FlyingCodeMonkey

Gods help me, I'm even engaging them in the comments.

Fortunately, I have a politic style.

Saw that. Can't tell if they're trying to help or just generate some traffic. On one hand it's another indicator of support for the game. On the other hand, it just invites commentary from corporate apologists who assume by default that an unpopular decision nevertheless must have some sound basis in finances.

In essence, I'm not sure it's helpful for them to invite people who have no personal stake in the game to throw in a worthless "let it go" vote, but I guess at this stage any venue for continuing the discussion beats total obscurity.

If there were no other way, I would do it.

I'd prefer there be some other way. I hate starting over with no resources.

That. was. AWESOME.

Gonna take me forever to find me. I was in Atlas 22, and about four feet tall.

Everything, more or less. I haven't played a lot of MMOs other than City (mostly just Aion), but even during the time spent there, I missed a lot of systems.

Travel - Flight, Jumping, Super speeding, Rocket boards, Ninja running, Coyotes, Ouroboros portals, Tunnel portals, transit improvements. I get so tired of jogging in Aion. City excels at letting us get to the mission doors and gives us many high-speed means of movement, usable at will, without being limited by arbitrary timers, at reasonable endurance costs.

Enhancements - Gear is tedious. One of the most brilliant decisions ever made in City was to separate form and function. I hate having a good bonus tightly bound to an ugly shoulder piece, or two bows that are both good but slightly different. City's enhancement system gives is tremendous flexibility in slotting powers according to personal preference, and it only got astronomically better with Inventions.

Crafting - If you have the recipe and the resources, you can build it. No grinding craft skills (unless you're badging, which is totally optional), no chance of failure, no wear and tear.

Super Sidekicking - absolutely brilliant.

Costumes - Again, form and function are completely separate. Two lowbie characters with the exact same powers can look completely different. Even I, fair to middling at best with costumes, can get some great results. Others can lose hours on this activity alone.

Instancing - The overwhelming emphasis on indoor missions has one caveat in that the exterior zones will look less populated, but everything else about it is great. Having a couple dozen people running across a field all competing for the same herd monsters or collectible plant as they respawn gets tiresome very quickly.

Difficulty - Tougher missions, if your character or team can handle it.

Incarnates - Gloriously over the top, with a series of accompanying trials that include some of the most interesting tasks, settings, and enemies in the game. Caveat, I never enjoyed what the presence of Incarnates did to the older task forces (ITF, STF, LGTF). I'd have preferred that those had been locked to (at most) alpha-only. But water, bridge, etc. But the Dark Astoria content ... awesome. There's nothing better than leaping into the armies of monsters in Cimerora, or stopping Mot from devouring the world.

And ... well, pretty much everything else, too.

On a tangent, ow. Ow-ow-ow.

Now, I remember why I stopped writing letters the moment keyboards, printers, emails, and such became viable: they hurt! CSB: I've been writing programs since around 1982. I've been PC gaming with the mouse/keyboard since about 1992. Somehow, to this day, I don't have RSI and I'm incredibly grateful for that fact.

I write one letter by hand, and my thumb is still cramping. My natural handwriting, printed or script, has always been a grotesque scribble. These thumbs, which operate with such precision for hours at a time when gaming, protest after a mere twenty minutes of letter writing to the NCSoft CEO. For some reason, writing legible text by hand is something I do only with intense physical focus.

And of course, it may not help. Still, one more written and mailed. Maybe it will be the one that made the difference.

NC is neither an enemy, nor a friend. They're a company, one that has made its share of good and of poor decisions (lately).

They're also extremely unlikely to be swayed in any constructive way by anger, venom, boycotts, or threats. While I personally have no plans to give them money again, after the disgraceful way they handled Paragon Studio, neither of those facts is helpful to this conversation.

They're also not a huge media company with an audience of tens of millions across North America; i.e., the sort of corporation that might be in a position to feel an impact from massive Facebook protests, Twitter campaigns, and so on. There are too few of us and too few people aware that NCSoft exists, for that kind of thing to be effective.

Being polite and positive may not help our cause either, but at least it won't hurt.

Yeah. I hate to say it, Steele, but that's absolutely the wrong way to go about it. While the content is pretty much all true, you can't strike a confrontational tone with a CEO. You can't demand concessions from someone from whom we need a huge favor. Threats won't influence him in any constructive way.

Just came back from the mail room myself,
Took me forever to find an envelope,
FCM

Late to the thread (was busy all long weekend on the video/screenshot archive, which will consume my evenings for probably another week or two), but what the heck, it's at the top.

Maybe it's a coincidence Posi, but you summed up my sense of the game beautifully. It always felt to me like you guys created an awesome playground, then invited us all into it. More than that, for the last several years I felt that you were incredibly passionate about creating the game that we wanted to play. It's a hard thing to express, but at least since Inventions, I've watched one thing after another after many others checked off the very long list of great features that people had suggested. I saw beta feedback directly incorporated into the new systems, many times. It created an extraordinary sense of community, even if I've hardly been able to follow the forums for the past year or two.

There's no way you remember, but years ago I reported a bug with some of my Kinetics powers (it turned out the endurance drain resistance from powers like Accelerate Metabolism was also resisting recovery buffs from powers like Transference). You met me in-game in a remote corner of Talos so we could repro the problem. That struck me as so very cool. It was just one of many interactions in the years that followed.

City has ruined me for other MMOs. Mechanically, you guys got so many things so very right, in purposefully creating a game that conveys a sense of powerful characters. I get shivery every. single. time. my Dawn Caste Solar ... er, I mean, my Titan/SR incarnate scrap, flares his searing anima and leads the charge through the gates of darkness, flaming sword in hand, song of battle in his heart. Hell, I almost get emotional describing it now. The Dark Astoria content couldn't possibly have been more perfect. The Sentinel of Mot could not have been a more awesome adversary.

Then I go over to Aion, which is a very pretty game about people with wings and two-handed weapons, and whose developers seem determined to drive people away. Flight timers. Random failure in craft grinding. Random chance of slotted enhancements breaking. Two minions may kill your tank. Griefers rifting into your low-level zones. Imagine if taking the train from Atlas to KR cost money. Imagine if you couldn't use the color red in the costume creator without specifically buying red from the store (per use). Imagine if all XP gain was reduced so they could sell more Tea of Repose (think patrol xp). That's Aion. It's a lovely game, but run by people who don't understand fun.

Where do we go from here? I have no idea. Maybe 2004 to 2012 was my MMO era, just as 1997 to 2001 was my RTS era. Some guardian angel company may swoop in and buy the property and keep it running for a while, but I doubt it. The window on retaining people who understand the code and the community will probably close too rapidly. If you make another game, I may follow. Time will tell.

For now, I can't possibly thank you and the City team enough, Posi. Well done, sir.

Regards,
Michael, aka FlyingCodeMonkey (Liberty)

You guys created an awesome playground, and invited us into it.

Every minute I've spent (and will spend) in City has been fantastic, except for that one time the vampire Archon killed me, then when I rezzed he ran back over again and punched me and killed me again. I said some mean things, that day.

But the rest was pure goodness.

I kinda just posted my whole thing in the "Thank You" thread and so probably shouldn't repeat it all here, but this thread has better epic/legendary status.

Man. I've been playing City so long, I don't remember what I did in the evenings when I wasn't speeding through Atlas. If you guys ever form your own studio and make another game, I guarantee I'll sign up for it.

Even if it has elves.

Regards,
FCM

Man, where do I even start?

Nine or ten years ago, someone made a post on Fark.com with the headline "this game looks like it might be kind of fun." Curious, I followed the link to the City site, then very much in its infancy. I wasn't really into MMOs, but I was curious enough to return occasionally, look around the faction profiles, browse the forums a bit, and so on.

This continued intermittently until one afternoon in 2004 as I arrived at an Ars Magica game and noticed the host's PC sitting in a game that looked like the City screen shots. Yeah, it did look kind of fun. I fiddled a few minutes with some variant of a katana scrap. After twenty minutes I got called over to the Ars game, and I knew I'd be playing City.

I wasn't in the beta, but I bought the game on day one and have been here almost without interruption ever since, minus a few months between issues 5 and 7. Well, that was a few years ago. Heh, no other game has held my attention for so long. No other game compelled me to attend PAX to visit the panel for the Mission Architect issue. The previous record holder was Total Annihilation, which I modded for a mere four years.

No good thing lasts forever, but wow ... that was sudden.

Thanks, guys. I don't know what else to say, except that now I have to go buy Fraps so I can record a LOT of screens and movies. As I posted on the FB comments, I'll miss my City characters more than some of my own family, heh. Those critters have given me a ridiculous amount of entertainment and satisfaction since 2004.

Regards,
FCM

(1) is fine. (2) is sort of awful. Not the biggest fan of Penelope Yin either way, though it would help matters if her psychic spirit thing would spam its heals ... silently.

C reminds me too much of the original Frankengun. Guess it's A, the George Jetson gun, for the pleasantly cheesy space rings.

Voted A, even though it doesn't have a prayer. C is too small, D reminds me of one that we already have, and I prefer the shape of A to B.

B, without a doubt. C looks too much like some of the other armored/robotic/metallic parts we already have, and B has the slightly-oversized gloves (want).

B is cool, but I have to go with A. A is a dead ringer for the classic Buck Rogers jet pack, and I think the more compact design of B might not stand out well as part of a costume.

I thought the raid leader was supposed to get a Microfilament. If I'd known all that trouble was for an Endoplasm, sheesh. I mean I like Endos, but I have plenty of those.

Did I mention that the Green/Blue teams were outstanding, yesterday?

No? Not yet?

The Green/Blue teams were outstanding, yesterday. Even taking the occasional stray shot from a yellow or from Hami himself, that was one solid and disciplined group.

I love the MSRs, Noy, but am not getting up at 10:30am on Sunday for them. I sympathize with your schedule trouble though, and respect the determination to continue running them at some regular time, even if it's awkward for those of us on the left coast.

Kudos to Ukase for picking up the Sunday afternoon/evening MSR. It's not a proper Sunday without a half-dozen Rikti Magi to confront.