Forbin_Project

Statements like this make people question if you have ever actually played that game. No one cares if you like that game but don't try to pretend that it isn't suffering from a host of bad ideas made by Cryptic/Atari.

Yeah there's a great idea. Let's take advice from a game that's hemorrhaging customers left and right. A game that was forced to offer free reactivation weekends less than three months after being released in a pathetic attempt to entice the people that cancelled their subs back. A game that's going to take another huge drop in subs when STO is released and the gang that bought 6 month CO subs for the STO beta access leave.

Oh and merging the servers? Go troll somewhere else.

He's already posted his support for this in Zachsmind's name thread.

It's one of the factors the devs consider all the time.

We wanted weapon customization.

We wanted power customization.

We wanted power proliferation.

We wanted more character slots.

We wanted side switching (we're getting it in GR)

We told them we'd pay for costume packs.

We wanted commas in the Consignment House.

We wanted them to cancel the 60 day rule.

We wanted larger SG rosters.

We wanted a healin powerset for villains.

We wanted Shields.

We wanted Dual Pistols. (coming in GR)

We wanted the 5th Column back.




And those are just a few things off the top of my head that we wanted and the devs gave to us. Does it mean we'll get everything we ask for? HELL NO. But the devs do listen and try to give us the stuff we want as long as it doesn't screw up the game.

And if the devs let us drop missions more frequently there are people that would the feature to level up without playing the game.

I've seen the people that don't play this game because it doesn't have a real PvP base. Most of them went to Champions, and I can honestly say this game is better off without them. They are a bunch of obnoxious ***holes.


As much as I wouldn't mind improving things for the remaining PvPers that are actually decent people all around, if it means attracting the jerks back I'll pass on improving PvP.

I found Santa by searching Funny Santa Avatars and Funny Holiday Avatars.

And that's where you made your first mistake.

And this is where you made your second mistake.

I've been here going on 66 months and if anything I'm seeing an increase in teaming and people in general. You also seem to be unaware of the fact that the Winter Event is going on and most players are goofing off in the Chalet in Pocket D running BNY missions, having ski and slolum races, and trading in their Candy Canes for the rewards. Pocket D has been so crowded lately that a slow night is when you only see 2 instances.

Then there is the fact that the devs removed the level restrictions on zones like RWZ and Firebase Zulu, and the new sidekicking feature means one level 50 player can sidekick 7 people on his team. That has drawn tons of low level characters into doing Rikti Mothership Raids, co-op AE missions, and Winter Lord teams are roaming high level zones like PI because that's where the best XP is.

Gone are the days when teams were forced to struggle to get 4 high level characters in order to sidekick 4 lowbies.

Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Disclaimer

Yes. This is a cut and paste reply that I keep handy, as well as a quick bit of instruction on how to search. Neither are meant to cause fights or to be insulting. The search instructions are in, not just because forum rules say flat out to search, but to help you and anyone else reading this use the search tool effectively.

The body of the cut and paste reply is the way it is because we've seen these arguments numerous times before. They're a summary of the salient points that come up each time. They are not here to insult you, make you feel stupid or otherwise "bring you down a peg." Instead, they are meant as instruction and information. Please read through the points and the explanation behind them to see the issues that are commonly brought up in response. They may not always match your suggestion 100% - in fact, you may have explained around one or two of them - but they're there for consideration and refinement of your idea.

Yes, I do look forward to the time, with some of these suggestions, that someone not only addresses all the points, but does so exceptionally well. It'll probably be added to the end of the cut/paste reply, with credit. For now, though, read and consider the points. They really are just there to help you, and move discussion along to help ideas evolve.

If you're going to see this and say an "evil forum vet is just shooting down your idea," or "You think you're the last word because of your post count," you're wrong. Heck, if you say the second, you've just worried more about my post count than I have in the last four plus years. Tongue-in-cheek comments in here are meant as humor, not put downs.

Searching Effectively

1. Click on "Search" up at the top of the forum.
2. On the left, under "Forum(s) to search," select "Suggestions and ideas."
3. On the right, Keyword Search Terms. This is probably where your problem was if you did search. Try the following, exactly as typed:

+vehicle -"re: "

This will search for anything with the string "vehicle" in the title.The -re: portion of it removes replies, so you'll see the root of every thread that comes up, letting you see just how many threads there are on this. (The last helps for other subjects, as well.)

Be sure to put the space between the colon and last quote.

4. Click the "In subject" radio button. This is a search, not a cute blonde in a bikini. Here, you want to ignore the body.

5. Leave Username Search blank.

6. Date range, Newer Than, change the 1 to a 3, and the time to Months.

7. Result format doesn't matter. Click on "Submit."

The subject at hand: Vehicles.
Vehicles as travel powers. This gets brought up a lot.

Short answer, don't expect it.

Long answer:
There are a lot of problems with the idea.

1. Movement.

Forward and back,even turning - ok. But you can do things that a vehicle can't - such as strafe (direct side to side or angular movement.) It doesn't work with a vehicle. There are also issues such as drift and "realistic" handling. We can go side to side, as mentioned, and make immediate right angle turns. Cars... not so much.

2. Movement, part 2.

Go stand in the road. No, not you personally. Take your character out and stand in the road, if you're heroside. Or even in the path of civilians. What happens? You get pushed. While not as big an issue with a motorcycle, perhaps, a car would have issues. What happens if two cars meet head on - yours and an NPC, or yours and another player's? Do you just pass through each other? Would you be satisfied with that very odd result? Or would you get stuck? How about those NPCs, can they walk and push your car, or are they walking through it? Neither answer is very satisfying, and intelligent, dynamic pathing is too computationally expensive.

3. Terrain.

Not every place has roads, or even makes sense for "off roading." Go look at Founder's Falls. Go look at Crey's Folley. Or Eden. Try to get to the north islands in Talos. What, do you have a kubelwagen? Look at the Pit in Sharkshead. Try to use your travel power (car) to get up to some of the doorways in high caves. Cars and motorcycles would be more like Superspeed - horizontal movement, period. And look - I'll be blunt - flat out *stupid* tied with, say, Combat Jumping or Superjump.

4. Combat.

You get ambushed on the way. How do you fight? Just have your powers blast out of the rolled up windows? How do you buff or debuff? EVERY power would need a new animation. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Then you want people with motorcycles instead of cars. Redo ALL the animations AGAIN. And they still wouldn't make sense - how do you use Footstomp in a car? Or Stalagmites?

5. Customizing.

Yeah, it would come up. Not everyone would want a sports car, or a mid-70s Buick boat, or an exotic, or a minivan, or whatever else.

6. Making "sense."

This was touched on in terrain - how do you get across water? How about the Shadow Shard? And if you want downright ridiculous looking, go do the heroside 25-34 Respec. Look at the Sky Skiffs inside of rooms or the reactor room. It makes no sense and looks *ridiculous.* Something that, yes, the devs try to avoid.

That's just a quick overview of why vehicles as generally envisioned aren't a spectacular idea for a travel power.
Further discussion

This I think merits a bit of extra commentary, honestly.

"Vehicles" covers a lot of different ground for different people. Some only consider cars/jets/motorcycles vehicles. Others add jetpacks, wings and the like. Much of the above considers cars and similar sized vehicles, with nods to motorcycle type vehicles.

Jetpacks and such, I don't see happening as travel powers. As costume options for Flight? Or as invented pieces that interact with Fly, similar to wings? Absolutely - but they don't need to be a separate travel power for that. I'm all for more jetpack and wing (or combination) designs. Besides, there are so many "temp" jetpacks, I don't see introducing yet another one as really being feasable - just my opinion.

But vehicles - cars, specifically - as a travel power, have issues.

One way to have them "somewhat" work.

For all that, I know some people *would* still like to pull up in front of a mission. So how do we do it?

A temporary power, based on the same tech from the Mac/Valkyrie pack Mission Teleporter. The temporary power would:

(a) be an invention - dropping from enemies. (A reward, because you saved... well, we'll get to that,)

(b) be a single use each time - you can only hold one at a time, not one of each, one total.

(c) use rarely used salvage, because... it's rarely used, and cheap. No Luck Charms here.

(d) come in multiple varieties.

How does this get around the various issues?


Terrain - It doesn't pass terrain. It just arrives.

It follows the same 'rules' as the mission teleporter - it's not indoors, doesn't go to contacts, etc. Just mission doors.

Customizing - It's not "your" vehicle. It's a temp power. You've called a cab, limo, or other transport.

Power animation - since you're skipping the space in between, no powers can be used 'til you arrive anyway.



The varieties?
- Limo: Stereotypical slightly stretched black limo.
- Checker cab: The classic yellow cab.

How about we move Freedom over to the EU servers and bring the EU servers over to the NA servers.

Not good enough. There should be a clear and undeniable proof that the majority of subscribers want their character names tied to their globals.

So Thaumator should be required to name one hundred thousand.

It's not our job to try and figure out what the OP is really suggesting. It's his idea and his responsibility to make sure it is clear concise and to the point. He has only himself to blame if people think he's talking about something else.

Dude, you should change your forum name to The_Pachinko_Machine.

That would certainly be a big help.

Oh please, CO has been hemorrhaging customers as soon as the free time that came with purchase expired. It's so bad over there they started offering free reactivation weekends before the game was three months on the market. When STO goes live and the 6 month subs expire they're going to lose even more customers.

heh heh heh heh . . .

This. Accolades happen when they happen. I'm playing this game because I enjoy the content and the people I meet. I'm not one of those pathetic little build nazi's that sit in the dark moaning in ecstasy over what accolade bonuses a character may have.

"20% more HP and 10% more end . . .Oh yeah . . . Oh Yeah . . .OH YEAH!"

First, I'm glad to hear you don't want to get rid of them.

Second, while I understand that you may not like all the gladiators, can you at least recognise that there might be people that like the ones you don't like? I know I personally have my favorites. If we were allowed to choose a gladiator as a temp pet we'd get people choosing some because they were the most powerful and others for purely roleplaying/concept reasons. I'd fall into the latter category.

Finally BBQ's right the devs aren't going to ruin game balance by giving us pets as strong as EB's. Minions, Lt's, and maybe Bosses are the best you'll ever see.

Actually I like the idea of turning the PvP zones into PvE. In fact I'd support making it permanent.

How about we get rid of all PvP except for one server. Say Freedom. Then all the PvPers can congregate there so it will be easier for them to find challengers, and the rest of us can enjoy the game in peace and quiet.

So you want to get rid of

The Shivan Shards
The War Whistle
Amy's Ward
The Clockwork Connection
The Coral Amulet
Creeper Seeds
The Demon Box
The Arachnos Combat Radio
The Loa Bone
The Rikti Drone
The Summoning Amulet
The Vial of Bees
The Snow Beasts
The Longbow Mech
The Arachnos Mini Blaster
The Vanguard Heavy Power Core



Or you could simply make friends. Join some global chat channels. Form your own teams. You know, stop being lazy and/or anti social.

Westley has posted a challenge more than once on the forums where he is willing to log onto any server at any time, day or night and show people how easy it is to form teams.

No one takes his challange tho. It seems it isn't as hard to find teams as some people want everyone to believe.