GMan3

According to the GR and CoX websites, that would be a no. The tips system is part of Issue 18, but the Morality System is part of GR. Therefore you would need GR in order to switch sides.

Good points and I am pretty sure Issue 19 will not be live until around Mid-November, maybe even into December based on the past publishes of new Issues. Every three to four months is about normal.

Please let it not be Issue 19. I am so hoping they work on the lag and mapserver issues before another Issue comes out. Not to mention all the other little bugs.

As for Issue 19 going to beta, I doubt it, Issue 20 was supposed to beta first.

I won't argue wise or not. I just don't think enough people really want this to justify the time to do the programming (from Paragon Studios perspective), especially considering that you can just make a new toon with the powers you want. This game was designed on that idea after all.

Most of the "never gonna happen/most likely won't happen" items in this game that ended up getting done was because a large enough segment of the players wanted it (Power Customization) or it had to happen for the sake of game balance (Market Merger).

So, like I said before, I just don't see it happening without a major shake up at Paragon Studios.

Either rushed out, possibly just not given the twice over, or both. I've noticed a lot of little spelling errors and double words (the the) in the new missions in Praetoria. It seems like people were trusted to create things and no one bothered to complete the leadership cycle of supervision by editing the work. I'll admit in my excitement at all the new shiny stuff I didn't notice most of it the first time through and on my second round I only skimmed the missions, but some stuff jumped out at me.

Anyways, I'm not sure if it is due to being rushed or a lack of supervision. I do hope they make some adjustments soon though.

I'm not so sure saying Cryptic ripped off the SK system and Difficulty Slider would be entirely correct. After all, Cryptic and NCSoft were partners in this game before Crypitic sold it's half to NCSoft in order to devote itself entirely to Champions On-Line. It is interesting though that the SSK system was in Champions On-Line first. Thanks for the info.

I just did this one again yesterday and the overall feel of it is just not right. I don't think my toons have to be the biggest and best all the time, but I certainly don't feel any kind of "Heroic" after that mission. If anything I feel more like a neutral sidekick.

That actually makes a lot of sense. I don't really use AE anymore and never did that much to begin with so it never even occurred to me. Thanks for the clarification.

I would say not exact copies since on a few occasions now the clones used powers I chose not to take on my own toon. I think what happened is each AT and each Power Set that the AT could use was designed by the Dev's to have certain powers based on what they felt would be effective. Now if they picked the powers the same way you did, Eureka! Perfect Clone! If they didn't, then close enough and may not be noticed unless the specific powers are flashy. I do like the system though. Nothing like violently attacking yourself to relieve stre . . . never mind, don't want to let sent to the loony bin for that one.

I've been wondering that myself. Just not curious enough yet to start testing it out.

I agree as to the SSK system being good and much better than the original. As for what my friends game was I will probably never know. That conversation was from almost six years ago and half a world away (I moved from NC to HI). I will try to research it though. I was told by a former WoW player that it has a SK (or SSK) system, but I can not confirm that since I don't play WoW and have only "tested" it couple times (many years ago).

A lot of games have a similar but different system in place though when they have NPC's join your group that are always "about the same level" as you and even level up in the same way you do. Neverwinter Nights comes to mind first. This would be my guess as to where the CoX SK / SSK System comes from. Keep in mind, I said "similar but different".

I agree, the morality missions can be confusing. The Alignment missions though are pretty straightforward at least.

Probably luck mostly (if it fits your toons so good), but a little bit of skill in writing broadly oriented missions too I would guess. I wondered in the beginning if they had made missions based on character origin types or just ATs, but after running a few for my own toons and for other people's toons, I dumped that idea.

I did not say that SSKing was not innovative because of Power Leveling. I said it was not innovative because the new SSK system is a rehash of the old one. Even your statement says the old system isn't exactly innovative though since other games use it as well. I remember way back trying to talk a friend into playing CoX and telling him about the SSK system. He shoots back with "Yea, my game does that too". The original SSK system may fall into the "New to the game, but not Innovative" category, while the new SSK system definitely falls into the rehash/rework category. I also said that I like the new system as well, I just also mentioned not everyone does.

Well, almost an apology there for lying about my statements. I guess I can accept it. Also an almost admission of your own mistake, so good enough I think.

Now let me respond to the New Positron TF first and please do not assume I have not run them just because I disagree with you. These two "new" TF's are a rehash of the old one. Plain and simple. I have run them a few times now and read them each time, but all they did, overall, was break a large TF down into two smaller ones. And they are still using the same old mission types. How about some new mission types. They are starting to do that in Praetoria, but it needs a lot of expanding. My personal favorites would be the chance to make decisions inside the mission AND mission Zone maps that actually make you feel like you are in a zone (NPC's, vehicle's and all), not just kill/defeat a bunch of baddies. As well as a bunch of things I already mentioned before like zones that can do environmental damage, underwater zones/maps, etc . . .

As for calling you or "imagin(ing) me as a fanboy who loves literally everything the devs do but it's not true." I never said that. I did say that I used to be a Total Fan and suggested you might still be too. Total Fans are Passionate but can discuss things most of the time (if with a little bit of difficulty), fanboys are just irrational most of the time and not willing you discuss anything unless you agree with them.

I do admit that the use of the word "stagnation" to describe the future of this game may have been a semi-poor one since most people will automatically jump to the worst possible definition. Sluggish may have been better but still isn't quite right either. Your own list of problems with this game is a good example though. Things do seem pushed out before they are ready or changed without really thinking the changes through. This also gets back to my original post about the trend this company is having with messing up giveaways/contests. If they had direct competition, they would be much less likely to do so because that kind of behavior pushes their player base over to the competitor.

Your ginormo (not a word, but I do like it) list was good. Very good in fact, but it fell into three basic categories: Innovative (smallest), New to the game but not Innovative, and Rehash/Reworking of old ideas (biggest).

What are my expectations? Well I would like to see more drive out of the company. More like the first couple of years when they had to make a name for themselves or go under. I am VERY excitedly awaiting the release of Issues 19 and 20. Not so much for the Incarnate System itself, but to see what other innovative stuff they come up with. I am hoping for a huge "bang" to the game for the 50+ content as well since that has been ignored since the very beginning. I don't mind the new but not Innovative stuff, it can be nice. The rehashing/reworking is often necessary, but what new and Innovative stuff is coming? What is to keep us from moving on to another new and fresher game?

Lastly DarkGob, I would ask you one thing. Go back and read that list you skimmed over. Look at it for what it is, a bare bones analysis of the changes/additions you listed and see if I am really wrong in what I say. I have no doubt we may disagree on how good something is, but am I wrong in my overall analysis of those items?

Actually, I thought nothing of the sort. Not to be mean, but I never even thought about you since I was debating DarkGob.

I do hope you get better soon though Electric. I had that very same problem last month and it sucks.

Bad? Where did I say bad? I can't find it. Please don't put words in my mouth that I didn't say. I clearly gave credit where it was due and pointed out that other stuff was not as good as you may have thought in the overall. I never said it was bad though.

I think maybe the problem is I have moved from the Total Fan type of player that i used to be, to the type of player that can comfortably critique the game I play. Your "bad" comment leads me to believe that you have not yet.

OK, I am willing to address these. I think you may see less innovation than you think. But I'll let you be the judge. Keep in mind though, I am not saying the game is dead or dying as some have suggested. I am only saying that Paragon Studios may not have the edge that they would have if they had a direct competitor and that this game may not be as good as it would be if it did. Direct competition is after all the biggest drive for innovation no matter what field you work in. You either push harder to out perform your competitor or you get pushed to the side and ignored. Here is my views on your list:

New Power Sets, Powers Customization, Power Set Proliferation, Weapon Customization, Multiple Builds, and anything else to do with Powers - I already said that Powers were this companies strong point. I just don't want then to get lax there is all. Innovative.

New hair Styles, Costume Pieces, Faces, Ability to change sex, Animates Tails, etc. - I did make the mistake of not listing Character Customization as another strong point of the company, but as I stated above, where is the rest such as snake bodies, centaur style animal bodies, animal heads, etc. . . that people have been asking for. They have been innovative here so far, but again, don't let up.

VEATs - pretty much had to come about thanks to the previous HEATs. Really though, they are just slightly different ATs, not innovation. And where is the power set customizations for these guys? Not innovative, but close.

Ouroborous - very limited zone map, no enemies to fight. Kinda nice to play your old missions over again in cased you missed something (badges). Not Innovative, but close.

Cimerora - still a limited zone map, but at least it has enemies to fight if you want to. Still, it only has ONE new enemy set. Not innovative, but close.

Hollows Revamp - they tweaked the numbers, not to innovative.

Level-Up Boost - I remember when people first started asking for that several years ago. Nice touch, but not innovative.

Combat Attributes - yea, kinda nice to see those. More helpful to the Power Gamers than the casual player, but nice none the less. Innovative, but only by a little.

Leveling Pacts - Not sure if any other MMO's do this or not, but it is probably one of the most innovative things I have seen about this game other than powers and costumes.

Reward Merits, Architect Merits, Vanguard Merits, Hero/Villain Merits - just a new reward system. Good idea and a good way to get you to spend your INF, but not really innovative.

Inspiration Conversion - good idea there, glad it came along, but innovative?

Day Jobs - I will grant innovation here. If it was just a badge it would not have been, but adding the minor benefits of your day job put it over the top.

Mission Architect - Not innovative at all. Many games include this idea. I can remember back about 25 years when I saw it in a game called "Ancient Art of War".

5th Column TF/SF - 5th Column is a rehash of an enemy type from WAY back in the game. Same series of the same old mission types. Reichsman is fairly cool though, I will grant you that. Unfortunately, that is one character out of the whole TF/SF. Good TF/SF, but not Innovative.

Costume Change Emotes - I don't use emotes much, but if I could make it stay on one particular emote EVERY time I changed a costume that would be nice. Might even use them more often then. As is it is just a pain and I ignore them. They lost the innovative edge due to that and the fact that it is almost a mandatory feature to explain a sudden costume change ala Firestorm, Iceman, Superman, Spiderman, etc . . .

Super Side Kicking - rehash of an older system. I personally like it, but a lot of people do not since they can no longer get the xp from +5 enemies when being Power Leveled. Not innovative.

Dominator AT Revamp - rehashing an old AT to make it work better in comparison to the other ATs is not innovative.

Enhanced Sounds, Ultra-Mode - This part of the game was completely ignored for years and had to be updated. The one good thing about CO and DCUO was that Paragon Studios had to look at this for competitions sake. In other words, necessary not innovative.

New Arcs, Positron TF Re-Vamp - not new, just rehashing the same old missions.

Doppleganger Tech - New, Innovative, win! Only because it can changed for each character you run that arc with though.

E-Mail Attachments - Not impressed. Just keeping up with the rest of the industry here from talking to friends that play other MMO's say and from what I have seen in a few myself.

Alignment System, Side Switching - Innovative idea that got drown out with a rehash of the same old mission types. Added to this is the fact that even the developers admit they wanted this to happen in 2005 with the release of CoV and you get a not so fresh or innovative idea.

Praetoria - 4 zones cost me just as much as I got when I first bought CoH in 2004, then CoV in 2005. Added to that is the fact that in all these zones we only got 6 new enemy types? In an ENTIRE WORLD? I was amazed with Praetoria too at first, but once the shiny wore off it really begins to look a little under done (IMO).

Market Merge - Had to be done, otherwise it would have destroyed anyones ideas of switching sides. After all, would you take your level 50 main to the other side if you lost all your cash in the process? I am sure a few would, but I think the majority would not. So not innovative, necessary.

Cathedral of Pain - rehash of something that never worked right to begin with. Then they didn't even bring back the "Item of Power" it was supposed to award that gave everyone in your SG, who was playing in SG Mode, a special little buff. Not innovative.

Countless other QoL improvements - I won't address them until you list them. I have a feeling though that a QoL improvement would have a hard time falling under the innovative category, but you may be right.

I could be wrong, but I see a lot less innovation and a lot more "necessary changes or upgrades" on this list. Of course this list is all "In My Opinion" and you therefore have to make up you own mind. Oh and BTW DarkGob, though I disagree with you, that was one heck of a list you came up with.

As for the M&G part, that started out as a question I was asking for a friend that refuses to enter the forums anymore. It later turned into something else when someone asked me about it. I'll leave it at that. The negativity comment may be appropriate if all you look at is my posts in these "Emote Pack" threads, but look at my comments in other threads and I think you will see that I try to give praise where it is deserved too. For instance in the various Veterans Reward threads I generally feel positive and not because I am a Veteran, but because the rewards seem to fit. Overall, they are mostly small incentives to stick around and a way for the company to say thinks. I can feel the love there. I have even tried to get others to "calm down" as you suggested (mostly the PvPers).

I'm not sure how your not experiencing the lag though. I would be tempted to call you a liar on that one, but I have read a lot of your posts and I am certain that is not the case. I happen to be a member of multiple Global channels on several different servers and the one theme I see a lot is people complaining about lag and being "Mapservered", not to mention the broadcast chatter going on backing it up. Almost daily my own lag is so bad that I turn the game off in frustration. It is slightly better when the servers are less populated, but only a little. I did a TF the other night in which one guy got booted from the game in every single mission and the lag for everyone else on the team kept getting us killed, the old "dang, lag, I'm dead" issue.

Buggy releases and messing the whole game up is easy to explain and I will only give a brief description here. Issue 17, why did it knock out the Markets for a day and a half? Issue 18 did too, but that one is understandable with the market merger. Why did they both screw up the globals for a day or so? I didn't see this personally, but I did see a lot of people on various channels taking about not being able to find the mission doors because the arrows were not there.

I have now been told on several occasions that it must be my computer, but I doubt that. Here's why: Quad Core Processor (2.67 Hz each), 64 bit system, 9 gigs of Ram, more hard drive space than I will ever need (not that it really matters in this case), and Cable Internet at the highest possible transfer rates. I also use the highest quality cables I can buy. All in all, this computer is way above and beyond even the recommended levels to play the game that NCSoft lists.

But how much of the game is new? New zones? Not all that much different really. New maps? Kinda. New missions? A few. What is truly different though, how has the game grown?

The alignment system is probably my favorite "new" thing. I really like the tip drop aspect to be honest. Even so, they are really only a re-hashing of old style missions, instead of a new mission type. Even switching sides does not really give you anything new, no matter how much badge hunters like myself like the idea. How about a zone map that actually feels like you are in a zone instead of in a mission map. How about a zone where you can actually get environmental damage if your standing in the wrong place, say a lava flow or a mudslide.

What this company really needs is some innovation. Totally different environments. How about underwater zones? Space? Maybe some alternate body types such as huge females, snake lower bodies, or the centaur style animal lower bodies. Powers too. How long has the request for a "Water" based power been out there? I will admit that the Powers are probably the companies strongest point, but keep it up, don't get lax.

As for your comment on the server activity, that is both a weak point for the company and a strength for the players. The companies weakness in that the stability of the servers is horrible as evidenced by the lag and "server disconnects" going on all the time and all around the clock. It is a player strength because of all the people that have either come back or decided to check out all the new shiny stuff. Most of these people will probably not last more than six months (if you believe most articles in gaming magazines about MMO's in general, not this particular one).

Overall, while I love this game, I am not really seeing new innovative stuff going on. Just a lot of re-hashing the old stuff.

OK, Electric, first off, I did not jump all over them for screwing up, I pointed out that they have messed up the last three or four contests/give-aways they have conducted. I do recognize that Avatea making the post where she admitted her mistake was nice and I will add classy. Her making another post saying there had been a delay was nice and classy as well. It does not change the fact that there was a screw up. Like it or not, it is a trend. Once is a mistake, twice is an oops, three or more is a trend. Especially when the mistakes are so close together. Really though, you invested a little too much emotion in what I said in that post. To be completely honest, my only intent was to point it out as a way of nudging the company and reminding them that quality does matter.

As for the rest, let me first start by saying that like you, I too love this game. Maybe that is why this micro-transaction model rubs me so wrong. Well that and the fact that for so long I believed this company was different from all the other MMO's out there. The "Emote Pack" though is, in my opinion, a slap in the face from a quality vs price standpoint. I could handle, even if I didn't like it, the other packs that actually added some form of value to the game for a majority of players. That one adds almost no value and what little value there is goes to only a small segment of players. They dropped the ball there for quality as well.

And my other comments? Complaining about lag almost all the time? What's wrong with pointing that out? Quality again. Buggy releases that take weeks to fix? Quality. Issue releases messing up almost every aspect of the games, not just the stuff they are supposed to add? Quality. Let me add here the fact that the on-line store sucks for both access and ease of use. Quality. What about any of this is nit-picky? It is all almost constant and certainly repetitive issues with the game as of late. Quality.

If you have decided to give them a pass even with all this stuff going on, that is your problem, not mine. I will remind them of the high standards of quality they should have whenever possible.

Something occurred to me while writing this post. I really wonder if not having a direct competitor has actually hurt this game lately. Champions On-Line came out and proved to be such a joke that everyone seems to be laughing it off. I think Paragon Studios has too. Heck, even DC Universe On-Line won't really be a direct competitor since it is a console game adapted for the PC and that rarely works out the greatest. Without a direct competitor though, this company may be doomed to stagnation since there is no other game to out do, nothing to push it.

Pretty clear in this post here from September 9, 2010 that someone screwed up. Not a bad screw up but part of a trend regardless. Then on September 14, 2010 another post by Avatea saying there has been a delay in getting the costume codes out. So it is obvious there was a screw up, it really doesn't appear to be Marketings fault, and it really does appear to be a case of "Oops, my mistake, I'll fix it when I get to it".