GlaziusF
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Quote:Well, last I checked, there wasn't any monthly fee involved there. You buy the game, and from then on you can play it as much as you want whenever you want, no questions asked.Originally Posted by Slashman
So that's why Counter Strike, Team Fortress 2, The Battlefield Series and other games like that are so unpopular? Thanks for clearing that up for me.
At least until the servers die.
Because a) monthly fee and b) people who suck don't understand how hard they suck or how to take into account feedback on their suckitude, which wouldn't be a problem if their money didn't have crisp edges and a certain legal tenderness.Quote:Also, why is it about PVP? Why can't battles with NPC enemies be more about player skill? Or at the very least more so than what we have now?
Heat death of the universe. You over or under?Quote:I'm curious to know how many times companies have to watch other companies 'get what's coming to them' before someone wises up and does something different. -
Quote:Yes, it's very abstract. You have to file a whole lot of fiddly bits out of a given social interaction template to produce something people can understand in a reasonable amount of time.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
That's... And awfully abstract interpretation of social interaction. I mean, I have a hard time accepting even SIMULATED social interaction (that is, talking with NPCs) as something which counts, but I'm willing to concede on that part. But Tetris as a social interaction because you have a computer which governs the internal rules of the game? But that interpretation, chopping wood or clipping your toenails could count as social interaction.
I don't really have anything to say about this, I just love the idea of real fake people. Presumably as distinct from fake real people and fake fake people.Quote:I'm sorry, maybe I'm not smart enough (no snark involved) to see things for what they are, but I can only call something "social interaction" if it has other people or people simulades in it. REAL people simulades, not just abstract concepts that, if you squint and tilt your head, sort of remind me of something that kind of maybe looks like a very vague simulade. The border is understandably ill-defined, but Tetris would most certainly fall far, FAR on the OTHER side.
For someone who's not interested in social interaction you write an awful lot of letters.Quote:I just don't see how the ESSENCE of a game has to be social interaction each and every time. Yes, I'm sure an abstract argument can be made that every game is, even games that aren't, but that's much in the same vein as the arguments that can be made as to whether SuperMan is Natural or Science origin. I really don't buy that the point of every game is to act as surrogate social interaction for the things we can't have in real life, specifically since I, myself, and not actually interested in social interaction in the slightest, yet I've played games since I was 6.
Anyway, it's not that people must use games to substitute for social interaction, though certainly you can call to mind cases where this happens. Social interaction is enjoyable, and people enjoy games to the extent that they produce the joys of social interaction, however distorted. And games continue to exist even though they _aren't_ a good substitute for the upsides of social interaction because they also ameliorate the consequences of failure.
And how did that "pay to suffer" business model work out for them?Quote:I grew up on the old arcades and I forged through all of their cheap, cheesy, unfair and downright malicious design. I suffered through Sunset Riders where getting shot once cost you a life and all your upgrades, I toughed it out through Knights of the Round, where one mistake could land you on the bottom of a dog pile. And because I didn't have unlimited cash as a kid, every play session of mine was limited to about three or four credits for the day.
Well, yes. That's because you, as a player, are statistically unlikely to be that damn good. A game where you pit your skill against another player's directly is eventually going to bring you face-to-face with the actual extent of your skill, which is likely worse than you think it is.Quote:This is one thing that is sorely missing in contemporary MMOs. Battles are almost never won because you, as a player, are just that damn good.
And since "pay to suffer" doesn't work too well, the people who keep losing will quit, and then the "better" people will start losing more often, and eventually only one player will be left.
Perhaps he will /broadcast "Victory! Victory! Immortal fame!" before he, too, quits for lack of things to do.
Well, how do you sell that sort of thing? How do you replace it? How do you give it to someone else? And how do you tell people that they can do any of these?Quote:But whether or not focusing on gear is a good thing, that's where MMOs are. I'm just tired of seeing this gear presented as swords and shields you pick off the ground, especially in settings NOT set in Fantasy Land. Why can't I visit elemental forges and imbue my Soul Reaver with an element? Why can't I put cybernetic legs on myself and jump higher? There are interesting variants out there, we don't need to keep repeating ourselves.
I mean, just to use a personal example here, I had no idea you could put more than one of the same enhancement in a power when I started playing. The illustrations in the instruction booklet had all different ones, so that's what I went by.
You know what one of the big reasons I keep playing CoH is?Quote:"Play," within the context of an MMO, usually means "spend more than a few hours on a free trial." The question wasn't why I'd TRY a new MMO that was just a rehash of the same old, same old and not just KEEP PLAYING the MMO I'm already playing which gives me the exact same thing. It's like the saying goes: "You don't drag people away from WoW by offering them the same things WoW offers them. If that's what they wanted, they can just play WoW. You drag people away from WoW by offering them things WoW DOESN'T offer." Like... Loot, an auction house, banks, crafting and... Yeah, that.
I seem to have misread. The point was, I suppose, that a new game has to offer something more than an old game if there is to be any point to play it. Why would I stop playing WoW, for instance, if another game offered me exactly the same things and nothing more? At the very least, WoW is "the big thing" AND the game I'm currently playing. "Same old, same old" is not enough to shift me.
The robust bind system.
No, seriously. Remappable keyboard controls are not a standard feature in games these days. Native keybinding support has changed the way I play this game so much from when I was using the default controls.
I told you that story so I could tell you this one: you never know what'll grab you. There are games that do try to copy WoW, right down to having buttons in the interface that don't actually do anything just so it looks like the WoW interface. But the ones that aren't so blatant? They're trying to paint their game as "all the things you liked about WoW except the one that made you quit".
Your money is going to make a lot more difference than wagging your finger. I mean, what, the designer is going to go into a meeting with the producer and say "we can't put this in the game! People will be mad at us! ON THE INTERNET!"?Quote:If my choice is between telling designers that their baby is ugly and sitting on my hands, I opt to tell them. All else aside, feedback counts. If it's just me, then who cares about me? But what if it's not? What if many people feel the same way? If all of us, then, tales the time to let designers know how we feel, that just might make a difference. The same way I vote with my money. If a game sucks, I don't pay for it. If a game is unimaginative and derivative, I don't pay money for it. I don't expect to wag my finger at people and have them turn red in the face, but I'm not going to keep my opinion of them to myself, either.
And it's not just about making things I, in particular, want. It's about making something, anything, that is new and novel. They CANNOT survive by remaking the same basic framework over and over again. This is not going to last. It cannot last. Sooner or later someone is going to have to innovate, or someone is going to go bankrupt. We'll see how the Star Wars MMO does, but sooner or later something somewhere will have to give. The MMO genre can't subsist on clones indefinitely.
Tell customer service when you quit the game, and PR when you don't want to play the new one they're hyping. Tell them why.
If a company pays any attention to that kind of thing at all, customer service and PR are more likely to be able to gather complaints from people and present them to decision-makers. Designers will just have a pile of anecdotal evidence.
And if a company doesn't pay any attention to that kind of thing at all? Well, they get what's coming to them. -
Quote:I cannot? I should not?Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Supplementary ideas and concepts are all fine and good, but they CANNOT override written descriptions in their official capacity. Going off what SOs do to you is not a BAD idea (provided you actually use them at all), but it should only ever work IN ADDITION TO the definitions of the origins as stated. You can use any and all tools at your disposal to spin and interpret origin definitions in whatever way you can manage, but you should not outright contradict these definitions.
Or what?
If people get stuck in character creation trying to pick an origin, it's because origin is a meaningless but necessary decision. For purposes of getting them unstuck, why not replace the meaningless decision with a meaningful one?
Chaos? Anarchy? Riots in the streets? Dogs and cats sleeping together?
PEOPLE MIGHT BE WRONG ON THE INTERNET?! Oh no, anything but that!
Seriously, or what?
This is what that says to me: "I never turned invisible and saw a weird, shadowy otherworld when I put on a ring, and neither has anyone else. Therefore, Lord of the Rings is semantically equivalent to RANDOM NOISE."Quote:Any story which picks and chooses which rules it upholds and which it disregards is no better than a story which disregards ALL rules.
Picking which rules it disregards is what makes a story a story, and not, say, a history.
What good does it do you to explain? I'm just not seeing it.Quote:You don't need to disregard the definitions as given and replace them with definitions of your own choosing, because you can EXPLAIN around the problems, rather than just kicking them out of the way. -
Quote:And distinctions without a difference are useless.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
This is irrelevant to the discussion. The Origins themselves have an actual stated set of definitions. Its legitimate to ask what Superman's best-fit origin is given those definitions.
If you want to get into a discussion of the role that enhancements play from a game design perspective, just say so. However, its obvious that while the original game design intent was to have origin have an actual developmental meaning, the eventual decision was to make enhancements redundant. In other words, Origin doesn't determine what kind of enhancements you can get so much as it determines the labels they have. The only real difference is who sells them (at times) which is hardly any difference at all. They are distinctions without a difference (which is normally a sign of a game design error or compromise, actually).
If you use the listed definitions of origin to work out that Superman and Batman are both Natural-origin, okay, you've solved a problem. But what then? What does it let you do? I'm totally with you here - from a mechanical standpoint, your origin is a meaningless choice. You may as well close your eyes and pick at random.
But what if you don't want to?
I mean, I'm assuming (perhaps unreasonably) that people who wonder what origin applies to a particular backstory are actually genuinely confused. Choosing an origin means something to them, but based on the information available to them they can't decide. If "close your eyes and pick at random" worked for them they'd have done it already. And they can't actually play the character they thought up because they have to pick an origin to do that.
I mean, maybe I'm just completely off base here, but that's the only reason I can think of for why someone would have a problem with picking out their origin.
So, "here's another piece of information: the SOs reflect different approaches to getting better at what you do. Which one best fits how you see your hero developing?" And as part of providing that information, I call Superman a Science "origin", because it's contradictory to what everybody up the thread has said and people tend to remember contradictions.
Come to think of it, I actually came up with it largely because it's not what people think of when they think of "origin" -- because it's not associated with backstory at all. People can often come up with their own backstories, but that's where they stop. They don't write the whole story of how their hero develops and matures and then step into Paragon City to act it out.
So "how the hero gets better" is a blank narrative space, and working out how to fill that in will usually work better than trying harder to cram a giant unwieldy backstory into one of the provided bins. -
Quote:Sudoku isn't a game. It's a puzzle. A relevant difference between a game and a puzzle is that you can lose a game -- it can end against your will.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Wait, what? ALL games are copies of social interactions? What kind of social interactions is, say, Tetris a copy of? Or Sudoku, for that matter. Or the many Breakout games. I can agree that, to some extent, MMOs can be billed as social experiences, but even then not every part of them is one.
You can give up on a Sudoku puzzle. But the puzzle doesn't care about that. It'll just sit where you left it. Waiting. Watching.
In computer games, such as Breakout and Tetris, the computer fills the role of another person or people. Often an antagonist.
What are Breakout and Tetris? Well, they involve hand-eye coordination and spatial judgement at an escalating pace...
They're tests. Passing a test, or "acing" a test, feels good in and of itself, regardless of what other effects it may have. Failing a test often comes with unpleasant consequences, but the game sweeps those under the rug. Your Breakout cartridge does not implode if you don't beat your high score. And while you might be able to recreate Tetris in real life with, say, an accelerating grocery belt, things are going to get messy when the blocks reach the top.
I missed your point by more than you thought. I wasn't answering the question "must gear exist?". I was answering the question "why does gear exist?"Quote:Wait, I'm obviously missing something. Last I checked, say Street Fighter didn't have anything I could describe as "gear," yet last I checked, it was one of the most popular games out there. Pac Man has no "gear" unless you count the power pellets, and that's a REAL stretch. The original Load Runner had no gear, either. More contemporary Need For Speed have something which would qualify, but older Need For Speed games did not.
Or are you saying an MMO can't exist without gear? And even if you were, you missed my point by a mile.
Let me describe a Street Fighter scenario. Imagine a single-player game of Street Fighter II, consisting of fighting eight opponents with steadily increasing A.I. difficulty (we'll say one step every 2 fights) and then three bosses. Now, let's say you have selectable difficulty, so that you can start the game at any difficulty, and you can beat any character including the bosses at difficulty 8... except for Dhalsim. You don't have much of a chance against him above difficulty 5.
So what are your options? Get better at fighting just Dhalsim, somehow? Play a game easy enough to contain a Dhalsim you can beat? Risk playing a game that might contain a Dhalsim you can't beat, forcing you to fight him over and over or just reset and try again?
What if you could earn, say, "technical tokens" by doing well in earlier fights, and use them to make the fight against Dhalsim easier, either by directly spending them to drop his difficulty or indirectly, by "buying" an Awesome Headband, +5 vs. Yoga Fire?
That's the seed of "gear". Everybody's difficulty is personal and different, so give them a resource they can use at their discretion to smooth out the bumps.
MMOs without this sort of gear exist. World War II Online, or Planetside. You have what is technically "gear" in both those games, but it spawns in with you. It's how you use your abilities. A sniper has a sniper rifle, an infiltrator has smoke grenades. Significantly, both games have the bulk of their challenge provided by other players.
Advancement in both games involves expanding the range of gear you can spawn in with. There are very few things you can't, in principle, have access to by making a minimal time investment.
Well, if you use actual physical possessions, or at least virtual representations thereof, to represent the tunable aspect of your character called "gear" they come with a lot of things people already understand. Limits on use - you can't, say, wear two pairs of boots. Intended purpose - armor protects you from damage, visors enhance your sight. Tradeability - you can give your old gun to a buddy when you get a new one. Degradation and destruction - you drink a healing potion and the bottle's empty. Convertability to a medium of exchange - go go gadget pawn shop!Quote:I never said I don't want the system in the game as such. I asked why it had to be GEAR. Why does it have to be swords, hats, shoes and armour? Why, even in contemporary games? Why, even in games that don't actually NEED items that you hold on your hands or put on yourself? Even Champions Online, the purportedly revolutionary game, still has me dressing myself up, albeit in items in name only. City of Heroes had a good idea, in my opinion. Enhancements - abstract concepts that enhance your abilities in ways OTHER than directly putting something on your body (a lot of the time).
These are called "affordances" -- bits of an object that people already know how to use. They're kind of a double-edged sword if implemented incautiously, in that people will wonder why they can't give gear to a buddy, or sell certain parts of it, or why they can wear 25 cybereyes at once.
People have spent most of their lives acquiring and using possessions to overcome obstacles. You have to be really, really good to toss all that aside and come up with something people can understand to work in the same way.
Otherwise you end up with something like, well, Influence. Which is functionally money in spandex and a mask, and has a canonical explanation that sounds neat up until you wonder how you get more of it by giving things to shopkeepers or trade it to someone else or spend/gain it at Wentworth's, at which point it becomes apparent that it's money in spandex and a mask. There's nothing wrong with that. I mean, do you know how long it took people to come up with money? Money isn't a bad idea at all!
So... you found out for yourself that they are what you thought they were? That's why you'd play a new game that seemed to be the same thing. Whether it's worth your time/money to do that is your call, but that's why you'd do it.Quote:Which means precisely zilch, since those games PLAY very much the same. I've tried many of them for a while, and they all offered me pretty much the same thing. Hence my question.
Uh, that doesn't prove your point, man. You told me I was wrong in the first sentence, and wrote that paragraph to convey to me the depths of my wrongness. I fail to see how the last clause there is anything but an accurate summary of your point.Quote:Wrong. Really, do I HAVE to say it? Every time you start a sentence with "you probably" or "you wouldn't" or something like this, just stop, backspace over it and rewrite. You don't know me, so making assumptions about what I would and wouldn't do is a total crapshot. To prove a point, you are completely, totally and utterly WRONG.
So here's the same words in a different package: "clone" can, in practical use, have both positive and negative connotations when used to describe a game. A positive clone capably executes mechanics that you've seen before. A negative clone incapably executes mechanics you've seen before.
I'm saying you're pointing your dissatisfaction at the wrong people: the designers. How the hell are they supposed to know how to design a mechanic which can be faithfully implemented as what you consider a novel idea? Not only can they not predict the future, they've never even MET you.Quote:And again, why are you arguing against my desire to see something new? Why does my dissatisfaction with the same old thing being re-released for 10 years now somehow make me a pariah? Are you saying that you'd rather every MMO launched from here on until we die be the exact same sword and sorcery crap under a new name? Because that's what I'm getting. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I'd need to understand how you can claim innovation shouldn't happen, that the status quo is just fine, and yet not vouch for exactly this.
It's not that it's wrong to WANT more out of games. But telling designers how dissatisfied you are with their product after the fact isn't going to go a very long way towards GETTING you any of it. -
Quote:Ah. So he gained... Experience with his abilities, then?Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Also, it doesn't cherry pick very well: Natural Origin SOs don't say how you were trained. You could have simply trained yourself, which certainly Superman has done. In terms of his core abilities, the classic iteration of Superman best matches someone with innate abilities not the result of any external magic, scientific experiment, mutation, or technological enhancement, and were simply improved by learning and practice.
Would you say he did it by... Experimenting?
Perhaps he took things to a new... Level?
Okay, let me step back and put down the snark before more innocent people die. Three things:
1) City of Heroes uses "origin" in a very Gamist sense. Your origin has the effects it does because the rules say so. Now shaddap and look at the colorful baubles, 7/11ths of which you can't use because the rules say so.
2) I am a Narrativist. Exactly how hardcore I'm not sure, but I like the cut of its jib. "It only has to be true for long enough."
3) I would not shed a tear to see Simulationist gaming take a long walk off a short pier. I have no problem with its practice between consenting adults, or its sealing away inside the confines of a computer, where it can be the endless series of algorithms it's always dreamed of being. But if I ever again have to define the 99% of the universe the PCs don't give a rip about, I will rip and tear the relevant tables from the relevant book. It will be a huge book, so it will have huge tables. Rip and tear.
This idea of mine about what Origin "means" is old. Older than little ranged plinky powers, older than temp powers where your origin gives you a bonus to damage. Just about old enough to enter kindergarten, and I have no idea what kind of lunchbox to buy it.
Back then, what relevance did Origin have? Your starting contact, who matters for five levels if you really push it -- none at all if you join a sewer team -- and the enhancements. Identical in every way except for the gloss on 'em and the dudes who dropped 'em. Since then it really hasn't grown much. If anything, with the various invention sets picking up where trainings left off, it's gotten less relevant.
But I never asked myself what origin and its implementations were supposed to simulate. I asked myself what stories they'd let me tell.
The story of "how I got my powers"? No, that doesn't work. That story is dead. It's sealed. In some cases it's ossified. And it likely doesn't fit the bio box in any case.
The story of "how my powers get better"? Well gosh, son, that's where the game happens already! Let's go!
So: how do you enhance your hero's capabilities, above and beyond the experiences that give you practice?
Do you call on forces outside yourself that you may not quite understand? (Magic/Science. Yes, I conflate them. Super Science is what makes that technology indistinguishable from magic that you've heard so much about.)
Do you look at the potential inside yourself, which can grow in ways you can't give voice to? (Mutant)
Do you draw upon the experience of others, whether in the devices they've built (Technology) or the insights they pass on to you? (Natural)
And the Superman I knew was all the time doin' Super Science. The original Superman Red and Blue were offshoots of an experiment he did to increase his intelligence by bombarding himself with 31 flavors of Kryptonite. He built time-traveling Popemobile bubbles and Bizarro Rays and robots that were designed to smash your camera.
And they're automatically Natural origin, because that's consistent with experiencing an enormous life-changing event and deciding to reinvent yourself, and they're all Technology origin, because that's consistent with having your gear overcharged and being inspired to use it in new ways, AND they're all Magical origin, because Maxwell's Demon saw what you did there (why did you think your face wasn't melting off when you got that close to a nuclear furnace?) and put in a good word to the boys upstairs.Quote:This perspective is also unusual in that it redefines "origin" to be "anything which can change your powers *long after* your character is created. In other words, this line of thought states that anyone that goes through the respec trial and executes a respec is automatically either Science or Mutation origins, the only two consistent with being exposed to radiation and having your powers significantly altered.
Or, y'know, take the story you're telling about how your powers are getting better and pick the explanation you like.
So that is my interpretation of "origins", which now qualifies for a senior citizen discount in Internet years, and why it probably won't do a thing for what you want out of an explanation of how Superman isn't Natural origin. -
Quote:Yes. But it may not be one the people who actually do the work of realizing the game have the capability to address, or even recognize.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
My grief with MMO designers isn't that they, as people and artists are uncreative, but that the GAMES they make are uncreative, uninteresting and derivative. And that is a valid complaint.
Over the course of development, ideas and goals change, and compromise is made between design and feasible implementation. Often this compromise is gradual, with the result that even the lead designer may not consciously be aware of what the game has become. More on that below.
Well now, I wouldn't say that.Quote:Granted. And how many Mario clones do we see TODAY? I'm talking about clones of the old Mario Bros game. We get new Sonic games, but they are most certainly not clones of that, not as of Sonic Adventure, at the very least, and I suspect since even before that. And, really, making the argument that "Halo is a Mario clone, only not really" borders on hypocrisy. Mario Brothers was a successful game back in its day, and it spawned an array of clones and derivative games. That was then, this is now, and those games ARE NO LONGER BEING MADE.
No, StarCraft 2 is a Herzog Zwei clone.Quote:But the original Mario Bros game was made in 1983. Today is 2009, so that's a lifespan of 26 years until today, but how long was it before the series evolved and moved onto other things? EverQuest was released in 1999. That's 10 years ago now. How long until we break out of its mould and start making other kinds of MMOs that can't trace their game mechanics way back to then? But then, StarCraft 2 is just Mario Borthers, but without any of the Mario Brothers stuff, so I don't know...
And so is Brutal Legend. Except it's an incompletely implemented one, and the lead designer has gone on record as saying it's not a real-time strategy game. Aside, presumably, from the parts where you're trying to accomplish strategic objectives in real time, which comprise most of the game.
See what I mean about games changing right under the dev team?
Huh. Okay, I'll justify "gear" for you, starting from (my) first principles.Quote:And "gear" is the only way to achieve this? Even in worlds and settings where "gear" doesn't even apply? I'm not going to per-point quote all of these, but really - I'm tired of gear, loot, items, drops, etc, etc.
Games (all sorts) are copies of social interactions. Georg Simmel called them "Kampfspiele" or "conflict-games". He said that people enjoy playing games because they can experience a measure of the satisfaction of successful social interactions while ameliorating or eliminating the attendant risk. So to use some modern examples: winning football teams rarely kill the losers, you don't starve to death under a bridge when you lose at Monopoly or labor under an oppressive regime when you lose at Risk, et cetera.
Talcott Parsons proposed that every "social unit" has four forces at work in it. One that sets external goals, one that coordinates internal efforts to achieve them, one that adapts to external obstacles to accomplishing them, and one that quells internal conflict that can lead to backsliding. "Social units" are generally comprised of smaller independent "social units", with a single person being the smallest functional "social unit".
"Gear" is that portion of an MMO social "avatar" that adapts to external obstacles. This also includes money, tokens, merits, badges, and other game elements whose sole or chief purpose is to be exchangeable for gear.
What must gear be, essentially? It's something you can change in response to an obstacle. Your capacity to use it should be throttled so obstacles can seem significant. It's okay for it to degrade (actively or passively) or be used up entirely in surmounting an obstacle, as long as you can get more of it. And for an added wrinkle, the gear you acquire need not be limited to your use only. You can even acquire more than you can use, so you can trade or gift it to other players to help them overcome their external obstacles.
Ta-da! "Inventory" and "economy". A game without gear is a game that can't create obstacles. Either your capabilities are so fixed that you can't overcome them, or so flexible that what appears to be an obstacle is a challenge in configuring yourself properly.
Because, to quote Hillbilly David Hume, people can think up any damn-fool thing they please, but that don't make it real. However much stock people may place in reviews and sales figures, entertainment and "fun" are ultimately personal and subjective, and a list of features, even a list of what a developer thinks are important features, even a demonstration of a list of what a developer et cetera et cetera, is not a workable substitute for playing a game for yourself.Quote:If THAT is all an MMO is going to be, then why would I want to buy it and play it, when I have exactly that in the bazillion other MMOs that have come out already? Let me put it simply - why play Lord of the Rings Online when I can play WoW? Why play Aion when I can play Lineage II? Why play 9Dragons when I can play EQ?
Of course, playing a game takes time and generally costs money, and you have to decide for yourself how much of both you want to give up to make sure. I can't very well run the numbers for you.
The people who implement the solutions make the solutions good. Or, y'know, not.Quote:Easy solutions to common problems does not make those solutions good, and they get worse and worse as time moves on. Once upon a time just having a virtual world to simply BE in was mind-boggling to people. Now, making an MMO that's JUST a virtual world with no quests or missions to do in it would have you laughed out of the union. Things change. They have to.
You wouldn't dismiss something as a "WoW clone" if it was actually fun for you. What "WoW clone" means in that context is either "WoW did this better" or "I don't know anything that did this better, but WoW is the cultural baseline for this kind of thing". Before "WoW clone" it was "EQ clone" and in the fullness of time it'll probably be a clone of something else. -
Standard enemy groups seem to have some sort of "animation profile", where -- for example -- when you encounter them in an indoor mission the Banished Pantheon are digging, ritually casting, and forming drum circles just as a matter of course.
Can we create something like this for our custom enemy groups? Even selecting from a standard list might be nice. -
Quote:And every science character was dipped in the periodic table and the electromagnetic spectrum simultaneously, and every mutant has awakened the catalyst to evolution.Originally Posted by Dispari
Yes. And every magic user worships and deals with magical deities, and every tech user injects themselves with nanites and throws grenades every time they attack.
Don't put too much faith in enhancements. You'd be hard-pressed to make them make sense most of the time on just about ANY character. -
Quote:Implementation requires the work of a whole lot of people who aren't the lead designer. The lead designer needs to compromise between the ideas they have and the capability of everyone to implement them before launch/extend the game after launch.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
The only response I have here is that while, yes, what matters is implementation, and not just abstract idea, the truth is that you if you DON'T have an idea, you have nothing to implement. Yes, you can try and fail. But there is no way to succeed without trying. You can have a good idea and fail to make anything good out of it, but I have a very hard time imagining having NO idea whatsoever and NO goal in design and coming up with something great. It's theoretically possible, but highly unlikely.
And as long as MMO designers plain and simple lack interesting ideas, nothing will ever change.
You're assuming that they don't have interesting ideas just because they can't implement them. I don't believe that assumption is valid.
Because seriously, who's going to talk to someone about something they've made and say "oh, here are all these really cool things I thought up that aren't in it"?
Criticizing a lack of creativity strikes me as ultimately wrong-headed. Like I said, people get mad crazy ideas all the time. The problem comes not with having the idea in the first place, but turning it into a form that a) has a design that reflects the idea, b) functions as designed and c) is actually fun to experience.
Ideas are cheap and easy. Real, working, fun game mechanics/games are expensive and hard.
Don't take that to mean that you should be satisfied with whatever pablum a company gets out the door. "Should" doesn't apply there - what you're satisfied with is up to you. But I would bet you that the vast majority of the time the pablum is not reflective of a deficit of ideas on the part of the game designers.
"By and large what everyone always focuses on is just that - traversing a landscape while avoiding or destroying obstacles. Super Mario Bros. has done a good job implementing that, certainly, but I guess my question is: is that the ONLY way to implement it? Is making a Mario clone the only way to make an action game?"Quote:We seem to keep coming back to this. I've read all the posts, and some talk about immersion, others about social interaction and still others about story, but by and large what everyone always focuses on is just that - a shared social space. WoW has done a good job implementing that, certainly, but I guess my question is is that the ONLY way to implement it? Is making a WoW clone the only way to make an MMO? Should MMO developers be designing their game by taking WoW's framework and then writing their game around that, even if it doesn't fit? Is THAT what makes an MMO? Because if the MMO market is to be believed, that, only that and nothing but that is what an MMO is or could be.
That's what I'm reading when I read that, Sam. Sonic is a Mario clone who goes really fast, has a "coin"-based health bar, and RUNS THROUGH LOOPS YEEEEEAAAAAAH. Banjo-Kazooie is a Mario clone with powerups that are intrinsic rather than transitory. Halo is a Mario clone in the first person with regenerating health and a greater variety of projectiles. Et cetera.
Most of the "WoW mechanics" you listed are just good solutions to common problems, and I'll add two more: an HP/mana bar and an on-screen minimap.
The HP/mana bar and minimap reflect that your character has a sense of their surroundings and their own capabilities that can't be communicated through your limited viewpoint.
Crafting and auction houses are both reflective of a desire to put a large assortment of gear into the game, to cater to peoples' desire to explore/enhance a specific aspect of the game/their character, and at the same time distribute that gear randomly. Auction houses let people trade gear with each other through a central intermediary. (Have you ever been in an MMO with "player shops", and seen hundreds of them clogging a town, with half the titles being variations on "lol"?) Crafting lets people produce specific gear from more generally dropped components.
The mail system can be one way to let people swap things among their various characters, and is always a way to send gifts to other players (for whatever reason).
Banks and to an extent player housing cater to the packrat in people, their desire to keep around a supply of trophies/mementos/variant wardrobes/experimental sets, and free designers from worrying about the impact of people optimizing their loadout on the fly.
Levels and XP are a gating mechanism for the various challenges to be overcome in the world and a reward for overcoming same.
Quests and faction (and achievements, if you count that as a WoW innovation) result from a player's desire to be acknowledged by the world. In a tabletop game it's easy for the GM to see my guy who likes fighting bugs and using his spear, and whip up a quest about fighting bugs to get indoctrinated into the Ancient And Noble Order Of Pointy Objects. Quests and faction standing are ways to "be acknowledged" by the world, even if they do spell out the things you have to do ahead of time.
I mean, it's not just WoW that ever did any of these things. They're all solutions for common problems. There are definitely games that "try to copy WoW", but what they try to copy are the visual stylings and the nomenclature. -
Quote:The default assumption for Peacebringers is that they're joined with human hosts, isn't it?Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
That was in response to the "I doubt all naturals are like that" line. They're not. Yes, all naturals are expected to train, but not all of them will train in "Back Alley Crippling Blow" (an name which raised a few eyebrows) or "Military Sprint." They train, just not necessarily in the military or in a dojo. They could have "Increased Tentacle Strength" and "Super Transparency" and so forth.
Point is, the Natural enhancements are designed for humans, which not all naturals are.
Seen that way it does reflect the difference between Peacebringers and Warshades. Peacebringers unlock more of their potential through the conventional training of their host body, while Warshades "have to resort to" experimental manipulation to get the same effect. -
Quote:Add in "and hardened on DA MEAN STREETZ". There are several "back alley" natural SOs, though mostly for things that nobody uses like knockbacks and to-hit debuffs.Originally Posted by Cuppa_LLX
if you go by the enhacments all Naturals are Tibitan munks trained by army sargents. There is nothing else by military training and monk chi mastery in natural. I doubt all naturals are like that.
-
Quote:Except when he does.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Superman does not in general perform scientific experiments upon himself to enhance his existing powers or gain new ones.
Who said anything about the sun?Quote:You can't drop the "scientific experiments" part from "exposure to weird radiations and substances" or its not science anymore. It might not have been a deliberate scientific experiment on you personally, and it might not have been a scientific experiment conducted by you personally, but the presumption is always that the effect was a product of scientific research. The Sun is not the product of scientific research.
I don't think you quite get what I'm saying here. I agree that the common-sensical meaning of "origin" is "the way you got your powers", and that Superman almost certainly wasn't the subject of a Scientific experiment. (Though there are probably alternate-universe Supermen who were intended to be guinea pigs/eventual vanguards of a Kryptonian invasion.)Quote:Furthermore you're attempting to make the case that what affects Superman's capabilities the most is exposure to the sun, not his intrinsic Kryptonian biology. In effect, you're saying that a human being standing in the sun is intrinsically closer to having superpowers than a Kryptonian on Krypton, because the Kryptonian must still get to a yellow sun, which is more than what the human being has to do, which is only become Kryptonian.
But that is not the mechanical effect Origins have in-game. Origins have nothing to do with "how you got your powers", aside from your little dinky temp ranged thingy. They affect how your powers change - specifically, what Enhancements you can slot into them.
Practically speaking, a martial artist who becomes partially fused with a mountain god and gains super ice powers, but returns to his old master to learn how apply his old training to his new capabilities, is Natural "origin". He got his powers through a process that would be considered Magical, but expands them through Natural training. -
Quote:Hold down an alt key.Originally Posted by Chompie
Facade (I don't know how to type a circonflex accent)
Press 0231 on your numpad.
Release the alt key.
รง
Presto! -
Quote:Statesman (the dev) once said a lot of things.Originally Posted by Cuppa_LLX
Statesman (the dev) once said that Superman was Natural, as he powers were inate and just refined over the years on a alien world.
This particular statement may have made sense in the context of how origins were designed to function in the original draft of the game, affecting your character's actual power and access to power sets. This was scrapped, by the way, because of the tremendous power differentials between "good builds" of the various origins.
But it doesn't mean anything, given the mechanical effect of "Origin" in the actual game. Which, as stated earlier, is "how your powers get better", or what Enhancements work for you. -
Quote:Okay, here's one for you.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
"What origin is Superman" is supposed to be parsed to "Given the definition of Origin in City of Heroes, and given all the knowledge we have about the character of Superman, what CoH origin is most consistent with the character of Superman?" And I've never seen a credible case made for that answer to be anything but Natural.
Counterintuitively, "origin" has no effect on how you actually get your powers. The one game effect "origin" does have is on how your powers change, aside from just practicing on your own.
Natural? You take Training from experts in the field and apply their knowledge to tweak your powers.
Magic? You make a contact with a Dimensional Entity - something outside yourself - and add its power to yours.
Mutant? Your best bet is to undergo a Secondary Mutation. Somehow. No, really, somehow. They can be grouped into classes with the same effect, but how you actually trigger yours is anybody's guess.
Technology? Cybernetics. Upgrade the tech you're made from or the tech you use.
Science? Perform Experiments (or have them performed on you), exposing yourself to all manner of weird radiations and substances which given your existing powers have predictable effects.
What affects Superman's capabilities the most? Weird radiations and other controlled substances. Occasionally he makes use of a Kryptonian Invention, or one from Star Labs, or something derived from him undergoes a Genetic Alteration.
But, clearly, he's otherwise a man of Science. -
Quote:Here's something to think about, Sam.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
One thing I HATE in game development is this sort of backwards planning. "OK, we need an MMO, we need a market, we need a bank, we need PvP, we need crafting... OK, now what setting are we going to but it in?" I literally HATE EA for this. They stick random timesinks into their games both to sell them as quasi-RPGs and to fill up some space and pad out some game time without having to spend money on actually making quality products. And I've lost all faith in MMOs that are just that, just one more collection of market, mailbox, crafting tool and PvP with some setting randomly thrown together.
All the innovation you admire so much - you're not admiring the new ideas. You're admiring the ability of the dev team to make them "real", to put them before you to see and experience in a way close to how they thought them up.
Ideas are cheap. Ideas are a dime a dozen. The world is just lousy with ideas. You can walk to the drugstore and have ten new ideas by the time you get back.
Making them real is the hard part.
And a game that started with a lot of new ideas, with a team that can only make the old ones real, is no different from a game with no new ideas with a team that can only make the old ones real.
Sometimes "old" ideas are genuinely played out, but sometimes they've never been "done right"; nobody's found a good way to make them real -- yet. So a game with a bunch of old ideas that's well-crafted may actually be enjoyable when games with the old ideas never were.
The 'common MMO featureset' is what people know how to make real. Everything else is just spun sugar and fairy cake, for all that it can reliably be produced.
As for what an MMO is? A shared social space where players can explore/defeat the world/other players. Everything else is fungible. -
@GlaziusF
Since this seems to need a formidable solo character, running this on a mid-40s DB/Fire brute. All bosses no AVs 2 villains at +1.
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Ah, Eris. How many people only know you from the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy? Probably too many.
DJ Zero's dialogue ends with "Could you do me a solid and check the orchard from where they came?"
While, uh, grammatically correct to never end a sentence with a preposition, "where they came from" is modern casual usage, and it's hard to imagine DJ Zero being very far from modern casual.
Also he should say something about popping a portal open for you, because he does that thing on a regular basis.
Hmm. Seems like a pretty monolithic custom group. Arch/TA minions who occasionally drop a flash arrow on you and pop Aim, DM/Regen lieutenants, DM/Kin bosses, with annoying Siphon Speed action.
Nothing notable in this mission aside from a glowie... which then chains into three destructables. Locations don't work too well in an outdoor map, so now I run around looking for stuff to break.
And that chains into a boss fight.
Looks like Extreme Stone Melee with buildup/Dark Armor. Seismic Smash and Tremor hurt. A lot.
Unbuilduped, Seismic Smash does over 1000 damage, with 35% smash resist on my part. Combined with the ticking aura that's a oneshot.
Just insult to injury when he pops Soul Transfer for an unavoidable stun and then tags me with Seismic while I'm reeling.
(sorting through the clues after the battle, the objective that drops the feeling of dread should be dragged to be before the crate-busting and boss fight.)
---
Ah, discord. Time to safeguard a bow.
Weapon rack, looks like a standard destructible. I know an ambush is coming so I insp up.
Strangely, on approaching the bow I get a clue drop about how I lost my memory of something, which is echoed in the mission-complete clue. I'm betting that was like a phantom captive or ally or something when the bow took damage?
---
Now to seek the legendary ointment. Mmm, panacea.
Back to another outdoor map, looks like.
The same woods map as the first mission.
The boss is some sort of spines... I don't know. No visible armor. Was she actually pain dom?
I don't even get a bit in the system text for taking her out, let alone a clue.
I roam around the map for a good while before finding an urn down a side forest passage, tucked away at the very end.
Bit frustrating, but at least I have the magic goop I came for.
---
Oh dear. A solid parade of bosses? That's actually terrible for XP these days, with the reduction. You can't have known about it at the time, of course.
But while it was soloable with a few hiccups until now it's veered into terrible territory.
Especially since all the bosses are DM/Kin. Can't hit anything, no powers recharge, enemy damage stacked up to the heavens.
"Wait 30 minutes for the mission to auto-fail" is not a reasonable option. "Find a team" is not a reasonable option.
A solid parade of DM/Kin bosses is not a reasonable opposition.
Eros comes free. Limos (DBlast/Miasma with Blackstar) follows. Eris (Broadsword/shield AV downgrade) is next up.
I get her down to a pixel of health, and then time's up. Can't carry enough lucks to not die and insights to actually be able to hit her.
---
Storyline - ****. And DJ Zero gets Eros out anyway. Pretty serviceable story, delving more into the movers and shakers of Grecian myth than the existing one(s). There was a bit of something that didn't seem to go anywhere with my odd amnesia concerning the second mission. Maybe it's spelled out in the actual ending, though absent console commands I'm probably not going to see that.
Design - ***. I was kinda expecting the Roman caves or Eleusis at some point, not the same outdoor woods map twice. Rather a pain to find glowies and other objectives, at least it can be - the enemies really need some kind of particle aura or notable animation to make them stand out. And for the last mission, springing Eros should be the last link in the chain, not one of the first, since I really have no reason to stick around and beat down anyone when he comes free.
Gameplay - *. I was only able to survive the last mission through the liberal application of temp stealth and Nectar, and even then I was just a bit short of actually beating it, even with a Shivan fruitlessly trying to pound on Eris. The "special bosses" were a good step up from the rank and file, though the Stone Melee one from the first mission was entirely unreasonable. Overall the custom group seemed pitched to be frustrating, all debuffing accuracy with the bosses peeling off damage and attack speed to boot. And I'll say it again - a last map full of all bosses isn't rewarding anymore, and given the incredible self-stacking capable of /kin bosses with, say, Transference, Siphon Power, and Siphon Speed, it's just not reasonable to throw a solo at it -- or a team for that matter, unless that team stacks enough defenses to never be hit or enough lockdown to hold down bosses forever. And if that's the case then the normal mix of enemies would be more rewarding than solid bosses. They about came up to minions on the reward scale.
Detail - ****. Everything's reasonably done, though the various powersets on display may or may not be related to the description of their related enemies. Then again, the description may not relate to anything the game can model.
Overall - *. Not an average. Would have been good fun without the nigh-impossible final mission. Saying "don't run the arc" isn't reasonable, as especially given the recent changes to XP for groups with missing ranks, a normal spawn for a good team would be a better payoff than just solid bosses. I counted 8 customs (3 in the custom group, 3 sub-bosses, Eris and Eros) and not much text, so you could, if you wanted, put together another minion/LT/Boss arrangement and use that enemy group for a mission, then mash 'em both together for the final map.
But that aside, the senseless boss rush is what sinks it for me. If I got Eros as an archery/TA or archery/empathy ally and the mission was full of normal enemies I'd have a much more positive impression of the whole thing. -
Tonight's random arc: Apples of Contention (3184). Verdict - *. Review lower in this thread.
-
Tonight's arc is a re-review of Illpracticed Malpractice (246459). Verdict - ****. Review in MA Forums Thread.
...and that's the last of my queue! Looks like it's time to go back to random arcs. -
@GlaziusF
Review done as part of the CoHMR Aggregator protect.
Taking this one on with my low-40s merc/TA mastermind, who fights bosses but is otherwise old diff 1.
---
Ah, a giant new giant corrupt hospital in Mercy, and I get to fight through all of it. Keen.
Also keen: the little aside in the bug text. Very nice.
For some reason the mission caps me at 35. Ah, it's because of the repurposed Crey. Fair enough.
There's a little more incidental detail in here, which is nice, but the key to being funny is to be unnecessarily specific. Vague details like "things being done to Arachnos soldiers" or "a long list of grievances; some of it makes you angry" would fit pretty well in a more serious arc, but this is a joke.
The arrangement of the final room tucks the boss surgeon in a corner behind the captive, which is a rather problematic arrangement. He doesn't seem to be as important, so why not put him a bit more towards the middle?
Weirdness with the vengeful villains: they beat each other up. I guess they're all coded "rogue" so they'll fight the hospital staff, but that means they also tear each other apart.
And because I've got Tactics running the doc goes running off to wave hello at everybody. Fortunately I can grab aggro with a quickness.
---
Storyline - ****. The thing I most want out of the story is more of it. Move of the malpracticed-on villain group, specifically. Since I encounter them in a situation where it's not really to my benefit to take my time looking at them/reading their descriptions, I never really get a sense for them. A second mission where they're raiding the law offices because their share of the settlement amounted to a coupon for a free Coal Burger would go over pretty well.
Design - ****. The derelict lab is a much nicer setting, with the only real quibbles here being the placement of the boss - as it is he has a chance to be in the same room as the doctor, which doesn't bode well for his survivability if the fights trigger together - and the rogue con on the vengeful villains, which means they can often clear each other out. I'd make them enemy con, and maybe have one of them shouting about how if the chief resident goes down that means promotions all around. Maybe put in an ally hospital worker who turns at that point too with a "they've got a point, doc" kind of sentiment.
Gameplay - ***. I didn't notice it before because I was playing on a rather resistant character, but you've got minions with control powers in the nurse (illusion) and sorceress (ice). Given that they can show up in duplicates, that's rather a pain.
Detail - ****. Generic details are informative, not funny. And the imported Crey need their descriptions rewritten, unless they're supposed to be "on loan from Crey".
Overall - ****. Moving the map made a pretty nice difference, and the extra detail helps realize the whole thing a little better. The only problem is now I want another mission. -
@GlaziusF
Hittin' this one up on my ice/axe tanker, low 40s, all bosses no AVs 2 heroes at +0.
---
Man, dude, stop leaning on your period and give some love to the enter key here. Wall of text is kinda non-parseable.
Weird. Judging from the doc's unhinged rant this place was a robotics lab, but it bears a certain relationship to an office.
If you want to "camouflage" the research files in with the other clickies, give them all the same plural.
Ah, it's an office/cave/sewer. For... some reason. I guess it's supposed to represent the Freakshow attack?
Huh. Okay, looking over the clues, I don't get what she could learn about robotic AI by studying the Clockwork King. He doesn't have a robot army, he has psychically controlled piles of scrap.
---
Dude does not stop with the run-on sentences. ...also he's about the worst liar ever.
But okay, let's go fight Nemesis. ...somewhere. Oh! Actually in the streets!
But this is Kings Row, not Founder's Falls. There are more upscale-looking neighborhood maps, but it's best just to make up a name the way the devs do when they send you to one of these. There are plenty of places generally under solid protection from the War Walls that villains nevertheless manage to find.
You need another "fake plural" here, and the box of possibly Clockwork parts needs a much shorter name. It's too tiny to see when it autowraps to the target window.
...wait, what? Nemesis is trying to take control of the Clockwork?
Why? For use as spies or something? Because they're really not that much of a power upgrade on anything Nemesis has.
And again with the talk about the Clockwork King having some kind of brain-to-robot interface. His robots should not work at all. There is no motive force aside from his own formidable psychic powers. The "Clockwork Captive" and "Mind of a King" arcs spell that out pretty explicitly.
---
I get to a certain point in the ensuing warehouse and my NPC dialogue window gets bombarded with Nemesis patrols, Clockwork patrols, and what may be a fight in progress?
Most of the dialogue's copies, too. If you're going to have multiple patrols, create one talky edition and fill the rest up with silence. NPC dialog is basically broadcast-range now inside missions, so you don't need to worry about people missing something.
For some reason, the mission complete clue I get here is the same thing that minion says when I spring it from Nemesis.
...and apparently the Clockwork pulled a fast one on Nemesis? Man, getting punk'd by Clockwork is not the kind of thing you want on your resume.
But as far as I could work out their plan goes like this:
1) Get researcher to investigate them.
2) Wait for Nemesis to be interested in researcher.
3) Wait for Freakshow to kidnap researcher and make handoff to Nemesis.
4) Wait for Nemesis to bring researcher to the place where she usually goes to get Clockwork parts.
5) Kidnap researcher.
...I'm not sure exactly why parts 2-4 are necessary, here.
The debrief ends with "Why do you get the feeling the good Doctor is not telling you everything ?" run into the same paragraph as everything else.
...is that supposed to be my own commentary, there? It would help to set it off with a different color or text style, and maybe a different paragraph too.
---
Wait, what? Those are clockwork from the Psychic Clockwork dimension? But.. but...
The Psychic Clockwork aren't independent robots, any more than the Clockwork Clockwork are! They're scrap animated by their dimension's Clockwork King too! It's just that he's got over his fixation on being a roboticist and instead rains screaming psionic doom down on the landscape with his giant collection of brass Fin Funnels!
When our dimension's Clockwork King gets serious (springing Penny in the LGTF, for example) his entourage throws around psionics too.
...and it's a defeat all in a sprawling, 5-floor tech lab.
With tons of patrols and battles around, all saying exactly the same thing.
And it seems like the apparent three important objectives (defeat Nemesis, help Crey, rescue the doctor) are ALL in the last room.
...who's supposed to be guarding the doctor? There's a Jaeger speaking up about defeating organics, but that may just be coincidence on his part.
Hmm. So maybe "Help Crey" wasn't in the last room. I've cleared it out but the mission hasn't completed yet.
Time to go back and search through all the floors again! Oh boy!
Ah. Okay, "help crey, defeat all clockwork" was the name for the defeat all objective, as I find out when I clear the last couple pixels of health off an Oscillator stuck on the underside of a platform.
So it doesn't get confused for two objectives you should probably call it "clear Crey lab of all clockwork" or something without a comma in it.
But I'd be more in favor of dropping it entirely and putting glowies or something in if you want people to explore the whole map.
I get a mission complete clue which is pretty much the same as the clue I got for freeing Dr. Trask, with some quote marks around it.
That mission was 400 tickets big! That's a lot of all to defeat.
...wait, what? They actually picked up the entire Clockwork King from his home dimension and brought him here?
Didn't they get the crib notes from Portal Corp that the dude was so psychically ripped he singlehandedly destroyed all human life on the planet?
I mean, I know Crey's pretty insane, but picking up some dude like that just to make better prosthetics?
---
Hmm. Y'know, all that stuff in the navbar name of the mission, that looks like a list of objectives, should probably be a list of objectives once you get in the mission. The navbar name is just too long.
So I go poking around the standard Kingly lair, drop Babbage at the door, and take out a couple of dimensional stabilizers, which are supposed to be keeping the Clockwork King in this dimension... somehow.
What, did they use these to kidnap him?
Doc Trask has already been subjected to the fate I was supposed to prevent when I walk in the door.
On the one hand, that rankles. On the other hand, you can't very well have an arc about a Clockwork Queen and not get a Clockwork Queen.
The machine that did it is sitting around for me to bust up, but I don't know what good it'll do and its guards don't vomit ellipses into the chat box like everything else around here, so I leave it be for now.
This is some pretty sweet visual work on the Queen and her guards, but I feel obliged to say that the Clockwork King already has robots that create other robots - they're the Assembler Duke/Prince.
Well, the King shows up, lording over the pile of bones, but with a new ally I drop him fairly quickly.
Ah, that's what the machine does. Completes the mission. ...and summons a horde of the new-type clockwork.
I'm not sure why it particularly needs to be destroyed, though. Its grisly work here is done.
And I get another odd comment when I tag back to the contact that is... supposed to be my inner monologue? Maybe?
---
Storyline - *. So a doctor wants to make better prosthetics (that's cool) and thinks the Clockwork King's robots are the key to it (um, no, unless we got psychic veterans) so researchers kidnap the fully ascendant Clockwork King who scrubbed his world clean of life, to study him. (WHAT.)
My first problem is that there's no "there" there. The Clockwork King doesn't have an army of functional robots, but psychically animated scrap metal. DATA has known this since I was a wee Security Level 20 scamp running errands for Colleen Saramago.
My second problem is that bringing something that destroyed its world into this one without any apparent precautions is a cataclysmic level of dumb.
My third problem is with the Clockwork's plan to retake the researcher -- as outlined above, it goes through the completely unnecessary steps of a handoff through Freakshow to Nemesis and subsequent baiting of Nemesis to a particular location.
You know what makes sense here? The Clockwork King always wanted to be a brilliant roboticist. Maybe there's a universe where he actually was one -- and this is the logic the doctor follows in hopping a portal to Epsilon Tau 27-2. Sure enough, Kingy seems to be rather eager to make progress on her designs - but Nemesis catches wind of things and et cetera et cetera, and the entire time the King just wanted another robot intelligence because it gets lonely talking to yourself all the time. Maybe the jammers in the final mission are designed to lock his dimension off, and they get finished just as you show up.
Design - ****. Extra points for the Clockwork Queen and the little builders - her design is very striking, and while the little guys don't make narrative sense they at least look the part. Minus points for putting the little builders in a group with no bosses or minions, making them worth about as much as half a sprocket apiece.
Gameplay - **. Some of the enemy choices are a bit frustrating. Psychic Clockwork are very small, like to keep at range, and scatter easily from knockback. Nemesis snipers have a giant perception range, which means they can hit you from about a city block away with a clear line of sight, and the outdoor city maps definitely provide clear lines of sight. Those are fairly minor problems - the big one is clearing an entire 5-floor tech lab of Clockwork, when at any given time one could just dart off and get lost behind the scenery.
Detail - *. The contact briefing is just a wall of text, which is very hard to read at standard resolution. Break it up some with double line breaks to create paragraphs and offset some ideas from others. This is especially vital if some of "my hero's thoughts" are supposed to be mixed in there somewhere, and they need to be different from the other text, in color or style or both, so I can figure out when "I" am supposed to be speaking. Also break up some of the in-mission dialogue with spaces so it fragments more cleanly across lines instead of just overrunning the edge.
Overall - **. Something needs to be done about the defeat all on the giant lab map. I'm in favor of cutting it out entirely. And while the Clockwork Queen is some nice visual work, and the outcome of the last mission interesting in isolation, the plot that led there was pretty unbelievable. And I wonder how much "internal monologue" I missed because it was just lumped in with the rest of the contact text. -
Hey, I may actually get some arcs done this weekend. Keen.
Last night's was The Tragic Tale of the Clockwork Queen (25451). Verdict - **. Review lower in this thread. -
@GlaziusF
Carrying this through with the level 50 spine/regen scrapper, all bosses no AVs 2 heroes at +0.
I think it'll turn out to be a wise choice.
---
...I'm doing a mission chain for Nemesis. Uh... this arc's alignment Heroic, right? Yeah, that's how it's listed.
Hoo boy.
Let's see what the big brass man has to say.
Just so you know, Nemesis doesn't have much of a reputation for being, uh, trustworthy, or straightforward. If he's telling you to do something, your best bet is to do the exact opposite. ...or wait, he might be planning on you to do that, so it's probably better to pretend you never heard him.
This place is full of amped clockwork. None of them are saying or doing anything special, and for some reason there's an Arachnos terminal in here I have to interact with. (If you want more standard consoles they're wall details.)
...wait, what? The Clockwork King has a bank account and he's still building his army out of scrap?
Okay, okay, I'll roll with this.
---
...wait, what? Nemesis built the Amps for his own use, but then the Clockwork King took control of them when... Nemesis drove him insane.
Usually he's more careful than that.
More silent Amped Clockwork, a defeat all in a warehouse with plenty of crates to hide little robots, and two clickies later, I find out that...
Arachnos has commissioned the Clockwork King to build them new robots.
What?
Can the Clockwork King even build robots at all?
And what's wrong with Black Scorpion, their current builder of new robots? Is he just going to be laid up for months on account of getting magna stoned off of some oil refined from space or something?
---
So now I'm planting a bunch of devices that I don't know what they are to "break the Clockwork King's control". Uh huh. Whatever you say, Brassy.
...t-t-TEN? That's a lot. That's as many as five twos.
Also, you can make glowies transparent to start so they become solid when you activate them.
Huh. So the Clockwork King... is apparently going to be using this whole project to plant moles in Arachnos.
...did they even know ANYTHING about this guy when they hired him? I mean, "can psychically control machines" isn't exactly a big secret.
---
So now at Nemesis's urging I head over to an Arachnos base, clear it out, and find a single new trooper at the top level.
...I'm kind of embarrassed to say I didn't get a chance to look at him. What rank is he? I was AoEing down the other members of his spawn and he wilted a while before even some lieutenants dropped.
Maybe I just got super lucky with crits.
Oh, and all this time Black Scorpion was paying the Clockwork King to develop stuff! Okay, now everything makes sense. Because Black Scorpion so often doesn't.
---
Huh. If enough troopers are produced they reach a critical mass? Like, these guys are self-replicating? We could be looking at a red-and-black goo scenario?
And the factory is... an abandoned warehouse.
Okay, true, if this had been a defeat all on an outdoor factory map I would have blown a gasket.
...it doesn't even seem to be a defeat all. At least the navbar doesn't think so, despite Nemesis's instructions to leave nothing standing.
Once again, these glowies should be fading in from transparent.
For some reason these lieutenants are worth about half what the Arachnos minions were in the last map. And they certainly wilt faster - I'm guessing Arachnos armor is just high lethal resist, and shield defense can't come close to that.
Ah, that's why they're worth so little - no minions in the enemy group. Maybe no bosses either. If you don't have any more room for customs, you could use Arachnos tarantulas to fill out the ranks, they're Black Scorpion's purview.
After a good old slugfest, he goes down, cursing my name. Not even a closing clue to show for it.
As far as Black Scorpion's opening rant goes, you can use $heshe to put in the appropriate gender.
And Nemesis tells me good job and he'll keep me in mind? ...uh, who is this guy and what has he done with Nemesis?
---
Storyline - *. So... this is Nemesis. The same guy who's such a giant egotist his elite troops are all robot copies of himself. And he's trusting me to bring down the Clockwork King and put a stop to Arachnos' plans because... it's the right thing to do. Not for any personal gain of his. He doesn't even say anything about planning to fill in the robotic world-conqueror gap. I mean, the dude does have giant brass ones, enough to just tell a hero about some threat to the world, even though it'd lead to his ascendance, because heroes stop robot threats to the world. But there's no indication he's getting anything out of this, or that he's anything more than GENERIC_HIGH_LEVEL_TECH_CONTACT_05. Which really should not be happening with Nemesis.
So here are two options for... well, the whole story, really. If the last mission was a Freakshow "plot" instead of a Nemesis plot, then some repentant Freak tells you about the fate of the mind control device - it was salvaged by somebody not them, which leads you through ampwork and a very confused Clockwork King to find out that Arachnos is looking to give their fortunatas robot slaves.
Or, the last mission was Nemesis but not using mind control at all, just motorized brass bits that looked like scrap but which he could remotely control as part of a Clockwork, and he was using this psychosomatic feedback to drive the Clockwork King insane. But with the device gone, Kingy has access to largely functional Nemesis tech, and Penelope Yinstop wants you to keep him from doing something he's going to regret with the new power.
Design - **. The custom group used in the final mission needs proper minions and bosses in it, otherwise it's a bunch of somewhat difficult fighting with less reward than punching minions. And the new troopers look pretty keen with the red shields but don't seem to be as resilient as the rest of Arachnos. Also, I don't really buy "abandoned warehouse" (also in the fifth mission) as a workable robot factory. Maybe if you swapped the maps for the second and fifth missions, and put the first one in an abandoned office or lab or something so you wouldn't have two missions in a row on the same map.
Gameplay - ***. I'm not a big fan of whatever scaling puts giant swarms of blues and greens all over the place. It makes defeat alls more frustrating because there's always some outlier who bolts, and it makes stealthing clickable objectives more frustrating because there's more things spread around to see and hit you. And the Ampwork are just as bursty as they were last arc, with all the attendant consequences.
Detail - **. The missions were pretty much empty. Clocky, the prototype, and Black Scorpion were the only ones who ever said or did anything special. This made Nemesis the prime source of information on my plans and the enemies' motivations, and he has serious credibility problems, to put it lightly.
Overall - **. This arc inherits some of its problems (the seed of the plot, the Ampwork) from the previous arc, and makes some of its own mistakes (lack of optional objectives or conversations outside the contact, custom group with abnormally low rewards). There's a lot here that can be productively overhauled. -
So I grabbed some shuteye early Wednesday, and very early Thursday. Here's an arc from two days ago: A Spanner in the Works, Part II (336665). Verdict - **. Review lower in this thread.