IronMax

The Turk: Europe's boogyman. A terror to everyone they "shared" a border with. Small wonder they spawned such a historically reviled figure to counter them: Prince Vladmir III of Walachia.

Better known as Vlad Teppes, or even better known as his fictionalized counterpart, Count Dracula.

Viewing his history with an understanding of how external forces recolor events, consider this sequence.
Young Vlad and his brother (Radu if I recall) are traded as hostages to the turk to free their father - leaving the boys captive .. in the Turkish court.. pretty pretty young boys. Vlad's father bends over for the Turks, until they decide he can't be trusted and have him killed. Vlad and his brother are released, and Vlad takes up his father's position - only Vlad begins to campaign fiercely against his former "hosts", very successfully (if brutally) by all acounts. So much so that he even uses the turkish trick of impaling enemy forces on large stakes (though as I understand it, he improved on it by blunting the stakes so as to not rupture the captives' organs, preventing them from dying too soon). Within his kingdom, he was considered a hero who held back the turk, whereas the more "civilized" western "press" for lack of a better word (there weren't proper newsservices per se) reviled him as a monster, ethnocentrically seeing only the results without understanding what he was fighting against. The king, apparently half fearing his popularity internally and half fearing the bad press he was generating externally, had Vlad locked up, and put Radu on the throne. Radu, who I can only surmise took his treatment from the turks differently than Vlad, made "peace" with the turk. From what I understand, the frontieer became destablizied, causing the king to reinstate Vlad, who, in the wake of a lifetime of betrayals, took once more to the battlefield to find his death.

Taken in context for his place in time, I see less of a monster, and more of a man who did a job besieged and betrayed by both enemies and allies alike. A saint? By no means. Mentally unstable? By the end, quite possibly. Bloodthirsty monster by modern standards, but by eastern-european standards at that time - eh, fair to middlin.

Take this all with a grain of salt - it's been a few decades since I read the research, and accounts from both sides of history are unreliable at best.

A little far back to go for villain background anyway. Current current...the Klan of course might make a decent villain background, though frankly, even someone "playing" at it is a dangerous road to set out on. MacCarthyites - American "fascists" as they meet most of the criteria set down. (fyi as I recall, the term fascist comes from I think "fasces" - a symbol of a bundle of sticks surrounding an axe and was part of the standard that Caesar marched back to Rome under when he took power).

Will think more on it, but great thread btw - thanks!

Cheers!
Engremore

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Shadow shard, auto exemping, PvP zones, building bases, old TFs, the soon to be legends & skills systems.

[/ QUOTE ] And do any of these give you anything new to do? Shadow Shard may be visually appealing, but all you do is run around and hit things. Auto-exemping, PvP, old TF's - all ways to hit things. Bases: how many bases can you build, especially at these prices? Skills system - if it's essentially crafting, then it's the same old grind - hitting a "crafting skill" button instead of a "punch" button.

This isn't anything "new" at 50 - it's more of the same. If this is all the game offers then you might as well retire at 20. If the Council boys just slip on a dress and facepaint and become Carnies, what's the point?

Anyway.

I applaud the devs for the things they HAVE done: the game looks great, the character customization right out the gate is refreshing compared to being dressed in identical rags that most games offer newbies, the environmental effects while lag inducing are generally gorgeous, the animations look good. A solid foundation.

I'll stick to it a little longer, then I'm probably going to reduce to one account, and let it rest for a while.

Cheers!
Max

I know they're affectionately calling each new release "issues" as part of the comic book terminology, but truth be told what they need to do IS release issues in more of the comic book style - each "issue" should include new content, and by that I mean new things for your existing charaters to do. Not meddling with powers, that's what patches are for. Content - the idea of Croatoa initially is great;a magical crossover zone, a world caught between our world and a strange magical dimension. That said though, the activities there don't differ at all from what you would do anywhere else. What it needs is to be a magical zone where our heroes need to use their wits because the magic of the zone doesn't react in the same way as say..the science in another zone. It needs random weirdness that forces us to improvise since our accepted way of doing things don't work there.

Issue 1: new "tf/story arc" style missions in each zone - they can use existing assets (models, animations, powers) but combine them differently. Create missions, arcs, etc, that have different styles of objectives. The cheapest (codingwise) part of the game is the writing. We've seen in CoV that they have started doing cut scenes - give us more. Have the villains talk to us more, tell us more, conciously or unconciously giving us clues. I want to come out of a mission with a full clue bag, and no pointer for where I go next, and have to figure it out based on the clues. That alone could keep me in the game for a long long time. I've been reading comics since the early 70's, and have enjoyed going back even further, absorbing their golden/silver age antecedents.

Same old same old (not always creating new villains/models, etc)? Batman has been fighting the Joker since almost day one. Almost 70 years. What keeps us coming back is the NEW things, and our past knowledge about these characters. When we see the signs of the Joker, we know that we can expect unsettling viciousness with a goofy edge. With Catwoman we expect a certain degree of sophistication and inner conflict - we have to stop her, but all we really wanna do is "date" her.

Issue 2 (a month or two later): see Issue 1, rinse and repeat.

In this way, I'll retire my character when I get tired of his fight. As currently is, when I reach 50, I won't feel I've even scratched his surface - I've been using a supercomputer as a pocket calculator. Just crunching the numbers of "arrests" and enhancement diversification... Sure, as you advance with villain groups, they introduce new ranks of them: with the 5th, you started out with foot soldiers, then progressed up to soldiers with things like our powers, then vampyri and war wolves and mechs, but ultimately there was no difference between them - our only means of dealing with them was hitting them. Which is what you do in WoW, or SWG, or EQ2. If I have a problem with CoH, it's not comparing it to a superior alternative but that it doesn't try to rise above it's limits. I have had it pointed out to me on a number of occasions that CoH is NOT a comic a book - it uses the trappings of them, but that it's a game. Well I've played this game already in any number of different guises. If they want to draw me in via the comic book analogy, then they need to give me what comic book do: Content. Story. Adventure. I have also heard the old saw that _I_ am supposed to provide the story. That's rubbish. No other form of entertainment requires that. If you walked into a movie theatre and they just had a bunch of actors standing onscreen with their backstories printed above their heads, and you were required to fill in the story, you'd demand your money back. Yes, there are story arcs, yes there are "clues" and "souveniers" but they are so thin, so "tacked on" as to make them irrelevant.

And the solution is so EASY: write more. Yes, writing is an art, so I'm not suggesting that it's "easy" per se, but then there are a LOT of writers out there who would love a chance to do something like this. Given that, the rest has already been shown to be a cookie cutter process - the combat situations are stock already on hand. When I say easy, I simply mean it's not like creating new assets that have to work on their own as well as in relation to everything else in the game, requiring lots of coders and animators and modelers etc just for one new asset.

Fact of the matter is, I am rapidly reaching the point where I can no longer enjoy a game that consists solely of running around hitting things. And that just may mean it's time for me to get back into making things again in rl. My job rl already consists of making the fantastical happen - I work in motion picture and television special effects. I get my quota daily of seeing cool vistas and unnatural feats - so I guess what I need from a game just isn't out there yet. Hence my wishing, hectoring, cajoling to get the game to do more.

This may be the end of IronMax's story, a least in this venue. It may mean he may have to enter the real world, or maybe a comic where he can finally stretch his wings.... because he's starving in-game.

Cheers!
Max

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I will also say that I find the lack of loot & economy as refreshing now, as I did when I first started. My snark and sarcasm when describing loot runs in other games, or the "end game content" is well founded. I did it. I hated it. It was really a sad excuse for content in my opinion. Once again though, that is just my opinion.

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Oh I in no way defend the l33t loot concept, though as flavoring it might not be bad. My primary complaint with CoH is "Is that all there is?" Endless quota fighting is no different from CoH to WoW to SWG. For me, the 50 retirement in CoH is akin to going to the police academy and ritiring at graduation - you finally have all the skills you'll need to fight crime, and it's over. As far as I'm concerned, 50 is when the game should really start. Your character has got all his powers, respecced and studied and honed, and now should be ready to handle the real content.

I can't be satisfied and enjoy the game indefinitely if all it is is a fighting game. If all I have to look forward to is doing the same thing with different powers, fighting villains that only differ in look and powers, then I may as well leave the game to kids who like seeing pretty images flashing by over and over. It's certainly not comic books, otherwise Batman would have faded out 50 years ago. Favored genres of course have certain immutibles, which help define them, but it's the things that differ that make us pick up the next and the next and the next one. If all you have to look forward to is Superman punching something in the next issue, then there's no reason to buy it. However, it's the challenge and how he addresses it, what he does or doesn't do that has you picking it up month after month. That's one of the reasons the idea of an MMO is so appealing - the human factor. What other people will bring to the table. As loathe as I am to admit it, it was the player built cities, the crafted items that varied in quality depending on the craftsman's skills and resources, the (in retrospect) fairly varied story arcs that made SWG as engaging as it was - and I ran screaming from the day-to-day grind of being a merchant on the side there (after all, you went to a galaxy far far away to be Luke AFTER he met Obi Wan, not Luke on the farm maintaining the vaporators).

Task Forces shouldn't be the gems, they should be the staple in our superhero diet. The gems should be something like ... the Hammidon takes a stroll, or someone failed the Vhaz mission and the plague got loose. A batallion of Malta Titans settling over Atlas Park. I loved it when the big eyeball guys were popping up all over. I love seeing someone's way too high ambush running loose in the streets.

I've been in CoH for about as long as you, and while I can still enjoy finishing a story arc, and LOVE to just fly around sometimes, I can't help but hope an airplane will fall from the sky and only I can stop it, or a villain will arise leaving clues that only I can unravel before stumbling into his deathtrap and escaping by my wits. I want a name that is tied to events that not everyone else in the game went through.

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But if you enjoy the game for what it *is*, rather than what you want it to be, you'll still be here months and even years later.

[/ QUOTE ] That's like saying that if a woman would only accept that her mate beats her, cheats on her, and generally ignores her, she can remain happily married for years. If that were the case, everyone would still be playing Pong. It is only by expecting more, and demanding more, that we get more. As is, despite the pretty graphics, we are subsisting on a banquet of crumbs.

A susinct, if snarky, apology for the general lack of vision of the game.

Coming from the burden of economy and obligations of games like SWG and EQ2, CoH at first seemed liberating: no monetary upkeep on armor or weapons (other than influence/enhancement issues), no crafting or collecting sidelines to divide your attention. Just pure and simple "fighting the good fight" and flying. Pretty soon though, that simplicity reveals the essential flaw: it's so simple that it becomes tedious. It's a one trick pony, that may work for the OCD crowd, but lacks, as all games in this model do, any variety of experience. New settings, new costumes, new power animations do not a new challenge make. The content that so many ask for is new WAYS to fight, new WAYS to use your powers to resolve issues. Me, I wouldn't care if we only had 1 villain group to fight, as long as the conflicts and their resolutions were different, or even, by archetype, the solutions were different - meaning a Tanker would solve a mission one way, where a controller could solve it completely differently. As it stands now, the solutions are just a matter of number of hit points taken from your opponent, be it with your fists, beams, or pets.

You speak with virulent disdain regarding the ancillary "content" of other games, but CoH is no different. CoH doesn't have the added avenues of empty-colorie activities, but that's hardly a virtue, but rather a recognition of the lack of vision of established MMO's.

They have taken stabs at messing around with the idea - the firefighting event in Steel Canyon comes to mind. Though it doesn't take more than a moment to realize it's the same old thing: there's only one way to fight the fire (with the temp power of "fire extinguisher" that does x amount of damage to the bits of fire that have x # of hitpoints.) Why can't a hero with Whirlwind damage the fire? Or an Ice blaster/tanker etc bring the temperatue down? A super strength hero knock over the water tower on the adjoining building onto the fire?

What all these games offer is the lure of the genres: be it fantasy adventures with wizards and mighty warriors, starspanning opera with lasers and strange aliens, or spandex thrills saving the city. What they don't offer is what the stories give us: the oportunity to excell, to outthink the paradigm. It's not the game's job to make us Superman, but to give us the oportunity to craft our own destiny and stand beside him as peers. They need to provide the universe, the functionality for us to find our own inner hero. You can hardly call yourself a hero/champion/Luke Skywalker/Batman if all it takes is following a recipie: go to this place, hit x number of enemies, rinse and repeat, till you're a hero. If that's the message they're putting out, it's insidious, and given the attitudes of "heroes" who hang around Warburg, the damage is done.

As the games (all MMo's) stand now, you could easily change the costume creator to give us CAL/OSHA approved coveralls, swap out "superspeed" for "improved productivity", and collect our "mission" from our contact (foreman): a timed mission to assemble 20 Tsoo action figures, or we're "fired".

Cheers!
Max

Funny thing on the Kraken - in my various alts back on Infinity I have the Kraken badge from Perez, and that was just on casual fly throughs. Since moving shop to Triumph, and making a Search & Rescue character, I have spent LOTS of time in Perez just patrolling, and haven't seen the Kraken once. It does seem the spawning on him has gone down...

My two bits.
Max

(PS: outstanding job, Posi! Folks are right: love/hate what you guys are doing, you do at least respond to player input).

[ QUOTE ]
who needs a helmet when you can look like this guy

[/ QUOTE ] The Pillsbury Bondageboy?

The story so far:

Have preordered 2 from EB (nothing arrived yet), 1 from Gamestop (CE) - box (which makes no indication of CE contents) and disk arrived and preregistered though no response email , assuming the reply will be when beta invite comes (any devs wanna correct this - if we were supposed to get a confirmation email nothing came), and 1 walk-in at BestBuy - box and disk and preregistered (again no confirmation email). Gamestop and one EB for my fiancee for two of her accounts, and EB and BestBuy for my accounts.

As to expectations: 0. Beta will be fun and all, special helmets will be niceish specially for my fashion concious angel, and a headstart would be helpful, but I can pretty much live without any of them. As it stands, I'll have the game for when it starts with no worries about not being able to find a copy. And THAT is why preorder. If the rest of the promises about it hold up, YAY, but at the base of it, I will be able to start playing off the bat.

Again, if I can get a dev response on how the preorder registration is supposed to work, that would be keen. Wasn't expecting an immediate beta invite, but didn't get any sort of response when we upgraded, and I think it said something about an email at some point.

Cheerio.
Max (on the other side of the hill from Clintonian, in the sweltering heat of Hollywood).

Postscript: the EB orders arrived (sans boxes) in little packets of disk, poster, and other filler. 8/29/05

And just in time for Christmas:

Jerk Hack: the Movie!

Cheerio,
Max

Heya... just put this up tonight, enjoy!

Jerk Hack, the movie!

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Let me try to illuminate the issue a little further for you then.

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Oh I got that part - it was his reference to other powers that had been broken, I assume, re:
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Lets leave powers broken and sub par, because its fun! Lets roll back twilight grasp to its previously stupid 4 second animation.. dead teammates are cool! Lets get rid of stacking armors. Bye bye punchvoke!

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I understand that the current version of ST is frustrating - I never debated it, nor suggested that it shouldn't be changed back to the version that people seem to think works. "Get over it" was his take on what I said.

The gist of what I meant in the second part of my orginal post, and apparently didn't make clear, was that for now it be viewed as a challenge rather than cause to flail about, give up, and respec it away. The first part concerned how "fun" was a subjective criteria - that, for me at least, fun also included the challenge of dealing with a power gone awry (like Superman when he couldn't stop his heat vision, or when his powers were stripped from him on various occasions).

And I liked chasing mobs around Orenbega (and they fled even without ST - I was in my scrapper). Gave me a chance to hone my fly/hover pursuit tactics.

Pax.
Max

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Yes, another vote from someone without spectral terror, telling us to accept a power that was working, and was broken on 1/18. Thanks! Lets leave powers broken and sub par, because its fun! Lets roll back twilight grasp to its previously stupid 4 second animation.. dead teammates are cool! Lets get rid of stacking armors. Bye bye punchvoke!

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Everyone gets nerfs at one point or another, hence, I'm fully qualified to say "I don't care if it's broke for now". I have an Invuln tanker. I have an illusionist, though I don't have ST yet. My main focus is on content, not maximizing my build. I'm in the game to have fun, not stroke my ego by balancing elements to beat a lousy AI. Hence, I don't give a tinker's damn if ST has changed, as long as it doesn't crash the game. As to the rest of your illmannered hyperbole, I have only the vaguest idea what it's about, but I assume it's something to do with people's powers and how they weren't used within their temporary limitations. You got me there. I'm wounded deeply by the many more hours you've spent in the game that I spent doing something useful. You scored big trying to insult a total stranger.

Regardless of your MPMS, I never suggested "roll over and accept it" - merely that it's not the end of the world. I will never say "Roll over and accept it". It's our god given right to sue for redress when we see something wrong. So while I don't see the urgency of the matter that provokes your hissyfit, I support your right to hissy over it.

Cheers!
Max

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I make it on the simplest basis possible; of what is fun and what isn't. When one's powers hinder play, it is not fun, and is therefore an undesirable play element. As I wrote in an earlier post, an alternate solution for tempering Spectral Terror would be to reduce its fear duration.

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Hurm. Interjecting here, but putting my vocabulary primer on the shelf. "The simplest basis possible: of what is fun and what isn't." Blue is good and red is bad. Typewriter is wrong, oven mitt is right. Fun, like so many other things is primarily subjective and therefore not an empirical measure.

I know, you're referring to your own fun in the matter, but for me, regardless of how the powers work, the "fun" is all about working with your weaknesses as well as your strengths. It's not heroic if it's easy. Superman doesn't run away if there's kryptonite involved - he finds a way to win. And if his powers suddenly go away or behave erratically (which they have done on numerous occasions) he still finds a way. So nerfed, renerfed, unnerfed, "as designed". They're your powers. Use them to the best of your ability.

Because the hero doesn't reside in the powers...it resides in you.

Cheers!
Max

Don't think anyone can accuse me of brown-nosing, given the pages of suggestions and laments I've added to the forums. That said, I think this thread was a long time in coming. I know you've put in a lot of sleepless nights trying to get things to work, trying to make things special, and more often than not, met with snarky pettiness.

Despite my issues with content over grind, I have enjoyed this game more than any other.

If for nothing else...

For letting me fly.

Thanks for all your hard work, you've done a great job over all so far. Now, stop glowing, and get back to work! *G*

Cheers!
Max