Johnny_Butane

Jab could only wish to be so interesting.

[Edit]

To elaborate, I didn't just play the JLA: Act of God card lightly.
I feel it's quite appropriate to what you always seemed to champion and part of what's wrong with the game: Blue Blue powered down, useless and ineffectual with his ideal **** upon. A gigantic swooning love letter to how 'awsum' Bat-Scrapper is while basically flipping off the Atom, Martian Manhunter, the Flash and other heroes. A massive mishandling of a cool idea that had potential.


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In light of that, I suspect your interpretation of super heroes is shaped by bad Wolverine fanfic and possibly JLA: Act of God.



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Ah, but it isn't an 'anything-goes metaverse'. It has a lore, design of NPCs and world that is very modern age western super hero centric.

There is/was a deliberate effort to make this a 'super hero MMO', not a generic mash up of sci-fi and whatever the fly-by-Twilight fad of the month is.

It just gets treated as the latter because some players (and devs) don't really care for super heroes, don't bother to respect the genre and setting or simply have a very lax opinion of what a super hero is.

You can pretend The Simpsons exist in the CoH universe, but they don't just because you can pick a yellow skin tone, spiky hair and rolled "Bart the Blaster" on Infinity.



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That is an outlier. Marvel's Thor was specifically created as an experiment in meshing super hero and fantasy/myth. He was infused heavily with super hero tropes; a secret identity, plenty of 'science villains' to balance the fantasy frost giants, etc.

There have been comics about truckers and football too...

http://www.comicvine.com/us-1/49-3246/
http://www.comicvine.com/nfl-superpro/49-20476/

...but that doesn't made Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing and Madden an automatic fit for CoH.


Also, one of the main draws of Thor was that he was such a fish out of water and unique being a fantasy hero in a super hero world. To contrast, I've seen so many vampires, elf rogues, Neos, Spartans (Halo and 300) anime fighters and whatever that western comic book super heroes (of any age, gold, silver, dark, post modern) seem to me to be the minority in game now.

I don't think it's unreasonable for anyone see a problem with a super hero game 'not really' having super heroes in it like the box art and loading screen would lead one to think. I also don't think it's OK to blow off that opinion if someone has a higher or lower standard about what they consider a super hero is.

That cuts both ways. You also can't blame people for creating the characters they do, or considering Cloud a super hero.

Still, I can't help wishing this game had more...focus.

Flip it around. Try to make a 'super hero' in WoW. It doesn't work very well. No true flight or iconic travel powers. No classic powers like super strength, an unarmed 'Batman' would be uber gimp. You're bound by their very limited costume system of armors. If you named your character Captain Dynamo, they'd throw you off the RP servers in a heart beat.

Flip it back around. It's pretty easy to approximate a fantasy character in CoH, in looks and powers. We've got a large armory of fantasy weapons available and for most RPers, almost anything goes in terms of what's a valid character concept and name.

IMO, you can have too much flexibility. It can dilute immersion. I'm of the opinion it has in this game. YMMV.

But, the bottom line is, if you allow for it, players will do it. If you are a GMing a D&D-esque fantasy game and you allow a character to drive a muscle car and wield a shotgun, you may as well throw setting and theme out of the window. And, claiming they had it in Army of Darkness is a very weak defense. Can you blame someone who *is* a fan of legit fantasy for complaining? That's why those game has someone set aside to decide what isn't 'legit' and what fits.

The thing is, here, we don't have a GM. We have devs. And I still have to ask if they're truly into the super hero genre.



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You should, because that's the day the US President and Will Smith lead us against the alien invaders and the world declared in one voice: "We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!"





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Somewhere along the line...actually no, there's no one crossroad one can point to.

At various points the devs made the conscious decision to try and force super hero sensibilities, tropes and into conforming to mechanics and conventions that come largely from fantasy MMOs and PnP games. Rather than create or try and adapt mechanics and design to suit the world of a comic book, they tend to try and force comics to conform to things like the Class Trinity, loot and standard MMO mission design.

In my opinion, this has resulted in a rather curious phenomenon; a 'super hero' MMO that doesn't really attract super hero fans.

To be sure, there are comic fans who play the game. No doubt. But the lion's share of people, in my observation, are mostly here because this is a straight-forward casual friendly game that's generic enough(and has a flexible enough costume editor) to accommodate their Night Elf Mohawk or character from the Matrix Online, Vampire the Masquerade or what have you. They couldn't care less about the 'super' in "the world's most popular superpowered MMO".


It's been my first hand experience that the design of this game tends to drive away, or at least discourage, comic fans I've tried to get playing. Just off the top of my head:

-More than a couple thought not getting their travel power for 14 levels was really silly. After all, by the time Supes or Spidey put on the tights, they could already fly/jump/run respectively.

-Related to the first, I've had a lot of people tell me the game didn't allow them to flesh out their characters soon enough. What's the point of a speedster who can't run fast after all? I have to agree with this personally. There's not a lot of sets that have powers that grab you right off the bat. The first hour of gameplay is critical.

-Something extremely trivial, not being able to create a character with a cape right away. This was a deal breaker for a close friend of mine, and she wasn't about to buy one of the costume packs when I was trying to sell her on even playing the game.

-Not being able to create the kind of character they wanted. No good way to do swords + guns. Prior to custom animations, no power set for a hand to hand fighter that wasn't all flashy kicks.


That's my take on why what you're seeing happened. Watered-down, generic design and gameplay attracts generic fans. Most, but not all, of their potential players who come from a strong super hero centric view have been driven away over the years or gave up on this game a long time ago.



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Because there's no reason anyone would associate mutant super heroes with animals unless they were a furry.





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Another thing I wish, before 19.5 and definitely before i20, is for them to come out and explicitly say that Shards are or are not used for the other Incarnate slots besides the Alpha.

Based on the Info description for them, I think they are only used for the Alpha components.

Other people however are grinding to stockpile them with the aim of making their Judgment etc, as soon as it drops. I'd like to save them the effort if need be and have a conclusive red name post to point to.



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Rocket Punch!



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And the biggest hint is the eagle-headed hero on the official CoH Facebook page you must have missed.





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Thank you for clearing that up.

For the first time in a while, CoH news comes out and I don't have anything new to dread over or complain about...for now.
Enjoy the relative silence.



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My kitties are cuter.
Chiaro and Scuro, I got them from a shelter just before the holidays. I'd have pics but I lent my digital camera to a relative and it's yet to return and the kitties wont sit still long enough on the flatbed scanner.



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If they expect us to pay more to unlock the rest of the Alpha or even for content for same, this 'Strike Pack' is nothing less than a 'strike' in the face.



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Idea time.

How about a mission to an alternate Earth where they did try to give everyone a Medi-Port beacon, but there was a citywide disaster that triggered a mass teleport and the overload caused a malfunction, fusing half the people into freakish monstrosities.
Nightmare fuel.


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She could have also said "that players have been asking fur"



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Only because I wrote more, got logged out by the forum bug and fed hungry kittens.




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So, I'm guessing the rest of the Alpha will open up, along with perhaps a new TF or one of the raids they've been working on.

Which means that i20, and all the stuff rumored in it, is further off than I expected.



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The damage in the Apex finale that can be absorbed, BM's infrequent ranged attack, can easily be done so with a Brute or Scrapper.

By the same token, if Boobcat can two-shot a Tanker without support, you may as well just get a Brute or Scrapper if you're going to have to deploy a couple buffers/healers dedicated to supervise them anyways.

Even more so than the regular content, these TFs trivialize Tankers and in the case of the Apex finale, also render their offensive contribution of low-mediocre damage even more of a joke.


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Because that is how all of the original ATs and most of the power sets were designed to be used and they've spent six years conditioning us to play that way by punishing us for doing otherwise.

If the devs don't want us playing like that any more or want to 'evolve' the game into an "action MMO", they need to get off their butts, remove all movement suppression and animation rooting, fix all the powers that rely on the old dynamic like Stone Armor, Invincibility and Rise to the Challenge, give better ranged attacks to the melee ATs and fix the ATs that were designed for and are only good for tank and spank, ie Tankers.

Because as a Tanker, a session of spamming Taunt at Battle Maiden and getting in pathetic damage that's made even more pathetic by not even being allowed to stand there and deliver it because the blue patches make my Primary Power set irrelevant, in addition to most of my Secondary, is a [censored] joke and isn't worth my time.

Go to Hell, Apex and Tin Mage.



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I've heard i20 rumors that rhyme with Conclusion Bombinators and Bryce Wrappers.
Take scuttlebutt for what it's worth.


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At the time of the leak, Lore allowed you to summon pets from from one of four Praetorian factions; Warworks, Imperial Defense Force, etc. At the highest tier of the power that was seen, it allowed you to summon one LT and one Boss simultaneously.

Destiny was an AoE team buff of varying flavors, with one option being a team rez and another providing various forms of mez protection or resistance.


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Considering the three or four threads active with dozens of posts each were exactly what I describe is happening, I found that part of his 'well wishing' to be in poor taste, or at least extremely ignorant, and I thought it would be only fair to reciprocate in kind.

I19 has brought me zero holiday cheer and fills me with nothing but dread for the coming year of the game. It'd be a shame for him to pull himself away from the fire to address any of the concerns raised in those threads as of late, so consider this a friendly suggestion to him to check those, lest they fall off the first page or "disappear" before he gets back to the office. Since he seems pretty pleased with himself, I'm forced to assume he hasn't yet.


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