Lightfoot

I love how the corporate mouthpiece tries to make it sound like the home office is hurting over this decision, too. I'm willing to bet that not a single person in Korea lost their jobs. We understand the immediate closure of Paragon Studios includes Paragon Studios management. That's what we are upset about. They didn't even try to sell the game and studio, they simply cut it off.

Aion's next. City profits were down 15,000,000 Won from last quarter. Aion's losses were 15,000,000,000 Won. Closing City won't do a thing to prevent that.

I'm a huge fan of JMS' Spidey run. It brought me back to Spider Man after years of lackluster writing. Even so, Q's influence was felt several times over the course of the run. The Goblin's children arc was originally written so that the twins were Peter and Gwen's children, not Gwen and Norman's (can anyone say "Ewwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!). Q thought that the idea of Spider Man having sex out of wedlock was too edgy and mature, so he forced JMS to change the story. Never mind that the story then became one where Gwen had sex (it's a little unclear whether it was consensual or not) with a man three times her age who was also a sociopath. The same sociopath who later kills her. Isn't that a whole lot more edgy and mature?

I considered picking up One More Day to complete my JMS run. As I understand it, the first three issues leading up to the final issue are fine, but Joe Q. did not like the ending that JMS penned, and rewrote it almost entirely. JMS demanded that his name be taken off of the book, since he did not write the story contained therein. After this, it would only take one more straw of editorial interference to drive JMS away from Marvel (Marvel promised him he could have complete control of the Squadron Supreme, and then interrupted him mid story for a crossover event with he Ultimate universe, One More Day, and Siege interrupting his Thor story). Out of respect for JMS, I will not buy OMD. No story in the Brand New Day continuity has interested me enough to come back.

tl;dr: yes, OMD cost them at least one customer, I don't think I'm alone.

Agreed. I wish I could have read JMS' original ending. My guess is that it had Peter refusing the deal, Aunt May dying, and Peter divorcing MJ in order to "protect" her. According to interviews with Q, divorce is also too mature and edgy a topic for Spider Man to deal with.

For the record, Marvel did not do Fantastic Four. 20th Century Fox owns the movie rights to the FF just like they do the X-Men. Prior to the Disney buyout, Marvel couldn't raise, beg, borrow or steal enough money to buy back the film rights to those properties. With potential Disney money in the offing, Marvel could conceivably get the FF back, but Fox will never sell the X-Men.

What amazes me about how bad Superman Returns was is that it was directed by Bryan Singer, who did such a great job with X-Men I, II, and First Class. Maybe the Man of Steel movie will turn things around.

As a comic book collector for over 30 years now, how is this different from what came before. Or Marvel's lineup. Or Image's.

There are ALWAYS far too many books in circulation, and not enough talent to do them justice. This leaves you with a few really great titles, a few more titles that are worth reading but could be better if only "X were writing it" or "Y were doing the art." And the rest is ultimately forgettable.

For every Wolfman / Perez era Titans, there are dozens of Darkhawks.

And four pages of comments later, with absolutely no support at all, you are fishing for some positive feedback?

How about your feelings about the points being raised in objection to merging servers?

In a game that encourages alting to the extent that City does, I know that I am not unique in having 200+ characters, any one of whom I would be quite upset to lose should the servers merge and the two merged servers combined have more than the 48 character single server limit. And the two servers with the most characters are not high pop servers, Champion and Justice (actually, Champion combined with any server but Zukunft and Vigilance will result in the loss of characters).

Others have already said it. You want a more populated server, move there yourself. Don't inconvenience everyone else by insisting that the other servers come to you.

Issue 22 was in Open Beta for 7 weeks (1/11/12 to 3/6/12).

Issue 23 has been in Open Beta for 2 weeks.

Figure another 4-8 weeks for it to go live.

Paragon has said that Celestial Armor will be made available through some other means at a later date The most likely method is that it will probably appear in the Paragon Market, maybe at a more expensive rate than the 400 PP that costume sets normally run, and probably not until Fire & Ice rotates out at the earliest.

Except Paragon isn't doing that. They haven't replaced everything with a warped mystical landscape with hordes of zombies and mythical creatures everywhere. Just Dark Astoria, which has been a zone steeped in magic from the day it was released. We clamored for a Dark Astoria remake, wanting actual stories and lore for the zone instead of just passing through it for the occasional mission or as a good place to hunt zombies.

What did you think you were going to get when they gave us that remake? I expected a story steeped in magic to go with the zone steeped in magic. You expected to learn that Dr. Vazhilok engineered a plague that killed everyone in the zone, but the Banished Pantheon got there and harvested all the corpses that he worked so hard to create? Or that the Banished Pantheon isn't using magic to animate the zombies at all, but animating them with nanotechnology?

And City of Heroes is a superhero game where magic plays a role. Right after you finish with a Dark Astoria arc, you can go to the Rikti War Zone and take part in a Mothership Raid, or beat down some Malta and Knives of Artemis, or foil one of Nemesis' schemes (or did you really help him by destroying that Warhulk factory, only Nemesis knows for sure). I'll grant that Mutants don't have much going on after the Outcasts drop off the radar, but every other origin is pretty well supported all the way to level 50.

Your tech and science "superhero stories" are coming. The Shivans aren't magical (so I guess they didn't release Drowning in Blood at the same time they released Issue 22), and neither are the Battalion. American superhero stories embrace a wide variety of themes, magic being one of them.

You know the big superhero movie this summer? I think it is called "The Redeemers" or something like that. Captain USA, Hawkshot, Brown Recluse, Metal Man, etc., those guys?

The big villain is Loki, who totally uses magic. And the macguffin? The Solar Sphere? Yeah that is tech so advanced that it is completely indistinguishable from magic.

(And, if you can and will correct me on all the "mistakes," you know exactly which movie I'm talking about. Once you establish that magic, or tech so advanced that it looks like magic, is real in your comic book universe, then it becomes a very credible threat to your superheroes. Marvel movies have now established that magic is "real," so I wouldn't be surprised to see the Mandarin in all his glory as the next Iron Man movie villain, or failing that, as the next Avengers movie villain.)

They can afford to be. A lot of the things that the Distinguished Competition and the Competition that Once-owned-this-game want to do is get themselves up to the functionality found in this game.

If you follow the leader, you can be fairly transparent about that fact. You can even telegraph when you are going to take a new route, because you are fairly sure the leader will be unable to change course to match you (Don't be surprised if the leader makes a course correction or two when he doesn't see you in his rear view mirror anymore, I have no doubt that the CtO-o-t-g started cursing up a storm when CoH went Freedom, since their going free was their only chance catch up, and now they are in the dust again). If you are the leader, you need to play things a little closer to the vest to keep the guys following you guessing.

I could have sworn that Back Alley Brawler fixed it that draw time was accounted for in the activation time of every weapon power back in 2010.

You are more than a little late to the party. Weapons have been pulled from "Hammer-space" since launch.

Part of the issue is that the Devs have so far been unable to change the appearance of a costume piece dependent on whether a power is active or not. Were we to have scabbards and holsters, you would then be complaining that, after you drew the weapon, there would still be a weapon in the container in question

Redraw has been mostly fixed so that you aren't actually losing any time due to the draw animation. Mechanically, redraw is a non-issue. If your complaint is mainly aesthetic, I don;t think you realize how much work it would actually be to kill redraw entirely (almost as much as power customization). In order to facilitate your request, they would need to create alternate animations for every single weapon and available complimentary or pool power that could interact with it.

Let's take Broadsword as an example. Just for Scrappers, there would need to be 121 new animations made, and that is before we get to power pools. If there needed to be 121+ new animations made before they released Staff Fighting, we probably wouldn't see it until the end of the Mayan calendar.

If it a choice between seeing Staff Fighting at the beginning of March, or a few days before the end of the world, I'll take March, and the alternate animations can wait until the Devs have nothing better to do.

There is a technical limitation to giving us a sheath. The current tech does not allow them to change the appearance of a costume piece based on whether a weapon is drawn or not. Rather than have the weapon still be in the sheath AND in your hand at the same time (which would generate just as many complaints as pulling them out of thin does, if not more), they have opted to continue using "hammer-space."

Got no answer for you about quivers, though.


And you haven't been reading the posts in response to yours. The issue with Shields and two handed weapons is not entirely a technical one. Restricting them was also, at least in part, a design decision, just as Titan Weapons not being a Stalker set was a design decision*. As such, there is nothing to be fixed, as it is working exactly as it was designed

*Due to enormous outcry, they have reconsidered and decided to see if they can make Titan Weapons work as a Stalker set after all. There was not a similar outcry when Shield Defense was released. If you can get the grassroots support going, maybe you can convince the Devs to change their stance on Shield Defense. However, your current attitude during debate is unlikely to win you support from people who are on the fence and unlikely to sway any who oppose you.

Things to bear in mind:

The screenshot was a nighttime shot. Details, such as the glistening fleshy parts cannot be seen clearly.

Since the concept of the axe seems to be flesh and muscle stretched over deformed bone, it could be that the texture is supposed to be stretched. It is not supposed to be pretty, like the Plasma Sword.

This.

I have a number of villains who, were I given the choice, simply would not stand for some of the treatment they are given by the contacts in City of Villains. Willy Wheeler, Marshal Brass and Hardcase, I'm looking at you. If my villains could, all that is left of you would be the greasestain in the place where you used to be, maybe not even that much.

Unfortunately, since the Rogue Isles are not a member of any international political or trading bloc (UN, OPEC, etc.), they have no one to appeal to in order to protect their sovereignty. Were the Rogue Isles a member nation of the United Nations, for example, they could appeal to that body to impose sanctions on the United States for their unprovoked incursion.

But the Rogue Isles have no allies, and holds itself apart from international politics (aside from the occasional invasion of U.S. soil to liberate superpowered political prisoners from Ziggursky Penitentiary). With no member body to appeal to, and no friends, the Rogue Isles have no influence with which to fight the Longbow incursion, so they must use the Arachnos paramilitary (some would say "terrorist") organization and the liberated SPPP to protect themselves.

Were Longbow to try something similar in Pakistan, Iran or Korea, they would get slapped down hard.

Given that City of Heroes is one of the most alt-friendly MMO's in MMO history, I think this premise is flawed. The Devs have no desire to make us play the same character to the exclusion of others. They have given us VIPs 12 free character slots on 15 servers, 12 distinct Archetypes, scores of powersets and thousands of combinations. The reason the Devs keep adding content to the game outside of the endgame is because one of the original design goals of City of Heroes (prior to Ourobouros and Going Rogue) was that it would be impossible to do all of the content with a single character, forcing the players to create alts if they wanted to experience all of the game.

The other place where your argument falls down is that it is far easier and faster to level using Dev designed content now than it has ever been. The Devs smoothed the leveling curve, added repeatable content so that you could never run out of missions, increased story arc rewards, increased mission completion awards and added patrol XP. If the Devs wanted us to have a never ending grind to get to 50 and beyond, they failed miserably.