Lothic
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Posts
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Joined
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As with any entertainment/art medium there will always be a spectrum of reactions to comic books that'll range from "I see nothing wrong with it" all the way to "I consider it too extreme/perverse for anyone else to see it." Clearly there are some titles, storylines and/or artwork that are more questionable than others. And obviously as public opinion evolves over the years what will be considered "generally" acceptable will change.
Having said all that I would hesitate to make an absolute statement like "comic books are sexist". Are some titles more sexist and/or problematic than others? Sure some are worse than others. But can you say that about all of them? Not really. You have to accept that a label like "sexist" is one of those loaded, subjective terms that means something slightly different to almost everyone. *shrugs*
As with many forms of entertainment comic books often show us idealized images of the male and female forms. That kind of thing is hardly a new idea - the Greek Olympians were often described as models of physical human perfection. Ultimately what any one person considers to be "too much" is going to boil down to personal subjective preferences.
I think the key is to make up your own mind about things like this without being prejudiced or using vague unqualified labels. -
Quote:I always have a good laugh when anyone makes an absolute statement like this. To me it's like saying blue is always a "better" color than green. Unqualified subjective opinions being tossed out as if they were proven facts are just classically funny to me.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
Not going to comment, except to comment that I'm surprised no one commented.Quote:Originally Posted by Rikis
Dominators have always been better than Controllers. Even before their revamp, but now that they've been freed up for dirty hero hands to molest, they're gonna be overused
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I always got the feeling that the Gladiator system in this game was originally just a development testbed application the Devs used to test Mastermind functionality that got "dressed up" enough to be released as something the players could use in the arenas.
It didn't bother me that the Gladiator system never took off because it always seemed like a tacked-on recycled afterthought to begin with. It was fun thing to toy around with but only as a fringe extra, not as a core element of the overall content of the MMO. I almost hesitate to call it a significant "failure" the way Positron seems to think it was. There was no real need for it to succeed in the first place. It is what it is so I don't judge it too harshly.
Not that I'm pointing fingers but personally I feel the downfall of the IOP/base raiding system was a far most serious failure in the history of this game than the current fate of the Gladiator system. I'm willing to let both of these missteps pass away as interesting footnotes to an otherwise excellent game. *shrugs* -
Quote:I think Snow Globe was just using those numbers to explain this game's general definition of a "level shift". I don't think he was trying to imply the Alpha slots work below level 47. Remember there was talk of a "level shift inspiration" that might be added to the game in the future that would allow anyone to gain a temporary level shift effect. These inspirations would presumably work for characters of any level, not just a level 50 Incarnate.Originally Posted by Stone Daemon
No, the alpha slot doesn't work lower than 47, remember?
The real question is, if the enemies con lower to you, does that reduce the amount of influence you obtain from defeating them?
I think the net effect of a level shift is that it'll allow players to defeat enemies easier. I doubt the rewards for defeating those enemies would be reduced in any way. The idea that there could be any negative consequences to using level shifting just doesn't really make any sense. -
Quote:I can anticipate having new costumes to play with without Jay spending -that- much time doing his best to tease us for teasing's sake.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Maybe taking a break to interact with the playerbase helps his creativity?
Generating a buzz isn't a waste of anyone's time
Taking breaks to interact with the playerbase is fine, but there's a fine line he tends to forget - I'm his customer.
I'm not paying my money to his company for him to waste -my- time wondering what he's babbling about. I couldn't care less.
All he has to do to make me happy is his actual job. Seems simple enough to me. -
Quote:The key info I (and probably a few thousand other people want to know) is how many shards the Rare and Very Rare Alphas are going to cost to craft. There's still many things we DON'T know about it yet.Originally Posted by Teeko
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Quote:I suppose it's cute that SexyJay thinks it's fun to craft cryptic "walls-o-text" instead of directing that creative energy towards making more new costume items. But then I stop daydreaming and realize I sort of wish he'd stop wasting everyone's time (both his and ours) and just get back to work. I don't really need him to "hint" at what he's doing for us. I just need him to do it. *shrugs*Originally Posted by Selenir
A short while ago, @SexyJay came into the CapeRadio global chat channel and began posting some fascinating and cryptic information about what we might be able to see in the future of City of Heroes.
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One of my Primal badgers got it via that revamped Praetorian mission soon after Issue 18 went live. Of course you have to have access to that mission which may take a lot of time to set up.
The main advantage of popping the "gargoyle" ones on the tops of the buildings at the west end of Neutropolis is that they are permanent spawns there. You don't have to go looking for them because they always respawn back at the same points. Once I got going I was able to kill one roughly every 5 to 10 seconds continuously until I was done. -
It might have been cool as a one-shot "what if" alternate universe movie.
But as an ongoing series? No, it probably would've gotten real old real fast. -
Getting them during the events is doable but it only took me about 10-15 minutes of street sweeping around those Neutropolis rooftops to finish that badge.
There's at least a dozen or so spawn points that always respawn single seers at those points. They seem to like to sit on roofs at the corners of buildings west of the prison like gargoyles. It was easy enough to cycle through them because by the time you'd get back around to the first one it'd be respawned waiting to be popped again.
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You gave a nice "state of the badge" summation there.
Quote:As far as Praetorian native badgers go I just wanted to chime in to say there may in fact be a few people out there seriously trying to do that. About a month after Issue 18 went live I stumbled across a character in Steel Canyon who was an obvious Praetorian native (based on the badges he had) that had over 700 badges. Even though Praetorians can get 4 Praetorian badges that Primals can't currently get they are going to be down at the very least 7 anniversary badges (counting the CoV one) and the 5th column gladiator. Still there appears to be at least one person going for it, for what it's worth as a FYI.Originally Posted by Ms. Mesmer
For a Praetorian, subtract four from that total, plus Handsome/Beautiful, since the contacts needed for those haven't been in the game yet for them since Praetoria launched, something that will almost certainly change when the Spring Fling Event comes back. I doubt that any Praetorian is nearly that high, though, since they can't possibly have earned all available Day Jobs and Day Job Accolades, and would have had to subtract from the time earning those to work on Damage Taken and Healing, at the least. -
Quote:I personally think Travel Suppression in a game like this is a Necessary Evil.Originally Posted by Ironik
They also have the thrice-damned Travel Suppression which is actually (and I never thought it possible but they managed it) far more onerous than it is in CoH.
Could it be implemented differently to serve its purpose better here? Probably.
But for a new game to make the ill-favored concept even MORE annoying instead of less is a monumental failure.
It leads me to believe if they've done something that obviously silly what other dumb things have they managed to do.
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Quote:This is a valid point. What MMOs could get away with 7 years ago is likely different than what they can get away with today. Then again my formative years for "video" gaming were set during the age of Atari 2600s, Apple IIs and Commodore 64s so frankly CoH even at the state it was in 7 years ago was quite impressive enough to me. These darn kids just think they're entitled to everything instantly anymore.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
What CoH had was a lack of competition to make it painfully obvious what a content gap does to the game. Street sweeping helped, and in fact at one point it was better XP than missions anyway, but I think if CoH launched today with the same kinds of gaps it had at launch, it would die a quick death. It was a mistake we were allowed to make, but no other MMO will ever be allowed to make. Today you're punished for content gaps in a way totally unknown to CoH when it launched.
My main thought was that DCUO will be dinged by some people for having "lack of content" simply by being a brand new game. I think that's a generic criticism for almost any MMO (released at any point in history) just because no set of Devs can realistically launch a game with multiple years worth of content ready to go on Day One. *shrugs*
Everything I've seen/read of DCUO leads me to be unimpressed by it. The fact that it lacks CoH's 7 years worth of updates only further puts it at a disadvantage. -
Quote:Obviously City of Heroes has a huge content advantage over the recent "johnny-come-lately" MMOs.Originally Posted by Sardan
A month from now (or less) we're going to see the complaints of DCUO players that they've exhausted all the initial content. Same as what happened with CO.
But just to provide some historical perspective from a Devil's Advocacy point of view there were a lot of people complaining about the "lack of content" a month or so after City of Heroes launched and many people were predicting it was going to fail very quickly. Obviously events have proven those people wrong.
It goes to show that the amount of content really isn't the only factor which determines how well a superhero MMO does in the marketplace. As we all know CO also started with a relatively small amount of content and as fate would have it managed to falter for a myriad of other reasons. DCUO will succeed or fail based on the quality/uniqueness of its content, not necessarily on the overall quantity of its content. -
Quote:I agree that most of the time the Devs never mention "fixes" to things they consider exploits. But strangely enough they seemed to break their own rule about that when they mentioned the nuke nerf for the CoP Trial. Go figure.Originally Posted by Ironblade
If it's an 'exploit' in their heads, it won't be in the patch notes.
Basically this means that the Devs "may or may not" nerf nukes for the Tin Mage TF and they "may or may not" tell us about it either way. *shrugs* -
Quote:Wait a minute... are you saying the suits at SyFy actually hate Sci-fi?Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Third the idiot in charge has gone on record saying they hate science fiction. So it's unlikely that programming will change back to a sci-fi focus until that twit gets fired.
Actually that could explain why that network is so generally suck-tastic right now.
I realize that running a TV network is just a job regardless of the programming but you'd think that the people running a specifically targeted network like SyFy would at least not outright -hate- the kind of shows they produce. *shrugs* -
Quote:Originally Posted by Pouncer
ScyFy should have picked it up. It would be better than the wrestling and cheesy monster movies they have now.As much as I'd like to see a good Wonder Woman TV show I'm afraid it being on SyFy would almost guarantee that it'd be poorly done and quickly cancelled. I'd like to think that a channel supposedly dedicated to sci-fi could actually do a show like this well, but I'd have little confidence in it from the start. I think there's a reason there hasn't been a Wonder Woman TV since the mid 70s on any network and that reason is no one seems to want to give it a serious chance with a reasonable budget.Quote:Originally Posted by Nericus
SCyFy would desecrate it.
The article Knight_Marshal linked to mentioned that DC may be part of the problem here. I'm not exactly sure what the Warner Brothers / DC comics business relationship is so I don't know what the licensing fees involved are. My guess is that the cost was not going to be zero dollars so that had to factor into the equation somehow. Any excuse a network can use for a new show potentially costing too much is going to be used against it, which seems to be the case here.Quote:Originally Posted by Warp_Factor
Odd, EW seems to think Warner Bros TV would have to pay a licensing fee to use a character owned by Warner Bros.
I understand DC deserves to be paid licensing fees for their character property, but if they are charging too much then no one will pay for it. It seems like DC would be willing to cut their rates as much as possible in return for all the free long term advertising a modern Wonder Woman show on TV would represent. -
Quote:The idea that Praetoria is a parallel (or mirror) dimension to the Primal Earth where the original City of Hero/Villains is based was the whole point of the Going Rogue expansion. The concept of parallel dimensions and/or "alternate earths" has been a staple of comic books almost as long as comic books have existed.Originally Posted by alyssa_jones
Is this true? Really?
Emperor Marcus Cole of Praetoria is the classic study of what would happen if you let a civic-minded superhero like Statesman become so obsessed with the idea of imposing order and security over everyone that he effectively decided to establish a totalitarian government to better "protect and control" society. Strictly speaking Emperor Cole is not evil or a "villain" in the traditional sense, but he has imposed his will over his people to such an extent that he's basically forced everyone to give up their basic freedoms in exchange for his "enlightened protection". He's a comic book version of an Orwellian Big Brother.
If you want your characters to be heroes when they go to Primal Earth then it makes the most sense for them to be playing through the Resistance arcs in Praetoria first. There's no real right or wrong way to do it, but as far as the game is organized Loyalist=Villain and Resistance=Hero. You can tell that via many hints in the game not the least of which is the artwork used by the Agent of Praetoria and True to the Last badges - Loyalists get the red arachnos symbol and Resistance gets the blue star. But if you want a Loyalist to become a Primal hero just come up with a good RP reason why that's the case. Like I said there's no real right or wrong way to play it.
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Even though we have little real data yet I think we can speculate with a reasonable degree of certainty. It's quite likely that given what we do know that Rares will take the equivalent of many dozens of shards and Very Rares may take upwards to a few hundred shards total.
I'm not going to go crazy farming for as many shard as possible, especially before we get more precise info on this. But I really don't think it's going to hurt anyone to have several hundred shards racked up and waiting for Issue 20.
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Quote:Well even "normal" movies tend to have dozens if not hundreds of hours worth of leftover footage that usually never sees the light of day. When those movies are made into DVDs they'll usually scrape together the best leftover hour or two for their "special features" and be done with it.Originally Posted by Talia_Rayvyn
Who waits 30+ years to release deleted scenes to a film!?!
Star Wars on the other hand is a huge franchise which as we all know has been around for decades. If we can assume it had several 100 hours of deleted/unused footage spread across all the movies there are probably still a few of those hours worth that we haven't seen yet. The only real difference between the Star Wars movies and regular movies in this regard is that people are still buying enough of the various releases for them to keep digging down through the remaining hours worth of leftovers.
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As they exist now I can mostly (mostly mind you) sympathize with the point of view that the anniversary badges should not be made available retroactively. They were defined to be something you'd earn for logging in during specific real world dates so at least on some level it makes no sense to allow them to be awarded anytime after those dates.
On the other hand I firmly believe the idea of implementing a set of badges earned by characters in this game based on real world dates was a very silly and shortsighted maneuver to begin with. I will always argue the point that how long a real world MMO game has been around has absolutely no bearing whatsoever to any individual character inside the game. Why would Captain Awesome, a hero who lives in Paragon City fighting crime, have any connection to how many years a real world MMO game has been live? At the very least anniversary badges should have ALWAYS been account wide badges because they have nothing to do with individual characters. They are what I'd call "player badges" not character badges and probably should have been separated from having anything to do with individual characters kind of like how SG badges are handled.
I realize the idea of removing anniversary badges completely from the game will never happen.
I also realize the idea of remaking them into global account badges will probably never happen at this point.
I wouldn't even be that upset if they were purchasable (via merits or even real world money) but that seems fairly unlikely as well.
Basically they were an intrinsically bad idea that we're all now stuck with.
But even if nothing can be done about the anniversary badges I'm all in favor of "divorcing" the 5th Column gladiator badge from the anniversary badges. There is no legitimate reason why that badge should be in anyway exclusive anymore. It could easily be remade into a simple "defeat" styled badge or linked to the Khan/Cuda TF/SF as Nericus suggested. Any character who currently had it would be allowed to keep it unchanged and it would become earnable by anyone else who wants it now. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
What's really sad is that the Devs had a perfect opportunity to "balance the scales" between hero and villain badge totals and didn't think to make use of it. The Elusive/Pursuer badge was basically the 1st year anniversary badge for CoV. If the Devs had thought to make that a "villain only" badge then that would have made up for heroes being the only ones who could have the Celebrant badge. Each side would then have had one badge the other side couldn't have thus restoring the overall badge totals. Oh well. *shrugs* -
Quote:Lucas will commit that atrocity when he has to digitize the original trilogy to make the 3D versions of them.Originally Posted by starphoenix
At least it is not a remake of the original Star Wars to make it fit with the prequel.
Just give him some time.
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Quote:Or you could realize that the Stargate movie predated Sliders by a year or so.Originally Posted by Hydrofoil_Zero
Or you could go back further and say they wiped of Sliders. :P
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliders
But like I said if you dig enough you could cite examples many decades earlier than these. *shrugs*
This was not a "new" idea by any means... -
Quote:Yeah I'm pretty sure CoH doesn't own the "patent" on all sci-fi dimensional portals. And neither does Stargate. These kinds of things have been sprinkled across sci-fi literature for decades if not longer.Originally Posted by Socorro
Not to be a bahumbegger, but I imagine lots SciFi Dimensional Portals, Stargates, etc. are made to look like this. Lots of structure and machinery (often circular) surrounding a pulsating energy flux - I'd say it's sort of a convention.
Heck, one could say CoH ripped off Stargate
Still cool though, and eagerly anticipating GL movie
It's cool that this image does look similar to what we see in CoH.
But beyond any involvement of a CoH fan in this movie it's effectively a coincidence. -
Quote:[In reference to Dr. Strangelove's plan for post-nuclear war survival...]Originally Posted by Nylonus
Don't they only have "intimate relations" every 7 years? Kind of hard to maintain a population at that rate.
General "Buck" Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... *smiles deviously* service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
Ambassador de Sadesky: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.