Nethergoat
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Posts
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Quote:I've done this whole "what is content!" dance a dozen times over the years and don't have much taste for another re-hash.Originally Posted by rian_frostdrake
In a way, not really. now to preface this, I dont feel this way so its devils advocating here, but it seems to be their point that new stuff is happening at a disproportionate way, lots of new powers but similar content to go through limits the novelty a bit. wether you are using water blast, plant melee or feather duster assult set, if you are whacking the same enemies over and over again, it can still feel like the same stuff.
For my part I just played through the Hollows on a new street justice brute, and calling those missions "content" shamelessly abuses the definition- street sweeping would've been more efficient and delivered a more compelling storyline.
But I still had a lot of fun, because Street Justice is a blast to play and I haven't done it to death yet.
That's content.
When someone is burned out on the game, nothing the devs do is going to satisfy them.
so, take a break.Quote:its more likely that for the op, 7 years in a game that is still mostly in the diku mud style setup is a dang long time, and i can understand burning out even on the best thing. , you left for a time, and that helped reset your clock, I play a lot of other games and often dont play for a week or so,so i reset my clock, but if you play anything, no matter how good, for 7 years is just a long time.
nobody can help you with burnout.
Threads like this aren't constructive, they're mainly about whining and trying to convince other players that you're *right* to not be having fun and that they're wrong for still enjoying the game. -
Quote:I will go to my grave declaring Time Bomb a garbage power & waste of slots.Originally Posted by Quixotik
Devices offer some nice Defiance buffs Trip Mine 26% Time Bomb 52% for 15 seconds. I always take them both and slot 6 Obliteration which grant some nice buffs.
Unless they've MASSIVELY buffed it since the last time I respec'ed out of it in disgust, anyway.
And my feelings about tripmine have (hopefully) been stated earlier in the thread- it imposes an entire playstyle I don't enjoy.
Defiance buffs are all well and good, but can't in and of themselves make me take a power.
I love working some +range into my cones when possible- cone AoE is the main strength of AR & boosting its range is helpful, although the hit cap does somewhat limit its practical application.Quote:Boosting Regen and Damage work well for Dev blasters who usually prolong battles with Caltrops, stuns, etc. Also AR is the cone attack monster so Range extenders pay off well. I have a level 50 AR/NRG with Boost Range and Centriole in most attacks. Ever see what Full Auto can do at 175 foot range?
Temp powers can be handy at lower levels, but once I've got a full attack chain they become superfluous.Quote:I do have an AR/Dev at 40 though. Because of Targeting Drone he gets the most out of the Temp Powers which become very accurate. Stun Grenades, Frag Grenades, Hold Grenades, Gabriel's Hammer for those melee moments. -
Quote:altitis means having a stable of characters across a wide range of levels, meaning it's easier to take advantage of 'new' content wherever it occurs.Originally Posted by AzureSkyCiel
Not as much as you'd think: Altitis means one has lots of options to make a character, but limited content means you only have so many different ways of running them, meaning you eventually end up repeating the same content over and over and over again.
And if you have issues with repeating content, you're in the wrong genre. -
I'm genuinely impressed by the It Feels So Stale Because We're Getting Too Much New Stuff line of thinking.
That is quite the amazing feat of mental contortion! -
Quote:Hah!Originally Posted by TonyV
I have to admit, as far as slaps in the face go, this one wasn't so bad.
when it inspires a TonyV post I not only agree with but get a genuine laugh out of...they call that thread SPECIAL. -
Quote:Then go do something else.Originally Posted by Dusk_LoneEagle
I am becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the game overall.
No point playing a game you're burnt out on. -
Quote:*shrug*Originally Posted by SerialBeggar
Really? The first 2 punches sound like I'm whiffing. Even now, I still need to check for orange numbers to tell if I'm landing hits.
So far I really like everything about it- well, aside from the unpredictable AoE of Sweeping Cross. Even as a veteran player with years of practice consistently hitting 3 enemies with Shadow Maul it's confusing me.
But that's my fault, not the sets.
There's nothing like running old content to give you a new appreciation for the monumental improvements made over the years. A few years back I did a thread similar to Tygers where I ran the 'original' content with a new character and it was just gawdaful. The Hollows vividly reminded me of those bad old days.
Now, even the various flavors of repeatable missions we get are light years better than legacy content. If I were running things I'd make replacing all those crummy old arcs a high priority. They've done a good thing with the 'sanctioned powerlevelling' of the two low level trials, but there's still a lot of junky, terrible content in the game for new players to run across and get a bad opinion from.
/edit
I also blew a few points last night on the cape & aura unlocks, another major QOL improvement.
I defended the gating of both back in the day based on the reality that games need carrots for people to chase, but the modern era has provided a bounty of real, actual goals to aspire to. Giving interested players a way around running tedious missions for their graphic fun was a good decision. Many's the character of mine who had to do without one or the other due to my antipathy toward the system of acquiring them. -
okay, finally got around to reading the link in the OP.
To call it an "article" is pure hyperbole- it's generic forum butthurt & conspiracy mongering that somehow escaped a well deserved fate in the editor's garbage can.
When you open with this
Quote:and close with thisI want it to be clear that I could, in fact, be totally wrong, and when I say that City of Heroes nearly committed unintentional suicide a couple of years ago, I don't want that to be seen as some grand behind-the-scenes revelation.
the pretense that you're practicing journalism, even of the opinion variety, goes straight out the door.Quote:Do I have any proof of all this? Of course not -- just a lot of hearsay, conjecture, and external observation. But it all hangs together coherently, so I can't help but wonder.
I could, following the rules of engagement laid down by Eliot Lefebvre, concoct an elaborate exploration of the hows and whys of his deviant, perverted private life and publish it on a respected industry website using his own disclaimers, in spite of having zero actual knowledge of his real private life. But it would hang together coherently, SO HOW COULD I NOT PUBLISH IT?!
*rolleyes*
GR wasn't the grand success everyone hoped for, but it did give the game a substantial boost for a good while. Free to Play of one flavor or another is the 'new normal' for MMOs and was fueling the forum rumor mill here before GR was more than a gleam in the dev's eyes.
There is zero objective connection between the two...unless of course you're a self admitted conspiracy theorist and serial fabulist along the lines of Eliot Lefebvre. -
Quote:We got *nothing* for free "back in the day"- the game had a $15/month cover charge and if you didn't pay up the bouncers laughed at you.Originally Posted by Warbaby
*Sighs deeply*
Back in the day we used to get all this stuff for free (except expansions, server transfers and renames) and they didn't have to make a such a song and dance about it.
News flash- this game is a business, and all businesses to some extent rely on marketing to survive.Quote:I may be a bit of a synic (I probably am) but as others have said it's probably just another marketing ploy.
The More Cynical Than Thou demographic here generates more laughs than any other, delivering penetrating insights like "Of COURSE that puppy looks cute and darling...that's all part of a devious master plan to make you like it!" -
Quote:If they'd started with something more interesting the reaction when the next freebie didn't 'measure up' would've caused a collective whine so powerful a wormhole would've opened up and swallowed the earth.Originally Posted by Tenzhi
If they would have started with something more interesting, it'd make it easier to not fall into the cynical line of thought that it's always going to be some penny-ante throw-away.
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Quote:if you say 'free xp booster' people know what they're getting and some of them won't want it, whereas if you say "free random thing from market" pretty much *everyone* will log in to see what it is.Originally Posted by ShadowMoka
If everyone got the same thing, an XP booster, why did it have to be built up so dramatically? Kind of a waste of time. I guess it'd be nice if I weren't VIP or If I haven't bought a bunch of super packs in the past, but I have like 20 XP boosters already.
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PS:
Street Justice is fun enough that the overall crumminess of the Hollows didn't bother me much in a practical sense because in micro-scale I was having fun busting the chops of individual spawns. Conceptually it sucked that there was no overarching goal or obvious storyline to provide context to my actions, but credit Street Justice with making the actions themselves quite enjoyable.
Just a fast, fun, well animated set with terrific sound effects.
Made it to level 12 amidst the hubub and headed to Steel to run the invention tutorial and hit up Montague Castellana for some more appealing missions before logging off. -
Okay, decided to stick with Flux until I got the Frostfire mish, which I dimly recall being fun. Burned an auto-complete on the street sweep, and happy happy joy, the next mish is Frostfire.
In I go, and it's still fun. Been so long since I last ran it I'd never seen the cutscene, which amused me. Good fights, sliding around on the ice is still funny, solid mish.
I finish it off and Flux sends me to Julius the Troll- as I've never hung around the Hollows a moment longer than strictly necessary, I decide to check him out.
Mission One: kill 10 trolls.
Mission Two: kill 10 trolls, OH WAIT over by the dam, so that's totally different, right?
Mission Three: kill all creatures in cave.
WTH!
Finally something different on #4, 'Rescue Slaves', and happily it's at the same mission door I just exited. Karma!
Toggle Ninja Run and zip through a really ridiculously giant cave map sniffing around for slaves to rescue- happily, they were't the sort you have to escort out, my single least favorite mission type. Clean it out, find out Sam Wincott is alive somewhere else, get an unexpected dose of reward merits and Julius tells me to get lost.
I now leave the Hollows permanently, my prejudice against the zone justified and intact. If it took someone more than an hour to plot and write up every arc I played in this zone, I'll eat my hat. Awful even by the low standards of 'old time' content- when they shuffled things around they should've taken the time to enliven the actual content- not much point making it easier to get to missions when the missions themselves are still hot garbage. -
Quote:Zone, Zone, Zone, Zone.Originally Posted by Leo_G
Which makes me believe the playerbase doesn't know what the heck they want. Moonbase? Underwater zone? Wilderness/Jurassic zone? Yeah, that's not Paragon City, so no, you're not going to get those.
The 'rogue isles' would've made a great CoH zone, but they made it a whole other game and players didn't like it.
Praetoria would've made a great CoH zone, but they made it a whole other game and the players didn't like it.
Yes, that's the game people enjoy the most, so it should be the game that gets resources allocated to it.Quote:Stay in Paragon City.
If you're going to reply to someone it helps to read their post first, as my original comment made all these points very clear. -
Quote:Redside had population problems well before the introduction of any of the various reward systems we take for granted these days.Originally Posted by OneFrigidWitch
I dunno. 20 levels was not good in GR. I am still pissed about that. I really liked GR. A lot. I utterly despised how empty it was. I could maybe group with 1 person a day if I was lucky.
Redside sucks too. Why? Nobody plays. Blueside rewards are just THAT MUCH BETTER. Any blueside TF generates sometimes as much as 2-3 times as many merits as an equivalent redside TF. Who wants to play with nobody for worse rewards? Just because story is better? Sorry, that just isnt acceptable.
People might use that for an excuse, but they didn't play redside even back when NOBODY was getting 'rewards'. -
GR's problem is the same problem CoV had, which they should have figured out at some point- people like playing heroes and they like the setting of Paragon City. Any big 'new' release should've incorporated that reality instead of trying to impose its own.
Conceptually, CoV was a great idea. Conceptually, GR's whole morality system was a great idea. Sure you can quibble about this or that element, and argue about what could have been done differently to lure in players, but IMHO the bottom line is players like being heroes & like the 'generic' hero environment of Paragon City.
CoV should've been a zone off Paragon, Praetoria should've been a zone off Paragon- the city is the foundation of the game and they stray from it at their own peril. -
Quote:Yah, this is more of a daily special situation.Originally Posted by Lothic
So in this case the guy making your sub has asked you, "Do you want free bacon on that?" and instead of saying "No, thank you." you have chosen to complain that the guy offered you some free bacon in the first place. That is textbook rude on YOUR part by any stretch of the imagination.
"OMG why did they make BACON the free special of the day when I wanted STEAK! The rudeness, the temerity, the humanity!"
*eyeroll* -
Quote:Yep!Originally Posted by dugfromthearth
Did you get the choice to kill him earlier?
Nice touch, that.
Okay, tonight I ended up logging in SilverRage and decided to run the Hollows, for reasons obscure. Hated it before the retrofit, haven't played it since other than to jump in and check out the cosmetic changes.
First impression is "I still hate it."
David Wincott hands out street sweeps and kill alls- the 4 merits at the end of the arc were small compensation for the boredom.
Get Flux, who immediately assigns me another substantial street sweep, then an annoying 'disarm two bombs in a giant cave' mish- adding insult to injury one of the bombs was floating about four feet off the floor.
Old school content at its very worst.
And his third mission is......kill all trolls in base.
also rescue FIVE policemen?
Guh.
The last cop was, of course, hidden away in a small upper level room on the first floor- I thought these things were supposed to show up on your map these days? Grr.
And what is my reward for persevering through this tedious swamp of a mission?
Flux thinks I deserve ANOTHER street sweep.
Feh.
Time to log off and get some reading in anyway.
old = bad. -
Quote:I did some playtesting for Savage Worlds and wasn't into it- while it wasn't D20 it traveled the same simplify everything to the point of making it generic! road. Better than d20, but that's like saying Burger King is better than McDondalds- I'll never eat at either, so it's a pointless distinction.Originally Posted by dugfromthearth
Deadlands is now Savage Worlds, a generic system. It is reasonably good and has Necessary Evil a superhero system which is pretty popular.
/edit
I did enjoy their Great Rail Wars game, which provided the skeleton of Savage Worlds. The simplification worked well for that cross between board game and miniatures wargame, I just don't enjoy it in a pure RPG setting. -
Ok ran Harris' arc.
Really good, especially for a veteran player familiar with the locations. The setup was a grim chunk of undiluted misogyny, but hey we're in the Rogue Isles and anyway that basic scenario plays out all the time IRL. Missions are a fine example of moving action out into the zone & giving some places that looked like they should 'be' something a context- I especially liked setting the Arachnos prisoners free- that little compound always looked like something interesting should be going on there, but never was.
I also liked the Skulls coming along to lend a hand at the finale, along with that guy in the weird coat I didn't kill in an earlier arc. Good for immersion, and rewarding positive social behavior (even in the context of CoV) is a good thing. Let the maniac psycho-killer contingent pursue their nihilistic agenda solo while throwing a bone to the less scorched earth villains out there. A nice touch.
Finished it up and headed back to Graves to check out his arc.
So far so good on the redside lowbie revamp. -
Quote:I <3 this.Originally Posted by kburd
awesome, another cheesy gimmick
Oh playerbase, you never fail to come through!
Sounds fun!
can't wait to log in this evening and see what manner of swag I score. -
Quote:thanks for the tip!Originally Posted by Arctic Man
Don't forget Lt. Harris (third contact in the intro series) if you haven't done his arc yet. His level range is 5-7, while you have until level 9 to finish Dr. Graves' first arc.
I'll run his stuff first.
I'm still amazed at how fast the levels go by these days...already at 5 in spite of letting my son wander around "bonking" things to his heart's content this morning. -
another detour: thought of a good name on the way home from work last night, this morning created my new mace/stone brute The Scab Factory. Went villain to check out the new lowbie stuff red side. My son helped with the costume, and it turned out pretty good anyway- although given my druthers I don't think he'd be wielding a white mace.
Ran the initial guy's stuff, standard street sweeping & head cracking. My son really liked "bonking" the Longbow, which he called "Megatroids", and we spent quite a bit of time wandering around up on the system of catwalks above the city.
Took Firewire for my second contact, that was a good time. Really liked the modified bank mission- something about those piles of burning NPCs warmed my villainous heart, annoying as they've been over the years. My son was aghast when Firewire showed up at the end and started shooting at us- "Hey! He's our FRIEND!" His favorite parts were when we got to put on costumes, and when we blew up the building. "Let's blow up MORE buildings!"
Hit level 5 and got hooked up with Dr. Graves before logging out.
I like the revised Mercy- Arachnos being hostile was always a bad design choice, having them just hanging around makes you feel more like you're part of something instead of just a lone wolf battling the entire world. Longbow as the main enemy is good, and I liked 'recruiting' skulls as allies for that final bank mish. Red side doesn't have to be all touchy feely, but not having literally every hand turned against you from the moment you hit the zone is a huge improvement.
I've never run a mace OR a stone armor character- so far I'm liking them both. My lad really likes the disorient effect- "Dada, that guy got all DIZZY! Hahaha! Make him dizzy AGAIN!" Stone graphics have always been a problem for me, but with this guy's look it fits right in. I'll post a screen tonight, if I remember.
Looking forward to Graves' arc, will hopefully be able to check it out this evening. -
Quote:As I mentioned.Originally Posted by Valerika
Not on Virtue, it isn't.
No, that isn't what this is about.Quote:Is that really what this is about? Is this just another one of those "My server doesn't have enough people on it, merge the servers" threads with twist? -
Quote:I've passed through on my way to somewhere else, which is all most players do.Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Trainers
Inspiration vendors
Some missions. (Seasonal, though some of my characters still have access to them.)
Inter-faction travel.
Arena
Sound like services to me. Have you been there lately?
Travel lobby & in-season mission hub, the only time you'll see it populated (outside Virtue, anyway).
This seems to support my point of view that useful spaces attract population, whatever the design intent.
Your hangup on spaces being defined by their intent is really weird.Quote:It is also *designed* as a social hub... y'know, for that player interaction you're aiming for.
They *designed* it as a social hub, and yet it is mostly abandoned.
Well, except for the periods when it transforms into a mission hub and becomes generally useful, whereupon it magically fills with players.
This suggests to me that your "social hub" should deliver a service of general utility if you want players to use it.
Like, say, a market.
And you keep making my points for me, it really takes a load off!Quote:Keep setting up those strawmen to try to divert attention from the fact your argument has no merit.