Oedipus_Tex

Bye y'all!

To start with, the mentality that we're building a cult game for a core group of dedicated players, as opposed to a blockbuster game with appeal to millions.

I think too many studios set out to remake Titanic and end up making Pearl Harbor.

I bought the game and tried it for a couple of days, but already cancelled. I think there is a lot of good stuff in that game, but also there was a lot of "typical" MMO stuff that I wanted to stay away from.

I wrote in another review that I think it would have made a better non-MMO than an MMO. The atmosphere is top notch but by the time I got halfway through the third zone, the endless zombies had gotten to me, as had the WoW-ish dungeons (with "need or greed" rolls). The game's many "solo" instances make teaming really hard, and you can only have a very few quests in your log at a time. I can see why people like the game, but it wasn't for me at this time.

It might (or might not) be worth noting that the phrase "I'm as mad as hell and not going to take it anymore" is sort of double-edged. It's a famous quote from the 1970s movie Network, where a possible implication is that the speaker is buying into a corporate message that is loud but ultimately hollow; anger as entertainment, basically. I understand the feeling the OP is talking about, there just may be a phrase that has less baggage that could be used.

The movie clip is below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_qgVn-Op7Q

I'm actually thought the Char were a fairly major achievement. I didn't actually want to play one (I almost always play Humans) but the design was very nice.


Meanwhile, I'm pleased/ashamed to admit that since buying Torchlight 2 a few days ago, I have logged 23 hours of play. It's taking the sting of CoX and Diablo 3 off. I thought the cartoony graphics would be an issue. Nope. The gameplay has me hooked, and during the actual battles its hard to see how cartoonish the avatar is (especially when you smack an enemy with a hammer and it splatters gore all over the screen). It's definitely not for everyone but I was suprised a game that sells for only $20 entertained me so much.

FWIW I am looking into the possibility of a CoX inspired mod for TL2. A lot of the game mechanics are similar (everything but being loot heavy, but depending on how much latitude mods are given I have a possible solution for that). The game supports knockback, -resist, endurance drain, -damage, -tohit and a few categories of debuffs CoX doesn't. The main one missing is Recharge but I don't think that's hard to work around (it can be replaced with +/- attack or cast speed). There is also apparent support for some really weird abilities, like Teleporting an enemy across the screen when it hits the player, or dropping random effects like giant comets on enemies as the result of a proc. Absolutely no promises but maybe one day.

The setting is wrong and the game is very cartoony. But I can't help but notice how many core CoX components are contained in Torchlight 2. Even stuff like what would could be used for a Domination and Rage bar.

I doubt we'd want to do an exact power for power remake, but I've definitely got my eye on this game. It helps that it's extremely cheap ($20).

I haven't been able to see how far the modding tools will allow us to take this game yet. If it's like Civilization 4, that's pretty far (I actually modded the .dll files for that to radically change the game).

Anyway, maybe?

The Hasten sound effect.

I guess I just question why a person who has posted only 47 times in 7 years started a thread announcing that s/he is not that interested in the game. It would be like me going to DCUO or CO and saying "I wouldn't be upset to see this game cancelled, because I dont play it."

When you partner with a famous person to promote your product you take the good with the bad. That's neither fair or unfair, it just is. If you partner with Paris Hilton you do not get to complain that Mensa disapproves.

After reading the comments from the Firefall community regarding this issue, I wouldn't feel comfortable playing that game anyway. The posts read like missives from the infamous Straight Male Gamer episode a few months ago.

Rather than dwell on that I'll just say that CoX as a community has always been (mostly) supportive as a whole. Part of the reason it will be hard to find somewhere new is because of that.

Even if worst comes to worst and CoH goes dark, NCSoft or whoever owns Water Blast should sell those graphics to another game company or even rent them to GW2. Seriously. I know different games have different graphic engines, but make it work. That is one of the most attractive set of powers I've ever seen in a MMO. Whichever developer(s) designed the SFX deserves a medal.

DCUO had numerous issues but in addition to everything else, is just paper-cut to death by dozens of small things that make it very frustrating. Starting with a 3 color limit for an entire costume.

But the most significant flaw in DCUO may be technical. From what I understand, the developers never could actually make the high speed combat flow once lag is taken into account. So, they put part of the responsbility for tracking animation completion in the game client. The issue with that should be obvious. The game was plagued with massive exploits in PVP in particular that allowed "animation cancelling" to generate dozens of hits on an enemy within the animation time of a single attack.

Video of a really egregious example: http://youtu.be/Fl_S12yHFOM

I tried reactivating my CO account out of curiosity, but so far only make it as far as the password reset screen. It sends the email, I change the password, then can't actually log in with said password. Hints?

The best "revenge" is to treat them like what they are now: a competitor. Whether I do the game building myself (doubtful) or someone else does, NCSoft is competing with projects I would rather support.

And that is the reality of cold, hard economics. I can't speak for NCSoft, but I certainly wouldn't want a group of highly motivated, tech savvy, largely adult people with lots of time on their hands needling at my company.

The creators of DCUO appeared to believe the patron power pools made up for the the lack of a proper Invulnerability set. I think they believed the myth that developer intentions equals player reactions. That's pretty common in MMOs and especially with DCUO (from what I can gather).

Somewhat related, IMO, are claims by various developers to have designed a "classless" or "level-less" system that actually works in an MMO environment. Many people believe removing levels and classes removes the artificial "boxes" that limit character design. To me, they just change the nature of the box, and usually in ways that squander resources. DCUO has this issue because its "powersets" unlock two trees. For example, the "Nature" powerset encompasses both Plants and Animals. What this means is my Plant concept character somehow ends up needing to turn into a giant wasp to function. Her box was reshaped by the illusion of flexibility, and resulted in something significantly less satisfying than Plant Control or Nature Affinity would have delivered.

The Secret World is another interesting one to watch. I have a gut feeling that without major changes its skill system is going to cause the gameplay to collapse within 6 months to a year. There are other issues, but the skill system sticks out in particular. The game would work okay as a non-MMO, but MMOs require a stream of low level players. In TSW there is no reason to have a second character, because your "main" can get everything and respec into any build at any time. The only thing seperating you from anyone else is ultimately your gear, which in that game breaks down into predictable Tanker, Healer, and DPS roles.

This issue of infinite respec-ability without consequence brings up something else. Infinite respecability means the barrier to top performance in any situation is your willingness to respec for it. The issue with that is, respeccing itself is often inconvenient from a GUI perspective. So at that point your game is balanced around a player's ability and willingness to manipulate the respec GUI to change builds as situations occur.

[The game Civilization 4 had an interesting version of this issue. In that game, which is turn based, you move troops around and build cities and so on. You have the ability to enable mutually exclusive "civics" for your nation that granted certain bonuses, for example, Free Religion gave a happiness bonus, Piety gave another kind of bonus, etc. With most nations, changing civics caused a turn of "anarchy" where you were unable to do anything else that turn, ie there was a penalty. But a few nations had a special ability that allowed them to change civics at any time with no consequence. The result? To play optimally, the player is incented to review the benefits of civics on every turn and change them if the benefits would be better for this turn. Unit about to generate? Switch to Military Code for one turn to get the bonus. And so on. That portion of the game was literally balanced by a player's willingness to deal with the frustration of changing civics every turn.]