RemusShepherd

The first Mage was a terrific book, one of the best comics of the 20th century IMHO. But I hope they don't intend to film the second. It was not very good.

Could this news mean that a Grendel film is possible? I may actually get to see the end of civilization after all.

* Do not ask Silver Mantis out on a date. Ever. Not even if you think you can handle it. You can't.
* Do not request that the Radio play 'Video killed the Radio Star'.
* Freakshow Meat Doctors are not a good resource for discreetly dealing with a venereal disease.
* Neither is any other doctor in the Rogue Isles. They're all mad scientists. Go to a Paragon City clinic.
* Taking a submarine on a joyride to Paragon City to visit a clinic is not an approved use of Arachnos equipment.

I'm not getting much out of Power Customization, sad to say. I'm red/green colorblind, so I effectively see only two colors: Brownish and Blue. It's okay. I'm in good company -- up to 11% (1 out of every 9) males have the exact same problem.

That doesn't mean that I don't want my characters to look good, though. I've taken screenshots of the costume and skin color screens, put them into Adobe Photoshop and memorized the hue and saturation values of the color chart. It's not difficult -- the costume colors are arranged so that each hue has its own row, with increasing brightness until the last three columns, where the saturation starts to drop. Easy to work with.

The power customization colors, are not so easy. They switch hues within each row, with various brightness schemes, and the saturation values appear to be placed at random. In short, power customization is almost impossible to navigate for the colorblind. I think the time has come for a GUI color aid.

I suggest small popup boxes that would appear whenever the mouse cursor hovers over one of the color dots in any of the color screens. The popup might contain nothing more than a HTML color code ("#4444FF") for that color, or it might display a color name ("Pale Blue 1"). Give people the ability to disable the color popups in their option menus...set the default to off, if you like. But the colorblind will use it, and they will *rejoice*.

Please. It's time.

Lepton Lullabye would ignore the kitten. He eats the brains of sentient creatures, and kittens don't qualify. Then again, it would have to be a superkitten to even notice him -- Lepton is a nightmare come to life, and nobody sees him unless he wants them to.

Leggy Blonde, VEAT, likes cats. She is, however, an arachnophile, so she likes spiders a lot more, and she might have a mutant spider pet at home. If so, she'd pick the kitten up as free pet food, and toss it into the web when she got home. But maybe all her 'pets' are robots, in which case she'd pet the kitten and be off.

Ludwig Spry would kick the kitten if it got in his way.

Imager would frighten the cat with an illusionary ninja, then laugh as it ran.

Gatora -- lizard girl -- would eat the kitten. In fact, I expect that Gatora spends most of her free time hunting strays. What I can't figure out is whether she'd swallow the kitten alive, or barbecue it with her radiation powers first...

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If you are an Ice/* then Cryo Freeze won't do you much good.

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I could see the Sonic one since sleep doesn't stack, but with Ice/ wouldn't that give you three holds, is that too much for a Blaster?

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Yes, it gives you three holds, and no that isn't too much. It gives you the ability to hold a boss and a minion (or two bosses with the right slotting and some expertise) while you kill everything else.

It doesn't help much with a 'blasterlike' style of play, but it is a godsend for those who prefer a more 'blastroller' style.

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I might have a new comic of my own coming out eventually. I promised that I would do it, but I'm having trouble finding a host that I like.

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We can help ya with that. You looking for file hosting or reading ability?

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I may have stumbled into this thread blindly. My comics aren't CoH comics. (Although many of my heroes were originally built in CoH.) Sorry about that, I misunderstood the announcement post. I thought we were assembling comic creators who happen to play CoH, not people who create CoH-derived comics.

Anyway, what I'm looking for in a host is:

Reasonable cost. (Say < $30/month)
Reasonable traffic limits. (I'm hoping and shooting for 15k uniques/day.)
Some kind of daily update software. (Or a shell account and the ability to install such software.)
The ability to run my own advertisements.
The ability to attach to my own domain name. (I already own genocideman.com.)

...and I need for all of this to not take up too much of my free time.

I just listed my needs for you because I really am looking *everywhere*, but I don't think there's a good match here. Thanks for offering, though!

Neat idea, getting the comic creators of CoH together.

My main comic, Indefensible Positions, has ended. But I have one of the characters from that comic in a crossover with several other stars of the webcomic world. Together we're doing Crossoverlord, and poking a lot of fun at crossovers in general (and each other).

I might have a new comic of my own coming out eventually. I promised that I would do it, but I'm having trouble finding a host that I like.

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How many old timers are there still around to be able to get the 60 months Vet Reward during this year anyway? I'm due for late June.

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You'd be surprised at the number of early players this game has retained, or so I hear.

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There's also a very large number of players who were here during beta and release, quit after ED, but came back because they discovered that CoX is still the best MMOG they ever played.

Sadly, people like that aren't going to get the 60 month reward anytime soon. Because of my two-year hiatus, I've just gotten the 36 month one.

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If hired, you will be working on a wide variety of characters, creatures, vehicles and props. Effective communication with engineers and designers is critical.

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I wouldn't get your hopes up too high. While it's possible vehicles will come to City, it's unlikely.

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There are already vehicles in CoX. They run me down everytime I stand in the street. Just because they have a vehicle designer, it doesn't mean they're giving vehicles to the players.

As for the Big News...

I've had a rocky relationship with CoX and the developers. I'm certainly willing to shout 'DOOOOOM' when things look doomish, and I've shown that I'm willing to cancel my subscription if I really think the management of the game is being bungled. I don't see much to be concerned about, here. NCSoft loves the game enough to pour money into it; the devs love the game enough to stick with it. At *worst*, I predict some chaos as people move and new servers are tested and things change behind the scenes. But the direction, the vision, the commitment to making this a great game, all feel firmer now.

Kudos to all involved. This looks like promising news.

(Although things can always go wrong, so we'd appreciate it if you don't get cocky and slouch off on your responsibilities. )

IIRC, something else that Lighthouse said recently is that I11 will give 'level 50 characters a lot of things to do'.

I think it's as simple as Portal Corp. finding a portal to an alternate universe Paragon City, one where the Outbreak virus spread across the world. Level 50 heroes will have a dozen new zones to explore -- decayed and infected versions of the existing Paragon City zones. Sounds like fun.

I've been in a team of 8 that spawned about five heavies during a raid. This was in a villain zone and we had MMs in the team, so the pets may have had an effect, I don't know. But heavies do spawn from a single team, from what I can tell.

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As for Step Three: Speaking to David Wincott before going to your first 2nd tier contact insures that the contact will not immediately send you there to talk to him anyway. Staying out of the Hollows is key at this level when trying to achieve the Spelunker badge.

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Why?

If you have already begun missions in the Hollows, but are not yet 10th level, is it too late to get the Fortune Teller mission?

Seems a shame that the assembled wisdom of the playerbase are recommending new characters skip an entire zone.

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I only wish I had realized this truth a year and a half ago. :/

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Now, come on Remus, let's be fair.

You're telling me that if you had believed that, you wouldn't have played? If you hadn't you would have missed at least a year when the game was very much to your liking.

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I don't beta-test games. No interest in doing so. I don't even download patches for single-player games that I buy -- if the game doesn't work right, I return it or delete it. I just want things to work.

Someone's going to pipe up now and say that 'MMOGs don't work like that', neglecting that I've talked about playing EQ, AC, and GW. The changes to COH are far worse than any changes those games went through. (I've also played AO and SB, but I regret trying both of them.)

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That's like saying that if I had known, I wouldn't have married my psycho first wife. Sure, my life would have been easier, but I wouldn't have three very fine children.

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I have no children from my ex-wife, but had I known what she would put me through, I *definitely* would have avoided marrying her.

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In addition (and it may be a blow to the American ego), the North American market is essentially a test market for the Asian market where the real money is. CoH/CoV makes a bit of money right now, but ultimately the game is being groomed for Asian release where the economies of scale can be more profitable. It most likely doesn't matter if CoH/CoV ever gets close again to 200K with the North Atlantic subscriptions.

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In other words, they do NOT care about us. We are only beta testers for the Asian release.

Statesman, deny that if you dare.

I only wish I had realized this truth a year and a half ago. :/

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First to RemusShepherd I have to ask why you feel the game is being targeted at the PvP players?

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First of all, the game is being targeted for financial longevity. For MMOGs, longevity means having a lot of content. There are several ways to put content into a MMOG, and two of the classic ways are to have a slow level grind (so the existing PvE content lasts longer) and to have PvP (so players make their own content for other players to enjoy.)

CoH did not have those forms of content when it was released. It had an easy level system and no PvP. But at some point someone in NCSoft looked at the subscriber numbers and made a decision to use the same old faux content mechanisms as all the other games out there. So they slowed levelling, forced grouping, and are pushing players to PvP.

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Is there anywhere in here where you are forced to participate in PvP ?

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All the new content in I6 can only be experienced if you play PvP. They're not doling out content for PvE at the same rate. They want to lure PvP into this game. What did CoH players who did not buy CoV and do not intend to play PvP got out of the last patch? As far as I can tell, nothing except nerfs.

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Also what exactly do you mean by the "Competative Asian market" ? Are the markets in the rest of the world not competative? Are only Asian players competative with other players?

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The game market in Korea and other countries is a little different than in the US. They have game parlors -- stores with computers set up in them, and these parlors buy hundreds of game licenses which they dole out to customers. That's why Lineage has such obscenely high numbers -- because the numbers are inflated by game parlors.

That's not to say that they don't have that many actual players. Gaming is an obsession in Korea, and the game parlors make these games much more accessible to players who otherwise would not have a PC or be able to afford a monthly fee. Lineage has 10 times the number of subscribers as any other MMOG, last I checked, and even if much of that is timeshared accounts in game parlors it's still one hell of a lot of money. That's the market that NCSoft knows well. It's not too far a leap of reasoning to assume that if CoH was not performing as well as they'd hope, they would order Cryptic to change the game to appeal to the markets the producers know best.

This game started with a vision. It is now going for the money. Some people see that as a sad change. But as I've said, I agree that it's better to have a mediocre game that's financially healthy than a terrific game that failed because its niche was too small.

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My last question is .... WHAT THE HECK IS "ED" ? I have seen this all over the boards since I got back, but no poster has explained what it means.

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Enhancement Diversification. A euphemism that Statesman used for the nerfs in I6 that cut the effectiveness of enhancements in powers. If you 6-slotted a power (e.g., Stamina) it is only 55% as effective as it used to be before I6. It was supposed to be about forcing players to diversify the types of enhancements they use. In reality, it has only altered the standard enhancement loadout, while simultaneously destroying character diversity by making casual and concept builds untenable. But there is disagreement about that last point, as you've no doubt noticed by now.

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It used to be aimed at casual players and superhero fans. Now it is being aimed at PvP players and the competitive Asian market.

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So, tell me something...

How exactly does allowing Heroes and Villains to beat the snot out of each other go AGAINST Superhero fans?

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Because to balance the 'beating the snot out of each other', they chose to destroy many of the most immersive RP elements of the game, such as true invulnerability, perma powers, non-suppressed travel powers, and the many minions vs. one hero playstyle. Have you not seen any of the hundred-or-so 'We no longer feel super' threads on these forums?

We had super-powered immersion. It became second priority to making money off of PvP. I'm sad about that. But I admit it's probably the decision they had to make. No sense letting a great game go bankrupt, after all...better to turn it into a profitable, if mediocre game.

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So, to claim that CoH is becoming "Lineage in Tights" is Erroneus at best, and an outright lie at the worst.

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It's neither of those -- it's a statement of opinion. Nothing more.

When I say that CoH is becoming Lineage-In-Tights, I'm referring to my opinion as to the financial focus of the game. It used to be aimed at casual players and superhero fans. Now it is being aimed at PvP players and the competitive Asian market. It's just a change of design philosophy. The gameplay has not changed that dramatically, but it has changed enough that many people who loved the previous philosophy of the game loathe the new changes.

Just my opinion. Nothing you say will change it -- you cannot convince me that I like what City of Heroes has become. Nor will I convince you that the changes are detrimental to the game, because you like the way the game has changed. We apparently like different kinds of games. Congratulations, things went your way.

I'm going to defend States here briefly. And then, as I am wont to do, complain a bit about what he's done.

CoH/CoV is doing well. Cryptic is a small development company, and they are competing against big guns like Blizzard and Sony, and they are doing moderately well at that.

The game's focus has changed, and perhaps it needed to change. While it was focused on immersion and exploration, it has shifted to achievement and competition. Exploration only keeps players entertained for so long, it seems, and I'm sure they will hold more subscribers by re-gearing toward the tried and true MMOG classics of level grinding and player-made content via PvP. Those classic playstyles will serve CoH well in theupcoming asian release, as the lucrative asian game parlors are designed for heavily competitive games like Lineage.

I am upset that the game has changed. I preferred the casual, relaxed play that CoH originally had. I also detest hard level grinds and have no interest in PvP. So the game has shifted out from under me, and it's no longer my kind of game. That's sad, but it is probably more financially sound to have the same kind of game as everyone else rather than something innovative and casual.

CoH used to be unique, but only moderately successful. I'm sure that it will become much more successful in the future, now that it is being changed into Lineage-in-Tights.

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Actually, if you put END REDUX in those 2 or 3 slots, your DPE will be BETTER.

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For attacks. For those who run on toggles, the nerf to stamina will be a major hit. My bubbler is a toggle fiend, he already has 2 endredux in all his toggles, and still doesn't have the endurance to fight much. ED will *cripple* him.