SDragon

No.

I'm glad people got so much from this place. I hope the devs walk away from this knowing how much good they did.

There's been a flood of posts here in the past day and I don't really expect that it will get read. But this is pretty much my last chance to say this. So here it goes.

CoH saved my life.


To elaborate I'll have to give a bit of background. I first heard about CoH in an old magazine ad. PCgamer maybe? It was just a blip. A 2' square shot of the old heroes around the original AP globe. Back when it was all wire-framy. It said that there was a new super-hero themed MMO in the works. That magazine sat in my bathroom for a good few months and I kept meaning to look into it. Eventually I did.

I joined the CoH fourms far back, in the days of the Halloween colored forums. Pre-AT days my friends. Pre-everything. I remember before there was a real fourm Mod. Who was it? MacAllen? He was the mod I think. I even remember Kiyotee. I remember Aura, the mod before Cuppa. I remember the ohhs and aahs over the scattered pics we got showing off the shiny spandex(and people talking about the broken backs the poor girls had). I even remember the weekly dev Q/A with good ol' Jack.

I'm rambling a bit, yeah. I'm kinda shellshocked about this whole mess. My point being that I've been around a while. I've watched this community grow from a few dozen to a few thousand. All this time I've maintained this handle. SDragon.

I had never really been to a forum before CoH. I had only made one handle before, for an old Mod for Quake 3(Bid For Power). The name I used there didn't suit a superhero game. So I tried to think up a new one.

My favorite color is blue and my last name is Fox. Simple! Only Blue Fox was taken. Silver then. Silver is my second favorate. It's a good col-- Yeah that won't work. Eventually I dug up an old Monster Manual and looked for something more mythological. Dragons! But Blue Dragons are evil... So...

My first hero.

Fast forward a bit. I'd always been a bit of an introvert... ok maybe more then a bit. I had managed to play on Victory for several years before I ever really made any connection with anyone. I just made my own little stories in my own little head. Slowly soloing my way through all the content. It was only after a few scuffles with some of these freaky "RPers" that I considered trying to meet other people.

So I made a post on the forums on the Victory(My home) sub-forums. Asking if there was any RP going on here. Mostly I got told to go to Virtue. But one poster said a few RPers meet up in GC on the weekends. So... I got up the nerve and I went. That one post. That one poster. That all changed my life, though I didn't realize it for many years.


I did some basic RP. I did what might have been Victory's first RP PVP event right as... what was it? Issue 2? The one with the arenas. Just sorta throwing out RP stuff at the poor random people who showed up. Got into an argument about lovecraftian entities, heehee. But that kinda fizzled out over time. People sorta dispursed or moved onto Virtue I guess.

But I did make some contacts, got onto a global channel(when those came out) and eventually got invited to an SG to help build up Prestige. I don't remember the SG's name. Eventually it... I forget, I think it just kinda broke up? Either way, one of the guys invited me to his SG. Shield of Valor. It was an RP-SG even. I sorta stayed in the peripheral for the most part. Joining in on a few missions. Until one day I teamed up with a certain player. She knows who she is.

That was the first serious RP I'd ever done. Our character's randomly hit it off. Our respective quirks happened to align just right and we the players hit it off as well. Many RP adventures were had and I even wrote a few stories(at her encouragement).

Years passed.


We met up IRL and she eventually facilitated my move, helping me get my first job and car. Which is where I am now. If it wasn't for CoH, I'd never have met the people that changed my life.

...But that doesn't really explain the thread title. To understand that, you have to know what was going on in my life during all this.


When I first went into CoH, back in the beta, I was juuuust under 18. I had my dad sign the NDA for me and what not. I played it damn near religiously. I had no job or school. I was vaguely getting ready for collage and maybe a part-time job. But for the most part? I played CoH.

Being home schooled, I had literally no friends since the 4th grade. Which was when I started home schooling. When I said I was an introvert, I meant it. I played with my younger brothers in CoH(two accounts) and sometimes got my dad to play with me. Not that he didn't play, just not with me mostly. I spent my time in this weird little bubble. We had a half a million dollar home. He was pulling 6 figures a year.

Until he left.

Then, only a month or so after my 18 birthday, my life collapsed. Or the pretense of it. He had skipped out on the last year or so of mortgage payments so we lost the house. Things spiraled down from there.

Our oldest dog, she had Addison's Disease(SP?) and needed constant medication. Which we just couldn't afford a ready supply of. She ended up dying in my arms at 2:10am. I had stayed awake with her the whole night, I could tell this was her last. That was really about the most painful thing I'd ever had happen to me. Maybe that's the sheltered life speaking but it hurt. A lot.

I had no method to deal with the stress. What my family was going through. What I was going through. And it dragged on for years. My thoughts grew darker with time and I considered ending it. I considered it more then once. I'd even planned for it and drafted a few notes for my family afterwards.

Why didn't I?

That player I mentioned, the one who helped me move on with my life? She and I spent long days and nights together. Her job gave her odd hours and I was able to spend the night brainstorming and building stories with her. It gave me, well maybe nothing more then something to do, but it worked. It gave me strength to hold on a bit longer.

If it wasn't for CoH, I wouldn't have met her. If it wasn't for CoH, even if I had we would have had nothing in common to form a bond together. If it wasn't for CoH, I would have spent those years coldly pondering my own mortality until the darkness finally won.

If it wasn't for CoH, I wouldn't be here.

Through every hard time in my life, I've had CoH as the constant anchor and rock. It was always there. The gleaming towers of Steel Cannon would wait for me to sail through again. The gritty rooftops of King's would wait for me to leap from them once again. And now it's going away. I don't even know what to think.

I will survive, that I know. CoH has given me what I needed most, time. It buoyed me up long enough that I can swim on my own now. Developers, I don't know how to express myself to you properly. How much your work has meant to me. How much interacting with you, asking questions, reading your posts. How much all of that helped. How it helped keep me engrossed in this world. In your world. And how it all helped keep *my* world together.

Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I will truly miss this place when it's gone.


To any of those who worked through my self-indulgent, stream-of-consciousness, wall of poorly spaced text, thank you. To all the great people I met and played with. To all the people that answered my weird PUG /tells. You helped me through a dark time, even if you didn't know. You helped.

And now I'm all teary eyed, heh.

What's "absorb"? I don't recall this mechanic

Lets not let YET ANOTHER thread derail this way, please?

This thread makes me kinda sad.

tl;dr? YOU MADE ME AGREE WITH GG



Most of the responses have fallen into the standard stuff that I see thrown at the female gender when complaints arise about how they are treated.

"Well, men are just gonna be that way. It's how they are. Get used to it."

"You should just hide who you are"

"Well, what about the MEN who are getting harassed, huh? You can't start a thread about women getting harassed without also talking about the men!"

"Lulz, pics"

"Just report them, there's nothing we can really do about the existence of jerks."

And the best of all.

"Well, it's your fault that you get harassed for letting slip you're a girl."



No. No no nonnonononooo.

What the HECK people!? This is a game about superheroes! How do we let this stuff slide!?

From what I've seen, the entire culture seems to say "You have no right to stand up for yourself. Either flee and hide yourself, sneak around in the shadows and dare not let a sliver of light reveal your true self lest ye be torn apart by the beasts." It's not just a problem on any one internet forum or even gaming as a whole.

How come we don't go after the beasts? How come it's always left on the shoulders of the victims to fight the endless tides alone? Not a single person here(That I saw) offered to help the OP, she was just told that her ideas were stupid and she should deal with her problems on her own. There was no sympathy, no empathy. Just, "No you're dumb. Get over it."

We're creating yet another micro-culture where women who speak out against being treated like garbage get yelled at for speaking out. Not everyone here was doing it overtly, but the majority was at least letting it slide. And letting it slide is even worse in my eye. It means there's no hope.

This sort of thread will pop up again some day. And when it does I bet I will see the same responses. Again telling people that it's your fault you got harassed for being you. Next time, you should change who you are or hide it.

Even other women who pop in to say "I don't have a problem with this stuff", which is about as useful as saying "Well, I've never seen a polar bear, so NO one must have seen one." Or worse yet, "Suck it up like I do."

No! No. We do not DO that. You do not "Suck it up." When, in the history of history, has "Shut up and be quiet" made harassment stop? All it does is encourage the jerks, 'cause no one ever stands up to them they feel they get to do what they want and get away with it. BECAUSE THEY GET AWAY WITH IT.

Do you know how enraged I am at this thread?! DO YOU?! IT MADE ME AGREE WITH GOLDEN GIRL! ARGH!

Ok, calm down... *sigh*


How about this. A set of guidelines on how to deal with sexism in games. I'll write it right here and now.


If you yourself are harassed? I see two major options. If it is by a random stranger entirely through /tells or some other untraceable random harassment. Tell them that what they are saying is not welcome, do not send further tells. Then /ignore + /petition. If you are instead harassed by /tells inside a team or an SG or a Vent server. Do not let it slide. Make sure that the group knows what this person is doing. And also send in petitions and /ignore as needed. Silence is death. Silence is approval of what is, has, and will be done. That is how it has always been and how it will always be. The silence cannot continue. This applies mostly


If you see someone harassing someone else. Do two things. First? Say something. Tell the bugger to bugger off, tell them they're being a jerk and they need to stop. This shows the victim that they are not alone and it shows the harasser that they can't get away with that. Second? Do something. Petition, kick them from the team, kick them from the SG, kick them from the Vent server. Whatever, but do not make hollow statements you are not willing to back up. The above guideline should never go uncontested. If someone says "Hey, leave me alone." There should be a chorus of voices agreeing. Not silence.


If you hear someone get "outed," and phrasing it that way makes me sad, do not say "Wow, are you REALLY a girl!?" Just say "Okay." Do not, i shouldn't have to explain this, do not oggle or boggle over them. There is nothing magical here. Move on. Don't even make the single off-hand joke. And if you see others going at it? Tell them to stop, that becomes harassment in a nano-second. See the previous guideline for more details.
There's nothing special about being one 50% of the population. If they were hiding it and told you they were something and later became "outed" willingly or otherwise? THEY HAD A REASON FOR HIDING. Respect it, maybe in a casual or private moment you can ask about it. But never pressure, never badger. It's none of your business. And it sure has no place in the actual gameplay situations. It's off-topic and easily causes a cascade of questions, accusations, insults, "jokes" and other fun things that all build an environment that makes people want to flee and never return. Don't start it. Stop it if you see it.

To make a CoH 2 could solve many many issues that we currently have. A whole update to the graphics of the game, a clean slate for powersets to be updated and adjusted, new game mechanics and engine to allow the use of new types of powers that we can't get currently(Swinging/Growing & Shrinking/etc). Lots of possibilities.

But it also comes with huge risk. You never want to split the player base and that's exactly what would happen. Some players would migrate to the new game, others would find that their favorite thing just wasn't possible in the new game and ignore it. And now you have two half-populated games, which will cause a bleed in subscribers 'cause no one wants to play in an empty game. Ok almost no one.

They also have to worry about getting the money to MAKE this new cutting edge game. They'll have to split resources between two games and maintain them both. If there's not enough of a bump from the new game, this could stress them to the breaking point.

The biggest most important issue I see though is the sheer amount of stuff IN CoH1. No matter what they do with CoH2, it's not going to have the same amount of content, costume pieces, villain groups, powersets. It's not going to have the same number of systems(flawed or not). There will be no social groups established unless they're pilfered from CoH1 which will never be a 100% transmission.

What I imagine to be large sections of the player base, if allowed, will just keep playing CoH and waiting for CoH 2 to get updated enough to be worth switching. Which means a smaller amount of players playing CoH2. Now they could decommission CoH 1 but that would just anger tons of players. Trying to force them into a new game so NCsoft, looking at the numbers, wouldn't axe the game for not drawing enough people.


So, yeah, I see two main outcomes of making a CoH 2. Either the playbase splits and we see a slow death for one or both of them. Or they shut down CoH 1 in favor of CoH 2 and enrage a large section of their players(The Vet players).

Personally, I think they need to upgrade CoH 1 INTO CoH 2. Make a massive update that adds in multiple new graphic updates, engine updates, and so forth. And slowly transition from the game relying on the old stuff, to the new stuff. Add in a toggle that lets us switch from the old models to the new models in our options.

Like Ever Quest did with... what was it called... The Tiger People update. They added in new Player models and gave players the option to view the old or the new ones. So, as the new models have the old existing parts converted over into new ones and added into the new Costume creator, the players who have costumes that can't be re-created in there can just use the legacy models.

Leave the powersets in the game as they are, with new options for CoH 2 players(Obviously we'd have to pay for this). Add in a 10th power, new updated animations and effects. Whatever new options they wanted to have. Update all the villain groups and the zones. Add in new "CoH 2 only" zones as well.

Anything they wished to get rid of, the multiple currencies for example, could just be ignored in the new world order. Yeah it would take more then a year of slow transition to get to this point. But at the same time it allows us to keep everything we want to keep and throw away the rest while also gaining all sorts of new things.

Replace this game from the inside out, one organ at a time, until it is an entirely new beast.

That's my insane proposal for the day.

[QUOTE=VoodooGirl;3748752]Congratulations!




Is there a badge?

Someone Photoshop the Kool-aid man yellow and throw on Hitler's hair/'stash, stat!

As I recall, the CoT in the Halloween tip mission comment how Magic is much harder in Pretoria for some reason. As if something was suppressing it or something like that.

It always seemed to me that the only origins that are Cole Approved™ are Natural/Science/Tech. All the big heroes on display are primarily people who worked their way up from nothing and overcame obstacles to become what they are. Tech and Sci are the main theme of the city, for sure. Everything is pretty and ordered.

The big exceptions are Mother Mercy and Marcus Cole. Cole would obviously make an exception for himself. As for Mother Mercy, well... it seems that Psychic powers are treated as a separate origin in Pretoria. They don't call the Seers "mutants" they're just... psychic. Same with Mother Mercy. Psionic exemption from the mutant origin, apparently.

It seems Cole believes, likely because of his lieutenants telling him so, that SCIENCE! can solve all the problems of the world. Because of this Science and Technology are readily available and in some respects easier to control. Natural characters are also easy enough to control. They tend to take time to train and practice to become powerful and even then, their powers are rarely of the kind that could disrupt anything important.


Magic and Mutations on the other hand...

Magic is powerful and unpredictable. It can do things outside of the tech/sci bubble that Cole has created. Allowing a single individual the ability to block Seers or control Clockwork or even risk the sonic barrier. All without generating an anti-matter signature or emitting EM radiation. No signal to trace. No electronic to track. Nothing that Pretoria is set up to handle.

Mutations are even more unpredictable. And ugly. Mutations are a PR nightmare. It's not a person valiantly rising up onto their own two feet and fighting against an unfair world... It's Nature giving an unfair advantage to some random dude. And we all know how awesome Nature has been to Pretoria so far. You don't want things like that reminding people of what waits outside the walls, especially if you want to keep them docile. Heck, they went out of their way to make genetically pure shrubs they're that paranoid.



Of course, there's also the possibility that it's the Hamidon...

There's far too many Psionic beings in Pretoria. In a world where the population was culled so violently, why are there so many psychics? It's like 1 in 10 people has mind powers. That seems wrong... Unless someone had seeded the population. Or more insidiously, intentionally allowed Potentials to survive the slaughter so they could develop their powers...

And seeing how the Hamidon has basically become the Earth itself, why wouldn't it tap into Magic as a source of power. Maybe it's redirecting the laylines on the planet into itself for power, which weakens the Magic origin as a whole. *shrug*


Random speculation 'CAUSE THEY WON'T TELL US ANYTHING!

Ground cracks and/or explosions for an aura?

Grass and/or flowers growing if you stand still for an aura, or grassy footsteps.

FX based weapons similar to the FX based shields? I guess that relies on models too...

A dripping aura. Water/acid/blood/soda/whatever.

Heat ripples, which I think already emanate off the Brute fire aura powers?

Should all games take you out of your comfort zone? Of course not. Besides being logistically impossible at a certain point. It's just silly. There's room for the comforting, the normal. Humans are designed to enjoy the normal. At the very least you need to have a comfort zone before you can be pushed out of it, right?

But at the same time, there NEEDS to be games/books/movies that push the boundary of what is "normal" or inside the comfort zone. Or else culture will stagnate. With no new ideas introduced into the pool there will be no progress. Video games have the chance to offer an INTERACTIVE experience that no other medium can provide, allowing us to explore new aspects of the world that we would otherwise never be able to. Moral choice systems are a good example. They're usually poorly implemented and heavy handed. But it's a start.

Again, I'm not saying every game needs to do this. But asking if they, as a medium, should do it at all? That's just...

*casually reads OP*

"Should games take us out of our comfort zone?"


Do people ever ask that about books, movies, or TV I wonder?

*shrug*

I swear I asked if there would be generic Lore pets and he confirmed there would be. But they wouldn't be customizable. Because customizing pets is still a long ways off.

I asked if there would be "Generic" Lore pets and he confirmed that, generic Lore pets in addition to the villain groups.

Issue 21 has a new zone

Issue 22 likely revamping or adding onto old zones

Issue 23, probably maybe like issue 22?


Uhm... what else...

Did anyone log the questions we got answered in this chat?

Protian says we should get the answer to this question in Issue 21...

Isn't it stated in lore that a majority of magic users in the world are at least distantly related to Mu?

What if the CoT didn't back down at the last minute and spare some of them? After that it's not hard to guess that the literal deal with the devil they made turned out poorly. And they either ended up like our CoT, trapped, or were wiped out completely.

With the primary sources of magic in the world extinguished, maybe magic as an origin is just very weak or underused in Pretoria.

That's all my own fantasy, but it does wrap it up nicely. The origins are not universal aspects. As far as I can gather from the lore, the origins are all paths that lead to "power" in the most general sense. Your origin determines how that power manifests in the world, how you tap that power, what your limitations and strengths are. Our world found five paths to power. But that doesn't mean other worlds followed the same routes.

Though I would like to know what makes something become an origin... Is it like gravity? Where it exists all the time everywhere, and it some process or event starts happening often enough or... something. It creates a "Power Gravity Well" that eventually hits critical mass and becomes an origin? Like a star igniting. According to that theory, the Well itself is some kind of massive black hole of power that's become self aware.

...Ok that got kind of ranty.

I know enough about the universe that I know "Reality Warping" would end up very very poorly unless you were borderline omniscient. All it takes is one screw up, like making 2 + 2 = 5 law. And suddenly the universe never happened in a way to bring you into existence. And then causality gets all wibbily And it-- it's just a huge pain in the butt. Even if I could warp reality with a thought and with no repercussions... that sort of gets boring. That's just Life with cheat codes. Naw, I'm a gamer. I want a challenge

And... you know... a power that won't risk obliterating me through causal use.

Of course, as a nerd, I've given this much thought...



Immortality: Comes in many flavors of course. Using the TV tropes metrics... lets see... Type 4 seems the most practical in the end. See, I'd like this power so I can see how it ends. I want to know what happens to the human race in the end. What wars we make, what weapons we built, what wonders we create. I'd want to see the full range of experiences you can have. See things I've never conceived of. Live long enough to find all the answers.

But that's got plenty of risks. You don't want to outlive your will to live. Nor get yourself into a position that would suck for eternity. Trapped in a rock slide or stuck to the surface of our burned out sun in a few billion years. That would suckith muchly. Even the simple stuff, like adapting to the times would be difficult. So, getting a free reboot every so often seems like one of the better ways to go.


Precognition: The ability to see the future/present/past. I'd take dream based visions or crystal ball style induced visions. Though I'd rather some control and a non-ironic set of visions. Random visions, useless visions, visions of dramatic timing, visions you can do nothing about. Kinda sucky, and risks spoiling books and movies for you. Who wants that?. I'd just like the ability to peer into space/time. What did dinosaurs look like? What's on other planets? What happens to the light inside a fridge when it's closed?

I have too many questions that need me to break the laws of physics to answer.

On the non-knowledge side of things...

Mmm...

Super Charisma: Now most people assume I mean radiant beauty and people fawning over me. No no. That's got too many silly risks. I'd rather the more subtle aspects. The ability to convince people that what I'm saying is true, through sheer force of will. Super personality if you will(Wasn't that considered as a powerset before ATs? Hrm.).

The ability to know the right thing at the right time, reading people and situations with astounding accuracy and insight. Yes, that would be fun.

Shapeshifting: I don't need fantastical shapeshifting, nor quickly shifting. A more biologically accurate one would suit me well enough. Perhaps a chrysalis type thing. The ability to alter basic facial features, skeletal structure, muscle structure, color, texture. Maybe even add/subtract limbs. Wings would be awesome. And who wouldn't want a tail?

This does lean heavily into the risking death with use section of powers. Don't want to accidentally remove a vital organ, or lose the ability to metabolize or some other such thing. Still...

Anyway. On the further fantastical scale I have stuff like...

Wind control: Air manipulation, gusts, micro-tornado, semi-controlled flight. Doesn't need to be hurricane level, just enough to get me into the air.

Ice control: Ice projection, cold generation, frost generation, snow summoning, ability to draw in/generate the moisture necessary to USE these powers well.

Shadow control: Shadow melding, teleportation via shadow, shadow summoning, shadow animation.


Of course, I wouldn't complain about getting any super power.

I thought it was because of the way the teleport system works in CoH. If it pulled you out of an instanced mission. It would try to drop you back in there. But if you were just on a trial, it might not know where to put you.