SagittaryGold

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I've noticed that CoH seems to have a high couples count compared to other games we've played. It also seems to have a larger female player base than other MMOs I've played. At the risk of sounding sexist, for women new to gaming I think CoH is a very user friendly introduction. The learning curve is quite gentle, the game is very forgiving in the early levels and it's quite easy to team with your SO even if there are several levels between the two of you.

Besides, the male characters have quite nice butts to look at and, if you angle your camera just right, you can see their hang down.

Damn... is that gonna get censored?

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Nope, not censored. As to why, the book "Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence" has a nice read on this. The gist is that comics (and other genres) foster interesting relationships and deeper motives (whether wrapped up in an action movie or what have you). Transfer a genre that's increasingly about interesting interactions into a very socially oriented game that is about interacts itself (from the story arcs, to the natural interplay of heroes, to the backstory) and you create an environment that has the sort of depth that attracts more female gamers and casual gamers of both gendrs. Depth that while not the sort of depth that guy/hardcore gamers look for (gameplay depth) is also very easy to get into. You don't need to know why Indiana Jones does what he does... but he's more interesting if you ask why. Comics have this question built in... you really can't make a character in a comic (nowadays) without asking Why are they doing what they are doing, without asking how they relate to others and the world around them. It's like a romance novel - the story isn't really about the romance (surprize surprize), but about the relationships and interesting interactions that the characters have.

Or something to that effect.

One, very long and full of work way, would be to mimick HeroClix. Instead of having minions, Lts, and bosses as distinct entities, you instead have varients of a single gladiator... in minion, lt, and boss varieties and then balance points and powers around that, with each rank up costing more but getting a little better. Some gladiators might not have boss versions and some might not have minion versions making them harder to fit in into a team as there would be no option for a lesser point version.

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Now that you have two half finished games how about we fill them out and make them as robust as most people would expect an MMO to be before we go and get carried away with the next City of....

[/ QUOTE ] You do realise that 'finished' and 'MMO' really go together very, very, very rarely. Actually, I'm completely unable to think of one.

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Way to completely miss the point of what I said. Well done, you should be a dev.

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Unfortunately, that's rarely possible - game development, you have to keep running to stay where you are. In all likelihood, and this applies to any studio, the designing for the next game/expansion was started a couple months before the game went live. I'd bet that Statesman and company are well in the design phase of the next expansion/game.

Hey, I know you. I use to hang around the SAS forums quite a bit. Welcome and enjoy the insanity.

'course, I asked this when Zeb came on...

We gotta see you get in SAS spandex and duke it out with Statesman? Heh...

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Awry has captured the new guy and is torturing him as we speak. I will rescue him later this week so that he can post a hello.

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How... interesting. I want to work at Cryptic!

Well now I'm sad. It's been a blast Gil. Wherever you go, the team is really lucky.

Delayed reaction?

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Also remember that the Freakshow will work for anyone who provides sandwiches and a keg.

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I didn't think they actually ate. I thought they got their energy from their drug and batteries or whatever... HOW do they deal with their bodily functions? Are those claws and hammers removable? o_O

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According to in game descriptions, they have "care takers".

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I'm sure they're all still living in their grandparents' basements and the "caretaking" consists of horrific laundry detail and underappreciated cooking.

"GRAN'MAAAAA, you weren't snooping around my room, were you??"

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That would be.... wierd because remember, some of them don't have hands at all.

You'd think though that with their chaotic technology, they'd have integrated mini- robot arms somewhere.

Many mythos have a story involving a well or fountain and some cultures have one as well that do not tie into their mythos such as the Fountain of Youth. My guess is that there is the mythological wells and then the 'real world' COH-verse well that is the source of all those mythos. So the mythos are not pure fact (perhaps real event inspired) but the well itself is.

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Heres an idea for a way to notice the trolls rampaging in skyway...

what is skyway known for or named after? The highways all over...

so why not have traffic jams around the areas the super trolls are attacking? Would fit the theme of the zone.

And yes, please for the love of paragon...make zone events happen more in live too...seen the ghost ship twice (to busy to do anything bout it) and adamastor only 1 time....in a year of playing.

Also, if you want a way for us to see it, why not make the zone maps have a special thumb tac put on it when it occurs? So if we open our map we see it.

Area text would be nice too like

"you smell smoke comming from up ahead" (Fire)

"You notice the water move in the distance behind you" (squid)

"you hear the defiant roar of an angry troll" (rave)

"You are overwhelmed with the smell of decaying flesh" (Adamastor)

"someone just threw a snowball at you!" (winterlords)

You get the idea

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Perhaps having traffic jams similar to the Hollows shootouts that currently happen. These jams wouldn't be the actual event itself but instead just a better visual clue that something was happening near by.

As for other means of shoinwg off an event, I like the idea of civilians chatting about it. It allows those that care to see whole not intruding on those who don't. Something like..

Policeman (and police cars?) calling in/driving to (but not actually getting there; they'd despawn out of sight) appropiate events.
Fireman (and firetrucks) calling in/driving to appropiate events.
Civilians commenting about such things. "A building's on fire in Neighborhood X! I hope my mother's place is okay!" and such.
Regular non-event villains comment about the appearance of an event. Hellion spawns might say things like "Don't forget about the party down at [neighborhood X]". Trolls might say "Beat up Outcast quick. Me hear of Dyne in [neighborhood X]."

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Man, I remember that vid. He has almost Einstein type long pepper hair. Looked liked the crazy guy from the comic shop rather than the lead designer of an MMO. I almost miss that look; he looks so... well, normal with short hair.


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You'll be glad to know that I've decided to leave my hair long in the future. No more short hair.

And I haven't lost any weight, though the Cryptic team has a personal trainer that we started working with in January. So I'm definitely more fit than I was.

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Woot! \o.o/ Long hair 4 teh win!

And exercise for teh fl4b!

Seriously though, I did like the long hair. It made you seem so much more friendly and personable. Yup, that's good ol' unca Jack. Or as one of my teachers might said, "Don't be square! Stick it to the Man!"

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Well, I'm glad someone was taking notes!

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The post 50’s blues: Mr. Emmert mentioned several different possibilities for post the 50’s game. Going back and doing missions with a sidekick so that the sidekick gets more xp.

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Just to clarify: I didn't say this. No plans.

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As I remember it, Mr. E. was discussing a few ideas in the context of animal or pet sidekicks, i.e., an animal sidekick would start out at level 1, and the character would fight alongside said sidekick to raise that level. I think he may have also mentioned auto-exemplaring down to the animal sidekick's level, but don't quote me on that.

Mr. E. also mentioned, as I recall, that they were considering implementing ways of acquiring temporary powers outside of missions and the arena. I wouldn't be surprised if this became an alternate use for the universities.

Good summation overall, ZB. If I remember anything else important or interesting to add, I'll pop back in.

--VB

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Pets? As in a little puppy that you raise as your own? Wow, now that would be cool. I need a puppy

-k

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I choose you, Super Doggie! Go! Laser Eye Beam Attack!

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I'm far from being a kiss [censored] but...

Did Jack lose weight?

Check out the nerf bat pics an check out the old OLD video in the movies section with Jack talking about CoH...

I swear he lost weight.

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I know he's cut his hair since WonderCon.....

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Man, I remember that vid. He has almost Einstein type long pepper hair. Looked liked the crazy guy from the comic shop rather than the lead designer of an MMO. I almost miss that look; he looks so... well, normal with short hair.

Well for one, Jack looks shorter than I imagined (but don't they all?)

Anyway, maybe we can compromise on the Pistol set and make it (or varients of it) both Blaster and Scrapper.

Hmm... IF enhancements get turned into more of a drop-n-use sort of mechanism, this may in itself make the game a little more difficult as people will no longer have all their powers +2ed out at all levels. Instead, their powers will be a combination of -'s, equals, and +'s as well as the occasional red. This may do more to increase the overall difficulty on a very subtle measure than making bigger change to mobs or what have you.

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Personally, I think the reason it remains so is viral: people continuing to gather where there's the most people.

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No no, you're suppose to say it like the NPCs, Skunk. "Looks like it could be viral, %heroname".

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My guess is because Altlas Park is the first choice and Galaxy City is the second. A lot of people seem to just roll with the default, especially if they don't know the difference.

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Perhaps but a good chunk of the time after going through the tutorial, GC is listed first and AP second.

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More on the only child in the game, Penny, would be nice to see too. Like doesn't she get lonely with no one else her age to play with?

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She's got plenty of imaginary friends.

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well in my experience GMs in l2 are bots.. mostly...
but then i've never seen a GM in CoH

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GMs in COH are bots too; GMs tend to show up as police drones.

Cowl. Cowl is a head thingie (like what Batman wears). Cowell/Cowel is the judge of American Idol (or other country Idol of choice). But lots of cool stuff being discrussed even if I don't know most of it.

There should be at least two other mirrors for the video.

http://rapidshare.de/files/1965560/Thankyou.wmv.html

http://coh.forlorn-hope.org/downloads/Thankyou.wmv

*glazes over at all the tech talk* Er... how about them normals.

Anyway, between the bunch of you all, I smell... group project!

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Id is, indeed, a very good example. IMO, Id makes crappy games (I'll admit, though, that I never even tried Doom3 after my utter disappointment with Quake 2 and 3, as well as Return to Castle Wolfenstein), but really top notch game engines. As much as I preferred both the look and the game-play of Unreal Tournament to Quake 3, the Quake 3 engine was much more streamlined, and was capable of some really amazing stuff. That said, though, I think they might be losing their lead in game engines as well. I don't know much about the Doom3 engine, but I thought Half Life 2's Source Engine looked better (though, once again, that might just be Valve making much better use of their engine than Id of theirs), and the demo videos I've seen of the new Unreal Engine blow both Id and Valve away (of course, the new unreal engine isn't released yet, and Valve's Source engine is being updated to use HDRI, which will be stunning, so who can really tell who's ahead).

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Well Doom 3's problem was that you were in the dark most of the time. You could be seeing the most brillant texture work in the world and not know it. But yeah, on an overall level, Source is a 'better' engine in terms of graphical might. The Unreal 3 engine (which incidently, NCSoft recently licensed) is a year or so ahead of Doom 3 and Source. Either way, many pretty and photorealistic games are a coming. ot to discount non-headliner engines. Remedy's engine they build for Alan Wake is absolutely incredible as is the engine for Elder Scrolls Oblivion.

Umm.... to relate to the topic, er... DOOOOOOOOOM!!!

While I see your point Augur, as you said, nowadays, it's an impracticality to build everything from scratch. Middleware (physics, graphic cards, software, engines, etc) is a rapidly growing part of the game (and digital) industry precisely because it can take many more man hours and money to make something from scratch. Doom 3 is the best example off the top of my head; the developers (id) made it to be a tech demo, essentially. They didn't need it to sell; they just needed to sell what it can do because they'll make far more money off licensing it than they will off the game itself (not to mention, mods which wilil sell the base game; Counter Strike and Desert Combat in point for those). I honestly wouldn't expect most people to be building stuff from scratch for most things unless it's some unique or very complex project. But as you and Darkjedi said, it is a tool. It and of itself, it doesn't make something complete. The thing with Poser is that it's very easy to fall onto it as a easy crutch; on the other hand, as DarkJedi's stuff, among others, shows, it can also be a very simple base by which very non-Poser looking pieces can be done.

Belated goodbye since the boards were down (see what happened when you left?! We need you!). I dunno... I hate goodbyes. Enjoy the L2 breast augmentations and get a backbrace to go with.