Samuel_Tow

Speaking of which, I want a wrist-mounted dog launcher like in Final Fantasy VIII.

More specifically, when are those things coming and are they purchaseable?

Well, that kind of fits, doesn't it? Release something genuinely new only once every two weeks, and fill in the intermittent weeks with reruns of old releases. I don't necessarily mind them releasing stuff every week. What I mind is the feeling that this schedule is making some things come off as rushed, unfinished and botched.

In fact, repeating old releases, but at a discount, instead of pretending to release anything new might be a good idea. Do you have any concept of how many things I've bought off Steam not because I wanted them, but because they were on a 66% discount?

This is essentially why I find forced teaming as the sole source of progress in a system to be a bad idea: It's herding cats. And I don't mean that the people organising or participating in these events are herding cats, I mean the development team is. Because each piece of content needs people to want to do it so people can do it at all, they have to worry about balancing the time, threat and reward of all tasks. Then things like MARTy come in, then things like Merit penalties come in, and so on and so on. Forced teaming is a self-sustaining phenomenon - when people want to do it, people can do it. When people don't want to do it, NO-ONE can. This places an imperative on design that really isn't present anywhere else.

I can, for instance, quote World Wide Red as an arc few people do because it's a mile long, it involves Malta and it's not terribly rewarding. I like it, but it's not popular. And? So what? I don't NEED it to be popular in order to run it, because I can choose to do it by myself. At the very least, I can rope one of my friends into playing it, because finding at least one other person isn't all that hard.

Now suppose I wanted to run the Underground Trial. Well, people don't seem to like it very much, so suppose for the sake of argument that no-one wanted to run it. Well, then I CAN'T run it, because I need quite a significant number of other people that I can't up and find when it's convenient for me. Because this content is now wasted, the development team is essentially forced to make it more rewarding or kill the reward on other content. Or both, as they tried to do. In essence, it becomes required for the developers to commit the cardinal sin of game design - to tell me what and how to play. Generally, this is a bad thing, but when they NEED people to play certain bits of content in order for those bits to be playable in the first place, it's a necessary evil. Hence the problem.

This has been true since time began. I like (some of) the Shard TFs and would like to run them, but getting a team for one is like pulling teeth, especially during US work hours on a work day, which just so happens to be when I want to play. The developers did what they could to encourage players to play more diverse TFs (than just Katie Hannon over and over again), but it still didn't make many willing to run Sara Moore or Dr. Quaterfield. But it was fine - if I wanted to do something in the Shard, I could still work with General Hammond or Dr. Boyd. Or, if I just wanted to get to 50, I could leave the shard and run Peregrine Island content. I was still making progress. No-one really needed to coerce people to play one piece of content over another if people didn't want to.

When your only source of progress is team-only content, then the development team faces the imperative to FORCE people to play all of it, and that's just depressing for all involved. In simple fact, people will develop their favourites and keep rerunning them instead of seeking new challenges.

That's actually the chief problem with Incarnates being funnelled into non-Incarnate content - it's not balanced for them, and it CAN'T be balanced for them without screwing over non-Incarnates. It's the same argument that was had for abandoning 2002's "points buy" build system in favour of the Archetypes class system, as well as the reasons behind ED and the GDN, at least partially: To narrow bracket of power players could achieve, thus making the game easier to balance for all.

Now, I have nothing against Incarnates being much more powerful than non-Incarnates. That was kind of the point, and if it WEREN'T the case, I'd be crying foul. But BECAUSE they are more powerful is why I feel they should have been given enough content of their own such that they wouldn't feel compelled to replay pre-Incarnate content. Granted, Incarnates could still choose to do so if they really wanted, but at no point would players feel like they HAD to, or else grind the same four tasks to infinity and beyond.

Spin it as we might, content is the problem, and content is the solution. Give Incarnates enough content of their own, and you'll reduce their numbers in ITF reruns significantly. As far as I'm concerned, everybody wins.

The thing with culture is... This didn't originate in Korea. Much like how anime is (or started as) Japan's knockoff of old Disney animations, but with Japanese themes, so the current generation of Korean grindfest MMOs are little more than Korea's take on the MMO progenitors of EQ and AO. I honestly don't think we can blame Chinese gold farmers or Korean people who died from playing WoW for MMOs being a grind, because a grind is what they started life as. And I honestly believe that they started life as a grind because they tried to emulate pen and paper RPGs and their methodology of creating a living, breathing world for adventurers to forge their adventures in, minus one GM/DM.

If anything, the current move of MMOs away from repetitive grinds, away from hundreds of hours of time sinks and away hostile difficulty curves is a response to MMOs becoming more mainstream all over the world. As they become more common and more people play them, the number of "hardcore" fans who welcome the punishment and yearn to dish it back out becomes diluted with people like me, who would never have gotten into MMOs to begin with if the game weren't easy or teaming weren't mandatory or rewards weren't fairly swift. Even back in the day, City of Heroes was one of the easier MMOs, and to be honest... This hasn't changed by all that much. It's still easy and quick, those are just simpler to achieve.

There will always be room for more classic, punishing MMOs, but as the years roll on and competition increases, there will always be room for the simpler, easier, more casual-friendly MMOs, as well.

That's a bet you'd lose. Character progression is part of what makes the game fun, therefore granting all practical rewards up-front removes much of the fun. By contrast, however, the game design mentality you suggest is for the game to intentionally keep these rewards for me and string me along. While I want character progression as part of the game, I want that character progression to be snippy and move along at a good pace. I have no need to "prove" myself to the game.

No, I don't forget. I never "waited" for anything in this game, because waiting would imply that I disliked doing what I was doing and waited for something more. And I simply did not. I did not "wait" to get to 50. I played the game I enjoy and 50 came along on its own. I never waited for new content at level 50, because I had number 50 other characters waiting to be played. I never waited for Incarnate content to début because I never WANTED raid grind. I did make a fuss about it when I had some illusions that the system could be anything more than a boring grind, but that ship has sailed. If they add solo Incarnate progression of a meaningful kind (and they won't), well... I'm no longer waiting for it.

Making me wait is wasting my time, because I have better things to do with my life than wait for things to happen.

I'm glad you're able to create your characters in a visual medium. I, however, cannot. I can't draw, I can't model, I can't animate, I can't sculpt and I don't have enough spare cash to have artwork commissioned. To me, City of Heroes is a means of expression for those who are talented in expressing themselves, but not talented in any practical way of realising that idea of expression.

When I was a kid, I used to play with action figures a lot. I had one of Skeletor, one of Batman and one of Robocop, and I spent a hell of a long time just playing with dollies. But here's the thing - they were kind of lame, and I could never get them to stand upright without propping them up on something. Besides, as much fun as playing with action figures is, much of that fun is lost when you have to do the voices and move their arms and legs with your fingers.

City of Heroes gives me action figures that I can design, but that the game can animate and operate for me. That's far, far, FAR better than anything I could represent visually. And while, yes, a single piece of artwork from a single decent artist will probably outstrip what the game has to offer... It's still a single piece of artwork. The game is an entire world with an entire host of characters, and all it costs me is $15 a month, less now since I moved to bi-yearly subscription.

I'm not interested in "challenge" or "achievement" or all the standard parlance that gets thrown around these forums, because I have nothing to prove to anyone, least of all to myself. I'm interested in making cool characters and watching them be cool on-screen. Nothing more, nothing less.

Speaking of which: Once upon a time, I used to write character bios at character creation. But then I wouldn't get the name I want and I'd have to re-write the bio, and then I wouldn't get the new name and on and on like that. So, I started making characters with no bios until I could be sure I'd get the name, and the only way to be sure I'd get the name was to make the character. However, laziness and desire to play meant I'd put off writing the bio for a long time.

Now, not only can I check if a name is available (a tool which used to not work from creation), but I can also reserve that name while I write about it. As such, I found myself once more able to write bios at character creation. Being able to do this makes character creation quite a bit more lengthy of a process, but it's worth putting in the time if it means I enter the world with a story to tell, rather than being once of those that, when you go to read their bio, you're presented with their set bonuses, instead.

Opening a window is no great feat, however. You can still tell if you'll want to read a bio or not before you read it.

Only as a counter-balance to the over-abundance of "less is more" rethoric. My idea was not to shoot for neutrality, but rather to provide a strong counter-point, thus proving the variety of opinions.

I once had a pen that wasn't like other pens. Your typical ballpoint pen consists of a cartridge, a two-piece shell, a spring and a one- or two-piece clicker mechanism.

This pen was different. It consisted of around ten pieces. It had its cartridge and one spring to move it nestled within a part of the casing at the front. On top of the cartridge went the two parts of the clicker mechanism, which then slid into a middle, normally hidden part of the casing, with the end of the clicker having a hollow threaded space and sticking through a hole at the back. Over this thread went a second spring, and over that spring went the final, outer third part of the casing with another hole at the end. This casing would then be pressed down to compress the spring, the pen clip welded to a washer was placed over the hole, and the final top piece of the pen - a decorative cap with a a protruding screw, was threaded through the clip washer, through the other casing and actually screwed onto the end of the clicker mechanism below.

With everything tightened up, you had a pen which appeared at first glance to be ordinary. However, when clicked, the entire half of the pen would move. Furthermore, unlike most clicker pens I've seen, the clicker would not remain in the "down" position and slide around when the pen was clicked on, because the secondary string kept it extended even then.

I own many "toys" of this nature that I've acquired over the years, but this is easily my favourite one. It's precisely as simple to use as any pen I've ever seen (simpler, actually, because it doesn't jam), yet it's immeasurably fun to take apart and put back together again for no reason other than... Because it's fun to disassemble and reassemble. Undoubtedly, this is a "machine" with far too many extraneous parts, doing what should be a simple task with overly-elaborate mechanics. Yet it's my favourite machine of this type nevertheless.

Take out the snark, though, and you're left with the truth behind the "classic" MMOs of old - they were designed to be all-consuming giant time sinks which quite literally expected you to devote all of your free time to them and then look for real life activities you could skip so you could devote even more time. That was the only way to make decent progress. If I had to make a guess, the original idea behind MMOs was to target P&P fans, who could dive into this interactive but fairly aimless world and make their own fun, thus tailoring themselves after the slow progression of your typical D&D campaign, which could take weeks, months or even years.

When MMOs were a niche genre popular among hardy, loyal fans, they could afford to be time sinks and they could afford to waste people's time for the sake of atmosphere and achievement. As MMOs become more mainstream, however, and, more than anything, as they face more and more competition, they have to cater to players more than ever before. While EQ and AO could afford to treat people with tough love because there were so few options and their fans so determined, MMOs today exist in a saturated marker where if you tick off a customer, he can always ship off to the next MMO over.

Finally, with variety comes the power of choice. When you have all of one or two MMOs in the entire world, people take what they can get. When there are probably hundreds as there are today, people will pick the MMO they like, because chances are, one of the hundreds is going to be a match for almost every person. As such, people simply won't put up with things they don't like in an MMO.

As the genre matures and competition increases, businesses will be consistently forced into catering to their customers more and more. It's the nature of business, simply put.

Of course I did. We have no real numbers. I was as unjustified in giving that number as you were with disagreeing with it.

Previously, the reasons for it is there was no end game, thus no reason for anything to unlock JUST at 50, when it could unlock for the whole 45-50 range. While people were expected to spin their wheels at 50 somewhat, people were REALLY expected to make alts. There was also the notion that only a small percentage of people owned level 50 characters, thus more content was put in the earlier level ranges.

That was then, this is now. Now, we have what may as well be a whole new level range that goes beyond 50. Sure, we're technically still level 50, but we continue making progress beyond that point, and we are technically getting stronger and facing tougher challenges. As we now have a figurative new level range, it makes sense for new contacts and new story arcs from old contacts to take place in the 50+++ range.

I'm not sure if that's what the people at Paragon Studios have in mind when they speak of a "solo Incarnate path," but I strongly believe that contacts and story arcs that deal with the Incarnate storyline and give us Incarnate progress are a good idea. Contacts and arcs, as a point of fact, very much like Mender Ramiel.

As it should be. I didn't come to City of Heroes looking for a hard game that wastes my time. There's a reason I never cared for EQ or SWG or DAOC - because I don't believe in tough love. Getting things in City of Heroes is easy, and I'd like to see it made even easier.

Honestly, if I want a "hard" game where getting stuff is a "challenge," I'll pick up a Korean grindfest MMO. Heavens knows there are a ton of these out there, both free and not, and new ones keep coming out, some even made by our very own NCsoft. That's those games, not this one. This game is easy, and I couldn't be happier for it.

I'm not sure if builds are specifically more diverse (though I suspect they are). What I AM sure, however, is I have more choice in what to take now. Even though I didn't take Stamina before, that still took away from my slots for endurance reduction, and that's a LOT of it. Now that I don't have to do this (not as much, anyway), I'm free to slot things I couldn't slot before, and in turn take things I couldn't take before because I couldn't slot them.

And what I want to take is rarely for optimisation. What I want to take but never could is simply the crap stuff I could never justify "wasting" my slots and power picks on. Now that I have slots and picks to waste, I get to have what I want. Far as I'm concerned, that's a win-win.

I've tried getting exposure, and the truth of the matter is much more grim than one might infer from Facebook and Twitter. Yes, anyone can post, but anyone who believes himself worthy of public exposure is in for a rude surprise, trolls notwithstanding. Even if I were an arrogant ponce and believed my writings were a diamond in the rough, I couldn't be arrogant enough to expect people to shower me with praise or give me the light of day, simply because I've tried, and I know how it works.

Trust me, I know length is a turn-off (giggity notwithstanding), and I'm far from believing that just because I have something to say, people will want to read it. However, for some things, more simply is better than less. That's just the nature of some styles of writing and not others, just as excessive detail is the nature of, for instance, the [url=http://www.gamedropzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/image6.jpg]Warhammer 40 000 universe[/quote] and less so for DC's earlier works.

Granted, there's something to be said about picking a style that's appropriate to your chosen medium, but in my case... Well, that's simply what I enjoy the most. I've made a career out of making decent characters from bad ideas in this game, and it's been fun so far.

Really, yes. Few things take me out of my skin quite like people telling me they know what I actually mean better than I do, and I've had people do that to me quite a few times on these forums. Whenever I see people quote me, then start a post with "So you're saying..." or "So you want..." I instantly get a twitch in my eye, and not the good kind of twitch. I rarely want to punch people over the 'net, but for those who try to tell me I mean something other than what I've said, I make an exception. Insults, trolls, threats, that doesn't get to me. Putting words in my mouth, that I simply can't stand.

It's subjective, of course. That was my point. We shouldn't be speaking about writing in terms of write and wrong or better and worse any more so than we can speak about costumes in those terms. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then eloquence is in the eye of the reader. Where one sees eloquence, another sees pretentiousness. Where one sees wit, another sees ineptitude. It's down to what we prefer, which is why I take issue with the "less is more" attitude. Less may be more SOMETIMES, but not always, hence my point.

While I appreciate the spirit of this quote, it is still one I disagree with. When it comes to artwork, I am naturally drawn to such that is both intentionally over-elaborate, but also one that is "sloppy," in the sense that the artwork resembles more a sketch with its rough, repeated lines and uneven shading, rather than one which resembles vector graphics. Well, at least more often than not, and depending on the style. I'd like to give direct examples, but sadly, all the pics I have in my collection are... Not postable, let's put it like that.

As a point of fact, I can't imagine artwork that has TOO MUCH detail, for the simple fact that I'm not sure such a thing is possible. The greatest limiter for artwork detailing as I see it are time and skill, with inclination following soon thereafter. But if an artist could put more detailing, I would always prefer said artwork with over without it. And that's not to say you can't have a stylised piece of art - you very much could. But you can still add detailing to that where appropriate.

I'm aware that this is, again, personal preference, but BECAUSE it is personal preference, it irks me when people speak of it in absolutes.

Honestly, just have the bio truncate in the window if it's such a problem, with an option to expand it. Heavens knows I've seen enough sites that do that. And I agree that this is probably not a very high priority. That's all the more reason why I don't want to see the subject dismissed out of hand, however. Far be it from me to believe I can will a change on this front into happening just because I want it hard enough, but the least I can do is try to bring a sense of moderation.

This isn't about good and bad. It's about choice.

Yeah, I wouldn't complain at all if the old missions were left in as an option. Keep them away from people unless they specifically went looking for them, but I'd still like to run those missions if I could.

Hell, since 2004 I've been asking for one simple thing: More missions. They don't have to have complex mechanics, they don't have to tell game-changing stories. They just need to have a reason for why I'm going places and beating up people. And there have to be MANY of them. Not one or two, not five or ten, I'm talking of tens or possibly hundreds. If we restrict ourselves down to the very basic of objectives, like beat boss, grab stuff, then I'm sure even I can knock out at least a hundred of those in a week, just by myself.

Not all new content needs to be flashy and eccentric and replete with gimmicks. I would be more than happy to have "boring" content if I had a huge amount of it.

It is a problem for two reasons:

1. Originally when you hit level 50, you were intended to do level 50 stuff or retire. You weren't really supposed to have endless gameplay.

2. You COULDN'T go back and run level 40-45 missions without being exemplared and scaling down to match your foes. You weren't encouraged to play content that is technically below your level.

Right now, the game is supposed to not really have an end, as it slows down into infinity the closer you get to it, and that's by design. The game now has even less content for Icarnates than level 50s originally had at their level ranged (technically, everything in the 45-50 range) and they are encouraged to play content they "outlevel" as part of their normal progression.

I assure you, if Incarnates had enough actual content to keep them going for weeks (as opposed to hours) without running out at least with moderate gaming, then most wouldn't be caught dead rerunning old content, or at least not as frequently. The reason you see so many Incarnates linger in non-Incarnate content is because they're being squeezed out of their "Incarnate-dom" by the constricting of insufficient content. I mean, it's either old content or the same old threadmill of Trial after Trial. Yes, we have four now. Soon we'll have six. We could have 12 or 20 for all that matters - they don't last. And when you're tired of Trials, what else is there to do but to go back and outclass non-Incarnates at their own game?

The solution here isn't difficulty adjustment. It's more content. LOTS more of it. It's content that's applicable to raid groups, to small teams and to solo players. It's enough content to keep Incarnates doing Incarnate stuff and not going back to the old game unless they felt nostalgic.

Then put it on the Market. I'd sooner have twice the Bio space than twice the costume slots or twice the number of builds.

I disagree. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that this interpretation is both unfair and actually very rude. I hate a lot of things, but the thing that deserves a special place in the fires of hell is when people try to infer what I REALLY meant to say when I neither meant nor said anything of the sort. If you read one of my long bios and then suggest I wrote it because I believed I was important and you were expected to care, I would have many, many mean things to say about you. Being misquoted is my one single biggest berserk button, and implying what I meant with the structure of my bio is right up that alley.

I write long bios because I like writing long bios and because I enjoy writing long bios. If you infer otherwise, you infer wrong. In general, if you try to assume what people "meant" with anything other than what they said directly and in plain text, you're already wrong. Death of the author this ain't.

Moreover, as a writer of long texts, I'm more than well aware of how important it is to grab a potential reader right from the start, and do what I can incorporate this in my writing. Even if no-one else reads it, then at least when I go back and start reading, I will immediately remember why I wrote it and what I liked about it.

Not always. A character is made interesting by his or her backstory or personality. I mean no offence to whoever had those one-sentence bios upthread, but if I read that on a character (and I have), I'd just roll my eyes, think "Man, what a waste!" and leave. Granted, I'm the guy who makes bios for himself, but people in this thread have claimed to be writing them for others. So if you fail to put in the bio anything that's actually worth reading and, moreover, anything that impresses, then it's really not a bio that's worth reading, at least not to me. I'd sooner read two pages' worth of character background if it's actually good than read half a sentence trying to be witty.

When I plan my characters out, I give them complex backstories, with each event drawn up to be meaningful and having an impact on how this character has grown as a person. It is the sum total of these events and the character's reaction to them that makes this character who he or she is. If I skip too many of them, then I have nothing left worth writing about, because I've removed the character's soul and meaning, and I'm left with things that don't really matter. And I have a very hard time justifying the time invested in writing something that, as the game used to say, doesntmatter.

There's only so much you can cut from a character's bio until the only thing you can fit really doesn't say anything worth reading, and I've faced this problem before far too often to want to count.

"The guts" of my character is the hardships he has suffered and the life lessons he has taken home from them. No good character can be boiled down to JUST a single key event or JUST a single personal characteristic. In fact, I take it as a sign of depth when you just can't simplify the character like that.

Besides, I have and I do, and here's the rub - no-one reads stories on those websites, anyway. I'm not going to go ahead and effectively publish something if I know for a fact no-one cares and no-one's going to read.

It's there for me to read, and it's considerably easier to read it if I can access it from inside the game from any machine I have it installed on, rather than having to Alt-Tab (which occasionally crashes the game) and root through folders and subfolders to do it. I write these things and I read these things, and the convenience of simply typing /infoself as opposed to all the other more complex methods is important.

Or did you infer me saying I write these things, but never read them? My memory's not that good. Besides, I actually like my own writing.

Based on the same numbers you're using, I guess.