Samuel_Tow
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Also, here's my mini-review of the CoT set, which I'm putting in a separate post because I'm sure someone will post by the time I'm done writing this:
Hood: The Cot hood is an interesting deign, and the first "open" hood that I've seen. However, it still pales in comparison to the Magic Pack hood because it's both kind of low-resolution (either that, or it has too much detail for the resolution it has) and it colours VERY weirdly, as sort of a gradient between the back of the neck and the front of the hood. I may be able to use it at some point, but I can't think of a single design that I can't make with the CoT hood that I can't make with the Magic hood.
Chest and Legs: This is very weird... Why do the CoT have a rubber super suit finish on their tights? Serious question here. The thing is perforated like the new Super Man tights and it has a rubbery sheen to it. I thought those were supposed to be robes, as in CLOTH. Cloth really isn't shiny. Unless these guys are supposed to be wearing some kind of pressed leather? What happened here? I could never see the NPCs close enough before, but seeing this on me is just... Weird. It's like Sinister if Sinister were made of rubber.
Shoulders: One great set and one awful set. I'm sure the awful gradient shoulders looked good on NPCs, but on players they're just bad. They have a really low-resolution texture that their inherent blend pattern makes look even worse so they just look like some kind of undefinable scuffed material. The great set, however, is great. I'm not sure if it has a higher resolution, but the sharp, defined thorn patterns stand out very well and make the shoulder very pretty. They look a lot like Blood Elf shoulders, but that's not a bad thing since I like Blood Elf shoulders. That's probably the only part I really want.
Gloves: Strange choice of design, but I like it. The gloves kind of look like a long heavy sleeve pulled over a glove underneath. Sadly, there is no option to have the sleeve with a bare hand, something I thought would have been obvious considering the old CoT had sleeves separate from their gloves. The bad part about this is that since it's all one piece, the thorn detailing always matches the colour of the glove, and it's a bit weird. There's a version with and without thorns on it. There's a version with and without spikes, but I prefer the one without since the spikes don't seem to match the glove pattern very precisely. And the gloves still look like heavy latex rubber for some reason.
Boots: OK, this is just plain weird. These look almost exactly like Wellington Boots with the CoT pattern painted over them. They even have the rough rubber surface finish of some of Wellignton's designs. This is just out of place, since those are fairly modern They have the modern thread pattern, the elevated heel, the skintight design that makes the ankle bones very obvious... These are just weird, and they still look like rubber. They too have a version with spikes, and these are much more appealing since the spikes are better positioned over the pattern. Here's the kicker, though - on the gloves, the spikes are over the detail colour whereas on the boots, the spikes are between the detail colours and over the base item colour. Why?
Belt: What is this I don't even... At first glance it looks like a tied cloth sash, but it's not. It's more like a metal-studded leather belt with a cloth insert along the middle, but what is that cloth knot supposed to represent? Is it even a knot? I don't get it.
Kilt: OK, I take it back, this is the other item I wanted. The Kilt isn't exactly a full robe, but it looks very impressive. Like the great shoulders, it has a crisp, sharp texture that makes the patterns stand out from the background and its sheer model complexity is just breath-taking. But... It doesn't really work like a robe or a tunic. Not in the slightest. At best it looks like an elaborate coat tail. Still, the piece looks great and I can't complain.
Those are all the pieces I saw. I may be missing some, but as with most other costume set, I have no idea what's actually in it and where to find all the damn parts, so that's all I have. -
Quote:That's pretty much where I am. Having seen the pieces in the editor prior to buying the pack, I really don't see anything that I really want, with the possible exception of one set of shoulders. Normally, that would be enough - I bought the Valkyrie set just for the boots - but I just don't feel like doing that any more. I can no longer simply trust that any new pack is going to have costumes I can use when costumes I actually want are continually pulled for reasons that amount to excuses.Originally Posted by Mega_Jamie
want to trust Paragon Studios, that I could just buy packs and get what i would expect in them, trust definately gone for now though.
Here's an idea: Stop making a new set every week if that's what it takes to make COMPLETE sets. I'd pay even more than 400 PP to get, say, a Barbarian set that had all items available to all three models, as opposed to one that came out sooner and was missing half the stuff I actually wanted. There doesn't need to be a new incomplete set in the store every few days, guys. We've pretty much proven we can wait. Hell, we're waiting, and waiting patiently, for your Marketing department to deem they've jerked us around long enough before releasing Street Justice. We're waiting and we're accepting the wait. We can wait until you actually COMPLETE these sets. -
Quote:It occurs to me that a lot of the newer concept is written to be played BY THE PLAYER much more so than by the actual character. It's hard to explain exactly why, but this is the sort of thing you see in choose your own adventure games that you're only really supposed to play once, and even more so ones that have a specific good and evil karma system like Mass Effect. It's really not intended to be at all accommodating to any specific character who isn't being written to fit events on the fly. And as content written for games intended to only be played once, I'm only really going to play the First Ward once.Originally Posted by Megajoule
I finished the First Ward content this last week with one of my Praetorians. It was a great ride and/or story, but there's no way that this particular character could have done all of it IC.
Here's the thing: Even if I had a charter who fit events perfectly, the story is still so heavy and so dark and so devoid of a satisfying resolution that I don't WANT to play though that content again. Hell, if I knew what I were in for, I probably wouldn't have played through it even once.
What's there is great, I must admit. The writing is top notch, the mysteries are very interesting, the characters are well-written, ignoring the complete derailment of established ones and the mood and atmosphere are expertly delivered. The problem is that this all comes together to form a story which honestly upset me on an emotional level, and since I don't play games to push myself out of my own comfort zone, I have no interest in being upset like that again. Maybe if there were a reasonable resolution or if the arc weren't so heavy-handed with the depressing plot points things may be different, but as it is, it's just way too heavy to run twice.
And it's a shame, really - First Ward is a great arc, but it suffers for its own greatness by side-lining character concept and trading replayability for moody darkness. -
Quote:Honestly, I just wish "good" as a methaphysical concept weren't so inexorably linked to Longbow, so that villains could fight heroes without necessarily fighting Longbow by default. There are more heroes, even just in the Isles, than just Longbow. Why do we almost never see the Legacy Chain except as pets for Longbow and why do we almost never see Wyvern? Why couldn't the Rogue Isles Police been an actual, functioning police force to act as another hero group? Why couldn't we have had a local resistance against Recluse? Why can't the Scrapyarders have been painted in a bit less of a dickish light and had them serve as heroes?Originally Posted by rian_frostdrake
you know, sam, one compromise i think that would work for both of us is for longbow to be more varied.yeah their powers can be tough, but for me, their biggest weakness is they are always the same, gunmen, stealth gunmen, special weapons gunmen, gunmen on jetpacks, ballistas, and super powered wardens. if they were as varied as the ppd, who have regular munitions, power armor, psychic and kheldian varieties, they might be less tiring, but the same boring one color scheme, low detail costumes wearing group with always the same powers, it makes them visually dull to fight. gimmie a martial arts, occult or mutant division(especially on the latter, we need more monstrous heroes) and they will be a lot less dull to engage, and the powers will make fights more varied.
I'm sick of Longbow because the game treats them as the default skin for "heroes" when they're just one organisation with suspect authority. It's never good vs. evil, it's always Longbow vs. Arachnos, and I'm getting more than a little sick of that.
I liked the Snakes because they were unique and interesting enemies. Longbow are the polar opposite of unique and interesting enemies, and nothing will really change that. You can turn them into the Council in terms of variety and they'll still be "good guy stand-ins" because that's what the story treats them as. Until the game's narrative divorces "good" from "Longbow," I'm going to have a problem with fighting Longbow as one-size-fits-all heroes, which they expressly are not.
I'm sorely disappointed in the new Villain content, because it makes our characters obsessed with blowing up Longbow bases and kicking puppies. I much prefer the old CoV Launch content and would very much rather do that, but that's gone, even if the contacts still exist. -
Quote:Precisely. I didn't buy them, and I WON'T buy them, because it'll be a cold day in hell before I'll pay 20 ******* dollars for 10 enhancement slots. That's $2 per slot. Not until I have my brain and my butt switch around will I ever see this as anything other than highway robbery.Originally Posted by Ironblade
This is true but, before the entitlement crowd jumps on it, let me point out that you would be paying all this extra money for something that was NEVER EVEN AVAILABLE previously. Anyone who thinks it's too expensive (like myself) can simply not buy it. You're not losing anything.
So I don't buy it. No harm, no foul. They charge too much, so I don't pay, and the micro-transaction model is working exactly like it should.
As I said - how much you pay comes down to how much you actually want to have, and my personal wishes seem to have turned out to be quite humble, surprising me more most of all. We'll see how that goes with newer costume sets, but if they count down to 12 pieces like the CoT one, I may not get even that much. -
Quote:I'm not sure why everyone keeps assuming I want new tech, or indeed that I want more functional choice. What I want is the narrative to be less intrusive. It has been done already. It has been done by the game's writers on staff, it has been done by people in the Architect, it has been done by myself, as a point of fact.Originally Posted by Venture
An earlier respondent summed it up by citing the difference between "sandbox" and "theme park" designs. The game Sam wants is possible to create but City is not and never will be it.
Yes, Venture, YOU won't like, but I'd still want to see more arcs told like Dean McArthur's and Leonard's. The grand schemes in them may not be my choice as the player, but they're still presented as my character's own initiative for his own personal gain, and that's perfectly fine.
I don't need a sandbox. I just need the writers to stop grasping at the easiest solution, which is to make the story about other people where we just take control of a pre-determined character. DC's MMO at least has the decency to admit that design up-front by giving you missions where you out-and-out play established DC canon characters instead of your own. A lot of our story arcs are like that, but without admitting it's like that. -
Quote:No-one's asking for a "personal" story. We're just asking for a story that doesn't have us kowtow to "a bigger fish" all the time. We're asking for a story which paints us as the protagonists, as opposed to some random thug who wandered up to a much more interesting villain who has some dirty work to hand out.Originally Posted by Fanservice
Story arcs try to tell a story. They can't tell a personal story crafted to suit you because that's simply not possible.
It's not a question of game mechanics, it's a question of writing. And every time someone claims "it's not possible," Dean McArthur gains another fan. Evidence exists in plenty for how it IS possible, so claiming it isn't is just an excuse, and not even a very good one. -
Quote:They're still shooting blind, I think. If their Marketing boys and girls are smart, they'll soon tune into what we're most willing to pay for without a hint of regret and focus on making more of that. It makes business sense to give players what they want when players will pay you extra to get what they want. That's as opposed to giving players what they never really asked for and having them turn their noses up at what must have cost a whole lot of money to create.Originally Posted by CactusBrawler
That would be true Sam, except the devs still arbitrarily decide what comes out based on what they feel is best for us.
Years ago, Matt Miller promised to "give the players what they want, within reason," and in his defence, that's a lot of what we got. However, beyond keeping players around, the team never had an actual, practical motivation to do that, other than being the kind, generous souls that they are (BABs and Power Customization, say). Now that the difference between guessing what players want and missing that guess defines profit margins, I can bet you dollars to doughnuts we'll see a lot more of the stuff we've always wanted show up. Always for a price, of course, but that's just the price of getting what you want.
For all the different ways I crap on the game, even right now, I still have more faith in its future than I pretty much ever had before. And I don't say that lightly. -
Speaking of which, I miss the snakes, too. They were a cool, unique group that used their own special rig and had a very interesting backstory. What's more, I liked the 45-50 story arc that sends you back to Mercy to fight Elder Snakes, in how it resonated with a return to our roots. Now that the snakes are gone, the Elder Snakes arc makes less sense and is considerably less interesting.
What's worse, the Snakes were swapped out with Longbow, and if there's one thing that City of Villains will never, ever, EVER need more of it's more Longbow. I get enough of these guys just going through Nerva and beyond, where Longbow seem to constitute half the enemies we fight. Now they're 3/4 of the enemies we fight in Mercy Island, too.
I liked the Atlas Park rewrite so much more... -
Quote:Maybe not yours, but I'd FAR prefer to have that be mine if it meant the story treated me like the protagonist, rather than like a supporting character. If the story is written well enough to sell the opportunity, then I can bend a little and accept it, so long as it's written as if it were MY idea all along. If my character wouldn't really have such an idea, no harm done - I pick another contact in whose story I can have a more appropriate idea.Originally Posted by Venture
But it's not my idea, my plan or my initiative and no amount of spin will make it so.
This is key to me enjoying my villains - when I'm written as working on my own initiative. I can see past the railroading story when I actually like where it's taking me, and for a villain, "towards my own plans" is always a good destination. -
Quote:Beam Rifle is another one of these. I have no use for the set itself, since I don't play the ATs which can use it, but I'd still buy the set if it would let me use its selection of weapons on at least Mastermind Pulse Rifle. So far, not only has this not been done, but it has been completely and utterly ignored, even though I have no reason to believe any of the Beam Rifle weapons would cause "clipping issues" with the whole of THREE Pulse Rifle attacks.Originally Posted by Winterminal
I'm with Sam when I say "I want to support Paragon Studios" and I intend to, so long as it is something that I will use. I bought the Rocket Board and Beam Rifle right away because I knew I would use them. I skipped the fantastic sale deal on character transfers because I knew I had little use for them.
So be it. If I can't get new weapons out of that set, then I'll spend that 800 PP elsewhere. Your loss. -
Quote:No. Ascendant I will never get because I don't hate myself and will therefore never waste my time running and rerunning iCrap, nor do I have any use for a costume set I can only ever use on level 50 characters. Celestial is good for the auras and the wings, but the rest of the set is quite "meh" and it's tinted an awful washed-out base that doesn't match any other colour on any other costume in the game.Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
You mean like Celestial and Ascendant, both of which are just as shiny as any of the new CoT pieces and neither of which you need to pay for in the store using paragon points?
And neither of the two are proliferated NPC sets. Instead of throwing around pure Booster material, look at at the PPD set - we didn't get the Interrogator shoulders and we didn't get the GOOD PPD gloves. Then look at the IDF set - we didn't get the far better, far bigger IDF gloves and shoulders, and instead got significantly toned-down versions. Yet the trainer in First Ward can still wear the cool costume pieces, but I can't.
I have no use for a costume set that doesn't have the exact pieces I wanted out of it, and I'm no longer going to pay for a costume set on principle. Not until I see an NPC-borrowed costume set where the good bits are left in, or otherwise a set that has any of the number of things I've asked for over the years.
P.S. The Celestial boots and gloves are horrid. I wouldn't be caught dead using those things. -
I'm sorely disappointed with the low-level game villain-side, myself. I never played a villain and thought "This is evil, but it's not gross enough. Let's make it more disgusting." I can tell you this for a fact - I never want to see Arachnos soldiers piling Longbow corpses into a mass grave ever again, and I never will, because I will me getting the **** out of Mercy as soon as I can. I pray to all the gods that what happened to Mercy won't infect the rest of villain-side and that I will always be able to at least run the old missions, because this new view of villainy doesn't work for me as a person, let alone any of my characters.
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Quote:And as an "Old Guard" player myself, who started in May of 2004, I disagree. City of Heroes has never been better, I've never had more fun with it and I've never had more things to look forward to. Especially counting the last year of iCrap and not much else, Freedom is a godsend.Originally Posted by elvnsword09
What I am saying is that ADDED to the new Freemium f2p, micro-transaction thing they're doing, they are driving away Old Guard players.
What's more, now that "you get what you pay for," this has enabled me to vote with my money. I no longer have to worry about what someone on the art team feels looks good, because I get what I choose to get. If I want large weapons for women, then I say so. When large weapons for women come out, I WILL pay for it. This gives incentive to the development team to develop what players are asking for, as opposed to what their "vision" dictates people should want.
"You can get it in any colour, as long as it's black" no longer applies to the game, and if this costs me a few extra dollars a month, that power alone is more than worth it. City of Heroes is still by FAR the cheapest form of entertainment that I know of which is actually entertaining for more than a day, and if I have to pay for it, I will pay for it. -
Here's the funny thing - now that I an see all purchasable pieces in the store, I don't have to buy anything until I actually need it. I was still determined to buy everything, however, just because I respect the art team and I feel that their work is worth paying money for even if I don't really need it right as it's released.
This is the straw that breaks the camel's back. If sets are going to deliberately and intentionally going to hold back all the best pieces, then I won't buy them until I have a use for them, and considering I rarely have use for more than half a set, I'll be spending a lot less on clothes. It's a pity because I honestly DO want to support the studio and encourage it to make more great costumes.
I'll resume doing that when they resume making great costumes FOR ME, instead of making great costumes for the NPCs and giving me the stripped-down minion version. I'm willing to pay for the good stuff, but if I can't have the good stuff, then I'm done spending my money on anything non-essential. Sorry. -
Quote:As do I, just never about myself. I've come to accept my life for what it is.Originally Posted by EU_Damz
I actually daydream a LOT while out walking or on long rides about having superpowers
If you wish though the question can be related to your characters too
When it comes to my own characters, I honestly have pretty much all of them be public. They don't HAVE secret identities, because they are what they are. Comic books have a history of making a distinction between the hero in the papers and the simple man trying to have a normal family, but as I don't read comic books, I rarely do that.
To me, my characters are adventurers who really have very little use for an ordinary life. Their goals are very rarely as vague as "fight crime" and each of them typically has something he or she is working on, to which end fighting crime is usually either a means or a distraction.
To go back to your original question - if I were a super hero of some form, I would have very little use for a normal life, because I have very little use for a normal life even now. I need shelter and food and water and security so as to not die, but believe me - if I had a way to live WITHOUT those, I so would. That, more or less, is how I write my characters.
I don't make a distinction between ordinary people and "metahumans," because none of my metahumans have any desire for an ordinary life. They have powers which they embrace, rather than trying to hide, and all of their friends and family are also meta-humans who can take care of themselves.
Funny anecdote: Samuel Tow, the character, does have people close to him. He has good friend who's a wealthy businessman, but going after him is a mistake. This friend is the Steel Rook, power armour super hero with an army of police robots at his beck and call. He also has a long-term female companion with whom he has been through thick and thin, but trying to go after her would be outright disastrous. She's a cyborg built so sturdy that to this day I haven't come up with a way to actually damage her in a way that can't be fixed, and she possesses ungodly strength and speed, so in many ways she's even more dangerous. He has a few more acquaintances, and most of them go along the same lines. No real reason to try to protect them, and the guy hasn't wanted a "normal" life in over 250 years anyway. -
Quote:How far your stipend goes seems to be entirely dependent on how much you actually want. If you want all the inventory increases, you're going to be out hundreds of dollars. If you actually want to buy recipes and other consumables for in-game, you'll be out even more.Originally Posted by EU_Damz
This has been true for myself too. With my free points i bought the rocketboard, beam rifle and unlocked auras/capes on all characters from creation. There are a few costume pieces from packs which i might purchase in the future using free points but i do plan on not spending a penny extra than my current monthly sub!
If, however, you're like me and all you ever wanted was the costumes and powersets - and even then only the ones you could use - then I can definitely see that money being more than enough. Depending on whether I buy the Circle of Thorns set or not when hourly maintenance is over - and without the pope hat, I most likely won't - I'll probably have enough for Street Justice even if that came out tomorrow. -
Wait, me? But I don't have super powers, and I've never really entertained the notion of having them to any great extent. I thought you were asking about our own characters and our preferences for heroes with a secret identity vs. heroes who only have one identity - their public one.
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OK, even I'm starting to feel that this is WAY too much maintenance. We're getting half a workday's worth of maintenance every couple of days, and I'm finally starting to lose my patience with it.
Here's the thing - I have other things to do and other games to play. But if I can't play this one too many times in a row and instead keep having to play other ones... I start to not want to play it at all, because I fall out of the loop.
I sincerely hope that we stop getting "Issue Launch!!!" type maintenance windows every other day very, very soon, or this is going to turn really ugly, really fast. -
Quote:Um... You listed three people - yourself included - and three stabs. Did you take your own life there?Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
From left to right;
[Insert Suitable Dev], Myself, Posi
Stab, stab, stab... ¬¬
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I'd like to support the downtime disappointment, but there's too much of other kinds of entitlement in the original post that I don't support at all, so I'll look for another thread to do that in. Sorry, there's a little too much frustration here, even for me.
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Tangent: I really don't care what kind of place City of Villains was intended to be. If it's not fun to play in, it fails as a game, and right now the story goes out of its way to ruin my fun by ruining my mood completely.
*edit*
I want to reiterate something: For all the criticisms I may level against First Ward, it's still one of the best zones in the game in a long time, and it held my interest long enough to get to the end without ever feeling like a drag. It just seems to me that it suffers from quite a few problems of priorities that didn't need to be there, because I like the story considerably LESS now that I know how it ends than I liked it right up until then. I guess if we accept that the story is incomplete and we'll get the other half of it and THAT will have a happy ending, then the whole thing seems more justified, but until such a time, it will still suffer for trying to be heavier than it deserves. -
Quote:I'm not sure if that's what you were saying, but you remind me of something interesting: When we were getting costumes for free, I could kind of get that they were trying to protect us from ourselves. After all, you get all pieces whether you like it or not, so they better work.Originally Posted by Vanden
I, like many here, am sick to death of getting shortchanged on these NPC conversions. I don't care if they clip with 20% of the available costume pieces, that's still 80% they WON'T clip with. Just like with the IDF pieces, I wanted to make a costume that looks like the group's bosses, but instead I'm stuck with looking like the minions. This is not acceptable! At least with this set I can voice my displeasure by not buying it.
Now that I'm paying for the pieces, I have to ask: Who gives a crap if they clip with a few existing pieces? I saw the piece in-game, I tried it out in the costume editor, if I still choose to pay money for it despite the clipping, then isn't that my own damn business? It's my money, it's my time, it's my characters, and if I want them to look like crap, then they will look like crap. What's the problem of letting me pay for that even if YOU don't think it looks good? Because, at the end of the day, YOU don't play these characters. I do. They exist so long as I think they look good, irrespective of what anyone else thinks.
Whether it clips or not is irrelevant before the question of whether I can use it or not. And I'm 99% positive I can use the pope hats without them clipping with anything.
*edit*
Actually, you know what? I'll have a good long look through the costume set when the servers come out of hourly maintenance, and unless I have some IMMEDIATE use for one of the pieces or fall in love with something I wasn't expecting, I won't be buying this set. And that'll be a first. -
Quote:Which isn't in the slightest what determines what you can and can't use when you are "only affecting yourself." Portals are a pet summon, and pet summons are disabled when only affecting self.Originally Posted by Screwed38
Portals are beneficial to yourself therefor should be aloud to place them under that status
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Quote:Considering that other games' Super Jump is what got me to finally rage-quit out of that game (no joke), I have to disagree. Their Super Jump looks incredibly goofy, with the disorientated arm and leg flail, making me feel like every time I jump, it's because someone booted me square between the butt cheeks. The landing is cool... If you're the Hulk, but completely implausible if you're a light, fast, agile character who lands gracefully, rather than plummeting from the sky like a piano tied to an elephant. Sure, I have heavy characters who jump. Three of them, in fact, but for them, I'd rather use some variant of the Seismic Path Aura.Originally Posted by Screwed38
I wouldnt mind a more traditional superjump, Dont get me wrong i like the CoH one but the one the put in that other game just seems to be the kind of superjump i think of when its mentioned, the CoH SJ i see more as a Glidingjump
What's more, that other games' Super Jump is just horrible to use. It launches you way up in the air, but sends you a very short distance horizontally, so you have to jump a lot more to travel a lot less. It also takes time to warm up, so the first few jumps you make are both short and low until you start moving faster, and even at its fastest it's still not very fast. And to top it all off, you don't have all that much control over it.
That power pissed me off so bad I shut down the game and went back to City of Heroes to experience a kind of Super Jumping that doesn't piss me off. Good god that was a horrid experience!