Samuel_Tow

You must hate yourself in February three out of every four years, then.

And here I thought you were deliberately fishing for suckers

I respect Advent Rising for doing dual wielding right, for having some of gaming history's coolest pistols (a concussive pistol with 90 cal. armour-piercing rounds? WANT!) and for having a good mix of melee and ranged combat. The first time I force-pushed someone off a high platform, slowed down time, shot him full of holes, shouder-charged into him in mid air, beat him down via an aerial combo and force-pushed him a second time into a wall, I knew I was in love with the game.

Sure, driving sucks. Sure, the game is bugged up the ***. Sure, the RPG elements are unnecessary and unwieldy. Sending a fully-charged Aeon Pulse through a massive dropship, taking it down in one hit, then diving into a swarm of enemies, spinning in mid air and shooting them all full of holes with dual pistols and then riding giant alien thing and breaking its neck with one hand while shooting at his buddies with the other... That kind of makes me forget about any bugs and bad design I might have encountered.

The story may have mostly taken part in cutscenes, but I've been playing video games for 20 years now, and this has never bothered me once. I hope and pray that that game gets a sequel at some point, because it's easily one of my favourites of all time.

Halo, by contrast, is easily my LEAST favourite game of all times. I've only played the original Halo, as to the best of my knowledge, that's the only one which exists for the PC. It's an endlessly dull, repetitive, boring shooter that ran me through virtually the same five locations so many times I started worrying I'd gotten turned around and was backtracking. It really doesn't interest me what I take over when the sum total of the game's environments can be summed up as "field and base." It has the same problem as the Unreal Engine games of today - nothing looks like anything, so everything just looks like fields, caves or indecipherable high-tech bases. It's the same problem Arachnos bases have now - they don't look like anything, so every place in them looks exactly like every place else.

Sure, games like Half-Life manage to have the player participate in events and get away with only pseudo-cutscenes, but I don't find this to be necessary. Darksiders, for instance, has a rather involved story with lots of backstory to it, and I love it to bits, but the game never really lets me take place in important story bits, nor does it give me any input. I'm not sure if Samael even has an in-game model, because I only ever see him in cutscenes.

My point is I don't need the story woven deeply into the game. Once "story" becomes an excuse for ****** gameplay, I draw the line. I don't care if "the plot said so," if I'm forced to endure a stupid AI escort or hideously unfair location protection or, heaven help me, one of those last stands with automated turrets that Half-Life 2 loved to throw my way, I call foul regardless of how good the justification is. I want to play a good game with a good story, but when the story interrupts my gameplay, BOTH of them suffer.

This is a symptom of a larger, much more deeply-ingrained problem: In City of Heroes, evil is equated to Arachnos and good with Longbow. You're not evil or a villain, you're "with Arachnos." Naturally, we need a clash of evil vs. good, so in this game that translates to a clash between Arachnos and Longbow, hence the idea that all villains hate Longbow all the time and want nothing more than to blow up an infinite umber of Longbow bases.

Until we divorce "evil" from "Arachnos" and "good" from "Longbow," we're always going to be stuck being lumped with one, blowing up bases of the other.

I did the same when we could only transfer 9999 at a time, as in four digit counters on the Inf amount. I didn't precisely like it. Now that we have global mail to mail things to ourselves, I vastly prefer how it works.

Their original intent is flawed. I hurt no-one by having a SG all to myself. Forcing me to have other people in it is not going to make me more likely to join or form an active SG. It's more likely to make me not even bother.

And I'm really sick of uninformed detractors.

No, they didn't. What Matt Miller said was that this would cause an enormous amount of problems and was something they didn't want to do except as a last resort. There has never been a firm "no" on the subject.

Matt Miller was still with the company last I checked. And there aren't 100 000 developer responses because the developers have lives and jobs and there aren't 100 000 of them. They don't need to keep repeating what they've told us 100 000 times for us to remember what they've told us.

You hear wrong.

Once I realised that they are stubborn about keeping SGs team content, I lost interest in them in general. Sure, I might come up with a way to invite my own characters, but then prices will be set for teams or something else equally limiting will show up and I'll be told "Well of course you can't have it! It's team content!"

I can, technically speaking, run TFs by multi-boxing with free accounts. That doesn't make TFs any less team content.

That, or - like me - they could simply want to keep a SG restricted to just their own characters who conform to a specific theme or share a specific backstory.

No, no, of course not. However, Graves depicts my actions for, what... Two thirds of his entire story arc as being under the orders of Scirocco, because he threatens to kill me. While the arc can't do anything to help me break away from Arachnos, by putting me under Arachnos' wing, it does do at least some damage in the opposite direction.

It's difficult for me to speak about arcs that put players in Arachnos' employ without expanding the problem to the broader issue of "I don't want to belong to canon NPC groups." Much as people may deride old City of Heroes writing, we never had to "belong" to anyone or anything to partake in old story arcs.

That's pretty much the central failing of Dr. Graves - it has a very narrow idea of what kind of villain we're supposed to be without ever giving us even cosmetic options to be anything else.

For me, Advent Rising is one of my favourite games because it has unique gameplay AND a good story. I don't necessarily need my story and gameplay to be occupying the same space, especially when the story can often be disruptive to gameplay and the gameplay to storytelling.

Those aren't the biggest by far. The actual Omega boots, gloves and shoulders are bigger by a fair margin, and they look less weird overall. Realistically speaking, though, the height comparison is good enough for me, personally.

Also, I imagine that covering your rock man with even more rock would end up making him even bigger.

That's probably where we'll have to disagree, however. I wanted to transform my Brute into a giant monster made of stone, yes, but I wanted that monster to look like a man, not like a knuckle-dragging creature, as the DE model is. In fact, this disproportionate body is a big reason for why I don't like the original Geanite Armour. It looks too clumsy to me. Allowing me to pick my body structure and shape, however, would help tremendously.

Pardon me for being cynical, but wouldn't the best solution to that be to NOT make missions which require people to hunt a specific kind of enemy in a small location where competition is almost inevitable?

I get that they didn't want to give us instances... Even though they did anyway. But I refuse to see the upside to NOT being able to pick any Hellion or Skull or Longbow anywhere I can find them. Hunt missions were always a pain in the *** even when we could do them in any zone in the entire game. They get progressively less fun the narrower the location we have to hunt in.

There is. They look like boots made out of wrapped fabric, the intention is probably soft leather. They look pretty good, actually.

But he's happy!

On the one hand, it makes sense. On the other hand, Arachnos is poorly handled because they serve as the game's backdrop, rather than a step in character progress. Picture this:

You start the game as an Arachnos stooge. All of your contacts insult you, you're always doing everyone's grunt work and things are pretty much as they are now. Then at around level 30 you start getting a little too strong for Arachnos to handle you. You cross the Arbiters, they try to take you down but fail. Arachnos comes after you in force and cut off access to the Quartermasters and Reclimators, but you run an arc which allows you to use scavenged reclimators hidden around the Isles and you can buy enhancements off underground traders. You get into a fight with Arachnos, you blow up something important to them, they hurt you badly, you retreat to heal up. After a while, Recluse and you have a chat. You decide that the petty rivalry has to stop because it's costing both of you too much, and lo and behold, Praetorians are on the horizon. Essentially, you don't bug me, I don't bug you and we all live happily ever after.

This happens at level 30. From then on Arachnos continues to exist as an enemy faction, they continue to rule the Isles, you can even work for them if you want, but you're no longer indebted to them, they have no more power over you and you can actually work to undercut them from there on out. Again, this happens at LEVEL 30, not level 50, and frees up most of your high-level game to be self-serving if you want it to be. Maybe even visit an island that isn't under Arachnos control, why not?

My point is that I really wouldn't mind being a stooge for Arachnos if it led to something, but it really doesn't. A token acknowledgement right at the end of the game is appreciated, but too little too late, and I STILL have to have sucked up to Arachnos and served under their Patrons to get to that point. I want to DEFY Arachnos, not serve them so well I become a liability.

An option to turn both of those off would be great, in my opinion. I wasn't a fan of the circles when those were introduced, and I like the coins even less. If I could, I'd turn both types of identifiers off, honestly. I, personally, don't need them and I don't think I ever have.

More broadly, City of Heroes is not like other games, in the sense that you're never expected to FIND your contacts, therefore having them marked at all is unnecessary. City of Heroes is a game of waypoints and menus. When you need a contact, you select said contact from a menu and follow the waypoint. When you need a mission, you select the mission from a menu and follow your waypoint. When you need to go anywhere, you open you map, select a destination and follow your waypoint.

At no point are you required or even expected to be randomly roaming around and just spot contacts standing around. Those who need to be introduced to you will be introduced to you and will expressly NOT speak with you until such an introduction happens. Those who don't need to be introduced to you will show up in your Contacts list via contact introduction pop-up. Furthermore, ALL contacts you can speak with directly and, from what I've seen, one contact you need to be introduced to who matches your origin, will be placed in your Find Contact window, where you can select a contact and follow your waypoint or outright teleport to said contact.

Identifying contacts from other NPCs is not necessary. Not to mention that it doesn't need floating coins - any NPC that's standing around IS a contact, you just can't always speak with all of them. Sure, some of them are vendors, some of them are only used for delivery missions and some of them - like Lady Albert - are bugged, but it's a pretty safe bet that any person standing around who isn't a player is a contact of some fashion.

That's more or less exactly what I've been trying to say. The people who like playing villains and reading stories about villains don't seem to be the same people who actually write the villain stories, and that's a cryin' shame. I've said it time and time again - not many people like playing villain-side because villain-side doesn't want you to like playing it. The entire body of content, bar almost no one single task, is purpose-designed to turn you off playing a villain, beat into your head how much you should hate yourself for what you're doing and depress you into next week. This is not conducive to a good game of any sort.

When I first found my lefts for playing villains, I realised a simple truth: As long as the game and its story are fun, then I'm perfectly happy to play the bad guy. As long as it doesn't disgust me or beat me over the head with how much I should hate myself, I'm perfectly happy playing the bad guy. All of the times I've wanted to just grab a person by the back of the neck and smash his face through an oak table but refrained as a hero, I could do as a villain. All the times I've had to defend jerkasses I hated but couldn't abandon as a hero, I could as a villain. All the times I had to hold back as a hero, I could let loose as a villain. In essence, where heroes couldn't have fun because they had to be good, villains COULD have fun because they weren't constrained by moral or ethical rules.

In short, if I can stop worrying about morality and ethics - like an actual villain would - then I can enjoy myself regardless of the context. I've played Carmageddon and had tons of fun smearing civilians' body parts all over Max's Junkyard, I've played Prototype and had fun throwing tanks full of people at helicopters full of people, I've played Stubbs the Zombie and had a blast eating people's brains. If the game presents me with a fun experience within which to engage in these activities and DOESN'T make a point to make me feel sorry for doing them, then that game can be fun while playing a villain.

City of Villains - a game named after the act of playing a villain, pretty much - is not that game, and it's a cryin' shame.

Please, Paragon - find someone who enjoys playing villains for fun rather than out of masochism or sadism and have that person write a few arcs. I'd love to run them. Hell, I could write a few arcs where you play a villain AND you end up feeling good about yourself both all the way throughout and after it's all over. They may not be very GOOD, but they'll at least attempt to make people HAPPY for having chosen to be evil, because I'M happy to have chosen to be evil. The more the game tries to ruin my happiness, the less I'll want to make more villains ever again.

This is where I completely lot it! Thank you, I needed that

I honestly don't know what causes it, but if I use Build Up while Hovering forward, then no animation will play thereafter until I stop moving forward or am stopped somehow. It doesn't work on all characters, but it DOES work on this one, whom I have repeatedly offered to QA to test with. They should have a copy of all my characters, my more specific reproduction steps have persisted in every bit of communication I've sent and every time I log back into this character just to check if he can override all of his animations, he still can.

That's the same, I assume, as the bug which causes some characters to resurrect floating via Return to Battle and use inspirations on the way up while causing others to resurrect shambling to their feet and unable to use inspirations on the way. I've reported both, reported characters that can and cannot reproduce the bug, listed reproduction steps and conditions, and still nothing.

Now, obviously, that's one bug out of a thousand, but a bug that can allow a person to override ALL combat animations, a bug that I had an entire thread deleted by a mod because he firmly believed I was making a guide to an exploit, isn't something that should spend this long existing. I first spotted it around 2008, I think, and I will bet you dollars to doughnuts it's still in effect.

It won't change anything, but that was precisely my point in response to what I quoted. The assertion was that us knowing the bug priority would somehow give us extra ammo to complain with. But as you said, nothing would change either way, because we don't need inside information ammo to firmly believe that bugs are not being fixed.

At the very least, being able to see that a bug has been logged, confirmed as a bug and a solution is pending will alert me to stop reporting it, and will at least let me know that it isn't being ignored or considered working as intended.

A villain is a villain is a villain. What kind of villain is only secondary to that main point. Maybe the Power arcs aren't the most disgusting, repugnant kind of evil in the game. Maybe the most entertaining kind of evil ISN'T the most disgusting, repugnant kind. That's my whole point - Praetorian Power arcs prove that you can have a self-serving villain who isn't motivated by the desire to be anyone's lackey and who manages to achieve greatness without being a stooge. I want more arcs like these.

Sure, Power villains don't kick puppies and eat babies. Sure, Power villains don't want to destroy all humans. Sure, Power villains don't salivate at the thought of torturing the weak and defiling the innocent. None of that is integral to a good or a cool villain. The Power arcs prove that. Yet we never seem to get more of them and we never seem to get them villain-side.

Why is it possible for me to be both famous, respected and HAPPY and still be a villain in Praetoria, but once I step into Primal Earth I'm suddenly required to be hated, petty and bitter in order to be a villain? Why can't I be a villain like the Praeotiran Power arcs, but on the Rogue Isles?

No, I didn't need to be, but I was. I feel there is absolutely no merit to be had in having these hideous coins in the game as I don't consider people to be half as stupid as they seem to be expected to be here on the forums, but if I say THAT, then someone will invariably come out and explain that, no, really, people ARE that stupid.

And if you're asking why I had to bring that up at all, the answer to this is "because." To simply comment on the option to turn the coins off is not possible, because there is no legitimate argument against it, and I don't believe petitions are permitted by the forum rules. Besides, saying /signed isn't my style, and I can't really let go of how unnecessary and ugly the coins are.

So that missing section of floor in one of the sewers entrance rooms that I have sporadically reported for the past seven years is something they haven't gotten around to yet and I should wait longer? I know people who weren't ALIVE when I first submitted that bug.

There's a reason people feel that their bug reports are sent straight into a black hole - because no acknowledgement is ever given that these bugs have even been read. City of Heroes has never had a comprehensive "known bugs" section outside of directly after large publishes, so people can't even tell what's considered a bug and what isn't.

And, really, us not knowing what priority a bug has been given internally doesn't really prevent us from inferring what priority that might be based on how long it's been since we reported it with no confirmation or fix in sight. To this day, I still have a Blaster who can completely and utterly bypass all power rooting, I've reported this multiple times and nothing has ever happened with it.

Here's a bit of a funny story: A few years ago, a person asked me to review his Architect arc - believe it or not, multiple people have asked me to do this, and I made a few friends out of it. So he asked me to review his arc, and I did. There were a few typos here and there, a wonky mission objective or two, as is normal for Architect arcs in progress. Overall, though, the arc had a solid story, it worked and it was interesting.

Except the final mission. The author wanted to have a sequence of PA messages from the final boss that played out as the player progressed, and they needed to show up in order. So he did the only thing he could and had each boss fight keyed to trigger only after the previous boss had been defeated, for a chain of at least around 10 bosses. The result was that I accidentally missed the first boss spawn which had occurred inside those open containers on ship maps, so I ran through the whole map, seeing NOT A SINGLE ENEMY. Finally I traced my steps and found the boss spawn in the middle of the ship, defeated it and another one spawned. Somewhere. I searched the map up and down, found that, triggered the next, searched some more and did this close to a dozen times.

One major point in my feedback was that you just can't do that because it breaks immersion to leave the mission empty, making me roam around trying to stumble across whatever trigger makes the plot move forward like I'm playing a Bishujo game. You can't have enemies appear unless they were expressly supposed to NOT have been there before. I honestly don't remember what he did about it in the end - my idea was to transform the PA narrative into dated journal entries, so that even if players found them out of order, they would still know what order to read them in, but I don't recall what the author elected to do.

Lo and behold, I'm running into precisely the same problem in Dr. Graves' mission. "Trick Zephyr into following you" says the game. I move ten feet forward and Zephyr is following me. "Great!" I think "I tricked him into following me!" Except the instance is now barren, there's a computer I can't use and I don't know how to continue. Then I remember an old Tip mission and think "Oooh! I was supposed to TALK to Zephyr!" so I spoke to him and pop goes a spawn of enemies 20 feet ahead of me within line of sight. I proceed forward and sure enough, the map is now full of enemies.

The same exact problems I've been bugging Architect writers that ask me to review their arcs for years now are starting to show up in developer-made arcs these days. Both in terms of writing and in terms of mission setup, the developer arcs start to come off like fanfiction.

"Save Crosscut's captive" says the game, so I find a Skull attacked by a Cobra, save him and speak with him. "Save the Crosscut's captive" repeats the game. I just frikkin' saved him! But no, I had to fight all the other Snakes around him before he was truly saved. But now he won't follow me. That's OK, I can beat Crosscut without the Skull. "Confront Crosscut with your new lackey" says the game. I confront Crosscut WITHOUT my new lackey who won't follow me, but I can't attack him. He's registering as an ally. Can I speak with him? No. Can I kill him? No. Is he like those clickies that you have to bring a hostage to before he will activate? Do I have to bring the Skull to him? Well, apparently yes, because I reset the mission, killed all the Snakes BEFORE I spoke with the Skull, brought the Skull before Crosscut and NOW he became hostile and started fighting me.

The mission structure in City of Heroes is becoming a huge mess. I can't attack people I'm supposed to attack until I arrange the soup cans to spell his name, my enemies don't show up on the map until the screen scrolls far enough to the right, three quarters of my enemies want to speak with me before we fight, speak with me half-way through the fight then speak with me at the end of the fight, I can't click a damn objective without having to converse with it and and go through at least three screens of text...

Why? Is all of this necessary? Sure, the old missions were basic in terms of game mechanics, but at least I had at least SOME control over how they turned out and they felt at least somewhat believable. If there's an enemy I'm supposed to kill, I can attack this enemy on sight, and he'll attack me on sight, too. We want to kill each other. If there's an objective I need to click on, I can just walk up to it and click on it. If there is a number of enemies I need to kill, all I have to do is find them, not worry about who I have to speak with to make them appear.

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I say City of Heroes suffers from the "TNA Wrestling Syndrome" because we spend almost all of our time talking and almost none of our time wrestling, and whenever we do get to wrestle, it's a gimmick match. "Why have a match, when you can have a gimmick match?" Why have a wrestling match when you can have a table balanced on ladders in a cage match? Why have a boss match when I can speak with a computer, speak with three different NPCs, then speak with the boss, fight him, have him leave, have him return and set the oil rig on fire and then fight me only for there to be an even bigger boss match?

I came to City of Heroes to make awesome characters an have them fight lots of enemies. Everything else is subservient to that. Sure, interesting game mechanics help mix things up, but sacrificing gameplay for talking is missing the forest for the trees. Most of the new arcs make me feel like I ordered a toy and they shipped a box of nothing but packing peanuts.

The panties are there under Tights With Skin, and I agree - they should have been more muscular. Right now, using the combo of top and bottom makes the costume feel discontinuous. You have this relatively ripped upper body, yet those perfectly smooth legs. I'm not an artist, myself, but I'm sure the legs could have used some more definition.

Speaking of which, I'd have liked the chest to receive some more definition, as well. The muscular texture is there, but it's barely visible and a lot less noticeable than my Male Tights skin swap of old.

As a child of 1984, I appear to have that working against me, as well. It's funny how I JUUUST missed that "greatest generation" or "generation X" or whatever they call it, so every time references come out, they're usually just shy of 10 years before my time. When games are mentioned, it always seems to be NES or ZX Spectrum, when movies are mentioned, it's usually 80s movies. Things of that nature. I'm not sure about the 60s, but as a child of the 90s, it seems like all the pop culture that's most famous is from the 70s and 80s, RIIIGHT before my time.

That said, you underestimate the disadvantage that non-Americans have when it comes to pop culture references. Sure, the old ones would be beyond me even if I were born and raised in the US, but I don't get even contemporary references, either. Just yesterday, I had to have that whole "man law" thing explained to me, which apparently I was expected to know about. I get to see a few of the more popular things, like the Mythbusters, more famous movies and so forth, but I get no TV shows, I get no news broadcasts, I get no commercials, no music programmes... Nothing. I'd be out of the loop even if the references were current.

I feel much the same way. I LOOOVED City of Heroes back in the day, and not just because I didn't know better. I got into the game after having played games like Diablo I and II, and that's the gameplay I was looking for. That's the gameplay I'm STILL looking for. Tell me where I'm going, tell me why I'm going there, then get lost and let me play the damn game.

When City of Villains came out with its memorable contacts, one of my chief criticisms was that they're usurping the limelight. Oh, sure, the old CoH contacts were bland, but that was OK - it was a story about MY character, it was a story about ME. Far, far, FAR too many contacts red-side tell a story about themselves, my character be damned. In a curious role reversal, the contacts are no longer bland. Now my character is the bland, unimportant one. Hell, Veluta Lunata, for all the praise I gave her, still has an arc that comprises of "I'm quirky, serve me, now get lost!" with nothing having been accomplished on my end. I got "paid" with money that is to fake money what fake money is to real dollars, I got no resolution to either story arc, I earned no revelation regarding story or canon... I just got used, "paid" and sent on my way. This is no longer a story I can pretend to be about me. It was about HER.

At least when it comes to Veluta, the gameplay is still fun and unobtrusive, it doesn't pause in the middle of the action to deliver more exposition or run other people's characters in my face, the maps are large, the action is solid and the arc doesn't assume. So while it IS an arc about Veluta, there is at least room for me write around it and the arc itself is fun.

The harder the developers try and the more gimmicky they make their missions, the less fun these missions become. Every time the game pulls the drag chute and yanks me out of my state of flow by the neck, it introduces a stop point. If I stop, I'm likely to tab out to the forums, watch TV, walk away to eat or just end for the night. Every time I have to stop, my "flow" goes out the window. Fiddly game mechanics that keep me from killing stuff do not help my immersion. On the contrary, they ruin it entirely.