Samuel_Tow
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Posts
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Joined
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Last I looked, the sale had something like 200+ hours left until it expired. Not showing days is not a good idea.
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Quote:I'm happy to confirm that I was right all along: One major stumbling block keeping people from caring about unlockable costumes is their inability to plan for them before they use them. Letting people see how cool their character would look with a new costume piece (in this case a purchasable one) is a much better way to get people to care and decide to commit.Originally Posted by MaestroMavius
I was looking through the costume sets while making my newest controller and noticed the Android. Having never seen it before I was blown away.
The legs and arms. I had to have those legs! They ended up being the perfect addition to Prototype Protector's level 20 costume!
Chalk a sale up to being able to 'see' the items beforehand.
This was a very, very, VERY clever move. -
The first thing I bought was the Celestial set with veteran rewards. I don't actually like much from it, but who knows what I'll think a year from now? More importantly, I like the wings and the floating halos should come in handy at some point.
After that, I somehow spent exactly 400 points on:
The Barbarian set
The Aura unlock
The Cape unlock
The School Backpack item
I haven't bought the Rocket Board as it's kind of expensive and I don't need it at the moment. I haven't bought Beam Rife, and I WILL NOT buy Beam Rifle until and unless I have confirmation that I can use its weapons for my Robotics Masterminds. If I can use the custom weapons, I'm sold. If I can't, I have no use for the set.
I don't intend to buy any inventory increases. Ever. $20 for a single expander is highway robbery and I've been playing just fine without them for seven years. Maybe if I tripped over a solid gold bullion on the way home from work, but until then...
*edit*
And no costume slots. I don't discount their value, but I can barely come up with five costumes that don't constitute a whole different character or don't require stupid excuses. I'd rather focus on more characters than more costumes for fewer characters. I'll be buying more character slots when the four I had banked run out. -
Quote:Err... No, unfortunately. I neglected to take a screenshot (costume isn't done) and the servers are down for the next four hours. I'll get you one as soon as I can log in, though.Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
Wait really? Can I get a screenshot of that?
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Quote:I don't and I do. It's true that to some extent we all like to complain about the things we don't like, and that's really just fine. As you say - no-one has to be brainwashed-happy about any game. On the other hand, I did kind of adopt a bad attitude, firmly believing that no matter how good a proposed addition was, the team would find some way to ruin it for me. It's a state of mind that I honestly hadn't had since the last days of Jack Emmert, when it seemed like the game was adding tons of cool stuff, all of them with some sinister catch that made them unusable for me.Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
Personally I don't think you had anything to apologize for.
I'm really not talking so much about conduct or "faith" as I am about not giving the game a fair chance. When something came out good, I saw it as an exception and when something came out bad, "I told you so!" There's being displeased with one change or one addition and then there's just being unfair, both to the game and to the people. And I wanted to apologise for being unfair.
Slightly off-topic, but I actually agree with you completely. Sure, some of us do occasionally go overboard in our bitter criticisms, but at the end of the day, many of us get angry because we like the game. Speaking purely for myself, I don't really get upset about negative changes to things I don't care about. Take, for instance, Marty. Everyone seems to be up in arms about it, but since I really don't care about min/maxed gameplay, I don't care about Marty. The only times I get really, really upset is when I see something that I care about greatly either dismissed out of hand or implemented very badly. For instance, I jumped on the "Barbarian" bandwagon because - as the new chest stands to proof - I want bigger, bulkier, more masculine pieces for women, and the original PAX pics and what David said thereafter seemed to indicate that these would never be coming. THAT upset me, because that's something I really care about.Quote:Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
As I've said before, MMOs should START to worry when players like you have no reaction at all. Positive or negative.
Complaints and criticisms are indeed just fine - within reason - for when people stop complaining altogether, it just means they don't care any more. -
Quote:I'd worry about being predictable, but I'm too gobsmacked by that costume piece to worry about anything at allOriginally Posted by Tenzhi
When I noticed that female Barbarian piece was sporting a muscular midriff, the first thing I thought was "I bet Sam'll be happy to see that!". That's actually the first or second Barbarian piece I saw the other day, so it's possible it started me on a positive leg. Even so, there really isn't anything "major" to complain about, be it with the set or with the Issue. Sure, technical problems abound, but that's to be expected with a major Issue release AND an expansion release AND a change to the game this big. I tend to joke with my friends about how the servers were offline for, like, 12 hours, but again - it's perfectly understandable.
I didn't actually go out looking for it, but it still surprises me there's this little to complain about, aside from known issues. -
Funny preface: For how many months now I've been complaining about the game? 12-16? And now that I decide to finally sing its praises... The forums log me out and refuse to let me back in for two days. Is that a sign?
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I've said some pretty harsh things about City of Heroes, and been quite uncompromising with the people who made it. Accusations of treating players like cattle have not been uncommon, and for a time I really did question City of Heroe's very immediate future. I've said a lot of disparaging things, some or a lot of which were probably not warranted. I want to take this opportunity to say:
I'm sorry about the things I said.
See, here's the thing: Last year around this time, I was angry at the game. A lot of things pissed me off, and to my biassed eyes, it didn't look like we'd get anything nice ever again. And yet over these last few weeks, I'm constantly catching myself giddy about this thing or about that thing, or about this possibility that may not even come to pass. Reflexively, I criticise most new additions before I even know what they are in full, simply because I fear that what I'm not seeing will be worse.
I've been promising to post an apology when Freedom is finally Live and I've played with it, but despite not having played thanks to server issues and time restraints and we're not "really" Live yet, I decided to advance this. Why? The Barbarian pack. When I saw the announcement from PAX (was it?), I feared the worst. Seeing the pack Live now... It's awesome! A lot of the things I've worried about sucking have turned out awesome in recent times, to the point where I'm starting to wonder what there is to worry about any more. What's the point in assuming the worst when the team has consistently delivered AT LEAST above average every time, and great all too often?
In my defence, I still feel the Incarnate system is evil and horrible and treats its players like cattle, but in the year since I preached doom, I've grown the ability to ignore the parts of the game I don't like and not see them as a sign of things to come. I apologise for ever having felt that in the first place, but the team deserves praise performing well enough to turn even my grumpy self around.
This may seem like a petty reason to be happy vs. angry, but lately it just seems that we're getting a lot of things we've asked about that may not always be the most efficient ways to addict players to the game. I don't know if this is pure altruism or a sign of a game model which seeks to pamper players as opposed to bogging them down in time sinks, but I like it regardless. There hasn't been a month for probably five years now that I haven't whined about weapons for women being too small, and all of a sudden we're waiting for Titanic Weapons. I've been hounding David for muscular women for how long now? But have you checked out the metal bra for women from the Barbarian pack? Yup, that one's muscular, and it's AWESOME! I'd have like to see it with shoulder straps, but I can work with this. Oh, man, can I work with this! Street Justice is (will be) awesome, I love the IDF set... There really is too much to list.
My point here is I apologise for making a big stink. I wanted to post a gushing review of the Barbarian set as soon as my login returned, but someone's already done this, and I figured an apology was more prudent. For what it's worth, I promise to stop assuming the worst possible outcome of any change and to look for the positive things in the game's future. Heavens knows we're getting a metric ton of cool content that I don't have the hours in the day (especially with daily maintenance) to explore. I'm already working on, what... Four? Five new characters or revamps of old ones. I honestly have nothing to complain about right now (yet, I'll think of something), and I'm not sure how to handle that
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Quote:But lacks the status of the login server, which is separate from the game servers.Originally Posted by Crazy_Dragon
There's already a link that opens the Server Status page in your default browser in there. It shows up when you select CoH in the Launcher.
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Quote:Absolutely not. I must have misread your original idea, because this is something I would sooner leave the game entirely than support. At no point should making my character stronger require me to start over, just on face value. More in-depth, the developers have historically been completely stout in their refusals to allow AT respecs of any shape or form. This will not happen, and that's very close to what you're suggesting. Finally, tying a reset to player progression is something I will never support. If you want to start over, then by all means, start over. But don't ask to start over stronger.Originally Posted by Lost Ninja
And secondly you're increasing the overall power of the character.
The only way I will support any form of "rebirth" idea is if removes any and all functional powers from the character, accolades included and starts the character fresh and unpowered, same as any level 1. New Game ++ has no place in an MMO. There are ways to make your characters stronger without invoking the worst plot device in the history of story writing. Players shouldn't have to deliberately and intentionally kill their creations to make them stronger. -
Quote:This, however, is NOT something I want to, um... "Futz" with. I've played quite a few other MMOs after I first started with City of Heroes, and the question which immediately came to my mind in every single one of them was "Why the hell would I need a second attack? Why, when I can put my basic attack on auto and have a secondary attack which recharges as fast as it's available, do I EVER want another damaging attack, other than to replace the one which I already have with a better version. This, of course, begs the question of why I'd bother enhancing a power that I'm just going to replace, but that's a gripe for another time.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
However, the lack of global cooldown is also another one of those things that makes combat in CoH significantly more "action-oriented" than you would expect from an MMO not focused on "twitch" combat. We can't just put our best attack on auto and periodically use other powers because in City of Heroes that would be extremely pathetic output. So its another thing very dangerous to futz with, because mucking with it can dramatically reduce the entertainment level of combat in CoH.
Lack of global cooldown and the need and opportunity to use multiple powers is, I think, one of City of Heroes' greatest strengths in combat. One of the things I hate the most in gaming is unnecessary redundancy. Why do I need five attack which all do the same thing that I can only ever use one of at a time, when one will do? And, really, the answer is "I don't need that," as anyone who bothered to optimise an attack chain will instantly realise - you don't need powers you don't have to use in order to achieve constant proactivity, and you generally don't take powers that you don't need when you can take others that bring you a tangible benefit.
I'm one of the idiots who still takes and slots all powerset powers just because I like having them, but the point remains - being reduced to the productivity of just ONE power negates the point to having more than one power, or at least more than one power per application. In City of Heroes, you NEED more than one power per application because of recharge times, hence why we can afford to have redundant powers (Energy Punch, Barrage, Bone Smasher) and still benefit from them all. It's when we DON'T have enough redundant powers to achieve an attack chain that we truly suffer, which is what sinks the single-target damage of sets like Assault Rifle and Electrical Blast.
If a global cooldowns and one-attack-only system is to be in place, then the choices we get need to be reduced DRASTICALLY and also diversified A LOT. There'd be no real point to having melee attackS, when you will only ever just pick the one best melee attack and use that. -
Quote:Beta is to Live what Live is to real life. That's the problem.Originally Posted by Dark Sweater
Beta is still up. Stop doing your real real world stuff and get back to the virtual one, you sissies!
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What I'll do is go have lunch and play Darksiders like I've been meaning to for some time. A friend of mine might drop by at some point, so we may play a co-op game together, as well.
Considering maintenance ends at 11PM my time, the head start starts tomorrow for me. Unless it ends a few hours earlier, of course, which it won't. -
That doesn't work with existing canon. The reason Calvin Scott became the leader of the Resistance is because his wife is able to resist Tilman's powers, making his mind completely impossible to read and his presence completely impossible to detect, making Calving "the last free man" in practical terms. While it's very possible that Aurora is pretending to be Shalice and she's pretending to not be able to read his mind and she's pretending to not know where she is, but this becomes such a convoluted plot that it snaps any sort of narrative cohesion over its knee with a sickening crack.
The Praetorian storyline - as contained on Praetorian Earth itself - is pretty much the game's single best continuity, partly because it's new and partly because it was all planned out at once. It's the game's most stable storytelling, so introducing bizarre and tangled plots to just that stands to destroy more than it gains. -
In seven years, I've transferred a character once - Vox from Virtue to Pinnacle, because Virtue lagged too bad for me. Beyond that, I'll have no use for servers other than Victory and Pinnacle until those fill up, and with a fourth page of purchaseable slot, I don't see this happening within my life time.
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I have a whole bunch of immortals, a whole bunch of people who don't age, a whole bunch of people who could be healed, regenerated or repaired good as (or better than) new, so no-one's really dying. I also have a few characters for whom being teenagers is important, so those I'm simply not passing any time for.
The rest, meh. Seven years is not a long time, plus I work on comic book time. It's still the same point in time ten or twenty real life years later. I focus on the here and now. Long-distance retrospectives are always depressing and even when they're not, I feel like I missed out on all the good bits. -
The servers rearrange themselves every time you visit them to put the last you logged into at the top of the queue. This makes going down the list of servers very hard if you're not paying close attention, because you always have to remember what's NEXT in the list. And if you're like me and you log into a server, see three characters, check them out and go "Oh, I remember this costume! Man, that is so cool, why did I forget to use it? It would work so well on this character I'm making... I really should finish writing his story though." then by the time you're back to server select you no longer remember which server it was that you were going to visit next.
Having a list of characters arranged by server, even if it's just names, ATs, powersets and levels with no pictures, would help tremendously. -
Quote:Moo has a point. "Purchaseable" travel powers are becoming an epidemic in this game, and they really ARE starting to crowd out the powerset travel powers by being free and now BETTER. Yes, it's true that you can fight while using Fly and you can't while using Rocket Board, but who honestly fights with Flight anyway? It suppresses, it costs too much and you have Hover which does so much better. What's to stop one from using Rocket Board/Hover instead of Fly/Hover?Originally Posted by AmazingMOO
*taps fingers*
Yeah, so let's talk about this. Why faster than flight?
I can somewhat deal with the concept that flight should be the slowest travel power of the four 'standard' travel pools. I don't agree with it, but I understand the rationale.
But why gimp flight to such a degree that even prestige powers like the Rocket Board are faster?
When I think of Super-heroes flying, I think of heroes who can race jet airplanes and frequently win. The CoH engine certainly isn't going to support Mach travel. However, flight doesn't HAVE to be quite so slow. At the very least, a player who's willing to spend slots on flight should be able to be faster than mechanical conveyances.
Afterburner is really a lame solution to this problem. I don't like it, but I'm going to have to deal with it if I want to fly like a real superhero.
Remember, a travel power is a build investment. It takes a power pick and it's level-gated. Unless you plan to one day GIVE us a travel power for free at character creation (just one), then this influx of out-of-build travel powers needs to stop. The whole build system is already bastardised enough with temporary powers, veteran powers, purchaseable powers and more. We should be making player build MORE important, not more irrelevant.
A long time ago - before Incarnates - Castle said that if we did get more levels, they would NOT give us more power picks and slot pics because of how much this trivialises and unballances the system. Yet practically every three months since he said this, we've been getting more and more powers in Booster packs that our builds don't account for. Right now when I start the game my character is born with the Nemesis Staff, the Sands of Mu, the Ghost Slaying Axe, Assemble the Team, a Base Teleporter, a Mission teleporter, the Pocket D teleporter, a power which resurrects me, a power which hides me, a buff pet, two types of jump packs, Ninja Run, Beast Run and I forget what else. Enough powers to crowd out my powerset powers from off my ID card. This isn't good for game balance.
This is something I've suggested before - simply have the character use ground-based animations while standing on a floating object. This could use the entire ground-based array of animations entirely, save for movement animations, which should just have the character stand in place with the platform moving him about.Quote:Originally Posted by Noyjitat
I still don't get why it was designed this way. If its due to animations then why not simply have you stand normally when you are just hovering in the rocket board but the minute you move forward or backward it changes to the prestige power slide animation like it always does now. So you can still use powers when you aren't moving. This way you don't need to suppress toggles or anything.
The problem with using Prestige Power Slide as a base stance is that there are no animations to blend in with it. Ground-based animations solve this by knocking you back into standard left-foot-forward stance when you fight, retaining only the leg glow, but airborne animations can't afford to fall back on aerial animations since those don't have the character standing, and they can't afford to fall back on ground animations since the rocket board isn't wide enough to accommodate the wider, less central stance.
For a rocket board, I get the design decision. However, this doesn't mean that a flight-type power can't exist that has the character standing on a platform large enough to accommodate animation footing while allowing the reuse of practically ALL ground-based animations, and possibly even allowing for a few ground-only animations like Tremor and Foot Stomp, per chance stomping on your own flying machine mid-flight is not a bad idea.
Honestly, this should happen. There's an almost indescribable variety of stable platforms that one can ground-fight while standing on, from floating a rock/ice/crystal/cloud to a solid metal disc, to some kind of technological hover platform to a large flying carpet an energy field. Anything that's big enough for a character to hop around on without stepping overboard will do, and variety there is massive. -
Quote:I'm speaking specifically of power balance. An AoE attack pays a very high cost in endurance and recharge for not a lot of on-paper damage, because an AoE attack is expected to multiply its effect by hitting multiple targets. Deny that power its multiple targets, boil the encounter down to a single target only, and then face said AoE power against it. What was once a great power because of its superior range and large target cap transforms into a liability because it costs too much for what it does.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I'm not sure how that specifically addresses the AoE disparity. Keep in mind that many of the top AoE performers are also very good single target performers (for example, Fire Blast). Its not true that the things good at AoE are completely bad at single target: most things are decent at single target, and some things have good AoE on top of that.
Fire Blast being an excellent single-target set as well as an excellent AoE one - which I agree with, by the way, that was the only Blaster I ever had fun with - isn't so much a problem with AoE as a concept as it is a problem with set balance in allowing such a set to exist while simultaneously not ensuring that all other sets can measure up. When you make a game where some sets have AoE and others focus on single target, having a set which focuses on both is breaking your own rules.
Of course, I agree with you on a fundamental level - with AoE attacks cloning their damage over their entire AoE range, they have too wide of a performance gap and they cascade into excessive effectiveness VERY fast. When you deal more damage the more enemies you shoot at, it's natural for people to WANT to shoot at more enemies. This, then, becomes a problem with a no-brainer solution - AoE rules. Until caps, disincentives or mitigating factors are introduced to not just limit the scope of AoE, but redesign it such that it is self-limiting, AoE will be king.
Years ago I might have disagreed with you on the notion that AoE is evil, but it is. It's the obvious best choice for practically every challenge the game tosses at us, especially the "toughest" ones with larger teams. I firmly believe - as you do - that this shouldn't be repeated in the future, not because AoE isn't fun, because not having AoE isn't fun and it makes the game a nightmare to balance so it's fun for everyone. I don't want to see this game or future games become any less about fighting hordes of enemies - that's what's so great about City of Heroes - but this needs to be done in a system that doesn't leave approximately half its players out in the cold. -
Quote:Then you need to post more. Your post count isn't moving fast enough.Originally Posted by Friggin_Taser
What if the sad reality is I'm a sarcastic remark bot powered only on forum post count and badges?
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Quote:If you mean visually, then hell yes! Do you remember once upon a time when everyone - and I mean EVERYONE - used the one M16 rifle model and the one 12 gauge shotgun models? I'm talking Warriors, Tsoo, Family, the works. The Family used to use M16s, the Warriors used to use M16s and the Tsoo Green Ink Men used to use shotguns. To be honest, it kind of made sense for these guys to use modern weapons, as they were and are modern gangs, but these days the Tsoo use arm crossbows, the Warriors use bows and crossbows and the Family use drum-fed Thompsons.Originally Posted by Kjell_NA
I mean "interesting" in the sense of the Fallen having a neat dagger or a fire blast. Very simple stuff but more flavourful than just a shotgun.
I'd definitely like to see oldish, low-level villains given more identity than "pallet swap Slugger," and something more along the lines of their conceptual design. I'm not sure what that might be, but I'd expect Hellion melee weapons to have more of a satanic motif to them in some way. Honestly, not being an artist or even visually-minded, I couldn't tell you what I want, but something more would be nice. Sooner or later we'll have to update their aging outfits anyway. -
I will miss Galaxy City to the extent that I miss any piece of content taken out of the game - I liked it, and it's gone. However, I won't miss the zone much - nowhere near as much as I miss the original Faultline, back when it used to be impressive, before they flooded the massive sheer cliffs. Faultline I will always miss because I liked the original Faultline. Galaxy City I will miss because it used to be there and it isn't any more.
I started my first character in Galaxy City, myself - I wanted BABs as a trainer. I learned the layout of Galaxy City long before I learned Atlas Park... In fact, I still don't know Atlas Park all that well. But, to be honest, City of Heroes just already has too many Atlas Parks. There's the original, Galaxy City is almost the same thing and Steel Canyon is pretty much almost the same thing, as well. They have different layouts, but they look like jumbles of the same zone and have the same feel.
I appreciate Galaxy City, but I feel no sentimentality towards it. -
Quote:Having seen the Celestial set, I really don't think you're missing much. I'd hold out for IDF, if I were you. Even without the overbig gloves, it's still most polished set to come out of Freedom, and it goes well with a variety of themes.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Right. So, there goes any reasonable hope in hell I have of getting the three Celestial rewards before they 'rotate' out.
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Quote:For some reason, I still feel that the best thing to come out of professional wrestling is the Spoony One's Wrestle Wrestle (now seemingly discontinued, sadly). Ah, good timesOriginally Posted by Liquid
Some awesome people/events have come from it, though (my favorites being "Macho Man" Randy Savage, the Andy Kaufman stunt, Rowdy Roddy Piper's movies, and The Rock/Dwayne Johnson who I really hope will indeed one day play Black Adam).
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Quote:Hmm... OK, so if it's calculus or differential equations, I have a shot. If it's statistical analysis (and I suspect it will be) or differential geometry, I am SOL.Originally Posted by Zwillinger
Update: Arcanaville will be providing the mathematical question.
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When the train stations were unified and several zones ended up with multiple stations, this opened up a piece of convenience I never knew I wanted - the ability to port around the zone across long distances. When given the choice, I would almost always take the train from one end to the other where it's closer to my mission.
This, realistically speaking, isn't out of laziness so much as because travelling for the sake of travel is a time sink. Travel powers help, but they only lessen the pain. Short trips are never a problem - some travel is always fun to have, just to get a feel that you're in an open world. However, when you have to set your character on auto-travel and you can go take a leak in the meantime, that's not good gaming. Just by definition, any sort of gaming where I am not needed at the keyboard for long periods of time is bad.