Samuel_Tow

Mistyping more than misremembering, but yes, I meant "proliferation" I'm looking to swap an existing Sword/Regen Scrapper to either a Sword/Shield Brute or a TW/Regen Scrapper, and which I make him kind of depends on which comes first.

If Freedom launches with I21, that means energy wings, and since I'm already a 72 month veteran, I'll be getting pretty much everything decent out of the reward pools, wings included. This means the possibility of making new characters with them, since they wouldn't fit any of my old ones. To make new characters, however, I need either new powersets or proliferated such, and Time Manipulation hasn't given me any ideas yet, especially since the only AT I play that gets access to that is Masterminds and I'm dangerously close to having two of every primary.

So let me revise the "customization" question and instead ask a new Question 4:

4. We heard a lot about really awesome power proliferation. When is that slated to happen?

I'll go edit the OP right now.

*edit*
Also, I WAS forgetting the revamp of Atlas and Mercy. Now I remember why I wanted to make new characters

Hmm... OK, that is a good point that I hadn't thought about. I suppose since I'm the only person who plays City of Heroes on any of the PCs where I have it installed, I kind of assumed this would be obvious, and it really isn't. What to do... What to do...

Well, I suppose I don't mind seeing someone else's character before I log in. Have it display the last character that was logged into the game, whether it be mine or someone else's. And you have a point - it can't be random, since the game can't draw out of our character pools before we log in. It doesn't have access to them.

My point is that if I can see a real character made by a real player on the splash screen, I'd enjoy it a lot more. Whatever spash screen the art team makes, it'll always contain someone else's characters. That's not a criticism against them, that's just reality and I completely understand. Which is why I feel putting actual player characters on the splash screen would be so much cooler.

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I'd go a step beyond that, by the way. I've always wanted to see other people's creations show up in my missions, like in Mayhem and Safeguard missions, at least, or any place which calls for a hero or a villain that's not tied to the story in any way. I mean, it's not that I expect to like xXxEvilDevilxXx more than Ms Shock, but there's something about using real characters that always trumps using fake ones.

Doesn't she show up in the Mender Tesseract TF, though?

...

Oh, this gives me an idea! Can we kill Mender Tesseract? Please?

Err... Not quite. Web Grenade does no damage and Power Push does fairly little, but every elemental immobilize power actually does about Moderate damage, and these are on a pretty short recharge. The DPS for the immobilizes is actually pretty solid. The problem is that they cost a HELL of a lot more than their raw damage is worth, which makes spamming them a fast way to kill your endurance bar, even with proper slotting. Their DPE is pretty bad. The immobilize powers' damage is also spread out over time, so it doesn't look like they're doing much of anything when you apply them, but their effect does add up considerably, especially against something like a boss or elite boss.

That's not to say I feel they're the best thing since cheese with no holes in it, and indeed sets like Energy Manipulation prove that you can have melee controls and be decent... Somewhat, kind of... So I'm not actually going to argue against the set itself. Leave it at that.

Drop the name "David" from the above post, then. The development team is aware we want this, this much we've known since Power Customization first came out. What I meant to say is we don't know any of the specifics, in particular why the UI seems to be such a huge issue and whether the new I21 UI will also propagate to the editor and help out in this regard.

I get so hung up on the UI because it's the only reason we've ever been given. Almost every Epic power is a direct copy of an existing powerset power with tweaked numbers, and most of those are already customizable. Char from Fire Control is tintable, for instance, but Char from Pyre Mastery isn't, even though they're the same power. This leads me to conclude that it's not making new artwork that's the limiting factor (pretty much anything that's not Munitions Mastery already has customisable effects), but something else, and the only other thing we're aware of is problems integrating the thing into the UI.

This is further substantiated by the fact that when you first slot a Judgement power, you become able to customize all four judgement powers, even the ones you don't have. That tells me it's a problem with telling the game to only customize the power(set)s you have and not writing custom options for dozens of powers you CANNOT take into the database. Custom Powers files are already bigger in size than your entire costume, so that's saying a LOT.

Aha. So you come into a threat talking about the new splash screen - the one that's on the login menu - then insist on speaking about other splash screens, intentionally ignore all that I say, then insult me. Great. That's nice going there. Here's a hint - it's a discussion thread. I happen to enjoy discussing THE splash screen - the one that's on the login menu. Not the zone loading screens, not the mission loading screens, not the splash backgrounds for the editor or the mission architect, not the splash screen for the old or the new site. THE splash screen in question - the one that's on the login menu.

And if you'd taken a moment out of your reflex to bash me because it's me, you might have noticed that I said I like the splash screen. It's nice, bright and high-quality. It's better than what we have now for City of Heroes, which is a 7-year-old, low-resolution pic of pretty low-quality models that came out of pre-2000s prerendered cinematic, specifically that one City of Heroes intro that doesn't seem to be in any of the new releases, where the Statesman takes out a Rikti saucer.

But that's OK. You don't like me and prefer to sidetrack things I've said. I get it. Can we move on now, please? Like into a discussion about the splash screen? You know, the one that's on the loading menu, the one that's in Leandro's pic and the one that the thread is named after? Because that's the one I was referring to. The login menu is where I want to see either pictures of my characters or straight-up 3D models of them instead of a splash screen. That's on the login menu and not on any other splash screen anywhere else in the game. Just the login menu splash screen.

Am I being clear enough now or do you think there's somewhere else that Champions had splash screens that I failed to mention?

*edit*
For future reference, when you tell me I'm wrong, please ensure that I actually am. That way you won't have to retort with embarrassing backhand comments when I explain my position and why I'm not wrong and you simply misunderstood. But if it you'd sooner believe that I'm a dick than that you're wrong, then go right ahead. I'm more than willing to play bad guy for you to feel morally superior. No skin off my nose.

I find life to be worth retelling more than death. If the signature arcs end up killing a signature character, I simply won't run them. I have no interest in populist shock deaths. Any time you advertise your story as featuring a death like that's the main attraction, I lose all respect for it instantly. I'm not interested in another Countdown or Cry for Justice.

Not really sure if that's a good idea to do automatically with no option to change it. I have, for instance, a laptop with a 17'' screen that's 1920x1200. The laptop generally can't handle current-generation games (or City of Heroes) at its native maximal resolution, so defaulting to that would be a bad thing.

I kind of think that they should institute the ability to tweak at least basic graphics settings at login somewhere, especially since the game wants to restart when you change them.

The "and go to the character select screen" should probably have tipped you off. The splash screen is the first thing you see when you log into City of Heroes. That's what you get bounced to if you get auto-logged, that's where you go when you log off and that's what you see first thing when you zone.

And rather than that always having the Statesman's face on it even though he hasn't been relevant in-game... Pretty much ever, I'd like it to have the picture of MY character on it. The game is very much capable of taking "on the fly" pics of characters and displaying them as pictures, as this is how you get your face on your ID card and how contacts get their faces in your Contacts menu.

You can still have it show the Statesman if I happen to be a brand new player logging in for the first time with no existing characters, but if I were a brand new player I'd probably be playing the game in a horribly stretched 800x600 resolution that I can't change unless I make a character, so I'm not sure how important that is.

The problem with choosing the devil you know over the devil you don't is you're still choosing the devil, and I'm not THAT big a fan of heavy metal. As I said, I don't believe Tyrant (or his BCU?) is a better choice for the splash screen. I don't believe Statesman is a good choice for the splash screen, either. I want to see the game become more about the players and their characters and less about a retread of the same old "monster of the week" methodology.

Speaking of the Splash Scree, you know what I would really want to see there? A picture of one of my own characters. Doesn't matter if it's the last one I played or one at random. If anything - and it pains me to praise that game - I believe Champions did that right. You log into the game, and what's the first thing you see? Your current character. No splash screens, no established canon characters, no storyline distillation. You log in, you see your own character standing in a city. That's what I want to see here, because at the end of the day, that's what it's all about: "Paragon City, where YOU are the hero!"

This kind of reminds me of professional wrestling, believe it or not. Though a goofy made-up sport, wrestling can still be fun and entertaining if you have two talented athletes in the ring playing their parts well. But all too often, the major wrestling shows - that's the WWE and especially TNA - seem to forget to book actual wrestling on their wrestling show, and spend 60 minutes out of a 90 minute show doing storylines, promos, storylines and generally "talking," instead. Which is fine, storyline is important. Wrestling is the soap opera for men, after all. But at the end of the day, it's still a wrestling show, and we still tune in to watch wrestling, not listen to the ******* GM! *ahem* Sorry...

My point is that City of Heroes is just that - it is a city full of super heroes, where the super heroes are us. Even if we do nothing else with the game, THAT is the one thing we can't avoid - adding to a city where we are the heroes. We. Not Jack Emmert's Mary Sue, not whoever's baby the Well of the Furies was, not Praetoria's god mode Sue. In all of this quest for overentangled storylines and railroading plots, the game seems to forget that at one point... It kind of was about us. It ain't any more. It's about the Coming Storm and the Praetorian War and Arachnos and the Rikti and all that other stuff. We're just extras in our own stories.

As it should be. I play games to unwind and let my imagination run wild. If I wanted to excel and compete, there are always actual sports to try. Sports are real even within the confines of their rules. Games aren't, and never should be. Games are there to have fun in, not work at. Challenge needs to exist only insomuch as it keeps the game from being boring, but "challenge" that pisses me off over and over again has no place in my games.

I recall the following anecdote from that tank game I mentioned:

We were playing a map that's basically two siege lines with no man's land in-between that's essentially a killing field. You crest that hill, you die to the barrels of ten people waiting for you and you alone. So my team-mates chose to wait for the enemies to come. And they never came. This lasted for 5 minutes. then 10 minutes. Then 15 minutes. In the meantime, I'm watching TV, listening to music, browsing forums, clipping my finger-nails and still the game keeps showing me a picture of nothing happening. In that time, I could have played three whole matches and actually had fun, but no! We have to be cautious. Eventually, I crested the hill on purpose, got my tank shot to ****, again on purpose, and left that boring snooze fest of a match. I went on to play I think three more games and STILL my tank was unavailable, stuck in that battle still ongoing. I don't know what the timer on that is, but this must have gone on for half an hour, and I don't have that much time or patience to sit on my hands.

This, as a point of fact, is part of the reason why the multi-player aspect tends to ruin my fun. Obviously, I don't want to rush through content head-long like a spastic monkey. But this doesn't mean I want to spend 45 minutes discussing strategy and pulling every single minion around a corner one by one because we can't afford to let any team-member lose a single point off his health bar. I hate overcomplicated, overcautious strategies for doing simple things. When there's an easier option - like punching faces - I will always pick that easier option. If the team insists on picking the approach which has me sitting on my hands for 20 minutes, I pick an easier team. If the option doesn't exist, I pick a different game. It's really that simple.

Games shouldn't hurt and be boring. Games which treat me with "tough love" and try to hurt me into being a better player don't really get me to shape up. They just get me to resent them even more. The point of playing a game isn't to become good at it, it's to have fun. Sure, becoming good at a game usually means having more fun, but it just as often means having LESS fun when you realise that the best strategy is to have seven people fall asleep for ten minutes with the eighth person finds the boss and teleports us all to him. When being good at a game interferes with enjoying a game, the enjoyment trumps the skill every time. Because I'd rather die 100 times and have fun succeeding than never dying at all before I win and then coming to the forums to complain about how boring the task was.

There's something I firmly believe: City of Heroes is the most fun when things go wrong. When everything's going like clockwork, the game puts me to sleep.

I disagree. It created a hostile community from what I've seen, because no-one ever trusted you, everyone always freaked out when you got them killed, everyone was always calling everyone else a "noob" and no-one wanted to take any risks. In other words, what should have been an exciting, action-packed adventure was turned into a PowerPoint presentation. "Now we do step one. Now we do step two. Step three is kind of tricky, so we'll split it into two parts." This is HORRIBLE gameplay, at least to me, because it turns a game into a job. Being cautious and methodical, that I can understand. But when my gameplay involves me taking my hands off the keyboard for over a quarter of its running time, something is horribly wrong.

And again - back in the day, I've had more than a few people insult me because I got them killed by accident. These days, no-one cares. Someone dies, you say "Sorry about that!" and they laugh it off. No-one's ever angry, no-one's ever stressed. We're all here to have fun. If we succeed, great. If we die, well, **** happens, to quote Predator II. I haven't been yelled at for not performing to some arbitrary minimum standard in years, and I haven't seen people complain that their Kinetics Defenders get kicked from teams because they didn't take Speed Boost or their Blasters getting mocked for not producing some made-up minimum level of DPS. The game isn't stressful, which is exactly how it should be.

I disagree. That's EXACTLY how an MMO should be. It should present a persistent, communal world for people to meet in and interact if they so chose, but a scaling experience for anyone to tackle how he wanted to. Dr. Zeus once made the hilarious comment that teaming is like marriage - you dread it and refuse to commit to it, but once you do, you realise how great it is. Presuming that we still club our significant others over the head and drag them over to the cave, that's still not true, given how many divorces we see these days (including my own parents, incidentally, though that's besides the point). Forcing people into interacting with each other when they don't want to is a BAD thing. Sometimes it forges friendships, yes. Most of the time it causes people to treat each other like luggage.

Say I want the Romulus Sword, but I don't like teaming with people. I WILL team with people, because the ITF tends to be quick, easy and I can fall asleep at it without anyone noticing. But if I do it at a time when I don't feel like teaming, not only will I not have fun, but I may very well ruin the fun of everyone else on the team, too. OK, I probably wouldn't since I know when to shut up, but the point is that forcing people together - effectively locking them in a room with each other - is not the right way to foster pleasant relations.

Games like WoW and many of the newer MMO models are more popular for a reason, and it's not because everyone has suddenly forgotten what it was like "back in the day." In fact, for the longest time people cited their reason for subscribing to City of Heroes as being because it explicitly did NOT have raiding and loot and gear grind and PvP and all the other things that have been added to the game since those comments were made. More broadly, people don't want their games to piss them off. Sure, some like the rough treatment, but they aren't many. In order for MMOs to become mainstream, they needed to stop abusing their players, which is precisely what's happening. Once you open the game up to more people, more people come to play it. That's not a bad thing.

Let me put it this way - if MMOs had remained like how you describe them, I would never have joined City of Heroes. Not in a million years. In fact, my biggest fear when I first bought the game was that this is what it would be like. Luckily, through a collision of chance, City of Heroes was the most un-MMO MMO on the market for a good long while after it came out, and remains one of the least punitive even today. I've considered giving Lineage II another try, for example, but my brain hurts every time I remember my experience in that particular soul trap. Ugh!

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I like City of Heroes DESPITE the fact that it's an MMO, not BECAUSE of it. And before you ask: Because a single-player version of the game doesn't exist. But I'm hoping whatever the game is when it finally shuts down (nothing lasts forever), that the game will be resold as a standalone server-client package that I can keep on playing even when the official servers have gone down. What I'm saying is I'd play this game even on a server all by myself when all the players have left, because I like the game first and foremost. Everything which stands in my way of enjoying the game... Well, gets in the way.

Teaming with people is great when I feel like it. Teaming with people when there aren't people immediately available or the ones available disagree with my choice of hairstyle, however, is a problem. When I log into the game, I want to start playing. I don't want to spend half an hour looking for a team or building one before I can play. I don't want to depend on other people's when I can't rely on other people's help to always be available. It's like a server queue. When I log into the game, I want to play, not watch a zombie dance for an hour before I'm allowed into the actual game.

Older, "classic" MMOs, at least as I have seen them, are games designed to hurt, scare and insult their player base until players are too afraid to play through content, and so said content lasts longer. They're purpose-designed time sinks that aim to waste your time and steal your progress to keep you playing more because you have to in order to accomplish anything, rather than because you want to as the game is too much fun to put down. I didn't play "classic" MMOs and I wouldn't want to play them even if we could turn back the clock and make it so. I like City of Heroes specifically because it gives me an option to play by myself when I feel like it, and only ever ALLOWS me to team when I choose to, rather than forcing me to do it. Jack went out of his way to force us to team, and found to his dismay that players simply didn't want to. So why not, instead, "give the players what they want?"

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I started this thread explaining why "multiplayer" tends to ruin my fun. That's not a problem. That is a solution. If multiplayer ruins my fun, I simply won't do it, because the game gives me that option.

To be honest, I was one of the people shouting "Enough with Recluse! Enough with Arachnos! We want something else!" Having Recluse step down from the picture doesn't really come as a surprise to me, and I can't say I'm TOO disappointed. If you stop to think about it, Tech, I'm sure you'll agree at least somewhat that the suffocating, restricting Arachnos railroad had to go, and taking Recluse off the splash screen is one step towards doing that. It does have the unfortunate implication that "the devs hate villains," but I still feel that we can live villains and still dislike Arachnos at the same time.

Recluse is starting to turn into "the devil you know." When he was around, we pretty much all booed him. But he's been sort of off the radar for a while, and now we have other people to boo (Tyrant), so we remember Recluse with fondness not because of what he is, but largely because of what he IS NOT, and what Recluse and Arachnos are not is Praetorian.

Ideally, I'd like to get Jack Emmert, Jack Emmert and Jack Emmert off the splash screen if we can, by which I mean to get rid of Recluse, Tyrant AND STATESMAN. Keep them as heroes, keep them in the story... Just take them off the splash screen. I mean, you don't see Imeperious (Jack of the past) or Reichsman (Jack the M. Bison) on any of the splash screens.

I like what the Airhead (note: pick a name that doesn't make me sound like I'm insulting you ) said - the original splash screen's pile of heroes kind of does suggest that we, too, are also somewhere in that pile. This, to me, represents the original mentality of the game when it first went Live, and which hasn't really been back since - that the game is about US. Not me or you or anyone in particular, but about "us," the players. That pile of heroes, that's us. That's what's on the cover, that's what's on the manual, that's what's on the CD, that's what I see when I log into the game. It's a City of Heroes, not City of Statesman vs. City of Recluse vs. City of Tyrant.

Branching out is unlikely. I don't believe in patriotism and nationalism in general, and my own people are right now committing some pretty unpleasant acts by using these as an excuse. I tend to prefer to keep characters contained within their own stories and out of themes of politics, government and so forth.

However, what you describe here isn't something I'd call "patriotism," in that I define patriotism as a form of allegiance to "your own." Whether this is allegiance to your ruling body, to your state, to your people, to your culture, to your heritage or to your land, you're still showing allegiance to your own BECAUSE they are your own. What you describe is more a hero with a strong sense of morality doing what he believes to be the right thing, even if it goes against the best interests of king and country. I'd more call this integrity than patriotism.

Yes. It means you should be dead from insomnia within a couple of weeks.