Samuel_Tow

And it's not strictly PvP that's the problem, as well. I mean, I've had fun in competitive games before. Lots of it, in fact, though admittedly usually when I win With so many games going free, I've gotten my friends to try a whole bunch and my friends have gotten me to try some, and we tend to have a lot of fun... Sometimes. Other times, we both get pissed off and go play something else.

This kind of problem exists in cooperative games, as well. Sometimes you'll fire up a co-op game and you'll get a bunch of wonderful, fun people join you and you'll have a grand old time. Other times all it takes is one disruptive ******* joining you and being somehow resistent to kick-vote to ruin the entire experience, to the point where I've rage quit my own servers a few times. Which is pretty funny, because when the host quits a local server, the server dissolves Teach you to harass me! Ahem...

You can't control other people, especially when entire games or specific subsystems are designed to make you play with people you don't know. Sometimes it's great, other times it's horrible, and from time to time I just want to sit down and have some predictable, controlled fun by myself. Not every game lets me.

Indeed. That's what I do in City of Heroes

Especially F2P ones, yes. I know there's probably a good reason for it, but it's very unpleasant that almost universally, the ability to have friends and pick your teams is a Premium option. Free players are often restricted to randomly generated teams, often on randomly-selected tasks. If you want to specifically team with the people you want to play with - say if you want to get a friend of yours into the game - you gotta' pay.

Even Steam does that, by the way. You can make a free account and stuff it full of free titles, but that account can't have any Steam friends, meaning it's impossible to join your friends' games a lot of the time, especially on games that don't offer you a choice in who you play with and what task you play.

I actually kind of hope our developers will reconsider some of the harsher restrictions on Free player chat once Freedom goes Live. Not being able to chat with most people or form your own teams is a real downer.

It's not just PvP, though. I've had precisely the same experience on your average ITF. Sometimes I'll join a team made up of two-dimensional idiots, we'll spend half an hour forming and then scatter like cockroaches as soon as we hit a mission. I die because my team-mates abandoned me, it pisses me off, but I can't just rage-quit because I'll just be sinking the team even more. Inversely, most of the time when I get on an ITF, it's a team that's just looking to rush the thing, they skip fights, they fly up the hill ghost/stealth everything they can, steamroll spawns far ahead of me and so on. For most of such TFs, I can spend the entire run time with my hands in my pockets for all it would matter.

What I'm saying is that when they're good, other people can do a LOT to enhance the experience and make the game a lot more fun. When they aren't, they can ruin the entire game. Completely. And that's win or lose. In such situations where this happens to me in City of Heroes, I always have the option of quitting my team and running a few missions by myself, where everything goes right and everything is done my way. Not so much in other games, I'm finding.

I disagree. Without the fear of failure, the player is free to try whatever he likes. That's why I play video games in the first place - because I don't have to worry about screwing up.

Well, I still play this one.

Eh, so can I, but 10 minutes with IDDQD and IDKFA is better than 0 minutes without them. I honestly never liked that game. I don't think I made it past level 2. Ever.

Well... "Annoying" isn't always a challenge. Imagine fighting enemies that phase you for 30 seconds every time they die. It has a huge radius, doesn't need line of sight and is autohit and unresistable. That would be pretty damn annoying, but not exactly challenging. That's really what I'm saying.

To be honest, I don't find Glue Grenades to be very challenging at all, unless two Equalisers happen to stack them on me. As someone mentioned before, Ghost Flashbangs are FAAAR more debilitating. Most of the time I can turn on Sprint and beat the whole spawn into glue while treading Glue Grenade the entire time. That's not the issue. It's just... Irritating.

Take a Sapper, for instance. A Sapper is horribly dangerous for most characters, and yes that makes him annoying. But a Sapper is annoying because he can get me killed right fast if I don't know what I'm doing. That, I have to admit, is a challenge. But Equalisers are just god damned bats.

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To be honest, though, you're right in that I don't appreciate challenge all that much. As long as the game requires me to use all of my powers, that's more than enough in my book, even if no encounter in the game scares me or makes me curse at the screen. So long as I get to fight enemies that the plot and the story make out to be big threats, I'm perfectly happy to have an easy time defeating them.

I feel bad for Nuclear Toast who gave me his DVD edition code because he's cool like that

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Speaking of the 69 month veteran reward, have we spoken about a Leisure Suit Larry suit?

Though we have models, I'm pretty sure they don't have skeletons with any practical animations to them. And the models aren't very good.

Not gonna' happen. The PlayNC has never offered refunds and that's part of the agreement you make when you make a purchase. You can always reverse charges, I hear, but I also hear that gets you and your account seriously blacklisted. It doesn't matter how many people ask for a refund, it ain't happening, especially not this long after the fact.

Ignoring the fact that over half the real numbers are missing, wrong or incomplete, "numbers" don't help much unless you know what to do with them, or indeed what they mean. A friend of mine who used to play WoW complained to me about missing too much and asked if I could help him figure out why. I asked him what his accuracy was, and he told me something like 750 hit rating (I may remember the number wrong). I asked what that meant, and he just shrugged his shoulders. Is that a lot? Is it too little? What does it calculate against? What "anti hit rating" do various enemies have? What enemies is he fighting and what enemies is he likely to fight?

It is possible to predict the combat viability of a build ahead of time if you're Arcanaville. I'm not Arcanaville, and I can tell you for a fact that I find it amazingly difficult to do so, and I'm using about ten different sources of out-of-game information. Arcana likes to quote the SR passives and how few people can really get any real idea of how much the scaling resistances actually do, practically speaking. I know I have only a very basic clue of how I might try to calculate that, and my idea includes differential equations.

Beyond that, I've gone out of my way to design and build a spreadsheet specifically so that I could calculate the overall cost of a powerset combo, with slotting, with Stamina and other endurance aids and with Alpha Incarnate boosts. To do this took me a full day of work with Excel. To make the spreadsheet reusable took me another day, and quite a bit of specific knowledge about the programme.

If you're telling me that you can toss some numbers in a player's face and then hold him responsible if his build sucks, then I'm glad you're not in charge of power balance. This game has historically gone to great lengths to look after its players. I would be very much against throwing away many of those safeguards, even in the name of "freedom."

Precisely. Generally speaking, I don't give a bag of rats whether the target I'm fighting is an elite boss, an archvillan or a giant monster. So long as I can beat it and it's more than a boss, that's all I ask for. If I could take on all the big bads as elite bosses, you can bet your peg leg I'd rush out to do just that, and have a grand old time of it. Because what I care about is not the colour of their name, but who they are, what they look like, what the game's existing plot says about them and what's actually in their description box. I feel much more accomplished fighting a bigass winged fire-breathing demon even if it's just a lieutenant than I do beating a bunch of +4 Malta soldiers who are completely out of place in the story they show up in.

I really don't see fighting Lord Recluse as fighting a meta-game construct of power balance. I see it as fighting Lord Recluse in a fight I can win. Not asking for anything more than that.

So, essentially, if I want a path in which I can gain Incarnate progress AND have fun, I'm sadly out of luck? That seems to be a running theme here. Call me cynical if you want, but if the Trials are so horribly grindy that making a solo path that doesn't bore me to tears or isn't impossibly difficult is unfair to them, then shouldn't this mean something's wrong with the Trials, rather than the solo path?

I'm serious when I ask this question, by the way. Every time I suggest anything in regard to Incarnate content, people usually give me a requirement that "It must suck at least this---> much to exist." Why?

You doubt this would be overpowered for a reason - because such a setup would be hideously gimped. Controller hit points in melee with practically anything is never a good idea, considering a lot of things can pretty much one-shot a Controller. Yes, I'm sure some people have built and can play Controllers who are constantly in melee. Some people solo multipe Archvillans, Rikti Pylons and the ITF. "Some people" are scarce exceptions to the general population of people who don't do much math and don't plan all that far ahead.

If I've made it seem like I mind a "points buy" system because of its potential to create overpowered characters, that's really not my concern. My chances of making overpower characters for myself decreases dramatically as the complexity of the system increases. On the contrary, I hate these systems because there's no safety net against gimping yourself. And, no, it's not always obvious you're going to be gimped right at the start. Sometimes you have to go through 30 levels until you realise that no matter what you do, that character ain't gonna' work.

In the spirit of what about, what about Travel Power Man, the character whose only powers are travel powers and their prerequisites. He can run fast, jump high, fly, teleport and grant these powers to others... But he cannot attack or affect enemies any any way, shape or form. Complete freedom would suggest such a character should be respected along with all the others, but such a character would be garbage in actual practice. The class system we have now, even if it doesn't force me to stick to my powersets, at least gives me a clear framework in regards to what I should very seriously consider taking. If I don't at that point, then OK, that's my own fault, but how do I even know what I'm supposed to get in a purely open system?

You may say that, well... The point of a points buy system is to explore the options and if you gimp yourself then that's just part of the experience. Except if I've ever talked about how much I HATE HATE HATE Diablo II, it's because I gimped a few characters in it, played with them horribly underpowered, died all the time and got so pissed off that I've held a grudge against that game for... How many years has it been since it came out now? Like... 8? 9? And I'm still pissed off! Allowing people to unwittingly gimp themselves because your system values freedom before playability is not a good idea in my book.

Obviously, I'm not saying some characters should never exist. Obviously, I want my Swords/Pistols combo. But what I AM saying is that I want every character I make to be good enough to not suck, even if I don't necessarily know precisely what I'm doing every step of the way. And my standard for "not suck" is pretty dang high.

If I recall correctly, they all but confirmed new Epics at some point, possibly with Freedom but I can't be sure. Granted, those will probably be things like Electric for Scrappers (as opposed to bows for Scrappers), but it's better than nothing. Now we just need to make Epics customizable.

I did actually hear something about the development team considering making new pool powers, but I doubt that'll happen any time soon. For some reason, pool powers have been almost completely unchanged since the GDN.

Because I don't say those enough all the time? Yes, it's obviously my opinion. To avoid doubling the size of my post, I'll avoid appending "in my opinion" to the beginning and end of every sentence, but do feel free to read those in there anyway. It's all opinions here anyway.

That's because the game as a whole wasn't much fun at all. The only reason it was fun with cheats is that at least I didn't have to work hard at it, but the hideous maze-like levels, the repetitive enemies and the lack of any goal whatsoever (and the fact that it made me sick to my stomach with vertigo) were a major turnoff for me even then, and it's only gotten worse since. I've never understood the appeal of "spiritual successors" like Serious Sam (oh, irony) or PainKiller, despite Yahtzee apparently liking both. In games like these, I'd pretty much cheat so I could see all weapons, see the first few levels and go back to playing something that isn't such a drag.

And before you tell me it's just a sign of the times that games didn't have plots and settings and points back then, consider this: Doom II came out in 1994. In 1995, Flight of the Amazon Queen came out, and though it didn't have a stellar plot, it had A plot. In the same year as doom came out Blackthorne, and while that game didn't have too much of a plot, it still had one. In the actual game through text boxes and "cinematics," as opposed to on the manual that no-one ever read because everyone just had the shareware copy. Hell, Commander Keen had a plot compared to this, and it didn't give me vertigo nearly as much.

My point in all of this is to say that if a game ain't "much fun" without cheats, then that's a failing of the game, not a failing of the cheats.

I don't see why that's even relevant here, though. It's not a question of what I feel the developers will or will not sell, but rather a question of what I feel they SHOULD and SHOULD NOT sell. It's a statement of opinion from one player to another. If a developer (or, much more likely, a community rep...) reads this and goes "By golly! We shan't sell powers!" then so be it. If a developer looks at this and thinks "Well, then are you gonna' be pissed when you see the store..." then too bad for me. I'm not trying to force the development team's hand. None of us could. About the only thing I can do is state my position as firmly as possible.

No. To this day, I have rerolled:

*One level 50 MA/Inv/Weapons Scrapper into a currently level 50 SS/Inv/Energy Brute

*One level 50 AR/Dev/Munitions Blaster into a currently level 28-ish Bots/Traps Mastermind.

*One level 50 Fire/Fire/Flame Blaster into a currently level 36 Fire/Fire Scrapper.

*One level 50 Energy/Energy/Foce Blaster into a currently level 38 Energy/Will Brute.

I don't for a second believe it's "stupid" to reroll a level 50 character. If you got said character to 50, there's a high chance you enjoy the look, name, concept or all of the above. Rerolling that into something you enjoy playing is - in my eyes at least - superior to keeping a level 50 you don't really use just so you have more notches on your belt or whatever. At one point, I had something like 12 level 50 characters. I have rather fewer now, but I'm having more fun just the same.

About as many years as it's going to take for people to understand that it is, I guess, if we're sticking to your flawless argument strategy.

So do Psi Blast and Ice Blast, yet you'll never see anyone complain about Blasters with them. Hell, I haven't seen anyone complain about Rain of Fire or Freezing Rain in years.

That's debatable.

Only ever played that game on God Mode with the All Weapons cheat. Doom is and always has been a HORRIBLE game. At least not getting killed or running out of ammo was its one saving grace in my eyes.

"Balance by annoyance" aside, I don't think any of us are asking for Glue Grenades to be removed from the game, or "nerfed." I'm merely asking that the developers make a decision on what they want the power to be. Is it a patch or a target AoE? If it's a patch, then end the debuff when I leave the patch. If it's a target AoE, then get rid of the patch. One or the other. Both is just... Ugly.

There used to be. Then it got bugged and no-one has been arsed to fix it in the three years since that happened.

Ways to make enhancement shopping easier without modding the game:

1. Learn the enhancement colours. Red is for damage, teal is for endurance reduction, green is for healing, yellow is for accuracy and so on. It's a pain in the ***, of course, but it's not impossible. Off-hand, for instance, intangibility is a sort of light, orange-gold colour while slow is a dark petrol blue. It helps.

2. Learn the enhancement order. Not necessarily down to the last enhancement, but knowing where to search for an enhancement makes things SO much easier. Accuracys, damage, endurance, healing and defence buff/debuff are at the start, to-hit buff/debuff, taunt and run are right at the end, while slows, stus, intangibility duration and such are towards the middle.

3. Find a way to right-click on enhancements and check their stats that way. It's slow, cumbersome and uncomfortable, but it's a sure-fire way to find them.

*edit*
All of that said, I'm just about ready to drop the fancy names and eccentric pictures for DOs and SOs and just call them what they are. Keep their custom descriptions, of course, but stick to names that are easier to read.

That's actually one of the strongest arguments against such a system - what's the point? I'm sure everyone has the one or two things they'd like to make which the current system really can't, like Gun Fu, all elements, tank-mage and so forth, but what we have right now is... Surprisingly versatile. If you need multiple themes, you have a choice primary, secondary and epic, plus now Incarnate powers. It's not PERFECT, granted, but an Energy/Fire/Ice Blaster with a Dark Judgement and... I don't even know what the rest of the powers are... That's a pretty broad range of powers.

In my experience, almost all of the concepts people are after that seem to fall in-between ATs and powersets right now can be achieved trough the addition of new epics, patron pools, power pools and weapon/costume options. If I want, for instance, a character who uses a sword and a pair of handguns ala Dante, this can be achieved via adding a pistols epic to Scrappers/Brutes/Stalkers or a sword epic to Blasters/Defenders/Corrupters. If I want a character who uses elemental weapons, then we can add elemental weapons to the existing weapons sets. In fact, a fire sword and an ice sword for Dual Blades is already more expansive than most concepts out there.

As far as I'm concerned, free-form character building is all too often just too complicated, cumbersome and prone to making me gimp myself if I'm not Arcanaville, and it very rarely gives me anything too interesting that a class-based system like City of Heroes couldn't.

It's not really a case of what other people have that I don't. I have almost all the Veteran Reward powers and every Booster Power ever released, just about. I have these powers, so it isn't really a case of me wanting something I don't have. It's the mentality and politics behind these powers that bothers me. Right now, the people who have these powers just kind of have them, they're veteran rewards. But if these start being sold for real money... That becomes a problem.

I really hate "no-brainer" solutions for real money. Anything I can buy that gives me an advantage with no downside is problematic. Why? Because every time I run a mission without it and run into a serious problem of performance, I think: "Why am I torturing myself? Why not just BUY my way out of this situation?" Why? Because paying my way out of a hard spot is BAD GAMING.

I'll give you another example: You sit down to play an old-style point-and-click adventure. You meet a situation of bizarre logic, you spend a day wondering what to do, and finally figure out that you just had to arrange the soup cans on the floor. Doh! Of course! Then the next day a friend of yours comes over and leaves you a printed walkthrough of the entire game. You play some more, and reach another weird, bizarre puzzle you just don't know how to solve. It looks like it'll take you another day to solve, and it might be very hard to do. All of a sudden that walkthrough on the table looks oh so attractive. Do you resist using it and keep beating your head against a wall or do you check it "just this once?" Because try as I might not to, I usually check the walkthrough when the game pisses me off enough. But "just this once" is never just this once. Before long, every time I meet a puzzle I can't solve immediately, I go back to the walkthrough and simply read how to solve it.

Games should not allow us to cheat because even just having the ability to do so is a bane on the gaming experience. Even if I had the divine self-control and never resorted to using these advantages (and I don't use vet powers almost at all), I'm still going to feel like a complete idiot when I reach a point for which these advantages are PERFECT but I choose not to use them. An enemy runs away from me with a sliver of health, but my powersets have no ranged attacks. And so I sit and watch him run away into another spawn, unable to chase him, cursing the running AI and cursing the decision I made to not use the Nemesis Staff. Or, I whip out the Staff and end the problem right there.

"Pay to win" is, ironically enough, a no-win situation. If you pay to win, you ruin the game, if you don't pay to win, you feel like a sucker. For this reason, I do not want the opportunity to even exist. Sure, it might earn the company some extra cash, but it will also earn them at least one customer lost forever - me.