Samuel_Tow

Unless you have a quote to confirm that, I can tell you that we already have precedent for costume items being animated to respond to power activation sequences. That's how custom weapons work. If they can be triggered to appear and disappear based on what power is being activated, there's no real reason why holsters can't be triggered to stock or empty based on precisely the inverse triggers.

If the Wikipedia article on this acronym is anything to go by, those look like games (or "games") that lack any graphics. Not really what I'm after.

I disagree. In fact, let's go by examples:

Not necessarilty. Even ignoring the fail that is Mirror's Edge, I can point you to quite a few first-person games that don't play like classic shooters - like Portal. But I have one even better. Consider how different games like the ooold Doom clones that keep being released to this day as Serious Sam, Painkiller and so forth are to the army of cover-based shooting military style FPS games that Call of Duty made popular.

Yes, they have similar controls, in that you push buttons on the keyboard and things happen on-screen, but that's a very broad definition of similarity. How these games are different is much more profound than how they are similar. I'm talking about regenerating health vs. a health bar, bunny-hopping vs. cover-based shooting, currency-based item purchases vs. picking up dropped weapons, "only two weapons" vs. unlimited arsenal, single-player focus vs. multiplayer-game, deathmatch focus vs. organised team warfare, the list goes on. Left 4 Dead 2 doesn't play like Battlefield 2, and I didn't get Bulletstorm because I liked Sniper Elite. Every shooter is not like every other shooter to nearly the same extent as MMOs are, even if the bane of regenerating health DOES go a long way towards that end.

I spent my youth playing fighting games, and I can tell you for a fact that this couldn't be farther from the truth. Fighting games are only "alike" as far as the basic model goes - i.e. one fighter fighting one other fight. But even that's not true any more, with tag-in fighting games, two-on-one fighting modes and so forth. You could cite the faux 2D playing field, but that's not necessarily true, especially with the massive proliferation of 3D arena fighters such as Virtua Fighter. Not every game has punch and kick buttons, such as Samurai Shodown, which has slash buttons.

In fact, when you get down to it, a fighting game is made by its combat system, and combat systems in fighting games are more varied than almost any other genre. Capcom's VS series and their six-button system seem to be some of the most popular, but SNK's four-button legacy lives on even if the company itself doesn't. Mortal Kombat's own brand of fighting continues to evolve while Tekken and Tobol and the like are still being made, while Street Fighter style games remain unlike all of the above. And even if you memories all of the above, I can still sit you down to something like Rise 2: Resurrection and you won't have any idea what to do, because it's not like any of those other games.

That's far, far, FAR too broad a definition to be meaningful. It's like saying that all games are alike because you push buttons, things happen on the screen and you eventually achieve an objective. Sure, it might leave out "games" like Second Life, but practically any game that's built as a game will fit that description. "You control your character to complete certain objectives" describes over half the games ever made.

I disagree, as that has never been my experience. Whenever I ask people what games they like, they give me a list of the games they've played and enjoyed and finish with "like those." Sure, I've met a lot of people who DISLIKED specific genres over the broader characteristics that describe them, but I've never met people who LIKED specific genres because those characteristics are too broad to like something by.

I can, for instance, say without a doubt that I don't like consoles in general as I lack the TV set to run them and don't enjoy playing games on a TV to begin with, but I can't say that I like "computer games" merely because I have a powerful computer and a comfortable setup. It's more a question of "will try" vs. "won't try" as opposed to "will like" vs. "won't like." When people bring up game genres, it's usually in respect to what games they're willing to give a chance to, not what games they're going to like.

However, I can tell you without a doubt that, barring a few exceptions, people aren't going to stand for paying money to buy the same game over and over again. That's why sequels to games are seen with such bile when they get into 4 or 5 or above, unless they offer something new. Sure, football and rugby games might somehow subsist on selling the same game to people over and over again every year, but these get bought as much for the roster as for the actual game. MMOs don't have that kind of luxury, as while people will indeed buy a game because it has Superman or Arthas in it, whether they stick with the game depends on what the game has to offer.

Again, I say all this because I'm not at all happy with contemporary MMO conventions. I want something else. I want choice. Right now, I have no choice, because City of Heroes is the only MMO out there that I'm aware of which is sufficiently different to at least CALL things something else. Right now, it's either City of Heroes or "everything else." As such, this game has no meaningful competition and I as a customer have no real choice in which game to play. Because this one is, quite frankly, the only MMO I've ever tried which doesn't suck.

Right now, if you're like me and you don't like the current MMO framework, you're SOL. That's all there is. Every game out there is about items, raids, stats, loot, dungeons and so forth, and every game which didn't start out that way gets those things after the fact. And if I'm looking for a game which specifically LACKS some of these aspects and has other aspects besides, then such a game doesn't exist, because every MMO that comes out, no matter how current, comes out looking very much the same as all the others, down to the interface, structure and even component names.

I get what you mean, actually. Whenever this comes up, I like to refer to Psychonauts' Lungfishopolis. You could potentially have a miniature map where players have debuffed movement speed and almost no jumping ability.

I think you described Jane Temblor's "Rumble" power, at least partially. And I actually agree with this. That would work both for an Earth-themed character as well as for a traditionally super strong one.

Dancing swords are kind of an interesting idea to make a sword-based one, too

You're not alone. I'm not sure the people who made Blaster Mastery sets completely understood what they were doing, beyond "We have these powers left over, let's use 'em." If you ask 10 Blaster players what the secondaries are supposed to do, you have a good chance of getting 10 different answers.

As for powersets, have you considered using an electric PRIMARY? I say this only because then you can have Bob the Voltaic Sentinel, which is a more eccentric and therefore more magical-looking power. It's also all energy, so you can more easily sell the set as a variety of magical attacks.

On the flip side, it's not quite as good as Fire Blast, but it's your call.

Just to illustrate, I give you dord

It's a bit disappointing to me that you call it an Auction House when it actually isn't, though, that's kind of my point. What we have in City of Heroes is closer to a consignment house, and it's called that in-game and in-fiction. The only reason you see people say "Auction House" is because World of Warcraft has an Auction House.

More generally, I'm aware that games tend to be built with familiarity in mind, but it seems to me that these days we're starting to see a little TOO much familiarity. To stray away from MMOs for a second, look at what's become of FPS games - almost all of them have been reduced to slower-paced cover-based shooters based on vaguely military motiffs, be those WW2, present-day or futuristic militaries. Painkiller was... Interesting if more than a bit dumb, but it's rare to see anything too different from the trend-setters.

My problem with this approach to game design, especially when it comes to MMOs is that I have no alternative because of it. A lot of people have told me that I clearly don't like City of Heroes and should instead go play something else, but play what? Every MMO I try is exactly like every other MMO I've always tried save for the graphics. There are differences, yes, but it's generally the same experience built on the same model. If anything, City of Heroes still remains the most un-MMO MMO out there and is still one of the more diverse and different ones on the market. This game quite literally has no competition, because right now, it's City of Heroes or "everything else," and I happen to not like that one specific game model that everything else uses.

The reason I find this surprising is because I honestly though that the MMOs I was trying were simply following a similar trend in design, but what I'm just now realising is that it's not just those few... ALL MMOs seem to follow just that one specific trend in design. And I'm sure it's good enough to supply one MMO, two, maybe three. But how many do we have now? Dozens? Hundreds? They have to be, with all the F2P clone games. I fear for MMOs in general, because if this keeps going on, there simply won't be any more room for new players in what are ostensibly next-gen graphic old games. And I do fear that the player base will crash sooner or later if nothing changes on that model.

My problem with MMOs being designed for MMO players is that this allows for no or very little innovation. People expect certain game aspects because developers keep making them and developers keep making certain game aspects because players expect them. It's a vicious circle that keeps MMOs from evolving and expanding what they can be. Not only is it very hard for an MMO to exist if it isn't an exact copy of the norm, but even if one survives launch, it slowly grows closer and closer to the norm as time goes on, defeating the point.

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Let me put it this way - I don't have a problem with MMOs trying to emulate the old EQ and before model. There ought to be something for everybody. But I want SOMETHING ELSE, as well. I want a different experience, I want to see MMO developers engaged in actual competition, providing different and diverse services. I don't know what it's going to take, probably something very successful and very different. But if it keeps going like this, then there really is no point in even looking at any up-and-coming MMO, because I'm already playing that game now, only with different graphics.

I challenge that assertion as inherently biassed and one-sided. I can't recall the last time I've run into a name in use, and I've made quite a few characters recently. Granted, none of them had "obvious" names, by which I mean Something Person. There's nothing inherently wrong with these names, they're just obvious and so much more likely to be taken and I, personally, happen to dislike them for aesthetic reasons.

Recently, I've snagged names like "Sphyra," (an apparent misspelling of Final Fantasy X's "Spira" because I've never seen it written), Lurian (the name of the space station from Advent Rising) and Tenebrious (an alternate but valid spelling of "tenebrous") and "Blige," a personal name, which I'm reconsidering swapping for the "made up" name "Elaniel" which appears in the character's story. That's not to say those are GOOD names, but it is to say that most of those were my first choices for names and they went on the first try.

I have additionally tried to make a ripoff of Darksiders' War, but "War" is obviously taken and "God of War" would be even more obviously snagged. I tried Strife, but that's taken and a Marvel character, to boot. I tried Conflict, that was taken. I tried a few more, I forget what they are, and finally settled on "Attack," which was free on Victory, though if it still is I cannot say. The character's necessary powerset combo didn't exist within the same AT, so I deleted him when I ran out of room. If I do resurrect him, he'll be named something else, as I don't want to rip off other people's intellectual work.

It's even more funny that he asks to see your papers on your way out.

NPCs that speak out to you need to be used VERY sparingly, because they're horribly annoying, and get old really fast. On the other hand, though, they do make for some interesting comedy when they point out names of players I'd never have noticed since I don't play attention. "Hey, Walks Like a Duck! I need to tell you about Recluse's Victory!"

A player costume constitutes a 7-10 KB data chunk, and a player's custom powers constitute another 10-15 KB data chunk. You can check the size of those files when you save your costumes and custom powers. The net result is that when you swap costumes, the server is sending anything between 17 to 25 KB of data to every player in range. Do it within the presence of 50 people, like on your average Hamidon raid and you're looking at making the server upload over a megabyte of data on top of whatever else it's handling at the moment. Have ten people swap at the same time in a high-density environment and you can force the server to upload 10-15 MB on the spot.

Notice I never mentioned anything about the actual timer. If you get many people to swap costumes within the presence of many others, you'll choke the server's upload, and that is a fact. A 10-hour timer on costume changes won't change that. The 30-second timer is in place to prevent a single player from doing so by binding his costume swaps to a key and spamming that very fast. With 100 ms of ping, which should be about average for US players, a player should be able to swap costumes 10 times per second absent any timer, which is constitutes a significant load. However, drop that person down to a timer as short as one second, and you're limiting him to a bandwidth load of a bout 25KB/s, which isn't all that much to speak of. Yes, you can still get lots of people to spam it, but you can't really change that with a timer anyway.

If a timer HAS to exist, then have it activate only when costume changes are threatening to overload the server's bandwidth. For instance, have swapping a costume from one player suppress other people from swapping costumes for the next 5 seconds and introduce a scaling timer that lengthens the more you swap costumes within a small amount of time. There are solutions for this that aren't as annoying.

I knew about that pic and wanted to bring it up, but I wasn't sure if you were the one who posted it last time. Based on that face, I should have known