Samuel_Tow

I mean level shifts in general, including the one on the Alpha slot. Right now, it's in "you must be this awesome to ride" territory. I'm not opposed to HAVING such territory in the game, as we did even beforehand, but I'd like the level shift to come before that.

This is pretty much what it comes down to, for me, though I'd call it "face time" more than anything else. It's probably selfish of me to say this, but I play this game for the characters I make, and I want to see them shine in their own right. On a smaller team, this can happen because I may be the only one providing a certain function. Like that TF I ran a while back where I was both the only "tank" and the only "source of damage" on the team, playing a pretty chunky Brute at the time, on a team that was mostly Controllers, Defenders and AFK/lost. I'm not sure I wasn't feeling all self-important at someone else's expense, however.

My point here is that it comes down to Spoony's take on RPG protagonists - "Because I'm the hero! This is my story!" - as he goes through other people's stuff looking for potions. And you can't really get that from grunt warfare, at least not with other people who deserve as much face time as you. Call of Duty games, at least the WW2 ones, always managed to take a faceless war scenario and make YOU the protagonist de-facto in them anyway, but those were single player.

Generally speaking, people on smaller teams have a much easier time feeling like, if not THE star, then at least A star, because their role isn't redundant. IF you're the damage dealer, you are THE damage dealer, not damage dealer #17. Big crossover events never worked for me.

And, to me, is the hallmark of a bad story. And I say "bad" because it's the kind of storytelling that might work in a "hero with no name" RPG like Diablo or Dungeon Siege, where you're either a wanderer or just one more peasant with a sword. In these games, yeah, you can slap a hundred people together because characters are basically interchangeable moulds over which to hang your gear. Not so in City of Heroes. Well, at least it wasn't always so. This is one of the few games where NPCs actually address us by name, have you noticed? This is one of the few games where we're asked to create a backstory and a pretty final look right out the gate. Here, we're expected to have a backstory, and who we are matters.

So it's more than a little disheartening to be tossed into the grinder like we are, reduced from a person with a personality and a backstory, into one more warm body in the trenches. There's a reason I stay away from war stories.

I walked right into that one, didn't I?

I actually do have more than one friend in real life, but I've never felt the need to count them, and more than anything else, I've never felt the need to look for friends out of pragmatism. Like, "I want to go to bars, so let's make a new friend who goes to bars."

Just a quick note, bAss - you're turning into Golden Girl with the propensity of comments like this. My quote in your sig is in reference to the irony of your avatar. Please don't make it any more true than it has to be.

And, I have to repeat the line that gets me stomped on the face every time I run it, but I feel I have to run it again:

I'm happy that you had fun running those trials. I have relatively first-hand knowledge of how much you enjoyed running the I19 Incarnate stuff, so I wouldn't dream of questioning you on this point. But you have to understand that not everyone likes these trials as much, so when people come off the position that "I've run a bunch of iTrials. Now what?" they aren't pulling that out of thin air.

What I'm saying is that when people really, really like something, it's much easier for them to ignore or justify its shortcomings. So for those who like repeating end-game raids, I imagine Incarnates are heaven. But sooner or later, we have to accept that this is not universally true or everybody, or indeed even most everybody. Participation in those trials cannot and should not be viewed as unanimous approval of their design for the same reasons posted in this threads - some people do them for the loot, not the love.

It is what it is NOW, but I want to think toward the future, and I hope the future brings us more types of entry points to the system. Eating your cake and having it too is kind of the selling points of games as escapism, after all.

While I know what the definition of cyborg is, I tend to see one as a cyborg only when it includes parts of existing creatures, such that creatures have been "upgraded" into robotic organisms. Just a robot with organic parts is far too loose of an interpretation. I mean, plastic is an organic compound, after all.

I'd look for the spirit of a robot, rather than the definition, myself.

Tough question. Let's see if I can split those down to expectations:

Unlock: Easy, for whatever definition of "easy" you want to use. I use "Mender Ramiel," personally.

T1: Couple of days, if I put my mind to it. If I have to break it down to hours, "when I put my mind to it" means about a full work day, so give or take 15-20 hours.

T2: About as much as T1, plus a few hours on top for good measure.

T3: About a week on the outside, 'bout five days on the inside. Give or take.

T4: Out of my reach, and I can live with it.

Level Shift: I'd put that on the T2 power, myself. T1 is sort of "I have SOMETHING slotted in there," but T2 should definitely be "I have something GOOD slotted in there." T3 is already the "Sweet! Look what I got slotted!" and T4 should be the "I can't believe it's not yoghurt!" power. Gating the level shift behind the T3 power is... Not something I appreciate, as it shifts it from "expected" to "elite" content.

"Level shift tier," no, because the level shift tier is T3, and that I consider to be above and beyond. Getting the level shift itself, however, IS something I consider at least the equivalent of gaining another level. Swapping that to the T2 power would fix that and shut me up right fast.

As a general concept? No, not in the slightest. This has been true since time began. I typically take a day, sometimes two on a level from 35 up, yet a single 90-minute ITF can give me two levels and then some. And I have no problem with that. When I want to play at my own pace, I solo. When I want the fast road, I hitch a ride with a team forming up.

It's a question of how much this incentive is, and how much it's incentive for one approach vs. disincentive for another approach. I don't want to get into specifics here since I'll get crucified again, but suffice it to say that I feel there's room for improvement.

My interpretation of repeated content is, sadly, unrealistic given the realities of game design. Not needing to repeat the same task more than once isn't going to happen for Incarnates any time soon, unfortunately. Not if the developers keep investing so much in overly-intricate content at the expense of volume.

What would I consider reasonable, though? I don't know. A bunch of story arcs, I'd say. Say, something on the order of the Faultline storyline, and I mean cumulatively between Jim, Penny, the Doc and Agent Six. That's a total of, what? 20 missions? More like 15, actually. Or replaying something on the order of World Wide Red. Just a body of content that's long enough for me to not distinctly remember the beginning by the time I reach the end.

That's why I've been campaigning for Incarnate story arcs, and why I haven't made too much of a huff about how high-quality they are. It's been my impression that the less the developers try to wow us, the more interesting the stories they end up with. Faultline is a good example, as is the Rikti War Zone storyline. Sure, all of those are replete with gimmicks, but at their core, they're basic missions with a fairly simple, yet solid structure. I don't feel a pressing need for surprise timers that turn into secondary objectives which spawn waves of ambushes which turn into a cutscene which leads to a set-piece battle. These are good as keystones atop more normal stories against which to shine. We don't need story arcs entirely made up of gimmicks.

As such, my ideal would be for simpler missions to capped with a gimmick mission to form a wider selection of Incarnate story arcs, even if they take me days upon days to complete. As a point of fact, I would even accept something on the intellectual level of To Save a Thousand Worlds, if it meant a larger volume of content.

I'm not sure if "satisfied" is the right word, but it will shut me up, that much I can promise you. I dislike a great many things about a great many things, but I only ever bring up the ones that piss me off. While just better drop tables and faster progress would be enough to actually get me moving along, it's not what I'd ideally want.

Ideally, I'd like the former, but I'm not quite as deluded as I may seem, so I know this is not doable without a serious change in strategy, which at this point seems unlikely. Put it this way - I would like for there to be enough content to do with Incarnates so as to get at least one character to at least his Common powers without repeating any of it. Pie in the sky scenario.

More realistically, yes, I do believe the developers should bother with at least one story arc, but I'd want that to be one story arc per slot, not just per Issue. One arc to unlock one slot, just like we have one arc to unlock the Alpha slot. Between four different arcs, if they are of sufficient length or with sufficient padding, I could see myself tolerating the grind enough to not complain about it for quite some time.

I generally don't like missions that can be failed, but if the only option is between failable and "You cannot progress so you will NEVER finish!" then I pick failable, with progress on fail. This should still be balanced in some way to make people want to succeed, not just fail, reset, farm.

However, I do not know how to balance such content. I've always been notoriously bad at anticipating different AT's strengths and weaknesses, especially since I haven't played a fair few of them in years. This is one question I cannot answer.

Yeah, that's more or less I intend to do. I have too many problems with the whole system right now, so instead of embittering myself for nothing, I'll let the system develop and see what comes of it. Maybe sooner or later something will pop in that will blow my mind. Everything is possible.

I concede that you have a point in regard to team encounters, though for the most part my experience is a bit different. I tend to play my Blasters at full tilt on teams, largely because I get so fed up of having to withhold half my powers when solo, and I've very rarely had that problem. Granted, on very high difficulty settings, that might become problematic, but the worst aggro I've seen Fireball or Fire Breath (or Fire Sword Circle or Combustion) draw has been a straggler or two. And that's not just on eight-man teams. Even on smaller teams, I rarely get more enemies than I can comfortably handle.

I have to disagree on using nukes as a last resort, however, and not because I haven't done it - I have - but mostly because it doesn't work. What I mean is, by the time I'm low on health, the spawn that's about to kill me has usually scattered quite a bit, or is otherwise out of range. My chances of catching them all with a nuke are minimal, so nuke or no nuke, I go down, at which point I consider nuking to have been a failure.

My beef with nukes and snipes and a few others is that all the drawbacks take at least my fun out of them when I have to think "I want to use this power... But I really shouldn't." It may be the smart thing to do, but if smart means not using my powers...

Hmm... OK, you have a point there, I concede. I'll need some time to decide if I CAN argue against this, if I'll just need to hand you this one.

Viewing Incarnate powers as pools is not a bad idea. I suppose I saw them more as epics, myself. But they seem a bit... Specific for pool surrogates, though. Pools are mostly "just" powers that don't come with elements.

A lot of those aren't equal trades, however. For instance, when Brutes got Fiery Melee, they traded Combustion for Cremate, for reasons I don't remember any more. And even when sets are identical, AT mods and their other powers aren't always.

And even then, we have ATs which are, to some extent, equivalent of each other, and so they share powers, but nevertheless we have ATs which are very different from each other and they get completely different powers, instead.

I don't like cross-class Incarnate powers any more than I like Champions Online's "open archetype" character creation system. While I'm unhappy with the restrictions posed by an AT more often than not, I still believe that a game designer is better at creating diverse and balanced classes than players are, when given the freedom to do so. If that meant my Scrappers would get a very strong single-target attack instead of an AoE from Judgement, then I would accept that.

That, in point of fact, is all I've ever claimed to say - an alternate path to Incarnate... Err... Incarnatitits without having to go through huge raids, and simultaneously one which doesn't take multiple years to achieve on one character.

I can play the game AND post on the forums. Sometimes simultaneously.

Come now, people, I make these posts for a reason. Read them carefully. I chose my wording intentionally, after all.

I've argued "against the existence of" PvP and loot, which is to say at a time before they existed. I'm not dumb enough to think that anything I say could yank PvP out of the game, sorry as it may be these days, and I didn't think so back in 2005. However, with PvP, I did end up getting what I wanted - PvP far away from those who didn't like it, where I don't have to see it or participate in it unless I chose to do so intentionally, and with the only reason being that I want to PvP. Which I have, believe it or not. Anti-Catwhoorg (I could never spell his name...) hosted PvP events that I got invited to, after all. Didn't do much to change my mind on the matter.

Thus, when people suggested end game, I was starkly against it, because I knew what it would mean for the game, and in hindsight, I was right. Now, people like Friggin Taser like to use the "So you're saying something you're not actually saying, right?" approach to argument composition, but I never actually argued for the REMOVAL of the Incarnate system, for the demise of the game or any of the hogwash they put in my mouth. I've merely argued for an alternate path to advancement which wasn't insultingly penalising, but apparently that makes me anti-social, so eh...

Suffice it to say that I'd be an idiot to argue for the removal of anything, as nothing in the history of the game has ever been removed. Not even the 5th Column. I will, however, keep arguing for additions to the game which expand path to acquisition.

I doubt you're stupid enough to believe what you're saying, so I must therefore conclude that you're making things up as you go along. I don't recall asking for an entire MMO to be designed around my desires, but of course, I'm stupid so it's likely I asked and simply forgot. It ain't easy being green, you know. But I'll tell you what - the moment I remember asking for what I clearly didn't ask for, I'll let you know so you can insult my intelligence without having to fabricate false stories.

So, "so be it" would be a person accepting the fact that he will be vilified by malicious posters like you and deciding to embrace it. You've gone out of your way to paint me as the bad guy, and - uncharacteristically for such a selfish, egoistical person as myself, I'm going to oblige and give you a bad guy. I know you feel unrepentant glee in smacking down dissenters with the game. After all, there was a reason you've been banned once already. It's a small miracle I haven't been banned yet, what with me being unlikable.

In fact, if you will allow me to appropriate a GLaDOS quote:

"All your other friends couldn't come either, because you don't have any other friends. Because of how unlikeable you are. It says so here in your personnel file: unlikeable. Liked by no one. A bitter, unlikeable loner whose passing shall not be mourned. "Shall not be mourned." That's exactly what it says. Very formal. Very official."

Ah, I feel right at home.

Yes, this one I have not heard in a while. "Catering to your wishes is bad for the game." This used to bug me so much, you know. I mean... Who are these people, so self-important that they would cast me out of MY game? But I'm starting to take a liking to it. I have consistently managed to be the guy whose every wish and desire is bad for the game. This has to be some sort of status symbol. After all, who else can claim to be the anti-Christ of game design like I can? You're probably the third person to say this to me, and now I'm sorry I didn't keep track.

Of course. I want to ruin everybody's fun. It's what I live for. Don't let my other posts fool you, I never play this game. I spend my entire time thinking up new ways to make the game worse. It's the little things that make me happy, really, like Evil Geko sending me a horrified PM way back when, appalled that I could dislike the Market.

Never you mind I didn't actually say either of the things you claim I said, but why ruin a good lie when it makes for a good story, right? After all, if you kept to the truth without fabricating your usual nonsense, you couldn't paint me as half the pariah that you do now, and who wants that? We don't come to the forums for entertainment... Well, no we, do. We come to humiliate each other in public, and in so doing entertain ourselves, don't we?

Ah, it's so refreshing for someone to finally read my mind and figure out what I was thinking. And I didn't even have to say it. In fact, I'm pretty sure I never said what you suggest I said, but that hasn't stopped you from putting words in my mouth before, so why stop now that you're on a roll?

I do appreciate the hypocritical "this is beneath you" comment, though, especially coming from someone who's scraping the bottom of the barrel of lies, personal insults and fabricated arguments, but that's what I like about you, Taser. No low is too low for you. You used to be the guy who'd make a complete *** of himslef to put down those trolls and I always wished I could be like you, but my good sense kept holding me back. Good thing I no longer have any good sense, though.

Because you and people like you have finally succeeded and turned the whole of the forums into one giant big joke. So, yeah, I figure why keep trying to save face when I'll just get insulted to my face anyway? Why keep trying to make reasonable arguments when people like you will skip them and put their own words in my mouth anyway? Why NOT have some fun of this big giant joke that you've cooked up? We come to the forums for entertainment, do we not? I might as well entertain myself.

Sure, once upon a time I might have entertained myself with intelligent discussion, but phht! Who cares about that when we can sling poo at each other, right? That's what you used to be good at. And, silly me, I honestly thought you'd changed, that you'd become a reasonable, level-headed person. I'm glad to see I was wrong. Now all we need is Excession and we can get the party started. I brought the gasoline!

The one who had already run every mission in the game prior to I19? Just sayin'.

Powers already have drawbacks and tradeofs. They have costs, they have recharge times, they need slotting. That is more than enough. And, yes, I find the crashes on T9 "god mode" powers just as annoying, but at least in their case the merit of the power is far greater. A Blaster nuke skips a spawn. That's about the extent of its contribution. And, no. That's not enough.

If this were a tactical game, I might be inclined to agree, but it's not. When the majority of powers require no tactical consideration, the few that do stand out as an unnecessary choice. What is your "tactical consideration" for using Fireball? Not very much more than what can be scripted using Dragon Age II AI scripts:

If Enemy: Clustered >= 3 then Use skill: Fireball.

There, that's your tactical consideration. What about Blaze? Because I'd script Blaze as "If Self: Any." Really, in what situation would you NOT fire off Blaze? If the enemy is too low on health? Meh, even then, it's not that inefficient.

See, most of the "tactical consideration" in City of Heroes comes into play once you start optimising for efficiency, or once you start bumbing the difficulty slider up, and even then, it's more a question of rehearsed playback. However, under normal circumstances, powers with severe drawbacks present mostly drawbacks and considerably less use, turning what should be great powers into gimmicks.

This is a lot like asking the player to type in the name of a power before it can fire, when none of the rest of the game requires it. Sure, it's not that much of a problem, but it IS an out-of-scale bother, and if I had the choice, I'd stick to my simpler attacks that work just fine.

Nukes should not be gimmicks, and they pretty much are right now.

I'm not looking for new friends, Taser. I like the friends I already have enough, and I don't buy into the social network society of tomorrow, where having 10 000 friends is a sign of great social status. Friends are not like underwear. I don't feel the need to change them every day. I don't feel the need to have loads of them. As a point of fact, one is enough for my tastes.

When I go out and run a TF, I'm not looking for friends, because I already have friends. That's not to say I haven't taken down people's names. Every so often someone will tell me what a great team-mate I was (no joke) and insist to put me on global friends. Being the softy that I am, I always agree. Only to never see this person log on again. Or, alternately, only to see this person log on again and never respond to my tells. Or, alternately alternately, only for that person to log on and constantly pester me to run the same TF over and over again.

You know how many times I've put people on my global friends list and had them contact me for something other than needing a warm body on their current team? Well, about a handful, I'd say. Last time I ran the Sewer Trial with Zamuel, a person chatted me up at Wentworth's, I forget what for, and we ended up trading globals. Unlike most other instances, said person actually WAS good for a casual conversation and did respond and did call, and I've ended up with an active global friend with whom I have not teamed a single time. In fact, I only saw his character for the span of 30 seconds in passing as I was doing other things. Everything else has been done over global chat.

I don't feel the need have dozens of friends. I have neither the time nor the mental capacity to deal with this many. If that makes me anti-social, then anti-social I will be. I far prefer that to bragging rights of people about how many friends they have that they can't stand.

This is a social game, yes, and I'm perfectly capable of being social and socialising. With a handful of people. I neither want nor indeed CAN socialise with the dozens of people I appear to be expected to in order to qualify for a non-outcast. But so be it.

You know what? You and people like you have spent so much time trying to disassemble and assassinate my character that I no longer care to defend it. Call it what you will. Go ahead, I can take it. Anti-social? Sure, I'll be anti-social. It's my own fault. OK, I can dig it, it's my own fault. I'm conservative and grump. That I am.

And none of that will stop me from stating my opinion and defending my right to hold that opinion, despite the efforts people go through to discredit that. As many times as I feel like in as many places as I like, because you cannot stop me.

OK, maybe things don't have to make sense AAALL the way Though, in the case of giant swords, I want that as an option to let people explain it, themselves. And there are valid explanations for it, if one were concerned enough to look.

Really, though, some of the best stories I'm aware of are the result of an author taking an absurd story and telling it seriously, and that's what I want out of City of Heroes. Sure, embrace the ludicrous and outlandish, but tell it within the confines of a grounded story. Enough with the self-aware, self-referrential in-joke humour, please!

This I can kind of sort of get behind as a general basis for a whole setting. "In this reality, people are more aware of the absurd ridiculous things they can do, so they do them!" However, where things start to fall apart is when you try to answer the "why" of the matter. "Why" are people more aware? Why are they more capable?

You're not supposed to ask that! It's a general premise of the entire fictional universe because it makes for a better story, and each single instance of this can be explained on a case-by-case basis. It's a weird world where weird things happen, but each weird thing happens for its own reasons. Once you start trying to tie it all together to a common cause, you start taking away from the depth of the world, because you're essentially giving an answer to practically every question which could ever be asked. Even just IMPLYING such a connection is a bad idea, as while it doesn't answer every question ever asked, it implies there is a singular answer to them all, which you must only ever find once, and you can then answer all other questions.

Some things in a story need to be left unexplained, because explaining every single aspect of a story robs it of its allure and reduces it to a technical manual of the operating principles behind a fictional world.

I don't need to know where "super powers" as a generic term come from. I don't WANT to know where they come from. Because my mind is consistently able to produce better ideas FOR ME than the one already presented. We gain nothing by explaining the origin of powers, but we lose our free hand in writing them, and that's not a good thing.

Super powers are. Leave it at that.

Whenever I write a story, I try to not include such things even for the sake of the rule of cool, just because they bug me. But I mean that in a larger sense - I prefer stories written in such a way that makes sense, at least in regard to their own internal logic, not the garbage we've been getting recently about bad guys stealing "the item" so that they could enact "the plot" with nary a second of explanation as to what we're actually talking about. Remember my rant about exactly WHAT it was that Roy Cooling was looking for? That's what I mean. We need to focus more on the narrative part of the story, not always solely on the fantastic part. That's how you make a good story with fantastic elements.

Additionally, there's no need to explain each and every player character in the game's own narrative. Some of us go to great lengths to displace the origin of our characters from those of the game's setting. I've gone back in time, forward in time, to other planets, to other dimensions, to other planes of existence and so on and so forth.

I could see how a person on Earth COULD have gotten powers from the opening of Pandora's Box. I cannot see how a person from seven billion years onto the past of another planet in another dimension could have gotten powers from that. And I'd rather not hear plausible explanations as to how that's possible. It's NOT possible. That's why I put said character so far off the map.

7 of my 9 50s are on Victory, and the two on Pinnacle I'm not particularly interested in. I used to know a LOT of people on Victory, but without exception, all of them are either gone or lack level 50s there. I used to be part of a large-ish SG there that's gone to the dogs now, so there really aren't any people there that I specifically "know" other than Zamuel, and he's been having troubles staying subscribed.

There are a few names on the Victory global channels that I recognise, such as the Satanic Hamster and Voodoo Company, who used to post here and probably a few others I'm forgetting, but I don't see them very often. Especially the Hamster, who seems to be out of town.

On Pinnacle, I do know a fair few people, mostly Americans and Canadians. They run events once, maybe twice a week, but we keep missing each other on the time slot, and there are few of them online playing 50s when I get around to trying anything 50ish. They do run planned events on Weekends, but Weekends are my days to relax, not work for rewards, so I avoid doing anything I don't like on a weekend, which is unfortunate from a scheduling perspective.

But, really, are you suggesting that there are a total of 50 people playing on Pinnacle? Or are you saying that if I don't go out of my way to seek the company of others FROM THE SAME SERVER, then that makes me anti-social? How? I spend most of my time when "solo" chatting with friends over global. You can ask the Vulpish One how he manages to put up with me, if you're interested. I'm mostly solo most of the time, but I am very rarely "alone." I just happen to chat with people over global, rather than teaming with them.

I've run a fair few TFs these last few days - three times Admiral Stutter and once the ITF. Of those four TFs run with a team of 8, I saw a grand total of ONE character I knew - Zamuel - whom I recognised only when I joined his team since he seems to have disappeared from my global friends list.

But go on. Do tell me what makes me anti-social if I spend the bulk of my time socialising with other people.

I'm happy for you, but for those of us who aren't loving the new stuff, the lack of options is disconcerting.

I read it more as "Now that I've seen how nukes can be done RIGHT, I no longer care for the nukes we already have." Or maybe I'm biassed in that this is how I, personally, feel.

I don't know why, but I've always seen arguments in defence of situational powers to read a lot like "Well, I know the power isn't very good, but I have uses for it, so don't touch my power, please." And I've never agreed with this sort of approach to balancing.

Not only are there really no situations which call for a nuke which can't be handled about as well via other powers, but even when you opt to use it, you do so at great risk to yourself. It kills the power for me, because it constitutes an entire extra level of consideration that I don't have to go through with most other powers. There are very few situations where using Blaze is a bad idea, and in every situation where it's a good idea, I use the power. Because it has no downside. Not so with nukes. Even in situations which should technically be ideal for nukes, they still come with a downside and still constitute tactical decision, even in the most obvious, one-sided circumstances.

I don't like powers that I'm afraid to use, that's a lot of what it comes down to.