Samuel_Tow

Pretty much. Just remember that "I get the hint" means I understand it and realise it's pointless to argue, not that I accept it or that I like it, and you can bet money I'll speak up again next time it's brought up.

Again, though - this is getting to the point of accessibility of that one Infected who spawned at the station in Recluse's Victory sometimes. It's better than nothing, but... This keeps bringing me back to a conversation from Advent rising:

Colonel: Our ships have the ability to blast small asteroids out of the way.
Ethan: That's better than nothing.
Gideon: That IS nothing.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I appreciate it, and it'll probably be doable, if mostly for small teams who don't run TFs very often. Hell, it may be viable for me. A few lucky Purple drops made me my first Billion on a 50 Brute.

But like I said before. I get the hint. This is team content. I've made my peace with that.

Oh, you are definitely correct in this regard. I've gone on the record as not liking the morality of Vigilantes and not feeling any of my existing heroes or villains would fit that... But that's still a choice I'm given to make, and it IS a choice of morality, not group think faction identity. None of my characters make sense to be Vigilantes? Then none of them WILL be! There are more than enough moralities to encompass all concepts I would personally play, and even a "Neutral/Neutral" character could probably fit in there somewhere along the line.

Vigilante missions let me choose what to do not based on whose ideology I want to support, but based on what ideology I want to give that particular character, and that's really all I'm asking for.

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Praetorian even missions are... Iffy, however. Yes, they lack contacts, but that's actually even more offensive, because my character is still reduced to group think and faction identity without even being prompted. I can kind of see it as having no choice when characters TELL you to do something, and you can sort of pretend you don't want to but what are you gonna' do... But when I go out on my own and strive to follow either faction's agenda without being given a third option... Eh!

See, what bothers me about those is the same as I mentioned before. Let's take the Ghoul vs. PPD event, for instance. It's not just a question of stopping the Ghouls vs. helping the Ghouls. No, it's stopping the ghouls FOR THE PPD vs. helping the ghouls FOR THE RESISTANCE. Everything that happens is always refracted through the prism of Resistance vs. Loyalists duality, and that doesn't make for good fiction.

A binary world is a bad world, and this is even more true in fiction than it is in real life. There's no reason to write a world as binary, because all this does is either exclude or pervert concepts so as not to let them get away from the EXTREMELY RAILROADIN PLOT. This needs to be said in all caps, because that's what it is. There are points in the rails, sure, but it's still the same storyline - Resistance vs. Loyalists. Longbow vs. Arachnos. Hell, at this point I welcome Vanguard's involvement, but of course, they put themselves in the Resistance's thrall, because the Dark Watcher is a Calvin Scott fanboy, apparently, and never questions his insane decisions. If Vanguard can have a schism with Longbow, can we please present one between them and the Resistance?

Back to point - to draw a binary world is a mistake, because it excludes themes and it makes the world unbelievable, like those poorly-written movies where people don't talk like people and everyone's motivations are forced. This doesn't need to happen. You don't have to limit people's options to give them a choice. Choice does not have to be meaningful if it can't be made meaningful, and I'd rather have purely cosmetic choice over such a restricting storyline.

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On the suggestions: I agree, for the most part. I can see not allowing people to swap their factions before level 20, but I can't see any harm in letting us do tip missions, even if they don't earn us points towards a faction. Sure, the low levels fly by fast, but it'd be cool to have some moral choices for the lowbies, perhaps between arrogant overconfident new hero (those being vigilante-like options) and cautious but responsible rookie (those being more traditional hero options).

And while I may complain about Praetorian even morality, I have to admit that, mechanically, they're far superior than practically any event before them. If I never see another Rikti or Zombie invasion, it will be too soon, but the various Praetorian events? I'd tune in. I can try them alone, or with friends, or even with random strangers, and they're more interesting than just basic mosh pits/soup of effects. That alone deserves major props. More like those, please.

That's really what gets to me. Sometimes it feels like, in this game, "chance to hit" isn't really a good representation of your chance to hit, because dropping to something as "low" as 80% chance to hit means I'll be missing over and over again and scoring streakbreaker hit after streakbreaker hit. You'd think an 80% chance to hit would mean you'd hit more than you miss, but more often than not, it means I'll miss a good three quarters of my attacks under those circumstances.

One reason I rarely care about hit chance over 90% is because I'm convinced the RNG intends to screw with me, and all that really matters is being in the highest streakbreaker bracket.

Ack! No! No taxes! No rent! No upkeep! No negative progress, please. I don't want anything I own to have a bleeding cost associated with it, such that if I don't log in and work to maintain it, it could deteriorate and disappear. Always move progress up, never down. Don't force me to reinforce my gains, achievements and creations. Don't ask players to re-earn their achievements and don't take away their stuff if they don't keep claiming it.

Whenever people say things like that, I have to wonder if that's an actual deductive argument or a reverse justification of existing game design. And I wonder about this because that's completely false and easily provable by looking at the hero-side game. The original City of Heroes had no affiliation, it had no "belonging," it had no factions. A hero was a hero, doing heroic deeds THAT HE CHOSE TO DO.

There is no limitation on free choice in a multiplayer game, or indeed in an MMO. It all comes down to writing, and in particular NOT writing yourself in a corner by constructing a binary world. Especially when you have not, in fact, constructed a binary world. What do I mean?

Well, Praetoria is not just the Resistance and the Loyalists. Even ignoring things like the Ghouls and the Destroyers, you still have one other major player with clout, ties and resources to rival both of the others - the Syndicate. Emperor Cole has the resources of the state, government and police. The Resistance has the resources of a massive number of agents and supporters. The Syndicate has the resources of EVERY CORPORATION IN THE CITY, if not the entire world. They have money, they have manpower, they have technology, they have agents who have infiltrated practically every facet of public life and government, to say nothing of the Resistance, they have psychics of their own, and by the truckload. Hell, most of the Syndicate Suits even seem to have a genuine ideology for the future of Praetoria distinct from either Cole or Scot, one of a shadowy conspiracy existing just below the surface of a seemingly free society, somewhat of a half-way point between Cole's totalitarian ideology and Scot's anarchist ideology.

Why aren't the syndicate a major player? Why aren't players allowed to side with them when both the Resistance and the Loyalists are acting like complete loonies? Hell, they're even built with faction friction in mind between the Honour and Business enthusiasts. Honour follow the teachings of Wu Yin, trying to free Praetoria from Cole and run it better, whereas Business follow people like Octavian and try to become a deep-rooted conspiracy to better themselves by ruling over society. The Syndicate is ripe for being included in the game, but actually isn't. And why? I haven't a clue.

The Resistance vs. Loyalists duality is - to my eyes at least - just an instance of lazy writing. False binary fallacies like "You're either Nexus or against us!" are just that - putting the player in a manufactured, unbelievable dilemma for the sake of putting the player in a dilemma. But Thou Must if ever I saw it. And it's not like it's JUST Praetoria because Praetoria is such a unique, special case (ignoring the fact that it was purpose-designed and written so as to "tie their hands"), what about the Arachnos vs. Longbow duality? Can I not be a hero without immediately affiliating myself with Longbow whenever a hero vs. villain conflict erupts? Longbow are NOT the face of heroism, they are a private military organisation which isn't even strictly legal. And what about Arachnos? Why the blue balls would my villains want to lackey up to the Spiders? Can they not be villains on their own? Can they not take part in hero vs. villain conflicts without being affiliated with Arachnos? Despite what the Resistance Greeter in the Rift Enclosure might lead us to believe, Arachnos are not THE big bads. They are A big bad, right alongside Malta, the Rikti, the Nemesis Army, the Carnival of Shadows, the Devouring Earth, the Circle of Thorns and so forth.

I have had it up to HERE with faction-on-faction action. Why does everything have to be organised brawls and organised wars these days? Why can our characters never shine without having to affiliate themselves with some organisation, all because a writer keeps writing every bloody piece of new content like a god damn crossover civil war comic that has to involve large-scale warfare or large-scale infiltration? What happened to Clark Kent working in a newspaper and saving people in his spare time without necessarily leading a Justice League or the armies of Earth or whatever? What happened to Magneto taking on the X-Men without having to involve Venom, Carnage and the Kingpin? What happened to all of those stories?

I've yet to fail a Khan TF, or indeed be on one that took too long. That does nothing to make the game's single dumbest TF any less boring, tedious and annoying. But thank you for the patronising insult just the same. I'm sure that helped.

And when I extort how bad this TF is, I'm including the original Positron TF, Dr. Quaterfield and even that godawful Bastion TF. Sure, they're not very well designed, but at least they're not deliberately annoying and things actually happen in them. They don't devolve into a long boring fight of watching a bar steadily decrease.

The Riechsman TF is only slightly less boring than watching my game load.

Well that's a ripoff.

David, I really, really appreciate everything you're doing for the community. Your All Things Art thread has been easily my favourite one on the forums in the last seven years, and it keeps getting me back into the game and cheering me up even when other parts of the game piss me off. Never before have I felt like anything I said was actually taken seriously just because I asked for it until I took part in that thread.

But I just want to say that, even if you don't really have anything to add or clarify, you should still drop by those threads from time to time, just so that there's a red-name post in there for people to see. It doesn't really need to be anything major, like an announcement or a promise. Just seeing your name in that thread is enough for those of us who frequent your All Things Art threads, and a red-name post in the Dev Digest will also bring more participants to avoid letting the threads sink out of the front page.

And thanks again for making and reading those

I guess we'll just have to disagree on that one, because I personally have never felt it necessary to use items outside of their intent, and have in fact gone out of my way to not do so. Gas Masks posing as beaks and muzzles is a big one for me - do not want.

To me, previous packs didn't really have any real "purpose" to them, they just had a few undefined sets almost exactly like all the other undefined sets we had in similar themes, but with different details. To my eyes, Organic Armour is redundant with Chitin, all the Science Pack breathers and goggles are redundant with the goggles and masks we had before. Martial Arts were more robes a lot like the more robes we had before, and Cyborg was one more tech set a lot like all the other tech sets we had before.

That's not to say those packs weren't good. Far from it - I bought and love all of them. But I never bought a costume pack before and think "Wow! I can make a character now that I couldn't make before!" At most, I thought "Well, I can replace this piece on that character with that piece from this pack." This is the first time I've found a costume pack which enabled new characters completely and entirely, as well as one which actually explored new ground, as opposed to retreading old concepts.

At least that's how I see it.

For a costume I threw together in 15 minutes with no prior designs or ideas and with having to "cheat" with black skin to match those damn skin legs to the fur... Yeah, more or less

The trouble is, we don't really have anything which looks tribal or barbaric. We have a lot of Tech shoulders and a lot of eeevil spikes, but we don't have animal skin shoulders or weird tribal necklaces or one of those Aztec Obsidian barbed clubs or proper dried-up skulls shoulers, or a ragged chest detail of some sort, or a decent tribal belt... We lack a lot of items to work with. When I do get about to making this one on live, I'll be perusing the Costume Redesign thread, as I'm not happy with the state of that costume quite yet.

*edit*
That said, I did find my reference pics. To avoid bloating the thread, here's a series of links:
Link 1 - A decent stone hammer, feather decoration reminiscent of native Indians and a decent necklace.
Link 2 - Slightly less complex, but still a decent necklace and interesting shoulders, plus the ability to use pants with hooves.
Link 3 - Not much to say about this one.
Link 4 - Not a "cow" girl, but this one has practically everything I had in mind when I said "tribal/barbarian."

I wish e could make the bull head a little bit bulkier with a little less neck. And I wish we could give it hair, or at least a mane that could pass for hair

If we are indeed going the WoW raid queue path, then raids will be joinable mid-way, so if anyone leaves, others in the queue can replace them. Think of Trials as servers for your average FPS. You have an event going, and people can join it or leave it real time, taking up and freeing up space as they do.

This is actually something I would be more willing to engage in, since it feels less like a social activity and a gathering of people and more like... Well, like your average FPS, where you drop in and out as you please with no commitment.

I wonder if they'll institute raid quit penalty, too?

Considering just about the only thing I use from the Valkyrie pack is the boots and the only thing I use from the Martial Arts pack is the Ninja Gaiden helmet plate... That sounds about right for me.