Samuel_Tow

General statements of this order are almost always true by their inclusive nature, and almost always irrelevant by their non-specificity. Yes, context notwithstanding, "expanding a character's possible wardrobe" is a not a detriment. However, it is very much not always an improvement. If my character is a mobster, then unlocking Roman costume pieces serves absolutely no purpose as I can achieve all I want via suit and fedora hat. If my character is a robot, then... Roman costume pieces serve no purpose, because I'll be using Tech pieces, not Roman pieces, and the Valkyrie helmet options are superior anyway.

I would also disagree with your assessment that most people want to make their characters look "better," because this assumes they want to, or are at least willing to make their characters worse to begin with, and in this game in particular, they're willing to do so on purpose. While I'm well aware that a select few people have described their process of character design like this, they are by far not "most" people. Most people that I've spoken with, at least among those who even care about costumes, have only ever expressed the desire to make their character costumes GOOD, preferably from the start. Obviously as new costume pieces which didn't exist before, we all flock to the editor to improve our old costumes and to make them better. Many will agree that characters way back when looked much worse than they look now. But they didn't look worse because we chose to make them that way. They looked worse because we had no choice to make.

Furthermore, the costume editor as it stands now permits a LOT more character types to be made than it once did. In fact, only now can we make actual, obvious robots thanks to the Praetorian Clockwork pieces, whereas before they all looked like men and women in suits. People, at least among those I've spoken with, didn't make characters back in 2004 which didn't look anylthing at all like what they were supposed to, only to wait years and years to actually make them work. No, actually, some did, and proceeded to abandon said character for many years until the right powersets or costumes became available.

People make their costumes "better" not by unlocking "better" costume items, which, for the most part, aren't better in the slightest, but by getting new ideas, getting help from other people or becoming better at using the costume editor or better at comprehending their own tastes.

Yes, I remember, and you were wrong then, too. The more something costs me to get, less it is worth to me, because I've invested that much more in it. To claim that it's the work which makes it that much sweeter is nothing more than a convenient excuse given after the fact so people don't feel like they're wasting their time. Once all the stuff that sucked is done and over with, OF COURSE the reward will be sweet - it was worth the work, or you wouldn't have done it. I, however, happen to decide whether or not I want something BEFORE I invest a massive sunk cost into it. It's amazing how much more objective and practical a person is about what he wants BEFORE he's paid for it with no refunds.

Let me boil this down to a single sentence: Things I get for free are worth it to me even when they suck because they didn't cost me anything, whereas things that cost me a lot had better damn well be frikkin' amazing or I'm going to kick someone's *** so hard his kids will be born bouncing.

No, the problem with these tasks are that I have to repeat them every single time I want the items. The ITF is fun once. The ITF is fun twice. The ITF is tolerable five times. I have five Broadsword users, two axe users, two Dual Blades users and three Shield users. Do you realise how many times I have to repeat the ITF to outfit them all with Romulus swords? I probably have over a dozen people who could use Rularuu weapons. That means I need over 1200 Overseers to get weapons for all of them.

Almost every character I have uses an aura of some sort on at least one of their costumes. Do you have any idea... ANY IDEA... how many times I've done that god damn mission, over and over and over again? I don't even read the text any more. I don't need to. I know what everyone says, to the letter. It might have been cool once... I think. I don't know. It's been so long since I cared that I've lost track.

But at least the aura mission is simple and easy. Not like running all of the original TFs, now, is it? Just suppose I need the Task Force Commander epaulettes on... Let's be conservaitve and say four characters. That's eight TFs four times, all with these specific characters. At which point am I within my right to complain the god damn epaulettes wouldn't be worth it if they deposited money in my credit card?

If they were global unlocks, I wouldn't complain. Then I could collect them all and never have to "start over," forever having the ability to make awesome costumes without having to make mediocre costumes first because half the decent weapons are locked.

Probably not, I agree, but I can't honestly say I'd be against the idea in basic concept. It would depend on how assinine the unlock is and how many times it has to be unlocked. I know it sounds crazy, but consider this:

We're already getting Boosters which offer costumes you CANNOT get without buying the Booster. Wouldn't Boosters that come with an in-game way to earn the bulk of their content be considered an improvement by the opponents of microtransactions? I would think so, but I honestly don't know.

My point exactly. Let's take a little example of what kind of difference it would make to me.

Right now, it takes around 1000 Vanguard Merits on a single character to unlock the full Vanguard set on that specific character. I would be perfectly willing to accept raising this to 10 000 Vanguard Merits among all of my characters to unlock the set for all of those characters. So, for instance, if I want the Vanguard Sword, now I have to pay 100, and under my proposed system I'd have to pay 1000. 100 now seems expensive to me. 1000 for having the sword account-wide seems perfectly reasonable.

Here's another example - you unlock Rularuu weapons for defeating 100 Overseers. I would happily defeat 1000 over however long a time that this may take, if it were to unlock the weapons for my entire account. Or even just that one weapon that just that one character can unlock. So a Broadsword Scrapper would have to slay 1000 Rularuu to unlock JUST Rularuu's Bane, but then all other Broadsword Scrappers on my account would have it unlocked.

Right now, you need to do the ITF twice to earn the Nictus Romulus sword. I would gladly do it TWENTY times if it unlocked the sword for my entire account.

I'm not against working for these things, I'm not against achieving "stuff" in the general sense. I'm against having to achieve it over and over and over again. I can put forth the work, as long as I know I only need to do it once. I may not like it, I may not agree with it, but I wouldn't complain.

And this is where you fail. A Sword +1 is an improvement. A Helm of the Restricted Vision is an improvement. A damage enhancement is an improvement. A new set of gloves is NOT an improvement. Not always, anyway.

For instance, I quested for the Roman swords, hoping to improve my Broadsword Scrapper. The swords I got for defeating 100 Cimerorans, however, do not work. At all. The reason I was looking for a new sword was because his current one wasn't as big as I'd liked, so I wanted a bigger one, and all the Roman swords are short, as Roman swords are. Fat lot of good that did me.

Or how about capes? I quested for the right to wear a cape... Only when I got it, I realised that this character just didn't look good with a cape. So I waved my hand and went about my merry way, still capeless.

By contrast, one day I decided I wanted a medieval knight character. I went into the editor, put on a full suit of Medieval armour, threw in a bunch of colours and I had a really cool character. Then I decided I wanted to have a Roman soldier, so I went into the editor and... Went back out, because I didn't have access to Roman pieces. Apparently, Romans are an "improvement" over medieval soldiers, despite the fact that Medieval soldiers had much better technology and, to boot, much cooler outfits. But because Roman armour is locked, it must be an "improvement," right? Right?

You can't grade costumes from best to worst, so you can't put some of them as rewards. Practical rewards have a measurable worth based on how powerful they are. Costumes have no measurable worth whatsoever, unless you play the meta-game of how costly they are to the developers to make.

Trying to claim unlocking a costume piece is an improvement is as ludicrous as claiming that unlocking the ability to use the colour blue is an improvement to the outfit of a Manchester United fan. Each item's individual worth is subjective and almost entirely dependent on the concept and costume of the character, therefore what you lock and what you allow is completely arbitrary.

I can have an Egyptian sword from character creation, but I must unlock the Roman one, because... The Romans are better than the Egyptians? I can make a ninja character at when I join the game, but I have to wait a year to make a Saumrai character, because... Samurai are better than Ninja? I can have an Energy Shield at character creation, but I can't have an energy sword unless I buy it from Vanguard, because apparently energy swords are cool and energy shields are not.

In other news: THIS MAKES NO SENSE!

I'm with the Goat on this one. The only thing costume pieces serve to do is expand our tool kit, but they do little to make us "better" at making costumes, because making costumes is more of an art than a science.

What really bugs me, though, is the undertone. "How well you do in the game and how dedicated you are..." I don't WANT to be dedicated to a game. I don't WANT to "belong." I am not so dissatisfied with my life that I need fake achievements to make myself feel content. I could suck the worst of anyone ever born at a specific game, and as long as I'm having fun, I wouldn't give two rats about feeling like I "achieved" something.

I play MineCraft's free version only, and not just because I'm too cheap to pay for the full one. The only thing I want out of that game is to build stuff. I'm not interested in the "simulation" part where I have to earn materials for it. The longer I have to spend grinding out Metals, the less time I have to spend on building an almost exact replica of my house, or my interpretation of the Empire State Building.

Games should be entertaining. They should not be a professional sport you have to dedicate your life to in order to succeed at. They benefit from not being harsh like real life and permit me to eat my cake and have it, too, something I may not always get to do in the real world. I play this game as my super hero escapism. I don't need real life hardships in here, too.

I was actually serious when I said this. Back in the day when Arenas were added, there was this unspoken rule that PvP would be "out there" where people who weren't interested wouldn't even have to know it existed. PvP took place out of sight and out of mind, so care bears like me didn't get in the way of people who were looking for a fair fight and they didn't hold me responsible for ruining "their game" in return. However, with the advent of PvP zones and CoV, we had more and more intrusion of PvP themes into areas where they really didn't belong, such as the numerous threads trying to convince me how wrong I was for not PvPing and how much I'd love it if I just tried (this despite the fact that I don't want to PvP expressly because of having tried it) and subsequently the troll raves certain PvP posters made in an effort to ruin everybody else's fun because they perceived they weren't being catered to.

The disdain some PvE players, such as myself, have for PvP players as a faceless generalisation didn't pop out of the aether. It was the intrusion of PvP themes into the places where we hung out that caused us to turn bitter. So if a pack can be created which catered to PvP players such that they can flourish and have fun and have duels in such a way that I didn't see them... Great! They get to have their fun and their way, which they should, and they do it without bothering me in return. If such an arrangement were possible, I'd be all for it. Better that we all have our fun separately than suffer together.

On the other hand, the problem with PvP is and has always been that it really doesn't work for the PvPers without involving me. There simply aren't enough dedicated PvP players to sustain a workable gaming environment just by themselves, so the only way to make PvP work is to involve the larger community on a much more consistent basis. Not only is a "members only" PvP environment counter-productive to that (competitive environments thrive on participation, not on exclusivity), but it actually loops right back to the old problem of involving me when I don't want anything to do with PvP.

Look, I like visuals as much as the next, but in this case, the need for visuals mandates a solo-only mission in a context that doesn't really have to be solo-only.

I read your entire post, and I thought I addressed it. But just to be clear: Each side gives you its argument pretty much in straight text. It's an argument that can easily be written out in the briefing text box I suggested. Yeah, sure, it may not work exactly like it works now in that one specific mission, but practically all other Morality missions I've seen are little more than one-sided explanations from just one side, if that.

When saving the mind-addled destroyer, all you get is a tank with him in, some narration and a choice menu. When helping the Seer shut down the network, you get a shot of the network, some narration and a choice window. When blowing up the Enriche plant, you get a monologue from Calvin Scott which is completely redundant with what the Dark Watcher said before and which could have popped up in its own window prior to that, and then a choice window. The last morality choice for Responsibility consists of a monologue by Kang interspersed with narration which he could have told you on the phone ahead of time if not for plot convenience, and a choice window. The fight with Beladonna Vetrano consists of a lecture by Beladonna which could have taken place before the mission and then a choice window. The mission to disconnect the Olympian consists of nothing more than a still shot and a choice window.

None of these missions REQUIRE these cutscenes. And I don't agree that the cutscenes add all that much to the immersion, either. They're just... Sort of there. Now, if the developers wanted to make the cutscenes important, they should have actually made the missions such to really revolve around them. The best one I can think of is the fight with Reese, where you have to run the gantlet before you even know there's a decision to make. THAT would be the right way to present these, but THAT is exactly how they're NOT presented.

The best compromise would be to make costume unlocks global. That way I have to unlock them just like everybody else, I just don't have to unlock them twelve times over. Then you can make unlock requirements even more stringent and I wouldn't complain, because I'd only have to do it once.

After all, I don't need a 50 hero for each Kheldian I make, do I?

I'll be playing the game, too. But my playtime will not include grinding Vanguard merits, fighting 100 Overseers, doing the ITF even once, let alone twice and participating in Lord knows how many Rikti Invasion fights. I will certainly not do all of that crap on every character, whereas almost every character I have could benefit from the costumes.

On the other hand, I'll be paying for the game anyhow. Might as well pay a little more and get these costume pieces on ALL characters at character creations. It's far better than whining on the forums about how I don't want to defeat 100 Overseers for the third time when I was bored sick ten in the first time I tried it.

Some of us don't care about "achievements," when the "achievements" in question only test the strength of your butt cheeks and the zen of your patience. You know how I unlocked the Rularuu weapons the two times I've done it? I got a level 50 to gank level 41 Overseers in the shard while I watched from a distance. I feel so proud of myself now. You know how I unlocked a full set of Vanguard gear? I... Didn't. The entire War Zone arc only awards around 200-300 out of the 1000 necessary, and I have no interest in glorified story-less paper missions or the glorified lag fest mosh pit Mothership raid that's even lighter on story.

Levels are an achievement, because you can get them playing anything and everything (other than Steel Canyon fires, what the hell?), which means I get to have fun AND reach a milestone. Unless you define "achievement" as "missing the point of a GAME," I will never consider, boring, unentertaining WORK in my entertainment to be an "achievement." In fact, I would consider it an achievement if you managed to get to 50 without ever having to do something you hated. Like grinding Vanguard Merits, farming Rulauu Overseers or playing 35 god damn levels with a costume that's ugly and stupid and annoying just because the stupid energy sword is locked behind an arbitrary level and merit limit.

Powers are achievements, because they have a clear progression of scale. Each new power is superior to the last in at least one aspect, even if that aspect is nothing more than having four attacks instead of three, or just pluging up a semi-rare situational weakness. You can't say that "this" costume piece is "better" than that one, because how much good a costume piece is depends squarely on the person making the costume and their aesthetic preference. You can't put numbers on aesthetics and restrict only the "best" costumes as fake achievements, because there ARE no "best" costume pieces. Some people hate the thigh-high stilettos for women (and I'm among them) and some people would pay money to have them. If you put them as an achievement, I would chortle in your face, but other people would stab you in your face for it.

Yeah, I agree. That's not nearly enough, especially considering one didn't have costume pieces in it.

To go slightly off topic, I find this kind of timer to be vastly superior to the "if the time runs out, you FAIL!" variant in regular timed missions. Regular timers are just cheap. These timers, however, have an actual, non-cheating consequence for exceeding them.

I gotta' tell you, even when exceeding the timer spawns a +23 EB in the mission who proceeds to one-shot me, I STILL prefer that to just getting booted out of the instance.

City of Data lists the Nemesis Staff as doing 175.63 Smashing damage for both Peacebringers and Warshades at level 50. I would be surprised if it weren't since Peacebringers and Warshades have the same mods for everything and are both listed as Kheldian in damage mod tables. Furthermore, the power is listed as doing 175.63 Smashing damage for a level 50 Blaster, as well. I lack level 50 Kheldians to test this with, but I'll see about throwing a few Nemesis Staff bolts from different ATs to check in person, when I get the time.

I cannot resist the temptation to say "This:" I agree with the above statement completely. I hate unlockable costume so much that I would be willing to pay real money to have those unlocked at character creation. I'll go one better, just for emphasis. I'd pay real money for the ability to make the badges which unlock these costumes global, so that I only have to unlock them once.

That's what I'm saying, there is "no point in the mission" at which this happens. It happens RIGHT AT THE START. What difference does it make whether it happens before the zone load or after it? Either way, it's still the narrator in black text boxes that tells you what your choices are.

Let's take the final Power moral choice to destroy the Olympian. The entire mission consists of you walking in, seeing a tank with the Olympian, and then the narrator starts telling you what you think and what your options are, and then you get the alignment choice. How is this different from having the narrator tell you this before you zones into the mission? Is it THAT much more immersive if you do it while watching a still shot of the Olympian in his tank?

I'd understand it if the mission were long and difficult and you got to see people making their cases along the way. But it's not. It's just one set-piece encounter that starts almost as soon as you walk in and ends the mission once its done.

I am principally against anything tedious and time consuming being an acceptable part of any game I care to participate in. I don't see what multiple builds and costume have to do with it, however. Each build is akin to a different character, as is a different costume. Each of those requires no more micromanagement to have. Not unless you try to design each for a specific task and try to always have the optimal build for the task, which... I don't actually think is feasible with how the timer is set up.

What I would consider micromanagement is if we were one day given the option to specify our percentage enhancement by typing in a number, instead of having to apply enhancements, with a set total for each power instead of six slots. For instance, you can have 500% ANYTHING in a power, so you could throw in 50% of everything and not have it diminished, or 250% of two things and have those diminished by ED to however much they drop to. THAT would be micromanagement. Sure I don't HAVE to do it and I can just keep using regular enhancements... But I don't feel like getting locked out of even more extra performance yet again.

No, that's a simple case of smart design. Give people the tools to ruin their own fun and they will ruin their own fun. This has been proven time and time again. Furthermore, I am getting sick and tired of missing out on everything powerful in this game because it's hidden behind time sinks and micromanagement. Call me malicious, but I'd rather we didn't get any nicer things if the nice things we could be getting are continually unavailable to me, such that people can alternately scoff at me for not having them and mockingly tell me to "then just don't."

I don't want any more Inventions in this game. The current mess of min/maxing is big enough to bother me that I'm ignoring it, but not quite big enough to make me feel like I'm missing the point of the game. I do not want more like that. At all. Ever.

And that's what it comes down to. Advantage/disadvantage systems come down to just that - more boring stats. That's all they've ever amounted to. That's all they can ever amount to without essentially designing a brand new game. That's BORING. It introduces another set of numbers I have to remember, it introduces another set of variables I have to pay attention to and it makes the system even more complicated. And for what? So my orange numbers can be bigger and my red numbers smaller? That ain't worth it. At all. And that's, in a nutshell, what the entire Inventions system is.

Beyond that, you assume I want NPCs and battles to be more dynamic. I don't, and specifically because I know that "more dynamic" just means "more cheap." Difficulty and complexity in this game comes from cheating enemies that hit through your defences and disable your powers. That's fake difficulty in the extreme. I'm not interested in more Void Hunters who shoot me through my resistance, chain-stun me and knock me down. That's not dynamic. That's just cheap.

The only way I can see an advantage/disadvantage system work is if it were written into the story, such as a tech-savvy character being able to hack a computer whereas a dumb brute would have to bring in a scientist, while the dumb brute can just knock down a stone wall whereas the tech-savvy character would have to take the long way around. THAT kind of system I would appreciate, but THAT kind of system is not doable in this game. Or indeed almost any game I've seen to date, Arcanum included.

I said it before and I'll say it again - I don't argue against your suggestion because I CAN'T argue against your suggestion. I'm indifferent to it, but that doesn't mean I would specifically be opposed to implementing it.

All I'm saying is that while I wouldn't oppose you, you're very unlikely to convince anyone in power. Hell, if it came to that, I'd show my support to the idea because... Well, why not? But as you yourself have admitted, it's highly unlikely.

I didn't mean to say you started it, Lothic. We just already did this once before and I wanted to cut to the chase and pick up where we left off

Err... No, thanks, I wouldn't take that game if you paid me

But I agree, that was L4D2 at a massive 66% discount. Still, if I can snag entire high-profile games off Steam for $10, I'm not afraid of paying $10 for several auras that I've always wanted to have but never could.

I'm OK with this amount of cosmetic content. It addresses a section of the costume creator that is SERIOUSLY lacking and does not repeat the mistakes of overly strong powers in paid-for Boosters. What more could I ask for for less money than L4D2 cost me?

Ninja Run. I have seen numerous people use that to replace their travel power, because it's "good enough," it never runs out and you get it at level 4 for doing nothing more than existing. This gives those who have it the potential for two extra power pics and possibly a slot pick or two, which is NOT something to scoff at.

Yes, it's true that Ninja Run isn't better than any of the four "real" travel powers, but it's good enough in most situations. Good enough to make an actual travel power pointless except for concept or as a luxury. You don't NEED a travel power with Ninja Run, whereas someone without it does very much need one if they want to get anything accomplished.

Right now, people seem to hold Ninja Run as the bottom line of what they want, and expect each subsequent booster to outdo that. This SCARES me to death for the future of this game, because we're already half-way down the slippery slide of buying performance. Ninja Run itself is a step too far, I do not want to see anything else that even comes close to that and, ideally, I don't want to see any more powers in booster packs ever again.

That, yes

True, but are you sure your line passes through the corners of the squares exactly? I mean, once you calculate it, yes, you can be sure (it's provable) but you can't really just go by eye.

We'll have to see how many options the new auras have, but yes, this. We've had the same, what? Dozen or so auras since I2 rolled out and added almost nothing to them right up until Going Rogue. Alpha and Omega are the only two more traditional auras that we've added to the game in QUITE a while, and auras are a part of costume design which I find to be very important. Far more important than capes.

Yes, I know about Flies and Combat auras, but even with them, we need to add more. Many more. Our auras are lacking.

Hell yeah! That's pretty much exactly what I was looking for on that one. Cole shows an incredibly cool head considering all the problems he's apparently been having with Barry, so I'm pretty sure I can add some spirit to this without so much as budging the man's stoicism. What I had swirling around my head was more along the lines of:

-Berry is hard to control. It is one of his many downsides. Are you suggesting I should add disobedience to that?

-I'm suggesting you reconsider your options. Berry continues to fail and embarrass you, whereas I have continually made you look good. You know I'm better than him.

-Let's not jump to conclusions, $name. Berry has his faults and failures, yes, and for those he will be... Punished. But his worth to me is still great. You do, however, have a point, in that you have proven yourself more than enough times. I don't want to do anything too drastic about it at quite yet, but suffice it to say this: I am impressed.

Really, that's splitting hairs, as what you said is very close to what I had in mind. I was just illustrating the point. Yes, what I described still ends up serving Cole (there isn't much of an option here), but it approaches it with dignity and ambition, rather than with loyalty and obedience. I want to prove I'm better than Barry, rather than prove that I'm a good boy as the game would have me. You can be a servant and STILL have dignity and class, which is all I'm asking for.