Samuel_Tow
-
Posts
14730 -
Joined
-
Quote:They will? Maria's bio has been bugged for over six years now, and when they went to update it... They didn't fix it. It's still the same bio with one obviously extra sentence appended.Originally Posted by Ironblade
Yeah.... I had an alignment mission today where I was supposed to "diffuse the bombs". Ouch. Just bug it when you find something like that and they'll get fixed eventually.
By the way, on the subject of the Statesman aggroing the world - I say let him. The guy looks like he's tough enough to handle the aggro.
I also want to note that I like how the signature NPCs are treated. If we can just dispense with the stupid "You lead the way! This is YOUR adventure!" breaking of the fourth wall, the arc does a very good job of making me feel like I'm playing in the top leagues now. All of a sudden, my mission is so important that I'm teaming up with the real big guys, and I end up having to rescue them by the end, to boot. Very well designed, save for that obvious forum whine reference.
Oh, and by the way, the final mission just rocks. The "out" they used to avoid putting Tyrant into the game, yet still have A tyrant in there and reusing the costume and powers (and glass jaw) was just brilliant. Same place, same scenario, same bad guy, only he's an "Olympian Guard" who's one of Tyrant's elite and cloned from his DNA. Brilliant!
---
Before I forget, can we try and not say that the Statesman was "kidnapped" like he was "kidnapped" before? It's starting to sound like Spoony's "Yuna kidnapped" counter and it makes him come off like a damsel in distress. Can we please say that he was either "captured" or "taken prisoner?" -
I gotta' say, after getting through the arc... It's actually pretty amazing. Far better than what I expected and FAR better than what we had before. I like the fights, I really like the story, I dislike but appreciate the self-depreciating humour and I enjoyed seeing some higher-level Praetorians.
I discovered that what REALLY drags this arc down is its writing, and I don't even mean that in an artistic sense. The briefings are full of typos and suspect grammar and a lot of it comes off more as exposition than actual natural speech. The arc is great, but it REALLY needs to pass through an editor, because I gave up tracking down obvious text errors pretty much from the get-go.
You have typos in contact dialogue, you have errors in NPC descriptions (a lot seem to have chunks of text missing), you have suspect dialogue, you have errant triggers (Sister Psyche never spawned for me)... It's just all over the place. Someone needs to comb through the whole thing and weed out at lest the obvious mistakes. Like Maria's bio. Fix this, please. It's embarrassing. -
Quote:Fair enough. I didn't get that from the previous posts, but I could have missed it.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
I can tell they have a base with empowerment stations if they're in my SG. I can tell they have a base with empowerment stations if they're in an SG I team with frequently and whose base I have visited. They still don't use empowerment buffs.
Fair enough. Will stop.Quote:Your tirades about the problems you have with SGs and bases are off topic.
Oh... I actually read that as sarcasmQuote:Your posts about mouse-look are completely on-topic, I'm just explaining why I personally don't use it. My bad, will re-read. Gimme' a sec.
...
OK, so you're saying you use the arrow keys to steer because you don't like to use WASD, thus you can't have the mouse in your hand at all times to use mouse look. OK, I can see that. I didn't think people used the arrow keys to steer, however, and that's probably personal bias showing up.
Once upon a time, used to use the Numpad and the mouse to play FPS games, until I played Oni, where I couldn't alter my keys without digging though settings files. Oni used WASD, so I had to get used to that. Battlefield 2, then, forced me to use WASD because the Numpad was taken up by functions I could never find in the keybindings (I assume system functions) and the game did not allow me to override previous binds. Since then, I've taken to using WASD in City of Heroes because I got used to it, and because it's closer to the bulk of the keys on my keyboard. I tend to have around 18 binds on most characters, give or take, so the Numpad doesn't cut it.
To each their own, I guess. I just know I'd fly out of my mind if I had to use the keyboard to steer. The last time I did that was Duke Nukme 3D, and I do not miss that game. -
Quote:Well, if you can tell that a person has a fully-functional base complete with these things, then yes, I can see how that question would be interesting to get an answer to. I didn't get that from the original post, or any of the subsequent ones. All of them assumed people already had bases and why didn't they do that with their bases.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Tirades about Longbow and PvP and bases have nothing to do with complaints about people with a FULL INSP TRAY and A WHOLE BUNCH OF TEMP POWERS and A FULLY FUNCTIONAL BASE not taking advantage of those things.
All I'm saying is that some reasons that you don't see as many people using Empowerment buffs include:
1. Not having/wanting a base to begin with.
2. Being a member of a SG that doesn't give you permission to add one.
Of course, I'm sure you can snark me over that, as well, but using empowerment station buffs is not as much a no-brainer as you guys make it out to be. It's like me being AMAZED that people don't use Mastermind binds - yes, they are useful, but not everyone wants to mess with binds. Or macros.
*edit*
If you want to say that my posts are off-topic, then go ahead and say it. Allusions do no-one any good. -
Well, the arc is pretty nice so far, despite the constantly-disappearing Elite Resistance being annoying.
But does the Statesman HAVE to keep repeating "I'll follow your lead!" Seriously, it's like someone was afraid we were going to feel overshadowed if he didn't say the same thing over and over again. "Hey, you're the boss here. I'm just tagging along. This isn't my investigation. No sirriee! You call the shots. I'll just follow you. You lead the way. Your orders, sir? Just so you know, I'm not the star of this arc. You are. You get it? You get it yet? Oh, OK, just wanted to make sure that you knew. That I'm not the star, that is. You are. You're the hero. Understand yet?"
YES! I UNDERSTAND! Seriously, I'll be the first guy to get cheesed off when it feels like the NPCs steal our spotlight by being level 54 Archvillains and having the story be about them, but did we really have to turn the Statesman into such a goof to avoid it? He literally says "I'll follow your lead" at the start of each mission. Yes, I realise it's nice that I am the hero, but could we not have done this in some way that didn't break the fourth wall? Because every time he says this, I picture a mission designer reading the forums.
Incidentally, why does Nightstar have wrist blades if she never uses them?
*edit*
Oh, and by the way, I spent probably 50% of my time with the Statesman looking like this:
He got stuck once in the Boomtown map, I Team-Ported him out. He got stuck again and I left him. He got stuck in the caves up next once. I Team-Ported him out. He then got stuck again, and my Assemble the Team temp has not yet recharged. From the looks of it, it won't recharge for another 15-20 minutes. From the looks of it, I'll be fighting Battle Maiden alone. Feh! -
Quote:That's kind of what I mean, though - it's a fixed flat speed. Is that really more comfortable than mouse look? Maybe I just notice the excessively bad examples, I don't know. But I keep thinking there'd be less complaining about camera control in caves if more people used mouse look.Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
I increase my turn speed in the options.
You start out at 300% default, I increase mine to around 450%-500% so I don't turn so slowly. Any more than that it gets difficult to control, but around 475% is just about perfect. -
Quote:Two points:Originally Posted by Fulmens
Samuel_Tow: You have no perspective. There are workarounds for all these things. Base rent is trivial. "I don't want to do that" is a perfectly good reason to not make bases, and yet you insist on making it into some sort of crusade against evil. What will you do when you run into a REAL problem?
1. What's it to you? If "I don't wanna" is sufficient for you, then why the flying Dutchman do you even read why I don't wanna?
2. What does that have to do with "perspective?" That I should realise other people have resigned to using ugly workarounds and never look into actual solutions? Not how I roll, bub. -
Quote:Last I checked, a 2 to 1 "majority" is not terribly significant, especially when a fair number of people stand to be pretty pissed off, as I've seen in the past. In fact, David is demonstrating tremendous presence of mind in recognising the problem and subsequently looking for an alternate solution.Originally Posted by Knightfox
Totally ignoring the fact that he came right out and said that a menu overhaul would take away 50% of the man hours that could be spent overhauling old textures. My opinion is not more valid than any other, clearly you seem to think yours is. My point is, the majority (by a 2 to 1 margin the last I looked) wanted option 1. Noble Savage himself supported option 1. So instead we bow to the minority, what sense does that make? Clearly my opinion was shared by around 66%, apparently OUR opinions are completely invalid. Get off your high horse.
Furthermore, the character customization UI is and has always been in need of a serious update. The smart thing to do is to enact this update before clutter and inefficiency becomes a serious problem. This needs to be done. The sooner it is done, the better. -
Quote:Oh, and then there's that. So far, David is my favourite guy on the Development team ever since BABs stopped posting. Rock on, dude!Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Legend. Seriously glad they made you lead Art Dev, dude
-
I don't think a "slider" is an option (why is the solution to everything sliders, anyway?), but I do believe we can ask for voice packs in this case. There are several powers and several actions which produce grunts and yells and being able to customize those would be really cool.
I'd go with something like Tough, Smooth, High-Pitched, Monster Growls, Synthesiser Voice, Machine sounds (electric motors, hydraulic pistons, air compressors, etc), Creaking Metal, something along those lines. -
Quote:All of which, incidentally, I also don't have, and for the same reasons.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
You will still have to pay rent on storage and medical items even if you don't have an empowerment station.
Unless and until these three things happen:
1. Bases lose all form of rent entirely. If they need to go inactive, have them go inactive after the SG hasn't had activity in a week, then have them reactivate when a member attempts to enter them.
2. I am either allowed to have personal bases, base costs can be paid with INF (at a LOT under the current cutthroat conversion rate), or I am allowed to invite, promote and demote my own alts.
3. Something is done to the editor to where I don't have to spend an hour and a half to make a simple conference room which doesn't look like complete crap, be it through templates or through not making it so hard for me to put in a wall vent.
I will not respect bases as something I want to invest in on every single character that I have, and unless I can use something on every character, I'm not interested in using it on any character ever. My characters are all equal in my eyes. I have no "main," I have no favourites. -
Quote:It's also the same sound used all over the place in UFO: Enemy Unknown, more specifically for the Heavy Plasma.Originally Posted by Obscure Blade
The sound effect for the Radiation Snipe Proton Volley sounds exactly like the green disintegration blasts the Martians use in the classic version of War of the Worlds. Looks a lot like them too, so I doubt it's a coincidence.
So THAT'S what it says! OK, thanks for clearing that upQuote:Originally Posted by Willowpaw
If you are referring to the police drone chatter, it is "Read 7-8-5, code 6, 105 north avenue", not the 132 and Bush line from Cops. I knew it said something about an avenue.
-
Quote:Yeah, and they promised they wouldn't take anything out of the editor, the bastards! How dare they go back on their... Wait... Wait, never mind.Originally Posted by MrMountie
Because that's totally what happened with the shinies in Ultra Mode. They didn't change any pieces that people were attached to, and blithely rubber-stamp it through QA. They made the responsible decision of keeping both options for things like the Metallic skin, the Vanguard and Valkyrie costume models.
-
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=236701
*edit*
Link because everything I have to say on the subject is in there. -
Quote:I'd settle for a foreclosure notice, followed by a base editor that doesn't suck, but that's just me.Originally Posted by Zortel
Yes. Hell yes. Hell, can we get anything for our bases?!
-
Quote:If you don't see a problem, then you're not really looking. Some animations exist, but a lot of powers make no sense to either work the way they work or look the way they look underwater.Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
I would agree with this if we didn't have animations already in the game for fighting while using Hover or Fly [weightless]. 'Port those over to the underwater zone and I don't see a problem....?
And I'm not talking about simple things like electricity (which should be invisible in water) or fire (which should create large amounts of bubbles). I'm talking about simple things like storm clouds, hurled boulders (which require a bottom, no less) and fast-moving acrobatic like Eagle's Claw or Eviscerate.
You can place characters in a hover and dunk them underwater. That much is easily provable. What's not as easily provable is doing this in a way that feels like actually being underwater, as opposed to floating through blue caves where Earth and Stone users are totally SOL.
I've seen Champions attempt. It doesn't look like water and it doesn't feel like water. All the fish and standing plants don't make up for my ability to throw barrels Donkey Kong style and hold my breath indefinitely. -
Quote:Having known a few artists, I'm sure of one thing - you can always add more detail. Looking at modern games with modern engines that somehow manage to make everything look worse, the things I could think of that could possibly be added to not just this pattern combo, but any pattern combo are the following:Originally Posted by LISAR
I'm not even sure what you add to that texture since it looks normal.
*Stitching: At the very least one seam on each side of the torso where two pieces of fabric were joined together. Most shirts that I have are made like this.
*Seams: Decorative or functional seams added between different layers. The shirt I have on right now consists of several pieces stitched together for decorative purposes.
*Creases: Fabric in real life never clings to the body so perfectly as it does in games and comic books. When you turn around, your skin-tight shirt folds into little creases as it twists.
*Texture: Certain fabrics have a very pronounced texture to them, such as the above-mentioned lace pattern on the mock-up bra, or even something as complex as the hex pattern on Stealth pieces.
All of those are good ideas for NEW costume pieces, but not as replacement for the flat, smooth, seamless tights. -
Quote:Not if it replaces old options that work exactly because they DON'T have stitching it won't. But let's use examples. This:Originally Posted by ghoost
Option 1! we need to see updated versions of outfits. Seeing raised stitching and some outfits that have texture to them with some wrinkles added will enhance the new content thats comming down the pike.
This is a pic that's five years old, which I've not changed a smidgen since. I made this costume because I liked the look of smooth tights over skin. I do not want stitching, creases, pattern or seams on this outfit. I designed it as a one-piece skintight suit and I want to retain this as a one-piece skin-tight suit. I have no interest in replacing this with anything but a higher-resolution version of the same PATTERNS.
By all means, add textured "pieces with skin," but don't replace the old patterns with skin, because they have a very specific appeal - that of an impossibly skintight, very smooth fabric which creases, stitches and seams would utterly destroy.
*edit*
I'm not worried about the gloves, the boots, the shoulders, the belt, the hair or even the face. Those I picked because they looked good on the costume, and I'm sure higher-res versions will look just as good. I'm only worried about the tights, because a cornerstone function of tights in comic books is as a fabric which follows the shape of the body, whether that's actually possible or not. This needs to remain as a functionality. -
Oh, here's something that's incredibly useful that people never use:
MOUSE LOOK
I keep hearing complaints about how people's camera keeps getting stuck in ceilings or stuck into walls or or stuck in geometry (by "stuck," I mean forced against your back so it's just about first person) and when I suggest just moving the camera a bit to the side or a bit down, I find out they don't want to bother since they're using keyboard steer.
Furthermore, even today, I see plenty of people do the "slow turn." What I mean by this is a person will run up to a dead end, realise it, then slooowly turn around in place before running back. I know how slowly characters turn with Q and E, and I can spot it from a mile away. How do these people use Super Speed at all? -
Quote:If they add "edges," it stops being a pattern and becomes a texture. And I am completely against scrapping patterns and replacing them with textures. Remove old versions of costume pieces only if the new ones are the same piece but in higher resolution. A texture is not the same piece as a pattern.Originally Posted by LISAR
If they add edging like they did for the female tank top that shouldn't mess up use but I'm fine with it being flat and cleaner.
-
Yano... I was really looking forward to trying the new Maria Jenkins arc, but I gotta' say... My enthusiasm tanked at the very first briefing. Not only is there a missed new line (a <br that's missing its closing bracket), but the entire briefing feels like an incredibly dry infodump that doesn't feel like something someone would say, but more like the index of a book. And it has some suspect verb tense in there, like "these will be the hardest missions you will have done." ...They will be when I'm done with them? How do you know what I'll have done by then?
Anyway, this is my experience with all of one briefing screen and not much else, but I would honestly have expected a D-Mac style conversation to introduce the character's... Character and personality, I suppose. But OK, I'm fine with that. A briefing will do, but it really smacks of the same kind of... Let's just say "questionable" writing that made me never want to read another thing Montague Castanella ever had to say.
I hope I'm an idiot and I'm making a big deal out of little things and that the rest of the arc will be awesome, but I gotta' say... So far I'm not warming up to Mrs. Jenkins.
*edit*
And holy molly! Who updated Maria's bio but left GLARING typos in there anyway? This is so wrong in so many ways... In fact, let me count the ways:
"Maria Jenkins, as she called in her other identity..." - missing a "was" or an "is," as in "...as she was/is called..."
"Slowly her powers began to fade with time but she was aging quite slowly." - It slowly happened very slowly. And redundantly. And that's ignoring the fact that the continuous tense here is better replaced with the simple tense: "she aged slowly." Because she did and does.
"...in the 1930's she appeared..." - I'm pretty sure that apostrophe shouldn't be there. Though I can think of a few reason's why it was added.
"Although she is retired, Maria certainly does not look over a hundred years of age. Maria was the first to deduce Statesman's kidnapping by Tyrant years ago, and is happy to have her friend returned to her." - Maria/Maria redundancy makes it pretty obvious that whoever "updated" her bio did nothing more than append a sentence to the end, apparently without so much as reading the sentence before, let alone her entire bio, because at least one of those errors is obvious and unquestionable.
Gah! Why are text fixes such rock bottom priority that they aren't fixed even when someone actually works with the text field in question?
*edit*
The Infernal Summoning Altar mission, however, was pretty damn good. I don't know how much of that is new (I'm guessing "very little," but I'm clearly biassed), as the last time I did that mission Infernal didn't have wings, but the mission was cool. The map was very nice, with an eerie orange fog an splatters of blood right at the end, and I'm pretty sure demons performing satanic rituals on people while giant ghostly faces form in the smoke wasn't there last time. Nice touch. Infernal himself... May or may not have a new costume. I don't know. I do know he used his fire axe a grand total of ONCE, however, spending the entire fight cycling Flares, Fire Blast, Fireball an Fire Breath the entire fight. He was, consequently, a pushover, because even as an EB, Fireball does not scare me. At all.
His altar was pretty cool, and unlike CoT Behemoth portals, still had it stone structure. It spawned behemoths once, and no more scary than what a regular portal spawns, then did nothing the rest of the fight. Being that the thing is an EB itself, it was basically a Mole Machine fight. Not that I can complain.
Experience rewards were... Odd. At level 48, Infernal as an EB gave me 19 665 experience, the mission completion bonus was 27 225 experience and the portal itself as an EB gave me 58 995 experience O.o Unexpected, but I'll take it! Time to go see how Maria butchers her debriefing. -
Quote:All I'm going to say is - you don't have to.Originally Posted by Mr_Grey
Not all of the powers you could or even WOULD choose are of the "One Shot," Passive, or "Emergency" variety. And I'm not just talking attacks. Every power I choose takes consideration on how I can improve its effectiveness.
As a matter of fact, running through my characters recently, I find on a lot of them I've taken things like Hasten or, yes, the Fitness powers, not because I actually needed any of them, but because I actually DIDN'T WANT anything else.
Here's some food for though - now that people are purportedly going to have so many more power picks, can we please open up Epic pools a little earlier? Say, 38 or 35? That way, we can potentially grab all five powers from it by the end of the game, as opposed to the four maximum we can now. -
Quote:While that might be a decent argument for people who dabble in bases in general (and I know that's who you were addressing), it perpetuates a running problem with bases - they're very hostile to solo players and introduce all manner of hoops to jump through. Rent, an obtuse editor, inability to invite or promote your own alts, prestige conversion rates, blah blah bladity blah blah.Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
They're not that bad. Besides, the first is very useful on its own. The second a bit more. The third, not so much. And you only need one.
To explain - I've been here for six years, maybe more, and to this day I HAVE NOT SEEN an empowerment station. Ever. I don't know what one even looks like. -
Quote:As I read it, he agrees that names are very important, but disagrees that this implies everyone should be permitted their name of choice. On the contrary, because names are so important, he believes each name holder should have sole ownership of that name.Originally Posted by Liquid
If the person who I was asking for an explanation wants to agree with you, then that's fine and I understand their argument, but then the part about agreeing on the fundamental point yet still disagreeing on what it means is not applicable.
Me, I don't care either way. Names are important to me, but I've never found a character I couldn't name. I'm not opposed to a non-unique naming system, provided it's not ugly yet isn't ambiguous, but then neither am I opposed to the status quo. -
Quote:Doh! Why do I only now realise that my typo caused me to type out Orc? What's an Orc, you say? I dunno, but Warcraft seems obsessed with them.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
What's an ORC, by the way?