Samuel_Tow

They're classified in relation to their scale damage, actually, with around 1.0 being moderate. Below that, you have around 0.64 being minor, around 1.64 being high, and anything above 2.0 being superior. I think you need to break around 2.6 or 2.7 and above to class as extreme, with Snipes at 2.76. Not that it really matters, just sayin'.

As far as this goes, I love your idea, but I can't help but think this is better served as Assault Rifle customization options... Somehow. I realise it's not what you're after, but what you're suggesting is another big gun when we already have a big gun powerset. I'd rather just see bigger, more cannon-like weapoins in Assault Rifle (since it hasn't gotten any new options past what was originally with weapon customization) as well as animation and effect changes to make it feel more like a heavy cannon. I already went through sound alterations for Full Auto, and we can extrapolate from there.

I'm not against the idea, mind you, but it's just too similar to Assault Rifle. If we ever get another rifle set, I feel it ought to be an extension of the Mastermind Pulse Rifle attacks. And if we get an actual cannon, I'd sooner it were a semi-auto cannon like what Resistance Heavy Barrel tot around. No auto fire, just single-shot heavy shells and lots of big explosions. Considering how many things a decent-sized cannon can fire - from incendiaries to high explosives to solid sabot rounds, I feel there's enough there to make a gun that's a lot NOT like the gun we already have.

I.e. War of the Worlds, another movie I utterly hated. But at least in that one Tom Cruise found his wife, and we were all happy about it.

This is my bias showing through, but I honestly don't care about "slice of life" stories, even if that slice happens to be a monster attack. While I'll probably suffer the same fate as the people in Cloverfield if a monster attacked my town, this is kind of what I want to ESCAPE from. I know that in real life I'm a weak, wimply dude who'd get eaten as soon as something extraordinary happened, which I don't take great pleasure in. That's why I watch movies and play games about competent people doing thing I am physically incapable of even conceiving of.

I sat through all of War of the Worlds - in a cinema, no less - and I sat through all of Cloverfield, and I was left thinking "Yeah, and? So what? Why do I care about any of that?" Cloverfield had no point. War of the Worlds had no point. They may have been good for atmosphere and "what if" artsiness, but they amounted to nothing, showed me nothing, did nothing. I sat though hours of people running for their lives, and for what? Zilch.

I never cared for any of these people, because I was never given a reason to care about them. All they did was whine and cry. Natural, given the circumstances, sure, but not endearing in the slightest. At least Tom Cruise got an out-of-place badass moment with a grenade vest, but the whole movie felt so... Meh.

In fact, I can describe these movies as "Watching something boring while more interesting things are happening off-camera." Again, that's my own personal bias, but I want someone to cheer for, which assumes there's someone who has a reason to be cheer on, i.e. someone who is achieving something above and beyond "run away," Monty Python style. Basically, it's City of Civilians to me. Realistic, maybe, as realistic as disaster movies can be, but not interesting in the slightest. Not to me.

Yeah, that's kind of like reviewing life in WW2 France and not mentioning the Germans. It's part of the game. If you want an objective review, you need to mention EVERYTHING, not just the apparently narrow field of interest you have in the game.

Again - listing only the things you care about in a game is all fine and good. For a blog. But that is not a review, not should it be called one.

How, pray tell, did you check? Positron was pretty clear that players who had no characters created on their account would only have Praetorian as an option, and would only be given Hero and Villain options once they had created their Praetorian. You are not, in fact, a new player as you have played before and this limitation clearly does not apply to you, but this is what was officially said with GR's release.

Considering it's so patently obvious how events are just so arranged that it isn't the same, yeah, it isn't the same. But that's my point - why couldn't it be?

Maybe she will. Or maybe she won't. Maybe Cleo is one of the actual good guys in the resistance, maybe Cleo has a bit of honour and dignity left in her. Maybe she'll just cut her losses and flee. Or maybe she'll attack me and force me to kill her. That's fine. It's still the same effect, but I still get to CHOOSE different.

Or maybe she'll prove to be the dirty Crusader that Washington thinks she is, run to her boyfriend and try to rat me out. Then I'll get jumped by the PPD and forced to find evidence to clear my name, eventually exposing her and either killing her or arresting her.

As I said countless times before in relation to City of Villain - I'm fine with facing consequences as long as I'm allowed to make the choice which causes them. I want to flip Arbiter Daos the birdie and help Ghost Widow defile the Red Widow. There are other ways to retain status quo and keep her a ghost. And I'm fine with being tossed into an Arachnos brig for it and having to break out. Several times, if need be. But, of course, the cop-out excuse is "they can just turn off the reclimators," which thankfully CoV seems to discount, if you believe Dr. Steffard.

Why am I always using someone else's reclimators, anyway? Why can't I dig myself a hole in the sewers where no-one knows about, steal myself a reclimator, buy myself a cold fusion generator and have my own hovel where I don't have to worry about spawning in a PPD cell or a Resistance brig? If this is about grey and grey morality, why can't I be allowed to make mistakes and suffer the consequnces? Why must I kowtow to this faction or that faction or that faction over there.

In fact, you know what I'd have liked to see? Option 1: Kill Cleo. Option 2: Kill Washington. Option 3: Kill 'em both and claim that's how you found 'em. But I can't, can I? Because which faction would that put me with? "Me?" Such a faction doesn't exist. And it should. I've been saying that for five years, and even the "City of Ambivalence" expansion STILL doesn't let me work for myself without being somebody's dog of war.

I will freely admit that I am not the most focused leveller out there. I definitely played for more than 7 hours, but I did more with my time than grinding XP. I spent a lot of time designing costumes, perfecting concepts and deciding powersets. I had four characters I wanted to make when Going Rogue launched, and they needed to be finalised by the time I got around to making them. I also spent a lot of time chatting with my friends, who had all congregated to play, as well. They're chatty. I also spent an inordinate amount of time reading clues, mission briefings, contact dialogue, NPC dialogue and so forth. I also spent a good deal of time just running around Praetoria, taking in the sights. I managed to nearly got myself killed by the Sonic Barrier at least twice, I managed to get trapped in the BAF where you can't jump over the wall, I explored Keyes island and climbed Anti-Matter's reactors. I spent a good deal of time Walking (as in, using Walk) because my characters came out so damn perfect I couldn't take my eyes off them.

I goofed around, as I would in any game I step in for the first time, which is exactly what I'd expect a new player to do. Frankly, I don't know why you'd expect a new player to go "OK, I made a character. Now what's the fastest way to powerlevel? Go, go, go!" It ain't been my experience, and I should tell you - I level pretty much the fastest of all the people I see on my friends screen every day. In fact, I have a friend who keeps being amazed at how I can make a character on Monday and be level 18 on Friday, though he solos a lot of Defenders, so I can kind of see that.

I did better on my second playthrough. Got through Praetoria in about three or four days, but that was some serious playtime put in there, and with a lot less sightseeing. And now that I'm back at work and now that I post on the forums more, now that I'm starting to write again... I play even less.

Seriously, getting to 50 in two weeks is not the norm for VETERANS, let alone new players.

And that is reflective of the new player experience how, exactly? I didn't do anything to slow myself down. I soloed my way through all of the missions, a few hours a day while at the same time exploring the new landscapes, chatting with friends, working on costumes and designing new characters. You're a jaded veteran, and that's fine, but don't be a hypocrite by hiding behind the "new player experience." It's been three week or thereabout now, and a lot of people on my Global list are still playing characters in Praetoria.

Methinks the problem is you.

Whether it affects your review or not, you are obligated to include it if you want to have a claim at an objective review, which yours isn't. If you want to go on a rant about the game, that's fine, but don't pretend you're doing fair and objective criticism, especially since new players HAVE TO START IN PRAETORIA. Period. The point of a review is to give people a comprehensive look of what the game has to offer, and just because a piece of content doesn't affect your pet peeves doesn't mean other people wouldn't want to know about it.

If you want to be Yahtzee, then at least stop pretending you're being fair, because Yahtzee has made it clear that he isn't fair to the things he reviews in the slightest. In fact, after his positive review of Psychonauts, he basically swore off doing positive reviews ever again because his audience did not take it well. But you are no Yahtzee.

And there goes your credibility as reviewing for new players. I'm a veteran here and it took me A WEEK to get done with Praetoria. I'm not sure what you're doing to get through it in a single playsession, unless that's a 24-hour playsession, but it ain't casual or new-player-like.

Besides, if you out and out discount the expansion which brought so many new players to the game, I dare say any review you make is going to be useless as a review. You can't pick and choose what you want to include and then claim you're objective. Don't work that way.

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Also, unless you assume that people are idiots, you don't need to call missions "quests." I'm pretty sure any person who speaks English will be able to understand what a mission is, and most WoW players call their dungeons "instances" anyway.

I want to be different and cast my vote for Java. It may be a bit bloated, but it has an excellent free compiler in Eclipse, the Java runtimes are free and easy to acquire and already on a lot of PCs due to being required for some sites, and Sun Microsystems provide excellent free support with a full library of classes and their uses. Half of what I know about Java, I learned from library-diving in their archives.

Then again, I don't know much about C#, as I never ran across it in the field. I mostly use Perl in my work these days, but I would advise AGAINST it for the simple fact that it's much more heavily reliant on sygils and "default" variable, two things I can never remember offhand.

I don't, huh? So when you said:

I'm not right to call ********? Going Rogue was supposed to offer a third option that was neither a hero nor a villain. It completely failed to do this, because it's always a binary choice even in Praetoria. People spent years talking about City of Greys or City of Spies or City of Mercenaries. We didn't get that. What we got was City of Heroes and Villains.

This isn't a bad thing in itself, mind you - that's how it should have been from the get go. But it's not what people were expecting from Going Rogue. You can insult my intelligence all you want, this doesn't change the fact that Praetoria wasn't as advertised. It's not about walking the line in the slightest. Walking the line would assume making your own choices. In fact, you very much don't. You never even pick your own morality. You pick between factions, where all factions are wrong.

I don't know why the game has been so focused on "beloning" ever since CoV, but I don't like it, because this compromises one's morality at its core. You belong to a faction, so you HAVE to share THEIR morality. You can switch to another faction, but then you have to share THEIR morality, instead. None of the choices that matter have to do with a grey morality. They have to do with faction warfare. At no point do any of the important choices actually let me pick MY morality. Why can't I play a Loyalist who will sometimes compromise the greater good for the good of a single person, but overall keep my alignment? I can't, because of the "political atmosphere." Or why can't I play a Resistance sympathiser who doesn't like wanton and petty rebellion? I can't, because of the "political atmosphere."

We turned morality into politics, and politics is not a "grey and grey morality." Again, the little consequence-less choices we make in-mission are far more interesting than the big morality swaps, because I can follow my chosen path AND make my own choices, rather than having my choices dictated to me by the path I've chosen.

We are given two "morality packs" - one resistance and one loyalist - and we can only ever swap between them wholesale. I never feel like the choices are my own, because the choices are always pragmatic - do you want to be Loyalists or Resistance? I can never say "I, as a loyalist, choose to spare this woman because the greater good of the people should not come at the price of lawlessness and cold-blooded murder." I can't, because of politics. So White will try to get Cleo out. Let him. Let the system work. Let the laws do their job. Isn't that what being truly loyal to the system means? Or why can't I be a resistance member who chooses to not kill innocent people by making them suck on sewage? Why can't I feel that the best way to save people is not by destroying their one source of fresh water? The truth is out, the struggle is going well. We don't need pointless sacrifices. Isn't that exactly what we're fighting against? Needless oppression and wanton murder? I guess not, because if that's what I choose, I become a Loyalist.

As far as I'm concerned, the game would have been far superior if we never "belonged" to any one faction at all and were simply allowed to pick and choose missions as they come. That way, we could take a little of both faction's morality without belonging to either one. That's what in-mission choices let me do. I can be a loyalist and still let DeVore go without becoming any less of a loyalist. If I can let DeVore go, why can't I let Cleo go? It's basically the same choice, only one time it's my choice while the other time it's a faction swap.

You should see my character roster. In fact, right now I'm playing a jet black bug lading with giant wings, glowing eyes, cloven feet, carapace arms and no lower jaw. I fly up to Dean McArthur and the first thing he says is something along the line of "Hey baby! What's a cutie like you doing in a dump like this?" I seriously laughed my *** off at Dean's dialogue, within context But at least I know I'm not the only one who finds the bug lady sexy, so go me!

I can't say I share your outlook here. In order for me to enjoy a character in any fiction, I need to like this character in at least some way. In fact, I recently had something of an epiphany as a storywriter, in that I think I find the best way I can write. It probably sounds patently ridiculous to try and have a story where you like EVERYONE, good, bad or ambivalent, but it can actually be done. In fact, trying to intentionally write for characters I hate has been one of the biggest stumbling blocks I've ever faced when writing a story. It's easiest for me to get lost in a character when I actually enjoy just being in the presence of this character. When I can look at him or her and go... "This is so cool! I want to write more of this!" Every time I've tried to write for a completely irredeemable character, the opposite happens "I don't like this. I don't want to write this any more." And I simply stop, and then I "neglect" to continue.

Yes, that does indeed mean that if I'm going to write a villain, I will need to "like" that villain. This doesn't always mean I'll like what the villain is doing or agree with his decisions, but it means there's something in that villain that I secretly enjoy. With Ezikiel, it's the fact that you don't play him. He plays you no matter what happens. With Tyler, it's the utter absolutism of wanting to kill all life and replace it with machines, in that "you are beneath my notice" way. With Alexander, it's the complete and unrelenting resolve in pursuing a hypocrite's vision of good. Every villain I make has to have something I like in order to be made in the first place. It's like... OK, he's the bad guy, I know that. But at the same time, there's something about him that's so completely awesome! I probably don't want him to win in the end, but I kind of don't want to kill him off, either.

I prefer being able to cheer for the bad guy from time to time. I hate it when the heroes find some cheap, undignified way to ruin what was an otherwise remarkable scheme. It doesn't feel "earned" then.

I think I'll just have to disagree with you there. True, the way certain stories are told, there really is no way out alive. But then... I really don't want to hear that story. Part of the reason is that, from any story I read, watch or play, I want closure. I want to see the events that take place in it build up to something, to have some form of effect. Because if they don't, then I see no reason for me to have watched the movie, played the game or read the book, if the protagonist just dies in the end and nothing really changes.

The way I read stories and, above all else, the way I WRITE stories, is always based on actions and consequences. "Where am I going with this?" An action doesn't have to have an ultimately practical consequence. Such as, for instance, a hero could spend the whole game trying to find the vaccine to stop the evil disease that's killing him, only to realise there is no vaccine and that the disease is actually his own psychosis manifesting as a physical condition. A "you suck" ending would leave it there. The way I'd write the ending is I'd give this "failure" a meaning. All of this wasn't for nothing. Now that he knows what it is, he knows how to combat it, which in turn becomes the other half of the story.

I can respect a game like Silent Hill (but not Silent Hill 2), in that it can give you basically a meaningless ending - it was all a dream, you died in the crash and hallucinated the whole thing. That's fine, because the game also features a non-dower ending if you know what to do. If the whole plot is made irrelevant right at the end, then I have to wonder - why even bother? Why let a protagonist struggle if he's going to lose anyway. Would it honestly have mattered one bit if he'd died right at the start?

Oh, sure, if you end a story five minutes in, as opposed to 90 minutes in, the audience won't see as much of the action, but as far as I'm concerned, the audience can go to hell. When I write a story, I'm invested in the characters and their stories. I am not, not in the slightest, invested in the audience, who they can relate to or what they want to see. If I make the characters feel real enough and their journey powerful enough, it will make for a good story, and basically all the feedback I've ever gotten on basically anything I've written has pointed to the same effect.

In a sense, I write stories not for participants, but for observers, and I naturally crave stories of the same fashion. That's not to say I'm right and everybody else is wrong, but as long as it comes down to opinions, this is mine.

In much the same way you'd think a Blapper would be a Blaster who also uses his melee attacks a lot, but apparently not. A Blapper is a Blaster who does not engage in ranged combat. And what few "Offenders" I've seen have usually done so to play Blasters with a powerset Blasters don't get access to, such as Dark Blast.

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And a Defender who "embraces," i.e. "uses" his secondary is pretty much a Defender, as that's how Defenders are built and intended to play. There are, of course, the so-called "pure Defenders" who only ever use their primary and then supplement it with the Medicine pool and Leadership toggles, but I hardly feel they should be the norm the AT title should refer to.

More trivial than taking the same three powers on every character?

Why the hell don't people get off their high horse and realise that Going Rogue was supposed to offer a third option to hero and villain but didn't even attempt to do that? You're still given a binary choice between two factions. There's never a third option, be it good or bad. It's always either this or that. That's really not much more choice than what we had before, you just make those choices repeatedly instead of once at character creation.

Personally, I'd have picked the option to walk away and let Washington get his *** kicked. Or kill Cleo. Who cares? Or maybe I would have been a big enough dick and chosen to kill both of them - Cleo for setting me up and Washington for trying to order me around. In fact, that's the one distinct praise Yahtzee gave in his review of Alpha Protocol, which must be the only game which did a good job adding options in-between complete dick and complete saint. In fact, it went out of its way to break most things in three approaches - empathic, neutral and aggressive.

You can't have grey morality if you're still strung up in a binary choice anyway.

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You know what? I'm actually starting to miss ye olde Fantasy RPG, where you're basically some guy in a lawless wilderness setting were you're not constantly badgered to side with this faction or that faction or this other faction over there, where you can actually make your own choices independent of how it affects your standing.

My opinion is I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Care to elaborate?

This is not even remotely true. Blaster Bone Smasher is scale 2.6, Stalker Bone Smasher has a damage mod of 1.64. Blaster Energy Punch is scale 1.96, while Stalker Energy Punch is 1.0. And again - all Stalkers have after their initial Assassin's Strike is weak attacks. Energy Melee is an exception, as it has both Energy Transfer and Total Focus, granted, but everything else is very much the rule. Broadsword has Head Splitter at 2.62 and Disembowel at 1.96, for instance, and both of them are slow. I'm not sure how you figure that each Stalker Set has attacks stronger than Blaster attacks when that's patently untrue, ESPECIALLY in the face of significantly higher damage buffs from Aim and Build Up AND in the face of significantly more strong attacks available to a Blaster than to anything else in the entire game.

Every Blaster combo that isn't Devices has at least two very serious heavy-hitters in melee, and many sets have a collection of smaller attacks, too. Energy Manipulation, in fact, has Charged Brawl, Havoc Punch, Thunder Strike and Shocking Grasp at 1.96, 2.6, 3.0 and 1.8, respectively, and even something as simple as Electric Fence is 1.0 scale damage. Other than Energy Melee, most Stalker sets hover around 1.64, if that. They may or may not have a single heavy hitter, such as Greater Fire Sword, but the bulk of their sets in and of themselves don't hit nearly as hard as your standard Blaster melee attacks, and they have the same damage mod. On top of that, Blasters have hard-hitting ranged attacks to add to this, and if you really felt like it, a 2.76 scale damage snipe with a 1.125 damage mod on it. True, Snipes suck and should not be used for damage, but they're there.

Stalkers get out-scrapped by Scrappers and Blasters, and I'm not saying this just on numbers analysis. I have enough Stalkers, Scrappers and Blasters to know. Stalkers work well when striking from Hide, but they get one, at most two hits like that, and then they are forced to either scrap at a lower damage mod, or run away to hide, wasting colossal amounts of time. Yes, they are still good at what they do, and I still play mine - I'm not saying they suck. But making an AT that's like a Stalker, only MUCH WORSE at Scrapping than what is already struggling in that category is not a good idea.

I take it you don't play a lot of Blasters, then. Because your rules of thumb do not in any way, shape or form reflect reality for a Blaster as I play it or as I've seen it played. The "tank, healer, damage dealer" mentality that you seem to covet really doesn't have much place here. And then there's the solo game...

Which there usually isn't, because few people care to wait for a "healer" or huddle in range of Healing Aura put on auto. Most people build to take care of themselves well enough to not need to be babied - and yes, that's including Blasters - so you won't really see them huddling outside of an AV fight. Plus, even if you had "an AoE healer," what the devil would that "healer" be doing face-up against a Tanker tanking a Face Nemesis, where he'll be eating Nemesis Staff AoE for no reason? If people honestly do that, I ain't seen it, and the few times I've seen it attempted it has led to a lot of dead Defenders. "Healers" aren't vital enough to put lot-damage ATs in the middle of a melee.

Back then there was no reason to take Stalkers on a team, in fact. And the teaming scene reflected that. The primary reason Castle even messed with Stalkers was just that - no-one ever wanted to team with a Stalker because there's nothing a Stalker brought to a team that pretty much everyone else couldn't beat or exceed. A Brute with enough Fury could match a Stalker hit-for-hit and survive significantly better, just as a random fact. The changes did alleviate that somewhat, but I still very rarely see Stalkers on teams and, even playing mine, I can see why. Stalkers don't "reign supreme" in boss killing. They're simply good at it, which while it is a boon for the AT, is hardly an exclusive field. A Brute can just as easily play boss killer, and while a Brute might take slightly longer to do it, it makes little difference because the boss will still not threaten the rest of the team. Furthermore, a Brute will throw in things like Foot Stomp, Tremor, Pendulum, Fire Sword Circle and so forth, wiping out minions in the process of killing a boss, anyway. That's something a Stalker couldn't do, partly because Stalkers lack any meaningful AoE, and partly because their AoE attacks have a very unreliable chance to score hidden criticals.

And again - Stalkers scrape by on shock value and brand loyalty, and they do reasonably well. An AT that's like Stalkers, but unable to scrap will bomb. Hard.

Simply put, I get interrupted. Too many enemies firing too many times occasionally forces some small attack through my shields and interrupts me. That's three seconds' worth of interruptible attack. It's nothing to sneeze at. And that's only on sets with defences, which is what? Ninjutsu, Super Reflexes and Energy Aura. What about Dark Armour, Regeneration, Electrical Aura, Willpower? And again - even in those cases, you have to sit on your hands for eight seconds, then animate three and a half more. That's 7.0 scale damage in 11.67 seconds. In 11.67 seconds on a Ninja Blade character, I can do Golden Dragonfly -> Gambler's Cut -> Soaring Dragon -> Sting of the Wasp -> Gambler's Cut -> Flashing Steel -> Divine Avalanche -> Gambler's cut, still take only around 10 seconds seconds and still do 9.59 scale damage. And that's if I don't score any criticals, mind you AND only counting one target, which with Golden Dragonfly and Flashing Steel may not necessarily be the case.

Assassin's Strike has that "Boom! Headshot!" feel to it, I will admit, but the overwhelming majority of time, just like a basic snipe, it is not useful in a fight. Not as useful as just standing your ground and scrapping. It's not worth the risk, and it's definitely not worth the cost of restarting it multiple times. And how DO you restart it after you get hit, interrupted and your hide breaks, incidentally?

And I can guarantee you that as soon as people actually start using snipes like this, changes will be made to curtail it, as has been done before. The only reason this is currently possible is because snipe attacks suck big-time. As soon as someone figure out how to level off them with no risk, if that were even possible, you'll see changes.

But OK, let's go with your hypothesis. Let's say such an attack were, in fact, doable. What possible purpose could it serve? What purpose, other than to endlessly cheap-shot hard enemies with no aggro? Because I can guarantee you that such an attack with such a defined purpose will not be allowed. Snipe attacks have that as a side benefit because of how they're designed. But if you think an attack will be INTENTIONALLY designed like this, it is you who are wrong.

"Offenders" implies more than "doesn't heal" (since "uses heals" isn't what defines Defenders), but rather implies Defenders who abandon and do not use their primary, choosing instead to focus on their secondary.

Well, that just makes me glad that's what I've been doing for the past six years on most of my characters Therefore, an Inherent Fitness will likely only free up slots, even considering I'll want to three-slot Stamina. I should be able to pull endurance reduction enhancements out of a lot of places.

Well, for my part, I never thought you were doomcrying, and I respected your argument. I know it probably didn't come off like it (what with the "you'll get over it" tripe), but that is a valid concern. How SERIOUS it is is a matter of perspective, but I can respect that it is, in fact, a valid concern nonetheless.

It's certain other posts that bugged me.