Samuel_Tow

And I'm of the opinion that nothing in a game should ever be "hard work." This is exactly what I log on to AVOID, why on Earth would I be looking for it in-game?

The point of faster levelling isn't to get to 50 and be done. The point is to get to 20, to get to 30, to get to 40, and generally to be able to make decent progress to where it doesn't feel like you're spinning your wheels. Back in the old days, getting even a single level in the 40s was an epic struggle, and despite what people may say, that is NOT a good thing. Day after day after day spent with no progress made but a couple of purple bars is not my idea of fun. I like getting new powers, I like getting more slots, I like making actual, meaningful progress via milestones, NOT via small increments in a bar I have to fill.

And if I get a character to 50? So what? I move on to the next one. At last tally, I had almost 40 characters, only 7 of which are level 50. That's 7 characters in 5 years. I'm not running out of things to do any time soon.

On this, we simply have very different views on what "aristocratic" entails. Mind you, I don't think yours is wrong, but it is simply different from mine. Where you see arrogance and sinister calculation, I see honour and tradition. In fact, this is a large part of what I want to use to give this particular character some more depth than just "a vampire.

Typically, when you have stories about vampires attempting to defy their nature, this comes about via a complete rejection of the whole vampire reality. Blade, for instance, refuses to drink blood, and others may refuse to kill, or even use their supernatural powers. What I want is something of a middle ground. A character who has embraced his nature, entrenched his ways and accepted his fate, yet who still questions the justice of his very existence. "I hunt to feed, I kill to survive, but in the end, is all this loss of life worth it just to sustain my own unlife?"

Typically, immortality in fiction has two distinctly different effects on people. On the one hand, it gives then infinite life, and so unlimted opportunity for greatness, in essence giving the, endless ambition. On the other side of the coin are the the others, to whom it gives infinite life, but finite happiness, and as such a meaningless existence that isn't wanted, yet doesn't end. There is, of course, a whole field of middle ground in-between, and I have characters pretty much dotted all over the place, but with this one I think I'll want to lean towards the latter. Less sinister and ambitious, more disillusioned and introspective.

And, mind you, alone. Again, this is where our takes on aristocracy differ. I can certainly acknowledge that it could be seen as an active, passionate high life, that of the people in power pulling the strings. On the other hand, though, it could be viewed as lonely, the perfect example of this being a lone aristocrat living in his ivory tower with but a few servants to tend to his needs, away from the furore of high society. If I wanted to be symbolic, I could probably go on to explain how all the feasts and celebrations and all the social relations are only empty shells of where real relationships would be, and how the false mask of festivities hides behind it a great void that is never filled no matter how much fun you have or how much success you feed it. Which would then be compounded by the nature of a vampire, doomed to live alone, hidden from society and forced to pray on the innocents, into tricking them with false affection and betraying perhaps the only people who would actually care.

And, mind you, I'm writing this as I go along at half past 2 AM on four hours of sleep since half past 2 AM yesterday night, so if it doesn't make a lot of sense, please excuse me

That happens to me a lot. I see a movie or play a game based on a popular franchise I never knew existed before (or since), only for it to be panned by just about everyone as a very bad representation of the the franchise. At the same time, all I'm able to see is a good game or a decent movie, and I'm left scratching my head for years, until someone tells me I'd probably hate it a lot more if I had read the book. Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption is a lot like that. I have no idea what Vampire: The Masquerade even is, and from what I've heard about it over the years, I'm not sure I want to know. I've never been a fan of quasi-political storylines.

All I know is I played a game about a cool European knight who got turned into a vampire and spent the rest of the game hunting down his love of all of two hours and trying to redeem himself from the "sin" of vampirism. To me, it's actually interesting how Christoph grows from an "infected" human to a fully realised vampire, yet retains both his faith and his honour the entire way through. Bloodlines, on the other hand, even numerous technical problems notwithstanding, just felt like gang violence mixed up with illuminati politics. Of course, I never got far enough to really know, so I may well be talking out the other side of my mouth.

That depends on the vampire, really, and what you want out of him. Some vampires are sinister manipulators, other vampires are... Well, Alucard. Yeah... Alucard, in pretty much all of his iterations. Just about any time the name comes up in relation to a fictional character, you can expect a walking juggernaut of carnage, be it subtle or psycho crazy. I keep defaulting back to it, but that's pretty much half of what I had in mind to begin with - what the vampire said to D: Taking on a vampire at night is a job for fools. And he wasn't saying that because he had a plan, merely because he felt like he could cut any enemy apart with his metalling wings-cape.

A Stalker survives by hiding, by running away, by setting traps and exploiting weaknesses. A true, realised vampire can stand up before you, warn you against taking him on, then slice you in half with all the grace of someone toothpicking a weenie at a cocktail bar. That, at least, is my vision of it. I don't claim it's right, but it's how I see things.

Also, this also comes down to how we interpret Fury. Yes, I'm aware how the game describes it, but I've never played a Brute by running around, trying to build up or maintain Fury. On the contrary, I play as I always would, and rely on Fury to build up on its own in situations where I need it. And with dropping my difficulty to -1x3 (from +0x2), I actually see a lot more enemies, and they give me a lot more Fury basically for free. In essence, I treat Fury not as the act of getting angry and enraged, but with the act of getting serious. It's all fun and games until you get swamped with enemies, and hurt more than you expected. That's when it's time to get serious and stop pulling your punches. Very much all of my Brutes are written as calm, calculating fighters who don't fly off the handle pretty much at all. They just fight harder and harder as the situation demands. I'd rather leave Stalkers for the agile, fragile fighters.

It's a combination of not having any options I live compounded on top of not being able to find many swords that don't look Japanese. I should probably go out and try the costume out in the Architect where I have everything unlocked. Maybe that'll show me a decent weapons. I hope the Rularuu Katana is a little thicker in the bald than the Rilaruu Broadsword. Either way, the Rularuu weapons show up at level 37 and above (that's when Nylor gives his Shard arc), which is far too long to wait if I don't have a decent Katana to start with. Hence the cornerstone problem of unlockable costume pieces - if I need it but can't have it, the character doesn't get made, so I don't really need it. If I have it but don't really need it, then I don't really need it, do I?

Wait, by "first" do you mean "left?" Because the left one with the white hair actually has darker skin than the second with the black hair, which has pure white skin (or as close as the editor will let me get). It just feels odd to make both his skin and his hair white, is all.

Too much colour. I tried all the colours, but the Occult coat just colours in very large patches. So large, in fact, that even the darkest of non-black colours really stand out. You'd think I could pick, say, really, really dark purple and you'd barely be able to see, but it glows like a neon sign when I put it on coat, sleeves and boots. I tried. That's part of why I tried removing the vest, so I didn't colour at least that. Didn't work.

I'm biassed, obviously, as I have the pack and I'm using it for a lot of costumes, but I'd advise you to get it. The Magic Bolero for women is VERY cool and useful for a whole slew of concepts (you get a Witch variant with it, as well), and the Baron coat for men is really cool. It's very much the only long coat we have, short of the lab coat, and it shows. That, and the high-collar cape is easily one of the best we have, simply because it's so good at looking regal and/or mysterious, which the other "super hero" capes just can't match. It's also very much the only high collar we have in the entire game.

Thank you for your help, and now I'm off to bed because I lost my ability to think more than a sentence ahead probably mid-way through this post

I had that face on an emotion-less Dominator of mine who used a costume my mother designed, if you can believe that. Just sat her down one day, asked her "make something" and she came up with something surprisingly decent. Pity I can't play Dominators, even after the fixes. But there's no sense wasting a good face

I remember an old discussion about how black was tacky and heroes shouldn't use black. I remember laughing in the face of whoever said it back then. So, yeah, I agree with you. Even though you may not always need it, there's no reason to NOT use it when applicable. In fact, the only colour I'm at all able to accept an argument against using is pink, and even then because of how its perceived, not because of how it looks.

Yeah, pretty much. If you look at this and think: "Hmm... Vampire, maybe?" then I did well. In this case, I went for obvious looks over originality, as I think the theme carries the character a lot of the way.

I would, but they're already quite below average. Muscle is about a quarter below middle, as is chest, and waist is about half below middle. The shoulders are wide, as I wanted a wider frame and the legs are long and wide, but the physique itself is skinny. It's just that huge baggy jacket covered in a huge baggy cape, with big baggy pants and oversized boots that make him look thick

Do so if you get the chance and inclination, but I seriously doubt you'd come up with a way to make it work. Even the darkest of colours are too bright for this dark costume, and because of how the jacket colours, you'll just end up with massive patterns. See, if I could colour only the edges or smaller embroidery, I'd probably go for it, but it also colours the huge anchors with the skulls on them, and that just takes up over half the surface of the jacket. Rather than being black with accents, it turns into a two-colour piece, which doesn't look as good. It's not subtle in the slightest.

By the way, even black on black has contrast, as the fabric is matte, yet the patterns are shiny, so they still show through.

Well... That's a matter of how you look at it, I guess. To me, that inside looks like a buttoned bed sheet, and I actually avoided it for that precise reason But on the other hand, yeah, it's the skill. I'm already overdoing the details by a LOT, so slapping that huge skill on the back will push it from somewhat tastefully ornate to gaudy in the extreme. There has to be a balance between the detailed and the flat in this one, and that gigantic pattern just ruins it.

Hmm... I was highly hesitant about them, but I could go with that if you like it, sure

That's actually how I come up with most of my concept, to be honest. I find a something from another culture, genre, story or setting I know almost nothing about, and then try to replicate something as close to what my mental image of that thing is as I can. The problem is my mental image is almost always wrong, so the final work becomes similar in name only. My avatar is a perfect example. It was supposed to be the stylised Z on the shoulder of Zero from MegaMan X4. Except I didn't remember what it looked like, and what I came up with looked nothing like it

Personally, this particular approach is probably my favourite, both to create via and to watch other people's creations done through it. I enjoy taking old, trite concept, breathing new life into them, keeping to the old, "un-modernised" traditions as much as I can afford, yet still bringing something interesting to the table. Old is the new new, as it were, only oftentimes "old" isn't necessarily measured in years, but in use. Vampires are old both because they've existed as a concept for centuries, and because media has run them into the ground and turned them into a cliché. Well, sometimes you can take a cliché and, if you do it right, get something decent out of it

Dual Valkyrie swords, at the moment. I tried Broadsword, but I couldn't find a decent sword to start with, and I can't use the Romulus sword for a THIRD character. And, really, it's the only one decently big enough for my tastes, that isn't the Legacy Broadsword, which isn't very regal. I couldn't work with Katana, as all the options are Asian, and I wanted something more European. I settled on Valkyrie swords because they're shiny and fancy, like the rest of the costume

I'm not sure what to colour them yet. For the moment, they're black with white blades, but I wouldn't be against going red or blue for a more magical look. Or even making them different colours to simulate unique, heirloom weapons.

Riddle me this - how do you fight a spawn with two TacOps in it with a Fire/Fire Blaster such that at least one doesn't perma-stun you?

I'm not sure what you mean, since the man said:

That's pretty much definitively weapon sets not causing redraw in conjunction with ANYTHING. Not causing redraw with themselves is sort of implied.

No-one's trying to say you're wrong to feel how you feel. We're just trying to say you should give it a chance. It looks better than it sounds.

I assumed you haven't seen it, because this was only present in a fairly exotic bug which, at the time when I reported it, no-one seemed to have seen. And it's been fixed now, anyway. Back before, if you activated the Undead Slaying Axe while flying or hovering, it would not play its draw animation and would proceed straight to its swing animation. As I tried this on a flying Broadsword, I felt the transition was actually pretty smooth overall. If the new setup looking like this, then it will be pretty cool.

Actually, in the old days getting to 50 was more like taking a dump. A lot of effort and eyestrain, and you ended up with something that didn't you didn't have any use for.

Far as I'm concerned, the "sense of accomplishment" in doing hard-slash-tedious tasks in MMOs is something that needs to go the way of the dodo, at least as far as mainstream content is concerned. Leave the major accomplishment badges and TFs and Sets for the hardcore, but make the game easy to play, hard to master. Reaching level 50 shouldn't be some kind of monumental accomplishment. It should be within anyone's grasp multiple times. Knowing that you can get to the "end" of the game multiple times before you die of old age is a great booster in replayability, at least in my eyes.

I don't believe the levelling curve is bad right now. About the only thing that slightly bugs me is that it slows down so harshly at level 25, but that's not that big of a thing. It's just fast enough to where you always feel like you're making progress, yet not fast enough to where you don't get to use your new power before you're picking up two more. Double experience would be a complete mess, on the other hand, and I wouldn't shed a tear if we never got another double experience weekend.

MMO players are a strange bunch, wanting their games to run forever so they can never see the end at all. Me, I'm glad we have a game with faster levelling where all content is within your reach. It's not a question of getting to the end, it's a question of what you do along the way, which is how it should be.

You do get speech bubbles, but only if you have the Pet channel in at least one of your tabs. You don't need to be looking at the tab, just to have the channel somewhere.

I don't get to self-destruct my henchmen, but I actually lose zombies a lot of the time. They seem to take alpha strikes a lot, and they ARE pretty weak. It's not often I lose a Grave Knight and I almost never lose a Lich, but I often find myself wanting to extract a soul and not being able to because it's still recharging. Pretty much every other death I suffer, I can't extract a soul out of it. I'm just not very careful about it

No, I honestly wouldn't want any of the procs or sets. I'm not interested in them. SOs and Commons are all I'm willing to use. Consider it a physical limiation.

As well, Zombies in general lack fire and lethal resistance, but they are not specifically vulnerable to them. I don't know what other henchmen have off-hand, so it's possible everyone else has defence or resistance to these effects, making zombies weaker by comparison, but unlike regular zombies, they don't have negative resistance to the damage types. Don't Genin also lack resistance of any kind and rely only on low-ish defence?

It doesn't befit you to resort to malicious arguments, Arcana, especially since you've shown you can do better.

A person can very much work beyond his or her "original programming," as basic development already shows. A person can be taught, a person can learn by himself, and a person can plain figure things out via trial and error. And in a much deeper way than just pure reason. We're built with systems specifically designed to handle the unknown, which gather useful information and give us an instinct even if we don't recognise it.

That's not to say computers can't emulate the same thing, and learning computers have been in development for some time. But that's another thing entirely. A computer which learns and is able to apply its knowledge to an unknown situation IS intelligent, if such a thing even exists. But a computer that only reacts based on pre-defined situations and reactions to them is not. It is a machine, nothing more. A complicated system of pushing a button to initiate an effect.

I'm not of the opinion that any system which can fake intelligence can be considered intelligent. For one thing, humans are idiots and some can believe anything is intelligent. After all, how many people are completely convinced their toaster is talking to them? For another thing, humans are idiots, and even ANOTHER PERSON can't always manage to come across as intelligent, much less a machine. What "seems" intelligent is an inherently flawed test, because it's subjective and because we're predisposed to see faces, patterns, reason and intelligence in places where it doesn't exist. Gods weren't invented for fun, they were invented because people were SURE there was some kind of intelligence behind the sun and sky and the health of their crops.

Intelligent computers are possible, but as far as I'm aware, they don't exist yet. Some headway has been made into some of those fields, but results are still limited and impractical. Intelligence, in the practical sense, is not the same as automation. If anything, automation is the OPPOSITE of intelligence.

I don't think I really need fitness, to be completely honest. Yeah, yeah, I know common wisdom about it, but I don't want to take it "just because." And, yes, I am a 60-month veteran.

I like Fly, but I'd still stick to Hover, instead. I really can't justify having two travel powers, but I CAN justify having Hover and Teleport, as they have non-overlapping utility and actually work pretty dang well together. I understand Concealment for Phase Shift, but to be honest, between Cloak of Darkness and Teleport, I think I can kludge the "turning into mist" intangibility without the need for practical intangibility effects in-game. That, and I really don't think I need this much stealth, especially on a Stalker. Plus, I'll probably want a Dark Blast or two, likely from Ghost Widow's pastel darkness.

I'm starting to come around to the Stalker concept, to be honest. You have a point about the "nightstalker" angle. I'm just... Not sure. On the one hand, it makes perfect sense. On the other hand, "taking on a vampire at night is a job for fools." I'll have to think on that.

In general fiction, and especially in animation and video games, "speed draw" has become the norm. That is not to say that draw doesn't exist, it does. It's just done so quickly and out-of-scale with the speed of everything else that it may as well be instant. Rather than dilly-dally with making incredibly fast draw animations, the easiest, cheapest next-best-thing is to just not have draw at all. Functionally and for all it matters, it's the same thing as a really quick draw, as a really quick draw is nearly invisible to the eye, anyway.

Look at any non-FPS action game that revolves around a multiple weapon design and you'll note they all use what's known in the industry as a "fast weapon switch." Essentially, the switch is instant, so as to preserve the pace of the action and to allow for consistent, flowing combos. What's more, a lot of games that focus on weapon users often have the weapon user constantly use a holstered weapon, pulling it out the instant you hit the attack button, performing a full combo and then putting it away, in effect never having a weapon in-hand unless he's attacking.

Again, you have not seen this in action. I have. It looks a lot better than it seems from the verbal description. Give it some time, try it out, play around with it and I'm sure you'll come around. Yes, it's a bit of a cheat, but for the sake of the smoothness it creates, it's a good cheat.

Consider the consequences. You can mix Kick into your sword attack chain, and you won't have to slow down and redraw each time you kick. It'll be just a smooth attack chain no different from a (somewhat slow) fighting game. Or you could have. On the other side of the fence is something like an Assault Rifle/Energy Blaster, who can punch and gun at the same time. And while it would certainly be better for each punch to kept the rifle out, I guarantee that with this change, you'll get pretty dang close to this. Or, and this is what should keep you up at night, picking different models of Spines for your different Spines attacks should no longer cause in-set redraw. Err... When we get to Spines, that is

One of the big problems in City of Heroes is that combat system is cumbersome, rooting us for long periods of time, often for little or no benefit. BABs has been trimming the fat for years, making small attacks faster and eliminating some of the pauses. By and large our animations are great, better than most other MMO, but at times they can feel unwieldy. These are the times when you spend a lot of time rooted AFTER an attack has completed, as well as the times you would really like to chain attacks one after the other, but there's a big gap between them. And, yes, this also occurs when you have to draw a weapon after every couple of attacks.

And I know what you're thinking: just don't take non-weapon attacks when you have a weapon set! Well, why not? Now that I can, this opens up a lot of new build options, as well as a lot of new concept options. I've often wanted to take Kick or Boxing on my sword users, but never did because putting the sword away looked dang silly. Now that it won't matter, I'll have to go back and retry that.

Overall: Christmas comes early for me! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

It's not as bad if you pay constant attention, but yeah. A lot of the older story arcs are pretty poorly executed, basically "things are happening in places all over town, go interfere." A lot of backstory is talked about, but it never actually comes to anything. For instance, we know the Family is selling Superadine to the Skulls, who then sell it to the Trolls for use and distribution, and that the Hellions get artefacts from the Outcasts, who in turn work for the Warriors. None of that ever comes to play. You don't see missions where the Skulls are dealing with the Trolls, and while you DO see the occasional Button Man in Steel Canyon, no mission ever makes a point of it.

Compare that to, say, the Rikti/Lost connection. It's hinted at a few times, it's explored in the Organ Grinders, it's explored again by the Dark Watcher in the Benjamin Deckar story arc, becomes relevant for Angus McQueen's own backstory, as well as Division: Line, where it plays a part several times. It plays a large role in Timothy Raymond's story, it affects Kelly Uqua. It's there, it's mentioned a few times and it's all over the place if you're a little more observant. It matters. The Family/Skulls/Trolls crime ring, on the other hand, does not. It's hinted at I think once, mentioned one more time and that's it.

Newer content, from CoV onward, tends to be a lot better about giving you complete stories, or at least completing the incomplete ones. For instance, Maros spends a lot of time talking about the second coming of the tower, but his content ends at level 30. Scirocco's Time After Time returns to that storyline, however, and explores the Tower to the Heavens. The red coral crystal is also mentions all the time, even out of context. Arachnos want it, the Cage Consortsium wants it, the CoT want it. Even Psymon Omega wants it. It matters. And the ultimate example, of course, are the persistent characters in Faultline. Even though I hate Jim and Anette, and I'm not a fan of Sands, they feel like persistent characters, rather than plot devices invented for one mission only.

For one, Grendel is dead. He was the previous leader of the Trolls, I believe, with Atta being their current leader. One has to wonder why he's, at most, level 15 when the Trolls go up to 20, but that just goes on to suggest the Hollows was intended to be a higher-level zone than it ended up being.

As for the Magmite master, I believe you fight something like that in the Caverns of Transcendence. I wouldn't know. I'd sooner give a lecture to a full class or stay at work a full work day than her cats for that nonsense.

What... Does this have to do with anything? Each Issue's content is incrementally better than the content in the previous Issues, sure, but did you honestly think I was saying the opposite? A slap on the neck is an improvement over a knee to the groin, but I still wouldn't call it "good." How much better content was than content before it is irrelevant when it comes to updating content NOW. Fact of the matter is, how much of an improvement the Hollows was over pre-I1 content isn't going to keep a new player warm at night when it's still very much bad.

You're really determined to get me on semantics, aren't you? So, if I said half and it was 49 out of 100, would you still claim it wasn't precisely half? You know full well what I mean, and for someone beating me over the head with context, this is a pretty out-of-context argument. No, it's not half. I didn't count them and you know it. It's still too damn many, considering how very many people have complained of hunts over the years. In older content, you could at least skip the hunts, Security Chief notwithstanding, since the contact would always offer a hunt or another mission, and when he only offered a hunt, it meant he was out of other missions. With the Hollows, Striga and Croatoa, the hunts are lumped in with the "story" missions (and I use the term very loosely), such that you CAN'T skip them. Contacts only ever offer a single mission, and if they offer a hunt, a hunt is what you get.

I won't go into the myriad of problems with hunt missions. I'll only say that sticking them into story arcs has been largely avoided in recent years, and for good reason. Sticking them into story "arcs" is exactly what the I1-I5 zones do. It's as bad an idea now as it always was. Worse, in fact, in this day an age.

Or, you know, I could take that "optional content" you keep clubbing me over the head with and not do it. I have neither the time nor the inclination to do multi-hour marathons in a single sitting, nor do I have the time and inclination to herd cats. For some odd, eccentric reason, this doesn't prevent me from finishing the story in Faultline, or the story in the Rikti War Zone, or any of the stories in Ouroboros. Sure, I can't really finish any of the stories in the Shard, but at least I can't even start them. Before you try to chastise me for preferring to solo, you may want to stop overlooking the flaw in design present here - you do not let people start tasks they cannot finish. And when a story ends in a TF, it's pretty easy tell a player won't be able to finish him just by virtue of TFs requiring a minimal number of people.

So, no, you might not. I don't ask you to play on my difficulty setting, you don't ask me to put teams together.

Yeah, I must need new glasses, because I still don't see it. I said new content has been better with the narrative. Since CoV, yes, but ESPECIALLY FROM FAULTLINE ONWARD. The reason I even included CoV is because it DOES have a lot of good content in it. Seer Marino's Oh Wretched Man, Marshal Brass' Echo Down the Aeons, Maros' Cult of the Shaper, Mu Drakhan's various arcs. There is a lot of good stuff in CoV, much better than anything in CoH, before or even since. But there's also a lot of CRAP in CoV, such as Operative Kirkland, Arbiter Leery, Kelly Uqua, the Shadowy Figure, Henry Dumont, that Cage Consortium CEO. It's a mixed bag. It deserves a worthy mention, as it IS the starting point, but I've gone on and on and ON about all the crappy design choices made there, something I've generally not done about Faultline, the War Zone or even Ouroboros, despite it not being a full zone.

Learn to read before you insult, please.

Why do you have it stuck in your head that "hunts" are the only thing I find wrong? Pointless, non-story instances are just as bad. "Ghosts have taken over a building. Go get rid of them." "Thanks." It progresses the plot not a single inch, it has no point whatsoever, and yet it's stuck in the middle of what's supposed to be a story. Show of hands - what, exactly, is the story Gordon Bower tells you? Because it comes down to "Croatoa is infested with walking pumpkins! Help!" In effect, Mayor Bower does as much for Croatoa as the Hazard Zone field operatives that meet you at every entrance - he tells you what the zone is about and that's it.

Croatoa has no story in it. It has a basic setting, and that's it. Noting in it ever happens, at least nothing that lasts more than one mission. There's a grand total of one revelation outside of the Kathie Hannon TF, and that's that the Red Caps broth the Tautha and the Fir out to fight so they can feast on their pain. Oh, and again, a suggestion that something else might be happening via the all of one Cabal mission, which is no revelation at all since you can plainly see and be attacked by flying witches just walking the street. WHAT is going on with them would have been interesting to know, but again, that's locked up with Kathie Hannon.

So you say. I've run through the Croatoa story over a dozen times, and it has never felt like a story. Bower's entire collection of missions can be summed up in one zone briefing, half of LeGrange's missions are you going out and finding nothing interesting, and it just drags on from there. I don't mind random side missions, not at all, but I want a cohesive story that follows a storyline, not just random clues scattered about unrelated missions. What you have in Croatoa is not cohesive in the slightest. And, frankly, tout its virtues all you will, that has never been repeated. I5 was the last we saw of that confounded storytelling approach, and CoV gave us a better one - short, episodic storylines that feed into each other and follow an order. What in City of Heroes would have been one long arc becomes several short arcs arranged as one split long arc. For instance, the World Wide Red could be cleanly split in at least three parts for three mini-arcs without loss of finality.

All of the Hollows, Striga and Croatoa feel like a bad version of To Save a Thousand Worlds. Each mission is essentially a part of the repeating cycle of "Explore fist dimension," "Explore second dimension," "Explore third dimension." Or like the To Save a Soul arc, where you go back to the spirit world no less than five times, each time to essentially do the same thing - find Vanessa's soul and get another clue from it. Or find nothing, as one of them is. There's no reason these need to be five huge outdoor instances when they could just be one instance with five ghosts of Vanessa, since we're in her mind, anyway.

In essence, the Hollows, Striga and Croatoa is 90% filler with a mission here and there that has some meaning. As far as I'm concerned, any mission that has you go somewhere, kill all and find NOTHING that advances the plot in ANY way is a complete waste of my time and doesn't need to be in the story. And yet that's the bulk of what these zones have - missions just there to provide excuses for instances, and yet which advance the plot not in any single way. That's all the stories there are - filler after filler after filler with maybe one meaningful mission at the end. And even then, I fail to see how returning Stephanie's wedding ring was "meaningful." It was a good deed, sure, but are you trying to say that this is the culmination of her story? All of her missions are basically "The Council are doing something bad. You need to beat them up." There is no story behind them.

This surprises me, actually. Who decided this storytelling approach was a good idea? We already HAD consistent, persistent story arcs in the game since launch. I've already quoted a lot of them, but just to restate - World Wide Red. This is an arc that's probably 20 missions long, just in itself more than most of these contacts we're talking about even have. And maybe it's because it's a big conspiracy theory, but even though there are probably three separate subplots taking place the entire time, the whole thing has a constant, uninterrupted train of though. Either you find what you're looking for, find something you didn't expect, or don't find what you were looking for but learn something else important. At no point is Crimson pulling random tasks out of a hat just to have you do maintenance. Even when you have NO IDEA what's going on, there's still a storyline to follow.

By comparison, Croatoa makes me feel like I'm playing Lineage II. "Here, you're in a town. Now go find something to do."

For Dark Armour, you don't see the effect for even that long. There's just enough time for an incredibly transparent tendril that barely carries a colour to show up before it loops back to the beginning. In effect, I have no way to actually see what I'm changing, short of changing OTHER Dark powers, like Dark Blast or Dark Melee, and trying to judge from those.

Welcome to my world

I'm well aware vampires are overdone. Let's take a stroll down my list of characters and see what else I have that's overdone:

A dude in power armour
An incredibly human robot cyborg girl
An alien girl
A giant green woman
A necromancer
A giant robot
A fallen angel
A panda
A false messiah
A technomagic user
A sorcerer/demon
An immortal
Ghost armour
A bunny girl
A school girl
A "rule the world" villain

Suffice it to say that "overdone" is more or less what I do In fact, I prefer it. Overdone clichés are overdone because they are solid, decent concepts that everyone defaults to. There's nothing wrong with the concepts, themselves. The devil is in the detail, and I've always found that the best starting point for something interesting is actually something fairly cliché. It's part of the reason animé appeals to me so much - animé stories are unashamed copies of famous concepts, and almost always stick to something fairly simple, like "angels and demons" or "spirits" or "evil science" or some such, and they just go from there. In a lot of ways, trying to think up an overcomplicated, "different" basis is detrimental more often than not, as it's actually MORE difficult to take seriously than something generally overdone.

I'm not saying I disagree with you - vampires ARE overdone. But that's part of the reason I want to get into them. It's an interesting idea with a lot of potential that people tend to avoid these days, unless they have some grand, unbelievable spin on it.

My bad. Doesn't change the time line, though.

I was under the impression we were talking about missions and arcs. As far as I'm aware, nothing changed in this regard. I guess you could count Meg Menson, but she's basically the "Police Scanner" of the Hollows. And as far as "zones are content," that has pretty much been dismissed by the development team in the past, admitting that it takes far too much resources to create new zones for what it's worth. Certainly the changes (or lack thereof) to the War Zone, as well as the added content in the form of "mini-zones" such as Ouroboros and Cimerora is pretty strong evidence in that regard.

So, yeah, if you want to reduce this to a semantics argument, then yes, "something" changed. Not anything that actually enhances the content of the game, since the stories and missions are still terrible, but "something" nevertheless. I appreciate War Witch's work very much, and she turned what was a zone of nightmares into a zone only limited by its crappy story, but that's quality of life pretty much on the nose.

There's about as much "narrative" as there is in Lineage II or any of the range of "free" to play Korean grindfest MMOs. That is to say, there is a story, and it's mentioned occasionally, but there is no "narrative" to speak of. Most of the time, you're doing missions unrelated to the plotline in anything but geographical co-location, and what storyline missions you do get are curt and apologetic. The Hollows lacks a storyline completely, and most contacts lack a story "arc" as a general thing. Let's look at Flux as the easiest example. He has you hunt Outcast here, beat up some Trolls there, save a few cops on the side and OH HEY! I can give you FrostFire! At no point in your interaction with him does one event lead logically into the next. This is not a story. This is a collection of random unrelated events and occurrences that, when you put them together, kind of resemble a story in the most loose interpretation of the word.

But that's not the worst of it. The one ACTUAL story in the zone, the thing that keeps being referenced the whole time, is Sam Wincott and his interaction with the Minions of Igneous. The only actual story in the zone, and you can't have it, because it's locked behind a Trial so fat no-one ever does it. I've never even heard a single person alive so much as mention it, not even in passing. Not unless I bring it up. I'm sure most people know it exists, but that's about it.

Content is not "optional" if it's part of a story you're already running. If I'm running Ubelmann the Unknown and suddenly I can't take the final mission because it's an 8-man Trial, then that's not optional. That sucks. If ANY part of a storyline is going to be a TF or a Trial, then the ENTIRE story needs to be a TF or a Trial. Not necessarily ONE TF or Trial, but even multiple TFs following the same plot line is better than solo arcs ending in a TF. What's more you're never warned that the Hollows storyline ends up in a Trial right up until you talk with Karsis, an the only reason Karsis even exists is because people complained that the final mission in Talshak's arc WAS the Caverns of Transcendence trial. That's right - you were locked into a story arc you could not escape from, and which you needed 8 people to do an 8-glowie simu-click.

But let's give this the benefit of a doubt. Let's say I've been around the block a few times and I know the whole Hollows storyline ends in a Trial. That just makes THE WHOLE DAMN ZONE optional team content. And, yeah, that's the reason I did it once back in I2 and I never did it again up until I7 or some such. The missions are terrible, the zone was (and is no longer) horrid and I can't even get a complete story for my effort. It's like renting a crappy movie and being told that the only way you can watch the final half hour is if you watch it in the cinemas. And it's no longer being shown. Great, thanks.

You really put yourself behind the 8-ball when you mentioned Striga. Easily half the missions from ALL the contacts are pointless "There are people over there, they are bad, go beat up 20 of them" hunts, with almost 90% of the rest of them having no logical progression, or indeed nothing to do with each other or anything else. Stephanie Peeble's entire mission set is completely pointless, both in relation to the rest of the city and the rest of the island, an in terms of correlations between the separate missions. A the end, all you accomplish is retrieving her ring. You learn nothing, you accomplish nothing, and it's basically a gigantic waste. Even the horrid story arcs of the pre-I1 content had more meaning than this, at least giving you some background information the factions involved, like the crime ring involving the Skulls, the Trolls and the Family.

In Striga, aside from the Hess and Moonfire TFs, you learn two things: One, the Council have super soldiers, magical wereolves, scientifically-created vampires and killer robots. Because that wasn't BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS without investigating it. Two, "something" is happening on Striga Isle. That's kind of like the news reporter from Spy Dogs. "Breaking news: Things are happening in places all over the world!" Unless you do the Hess TF, all of (tow missions of) build up account for nothing, since you don't get to see WHAT. And I've done the TF, and I still don't know what's going on, since no-one gave me the 5 minutes here and there to actually read my clues and briefings, just like on every TF.

Who ever said red-side was rosy? Most of the original content CoV rolled out with is utter crap, spoiled by a mistaken belief that if you jam all missions in the same zone, you don't have to do anything to actually make the missions themselves good. CoV has a few interesting missions here and there, some with unique mechanics, some with interesting writing, but a lot of them are garbage. Take Operative Kirkland, for instance. Oh, something is happening. Go have a look. I see. Go have a look at this. I see. OK, we're done.

It isn't until Faultline that mission designers finally pulled out something REALLY good, and good throughout the entire duration of the experience AND avoided the railroading storyline that plagues CoV. Faultline and the majority of the Grandville arcs are the beginning of the consistently good content in the game, with only pockets of it here and there before that. All of the I1-I6 content is practically doomed, and needs to be touched up a LOT. Some of the redside content is terrible, but a lot of it is good, and most content afterwards is above decent. But old content is still old.

No, the I3 and onward content was not vastly improved. Striga and Croatoa are a blight upon the game, and I'm all rainbows and unicorns that the developers have NOT repeated the same mistakes in their later works as they introduced in Striga and Croatoa. It petrifies me to think that the "Striga model" was actually considered good at any point in time, considering it's WORSE than the pre-I1 content the game launched with. The zones are justly lauded for their TFs, but everything ELSE is embarrassing.

Precedent already exists for this, in fact. Back in the day, Claws was the first set to be tweaked and have draw times removed back when it was originally reworked. I think, so at least. War Mace came next, when it was shown to underperform, which caused BABs to look into it and discover unreasonably long rooted times. Finally, Dual Blades came out and that was constructed with draw times separate from attack times. When War Mace and Battle Axe were ported over to Brutes, they had their weapon draw times moved out of attack times, an Broadsword benefited from these changes as it shared 8 of its 9 animations with them. Katana, however, did not benefit. An Issue later, Katana had its draw times moved out of its attacks, in turn.

All that is to say that we got rid of built-in draw step by step. There was no one single patch that took draw out of all powersets, so what is being dismissed here actually already happened. And for what it's worth, I've no problem with it happening again. As was mentioned, some powersets tweaked is better than no powersets tweaked, and as long as the promise of doing them all eventually exists, no-one has grounds to complain, only grumble.

The problem is that the former definition actually fits things easily demonstrable to lack intelligence of any sort. Like a door lock. You rotate a key which "instructs" the lock to lock or unlock. Not intelligent, but it carries out orders on command. And we shouldn't really make a difference between electronic "orders" and mechanical orders, as mechanical computers have also existed. Electronic commands are no more "commands" merely because systems that use them are more complicated or because they require less energy to actuate them. Mechanical actuators exist to do the same thing.

Basically speaking, "operating by design" is not intelligence, not in any definition of the word I can accept. Intelligence requires an intelligent response. A pre-defined response is not intelligent. It may be appropriate, but it is not a decision, not any more so than any inanimate object reacting to physical law. Only when you have an actual, intelligent decision, or a decent emulation of such, can you actually have intelligence. People who are very good at doing what they are told do not do so because they're brainlessly following instructions. They are good at following orders because they are good at interpreting instructions, working out the INTENT behind these instructions, and then carrying them out to the satisfaction of the commanding figure.

A computer can only emulate intelligence if it is given sufficient situational awareness, which very, very few programmes are actually capable of. An AI within a game is, in fact, very rarely aware of even its OWN environment, and that requires no environment perception at all, since everything is virtual and already within the system's memory. Look at basic pathfinding within the game, and how often a pet will get stuck on a railing, running into it an unable to jump. I can see this, you can see this, and the computer can CLEARLY see this because both the environment, the pet's location and the pet's instructions are already within memory. But the AI is not able to comprehend the information and realise that there is a railing in the way and jumping over it the intelligent solution. Because the AI is not thinking of a larger picture, but rather an iterative process of consecutive steps, it cannot understand that you just want it to get from point A to point B, and it's not necessary for it to do it via those exact instructions and could go around if need be.

Something is intelligent if it only needs to be told WHAT it needs to do in order for it to do it, without necessarily having to be told HOW to do it. In predictable circumstances, the "how" is easy to just program in a static way. However, in dynamic, unpredictable and, above all, indescribably circumstances, this is non-trivial, and actually sets the limits on artificial intelligence. Humans are perfectly capable of functioning on unclear, ambiguous orders, in an environment full of unknown variables, using limited, incomplete and often misleading perception of their environment with often unreliable interpretation of this perception. Yet we manage to get through this mess just fine. Computers, at least current-generation computers, cannot. Not unless they are led around like little children or restricted to only very specific, controlled situations. We are intelligent enough to operate basically on our own, and we do pretty well for our limitations. Computers are not.

Basically, a computer is wholly incapable of intelligent action unless it is being controlled by an intelligent person or operating with very limited application.