Samuel_Tow

So if I say "OK then." I'm going on global ignore?

A Belmont? Ha! I slapped Richter around like a red-headed stepchild! Well, Before I realised that that was the bad ending...

I've also already gotten the regeneration armour, but I never put it on. Its defence value is crap, and I didn't think it regenerated very fast. I've also seen this awesome sword, but it removed my shield and actually debuffed my defence, so things were hitting me for 40-50 out of 400, whereas with my armour, they were hitting me for 1. HUGE difference. Pity, though, because that sword was a BLENDER

Except for the fact that the game routinely spawned much more than just three white minions, and most people were equal to a lot more, which led to power restrictions, enemy buffs and, yes, even nerfs. Remember the boss buff of I4 (or was that I3)? Clear example of just that. Because someone's fat head thought bosses HAD to be team content, they decided to just buff them over the top, which still didn't make them unsoloable for Scrappers and some Tankers, but made them impossible for pretty much everything else. My Blasters were being routinely one-shotted by bosses back then. That was such a terribly change they rolled it back and have never attempted to reinstate it in any incarnation. In fact, some time later they gave us the ability to TURN OFF bosses in our missions.

That, and the "1 hero = 3 white minions" was amended to "1 hero = 3 +3 minions" or some such, when Jack and crew finally admitted that their intended power curve was never going to happen. The way the game was originally designed was a TRAIN WRECK, and it was only through the inability to actually enforce that original design that the game is as cool as it is today. Because it was overpowered characters who set the benchmark, we got a pretty damn lenient power curve, and that's precisely what has kept me here all these years.

Or, you know, have basic self-illumination like in every RPG with darkness in it, and like Diablo has done since the dawn of creation. Yes, powers making light would be groovy, but there's no reason why your own presence can't make light. Explain it away and say you just see better when you're closer.

Your analogy is substantially worse, because comparing teaming in a public place to YOUR OWN HOME borders on absurd to such an extent I have trouble accepting this is coming from you, Lemur. Come on, man, that's hyperbole and you know it.

If you want to draw a proper analogy, draw it from context. People online exist in a public space, doing things together, but not segregated from the public. That, and you need to pick an event that doesn't come with a significant negative stigma attached to it. Letting a stranger crash on your couch for free is unrealistic, so you need an event where perfect strangers are acceptable to join mid-way through, both by invitation and at random.

And, right now, I can't think of a good analogy for such a thing. The restaurant table analogy is loaded, because people don't go out of their way asking strangers to sit at their table. The house analogy is even more absurd, because NO-ONE goes out asking for people to crash on his couch, and since team members pay no upkeep or admission, you can't really justify it for rent.

I guess if you found some mystic little town where people all build cars and are willing to house anyone who can help them with it, then the analogy would be valid. But then, you'd have an argument both for people going out asking for help and offering a spare bedroom just as you'd have one for people knocking on doors and asking people if they have a car they need help with. The key here is that it's a loaded analogy if you start with an event that has a social stigma against it, because that's instantly loaded towards the anti-social. But teaming is not like having a stranger sleep in your house. And if you go with an analogy where this event is accepted and expected, then you can't drive an argument that it's expected to occur only in one way.

Think of it this way - bosses need people to work for them, and people need jobs. It's not out of the ordinary for a boss to phone people from employment agencies and interview them, just as it's not out of the ordinary for people to apply for jobs and ask to be interviewed.

I always keep my microphone muted (and it comes muted by default), to prevent just this problem. The sound card gets microphone input, it just doesn't play it over the speakers. With the way my speakers and microphone are set up, I get horrid sound feedback just as soon as I unmute it, so I keep it constantly off.

As well, that's not actually sound feedback that I recorded. That's actually the regular /em whistle at around one eighth the speed. I actually checked. I sped it up eight times, and it sounds almost exactly like the regular whistle. Everything is like this with 3D sound turned on, even something as simple as the bells on the Buy/Sell buttons at vendors. Normally, you just hear bells. With 3D sound on, you hear each individual high and low, because it's so slow.

Precisely. Asking politely IS NOT RUDE. OK, depending on what you're asking it could be creepy, but it is never rude. And asking to join someone's team is far from creepy. Certainly people who ask to be invited in a less than polite and thoughtful way (Invite me.) ARE rude, or at the very least presumptuous, but as a wise person once said - use your words. Stop expecting people to get it, stop assuming, stop thinking everyone understands. If you don't like something, say so, and be receptive of other people asking you when they don't know. EXPECT people to not know.

This situation is kind of like the glowie etiquette. It's been well established that there is no well-established universal stance on how to go about this. If you don't warn people how you want to run, you have no right to be angry when they do the right thing. Don't assume other people will assume right. Tell them. Failing that, leave them a note. Language exists to communicate in.

It actually IS a novel idea in and of itself, not so much because it's new, but because of how few people have actually ever had the balls to see it through to the end. It seems game designers just can't stop themselves from suddenly inventing new an powerful enemies who just overpower you by a large margin and that reduce your "giant monster" to little weakling who has to avoid and evade.

In fact, the Kind of Monsters 2 game (to which I won't link because it just... Looks bad) has you playing a giant monster, smashing mountains, tearing buildings at the foundation and even destroying the twin towers (yeah, it was made in 1992). Yet your primary enemies are even BIGGER monsters, thereby eliminating the effect.

On the flip side, Psychonauts' Lungfishopolis is a perfect example of how a GOOD monster rampage should be done... And you play a little kid In Lungfishopolis, the mind of the giant monster, everyone is small and YOU are the giant monsters. You get attacked by tanks and aeroplanes, subs, ships and even a blimp at one point, but none of that stuff can do too much to you on its own. And you don't even need to hit them. You can just walk over them and step on them. Or, you know, grab one off the ground and toss it at another one. There's even a King Kong moment where you climb very tall buildings to swat bi-planes out of the air Of course, the final boss of the stage is the controlling psychic, who's the giant super hero of the town set out to stop you, who yells out comic attacks like "Haaard to avooooooooid... AREA ATTACK!!!"

Comedy aside, nothing in Lungfishopolis can beat you down on its own. Even the monster-killing tanks that make you reel when they hit you. At best, they are annoying and at worst they chip away health you can't recover. The stronger the enemy is, the harder it is to prevent from chipping away from your damage, but aside from Lysander, no-one is actually strong enough to so much as faze you unless you just incur too much fire over time. The game goes a LONG way to show you that the little lung fish really, REALLY can't do absolutely anything to stop you, but hope to wound you enough that you retreat, or maybe just wear you down. That's sort of what it means to be the level boss. Players, generally, don't beat level bosses by pwning them, weakness exploitation aside. They beat them by chip damage over time if the player can survive long enough to inflict it. That's how the player-as-a-boss should play. Not losing to even stronger foes you have to chip to death, but losing to attrition because even your invincibility can't keep you alive forever if you sit on your hands.

In essence, the level boss isn't fighting for his life. He's gonna' win, one way the other. He's fighting to win by incurring as little damage as he can and expending as little ammunition as he can get away with, because there's a whole army waiting, and only so much health and fire breath to go around. Let me put it this way - when is the last time you played a game where the best way to deal with damage was to just face it and take it on the chin, killing what's shooting at you THROUGH its own hail of fire? If that's in your game, you're on the right track.

Again from Castlevania, there is a small section that takes place inside Alucard's nightmare. There, he sees his mother strung up on a cross, and she's telling him to watch her die (ugh... Japanese games...) and hate and kill humans for it. "There, kill that one over there!" Of course, Alucard is a good guy in this, rather than the psycho from Hellsing, so he refuses. His mother tells him to not be afraid, and at this point one thought just rings through my head: "Ugh... They couldn't hurt me if I LET them, but that's not the point!" And it's true. I'd already slain a giant ball of corpses, a demigod lizard thing, hordes of zombies, ghosts, skeletons, werewolves, possessed suits of armour, ghosts, just... Legions of monsters. What am I going to fear from a bunch of peasants with torches and pitchforks?

Of course, it's all an illusion, she's a Succubus, and I slashed her into goo (she was an easy boss), but the point remains. This actually goes in my scrapbook, right next to "I would love to see you try." You couldn't hurt me if I let you. A lot of times, that's actually true for both heroes and villains alike when they deal with regular people. Think about someone like, say, Superman facing off against a common thug with a knife. Superman can go to SLEEP and there isn't a damn thing the thug can do to hurt him. It takes some serious firepower to even knock the guy back, and alien rocks to actually hurt him, so a street punk isn't going to do jack to him. It's when this extends to actual, meaningful enemies, however, that we approach the "player as level boss" design. Granted, for a game to be meaningful, all enemies need to make some progress, but put it like this - when a lot of enemies, at least individually, can't really harm you, then you know you're looking at the level boss design.

And, as was said, not all games need to be about losing via getting killed. As the bad guy from the Metero Man (I'm starting to feel like such a nerd quoting all that stuff off memory) said: "You can't be everywhere and you can't save everyone." Maybe the bad guys can't stop YOU, but they can kill innocent people that you have to get through an army to save. Yeah, you're not gonna' die, but if you let them slow you down too much, you're still gonna' lose. Or maybe you just need to step on all the bad guys, but you need to make sure there's a city left to save in the end. Think Hancock and his approach towards "saving the day." If you don't want that, you're facing limitations other than pure survival. At the end, a lot of these come down to a world of cardboard design.

Basically, I've gone on and on about how I don't want every fight to be a boss fight before, but I've secretly wanted, at least for a few of my characters, for the game to be the reverse - that every fight is a boss fight, only I AM THE BOSS. I actually had that, sort of, with my Necro/Dark Mastermind. I play at -1x3, and I somehow managed to aggro I think four spawns. I got beset by what looked like 30 people, complete with an Agony Mage, a Chief Soldier, several Behemoths and several Spectral Demon Lords. Now THAT was a boss fight with me acting as the boss. I was sort of like the man behind the curtain constantly throwing zombies at you that you had to kill while dodging dark blasts, keeping out of the sticky tar patches and being weakened all the time. Sure, it wasn't one hero against my horde, but lots of enemies also counted. It cost me pretty much a tray of inspirations and I think two full sets of henchmen, but hey! It worked, and it was amazing

That's sort of what I've always wanted to see more of. That's why I dropped enemy level and turned off bosses, while increasing enemy numbers significantly. Because that sea of minions trying to chip me to death is what I feel is the most epic. A lot more than a constant fight for my life against an enemy and a half.

Leading a team requires maintenance. Being on a team requires that you stay awake. The workload and stress involved do not even begin to compare.

With Jack gone and Positron wisely laconic, you seem to be taking the brunt of the unreasonable hatred and and unnamed developer misquotes, so that is a high price indeed. For what it's worth, I commend you for taking it as well as you are and still posting despite our unpleasable fanbase

Ah, combat in Assassin's Creed... It's rare I find a game that is SO satisfying to fight in And I wasn't one of the munchkins who just turtled until I could counter-attack. I'd conter-kill a couple of soldiers, then either watch for those who drop their guard or just guard-break someone and combo him to death. In fact, I only ever blocked when I was being attacked. When we're all standing around, I'm attacking full-time. It's especially cool when we get to fence a little. Say...

I get hit with a guard break, I dodge the next attack, counter-attack, clang once, then he guards, I follow with a guard break and then a combo kill. It LOOKS really cool, and it's actually kind of hard to pull off. Pity I could never turn off the STUPID action camera.

Now, if only the game would come out for the PC...

That's exactly what I meant, and I had a strong suspicion the Hulk game was like that. They did it right once. Why couldn't they do it right any of the other zillion times they've tried? I mean, we practically have a whole genre of Ultimate Destruction clones, and yet most of them end up playing like a GTA with super powers (or like Mercenaries 2, which actually fits that description).

In fact, Castlevania with enough of a level difference also tends to work like this. You can take out most things in a single hit, and what you can't take out in a hit you can't sort of glitch a double hit and kill anyway (swing just as you land and the landing will interrupt, freeing you to swing again). Trick is, if you miss, you get hit. It doesn't hurt a lot, but it adds up. Since you don't heal outside of very expensive potions and largely limited food (and Dark Metamorphosis sucks), you're essentially limited by your life bar to make it to the next coffin. It can get pretty dicey, especially with the strongest enemies, but the weaker ones you just have to mind not to get hit. They can't kill you (unless you fall asleep at the controls), but the attrition from a lot of annoying enemies does add up. Especially if you slip up and get hit with something unreasonably damaging.

Actually, this is one of the primary reasons I enjoy Scrappers and Blasters so much. Minions FEEL like minions. Though it never gets down quite to one-hit-kill (all of the time), minions ARE throwaway. Any self-respecting Scrapper can shred down most lieutenants in under 5 seconds, and most minions are swatted in a hit or two. Even if bosses and above REALLY hurt, minions being fodder like this actually helps a lot. They provide a fight, but they honestly couldn't kill me.

Thank GOD Jack never had his way with making one hero equal to two white minions!

So says Everest. Besides, I know what it is. I thought it was some kind of super-awesome futuristic sound card, but that just shows how much I know. Crap...

Would that it were as simple. I'd do something about this, but I fear for the cost, and I'd probably be looking at upgrading my video card for Going Rogue at some point. Probably not now, though, as I want to see what'll come out in the next 6-8 months before Going Rogue launches. Incidentally, how much does a REAL X-Fi card go for?

It's very hard to get used to, yes. The "Doppler effect" is what gets me the most, that dumbing down and muting of specific sounds. But, yeah, for some reason, the surround is centred around he character and follows his direction, so someone to the side of him swinging makes it feel like I should pan around and look at what's under my camera. I don't play over-the-shoulder, either. I play four mouse rolls back (I really need to figure out how far that is in camdist unitus), so it's especially jarring. But then, at the same time, it IS 3D sound, which is still better than a flat stereo.

I'll have a look at the drivers now.

*edit*
Oh, great... The Creative auto-update says I have a "PCI Express SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio." That's... That's bad, right?

*edit*
Nope. Installed new drivers, nothing changed. Same slowdown, same nonsense. I even got a trobleshooting utility from Creative, and it says everything is all right. I think it's high time I hit up customer support. At least now it's Monday.

*edit*
What the hell?!? I try to ask a question, and I can't ask a question about City of Heroes US? I get defaulted to Europe? Guys... You have no idea how hard I have to hold back right now to avoid dropping a bunch of F-Bombs! I own the GOD DAMN US VERSION! Let me ask for support about it!

So... What do I do?

Standard Code Rant applies on the one hand. "They can use somethin what they call programming and change some rules in game" is simply an invalid argument.

On the other hand, if you know how flight speed works, you'll understand the problems with raising it. The flight speed cap is a global parameter which affects all forms of flight, be they Fly, Hover or what have you. Flight is kept at the speed it is at for balance reasons - why even take Super Speed if you can fly just as fast AND have vertical movement? The power Fly's stats aren't really the problem. It's the flight speed cap that keeps things in check. Raise the flight speed cap, and I can guarantee you people are going to be flying at close to Super Speed levels naturally without the need for an Afterburner. Not only is that bad, it also encroaches on Super Speed territory. And there is no way to have Fly cap at one level, then have a power push it over the cap. That's why it's called a HARD cap.

And, really, all Afterburner is is a weaker version of Power Boost. Grab Power Boost from any powerset that has it and it gives you 20 seconds' worth of afterburner. We need something more practical.

Well... Yes and no. Just about any attack worth its salt needed to be charged up, at least a little bit, and I cannot BEGIN to tell you how many times I've been shot out of the air while charging up a Spin Blade elbow slam. And it doesn't even take out tanks in a single hit. And if you try to use anything BUT? You know, those claws that become worthless mid-way through the game or the heavy tumour hands that are so slow you get bazooka-d three times before you can even swing a decent attack? No use. In fact, practically anything you could do on the ground was no use, which reduced the game to a boring series of running around, super-jumping and dive-bombing enemies, wash, rinse, repeat. The only way to avoid the cheapness was to act cheap, myself, and that just reduced the game to something not nearly as spectacular as it could have been.

Speed, in general, is only as good as your slowest action, and in this game, EVERYTHING other than running around was slow, or at least rooted you to the ground. And the running attacks were completely impossible to aim, and would actually sort of slide off enemies, rather than slashing at them. Basically, most of my battles consisted of running around, jump-elbowing enemies, grabbing a soldier and running off the consume him where he won't be shot off my hands as soon as I set both feet on the ground. And mobility is only as good as your offence, and since practically every single offensive move rooted you, that went right out the window.

Yeah, the one cheap move that killed everything in a hit or two. When I have to resort to recycling the same attack time and time again because all my other attacks are too weak and/or too slow, that's bad game design. Why give me this huge arsenal of weapons, skills and moves if only a couple are actually going to be useful. Like the Bullet Dive move. Said to be the strongest one of them all, but you have to charge it so long you get shot out of the air, and if you dive from above shooting range, it's impossible to hit anything worth hitting. It was said the be the strongest move, but to also be very difficult to aim. Well if it's difficult to aim and doesn't hit anything, fat lot of good it does me that it's the strongest, huh? That whole game is packed full of awesome but impractical skills and powers. I HATE it when games do that.

In fact, and this is slightly off topic, but in City of Heroes, almost EVERY power I have has a use and has its place. And I'm the guy that takes every damn power from his primary and secondary 99% of the time. Even on a Blaster, who has more powers than he strictly needs, I still have use for all of them at different times.

But this is sort of what I mean. I haven't played the Hulk game, and I'd assume the Incredible Hulk would be a bit more steady on his feet, but in Prototype, Alex is billed as this unstoppable super weapon, yet he's weak, slow, cumbersome, fragile and undirected, and even though the player can somewhat fudge being able to triumph, he's nowhere near the unstoppable threat the Army makes him out to be. And the bosses (boss, one fought twice) - the Supreme Hunters - are still bigger than you, stronger than you, faster than you, all but impervious to melee attacks AND you have to fight one on a ticking timer. If I'm this unstoppable threat, why am I squishy while they are immovable objects?

I HATE HATE HATE bosses that my normal powers simply don't work on. Big beef with the Purple Triangles of Death, but it just goes on and on. Any character with grappling moves will be unable to grapple bosses. Any character with incapacitating or hindering moves will be unable to incapacitate or hinder bosses. Power Word: Kill will NOT kill Belifeth. It goes on and on. Not only is the boss so much stronger than you, but half your powers don't actually work, so you're restricted to recycling that one skill which actually works worth a crap.

And this is present in the MegaMan games I keep praising, by the way. Because MegaMan essentially gets to shoot different things for his powerups, the bulk of those different things are completely useless, very weak or incredibly dangerous. Zero gets a lot more leeway, because his boss-taken powerups actually give him extra abilities, like double jump and air dash, vertical attack, dropping attack, longer-range horizontal attack, additional weapons and so forth. Some skills won't work on some bosses, but they will all typically work on all regular enemies, and its rare a skill would be completely useless on a boss, too. Generally, a boss will be immune to his own weapon and not a lot else.

And I am more sick than I can describe of getting hit just touching the boss. Alucard may be a wimp who gets knocked back by running into the back of some dude with a mace, but at least here in City of Heroes, enemies generally have to HIT us before we get hurt.