Samuel_Tow

Hence why I feel it shouldn't have been a purchasable power.

Yeah, but we need them to be used in REGULAR travel, not just unenhancible, novelty prestige powers. That is to say, I want to see customizations of the ACTUAL travel powers, along with customization of our base run styles. Booster packs are good, but I'd like to see these added to the base game's base functions.

It's a reasonable interpretation, certainly, and I can't really find a fault in it. But I AM saying it's possible to argue the opposite and still make a fairly convincing argument. I'd base it around the origin of his power, arguing that his actual POWER is science/mutation and his technology is only an application of it, to which I can draw a parallel with Cyclops and his goggles. Yes, he can blast stuff indiscriminately with his naked eye, but his precision and control come from the goggles. But he's still a mutant.

Again, I'm not trying to contradict Matt's interpretation of Positron's origin. I completely agree with it. I'm merely trying to point out that origins are flexible and subject to spin as much as they are subject to fact.

That's probably the BIGGEST thing that bugs me about most contemporary MMOs. As you level up, you should get stronger, more confident and more independent. I mean, you ARE getting more awesome, right? Instead, as the levels roll on, monster difficulty ramps up so severely you end up feeling weaker and dumber with each new level, up to the point where you need a team to shine your shoes and wipe your... Face. Oh, sure, you can run around pciking on weaklings, but the "real" monsters... Nah, those are team content. You're never awesome enough for them.

In a sense, you can never become Master Chief, and the harder you try, the more you become Private Ryan.

This is patently untrue, seen as how people with super powers existed long, LONG before Recluse or the Statesman. Easy examples - the Nictus and Kheldians. The Circle of Thorns, the Mu, the Banished Pantheon and the Coralax. The old gods, and at the very least Hequat, whom we get to meet in-game. Lord Nemesis, said to be over 180 years old and born and realised long before the Statesman was even born. Giovana Scaldi existed long before, as well, and she serves as the source of power for Vanessa DeVore. The Red Caps, Cabal, Fir Bolg and Tautha De Dannon are all many centuries old and have been leading a war in the spirit realm. The ghosts in the Port Oaks fort are also several centuries old, comprised primarily of pirates. Bat'Zul, the Cap Au Diable demon is probably several millennia old, which would make Deathsurge and the smaller Cap Au Diable demons ancient, as well. Speaking of which - the Leviathan is significantly older than the civilization of the Oranbegans, which is itself 14 thousand years old. We could probably also count the Shivans, as they come from an asteroid in outer space, and are presumably more than a couple of hundred years old.

The Origins of Power arc is a crock, to put it plainly. It's an excuse for Cimerora and powerset proliferation, and its missions are nothing but a well of deliberate misinformation, with the different Origins contacts contradicting each other, contradicting themselves, contradicting continuity and being contradicted by subsequent events. Since it's been theorised multiple times that no-one really know what the hell is going on or how things are interconnected, all of the contacts in those arcs are making nothing more than somewhat educated guesses.

Clear to the player, obviously. I like to know that the people I'm teaming with are indeed the people I believe I am teaming with, and figuring out a way to do this such that it is both not obnoxiously disruptive to the game's overall look AND not horribly obscure such that I have to go out of my way to verify every time, is not something I can see as doable.

This is purely about interface. How do you let me tell the difference between Some Dude@Stranger and Some Dude@Friend WITHOUT putting their globals over their heads or making me search through player notes? It's a catch 22, hence the problem.

They're standard equipment if that's the kind of MMO you want to play. My question is actually meaningful, because what you describe as standard equipment is only standard equipment for one specific mould of MMOs that is, at this point, probably as old as I am. If we stuck to only standard equipment and nothing more, then FPS games like Half-Life or Call of Duty wouldn't exist, and we'd be playing Doom 12 or Heretic 5.

I don't think your comparison to cars is a good one, either. A few months ago, my brother offered to sell me a Mitsubishi Eclypse at a big discount. Now, I couldn't afford it, myself, but my whole family offered to pitch in and help. I ended up having to beat them back with a stick, because as good a car as that is (and it's AMAZING - I drive a 15-year-old Fiat Tipo ), it's just not the kind of car for me. First of all, I can't actually drive automatic gears (something about the car starting to roll as soon as you let off the break and learning to drive on a Lada), and secondly, it's just a car that's more flashy than practical. I don't want many extras, I just want something that's small, efficient and that drives.

Or, to give you a more poignant example - cell phones. Every day I watch TV ads about all the new cell phones and about their however many megapixel cameras and huge hard drives and videos and MP3s and touch screens and blue tooth and Internet and... Ugh! All I ever get out of this ads is "This phone is very expensive because this costs extra and that costs extra and this costs a lot..." I want a mobile phone because I want a phone that is mobile. If I want a mobile computer, I have a laptop I can take with me. I don't even have a CD player or radio in my car (I think it got jacked before I got it), and I certainly don't need one in my phone. That, and the last time I took a photo was I think the spring of 2007, when I made, like 5. Prior to that, it's been probably 10 years since I've made meaningful photos.

Granted, that's just me, but that's how I see things.

And again, all you do is reaffirm the vicious circle that has had MMOs trapped in the 90s for 15 years now. Developers make things because the players expect them, and players expect things because the developers make them. A bank and a market is not something people expected of MMOs back in the days of EQ and Ultima. In fact, I'm not sure if those games even HAD them. But someone thought it was a good idea, added it to a game, and it became a staple. On the flip side, no-one today is going to advertise his game as "has long, boring spawn-camping and not much else," yet that was the order of the day back in the 90s. Obviously someone understood that may not have been a great idea, changed it, and people now expect instances and dungeons and quests. Well, Champions doesn't seem to have gotten the memo, but that's besides the point.

And the point here is that MMOs feel like they're stuck in a time warp. Nothing changes because no-one dares change anything, to the point where the actual settings and stories become irrelevant, as long as it's an MMO in the books and has "all that's in an MMO."

Suppose someone wanted to make a FPS game and described it as: "Well, it'll have all the FPS things. You have a gun, you have your sights and monsters come at you. Yeah, everything that's in a FPS." This immediately excludes game like Deus Ex, Battlefield 2142, Call of Duty 4, Mirror's Edge, Cryostasis, and that's just off the top of my head. The above explanation pretty much only includes the Doom -> Quake -> Serious Sam -> Gore -> Painkiller branch of FPS games, and completely ignores all others.

When I ask "What makes an MMO?" that is actually a meaningful question exactly BECAUSE the answer from so many game companies is "Duh! Like WoW, of Course!" And derivative work in large numbers is BAD for gamers in a big way.

The reason I brought up the "evolution vs. revolution" argument is because it's actually meaningful here. WoW is evolution. Nothing more. It's the same old set pieces designed in the same old way, but they have been cleaned up, made neat, presentable, easier to use and generally very polished. It's an old game in the new age, and it's something Blizzard are particularly good at. Take an old, tried, even trite design and make a very high-quality game out of it. It just goes to show that old concepts are not bad in and of themselves and good games can be made out of them. In fact, the mere existence and success of a game like Torchligh, which feels exactly like a game game from 15 years ago, proves that there's still more meat in the old concepts.

But by the same token, there is only so many times you can remake an old thing. I am SICK AND TIRED of watching Robinson Cruso movies, for instance, and I refuse to watch another remake of the three ghosts of Christmas. And just in the same way, I refuse to touch another "sword and sorcery" game again unless it provides something truly new and interesting. "More quests" or "a better dialogue system" or "500 new spells" doesn't cut it. A Devil May Cry combat system might cut it, though, or interjecting anachronistic elements, like aliens or time travel (an area where Hard to be a God could have been so successful, but utterly failed) could sell me. But I am DONE with Fantasy, and barring anything truly revolutionary, I'm just going to pass on any game that uses the genre.

Describing in terms of "what's in an MMO" is not a bad thing in general, but it's a bad sign for the game it describes. If the game is viewed as "XP with crafting and PvP, oh, and it has a bank," then that tells me this took precedence over the actual substance of the game. I've gotten into so many games that got completely ruined by this approach, mainly by being made into Korean grindfest MMOs. "Oh, hey, this is a really cool game about martial arts and philosophies, where you can make cool fighters and engage in an epic storyline." Great! Only when I log into the game, I find myself killing foxes, punching stones and camping the same moor over and over again, because the martial arts and epic storyline lasted all of 5 levels before the game became a very classic MMO.

Personally, I don't see why games would need to innovate EVERYTHING, as that's both alienating and a gamble. But, and I have to be blunt here, the MMOs that have been coming out in recent years have taken the opposite approach and innovated NOTHING. I'm not interested in buying the same game all over again, and it's coming to the point where every MMO feels like a rehash of the same game. I really have no head for business, but I'm starting to feel like we're up for crash of interest some time in the future when MMO developers start making more and more formulaic, more and more low-quality games until something tanks so bad everyone else takes notice.

Trust me, I'm about as conservative as people come, but even I'm not going to buy game after game with different graphics over the exact same gameplay. Tweaks here and touches there aren't going to work.

As others have pointed out, Prestige Power Slide is a carbon copy of Sprint, but with a completely different animation, the one used for sliding on ice and oil slicks. It DOES have a different effect, but it also has a different animation, and for all practical purposes, it IS Sprint.

That, and both Walk and Ninja Run seem to have different movement modes, with Ninja Run being usable in battle (it seems to auto-default to regular combat stances), so it's only natural to ask if it's possible or plausible that this will be extended. I'm pretty sure I heard that just adding duplicate powers for everything is NOT going to happen (and I wouldn't want to see it happen anyway), but it IS a natural question to ask if this might show up as more proper customization at some point.

What's with all the bus stops, then?

That'd be cool, though I still hold out for customization of our BASE running animations and stances with all toggles down. I'd certainly make do with travel power customization, believe me, but base animation customization would be even better.

That's the big thing, really. We already have animal heads, it's just that they're the same 6 heads we've had since CoV launch (5 heads, at least, with the Dragon head showing up at some point afterwards). And of the 5 similar heads, only one is really any good, which is why you see pretty much everyone with a Monster head using that. We already HAVE animal heads. We just need some new ones.

By the same token, we already have animal fee - claws, hooves and insect feet, and even robotic claws. We just need a few more, like, oh I don't know... PAWS! Seriously, something less groutesque would be cool. We already have tails... The SAME tails we had over five years ago. OK, we got an extra one in the Bunny tail (which I've used for a bunny and for a panda), but come on, now! And the only decent non-human hands we have are the Monstrous, and they're the only ones. I'm not going to go into lobster claws or silliness like that, but at least paws might be nice.

See, the funny thing about Champions and their animal parts is that their are REVOLTING. Their tentacled hands and feet are absurd, most of their animal heads range from grotesque to cartoony, and about the only decent parts are the Anumbis head and all the parts to make Beast from Beauty and the Beast. Though ours are better, they too skirt the line of grotesque a lot more than I like. I actually really like the idea of hiring an artist to do just that, someone who's actually into that stuff, because I'm sure that'd produce some pretty decent costume pieces.

As I've said numerous times, graphics don't mean squat when it comes to how good something looks. It all comes down to the skill and vision of the graphic artists that use these graphics to create in-game art, and while City of Heroes falls squarely into the "really cool" category, the animal parts really, really let it down.

Yeah, that's actually a pretty good counterpoint. Complain all you will about current experience speed, people. You KNOW what would happen if they slashed the speed back to what it used to be. Where's my Peter Venkman quote...

Hurdle, yes. Hurdle has a very substantial bonus to jump height but, above all, lateral jump speed. Sprint has a token jump height buff that LITERALLY doesn't matter. It so insignificant that all it does is let you slot jump enhancements in it (I think). It does give you extra height. All of an inch or so.

Yeah, but Acrobatics from Champions Online is an actual travel power that costs a travel power pick.

Tell you what, and this is completely serious: Why not unlock our travel powers for free, as a special travel slot? If not at level 1, then say at level 6. Since regular travel powers won't take a power pick (or two) and will still be slottable, then I'll have zero problems with the Ninja Run as it stands.

I always thought that was Jump Speed (or SpeedJump) but from the looks of things, it seems that it might actually be Movement Control, which doesn't seem to be one of the values displayed in Real Numbers.

And by such a small amount you can't actually tell.

Which wasn't my point at all. Whether or not THIS SPECIFIC ANIMATION for Ninja Run makes it into the game is irrelevant compared to the prospect of having actual movement style and stance customization, comprised of more than just the default stance and the cheesy ninja run. Like the bestial stance and run people keep requesting, just to throw out an example, or a robotic, mechanical stance and run.

In essence, whether or not it's Ninja Run in particular, I'd like to see the system utilised to give us alternate stances and run and jump styles as a game feature, not as additional Sprint powers.

The worst part about it is you'll get a lot of heat for suggesting that, even though it's a perfectly valid idea, even if I'm not sure if drawn art artists are as appropriate to a game as actual 3D graphic artist modellers. But, yeah. If any game is appropriate for all kinds of concepts, City of Heroes is definitely it, and I'd love to see more of these kinds of costumes.

Now, whether Jay does or doesn't "hate" furries (in the same way BABs "hates" Aquaman), he seems to simply not be a fan, and as such saddling him with these designs might simply not be a good idea. Forcing artists to go out of their style and comfort zone tends to produce questionable results, which is why I agree with getting on board an artist who specialises in non-human, non-mechanical costume pieces. Jay is incredibly good with armour design and tech weapons design, and his work on basic clothes has been impressive, but when it comes to non-human pieces, like animal heads or appendages, or even just tails... Well, I don't know how many of the ones we have I can credit to him, but suffice it to say that we just don't have almost anything in that vein, not on player models, not on NPCs. And it'd be nice if we did.

Interesting... I think you just summed up how I feel about my characters at level 50 with that. Good job! I wouldn't have used GTA as an example (because... Ew!), but let's say... Devil May Cry. Yeah, you can upgrade Dante's weapons and skills, but right at the start of the game, he's an absolute badass dragged out of hell to basically be awesome. Or Metal Gear Solid, where Snake is a super skilled super agent dragged out of retirement because he's the only bad enough dude to save the president, so to speak. Or Halo's Master Chief, who's a veritable one-man killing machine just stepping out of the pod.

In probably the great majority of action games, you're put in control of a highly-skilled, very powerful, utterly competent hero who's pretty much the only one badass enough to survive the dangers and put a stop to the evil. Very rarely do you start out as the fledgling wimp who needs to train and improve unless you're in an RPG, because action games thrive on action, and depriving you of your skills for too long is counter-productive to that.

That's essentially how I feel about my 50s. They've served their time, they've had their adventures, they've completed their training. These are now the veterans, the elite, the guys and gals who are above and beyond the day-to-day trudge of holding back the waves of crime and evil and who essentially hang back and let the younger heroes take care of things, stepping in only when the crap REALLY hits the fan. They are, if you will, the cavalry, charging in to save the day when all others have failed. Getting a hero to that point is not the end. Even if I don't go for Inventions Sets and Hamidon enhancements, this is pretty much the BEGINNING of the hero where his story truly starts now that he's done with his training.

While you are correct, that question is outdated, as shown by your choice of tense. DID it affect population? On a pure guess, yes, it most probably did. But that was then, this is now. DOES crazy rampant farming affect the player population NOW, after the Architect changes? In the words of the poet, that is the question. And in my opinion, no. It no longer does.

Very much so. Purge names from time to time. It helps clean up the throwaway characters. I'm not sure how many names it frees up, but I see no real reason not to, especially with the current purge parameters. But tying names to global is just... Icky!