Samuel_Tow

As far as I'm aware (and I could be wrong), the Champions Online engine isn't actually brand new, but rather based on a (more or less) heavily altered version of the original Cryptic Engine, which is what City of Heroes uses. I'm not sure how much better or worse the Champions engine is (I wasn't impressed, but that's me), but I don't think painting it as some kind of future technology is a safe bet. I've already seen the CoH engine do things we were flat out told wouldn't happen.

Now if we could just see some further optimization and better hardware support...

Which I'm not forced to do. Unlike underwater breathing, which would apply to every character ever made of every AT, origin and powerset combination.

If you wanted an actual parallel, you could compare that to the implied ability of every character to survive on Earth. This means that, no matter where you come from, you have some way of tolerating Earth's atmosphere chemistry, air pressure, gravity and temperature. This IS mandated on all characters in order for them to even exist in the game, but unlike an underwater zone, this is an easy sell. Having a game take place on Earth, in breathable air, in comfortable temperatures and at regular pressure and gravity is more or less the status quo. That's what the game is.

Adding one single zone that's very much everything the game ISN'T is not quite as easy a sell. I'm certainly not going to buy it without something to convince me, and "Well, why not?" just doesn't cut it.

You are completely and utterly wrong, which is doubly as ironic given you tell people that they know very little.

Any set that is shared between Tankers, Scrappers and Brutes (with VERY few exceptions) is completely identical. The reason the three ATs get different stats from the same sets is due to their AT mods. A set isn't made "stronger" for a Tanker. It's made the same, and the Tanker just gets higher numbers out of it. That's why practically all powers are defined in scale numbers, with AT mods applied overtop them.

What this means, practically, is that you can take a Scrapper set, shove it onto Tankers and they'll have Tanker level protection, while you can take a Tanker set, slap it onto a Scrapper and you'll have Scrapper level protection. About the only difference between a Tanker set and a Scrapper set is in the form of utility. Scrapper sets tend to have less utility, which is more self-centred, whereas Tanker sets have more control-centric utility which tends to be more AoE. But this isn't representative of the strength of protection of the set, it's a measure of its utility.

As for the argument that Brutes are supposed to tank, that's a very hard sell. Yes, they have Taunt on all their attacks, but they have Scrapper-level protection and not too much greater hit points. About the only way they can even hope to approach Tanker level survivability is via team support, as they have Tanker level caps, but that's more a function of the team. As well, Brutes have I think the game's highest damage cap, so with the proper amount of buffing, they can be damage-dealers, too.

By and large, I find that playing Brutes like Scrappers is the safest bet. Just flip out and kill stuff. Everything will fall into place.

And as far as proliferation goes, I'd like to see every AT have access to all sets that fit its framework.

So... You defend yourself by punching people in the face? Hmm... Why didn't I think of that?

Isn't that how his powers work?

Much of the game doesn't weigh one decision over the other. You can fly. Why can you fly? Who cares? Don't have a reason to fly? Easy! DON'T fly! Problem solved.

This... Doesn't quite work underwater. You can breath underwater. Why can you breath underwater? Don't have a reason to be able to do that? Well, you're gonna' need one. 'Cause, you know, you CAN breath underwater no matter what you do, so you better get 'a-thinkin' and come up with something good.

The only thing the game requires, conceptually, is an excuse why I can fight against the enemies I do, which a lot of the time is written in the powersets you pick. However, it never forces secondary super powers. You're never forced to fly if you don't want to, you're never force to jump if you don't want to, you're never force to be stealthy if you're an extremely obvious ninja. I wouldn't really appreciate being forced to always be able to breath underwater as part of a character concept.

Granted, I could live with a power which gives us underwater breathing, be it through magical or technological means. We'd probably want a full set of scuba gear costume pieces for that one to work for everybody, but I can live with this.

Even with that, though, we still have the problem of motion feeling right underwater, and all the power elements and effects. If it can be done RIGHT and made to feel right, then I'd be right there with you guys, cheering for it. I'm not sure it's possible, and I highly doubt the concentrated effort to make it right is something the guys at Paragon Studios would want to commit to for just one zone.

It's not about what's realistic. It's about what looks good. Fire underwater does not look good. It looks silly. Hurling boulders underwater does not look good. It looks silly. And, again, HOW do you envision something like Steamy Mist, Hurricane or Freezing Rain happening underwater? What about Storm Cloud? How do you foresee Mud Pots or Brimstone Armour working? How about Electrical Armour? Do you realise that if you do NOTHING and just plop those sets underwater with the exact same effects, the result would be ugly as sin?

Let me restate: This isn't about realism. This is about appeal. And certain things just DO NOT LOOK GOOD when done underwater. If I'm going to have a zone where I have to continually remind myself is actually underwater even though it doesn't feel like that in the slightest, then why even have a water zone? Champions' underwater locations that I saw didn't look underwater at all. They looked like a caves I could float inside. It takes more than just calling it underwater and enabling everyone to swim to make an underwater zone.

Also, remember how much we DON'T have. We have ONE swimming animation that only goes forward. We have no swim up, no swim down, no strafing. It's just horizontal movement. All of our powers are designed to work in air and on dry land, so you see wind, you see powers that kick up dust, you slow-burning fire, you see fast, energetic swings that display no drag, we hurl a lot of things with no feel of resistance. Put these things underwater, and you get something which is UGLY.

One of the reasons I like City of Heroes is because it is visually refined. Animations feel natural, to a large extent, motions are mostly fluid and force and impact are almost tangible. Effects look appropriate, and that matters a great deal. The only way for those effects to look appropriate underwater is for them to have custom swimming variants, which I plain don't see happening. But again, if you're talking about just making a free-flight zone with a blue tint and a short draw distance, then I can tell you here and now - such a thing would NOT look good.

This has got to be the best out-of-context quote of 2009. You, sir, win an Internet!

As far as lag goes, I've been having connection problems for at least two weeks now. It's awful sometimes, my packet loss goes through the roof to the point where I can't do anything, and even on good days, I'll get a lot of lost uplink packets and occasionally some lost downlink packets. I cannot confirm that it isn't my connection, however.

Swimming in WoW is one of the silliest things I've seen in a game, and that's saying something. I had a friend who played that a lot, and at times I couldn't tell if he was underwater fighting or in one of those suspiciously coloured forests fighting, not at a glance, anyway. You don't move through water like it's water, you don't float in water like it's water, you don't act in water like it's water. For all intents and purposes, it might as well be teal-coloured air where you fly all the time. I just don't want an underwater zone that didn't feel like it was underwater, and just lighting and scenery don't really do enough.

You shouldn't be able to throw things at high speed underwater, not without causing some serious sockwaves. You shouldn't be able to have fire be as effective in water as it is in air. Electricity shouldn't work the same way, as water is a conductive medium. For one, it should be more effective. For another, it ought to shock YOU, too. Ice powers would be pretty funky and lasers may well not work at all. And, again, how in blue blazes do you picture STORM SUMMONING working underwater, and with the same effects, no less?

For instance, I like how Dead Space handles... Well, space. As soon as you open the outside airlock, you lose all atmosphere in a rush of air and start running out of oxygen. The colour bleeds out (which is likely unrealistic, but it IS a nice touch) and noise almost completely disappears. You lose gravity, so you walk slowly and stomp hard, and the terrain loses up/down consistency. Every time you're in zero gravity, there are things floating around, like crates or debris or water. Things of that nature. Outer space has its limitations, and that's what makes it feel like outer space.

In fact, that's something which bothers me in sci-fi in general and sci-fi series in particular. A lot of the time, they come off like sit-coms with a space theme where people spend the majority of their time talking to each other. If there are alien worlds, they always have atmosphere that's breathable and non-toxic, as well as Earth-like gravity. If there's space, you see it out the window. If there's anti-gravity, there are reasons why the characters aren't floating about. If there are EVAs at all, they're filmed in extreme close-up so you can't really tell what's going on. You can't just pretend you are in a specific environment by just SAYING you're in that environment. If you claim you are in space or underwater, but everything I see contradicts this, then I'm going to feel cheesed out. If it's not done right, it just feels wrong.

Yeah, but it doesn't actually say "colour blindness" on it anywhere. And, provided this is Russian, "боец" doesn't actually stand for soldier. More something like fighter. Soldier would be "солдат." 'Course, it's been a few years since I've used my Russian, so who knows how things have changed.

Sort of that was where my thinking was going, yes. Abandoned buildings ought to be dark, or at least darker, with us bringing our own lighting with us. It would make the whole game a lot more atmospheric. I mean, that sort of thing worked wonders in Diablo 2, much as I hate the game, as it really made magic fights in the dark look quite spectacular. Firing a fireball in the dark would look REALLY cool, I agree with you Kind of like how Gravity Control looks really cool around physics debris right now. Or how about lighting up a whole neighbourhood with Inferno? As soon as you nuke, you project a light with a HUGE radius, making it very obvious for everyone around After all, nukes are the sort of powers where, in comic books, a character would see across town and know something is going on.

Lighting right now is terrible. For the most part, characters are illuminated by some kind of awkward ambient light that gives barely any shading and doesn't seem to have a direction. The rest of the time they're illuminated by some globally uni-directional light where it doesn't matter WHERE you are, you'll always be illuminated from one side only. Very, VERY occasionally, you'll see a couple of omni-directional lights, largely in special locations like the Vanguard base, but by and large it's either ambient light or isometric uni-directional light.

If I had to tier my view of what extra lighting effects can entail, I'd go like this, from most important to least important:

1: Omni-directional dynamic lights.
2: Omni-directional dynamic COLOURED lights.
3: Cone-shaped dynamic coloured lights projectors.
4: Dynamic environment shadows.
5: Dynamic character shadows.
6: Partial character lighting.*
7: Volumeteric light. (your room with a light idea)

Personally, I'd be fine with going down only as far as 2 and 3, but going all the way to 4 and 5 would be G-r-r-r-r-rate! I wouldn't expect to see 6 and 7 at all.

*Right now, characters are always illuminated in their entirety from any light source they're subject to. What I mean by this is to be able to have a light illuminate, say, only your character's legs in green light, but not the rest of his body which would remain illuminated in generic white light. You can't get that right now. If you walk up to a pool of glowing green liquid, you are ALL green, even if you just poke your head into the light.

BABs specifically made it a point several times to explain that it was never hard or complicated, so much as it was a krappton of work. Every power's definitions would need to be hand-edited to accomodate power customization and the character creator would need to be redone to allow you to use that. He did a breakdown of how many effects scripts they had to fiddle with, and it ran well into the thousands, if not tens of thousands. It was just a lot of work, but if I recall correctly, fairly straight-forward work that just needed to be done.

Pokes Cthulu with a stick. I love it!

I don't believe Darryn Wayde is the Dream Doctor, himself, or an aspect of Rularuu. The reason for it is, unconvincing as it may be, how he's written. He seems to be written as a former, jaded member of the Midnight Club who just ended up being too mischievous and power-grabbing for the Club. He does talk about all that "walked on the backs of giants" nonsense, but we've seen him as a boasting loud-mouth who makes promises before he's sure he can deliver (such as in the Dead Man's Deck). If anything, he sounds like that... What was his name, the rival of Dr. Strange who was working to bring Dormamu into the here and now? Kind of like him.

In this case, I'm not sure Darryn is a de-facto servant of Rularuu, or if he is more a member of that cult that was mentioned. I'm not sure if I'd call them as much nihilists as much as anarchists on the order of the Freakshow, but I can definitely see this angle. Most importantly, though, Darryn has the mouth of a man, or at least something that started out as a man. Look around the game and note how all aliens, gods and trans-dimensional entities talk in this pompous, over-blow, quasi-regal fashion, abusing "shall" where it doesn't belong and generally making needlessly-long, overly-elaborate sentences. Kind of like me! Darryn sounds more like Top Cat style hustler with a some major mojo stored on the side than he does as the manifestation of a god, and his history with the Club makes him sound like more of a disgruntled former member.

Granted, I can't refute the notion that he is some sort of manifestation of one of the aspects of Rularuu, and I admit it would make for an interesting story, but I think making the Shard TOO much of a divine gambit would take away some of its flavour. Right now, it's a whole giant place of godliness, but it ultimately comes down to us regular people to explore and learn it, and other regular people to try to mess with us. I wouldn't mind a god or two getting involved, but between the Circle, Nemesis and the Midnight club, I think we have more than enough players. "He was something else all along" stories are kind of hard to pull off when the setting is already just borderline believable.

Well, there is that, too I like how Champions Online just handwaves that away without a passing comment. You dunk yourself into near-freezing water under the ice, and you can spend hours there never freezing or surfacing for air. Which makes just as much sense as hurling barrels underwater. Who the hell looked at that and though "Hmm... Wouldn't it be cool if we allowed characters to toss huge, non-hydro-dynamic objects at each other underwater? Make it so!" The absurdity of this concept is just difficult to describe.

And that's before we face the age-old problem of video games and swimming - floatation. How in the BLUE HELL does a person with 200 pounds of plate mail swim and not sink like a stone? Surprisingly empty head for buoyancy? Every time I see a medieval-style game where a character dives into a ridiculously deep lake in full armour and swims through to the other side, I just have to laugh. It's like swimming with an anchor around your waist.

Really, I understand we can just wave our hands, close our eyes and say "Ignore the details. Just clone the dry land game into the water." The problem is that what this results in neither looks nor feels like underwater. It feels like some kind of alien environment where everyone can fly. Air, floatation, the chemistry and physics of water... These are the things that make an environment feel like it's really taking place underwater. Ignore those, and you lose the point of the environment.

I actually feel the same way about an outer space/moon zone. Unless it takes part in a domed structure or underground in sustained atmosphere caves (and I'm not sure if there are, or indeed CAN BE caves on the moon) it runs into the same problems. Deadly-hostile environment which precludes half the powersets in the game from existing in it, much less being effective. I'm just going to die laughing the day I see Storm Summoning in vacuum.

That's never worked for me. As soon as the things start running, they will ignore EVERYTHING and just run. AoE doesn't work, they just keep on running. Taunt auras don't work. Hell, TAUNT doesn't work. They just keep on running. There has been literally NO way for me to stop these things, and they run too fast for me to chase them down and kill them before they get to the door.

...

Well, I...

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Nope. I got nothin'. You, Sir, have left me speechless. You win an Internet. Thank you, thank you, thank you for this

Test for the young soldier/warrior? What the? Since when are colour blindness tests called that?

And I'm fairly certain 5 is a control with nothing in it.

Yeah, because the only reason to bash something that is intentionally hideous is to boost our egos. We're small like this. We need easy targets, because we're so insecure. Good to know.