Scythus
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:There's also precedent for it in the inspirational source material: comic books. Superheroes travel to another universe, find everyone's the opposite gender in that other universe. It's been done a lot over and over again. People shouldn't be shocked to find it in this game either.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Doesn't really have to be a reason for it. In fact, there's precedent for it in existing lore. -
Quote:I think you need to play through the Doc Delilah story arc again. Castillo has a thing for her.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Captain Castillo would only ever ask out Captain Castillo
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However, I doubt Doc Delilah could put up with Nemesis' sexist, male chauvinist attitudes for very long.
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Maybe it's something like this.
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Quote:Wait, wait, wait... Evidence... please. In just about every post I see him make, he's saying how "horrible" something is and saying we also shouldn't like it. I have yet to see him speak fondly of anything.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
You know, just because someone criticizes something you like doesn't mean they don't like anything.
I've seen some of what Venture likes, and some of it is, you know what? Good. Some of it is even--oh the horror--funny! -
Eh, it's Venture. I don't think there's a single thing on the face of this Earth that he likes.
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Quote:Wrong.Originally Posted by Venture
I used to sell those books when I ran a game store, and you're right, they weren't even close to bad writing. It was TERRIBLE writing.
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Quote:Agreed.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
A bubble bath is the ultimate bath
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Quote:Unfortunately first-person narrative in such a way would be confusing and jarring for most native English speakers. Like I said, I'd be wondering who this "I" person was that was seemingly talking to me.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
If you inferred that that's what I was suggesting, then you missed the point. I'm not suggesting that the omniscient narrator speak in first person. I'm suggesting that the omniscient narrator NOT SPEAK. At all. When I refer to first person, I refer to letting my character speak for himself. If the game is going to tell me how my character feels, it may as well do so in his words out of his mouth.
Clearly there is more about English you need to learn such as context.
Oh, so your real issue is the fact that the text narrates your feelings to you. Regardless, it's still a fair use of second-person narrative as we native English speakers are familiar with.Quote:If pen and paper RPGs have always been done in second-person narrative, then that's just one more reason to not bother with them, given my general distaste for real-time roleplay. I don't enjoy letting other people write for my characters, and this is precisely what this second-person narrative does. And it isn't necessary, because the choices don't need to be explained to me. The choices can be given to me as-is. When a situation fails to give me an explanation of the morality of a choice, it forces me to come up with my own morality, which in turn forces me to explore my characters deeper and make them more compelling.
I have some good news for you; generally in pen and paper role-playing, unless we're dealing with some kind of status effect or character trait you chose during character creation, the DM doesn't dictate your emotions and thoughts to you. Generally. As I listed though, there are a few exceptions.
Physical sensations such as sight, hearing, sound, taste, and smell are another matter completely.
However! ....
Then you are clearly unfamiliar with another medium of second-person narrative: Gamebooks. I was an avid reader of gamebooks in my childhood. My favorite series was Lone Wolf by British writer, Joe Dever. A more popular series in gamebooks that you might recognize; however, is Choose Your Own Adventure. In these gamebooks, the reader is allowed to choose where the character goes in a limited choice of options ("If you choose to go down the twisted, narrow path, turn to page 6. If you choose to climb the staircase into the cave, turn to page 37." And so on). Often in the text, my emotions and thoughts as I discovered the worlds within were described to me as much as the sights and smells.Quote:In simple terms, being told that "You chose to save these people because they're innocent and they don't deserve to die and you've sworn to protect the innocent!" just causes me to go "Oh, OK. I'll go with that." By giving me an option to save these people but not explaining why I took it, the game forces me to ask the obvious question: "So why DID I choose to have my character save these people? Would he choose to save them, really? Does it fit his personality? How can I explain this?"
Writing thoughts into player characters' heads is bad storytelling, because it corrupts one of the driving forces behind the game's fiction - creating our own characters from our own ideas. The more the game encourages people to think for themselves, the better it is overall.
It was hardly bad writing. Not even close.
Having read those books in my youth, I hardly have a problem with CoH doing the same thing as its mission briefings these days are very similar to what was found in the gamebook genre.
Once again: Confusing. Who is this "I" and why am I setting out on the mission he decided to go out and do for himself? It might work in German, but it doesn't work in English.Quote:And, really - when when the game does not give us any way to make our characters speak in such a way that the game accepts it, I see no problem with putting in a little first-person dialogue. If the game needs to tell me how my character feels, then let him say so on his own. -
Sam, second-person narrative is a staple of RPGs. I don't know how they do it in whatever language you speak, but in English, it's done this way. It always has been and always will.
For example, if I am DMing a session of D&D and you're one of the players, and I'm describing a scene to you I don't say to you: "As I enter the tomb, I feel the temperature drop precipitously around me."
No, I say to you instead: "As you enter the tomb, you feel the temperature drop precipitously around you."
The first implies I'm talking about myself. The second implies I'm talking about you.
There is nothing wrong with the pronoun use in the tip missions. If it was done your way in the first person, I'd be wondering who the mysterious "I" was and why I was doing his stuff. -
I prefer baths myself. There's just something about lounging in a pool of warm, comforting water.
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Quote:Ah, the irony.Originally Posted by That_Ninja
But MST3k is funny.
Anyway, Sam has always made it clear that he hates comedy. So be it. Some people just don't like laughing. -
Quote:Duray's morality didn't change much.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
But up until I20, it was only morality that changed, rather than gender - so this opens up loads of funny possibilities in the future
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Quote:Anything can happen differently in alternate universes.Originally Posted by Impervious Fist
No one answered my question that I never asked therefore it never became a question, so I shall ask it now.
But fo' why so seriously, why are they different genders. SPOIL- wait never mind too late. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Bionic_Flea
You only have one pair of underwear? No wonder you don't have many friends on your server!Reading comprehension fail.Quote:Originally Posted by Yogi_Bare
lol, I didn't want to be the one to point that out.
He said friends are NOT like underwear and proceeds to explain that he doesn't feel the need to change them every day, like he would underwear. -
Quote:They might as will be with the calculations already shown in this thread. It's effin' ridiculous.Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
Except they're not completely unattainable.
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Quote:That was very well said. I will gladly sign my name to this.Originally Posted by UberGuy
We don't need Inventions. We don't need to be level 50. That's a non-point. People want these things, and a large number of them are going to strive for them.
I simply don't agree. In brutal honesty, if they don't really want soloing one's way to this stuff to be viable, they simply shouldn't offer the option. Offering something that is, roughly based on what we're seeing discussed in this thread, 10 times less efficient is, in my opinion, going to insult people. I don't buy into the notion that offering people an alternative way to progress, no matter how unattractive is a feature worthy of note in any but the most literal of ways.
Proof is impossible here, because this is not an objective matter. Asking for proof of such a subjective situation is tantamount to trying to dismiss the discussion, because no one will ever "prove" what they enjoy or hate. This topic is a convolution of game mechanics and play preferences. Basically, the people who don't share the same preferences as the unhappy people are trying to dismiss their opinions about how they like to play, or the goals they like to pursue when they do so. There are certainly playstyles that are so far outside the norm that low performance has to be expected. Soloing in this game has not been one of those for a very long time, if ever.
To set expectations here, I am not worried about barriers to Incarnate progress for myself. I have access to a core of players who are already dominating this content. I have unlocked all four new slots on a character already, and have taken three of that character's slots to Very Rare, and the other to Rare, meaning I have both Incarnate shifts. I'm now ready to move on to another character, probably long before most people have unlocked all four slots on one character.
All that said, I still wish there was a way to make progress on the slots and shards that wasn't ridiculously slower, not because I don't want to team, but because I don't want to team all the time. I want to progress towards the new shiny, but I don't want to run Trials all day to do it. I want to do other stuff, too. And sure, technically I can do other stuff and make progress, but the rate of progress I make doing so is completely lost in the noise. It's so much slower that it's almost not even worth measuring.
I think it's notable that this is true on characters who are radically powerful. I would guess my level 50 characters are easily in the top 10% of solo performers for their AT and powersets. Despite this, the rate at which they earn any incarnate progress solo isn't just "slower" than what I earn on trials. It's so much slower that it's ignorable. It such a worse option that there is nothing that would compel me to chose it over running trials, since I have that option. If that's true for me, and my characters really are in the top 10% of performers, then 90% of the other people playing would find it even less compelling to do anything but run the new trials if they want to progress towards Incarnate abilities.
Whether I or anyone needs these abilities to play is just completely beside the point. I16's difficulty settings ensured that I can make good use of them on many characters whether I need them or not. The whole point of them being in the game is that they make our characters stronger, and stronger characters are, for me and many others, goals for their own sake. Giving us extremely narrow playstyle options for how to pursue such goals after seven years of extremely flexible choices was bound to chafe part of the player base. Some folks are being pretty darn obtuse about it, but I very much understand where at least some of them are coming from. -
Quote:Who's being anti-social for wanting a better solo-option for Incarnate progression? I see some ridiculous character assassination of Samuel Tow earlier in this thread, but it's obvious to me that he seems actually quite sociable.Originally Posted by GreenFIame
Oh man don't be Anti-Social
I have nothing against the new i20 raids and I will join one when I feel like it. However, it's not something I want to do all the time. Personally, yeah... I have a couple social disorders; manic-depression and agoraphobia. Both of these make it very easy for me to grow tired of people and I just want to slink off and do my own thing for a while. This doesn't stop me from teaming or raiding, I just don't want to have to do that all the time. There needs to be an alternative to Incarnate progression other than that hilariously prohibitive shard and thread conversion. -
Quote:How the hell am I agreeing with you? The very fabric of reality shouldn't allow this!Originally Posted by Venture
Anyone attempting to create J/L/I/D abilities by collecting shards needs to have their head examined.
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Quote:Actually the villain SF has nothing to do with Praetoria.Originally Posted by EvilGeko
The focus of the issue is Incarnates and the war against the Praetorians. Both the two trials and the two TFs deal with that. The only new maps created for this issue belong to...wait for it...the TF you call a crumb.
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Quote:Titans are primordial entities that preceded the gods.Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Technically Prometheus isn't a god. He's a titan. What the semantic differences are there is anyone's guess.
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Quote:In respect of our Canadian brethren and those few Americans who have actual sympathy, some of us never made such a claim.Originally Posted by Ravenswing
I also find it rather amusing that we EU players get told it's all just fine when we lose our entire evening, but it's fine to moan when the US gets hit.
Gain persepctive, be calm, say "Ommmm." -
Huh... I guess I never noticed.
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Wait... Domination gives mez protection? When did that happen?
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Quote:+1.Originally Posted by Blood_Beret
Ancient Spirits of Evil....
of course it's Mumra