Slashman

I think that is exactly the point of Preatoria. Neither side is squeaky clean. No one is absolutely right or wrong. I think this makes for much better storytelling and I can only be amused by Golden Girl's frustration with being unable to find stuff to play in Preatoria as a result.

You know, I could actually get behind that. As I recall, those servers are the most populated because they are holdovers from the beta. The devs should not have kept beta server names in the first place. It prompted people from the beta to crowd the servers they were on before instead of distributing the population more evenly.

Not sure what the implications of doing something like this now is though. Still, I'd be for it. I'm not a fan of high lag and rubberbanding in exchange for grouping with more people.

A possible solution is a new user experience for both blue and redside. Clear out the crap starter missions we have now and do something spiffy so that whether or not you buy GR, you get a fresh and interesting starting experience.

Doesn't have to be 1 - 20. I think just up to level 10 would be fine.

That entirely depends on the game. I can hide just fine in EVE. In fact...there are systems that practically never see another human soul.

Yeah there is lag. But there is lag on multi-server games as well.

I actually had a nice trade route setup through a 5 system cluster that was surrounded by low sec space. I could spend a week in there and see maybe one or two players pass by.

Please refrain from generalizations.

We're more or less just using those examples as fuel for 'what if' scenarios. I don't think anyone here truly thinks that comics are deep philosophical wells to draw from. But they still reflect someone's views of morality and justice, no matter how skewed.

Just like many real world events are often not as complex or simple as they are portrayed. Watch the news lately?

And unless you're in the closed beta and violating NDA, you can't say how complex or simple the devs have presented the Praetoria situation.

This right here is the thing.

A lot of parents are unknowingly turning their kids into little monsters because they tell them: 'Don't take crap from anybody. You can do anything you want. No one has the right to tell you what to do...' etc.

They tell them by having the wrong attitudes in the first place. They can't pass on respect and responsibility because they have none of their own. They don't have to teach them with words, they teach them just fine by their own actions(or lack thereof).

Also, as to Cyberknight's statement about becoming a father making you a better person. I have to say that I disagree. People are who they are. I know more fathers than I can count who remain the same a-holes they were after having 2, 3 or even 4 kids. If becoming a parent automatically made you a better person, then the world would be a total utopia. I think that becoming a parent just means that either you pass your crap onto your kids, you try to hide it(and usually fail and show it anyway), or your kids benefit from having a parent who was actually ready to become a parent(sometimes this comes a total shock to the parent in question).

This is win!

What exactly does this prove one way or another?

Which is why I said the effect on the enemy is great. But I still want to feel like I unleashed a huge blast of awesome on my foes. The blast itself is very unimpressive visually.

How many exactly is a 'lot'? See, you just put the people who don't really like crowd interaction in a small box and the people who like that interaction in a bigger box. How do you quantify those two values? Also...the motives for going to a movie theatre may be a lot more varied than you think.

I generally dislike people. I don't like crowds and I rarely play with people in COX who are not friends or people that I have at least met and talked to and decided I like enough. I don't like PuGs much and raid type activities are not a huge draw(Rikti Invasions, Hami, Zombie Apocalypse etc.)

I go to the movies often enough. Simply because when a movie that I think is going to be great comes out, I don't want to wait for it to hit DVD/Blu-ray etc. before I see it. I may not go opening night...and I may, in fact, go when the crowd has thinned enough that there is no huge crowd in the theatre. But at no time, am I ever going to the movies because I like a crowded movie theatre or free air conditioning.

It's the same darn thing to me. And also to the friends that I go with.

That's the nail on the head right there.

There is no 'point' at which to stop. And can you please explain how preventing a buff which isn't wanted, ruins the experience of COX?

I played EVE online for over 2 years. There is no game that offers the opportunity to seclude yourself from other players quite like EVE. You could literally find a patch of space that sees maybe 2 or 3 players passing through a day. Ships which offer 'buffs', can pretty much only do it in a gang(team). You can be as much a part of the galaxy as you want, or be as much of a lone wolf as you want. Who has the bigger player population?

I agree that players can only have so much control, but this isn't the sort of matter where I think that kind of thinking applies

Most of the folks here are only talking about Mystic Fortune. It has a 20 minute duration and it does NOT go away on death or logout. It is not like Speed Boost or Intertial Reduction or Cold Domination Shields. And I don't think it should be treated like other short duration buffs.

I agree...with things that have continuous effects...like bubbles, sonic shields and the like. But if we're gonna talk about a tier 9 nuke with a super long recharge...then I can't see that turning up the 'impressive meter' a bit would hurt.

I personally think that Thunderous Blast looks weak...even though its effectiveness on enemies is great. I actually took some screenshots of its effect and the bolt coming from the player's hands is small. I'd rather a huge lightning blast fall from the sky and explode is brilliant glory than the current effect.

I hope that power effects get a look over by the devs at some point in the future.

You're not wrong. Console graphics are 'as is' most of the time because everything is built to run at a given framerate with a specified look.

As I'm a PC gamer exclusively, I thoughtlessly only took PC games into account. But I can see how it would suck on the console to not be able to turn motion blur off in ME 1.

Actually, if most of the people pissed off about overdone graphical effects in next gen games are talking about consoles, then I'm probably guilty of dismissing them wrongfully because I'm accustomed to never having to put up with an effect I don't like(most of the time).

I'm curious as to why there is all this hate for graphical effects that can be turned on, off or adjusted in intensity at the whim of a player. I turned off blur in ME1 forced antialiasing and supersampling for both that and ME2 etc.

If you just leave your graphics set to whatever the game 'recommends' then I can see where you might get effects you don't like, but with a gajillion graphic settings to tweak and(with any decent graphics card) the ability to tweak and add things not even in the options in the first place, where is the problem?

Also...can you name me some games where 'brown' is used inappropriately and excessively? I'm not saying it doesn't happen...I'd just like some examples to get my head around the problem.

No. I agree that the 'little guys' have trouble saying no when someone passes a multimillion dollar buyout under their noses. It's sad...but greed trumps all.


I agree. Adding Ultra Mode to the old zones doesn't really constitute a remake.

I'd like to see our character models get an update but I'm not going to hold my breath. They certainly haven't announced anything like that with GR.

It's not one OR the other in my mind. It's how much of one you have versus the other. And also how much of one better lends itself to the game experience than the other. There are some games where better graphics don't enhance the experience very much and others where they are almost a necessity.

No. Not EVERY villain. But there are plenty of villains who are driven by pure greed or just a lust for power. So much so that it blinds them to right and wrong and was the driving force behind them becoming villains in the first place. You can't honestly expect the devs to account for every villain type there is.

I liked them because they portray your character as actually being proactive and making some decisions instead of having them all made for them. That, to me, is an important first step in carrying mission design forward by the devs. Will they continue to build on that and do better in the future? I don't know.

So...you'd rather they started nowhere and did nothing instead? I never said the new arcs were 'perfect', but they are at least a bit better for villains than they have been. At least I'm not working with a bunch of heroes to 'save the day'. At least I'm not getting pushed and threatened by people with no powers of their own.

Did you expect everything to be addressed with one arc? People have simply said that they have enjoyed these more than previous arcs. I know I did. I'm sorry you didn't. You still have the choice to not do them if you think they don't represent your character. You can, of course, go have fun doing Kelly Uqua's arc. Which I think makes your villain look more idiotic than anything done in the new i17 stories by a good long way...but YMMV.

Because stuff like that has never happened in comic books before? I think I lost track of the number of times a mysterious entity pokes their nose in under false pretenses and fools people into thinking they have their interests at heart.

I think I'm tending to agree with Sam that you guys are expecting things based on the world you've created in your own head and forgetting that this is the devs' universe to direct as they would.


Lots of people get fooled every day by things you'd think they would see coming. Some villains in comics will knowingly work with another villain/group expecting to be betrayed at some point. Some of them don't take precautions and some do.

Not all my villains would fall for a 'helping hand from an unknown party', but some of them certainly might. Some of them are big brain masterminds and some are thuggish. Sorry if none of your toons fit this concept, but its a hazard of MMO storytelling. They are never going to give us 7 character choices like if this was Dragon Age or something.

The developers have to make hard choices, it's true. But even knowing that, it is mind-boggling to see developers focus on a single aspect of a game to the exclusion of so many other things in this day and age. And then that same developer will act all surprised when the game doesn't do well and blame something else entirely like piracy.

It's like the Crysis situation. They were surprised when a game that could only run well on(at the time) top end systems didn't sell as well as they expected.

And yet what you're saying seems to belie this.

Especially this:

People liked the new villain stories because they did a decent job of representing the player as a villain. I'm not sure what you were looking for, but you seem to be getting story mixed up with new mission mechanics and technology(both of which I agree we could use more of).

The new missions mostly presented the player with some dialogue options that we've never had before and did some cool stuff in terms of linking the story and setting of the missions and the enemies you fight. In short, they flowed better than the arcs we've been getting.

From what I've been seeing here, people who play this game(and pay attention to the storylines) are a bit more concerned with getting a chance to represent their character in more ways than costume, bio and powers.

Since the new missions seem to be pushing in this direction, it's a no-brainer that people would like them. No one is calling them literary masterpieces. And at the same time, can you please name me a popular comic where the superhero hasn't had to deal with a clone or double at some point in time?

I posted some thoughts on how I would remedy this in another thread somewhere(too lazy to dig it out now).

My take on it is that the devs might want to take a look at other games and see how they are presenting story elements.

Teaming to do missions is one of the most surefire ways to lose track of any story in this game. It's sad, but true.

One major issue is the inadequate nav window. Sure it tells you what the objective is...but we could use a separate in-mission alert window. Something that sits in a corner of the screen and is auto-updated with new info as the mission progresses. When something happens, it's displayed as a short summary text that is clickable to bring up a more detailed explanation. Similar to how a quest update or Codex update pops up in Dragon Age or Mass Effect. In this way, all team members can see what has been happening and what it means to the mission.

Another thing we lack is lore caches. Taking a leaf from just about every decent RPG, why can't we have a lore book/log/data pad whatever? I'd like it so that when we do missions, there are scrolls, notes or data discs that we can collect and each one gives some insight into either the current story arc or the enemy group as a whole. Each one becomes an entry that we can read immediately or later as it becomes convenient. And each one puts a different piece of the puzzle in place.

Third thing: Random mission maps suck for creating good stories. I know the devs thought it was great that generic warehouse 85126 could serve in that Council arc and still be used later in that Nemesis arc down the road, but that was a bad idea. I hope newer arcs and content going forward leverage the use of unique maps for missions so that things like unique pieces of architecture and other props can be used to better convey what is going on in the story.

There's no reason that good gameplay and story can't co-exist in this game. I would personally love to see things done other than front or back loading all the story bits for a mission or arc. I'd love to see more of the story told during the mission and affected by our actions.

It wasn't incoherent to me. I found it to be pretty interesting and mostly on target.

In my experience, people don't try COX because they know next to nothing about it. Lack of marketing and press time means that its not a game that's on people's minds. Combine that with some bad press over the Mission Architect debacle and you have a game that will probably not get much attention. Apprently this is just what NCSoft wants after sinking all this money and resources into a new box and expansion.

That may be a bit misleading. Text adventure games were popular at a time when, again, graphics weren't all that.

As much as I may hate to do it, I have to look at games through the eyes of the publishers and investors these days to get an accurate picture of what is shaping the game industry.

The target audience has changed dramatically. People tend to discount this a lot. We talk about dumbing down games...but I don't think we appreciate what that means exactly. Accessibility is the new buzzword for games now. They need to appeal to the widest possible audience.

A game would have been considered successful by selling 300K copies 7 years ago...but this is now considered to be the territory of independent game developers and not large, main stream entities like EA and Activision. They want millions of copies sold because they are investing millions of dollars into every single title. That doing this may be the wrong thing, is irrelevant to them.

With that kind of investment on the line, the publishers will goad the developers to cower into comfort zones. Stifle creativity and stick with a 'tried and true' formula. That, more than anything, has stifled the evolution of storytelling in modern games. A few developers can choose to ignore this kind of pressure, like Valve with their Half-Life series, because they are their own bosses.

Other developers can get more legroom because they are so well known that their publishers will give them more leeway...like Bioware to a certain extent. And even they have to tow a certain line now that they are tied to EA. I'm not sure what the second installment in the Dragon Age series will be like. I HOPE it will be more like the first...but mass market appeal tells my gut to expect a good dose of consolitis.

In the end, I'm kind of sad that creativity is getting so heavily stifled. And this, in turn, is retarding storytelling in games.

A difficult question to answer easily.

Gamers do like great looking graphics. I know I do. Back in my earlier days of gaming with my friends when we would do LAN parties almost weekly, we all obsessed over getting the games we had to look better. The 3D graphics card business was still in its infancy and so hot graphics were all the rage.

The major difference at the time was that it seemed like games were made with better graphics only after the developers got everything else done(it SEEMED that way). So it was like graphics assisted the game but didn't drive it.

Presently, I think that advanced graphics are on a game publisher's must-have checklist. When you demo a new game, it's not as easy to show how great the gameplay and story aspects are in a short period of time. But you can totally show off your hot, new graphics engine.

Crysis is a good example of going overboard with graphics.

Also, keep in mind that gamers are liars. A lot of 'hardcore' gamers will gladly give you an extensive lecture about how great things were back in the days of Quake. But that same guy will then scoff at a new game that comes out and has graphics that 'look 5 years old'. Check the forums at Bluesnews for many examples of this.

I agree here. Though I would also add that complex level design has not stopped the game community from pushing out lots of great mods for any number of games out there with publicly available SDKs.

It sure sold a gajillion copies though...

I think that Valve has done a remarkable job with that in the Half-Life series. Even with so many unanswered questions, it still feels like you're seeing the big picture and are a part of it.

I've thoroughly enjoyed ME 1+2 myself and I'm looking forward to 3.

The sheep syndrome of humans wins out in the end.

I think that's kind of unfair. Everyone keeps pointing back to Baldur's Gate and accusing Bioware of doing terrible story-telling. I agree that the original NWN campaign was badly done...but from what I understand, there wasn't going to be a full campaign shipped with the game. That got put in at the last minute and so the demo module became a 'full game module'. The expansions were much better done.

Mass Effect and Dragon Age are pretty nicely done games. No, they aren't Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment(not made by Bioware), but then if they were, people would be complaining that Bioware is rehashing it's past work.

I DO love this kind of tension when playing. The thing is that once I know an enemy group in and out, I can perfectly plan each combat(doesn't always turn out perfect, but still...).

So if the thrill of being on the edge doesn't appeal to you, then blasters may not be your thing.




Haha! Exactly!
And, funny enough... /Regen and /SR are my two scrappers as well![/QUOTE]

I hope you don't mind when the favor is returned then.

The prompt was there when Mystic Fortune went live on the servers. It went away to fix an exploit with walking and having it applied multiple times.

How do you make the jump to the conclusion that someone who was used to the prompt for all those months and liked it, would ask for it back and purposely disregard how someone who hated the prompt would feel?

In the first place, the people who asked for it back would have to be aware that there were people who strongly hated it. I myself didn't even know that people hated the prompt to that degree. Or at least people on the forums...



Good. Since you're giving me ample reason to be inconsiderate of those who dislike the prompt if they all act like bullies in a playground throwing a temper tantrum as you have been.

The buff is NOT like every other buff in the game. Its effects are random and last 4 times longer than even the longest duration buffs that were previously available. The effect doesn't cancel on death. It doesn't cancel on logout. You are stuck with it for 20 minutes.

If you team with people who would prioritize throwing out a random effect buff in the middle of combat rather than using buffs from their own powersets or otherwise helping to defeat the current spawn, then your problems may run a little deeper than just Mystic Fortune. Its the sort of buff you'd cast between fights.

In teaming with my SG/VG mates and other online friends, I have never had them try to cast this buff in the middle of combat. It is always something we do at the beginning of the mission before we fight and then in the middle once we get a breather and have a quiet moment.

Well this is certainly something I can heartily agree with you on in all that you've posted so far. You could have just started with this and be done with it.

Isn't that a bit overly dramatic? I mean is it anywhere near as bad as a drunken karaoke session for sailors on shore leave?

Seriously, I've never found sonic blast audio effects to be so annoying that I stopped playing what is otherwise a great(and under-estimated) blaster primary.

What kinds of sounds would you actually use for the set anyway? Pretty much anything you put there will sound weird when held against the theme. And all comic book sonic blasters I've seen have their blasts represented as loud and disorienting sounds.