Starsman
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This is very similar to what I was brainstorming to do (yes I am literally hoping I have the time and money to pursue this.)
My idea has a few differences. For one, I was not thinking on a single player mode (although it crossed my mind for offline play in android/iOS.)
Character data for multiplayer would only reside in a private server. Characters can transfer from one server to another via some kind of handshaking system (if you going to another server just request a character transfer with the IP of the current server and the servers do their thing.)
Cheating would in a large part be a honor system, though. It's up to the server managers to decide how lax they are going to be, and may even be able to enable certain rule sets (that other servers can look at and refuse transfers.)
Content would be in large part made by the players themselves with tools.
With the content tools, the private server managers can actually re-shape the world to their liking. Let's say I set Starsman as the world's equivalent of Superman or Statesman. Well, any server manager can change that, remove built-in content and setup their own city and core missions. Every server would have the potential to be entirely unique.
Business model would be split in 4:
The client would be sold on it's own for a price.
A client/server combo would also be available for a higher price.
Content authoring tools would be separate.
Premium content "modules" can be bought (example, devs create The Devouring Earth, thats an official enemy group pre-created that can be purchased for a small fee and used on either randomized content or player created missions)
"Power Set" modules also would be available for sale.
I really like the MineCraft server model (don't play minecraft myself though) and that's what inspired a lot of my thinking. The idea that the game will only die the day no one in the planet wants to play the game anymore is something that I just love.
Also, one thing is sure is that the iOS and Android have shown that single player "MMOs" without centralized servers can still make a lot of money (just look at the top grossing lists, they are full of free games people play as if they were single player MMOs.) -
Quote:Most campaigns targeted at convincing NCSoft to change their minds are a waste of time. They will not reverse this decision.Originally Posted by Atlantea
This.
I know we're supposed to remain mostly positive.
Okay. Fine. Titan and the people in direct negotiations with NCSoft. THEY can remain positive.
But I think a few of the rest of us would be well served to find some back-channels to the gaming media and do a little rumor-mongering here, a little tanking of the meta-scores there. A whisper campaign via twitter over there...
Ok. Sure. Maybe wait a little while longer and let the positive and polite efforts run their course. But when and if it becomes obvious that such efforts are not paying off?
Well then it's time for the heroes to step aside and let the villains take a turn.
The best hope CoH has to survive is that an IP transfer can be negotiated. The best chance of this happening is that Paragon Studio management, and associated investors, manage to convince NCSoft to sell it off. Note there may be many reasons for NCSoft to not sell, most of them "selfish" (if you want to attach feelings to a company.)
Even after a sale, we also have to hope full data transfers are possible. There is a huge chance that negotiations can fall apart if the game is forced to re-launch. I dont care to start from zero, but way too many players do care. Heck, if players need to re-sign up, that alone can make the game lose a huge chunk of its player base overnight, something that may make the game fail even after a successful acquisition.
So negotiations must be handled very carefully so a transfer, if one happens, goes as transparent as possible for as many players as possible. -
Quote:If you mean the "publisher's efforts to realign its focus and publishing support" statement, for me it's the opposite.Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
The more I think about it, the more that statement flies through my head.
"And now the truth comes out."
Due to certain issues in a publicly traded company, press releases like these must be truthful. They should also be ambiguous enough that the player base does not get it out right.
I think the key to confusion may be in grouping of statements. Many may think:
They are putting effort into realign focus.
They are putting effort in publishing support.
The truth is that they are putting effort into realigning "focus and publishing support".
Realign is just a polite way of saying "taking it away from someone and giving it to someone else."
What they are taking away from "someone" [Paragon] is complete support.
Simply put: they took all budget away from paragon, seeking to "focus" it in supporting a different project or studio.
At first I figured it was for Guild Wars 2 (who also expanded hiring efforts at the same time the press got this embargo scoop), or potentially Wildstar. Now I'm thinking it's for this. They may be forming an all-new-studio, or expanding Aion's studio, to localize this game.
As I mentioned in another thread, we still don't know WHAT actually made them think this was a smart choice, and we don't know for certainty what studio will get the money, but we have enough to put it together that the true meaning is simply no more desire in supporting Paragon Studios and desire to support something else with that money.
BTW, this is not just guess work. Back in 2009 they used the same wording (refocusing publishing support) to justify NCSoft West -across the board layoffs. Shortly after ArenaNet came forth to clarify they got extra budget/manpower thanks to the misfortune of the fired employees across other studios. -
One thing I got to say that I picked up over this thread: adding a number to the end of globals is ridiculous!
If you going to do that may as well just force unique globals. -
Ah... so THERE is where Paragon Studio's lost publishing support is being realigned towards: the westernization of that game.
Edit: interesting that the announcement was done one week before Paragon got canned, and the websites that got the scoop got embargoed until two weeks after the announcement of Paragon Studios shutdown... -
Quote:They said they were going to do this. Bad sign would be if all stuff in the market goes free. Then again, a bad sign also would be if all the Paragon Studio staf was laid off and the studio shut down...Originally Posted by Ozmosis
I hope this isnt a bad sign tho....
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Quote:What's a Freudian slip?Originally Posted by airhead
A Freudian slip perhaps, the root cause of the delay?
Root for the (4 year) delay is mainly that I hated the inkwork and so never continued work on it. I moved recently and found a few art pads I had in boxes, this was among the lest horrible pieces. Sort of wish I never inked it, though.
Otter Summon Mastermind PrimaryQuote:Originally Posted by the_fox_Rox
I like this pic. Though I feel like she just threw the otter in the upper right. Still Otter Blast sounds like an awesome set, or at least very cute.
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Quote:Good in a bad way: they also laid off legal.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
We're all going to jail, aren't we.
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Quote:Originally Posted by Schismatrix
You know, the thing about insulting, condescending platitudes is that, as platitudes, they've been said many times before. Still, you do get credit for chaining more of them together than usual.
3.4Guys, don't feed the troll. Look at his "reason for editing:Quote:Originally Posted by Paladiamors
How about you get off your high horse? If people want to be upset because a company pulled the plug on a game they enjoy playing then that's their perogative. Don't like it? Don't read. And I HATE the saying "Don't the player, hate the game." Why should you NOT hate the people stooping to 'playing the game'? Especially when, in this case, the 'game' made little sense, aside from potentially making quarterly costs look more reasonable and maybe shifting that budget to another game.
He is intentionally trying to stir the pot. Let the troll die of boredom.Quote:Last edited by Solo_One; Today at 10:57 PM. Reason: i am a ***** -
Quote:Nop, other than Arcanaville herself (she was always good at telling me she didnt have the data, though) I never asked anyone for data because I was aware how sensitive it was and no one that didn't know me would ever entrust me with anything (same way I never entrusted anyone but Arcanaville with the tidbits of things I learned about.) Also... a few years back I coded an SSIS job that leached every single data field from City of Data, even "hidden" pagesOriginally Posted by Codewalker
PS: I apologize if yours was one of the PMs that came in requesting powers data that I ignored. Due to the nature of obtaining it, which technically went against the ToS, it wasn't something that we really talked about outside of a small group. Unfortunately that made some people seem a bit cliquish, but it was a necessary evil given the sensitive nature of the work.
In fact I think after that was that Arcanaville started trusting me with small tidbits of data here and there. That job of broke as CoD got redesigned. I was working on a new one recently, though but since I started doing some coding for profit on my free time, I kept finding it harder and harder to justify to myself spending TOO much coding time into the game.
My dream, for years, was to make a program that would allow the devs to easily benchmark things like survivability and offense, and also yield warnings when an enemy group was insanely and unfairly overpowered against specific builds. Lack of sufficient data (CoD was always behind for what I wanted) made this too hard to ever accomplish. -
Quote:I am certain it was in before GR, though, at least for Chain Induction, since Castle talked about it and... well I quit the game until I23 once GR launched (felt that strongly about blue-side Brutes making tankers irrelevant.)Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Yeah that was recent and slipped my mind, and I believe its possible that became practical when Television made some changes to the entity spawn and clean up code that might have otherwise made that a bit fugly.
I hadn't really looked closely at the "deep data" since I21, honestly, except in certain limited situations.
So I never got to see any announcement or changes in between I18 and I23, plus Castle (and BaBs) were laid off around I19, no? -
Quote:In this case I think I'm very warm on the meaning, though.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
IMO it could mean anything. I work in a completely different type of coporation and I'm pretty sure I got the same message from my company one time when they decided to stop working in mortgages and again when they caught two co-workers having an affair.
I already saw that just a week earlier ArenaNet posted job openings. I have not looked into the studio behind wildcards though.
Now, that may not be the full reason, though. Actually, that's not a reason, that's what they did. The REASON still is in the air. Why did they think they were better off shutting down paragon studios?
- Was it a matter of trust on paragon management? Because CoH underperforming would not justify killing the in-production secret title.
- Was it that they did not believe in the future of the genre of said secret title?
- Did they think the secret title development was taking too long to deliver milestones?
- Did they think CoH income was falling too quickly? Again, still would not justify closing all of Paragon Studios but may be part of it.
- Was it simply they desperately needed more manpower at these other studios but, due to losses in the previous quarter, did not have the budget and considered sacrificing Paragon to increase those teams development support a more viable long term investment?
Note all the above are not exclusive reasons, it may even be all of the above.
Public traded companies tend to keep these announcements worded in a way that is not considered a "lie", they make them ambiguous enough to not upset the audiences, but they also have to make sure investors cant say they were lied to. -
Quote:Wait... you where on charge of that code? I attempted various time to get a hold of some one, every time contacted the wrong person. I never pursued it extensively since I ended up jumping to other things, but my attack simulations attempts always got abandoned because the gargantuan amount of work I would had have to go through to acquire all the data that is in Mids or CoD.Originally Posted by Codewalker
(I've brainstormed this quite a bit myself, as for the eventual Mids successor I wanted to push for doing a more accurate simulation of the combat system rather than a ton of special cases that are a PITA to maintain)
A few times i thought it would had simply been best if I just somehow got it into Mids itself, but again, always ended up getting derailed to other stuff. -
Quote:Minor nitpick: that is how the original Chain Induction worked and it was a bit buggy, plus was not able to transfer enhancement strength.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
For example, CoH has no "chaining" mechanic. None. Chaining powers grant powers to targets which create an aura around the target which forces the target to grant additional powers to a limited number of the targets around them which themselves damage the target and grant the same aura to those targets and set a flag which prevents the same target from being hit again by the target it hit with its own aura.
I think all chains now are close to that, but they don't grant a power, instead they summon an incorporeal pet at the location of the target that in turn has a damage aura with a max target of 1, that aura in turn does the same, summons another similar pet at it's target, etc etc.
This was one of the first things that changed when Arbiter Hawk (or maybe Synapse but I think hawk is the one with the chain obsession) fixed by re-working the original approach for implementing chains. -
Quote:That does not mean they are withdrawing from the west. However, they used that same pitch back in 2009 when they laid off forces all over their west studios.Originally Posted by Zemblanity
"Bro", I'm not trying to win an argument, do whatever you want.
"In a realignment of company focus and publishing support, NCsoft has made the decision to close Paragon Studios."
If you can read this and still buy stuff from them, go nuts. Just don't go crying to the courts when they decide "company realignment" dictates the need to close US and EU servers for Guild Wars II a year from now.
At that point it was publicly told by ArenaNet they got a lot more budget and support "thanks to the layoffs".
In other words: "realignment of company focus and publishing support" simply means... well it means that.
In more common man words: "we are taking budget and support away from Paragon Studios to give it to another project".
WHAT was that project, may be into question. I still think it was Guild Wars, but there is a possibility it may be Wildstar. -
Quote:Or at least that's what a bad, inexperienced and badly trained manager thinks, or a retarded boss of his expects out of him.Originally Posted by Father Xmas
The regional manager has to chew your group out and report that he did to show his boss that he is doing his job. Even though there's rarely ever any repercussions, him not scolding your group tells his boss that he isn't doing his job as his boss sees it.
A manager should not just bark at people, he should improve the work environment and improve morale. Demoralized employees perform badly. Unfortunately, many managers think employees full of moral either slack or are threats to his own position.
Thats a different issue that comes from a horrible culture of Stacked Ranking. I read something about it a while back, cant remember what CEO used it to "turn around" his company and it supposedly yielded huge success. History has proven that the real reason the company improved is that he happened to do it during an economic upturn, the company likely would had performed even better without employees sabotaging each other to make sure they didnt turn out being the worst ranking at the period's review report.Quote:It's like doing employee reviews. You are discouraged, severely by HR, to give everyone in your group excellent ratings, even if they all are. You are told you have to nitpick to find areas of improvement and fit all the review to the "curve" so at least one employee on your team is "below average". Of course if your team is heads and tails above another manager's team and when that other team's best person is still worse than your "below average" person, when layoffs or raises come it doesn't matter. Your boss simply fires all "below average" people or dole out raise amounts based on reviews.
Interestingly: Microsoft has a Stack Ranking and has been heavily criticized lately for losing extremely bright people to it. Not only people that are fired but bright minds that leave because they cant take the hostile environment anymore. -
Quote:From the wiki:Originally Posted by Star Ranger 4
Hell... I still dont understand just what the difference is between the two. well, that to hit buffs are something that you can give to others. thats IT
Quote:ToHit and Defense work the same way as each other, but in opposite directions. What they do is pretty simple: they directly adjust the chance of hitting by the amount of the modifier. That is, they would be that simple if Accuracy didn't exist, but we'll ignore that for just a moment.
Example: Let's say you're attacking something with a power that has a 65% chance of hitting. If you got a +20% ToHit buff, your chance of hitting would go up to 85% (65 + 20). If your target then got a +10% Defense buff, your chance would drop to 75% (85 10). If you then had your ToHit debuffed by -23%, your hit chance would drop further to 52% (75 23).
Accuracy is subtly different. It modifies an attack's chance of hitting by a fraction of itself instead of by a fixed amount. Accuracy changes how often an attack hits in proportional terms instead of absolute terms.
Example: Consider an unbuffed, unenhanced attack that hits 30% of the time. If it got a +50% ToHit buff, its hit chance would rise to 80% (30 + 50). If it got a +50% Accuracy bonus instead, its hit chance would only rise to 45% (30 + (50% of 30), which can also be written 30 × 1.5). Accuracy is applied in a second step, after all ToHit and Defense modifiers are applied. -
Quote:That's her point: technically it is not accurate to say that accuracy bypasses defense. It does not. Global tohit buffs being provided full time would technically bypass defense, but it would do so for all attacks.Originally Posted by Android_5Point9
The ones that mention that have higher base accuracy (82.5% vs 75%, or 1.1 vs 1.0). So, I suppose those descriptions are technically accurate.
As far as I know, at the point of cancelation of the game, there was no way to grant power specific ToHit buffs. -
Quote:But you know they didnt have a clue back then about the differences between ToHit and accuracy. You more than anyone had to fight with them to make them know the difference between the two.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I still want to know if the people who originally wrote the descriptions for things actually knew anything about the game. Mez protection powers still claim to offer Res. The difference between accuracy and tohit seems to be randomly interchangeable. And I still want to know why Radiation Blast was originally described as being able to bypass defense. It can't be because the writer confused that with debuffing defense, because it *also* says it debuffs defense, so "bypass defense" must have meant something else in the writer's mind.
I am not sur if they ever had similar confussions with Mez resist vz prot or simply at some point during beta only intended those powers to offer resistance and no protection. -
On the thread topic: Confessions
Back in the day of herding, I hated the idea of powergaming and farming, and herding. One thing I loved about the game was how we were able to knock enemies around, it made me feel strong. I also was running a tank, everyone expected me to herd for the team.
So... I do the most obvious thinig I was able to think of... I took Hand Clap and slotted it for recharge. My opening on every spawn was to jump in the center and handclap.
Herders hated me, although I am not sure if they hated me as much as I hated them (at the time.)
Simlar lines: I got so angry about the knockback "nerf" (turning melee KB to KD) that I retired my Ice/Battle Axe tanker.
Second confession, although not as dramatic:
I loved the old Chun Li stile storm kick martial arts had. I had a martial arts scrapper called Shadowing in Triumph. I got so annoyed at the new animation I deleted the character. That is my biggest regret in this game, that was a frigging cool name that got snatched fast. -
Quote:I ponder if he means the rechare. At one point I recall expresssing the benefit of -recharge (for survival) not affecting the full attack cylcle, since the attack cycle for every power is recharge + cast time.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Incidentally, I have no idea what you mean by "only part of the recharge rate is affected by the enhancement." On its face, that statement is false.
Side note: Before we all knew better, I also remember thinking it would had ben darn cool if we got some way to reduce cast time of attacks (before I realize how insanely overpowered that would be.) I recal thinking for recharge to affect everyone equally, the cast time also had to be reduced by the recharge buffs or enhancements (again, before I knew better.) -
Quote:Flat out stupid is to give players that know nothing of balance, or just care to exploit it, the ability to balance every single critter.Originally Posted by Xzero45
It's a good thing you weren't in charge, then, because those changes sound awful. Further penalization to actual story creators that love customization and creativity in their enemy groups purely because you're afraid of inevitable farmers potentially abusing a unique system is just flat out stupid.
Even the writers in the dev team were not given as much power over balance as we were given with AE, and that didn't hinder their ability to tell great stories.
That is sort of what ended up happening (minus regulation.) It just resulted in an AE that is only used for powerleveling.Quote:Pohsyb had the best suggestion. If the devs embraced farming and regulated it, it wouldn't have gotten so far out of hand, without making everyone else suffer as a result.
Regulation would have required that all published arc go through an approval process, requiring dedicated staff that did nothing but playtest every single submitted arc all day long. -
Quote:I have not played Mass Effect (I was holding on on it until "i had time" but it is on my game library) but this comic strip sort of delivered the message to me of what was wrong with ME3:Originally Posted by JayboH
My understanding is that Bioware makes fantastic games and people's expectations to endings make them hate all the work they put into their products... or is this wrong?
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I'm not much of an artist. I doodle, and I fend myself when there is a computer with a big Undo button, but I don't feel I'm that great with the pencil.
However, back in 2008, after a huge campaign mainly driven by Tundara, Ice Melee finally got buffed. Sure, it was just an AoE fix and the single target damage sucked, but it was a huge victory for the then insanely anemic power set.
To celebrate the occasion I started to do something I rarely do: a piece of character art. For one too many distraction, I never finished it. Given this may never later get a chance to see the light of day in a place where it is relevant, I figured I may as well post it here. The piece is rough, I touched it up a bit in Pixelmator but mostly to minimize the pencil lines a tad and make the yellowish of the paper look white.
It's blurry, I have no scanner and had to take a photo with my phone, something I am apparently also not very good with.
Tundara has not posted in these forums in a few years, so if anyone happens to know him or how to get in contact with him, let him know so he can have his delayed trophy.
Anyway, here it is:
Tundara, Master of Otters
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Quote:Ah that makes sense. I was also thinking a hypothetical case where I (or some one) would be working on it full time with some one providing compensation.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
My estimate includes the fact I would be working on it on nights and weekends, and not all of those as well. Which means my speed would be much slower than if I was spending actual eight hour days coding continuously.
I also can't work on something for thousands of hours with nothing to show for it for years, so I would have been implementing it in a manner consistent with getting an initial core running and then adding mechanics over time. That's also not the most efficient way to do it, but its the only way to do it while still remaining sane and not getting paid.
I wish I was able to go back to college with the stuff I know today... why on earth did I waste those years studding visual arts?! *sigh*
