Starsman

For one: everyone inside Paragon Studios didn't know this was coming.

For seconds: even those that knew things were not doing good would still try to paing a positive outlook in the press, as success stories and the like get press and press equates free publicity that may revitalize the game.

The sad thing: biggest barrier of entry for this game has been neglected since launch, the GUI. It's terrible. I got some people to try the game and it's horrendous. There was no way the game would manage to hold on to a significant number of new players with the current horrible GUI even as a free game.

Money and profits.

Unless they are a bunch of sadists, there is no other reason to kill the entire studio before a long holiday weekend other than the fact that today was the last calendar day of the month, in other words: Accounting releated.

I think a law was recently passed in California to prevent mass layoffs without a 2 month notice, likely precisely things like this really hurt the economy (big studios shutting down and just sending hundreds to the unemployment lines overnight.)

Not sure if everyone was actually fired, though. If the company had any decency, they likely attempted to accommodate everyone into new positions. I don't think that happened, though.

We can still pretend server shutdown is just the Battalion ship arriving and shooting a big gun at the planet without us seeing them coming. Would not be too different from what happened.

Yea, its all done. End of month too... this sounds like the studio was in huge struggle. Didn't Califorina pass a law recently that forced mass layoffs to require a 2 month head's up?

Anyways, yea I don't expect any event to end the game. Man I'm so ... disapointed.

Worse. We lost a game and a hobby. They lost their job, their income and their family (work environment like these become family and they rarely survive this kind of shet.) all before a long weekend that many likely had spent some considerable amount of money to enjoy.

On top they all were players, I think a lot of the current dev team was recruited from the player base. At least Hawk and Synapse I think.

This got to be hurting them all bad, worse than we can imagine.

This. Not because there won’t be any interested parties, but mainly because I get the feel NCSoft is the kind of company that rather kill a game than allow another competitor to be released, even if they profit from the transaction.

For a while now I have been fearing this would happen. The game has indeed been slowly fading away, servers emptier, profit reports smaller... and NCSoft has given a track record already killing games that don't perform properly.

Wish this was SOE... how many years has EverQuest been running now?

I want a story, but not a soap opera.

My favorite comics of all time are Kingdom Come and Walking Dead.

We already have that game. J_B wont accept it, but tankers are already at that point of godliness. Dude with arrow simply comes better equiped for offensive. (Mind you, dude with arrow still can be shot to the face with a shotgun even if he was on his underwear.)

There are plenty of things you have to toss out the window for the sake of balance. It may "make no sense" as you say, but it's required for a game. Result is you can play the dude with arrows or the unkillable machine.

I can roll any random hero, go to a atlas park, and be hit several times by a shotgun to the face. Blast energy out of my hands, defeat said shotgun wielder and just walk away and do it again without any medical attention needed. That’s just "slightly extraordinary"?

Last I check, we worship a guy that walked away from 2 nails, a piece of wood and dehydration.

I'm pretty sure should someone pull the above stunt, he will be worshiped. Unless every single other person does the same, though... and that’s a problem with trying to feel godly in an online game: if everyone else is equally super, then nobody will actually feel super.


Last I checked Sups constantly faces Lex in an insanely pumped up power armor, Darkseid, constantly returning Doomsday, among other enemies that can stand toe to toe. The rest is just using soap opera elements to entertain readers. That's one of the many reasons I quit reading XMen back in the day. I don't pay money for a comic book about mutants with super powers to read about their love lives.


I am not sure how this turned into comic books... this is about the game. The question was: how you make a game where the main character is a god. Would be darn frigging boring if God of War was about this big tough god-killer dude that is sobbing all day about collateral damage and love triangles.

That's a very weak excuse. It was also used for shield def, but shields actually had mechanics issues (taunt aura to boost damage, buffing ally defenses, shield charge AoE insanity)

Not all tanks are loaded with resist. There are def and regen based tankers that would be pulverized the first time they get hit by 2 attacks that are meant to just dent a resist based tanker.

Or... you know, you just make them face gods.

In my opinion, giving even level 1 characters the ability to take several hundread bullets and not die is rather godlike. Sure, nothing compared to taking a billion bullets, but I wish I was super enough to take 5 bullets to the chest without bleeding to death at the hand of a random thug.

Ninjitsu (out of IO) is not extremely sturdy (mainly due to how many powrs are utility and not mitigation.)

You can just give it the Energy Aura treatment for Hide, but look for how many issues EA sucked.

Adding a damage buff is thematic with the "offense and utility over survivability" design sets like Fire and Shields have.




And they got Energy Aura before tanks!

Take it you would LOVE caltrops being swapped for Fast Healing then


A rib cracking ninja sounts fun

I am curious why that set didnt go for stalkers... there is no DOT... there is the momentum/combo like mechanic but that did not stop Street Justice... /shrug

The only drastic change a Ninjitsu for scrappers would need, IMO, is Caltrops due to Epic redundancy.

The Placate and -Perception debuffs can work for scrappers, and Hide can use a similar mechanic to what is seen in AE: a damage buff that suppresses on attack, doing only the first attack from hide do bonus damage.

I think that one caltrops power can safely be swapped with a passive regen power.

Synapse and Arbiter Hawk are the Power Guys (it's a dynamic duo with 50/50 ownership now.)