Sugar_Rush

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the entire city would have to be rebuilt/redesigned into a single zone, expanding the interesting bits, reducing/culling the dull bits.


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99% of RL cities is dull though. I pass the endless housing estates on the train every morning.

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Sure, but 99% of the countryside is too and WoW, WAR & LotRO manage to make single zones work (although in the case of LotRO at least, the majority of the maps are large and empty) and not seem too silly.

It wouldn't be simulating a real city, there's no reason to include dull areas, the whole city can be playable area - GTA has shown us that at least. Adding some more locations like shopping malls and airports would go a long way towards filling the empty space, although since we all have travel powers, a certain amount of empty space might not be so bad - we could get away with more than WoW does, at least.

To me, the war walls are far more immersion-breaking than a single city with a mugger on every corner would be (since that's effectively what we see anyway).

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I'd love to see the war walls taken down.

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The zones aren't ajacent to each other. There are several miles of unmapped uninteresting city between where the action takes place.

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I think it's a given that taking the walls down means the entire city would have to be rebuilt/redesigned into a single zone, expanding the interesting bits, reducing/culling the dull bits.

I'd love to see this (I hate those damn walls, especially after playing WoW, LotRO & WAR), but it ain't gonna happen in an expansion pack.

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If it was a new game not an expansion, hearing the servers were in the same place as these would be enough for me not to bother.

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You have a point there; whereas I would probably buy a CoH2, I would be less likely to buy a European CoH2.

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Plus, I can't think of anyone playing this game who WOULDN'T buy an expansion pack...

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Well I know I would, but if for the sake of argument they went down the route of every other MMO expansion and increased the level cap by 10 levels, can you see everyone being happy about that?

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They dont need to increase the level cap, just give 50s something to do.

Or bring in that extra power slots idea they had for 50s, i liked the sound of that.

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It was a random example of something I knew many people would object to which is a staple of MMO expansions that many other people would expect to be there - thanks for proving my point!

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Plus, I can't think of anyone playing this game who WOULDN'T buy an expansion pack...

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Well I know I would, but if for the sake of argument they went down the route of every other MMO expansion and increased the level cap by 10 levels, can you see everyone being happy about that?

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I disagree there. Look at WoW's expansions. They add plenty to the game without affecting the existing game, because they put the new stuff in new area's.

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No, actually you agree. You just made my point for me.

I want fundamental changes that can't be held in areas off to the side - you can't do that with a paid expansion, as demonstrated by WoW and LotRO. There are general game changes that go along with the expansions to support them which everyone gets, but these are only really the same as we get with our issues anyway; the stuff people pay for is exclusive to the people who pay for it, which has to be limited to content, more zones, more story; not for example, removing the war walls and changing the city into a single huge wow-style zone.

More content is always nice, and I would pay for it and play it; but the stuff I want to see addressed can't be if it's optional.

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Tho i still don't quite understand why MMOs need a sequel to my mind it seems a bit like a throw back to stand alone games.

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I agree with you there, MMO's don't need sequels as they just evolve "naturally". Which is why, IMO, Massively are wrong. There isn't going to be a sequel as such, there's going to be a paid for expansion pack with shedloads of new features.

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I'd rather see a refresh of the existing game than a sequel too, but the problem with expansion packs is they are optional.

There's some general stuff I'd like to see change - graphic updates like more detail on avatars, war walls coming down, introduction of a faction/reputation system, etc, which can't really be optional. It's hard to see how they could change fundamental elements of this game with a paid expansion - expansions generally just add more of the same in the form of extra content.

Happy New Year everyone

Not to disagree with your general points RW:

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Any name like that which is older than 90 days is freed up by automated scripts and can be reused. You'd know that if you read announcements more often.

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Is that automatic now? I thought they ran that script manually...once?

Also, since old accounts are regualarly reactivated when new issues hit, wouldn't that screw things up?

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If I lost my character and SG names, I'd leave. If they can't come up with a decent way round the naming and base and group issues, then no thanks to a server merge.

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That's always the challenge with Server Merges.

Best way is always to give the characters and guilds (this case supergroups) a free renaming token to their account for the characters affected with conflicting names.

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A better way would be to merge both servers into a third server where no-one has a prior claim to the name, so everyone with the name has an equal chance of keeping it; the *best* way would be a way of supporting multiple characters using the same name.

*Paying* to rename is not the issue.

*Renaming* is the issue.

Personally I agree the population is too low, but it's more complicated than that. I just moved my main to a higher population server in WAR. I didn't move anything else as I would have to rename them. If I hadn't been able to move my Gobbo with his name intact, I wouldn't have resubbed, I feel the same way about many of my alts here; don't underestimate how attached people can get to the names they chose.

I got two emails: an EU one containing a 'buy 6 get 1 free' offer with a buddy code, and a US one (because I took out a trial?) which lacks a buddy code but along with 'buy 6 get 1 free' has 'buy 12 get 2 free' - I fully expect people to complain at length about this inequity since it's a limited time offer.

I don't like the rent concept for a couple of reasons.

First, it says very clearly 'your base belongs to someone else' it can't belong to you - you don't pay rent for stuff that you own. Who does it actually belong to then? The city council? A superhero housing association? There's an industrial estate somewhere zoned for base building?

Heros and villains should own their bases; sure, there are heroes and villains in comics who pay for their bases - be they Baxter Building penthouses or caves under the family mansion, but these are paid for with money.

Equating base rent with real world rent is just dumb; they are totally different things - Batman can't be evicted from his cave for not being popular enough, Superman wouldn't lose his fortress of solitude because he spent all his inf at Icon this month...

Influence is not money. And even if in the case of base rent you decide that influence is money, why would a Villain pay it anyway? They'd go and find an abandoned warehouse/cave/sewer, they wouldn't go on a council housing list or get a mortgage...

Personally, I'd rather they'd killed the base rent concept altogether and just made bases more expensive to build in the first place.

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my screen res is 1680*1050, but i use hero planner in the default window shape it comes in, i don't maximize it.

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Ditto hippo.

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what they said

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Helen Highwater

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...the hollywood starlet, is married to Orson Cart.
(I just read Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator to my 5 year old)

I created & deleted a sword & shield'er on Union at the weekend, decided I couldn't go through with it:

Hyper Link

Costume should be fairly obvious to any Zelda fan.

A sticky outlining NCSofts current position on merges would be useful, but one proclaiming it to be a 'bad idea' I don't see happening. That's a pretty subjective opinion Dante. It would kinda tie their hands, and preclude any clever solution they may come up with to solve the downsides.

@Butik
The majority of the vocal opinion here is against the idea, as there are big reasons not to - mainly to do with names and SGs. The seemingly obvious 'but there would be more players around' argument doesn't cut much ice around here. Trying to start a serious thread on the topic is pointless, it's been gone over time and time again - you'll just get flames from both sides.

I'm bowing out of this one here.

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And to make a really quick link.

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urgh.

Those images actually made me feel ill.

I thought Aero was more to do with the transparency effects... I've never turned it of - I use XP at work so I like the change when I get home.

It's a shame CoH doesn't do what LoTRO (and WAR too I think) does - when you run the program it switches to windows basic display automatically, and switches back when you exit.

That said, I don't have any problems running CoH on mine - single 8800GTS (fairly recent drivers - Mines of Moria wouldn't go with my old ones so I updated last month), Vista64, 4Gb RAM; okay, I've not been playing much lately, but it didn't crash on me when I popped in to look at i13 yesterday.

Every time that delete button is pressed, a fairy dies.

True story.

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even WoW has animated hair

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It does?! I've never noticed it. Character models in WoW are horribly basic.


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I think WoW (as does WAR), has an exaggerated 'breathing' animation on its models, including the hair, making the characters move slightly when they stand still in an effort to make them seem more alive - I've always thought of it as a Roobarb effect and it looks totally stupid on great armoured hulks if you ask me...

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Avatar icons are allowed as long as the images are below 20k in weight.

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Source

Now you know.

I work, I've never been at home waiting for the patch; I assumed it was applied as part of normal maintenance.

Why 5/6pm? wouldn't it go live as soon as the maintenace patch was applied?

oh noes, don't mention the coloured ice thing; it was decided here some time ago by someone who knows that all ice is green...or blue...or white - I can't quite remember - but ALL ice this that colour (whatever it was) and cannot possibly be any other.

Ahem.

I hope when they eventually do give us power customisation (and if it takes an engine rewrite to do it, I can wait), they don't think this lame 'only you can see it' solution will fly. If I make Red Ice Dude, I want everyone to see that my ice is red! (dammit, I mentioned coloured ice again )

I dunno Standoff, there seems to be a general feeling of jumping down people's throats on here at the moment from a few posters (not aimed at you, I thought your post was funny and appropriate 'ask a silly question' response).

Yes the OP was a bit of a daft question, and the humour possibly wasn't as obvious as it could have been, and you're correct to pick up on the hyperbole afterwards...

but.

There seems to be an inevitabilty that simple questions or attempts at discussion are doomed to petty bickering and flaming (and here I am, wading in...sigh).

I'm not singling anyone out, I don't want to flame - or be flamed, come to that - I hope it calms down when i13 hits; despite GR's seemingly massive patience (I can't quite believe he wades through editing threads as much as he does, rather than just deleting stuff as used to happen - the effort is appreciated, at least by me) there seems to be a lot of ill feeling sloshing around the boards recently.

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Well, I know this may not be the most favoured of options, but: The sounds like a job for Micropayment Man.

You can pay to change the name of your character, why not let the SG leader pay to change the name of the SG.

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Am I right in thinking LoTRO does exactly this?

/signed, I'd rather pay for an SG rename than a character one to be honest (if I find I don't like a character name, I know it by level 10 and delete them), I've been left as the only active member of an SG before now - I'd certainly have paid a little to take full ownership with a name I chose.