SuperOz

Hi all.

This has come out of some discussion with Hit Streak on the Beta server and with other players generally. With, as we know now that i24 spells the end of the Praetorian story with Cole having destroyed any defence for the city and the city itself falling, Praetoria City for all intents and purposes in the 'present', is no more.

However, having had opportunity to speak to Hit Streak about what would happen to the game zones, he said that they would remain in place. There was no mention of forseeable future, just that they would. So aside from those people who are levelling their Praetorian characters up to 20 in the 'past', the city sort of doesn't exist.

I heard tell that some folk who are past the level ranges of the zones come and use it for roleplay, and I can see that with Club 55 being like a proper nightclub, there are outdoor cafes, a beautiful central park, apartments and more.

So...shouldn't we at least on Virtue make something of these otherwise quiet zones? I know from a tech perspective it can be a punishing experience on some machines (even my quad core with 8 gig of RAM and the video card recommended for Ultra Mode, a Raedon 5770) and that'd deter some people, but I do expect a lot of people would be into machines that could handle it on lower settings.

I'd really like to see something happen here; there's a lot of city to mess around in, you can pretty much ignore the NPC mobs for the most part and there's a lot of enterable buildings.

Off the top of my head, I'd like to imagine the areas as some new expanded zone near Peregrine Island (I don't have a map handy to reference) that are 'state of the art' and part of an urban renewal plan such as happened to Atlas Park.

It may be just me, but after all the work that went into these areas and regardless of whether you think they were worth the effort, but I hate all this real estate just becoming a ghost town. Sure, if it were up to me I'd change the billboards, replace the NPC mobs and such, but I feel it deserves more than to just be a stage of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

What do others think?



S.

Please do! I didn't get a chance to play them before.


S.

I think this is a very salient and relevant discussion to be having in today's market, especially given the changing and stated attitudes of some development companies towards the notions of what players want from them.

On a purely anecdotal level, I've noticed the two things players seem to want more than anything are customisation and flexibility of play.

The first one seems almost oxymoronic given that City of Heroes is primarily based upon customisation as one of its first steps in play. But customisation is becoming what I personally see as a broader theme in games generally. Not only do people want to choose how they look, but also what they can do in the game and how they do what they want in the game. I think this speaks to the initial popularity of something like Secret World where there's no set guidelines to characters and there's no 'bad builds' necessarily either.

When MMO's first transitioned from MUDs, there was still a locked in perspective of classes, modes of reward (gear), and progression (levels). That's taken a decade to change, but that doesn't surprise me because this is only really the second generation of players coming through and the game developers themselves now have new game technology and approaches learned through the first generation. City of Heroes I think took a risk by breaking from the gear and punitive progression model (that is to say repair costs for items (the game has none) and death penalties) as well as taking broader approaches to teaming and even difficulty levels.

Flexibility of play has come into play through not only changing economic times, but the advent of the casual player. The Nintendo Wii demonstrably proved that you could have a market of casual players who not only wanted to play what they wanted, but also wanted to play in ways that suited them. The advent of free to play models with microtransaction stores doesn't surprise me at all, given how prevalent they'd been in console games. But what it does do is empower players with choice. If you're someone who plays very occasionally, there's no disincentive to do so in a lot of games now. If you don't have the time to level through to new gear, there's the store to aid you. I know some people would see this as 'cheating' or 'powerlevelling', but it's a valid playstyle choice for a casual player who has disposable income.

It's very interesting given that in a recent podcast interview with mmorpg.com, one of the senior Funcom team members not only stated that they felt the player experience should be more individual and filtered (the interview mentions their technology for eventually providing specifically filtered play, even down to the PvP level where people could just fight and loot each other, a significant step forward in server instancing), but how Funcom changed their business model towards the notion that free to play itself was a powerful new business model. The statement was made that 'the days of seven and fourteen day trials are over', in their opinion. A game should be robust and substantial enough to support both subscription and a free experience, was the argument.

I tend to agree with that statement and feel this is where the market is heading. MMO's as stated by other posters will not be in the form we are playing them right now, this much is certain. I feel the divide between console, PC, and handheld mobile device is growing narrower and narrower with each iteration of technology that comes along, and what I may or may not play in five years' time could be accessible from my phone, my console and my PC. Developers would be foolish not to see the income possibilities and sheer variety of what's coming and one way or another, we are in the last generation of purely PC only MMO gaming.



S.

Groundbreaking female comedian who started way back on Groucho Marx's tv show. And never afraid to admit her age and her battles with it. Sad news.


S.

There is a casino episode in the run with the Joker.....


S.

Hi Dink, and other forumites....

I'm not sure I could find this covered necessarily, but I noticed when dealing with the Barbarian 'shorts', with the options being Skin or Tights, I noticed in the Tights section there was no accepting of any patterns other than a color, and with Skin, you couldn't take a particular texture, such as Bioluminescence for example. This essentially means you just have colored legs or well...skin.

This goes against what you can do with Kilts and Shorts which can retain patterns and textures, which makes me wonder if the Barbarian 'shorts' shouldn't be moved into that category and have those options applied? I'm sure I can't be the first person to have noticed this. Which leads to one other thing....

When using Kilts, Skirts and Shorts, the scaling on the legs changes to much thinner than if using Tights, for example. Is this just to accomodate the pieces in question? It's a noticeable change on Huge characters, for example. I tried this on one character and his massive upper body didn't look like it was going to be supported by his spindly thighs....



S.

Well, to remotely drift back on topic....

The building can't be entered and there's no story arcs or missions that go into it. On Beta this morning, The Net and Doc Aeon said there were apparently no plans to add interiors to it, and it's a direct homage to Smoke and Mirrors.

But wouldn't this building be the perfect place to have a new social space that isn't Pocket D? And it's meant to be a Community Center. I'll be writing up my support for the idea, and I'm curious to see what others think.



S.

Unless there's a seperate situation going on for bases, it's really unlikely bases are going anywhere. As it was put in one Coffee Talk conversation, working with bases is like playing with a house of cards that's on fire.

The code isn't documented and tweaking it can literally break the system. I'd love for there to be a parallel base system developed, though.



S.

He made them the money, he gets to do whatever the pancake he wants on a tv show. Noone's going to seriously question him when he makes the highest grossing film of all time with only his second or third feature.


S.

Well, we know that Punisher and Elektra have reverted to Marvel along with some of the other one-off non-Marvel Studios movies. There's also solid evidence that Sony were actively working with Marvel to include the Oscorp building from Amazing Spiderman into the Avengers skyline near Stark Tower (this only didn't go ahead because the artist on board who had worked on the Avengers for buildings and so on...an environment designer, I think the title is...was committed to another project).

I very heavily doubt Fox will get a Daredevil movie up in time to beat any deadline, and Marvel will happily reclaim the Surfer and Galactus. In turn, it's going to put huge pressure on the FF reboot (which hasn't even been cast, to the best of my knowledge) to either jump on board the shared universe concept or try and risk standing alone. It's clear that people responded big time to Marvel's shared universe concept and studios would be foolish not to get a slice of that pie.


S.

Agreed on this. I know this is where David Nakayama was heading in his concepts of base tights designs that you then could do whatever you wanted with. It speaks more to layering than anything else, at least as he spoke about it.

I particularly like the designs being offered with these Bodysuit designs, and with luck that's going to be a design ethic that continues into the future. If it's not a specifically themed set, it'd be nice to work with a creator that has your 'Base' layer (such as these bodysuit designs) that you can then build upon. It's kinda sorta how Champions does layering, but they have a significantly more flexible base creator to work from.

I would like to think that we could see an upgrading or overhauling to the costume creator to allow this also. But I'm very pleased in the meantime that there's an understanding of costumes being more than just patterns and colors. Texturing particularly is going to be key to getting any Golden or Silver Age themed costume parts right and this is a step in the right direction.


S.

The title comes from the recent revelations about the Fighting Power Pool being redesigned to become a 'miniature Street Justice'. I got to wondering if Power Pools can be added to and expanded upon to provide variety to powersets that didn't exist before.

Some thoughts I had were:

'Titan Strength': A small supplement of Titan Weapon animations/attacks that can be used out of Super Strength to simulate super-strong types using the environment to beat on folks. They obviously wouldn't be as powerful as Titan Weapons, but it'd supplement regular Superstrength powers or even replace some.

'Speed Combat': Combining and changing some animations/powers to show the combative side of a speedster. These would include a version of Shield Charge, Whirlwind, and Flurry all to simulate a speedster's ability to attack quickly. Even the 'teleport' attack from the recent Martial powers for blasters would work here.

'Weapons Expert': Used as a supplemental to Claws, Dual Blades perhaps a few other Scrapper sets, this could involve borrowing a few cross-pollinated powers and animations from other sets to provide variety to regular sets.

These are the ones that occur to me...what do people think? Could there be more? Would these be unbalancing?



S.

Definitely the 'armored suit' powerset. You can emulate it to a point with a lot of Blaster sets particularly and the Munitions Epic pool, but armored suits are all about the gadgets. Autocannons, missile launchers, and so on.

This is where I could see a redo or expansion of the Munitions pool or a Blaster primary called Power Armor or something.

Superspeed. Without a doubt, that's a powerset that doesn't get emulated at all here, even with Synapse. Flurry times ten, high speed 'drive by' attacks, something like Shield Charge...it just doesn't exist.

One element of Super Strength, which is manipulation of heavy objects, ala Titan Weapons.

Those are the ones off the top of my head.


S.

Should point out that the second stand alone Wolverine movie is in production as I type this down on Fox's Sydney studios. It won't be connected at all to this project, but it's notable that Fox is trying to keep the X-Franchise alive as long as they can. Days of Future Past (if they stay with the storyline) would nearly have to involve Hugh Jackman at least in the flashforward sequences.

Good subject matter, though.


S.

Well, I'll confess I own all the movies, and the original 1940's animation courtesy of a steelbook set that a friend very kindly bought me as a birthday present years ago. I agree that Superman IV took a risk in having the central character make a very political stand, but this is what brought Chris Reeve back to the role after not wanting to do it.

He's even one of the co-writers of the screenplay, I think. Superman III I still like to this day for that brilliant acting he does with good and evil Superman going against each other, with his actual identity as Clark in there too. I can watch those portions of the film quite happily.

I did want to pick up on Olantern's point on the style of the original film; Richard Donner fought bitterly with the Salkinds who wanted to do the film in almost a slapstick way and he argued (and rightly so) that Superman was genuine Americana, a real cultural artifact. He argued it deserved reverence and portrayal in the most iconic way possible with all the attributes most people knew of the character. His Kent farm was in his words meant to be 'a Norman Rockwell painting', for instance. So you're right O'lantern, it is heavily stylised, but something I think gives it a true timeless quality.

And Superman Returns...alas. Bryan Singer was lost in his hero worship of the original, unfortunately. He openly acknowledges it as a tribute to Richard Donner and Routh pretty much is the Chris Reeve version. They mention in the commentary that it's meant to be in a lot of ways a follow on to the ending of Superman II. There are moments to be sure, but 'Super-stalker' as he became known was a horrible misjudging of the character.

I'm very happy to have someone redefine the character (and who knows, Henry Cavill may yet do that), but Chris Reeve is a standard that most definitely should be aimed for.


S.

Iconic, bar none. Reeves' stage training meant he brought a lot of nuance to the role, and he took it seriously as a role model for kids, something he mentioned a lot in interviews.

In terms of performance, go back and watch the original movie where just after being interviewed by Lois, he for a moment considers telling her he's Superman, and you notice the incredible change in body posture, stance, voice...he's clearly thought about the seperation of personas and how to play them. A lot of the other actors in this role have never even considered the performance of the secret identity and the hero persona, but he did the first time.

And seriously, that smile at the end of the film and noone gives a damn that he breaks the fourth wall? Iconic bar none.


S.

I watched all of this and hadn't read OMD or OMIT, so I had no biases and such. I think Linkara needs to tone down the shouting a lot, because when he does make a point, he explains his reasonings, and very coherently at that.

I also agree with his two points; you can't endlessly keep Peter Parker as a teenager/man-child. He can still be jokey and a punster and be well....Spider-Man whilst being married and even eventually fathering a daughter. It's as if Spider-Man is a metaphor for a male midlife crisis or something. 'You can't go back, you can never go back!'

Quesada is a horrible, horrible writer. Linkara didn't have to sell me, I was looking at and reading the panels as he went through the issues. How this guy replaced people like Jim Shooter is beyond me. But then this is the same industry that's supported Liefeld and Didio.

My only question is have they gotten the pair back together or are fans still disgruntling for change? I'm not sure it matters seeing as they reboot the Marvel and DC Universes every other calendar year now, but I am curious.



S.

Very sad to hear about this....her tenure on the show was part of my longest deep love with the show and I remember the Key to Time fondly, being a story arc that ran nearly the entire season, as I recall. Very rare for a season of Doctor Who.

I had my heart broken by losing Liz Sladen last year and now Mary Tamm. Even though the Doctor's still going strong, these are parts of my childhood that are just crumbling before me.



S.

Thanks.

It helped a lot that my early interest in comics developed into an appreciation of film and then film history; a lot of people born in the last forty years wouldn't have even seen the old Republic movie serials, but I was not only lucky enough to track them down, but also actually watch them on my local community television station, including the original Captain Marvel serials, and even a jetpack-style hero in a sub-par one called 'G-Men'.

I always found it interesting that the 1950's had the longest standing influence in comics, right up until DC did their first Crisis series in 1983. But the art influence still had a distinctive Retro Sci-Fi look to it. It's only really been since comic book movies (and arguably as late as the first X-Men film) that the looks of the characters adapted to the cultural influences around it; just look at the last Batman film before the current Nolan trilogy and it's deeply clinging to decades-old looks.

I rather suspect that we'll come full circle and comic book characters will go back to simplistic designs; the recent Tron sequel was all about art deco design with neons and sleek lines which are taken right from the 1930's and 50's.


S.

On the subject of time invested into MMO's, I can freely say that I'm a lifetime subscriber to LotRo, I regularly play SWTOR, and still dabble now and then both Champions and DC.

And I'm sure that might seem shocking to some, but for me it's an issue of burnout. I'm coming up on seven years with that game, and even with content revamps, there's only so many journeys to 50 I can make without feeling it now and then. So I play similar games, and even radically different games to feed all the aspects of my creativity. I can't do pure space fantasy here, so I play it on another game. I like messing with console-y game systems now and then, so I do that. It means when I return (and I never really leave) to CoH, I'm refreshed and interested to see what the game is offering next.

As far as a 'CoH 2' is concerned, if the intent is to at some point tweak the under the hood stuff to more modern standards, I wouldn't mind that. I think an emulation of some of the things we might see as essential to the genre (namely property destruction and using said property as weapons) could be possible; Titan Weapons at least plays visually with the latter notion. Moving the game visually to something like Aion's visual standards (and that's just using the Far Cry engine) would be great personally for me, as I'm a sucker for eye candy.

It's been done for games before, so who knows, we may be in the process of that now, zone by zone, costume set by costume set.



S.