SuperOz

I agree with the concept of Lairs (minus the number of people in said lair limitation that the competition instituted), and grandfathering the old system is the way to go. Absolutely every Dev I've heard or read about talking about the system has said that the coding for it is like a house of cards and has to be handled gently.

I would definitely suggest that upgraded textures and new base items (preferably 3D from Going Rogue onwards) be added to do absolutely everything to reduce the load on bases due to stacking and so on, whilst building a whole new system that allows for a similar level of creativity but a lot more user-friendly. I personally believe there's tons of art assets (like swimming pools from Faultline all the way down to Praetorian basketball courts and furniture) that could be added in and help base builders. I love my own SG's base where submarines and ships have been made, but such things could be implemented without having to use stacking (and therefore server memory) surely that would be good all round.



S.

I've watched five minutes of this after skipping ten, just watching this guy try and set up Ventrilo...when he should've worked out any technical issues before the start of the recording session....and then it's further compounded by his complete unfamiliarity with the game and apparent inability to stay with a raid group.

I'm really stunned that this is a video for a press event where the developer team can't be heard so they can sell this (being kind of the point) and that they have someone who isn't familiar with the game enough not to look foolish during the recording.

mmorpg needs to get their act together with this sort of thing...along with PS's marketing department. Looking this amateurish does not a sellable presentation make.



S.

I don't know if there's any personal or company spite, but frankly there was no concrete reason to off either of the characters. And Miller's wording of why this was done doesn't help with the impression that two of Emmert's characters were singled out for the job.

And when I say there was no concrete reason to do this, I mean it. People can go on and on and on about how Statesman was a Mary Sue, in spite of the fact we save him on more than one occasion in-game and Incarnates well and truly created a new tier that only player characters stood on.

The only reason I can see that players wanted him gone was that wonderful sense of entitlement that only gamers can have which is 'I want all the things NOW'. Note that Statesman doesn't intrude directly at any stage during the character's levelling time, nor does he step in and patently do something it is impossible for the player to do. Now look at that in contrast to practically every step of Who Will Die where there are direct and obvious cases where NPC's who are not Incarnates can still outperform and even outshine the player character, who is meant to be the only person capable of stopping Wade. Penny Yin, anyone?

I've had complete strangers who don't even play this game watch the Statesman cutscene and wonder why he just gave up without a fight; I can't imagine a single one of my characters (some of whom are vastly older than Statesman) just go 'oh yeah, it's my time, off I pop'. Either Statesman is written to have a death wish, or he stopped caring about Paragon City years ago, in which case he's again an incredibly poor model for the ideal hero.

And Sister Psyche's death is the model of mischaracterisation. From the inabilty to prepare the ritual to Manticore improbably and impossibly not realising he has alternatives other than killing Psyche rings false and hollow from the moment it starts. It's BAD WRITING. It's not dramatic, it's not suspensful. Anyone with even the most basic understanding of plot can see the ending a mile away and that's inexcusable. And like it or not, when that happens people start looking to reasons beyond the story as to why this has happened.

Paragon Studios had already left behind Cryptic Studios and its legacy the instant Going Rogue was unveiled. Statesman remains, even though he's dead in-game, the main marketing figure the game is based around. What then is the purpose of killing said character and then promoting him as the 'ideal hero' of the game?

It was a publicity stunt and at the very worst an arguable case of professional spite. Statesman and Psyche served valuable purposes for selling the game, and players who were taking issue with that as they were somehow stealing their limelight are frankly deluding themselves. The game isn't sold on us the players, it's the NPC's. Always. Show me an instance where this isn't true. Go ahead.

In any event, these deaths serve no long-term purpose whatsoever. Those who wanted them dead are happy, but now want more importance in the game. Those who didn't look at their replacements and wonder where the difference is.

And those who make the game need to make the mature decision to step away from their own characters and realise that the game is more important than any one character and promote or kill off whomever serves the game's purposes, not their own.


S.

I have to agree with you on this one Sam....but I think it's more indemic of what's happening in superhero and entertainment culture generally more than anything else. Look at the Avengers trailer, for example. It can't be this group of cool heroes coming together to fight evil, it has to be the impending end of humankind and the team straining under the weight of their collective egos.

The last writing outside of this game that inspired me, and I mean really inspired me was the old Justice League (and Unlimited) cartoons. They weren't afraid to be adult, but unfailingly reminded you of just why these heroes were heroes.

The Shining Stars arc almost does that but then undercuts it bitterly with its ending, and I think the last arc I came away feeling really positive about was probably the RWZ arcs where you stop Nemesis and the mission being called 'Save the World!' seems not only to bring that storyline to a head where peace can be reached with the Rikti, but you actually stop the villian of the piece.

I've missed that feeling of achievement a lot, even in this last Who Will Die? chapter because so much of your supposed success happens with direct NPC intervention. Even when the text says otherwise, you're invariably in a group of powerful NPC's who you could not (especially in Penny Yin's case) do the missions without.

The notion that you are a positive catalyst in the world gets constantly undermined by outside forces that stop your best efforts, or you become the unwilling pawn of other forces.

The writers at Paragon Studios need to realise it's not the 1990's anymore and we don't want the darkity-dark moral quagmires that the storyline is forcing upon us. The ideal of this game is a homage to the late Silver Age, and if the direction is more of what Matt Miller described as 'growing out from under the shadow of Cryptic Studios', then they will lose me as a customer. This game has already become my #2 game and I'd hate to see it drop off the radar entirely.



S.

It was an interesting video, especially linking together all the various architecture styles and then somehow turning that into an equatorial landing strip. I'm personally of the belief that we lost a great deal of highly advanced knowledge before the advent of the Roman Empire, and even then we lost so much when Alexandria was sacked.

I also believe there is intelligent life out there beyond our own, mathematical probability alone says it's entirely possible. I think all the sightings of craft beyond a point exceed coincedence and are part of something larger. The same goes for the depiction of non-humans in older inscriptions and the like.

What's it all about? Well, when the Doctor introduces us to them via the TARDIS, I'm sure we'll all know.



S.

I agree with pretty much everyone in this thread who has found this to be a wasted opportunity or at the very worst, an egregious turn of both story and in fact storytelling.

Sam, to be perfectly frank with you, the whole arc was concieved and purpose-built to be a) A publicity stunt (look, Paragon Studios are killing off their central marketing character, how daring!) and b) A somewhat ham-fisted attempt to move the canon forward.

I agree it's succeeded on the latter part of the equation, but it certainly didn't require player involvement to make it happen. And Sam's also right when she says all the hoopla squarely focused on killing off Statesman, and somehow Sister Psyche's story became practically inconsequential as a result.

I can perhaps appreciate a full breaking from the lingering traces of Cryptic and Jack and all of that business, but to publicly come out and say so whilst not really disguising that was the purpose of these stories really dented my faith in the objectivity of the storytelling. It totally undercut my empathy for Statesman's eventual death because rather than being emblematic of the character at their best, it was a pastiche of character moments that weren't more than an echo.

I had the opportunity last week to show a friend of mine who doesn't play the game at all and asked them to evaluate a video that someone posted online of said cutscene. I gave them just enough backstory to fill in, and their sole comment?

'Why didn't he put up a fight?'

If a casual viewer could make such a pointed observation about the story, then it told me volumes about how it was written.

I'll be perfectly honest here; I am playing the glowy stick game far more than I am this one right now, because for all its flaws, all of its 'things that CoH doesn't have' (an argument that annoys me when one is comparing a seven year old game to a three month old one, ARGH), I've at least had the illusion of choice given to me. The choice is in my hands, not the story's. I can choose how to react, which is far more than Paragon Studios have let me do lately.

Sure, I might save the world in WWD#7, but I suspect a) It won't because of anything I do directly and b) I have trouble caring because I've been forcibly distanced from the story so far.

The studio and their marketing department need to take a step back, and I mean an actual objective step back and ask how we can be involved, rather than publicly pat themselves on the back for a series of well-constructed cutscenes.

Dark_Respite/Samuraiko does that and gives us a story. They'd do well to learn.




S.

Kind of what I thought might happen. Both cars have a lot of power, but the 1989 car is heavier, requiring more power to get it going.


S.

New companions are like new Doctors; they get horribly criticised at first and then people can't live without them. I've seen too many now to do that...I look forward to the new dynamic, myself.

I keep waiting to see another Sarah Jane/Three and Four chemistry, or Ace/Seven....just that great spark between the actors.



S.

52. Recycle his cape as they did to make the flag at City Hall to have a new leather textured flag! Rock on!

53. Put him in stasis and wait to see how long it'll take before there's four guys claiming to be him to come along.




S.

I agree with everything said about a King's Row update....if anything, it should get a City of Villains makeover with some additional detail to emphasise that grim and gritty feel. And a Cyrus Thompson building, definitely.

I also agree with the notion of having the zone revisitable. If CoH does one thing wrong with its zones, it's that you are never encouraged to go back and revisit places as a higher level character. It's a shame, seeing as the morality missions cause you to revisit old foes like Frostfire and you get the 'What are they doing now...?' updates.

And from a story perspective, you can work the breaking apart of the Phalanx into the story, suggesting that yes, criminals and villain groups are being much more bold, and so you come full circle from being the neophyte hero to embracing the neighbourhood as 'your' patch. Which I think should apply to Brickstown and even Skyway.

Give us reason to re-embrace the city, not leave it behind.


S.

Steelclaw...mate....you can't diss on Christopher Reeve, man. Even when he's gone. That's some sort of cardinal rule or something I just made up.



S.

I can't help it...

'I use Magic Missile!'

'On what? There's nobody in the room?'

'I cast it...on the darkness!'

*nerdy giggles ensue*



S.

I get better value from XP boosters, for my money.


S.

It's interesting to come back to this thread after several pages away (how often do you get to use that phrase?) and am interested now to see the discussion turn towards the immersiveness and factors that give you a 'feel' for the game in which you're in. But I did want to comment on something first.

Arcanaville mentioned the notion that CoH is something of a haven away from other games, and I think that's true. Speaking only for myself, I don't see CoH as an actual MMO. Now that's not because I think it's lacking anything, but because it retains few of the traditional trappings of the vast majority of MMO's. But for me, that's a double-edged sword. What CoH does right, I think it does better than anyone in the industry. Sidekicking, ease of travel, the lack of repair costs on gear, the actual absence of gear, and the 'one size fits all' style of play, replete with difficutly sliders.

The things I think they do badly are raiding (which to me violates the 'one size fits all' rule), a cohesiveness of storytelling (I often now run with my own continuity in my mind as opposed to that of the game...I don't find myself being able to reconcile the disparities between stories over the years), and probably more importantly traditional superhero trappings.

Don't get me wrong; I know Paragon Studios owns this IP and can do as they wish with it within reason, but I feel they've swung and missed on a few key elements that the laser sword MMO gets right first time out of the box. For one, we don't have 'proper' supergroup headquarters. Not to say that people working the base system aren't magicians in my mind, but whereas the space fantasy game makes your transport your home and even gives it missions to do, giving it a purpose, CoH bases don't really do that much at all. Storage and resources are easily handled with Vaults now. Groups can take advantage of all the means of forming a team without ever having once to step inside a base. That same ease of convenience in my mind undercuts this key superhero setting.

And settings, the lack of them, hurts this game enormously. From the time I started this game in 2006 til now, the running joke of an underwater or space zone has continued. We got time travel (more or less), we got the alternate evil dimension (more or less) and now we're getting cosmic-level enemies. The problem is for me is that the things like the Rikti and the Shivans is that instead of being attacked and going to planet X to face them, all the action is confined here, to the city. And I'd argue to the point where the Rikti now seem like an afterthought rather than relevant anymore to the storyline.

I look at the laser sword game, and everywhere I go is different. I can't tell you how my breath was taken away going to that sand world with the two suns. Everything about it was atmospheric, and I felt immersed as if I were in a movie. It helps that things are so far spread out, but touches like little sandstorms right down to famous visual landmarks drew me in and made a statement of telling me where I was and how it was different from other games. Outside of First Ward, I have trouble naming other zones that make me feel like that in CoH.

And lastly, I found I just can't do some things that go without saying for a superhero game. My first character was a SS/Inv tank and...I couldn't pick up anything. I couldn't damage the environment around me, aside from Mayhem/Safeguard missions. I couldn't bash a door down, I couldn't plow through a wall; if I had Laser Eyes, I couldn't burn anything with them. I accept the age of this game and the technical limitations imposed upon it because of that, but I also make the concessions that newer generation games, even if they do not much else right, seem more capable of capturing the atmospheric essence of a lot of powers at their core.

Yes, we have lots of powersets and they all do interesting things, but I don't often find them dynamic. We may be able to beat up large mobs, but I can't tie them up with my handy swingline, or I can't safely incapactiate them because I'm a Claws character and no such option is presented to me. As much as there's freedom in as many powersets as we do, I often find there's a lot of limitation within them, too.

I've always accepted that things in an MMO won't work as they do in their source setting, also. I should be able to take a tank round as a Tank, but I can just as easily be taken off my feet by a guy with a rock or a pipe wrench. If there was something in game design I'd want to see change is an acknowledgement that you 'grow beyond' lesser forms of the same damage, or your weapon can do some of the things you've seen it do on screen.

I think this is why console gaming and MMO gaming are slowly moving towards each other, because MMO gamers see the breadth of options given to console games in terms of customising their characters without necessarily needing to make the 'right' build, and console gamers see a dynamic world they can continue to interact and work with. I think the model for that is coming in Guild Wars 2, myself....

Edit: I did want to say I agree with EvilGeko's post in that I think there's a lot of expectations for all the bells and whistles to be on a new game at launch, which I find highly ironic given how little this game started out with and now people have a wealth of riches thanks to seven years of fixes. It's an unfair comparison given the other game is just over two months' old...


S.

Having access to the following costume sets:

Vanguard
Roman
Celestial
Elemental Order

I'd had a concept in mind forever that I thought was highly original and interesting as a personality type, and yet I couldn't visually achieve and fulfill to sell the concept. Having purchased and veteran rewarded my way to these things, this is now possible, and I have a character who has an in-built dramatic story arc by virtue of just being who he is.

And that's awesome.



S.