UberGuy
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Posts
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Joined
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Starsman, you fit nicely into a constellation of posters (see what I did there?) who defined how we received and understood our knowledge of the game. They were posters who made me want to check a thread when I saw they had posted in it, or especially if they started it.
For being one of those people, I thank you. This forum has probably been close to as important to me for the past 8.5 years as the game itself. It, and those posters on it who stood large in my mind, will be missed. -
Quote:There are two program paths there - one invalid. It should probably look like this.Originally Posted by Acroyear2
The name 'C:\Program Files (x86)\CohBeta\cityofheroes.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\CohBeta -demoplay' specified in the Target box is not valid. Make sure the path names are correct.
C:\Program Files (x86)\CohBeta\cityofheroes.exe -demoplay
Assuming that your "cityofheroes.exe" file for beta can be found at the above location. -
Quote:Actually, that is worth a lot to me. I was going to reply to your post above this one I quoted to add you to the list of people I respected and like reading posts from. That I rated this reply from you frankly feels quite nice. So thank you very much.Originally Posted by Stargazer
For whatever it's worth, you're one of the posters on these forums I've had the most respect for. You've always seemed to manage to remain level-headed, with a genuine interest in learning, while being friendly and helpful to those that needed it. Those are attributes I value highly, and I believe that your presence has made these forums a better place. Thank you.
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Quote:I would have loved to see this and experience it. It looks like it was awesome. Unfortunately, it overlapped with the last of Justice's long-standing regular Hamidon raids. (Yes, we've still been having them twice a week. This week, we filled the Hive both nites. This community rocks on so many levels.)Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Briefly, thanks to everyone that helped put this together, and thanks to the players that showed up and patiently waited while we worked out some of the glitches. We honestly didn't expect to see so many people for an unofficial informal end of game event, but I'm glad we were able to accommodate everyone that showed up (at least until we started - we had to lock the zone for technical reasons once it kicked off).
I'm very impressed at the efforts you and others put into making something like this happen.
And by the way, I really like the writing you've put up in this thread. That's not a smoke-blowing exercise - I really mean it. I believe it compares extremely favorably with some of the best writing we've seen put up on these boards by lore rednames themselves. You should definitely find an outlet for that if you can. I sincerely wish it could be this game. -
Nice.
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Fire Man / bAss, I always thought that was a cool looking character, and have enjoyed the pics of it (and other characters of yours) you have posted over the years.
Thanks for that.
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Quote:I always hated this viewpoint. In my view, that's not playing the game. That's playing the numbers at the expense of everything else. It incredibly self limits the player, and makes them only appreciate the very best performing things in a game where being the very best performing, frankly, was of very little significance other than self gratification.Originally Posted by DreadShinobi
On the other hand Scrappers were incredibly limited in (what I consider to be) viable build choices, especially compared to brutes, and for much of their existance Shield Defence was the only choice (because it outperformed everything else to such an extent), and the major issue here was that only a few scrapper secondaries had a taunt aura (this was the biggest flaw of scrappers). Honestly if they had just given scrappers taunt auras on the resist based sets I would have been all over scrappers all day long, but that never happened (Until I managed to convince the dev team to add a taunt aura to the Hybrid Incarnate Power, but even that wasn't that much). With the lack of taunt auras on scrappers, brutes were always #1 for me in terms of melee. As Silas would put it, a good melee will bring 2 things to a team: Damage and Aggro control. Unless you were SD, Inv, or WP, it was likely you failed at Aggro Control, and if you were Invul or WP, you were taking a hit to damage output as well.
For everything else, there are brutes.
I enjoyed min/maxing in this game. But I did not set about that in terms of insisting on experiencing the maximum performance on offer. I set about it by taking what I considered fun or interesting to play and making it as good as it could be, for the goals I set forth for it. -
Quote:It wasn't impossible. Castle wanted to do it, but was vetoed.Originally Posted by Rangle M. Down
It probably would have been impossible to implement, but I wouldn't have minded AT mods effecting set bonus numbers.
I loved how broken inventions bonuses were. Seriously, I enjoyed the game immensely more for how outrageous they were, and an AT-scaling of their bonuses would have made me very sad. -
I like CoH's combat system, and would indeed like to see more of it. That said, I do think it could be improved. Travel suppression was a bummer, but honestly, I've long gotten over the PvE version of it. The PvP version of it needed to die in a fire and be resurrected so it could die in a fire again, repeatedly.
Rooting was more of an issue. Honestly, it doesn't bother me, but I recognize that the game would be more fluid and dynamic without it, and that would be a good thing.
Tab-to-target works fine for me. I came to CoH from a six-year stretch of FPS gaming, and I targeted foes with tab there. Granted, in most FPS games "targeting" doesn't mean the same thing it does here - it was for tracking a target, not automatically hitting them. But the transition was quite natural for me. (I too bind tab to "target nearest". I use alt-tab for "target next".)
I don't need MMOs to reward me for aiming, and I say that as a veteran FPS player. An MMO need not be an FPS, and frankly I'd prefer it not to be, though I could likely enjoy some blending of the two, as suggested could be done above. But I have zero problem with my attacks being "dice resolved", as long as it looks good. (Sometimes, CoH didn't look good doing this, as with homing boulders and the like. On the other hand, sometimes it looked awesome. Seeing Marauder leap away in a Lambda with a mass of ice, fire and darkness pursuing him was one of the coolest looking things I think I've seen in this game.) -
Quote:It used to be particularly hard primarily because not everyone flies. These days, anyone can buy a jet pack, which makes a pretty big difference.Originally Posted by Interface
It's been done before. It just takes a loooooooot of firepower.
There's no badge for it because it's so hard, most people would be left out.
It still takes a lot of firepower. It's just a bit easier to get people who can actually apply their firepower to the drop ships.
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Quote:I don't think so. That bug was much older. People had been able to get into the other side's bases as early as I10, when SG portals appeared in coop zones, specifically the RWZ. I used that one too, to move some Miracles and the like over to my villain SG.Originally Posted by SerialBeggar
Was this related to the emergency fix for Base Storage Bins. As I recall, it had something to do with visitors being able drop items into the Bins.
If they patched that as an "emergency" in I20, they were way behind. >.> -
Quote:I agree.Originally Posted by JohnRobey
LOL, I wish I'd known about this "exploit" as it would have fit at least a couple of SG/VG groups as well as being very practical for vigilantes and rogues. Too bad it was against game policy, since I think it would have been nifty for this to have been permitted by game design.
I don't think the devs were highly opposed to it. I saw at least one post to the effect that they only really blocked it after side switching was an option because it because it somehow risked corruption issues. It clearly didn't always cause them, since it never screwed up any of my SGs or characters. Or if it was guaranteed, the corruption wasn't always catastrophic, or visible to the people using the "exploit". -
Quote:This sounds far more sappy, and frankly ***-kissy than I really mean it to, but if there is one forum handle that comes to mind when I think of individual forum posters I'll miss discussing this game with, it's Arcanaville.Originally Posted by Doctor_Gemini
One of the big things I will miss from this game are your posts on the forum. Hopefully I can manage to be awake when this event is run, I'd love to see what you're going to do.
And I don't even always agree with her!
I really should admit, though, I used to disagree with her about a number of things I later either figured out I didn't understand, or just hadn't experienced enough to grasp. Case in point, I remember once strenuously debating with her whether someone could detect small percentage changes in performance. I didn't believe one could, but I now thoroughly believe one can, because I have done it myself, several times throught the years. "Hmm, this feels different..." *Gathers data.* "Well crap, it is different!" The I16(?) breakage of the RNG for recipe drops comes to mind.
I have probably learned more about this game from Arcanaville than any other single poster here, past or present. I know (in part because she has said it herself) that what she has passed on is often gained from or at least based on work by other players. But she still posted a lot of it here with lots of exposition and explanation that helped me understand it better.
I rarely posted truly original thoughts or analysis of my own here on these forums. When I posted helpful things, I was almost always posting information gleaned from others, Arcanaville included. But when I did, I looked forward to what Arcanaville though of it, sometimes with trepidation. Before the sunset announcement came out, I was working through an analysis of AoEs and the use of the area factor in game balance, inspired by a thread in this subforum that talked about AoEs and how to quantify their balance.
Arcanaville,
I have to say, it mists me up to see you post things like the OP here. While you have seemed to sometimes have let emotions show in your posts, I mostly think of you as having a dispassionate posting style. To see you openly post about your sadness at losing CoH gets me all sad again myself. :P
On the other hand, it's nice to know you're not a T-800 Terminator.
I lost a bunch of time I meant to spend in CoH working on last goals, and now I am cramming to fit them in this week. I don't know if I'll have time to check out what you have planned, but I would love to if I do. -
When Issue 18 brought us side switching, it was possible for a while to coalition Hero and Villain SGs together.
You needed someone with SG permission to form coalitions to switch sides. Once on the other side, they could form a coalition with an SG from that side.
While this was eventually fixed so you could no longer form new coalitions (I think it took until around I20 or so), oddly there was apparently no simple way for the devs to data mine for cross-faction coalitions such that they could break all such coalitions automatically. It took someone reporting the coalition, or some other way for a CS rep or what have you to notice it, and then it would be dissolved on a case-by case basis.
My Hero and Villain SGs have been in a coalition this whole time. They have basically been personal SGs for a long time now, and I was simply very cautious about who I told about their being in a coalition together. Most people didn't seem to know it was ever possible.
About all its good for is to make travel convenient between sides. Only Rogues and Vigilantes can take full advantage of it. You just hit the local SG portal, go in the other side's base and use their teleporters. It's been convenient for me for some time now getting my Rogues to the regular Hero-side Hamidon raids on Justice.
You can use it to get into Ouroboros Echo zones with Rogues.
If you try to send a full Villain to a Hero zone or vice versa, it won't work, barring degrees of exploit I'm not familiar with. You briefly appear in the target zone, then are teleported to Mercy (for Villains) or Atlas (for Heroes).
The coalition has one other good use, though: it grants a pretty high degree of access to Ouroboros missions from the other side for rogues and vigilantes. If you want to take a Rogue on a Hero arc, for example, you get them on a team together with the Hero in charge and go into the Hero base. The Hero starts the arc, and the villain can run it. There are a few oddities that were introduced in I20 that sometimes get your "grey" character kicked if they try to zone to a co-op area, but otherwise it works out great. (This bug actually affects grey-aligned characters on some normal TFs - a Rogue will get kicked off of a Kahn if they zone to a coop area or into a SG base.)
This coalition bug/oversight is probably the most severe exploit I've ever purposefully taken advantage of, except maybe some of I14's Architect missions. (I missed out on the most insane AE exploits, and mostly only used the ones I did take advantage of to earn inf or help friends PL, since I don't like to PL my own characters.) -
My very first CoH character, created on pre-release day one (so 3 days before opening of CoH to the general public), was a Scrapper.
I picked the AT because the description of its ability to go it alone appealed to me.
My second character, and one of my favorites, still played and one of my most played to this day, was also a Scrapper.
My sixth or so character, my badge character and one of my time all-time played, is a Scrapper. (My Dark/Dark Defender got the top rank all-time played.)
I have three level 50, fully "Incarnated out" Scrappers, plus one who got to 30. (The level 30 is that pre-release one. I still have him.)
While I have to admit my favorite character is not a Scrapper, Scrappers are my favorite AT. IMO, they have the perfect balance of damage, durability, and freedom from "gimmicks" like Fury, Hide, Assasin's Focus, etc. And don't get me wrong, all gimmicks are not bad things, and I enjoy the ones I've listed there. I just love Scrappers for not having one. It's relaxing. Being powerful, tough and with a relaxed approach to what they do? Priceless.
Melee has always been my favorite thing here. I like all the melee ATs, even Tankers, though I like Tankers less than the damage-focused melee ATs. I like melee ATs partly because I just enjoy melee fights, partly because melee characters get full-time mez protection in a mez-heavy environment.
And Scrappers are the melee I enjoy the most. -
Quote:Indeed. Very few things in this game ever infuriated me. I mean, hell, it's a game, right?. But I wanted to murder those Scientists just about every time I went for a nuke, even if I was playing a hero. In contrast, most mission hostages would only follow you if you weren't hidden, but they were almost never as flaky as the Warburg ones about actually following you over uneven terrain. (They were flaky, but not that flaky.)Originally Posted by Ironblade
The scientists in Warburg were really odd. Unlike most escorts, they could follow you perfectly well while you were invisible. But they could also get stuck on the tiniest piece of rubble in the street.
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Late to this thread, as I've been away from the forums for a few days.
Black Scorp,
- Thanks, for the stuff you did. This is the only MMO I've ever come close to wanting to play forever. Everyone who had a role in it gets my thanks, and yours wasn't a small role.
- Thanks, for the stuff you're describing that you didn't get to work/fix/implement. A lot of it sounds cool and/or I would have liked to have seen it work that way.
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Quote:Eh. I'm honestly not worried about it. You seem to be assuming that an emulated CoH will try to emulate every aspect of the game as it exists now. Honestly, I think that would be a mistake, and the market is an excellent example of a feature I think would not work well in an emulated game, before any consideration of exploits.Originally Posted by CyberGlitch
Back when COXEmu was first released (before it was shut down), there wasn't a Marketplace aspect to the game. Just SO's and Inspirations, which were effectively unlimited from vendors. I'm pretty sure emulators will totally bork the marketplace model, if it can exist at all. And without market economics in place, IO'ing out your character is going to be tough unless (wait for it) someone jerk-hacks the marketplace code to address this.
The current in-game market depends heavily on network effects - everyone across all shards shares common listing and sales, to improve both supply and demand. That's not going to be possible in any but the most amazingly successful visions of an emulated game.
CoH was never very loot centric. An emulated game could make IOs more available via non-market means like Reward Merits and not really break the game that much more than it was already "broken" on the live servers. (And I'm not complaining about that brokenness - I love having my characters like that, and all of the ones I really care about are.) -
Quote:None of which I ever claimed was not possible.Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy
Mind you I know that if a hacker is good enough and want ot hack there isnt much to stop them just as if someone wants to steal a car, they will or if someone wants to rob a house, they will but that doesnt mean people leave their doors unlocked and or dont purchase an alarm system.
If the emulator isn't abandonware by its creators or some community of coders, even if it's only a few, things like that will eventually be addressed. Yeah, if they aren't eventually addressed, even the emulated game will die. But I read the complaint up-thread as saying that the very existence of these things will ruin the emulated game such that it would die a second death. I think the extreme longevity of things like emulators for UO (which actually have a variety of different "forks") show that this is not some forgone conclusion, which is very much how it was presented above. -
Quote:I believe Argentina was mooted.Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy
What areas are these areas?
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Quote:What the flip? You come in the thread, make a sweeping, generalized claim, get called on it, and the burden of proof is on the people calling you?Originally Posted by CyberGlitch
Burden of proof is on you.
What planet are you from, again?
What does any of that have to do with defending your claim?Quote:Considering the facts...Game is cancelled, bunch of amateurish "We are a REALLY heroes IRL!" delusional group wishing ensues, you are out there selling hope in a sieve, etc.
You claimed that an emulated CoH would be "ruined" by people hacking the emulator. You have not backed that up at all, and all you've done since you claimed it is dance around and generally act like a child.
Once again, ad homenim with no actual defense of your claim.Quote:I'm pretty sure one of us is grounded in reality slick. And it's not you.
You seem to have a fundamental problem with the distinction in attacking the argument and attacking the speaker. I've been going after your (still completely unsubstantiated) claim. You are the one who started with the childish name calling against me personally. Did I respond in kind? Damn skippy - while continuing to point out that you also have no argument.Quote:And as for personal attacks.....so nice to meet you Mr. Kettle. LoL
Ooh, emulators get hacked. (Hey, so do live games!) How does that lead to ruin? Why would that mean a CoH emulator would "kill the dead game?"
This is the claim you posted that I'm asking you to back up. -
Quote:I don't think they're in the minority. I actually think alt-centric, "50 is a journey" was a majority perspective from the CoH player community. And I say that as someone just like you - I have played my core characters to death. But while everyone I know has one or a few characters like that, almost all of them were far bigger on alts than I was. Even the power-gamer types.Originally Posted by Hercules
Well, I'd have to say you are probably in the minority then. Most people become attached to one character or a small subset of their characters, and want to continue playing and improving that character. Leveling a character to 50, then scrapping and starting a new toon is not what I want out of a game.
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Quote:No. WoW met a ton of conditions that ensured it was a massive success when it came out.Originally Posted by DarkBlaster_NA
That it would have been a very competitive/outsold WoW?
It had a popular brand - the Warcraft lore setting was already very popular in gaming contexts, and already had spin-off products. You could buy licensed Warcraft world settings books for Dungeons and Dragons tabletop play, for example. The previous Warcraft RTS games had a large following, and the game maker was popular. WoW successfully re-used some of the most popular design aspects of prior MMOs - they may not have been that original, but they were smart about what they put in and how it worked.
And perhaps most importantly, it was the first game to really hit those sweet spots simultaneously. From there the network effect ensured it got even more massive from there.
I do not think any MMO could have bested it. As much as I love it myself, CoH's appeal was too limited to compete with a game of WoW's scale. A lot of hard-core MMO players were not satisfied with CoH - it had no PvP, no end game, and not much grind. Yes, there are people who claim to like grind. Better advertising would not have addressed any of that.
By making a game that appealed to people who didn't care for other MMOs, CoH became a game that could probably never be as large as the most popular MMOs. -
Quote:And that is guaranteed to ruin it how?Originally Posted by CyberGlitch
Every game in history that has a server component controllable by players has been hacked in one fashion or another to create "new derivatives."
Thanks for the brilliant example of how to spew tons of non-information with google. You did a search for one game, the 800-pound-gorilla, which is still a massive, thriving game. How are you showing that emulators ruined it?Quote:I have historical evidence to back up my beliefs.
"La, la, la, you asked for some proof of anything I claimed and I'm going to show how good my proof is by attacking your personality".Quote:You have wishful thinking to back up yours. And cluelessness.
Until you can back up your specific claim, I'm going to call it like it is - doomsaying. And based on the rest of your responses, doomsaying by a childish idiot, meaning doomsaying with zero credibility. -
Quote:Frankly, the arguments about legality have more going for them. Where did you make this up from? You have no way to know that things like that would happen, that it would "ruin" the game for anyone except apparently you if it did.Originally Posted by CyberGlitch
Emulators=eventual hacked gameplay and "fixes " that won't fix anything. Stalkers with blaster nukes and tankers with Defender debuffs. Emulators will kill an already dead game, perverting the gameplay.
Seriously, this sounds to me like proclaiming no one should get out of bed tomorrow because the day might suck for completely out-of-the-blue reasons. Yeah, it might. Everything and every day is like that. It's only a reason not to get out of bed if you're a terminal pessimist.