UnSub

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It may have already been said, but...

it's a consignment house, not a money wiring system.

People can use it as a money wiring system, but they have to take their chances.

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*gasp*


Is that Lighthouse?


In the Fanart section?


*faints*

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I don't know... did he post first then move the thread, or did he move the thread then post in the Fan Art forum?

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Whatever he did, he was obviously wrong and CuppaJo would have done it better.

To buck the trend, I like the look of Spines as is. Not all powers should be clean-looking.

And taking a moment to think about it, it's likely that in Statesman's TF you have to stop Lord Recluse's scheme - you may not have to defeat him to succeed at the trial. This fits with comics where the hero stops the scheme but the villain escapes to cause trouble another day.

Comics usually require the villain to defeat the hero to be a success. The LRSF reflects this.

And there WILL be an optimised hero team for this mission. It may be 3 ATs instead of 2, but there will be ATs and builds that are disadvantaged by this TF. That's just the way it goes when there is so much flexibilty in CoH/V.

I can't believe people think that the Statesman TF will be hard for heroes to do.

I mean, look at the devs - they are using an AR Blaster and Archery Blaster as part of their main team. Talk about non-optimising your group :-)

That was a great post November, especially:

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I tend to think this may be the case - as I really can't see anyone looking at bugs this annoying and saying, "Yeah, let's release this pig - I want to get 300 complaints in my email every day I can't do anything about so I can die of an ulcer at an early age and learn to hate my job.".

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But tell me - do you have to die young to learn to hate your job? :-)

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This thread HAD to be started by someone who either a) joined POST ED, or b) wasn't active here until POST ED.

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I was second wave CoH beta and have played since then.

The mods and devs are doing a good job imo. I don't experience any crashing bugs, think that I9 will be pretty interesting and will wait to see what the future holds.

Statesman, Positron, Lighthouse et al are doing a good job with what they have available to them. It's easy to forget, but they (Cryptic) are an independent game development studio who did the near impossible and created a MMOG that competes with the big, large dev studio funded MMOG genre. For that they deserve huge amounts of kudos and also for their ability to keep interesting new content coming out.

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My suspicion is that Marvel wanted a developer with a proven track record after the Valve deal fell through, and maybe SOE was already committed to DCO.

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I thought that the Marvel MMOG fell through with first Vivendi, then with Sigil (particularly after Microsoft off-loaded Vanguard to SOE). If it fell through with Valve as well, that's a heck of a project history.

As for the DCU, the speculation is that SOE accepted The Matrix Online from WB in order to get their approval for doing the DC MMOG.

So, as far as Marvel suing Cryptic (and doing it badly) as a way of getting in the door to get the MUO up, it's not unbelievable. My opinion is that Marvel wanted to use the old comic book model of "sue your competitors so that they sell you their IP" ie if Marvel had won the action, part of the settlement would have been part ownership of Cryptic AND had them create the MUO. They lost the action, so they just went with getting the game created.

Personally, I am excited about MUO and think it was a great business move by Cryptic. I'm no Marvel fanboi, but the MUO has a lot of potential and it is being created by comic book fans. And it is a great business move for Cryptic since they will have a lock on the superhero MMOG genre until the DCU comes out and will also have a good shot at dominating the Xbox360 MMOG market (who's current size is unknown but has a lot of potential, afaik).

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Just going on console vs PC, consoles hold the advantage in that they have fixed hardware and software. I've got no idea how much of CoH/V's application is devoted to the numerous different drivers for hardware from numerous vendors, but it would add up. You build a MMOG for a console, you don't have to worry about video card issues, for instance. Having a fixed platform would make things much easier for the dev team.

Also: don't think anyone has mentioned Phantasy Star Online, which has Dreamcast and PC versions at the very least... also think it went PS or PS2.

I am really interested in seeing how MUO develops and how Cryptic approach its game design issues having learned on MUO. Thus far dev houses have a very mixed record on sophmore releases (eg EQ vs EQ2, AC vs AC2, Jumpgate vs Auto Assault) so I'm interested if Cryptic can buck the trend.

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Ironically, this only goes to further support the idea that full-featured MMOGs CAN be successfully adapted to console systems and controllers.

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Last I heard, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (aka WAR) will be a more modern test for this - it's on the PC and Xbox 360.

Ultimately, I think that the distance between online and console games will shrink as more people move to voice chat (or voice chat facilities get better). You take away having to type words, you won't need as many keys so you don't need a keyboard.

When there is no room left in hell... the dead threads shall walk the earth.

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Can you please include my Ninja/Dark guide? I did provide a link to it quite some time ago but it seems to have been missed in this latest update. Thanks.

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That's a great guide Brev.

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Um, youre the people that think doms are just right and keep adjusting domination......so in other words we will be inventing training enhancments and will cost way too much to justify the cost.......

Thanks for nothing

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Inventions is ruined before it even starts! DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

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Arcanaville, thanks for proving what I'd felt had been happening - that Blaster damage is boosted by Defiance, even at high health levels. I've long suspected that since Defiance was implemented, overall Blaster damage levels have increased.

I agree that Defiance should kick in sooner and should also show its own numbers. A big problem with this inherent power is one of perception - since it does nothing flashy (ie no particle effects / "rising words" ie Scourge) and only really starts to be noticeable when the Defiance bar moves and Blasters are close to death, a lot of players feel it is useless. However, if Blasters could noticeably track the extra damage they received from Defiance, it might do something to make this inherent less of a punching bag for the Blaster forums.

Defiance needs to be recognised as a passive inherent power, one the provides some small benefit all the time and maybe a big benefit in times of trouble. Blasters need to be less focused on the high defiance / low health end of the equation if they are ever to see the value that Defiance actually contributes to their characters.

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What the heck is Wacky Races?

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Not as good as some people are selling it.

But nice catch to the OP.

When it comes to player guides, I'd suggest that Cryptic / NCsoft remove them from the forums and place them in some sort of wiki / blog / whatever application that is attached to the main page. Give guide authors the ability to edit their own guides, attach guides to player login names, people can leave comments etc but I don't think that forums are well suited to the creation and maintenance of guides. IMO.

And right now, we've hit the point where this thread should be locked because it's severely derailed.

But if the mods do lock it, are they being efficient and doing the right thing, or stamping on the posting rights of innocent forum goers and ruining the community? Discuss.

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If we have to polarize things now, then Unsub - and by extension, you - are absolutely wrong.


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I'm willing to believe we are at opposite ends (or close enough) on the spectrum of how we believe forums should be run. You disagree with me, and that is fine enough, until you call me "absolutely wrong" on it. You don't have the absolute truth on this matter, so don't pretend that you do. Neither do I.

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CuppaJo (and now Lighthouse) are community liaisons. If you're not willing to be a part of the community, you'll suck at the liaising thing.

That's not the same as saying that he has to be my friend, but if he holds himself aloof and acts only as a traffic cop, there's no real connection to the community.

Also, the fact that CuppaJo did not hold herself aloof and act solely as a traffic cop was not a flaw.

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Whether or not CuppaJo was aloof or not (which she wasn't) is less important to me than how she did her job. She did it well, and she was well liked, but it's not like stealth-deletions weren't rampant when she was in charge. They were. Yes, she did occasionally post a "stop this now" message in a thread, but it was rare.

Lighthouse is doing a better job by stating in the threads he goes into WHY he's doing what he's doing and usually how it violates the forum rules. In terms of managing forums, anyone reading those posts can see what's happened.

He is not aloof to the community - if he was aloof, he wouldn't be posting explanations about what he has done. He's just not cracking jokes just yet - which, for someone in authority and fairly new to the job, is probably a very good thing to do, lest he makes teh funny that the community hates him for.


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If there were any sign that thread deletions actually related to the forum rules in anything other than a random sense, this topic would not have even come up.


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Of course, I can't show you a deleted thread to deal with that over-generalisation you made there regarding thread deletion. But yes, I've seen threads that deserve to be deleted... and in fact, where.

My "Happy 1st Birthday to ED!" being one of them :-)

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I'd wish the kind of moderation on y'all that you guys so clearly seem to want, but then I would like to find this forum at least moderately pleasant to hang out in. I feel like I'm conversing with people begging for food rations and a maximum wage limit here.

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Wow, condescending much?

I want order instilled on the forums because 1) I want CoH/V to continue to have an official forums, 2) I don't want it to turn into the IMDb forums (as one of many examples) and 3) I don't want it to turn into a forum where the mod's friends run riot.

You think that Lighthouse needs to be a bigger part of the community, whatever that means. I think he is doing fine right now and like his tactics. YMMV.

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To take the counter point - there are likely thousands of posts made in a week. It would be incredibly difficult to read them all, so it's likely posts get skimmed and if something catches the eye then it might get trimmed (and sometimes, trimmed too extensively). And sometimes threads go very quickly from good to bad, so it might get away from them.

On top of this, I have to assume that mods have other responsibilities over just reading the forums all day. So "heaven forbit" that some posts, out of thousands per week, get missed. If anything, it suggests that mods should get a lot more delete-happy, because that will catch all problem posts.

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Now you're implying that all the posts that do get deleted need to be deleted, and that is so not the case. I can understand them missing posts, and I'd be okay with that if they weren't also deleting posts that simply do not cross the line. You're excluding possibilities here to make it sound like consistent moderation is a pipe dream.

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In all reality, at this point I believe we are arguing individual points of view about what "consistency" is. For all the talk of the mods being more ruthless recently, I haven't really seen it. In fact, I think I've seen more complaining (and weak complaining at that, which has then spawned flamewars) about I8 than I saw about I7.

So perhaps the mods aren't being more (allegedly) ruthless because there is a new guy in town; perhaps the mods are being more (allegedly) ruthless because they are dealing with a more hostile crowd or because it's been decided that the forums need to be cleaned up.

And I don't expect that the mods are 100% accurate that every post they delete deserves that fate. You are arguing that it is better that if mistakes are to be made, inappropriate posts should remain because it is better than appropriate posts being deleted. I disagree. The removal of an appropriate post (which in often incidental to the core of what is actually being deleted) is better than leaving an offensive post for all to see.

To which someone will reply, "But in this case, the mods left this post in which was offensive", and I'll say that they made a mistake in likely leaving an old post up when checking on the hundreds of new posts that had been created in a day.

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I would welcome that. I got a warning for echoing a playful jab at another poster (using the same exact words he used). I got a warning, he did not.

Inconsistency is the problem, not the moderation.

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Actually, the guy who retaliates is always more likely to get pegged than the guy who starts it. It's a fact of life.

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And if your post does get deleted for good or ill, what has it cost you?


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It's a principle issue.

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Ahh, in which case this thread may never end.

As a side point, I started today with the opinion that MMOG's should always have official forums and the the tendancy of some companies to rely on fan forums instead of putting up their own was the wrong thing to do.

This thread is rapidly eroding the confidence I once had in that ideal.

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Again, I point to Athyna's example. That post is still up.


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It seems that they are just randomly looking at posts and going "Oh, I see something bad" and then use their magic mod buttons. Heaven forbit they actually remove other posts that are worse, that would require reading.

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To take the counter point - there are likely thousands of posts made in a week. It would be incredibly difficult to read them all, so it's likely posts get skimmed and if something catches the eye then it might get trimmed (and sometimes, trimmed too extensively). And sometimes threads go very quickly from good to bad, so it might get away from them.

On top of this, I have to assume that mods have other responsibilities over just reading the forums all day. So "heaven forbit" that some posts, out of thousands per week, get missed. If anything, it suggests that mods should get a lot more delete-happy, because that will catch all problem posts.

Final point:

And if your post does get deleted for good or ill, what has it cost you?

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After ironically having my pro-Lighthouse post deleted because I attached it to another post that got squished, I'll start at the top.

To reiterate - Lighthouse is doing a better job than CuppaJo. Yes, stealth-mods and stealth-deletions still occur, but when Lighthouse acts he tells us why. CuppaJo occasionally did, but usually she just threw a black bag over the head of the offending thread and had it dragged into an awaiting van.

I didn't (and still don't) get the fandom that surrounded Cuppa. She was nice enough for a voice on the wire, sure, but nothing special. But that's all she was for 99% of the forums - a voice on the wire.

But then I don't actually want the mods to be my friends. I don't want them to be friends with players because I think it creates the chance that they will let too much slide from certain people. I want the mods to be efficient, to be open about what they are doing / why they locked a thread and to show a steady hand. Lighthouse is doing all of this.

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I disagree with pretty much everything you say here.

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I can live with that.

After ironically having my pro-Lighthouse post deleted because I attached it to another post that got squished, I'll start at the top.

To reiterate - Lighthouse is doing a better job than CuppaJo. Yes, stealth-mods and stealth-deletions still occur, but when Lighthouse acts he tells us why. CuppaJo occasionally did, but usually she just threw a black bag over the head of the offending thread and had it dragged into an awaiting van.

I didn't (and still don't) get the fandom that surrounded Cuppa. She was nice enough for a voice on the wire, sure, but nothing special. But that's all she was for 99% of the forums - a voice on the wire.

But then I don't actually want the mods to be my friends. I don't want them to be friends with players because I think it creates the chance that they will let too much slide from certain people. I want the mods to be efficient, to be open about what they are doing / why they locked a thread and to show a steady hand. Lighthouse is doing all of this.

I don't agree that Lighthouse needs to show more "personality" - he's doing fine. He's been civil, efficient and open. That's good enough. I don't need to know his favourite colour or about the time he tried to beat the world skipping champion. It's irrelevant to the task at hand.

Oh, and I'll link this for ironic timeliness.

I don't think there are any shortage of threads that tell the devs what is wrong with CoH/V.