Venture
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Posts
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Joined
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That's an overly-optimistic reading of what was reportedly said.
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The problem with this idea is that we can only pick one.
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Quote:If farms were removed, we could start trying to change public perception of AE from the current Monty Haul wonderland to a source of new content. Then, maybe, we might see more traffic.
If farms were removed, more people would not suddenly start playing your stories.
If farms stay, there's no hope. Story arcs are lost in the noise and no one is even looking for them because they don't even think in those terms. This is why a "farm" or "story arc" tag is not going to help. -
Quote:We understood you the first time; you're just wrong. The Tina MacIntyre and Maria Jenkins arcs were changed in i18 when Going Rogue launched. If you're just seeing the difference now it means you haven't looked at them in over a year.
Fair point. I didn't quite elaborate enough: -
Quote:We're already there.
I think it'd be hilarious. Not only would you have all of those people with dedicated farmers up in arms, but the ******** would change from "ebil farmers ruining our AE!" to "no one uses the AE!". The AE system would turn into yet another abandoned subsystem that only the diehard supporters even think about using. lolAE will be added to the same list as lolPVP. -
When the Council was brought in the initial pass did edit all the 5th Column missions in ways that made it seem the 5th had never existed. That got rolled back due to the outcry here when the issue hit Test.
The introduction of Arachnos introduced a whole herd of retcons involving Statesman's background. The most blatant of them was changing Maria Jenkin's "about" text, which used to say she was Maiden Justice.
Both novels contradicted canon in many places; some of those contradictions were retconned in and others are still in limbo. The writing team for CoV either didn't read the existing material or did and didn't care what it said, as they played loose and fast with canon in a number of places. One that stuck out for me was mangling the details of the Mu-Oranbega war.
There's a lot more that just doesn't spring to mind at the moment. The idea that the writers haven't ignored their own history on numerous occasions is laughable. -
Quote:False, there are a substantial number of arcs that do have story behind them. This just isn't one of them.
Ok then, by extension the entire game has no story. Why are you here? -
Quote:*cough* You're new around here, right?
I've not seen CoH retcon any of its past. -
Quote:No, they don't. There is really no "story" here in any case. It plays the same if (just off the top of my head) Crey makes a deal with the Freakshow to steal a device from Arachnos that will let them steal Synapse's powers yadda yadda yadda. Actually this is better, since Crey created Synapse in the first place so now there's actually a connection. In the existing arc Synapse is just RANDOM_HERO_VICTIM_01. And it would have the benefit of opening a wider level range. More characters would be able to play at their native level and preferred difficulty.
The factions they chose fit very well with the story they're telling. -
Many of us do object to this set of arcs as we do to the villain counterpart. I ran the hero set on one character to see if anything had changed at the last minute (it hadn't): I won't be bothering with either set again.
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Quote:What does that have to do with anything?
Did they charge any less admission at release than other movies in theaters at the time?
Back when Babylon 5 was being made its creator was on Usenet almost every day answering messages from the fans. After explaining how something had gone wrong in a recent episode (I forget which or what the problem was), he added (from memory, can't find the quote right now), "By the way, I'm telling you guys this because part of what I want to do is educate people about how TV shows are made. I'm not trying make excuses. One of the things I learned in my theater days is that the audience only sees the play that's in front of them. They don't know that you're hung over from the pre-opening-night party, or that your costume is torn in back so you can't turn around, or that someone didn't put out a prop so now your next line doesn't make any sense. They just see the play, and that's the way it has to be."
How many people worked on this or what went into making it isn't part of the equation. All that matters is what the players see, and what we're seeing isn't nearly worth the asking price. The Current Opposition's for-pay mission content cost slightly more but delivered waaaaaaaay more content. As a bennie for subscribers this is OK (not great); as a store item, it fails dismally.
Edit:
No one put a gun to anyone's head and forced the devs to use the factions in question. They made a choice to peg the arc at the 10-20 bracket. They could -- and should -- have chosen to tell the story they wanted to tell using factions that went to the top.Quote:Doesn't work that way because these enemy groups are not on par with level 50 characters. They would have to be redesigned to match the proper difficulty.
Yes, it's a good reason. People end up with level-capped characters and nothing to do with them. Oh, that's right, we do have something to do with them now: we can farm for more powerful stuff that lets us run tougher farms for more powerful stuff that lets us....Quote:That's not a good reason to focus most or all of the new content on the level cap. That's not even a bad reason to focus most or all of the new content on the level cap. -
Quote:An awful lot of people worked on Heaven's Gate, Ishtar, and Waterworld, too.
They put a lot of time and resources into these gorgeous missions. Writers, art people, and powers team were all involved here. -
Quote:Because the level cap is where everyone ends up. Lower levels are only transitory.
And I'll just say again that I ultimately see no reason why ALL game content must be geared towards level 50s. -
Quote:That dog won't hunt. Events have been added to the game that won't conform to that paradigm.
Remember that "time" is progressed in the game world through your levels. By setting the level of this arc at 20, it sets it firmly in the timeline of events that happen while you level. -
If a story won't work with the existing continuity then odds are it's not a story at all. It's just a bunch of stuff that happened.
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Quote:Because farmers have the same effect on AE as, say, a paintball match would have if held in the same room as the chess club.
I just don't understand people who hate on certain groups (farmers, PvPers, PvEers, whatever) as if the fact that they like to do (farm, PvP, PvE, whatever) somehow lessens other fun in the game. -
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Quote:Exactly what I do with my common salvage on my Field Crafters, though I check first to see if the IO in question is selling at all. "Power 5" are almost always worth listing.
Eh, while economics may not work that way, what else are you going to do with all those common salvage drops you get? I know I turn them all into common IOs and throw them on the market, especially on toons who don't have niches in other places. its cheap, easy, and a nice way to make a few 100k inf with very little work.
As for /auctionhouse and instances, frankly I thought it was abusive for it to work in missions. Too easy to grab inspirations. I do wish they'd find a way for it to work in bases, though. -
If there is any argument for Power being non-Villain (there isn't), it ends when you arrange for criminals to attack a lab so you can stop them, because otherwise just going to pick up a report wouldn't do anything for your public image.
There's no way to tie a bow on that one. And it's pretty early in the progression. -
Heroes use those powers in situations in which a police officer would be warranted in using lethal force.
Except, of course, when some idiot has dressed innocent people up like criminals and sent them in to get shot. -
Power and Crusader are both Villain paths. Responsibility and Warden are Rogue or Vigilante; you can argue over which gets which.
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Quote:As a great man once said, I'll swallow one porcupine but not two. Manticore's actions judged by the setting's own internal logic display a wanton disregard for human life.
This is comic-book world where no one dies except when the plot calls for it and then they're hardly ever really dead. You can't knock someone out with a flame thrower. For a literature snob, you seem to lack the capacity to understand that different genres operate by different rules. -
I just played it myself. There's a bit of dissonance in the Lost's attitudes towards magic. It only plays if this is taken as set before Angus McQueen's arc, which doesn't really jive.
I did not care for the Rocks Fall Everyone Dies trick in Act I. (I got to the door after snuffing the Load Bearing Boss only to get the HA HA message, then all the Pumicites I flew past killed me.) The ambushes in Act II were way over the top. Of course, I was on a level 10 Thugs/Traps MM (heroic). The final ambush would have been a bit much but I had some extra temp powers to fall back on. (Backup Radio and two extra attacks.)
Overall, not bad. We'll have to see how the rest plays out. -
Quote:OF COURSE NOT! I've been on these forums as long as he has, I know exactly what he's like. But as a guy just across the river from me likes to say, there's no such thing as bad publicity. I'll likely get a few plays out of this, no one will care what Taser thinks and I've gotten the better of him in any case, as I knew I would. I've been dealing with his type since 300 baud was all the rage.
Venture, you're just as bad because you fell for it. Did you honestly think Taser was going to end up liking your arc?
*tosses Squid a brass bolt*
Really now. -
Quote:According to CNBC, the following were the top ten selling video games on 2010:
(I'm a game design major, we're kind of trained to treat a story as something completely unessential.)
- 1. New Super Mario Brothers Wii
- 2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
- 3. Battlefield: Bad Company II
- 4. Final Fantasy XIII
- 5. Wii Fit Plus
- 6. God of War III
- 7. Pokemon Soulsilver Version
- 8. Wii Sports Resort
- 9. Mass Effect 2
- 10. Pokemon Heartgold Version
There are precisely two titles on that list that do not rely on some kind of story or at least narrative.
According to Gamestop.com, their current best sellers for PCs are two version of Star Wars: The Old Republic, two versions of Skyrim and Battlefield 3.
There are zero top-selling MMOs that do not rely on story.
If you have learned game design from people who claim "story is unessential" then you have learned from morons. Modern video gaming is increasingly about interactive storytelling (suck it, Roger Ebert). There is a market for sports or Tetris/Bejewelled/etc. type games but it's not setting the world on fire and more importantly, I can pretty much guarantee you that the guys currently slamming the bits together for (e.g.) Dragon Age III are pulling down bigger bucks than whoever is hoping to come out with the next Angry Birds.
MMOs in particular are nothing without story. Story is not sufficient but it is necessary. No matter how much you may detest "World Wide Red", without its story it would be even worse.
Oh, and as for the original question, the answer is "too many to list".
