je_saist

Somebody managed to make Zwillinger tangentless!!!

Oh, don't misunderstand me.

I "get" why the individual prices were being readjusted.

I was just commenting on the initial impact of "wait? what?" that the announcement generated.

I'm afraid the moderators would get (even more) mad at me if I started overtly talking Pside2 up.

...

I'm...

I'm not able to argue this point.

It's got Zak Synder heading it, so it will have better action...

however, it's got Zak Synder heading it... so I expect the plot and overall editing to be worse.

Trust me, you aren't the only one that head-tilted at that.

That's because the Hero just defeated a monster down in the sewers.

Down with the Terran Cockroaches! Begone with the Conglomeration Anew!


Forever the Vanu will Reign!

no.

it cannot run it in Ultra.

The 540m has a theoretical MegaPixel throughput of 2,688mp and a theoretical Megatexel through put of 10,752. http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=98&pgno=7

The starting point for MPixel throughput in Ultra Mode on Nvidia hardware with low settings is a little under 11,808 MegaPixel / 47,232 Megatexel :: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=251721

Please do not lie to other forum posters.

Content is content, players play what they want to play.

No amount of cajoling or talking on the part of the developers is going to change what players want to change.

If the developers even TRIED to say "you must play Villain-Content" or "You must play Hero Content", or tried to do any kind of "player distribution", the number of players canceling their subscriptions would immediately remove any financial benefit from CoH: Freedom

And... why is this?

It's because most "other" MMO's try to enforce an active Player-versus-Player content scenario. Players who are on a lesser-population find themselves granted buffs for being in the minority. In severe cases the majority-population will find itself actively debuffed.

City of Heroes has no such Player-versus-Player mechanic, and nor does it need one.

You do realize that new players will either need to start in Praetoria or Galaxy City Correct?

You also realize that new players starting in Galaxy City will need to pick Paragon City or the Rogue Isles when they leave right?

Galaxy City is the first impression players will receive, not Mercy Island or Atlas Park.

Those zones will be their second impression.

And here we go into the topsy-turvy world of what players are comfortable with playing. Mechanically there is no difference from playing the Villain-Content over playing Hero-Content, and since Going Rogue brought the ability to change what side any archetype and power-set can be on, we can safely say that mechanical game design probably does not factor into a player's decision to play through Villain Content or Hero Content.

We can instead focus on the soft and undefinable factors, such as story content. Believe it or not, playing a "villain" can make players feel incredibly uncomfortable. Just look at the feedback given when the Tips missions were first introduced, and then the Vigilante to Villain tips were added in. Some players where a little more than disturbed over what their avatar did / was doing.

Then there are communities such a Supergroups and VillainGroups, or global channels, membership which can be defined, but not explained. Why does one group of players get along with each other, but another group of players does not?

Then there are legacy concerns. Villain-Side content is a decidedly more narrow experience than Hero-Side content, and in many cases, far more repetitive. Case in point being the newspaper system. It is functionally impossible in CoV to level up without, at some point, having to run the Newspaper missions. There is no chain of contacts from level 1 to level 50 that provides a coherent storyline or process of a storyline. While in terms of total content, CoV may have parity to CoH, as a quick trip to Ouroborus would indicate, actually getting to CoV's content generally requires more hoop jumping. Will this change with the "find a contact" or whatever feature in I21? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know.

At the end of the day, Villain-Side content is going to be Villain-side content, and hero-side content is going to be Hero-side content.

Players will play what they want to play.

If somebody wants to play villain-content, they will play villain-content. If a player wants to play hero-content, they will play Hero content.

Speaking for myself, I will fight tooth and nail to fight any attempts by any players to try and convince the developers that some over-arching system must be in place to force players to choose one side or another for the sake of "equalizing player faction sizes"

yeah. And I thought I typed fast...

none really.

I know it's not a surprise to a large number of players, but that generally hasn't stopped players asking for it.

Hey Sharker.

Don't worry, Freedom isn't far off

400-800 points.

Anymore and the cost of a power-set goes from "I can get it with my subscription" to "now I'm paying far more than I did before, this is not worth it"

I'd say 1 or 2 months worth of free points instead.

As a subscriber I would not respond well to "only" having enough points to keep up with new power-sets and nothing else.

Bull manure.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...88&postcount=7

Now back to whatever you thought you were saying.

It only irked people who made gigantic assumptions and keep trying to rewrite history.

It did not irk anybody who was actually... you know.. paying attention.

They didn't miss them.

There was no reply.

All of those threads were based on giant assumptions made by players who either intentionally misread and / or misheard everything the developers said.

How exactly are the developers supposed to respond to players who are the textbook version of delusional: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/delusional


Good. You haven't made one yet.

So... people got excited... about a beta version of a game engine... that they new wasn't final...

Um. Why?

What part of BETA do you not understand?

Squashing misconceptions can have little effect. I've squashed your misconception on Incarnate content and Going Rogue more times than I can count, and yet I still see players, such as yourself, claiming that misconception as "truth"

... Wow.

Just. Wow.

You... do not.... on any level... what so ever... grasp the concept of a Beta Test.

This is just so far out there, I don't even know where to begin. You really need to read through that article I wrote years ago about testing beta software.


And while I'm at it, knock this little period thing of yours off. All it does is increase the space your post takes up, nothing more.

If you want to make your posts be more noticeable, say something that cannot be debunked with 2 seconds of google searching.

Hey, when you are a Sith Lord or the best bounty hunter in the business, genocide is just another Tuesday.

If you've read what I've wrote before, I'm not asking them to do that. The City of Heroes engine runs perfectly fine as is under Transgaming's G.T.L. or W.I.N.E. bases.

In the case of Transgaming they could likely obtain permission to wrap the Game Client in a modified G.T.L. launcher, much the same way that the OSX release is managed.

Also, nobody's asking them to maintain various Linux Distros. All NCSoft / Transgaming have to do is target Debian / Fedora bases, a decision Transgaming came to... well... a long time ago. As is now Transgaming only packages for Debian 32bit, Debian 64bit, and a generic package for Fedora.

Yes, transgaming does make the program binary available for users with other types of distro's, but the development reality is that the Desktop Linux market is not as fragmented as it appears. It's pretty much Debian or Fedora.

Correct. No one person is going to change their decision. Getting other players motivated to speak up and say something is what would cause a change of direction.

Am I going to wait around for somebody else to say something? Or am I going to step up and be the focal point for other people to look at and rally around?

Strange, I've done that multiple times. It hasn't worked.

Now if you want me to go into WHY reasonable arguments don't work, I'll be happy to do so.

Where should I start? With the F.U.D. that Microsoft constantly spews off that Linux users are all pirates who won't pay money?

With the conceptual idea that any and all software published for the Linux platform has to be GPL compliant?

With the lie that GPL itself is virulent?

With the conceptual idea that there are just too many distributions to support?

With the conceptual idea that there isn't a market to begin with?

I can bring forth data all day long showing that yes, there is a market, pointing out games such as Heroes of Newerth, pretty much every single Humble Indy Bundle made so far, and Epic's old success with Unreal on Linux until Microsoft paid them off to stop releasing a Linux client. I can explain what the GPL really means till I'm blue in the face. I can make a spreadsheet showing how development teams with far less resources than a multi-billion dollar gaming empire easily manage to support 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or in some cases more, Operating Systems with a single code base by using platform neutral API's and toolkits.

It. Hasn't. Worked.

The plain and simple fact is that most modern publishers these days do not do basic market research. Epic Software, for example, is still confused as to all get-out why Unreal Tournament 3 was a flop. It never occurred to Epic that a significant portion of their player-base was no longer on a Windows platform, and were waiting for the Linux client that never appeared. Sales of UT3 were only boosted when the game became playable under Transgaming Cedega and the WINE code-bases. Was it worth it to Epic to take the bribe from Microsoft to can that client over making sales? I'm not in position to judge that. Since Epic Software is still around, obviously what they did worked for them.

One of the problems that many publishers and developers have is that they are stuck in a market-share mentality.

Case in point, the Gamecube and the Wii. After the N64 platform many developers and publishers had largely written Nintendo off, and the Gamecube was plagued by lazy game ports with few developers outside of Capcom taking the platform seriously. Then came the Wii, which again, publishers and developers wrote off. As we all know, the Wii exploded, dominating the sales charts for the next few years, and leaving publishers and developers reeling with just how wrong they were. However, since most publishes and developers had allocated no resources for Wii development, the Wii, like the Gamecube before it, was plagued with lazy ports and shovelware titles. Rather than entering the Wii market with quality games, most publishers and developers shot themselves in the rear end with downright unpleasant game-play experiences. Little surprise that 3rd parties couldn't sell games on the Wii, very few consumers were willing to give those third parties chance... never-minding deliberate attacks on the consumers such as the Goldeneye revamp.

Bringing this back around to Desktop Linux, nobody is saying that the platform is going to be a multi-million dollar sales opportunity from Day 1... but it does not HAVE to be one. Most commercial game publishers and developers approach the Linux platform as though the Linux platform was it's own separate contained little world, and treat it as such. That is a mistake as most commercial publishers and developers will only approach a platform if that platform offers a certain level of return on investment.

The simple fact is, if commercial publishers use platform neutral toolkits and API's, they can hit multiple-platforms with a single code-base... a development mentality most commercial publishers and developers already are having to embrace with game console ports (PS3 uses OpenGL and Linux, Xbox 360 uses a WinNT dervied kernel with DirectX).

This platform-neutral development lesson is also being learned commercial game developers and publishers working with Android and IOS. A code-base using platform neutral API's is a lot easier, and a lot cheaper, to maintain and port between the platforms. Applications that were built with platform-neutral toolkits and API's in the past are also much easier, and cheaper, to modernize and republish... something IDSoftware leveraged with their own mobile app-space games.

Most commercial publishers and developers are once again learning the lessons their progenitors learned back in the 1990's. New platforms need to be approached as growth opportunities, not as guaranteed sales pitches. Yes, a new platform may not reach a certain level of R.O.I. New platforms generally do not have to. New platforms are where customer bases are built up. If that means a few losses up front, so be it. Most commercial publishers and developers have been through this cycle throughout both console generation changes: e.g. Playstation 1 into Playstation 2; and operating system conversions: e.g. Windows 9x into Windows NT. One would think given the ample experience of publishers and developers who took risks back in the 1990's and 2000's by betting on a new platform as a growth market, there would not be the industry stigma towards just getting a Linux client out the door.

Now, I can't fix the perception problem on the part of commercial publishers and developers. I cannot make an executive suddenly start treating Desktop Linux as a growth market. I cannot force executives to implement a policy that development be done in a platform-neutral manner.

I can, however, raise as much noise as possible, hope other people join me, and hope that at some point, hope it's enough to result in a change of policy.