rian_frostdrake

I think there is a subset of gamers who have gotten it in their heads that they have to do some kind of backlash against anime and japanese thigns in general because they have seen a few cases (or more likely heard of a few cases) where people lose perspective with it...pretty much like any fan subgroup. add some 4-chan stupidity and a sprinkle of mild racism/xenophobia and viola'. the stupidity is not too strong on this forum, and some of the less hostile forms lead back to the idea that this game was at one time (i have not seen this, but im something of a latecomer just pre issue 1) as a straight up silver age game. manga and such being outside of both the genre and the time frame in a lot of people's recollection and i can understand, if not sympathize, with such a viewpoint. The good news though is coh does ok with costume and power selections that reflect broad but popular callbacks to anime.

yeah, we dont have the big rumiko takahashi eyes(which amusingly enough, actually originated in western cartoons and impressed osamu tezuka so much that he borrowed it as a stylistic device) and the body types really cant ull off the streamlined "lean and athletic" look a lot of shojo anime males can pull off, but we can make a passable sailor suit, a passable guys school uniform, a large number of powersuit options, the shuriken attacks in martial assault pretty much scream naruto, we have a lot of psychic character options, and katana was in the game day one, albeit with broadsword's animations, despite being in a "silver age" game, i have heard that we may even have an isolated nekomimi in virtue's pocket d. I'm of course always agitating for more because I have generally preferred manga to western comics, but we do ok, and we keep doing better. and outside of the usual suspects, who look amusingly anachronistic ranting about it, like an old man ranting about kids these days and their dad-gummed scooters, people seem generally ok with it.

what can I say, i love the set and love how busy it is. maybe once nature users start saturating the trials it might bug me, but for now the more people running it, the more i enjoy it.

johnny, one thing you KEEP ignoring is that this is a video game based on comics. comics can empower and weaken their characters as needed and often entirely by virtue of the story to avoid making things dull. video games don't have that luxury. we have discussed this before but the "superman curse" refers to the fact that there has never, nor will there ever be a game starring superman that is actually good. why, because while in the controlled circumstances of a comic the author can maintain tension to keep the story interesting, in a strict rule setting the player would either stomp over the challenges (if superman's power was correctly shown), or be dis-empowered to the point they were challenged, in which case it wouldn't really be superman. even in recent hulk games, he can be killed by sufficient amounts of conventional firepower, can you see that happening with "world war hulk"?
Coh is in a somewhat similar boat. make no mistake, we have gotten stronger, maybe a little too strong, but given the pve/noncompetitive nature of the game, it doesn't stand out as much. as arcana has argued in a far more eloquent fashion than i, coh's balance is at least partially what it is because of the inexperience of the original dev team. we were never intended to be as strong as we were even at launch, and a not uncommon argument is that the game lacks any real challenge, even at max difficulty settings. not a comment i personally make, but one that a large enough number of posters have made to make it seem less likely it is just a few munchkins.

Ina way, i think that we dont entirely disagree, many of the things you mentioned are things I am enjoying too, but a common thread through your posts, not just here but over the years is you expect the game to allow you the experience of being the hulk, or superman,even your example of batman evokes one of the most ludicrous plot armored author inflation jobs of comics history, i feel you will always be disappointed because the power levels in comics exist because they have authors who can manage them, and in games that just doesn't translate.

well, if you have a 50, dark astoria is a nice bit of writing that makes your character look like a hardcore butt kicker , has badges for doing things the hard way, and awards solo/small team progression for incarnate stuff.

tips..i love tips, the general content tends to make you blandly good/evil, these allow you to do much better ad more acutally heroic/villianous things.

since you are subbed, try the ssa's, hero merits halp get some of the rarer ios, and the stories let you take on some of the ehavy hitters in lore that the game proper tends to keep as background stuff. ssa1 i enjoyed the heck out of, though some times you will see plot points well before your character catches on, and 2...i have not had time to play, but buzz is good in the threads i have waded into without reading heavily enough for spoilers.

check the outfits too, there is some crazy stuff out there on the market. some of the new powersets are interestign too, i like beam rifle, street justice and nature affinity and water blast, but check all of them and see if they grab you.

made an angelic themed nature/water defender named asperguillum so far enjoying him.

could you be a bit more specific in your question, im not an internet cat.

I tend tot ake breaks, but since i sub in the 14 month deal, I usually dont let my sub lapse, i just do something else for a while. Its good you like the game enough o come back, but a break is productive sometimes.

japanese, and lots of it. I'd love to see the yaoki pop up, with creatures like tengu, oni and bakemono as well as more standard (and creepy) japanese ghosts. I have often suggested having the paper dolls often used by onmyoji in anime as an alternate casting animation for some controls. I'd hug someone if we got a serpentine Asian dragon as a giant monster (with some costume elements for a second dragon head with the whiskers, antler horns and facial hair) maybe even deal with kirin as contacts for blueside and antagonists for red. maybe even throw in a nine tailed fox since we are using our 4 legged rig as much as we are. have weaker foxes with fewer tails, but have a nine tail pop up like a redside giant monster if you beat the lesser ones.

nobody "saved" because i tend to not get so hung up on changes that i feel characters are broken, just changed, but i see sorcery working as a thematic benefit for several of my characters, and i see a few concepts springing forth from martial assault and martial kombat...er combat. so there will be rerolls, and there will be respeccing, lots of it.

I always put gw in the same category of games as phantasy star online. the only massive aspect was the towns/ships. the world was instanced. that really is not the case anymore though, gw2 is far more an mmo. Im already pre purchased on it (thank you abusive amounts of overtime) will play when i get around to it, now that we know when nature affinity hits, I will definitely shift to here to get said defender made and leveled.