uberschveinen

There was a short rollback last night that took off maybe an hour or so from the server when it went down for a half-hour. I assume it was a server-wide bug that just had to go.

Jus tremember: Characters with a concept that you can really get into and a costume that you like automatically get a +100% buff to levelling speed.

The legalities are, for the most part, fine. NCsoft has full control over the story that you put in the game as it exists in the game, as defined by the EULA. While some parts of the EULA are a bit fruity, this element is, at least, enforceable in the jurisdictions I've checked where the game is playable.

The problem isn't so much a legal one as it is one of lines. The developer/player distinction has always been very hard for commercial MMORPGs, and the attitude on both sides is generally a vague dislike of the concept of removing it. There's no specific or definable reason why the 'rules' should be this way save that too many peopel find the concept vaguely discomfiting.

It's like men wearing skirts outside of the UK. It's not a legal problem. There's no definable reason why you can't do it. But nobody really likes the idea.

Because as it is the way AE is set up doesn't actually bring the best arcs to the surface. It's a self-reinforcing popularity contest, where the only way to get more than a few plays is to already have dozens, and the only way to get 5 and dozens is to have so many plays the needless griefing won't bring it down. There's a reason all but a tiny handful of arcs in the Hall of Fame were released barely after launch.

Also, given the amount of, let's be frank, crap in AE, it's not really fair to expect developers to have to do the drudgework of lokign for worthy arcs. I once decided that for every reputable arc I played in AE, I'd pick a random unrated arc and play it. That lasted two days before I would have quit the game rather than keep going.

If this were to happen, I imagine the best way to do it would be like the Dr. Aeon contests that used to run. They had a better guarantee of quality, and more importantly, because they were run to a set theme, the content it generates could actually be directed to where the developers want it most.

I think the biggest problem here would just be issues with formalising player-generated content into developer work. Player-generated content in general is looked down upon by developers in games and often outright mocked. AE is actually leagues beyond any other MMORPG in this regard. There's a lot of professional dislike to get over for things like this to happen. If it could happen anywhere it'd be here, but I just don't think it'll happen.

This would be good, but the developers who run missions just don't seem to spend time redoing old arcs, save to repair genuine bugs or player-outrage-generators, and very rarely during a zone revamp. I assume it's because they get better player response for just making new content.

Yeah, but who'd voluntarily fight a Ballista?

What's this? Blueside being disadvantaged in power pools in favour of Red?

This isn't unfair. This is JUSTICE.



Really, though, decent idea, but it probably won't happen. It took a couple of years for us to convince the developers that we shouldn't be permanently stuck with one PPP only, because they thought it was 'World-appropriate'. You're not going to knock this one over this easily.

Thug Masterminds pay other people dollars to fling around pistols.

Single pistol won't happen as a set. There's more important things to animate in the game, and more demanded things even in this set, namely, less ostentatious powers. Single blade exists in two different flavours and why don't you know this argh.

If you specifically want one pistol and the emote-style knife, buy the temps.

Luckily, the early ones are all relatively easy, since so many do them. Look for teams 5-20 and if everything runs smoothly sooner or later that team will try one.

Now, if you're only low, that's why you're feeling flat. All but a select few sets can feel equally devastating; the question is when they start to kick into full form.

The single most powerful-feeling character I ever played was a Super Strength/Shield Defense Brute. This character felt not so much like a character as a fundamental force of nature that I had, through some accident, been mistakenly granted. Most sets and combos have a way of activating their MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE mode where everything just dies, but this guy was MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE at the minimum and just got a little absurd after that.

There are a few reasons he worked so well.

Firstly, Suepr Strength. It's pretty much the easiest set to play with in the start. You get your entire attack chain for the rest of your game by level 8, and at level 18, you get Rage, the best power in any set ever, a massive damage and tohit buff that by level 19 is always on. Then when you hit 32 you get Foot Stomp, the finest PBAoE the developers have chosen to bless a set with. It's a little less than half the damage of, say, Lightning Rod, for which minor inconvenience it's got less than a fifth the recharge. You get to drop the bomb two or three times in every single spawn. Super Strength also has the convenience of absurd amounts of knockdown. You can kill Elite Bosses with SS without them ever getting a shot off at you. The most important part, though, is that the set just feels absurdly massive, with huge shockwaves and explosions and people flying everywhere every time you hit any attack.

Now, SS has a weakness. Shocking, yes, but true. It does a damage type that's often resisted. How do we deal with this? ADD MORE DAMAGE.

Shield Defense is, in addition to being a fine and functional defesive set that gets downright good on teams, gives you EVEN MORE DAMAGE. It has Against All Odds, which gives you a generous boost to damage for every poor fool who wanders into your Instant Death Radius. Combined with Rage, you're adding at least another +100% to your damage pretty much all the time, and EVEN MORE against big groups, which are, it should be noted, your natural prey, before we even talk about Fury. But, since the finest damage buffs known to man are obviously not enough, the developers in their beneficence granted us Shield Charge. This power is basically Lightning Rod, except in your secondary. So now not only do you get the Foot Stomp carpet bomber, and an absurdly massive permanent damage buff, you you also get a tactical nuke.

Once both are loaded, the game is almost dangerously fun. You walk up to any similar-level mob, hit Foot Stomp, then Shield Bash. Everything is now dead. Move on. If it is not dead, it is a boss, and oh dear, you've got massive single-target damage on top of silly amounts of knockdown. Sure, you COULD notionally be overwhelmed, but this just doesn't happen because everything dies too fast. I had to stop using my SS/SD Brute for testing my AE missions because when I was using him it never even crossed my mind that roving all-Malta-Sapper patrols would actually be challenging.

In short, SS/SD has massive single target damage, monstrous AoE damage, colossal damage buffs all the time, easy-cap positional defense, two damned good +health powers, a solid backing of resistance, and so much knockdown that none of the defense will ever matter against just one enemy. Also, it gets good earlier than all the other Brutes and never stops getting better. SS/SD killed my ability to ever enjoy playing other Brutes, because they just can't duplicate the feel of a runaway bus full of freight trains.

The Super Stunners are real bastards if you don't have Brute-grade mez resistance or better. Held-slept-stunned me for about three minutes straight.

Syndicate jackets come under Baron jackets and Racer, I think.

You can get it either side. Complete all of the accolade requirements for either Force of nature or Geas of the Kind Ones will earn you that power. You have to complete all of either set, not just some of each. The requirements aren't equivalent.

One of the tricks I think a few people will pull is working out which side has the easiest accolades, and swapping them around to get them easier. Demonic is much easier than Archmage, and Atlas Medallion is much easier than Marshal. This depends on whether tha accolades actually translate across, which I'm not sure they will

It's probably a server backlog due to the absurd numbers of new characters being made and deleted with GR. It should stop in a few days. If not, it may actually be a bug.

No, it's not according to him, or anyone with any sense at all.

The inherent presumption in any contract ever is that, if you agree to perform an act or not to perform an act, that you have the authority to do so. This is so staggeringly obvious that not only is it assumed to be a basic element of any contract ever written in every last legitimate jurisdiction on the planet, but that in nearly all of these it is not actually possible to remove this implied term from the contract even with express terms.

Claiming that because NCsoft can't claim copyright of a character you don't own that they can't claim ownership of characters you do is almost as well-thought-through as the notion that because it's legal to stab yourself as a person in the throat that it must therefore be legal to stab any person in the throat.

The strange thing is that after hitting 27 and adding a handful of damage slots to the single-target powers, everything just seems to work. Certainly, it's not the runaway bus full of freight trains that's a SS/SD Brute, but now I can actually fight bosses without using a Shivan. I haven't changed anythign that could actually explain this, but so long as it does work, I'm not going to ruin it by asking questions.

Energy/Thermal is still incredibly boring, though.

My favourite part of the system?

The Tip missions.

Seriously, these missions have literally done every single thing I've wanted to happen with missions since I started playing, even then ones I didn't ask because they were obviously too ambitious. They let your character take on an active role and actually DO something instead of just following orders. The reoccuring characters, complexity of groups, and the dialogue used suggesting that each group has its own unique plans that brought them here gives the game that real comic-book feel, of a hundred different plots going on at once, and this is yours. It lets you feel like the main character in your story in ways that weren't possible before. It gives you so many more options in who your character is, going from the previous binary choice of Goody MacTwoshoes or Doctor Baron von Evilsatan to a full range of character styles from power-mad psycho to money-is-money to criminal-with-standards. I haven't even been to Praetoria yet; I've been having that much fun with the Tips. The system as it is is a genuine accomplishment, and I have to congratulate the developers responsible for their fine work.

Going to enjoy the Tip missions for a while first. They're everything peopel have always been asking for in missions, with not just proactive content where you're the one leading the charge for once, but also proper moral dynamics between Goody McTwoshoes and Doctor Baron von Evilsatan. The Rogue ones in particular I like they cater so well for the characters who don't care what they're doing so long as they get paid. Also, you can <i>finally</i> do something for the Scrapyarders instead of just ruinign everything.

I assume I'll roll a new character eventually, when I get tired of these.

Actually, given the fistful of server upgrades they've had over the years, this could actually be the fullest the servers have been since launch.

Do we know how much more capacity the current servers have over the originals?

I've always had some problems playing Corruptors, but until recently I played it off to getting an Energy/Thermal to fifty solo-only back before you could drop missions. Recently, though, I've tried them again, having played the other Villain ATs to death.

Nothing has changed. It's still an exercise in frustration that serves no useful purpose. At no point during my attempt to play these characters has the game actually been fun. There is only so long I can tolerate having genuine difficulty with three even-level minions, and being forced to use Demonic against some Lieutenants is almost insulting. I've yet to beat a boss without a Shivan or a fistful of purple inspirations, and Elite Bosses are a lost cause.

Obviously, something is wrong. If this archetype was actually as unplayable as it seems, it wouldn't be played by any sane person. I can't figure out what it is, so I'm hoping someone else here felt similarly until they realised that they were doing something stupid and figured it out.

It shouldn't make a difference, since it felt equally unenjoyable across the board, but my current effort is a Dual Pistol/ Pain Dmination corruptor. Slotted with IOs, at level 26. If there's no reason for the game to be this painful to play he won't make 27.

Because some people actually play a game to play a character, not to watch meaningless numbers march up the screen.

Here's the thing about a End-User License Agreement. In fact, it's the thing about contracts in general.

You can put whatever you want in them. Anything at all. It doesn't have to be sensible. I can take a standard mortgage contract and, at the end of it, write down "Subclause 22(b): The signatories to this contract acknowledge that this contract is not a helicopter." It doesn't even have to be reasonable. I can make subclause 22(c) "The signatories to this contract agree to, within one year from this date, transcribe this written contract into such a form that it is a helicopter." Hell, a contract doesn't even have to be legal for it to work. Literally tens of thousands of contracts a year are agreed upon, carried out, and completed that are actually not a legitimate contract, and a fair few of these are actually illegal contracts that cannot by law be made.

Only one thing matters in contract law, and that is enforceability. Although you can put anything you like in a contract, when you actually have to force someone to follow the contract in a court, a judge will only be able to force the other party to the contract to do some of those things. What these things are in general is pretty common in most Western nations, but the specifics will vary quite widely between jurisdictions.

This is why the EULA is written with such absurdly broad language. By giving themselves every right imaginable, if NCsoft ends up trying to enforce those rights in court, they won't usually miss out on rights when the contract is rectified to be legal for that specific jurisdiction. They lose nothing for this, since if a term of the contract is unenforceable, there is no penalty applied to it. There's also a chance that, because the proportion of game-players who actually have even a basic understanding of contract law is not great, that a player will choose to fulfil the parts of the contract that are unenforceable because they don't know better.

If it ever came into a court, in any jurisdiction, many of the provisions in the EULA would either be excised or rectified into much weaker forms. The thing is, what are you going to be doing under the EULA that's worth tens of thousands of dollars and days of your life to enforce?