a thread to discuss alternatives to "the grind"
By
Aces_High,
Posted on: 2009-07-19 18:03 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Anyone who would say what you say, and actually listened to themselves saying it, would shut up pretty quickly out of pure embarassment.
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Only sensible people know when to be embarassed. As for Nethergoat: Report++
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Lots and lots of people use Oroboros, I'm not sure where you got that one.
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Using an o-portal to switch zones doesn't really count as using Oroborous.
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Yes it does.
It's a great design because it serves a practical purpose everyone enjoys and also opens up a lot of content for those players who're interested in exploring it.
It also quieted multiple categories of whiners.
It's an elegant system and an excellent blueprint for adding multi-use content to the game.
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Yes. If you're using Oroborous to flashback and open up content at the various levels, you're fully taking advantage of the system. And yes, like you said, it's a wonderfully elegant system.
But if all a user does is just use it as a fancy teleporter, it's not really utilizing Oroborous. That'd be like saying "Eden is a great zone because I use it all the time to get to the Hive".
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Orobouros is nothing more than a transit zone to get to other locations. Players can access the flashback system thru their SG terminals.
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Personally, I find tile-matching puzzles irresistible. I count the time I spent in Free Realms sorting letters in the same category as the time I spent on Popcap's website playing Bejeweled. The fact that I levelled up in Postman is pretty much incidental.
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That's an interesting introspect about the nature of minigames inside a uni-macro-game. For me, these things are a HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE distraction that I want to get out of the way so I can get back to whatever else the game was about, as I can't stand these things. I hate tile-matching games, I can't stand to play Tetris for more than 15 minutes every few years, I despise the rearranging the tiles to form a picture game if it's anything less than straightforward (say, using non-equal shaped pieces) and so on and so forth.
In my time, I've played a couple of pure puzzle games. One was a point-and-click adventure that was quite literally one puzzle after the other. They started fairly easy, like "you have a 3 gallon jug and a 5 gallon jug, how do you fill the big one to 4 gallons," only done with chains and weights or the one where you have to match a pattern, but every action moves several pieces at once. They were annoying, but fairly easy, until the game started getting into more and more bizarre puzzles with absolutely no explanation given, or only a riddle to guide you, I suppose with the idea that I'd simply blunder through the puzzles and come up with an idea of what I'm actually supposed to do, let alone how to do it. I ended up reading a guide, and even with THAT, I couldn't track down where in the game I had clues what needed to be done. And that's in a game with a tips system, no less.
The other was Safecracker. I got this game with the idea that I would be cracking safes, and I was hideously interesting what they would have done to make that interesting. The answer was "nothing," because the game ended up a Zork-style explorer in a house with multiple inane puzzles in each room, none of them simple or even comprehensible. The one that really did me in was the aforementioned "move the pieces around to form a picture," only some pieces were too big and couldn't be moved past others. There was also a ball puzzle, where you have to roll a ball around a table until it hit something and mind that you don't roll it off the table. Took me half an hour but I figured this one out, just barely. When I realised, however, that this was a game ENTIRELY about inane puzzles and that they were only going to get WORSE, I removed it from my hard drive. Yuck!
Some people like puzzles and minigames, and truth be told most people can tolerate any puzzle that is simple, obvious or at the very least quick. But I can guarantee that the number of people who will want to sit through a puzzle drops off SHARPLY as the puzzle's difficulty and complexity increase and the amount of available explanation decreases. Very few are the people who will look at a table with pieces scattered around and think "Let's see if I can find a pattern to these and see if I can't figure out how they should be arranged." Most people would just say "Forget this!" and either go do something else or look at a guide.
I'm the kind of person who will give every puzzle a try as long as I know what I'm trying to do. If I find a puzzle that's sort of there and I need figure out what the actual point is, forget it. If the puzzle is so complex that I can't understand how one could possibly solve it, forget it. And, oftentimes, if it feels like it's more a chore than fun to solve it, forget that, too.
With the above tirade in mind, I'm not sure I'm a big fan of introducing minigames and puzzles as an integral part of the game. I'm not sure I'd be specifically opposed to them being added to something like Pocket D as distractions, but given that they're already widely available on the Internet, whereas free games about my custom-made characters kicking [censored] aren't as common, I'm not sure that's a very worthwhile investment of resources.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Lots and lots of people use Oroboros, I'm not sure where you got that one.
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Using an o-portal to switch zones doesn't really count as using Oroborous.
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Yes it does.
It's a great design because it serves a practical purpose everyone enjoys and also opens up a lot of content for those players who're interested in exploring it.
It also quieted multiple categories of whiners.
It's an elegant system and an excellent blueprint for adding multi-use content to the game.
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Yes. If you're using Oroborous to flashback and open up content at the various levels, you're fully taking advantage of the system. And yes, like you said, it's a wonderfully elegant system.
But if all a user does is just use it as a fancy teleporter, it's not really utilizing Oroborous. That'd be like saying "Eden is a great zone because I use it all the time to get to the Hive".
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Orobouros is nothing more than a transit zone to get to other locations. Players can access the flashback system thru their SG terminals.
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Which is what I usually do. I love the O-crystal I put in our base. I pick out an old arc I liked, stock up on some inspirations, get a buff from the empowerment station, and then use the crystal to go right to the zone with the mission. Very very nice!
I was discussing it with Nethergoat, but he seems to think that casting an O-portal to go from AP to Peregrine is using the Oroborous system and considers it elegant. Which is puzzling because building an entire zone with contacts and missions and a flashback system is hardly an elegant solution to traveling from one zone to the next.
Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break
The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
"Life is just better boosted!" -- LadyMage
"I'm a big believer in Personal Force Field on a blaster. ... It's your happy place." -- Fulmens
You can use the O-portal as a transport, and also do Ouroboros arcs. They're not mutually exclusive.
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I was discussing it with Nethergoat, but he seems to think that casting an O-portal to go from AP to Peregrine is using the Oroborous system...
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When you trigger a power called Ouroboros Portal to go to a zone called Ouroboros, you are in fact using the Ouroboros System.
It takes a very special quality of intellect to argue otherwise.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
When one uses the Ouroboros Portal power to use the zone menu from the Ouroboros zone, one is not using the Flashback system. Likewise, if one uses Ouroboros only to access the strike forces, one is not using the Flashback system, either. In both cases one is, however, using features associated with the Ouroboros zone.
Is that the word your little quarrel is about? I don't mean that to sound as condescending as it probably comes off... not entirely, at least. 
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When one uses the Ouroboros Portal power to use the zone menu from the Ouroboros zone, one is not using the Flashback system. Likewise, if one uses Ouroboros only to access the strike forces, one is not using the Flashback system, either. In both cases one is, however, using features associated with the Ouroboros zone.
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Precisely.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
EDIT: Misreplied. In reply to Barata
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I was discussing it with Nethergoat, but he seems to think that casting an O-portal to go from AP to Peregrine is using the Oroborous system...
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So what, just because someone isn't going to the Oroborous to do the TFs or Flashbacks and only to port to another zone doesn't, it doesn't count as "using it"?
Unless you can link me a dev statement saying that using it to port to other zones isn't an intended feature, you're full of it, and I don't mean fluffy stuffing.
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games within games.
chess and backgammon are great ideas. play vs another player, or the AI.
of course risk vs reward would be a factor. but that would be a discussion for another thread.
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Uh, no.
I want dev time put into building CoH, not inventing diversions from the game.
If you like backgammon or chess or poker or whatever, hit Yahoo Games. Heck, you could play CoH in a window and play Yahoo Checkers in a browser.
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Yes! Instead of making distractions and window dressing, improve the core game! Make more powersets to fight with (and new power concepts instead of new graphics for the same thing)! Make more interactive battle environments! More mission tile sets! Stuff like that
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But if all a user does is just use it as a fancy teleporter, it's not really utilizing Oroborous. That'd be like saying "Eden is a great zone because I use it all the time to get to the Hive".
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Yes it is, and no it isn't, respectively.
You're wrong an awful lot, aren't you.
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I take it you don't actually listen to yourself much. Anyone who would say what you say, and actually listened to themselves saying it, would shut up pretty quickly out of pure embarassment.
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I make sense and my positions are internally consistent.
I understand that this makes you feel confused and threatened, but I can't help that.
You're saying "Using Oroboros isn't really using Oroboros", which is gibberish. That caliber of argument doesn't deserve explanation, so it gets jranger'd.
If you'd like a detailed explanation, make a better case for your position.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone