Disappointed

Oh, I'm quite certain that art could come from a videogame. I suppose there might be a communication problem here, as certainly lots of artists are employed nowadays for a games' graphics and music, not to mention the writing. It wasn't my intention to minimize that at all, as I realize the kind of work is hard and takes time. It's too bad that English doesn't have words that would distinguish among different types of art, insofar as the intentions of the artist.

Also, I think, it might be a mistake to equate a videogame with a movie, in terms of story telling. Watching a movie is a passive experience; you are merely an observer of events, and nothing you did would ever change what happens there. A videogame is necessarily different because it is interactive. There's an opportunity there for something rather awesome that I think has only barely been explored so far, be it from technical limitations or not having a proper frame of reference because the idea is so new, or what have you. That's why I say I'm not convinced that it's an artform yet, but that it's approaching that. You see more and more glimpses of that happening now, and given enough time it might flourish into something really incredible.

And again I do appreciate this kind of response. While the peanut gallery around here would rather fling po... er, peanuts at me for daring to disagree with their apparently sacred ideas instead of, you know, actually debating the issue (though I will admit to enjoying giving them back what they give; never start a fight but always finish it!), I thus find such discourse very refreshing!

reasonable dissent is different than being a hostile malcontent. The drop rates were doom PLUS rational statements supported by facts. there are posters whose adherence to massively unpopular causes or irrationally crazed theories, particularly ones that later are shown to be factually inaccurate, only marginalize the causes they support.

I tend to disagree on the subject of interactivity. While it is true that a film tells a story it is also true that a great film draws one into the story.

Art is a form of communication that requires an individual to connect with the artist on some level. A picture, sculpture, sonnet, film or song is risen from the status of mere media to that of art only through the interaction of the human senses. Sight, hearing, touch, and even smell and taste if one accepts cuisine as an art form are required to appreciate the elegance and emotion that can be inspired by the human expression that we call art.

It could be said that "video games" have upped the interactivity ante a bit by requiring sight, hearing, touch and a more tactile interaction but it is still an individual connecting with an artist, or group of artists, through a given medium. A "video game" is a story that draws you in by making you part of the story.


>

That only means as an artform it has not yet achieved its full potential yet, or alternatively its not the artform you want it to be. That does not mitigate the fact that it is somewhat insulting to claim it isn't an artform at all.

Saying something is not an artform is making a very strong judgement. Its saying no game is a work of art and no game could be a work of art. Saying the reverse, that games are an artform, *doesn't* require I believe that all games are works of art. It only states that they can be.

In fact, saying games are not an artform is a stronger insult than saying CoX is not a work of art. If I tell BaB "CoX is not a work of art because ..." I'm saying the game itself has no artistic merit. He will probably disagree, but its a debatable judgement. If I tell BaB "games are not an artform" I'm telling him that nothing he does, for this or any game, can ever be called a contribution to a work of art, regardless of circumstance, and by extension his profession as "MMO animation designer" is not an artistic profession, period.

The claim that games might be assemblages of art but not art itself is a hair I'm disinclined to split in this context.

That was Marauder speaking

Supported doom is great, as is supported celebration.

On the other end of the spectrum I don't personally see your depiction of the "tinfoil crowd" as any different than blind allegiance. Neither is very admirable to me.

*I've been guilty of being a member of the tinfoil crowd and the blind allegiance group in this very game. It gets ugly on both sides of the fence.

I don't think that far fashion foward.

Maybe, but historically the big negative changes have coincided with the big positive changes. If something big is going to happen it will likely be with GR. I can't think of a single issue I've been excited for that wasn't quickly followed by a significant change that was hard to swallow. The bigger the positive change the bigger the negative change they can stick through. I hope nothing as heavy handed as ED2.0 (ie diminished returns) come down the pipe, but I personally feel a lot of indicators are pointing toward something significant occuring.


I don't think I'm all that far off in left field. I've read a number of comments from Castle stating his dissatisfaction with current implementations resulting in overperformance and I just don't think they put the time and effort that has gone into make Diminished Returns only to use it in 2% of the game.

The current chasm that exists in the game is astonishing, many characters have returned to nearly i4 levels of power, while many other players are effectivly licking their boots.

Also DR would have a trivial impact on the things you mention such as: drop rates, xp progression and such. But it would greatly contain the outliers (solo and teamed, IO'd and non IO'd) that over time become more and more prolific. All while having virtually no impact on the "casual player". I tend to min/max so I'm not looking forward to it, but for what its worth I think it is coming and similar to ED probably necessary for the health of the game.

Or they might take it in the other direction and allow everyone to be a demi-god, but I see that as less likely. But I also see the status quo as unlikely to continue too.

That's a bit of cherry-picking of Castle's comments. Castle has said that if it had been up to him, he would have considered a "diminishing returns"-like system for CoH in many areas**, but he's also said that changes like that would probably be inappropriate for a game of this maturity.

As to the "time and effort" part: the effort to put the tech in itself was probably relatively low. I don't know which programmer did it, but my guess is that whoever did it it was a couple days work at most (that's an educated guess based on how long other things have taken to be actually written, of which I have some limited information). Most of the time was spent actually tweaking the values and testing them within PvP contexts, which could have been weeks or months of man-hours of work within the powers team. That effort would only be applicable to PvP, and would not transfer to PvE: the DR alpha/beta parameters would have to be rebalanced for PvE (see below).


Not true. Consider that we know blasters were, by the devs' definition, underperforming prior to I11. The attempted remedy was to modify Defiance, and one component of that change was to attempt to give a greater percentage of players better damage (D1.0 was also a damage boost, but the thought was that directly attempting to leverage D1.0 was getting all but expert players killed). If DR lowers blaster damage***, it would almost certainly hurt blaster balance - meaning blaster xp progression and reward earning capability - by logical inference. It would probably have other balancing effects as well.

The only way I could see DR being implemented in PvE would be if the entire system was rebalanced for DR. That seems unlikely. Otherwise you'll have situations like "normal" SR scrappers will be walking around with maybe 23% defense and currently soft-capped SRs will have maybe 33% defense. Scrappers are going to pop unstoppable or MoG and discover they only have 55% resistance. This is far too drastic a set of changes. I believe Castle is unlikely to sign off on such drastic changes to the PvE experience, and even if he did I would bet he would never get that past either Positron or Brian (Clayton, the producer).


The status quo is never preserved indefinitely. That doesn't mean its really fair or useful to predict "changes" in the general case. When the Invention System was introduced, a lot of people predicted significant nerfs to counterbalance in PvE. Its been six issues, and four since the dev team has had the enhanced resources made available by the NCSoft buyout, without such changes. Even if such changes are eventually made, say, two years from now, all those people will still have been wrong, not "eventually right."



** A proper read of Castle's prior public comments suggests that Castle would have originally been in favor of linear returns for survivability-related effects like defense and resistance (not too dissimilar from the type of diminshing returns on resistance in Champions Online) and harsher, more genuinely diminishing returns for things like buffs and debuffs, or alternatively a significant stacking limit on such effects.

*** At current values, DR would reduce 0.95 ED soft-capped slotting to about 0.80, and assuming blasters have an average of +35% damage from Defiance their 1.30 damage strength would drop to about 1.03. That's a net reduction comparable to removing the damage buff from Defiance altogether.

I'm always curious about peoples proclamations that they know what's required for, or how proposed changes will affect "the health of the game".

You aren't any better informed about this than Arcanaville (or any of the rest of us). You're just basing a prediction on your own feelings of what you think should happen, and reading Castle's comments through that colored lens. Of course the interpretation and prediction seems imminent and sensible to you - you came up with it.

And so does whatever view people see through their lenses. You have adequately described perspective.

I'm also not basing it off what I think should happen. That could not be any more inaccurate. I'm just saying what I think will happen.
You're second statement aside from that, is just repeating exactly what I already said.

Regardless, it is quite a way down the road. Further discussion of it will provide nothing more than "cause I say so's". Not that there is anything more concrete than that being said to support either position already.

Say, it's entirely possible the world will end in 2012. The Mayan calendar says so. Would you happen to have any evidence that this won't happen? It would really put my mind at ease.

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.

Oops, I'd actually be the completely wrong person to ask for evidence disproving it if you have been following the flow of the conversation.

If there was a documented history of world ending events that indicated a predictable pattern and it so happened to have the next one fall in 2012 I might be inclined to agree with the Mayans. But I don't think there has been an established pattern when it comes to apocalyptic events. Well, unless you are a fan of Nicolas Cage

I don't really think believing the next biggest batch of shiny will be accompanied by the next biggest batch of....negative performance adjustments is very far fetched. It is consistent with how the game is handled. If it is going to happen it is the logical time for it to occur.

rep said:
"It's not coming. They said so when they did it to PvP."
link?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frosticus Well, unless you are a fan of Nicolas Cage

Do such mythical creatures even exist?! I thought those were Google Bots on Nicholas Cage's fan site...

The Mayan Calendar has several dates as a possible end of the world, one of which roughly coincided with the Spanish invasion of their lands and the utter annihilation of their entire nation and their entire culture. So, yes, it has precedent.

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.

Clearly not; you said:

The numbers support no other conclusion other than implementing DR with its current values would seriously impact PvE performance for xp progression, and moreover there is no other reasonable conclusion than that it would also affect cross-archetype balance.

That makes your logical inference false:

As "the time and effort" put into DR is inapplicable to PvE, its premise is provably false. Just because none of us knows for certain if DR is coming at some future date, doesn't make any wild conjecture you come up with equally valid.

First, the possibility of the world ending in 2012 is just a little bit less than the possibility of it not ending, and second, I'm not so sure the calendar of a South American civilization would be any more acurate for doomsday predictions than the calendars of other civilizations who also have predicated the end of the world at various dates that have been and gone

By my reckoning, the issues with the largest or most visible extensions to the game or gameplay are:

Issue 4: PvP
Issue 6: Bases and CoV-related
Issue 9: Invention System
Issue 11: Real Numbers, Weapon Customization, XP smoothing
Issue 14: Architect
Issue 16: Power Customization
(honorable mention: Issue 3: epic archs, EPPs, global chat, notoriety)

The Issues that introduced the largest performance reduction changes (at least in scope) were:

Issue 5: Global Defense Reductions
Issue 6: Enhancement Diversification
Issue 13: PvP diminishing returns

I don't see the pattern myself. If someone has a version of the release data that supports the theory that the devs make a conscious effort to release performance reducing changes with high profile releases to reduce their psychological impact, I'd like to see that.

Originally Posted by PapaSlade Rangle's right....this is fun.

That was a buff

lol.

Originally Posted by PapaSlade Rangle's right....this is fun.

Are we sure about that?
I figure it's more like "Dang, chiseling this stone calender is hard work. My hands are cramping and the high priest should be satisfied with this. After all, it goes centuries after my great-grandkids will be dead. And if this is so important, those lazy kids can continue the pattern. It ain't rocket science, (which no one has invented yet) and 12/12/12 is a good number to stop at.
I'm going fishing."

Or there were additional calender tablets that were lost.
You know, maybe Conquistadors tossed them into the bog, used them as boat anchors, etc. Loser son pawned it for gold coins to buy meth from a nieghboring tribes. Whatever.

I am by no means a history buff, so I can't really give you a good number on this one. I watched (well, listened to while I played) a documentary about them, which explained that the Mayan calendar pointed to many dates as a possible end of the world, many of which have already passed. The 2012 year predicted is, I believe, an extrapolation of the way they measured time, the state of celestial bodies and their movement and the Mayan interpretation of what those meant. I picked that particular date both because it's at least slightly famous, and because it belongs to a civilization that DID see the end of their world already. I wanted to have at least a little credibility

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.