I don't feel VIP at all

Does that mean we can't use the tar and feathers on them?


Can we still have the witch we hired turn them into newts?

You are wrong - Only VIPs get a FREE monthly stipend. Everyone else who wants points has to buy them.

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

In TOR (yup that game pretty much killed voice over for most people) game pauses for a few seconds before and after cutscenes start and in some cutscenes you can see your characters start moving slower Also in TOR most cutscenes are just potraits focusing on whoever is talking so it doesn't have a feel of cutscene at all just a normal get mission dialogue with voice but more than usually you can see your character or talking one getting slower and mouth completly stop moving sometimes even wrong character is on screen and it only slides back a few seconds later to talking one. Also TOR had some sort of metric that whenever you were getting closer an NPC in game they will randomly play a dialogue (much like when random people walking around suddenly talks about a players achievements) and if you entered in an NPC crowded area (like a cantena) game was slowing down becuase of sudden burst of sounds lucky it was only playing a certain amount of them at the same time so it wasn't a sudden chaos of sounds.

I agree that mostly people got allergic to voice over becuase of TOR. Like I said I would prefer Secret Worlds Voice Over. You can skip it, it feels more cinematic and it does not slow down gameplay in anyway (being played both TOR and TSW at highest settings I can tell you that there is a huge performance difference between both of them)

EDIT: Almost forgot one of most important reason why complete voice over in an MMO is bad. It is language barrier, now I am not mentioning people not knowing english it is totally different. Just you know enough english to play a game does't mean you have enough diction to talk or listen in said language and if you are going to read subtitle anyway what is the point of voice over? I think this is the biggest cons of voice over. But than again this is personal opinion.

There is a difference between reading and listening. You can read faster than you can listen so when a guy lets say giving same mission on text and on voice over voice over feels like going forever while you can read through text. And hearing same guy over and over again (for example assume Crimson giving his mission with voice over reading all that text aloud ) becomes dull after a certain time. In TOR it is worse because your character also talks for each of your choices (good part is most of times it is different than what is selected) or sometimes just as part of conversation after getting to level 25ish you got sick of talking and turn off voice entriely but cutscene still triggers and you need to skip them.

I think you lost track of the fact that I was talking specifically about the VO in SW:TOR.

As for their implementation here in CoH, I think they'd be just as bad. In the beginning, the scripting for CoH tended toward the terse -- maximal information using minimal verbiage. Now it's incredibly verbose, with a bunch of stylistic foofaraw* that seems unending at times. Imagine trying to wade through that at speaking speed instead of the 10x you can accomplish via reading.

And yes, the VO in TOR *did* slow down computers, something widely complained about during beta. They tried to correct it I guess, but I never saw much improvement, suffering many stutters and often crashes during particularly heavy expository scenes. I don't know why that would happen, but it did.

* That's a real word.

The graphics are a different barrier. If we eliminated the graphics and reduced MMOs to a text adventure, we could make MMOs more accessible to tools that assist the blind. That is, after all, where they started.

Ooh, oooh, we finally get this?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

I dont have a pony in this race, but I did want to chime in and say I did not have that particular problem. Im sure it existed, but my particular experience was different, the VOs were fine for me.

--Frog

That's actually a big problem I have with "dialogue" not just in video games, but in movies, as well. Recently, I've been trying to figure out why Darksiders II doesn't impress me as much as the original, and a lot of it comes down to the sequel playing out most of its dialogues like Mass Effect, with just two people facing each other and talking. This works if you have solid voice actors and a strong script, but the original got around this by making the characters in these scenes much more "animate" as they talk. Better, more precise lip-syncing, more natural motion, more gesturing and moving around, that sort of thing. I still miss seeing Samael hunched over and stomping around as he spoke.

That's even worse in live-action movies, when your entire conversation consists of two people basically standing relatively still and talking. It's at that point where a movie stops being a movie and becomes an audio book. A REALLY good actor can still pull it off just via facial expression and tone of voice, but I've found the best sort of dialogue scenes to be the ones where characters do more than just stand around and occasionally loop an emote.

This, to bring it back to the game, is why I don't like cutscenes in City of Heroes and why I don't feel like Mass Effect style conversations can work here. It's boring to sit through and misses the point of having these things show up on-screen, rather than in plain text, though be it narrated. If you're going to give something its own specific cutscene, it can't just be people standing up and talking with the occasional emote. Either you need an ACTUAL cutscene, or you can deliver it through text.

As with most parts of game design, nothing grants a benefit without also having a cost entirely separate from development time and resources. Cutscenes have the cost of halting the action and forcing people to sit idly by while they play out, and this is only really worth if the cutscene is worth watching for its own merit. Which none of ours are, sadly. And that's not a dig at our "cutscene makers" - the game just doesn't have the tool or the budget to make custom cutscenes.

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.

You said: How can it be about how TOR did it, when you knew it would be bad when they said 'completely voice acted'? And that it's not fine for one where you pay a monthly sub?

Voice Overs can't be done for CoH, because they'd have to retroactively add it to ~10 years worth of content, and people have already been using various 'voices' in their heads for various people (it's one of the reasons people always rage whenever a book is turned into a movie), so regardless of how good the voice actors were, people wouldn't be happy due to different expectations.

Again, I'm talking about in general for MMOs, while you keep trying to say 'Well, it didn't work for TOR!'. From the sound of it, TOR had lots of problems that was related entirely to their implementation. Again, I don't give a crap how TOR did it, because it's just an implementation. Any complaints that are specific to TOR aren't specific to voice overs, which, again, is what you said was bad for games where you pay a monthly sub.

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

I've said such about some products on the market, but for me it's more a case of 'I don't think the prices charged are good value, so I don't buy them. If they were cheaper, I may reconsider that.'

Let's take the IO set 'Theft of Essence': 856 Paragon Points when not on sale, 428 paragon points when on sale. 6 IO's forming a set that can't be traded, sold on the AH or upgraded with Enhancement Boosters, can only be used on one character unless enhancement unslotters are used to remove it and have it sent to your e-mail in box.

For 56 points left I can get a power set that could be used on any new character on any server I have space on. For 28 points less than the sale price, I can get a costume bundle that has pieces that can be used on any costume slot on any character on my account.

Seeing as I have many characters, I'd rather A: Purchase things that can be used on many characters, or B: Get Super Packs for the merits and ATO's, then convert merits/sell ATOs for inf for the enhancements I want.

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SUPPORT - IT'S NOT JUST A GROUPING OF ATs
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More Than a Game
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I can't decide which argument is more ridiculous. That one or the one that goes, "I'd spend more money on the game if you gave me the stuff I want for free." As if they think the devs are stupid enough to believe that if these clowns are getting everything they want for free they'll turn around and spend money on stuff they don't want.

Then of course there's the other related argument I've seen that goes something like "If you guys sold such-n-such for half the price then I'd bet twice as many people would buy it". Assuming they could even rely on getting twice the sales how exactly would making a price reduction like that benefit Paragon Studios?

Wait?
Are you saying they Devs are working on Clown Summoning? You heard it here firs... er, nvm.

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

Killer Nazi Space Klowns on the Moon with a Big Red Ball.

I'm down to less than 700 points. At one point, I had OVER NINE THOUSAND!!!

I stopped buying market origins when they stopped doing sales on individual pieces.

P. shifter proc + End Mod for 120 pts? Yes please. The entire set for whatever, no thanks. Unless that whatever was around 120pts. Now that you have to buy the whole set even 1/2 off doesn't put most sets into impulse range.

I hate all the fiddling purples require so I *love* the ability of the attuned pieces to exemplar over their full range for set bonuses. If they were cheaper I'd be trading cold hard digital cash for all the time savings of not having to fight the AH to get the pieces I want at the level I want. But at ~$10 for some non-purple sets, not so much.

You see a man named Prosser in front of a bulldozer. He is screaming obscenities.

>Lie in mud

The mud feels warm and squishy around you. Prosser is yelling at you to move.
Your friend Ford Prefect happens to drop by...

Sarcasm aside you know what I mean a languages written form is universal but verbal form can change even from village to village and some people can't even tell what otherside saying if their dialect differs too much (London english and Scotish or Irish english for example). Now they could get very clear dialected people to play roles but that becomes monotone after a while (just like how it is in TOR after a couple of levels all NPC's sound same and you start to press spacebar only to get to choice than conitnue spamming spacebar because there is no auto-skip and keeping your finger on spacebar was not working.)

And why should a blind person should get a game which eats %70 or more of resources of their computer on something they can't use (graphics) Now is there was a voice over version of a MUD I could understand that.

Solve it the same way TV/Radio did decades ago: Received Pronunciation (UK) or General American (US). Pretty much anyone that understands English will likely understand General American, since it's spoken so widely.

Nothing says you have to cater to everyone, anyways. Try and do as many people as possible, but you don't need voice overs for Esperanto.

Text to speech. It even works for ASCII art!

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

Not sure how you managed to think I was talking about paragon points.
You TOTALLY missed my intended point, but hey. You seem to do that a lot, so I'll forgive you. You also seem to snip out certain parts of posts to reinforce your delusions, so...once again, I forgive you. That's twice. All you get.

What is a slap in the face is the fact that I pay a monthly stipend. Which should set me above marketing schemes and ploys. But does not.

What is a slap in the face is that the very same subscription fee was just fine for game play for a VERY LONG TIME. Freedom comes along and all of a sudden, it's no longer enough. A blatant statement was made by the devs which I will paraphrase here. "We once got $15 a month from you, and that covered everything we put out. Now, however....we want a $15 sub and extra for you to get everything we put out."

True, we're getting stuff at a more frequent pace. This just shows me that the game developers were capable of this pace previous to the Freedom model, but were too.....heck, I'm not sure -why- they didn't. Another slap in the face.

Now...I get that not everyone shares my opinion. Which is fine. Really. ^_^
But to insult me and tear me down simply because my opinion is different from the majority is.....well.......just immature. Wrong. I'm a human being too, with the same right to express my concerns and feelings here as everyone else. Kinda makes me wish there was a way to ignore certain forumites posts like you can ignore certain people ingame. The vitriol that is spewed forth as common expression in these forums is exactly why in six plus years, I've posted less than five hundred times.

But, I digress. Back to subject.

Yes, I feel wounded and slighted by the way we as V.I.P.'s are being treated. We get the same marketing department schemes to drum up money tossed our way that is intended for premium players and free players. That should change. Not likely to, but I wish it would.

We as V.I.P.'s also do enjoy a good number of ingame perks. Which I am EXTREMELY grateful to have. Almost 24 character slots on Virtue alone filled. If I dropped my sub, I'd lose at least six of them, as I'm not sure the previous verteran program yearly slots count as purchased slots. Nor am I sure if I'd get to keep the 12 "original" slots or get dropped down to the 2 or 4 slots a premium/free player gets. I like mah global channels. I like having bases for my characters. And yeah, they're SG's and VG's with nothing but my characters in them.
Pretty sure we know what all the perks are....and those perks are why I'm still paying the sub.

To sum up.....yes, I love this game. It's my first MMO, and having tried the others out there since being introduced to the genre by CoX......I come back every time. For the most part, the community here ingame is outstanding. I've a wide circle of friends and at any time of day or night I can log in and find at least five people on my global list to do things with.
WoW doesn't do that for me. CO doesn't. STO doesn't. DCUOnline doesn't. Just City of. So it's not because of how we as V.I.P.'s are getting ALL THESE MARVELOUS THINGS from the devs that keep me coming back....because we're not. Really. We are for the most part getting shafted by the marketing department now. It's because of friends and what I've gotten used to having ingame that keeps me subbing every six months.
By the way...I bet dollars to doughnuts someone will clip something out of this and use it to point out yet another fallacious and erroneous judgmental statement I seemed to have made with this post.

I suppose you can keep ignoring the part where I then talk about why I don't think it works for any MMO and probably wouldn't work for CoH in order to prolong the argument, but I really don't feel like repeating myself yet again for those of you reading this while inhaling the exhaust fumes in the back seat of the short bus.

There is.

1. Left click on the forum members name.
2. Select View Public Profile.
3. Click on User Lists
4. Select Add to Ignore List.
5. Click Yes to confirm you want to add that person to your ignore list.

Alternatively, one can just filter out such responses in one's head. Which has the added benefit of working even when such posts get quoted. It also sidesteps the apparently inevitable temptation to post an "I don't see what everyone's getting so riled up about, all I see from Poster X is 'You are ignoring posts from this user' messages" reply, which is kind of the forum equivalent of sticking one's fingers in one's ears and going "LA-La-LA I'm not listening!"...

Temperance is difficult, I suppose. In the long run, at least.