Bindweed

The preservation of a separate "European" English-language area has, I think, more to do with the preservation of the diversity of cultural expression on the massive new forum. It may be less apparent to our North American cousins because they have become used to a very large and very noisy forum over the years, whereas the European forums were smaller, tighter, and better related to the cultural experience of the English-speaking European regions.

Since these boards have gone live I've found it almost impossible to find and follow the threads about the Ashes series, for example, or to track down many of our old Creative threads, follow news about comic conventions and sci-fi events in the UK, or keep abreast of the media chatter that relates to UK television and cinema releases. This last one is especially tricky since North American TV threads are littered with spoilers for shows that have yet to air and films that have yet to be released here in the UK, and our inevitable threads about Dr Who and Torchwood will threaten to spoil the surprise for many North American viewers.

I doubt that there is a need for a "North American Lounge" since, to my eyes at least, this is essentially a North American forum to which the European servers were added. We are indeed a smaller cultural fish in this pond, and consequently need a degree of consideration.

Truth be told, I don't think the preservation of the English-language area of the European forums has gone far enough. Personally, I would have liked at least parity with the French and German-speaking forums, and maintained an area that contained all the old European topics under one roof, so I can still follow our traditional threads. That wouldn't stop North Americans reading and contributing to threads about the contents of Cornish pasties, nor does it prevent us offering uninformed opinion on what makes a decent bagel. But it would make culturally sensitive board moderation easier and appropriate, and protect the minority.

You're both making me feel guilty. I desperately need to find a form of exercise I can do without shattering my joints with weight accumulated from too much beer and junk food, but the closest I can get to what you're doing is collecting a takeaway from the nearest Thai-Chi food emporium

As for dxp - the best bit was a very entertaining ITF. Didn't get as much done as most, I guess, but I never do. And Saturday night we caught up on some TV and introduced the nipper to the pleasures of Season One of both Chuck and Eureka.

Well, I did try, several months ago. Ravenswing wrote a few pages of script to get us going and I roughed out a few pages of layouts, but it all got back-burnered when other work (the sort that people sometimes pay me for) stole my time.

Still, it's reminds me that I should try and get moving again...

IIRC there were quite a lot in the old "Creative" section of the late European forums. Good luck tracking them down, because whoever built this place forgot to read the spec and neglected to offer a map...

Don't like it, so far. So much of more geo-specific stuff has been buried in the skip of forum convenience. In particular the "Culture" threads - Scarlet's thread re. The Ashes, for example: I can't imagine it being of any interest to our North American comrades to have that buried in the middle of the massive "Culture" board, swamped by items about US TV shows etc. but it would be a pity to lose it because we can't find it and keep up to date with it and things like it that are specifically relative to our experience. It seems to me that this is an example of needing a "Culture" thread here in the EU lounge, where these little interests of ours can be safe from the overwhelming smothering.

I like the fact that we're different, with different experiences and interests. I think we need to protect that or these boards will become bland and homogenized.

I know there's a good deal of debate about why would I want to contact customer support since there's never any kind of decent response, but novertheless...

Almost every time I fill in the "Ask a Question" screen on the NCSoft site, I click Continue, and get thrown into a "Create a new Account" screen. I logged in to my NCSoft account before I selected to Ask a Question, so there's no way this is right. On other occasions, after selecting Continue, I get a Log In screen (I'm already logged in, remember). If I try to log in, I'm told my account details are incorrect.

Is this lunacy why I've never had a sensible response from Customer Support in 5 years? Because I can never get a question past the stupid Customer Support software?

Is it getting a fix? Or is there a working way to enter into dialogue with Customer Support and get answers to a couple of questions?

On a UK keyboard it's # for the main menu. ' brings up the list of emotes.

Neither were the Doomsday Switch. I'm worried now, because I can't remember which one it is. Oh well, I'm sure we can always rebuild Europe later.

Now, what about a keystroke for the health/stamina status bar? I bet you don't know that one!

Thankyou, sirrah! If it ever happens again (which of course it won't, until after the boards are merged and this thread disappears), I'll try both.

Unless one is the Doomsday Switch.

I knew I should have painted it red.

I am fairly optimistic that these things will be a fun piece of eye-candy, and as long as no-one takes it more seriously than that, that's OK. Personally I still think it's another portion of thin soup, but I'll have a lark for a while, at least, playing with them.

I share an earlier posted worry though: I anticipate heads melting in front of their monitors, like nazis before the Lost Ark, at the sight of a great many of the appalling combinations of fluorescent bad taste we'll no doubt be afflicted with. I would now like the assurance of a button to "kill" offensive patterns from other players. Otherwise I'm scared of what might happen to my screen...

Not for the first time I started the game and all my UI windows were gone: No Chat box, no Powers box, no Navigation box and no Target box. Most worrying, there was no main menu box. I can (and did) restore the others by typing C, P, N & T - but for the life of me I couldn't find a keyboard route to restoring my main Menu. Does anyone know what that might be? And why would the game open up without any of these windows anyway? Should I be tooling up for another beserker charge into the Seattle offices of Mr Gates? Or starving my pet orcs before freeing them to feast upon the entrails of the NCSoft minions? Surely as a tax-payer I have a right to demand someone be tortured over a slow fire for this outrage!

*Is led away to waiting ambulance by patient nurses...*

Kind of sci-fi, then? Like the police scanner animation for checking radio missions? Appropriate for tech toons, but inappropriate for magic based or psi-behemoths. Not that I care. I won't get it for a while. I just like sniping at stuff I can't have yet

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I think the no-color option won't be available because of PVP. You have to know who attacked and what he used; it would be odd to be hit by an invisible fireball.

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I don't PvP. Please tell me there's a reason other than that for something not to be implemented.

I can think of only a few "powers" where an invisible effect might be aesthetically preferably to some players - maybe Martial Arts, for example: when I kick things in real life there's no blinding flash coupled with a thunderclap. I was mainly after having the option to hide auras that cloud my toons: I have a tanker that glows like a 250 watt bulb with some auras running, and a brute that looks like a blob of radioactive yellow snot. I'd rather see the toons I made than the eye-melting pixels of a tired designer from 2004.

As for PvP: anything like that could always be suppressed in those zones if it's important to know what's just ganked you. I don't know why an invisible blast would be any less overwhelming than a blue or pink one, but then I rarely survive long enough in PvP zones to let those thoughts occur to me

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I wonder if there'd be a Succubus as a demon.

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Possibly.

Sort of.

Only male.

Incubus.

Safer and easier to get away with as sexism only ever works one way.

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I seem to remember some debate back in the day surrounding questions of female pets for MMs. As I recall, wasn't the decision irrevocably "PC" - although if that's the reason it's as dumb as a sack of spanners. Because it's OK to create virtual villains who commit virtual murder, but apparently unacceptable to allow anyone over 16 to demean women by creating virtual fembot assassins, I can only surmise that these decisions are taken by lawyers and marketing creatures who have to try and juggle political and legal variations across not just the vast mosaic of US culture but also international and intercontinental experience. Perpetrating mayhem, murder, destruction and violence, all with sadistic glee, is not as vile in the West, at least, as pretending to control an army of women. I don't get it, but that's the culture. It sucks, but I guess people in suits, and well-meaning but dumb people in smocks, not only assume power over our lifestyles and culture, but presume to police our thoughts, too. Better safe than sorry, I guess, is the motive.

It is frustrating, but the really infuriating part is that such a huge portion of humanity really do seem immature and ignorant enough to need it.

Back OT of colours: do you think this will include the "no colour" option? (And, if possible, a "no noise" option for auras that "hum"). I'm still holding out hope that I can make armour auras etc. invisible. If I wanted to move something garish and shapeless around the screen I'd dig out the old Gameboy. We have so many options to customise our appearance, why not have the option to let us see it, rather than hide it behind an explosion of colour and noise.

All this does is confuse me. The game ran best for me when I had XP + a far from top of the range ATI card (Radeon X1550, I think). At the time, the game displayed the NVidia "The Way it's meant to be played" logo. Then I "upgraded" (I use the term advisedly) to Vista and a GeForce 9400 GT,and the game is much more choppy. Granted, I have more things turned up than before, but I paid for better graphics, dammit, so I'm going to try and use them!

All in all, it seems to me that polishing someone else's logo doesn't mean your game runs like a gazelle on their card alone, and like a club-footed troll on everyone else's cards. All it means is whatever card I buy, Microsoft will think of a way to work in harmony with its manufacturer to stress me out of a several months of precious life.

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Yes.. zombies could easily become vampires. The cast and summon animation is the same. Just a change of skin needed.

Three vampire brides
Two vampiric knights
One vampire boss

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Or copy from that group.. errr.. with those face-bosses.

The ones with shotgun -> zombie
The big ones -> graveknight
the annoying storm/earth casters -> lich

They spawn in Talos, at night.

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Banished Pantheon.



Amnesia-B-Gone Emergency Response to the rescue!

I hope so. Turning it off at "prime time" seems a bit daft...

I'm fairly casual about most stuff in the game. I use the markets, but I never have enough inf to buy stuff, so I just potter when my inventories get full. I don't use MA because it takes forever to try and write a mission and I want to play, not program. I don't farm because I like the arcs and the variety. I don't PvP because I suck at it. Lots of people do these things with varying degrees of skill and commitment, and that's their bag. I don't always get it, but I don't have to. We all pays our money and we all takes our choice.

But I do like to team. When I started playing this game - the first MMO I tried - the pick-up teaming was everything from horrific nightmares of unending stupidity and rudeness to glorious, addictive joy of joking, faceplanting, and larking about in a new and fascinating game.

I may be wrong, but the impression I get is that a very significant portion of the active players are in MA atm. Some are farming, some are not, but none of them is out there on the streets battling crime and making PuGs. I'm worried that by adding tools that make non-teaming more rewarding, the numbers of active, teaming strangers out "in the field" will dwindle to a much, much smaller number.

I'm not, of course, suggesting that players who want to solo should team (I say this because I know some people will respond as if I'm saying they should... ), but I am expressing a concern that this addition to the game at this time, when it's apparent to me recently that non-farming, "in the field" PuGs are so much thinner on the ground than ever before, seems... just peculiar.

Does not come with cheese in a seeded bun

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...yes, get rid of Talk to X or give an option: I rather not.

Or make it account wide, did it once, you don't ever have to do that again.

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This. Most definitely, this.

ESPECIALLY if the follow-up is "Travel across 4 zones to tell a contact (whose cellphone number you had 8 levels ago but is strangely no longer working) that no, you're not interested in buying his mum's Vauxhall Vectra, and will he PLEASE stop bugging EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOUR ALTS about it.

If you're not going to drop or overhaul the way the missions are constructed and distributed, at least give us a much more flexible and frequent means of dropping them.

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I think a skipping tutorial is a great idea. I'd love to learn how to jump over a rope!!!

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Here ya go. Have fun

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Why is it that boxers in training use generic Metal instead of "Salt, pepper, vinegar, mustard"...?

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I don't mind the Tutorials at all, but grinding out the Isolator badge in the Hero tutorial is a right pig. Especially after 20 or 30 or more times. How about reducing the number of required mobs to a nice cushy number...?
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I'm asking because I'm too lazy and hungry to go look for myself, but is there an equivalent on the US boards? If there is, will we be pitched in with them when we all become homogenized? If there isn't, I wonder if they might introduce a new transatlantic version?

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and why don't we have a toggle (like Costume emotes) for the fly pose yet? Yes, we need travel power customization!

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You don't mean the four fly poses themselves, do you? Or do you mean some kind of "Up, up and away!" poses we can /e before taking off?