Castle

_Castle_ is based on my Champions character named "Rook." Unfortunately, way back when in Beta, when I went to make him Rook was taken. Thus, Castle was born. The underscores were added when I could not get the name Castle here on the boards, since someone else had the name.

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Hmm, don't think we've ever seen a pic of _Castle_...

<edited due to massive brain fartage>

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And if I can at all help it, you never will! Muahaha!

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Ex Libris quick question for you, are any of those models actually from CoV or CoH, cause some of the buildings look familair

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Nope. Archon Voss, Statesman, Loki, and one of the guys who doesn't have a Red name bought and/or made them. Archon Voss is particularly handy for making terrain/buildings.

Edit: The Decent boardgame is the only one I'm involved in. Never played before, and so far it's pretty fun!

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I hear if you bribe them with foods not found in California they will come. But try finding a food not found in California.

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As a person who moved to Austin, TX from the Bay Area in CA I can tell you this: I didn't know what real barbeque was until I moved out here.

We should send them a teeny tiny box of Texas Barbeque and tell them they can't have more unless the come to Austin.

(Works both ways, though. No one out here can make really good Sourdough bread, either. Sure, they LABEL things Sourdough... but it's not. It's a mere facsimile.)

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SexyJay gave us a real Texas Style Barbecue not too long ago. Good stuff...I could feel my arteries hardening!

As far as public appearances go, I swore off trade shows about a decade ago (or maybe, I was sworn off of them. Something about being forced to demo a product I thought was doomed and being honest about it when asked...not real sure.)

A "Meet & Greet" might be different, and there is at least a small chance I'd go to one locally. I hate travelling and dislike crowds -- not a great combination. Makes me a bit anti-social.

Besides, EvilGeko and Angry-Citizen would kidnap me, lock me in a room and do horrible things to me.

I used to get together with some friends once a week at a local Chili's to discuss our results/plans for the turn of Middle Earth Play by Mail wargame we were on. Imagine a couple guys in suits and ties, and a couple guys in T-shirts & shorts, all with briefcases sitting around eating chips, and discussing how best to assassinate the Witch-King of Angmar and mobilize troops to protect the southern flank of the Greenwood from the Dog Lords heavy cavalary.

I think we got the best looks when we pulled out the full size grid maps of middle earth and began putting pins and markers out to plot troop movements.

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Our characters are living organisms. How come we can't "adapt" and do similar things as hami?

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Respecs + New Slotting.

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Well I see the idea but I think it's just too' lazy of the Devs not explain why he can now hit you though PS.
I think a better fix would've been to just make him ignor anything that's PSed. PAs included. That would solve the tanking prob.

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He's a living organism; he adapted to his environment.

Excellent write up! I particularly like that you did two builds and a comparison between them and the I8 'standard.'

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Because he flat out said that gimiicks weren't the way.

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You have no proof that he thinks shivans and bombs are gimmicks.

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I'll supply that, then. Shivan's and Bombs can make it easier, but the new Hami encounter is designed to be beaten without them.

Comment on the thread in general:
Watch the language and the personal attack folks.

As pretty much everyone knows, despite my best efforts to prevent this power from stacking from multiple users, it can still be stacked.

At some point in the future, I *will* get code support to eliminate the problem. In the meantime, if people are abusing this loophole (it's an exploit but not an "Exploit" -- GM's and petitions won't do anything about it at this time) I suggest that you blacklist their team and simply do not engage them in PvP.

For the PvE folks reading this, no, Vengeance is not meant to stack in PvE, either and the change, when it happens, will apply in those encounters as well.

Certain self heal powers are tagged to not allow outside healing buffs. Reconstruction is such a power.

General Rule:
If your heal also grants resistance to toxic, it won't benefit from +Heal buffs.

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Castle, one thing that would be very helpful for this kind of discussion would be some numbers that we don't have access to. For example, the question of replay value of the PvP zones in CoX could be well demonstrated by looking at the number of a couple of badges.

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I cannot release those numbers. That would have to come from someone above me!
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Really? Then how do you explain the continued popularity (and huge expansion) of Xbox live? Granted there are some extra things that MS throws in, but the main aspect is providing hosting for multiplayer games and its far from free, in fact you have to have a gold membership to gain access to the multiplayer games

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I think most people think of XBox Live in the same way they think of their ISP -- it's a requirement to get to the content they want. A necessary evil.

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I'll go along with the idea that if it cost a fee to play CS that would reduce the number of players, but I don't think it would be a major reduction. People like to pretend that it doesn't cost money to play these games, but I can assure that is a serious mistake. While its true that anyone could host a game with a few buddies, but once you get beyond the small team vs small team size you need a dedicated box. This is even more true for the newer FPS games. Take a look at the pricing for game server rentals/hosting and you'll see what I mean.

Game Servers UT2004 Pricing

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True enough. Most end users, however, don't pay for those.

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Sony tried and failed to get a subscription based RTS launched. They launched, with severely underwhelming success, an FPS with a monthly subscription fee. I contend that the lack of success of both titles had as much to do with the required subscription as it did with any shortcomings in implementation. Planetside may have been the best game ever -- I personally would not know, I would *not* pay a monthly fee to play an FPS when I can play Counterstrike for free.

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Again, this is something of a fallacy because in almost all cases someone is paying. You can play all day on a free server, but someone is paying for it, often to advertise their server rental business

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Someone is paying...but in most cases it isn't the end user. I'm sure that if Blizzard announced tomorrow that WoW would be free to play from now on, they'd pick up even more customers than they already have. I don't think the change would be as dramatic as if your BF2 account suddenly required a monthly fee to log into ANY BF2 server. A large percentage of end users would balk and simply stop playing BF2 at that point -- since there would still be other free alternatives with similar game play styles.

And that's really what my point is -- so long as a "free" alternative with roulghly equivalent feature sets exist in gaming, players will tend to go with those, rather than pay for a monthly subscription. Going back to your XBox live question -- there isn't an easily accessible "free" alternative to XBox Live. The customers are a captive audience -- if they want to play their games multiplayer, they pretty much have to have XBox Live. (One of my complaints about the 360 is how few games I can play multiplayer with my family.)

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Guys, i don't think the question is "Do you know the current defense values?" like some people seem to be answering. It's more "If you designed the game, what chances to hit would you design in these situations?"

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Correct.

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The answer to this question is that I as the attacker expect under the current system to hit 95% of the time. As the defender I expect to be missed 5% of the time. The latter half being my experience in pvp zones playing as a /ninjitsu stalker.

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To clarify here: Does this mean, in a perfectly balanced system, you would expect Max To Hit to always completely negate Max Defense? That's how I read what you have written.

To everyone:
The availability of To Hit buffs is a seperate question. Assume for purposes of this exercise that you have access to buffs far beyond what you would need to reach a maximum value.

First off, this post is *NOT* a precursor of any particular impending change. The topic is strictly informative and for discussion.

I'd like to know about breakpoints for To Hit and Defense and how you, the players, think it should work. I'm not talking about mechanics -- I'm talking about the expectations you have in a fight.

1) You have the default To Hit value (ie no buffs), your target has no Defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?
2) You have the maximum possible To Hit value, and your target has no defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?
3) You have the default To Hit value, and your target has the maximum possible defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?
4) You have the maximum possible To Hit value, and your target has the maximum possible defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?

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Keep in mind that both Counter Strike, StarCraft, Warcraft, BF, BF2, and a multitude of other "old" games.

Lets just look at CS since its the grand daddy of em all.

In 2002 there were over 30,000 populated Counter-Strike servers on line.

In 2004, GameSpy statistics showed over 85,000 players simultaneously playing Counter-Strike at any point in time.

in 2006, Steam regularly shows over 200,000 players for Counter-Strike at the same time (though this number includes some of the later releases as well).

According to statistics gathered by Valve's content-delivery platform, Steam, these players collectively contribute to over 6.177 billion minutes of playing time each month.

Thats a game that was released in 2000 (started as a mod back in 1999).

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I don't think anyone could successfully argue that competitive games are not popular. Multiplayer FPS and RTS games do have a great amount of replayability and popularity, but your statistics here are ignoring two major facts.

First, all of those games mentioned have healthy, strong MOD communities which constantly churn out new maps, weaponry, and options. None of them are remotely the same as they were the day they were released, and most of the modifications come from fans who donated their time to create/alter content.

Second, none of those games requires (to my knowledge) a monthly or hourly subscription fee. Ah, wait...the internet cafes in the asian market do charge an hourly rate and most players in those markets play via the cafes.

The MMO market is hugely expensive to develop for. This means a revenue stream of some sort has to be guaranteed for an MMO to be successful and in the American Market, the standard is the monthly subscription.

My opinion is that if players in the American market had to pay as much to play Counterstrike as they do to play say "WoW" there would be a vastly lower number of Counterstrike players.

Sony tried and failed to get a subscription based RTS launched. They launched, with severely underwhelming success, an FPS with a monthly subscription fee. I contend that the lack of success of both titles had as much to do with the required subscription as it did with any shortcomings in implementation. Planetside may have been the best game ever -- I personally would not know, I would *not* pay a monthly fee to play an FPS when I can play Counterstrike for free.

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Player Auction houses are a great example of PvP content that is typically embraced by PvE players.

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Why do I get the feeling that you've played EVE Online?

DS

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I haven't, but I want to get into it at some point. I find their use of resources intriguing.

Edit:
I'm also really enjoying the discussion between Thor and Arcana in this thread. Good stuff!

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On the other hand, PvE environments are generally static, and not because they have to be, but because game designers claim they *must* be: that an evolving PvE environment creates all sorts of problems that would upset or unbalance the game. Can't have PvE players alterning the environment, because a constantly shifting backdrop to PvE would wreck PvE.

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I don't really know any developers who believe that. We look at games like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, God of War or Shadow of the Colossus and the innovative use of terrain involved there and think "How can we get things such as that into our game?"

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If you're not joking I'll be so

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Nope, not joking, but, yes, being pedantic. The point of economies being a form of PvP is mostly academic and not the idea of PvP most people, or even I, think of when they see the acronym. I was essentially just attemtping to show that there are systems beyond what most people consider and that there is plenty of room for improvement and change.

As for the "Quatloo/Quatlu" thing -- I'd forgotten all about the quote until someone else here on the forums used the term last week. Apparently, I made the same misspelling they did!

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Player Auction houses are a great example of PvP content

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yeah I don't see how that's pvp either.

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The whole sentence he said, "Player Auction houses are a great example of PvP content that is typically embraced by PvE players." PvP = Player vs Player competition. So, I think he means that players will be directly competing against each other in the consignment houses. Just like if they added an implementation of 2 player pong. It would technically be PvP, but not exactly what everyone expects as PvP. It's a somewhat pedantic point.

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Yeah, I specifically went for an example that most people wouldn't think of as PvP. "Pedantic" is, I suppose, deserved.

As for how it is PvP, say you are selling "Progenitor Goo Mk XII" for 800 Quatlu's and I have one I want to sell. I am going to price my item based off not only what the 'market' says it should go for, but also based off of what others are selling for AT THIS MOMENT. So, if I think you're selling too low, I could buy yours, then try to sell both at a higher price. Or, if I think you're selling too high, I can undercut you, reducing your chance of selling. Either way, my actions will effect you, and your actions will effect me. Thus, "PvP."

To appeal to the largest possible audience, a game should appeal to both PvP and PvE segments of the marketplace.

A PvP only game has difficulty generating sufficient populace willing to pay a monthly fee -- why pay a subscription when I can play Battlefield 2 for a single upfront payment? Especially when there is an extensive mod community which can churn out new maps/content?

A PvE only game runs the risk of growing stale. Players will always be able to burn through content at a rate many times faster than a development team can create, and this creates situations of player burnout and constant cries for 'new content!' A great example: A WoW developer said at one point that it would take players as long to go from level 60 to level 70 as it took to get from level 1 to 60. And yet, within 48 hours of the expansion going live, there was already a level 70 player. While it is certain that he did not experience all of the content of that expansion pack in that time, it should be apparent that the rate of consumption is far greater than can be met by a development team working with realistic resources and budgets.

By taking both elements (and both are extremely wide categories) upcoming MMO's are hoping to appeal to a broader range of customer, which is the only real way to recoup the incredible development costs involved in projects of this size. The challenge is, therefore, how to incorporate PvP elements so that they do not repel predominately PvE players?

Player Auction houses are a great example of PvP content that is typically embraced by PvE players. They are not strictly competitive; they can be viewed as cooperative, they help you progress your character in direct ways (new armor, weapons, enhancements, Implants, etc) as well as indirect ways (name recognition, money.) As an aside, this is tangentially related to my abhorrence for the third party 'gold/item/PLing' market -- using out of game resources to bolster your in game efforts is cheating, regardless of the excuse used. I own a second chess set, mind if I set up an extra bishop or two for our game?

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

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Sort of.

Edit: Moved my longer post to another thread.

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Which one?

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Here

Sort of.

Edit: Moved my longer post to another thread.

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This is a pretty remarkable series, Scrapulous.

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Agreed!

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team buffs have a mechanics problem. Teams vary in size from 1-8 so a buff that applies to everyone on the team is multiplied in effectiveness from 1x to 8x. Either a buff is useless for small teams or godmode for large teams - or both.

What if team buffs had diminishing returns? Say 150% effectiveness for teams of 1-2, 125% for 3-4, 100% for 5-6, and 75% for 7-8 (numbers given are just an idea, the real numbers would need to be better balanced and more complex like (Y-1) X (12.5% + R/2.3).

That way buffs would be more useful on smaller teams and less powerful on bigger teams than they are now. A team buff should still give a bigger total boost on a large team but not 4x on an 8 person team what it does on a 2 person team.

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Yes, they should. In fact, adding diminishing returns to buffs and debuffs of all sorts would allow us to alter many, many problematic powers. In all likelyhood, though, it will not happen. The change would simply be too fundmental and require a great deal of work on our part.

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Lord help us, they'd do it if they could!

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Sure! Then Weave could give 15% Defense, and Combat Jumping could give 25% Defense (or whatever) and combined, they'd give 30% instead of 40%. When the local FF Defender buffed the character, instead of the normal 25% for the FF, it'd be 5% for 35% defense.*

Basically, additional buffs would always be helpful, but the base level abilities could be made better and more useful across the board.

* Disclaimer: All numbers used illustratively and do not indicate any relation to what said values or formulae would actually be if we were ever to implement a system such as this, which I doubt.