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Quote:lol
i also note how many times the zone was won during twixt's reign: Oodles of times. -
"Do I REALLY need to be in this thing? This is a joke right? RIGHT??"
Recursive wriggled in the plush gold casket, the others snickering and looming over her. Proxy suddenly rose up and appeared to the right, rubbing the dust from the ceremonial bones from his hands.
"Uncomfortable?"
"It's a coffin. I'm alive. Why would I be comfortable in here?" Proxy shrugged.
"Following the general symbolism of the ritual as closely as possible is going to give you the best chance for success. The casket has a compartment underneath for the bones and I was able to inscribe to all the necessary symbols on the outside. You want to be rid of Bulb right?"
"Yes..."
Love Tap came into view in the corner down by her feet.
"Don't worry hon. I won't let them bury you alive."
"Bah it ain't nothin..I been buried lots of times.." FD stepped in front of her, bumping the casket slightly while waving the beer in his hand. "Anyway, you could just do your thing right? Reverse time..make the dirt fly back up in the air, lift the box up, that'd be funny as hell, haha.."
Love Tap pushed him out of the way. "We won't bury you. We're not even going to close the lid."
Proxy appeared again at Recursive's shoulder. He handed her 2 pills and a glass of water. She propped herself up and took the pills.
"I guess I should get this over with.."
"Yes it would be prudent. The longer we wait, the more likely it is he shows up here."
"Good luck babe!"
Recursive put the pills in her mouth and then accepted the glass of water, washing them down with a couple gulps. She handed the glass back and reclined, staring glumly at Love Tap. Proxy reached over and opened her right palm, placing a clump of ash inside.
"How long do you think it will take for those pills to work?"
"Hard to say. I don't think it will be long."
The casket shifted again slightly as something bumped it.
"I remember this one time..man. I got wasted out of my skull and then I got in a fight and these jerks shot me a bunch of times. And I stumbled outside and passed out. So then I guess they were worried about the cops finding the body or somethin..so they took me to the damn graveyard and the bastards buried me. So I wake up, hours later in the dark and man am I pissed so I blast my way outta the hole and there are all these friggin weirdos standing around hahaha. Man they like were..what you call them..LIVE ACTION ROLE PLAYERS...and they got like pasty makeup on and fake fangs man! Forreal! And these chicks look up at me like I'm their dark lord from beyond the..."
Darkness.
A void with no sensation. Slowly the feeling creeps back into her fingertips and she's falling.
Flailing frantically against nothing out of pure instinct. A feeling. A sound. A pressure.
Something is rising up beneath her.
Then.
Impact. Cutting like a knife into unseen water. Kicking and twisting and wrenching her arms to the surface. She breaks through, graping for breath and then the words of the patron appear in her thoughts.
"Swim little fishies! Swim!"
Recursive spun around in the water she still could not see. Her eyes caught a pinpoint of light in the distance and she made for it. Stroking and kicking desperately to reach that one beacon of illumination. Her limbs felt heavy, and her shoulders ached, the air burning in her lungs every time she twisted her head to breath. She paused, looking up. The light was land. An island with something in the foreground. A grey figure..something still like a statue. Some structure in the background behind it.
An impact disturbed the water somewhere to the rear. There was a noise, the echo of distant laughter. It was there behind her. It had finally caught up with her.
Recursive lurched forward, the fear surging like a charge through her body. Her arms and legs pulsed with agony as she willed them to move. The sounds of splashing grew louder. It was close. She didn't know if she could reach the land in time. Suddenly her fingers clawed through sand. She drew her legs beneath her and kicked against the bottom, staggering up out of the water and crashing forward into the white beach as the weight of her fatigue yanked her down. She gave a spasming cough as something grabbed her ankle from behind. She kicked weakly and managed to break loose, flopping over on to her back. Bulb was crawling up on to the beach towards her. As she slid on her back, trying to put more distance between them, it shook it's right arm, a long thin dagger sliding out of the sleeve into its gloved hand.
A laughing deathless skull appeared in its glassy visage. It lunged forward, it's free hand darting forth and grabbing her other ankle, yanking her screaming towards the water and it's blade. -
Quote:Again, you are repeating the same sentiment and not even listening to argument. Advocating improvent to pvp, which is something the Devs support in a misguided way, does not mean making cox a "pvp" game. It means making it more appealing to segments of the current playerbase as well as attractive to potential new players who want a pvp aspect in the game they buy.
No, actually it DOES need to be repeated endlessly until people get it through their heads that this will never be a PvP game, nor will you ever get people who dislike PvP to engage in it, hence, any suggestions for bringing PvP to the PvE masses are bad by default.
You will never get people who are dead set against pvp to like it. These are a part of the playerbase, not ALL of it. Many people do not pvp because of the implementation, not the idea of pvp itself.
I was the PVPEC rep on Protector for a while. I hosted beginner friendly pvp events that drew in quite a few people that didn't normally pvp. This is because I acted as a kind of quality control for the event. The problem was that a player had to take the initiative to do it. When the reps weren't hosting, the people didn't come out for it. It shouldn't fall to players to tailor things for these people, it should be part of the game design.
As for the idea of putting a duel function in pve zones, I made a concrete proposal. You haven't commented on why it or an idea like it is unacceptable. -
Quote:If you don't want to reply to specific suggestions made, why are you posting here? It's obvious you don't like pvp, it doesn't need to be repeatedly endlessly.
I've already contributed more than enough about why the ideas are *bad*.
Quote:However, you bring *heavily interrupted game play* into the pve zones, by introducing *any* amount of pvp there. Period. -
Whether or not its intended, badging, going for shivans, wb rockets, etc. has affected my pvp experience at times. If I was really intolerant, I might write something like:
"Whatever happens to PVE here, needs to NOT, EVER be at the cost of any PVP experiences."
Capiche?
What's wrong with having pvp available everywhere? I made a proposal above. Why don't you provide some specific feedback? -
I don't buy the "ship has sailed" argument. A lot of my friends left back in I3 due to lack of content and repetitive gameplay. If similar logic applied, the devs wouldn't bother with new content or gameplay.
I have yet to come across any pvper in this game that finds the pvp adequate. If they improved the system and made it "the most shining fantastic system in the world", more of the current player base would use it AND it would be a selling point for new players.
Bizarro anti-pvp-at-all-costs logic should be apparent when someone describes cox attracting a new demographic as a problem. That's what you want: the game to grow, the company to thrive, more money for development period.
Quote:Like badgers cussing me out in pvp zones? Mmmm--hmmmm.....Whatever happens to PVP here, needs to NOT, EVER be at the cost of any PVE experiences. -
Just a word to the wise, discussion of actually pricing is forbidden on the forums so you might want to edit your post and direct people to your deviantpage for that info.
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This is the original image that I'm redesigning, plus some color correction, for comparison. -
Over the weekend I took a webinar with some concept art professionals over compositional principles. As I try to apply some of this information to my own work, I thought I'd redo some of my older pictures for practice. Here's a new thumbnail for an update of a pic from a few years ago: http://battlewraith.deviantart.com/a...nail-133047384
One approach usually taken by the conceptartists is to do really small thumbnails. If you can convey the idea behind the piece in the thumbnail, the composition is good. Then sometimes they blow the thumbnail up and paint directly over it. That's more or less the plan for this piece. -
Quote:When the arena went live, it took me a couple days to even try it due to the lag from people joining matches. First couple issues after I4 arena activity was steady and you had people going to test for things like cross server battles, regularly scheduled arena nights, and eventually the pvp sg ladder.
They have had many opportunites through game design to get people to pvp they didn't. First it was arenas, then it was lower level pvp zones, then it was RV, then it was various tweaks (getting rid of caging for instance) to make it less annoying for folks. Then finally i13.
Tell me at which time in any of those design decisions that the pvp pop was suddenly rolling and large and you could find folks in the zones consistently in the servers, matching the levels of pl teams in PI?
When zones were introduced there was pretty steady action up until i13. A regular night in Siren's or RV on Freedom might have had 50-60 people fighting in one zone. Now Freedom is more like Protector in its heyday. Generally, new pvp features resulted in a spike of interest followed by a slow decline resulting from nerfs or slow pace of development.
Quote:EDIT: Also every time an open pvp system or dueling system is suggested on these forums it's been shot down with so many holes it's not even funny. The idea that if we just do it right folks will love it is a pipe dream. For it to be a reality you'd have to get a team of devs in who don't aim to go on the current path of i13 pvp. Since the likelihood of that happening is null and void . . . yeah.
It's more constructive to imagine a way that the idea would be good under ideal circumstances, then try to adapt it towards the actual circumstances of this game. Maybe the idea would fail at that point. Maybe it would spur another idea that would work. There's no harm in speculation. -
Quote:Straw man. Nobody's claiming that implementation of any pvp feature is going to suddenly transform the playerbase as a whole into rabid pvpers.
The idea that there is some hidden MASSIVELY LARGE elventy1111!!! audience in game that is gung ho on open pvp or dueling is a fallacy.
Over and over again you get people chiming in "this is a pve game, the playerbase doesn't want pvp." One problem with that is that it assumes that all non-pvpers are the same, which is not the case. There are many categories of "non-pvper":
1. I don't want pvp in the game under any circumstance.
2. I tried it, but I didn't like it for x,y, and z reasons.
3. I tried it, and it was fun at times but I was harrassed by other players which made it unenjoyable.
4. I did it and enjoyed it, but it was too demanding in terms of paying for a pvp build, having a competitive character, having a team, etc.
5. (most recently) My powers don't function in pvp the way they do in pve and I don't want to relearn the game.
And so on.
Game design can address all of these points except #1. -
Like Spock stealing the cloaking device from the Romulans?
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Quote:Done trolling? Excellent.
Now, if you're done taking offense and are ready to debate the merits of your "idea", you're welcome to start there.
Here's a proposal. The initial idea is for cross faction pvp in open pve zones. For example, a villain in Cap au Diablo accesses a contact or terminal in that zone indicating they want a duel. They are transported to the corresponding hero zone. Upon arrival, they are phased and enemy chat is disabled. They do not challenge a specific person to a duel. They are matched randomly with someone hero side that flags themselves for a duel. The duel ends when someone is defeated, time runs out, or one of the participants clicks to exit the zone. The participants are visible but do not interact with other people or npcs in the zone.
Unlike zones and arena, there is no exemp function to this. You can only duel in an area that is appropriate for your level. So a level 50 villain, for example, would only be able to use it in Grandville.
pros:
1. People can take a break from leveling their characters to pvp, with less concern about requiring a polished build or encountering unfavorable odds.
2. People in zone can safely watch pvp if they choose. Adds flavor to zones aside from street sweeping and occassional costume contests.
3. Novelty of pvping in large pve areas under restricted conditions.
4. Less hassle than setting up an arena duel, less likelihood of predictible outcome.
cons:
1. technical issue relating to flagging, phase mechanics, etc. may make idea untenable.
2. Resources required to implement the idea may exceed interest in having it implemented.
3. Issues of lag, exploiting, etc. endemic to any change in the game system. -
Quote:There's nothing to adress in you posts. Your stance is "I don't want it. The majority doesn't want it. End of discussion." That position has been reiterated in this thread ad nauseum. You've made your point. Beyond that you're just trying to flame me.
You know what's really getting old? Your strategy of dismissing arguements without actually addressing them, and then pretending to take offense. If you were really as unable to take criticism as you pretend to be, you would be ill-suited for PvP--I don't buy it. I highly doubt that when I describe you as dismissive and selfish that you are wounded to your core.
I can take criticism. But you aren't making any that's relevant to the topic at hand. I'm not wounded to the core over your comments, they're just irrelevant and tedius to wade through. And the forum usage policy proscribes personal attacks.
You took offense at my use of the words fear and loathing. Then you went on to describe things yourself in synonymous terms. Ooops.
Quote:Yes, I have a pro-CoH bias. It's clear (as illustrated above) that you are completely biased against it to the point of *hatred*. Which bias is stronger? Which one is more potentially detrimental to the game?
This is a suggestion board. Any account holder should be able to come here and discuss their idea without having someone like you try to smother is with whack character assessments lol. -
Quote:
Here's a shocker--the PvP system is ALREADY configured in a way to minimize the impact on other players. Any changes to that system would make PvP more invasive into the PvE game. Quote:Can't be done, and you know it. The current system is the best compromise available.
Quote:Quote:
"Discontent so vast". In other words loathing. Apparently I'm a bully for wording the same thought a different way.
You fail at comprehension. Let me give you an example. Let's say you're playing in a game where they have worldwide PvP, and someone is trying to goad you into fighting over and over again. As a result, you log off in disgust. Would you say that you HATE that player? I doubt it. If you hated them, you'd probably try to track them down. Instead, you just log off in disgust.
Quote:Much like I don't hate you--I find your selfishness and dismissive nature annoying, but I don't HATE you. Or PvP for that matter.
Quote:Here's the thing--I'm a big believer in majority rule.
Likewise you and your perception of what the majority of people playing this want don't define the cox community. The community does not belong to you. It is not defined by you. You are merely a part of it, like anyone else posting here.
Quote:Telling you to take a hike would be redundant. -
Quote:Right, that's exactly what the pvp vets said. That's why I led all those pvp educational sessions and organized all the newbie events: to keep winning and to keep casual people from enjoying themselves.
Right: the hardcore people. Had lots more non-hardcore people come in and said "hey that's a really good idea! I won't have to figure this out the hard way any more!" it may have been different. As it was, perhaps the content of the suggestions were more akin to "we want to keep winning and keep others from enjoying themselves" and less "let's get lots more people enjoying this event".
Lemme reiterate something that has been pointed out repeatedly since i13 came out: it didn't solve the problem. It actually made it worse for casual players. It made fewer builds viable. If I could beat you before, it's even easier now.
Quote:Right. Because the few hardcore folks who have stayed are still doing the same crap that they did to prevent other people from enjoying it now, only with slightly different tactics. I see nothing wrong with this picture.
Quote:Better is a highly subjective term here. Better for SOME small number of people, but honestly there are so many more who just wouldn't even NOTICE if PVP completely vanished from this game entirely. You know this to be true.
Quote:Let's talk about quality versus quantity, then.
In order to appeal to a pvp-oriented PLAYER, a game really does need to be built from the ground up with PVP in mind.
Quote:This is not one of those games. It's always been rather a joke in this game, that pvp isn't all that great. I've seen scathing reviews of it, and even the hardcore players who HAVE conquored the methods here, laugh at it at times. If it's such a joke, why defend it so hard when there are other, way more appropriate places to play pvp style? Other games - like Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress and Counterstrike - are ALL about pvp, and leave nothing much to the imagination there. But they have different styles of play too, admittedly in a much more restricted whole game environment.
Quote:Anyway - enjoy what you get. Because obviously, the devs DO hate you. And villains. And furries. So clearly you should adopt a furry, pvp villain as the mascot of "improve or die" ... >_> /sarcasm -
Quote:Again, argument by analogy is never valid. It falls under inductive, not deductive, logic. Furthermore, he isn't making any kind of logical argument at all. He's making a comparison between my suggestion of incorporating a duel function ingame and asking for ashtrays in a hospital. The problem with this comparison is that it assumes that the /duel function cannot be incorporated in any way other than one that will lead to substantial harrassment of other players (i.e. more substantial than any extant chat function currently does).
And as previously noted, the analogy is not invalidated by a difference in scale
Nice cherry picking by the way, given that this analogy is part of his ad hominum which doesn't seem to concern you. -
Quote:The hardcore arena crowd provided extensive input, testing, and feedback to the devs on how to improve pvp. With i13, Castle basically flipped off that entire segment of the population and incorporated changes that were the exact opposite of what the pvp vets said were the best thing about cox pvp. The result was a further decline in the population.
"Make PVP more appealing by x, y and z" might be a far better solution to draw people who do not regularly pvp, into the areas designated for it. That has already happened - and the hard-core pvp crowd flipped their collective wig over it. So... why bother trying to bring more people who would require way more 'attention to detail' when those same people are more than content to use the zones as-is, pve dominating pvp, instead of alienating anyone?
Your basic line of thought is: hardly anyone pvps. Therefore hardly anyone wants to pvp. Therefore everything is fine as is and the devs shouldn't make additional changes to try to lure people into pvp. You look at the end of a long evolution and draw erroneous conclusions based on your own disinterest.
Pvp has always been plagued by developer neglect. When the arena was hopping, it broke and they neglected to fix it. Naturally people stopped doing it. Base raids happened regularly. Then it broke. So people stopped doing it. Zones were dominated by highly skilled teams of hardcore players, so casual players stayed out. So they nerfed buffing and movement powers. Many of the skilled players left and the pve-minded still stay out. If the devs handled the pve game the same way they've handle pvp, the entire MMO would've failed long ago.
Why bother to work on pvp? To make it a better game as a whole. To make it appeal to a wider variety of people. What's hard to grasp about that? -
Quote:It's been a while since I took logic in college but an analogy is a comparison to help visualize or understand a concept. They can be good or bad, but they can't be valid in a formal argumentative sense. Generally speaking arguing by analogy is a bad idea.
Analogies are not invalidated by differences in scale.
His analogy that I quoted is clearly bad. He compares me coming to the suggestion forums and advocating an idea, which is the purpose of this forum, with someone endangering a patient's life in a hospital. It's ludicrous on the face of it.
Solicio--
Quote:Your blatent disregard for the wishes of other players in favor of your own narrow viewpoint, and your "generalizations" have earned you those labels. If the shoe fits, wear it. You have no interest in what other players think. You only care about your "impromptu PvE duels".
Quote:I have little patience for people who would continue to ask for a feature after others expressed discontent so vast that they would leave the game over it.
Quote:Could you really enjoy a feature (especially a small one) if it came at the cost of a large chunk of the playerbase?
Quote:Would you really just laugh it off and say "Well, people leave games all the time." ? I can't think of any way to describe someone who holds viewpoints like that other than "a bully, PvP smacktard, or a jerk".
Quote:You aren't trying to "flesh anything out". You want your PvP, and you want everyone else to jump through hoops so you can get it. PvP in CoH has already been "fleshed out". It's made to accomodate the majority of the playerbase in an acceptable way already. -
Thanks. The first pic was drawn by Ryan Kinnaird and inked by Boy Sicant. You can see the uncolored inked version here.
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Quote:I didn't group anyone together and call them names. I made some generalizations about the negative responses I was seeing in this discussion. Now you're following some tortured logic to make it out that I'm insulting the player base at large. You can quibble over the connotations of my earlier choice of words all you want.
No, describing anyone in opposition to said idea as fearful or hateful is what makes you bullying and belittling. You refuse to believe that there could be something wrong with the idea--instead, there must be something wrong with the people who disagree with it. Which is odd, since they comprise the majority of the playerbase. So in essence, you're describing most people who play this game as scared or hateful. I stand by my statement. If you think that you can change people's minds by grouping them together and calling them names, you're a bully, and you're attempting to belittle people into seeing your point of view.
On the other hand, so far you've labelled me a bully, pvp smacktard, and now a jerk. The comments are in no way comparable. Now there may very well be SOMETHING wrong with the idea of worldwide pvp in this game (I specifically mentioned a duel function). There is NOTHING wrong with trying to flesh something out here on the forums. But your personal attacks and general hostility shouldn't be a part of it.
Quote:You're overgeneralizing to make your point by assuming I hate all kinds of PvP--not the case. I enjoy occasionally going to PvP zones for PvP when I'm in the mood, and I'm glad it's there when I want it. It's like visiting someone in the hospital, and going to the smoking section to light up--there's nothing wrong with that. What you're advocating, on the other hand, is installing ashtrays next to the hospital beds so you can smoke anywhere you want. That makes you a jerk.
Quote:It's nothing like an anti-grav skateboard. -
Quote:Of course its a dead end. They'd never put anything like this in cox. But let's look at it as something like--building an anti-gravity skateboard. It's a ridiculous thing that will never happen for a variety of reasons, but discussing and fleshing out the proposals might lead to other ideas that would be interesting and/or useful.
If you want to campaign for something, campaign for PvP missions. That's something that's still technically unfeasible (per Castle, last time i brought up the subject), but would at least offer wider scale PvP without all but guaranteeing delays to content updates and improvements in the entire rest of the game, and which could, if implemented intelligently (read: not this idiotic deathmatch crap we have now), interest more players and result in growth of the PvP segment of the population, up to and including getting "strictly PvE" players involved.
This idea (world PvP) and thread are dead ends, don't waste your time trying to pump life into them. -
Quote:So ridiculous, lol. There is more farming now than probably any other stage of the game. Not only does AE make it much easier for novice people to run a farm themselves, all the phat loot is outrageously expensive and requires that you farm tickets, inf, etc. in order to make any headway.
Who's "they" exactly? Only a miniscule portion of the population STILL farms.
/em Darryl Hall "Out of touch, out of time, out of touch, out of time girl!" -
Quote:Wow. So posting in support of a pve zone /duel option makes me a bullying and belittling pvp smacktard who wants to hold sway over other players. You're describing the pvp population as the "griefer population." I get it. You don't like pvp. And apparently this extends to flaming people who advocate any kind of pvp. That qualifies as loathing to me. YMMV obviously.
Not at all. It's more accurate to describe it as a lack of willingness to watch this game devolve into a pseudo-WoW clone, copying the worst aspects of other games. I wouldn't leave this game because I was afraid and I hated it--I would leave because I couldn't bear to watch all of the cooperative spirit leave. I couldn't bear to watch the small griefer population of this game (small relative to that of other games) become empowered and enabled with a massive grieifing tool. In short--I don't want bullying and belittling PvP smacktards like you holding sway over other players. It's ruined other games, and I won't watch it ruin this one.