Human_Being

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Well, but wait a minute. The argument I see all the time [not necessarily from you, just sayin'] is that "no one needs Stamina and only lazy/greedy people pick it up."

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Your hyperbole aside, a long time ago (pre-i9 and Inventions I think) Arcanaville made a run-and-gun Martial Arts Scrapper (non-regen) without Stamina by using multiple EndReds, just to show it could be done.

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This post is simply to address what I feel has become of this game. Prior to my break from this game four months ago, this place was booming and it was very noticeable. I could find large teams all day every day. Now that is not the case. I have to settle for smaller teams and I have to settle for less effective teams. This can be seen when I am trying to form a normal paper mish team red side or a TF such as the STF or Respec blue side which has been the hardest thing to do these days (STF that is) where before I could do it out of the air. Also, the stamina thing was merely a suggestion that could not possibly hurt anyone, if anything it would just give players like myself that enjoy using lots and lots of endo to kill stuff and surviv, customize our builds a little better. Also, brushing off PvP as the minority is counterproductive. The devs have done well in my opinion with helping PvPers lately, however not everyone agrees with this and a swarm of people quit and threaten to quit everyday in the pvp zones due to i13 pvp changes.

Point of this topic, it is tougher for me to find teams, the pvp population has diminished. Anyone that cannot comment on those two statements need not comment at all.

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At this point I think we have two possibilities here:

1. The original poster literally cannot receive any of the advice offered in this thread and is self-generating his own stated "teaming difficulties" due to personal personality traits.

2. The purpose of the original post and subsequent behavior is specifically to generate ongoing attention and more posts.

Note that these two possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

Ohheylookpie.

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I wonder what this expansion will break.

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Can't be any worse than the bugs they apparently got in I14 beta. I heard at one point they managed to break levelling entirely - you'd go to a trainer to get new powers and stuff and it simply wouldn't let you.

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Wow <'x'>

The worst I14 bug I saw before launched was one where every time you clicked Edit, you'd crash to desktop. Every. Single. Time.

Makes working on a story arc kind of tough <,<

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For a week or so in i9 Beta, there were a bunch of random players who literally could not earn xp from anything but Mission Completion bonus. Nothing else.

As far as Going Rogue is concerned, with Nostradamus-like precision I predict that i16 will break the Chat system in such a way that every tell is randomly transcribed into one of eight random dead-languages. The "Sanskrit bug" will be the ultimate evolution of the progressive chat bugs and finally cause all in-game communication to grind to a halt. Chaos and mass hysteria will ensue.

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Thank You for proving my point.

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I believe you've amply demonstrated your point already. After seeing the way you've behaved in this thread, I wouldn't want to team with you either.

If you want something in the game changed that will let you share the same amount of company that others can find on Freedom, look to your own demeanor.

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...I have seen the same people flaming posts not saying anything intelligent since I first started posting on this forum...

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Some irony is sublime.

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I think a moral compass is something that's been a long time coming. It was inevitable, given CoH's source of inspiration (superhero comics), that we'd see this option added. I don't think SW:OR has anything to do with it.

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Taking a different tack on the 'long time coming' idea, branching dialogue trees have been a functional reality in the game since the release of Issue 12. The different reactions of contacts to aspects of your character (origin) in the origin of power arc and different answers to get into the Midnighter Club were stated to be "test beds" for the system during Beta.

Since then we haven't seen it used extensively; nor is it part of AE. Yet i12 was released May 20th 2008. They've had a year behind the scenes to play with the working tech.

I'd say it's highly likely branching dialogue and a spectrum of Contact responses has been woven into the fabric of Going Rogue.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I remember from the I13 Beta these PvP changes were only to "prepare the battlefield" per say for more PvP work, not to promote it. Is that not what they said? There is, or was so far as I know, a PvP zone revamp coming, base PvP revamp, and all that jazz?

Or has that all changed? Is PvP in timeout?

Just wondering if more work is actually coming or if the developers have just said, "[censored] it."

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i13 had mechanical groundwork. They determined that lack of it would sabotage any other efforts the might try to make. i14 saw introduction of new rewards into PVP. It's not "the major focus of development", but one can hardly claim it's being ignored.

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I did have the thought just then that the Praetorian Nemesis could be ... Emperor Cole.

1) He usurped Tyrant in a secret coup and has been controlling the world ever since.

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Lame!

Besides, it's completely out of character for Nemesis: he never actually *succeeds* at anything. He just says "I meant to do that!" and makes yet another hopelessly convoluted plot that's doomed to single-detail cascade-failure due to its own complexity.

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Umm, have you played the several missions that take place in alternate dimensions where Nemesis has won? He considers himself his own best opponent.

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There's an alternate dimension where everyone on earth is a furry warwolf , your point?

An obsession with detail and precission may help in designing automata, but it does not make one a strategic genius. Neither does two hundred years of serial failures waved away with the megalomaniacal claim "I *always* have another plan" or "I wanted to be beaten for a reason!"

Seriously, threatening a nation with poison and declaring yourself Emperor when most of those on your side are piston-instrumentalities? There's no way one can rule without a support base. Nor can you spin such a colossal screw-up and coming onto the radar of all who could stop you as "a clever ruse".

Siphoning money from a criminal underworld and using it to build an army of steam-robots to "take over a city"? Was he just going to put a wall around Paragon and pretend the rest of the world didn't exist and no one would leave?

Starting a war that almost results in genocide and *does* result in formation of an extremely powerful organization that ends up being the very thing that stops his delusions of apotheosis?

One *can* claim that each of those was in some omniscient way deliberate...but you're handwaving.

Everything Nemesis has done suggests a mentality that is intimately comfortable with the precision of fine machinery, but absolutely can't get its thinking around the idea that the rest of the world doesn't function like clock-work. The more involved machinations in an open system get, the less predictable their outcomes become. Nor does recursively adding extra compensators to a plan bring it back to an exact result like a steam-governor; it just adds more complexity and more places for something to go wrong. The very structure of Nemesis' plots dooms them to failure.

The ever-present steam-tech is a metaphor for his inability to overcome his weaknesses. He just can't adapt. He keeps doing the same sort of thing over and over, getting increasingly more refined yet progressively more anachronistic.

Even his name is an irony of self-defeat. "Nemesis" is the greek concept of divine retribution against the sin of "hubris". Hubris is the arrogant belief that one is the equal or superior to the gods and nature. When nemesis occurs, something the arrogant mortal believed was beneath them and under their control goes wrong and brings all plans to ruin. The Prussian Prince is hubristic to a fault, and is his own "nemesis".


Nemesis has been written as a 'golden-age villain' over-the-top clown since the beginning.

*takes notes* Moose...munch...and....stay...shun...air...ee..... ..

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So who's who in the picture? Unless it is a secret.

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Left to right: Bruce Harlick (Writer), Melissa "War Witch" Bianco (Head Zone Designer), and Joe "Hero 1" Morrissey (Lead Writer).

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Should babies drive?

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Babies have just as much right to be on the road as you do! Are you honestly so arrogant you're going to say only someone tall enough to reach the brakes *and* see over the wheel can drive? I be you're going to say they have to able to read street signs and know a whole bunch of stupid "traffic laws" too. We need more traffic on our highways so you're just going to have to put up with babies there or not have enough revenue for road maintenance!

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I did have the thought just then that the Praetorian Nemesis could be ... Emperor Cole.

1) He usurped Tyrant in a secret coup and has been controlling the world ever since.

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Lame!

Besides, it's completely out of character for Nemesis: he never actually *succeeds* at anything. He just says "I meant to do that!" and makes yet another hopelessly convoluted plot that's doomed to single-detail cascade-failure due to its own complexity.

Dude! Spoiler warning on that kind of thing.

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Well they aren't difficult, they just are irritating snots the way they jump around from every direction.

On top of it all, Johnny doesn't even say hardly a thank you for saving his soul. There should be an optional ending where you can take out Johnny for being such an ingrate .

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Uh... Go back and reread the NPC dialogue at the end of that mission.

As for the Wailers, I hate fighting them but not because they are irritating in some way. They are just relentlessly *bland*. And if you do Hardcase's missions it's ten levels of all-Wailers all-the-time .

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R-type.

We are getting Plasma torpedos to go with our cloaking devices. Thats a huge buff for /devices.

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If they let us shotgun load Type F Plasma Torpedoes in an R launcher I am so going to send the dev team fresh cheesecakes.

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Whooooaaa.... Blast-from-the-past SFB reference. Definitely a Type R Gaming Geek .

You should have a heck of a lot more money than that by now. Sell the drops you get at the Market. You can slot DOs at lv12 and ought to be able to fill all your enh slots with either DOs or lv15 Basic IOs using cash on hand.

EDIT: And it's not a factor of luck. Selling your drops should get you plenty of cash by the point you are at. If you *do* get lucky then you should have a million or two lying around.

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If the gentleman in question is one of the environmental artists then he is either Don Pham or Ryan Roth.

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He's neither. I asked about him because I thought he was someone else who still works at Cryptic Studios and was told he was "John, one of our environmental artists".

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5. Nemesis system

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This one confuses me. You build an enemy, know intimately what they are capable of and how to beat them, then "face" them multiple random times in missions. How is this not going to grow boring after the first couple of encounters?

An underwater zone featuring Merulina and the Coralax would be something exotic for the game.

I love old pulp-adventure/SF stories so, despite admonitions it's not coming, I'm still holding out for a Moon Zone with the 5th Column. It's a trope of lots of post WWII pulp stories to have Nazis setting up a moonbase with rockets and super-science weapons. I want my Moon-Nazis!

Semi-relating to the above, for the love of god finish the construction in Port Oaks! The Boston Big Dig saw more progress than this.


I'd also like to see more done with the Safeguard/Mayhem destructible object technology. At the top end of possibilities: team vs team PVP on mayhem maps where the villains are trying to accomplish some objective and the heroes are trying to stymie them. However, both can damage the destructible objects and destroying them gives the villains more time. Are you so callous as to fire an AoE while the villain is standing (deliberately) in a parking lot and cause all that property damage? Or do you hold fire and weaken yourself against them? But overall have objectives besides "I beat up the other guy".


Finally, a new AI setting. We've been told they literally can't add a higher difficulty setting with just +level enemies. I don't think that would satisfy my desire for tougher challenges either. But we've been told there are things like Healing-adds-to-aggro flags in the game; they've just never been used. I'd like to see an "AI +difficulty" setting where the enemies were smarter, more dynamic, and reacted better to player-actions. Heals that draw attention from enemies. Runners that auto-aggro other spawns they run past. +Perception boosts that let them aggro on you as soon as you can also see them. Etc. I don't think it would require more than a token reward increase either; it would be for the challenge of the thing and to freshen older story-content.

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Hey hey hey buddy! Stay on task here! What does that gentleman do?!

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He's an Environmental Artist, which I believe puts him working with Melissa "War Witch" Bianco.

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In the last interview I read, Posi said that they have over 50 employees now and were getting ready to take a new company pic. I haven't seen the new pic yet.

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They also still have 12 openings.

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*dashes to the Paragon Studios jobs page, reads, and then sighs in disappointment*

Damn.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

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HIRE THIS WOMAN!

You have only to watch her videos to know she's qualified and that she'll be fabulous at creating videos that actually make people want to play this game.

If I wasn't already playing this game and watched History in the Making (5th Anniversary Commemorative Video) I would have dropped what I was doing, downloaded the game, and stayed up all night trying it. Then I would have bought it the next day.

By comparison the Captain Amazing videos made me wonder what game they were talking about. Goofy camp doesn't make gamers want to play, game play does. Goofy camp appeals to very little roleplayers, story does. Even the I'm a Hero - I'm a Villain videow, while cute, didn't sell the game. Videos should sell the game. Samuraiko delivers the goods.

Hire this woman.

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This a hundred times over. Qualified applicants these days involves alot of formal educations and whatnot, which do serve a purpose. I feel that Dark Respite aka Samuraiko has one very important detail that I feel should qualify her, that being...

She delivers the goods.

Tell me that that's not worth something.

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I must concur.

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...That's *not* stoked about Going Rogue? For me, I see less pros and more cons. Like, if defenders make their way to villains, corruptors will most likely be ignored. People will prefer Tankers to Brutes. Am I just being overly-negative?

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It really is just you man...

More seriously, what I've heard other people complaining about is that *Tanks* will be ignored in favor of higher damage Brutes and *Defenders* will be forgotten in place of higher damage and nearly as buff-capable Corruptors.

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I would prefer if they had improved giant monsters that cause true environmental damage and would go on rampages.

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You mean that there would be consequential outcomes from what you had done: a reason to do it to begin with beyond "because it's there".

*post deleted and turned into a PM*

I do admit to being confused about who does what over there now. How is the org-tree arranged for you, Avatea, Niviene, and EMpulse, and what are your respective responsibilities?