Lazarillo
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:It's also probably a major reason why we're in this mess in the first place. Think about it, we, as a playerbase, were given tools to write almost any tale we cared to imagine, and what did we do? Farm mor monkees. Small wonder there's so little focus on story, when we've basically told the Devs we care less about such, and more about going to the same map for the same tasks over and over and over and over again 'til we're oober.Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
Goods. AE was a bug and exploit fest and a massive waste of developer resources. A massive, massive misstep for Paragon Studios, and especially it's lead designer at the time. -
Scratch that, I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume I misunderstood.
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Quote:Invest in an iron?Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Yes, very - it makes my T-shirt bumpy
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Quote:I've been saying it from the beginning, the signed NDA is just the next step in hype-building.Originally Posted by CactusBrawler
Is it just me, or can anyone else not see why they needed a NDA?
I mean the match making system is nice, but its been done before.
And multi-team fights are a staple of the MMORPG Genre.
So what exactly were they trying to hide away?
And some of the comments in this topic about how i20 was promising the world seem to indicate that it works, if perhaps a little too well. -
Quote:Seriously? SERIOUSLY? More new currency? S.E.R.I.O.U.S.L.Y.?!
Incarnate Shards are not used for the Judgement Slot - Incarnate Threads are -
Quote:When the actual issue was announced, ala what we got today, Weapon Customization came with it. Dual Blades was announced way in advance (sorta like the raids for i20 were), then the actual Issue press release came out and the Devs were all like "See, toldja there was a reason we weren't calling it 'Duel Swords'!"Originally Posted by Obscure Blade
I recall when the Issue with Dual Blades was announced there was a fairly long period when people complained that they didn't like the looks of the swords; and then the devs announced "Oh, by the way - Weapon Customization!"
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Quote:I don't expect much story (TFs and Raids aren't really conducive), but going on the previous analogy I made of "Content is stuff I do", then even for any other problems I might have with it, the idea that there it's "light on content" is nuts! Lighter than the last two issues? Sure. But that's like complaining i7 was lighter on content than the initial CoV release.Originally Posted by EvilGeko
Anyone who thinks this issue is light on content is being ridiculous. A cursory review of the other issues shows that this issue is on the beefier side.
I can accept that, at the least. -
Quote:I'm from Missouri. No, wait, I'm from Texas. But I'll still believe in its expanded form when I see its expanded form. I do stand corrected on promises made, however!Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
See EvilG's link above.
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Quote:Right, as it's been described, at least, it cannot. It's a system specifically for the raids. From the sound of things, you hit your "I wanna raid" flag, then you hang out until 10 other people hit theirs. Then you do that raid. It's not universal.Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
Can it not be used to organize regular 8 man teams?
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Quote:Then can we go ahead and take him down? It's been 3 issues now.Originally Posted by EvilGeko
Likewise, Primal Earth has been invaded by a mad man-god and his rabid followers. All that other crap needs to be put on the shelf for a bit until we take this sum 'O a gun down.
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Quote:That last bit only applies to the two new trials, though. For regular teaming, the queue system does nothing. Heck, unless you feel like street sweeping potentially for hours at a time, you're still going to have to organize a raid like normal anyway, so the queues...still don't really matter a lot, as near as I can tell.Originally Posted by EvilGeko
Two Co-Op trials; a hero and villain specific TF; huge mechanics improvements to grouping. What the heck do you folks want?
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Quote:Currently two. A Scrapper and a Bane Spider. My namesake character (a Controller) is still only 40, but I've been working on him a lot lately because I'd like to do it with him, too, and when I do, I'll probably pick a fourth to work on as well.Originally Posted by Cosmic_Herald
How many level 50's are you attempting to 'become an incarnate'?
Depends on the person, but for me specifically, I find one at a time of each is right about my golden spot.Quote:Do you feel that doing more than say one hero and one villain is doing 'too much at once'?
There's definitely more focus on "what to do at 50", but I haven't had any problems working on others. I solo a lot, though.Quote:Do you feel a shift has occured to more time devoted soley to level 50's leaving far less time to level an alt?
Actually, I do kinda like the focus. The added stress of "these are my main characters" make those characters more fun to play.Quote:Do you feel this is a good thing?
Haven't had that problem at all.Quote:Do you seem to not have enough time to devote to alt characters because you feel you need to be collecting shards and such?
Nah. There's nothing that forces you to do the WTF every week. People that wanna go fast can go fast, and people that wanna take their time have that option too.Quote:Do you think changing the Weekly Task Force to a Bi-montly Task Force would be 'better'? Perhaps offering a more relaxed atmosphere for the playerbase? -
Quote:...umm, pretty much every time, that I recall. And usually when they do, and people go "that's it?" there's a response like the one you just gave. And then people start thinking there's more, and then there isn't and there's an even bigger "that's it?".Originally Posted by Furio
Sheesh people....when have they *ever* released a full and complete list of the contents of a new Issue with their first posting?
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Quote:Power scale isn't what makes a villain an interesting character.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
How can an almost invincible man powered by an ultimate source of power and attempting to conquer the entire multiverse "for the greater good" not be an interesting Villain?
You make Tyrant sound like Hopkins in a fancier suit -
Quote:I probably have a weird use of semantics.Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
Raids and TFs aren't "crunchy"?
When I think "crunchy" as far as this game is concerned, I think more about powers, proliferations, QoL changes, things of that nature. TFs and raids fall under the umbrella of "content".
Basically, crunch is stuff I use.
Content is stuff I do.
Yeah, I'm weird. Probably. -
Pretty much all raids and TFs. Not much crunchy stuff at least at this point. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't expected more, but hopefully the raids'll be fun enough to make up for that, since I imagine there's going to be a lot of raiding once this hits.
Though I suppose that given there's absolutely no talk of new slots, we have at least some indication that the list is incomplete. -
Quote:There are two types of "content" in my eyes. "Story" content and "Gameplay" content. i19 was great for the latter. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Apex was about the most fun I've had in the game in quite a while. i20 looks to be more of the same. So I suspect I'll enjoy it greatly to that extent (I haven't done the sneak preview raids because I'd rather experience the polished versions as my first impression).Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
Well if you're bored by them you might end up skipping Issue 20.
Me, it sounds like fun.
However, without great "story" content to go with it, and without a compelling villain to inspire me, I suspect that, like the new TFs of i19, it will also elicit a great big whopping "who cares?" out of me when initial rush is over. Some may say that asking for both to be great is asking too much. I'll turn and point out that we have precedent of both being in place in this game already, and that it's a little disappointing to see the most epic "gameplay" content get completely shafted on the "story" side. -
Quote:It's also a story based game, though, and in a story, you can't just say "the world's in danger". Well, you can, but it doesn't tend to make a good story. That's the distinction between a villain and a boss that I mentioned earlier. A boss is a something that has a buncha HP that I click on and then press the little numbers on my keyboard until I see that it doesn't have HP anymore. A villain is a character in a story against whom I feel like I want to click on the little numbers on my keyboard and make him or her not have HP anymore (or, alternatively, one that actually makes me sympathize and feel even a touch of regret for doing so).Originally Posted by Golden Girl
But any high level threat has to involve the world in danger in some way - some evil force has to threaten Primal Earth or another world, and we have to fight it - and as it's a combat based game, any evil force will be using things that we can defeat in combat, so that means invasion armies.
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Quote:Aye, but why do we care that it's the Praetorians? I'm not talking about why "we" as the heroes and villains fighting to keep them out care. It's obvious why the characters care, they don't want to be invaded. But why do we, the players, or more aptly, the readers care? What's the story behind it? What's the difference between a mission where Battle Maiden invades King's Row, and where the Axis Amerika version of Maestro invades King's Row?Originally Posted by Furio
That's kinda what bad guys do when they're at that level of power. Invade and conquer/destroy places. Then heroes stop em. The reason heroes care who the villains are (in any story) is because they're attempting to change the heroes' status quo through violence. If the Praetorians stayed in their home dimension, we likely *wouldn't* care about them at all.
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Quote:I've tried to explain it several times but even if "Praetorians invading Primal Earth" is a new arc, as a concept, it's nothing we haven't seen other villain groups already do. We have fought most of them already though. Well, we have heroside, anyway. Villains have even less reason to care.Originally Posted by Silencer7
I like the thread's seeming premise that praetorians are old hat before we've even fought most of them. The two TFs that we've done are meant to be the start of the whole 'praetorians invading primal earth' story arc, but some folks have already seen it and it's old news.
Story content that explains why we should care about who these villains are. Right now there's not much to elicit other than a yawn since it's the same stuff we've seen with the Rikti, with Rularuu, with Axis Amerika, etc...Quote:One wonders what 'new content' you're waiting for. -
Quote:This is sort of part of my fear as well. They're holding back Tyrant for some final big boss raid for 50 Omega-slotted Incarnates, or the like. But really...why?Originally Posted by Dr_Mechano
As mentioned I really don't like Tyrant being the uber-awesome that requires Incarnating. Heck the ONLY reason the Incarnate Taskforces require you to be an Incarnate is to avoid the level debuff...a purely game mechanic way of making the Alpha slot more useful than it is (they freely admitted this saying that 'since some characters could already reach that power level with Invention Origin sets'). Which frankly seems a bit crap in my opinion.
Let's take Hro'Dtohz as an example. The big confrontation with him in the Lady Grey Task Force is the third time you encounter him in the story, and even when you beat him there, he escapes to fight another day. This doesn't diminish him, though, as still being the big bad leader of the Restructurists.
The Rikti aren't the only example. Is the final Kheldian arc any less epic because you had a skirmish with Arakhn back on Striga Isle? I say no. The finale is still great, but part of what makes it great is that she's not just some faceless behind-the-scenes mastermind. We meet her, we see her hand in things, we get to know her as an enemy.
I could go on. Requiem? Nemesis? Constant foes. Countess Crey? Doesn't appear until the end, but there are all sorts of little hints and teases. Vanessa DeVore? We rescue her in that little one-off mission in an early appearance. Little touches like that are what make these guys villains rather than bosses.
Now, if there really is a twist here with Neuron and Chimera being all Weekend at Bernie's with Cole, that could be neat, but even then, we need something compelling to tie us to that. As it is right now, if they dropped the "oh, and by the way, Tyrant's actually been dead all along"...who would really care? -
Quote:Wah-wah-WAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
They did this to avoid the eventuality of someone buying the Fifth Column.
That was horrible. Well played, sir! -
Quote:And it's that last bit that really spoil the package. The game does have decent characterizations for several of the Praetors already. The thing is, it's completely absent from any of the conflict. Marauder is presented in a really complex character. He's all about the get-tough-or-die approach, sure, but we also see traces of reluctance in him and outright grief when he finds out about Cleopatra.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Cole is a bland, generic megalomaniacal overlord threatening the world for reasons to be explained later
Then we get to confront him later and he gives us such gems as "Serve Tyrant or die!"
...seriously?
The others don't really make out much better. This is a place where the Devs can really kill two birds with one stone, though. It seems like there's at least part of the crowd clamoring for more to do with their Incarnates than simply raid. Let's have some actual story arcs that focus on the conflict and who these people are. We can still have the big epic battles in the raids and TFs and stuff, but adding actual story content is what will make it matter. -
Quote:The fact that Reichsman did it two years ago? Or that Hro'Dtohz was doing it for two years before that?Originally Posted by Golden Girl
What exactly is there not to like about a crazed god-emperor who's the apparent champion of a mystical source of ultimate power than spans the multiverse launching an invasion of giant evil war robots to enslave an entire world?
I'm not saying I'm against the invasion. But Tyrant needs a bigger schtick than that. Nay, Tyrant deserves a bigger schtick than that. -
This came up in the floating fortress official topic and it sorta made me realize something that seems fairly worthy of discussion (but not worthy of completely derailing that topic). See, I don't know about everyone else, but I'm quite the villain-fanatic. A good villain can make a great story, and a bad one can break it just as easily. And CoH, I'd say, does have some pretty good villains. But looking at the new "All Praetoria, all the time!" focus that we seem to be shifting to, I'm starting to wonder...why the heck do I care about the Praetorian Guard?
I seem to remember comments along the lines of the idea that Praetoria was supposed to be "so much more than goatee Paragon" and, I'll note that for characters created there, in those first 20 levels, it certainly is. It's an interesting and complex world with some good stories to tell. Marauder, Chimera, Mother Mayhem, even Bobcat all have decent amounts of characterization. The thing is, these stories end, then, skip forward to the new endgame, and there's no difference between "Primal" and "Praetorian" as players go. Everyone's "Primal" by that point and, maybe because of that, all that characterization is gone. These guys have become nothing more than more sacks of HP to whittle down. The ones that don't appear in the 1-20 arcs get even less. Siege is just...there. Diabolique is still one of the most annoying bosses in the game, but still one of the most pointless in terms of her character even existing.
And Tyrant, the supposed biggest baddest boogieman of them all? Doesn't even appear anymore. He's just kinda out there. Oh, and he wants to invade Primal Earth. Really? Take a number, buddy. The Rikti were here first. Rularuu's ahead of you, too. And Reichsman. I can go on, really. But really looking at it, you could basically replace the Praetorian Guard mobs in the Apex TF with Rikti and it would be exactly the same story. The only thing these guys have going for them really is being "goatee Paragon".
I'm not sure the current approach to the content is doing anything to help this, either. TFs and Raids aren't exactly geared towards expanding story and characterization. The system just isn't set up that way.
So, in the end, it's been 1½ issues, and the Praetorians are already losing their shine. I've rambled a lot, I tend to do that, but I guess my hope is just to say that I just can't bring myself to be too excited by these guys when I barely even know them. We know Praetoria can tell a good story, but we're desperately in need of more of it.