Leif_Roar

[ QUOTE ]
Positron will have some FUN information to share?
That's it. Fun information?

Not ground breaking news? Not An anouncement about the future direction of CoX? Not a watch this space? Just fun news?

[/ QUOTE ]

Now that's just searching for something to take offense at.

Just a quick FYI: "Fighting off the Blackguards" is unpublished, and have been republished as "Blackguards in the Night", arc id 115668, level range ~20.

[ QUOTE ]
But seriously, yeah some warning might have been nice.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll hazard a guess that this wasn't so much the MA being taken down as that it fell down on its own.

[ QUOTE ]
So I guess I should demand double XP, inf, merits, recipes and other drops, discount sub etc, but it's all USELESS.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, no, no. Get with the program already! We're demanding double MA slots this week. Discounted subs were last week.

A mission dialogue should be the right length. Sometimes that's short, sometimes that's long. The right length depends on the pacing of the story, the complexity of the plot and the voice of the character.

That said, when a long mission dialogue is called for, never forget the three golden rules: paragraphs, paragraphs, paragraphs.

When the text is threatening to overwhelm you, remember that punctuation, whitespace and formatting can go a long way towards making a long piece of text read as if it was short.

Or maybe you should just cut away half of it: "Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife -- chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now, it's compete because it's ended here.'"

[ QUOTE ]
I normally prefer to post all EU announcements at the same time (so, EN, FR and DE all together). I'll publish the EN version shortly, however.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's five o'clock on a Friday, GhostRaptor. Forget the silly announcement and get thee to a pub already.

[ QUOTE ]
I'd be interested to see what makes you come to that conclusion.

[/ QUOTE ]

I share PRAF's suspicion. What with the ramp-up in developer staff, the dearth of new art or story content, CoH's current architecture having clearly started to grow cumbersome and the mounting pressures from the competition, it makes sense that they'd be working on CoH 2 now and the anniversary would seem a good time to announce it.

So, I'd hazard a guess we'll get an announcement of CoH2, some concept art, a few planned features and "planned for second half of 2010." I have been known to be wrong from time to time, though.

[ QUOTE ]
Two more ratings and it went down to four stars. I may be wrong but I am figuring, from the mathematics involved, that the two people who rated it next either gave one star and two stars, or both gave it one star.

[/ QUOTE ]

Five votes of five, two votes of three, gives an average vote of (5 * 5 + 2 * 3 ) / 7 ~= 4.43, which rounds down to a rating of four stars.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm actually with FFM

we're gonna get a big fat NOTHING

[/ QUOTE ]

As there hasn't been any kind of announcement yet, I doubt there'll be any 5th anniversary even on the 28th. Probably later, though, although it wouldn't surprise me if it takes till the release of I15.

[ QUOTE ]
True, but that would also apply to references to mythology and history (which this reviewer is much sharper on).

[/ QUOTE ]

Sure, but then any reviewer has their blind spots, just as any story has a target audience.

[ QUOTE ]
That's just one of several examples where I think that Posi and the Dev team have lost the plot.

[/ QUOTE ]

My impression -- and this is based by nothing but my gut feeling and is both over-generalised and probably quite unfair -- but my impression is that under Emmet the developers left features only half-implemented before hasting on to the next one, but the game had direction: it was going somewhere, although with only three wheels, a broken clutch and misaligned spark plugs.

Under Miller, new features are [/i]completed[/i] properly, but the game is floundering with new features added piecemeal and somewhat thoughtless: they've got all four wheels and fixed the clutch, but they're just driving around at random on the backroads trying to get somewhere, but not knowing where.

I think the unique maps are frequently bugged and will often not work reliably with given mission goals as these maps have been made for a single, specific use. There wasn't, until the arrival of the MA, any point in making them robust or to test them outside of the one particular mission they were paired with.

I think it's a case of TMA, personally.

[ QUOTE ]
And if anyone could enlighten me what that core reason actually is I'd be very grateful!

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the three very brilliant parts of CoH that keeps people's attention are the costume generator, the huge amount of ATs and powersets to play around with and, finally, the pacing of the fights which is fast and action-filled without being uncontrollable.

[ QUOTE ]
Personally, I'm sick and tired of all the "soon" rubbish, and no longer expect ANYthing from NC.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have to agree (well to be precise I expect them to release I15 at some point within the next four months, I just don't know if I can expect anything from I15.) Over the last year or so, they've really dropped the ball when it comes to fostering and supporting the player community.

The wall of silence seems to be back up, too. I'm not talking about them revealing what they've got planned for the next issue, or comitting to release dates or chewing the fat on the forums, but on the way too much just seems to fade out and never be mentioned again.

You'd have thought the reaction to the PvP changes in I13 would at least have warranted a public statement of intent or their view on the changed PvP or something, and considering that pretty much the sole contents of I14 was a tool for the community you'd have expected some kind of engagement with the community about it, but so far there's been nothing. And don't get me started on the user feedback threads or the forum / web-page changes or the vault and all that vapour.

[ QUOTE ]
The things they're taking out aren't being taken out for good - just until they fix them so they can't be exploited.

[/ QUOTE ]

"Nothing is as permanent as a temporary tax," though.

Just wanted to say I really enjoy reading your reviews, Blitz. Great work.

[ QUOTE ]
The theory I've heard is that republishing an arc deletes all instances of its souvenirs from people who have played it; haven't verified this though.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmm. Sounds like a reasonable theory. I can see how the database has been designed to cause that behaviour.

[ QUOTE ]
Rather than "I've finally had two change the title too the correct to." it should, of course, read: "I've finally had to change the title to the correct too."

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah, that age-old question of copy-editing: "To too 'to' or not to too 'to'?"

[ QUOTE ]
Anyone who doesn't see anything threatening in a bunch of fairies, doesn't know much about fairies...

[/ QUOTE ]

"Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen..."

[ QUOTE ]
I think it would be a bad thing because there are people who publish a farm arc as well as proper arcs for story while they're at it. Cut the rewards and we have them gone.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't understand your reasoning. If someone wants to make a proper arc, why would they not do so just because they can't make farming arcs?

In fact, if someone did have to be "bribed" with the ability to make farming arcs to make them write arcs with story, would you really want to play in their story arcs? If a player isn't really interested in making stories, their stories aren't going to be any good.

[ QUOTE ]
Then there are the new players, experimenting what other players have come up with. Cut the rewards and they're off to Faultline, Talos, IP, anywhere where they can get "normal" xp/inf.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again I ask "yes, and?" What's wrong with people playing in Faultline? We don't want everybody playing in the MA all the time: that would eventually kill the game.

[ QUOTE ]
Then there are people whose enjoyment is part an enganging story and part earning new powers (e.g. earning XP, leveling up, getting the new power). Cut the rewards and some of them will also leave. Why should they have to choose between the two things that make their gameplay fun?

[/ QUOTE ]

Because the current situation is not without problems: farming in the MA is so efficent as to make the rest of the game moot, the prevalence of farming arcs make it a chore to find arcs with good stories and the barrage of farming spam, particularly in Atlas, annoys a great many people.

[ QUOTE ]
After any inf or xp change we would have the majority of current MA users gone. Not from the game necessarily, but at least from using MA which would, in effect, hurt those who just want to have fun in MA playing new arcs.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, it won't hurt them, because they are the people who will not leave. The PvPers are not adversley affected by the people who're not interested in PvP staying out of Warburg, and the players who are interested in fresh, new missions are not adversley affected by the people who're not interested in that staying out of the MA.

[ QUOTE ]
Any xp/inf change and the majority of players wont ever use it again.

[/ QUOTE ]

And that would be a bad thing, why?

I don't actually think your assumption is true, but even if it is, surely it makes more sense to target the MA at the players who're interested in new missions than at the players who're only in it for the XP.

Just a quick request. As there's no bookmarks or favorites of AE arcs, once you've published your arc and gotten an arc ID, go back and edit the text of your mission souvenir and add the arc id to it. That way people who've played through your arc have an easy way to find it again.

I recommend Faerie Gold, arc id 95553. Heroic, levels 20 - 29.

[ QUOTE ]
A high Wisdom score lets you write the setting to be on a wrecked ship full of treasure, giving you some nice loot.

[/ QUOTE ]

And a really high Wisdom score lets you write yourself in as a time-traveller from the future, with all sorts of high tech weapons?