Mazey
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Posts
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Quote:That is factually not true.Originally Posted by Venture
A "true inconsistency" then never exists by this definition, because any inconsistency can be handwaved if you're willing to swallow enough codswallop. This is the point.
If, for example, a story says two people met on a Thursday, and then later contradicts that by saying they met on Wednesday, and those claims are made out-of-character, then that story contains an inconsistency.
More formally, if a story claims both A and ¬A are both true, then that story is inconsistent.
Inconsistent stories are most definitely possible, which is why it's important to make the distinction between actual inconsistencies and a convoluted story lacking explanations.
Of course, there's also the question of if retcons count as inconsistencies, but super-hero fans generally seem to assume they do not. -
Quote:Yeah, in Issue 32.Originally Posted by Starsman
I would hold on, though. If they are doing Pools and Epic pools, it's only natural epic ATs are next.
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Quote:Was the mentioned beforehand? If it was, I never saw it.Originally Posted by Sebaddon
Ehm, just 2 things there
1: Yes, they said we would get an SSA every month. However, Zwillinger (I think it was him) has also stated multiple times that there will be gaps in between the different story arcs, to make and test the new ones. Once an SSA is started, like now, then it will be monthly, till it ends. Then they may wait till the next issue to fully test and make sure the SSA's are completed. We still have 2 weeks this month.
There's a great big difference between going "We're going to release one every month, then a gap before the next set start." and going "We're going to release one every month." then, 5 months into the first arc go "Oh, but there's going to be a gap between the first arc and the second."
The latter is what I remember happening.
Those weeks weren't nothing, they were sales on sets that were newly released on the market. Those sets were the new thing.Quote:2: There have been many more weeks that we got "nothing". Mainly look at the months before issue 24, April and May. All they offered was nothing more than sets on sale. Because they were working on the issue mainly. They can't always have a lot of stuff ready to give away. We already get more than we used to. -
Interestingly, looking through the records, it seems that SSA 1.7 was released exactly 1 week after the Beast Mastery set.
"But how could anyone be so entitled as to think they might release a SSA directly after a powerset?!? Stop being so entitled!!!!" -
Quote:Then where were April's and May's?Originally Posted by bpphantom
We've always had one new SSA part per month.
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Quote:No-one is forcing you to read them and post in them.Originally Posted by Thirty-Seven
I know this isn't what you said, but firstly... because the threads themselves are an exceedingly common occurrence, and to see the same type of post every week a power set or SSA isn't released seems... trite and pointless to me. So, from that point alone, at least my patience is wearing a bit for this type of thread.
And no, I do not see why someone posting their displeasure must automatically come off as entitlement. These people want to give Paragon Studios their money, that's anything but entitled.
Further, in regards to the SSAs, when Freedom was announced we were explicitly told we were going to get a new SSA every month, and we've been getting them decidedly less often than that. Part of our VIP subscription was supposedly going to get us those monthly stories.*
Where exactly is the "entitlement" in wanting what we were told we would get?
No-one ever said any differently.Quote:Also, it isn't rare for there to be a week in which an SSA or power set isn't released. In fact, it prolly happens twice a month, or more.
SSAs and powersets aren't the only things they release. This is still pretty much the first week where nothing new was released.
*In fact, we were also told we would get a couple of comic pages at the start of each one, like with the tutorial. Whatever happened to those? We got a single picture with each story of the first SSA and with the second it seems we're going to get screen-shots. -
Right, I really don't get some of the comments in this thread.
They've been giving something new every single week from the start of Freedom (with the possible occasional exception), including weeks after we got a powerset.
So, is it not noteworth when it doesn't happen? How is it "being entitled" to simply comment on a vary rare occurrence?
And really, what the hell does a newly released powerset have to do with anything, when they've released stuff right after a powerset every single time before? -
Quote:Exactly, that's exactly what I meant.Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
The Well of the Furies that we have today bears small resemblance to the Well that Marcus and Stefan dipped their hands into back in 2004 (that being the year the game launched, not the literal in-game year that they received their power). The characterization of the Well as a cosmic dimension-spanning entity is inconsistent with the original characterization of it as a passive "battery of human potential". In fact, the Well was originally a dodge and Pandora's Box was the real power source. Later, it turned out that the BOX was the dodge and the real source was the Well after all.
Now, you can wave your hands and say, "That's not inconsistency, it's just that <handwave>we now know more about it than we knew eight years ago</handwave>."
There's no particularly good way to refute that because it says that we players were never given the whole story and so anything the devs decide to toss at us lore-wise is perfectly okay because they're just "expanding" on the old content.
This, of course, is why I tend to go into Standard Lore Rant #3 about how the devs hoard all of the lore they have in order to promote the existence of this very situation where they tell us the smallest amount of history necessary for the current content and so nothing they write is technically a contradiction of existing lore; it's "actually" an expansion of existing lore instead.
It's not that Statesman "realized his potential", it's that he found a magic box and released super powers into the world for the first time since mythological days. Except that it wasn't really the box, it was really The Well, and the potential was actually there all along. Except that the Well actually created this situation and brought Marcus and Stefan to itself because it needed a champion. Except that it's sentient and really wanted to find the person it could use to take over the multiverse.
Let's not even get into the silliness that is Doctor Brainstorm, the Origin of Powers, and Power Proliferation.
You see <handwave>we're just learning more about it is all</handwave>. It's not REALLY inconsistency. It's just that Statesman lied and then lied again and then the Well itself lied and Mender Silos lies when it suits him and Prometheus is almost certainly lieing about many things. That's okay, though, because a lie means that the truth is never an inconsistency.
This is a cheat and a dodge and an excuse for writers and mission programmers to be non-commital and justify whatever they feel like justifying after the fact instead of binding themselves to their established history.
It means that no matter what we players think we know about anything in the game, that we never can really have faith that we know the whole story. It can change at the whim of a writer with a "good idea". That's all well and good for a game about conspiracies where you know up-front that you don't know the whole story and that what you do know probably ought to be questioned. This is a game about super heroes and villains and it's supposed to have a solid history.
It means that we can never know the answer to a simple question like "What year was the Faultline Incident?" because committing themselves to it would be taking away some of their own freedom and laying themselves open to actually be inconsistent.
So, is it inconsistent? No, technically, it's not. The consistency is that we've been lied to repeatedly about the nature of the Well and the Furies and the Gods and we are continuing to be lied to and dodged. The people doing the lieing and the dodging are the writers of the game, and we're supposed to just smile and say "Wow, that's neat! I can't wait to see how the next lie is revealed!"
Pardon me; "I can't wait to see next expansion of the existing content."
You can take your pick about which statement is actually more correct.
The lore isn't inconsistent, its been purposely manipulated to avoid it, and that's a far worse insult to the writing than simply going "It's inconsistent and makes no sense."
Every example given is something that can be explained. Such an explanation might be horribly convoluted, but can still exist. A true inconsistency can't be explained. The Well lore isn't inconsistent because the writers refuse to give us enough information for an actual inconsistency to occur. -
Quote:Yes, this is the internet, where a lot of people actually understand how logical reasoning works, and so you can't get away with the fallacies you can when talking to people in person.Originally Posted by Athena Six
That's a bit extreme don't you think? Oh wait I always forget this is the internet
My example is extreme yes, but it also fits exactly with your reasoning.
I was using the extreme example to show up the flaw in your claim. The fact it was extreme was the whole point. You weren't meant to like it, but it still fits with what you said. -
Quote:By that reasoning, they could just release exactly the same thing on the market every week and claim it was a new thing on the off-chance that someone hadn't been on the market before and so it was new to that person.Originally Posted by Athena Six
Define 'new' from where I sit, and many many others there are quite a few 'new' things out this week. Bat Aura. never seen that. Alpha and omega costume.. only available to those that have good vs evil edition or bought them on the market piece by piece.
I feel you may see my point by now? Just because something is not new to you does not mean it is not new to others
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Quote:I think that's the problem people are having with it. Having a week without any new content whatsoever is pretty much as uneven as you can get.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Because they have a release schedule to keep the content flow as even as possible.
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Quote:Those two sentences don't have any connection.Originally Posted by Venture
It is not merely inconsistent but it makes absolutely no sense on any level when examined closely. It's a great example of an ad hoc attempt to explain things that didn't need explaining and weren't really connected in the first place.
The incarnate story may very well be an "ad hoc attempt to explain things that didn't need explaining and weren't really connected in the first place", but that doesn't mean that it's inconsistent.
Show me one example of where the incarnate story is outright inconsistent, because no-one's done that yet.
When people complain about stories in CoH, they're often very quick to make claims of inconsistency while only giving examples of 'things they don't like', 'things they can't make sense of' and 'lack of explanations' but, while those things may be examples of bad writing, none of them are examples of a story 'being inconsistent' or a story 'not making sense'. -
Quote:If that house had fuel lines connecting to every other house in the world, then it's not inconceivable that if that house burnt down, then a chain reaction would happen resulting in every other house burning down too.Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
(2) that makes... no sense at all. It's like saying "There was an arsonist who burned down a house on fifth and main, and because it was an important house, every city in the world burned down." And that comparison wouldn't be hyperbole.
That's what the well is, except more so. Its power connects to every single human, and the more they achieve, the more it connects to them.
The same is true of the kheldians and their well.
You may not like the lore, and you might find it more palatable if it were explained better or differently, but that doesn't mean it's inconsistent.
The Incarnate kheldians in game draw their power from the human well, not the kheldian one. So they wouldn't lose their power unless the human well was captured.Quote:(3) Given incarnate trials and what Prometheus's group "knows," the whole "captured the well" bit should be... well, moot, unless the devs are suddenly going to de-Incarnate every Kheldian that's reached that level.
Though, as things stand, nether well has been captured yet in the game's "present".
Yes, potentially, but that would require them doing something that allows them to draw power from their well. Which has never been added to the game.Quote:Heck, Khelds should (by that line of thought) be twice as powerful, as they'd have two "wells" to draw from, potentially.
There's no reason to think that such an idea is plausible.Quote:Still... Find some of the Khelds, start the prep-work, and raise a new one to that level. Scaling it down, it's like saying "They've bombed the HQ and killed General Smith" kills any chance of ever having an army ever again... as opposed to promoting a capable officer to take General Smith's place. There might be some chaos immediately after, sure, that's a given.
Twilight's Son saved himself by switching wells, but we don't know how he did it, or if such a thing could ever be possible on a scale as large as an entire species. -
Quote:Because the Battalion captured the well of the Kheldians, which means all the achievements of the Kheldians became the achievements of the Battalion, and escape is a form of achievement. Wells are also multi-dimensional.Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
You'd probably think Khelds, given the Kheld back story guide, and all the little questions (and inconsistencies - such as how the battalion could actually have captured/wiped out an extragalactic, fairly easily multigalactic species such as the Kheldians - moreso when we have portal technology in game - and what makes Twilight Son think he's actually the last.)
They still don't. All the forms of Mot are Elite Bosses, not AVs.Quote:Originally Posted by Agent White
I mean heck, the BP didn't even have any archvillains until Mot came along. -
Quote:That's pretty presumptuous.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Presumably the devs have enough data to figure out which "issues" are genuine and which are the product of inflamed entitlement glands. They certainly have vastly more info than we do.
They've done an excellent job thus far.
The devs are human beings, not infallible.
There are undoubtedly many decisions they would have done differently with hindsight. This may well be one of them.
Edit:
Further, what information could they data-mine to work out how big an issue this is? People who come back once and leave again, there's going to be hundreds of them, even if all issues are resolved. There's absolutely no way to pick out which ones leave because of IO issues, unless they explicitly say so, which most won't.
What?Quote:The devs have no control over what individuals "feel".
Of course they do.
Presentation is a hugely important factor in people's willingness of buy into a product. Which basically comes down to "how people feel".
No. I'm arguing a monetary issue which, for a business, is far far more meaningful than "whose the entitled one?".Quote:So you're arguing about a meaningless non-issue just for kicks?
No, you shouldn't, you should do it on a case by case basis.Quote:Originally Posted by Tenzhi
Conversely, you shouldn't automatically make changes just to satisfy a few people.
Going by the forums, and responses I've gotten on sites other than this one, this is single biggest issue that people coming back to Freedom have had.Quote:I didn't mention any specific changes. I would say that those are changes that probably wouldn't move the pay-line. I would say the same about making slotted IOs act as basic enhancements (no set bonuses, special IO bonuses, or procs) for Premiums without access to IOs.
There is no evidence as to if it will change the pay-line or not, but if anything's going to be done, this should be the first port of call. -
Yes, there are potential issues with changing things in the game, and not always something to gain.
Which is precisely why it should be done on a case by case basis. Rather than just disregarded in its entirety. -
Quote:That doesn't mean you should be automatically satisfied with the number you have already satisfied and never seek to satisfy any more.Originally Posted by Tenzhi
When you make the changes to satisfy those could-be-satisfied-if people, you move a group of people who were more unsatisfied into a could-be-satisfied-if position. That group will ALWAYS exist. You cannot satisfy everyone.
Yeah, because everyone hates greater proliferation of information and appropriate warning screens...Quote:Worse than that, you could create a new group of were-satisfied-until people with such changes. -
Quote:It would depend one each "inch" in question.Originally Posted by Tenzhi
So, when an "inch" is given and people continue to complain/leave you wouldn't justify more "inches" with the same reasoning?
Some would be justifiable, others not.
If someone leaves because they can't get absolutely everything for free instantly, then just let them leave.
If someone leaves because the first two characters they unlocked were their Mastermind and Controller, and they were never given a warning screen that the characters couldn't be played without paying more, then that's something that should be fixed. -
Quote:Yes, some people.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Some people are so whiny and entitled they'll never be satisfied however many concessions you make for them.
There are also many people who are quite willing to be satisfied, but who get turned away from the game early one by issues they find upsetting.
There isn't a dichotomy between people who are immediately satisfied and those who will never be.
I never said it wasn't.Quote:The game is very open to new and returning players.
Making it any more so would frankly undermine the incentive to remain VIP.
The issue isn't how open the game is, but how open people feel the game is.
Again, I'm not saying these people are right, just that they're getting put off, and have money. -
Quote:Implicitly.Originally Posted by Tenzhi
Where did I say you did?
That makes no sense, giving one inch does not mean any more need be given.Quote:Reducing the IOs in effectiveness is a novel idea that I could get behind, but it only partially addresses the complaints people put forward about them. Others will still complain that their characters aren't what they ought to be. If we keep giving inches to keep these folks around, eventually we'll have given a whole mile. Thus, the reasoning that we should give them that inch just to keep them around is inherently flawed. There may be a good reason to do so, but that isn't it.
If giving the "inch" of scaled IOs or a warning sign keeps even one player around long enough to spend money, then that's a gain.
Right now, players are leaving because they come with one idea of the game and when they arrive they find another. It's quite possible to eliminate that without any loss of sales elsewhere.
And, quite frankly, I don't see any issue anyway with giving a whole "mile" of quality of life improvements to free players, never-mind an "inch". -
Quote:Where did I say that IOs should be made free?Originally Posted by Tenzhi
Keeping them around by cutting down on what they may feel compelled to spend money on is a battle that ultimately ends either in being fully free or else having this same debate centred around a different pay-line-of-demarcation. The line has to be drawn somewhere if it's to be drawn at all, and wherever it's drawn not everyone will be satisfied with it.
There are many solutions to this problem that don't involve that. Such as reducing IOs to the effectiveness of SOs without the licence, or a great big warning sign when a player tries to unlock a character slotted with IOs. -
Quote:Again, that doesn't matter.Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Returning players already know what the game is like.
Players that left before I9 will return to characters that play the same as before except for changes made to the powers themselves and not the enhancements slotted. Restricted IO access isn't going to turn them away. It's just something new added while they were gone, and curiosity is far more likely to get them to sub/buy a liscence and try it out than drive them away.
Players that left after I9 already know how their characters play using IO's and can make an informed decision about whether or not they want to spend $2 dollars a month on a liscence or $15 for a sub.
It doesn't matter if they should be getting turned away, what matter is that they are getting turned away.
It really doesn't matter how "right" you are Forbin, what matters is that these people aren't paying money, when they might have done if they'd stayed longer. -
Quote:I do:Originally Posted by Obitus
If you truly believe that you have an idea that will improve the Freemium model, both for players (free and paid alike) and by extension, for the long-term health of Paragon's business, then that's great; fire away.
Stop turning returning players away from the game before they even have a chance of considering paying anything towards it.
And that applies to both the Invention Licence issues and how the existing player base reacts to anyone having issues with it.
Obsessing over "who's right" and "who's entitled" does absolutely nothing to help Paragon Studios make money. If anything, it harms their ability to do so, as players who feel upset, no matter how justified they are in feeling that way, come to the community and just get abused, resulting in someone who is never ever going to pay money towards the game again. -
Yeah, the single target, high power knockbacks are the best. For when you have just one too many enemies in your face.
The cone ones can be okay too, but still mostly fall under "annoying". -
Quote:When did I do that?Originally Posted by Leo_G
And you're the one bringing in 'right' or 'wrong' opinions.
As far as I can tell, I voiced my opinion and even clarified that that opinion wasn't always true, and you jumped down my throat for it.