Mr_Squid

Right now I'm imagining this hilarious scenario where he tests it, it DOES work, and it chucks him forward in time 50 years to when someone else has invented the warp drive independently and taken credit for it.

So as more and more issues come out the more and more I see players starting to object to the state of this game's storyline. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that after a couple of years where the game's lore didn't really go anywhere (I would say roughly from issues 9-17), the game's lore has begun to rapidly advance, and with it bring a whole host of various revelations, reveals, and retcons. And understandably, not everyone is happy about this.

But as I read more and more posts I begin to wonder if this issue is really as pervasive as it seems or is it just the work of a few dedicated and vocal individuals. So honestly, I think it's high time we all just lay our cards on the table and say what we think about this game's lore. So to that end, a couple of questions.

1: Is the lore of this game significant enough to be a reason to subscribe?

(My answer: Yes, but it's always been secondary to the gameplay.)

2: Is the lore of this game fundamentally broken? That is to say, contradictary, messy, and poorly written?

(My answer: Yes and no. Yeah the lore can be poorly written, but for every badly written story there's a good one to balance it out. And frankly, due to the weird per character basis on which continuity works in this game, the lore has always been eight kinds of screwed up.)

3: Do you like the current direction the lore is taking?

(My answer: All things considered, yes I do. Personally I've always liked stories that let the characters grow and grow in power until they reach near-godhood, and from a conceptual level I'm glad the game is going in that direction. The actual execution of that direction could use some work, in that frankly I feel it's a bit too complex for it's own good right now, but I'm overall content with it.)

4: Would you like the development team to spend a significant amount of time fixing all the old lore, even if that meant spending an issue not moving the game's story forward and just patching things up?

(My answer: Nah. I would much rather have new shiny stuff.)

I'm liking all these suggestions thus far...I just finished getting very rares on all of Kronaros's incarnate slots and have been dying to do something utterly ridiculous with them. Maybe I should start small though...what do you think a KM/SR scrapper with softcapped everything and very rare incarnate abilities could handle?

Yes I will! And right after I said I won't make any more new characters.

So I've got a D&D game going now and I've got my own custom campaign setting: Oryssm. It's kind of like Eberron with the magitek turned up to eleven and under siege by sentient lovecraftian stars. But what's a custom campaign setting without custom races? And I have two, the Gnosids (good Mind Flayers), and the Zuriel (Eight foot tall hulking angelic warriors with six razor tipped wings, horns coming out the wazoo, and an immortal life cycle).

So yeah, I'm gonna make myself a Zuriel, since in the game they love using GIGANTIC weapons. And utterly impractical ones too, like a sword with four blades, all set at right angles to one another (they make it work though...somehow...)

Just got back, and to borrow Sho's catchphrase, I dug it. By far my favorite of the three movies.

The action scenes were GLORIOUS in this one. I've always believed that there's an art to good action scenes and many films don't do them well. This one freakin' nails it, and on top of all that the action scenes are absolutely BUGNUTS INSANE. You know that one with the giant robot sandworm kraken digging into the skyscraper you've seen in all the trailers? Yeah, you can expect that level of "HOLY SH*T" from every single action scene in the film.

Without spoiling too much, the villain in this one was probably my favorite villain character of the trilogy. He wasn't nearly as one note as Megatron or the Fallen, and he had a far more interesting backstory. I'm not going to say much else but we finally have a villain in a Transformers movie who's motivation can be summed up by something other than "CRUSH KILL DESTROY". And also, his plan was surprisingly cunning.

There were a LOT of G1 references in this one. Hell, the entire plot of the movie was pretty much a mash up between "Megatron's Master Plan" and "The Ultimate Doom". My favorite one was a shout out to "Atlantis Arise" where Megatron sits on the Lincoln Monument's throne. To go one step further, this one felt a lot like an adaptation of G1, just in the way the plot was structured.

The 3D was also excellent as well. There's been a lot of movies recently where I've outright forgotten that I was in fact watching the movie in 3D, but in this nearly every shot had a defined foreground, middleground, and background. There were also plenty of shots in the film where you could tell were done specifically with 3D in mind, but weren't the sort of glaring "HEY LOOK SOMETHING IS COMING OUT OF THE SCREEN" sort of shots that plague a lot of other 3D movies.

So yeah, in other words, it made me a very happy Transformers fanboy. If you have any interest in the series, go check it out in 3D. It's well worth the 10 bucks and 2.5 hours.

Just wrapped up two runs, one of which I lead, and they both were a ton of fun. I'll be honest, I'm a sucker for gameplay gimmicks, so the sheer number of them in the Keyes trial excited me to no end. I also loved the difficulty. These things are supposed to be challenges worthy of beings of godlike power, and while Lambda SOMETIMES feels like that, the BAF has gotten so simple I can just turn my monitor off, mash buttons, and still probably come out with a victory. I also liked how it worked the need for healers back into the game. It's become so easy to softcap resistance and defense on a full team now that heals kind of seem pointless, and I always like seeing a new bit of content revitalize an underused build or archetype (cough cough, maybe the next trial could involve being stealthy. Give stalkers something to do...)

Plus it has giant orbital kill lasers, which make everything 20% cooler.

City of Heroes: Champion was also considered but all the playtesters quickly developed a rare medical condition known as "complete bugnuts insanity".

If I absolutely had to choose I would go with Kronaros and Lord Kron. Kronaros is a Kinetic Melee/Super Reflexes scrapper who is the living incarnation of the imagination and creativity of a benevolent omnipotent being. Lord Kron is a Claws/Dark Armor Brute who existed before reality did, was kicked out of reality itself for introducing the concept of entropy, and has clawed his way back for the sole purpose of literally tearing reality to shreds. Both have similar costumes, both are designed around the incarnate system, both are complete mary sues, and both have backstories that do horrible, horrible things to the canon of the game.



Three guesses as to which one is which

Holy crap! LAMBDA SECTOR IS TRYPTICON!

Another proud Brony here, and here is an IRL version of me as a pony:

That, and I feel like a lot of people (not just the reviewers in question) seem to think that cynicism = funny. It doesn't. Done RIGHT being overly cynical can be funny, but when it's done wrong it just makes you sound whiny, pessimistic, and well...boring. It's one of the reasons I stopped watching Yahtzee, it seemed like he started to rely less on jokes and more on lengthy author tracts about how terrible and awful the games industry is.

Now if you want to see an example of a reviewer who can be humorous AND optimistic, check out Vangelus. He's one of the few people out there who reviews toys in a semi-professional fashion, and is really funny about it too.

Check out his youtube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Vange1us

and he recently joined That Guy With the Glasses!

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/vid...lus/vanreviews

So I just got back from it, it was damn good. But I'm not here to talk about that, I'm here to talk about a really fun alternate interpretation of the movie I came up with while watching.

So Sebastian Shaw has the ability to absorb energy, and then use that energy to chuck things around and blow things up.

And Sebastian Shaw also wants to start a big war between the US and Russia, which will result in a lot of things getting blown up.

And Sebastian Shaw's favorite way to kill people? Blow them up.

Ok. So. Compare:



And now notice how much he looks like a certain other explosion obsessed madman.



X Men First Class is about the X Men trying to stop Michael Bay from blowing up the world.

Because...um...it's (probably) fun?

Oh no no no no, perhaps I got read the wrong way. I wasn't calling people out for dooooomcrying in this thread. In fact, having a costume only usable by level 50's is a pretty legitimate complaint. I'm referring to those OTHER people who seem to be infesting OTHER threads and complaining about OTHER problems.

Pointing out one or two little problems doesn't bug me at all. In fact, if I was a dev, I would appreciate it. What does bug me are people who make blanket statements about how "X isn't just bad, it's SOOOO bad that the game is RUINED FOREVER!!!"

But seriously, we're getting a sonic rainboom aura.

Wait, wait, wait. Wait.

So not only do we get a new incarnate trial, we also get Rikti, Nemesis, AND FREAKIN' RULARUU PETS, the coolest dang armor I have ever seen in the game, a pixel and SONIC RAINBOOM AURA, and group area buffs?

Okay, two things.

Number 1: SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Number 2: Seriously, all you people who seem to be emerging from the woodwork right now to say how much this game is horrible, and the dev team should feel horrible. What are you smoking?

Live Patch Notes - 9/12/2281

Patch notes for build 2279.8162984610384563927619372164927194362.1.

COMBINED

-Attempting to join the Rularuu Jr. Task Force while using an iOmni braintop PC will no longer cause epileptic fits.

-Players who were feeling very angry could cause minion's heads to explode by looking at them. This has since been fixed for all Archetypes except Brainpirates.

-Removed all villain zones except for Mercy Island, Nerva Archipelago, and St. Martial.

-Removed "Snow Crash" temporary power entirely. NOTE: Some players may still find Snow Crash in their inventory, if you do, contact the nearest customer support Cybergnome, who will hurl it into the pits of Bittorent.

-Players on UNEC Orbital Defense Platforms will now be able to access Demiurge server, Paradox server, and Scrumdiddlyumptious server, as they have been let through government owned infernowalls.

-Note: All spawns in Mercy Island, Nerva Archipelago, and St. Martial are continuously doing the /em flipthebird emote. This is working as intended.

-Players who select Nemesis as their patron may have their frontal cortex wiped. This is working as intended.

-Added Astrologic Merits, Herculean Merits, Surreptitious Merits, Amaterasu Merits, Caramel Merits, Square Merits, Vague Merits, Donkey Merits, Impeccable Merits, and Baratheon Merits. Players may purchase training origin enhancements with them.

-NOTE: While it is against the policy of NCSoft to discriminate against any religious belief, adherents of 4channism and Anonymism will receive a stern talking to.

Gameplay and design tweaks mostly.

-New graphics engine. We're running on OLD hardware here, and no matter how many new doodads and shiny bits we bolt onto it, at the end of the day we're still using an engine from the early PS2 era.

-"Denser" content. City of Heroes at launch had a TON of content and zones, most of which were added with the intention that they would be updated later. Most never were, and nowadays we have a ton of zones that are ghost towns. Launch with less content, but put more effort into making it polished, well written, and interesting. The launch content in this game has not aged well, and nowadays I avoid it entirely. Less missions, less zones, add nothing with the intention of updating it later, and only then start adding new stuff.

-Make Archetypes more distinct. Sharing powersets and whatnot is fine, but at the end of the day a lot of AT's play very similarly (most notably the melee classes). Make the AT's more specialized, but not in the sense that teaming would be required (oh god no), but in the sense that every single AT would require it's own unique tactics. Maybe cut down on the number of powersets too, but make each powerset really unique, rather than just the sort of "palette swap" powersets we got at launch.

-In short, make the game smaller, and more focused. That's not to say the game couldn't get bigger later, but the dev team has a bad habit of coming up with great ideas, implementing them halfway, and then losing interest. Make a game that has a clear focus and a clear goal moving forward to start, and then worry about adding new things to it.

So...um...it's probably because I'm a clueless guy, but what exactly is the purpose of shipping again? From what I can infer it's just arguing on forums about who should get together and drawing fan art. It doesn't really seem to accomplish anything. I'm not trying to be rude here, I'm just curious!