Nethergoat

It would have been the best year ever if I9 was the only thing that happened.

Now, it's like a supernova of awesome exploding inside my computer.

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How about merging the markets at the same time

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How about QFT!

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and a BOOOYAH for empasis.

the less pretense that CoV is some sort of entirely separate game, the better. Share forums, shared market, shared zones...that's the future.

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It may not be a democracy, but I do seem to remember the devs stating that their priority was to give the players what they wanted if it were possible. Is a poll possible? No one is saying to make it a fill in the blank pole, but if the devs would throw out 20 ideas that they believe are doable, and then let us narrow that down to 6 or so for the official poll, it would be a step in the right direction.

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I'd much prefer they narrow down the list themselves and present us with a handful of 'most likely' candidates to choose from.

I'm not interested in sifting through a bunch of no-hope choices like Rodeo Clown Fu, Body Odor Projection and Violent Flatulence....that's why I pay them the big money. =P

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You know, Nether, you're like a force of nature. When you're against me, your awesome power is frightening and deadly. When you're on my side, you're a beautiful side to behold

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Thanks Sam, glad you enjoyed my little parody. =)

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When a police officer uses deadly force, even if he doesn’t kill the perp, he is placed on administrative leave, the department does an investigation into if the use of such force was justified, and the results are sent to a civilian review board. If the officer is found to have used deadly force improperly, the officer is subject to criminal prosecution.

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Well, when someone's game-world avatar uses deadly force, they are rewarded with experience, inf and potentially valuable drops they can sell to vendors or place on the market. The actions of heroes are subject to periodic review by zone trainers like Back Alley Brawler and Ms. Liberty. If they are found to have used enough deadly force, the hero is subject to levelling up and gaining access to more powerful abilities.

I hope this helps you differentiate between Paragon City and New York City.

Either way, please enjoy your new home- my ignore list.

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Dude try actually using a CURRENT picture of him. An old avengers comic is your proof that he uses a shield? Your joking right? You even read the comics with him in them recently? NO SHIELD. Nuff said.

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"you think a comic book cover showing him using a shield proves he uses a sheild? YA RITE!" isn't the strongest comeback I've ever read.

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3-5 times a mission? Horseshit.

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hawr!

another way to get lots of crits is AoE damage.
My spines scrapper seems to get more than his share...of course, he thinks in terms of entire spawns, not individual enemies.

I want to like it.

does that count?

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Its a stylised Ouroborous for sure.

"It has been used to represent many things over the ages, but it most generally symbolizes ideas of cyclicality, unity, or infinity"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros

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My money is on Flashback.

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I *want* to like PvP.

how's that?

good guide.

reads fine for me using the CoH forum skin...the red is a bit much, but the yellow and orange look fine.

dead sexy!

suckerpunch for President.

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Gigantic dividends from precisely *one* product

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which they wouldn't have otherwise had.

Investing in r&d is always hit or miss, but one winner can carry your entire company.

How many copys of HL did Valve sell on the back of the player-created mod CounterStrike?

Giving players the tools and opportunity to 'help' your game is never a bad idea or a wasted investment.

I9 loot for the win.

best issue evar.

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Traps: Villain version of blaster Devices secondary, with a few modifications. Like Devices, it works best with corner pulls, dropping trops on the corner and pulling baddies onto them. If you're a pulling type personality who likes to have a good retreat option always available, this is your powerset.

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that is a really poor description.
If you're gonna write something up you should probably play it first.

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I see - you assume that somehow the 10% program is a significant contributor to that sucess. Care to back up that assumption with facts?

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let's take 5 seconds to get some via...google.

"Twenty percent" time

All Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time (one day per week) on projects that interest them. Some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors.

In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, stated that her analysis showed that half of new product launches originated from 20% time."



Adsense is one of their major revenue sources.
Gmail revolutionized webmail.
Google News is causing seizemic changes in the news industry.

Pretty gigantic dividends for a tiny corporate investment.

And that's ignoring the hiring benefits of being able to tell potential employees "hey, one day a week you can work on whatever you want".

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"Can you give me a quick number crunch on that?"

170,000 active subscribers.

Say just 2% of them decide to create modules. That's 3,400 people.

Say they each create a module a week. That's 3,400 modules per week to audit.

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those numbers are.....uh....quite optimistic.

A more realisic prediction would be a fraction of one percent of players attempting and completing one module, forget churning out a stream of them. Even with a powerful, intuitive SDK making content takes a huge amount of time and energy, and not many people get past opening the program and realizing it's not going to do the work for them.

The talented people who put in the effort to make original, appealing & playable modules would swiftly rise to the top, and my estimate is you could count all of them on two hands.

Again, the early stages of screening would be taken care of by players. Players would be very adept at filtering out the generic, the boring and the unplayable.

Given any sort of halfway effective filter system, our hypothetical dev in charge of player submissions would be looking at maybe 1-3 suitable candidates per week, not thousands.

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I realize that this is trivial and petty, but a lot of drama is created via trivial and petty things.

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the uproar over costume drops, for instance.

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The problem with OK'ing submissions is partially an issue because of manpower. Depending on the number of submissions, you'd need people entirely devoted to reviewing, approving and ultimately putting that stuff into the game. That's not trivial, to be honest, when dealing with 100,000+

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No doubt.
That's where letting the players themselves handle the early stages of sorting comes in.

I'm completely ignorant of the economic realities of game design, but it seems that having a couple of people dedicated to guiding user-generated content into a game would be pretty cost-effective in the long run.

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The devs over at Pirates of the Burning Sea will agree with you (game isn't out yet, IIRC). They set up a system for players to submit art: sails & flags, for example, but with more on the way (ships, jewelry, hilts, etc). They're community reviewed, voted on, and then brought to the devs when they've reached so many votes. The devs always have veto power.

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That's a great way to go about it.

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I just don't agree that the players can automatically filter out those mods which are low, crude, crass, offensive, or inappropriate. Ultimately, somebody on the payroll will have to look at the most popular stuff and decide whether it fits the game plan.

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Players are very adept at filtering out the unplayable garbage.
That takes care of probably 90% of user generated content.

The remaining 10% shouldn't be too hard to sort for suitability and balance.

The model that I keep envisioning is something similar to the CS mapping community.

It certainly churned out its share of crappy, unbalanced maps that were inexplicably popular, but it also generated many maps that equalled or surpassed the 'real' ones, at zero cost to the developers.

Yeah, it would take work to vet user generated content.
But it would be a lot less work than making the content yourself, and you could partner with the player community for the early stages of the weeding out process.

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Jack Emmert has stated in the past that he feels player-created content is a red herring because most players don't have the talent for creating good content. He wasn't slamming players; just acknowledging the fact that most of us don't have great plotting/writing skills.

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when you're dealing with hundreds of thousands of gamers, some of them are bound to be extremely talented at plotting and level design.

if even half a percent of the playerbase turned out cool, usable content it would add a lot to the game.

user-generated content is one of the futures of the MMO, the company that figures out how to incorporate it into their business model will go a long way toward satisfying player's insatiable lust for new content.

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man, I am jealous. I only got a costume piece on one person so far, and it would look stupid on them.

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Sell it for big money and use that to buy something you can use. =D

User generated content (of various sorts) is a clear winner for the MMO environment and such an obvious solution to the insatiable thirst for content I'm surprised it hasn't already been done.

Good to see Cryptic sticking a toe in the water.

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And, gods help me, I actually agree with Shubbie here. The timesink conspiracy theorists are having a (not entirely unsubstantiated) field day with I9.


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It's CLEARLY a timesink.
I didn't think that was even open to question, let alone qualifying me for a tinfoil hat.

I just don't care, because it's a great amount of fun. =)