Peacemoon

Originally Posted by Antigonus

There are however posts with pictures showing one day loads as if to say "LOOK WE HAVE POPULATION THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS".

You know exactly what was meant Forbin.

Originally Posted by Obsidius

I support not only more APP variety (especially since villains can now utilize them, further increasing their utility) but also Power Customization for APPs (no small task, but another thing that would increase their ability to fit a character's theme).

Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA

Actually from the amount of pushing Posi did over his baby (ew, that puts a nasty child-birth related image into my poor head) along with the time invested in it this is wrong, or at least hopelessly misguided on the devs part. You don't put a feature into every frakkin zone in the game and spend the bulk of two issues on a "niche".

I actually agree with mac on this one, the proof of the pudding in terms of how successful Going Rogue will be is how the population will be in a month or two, not on launch day.

Mind you I suspect the Devs know that and have a few Issues well underway to continue to fuel the fire and keep their churn down (at least I hope they do). NCSofts whole marketing approach of Going Rogue seems to be aimed at getting people back to the game from "other sources" rather than attracting totally new players into it (although that may not have been Paragon Studios initial intent).

Originally Posted by Another_Fan

Pot meet kettle ?

Originally Posted by macskull

Most people don't want to read your poorly-written stories unless ...

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

Let me expand on my previous question here: What are we hoping to achieve? I have a few guesses:

1. Strongarm the developers into making our changes under threat of game sink. "See, you did this, and now your game is sinking. You better do that, or you will go out of business!" This is, has always been and will always be futile. The developers cannot be strongarmed. They can be persuaded, and they can be persuaded by desire and enthusiasm, not threats of vague apocalypse. If the point was to persuade the developers, focusing on how a change could help the game is far superior to threatening how not making the change means doom.

2. pwn teh noobs. "People said the game wasn't dying, but now I have proof. Ha-ha!" This is pointless, useless and, above all, petty. While there is a certain degree of satisfaction in "I told you so!" what is it actually achieving? If we WANT the game to fail, then it makes sense to try and depress current players enough to leave by prophecy of doom, thereby doing little more than creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, thereby removing any satisfaction of being "right" anyway, since you didn't know, you just helped make it happen. But that's a bad motivation in any ethical context.

3. Sour grapes. "I hate this game because of all the bad changes made to it, but it's OK. It's the game's fault because it sucks and see? See? It's failing!" Having seen people do just that (and fall several levels down the ladder from "friend" into "*******"), I can definitely see it as a possibly intent, but again - what does this achieve? It's like the console wars all over again - I cannot simply prefer one game over the other based on personal taste. One game has to be provably superior to another in order to justify my opinion with hard fact and make my decision obviously correct. This is not a good motivation, because it could just as easily be replaced with a modicum of self-esteem.

And that's all the options which I could envision. And none of those options are productive. WE are not going to fix the game if that were our intent, because WE are not game designers who work for Paragon Studios. The most we can do is campaign for what we want, make our opinions and ideas heard and trust the developers to make a good game out of it. We can't keep second-guessing them and trying to yank their jobs from out of their hands like we know everything. All the gripes here are legitimate, but as complaints constrained to their own particular field, not extrapolated into doom and gloom.

And the rest is just mean-spirited alarmist hysteria. I've seen and seen claims that Going Rogue will bomb and sink the company. Even assuming that it will, so what? How will that change what YOU are doing right now? Do you need assurance that City of Heroes will last another decade in order for you to keep playing? Because such a guarantee will never exist. For any game. Even WoW. It's likely, obviously, but it's never guaranteed. Any game can bomb and fail. What does dwelling on that accomplish?

Even if we could prove that City of Heroes is going down the drain, what are we trying to achieve by it?

Originally Posted by Rodion

I'ts quacking like I18. My guess is that they are installing I18 Monday to make sure that they will have enough time to clear up any problems and hit their launch date on Tuesday.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

Lemme' ask a quick question - what are we trying to prove here?

Originally Posted by RedSwitchblade

Wasn't sure.

Anyway I've seen a petless bots/Traps in action.

Sit down kids, let me tell you the tale of Professor Freak.

Professor Freak was a man who sold out his enormously flawed superscience to the villain world at large. Always thinking grandly and delivering poorly, Professor Freak was loved and reviled, depending on whether you were on the bystander side or receiving side of his genius, respectively.

In 50 levels of my teamings with this NoBots/Traps, I was surprised to find that he still was as valuable to the team as ever, even if his only sources of damage seemed to come from pulse rifle blasts that could barely melt butter and seeker drones that actually managed not to slice their own master's head off in carnal lust for blood.

One time, I saw what the fuss was all about, and it was a doozy. The sun, if you could call it that, was dimly lighting the obscured sky of the ruins of Atlas Park in some dismal, grisly future where Lord Recluse finally had hiked up his gonads, roflstomped Statesman, and proceeded to crap all over his kingdom by letting it calmly burn to ash around him. Content that he was secure in his Fortress of Burning Lolwut, Professor Freak merrily hopped, skipped, tripped occasionally, and finally stumbled across the landscape unnoticed.

We engaged Lord Recluse in all manner of attack that some would call downright uncivilized. Professor Freak spent most of his time tickling the Spider with his guns, until finally Recluse turned and looked at him angrily - only to be shot in the face ten times with an acid mortar that was loaded to the gills with Damage Procs, and a couple of seeker drones buzzing at him like angry metal bees. Oh, how the Spider hated the bees!

Knowing he could not go it alone, or even with my assistance, Professor Freak calmly asked a few friends to assist in the beatdown.

What I saw next was something that blew my mind. The team descended, and in pitched battle the Spider taunted them all with his army of Banes and his sliver of insurmountable health. Then, from the heavens above, descended a single Assault Bot. The label above its head was emblazoned in green with the moniker "My Life's Work" and it promptly landed, shouted an error code and made the bootup noise from an OS9 PowerPC, then exploded, killing the Spider. Sparks flew from Professor Freak as the Super-Villain Advisory Board granted him clearance to level 50. My jaw hit the floor for critical damage. This little turd of a character violated his idiotic noPet rule for an equally idiotic chance at glory with a marginally idiotic use of Detonator. I then imagined what he could have done if weren't an idiot.

Never in my years had I ever seen something so amazing, until 3 weeks later when an Ill/FF named Subconscious scored the final blow to Lord Recluse, at the feet of Grandville City Hall, with a baseball bat after we took down his WEB device.

That's the story.

I know all too well the power of Bots/Traps in reality, but to say that even WITHOUT pets, you are super useful, is something else. Also Professor Freak is very real, he's a good friend of mine, and he's far from an idiot. But that moment blew my mindhole wide open.

Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex