Void_Huntress

Awesome. Be sure to let us know when you've launched a commercially successful title.

As it happens, what you can or cannot fathom does not actually delineate the boundaries of what the developers have to contend with.

There is one justifiable reason: Staying In Business. Business folks adopt these methods for simple SURVIVAL needs.

Because humans are what humans are, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time can be ruinous, no matter how much it SEEMS like it's what people want to hear.

Wanting it to be any other way will require HUMANITY to be different. You don't start that battle with businesses. That change has to happen on a different level.

This is why we can't have nice things. :(


Seriously, they told us they're looking into it. They CANNOT say anything more than that until they're sure they've got a workable solution. They can't be sure they've got a workable solution until they've actually implemented it at least mostly and have it tested to some degree or other.

ITF? But according to Avatea..

..next week we're beating up on Reichsman, not Rommie. And the ITF isn't for the two following weeks, either.

apparently led to this PM (with a subject of "Did u wanna pvp"):

Did he ever get back to you, Claws? 'cuz I'm not really interested in beating up children.

For what it's worth, Paizo's still doing their thing, too. After Wizards ended that relationship, Paizo refocused on their Golarion setting more strongly, and have been producing a lot of interesting stuff. Their Adventure Path series isn't JUST modules, it has a lot of interesting articles along with it.

Or you can run more than one of the tasks available to your side regularly. Plus there's the ITF (which is always easy to get going) and LGTF, which are cross-side to begin with.

Being able to do ALL of the tasks on BOTH sides doesn't significantly add to your options when you're looking at merit rate versus diminishing returns, unless you have an extremely high number of hours per day to dedicate to the game. I'm looking at this from a general case.

And D_R, you are not the general case.

Thematics is a valid one, and I DO have a vigilante myself because she's a grey area kind of character. But really, the system as it is now is HEAVILY weighted towards the 'pure' alignments, and doesn't give much to the middle ones.

This. I came to the discussion thread SPECIFICALLY to bring up this point...

Right now, your choices are to stay with a pure alignment, and get more rewards, or go with a middle-ground alignment and... ... what? Have access to SOME more teaming opportunities?

You can't enter SG bases, so getting around is a pain. You can't use the other side's o-zone, so you can't start or join flashback teams (not even ones formed in bases, since, you know, can't enter those).. You can't run your own contacts on the other side, only radio/paper missions..

Honestly, being vigilante/rogue doesn't ADD that much, other than being able to get SOME of the other side's badges. and if you're after badges, you're probably going to go all the way so you can get them all.

If all you're interested in is teaming, you can generally get all the teaming you want staying on your side and using the relevant tools for getting people on your server.

So the question isn't "Why aren't people sticking with vigilante/rogue?" but "Why WOULD they?"

... I really hope they don't. They've been bad about it, and I think it's harmful to the community, because these discussions help us better understand our own game better. :(

Just in case, I'm saving a copy of that page.

I think this distills the essence of what I was looking for, right here. Thank you, that helps.

With your analysis there I'm now able to recall a reviewer once noting that in CoX, even if you don't actually intend to "roleplay", if you at all approach the game with an intent to engage with it, you have to 'RP' a little just in the process of creating the idea of your character. You can't help it; with the choices of archetype, powersets, and costume creator, and the opportunity for a bio.. An idea HAS to form. A story even in its barest skeletal form gets told just to make your character happen.

I've seen decaying buffs in a few other games, and generally what that means is the buff starts at a certain intensity, then over time drops in intensity. For instance, imagine if a Forcefield bubble is full strength at first, then over time eventually degrades to nothing. I've seen this both as a gradual shift (at each second it's fractionally lower than the previous second), and as 'stairstep' reductions, dropping some particular amount at specific intervals.

I'm curious as to your perspective on this. I never got to see any of your participation over in The Other Hero Game.. What is it you feel is the crucial aspect to CoH, the thing which makes it work that others are missing?

That's... kind of astonishing. Do you have any idea how arrogant that sounds? "Maybe I'm just a better person"?

Different people have different things they're after when they play a game like this. For you to actually go and lay a MORAL WEIGHT to your objectives versus other people's objectives like that, is ... astounding. I really can't believe you WENT there.

I solo. A lot. I spend a lot of effort into making sure I _can_ solo effectively, on every character I play. And, in fact, when I decide to PLAY City of Heroes purely for my own enjoyment, I usually do it by myself.

Often things like, "I want to experience this storyline." Well, I do that better alone than I do with other players, because sometimes I get slow, and don't think other people want to wait on me.

Maybe it's, "I want to see if I can take on this challenge." Usually, the challenges are things I can only really tell if I succeeded or not if I'm the only player involved. Teammates skew whether or not I know if I managed it, or they give me things I wouldn't otherwise have. Very occasionally, the conditions might require a teammate or two.

When I decide, "I'd like to get a bunch of XP quickly" or "I need to get <y> reward quickly", I grab a team. That's How It Works.


... and for you to have the GALL to suggest that because I make that decision for those reasons, you're a BETTER PERSON than me?

Seriously?

Are you REALLY going to take that position?

An important distinction is that incarnate advancement isn't just strictly gear, it's a form of permanent character advancement. Your character gains these things and keeps them forever; the only time you 'lose' or trade out one of your incarnate boosts is when you're getting another one that contains the benefits of the one you're 'losing'.

In a real way, Incarnate Shards are our alpha slot XP. Now, the granularity of this and whether it's good or not is something you can discuss, but the fundamental here is that we're not talking about 'loot' in the traditional sense.

Right now, if a team of 8 goes stomping through content, statistically they will all get the number of shards they would have if they all had separately killed the same enemies by themselves. The advantage here is time saved; a team of eight goes through those enemies faster than most solo builds.

Similarly, when gaining XP, you can get a lot more a lot faster teaming than going solo.

In an MMO, the developers tend to want to incentivize teaming for advancement, giving a common reference point for balance, and ... generally speaking? It's social folks who tend to keep an MMO alive and well.

You have the right to have an opinion, but when you express it publicly others have the right to challenge your position.

If you want to provide feedback to Paragon Studios without others responding, possibly critically, then that's what PMs are for.

Nobody's saying you need to do 'datamining'. It'd be enough for you to say, "I don't know, but I have some log files." CoX will log things for you cheerfully. Or if you want something more pared down without having to manually run a post-process script on it, herostats will do that in the background for you.

There's no need for you to put in a great deal of effort when tools will do the important effort for you. No extensive analysis is needed in this case, just a simple tally: How many things were killed of each type, and how many shards came out.

It's possible objective was the word intended, as in 'mission objective'.

But that has its own issues.