temnix

Over the last week something strange has been happening in my browser: some websites open very slowly, others only in part or require reloading, or just fail. I have seen no clear reason and attributed this to something on my end, although I had changed no settings. One of the sites affected had been a Chinese A. I. generation site I use. It had been struck by some kind of amnesia all the times I logged in, forgetting my history, favorites, and just did not work at all. I thought again this was all my fault somehow, but the other day it was up and running properly with an explanation from the administration that Google had experienced technical problems with some services or mechanisms that site depends on, and that those problems had been resolved on the Google side. I had not expected a Chinese website to rely on something from Google, but... Two days later the site is down again the same way. And all this time I have been having trouble logging in to CoH. I am currently stuck at "Retrieving character data from..." When I use my VPN, which might send the data through some different countries, rely on different providers along the way, I am able to get to the character list then, although everything is kind of laggy and loads in jerks and starts. On the web at large some familiar websites continue to open normally and quickly, others stopped, all of a sudden. Might this be due to some reliance on Google? Might CoH be dependent on its products too?

If players can overcome challenges which, for their power level, should be very steep or indeed impossible and do all those things like soloing Archvillains, what that tells is not how brilliant they are but how flawed the design of the game is and how poor its actual balance. Whether that is because Inventions are overpowered or because of set bonuses or there being overly useful, almost cheating powers, or all of those things together, the combined result is that system-hacking players make themselves almost into gods. This kind of mastery should never have been possible. It represents nothing in real life or in comic books. No Olympic athlete can hack himself to run at the speed of sound with any clever training techniques, Wolverine could not have boosted his regeneration rate to the point where he would survive an atomic blast. Both are bullshit. You've got something, you use it smartly and you take your chances: that is how it should be. Yet here in CoH, to respond to the demands of those min-maxing players and obsessed Veterans (as if power play is somehow a virtue instead of a freakish one-sidedness), the developers focused on the Incarnate system and content beyond the point where, to put it plainly, the game is over. Homecoming knows no better than do the same thing, cranking out high-level content while for low levels you can just go and talk to Matthew Habashi's wife on the communicator again. Why does this game and other games of its sort cater to the obtuse, the idle, the obsessive and the petty? In fine, what I'm missing here is not a reflexes mastery or a build mastery but an intelligence mastery: a real way to understand the enemy and ways to use his weaknesses and the environment against it while being, of course, fairly strong and competent. That is how fights and battles are really won: you strike hard in the right spot. Better yet, you outwit the enemy and win without a fight, which should be rewarded as well if not higher. Why must I have to grind meat in CoH's boring missions in order to advance? Why aren't there more opportunities to use Stealth? Thank god Stealth exists, to be sure, and that I can sometimes sneak to the glowing objective, click on it and obtain the cure, disarm the bomb, crack the safe. That is the actual objective of the mission. But its accomplishment is not rewarded. Beating goons is rewarded.

Azure Shadow

How would they do the impossible, if every encountered villain was a purple and had special attacks and intelligent scripts instead of standing there getting beaten up?

I used to protect girls from purse-snatchers too, and I still sometimes do, out of habit, but neither the game world nor the gameplay satisfy me any longer. Part of it is simply knowing them too well, though not exhaustively. I couldn't tell you where every badge is as so many others can. And that still allows me short periods of discovery, what I described in the head post. I'm not responsible for idiots seeing a complaint in that, when in fact I was celebrating a good time. But most of the freshness and mystery have long since rubbed off, and more than that: I outgrew this game. I outgrew the intellectual level on which those talented but pretty ignorant 20-somethings stood when they made it. They outgrew it too and went on, one hopes, to better things. And finally - the world in the which the game takes place no longer exists outside the computer. It never did literally, but still, there were buildings like that, offices like that, cars like that, suits and pants like that. Computers with tube screens left turned on and showing Windows desktops. You could hear music such as that playing in the areas on the radio, in clubs. Not anymore. That past is gone, though it has not been not outgrown, it was only discarded... humanity does not progress, it rolls sideways. And I miss even older ages represented by some relics for circa year 2004, most of all the tugboats and steamers. When I zoom over the Nerva Archipelago or Striga, I look with adoration at those wonderful little ships, like rusty wind instruments lying on the waves: part memories of real ship designs and part imagination of Cryptic. I think back to the 1920s, 1930s, 1950s and other eras that I know from gangster films and Chaplin films and not only from them, and I miss those times: their fashions, their bustles, their newspaper hounds... The suits of the Family. All of those are Echoes, one within another. And now the present of this game world is an echo too. The War Walls are still turquoise, the monorail is gayly trundling along, but it is impossible to continue all this, to pick up and develop that music, those fashions and architecture in some direction different from where they were pushed by the consequences of September 11th and the Iraq war, the financial crisis of 2008, algorithms, social networks and their moron spawn, the dumbing-down of society as a whole, climate change... So I can't get in character any longer. It would be to do quite monstrous violence to myself to pretend that I can still live the reality I find in CoH as I viscerally did in 2004.

@srmalloy What is that declaration you are talking about? I do agree with it. @Spaghetti Betty Thanks for the info on Dark Souls. Overall, increasing difficulty in ways that are possible in this game will make missions interminable. It also won't solve the problem of the gameplay not being... epic? I don't like that word, but there needs to be a serious challenge leading clearly and quickly to a serious result (saving innocents, disarming a bomb and so on). I don't think this structure is optional in a book, a film, a game or a life, whether or not a lot of people may enjoy wasting their spare time steamrolling, farming, collecting badges and otherwise doing familiar rotes. The concept of farming itself is strange and antiquated. I don't see a single reason, first, why a game needs to be an intentional time sink (and what moral right do any developers have to designing time sinks?) and second, why the time that IS spent in the game needs to be devoted to repetitive fights. If it is to be fights and not, say, dialogue, quests, choices, exploration, reconnaissance, resource-gathering, crafting, then, as I said, the time can be spent in killing three minions in a life-or-death struggle instead of thirty in a yawn. Wouldn't that be finer all around? CoH lacks everything but combat, that is one problem with the concept from the beginning. It doesn't even have an inventory. Life could be put on the line exploring, spying, but death doesn't come with serious consequences - and if you factor in patrol XP, with any consequences, so there was always little point to real risks. MediPort will catch you if you fall. Diablo II with a different skin, that is well-put. However, Diablo II does have a direction - through the Acts, towards its end. These old online grinders are like Diablo II looped. That is why I asked whether newer games use some different, denser formula. Dark Souls seems to have been a stepping stone to more substantial, deliberate mechanics, but if newer games are still about running around killing orcs or what have you, only with Poise, Stamina and some other bar to watch, then nothing much has changed. Shadow of the Colossus may have been a movement across the spectrum. A game where there are only bosses to fight.

In CoH and all other games of that early period of MMO(RP)G that I can think of (World of Warcraft, Everquest etc.) players mostly fight enemies who are not a problem to defeat. One can wander into areas that are too high-level and there are bosses, but overall, people spend time killing things they know they can kill. In CoH it was a starting assumption, never challenged, that experience for a new level would come from a hundred returned purses and cleared sewer sections. With time thousands begin to be required, but that is the only difference. Yet one could as easily imagine a game where fights are very advancement-rewarding and very dangerous - and therefore memorable. CoH could have missions with only ten enemies in them, but all of them red to the player at the starting difficulty. You sweat, you puzzle over defeating them, and after a couple of such maps a level-up is your reward. That is just not how this game works. What about modern games? Are they still about mashing up a ragout of underlings and sewing mantles of newt skins? It seems to me that Dark Souls was a departure in the direction of tough, time-consuming fights, but I haven't played that game and don't know whether fights, being hard, are therefore more rewarding and less frequent there. And what about games since Dark Souls?

Call me strange, but I find beating up on legions of largely identical enemies with few interesting attacks and very primitive scripts, spread around mostly generic and confusing maps, a chore. It comes down to clicking on buttons 1-5 in time and keeping Inspirations stocked up. What I find exciting is a different occupation entirely. Here is what I did with my latest 1st level character. I got a steam jump back from a S. T. A. R. T. vendor, thankfully they are free, and decided to go and collect the more remove Exploration badges in the area. I had no gratis jet pack yet, but I timed the jumps to the top of the City Hall and the Atlas dome, then made very long jumps north for that house balcony badge. To a complete rookie going around Atlas Park's harder zones can be dangerous, I could have landed among some high-level Hellions or Clockwork, and jumping is not as safe as flying. But I was smart and lucky and got the badge. Then I went for the Vanguard badge, past the portal to the Vanguard compound, picked up the badge there, getting an anchor in that area, and ventured out through long tunnels that I hadn't traversed before, emerging on the surface to the southeast, near the Eden entrance. I thought about trying for a badge in Eden with my jump pack, but I didn't remember where they were too well and instead headed over the rooftops of the War Zone back to the base, getting a fresh look at that part of the map. I thought I was fairly safe on a round warehouse roof, despite some Rikti monkeys milling at a distance, but I had forgotten that they could throw psychic arrows... Stepping out of the hospital, I went back through the portal, but not to Atlas, to Founders Falls. The compound does not exit to anywhere safe there, but I was fairly certain no Crey snipers sat on the rooftops of the skyscrapers I was going to try on my way to that badge at the obelisk. I got to some obelisks, barely missing a group of Circle cultists conjuring up their green fire. Any one of them could have killed me with a look. It turned out to be the wrong place, though, and I hoped some more across the water to the real location of the badge, demons not too far away. Then, again timing the jumps and waiting for the power to recharge, I reached the Williams Square, the university, steering clear of a right close Fifth Column band. But even with all these badges the Long-Range Teleport would not yet unlock, because I had skipped the easy badges in Atlas. All of the transportation and exits - to Talos Island, to the monorail - were far away and blocked by powerful enemies. I was on my own. My best option for getting out was to try for the Pocket D entrance. I again timed the jumps, sat on a cornice for a while, landed, ducking another group of CoT on the way down, and quickly ran for the tunnel. No police bots or anything else were guarding the manhole, in which I jumped. All of this was a lot of actual, not pretended, fun. I was really exploring, not completely remembering or knowing every detail of every map; I was using a power to do it; it was a cool power I had not paid attention to before; it had definite limitations with consequences; it physically changed my relation to the environment; there was serious danger along the way; and I did it all for a profitable purpose, to establish anchors in several zones. It was an adventure and it made sense. The rest of the game, though, what I am supposed to be doing, lacks that. It sends me away to save abstract innocents in one stupid warehouse after another, and when alien dimensions take the place of warehouses, they are still the same dull setup that does nothing whatsoever for me.

These are the biggest icon pictures that have ever come before my eyes. A final screenshot from me: "One for the proletariat."

Really? I thought this was Neutropolis. Well, it is cozily suburban. Here is one from me. I called it "Never for real."

This was supposed to be a Nazi hottie, you can imagine her in Fifth Column insignia. The background should have been replaced with a secret base, but I ran out of free credits.

Good stuff with that Murder Bot, @Troo. Very slick.

I see that passing birds have crapped some more in this thread. I'm unsubscribing from it. Those who want to lend a hand with a mission or base to showcase this faction can send me a PM. For the last post here two Ringmistresses. All of them are dual-blade scrappers with active Leadership and summon a posse of Groupies, Harlequins and Barkers on the player as soon as they see him.

Let's not spam in the thread MORE with new appeals not to spam and be respectful and whatnot. That will just lead a moderator to shut it down. @Major_Decoy That is one way to approach the design, though conscious decisions are always inferior to intuitive ones. And I don't know where you got the horses theme from. It's not the King Harla's harlequins who work in this circus, obviously. And horses don't exist in this game world. I could not possibly intimate the existence of horses off-screen, even if I gave everyone spurs. You were on a wild ride there, I think. :D There is an idea here, however, a simple one: the New Carnival is the old Carnival who changed their intent, public image and organization. (By the way, Vanessa DeVore is out of the picture on Prime Earth as well. Desdemona wears her mask, there with the survivors of Praetoria. Everyone gets Provost Marchand as a Contact around level 30 and can see that for himself, so this is the official storyline. But I don't really care.) And probably the magic at work as well. Inducting people by force and shutting their entire faces in identical masks so as to keep them enslaved was a dead end and no kind of art at all. The new movers and shakers in the Carnival, whoever they may be, advertise the outfit as a circus that lets dreams come true. They welcome all kinds of creativity and while there is some carryover and legacy of diamond patterns and caps, nothing is really forced on the members except to progress in the trade. Recruited from Groupies, Harlequins may be the least original workers in the circus, being fresh blood. They are given light half-masks that inspire them and assist in the basic stage fencing, juggling, simple acrobatics and light clowning, but they have no powers as such. (The rapiers, as you might have noticed, don't glow, and they should use something more mundane for missile attacks, like playing cards. Bleeding DoT. Cards exist as an object in the game, too, so it is possible.) Before long Harlequins are expected to specialize in one of the four lines, representing four aspects of femininity. These are the Masques of Empathy, Agility, Mastery and Mystery. Those who fail to show talent for too long come to bad ends, usually suicide by drowning. At some point they develop an irresistable urge to see their reflection in the water and throw themselves in. The advanced masks lead their wearers to heights of art and originality, but away from humanity as you know it. A few talentless Harlequins that show outstanding administrative abilities get promoted to Ringmistresses, but each Masque line has its own Bosses. There are also Barkers, the male members of the Carnival that take on ticket sales, check admission, serve as butts of jokes between main circus acts and eventually, at Leutenant and Boss levels, advertise and promote the Carnival at large. All Barkers are sniper units that detect stealth and taunt with sonic attacks out of their barrel chests.

I combed through the readme curious whether there are implemented any of the changes and fixes that people have asked about on the Suggestions forum - perchance. Nope, none have made it in.

I am not going to complain about Homecoming's conversion of Kallisti Wharf: there is no point. The game is in the hands of these people for ever and ever, and that is a reality that needs to be acknowledged. And, after all, I might say, good luck: maybe it is going to make people happy... but no. There is no need for another high-level zone. What there is a need for is another low-level zone so that early playing experience would stop being so mind-numbingly the same. Since I can't change anything, I am just going to tell you a story of what Kallisti Wharf might have become, and may this inspire you in other games or suggest some costumes... So turn off your ADHD, buckle down and listen. Once upon a time, in the 1980s, a multimillionaire, philantropist and scientist approached Paragon City with an offer. The city was going through a difficult time, with falling revenues and surging crime. This great man... let's give him some power surname... Gladstone? Gladstone. A friend of Statesman and an international celebrity, Ebenezer Gladstone offered the city to rent a run-down area of slums, piers and vacant lots for 50 years. Though open to all, it would be privately built, administered and policed and a local offshore trading zone instituted. At the end of that period control would return to the city with an option to buy back the enterprises created in the meantime. The city agreed. Over this time Gladstone and after his death in 2011 the board of trustees turned Kallisti Wharf (named after Gladstone's wife Kallisti Aligizakis) into an urban utopia. The residents of the redeveloped area received new excellent housing and jobs in the businesses that sprang up there, evoking admiration and envy in the rest of Paragon. Meantime the great man himself had focused his scientific genius on his life-long passion: advancing agriculture. The skyscraper in the artificial island at the center held mysterious technologies, rumored to be able to control weather on Earth once complete. As written in Gladstone's will, they too would pass into Paragon's hands after the expiration of the lease. The arrangement was already celebrated as a stellar example of private capital used for public good. Before that date, however, and soon after Gladstone's passing Arachnos appeared. They presented a different version of the will where Arachnos was named as the beneficiary and claimed that theirs was genuine. They also showed proof that much of the development in the area had been done on Arachnos' money and technical know-how. While the scandal raged and Paragon prepared to take the matter to arbitrage, Lord Recluse quickly garrisoned one shore of the river mouth with his troops and erected air defenses. Thus the area was split and it continues to be split as the never-ending litigation over jurisdiction for arbitration drags on. For player characters this would mean an alternative starting zone: heroes on their bank, villains on theirs. Kallisti Wharf would be a PvP zone with no level cap but a special twist: characters would only be able to attack other characters until level 10. This way newbies would not need to be afraid of experienced characters from the opposite side crushing them. Allowed PvP would be only one aspect of the place, however. In other respects it would be a proper starting zone, with Contacts, missions and low-level groups to fight, to take place mostly on the unfriendly shore. Contacts would send heroes over to the Arachnos-controlled territory to obtain proofs of that side's duplicity while villains would cross over to find documents to the opposite effect, all to move the opinion of the courts in their favor. In addition to being mission objectives these successes would give the blue side or the red side control over the devices in the central tower and the ability to change weather! Villains could unleash storms across Paragon City while heroes could make the clouds part and the sun pour down on the Rogue Isles, with some area-wide mechanical bonuses and penalties in both cases. Higher-level characters in other zones would also therefore have a reason to care about the happenings in Kallisti. Too powerful for PvP in Kallisti, they could voluntarily lower their levels there to participate in the struggle for control. Starting out in a war zone would put a different twist on the early game. There would be regular traffic between the areas too. Players who found they could not handle the PvP possibility would be free to leave for more conventional climes - take the monorail to Atlas Park or the submarine to Mercy Island.

I can't believe they made Kallisti Wharf a high-level zone. There goes the last chance to have an alternative starting location for heroes, like Galaxy City of erst. In fact, it was a chance to have an alternative starting location for villains too, instead of doing Mercy for the hundredth time. But it's no dice with these people and their level of imagination.

@UltraAltI am entitled to consideration of my intent. You and the others are behaving like street bums who feel free to crash any party, even one that is obviously not theirs, and shout drunken expletives inside. There are more than 70 different variations of creatures. The Carnival is a complex affair. It welcomes many professions, talents and races. It is not as simple as some people in masks and fool's caps standing around to serve an evil mistress. I can't even make the masks from the commonly available parts, Homecoming would have to fashion them themselves - small articles and not obscuring the eyes. The New Carnival does not suppress individuality, it demands it. Right now in my designs there are only placeholders for where masks would go. I understand this is an unfamiliar direction and broadening and may feel confusing and alienating. But this is a noble circus as it should be - vivacious, hard and embracing, and if there are shadows, they lie deeper down. For what reason and purpose, if any, does the Carnival insist on its relentless exuberance? Here is the complete line-up of Harlequins. I have only made four versions of each same-tier creature, though there should be more - in any faction and especially in the Carnival so that encounters with it remain surprising for a long long time. At least six, I would say.

@High_BeamAt least you are not talking like a fool yourself, in this place one has to be grateful even for this kind of feedback that is mistaken on several points. I did make a public thread, but its intention was to invite cooperation, not solicit opinions on the designs. Posting one costume was a way to show that this would not be a mild facelift for the faux-Baroque, fuchsia-abusing faction but something different - and much broader and deeper than I can summarize here. It's an invitation to creative people. Doing all this by PMs as if we are spies would be an unnatural chore. So here is the thread, those who are interested get their opening. The DeVore storyline can be tweaked easily, the game does this back and forth all the time. And in my opinion the revamp of the Warriors at Homecoming's hands is respectable. They don't have any apparent connection to the Greek idea, but they didn't have before. Only Odysseus with his crest looks a little like a scrapyard Bismark. But they are good and entertaining. Now, to the meat of the business: this is only one costume of many. It happens to be one of the Handlers, from the Masques of Empathy who specialize in the taming of beasts. Hence the looped rope they all carry. Minions summon a wolf, but the Handlers are their Leutenants and call forth two mountain lions. They are also accompanied from the beginning by a hawk circling overhead, being a stealth-detecting unit and in the fight swooping in for one attack before flying away. Since this is a circus, all performers want a spectacular appearance, hence the horns. Other Handlers are different, and the bosses of that line, Dominatrixes, are another breed entirely - they command people instead of beasts. But there are more familiar elements in other designs and leftovers of the "jester" trope, patterns, caps. I could have posted a Harlequin here, yet I wanted to make it obvious that this is a revamp and not a slight alteration. That said, if what you desire is more of the same that has been around for so long, then we have nothing to talk about. The Carnival, as it exists, is a boring and pointless enterprise that could not sell a ticket. All they do, apparently, is hypnotize people to spook them and steal their souls. Try putting that on a flyer. I more or less like the Strongmen and they get to remain, with some upgrades to the textures, but theirs is a circus without numbers, without charm, without art and without clowns. I have clowns, acrobats, aerialists, beast tamers, jugglers, illusionists and others with such unique personas and powers that they don't fit in any niche - they make their own. That is what a real high circus, like the aforementioned Cirque du Soleil, strives for.

Opinions don't all have the same karat content, you know. And the lazy hacks will continue to be lazy hacks, true enough, as more opportunities for them bloom.

Somebody should hold a disco inside the Leviathan... Anyway, here is another one from me.

You forgot to put "caboom" in there somewhere. Also mind the meter.

Art = skill + talent. Skill = practice + tools. Talent = a fertile brain + ideas. Any degree of autiomation, e. g. in something like Photoshop, keeps skill from developing. "A. I." is not like a brush at all, because brushes, even digital ones, don't do the job for you. They make it possible to put a dot or a draw a line, if your body is honed enough to control the tool, they don't do it themselves. Moreover, a brain gets inspired, inter alia, by the process of using tools and the feedback from them and material. A line that looks identical on paper and on the screen is yet not the same, because the resistance of paper, thoughts on having to spare the expensive paint, thoughts about what one's mother would say about not saving expensive paint, thoughts on Trump's face that the line suddenly begins to resemble midway... a muscle cramp and everything else in the universe as far out as the source of cosmic rays in distant galaxies in that moment comes together to result in that line and its connotations, later lines and shapes. The digital line is sterile, and that is if it is drawn by a man or woman on a tablet. When it is not even that but something plotted by a machine on request, all parts of the creative process are gone, leaving only a fevered idle space for pretense where one imagines that giving prompts is itself somehow creative.

Attention, everyone! I have other models and screenshots I am willing to show to those who are interested in an original makeover of the Carnival. The rest of you, who are not offering to help, are welcome to stop spamming in my thread.

And you are used to bow-tied high heels like something out of a Carlo Gozzi? I said a modern circus and an exciting one.