bwdemon

Re: June 2nd I get the whole big release thing, but it always seemed strange to me that companies would want gamers first seeing their product at a convention where they could/should be playing the product. As is, 6th edition will be there for purchase and people will be playing 5th edition at the tables. If game conventions were just big retail release extravaganzas, then that would be a different story, but the gaming is kind of the focus.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game User-created content is the final send-off for the game. They're likely to reroute COH resources to Aion and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The game's been out a long time (almost 5 years since its release) and it's showing its age. Handing it over to those who still have an investment in the game is pretty smart. I've pretty much hit the wall with COH/COV. I only have two 50s and a few 40s, but there are lots of alts scattered around. It's a good game and I had my fun with it, but if it came out today I wouldn't buy in. I'm also waiting for DCUO and CO, which is where things will be going. May as well get in early, right? Until then, I did just pick up AOC (still not installed...) and I can always play L4D and other games. I may even visit COH/COV from time to time, but the thrill is most definitely gone.

Re: The fall of your character Magni: Hopeful: a glorious death in combat against endless hordes of villains... Likely: essentially retired, telling pre-Ragnarok stories to family and friends...

Re: Someone Please Explain This to Me? Lucius, for what it's worth, I agree that KAs are an unnecessary legacy item that should be done away with, for all the reasons discussed herein.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it...

Re: June 2nd

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Dirty Laundry (Tom Middleton Amba Remix) by Bitter:Sweet

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Midnight in a Perfect World by DJ Shadow

Re: Competition from Marvel ? The first thing that caught my attention in that article were the words "casual MMO for younger audiences". Great IP + low development costs + low maintenance costs + underserved market = cash cow. After that, you get into the more polished projects, but this is a big first step and, I think, the right one for Marvel.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Top Gear (BBC): one of the most entertaining shows on television, great for car fans and non-fans alike. Lie to Me (FOX): good fun show with lots of lying people getting what's coming to them! Smallville (CW & DVD): I didn't start watching until late in the 5th season, but I'm hooked now. I watch the current episodes and I'm catching up with the DVDs. Heroes (NBC): It's getting "meh", but I'm committed to it.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it...

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it...

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Broke out the 90s playlist today... Smashing Pumpkins "Today" ...just ended, followed by... Letters to Cleo "Here and Now"

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "Quicksand" by Natalie Walker (Thievery Corporation Remix)

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore I give you: The Horseshoe. Two big burgers, on toast, open-faced, covered in french fries, covered in Welsh rarebit sauce. You ever get to Springfield, IL, you have to try this. If you don't want to take your life into your hands with this thing, then get the Ponyshoe (half sized Horseshoe). You can swap out the burgers for whatever: chicken, buffalo chicken, poor boy meat, tomato & bacon, turkey, ham... etc. Not all places use the rarebit sauce, but it'll be some variation of a cheddar cheese sauce.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I recently finished the first two books in the Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks (I just got the third). Fantasy setting, with one of the more enjoyable stories that I've read since I picked up Game of Thrones. All three books are large without being overly wordy or needlessly decompressed, so the editor did good work. If you enjoy Game of Thrones, I would probably recommend this. The tone is lighter, things aren't quite so graphic, magic is more prevalent... but you still have the politics and long list of major characters. Good stuff. I'm progressing quickly through the third book... more good stuff!

Re: Best HERO system product Original "Enemies" book

Re: 6th Edition Hero System I mentioned a bunch of them way back in the second post. Those changes deal largely with game balance. I have others I would add to the list now: no PS12 recovery, rebuild superheroic characters so they scale reasonably with heroic characters (though that's technically a setting change and not a rules change), and likely many more. Everything can be houseruled, but there comes a point where the houserules overtake the baserules and it just isn't worth messing with anymore. HERO has fundamental balance issues that have existed since its inception that it has failed (willfully) to correct.

Re: 6th Edition Hero System You know, there were plenty of people way back in 3rd edition who said the game was perfect and never needed another edition. Then 4th edition came out and a some of them complained, but mostly people decided that 4th edition was perfect and HERO would never need another edition. Then 5th edition came out (which wasn't all that different) and the same sort of thing happened. Then 5th edition revision came out (which was even less different) and it's still the greatest blah blah never need blah blah. When 6th edition comes out (and it will), it'll be the greatest edition of HERO ever and we'll never need a 7th edition. Well, until 7th edition comes out, whereupon the 7th edition will be... etc. For me, like I said before, many things have been broken/unnecessary since the game's inception. Until they're actually fixed, HERO will never be perfect.

Re: I'll mimic your powers.. what? That's impossible! I can't! More importantly, what's the SFX for being inimitable? Is the character an alien or a technological hero such that they aren't really powers? Are the powers not real (e.g. extremely powerful illusion not controlled by the player)? I have to admit that I get worried when I see players wanting a very specific defense against a very specific powerset (especially a power set that costs a bundle). I immediately start to think of players buying up EGO and mental defense as soon as they find out they will face a mentalist...

Re: SPD and DEX for superheroic martial artists? Ach... Sorry about that. Both do share significant thematic elements (block-placement-maneuver). I always thought that Aikido developed from Kenjutsu, but now it appears it might have been a derivative of Jiu-Jutsu (perhaps with circular motions borrowed from Kenjutsu) and, by extension, a sibling or cousin of Judo? The relationship of art to art looks more like a plate of spaghetti each day...

Re: SPD and DEX for superheroic martial artists? Normal humans can't hold black belts in two martial arts? Judo is a derivative of Aikido, so mastery of Aikido includes mastery of Judo (unless you assume that it matters solely from a point-scoring perspective in tournament fighting). Taking out six combatants with your eyes closed is a bit off, but I'm talking about the standard for the character, not the outlying events made by some fanboy writer (let alone what fanboy made the Wikipedia entry...). No reference in the Wiki for that "six normal men while blindfolded" bit, either... Regardless, put a few levels in HTH Combat, shift them to DCV, stick with defensive maneuvers, throw opponents into each other, and you'll have a victory in no time. Nothing there requires superhuman DEX or SPD...

Re: SPD and DEX for superheroic martial artists? I don't hold the players of a game accountable for the actions of the game's creators and custodians. Had the game's designers gone with non-inflated DEX/SPD scores from the game's inception, would you feel like you had to pump up the DEX/SPD scores in your game to adequately reflect the capabilities of homage builds?

Re: Comics and cannibalism:two great tastes... From a reader's perspective, and especially with animal-based characters, cannibalism makes the audience think about being one rung lower on the food chain, which is particularly disturbing to many readers. It also dehumanizes the villain, which makes it more difficult to sympathize. Disturbing events + dehumanization = go get 'em heroes! To some degree, the antihero phenomenon fed this change. At one point, villains were people who did things to inconvenience others (often comically) or engaged in simple robbery (usually of banks). Some started getting more violent in their acts and it sold well. Eventually, they got into killing and that sold REALLY well. They've been doing that for a while now. Then the heroes started getting more violent and adopting killing ways, which also sold well. However, something was needed to differentiate the two. Writing for the character who kills characters that kill innocent characters gets boring fast. So, the villains got nastier and depravity became the order of the day. Cannibalism is pretty high up the depravity scale, so it was only a matter of time before it hit the comics. I'm fine with Ultimate Hulk being a true monster (or at least having been a true monster, we'll see what happens with Ultimates 3). This obviously caused problems for some readers who expected Hulk to be the big green misunderstood hero that he is in 616. He's an unstoppable force without self-control or fear. He meets all threats with maximum violence and all desires with maximum focus - pure id. He's supposed to be disturbing, he isn't (or wasn't) supposed to be the jolly green giant. Way back in the 1960s, it was pretty scary to think of someone with the mind and emotions of a poorly-raised three year old with superhuman strength. That was enough for the audience to fear the character to some degree. He was heroic because he fought against "The Man," who wanted to capture/kill Hulk, because he was an embarassment to the military industrial complex that accidentally created him. Ultimate Hulk is villainous in a misguided antihero sort of way in Ultimates and a pure antihero in Ultimates 2. He's an antihero that took the next step and went into depravity, though, which is interesting from a conceptual standpoint, but it won't sit well with fans of the "harmful, but not really" Hulk of 616. You aren't supposed to hero-worship Ultimate Hulk, which I think causes a lot of problems for some readers.