When I saw this article I had some thoughts and then I saw that there were 35 pages of comments in reply. I'm not about to sit through and read all 35 pages of it so forgive my ignorance if the points I'm about to cover have already been discussed.

Much of what I think goes right along with mrwolf who posted before me. You paid for the box and you're paying a subscription fee, the front of the box says "xx Million Copies sold" or something to that effect (I've lost my box since I bought it and the cardboard disc holders don't say it (I just checked)). Now, if you multiply that $15 per month per player by the number of years the game has been out, I'm sure the amount of revenue generated has been more than enough to pay the development team, maintain upkeep of all game servers and helped the development team to put together subsequent expansion packs many times over. So why the need to use an item mall as an excuse to give money to charity?

Are to think that Blizzard isn't making enough money to maintain itself, it's servers, it's staff and it's other projects off of sales of their products (which are quite numerous especially with Diablo III rolling out)? If they feel strongly about the charity, why not just place a tag on boxes that states that a purchase of this game and subsequent payments of already existing subscription fees will, in part, go to x charity? 

I'm sorry, but it does seem to me that they (Blizzard) might have a genuine care for the charity but they are going about it all the wrong way. In effect, by creating an item mall containing any items whatsoever (vanity or progression) was an excuse to generate more work for developers, requiring more money to pay them, for no real purpose at all. It also would make the player without the extra cash to spend look rather heartless if they could not summon one of these cuddly pals from the item mall that is supposed to be there for charity. In essence, it creates a smokescreen effect. "If you want money to go to this charity, you'll buy the pet, if you don't, then you don't care and YOUR friends will see that you don't care."

In my honest opinion, it seems to be more of an uncaring company trying to look innocent. 

I don't know what has limited alot of this lag I keep on hearing about. I'm currently playing Shin Megami Tensei: IMAGINE off and on. I usually play on Channel 7 which is 6 whole channels away from the trade channel. It generally helps to cut lag issues when you only go to 1 to PUG a bunch of runs or to buy that really cute outfit you've had your eye on. Head back to 7 for all of your gameplay fun and/or training demonology expertise. *grimaces*

Anyway, just a friendly *bump* post I guess.

 With both of these titles technically or literally "Under Development" it's no wonder they aren't listed under the Game Forums section yet.

Shin Megami Tensei fans might be interested to hear that there is a Shin Megami Tensei MMO out there on the Free to Play market (made to survive on a micro-transaction system). Shin Megami Tensei: IMAGINE is definitely a more unique approach to an MMO with some of the old MMO touches thrown in. There are three or more difficulties to dungeons based on the "plate" you use to enter them. So, yes, there are instances. PvP is an event only type thing and events do happen quite regularly. Keep in mind that this MMO is based in Anime, has kids that play on it and whatnot, but the events will tend to cater to them a bit. The site address is http://www.megaten.aeriagames.com  MegaTen being short for Megami Tensei, of course. Characters all start out the same way. There are no pre-defined classes, but that's not necessarily a new thing either. Developed by Cave and Atlus and bought by Aeria Games, MegaTen might hit some sort of spot somewhere. 

Another game that doesn't have a game forum on MMORPG would be a Brasilian made title that is most definitely still in development, even the mining rules have yet to be implemented. This title is pretty much in open beta at this time, there are missions already and you can craft and gather resources (though there is a good chance that there is seriously more to come and rules to be implemented) as well as shoot the living daylights out of your fellow pilots on quite a few different PvP enabled maps. This game is not your standard fantasy game, nor will you have to pay incredulous rates a month to play. What is it? It's a free to play (with optional micro-transaction support) Sci-fi game from Hoplon Infotainment! Hoplon, such a strange name, right? Well, it's not only their name but it's the name of their micro-transaction currency too!

Well, let's see, oh I haven't said the title of the game yet. It's Taikodom! Sounds silly, I know, but you haven't heard it explained yet. Taiko means Space in chinese and Dom for kingdom from old english, put them together and you get (basically) spacekindgom or Taikodom. Which one sounds more streamlined to you? If I got my information straight at this hour, (I've been up for over 24 hours now) this game was originally created as an interactive Sci-fi story. There are even books slated to come out about the lore of Taikodom if a few haven't already been published. Well, have a look for yourself at http://taikodom.com and use the quick links at the top of the page to find out more about the universe. Oh, and fair warning, right now most of the community are Portuguese speaking but that doesn't mean they aren't nice. If you're looking for English speakers, they are out there, I fly for a Corporation called The Syndicate which is comprised of all English speaking people and wish nothing more than to be able to help newcomers sort things out and get to enjoying the game.

Originally posted by Neanderthal

Originally posted by Linthead4504

And what does the Captain do in your scenario? The problem is... everyone will want to be the captain, or even the Pilot. What if you pilot flies all over the place and refuses to listen to the Captain? Then what?

If you say the Captain has all the power, well then what's the difference between the captain having the power over PC's or just being the Captain of your ship? Many people would rather just be the captain of their own ship there.

If you say there's nothing they can do, well then what fun is it if you're at the mercy of just 1 person? And if that's the case, why would anyone want to be anything other than the pilot?

 

If you read my earlier post in my opinion their shouldn't be a specific "captain" profession.  Everyone should be either a helmsman, a tactical officer, science officer, or whatever but no specific "captain" career.

When you put a group together the person who forms the group would be the Captain of that particular crew for the duration of the session.  So sometimes you would be the captain and sometimes someone else would be the captain.  But even if you are the captain you would still do your specific job in the group (piloting or engineer or tactical or whatever).  If they actually had you on the bridge inside the ship we can just assume that all jobs could be done from the captains chair.

If you get an idiot in your group like a pilot who "flies all over the place" you just leave that group and remember never to group with that guy again.   Take a shuttle back to the space station or beam back or whatever and get a different group or get a different pilot.  It's hardly an insurmountable task.

It seems to me that not many people have actually gone to the STO website and actually read about this title. The role of captain is not a profession. Everybody is their own captain and everybody commands their own ship. The point of a group is to increase the potential fire-power while bringing you own personal skills to the table. Captain #1 is an excellent strategist, captain #2 is an explorer, captain #3 can be even be a paleontologist! What's the point? Everybody uses their own personal skills to further to the advancement of a group but do so from their own ship. At no point have I seen anything on the STO site that said you could become a member of another player's bridge crew, that's just insanity! Visiting another ship to see what the captain has done with it, on the other hand, is an interesting idea. Boarding an enemy vessel to carry out a tactical seizure of the vessel or just oust the captain, that would be interesting. Becoming a member of another captain's bridge crew to sit there staring at an LCARS screen and carry out orders.... Sure, it's RP, but it's not fun.

Even more to add would be the fact that not all players assess the same situation in the same way. When one person says to do something a particular way at a certain time, reaction times could suffer immensely. We don't live in an age where all internet connections are created equally, you know? What if your tactical officer were experiencing a high amount of lag when the helmsman manuevers in for the perfect shot and you miss your chance and everybody dies? Well, I see all the players that just lost their lives on this mission being extremely PO'd! "Sorry captain, my LCARS screen was extremely boring and froze on me multiple times...." That's not RP, that's crappy internet in a RTS simulation.

Where did people get the idea that grouping up would mean that you become a member of another player's bridge crew? I don't get it, I really don't. Never once have I seen the Defiant come to the aid of the Enterprise by transferring the bridge crew over... would that even make sense? Hell no it wouldn't!

"U.S.S. Yorktown here to assist you in the fight against these Klingons, prepare for a new bridge crew"

"Sure thing, just dock your capital ship with my skow so you can help me." States the captain of a trade vessel.

No, this doesn't work. Get a clue and then post here please?

I suppose that posting this here and now is kind of like poking a sleeping grandma with a stick, but.... Well, the only way I've managed to change the resolution of this game is to edit a text file in the game's folder.

C:\Program Files\AOA\AOA\core.ini

That file contains 3 simple lines to check out... however, this game was not meant for widescreen resolutions. Seems the max it can support is 1024x768 but there is a line to change it from fullscreen to windowed mode. If you're in fullscreen already then change the 1 to a 0, save and exit.

If you have a standard CRT with a max resolution of 1024x768 but are in windowed mode, you can just change that

full_screen     =  0

to

full_screen     = 1

Save file, exit editor and start game. Too bad it doesn't support the higher resolutions since my monitor is 1440x900. The game graphics themselves seem to adjust alright but the interface containing the hotkeys and menu buttons is static linked to a certain position within the 1024x768 resolution frame. So... I guess I'm stuck in windowed mode. v.v