From a perspective of a current senior at a university. A degree doesn't amount to much without a portfolio or work to show. I'm in Computer Science and have completed all of the requirements for this major, but am still pursuing another degree. But honestly, the university really only teaches concepts. Hardly any or no actual application of the concepts. As a result, you'd forget a lot of things. My advice is to focus on a narrow subject that you enjoy and apply the concept and learn outside of school. Your best bet is to find a school with a game club and join in on group projects (because I think group projects are fun which facilitates learning, with the caveat that you're working with qualified and responsible people, which is rather rare though).

Edit: That is, I don't really think the specific major matters all that much as long as you have projects/work to show. However, the main reason I wouldn't recommend a game major is that you'd probably be wasting your time in "design" courses that only ask you to think or be creative on your own (that is, stuff like designing a theoretical game or analyzing game-play elements), which can always be done on your own time or within a game club.

Originally posted by CHATTER

You can also disable the energy builder from being a toggle and take multiple energy builders and just use them like you would in CoH, you just include them in an attack chain.

That's just false/misleading information... Currently, there's only 1 endurance builder per character, unless they added a new patch yesterday or today. Furthermore, endurance builders deal as little as 1/10th to 1/20th the damage of many of the stronger attacks.

And I think I understand what the OP is talking about. Some people talked about this during the closed beta. The sense of impact, etc...

Note - I'm not going to write a 100 page thesis. I'm only writing what I feel is relevant.

It will probably mainly attract serious min/maxers (due to the convoluted system), collectors (due to collectable equipments, which requires grinding through quests/instances at end game), grinders (see collectors), casuals (what doesn't attract casuals as long as there's solo elements?), and maybe crafters (there's a simple crafting system, see below). And people who really, really, really like character customization, obviously.

It is unlikely to attract serious PvPers (see below on Combat and PvP), Explorers (since there's very little to explore and most traveling will be done because of quests), Epic Story Lovers (because the stories from quests in CO is disjoint and mostly unrelated to one another), Immersion Lovers (because the open world is practically static with few dynamic fluff events, spawns are at static locations, etc.), etc.

Some of the main aspects are described below:

Combat - It's fairly simple and straightforward. Anything affecting a target will require a target unless it's a Point-Blank Area of Effect. You have your Endurance builder, which is essentially an auto-attack (And you shouldn't turn the auto-attack off unless you want to be less efficient) to give you endurance so that you can use other powers for a few seconds before coming back to the Endurance builder. You have powers that do knockback/knock-up/knock-down/repel and powers that apply holds on the target; and most of these will give the target the respective resistance to the type applied for a duration. There's practically no  predictive element to combat. Even though reflex plays a small role in the game, it's no where near the amount necessary nor as demanding as in games like Guild Wars. However, during Closed Beta, many people who enjoy the combat, enjoy it due to the animation of the powers, since it makes them look cool; and they don't play to be efficient (i.e. - relying on 1 strongest power), but switch through powers to look cool or fit their concept.

PvP - You have Duels and simple Team Arenas (and Free-For-All at level 21+). You can't really pvp alone without pve, because leveling through pvp is much slower and you don't get any worthwhile items, which will start making you weak in comparison to others. Balancing issues is still going on. PvP is fun if you like dominating other players (assuming you built yourself correctly). This is possible due to balance issues between powers and how important stats are tied to specific powers; in other words, if you build yourself correctly, you'll be drastically superior to another person. Currently, players can only undo up to 10 points applied to their character, so a gimped character will remain gimped.

Quests - It feels like the stuff from WOW. You go to a contact. Take a quest. And go finish it. Return to contact and return the mission for experience and loot. They're pretty much fetch or destroy missions. There's some instances where there's more to them, where trivial puzzles become a part of the game (e.g. - use this magnet through glowy objects to collect this and put into this).

Leveling - pretty much exclusively through quests. PvP gives like 1/2-1/3 the rate of PvE. Mobs give hardly any experience and is much worse than PvPing.

Crafting - there's really only the 3 distinct schools. You're not going to be particularly special. And crafting is beneficial (in the later levels) and easy to level enough that everyone should do it.

Teaming - You have to go out of your way to find the teaming UI. For this reason and others, there's hardly much people using it. The game is also fairly solo oriented. It's possible to solo through everything, assuming you build yourself like a tank. Also, teaming feels awkward, since everyone is usually built to solo, so it doesn't ever feel like you're working together. It feels like we're soloing together. Of course, not everyone will feel this way, but I certainly did and others mentioned it as well in the Closed Beta.

When there's a cluster of players in an area in Eve Online, even there has been complaint of severe lag. And the world of Eve Online is huge and assumingly non-linear.

In games where there will be expected clustering of players in an area, this is clearly not possible. For a server, if there's n players in an area, then that requires n*(n-1) information being transferred, because each of the n players needs information from each of the other players. This puts severe stress on the network.

The problem these days is that players don't understand technology or the inner-workings. The demand for something like this is just not practical...

What Abrahmm said, probably...

Anyways, the problem is latency (i.e. - ping) , so it's probably fine for non-time critical single player games, assuming servers are widely distributed so there's servers near you. However, MMOs, have centralized servers. So now when you press a button, signals will run from your computer to an MMO server, back to your computer, to the Onlive (or Gaikai) server and back to your computer to update the screen. It suffices to say, your latency will be worse.

Edit: I just looked up the geographical distances... Doesn't look like it matters too much if you're using like say Fiber Optics (which uses light as signals), but I assume server processing are the main brunt of latency. As my knowledge is lacking in this area, I can't say for certain how bad it'll be. But the basic idea is that your current latency will probably be approx. double of what it currently is for MMOs.

Originally posted by MsBunny2u

I have seen alot of Champions Online, and have NEVER liked their "cell shading" graphics. Then I heard the BUZZ about DCUO and how awesome it is going to be. So I started to follow this game.

But. Hold the phone. All the recent videos I have seen look like Champions Online but with different characters.

 

Why is no one making a SUPER HERO game on a DECENT game engine like Unreal Engine 3 or whatever they used for Crisis???

I don't really have as much a problem with them in regards to the colors as opposed to body/face shapes and appearance styles.

Also, keep in mind that the details aren't as high as say Blade and Soul, or Continent of the Ninth, or Tera, etc. or many console games. Highly detailed games generally lack customization, because it's a lot more work. And higher PC requirements severely limits the amount of consumers. But I do agree that the overall result doesn't look particularly satisfying.

Many gamers spout out "technical" jargon as if they understand it (and then the community starts using them as well), but they're totally using it wrong. A game engine (or more appropriately, a graphics engine) allows the capabilities for certain levels of graphics; it does not define how something looks. DC Universe and Champions Onlines went with a specific graphical design style (and the style itself is hardly related to the game engine).

Considering they spent magnitudes more money in TR than any other MMO they published/developed, and the trash that came out of it... And in terms of monetary support, TR has had the most support at that point in time. The only real con here was by RG.

To truly analyze it you need to go in much deeper detail than that. (e.g. - combat mechanics).

I found the mage class to be rather boring. However, the scout class was surprisingly engaging due to the fact bonuses from direction of movement mattered and skills that deal massive damage based on the direction the enemy is hit from.

However, overall, I doubt it and other MMOs currently on the market are much different from each other. Next Gen MMOs are coming next year...

care to elaborate on how the mechanics change? Furthermore, I've read through the skills list for just about every class...

However, the point that the game is worth playing or not is NOT my intent for this thread. This thread is meant for discussing the engagin factor of the classes and the way they play with specified mechanics to back up opinions...

I only tried 2 classes, mage (lv.6 or 7) and scout (lv.4). Again, note that this is purely my opinion and thoughts.

Note - I define engaging to be something that keeps my focus/attention (which implies that it's at least somewhat entertaining).

Mage

I usually play mages exclusively, but MMOs lately have made the mage classes rather stale. The mage class in Aion appears to be mainly about just keeping distance from the opponent. They have root, slow-downs, and nukes. I found this to be really boring, especially since every game retains this aspect (i.e. keeping distance) of mages.

At least in Ragnarok Online, there was the aspect of positional and locational casting (e.g. - firewall, ice wall, thunderstorm, safety wall, etc.). And the fact that you have to aim with every spell added to the engaging factor. Of course, all of these worked for an isometric game and may not translate well or needs to be reworked for a 3rd person game. And I am hoping for more engaging/complex combat mechanics in future games than in previous games/MMOs.

Scout

I found it surprising that I enjoyed the combat for this class as much as I did, given that the mechanics are rather simple. The attacks which gain huge advantages for attack from behind, and the movement of the player's character affecting damage bonus (or dodge bonus or defense bonus) really added to the engaging factor of the combat. It's a very simple system, but I found it engaging enough to be enjoyable, albeit I would hope for (much) more complexity in future games.

Concluding Remarks

Well, those are my thoughts. I didn't find the other aspects of the game very interesting (but the graphics are quite nice). Anyways, I wonder how you guys feel about the engaging factor of the different classes in Aion.

I'd like to mention that you guys should read with discretion. I keep forgetting how much fanboys (or haters) twist the facts or outright lie. This includes the press as well... I'm reminded of this every time stuff like this puffs up...

You're right. You must be blind!

- Villain versus Heroes = PVP in open world, actually, I believe they said this is for pvp servers.

- Conflicting Missions (instances)

Actually that's all I know right now. And I think there's some sort of mechanics that allows someone to stay out of pvp if they don't want to (but I assume the separation pvp servers and pve servers will handle the main part of this).

Notables:

1) Mob difficulty - they kill you quickly. Only other game that has done this is Ragnarok Online. And I felt Ragnarok Online did a good job with creating various atmosphere by scaling how fast/strong mobs are. I'm not sure how well AION will utilize this. However, it is a plus.

...

I guess that's it. The combat and quests are standard fare. Some mobs interact (that little horn guy chasing the firefly like monster). However the AI for them are standard as well (i.e. - completely oblivious to player characters). Overall the presentation is decent. There should be more encouragement for grouping. Anyways, this isn't something to pull me away from console games.  I'm still awaiting the next-gen MMOs (LineageIII, that game from bluehole studios, Blade and Soul, Final Fantasy XIV, etc.).

Nintendo or Sony for me. IMO, microsoft was left in the dust, because none of their stuff appealed to me...

I couldn't care much for the Sony and Microsoft jump on the motion stuff. (You do realize much of any real movement would not work or be awkward without an analog stick)

What caught my attention:

Nintendo - 1) New Super Mario Bros. 2) Monado 3) Metroid the Other M.

Sony - 1) The Last Guardian 2) Final Fantasy XIV

Some reason I didn't feel very stoked about the Final Fantasies or Team ICO's game, even though I loved Shadow of the Colossus and have played almost all the Final Fantasy games.

I felt most excited for the New Super Mario Bros. It's just so nostalgic thinking back of the nes and snes days with Mario. But now there's Coop. Awesome!

Given I've played it years ago for about 2-3 months. I thought COH had one of the most intuitive interface and controls out of any mmo...

I disagree with your sentiment that not a lot can be done in 6 months if you've been in any real beta. Besides the release date was planned for next year (not this year), so it's more than 6 months. However, it depends on what they decide to work on, even though they never seem to work on the plain obvious stuff that people hate.

I agree however that it looks horrible. (I think you should elaborate what you don't like either)

-People have complained about the stiff animations which are quite painful to look at. (That knockback in the video looks awkward). They said they were going to change it, but considering that's what they had in mind originally and no apparent change in months, I'm doubtful unless there continues to be more commotion on this.

- Lack of COOL powers. The coolness factor just isn't there. I think they need to ramp up on making the animations dazzling for some of these powers, which needs to go with some cool effects that the power does (which includes the amount of damage too). They can compensate for these super powers, by making the effects be stochastic events. But the point is, we should have some moments where we feel absolutely awesome and powerful.

- I hope everyone don't have the same type of powers as shown in previous demos (ex: everyone has a hold, basic attack, etc.)

- Something I hope they definitely have. And that's grouping. They need to support grouping. That means, please don't give us pickup quests that we have to run back and forth between contacts or places too much. It also means, street sweeping (i.e. - fighting enemies in the world) should be a viable alternative form of advancement . It'll be even nicer if we can just pick up generalized missions/quests as we're battling in the outside world.

I think the Yin and Yang of their development team was lost the moment they left "half" their team with NCsoft.

That is, to say you should try it first before jumping the gun...

Originally posted by vesavius

 Instead though of a co-op group based social game with interreliant system design, it looks like a 3D Street fighter. Not even Double Dragon, but Street Fighter.

If it was like a 3d Street Fighter, I'd buy it...

However, I can't even understand in the slightest, why'd you say Street Fighter. There's no specific correlation between the 2 games.

Originally posted by vonomous

Originally posted by Tykero

Originally posted by vonomous

Originally posted by Tykero

Her arm does not change sides. It moves fluidly as one would expect.

 

Yes it move fluidly.  It moves clockwise, and then it switches to counterclockwise with the image mirrored horizontally.

My point (however badly explained) is that you are perceiving it as going 2 different directions at different times because: It is going different directions at different times.  Call me when you guys figure it out.  Pretty silly prank really.

 

 

 

No, it doesn't.

 

I have it open in Ulead GIF Animator right now. There are 34 distinct frames composing a single clockwise rotation.

 

 

 

Why do you think people are seeing it go both clockwise and counter clockwise? 

 

They can't tell the difference between their right and left? clockwise or counterclockwise...you know. It can be hard for some people.
 

There's multiple reasons someone might like guilds. I think Fa+e should explain that reason. What aspects do you like? It looks like Zoey likes chatting and easy to find group play (which in my opinion does not necessitates guilds).

I dislike guilds, because it tends to have whiny people who begs for stuff, or some guilds even force or expect you to do stuff for the guild.

I like to play with a core group of few people. When I was ever in guilds (ingame guilds), I only played with specific players. However, I had closer buddies when I'm not in guilds and I enjoy playing with them more, because we don't have to deal with guild issues.