good gravy

Pay to win is the stupid thought that players need to pay to win

Its the comment originally made that people have to pay to win as there is no other choices.

That's where the root of that term comes from.....its a derogatory comment made by many who have had the unfortunate experience in playing games like that.

It does not mean you buy things to make your leveling easier.....only idiots and morons as the last few years have started to use that term for that reason and incorrectly.

Yes a certain new game in open beta makes you spend cash as you have no real way to get the extra bag space you will need to play nor will you be able to get most of the real high level items with out resorting to drastic or unimaginable methods in game as the costs are astronomical and a normal player cannot hold that much.

Pay to win games follow a specific pattern, they will always have ways to get most items from their cash shops in game but the way to do it is always obscured and made extremely difficult and very time consuming. 

Like for example when you battle a certain underground dragon to get that special Mount Soul from a specific game I wont say the name, you will find that the normal dropped items you have are not nearly enough for the party to tackle it.  And even if you have the items you have to do extraordinary tactics to beat it.

Or better still in a differing game you can easily get specific items of high level through the cash shop.....or you can simply defeat over 1 billion of a certain type of enemy to get a specific item. 

The term originally though came from players playing some specific games that literally required you to buy items from the cash shop or else you could not actually play specific adventure/dungeons nor have items that would let you fight specific in game enemies (termed as party or nightmare or advanced encounters in games)...if you know games that use these terms then you probably can easily figure out which games these are....some long time game players ofcourse will use these as reminders.

For me I have intimate knowledge of the term and how it came about after playing many video games....its like L337 speak.

What astounds me the most is the forum posts like this one and the actual people who post on it with so many "I think posts" or other things not related to the actual history of things......at some points its like people seam to forget where the terms or concepts come from.....and of course there is always the newer generation of players who feel they need to make things up to make it seam like they have knowledge.

Then of course there are those specific individuals who label everything in a negative fashion because they are either fans of some other game or hate some game or other.  

I gave up on the pvp as well.

But for a differing reason.....I noticed in zone chat some people gloating about how good they where so I QUED up and sure enough they beat me with the team I was with......it was a bit strange though....as they would get points even though they didn't control all the control points and they got them faster then my team who held at least 2 control points and at times 3 and we did this more then they did....so we should have won from the points....but didn't.

So I thought ok they have two rogues a cleric and control wizard......so I switched to a control wizard and qued up ...and that's when I saw even more out right hacks and cheating.

The two rogues would constantly break out of my holds instantly.....worse when the great weapon fighter hit one for 5000+ damage the rogue didn't take any damage.....so I looked at their health....we where supposed to be all level 19.....yet the rogues both had a health of 55,000.  not kidding here....and they where immune to control effects they also didn't even try to use hide at all...as they didn't need to......their damage was insane....a lot more then any trickster rogue can do.

They also where doing the old getting to places they should not be able to...to a point that when I personally went and took their control point that is blocked from our team.....I personally defeated their control wizard....with my wizard.....and proceeded to teleport back to the control.....as in I would give him a death blow....and blink he would come back....I knocked him over the side.....blink he was back.

After that...I just kind of gave up.

yes trickster rogues are tough in pvp but their flaw is they usually cant stop control effects they get one power after level 30 that will give them 6 seconds of control immunity and takes 30 seconds to recharge...they are one trick pony characters.

And guardian fighters yes they can block a lot.....but when you hit them form the rear they still take a lot of damage also they cant attack when blocking and thus you can break their block meter down.

And control wizards can blink and things....but really they are slow at moving....and having a heck of time against someone who keeps knocking them back are staying in real close.

And clerics....well they are clerics.....developers penalized them a lot....their featured class ability righteousness all it is a -40% penalty....that's right their bonus power is a penalty....on top of having low damage and low healing power.

And great weapon fighters....their armor isn't being calculated for them....they seam to have the same armor if they don't wear any...and the defense obviously on them isn't being calculated fully.

Its an ok game.....but when you get up to the highest skills and have supposedly real good gear and find you don't stand a chance against things you run into....its just sort of turn off.

I think I like the concept of when you level you should get stronger and more powerful.....but in this game you don't get that much more powerful then when you started the game.  And then when you actually fight nightmare content you cant even fight a minion with out difficulty.

I am sorry I just don't agree with that concept...those things make a game a bad game...and sadly you can see it when you play....as you go around playing you will start seeing monsters and things with very high health points that no one ever fights.  

Yes it is a fun game.  Though it has its little quirks and issues.  

I found the game play to be a bit short, and it took me about 2 weeks to level up to maximum level with just playing casual.

I find that the classes have some mechanical flaws in them...that cause them some issues.

Like the latest article talking about tanks, well the fact is for example the power called unstoppable just doesn't make the great weapon fighter unstoppable....plus they don't have the health and the armor in the game doesn't seam to do much.

The bosses in the dungeons are not that hard....what makes it hard is you have idiot players. 

There are way too many players who spec themselves for damage or healing with no survivability put in....so they die a lot.  Its neat they can do tons of damage but they cant survive onslaughts of imps...which is kind of sad.

This sounds neat....but the reality is a bit weird.  Liek to get crafting materials right now you have to find specifc objects in the game that are related to your class skill.  If you dont have hte right class skill you have to have a kity that has a fialry high percentage chance of failing to allow you to open the object. 

After playing alot....I found many many many of the items....but was never the right class.  The eworst part was the kits you need to open the objects where fairly pricey....I think i got on average at level 5 about 1 copper per 10 or 20 enemies i defeated if i was lucky.....with the kits costing about 100 copper.

I dont know....it sounds neat but the implementation is kind of not that great...

Actualy one thing they are testing is the ability to choose your skills now...so the next closed beta test being tommorrow may have alot of interesting new things in it.

The only detraction for me so far has been the anchored combat attacks...and if you know what that is.....thats where you target your foe and swing the weapon to get stuck inthe animation.....and unabale to move.....thus the enemies can run behind you and hit and atatck you while your attack basicaly misses.

The mage for example has a blnk teleport to help them get out of the way....and you cant use it alot becasue of the anchoring effect.  Not that it would help since it wont go through enemies or twigs or anything.  Rolls and sprinting can run through enemies...but teleportation seams to not be able to.

All i can say...is that combat in the secert world was distasteful until i used a controller...that made it 100% better.

I dont know about the rest of the posters but i felt like AGE of connan put me to sleep....and i didnt find the graphics very fluid(noticable skipping to speed up things)....cinematics seamed kind of sub par too....i felt the secret world seamed alot better in those respects....running with dx 11 the ground and over all enviroment seamed more realistic to me then age of connan.  Which kind of seamed cartoony and artificial more....they couldnt even get the wind right in age of connan...I think one of the most noticable was the sky textures for me...painted sky from age of connan to one with moving clouds and mists fromthe secret world.  In addition my graphics card had its fan work more with the secret world then with age of connan...so that means connan wasnt really that graphic intensive.

But i guess thats just my opinion...seams alot of people have very bad graphics rendering ability.....they supposedly have great hardware...but it certainly doesnt seam like it.

Snakes.....why did it have to be snakes?

>_>

Just kidding     ^_^

I think this sounds neat....this will be the fourth auxilery weapon......I just wonder what the other ones will be.

Its an ok game....

The actual system was a bit odd as you really didnt get to choose much....plus the cleric actualy had a shooting skill.....they called it divine bolts or something...there where some other things that you could choose that i didnt see a reason for....like choosing where you where from....or your patron diety...but maybe i didnt get far enough for those things.

I didnt feel i was anchored much in combat at all....but then again the combat wasnt a big deal......there was a terrible level curve though....as you progress in level you actualy start out being able to beat things failry well....but as time goes on....things start to become harder and harder...until you are fighting literal hit point balloons.

Its incarnation is ok.....maps are bit weird...they look large but are actualy just a series of linear caves with fancy drawings to make them look like citys and such....as i tried to jump off bridges and things and could not....i spent 30 minutes trying to jump to many places that the game wouldnt let me due to an invisible wall.

Shortcuts like say an ally between buildings....you cant use as thats just a decoration kind of thing alot.

In addition the map legend and things was neat....but the game had issues with telling you where things where....like the mail box npc.....you cant take items from your mail including reward items and pre-order items unless you access that npc and of course it wasnt listed on the map....nor in an easy spot to get to.....everything was spread out.....and running constantly to get to things was annoying.  You could set a way point...but that just told you on your compass which way to face to get to it...not the path to take which was stupidly round-a-bout way too much.

The chat system is linked to star trek online and champions....so you can speak to people in the other games....mail system is also connected....but alas...they made sure you cant trade your star trek phasers to your never winter guys..like what happened in the past....

I felt the combat worked very well....there was a huge issue with using a controller though...and i couldnt re-map the controller either...the biggest issue (as in pop ups sending control to the chat box) thus you would get a pop up telling you you went somewhere or are in combat and suddenly your controller ceases to function.....that was super annoying.

There where a number of other strange issues...but i think those willbe ironed out.

But that is just my own experiences with this beta so far....the actual released game could be alot different...which has happened that way alot....I recall a number of specifc places in other games by cryptic in the past being totaly re-done when the games went live.

Oh and as for how the game feels.....it reminds me of that game called Cabal....inthe way the combat works....but with a dose of final fantasy xi with the way they make you run all over....

I persoanly believe the free to play model is the furture...however i do think that also there will always be a form of subscription service included...and the usual life time subscriptions.

What i mean by this is....sure there will be the ability to play for free....with some stipulation.....star wars the old republic for example is a horrible version of this...The secret world and Star Trek Online and Jade Dynasty for example are more in line with what the eventual free to play models will be.

I envision the user will be free to play...maybe at home...on a computer...etc....with options for a subscription that will let them support their favorite game or publisher...but also the subscription will give the user the ability to use the game where ever they want.

This makes sense to me...becasue i understand how so many players feel...in that they may not have the money to play...and i also understand how others feel witht he fact that with out a constant revenue stream their favorite game wont get the attention or extra content that a subscription is more likely to bring.

Right now I have a number of life time subscriptions....but i still use the cash shops too...when i can....my reason is simple....i want to support the game developers creating things...I dont always have cash...sooo...paying a subscription isnt always a good idea for me....but i do try to contribute with the cash shops.....there have been a number of games that have gone away silently in the night....and we as players.....we have an obligation to not let our favored games simply vanish like that....so just becasue they have microtransactions or a cash shop....please..please....support your game.

Maybe it will be more like you get items and things like you would in most games....but with high enough craftign skills you can improve the item a bit more.

Sort of like how it works in Hellgate Global.

Though i think maybe they should have a degradation thing happen...so that if you are not constantly crafting you could go down in values.....sort of like Ultima Online.

That way it will keep people crafting if they want to keep the high skills.

Yep this game has changed quite a bit from its start.

Almost more stuff to do then to keep up with....and they keep adding more things...

I cant tell you how much time i spent getting my own ferengi cruiser and ferengi crew....

And no you dont have to spend real cash to play....just have to play the game...and use the ingame markets...you can literaly trade ingame cash for the cash shop cash.

Like most perfect world games yes they have the gambling boxes....

By the way there is one mission in this game they have no where else in any other game...not even close to it......its called "Quell the Mutiny" you select one officer of yours and you execute them...and then are given a random new officer to replace it.....sorry this mission alone makes me laugh everytime.

One thing that has not changed or it has but is still bad....the crafting...if you have done it on star trek you know how lame it is.

Also they still are using level banding with the QUEs for pvp and the special encounters....thus still is lame when you want to tackle the crystaline entity as you can only play with others of your level...

They used to jump your level up...or lower it on the stuff...so you could do everything even at the lowest levels or highest levels....but the level banding really made the QUE system totaly lame.

Basicaly in a nut shell....NC Soft  decided to discontinue city of heroes....becasue they not only had the newest Guild Wars coming out, but they also wanted to support their newest game they had been hyping like crazy Blood and Soul.  If you actualy decide to look at their profits for each game you will see the biggest loser title being Lineage 2, followed by AION which has had trouble for quite a while.  As a gamer if you have played both titles you know why this is. (aside form age of game the over game play for these two titles have had alot of issues and tons of damage control that just has not worked as well as I am sure they wanted....go figure...nepotism causes this sort of thing.) 

As for it not being profitable.....it was...it just was not enough of what they wanted...in addition they decided to change focus....You can see this statement issued by them in many places including thier announcement about the sunset and in many issued statements.  What that means in video games terms is that they decided to go with a specifc genre of games and focus on that only.  Thus they went to the Fantasy style of gaming and Super Heroes doesnt exactly fall with in that genre.

I dont actualy know why they decided to discontinue it like they did.....they really made some big names in the entertainment and writing and movie industries very angry though(you could have read this on the city of heroes forums when they existed but can still read right now on the titan network forums for some juicy stuff)

But the biggest reason this is continualy being brought up... if anyone has been part of game shutdowns....I have a number of times....this time it was handled alot differently then the usual......In every game before city of heores....the number one thing companies do is try to keep players...in this case they usualy do the old we will give you the time you pre-paid for on another game title.....or discounts on other games they have or are coming out with....they did this on Auto Assault, and Lineage and Dungeon Runners and even Tabula Rasa....but with this one....they instead....didnt send out any emails....they simply gave people back credit..and that was it....any calls or emails to them where answered with a response of the game is being sunset on the date and nothing else.

So strangely enough this is why this thing keeps getting brought up like a dead horse....is becasue the players....noticed the company didnt try to keep them....they literaly didnt try to sell the game nor any other games....and they didnt seam to care they ticked off some influential big wigs in differing fields...which kind of goes way against the typical game company strategem...and what is even more strange...is the fact that many other game companies have been super supportive to a point you can tell that the moderators and workers in those other companies are just as mystified.....thus the reason you dont see the city of heroes stuff taken off the blizzard forum...or from the perfect world forums or the secret world....

Yes its very irritating to players who never played city of heroes and would never have played it and could care less....

But the mystery is there and thus....its why its brought up.

Figured I would post all of this to get people up to speed.

Well its upsetting for me as i tend to play city of heroes alot.

What the most irritating thing about them closing up.....is that they literaly had the developement team showing off new things and had a new build onthe beta that really added alot of things and new powers and changed the game areas.

Then suddenly onthe very next day the group was telling players when things where going to hit the live servers....the company got them into the office inthe morning on friday and fired the entire studio...then said everyhting would stop.

Its annoying.....its alot like Hellgate London with what happened.....where they had all the cool stuff on beta...but now we wont get it becasue they are closing the game down.

Ah well....I guess i am mostly frustrated as in I dont know what other game i will actualy play....mostly everything else doesnt have the same stealth or travel system... all other games are sub-par in those categories...and most of the attack and level systems and such are sub par as well in other games.  Then there is exemplar and side kick systems that no other game has come close to yet.

For me...i am upset its going to go...i spent 8+ years playing....thousands of players i have played with and met on this game....

What the really sad part is....after this game...I am not sure what i will play....i play alot of games sure....but I spent most of time with city of heroes....and now i will never find out what the big omega slot power is....never know the end of the big storyline..and so now not sure what i will do...probably just not play online games much anymore.

Wow not sure what to make of this.....action MMO....probably going to be like Cabal.

sounds like it....thats an action mmo.....rusty hearts....is very linear.....but since this is cryptic...then we will probably get flying off the bat to anywhere....with toggles to allow to stay flying or at super speed or invisible as long as you want.....

So it wont be like idiotic worlds of warcraft with their limited super speed.....or final fantasy xi with invisbility on a timer of 20 seconds......

But then again.....AION came out and had that retarded 30 seconds of flight then you drop like a stone to your death thing no matter how high up you where.....oh wait that was NC soft who did that.....

Well if they can do what they did with city of heroes....maybe do a good job like they did with star trek online.....and make something more entertaining then champions...then the game might not be too bad.

this is going to be difficult though....alot of games with alot of good qualities in all of them...have spoiled way too many people.

Its about a week or less for it to be open to everyone.....jump starts from this group are usualy not very long.

Also i hate to point this out...yes its better costume creation system then APB...but then what do you expect?  APB was designed for fast play with its engine.....City of heroes uses a differing game engine so it can use differing communication lines differently.

Yah so this will be different game play definately for people who come from games like final fantasy and worlds of warcraft....they wont be used to being able to turn on super speed and leaving it on or being bale to fly in a straight line or leave it on forever.  Also In my opinion the combat is alot faster....you dont have 20 billion buttons of the same attack.....

I dont know i think combat in city of heroes and champions is about the same...feels the same to me....targeting in champions is a bit weird now....as is the defense system in champions  not working....but then again in city of heroes their attacks are all mostly click based....so you can keep firing or using some power like you can in champions.....

Ah well...i play both and they strangely feel like they are both additions of the same game.....if they combined both games...i dont know....i just wouldnt be surprised

Well the content is something interesting....

At least they keep supporting it...albeit a bit slowly.

But then again i am glad it is a bit slow...since i wouldnt be able to keep up with city of heroes if they went very fast...as i would be too busy playing dc then.

As for the major thing they are gearing up for....if you play DC universe....the new content is the major thing but what they dont tell you is the other small things they added....like more of the green lantern corp. signs for example.....

Luckily i dont pay a monthly fee to keep playing....what can i say....

Sounds alot like DC universe

In that it has 7 active skills only to be accessed normaly....not sure what the deal is with that.

Micromanagement of that type is major annoying.

So which means you gets a bunch of skills you can never use.....becasue you have to choose 7 only to be used at a time.....

oh but it has passive skills too.....<_<

Just like DC universe....

Sounds like the game will be ok.....not sure it will be that great though

Freemium is a horrble word...that implies a trial game with a time limit to me.

I prefer the term...cashshop game....since thats what it is.

kind of is more descriptive too...no way to confuse what type of game it is.

By the way...back on subject....i wonder why the state of game didnt talk about the things they have done...might be more interesting to people who dont play...to know that they upped the china town missions by double...and included a story arc related to hi-pan so you dont have to hunt the random spawn that never appeared.

Or maybe tell about how they changed the tutorial missions quite a bit and put more of the hazard zone missions in in.....making the original white sands danager area higher level.

Call me crazy but i think that would make the article a little more interesting then its just a statement about how they plan to do things for end game content and may or may not have weekly episodes like they do in star trek online.

There where alot more changes but go figure if i cant recall everything right off..