Author Topic: I just can't do it.  (Read 13871 times)

A Cyclops named Steve

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I just can't do it.
« on: December 13, 2012, 05:40:04 AM »
I tried I really did. I thought I was ready to game again(this is the longest I have gone without playing anything for as long as I can remember) and I just couldn't do it. We played for about an hour and it just felt wrong. I was sick to my stomach the whole time. Guess I'm just not there yet. :gonk:
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healix

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #1 on: December 13, 2012, 07:08:21 AM »
Steve, everyone here knows how you feel....hang here with us in the forums. Vent, laugh, take comfort and fight with us to get our city back.
Listen to the 'mustn'ts'. Listen to the 'don'ts'. Listen to the 'shouldn'ts', the 'impossibles', the 'won'ts'. Listen to the 'you'll never haves', then listen close to me... Anything can happen . Anything can be.

Tenzhi

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #2 on: December 13, 2012, 07:35:32 AM »
I've never had that sort of attachment to a video game, but I have had that kind of attachment to roleplaying game groups (both offline and on).  When those fall apart for various reasons it tends to demotivate me to starting/joining a new game, and when I do it often seems like the new game is a pitiful attempt to recapture something that has been forever lost.
When you insult someone by calling them a "pig" or a "dog" you aren't maligning pigs and dogs everywhere.  The same is true of any term used as an insult.

Victoria Victrix

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #3 on: December 13, 2012, 08:55:03 AM »
I feel the same.  I tried Champions out last night and besides being as ugly and clunkier than CoH I4, the ONLY interaction I had with another player was some moron that kept challenging me to PvP (in the trial zone?  REALLY?) and wouldn't accept a refusal for an answer.

It made me feel sick and depressed and ready to break out in tears.
I will go down with this ship.  I won't put my hands up in surrender.  There will be no white flag above my door.  I'm in love, and always will be.  Dido

Tenzhi

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #4 on: December 13, 2012, 09:29:35 AM »
I feel the same.  I tried Champions out last night and besides being as ugly and clunkier than CoH I4, the ONLY interaction I had with another player was some moron that kept challenging me to PvP (in the trial zone?  REALLY?) and wouldn't accept a refusal for an answer.

It made me feel sick and depressed and ready to break out in tears.

There's a Social menu, in it there is a whitelist option where you can set duel requests (among other things) to whitelist/friends only.  That's the definitive "no" that they have no choice but to accept.  I look for that sort of option in every game that has duels ever since my first sojourn into WoW when I continually had to set people to /ignore in order to stop their duel-spam (they put in a working option to auto-decline sometime later I found out on my second brief attempt to enjoy WoW).
When you insult someone by calling them a "pig" or a "dog" you aren't maligning pigs and dogs everywhere.  The same is true of any term used as an insult.

Nebularian

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #5 on: December 13, 2012, 11:50:52 AM »
I think I am going to try something a lot of people have talked about.  Everquest.  Never tried it...but  a lot of people hold it up as an example of what could and should have happened to COH.
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Kyodai

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #6 on: December 13, 2012, 03:59:18 PM »
I hear ya Steve.  I've always played several games at a time, but they all sort of lost a bit of flavor after d-day.  I started playing SWTOR about a week ago, and have been pleasantly surprised by the community there.  Very helpful, courteous and mature (so far).  Teaming is a bit more challenging, but i attribute that to the immersive quality of the leveling experience.

Still tough though.  I hit the CoH icon in my quicklaunch by accident last night, out of habit.

--Kyo

Thunder Glove

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #7 on: December 13, 2012, 05:18:23 PM »
I know the feeling.  I took the game off my sidebar, so I haven't accidentally tried to play it, but I still type "boards.cityofheroes.com" into the browser out of sheer habit every single day, only to be greeted with the bleak Sunset page and another kick to the gut.

Champions is vaguely filling the void while I'm actually playing it, but ... even then, most of what I'm doing is attempting to get those frail weaklings whipped into some semblance of the 50+3 godlings they're modeled after.

Edit to add:

VV, there's a channel for CoH refugees on Champions that I always have on, called "CoX".  I know there's a slash command to add it (/join_channel CoX or /channel_join CoX, I forget which), but you can also go to Chat Settings (by clicking the little square on the right side of the chat box) and add it from there.

The CoX channel has the full gamut of players from CoH (including the trolls screaming "the game was clearly losing money and failing, despite all evidence to the contrary!" and the "It's been a whooooole week, so I've moved on, and you should too" folks), so I've had to put a few on /ignore already.

But, in general, it's a bunch of helpful folks, and I rarely have even the regular CO chat on.  I'm @zazelby.  (Don't ask where that name came from; I'm not sure why I picked it myself)
« Last Edit: December 13, 2012, 05:25:42 PM by Thunder Glove »

Arachnion

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #8 on: December 13, 2012, 05:38:59 PM »
I still type "boards.cityofheroes.com" into the browser out of sheer habit every single day, only to be greeted with the bleak Sunset page and another kick to the gut.

This. I have to stop myself from going there every day now, like I did in the past.

 :'(
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Dollhouse

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #9 on: December 13, 2012, 06:02:04 PM »
I feel the same.  I tried Champions out last night and besides being as ugly and clunkier than CoH I4, the ONLY interaction I had with another player was some moron that kept challenging me to PvP (in the trial zone?  REALLY?) and wouldn't accept a refusal for an answer.

It made me feel sick and depressed and ready to break out in tears.

Yeah. Just...yeah.   :(

I've given Champions Online two pretty good tries now (closed beta through the first six months of live and a recent three-month sub that just ended), but it just doesn't work for me. Champs has some things I like about it, sure. I actually (slightly) prefer the feel of the combat system to CoH, and I can imitate reticule targeting in the UI.

That and...um...well, that's about it, really.

It's by no means a bad game, but it simply fails to grab me, to make me want to log in and play. In both cases I mention above, the latter part of my subscription remained largely unused: I simply wasn't inclined to play. The latter case was effected by my laptop imploding, for sure...but I don't think that would have mattered much.

I think more than any other factor - and there are many - it's that the game fails to take itself seriously enough. Not that a comic book superhero game (of all things) should be "srs bzns" in the same way a game like, say, TSW works best. Yet somehow Champs always comes across like it's making fun of the genre. Moreover, the game has too little respect for the Fourth Wall, which I find to be a lethal immersion killer.  For someone like me, who never really found the genre to be the biggest draw of CoH and who instead tended to operate on the fringes of canon, with characters who would only be caught dead in spandex if they were cycling, CO's cartoonish look and almost satirical presentation just never worked.

A Cyclops named Steve

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #10 on: December 13, 2012, 06:18:34 PM »
Thanks everyone! :D I am so glad I still have my family here
.                              Come with me and you'll be in a world of pure imagination. Take a look and you'll see into your imagination.

                                       We'll begin with a spin, traveling in the world of my creation. What we'll see will defy explanation.

            If you want to view paradise simply look around and view it. Anything you want to, do it. Wanta change the world? There's nothing To it.

Arachnion

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #11 on: December 13, 2012, 06:40:33 PM »
No offense to people who like Champions, but it is a generic brand/store brand soft drink when compared to CoH, which is a popular, loved, name brand soft drink.

 ;)
I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go
Walkin' with a dead man over my shoulder

Waiting for an invitation to arrive
Goin' to a party where no one's still alive

Thunder Glove

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #12 on: December 13, 2012, 07:08:16 PM »
No offense to people who like Champions, but it is a generic brand/store brand soft drink when compared to CoH, which is a popular, loved, name brand soft drink.

 ;)

I do like Champions, but ... this is exactly 100% how I feel about it.  It feels like a pale imitation.

There's lots of games I like, but there was only one game that was my all-time favorite, and I want it back.

A Cyclops named Steve

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #13 on: December 13, 2012, 07:16:11 PM »
No offense to people who like Champions, but it is a generic brand/store brand soft drink when compared to CoH, which is a popular, loved, name brand soft drink.

 ;)

I'm considering giving CO a whirl my problem is the power set I want is a premium set and I really don't know if I'm willing to put money into it just yet.
.                              Come with me and you'll be in a world of pure imagination. Take a look and you'll see into your imagination.

                                       We'll begin with a spin, traveling in the world of my creation. What we'll see will defy explanation.

            If you want to view paradise simply look around and view it. Anything you want to, do it. Wanta change the world? There's nothing To it.

okami

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #14 on: December 13, 2012, 08:13:03 PM »
I'm considering giving CO a whirl my problem is the power set I want is a premium set and I really don't know if I'm willing to put money into it just yet.

You have to get a (as in one per account) character to level 10 before you can use the store. Or get access to the non-crippled costume creator. You can then delete that character and still retain your "I made it to level 10 now let me give you money" perk.

So if you want a paid AT you'll have to give it a go with a free one first.

I haven't looked in awhile but a month or so ago you could get CO boxes off amazon for around $5 that would give you 30 days of subscription and 5.00 "cryptic bucks" which I hope translate to Zen now, I haven't used my code yet so I can't verify what happens with those.

A Cyclops named Steve

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #15 on: December 13, 2012, 08:19:20 PM »
You have to get a (as in one per account) character to level 10 before you can use the store. Or get access to the non-crippled costume creator. You can then delete that character and still retain your "I made it to level 10 now let me give you money" perk.

So if you want a paid AT you'll have to give it a go with a free one first.

I haven't looked in awhile but a month or so ago you could get CO boxes off amazon for around $5 that would give you 30 days of subscription and 5.00 "cryptic bucks" which I hope translate to Zen now, I haven't used my code yet so I can't verify what happens with those.

Ah ok. Thanks. I really have little knowledge of CO, other than its "store brand" feel and that the animation isn't my favorite.
.                              Come with me and you'll be in a world of pure imagination. Take a look and you'll see into your imagination.

                                       We'll begin with a spin, traveling in the world of my creation. What we'll see will defy explanation.

            If you want to view paradise simply look around and view it. Anything you want to, do it. Wanta change the world? There's nothing To it.

JWBullfrog

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #16 on: December 13, 2012, 08:28:02 PM »
I will admit that I have a lifetime account with Champions Online. I purchased it so I could get into the STO Beta.
 
This is good because it will take me at least that long before I ever, really, get into CO.
 
On it's own merits it's an ok game. However, it is not good enough to really hold my attention.
 
It is ugly. Not the world, mind you. I find the environments to be quite nice  but I just cannot stand the modeling style they've used for characters. If they change the character models to more closely match another system (say STO) I would be more inclined to play.
 
It is clunky. The mechanics of the game just seem so... meh. Combat makes very little sense, character advancement makes very little sense, how NPC's react (i.e. the fact that everything within a mile of my character aggros when I shoot an isolated target) makes no sense. Blocking makes no sense.... you get my point.
 
I have tried, and will continue to try, to give this game a chance. But as it is right now, I find it lacking.
 
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okami

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #17 on: December 13, 2012, 08:48:09 PM »
Ah ok. Thanks. I really have little knowledge of CO, other than its "store brand" feel and that the animation isn't my favorite.

You get a travel power at 6 (right after the tutorial) which can help with movement animations. Acrobatics is ninja run, athletics is a more normal if slightly leaned forward run.

I really suck at selling things which is probably why they keep me locked away where there's no chance of a customer coming in contact with me. It might be because when sales sells someone the moon I get to do the Apollo myself from scratch.

Quote
It is ugly. Not the world, mind you. I find the environments to be quite nice  but I just cannot stand the modeling style they've used for characters. If they change the character models to more closely match another system (say STO) I would be more inclined to play.

I tried STO after CO and my first thought on seeing the characters was "Why can't CO look like this! It's the same friggin' engine!".

Kistulot

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #18 on: December 13, 2012, 09:07:42 PM »
The thing that oddly felt the most depressing to me about CO were the environments, and how small it feels.

It has such few zones, and the Desert and Canada are essentially zones more akin to Eden or The Hollows - not places you'd actually expect to find people, but disaster areas... and that didnt feel very compelling.

CoH had a world in a city. It felt like it was alive. CO feels like an artificial gameworld.
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Electric-Knight

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Re: I just can't do it.
« Reply #19 on: December 13, 2012, 09:51:56 PM »
Just  a quick story to show how I can relate what you're saying:

I played SWG for 3 years. I know that may not seem like a lot when we compare it to the 8 years CoH was in existence, but... c'mon, three years with one game (that you play for HOURS and HOURS every single day, haha...) is a long damn time.
I found baby animals that I tamed and trained and watched grow bigger and older - and one, in particular, became my constant sidekick (I still miss you, Ozzo).

Okay, I said "quick story", didn't I...

After that game was taken from me (and my wife, who joined me and loved the game as well) - they changed the game in drastic ways, leaving the same virtual world, but with a whole new game system (akin to turning chess into checkers and/or if CoH turned all the ATs and powersets into just 5 ATs and each AT only had ONE powerset, instead of all of the options - seriously).

So, okay (that summed up), we lost our most favorite game and virtual world ever.
It was pretty tough. I played that game far more often, and for longer hours, than I did CoH (things were a little different for me back then!).

Afterwards, I decided that we'd try each and every mmorpg free trial out there, to have some fun and see what there was.

I made a silly choice... I chose the CoV Free Trial first!

We both played it... LOVED it!! And both decided that we wanted to buy it, subscribe and keep playing (before the trial even finished).

That was great, of course, but after about two months, we both realized we still had some healing to do. It was just too soon. Our old home kept coming to mind. The resentment toward the company that stole it from us was still far too fresh... all of that stuff that you, unfortunately, are all too familiar with.

So, we cancelled our subscriptions, both agreeing that we'd definitely be back in a little bit.

While that little bit ended up getting delayed a while longer than we'd planned... we absolutely came back and never stopped our subscriptions since (Must have been April of 2008, I believe).

Anyway... I feel ya.
Take your time. Don't worry about it.
The time will come. Of course... SWG and CoH were basically the last of a similar breed. Virtual worlds vs. video games. Games that are more open, more about options, customization with fully-realized virtual worlds and care and love of immersion and personal attachment and interest beyond what most others cater towards... not directed theme-park ride or something you had to play somebody else's way.

I was lucky enough to find another one, in CoH (with a FAR, FAR, FAR better development team and community!!!!!)... I'm sure we'll find a happy home again. Maybe it'll be the same home we just had... maybe it'll be something coming out in the future... Maybe you'll find something out right now, who knows... But, don't fret about not being ready yet. ;)
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