Reply from contact at Google!

[Rae]

Still a work in progress, I'm afraid. We will tell you when it's gone, promise

[Safehouse]

Still a work in progress, I'm afraid. We will tell you when it's gone, promise

I believe in you! In the mean time I'll loop the theme song, because it makes my desk job that much more epic!

[Triplash]

I believe in you! In the mean time I'll loop the theme song, because it makes my desk job that much more epic!

Great. Now you've made me want to hook up a motion detector to a sound system in my house so walking into each different room triggers its own background music.

Is that weird? That's weird, isn't it?


*looks at the recent "derailing" comments*  Umm... I mean... Go Team Wildcard! Yeahhh!

[Segev]

My friends used to joke about sneaking speakers into the lining of my cloak so that they could trigger "The Imperial March" with a remote when I walked into a room.

[OzonePrime]

Actually, no! Sounds pretty cool to me! Might be my next project.

[Segev]

I believe it's doable in Minecraft.

...also, sounds like a great kind of Base Item for a superpowers-themed comic-based MMO wherein you can have super bases...

[Safehouse]

Great. Now you've made me want to hook up a motion detector to a sound system in my house so walking into each different room triggers its own background music.

Is that weird? That's weird, isn't it?


*looks at the recent "derailing" comments*  Umm... I mean... Go Team Wildcard! Yeahhh!

Dooooo it! It'll be amazing, though maybe use ominousvoice's orchestral rendition of the theme. Its... glorious

[TimtheEnchanter]

My friends used to joke about sneaking speakers into the lining of my cloak so that they could trigger "The Imperial March" with a remote when I walked into a room.

Pity the way things are these days. It'd be a blast to use at a Con. But with the negative aspect of scaring the living Hell out of the security guys by the metal detector.

[Safehouse]

Ahahaha I'd watch video footage of said frightened security

[houtex]

Great. Now you've made me want to hook up a motion detector to a sound system in my house so walking into each different room triggers its own background music.

Is that weird? That's weird, isn't it?


*looks at the recent "derailing" comments*  Umm... I mean... Go Team Wildcard! Yeahhh!

Heck no it's not weird.  But you're talking iMUSE: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/IMUSE
 
I, too, say 'DO IT.'

[Triplash]

Heck no it's not weird.  But you're talking iMUSE: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/IMUSE
 
I, too, say 'DO IT.'

Is that site seriously called Wookiepedia? That is awesome

The description of that system sounds like the way they integrate the narrator's comments in Bastion. It gives you a very fluid ongoing commentary describing the basic situation and actions your character is taking. It's like the guy is watching you play and describing it as you go. It's kinda freaky tbh, but really cool to see it work.

[Safehouse]

Is that site seriously called Wookiepedia? That is awesome

The description of that system sounds like the way they integrate the narrator's comments in Bastion. It gives you a very fluid ongoing commentary describing the basic situation and actions your character is taking. It's like the guy is watching you play and describing it as you go. It's kinda freaky tbh, but really cool to see it work.

I go to Wookiepedia almost as often as I go to Paragon Wiki. It's a treasure trove of wonders!

[Mister Bison]

I go to Wookiepedia almost as often as I go to Paragon Wiki. It's a treasure trove of wonders!

And of spoilers. If you want to read the books later, keep that in mind.

[Safehouse]

And of spoilers. If you want to read the books later, keep that in mind.

Ahahaha an excellent point, though the same could be said of Paragon Wiki (at least when CoH was online)

[dwturducken]

It's hard to see them as spoilers, but i know I'm never going to get through all the published content. I'm not terribly worried about the promised movies that are in the pipeline, since I don't go to Wookieepedia that often.

[srmalloy]

The sidekick system

This.

SWTOR does something loosely similar to sidekicking, but it only occurs in PvP areas. In a PvP area, you're affected by 'bolster', which essentially scales your character to level 49 if you're lower than that. Because the game is gear-based, there are still some places where it's not working well, like the 'naked bolster', which grants a character a lower degree of bonus if they don't have a particular category of gear (i.e., lower-level characters who can't get anything for their head slot). So it functions more like the way CoH's PvP zones flattened everyone to the same level while they were in the zone. Unfortunately, because this only works in PvP areas, in all of the content where you are expected to team (the 'Heroic 2', 'Heroic 4+', 'Area 2', and 'Area 4' missions, or world-boss fights), if you have a level gap larger than about six levels, the lower-level characters start losing XP.

As a result, there's no good way for you to bring in friends and play with them after you've been playing the SWTOR for a while; if you play your high-level characters with their low-level ones on PvE missions, they get squat for XP, so you're stuck creating new characters just to be able to play with them at a comparable level. This discourages you from bringing in your friends, where City of Heroes would let you get friends set up with the game, let them get through the tutorial, and then you'd be able to take any of your characters and team up with them to do their missions or yours without one or the other of you getting jerked over by the level difference.

Sidekicking is the one feature of CoH that made it possible for new players to get drawn into the established play of characters that had been around for years, exposing them to a wider view of the game instead of being stuck with the much smaller group of characters at and near their level. The "we're all superheroes together" result, I think, helped foster a community that I don't see any other existing MMO matching.

[Omega Mark V]

I believe in you! In the mean time I'll loop the theme song, because it makes my desk job that much more epic!

I know this is also off topic for the thread, but now I want AP's theme when I boot up Windows.

On topic: Thanks for the update, Rae. The proposal can be done when it's indeed done. I think we can all wait a bit for a well written proposal, especially if it's a success later on.

[dwturducken]

I know this is also off topic for the thread, but now I want AP's theme when I boot up Windows.

That's easy enough with Audacity and a little poking at Windows' sound settings.

[CG]

I don't think I've seen my answer to what made teaming work so well in CoH, which is:  Team members are not in competition for rewards. 

This is an extension of the 'no loot' character progression.  Everyone got their own loot and nobody else knew what it was.  There wasn't a common pool of drops that the players were in competition for.  Since the players on the team weren't in competition for loot, it removed a disincentive for teaming. 

The incentive for teaming is that it's so much fun!  This comes because we don't need the trinity of Tank/Healer/DPS to complete levels.  Levels could have their difficulty changed so that regardless of team composition or skill level, you could complete the level and make progress.  You could play what you wanted and still succeed.

Others have mentioned sidekicking and when I first started CoH, it was a great idea, but a little clunky because you needed a separate mentor for each sidekick.  If you had more sidekicks than mentors, it didn't work.  The addition of Exemplaring and making *Everyone* sidekick to the team lead solved the problem nicely.

Basically, every barrier to teaming was minimized or removed.  Teaming on an MMO is incentive enough if you get the roadblocks out of the way.

[DJMoose]

I don't think I've seen my answer to what made teaming work so well in CoH, which is:  Team members are not in competition for rewards. 

This is an extension of the 'no loot' character progression.  Everyone got their own loot and nobody else knew what it was.  There wasn't a common pool of drops that the players were in competition for.  Since the players on the team weren't in competition for loot, it removed a disincentive for teaming. 

The incentive for teaming is that it's so much fun!  This comes because we don't need the trinity of Tank/Healer/DPS to complete levels.  Levels could have their difficulty changed so that regardless of team composition or skill level, you could complete the level and make progress.  You could play what you wanted and still succeed.

Others have mentioned sidekicking and when I first started CoH, it was a great idea, but a little clunky because you needed a separate mentor for each sidekick.  If you had more sidekicks than mentors, it didn't work.  The addition of Exemplaring and making *Everyone* sidekick to the team lead solved the problem nicely.

Basically, every barrier to teaming was minimized or removed.  Teaming on an MMO is incentive enough if you get the roadblocks out of the way.

+10