I would Heavy Gear or Robotech my ass off.
Just sayin'
CAVEAT: So long as they don't use the Palladium RPG System, because fuck that noise. While I don't terribly mind the percentile dice system, there is no way a MU would survive a single combat scene where 6 different PCs and multiple combat opponents each got 3+ turns per round.
Well, like anyone and their hangups, the best part about this hobby is that you don't have to play where you don't want to play.
It can be interpreted however one chooses to interpret it, but I've read over the pitch piece and it doesn't come across as some audition gateway to determine whether or not you're good enough for the game. It comes across to me as a way to prime players into what they hope to achieve with their character and provides a necessary gateway to make sure someone knows that Spider-Man isn't the one with the claws and the mutton chops.
I think it's smart, honestly (to have a check before an FC is apped), to ask the player to leave a little mission statement.
If we'd like to discuss this (whether or not it's an audition and how it makes us feel) more, I'd be happy to do so away from this game's advertisement thread. I'd just hate to derail it further away from other questions about the game.
@faraday Your wiki-fu is strong and badass btw. Pleaaaaaase don't take any of my feelings about the philosophical whatevers about wikis to be a negation of your hard work. Your MU-to-Wiki integration is a beautiful piece of work and you should be damned proud.
I understand entirely that my stance is some kind of Walt Whitman "close your eyes to the visual and enter the state of the descriptive subjectivity of life" prattling on.
And while it works for me, it doesn't work for a lot of other people, and in the end I enjoy having RP partners to not having them.
Addition: Is my stance outdated and romanticized? Quite possibly. It's important to evolve with the times and not forget the problems we had in the years before the wiki (issues with proving things with logs, etc). But I like to think that I encourage people to step out of the use of visual aids in lieu of what is typed out in the present tense. I love being challenged by good writers; it's my favorite thing in this hobby.
Fair ' nuff. I'm in no way arbitrating what is right or wrong. Just ideas and I'm a fan of prose-before-shows.
@faraday I'm not going to wrongfun people for doing it. It's just my personal preference that people make a life of their own rather than borrow that of a PB. My main reason for this is because, over a period of time, the characters blend into immemorable efforts because they were all one shape or another of the same mannerisms and appearance to me.
To each their own, but I've hung out with Chris Pratt and Amy Adams a lot.
As to my decline comment, we didn't use to lean so heavily on PBs and pictures to do what we seek to do through words. I think we got a lot more creativity out of things back then, as well as more variety of concept.
I do believe that some of the negative byproduct of wikis, such as wikistalking and metagaming thru posted logs (the latter being a necessary hazard) have led to a great deal of negativity and hyperbole. Things like the infamous Fallcoast BANG LIST where a guy stalked wikis and make his own wiki pages of female PBs his character planned to sleep with.
@seraphim73 said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:
@faraday said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:
And yeah, I don't know who "Sean Teale" was at a glance either, but all it took was one photo on a wiki page and now the new guy on BSG is cemented in my brain as "that guy from Gifted". That is the power of wikis for me.
This is actually one of the major dangers (Major Danger salutes) of wikis for me. Because just because the new guy from BSG looks like "that guy from Gifted," does he have the same voice? The same accent? Some of the same personality quirks?
I've fallen into that trap myself when picking PBs at times, incorporating personality traits or quirks from some of the characters that actor has played--and I ended up disappointed with myself as I was playing Vin Diesel the Whitecloak, or Drew Boley (Diego Boneta's Rock of Ages character) the Space Rocker. I've noticed other people doing it too, and before PBs, it was a lot less common.
Agreed 100%.
See, the basis of these games is writing and describing. I love wikis for 3 things:
I've seen a decline away from the writing side of MUs over the years. Things like descs have been slowly replaced with PBs. PBs have turned largely into role playing the actor playing the character, which one one hand helps me understand the mannerisms of the character when they're acted out, but really it just seems like a shortcut crutch to me. Few seem to ever role play a character with Robert Downey Jr as a PB for visual purposes alone, but they role play Robert Downey Jr as...
More and more I think many people are using OOC information gleaned thru wikis and taking this information into their role play, rather than putting the focus on the IC play. While I approve of descing while playing, I tend to get a lot of image links rather than descriptive prose.
So, I guess all I'm saying is that the writing aspect of the hobby is important to me, and I'm getting tired of PBs and wiki pages of hot people. We have people who avoid role play because of PB selection or because this persons wiki makes them look like a TS whore so I'm going to avoid them (I've heard this personally), and the dreaded wikistalking.
I just think it's a gradual shift from writing and being descriptive, and I'd like to see more games focus on that. I'd rather see wikis focus less on PBs and more on images of things that represent the character in artistic ways.
Today, as a corporate event, my company is hosting a showing of: STAR WARS EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE
My Indian buddy, Anil, has never seen Star Wars.
He's excited.
I'm excited.
This might end up better than the time I assisted him in his first LASER TAG experience.
ADDITION: Because WHAT DO YOU DO when two coworkers from India (who have only been in America two years) walk up to you at a corporate event at an entertainment complex (bowling, laser tag, billiards) and are damn near giggling and chittery with excitement, saying: "We want to do the laser tag! We saw it on HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER" but dont know how to do it! Can you do it with us?"
@thenomain Call me on old man when I say this, but there are times when I miss the days without wikis. Where there was less focus on PBs and super formatted wiki pages with photosopped pinups of your PB.
I feel sometimes like I would prefer much of the character information remain on the server-side, but wikis be more reserved for scene log repository and a GUI for rules, systems, and setting information.
I miss there being more focus on description of the character, via descs and rp, than just picture Amy Adams in scrubs.
Mark Wahlberg has asked forgiveness from God for making Boogie Nights.
@enoch Keep an eye out for me heading towards the Brotherhood.
Because begging for humane treatment from the prior evolution of humanity only results in mass graves.
OMG the skin color selection is displayed as a difficulty slider. So the darker the character's skin is, the higher the difficulty.
LOL: "This wont affect combat, but pretty much every other aspect of your whole life."
Yeah Utopia might be a doubling down. Either way, I'm the madman who opened that GUT CHECK thread so ill be joining the game to support.
Oh, wow. You guys totally made the X-men/Brotherhood game idea.
I'll be stopping by.
@ganymede said in Yes! More Micro-transactions! (Activision, WB Games and EA appreciation thread):
@ghost said in Yes! More Micro-transactions! (Activision, WB Games and EA appreciation thread):
Oh, and...
@Admiral not the Hog Pit. Take that attitude elsewhere, please.Excuse me, but that was my attitude, thank you.
Sure, sure, but I'm hoping we can keep from calling something stupid without those so I guess you're calling me stupid too throwdowns.
Those start fights. 
@ganymede said in Yes! More Micro-transactions! (Activision, WB Games and EA appreciation thread):
@ghost said in Yes! More Micro-transactions! (Activision, WB Games and EA appreciation thread):
Last I read, microtransactions account for 25% of all profits in the gaming industry.
Micro-transactions support the theory I have that most new gamers are fucking stupid.
Whatever. I hate you, I hate them.
Do you ever have those moments (about video games) that make you feel like an old person screaming at people to get off your lawn?
I have them a lot.
Sample dialogue:
When I was a kid, you bought an NES cartridge for $30 and you got the WHOLE GAME. Not HALF of Ninja Gaiden or Super Dodge Ball, but ALL of it. God damn it, I remember the GOOD days when you got ALL of it. You didn't pay for games in INSTALLMENTS.
Or.
I remember when DLC was done right. You'd buy a game, get the WHOLE game, and then the developers would get to work after the game was released and say HEY, WE LOVE THAT YOU APPRECIATE THE GAME, SO WE WORKED HARD TO ADD 40 HOURS OF GAME PLAY AND NEW ADVENTURES BECAUSE WE LOVE YOU. But noOoOoO now it's like: Thanks for buying the $60 disc. For an additional $20 at launch you can buy an 8 byte update that will unlock stuff that was already on the disc you just bought. Because capitalism.
Oh, and...
@Admiral not the Hog Pit. Take that attitude elsewhere, please.
Well, really, if you think about it, making a video game without microtransactions is a lot like making a movie. It's a moneymaking project designed with a release that includes a lot of the following:
...all up to the release of one product that they hope, at $60-$100 per customer, will recoup these costs up amd over the profit line. It's kind of like how a movie has to pay millions to make a movie (Hey, Jennifer Lawrence puts butts in the seats, but her asking price is...), but if the movie doesn't go over into a certain profit margin, it is considered a failure.
So do I get why microtransactions are a thing? Of course. Especially with new IPs, a video game really is a "let's throw this against the wall, see if it sticks, and hopefully walk away with millions" affair.
It's a cheap, profitable, and tried and tested means of mitigating the risk of failure, but it's still tricksy and bullshit.
Last I read, microtransactions account for 25% of all profits in the gaming industry.
