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Infinite Crisis' Superhero Origins Story
An anonymous reader writes A new interview published this week looks at the creation of Infinite Crisis, one of the slew of Dota 2/League of Legends team multiplayer competitors currently under development. What makes this one stand out however is not only its use of DC Comics heroes like Batman and Wonder Woman, but the experience of the studio behind it, Turbine, in massively multiplayer online games and punishing abusive and toxic players, something League of Legends developer Riot has serious struggles with. Turbine was the studio behind the popular Asheron's Call, and is applying many of th same policing techniques it used in RPGs to the growing MOBA genre. Of course, they still have troubles with the inevitable: balancing Superman as a playable character. it's a challenge, Kerr admits, especially when you're having to nerf the Man of Steel as a result. "Yes, we redid Superman three times, because, and I know this is going to be a surprise, he was super overpowered," says Infinite Crisis creative director Cardell Kerr.
He's just living in a world of cardboard. Always taking constant care not to break something, to break someone. Never allowing himself to lose control even for a moment, or someone could die. But you can take it, can't you, big man? What we have here is a rare opportunity for him to cut loose and show you just how powerful he really is.
Dude, it's the games section ... it's an actual interview ... about an actual game ... on redbull.com ... it seems reasonably on-topic for what it's supposed to be.
What do you want, "Man Strains Thumb Playing Call of Duty"?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
One of the reasons I don't play Wow or LoL is the lack of fine tuned character control. This looks like just another version with different characters. Besides, I can already get a DC fix with DCU Online.
Soren Bowie of Cracked suggested another way to make Superman interesting: conflict about whom to save at any given moment. But I don't think it'd work in a game with multiple supers.
You could start at All The Tropes: "World of Cardboard Speech", which has the Justice League Unlimited quote at the top. And then waste a couple more hours clicking through all the links.
If they rely on the gimmick of keeping Supes away from sunlight, expect every encounter to resemble a Birdman episode from before he got admitted to the bar.
Turbine is NOT known for handling abusive players. Players of DDO know them for not being able to fix exploits and doing nothing to the utterly rampant exploiters. About the only action ever taken is manually by the otherwise hamstrung GMs to people shouting racism in public channels, and then only if enough people complain.
Turbine's biggest property isn't mentioned in passing? Heh. Lord of the Rings Online is still going strong.
I don't mean to be argumentative, but so far, 20 people have commented on this article. Seems ...not so popular here ...like uninteresting advertizing ...as if I'm wasting my time checking slashdot for ...news for nerds, stuff that matters.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
MOBAs are easier to make yes, but to attract a player base, you need to be special, have flair, and a little luck. I think Turbine should have just made a new MMORPG as they're skilled at to play it safe. Can you really make a MOBA attractive when there's only like a dozen or two DC characters to select from, and you still have to unlock a majority of them? To me, it seems like Turbine is attacking the MOBA scene like it knows what it is doing, but they probably don't. I'd like to be kindly surprised as I'm a Turbine fan, but their mainstay is good quality MMORPGS
With Blizzard doubling down on WOW and cancelling their MMORPG, there's no MMORPGS on the horizon that I know about that could be any good. I wish Turbine would make Asheron's Call 3 and not even consider it being a WOW killer. Just go through the motions, make a successful and big MMORPG with modern graphics, and you're going to get a player base as Turbine.
I bet Turbine would be a great place to work at, but none of their projects seem interesting right now. If they have deep pockets, they should be making more games than just a single game.
God spoke to me
Does there come a time in a nerd's life when s/he just doesn't care about yet another "origins" story?
Do today's gamers really care about being called 'fag' on the internet? I'm not much of a mmo player, but back in the quake days, the problem was dealt with by keeping the few who did whine to a minimum instead of pandering to them. They were unceremoniously booted from servers, laughed at and kicked off irc, and, otherwise, mocked and ignored. While some of them did persist, the community was healthy and stayed healthy for a long time because of that. Irrelevant complaints about 'mean words' and social justice politics were ignored. If you wanted respect, you had to get good at the game. Nothing else mattered. There were a few servers (out of thousands) that had silly rules meant to appease these people, and you know what? They rarely if ever had any players on them. A little pool shock every now and then keeps the water fresh and clear.
As far as other behavior goes, like griefing or outright cheating, it was difficult to do the former without sucking really bad anyway. There were a few specific maps and/modes that would lend themselves to it, but usually persistent griefers were booted after a minute or two. While there were some known cheaters that got away with it for a long time (even a whole clan of cheaters iirc), most were caught and booted/banned from servers.
The answer to 'abuse' in gaming is a chat toggle. Those who can't handle the main chat should turn it off, and the ones who whine anyway should get votekicked. These special snowflakes aren't worth pandering to. The better players are almost always more immune to the banter and trash talk anyway.
I don't mean to be argumentative, but so far, 20 people have commented on this article. Seems ...not so popular here ...like uninteresting advertizing ...as if I'm wasting my time checking slashdot for ...news for nerds, stuff that matters.
Would you rather have another clickbait guaranteed-1000-comments article about whose fault it is that so few women are in tech? How about another one about police shooting innocent people or some irrelevant person's desires to abolish the 2nd amendment? Hell, we could go for gold and post stories about religious groups attempting to force everyone to conform to their ways through laws or textbooks.
Given the alternatives, a lowly 20 comments about how a videogame developer is developing a videogame is pretty nice.
Since new accounts can be made in minutes, there's very little disincentive for toxic players. Voice is much harder to police than text.
S2's new MOBA, Strife, even goes to the extent of banning both (an exception is made for friends and party).
You're right that prominent voice/text toggles are a big part of the solution.
- Ultra-premium AKA ultra-high-priced franchise, DC superheroes, check!
- Massive committees in charge, check!
- Done by Turbine, part of Microsoft, check!
- YADC (Yet Another DOTA Clone) in an aging genre with a saturated market, check!
- DC's move belatedly into "action" MMORPGs, and Marvel's into "action" Diablo-clones both flopped miserably, check!
What could possibly go wrong?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The motto of people playing their MMOs has ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS been "exploit early, exploit often." That was true in 99/2000 with Asheron's Call just months out the gate, and it was(/is?) true two months ago as it got put out to pasture (one-time-fee-to-play, no new dev work).
Turbine will patch the hole but only once in a blue moon will they even consider taking action against paying customers, and usually even then only a slap on the wrist 1-3 day ban. The macros, duping hacks, speed altering programs (gear).
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
hes too powerful. He is "I can do every fucking thing man"... if he doesnt get to the damsel in time, he can just reverse time & try again.
The dude doesnt have a weakness.
"Oh, but what about kryponite?" Someone is going to chime in.
I dont believe he -does- have a weakness to kryptonite. If you watch you'll see that hes never weakened by kryptonite until the badguy opens up the briefcase & shows it to him.
I think the kryptonite thing is just an act.
You make a strong point.
Bring on the generic MOBA game slashvertisements! Lest my eyes roll right out of my skull after another of those damn clickbaity articles.
Well, to be fair, a lot of play involved team deathmatch and tourney/duel 2v2 modes, which were much more structured and required team effort. Trash talk still happened there, though it was less frequent. This wasn't due so much to censorship from above (although, like I said, there were a few server admins that tried this and their servers failed to gain popularity), but just that players spent most of their chat time in team chat rather than global, and a lot of that was just binds. FFA/pickup games were more casual and allowed more chatty behavior.
I just think catering to whiners by sterilizing everyone else's environment is self defeating. They cannot be appeased no matter how E-for-everyone they try to make the interaction, because in the long run, this sterilization causes more extreme reactions to diminishing stimulus. The real reason they whine is because they get beat by better players who likely play more often. Publishers are better off focusing on these better players because they are likely repeat customers (assuming subscription mmo here). Flattening the skill curve on the better players in vain attempts to reach everyone ruins the game itself. Offering some incentive for new players is fine, but the main game should not be compromised, nor should the culture that built up around it.
Whine whine... the people complaining this character or that character is overpowered. Quit whining that everything has to be NERFED just because you suck and you lost the battle. The Superman character comes with a sysop root account on the game server. So what? Deal with it and quit whining.
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