Drifters

[Tanuki]

so I'm setting up a guild in C9 named Drifters .... open invite to one and all so long as you can abide the rules:

#1 No Drama. (I hate that shit!)
#2 Play Nice. (Be Cool to, and with, each other.)
#3 Use the Site. (Yes, it is necessary.)
#4 No Drama. (did I mention this one?)

http://drifters.shivtr.com/

technically it's three guilds .... one primary guild and two alt guilds.
Drifter: the main guild for regular membership.
Derelict: for endgame level characters and high level Guild vs Guild PVP.
Vagrant: for alt storage and mules.

(yeah, setting up three guilds is a bit excessive ATM, but in the late game rolling alts and leveling up guilds is a big part of things. starting three guilds now is planing for the long haul and getting a lock on the guild names I wanted.)

[Acrylik]

what's c9.

[gold163]

http://continentninth.com/

[AppleShrapnel]

I'll admit, I'm a bit intrigued... combat smacks of Vindictus or Dragon Nest (which is a good thing)...

But I can't seem to find an official site, much less a beta registry or download link, anywhere.

[Tanuki]

http://us.c9.webzen.com/Main/

it's actually older than Vindictus, and much of vindictus's design concepts are lifted from C9. it's combat is much faster / smoother, towns are better, and while Vind looks better since it's run off the source engine C9's engine is actually a mmo engine and thus performs better with mass players running around.

here is a good look at how fast paced the combat is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYnYH1_jdiw

here is a run through of a PvE mission/level:
Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jzBuG4ZwcI

part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jzBuG4ZwcI

*edit* gold's link was to a fansite.

[AppleShrapnel]

http://us.c9.webzen.com/Main/

it's actually older than Vindictus, and much of vindictus's design concepts are lifted from C9.

Whoops, should've known that, considering the dates I saw floating around... my bad. >.<

Gonna give it a shot- but I'll be honest, gonna have a really hard time deciding on a class.

[Zidders]

Mashy mashy button!

'luck with the guild, Tanuki!

Er, guilds..

...wouldn't it be easier to just have one guild with a different section for each subgroup on the forum? Not tryin' to tell you what to do, just seems it would be easier that way. Less fragmented.

[Tanuki]

leveling is fast and rolling alts is easy; they give you lots of character slots for a reason.

one down side is that the classes are gender locked, which shouldn't be troubling if you are ok with Vindictus, and sadly the two female classes take sexism to a new low despite both being exceptionally powerful and exceptionally fun to play. (the whitchblade' posture is quite honestly grotesque when you stop to look at it, thankfully the game is so fast paced that as soon as combat starts you stop noticing any of it.)

[AppleShrapnel]

Well to be honest, gender-locking classes has never sat well with me... and even moreso when they aren't even called classes, but "characters".

The sexism is unfortunate- yet still nice to look at... (just sayin')- but games coming out of Korea all tend to be pretty bad in that regard. Just look at Tera, Vindictus or the Kingdom Under Fire series (and I guess C9 gets added to that list); impractical clothing/armour and jiggle physics abound for all the ladies. Oops, wrong smiley... um... how about ? Yeah, that'll work.

Got a few hours before my d/l finishes, but I'll derp around a bit and, should I decide I like the game, I'll post here about getting tagged and all that. :3

[Tanuki]

Mashy mashy button!

'luck with the guild, Tanuki!

Er, guilds..

...wouldn't it be easier to just have one guild with a different section for each subgroup on the forum? Not tryin' to tell you what to do, just seems it would be easier that way. Less fragmented.

it's one forum with multiple in game guilds, for several resons:

#1 clean rosters!
running guilds is a pain in the ass, typically the number one reason guilds die is because members look at the roster and see a bunch of inactive players, then whine how the guild is not active and stop logging in. half the time most of the inactive players on the roster are low use / inactive alts of active members, but logic fails VS assumptions every time, and going inactive since you think the guild IS inactive never helps the problem. (I'm being condescending since batteling with this issue has been the biggest headache I have had with any and every guild I have run or been a part of, but the truth is that it's less about assumptions and more about human nature reacting to perception)

the best solution to this is to prevent people from making that assumption by having a roster cleared of inactive characters (alt or otherwise), but if you kick everyone as soon as you don't see them for a day and deny people the ability to have multiple characters (when many MMOs thrive on this) you will inevitably kill the guild yourself. a nice happy medium is to run an alt guild devoid of attendance requirments for people to store their low usage alt characters and crafting mules while maintaining a sense of connection to the main guild, and then have a main guild for active play characters (I typically set a limit of if I haven't seen you for two weeks without telling me you were going to to be gone, I assume that you have quit the game and moved on and kick your character to keep the roster clean).

#2 playstyles!
I myself am a casual player, and I run casual style guilds that are more about shooting the shit with friends and having a sense that a player's characters have got a home of sorts within the game. I like to keep things nice and mellow, that however typically clashes with how the end game content is usually set up and if you get members that have been with the game for a long time they typically want to focus on playing with other well established players / characters. if you don't do something to address this issue you will start shedding long term members as they move to guilds dedicated to to high end gameplay.

that is why I set up a second alt guild for high level characters; to offer both end game and casual type playstyles. not to mention ther are some players who want to be in a guild but would prefer a quiet guild, and to that end I have no problem with active players willingly play in the low useage / mule storage guild.

#3 overflow.
C9 is pretty forgiving with it's member capacities, so this probably wont be an issue, but I have had guilds in games where the max guild capacity was 50 players and you would not believe how quickly that filled up. just in case it's always good to have the means of offering up a few extra guild slots (even if it's technically in another guild) for people who want to join when your active guild's roster is full.

#4 everyone likes having rank.
but if you give everyone officer privledges, it stops feeling special; more guilds, more opportunity for rank, less deterioration of the reward for having rank.

naturally most of these issues are not going to be relevant until later on (providing that I can keep things going and expanding), but my intention is for this to be a long term community.

[Tanuki]

Well to be honest, gender-locking classes has never sat well with me... and even moreso when they aren't even called classes, but "characters".

in the heat of battle the models, and their sexualization, are almost invisible. the classes (and more importantly their skill lists) however are all unique and each character plays phenomenally different:

Taoists are close range brawlers that specialize in high crits and flurry strikes (and is the most powerful class in the game thanks to the combination).

Illusionists focus on non element based magical attacks and skill chains that set off additional effects.

Elementalists are your stock in trade mana cannons that shell out element based AoE skills to nuke opponents.

all three of those are Shaman type advanced classes: one focuses on close range physical attacks, one is a mid range skill pounder, and the last is like a magic based rocket sniper.

within each of those classes are options for further specialization in skill focus, for instance Elementalists will need to pick a specific element type to focus because trying to upgrade all elements will leave you with not enough AP to "buy" higher grade skills. (not to mention some skill builds are better for PvP, but suck at PvE, so people tend to end up making PvP and PVE versions of the same advanced class that are specialized for what they feel like playing.)

all in all, there is a massive level of ability to build your character how you want to ... in almost every single way except for gender.

[AppleShrapnel]

all in all, there is a massive level of ability to build your character how you want to ... in almost every single way except for gender.

Yeah, that's what I take issue with. Nothing major, of course- I mean at worst, it's a minor gripe.

Still not set in stone, but I think I may try for a Taoist first. Curious to see how a mage transitions into a melee powerhouse.

Naturally I'll give all the base classes a fair shake at some point... assuming I don't say "meh" and uninstall it.

[Tanuki]

Taoist is mean ... flat out mean.

you gotta be careful about OVER powering her, otherwise you will gimp yourself.

no, serriously, you can gimp yourself by overpowering!

the game has a end of mission ranking mechanic where in the "scrore" you have at the end of a mission effects your reward options. you are presented with 6 chests (that contain gold or random bits of equipment), and the rating you get at the end of it determines how many you can pick to open: "perfect" get you 4 "keys", "execlent" gets you 3, "good" gets you 2.

the biggest factor in your score is your combo counter, however you can't get combos if you can one shot everything in your level bracket, and that is exactly what I did in the CBT by shoveling a ton of skill point into the Taoist's passive skills that boost physical attack and critical rate. at level 35 I was dishing it out like a lvl 47, and as a result I couldn't get my combos up high enough to do better than "good" .... which effected how many options I had to get equipment, equipment that I would have then broken down into materials and sold or recrafted to get equipment I needed wanted for my character.

all the other classes are a bit more balanced, but the Taoist is just ... mean. it is however a good starting class to aim for, since thanks to it's power you can burn through stages and hit the end game missions that pay out tons of gold (that you can then supply to other characters that you are building up for PvP or crafting or actually following the PvE plot with).

at one point during the beta there was a poll up as to if the western market wanted Webzen to unlock the genders by developing male of female versions of the classes, apparently one of the head managers for Webzen stated that they are more than able to create the character models and the real issue was more an issue of if western audiences would want it enough for it to be worth the effort ... so maybe not all hope is lost.

[AppleShrapnel]

Well that'd be awfully decent of them. I don't think I've ever seen a game of gender-locked classes get unlocked.

Generally speaking, though, I'm not one for PvP'ing. I'm far more casual and have no desire to min/max and/or have to go for cookie cutter builds just to compete. I just don't find that fun at all.

Not to say I won't PvP if it's done right, of course. Scaling systems like Warhammer Online and (possibly) Guild Wars 2 do a far better job, if ya ask me. I may just end up running the PvE story once or twice and consider myself "done" with C9... but I'm getting ahead of myself. Time will tell, as always.

[Tanuki]

so how you liking it so far?

[AppleShrapnel]

Digging it. Need to fuss with the settings a bit, though; every so often my game hitches for a second or two- both in missions and running around town.

Thinking I might shelf my shaman for now, though... I didn't think it'd be a big deal only getting "good" rankings, but it's proving a lot more frustrating than I thought.

So now I have to decide if I wanna go with the witchy-woman or the sword & board guy. Probably the lady, since I've gotten a few bits of lvl7 equipment for her. If I can get better ranks, that means more gold and items to toss alts.

[Tanuki]

quick question: did you at least make it to the master grade of the forest?
(third-ish dungeon in, 4th difficulty grade)

[AppleShrapnel]

No I didn't. Probably should have, but I played through all the difficulties as I unlocked them, and ended up replaying them as quests required... if memory serves, I got as far as the goblin shrine- either to the last or second-to-last difficulty, before I collapsed into bed.

Last night I played my witchblade, but my fps was pretty abysmal, even at medium settings... and my computer's no slouch, mind you. But went as far as the tutorial and called it quits once I got into town. As for the sudden performance issues, I dunno, it's happened before where I have to somehow force the resolution to reset or wait around for the graphics drivers to derp and reset itself- afterwards things turn all buttery and smooth. Most recently happened in Path of Exile.

Still, those issues notwithstanding, I'm in gaming purgatory; so only two games will ultimately catch (and keep) my attention- Torchlight 2 or Guild Wars 2. Anything else just feels like a gross compromise... so maybe, at some point, I'll be hopping back into C9. Just... not in the foreseeable future. ._.

[Tanuki]

yeah you were almost there, I demand that you go back and get to it; it is the first dungeon where everything -clicks-.

IMO it's close to the peak of the game, not content wise mind you, but in how your character's power and abilities line up with that of the enemies.

it hammers you just right to make you use very tactic and skill chain available, without being cheap or overwhelming. (and if you don't break over the 100 combo hit counter at least twice I will lick my cat)