Monthly Archives: July 2016

Cosplayer Interview: Crystal Santoro

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One of the ideas I’ve had for my editorial spot is to do interviews with cosplayers great and small, new and experienced. In this, it is my hope to inspire people who may be on the fence about delving into a great hobby, learn what drew others in and in general, find out more about them as a person! If you’re interested in following Crystal on social media, her Twitter is here and her Instagram is here! Her Instagram may not be 100% PG, so fair warning! Everyone’s journey is different, and maybe learning about another cosplayer will help others! It’s certainly my pleasure to do these interviews, and I hope to have more of them on the way very soon! And we aren’t working alone here!  Some fantastic photographers made these photographs possible!

Jayce Williams: PhotosNXS

Dennis George: Style and Grace Photo

Tommy Penny: East Coast Exposure

Alexander Okieff: [has no social media outlet but he’s awesome anyway]

Jason:  Crystal, how long have you been cosplaying?

Crystal:  Well I’ve been cosplaying since before I even knew there was a word for it. I have played Tomb Raider since the game came out when I was four and since then I have always wanted to dress up like Lara Croft and do fun and cool things like her. I think my first time getting dressed with the expectation of looking like Lara Croft happened when I was about 10 or so, So 13 years ago.  Then a few years after that I learned about the word cosplay and what the cosplay community was…then the addiction started..

Jason:  I also hear tell that you have been on at least one archaeological dig! What was that like?

Crystal:  A lot of hard work! There is a lot of digging involved (who’da thunkit.) and when you are working outside that also means a lot of freezing temperatures or sweating depending on the time of year. I loved it though, got to learn so many new things and see some really neat stuff that no one had seen in a few hundred years because it was underground. Plus working outside and with your hands tends to make for a great work day and an even better night’s sleep 😉

Jason:  Speaking of which, Lara Croft is well known for being an archaeologist, and you yourself are known for portraying Lara Croft! Is this a coincidence, or did one influence the other?

Crystal:  Oh my gameplay and love for Lara Croft definitely influenced my love for archaeology. Like I said earlier, I have been playing since I was four and have played almost every game made since (including some of the mobile games they had for the first online phones) Because Tomb Raider and Lara Croft had such a huge influence in my life it is safe to say that roaming those first few games paved the way for my current obsession with archaeology. I have a degree in anthropology and love studying ancient cultures and I think it’s because I spent so much of my childhood in the game.

Jason:  What inspired you to start up cosplaying as a hobby?

Crystal:  I  started cosplaying because when I realized that there were other people that had games and pop culture in their lives in such a pivotal way like I did I knew I wanted to meet them. I wanted to see how other people’s lives had been shaped because of these creations, video games, comic books, etc. I knew the huge role that Tomb Raider had in my life and knowing that there are other people in the same boat as me that had the same passion as me that would accept me and RECOGNIZE that I was dressed up as Lara Croft. That opens doors and I realized it didn’t have to just be Lara Croft. I could cosplay ANY character I wanted to. Which leads to a very expensive and time consuming creative addiction.

Jason:  You’ve also done some non-cosplay modeling; boudoir and the like. What inspired you to give that a try?

Crystal:  How personal are we trying to get here?! Haha. Well in all honesty I went through a rough period of depression during my freshman and sophomore year in university and one day my mom sat me down and asked what I like to do for fun. I realized that I couldn’t give her an answer I felt confident in (other than video games) and that made things worse for about two weeks. Then one day like a light switch I remembered taking my high school senior photos. I told her that was what I thought was fun and made me happy. A few weeks later I had a gig booked with a local photographer and here we are five years later with as much love and fire (if not more) for modeling as I have ever had. Modeling in general pulls me out of my depression and makes me happy. It allows me to express myself and be a different person, especially cosplay modeling. I can feel confident, talented, and like I’m really making progress in my abilities. I guess in a way, the “normal” modeling came before modeling in cosplay, but cosplay came before the modeling in the timeline of my life.

Jason: Do you have a hero or role model that you look up to?

Crystal:  Fictional: Definitely Lara Croft, she is a confident, strong, independent, powerful, sexy woman that seems to be able to overcome any obstacle and I love that about her. It’ what I always wanted to be growing up.  Reality: My parents. My mom and dad have always pushed me to be the best I can be, have confidence in myself, not give up and fight for everything. They trust me to follow my dreams and be awesome. I don’t think they expected the weird side effects of me being…. Well.. Weird. But they got that too 😉

Jason: Do you have any cosplay ideas that you’re throwing around that you might want to share?

Crystal:  I’ve got tons of things that I’d like to do, but at the current moment I don’t have anything that has plans behind it or any deadlines.

Jason: I ask this of pretty much everyone, but do you have any secrets or tips you want to give to would-be cosplayers?

Crystal: You like that character? That character has a special place in your heart, life or mind. Bring them to life for YOUR benefit. Show the world how you see that character without worrying if you are the right gender, body type, ethnicity, whatever. This is your opportunity to express how much you love that character and have fun. It doesn’t have to impress anyone if you don’t want it to. Or just the opposite you can aim high and knock everyone’s socks off. That’s the beauty of a huge group of adults and teenagers playing dress up; you’re playing dress up in a room with other people playing dress up. HAVE FUN

Jason: What is your favorite part of cosplaying?

Crystal:  Getting to bring an important character that I feel a connection with to life. Bringing someone who is otherwise “fiction” into the real world and getting into character so much so that you can really tell that people aren’t even sure you’re NOT that character

Jason:  And something irrelevant: Top five favorite fictional characters!

Crystal:   In no order whatsoever, Lara Croft, Buffy Summers (the vampire slayer), Captain America, Elektra, and I’ll leave one open to whatever mood I’m in that week 🙂

Thanks for reading everyone! Crystal also has a store right here if you are interested in prints of her work! There will be more of these to come as the weeks roll on! Some big names, some local names, and much much more! Stay tuned for the next Cosplayer Interview!

 

Star Trek Online Review 2016: To Boldly Go Back Where We Went Before

By Jason Parker (Ragachak)

 

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I was looking over some things on OnRPG, and I noticed a glaring error: Some of our work is horrifically out of date! One of the most grievous of the offenders  though was  Star Trek Online, a game that has been out for quite a few years now. But our main review of it is particularly out of date. So much has changed in the game since the 2010-13 era, so I feel it is appropriate to go into my personal thoughts of how the game has evolved since then. However, I have not been a faithful follower of the Star Trek MMO, because I had WoW and FFXI [and now XIV] to play. While yes I do love Star Trek, my personal preference is TNG. So I had to do some research! Luckily, I had the time to do just that. I will say that Perfect World Entertainment has done an excellent job of being true to the franchise in a lot of different, but pleasant ways. I still haven’t seen Q yet, but I’m holding out hope.  With the third expansion, Agents of Yesterday, arriving this week I felt it was time to take a nice hard look at Star Trek Online.

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What IS Star Trek Online? It’s an experience for one thing: You play as a Captain in one of several races/factions, experience a gripping series of stories, and mix it up in combat whether in outer space  or down on the ground with your away crew. Authenticity is the key here, and I really think they have it.  I’d also like to note that my personal favorite race is playable, the Ferenghi, and that makes me happy as only a Trekie can be. Still there’s plenty of room left for unique and unusual story telling as STO evolves, such as a mission series focused on playing as the Borg! After all, in Agents of Yesterday, you make a new character to take part in the wacky time-travel shenanigans so that you may experience some “Original Series” action, complete with some fantastic voice work as we cover in our dev Interview focused on ships, planets, and storylines.

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But as far as the current story, the most important thing is that it is fed to you in doses. It is presented in episodes that can take a good half hour to hour to complete.  Not everyone has four hours to dedicate to one set of quests, and coming back to that later can be jarring or can completely kill motivation. The game is far more accessible as far as the story goes, compared to launch. Yes, there is an overarching story, but you aren’t required to do it at once! If you want to, you can fly around and explore the system. We’ll get to travel in just a little bit.  However, Star Trek Online allows players to ingest the story in doses that would be used in the actual series, typically culminating in some kind of physical calamity [in space or otherwise]!

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How do you get to these events? In a starship of course. There are SO. MANY. SHIPS. I thought I knew a fair amount about Star Trek, but I really didn’t realize just how many bloody ships there are. And they don’t all handle/play the same. Sure, your first starship is basically garbage, but you can customize them however you please. As time passes you can unlock and use a variety of them. I think in my current play on my character I have three or four ships? Possibly more. But you can equip them just as you can players, with photon torpedoes, a variety of power sources and cannons.  That’s not all either! Your crew isn’t just for show. Your main crew, which can also be your Away Team, typically fill roles on the crew such as Engineering, and offer utility powers you can activate while in battle. These will increase damage, shields, regeneration, and so on, adding an element of tactics to assigning crew members to balance your strengths as you see fit.

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As you level, you also gain talent points for the ship as well as your character which is nice. The way it used to work, is that you had a shared expertise pool. What this could mean is you could be super strong in say, ground combat, but you would also likely make your starship worthless without amazing equipment. This requires way too much work, balance and time that frankly, I’m not investing. Now they have separate pools which is much, much better. They resemble the old World of Warcraft trees with fairly predictable things like more health, more damage, et cetera. But that’s not bad. You don’t have to re-invent the wheel to make something worth enjoying. Now you can do with two to three points what might have taken up to ten in the old settings!  It was ten points a tier, for amounts of growth that simply didn’t feel worth it. The choices you make feel like they matter more; I don’t feel like I’m dumping points into something that simply isn’t worth it. Expertise is pretty much gone too, but it is involved in your Bridge Officers; it doesn’t serve you as a player anymore, but it does go towards your Officers, and that’s just as well. They need to be strong too, right?

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Speaking of leveling, players have what is known as a Career Path, which are basically your character classes. No matter which faction you are in [Federation, Klingon, Romulan], you pick a career path. Each character class feels different too, but since our last iteration, another was added! Tactical Officers [or Intelligence officers] are DPS/Damage type characters, unlike the others which are typically healers/tanks. They are my personal favorite character type, and tend to use Escort-style vessels. Tactical Officers are all about squad tactics, strategy, and increasing potential. To me, the best thing about them are the Attack Patterns [α, β, Δ, Ω] which are significant damage boosts to your ship. They have some pretty awesome unique traits too:

  • Crippling Fire [Space]: Your Critical Hits reduce your target’s Accuracy.
  • Last Ditch Effort [Space]: During Go Down Fighting, +Res from attacking
  • Situational Awareness [Ground]: Grenade powers you use will expose their targets.
  • Strike Team Specialist [Ground]: Attacking targets gives +Crit Chance

Character creation has so many choices for race, too. It doesn’t really matter which you play, any race can go with any career path, but each faction has certain races that belong to their federation. It all boils down to what group you want to immerse yourselves in!  Personally, I go with Vulcan or Ferenghi, because that’s just how I roll; but it doesn’t matter! At the end of the day, you can play whatever your heart desires, and so many different races are available. Yes, some of them have to be purchased, but that is entirely up to you. It’s not like content will be denied to you because you aren’t a Federation Klingon!

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Let’s talk Officers for a moment; in particular, Duty Officers. It’s a system similar to something you find in Neverwinter, but I do believe STO had it first. You have a crew of officers on your starship – folks that you don’t take with you on missions. But what do they do? Nothing? Of course not! They have to earn that paycheck!  Depending on what traits/skills they have, they can do certain missions which have a cooldown/duration before they are completed. It’s basically a ‘commit resources and wait’ system, which isn’t bad because I hate most crafting/missions systems. A lot of these require certain resources, and at least now, more of these can be made via replicator [created for an amount of credits], but not all of them. There are special resources that require you to travel the stars, seeking people willing to sell it to you.

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Cardassian alcohols are a prime example of that. More generic things can likely be replicated, but special, species specific requirements? You’re gonna have to take flight!  There are Duties that require special characteristics too, like Psionics or Survival. It’s just another feature piled on top of the every growing list trying to immerse you into the world of Star Trek, giving the rest of your crew a purpose while your main characters are out being awesome. I personally am not super wild about the system. I think it’s neat, but I often find myself forgetting about it, because it’s not something prominent on my screen amid all Star Trek Online’s distractions.

 

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Bottom Line

This is not a perfect game, don’t get me wrong. For people not familiar with the franchise, they might become quickly overwhelmed at how much this game throws at you at one time. They won’t get the intricacies of character interaction, may not be familiar enough with the game jargon, or get the significance of certain equipment. Does that make it a niche’ game? Nah, I don’t think so. The Star Trek fanbase is gargantuan. But they have definitely fixed this game from when it was just ran by Cryptic.  For example: Travel. Travel. Was. So. Slow. In the time it took me to write this, I probably could not have traveled a few sectors over at the very most. However, now you can fly from one end of the quadrant to another given the same time. You can activate auto-pilot to travel exactly where you want to go in space.  Now it’s a matter of seconds to get some places instead of having to wait ten minutes plus! Also, when you hit a new sector, you’d stop moving and have to start up flight again – frankly a horrible outdated system. I hated it. To the point I can rejoice knowing it’s no longer the case. It does fall into some of the same traps that every MMO goes into though. Most of the missions out in space I found were: Scan things; intercept things; now that the enemy has appeared, kill those things! Sure, it’s fun to fly around in space, fire photon torpedoes and stuff like that, but it’s still going to feel incredibly tedious a few missions in.

 

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Conclusion: Great

At least it’s easy to complete an episode and take a break. Some of the ship battles can be terribly overwhelming and stilted against you, but that’s the nature of the beast. The Away Team instance missions are fun, but the movement still feels awkward and robotic. These missions almost always feel incredibly easy. I haven’t done them all of course, but the ones I went through I absolutely obliterated. My away team was an efficient asskicking machine free of redshirts. Winning was so expected that the intensity simply wasn’t there. I feel like there should be more political missions, involving diplomacy, right and wrong choices, shades of gray. Things that impact the universe you play in. That might be tricky in an MMO but perhaps this could be done in a server wide event? For example: All three factions have decisions to make in a storyline and the majority of their choices made influence where the story goes from there.

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This is just an example of something Star Trek Online could do to really excite and immerse the audience in a new way.  But the missions, while short enough to do at once, feel very repetitive and frustrating as you enter the grind to repeat them under the guise of a new narratives. Speaking of which, the tutorial itself starts you off with a taste of the grind. I appreciate a good tutorial that explains things, but damn! I was still in the tutorial at level 8 or 10. Even with these criticisms, the game now is lightyears beyond the state it was at launch. It’s really come a long way and Perfect World Entertainment continues to listen to their audience and will likely continue to grow for years to come. With so few surviving options in the free to play sci-fi MMO genre, Star Trek Online is still safe from assimilation for years to come.

HIT Global Launch Developer Interview

Questions by Michael Sagoe (mikedot)

Answers by Yong-Hyun Park, Creator of HIT

Today, Nexon Mobile has launched HIT (Heroes of Incredible Tales). HIT is a mobile action MMORPG, powered by Unreal Engine 4 and created by Yong-Hyun Park, the same mind behind Lineage II and TERA. We had the chance to speak with Park to learn more about this mobile phenomena.

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Mikedot: It really is privilege being able to chat with the designer of two of the most influential MMORPGs of all time. Before we begin, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, as well as your experiences as lead designer for Lineage II and TERA?

Park: I started to work on Lineage2 (2003) as the team leader and later became the lead designer. Eventually I led the development for TERA (2001). There’s also HIT that was released. Although I’ve been working on the development of MMORPGs for about 20 years, there haven’t been many titles that have been released.

Similar to how painters have a unique painting style, game makers also have a unique style. If you look at similar past games like Everquest, the combination of hits from attackers and defenders lacked a final cohesive picture. This is where we began to make progress. For the next game we made, TERA, and then HIT, we first focused on innovating this aspect.

If you look at it this way, I’m a person who focuses on basic combat and HIT follows that flow. Once we have ensured the combat is fun, the rest of the development can follow. A solid battle mechanic should anchor the core gameplay experience, encouraging players to tackle increasing challenge and difficulty and to push until they beat the game.

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Mikedot: For those that haven’t already heard: Gives us a brief overview for HIT

Park:‘HIT’ is an action-filled game with high-end graphics that was built using Unreal Engine 4. More than just the action, ‘HIT’ captures the fun essence of traditional RPGs for a mobile audience. We hope that ‘HIT’ meets the expectations for users who were waiting for a high quality RPG mobile game.
 
Mikedot: Back before HIT was released in South Korea, I would like to know what influenced you and your development team to focus on the mobile gaming market instead of sticking with the PC Platform.

Park:There were two conditions that led to making this happen. First, we needed the vision to be able to develop a mobile platform game that capitalized on the advantages of having a large scale team. Second, we recognized it would be difficult to continue to endure PC MMORPG development due to its massive scale.

When I started to develop games, you could say that the quality of mobile games was not there. People mainly recognized casual games. I thought that it was possible to get the same kind of fun and exciting experience on mobile that you get on a PC or Console game. With that in mind, I decided to implement this idea.

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Mikedot: I would like to know more about the experiences that you and your team had with developing HIT for the first time. Were there any difficulties that you and your team came across?

Park:Mobile development goes through the cycles overwhelmingly faster than PC. For PC it took a year to make a good prototype, but for mobile you have to complete it within a month. Since everything was this way, we had to change our development process accordingly.

Since we were accustomed to our previous ways, our team experienced a fair amount of growing pains. Although there are many producers who switched to mobile after making PC games, I think there are very few who successfully converted over. PC and Mobile are quite different. Only those who truly commit to the change can succeed.
 
Mikedot: Tell us more about the core gameplay of HIT. What sets it apart from other similar games on the mobile platform?

Park:First you can see the great visual graphics and striking colors. There are no competitors yet. Even if you view it on a large TV screen, there is nothing lacking. It is of console quality.

When you take other mobile games and compare their videos through A/B, it is easy to see the difference between good and mediocre ARPG games.

Many common ARPG games are “fighting while standing in place.” While walking and encountering an enemy, you stop and fight. You’re forced to stand and wait until you’ve beaten it. When the fight is over, they walk again. For HIT, the biggest difference is that you keep moving forward to gather all the enemies in one place and slash them all together.

We’re proud to show the stylish ranged attacks from our wizards and archers. Many ARPG games have close combat; however, they are lacking in their ranged attacks.

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Mikedot: Tell us more about the PvE and PvP systems available.

Park:PVE faithfully follows the familiar formula of Hack & Slack action games. The map, timing, enemy appearance, and level designs dynamically change, immersing the player, giving excitement to the game. When you naturally enjoy the action of the game, it encourages character growth. Character growth results in more possibilities for the player.

PVP can be described as real-time synchronization. While users are connected to the network, players can compete in 1v1 duels or free-for-all battles with 4 people like in a PvP real-time based battle on the PC. You cannot easily experience this in other mobile games.
 
Mikedot: What kind of social features will be available in the game?

Park:The social features of HIT will mainly take place in the guilds. Of course it will be possible to chat with fellow guild members. Once a guild sets up their emblem, they may share it among their guild members. The most important aspect are the guilds. Guild members will work together to compete against other guilds using their skills. This will also take place in real time.
 
Mikedot: While looking at the four playable characters in the game, I noticed that Kiki (the Mage) looks very similar to the Elin race from TERA. With that said: I would like to ask how much of your ideas from TERA and Linage II made its way into HIT, from a visual design and gameplay design standpoint?

Park: Is that so? Honestly, I’ve heard this several times, but since I’m on the artistic side, I’m not intentionally trying to do so. We have a team leader who was also in charge of some of the characters on TERA, so some of the similarities might appear.

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Mikedot: Now the game has some incredible graphics thanks to the power of Unreal Engine 4, but what kind of mobile device will be needed to play this game?

Park:You can play on Samsung Galaxy S3, Apple iPhone 5 or later phones.
 
Mikedot: How frequently do you plan to release new content for the game? How much of that new content is influenced by user feedback?

Park:Generally once a month. We welcome all feedback from our users and will strive to make positive improvements. The global version of the game will have the difficulty of trying to balance the different tastes of all users from different countries. This is a big challenge for us.
 
Mikedot: Where do you see the mobile gaming market in the next few years? Where do you see HIT’s place in gaming in the next few years?

Park:For the last few years, the scale and the importance of organization of mobile game development has steadily increased and I see that continuing. Indie games will of course continue and medium sized development teams will experience some difficulties. The lifecycle of mobile gaming is getting longer. Mobile gaming success will also be dependent on live operation capabilities just as it did on PC online games. HIT strives to be a high-quality live service game.

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Mikedot: Are there any comments you’d like to add before we end this interview?

Park: Rather than concentrating on specific elements of the game such as character, story, action, and sound, I think the game meets the highest quality in all areas without any bias. We tried to show that HIT could excel in all areas of the game without making compromises in the development process or being limited by the constraints of platform games on mobile. I invite you to give it a try!

 

Star Trek Online – Agents of Yesterday Temporal Agent Starter Pack Raffle Event

To celebrate the launch of Star Trek Online’s Agents of Yesterday update, we’re teaming up with Perfect World Entertainment and Cryptic Studios to host a raffle for your shot at winning a Temporal Agent Starter Pack!

Each pack includes several items to help you create a brand-new Temporal Agent, including two temporal ships, torn uniforms from Star Trek: The Original Series, an 0718 Bridge Officer and the official title of “Temporal Agent.”

Agents of Yesterday sends players back in time to create new Captains in the Star Trek: The Original Series era, fly classic Starships and experience new episodes inspired by the television series that started it all. As a Captain from The Original Series, players will participate in new task force missions, interact with iconic characters voiced by original Trek actors and command era-appropriate ships, including the Enterprise, Constitution-class starship.

 

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To Enter the Raffle:

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