American_Angel

Originally Posted by CaptA

Maybe part of the issue is that the devs think we are expecting a huge chunk of stuff all at the same time. I'd be happy if they could just give us a few small things each patch, or at least in some patches. Every new issue could include SOME stuff. I mean, emotes are fine and all, but how much do they really add to the game? Certainly less than a market interface for bases, or a tailor. It seems to me the time spent on one emote could be used to import some decorative items into the editor. I really find it hard to believe that minor moves like that would really make a huge dent in their schedules. A trickle over a long period is better than nothing at all.

Originally Posted by mercykilling

I've a question that might seem silly. But then, the only silly question is the one you don't ask, right?

So..it's actually a two-parter. Sneaky of me, I know.

1) Does anyone know what -can- be done to bring all this concern to the Devs?
2) Is anyone actually -doing- it?

Originally Posted by DitzyBlonde

I understand he wants a personal apartment within a sg//vg. Thats is easily achievable with the current state of bases. Bear with me a minute........ all it requires is a base leader with editing priveleges to design his room per his specifications. Voila!****.. my vg base on Guardian has 22 personal apartments designed specifically for each player that wanted one. Hours in vent. Still easily doable.

The thing that really GETS me is that prior to issue13 good ******* luck funding absolutely any prestige unless you were really hardcore with your group and grinding prestige daily.The devs cut all costs and you people still *****. The devs opened editing possibilities... and you people still *****.What in this game deserves to be worked for anymore? Seriously.....the majority QQ's and gets it almost free and still complains!! My large complaint about bases would be the removal of raids, iop's and the Cathedral. This thread is a ***** session about cosmetic irritations. Big ******* Woooo!!How about you all ask the devs to fix pvp so bases can once again be used as intended?Thats a little too far right field,huh?

Originally Posted by Infernal_Marquis

personally, I'd say pick a dev and harrass the hell out of him/her. send PMs daily over the forums until his/her inbox crashes. make it so he/she cant do anything, say anything, go anywhere, or see anybody without another dev giving him/her a hardtime about the inbox crashing under the weight of our voices.

and once that has been achieved, i say we get a direct phone number and extension, then crash the voicemail. once phase 2 is complete, we prepare for what I'd like to call the Billion Base Builder March where we camp out on that particular dev's front lawn with /em protest, disrupting the spouse's ability to get to work and the kids' ability to get to school!

upon completion of phase 3, said Dev now can't get to work because of all of us on the front lawn, so he/she is fired for missing work. That would be the time each of us submits an application to be a dev and maybe, just MAYBE, one of us would get hired so now we have a mole on the inside who we could get to start the ball rolling on Issue 21: Seriously Overdue Base Luvin'

With all of that said, I may or may not have some friends in NY in the "waste management" industry who may or may not know some connected people and who may or may not owe me a favor... i'm just saying.

So if the devs are in fact watching this thread... you may or may not have been warned.

Originally Posted by DitzyBlonde

No offense,Ironblade.

You are a flippin idiot if you can't figure out how this ability already exists ingame .If you'de like to see some personal apartments within a vg base please do pm me. I will be more than happy to give you a tour of private accomadations set for individual vg members.

In addition I am more than happy to accomodate a tour of completely non sg/vg affiliated apartments(condo's, lairs,wthe) as well.

P.S. Your quoted post is contradictory, Please state what you meant.

Originally Posted by unjust

I checked and yes there is a definite change to the way it looks. While I am thinking that with the new Ultra Mode this is WAI I also hope that this will get fixed. The best way would be to allow us some actual water textures and not make us jump thru hoops as we have been doing for so long.

Sadly it appears that from the sounds of things about the next few issues, the bases are still low on the totem pole of things to get to. Sometimes I think the devs hate base builders worse than villains :P

Originally Posted by Impish Kat

This is why I refurbished the Big Consolidated List... to make exactly this point.

The fact that I could take a 2 year old list, make minimal changes (adding as well as removing things), and it still expresses so many concerns that haven't been addressed... does indeed highlight the fact that we need to beat the drums.

Originally Posted by DitzyBlonde

Did you ever stop to think that perhaps the attention they got was not the kind they wanted??? Be careful what you wish for.....Even after continous well thought out and represented input from the pvp community they still got an implementation of pvp with issue13 that NOONE asked for or imagined. Please note the dates in the links below.See that? They are still trying to no avail.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=122744

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=130423


Furthermore, posts like the Ops get nothing accomplished unless its already on the dev's agenda. The assumption that base builders are any more important than any other subfaction of the player base is ludicrous at best... assinine at worst. However, I would agree that there does seem to be a pattern of neglecting various subfactions by the development team.

Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan

I'm not sure that developer attention is what you want.

Consider that relatively few players are active base editors. For me at least, part of the reason why I don't play with bases is that there are too many choices. The editor is more fine-grained than I really want; I'd like to be able to slap down rooms wholesale pre-decorated and pre-functionalized. If the developers decide to pay attention to bases, they'll be paying attention to the needs of people who aren't using bases now, and that will probably mean simplifying base editing to the point where a significant chunk of the customization available now is simply going to be gone. I am not saying this is the right thing to do, nor that it is inevitable, but it's pretty clear from prior decisions that the developers are willing to completely ignore the requests of the community currently using a feature, and instead try to cater to the perceived needs of those not currently using the feature.

So you may want to think about what dev attention to bases will really mean, and start thinking of suggestions as to how the existing functionality you love can be retained while also making base editing accessible to the very lazy general player population. My personal suggestion would be to offer examples of well-decorated rooms that could be added to the editor as slap-down prebuilt templates, and to advocate for room files that can be saved, shared, and loaded so that when people see an excellent room in someone else's base, they can quickly duplicate it in their own. But these are just the uninformed opinions of someone outside the base-building community.

Originally Posted by The_Alt_oholic

I've been able to learn to do a lot with bases.
I've seen very cool bases that other people have built.

It would be cool to have new stuff in bases. However, I must admit that I don't think that I have explored everything that I can do with bases.

There are cool tricks that can be done that many might not know about.

I would like to see elemental textures that we could at least add as part of the coloring if not as style parts.
I'm sure there are some base builders that would buy a room strait out of a game map to use as a room in their base (the old Pocket D big Warehouse room with upstairs bar - for example)

I'm not leaning on this stuff now. There is plenty of work to do to get GR finished on time (I'm sure).

Looking forward to the cool new stuff as we get it.

Hey, DEVs!
Great work on the bases as they are now.
I really like them. Thanks!

Originally Posted by stacker

Ok my 2 cents. In the last 2-3 years I think I have logged just over 3k hours in the base editor building and making bases. Functional bases, cosmetic bases for both big and small super groups. A fact of bases is they have always been bugged. Some amazing people some how figured out how to make these bugs work to our advantage. If you spin a desk so many times you can stack another desk on it, if you place a room then put a wall then spin the room you can make a double doorway.

Stacking in general is a bug. With issue 13 when raid pathing was turned off yet a different stacking bug the safe or lamp and the floor tile…nowhere in the patch notes it said the safe and lamp is stackable im sure the tile didn’t change it would always allow items to be placed on it.

I am so ready for new base things; I think I have pushed the editor to its limits and then some. In its current state it makes it harder to come up with new ideas to build around. I know as of right now the building community is a small part of the game but its potential is big.

Yes we need more functional items in the base, the dev concern in will it take away from the areas in the game. If we had a Wentworth terminal a costume terminal and so on would people still gather at these areas through out the game? I believe there is enough stuff to change around bases to have its own issue.

We do need a new editor, more items, textures; the whole super group system needs an overhaul. We need a better way to communicate to offline players like a mass SG email or SG event bulletin that can be posted in the base or in the SG tab. We need a better way to recruit players instead of annoying the crap out of people in every zone of this game.

Raids need to come back both pvp and have a pve type of raid. I miss raids so much, just because you raid doesn’t mean you cant make some cool cosmetic rooms. We had a blast fighting in our Bowling Alley and Movie Theater. I am sure the devs have herd our voice and seen our base lists.

I don’t want changes unless they are well thought out. The quick fix to shut us up for a couple months won’t do it. If I have to wait for it well then I guess I wait and continue to build the unbuildable and push this base editor until it breaks. Oh and this beaker rack nonsense I hope is the devs way to see how to implement changes with items because I think I missed the add items to the beaker rack in the dozen threads on what we want in bases.

Originally Posted by Turbo_Starr

It’s obvious we all share strong opinions on what should be done and what is/isn’t possible. We can’t fault anyone for making another post about it, another list or another attempt to be heard. I admire your passion AA and agree that we should push the envelope.

Who knows what is possible if we are persistent. From my discussions, the devs are following this closely.

Originally Posted by Chaos_String

Actions will be taken when allocating the necessary resources makes financial sense.

Imagine you're going to buy enhancements for your toon. But you cannot afford to buy enhancements for every slot. Some slots must remain unenhanced until later. It becomes a question of cost-benefit at that point. Should you slot more defense in this toggle, or more damage in this attack? How much accuracy do you really need? How much endurance reduction must you have to avoid running out? Since you can't afford all the enhancements you have slots for, you must choose which enhancements to buy right now so that you can run missions at a decent pace and obtain more enhancements.

The devs are in a similar position. CoX generates a finite amount of revenue, therefore there is a finite budget for development. This development includes both man-hours and resources necessary to implement changes and improvements. The question becomes, what development must be prioritized in order to best generate more revenue so that further development can be funded. (i.e. the devs keep their jobs at Paragon Studios) Obviously, base builders are part of the community. So are PvPers. So are badgers. And so are the tens of thousands of customers who just want to play missions, and don't care about bases or PvP or badges.

The question is, how many hours of paid subscription time does the playerbase spend building bases, as compared to badge hunting, PvP, running missions and raiding? That's roughly the proportion of developer hours that can and should be spent developing base content.

I have no doubt that War Witch would love to increase the resources available to base builders--after all, she was a developer who designed a number of zones in the game. Visual design, decorating and layout of features isn't lost on her. But the fact is that the developers must spend most of their time improving the facets of the game that are used the most by the playerbase, so base building tends to stay on the back burner.

Crying "abuse" or "neglect" because a relatively marginal aspect of the game receives only marginal development isn't going to make things better. As for myself, I'd like to see the memory leak in the base editor fixed, and I'd like to see more map elements and objects that occur in PvE to be available in base construction. In fact, I'd like to see many kinds of improvements made to bases, but if those improvements are lower priority than developing more rubust endgame content, side-switching, new powersets, new zones and so on, I can't fault the developers for it.

Originally Posted by Impish Kat

An excerpt from the transcribed in-game Dev Greet the other day:

Originally Posted by Impish Kat

Understood and agreed, Fire Away.
Though, I thought it was interesting that WW outright said;

"You can harass me about bases."

That is, of course, not necessarily a promise that she'll respond, but we have essentially been given permission to put our comments & concerns directly to her.

Originally Posted by Nitra

I had the same thing happen on test while I was using an ATI 5570. The Water effect looked very dark, so what I did was lower the water effect to low and it looked normal again. I have since traded that card for a 9800 gt and it looks fine on all modes.

Hope this helps

Originally Posted by CaptA

Yeah, I noticed the green crystals look bad now. In addition, the SG logo glass things that people use for windows are now darker. Another thing I noticed is that the "beaker stand" from the tabletop items now has beakers on it. I liked it for what it was before because I was using it for a grill surface in my kitchens.