Android_5Point9

Obviously they take a cut somewhere in the process. I'm just not sure that many people would (or could) retrofit an existing title with Steamworks to take advantage of the built-in microtransaction support there. It's very possible that they take Steam Wallet funds as a payment option in other already existing games like Champs or DCUO, but if one wanted, it'd be rather easy to circumvent doing so (run the game outside of Steam if it relies on the overlay, install from a non-Steam source, etc) which is why I'm skeptical that that's what they do. It could be that there aren't enough people who care enough to work around paying through Steam that it's still a viable choice, but like I said before, this is wild speculation.

If it is that simple though, I imagine the explanation for CoH's absence is just, "our store provider is tough to work with so we can't add support for transactions through Steam." Which seems fairly likely.

Clearly a nefarious plot that proves Valve is a company that feasts upon the souls of the unworthy, and is determined to destroy gaming as we know it.

There was also something to do with swapping from the old updater to the NC launcher that caused some issues. I don't know if they ever got resolved or not. That's a Black Pebble question, most likely.

Steamworks and what you're describing in the first point there are two different things. You can add any program to Steam to get an unsupported version of the overlay that would let you chat with people on your friends list and whatnot while in the game, track hours spent, take screenshots that are uploaded to an online gallery, etc. Steamworks is a set of features that you can build into a game that gives it Steam's DRM, microtransaction support, retail encryption, matchmaking support, and so on. Skyrim uses it, as an example. It's not required for every game that's on Steam to use Steamworks. though, and the old version of CoH certainly didn't. Most (if not all) MMOs don't publish their updates directly through Steam either, and instead just uses Steam as another retailer, and let them handle the distribution of one particular build of the game, and then just launch the game's updater.

Admittedly I'm not positive how they handle microtransactions for other f2p MMOs that are already on Steam. At first glance they don't have anything listed for points bundles or something like that for say, Champions, and I don't think there's anything done in-game with it either, but I'm not positive either way.

It didn't support f2p titles around the time CoH's conversion was announced, iirc. Very shortly after and by the time it launched it did though.

It's already had involvement. City of Heroes was purchasable on Steam not too long ago. Even though Valve does take a cut for Steam purchases, any non-Valve title that doesn't have direct integration with Steam (ie, most games) doesn't require that you run Steam at all. Steam achievements aren't, well, that important (and don't need to be there at all), and any packs would just generate a code that you would enter in the store to receive some stuff.

Also, Steam's huge, and used by a lot of people. The exposure certainly wouldn't hurt.

He mentioned they would do it on one of the weekly livestreams. They started the trend with Staff Fighting.

I don't think it's been confirmed, but I presumed Captain Mako's Praetorian is Riptide.

I do remember Praetorian Infernal being confirmed as alive during one of the livestream Q&A's as well.

Sounds fair. You mentioned maybe giving Dominators in Domination fast snipes all the time. Maybe Stalkers have to be in Hide to utilize it, and Scrappers get a more vanilla tohit requirement?

I think it's fair when you look at what the other sets gain from fast snipes, but it doesn't do much to help close the gap between other sets. I think a lot of it has to do with the secondary effects being lackluster or a set's mechanics not having enough of an impact to warrant the hits it has to take elsewhere. I think a lot of people point to Electric Blast and the meager end drain, and Dual Pistols and the minuscule secondary effects from the ammo swaps (to the point where it's not a choice, and just incendiary all the time) as examples.

The recovery and regen debuff could probably stand to take hits. I don't think any other regen debuffs are enhanceable at all, so that's fair, and it's main usage is on large groups, not single hard targets that need regen debuffing. I do think the buff duration should match the power's recharge - it feels like a penalty to players not in the know that their survivability tool doesn't have equal uptime with other secondaries. If the per target portion takes a hit, maybe you could keep the per target buff and the frontloaded buff separate, and allow the per target buff to be stackable? That way high recharge builds can still benefit, but not by an enormous margin.

Trust me, we love the open communication too. I'll admit it's not quite as awesome as the time I realized I could call anyone at Valve on the phone and talk to them, but it's certainly up there in terms of "this company rocks."


edit: Oh, and one last minor change that's been bugging me forever: could you standardize the power pool Leadership toggles' activation times to match the VEAT ones?

Patron Power Pools have snipes.

It checks once at activation and then once per every 10 seconds for pseudo pet summons, and each healable unit in range has a separate chance to benefit. It also means if you have enough recharge to get two or more beacons/trees going at once (not exceptionally difficult), you can have each of them checking against every person in range independently of eachother.

Also applies to any Scrappers or Stalkers who have a PPP snipe.

Beam Rifle also has a 100% chance for disintegration spread with their snipe, so that should be fun too.

Granted, she was a bubbler.

Except that Supremacy provides any earned shifts to pets, so it makes some sense that temporary ones might apply as well. I'm slightly curious to see if moving out and back in to supremacy range would apply the shift to them or not, but I don't have a 50 MM to test it on myself. My initial guess is "no" considering it doesn't work at all on temporary pets, though.

You're gonna make me post Nuditron, aren't you?

If you go to ABP's options, under the customize tab (at least in Chrome), manually edit your filters and add:


http://boards.cityofheroes.com/style...background.jpg
For the villain skin.


http://boards.cityofheroes.com/style...background.jpg
For the hero skin.

It was reported and supposedly fixed on beta fairly early on.