Acetylene_Torch

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As several have noted, I7 features content mostly for City of Villains (levels 41 to 50, in fact). This is exactly what we did for CoH. City of Heroes will receive a cool graphics upgrade, new base items (Empowerment stations!) and access to Recluses’ Victory. It’s true that CoV received more attention, but that’s mainly because we needed to fill out the levels. I had the option of releasing I7 or waiting until we could fill out the City of Heroes content. Obviously, I chose the former. New content should get out there when it’s ready. We'll be focusing equally as much as possible on each product moving into the future...


For those who have speculated that Newspaper missions are coming to City of Heroes, they aren’t…yet. That’s coming a little later in the year. I’d like to add something different to the CoH system…

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It is a shame that you have chosen to ignore the people who tried the City of Villains addon and didn't like it. I will be checking back when Issue 8 rolls around. Maybe by then there will be more to the game than hack and slash for 50 levels.

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Doublechecked Defiance - and its working for us (internally and on live). Can anyone give more details about this issue?

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It sucks and is a worthless ability. It takes too long to kick in and doesn't provide any solid ability to the player. A more gradual introduction to the ability instead of only having it useful when you have 3 hitpoints would be nice.

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AND now...we're changing the way Archvillains spawn. A ton of forum goers disliked adding so many AV's into missions a while back...so we've come up with a solution. If the team size and mission difficulty are ABOVE a certain level, an Archvillain spawns. Below that, players will face only an Elite Boss. If the mission is set on the first two levels of difficulty, it takes 4 heroes or more to spawn an Arch Villain. On the third level, 3 heroes or more. On the fourth level, 2 heroes. On the highest (Invincible), a solo hero will spawn an AV. Note this works in BOTH City of Heroes and Villains.

In order to incentivize larger teams, Positron is going to add a bonus to AV rewards!

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This is good.. Finally a change for the better. Hopefully more come into effect soon and I can return from my forced sabbatical. When all the game offers is combat and you can't do that solo, there is a problem.

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Ummm... Crafting is alive an well in CoH and CoV. What do you think all that salvage and the worktables in bases are for?

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One could argue that, but is there an associated skill to it? Can a level 1 player make something just as easily as a level 50?


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In its current implementation in this game? Yes... Prestige is shared among a supergroup. You do not need your own personal prestige to place an item. It costs nothing to create. A level one can create any item in the list as long as they have the salvage. With salvage trading, it is quite possible to do this.

In my opinion, SKILLS are about personal character development whereas the CRAFTING in this game is about improving the Group. Too different things. We don't need skills to create uber loot and uber loot is not needed. Skills should be a way to differentiate your character. If you have a character concept where he is a genius computer hacker, you can't realize that in the game right now. With Skills you could. There are many other examples.

People are too caught up in a loot concept as opposed to personal development without the use of items. They wouldn't out balance the game because anyone could learn them. As far as level 50s having more skills than a level 1, that should be the case. You don't expect a first grader to know as much as a 4th year university student.

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People here tend to argue that crafting would be boring. I suppose that CoH/CoV has lured exactly the kind of players who would find that boring.

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Yes. And now people who want the things all those other games have are coming to "our" game and demanding that these things be added, so as to make "our" game just like all the rest. See how folks might get a little touchy and defensive?

I've already seen this happen with PvP. I don't want to see Skinner-box crafting (peck the button, get a food pellet) too.

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Skills and Crafting are too different things. I see skills as a way to improve your character's abilities. Something you really can't do in this game outside of combat. Hack the computer faster, disarm the bomb faster, etc... Risks can be built in. So instead of just a simple click and the bomb is disarmed, there is a failure chance added and if you fail it explodes causing a minor bit of damage. etc...

I for one had never played any other MMOs before this one. I saw my wife Crafting in EQ2 and thought it was a waste of time. Skills however is not that. That is what he was talking about in Ask Statesman Answers... Skills. Not Crafting.

Crafting has already been introduced to the game in a very simplified fashion that doesn't make it boring.

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Ya know, if the skills system is going to make people long for crafting, I'm glad it's on hiatus.

One of the best things about CoH is that there is no crafting. Therefore no farming and camping and all the other bad things related to that. Look what happened when they added a single uberloot item (HO's)...

If they do get forced into adding crafting, or crafting-like junk, it better never give an in-game reward that is at all useful for *anything*. Or if it does, anything that can be crafted better be able to be bought at a store. Then the crafters can sit around camping spawns, and the rest of us can continue to enjoy the game mechanics.

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Ummm... Crafting is alive an well in CoH and CoV. What do you think all that salvage and the worktables in bases are for?

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Statesman seems to think that there is no satisfaction in crafting where you just put some items together into a menu and hit build.

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Actually, I was talking about Skills, not crafting.

What's the difference? In the end, crafting yields a usable commodity. In Skills, you might have unlocked a door or opened a safe or whatever....if I could guarantee that clicking on a computer could yield as cool a reward as an Enhancement, well, that'd be something. But the problem is that there are only a few computers in the world (and missions), whereas crafting is rather unlimited. One needs to undergo risk to gather resources (let's use Salvage as an example), but there isn't much risk in clicking on a computer.

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See for me skills is not about an enhancement everytime I click a computer. It is about making the timer work faster, getting additional clues that could spawn side stories and arcs or unlock contacts. Skills is about slipping in undetected so there are no ambushes or alarms in a mission. It is about being able to find an enemies weak spot and defeating them just a little faster.

It isn't just about enhancements. In fact, I think the game needs to get away from enhancements as a reward. There is nothing special about them, everyone has the same ones. You can buy them in stores all around the city and get them from defeats. You are right in that rewards need to be in line with the risks but you need to rethink your ideas of rewards. If you truly want a lootless game then stop thinking in terms of loot.

A computer cracking skill this halves the time needed to get information is much more fun than an enhancement. New leads and customizard story arcs though skills is more fun than an enhancement. Stop thinking video games and think role-playing games.

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I understand that people may forget that the low levels are less accurate in general, when they're used to playing high level Heroes who are fully SOed.

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And people think I am weird when I have low level characters that have attacks which are 4-6 slotted (pre-ED) with accuracy until I get to SOs. And yet, I hit a lot more as well.

Haven't tried it after ED since the only character I have made since then is a Corruptor Villain.

Originally bought this game as a Yule Present for my wife last year. The mushes she played had just fizzled out and it was different from The Sims 2 (which I also got her).

After she made a couple of characters the rest of us in the family got interested so we picked up a couple more accounts. Now just she and I have accounts but we both still play.

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Not to mention that if someone needs to look up something like "Where is the magic store in talos..." The guide won't respond with "OMG just use your map n00b!"

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But it's on your map! No looking up necessary, hit M!

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But it isn't though is it? Yes, all stores are listed on your map. You have a number of $ symbols on your map equivalent to the number of stores in the zone but it doesn't say which one is the Magic Store or which is the Technology store.

If someone like myself buys these binders because we want to what problem does it cause anyone else? It is our money and our decision. It doesn't effect overall game play.

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And on top of that, what information could be in that guide that isn't available on these forums or on one of the many excellent fansites? -boggle-

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Doesn't really matter if it doesn't contain anything that can't be found on these forums, except that it should have one item these forums do not. An Index. This will make information easy to find within the guides. The forum's search engine really sucks to put it in its best light. Add to that the fact that posts are deleted every two weeks for whatever reason and having everything in a central location is good. Besides these are binders, I want to add something from the forums then I just print and add it. Voila, up-to-date guide.

If the COV one has decent information on base building which is cryptic (pardon the pun) on these forums at best, then it will be worth it to me.

I plan on buying both soon.

Well considering 90% of all missions are instanced then people are most likely in instanced zones and only use the city zones for traveling. With the number of zones it would be easy to not see 1000 heroes in a gaming session. With Peregrine Island, you can run missions for days without ever leaving portal corp.

Now with the contacts giving phone numbers earlier there is even less reason to hop, skip and jump to them after every mission. Just call them up and go to the next instance.

Was on Virtue earlier and there were 2499 other players on it combined through COV and COH. Before the COV launch, Virtue usually only had 1600 people on it during US primetime.

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Seemingly, we lost sight of a basic principle of Design: players shouldn’t make uninformed choices.

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Too bad the entire concept of building characters is based on uninformed choices. The manual doesn't list all the effects of every power, it is not updated for every release. There is no place within the game to find out how much benefit you get from power A over power B, you don't tell us how much benefit we get from slotting a power. Uninformed choices seem to be the rule rather than the exception. What is the big deal about not releasing effect numbers? Let us have them.

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Because people get too caught up in the numbers and try to quantify their "fun" using those numbers. "Fun" cannot be boiled down into a math equation. We don't need the numbers. Better, clearer descriptions? Yes, that we DO need. But the numbers themselves are not necessary.

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Not trying to quantify fun via math equations. If I have an option to choose two powers and what the most defense/attack/debuff/etc... possible and it says that Power A gives 10% benefit and power B gives 12% benefit then I want to be able to choose power B.

I haven't done a single math equation since playing this game. I hate math. Still I would like to know the base benefit each power gives for better informed decisions. If you don't you don't have to use it. No one would be forcing you to.

To me the phrase no uninformed decision means exactly that. That means everything needs to be out on the table for people to make their choices.

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Seemingly, we lost sight of a basic principle of Design: players shouldn’t make uninformed choices.

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Too bad the entire concept of building characters is based on uninformed choices. The manual doesn't list all the effects of every power, it is not updated for every release. There is no place within the game to find out how much benefit you get from power A over power B, you don't tell us how much benefit we get from slotting a power.

Uninformed choices seem to be the rule rather than the exception. What is the big deal about not releasing effect numbers? Let us have them.

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Would bases only be allowed to be built in the CoV/CoH PvP combat zones?

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I certainly hope not. I have a character who is her own supergroup and I want her base/warren to be in the middle of the Perez Park maze.

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And I suppose Sally could be considered the same, but she's weird and odd.

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Sally only has 1 hitpoint so whoever gets the first hit, wins.

Issue 5 is an interesting peace of work. The changes to missions are interested and can lead to fun. However the changes to the powers are disheartening and often lead to debt. It is really such a shame that some of the creative talent that goes into mission and zone design cannot be used to balance powers. I am currently playing defenders and now I cannot solo missions if I can't find a team. I could before Issue 5 and what makes me wonder is why I can't now because defenders weren't touched much. I have to wait until I outlevel my missions because I can handle them solo on Heroic. That isn't my idea of fun.

Multiple times alternatives are posted that would achieve the same things the developers are striving for without constantly reducing powers. They are hardly ever even acknowledged or looked at. Once a course of action is decided upon, then nothing else matters. Is listening to and responding to your customers that difficult? You seem to be able to talk about your conference trips, contests and the like enough but you can't get patch notes to NCSoft in time for a timely update? You don't give power information to the customers and yet you say "No uninformed decision".

There is a suggestion and feedback forum here, it would be nice if you used it more often and implemented some of the very good ideas in there. It would be nice if there was a quality of life patch which fixed the almost 200 known issues listed in the Training Room forum. Cryptic obviously has a vision for this game that is spectacular. It would be nice if the implementation was more rounded.

Personally, I don't like the plans to carry things from the CCQ and PnP RPG into the online game. They are trying to force people to spend money. I have time for either an online game or a PnP RPG. I prefer online at this time. Those who don't use these other products will lose out in the long run. I have no interest in novels, CCGs or RPGs. I can understand why they are doing it but I would rather they concentrate on the current issues in COH first, especially with a new MMO on the horizon.

20 years ago? These would be right up my alley... Today there is too much going on in family life.

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You know that all you americans descend from europeans?

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Not all of us... Some of us had family native to these lands 10,000 years ago.

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ramen eating Europeans.

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What's wrong with Ramen?