AquaJAWS

Whenever they have a patch, at least in the recent years, its been applied Tuesday mornings. They may not always have a patch, but I've just grown to expect the servers to be down for a bit Tuesday.

Now, historically, the first month or two after a new issue has come out, like one did last week, you could expect bigger maintenances on Tuesdays (or more often than that) as bugs and exploits get fixed that weren't caught until after they went live and had true stress laid on them, which Issue 20 has had more of that happening that any issue in recent memory, but even light issues have it to some degree, and issue 20 isn't a light issue.

I would venture to say that you can probably expect situations like this to happen more often around issue releases. Its always a possibility whenever they apply any patch which will happen every week or so just after an issue.

Relax. Its going to happen from time to time. Nobody and nothing is perfect and no amount of QA testing or planning will catch EVERY possible problem EVERY time and things just go wrong sometimes. This is the devs trying to make the game better for us. Just some things can't be done when there are thousands of people playing it.

As far as them not telling us that its going to take longer, usually they have if its been more than just a little bit over. If they aren't, it probably means they are getting close and to formulate up a post and put it up here to tell us they're going to be late actually would take longer than actually getting the game running. Usually they don't know they'll be done that long until they're in the middle of it and they are already down. In that case, I would rather have them back there hunkered down trying to fix it than spending their time and responding to everyone and posting about the servers being down for an additional 15 minutes.

These complaints have not been my experience at all. The first night or two, the teams I was on failed quite a bit. Was initially trying to go in solo via the TUT and Turnstile feature. After a night or two, there were several leagues being formed in the coop zones and then entering the turnstile, thus preforming the group instead of going with random people. That works very very well. The leaders knew what to do and clearly (mostly) communicated and led the team to victories.

Also from what I've seen, with the pre-formed groups, the people who do know what to do and when have gone through, made sure everyone had the League channel in their chat window to see communications, communicated the plan, asked if there were any rookies, or any questions before going into the turnstile. Everyone's cooperated. And the majority have been successful.

Since about Thursday night, I've only failed 2 BAFs and never failed a Lamda. One of the failed BAFs was an attempted master run, where we were off killing one of the AVs by one second, and they rez'd each other, and just overrun us afterwards, and we ran out of time ultimately. Not bad for a lot of first master run attempts. The other failure, some of the teams didn't follow the instructions properly and improperly positioned themselves for the prisoner escape and just missed too many. Was their frustration...yes, but we just regrouped, communicated the changes in strategy, and we were completely successful the next run.

Most other missions in this game (with a few exceptions, usually the newer stuff, but still can take this approach some of the time) can all be completed with simply overpowering a few tougher baddies and still win. These are the first real content in the game that truly depends on team cooperation all the way around in order to succeed. If your team doesn't work together and cooperate and employ strategy you will not beat these trials.

But it only takes one person to know what to do and to be able to communicate that. Suddenly...dozens of people have an idea of what to do to beat these things. Are the more difficult than the rest of the game...yes. Are they so difficult that an average team can't get it, not at all.

I think about the only interface proc that will have an effect (outside of the little floating icons that usually accompany debuff effects) will be the reactive interface with the fire damage over time.

Destiny definitely has a very obvious effect. That (as well as some of the summoning effects from Lore and the look of your Judgement powers) can be customized at the tailor.

I know I've gotten several shard drops in trials. Got threads in the same trial. I don't remember anything saying shards DON'T drop in trials just as they do anywhere else. Just threads ONLY drop in trials. Remember the shard drop rate is much lower than threads...and I know in the BAF, you really don't do too much killing. You might only get one or two on a trial depending on how much the RNG likes you.

So far, LOVE issue 20 for the most part, however I have complaints but some are too big to address quickly. But I do have a few ideas so far that are a bit of an annoyance or a wish-list that are QOL additions that would help out a lot, and they might actually be able to push out in a hotfix or something.

1. A way to get a 'beep' sound effect when a new message comes in on the League channel.
   
   Its very helpful when the Team channel makes that noise. Lets you know someone is trying to get everyone's attention, and it could be crucial for coordinating the players to do something with these new trials. While fighting its very easy to get caught up in the fight and not see something that pops up in the league channel.
   
   Ideally I would like a selection of various different 'beep' sounds and a way to assign different sounds to different channels, like supergroup, coalition, team, league, tell, any of the server channels you sign up for, wentworths, etc. But just an option to turn the league beep would greatly help with the new trials and such
   
   
2. Separate the incarnate power customization UI by tree instead of slot.
   
   While I love that we can customize the look of the incarnate powers, the UI is a bit cumbersome for it. With 9 powers for 4 trees (and more trees on their way according to the USTREAM), with each tree being a different pallet selection and category(?, bright, dark, custom colors, etc), its a lot of powers to get to all look how you want. Granted, currently most players using this are only going to have 1 judgement power for example and will only have to update that one. But eventually people are going to get multiple, and customizing powers costs money (or free costume tokens) at the tailer, and fixing more than one and getting the various trees to match is cumbersome.
   
   I would like to see the trees broken up into separate powerset groupings on there. This will let me, a lot more quickly than now, go through and say I want all my pyronic powers to look this way with this color choice, my void powers to look this way, my ion powers to look this way, and my cryonic powers to look another way, each with different colors and pallets and such. Using the option to sync all the colors in the powerset, I can customize each separately pretty quickly.
   
   Currently, you can set them all to be bright, or dark, or custom colors. But only ion and pyronic use bright and dark, and void and cryonic use the custom colors pallets. Then if you want to have all your fire have different colors than your ice or void, you have to go through and set each one's colors to the same thing. Breaking them up would allow someone to go in on each of their (up to 5) costumes, add the 4 power customizations across all their judgement slots, and move on with ease. Now, you've got to hit each of the 36 possibly to get them customized I'll bet a lot of people are going to want to do so they don't have to hit the tailor each time they upgrade their judgement power slotted or get inspired by a new costume idea.

Just my thoughts for stuff that might be quick and easy for them to update in a patch or squeeze into Issue 21. I know usually they have things all planned out months (or years) in advance, but if they are looking for small things that will make some people much happier without much work.

It happened to me once last night. Some of the details and specifics are fuzzy at this point but to the best of my knowledge

Virtue
24 players/3 full teams
BAF
Early morning eastern time. I'd say between 2 am and 4 am
Predefined group.

We all met in the RWZ 3, the leader (I think he was Y2KING) organized the league, started the queue. We all got in. Shortly after getting in, we all zoned back to the RWZ, in the same place, but the team/league was no longer formed and we had to rebuild it. Can't remember if it said "You have quit your team" or whatever, but I was no longer on one.

There are lots of new things today. They just pushed out issue 20. The post level 50 stuff is the Incarnate stuff. Your best bet will be to look at the wiki, which i'm sure someone will have a link shortly.

Since Issue 12 real quick...
VEATS
Day Jobs
Architect Entertainment
Lots of TFs
Power Customization
Super Sidekicking
Ultra Mode
Going Rogue (highly suggest you buy)
Incarnate TFs, Trials
Weekly Strike Forces

My guess is they wanted the new WST to be the new trials that just came out, however they didn't want to spoil that issue 20 was definitely going to be out by that point they announced the WSTs.

Pure speculation on my part though, but I think it makes sense.

Basic History:

City of Heroes and City of Villains started out as two separate games (same universe, but very little cross over), but are now considered one game. You get one, you get the ability to create and start characters in the other. Heroes start off in Paragon City (commonly refered to as the Blue-side). Villains start off in the Rogue Isles (Red-side). Later on in the game there is some cross faction gaming in certain zones.

City of Heroes: Going Rogue is an expansion to the original two games that kinda did the final merging and allowed characters that started off as heroes (or villains) to cross over and become the other faction or jump back and forth in a grey area and play in both areas through completing various missions.

It also opened up a new lower-level content area to start in called Praetoria, that allows you to go to either Paragon City OR Rogue Isles once you reach the end of that area's content (level 20), as well as some new end-game content to allow further character development past level 50 (the game's long standing level cap).

There are many other details around this, including what archetypes can start in what area that are all spelled out in the wiki. Basics: Both Red and Blue sides have 7 possible starting archetypes (5 standard and 2 epic. Epics are unlocked by reaching level 20 on their respective side), for a total of 14 different archetypes. All can start crossing over from one side to the other at level 20. Praetoria allows any of the 10 standard archetypes to start with, and you chose where you go at level 20.

As far as buying the client, if you buy a box in a store, its most likely now the City of Heroes: Going Rogue - Complete Edition, which gets you City of Heroes/Villains AND the Going Rogue Expansion (as well as a free month and a few other costume bits, bonus powers, etc). You don't even need to buy a box though. The client to play with is a free download online, however you'll need a subscription and you won't get the Going Rogue expansion. Just the expansion is available as a add on to your subscription separate online as well.

For what its worth, if you want to try the game out past the trial, get the Going Rogue expansion. It opens up some of the newer and more fun content in the game especially for lower levels, and gives you a lot more options for game progression.

Another factor I've noticed, though I'll admit that it may be completely based on perception and have no basis in reality, is I tend to get more rare (purples, etc) drops right after a new issue or patch comes out that adjusts the reward tables and what drops. I've just told myself it must be because they do some kind of 'reset' of the PRNG that causes them to drop more frequently. But it could just be my perception as well.

But yes, 3 runs is far too small of a data sampling for the random number generator. In reality to get a truly valid sample you'd need thousands or more samples. As you gather more data, with random numbers, the results will even out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers

If you like new toons, and have the Going Rogue expansion, roll a new character in Praetoria. You can create any of the 10 non-epic ATs to start in a completely new world for levels 1-20. Some fun and interesting stories and new mission mechanics over there. Be warned, some would say its a little harder than the Primal starting zones.

For after level 20, there are new tip missions that give you the ability to switch sides, from hero to villain, or villain to hero and back. There are also a few new arcs in there as well.

For level 50, there is the Alpha Slot and incarnate stuff. The alpha slot is a way to continue your advancement past level 50 and expand your abilities more. After you've obtained that, you can slot it with various global enhancements and it opens up a few new task forces.

The majority of the new stuff is exclusive to those who bought Going Rogue. If you haven't, there are a few new things, but would still HIGHLY recommend picking it up, especially if new stuff is what you're looking for.