Avatea

It’s true, we’re on Twitter and we’re getting ready for San Diego Comic-Con next week. Don’t miss out on our antics! Follow CoH_OCR and we’ll keep you up-to-date on all the excitement as it unfolds. You never know what could happen…we just might go tweet happy and you could benefit BIG TIME (especially if you’re at the show with us). So hurry and start following CoH_OCR today!!!

Note: Be on the lookout for our official Paragon Studios Twitter page coming very soon!

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So no TA fix.. It couldnt be that hard putting the pet back to hostile?

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Never assume that something can easily be done And when it can be done, never assume it can be done in a matter of minutes.

Further to the MotD that was deployed ingame a couple of weeks ago, please be aware that the next Double XP Weekend will be on in 2 weeks:

Start: Friday, 31 July 2009, at 8:59 a.m. British Summer Time/9:59 a.m. Central European Summer Time

Finish: Sunday, 2 August 2009, 8:59 p.m. BST/9:59 p.m. CEST

The next person who writes "animated hair" on the forums gets a voodoo curse performed by me to make sure their hair in real life becomes as in-animated as ingame hair....oh wait gel that does that already. Curses!

*makes a note to include "animated hair" in the future forum's filter*

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"Power Spectrum"? That ranks with "Power and Responsibility" as the crappest issue title yet

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And apart from this helpful piece of feedback, would you care to share your invaluable suggestion with us?

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Although I've spotted an error already - you've listed Betty Page's eye colour as hazel, when they're amber in the illustration.

You FOOLS!

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It depends on the lighting :P

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Still, it's annoying, and as Dave stated, there is no indication of when it will get 'unlocked' again. Do you perhaps have an answer to that?

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The block is in place for 24 hours after the 3rd purchase has taken place on one card.

I wish! That was an annoying problem that could be addressed quickly though.

Bon il faut que je me souvienne qu'impromptu ne veut pas dire qu'il faille se passer de règles. Il faut éviter d'embrouiller les gens qui font l'effort de se déplacer ! Je ferai mieux la prochaine fois mais merci pour les sushis en tous les cas !

J'étais dans les égouts pour vérifier quelque chose et je me suis dit que c'était une bonne occasion pour un petit jeu impromptu réservé aux petits niveaux.

Trouvez-moi dans les égouts abandonnés et je vous donne un code de costume spécial :

1- Harlequin

2- PPD

3- Freakshow

Attention ceci n'est valable que pour les personnages de niveau inférieur à 9 !

Release Notes for Build 19.20090702.5T2.

<h2>COMBINED</h2>

Animation

<ul>[*]Characters will now animate, draw weapons and show auras in character creation, tailor and critter creation.[/list]

Just when you thought the customisation in City of Heroes® couldn't get any more expansive...

Paragon Studios is proud to announce Issue 16: Power Spectrum which contains one of the most requested features asked for by players - the ability to color customize powers! With the new Powers Customisation system you can choose from a virtual rainbow of colors in order to change the appearance of your power effects.

But that's not all Issue 16 has to offer! This content update will also continue our Powerset Proliferation as well as adding Enhanced Difficulty Options.

Visit the Official Issue 16: Power Spectrum Overview Page for all the details. Then get ready to see what happens when pigments fly!

By: Matt “Positron” Miller, Senior Lead Designer, Paragon Studios

When Going Rogue was in the planning stages, we knew that we would need a couple “poster-children” to encompass what “Going Rogue” meant. We needed a Hero and a Villain to cross over to the other side and show to the world, and our players, that yes, this can and will be possible for your character too.

We originally thought that we would take existing Signature characters and migrate them to the other side, but since we did the “Trading Places” storyline in the comic (where Manticore joins up with Arachnos), it seemed we couldn’t do that without someone tying it back to that comic storyline where (spoilers ahead!) Manticore was only faking and was actually a Hero the entire time.

So that meant we needed a Hero-gone-bad and a Villain-gone-good. Looking back into my stable of old RPG super-heroes I remembered a gun wielding vigilante I used to play called Maelstrom. Since we really wanted to get a dual pistols Powerset into Going Rogue I thought that he would be a great guy to dust off and bring to life in the City of Heroes universe. Like all creations, he went through many iterations before the final look and style was settled for him. The Going Rogue version and the RPG version from years ago are pretty much two distinct entities now, and I just love what our concept team was able to do to modernize him.

That took care of our vigilante Hero, but I still needed a redeeming Villain. I looked to the other powerset we wanted to put into Going Rogue, Demon Summoning. This was a Mastermind set, so it was already exclusive to villains, making it obvious that whoever we came up with was going to be a demon summoner.

Desdemona was the hardest to nail down a name for. We had gone through many iterations of her name, everything from Pandora to Eve to Demonatrix to Parable. We were never happy with any of them, until Melissa Bianco (War Witch, our Senior world designer) came up with Desdemona. It fit the character perfectly and instantly became her name in the story bible. We loved that she had such an “evil” powerset, but found herself in a situation where she wanted to use her powers for good.

Personally I love the way both characters turned out. During the concepting phase Desdemona had a lot of skin showing around the neck so we were trying out various jewelry and collars to break things up. Then I realized if this girl was summoning demons, she’d probably want something mystical to keep them from controlling her. That’s when I came up with the idea of a tattooed “circle of protection” encompassing her mind, that demons couldn’t penetrate and was permanently part of her body.

Maelstrom’s power source was also a great idea. Ken Morse, the Lead Artist, wanted something that evoked “Maelstrom” more than just the name, and so his idea was to having this glowing, swirling, energy source in his chest. I think the end result was awesome.

Sharp-eyed fans will note that we’ve been working on these two characters for a while, as they had their “birthdays” listed in the online calendar we released for the fourth anniversary of City of Heroes, over a year ago. Although Desdemona was listed as Pandora on that calendar, it just shows how fluid, and long, some of these ideas take to come to fruition.

For the next Dev Diary, Joe “Hero 1” Morrissey will detail new information on Tyrant, err, I mean Emperor Cole, and the world of Praetoria where he and his Praetorian Guard hail from.

We do have a stringent security system in place attached to the NCsoft store but please realise that this is for your protection. The last thing we want is for a fraudster to use someone else's card to purchase a lot of items at once before the legitimate owner can react. At least now any potential damage is limited.

The European City of Heroes servers will be offline for maintenance on Thursday 16th July 2009.

Start Time: 8AM British Summer Time (9:00 Central European Summer Time)
Expected Duration: 2 hours
Expected Finish Time: 10AM BST (11:00 CEST)

We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience!

You knew they were coming, and now they are officially here. Cater to your inner mad scientist and/or indulge your creative design genius by purchasing the Super Booster III: Superscience pack or additional Mission Architect story slots!

<h2>Mission Architect Story Slots:</h2>

Just can’t stop designing Mission Architect game play masterpieces? Well now you can increase your repertoire! Additional Mission Architect story slots are available for purchase (1, 2 or 5 them for £3.49 / 4,99€, £5.99 / 8,99€, and £11.99 / 17,99€ respectively) up to a maximum of eight slots per game account.

* Note: Existing rules applicable to inherent story slots also apply to purchased story slots. Having one of your published stories awarded with Dev's Choice will free up one of your slots but getting one of your published stories suspended will result in that particular slot being unavailable for the duration of the suspension.

What are you waiting for? Put those creative juices to work! Login to the character select screen and click on the "Enter Store" to buy additional story slots and then share your new design creations with your City of Heroes® brethren!


<h2>Super Booster III: Super Science</h2>

Cater to your inner mad scientist by purchasing the Super Booster III: Superscience pack—now available for purchase at the NCsoft store for £5.99 / 8,99€!

You don’t have to be a chemistry or biology enthusiast to love it! Get your hands on new science themed costume pieces, emotes, and costume change emotes.

But there’s more! The Super Tailor is a new Tailor NPC called the Cosmetic Surgeon, located near existing Tailors and enabled through purchase of Super Booster III: Superscience. The Cosmetic Surgeon can modify your character's height, build, body type, and even gender in each of your costume slots. Transform from a 98-pound weakling into a huge beast! Experience spontaneous gender reversal! These amazing things are possible with—science!


Go here to purchase Super Booster III: Superscience and get your mad scientist groove on!

As for the Super Science Booster Pack and Mission Architect Story slots, we should be able to give you an update on this later today.

Release Notes for Build 19.20090702.4T

<h2>COMBINED</h2>

Animation

<ul>[*]Zenith Hoverbots will no longer loop their exploding death animation [*]Rikti Drones will no longer loop their exploding death animation[/list]
Badges

<ul>[*]Fixed a bug that would cause some players to earn nonexistent Arena badges and immediately have them revoked.[/list]
Emotes

<ul>[*]The basic /emote juggle now works while flying.[/list]
Invention System

<ul>[*]Damage resistance bonuses granted by Invention Origin sets like Aegis or Shield Wall will no longer be modified by archetype modifiers. This means that all archetypes will get the advertised bonus on the enhancement. [*]All damage proc effects in Invention Origin enhancements will now state the rate at which they will be triggered, the damage type they inflict and the measure of damage they inflict.[/list]
Mission Architect

<ul>[*]Removed powers from Destructible Object mission objectives that harmed or affected players in some way. These objects should simply explode upon reaching 0 health and have no secondary effects like buffing or debuffing players or causing damage to either enemies or players. [*]These changes will not affect on Mission Arcs that are marked as Dev Choice. [*]These changes will not affect on Mission Arcs that are marked as Guest Author [*]Destructible Objects that didn’t have a “glow” and sound pulse should now correctly have these effects [*]Fixed a bug where some players would receive an error message when entering an Architect mission (this error did not prevent players from actually entering the mission) [*]The Story Contact à “Contact Group” field will no longer reset to empty when editing a local or published arc. [*]When creating a Custom Boss and choosing the “Same as Boss” setting, the accompanying mobs will be the default Villain group of the mission in general. To circumvent this issue, you can use the Custom Tab for the accompanying mobs, and select the Custom group that the Custom Boss is in. [*]Removed Mending Mitochondria from Devouring Earth enemy group. [*]Custom Critters - Mercenaries summoning set - Attacks from this set should deal damage versus players now.[/list]
PVP Changes

<ul>[*]Fixed a bug where you could sometimes attack a player as they respawn in an Arena match [*]Changed Dominator PVP damage bonus to compensate for the improved base damage. [*]Fixed a bug where mez powers in PvP zones that were affecting NPCs were being limited to four seconds in duration. [*]Fixed PvP rewards to function once again. Now, influence, inspirations, and other normal rewards occur on every PvP kill, while PvP IO recipes can only be rewarded on rep-valid kills. [*]Fixed rep-validation to function in arenas, even though it doesn't give you any reputation in arenas. [*]Also lowering the rep timer from 10 minutes to 5 minutes. [*]Dominator - Energy Assault - Power Push now deals damage versus players correctly.[/list]
Recipes

<ul>[*]Fixed a bug where some recipes wouldn’t display tooltips when you moused over them[/list]
Supergroup

<ul>[*]Ranks 4 and higher can now invite Supergoups to chat channels[/list]
User Interface

<ul>[*]Fixed a bug where enhancements in the Auction House wouldn’t display tooltips when you mouse over them[/list]
<h2>CITY of HEROES</h2>

Powers

Kheldians

<ul>[*]Kheldians in Dwarf form should be able to utilize emotes again.[/list]
Tankers

<ul>[*]Tankers in Granite Armor should be able to utilize emotes again.[/list]
Hero Task Force – “Return of the Reichsman”

<ul>[*]Changed Task Force version of Reichsman’s Unbreakable power so it no longer requires a To Hit check on an opponent to make him phased. [*]Fixed the Dimensional Grounding Ray so that it can hit Reichsman while he is Phased. [*]Now using the correct (unkillable) version of Reichsman in mission 2 of the Reichsman Task Force[/list]
Scrappers

<ul>[*]Activating “Heightened Senses” with Claws out no longer plays the Slash animation.[/list]
<h2>CITY of VILLAINS</h2>

Powers

Brutes

<ul>[*]Brutes in Granite Armor should be able to utilize emotes again.[/list]
Masterminds

<ul>[*]The visual FX for Robotics - Pulse Rifle Burst should now sync with the attack animation [*]Power of Black Scorpion (Mastermind Version) now has the correct targeting information and help text. It also now works correctly when used on Reichsman. This power prevents Reichsman from using his Unbreakable power. If it is used while Reichsman is Unbreakable, it will prevent Reichsman from using it again. [*] Necromancy and Robotics Mastermind pets should be able to utilize emotes again. [*]Fixed punctuation issues in Mastermind Pet Response text strings.[/list]

The patchnotes will be posted in a moment. We try and deploy new patches as early as possible for us so it doesn't fall into the European peak time, however that also means there is nobody to post the patchnotes. These will be posted in a moment, thank you.

The European City of Heroes servers will be offline for maintenance on Wednesday 15th July 2009.

Start Time: 1PM British Summer Time (14:00 Central European Summer Time)
Expected Duration: 3 hours
Expected Finish Time: 4PM BST (17:00 CEST)

We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience!

Fret not, we should be able to make it available to all this week!

Ok if this going to end up being yet another tennis game. I'd rather just lock this thread and any other thread that will be treated this way.

You guys...

I understand that changes to the game or bugs can elicit a lot of agitation, but we are all passionate about something in City of Heroes, something that differs from one individual to another. Let's just not project our frustration at one another on these forums. Some say this is inevitable given the number of people and personnalities but we can at least minimise the casualties.

almost has an oxymoron for a forum name. Everybody knows DSs make you all fluffy inside.

Doh! That was a trap!

Oh well, if you can't have a little harmless fun every so often (harmless being the keyword here).

We can't be treading too cautiously when it comes to IP violation. With regards to the Korean offline character tool, I believe it is not meant to be used outside Korea but I'll have to get a confirmation on that.

If you are thinking of using or creating a similar tool that requires reverse engineering the game source, then I have to advise against it as it does go against our User Agreement (see section 3. LICENSE TO USE).

I know this is something that some of you would love to see us providing support for but right now I'm afraid this is just not feasible.