BlueRaptor

Yes, hero side is usually more populated, after all it has more content, way more zones, and 10 different starting contacts plus other low level options as opposed to Snakes in Mercy or Snakes in Mercy on villain side, and thus much greater replayability value.
Also, most players seem to start out on hero side and only later occasionally peek into villains, where they get bored even faster than if they had started out there as a good deal of things are similar, they played the shared content already on hero side, and a some things on villain side are just simply more boring.

Also, hero archetypes tend to go more into extremes while villain ones are a bit more 'balanced' or multifaced, which can make them feel mediocre compared to heroes.

Yes, the sun shines more on the heroes than on the villains.

Yes, I was going to point that out, that it seems to be a more general issue with newly spawned enemies.
I always have the feeling that Rikti in an invasion battle are dead from pets or area effects before I can even target them.

I agree that PvP feels like a rather meaningless tacked on feature, that is hardly used.

There's nothing you miss if you dont ever PvP but the thrill of PvP by itself, and nothing that drags you into those zones.
But with the game being almost exclusively PvE, so are most of its players. Demanding that there is significant PvP content all of a sudden will not get you cheers from the players that like CoX because it has so little PvP, as they'd much rather have more PvE content that they can enjoy playing.
Yet as it stands there is nothing for PvE-ers to do in PvP zones. They are almost exclusively for pwning a less PvP-experienced player, which leaves mostly true PvP-ers and very few casual ones in those zones, and PvE-ers even less inclined to go in there.

The goal for the near future would thus be to create PvP content that mostly-PvE players can casually take part in and enjoy too.

Allowing a second build for each character so that you dont have to decide if you want to be good at PvE OR PvP is a good step. Introducing story arcs or as task force that place in a PvP zone, or PvP events that are objective-based where fighting other players only helps in preventing them from achieving their objectives (as suggested) would help too.

What I'd still love for the not so near future is a HUGE PvP zone that is pretty safe for one side at one end each, and a free for all combat zone in the middle, where real missions and story arcs take you into gradually more dangerous space on the other side of it.
(actually, that is what I thought City of Heroes would be like before I got it... )

Hm. I had a hard drive crash recently and now have the same Firefox installed as before, but without older versions having had a chance to interfere with it, and it got much better on Firefox and even an old Mozilla now. Dunno what caused it.

Problems are still there to full extent. I am also getting a lot of lag recently in the game (Triumph server when it was not full at all) but I hear I am not alone with that.

Well I doubt that malware that made it through my firewall affects explicitly cityofheroes.com while the rest works fine.
I am not running an anti-virus, My firewall didnt block anything when I attempt to load the page, I dont have any browser plugins installed (hate!) and I do not use a proxy myself.
And I did NOT have any problems with the old forum.

I really think the new pages are too overladden or complicatedly created in realtime for whatever funny route they have to take to me.


( Is there a chance of getting a plain html version perhaps? )

PS: Thanks for the link, but the GAME runs fine. Just laggy recently.

I dont know what you changed, but the new forum and site are a total worthless mess to me.

Bigger images like the background one NEVER load properly, always having errors, menus are wonky, each page takes forever to load, and upon several reloads either: gets Content Encoding Error, goes blank, stalls, loads only partial, or loads with severe errors, and only after I click reload like a madman MIGHT come up, slowly, if I am lucky.

The forum is unusable like that for me. It took me over half an hour to get here and post this. Perhaps the new one is just too uber-spiffy and overladden with images and functionalities the tubes it has to go through to me? I never had any problems like that with the old forum.

Sitting in Europe, US account, Windows XP SP2, Firefox 3, 1000 Kbit connection on a new and potent machine. And yes, I normally can haz internets fine.

(edit: on IE or other browsers I have the CoX site/forum doesnt work either)

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So I should get less XP on my already-terrible-for-XP arc because I think it's a lot of fun to try it with different characters?

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Sure, since all your characters share missions and XP.
What? Since when does a mission that one of your characters does ever affect your others?

I think allowing ONE epic AE arc per account that can use a little more space would not hurt.

And maybe if then enough people click that you are the god of writing epic AE arcs you get another extra-sized slot? O: )

I'm still for each AE arc only giving full XP the first time you finish it.

Its what it's meant for. Play lots of different interesting custom missions.
Not replay the same very rewarding one over and over.

Well if you do switch to a new system,
Could you have each topic by default have a little poll on how much the readers agree with the suggestion or point brought up, and on how much they think it is a really important issue?

That way, you devs can easily see where the really big problems are.
(Especially if it doesnt only show "Readers fully agree/ support" (e.g. topic icon is green rather than red) and "Readers think this is a big issue" (e.g. icon is BIG rather then small), but also if few people have voted on that (e.g. icon is faint/greyish) or many.)

Well exploit or not, there are not-intended and hindering-what-was-intended behaviours.

MA was, imo, created so people can play and experience lots of different interesting new stories.
Wheter doing the same especially rewarding mission over and over again is an exploit or not, it is clearly not what was intended.
And if such tactics are WAY more rewarding than the intended ways to play the game, and that results in noone playing the intended content anymore, then it is working against the game and it is totally understandanble that something is done against it.

Never been much a friend of such rating systems, but if 5 starts only means you get much XP per time and risk, and the really 'good' as intented arcs are duried deep down in the list instead, that is working against the intended purpose as well.

Personally I'd give the biggest part of the rewards only upon completing a story arc for the first time.
I dont know how the ids for such arcs are handled though, or how to tell minimal changes apart from a new and enhanced version or totally different story in the same slot.
But not granting any completion XP for own arcs would already help too.

I saw that happen today too when I porbed the MA some more and found that neat for my use, but thought it was rather meant to only spawn a single enemy and it scaled down to zero because there were no minions in that custom group and I was solo or some.
Does that actually mean no guards whatsoever? That'd be cool. They should call it "None" then though.

It would be a neat idea if it worked.
But you can only do this for captives, not for allies.
The difference being that the captive turns hostile when you make its guards allied.

An Ally always needs hostile gurads, you cannot even give him no guards, not even when freeing him is not a mission goal, as it seems.

I'm actually pretty stuck myself with trying to do a mission where in the end a lot of good and bad guys just stand around and wait for you to attack one of the bad guys, then all fight.

-You cannot have any allies that you dont have to find and rescue first, as it seems.

-You cannot have any missions that are not filled with enemies.
(Sounds like it doesnt make much sense to have empty maps, but maybe you want an intermission within an arch where stuff is explained, or search something in a deserted area, or want all enemies to come in as ambushes)

-You cannot give your custom enemies (or allies) a power.
You can only give them a powerset. I'd for example like pulse rifles for a sci-fi scenario, but can only have them in combination with the ability to spam robots.

Request: Can we please choose one single power in addition to the two sets?
It wouldnt make the enmies any easier so no farming issues arise, but allow a LOT more customization.

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"No Caves/No Rescues" is said in team chat often.
<whining about it>

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Brave heroes indeed.

I do agree with Fredrik though, like I think I said in a post about putting more variety into the tilesets, that in no matter what cave they have to make up their mind whether its supposed to have lava pits or dripping water and mushrooms, and especially whether it has them mining tracks and constructions.
Either it does or it doesnt. A wild mindboggling potpourri of a bit of all of them really looks ridiculous and doesnt make the cave as such more interesting either.

I only say that if, through whatever means, a player of a given level on one side can accumulate more cash/ more drops than a player of the same level on the other side, it becomes unfair for the latter if the markets are merged.

Not saying that is the case or that its blue side that has the sunshine (although that is usually the case ), just that its something one needs to consider and yet another thing that would have to be balanced then, while its not so much a problem if the markets are seperated.

I dont mind that room and I dont want those caves to go.
Not every hide-out has to be built for utter hero convenience and not every single room has to be comfortably big and easy to overview. Making a not-so-huge character helps there by the way.

I like variety and if some hideouts are small and maze-y, then so be it.
I only dislike said room being so overused, and because it is always the same. Whenever these caves have a big boss-room, it is always this one stupid room. If there were several different big rooms, even with several layers, I wouldnt even mind so much I think.

Wow, got long again indeed.

While I dont think both supply and demand growing would be a problem by itself, I still think that before merging the markets they'd have to make sure that on both sides you get the same amount of inf and drops per level.

For demand is triggered by levelling and needing new stuff then, and supply is generated from what you got while getting there.

Otherwise, e.g. if both get the same amount of drops but on one side you get more cash per xp for example for preventing streetcrime, one side will always be able to buy the better stuff from a merged market because they can outbid the poor side.

OK, if merits make rewindable content like TFs so much more rewarding than completing story arcs I agree it is a bad idea.

Also if you can always choose lots of merits over one random rare recipe that is indeed the death of the market. I see prices of 50 or 80 million for even the second- and third-best choices for IO sets on red side already and constantly a high demand and zero for sale, most often over the entire level range of the enhancement. If an hour or two worth of merits can buy you what 80 millions cant, the only things that will ever hit the market are accidental buys and those removed with a respec.

I like incentives to complete story arcs or defeating important characters.
Since badges seem to be attached to those criteria rather randomly, I appreciate merits.

The Merit Vendors though... they are spamming. I mean it.
(Given the IO recipes cost in the hundreds of merits, it will take you how long until you need to go to one of them? There wont be more turning in of merits than turning in of candy canes during the winter event, and for that one single guy is sufficient too.
Now its OK to rub it into players faces while the feature is new, but in the long run, I think the streets can go with half the abundance of merit-vendors easily, given how rarely you need one.)

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The real issue isn't # of zones specifically it is lack of choice in missions and certain villain types who just don't appear in any quantity (except possibly in PvP zones).

I'd settle for 25% more missions whether they are in an existing zone or not. Badge hunting is a harder thing to fix because it spans all levels.

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That pretty much sums up my opinion on that. It is annoying that there are so few zones and you move from one to the next like to a new level in a sidescroller game, but one has to give them that the zones are bigger or at least not feeling as empty as most hero zones.
But its the lack of choices and things to do. Brought up lots of time in opther topics I wont re-rant on it, just add that I think most people do start out with a hero char first, it is easier and you are more supported, story-wise.
When you then make a villain, you already have seen hero side and just have to notice that there is way less to do from start on. No fancy gathering spot, only two contacts, same boring snakes missions, no auction house nearby, .. and it doesnt get much better with the forced paper and bank missions, plus it feels more like City of Lackeys.
I can totally see the point where you rather make another hero than another viallain because of the less-liked-stepson treatment villain side gets content-wise.

I am all for more freedom to break out of the strict hero / villain prison. It feels especially artificial when both sides do perfectly the same things in most missions, but when you stop an arms deal as a villain it is evil and when you beat the guts out of poor sickened townsfolk as a hero it is good. Because your label says so.
(Contacts also rather frequently give you missions that feel like being on the other side, sometimes even stating things like "I know it may seem weird to help this villain organisation as a hero / sound weird to help the good guys... ". Its perfectly what the original poster describes, so character-wise there is little that would speak against helping the other side occassionally for greater good (or evil ). )

<dream> and maybe if there are choices added how to act in those missions where agents from the other side make offers, and they give you points for how evil or good your choices are... oh the prospect of side switching. O: ) Twice the amount of archetypes to team with... I'd even give the character's unlsotted possessions for a switch </dream>

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Could the Control output of the Mainframe or the Prestige cost of the Mainframe be re-examined? It currently provides only 50 Control, whereas the combo generator provides 75 Control.
-Kirov

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Well that's totally fine I find, mechanism-wise, as the combo unit is for getting relatively much as a bargain to start with so you can have some stuff early, and that is why you can only have one. It needs a pretty huge room for that too, it really is a startup solution for new and/or small groups, and does good that way I think.
(*snickers* smaller laptops are always more expensive than clunky ones too, even )

What I would rather like to see is the control terminals, corner or not, being the same or even higher control per cash rate than the database. Right now they take up more space and WAY more auxiliary slots thant just sticking a database there, so having a cool looking control room with rows of those terminals is really something one has to pay hard for.