Cantatus

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Fantastic!!! Now open bases up to those who do not have CoV and we have ourselves a winner.

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Or buy CoV you cheap [censored]...

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Out of curiosity, how much is one month's sub?

I thought, I could be wrong, but I thought it was 19.99. That's what CoV's going for on the PlayNC page.

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$15, but I've actually seen CoV on sale for below that recently. You can get it at GoGamer for $14.90 +S&H, for example. No good reason to not take advantage of it when it's below $15. You actually end up getting the game for free (or even getting some money back) when you take the free month into consideration.

Oh, thinking about it, this'll be a good weekend to get some of those TFs out of the way I've been sitting on. Double exp might make it easier to find willing parties, and then I get double prestige at the same time.

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Double XP has been something other MMOs have done

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That explain...a bit. Maybe they have a BBM survey team coming this week-end to register the active playerbase heheheh

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You know, I have the reputation of a fanboi here, but even I can see this in a cynical light.

Look at the way this was announced. NC Soft told video game newsites before they told us here at the forums.

So perhaps this is just a way to get some good PR in the video game media to try to band-aid the wound caused by news of the recent NC Soft layoffs.

I think this weekend has very little to do with Cryptic or City of Heroes in particular. This seems to be a strictly NC Soft PR move.

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Yeah, i didn't even think about that option. That explains why they told the media first. And it also explains why only Co* is getting this benefit. It would be far too obvious if they did this for ALL NC Soft MMOs. As is, it just seems like a random act of kindness. Very good thinking Taser, lol.

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Aren't they doing this for Guild Wars too?

Meh. Was afraid something like this was coming considering they've been testing it. I don't want to outlevel arcs on my Warshade, so I guess he gets a vacation. Maybe I'll break out my level 50 and get prestige or finish off those inf badges those.

I wonder if this is why Dev's don't post as much as they used to.

I hope it's not nerf fire. Burned nerf smells awful!

I guess that explains why mobs run away from it? (Well that, and that that it sizzles their flesh...)

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Personally, I hate the word, and try never to use it when talking about the game to players. It carries a very negative stigma that I like to avoid whenever possible.

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So does this mean no more nerfs? Or are you just going to use a different word for it?

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Developers typically already do. Things are "rebalanced" or "tweaked" or "altered." It's pretty much all synonymous, but like Positron says, "nerfed" automatically illicits negative viewpoints. It's a very evocative term.

But rest assured, things will be "rebalanced," "tweaked," "altered" and even "nerfed" for years to come in any MMOG you play. Sometimes reductions in effectiveness/powers are just necessary whether we like it or not.

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If they lost a writer and Arcitc_Sun is still around then it was, sadly, probably Gilgamesh. Sorry to hear it, Gil!

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Or Captain Mako. He did a lot of the writing for CoV, and sadly we haven't heard from him in ages.

Of course, it seems like we hear from red names far less often than we used to.

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Manticore created all of the Freedom Phalanx characters aside from Statesman and Sister Psyche. (You can see the credits for this in the comic book credits.) That should give you some idea of his influence vis-a-vis the game heirarchy.

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He also didn't create Positron. Matthew Miller did.

Couple of issues with the male toga:

First one, when you wear a cape with the toga, the mantle floats over the right shoulder. Presumably this is because it rests on the left shoulder (where there is cloth.) (Screenshot)

The second is more annoying. If you zone with the toga and a cape on, the cape becomes detached from the mantle. (Screenshot) This can be fixed by switching from that costume to another and back again, however.

Not quite sure if this is a bug or not, but I noticed that when you choose "Full Masks" the "Victory Laurel" appears under "Detail 2" (eyes) rather than "Detail 1" (hats.) Seeing as the Victory Laurel is part of your hair under other options, it seems that this was catagorized incorrectly for "Full Masks."

Oh, and Jay is sexy. (The check is in the mail, right?)

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Now I'm wondering when we'll find out since the next book seems like it'll be another 20 year jump into the future.

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Next novel? This leads to the biggest spoiler in the book. There is no mention of the next book at all. No release date given, and no excerpt in the back. Prior to the title page of The Web of Arachnos there was a listing of the series giving tentative release dates for The Freedom Phalanx and The Rikti War, this one had no mention of The Rikti War in the same place.

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I'm just assuming the The Rikti War is still in the works. I'm keeping my fingers crossed anyhow. I am a little leary that it wasn't mentioned at all in this one. I'm doing some digging to see if I can find anything out though.

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In case it went over your head, Shadow Queen's mask IS Vanessa De Vore's mask. We can only assume in the 15 or so years between the book and the Rikti War Azuria lost it and it found it's way back to Italy to be found by Vanessa.

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Looking at it now, I can see how that can be inferred. I still stick my my assertion that it was fairly redundant, however.

But Azuria losing something? Makes sense...

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The biggest problem I had with this novel me was the way Laws represented Sister Psyche. She was demoted from long standing full-fledged hero to helpless female hostage. The only woman on the team and she was scarcely allowed to do anything heroic. Almost immediately after her first appearance in the book, she is sidelined and incapacitated.

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The thing I appreciated about the way he wrote it was that it gave us a ton of insight into how Sister Psyche's powers work. I suppose it could've been done in a different way though. Then again, the whole thing with her being a hostage was very integral to the book's plot. Remove that and a lot of stuff would've needed to have been rewritten.

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When Psyche did face off with the Shadow Queen – the only female hero squaring off with the only female villain (another tired cliché) – the showdown was in a toilet for Pete’s sake!

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I definitely agree with that being a cliched. One female hero and one female villain, so of course, they have to be rivals! Then again, aside from Protean and Manticore, all the other rivals had the same juxtaposition. Lord Recluse and Statesman got their powers from the place, as did Synapse and Revenant (torture), and even Positron and Dr. Bein.

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Yes, I’m a Sister Psyche fan. But I would have felt equally outraged if the helpless female captive was a non-powered ordinary woman - still a tired old convention and needs to be avoided.

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Shadow Queen is a "non-powered ordinary woman" to the extent that Positron is in the novel. They get their power from an external source. Many heroes would fall into this catagory, and that doesn't make them not be superpowers.

To expand on this though, I was really annoyed with how much Shadow Queen's power origins had in common with Vanessa DeVore's. A porcelain mask from Europe that is possessed by a spirit? You would've thought that someone during when the book was being written would've noticed those links and made Shadow Queen's unique.

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There are THREE Miss Liberty(s).
One is State's wife, Monica.
I suspect their daughter, Ms. Liberty, is Jessica.
Ms. Liberty's daughter, Miss Liberty, the Vindicator, is most likely Megan.

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Monica Ricter, married to Statesman is Maiden Justice.
Their daughter is MISS Liberty - retired but still around. Don't remember her name from the book...
Their granddaughter is MS. Liberty ('MIZ'), the Vindicator. According to the book, her name is Jessica.

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According to the book, Miss Liberty's real name is Alexis Cole.

In the book, Ms. Liberty's name is Jessica (which was also her name when her original background came out), but here on the forums Manticore - who is in charge of everything backstory - has said that her name is Megan.

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That's true, which brings up a lot of questions: Does Miss Liberty later have another child? Are Jessica and Megan one in the same and just a name change? Did Law get the name wrong?

Personally, I was a little disappointed that they didn't get into that story more. I've been looking forward to finding out who Ms. Liberty's father is since Manticore taunted us with it, and it seemed like this book would've been the perfect place for it to come up. Now I'm wondering when we'll find out since the next book seems like it'll be another 20 year jump into the future.

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Personally, that sounds to me like her father was/is possibly a villain of some kind. Would be a typical comic book mythos twist.

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And possibly another cliche.

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Wheeee! We won Best Community! Way to go guys!

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WoW was robbed!!

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* Lowered Empowerment Station recipe requirements. (Known Issue: requirements for recipes on Tech Empowerment Stations were not reduced. This is a bug and will be fixed in a later patch.)

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First off, the recipes for the Empowerment Buffs don't show unless you have the components for them. Not a huge deal, but might be good later on if there are more intricate recipes that require a broader variety. It'd be good to know which things I need.

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I thought that was an option? Has it changed with yesterdays patch?

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Yes. There used to be the little arrows that would expand the window of an item to show you the recipe. This is missing on Empowerment Stations.

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Yeah, but think PvP. Stalkers are already crying over FA; making +Per buffs in your base too cheap would make em throw even bigger fits...

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Precisely. As soon as this goes live, anyone with enough Salvage will be able to see Stalkers in Siren's Call without even needing IR goggles to do it.

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We've been told these stations are to buff up to get past a big hurdle in a mission. (Such as an Elite Boss.) These don't seem to be for PvP. 15 minutes is very irrelevant for PvP - if you got wrecked by a stalker this is still going to be within the 20 minutes of "no profit" time so you can't even get proper revenge.

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But isn't Perception pretty much useless in PvE?

And just an additional note: The temp powers still don't work in Nova or Dwarf forms.

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* Lowered Empowerment Station recipe requirements. (Known Issue: requirements for recipes on Tech Empowerment Stations were not reduced. This is a bug and will be fixed in a later patch.)

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First off, the recipes for the Empowerment Buffs don't show unless you have the components for them. Not a huge deal, but might be good later on if there are more intricate recipes that require a broader variety. It'd be good to know which things I need.

Secondly, the prices seem much more reasonable. Everything seems to have a requirment of between 1 and 4 Focis/Elements. The only exception seems to be invisibility, and I couldn't unlock that recipe even with 13 components.

So, in 20 levels of playing in SG mode, I've gotten enough salvage for 6 Foci and 7 Elements, which translates to about 6 buffs, or about 1 buff per 3 levels. Seem fair?

I posted all the recipe costs here.

I agree with what everyone else is saying. The prices for the buffs are quite ridiculous. My level 19 Warshade who has been playing in SG mode since creation only has enough salvage for 1-3 buffs. If these are supposed to help the little guys, they're not really doing their job.

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I think these tidbits really did help a lot. We've been in sort of an info blackout.

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/agreed.

I would not mind an informal 'Ask a Dev' series repeated.

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Gets my vote!

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Did you know...

That you used to still hear the sounds from the game after minimizing or alt-tabbing out? This was incredibly useful for people waiting for AFK players by listening to the "chat" sounds. I'm still miffed that they "fixed" this.

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Me too. I really wish they'd restore that and add an option to have it on or off.

I think I'm beginning to understand why Issues are moving further and further apart. The devs probably have to go through a few months in a mental ward before they're ready to tackle these sorts of things again!

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mistform, when people in your groups are leaving every 20 mins to go get buffs, I think you'll see what I mean.

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That might happen at first, and then the Salvage will start to run out. Hard to imagine, I know, but just think how quickly people will get through the stuff once it has some use.

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I think this will be one of those things where they'll really have to be careful with how they balance cost and effectiveness. If the buffs are too good and also cheap, people will want to get them all the time. If they're mediocre and expensive, no one will use them. I imagine the goal is to have them good enough that people want them, while priced where you'll have to wisely choose when you activate it.

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But, better to start at "too weak" and buff as needed, rather than "too strong" and nerf it, right?

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Bingo.

Making the buffs be Inspiration or Click-power like is just ASKING for abuse. Besides, that's the type of stuff the Invention System should deal with.

Empowerment stations are instant buffs. You are bathed in radiation/magic/etc. on the spot and get a bonus to your travel speed/lethal resistance/attack speed/endurance recovery/knockback protection/whatever you need at the time, right then and there.

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Ok, again reserving judgment until I can experience this for myself, but I'm not sure I understand the abuse side of this. If you make it so the empowerment stations give you a temp power that can only be used for 10 minutes, but only lasts for 20 minutes (like how the Nemesis Staff goes away after 3 days), how would that be open to abuse?

Honestly though, I don't see travel time as too big of a concern. Realistically, how much time does it take to get to a mission, especially when you have a base portal in every zone in CoV and every cityzone in CoH?

Also, is the invention system going to use salvage as well? If this isn't coming in I7, this might be something you want to clear up beforehand, otherwise you are going to have people upset that they used all their salvage stuff for buffs and wouldn't have anything to play with once Invention is implemented.

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That's a terrible idea. I thought you guys wanted to give us something cool and helpful. So bascially it is a power that you get because you died in your mission and rezzed in your base?

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But the thing is, these smaller SG bases aren't even going to have a hospital likely. So, instead of going there when you die, you'd have to run from the mission to the base and back to get buffed which, in CoH, could be extremely inconvenient if you're in someplace like, say, Moss Cemetary in DA.

Of course, I'm reserving judgment until these actually are on Test, but maybe they'd work better if they were more like Inspirations?

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Since the Malta group is trying to pull the strings and keep heroes in check, shouldn't they also be concerned about too many super powered villains as well?

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You'd think so. Perhaps they'll be 40+ content in CoV like in CoH?

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First, Mayhem missions aren't generally at the Portal Corp.

Second, Longbow is one of the groups you might be fighting. There are others.

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Third. Still sick of seeing Longbow and CoT...

Just saying...




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Statesman has an interesting power where he'll provide much needed and requested information, without addressing the main complaint in the thread.