Cantatus

[ QUOTE ]
Technical difficulties isn't the most interesting answer, but it is a reasonable one. We know it's not because they haven't thought of it, we know it's not because of story concerns, and we know that they'd like to do it. They just have some technical issues with pulling it off.

[/ QUOTE ]

A technical answer could also consist of a response like what many others have said as well: They can't add a trainer to Pocket D because it couldn't differentiate between heroes and villains and would train both. That's still a technical reason. The source code doesn't need to be trotted out to explain something like that, and I strongly doubt that that is what anyone is requesting. That's just hyperbolic. The devs have been able to explain reasons behind things many times before even if it's something that's prevented from a technical standpoint. MM pets not being able to zone into instances is a good example of this.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Could we maybe, I dunno, get explanations for when our ideas get shot down?

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh yes, sure. I am positive that Positron and Statesman will happily share all their source code with us.

I am also quite positive that at least 99.99% of the forumers wouldn't know what to do with source code if it came up to them and bite them on their behind.

Positron didn't shoot the trainer idea down. He simply states that there where some technical issues with it. This would typically mean that it is related to how the code is written.

[/ QUOTE ]

Way to overreact. No one is asking for their source code, and a reason behind this doesn't require a source code either.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Could we maybe, I dunno, get explanations for when our ideas get shot down?

[/ QUOTE ]

While Powerhelm's tone is a little more strident than I'd be here, I do agree with his questions here. If the ideas we're proposing aren't going to be used because of some kind of exploits, why not go ahead and tell us what those exploits would be? If the idea isn't going through, we're only dealing with hypotheticals anyway. The only outcomes would be either a) us working together, players with the devs, to try to address these exploits, b) the players see the problems the devs are facing, and back off some more, or c) the players and devs don't agree on the problems, and nothing happens.

A or B are better situations than that we have right now, which is pretty much identical to C.

[/ QUOTE ]

I concur.

[ QUOTE ]
There is at least one exploit which I can think of off the top of my head. You can target anybody in your friends window who is nearbye just by clicking on their name. That would allow you to target a hidden stalker friend or any other hidden friend for that matter. Even unhidden friends that were near enough could be found behind buildings or walls.

[/ QUOTE ]

Couldn't this just be solved by making it so you have to get consent from the opposite side before you add them to your friendlist? That way I couldn't just add every stalker to my friendlist while in Siren's Call without their permission. (Of course, I'll just point out this problem would already exist in a FFA zone like Warburg anyways.)

Personally though, I'd just be completely happy if the Global Friend list told you when someone on it logged in.

The inspiration thing is understandable to me if they're going to add villain/hero-only inspirations.

Adding to the friend list, however, is one of those things that's annoyed me since I found out about. Sure, I can't team with them or whatever, but it'd be nice to be able to see if one of my friends is playing CoV instead of CoH, so I can switch over to join him. I understand I can do it with Global Friends, but that isn't nearly as convenient as it doesn't tell you when a person logs on through Global. I don't like having to keep checking my Global Friend list just to see if my friend is playing the opposite game. I really don't see what problems this would cause either as long as they made it so a hero has to get confirmation to add a villain to their friendlist and vice versa.

[ QUOTE ]
Agreed. I would also further add: put villians on the Looking For Team list (only in that zone). It is SO hard to put together a team when all you can see is the good guys LFT.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I noticed that one myself. The only thing you can do to form a group in Pocket D is just to shout for people since you have no way of seeing anyone on the opposite team that's LFT.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Login and you get both

[/ QUOTE ]

Wait.
Both?

And is this "log in soon", "log in whenever", or "log in today"?

[/ QUOTE ]

Log in whenever up until whenever the event ends. If it's like the Christmas event, it'll be a month before it's removed. I'm sure there will be an announcement on the event's duration later today.

Oooh... I definitely have to make a Roman/Greek inspired character now. Maybe my creative dryspell regarding Heroes/Villains will be over.

If only you guys did this last year while I still lived in Austin.

[ QUOTE ]
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…

[/ QUOTE ]

Statesman, I think the main concern here is that previous to CoV's release, we were told both games would continue to get Issue updates and both games would be supported. With the announcement of Issue 7's features and it being brought up that Issues would start being spaced out even more, you can surely understand why people are beginning to question that commitment. Some of them, myself included, are perhaps afraid that this sets a tone of how Issues from here on out will be. From here on out are those of us who are playing our respective games exclusively to expect less content per Issue for the game as well as less frequently? That doesn't really sound like something to get excited about.

As it is, CoH has gotten next to no PvE content since Issue 5, and given the time between Issue 6 and 7 and that you've said Issues will be spaced out more, we'll be looking at nearly a year since Issue 5 in which we've gotten PvE content for CoH. Surely you can see where people will have a complaint about that given how frequently we received content prior to CoV's release.

So, I suppose my question is this: Is Issue 7 representative of how we should expect Issues for the foreseeable future? Or is Issue 7 finishing up CoV (so to speak) and Issue 8 will be when things are kicked into high gear? I ask this, because right now it looks like neither game is going to be able to get the support that CoH was able to get prior to CoV's release. I'm basing this on one Issue, however, and I'm sure you guys know what's going on much, much, much better than I.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I wouldn't mind if all Holiday event badges (including the accolades) were put under a new "Event" tab.

[/ QUOTE ]

You wouldn't, but Poz and I would. We are of the opinion that there are too many tabs there as it is.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree about there being too many tabs. Is it possible it could be changed to a pull-down menu instead?

[ QUOTE ]
Lets all do some simple math. Heroes have:


Atlas Park
Galaxy City..........................Kings Row
Skyway City.........................Steel Canyon
Perez Park............................The Hollows
Faultine.................................Boomtown
Independance Port.................Terra Volta
Talos Island...........................Dark Astoria
Brickstown.............................Creys Folly
Rikti Crash site......................Croatoa
Striga Isle.............................Founders Falls
Eden.....................................The Hive
Peregrine Island....................FireBase Zulu
The Chantry..........................The Cascades
The Storm Palace...................The Sewers
The Abandoned Sewer Network

And Villians have:

Mercy Island
Port Oaks
Cap Au Diable
Sharkshead
Nerva
St. Martial

Now, to crunch the numbers:

28 > 7

And you're all upset that Heroes don't get a new zone? Whaaat?

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah, but CoV's zones are much more fleshed out. Take out Hazard Zones in CoH, since there's barely any reason to use them, and the lists are much more comparable. CoV did away with Hazard Zones, but incorporated all the good features (big groups of spawns, monsters, etc.) into their city zones.

I am in agreement with you though. The last thing CoH needs is another zone. What we need more is revamping of all zones to bring them up to par. Zones like Boomtown and Eden are largely unused as, like I said above, there's no reason to go there. Rather than giving us yet another zone to play in, why not use what we already have and make it better? They could even take some of these unused zones to turn into PvP zones if they wished.

For CoV, they could even take some of the Paragon City zones and turn them into CoV ones. For example, make a villain only version of Kings Row. The zone has the normal NPC villains in it, as well as NPC costumed heroes and police officers. Within the zone, there would be the villain contacts for them to use. It'd be the same zone, but from a different perspective with no PvP required.

[ QUOTE ]
Even just looking at that list it makes me fear that most of the manpower at cryptic will be focused on COV and we'll get less new content in COH because of it. I mean this issue is essentially issue 1 for COV and its a large update for the game, but all that new stuff means people have to make it, and that means people arent making things for COH

[/ QUOTE ]

My fear as well. It seems the only things on the list CoH is getting is stuff that applies to both games (Recluse's Victory, etc.)

I'm hoping this is just the CoV side of things, and we'll get a CoH list soon. I'm crossing my fingers!

Is there any chance of having badges awarded from TFs working more like the Souvenirs previously did? For example, the "Portal Smasher" badge from Dr. Quaterfield's TF in Shadow Shard would have all of the text from the Souvenir that was disabled? (Perhaps only a little of the text could show, but be expandable like how Souvenirs are or how missions now currently work with the pop-up?)

Wow, you've been hard at work!

Woo! Gilgamesh!

It's both a good and bad thing.

It's good because the more mainstream it becomes, the more companies you have trying to make them. Competition is always a good thing. The more MMOGs you have to choose from, the better the chance that you're going to find something just right for you. It's also good because it means more people are playing them. Let's face it, games like these aren't as fun if you don't have anyone to play them with.

The bad comes in that as the customer base increases, the developers need to look for ways to appeal to a broader base. This typically means dumbing down the game or making many sloppy features rather then focusing on fewer, well polished ones. It also becomes problematic in that you have companies chasing the money rather than the customer, and then you get more companies like SOE, looking to make a buck anyway they can.

Hey Adar! I know the people at the Safehouse are still thinking about him.

<ul type="square">[*]You May Be Right - Billy Joel[*]When the Stars Go Blue - Ryan Adams[*]Killer Queen - Queen[*]Hate to Say I Told You So - The Hives[*]Take Your Mama - Scissor Sisters[*]I Will Make U Cry - Nelly Furtado[*]California Dreamin' - The Mamas and the Papas[*]All My Loving - The Beatles[*]Incense and Peppermints - Strawberry Alarm Clock[*]Timothy - Jet[/list]
[ QUOTE ]
6. Ben Folds Five - Song For the Dumped

[/ QUOTE ]

Love that song.

[ QUOTE ]
Ugg. Thats a long wait to even find out what might be coming in I7

[/ QUOTE ]

I really hope they'll give us some teasers before then. They used to be really good about getting people excited about the Issues. I mean, at this point, I'd be happy to get a screenshot of one of the zones or something close to this where details are just given on one feature rather than the entire Issue. Issue 3 was really great for this. We got something nearly every Wednesday until it was officially announced, now we rarely seem to get anything. The last Paragon Times we got was 12/18 and that was in reference to the winter event, the one prior to that was for CoV launch.

I'm not sure if this is because they've just been busy with CoV and then the holidays, or if they've just stopped seeing the importance in this regard. I just feel like they're not giving us enough to be excited about in between Issues anymore. I recall a few Issues where it was like we were hearing about the next one as soon as the previous one launched. I miss the ongoing story and Statesman's patented cryptic teasers.

Of course, maybe it also just feels like this since Issue 6, by most accounts, wasn't a "real" Issue since it was just a bunch of stuff from CoV, which makes it feel like even longer since we've gotten stuff.

Another month? I guess what they said about spacing Issues out more after CoV launches was true. It'll be nearly 4 months since our last Issue by that time. Hopefully this means it'll be a lot bigger though.

I'm disappointed, Arctic_Sun.

How come you don't explain what happened to their long, wild colored hair and the gems in their bellybutton? I've been playing the game since release, and will not rest until I have these answers!

Hahaha, nice work!

It's possible they're still trying to get it up for us before the end of the day. It's only 8am where Cryptic is, so they have a lot of time to work on a fix and get it up before the 15th is over. In Europe, however, it's already around 4-5pm and likely far past their normal maintenance time, and it could already be the 16th there by the time a patch is ready.

Either way though, Cryptic is probably just starting their workday and might not even know whether the American servers will get it or not.

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

[/ QUOTE ]

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.

[/ QUOTE ]

Even if you can't make a complete skills system out of something like this, I think it'd still be an interesting feature to see in missions. It'd be a good twist which would make the missions more interactive if you actually had to hack computers or unlock doors rather than just clicking on them.

For example, it could be similar to Warburg. There are 4 hackers in a Crey mission. 3 of them are good, and 1 is anarchistic and likely won't help you. However, you can only bring two to the computer. If you bring the wrong combonation back, the alarm sounds and you start getting ambushed and have to try again. If you succeed, you get to unlock the next room and continue on your way.

Another example would be making glowies that work sort of like riddles. Maybe in a Council mission you have to figure out which Council member has been brainwashed and which is the real leader. You go through the mission picking up clues which help you. If you take out the right guy, you succeed. If you take out the wrong guy, the actual guy makes a break for the exit, and you have to retrack (while getting ambushed) in an attempt to get him before he escapes.

[ QUOTE ]
Earth, air, fire, water … all ready to rumble!

[/ QUOTE ]

Where is the heart Outcast!? We all know he's the Aquaman of the Planeteers, but they still can't summon Captain Planet without him!

[ QUOTE ]
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

[/ QUOTE ]

You know, I think I'm beginning to question your sanity here. I'm not so sure we should trust a walking WMD that rides on ponies!