Chase_Arcanum

I'd forgotten all about this! How had I forgotten about this! I used to rave about this all the time!

Better still- confuse can make easy work on foes I hear so many complaints about-- with virtually no XP loss!

- Carnival Mistresses. Stack a confuse on her, she'll pull out her illusions/pets, then do the aoe blind on them. If you time it right, they won't be phase shifted when it goes off. Since most of the damage she'll do while confused will be against her own pets, the XP loss is negligible.

- Malta Yeah, you can choose to just hold/stun the sappers them or snipe them, but there's nothing more satisfying than confusing them and watching them drain the endurance from your foes. They don't do much damage with those hits though, so the xp loss is again negligible. If you don't mind a little XP loss, hit an ops engineer and wait for his stun grenade to take out the sappers (and several others) before going in.

If they had to, I'd expect a freespec, then a week delay, then a freespec. It still won't stack, but it'll address the issue, more or less

Wait till beta. Then we'll see what they've worked out.

As far as we know, the freespecs are inherently unstackable. It isn't the devs being stingy. It may be that there are so few people dual-building that it'll just be an oversight. It may be that they issue a freespec week 1 on live, then week two, issue another. It may be that this affects too few people to expend the resources. It may be that they have something in the beta that makes the whole issue moot.

But best to just wait till beta. We'll know more then.

Agreed... I've heard that CoH started as a $3-3.5mil project and then was "doubled" to $6-7mil for development... I've also heard that when NCSoft became publisher, they roughly doubled Cryptic's initial investment to get the game "to market". Since it was always unclear whether that meant they were the previously-reported doubler or this was in addition to the original doubling, I usually use estimates of "less than 15 million"... since it certainly was less than that, by the worst-application of those numbers.

Agreed.

That's one of the challenges- isn't it. Names are just part of one's unique identity. IRL, we have so many varying appearances- some very tough to change- that also add to that identity. We can afford duplicate names because there are more concrete things to latch our perception of persistence on (barring disguises).

In game, we have limited variations of appearance. Someone CAN make a visual clone of my character easily. Someone can mirror me, but he can't mirror my name. I can't identify him by his appearance because others can appear exactly the same and HE CAN CHANGE AWAY from that appearance. In real life, all those other anchors make identical names less of an issue... in-game, they're one of the few true things that we can't easily escape or impersonate.

Duplicate-naming makes even this more unstable.

(yes, this argument supports the opposing side of my last post. No, I didn't change my mind. They're both true. )

Asa counterargument, I know several "Mikes"-- even three "Mike Hammer"s but I don't expect them to know one another.

In the army, it was common for squads or platoons to adopt nicknames. I've seen so many "mad dogz" or "the posse" in so many units, but I know they're not affiliated or anything. The expectation of true name individuality would be a rather foolish one in virtually any genre.

There's a "Cinder F1ame" on Liberty that obviously wanted the same name as my wife's main character. its obvious that, to that person, they're not "cinder F one ame" but "Cinder Flame," and just getting around an OOC technical hurdle. That identical name doesn't force me to treat that character as my wife's... or that she's at all affiliated with my wife's... or that my character would have any difficulty telling the two apart. She's just another person that liked the handle "cinder flame."

And it hasn't caused me an ounce of trouble. Despite logging hundreds of hours, I've encountered her twice. Both in passing. Never a conflicting broadcast. Never a shared PUG. Never in the same zone event. No effort expended, no grief.

(As you, I'm not passionate about this one way or another... don't take this as a rabid attack, just an exploration of the idea, please).

Shoot, sorry, not my intention... really bad wording there.. kinda dividing attention and mixing thoughts... my serious apologies. Started grumpy, reread, and found you weren't deserving of it, then edited away several areas up front when I posted rather than previewed, but didn't check the end before going on. I blame caffeine poisoning.


See, though, that's the difference for me. Maneuvers gives you only 2%, but to a /SR... that's valuable enough (if you can afford the stamina cost) based on how stamina goes. People will overslot other powers to get an auto 2.5% bonus to ranged defense... this gives you ALL defenses, PLUS your teammates. ..and if THEY took maneuvers, that just makes you more effective.

Similarly, Assault on a DPS class like a Scrapper gives you +10.5% bonus, IIRC... which should be applied over ED, right (asking here, haven't followed the effects too much lately) How many people neurotically slot to get a +3% set bonus? This is 10% across all powers, and at most it would make sense to add 1 slot to the power to reduce endurance costs. A fire scrapper with stamina inherent could easily use a single-slotted CONSUME to make up that difference operationally.

HASTEN isn't required for all builds, and perma-hasten isn't a requirement to make hasten useful, but hasten can make any build have thier heaviest hitters come back faster, so how isn't a single-slotted hasten pretty darn useful?

Single slotted recall friend to keep the teams together with less separation time due to those afk moments?

These all have VALUE-- even unslotted.




Personally, before I called for more SLOTS, I'd clamor for more POOL POWERS like these. (Preferably some more of autopowers-- my trays are insanely full on some builds)... and how about rethinking the "pool penalty" where many pool powers seem to cost more for less effect than their pri/sec counterparts. It's very annoying to take a throwaway attack from the fighting pool on my pistol blapper just so I can have the later toggles... especially when that attack, even properly slotted, so underperforms compared to my secondary options.

Well, a few things here:

1) Referring to a leaked confidential & targeted marketing survey as an example pretty much misses the mark. You don't know that they're not still doing such surveys, just enforcing the confidentiality side more.

2) Said survey came around the time of the massive reinvestment into CoH (going from the under-two-dozen devs to over 100, iirc) and represented a moment to develop a creative vision for going forward. The vision that came from that covered this expansion and could cover more gameplay to come-- it could be that they're not at the point where they need that very broad approach again.

3) As you noted, some devs prefer direct channels. Sure, we haven't had any forum-related surveys like before, but we have the Art director managing and responding to several targeted threads for feedback, input, and criticism... and he's responded to all of them. Those could all have been channeled through community relations, but we wouldnt' have the direct conduit to the dev.

Thus, we can't really tell if there's been a net decrease in feedback or just a change in where the message has come.

Back in 2004-2005, at one of the developer conferences, a research group presented info that, based on datamining on several MMO's, they had online community forums that were visited at least once a week by 5%-9% of their player population. Never past 10%. Additional surveys indicated that this 5%-9% didn't represent a cross-section of the base.

Their takeaway was 1) don't rely on JUST what your forum base says and 2) don't neglect the rest of your base. In-game community relations has the potential to reach the forumites AND the rest.

It could be argued that the previous OCR's-- with very heavy forum presences-- focused TOO MUCH on the forumites. We've seen a general increase in GAME activity run by these guys- Rikti raids, zombie hunts, parties, etc. They try to make a presence at many player-run events-- including some PvP ones.

These take time to prepare and time to run, so you can't do that AND keep the broad presence on the boards of their predecessors.

The party pack? I don't know... We've had plenty of people joke that they'd pay extra for dance packs... could be that all the sports animations that were developed for Praetoria were just thrown in to sweeten it. Sure, it isn't for everyone... but thats' the point of optional add-ons. Used to be that people would complain when the devs "wasted my $15 on stuff I don't want."

The original rationale that MANY MMO devs gave for optional packs was that they could be used to develop assets that aren't for everyone or just otherwise couldn't be justifiably budgeted. Complex dance emotes, to me, fit that bill.

The problem is one of perceived value... and a history of packs that made habitual buyers out of the people that don't value dance emote.

Very close, but not 100%

1) you CAN register a common word as a trademark-- within a particular trade field. That's why there's "Wolverine" trademarked as a boot brand and a superhero character. It doesn't HAVE TO BE tied to an appearance, but you often use an item, like the NIKE swoosh, with the mark. NIKE by itself, without the swoosh, in the trade fields that NIKE does business in, is STILL a trademark violation (they've registered with and without the swoosh).

This is relevant because Marvel has registered names (and just the names) like Wolverine, Cyclops, and Phoenix for comics AND movies AND video games. That last part's the sticking point.

2) Marvel sued NCSoft based on APPEARANCES because they were trying to tie the publisher/developer-- the ones with the money -- as facilitators in trademark infringement. They made the costume elements that could be compiled into a reasonable facsimile of the characters, after all. If they'd focused JUST on the names, NCSoft/cryptic could reasonably be excluded as responsible parties-- the names were created and registered by players with no facilitation (beyond serving as registrar) by the devs. Marvel would be told to sue the individual infringers... and they didn't want to be seen suing their fans. Bad business, bad PR, and bad revenue source.

3) Trademark law is a bit wonky in many ways- for one, if you don't defend your mark of trade, you run the risk of losing it. It's intended to be a mark of your trade... and if that mark becomes too broadly applied outside your trade and you did little to prevent it, it's effectively "generic'ed" -- companies do a lot to prevent this-- both in marketing and in aggressive legal action to keep things from being too broadly used (kleenex used by people synonymously with tissue paper, aspirin used for painkillers, "coke" for "any cola" in parts of the country, "xerox" for any copier, etc).

For Marvel, there's a lot of value in keeping the trademark WORD "Wolverine" valid in video games. It's worth a lot of money-- more than enough for the legal fees of filing complaints against trivial infringers. Even if the people they file against take it all the way to CHALLENGE it in court and a judge rules that the particular act doesn't threaten the diluting of the trademark. The people sued aren't going to get their legal fees paid for by Marvel.

This means NCSoft is reasonably gun-shy about legal fees. Your $15 / mo doesn't cover 5 minutes of their lawyers' time. They're willing to aggressively challenge even a name of a TRADEMARKED character that has no other similarities to that character. Now, note that not all characters in the Marvel universe ARE registered trademarks across all media, so just BEING a comic character's name based on a common word isn't enough... so there is some legal wiggle room. Then again, do you really expect NCSoft to pay the salaries of a lawyer/trademark analyst for their name-genericing service?

On the flip side, I reject that whole rationale as so narrowly-focused its effectively blind.

"Effectiveness" of powers? They still have an effect-- even a very solid effect. Leadership's Maneuvers will STILL give you a defensive boost, it just won't give you as BIG of a boost without slotting. It still has an effect. Just not an optimized effect.

Could you get MORE of an effect by slotting it? sure.

Does it make sense to take and use, for example, another unslotted ATTACK power when you have a tray full of attack power? of course not.

Could you make use of a situational power that you otherwise wouldn't have? A self-heal / heal other to minimize downtime? A single target taunt? A fear in build that had no fears? It's something you otherwise wouldn't have-- another tool in your toolbox... just might not be the MOST effective contributor to your build's core power. It'll still have its uses-- heck, it might just help fill a limitation that your focused build had to live with.

And who says it has to remain unslotted? I've seen plenty of FOTM builds that wastes a slot in an attack to eke out another 3% increase to damage in a heavily ED-affected site. This is the opportunity to weigh what'll get you more- that 3% damage, or an extra def/endred slot on that leadership toggle you otherwise wouldn't have taken. Sure, you're 3% less in damage on that one attack, but you're getting more bonus for less cost from the new power you took. You lost a tiny bit of dps focus for a bit more survivability (or to-hit, or damage bonus, depending on the toggles).

That's just simple build management, and the fact that anyone can't fathom how these kinds of things balance out amuses me.

Why should the vast majority be deprived of what could otherwise be done with limited dev resources to design to the standards derived from anemic arguments being made by a very small segment of the market.

I'm not normally one to claim to speak for the majority here...
...nor am I usually one to demean one's concerns or trivialize the % of people that share those concerns...
... but in this case, do you REALLY see so many people "opting out" of your plan that it's really worth the resources expended developing such an 'opt' system, knowing that those resources are pulled from other tasks?

Hmm... they put it immediately after a crosswalk. In theory, if you were driving according to the law, you'd have already slowed for the approaching walk/school zone, thus wouldn't need to be screeching to a halt.

In theory.

Not sure how I feel about this-- or its effectiveness. optical illusions generally affect people that are already looking and being attentive. Hitting kids in crosswalks is usually due to distracted driving. (or people desperate for a 15 point boost to their scorecard... :P )

Agreed.

I20's very early closed beta is probably more due to the difficulty in testing the feel of something that is a) supposed to take a good deal of player time and b) requires a certain critical mass of players OR fewer players, but more duration

I'm betting they skip 20-30 Praetoria. They've set up the praetorian story to include some sort of travel to Primal Earth. Levels 40-50 will show a return to a changing Praetoria... with upper-level content and Incarnate stuff situated there.

:reviewed the thread
:reviewed the thread again.

I don't see any witty commen....ah, you said ATTEMPTING TO MAKE... ok, thanks. bye.

Exactly,

Also go back over the past year. Look at the existing MMO titles that ran promotions for very early preorders, "yearly subscriptions" or even some "lifetime account" plans. The existing titles sought more advance $$ from their playerbase to finance their expansions & new games... probably because credit was so lean elsewhere.

His history of "fast production cycles" doesn't add up. Jack's recap of CoH's development schedule is a bit... quirky. I'm not sure where he's starting with his CoH date side of things-- the DNS record for the name goes back to 15 May 2000, and if you look at actual accounts of its development history from news articles, then count backward his count of months from the CoH release date... you have a great deal unaccounted for. Does he not count in the conceptualization and design documentation and planning side and, heck, concept prototyping of things into this schedule, maybe?

We usually talk about more than half a product's time being spent in planning, designing, and tool selection/development before actual product development begins. Jack spoke about the "City of Villains" before CoH was out the door... so some thought preceded it. It used the engine, the game mechanics, design principles, and the production tools all developed for CoH and came out a year and a half later. To compare that to an normal from-scratch MMO that spends 4-6 years from conceptualization through planning, tool development, product development, and launch is... well... ridiculous.

There are plenty of examples where developers will make expansions / add-ons / sequels using the same core engine, mechanics, etc and get it out there in a fraction of the time. In good product development, you often spend more time in the planning/preparation than in the actual assembly of the product. By using much of what you've already got, you get better schedules.



So it wasn't that the production schedules were faster than a traditional MMO. They brought a lot in-- For the parts they had to work on, they had about as much time as a similar scratchbuilt would have on those parts.




The thing is, though, the PUNDITS latched on to the quick development time for New MMOs. They questioned it... and when the product released somewhat content-light, they reveled in being right! "STO was... anemic in content... because it was very quickly produced."

They gave Jack an easy scapegoat. He has to build player excitement for his next game, and to do that, he has to ease concerns that he's repeating previous problems. Rather than air any real dirty laundry, he picks up the issue that all the pundits already latched onto for his most recent game-- and does some creative counting on the previous projects to illustrate a TREND.

"Yes, we rushed things too fast. Yes we learned from that. We're still using a tight timetable, but we're narrowing our focus. That will make things better. Next?"


Sure, it doesn't match with the actual researchable numbers, but the pundits don't care-- they were blaming this particular boogyman for months already. They just feel happy for being validated. It proves that they've known all along- that they're smarter game developers than... y'know... the people developing games.

You're misunderstanding the financial side. Game developers- like most businesses- take out lines of credit all the time. They invest SOME of their own money, but borrow the rest.

In this case, after they committed to those fast production schedules, we had the financial meltdown and... well, if you listen to the news, you've heard that there's a BIG problem in getting banks to lend to even credit-worthy businesses... crushing a great deal of potential business development and job growth.

Cryptic got caught at a bad time- it had projects going full-swing, it had credit owed, and it had no existing subscription game to leverage (if they'd still owned CoH, they might've pushed a promotion of "pay for 12 months now get 2 more free" to give them the cash at hand they needed to get through to at least one launch.)

At that point, they couldn't scale back production- they needed launches to make the money to pay their existing debt-- but they couldn't keep paying salaries without a line of credit... so they started looking for someone to buy them... someone with enough money to pay their way to launch. Atari

I don't think so.

I think it's more about adjusting the base "feel" of the game to match the changing times. Back when CoH came out, there was a set defined expectation in MMO design. Teaming was more enforced-- you build with more of an expectation of having a buffer/healer in the group. You actually designed downtime into the game, in part to slow advancement, in part to encourage brief social moments during those moments (as social bonds are one of the biggest known factors in KEEPING people playing an MMO after they've mastered the game mechanics). That was MMO design 101 back then.

CoH actually stretched many of those concepts. We had things like the requisite inter-zone travel to stretch out gameplay, for example, but we had travel powers that mitigated the effect of the long journey. Where SWG used to have 15-minute timers in their shuttleports to encourage those waiting to chat & interact, we had a very short pause (you could see how our monorail could have had the similar waits, too)

We had stamina builds and leveling grind, but at less of an extreme than our predecessors. Our stamina came back quicker and our level advancement was faster. Our teaming was a little looser and our support class wasn't always a healer.

Later games challenged, changed, and pretty much broke many more of these conventions. WoW leveled even faster than CoH, interzone travel went by the wayside for more themed experiences, even SWG got rid of the travel wait times. The focus of stretching out play with "pause" moments has largely evaporated. Heck, for all its other issues, CO challenged the thinking behind the endurance meter... rather than pacing how frequently you can fight, theirs limits what you can do during a fight without delaying you from going into the next one.

All that has made players' EXPECTATIONS change since CoH launched.

I think that adding the fitness pool is simply part of CoH's answer to this trend-- to keep the game feeling faster-paced and energized compared to others out there. We move faster, jump higher, and wait a little less between battles. It nudges us forward-- keeping us trending with the newer design ideas without going all "NGE" on the gameplay.

Don't forget the Clockwork endurance drain and CoV's low-level MU. The game does challenge you to manage endurance drain at the low levels. They just ramp up the challenge as you get more options open to you.

That makes me much more comfortable with Option 1.

I, like some others have mentioned, had a "battle armor" character whose appearance was altered undesirably with the metallic updates.

I preferred the "flat" nonreflective colors- the army, for example DOES use nonreflective paints on the metal surfaces of combat gear, after all. That, and the "piston boots" weren't touched, so his super-shiny (and slightly bluish tint) armor looked off with his flat, drab boots.

That's my- and probably most of our concerns here. While ultra-mode reflections looked nice in a complete set, it made mixing sets more difficult. We have some other costume sets that- for shaders or whatever reason- don't seem to match when compared against other items at similar color settings. If caution is taken to not make these revisions "tough to mix" I have no issue with Option 1. While these sets look nice when taken as a whole, they don't add much to the much-loved flexibility of the character creator.

Yet another group recaps the thread