Darkonne

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We will be hosting an open casting call on the Training Room Test Server for the following sets on Friday, May 9th from 8:00-11:00 PM EST and Saturday, May 10th from 12:00-3:00 PM EST. For both casting call, we will be on the Pocket D main floor.


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This doesn't leave much time for dilly-dallying. I'll have to step up plans for my new SoA costumes...

-D

User created content? This is certainly unexpected. I can't wait for details!

-D

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As I believe the article alludes, the tech for this is only now coming to fruition, so it use in Issue 12 content is not likely to be heavy, nor, as I understand it, will Issue 12 involve heavy revamp of existing content making use of the new tech. So, from an Issue 12 perspective, it's a minor addition. It is pretty big for what we can do going forward, but that will most likely be a big bullet point for a future Issue when that work is undertaken.


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I can understand the desire to start slowly and avoid building up unmeetable expectations: branching dialog choices do have a long history of lookin better than the really are.

Still, I really hope the potential of this feature is recognized by the devs. The inability to respon in any way to the storylines in CoV is, I think, one of the big flaws in that game. And it would certainly be nice if a shared storyline could behave slightly differently for heroes than for villains.

I'm not trying to ask for the world. It would certainly be great if future arcs (or retrofitted old ones, should NCNC find lots of time on its hands) had broadly branching paths that became totally different stores as the choices unfolded. But even a simple choice that led to two mostly similar endings can go a long way towards mitigating the feeling that our character is simply punching a clock, rather that going through an adventure.

So, in short, I don't mind you devs taking it slowly, but don't you dare let this new bit of technology sit idle! I'm watching you!

-D

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He's also excited about the addition of traditional RPG branching tree dialogue, something they didn't have in City of Heroes until this Issue and will now begin to use quite a bit.

"In this issue it's just the test bed for it, we got the tech late into the development process so we were not able to use it everywhere we wanted to," said Miller.

This allows them to put options into conversations or theoretically do things like present players with situations like which wire to cut when diffusing a bomb. It sounds simple, but it makes their options as mission designers much greater.

Miller could not - however - comment on whether they plan to go back over old content and backwards integrate this technology.

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ZOMG YAY

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What she said!

How exactly did this tidbit get buried in the back of a third-party interview? This is a serious potential paradigm shift.

-D

As fine a market guide as I have seen, and a good read to boot. Excellent work!

-D

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Rikti Invasion starts this Friday, make sure you are locked and loaded!


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And I was just three days from retiring, too...

;-)

-D

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A cool grand to max your slots.

I wonder who'll go completely insane and do it just for bragging rights....

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I don't know, but if someone does it they should name their 258th new alt Captain Character Man!

-D

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Dead serious question: Does Test count as a server, or do vet rewards repeat on it?

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That is an interesting question. How do extra slots work on Test in general?

-D

Well, that sounds pretty good to me. I'm glad we get a few freebies, and I think extra slots are the sort of thing the Veteran's Rewards should give. [EDIT: And I should add I'm glad they're retroactive; no one would want to wait 4 years for a free slot!] The price points for buying additional slots seem a bit too high for my taste, but then I doubt I'm the primary demographic for this system anyway.

I am very happy to see the ability to reorganize our characters. I've wanted that for ages. One question, though: is it possible to move a character from one "page" of characters to a different page? I cannot test this myself, but it doesn't seem like the drag and drop system will allow that.

Anyway, my concerns are minor. Good work on this!

-D

Thank you, that was a nicely written guide!

-D

Woohoo, finally all that money funneled to Vanguard pays off! Thanks for the info, DW!

-D

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If you understand it is your connection when you start dropping (like say resetting the cable modem fixes it), then realize you may hard drop and tell your friends you'll bow out rather than risk it (or at least discuss it with them to see what they want to do, maybe they think, given the team make up, they could brute force it even if you two do drop).

At least this way, their is your ability to control it. For an example, what if the Task Force was one with a 6 person minimum and you started it with 6. Under what's currently on live, you'd have no recourse and the team would be doing the mission with 4 people with spawns of 6. With the change, you can at least realize what is going on and preemptively quit and allow the spawn size to scale.

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I'm not sure how I feel about this change: it might be a better compromise, but I don't run TFs often enough to know for sure.

But Lighthouse's recommended solution just rubs me the wrong way. The notion that players should be expected to throw themselves on their swords the instant their computer/internet connection/schedule becomes the least bit suspect is ridiculous. The notion that team leaders should effectively be penalized for NOT booting teamates early and often is even worse. This just seems likely to emphasize the sort of cutthroat attitude that makes teaming in online games much less fun.

I'd rather the devs just learned to live with soft-loading and stopped wasting their time trying to fix it, but obviously that never happens. Still, if this is the best recommendation for dealing with the problems the newest change creates, count me out.

-D

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That was indeed the stated intent at the time.

I that TFs have been getting shorter, and that that's a good thing. But there's a limit. They are only supposed to get So short, So easy. And where ever that line is drawn short of getting rid of TFs completely, there are people who will want them to want less commitment and time.

This is as good a place to draw the line as any.


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I think most of us are arguing that this is, in fact, not a good place to draw the line. The notion that the devs are going to re-assert the original intent of TFs, after years of giving players TFs that they prefered to that model, should be a non-starter.

If the devs want to give us new TFs tailored to the hardcore gamers that would be one thing (though I'd argue their time could be better spent on more universal content). But just switching every TF in the game (though some more than others) towards a model that was abandoned in Issue 3? No, that just seems like poor thinking.

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There are many forms of challenge in a game, and 'time spent' is as legitimate a challenge for a goal as 'sufficiently minmaxed', 'can team', or 'is level x'.

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How is arranging a large block of uninterrupted time a challenege? It's like the challenge of "earning $X a year" or "living in North Dakota." Those are things that, while malleable, are usually thought of as beyond the scope of a game.

-D

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So what possible benefit could the Devs have had from suppressing it on purpose, seeing as it was obviously going to come out anyway?

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I suppose by making the change a fait accompli, the devs might reduce the duration of complaints a bit. If it were revealed while on Test, people would naturally complain while on Test, then continue once it was pushed live. Here, they can only complain during the live phase. The devs could conceivably have kept the change hidden in the hope that the furor would die out quicker this way.

I think that's unlikely, since it would imply the devs are absolutely committed to sticking to their guns and pushing through a change they know will be unpopular. If that were the case, you'd expect them to mention it to Lighthouse in advance. :-/

I suspect this is just an unusually glaring mistake in the documentation process, but that doesn't mean it can't be deliberate. There's a reason the old saying that 'it's often easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission' is a saying.

-D

This seems like a poor solution to me, more likely to punish PUGs that lose members over the course of a long TF than it is to really clamp down Pool C recipe farming. Additionally, it seems like allowing a single character to set himself up with an infinitely repeatable group mission could only be a boon to influence farmers.

I've never liked the way the Pool C recipes were implimented, so I'm not really interested in 'fixing' any exploits we use to actually get them. But even so, a hamhanded fix like this is borderline insulting when TFs like Positron and Quaterfield are still day long slogathons. But pushing such a fix live without any testing or warning is beyond insulting. The last thing this game needs is a return to the sloppy change documentation that plagued it's first year. Get your act together, devs!

I'd recommend pulling this change back to the test server and actually testing it rather than letting it stand as an ill-thought out fait accompli.

-D

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Rather, I believe it has to do with increasing common ways that people get XP in the level ranges the team is targeting (defeating critters, for example).

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So something along the lines of 'since you're level 39 and you probably have no missions left, we'll give you a bonus to the XP you get from defeating badguys so that street sweeping will be more efficient'?

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It's probably addressing the discrepancies in those "Number of even-conned minions needed to level" charts. It's been a while since I looked at one, but as I recall a few levels required much larger increases than their preceeding level.

-D

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Yes, they could easily have bundled all this up with I12 and gotten away with a thinner issue that way. I'm glad they didn't.


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I'm a bit curious about that, actually. As you say, they could easily have held this off until I12 and no one would have complained. I wonder how much the change to NCNC figures into this?

Still, even my cynicism is no match for the humble glory of Actual Numbers, so I can only assume it is because they love us customers that much. And perhaps they don't want to distract us from the wonderful ponies in I12. Life is good. 8-)

-D

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The City Vault

Double XP Weekend and Server Hardware Improvements

Valentine’s Day Event

Smoothing the XP Curve



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This all sounds nice, and most of the time I'd comment on it, but ...

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Real Numbers
As a general quality of life improvement we will be adding new functionality in a coming version of the game to display the “real” numbers behind your characters and their powers. This includes a user configurable display of important characteristics such as movement rate, regeneration rate, resistances and many more! Additionally, you will be able to see how those statistics are affected in real time by buffs and/or debuffs affecting your character.



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Am I going mad, or have the devs finally decided to address one of the (few) classic flaws in this game?! This is beyond wonderful news!

TRIPLE WOOT AND MATE!

-D

[Edited for lack of excess caps]

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Sheesh, I ignore Co* for a week and look what happens!

All in all, I think this a good move. Cryptic's deal with Marvel would have left Co* in an awkward position eventually. This gives our game the best chance to grow and continue. Here's hoping they make the most of the opportunity!

-D

Count me in for this change as well. The current system just makes no sense.

I'd be happy with minimum levels for accolade powers if the devs want to add them, but if that's too much work just make them always available once earned.

-D

Well, so long Arctic. I feel like I barely got to know you, even though I did enjoy all the tidbits you gave us. Remember to leave copious notes for your successor, and good luck in the new job!

-D

I think I9 is long on promise, but short on actual delivery.

I love the STF, but that is undercut by the degree to which Mako and Ghost Widow are broken: Mako simply takes to much +To Hit (and nothing else), and Ghost Widow is unecessarily harsh to melee characters).

Also, while I appreciate the desire to make Hamidon a less boring encounter (and especially to open him up villainside), I think it's been massively overbuffed. The absurd amount of effort, time and planning it takes to run now puts Hami entirely out of reach of the more casual players. But it's also likely to convince those who COULD organize and run assaults not to bother. I think the new Hami is just far too much difficulty, and very little that's enjoyable. The old raids were dull, but at least they could be fairly social. I'm very sad to see this much time wasted making content worse.

The Invention system (the real point of the issue) is very interesting, and it can be very enjoyable. But even here there are significant problems. Most of the low level generic IOs are heavily overpriced: the fact that they last forever is only value-added if their bonus is enough that you would be willing to slot them forever, and that only happens at level 25. Below that, they need to be much cheaper, unless they really are intended to be sold at a loss by badgers.

The IO sets are also a mixed bag. Hunting for them is enjoyable, but I think too many of the sets are not well thought out. Most catagories have very few option in them, and the difficulty in organizing TFs/Trials makes some of the sets much too difficult to obtain relative to their bonuses. Still, even when I get a ~complete set with good bonuses, it feels remarkably theoretical. The total bonuses are never shown, and I only see them at all inderectly (by mousing over a slotted IO one power at a time, or on a long dull list in Personal Info). It's hard to get too enthusiastic over a system that feels so un-integrated with the game. This is further complicated by the way higher level IOs stop providing bonuses when exemplared, with little way to tell what has stopped working. And, as always, in game documentation on how things really work is no substitute for coming to the boards and asking around.

Moving on, I think the consigment system is a mess. The decision to so closely limit the number of slots you can use in the CH is a bad one: it makes it very difficult to leave large numbers of small-market recipes up for auction for a long time, and eventually I can't help but think that is going to cripple the market. I also think the double blind payment system is a waste; just letting us see what people ware willing to pay will save us all a lot of time.

On the issue of storage, I think we have too little. I understand that the devs fear people hording, but I think they need to get past that. The degree to which people would horde more with extra storage space would, IMHO, be offset by the ability to store and eventually sell less popular items. We'd have a more robust, less volotile economy, and I'm in favor of that. I also think we need some way to directly transfer salvage/recipes to off-line SG mates and alts. Again, it might prevent a few items from hitting the market, but it will lead to happier people and SGs. In the long run, that will be better for the economy, and the game. Lastly, I think the personal storage is a complete joke. It serves NO useful purpose, since it could just be added on to our on-character storage directly. It's just forces us to run around more before we craft something. Either make it different in some useful way (can transfer between alts, can store more than just salvage), or just eliminate it and roll it into our on-character inventories.

Finally, but most importantly, the seemingly arbitrary decision to tie costume parts into the invention system really ticks me off. I understand that people like their l33t items, but this is just a terrible blow to the best part of the game: the marvelously creative costume creator. This was not necessary for the Invention system, and the fact that every costume added to the game in I9 comes as an extremely rare drop fills me with dread of the future. If costume parts must be part of the invention system, they must either be specific versions of parts already generally available, or there must be a better way to get them than random chance. In addition, the system means you must by costume parts sight unseen, since there is no way to see how a given part would look on a character until you have bought it at least once. Just further evidence of howly badly thought out this aspect was.

So in total, I9 is a fair-to-middle addition to the game, but it could have been much better. The good news is that many of the flaws can be corrected after release. But most of that will take further time and effort.

-D

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#2: I would love to know how you know all of this.

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You bother the devs for years, you pick up a thing or two.

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True, but I suspect most of us would just pick up a bunch of /ignores.

-D

Very interesting analysis, Protea. I think I generally agree with it, so hopefully the devs will eventually pay attention.

-D

I finally completed the STF this weekend on my fifth try. Yay! And I found out that SHOEs and HOs can be combined, which is nice to know.

Sadly, while I think the group was very knowledgeable, it was not the smoothest working team I was on. We beat the TF becuase we had multi-stacked Vengeance, 5x Tactics, and no overabundance of melee ATs (plus no one dropped). I continue to think that this TF unecessarily punishes groups that don't bring the right powers to the table, regardless of how well-coordinated they are.

So I still suggest that Mako should have his defense in god-mode reduced a fair bit (or the god-mode needs to be on a very long timer), and Ghost Widow's dark heal needs to be heavily weakened to make it possible for melee-centric parties to actually beat her. Teams with the right configuration already have no difficulty pasting the Patrons, so don't tell me it will make the TF too easy.

On other fronts, our tank was able to distract Recluse while we took down the towers, so I'm not sure just how tough that job is. Overall the Recluse part of the mission seemed well done, but it would be nice if the Towers had some information in their description to help players understand what they actually do; the forumites probably grock them by now, but in-game notes would still be a good idea.

Finally, if Iakona's stats on GW's hold are accurate, she needs a serious session with the nerf bat. I know she's supposed to be powerful, but good grief! Recluse had better have her put down first, because she can take him.

-D