Erydanus

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*Looks at Philippa*
*Looks at all those [censored] trips to Azuria*
*Looks at THAT door in Nerva*
*Looks at the Shard*
*Looks at the mission door you can't find since the red mark is in the wrong place*

Think of it as the power that fixes a lot of what's wrong with the game every 30 minutes.

And heck, it'll probably enable a few more seconds of Agent G's wonderful temp power for me.

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*Don't forget THAT DOOR in Perez, the one annoying one War Witch didn't shut.
*Doors below street level in Skyway City and Brickstown that confuse even Positron
*That door inside Arachnos HQ in Port Oakes that confuses people so much
*Every door ever hidden by a map pointer glitch

and last but not least

*for THAT GUY who just had to stop and sell despite it being a timed mission

As to the costume, I think it's pretty savvy of them to include, basically, a free "costume pack." After all, this game isn't new, even though it's expanding to a new market, you have to make the potential player pool sit up and take notice! The only important thing is that those of us who want to will be able to buy the costume pack separately, later, after a window of exclusivity to the new Maccies. : )

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We also have grief problems.

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I'm trying to block out some of the griefing this year. It was so bad the first night on Triumph in Peregrine Island. In previous years my "griefing" experience was just some people leaving mobs behind and some sloppiness. This year it was someone 7 levels higher than my character running along a building and clicking doors quickly, spawning +9 mobs onto me and my team while we were fighting and running off. Then, lapping around a few minutes later to do it again. Deliberate mob-player-killing (MPK). If I could have targeted that player and gotten a name I'd have petitioned them, but they moved too fast for me to actually see their name, just "zip, knock, flee, oh no..." I actually like us being able to pop a couple doors at once because for some teams it is fine, but what I'd like is for Ambush Aggro Code to make those mobs actually chase their door clicker instead of stopping to paste the characters who happen to be standing there when they spawn.

As to the non-main-city zones getting zombie invasions, I'm for them! it's nice to do the invasion thing somewhere out of the ordinary. Perez Park, Crey's Folly, Dark Astoria... these are places I can really see the zombie hordes massing!

Just as a thought for next year, it'd be nice if there was a chance of a big inspiration as a treat, say, 10% for a large, 20% for a medium, 70% for a small? With all the fighting, the inspirations are actually getting used pretty fast.

Thanks for the update on the Spirits issue!

As to the invasions... they've seemed pretty frequent to me, but thanks for monitoring it!

This is a Known Issue(tm).

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I almost wish they would sub-divide Pool C into two pools:

One for the "Junk" recipes awards at the end of Story Arcs and Ouroboros "TFs".

The other containing the high-end recipes people want after running a TF/SF.

The drop rates should get a little boost and it should allow everyone on the team to receive a drop so there's no penalty to teaming.

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You mean split it into a mission drop pool and a TF pool? That's what we have now, pool B is for missions, and C is for TFs. The real issue is that there's no weighting by power type so that there's a scarcity of certain extremely common categories: all damage types but Sniper: ranged, melee, targeted AoE and PBAoE; arguably, healing sets and some defense and resistance. Possibly also pet recipes villain side.

And, what's trash to someone might be a treasure to another. There are people who like and can use mez sets, for instance. Someone else might throw out a mez drop as "trash" because they can only vendor it for 5000, or recently they've seen it sell at trash prices, 1000 (maybe someone was selling for badge progress). Yet, out there, someone else might really want that set and would be happy to pay 10x vendor value on, 50-80k. 50k might not be worth someone's time, or it might be if they have slots to spare. The economy we have, actually, is still young. It's every bit as "real" as if a new country started up somewhere in the world today and just went into business.

Part of the underlying problem is that the public doesn't have a very standardized idea of 'value' and that means that the market can careen wildly. For instance, as a general rule of thumb whenever you buy something, use it, and go to sell it used, you can expect to charge about half what you paid new for. The price of selling a dropped piece of salvage to a vendor could be thought of as that half-price value. Thus, the more ideal price for any piece of salvage on the market would be 2x the vendor price: 500, 2k, or 10k. Something that gets used more than other things, for instance Luck Charms, should be scaled off that. Realistically, a Luck Charm should be worth in the range of 2500 to 5000 influence, not 80k.

If people had a more consistent expectation about making money on the market, they would be doing that instead of trashing or vendoring so much, and that would self-reinforce and even out the supply. There are always going to be some things that are less valuable, but that's ok too. If out of 10 drops you get 1 that's trash and 1 that's worth 10x normal and the other 8 are regular not outstanding sellers, you're still coming out ahead.

What would help? After reading all this and thinking about how many things I've vendored/trashed because I'm out of slots ... more slots would help. So would a recipe storage system (I find I have to store a lot of recipes either because I need an expensive ingredient OR if I am waiting on getting several set pieces together). Also, it would be nice if I could transfer recipes to my other characters without having to get someone to "hold" something for me. (With a few that are alts in the same SG I can craft an IO and pass it over, but mostly I can't do that.) So, my thought is that some kind of account based storage or intermediary system would help, even if it was just 10 slots.

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In addition to putting ads in the game maybe they can, you know, advertise the game?

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You know I ... I keep thinking they do need to advertise. I never see this game advertised anywhere. I did see it mentioned in issue 1 of MMOZine where they did a retrospective review (short version: they said the game was still doing well and had been massively improved and was well worth checking out) so I sent a note to Lighthouse. Of course, they've had a couple web sites carry feature info for them, but they're never sites I heard of before. I don't see big blurbs on Kotaku or Joystiq, I don't see articles showing up on Digg. GameFAQs has had a number of daily polls about MMOs and I don't think I've ever seen this game listed as a choice. (Even more off-topic: this year we're putting Ghost Widow through the most popular character contest; watch for it!)

The thing about this game is that it's really grown from its roots. Ostensibly it's classic super-hero/villain gaming, but there's a lot of general "adventure" elements too. You see characters inspired by action movies and other videogames as well as comic books. People love the character creator, on Virtue there's always people in Pocket D roleplaying, and again, not just traditional comic book style. Of course, comic books today are more than just the classic figures, and the game accommodates them too. So, there's tremendous play diversity in this game and most people don't know about it.

Anyway, considering the tremendous work the Phenomenal Fifteen have done, it's just a shame more people don't know. You guys rock!

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I'm very confused as to why Psychic Scream is in Mental Manipulation.

My only guess is that they just swapped it out for Aim.

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For blasters, Aim is always in the ranged powerset and buildup always in the support. This Mental Manipulation is very close to Psionic Assault, the changes are merely that the psionic snipe and the tier 1 tiny damage blast were removed, build up and the new toggle confuse added, and subdue was dropped to tier 1 making it consistent with all other blaster secondaries that start with a damaging ranged immobilize.

For a solo base the oversight room's a nice deal. It's cheap, the power-control unit is cheap, and you can put a storage item (a bin or a salvage vault door) in it, and 1 workshop item. So, you could put an IO crafting table and a vault there, then tack on a 1x2 workshop and stick in an enhancement bin. (It's your walk-in closet!) The oversight room is 3x3, inefficient on a large base but a great amount of space to create a studio apartment. Just look at Djeannie's recent 1-room base representing a Carnival of Shadows tent!

That is COOL. /em hatsoff

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Yes, I know, I stated as much in the part you quoted even.

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As your passage started with "I believe" it sounded to me like you were pretty sure but not totally sure. So, I provided you with a firm, specific piece of evidence.

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I believe that's only in PvP that they are considered unresisted. At the time I wrote this guide, it was based on my testing in PvE and it wasn't until much much later that I found out that some procs are unresisted in PvP.

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Procs are definitely resistable in PvE, I have both an energy and psi proc in Deceive and I frequently see two different numbers as energy resistance is much more common than Psi.

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Energy Manipulator / Chance of Stun is working properly now. I've seen it proc on several mobs standing within my lightning field and stunned various foes with the one in charged brawl as well.

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was it ever not working in PVE? the problem was always with it working too much in ally buffs.

don't confuse this with the Taunt set chance for stun that isn't stunning anything at all.

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Someone upthread reported it doing 2 points of negative energy damage instead of stunning in pve.

Energy Manipulator / Chance of Stun is working properly now. I've seen it proc on several mobs standing within my lightning field and stunned various foes with the one in charged brawl as well.

I'm really impressed with all WW has managed to do with so little time. I was not expecting more than a few spawn nudges and the new mini-hospital.

I love diversifying the inhabitants (ok maybe not the Vahzilok, they're just icky) and it makes sense that with all the things stirring them up in the Rogue Isles that the Coralax might swim past Striga and up to this coastal river area of Paragon City. I love that we'll be seeing a few Legacy and Longbow sticking their noses in. I'm hoping the new repeatable contact will give us some missions related to the Legacy Chain.

The mission door thing... that's just so awesome, especially for the lower level players without even a safeguard mission travel power.

As much as some of the other City zones could use a sprucing, I look forward to the day they let her clean up Mercy Island. I hate that zone so much that the moment I ding 5 I use my Pocket D card and evacuate the zone for Port Oakes. And I know I am not alone in that. But that's going to be a big project that requires art resources. I think it's great she gets to practice on these other zones as time permits. I think its wonderful our devs, in general, try to really maximize what they can do for the game with limited time/resources.

The next Chai's on me WW. And I brew mine from scratch with extra ginger and cardamom.

Welcome to both of you!

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Players step foot upon the ancient land of the Roman Cimeroran Peninsula, where they battle deadly creatures, defend an ancient city and ultimately come face to face with the enemy of time itself.

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AZURIA! At last your true evil will be revealed!

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A mobile hospital? Sounds interesting....

Maybe some new tech they can add to the Hami trial later?

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It'll probably be an ambulance and a few stretchers like in Safeguard Missions. I.e., not a new hospital built, just a trauma center. The logic behind not having hospitals in hazard/trial zones is somewhat lacking, and is broken by Dark Astoria and higher zones as it is.

I wouldn't prioritize the Hollows for a true makeover, but overall, it sounds like it's just a nice "fresh coat of paint" and probably just matched with the dev time available. Saying it's getting a mobile hospital implies to me there will not be any zone reconstruction, just misc spawn and mission adjustments. And that, I think, is fine.

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5. Merge the markets. Two other major MMOs, EQ2 and WoW, both allow the opposing factions to sell to the other. There's no reason to keep an artificial separation in CoH/V, especially since the entire process in this game is blind --

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There's a fundamental reason to never do this, well at least not for several years. CoH existed for such a long time before CoV that the economies are completely offsync. Typically everything in H costs and sells for about double what it does in V. If you merge the markets, the V side will be sucked DRY. And while it will shift some money to the V side, it would take a VERY long time for that to equalize. Sorry if that doesn't seem to make sense but if you've had any college-level Economics it should be clear.

As to the main point, COOL. I think this is a very fair and balanced change. It's not even going to be noticed by myself and all my friends. We play together, and if a couple people got disconnected by a storm or something, we'd STOP the TF and wait for them, even switching to alts and resuming another day. We're just casual like that.

Actually I've gotten emails from you guys just fine in the past and you're flagged in my address book as not-spam. I've opted to disable all web-based spamblocks and let Thunderbird do my sorting for me.

I didn't get a 2xp announcement or a Valentine's one either. So yes, I think you need to look into your service.

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Ok, Havent been on the game yet, but I just finished checking out the patch notes... everything looks ok, but this caught my eye.

"Taunt Aura powers, such as Invincibility, no longer accept Taunt IO Set Enhancements. "

Is this a joke? Am I reading this right!? No taunt IO sets in taunt auras?!?!?! What's up with that?!?!?!

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No joke, there was a very big bug and they had to be discontinued, unfortunately.

As to the folks wanting to see how enhancements affect your build... the new information lets you see base values and make an educated decision. As for more complex slottings, you can use the new combat information in conjunction with a copy over to test to see how your planned slots will go!

This is such great work. Is there a key somewhere to tell us who all these great characters are? I see some truly wonderful costumes in there.

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Depending on your SG badges, put the bar in a medical room.
That way you can have a robotic bartender.

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That's friggin brilliant.

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To further clarify for the person you're responding to here, Ex, yes, the free month that you get from purchasing the game does indeed count towards Veteran Reward time. Not sure where he'd get the idea that it doesn't.

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Probably because there's two categories in your account info, 'Veteran Reward Time' and 'Paid time.' I think it's just confusing for some people. Of course, if you look at it closer you will probably see that you have more time toward vet rewards than actual paid time. I guess they are providing paid time just for our reference as to what charges we've incurred.

I would disagree with any kind of blanket approach. For instance, one of my favorite guides is an i2 or 3 Illusion/Empathy Controller guide. While the powers have changed markedly, the author has some sage advice about the build in general and it's a well I've gone back to several times. (I would like to update her guide with relevant power info updates without changing its structure, but I feel it would be inappropriate to re-write someone else's guide without permission.) So definitely, please do review anything that's not someone's obsolete version of a current guide. Some of them can be more valuable than you'd think.

Everybody complaining that you now get both for free: you get both in 1 retail package now. They're not "new" products. You got a 1 year "head start" on the freebie players, ok?

Grats to all the devs, I hope your new offices rock and you all get raises for making such great improvements to the game this year.