FlyingCodeMonkey

Phooey! I was all over that one.

Heh, the simultaneous and very-close-together posts in the last part of the hour are officially tedious. Ah, well.

Typing a code of that length in a few seconds is very possible.

Without typos ... now that's the challenge.

Wow, it's like a meeting of Knockerbackers Anonymous in here.

You guys have your fun, and I'll cherish my collection of KB protector IOs. Everyone wins.

Speaking for me, costumes are mostly all fine (except the occasional need to reset a piece on an old costume). Power colors are mostly all gone. VERY annoying. I had quite a few of them saved to disk, but probably no more than half.

Funny thing, as it turns out I reported this as an issue while 17 was still on test. I noticed that powers on the characters I'd copied over had lost their colors, but I assumed it was a bug with the copy tool. It never occurred to me that 17 might have a serious incompatibility issue with losing those settings.

Wish you'd paid attention to this one, developer folks ... given a couple dozen characters, each with multiple costume slots with potentially a dozen or more custom color settings each, it can be a pretty massive time sink to fix a problem that should have been avoided.

-FCM

Can't pick just one, sorry ...

My best City memories, eh? There have been many, but a few of them do stand out. My first level 50, for one … forged back before warwolves had a ranged attack, when there were no target limits. I used to use Force Bubble to anger half the wolves on the map, then bring them back to one particular hill. Sometimes I'd pause and look at the terrifying, boiling sea of werewolves. Then I'd switch over to Phase Shift and bring them up to the hill for the rest of the team. My favorite City screenshot ever is one of our Energy Blaster going Nova, with wolves flying everywhere. While I know target limits and aggro caps were necessary, there's just no such thing as that kind of spectacle in the City anymore.

The first time I saw the Crystal Titan in the titan chamber, on my first-ever run through the Eden Trial, was pretty awesome.

Ages ago, when the game was still new and the blue Circle portals still summoned huge numbers of demons, I was one of a trio of characters who stumbled into that room for the first time. Proceeding not quite cautiously enough, we activated two or three of the portals and were quickly inundated by an ever-growing number of summoned demons. So there we were, huddled within my hurricane, while the blaster tried to get ahead of the spawn rate and the empath worked desperately to keep everyone alive. It was solid adrenaline for a few minutes, as more demons rushed in and our last stand started to crumble. In the end ,we lost. We were overwhelmed, but it was an outstanding battle.

Once I was running through some zone when I got a tell from a coalition friend. She was on a team trying to finish the Sewer Trial, and they were almost out of time with the head hardly damaged. This was back in the day, when you could invite more to the team in mid-trial. So, I rushed madly into the Abandoned Sewers, clicked through the door, and plunged headlong down the long fall into the trial chamber. The radiation debuffs and controls I brought were just enough to drag the mission back from the edge of failure, and we finished off the head as the final few seconds ticked off the clock. I felt pretty heroic, that day.

Then there was the time, late last year, that I spent a few weeks working on my submission for the first Aeon story arc contest, the one about a hero forced to commit evil acts. I labored over every last detail, then submitted it well in advance of the deadline, then received a comment to acknowledge that someone on your contest staff had looked at it. Wait, no. That last part never happened. Not such a great memory, I guess. If you guys could get to that at some point, I'd appreciate it.

A while back, I brought my Force Field Defender to accompany a big team into an Oranbega mission. At one point, most of the group foolishly rushed into a prison room. Attacked from both sides, they were crushed and most of the team were defeated very quickly. Most of the time, this game is pretty merciless with the odds. Once past a certain point, it's very difficult to recover. I activated Force Bubble and flew back around a nearby corner, as out of sight as I could manage while using FB to keep the Circle hordes at bay down the hall. Gradually I recalled everyone out, while under constant ranged attack, thanks to probably my entire inspiration tray. Slowly, people started firing Awakens and Resurrections. Within the Force Bubble shelter, the team regrouped and struggled back to win that battle. So even though it's definitely a niche power, these are the sort of reasons why I really love Force Bubble. Once in a while, it's exactly the power you need.

The first time I ever walked into Perez Park, I found myself in an epic scene. What I'd guess were two or three big groups of Hellions had been aggroed to near the gate area, and a bunch of newbie heroes like myself were trying to get control of the situation. Later that afternoon, I joined a large team for the first time. Until then, I hadn't been part of a group with hovering Blasters and attentive Defenders and the myriad of wildly colorful powers. That was the beginning of what's become a six-years-and-counting addiction.

Not so long ago, my wife activated an account for what was expected to be a sort of MMO learning phase for her eventual cross over to Aion, but as it turned out she liked her City Tank more than her Aion Templar. Since then, we've nurtured many heroic duos through their careers.

The Fir Bolg in Croatoa trying to figure out the ringing telephone still gives me giggle fits.

Finally, I guess I'd have to mention the point where I realized, conclusively, that you guys really were paying attention to our feedback. It's been amazing to see the numerous suggestions and ideas reflected in content, improvements, and features. I'll be honest, I never thought I'd still be playing City six years later, but here we all are. Thanks for investing the effort in having a good working relationship between the game staff and the subscriber community. It's appreciated. Now, about those Peacebringer improvements ...

Good times,
FCM

Love the idea. 9:00am local starting time, not so much. If by some freakish chance I'm awake on a saturday morning, great ... but odds are not in favor.

-FCM

Please replace this power:

Detention Field (Ranged, Foe Capture (Special))
+5.96 Untouchable, OnlyAffectsSelf for 30s PvE only
+5.96 Immobilize for 30s PvE only
+4 Untouchable, OnlyAffectsSelf for 4s If target is a player
+4 Immobilize for 4s If target is a player

With this power or one very nearly like it:

Abrading Field (Ranged, Foe -Regen)
Regeneration -5 for 30s PvE only
Defense -0.313 for 30s

The details and format are stolen from Red Tomax, but the purpose should be pretty clear: Detention Field is not, and has never been, a very useful power. One of my oldest characters (my first 50, in fact) is a Force Field Defender. I do love the bubbles. FF has been improved somewhat over the years. For example, once upon a time Repulsion Bomb was remarkably annoying. These days, it's not a half-bad power.

Speaking as a long-time force fielder though, the one thing the set has always lacked, and continues to lack, is any kind of regeneration debuff for AV/GM targets. It's always been an unfortunate omission, but more so since well-rounded sets like Cold and Thermal were designed. FF certainly does have its area of expertise; nothing else can quite match it in terms of sheer glorious defense. However, a Cold Defender or Controller can provide the vast majority of the same defense, and make up for the remainder with debuffs/controls, and also round out the package with regen debuff for the AVs/GMs.

Sometimes, it's a little awkward being the FF in a group. Most experienced players love the bubbles. Everyone knows the team will be in generally good shape. It's perfectly fine for a power set to be heavily specialized for team buffing over enemy debuffing. However, everyone also knows that if there will be an AV/GM in the TF/arc/etc., that FF can't help. If you're a rad or a cold, there's no such problem. If you're a dark or a kin, things will usually be fine unless the team/AV level disparity is huge. If you're a sonic, there's still the same issue but at least you've got your -RES debuffs to help things along.

On top of that, Detention Field is, as stated, simply not a good power. It can be used, yes ... but like all Intangibility-type powers, it will rarely accomplish anything more than causing confusion for a team. Perhaps it could be argued that it's of slightly greater utility when solo, but let's be serious: if you're really talking about soloing a FF Defender (Controllers have other tools to work with), Detention Field is not going to be the Most Important Thing that determines your viability. I'd like to see the Intangibility powers entirely phased out (ha!) of the game, but in this particular case the presence of the single-target Intangibility power is especially egregious.

Remove the "capture" aspect. It was a cool idea way back when, but never a good idea. Call it Abrading Field, or Abrasive Field, or whatever. Keep the same animation. Replace it with a single-target power of roughly the same -Regen strength/duration as Benumb. Present it as a field composed of tiny, impossibly thin force shards that constantly nick and wound the target to prevent fast regeneration of damage, or whatever theme appeals to you. Then when you're finished, do the same thing for Sonic Cage.

Thanks,
FCM

I think I'm about to get the five-year badge, which makes me sad because I spent six months deactivated long before there was any hint of veteran badges down the road. Like everything else, I blame long-departed Jack for that.

1. Nearly everything. I play heroes about 98% of the time. I prefer to play one of the 50s (22 of them) much more often than I spend leveling new characters. I've played almost every power set to 50, in various combinations (I don't tend to repeat sets). There are a very few gameplay mechanics that I like more on the villain side (mostly related to story arc design), but in general I prefer the more specialized hero archetypes.

2. My oldest character is an Illusion/Storm Controller who I've had since about April 2004, though he was preceded by an Energy Blaster who went into the bit bucket long ago. Since he's been around for so long, his journey from poorly-conceived original build to his current powerful IO-ed incarnation has been very interesting, even in spite of the control nerf back around 2005.

3. Earth Control/Radiation Emission. Lots of hard control, lots of soft control, lots of debuff, with a lot of the location-targeted powers that I adore. I'm also extremely fond of many of the other 50s too, all of the main hero archetypes plus bruting and some flavors of masterminding. I'm not as big a fan of the other villain ATs.

-FCM

Sounds like I'll be pretty happy, then. Sweet.

Haven't read any of the other replies, just my own thoughts as they occur to me. Overall, I like the new Lord of Winter addition with a few concerns.

First, whenever a timer is involved, it should be visible. That includes however-many minutes the present portal remains open and available. A friend of mine was trying to join one of our runs this afternoon, but she arrived a few minutes after we'd started. Then she reported that the portal in Atlas had vanished. I'd had no idea it would disappear, so that surprised us both. I can think of some reasons why you'd want to do that, but it ought to display some visible indicator of how much time remains. That's less important than having a visible timer within the Lord Winter event map itself, though.

Speaking of which, I'm concerned that there needs to be more time within the event. In one attempt, we had maybe a couple of dozen people inside, and we failed to defeat Lord Winter in the allotted time. Some of that time was lost because most of us were there for the first time, and we didn't know when Winter goes intangible we had to defeat the other incoming GM. So, we lost a few minutes, but that suggests there isn't a lot of time to spare. Even on our successful attempt, we had maybe ... three minutes left over? Not much.

Which brings me to my main point: although I loved the Deadly Apocalypse event, the timer was a bit aggressive for lower-populaton servers where (after the first couple days of crazed badger participation) you might have a dozen or so people show up to participate. A well-tuned group can maybe do it in that time, but the PUG nature of the event means you won't often have an optimal balance. I attended several Apocalypse events where the participants simply weren't able to defeat the banners quickly enough after they became vulnerable. The glyphs scaled up banner toughness very quickly even for smallish groups. It's aggravating to watch time run out when you're on the last banner ... again.

For the Apocalypse, I maintain that each banner defeated should have added two or three minutes back to the event timer. Similarly, I suggest each of the WLs spawned within the Winter event should put a few minutes back on the timer when defeated. Lord Winter seemed very tough, and he certainly needs to be tough to last any amount of time against the kind of crowds he'll be seeing on some servers. But a person's chance of success should not be dramatically reduced just because they prefer to live on a lower-population server. It's not quite proper for a team to fail not because they can't beat Lord Winter (or banners), but because they can't do it quite quickly enough. So yes, I'm just arguing for a somewhat more generous timer.

I hope you guys know what you're doing with the portal to other instances of Lord Winter's zone. Considering the amount of time involved to defeat him compared to gathering canes via presents and defeating WLs normally, maybe people trying to chain-farm his zone isn't really anything to be concerned about.

MInor detail: it's one thing for Lord Winter to go intangible, but all of the little sprite things that spawn around him really shouldn't blink out with him. Or if they do, it's rather annoying for them to be able to attack while phased. You should also put different sound effects on their Peacebringer-type blasts.

Those are really my only concerns, I think. Everything else seemed fairly straightforward, though it had to be explained to most of us. The first time in, most of us didn't even know there was a "Lord Winter" on the map to defeat, much less the WL spawns, and such. The reward (6 merits, 20 canes, badge) seems about right, no matter what others may say. I'd rather not see us reduced to nothing but LW farms for two weeks. The inevitable yearly all-day WL-hunting parties in Atlas are quite enough.

Thanks for the opportunity. Glad I finally happened to be online and on test during the day.

Regards,
FCM

Not that it's likely this thread is being read anymore, but here's my one and only main issue with the Deadly Apocalypse event, and I hope this will be addressed next year: if only say, 1.5 to 2 teams worth of people bother to participate, it's nearly impossible to finish.

But wait, you say ... that' s by design! It's supposed to require big participation. Well yeah, great in theory. But when you live on a lower population server, two or three weeks into the event after all the badgers have long since finished their business, and the event happens a few dozen times a day, ten or fifteen IS big participation. There are two issues that need to be corrected for next year, though they're related:

1. The banners scale up too quickly for too few people. I like the "glyphs" idea making them tougher, but the ramp needs some adjusting. When you have the only dozen people who are interested hammering one banner, ignoring all mobs, and there's two or three glyphs active, you'll lose ground. It's frustrating and pointless.

2. Time; if you're going to keep the banner scaling as it is, then each banner defeated needs to add about two minutes to the event timer. This is especially true in zones like Atlas, where you tend to get lowbie participants who can't move quickly to the next banner across the zone. You can easily lose a critical minute or more just getting set up on the next one.

Funny thing is, all my badger characters already have the Halloween accolade. I don't really have a dog in this fight. I got them during the first two or three days, when tons of people joined in, banners died rapidly, and when you might actually miss a badge because an entirely different couple of teams took out a different banner across the zone. However, for the past several days I've been helping a friend who had to join in late. I've called in all available assistance from zone, globals, friends, and SGs. No luck. A few times we've managed to get to the final banner with only a minute or so left to finish it ... not nearly enough.

I really enjoy the event, but the scaling needs some adjustment for consideration to lower levels of crowd participation. I don't care if Hamidon takes 50 people to kill, but a badge-centric zone event like this, happening multiple times per day for a few weeks, needs to take these things into consideration.

Thanks,
FCM

So, it looks like in the aftermath of Architect, you dev folks are perfectly content to let the salvage flippers inflate the prices of certain common bits by 100x to 1000x, more easily than ever since common bits cannot be obtained from AE.

Fine. Then let me spend my tickets to buy common bits, just like rare bits and uncommon bits. Rares and uncommons actually drop at a rate more or less appropriate for the quantities in which I need them (i.e., not as much). Commons, not even close.

You couldn't seem to care less about the ridiculous ever-increasing price inflation on much of anything else since Merits and AE, so why not one small indulgence in return. I have significant resources (far more than the average player, far less than the devoted merit farmer), and even I'm pretty disgusted with the current state of things.

-FCM

Love the Science Pack.

One question, tangentially related: the Tech pack was introduced before there were Costume Change emote/animations. Will a couple of tech-themed costume changes ever be introduced for parity? Do you have the ability to add a feature to a perk that was purchased in the past?

[ QUOTE ]
We hope everyone had fun with us on April 28th

[/ QUOTE ]
Mmm-hmm.

In the middle of the day.

In the middle of the week.

On short notice.

Mmm-hmm.

Sadly, my real day job takes precedence. Nice vid, tho.

Happy 5th, all. Here's hoping the next five are even better.

First, the good stuff: grats on 5! Five years ago, I honestly didn't expect my one and only MMO to have this kind of longevity.

Now, the grumpy stuff: seriously guys, I know the 28th is the official day and all, but throwing your big celebration in the middle of the week, mostly during the day? I'm sure I'll be seeing plenty of you guys in Pocket D by around 9 or 10pm (Pacific) when I get home on the average weekday evening.

In a better economy I might call in "sick" like I did for the wedding event last year but ... nah. Are you folks allergic to throwing events on weekends, like "City of Heroes 5th Anniversary ... observed," so more of us with real-life day jobs can attend?

Ah well. I wish my real day job accrued benefits while I was offline, but no such luck. Get some good screenshots, and I'll shop myself into them later.

-FCM

I love the MA, totally love it ... despite the notable lack of Shard glowies, Shard maps, Shard AVs, etc. I'm hoping those omissions will be addressed over time. Back in the day, I was the author of a popular mod version of a well-known RTS game; the fun of it was being able to create a custom experience within the framework of the game, without having to write all the tedious bits (rendering, data management, load balancing, etc) ourselves. MA is the same kind of thing. Objectively, it's great work.

My major disappointment is the whole "Developer's Choice" concept. You've simultaneously and voluntarily created for yourselves an unmanageable problem (finding the good deserving stuff in +100,000 arcs) and an all-new "Bug Hunter" situation. Slightly worse actually, since Bug Hunter conferred no additional benefits beyond notoriety. DC confers additional badges, and bazillions of tickets (which translates to rare salvage bits, good rare recipe rolls, etc).

Almost the entire first page of default results is still filled with the same dozen-or-so DC arcs that were anointed on Day One, still soaking up clicks, still condemning other arcs to relative obscurity. Hall of Fame and DC were supposed to be independent, but good luck getting HoF without the DC gateway. I've seen the badgers on my server's main global channel urging each other to push a particular DC arc to HoF status so they could start getting their badges for running HoF arcs. It had nothing to do with any merit the arc possessed.

I had expected that DC membership would rotate, or something ... that maybe every few days we'd see a couple of different arcs pop up with DC, that you'd have folks spending a little time actively sifting through some of the 5* stuff and 4* stuff looking for deserving work, but things don't seem to be changing on page one. Meanwhile, the difference between 5* and 4* is the difference between actually getting some clicks outside your circle of SG friends, and near-total obscurity.

Finally, I'm not fond of what AE has done to the prices of common and uncommon bits that can't be purchased with tickets.

So, I love the technical experience; subjectively, I find the game as a whole carries somewhat more frustration for me than it did before ... a slightly higher number of irritants. With tens of thousands of us creating content, it's inevitable that a ton of quality work will never gain any significant play, but it's still unfortunate.

-FCM

I know there are other categories that people wonder about, too. I see people asking why there are no purple sets for damage resistance, defense, endurance mod, etc. These are fair questions, but they're not the one I'm asking.

As far as I can recall, the existing purple sets fall into one of two categories: damage and mez. Of those two categories, I believe the only flavor missing a purple set is Fear. Even sleep has a purple set. So, why no love for Fear? Sure, back in the day it was a weak mez type, but along the way it became good and useful.

You're doing a disservice to Mind Controllers, Illusion Controllers, and anyone who actually feels compelled to slot up a Presence power. Omitting Fear is just as bizarre as if you'd left out Ranged Damage. So, why?

As someone who probably won't be leveling any characters next weekend (everyone I care about is already 50), my one and only question is an obvious one: Merits.

Merit Rewards are not doubled, right?

/pity

I have to pick just one for 2008?

The Imperious TF, then. It's great. ITF emphatically discards Jack's old "one player character == three white minions" mentality with all-boss groups, tons of EBs, and a nicely-designed final AV. It included the surprise reappearance of my favorite fascists. It has some big mob groups and occasionally massive battles. It's about the right length, and it's a great activity for the dreaded 35-40 range.

ITF isn't perfect. It's too easy for speed teams to shortcut by killing only the target EBs and cysts. The valley of lag is sometimes frustrating. The mass-clear-mind that the Cims cast in almost every single battle gets old, but admittedly the latter is a clever compromise. The Cims get to fight for at least part of most battles without control being nerfed again, and secondary debuffs gain more importance.

Subtract a couple of points for making the hero-side Midnighter arc a bit too long for something that must be run on every single character.

Honorable mentions go to patrol XP, power set proliferation, and merit rewards. Ignore the DOOM; earned rewards are better than rewards based on pure luck, and/or on farming inf to finance ridiculously expensive purchases.

I'm no good at picking just one thing, but ITF wins. I'm still so-so on the LGTF (especially after the ridiculous decision to restrict it to 45-50), but I'll run ITF anytime.

Arrrrgh, I fear change! Hold me.

Actually seems okay so far. The headlines seem a bit exaggerated to my eye, and the tiled news/ad blocks with very little bordering them tend to blend into the busy background. They could use stronger borders at least. Fonts seem good. Captain Mako is ugly. The 14-day-free-trial box should change frames a little more slowly.