FlyingCodeMonkey

Okay, I was sort of on the fence but now I KNOW I'll be attending PAX.

I MUST have the PPD costume.

Oh, and I guess it might be fun to meet the crew too.

Thanks for fixing the Portable Workbench and the hideous pink Mental Manipulation icons.

That is all.

Love it.

Just wish it had been next week. Seriously, you guys need to coordinate these releases better with my other commitments.

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Additional items of interest

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Those are fascinating. Almost every one of them is different from what I would have predicted. Seriously, how are Scraps as a whole more wealthy than the legion of F/K farmers I see every day?

Happy 4th, Posi.

PAX, eh? Man, I may have to go this year. It's not like I live in the Seattle area or anything ...

Awesome, Posi. Especially sweet that this is now part of Issue 12, instead of "soon after." Doubly especially sweet that some of the slots are for free, and some are on a vet reward basis. It's as if you implemented all of the best suggestions.

Nothing further to add. Couldn't be more satisfied.

The new character creation screen looks awesome. Really, really want!

I could spend hours staring at the power details without even creating any characters. I probably will. I'm one of those people.

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Nothing to add here, except thanks (x4) for the very detailed explanation.

<QR> no time to read the whole thing ...

1. Midnight Squad sounds great, please say it will all be available through OB? Even if it causes some sort of space-time conniption to go back and do missions related to time travel?

2. More power sets == exquisite. Could I possibly beg for two more character slots per server at the same time? C'mon, just shrink the selection screen fonts a little bit. Please?

The rest of it ... great stuff. I may actually roll up a second villain if the epic ATs look good (ie., better than Khelds), and I can't over-emphasize how much I'm awaiting the contacts reformatting. Since that window is experiencing a major overhaul, any chance of an Option to hide the rendered pics? Or just convert them to static pics as probably should have been done ages ago?

-FCM

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So what happens if a team of 8 people get together, all running their buffing pets?

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They couldn't possibly have imagined that happening.

Certainly, some organized groups will all choose whichever pet cumulatively gives them the biggest overall advantage, but I wager that was expected.

If one of them provides a tiny Def buff though, I already know which one my FF Defender will pick. Sweeet. Um ... six months later, that is. Stupid Issue 5/6 hiatus. I shake my tiny fist of rage at Jack for making me so disgusted that I left for a few months! Or something like that.

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Spawns in Task Forces, Strike Forces and Trials will now spawn enemies for at least the minimum size required to start the Task Force, Strike Force or Trial.

For example, if a Task Force requires 4 players to start and a team of 8 start the Taskforce, the spawns will spawn for a team size of 8. If 4 players drop out of this Task Force leaving only 4 players left in the team, the spawns will adjust to a team size of 4. If 2 more players leave the Task Force leaving only 2 players, the spawns will remain at a team size of 4, since that is the minimum size required to start the Task Force.

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Didn't read the rest, so forgive my revisting whatever points have already been made. Well, now that I understand the change that was made ... Light, I don't really see why this would be a good idea.

You know how the champion farmers operate, right? These are people with builds so strong (most commonly pimped-out F/Ks, dunno what they use on the vil side) that they can have friends or volunteers temporarily join the team while they intentionally spawn the whole map for a larger-sized team. They thank the padders, who drop while the smaller team stays inside and divides the xp/inf from the bigger spawns. With that in mind, I don't know what you're trying to accomplish.

Is someone in a conniption because TFs are supposed to be a big social activity, but some people are able to run and finish them with fewer characters than the anticipated minimum team size? If so, big deal. Since Issue 9 you've repeatedly given us inventions that make that sort of thing more feasible, for which I'm personally grateful. We have some pretty great temp powers that are fun and useful. Some builds are stronger than others. Some players are better than others. So what?

During my December vacation, I was online during the day quite a bit. I had finished my new scrap, and I wanted to get Task Force Commander on him. To expedite it, I enlisted a Kin Defender friend, who duoed Positron and Synapse with me. We used a volunteer padder or two to start them, then happily finished each one in about two hours. Precisely why should I be more obligated to drag along puggers, or less able to do this sort of thing because I can't find enough people interested in running the TF at that particular time? My volunteer padders couldn't commit two hours of their time, so I should be out of luck?

You can not mandate social activity, Light. You can encourage it, and/or reward it, but you can't require it. In the absence of knowing the "real reason," I can only regard this change as a mistake.

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My favorite image from the event!

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Oooh, I'mma stealing that one. That green-skinned guy Transferencing LR from the bottom center is me.

FWIW, my favorite screen from the event: me kinning LR while BAB and Castle (among many others) charge him on the platform.

Unless it means a 2.0 game client, taking anything "to the next level" makes me a bit nervous. But, for now I'll just write it off as PM-speak and remain pleasantly optimistic.

Like a lot of folks, I've grown inordinately fond of my City stable of characters over the past few years, and any plan that accommodates me carrying them forward to whatever's next would be the most welcome of all.

WOOHOO! Page 8, second panel, green-skinned guy in the blue tux is me as Rush, not that anyone but me cares. It makes me happy, tho.

Ahh, several other appearances during the vows, too. Good, good. Even a shot near the end of the fight when I was kinning LR. This is a keeper for me!

OMG, I forgot about Posi protesting. That was too freaking funny ...

The Combat Attributes window is sooooo beautiful. I can't stop staring at it. So pretty. So hypnotic. Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou.

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On Thursday, February 14th, 2008 Paragon City™ will rejoice in a celebration of love and union between two of its luminary Heroes. Beginning at 3:00PM PST (6:00 PM EST) on the Training Room, and repeating for the next 3 hours, we will present the wedding ceremony live.

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Geez, guys. I guess you really don't realize how many of your players have day jobs. Honestly, would it have killed you to spend one saturday afternoon at the office? Or is this a subtle form of crowd control, heh.

Thanks to 2xp weekend, I finally have my first (and probably only) level 50 Villain. Without it, I doubt I'd have ever quite motivated myself to get him through the 30s. Had a couple of absolutely awesome LGTFs along the way, as well.

At the risk of derailing the discussion, I'd like to call out the Ouroboring clicky-mission as an especially egregious kind of suck. Not because I get all worked up over exploits (I don't). Not because I have any objections to PLing (I don't). Because while playing my vil, I kept checking my global friends, seeing them in RWZ, and thinking "sweet, I can hook up with the SG and run war zone missions" ... only to find out that yeah, they're still running that stupid OB thing on the hero side. Again. All day. All weekend. It made 2xp weekend a surprisingly non-social event for me, compared to past iterations.

I have mixed feelings about the effects big events always have on the market. On one hand, it's nice to get 2x or 3x my usual price for IOs. On the other, the resulting bloat in common tech bits versus the shortage of common magic bits is just ... bizarre. Haven't we all adjusted to a world where you need to fight magic mobs sometimes? Months later, it seems that no ... collectively we haven't.

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Smoothing the XP Curve

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Heh ... y'know, I'd have loved this back around three years ago when I was a struggling Illusion/Storm Controller, in the low 30s for the first time and close to quitting the game because advancement had become such a painful grind. Admittedly, I didn't really know what I was doing back then. My newest character went from 1 to 50 in less than four weeks with only a bit of friendly PL here and there. Still, more is more. The 30s are still fairly awful, and any nudge through there would always be welcome. Heck, between that and 2xp weekend, I might even have a high-level Brute some day.

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Real Numbers

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Oh ... my ... *happy*

P.S., could I get a couple more character slots on Liberty? I like my collection of 50s there, and I really don't want to start over on another of those scary alien servers.

I don't suppose this might lead to some sort of nifty forum-sig badge generator like so many other games seem to have ... I mean, that busy block of text I have down there is really informative to me, but not exactly sleek and sexy to behold.

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Hey, I'm as big a badge-ho as the next guy, but I was surprised to see a badge for debt in the first place. Frankly, those are the badges I would NEVER want to earn.

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I think of Debt Badges as permanent wounds.

So yeah, me too.

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No, what I’m saying is I don’t want someone getting the EXACT thing I paid for free. I don’t want compensation. Hear me out again, I don’t mind the game and SOME of its features being available, just not the extra character Slots that were paid for.

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Ah c'mon, be reasonable. The value of goods and services decreases with time. Years ago, I paid hundreds of dollars for new wireless phones that are in every way inferior to the models that are practically given away in every cheapo mall kiosk. Things for which people paid at one time are routinely given away as sign-up incentives. Last week I walked into a fast-food restaurant and had to pay full price for two cheeseburgers. This week they've got this buy-one-get-one-free thing going, and thousands of people are walking away eating stuff for which I paid a higher price. I'm OWED!

I kid. But seriously, did you use your four additional slots per server during that time? I did. Heck, the three biggest reasons I bought Villains had nothing to do with playing Villain characters; I wanted base teleporter access, more costume options, and four more character slots per server! If you've spent nearly as many hundreds of hours as I have in the last two years using characters who occupy those slots, then they've been well worth the price. Meanwhile, someone without Vils is finally getting them a couple of years later for no fee. So?

The video card I have in my City PC can be purchased now for about $300 less than I paid for it at the time, but I'm not protesting the manufacturer to compensate me for lowering the price of the product since then. It's certainly served me well. This is essentially the same situation, except the price of access has been lowered to zero. It doesn't hurt me at all for others to be granted those things, two years later. I can understand more if someone had bought Vils very recently instead of two years ago, but once again ... sometimes chance just works out that way. In the grand scheme of things, $40 or so isn't much of an injustice.

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Geez at the folks still looking for reasons to be grumpy.

You roll the dice, and you take your chances. If you want to wait a year or two before buying some City-related product against the possibility that it might be offered for free later, then by all means do so. If you'd rather pay for the opportunity to actually play with that product during those one or two years, then go right ahead.

I bought Heroes and Villains separately, and I have no regrets, nor envy toward those who benefit from this present. I've been able to use my 12 character slots, base access, costume bits, and vil archetypes for ages compared to someone who didn't have both games activated. Opening it up a little more after this much time makes perfect sense.

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What would a CoH 2 bring that couldn't be done with expanding the original?

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With at least three years of hindsight regarding things that they just can't realistically change now because of the massive potential destabilization to the game engine? Quite a lot, I'd imagine. Power customization was called out as one excellent example. Castle once mentioned that if the engine were designed for diminishing returns on stacked effects (ie., tanker shields + multiple buffs, multiple rad debuffs, etc), things would be very different and a lot of the big nerfs that happened along the way might not have been necessary. For example, Weave and Maneuvers might still have a decent base Defense, if it worked that way ... but they have to plan for the case when those powers are added to other things.

During the Issue 9 beta, Posi explained how rewards are generated essentially by concatenating a string from the name of the recipe and a corresponding level, then that key is looked up in a table. That's why we had so many no-reward bugs; the game might try to drop you a level 40 Kismet, but no such recipe was defined, so you got nothing. That's why Pool A ended up being pinned to mob level. There are probably innumerable things they'd do differently, now.

Honestly, I'd be a little disappointed to discover that at no time had there been at least a person or two creating the specs for City 2.

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marketecture

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Please, never use this "word" again. Don't make me leverage your synergy.