Foomf

Damn.

Well, you leave the place MUCH better than you found it.

I'm hoping you'll be working on other games I'm enjoying, and that you'll be around when needed.

Also, have a good vacation. Even if you have to move. Winter is a rotten time to move.

Organic Armor Wings disappeared when going back from power color to costume. Still selected but simply not displayed.
Face and body colors should be matchable for organic armor. Full Mask could let face color be chosen from body color for this purpose (and that should work everywhere, frankly).
Must disable 'match colors' to make head armor match body armor for organic armor, why is this the default again?

All ears except for human clip badly with Organic Armor.
Still no way to make human ears disappear. Full Mask should at least offer this as an option.
Organic Armor option on head on details 1 but not on details 2.
Shading mismatch on leg->foot for Organic Armor makes a glaringly visible seam.
I observe that Organic Armor has a belly button. I would expect some kind of armor, perhaps as a chest detail, but there is no chest detail.
(Then again the REPTILE body has a navel too. Things that hatch from eggs, and plants, don't have navels as a rule. But this is a nitpick.)

Organic Armor lacks a belt. Something could be done there.
There is no tail for organic armor.

No way to use "monstrous" for organic-armor gloves. Fingernail/claws would look great for this, but cannot.

Once again, monstrous-leg feet get no love; no organic armor parts for them, so they don't look right at all. Further, the shiny texture doesn't match any of the leg textures. Why bother even making organic armor monstrous-legs if you cannot match the feet?

Bioluminate face is just kinda ugly. Alternatives would be nice, or a bioluminate mask over other faces. As is, I have to put a ninja mask on it to hide that nasty thing, and wasp eyes for the eyes.
Bioluminate chest and neck match up poorly in front giving a visible seam.
No bioluminate wings! Sad!
No bioluminate belt means there's a LOT of bland there in the middle.
No bioluminate chest detail.
Bioluminate with black and dark stuff in the usually-bright parts REALLY looks nice for chest. Not so nice for monstrous legs, and again, no love for the monstrous feet again, so why bother?
Bioluminate color does not separate texture for skin part from texture for luminous bands, which means one cannot adjust it for contrast. Since skin is already there, and second color is available, why not use second color for the not-lit parts?
Once again, on a skin that would look better without human ears, there's no way to hide the human ears while still showing the rest of the head, and none of the ear overlays looks any better in this one, and I'm already using the wasp eyes to hide the eyes, so I can't hide them with any of the ear-covering options from details 1.

No bioluminescent wings, but it would look fantastic with the insect wings.
There is no tail for bioluminescent.

OK, the on-street advertising balloons are getting out of hand.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I have to say I'm enjoying these stories, Jock. Yours, too, Kid_Disaster!

I particularly like the optimism and acceptance shown in them. As morality tales, they work quite nicely! Too often we get caught up in the gloom and doom of things. These stories get beyond that and show how cool it is to be a "child of Defender."

[/ QUOTE ]
TheMightyScourge: Yatta yatta kvetch yatta -rec. Defender's compassion is such that you might compare your position to a slug held in the palm of Defender's hand over a salt-fire, where salts are somehow combusting, and loathsome as you are, Defender *still* chooses not to turn their hand over and allow you to die and explode and melt and burn, forever and ever.

Let's bring the /fire and brimstone/ back into defending!

[/ QUOTE ]

Salt? Fire? These are the tools of the Controller, you impostor!
Even now you attempt to trap us in a cage of paralyzing frustration.

[ QUOTE ]

Too bad the entire zone, the storylines, the contacts, and the easter eggs are pretty much totally useless for those of us who already outleveled the zone.

[/ QUOTE ]

You have, what is it, eleven servers and at least eight slots per server, twelve if you've got villain, and you can't stir yourself to create a new character and spend the week, tops, that it takes to get to level 15?

I'm sorry, I don't feel a huge surge of sympathy for your plight, Caios. Pity, maybe.

[ QUOTE ]
Neutra:
Personally I'd have one person in charge of just CoV design and one in charge of CoH design whom then reported to one overall CoX designer who worked on advancing the story and things common to both games. In essence you'd have the three heads making sure that both games got their fair share and at the same time matching up to where they need to cross and progress forward together.

The main story writer should collaborate with all three heads and there should be two teams, one for each side, working on their own stuff, but all in the same room so that each side can grab ideas from the other and constantly communicate what each one is adding.


[/ QUOTE ]

I advise you to find The Mythical Man-Month and read it through once or twice. Adding heads to a highly complex and creative position will exponentially increase the communication overhead, and the costs, and splitting CoV off to its own staff would make it increasingly difficult over time to integrate between the two parts of the game. This is why they combined the two together in the first place.

There might be benefits to having some kind of story-and-direction meeting every month.

[ QUOTE ]
Every day at the beginning or during lunch it should be mandatory that each person who works at Cryptic read the corresponding forum for their department for at least 30 minutes or so and take notes of the top issues/topics that are being discussed amongst the playerbase.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh HELL no. You do not get to take people's lunch away from them, thank you very much. That's illegal, still.

Further, you're creating a micro-management situation more apt for something in emergency development crunch.

Once a month, normally, as a whole-team diversion, as a supplement to the regular weekly team meetings. No more than that.

[ QUOTE ]

Bases were not one of Cryptic's successes; I think most of us can agree with this.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll venture to disagree. Especially with the Halloween content (I actually made four bases, for different groups) I've determined that bases are not FAILURES.

They're perhaps mediocre, perhaps simply "good enough but not in any way exceptional" in the same way that those old russian cars of the 1950s and 1960s were functional and did the job, but were anti-luxurious and anti-performance in every way.

We're disappointed, perhaps, because we expected something really spectacular, and didn't get that.

I am compelled (ok, I'm sick that way) to reply to this.

You guys tend to do two things which I don't think highly of.
First, you make game mechanics which prevent people from doing things for insurmountable reasons. Sometimes this is an utter lack of documentation, sometimes it's just a clumsy, anti-intuitive interface, or something that's clearly broken or cut back. Game mechanics should enable and empower, not confuse and restrict.
Second, you solicit input from players, but you seem to design to a goal that's set independent of that input. This showed up with ED (still unpopular with many people) and with bases. You set prices too high, even after being told they were too high during beta, and made it impossible (or just blasted difficult) to do things in them in a coherent way.

The reason bases aren't as big a deal as they deserve to be, is that they're so expensive to get going. The restrictions on what can be done in various rooms - stupid, clumsy, painful, and expensive. The difficulty of getting useful base features, not that great, and there's a growing tribal knowledge (not ideal by far) of how to do things like build teleportals, med bays, storage bins for enhancements and such.

The SIMS-like interface for base building is OK, but it's unreasonably hard to place things where you want them, and being forced into a single POV is rather burdensome (and crashes my box, which I built last month and is top-end and should be crash-proof).

The current bases are a good prototype.

You recently added something REALLY useful - the combined power/control room. It's fecking huge, by default, much larger than it needs to be, to hold that tiny power and control device, and it'll have to be sold back anyway in order to set up a base to contain the regular power and control, items which for no apparent reason CANNOT be in the same room.

*Note, not a PVPer. Never got into it, not likely to do so, much more likely to do more realistic dramatic-tension things like the V-day thing.

Here's my preference: a personal base, useful for ONE PERSON.
Make them available from reps in Atlas and Galaxy, or Mercy, or wherever, at level three, or five. The base should come pre-configured with enough power to attach a workroom, or a teleportal, or a medical transport, and let the player expand them as they wish, either by paying inf or by running some specific 'police/newspaper' missions. Prestige still only applies to supergroups (and frankly, if supergroup newspaper/policeband missions were around to use to get special items, there'd be no real need for prestige.)

It would also be nice if they could attach to places other than the blue tubes that are blocking bus stops (where ARE the busses anyway?) like doors in KR, or Steel, or Skyway, etc.
It would also be nice if they didn't require L10 and supergroup to create them, but that's asking for a lot, I know. They don't necessarily have to be huge, but 2-4 rooms might not be a bad idea.

On creation, the personal base might be offered with a door in one of three or four places - special sewer door, special rock door, brownstone door, skyscraper door - and the door might be movable for a fee, as the player gets higher level and decides to move closer to work, or as below: attached to a supergroup base. If someone leaves the supergroup, the door reverts back to the previous location.

Supergroup bases should permit players to attach their 'door' to their personal rooms to a door inside the base. This would allow personal control of personal space which can be made themely with the group or not, if they don't care - and leaders with build permissions would be able to unlink personal rooms (since they would have to build the room where the doors are linked).

Supergroup rooms are currently limited to a handful of styles, and could easily have more, without hurting things terribly. SIMS provided a texture and object tool to players; you could hold contests for best textures and objects. This would permit a quick, relatively cheap expansion of the inside-base features (for personal and supergroup both).

Having a personal base, apartment, whatever, would then be as personal and interesting as the costumes, and would permit people who aren't group-minded to utilize the base-related item building.

It should not cost anything, or much at all, to make an item using the salvage one has already worked for, as the 'forge' is powered by the base's power supply. Selling crafted items back for prestige? Not necessarily bad, but shouldn't be sufficiently rewarding to create an economy (ick).

I can see charging for a room, for things inside the rooms, even though they're essentially immovable set decoration. I can absolutely see charging for destructible/stealable items for base raids, though I am uninterested in the extreme in such things.

I think the current set of items: base teleporters (especially if one can be set to "door to your active mission") are a wonderful and useful thing. Medical teleporters are great, as are storage bins and enhancement trees and other weirdness. (Hey, if I could build a Kora Bush using salvage from the Shard, you bet I'd love it, especially if it had the big fruit.)

As for 'personal items' - As far as I can tell, they're not decorative items, they're only the fancy expensive weird stuff you have to use at least three different worktables to build, which is not just a pain, but most bases don't have multiple forge-tables lying around. How about making them useful to the player?

So, what's the status on this?
Did it show under a different title, or just not happen because I7 and later changes have changed things completely?

Congratulations on a new job where you can begin to rule with a caffeinated fist from the beginning!

Also we will miss you.

Here's a suggestion.

If you don't like Hamidon as he's currently implemented?

Don't raid him. Don't go there. Play a lower level alt. Watch a movie. Make out with your SO. Avoid the un-fun, making it clear that it IS un-fun and that you will do other things instead.

You've let the 'reward' from basically farming the giant monster turn you from a superhero into a grinder.

If the post-50 content is unpalatable, or unplayable, just ... don't play it!

And they will notice, and they will either add something new, or fix the Hamidon in some significantly dramatic way. But at this time, there's actually a counter-impetus to changing it to anything better - the whining and howling of the masses when their HO farm gets taken away.

Of course it makes sense. They want to know how various bits of it work under stress, and adding PPPs will contaminate the test.

[ QUOTE ]
Great Pics Obsidius.
Yes Howies was great, first time I have ever been there. It is a bit of a drive from Burbank, but worth the trip.
I felt a little odd about using the rest room. In the Men's there is a large plasma screen over the urinal, and it is kind of hard to do your business with a giant pic of Lord Recluse staring down at you! ! !

[/ QUOTE ]

Not just staring down, with his eight oversized LIMBS, but also, judging you.

[ QUOTE ]
Do they need to playtest shorts first?

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually... yes. Changes to costume options are one of the flakiest parts of this game, breaking things that appear to be completely unconnected.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
We shouldn't have to share the development sandbox.

CoV is suppose to have it's own development sadnbox; we were told this in the beginning.

That way both games get updated, not just one.

The Devs changed their minds (without telling us) however, and people are irate about it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I sometimes think I'm the only one who's not the slightest bit irritated by this dev quote (if it is a quote, I've never been able to find it).

Why?

Because it's a bad idea. Totally disparate development teams working on an application with this much shared code is an express train to Nightmare Town (for the developers involved) with a stopover in Bugsville (for the end users).

It's the kind of idea that software company managers with no experience writing actual code come up with, announce at annual employee meetings, and which gets quietly buried by the worker bees within three months in order to keep the process working.

(There, I said it. Sorry, the programmer in me had to gripe for a minute. )

Edit: Two separate content teams -- design, art, dialogue, etc. -- that I'll buy. But not development.

[/ QUOTE ]

YES.

And the whole accursed Special ED thing came about for exactly this reason - the code works better and is more maintainable when characters have the same db structure. They _had_ to provide inherent powers for all the ATs, to prevent otherwise ugly bugs. Since enhancement-slotting limits were required to balance scaling issues that were messing up playability for extreme builds, and they had time to design it into CoV from the start, it's obvious why they would work better for villains than heroes. It's also obvious that they did have two separate groups for a significant time, because they had to fold it back into the CoH tree with the I5 and I6 releases. And it's pretty clear that they didn't put much thought at all into what was necessary for heroes in the way of innate powers that worked well.
(Yeah, they should fix the heroes now.)

And, separate art and content and scripting groups, that's also obvious, although it would be nice to see some integration there too.

What they really need, though, is a better way to test some of this stuff so that people won't find the latest bugfix making it impossible to play the game on their supposedly higher-end computer because the engine suddenly relies on graphical features that are missing from half the player-base's PCs.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If they are going to be sold separately then they should be supported separately...to an extent.

[/ QUOTE ]

But where is it written in stone that they need to be supported equally. And, for that matter, what defines equal?

[/ QUOTE ]

(boggles)

What defines equal? Get thee to a dictionary.

OK, perhaps the original poster would be better off using the word 'Fair' instead of 'Equal'.

Comments have already been made that the content going live with I7 is primarily focussed on CoV, and that unless you own CoV you get nothing, because the temp power/buff thing is not available without a supergroup base.

There are two simple fixes for this.

First, enable bases for CoH only purchasers. This is trivial to do. Currently, CoH and CoV are the same damn program. If they want to make buying both packages necessary, then make base raids (and PvP zones if you really want) require both packages.

Second, make a place in the university, or at the first player contact, where the CoH guys can get access to the new temp power and buff creation stuff. CoV, make it a broker.

Or put it into the PD somewhere.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I would rather content and cool toys to be released as they are finished. That way we can be only slightly dissapointed an update at a time rather than just one huge dissapointment every few months.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would rather they just stop disappointing us.

I agree with you about releasing as it's done. Paying to wait for nothing gets old pretty fast.

[/ QUOTE ]

Guys... as a software developer, and TESTER, I can assure you that you do NOT want stuff released 'as it's done' for one very good reason.

It will break stuff. A lot.

This game has already demonstrated that there are a million odd interactions that you have to watch out for. Minor fixes to costume bugs have resulted in completely broken costume operation in many many places - and you really do not want the supergroup-costume-cannot-be-accessed bug to come back, nor the 'I lost your face, here's a generic one so you have to spend 90K inf to get your old one back' bug, etc. etc. etc.

The only way that this stuff works right is when it's bundled into a correct build, tested on the internal test servers, then moved onto the public test server, then fixed, re-tested, and then moved to regular.

EACH build has to be correct and precise. Cryptic has already proven that each developer is working in their own branch of the code tree, which may or may not be integrated with the baseline, and that the re-integration process does not ever go smoothly.

They're not currently organized in a fashion that will allow weekly micro-releases. Maybe, once a month, if we're lucky, they might issue bug fixes, but whenever they try to slip in new stuff it creates problems. The current "issue every 3-5 months" schedule at least lets them work around their process issues to generate a well-integrated product.

Very interesting...

but, frankly, Wyvern is (in my opinion) not even remotely as bad as Longbow. Yeah, the Wyvern guys use paralyzing poisons and rough methods, but they don't pretend to be goodie-guys.

And they don't use flamethrowers. Napalm and jellied gasoline, that's heroic?

Besides, Wyvern don't wear that stupid red and white "Hit me!" spandex with those stupid little goatees like Longbow.

[ QUOTE ]
(Sam Fetisher says)

[ QUOTE ]
It's up to me to do nothing. You are not someone that I need to prove anything to.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am assuming you were trying to contribute something to the conversation and that you are one of the people saying it was bugged pre-I6. As such you must prove it. I have already stated that I did not see the bug pre-I6.

[ QUOTE ]

How many people have to tell you that you're wrong before you accept it?


[/ QUOTE ]

Don't tell me I am wrong prove it. As I stated earlier, I never take my users word for it at face value. Its a fact of the business. Try developing some time, and you will see what I am talking about.


[/ QUOTE ]

Having been a developer for the past 25 years and having done software QA for a good half of that, I am truly happy that I have (to the best of my knowledge) never worked with you, and why I hope that I don't have any software or systems in my home that you were part of the dev team for.

If you want to know why, here's two quick and dirty rules for bug categorization for successful software:

1) You never dismiss a bug report by dismissing the user or demanding that they 'prove it'. If their complaint is clear enough to be understood, you start tracking it and you work on resolving it. PART of that resolution might include getting a better description of the problem, or getting a way to reproduce the problem from the user.

2) You never dismiss a customer complaint which is based in the customer's dissatisfaction with a feature or a feature set. Ever. Especially you never tell the customer to their faces that they have to prove to you that their complaint is valid. This is the fastest way to lose customer confidence and a fast trip to failure for the product.

Now as far as anyone being required to 'prove' anything to you? No, sorry. You can demand until your face turns blue from the cold wind of your lips flapping and it won't obligate anyone else to do your homework for you. Look up the archives of the boards, and when you get to the expired posts, look them up on google or somewhere else, but nobody else has to do that for you.

All that aside, I know that I2 fixed a bug which made fire/devices blasters a truly appalling thing; as I recall, people still called it 'City of Blasters' for a long time after that, until around I4 or so.
Since I3, the 'love' has been lacking largely because blasters were not the AT that caused the worst problems for exploits.

And, yes, I consider Masochism, er, Defiance, to be utterly broken, as it is only useful in a handful of situations that no competent player will get into by choice. Only the "Negligence" power of Defenders is as worthless, and none of the CoH innates is as well-designed as the CoV innates. Gauntlet and Scrapper Crits are marginally OK, but they worked fine before the Special ED changes.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I don't yet have a theory on why the Circle is male-only, unless it's a fraternity type of thing.

[/ QUOTE ]
I just figured they had something worked out with the Coven, who appears to be all female. Then once or twice a year they can get together for a really big and strangely awkward mixer with all the guys standing on one side and all the girls standing on the other...

[/ QUOTE ]

SNORK!

As I recall from the remarks in Croatoa during its Beta test, the Coven were women who were trying to take revenge for the killing of their husbands and children. I haven't yet gotten back to see if that's still the case, but it makes more sense than them tolerating jerks like the Circle of Thorns.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
CoT. Succubi are female, but some of the mages ought to be too.

[/ QUOTE ]

... when you're using magic for a long time, you grow a beard and lose your bust. Arctic Sun is going to include that tidbit when he redoes the CoT background.

[/ QUOTE ]

Now, now ... be nice.

I don't yet have a theory on why the Circle is male-only, unless it's a fraternity type of thing.[...]

cheers,
Arctic Sun

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, since we see them stealing the bodies of women as well as men, I would imagine that a successful 'possession' transforms the victim's body into a duplicate of the body originally worn by the possessing spirit. Why they were originally all males? Sexism, power-madness, and perhaps a particular oddity of the pseudo-god(s) that they serve? Certainly there is no shortage of female magi in other groups. If there were female magi in their ancient civilization, perhaps they might show up as a different enemy group, or even ally group, in some future release.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
...Though I've gotta agree with some people, exposed brains and sewn shut facial features don't really mesh with the heroic side.

[/ QUOTE ]

While I am in agreement that many of the costume options would 'port over well and be a refreshing option for CoH, certain items like those above and the truly villanous/monstrous faces should stay with CoV. From what I've seen in beta, clearly some options seem "villian-only."

[/ QUOTE ]

Fooie on this!

I want the reptilian, feline, monstrous, etc. options for heroes too.

Then again, I also want cat ears for male toons, patterns applicable to tails, and huge females as options too.

I am still getting vertigo from the sonic bubbles. Having to look away from the screen to avoid hurling is not a good way to survive.
PLEASE find a better way to represent this power.

Also, on the list for 'integrated' effects - I have a sonic archer defender (Elvis Archer) on Triumph - the animations for drawing and shooting are so long that it's resulted in a couple defeats, especially when using the sonic blast secondary set ALWAYS makes the bow go away. It would be nice if the bow did not have to go away when you use other powersets.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

It's highly lame, unrealistic, and most importantly, immersion-busting to see some Outcasts AND some aliens beat down on you at the same time. (Not that it hurt, I was a well-slotted 23 tank in Steel Canyon, taking their pathetic level 16 hits indefinitely.)
Pathetic!

[/ QUOTE ]

For that matter, how about cops standing around doing nothing while you're fighting criminals, or civilians walking up to you to thank you while you're in the midst of a vicious firefight with bugeyed monsters? Or cars that don't do any damage when they hit you? I don't think any of this is pathetic, but there is some room for some "realism tweaking" in COH...

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, but I can see how this COULD be done. Just give them some EYE drones, and give those the code for the Police Drones and have them follow around.

It'd still do nothing for the wandering civilians, but you could always make them RUNLIKEHELL when the Rularuu came around.

[/ QUOTE ]

One small problem with all this:
Considering the pissing, moaning, whining, and crybaby attitude people get from other players 'kill-stealing' their ordinary everyday villains... Imagine the temper tantrums should the INVADERS (who are just part of the GAME, whine whine whine) start stealing their ever-precious kills.

Seriously, I agree that they should be bothering the regular citizens AND bothering the criminals as well... I stood in front of a couple Shockers in Steel Canyon the other day and harangued them for a half hour about the invasion and why weren't they doing something to stop it. They pretended I wasn't there. Then again, they usually do. Something to do with being afraid of getting their keisters handed to them on a platter.