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Posts
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Joined
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I'd love to see a little work done each issue on some back filling.
First of all - can we get some new Tip missions? I like the Tip missions, they're tightly crafted, tell a story in a single mission, and have some fun twists. But I do five a day on my main scrapper, and have them all memorized.
This might be put out as a challenge to the AE writers out there, come up with single-mission arcs to be submitted as tip missions. It would still need some polishing by a dev, since AE doesn't have all the bells and whistles current content has like a real "talk with this person", but would be fun in itself as well as may be help.
Second - clearly, over the years, the devs have changed the ways they tell stories in missions. Not just with the new tech, but there used to be a big focus on time sinks. Some of the old arcs have GREAT stories, but they're trapped in the old boring style. How about, every issue, update a couple old arcs? I'm not asking for a full redrafting, just a little blue pencil work. "OK, we've got them hunting 200 foes here. Let's make it 10. These three missions are all the same thing, let's cut it back to one. Huge map, defeat all - shrink the map and make it just the boss room to be cleared."
I'm not asking for a Issue 24: BackFill where all the old content gets touched and we get 10 new tip missions at each range for each alignment. Just a little here and there. -
Quote:Except the argument of the thread is "why do people only run the low level trials (the ones without this challenge)".so basically what you are saying is that all trials and TF's should just involve standing still either at range or in melee and all just beat down on an AV?
Thats sounds really exciting - unfortunately i think most people would prefer a bit more of a challenge - and HAVE to actually watch their screens and react rather than just hide in the mass of heals and buffs and go afk for 5 mins!
I don't play platformer games, and the video games I play, are almost always on the easiest level or maybe one level up. "hey spot the circle and stay out of it" is completely unfun to me. "Watch for a message saying you're under some effect, and if so, run away or bad things happen" is also unfun to me. The Underground trial has a bit of it, but enough "hey come whale on the big bad with others" to make it, on the whole, fun. The one time I did Keyes, hated it all, will never do another one even if the rewards were increased to "complete it and you'll unlock all your incarnate slots in one go". If the rewards on the others are so low that nobody will do them or the rewards for the new solo/small group is so low it's meaningless, I probably won't do that, there are always other games to look at.
Now, all of that is true for me. From talks I've had with others, it's true for some others, and completely untrue for others. Keep doing some hard challenge trials, provide fun for those who love that sort of a challenge. But please don't try to force those who don't find it fun to do it, either because there are no alternatives or the alternatives have so little rewards it's not worth doing once you've got the badge. -
Hi, an update. Some major bugs showed up, so it's going to be a bit longer. Plus, with the seasonal rush - may not be until the new year. Sorry for those who have volunteered.
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Quote:I guess I'm the kind of player you're calling Little Timmy. I play games to have fun, to relax and kick back. I can do it solo, love doing it with other players. But I am not and never have been a hardcore player. My reflexes weren't great when I was 18, and that was a long time ago.Yeah, and the trials reward Little Timmy for continuing to push buttons. He may have to push specific buttons, but it's still button-mashing. Little Timmy is a grunt. He's not there to think. He's there to follow the leader.
I've done a Keyes once, never again, because I don't find I fun, too gimmicky, too filled with the sort of twists that have turned me off from other games. Don't play platformers outside of CoH, don't want to play them within it. This doesn't make me weak or stupid or childish, I just means I like other things than you.
There SHOULD be some trials that match your preferred style of play. I just don't want them all to be so. I want new interesting and yes rewarding content that matches my preferred play style just like there's yours. -
Quote:Actually, here's my wild speculation. Wade killed Miss Liberty because, as States daughter, he thinks he can inherit States incarnate power by linking himself to his lineage. Statesman will die (for now at least) but through in part our meddling, Ms Liberty gets it. New costume, new name in her new incarnation (Stateswoman). If you go to Atlas Park after playing arc, trainer is Stateswoman, and the contact in IP becomes Stateswoman.
5. Won't be Statesman. Too big. Well I should alter that a bit. It could be Statesman IF afterwards, they have Ms Liberty join the Phalanx. She would then be able to continue his work and finish up any unfinished stories that Statesman didn't, for example the fight against Recluse. This would add more depth to another character and really make Ms Lib pop.
Plus it would add another female to the group, since there is currently only 1 living female right now. -
Quote:Actually, I'd strongly recommend "Romancing the Stone". One of the first great adventure comedies.Dupin' movies now, eh, Zwill?
These are all moves that I've never seen, and have no intetion of ever seeing. Especially "swingers". Never heard of it before, but it sure sounds naughty.
BTW, has anyone mentioned "The Rocketeer"? One of the best superhero movies. Flopped in the theaters, but got a following afterwards. -
It's looking like it will be next week before I'm ready, so will send out PMs then. As Rajani says, I'll need UUIDs to set you up, see http://indude.com/find-iphone-uuid/ for instructions on finding your UUID. You'll PM them to me, probably best not to post publicly.
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I've written an app for iPhones and iPads to show the CoH Server Status and will soon need beta testers. If you are interested, send me a PM, and I'll get you a copy. A few notes.
1. This is my first iOS app, so I'm figuring out this "Ad Hoc" delivery system. If there are any iOS developers out there willing to be my first guinea pig, please say so.
2. Can only send to 100 people. I'll need your UUID, I'll send a link on how to get it. That lets my function work on your device.
3. It will be a free app. In the future I want to do an update where, for a nominal fee, you can click on a server that is down and get a notification when it is up.
4. Sadly, for an independent developer, I was born without the gene that includes any aesthetic abilities (as anyone who has seen my costume can attest). So its kinda ugly and will happily accept recommendations for asking it not ugly.
5. Please, no requests for ports to Android, Windows Phone, RIM or any others. As a longtime Mac developer, iOS is easy for me to pick up and I've got an iPad. Happy to talk to anyone who wants to do versions on other platforms, getting the status is not hard. -
The name is part of it, but when I think of female heroes in Westerns (Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley, Cat Ballou) in action, I see them dressed in costumes more like the male costume. The may wear more frills in off time, but the only time we'd see them in something like the female costume is if they are going under cover for something.
Compare that to the steam punk costume set. Yes, there is a disparity, but the female
steam punk costume is something I have seen female steam punk heroes wear.
There are some nice pieces in the female gunslinger costume I may use in the future, but looking at the complete character, I don't see hero (or villain), I see NPC. -
It may not be WAI, but should be WAD. To be specific - if the limitations on chat are to keep the spammers at bay, /r is not usable by spammers, and can only be used if someone sends a tell like "lft?" Improves the free player experience to the point of "hey, I want more into this" without "why would I spend any money"
The only reason for blocking it would be if some interaction or misuse of a slash command (directly or through another account) can set the "lastperson" and thus be used for originating tells. -
Really enjoyed the Halloween trial.
Gonna put in a plea for some of these things to make their way into the AE. Listening to the captions - would love to have those in some arcs I have in mind. NPC just standing there and ranting, also good. -
Here's my proposed solution:
(1) On October 21st, any VIP account that hasn't gotten points in October, gets a points award. Also, it gets two reward tokens. Those are the only reward tokens or point reward tokens given in October.
(2) Starting November 1st, on the first day of every month, every active VIP account gets (a) a server transfer, (b) a reward token, and (c) points award.
Yes, most people get a little bit more than they "should". They get digital goods with a cost of zero, rewarding them for their support of the game and encouraging them to continue paying money from the game. From that point out, the awards are easily understood by players, easily understood by support personnel, and I suspect the code to handle them is GREATLY simplified.
Naw. Too much sense. -
Quote:I can accept that transitions to the new system are messy. But this needs to be fixed. I'm not saying has to happen in October or November or even December, but I sure hope the plan is to eventually have all three hit on the same day - server transfer, points, and paragon reward token.Now, as far as we understand it:
Transfer Tokens award on the 1st.
Paragon Reward Tokens award whenever your vet reward tokens awarded (which was based on your subscription date, right, so I assume they still are?) I subbed on June 18th, 2005, I used to always get my Vet Rewards on the 18th (every 3 months) so I should get my token on the 18th of October, right?
Paragon points award on your billing date, unless you're between the 1st and 10th at which point they will award on the 13th (at least for October), and will "slowly move backward over the coming months" to eventually line up with our billing date, is that right?
Do we need to keep track of the phases of the moon, or do the hokey-pokey, or anything else? Is that everything? Lord this is confusing. -
Did like the bit about "too young to have seen Fraiser/Ali".
And I'm definitely seeing a time travel reset button coming up. But I think we have seen the last of H.G. Wells, and glad she got the moments of glory she deserved. -
Quote:My understanding was that Premium Players without access to the Invention system, the IOs were completely non-functional, like having no enhancement slotted (which I believed was a Very Bad experience). If they are acting like normal enhancements with the special abilities, I think that's a Reasonable Experience.As a Premium player, if you do not have access to the Invention system IO bonuses will not apply. The Invention system is a Tier 7 bonus on the Paragon Rewards Tree (lifetime Invention system access), or Premium players can purchase a 30-day license for the Invention system in the Paragon Market™. VIP players have access to the Invention system as part of their subscription.
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Quote:But Mac issues are often different from PC issues, so it will create confusion about "wait, is the person talking about issues on the Mac or on the PC"? Also, it's been fairly clean of the platform flame wars that are endemic on the Internet, but sometimes we saw hints of that in the beta forums.[*]A quick glance at the Mac forum shows that it is mainly tech support. Get rid of the Mac forum and let Mac users post their issues in the gameplay/technical issues and bugs forum. Sticky relevant Mac links.
*Edit* Just saw the suggestion to move it into development. That makes sense to me. -
Quote:If it's a PPC machine, it can't run CoH anyway. CoH is only playable on Macs with Intel processors, and I've got one of the very first intel Macs released and have no trouble with Snow Leopard.From FB:
the upgrades may be cheaper, but not everybody can run Snow Leopard. I didn't purchase it for that reason, but my PPC is stuck at the OS9/Leopard dual boot. that said, all this means is that should the game need to be modified to retain com...patibility with Snow leopard in such a way that it becomes no longer compatible with leopard, then a major upgrade would be in order on the user's part. Since apple has chosen the intel path, then I highly doubt that there is going to be a point (soon) that the game will become totally incompatible. -
Quote:I'm currently running Snow Leopard in 32 bit (by necessity, don't have a 64 bit processor). And in theory, the OS can shift for apps between 32 bit and 64 bit apis based on a setting in the app's info.plistI would note that anyone upgrading from Leopard to Snow Leopard or Lion should be a little careful, as it's a shift from 32bit to 64bit. Some apps might not work in the newer system.
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Actually, I've thought it over, and the answer doesn't really make sense for me. I've spent most of my professional life writing programs for Apple computers, starting with the Apple II in 1977, the initial Mac release in 1984, up through Snow Leopard in 2009 when I shifted careers. So why doesn't this work for me?
(1) In all those years, no developer I ever knew expected Apple to fix a prior version of the OS. In theory, if you found a huge crashing bug that could destroy someone's hard disk, might be worth reporting and if it's soon after the release of new version they might do an upgrade. And recently, some security fixes would get done for back versions. But every developer knew that if there was a call not working right in an older version, the choices were work your way around that call, or tell the customers "You need to update to current".
(2) While Apple's online documentation has generally been good (barring a few periods where they dropped the ball), direct support from Apple as a developer unless you worked for Microsoft, Adobe, or a couple others has always been pretty spotty and lacking. There have been forums where developers help each other, developers would make friends with people at Apple to go around the system. But even under the paid system, the number of "support events" were very limited and rarely helpful.
So, Apple's decision that they won't be supporting Leopard any more is pretty much a non-issue, because the difference in support to developers between Leopard and Snow Leopard is vanishingly small. Yes, that decision has an implication for consumers - you may run into security issues that don't get fixed, any official Apple software may not run on Leopard any more (like iTunes). But when I switched to web stuff, most developers would support Tiger on Intel machines (which was only the standard for a few months), and many would also support the PPC macs and older OSes back to Jaguar (10.2).
Now, there are reasons to cut off older support. Because Paragon relies so heavily on Transgaming, Transgaming may have declared they won't support Leopard anymore. It is a pain developing for three different versions of the OS and a major pain to support that many. Also, Snow Leopard included a number of backend changes, introducing some nice new powerful APIs and providing cleaner and more functional replacements for old calls. It's possible to write code that checks the OS and run different code based on which OS you're on, but that's painful, results in unclean code harder to debug, and so one tends to use the oldest API in most cases even if there's a better call in the newer one. That's why a company will cut off older support, or say "Download this version for Snow Leopard/Lion, download that older version for Leopard and earlier" - and in a constantly updated system like CoH that approach won't fly. So Paragon or Transgaming may have made the call of "we're done with Leopard support"
But those are decisions you make over time. Giving you time to give people a heads up, and either upgrade or at least not dumping money into microtransaction costs just before you lose access. And those decisions aren't made because "Apple isn't supporting Leopard any more" -
Quote:Actually, I suspect most Mac users aren't aware of Apple discontinuing official support for 10.5.Most Mac Users are aware of Apple discontinuing official support for 10.5. Unfortunately, the resultant effect is that we're no longer receiving development support on our end for any issues encountered with 10.5, a truism I would venture to guess is the same for Transgaming.
There is, of course, the possibility that users with 10.5 will continue to be able to play COH, however we cannot officially offer support for 10.5.
To Apple's credit, they do make their upgrades quite affordable. Something like $30.00 USD for registered versions.
Ending support for 10.5 isn't unreasonable, so long as you don't arbitrarily block ability to use it - every Intel Mac (only ones that run CoH) can run Snow Leopard, the cost isn't excessive. But the way this was handled stinks.
#1 - Announced during the maintenance where it ends support? Bad form. From your statement above, it seems like you knew you weren't getting support any more, so could have explained earlier.
#2 - If you can explain just what that means, would be good. Is it just "Hey, I'm getting odd crashes on my Mac with 10.5.x" means you get no answer? Or will you be blocking access to the game for those using 10.5.x? If it's the latter, completely unacceptable without a lot of notice.
The bigger issue, of course, is what about the future. I have a Mac that is incapable of running 10.7 (Lion) and a PC that, if it can run Windows 7, won't run it well. Will I someday hear "As of today, no more gaming for XP/Snow Leopard players"? -
Quote:Considering all the kinds of damage my characters have taken to be defeated without the Medicom failing to kick in, that's a very low risk. If I can activate a self destruct mechanism and be blown into smoke and still use the Medicom, the risk has to be pretty low.Not an excuse. He's using a live-fire scenario to "test" the Shining Stars. It's sheer luck (authorial fiat) that no one got their head blown off or otherwise hit in a way that prevented Medicom from kicking in.
Quote:I loved the arc.
But I am flabbergasted that people do not object to this arc as they do to Dr Graves arc. It got the same basic assumptions, hyacking your speach and thoughts, railroading you, giving you tutorial lessons a bit late and not with enough detail. I am glad people like it, but still.
Perhaps it is the hoorb factor?
A hero's goals are pretty straight forward. Stop the bad guys, don't let the bad stuff happen. Whether it's because you're an illegal alien taught by foster parents in Kansas to be the ultimate Boy Scout or the brooding obsession of trying to deal with seeing your Mom and Dad shot down as a boy, the goal is pretty much the same. Yes, I want to help shut down the skulls in Kings row, they're bad guys doing bad stuff. I've just come from Galaxy City, of course I want to stop that from happening again. The dialog may not be quite right for an individual character, maybe some heroes may not be as understanding as the dialog suggests to the quirks and mistakes of some of the NPCs or need more encouragement to join with this group, but it's about stopping bad things from happening. Of all the heroes I've run through the arcs, on beta and live, none made me think "Wait, my character wouldn't do that".
Villains, however, have a myriad of different motivations. There's those who want to get rich without the tedium of things like earning it, there's those who are certain that with their superiority it is required they rule, there are those seeking revenge against the whole world, there are those whose ego is based on being the biggest bad *** in the block, and there are those who just want to see the world burn. It's been one issue with the villain content since CoV launched, and it shows up here. I don't play a lot of villains, haven't in a long time, but none of my characters would be particularly tempted by a desire to win a competition to prove I'm the baddest villain of them all. -
The Muppet Show has always played at two levels - funny animals and slapstick for the kids, language with double, triple, and quadruple entendres and obscure references for the adults.
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Loved the Brave and the Bold opening. Smiled when I heard the classic music, and the line by Bats about Trevor, "What does she see in him" was perfect.
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When can we start the client upgrading? Near start, near end or will a download after logoff be active today?
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Will the beta and/or test servers for issue 21 be available to do testing (or helping with last minute filming)?
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My main concern is that the first experience of a returning premium character with an IOed character (who isn't of a level to get use of the Invention Experience) is having to replace all those IOs. If IOs degraded to SO levels, the first experience can be "diving back into the fight".