GadgetDon

My feedback on bases is all subjective.

First, although it's water under the bridge and I know we're not going back now...the removal of base salvage makes no sense whatsoever, and was not well implemented. In an attempt for, as we were told, "simplicity", a new form of salvage was created (brainstorms), hundreds of convert recipes were created, storage was greatly reduced meaning that event salvage overflows in many bases, all base crafting and empowerment station recipes have been tripled, and the providing of salvage for bases has gone from something the whole group contributes to, to something the base architect has to provide from his own pocket. (Yes, theoretically everyone could contribute...but how many is that happening.) With all the issues facing bases, THIS is what they spend their time on? And apparently no one thought of the side issues of event salvage, or the way people used the conversion of invention salvage to base salvage for the crafter badges. It's a done deal, we're stuck with it, but it was a bad idea, and very poorly handled. If you'd talked to us about it before it was a fait accomplis, maybe we'd understand, and could have helped deal with the side effects and craft a better solution. This change, and even more so the way it was handled, has cost NCNC a lot of goodwill with me.

Next, there's rent. On a purely personal level, POWER being my main group, the reduction of rent is nice. However, I also run some groups of rarely-used players with a small base that owed no rent. They now will be charged rent. And because they are rarely used, they'll likely find bases shut off, and with the bugs where bases get into a 'you can't get in because you owe rent' but the SG registrar says 'you don't owe rent' requiring a petition...the time it takes to get it fixed will mean that the bases are now useless (because when those rarely played characters are played, it's for a short time).

Furthermore...what is the purpose of rent, from a game design standpoint? It used to be both a limit on excessive growth (you can't put every bit of prestige into the base without looking at the rent costs) and an incentive to keep active and have everyone contribute to keep the SG going. It was overly burdensome, particularly for large groups, but at least there was an identifiable reason for it. The reduction to being based on plot size greatly reduced the burden, and made it easier for small groups to get going. The I13 rent is so trivial that, at least if you have a few 50s in your group willing to run in SG mode, it might as well not exist. Now, it's only an annoyance for large groups, sending someone to atlas park or port oakes periodically to click on a man to keep it going. And for small SGs where the rent went up, again it's not the amount that's the issue, but that people have to periodically pay the rent--and if people don't play in that SG that often, the base may find itself shut down.

Goals and motivations are good, it's why we play games, to do stuff in the game. Annoyances aren't, they are interruptions in the game. Rent is too small to be a goal or motivation, and the process of paying rent is an annoyance. Either rent should be increased...or eliminated. If you increase the rent, it shouldn't be based on things like storage...and the very small groups shouldn't be hit by it. If you don't think you can eliminate, at least reduce the annoyance...give us an option to have the rent paid automatically when it is due (presuming there is sufficient prestige).

Pricing changes...appreciated and particularly the refund. Though I think there was one area missed...the second step towards growing a base. The one where you go from an oversight center to separate energy and control rooms, with the basic purchasable power unit and control units. Having taken a few groups over that step (and having had other groups stall out at it), lowering that step would be great.

One last thing, and in many ways, it's all of those. It's what an ex-president would call "the vision thing". Does NCNC have a vision about what bases should be, and if so, can you express it? From the cheap seats, it looks like you started with a vision of "bases are for PVP in raiding" and when that didn't work you, you've sort of been muddling along, tweaking things based on feedback and what you saw as problems. If you do have a vision, it doesn't show. Clearly, you want PVP to be part of what bases are, and while it has promise, it's not going to be the whole, or even the majority, of what the players want from bases. So...what does a big SG do with its base, what should be the experience with it. How about a small SG, say 8 people who team together once a week (or so). From the vision, flows questions of price, rent, security and permissions (much of the base design is based on big SGs...except the storage permission system really only fits the small SG). Bases are a fun and useful addition to the game, it deserves some direction and coherence.

There were unusual issues that popped up on the live server, that may have delayed the work for the open beta.

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I've lost all track, so I apologize if this has been answered elsewhere. Was the Mac version supposed to go live along with i13? If so, where can I download the client? If not, what's the status and/or vague ETA?

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Mac version not live yet, nor even open beta, they've been talking about open beta next week.

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Oh, you will also be able to choose what Contact hands out your story arc, or create your own Contact in the same manner as you would create a character or a boss.

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Create new contacts to hand out missions? I wonder if the streets will be lined with these. Seems like potential to have 'too many' contacts.

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Based on what they've said elsewhere, Mission Architect arcs won't be gotten from a contact on a street, but you go to a special arcade/communications center and talk via a panel of some sort.

One thing I'd suggest is rejiggering the pools.

First, all the recipes that make most people go "Damn, I got a...", put those in Pool A or Pool B. Trap of the Hunter, etc.

Then, break up all the rest into three groups...useful to most, very useful to most, highly prized. Random rolls for useful to most stays at 20, very useful to most at 40, highly prized to 80.

That way, the not useful to most players stuff goes back to random drops and the market gets them, and there's a real incentve to take a random roll.

As an alternative...add some more random rolls, by type. No level breakout, but you can choose a melee damage roll, ranged damage, heal, etc. That way, while you may or may not be getting something highly valuable...you are guaranteed getting something you can use.

There are lots of things that make up speed runs that are just good strategy. For a common example...the citywide hunt in Numina, an effective team puts people in each zone ready to take down their hunt. Good strategy should be praised and rewarded, you're playing better.

Then there's the use of exploits, how speed edens used to involve flying through holes in the walls. (I have to think that much of the dev's 10 minute average goes back to those.) Exploits are cheating, you'll get no kudos from me for abusing a flaw.

Then there's the areas in between...either having a perfect team (so if you don't have what they want, you're out) or taking shortcuts that bypass all the content. I can appreciate the desire to see "how fast can I get this done" as a challenge, the problem is when people are farming it. But in any case...it's not the way I choose to play.

And that's where those grey areas should stay, it's not the way I choose to play. The problem is that the devs want to discourage it, and the way they discourage it affects me. People farmed the Katie AV fights...so the rewards got nerfect. People speed-ran Eden, so it's now 2 merits for (when I do it) a 90 minute TF. And so while I shouldn't care if you're running Eden in 10 minutes for kicks or even farming the hell out of it for recipes, under the merit system I have to care. If you find a way to do the ITF in under 30 minutes consistently, and farm the hell out of it, you'll be cutting down on my rewards.

It's not jealousy. It's different views of fun, and it's your view of fun affecting our rewards.

Thanks for the replies Sunstorm. It's great to have someone that interacts with us with real answers, even if I disagree with some of those answers.

And speaking of which...

I'm sorry, I have the help channel in my main chat tabs, I'm in several global channels and have helped people with really rudimentary questions. I can't recall any confusion ever between base and invention salvage. And any confusion that might be simmering out there below the surface has to be a lot less than (1) racks holding 999/30, (2) The process of converting base salvage into invention salvage (I don't see convert to Rikti Alloy, just convert to brainstorm, what's a brainstorm), (3) the confusion of Merits and Vanguard Merits (and candy canes). And of course (4) let's now have three recipes for everything instead of just one.

I've been describing this replacement as a trainwreck. I'll thank you all for tapping on the brakes by removing rare salvage from the teleporter recipes. But the train is still zipping past the "bridge out" sign. And I'm still looking to three+ very boring hours converting base salvage (presuming nobody manages to steal it first)...and without an explanation that makes sense for the major work that had to be done to make this change, or the work and security risk it imposes on the SG leaders. I understand that we're presumably past the point of no return on this, we're not at the point of "is this a good idea" but "is there a showstopper kill-the-game problem with going forth." So we'll have to live with it. But for the record, in my opinion and the vast majority of people who provided feedback in Ex Libris's thread, it's not a good idea. Which means there's either a reason for it that we aren't being told, or there was insufficient thought about it.

All that said, other than the fact that the trainwreck continues, I'm heartened by the things stated in this thread. The refund and lower price of old items is very welcome, and it's nice to know that other things are taking place. Please, talk to us about the changes that are coming, as early as possible. Nope, I'm not saying that we should dictate them...but we can give a perspective that the devs may not have, and it's a lot easier to take advantage of that perspective while changes are on the whiteboard than when they're in open beta.

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A good example of this is the Lord Recluse Strike Force. It normally would grant 18 merits due to its relatively short average completion time, however because of its difficulty it gets a +7 bonus granting a total of 25 merits!

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Have you considered simply adding 1 Merit per AV?

This fits Risk-v-Reward, and makes that LRSF "buff" more obvious. (Not to mention a partial profit if you beat 3 or 4 missions and fail the huge challenge at the end.) Merits for AVs may also help balance KHTF, and maybe even bringing Eden up to something not laughable.

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Since you defeat the same AV 10 times, diminishing returns will reduce the value of those merits.

nvm, I misread the part I was quoting. Please ignore this message. Thank you. (Exit, stage right)

One more additional note, that might fall into the heading of suggestion, but will somewhat lessen the negative side effects--in most bases I see, the vast majority of crafted items only occur once. One Turbine generator. The only thing that most bases craft multiple items (and starter bases need to craft) are teleporters. Move teleporters from the crafted list to the built list. It'll also remove one of the regular questions that beginning base builders run into.

And that can allow the later addition of a craftable better transporter (that takes more beacons). Which is how most items work now...you can just build basic versions of things, like the basic energy unit, the basic control unit, but you craft better versions.

BTW, I want to add one additional note on Invention Salvage...everyone I've known who got the field crafter, did much of their crafting in part involving base salvage...converting base salvage to components, converting invention salvage to components, burning components on empowerment stations or personal items. It's already a very boring, long process. Well, the process of converting base salvage to brainstorm will temporarily give that a kick. But once that's gone...have you datamined how people earn the fabricator badges?

I am responsible for four bases. One is for POWER, a SG with a fully functional PVE base and a reasonable cushion of Prestige. The others are three very small bases, most running off of Combo units, used by rarely played characters (mostly just mine these days, but there are some characters by others that show up from time to time). So I'll answer based on POWER, and based on the small groups.

POWER -

1) How will the repricing of bases affect you personally?

No significant impact, not much more to do for the POWER base.

2) Will you dismantle your base to gain the additional prestige from the repricing?

I'll definitely rebuy the lot to recover prestige there, and may rebuild a few rooms. But I won't be rebuilding any crafted items, nor most of the rooms.

3) How long would this process take you?

I'm guessing I'll spend half an hour to an hour on it. If I was to do a complete recrafting, my guess would be two or three hours, not including the time involved in the salvage.

4) Positive and negative concerns regarding the repricing.

For the most part, all positive. If POWER wants to get into base raiding at some point in the future, this makes it a lot easier to get into. The only negative is the major price increases of so many decorative rooms...if we want to take advantage of the extra space for fun rooms, the decorative uses get worse.

5. Short term, no big change. Long term, no big change unless there are new PVE opportunities coming with bases to use that prestige.

My small SGs

1) How will the repricing affect you?

It's not really affecting the areas I build those bases in, so little money saved from it. And the change to rent is going to add an annoyance factor. Many of those SGs only have someone log in every few months, so their bases will shut down because of the rent issue.

2) Will you dismantle your base? no reason, no money in this range
3) How long? Not including crafting, maybe an hour, tops
4) Positive for the small groups? If they ever become active again, easier to move up...but doesn't do that much for the big step from combo unit to separate control and energy rooms. Negative? Rent
5) How will this feature affect you? Bases will become shut down, requiring a trip to atlas or port oakes to open it up.

Base Salvage (this applies to all bases, but mostly POWER)
1) Negative effect on your base for this feature implementation?
Well, first I'm going to have to spend about three hours or so converting all the base storage to brainstorms, so that I don't have to lock down the storage bins. Then, I'm going to have a lot of brainstorms, and not really sure what to do. I have to make sure that I never delete that character (because there's no way to put the brainstorms back in storage). And should I decide to build something, I'll have a lot of brainstorms and no guarantee that I can get the parts necessary (in a test to create a single teleporter, I converted enough brainstorms into salvage to fill my 80 salvage storage twice over), and the fastest solution is to just hit wentworths and pay whatever the market calls for. In short, it turns base crafting from a straightforward endeavour, to a complex mess. Fortunately, POWER's base is pretty much done, and I've pre-crafted a number of teleporters.

Oh, we also will be selling a number of sets of halloween salvage and candycanes we had in storage, which fit quite nicely with the limits of 2500, but with the limit at 30...no such luck.

2) Positive effect on our base? None.

3) How long will it take you to adjust to learning this new system? Learn? None at all. Doing the conversions? many exceptionally boring hours. Cursing the devs when I find myself having to go to the market for something I have to build? Unlimited

4) What side effects to this system do you see from transitioning? The biggest is the security issue, but you ask about that second. The next biggest is that the burden of base crafting, by and large, moves from the group to the base architect...it's very easy to tell everyone "dump off your base salvage", and there's no reason either for people to hold their salvage or take it. Invention salvage, everyone wants for their own enhancements, and having them in stacks means people might take them. So instead, the base architects will be having to put their own influence on the line.

And one more thing...on Virtue, I've given a lot of Tech Powers to small starting SGs that don't have the salvage yet to make teleporters. A nice, easy way to help people. With this change, that's over. Every SG will sink or swim on its own.

Security issues: Inspiration storage is only useful if most the base can get it. Doing an eden trial, grab some ambrosia, put what you can back. Hami raid? EoEs are in the third storage. On a SG and had a team wipe? Rez in the base, and pick up some awakens. The problem is the settings for inspiration storage also apply to the salvage bins. Which is normally a good thing for halloween salvage and candy canes...but not invention salvage, much too tempting.

Good luck, Lighthouse. I may not have always agreed with everything said, but you were always in there pitching, and I hope you find a great place to land.

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Wonder if Mids would be kind enough to take on the task of porting MHD to OS X. I'd try and get it running through a compatibility layer, but it uses .Net, which a lot of those are picky about.

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I have Mids running on Linux using Wine and winetricks to install .Net 2.0. Wine can be installed under OS X so you may want to have a look at that. Can't give any first hand experience on how it works since I don't own a Mac.

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Getting the program that can talk to the server is a pain but straightforward. However, the badge and other tracking that can be done by some apps is going to be troublesome, because the cider code wraps the CoH client into it's own world.

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Outstanding guide! It inspired me to run the arcs and challenges for all the badges. Not Master STF yet though.

The guide is really well organized and made my runs much more efficient.

I originally ran the Division:line story arc for the 40-44 badges. And you are right, it is a long arc.
I couldn't stomach the thought for the non-travel powers challenges, so chose the "Nemesis Weather Control" arc.
This WOULD BE a fantastic arc for the badges, but it seems to be bugged, and I doesn't award any of them.

There are only 6 missions. And a couple drop without returning to contact. Which is really handy when no travel powers.
One mission is just a return to contact (Maxwell Christopher), who is pretty close to a base portal. and another is a delivery to Steve Sheridan, who is right near the in spot in Brickstown where you land from a base TP.

All in all, it took me 55 minutes.
But again. No Badges awarded!
So stay away from this arc!

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It's not an arc, it's a badge mission.

It's one mission, in that you keep going without asking the contact for a new mission (though one of the steps has you go to the contact and click on it for information).

GhostFalcon posted in the other thread that a separate server will be used for the closed Mac testing.

And the test is RSN (Real Soon Now)

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All the Mac Closed Beta players will be on their own server (independent of the Open Beta Training Room server), so really, we're just wrapping up a couple of things on the back-end.

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Will there be a way to copy existing characters to the new server?

I currently (sometimes) run the CoH client on my Mac with CrossOver games. It works, but it's a bit laggy, and lots of power effects going off can cause problems. (Was the lead tank for an LGTF and the first assault on the Rikti briefly kicked me into slideshow mode.) So we'll need to be able to test with high level characters as well as low-level.

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I just tried out the "alternate build" on a lvl 50 I had on the test server. The crazy thing is it started the other build at lvl 1. I'm not sure if this is a bug or intentional, but I really don't want to lvl my guy all the way up again unless I get to repick my primary and secondary power types. I was hoping to be greated with a respec screen that would let me re select my powers then choose if I wanted to keep IO's that I had already purchased.

Anyone else having this same problem?

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It treats your second build as though you've never trained, but you've earned enough XP to be level 50. So you have to "train" 50 times...but you don't have to re-earn the XP.

However, you do start empty on enhancements. That's by design.

It would be nice if it used the respec interface...pick all your powers, pick your slots, just leaving out the enhancement stage.

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We still have to pay for the client.

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No, we don't.

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.... not sure where my 20 dollars is going then. Whatever.

I guess everyone missed me saying this is a good thing in favor of proving me wrong. This IS a good thing, people! More players for a great game! I HONESTLY don't get why ANYONE is complaining. I've been praying for Mac OS X City of Heroes since I began playing. If anyone's worried about "exclusive" content, please remember that this is NCSoft! They have NEVER kept anything exclusive for long, and they even mentioned it. We'll all be equal with time. Only in the month of December will you be able to pick the Mac users apart from the PC users, and that's only if they A) tell you, or B) wear the entire Valkyrie set.

This. Is. GOOD.

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If you pay the $20 for the Mac version and you apply it to your existing account, you get an additional month of gametime, the teleporter power, and the costume set. Just like if you were to pay the $20 for the PC version of GvE on the website and you apply it to an existing account (without GvE options) you get a month of gametime, the jump pack, the Pocket D teleporter, the Justice and Sinister costume sets.

Your mac should certainly be compatible, it's newer than my iMac. But you'll probably still need to keep the graphics low, it's not going to be better than Bootcamp.

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As a gamer who has a Windows PC and a PowerMac side-by-side on her desk*, this news pleases me immensely. I've signed up for the testing. *crosses fingers*

(* It's a big 'un.)

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If it's a PowerMac (as opposed to a MacPro), it won't work. Requires an Intel Mac.

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It's an Intel Mac, you hair-splitter. Sheesh.

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Just wanted to be sure. Ran into at least one person in one of the threads who was looking forward to running it on their PPC Mac.

(But I know what you mean. If I was to get a MacBook Pro, I'd probably be calling it a Powerbook.)

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This year’s Holiday event features some new “ski runs” for players to try out in Pocket D.

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Click here to read the full article on Gamezone.com.

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didnt we have ski runs LAST year?

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Yes, but while the old runs are still there, there's a new run added. (It was on test briefly.)

bind files are just text, aren't they? Macs understand text files too.

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PC users will be able to play and team with their Mac friends.

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Umm, there are PC users who have Mac friends? Impossible!

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Yeah, though several of us had to break down and get cheap PCs once our PC friends had their brainz eaten by spandex.



Speaking as one of those cheap PC owners, I am thrilled for a Mac port. Unfortunately *my* mac is powerPC instead of intel based. Are there any plans or intents towards a powerPC compatible version, or should I look into upgrading my hardware instead?

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You'd need to upgrade. The way they are doing the Mac version is using Transgaming's Cider code which wraps around the existing Windows program to make it think it's running on Windows. Won't work on non-Intel machines.

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As a gamer who has a Windows PC and a PowerMac side-by-side on her desk*, this news pleases me immensely. I've signed up for the testing. *crosses fingers*

(* It's a big 'un.)

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If it's a PowerMac (as opposed to a MacPro), it won't work. Requires an Intel Mac.