GadgetDon

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At the same time, I'm a little irritated. I seem to recall being told over and over that no resources were being taken away from CoH to develop CoV, and that no resources were being taken away from CoX to develop MUO. I don't remember the exact quotes, but I can't help but feel that I was lied to.

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How were you lied to, exactly? The team was 60 (or so) strong when they were developing CoV, and we don't know how the work was split then. Shortly after CoV launched, the team was gutted to the skeleton crew of 15. It sounds like anyone who was moved off the project to work on something else in Cryptic was replaced with someone else. They maintained the 15 strong team until the NCNC buyout.

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Whether there were actual lies or not, I can't say. But we were led to believe that a much larger team was working on the game. Seeing how much the team was cut down (and we don't know if it was at NCSoft's direction or Cryptic's decision), I'm amazed at all that has been accomplished.

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There have been requests for something like this, and it ranged from having the billboards change out every so often to having real ads. I think they might have had a better reaction if they'd been able to put the ads there right from the start since then they wouldn't have to deal with teh bad blood about in-game advertising caused by such mess ups as Anarchy Online and Dungeon Runners. DR was originally just going to have an ad for non-paying customers during hte load screens, then it got out of hand and was poorly monitored and implemented.

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It may be that the reason this implementation is so reasonable is because they've seen what happened in Anarchy Online and Dungeon Runners (intimately with Dungeon Runners). And they learned from it. The additional money from ads would be good, but not at the cost of annoyed and unhappy players. Even if they aren't unhappy to the point of leaving, they'll be less likely to recommend the game to others.

And in their design, and in what they've said, they've taken great care to pay attention to player feelings. It's all immersive. Misclicks won't take you out of the game. Little to no impact on performance. And if someone just doesn't want the ads, they can opt out.

If it had been in the game from the start, without having a chance to see how it could go wrong, they might not have done it as well, and someone might be posting on another game's forums about "bad blood about in-game advertising caused by such mess ups as Cith of Heroes".

You know how you recognize the pioneers, right? They're the guys filled with arrows.

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Can we look forward to superstrength for scrappers in the future? The lack of a non-weapon punching set for scrappers has been a big hole for four years. There was talk about a street fighting set, but when Castle talked about upcoming powersets a few weeks back, street fighting wasn't even mentioned.

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Dark Melee and teh powur poolz.


Done. Next.

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Tried it. Incredibly subpar. The Power Pool attacks are pretty weak, and dark melee has remarkably few punching powers, given its name.

Can we look forward to superstrength for scrappers in the future? The lack of a non-weapon punching set for scrappers has been a big hole for four years. There was talk about a street fighting set, but when Castle talked about upcoming powersets a few weeks back, street fighting wasn't even mentioned.

SG mode issues might be a good "getting up to speed" project for new trainees. One can hope.

Two questions. One of the listed features was real numbers before picking powers, so I'm guessing we can see those numbers while training. However, can we look at real numbers for powers not available? If I'm considering a new set, I not only want to know what the first or second tier attacks do, I want to see what the ninth tier does while I'm still in the character creation. If I can't, well, still a vast improvement over what we have, consider it a feature request.

Secondly, I presume we can pick a costume set (like all jester) and then start making changes (like replacing the chest with robotic arms)?

Looks very nice.

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Well even though I knew what the sets were I have to say I'm still disappointed that Scrappers are not getting a punching set. After, what 4 years, of people practically begging for a pure punching set for scrappers the devs finally have a chance to correct this huge oversight in their original design, and they don't.

Even if I like some of the other stuff getting ported this whole thing is 'massive fail'.

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Which punching set in game would you have given them? Just out of curiousity.

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SuperStrength. It's the iconic "go punch them" set. A separate "street fighting" set might have been better, but based on what Castle said, that's nowhere on the horizon.

And for those saying "give it a try"...I need to try Fiery Melee to tell it isn't a punching powerset?

As I've said in other threads, I am VERY unhappy that once again, no punchy sets for scrappers. It's only been asked for since CoH hit beta, I know these things take time.

Well, TotalVideoGames.com has the info.

I'm pissed. I don't know if that's a forbidden word on the forums or not, but I'm pissed off enough that I don't care. For four years I've wanted to create punching scrappers. The choices have been kicking scrappers (MA) or scrappers with a couple of punch options but mostly debuff/buff/drain powers. For some inane reason, the devs said "Nope, scrappers won't actually punch, I mean, whoever would connect the term scrapping with fighting, only tankers get a punching set, here, have a weapon." There was talk about a Street Fighting powerset, everyone said they wanted it, it would be great...and a couple months ago, Castle said "next set is shields, but that's a long time away. Then a blaster and a controller set" which clearly meant "no punching scrappers"

But then came I12 with Powerset Proliferation. ATs will be able to get access to powersets that they've been denied. Yahoo! Finally I'd be able to get my punching scrapper. Some people talked about Electric melee or Energy melee, which would be tough to have as a natural scrapper, but at least they'd be punching scrappers.

So what do we get? Fire scrappers. Out of 9 powers, TWO are punching.

WTF IS WRONG WITH PUNCHING SCRAPPERS?

There appears to be a dead Coralax in a box in a Striga mission.

For those who are soloing (and yes, some people like to solo, some people have lifestyles that mean that getting a team isn't always possible or they have to be ready to go afk which makes them bad teammates), the Hollows was badly broken.

These will do a lot to making the Hollows less broken. But I was hoping for more.

What's still broken?

First, with the way the map is all broken up, it can be painful/deadly without a travel power. It's less broken now that you aren't forced to go to areas that are way out of your level, but it's still too easy to fall into a crevace that limit your choices to (a) pleading for a port out or (b) finding opponents above your level and getting defeated so you can go to hospital. Purely from a map design, Striga and Croatoa are far more accessible to those without a travel power than the Hollows. With the elevators and water, you can argue that the Fautline map is more low-level friendly.

And second, the mandatory "Yes, you must go to the Hollows. No, I won't give you any missions until you do. No, you don't have to do any missions in the Hollows if you don't like it. But you still have to sprint halfway across KR to the tram, halfway across Atlas Park to the Hollows exit, click on Wincott and return to Atlas where you sprint halfways across Atlas park to the tram, and halfway across KR so you can finally get a real mission."

The change I most want in the Hollows is having the KR contact say "let me introduce you to a contact", you click introduce me, you're told about Wincott and the Hollows and Wincott is added to your contact list, and you then turn back to your KR contact and say "So, what missions do you have for me?"

I don't want to seem ungrateful, many of these changes sound good and I may do Hollows missions on my new SuperStrength/Fire scrapper (hey, a guy can dream). But if I decide against going through the Hollows, there is no reason I should be forced to physically go to Wincott. And that also applies to Faultline, Striga, Croatoa, and the RWZ. You should be given the intro contact as a contact, so you know they exist, but it shouldn't be mandatory.

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Those all sound like really great changes to the Hollows. Now how about setting War Witch loose on the Shadow Shard? The huge villain population in the Shard is entirely too static, too rooted in place. The Shard has such enormous unrealized potential.

How about:

- a few wandering space "dragons"

- a few wandering rikti spacecraft

- a 50-hero Hamidon-raid-level arch-villain

- hollow out some asteroids for us to explore

- more complicated "one-off" missions

- an accolade power earned by completing the four Shard TFs

- access to the Shard for CoV (co-op mode like the RWZ?)

- actually place the Ski Chalet and Pocket D somewhere in the Shard

- black holes, small meteors, vision-obscuring nebulae

- a wisp city

- random rare rularuu raid on FBZ

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I'd add one more thing to your list...a technician that can provide you with official FBZ flight packs...but they only work in the shard.

Mac, actually. I was hoping the viewer would be flash. Ah well.

Was looking forward to those, but with the videos requiring Windows Media Player, I can't see them.

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So now your 95 million extra healing gives you the ability to save 50 Inf on the purchase of a Break Free. Yeah... I wonder if we can get a little base-lovin' this issue in the form of some item upgrades.

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If I'm reading the initial post correctly, your 95 million extra healing gives you the ability to spend an extra 50 Inf on the purchase of a Break Free.

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No. 100 million gives you Breaks for 50 more than a contact.

95 million is saying you have 5 mil already in an AutoDoc sitting right next to the Combat Logs. From the Auto Doc, 1 Break Free will be 150 for 3 Respites and a quick merge, which is 50 more than direct from the Logs.

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And you can buy them during a TF.

Though with Mender Roebuck...buying inspirations during a TF is no longer an issue for those level 25 and up.

I'm not sure it's a detective. I suspect it will be like Borea in the RWZ, just missions to do.

The Hollows was the first hybrid hazard zone, no trainer, no hero corps rep, no hospital, no stores, but it did have contacts.

Striga was the second. It got a trainer, and while there was an area with "normal" spawns, once you got out of Port Noble it was standard hazard zone spawns (I still find some of the hunt missions difficult).

Croatoa and then Faultline became standard zones...normal spawn levels throughout the zone, and all the ammenities. RWZ was back to Hazard Zone sized spawns.

If MasterMinds can use kinetic boosts on their pets...that's going to be somewhat broken.*-

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4. Perez Park needs something too. I hate those woods. My solution is since it is a zone between everyother zone if you look at your map, is make it a big multilevel parking garage with a subbasement that has a sewer for the hyrdra to hang out in.

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The perfect place for your Big Yellow Taxi, eh?

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Ugh, no badge sorting? Badges needed it much more than contacts (which at least appeared in the order you got them).

Also, power tray customization does nothing useful for me if I can't save the settings so as to rapidly implement it between characters.

I'm not gonna sail "fail," but only because they did promise i12 being a "small" issue.

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why do badges need sorting? so u can look at them.. in order? badges dont serve that kind of function to ACTUALLY need sorting over contacts. i dont scroll through my badges during a mission trying to find which badge i need to talk to or just talked to. or what contact i should go back to after a long hiatus. most of my contacts arent even active just sitting there clogging my contact screen, contacts NEED this WAY more than badges do, i admit badges can be frustrating, but it isnt that important, they are still organized to a degree in comparison

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The problem is trying to find out which badges you need to work on. It would be nice to be able to filter exploration by zone, and the Achievements tab (if I remember the name right, the one with the hunt badges) has had way too much stuff thrown in it. For one thing, Inventions should be its own tab.

But I will agree that contacts needed it more.

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I have to agree that both of you raise interesting points, but the fact of the matter is that it is less of a stretch for Villains to have a swarm of ceaselessly loyal minions that exist only to do their bidding, so I'd need to take White Lady's side on this.

The hero could/would never use his/her gathered crew of minions in the same way as a villain. For the villain, his/her minions exist as either:

1. Cannon fodder to keep the enemy from shooting at them or at minion type 2.

2. A powerful brutish warrior who is bound to loyalty to the Mastermind do to magical means, threats, promises, or in some cases sheer stupidity or lack of ability to think for themselves (Good in game example: Ghost Widow and her lacky Wretch).

A heroic "Mastermind" could never hope to be the same uncaring, send-all-the-pawns-forward-to-tire-the-enemy-out-first kind of character that the villain is. Name one villain who ever shed a tear when his loyal minions were brought down in the name of justice/revenge/whatever cause the hero is fighting for.

I somehow doubt that a believable hero could show the same disregard for his minions lives and safety.

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Robotic henchmen remove much of those concerns. Even when they've got some personality, you can rebuild them.

But the other possibility is that, just like we heroes have the medporter, so can our henchmen. Errand, my thugs/poison MM, has all his guys hooked up to the medporter. Every Hami raid, he comments on what these do to his insurance fees.

So yes, you could have a heroic MM, ThunderGuy and his loyal thunderers.

BTW, the argument that controllers shouldn't have more control over their pets because the controllers have only convinced others to work with them fails because (1) there are non-henchmen villain pets and (2) most controller pets are dumber than a pile of rocks. It's even worse when you're dealing with human teammates...you should be able to explain to General Aarons "OK, we're going to be sneaking past these guys...and now wait for buffing before attacking". Yes, Masterminds have more control than controllers, and Team Leaders (the heroic equivalent) would have more control, but there should be a simplified control system for every pet in the game, including the ones you pick up in mission. Maybe just set the attitude, aggressive/defensive/passive.

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Wait. How exactly do we still have our powers in Ancient Rome? I thought that was way past our "tether" or something?

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The Carbon Teather is over 5700 years long. Roman was about 2000 years ago.

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Yes, but...I thought we couldn't go past Breakout (or Outbreak) because our powers were only level 1?

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I think that if you already existed in a time zone, your level adjusts. But if you go to a time zone where you didn't exist before, your level doesn't adjust. After all, our powers didn't change when going back 15 years (before the Rikti war) to get that file from the 5th column.

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O_O I think my dream just came true... SCRAPPERS MIGHT GET ENERGY MELEE!! WOOOOOOOO!!

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Maybe, but I really want just plain old SuperStrength.

I have one serious complaint about this announcement.

I'm probably not going to make it into closed beta.

Yep. That's about the only serious complaint I've got. (Yeah, there are other things I wish was in there, and I hope they'll make it into a future release, but the list of what you're doing sounds great.)

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Devs are gonna redo the Positron Task Force to make it more in line with how task forces are now.

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I was excited when I saw this comment, but he just said "it's a goal". It's been "a goal" for a long time. I'll believe it when I see it.