GadgetDon

I've written code using the Twitter API, mostly for auto posting picture links from a gallery. The Twitter API is a lot more straightforward than the Facebook API. Writing a routine that searches for all tweets with "@cityofheroes" and "#gimmethataura", remove duplicates, and slowly send out DMs to the owners is reasonably straightforward. (The tricky part is trickling out the DMs so you don't hit the caps on the API usage.)

Alternatively, one could create a site where you link your Twitter account to it and it just displays the code for you after you do the linking.

This is what happens when internal code names go public. It creates unrealistic expectations, it opens the team up to mocking, and forces the team to come up with yet another feline code name

I stand corrected. Based on statements I'd heard from others, there was no such warning.

If it's earnable in game - it's free. Merits are cheap and easy to get, friends can drag you through the unlock quickly, etc. They might as well just remove the invention license or drop the permanent free Invention license to tier 2.

And it's clear that this is something the devs don't want to do.

Except one must ask oneself - why did Paragon go to the trouble of introducing a Premium group of F2P, and add F2P at all? Presumably, one of the goals was having players who were players and quit for one reason or another to come back, give the game a try, and continue playing either as a resubscribed VIP or a Premium player buying points to buy some things here or there.

What Twilight is saying is that the user experience for that returning player, who wants to say "OK, what's it like to play CoH now", stinks on ice. You choose a character to unlock, using one of your few slots, and surprise it's unplayable. You do manage to get a character unlocked and playable, jump in the game, and the character is weak and easily killed because it effectively has no enhancements - and the answer is "well, pay money to try this game that you decided not to pay money to play and decided to try again because Paragon said you could do so for free, or spend a half hour or so making that character workable"

And a lot of the potential long-term contributing and paying players just say "screw this, this is no fun at all, let me find a game where I can have some fun."

But if the devs made just a few changes, either "If you use one of your limited character slots to unlock a character, you can play it" or at a really base minimum "You get warned if you're unlocking a character you can't play" and "The character you unlock has its enhancements somewhat functional so you can just jump in and play", a number of them will say "Yeah, this is fun, I'm here to stay".

It's not about "but I want it all", it's about "I want to have fun"

The reason Controllers and MMs were treated definitely, from what they said, was the pets. One of the most cpu intensive parts of running a zone on the server is keeping track of where everyone is, who can see who, who is reachable by an aoe, etc. For those calculations, One Mastermind with six pets out = 7 Defenders in terms of burden on the server, one fire controller with the three imps out = 4 Defenders. Whether that justifies locking them or not is left as an exercise for the reader, but that's the explanation given and it seems reasonable.

Just got notice on Twitter that this week's coffee talk internet broadcast (starting in about a half hour from my posting this) will be talking about Power Pools.

It's better, but I think it's only sneaking up on the problem.

The problem is that premium players, coming back to try the game, find their characters are incredibly underpowered due to effectively having no IOs, and the process to do something about that is time consuming and boring (and potentially wasteful). If the character build is mostly common IOs with just a few sets, that solves it, run and go, but if most of the powers are slotted with set IOs, it's the same problem - those powers effectively have no enhancements.

There are a couple of "simple" fixes that remove much of the demotivator aspect, let you log in, unlock your character and immediately jump in and have fun (and hopefully decide, yeah, I'm back to stay).

Simple Solution #1: Slotted IOs continue to function. You can't slot new IOs if you haven't unlocked the invention system, but the ones in your solution continue to function.

Simple Solution #1.1: The first time someone logs into Freedom, they're given a 30/60/90 day "license" that allows slotted IOs to function. When it runs out, the player must decide to buy Invention Licenses, replace enhancements, or leave the game. It kicks the unfun boring part back a while, so it's no part of the returning experience. UI question of how to explain it to the affected characters and show a countdown so players know when they have to fix things. It seems overly complex both from a coding standpoint and customer understanding basis, but if they are hide bound on "slotted IOs without invention license are completely disabled" gets around the entry experience problem.

Simple Solution #2: Slotted IOs degrade without the invention system, but not to nothing. Maybe they just drop to common IO level of boosting but all set bonuses/procs shut off, maybe they drop to SO value (single attribute enhances 33%, dual attribute enhances 16.5% for each attribute, triple attribute enhances 11% for each attribute). There's still an advantage to having an Invention License, but the characters are still playable and effective immediately.

The need (and having talked to a number of returning premium players trying out, yes, I'd call this a need) is that old characters are playable and not so weak and underpowered to not be fun without the unfun fixing process.

Given complete control, I'd go further. Reduce the tier at which IOs are permanently unlocked to Tier 6, maybe as low as tier 4. Or keep the IO unlock where it is, add another unlock at Tier 3 where you can use and slot IOs but not make them (so VIPs can make influence selling IOs in the auction house to premium players). The Invention system is such a core part of the game, stretching through the reward system of tasks and more, that it's more a demotivator to say "screw this, I'm outta here" than a motivator to say "Yes, I'll pay to get that."

But that's something on which reasonable people can disagree, and it is their game and their call. The only thing I'll say is absolutely broken is "a slotted IO enhancement is effectively like an empty slot" in terms of gameplay and encouraging returning players to stay.

From what Twilight says, you are correct. Worse, you are not warned of this before unlocking a character whose AT is not unlocked.

"You may unlock up to four characters, please pick one."

"I had fun with MyIllusionController, unlock him."

"You have unlocked MyIllusionController. MyIllusionController is not playable because the AT is locked. You may unlock up to three characters, please pick one."

To be honest, I think using your existing IOs for free is not an unreasonable thing. Put creation of new enhancements behind the high tier unlock, completely fair. Put the slotting of new enhancements behind the same unlock or another unlock, also fair though I'd argue the ability for VIPs to craft for others could be a fun additional twist.

Or if that's a complete non-starter, have them degrade to DOs/SOs based on level. No set bonuses, no procs, so probably would be less effective than a pure SO build, but at least it's playable. The game may not require IOs, may be balanced around SOs, but it's definitely not balanced around "effectively, all your slots are empty". Worse, if there's the possibility you will subscribe again, replacing all those IOs with SOs is incredibly wasteful and going the second build route is boring and time consuming. Boring and time consuming is NOT the experience you want players who have just returned to the game saying "hmm, maybe I should get into this again" to have.

It's not an issue for me - I renewed my subscription when Freedom launched for all the new stuff and have no expectation to cancel, even if I were to let it lapse I've filled out the tree so can use IOs completely. But I've had some good friends who left the game who might be tempted to come back at least to see how it is, and this IO issue is a bad "box opening" experience, the experience of just getting back in.

I'll agree with that, and I'd add an unlock in Tier 3 or tier 4 to use IOs. The higher unlock becomes the unlock to craft IOs, get salvage and recipe drops, etc.

The revised arc has Anti-Matter doing it to get stuff done faster (perhaps an attempt to keep up with Neuron, it's been a while). The Pre-GR arc did have Neuron doing it.

They provide events to weave into arcs. Instead of being sent to mountaintop in the rain where Cimerora once stood, Cole is put to work debriefing Vanguard scientists on what he knows about his Hamidon, learning about Primal Hamidon and how it applies. There are groups that are angry about this, willing to break the law to impose their own justice, you have to stop them. Maybe you get picked as the lucky guy to try Cole's strategy to end Primal Hamidon once and for all.

And if the devs need a deus ex machina to finish off a story, Cole busts out and sacrifices himself.

There are questions of jurisdiction of punishing the Tyrant and Praetors for acts against Praetorians in Praetoria. If a new civilian authority was established in Praetoria, presumably Cole and the Praetors would be put on trial by them, but right now anyone in Praetoria is focused on getting out of Praetoria. If a government of Praetorian ex-pats is created, they might have jurisdiction, but would they be allowed to do so, and would we be sure that the elected government would hold the Resistance line as opposed to Loyalist? Who will the Praetorian civilian blame for the destruction of their reasonably comfortable life and being forced to leave the world they've lived in all their life?

As for Primal Earth - In most of the battles that take place in Primal Earth, the invading forces are apparently taking more than reasonable care in getting civilians out of the way, a lot more than taken by most real life armies. Yes, they'll blast metahumans with happy abandon, but I'd argue that we're the soldiers in this war, and coming to Primal Earth to attack metahumans is the same as metahumans going to Praetoria and slaughtering the Praetorian combatants there. The Praetorian War, at least as expressed in the Incarnate Trials, is in some ways a throwback to World War I warfare, where two armies fight it out and try to leave the civilians out of it. There are some missions from Maria Jenkins or Tina Macintyre that take place in civilian areas, but even so, they aren't herding the civilians into groups for mass execution or taking them back for experimentation.

Contrast that with the Rikti, which slaughtered civilians by the thousands - and we're busy trying to make peace with them.

All that said, I have my doubts that there would be any legal niceties like a trial involved with Cole or the Praetors. It's not like Wade got a trial. Longbow, Vanguard, Arachnos all show a willingness to do "what it takes" to deal with those they perceive to be threats, regardless of the law. Which dims the line between them and Malta, doesn't it?

Well, I've written some fan fiction on the redemption of Tom Riddle, so yeah, I think it's possible to be redeemed. In our own world, there are those who have created horrible crimes and found a change of life in prison. There's a reason that executives are granted the pardon power and we have parole boards.

But again, redemption doesn't mean "Hey, that stuff you did, it's all OK". Those acts remain, it will affect what restrictions they live under for the rest of their life, it will affect how people view them and treat them for the rest of their lives. It just says the story isn't over. The dead cannot change, but the living can.

And it's too easy to say "they're a sociopath, might as well throw them against the wall and shoot them." There are those with a real mental deficiency, unable to generate any concern for others, but it's rare. Far more common are those who for one reason or another never learned to care, had fatally flawed world views, or other reasons. And those are treatable, changeable. Not easily, change is hard, and most won't be redeemed. But it is possible.

I'm going to go with this. I think it's a serious mistake to equate in-game Statesman/Marcus Code and his analogs with game developer Jack and a bigger mistake to assume the devs equate them. At the VERY most, they have been wanting to shake up the story by killing off the game's biggest hero and assumed enough time had passed that it wouldn't be taken as a slam at game developer Jack (and if so, they were wrong).

These are serious people who care about the game, they spend countless hours and want to be proud of it - and at an absolute minimum, it's what puts food on the family tables. I can't see them being that petty. If they wanted to be petty, they could always write him into tip missions to mock him.

Absolutely. Harry Truman and the crew of the Enola Gay are over that horizon. Jimmy Doolittle too. Is Jean Gray over the horizon, or is not being in your right mind an out?

The cold hard truth is that, with remarkably few exceptions, war criminals are the guys that lost the war. Had the final Praetorian trial ended with the destruction of Paragon City and the annihilation of the Portal Corp program, our player characters would have been the war criminals. How many Praetorians have we slaughtered in the intro to the trials? I hear there are even criminals who do nothing but continually go to the Magesterium, slaughter the defense forces, and withdraw.

I'm not denying that there are acts while are inherently evil, and the Praetorians have committed them. But as much as we'd like to pretend otherwise, there's a line between waging war and committing war crimes but it's not as wide as you're implying or always so clear when you're in the middle of the war.

In terms of redemption, one aspect is going to be the why. "I killed them because I love to hear them scream" is not a good candidate to redeem. But let's talk about one of the examples that have been thrown around, Magneto. Of course, one of the problems is he's been written by multiple groups and originally was the paper thin "I do these crimes because I are a bad guy" type who named his group "The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants". But when put in the hands of more competent writers, he lived through an experience of seeing a vile out of control government try to wipe a race of people out of existence. Now he sees at many governments trying to wipe out his people, mutants, and he's fighting back. His path to redemption was seeing a different way to protect his people from being wiped out.

Also, when it comes to the Praetorians, no one is talking about Going Rogue "do the right 22 missions and you're a squeaky clean hero" redemption. The only way any of them are joining the Freedom Phalanx is if the Battalion has wiped out just about every powerful super on Primal Earth and dammit we've got to stop them. They will spend the rest of their lives under suspicion and under restrictions and hated by a good portion of the citizens of Primal Earth (and refugees from Praetoria) for what they've done. It's more an internal redemption, a change of heart, a sense of remorse. (And then probably some permanent sacrifice - dramatically speaking, redeemed villains don't have long life spans.)