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Sidekicking and Exemplaring: A friend just pointed me to a blog in which a bunch of current and former MMO programmers are arguing about MMO design theory. And one of their most prominent articles, one they put a permanent sidebar link to, refers to the insoluble problem in all MMOs of what to do if you and a friend want to play together, but your friend has more time per week to play than you do? Pretty soon he's higher level than you; you can't survive his missions, and if he joins you for your missions, neither of you gets any XP. And I read that article, literally just the other day, with a kind of sick fascination. How could all these veterans of the industry not know that this problem got solved three and a half years ago?

And the funny thing is, an exemplar/sidekick system like yours is something that would be even easier to implement in every other MMO in the market. In every other game on the market, most of your combat stats are derived from character attributes that go up more or less linearly per level, and from the stats on equipment of whatever level you're using, which also increase more or less linearly per level. This means that for them, adding the ability to sidekick up to a friend's level, or exemplar down, could be added with not much more than one line of code, not counting the code to track distance between the mentor and sidekick. Because of the freeform power selection, City of Heroes has to memorize what order you picked your powers in, store that information as part of the character data, and adjust your power list on the fly as your level jumps up and down. (I do go back just barely far enough to remember when this didn't happen.) You went to the trouble of doing it, though. That's nothing less than amazing, now that I realize it.

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To be fair, Everquest II does have Exemplaring. Multiple higher level players can exemplar down to one low character's level and the low level character will earn bonus experience for each mentor. The mentors also earn experience, but at a reduced rate.

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Didn't EQ2's exemplar come after the game came out? It is nice that other MMO's are copying some stuff from CoH finally (meant that in a nice way)

But as for the OP's post, I agree on all parts. I've yet to find an MMO that satisfies me like CoH/CoV has. They all copy every bad thing about an MMO too much and hate it.

I like #1 also. The green in #2 seems a little too dark for an Xmas theme in my eyes.

Well, I felt like recycling mine from last year, unless someone can do better

So..for anyone who wants their Avatar to be ready for the Holiday's, put the request here and hopefully some will make a great christmas/holiday version of it as I can't.

Though I am torn between keeping up Xmas Objection or Man gets hit by football...Xmas style

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NCsoft NorCal truly is taking care of its subscribers. CoH/CoV’s free updates will continue and the team is listening to community’s demands for more updates regarding the quality of life

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ALot of the stuff over the past year has been alot of QoL things that have been a long time needed. Biggest being Flashback. Ever since they put in Issue 2 (I think) with The Hallows, people have been wanting to play their main and go do the content and get their own souviner.

Well, you had to team or roll an alt. Annoyance for some, like me. I want the souviner on my own just to have it, because my main is my completist, my badger, my most played toon and all that hoo ha. Alts are meant to be...alts. Played for the powers, but for me, just the powers and flexibility (for things like STF's/RSF's, etc..)

Revamping Faultline into a more friendly zone was a great change that everyone wanted. Then they made the Rikti Crash Site more friendly for all again too and it turned out awesome.

So I have no fears that the growing amount of people working on the game will continue to improve the game by leaps and bounds. Flashback was a major hurdle thats now been conquered. The only other "major" one I can think of now is Power Customization in a bigger sense then what it is now.

After that hurdle is conquered, I think people would be cool with a new zone. But for now, I'm very happy to fork over my $15 since I'm getting what I've been wanting for a long time now.

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My first thought was "DOOOOM!"

My second thought was "Wait, now MUO and CoH are actually in competition. NCSoft has a vested interest in making sure that CoH competes handily with MUO. This isn't the sign of a game being sidelines (like MxO was when it was pawned off onto Sony)"

Maybe I'm being to optimistic, but I certainly see some cause for celebration...

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Good point! I hadn't thought about that. Now that they are going to compete, CoH/CoV will get even better then it already is

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Hey, nice.

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Special Thanks to Our Players

Now back to you, the players. You are the lifeblood of our game. In celebration of our new studio and our exciting plans, and in order to thank you for the fantastic community that you have built, we are pleased to announce the following.

Full Access to City of Heroes and City of Villains®
All players with City of Heroes retail* accounts will now have access to City of Villains, and all City of Villains retail* accounts will now have access to City of Heroes. Players that didn't previously have access to "the other side" will find that they do now. Just log in to check it out!

Debt Wipe
After the launch of Issue 11: A Stitch in Time this Fall, we are removing Debt from all characters and giving you a fresh start. Actual date will be announced shortly. Have fun in the mean time.

20,000 Prestige
Also after the launch of Issue 11, all Supergroups will receive an additional 20,000 Prestige per Supergroup member, meaning SGs could acquire up to 3 million Prestige based upon their Supergroup membership roster! Actual date will be announced shortly.

In the near future we will begin to share more information about our development plans. With this major reinvestment and effort ahead of us, we will take City of Heroes to new heights!

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AWESOME! Even though I already have both CoH and CoV, at least everyone can share in it now

*hugs the new NCSoft overlords* Don't let our hopes suffer!

I demand you accept my emotions!

If there was a "Live" event done and you recreated some missions, that would just be hilariously fun/funny if done right. I'd go to one just to participate in that

*waits for them to lock my thread also*

Hopefully CoP does return. It was doing well, unless it had to go on the backburner to fix some things but had to wait.

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Nice work, Suckerpunch! I always enjoy plotting my characters via your web planner at www.cohplanner.com!

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Try harder to not make it look like a shameless plug

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I hope your confidence in I9 is justifed. For myself...there isn't that much that is fun to me, and a number of things I dislike.

The moving of the content forward DOES excite me though. However, when you say:

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New costumes, new temp powers and new inventions.

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PLEASE don't make the new costumes "inventable". I created the look of my characters when I create them. Unlockable items, that I know when I can unlock them (cape, aura, witch's hat) can be planned for if they fit. But random drops, maybe you'll get it maybe you won't, might as well not exist.

I'm really looking forward to I10. I wish I shared your enthusiasm for I9.

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Can't please everyone. I guess I should beat that horse to death also.

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Wooooo! My first time being the first after a red name!

edit, after reading post: The Column shall rise again!

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Ok I seriously need to say this....

What makes you so special on posting first after a dev? Tell me. I don't get this phenomena. I made a thread about a month ago on this but eventually it got derailed too far by some people so it was locked. But yet this keeps happening and mods don't seem to care.

Yeah, I can just not read it, but its a little hard when its right after a dev. You wasted your time to post "Weee, I'm so special I posted first after a dev! I want a cookie!" then went back and edited saying "Oh...after reading it, here's something to contribute to what was posted" (not exact quotes but still damn close).


Anywho, with that out of the way, I'm happy to see what I10 brings. No clue what enemy group will become friends but its obvious on who is returning and who was a friend, now an enemy

Huzzah to 3 years of great gaming!

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Well II see little jump of excitment to be the first.

And it should be made clear Lighthouse is NC Soft hence a orange name not a red.

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Yes, I know who is what. Hence the 2 seperate Digests. I think after being on the boards long enough I know the difference

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Wooooo! My first time being the first after a red name!

edit, after reading post: The Column shall rise again!

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Ok I seriously need to say this....

What makes you so special on posting first after a dev? Tell me. I don't get this phenomena. I made a thread about a month ago on this but eventually it got derailed too far by some people so it was locked. But yet this keeps happening and mods don't seem to care.

Yeah, I can just not read it, but its a little hard when its right after a dev. You wasted your time to post "Weee, I'm so special I posted first after a dev! I want a cookie!" then went back and edited saying "Oh...after reading it, here's something to contribute to what was posted" (not exact quotes but still damn close).


Anywho, with that out of the way, I'm happy to see what I10 brings. No clue what enemy group will become friends but its obvious on who is returning and who was a friend, now an enemy

Huzzah to 3 years of great gaming!

I know the "Quinfecta" is uber rare but is that supposed to happen that way? I don't remember seeing confirmation if its a bug or working as intended.

35-45 hopefully gets some much needed love. Its longoverdue. I wish they could also spend a little time changing themob code in the RCS and Shadow Shard so that enemies actuallyttack the NPC's.

Wow, my space bar is acting up today>.<

Ah crap....I'll just avoid the appeals

This is all my fault....

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To be honest, this isn't an official site so the reviewer are probably under some misconception about Hamidon.

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City of Heroes / City of Villains: Redesigning the “Hamidon”
By Christopher Bruce, Cryptic Developer

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Yeah, I actually found it a little annoying that one of the Devs knows so little about the game (even if he were trying to use "elder god" in a figurative sense) that he referred to defeating Hammi as sending it (him) back to the dimension from which he came.

Duh, read through a story arc of the game you code for once in a while.

It just looks bad to me. Cryptic's own developers (at least this one) know very little about the background of something that they are writing an article on... one that said dev knows full well is going to get published online and read by actual players.

I mean, come on, spend the 1-2 minutes it'll take to skim through the text of the arc and find the part about Hamidon being a scientist who mutated himself.

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What if it wasn't a matter of "just" a mutation? What if when he mutated himself, what actually happened was that it opened a gate to the Elder God Hamidon who then uses his body as a way into our world? What if this Elder God consumed the scientist's body in such a way so as to not require the scientist's actual body to reform here, which would explain the lack of such a body each time the Hamidon is defeated, or assuming this, repulsed from this dimension?

It's possible there is more to this than we currently know.

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I like the theory, but the fact that the scientist's name was Hamidon Pasalima before his transformation is a bit problimatic.

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We fixed the issue with the article's backstory to match the game's lore.

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Darn you Lighthouse! You ruined the fun of us theorizing about the "New" Hamidon!

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I hope that the new encounter minimally accomplishes the following tasks, Villainside:

<ul type="square">[*]It must give Dominators a non-trivial role.[*]It must give Stalkers a non-trivial role.[/list]
If it can simply be squashed by buffing Brutes or Tankerminds, I'll be very ticked off. But I'm willing to wait with an open mind once Test goes public again.

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Read the article, fully before commenting. If you have, reread it again. If you still don't get why I said that, I'll gladly quote a part that voids your concern for you

Gentleman...Start your Doomgines!

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From the linked article:
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So the player cap in The Hive and The Abyss has been lowered to 50 players.

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SG/VGs allow more than 50 members.

And since it's an open zone, and not instanced, it's certainly first-come/first-serve.

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Here we go................................................ .

I think around 150 or 200.

But the background to Hamidon conflicts with how its told in game. I didn't know scientists were around for thousands of years and live in other dimensions. Unless they say "He was an alien scientist from another dimension"

Wow, nice to have an article detailing the difficulty of redoing the Hami encounter from a devs view. Great job!

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When we first created Hamidon, we started by making a trial that was, for all intents and purposes, impossible, save for one strategy designed by Geko, our lead powers and critters designer. Because the Hamidon would spawn a Mitochondria bodyguard for every character in the cytoplasm when reduced to 50% (and 25%) health, Geko’s plan involved the players coordinating their tactics so only a minimum number of characters were actually inside the cytoplasm, effectively reducing the re-spawn to a manageable level. Also, since the Mitos were immobile, characters could perform a multi-pronged assault so that when the Mito re-spawn occurred, they could force the Mitos to spawn on one side of the Hamidon, leaving one side undefended.

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Now we know what the strategy was the devs always thought of. About time they told us!

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[qoute]&lt;&lt;taken from the second interview&gt;&gt; As with other interviews, if you have questions for the interviewee, please ask them. However, please keep them tasteful and on topic. This is a fun thread not a flame fest. With that aside I bring you her interview.&gt;&gt;[/qoute]

I took out the standard warning becuase I thought eveyone got the basic idea. I was wrong.....

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Then lash and kill me with a stick