Greyhawke

I think the Mission Architect has a lot of potential to be much more than a less random radio mission generator, but I do worry that it may take quite some time before that potential is realized. How much, or how little, beyond a radio mission generator it is at launch will depend on how many features the extra development time has allowed them to add in.

Triggers are a great example of content that will be needed as soon as possible, if its not there at lauch.

I will make a comment on a couple of items from above

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Scale player's levels to match the content.

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Radio mission scale their level to match the player. Some might argue that the feature quoted above is a limitation of the Mission Architect, rather than a feature.

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Make mixed hero/villain teams.

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Technically, missions from Borea in the RWZ are radio 'style' missions that allow co-op play.

Which reminds me... I would love to be able to create missions which would allow two teams to play on the mission at the same time with conflicting objectives...

Anyway... I do think the architect is going to be more limited in the beginning than what we want it to be, although I do hold out hope that it will have quite a bit more flexibility than the more cynical among us are expecting.

Now that you can make the grey desks overlap their bounding box, they actually make a decent floor/ceiling.

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9. Ability to combine mission types?


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9 could you give more detail on this question?



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I think what is meant here is the ability to combine objectives in your mission.

For example "Find the clue, kill the boss, escort out the prisoner, oh, and you have 12 minutes."

I would hope its 3 arcs, and even that 'feels' painfully limiting at this stage. But then again I am used to the prolific player content development in Neverwinter Nights, so I will wait and see.

I am very eager to get my hands on these tools and see just what we are capable of. Hopefully we can get started on testing soon, now that i13 is on its way to live.

Thanks for keeping things updated here.

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Personally I think the new rent system is great. When they orginally reduced rent so that starting plot sizes had no rent this encouraged numerous players to create personal sg's to store thier enhancements, inspirations, & special salvage. This took a hit on the sg concept of it being a group & took a hit on recruitment.

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I think it was more lack of permissions for the storage they added that was the catalyst for an increase in personal bases. Before storage, I only had a few members in my personal base, mostly decorative for RP use.

In any case, if the devs meant the new rent to be a deterrent to personal bases, they would not have made it so unbelievably cheap. Now that rent is super cheap and independent of plot size, I find my personal base more useful, not less. With this change I will be paying less rent, not more, even adding up the two bases I had that were previously free.

The only thing that happens with the new rent that did not happen before, is that when an account goes inactive, the personal bases tied to that account will lock down once rent is not paid. Is there some kind of significant resource saving on NCSoft's end for a locked down base? That could be a reason for the change.

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Is it really that hard for you to store future holiday salvage on your person until the day finally comes that your salvage rack already stuffed with holiday salvage drops below 30?

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What's inconvenient is when that rack does run out, putting more back in and keeping enough there for all of the SG and their eleventy-seven alts will be impossible. Consider an SG that was started in 2008 does not have any candy canes in storage. If i13 goes live before the 15th of December, you will not be able to store enough candy canes in one rack to make most of the recipes available for them.

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Could you add a different type of salvage bin for event salvage only, and thereby allow it to hold more? It's a clunky solution, but it might serve as a stopgap if making a single container with differing limits is too hard to do right now.


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I'll try a simpler solution.

Bring back the old salvage storage. It can already store everything. Either add a tab that can store invention salvage, or if that is not possible add a different rack for that. Temporarily, you could even use the same art assets, just give it a different name. I'll move the old salvage racks out of the room with the invention table, the SG members will understand easily which is which.

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To add walking into the game we're looking at anywhere from 15 to 75 animations. That would get us a single 'style' of walking for the male, female, and huge player models. Doubtful that we'd ever be able to create a single walk animation that would make everyone happy...

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Good point. I personally would lik a 'saunter' button

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Items in personal inventory will be placed at the reduced price after the issue goes live. Merry Christmas!

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Excellent! Thanks for the answers.

And a hearty thank you to all the devs involved in making the refund automatic!!!


Next question (See how they never end, welcome again to the forums )

Are the prices currently listed for the decorative rooms correct? It seems a little off to have non-functional rooms be so pricey, as their true expense is already in their opportunity cost, being the space that they take up that could be used for functional rooms.

Great to see you Synapse. Welcome to the forums!

Next question

I understand the limit of 30 invention salvage in the rack, thanks for the feedback. However, are there plans to return event salvage to their own tabs with larger limits? The inability to store costume salvage and candy canes without impacting invention salvage storage is a big inconvenience.

Great to meet you Sunstorm! Welcome to the jungle.

Hope to see you lots over in the base construction forums. Sorry in advance for the flood of PMs you are likely to receive

Thanks for the post Sunstorm! Hope you're up to a few questions. I'll start with one

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Prestige Refunds: The programming team has set up a refund system for all base plots, rooms and items. As soon a player loads into a base, that base will automatically refund the Prestige difference. This is crucial: the base must be entered in order to trigger the Prestige refund. If your base is not loaded, then the refund will not happen until someone enters it.


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How are items in a players personal inventory, but not yet placed, affected by this. Will they have their placement cost reduced, or do we need to place them before issue 13 goes live?

Base Repricing
1) How will the repricing of bases affect you personally?
Overall, it seems to be a great change, allowing access to many things that were previously out of reach

2) Will you dismantle your base to gain the additional prestige from the repricing?
Somewhat. My 3x4 workshop has a lot of decorative items in it (its a library), so I don't expect I will rebuild it to realize the potential prestige gain. In contrast, my 5x5 teleport room will probably come down and be rebuilt. There is quite a bit of decor there as well, but not near what the workshop has and the prestige gain in the teleport room is too large to forego. I wish there were a method to replace a room without disturbing its contents, as is the case with the plot.

3) How long would this process take you if you were to engage in this practice?
Without rebuilding the workshop, approximately 15-20 hours. Rebuilding the workshop /library would likely be another 30-40 hours. Admittedly, both times could have been much higher without the new, less restrictive pathing and bounding box placement.

4) What are the positive and negative concerns regarding repricing?
No negative concerns, other than the method. I would have hoped for something less tedious for the players. The positive aspect is that it should make the system much more approachable for smaller SGs, especially the solo SG or the SG with less than five active accounts.

5) How will this feature affect you long term and short term?
Short term there will be an immediate plot upgrade and the ability to focus more on decorative items in addition to function. Long term, I am uncertain. I would like to see more about planned base raids before I comment.

Base Salvage Exchange to Invention Salvage
1) What is the negative effect on your base for this feature implementation?
Obviously, this forces a base builder to the market in all practicality. I also do not like making the group choose between there own individual needs/goals and those of the group

2) What is the positive effect on your base for this feature implementation?
I am trying to see one. I thought it might make things simpler overall, but in practice this does not seem to be the case.

3) How long will it take you to adjust to learning this new system?
In the previous system I could load up on base salvage and wander over to see what I could make. In the new system, there is a tremendous amount of shuffling going on to find out what you can make. I am not sure I will ever be "comfortable" with this approach, as it feels tedious and forced. It could be somewhat improved by having the crafting tables linked to the base storage rather than player storage when determing what can be made.

4) What side effects to this system do you currently see from transitioning the old to new system?
Well, again forcing the base builder into the market, likely spending their personal funds in many cases.

5) What security concerns do you have regarding this change?
Shared invention salvage is a much greater temptation than much of what has previously been storable in a base. Variable permissions per bin, or per room, or something, are near a must.


Additional Notes:[*]The salvage bins desperately need the tabs for event salvage and special salvage returned with greater limits on those tabs.
[*]30 is low for invention salvage, 50 would be better.
[*]Recipe storage would also be helpful
[*]Please make the small bookcases (the two to the far left in the shelf section) stackable with the same properties as the floor safe. This would be an invaluable decorating tool if it could be implemented
[*]Please come to the base forums and enter into a dialogue with that part of the community when you begin to make plans for moving forward with more base changes.

Thanks for listening.

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[*]Decorative walls. Basically, take the lateral file and double the height and length, change the texture to one that will fit for tech and one that will fit for arcane. Add another variation of each with a standard sized doorway cutout. Add as many colors and textures as you can afford to, resource wise. Add the ability to stack, if possible.

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Of course, I could settle for them making the small bookscases stackable with the same properties as the floorsafe. Then this

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...cohdoorway.jpg

becomes simple enough to build

I think its worth the effort. Given the removable of bounding block restrictions and pathing restrictions it could open them up to do decorative things that would previously have been too restrictive (walls, for example). Here's a list from me.
[*]Pinball machines, such as in Pocket D
[*]Delivery truck, such as the one parked in Pocket D
[*]Portals, like the CoT demon portals, and tech versions similar in size but looking more like the portal corp portals
[*]Pool tables. See the easter egg area in faultline for example
[*]Bars and Barstools. Again, pocket D.
[*]Target Dummies, as in the Vanguard base in the RWZ. Could also be functional like those, or purely decorative.
[*]Decorative walls. Basically, take the lateral file and double the height and length, change the texture to one that will fit for tech and one that will fit for arcane. Add another variation of each with a standard sized doorway cutout. Add as many colors and textures as you can afford to, resource wise. Add the ability to stack, if possible.

Sad to see you go, Lighthouse. You did your job with honor and respect. Good luck in your future endeavors.

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This is what i want to know. A friend of mine plays COH in her Mac through Bootcamp and she's dealing with crash issues. Will she have to rebuy the game to get the Mac version or can she just download the mac client from her account page?

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She can download the Mac client for free when it is released.

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Now this is awesome!

Awesome news! I am tempted to buy a Mac

Nice also to see the pre-emptive notice of later availability for those of us shackled to Microsoft. Darn you cool looking Mac people.

Hmmm. Wonder how cheap I can get a mac that will run the game, maybe something used? Are the laptops at all reasonable?

Well, to be fair, there was that whole Sister Psyche, Aurora Borealis, Malaise storyline that did change some of the task forces that were available. Yjay's about as close as I can get to a ture evolving story, but its something.

Wow, Stacker!

Awesome work! That's where I want to party!

Wait, I need a couple more of these -->!!!!!!!!!

Ok, now I'm done

Let's see. A porter the size of the raid porter that could handle eight beacons would be great.

And beacons that take up less of a footprint (wallprint?) so they fit under a porter raised up to the next level (4ft).

More clarity on the beacon would also be nice. I would rather it just say PEREZ in clear print than some ambiguous thumbnail I can't really see until I get right up on it.

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I’m primarily responsible for making cool stories and missions, and designing systems to help support missions.

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Sounds like you might be the Architect of the Mission Architect

Could you give us some insight into what the Architect can do, what it cannot do but may be able to do in a future update, and what it will probably never be able to do, whether through technical limitations or game design related limitations.

And yeah, you need a red name alias. Is anyone using Synapse?

For logging out under the statue of Atlas you get the day job "Fashion Model"

I would be interested in seeing more of Praetorian earth, as well as being able to travel directly to the Rikti homeworld.

I found a copy here. Thanks for offering to retype it though, Kat

Here is a link to it in googledocs

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?k...aWabC3cV1H9HLA

Note there are two tabs there, as I have things laid out differently on each

Below is the raw list, I will cross post in the magic desk thread for archiving purposes. Note that there were some other things in the lost thread, where people had added their own observations on a few items. Unfortunately I do not have those.

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Room Heights

4 Floor 1
4 Floor 2
8 Ceiling 1
8 Ceiling 2
24 Middle
48 Floor to Ceiling

2 ft items
Conference Table
Square Stone Plinth

3 ft items
Desk
Cabinet
Carved Stone Tavle
Great Altar

4 ft items
Floor 1
Floor 2
Mission Style Counter
Short Wooden Wall Cabinet
Small Bookcase
Barrel

5 ft items
File Cabinet
Invention Worktable
Small Stone Block

8 ft items
Ceiling 1
Ceiling 2
Tall Wood Shelf
Wall Torch
Large Cracked Block
Large Mossy Block
Large Stone Block

10 ft items
Wooden Post

12 ft items
SG Logo 2
Entrance Portal
Inspiration Storage
Lateral File
Basic Reclaimator

13 ft items
Invention Vault

16 ft items
Tech Generator
Reinforced Storage

17 ft items
SG Logo 1
Salvage Storage

18 ft items
Medium Tree
Tree Planter 1
Tree Planter 2

22 ft items
Tech Telepad

23 ft items
Tall Glowing Crystal

24 ft items
Middle
Stone Stele

38 ft items
Quantum Stabilizer

48 ft items
Floor to Ceiling

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