HeckTender

I find the 137 hours to be interesting.

I think the next challenge should be in hours on-line with the character (allowing off-line market study with screenies, but not allowing extensive on-line market research with other characters - honor system obviously)

Can someone reach 1B in 50 hours on-line?

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There's no reasonable way anyone could parse through our bug database and condense it into a list on a regular basis.

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That explains a lot.

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- I guess I just question if the people "want to get what the want" understand that this will probably make it even more difficult to create those great "uber" builds.

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The problem is that I don't think that'll be actually true for those few players who have decided that they will never, ever pay fair-market value for certain recipes. Those players were stuck running the same TFs over and over and over again, and no matter how much influence they amassed, they just couldn't get the one recipe they wanted, and they were pissed off about it, and the developers decided to listen. I suppose there must be decent number of them... or maybe one of the devs secretly agrees with all of their whining. Who knows.

It doesn't make it a good or wise decision though.

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It seems to me that the system is going to make it more difficult to IO your character out as you progress from 35-50. Right now you can run an ITF from 35-50 and get about a lvl a run. That means you get 15 random recipies. Now you will get 375 merits, which equates to only 10 "rolls".

Removing the post TF random recipie ruins the entire system for me. I never understood why people complained about that process so much...

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I honestly think what they're trying to do is cater to people who enjoy grinding. Most people who are good at the "market-game" know that if you play the game normally, you'll get influence, and you can exchange that influence for goods on the market at a relatively fair price... but there are certain people that just flat out want the game to give them what they want after X amount of time.

The merit system will operate such that you can play for a certain number of hours and retrieve the reward that you were working for. I have no idea why these types of players make a distinction between the game handing out the reward and purchasing that reward from another player, but all evidence is that they resent having to pay another player for something that they think the game should have handed out to them.

I question whether catering to the grinders is a good thing, but my guess is that that horse left barn months ago at some conference table.

Given that we're stuck with that design goal, I guess the next question is what might have a decent implementation of that looked like that wouldn't obliterate the market? Does it look anything like the merit system at all?

I think a system that keeps the random drops, but raises the prices of recipes to much higher levels might have been acceptable. It would have meant that in all probability you would have already a) had your desired drop, b) earned enough influence to buy it.... but if you were truely unlucky, then... at just about the time that you had a legitimate beef that the RNG hated your guts, could take your merits and buy what you wanted.

But that idea is still probably way to different than what they've implemented to get a look at this point.

I'm not at all convinced that the merit system as they've implemented it can be "tweaked" in such a way that it won't obliterate the CH/BM market for Pool Cs.

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Also could have sworn the system was first pitched by Posi as an ADDITIONAL way to earn POOL Cs. Though he has clarified why this philosophy was changed, its disappointing to say the least.

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Dang, I wish now that Beta was open we had access to all of these statements of philosophy and clarifications... because I have no idea what problem the whole merit system is supposed to be addressing. Basically it changes the drop system a lot, and I think it'll make it worse for some people and better for other, and definitely a whole lot more grindy... but why? what was broken with the random drop system?

Additional rewards for longer TFs? Lessening the rewards for Katie? Then give out merits for TF completion and have 2 Katies = enough merits for 1 random drop, 1 posi = 3 random drops, etc.

That change alone would have a significant affect on the market. The changes in beta seem likely to blow the market to pieces....

Basically we'll have two completely different competing economies, each with their own currency... but one of those economys is completely dependent on having a critical mass, and the other one is completely self-sufficient. Guess which one is not going to benefit from the competition.

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Devs didn't say much about the Merit system apart from Phil explaining the rationale. I have a feeling not many people took the Single Origin Enhancement so the Devs may have looked at Pool C and D and said..."How long should this take to earn?" You can get an SO for 15 Merits :s

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There's a rationale? I'd love to hear it!

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* Inspiration Conversion: Right click an inspiration to convert three of that kind into any one inspiration of another kind.

I'm not a big fan of this in PvP. Inspirations are already imbalancing some ATs. Tier 1 are fine but figure out a what to limit this in Zones and Arenas.


Sadface for no mention of MM fixes.

Everything else looks great.

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I don't see how this hurts PVP. If we assume that you walk into a PVP match with a full tray of the inspiration you think you'll need, you'll have no use of this feature. If the dynamics of the battle change, you probably wouldn't have time to combine them, unless they permit this to work with keybinds. If that's the case you're still paying a high price for your new insp. The only people this helps is PvEers who generally don't bother buying a full tray of inspirations for whatever challenge they're going to face, and instead rely on drops. The insps drop so often that you're often buried in thing you can't use. this gives an opportunity to convert them to something useful... how long before people get killed because they were converting insps in mid-battle!

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* Inspiration Conversion: Right click an inspiration to convert three of that kind into any one inspiration of another kind.

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I hope "another kind" means "I don't need blues, so let me cash these in for a purple" and not "I don't need blues, let me cash these in for a larger blue I still don't need."

for me, this is the most intriguing feature of the new release.

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I assume that it means another kind, but what I wonder about is what tier the new one will be. If I combine 3 large yellows to get a purp, does that mean I get a large purp? What if I combine one of each tier? Either way, the days of "anyone have a wakie" in the sewers appear to be coming to an end. And that's a good thing.

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So, what happens when you level from 1 to 2? You have fewer insp slots than there are inspirations. Does it just fill them randomly until you're full, or do the drops have an order of precedence? It would be nice to get a giant wakie at level 2!

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never mind they're "cast" on you, not put in your tray.

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The large inspirations are cast on your character, not put in the tray.

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Ah, makes a lot more sense. Thanks!

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I actually had read it the same way. It was when you quoted it I noticed my mistake

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Me too, thanks for helping with that... next question: If you're dead when you level, does that mean you get rezzed (by having a wakie cast on you)?

So, what happens when you level from 1 to 2? You have fewer insp slots than there are inspirations. Does it just fill them randomly until you're full, or do the drops have an order of precedence? It would be nice to get a giant wakie at level 2!

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Jezus. Can we have your stuff now?

Be excited about something for once. This is really nice. Very, very good changes and improvements, new zones, .... but no, *you* wanted something else.

make your own damn game. Then you'll be happy.

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Hey thats a pretty legitimate complaint though. Villains are RIGHT back with Arachnos. I can't wait till the RPers get ahold of this. Alot of em are gonna be pissed lol.

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Well, it'll be a bit easier to role play than Khelds. The fact is that if Villains were given an "outside-the-story-line" epic, the hero side RPers would be screaming that it's not fair. I like the fact that they didn't go the "easy" route and just give Villains Khelds, but they kept it "even" by giving both sides epics that are tied to the story-line of the game.

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So, since there were only two pets originally, there were only 2 powers made. I didn't have time to make 6 more powers to match the new entities.


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I'm glad you didn't, and hope you won't even if you do get more time. Anything that allows me to choose the way I look without having to sacrifice the way I perform is a win in my book.

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Because to get that the healers would have to get 500,000 hp healed/day at the very least. Outside of arena/lava/crystal farming, I doubt that you are going to get that without 6-8 hour day. Every day for 5 years. At that point I better be on NCSoft's payroll.

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I have no doubt that there are people who have exceeded that playtime per day over the life of the game so far, though almost certainly not on a single character and not averaging that amount of healing, even if the character were an empath.

Assuming that this badge was meant for "healers" only (defenders who focus almost exclusively on healing), is 100,000 an hour reasonable in normal play, or would that only be possible by farming?

What is a "reasonable" per hour healing amount in normal gameplay, assuming a full team and constant fighting for a "healer"?

A While back when I tried to transfer your guide to paragon wiki I had a hell of a time deciphering sections, subsections, etc.

This guide has pretty much the same problem. I see yellow text which sometimes seems to start a header and other times seems like a note. There is all caps/bold there is firstletter/bold, and there is italics. I think the guide would benefit immensely from a I, 1, i, outline style, with a nice ToC at the top.

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However, we hope everyone can appreciate the history behind this older content and also appreciate that, in the larger scheme of things, we have our designers working hard to bring out exciting new content in a timely manner and not spending too much time optimizing the experience of dated content.

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This attitude towards "dated" content is the fundamental problem! Just a few weeks ago I got a friend of mine to sign up to CoH for the first time. The sewer and eden trials certainly aren't "dated" for him! Even if he had signed up a year ago he'd probably only now be getting in the lvl 40 range (being a pretty casual player) so it still wouldn't be "dated".

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Posi, how are you going to account for the skewedness of the poll?

What I mean is that we have no idea what your intentions were behind some of the sets. Like, how is Vibration different than Fore Fields? How is either of those different than current armors?

Shields are going to be massively over-represented in this survey because they're an easy concept to grasp. Density, Vibration, and FF I feel would be underrepresented because we have no idea what they actually MEAN. The poll, as put forward by your team, will be significantly skewed because of factors like this. You've introduced several complicating variables into the equation.

I'm not saying that shields wouldn't win anyways, but really, I mean how do you expect us to choose between vibration and density armor if we don't know how they'd be different?

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Exactly. Here, I've got another poll. I'm introducing a new ice cream flavor. Please tell me which one tastes best:
<ul type="square">[*] Green[*] Cloud[*] Sweater[*] Apricot-alicious[*] Fred[/list]

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Perhaps Cryptic should impliments a 10% "own project" time like Google, where their art/code/numbers people get 10% of their paid time to devote to any feature they like.

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It hasn't worked out real well for Google - it has (mostly) produced a bunch of poor-to-middling applications that will be fixed and finished at some uncertain future date.

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Yeah, it's worked out just terribly for them. Would that CoH enjoyed the same level of failure as Google.

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I see - you assume that somehow the 10% program is a significant contributor to that sucess. Care to back up that assumption with facts?

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Nah, too OT, and anyway given Google's success I think the burden of proof really falls on a person disagreeing with their business/engineering/project decisions. The 10% rule isn't just about creating product. In fact that's probably the least of it's goals. Creating product is what the 90% is about.

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Perhaps Cryptic should impliments a 10% "own project" time like Google, where their art/code/numbers people get 10% of their paid time to devote to any feature they like.

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It hasn't worked out real well for Google - it has (mostly) produced a bunch of poor-to-middling applications that will be fixed and finished at some uncertain future date.

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Yeah, it's worked out just terribly for them. Would that CoH enjoyed the same level of failure as Google.

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Not allowing player created content in fear of things that are buggy or inappropriate is ridiculous. Other games have PCC and they are just fine.


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Which games and what content?

I'd just like to be sure we are comparing apples with apples, rather than a full player made CoH mission against flags in PotBS.

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In MMOs? I'd agree it's rare and fraught with problems, but for single player games, player mods are the lifeblood of a lot of games. If the devs were to release a mission designer, I would suggest that missions could be off-line only, The best of those will naturally rise to the top and the devs could put them into the game if they chose to.

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Designing a mission isn't really all that great (as it stands) since you basically get to define the text involved (mission offer, mission acceptance, mission entry, possibly mob flavor text) and a few basic elements (kind of mission, type of clicky (if any), name of hostage/boss, enemy types, tileset used).

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I disagree. There are a lot of already-in-game mechanics that *could* be used for missions but aren't. Take for example the "choose a contact" dialog. Right now it makes no difference who you choose and for most people it's basically a random choice. But that mechanic could easily be used for a choose-you-own-adventure.

Other in-game mechanics that are under-utilized:
<ul type="square"> [*]clues [*]souvenirs[*]temp powers[*]keys[/list]etc. the list goes on. and now with I9 we have salvage and recipes. In other words I think that there are plenty of mechanics for both telling a good story and have some interesting puzzle solving without having to write a line of new code... of course I can't prove any of it. :P

Well, in fairness if it's been escalated you probably won't hear anything back during the weekend.

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&lt;AHEM&gt;
Greetings, friend. Do you wish to look as happy as me? Well, you've got the power inside you right now. So use it. And send one dollar to Happy Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. Don't delay! Eternal happiness is just a dollar away."



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hmmm... I think I'd be happier with my dollar. One thing I will admit to is that they aren't very fast with responses generally. My suspicion is that both the rollback and this "fix" aren't set to a particular point in time, but rather time ranges, which would explain some of the duping and weirdness.

Hopefully they'll explain something soon for people it didn't work for (though that does not include me - I got my influence back)

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Sadly this could be the end of the Buzz Killers patronage of City of Heroes.

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Can I have your... oh right. never mind. Sorry, someone had to do it. I'm still stuck at work, but at this point with the apology and complete admission of wrongdoing PLUS their best attempt at setting it right, I guess I'll be happy as long as I get something back.

I mean, sometimes stupid things happen. The whole thing sounds to me like an unfortunate bug compounded by some amount of incompetence. Well, what can I say. I've performed incompetently at work before, and I like to think I'm not the worst of the lot! The point of it to me is that they admitted wrong-doing in very uncompromising terms, and then they had an extended down-time where (I'm assuming) they did their darndest to set everything straight.

The only thing missing would be an explanation in the most transparent terms possible of what they were able to restore and what they weren't and why.

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Sampoerna, thanks for pointing that out. Now we have a date. They still haven't addressed whether or not they plan on compensating us for those other things I mentioned though. We'll get our items back and the inf we had on bids(We hope it works) but no word on the fees we paid that are now gone etc. Still I'll be glad to get the stuff back and the inf, although all of it is now worth less then I had paid for it.

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I think that's a good point. It's interesting that Castle not long ago used CH as an example of "PvP" in the sense that people are competing with each other in getting the higest price for goods and getting goods for the lowest price.

I sincerely doubt that we'll get any additional compensation for lost opportunity costs or anything else so difficult to quantify. In theory they might be able to recoup the placement fee, which in some cases would probably be substantial (if you put up a costume item for 20 million thats 1 million of influence), but I'm not holding my breath for that.