Hellguard

Yeah, the people who are thinking that March 24th (or the 31st) is too early, or will mean a short Open Beta, are probably forgetting that the vast majority of work on the MA system was done before Issue 13 went to Closed Beta. It's not like they've had to spend the last few months working on the basics of the system; they held it back so they could add custom bosses/NPCs and no doubt used that time to further tweak the basics.

I'm not in Closed Beta this time, but I'd bet a billion influence that Issue 14 has had a much more polished and "ready" Closed Beta than any issue before. If I'm right about that, then Open Beta could be very, very short indeed.

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Is the March 24th date a solid confirm? I'm putting this on my calendar. If so, what was the source?

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March 24th is just conjecture. However, they're apparently shooting for a March release, according to the information released by all the gaming news sites. Anything earlier than March 24th seems unlikely, given that Issue 14's not in Open Beta yet. Unless something goes wrong between now and then, I think it's safe to assume that Issue 14 will be released either around the 24th but not later than Tuesday the 31st.

[/ QUOTE ]They can go up to April 14th, since that's the current release date of the Architect Edition, which is supposed to accompany the issue. I am not saying I14 won't drop before then, but they've got more than just March to aim for.

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Sure, but every single one of those news articles that happened to mention a release date said "March." That's what NCSoft must have told them, so they must be pretty sure they can get Issue 14 out by the end of the month.

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Is the March 24th date a solid confirm? I'm putting this on my calendar. If so, what was the source?

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March 24th is just conjecture. However, they're apparently shooting for a March release, according to the information released by all the gaming news sites. Anything earlier than March 24th seems unlikely, given that Issue 14's not in Open Beta yet. Unless something goes wrong between now and then, I think it's safe to assume that Issue 14 will be released either around the 24th but not later than Tuesday the 31st.

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MA goes live Tuesday, March 14.

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Where did this info come from?

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Tripp_Hazzard's imagination/sense of humor.

First after Power!

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Geek Sugar seems to be saying that the boxed retail version of the Architect Edition will be released on March 12, but that conflicts with several other sites showing 4/14 for the box, so GS is no doubt mistaken.

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This link actually just mentions that Architect will be out on the 12th. I doubt that it'll be live this early, but perhaps open beta will start then?

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Well, it's got an image of the retail box and it says something about it hitting "shelves this March" so I think the article *was* talking about the retail box. It just had its date wrong.

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My search fu may be weak, so this may be mentioned elsewhere, but Architect Edition shows up at Amazon now with April 14 release date.

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LOL I had the same idea this morning - I just checked Amazon and found the same availability date (price $19.99). I know that Amazon can change these dates, but it is usually a good indicator of availability.

If I recall correctly, Issue 14 will be live before the release of the new box. My guess is a release date of April 7th.

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At least one of the gaming news sites that Ex linked to is saying it'll be live sometime in March ( link ).

Stuff can change, of course, and it's not exactly official information, but one has to wonder why they would have said that after a big NCSoft media dump unless it was something that NCSoft at least hinted at...

EDIT: This one implies March, as well (it was posted on 2/26 and says "set for release with Issue 14 next month").

EDIT2: This one says "at the end of March."

EDIT3: This one says "currently looking at a March 2009 release."

EDIT4: Also saying March: this one , this one , and this one , and probably most of the rest that I didn't check. I think we're probably looking to see Issue 14 sometime this month. (Unless something in closed beta goes horrifically wrong, of course.)

Geek Sugar seems to be saying that the boxed retail version of the Architect Edition will be released on March 12, but that conflicts with several other sites showing 4/14 for the box, so GS is no doubt mistaken.

I'm gonna say it'll be either 3/24 or 3/31. If they open up the beta anytime in the next week, then that'll leave nearly 2 to nearly 3 weeks of open beta. Seems like enough for a system that had a major part of its work done by late last year. (Standard code rant applies.)

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Oh, one other question I don't remember being answered....

...what's the Day Job for logging out in Architect Entertainment?

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Probably, um... Architect .

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Items appear to be listed according to how rare they are and in alfibetical order. Try looking for something like a costume recipie in the so called list of everything and let me know if you find it.

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Actually, since you said this, I just checked out of curiosity. Costume pieces *are* listed in the "so called list of everything." Just click on the WW/BM rep and scroll down the big list. Scrolling down the big list, you'll see costume pieces listed, in alphabetical order, along with everything else. This is without setting any options in the search boxes to the left.

You may have to use the up and down arrows to scroll to more finely control your scrolling, since dragging the scroll bar seemed to make things fly by too quickly. But the costume pieces really are there on initial market load.

EDIT: Screenshot. Also, rarity of items has nothing to do with the listing. It's just alphabetical order, and yes, it does appear to be every single item in the game, as I said in my other post, which is what I've always heard when people complain about how the market loads. Bottom line is, let's hope the MA interface doesn't do something similar.

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Some items I never find unless I look under that spicific catigory because they're never even listed in the "list of everything" yeah it's a freaking huge list I'll give you that but it's not everything.

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Well, it might not be *every* single item, but whatever it is, the way the market interface loads has been a common complaint since the inception of the market. It definitely loads way more information than is absolutely necessary when you initially click on the WW/BM rep. You may not notice it as much if you have a lot of RAM, but it's a big issue with anything less than 1GB, to the point that my computers used to frequently mapserver upon first clicking on the market. Not a problem anymore, since one of them has a full gig now and the other has 2, but it's information overload with less than 1GB.

I was just saying, that when the other poster mentioned having to "download missions" from the MA, he may have just been referring to a similar information overload if the MA mission list loads in a similar way to the market.

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I have a concern about the mission architect.
I have an older machine with not a lot of memory. Normally, I am fine but I still crash occcasionally at the market.
I have read that there are like 160 arcs on the architect now, in closed beta with a relative handful of people making them. By the time it gets to live there could be thousands of arcs.
Do we have to download every arc every time we try to access it? If so, I can see my machine exploding and me being completly unable to play it.
Is there a type of filter where you can download only certain missions?

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You shouldn't have to download anything. The missions are saved on the game, not your computer.

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He might not literally mean downloading the missions. He might just be talking about something similar to how the market interface works, which can cause crashes and lots of lag when you first access it for machines with low RAM.

Hopefully the MA mission list will have a sort of default listing (like, when you open it, it'll show you the top 25 arcs or the 25 newest arcs or something) and then you can use the sort feature to look for other stuff. If it lists every single arc ever created (the way the market loads every single item), I can see it being problematic for slower machines.

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I did a Google News search for "City of Heroes Mission Architect" and one of the articles that came up was this:

http://www.geeksugar.com/2859675

The last line caught my attention: "Personally, I'm excited for this new edition of City of Heroes, which will be available March 12 on your PC or Mac. Are you already a City of Heroes fan?"

That's... only two weeks away. I see Open Beta happening by then, but release? Already?

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That article is about the boxed Architect Edition, which Amazon.com says won't be available until April 14th. One of them is wrong, of course, and the April 14th date seems more realistic.

However, considering that the bulk of the MA was undoubtedly done by the time Issue 13 went into beta, is it possible that things are going so well in Closed Beta that we might be looking at a much sooner release date than we would otherwise expect?

With the hints that Issue 15 might be out around the time of the 5th anniversary (4/28), a mid-March release for Issue 14 would almost be a necessity.

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What happens to arcs if the player who created them goes inactive?

Can trial accounts use the MA? ( Better not... )

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I'm still on my first cup of coffee, and haven't been able to kindle the CT reactor yet this morning, so apologies if it's obvious to everyone but me, but what am I missing? What's the problem with letting trial accounts use the MA?

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Freak Slicer: Oh no! It's Captain Dynamic!
Tank Smasher: Don't worry! We'll mop the floor with him! He can't afford all the best enhancements like he could if he'd only bought 10 million influence from www.stupidgoldsellingwebsite.com for only $10!

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I'm thinking much the same from the folks wanting to focus on high quality arcs. Or perhaps a lot of incremental "upgrades" to previously published arcs as they get more proficient and tweak the designs, taking down old arcs and replacing them with newer versions.


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Which raises the question of what will happen if people are midway through arcs that a creator wants to unpublish.

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The question has already been raised, and answered .

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I'd be inclined to wonder if the MA missions are available cross-server and cross US/UK.

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The first part of your question (cross-server) is answered in the OP. (The answer is yes, btw.)

Not sure if the "arc server" will be shared between the US and UK like the market server is, though.

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I do have a question though; if this goes into open beta (as opposed to going directly to live)... does the content created there go to the cross-server format (thereby being available as soon as live hits) or will 'test' *content have to be recreated once i14 goes active?

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I would imagine that, just like everything else made on the Test Server, that it will be completely separate from the Live servers. The Test Server has its own market server and global chat server separate from Live; I can't imagine the server that stores MA arcs and content would be any different from those.

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We are currently investigating this issue. It does look like a patch note was missed in regards to brainstorm ideas not translating to badge counts. We are looking further at whether the overall badges have been affected by this change.

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The phrase "whether overall badges have been affected by this change" seems like a silly statement. If the change making brainstorm conversions not count towards crafting badges is intentional, then of course "overall badges have been affected by this change." There's no way they CAN'T be affected by it.

(I sure am glad I got Fabricator the day Issue 13 went live... )

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still no santa! when does this thing start?

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I logged in when the servers came back up, and no event. Did a mission, and just now exited... got the Frostbitten badge and the other log-in goodies, as well as a message that Father Time needs my help!

Event is on now.

EDIT: And a Build Snowbeast & a Candy Cane for my first opened present!

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No gifts.
No splash notice.
No forum announcement.

Looks like just a regular autumnal morning here in the U.S.


Edit: ooooo...daily maintenance notice!

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Huh, you mean it's like all other events (except for this year's Halloween Event, which got an early start), in that it won't start until after scheduled maintenance for that day? Not a big surprise, for anyone who's been around for awhile.

Note that the Event might not be running when the servers come back up, though. Sometimes it takes a few minutes for them to flip the "event switch."

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got a question... if the new universal travel power recipes arent available until the winter event starts, then how is it that there have already been several sold on the markets?

and i checked and the event hasnt started yet.

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Could be that the European servers have started the Winter Event over there. Since the market servers are linked between the US and EU game servers, we could be seeing some that EU players are selling. The only sales shown on any of the Winter's Gift pieces are from today (12/15).

EDIT: Yep, Winter Event is live on the EU Servers. ( link )

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Also why dont any of the buffs when they are effecting the player give a read out of how much time is left on them? It becomes kind of a crap shoot trying to figure out, "Okay I was off for 8 and 3/4 hours last night and I should 3.36 min of run speed buff!" example there not fact at all.

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If you view the buff info from the "Day Job Powers" list on your powers list (as opposed to the buffs in your buff bar) you should be able to see the amount of time remaining on each buff.

But, yeah, to echo what most others are saying: most Day Job "powers" should be charge-based somehow instead of time-based. Like with the Base TP power, since you're going to be logging in by a base portal to build up the timer on it, the chances of needing to use it even once or twice in a play session before the timer runs out is pretty small. The Inf/Prestige/Enhancement bonuses need to be based on # of missions instead of time as well, in order for them to have any meaningful effect for characters.

I'll work towards getting the badges on my main badge character, but other than that, I'm not real concerned with where I log out since the buffs just aren't worth worrying with. I doubt that was the intent of the feature.

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So, where did people see that there were 4 new badges? All I saw was Frostbitten that was new. Are their 3 new badges to go with the new ski slope, aside from the three from the prior ski slopes?

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Yes, there are 3 new badges to go with the "enhanced ski run", in addition to the 3 from the "expert slopes" last year.

Thanks for the update. These forums are so bad lately that I'd almost be willing to just cut and run and move to the new forums without worrying about transferring old posts or messages.

I mean, I wouldn't actually do that, but it's getting frustrating at times. Thanks for taking the time to help us out with the move.

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there were no options at the arena. went and tested. and the PvP needs to go back to PvP pre-i13.

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The pre-i13 PvP options aren't in the game yet. Go back and actually read Posi's message and you'll see that.

Another freespec is coming, to make up for not announcing the first one (and in the "spirit of the season") per Positron. It'll be sometime before the end of the month, after December 21st.