HybridVerve

closing by the end of 2012? That damn Mayan prophecy was true after all...

This was THE game. Always came back to CoX time & again. It was my first MMO and it carries some fantastic memories. I remember getting my first toon to level 50, a blaster no less, having not taken the fitness power pool because I didn't know what it was and then exploding in nerdgasm when my more experienced friends pointed it out to me.

I'll miss the long drawn out discussion my friends & I had in the pubs here in the UK about the game, the missions, the hilarious moments and brilliant ones as well, though I imagine we will still do that, but it won't feel the same. The entire development team deserve a big cheer & hearty thanks for their efforts over the years. Thank you guys. This game WILL be missed.

I get the impression that 'Going Rogue' was not supposed to be out of the bag for some time yet. I guess someone's got some questions to answer about why this was announced now.

Still, all that aside, this looks really good. I'm glad that we're getting a brand new expansion to play.

Managed to buy it and upgrade account, eventually. Pretty insane page loading. This 'perk' must be selling really well.

Welcome to the game, Synapse.

I have nothing against the Merit system, but there’s one thing that stuck out for me, personally.


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Poster: Healing_Phoenix
Q: Why is it that the Villain side SF payout is way less than Hero side TF payout? I feel that as a villain I'm being punished.

A: On average Villain Strike Forces take significantly less time to complete when compared to Hero Task Forces. Since time is the major factor when determining the number of Merits a task gives upon completion Villains on average receive less Merits per task, but roughly the same Merits per hour.

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My understanding was that CoV was designed to be a leaner, more efficient game for players, fixing a lot of what people found laborious about CoH, like low-level, pre-travel power story arcs taking place in multiple zones - and - incredibly long Task Forces that people couldn’t always commit to undertaking or finishing. I assumed that all the changes made to CoV were from a ‘lessons learned’ exercise. Therefore things like task forces were ironed out a lot better in CoV, precisely so they wouldn’t take many hours to do. I thought that was the intent of the design.

But now we’re at a stage where all these new extensions are being added to game, which are effecitvely superseding previous systems. It seems to me that CoV has drawn the short straw as a result of its own efficiencies and I guess it's too late in the process to suggest a revamp or creating a system gesture that balances the reward with blueside. I'd suggest adding an extra mission or two to existing SF's, but that is unlikely to float well. Re-designing blueside TFs seems the best option, but again, would players welcome that? Do the Devs want to do that? I suppose the Merit system is more of a 'what's down the line' for the game. I see it as a system that works well for Co-op TFs, over TFs specific to blue or redside. Everything about i13 so far reads the same as issue 6 and ED, with the long-term vision for the game being mapped out. I don't mean that negatively, just a personal observation.

QR

Great news. I may start posting more on the forums after this. I've been using vB on my forums since late 2001 and have had only minor complaints with it and nothing that our tech team couldn't fix or bypass. It's a wonderful piece of software IMO and beats UBB hands down.

The latest vB software is very customizable with social groups, user albums and user-profile customization. If you added blogging software to the tool, you've got your own inhouse social network, beyond what CoH boards are now. Of course, if you were to look at a certain rival company and how they run their vB forums, it is just the bare bone version they've adopted for the user base.

Admin Control Panel is easy to use, so forum staff shouldn't have a problem setting things up.

Good news. City of Legends on the way then? Are we going to all get a chance to do our own versions of the Labours of Hercules?

Well that "news" was about as eventful as Hilary's trip to Bosnia.

Really liking I12 so far. Honestly wasn't expecting as much as we got. Figured it would be more a QoL with a couple of small new features, in preparation for I13. But this is good. Can't wait to experience the gameplay improvements. Powerset Proliferation is very interesting, in a good sense. But if this is the start of things to come, then it certainly is shaking the balance about

I'm indifferent to a PS3 conversion. I wonder if a PS3 port would conincide with a sequel to the game? It would certainly be an avenue of approach I would look into.

Interestingly, there's a single player game coming out on the PS3 called Infamous, which (according to its wiki page) borrows elements of CoH, but it makes no mention of additional online gameplay with others.

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Please use this thread to discuss the below announcement:



As online business continues to grow and develop, issues surrounding the different monetary transactions involved in that growth change as well. Recently, banks and financial institutions have been dealing with increased cancelled charges or charge backs on credit cards used for online game play. One example of this is a credit card, issued to a parent, that is used without the parent’s knowledge to pay for an online video game by their child. Upon discovering the charge, the parent calls the bank and has the charge reversed or claims it is fraudulent.

To protect themselves from this, or other sorts of issues with credit card charges, issuing financial institutions may not allow charges to be transacted from online gaming companies without prior consent. This may result in a user experience where the use of a credit card for monthly online game charges are denied. Users who have such experiences can best address this by calling the financial institution that issued their credit card. If you have your credit card in front of you, look on the back of it for a Customer Service number to call. Be sure to request to speak with the fraud prevention department to authorize the charges to go through.

If at any time NCsoft can be of assistance or answer questions on the subject, please don't hesitate to make use of the PlayNC Support Center and the "Ask a Question" option to reach our Support Team.

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I had something similar happen to me recently. I'm UK-based and despite the fact I've been paying for this game for three years without a break, my bank denied the overseas transaction at the end of July, for what they said were "activities inconsistent with general usage of card."

I began by opening a ticket with PlayNC. They confirmed the issue was with my 'financial institution' and they were right. It took several phone calls to sort it out but my card was reactivated after a nice chat with an anti-fraud officer at the bank. So in actual fact I only lost 2 days for the Vet Reward, which I can live with.

I was grateful I had a bank that was keeping tabs on this sort of thing, but I was also a bit peeved at the inconvenience of it all as I was desperate to play that weekend

I had a great weekend. An SG buddy & me created four alts between us and took them around paper missions mainly. Got all four up to 22, which was our goal and earned a nice amount of infamy/prestige. Really was a worthwhile event but I'm glad these events are few and far between, as it sucks a great deal of your social time... like all of it

And thank you to the player who paid 2 million for a Pacing of the Turtle after I put it on the BM for 1 infamy

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All in all there are people who are not forum regulars that frequent other sites and can utilize that tool as a resource.

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Aye, like me. My MySpace page is restricted to those I know or groups like this. Nice work, a very impressive looking page.

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It is my sad duty to inform everyone that August will be my last month with City of Heroes and City of Villains.

I am taking over community management of Tabula Rasa full-time as of Sept. 1st. Cricket will be your primary community person when Sept. 1 rolls around and I will no longer accept PMs as of that date.

I just wanted to take a second and thank everyone for all their support and kind words over the last two years. Even in the darkest hours I could always count on there being a few bright posts, emails or PMs in my inbox. These kept me going more than coffee ever could and they always brought a smile to my face.

I also want to thank everyone who has ever created well thought out, constructive post/PM. I know bugs or other game issues can be frustrating at times, but a community person's best friend is the player who takes that little extra step to research and document their issue while keeping it about the issue, and not about Statesman's momma.

Special thank you's to all the staff both here at NCsoft and at Cryptic for all your hard work, for answering questions and for listening to community concerns. Staff may not always agree - but they [u]always[u] listen.

Finally, thanks to you - the community. This has been a great community to work for and be a part of for the last two years and it's very hard leaving such a wonderful group of people. You are so intelligent, passionate, creative, funny and charming that it amazes me every day. And despite how it may appear on the surface sometimes - you all care for each other deeply and are always ready to lend a helping hand to those less fortunate. You are true heroes and there is no Paragon City without you. It has been my honor to serve you.

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Gonna miss you Cuppa. Good luck with things over the road at Tabby, though I'm thinking now that it's a plot by NCSoft to draw more of us CoXers over to Tabby, so they can shift the subscriber numbers up and we can get our daily CuppaJo. Damn their evil ways!

*heads over to PlayNC page to purchase his code*

Hey, I'm easily corruptable.


BUT I'm thinking though that as a reward for all your amazing work, you definitely need to be immortalized into the CoX brand now. (unless I'm late to that table and its already happened/happening). If not, GET THIS KICK [censored] GIRL IN DA GAME! I want to get a mission from Super Hero, Cuppa "Kill all Skuls who spilled my coffee this morning".

Ah, this is horrible. I've got two iPods, of about 25,000 songs so far and iTunes running off of two computers. I'll do the laptop first

LAPTOP

1. "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" - KT Tunstall
2. "Mood Indigo" - Nina Simone
3. "Feel Good Inc." - Gorillaz
4. "Turn Up The Sun" - Oasis
5. "Ain't No Easy Way" - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
6. "Get Your Way" - Jamie Cullum
7. "Bold As Love" - Jimi Hendrix
8. "In Dust We Trust" - The Chemical Brothers
9. "This Is Music" - The Verve
10. "Desire" - U2

COMPOOTAR

1. "Tender" - Blur
2. "This Mess We're In" - PJ Harvey feat Thom Yorke of Radiohead.
3. "The Future" - Leonard Cohen
4. "Hell Is Round The Corner" - Tricky (lyrics in sig)
5. "All My Love" - Led Zeppelin
6. "Masters of War" - Bob Dylan
7. "Lost Art of Keeping a Secret" - Queens of the Stone Age
8. "Cutt Off" (two T's in that spelling) - Kasabian
9. "I Don't Know Why" - Kano
10. "Mince Meat" - Dangerdoom

My girlfriend & I play the game, but usually we don't get to play at the same time because I'm in work or she's at university. But yeah, we've teamed together a few times and it makes for interesting conversation.

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Wow maybe MMORPG's will finally slow down the population growth over there

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Not related as such, but China has developed pretty stringent online gaming rules now due to their addictiveness.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4183340.stm

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*sigh*

Let's see if I can lay this thing to rest.

At I5 - and now again with ED - some claim that the game is "dying" and that thousands of players are leaving. This isn't true. We're actually gaining customers. Not hundreds of thousands, but we're gaining nevertheless.

Then all of a sudden I read Armsman's post where he talks about our original launch subscription numbers - which isn't really the point. My entire response on this thread has been focused to I5 and ED reaction - so the more pertinent number to look at would be what our numbers were just previous to I5...not our numbers just after launch. Never did I make a claim that we have more subscribers now than we did last year. My point continues to be: ED and I5 haven't created a ghost town out of City of Heroes.

Unfortunately, I pointed to SirBruce's outdated chart instead of NCSoft's numbers. Frankly, SirBruce's is the one I go to - it lists the competition, so to speak. Or at least to a degree. As SirBruce will tell you, it's really difficult to get numbers out of publishers. NCSoft posts ours.

Why is WoW or Lineage doing so much better? Heck - they're great games. But they're also successful in the Asian market. Will we ever catch up to them. Dunno. The WoW guys have a bit of a track record on us...years of producing amazing games. Who ever heard of Cryptic before City of Heroes? There are LEGIONS of Blizzard fans - of course they'd play WoW! And it's a phenomenal game!

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I think whilst subscriptions might improve, the large number of dedicated gamers (who are the core gamers) has dipped and the number of casual gamers has increased, which would explain why people are finding it harder to form teams (Pre CoV, anyway). Many players seem torn between the natural enjoyment the game gives and the anger of seeing their characters gradually get weaker and weaker. But what you need to remember is that at one stage this game made people feel powerful, which is what brought them back time and time again. What occurs when you repeatedly dumb down abilities is a sense of apathy. People become nonplussed by the game. It becomes just 'something to pass the time' and not something you're itching to do. From my own perspective I used to love the feeling of coming home from work and logging in to kick butt, but now I come home and I watch TV and log in for about an hour before getting bored. This isn't anything you've done wrong necessarily, you've just changed the game mechanics to something I don't like and trying to work your changes into my gameplay is difficult and time consuming.

I don't know any other reason to give but in the times when I have been online for 4/5 hours, I have stood in PI with my toons calling for teams or sending /tells to people who aren't interested. I don't think all these changes have really helped morale or formed in people a sense of camaraderie and that's the sadest part. Teaming no longer feels like a team of champions but a team where you pitch in to carry out other peoples chores and who enjoys doing chores?

So statistically speaking you're not wrong, but statistics are usually branded about when the worst moments call for it. What they do not do is mask the ill feeling that all your changes have caused people to feel. However, do not misunderstand me, I wish no ill health to CoH. People may enjoy ED and may adapt better and that's fine, but imagine if you came into work one morning and got told your portfolio was being reduced and you spend most of your time on the outside looking in or sharing your role with several other people whom you find difficult to work with? When you stop enjoying what you do, but don't want to abandon what you've built, what do you do then?


Yeah, sorry went off topic a bit.

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I wonder if ol' Emmert will actually be in front of the computer or if Statesman will just be an NPC. WOW that would be cool to open unlimited bottles of kick butt on the lead designer of CoH.


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You'll have your chance - I'll be playing the one and only Statesman!

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Will Lord Recluse undertake a counter strike a few days later?

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A few days later when the server's wiped and we're all starting over again at 1st level? If the villains didn't get enough of a beat down in last night's event...

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I just meant on the basis of story arc. A few days later CoV is released and the Breakout 'officially' begins for everyone and The Zig and possibly surround areas in Brickstown are given the smackethdown. I just wondered if a counter strike across Paragon would be made by Arachnos to tie it in. I'm probably missing out on something seeing as I've been off the game a bit lately.

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I wonder if ol' Emmert will actually be in front of the computer or if Statesman will just be an NPC. WOW that would be cool to open unlimited bottles of kick butt on the lead designer of CoH.


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You'll have your chance - I'll be playing the one and only Statesman!

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Will Lord Recluse undertake a counter strike a few days later?