IanTheM1

Yes and no.

Villain ATs are more tightly wound around their inherents, while as of right now our hero ATs have had their inherents intentionally downplayed (mostly because most get easily rolled up into powers design and/or were underwhelming to begin with).

Charge-based mechanics like Fury and Domination, if they were translated as-is, would add overhead to things the player needs to constantly keep track of, which is something we're trying to avoid. Scourge is an awkward mechanic even in the MMO, and it would be doubly awkward on paper; it's doubtful it will survive the transition if we do villains.

Masterminds are a problem, as allowing one player to flood combat with proxy targets does messy things across the board. The idea that's floating around in my head is to allow MMs one or two pets tops, but also allow them to use their command powers on allies, giving them bonuses and buffs. In essence, the Mastermind's teammates become his henchmen.

A bit late for that...?

The enhancement system in general is an awkward, clunky thing that doesn't really accomplish all that much in the MMO. Inventions are a balance nightmare, and adapting them is headache-inducing.

The one thing that does work from the enhancement system is the meaningful choices it asks the player to make in how they slot their powers. The Perk Grid is meant to echo these sorts of choices, and Demeanors are where we're currently experimenting with interesting bonuses (and penalties) that do more than just give +1 to this or +2 to that.

Huh? Why not?

We've had some basic discussions about tackling villains, but that's definitely pie in the sky at the moment. Converting villain ATs into a game like this is much more difficult (primarily Masterminds, though I did have at least one idea regarding that) and writing pre-made villain content is slightly trickier.

But both of those are ultimately minor stumbling points. Really, we've just had enough hurdles to overcome in designing the basic systems and balancing things and implementing new ideas that tackling an entire second everything just wasn't in the cards. Similarly, don't expect much attention to be paid to Praetorians this early on.

In the meantime though, considering how much powerset crossover there is, a crafty GM could probably whip up a makeshift villain set-up and write the rest of the content you'd need from scratch. (Yes, I am essentially advocating a homebrew for a homebrew. What of it?)

I was not aware this was a thing that happened, especially odd considering Rowling's stance on fan fiction.

Anyway, as previously said, can we please move away from legal discussion? We are aware of the situation and thank you for the concern.

At least two of those links actually say the opposite; from the third link:

And I will posit that if NCsoft takes a firm legal stance against this project, then what of ParagonWiki, VidiotMaps, Plan Z, et al?

But I really don't want this thread to get bogged down in legal arguments, so what I will say for now is:

1) If NCsoft is willing to license the rights and the game is popular enough, we would totally be willing to pursue that avenue somehow. I find this unlikely, though.

2) We feel that our game is roughly within the same scope of fair use as other fan projects, fan sites, and fan creative endeavors.

3) IF there is a legal problem, we're not incapable of ditching all references to the City of Heroes IP and releasing only the barebones system.

I'm grateful that you guys are concerned for our sake, but for now the project continues on un-altered.

Do you know more about the legalities of the situation? Care to go into more detail? I'm not being sarcastic; this is a legitimate issue and we are slightly concerned about it, but we also have no specific legal experience. I'm not sure how else we could be more careful.

That said, all of the game systems are either things translated from CoH that are already RPG staples (ie, there's no copyright on a chance to not be hit called Defense) or outright original design (there is nothing at all like our Skills in the MMO). Absolute worst case scenario? I do not believe there's anything actionable in a dedicated group of fans using a homebrew game system to play a superhero game and the GM just happening to take inspiration for how the game is run from a certain wiki about a certain superhero MMO.

The only major legal issue I could legitimately see rearing its ugly head is one of trademark, should our game somehow explode in popularity while the CoX IP languishes.

I'll make sure a thread gets posted on the Titan boards ASAP.

My initial estimate (though vague) may have been farther off than I thought. Basically, IIRC, anything from Issue 0 to Going Rogue, outside of the few still-villain-exclusive sets (Ninjitsu, Pain Dom), is either already largely planned out or has a high chance of being included. Any post-GR sets (Street Justice, Titan Weapons, Water Blast, Nature Affinity) are most likely not going to make the cut for now. This also might include Dual Blades, as we're still undecided on how best to translate the feel of combos without making things too overly elaborate. Dark Control and Dark Affinity may prove to be an exception since they're not too complicated to add.

I'm honestly giddy at the chance to write devblogs; when it comes to explaining the nuances of game design I'm an absolute chatterbox. Assuming nothing comes up and I can manage to get off my duff, I'll probably write up one or two within the next few days.

I'm glad to say that our game is being designed with exactly this in mind. While I can't promise that every single powerset is going to represented at launch (especially extremely recent sets like Water Blast and Nature Affinity, boy is that one going to be a tough one to adapt!), one of our design goals has always been to allow players of the MMO to recreate their characters with relative ease.

One of our main motivations is that even if the lights go out for good on November 30th, we want something out there that can keep heroes patrolling Paragon City to their hearts' content.

There are currently zero plans to monetize the project, and all efforts are going towards releasing this in good faith to the community, possibly backed by a Creative Commons license.

Basically, if ParagonWiki, Mid's, message board roleplay, and other community activities are okay (and I'd be concerned if they somehow weren't), I don't see this effort being an issue. Though, IANAL.

I again want to stress that this is by fans, for fans, and we're not looking to profit off of the CoH IP.

Well, pretty much all of my personal plans are intended for my supergroup's private continuity, but considering the depth of the core idea(s), I suppose there's some interesting potential for a more open collaborative effort. I'll have to ruminate on it. I can at the very least say that it involves rewriting SSA1 (primarily retconning Sister Psyche's death), rescuing Penelope Yin's character, and making interesting use of the Clockwork King. For the moment, any story stuff I eventually end up working on will be posted on my supergroup's forum.

In regards to the other plans, I do think it would be a mistake to try and democratically vote a canon into existence for a shared universe project, especially if we're talking an open RP/writing wiki type thing. Start from what we already have, and let contributors do what they like. Not every story thread has to mesh perfectly and not every character has to fit into every story. Unless the plan is to collaborate on a "product" of some sort, let things grow organically. So I guess what I'm saying is, it'd be really cool to see a companion wiki to ParagonWiki and Virtueverse for the purpose of collaborative writing, regardless of some complicated Plan Z indie project.

And as for the City of Heroes PnP game, we're still getting the final steps done on our big announcement post and we still need to figure out how we're going to handle things moving forward. Stay tuned on that.

That's great. Not really what I was talking about, but great.

Absolutely agreed. My point is that by making an item such as this hyper-exclusive, they've sapped some or all of its appeal as a really freaking cool piece and replaced it with competitive, chase-instinct, elitist appeal, which IMO is a terrible appeal to cater towards. (You can see the ugliness of it in this very thread.)

We've been seeing this unfortunate kind of thing creep into the game little by little over the last year, mostly via the Incarnate system (edit: and Super Packs, another source of costume parts that I simply cannot bring myself to care about because of their exclusiveness). It greatly worries me that by all appearances Paragon either lacks the foresight or simple foreknowledge that this kind of thing is mostly loathed, or they largely disregard our oft-given feedback on the forums, instead being guided by raw numbers or just plain stubbornness.

The /em Facepalm promotion wasn't nearly as impactful because it was a cute little bonus. This is an aura with wide, wide appeal and wide, wide potential for use. This is the exact same situation as with many of the Incarnate-locked parts, it's spawning the exact same arguments, and I'm forced to wonder why we're going down this exact same road, a road utterly contradictory to the game's main enduring strength, time and time again.

I also strongly agree that we need to move on from the incredibly weak-sauce promises that limited-time promos will be available "at some other time, in some other place". Outside of a few holiday market items showing up again during sales (Think Tank pack), we haven't seen any exclusives re-appear with wider availability yet, to my knowledge. There needs to be a better system or schedule in place for exclusives, and we need firmer assurances than "eventually later ".

I'm not saying an AE slot would be a perfect item to give out for free, that was more just me nudging them about maybe putting those slots on sale at some point. (Infusing the community with more talk about the architect was a good topic to try and engender though, IMO.)

And people will always complain, always, yeah, sure. But I think there's a sharp difference between a random number of people randomly losing out thanks to a blind gamble and a specific range of people not getting use out of a particular week's offering.

I'll throw in a suggestion to not pursue the coding time to make it random for everyone. Why? Lack of community cohesion, and yet more gambling.

By making the offer a true gamble, it's just going to upset the community further (and from what I gleaned from the rest of this thread, it may already have). I'd certainly feel like a dope if I were to pull a single Team Inspiration only for someone else to get a free Character Slot. Uneven rewards always, always, always cause headaches and a general feeling of unfairness, especially when we're talking things with actual money value.

But here's a big pro to pre-randomizing the freebie (or heck, even pre-choosing it, which is what I thought was going to be happening): Community discussion. Let's say for instance the Friday Freebie is a free Architect Arc Slot (not that I'm nudging towards anything, or anything ). You suddenly get a significant majority of the playerbase potentially talking all at once about the Architect, new players asking how to make use of the free slot they just got, etc.

I'd consider that far more impactful than the inevitable gnashing of teeth as some players get rewards that are far more useful to them than others'.

The actual City of Hero update that we got was part of Issue 4, IIRC, which places it before CoV. I didn't realize City of Hero's actual launch was so relatively late.

It's showing up on the Zone Event channel, so make sure you have that in one of your chat windows. It looks like your bog standard random zone gets attacked, people huddle into a giant cluster and lag out the zone until the event is over type deal.

So is there a badge for this, or should I go ahead sit yet another lagfest out?

Edit: Answered my own question. Defeating Nemesis himself (a Giant Monster class version) awards the "A Nemesis Plot" badge. It's a non-global badge. Ugh.

In addition to this, right clicking on glowies and choosing the Interact option has a larger active range than the normal left click hand cursor.

Oh, I agree, these threads aren't the best venue, especially not for generalized feedback. I think an open thread on the beta boards would be best. Personally I'm a bit skittish when it comes to PMs.

I've got top to bottom feedback percolating in the thought tank - presentation, products, price points, consumer habits, advertising, promotions, the works. When it comes time to analyze and break down something, I don't mess around.

I just want to point out that I've been saying this for a while. Though there may be a tipping point where one can be a bit too candid. *cough*

While I'm sure we wildly disagree on many points, there's nothing more I would love than to have a long, long one on one discussion (or just an open, public one, whatever) with Ghost Falcon (or a number of other devs, really, even non CoH ones) and pull out my big ole "list of things that bug me" and at least get a good feel for the whats and the hows and the whys.

Perhaps once I get some proper free time I'll make a good faith attempt at breaking down all of my issues with the Market in as nice a way I can... (At least that list is only about ten points strong or so. Grievances regarding enemy powers and powerset quibbles...now there's a whole book worth of material.)