InfamousBrad

No more often than it happens, I thought Zwillinger showing up to RP Nemesis (and to respond in-character to questions on VU!?!) was kind of adorable.

What I thought that this was going to be about was the automatic event-spam, which is out of control.

When a Nemesis Invasion happens, for each affected zone, it spams at least five messages, and I think it's six: impending invasion, invasion about to begin, invasion begun, EB spawned, EB defeated, invasion ended. And I could make a really strong case that nobody who isn't already in that zone cares about any but the first and the last of those.

I'd like to see a change to the generic-invasion-event code so that the first message and the last message go to the Hero/Villain/Praetorian Events channel, and any messages in between go to Broadcast in the affected zone only.

Poking around on beta, I just discovered a "new" (to last issue) Resistance boss-level NPC I'd never seen before. So I went looking at them in AE (which they're now in, in beta) and holy cats that's an awesome couple of costumes:





(a) NICE work!

(b) I only just noticed that Resistance Commando bosses also get those pants, different pattern applied, different colors, but same pants: Resistance pants with the Praetorian Police groin strap and this nice thigh armor. Can we please, please, please have these pants under Armored?

(c) Oh, look: yet another NPC group with the Legacy Chain/Carnival of Light shoulderpads. I've asked Dink a couple of times, on the forums, if we can please get these shoulderpads added to the Carnival of Light costume pack, since so many of the Praetorian Carnies wear them, both male and female; now I see that the Resistance in First Ward wear them, too. Can haz plz?

If I could duplicate this look, I definitely would, the next time I go to create a magic-origin Resistance character. Much classier than what I'm currently doing, which is basing them off of the Shepherds.

I'll take this opportunity to beg, once again, for the Legacy Chain helmet, shoulder pads, and at least one of the chest details (the one that matches the shoulder pads) to be added to the Carnival of Light costume pack, since virtually every male member of that order wears one or more of those pieces, and about a quarter of the female members wear at least one.

Also, I agree with PsyFox above that we need a turban. Two turbans, maybe, one with and one without a giant gem in front, for the psychics. We also need at least one fez, because fezzes are cool.

It's just the Longbow Chaser with a different paint job and a couple of different decals. And I checked: it's the same paint job and decals if you're Resistance. It's apparently a Powers Division vehicle, period.

Since it's free on the Beta Server and only takes a couple of minutes to level to 4, I went and shot one for you:

One or more Mole Machines, even non-targetable, spawning in the zone during the event would be nice. One or more brass airships, even non-targetable, following the path that the Rikti dropships take would be nice. A special Tip mission, active the week before the event goes live, incorporating some of the lore that went up on the web page, would be really nice.

But you know what? I'm just okay with this. It's a nice change of pace. Heck, I think they should do something like this at random, every month or two: pick one of the main factions and have them mass-assault the zones like this. Circle of Thorns. Council. 5th Column. Freakshow. Sky Raiders. Banished Pantheon. Primal Devouring Earth. Soldiers of Rularuu. Heck, heat up the cold war between the rest of the US and the Rogue Isles, set up an event where Arachnos troops spawn like this in the hero zones and Longbow spawn like this in the Rogue Isles. Maybe not for a whole month, maybe just for a week to ten days, but otherwise, nice, easy to make, easy to understand zone events like this.

It's a nice change of pace, it's something different, it's a change of scenery. It's a fun, social way for people to get the defeat-n-hundred-bosses badges. Get one of your lowbies on a good league with higher-level badgers and it's remarkably good XP, too. So, yes, I'd like some more, please.

I'll put it here rather than start another thread with my WST selection complaint, because it's related: I just went back over the list, and nothing below level 20 has been in the WST list since last August. The reason you're seeing the same WSTs over and over again is that whoever is selecting these seems to have a serious objection to exemping down to below 40, or to assume that we do, even for double rewards.

I've spent much of the last issue working on low level alts, and every week I kept thinking, "What's this week's WST? Nothing any of my non-50s can run. Huh. Maybe next week." Looks like I'll keep thinking that, too.

The UI on that "rank these features from 1 to 15" sucks. I had the devil's own time with that.

I waffled over whether to start this thread here or in Suggestions. But I came down here because, honestly, I know that it's not a serious suggestion, because it's not going to happen. But here's something that I would find really cool, whether or not anybody else did:

I want a level 1-20 version of First Ward.

It's always struck me as kind of "off" that you can roll a magic-origin Praetorian; I was under the impression that the Cole Administration was really hostile towards magic. (Official excuse: "Magic is chaotic." Unofficial reason: Cole is vulnerable to magic.) So I always felt like, when I was thinking of creating a Praetorian version of one of my Primal magic-users, like I had to shoe-horn the character in, had to come up with some kind of an explanation as to how that character ended up in Powers Division instead of either dead or exiled. And then ...

Then came First Ward. Which, I still insist, even after seeing the Dark Astoria makeover, even after seeing Night Ward, is still hands-down the most beautifully detailed single map in the entire game. I just can't get tired of it. And I love the factions, too: the Eltentowners, the Dregs, the Shepherds, DUST, the Forlorn, the Carnival of Light, Apparitions/Possessed, the Awakened, the Talons of Vengeance, and the left-overs from the capital-city arcs, the Ghouls and the Seers and the Resistance - it dawned on me that there are more factions in that 10 level range, more variety in that 10 level range, than in the entire 20-level range that comes before it on the gold side. That's twelve factions, when the entire level 1-20 range makes do with only seven (PPD, Resistance, PPD, Seers, Clockwork, Ghouls, Destroyers, and Syndicate). And the artwork, and the open-air spawn dialogs, and the plaques, all suggest that all of the unique First Ward factions have their own history, history that we never see and never will see. All that back story, all wasted.

So I wish we could kill two birds with one stone: give magic-using Praetorian Earth characters a more plausible origin (make it optional for the other 4 origins) and tell the backstories of First Ward. I wish they would make a copy of First Ward exactly as it is, except without the vortex and the shadowed paths, repopulate it with level 1-20 versions of the Citizens of First Ward, DUST, Ghouls, Shepherds, and Carnies and tell the stories of what those groups are doing there, the sub-factions within each of them, and how they relate to each other.

We're getting the NPC factions in AE next issue; if we can get some extra art assets, some of the maps, it might be fun to team-write those backstories ourselves. Have one person tell it with the viewpoint of your character being an Eltentowner, have another tell it with the viewpoint of your character being a Shepherd, have another tell it with the viewpoint of your character being Resistance, have another tell it with the viewpoint of your character being a Carnie; show how they ally with or fight with each other and with the DUST and the Ghouls and the Dregs. Anybody interested? We'd have to set up a thread somewhere to thrash out our own version of the backstory, a story bible to follow, then we could start rolling them out when i23 goes live.

But what I'd really love to have instead is an actual official zone: First Ward (1-20).

You know what occurred to me this morning? Why would a crusty old royalist right-wing reactionary like Nemesis plan his big conspiracy for International Labor Solidarity Day? It seems terribly off-message for his politics.

I've never gotten one out of the mid-20s, because I dislike the animations, they fill up the screen so I can't click through them to pick targets.

A couple of years ago, right at the end of the 2nd Rikti War, I would have paid $30 or $50 for a Rikti Epic Archetype that added Rikti Traditionalists as a hero archetype with their own story arcs and Rikti Restructurists as a villain archetype with its own archetype.

These days, there isn't much of anything going on in the story that I think calls for a new archetype.

They're (mostly) not loose cannons and they're (technically) not vigilantes. They're security contractors. I keep saying it: Longbow is the Blackwater (or whatever they're calling themselves this month) of the City of Heroes universe, a private security company that acts as a semi-official branch of government in conflict zones.

Think of the Longbow who behave badly as equivalent to that Blackwater convoy in Iraq, years ago, that heard a car bomb six blocks away, thought it was their convoy that was under attack, and killed every Iraqi civilian in sight -- and who were then cleared of wrong-doing by the Provisional Authority and the State Department because, hey, accidents happen. Put ordinary people in constant combat, outside the normal military chain of command, and a certain number of really really bad judgment calls are inevitable.

I, personally, find steampunk dirigibles far more fun than steampunk submarines. But steampunk submarines are still good. Fortunately, I already have an undersea costume for my steampunk airship pirate character ...

Lore detail: is it canonical that there are no remaining organic components inside the real Nemesis' shell? I had assumed all along that there would be that difference between the real Nemesis and the gazillions of duplicates, that the real one still had the original brain inside. If they're all clockwork thinking machines, what determines which one is the real one, what determines which one the others are trying to put into power? Some tiny little brass nameplate, not usually displayed, with the number 000-0000-0001? Some tiny little complex of gears and springs that engages whenever the copies think of ruling the world themselves? And if Nemesis has no remaining organic components inside him, what did Mender Silos clone himself from (assuming the most common player guess for how Mender Silos beat the carbon law is true)?

Game mechanics: Even if the Nemesis invasion ends up being literally nothing more than a reskin of the Rikti Invasion, with steampunk airships beaming down level-less versions of standard Nemesis troops and unexploded Nemesis Bombs, I'll still call it good. (And if it were to completely replace the seriously un-fun Deadly Apocalypse event that everybody studiously ignores any time except October, I'd call it a vast improvement.) Can we interpret one of Zwillinger's remarks from the other day as saying that whatever this event is, it'll be going on for an entire month?

I've been playing MMOs for just a hair under 10 years now, and that whole time, every couple of weeks, I've had to explain this to somebody who didn't get it:

In any multiplayer game, especially in any massively multiplayer game, if you find one combination of character class, skills, and equipment that is clearly more powerful than any other, and you start playing that combination? You will be nerfed. If what you do after that is move on to the next-most overpowered build? You will be nerfed again. To go down the path of the min/maxer is to spend your whole MMO career complaining about the constant nerfs.

There's a very good reason for this, and I've seen it with my own eyes. In Neocron, due to some irreparably broken character class design, there was one character class spec that, frankly, shouldn't have even been possible, the hybrid psi-monk. Reakktor Media spent years trying to find some way to balance it that would make it still fun, and still playable, but not overpowered -- by the end of which time their game was nicknamed "Monk-o-cron," because at least three quarters of all characters were hybrid psi-monks.

No massively multiplayer online game company wants that, or else they wouldn't bother introducing multiple character classes and multiple weapons (or multiple archetypes and multiple powersets) in the first place. And the only way they can stay on top of that is to nerf every clearly-overpowered Flavor of the Month that crops up. So if the only thing you can have fun playing is clearly-overpowered Flavors of the Month? Get used to the nerfs.

Even one clearly overpowered item, available in Super Packs only, set to Very Rare. I won't rehash my argument as to why P2W via casino gambling is evil enough that I won't do business with a company that does it.

I knew I was going to love this one as soon as it offered me the option to tell him off, to say "Who are you to give me orders? I don't work for you?" The exasperated boiler-plate he gives hits just the right tone, as does everything from there up until you get to decide what to do with the super-weapon you just stole. This is everything an Arachnos-themed Project: DESTINY story arc should be!

I did something similar a couple of months ago, with a ma/nin stalker, just to see what it was like. It holds up quite well, truthfully -- although dear Crom, that fight against Frostfire is a pain solo. I'm a roughly 6-year vet, I know all the tricks, I went in with a stack of medium inspirations, but fighting an EB who spams hold, his 4 pets one of which spams hold, a miniboss scaled down to a lieutenant, another lieutenant, and something like 7 minions, all spawned at the entrance to the room? While standing on ice? That took me a couple of tries. That's some pretty tough level 9 content! But worth it: Frostfire's Lair is still one of the best custom maps in the whole game, and Atta's cave is pretty epic in size and decoration.

When I did it, I went to Montague Castanella at level 15, then to Faultline. The Hollows/Faultline revamps do achieve what they were intended to: if you know to take that path, there is one (and only one) pure solo(ish) story arc leveling path that takes you to where the real story arcs begin in the classic content, level 20 in Talos or IP or Striga.

Bonus question for the devs: When we fight against (or with) Frostfire in the tip missions, he no longer has his pets. Why not?

I'm talking about war! Good god! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!

Let me say this up front: I enjoy City of Heroes. But I feel like the storyline has been in a rut for a very long time, and the next four or so issues (?) look like more of the same:

Issues 9-16: The Second Rikti War. Earth is invaded by people in (mostly) green and tan uniforms, with funny heads, who come here from another timeline to kill all of our supers and convert us to their way of life because they think our supers are a threat to them. We find out who fed them this lie, defeat that person, war ends.

Issue 15: Return of the Fifth Column: Earth is invaded by people in red and black uniforms, who come here from another timeline to kill all our supers and convert us to their way of life because the think our supers are a threat to them. Fortunately, we pwn them in a single issue, and tell them to come back later, because officially we were already in a war and don't have time for their silliness.

Issue 17-23: The Praetorian War: Earth is invaded by people in (mostly) red and white uniforms, who come here from another timeline to kill all our supers and convert us to their way of life because they think our supers are a threat to them. We find out who fed them this lie, defeat that person, war ends. Oh, and there are two other fronts in the war: at one point, as a distraction, earth gets briefly invaded by Soldiers of Rularuu, who are here to kill us all, because we imprisoned their god; the Banished Pantheon complain that they thought of that first and we get invaded by one of their gods and his armies, who are here to kill us all, because ... oh, never mind.

Issue 22-?: The Coming Storm: Earth is invaded by translucent green and red aliens who come here from another planet to kill or enslave us all and steal all of our supers' powers. Why? Just because ... because that's what happens in City of Heroes since issue 10, I guess, Earth gets invaded over and over again, and mostly only the uniforms change.

You know what I miss? Fighting crime. Remember when superheroes fought crime and poverty and corruption, and stood up for truth and justice and all that?

Look, I know that there are constraints on us because we're an MMO. Our characters can only solve problems by beating people up. But there are people we haven't beaten up in a very long time. Someone's still arming the Sky Raiders, or we wouldn't have had to fight them alongside the Praetorians in Skyway City. Someone's still funding the Council, and they still intend to turn us all into one big Nictus farm. God only knows what the Circle of Thorns will get up to after the current issue, when they can stop worrying about Mot, but they're still cursed until they figure out some way to fulfill their contract with demons to kill all of the Mu ... at this point, 1/3rd of the Earth's population have Mu blood, it came up years ago in a Nerva Archipelago story arc. Oh, and once The Coming Storm is over and Lord Recluse stops being distracted by his fear of The Well, Arachnos will go back to trying to conquer the world. And, you know, hey, not all Nemesis plots are going to involve us playing let's-you-and-him fight with aliens.

So you know what I'd like to see, once the Coming Storm is over? A couple of issues where, for one to at most two issues per storyline, actual Primal Earth bad guys try something really, really big or at least really, really interesting. Devote an issue to updating the Crey storyline. Devote an issue or two to foreshadowing the Second Council War. Send us to West Libertalia to deal with the Sky Raiders. Send us into the Shadow Shard to Nemesis' hidden brass city (he has to have one out there) to defeat his steampunk dirigible fleet. Send us to Gagarin Station and Armstrong Base to find out what the heck the Lost were ranting about back in issue 8, October '06. Heck, for the 2014 election year, give us an issue dealing with all of the Council brainwashed politicians and candidates, Nemesis Automaton politicians and candidates, Circle of Thorns possessed politicians and candidates, Family bribed and blackmailed politicians and candidates, and so forth. Just, please, give us a year or two off between alien invasions after this one? Please?

If Superman can take time off from fighting Apokalypse to deal with Lexcorp, we can take time off from our seemingly-annual alien invasions to deal with Crey.

I'm ... less happy with it than I thought I'd be. Two related complaints:

(1) It's VERY visually "busy." I'm getting a bit of a headache looking at it. And ...
(2) If it were 10' or 12' tall, it would look like a mecha. At 4' to 7' tall, it's going to look like a Power Ranger. Not, I guess, that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not really what I was looking for.

The complaints are related because that level of spikiness and that level of complexity in the geometry would look a lot better if the thing were 3 or 4 times the size. This would make a GREAT design for a Giant Monster ... or, better yet, a character-substitute model, so we could wear it as a giant mecha to fight an up-gunned Chronos Titan with something its own size. But at standard character size? Not only am I not tempted, I'm really kind of dreading seeing them on other people.