Judgement_Dave

Aren't Nerva and PI the homes of the portals to the shadow shards?

Or are other portals also used?

If not - any significance?

Admittedly it's only a stupid optimism and the lines about the rikti establishing a beachhead and them possibly making Guardian a new rikti world but what if...

Rikti invasions that have lasting server-specific zonal effects.

Yeah overly optimistic - but lasting zonal effects dependant upon players actions have been a recurring 'wishlist' item for years...

Curse my faint glimmer of optimism.

Sceptical that the attacks may be enjoyed more by the PS/NC staff taking part than the playerbase.

Imminent rikti-based happenings have been built up enough that it can't fail to be anti-climactic if it ends up little more than a few staff-attended invasions that, as a player, you need to be lucky to catch. And standard non-staffed invasions wouldn't really add anything.

Heck, after such a relative drought of permanent dev-created content (as in TF/SFs and arcs) for more than a year a longish build up for anything short of great news re: GR or another issue on the horizon would probably be anticlimatic.

Maybe as an attempt to recognise the EU it's a multilingual 'gift' - English for NA and German for the EU.

I wouldn't get too het up about this. Yes it's just about as useful as a chocolate fireguard for EU players - but we were pretty damn used to being treated as second class customers (at best) before the board merge. And I'd have thought that they would try a server-list merge before this if the intention was to see if any servers became so quiet that they could be closed.

i.e. cynical as I am I see it as merely an attempt at a nice gesture that probably works well for some NA customers but is virtually useless for EU players. I see no hidden agenda nor intended slights.

BTW - is it the case that some of the text/dialog settings on characters is set at creation and moves with character when transfering between servers using different languages?

As odd as it seems I was told some time back that this happened (and was partly to do with the dodgy multi-language implementation used by the game) - giving me the impression that some text would remain in German if I decided to transfer charcaters created on Zukunft to Union.

And cynically I'm fairly sure that EU players buying NA accounts alongside their 'main' EU accounts is another reason for NC to delay a server list merge (even if they eventually swap completely). And if enough do this, they get 2 lots of subs for the switchover period and then can close the EU servers for low population - all the effects of a list merge with no cost and extra subs.

Of course, that's the cynic in me and no doubt far, far removed from the reality.

But Heck - a list merge would be such a nice Christmas present.

Agree totally... in general...

Though we european-server players never did raid as much as the tales from the US boards suggested you Americans did... And on Union and Defiant we hadn't been running regular successful raids for very long (maybe several months iirc).

Without the same size playerbase as some US servers and correspondingly fewer hardcore raiders we'd taken the time to learn the ropes and get a raid that worked...

The seperation of server lists coupled with very few (none that I can recall) players running both EU and US accounts meant that we didn't have anyone experienced in US raids - so our own limited trial and error and the odd US forum post/guide was all we had to go on.

But we did get there eventually. There was a period where Defiant and Union were in fairly regular, good natured competition and it was still never guaranteed that a raid would work.

There were a few attempts after the change - but they tended to end up as 5-7hrs of repeated death before it became clear that it wasn't going to work.

Sure it would probably have died a death (or at least become less popular) in time as newer challenges and rewards became popular, but I'm pretty darn sure that overnight the change made it nigh-on impossible for a small server population (isolated from the US population) with few hardcore raiders.

We could have got there eventually - but I don't think that our fairly casual players were enamoured by the prospect of spending 7hrs every week or fortnight not really knowing what they were doing, repeatedly faceplanting, and risking DCing out of the event and all with probbaly no reward at the end (other than experience of what didn't work).

With that scenario quickly being seen as the probable outcome the raids were bound to quickly die off once a critical mass of raiders couldn't be gathered.

Is server performance still limiting this to 50 or could it be extended upwards?
And couldn't the Hami raid be made co-op now - since the thunder of introducing co-op has long since echoed into silence.

Upping the player zone limit could help entice back some of those that don't even try for fear of DC'ing midway and not being able to rejoin, and making it co-op would increase the potential pool of players on lesser populated servers.

Some form of reward split (or even multiple reward points) would have been a good idea - shame that was dropped.

And the ability to trigger the Hami spawn is possibly one of the best things about the changed Hami. Though on servers with low population it can be somewhat frustrating doing the Hambrosia farming and spawning Hami when still not sure if enough people will turn up to make a raid realistic.

Or at least: I remember that it used to be so - so long since a saw an EU raid...


Slightly ironic that the new Hami is repetitive when it replaced the old Hami partly because it was boring.

And then you're left wondering what to do with all the other surplus fingers.

I can see that Hami needed changing but the implemented change really did kill off a regular event on the EU servers (especially Union).

They know that not paying for D_Rs time gets the the videos made within their apparently limited marketing budget.

Why makeover PP?

The hollows has 3 major arcs for levels 5-15 (iirc) - and was punishing on many due to the hazard spawns with a very long trip from the hospital after the inevitable defeats (especially if you'd entered Hollows from Atlas and had a mission at the southern end of the Hollows).

There's no similar level of content in PP, and, tbh, it gets used a reasonable amount (compared to DA/Boom/SS) and doesn't have too long a trip from any of the surrounding city zone hospitals.

Boomtown is a pain in the behind to get back to from Steel hospital - but there's very little reason to go there, certainly no major chunks of arcs set in Boom (not that I can recall anyway).

DA has it's own hospital, but even less reason to go there unless badge hunting.

I'd say Perez sits well - and not least because there should be a 10-15 level zone with decent sized spawns (the one thing I disliked about the hollows makeover was the reduction in spawn sizes).

Admittedly Perez could do with a zone arc or two to help explain the history of Perez and the gangs there.. but the same could be said for most of the city zones IMO.

Not sure who B_I is...

I'm not suggesting that it is moving to a model where we pay extra for content. But it irritates the heck out of me when some posters argue against a recent lack of content by stating that GR will have plenty - GR should be seen as seperate to the usual, regular content updates.

Hasn't ER just been mentioning the last 6 issues as rubbish? Or did I miss somewhere where they said last 7?

Just asking as you show the last 7 issues 10-16. If it's just the last 6 that ER's poo-pooing you should be looking at 11-16.

It's still a decent amount, just trying to eliminate false evidence sneaking into the discussion.

Given how the past 3 have been very dev-content-light (though very good quality content, IMO) I'm still hoping that there's a good amount of non-GR dev content on the radar.

Whilst I'm pretty sure that most people who've played CoX for more than a couple of months will get GR it is still a seperate paid expansion. There ought to be some new content for those who won't (or can't) be getting GR unless we're moving to a content-model where all new content is bought by a purchase seperate to the subscription.

It'd be good if the threads that have been running (well, limping slowly at least) for the past couple of years still make it into the game in non-GR form. Thinking of the coming storm and those letters we occasionally find...

Well it was actually the EU test server (not Defiant) pocket D for the 5th anniversary.

Snippets from my chatlog of the event:
* On planning ahead:
04-28-2009 17:45:18 [Local] Golden Girl1: Positron, I have a question about the dev team - now that it's bigger, do you work on content further in the future, or do you all just have more working on current content?
04-28-2009 17:45:38 [Local] Positron: Far further
04-28-2009 17:46:12 [Local] Positron: MA took 18 months, which is 13 months farther out than we were doing previously

04-28-2009 18:10:30 [Local] Fulcrum: Posi, just curious, how far ahead do you have plans for at the moment?
04-28-2009 18:11:25 [Local] Positron: Working on I18 prelim designs.

I was going to mention the pocket D event because of the revamping zones comments earlier in the thread....
Silver Gale was just pointing out the devs position on zone revamps as stated by Positron:

* On new content:
04-28-2009 18:06:08 [Local] Positron: We could write Arcs, but with MA out there, we'd rather write TF/SF's
04-28-2009 18:06:36 [Local] Golden Girl1: Positron, are there any plans to give older zones a Faultline-style makeover, like Boomtown, for example, or would you rather add new zones to the game first?
04-28-2009 18:06:53 [Local] Positron: Right now, we'd rather add zones
04-28-2009 18:07:04 [Local] Positron: since a revamp takes almost as much time

04-28-2009 18:31:29 [Local] Positron: So we've done two "revamps" to zones so far.
04-28-2009 18:31:41 [Local] Positron: So we have a good metric on how much time it takes
04-28-2009 18:31:54 [Local] Positron: And for a smidge more time, we can make a brand new zone.
04-28-2009 18:33:18 [Local] Positron: But we can make COOL zones

Note that that was the second reference to 'COOL' (both times capitalised, 1st time referring to the 5th TF/SFs)

What was interesting was that Positron stated that they'd done 2 zone revamps. It appeared (to me) that he seemed to be drawing some distinction between a full zone revamp and just adding a bit of sparkle/doing a makeover...

i.e. RCS -> RWZ and Faultline are clearly revamps. Both included a set of new full-length zone arcs, changes to mobs and also had some serious changes to zone architecture/geometry.

Hollows is, by comparison, a mere makeover, adding a bit of sparkle by relatively minor changes - mainly mob changes and a repeatable mission contact. The addition of a field hospital and trainer are pretty darn minor...

It's pretty easy to imagine that the scale of geometry/architecture/mob changes made to RWZ or FL are almost as big a job as creating a whole new zone. But players don't see it as anywhere near the value of a whole new zone...

I can understand that position. It's probably right that the devs don't expend too much energy doing full zone revamps, as they get better bang for their buck elsewhere.

But I don't think that Posi's statements discount zone makeovers akin to the hollows - or maybe even adding a zone arc or two. It's the full zone geometry/architecture work that's wasteful - and I don't think DA or the shadow shards would need a large-scale geometry rethink to make them actually serve a purpose and be visited/used more.

Sorry I missed that...

Started a new work contract 2 weeks ago and found the EU servers pretty dead at the start of the Halloween event so I've not been on much recently. And a RL fun-and-alcohol-filled halloween weekend kinda meant I didn't even see that you were trying the new masters until 5 min ago...

No plans on leaving (heck - the contract pays for the luxury of keeping CoX even if I'm only popping in occasionally) so I'll hopefully catch you ingame before too long.

I teamed with you and know for a fact that you don't really exist.

Related to these IIRC the initial dev talk about GR suggested that there would be rewards for staying true to your villainous or heroic roots. Any details on these incentives/rewards to stay true?

IIRC it was said that staying true and not switching sides would gain the character access to some rewards that were not available to side-switchers.

What are the timelines for many of these dead people?

I know Cyrus Oliver Thompson is in a flashback TF, but can't see a definite timeframe for it. And we can't assume that the flag flying from City Hall in the TF is made from Statesman's cape.

The hospital teleportation network was created from recovered rikti technology. This happened sometime during/after the 1st rikti invasion of 2004. So anyone 'killed' before that time could easily have been properly killed, dead-as-dead-can-be unless some other tech/magic/mutation/alien interference/wizard did it.

IIRC the teleport to Zig network was decsribed as a modification of the hospital teleportation network, and so certainly didn't precede the hospital network and may have come quite some time later.

I don't recall it being established at which point the hospital network wasr rolled out beyond Paragon, so presumably CoV entities (potentially including scrapyard) may have died since it was introduced to Paragon.

There's also the odd occasion where the hospital teleportation network is suppressed/breaks down.

Of course you shouldn't really worry about occasional hiccups with the hospital/Zig networks - or worry as much as you do about a perp dying from a heartattack from the sheer shock of being confronted by kid gloves-wearing hero...

Possibly - But I'd think it unlikely if the new Praetoria is only accessed if you purchase the GR expansion. I'd have thought that any changes to APPs would probably apply to all accounts.

It could just as easily be the our world's signature heroes - maybe spurred on by the new threat from Praetoria they've decided that heroes need more hands-on training to develop skills akin to their own.

Or whatever... making up a rationale for heroic patron pools wouldn't be impossible - but I don't think it'd be in any area/content that's only available to a subset of accounts (i.e. those who bought GR).

More choice in powersets and skins is always good - but 'til then there's imagination. You can come up with a rationale for any set being non-lethal if you don't trust the teleportation network.

BTW I don't really hold that powersets with blades can't be given smashing skins and vice versa - surely the damage types have been slightly disjointed from the fx with power spectrum (still think it should have been going rouge).

Now you can have negative energy looking bright and cheery and normal energy looking dark and pretty darn negative. Is blue fire really fire? It could be some sort of mental illusion or spirit fire, but the damage type is still just 'fire'.

If that's possible I don't really see the issue with having wooden swords/batons/black puddings/tickling sticks available as skins for dual swords.

So why are there still so many kidnaps? Who would give in to the kidnapper's demands?

Pay $2miLlioN iN uSEd inF oR wE kIlL tHe gIRl
Hmmmm..... You couldn't kill her at 6pm could you? I'll pick her up at the hospital doors on my way back home from work...

Just now all APPs are AT-specific - a blaster doesn't get the same ancilliary powers as a tank and a Brute's powers from Mako are different to a stalkers powers from Mako.

No reason why this would change - so there's no reason we'd see a villainous tanker with any of the existing Mako powers exactly as they are, though they could have the Mako tanker powers. The devs have quite a few APPs to design/balance...

I'd been expecting a change to APPs sometime anyway, allowing all normal (non-Epic) ATs access to some form of equivalent to the patron sets and to non-patron sets. No real reason to expect that other than I'd imagine it'd help achieve some form of parity between the ATs ready for any rogue/AT-proliferation system.

I also consider removing the lock-in to a single patron on villains as a move towards this (watering down the villain APP ingame story allows other non-story driven powersets to be introduced).

That was almost my 1st thought on this - although I'd gone for more than just 4 as marketing tends to have a 3 drink minimum to start with.

Maybe they could rebrand as just City Of... I'm sure having two superhero MMOs with initials CO would lead to even more fun misunderstandings on forums than usual.

The start of closed beta does not have to wait until after the loyalty program subscription period ends.

The subscription period is for the 2nd tier of closed beta. 60 month vets can be let in before then as they qualify for tier 1 CB regardlesss of their participation in the Autumn '09 loyalty program.

Having said that, I suspect that SG is 'reading it wrong', just not for the reason that you state.

I'd guess that for 3rd and 4th we probably have to move onto the US server lists - Zukunft and Vigilance just don't count for most players due to language difficulties.

The limited time is why I restricted it to "maybe, just maybe, there wouldn't be any major bugs in the final release". Games and expansions will always launch with some bugs due to money/resource restrictions.

I think your restaurant analogy is close but wrong.

Beta testers aren't helping to prep the food (they aren't doing any coding or game-data manipulation). They're acting more like taste testers to let the cooks/chefs know if there are any major problems with a dish before it's added to the menu for everyone to eat.

If you actually are testing (rather than just enjoying a preview play) then you're helping to reduce the bugs that make it into the final release. i.e. if more people tested then maybe, just maybe, there wouldn't be any major bugs in the final release.

Everyone wins then.

That is enough for some.

EDIT: It's also sometimes the case that people just want to check that things that they enjoy in the game aren't being broken.