Judgement_Dave

What abbreviations were settled on for the new TF/SF?

RTF/RSF or 5TF/5SF or what?

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Yes the Paragon sign is new but how comes they have to keep the Cryptic logo?
Is it a legal thing?

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Wasn't there some arrangement with Cryptic re: the graphics engine?

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Still down, and internal testing...
This is... unusual...

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If it's I15 then they're removing a lot of badges from characters, on top of other changes.

I'd rather they check that they've not made a hideous error when modifying all the affected characters than the servers go live and half the characters are corrupted/unplayable.

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Yes.. please update this with news... Telling us its closed or not going to work anytime soon with a reason would be nice.

Just giving it the silence treatment is not the way to go... Especially with the new forums and sites now.

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Posi made a throw-away comment at the 5th anniversery Roast Posi thing in PocketD.

Basically they couldn't get this to work properly without flooding the servers with traffic so it was quietly forgotten about and left to rust "until we can get some network coders to look at it" or something similiar.

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Pretty much, though afaik he never stated it was network traffic.

EU pocket D anniversary comments on City Vault from my chatlog:
04-28-2009 18:07:30 [Local] Positron: Vault has been shelved.
04-28-2009 18:07:46 [Local] Positron: Generating the Vault stuff actually hammered the servers
04-28-2009 18:08:03 [Local] Positron: so we need to reengineer the whole thing
04-28-2009 18:08:19 [Local] Positron: so it's on the back burner until we get the right guy in here
04-28-2009 18:08:26 [Local] Positron: unplayable lag
04-28-2009 18:08:35 [Local] Positron: we're still trying to make it happen

So it is still planned, but certainly not looking like an imminent arrival.

Bah - guess it's tomorrow then...

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badge - i believe its called Lightbringer, the one you get when you came from US to EU.


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Pretty sure that 'passport' was the US-EU transfer badge.

Has any announcement been made about forum support for the French and German speaking community?

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- What happens where you have both a US (expired) and an EU account with the same display name? Do we need to change one in advance?


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This (and the general name conflict resolution) could do with being answered in good time before the migration.

About 5 minutes ago, I did briefly alter my US displayname to Judgement_DaveUS then realised that this could just cause further difficulty if another US account changed to 'Judgement_Dave' - which would take priority? The new US one or my EU one?

(OK unlikely with the JD name, but you get the idea.. and if a name is important to you it'd be good to know what the policy will be).

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I guess our individual server forums (which aren't hero/villain split Stateside) will become the main haunt for intra-EU sociability...

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TBH always thought it's better to have just server-based rather than server-faction. So many people play both blue & red on the same server that all the EU organisation means is that you have twice as many forums to check. And co-op TF/SFs make sense to arrange in a server-specific forum.

Why would you need bonuses for RP weddings?

Of course maybe some emotes or costume pieces could help (rings or maybe a ball and chain?), but not gameplay bonuses.

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Statesman ate a ham sandwich once

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Source?

Pretty sure there's no canon mention of his sandwich-tastes since becoming Statesman and I guess from the Web of Arachnos that the pre-Statesman Marcus was more a simple cheese-and-pickle man. Could clear this up in the lore section I guess...

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I don't know what the fuss is all about, we are just introducing 2 new powers, the blue Imps of Asphyxiation and the purple Imps of Tedium. The former has various ways of throwing blueberries at you until enough fall into your mouth resulting in you choking to death, while the latter has different manners of eating plums in front of you until you die of boredom...

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You realise that you're going to get so much grief about broken promises if, when I16 arrives, it's actually blackberries and peaches.

Well I didn't spot Sing on at 18:00 - so I guess it's postponed to next week again.. Have fun folks & gratz on your non-beauty-therapy award.

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Are you suggesting that the devs should treat fire control like the red-headed step-child?

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No! It should be treated like the red- or yellow- or purple- or black- or orange- or ochre- or cyan- or azure- or colorx-headed step-child that the devs know it can be.

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Seriously, I think Positron lost a screw somewhere when he said they were not going to revamp the older zones.

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When did he say that? He didn't say that in the anniversary EU pocket D event, as I'm guessing you think he did.

Couple of notes:

1. The EU pocket D exchange about zone revamps/new zones actually went:

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?
Positron: Right now, we'd rather add zones
Positron: since a revamp takes almost as much time

Notice that, to paraphrase, he said 'at this point in time we'd prefer to create new zones'. That is not the same as saying that now or in the future they will not do any zone revamps. It doesn't even say that they don't have any future ones planned. They may even have some being done now, as there is an overwhelming reason to revamp a zone, even though they'd 'prefer' not to.

2. What counts as a zone revamp???

At the EU pocket D event, Posi stated that they'd done 2 zone revamps:

Positron: So we've done two "revamps" to zones so far.
Positron: So we have a good metric on how much time it takes
Positron: And for a smidge more time, we can make a brand new zone.

But in recent years we've seen revamps to RCS, Faultline and Hollows haven't we? Now it's possible that he misremembered or miscounted, but I doubt it.

It appears RCS/RWZ and Faultline were both revamps in the devs eyes - they both had a good range of zone story arcs and contacts added, and saw changes to the zones architecture/geometry.

The changes made to the Hollows were far less intensive and seem to not count as a revamp in the devs eyes. But we did see a reasonable shake up in the zone spawns, a new contact for repeatable missions and some new facilities (involving minor architecture/geometry changes).

If that's how the devs do see it then of course what they refer to as a zone revamp will be nearly as much work as creating a new zone. Practically half of FL was redesigned - with the rebuild and dam area being added. RWZ has quite a few new areas, not least of all the vanguard base itself. And both had at least 3 zone story arcs added.

It makes me wonder exactly where a zone revamp starts. Maybe adding a single zone arc contact and a repeatable contact to DA, but leaving the architecture untouched wouldn't count as a revamp. If that's the case then it's possible that DA and Boom could see some more use without being given the full dev-qualifying 'revamp' treatment.

So even if the devs aren't planning what they class as a zone revamp it is still possible that they are planning what the playerbase would see as a zone revamp.

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Thing is in mercy the MA building is a stones throe from a black market and there a level up person just round the corner so the conditions are pretty much the same as atlas yet there is no real farming in mercy so i don't think its just the fact that atlas has both a auction house and MA building.

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And Cap AE has all this plus is a stones throw from University, Base portal, Vanguard and a higher level ferry.

It's much more conveniently placed than any AE in Mercy which only connects directly to PO (and so can be bit of a pain for higher level characters to travel to).

Welcome to the forums.

There is a mini pack, but the full Mac edition includes 1month subscription and so (iirc) usually works out cheaper than buying just the mini-pack (which contains the bonus costuume pieces & power).

ANd all you do is apply the code to your account - so the full Mac edition works fine with accounts used on PCs.

At least 2 of the regulars can't make it tonight, so I think we're skipping to next Sunday.

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Of course you could have power customisation in another way. What if you picked the asects of a power and then the system worked out the cost in endurance.

So for example you start off as a Fire Blaster, you get Fire Blast and then choose to customise it. You pick the Damage, Accuracy base, range, Cast (minimum based on graphics) and recharge times and the system then works out the endurance it'll use. You can make it a Super powerful, long range quick recharge power, but one shot and all your blue will be gone. Would be fun and frustrating, maybe at a respec you'd get to change it when you realise how big a mistake you made

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I think that would be way too big a change for the current game engine. You're talking about a fundamentally new powers system there.

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Nothing mentioned there that can't usually be modified by enhancements - so possibly not so big a difference to the current system, we just don't know.

And even the end tradeoff is sort-of there already.. if you want to not enhance dmag/range/accuracy/recharge you can slot endreds to effectively lower end cost.

Do we know for sure yet that the Praetorian Earth in GR is the dimension that already exists in game?

Just thinking that if we're acting in an infinite multiverse there'll be many alternate dimensions with the Praetorians - and being a different one to the one that exists ingame makes an easy get-out for any changes that need to be made (or slip ups that happen).

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I have been hearing rumours (but don't have the time to dig through the forum) that the Epics aren't going to be able to cross over?

If that is true, doesn't that defeat the purpose of the expansion to exlude the epic toons?
And if true, why????

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Or maybe rumours are just, y'know, rumours.

If info ain't been rednamed or in a PR release take it with a reasonable measure of salt.

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Is it only me, or aren't the pictures working in the Dev Diary?

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Not just you - in the announcement thread Avatea stated that they were looking at the problem.

Though as that was c.7 hrs ago I'd guess that the people looking at it have all gone to bed and we've got a broken version until the US awakes again.

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Use better keywords for people who search for something specific.

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I15 may help here - it has a small selection of keywords/categories and allows the author to tag up to 3 of them per arc. Not a perfect selection of keyword/categories - but a pretty good one that I hope will make it much easier to search the arc store.

Might be worth checking the US thread List of Ways to Promote Your Arc.

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While I appreciate the creative talents some are displaying here, I'd also appreciate if you could use different words than the ones requiring you to circumvent the filter!

I use expletives such as "Sugar!" everyday, and while my team hates it, I know I am being courteous and polite (and a good girl, yes I am!).

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its weird but the only word I can think of to rhyme with Sugar is a (mild) curse word.....

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Immediately springing to my mind are:

mugger
rugger (rugby)
lugger (type of boat/ship, though you could possibly get away with someone who lugs loads about)
jugger (a bird)


And possibly:
drugger (one who administers a drug?)
tugger (one who tugs?)

Or if you need a continental location try Zeebrugge.

I guess if some like a woman in the past you might even be able to get away with saying that they 'dug her'...

Belated Birthday wishes, Master Z!

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I never understood why the virtual line of badges even existed except to pad out the badge list.

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Easy when you consider that badges are actively seeked by some players and so a smattering of badges will be used as an incentive to get people using new features.

The devs didn't want a load of untested dross with basic flaws hitting the MA arc store and so gave us a way to test without publishing.

Q: But how to make sure that people do test their creations before publishing?
A: Stick in a few badges so that there's an added incentive (or thank you) for testing.

Of course that didn't quite work as the choice for arc authors was (and still is):

(1) Expend lots of effort testing your arcs yourself just for badges and ensuring a higher quality of arc when it is published. Conscientious authors would probably do this with several characters and maybe even try to get teams to test, but still wouldn't be able to test exhaustively before publishing.

(2) Just publish the arc and 'test' it there. This way it's easier to get others to test it (and maybe even a few people will play it after randomly finding it) and you'l get proper tickets/rewards for both testing and if anyone rates the arc. If badges are your thing, you'll also get progress to the live badges whilst 'testing'.

For anyone who isn't serious about writing an arc for the creative/storytelling purposes the choice became a no-brainer: Publish it without unpublished testing. This apparently surprised the devs (going off a comment Posi made at the EU pocket D) - though it shouldn't have given the reward structure in place.

Even for those who are serious, the test badges are only of use (as a thank you or incentive) to those who want to publish the first time with as few errors/issues as possible.

Since arcs can be unpublished then published again with no trace of old comments/complaints/ratings anyone who doesn't worry about trying to launch a faultless arc first-time should have no qualms about publishing a reasonable first-pass and then finishing testing from the live copy. If there's a major problem just unpublish/edit/publish - but you'll have still earnt proper tickets whilst finishing testing.

Of course, removing all the badges that are going just means that there is even less reward/purpose to testing for all but the most serious authors.

With each of my published multi-mission arcs I used several characters for between about 8 and 20 hours of test runs. Even though a lot of this time was on the test server, it was oddly satisfying to see the virtual badge progress slowly creeping up - and a nice little reward when the odd test badge dropped. With I15 even I think that there is virtually no point in doing more than 1 or 2 test runs of a new arc before publishing.