Judgement_Dave
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Posts
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Joined
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Issue 17 will change Defenders inherent system to make them solo better
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Halle-eee-luuuuuu-jahhhhhhhhhhh! -
PAX has seen a reconfirmation of the devs preference for new zones over revamps:
Q: Any plans to revisit old hazard zones?
Bianco Yes, they do revisit sometimes, but only when it makes sense; they like creating new one a lot more. -
Quote:I know - which is why I wonder if the thread about I19 is slightly premature... We have a name and know that there's 10 incarnate levels - but little else.Originally Posted by Lady_Sadako
Joking apart, we don't actually know what Issue 18 is called yet...
Although I'm wondering why the 10 levels arrive as 1 with GR and 9 in I19...
Is I18 not bringing more, or will that be a sort-of-pseudo-issue mainly providing GR-compatability?
If I19 is called Incarnates, but you need Gr to partake in the Incarnate levels... will I19 bring much if anything for non-GR players? -
Quote:But wouldn't we usually wait until we had the thread about Issue 18? Or did I miss that thread?Originally Posted by Lady_Sadako
it's a good old forum tradition to start a new thread with a new issue title in it as soon as it's learned about!
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Q: When was Going Rogue born as a concept?
Jesse: It was originally going to launch with "Issue 6"
I hate it when the devs rush these things out like this.
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So I found the post I originally did with timestamped (with times using British Summer Time, GMT+1) excerpts from the chatlog of the EU pocket D 5th anniversary event.
The full post is here.
The main section regarding zones/mission is midway through the post:
Quote:* 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 this is second reference to 'COOL' (both times capitalised, 1st time referring to the 5th TF/SFs)
04-28-2009 18:31:51 [Local] Fulcrum: Posi, do we need to get the umbrellas ready for the 'coming storm' anytime soon?
04-28-2009 18:32:11 [Local] Positron: Coming storm is still a ways away. -
So I found a post I made last June about this (in a thread about If you could design the next expansion?...). It contains the excerpt from my chatlogs from the EU pocket D event.
Hopefully this helps show exactly what was said re: zone revamps, though if not I'll look into reposting a larger chunk complete with timestamps.
Of course, it all relies on my being honest enough not to edit or misreport...
<.<
>.>
Quote:Originally Posted by Judgement_Dave
[ QUOTE ]
Seriously, I think Positron lost a screw somewhere when he said they were not going to revamp the older zones.
[/ QUOTE ]
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. -
Quote:MMO players in general are simple creatures. They often attach great weight to numbers they can understand and easily compare and contrast between games.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
What I simply cannot understand is HOW the hell they think revamping is, somehow, magically inferior to new zones? New zones !!!= better.
For many (x+1) zones must be better and bigger than a game with a mere x zones... And because many MMO players seem to think this then the press will often make more noise about a game getting a new zone than it will over an existing zone being reworked.
Devs who realise this know that they'll get a much better reaction from the press and prospective players spending 100 days working on a new zone rather than spending 80 days working on making an underutilised zone fun and full of existing players having fun.
For a non-CoX example: Like it or loathe it, I've seen many complaints/negative comments about Champions Online only having 5 zones at launch (and until last weeks update). But the fact is that each zone in that game was several times the size of most zones in CoX, with an accompanying number of contacts/missions.
And I'm sure I recall seeing several posts worried that GR may only be 2 or 3 zones, without considering that 2 or 3 zones in GR could be nearly as big as Paragon City if the zones are a similar size to the shadow shard zones (or bigger). -
Quote:IIRC the first time I saw the devs state that a zone revamp took almost as much time/effort as an entirely new zone was actually Positron in the EU test server pocket D for the 5th anniversary event.Originally Posted by Umbral
I believe the actual line (and I believe it was actually a War Witch one) was that it's almost as much work to revamp a zone as it is to simply create a new zone outright.
I've posted excerpts from my chatlogs of the event many times before, but I'm not at the PC with the transcripts at the moment...
I also recall that Posi stated that the devs had done 2 zone revamps - and at the time RCS/RWZ, Faultline and Hollows had all seen changes. Looking at the dev language used it's always looked to me that Posi was not counting the Hollows rebalance as a zone revamp, and so it follows that some rebalancing and minor changes may still be on the cards for other zones.
It's the major architectural/geometry changes and fleshing out with 3 or more contacts worth of new missions that takes almost as much effort as a new zone - and seeing the work done to RCS/RWZ and Faultline it's easy to appreciate that. -
Quote:So all the posters declaring that 'Earth is for Humans' (I think it's that - it may just be '%*$# Off home alien scum') don't worry you but an inability to drink tea in lobster form does???Originally Posted by Captain_Morgan_EU
Ladies and Gentlemen of the forums, it has just come to my attention that the drink tea emote does nothing while in Black Dwarf form.
And if you get lobster-form tea drinking then what about the poor khelds who never even got the chance to learn lobster form on their intergalactic travels?
You'll soon need squiddy tea drinking for equality.
And whilst squiddy tea is near enough to octopus tea for Lusca to join in any tea party of protest, and so could gain your movement a strong ally, it would also provide the logistical problem of creating and delivering a GM-sized tea cup, pot and cosy.
And if you let any old Kheldian start drinking tea then any old nictus will start to complain about the inequality and some people will get very upset if nictus and cysts get a boost to their powers (even if it's only tea drinking ability providing a minor lapsang souchong buff).
/unsigned as this could obviously ruin the game. Stick to coffee in human form. -
Quote:Go team positivity!Originally Posted by Olantern
At this point, I'm fairly certain that if we ever see any expansion of the Coming Storm story, it will be either immediately, in i17 (new faction or factions) or as the server-shutdown event. More likely than either is the possibility that it never gets developed at all.
It may not get developed in the way originally intended, but I'm fairly optimistic that it's still coming an issue or 2 after GR.
My own belief (totally unfounded in solid evidence) is that it was planned in a multi-issue arc and then the NC buyout gave the possibility to expand the team and do a true expansion. So the coming storm got put on hold whilst new team members were brought up to speed and then GR developed.
If something similar to this is the case, then I'd hope some form of GR to come an issue or two after GR - though it may have been modified to mesh with game/story developments in recent issues and GR. -
Quote:Given the multitude of possible 'Lord Nemesis'-es from different times and realities, and even that some fakes may be (at least) as sentient as the original, it's probably safe to say that Lord Nemesis is even against Lord Nemesis...Originally Posted by Scythus
The only side Nemesis is on is his own side.
...and possibly counts himself as his only worthy adversary. -
Quote:And 5 will get you 10 that if that were to happen in UK/EU magazines then the 14-day trial would still be for the NA service.Originally Posted by Prof_Radburn
The only way EU numbers will go up is if the advertise the game ,why not put the 14 day trial disc,s on the PC Gamer mags like they have done in the past.
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Quote:Wow. That looks (to me) to be a suggestion to completely change the reward mechanics with no real justification given... It feels akin to someone suggesting that the rules of Monopoly be changed so that it becomes Scrabble.Originally Posted by Syndyr
Please take into consideration that for this game to thrive and continue to grow it needs to be newbie friendly.
I get by decently as a 30 month Vet with 10 50's and all 36 of my character slots filled on Virtue, but at times I struggle to even begin to slot a build the way I planned it. So imagine for a second what it would be like to be a new player looking at the market and seeing 100's of millions of influence for one thing and then their bankroll barely breaking a million. (If they are lucky)
Maybe your idea would hold more merit if IOs and good sets were needed to play the game. As it is SOs are still enough, and so certainly work fine for newbies.
Now if a player is comfortable enough to have planned a fully IO'd build of any note then they are probably not a newbie, and so should already have some idea about the market and either how they are going to generate income to cover the build or how they are prepared to wait.
It's also the case that, other than CIOs, IOs were introduced as something that takes great time and effort to work towards. It was never the devs intention that people get fully IO'd builds in months or possibly even years - this is partly imo why the game wasn't rebalanced/made harder and is still balanced around SOs.
The reward system isn't broken. The invention system isn't broken. The market system isn't broken - it just suffers from high inflation and maybe needs more money sinks and control on INF-farming.
BTW - I'm nowhere near a marketeer or farmer, and very, very rarely transfer any INF between my characters (as I usually like to know they made it 'by themselves'). I have characters still on SOs (or lvl25-30 CIOs) and I wouldn't think any of them under-perform. No-one needs an uber-build 'nao!' to play the game. -
Quote:Whilst you know I'm critical of the decision not to have an EU box, I think that this may be a tad unfair.Originally Posted by Heart Attack
Meaning players who have left will have no idea there is something new to come back for.
NC should still have the email details for lapsed accounts and so, assuming that they are still active, could potentially market GR direct to ex-players as they presumably do with account re-activation weekends. I'd also imagine it fairly likely that many ex-players may have moved onto other MMOs and are likely to see whatever gaming magazine/website publicity GR gets.
It's the potential new players (who have never played CoX) that may have more trouble finding out about CoX.
BTW - I'm another of those who never played MMOs before CoX and tried it because I saw it in a shop not long after it launched in the EU - I'd never heard of it before that... Not all potential players search Steam or check gamingwebsite.com looking for an MMO to play - and before CoX I was unlikely to do this as the WoW-machine had me thinking that online games would practically all be high-fantasy tosh. -
Quote:They're anything but free!Originally Posted by Leif_Roar
Please, for the love of Gutenberg: paragraph breaks, good sir. They're free, you know.
They add extra characters (probably getting translated into <br> or similar) which cost energy to transmit across the interwebz. This extra energy is no doubt produced in environmentally damaging ways and cursing us all to a future of meteorological catastrophe.
If we all got rid of paragraph breaks in our posts to the CoX forums we could save the planet.
Fact.
Actually - I could probably save the planet single handedly by not posting any of this drivel... -
Thank you! That seems to do the trick.
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Quote:It's data.Originally Posted by Dante
I think it must be possible, it's just a question of whether the time and effort in overcoming the technical hurdles is worth it for them to merge the lists.
Bits and bytes (oh and maybe the odd nibble if we're feeling adventurous).
It's not asking for all the buildings in Europe to be relocated to Arizona or any other physical task.
As such, whilst there may be some hurdles to overcome, it is very possible if the will is there. Of course, the will being there depends on the cost-benefit case... -
Quote:I'm expecting GR content/assets to be part of the single excutable and collection of piggs (herd of piggs?) just as both CoH and CoV were installed even if you had access to only one. It'd be far worse/harder to try maintaining two versions of the game (i.e. an NA one with GR and an EU one without).Originally Posted by Dante
However, one thing to note is that there is an EU version of Going Rogue. Which means that for the forseeable future, we are expected to continue. I'm not an expert on coding but I'd imagine they wouldn't make an EU version if they didn't expect to maintain the EU servers for a while longer. However, if that is the case, the lack of effort in directing new players towards the EU servers is somewhat depressing.
There's only one part of GR that might be EU-specific, and that's the French/German translations. I say 'might' as by now I'd have had a darn good look at making the language client-side and moving into Spanish... If they uncoupled th elangauge from the server installation then even language wouldn't neccesarily be seen as EU-specific.
Since there's no boxed edition in the EU all that an EU GR sale involves is an unlock code applying to your account. And if account transfers or a server list merge were on the cards then there's no reason not to sell the GR unlock to current EU accounts, as the unlock can travel with the account or server.
It would be somewhat dishonest to be selling GR unlocks in the EU if they were planning to shutdown the EU service with EU players starting afresh with free NA time but without account unlocks, but I do not believe that they are planning that.
We might not like how the EU seems to get forgotten, but I don't think NC are stupid, and they know CoX has a pretty loyal/longterm player base. Selling a product you know will be obsolete in a few months is the sort of move to lose that customer base - and like I said, they aren't stupid.
I also play or have played several other MMOs (currently including STO, FE, CO) and the really sad thing is that I find the teaming and conversation in teams much better in CoX than any of the other games.Quote:It's hard not to sound negative and like we're having a good old whinge here but there comes a point when it does feel as if we're getting the sharp end of the stick. But as I said before, I live in hope that we'll get proven wrong.
Sidekicking (even before SSK) means you could happily play with other people at practically any level and feel like you're contributing. The instanced game means none of the spawn camping rubbish you see in some games. The team search whilst nowhere near perfect is still a lot better than many other games.
CoX does a lot of things right* that means it a darn fine blast whenever I play it... and I can see it getting better (I have reasonably high hopes for GR and Posi's endgame work).
But it does feel like the EU is being left to fizzle out, and even the best MMO in the world starts to feel pretty poor if the ingame population dwindles too low.
* - of course it does some things somewhat less than perfectly as well, but that's because the incarnates are in-game characters whilst the devs are only human like the rest of us. -
Quote:Hope that they didn't publish that, as 12 servers and 132 slots in total would mean 11 slots per server!Originally Posted by Mr_Blackmore_EU
Has any one seen the article mentioned in the latest PC Gamer mag April 2010, sure it has a nice review and kind words for CoX however it describes each players account as having 132 character slots etc and 12 servers to choose from.
Quote:Now from what I can remember a magazine cannot publish details like this without getting the green light from the game publisher and as this is a UK/EU mag why are they giving details of the US game?
I suspect that NC always give out the NA service details when they issue a press release (or in their press packs) as:- The NA service has better figures/stats than the EU service;
- Stating something along the lines of 'there are 12 servers or 4 servers depending on which service you join' would just confuse some potential customers.
- Players from anywhere (including the EU) can join the NA service and access the figures given.
Never expect any redname comment/response on this type of thing - unless you overstep the line and get a PM or post telling you to back off the negativity...Quote:This does worry me as with no comment from those on above to any of our concerns that we are being swept under the rug until the big announcement comes down "We are very sorry but we are closing the EU service down but to keep your subs here are some free character passports to the US service sorry for your bases and SGs!" 
And tbh if NC was considering imminent closure or transfer of the EU service then I'd expect it to be handled in a strict timetable of carefully drafted announcements. We probably wouldn't get much by way of redname interaction outside of the announcements as it'd be too easy to put a foot wrong (and risk ending up with it in one's own mouth).
If they did transfers I'm guessing it'd please a lot of people on the EU servers, and even more so for badgers if it included a second bite at the Passport badge. -
Quote:If that's what it took I'd imagine that effectively merging the lists (so EU accounts could access US servers) could be done whilst Union and Defiant were mid-move... i.e. we wouldn't neccesarily be without the game for as long as we were without our existing characters.Originally Posted by Leese
I've said it before, I'll say it again - IMO when it comes to adding real value to a EU account, there is not a single improvement the devs could make that would be better than an EU/US server list merge.
If Defiant and Union had to come offline for a week to get it done, I would support it.
Still - why even think about it when it looks suspiciously like they'd rather see the EU fizzle out than merge the lists.
I really would like to know if it's a case of technical difficulties stopping a merge that's desired or that there's no desire (from PS/NC) to perform a list merge. I suspect the latter - most technical difficulties can be overcome if the will is there. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Judgement_Dave
or alternatively...
You're quite correct - it can't be done by any one person. I heard it takes about 3.1412 people to tackle pie.To be fair, I did say it takes 'about' 3.1412- therefore implying an approximation - and a darn fine approximation for someone who was (iirc) on their 5th pint of proper cider (not the weak fruity muck the North Americans called cider last time I was there).Quote:Originally Posted by srmalloy
3.14159265358979323846264338327950288 people, to be more accurate... although that's only to the limit of what I memorized...
TBH it's a practical miracle the boards got any sense out of me 10 hrs ago, never mind now when I've been lubricating my throat for another 10 hours... -
I may be being thick here as I'm not really a Mac person, but I do have a nice new macbook and sat in a bar with free wifi tried downloading the mac client.
The US client downloaded 1st time - no problems... but I haven't tried that as my 14-day temp US account died about a year ago (I downloaded the US client by mistake).
I've tried to download the EU client 6 times - it fails each and every time.
The last time I kept the 'Downloads' window in focus, and clearly saw that the client download went fine until it was (apparently) 100% complete and then threw an error ('The operation couldn't be completed (SafariErrorDomain error 2))
Anyone know if I have a 'known' error or am I blatantly doing something wrong?
Many thanks in advance. -
Quote:Obviously savoury rather than sweet, as I'm never gonna say good pi(e) and dessert you...Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
Never gonna give you up, never gonna say "good pi"?
Hey - took me ages to decide if that meant it was sweet or savoury.. as I mention elsewhere, in the forums, I am at a bar. Please be kind... -
Quote:Did I fall asleep?Originally Posted by Bindweed
time for my treatment already...?