Liquid

But +5% to all typed Def is okay?

I agree with this. There aren't any RES bonuses from what I've seen so far, so having Tough Hide be +7.5% (or whatever) RES (all) and Acute Senses be +3% DEF (all) would remove the situation where all powers are useful to some powersets but not others.

Good advice, thanks. That does help me as a player, though not much as a creator unless more people learn to do this.

I've stopped playing the AE for the following reasons:

• It's too hard to find quality arcs. The rating system is totally useless, and the system is loaded with garbage and farms. Dev's Choice is nice, though the uneditable nature of the setting results in the older Dev's Choice arcs often being buggy. I could spend time in the Stories forum, but it's hard to find out if an arc is good or not without getting plot spoilers.
• Due to its quasi-TF nature, I can't start an AE arc, get a few missions in, stop and join my friends for a while when they get on, then go back to the arc, like I can with canon arcs. If I start an AE arc, I have to finish it or abandon it with that character. This is actually the same reason that I'm not getting a lot of use out of Ouroboros
• As someone who likes the AE for the story aspect, the setting breaks my immersion. I want my characters to be fighting or perpetrating crime, not playing video games. I actually want to travel to another area of the zone to get to the next mission; it makes me feel like the story is actually taking place in the world. Meanwhile, I'm sure most farmers and powerlevelers don't care at all about the setting, and love that they have zero travel time between missions. If the Mission Architect is supposed to be focused on stories, then the AE was conceptually designed for the wrong group. I know that the purpose of this decision was to make it clear to players what was a dev-created arc, and what was player-created, but instead of just making it clear to players (which would be done through UI design, perhaps with a tab labeled "player content" under "contacts" and/or "missions"), it was also made clear to characters (done through lore, the buildings, and NPC dialogue)

I've stopped creating arcs for the AE for the following reasons:

• Bugs-- two of my current arcs intermittently will have objectives not spawn. There doesn't seem to be any way to predict whether it will happen, and nothing I've tried has fixed it. Some features don't work they way they are supposed to (for example, allies that are supposed to do "nothing" when rescued, will revert to "follow" if you lose them and then return).
• Patches that frequently require updates-- I've had to fix my arcs many times after patches, either due to introduced bugs, costume parts that have been made invalid, or balance changes that require me to adjust my mobs and objectives so they give a noticeable amount of XP (I would like people to play my arcs, after all). The more arcs I make, the more time I would have to spend on this.
• The text editor-- Okay, I've never written a text editor before, so forgive me if I'm expecting a lot, but I've never encountered a text editor that was so simple, yet so buggy. Sometimes I'll type and nothing will appear, only to have it appear later after moving the cursor. Sometimes typing wraps to a new line, and sometimes it invisibly continues on the same line. Also, HTML counts against the character limit, making it difficult for me to use the contextual coloring as much as canon arcs do.
• The rating system-- from a creator's standpoint, it's frustrating to get a comment about having a good arc, and get 3 stars. I know 3 stars can be viewed as a good rating for many-- I view a 3 star rating from a critic about a movie as a good rating, usually. But if Ebert gives Iron Man 2 a 3 star rating, that doesn't make it hard for people to notice that Iron Man 2 exists due to thousands of other movies are on the theater's list, with 50% of them being 4-5 starred, including movies shot in someone's backyard with a camcorder.
• The loads upon loads of garbage in the system-- Farms and test arcs need to be removed or somehow separated so storytellers can get their arcs played by people who want to play story focused arcs. I'd be fine with having to republish or whatever it would take to do this, as long as I'm not going to lose ratings by doing so (unless they overhaul the rating system to make this be less of an issue).

That's all I can think of for now.

I remember hearing rumors about this (not the bat and gun, but the joining of existing organizations) during CoV's development.

That rumor then led to one of the theories as to the "real reason" for replacing the 5th Column with the Council: the 5th was an obvious organization that villains should be able to join (especially considering their aggressive recruitment efforts), but there would very likely be objections (I'm not referring to "ze Germans", I mean in the U.S.) over a teen rated game allowing players to join a Nazi remnant group. Removing the Nazi elements would solve that issue while saving the work of creating an entirely new group.

(Yes, that's right, the conspiracy theories about the removal of the 5th Column did not all center around the inaccurate belief that they were "illegal in Germany".)

By the way, Positron, I'm glad you guys dumped the thug->accident->powers idea. And thanks for these bits of trivia! I love this stuff.

That's why you guys added the option to disable it!

This is a risk in advertising in any format. You assess your audience, and determine what is most likely to be effective.

You do know it's already been done, right? That you've got the system in the game already, and used it for a while?


Edit:

THIS. I'd also advise that you put some serious effort into the costume design for any ads/videos you make from now on. Most of your promotional videos and screenshots have what looks like random-button costume designs. They're ugly, I mean stuff like the Huge model with purple and orange bio-organic skin with dragon wings using dark green fire-blast. Design characters to use in those videos.

We're set in present day. For most games, ads are out of place-- seeing a shampoo ad in Borderlands, Mass Effect, or Dragon Age is going to be totally wrong. But we already have advertisements in the game. They're just fake. Also, we can disable real ads if we want, and return to the fake ads! There are no drawbacks (though I'd suggest reserving some billboards for rotating fake ads so we don't have to miss out on the clever ones while helping the game's revenue).

Here's the deal: for in-game advertising to be both effective and not immersion breaking, you need to have targeted ads, modified ads that fit in the game, and varied ads. The Derek Jeter shoes ad was ineffective for three reasons:

1) We're mostly a bunch of geeks. We're not going to buy expensive sports shoes. If you advertise food or tech stuff in the game, we might actually buy it. A large segment of the MMO population plays their MMO more than they watch TV or read magazines, so that's an opportunity. If there's a billboard advertisement for Mountain Dew Throwback or Papa John's Pizza in CoH, and I see it on a regular basis, it's not only going to make the world feel more real, it's going to be on my mind when I'm thirsty or hungry.

2) The ad was way too clean in the Rogue Isles. It should have been faded with some graffiti on it. It was jarring and annoying.

3) It was the only ad running. If you'd had 4+ different ads running, it would blend in with the city and be less likely to be turned off. Every billboard in my town is not occupied by the same advertiser, and seeing it like that in-game is too ham-fisted and backfires just like when you're watching a TV show and the SAME ad is shown every commercial break (sometimes twice). It serves as an irritation instead of a reminder.

Wow!

...on a Melee set? I'm hoping that's a typo, there's only one power with 100% KB and the rest are KD, or there's some kind of Swap Ammo type power that changes powers between KB and KD.

Edit: Saw the video that was posted. It appears to be entirely KD. Nevermind, looks awesome!

Interesting! So, can we reconsider Pistol Melee now? I'd really like a Pistols/SR Scrapper. I don't care if my maximum range is 10-15 feet (in fact I'd prefer it). That's realistic pistol combat range. I just want to pair Dual Pistols with a secondary that makes thematic sense to me (whether that's through Scrapper Pistol Melee/Super Reflexes, or Blaster Dual Pistols/Martial Arts).

Edit: Also, exciting stuff on the Incarnate levels and Electric control as well!

I just checked, and unless the Combat Attributes are wrong, resistance enhancements are *not* enhancing that piece. I'm getting the appropriate 6% res total from two of them on my Tanker. And my total Psi Res is adding up correctly.

Great, much appreciated!

I remember when BotZ was introduced, it seemed odd to have what were normally 5 and 6 piece set bonuses only requiring 2 and 3 pieces, especially since none of the enhancements were unique.

I remember this too. If we aren't just plain wrong, I think it was retconned after Web of Arachnos came out and claimed Monica Richter was Maiden Justice. Personally, I doubt the Richters had even been created by the time Issue 1 was being developed, as even as late as Issue 3, Arachnos was being referred to as S.P.I.D.E.R., and I swear we knew about Maiden Justice back in Issue 1.

I think we're just going to have to accept that community people move around a lot.

Goodbye, Niviene, you've been wonderful to the CoH community.

This was Statesman's view. Positron threw that out back when Power Proliferation started. We have been told that, barring Poison and Empathy, and Shield Defense for Stalkers, the plan is to eventually proliferate all sets.

And my opinion on porting the set is that I don't care what they change numbers wise, as long as Foot Stomp retains the radius. Lower Rage, lower the damage and KD chance on Foot Stomp, but please don't lower the radius. Stomping the ground and only having the people in melee range be affected just would feel weak, like Frenzy for Crab Spiders (oh how excited I was for that power until I ran into the middle of a group and only hit 3 guys with it).

You never responded the last time I asked you this: why do you think those rare, desirable items are cheaper Villainside?

Did you never see this post?

Here, I'll repost the image from Smurphy's original post again:



Please explain why you think that moving items from a low supply market into a high supply market is the smart way to make money. Because I'm seeing the opposite direction as the money making opportunity. It will be easier for me to obtain high value goods faster and cheaper heroside, and sell them for more villainside, due to the supply discrepancy.

Edit: This is obviously irrelevant if your goal is to make money heroside only, and inf is not transferrable (though I interpreted War Witch's remark to be about villainside contacts not giving missions to Vigilantes, or heroside contacts to Rogues, which we've been told will be the case).

Yes, please let us know the answer to this. I currently can't use the filter because it's not possible for me to put all of my alts and all of my friends' alts on my Server friend list for every character I have. If it would check global friends, I'd be fine.

The other problem aside from the length is that the enemies stack dangerously as spawn size increases, and players tend to want to have 8-member TFs, because they think that will make it easier, not harder.

If it was Hellions/Skulls, Outcasts/Trolls, etc, it wouldn't be so bad. But you get 8 people in a Positron TF, and you're getting heavy endurance drain from Clockwork (probably the least worrisome of the three groups involved) and big toxic alpha strikes from Vahzilok.

The worst is CoT, though. At level 15, you get spawns with 2 Ruin Mages, Spectral Demon Lords, and a bunch of spectral demons. This means heavily debuffed ToHit values, 2 Dispersion Bubbles, 2 Earthquakes, Dark/Psi damage coming at you and plenty of resistance to smashing and lethal. It's a death sentence at level 15 for many team makeups that aren't very experienced, especially for melee ATs.

These situations really shouldn't be in the first TF in the hero game. Tarikoss isn't remotely like that.