LostCreation

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Like this idea too. Also think that a new slash command that *only* does the action emotes would be the solution, not replacing functionality for one of the existing emotes. Maybe "/do <emote>", if that's not a slash command already?

; can obviously be rebound to whatever we want, I don't think the default should be changed.

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Also, snipes are amazing if activated at the last second of a build up attack chain.

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Well lets think about that example. If say we looked at a 10 second attack sequence that had a 2 sec gap .....

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Read what he said again. It's not a 2 second gap, it's not even a 1 second gap. It's clicking the snipe right before the build up buff goes away, essentially extending the build up time from 10 seconds to just under 12 seconds. If you can figure out an attack sequence that leaves you just a breath of time at the end of it so you can do that consistently.... That's what he's talking about.

(I do something similar on all the ATs that have build up/aim, put the longest animating attacks at the end so I get that -> <- much more of a boost. It's not often OMGAWESOMESAUCE! but it *is* significant. For example, my Electric Melee stalker saves Thunder Strike for last, "adding" 3.3s to Build Ups buff time.)

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Well this is one I run into with my Hero I'm working on

All Defenders can heal.

My Trick Arrow/Electricity Defender would have trouble healing others (maybe handing out green inspirations)

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For these people, I give you Vengeance. Now every defender can heal.

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This isn't really a "powers" myth, but it amused me to no end, so I'll share.

I don't remember the specifics, but I was on a team with a fire/kin who was talking about how they moved from farm map A to farm map B (names removed to protect the (not-so) innocent). When I asked why the answer was "All of the good drops have been farmed out of it, so I moved on". I had no response at all, it was like a mag 30 stun hit me behind the keyboard.

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There may actually have been truth to this at one time. IIRC, shortly after IOs and Salvage were introduced someone discovered that if you ran certain missions in a certain way, you would get exactly the same drops in the same order every time. I believe it had to do with how the intern (I hope, anyway) seeded the salvage drops when you entered a mission. They fixed that little bug a while back, though, so even if this validated what the player believed at one time, it no longer applies.

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I'm a little... disheartened at the '1000+ votes at average 5 stars.'

This sounds very much like 'have fun with 3 arcs forever.' I mean, I think I can make some nice arcs, but getting 1000+ folks to vote 4-5 stars, and hope there aren't griefers or grumps dragging it down?

Sigh.

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I tend to agree with this.

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It sounds ominously high to me as well. I'm hoping that they data-mine it after release, and adjust the requirements accordingly.

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First, divide the requirement by 8 (or 4, or whatever the average team size is) and it's much less daunting. A couple of hundred teams playing through a good mission sounds very feasible IMO, and (hopefully) that's what we'll actually be looking at here. (If ticketing works at all equitably, I can easily see teams that used to run newspapers running MA missions instead -- less running around, potentially a lot more variety. I'd probably prefer it myself over having to manage separate enhancement, salvage, and recipe inventories while I play.)

Second issue, partial approval can be very arbitrary; what does 4 stars mean, 2 stars? I wonder if a simple thumbs up (yes, I enjoyed myself, yes I'd play this again) or thumbs down (no, the mission had problems, I wouldn't play it again without significant changes) wouldn't work better for this sort of system. You'd still represent the aggregate by a number of stars for the rankings, but individual votes would be binary.

Any idea if some sort of in game message boards/comment system is on the radar for public feedback? (Bug reports, typos, praise, whatever.) Feedback is a very valuable source of encouragement for hobby builders. While email may work if you want to send feedback, I don't think you can email someone's global handle (and it's limited to private messages too).

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Please tell me there is a save button and a holding tank so that we can work on stuff, set it aside, and come back to it later; without having to worry about people using it.

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From the faq, you have effectively unlimited storage for local missions that you're working on. Unpublished arcs start out as simple files on your computer somewhere, so I'd imagine you can create copies of them and do versioning pretty easily.

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Ok, the video was good. I laughed. I admit it.

But I still care very little for MA. It's not that i actively DISLIKE it, it's just, eh, not my thing. And frankly, we've known most of these details for a long time now. How about some information on the other stuff in I14... if there is any... any powers prolifiration? Any new contacts or tfs? new IO sets? anything besides this?

Or is this going to be a dud issue for me?

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If you are looking for stuff outside of MA, then yes, this will be vastly a dud issue for you. One of the devs even said that once players see what is there beyond MA they will be disappointed since anything else added is basically back end stuff for i15. Remember, MA was suppose to be in i13, but pulled to add in more stuff to it, so really i14 is more like i13b. You want the other stuff? That's what i13 was. A ray of hope from this is i15 should be coming Soon(tm).

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Also take into consideration what McBoo quoted for us earlier in the thread.

I'll only be disappointed if this issue doesn't result in a vast increase (in quality and variety, if not necessarily quantity) of content the dev's supply us. User made content is good, I'll be doing some of that myself, but I'm much more interested in what the talented team at NCSoft can do with a more flexible and accessible mission architect.

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Was Captain Dynamic Ed Robertson from Barenaked Ladies?

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That was crazy. When he first came out I thought, "Is that Ed Robertson??" then he took off the glasses and I saw it was!

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Had to dig around a bit to get any sort of cast list for the video. Found this quote on Rooster Teeth's web site (emphasis added, quote's below the video):

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Captain Dynamic: Episode 1
A team of writers is hired to use the new content creation tools in the game City of Heroes to promote the worst superhero in the world, Captain Dynamic. Starring Ed Roberston of Barenaked Ladies. Based on the game City of Heroes from NCSoft.

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I am sorry to see you go. Sorry that NCSoft are jerks.

[/ QUOTE ]Or he could have simply got a better offer, not necessarily even pay-wise, but perhaps Seattle just wasn't doing it for Lighthouse, and he found a new job with at least the same pay somewhere he wanted to move?

People *do* quit jobs for reasons other than "my boss is a jerk" or "co-workers are jerks".

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I'd imagine Community Manager is a bit like being Press Secretary -- stressful, often thankless, and no matter how well you do your job, the crap still splashes all over you whenever "the administration" makes an unpopular decision.

Whatever your reasons for leaving, Lighthouse, I hope you can look back on your time with us and this little game and remember all of it fondly. GL with you're future, and if you stay in MMO/Gaming scene, I look forward to whatever project you become part of next.

P.S. I'll second (third) the request that they put up a lighthouse in your honor somewhere along the Rogue Islands and Paragon City coasts. Least they could do after all your hard work for the game as a whole, and this community in particular.

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2. Abuse and disrespectful behavior is not tolerated.

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It should be "are not tolerated."

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Actually, probably should be: "Abusive and disrespectful behavior is not tolerated." Behavior applies to is, Abusive and disrespectful would apply to behavior. Unless there's an instance of "Abuse" that isn't a "behavior" that is... something I can't really imagine. (But if that's the case, switch the order: "Disrespectful behavior and abuse are not tolerated.")

Isn't English fun?

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I'd like to see what the enhanced values for powers would be too, before choosing them. You can guess on a lot of them (damage) but others really aren't that straight forward (recharge, interrupt), and some you don't think about under the current system (endurance, knockback, debuffs/buffs).

Not thinking anything too complicated though -- not like the planners -- more along the lines of a "typical max" enhanced value. I know with ED's diminishing returns you have a literal maximum and a practical maximum -- not to mention TOs, DOs, SOs, HOs and IOs -- but I think a reasonable estimate would be to take three even level IOs for the level you have selected and show that as the "enhanced" number.

I don't know that it's simple to calculate, but the simplest way to display it would probably be in another column to the right of the base numbers (appears to be room there, judging solely from the screen shots), but you could also do a "Base..Enh" range similar to Guild Wars, or add a widget where you could select base, "max", as currently enhanced, or whatever.

Also, will the text label for "knockback" correctly state when something is knockDOWN, knockUP, or knockBACK? Right now there are still a handful of powers that use BACK or DOWN when they really mean another, and it may be worthwhile to have the interface check the magnitude on the knock affect and set the label based on what that magnitude will typically cause.

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Eight power trays feels a little like overkill, and like begging for the screen to be completely taken over. I mean seriously, does anybody actually need 80 power/macro icons on their screen at once? Will the 4th-8th power trays have key-equivalents? shift-ctrl, shift-alt, alt-ctrl, alt-shift-ctrl, and something else?

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I'm wondering if these 8 trays are taken from the 1-9 trays we already have, or are in addition to those. Only my MMs come close to filling all 9 trays, and that's mostly because I use different trays for different minion command configurations (instead of number-pad binding), so this won't be a problem either way for me, but it could be for others.

I'm already planning on having my toggles in one break-away tray that I can easily monitor, since I activate most of those with binds anyway.

And while it's already been asked, I also want to know if the trays have a fixed number of slots in them, or if you can create a tray with 4 slots (as an example) if you wanted to.

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* Chat improvements: Right click on character names in chat window to ignore, add to friends list, invite to team, etc. Drag any item (enhancement, inspiration, salvage, etc.) into the chat window so that you and others can click a hotlink to view the complete info box.

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OK, not sure about the whole "drag any item" bit? Preview recipes before trading? Can that be done already in the trade window? Well I guess if you aren't standing next to one another it could be useful. Next useful step would be trading via Mail.

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This will be incredibly useful on teams, where you want to help out your teammates with a recipe/whatever drop that you don't need. It may also lead to the Request channel being used for actual buying and selling. I do hope that they restrict which channels you can do this with to the Team, Request and maybe SG, Coalition and Global channels too (with appropriate permissions). There's enough spam in channels like Broadcast, Local and Help without folks hawking their wares on them too.

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I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they dev's datamined that folks who spent a considerable time in the hollows leveled up slower than those who didn't. Lots of long travel time mixed with lots of death (even without debt) forcing you to cross zone lines, will slow you down considerably.

If that's not enough to explain "why the Hollows?", you also have a combination of brand spanking new players trying to navigate a hellish zone (a lot of them without travel powers, since in many ways Hollows/KR Newspaper missions are mutually exclusive). Since the zone also happens to gate a pretty cool story line, a couple of fun EBs (one in a really cool mission, one in a frustratingly huge mission) and a lot of interesting concepts (large spawns, hidden outdoor enemies, the first really challenging content hero's are likely to face) I can easily see why the dev's would want to make sure folks can experience that content with as little frustration as possible.

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I don't think it is preferable -- it's just what we already have. TBH, I like your suggestion a lot more. Things would be a lot simpler and more understandable if they changed all of the ToHit buffs into Accuracy buffs and all of the Defense buffs into Arcanville's Anti-Accuracy. The thing is though, actually implementing the change would likely not be simpler.

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I'm not clear on why it is that eliminating the distinction between ToHit and Accuracy (something I've been suggesting occasionally for about the last year) and making defense purely multiplicative (something I've been suggesting for even longer) is inherently more complicated than what Arcanaville is suggesting here, and maybe I'm just missing something.

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It wouldn't be if we had a "multiplicative version of Defense" already in the game. We don't have a multiplicative version of defense though. Adding that is essentially what Arcanaville is suggesting with Anti-Accuracy. Once you add in a multiplicative Defense mechanic to the game, you'd then be free to eliminate ToHit buffs and Defense buffs from the ToHit formula, but you have to add that first.

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But it seems to me that both approaches involve a fundamental change to the ChanceToHit equation -- the change you'd have to make to implement this Elusivity business is pretty much identical to what you'd have to do to implement my version. In fact, what I'm suggesting is essentially a special case of Arcanaville's suggestion, with what are currently called "Defense" and "ToHit Buffs" set identically to zero.

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Exactly. The thing I don't know is if you could just plug in the original Defense and ToHit percentages into the Anti-Accuracy and Accuracy variables in Arcana's formula without modifying their magnitude and/or rebalancing the powers by hand. If you can do that in the majority of the cases, then the change could be much simpler than I imagined.

I'd really have to play with the formula and some real powers numbers to see though -- there's too many distractions around me right now to really do that though. (I can tell you now that a majority of the defense set bonuses from inventions would be absolute crap under a multiplicative system.)

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The coding therefore should be pretty much the same -- the only difference is in balancing. To be honest, since my version has fewer variables, I feel like it would be easier to balance.

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It probably would be -- once you're done implementing it -- but doing all that work at once is where the potential pit fall is. In the long run eliminating "Defense" in favor of "Anti-Accuracy" and "ToHit" in favor of "Accuracy" would do more to balance this game than any other change they could make for the man hours -- but they still have to come up with those man hours. I just don't think there's enough in an Issue release cycle. There probably is in an expansion release cycle, but we don't even know for sure that they'll be doing those again. (It's likely, I think, but I haven't seen any guarantees.)

On a side note to go with what you and Arcanaville are discussing: any mechanic that requires as much explanation as the current ToHit mechanic and Arcana's minor modified ToHit mechanic just isn't good game design -- even if it's mathematically sound. Game developers, by and large, are math hacks at best. If a mechanic cannot be intuitively understood, then it's going to be abused and misused. It's even worse when your intuitive understand is often flat out wrong -- and I think ToHit/Defense/Accuracy falls directly into that category.

Even though its complicating things, adding in "Anti-Accuracy" will probably help correct that intuitive (mis)understanding since now you'll be able to compare apples-to-apples. ToHit will compare directly to Defense, like it always has, and Accuracy will finally compare directly to Anti-Accuracy. You won't need to compare accuracy to ToHit or Defense anymore, and that alone will help things quite a bit, I think.

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Okay, reading comprehension FTW: for some reason, I thought that anti-accuracy would just add with accuracy, instead of multiplying.. Having gone back over the OP more carefully, I can see I was misreading, and that eliminates one of my major objections.

I wonder, however, how this is preferable to simply making all accuracy modifiers multiplicative, and eliminating the distinction between ToHit and Accuracy.

Just pulling numbers out of a hat as an example, suppose I've got Aim (+100% acc), 1 Acc SO (+33% acc) and I'm shooting at a guy running Focused Senses (+50% def) and Agile (+20% def). My base chance to hit is 75%. My actual chance to hit would be

75%*2*1.33*0.5*0.8=80%

Aside from getting the right numbers for proper balance, can anyone explain why it would be preferable to have two kinds each of +accuracy and +defense?

To me, that just adds unnecessary complexity.

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I don't think it is preferable -- it's just what we already have. TBH, I like your suggestion a lot more. Things would be a lot simpler and more understandable if they changed all of the ToHit buffs into Accuracy buffs and all of the Defense buffs into Arcanville's Anti-Accuracy. The thing is though, actually implementing the change would likely not be simpler. To illustrate:

1. You'd have to implement Arcana's formula as a first step anyway.
2. Arcana's idea can be done piecemeal. Going the extra mile to simplify the ToHit formula would probably need to be done over a very short period of time -- a single patch, really.
3. With Arcana's idea, you only need to look at Defensive powers. This idea, you'd have to look at all Defensive powers, all powers that modify ToHit and/or Accuracy, and all Inventions that do too. If that doesn't at least double the number of changes, it doesn't fall far short.
4. Since the change would need to be done in one big jump and encompasses so many "little" changes to a whole lot of powers, I doubt it would be reasonable for an issue release -- it may be for a paid-extra-for expansion, but not an issue.

In short then, if Arcana's suggestion is "good enough" (and I think it probably is) I just don't know that going even further would be worthwhile. If you could wave a magic wand and get it done, I tend to think it would be... but in reality I just don't know.

Edit To Add: Of course, there's nothing stopping them from doing Arcana's suggestion first and gradually phasing all Def into Anti-Accuracy and all ToHit into Accuracy. That could probably be done more gradually, but it would also increase the amount of work -- probably not double but still significantly.

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This pack is something that we were able to make available outside of our regular release schedule. So, no, you won't have to pay for other new costumes and emotes. We realize that the Wedding Pack won't be for everyone, but hopefully those who are interested in it will find that they like having the option to obtain it.

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Quick clarification... will the Wedding Pack be in the store for the foreseeable future, or is it a limited edition-type thing?

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Odd how it's hard to choose to ignore something that's different than it has been in the past. In previous events the problems were lag and occasional server crashes, we've never been (IIRC) intentionally capped.

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If you can't play because you keep disconnecting, you still can't play. If the servers crash instead of being gated, you can't play -- only now they won't have DB corruption issues, character rollbacks, and other problems. And the server crashes were not "occasional". I remember multiple crashes everytime they did the 2x weekend.

The other problems, though, were just as bad if not worse. Last time I tried to play on Freedom during a 2x weekend, we'd have someone drop from our team every time we zoned -- usually a different somebody each time -- and periodically during actual missions. Instead of simply preventing people from logging in, the server seemed to just randomly dump people that it couldn't handle anymore. Dropping people who are already logged in is not better than keeping people out who haven't logged in yet.

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My (mistaken) belief was they increased the capacity of their clusters specifically to address those problems. I'd like to have known in advance that intentional capping was going to occur especially without a queuing mechanism.

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They did. Otherwise we'd have had quiet a bit fewer people able to play on Freedom (and likely Virtue) then we did. They could have done better job warning us about the gating -- frankly I think they were surprised by the turnout.

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Again, this is different than what happened in previous events...besides I don't like the PvE enough to want to "experience" it again so rolling new characters, leveling them, getting the accolades, and then IO'ing them out is no go. Are the developers going to replace my (small but valuable) cache of IO's or transfer my base? I don't think so, so to avoid their problem I have to pay money, convince my friends to move, lose everything in my base, or just leave it all behind and re-roll on one of the deserted servers. No thanks.

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If you want to play on the busiest server you need to accept the fact that it will occasionally be too busy to play on. This has been true in the past with 2x events, it was true as recently as the Rikti invasion. The only difference now is that instead of people being dumped by the server because of instability, the folks who are in are actually able to play.

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How you feel entitled to pass judgment on others boggles my mind.

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Read what folks are writing in this and the other thread. The vitriol and anger from a lot of long-time players is why I spoke up. Freedom has been my home for 36 months (and I've been playing with RO for less than 8 of those). My highest-level character is still on that server -- and that's still the only server I have where I play hero side regularly.

I can sympathize with folks who want to play a certain character and can't, because that's been true for me too. If they were just coming here to cry about it and not blaming anyone but their own selves, I'd offer a consoling shoulder. I've been there before. I'm still there. I'd love to get my 40-something 'troller closer to level 50, but she's on Freedom. The difference with me though, is that I did something about it.

This problem should have been obvious to anyone who's played on Freedom or Virtue during a 2x weekend. You just have to choose to not be a victim and take what control over the system that you can. For myself, I chose to roll new toons on a different server. Other folks didn't choose to do that, and now a lot of them are making unreasonable demands and unfair accusations. That's what I have a problem with, and I have just as much right as anyone to speak up about it.

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Lost Creation, Why not use your RO name instead huh?

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Not sure what you mean. Can't have a space in a forum name, but I have one in my global. And I do play with RO groups -- mostly on Justice, though I do Freedom and Virtue when I'm home for a SG night.

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I agree with everything said in this post, I just would have said it with a bit less venom.

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I'm more flabbergasted then venomous. I've been watching these threads since Lighthouse announced they could be gating Freedom or Virtue if the load became too high, and I honestly cannot fathom where a lot of these folks are coming from.

Blaming things on RMTers or their customers -- frankly, I'd eat my hat if anyone could present a compelling argument that more than 1% of 1% of the folks playing on Freedom are in that crowd. Blaming the devs for keeping the server playable simply because they can't personally play at the moment on the server they want to. I can't wrap my head around this attitude, not when most of the people espousing it have as much or more history with this game than I do.

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The nastiness from other servers in this thread fails epicly.

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No it really doesn't. There's no sympathy for most of of you folks because you simply don't deserve any. All of the big complainers I've seen have forum reg dates no later than 2005. That means most of you have played through every other 2x weekend and most of the big events that's happened since release. If you couldn't see the writing on the wall it's because you shut your eyes to it.

I saw the writing on the wall after the last 2x weekend. Freedom's been my home since before I1, but I wasn't going to play through that mess again. It just wasn't fun. So I decided to make all of my new toons on Justice. Most of my coalition has toons there as well now, and we're having a grand old time this weekend. All of you -- or near enough all to make no difference -- had this same opportunity. You could have paid to have your characters transferred to another server, or you could have done what I did and just started rolling new toons on a different one.

All of my high-level heroes are still on Freedom, and they'll probably stay there. I'm not spending money to move them -- but I don't feel the dev's owe me free transfers either. I rolled most of those toons before I1, but even then I knew what I was getting into. I've played other MMOs, I know what high-pop servers are like. If you're being honest with yourselves, I'd bet most of you did too.

And for the PvPers -- you were forewarned just like the rest of us. Not too long ago there was a discussion to choose an official unofficial live PvP server. It was pointed out several times that allowing Freedom to be the de facto PvP server would mean exactly what it has this weekend. I remember at least one of you participating in that discussion. How some of you can expect sympathy now just boggles my mind.

The only bone I'm willing to throw any of you is that they should have had a queue mechanism up for this event so that folks who want to stand in line to play on Freedom can. That's the only complaint I've seen that comes close to being legitimate in this entire thread or deserving of sympathy.

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3. If the engine can handle more people, then let it. LET it get to that point where the lag and rubberbanding starts affecting everyone, because then it's affecting EVERYONE HERE, instead of locking out longtime players who just had the misfortune of having to come home from work and have dinner before logging in to find the place locked, and all the PL maps being maxed out.

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Don't you think they could be doing things this way because they don't want the servers to crash like they did in previous 2x events? Crashing is bad. It causes DB corruption and lost progress. You don't want to crash.

Now, if your real problem is that barring the gate to some while many can still play isn't egalitarian enough for you, I have another suggestion. It's one I made earlier but no one seemed to like it when it was purely hypothetical, maybe it's time to try again. If the server fills up, turn it off and leave it off. No gates, no queue's, just blissful silence. Make everyone go play on a different server.

That's fair for everyone, right?

Those are the options people: let the server crash, cap the number of folks who can log in at once so it doesn't crash, or turn it off. The dev's obviously (and rightfully) don't want option #1 to happen anymore, so the choice is between #2 and #3. Which would you rather see?

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Yes, I can make an alt on another sever. But my main would NOT get the benefit of the double XP. Why should another player, or worse yet a RMTer, get the benefit of double XP on their Chosen character but I can not.

I know it may not happen... but it could... and I like to be prepared.

if a bunch of people are paying the same monthly fees they should all have the same opportunities to take advantage of double xp. No, the arguement that I can go to another sever holds no water. If someone else has the opportunity to play their chosen character on their chosen server but I do not... then that is unfair practice.

Yes, we agree when we sign up for a the game that sometimes we may not be able to connect. Sometimes the sever(s) may be down. But that affects everyone trying to connect. This situation, however, specifically says, "We are going to let you, you and you log onto your character of choice... but not YOU".

If I am told I can not log onto my character of choice while other people can... I want compensation. I demand the same opportunity and benefits that every other paying player gets.

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Fine, I vote that NCNC shut down any server completely that becomes full, disconnecting everyone. This will put everyone in the same boat and force everyone who was playing on that server to start logging into other servers. No favoritism there! If some other server becomes full, they can turn the server they "shut off" back "on" before shutting the now-full server down, repeating the process as necessary.

That's fair to everyone, right?

And no, I'm not being sarcastic. You can't have it both ways.* You either have to accept gated servers when the load gets too high, or accept poor performance and outright crashes as the load continues to increase. The later option is what we had to deal with in past 2x weekends. For this one, I for one am glad that they're choosing to gate the server instead.

If you can't handle the idea that someone else is playing on the server that you can't play on, then the only remaining alternative is to shut down the server completely and prevent everyone from playing on it. That last option would at least have the virtue of forcing folks to try the less-populated servers, and maybe get some more balance in server loads.

(Edit: * Meaning, the choice isn't between everyone being able to log onto whatever server they want no matter how busy the desired server happens to be, it's between gating a server that's too busy, or allowing it to crash/become unplayable. Those are the options. That's the choice. Anything else is a delusion.)

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actually, getting certain badges and bonuses are like alternate advancement in a way. you can get extra slots of salvage storage or a once every 30 minute power or something like that, which is the same kind of thing alternate advancements give.

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That's the thing you're not understanding. In most MMOs, Gear is Character Advancement.

This is true for any MMO that has gear-granted stat boosts, and becomes even more true when that gear is level-gated and/or bind-on equip. Just because you personally don't find this method of character advancement compelling doesn't mean it isn't character advancement, and it certainly doesn't mean that it isn't compelling.

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Pitbull is a cutie... Ex, you just gained about 400 cool points.

The question now... what's its name?

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Not to be a party pooper, but you may want to make sure your city/township doesn't have a law against owning pit bulls. IIRC there's at least one city in Cali that does. (When laws like this get passed, some folks just abandon the dogs. Sad really.)