Lothic

They are both RPGs.

There's a reason why D&D, the grandfather of all current RPGs both table-top and computer based, has been around for almost 40 years now.
It's because it managed to introduce fundamental concepts of game balance that work.
Critical Misses are one of those concepts.

Your argument that Critical Misses have "no place in a superhero game" is baseless.
What makes a superhero RPG any different than any other RPG in that regard?

I watched the first 4 or 5 episodes of the first season of this show and gave up on it. I always figured it was marginal enough to get cancelled after its first or second season. Who knew it'd hang on this long?

Maybe in a few decades I'll download this entire show into my brain using some kind of "instant-brain-downloader" machine just so that I can have the "experience" of it without having to waste the time watching 10 whole seasons worth the old-fashioned way.

Meh, I see it more like a "we are knee-deep in trying to finish Going Rogue so we really don't have any time to do anything more special than this" Vet award. Given the timing of this award I never really expected much out of it all things considered. *shrugs*

As to whether there'll ever be another special Vet award (which might "offend" the non-vets) who's to say. Then again I was one of those strange people who would have been happy enough to have seen the 60th month Vet award be the last one.

Your use of the word "generally" is the operative word here.

In the years since the Vet Awards were introduced the official announcements of the next new awards have spanned from over two months ahead of time all the way to about one week AFTER they were supposed to arrive (about two years ago there was a case where the Devs patched the upcoming Vet Awards unannounced into a beta of an Issue that didn't go live until about a week after the given 3 month anniversary date so technically that Vet Award was late for every old timer).

So given that unpredictable history there's really no reliable way to judge exactly when the official announcement of the next Vet Awards will happen. My guess is that because they are very busy with Going Rogue and I18 that they will not only cut it close to the wire again (for the July 28th anniversary mark) but I would expect the actual awards themselves to be pretty cut-n-paste and unremarkable. *shrugs*

The so-called "Nipple Nerf" was among the very first patches applied to the game about a week or so after it launched back in April 2004. Not only did it address the female nipple texture issue but it also (IIRC) removed the flesh-tone colors that were originally available for costume items. With those colors available it was very easy (or at least much easier than it is now) to create naked-looking characters.

The original appearance of female nipples in this game were never really as blatantly obvious as some people remember them to be. Basically the way the polygons looked on the female body form made it look, from certain angles, like there was a bit of something sticking out there. I think all the Devs did was slightly edit the model just enough to smooth over the rough edges so to speak to minimize the mere 'hint' of nipple.

From a realism point of view I wouldn't mind if there were more direct ways for these kinds of things to be part of the character models. But I understand that as a Teen rated game there's only so much realism the Devs are going to tolerate and having to be be stuck with featureless Barbie and Ken dolls is clearly safer from the "don't want to piss off overly sensitive parents" standpoint. I suspect the only reason female nipples were nerfed to the degree that they were was to appease someone who complained about it. Oh well. *shrugs*

Unfortunately there's a fine line between the Devs "holding our hands" by keeping everything as clip-safe as possible and them overreacting and removing/modifying items that are fine in most cases. I'd agree there have been combos where costume item A clips very badly with costume item B. But if that same costume item A works well enough with items C-Z then I'd rather it be left alone than removed for the sake of one specific scenario.

Sure there's always going to be players who run around with badly clipping costumes but I don't think it's a "large portion" of them as you suggest. The Devs will never be able to fully prevent that from happening no matter what they do. I'm not suggesting the Devs do nothing about clipping - I'm just suggesting that they've been a bit too aggressive about it. The fact that this thread even exists shows us that the Devs finally realize that they've perhaps gone a bit too far "protecting" us from this evil.

Better late than never.

Yeah this was basically a glitch that got quickly corrected. It only lasted for a week or so IIRC. The texture accidentally got wrapped 90 degrees off-center so the side seams slipped to front and back. But I still have an outfit on one of my alts that never changed this happy mistake so her skirt still looks just like your pic.

Like you I kind of wish they would have realized that the mistake actually turned out to look cool and made that a permanent option. Oh well.

I understand the fine line the Devs have had to play over the years trying to deal with costume clipping issues. In a perfect world the Devs could eliminate clipping and restore all old items which have been altered or removed because of it. Obviously some compromises will be needed no matter what to fix things that are truly broken. But I hope that the Devs are realizing that some of their "improvements" in this area have been a bit too conservative/restrictive.

Ultimately I would rather have old items (like the original thigh high boots) restored to the game so that I, as the player, can decide if something looks acceptable clip-wise or not. In these cases I see no reason why the newer versions couldn't co-exist with the old ones. More choices (like having two versions of the thigh high boots) are always better than one well-loved item being outright REPLACED by another.

I'm quite sure when the Devs forced us to accept changes like these that they felt they were improving the game for us. I'm not suggesting any of the "improved" items were bad - I'm just making the point that new versions of items should always be ADDED to the game instead of being forced on us as REPLACEMENTS beyond our control.

P.S. The Devs need to give us a new version of female Bikini 2 bottoms with the "Sleek" texture so they can match up with the "Sleek Tights" tops.

Being nit-picky about it the code for these two "games" have never really been separate. Even back when CoV was still something you could buy separately from CoH the client program you loaded on your computer was exactly the same whether you played CoH, CoV or both. The only thing that was handled separately as far as what game you were playing was your account info, which officially got merged years ago.

Once Going Rogue hits in a few weeks the lines between CoH and CoV are going to be blurred even more. Ultimately I'm not sure what purpose a "game /bind $variable" would serve. Whether you're technically playing a "hero" or "villain" will be based on what alignment your current character is, not which program you logged into. *shrugs*

So instead of a game $variable it might be more useful to have a new alignment $variable.
Perhaps that's what you originally meant?

There have been so many "back-oriented" costume item suggestions over the years that it seems that they could easily dedicate the time and effort to an entire Booster Pack for that theme alone.

I've got a Tech-based character I created about 5 years ago that was supposed to fly around with a "Buzz Lightyear" type jetpack with fixed wings that would pop out while in flight. Obviously at the time the game did not have a jetpack that worked like that, but somehow I always assumed the Devs would add something like that eventually to fit the character concept I wanted.

Well now it's been 5+ years and I'm still waiting...
Who knew something like that would be so hard to create in this game.

Well base rent's original main function was to force avid PvP base raiders to have to keep playing the main PvE game order to maintain and expand their huge PvP bases. Of course now that PvP base raiding is a thing of the past base rent really serves no practical purpose which benefits players.

I agree that the current rent scheme is annoying and it would be nice if it could be removed completely. But as a Software Engineer IRL I suspect there might be an underlying functional purpose that base rent still serves which may have nothing directly to do with how we players play the game.

It's very possible that the Devs store the data that records our base layouts in two different areas of their system. Bases that are currently active may be loaded into prioritized databases allowing them to load quicker. Bases that have let their rents go past due might be kept in a more secondary database so that they won't slow down the active bases. When you think about it there are likely thousands of bases that have gone inactive over the years. Why should those get in the way, so to speak, of the active bases? The act of having to pay rent could help our Devs sort which bases need to be kept in which databases.

Of course that's just a working theory of mine. If the organization of base data is not "prioritized" as I've suggested then there really is no need for base rent to continue to exist. *shrugs*

The Mission Architect allows you to pick emotes for critters in your missions. Many of the emotes available there have been in the game for years but normally are only usable by NPCs, not players.

I forget exactly what they are called but IIRC there are 2 or 3 emotes available that make MOBs lie prone on the ground. I think they are the ones we all used to see when we defeated bad guys in the game before the "ragdoll physics" was added and the ones we still see Troll/Hellion types use before you aggro them.

Basically all I'm suggesting is that the Devs switch those "NPC only" emotes to be ones that our characters can use while playing the main game.

There's nothing wrong with a development team making plans and setting goals to shoot for. When you're talking corporate budget planning you have to set dates for your managers so they have to be reasonably serious about their expectations on meeting deadlines. The problem comes when customers/players just aren't willing to accept that sometimes (oftentimes?) plans slip.

People have to chill and learn to cut the Devs some slack. Software development on this scale is never going to be a 100% predictable science. Obviously we all want to play new games ASAP and it's not like they change release dates like this JUST to piss us off. But players whine so much about it regardless that it discourages Devs from being more open about things in general. I'd rather the Devs tell us their plans KNOWING that they can always change rather than having no clue at all.

That's of course assuming they would bring it back based on the original "Base Raid PvP and Items of Power" model. Ever since the Devs pulled Items of Power and base raids from the game it's been pretty clear that this trial (if it ever returns) will not likely work anything like it was originally supposed to. Remember the Item of Power idea existed even before IO enhancements appeared - now that we have so many new ways to boost our characters it's possible the Devs would consider Items of Power "out-of-date" and unworkable in the current scheme of things.

For years people have been suggesting that the Devs just salvage this trial and re-work it into something more PvE related. That way they could avoid all the bugs/exploits that crippled it and give players the chance to play with it again in some form or fashion. This way all the work the Devs put into this years ago will not be completely wasted.

Welcome to the CoH/CoV forums.

I'll throw out one more reply to your suggestion: This game has been around for over 6 years now. Along with your suggestion there have been hundreds of others that have already been made over the years to improve the game. Sometimes the Devs listened to us and gave us the things we suggested, sometimes they didn't.

Just understand that the chance of there being a NEW suggestion at this point is practically nil so keep that in mind for next time.

This kind of thing has been suggested for years. Welcome to the club.

Several people have already mentioned in this thread that this kind of thing should be part of a free upgrade to the game. Sure that'd be nice, but the problem (as you implied) is that our Devs (in years past) have already told us that major power animation upgrades like this would in fact be a huge extra undertaking for them. If the Devs ever seriously decided to delve into this kind of thing it would likely only ever be as part of a paid booster pack/expansion to make it worth their time and effort. Therefore if it meant I'd have to pay extra to motivate our Devs to do this at all I'd be more than willing to see this as some kind of Booster Pack.

I have never once let the Devs' definition of what the Origins are affect my personal concept of them. Consequently I've never let the costume items included in the various Booster Packs bother me as to whether I think they are appropriately labeled by origin or not. Everyone's going to have their own subjective opinion on whether a given costume item is, for example, a mutant item or not. Therefore worrying that a specific item in this new pack is not "mutanty" enough for everyone is effectively pointless.

It's much easier to accept the costume items provided by the Booster Packs as generic collections of items instead of being "origin-specific" items. That's going to be even more the case when future Booster Packs get released without any presumed origin relationships at all. *shrugs*

P.S. The irony of course is that some time in the future when the Devs actually release a Booster Pack called the "Demon Pack" there'll probably be people complaining that the costume items in it look too "mutanty" for them.

While the costume save/load feature was a welcomed addition to this game (and probably satisfies plenty of people's needs) it's at best a "workaround" solution for this overall situation. It certainly allows characters to overcome the current 5 slot limitation, but I wouldn't really call it "practical" by any means. Having to be tied to a tailor to swap costumes in-and-out is less than ideal all things considered.

I guess the most frustrating part is that the freedom of having huge numbers of costumes ready to switch to instantly exists in that "other" game already. I can (for example) have a level 5 character there have a dozen outfits loaded if I wished very easily. It's just sad to think that game actually does something like this better. Hopefully our Devs will correct this failing someday.

As you imply many people have been wanting some way to get more costume slots like this for years now...
I'll always /sign this idea whenever it pops up too.

But ever since that "other" superhero MMO started to offer a way to buy extra costume slots via their "C-Store" last year I gained renewed hope that this game would follow suit eventually. This game is very much superior in most ways, but one of the few ways that other game still beats us here is by that one tiny QoL feature.