Lothic

Not sure that I've seen an exact date for the next 2X weekend yet but I imagine they'll give us at least a few weeks warning. That's a lot better than the first 2X weekend or two when the Devs basically only gave us like a few -days- warning.

I'm not technically against suggestions like this but I am wondering how often this comes up for you. When you say you "change powersets on your lowbies often" do you mean you tend to recreate characters several times before you settle on a specific powerset combo? Nothing wrong with that but couldn't you just save your costume the first time through so that if for some reason you wanted to start over you could reload it back? Basically I've gotten into the habit of saving every costume I end up liking just so I can always reload it when needed without any trouble. *shrugs*

I guess I'm not seeing how often we'd need something like this to make it worth the Devs' time and effort.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm surprised that nobody's pointed out the over 100 badge disparity between the sides. If this suggestion were implemented, heroes could get as many as 10 or more more End than villains ever could.

[/ QUOTE ]
You say that like it's a bad thing...
Alright, alright I suppose I'll have to agree that's a bad thing.

Anyway in all seriousness you're absolutely right. Until the two sides have an equal number of potential badges any suggestion for "get X based on how many badges you have" is automatically unfair and unjustified on that basis alone.

[/ QUOTE ]

You could base it on a percentage of total badges, I guess... if one were so inclined.

That being said I'm not sure this is a great idea. I'd be okay with +1 endurance for every 10% of total badges available collected, that way the max anyone could get is +10, and villains wouldn't get screwed because even though they have fewer badges than heroes, they still have "100%" of their own badges to get.

Just spitballin'...

[/ QUOTE ]
While I admit your version of this is much more reasonable than the OP's I'm still not sure it's a good idea either. And I'm saying that even as a person who would have TWO characters who would get +9 END under your scheme.

Basically anyone who's played long enough to get 80-90% of the badges in the game probably knows how to manage the tactical situation in PvE to make having a few more points of END, well, pointless.

PvPers in this game already have an uneasy relationship with badges and badgers in this game. Could you imagine the whining that would start when the PvPers would claim, "This sucks because we don't want to have to get any more badges than we absolutely have to". Forcing PvPers to become hardcore badgers would probably make most of them scream bloody murder.

Bottomline I think no matter how it's spun this idea is far more trouble than it's worth. *shrugs*

[ QUOTE ]
I'm surprised that nobody's pointed out the over 100 badge disparity between the sides. If this suggestion were implemented, heroes could get as many as 10 or more more End than villains ever could.

[/ QUOTE ]
You say that like it's a bad thing...
Alright, alright I suppose I'll have to agree that's a bad thing.

Anyway in all seriousness you're absolutely right. Until the two sides have an equal number of potential badges any suggestion for "get X based on how many badges you have" is automatically unfair and unjustified on that basis alone.

[ QUOTE ]
I suggest that each 10 badges give 1 endurance.

[/ QUOTE ]
I always love these double-whammy suggestions to give "worthless" badges a purpose (beacuse we all know collecting badges is mostly pointless) by making them the method to totally break the power/END structure of the game.

This suggestion is one of the most outrageously unbalanced and shortsighted ones I've ever seen.
Congratulations.

<QR>

The idea that a new Going Rogue "Spy" AT would allow us to combine any existing primary powerset with any existing secondary powerset is obviously a nice thing to think about but not very likely.

But in light of the "upcoming superhero MMO" which is going to be offering its characters much greater freedom of power selection I wouldn't be surprised to see the new Spy AT here be made from new unique powersets that had a large (but fixed) selection of powers to choose from so that each spy you build could be more unique from each other than most other ATs.

The difference between this hybrid idea and the "any power you want" scheme is that the Spy AT would still be defined by its unique Primary and Secondary powerset. But within those powersets there might be say 20 powers to choose from instead of only 10 or so. The Devs could still control and balance the AT but at the same time provide more flexibility in exactly how we wanted to build our own spies. Want a ranged sniper spy? Choose the spy oriented ranged attacks. Want a Controller type spy? Choose its controller-type powers. Basically this idea would be more flexible than traditional ATs but at the same time not be allowed to become so chaotically min/max-ish.

As far as the "hint" of power customization displayed by Desdemona changing her fireball from red to blue there have been other people already making that connection.

Like most new emote ideas I would love to have all of these too.

But apart from the the standard excuse from BAB that "emotes are relatively hard to code in this game" there are probably other reasons why we'd never get "lying on our back" emotes or "writhing in pain" emotes that are easy to imagine when you consider the wholesome "Teen" rating of this game.

Based on the info implied in the infamous Market Survey it's pretty clear the Devs have been considering a "Spy" AT for Going Rogue which could prove to be some kind of epic sideswitching AT similar to Kheldians and/or the VEATs. Regardless of the details I think it's at least reasonable to be open to possibility that there -could- be some kind of new AT associated with Going Rogue.

<QR>

While it's true much of our knowledge about Going Rogue is currently just speculation we do have a few facts.

Almost a year ago back in August 2008 the game Devs organized a marketing survey which detailed two major areas of (what was then) future development. These were the Mission Architect and Going Rogue expansion.

Now when you review what was said about the Mission Architect at the time we see that the survey was remarkably predictive of what finally became reality. Because of this accuracy there's no real reason to think that what this survey describes for the Going Rogue expansion is going to be any less accurate. Now I certainly can't promise or assume everything Going Rogue related in the survey -will- happen. But again it's probably going to prove to be a good indicator of what to expect.

Also while it might be hard to prove the "Devs have been working on Going Rogue since 2006/7" theory it seems to be a reasonable guess given how detailed the marketing survey was about the various features. Clearly the Devs have been working on it for a serious amount of time prior to August 2008 at any rate. This is why I believe the related theory that Going Rogue will be Issue 16 is also a reasonable one at this point.

Obviously 20/20 hindsight will put all this speculation to rest.
But I suspect we actually know quite a bit more about this expansion than we generally realize.

Yeah like Blackavaar said it'd be hard to see how anyone could really grief someone with this because we are talking about our default "movement" sounds not anything that could be emoted manually.

Of course I suppose if you had some idiot with a huge male body assign himself the most 'girly-girly' sounding voice/sound set and constantly jumped up and down next to you that could be annoying. But it's not like someone couldn't jump up and down next to you like that now.

At this point I think it could be a realistic QoL update, especially since I believe it would be a relatively easy character "customization", at least easier than full blown power customization would be at any rate.

Yes it's been suggested various times over the years. I know other games allow you to choose from several default voice selections so it's not an entirely new idea.

The only reason I can see that this wasn't done here was that the Devs must have been worried about having to transmit the data around to all the other players about which voice you were using. But since this could literally be done with an extra byte (or less) worth of data per message it would seem the bandwidth impact to the game would be negligible.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
yeah, I'll be setting up an arena match swapping cartel as soon as the issue launches.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, and I doubt you'd be the only one.

[/ QUOTE ]

One of the major "features" of Issue 16 will be the removal of Arena badges introduced in Issue 15, since they encourage arena match swapping.

[/ QUOTE ]
Obivous deserved joke at the Devs' expense aside it appears that all of these lingering Arena badges have been redesigned in a "first time you win X type match" variety. At least people who are going to farm these will have them done almost instantly. *shrugs*

I suppose this is in keeping with the Devs' new badge vision of less "grindiness". While that might be nice on some level it makes me wonder if we're ever going to get a new non-trivial badge in this brave new world...

Eh... my point for "supporting" this idea was that most people who try to farm something like this are going to get killed every 5 seconds. Even though I wouldn't be there to see it I'd still metaphysically laugh at these people from afar.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Or for the cost of say......5000 Architect Tickets you can purcase an Anniversary badge that your character doesn't have. Thus you can obtain it for any character of yours that accumulates enough tickets....or none.

[/ QUOTE ]

IF your account was active at that time.

[/ QUOTE ]

Which would then lead to farming tickets/merits/etc.

For an anniversary badge that you didn't get for your toon because they weren't around for it for X reason.

...Why have an anniversary badge then if you're going to water down its intent so much?

[/ QUOTE ]
It's actually because of headaches like these and the amount of quibbling people have engaged in over the years about how to possibly allow people to get such previous "one time opportunity" badges that I've never liked these badges in the game in the first place.

I understand the "concept" and intent behind what these badges were trying to accomplish.
It's just clear that in such a MMO that intent has always been problematic at best.
The fact that this thread has continued as much as it has shows this...

[/ QUOTE ]

The problem with the counterargument is if everybody can get everything than no accomplishment or item has any sort of significance to it.

One of the major reasons I decided to not renew my WoW account for at least a year or more is because the recent nerfing of the fishing and cooking skullup quests to being completely optional means its no longer any sort of accomplishment or effort anymore other than timespent farming a pond for skill.

[/ QUOTE ]
My counterargument wasn't that we should be able to get these badges more easily.
My counterargument was that I don't feel they were worth the angst to begin with and shouldn't even exist.

The concept of a "one time opportunity" badge is effectively broken in a MMO such as this. Just because the game can support such badges doesn't really mean it was a good idea. The Devs already learned that lesson with the yearly event badges by providing ways to get many of the old ones on an annual basis.

If the Devs are considering retroactively awarding the anniversary badges then that would be an admission of that faulty concept. Since the Devs seem to be going down the road to making them easier they are already unfortunately considering "watering" them down. If they didn't exist then there would've been nothing questionably broken -to- water down in the first place.

In this case I think I would've wanted no anniversary badges than the inevitable global/nerfed ones.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I hope they have a 2xp weekend this summer, One big weekend long push and I may finally get leader

[/ QUOTE ]

Leader of what?

[/ QUOTE ]
This kind of Leader I would guess.
I earned 940 million INF myself last 2x weekend...

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Or for the cost of say......5000 Architect Tickets you can purcase an Anniversary badge that your character doesn't have. Thus you can obtain it for any character of yours that accumulates enough tickets....or none.

[/ QUOTE ]

IF your account was active at that time.

[/ QUOTE ]

Which would then lead to farming tickets/merits/etc.

For an anniversary badge that you didn't get for your toon because they weren't around for it for X reason.

...Why have an anniversary badge then if you're going to water down its intent so much?

[/ QUOTE ]
It's actually because of headaches like these and the amount of quibbling people have engaged in over the years about how to possibly allow people to get such previous "one time opportunity" badges that I've never liked these badges in the game in the first place.

I understand the "concept" and intent behind what these badges were trying to accomplish.
It's just clear that in such a MMO that intent has always been problematic at best.
The fact that this thread has continued as much as it has shows this...

As long as this "bonus difficulty" was only available to level 50 characters as an OPTIONAL thing then I could see this being a cool idea. The reason I make this point is that if people could "accidentally" pit themselves against +6s and give themselves a bunch of XP debt you'd probably have silly people complain about how this thing is "unfair" and it'd be nerfed back. Maybe they could limit it so that the entire team -must- be natural level 50s to even have access to this bonus difficulty in the first place.

Clearly this idea would probably only appeal to uber and/or masochistic players as an end-game activity.
But if those people have fun with it I don't see a real problem with this.

There are good things about the blueside. There are bad things about the blueside.
There are good things about the redside. There are bad things about the redside.

Frankly the only thing I really hate are the "side zealots" who think that one side is "all that" much better than the other and like to whine/boast about their OPINION about it here in the forums. *shrugs*

If you prefer one side more than the other then good for you.
I'm just frankly tired of hearing about such opinions spun in negative tones here.
Talk about beating dead horses...

[ QUOTE ]
I have one older alt character that was stuck and would just have a light blue background everytime I attempted to log him in near the end of the 2nd Anniversary. I petitioned, but he didn't end up getting moved until after the event.

[/ QUOTE ]
That "login glitch" you described has only happened to me twice since I started playing CoH. Unfortunately the last time it happened was to my main badger just as I13 went live which means she lost about two months worth of Day Job credit (she lost the time the game was allowing people to save up prior to I13 if they didn't log in). I know I'll make it up eventually but it's ironic the game seems to screw people over just at the critical moment that way.

While I like how the Anniversary badges can currently kind of tell you "how old" an individual character is I don't think I'd be real upset if these badges became account based. Making them account based would certainly solve the "have to log in dozens of alts" hassle some people have.

My guess (and this is purely a guess) is that if this change happened it would NOT be retroactive.
But once again I would not really be upset if they figured out how to award them retroactively anyway.

To be honest I've never really liked the idea of these badges in the first place. They are clearly "player" badges that don't have anything to do with the individual characters themselves. I think of them this way: Why would Superman get a badge for the anniversary of the founding of Metropolis? The anniversary of Metropolis has nothing directly to do with anything Superman did so why give him a badge for it? Thus based on my reasoning that these badges are semi-pointless to characters anyway the Devs might as well make them account based.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
7) The boob slider will now have a "gravity" slider option as well.

[/ QUOTE ]
Oh if we could have this in real life.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm sure most of us would prefer an "anti-gravity" slider for this in real life.

It's funny how this reminds me of the sci-fi writers out there who love to describe in great detail the physical effects that low/zero gravity has on their female protagonists.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I highly suspect that IF model changes end up happening, they'll be a total conversion, meaning you can't have one slot be Huge, another Male and another Female. You just do a full switch. At least, that's how I see it.

[/ QUOTE ]
Would be kind of a waste to do, then.

[/ QUOTE ]

Which is likely why it hasn't happened. Not much point to making it, as people don't often get their gender wrong at character creation. Full model swaps are one thing, but they don't alter the record of your character in the database. If we haven't been allowed to do it yet, then I'd say altering it is not a trivial matter.

[/ QUOTE ]While I realize most people asking for it want per-costume genders, I don't think per-character gender changing is entirely unreasonable. I believe you can purchase a gender change in Guild Wars in the NCSoft store, so there's at least enough demand there for it to put a real-world price on it. Of course, I realize that GW is a different game, with different needs and capabilities (infinite and free re-speccing and no costume slots comes to mind), but hey.

[/ QUOTE ]
One thing to consider when comparing this game to other games offering body type changes is that because this is a "comic book" oriented game there is likely more character concept motivation to have easily switchable body types here than elsewhere. When you think about it how many other MMOs out there even provide for the concept of having multiple costume slots in the first place? Probably not too many.

So while other games like GW allow for purchasable global gender changes you have to realize why that's fine for that game but is probably not as acceptable for CoX. In a game like GW you are probably not creating "superhero" like character concepts where doing switches like Bruce Banner does to become The Hulk would make any sense there.

I imagine it'd be relatively trivial for our Devs to offer us GW-style body type changes for our characters which would affect all the costume slots of a given character permanently. But the nature of this comic book game would make that solution less useful to us than it might be to players of other games. Because that simple GW-style method wouldn't really provide the answer most of us are looking for (allowing for each costume slot to have its own body type) our Devs have probably (and unfortunately) decided not to tackle this issue at all for the time being.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
That would be really creepy, when you think about it. also you couldnt do that, because you might need a name change.

[/ QUOTE ]
One person's "creepy" is another person's "Bruce Banner to Hulk", "human to werewolf", "little girl to big power armor form", etc.

[/ QUOTE ] Superman to Superwoman? That simply isnt right

[/ QUOTE ]
As IanTheM1 aptly described the ability/possibility for a character body type change is absolutely in keeping with what is possible and acceptable in the "comic book" genre.

Again just because you might not chose to take advantage of such a feature does not mean there is anything "wrong" with it in the least for a comic book MMO. I might not even do my own "Superman to Superwoman" style change myself with any of my own characters, but I'm certainly not going to be small-minded enough to deny my support of character concept freedom to anyone else.

I'm hoping the Costume Gods will continue their benevolence and give us a Tights Sleek version of the female bottom "Bikini 2" costume item. I've been wanting to make a complete Tights Sleek leotard style outfit for my alts for literally years now.

[ QUOTE ]
Just remember. Pesky little things like RP tools are not really a priority for the Devs.

[/ QUOTE ]
While I might (sadly) agree that it's not a priority for the Devs to ADD new "RP tools" what we are talking about here is fixing a feature that's been in the game from Issues 0-13 and got BROKEN. While there are people out there who don't care about character descriptions to some people this bug is as bad as if several ATs and/or powersets were randomly removed from the game.

If the Devs can't give us many new QoL things they shouldn't allow existing features to disappear either.
I don't really want to play a game that ends up LOSING capabilities over time...