Lothic

Costume change emote list from the Issue 15 info page:
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[*]Backflip[*]Salute[*]Howl[*]Evil Laugh[*]Peacebringer Transform (Kheldian's only)[*]Warshade Transform (Kheldian's only)[*]Vanguard Sigil


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While I think the first 4 are probably self explanatory as far as what they'll look like I'm looking forward to seeing the last 3 in-game. It's strangely interesting they are offering "Kheld only" emotes - makes you wonder how long it'll take before someone whines that there are no "VEAT only" ones.

Anyway as far as the OP's emote suggestions go I like them all although my guess is that we'll never get a ccPhoneBooth one for the same reason we'll never get a "Newspaper Reporter" Day Job either. One could argue that some of the other costume change emotes are fairly familiar, but that one is SO iconic that it'd be obvious which existing hero IP that one came from.

Well I guess we didn't have to wait too long for more CC emotes at least.

I'm hoping that now they have the whole costume change emote command thing in place they will be able to more easily offer new animations for it in the future. A fiery one would be nice. So would a quick flash of bright white light like a little supernova or a dark misty swirl for Darkity Dark-Dark types.

Not only has this suggestion merely just "come up before" but it has been suggested dozens of times for years now. The fact that it has not been "drastically increased" after all that should pretty much tell you it will NEVER happen.

Sure like you I can "wish" that Flight could be as fast as say Super Jump or Super Speed is. But it's quite clear it has the 'disadvantage' of being slower as a game balancing measure. As was pointed out before if Flight was as fast as Super Jump or Super Speed why would anyone ever take Super Jump or Super Speed?

I have used Fly on characters for years now.
I have accepted the pros and cons of it as a movement power for years now.

While it's always worthwhile to voice your opinion just be aware that your desire to see this power's speed "drastically" increased is a lost cause. The Devs have compromised and bumped its speed up a few MPH several times over the years already. That's as much as we're likely ever going to get.

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It's not just the badge. This is a system that recognizes excellence and flags it for other players but it's designed in a way that facilitates griefing jerks who want to smack the arc back down into obscurity.

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I wholeheartedly agree that the system, as it is, is prone to griefing and thus probably fails to live up to the supposed vision the Devs had for it. I was never really actually all that 'thrilled' with having a player rated system like this in the first place, especially one that involved badges in any way.

It's hard to say if things will get any better with this or if the Devs are going to have to "adjust" things to make the situation less chaotic. But until things improve it's easy enough to just decide we now have a few more badges on our hands that are just as silly and subjectively shortsighted as Bug Hunter is and pretend they don't even exist. I'm not really going to lose sleep over them either way until something fundamentally changes.

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There WAS one. But not any more. They need to re-label the Hall of Fame star as 'Grief Me'.

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While the HoF situation is a sad one I'm not really -that- worried about it.

Only one of two things will come of it:
1) Eventually the situation will become more stable with HoF arcs maintaining their status.
Or
2) We're ALL in the same boat that none of us will ever have those badges.

Basically as long as we're all screwed by them it'll be relatively easy to pretend they don't exist until some idiot somehow manages to get "Two Thumbs Up" anyway and ruins the illusion for the rest of us.

Yeah I think the ship has sailed on the idea of a Lifetime Subscription for this 5 year old game.
But if it were part of some deal for a guaranteed "CoH2" arrangement that might make it worthwhile to me.

I already pay annually for this game. For the lump sum that a Lifetime Subscription would likely cost that might be equivalent to 3 more annual payments. Is this game really going to be around for 8 years before it either stops OR has a major "CoH2" expansion? Hard to say.

I'd rather just keep on paying annually for the remainder of this game and worry about a Lifetime Subscription for a possible "CoH2" down the road.

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Any chance of adding a /e juggleice or /e jugglesnowballs to these. That would make these emotes even better.

-Snow Witch-

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Yeah one would think after producing juggle emotes for fire, electricity and magic that an ice one would've been trivial to implelment. They could've effectively just cloned and recolored the fire one whiteish and called it ice. *shrugs*

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Ticket Cap
Tickets show up in Salvage under the Special tab. The limit to the amount of Tickets you can hold is 9,999. Also, there is a mission limit to tickets. The developer, pohsyb, said that there is a formula based on cap per spawn times spawns per mission which caps the number of Tickets one can earn from any particular mission. That cap is set very high and would take a single player running through a mission spawned for eight to hit that cap.

Tickets earned over either cap are lost. Tickets over the cap, however, do count for a series of badges which counts these lost, over-the-cap tickets.

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Yeah the caps are one way the Devs have designed the system to regulate things.

But if you can earn roughly 7,000 tickets an hour as the OP described then you can be turning those tickets in for high value random rolls pretty often. Having an inventory cap of 9,999 really does nothing to address this potential issue.

Bottomline the Devs will have to determine if 7,000 tickets an hour is "too" much for them. Yes the earning cap per mission is currently very high, but that could always be adjusted downward if too many people push that limit. We already know they hotfixed Snake Eggs and Council Transmutation Capsules so clearly they will likely step on anything else they deem makes things -too- easy. *shrugs*

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There's one more costume change emote I'd really like to see:

"Booth": a phonebooth or something similar rises up out of the ground around the character, then descends revealing the new costume. Only works on the ground.

Hey, Lightning and Twirl are both homages to known characters, why not another one?

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Ironically over the years this obvious "homage" costume change emote has probably been suggested more than any other one, even more than the ones we just got in this booster pack.

But that could very well be the reason why we DIDN'T get it. Sure comic geeks might be familiar with the Lightning and Spin/Twirl ones but pretty much -everyone- knows who the "phonebooth" one would be associated with. This game constantly has to make sure it doesn't identically copy preexisting IP and my guess is that a "phonebooth" costume change emote would be just TOO obvious to get away with. This is probably the same reason why we don't have a "reporter" Day Job either.

Who knows it might still happen, but I'm not going worry about it if it doesn't.

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I totally understand why we do not recieve credit for defeat badges, but i think we should at least recieve credit for inf gained in running those arcs

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We don't receive INF badge credit for any INF we earn in the markets because some people could probably get Leader that way in just a few weeks' time or less.

Why should this situation be any different when people could just make the absolute perfect INF farms with MA and have Leader done in a matter of a couple of weeks as well?

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Costume Change Emotes? Costume Change Emotes?! COSTUME CHANGE EMOTES?!?!

Okay, THAT certainly came out of the blue!

I can't wait to actually see them, those alone could be worth the bucks.

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Well I'll admit it's finally cool to see costume change emotes like these make it into the game. But like others have said on this thread people (like myself) have been suggesting them for years now.

Better late than never I guess.

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Meh, it'll be a vet reward in 6 months, why pay $10 for it now.

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No, it won't.

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Sexy J put waaaaaaay to much work into this it wont be

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Well it's not just that. The Devs long ago said that they would never release items like this for free that we initially had to pay for.

I know some people got bent all out of shape when the Devs "gave away" the Prestige Sprints and the Arachnos Helmets as Vet awards. Problem with that thinking is that those things (which were FREEBIE extras we didn't pay for) were never promised to be permanently exclusive at all. In fact back during the time those things were bundled with the pre-releases the Devs specifically told us that they would eventually make those things available to the general playerbase which they now have as Vet Awards. Far from breaking a promise they actually -kept- their promise on that.

Bottomline I would never expect to see any exact thing that comes in a retail booster to ever appear in the game again in any other way. They actually DON'T want to piss people off who at first bought something which later on became a free item.

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No. It's the idea of screwing around with the vet rewards, and more options is the same thing as customization. It doesn't matter if it's power or weapon customization. You want to pick and choose.

If the devs are going to work on any type of customization, they will do it for the actual powersets and not the vet rewards.

In the future, if vet rewards continue after 60 months they may add new temp powers you can choose, but they will NEVER add to the existing choices.

Why? Because it will piss off every single person that has already chosen powers for those rewards.

A power once chosen can never be changed, and to suddenly give more choices to newer players will cause nothing but animosity from many vets. The very people they are saying thanks to for being loyal customers.

It's always a good idea to slap your loyal customers in the face.

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Never say never.

People have been suggesting that we be allowed to "respec" our Vet award choices for years now. Of course that is no guarantee the Devs will ever make that happen. But we've been around long enough to know the Devs sometimes actually surprise us by making a change that people have been asking for like this.

So if we could respec our Vet Award choices then the idea of adding MORE choices to pick from for Vet attack powers doesn't really seem all that far fetched does it?

Again I don't support the "hint" of Customization that this thread has invoked. But if the Devs were to build upon the Prestige Sprint idea we might eventually get more Vet attack power choices as a QoL improvement.

I agree it'd probably would not be worth the Devs' time to change the actual Blackwand or Nem Staff Vet powers. But I always thought it would have been cooler if they allowed a few more choices for Vet attack powers in general.

Basically what they should have done with this is offer say five different ranged attack powers and five different melee attack powers. All of these powers "numbers-wise" could have been made equivalent to each other. Then when it came time to chose a Vet power we wouldn't be "stuck" with only one choice of two but instead one choice out of five. This concept is essentially equivalent to what they did for the Prestige Sprint powers - same basic power copied to allow several different animation options.

For instance I have plenty of alts where the idea of a magical Blackwand or techy Nem Staff really doesn't make any sense to them concept wise. But if I had a choice of selecting say a special taser gun 'shaped' power that'd do roughly what the Blackwand or Nem Staff do then I'd have picked that in a heartbeat.

The problem isn't that the Blackwand or Nem Staff suck as Vet powers.
The problem is that those are our only choices for ranged Vet powers in the first place.

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I think a Prestige Aura would be a great way to do just that! Possible a Prestige Costume Set/Piece. That, could be tied to a "Earn 700 Badges" Badge, and I would get behind it.

I think the hate that people are chucking at the idea is based on an inherent dislike of ANY increase to the max level regardless of how big it is or how one achieves it.

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Yeah like most people I'm against the "gain extra levels past level 50 via high badge counts" idea.
And I'm saying that even as someone who would likely benefit from that right now.

While I don't necessarily think I "deserve" an extra award for having characters with high badge counts I'm obviously not against the basic idea, especially if those awards were fluffy and trivial enough to make sense for game balance. Maybe something like a special aura or costume item would be acceptable for this kind of thing. *shrugs*

Again I'm not "demanding" such a thing nor do I expect it to happen.
But I don't see how something fairly trivial along these lines would be unacceptable to most people either.
After all eventually anyone could earn it if they really wanted it.

I'm all for costume item gender/bodytype equality.
I think all items should be available to all 3 bodytypes as a general rule.

But unfortunately I suspect they might not allow these buttcapes for males for several reasons:

1) Apparently it took a lot of effort to get this item working even for female player characters let alone anyone else. Since it took so much time to make it work for one bodytype it's possible they might not feel spending that much more time on it would be worthwhile.

2) Some costume items have remained strictly gender specific in this game even beyond most reasonable expectations. For example cigars for men only. I might not use a cigar for any of my female characters myself, but there's seriously no good reason to restrict that item from females other than for some kind of silly arbitrary gender bias decision on our Devs' part.

3) We know the Devs are a little "touchy" about letting players have access to NPC costume items anyway. This seems to be the reason why we don't have Kheldian sashes for instance. Perhaps they decided they only wanted female Widows to have buttcapes as some kind of built-in limitation for making sure not too many people ultimately use them.

My guess is that the Devs are just going to say "buttcapes are for girl Widows only" and be done with it.

Yeah I'm pretty much of the same mind that I wouldn't hate a new water zone but it probably wouldn't be my top choice either.

Just in terms of game graphics and implementation issues I would think that almost ANY kind of zone other than a "Waterworld" would probably be easier for our Devs to produce anyway. Heck just from a "copy-cat" perspective I think everyone would just look at it and say the only reason CoX is doing a water zone now is because CO is going to have one. *shrugs*

If we had gotten a full water zone years ago it would've been fine.
As it is now? I think the boat has sailed on the idea.

If it's any consolation this suggestion has been "debated" here in the forums continuously for years now.
You weren't the first person to start a new thread on this and you won't be the last either.

Bottomline Vet status in this game is a matter of consistently subscribed time, not just money.
You wouldn't just need 300+ dollars, you'd need some kind of real life time machine. Sorry.

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Wasn't this a confirmed April Fool's joke? I've heard it both ways.

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Well for what it's worth I'm happy for those people who really wanted this costume item.
It's only a few years overdue but hey, what can we do? *shrugs*

I still think it would've been incredibly perfect if it had been released in yesterday's patch.
The posts of people arguing whether or not it was an April Fool's joke would've been hilarious.

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They have you on ignore?

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Uh... yeah. Whatever you say.
Anyway get back to me on this when the Devs get around to doing it, I guess.

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Let the devs decide how their time should be spent.

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As a software engineer myself I have at least a reasonable educated guess how the Devs have "decided" to handle this particular suggestion, all things considered. I have faith that they've made the sensible choice already.

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I don't see how coding a simple reg tweak into the updater would stress Dev time.

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And I don't see why they need to bother at all when we have the TweakCOH program -regardless- of how much time it might take the Devs to do it. Let the Devs "waste" their time on other QoL issues which have no easy workable alternatives first.

P.S. Standard Code Rant Applies...

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Your ideas seem much more reasonable.

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Even when they fly in the face of the status quo of the system we have?
Let's just say "wishful hoping" that things like this will change does not seem very reasonable to me.

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I think Lothic's issue is she presumes too much.

Since we've stepped away form fact and are going on hunches my view is that the "exit to login screen" is to prevent account shenanigans while your on the pot. I vaguely remember something being said about this near launch time but I have no record of it so I file it under personal belief and not documented fact.

The logout timer is to prevent rapid escape, I base this belief on the fact any powers that could give the same instant out are also given a cast time that's interruptible.

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I'm sorry I'm able to look outside the box at the bigger issues.
If you'd like to make that a personal attack in the form of "I presume to much" then guilty as charged.

The only pertinent FACT here is that the Devs have imposed a 30 second timer and a certain procedure we have to follow to in order to switch to another character. Absolutely regardless of WHY the system is as it is people have be WHINING for YEARS to get -something- like the /camp command as an alternative to that and it hasn't happened yet.

If I had to guess, and mind you this is ONLY a guess, I figure the Devs like the system AS IT IS for whatever reason that may be.