Madcat_88_NA

I've decided to try my hand at video game blogging and have started with a three part intro to City of Heroes, covering character creation and the Praetoria tutorial.

Character creation
Going Rogue - Part 1
Going Rogue - Part 2

I'd appreciate feedback - won't be re-recording these, but will be taken into account for the next ones, which will probably be a quick guide to Gravity Control, or a return to the 'Meet the tank' project that I put on hold a couple of years ago.

These were recorded on the fly, and I intend to be moving to widescreen in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks for taking the time to review this.

As you can no doubt tell, it's a very old arc - there's a few things that could be made smoother with some of the newer options available in the AE.

I'd just like to address a couple of your quibbles re: clues

Mediporter - You aren't removing the mediporter yourself; just attacking Mimi when a medical contact is on shift to deal with her when she arrives at the port arrival.

Fake passcard - Mainly an in-joke for people who've worked at facilities that are supposed to be secure, but where you can just walk past the guards with an appropriately coloured bit of cardboard - probably a bit of self-indulgence that doesn't need to be there (or needs to be worked into a continuation arc)

Why Arachnos may still be monitoring the base - what I was aiming for wasn't that they are actively monitoring it, but that they knew where it was due to having wiped out the previous occupants, so it would be a good idea to remove it from their records.

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re: Recovering from a set back, I see your point, but I didn't want to turn Alison into a damsel in distress type NPC - no one needs a villainous version of Fusionette, and it's difficult to write setbacks in arcs when you've got no way for the player to screw things up except by author fiat - You can't branch arcs except via the 'Choose your own adventure' method and you can't even do two different arc souveniers the way they do in some Dev arcs - since the player has no control over the outcome, I feel it very unfair to write bad decisions or PC instigated failures for the player unless you're upfront at the start about it.

re: Bosses

Point taken, something that has been brought up before. The arc does need a full re-edit at some point to make things clearer and adjust a couple of missions to take into account new stuff you can do with the AE. (I have a list of quibbles and suggested changes to go through).

re: To be continued...

That was the plan, I was intending a series of arcs for each 5 blocks of levels, but then RL happened.

Once again, thanks for the review.

Option two here too.

A lot of the updates to costumes have made them harder to mix and match, and the move with more modern bits to have them only work as a set is not one that should be encouraged to proliferate.

I would like to see more controlled looking animations for Dual Pistols, a simpler set of animations for Kinetic Melee and and Assassin Strike animations for sets like Energy Melee that don't look quite so constipated.

One ghosted deletion, Liberty.

Support ticket filed too.

I'm a UK based player playing the US version of City of Heroes, and I have to say that the location based filtering on the store and support sites is infuriating - for instance, I've just discovered that I can't log tickets as an issue with CoH (US), only the EU version.

When buying stuff in the store, at least the main games usually have a 'US version available' link, but it's not at all clear that the bonus packs will apply to your US account even though they appear to just be the EU versions.

Please make it easier and more intuitive for EU based players to access the US store and support site.

I don't care what caused it, it would just be nice to know that the server/network team are aware of the issue.

The Global Chat and AE servers appear to be down...

This seems to be a badly designed over-reaction.

Defendable objects kill your XP? Really?

That's working as intended?

They could make something a tad more neutral that is applicable to more characters.

I'm not saying take out the hipsway, just tone it down a bit.

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Any chance of getting the hip-sway turned down on female models? It looks painful. What's wrong with making them walk normally?

I would like to see the following things added.

1. Mission fail on TPK

2. A Return to entrence objective that doesn't use an escort

3. The ability to set an objective other than the exit as the escort location.

4. A 'despawn' condition on objectives as well as a spawn one.

Cosmetically, I'd like the ability to set ambient light level and colour, and fog depth and colour on maps. To see what a difference this makes compare something like Infernal's summoning room map to its equivalent standard CoT map.

Also, branching mission arcs.

Not again

I'd love to see captions as an option as well as our current speech bubbles and thought bubbles.

They'd be used for things that should be actions rather than speech but aren't covered by animated emotes. Appearance would be square boxes floating over the character's head, but with no tails.

Right click on the actual CoH exe and go to properties - there's a compatibility mode tab.

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I really wish we could make a mission like that. Though I'd settle for the simpler "click a glowy in an empty map to spawn enemies" deal.

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I have a mission sort of like that in my 'Out of the Gutters' arc.

And as people have said you can do mostly empty maps by loading them up with triggered patrol details. (Again, I have one like this in Gutters)

Had the same issue with my new Vista Home Premium 64 build.

Some combination of the following fixed it:

hotfix for exactly this issue: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953186

Install DX9 updates (even though you have DX10 installed): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/detai...;DisplayLang=en

Roll back to the last of the 180 series of nVidia drivers (probably not necessary, and impossible for you - I have a GTX8800 rather than a 285), and finally, run CoH in XP SP2 compatibility mode.

I also run CoH in windowed mode, but that's because I have a dual monitor setup, and transitioning between the game screen and non-game screen is smoother like that.

You will also experience problems with The Sims 3.

Other games such as Saints Row 2, TF2, Prince of Persia etc. run perfectly.

I make them continously for my supergroups, but only have two up permanently.

I've got a revamp of MAGI Vaults planned, which will wait until I15, otherwise will just be tweaking a couple of custom critters.

Your Statesman is in another castle. :P

Seriously though, a lot of the old higher level content ranges from Dull to plain bad. The Malta arcs are an exception.

Ally death only matters if the ally is an Escort.

A normal ally can keel over without jepordising the mission

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And how many times will you go back and fix minor details like that on a published arc? once, twice, 3 times?


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If that's the only reason they're rating it down I'd be rather miffed, because I'm pretty exacting with my spell and grammar checking.

But in terms of making corrections; every single time that one that I agree with gets pointed out to me. I hate it when I spot an error that I've previously glossed over.

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In my second arc, The Audition (Arc ID 182289, currently at FIVE stars!*), I have a musical mission. Yes, that's right, its a musical. All the narrative is delivered via the mobs singing at you.

...It took me ages .

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I used one of those for an alternate world mission I did for one of my SGs. It took me ages too :P

(Had Family, Warriors and Freakshow. The Family sang Sinatra, the Freakshow, The Clash and The Warriors, Queen)

One of the people I play with has done a really dark fairy tale arc, called The Sisters Grimm (published by @Bashere)