Magenta_Phoenix

Starting in Praetoria is fine by me.

If needed, I can certainly be the Red ______, already being "Magenta" and all. Looked at Green because I was thinking of taking a support/healing role, maybe plant/rad (all tinted and back-story-justified appropriately of course)... but I certainly don't mind going Red and maybe being a little more offense oriented.

Saturdays are the best day for me, so I'm in 100% in that case. I will make every effort to go with the flow if it needs to change, as well. Are we looking at this Saturday to make a start?

Ugh, Wednesdays are the toughest day of the week for my schedule. I'm willing and interested, but I'd probably be absent about half the time on that day.

Up to you whether that's good enough or not... either way, I hope the group forms and succeeds.

The cadence is all wrong, tho. How about the Polychrome Paladins? Or Khroma Champions... then have a Greek Letter on the chest of each champion (I know, Khroma is the _Latin_ root of Chroma/Chromatic/etc, not Greek, but you get the idea...)

For my part, I'd be interested (Green, backup choice Yellow), but on what schedule would the static team meet? Don't want to sign on, then be largely absent due to conflicts....

As for the debate regarding the TuT/LFG functionality, open trials, and 90 seconds vs. 5 minutes waiting time... the amount of time is meaningless without an ability to communicate and get feedback. You could make it 10 minutes or 10 seconds, and it will have the exact same impact. The meaningful change would be additional functionality, not what integer is set for the timer limit.

The reason people are congregating in specific zones and filling leagues via global chat channels is because that is what _works_. You can gauge the level of interest, provide meaningful progress updates on formation to both league members and the wider community, and prompt for additional participation on a regular basis with some assurance that _someone_ is actually seeing it. All of these elements are key.

Both the old Find Team Member functionality and the new LFG almost completely lack any of this, and are therefore of marginal use at best. For my part, unless I am actually pulling together a trial league, I ignore the LFG menu item... it's useless to me. Even if I am pulling one together, it's only use is to initiate the trial... frankly, you could achieve much the same impact by multi-purposing the radio/newspaper Contact.

My two cents...

Not sure if it helps, but I've been on enough runs now where I've been able to watch the players come in and get kicked out on large leagues that the pattern has become fairly obvious.

There seems to be 2 alternative events: either team 1 and team 2 start by filling relatively normally, or team 2 and team 3 do, with team 1 having a single member. A few individuals also spread out singly to teams 4, 5, 6 (and 3 in the former event). Once either team 2, or in the second case, team 3, gets to 7 members, you can watch as the remaining members pop into spot 8 momentarily, then get dropped. (Note the "19" total slots at this point, 8+7+1+1+1+1). The messages that display (almost simultaneously) if you happen to be on that team are:

--Player-- has joined the team.
--Player-- has left the team.

On the player's side if being dumped at trial start in this manner, you see the typical loading sequence, then (usually) a very brief mapserver notice at the very end of that sequence, and you get dumped back to wherever you were prior to starting the trial. Additionally, you are unable to rejoin the trial, as if you never joined to begin with... this is unlike when DCing during the trial.

I have had some small success in preventing league members from getting kicked in this way by moving the people from teams 4-6 into a lower team slot before reaching the problematic total. Of course, that's only possible when I successfully retain league leadership through the loading process, which seems to be a 50/50 proposition at best. Particularly in the BAF trial, where a single league member moving in too soon can kick off the cutscene preventing such action, this is not a very viable workaround, but it can work if you're on the ball. (Yes, the Keyes is the same way, but it's not so well known on my server that people generally charge ahead on their own... plus the first target group is already visible.)

Neither locking the teams nor the trial seems to have much impact on this sequence of events.

Presumably whatever algorithm is used to re-populate the league after initiating the trial zone and moving people to it is what needs tweaking here. It's worth noting that I have never seen it do any of this when _leaving_ a trial, only upon entering. Not sure if that's a function of the more piecemeal exiting that usually takes place, or what.

Hopefully such observations are of use. Good luck...

Bah, humbug.

Here I log in to bask in the "OMG the world is ending" goodness, and what do I find?

Caution, reason, and calls for restraint.

How... disappointing. And this is the "drama" server, to boot. Whatever shall I do? (cue fainting couch...)

-=-=-

On a more serious note, I personally doubt this is going to have the negative impact that F2P has had on other titles. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details... upon review, I think the marketing and dev teams (no relation to aforementioned "devil") have covered themselves pretty well with the limits they are proposing.

Will I likely have a character or two on the "VIP" server? Probably... my guess is that will be hosting more special events (previously relegated to Test) in the future. But Champion has been my CoH home since initial release, and I don't see anything here likely to change that (wiggle room: "yet").

Thanks, some good stuff here.

Gladiators in the arena... I waver on this one, but given I had _completely forgotten about it_, I suppose I would have to agree that it's a candidate, at the least...

Various "never-ending" construction projects around the zones (Steel, Port Oakes, etc)... heh, good call on "abandoned" status... It would be nice to see those progress, but I'd rate it very low priority unless they had some inspired idea for what they'd be changing these things to, IMO.

Bases and AE are the most disappointing ones for me, as well, btw. (A more state-of-the-art LFG/LFM/teaming interface appears to be getting phased in, thankfully, otherwise _that_ would top my list... tho it's still miles from where I'd like it to end up...)

My thanks to all that responded so far...

Explanations:

First, note that my list is just suggestions to prime the pump. I agree some of my list are, at least arguably, not orphans.

Villain zones: somewhat of a joke entry. Most of the servers I have characters on, redside is pretty dead... but I really don't think those are orphaned by the devs to any great degree. Others may disagree, however.

Contacts: I include this one because they are largely redundant at present, and the little functionality they ever did possess (TO/DO/SO sales) is duplicated by stores and deprecated due to IOs. Even just adding an ability to buy 1 specific piece of common invention salvage from each one every so often (say, 1/week, flag resets at the WST changeover) would give them some value again, IMO.

Missions:
Here, I was specifically referring to old-style mission arcs, gained thru contacts, no special rewards except a handful of merits at arc completion (assuming you don't outlevel it via tips/radio/AE/taskforces first, of course). In short, they provide nothing that can't be gotten far more easily in another way. (This interweaves with my perspective on Contacts as well, of course).

I myself haven't run a full mission arc outside of Praetoria or the training zones in probably 2 years. Midnighters? Wait for someone else to get to unlocking stage. Ouro? Grab the portal from someone else. Badges? Run it thru Ouro. (Yes, even the Mirror arcs)
Even Vanguard unlock can be gotten around (tho that one is so short, I've probably done it in prep for a mothership raid, just don't remember it...)

Tips:
Really just complaining about the lack of variety. Considering I've bought 5 purples with A-merits so far, as well as other goodies, and gotten the full compliment of alignment roundtrip badges on several characters, it's probably more just a matter of me doing those too much... but I wouldn't mind seeing some expansion.

More later... duty calls

Just dropped in to get some feedback: was curious what elements of CoH that have largely been "orphaned" over time the people who visit the forum would point to as something they'd like to have revisited/enhanced by the devs at some point (if any, of course).

There are a wide variety of elements that have drifted into the background over time, ranging from the trivial to the "that was 2 entire updates!" Note that most of these are not truly removed (unlike Base Salvage... ok, bad example), they just haven't gotten much attention in the past couple years, and many are either largely borked or superfluous at present.

A partial list of "possibles", off the top of my head:

Kiosks (formerly displayed top 5 kill counts by zone, that kind of thing)
Original enhancements (TO, SO, DO, Hydra/Titan (and Yin's Talismans), even Hami-Os to some extent... everything outside Invention system)
Shadow Shard (tfs/zones)
Sewer and Eden trials
Supergroups and Bases
Mission Architect ("You will be able to."... er, when?)
Hazard zones (anybody ever been in DA except for Numina and/or badging... ever?)
PvP zones (anybody ever been in Bloody Bay except for Shivan farming and/or badging... ever?)
Regular missions
Contacts
Origins (Magic/Mutant/Natural/etc)
PB/WS-related stuff
Villain zones (anybody ever been in Nerva except for... ok, over the top, I know)

I'm tempted to add Tips/Alignment system, as well (I've just had to fight too many Carnival over too many stupid masks, I suspect.)

Anyway, just curious what else might be out there... thanks in advance.

Well... I think it's safe to say there are some people very much against anything even remotely resembling itemization. Although, frankly, I'm not sure most of the discussion in that vein is actually all that related to the original idea posted, either.

However, I'm still really trying to get my mind around the original idea, I must admit.... to me, it reads somewhat like a "Gadgetry" pool powerset might.

Each slot taken allows the character to "equip" a pool-related "temp power" built using the invention system (expanding on the existing temp powers concept), with recipes unlocked via the badge system (expanding on the memorized recipes concept, in a way), and at least somewhat modifiable to their personal taste in terms of it's visual impact on the character via the tailoring system (or some similar adjunct).

Presumably the "gadgets" would be tuned to the level of power of a typical pool power, in that implementation at least. Whether that was the intent in the original post, I'm not entirely clear on.

How close does that track to what was being proposed?

-=-

Other comments: to my view, most of the argumentation has been somewhat off point. The currently market activity re: temp powers, for example.... the recipes drop like rain, with the unc/rares requiring components that market for 6 and 7 digit sums underneath. The market prices are driven almost entirely by offsetting supply forces (oversupply really) at present... drawing any conclusion re: actual demand levels is nearly impossible. About all that can be said is that they are not constantly central to the gameplay of every player that logs in... which is good, they shouldn't be.

Aside: The drop rate is obviously tuned to make temp powers potentially available to anyone who wants them. I myself use hand grenades and revolvers quite a bit to fill in for holes in the attack sequence on new characters at low levels, in addition to the veteran temps, of course. And of course, envenomed daggers for debuff and stun grenades for the occasional supplemental crowd control in certain TFs. Two of my 50s are fairly heavy utilizers of temp powers, and the 5-6 others I play with any regularity almost never use them.

Not to mention that the invention temp powers are a fairly poor comparison to the proposed system to begin with.

The comment on "you WILL NOT make me choose which powers I have to give up to get some other half brained power"... 1) no real-world mind control was proposed, and 2) um, this is already the case? Limited number of power slots, hello? You're already forced to choose amongst multiple possible powers, it's been part of the game since day 1. If you think a power is half-brained... I would suggest Don't Take It. (I think everyone has their own unique set of existing pools they would point at on that score...)

I am surprised by the level of vitriol. Someone trying to kill someone's favorite hamster, or something? It's not a suggestion to replace your Starbucks with Folgers. I really don't see the existential threat, here...

-=-

All that said, evaluating likelihood of implementation based on what I think is proposed: I do think it is significantly more effort than is likely to be given to anything short of a brand new powerset, in particular due to the tie to costuming options. They haven't even gotten around to allowing customization of the existing pool and epic sets yet... adding any reasonable selection of what would essentially be visually customizable temp powers is _very_ low probability, I suspect.

My two cents...

My first character was Avenging Pixie, nrg/dev blaster. I then discovered my brother had also made a blaster (ar/dev), and I quickly made the first character I ever really played in CoH, Sapphire Knight (emp/psi defender) in support.... thinking it might be like EQ (mages need a healer!).

My first 50 was Freedom's Fury, ma/inv scrapper. (Scrapper-lock ftw?)

My first villain was Magenta Phoenix, fire/rad corr.

And yes, Home has been Champion server since Day 1 (literally... 7 years and counting...)

Actually, I recall a comment to the effect of "...not enough Enriche in the world..."

-=-

At least now we know how to undermine Recluse... double tariffs on shrimp, naow!

Hoping to make it as well. Even made a Freedom's Fury clone ("Freedom's Fury C") on Freedom just for the event. Assuming I don't get stuck working late on a Friday... hopefully will be Epic!

So, given the emergency downtime this morning (10/19/10), anyone taking bets on whether or not the usual email issues will occur? Nothing exceptional in my email (this time), just some random low-to-mid level IO recipes being passed around to see if they'd be useful on an alt (15 Serendipity, 37 Oblit, a couple hand grenade temps, that kind of thing).

What's the spread on lost-and-missing emails this time around?

Looks like we need debuffs, and I sadly don't have any. Ah well...

Global is @Magenta Phoenix, if there's a spot left for a blaster, scrapper, or ice tank.

Team 1
1. Melee - @Fanged Knight - Shadie Knight WP/DM Tank
2. Emp - @ResplendentMs
3. Debuffs with -Regen (Rad/Dark/Cold/Therm/Traps)
4. Debuffs with -Regen (Rad/Dark/Cold/Therm/Traps)
5. Ranged Damage - @Mezzey - Mind/Psi Dominator
6. Ranged Damage (Blaster, Dominator, Fort, etc.)
7. Team Shield Buffs - @Celestial Lord - Celestial Lord FF/Dark Defender
8. Any AT

Team 2
1. Melee - @Cobalt Azurean - Cobalt Aspisean Elec/Shield Brute
2. Emp - @Amily
3. Debuffs with -Regen - @Haleakala 2 - Rad Defender
4. Debuffs with -Regen (Rad/Dark/Cold/Therm/Traps)
5. Ranged Damage - @Disciple of Horus - Fortunata
6. Ranged Damage - @Kahlan - Fire/Kin Corruptor
7. Team Shield Buffs - @TFury sonic def.
8. @Cinkidd - DM/Regen Scrapper

Team 3
1. Melee - Slacker - EM/SD Scrapper
2. Emp - @Amygdala
3. Debuffs with -Regen (Rad/Dark/Cold/Therm/Traps)
4. Debuffs with -Regen (Rad/Dark/Cold/Therm/Traps)
5. Ranged Damage (Blaster, Dominator, Fort, etc.)
6. Ranged Damage (Blaster, Dominator, Fort, etc.)
7. Team Shield Buffs (Cold/Force Field/Sonic/Thermal)
8. Any AT

I'll take one of the Ranged Damage spots with Avenging Pixie (50 nrg/dev blaster), whichever team needs it...

My big wish for animations would be for the ability to place _any_ animation of an appropriate duration/length in _any_ power.

Alternative themes for Blaster Devices. Two themes that come instantly to mind are Spell Caster (finger-wiggling instead of grenade throwing) and Plant Control (i.e. exploding faerie ring/mushrooms for the trip mines, and a mini-Fly Trap for the Assault Drone).

Medicine pool, animations for magicians... +1

Alternate animation for all the various powers that use the "squeeze my body" animation... far too often it just looks like the character is "dropping a dime" in their suit.

@GATTACA: Good luck on the classes, compadre.

@Cobalt Azurean: I will definitely make a Moro Ouro run this coming Monday. I do need to verify the squashing of the Ouro bug in this latest patch (this weekend, I suspect). Depending upon the turnout/response, it may go on hold until Gattaca returns... I'll let you know (either way) after Mon night?

/signed

As an unofficial representative of Team Awesome Sauce: We was robbed!

Ok, actually, it was my fault... Scrapper-lock ftl. (It's just so much fun kicking Council around the room.) My team was great.

Gratz to the winners!

@GATTACA: Running late today, probably won't make it til about 8:30 EST, feel free to start without me...

Thanks to all who made it out for Moro Ouro this week... got most of the 30-34 level range badges out of the way before the server went kablooey.

Sorry we didn't quite finish off the last arc there. We'll catch it next week, perhaps. Many thanks!