Morgenstern

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PvP Changes:
We’ve also overhauled our PvP system... The previous systems were “ok”

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This is horrible. The new system is full of bugs, completely unbalanced and a majority of players (Current PvPers and PvEers) do NOT like this. In fact, the target audience of new PvPers are saying this changes helps even less! You took all diversity of At's out. Don't you think we know that a tank can take punches whereas a blaster can't? Now it is reversed! Blasters are supposed to be a high damage class, to make up for the low hp and def/resist. Now their damage is laughable. Blasters are the worst AT, along with Widows. Controllers and Defenders remain the "FotM" they were before with unresisted debuffs and high damaging holds. The game is turning into WoW 2.0. Please reconsider this "PvP overhaul," its worse then before!

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Ouch, if I were Castle or someone who worked extremely hard on trying to make all balanced and stuff and I read this, I'd wanna kill myself. Jeez.

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Or you could be one of the people that recognizes Positron is just being polite, and that the old PVP was so terrible that if every active PVPer quit over than changes and 15% of the non-pvp players played 2 more months than they would have otherwise just because they are fiddling around with the new system and giving it a chance, it would still probably be a win for the finacial health and longevity of the game. "Burn it to the ground and start over" is a valid response to some circumstances, and and I think evidence is strong that those circumstances had been achieved.

My perception is the basic goal is your build will not help you anymore. Your influence poured into your build will not help you much any more. Your skill - acquired in the past and in the new environement will. And even with skill on your side, you're still gonna get beat sometimes. Those are necessary goals if you want casual PvP players, and they look very much like the principles underlying the changes we are seeing. Implementaiton will call for more polish, but that was pretty clear in Positron's text. To me anyway.

Step 1: assume the Devs aren't crazy.
Step 2: deduce what they must see in their data mining from their actions.
Step 3: compare with their statements to observed behavior(recognizing there are some things they have to ommit because player desires and Dev needs do not particularly coincide).
Step 4: formulate suggestions that are within the range of their needs, where those needs have their closest approach our wants.

Incidentally, the test server is NOT recognizing that I just re-subscribed. Having it tell me would you like ot go to your account, and then going there and having my account page say "Your account is activated - go play!" and then going back to the log in and being blocked is just a teeny bit annoying.

I'm sure it's brain will catch up eventually .

That wasn't so hard, now was it?

And with that and a quick click through paypal, I'm back and playing. Well, at least until LotRO Moria hits and I log out all of my alts for a month to collect their badge while I play something else.

Please get the valkyrie super booster out before it becomes obvious that buying the mac release for the one month of play + the costume access is obviously the better deal...

(love the merit system btw - looking forward to the former trash of the pool C world now being worth something while simultaneously looking at stuff over 30 million and thinking "screw that, I'll go get it myself." It's like BOTH PVP arenas became 151 times more enjoyable to me at the same time...)

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You know, in the end, devs could simply award every job badges right after I13 go live. That way badgers that lack patience would already have all their shinies.

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God, you really do completely miss the point don't you? Badge-hunters don't want everyone in the game to just abruptly have 12 more badges. That just dilutes the %-of-accomplishment value of every real badge.

Essentially badge hunters want every badge to represent a modest amount of work you can accomplish as a facet of playign the game. That's why the Veteran rewards are annoying, why time-in-zone ones are mildly irritating and why these are outright offensive. A good badge collection says "I've played this game, and played it quite a bit and fairly well." These new ones have no meaningful acquisition strategy to them and seen in and amongst their tropies for playing all aspects of the game will now be a big poo-category saying "I spent a lot of time NOT playing the game."

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"We gave you all the badges! Why you not happy? They dont work? Is that important for you? I thought you cared more about the badge itself than the power attached to it?"

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Here, lets clear that up for you: Don't care in the slightest about the powers. Didn't want any badge "given" to us. Want badges that can be earned by our own efforts in the game rather than watching the turning of the hands of a clock.

But you keep trying to mock what you obviously don't understand. This game clearly has such a massive fan base that it can readily absorb some folks being dismissive of their fellow players having found a way to enjoy a sense of accomplishement from the game for a while longer after you realize there are only about 6 mission goals in the whole game [/dripping sarcasm].

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I'm curious...what MMOs put your xp on a cooldown to encourage alts? I've seen that bandied about in this thread, and can't think of any that I've tried that do it. (Which doesn't mean there isn't one; I'd honestly like to know which do.)

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WoW has their version "rested XP"

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Lord of the Rings online also has it (so theres #1 and #2 for MMO subscriber base). Been a while since I played, but I think Everquest II had it also.

In general its a leveling-the-field effect against heavy players. Play frequently and for long stretches and you build up less extra credit and play longer periods without the added reward.

And like most things in this issue, rewards playing alts, allowing lots of characters to increase their at rest credit while you flit from character to character like a humming bird using up that credit in small bursts of activity.

"Are you a min/maxer (even a novice one)? Then play multiple characters."


At this point is should have been "Issue 13: Alts-a-palooza"

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jeeeez 30 freakin days?? screw that, not even gonna touch the day job thing.

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Now now now now! I want everything NOW!

Does that sound like you?

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Not really. There are quite a few numbers between 30 and zero (even if you just stick to integers).

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I think people need to wait and see how the implementation of this is done.

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No, we don't. We're responding to the situation propossed. If that sistuation changes between now and implimentation, great, we'll be dealing with what happens then. If they can change the game, I can change my opinon to keep up . But ignoring their statements now just because they aren't final actually deprives the Devs of important feedback on the system as the Devs themselves understand it currently.

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I really don't think that you have to have 30 uninterrupted days of not logging in your character to earn the badge.

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I'm entirely certani you don't have to do it consecutively. They've just (quite deliberately I believe) created a system the makes it the optimum badge-pursuit path to do so, hopefully while you are simultaneously play on of your alts. The emphasis on "make some alts" in this expansion is staggering. The leveling pacts are only for new characters. New powersets are always for new characters. The best path reaping day job rewards is to have lots of alts.

The Devs know that players who play lots of alts typically subscribe longer than players that take one character, run it through all the mission content ("finishing the game"), and move on. Flashbacks were an attempt to squeeze more out of the players that refused to switch to an alt - giving them the ability to see the missions they missed 'the first time through' improved the single character-only player's experience.

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I don't think anyone is going to have to give up anything meaningful to get these badges...

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Other than $180+ to re-complete their badge set or restore their percent accomplished ratio to the same level it is now . I don't expect to see the proposed acquisition values change at all between now and i13 going live no matter what we say. I just think the Devs' have over estimated a number of people's tolerance for carrots at the end of very long sticks. Especially ones with no strategy that accelerattes acquisition (other than don't play, which actually makes these WORSE than veteran badges for collectors).

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Double XP does a level 50 how much good?

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Quite a bit. 50s still accumulate debt, and have to work that debt off before they can gain influence while exemplared down (such as during flashback missions).

Honestly, I think that's obvious enough that it must have been a rhetorical queston.

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You're quoting the wrong person; I did not say that.

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Nor am I talking to you, which is why all of your text was clipped out. Sorry your name appears at the top.

I used to be a badge hunter. Then the number of badges exploded with all the invention and time travel mission badges. At that point I realized I was not willing to put in the effort to get those, which meant I was no longer in contention to get most/all of the badges, my percentage of completion plumented and the whole goal structure just went away for me. I stopped hunting for any badges at that point. At one point I was in the 90%+ range on my main. Now, not so much. Clearly, I am not worthy.

It became one less reason for me to play the game and I've been quite content to let my account lapse from time to time because there aren't enough reasons for me to pay for it in between the times when new mission content shows up. My current paid period ends tomorrow in fact. I'll be back for a 1 month test period when issue 14 is signed, sealed, and delivered in the form currently propossed - that is to say with the mission arcitect orignally hinted at as in issue 13 + the functionality most players asked for (the IMO 'duh' request of using a tool they were familiar with to have some visual control of the system, not just a damn text window). Perhaps all my characters will all have a new badge on them when I get back. Imagine my thrill.

Making it so you can only have 1-2 occupatons at a time, swapping to new ones if you log out for another 30 day at annother location would be a lot less irksome to me as a collector. But a system that flatly says "you may buy one badge (per character) for every $15 you give us - and we've got a years worth stocked up" is just a little too blatant a sales pitch for me. I suspect it'll just the therapy quite a few other badge hunters need to clear up their commitment issues. "You can be back to having nearly a full set... in a year or so."

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Double XP does a level 50 how much good?

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Quite a bit. 50s still accumulate debt, and have to work that debt off before they can gain influence while exemplared down (such as during flashback missions).

Honestly, I think that's obvious enough that it must have been a rhetorical queston.

Do you suppose they are figuring out how to put the mission builder in a paid box expansion or something? Fill out issue 13 to a reasonable freebie level and get'r done, then move the giant monstrous soul-eating code project which clearly isn't going to be ready any time soon to where it can be a primary revenue generator - without putting a complete halt to the release of issues?

Lots of folks aren't interested in writting new missions (and have only limited interest in playing player generated content at reduced reward scales). I'm sure many of them would like to see the ussual spread of treats (powerset, costumes, maybe a zone) arrive sometime this year rather than wait for that rough beast to come slouching in. It's already clogging the information pipes.

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I got to add to my Crab Spider Webmisstress Natalya
http://s419.photobucket.com/albums/pp275...22-12-34-50.jpg

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Oh wow. Absolutely adore it. What chest is that?

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Looks like Insect hybrid with the cyborg plates chest detail over it.

I started a new super-strength/willpower tank recently. So far she's be a lot of fun in teams .

Glory-Bound by Terry Huddleston

Reference shots for her here.

I got the impression that there would be around 1,000 specific maps to work with. Not tilesets - specific maps. These maps all have anchors where things happen (paintings/wall safes can be places here here or here, desks/terminal/floor vaults can be placed here, here, or here). Similar anchors exist for hostages, and even the enemy spawns. I think you'll be able to populate those anchors specifically, so the placement of stuff on the map should be controlable be a designer. "I want some hellions over in this corner, and some skulls over there. The target painting glowy always appears back in that room at wall anchor 5 - right next to the thief-boss I've placed in the room."

You only use random maps to try to generate (IMO false) replayability, and with people creating missions in vast numbers, replayability of any single mission is not something the tool needs to preserve. Precision scripting is the only way mechanics will be able to back up story.

I just re-up my subscription a month at a time when something actually arrives (thank you paypal option), play it (which rarely takes a full month to figure out what the new entertainment value proposition is), and report back to my circle of on-line friends about whether or not there is anything going on in here that they should bother to come back for. There are other MMOs making solid cases for playing them now rather than soon, so we manage to entertain ourselves.

Take all the time you want. Really. Issue 13 as outlined is the first thing we've seen in nearly 2 years that might have enough meat to be worth $15 a month based on their play-styles (when you have a solid group of 6-8 who have played together regularly for 5 years this game has just about 0 mechanical challenge - but we enjoyed reading the stories ). We really are totally ok with delays because we've long since stopped funding them. Most of them joined up for CoV-only and the release debacles that followed that left a really bad taste in their mouths about steadfast support as a response to the word 'soon'.

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I heard about the big lawsuit but did CoH actually get sued or did they settle?

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All occured behind closed doors, but I speculate Marvel walked away with NCSoft's private parts in a brown paper bag, since they then turned around and hired Cryptic Studios to work on a competeing product on their behalf... Which should have had NCSoft screaming bloody murder. We got to watch Jack try to shill for and against himself for a year. It was bizarre and almost certainly illegal without some sort of binding (and entirely one-sided) agreement between NCSoft and Marvel.

First, welcome aboard .

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It does seem rather sad though that people get told to leave the game if they make a character that symbolizes their favorite superhero...I mean, its a superhero game, what do you expect?

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Honestly, for people to get it that buying a $3.00 comic doesn't give you the right to play with other people's toys.

When somebody takes the images that are the source of your livelyhood, pulls them on like a cheap suits and acts like an [censored] to other people, causing them to think less of that character, and maybe reduce the amount of money they spend on the creations of the actual owner, you react pretty much with bloody-handed violence. Creativity is harder than most people think. Promoting the fruits of your creativity to where it can be a business that supports even one person (much less the hundreds of people that go to work every day at a large comic book company) is an amazing amount of work. Don't look shocked when they defend it.

The system is largely self-correcting. People don't generally report tasteful imitation costumes being run by people who improve the gaming experience. You can stumble over a GM directly, but they are not real common. But dress up with someone else's creation and be a dork and you can expect a generic label promptly.

What's that? you're saying this message isn't actually keeping us in the loop, but is in fact a pre-emptive plea for forgiveness thats going spark speculation and doubt?

20 minutes ago some normal, reasonable human being down in the marketing department developed the most splitting headache of his or her adult life, and still hasn't found the cause. But they will, as soon as they browse the company boards. In fact, I can almost envision Ex Libris rubbing her temples now.

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The latest news on Issue 13 is that they have no new news on Issue 13.

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The cynic in me reads it as "We are so far from being finished we can't think of enough tidbits or mini-reveals to fill the space between our shiney initial anouncement and the actual delivery date. However, billing records and the sound of breathing tells us that there are people out there and we ought to say at least something..."

Honestly, BABs and Castle chating about making a new shield animation or some minor tweak to this or that power does a far better job of saying to the community, 'We are alive and continuing to work'. Which is all this post amounted to.

That's reassuring...

...I think.

Ok, this is the one that convinced me Nike could in fact have her own afternoon cartoon show .

Who is the super-hero who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

Toys!

I was pleased. The face is so clearly his style .

He only does 4-5 pieces at the show so there was some waiting in line early to secure a slot. Last year he did 5... and I was the 6th person in line. Made for a good story when I was first in line this year .

I reorganizing my main folder as I've learned how to use my cammera to take better shots of the pieces I've collected. I also have a lot of new art from this year's San Diego Comic Con that I am slowly getting uploaded.

Nike IX byTerry Dodson

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This is a lil different for me, since I normally take Con Sketches AT the show, but I don't have a table or booth this year. HOWEVER, I'd still like to do Con Sketches. So here's the deal. I'm doing inked and colored pieces, for a handy dandy sum that you can find by: clicking here

Single characters, preferabley bust or waist up shots if you have a complicated piece you want done.

I will do these sketches BEFOREhand, and you will receive your piece at Con. Upon receipt of payment I will hand out my cell phone number to folks so that we can meet up. Now here's the only problem. I will ONLY be at the convention on Saturday and Sunday.

Pre-arranging a meeting point would be perfect for all parties involved. I'm not very mobile, so let's say you're at the end of one hall and I'm at the end of the other, please expect to meet up somewhere in the middle. Perfect meeting points would be: Bud Plant Booth, nearest the hallway doors.

I will edit this with examples when I have a moment, today's been busy but I wanted to let folks know

Thanks guys! I'm hoping to raise enough to cover the cost of my hotel room.

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Note sent on DA . Hope to see you there!