Positron

I am pleased to tell you that in Issue 16: Power Spectrum we have two new features that are made to better facilitate the game experience by streamlining many processes that players spend time setting up.

The first of these is the new difficulty settings. A lot of in-game Broadcasts are powerful characters looking for “pads” so they can artificially increase their team-size to provide more of a challenge for greater rewards. With the new difficulty settings, these players can set their team size without having to bother other players with their Broadcasts. If they want to be treated as a team of 8, even when solo, they can.

The second feature is what we have come to call “Super-Sidekicking” but actually applies to all types of Sidekicking: Exemplaring, Lackeying, and Malefactoring as well. With this system, everyone in the team will find themselves automatically level adjusted to the level of the owner of the Mission that is currently selected. If there is no mission that is currently active, then the level is set to the leader of the Team.

If you are below the level you are getting set to, you are automatically sidekicked up to one level below the owner’s level, just as if you had sidekicked to them. If you are above the level, then you will be lowered to the level of the owner, just as if you exemplared down.

The players don’t need to do anything for this to happen, it all happens automatically. This means that no matter what level ranges you have in your group, you can ALWAYS play together and you can ALWAYS get XP. Yes, we are even changing the way exemplaring works so that you get XP while you are fighting at a lower level. There will be an option of having the “old way” of exemplaring, and earning extra Inf. instead, for those players who want to earn some more Inf. instead of levels.

Gone are the days of having to play “Mentor Tetris” (as we’ve come to call it) to make sure everyone in the team is SK’ed/EX’ed to the right person so that everyone is receiving XP, or having to tell your friend that they can’t join your team because you don’t have enough people to make sure everyone is SK’ed and earning rewards.

One of the other advantages to this system is that the level adjustments take place no matter where you are in the game. No more “My sidekick is out of range” messages. If you are about to undergo a large level shift, you will have a dialog box pop-up giving you warning and the ability to leave the team (handy if you are in combat at the time and don’t want to suddenly be fighting at a lower level). The range of levels that this dialog pops up is adjustable in the Options screen.

Now we are aware of a couple things that this system doesn’t do so well, and we are attempting to address most of them in the coming weeks. The first of this is the fact that you lose access to powers, especially the most-recently earned ones, when you Exemplar down. We are looking into some sort of fix for this.

Next is the fact that sometimes you just want to un-exemplar and kick some butt, especially when things look bad for the team. If you leave the team you will automatically start fighting at your superior level. This will enable you to save your team’s bacon at the cost of eating up any of the rewards they might have earned for those guys you defeat.

Badge hunters in the closed beta have pointed out that some badges are simply favorable to get once you outlevel the content where they are given. Since Super-Sidekicking makes manipulating the levels more difficult, we’re going to re-examine the requirements on some badges, and lower them where appropriate. Mentor badge credit is still given whenever you are the Mission Owner, and someone is auto-sidekicked to you.

Now one thing that is getting removed by this new system that is not going to be fixed is the ability to “bridge”. Bridging is the practice of sidekicking a low level character to JUST the right level to cap their XP earning on each entity defeated by the group. This was a side effect of how the Sidekicking system worked. While we have made adjustments to the Sidekicking system many times over the course of the life of the game to combat this, Super-Sidekicking eliminates bridging completely, since all rewards will be in parity.

Before we went and removed this playstyle completely from City of Heroes we wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing. We did extensive datamines to see how many accounts were actually participating in a “bridge” team, and were surprised to see just how low of a percentage it actually was. This may be a case where it is possible that the “advertising” in /broadcasts for bridge teams actually made the practice seem more pervasive than it really was.

With the ability to bridge removed, we should see an end to those Broadcasts, in addition to /tells to characters who are in the right level range for being a bridge. To us cutting down on annoying spam only makes your game experience better. (Which reminds me, we’ve added new features to the in-game Email system to either shut it off entirely, or only receive emails from people on your friends list and/or people in your Supergroup. Another step in the battle against annoying in-game spam.)

With both the new difficulty levels and Super-Sidekicking, players can use the difficulty slider to increase the level of the entities in the mission so that they can earn more rewards. But this, at least, comes with the risk inherent with fighting higher level entities and larger spawns. As for low level characters missing out on accelerated leveling speeds, we are increasing the rewards they earn from level 1 to 20 (about 20% across the board) so that every player can get through the lower levels faster, not just those that know “the tricks”.

(These changes are currently being tested in the Closed Beta for Issue 16, and may be changed/modified by the time they reach the Live servers)

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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...ragonguys2.jpg

So, that's Mod08, Bruce Horatio Harlick, Vince The Dark Watcher D'Amelio, Matt Positron Miller, Brian General Manager Clayton, Joe Hero1 Morrissey, Ross Marketing Borden, Unknown Woman, David Nakayama.

Who is that Unknown Woman... Mynx?


And congratulations to the guy who teabagged Positron!

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Fixed that for ya Z_M. At least I refrained from putting (Foxbat) in with his name.

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Unknown Woman is Karen Reynoso, our events coordinator. She's kept in a cryostasis most of the year, and brought out only to run the booths at the cons.

If everything goes according to plan... cross your fingers.

Yes we have the day off.

I am procrastinating from cleaning the kitchen.

We're sitting in a meeting and our Development Director said "We've contracted some Type R programmers".

I had never heard this term before, so I jotted it down on my notepad, so I could inquire about it later.

Just then our Lead Engineer asks "What is Type R?"

Our Dev Director looked stumped. "What do you mean?"

"You said 'Type R Programmers'" said the Lead Engineer.

"No, I said 'High Powered'." said the Dev Director.

"No you didn't. You said 'Type R.' See I wrote it down." I said, and showed him my notepad that said "Type R?".

So now, everything high powered and awesome in the office is "Type R".

I am now on a crusade to get it used outside our offices. I should add it to urban dictionary or something.

After reading most of the thread spawned by my “Abusing Mission Architect” post, I figured I needed to follow up on a few of the points I brought up. You guys had a lot of the same questions, so I think I can answer them FAQ style.

Q) “If I powerlevelled a character, am I going to lose them?”
A) Probably not. Only the worst of the worst, exploitive, powerlevelled characters will be removed from the game. We don’t take retroactive punishments lightly, but some offenses are so egregious that no one would question their intent and those ill-gotten gains should be dealt with. I just want to emphasize that no one is looking to ‘punish’ anyone here, but rather remove the rewards of exploitive behavior.

Q) “Are you going to give us an absolute definition of what abuse is?”
A) I know a lot of you want to know an exact definition to see if you were actually abusing the system, or just playing the game, but I don’t want to be set up in a situation where our definition of abuse is abused. For example, if we say that the definition is “you gained 4 levels in under 30 minutes”, then someone will make sure that they gain 4 levels in 31 minutes, so they can claim they were within the allowed limits and not abusing. Someone said it best that the “definition” of reckless driving is purposely ambiguous, being “Disregard for safety”. With this example, I would say that a good interpretation of abuse is “Disregard for the risk and/or time to reward ratio”.

Q) “Why are you removing badges we worked so hard to get?”
A) I apologize in advance if we remove a badge that someone got legitimately through normal gameplay. We didn’t want MA to become a badge farm (hence why kill-count badges don’t work in MA). Unfortunately the number of “count” badges we put into the system promoted some pretty aberrant gameplay. People forming voting cartels to get Hall of Fame badges, missions whose sole purpose was to tick a badge count clogged up the searches, etc., made finding the honest-to-god story arcs harder than it needed to be. We hope that by removing these problem badges (and adding some new, non-problem, ones in the process) we can see a better play experience throughout the entire MA system. These changes won’t happen until I15, but we’ll get a list of the alterations to you guys early next week.

Q) “Am I going to get banned for farming for badges?”
A) Absolutely not.

Q) “What if people who have a grudge against me complain about my arc and get it banned? Why should I permanently lose a slot over that?”
A) The first time your arc is pulled because of complaints, you do NOT lose the slot. If you get an arc banned and you do lose the slot, your only option at that point is to contact Customer Support. They are the gatekeepers to the slots, and can give you your slot back if it was banned in error.

Q) “You say not to use the word “Farm” in the mission or description. Is that how you are blanket banning things?”
A) We do not do blanket banning based on keywords or phrases. When customer service bans an arc, they are looking at the arc in question when they do it. I ask you not to use certain words in your title or description because players can still complaint-ban your arc, and then there is the fact that we are only human, and even if your “farm” arc is a complete joke/parody ABOUT farm arcs, someone might mistake it for a real farm and ban it, causing both you and us a headache in getting the arc unbanned.

Q) “What about all the farming and abusing that goes on in the normal game? How come you guys don’t put a stop to that?”
A) We address rewards abuse all the time. We put timers on missions that could get reset for rewards. We take rewards off of critters that are considered exploitively farmable. Or we just change the mission. Merit rewards are another way we have handled the situation. You can’t run really fast stuff over and over and get a reward every time. Again, we are looking out for “Disregard for the risk and/or time to reward ratio”, and we take action.

Q) “Why did you guys wait until after the reactivation weekend to do this?”
A) We had a publishing blackout during the reactivation that prevented us from putting new code up onto the live servers.

In the end, we hope you all understand that the changes we’re making, no matter how drastic they might appear to be, are in the best interest of the game and those who truly enjoy playing it. Out goal has always been to make Architect fun and enjoyable for both the authors and the players. We feel that with these changes we’re helping bring about the realization of this goal.

Release Notes for 18.20090422.5T - 5/7/09

When we created Mission Architect, the goal was to have an outlet for players to craft cool stories, using our assets, that other players could play and participate in. Other players could rate those stories and the best-of-the best would rise to the top.

While we have accomplished some of those goals with the initial launch of Mission Architect, some have found ways to abuse the system we put in place. We are not blind to this happening, nor did we not expect it. However, it is time to take action regarding it, so please be aware that we are about to implement a zero-tolerance stance on the extreme abuse we are seeing in the system.

One thing was made clear to me when I interacted with the players on our Anniversary. It was that you guys really don’t like the powerlevelling that is going on with MA. The constant spam of MA PL teams forming, requests for “Meow” missions, 5 star badge cartels, and the inability to find quality content in the Mission Architect listing are all things I heard complaints about over and over while I was logged in on Tuesday.

So here is a list of things that are going to happen:

• Players that have abused the reward system egregiously may lose benefits they have gained - leading up to and perhaps including losing access to the characters power-leveled in this fashion.

• Currently, some badges are being modified, and some may be removed from the game entirely. The list of changes being made to the MA badge system is not final yet, but you will be made aware when we have a concrete plan.

• Players who knowingly use an exploit when creating an arc, run the risk of having access to MA suspended, or worse- depending on the severity of the action, their account banned.

• Players who have a story arc banned for any reason, will have it continue to use up one of their publishing slots. Players will NOT be able to unpublish this slot without Customer Service’s help. This sets up a “three strikes and you’re out” policy. If an individual gets three story arcs banned, they will no longer be able to publish since their slots will all be used up with banned arcs.
•• This lock will not take place on the first level of “complaint banning”, where an arc has received a larger number of complaints. Players will still have a chance to fix the arc.
•• If Customer Service looks at an arc and determines it was banned in error, they will mark it as “unbannable”. At that point the arc can not be banned for any reason. The unbannable flag will reset if the player makes any changes to the arc at that point, and the arc can be banned again.
•• Remember, publishing slots are account wide, so players will not be able to log in another character on their account and use their slots instead.
•• Players are urged to avoid using common farming terms in their story title and/or descriptions. Even if it’s a joke, DO NOT run the risk of having an arc banned and requiring Customer Support to grant you your publishing slot back.

Some of you have taken the stance of “how does powerlevelling hurt the game?” and “shouldn’t I be able to play the game the way that I want?” What we want to make clear is in order to keep the game fair, balanced, and challenging, we have to maintain a risk:reward ratio. This is a ratio we’ve spent years attempting to achieve. Mission Architect is not immune to this, and we are taking swift action to see that the problems players are seeing and are being exposed to are remedied.

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meh he said the same thing in 10 difrent ways

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To be fair, I was asked the same question 10 different ways.

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So is positron's In-Game ADress being delivered on a specfic server or via an Admin (or admin like channel)?

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It will be across all servers, probably by updating the MOTD or something (which will force it to pop up on your screen).

Re: Feedback - Yes I send it, usually to tell the author that there was no warning about the AV/EB in one of the missions.

Re: 200+ years - I don't play every arc. Many arcs don't have a good description in the search window, which is my second criteria to see if I want to play it. First criteria being the title of course.

Re: Do devs revisit - If I give feedback and then the player sends me a message saying they made changes, I will look at the mission again to see if it's now DC worthy.

Star ratings don't mean as much to me. Today I searched "3 star, Villainous missions" for one that looked interesting. Tomorrow I will probably search under different parameters. I am looking for a catchy title and an interesting description to get me to click the Play button, as I think most of us are.

A lot of arcs look interesting but the authors have a note that says "still testing", "looking for feedback", "not quite finished", etc. I won't look at those because if I Dev Choice it, they can't edit it further and that would just infuriate them. We're looking at solving that problem, and that will open up a lot more arcs for me to consider.

I am playing at least one arc a day, and I know other devs are also finding the time.

Generally the arcs miss being Dev Choiced by things like "Oh, did I forget to mention there is an AV on this map?"

In CoH/V we are pretty clear when there is an AV that you should bring some friends along to help you.

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I don't guess you can bind the costumechange emotes, I've tried dozens of combos, none of them worked..

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You can.

BAB is working on a post. Stay tuned.

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At this point I bailed out of the arc and one-starred it. If zero was an actual option I'd have used it.

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Zero is an option.

Click 1-star twice.

You're doing a great job with these reviews, Venture.

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..... all this effort to make some really intricate and gorgeous magic costumes, and no sign of a simple Wizard Robe variation of the Trenchcoat? Comeon devs, people have been asking for a basic Wiz's Robe for ages!

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SexyJ has said that with the current engine, player robes are an impossibility, IIRC. Seems he's tried it several times, but could never get the to work.

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Yeah, it basically comes down to the fact that there are certain powersets (coughmartialartscough) that make true "wizard robes" impossible to animate. Jay explained this as much in the Q&A at HeroCon.

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I've been critical of many of the past official videos, and tried to pour some water on the idea that "wow, this would be a great commercial, you should show it somewhere."

Well, none of that today. This video is great, AND it's a great commercial. It clearly and in a compelling way explains what's so great about Architect, and you don't already have to know the game to understand the high points.

Kudos all around. Very well done, and this time, add me to the people saying "You gotta get this where people will see it"

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Thanks GD, that was very nice of you. I will pass this and the other praise along.

Oh, and happy b-day!

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Apparently, Freedom is updating slowly. They don't want other servers to have access until they can all go live together.

In other news...

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Yes, this is true.

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yay first one....

Now...whats the purpose of a "Super" Leader?
does it give anything special or allow something to be done that others cant?

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In the current system, no one can demote someone who is at their same level, and there is no self demotion.

Adding in a "sole" Superleader to the SG system allows for leadership disputes to be solved within the SG themselves, as there is now a level that can demote the current "leader" level. If the Superleader no longer wants to be Superleader, they just need to promote someone else to Superleader, and they will demote themselves in the process.

Here's the full text from the screens:

Welcome to City of Heroes(R), Horatio.
You last played on 4/1/87.

You find yourself standing in Atlas Plaza, the statue of Atlas towers above you. There is a
plaque at the base of the statue, and Miss Liberty stands on a platform to the north of the
statue.
To the south is Paragon City Hall. To the North is Atlas Drive. To the East is Emmert
Street. To the West is Dakan Ave.
Also here are Capt. Liberty, Ms. B. Haven, and The Luckster.

>Go North

You are on Atlas Drive. A small park sits to the North. To the East is Emmert Street. To
the West is Dakan Ave. To the South is Atlas Plaza.
There are two Police Officers here.
Also here is Mr. Awesome Guy.
Mr. Awesome Guy yells “Someone changed my name!”
Mr. Awesome Guy smiles at you.
Mr. Awesome Guy whispers to you, “Want to team up against some Thugs?”

>Whisper no

You whisper to Mr. Awesome Guy, “no”

>Go North

You find yourself in a park with a small lake in the middle of it. The park looks a tad run
down and unkempt. To the South is Atlas Drive. To the North is a lake.
There is a Thug here.

>Ataack Thug

I don’t know what you are trying to do.
The Thug shoots you with his pistol. (Rolls a 93)
The Thug hits you!
You lose 5 Hit Points.
You have 45 of 50 Hit Points remaining.

>Attack Thug

I don’t know what you are attacking the Thug with.
The Thug shoots you with his pistol. (Rolls a 70)
The Thug hits you!
You lose 5 Hit Points.
You have 40 of 50 Hit Points remaining.

>ATTACK THUG WITH ENERGY BLASST

I don’t know what you are attacking the Thug with.
The Thug shoots you with his pistol. (Rolls a 100)
The Thug critically hits you!
You lose 15 Hit Points.
You have 25 of 50 Hit Points remaining.
You are BLEEDING. You lose 1 Hit Point.
You have 24 of 50 Hit Points remaining.

>ATTACK THUG WITH ENERGY BLAST

You blast a bolt of blue energy at the Thug! (Rolls a 24)
You miss!
The Thug shoots you with his pistol. (Rolls a 56)
The Thug hits you!
You lose 5 Hit Points.
You have 19 of 50 Hit Points remaining.
You are BLEEDING. You lose 1 Hit Point.
You have 18 of 50 Hit Points remaining.

>Go South

You are on Atlas Drive. A small park sits to the North. To the East is Emmert Street. To
the West is Dakan Ave. To the South is Atlas Plaza.
There are two Police Officers here.
Also here is Mr. Awesome Guy.
A Thug appears from the North.
The Thug shoots you with his pistol. (Rolls a 84)
The Thug hits you!
You lose 5 Hit Points.
You have 13 of 50 Hit Points remaining.
The Policeman shoots the Thug. (Rolls a 12)
The Policeman shoots the Thug. (Rolls a 65)
The Policeman hits the Thug.
The Policeman hits the Thug.
The Thug takes 1000 points of damage.
The Thug takes 1000 points of damage.
The Thug is defeated! (+0 experience points because the enemy was defeated by an NPC.)
You are BLEEDING. You lose 1 Hit Point.
You have 12 of 50 Hit Points remaining.
Mr. Awesome Guy laughs at you!
Mr. Awesome Guy whispers, “should have teamed up!”

>Bandage

Who are you trying to Bandage?
You are BLEEDING. You lose 1 Hit Point.
You have 11 of 50 Hit Points remaining.

>Bandage Self

I don’t see Self anywhere around.
You are BLEEDING. You lose 1 Hit Point.
You have 10 of 50 Hit Points remaining.
The BLEEDING WORSENS!

>Bandage myself

I don’t see myself anywhere around.
You are BLEEDING profusely. You lose 5 Hit Points.
You have 5 of 50 Hit Points remaining.

>Bandage me

You attempt to bandage yourself.
You don’t have any bandages!
You are BLEEDING profusely. You lose 5 Hit Points.
You have 0 of 50 Hit Points remaining.
You have been defeated!
You can go to the Hospital or wait for someone to revive you.
Mr. Awesome Guy is rolling on the floor, laughing.

>go hospital

An ambulance arrives at your location, you fall unconscious.
You awaken in the hospital in Atlas Park. Doctors have tended to your wounds and got you
back on your feet. There is a closet and a door in this room.

>Open closet

You open the closet

>Look closet

You see Horatio’s Power Armor, Horatio’s Energy Blast Gauntlet, Horatio’s Rocket Boots, and
Horatio’s Targeting Array.

>Get all in closet.

You get Horatio’s Power Armor.
You get Horatio’s Energy Blast Gauntlet.
You get Horatio’s Rocket Boots.
You get Horatio’s Targeting Array.

>Equip Armor

You put on Horatio’s Power Armor.

>Equip Gauntlet

You put on Horatio’s Energy Blast Gauntlet.

>Equip Boots

You put on Horatio’s Rocket Boots.

>Equip Targeting Array

You don’t have a Targeting.

>Equip Array

You can’t equip Array.

>Activate Array

I don’t know what you are trying to do.

>TURN ARRAY ON

You activate Horatio’s Targeting Array.

>Go Door

You make your way through the hospital, to the exit. You sign yourself out.
You are on Bleaker Street. To the east is Renwald Avenue. To the west is Emmert Street.
The City Hospital is here.
An Information Terminal is here.
Dr. Morena is standing on the corner. He looks like he has a mission for you.
Also here is Capt. Faceplant and Almostbulletproof.

>Look Terminal

You see a sign on the terminal that reads “coming soon!”

>Talk to Dr. Morena

Dr. Morena tells you, “Thanks for coming to see me, Horatio. The clinic across the street
has been dealing with more and more thugs breaking in and stealing the drugs there. Can you
do me a favor and check and see if any thugs are over there right now, and arrest them if
you need to?” (Type Accept to accept the mission)

>Accept

I don’t know what you are trying to accept.

>Accept Mission

There is no mission to accept.

>Talk to Dr. Morena

Dr. Morena tells you, “Thanks for coming to see me, Horatio. The clinic across the street
has been dealing with more and more thugs breaking in and stealing the drugs there. Can you
do me a favor and check and see if any thugs are over there right now, and arrest them if
you need to?” (Type Accept to accept the mission)

>Accept Mission

You accept the mission.
You are on Bleaker Street. To the east is Renwald Avenue. To the west is Emmert Street.
Across the street is the Clinic.
The City Hospital is here.
An Information Terminal is here.
Dr. Morena is standing on the corner.

>Go Clinic

You are inside the Atlas Clinic. There are three Thugs here, stealing drugs. They don’t
immediately acknowledge you.

>Attack thug with energy blast

You blast a bolt of blue energy at the Thug! (Rolls a 100)
You Critically Hit!
You deal 50 points of damage to the Thug.
You have defeated the Thug (+10 experience points)
The Thug drops a Pistol, a Holster, a Wallet, and a Drugs.
The Thug shoots you with his pistol. (Rolls a 12)
The Thug misses you!
The Thug shoots you with his pistol. (Rolls a 22)
The Thug misses you!

>Attack thug with energy blast

You blast a bolt of blue energy at the Thug! (Rolls a 56)
You hit!
You deal 25 points of damage to the Thug.
You have defeated the Thug (+10 experience points)
The Thug drops a Pistol, a Holster, a Wallet, and a Drugs.
The Thug shoots you with his pistol. (Rolls a 29)
The Thug misses you!

>Attack thug with energy blast

You blast a bolt of blue energy at the Thug! (Rolls a 77)
You hit!
You deal 25 points of damage to the Thug.
You have defeated the Thug (+10 experience points)
The Thug drops a Pistol, a Holster, a Wallet, and a Drugs.

>Look

You are inside the Atlas Clinic.
On the ground is a Pistol, a Pistol, a Pistol, a Holster, a Holster, a Holster, a Wallet, a
Wallet, a Wallet, a Drugs, a Drugs, and a Drugs.

>Get Holster

Which Holster are you trying to get?

>Get first Holster

You pick up a Holster.

>Equip Holster

You equip the Holster.

>Get first pistol

You pick up a pistol.

>Put pistol in holster

You put the pistol into the holster on the floor.

>PUT PISTOL IN MY HOLSTER

You don’t have a pistol.

>GET PISTOL

Which pistol are you trying to get?

>GET FIRST PISTOL

You pick up a pistol.

>PUT PISTOL IN MY HOLSTER

You put the pistol into your holster.

>QUIT

Thank you for playing City of Heroes(R), Horatio.

There are some MA badges that are account wide, usually ones that are tied to publishing arcs and the arcs themselves (such as getting an Arc to be Dev Choiced, that badge is granted to all your characters).

If you spend tickets to unlock features in MA, such as a variant enemy, costume pieces, or a set of maps, then that is unlocked account wide as well.

If you spend tickets on a specific reward, like an Inspiration or Recipe Roll, then that is only given to the character spending the tickets.

Over the weekend I posted:

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When people play your arcs, tickets earned that way go into a pool.

You can then claim tickets out of that pool onto any character.

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And a few of you said "Please let Merits work the same way".

I don't think a few of you understood me correctly the first time.

>>When other people play your arcs.<<

The idea is that, since creating MA content is account-wide (anything you write can be "published from" any character on your account), that the tickets generated from other people go into a pool. You can then claim tickets out of that pool on any character on your account.

HOWEVER, when you PLAY Mission Architect content, tickets you earn are exactly like Merits. They are earned ON that character, and can not be traded.

Merits already work like this, and there is no correlation to the account-based publishing for Merits to "work the same way" for.

Now if you are simply asking that Merits be a tradable resource, or even trade-within-account, I am sorry, but that's not going to happen. Characters of different levels earn Merits at different rates. Merits are supposed to streamline the reward process for that character, and that's not going to be changing any time soon.

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Hi Positron, thanks for answering some questions on a Saturday.

Could you just talk briefly about how the Powers for custom critters will work? Do we get to say what powers from the powersets each critter will use? or, is the selection determined by the critter type (i.e. something like, Minion critters will only use the first few powers in the set, AVs will use the full powerset)

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Can't talk about the exact-exact specifics just yet.

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I thought of a question! With so many account wide unlockables in the MA, are the tickets going to be account wide/tradable? If some of the more awesome unlockables are pricey, it might be difficult for someone who doesn't stick to one alt to unlock them.

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When people play your arcs, tickets earned that way go into a pool.

You can then claim tickets out of that pool onto any character.

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Positron, I am a little concerned about the possible rate griefing involved with being able to rate an arc that hasn't been played. Especially when there are badges involved in rating unrated arcs or ones that don't have many ratings. A lot of people will probably get their badges simply by going down the line of unrated arcs, slapping a 1 star rating on them, and getting their badge in the process. I've seen rating systems on web-published content experience things like that, and that's WITHOUT the enticing badge. Please reconsider allowing someone to rate an unfinished arc.

*EDIT* Been here since CoH beta, and this is the first time I've posted after a redname.

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I'm willing to listen to ideas on how truly horrible content can get rated without having to endure all of it.