Positron

Have to fix BAB's list for accuracy:

Cryptic:
1. Positron
2. BAB
3. Castle
4. Ghost Widow
5. War Witch
6. Constellation replaced by Hero 1 (story bible)
7. JLove
8. Ken Morse (Art Lead)
9. Nick replaced by Don Pham (environmental/3D artist)
10. Brett replaced by Graham
11. Blue Steel (design support)
12. Serdar replaced by Mynx (Producer)
13. Richard (AP/Build Engineer)
14. Aaron (Lead programmer)
15. Garth (who moved over to Core Tech before the acquistion)

I think that is everyone.

Office support, HR, and Senior Management were all handled by Cryptic proper.

Issue 9 got a lot of attention from Jack, Poz, and Mike Lewis simply because the Invention System and Auction House was SO huge, and unlike anything we had done before. It took a village to raise that child.

John Yoo left RIGHT before the 15 person pair-down.

As for the comment about the two teams not stealing resources from one another. It is true. Anyone who left the project (Serdar, Constellation, Nick, Brett) was replaced by a new hire.

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In case you got this far (or only found this through the Dev Tracker)...

Visual Sounds are NOT going into the game. We are NOT deleting all your sounds off your hard drive. This was NCNorCal's internet prank for April 1st, 2008.

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Why on earth would they be unlocked without a 50?
Only if you could unlock Khelds without one!

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I remember reading something that Emmert said about lvl 50 epic unlocks was a mistake, and I assume that most of the devs feel the same way.

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We had to do it this way for the first Villain EAT... parity in unlocking the EATs across both games and all that.

Future EATs (if we dare go in that direction) will have different methods of unlocking (obviously, since the "get to 50" is already done).

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So, was I reading it right that each AT will get one primary and secondary power from its corresponding AT? If so that's awesome!

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Every AT gains at least 1 powerset -- Masterminds only get a Secondary, no new Primary. Brutes get 2 new Primaries, and 1 secondary. Everyone else gets 1 Primary and 1 Secondary.

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Which are............

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We'll have more info on this feature soon™.

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Eight configurable new power trays let players customize their User Interface by placing them anywhere on the screen.

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Now the question is can we place them Verticle instead of horizontal.

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You bet. You can even do boxes and L-shapes (when you push them to the edge of the screen).

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HOLY CRAP.

Axe brutes! Plant controllers!

THERE HAD BETTER BE STORM CORRUPTORS.

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/Storm Corruptors... done.

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7) an apology for not being as awesome and cool as I am. I know it's technically not your fault, so I'll also require an apology from your parents too.

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I am so very sorry for not attaining the awesomeness that you have attained. I also apologize for my lack of coolness, as I know it doesn't approach yours.

My parents are not very computer savvy, so they are snail mailing their apologies to you. Expect it in 3 to 5 days.

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Badge! Badge! Badge!
Come on guys! join in!

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No thanks. There's already one can of worms being opened with charging for costumes and emotes. If they threw in a badge with it, it would open up a whole new can of worms with accusations of trying to extort money from badge hunters.

IMHO, given that they're going to charge for something, this is exactly the right way to have done it. Maybe throw in some kind of prestige power, but certainly not a badge. I didn't like the RMT for the VIP badges, and I wouldn't like it if they did it again.

As for the event itself, I'm looking forward to it. I'll be there.

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This is exactly why I didn't put a badge in this pack.

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I am one of those people that don't care about xp but do care about content.

Do we have any idea when/if missions that aren't story arcs will make it to flashback? A lots of the cool and unusual missions are offered to you after you complete a story arc.

I am glad about the xp smoothing, not glad about the xp boost.

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Anything can be made Flashback, but the "completed" star checks for A) Souvenir clue or B) the Badge. If we did missions that were not Story Arcs and not Badged, then they would never show complete.

That said, I have no problem doing this if you guys don't. Just let me know what missions you want on Ouroboros and I will do my best to get them there.

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The one thing I question tho, he said they datamined how long characters were at certain levels. Could this info have been skewed by alt-itis? I know when I hit 22-27 range, I usually start another alt and run them for a while. Or even partake in a FOTM build.

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We have a "life at level" stat in seconds. This is how long a character spent at a particular level, logged in. While not a perfect indicator of levelling speed, it's an excellent starting point.

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I wish he'd answered the concern some of us have about the impact on prestige earning, with people reaching the influence penalty earlier.

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In Issue 12 (no release date yet, sorry), we are going to have you never dropping below 50% Inf. earn rate when in Supergroup mode. We will look at the impact of that change and base future alterations on that.

Very nice, Doug. I have always been a fan of your work.

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Finding out my gamertag is not impossible without me posting in the Gamertag Exchange. I know one CoH player who already found it and added me to his friends list.

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. o O (Perhaps... Positron? Naaah, too easy...)

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Positron's gamertag is easily visible on his blog.

(To all those who go, "WAAAA??? Positron has a blog!", it's a very occasionally updated blog. No, I won't tell you how to find it. Finding the blog can be the millstone around your neck if you really have to know.)

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Yeah, I need to post something... maybe you guys can give me ideas for topics of discussion.

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Like Jay even more now. I also have a action figure.... problem.

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Yes, I've seen this quite often in collectors of action figures - the strange inability to open the container. Yet these same people can open much more difficult containers that hold computer equipment in them. Very mysterious.

Thankfully, any six year old child can solve your problem and many can do so without any instruction or special tools. Simply leave one or two of them in Jay's cube and go do lunch. When you come back, at least half of them will be open and ready to play with!

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I thought I had broken my action figure...problem...after the Episode 1's were done...

Sadly, I am falling back on old habits now for some reason...darn those redo's of the 3 3/4" GI Joes! Dang them!

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... my thing seems to be McFarlane Dragons. <.<

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I think I bought every one of the carded figures from the Episode 1 run. I had half a bedroom wall covered with them. Had the different versions of the Battle Droids. Still have those things...somewhere...

And now, just for old time's sake, I walk through the toy section of a local store and see of all things, Firefly, Beachhead, and Storm Shadow. Hey lookee over there! New Star Wars figures! Ooooh...Galactic Marine! Stormtroopers! Oooh! Buy two get the third half off!

And *wham* right back into credit card debt.

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I ended up buying 36 Battle Droids from starwars.com when they had a "moving sale". The guy packing the order obviously knew I was building a droid army and made sure each and every one was the "clean" version. For a while I had them (and my other 6 battle droids) pinned to the wall of my office. That many battle droids boxed in one place is an impressive sight to behold.

Now they sit in a bin in the rafters of my garage. One day Positot will inherit the Droid Army...

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Positron through the glass....

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.... damn, he gets to OPENLY display all thsoe non-Co* games in his cubicle? Is that standard NC^2 policy, or is he just lording his Boss-liness over you all? ^_^

By the by: tell Posi to get his butt over to the [u]Comic and Hero/Villain Culture[u] forum, and post his Gamertag on the Exchange thread, so it'll have two redname entries. ^_^ I see that there Halo3 LE helmet on that shelfof his ...

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Finding out my gamertag is not impossible without me posting in the Gamertag Exchange. I know one CoH player who already found it and added me to his friends list. It just takes a little internet savvy and digging.

2 years old today!

Seems like it was just yesterday that I was rolling up my Robots/Force Field Mastermind on Virtue, then re-rolling him 4 hours later when I realized I spelled his name wrong.


Just to head this off at the pass, there is no Anniversary badge for CoV 2 years... we want to get to a point where we only celebrate ONE anniversary a year, like normal folks.

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Positron lied to us. This update contains two things players have been asking for since essentially the beginning of the game, not one. We get both Flashback and weapon customization!

I have emerged from my hole to say that I approve of Issue 11 and am as giddy as a schoolgirl.

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Hahahaha...

Actually Weapon Customization made the feature list AFTER I made the original "something you've been asking for" post, where I was referring to Flashback. (We had players in the CoH beta test asking for a way to go back and do the story arcs of the Contacts they skipped).

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First!

Edit - This is really cool news.

Flashback.

A start at power customization.

Normally, I'm kinda skeptical at new issue time, but this has me pretty excited. Now, I don't have to carefully plan out how my character is going to do his/her missions in order to see it all.

One question I have though, is Flashback going to allow a character to do all the missions from a contact or just the story arcs?

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Story Arcs and Badge missions.

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Since the dev's are chained up working, I thought I would show you where we allow them to play on a short term basis each day.


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Photo 1: One of the three mini's cabinets. This one is filled with mostly Warmachine/Hordes (there is a lunch-time tournament going on right now)

Photo 2: The minis table. There are four 4'x4' playing areas set up currently for the WM/H games. (I play Cygnar, and not very well). Behind that is the company foosball table.

Photo 3: Archon Voss' awesome Mordheim table.

Photo 4: War Witch, Castle, our lead QA guy, our lead story guy (who has the nom de plume of Hero 1), and I are in the middle of a game of Descent. The arcade machine is Mace: The Dark Age, which the former Art Director worked on when he was at Atari (I think).

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Posi, I read somewhere you were a fan of Pai Gow poker. Any tips?

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Sure.

Don't play the "bonus". They payouts are horrid vs. the actual odds of pulling one of those hands.

Build up a good rapport with the other players. If everyone is friendly (and you have a full table) you can ask who has the bug. If no one fesses up, it's pretty good odds that the dealer has it. If that's the case be prepared for the flush or straight in the high hand (which usually means a very weak low hand). Get your low hand as good as possible even if it means sacrificing your high hand to do it (like splitting up two low pairs).

Don't drink. You will make bad decisions.

If you are stumped how to play a hand, ask the dealer how the house would play it. The house will ALWAYS play a hand the mathematically best way to play it, since they want to keep their edge. The dealers will always tell you how the house would play that hand, as well.

If you have the bankroll and want some more excitement, bank a hand. You can win big, or lose big. Just be sure to bet the minimum on the hand before you bank (the house will match your previous bet to play against you).

If the dealer starts crushing you over and over with monster hands... get up and walk away. Don't keep raising your bet because you are "due" to get a winning hand eventually.

Don't go thinking that your casino rewards card is getting a lot of points playing hours and hours of Pai Gow. PG poker is, I believe, the least effective time/rewards of all casino games because there are so many pushes and the game takes forever to deal a hand.

Now, back to the design grind... anyone know a good way to pick a handcuff with a mechanical pencil, a Hero Clix, and a poker chip?

Ok, but I can't talk about Issue 11 or beyond... but that's pretty much what you guys WANT me to talk about so we are at an impass.

I'll be hanging around the NC Soft booth on Saturday. I want to check out the show, but I am only there Saturday, so if I am not at the NC Soft booth, I am wandering around aimlessly.

I am on a panel discussing the future of MMOs at 6pm on Saturday in Theater A.

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Ex is correct. We datamined how many names would get freed up by doing the purge at every level. After level 5, the amount of names freed up drops noticably on every server. There are a LOT of names being "camped" by inactive accounts on characters under level 5.

Sure, it doesn't take a lot of effort to get past level 5. But in the case of name campers, it looks like they didn't even put in that amount of effort on those characters. They simply made a level 1 character with the name and called it a day, or played a tad and got a level or 2.

We admit, the previous name purge was too high a level. I had a lot of people tell me that they wanted to come back to the game, but were turned off when they found that their character's name had been taken during the last name purge. We wanted the most amount of names freed up, with the least amount of impact on players who might want to return to the City of games.

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Not too bad but I still say they should hire the player that made that other I10 preview on youtube to do their trailer work. This video felt like it was just giving me an overview of the zone where as the player made video actually got my really hyped up to play I10.

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Well, to be fair, this was the "Zone Overview" trailer, much like the "Invention Overview" trailer we did for I9.

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Don't worry guys, I did the voice over for the next I10 video, so you can all poor your vo-hate onto me once that comes out.