Raithnor_Mal

One idea I had was to add 3 shard zones that were villain side only that dealt with the other aspects of Rularuu, plus one Co-Op zone where the idea was to have a Co-Op Raid versus the 200-foot tall version of Rularuu.

The devs have said repeatedly though that it takes the same amount of work revamping existing zone as it is making new ones and that they'd rather do Co-Op content. Even with Going Rogue, I don't see them making content that's Hero-only or Villain-only unless it has some wierd sort of parity.

I'm in the process of a respecing my Claws/Dark to include OG and CoF. I've tried both and to be honest of the two I like OG more. The only reason I traded OG for CoF was to deal with Romans. Since the Roman minions have Stun and KB resistance it made getting CoF necessary.

That being said, CoF has issues chief of which being the END cost. I realize fear is a seldom resisted power, but it has too many negitives relative to the value it has.

My overall plan is to use OG whenever possible, taking it ASAP. CoF gets relegated to the post 40s for the upper tier spawns that have stun resistance.

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Almost nowhere in the game does the narrative make it feel like the game is about ME. That's because it ISN'T. It's about the contacts and their little agendas and intrigues and whatnot. I'm just the hired hand to forward it. I've been saying it over and over and over again that making CoV more villainous and more about our characters isn't a matter of game mechanics, it's a matter of presentation. It's a matter of how the stories are told, and making it seem like it's YOUR character taking the initiative and doing things no-one else could doesn't need a new game. It needs someone to sit on their butt and write flavour text to that effect.

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Villains is what you make of it. When I first started out I basically decided that if I liked a given contact's scheme I would basically co-op it. Other times, I would work on certain contacts because it served some long-term goal.

Examples of Co-oping a scheme: Hardcase's Pied piper arc, Vernon Von Grunn's story arcs. Pretty much every newspaper arc ever.

Examples of long-term strategy: Working with Westin Phipps to meet with Aribter Daos.

Also I made a game of building a contact network. Figuring out who'd be useful in my "Organization" and who wouldn't be.

With Heroes there's less incentive to do that since you're not trying to cultivate an army of lackeys and fixers.

Of course multiple playthroughs make the content fairly stale, and you begin to care more about what a given powerset combination will look like at level 40-50 than re-running old content.

With regards to Recluse: Most use Social Darwinism as a justification to put themselves on top. So of course Recluse comes across as a giant hypocrite.

One thing I've noticed about Arachnos as a fighting force is they're arranged in such a way that each faction is a check on another. You have psychics as a check on the regular troopers, robots as a check on the psychics, electrical sorcerers as a check on the robots, and then troopers as a check on the sorcerers. It doesn't always work perfectly, but it does prevent the various groups from splitting off where there's at least one group that they would be at a disadvantage fighting against.

The problem with making the Rogue Isles like what is probably planned for Praetoria (except for isolated instances like Aeon City or the Golden Giza) is that it would have been too similar to Paragon City, which is what they were trying to avoid.

Manticore,

Since this isn't I15 testing section I'm going try to keep this Spoiler light as possible.

What is the Council's reaction to Requiem's Roman/Time Traveling adventures?

Is there a discernable difference betwen the 5th Column under Reichsman and the 5th Column under Requiem? I could understand a "5th Column from another Dimension" as opposed to "We're tired working for that Requiem tool."

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Various replies:

Various notes on Nemesis technology

It is explicitly described as steam-powered in a number of places, ranging from old base salvage descriptions (still available in the CH window and on ParagonWiki) to character /info panels to mission text. It's not cold fusion and it's not using steam just for show.


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Without using something like cold fusion or even fission, steam-powered technology makes no sense. Otherwise it's just you'd get a better return on your energy just by burning the fuel directly rather than using it to heat the water.

The other half of Nemesis' core technology is high-developed mechcanics to the point of it being robotics. He started out making very sophisticated toys which eventually evolved into the Jaegers and the Automotons.

I suppose this is all moot, Nemesis technology works because it does, but at least the above make it sound plausible for people who want more than BANNG! ZOOM! out of there comics.

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Ok I won't get into how exactly buffing what power is going to replace the lost AoE DPM from PSW, and instead I will direct your attention to this faction dmg resistance table.

Now this info is a tad dated, but you can double check most of it on Paragon Wiki if you search faction by faction.

From the data you will see that psi damage is resisted by multiple factions (carnies, cot, lb, arachnos, crey, council, nemesis, rikti, malta, de and others) and specific mob types (robots) across the lvl 40-50 range. Compare that to prevalance of resistance to the other damage types. You'll quickly see that psi damage is more resisted by more foes than fire and cold, is about the same as energy and is pretty close to S/L resistances. The only mobs that psi dmg excels at is CoT ghosts (pre-38) and Clockwork (pre-38, although LGTF has some post-38).

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Are you sure you're reading that chart right? The way it's presented 100% = The normal amount of damage. So if something has a resist it'll have a percentage less than 100 and if has a weakness it'll be more than 100.

For the late game Arachnos and Carnies are the worst. Regarding Arachnos, the really bad ones are the Night Widows and the Tarantula Mistresses.

Why Psionic Assault doesn't have some sort of Buildup/Aim Power I'll never fathom. If I had to guess it would be due to Drain Psyche.

I'm hoping Psionic Dart and Mental Blast get damage upgrages. Relative to the other Dom secondaries and the blaster versions.

Psychic Scream, Psionic Lance, and TK thrust probably aren't going to change too much except as a result of the overall boost in damage.

Subdue is a likely choice for any boosts in regards to the nerfage of PSW. Make it the Single Target Heavy-hitter of the set, but not as uber as the tier 9 assault powers are.

If you wanted to inject some "science" into the Steampunk tech of Nemesis, keep in mind the water used is probably "Heavy Water". Which is deuterium or protium, depending on the isotope. So essentially what he has is Fusion-technology without the semi-conductor revolution. Since the water itself is the powersource, you don't need batteries to store that power.

Also it's very strongly implied in the CoH in-game cannon that the Sky Raiders are a front for Nemesis. So Nemesis is capable of making modern, high-tech looking equipment, he just only does so when he doesn't want something traced back to him.

The biggest problem with Nemesis is he's protrayed and All-knowing and all-powerful yet never succeeds in his plans due to the heroes. Even then supposedly all they stopped was a distraction from the real goal. Etc. Etc.

The best way to deal with it would be to take the parts of the canon that work and dump the parts that make no sense. Which according to Venture you can't really do.

When I worked on my arc I had issue with the mission creator when the souvenir was more that 1000 characters. I ended up going in the file and putting the HTML br, manually. If it's a wall of text it could be a bug.

Couple ideas spring to mind:

The "Jean Grey" approach: You super-hero name is your real name. To that end find out common Bosnian first and last names.

The "Wild Bill" appproach: Some sort of descriptive adjective combined with your characters first and/or last name. Other variation on this are Occupation Name.

The "foreign language" approach: Similar to what The_Player suggested. Translate what you want the name to be in English to the character's native language.

Also it tends to help if you know you want to have your character's name as one word or two. You might be able to get away with a hypenated name if you idea is already taken. Generally Two-word hero names seem to be more viable.

The important thing to ask yourself is "Does this name reminds me of my character? If it doesn't then it's too generic for what your concept is."

At this point I'd be really happy if we could just Super Speed over water instead of through it.

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For my own Reference:

Are there any City of Heroes/Villains arc that avoid JABOSTH, preferrably avoiding the idiot ball?

Since the protagonists of the story are the Player Characters which are effectively chipers, the only "development" that can really be done is with the NPC characters.

Most of the City of H/V Story arcs seem more like backstories to the various factions and areas in the game.

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Vernon Von Grun springs to mind. He's a high level villain contact. I've noticed that CoH arcs tend to be more about the villain group while CoV arcs tend to be more about the contact him/herself.

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Forget about Vernon, it's almost like mentoring Doctor Horrible.

Although a common gripe villain-side is often "You're just a hired thug/lackey for all of your contacts because all you're doing it putting their agenda forward."

For my own Reference:

Are there any City of Heroes/Villains arc that avoid JABOSTH, preferrably avoiding the idiot ball?

Since the protagonists of the story are the Player Characters which are effectively chipers, the only "development" that can really be done is with the NPC characters.

Most of the City of H/V Story arcs seem more like backstories to the various factions and areas in the game.

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Arc #38226 "If You Teach a Man to Make a Fish"
tl;dr: 2 stars. Offenses: borderline Wall Banger

The UN's GENE program attempts to clone Mako...evidently to correct the world's shortage of psychopathic amphibian killing machines.

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"I will make Nature's most perfect killing machine into a robot for no apparent reason" - Sealab 2021

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As a security measure we limit individual online serial code purchases. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please try again later. If you have further questions please visit this Support Center article Online Code Purchase Limits.

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Something like this might have been useful before my card got double-tapped after the pages kept crashing.

I'm not terribly worried for serveral reasons:

1) Niviene said they were looking into the double-tapping issue, and I'll trust that until I have reason not to.

2) At this point in my life I don't need that $10 to prevent an overdraft like I would in my younger, jobless days.

3) If all else fails I'll call the Credit card company and tell them to kill the second charge at my end.

What if you didn't capitalize the "G" in gambit? Would it still get banned?

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Re: Badges, and why they don't count

This Mission Architect primary purpose is for telling stories. We do not want people to spend days making a great story only to find it shuffled into a list of missions with titles like "Get your Rikti Monkey badge here", "10 badges in 5 minutes", "Down on the AV Farm", etc. etc.

That said there are a lot of badges available to earn in Mission Architect. A good chunk of them are only in "test mode", so if you REALLY just want to farm those badges, you don't need to publish the mission (actually you CAN'T publish the mission) in order to earn it.


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Okay that's fair. That being the case can you and/or Synapse look into some of the outstanding badging issues?

The big one I can think of is the glitchy distinction between Marcone and Family Bosses. Although it would be really nice if Paragon Protectors spawned in Nerva.

Server: Virtue
Zone: Pocket D/Cap Au Diable
Character name: Eldorion Startalon/Psyclosarin
Time: 9PM Eastern US time
Location: At the tailor/facemaker
Mission: NA
Mission Contact: Tailor interface
Bug Description:

Loaded costumes are not working. I save a costume, and when I load it back onto the same character in a different slot the changes refuse to take however I'm charged infamy or a tailor token for the changes.

Additionally, I am being charged for non-changes in my costume and I am unable to reset them to prevent charging me for them.

Re: the SG base teleport accolade power.

I'd request changing it from time to charge per use. More often than not I end up buring all of my time before I have a chance to use it.

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What I have going on for the magic set; that is done and complete, is a compromise. I wouldn’t call it a robe per say, it’s more like a cloak of sorts. I don’t know when marketing is going to release pics and crap, but I think that you guys will like what I did.

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Cloaks are good. I've been using a sleeveless Black Trenchcoat as a cloak and it only works because the character's a technomage so he looks very Techie anyways.

As much as I like seeing the whole, combined sets, I only use a piece here and there amongst all of my alta.

I was happily supprised by the Valk pack. At first, it looked very "High tech" rather than "Fantasy". However my most "Fantasy"-based character is gettting the most milage out of it.

My short list of "Global Bugs"

Server: Virtue
Zone: ALL
Character name: ALL
Time: Persistant
Location: ALL
Mission: N/A
Mission Contact: N/A

The above is true for all bugs I'm about to list.

Bug Description: Color Chat Baloons are broken. When using the F7 ready command I see Web HTML color scripts as part of the text. My own chat baloons appear as a light grey with black text regardless to what I actually set it too. Also the color does not work in regards to other players chat baloons.

Bug Description: In a base when placing wall items only two walls allow vertical movement.

Bug Desciption: Private messages are breaking. Usually they display the last several letter of the character sending the message. Can use /r but not backspace.

These are probably know issues but they are the most visible glitches since the I13 update.

Objective:

Pocket D and Granville Beacons still show as "Destroyed" (Known issue)

Certain walls do not allow vertical movement. The workaround is to use a wall that does and then slide horizontally to the correct wall.

Subjective:

Ideas for the new base creator engine:

Being able to lock certain axis of movement when placing items.

Having items not strictly limited to the blue bounding box. It's much easier to create flat surfaces using desks. Before there was always a small gap on the "front".

It would be nice to have everything with a flat surface to have the ability to stack objects on it without having to place desks inside said object.

The biggest concern is going to be whatever the raid pathing rules end up being. As they were it limited our abilitiy to make rooms, to reinstate as they were would mean loosing a lot of creative ideas.

As for base salvage: Was removing component salvage really necessary? Anyone who takes the time to mess around with component salvage should know what they are doing with it in regards to base items and empowerments. All that had to be done was revamp the recipes in the Empowerment station and invention table.

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Poster: MadScientist
Q: Have you considered simply adding 1 Merit per AV?

A: Yes, Archvillains and Monsters are just too easily farmed. There are missions where they are very easily ghosted to and defeated.

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What about adjust the reward of reward of the story arc and giving a team award of a merit to the team for defeating the AV?

You don't want merits to be farmed, that's fine. You've made them non-transferrable to prevent that. I could even see the risk of having people Ghost the AV mish to do it. The problem is weighed against casual teaming as in no one will want to bother doing insanely hard AV mishes when they can grind Freak Paper/Radio mishes all day.

So if get a Mac, download the client, and sign up for the Closed Beta and log in do I get the "Goodie pack" or is this something that will be sold with actual Mac software when it's released (and released as a SuperBooster on the Website)?

Also is the Closed Beta for Macs the same as the current I13 closed beta? (Or will it be moot by that point?)

I don't mind paying another $10 for something this useful, but if I don't have to wait for the "PC equality"-release I'd hunt down a Mac to use.

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Roger Lighthouse.

*drags back to topic*

Anyway I found it an good read about the process but especially interesting in the sidebar of 'similar news'

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/47128
Artist David Nakayama Joins CoX Team

Was this announced here, and I just missed it ?

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We announced that David was joining the CoH Dev Team as a concept artist at Hero-Con. David's such an all around great guy and we're all very excited about him joining the team.

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I love David's art style! I thought his work in the City of Heroes comics was one of the high points. I was a little let down when he was relagated to just doing the covers.