Sapphire7

This was unfortunately not my experience. My main character is named BubbleYumm. She is literally minimum height (both in height and in legs slider), she is a FF/Psy defender, and her (shortened) biography is that she's "A piece of bubble gum that was tracked into a lab on the bottom of a scientist's shoe; exposure to a mysterious lab-ray gave her sentience, then she melded with a nearby semi-sentient robot." I had one costume on her that was a Dr. Doom tribute costume. Keep in mind she's under 4 feet tall, female, has a unique back-story, and her powers have nothing to do with Doom's. And yet someone reported that costume, and that costume got generic'd. (Not her other costume slots.) But then the GM also went through the rest of my account, on all other servers, and generic'd all of the tribute toons I'd made. I had one server at the time where I would make toons and never play them, but I just wanted to see how well I could recreate the costumes. They all got generic'd. If the GMs had looked at the amount of time spent on each of those characters, they'd have seen that it was literally only the 30 seconds to log back out after I created the character. Now that we can save costumes separately, I can fiddle to my heart's content - but Yumm's Doom tribute costume should not have been generic'd in my opinion.

This has been my experience too. In fact, *every* time I try to access the market, my computer locks up for at least 30 seconds, if not longer, and literally half the time I crash. It's absurd.

Agreed. Valkyrie wings on female models, anybody? I mean, just the wings, when the character is just standing there, all the feathers look like they're stabbing the character in the back and legs. That's not only "okay for release", but "okay for release in a product that people are going to pay $10 extra for"? Granted, I want clipping issues fixed (I think all my toons' elbows poke out of "Witch Tight Gloves"), but using that as their sole reason for not allowing certain costume combos just doesn't fly with me. They allow so much of it to slip through, why is THIS one or THAT one forbidden?

Well first, then let's not add a dozen shades of red. But can we have pewter? Khaki? Actually I have over the years encountered several colors that I consider fairly standard, that just don't exist for players, and I can't imagine why. (See next.)

You can still do this, the toon just can't be Caucasian. There are several shades of other colors that you can match both skin tone and costume color to effectively make a nude character. So, what, being naked is okay as long as you're not white?

(EDIT) I should state that I adore this game, and despite there being some improvements I'd like to see made, these issues do not threaten my overall dedication to the game. I'm spending fewer hours in-game now than I was five years ago (wait, almost six now, geeze!) because of real-life issues, but all of these bugs and QOL issues in this thread and every other, will not keep me from the game. They're "nice to have" for me, but they're not game-breaking, they don't utterly ruin my enjoyment. Just... for perspective. :]

Well, we all step outside of our natural alignment from time to time, I think. Sometimes life is more complex than even nine alignments can contain. Then again, it seems to be a purely human trait to need to classify everything into nice, neat categories. I tend to think of life as more of a spectrum, and we all fall somewhere in it.

I still think Batman is Neutral Good most of the time. ^_^

I believe that's incorrect. Chaotic means you follow NO set of rules. A Chaotic Good person is still willing to kill or do whatever they deem necessary for whatever cause they find Good.

And I am also referring to D&D.

When I was in High School I was Lawful Good, though I considered myself Chaotic Good. Once I grew up I realized that I had indeed been Lawful. I have since moved to True Neutral. I also have a much clearer understanding of the alignment system, having gone through and classified most of the people who have been important in my life. My ex husband is *definitely* Chaotic Evil. My current partner is Chaotic Good, though he's *really* close to the Neutral Good line. And as far as Good not wanting to kill? Totally wrong. My partner has extensive hand to hand combat training and REALLY REALLY REALLY wants a reason to use it to rip someone's head off. He's just close enough to Neutral Good to have a code that he won't kill anyone who didn't ask for it. (And going to jail would really crimp his style. :P)

I think I'd put Batman as Neutral Good. While I agree that Lawful does not necessarily mean that a person obeys The Law Of The Land, I think if someone simply follows their own code that really makes them Neutral (on the Lawful - Chaotic spectrum). Whereas, to follow with the first examples I gave, Will and Elizabeth from PotC are willing to lie, cheat, steal, kill, and do whatever else they deem necessary in order to achieve what they see as the morally correct end. Because Batman has *some* kind of code, which does not fall in line with The Law Of The Land, I place him more at Neutral.

I too have my own code. I protect my Pack. My Pack includes my family and my close friends. If I saw a child in the street and a car was approaching, I may call out to warn the kid, but I definitely would NOT jump in the road to save the kid. (A dog? Yeah probably, but I am a dog person, and I don't really like kids. A cat? Nope, I *really* don't like cats.) If someone in my Pack was in danger, I would sacrifice myself to save them. I would never kill someone out of anger, because that's just wrong. No matter how much I dislike someone, I would never kill them, even if the opportunity arose and I was guaranteed to not get in trouble for it. (Unless we're talking about performing executions for people who have already stood trial, I'm fine with that.) But in self defense? I could kill someone in under ten seconds flat, with my bare hands, and feel absolutely no remorse. I hold no special regard for the law, the only reason I obey some laws is because the chances of getting caught (and the punishment for being caught) outweigh the benefit of disobedience.

I have a low risk tolerance, so I measure the benefit against the risk of getting caught (or something going wrong) and the punishment (or consequence) of being caught (or something going wrong).

Example: I drive 5-10mph over the speed limit because the chances of getting pulled over are small (it's Florida, everyone speeds), and the punishment isn't that great. I don't really want to spend the money on the ticket and taking the class, but generally you can get away with 5-10 over the limit with no problem.

However, if I pull up to a light and I need to turn right, but there's a long line of cars ahead of me and I'd have to pull off the road to get up there and turn? I'll just wait for the light. The benefit is saving, at most, a couple of minutes. The chances of running over something that will damage my car are fairly high, and the cost of repairing said damage is also fairly high. Ergo, not enough benefit for the risk.

That's how I feel about most laws. I don't hurt people, I don't infringe on other peoples' rights, so I do have a moral standard... but when it comes to things that only affect me, I only obey the law when I feel it's more prudent than disobeying the law.

Hence, True Neutral.

Chaotic Neutral would throw caution to the wind and disobey the law whenever they felt the whim.

I've added NR to my bind file, and I'm slowly binding it onto all of my toons as I log them in. When i16 came out I logged in each of my 90+ toons (I have 97 now, not sure how many I had at the time), every single one of them, to get them all up to date. I updated the window arrangement and scaling, the bind file, made sure their chat bubble was the right color, enabled email from friends only, fix global channel colors (much to the annoyance of everyone in my globals) etc etc. I did NOT think to fix the Hide/Show GUI on every toon, I wish I'd thought to do that. Oh well. So anyway my point was - it took me three or four weeks to get it done on everyone. I'm NOT going to go through it again.. but eventually each of my toons will have NR.

It doesn't even fit the theme on anyone, it's just a good utility power. I have sprint bound to Numpad1, so NR is going on ctrl+numpad1. (I use the number pad for movement.) So it's very easy for me to turn NR on and off, very convenient when I need a little burst of speed, as you said: in missions, etc. And as much as people are complaining about the ready-stance, and as much as I personally don't care for it, I am actually very thankful for it. I *never* forget to turn off Ninja Run, because it's SO OBVIOUS that it's on. I frequently forget to turn off sprint, and then wonder why I have no endurance. NR is actually helping me to remember to turn off sprint in combat, too.

I have a couple of perma-hover toons too. ^_^ (Or, yanno, fly. But always off the ground.) And I've never really cared for Air Sup either. I realize it's pretty good for a pool-based attack power, but ... eh. I'd really rather just have hover.

Hover also lets me position myself for really good camera angles when I'm filming for AMVs. Speaking of which I still haven't started on my October Double XP Weekend AMV. Grrr, gotta carve out time for that!

Got it! Kudos for finding the bug.. and nuts that it's not the reason for NR being so wonky. -_-

For starters, I take fly on a lot of my toons for theme. In fact, I take Fly or Super Jump on all of my toons (or no travel power at all on some).. I *never* take Super Speed or Teleport. I've tried both, I hate both. So in the end, it's an opinion.

Second, fly is the slowest because it's also the *safest*. You can, at level 14, fly the to the ceiling of Nerva or Peregrine and safely get from one end to the other with ZERO PERCENT risk of being hit. The slower speed is to compensate for the lack of risk.

Finally, I find slotted fly (I almost never slot a given attribute with more than two IOs, *very rarely* will I even put three..) to be quite fast enough. I enjoy the fact that both Fly and Super Jump (with the appropriate key-bind) allows me to begin traveling in a direction and then use my hands to type to my team. One of the things I vehemently hate about SS and TP are that you can't do ANYTHING else while trying to travel. I hate it with a passion, I hate both of those powers because of it.

So I think Fly is just fine as it is. If you don't like it, don't take it. If you like the Raptor Pack better, go with that. (I use the Raptor Pack, and I like the name for what should be a fairly obvious reason, but I don't much like the graphic. I enjoy it on my Main/Badger, who has a Sky Raider costume, but honestly I like the Zero-G graphic better. And I'd rather just have a travel power.)

I am also one of those crazy people who *can* skip Combat Jumping/Hover, but doesn't, because I've had to take them for so long that I've grown fond of the +DEF, and usually play toons that need the Defense boost anyway, and love the little extra even on toons who don't need it. So basically, I know I feel differently about a lot of things than a lot of people.

You made me LOL. <3 <3

It's a confirmed bug that if you have Slow-Set IOs in your build, it affects you Walk speed. I'm guessing it's the same for Ninja Run. I'm not sure if it has been sorted out internally yet, but someone brought it up and BaBs said "Oh yeah, great find!"

1. Jack isn't a hero*. He's a protagonist to be sure, but he's not a hero.
2. Ninja aren't heroes either. In fact, Ninja generally had no code of honor. From wiki:

Also doesn't sound very heroic. Not that I'm advocating a Jack Sparrow -run power, but.. just sayin'. ;]

* Generally, heroes act for the greater good, or for some moral motivation. Jack acts for "what's good for me?". Not that there's anything wrong with that. Jack is Chaotic Neutral. I'm True Neutral, so I empathize most with his character in the stories. Elizabeth and Will are Lawful Good to start, and end up Chaotic Good. Barbosa is Chaotic Evil with many Chaotic Neutral tendencies. (The fact that he shot a member of his own crew to test if the curse had been lifted, the fact that he purposely threatened with intent to distress, and then attempted to kill Elizabeth, his tendency to betray his own word.. these are all very CE traits. I'm not saying I don't like him, but he's definitely CE.)

I already have a costume saved and ready to go, which would look even better with a quiver. She's not an archer... but since when do we have to use costume parts for their original purpose? I've made a cow's snout out of a gas mask. I use the jester masks as bird beaks all the time. I have a Widow themed character (not a VEAT, though) who uses the tux tails (I stole the idea). I can't wait for quivers.. *sly grin* bwaAHAHhAhAH!

Seconded!! It's like pokemon, I gotta have it all! xD

Yeah I was kinda wondering if that was a nod too. Here's hoping!

On the up-side, there are rumors that this is just the "first round" of origin based packs, and we can look forward to a Natural Booster II! *waggles eyebrows*

Link: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=114

Emphasis mine. (I know it's hard to scroll through hundreds of posts to find the dozens of times this has been answered but really.. Community tracker anyone?)

ABC had already clarified that his statement ('how about you fix the existing bugs before asking me to spend more money'), was directed at Paragon Studios as a whole, not BaBs in particular. Hence my (rather lengthy) reply about Paragon's business model, and whether or not there's any reason to change it. What they're doing now seems to be working rather well. In fact, having worked at several software/hardware companies, I can attest that releasing software with a list of known bugs (which will grow with heretofore unknown bugs) which will be fixed later.. is an extremely common practice*. Getting software out the door brings in money, as long as the software functions. As long as the bugs don't harm actual functionality, they can be addressed by the appropriate team later.

Also, I find that cutting back hours is a crappy practice, and I'm glad Paragon hasn't done so (or at least, that we've heard of). *Especially* since it's the new content that keeps bringing in the dollars, and especially because the bug team has been doing fairly well at finding and fixing bugs.

So poor arguments aside, the question is "Should Paragon Studios change their business model/resource allocation?" - and since they seem to be doing fairly well, I'd hazard the answer as a "No."

*To be fair, not all companies do this. But it's common.

Due to credit card fraud protection issues, I believe you can only use a given credit card to make one purchase per month. Or something to that effect.

Probably because he's defending his stance that they shouldn't be releasing new content until all bugs are fixed. In fairness, he is trying to support his view. In reality, he needs a little perspective.

I don't know about a beast-run, but I am VERY hopeful for animal heads/tails/other bits from the Mutant pack. *crosses fingers and toes*

Very true. Or not just working in a way we don't like: sometimes a power doesn't seem to be working correctly, and seems to be broken in the players' favor.. and yet it's working as designed. There are several powers that I thought were bugged because they seemed "too good" or to be working better than their description text implied.. but they are indeed working exactly as intended.

My Crab Spider is ... level 10 or less, so I have no idea about any costume bugs and whether or not anything is working properly. Sorry I can't be of any help there.

How are you sure they haven't been fixed because they're too busy creating new content? Or is it possible that they haven't been able to reproduce the error, and have to continue collecting data until they find the bug? Or because they can't figure out yet what's causing it? Keep in mind there's more to fixing bugs than just poking the code- they have to find them first.

Once again, all we're saying is that your anger is misdirected. Dislike the bugs, but new content has nothing to do with how quickly bugs get fixed (or not). The global chat channel color bug drove me *INSANE*. For months I rabidly read every update and patch in the hopes that they'd fixed it.. to no avail. When they *finally* fixed it, I was SO HAPPY! Would that fix have come any sooner if they hadn't released any new content in the [years?] between introducing the ability to color global channels, and actually making it STICK? Nope. So I never complained about the new content. I knew they'd find it eventually, and fix it, and they did.

Think of it this way: The Devs work on content that I don't care about. I don't like PvP, I never have, and I never will. Do I begrudge them the time to work on PvP? Not at all, because time spent improving PvP will make the game more enjoyable for people who like PvP, thus improving the game overall. Do I care about base raids? Nope, another form of PvP! Do I want to get them working? Yes, because so many people want them to work. Do I care about Task Forces being excluded from the Reputation system until they can figure out how to disable the -1 setting? Not really, I always play TFs on "heroic" anyway. But again, I want them to fix that because I know people who want to do really hard TFs.

If you do not like or otherwise do not care about new content, that's fine. If you vehemently want bugs fixed, that's great. But the two have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Not one iota. We cannot be any more clear about that: None of the new content is causing the delay of the bug fixes that are annoying you. It's like being angry at your dog for driving up the price of tea in China. One has absolutely NOTHING to do with the other.

Well, true. I was referring specifically to the new clipping issues, texture problems, etc. Bugs related to the pack itself.. which you are correct, may pop up outside the scope of animation or costumes.

Right. And then even if they got 100% of every single bug fixed.. the moment they released new content a certain percentage of those bugs would become un-fixed, and there would be an introduction of totally new bugs that they'd never seen before. The game will never be 100% bug free, which is why it's ridiculous to demand that all the bugs be addressed before new content is developed.

I mean, just look at the positive reception the booster packs get. Some people like certain boosters better than others, but in all they seem to do very well. Which is a great revenue stream for Paragon Studios - there's simply *no* reason *not* to take advantage of it.

You know, I *thought* I had read something to that effect, but I couldn't for the life of me remember where, so I was more apt to assume I'd dreamed it. Thanks for confirming. :]

This is the second time I've heard someone refer to "Walk" as the reason for the emergency maintenance. Until a redname confirms, I'm extremely skeptical that the introduction of a new non-combat power broke the servers. Also, the game was only "unplayable" for a couple of hours, since they rolled back to a previous build. When they *do* introduce bugs that literally break the game, they get them fixed right away, or remove the patch until they can make it playable. I also doubt the booster pack is contributing to the lag, unless it's due to the larger number of people online. In which case it's not a bug, and the pack is doing what it was meant to do: increase revenue for the company, and get more people in the game.

Besides, your original statement is still utterly missing the point. The people who work on the booster packs, i.e. the animation and costume design departments, do not have anything to do with fixing bugs. The people responsible for fixing bugs are continuing to work on fixing bugs. If they stopped releasing new content the bugs wouldn't get fixed any faster, because the people working on the new content can't just go over to the bug fixing department and start poking at the code. If you know of any COSTUME or ANIMATION related bugs, by all means feel free to post those in the appropriate threads so they can be addressed. But complaining that new content has been released while a totally different department is still working on bugs?

Look, I understand the idea behind making the product shine before releasing new content, I really do. For several issues I had sworn up and down that I didn't care if [the next issue] introduced NO new content at all, and was just a whole bunch of bug fixes. I would be fine with that. However, that's a horrible business model. City has been around for over five years now, and their productivity and profitability has only improved over time. One must assume that they know what they're doing.

I understand that YOU think their business model is backwards. Do YOU have a successful MMO business with over 100k subscribers and five years of history? Do you own any business at all? Is there any reason that the executive staff of Paragon Studios should abandon their current business model and hire you as a consultant? Or are you possibly just angry at something that has nothing to do with what's actually causing your anger?

I want bugs to be fixed too. Ending the booster pack program and ceasing the construction of any new content will not help us get bugs fixed any faster. That's the point people are trying to get across. Your anger is simply misdirected.

Are the other booster packs unlockable in AE? Or just the veteran costume pieces?

The only change I made to your statement is to highlight your own words. "core of the house will be unusable". So tell me, is the core of the game unusable? Do we have all kinds of shiny pretties that we can't play with because the rest of the game is broken? No. Your analogy fails because with termites you assume the entire house is infested and about to come down on itself. The bugs in City are more like finding ants in your sugar. It's annoying, it's disappointing, but it's not going to cause the ruination of your entire abode.

Unless you think the current bugs do make the game unplayable, then by all means stop playing. There are over a hundred thousand of us who think the game is perfectly playable, and will continue to enjoy the game without you.

(Edit) And before anyone says something about bugs building on bugs until they eventually break the game... how about we wait until stuff actually happens before we get upset about it? Or maybe wait until there's a hint that it may actually happen, before we start worrying about it? Tell you what: You're going to die someday, it's unavoidable.. do you spend your days worrying and complaining about that too? Or do you actually live the life you have and enjoy it while you've got it?

Weird, I'm using firefox and have no issues displaying the whole thread. O_o