Second Measure

Operational answer on one of these: regarding the exploration badge lore, over the last few years that became kind of a palate cleanser task we gave a few people to let them have some fun. Tim Sweeney and Chris H wrote most of them and I believe Melissa as well, maybe Paul G wrote a few... IIRC the creative direction was explicitly to make the game world feel richer than the core lore allowed.

Here's my favorite Sean McCann story. Joe (Hero 1) had been mentoring McSean (and wow, how awesome of a mentoring experience is that?), and to help with that we removed a panel from the cube wall between them so they could talk at will. Well, Hero 1 got the chance to move to another project, and eventually he came to me and said that while he loved working with Sean, he needed to focus on his work, and did I have any advice on how to get Sean some more independence. I said I would take care of it, so I went and found the missing cube panel, walked into Joe's cube, looked Sean in the eye through the wall and said, "I'm cutting the apron strings, McSean" and put the panel in place. I'll never forget the look on his face (or Joe's chuckle).

I will of course also never forget the great writing and totally fearless way Sean jumped into any design challenge. He made that engine do so many things we were convinced it could never do. He found so many ways to break the game that we had trouble keeping up, but I was determined to make sure we tried to keep up because he could make that gray lumbering beast of an engine sing with every "one little request".

You sure didn't need the apron strings any more, then. Go be amazing some more, Sean.

Some of my fondest game studio life memories ever, Melissa, are sitting in your cube and doing jigsaw puzzles with you while we plan out what to do next and vent steam. Not to mention the way I felt when you and Matt and I played off each other in panels at conventions, we were in the zone and I felt great, even if Brian was shaking his head at our shenanigans. You're a class act, through and through.

Keets, it's been an honor every day. If I didn't have a little sister you'd be the little sister I never had.

Gonna miss it, man, let's do it again.

$5 or:

Thanks, everyone. We spent lunch reading the forums and reminiscing. I would like to say that it is a testament to the team that the mood in the office today was celebratory of our successes and camaraderie and not sad or angry.

Thanks, everyone. It has been an honor to be associated with one of my favorite all time games for the last few years, doubly an honor to get to develop that game for this great community, and triply an honor to work with such an amazing team. Fortunately, I get to keep on working at this fantastic studio, and on a project that is very very exciting. It will be some time before we can share anything about our plans, but I can't wait for the day.

I hope to still make it to the next Player Summit, I have made some good friends in this community and love seeing you all when I can, I'll just have to wear a shirt saying "Don't ask".

I've had the pleasure of working with Melissa and Matt for a while now, I'm sure they are going to continue to do great things now that I am out of their hair.

At the moment, we are not developing any game content such as missions or task forces that will not be free to subscribers. We expect City of Heroes Freedom to remain live for many more years, and I can't promise we will never try this out, but for the foreseeable future we are focused on the Paragon Market being stocked with a variety of ways to augment, improve, or add variety to your gameplay experience rather than the gameplay itself. In fact, we originally considered the potential of making the Signature Stories as paid content, but we felt in the end that it was better to continue to provide the core gameplay experience you always have enjoyed as part of your subscription.

As always, the Paragon Points that come with your VIP subscription serve to give you access to the Market items that best suit your own playstyle.

Tomorrow night's costume contest theme is Apocalyptic Survivor. I wanted to give a little background on the theme of this contest, so you can get a sense of where it is coming from.

My first day in the game I spent well over an hour in the costume creator, and finally came up with a costume I was really proud of. I finally logged into the tutorial and landed smack next to someone in a much better costume, depicting someone who had survived a nuclear apocalypse. I immediately logged out and tried to replicate that costume, but I couldn't get it quite right. In fact, I have spent years trying to get that costume to look right off and on, but have never gotten it to look as good.

While the costume itself was compelling, and told a story at a glance, the Apocalyptic Survivor theme is really compelling, too. Super-powered characters are the ultimate in survivors, and you don't have to be a tank to be capable of survival against all odds: it is equally impressive to survive by your wits or by main force or by enlisting the aid of others. And you certainly don't have to be a heroic survivor, fiction is full of evil -- or at least self-interested --survivors as well.

And of course not all apocalypses are nuclear. Apocalyptic events can come in many forms, from nuclear incidents to magical rips in the dimensional fabric to good old fashioned conventional warfare.

We look forward to seeing your best costume-crafting on display tomorrow night, Thursday, September 15th, at 5:00 PM PDT (8:00 Eastern) on the Exalted Server in Pocket D. We'll be judging the costumes aesthetically, but also whether they tell a story.

Content is king, as they say, and at Paragon Studios we have long embraced that philosophy. One of the most significant factors in City of Heroes’ seven years of success is in providing free Issue releases for our subscribers, and we remain committed to this philosophy for the future. Over the last 20 Issues we have added missions, zones, powers, enemies, map sets, huge features and gameplay systems, world-changing storylines, and a wealth of truly memorable characters. In Issue 21 and beyond we will continue to expand on all of these great features, as well as make surprising makeovers of some of our older content.

As a team, we have learned a lot from all the work we have done to develop Going Rogue, City of Heroes Freedom, and all of our other updates. That has paid off by increasing our ability to make great content and stick to an ambitious schedule. Over the last couple of years we have released not just our regular Issues, but also a number of other updates. Over the rest of this year we’ll be adding the fantastic new “Haunted Mansion” event to Halloween, two new Incarnate Trials, and some great updates to the Winter Event, as well.

In the future, we want to take advantage of this experience to give you more regular updates than we’ve provided in the past. We are working hard to improve the predictability and frequency of our Issues and other content. We’ll be much more focused in the content we provide with every issue, and by increasing the frequency of our releases, we will be giving you more great content in a year than we have before.

In the era of City of Heroes Freedom, an Issue is also going to include more than just the things that come out on release day. For starters, every month we will be releasing a new Signature Story. These are free for our VIP players, and they will give you more reasons to log in and play the game: not just every month to play the new Story Arc, but also to get the increased weekly rewards from the Signature Stories. Once a week you will be able to choose an Alignment Merit (if you are a Hero or Villain), quadruple Reward Merits, an Astral Merit (if your character is level 50), or ten Incarnate Threads (again if you are level 50). Of course, you can run the Signature Stories more than once a week for their normal levels of rewards, and every one of your characters can get their own rewards by running the Signature Stories alone or with a team.

In addition, every week there will also be something new in the Paragon Market. Some weeks this will be an item like a costume piece or an emote, and other weeks we will release a new power set or an entire costume set. As a VIP player, you will have 400 points a month, or even more when you have reached the top tier of the Paragon Rewards Program. These points give you the freedom to customize what an Issue means to you by letting you choose from the great items found in the Paragon Market. The Market isn’t changing our commitment to Issue releases, it’s expanding on it.

We embarked on the road to City of Heroes Freedom with the express purpose of giving you more value for your subscription and more reasons to play City of Heroes with your friends, old and new. Issues are still a huge part of that. Our current planning sessions are covering content for the next couple of years, and we are excited about continuing to share great new things with you as they take shape in the game.

Hi folks. Between Comic Con, live publishes, beta publishes, preparing for PAX Prime, lots of things to do to ensure Freedom is as awesome as we can make it, and kicking off Issue 22 development internally, I did not have the time I normally have to work on a worthy producer’s letter in July. Rather than do something in a rush, we all felt that it was better to put the effort into the producer’s letter for August; I don’t want to treat these as just “get something out,” but rather take the time to give you valuable insight into development here at Paragon Studios, and from time to time my schedule may get really tight.

I do want you to know we have a whole mountain of other information we’ll be putting out this month and next about all the great features of City of Heroes Freedom and Issue 21: Convergence, so we’ll for sure be keeping you guys well-informed.

Hey folks, there have been a lot of questions over the last few days, and one of the points we wanted to clarify is what happens to your character slots if you stop being a VIP.

Free players get two Global Character Slot Tokens; they can use these tokens to unlock two slots *total* on any server(s) they wish except the VIP server (not two per server). Premium players/former VIP players will have all of their character slots locked, then will get the same two free Global Character Slot Tokens, of course, plus one Global Character Slot Token for every twelve months they have been subscribed to City of Heroes (these were formerly awarded by the Veteran Rewards program). In addition, if someone purchased Going Rogue before the launch of City of Heroes Freedom, they will get two free Global Character Slot Tokens to represent the two free character slots that came with Going Rogue. Plus, as a Premium player you will get Global Character Slot Tokens in exchange for any and all character slots you have purchased in addition to these.
You will then be able to use these tokens to unlock existing characters or empty slots where you can make new characters.




So for example, if you have been a subscriber for three years, purchased Going Rogue, never bought a single extra character slot, and choose to stop paying your subscription, you will have:

• Two Global Character Slot Tokens free to any non-VIP player
• Plus three Global Character Slot Tokens for three years of subscription
• Plus two Global Character Slot Tokens from Going Rogue
• For a total of seven Global Character Slot Tokens

In addition, as a non-VIP player you will be able to purchase more character slots from the in-game store for your account.

You will retain all of these slots for your account, no matter how many times your VIP status changes back and forth between VIP and Premium.

Of course, if you are a VIP, you will get twelve free slots on every server, instead of two slots total. Plus you will get one free Global Character Slot Token per twelve months of subscription time, any slots you have purchased, and if you have purchased Going Rogue prior to the launch of City of Heroes Freedom, you will also get the two free slots that came with Going Rogue. (After the launch of Freedom, Going Rogue will no longer come with these two free slots.)

From the beginning, our primary goal has always been to add more value for our subscribers. All of you who have been playing our game for any part of the past seven years are the cornerstone of our success, and we have always wanted to devote our resources to ensuring that you were not just treated well, but treated like VIPs. City of Heroes Freedom will indeed draw loads of new players in and give everyone alternate ways to experience the game, but we know that the relationship we have with our loyal community is the most important aspect of our game. We want new and experienced players alike to immediately see how much value there is in a VIP subscription to City of Heroes Freedom. We want to deliver more content, new features, and even better rewards for your loyalty, and yes, to bring in more people to play your favorite super-powered MMO.

We've spent nearly a year adapting our game to make City of Heroes Freedom a compelling and rewarding experience for new players and veterans alike. To make that happen, we had to first adapt the way we develop the game and the way we work as a team. We divided up into strike teams -- smaller teams within the bigger City of Heroes team -- each focused on a different area of the game. We needed to make new issues and support the live environment, develop new ways to reward our veteran players' loyalty, make a great early gameplay experience to engage new players and give new life to the lower level content, develop new ways to deliver content to you in the game, and we also needed people to provide great support to the rest of the strike teams. People took on new responsibilities, some moving into strike team leadership roles, others taking on new challenges. And we started to develop features and content sometimes months before it was supposed to be released, always with an eye to making great content efficiently. At one point we were simultaneously working on Issues 19, 20, and 21 and supporting Issue 18.

The last year has been a combination of hard work and rewarding experiences. Going Rogue set the stage for us by bringing a fantastic team together and giving us tools and systems for developing great new content more quickly and making the game look better than ever before. Since then, the strike teams have released two great issues (as well as mid-issue updates), but more importantly have developed a ton of compelling content for Issue 21 and the future. And the best part has been how excited everyone here at Paragon Studios has been about how much value we can add to City of Heroes Freedom. We are committed to this model of development and delivering content to new and longtime friends alike. We will continue to deliver great free issues for our subscribers and lots of other content besides, and we're working hard to ensure that we continue do this sustainably and reliably for the future.

Of course, we wanted to be sure we released a great issue with City of Heroes Freedom, and I believe Issue 21: Convergence is going to be our best issue ever. An all-new tutorial will introduce new players to Paragon City and the Rogue Isles like never before, and lets heroes and villains choose their archetype independently of their alignment. Atlas Park gets a tremendous visual makeover, and both Atlas Park and Mercy Island have all new mission content to give great reasons to create a character for veteran and new players alike. In addition, a new low level Sewers Trial for both heroes and villains lets you team up with other starting characters to take the fight below street level. First Ward is a visually stunning new zone that blends Primal Earth into Praetoria, tells the story of what happened to Magic under Cole's regime, and builds the Praetorian storyline towards its conclusion with some of our favorite missions ever. The Underground Incarnate Trial is the best endgame event yet. And it doesn't end there: there are new costumes, new powers, new characters, new villains, and a whole lot more.

As I noted in my first producer's letter this year, we are more dedicated than ever before to our amazing community. In fact, this is why we started the producer's letters, and this is the letter I have been looking forward to the most. We've got more people working to ensure not just that we add greater and greater value to your subscription, but also more people working to ensure we remain in constant communication. We remain committed to reaching out in game, on the forums, and via UStream, Facebook, Twitter, and whatever is next. We are adding new features in game and new processes on the team to ensure we can continue to support a great community and a make great game for you to play. In fact, we recently brought in some players to present City of Heroes Freedom in-person, and they gave us a lot of key feedback that has helped us ensure that we're meeting our goal of providing the best value for our players.

City of Heroes Freedom will help us build into an even stronger future, ensuring we can continue to innovate and grow for years to come. I am thrilled to lead a project that I so strongly believe in, and even more thrilled to work with a team that is dedicated to the project and dedicated to the future of City of Heroes. As a team, we're not just always up for something new, we're excited by a challenge, and we knew that adapting the game to fully embrace this opportunity was definitely going to be an exciting challenge. On behalf of everyone at Paragon Studios, we sincerely thank you for the time you have spent with us so far, and we remain, as always, devoted to giving you reasons to keep playing for many years to come. We look forward to hearing more from you all as we continue to release more information on this exciting time for us.

One of the most common questions we are asked as developers here at Paragon Studios is what existing content we are going to update in the future. A lot of our legacy content is still getting played regularly, and it’s content we love. Those early missions and zones and features set the tone for everything we still do today. But over recent years, we’ve also chosen to update some signature gameplay to demonstrate who we have become to new players, as well as reinforcing who we have been in the past to our old friends. The Positron Task Force revamped in Issue 17 is one great example. I remember very well the first time I ran the original Posi TF in 2004. I was excited to see so many villain groups and to travel around the world: I truly felt like I was part of an important and evolving story. But that Task Force also took what could be politely called a significant investment of time to play, and it was missing a few key features, like, say, the dam you were trying to protect (a dam we had added many issues after launch, in an issue that was itself centered around updated content, come to think of it). So we revisited the Positron Task Force and updated it, bringing it more in line with the changes we had made to the game over the ensuing years.

On the other hand, our commitment to ever expanding content is one of the things on which we pride ourselves, and that commitment has helped us achieve phenomenal success over the last seven years. In addition to the Positron revamp, Issue 17 had some of the most thrilling new missions we have added yet. Issue 19 updated the Monorails and Ferries and brought back the Calvin Scott Task Force due to popular demand, but it likewise had some great new features and missions. In any particular issue we may focus more on new content or on content updates. This is not an indication of a change in the big picture, but rather an indication of an opportunity we have identified to add more value to the game for new players and our existing Community alike.

The value we are adding to the game is in offering more viable choices for how players can spend their time in City of… When we updated Faultline, our goal was to ensure that there were good reasons to go to an underused zone, giving you more gameplay and more reasons to explore. When we updated the Positron TF, we wanted give new players and old players alike a more engaging challenge, increasing your ability to find a group for an important gameplay experience.

One of the drawbacks of updating existing content is that the original content is replaced. When we make these updates, we go to great lengths to avoid permanently removing things from the game. Fortunately, the Menders of Ouroboros give you the ability to experience some of this legacy content in its original state, or near to, and you can still play the old version of Story Arcs or Task and Strike Forces if you wish. When we must remove content, we try to bring it back when we have the technology or a great idea about how to make it work. In recent years we have revived the Cathedral of Pain and the Calvin Scott Task Force after long hiatuses. I certainly can’t promise that we won’t ever need to remove something from the game, but we give a great deal of consideration to the ways we can keep familiar favorites around when the time comes to make a change. In the end, if we can keep something around without sacrificing our ability to improve the game, we make every effort.

Last month I let you know that the next issue features a new zone, and I’m very excited about how it is coming together. We are also going to be making improvements to our early gameplay experience, starting with updates to some of the lower level zones. I wanted to share the specifics, however Black Pebble threatened my life if I divulged the details. That being said, we’ll have more information in the coming weeks!

Join in the Community discussion now!

For example, if you unlock the Frost Path Aura, you can unlock it on all the characters you choose.

You purchase the item from a vendor and you get something that is delivered via the gleemail interface called a Certificate, and it looks just like a gleemail but is labeled "Certificate". The item is attached, and you can claim it on as many characters as you wish. The Certificate doesn't expire, unlike other mails. You can delete the Certificate on any character after you claim it and not before, but the certificate will still show up for other characters, even characters you create after you have made the purchase.

The auras you purchase via Incarnate Merits are available to be applied to a character even if you haven't unlocked general auras on that character yet, much like the auras from Booster Packs, even if you are level 1.

There are also items called Vouchers that work in a similar way, but they can be used only once by any one character on your account. Vouchers use the same interface, but once they are claimed on one character, they are no longer available to any other character. One example is that for 10 Astral Merits you can buy a Voucher that will let you unlock capes or auras early on any one character. Log into the character to claim the voucher. (Current prices are Beta, as a reminder.)

(Just to be sure, I went on our internal server and tested all of this to be sure before posting since I knew I wouldn't hear the end of it if I was inaccurate!!)

You guys rock. Big time. Many, many thanks, happy anniversary, and wear the badge with extra pride!!!

Hi everyone.

We announced that on May 27th, 2011, for a few hours (4-7 PM Pacific), you can log in to the Freedom server and get a badge that will apply to every character on your entire account.

We understand that not everyone can be there that night, but we have a very serious goal to test some server improvements; so here's what we are doing:

We have a goal of exceeding our highest ever peak concurrent users on a single server, which is 3500 players. But we might not be able to make that, so we will at least settle for 2500. If we get 2500 concurrent players on the Freedom server on May 27th between the hours of 4PM and 7PM Pacific, we will leave the badge on for the rest of the holiday weekend (May 27th through May 30th) on *ALL* European and North American servers.

We timed this event to coincide with the greatest typical number of concurrent players worldwide to give the most people possible the chance to get the badge. If you don't have a character on Freedom, you can simply create one and log in to get the badge.

If you can't make it on the 27th or over the Memorial weekend, we will absolutely give you another opportunity to get the badge in a few months. If you DO get the badge this weekend, you’ll have some measure of exclusivity for a few months, maybe enough exclusivity to get you to log in real quick before you hit the hay or hit the clubs. And we want to ensure that this badge is prestigious, so the next opportunity will be a limited-time window as well, though longer than three hours to be sure.

When we run this event, we will be able to open the server queue wider than we have ever been able in the past (maybe even turn it off) and we think we can get a ridiculous number of you on Freedom all at the same time, more than we have ever been able to support. We've made some server optimizations that will make it possible to run our servers more efficiently for the future and hold *way* more players on any piece of hardware; this improvement will help us continue to support City of Heroes efficiently for the future. One of the smartest guys I've ever had the pleasure to know has been working insanely hard on this for months, and we want to ensure that he can go back to actually getting sleep at night, comfortable that his hard work has paid off.

You don't even have to stick around and fight off the Praetorian invasion: logging in during the window will grant the badge, and you can log out and go back to your home server. But maybe if you stick around and get into a group, you'll help reach the goal and have some fun at the same time. Imagine seeing more versions of Atlas Park than you have ever been seen before!

If you really want to knuckle down and kick some Praetorian butt, we are running events on all of the servers over the next few weeks to let you get your favorite characters in on the action, but the finale will be on Freedom to help us get this tested, as well as give a nice apocalyptic feel to the event. We can run all the simulations we want, but nothing will really help like real concurrency.

A few key points of info:

First, we have been running this version of the server software since Issue 20 went live, so it's not like this is a fresh build that hasn't been tested. We’ve had some other bugs since I20 went live, but these changes haven’t been at the heart of those bugs, which is why we feel comfortable running this event.

Second, before the rumor mill starts churning, this isn't about a server merge or going “server-less”, either -- the server communities are genuinely important to you and to us. We have good, old-fashioned business reasons to be more efficient with the servers. If you could make your car get a couple miles more to the gallon every day, you'd probably do it, too. Now imagine you can make your car *twice* as efficient. This is kinda like that.

Third, if this somehow goes unexpectedly awry and no one can get onto the server, we won't leave it so only a few hundred lucky people got the badge before something went boom; we will reward you for at least trying, so we'll figure something else out to award the badge if it doesn't work out, and we will be proactive about the communication.

Fourth, the Praetorian enemies used in the Surge are event critters, as well, so they scale to your level like all our other event critters. There are plenty of 50s on Freedom: you should be able to get a group, and I'm guessing leagues will form as well, but a dozen level 1s can still take out an event critter, easy. If you do stick around, you should have a good opportunity to lend a hand.

This badge is special to us, it represents a big technical milestone for City of Heroes. And now it is special to everyone, as well, because it will be a symbol of the community working together for a common goal.

Hi everyone.

We announced that on May 27th, 2011, for a few hours (4-7 PM Pacific), you can log in to the Freedom server and get a badge that will apply to every character on your entire account.

We understand that not everyone can be there that night, but we have a very serious goal to test some server improvements; so here's what we are doing:

We have a goal of exceeding our highest ever peak concurrent users on a single server, which is 3500 players. But we might not be able to make that, so we will at least settle for 2500. If we get 2500 concurrent players on the Freedom server on May 27th between the hours of 4PM and 7PM Pacific, we will leave the badge on for the rest of the holiday weekend (May 27th through May 30th) on *ALL* European and North American servers.

We timed this event to coincide with the greatest typical number of concurrent players worldwide to give the most people possible the chance to get the badge. If you don't have a character on Freedom, you can simply create one and log in to get the badge.

If you can't make it on the 27th or over the Memorial weekend, we will absolutely give you another opportunity to get the badge in a few months. If you DO get the badge this weekend, you’ll have some measure of exclusivity for a few months, maybe enough exclusivity to get you to log in real quick before you hit the hay or hit the clubs. And we want to ensure that this badge is prestigious, so the next opportunity will be a limited-time window as well, though longer than three hours to be sure.

When we run this event, we will be able to open the server queue wider than we have ever been able in the past (maybe even turn it off) and we think we can get a ridiculous number of you on Freedom all at the same time, more than we have ever been able to support. We've made some server optimizations that will make it possible to run our servers more efficiently for the future and hold *way* more players on any piece of hardware; this improvement will help us continue to support City of Heroes efficiently for the future. One of the smartest guys I've ever had the pleasure to know has been working insanely hard on this for months, and we want to ensure that he can go back to actually getting sleep at night, comfortable that his hard work has paid off.

You don't even have to stick around and fight off the Praetorian invasion: logging in during the window will grant the badge, and you can log out and go back to your home server. But maybe if you stick around and get into a group, you'll help reach the goal and have some fun at the same time. Imagine seeing more versions of Atlas Park than you have ever been seen before!

If you really want to knuckle down and kick some Praetorian butt, we are running events on all of the servers over the next few weeks to let you get your favorite characters in on the action, but the finale will be on Freedom to help us get this tested, as well as give a nice apocalyptic feel to the event. We can run all the simulations we want, but nothing will really help like real concurrency.

A few key points of info:

First, we have been running this version of the server software since Issue 20 went live, so it's not like this is a fresh build that hasn't been tested. We’ve had some other bugs since I20 went live, but these changes haven’t been at the heart of those bugs, which is why we feel comfortable running this event.

Second, before the rumor mill starts churning, this isn't about a server merge or going “server-less”, either -- the server communities are genuinely important to you and to us. We have good, old-fashioned business reasons to be more efficient with the servers. If you could make your car get a couple miles more to the gallon every day, you'd probably do it, too. Now imagine you can make your car *twice* as efficient. This is kinda like that.

Third, if this somehow goes unexpectedly awry and no one can get onto the server, we won't leave it so only a few hundred lucky people got the badge before something went boom; we will reward you for at least trying, so we'll figure something else out to award the badge if it doesn't work out, and we will be proactive about the communication.

Fourth, the Praetorian enemies used in the Surge are event critters1, as well, so they scale to your level like all our other event critters. There are plenty of 50s on Freedom: you should be able to get a group, and I'm guessing leagues will form as well, but a dozen level 1s can still take out an event critter, easy. If you do stick around, you should have a good opportunity to lend a hand.

This badge is special to us, it represents a big technical milestone for City of Heroes. And now it is special to everyone, as well, because it will be a symbol of the community working together for a common goal.

Happy seven!