SlackTech

LOL

I still haven't collected my thoughts properly on the information we've been given thus far (my morning has only just started). One thing that I did think of, though, is that if GC and Praetoria are going to be the two starting zones (for Primal and Praetorians respectively), it gives those people who want to use traditionally villain a/t no reason at all to go to the Rogue Isles, making the redside population lower than it already is.

Having said that, it gives me no reason to ever go to Paragon City, which fills me with joy (not that I have a lot of new character concepts and/or time to play the game lately).

Edit - should clarify that if it's going to work the way I think it is (that is, that GC will be the 'Primal' starting point and then a 'tour' will be undertaken, the destination city depending on the choice the individual makes), then I won't have to go to Paragon City after this intro is done and the choice is made to go villain (resulting in the 'tour' mentioned in the official write-up). Technically, if this is going to work like I think it is, all Primals will have to go to Paragon initially (but I'm hoping this will be a relatively quick mission or arc and the option will be given to go blue or red without too much elaborate mechanic).

I wish I could be all rainbows and lollipops, but I've come to accept that this is 'City of Heroes' as a fact of (virtual) life.

Realistically, this was always going to be the case, due to the bulk of player population being in Paragon and GR giving people access to traditionally villain archetypes which they can then take to Paragon. it's basically a catch 22 ('Redside is dead, so I'm not going there'... there is an amazing irony to this).

I view it in a similar vein to when I hear people at work talk about a certain very large fantasty MMO 'I got into it because X and Y were playing and I wanted someone to play with'. When I mention 'City of', the response is 'never heard of that, I wouldn't want to play if I couldn't get a group'. Of course, if several of my colleagues who play MMOs tried 'City of', we'd have a group, but they won't join in the first place.... it's a cyclic effect.

This was brought home to me last night while badging in RV and being killed by a Stalker (I was on my ill/ff troller, who is villain). Admittedly, only my Stalker comes anywhere near close to being a PvP build (and even then, I did it in Mids and probably made a mess of it, as I know little about PvP), but my point is that what was the 'villain pvp a/t' can now be used as a hero, so why wouldn't people do that?? If there's no need to level up a Stalker in the Rogue Isles to PvP, why wouldn't people level them up in Paragon?

(As a note, I am not complaining about being killed in RV - it is a PvP zone and I was near the hero base, so it's just a part of being in that zone. If it helped his rep and self-esteem, that's great!)

I used to get extremely annoyed by this 'hero-centricity', and Paragon Studios/NCsoft effectively dismissing the 'City of Villains' brand in any media or public forums (it's rarely, if ever, mentioned in any of the media interviews, although sometimes the terms 'villain' and 'Rogue Isles' are used). Now, I continue to be annoyed, but just accept that this is the status quo.

Oh, dear lord, I hope you are right. I can't wait to move on to something new (even though it still won't stop the 'let's link everything in the game to the Well' mentality).

Maybe the Well will launch its own cloud service to compete with iCloud, Google and such and rule the world through the interwebs?

And yes, I am getting silly with references to Cole, Praetoria and the Well.... I just can't take much of it seriously, and don't think it meshes well with game lore. For these reasons, I will continue to be rather flippant about them.

Edit: Cole and Praetoria as they were re-written.... I'm not saying lore in relation to these pre-GR was award-winning material, but it was a side-note that didn't bother me at all (particularly as I jumped to redside about 9 months after I started).

I think it's hard to argue that Going Rogue didn't deplete the population of the Isles, as the data released by the devs show that the bulk of early 'transitions' were villain to hero. I certainly have noticed a slight population drop in the streets of the Isles.

Having said that, the Rogue Isles aren't dead. It's just that, like others in this thread have said, there are a ton more options now for villains. They can travel back to ancient Rome and do instanced missions or the ITF, go to the inter-dimensional nightclub and do trials or participate in events or RP, they can hit Oro and do TFs there, they can zone into the Rikti War Zone and do a TF or instanced missions.... the list goes on.

The other spots where people tend to congregate are the Black Market and AE. Because these (and the University, Midnighter's Club and RWZ entrance) are in close proximity in Cap, that attracts a lot of people. Grandville, by comparison, has just a RWZ entrance, and is therefore not a hub of activity. People just go there to do instanced missions and the SFs.

Redside is not dead, but the 'branding' of the game is most definitely hero-centric since the 'merge' a couple of years back. Most people do not use the villain-only terms anymore, instead using the hero terms (I admit they are interchangable, but to me it does make the 'villain' brand slip away over time). Examples which come to mind instantly are using 'TF' where 'SF' should be used, and 'exemp'ed' instead of 'mal'ed'. It's subtle, and many would say to me (quite loudly) 'stop your whinging, it means the same thing!'. I know they mean the same thing (essentially), but it does make me feel that 'City of Villains' is just something that pops up if I choose the skin on the exe, that for all intents and purposes it's disappearing as a brand.

Having said all that, I love redside. I love the archetypes, I love the maps, I love the mission design and I love the SFs. I even find badging much less tedious than blueside (I'm not saying it's perfect, just that I find it easier to get badges, particularly Accolades). My main Brute is one step away from being villain again after being blueside since GR, and I can't wait to have him 'home'.

Agreed. For a start, it would exclude villains if they ran an event only in the standard GC map (unless they somehow make GC co-op or engineer it so that the event is launched in an instance).

Doing it via a paper in Paragon, it's possible that Recluse would read this and prepare for 'the event', giving an angle to get villains involved. Although, with the 'it's all about incarnates' mantra the game has devolved to, it could be that Cole has planted a space fortress in orbit which attracts meteors into orbit to create this event. Then various maps in both Paragon and Rogue Isles could be hit.

The topic of running trials/raiding, unfortunately, is the 'hot topic' of 'City'. I don't think that's going to change for quite some time as, apart from some QoL improvements (e.g. AoE buffing) that seems to be what the devs are devoting resources to. I'm sure if the devs announce a new TF/SF, or change an existing one (e.g. make ITF a 50-only affair), that would most likely be a hot topic.

Compared to some other threads, I'd argue this one has been calm and relatively bicker-free. The OP did mention running trials as something they'd rather not do a lot of - I think others are entitled to raise their opinion in response to that (either in agreeance or dispute), but there has been, from I've seen, little flaming going on.

Maybe I'm just biased...

This sums up my view of the incarnate system (particularly post-Alpha) perfectly. Basically, to me, it's a grind. I'm not saying the rewards aren't there, but that the time investment can be great.

However, as others have pointed out, if you're only planning on making a couple of characters incarnates, it's not as if you're not going to have time to go to work, feed the baby, etc.

Unfotunately, I am one of those fools who would like to have all my characters 'incarnated', hence my 'grind' perception. What I have found helpful, though, is cycling through my characters. For example, on a weekend, I might run several trials, but a maximum of two on a single character. As I'm usually employing different powers and strategies on each run, it doesn't make me feel like I want to start drinking to dull the pain. It doesn't completely address the 'oh, dear, here we go... again' perception, but it does make it a little more tolerable.

Welcome back, and leave your money on the fridge (Australian term of affection, I promise!).

Agreed.

For examples of in-game excellence I really rank Westin very highly, and the tip mission where you let the 'victims' (ghosts) loose on the longbow agent - I love that mission, and was really affected the first time I ran it. Apart from these two examples, I personally don't feel very villainous (certainly not 'super' villainous) most of the time.

Agreed - if a poll were done on this, I'd vote for it without hesitation

I would hope that I'm doing as you say, but as an experiment I will ensure that I release Spectral Terror constantly, use my force field shields constantly and throw my ST hold and 'attack' power (it is quite pathetic) regularly.

I agree - I'm yet to see evidence that pseudo-pets are the problem. Certainly RoF etc on my Corrs don't seem to hurt the end result. However, it's hard to play a ill troller or MM without releasing pets, and this does seem to be a problem.

As for Judgement - I don't have it on any MM or the ill troller, due to the ixp being so slow that I can't bring myself to take them on a trial often (and I appreciate the irony of that). I hate the fact that it's become a case of 'release Judgement before anyone else hits the group' - if this is what the devs intended, I think it's a poor design practice.

I maintain the system is not measuring participation in a fair way across archetypes (and some powersets) - I don't know quite what it's measuring, but I argue its interpretation of participation is not accurate and is incredibly frustrating.

/rant

Couldn't agree more.

On my MMs and ill/ff troller (obviously all heavy pet-based characters) I'm getting the leech prize or commons. I cannot 'participate' without using my pets (I am not going to go near the petless MM debate).

I have been using my non-pet powers. I try not to leech (sometimes my spouse wants to talk, so I play on auto-pilot/button mash etc - life happens). I often do more work on these characters than my fire/kin corr, but he, without exception, gets better ixp and rewards.

I know this post seems erratic, but quite frankly I am extremely frustrated by this 'participation' system. The unknown criteria we have to work within (and what seems to be proven thus far by players) is, to me, completely unfair to a whole a/t (and others).

I truly feel that as a MM and illusion troller player, I am being penalised for using my primary set. If this isn't so, devs, feel free to look at my logs and see what ixp and drops I've been getting (I'm happy to point out which characters to look at to narrow the search).

I am also very annoyed about what the reward structure (including ixp) has done to the culture of the game. When i20 launched, players on the teams I was on had a great deal of fun, didn't rush in like they hadn't taken their attention deficit medication, didn't ***** that player x had a very rare drop and generally worked together to determine how best to complete the trial. Now, this seems to happen fair less.

I would humbly ask, as others have done, drop this 'participation' system as it works now. Right now, I don't care that a leech might get equivalent to what I've got - as it is, I'm getting the 'threads' option up, so the game already believes I'm a leech when I'm working myself stupid.

Thank you for the conversion options on incarnate salvage - it is a positive move in my opinion. However, it benefits those who actually get above common isalvage, so my last paragraph is still relevant. With a system which seems so inherently discriminatory, you could make a conversion path that allowed rares to become very rares - it makes little difference if the player is getting commons or, at times, uncommons. It doesn't fix the underlying problem.

To me, the current system is the same as working for a company with a performance management process but doesn't give the employees the key performance indicators. One of the KPIs is to have perfect vision. One of the employees wears glasses, and constantly gets a 'please try harder' e-mail. His colleague sitting next to him does the same amount of paper shuffling, but gets a 'great work, keep it, here's a movie ticket' result. The problem is not the workers, or their work, but they get different rewards. It doesn't matter if you allow the ticket-holder to give his ticket away for a chocolate bar and an Enya Greatest Hits CD, it won't help the guy who has to wear glasses.

/end rant

Apologies, by Pet Damage IO I meant (but didn't explain) both the Pet Damage and Intensive Recharge IO set 'classes' (i.e. those designed for henchmen and non-controllable pets).

Thank you, you have answered the question and I think that although I've picked worthwhile procs, I need to check where I've put them, as it could be the case that they're not in the wisest places (i.e. on my ill/ff troller, I'll need to check what's in PA and Phantasm - I think the Chance for BU is in Phantasm currently, and your point about it being most effective in PA makes a lot of sense).

I basically didn't want to slot bonuses like that in Edict of the Master and Sovereign Right if all they helped was MM henchmen. To me, that's just a waste of slots on a troller (who, technically, doesn't have henchmen.... well, without the incarnate one).

Again, thanks for the information and guidance.

I think that, again, you're making a statement that simply suits your viewpoint (which we all do, I think, it just seems that it's happened a lot recently).

Co-op content doesn't have to be anything by default - it simply ignores alignment (the contact doesn't give a crud about the character's motivations, they just want their end-goal met). Unless you have secret knowledge of game code, or can quote a dev that confirms your statement, I still don't agree (as my viewpoint is different - not a good or bad thing, just different).

Also, saving the world is only heroic if that's the motivation of the character - as you've rightly pointed out, it may simply be a case of 'I'm going to stop X so that I can take it for myself' - that's hardly heroic, but you've still 'saved the world'.

Thanks for confirming what I suspected.

I don't mean to be argumentative, but if it does end up being in IP, then I find it hard to believe with current zone mechanics that it will be co-op. Zones are hero, villain or co-op by their design (of course with the 'tourist' provision of GR) - co-op zones are not 'heroic', they are co-op. Regardless of the motivations of the person behind the keyboard, or the character, you can't convince me that if this 'zone' is accessible ONLY from IP that Villains (except Rogues) will be able to access it.

If, however, there is a submarine in the Rogue Isles that 'takes us there' (and in fact it's an instanced co-op area) then of course Villains will be able to go there and participate in missions and teams. I hope this is the case, and it's just in IP for lore purposes.

"Those of you with military backgrounds who noticed that the new battleships in Independence Port look very familiar can thank John for bringing a little bit of naval reality into the game."

Agreed, it doesn't state that the instance/zone is in IP, however the next quote looks decidedly heroic...

"Somewhere hidden in this zone are a few hapless fishermen just waiting for your heroic arrival"

Thanks for stating the obvious, and also backing-up my point in the official announcement discussion thread. However, your argument isn't exactly a developed one (unless you just want City of Villains to stagnate and the players to move elsewhere, in which case it makes perfect sense).

In any case, the Rogue Isles is made up of islands - I would have thought this warranted a floating ship fortress...

Article only mentions IP. I am very disappointed, but it indicates the general trend of the franchise - it's Paragon or Co-op. If we want other than those choices, we'll play existing content.

Yes, I am a disgruntled City of Villains player and I make no apologies for it.

I think the announcement mentioned it is on sale from 23 Feb - but it may not have specifically said it was for sale (may have used words like 'released'). But as DR said, you can opt to wait and give them money (like I will, as I doubt I'll be able to get it any other way)...