Storm_Revenant

Its interesting how time fogs the history and the real story behind Slippery Jack's work:

(Spring 2004)
City of Heroes launches.

(November 11th 2004)

Cryptic and NC Soft being sued by Marvel:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/20...-avatars_x.htm

(October 31st 2005)

City of Villains launches

(December 15th 2005)

Announcement of the suit being dropped by Marvel:
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardwar...arvel_ncsoft/1

(September 26th 2006)

Less than a year later, Microsoft n Marvel announce Cryptic to design Marvel Universe Online.
http://marvel.com/news/vgstories.655.marvel_mmo

(November 6th 2007)

NC Soft announced they're buying CoX's IP and taking 15% of the staff from Cryptic with it:
http://kotaku.com/319628/ncsoft-acqu...tes-new-studio

(November 13-14th 2007)

First announcements that Microsoft will be cancelling their funding/agreements for the developement of the Marvel game with Cryptic. The official announcement doesnt happen until 3 months after this:
http://www.1up.com/news/leaked-detai...niverse-online

Read the information why: 2-6 months prior to this, the game was in major dispute of how to get it to work and virtually little to nothing to show for over a year's time since the game was announced to be developed. That's telling.

(February 11th 2008)

Final Official announcement occurring:
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2008/02/marvel-universe/

(February 20th 2008)

Shortly(and boy do I mean shortly) there after Cryptic announces the developement of Champions online:
http://www.1up.com/news/cryptic-anno...ampions-online

Essentially Champions was the fragments left over from the Marvel project. Supposedly now independent, infused with cash from the sale of CoX's IP and free of contractual obligations(and profit sharing) with MS and Marvel, they now get to take those fragments and try to make something of it.

(December 9th 2008)

Atari annouces the purchase of Cryptic. (Evendently they weren't that cash infused afterall).
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/09/at...yptic-studios/

Notice they were supposedly to recieve a 20mil cash bonus if CO and STO did well....

(March 18th 2009)

First stories of Cryptic using NC Soft and CoX forums to send out official Beta invites for their Champions game.
http://www.massively.com/2009/03/18/...eta-recruitme/

Then on the 20th of March it is confirmed:
http://www.1up.com/news/cryptic-conf...ng-city-heroes

This goes to show the type of thinking that pretty much is reflected prior to this and after this with the management philosophy and "game development". It also perhaps shows their desperation with regards to the Atari purchase and "incentives". This article implies Cryptic is a "publisher cast off" as well, hehe.


(September 2009)
Champions online releases amidst a myriad of issues and controversy
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Essentially what you have here is that bad developement and mismanagement led to the these chain of events.

Central to all of it: Jack Emmert.

So I'm not suprised -in-the-least- to see repeatedly over the years Jack's comments one day praising next day slagging CoX. I'm also not suprised in the least with how he's using the same rhetoric, used car salesman talk with regards to his next pet rock project.

I say option 1: WITH the understanding that you create very similar to the old designs for the new and double the choices and varations of them. This way you give very little justification(or none) to keep the old.

Though I question the effort to do that when it would seem more prudent to simply make a new game on a new engine that gives all that and more instead and within the same IP(ie a true CoX 2). Granted thats even more work but allocating resources to slap on new things to an older set up just means its still an old set, just with new paint. Just seems there's so much inflexibility becoming more painfully obvious.

Some of the zone clockwock bots in Praet(most noticeable in Novo) when you start combat will at around 50% health become untargetable(for pets as well), stop combat entirely, and grief mode flee/run away (pretty long distance too I might add... perhaps to get out of targetable range?).

Once they get a certain distance they will be target able again after a moment or two.

Ive only noticed this with the clockwork bots and not other mobs, but it may be found with those other ones too.

Mainly this issue occurs in the Praet Tunnel missions with:

Stairs with railing and ramp slope next to it.
Stairs with railing and water pipe next to it.

NPCs will get stuck on the railing or piping and wont budge unless you run back down and wait for the pathing for the AI to resolve and return down to the bottom of the stairs where you are waiting.

On the ramp slope stairs it seems to almost 100% of the time snag if you run up the slope as opposed to the stairs. However it will occasionally snag even if you take the stairs as well.

Potential solution ideas for the pathing:

-Give the mobs a dedicated pathing on those inclines that avoids the issue better.

-Remove the railing from the inclines(seems to be the railing is causing part of the snagging.

-Give the railing and or pipes a hidden NPC only in pathing visible "wall" so that they bump into it but avoid those parts of the incline and continue up the slope. Make sure the "wall" extends to the ceiling of the slope.

-Give the escort NPC's the same AI intuition for pathing that mastermind pets use? Doesnt seem that pets snag so Im wondering if there is a different AI involved in their pathing.

Same issue occurring.

Running 2 Geforce GTX 480 cards.
Win 7 Ultimate
12gb ram

1. Giving many of the blaster-esque powers the ability/animation to eminate from left right or both hands, chest, head, etc would be nice. To make the powers activation times similar, an appropriate energy charge or stance alteration could be coupled with it in the cases of those that require longer activations.

2. Assault rifle and pistols could be done similar when paired with certain costume pieces(ie tech/robo etc).

3. Cellphone calling instead of whistling for thugs.

4. Alternate skin/animations for most of the controller and mm pets (thinner/more android style bots, more punk or crime boss style thugs, different military looks for soldiers, etc) Accompanied with animations more appropriate to those times as well once summoned.

5. Alternate stalker stealths: poofs, melts into the ground/shadows, dispersed particles, etc.

6. More and less fearsome plant animations.

7. Earth and stone animations that synergy better with the sets. More liquidy mud n quicksand.

8. Multiple different fire animations across the power sets: Higher/lower flame counts, more/less smoke.

9. Different shark animations for the Mako powers(ie different shark choices as well).

10. Multiple taunt style choices to fiercely or humorously rile those enemies up.

12. Dark sets with more skull/spirit/etc looks. Also choices of more ichoric goey darkness instead of vaporlike.

13. More "Ball", spiral, cylindrical, dart style animations with various elemental blasts.

14. Weapon draws(pistol, sword, shield, axe) with alternates of materializing, growing, shaping from raw element to solidified forms.

All just a strategic bait n switch.... roll out the negatives first(issue 13) then roll out the positives (issue 14).

However, timing of the negatives couldnt be worse when you factor what else is going on.

Will there be any mission support features that will incorporate the day jobs feature and missions themselves?

What sort of mission support features to help better educate new players to understanding many different aspects of the game could be implemented? If the Architect feature of mission building by players gives more indepth tutorial and education to new players by player made missions for that purpose, do you see that as a viable solution and worthy of the "dev's" choice classification?

The use of cut scenes in a very sparse number of missions is a shame, will this feature be supported for the Architect system for I13?

So like WHEN ARE WE GETTING OUR INFLUENCE AND INFAMY GNOMES?????????????

We're way overdue!!!!!!!

Seems like from the recent announcement that the City Scoop went poop and needs a pooper scooper? Hee hee

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Ok, there are good and sound reasons for not having hard and fast well defined rules of what constitutes a constructive post etc. But as to why you don't have hard and fast written rules defining them. Simple to cut the rules lawyers off at the knees.

There is a category of poster who will try and define the rules exactly and get them in writing etc, then they will dance the line never crossing it but always pushing up to it and nudging it. By not making the rules hard and fast that negative and destructive behavior is discouraged. Instead the person dancing close to the edge can be mod smacked because while yes perhaps it was borderline it was the 5th, 10th, 20th, 100th time the moderator has had her/his attention called to that poster for exactly that behavior.

Another game and its company instituted something called a High Maintenance Policy to deal with this type. In that case if you keep coming to the GMs attention over and over never actually crossing the line but eating up lots of GM time to deal with the player and the aftermath the player can and will be banned including perma banned for continuing to push this.

In our case the moderators are simply keeping the flexability to slap down these types now.

And if you find that you are worried that the mods might smack you down for violating this then perhaps you need to stop and evaluate your posting pattern. Perhaps you are not being constructive to the community to a whole.

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My point is that the statements made were vague and subjective.... leaving them up to potentially liberal interpretation or abuse. The control of the information and accountability isn't transparent.

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Yes, as long as it is done constructively.

Again, as long as it is done in a constructive fashion it is fine, however the moment that attacks and insinuations begin to be made, they will be moderated out.

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But one issue is by what criteria and definition is such considered constructive. I question the legitimacy of this.

My impression is that the changes essentially are to limit the expressions of dissention and complaint of issues, attacks, or what have you. This is common on some forums but what does occur though is that you also gravitate towards a funneling of information that ammounts to affirmations of developers and community moderators and less of bringing real dialog and change when there are reasons of legitimacy there of.

There fore what is created is an effort to control and influence the information presented and discussed. Best intentions may or may not be the reasons for it but the end results almost invariably are always the same: disappointed on all sides.

Game needs a more prolific, interactive world than its static environment via door missions primarily now. Im hoping they're planning to evolve the game to that and with an engine upgrade, but the job hiring from NorCal isn't indicative of that, seems like they're going to continue to nurse along the current engine/game with tweaks.

It'd be nice if the long long long ago concent of CoH being free style when choosing powers etc was to be implemented (ie Archetypes becoming only an inherent power set up and nothing more) but I don't think they're gonna go this route.

Either all that or they're planning to make CoH free to play with subscriptions being for extra content or features and they've give Bling gnomes for cashing inhancers while in missions :P

These capping issues would be null and void if they came up with a way to have trial accounts bumped off servers or not able to access servers on double xp weekends. Its not right that paying customers have to compete with non paying customers who during the dxp weekend tend to be the spammers.

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One proposal I would have is that trial accounts are not allowed to log on servers for that weekend. Why should they get to benefit from that and push out paying customers?

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Locking out potential new customers from an event like this would just be crazy That's the sort of message you don't want to give to prospects. One can't just assume that only RMTers are using Trial accounts. I had a friend on a trial account just a couple of weeks ago.

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Its not about RMTers... its about that someone playing for free shouldnt be bumping out of a server someone who is paying. Period.


And also, people saying going to other servers. If your friends, almost all toons, etc are on a specific server, there's no justification to move to a different one. Cant exactly get teams on a ghost town server either, ya know...

Also, someone suggested playing on one of the ghost town servers then transfering it later. Why should I or anyone else pay to transfer it? And pay to do so because trials playing the servers free will be potentially benefitting.

And again, if a trial account wants to reap the benefits of double exp, they can just pay like the rest of us and activate the account. There's some marketing incentive for you.

Seriously, I really hope the dev's do something.... anything to reduce the issues with regards to lockout.

I want to know how the lockouts and such are going to be addressed for this time round.

Nothing like missing much of the double exp when you cant even get to your characters.

One proposal I would have is that trial accounts are not allowed to log on servers for that weekend. Why should they get to benefit from that and push out paying customers?

Another would be that no new characters can be made during that weekend on servers. Some may whine on that but if you're serious about making a specific character, you can make it or other prior to weekend. This will cut down on the character making for lowbie levels to then delete n try something else because they didn't like what they had. This will give players who really want to level something up their time and space to do so instead of competing.

Im just suggesting these because I think that most can agree there has to be something done better than last time in this regard.

hehe vet rewards went green!

Ex forgot to sticky this....

The seizure/palsy that people that are flying and hovering when they enter into a zone or into/out of a mission is evidently some sort of out of sync thing as well BECAUSE using /sync causes it to be resolved.


Just an fyi.

pfft... go to Dragon Con and then we'll talk.

I too have noticed flight pack on/off issues.

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Hate to post again for the third time in a row.. But I need a great name for a dark melee/Fiery Aura Scrapper. Mutation origin. Would like a heroic name and somewhat original.

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Mojo Firing
Soulfires Burning
Ashes to Ashes
Bitter Ashes
Channeler of Fire
Medium Rare
Medium Done
Burnt Marshmallow
Raising Ire
Raising Fire
Campfire Tales
Spooky Campfire
Burnt Offering
Burnt Offerings
Burned Offering(s)
Burning the Midnight Oil(probably too long)
Night Pyre
Dark Curry
Dark Spice
Late Night Heat
Night Sweat(s)
Bayou Lights
Burning Gris Gris
Campfire Shadows
Fade Flame
Shade of Flame
Night Incense
Midnight Passion
Snuffed Out
Koge Pan
Obsidian Candle


And I could go on... some may be taken but mix n matches might not.

I've noticed the Run away on almost all mob types maps etc. It is REALLY frustrating. That coupled with issues of mm pet AI (not attacking, ranged running into melee too frequently etc) just makes it even more not fun.

I just chalk it up to sloppy coding. *shrug*

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I think these necroposts are a result of the NCSoft/Cryptic thing. All these necrothreads, including this one, have at least one post by Statesman in there. And since Jack is no longer a part of the team... perhaps they're simply removing his ability to be tracked in the Dev Digest, and this is simply the result?

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