Thunderspark

I think the only reason WoW does so well over Guild Wars is because everyone plays WoW because their freinds do as well. It's seen as the "cool" MMO, and quite surprisingly so, in my opinion, since I never really saw the appeal. Sluggish combat, ugly graphics, servers you can sometimes spend tens of minutes trying to log into and more potty-mouthed 12 year olds than a South Bristol junior school.

Hmm, then again, maybe not its not quite so different after all...

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Canon says that anything that happens inside MA is in a Virtual Reality, therefore it never really happened.
If it never really happened, it can never contradict canon.
If it can't contradict canon, it must be canon.
Ergo eveything in the MA is canon.

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I love this guy...

Anyway, I really hope the overwhelming farming fad dies down as it was suggested it might. There's almost no such thing as "normal" teams and it's increasingly difficult to find members to join you on storyarcs which aren't farming related.

I wonder if things are any different on Defiant...?

I see a lot of love/hate going on with mission architect

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A strong and valid point. Having limited time, personally I prefer to pay for and get official MMO content - not be given the tools to do it myself and told "There you go - unlimited playability!" - because its not the same thing!.

[/ QUOTE ]Technically it is because the official MMO content is in fact the tools to do just that. Granted the brainstorming and creativity belong to a fellow player, but that doesn't make the end result any less enjoyable.

Even if you never actually create a mission arc of your own, you have access to all the ones created by others. That's far greater content than you would get by the devs alone, and in my opinion easily justifies the subscriptions.

The only problem is that the quality of the content differs wildly too. You get everything from primordial sludge you wouldn't play even if you were held at gunpoint to the highly polished arcs even the devs would be impressed at. As a result, the good content is bathed in a sea of waste. It's like trying to find a precious diamond in a landfill.

I think that MA was released to an immature gaming population not quite ready for it. When the majority of players are more interested in farming for cash than enjoying the game the last thing you want to do is give them the tools to do it more effectively...

Wow... I actually expected my post to be torn to shreds by the pro-farming players. It's nice to see there are actually others out there who think the same thing.

I'm humbled.

It's a tragedy that people only want to use Mission Architect for farming. If you don't build a mission with large open areas and lots of enemies, no one seems to care about it.

You need only have the IQ of a two-year old to put together a 5-star rated mission since it involves an outdoor area and lots of Freakshow/Rikti/Insert FOTM here.

It's really... really... REALLY sad.

That's how it's really been a waste. The bad ones win and the good ones fade into obscurity. I saw a 5-star mission which had only "Farming mish" and "Kill stuff" as the name and mission brief. The thing was probably cobbled together in under 5 minutes and had over 20 people giving it 5-stars because they could level quickly.

If people only care about levelling up, earning badges and getting influence then I concede that Mission Architect seems to be doing a wonderful job. For those small number of us who actually care to play a mission arc with some MEANING to it, it's absolutely tragic.

Mission Architect works fine. The players sadly don't. City of Heroes? Hah! More like City of Farmers...

Consider yourself lucky. I've transferred my missions from the test server only to be faced with a red box which I can only assume means there's a big problem with them somehow. All of the buttons are greyed out, there's no information listed at all and there's nothing I can do with it except view the filename.

Okay, not directly related to City of Heroes, but very much NCSoft related.

Can someone lay this bag of snakes out straight for me? I've had my account for well over a year (coming up to 2 years in fact!) and for some reason can't purchase new serial codes from their store after recently purchasing a Guild Wars (Prophecies) account.

I get the following message every time I try, and it's REALLY getting frustrating REALLY fast.

"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."

Following the supplied link to their "Online Code Purchase Limits" gives me precisely zero. There's no mention of how long my card is effectively barred for (and it's longer than 24 hours) just says "a certain timeframe" which isn't very helpful at all.

Does anyone know what this timeframe is, and more importantly why is it barring the very same card I've used for EVERY purchase on City of Heroes to date? Online fees and all!

Long story short:

Defense sucks. Always has, always will.

If you hate it now, wait until I14. It actually gets WORSE. At least as far as Beta testing has shown. Maybe they're making some changes for the Live version (I hope so), but as it stands, defense based sets are always going to be the underdog in PvP situations.

I have to admit, I've yet to reach the 100kb limit on my mission arcs, despite a large custom group, 5 missions and plenty of advanced mission goals.

100k seems actually very generous at the moment. Having multiple custom groups would easily push it over the edge though, since my single group adds at least 50% to the total file size. Probably wouldn't be so bad with two smaller groups though.

Curses... one day there really WILL be a Hamidon eating Atlas Park and then you'll be sorry you didn't look away!

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Most of the closed beta leaks we have had in the past have been from people who where unhappy about something they saw in beta.

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Not the first time there's been a closed beta then huh? I've only been playing for just under 2 years, so im used to being able to get play on the test servers openly. Still don't see much of a need for it to be honest. If it's buggy, you'll find more bugs with more testers. Simple maths.

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No leaks = happy beta testers.

[/ QUOTE ]Or stricter punishments for speaking out of turn. We need to find one of the closed beta testers and begin a process of tort- Err, I mean, friendly conversation in a not entirely villainous manner, to get some more information.

At the very least some official word about what we can expect would make me feel a lot better...

I don't wanna talk about MA until we can play it as it's too much like masochism. *grumble* closed beta *grumble*

Look over there! A giant Hamidon is eating Atlas Park!
*runs away*

I feel so poor...
Spare a penny for the destitute won't you?

If they add defeat merits in PvP, im seriously outta there.

All you're going to get then is groups of FoTMs running around farming every other player in sight. Right now, PvP isn't even remotely fair unless you're one of a few select ATs. And any of the others have to be either incredibly lucky or exceptionally skilled.

I don't generally play FoTMs, because while they might be the must-haves in PvP, I find them really boring to play in PvE, which makes up the larger portion of gameplay. I do have a Super Strength/Invuln tanker at the moment, but she's still level 20...

They claim to have levelled the playing field, but if that's the case then why is it still possible to hit for well over 700 damage in a single hit (Easily more than 50% HP for some weaker ATs) on some builds, but barely scratch 400 even on damage oriented AT's like scrappers?

They've also put horrible limits on defense. My mastermind should have around 40% defense, but is reduced to 27% thanks to the PvP caps.

It's clear the devs and myself have different definitions of equality.

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lol - if they aren't running a closed beta then what the heck is stopping I14 from being open-beta'd/launched?

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See my previous point about extended development time.

I don't like all the silence to be honest. If there's people actually testing it, then we've not heard anything from them at all. Given that this is such a big update (as far as im concerned it's THE update) you'd think NC soft would at least give us some tidbits of info to chew over. Something about the mechanics of it at the very least.

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And what if Nemesis has hijacked the EU Test server?

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Then we can only hope that the few privileged testers we do have are on hand to save the day!

In their efforts to "balance" every single AT they've actually tipped the scales horribly in favour of certain ATs.

They got rid of status protection because holds/stuns/sleeps weren't landing, instead giving everyone resistance. This means you can be stunned much easier, detoggling offensive abilities instantly which generally have a longish recharge. The upside to this, of course, is that there's no more perma-holds from dominators. As a scrapper in I12 I needed to pop as many as 4 break free's to leap out of a single domi hold, if im lucky. Nowholds don't last as long. Of course. nowadays, breakfree's are rendered almost useless anyway because they won't "break you free".

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Says you and those that post here but what about those that are fightclubing there still at it and you still see the odd post about being and a pvp zone and pvping if its that bad stop pvping alltogeather its no good say "hey this dosent work" and then doing it any way all that'll happen is teh Devs will look at there data mine and say "hey look still teh same number of people in pvp zones"

[/ QUOTE ]You're not playing the same game as the rest of us I can only assume. The PvP areas are practically DEAD. Warburg is mostly deserted save for a rare few skirmishes, Bloody Bay, which was always bad, has barely seen a fight in months, Siren's Call has finally seen peaceful days and it's citizens are starting to feel bright about the future. In fact, the only PvP area still running with decent numbers is Recluse's Victory, and I'd argue that the majority of players who go there do so initially to farm and then start fighting to pass the time.

I strongly advocated the changes early on, but now I see it's true colours. I hope it's given a severe makeover so it can claw back some of the dignity it left behind in I12.

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I think it's usual for beta 'vows of secrecy' (aka NDA) to be so restrictive that people can't even say that they are testers... if anyone who wasn't a redname (or explicitly authorised to talk about this) actually spoke about this from being in the beta then I guess it'd be the last post that we'd see from them...

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I sincerely hope that's not the case. It's an update, not Area 51! Heck, the fact that it's caused such a stir would be a good reason to make it more open.

That is, of course, assuming that the whole thing isn't just smoke and mirrors to make us think they're running a closed beta when they're in fact pulling the wool over our eyes in a bid to extend it's development schedule...

Err... about 20 million inf. Yeah, kinda cheap I know, but I don't go out of my way to farm endlessly. Once I hit 50 I usually use it for PvP, the occasional TF, or badge hunting. If im not doing either of those I'll be levelling a new toon.

If I recall correctly, the whole "create your own AV" idea was one of the reasons they actually postponed Mission Architect in the first place. They knew that people would want to have that ability from the outset and surely it's been added to MA right?

Anyone with a test server invite able to confirm or deny this, or are you all silenced to secrecy until it's made public?

Not having your own archvillains makes for a blander story. Sorry, but it's true. There's only so many generics you can bump up to Elite Boss or AV standard to make things interesting, and it won't feel like an epic conclusion to your otherwise fun story.

Besides, if we can't add our own archvillains to stories, it already renders every idea I've had welling up completely unfeasible.

I think im too down-to-earth to dream about video games. The last dream I can actually recall was a curious tale of a vicious tobacco-dog crossbreed, a rather large bowling ball of a woman driving a car which puts most juggernauts to shame, an unfeasibly long bridge and a near-secluded island.

So, as you can tell, im very down to earth...

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I wonder if The Great Face is looking for a villain SG lol

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Probably. I can't imagine that the Great Face gets invited to many social events. Unless, of course, there's an "evil laugh" training course I've overlooked.

This is what happens when you let your kitty cat play with the server cables like a ball of yarn.

A team of experts are now on their way in full scratchproof riot gear armed with water-sprayguns to oust the offending feline. Business will resume as normal assuming none of the experts are allergic to cat hair.

Yep. Another post moaning about the current state of PvP.

Now I was never a fan of the old system. Defense characters were completely useless (to some extent they still are, but I digress), Stalkers could 2-hit kill just about anyone, and blasters would constantly teleport you onto mine fields. But it had some advantages too. IO set bonuses meant something, you could actually FLEE from impending doom rather than sit around waiting for 5 people to tear you limb from limb and, most importantly, the PvP zones were actually populated with players most of the time.

There are too many issues with PvP for me to name them all, so I'll start with my biggest greivances and work my way down.

Travel suppression:
Lord knows this one is a killer. I can see it's intent, but in reality all it does is penalise the player who gets ganked by a small army of the opposing side. It doesn't help melees since everyone leaps around like Gummi Bears on steroids, and ranged attackers could hit you even without the suppression. It's a pain in the backside for teleporters especially, rendering their only viable means of esacape completely useless.

Tankers:
They're now the world leader in PvP toons. The reasons should be plain for anyone to see, but I'll note them here for completions sake. Firstly Super Strength has Rage. A riduculously overpowered move imo, which takes a strong powerset and turns the tanker into a scrapper worthy fighter. A tanker should never deal more damage than a scrapper can because that's why scrappers sacrifice some lastability. At the very least give us the damage to match! They also have very high defense and resistance. They're built to take punishment, a job they do very well in both PvE and PvP. Finally, ranged epics? Fireball is a powerful move alone, combined with rage it's one of their deadliest attacks. The initial damage is bad enough, but the DoT is extreme.

Stalkers:
I speak as a stalker here, so I don't say this without some degree of regret. But we're seriously strong in our epics. And you know what im talking about. It's Spirit Sharks. Fired from hide it can practically wipe out most heroes without some kind of HP bonus like Dull Pain. One move should not be capable of such extremes, except for our assassin's strike for the simple reason that it's harder to fire. Funny how you make Assassin's Strike deal considerably less damage then make our previously weak epic exceed it greatly.

Defense sets:
A trend I've noticed with a lot of my toons is when I enter RV (or similar) my defense markup drops considerably. While the "Combat attributes" window suggests I should be at 40%+ defense, my index remains at around 30% (as an example). You've got some kind of defense normalisation in place here, which is understandable to a point, but some toons RELY on that defense to stay alive. Abilities like Elude and Kuji-In-Retsu are considerably weaker since the defenses don't stack the way the maths suggests. And don't delude yourself in thinking that the opponents are any less accurate.

PvE toons:
Something seriously wrong with Mezzes on PvE's. Despite my resistance they land holds/sleeps/stuns like I had nothing at all. No protection OR resistance. Being stunned for a whole 16 seconds while an army sets upon you is a tad unfair to say the least, especially when you've already tkaen every possible precaution.

VR or otherwise I think I'd keep my player interactions vague so that everyone can enjoy it without feeling they have to make a special effort in immersing themselves. I think the best written missions will be those which can involve a character without needing to resort to specifics.

I have a mission arc in mind, but I have absolutely no idea how or even IF I can pull off the final battle. It's a pretty ambitious idea, which I won't waste by posting here, but if it works it could offer a very unique story arc enjoyable by all.

So many tasty maps to choose from, I think I'd be spoilt for choice. One thing I'd try to avoid, unless the storyline requires it, is putting in too many of the lesser-seen maps.

On paper it sounds like a brilliant idea, but in my opnion it would take something away from those special areas if overused. People relate to them more because of their uniqueness, but if everyone starts using them in tons of missions they'll start to become mundane.

So, a careful balance then. But there are a few maps I would love to use.

Eden -- Not the whole zone, obviously, but the area is a discarded paradise if you spent the time to look around. A small cordened off section of Eden would make a beautiful addition to a mission set I've had in mind.

Frostfire -- I've always loved this map, and I really want to see it given more uses. The ice gives it some nice wintery tones.

Amy's House -- From the Katie Hannon TF. All right, it's just a cave with some extra lighting effects and props, but all the same it's an ideal map for my plot.

Leviathan cave -- You know, the one with the swirling vortices that threaten to throw you around like a rag doll. That's going to be fun to use...