TonyV

I have to say, and I apologize for any offense in advance because I really don't hate you or anything, but I find this conversation extremely loaded. It reminds me of a push poll. "Do you think that it's right for a man who beats his wife to be a U.S. Senator? Did you know that Mr. Fizzlewick is suspected by some people to beat his wife? Does this information that some people suspect Mr. Fizzlewick of beating his wife change how you think of Mr. Fizzlewick? Would you vote for Mr. Fizzlewick as U.S. Senator, now knowing that some people suspect him of beating his wife?" These things are bogus on many levels.

It sounds to me like you are trying to equate giving rewards for task forces with "taking us out of our comfort zone." There are a lot of problems with that.

• Maybe teaming up takes you out of your comfort zone, but you have to understand that it doesn't take the vast majority of players of this game out of their comfort zone. If there weren't throngs of people lined up to do these Weekly Strike Target task/strike forces, you might have a point. As it is, you are in an extremely small minority of players.

• It's not like the Weekly Strike Target task/strike forces is something really weird or out of place in an MMORPG. It's entirely reasonable to expect people who play this genre of game to team up with others to accomplish things. If they decided to change the game to a first-person shooter, I might agree with you. As it is, they are only making logical, well-thought-out decisions that fall naturally in line with what the genre is about.

• You are taking an overly general concept--that is, "taking us out of our comfort zone"--and applying it inappropriately to a specific thing--teaming up with others--that you don't happen to like. It sort of implies that the developers were sitting around in a meeting and saying, "I have an idea. Let's take people out of their comfort zone! Let's get them to team up to earn some high-level rewards!" Aside from being a non-sequitur, it sounds a bit on the paranoid side.
  
  What if instead they had created a high-level reward that was only accessible via completing a long arc of missions solo, and someone else posted this thread saying that they're not comfortable playing solo, that the devs are going in a direction that "takes them out of their comfort zone?" In fact, and I feel dumb for asking this because I really haven't played much Praetorian content, but aren't there missions there that, in fact, you do have to complete solo? Have you made an issue of that because it might take some people out of their comfort zone? You probably think that's silly, and you're not wrong, because simply put, "making people team up" != "taking people out of their comfort zone."

• I've said this before and I'll say it again, but no one ever promised you that you will enjoy 100% of the game. In fact, I don't think there has ever been a game in the history of humanity that I have 100% enjoyed. There's always something, sometimes kind of nitpicky, that kind of rubbed me the wrong way.
  
  You keep framing this as people telling you to "suck it up." You also seem to think that's an invalid suggestion, but it really, really isn't.
  
  You know what I don't like about the game? PvP. It's just not for me. I pop into Bloody Bay now and then to get some Shivans, and once in a blue moon, I might pop into Warburg to pick up some nukes for a task force. If there are people fighting in either one, I avoid them. I've been known to leave the zone completely and try again some other time just because someone wouldn't leave me alone in there.
  
  You know what I do like? Having Shivans. Having nukes. Collecting some extra badges only available by engaging in PvP activities. Clearing the "See the warzone operative" missions. One could argue that the developers are trying to "force" me into engaging in PvP. Hell, if one did, he or she would actually probably be pretty correct.
  
  Still, I do pop into those zones and run missions in there. Why would I do that even though PvP is, as you say, "out of my comfort zone"? Because I want the rewards for doing it more than I don't like PvP. I suck it up. I'm not going to let the 3% of the game that I don't like keep me from enjoying the 97% of it that I do.

That last point is what slays me. I have seen you and others grouse endlessly on these forums about how much of a travesty it is that you have to team up. I have seen you and others try to frame it countless different ways. The devs hate soloers. (They don't.) The devs are trying to force people to do things they don't want to do. (They aren't.) The devs are trying to make people do things out of their comfort zones. (They aren't.)

I just don't understand what the big deal is. Do this sometime. I'm not being facetious here, actually do it. Find a civilian whose first name starts with the letter M and find out exactly how many hours you've put into that level 50 character. An average WST task force takes, say, I dunno, three hours. (Not really, but let's be conservative.) Divide three into the number of hours you've sunk into your level 50. Most of my level 50s have racked up somewhere around 500 hours in the city, so for me, that means that working on a WST accounts for approximately 0.6% of that character's career.

Now, take into account that most of my characters aren't level 50. If I add up all of the time across all of my characters, I'd probably come up with some depressingly HUGE number of hours, and my time in the game would actually be even more than that because I've deleted some characters I didn't like. I'm guesstimating that I have probably spent less than 0.001% of my City of Heroes career actually participating in a Weekly Strike Target task/strike force. If you add in the time I've spent on the Titan Network and here on the forums, my god, that number probably drops to 0.00001%.

I know you've been playing this game probably around the same amount of time I have. I'm sorry if that 0.001% of your City of Heroes career has made you so incredibly miserable that you just can't let it go. I'm sorry that taking an hour, two, or (gasp!) three out of your busy schedule once in a blue moon is just so intolerable that you feel the need to repeatedly bring up this issue over and over and over, trying to make it sound like this is such a horrible travesty, and that people wanting you to endure a minor inconvenience for just a fraction of a sliver of your game time to accomplish something that you swear is important to you.

I can't help but wonder, though, just how important is this to you, really? I mean, considering how much time and effort you have put into getting your character to level 50 and spent on him or her after he or she has gotten there, I really can't help but believe that if you're not willing to put in a couple of hours or so more to get the big shiny at the end, even doing something that you don't particularly care for, that big shiny really just can't be that important to you, that you cannot in good conscience claim to feel "forced" into doing it.

I don't know what to say. If I were a moderator, I'd be half tempted to lock this thread just because I feel like it was created under a false pretense, and it's got to be at least the fifth or sixth durn thread about this topic, attacking from various illogical angles, that I've seen on it. (Some of the others, incidentally, having been locked.)

Go. Play. And for god's sake, let it go already! If you spent half as much time working on Weekly Strike Targets as you spend here complaining about having to do Weekly Strike Targets, you'd probably have all of your characters level shifted by now.

That reminds me, wasn't I supposed to beware something? Hmm, I can't remember. Oh well, I'll just ask my friend Brutus tomorrow.

Hey all, the good news is that the constant changes and improvements in City of Heroes makes the game exciting and fun to play. The bad news is that it is making our volunteer jobs here at the Titan Network a bit challenging at times to keep up with everything.

We're currently looking to recruit a few developers to help us out. Specifically, we need people who have some good experience developing web sites and applications using PHP, CSS, and JavaScript running on Linux against a MySQL database back-end. We've got several existing more-or-less static projects that need occasional maintenance as well as marginal improvements, such as Faces. We also have our most frenetically changing project, City Info Tracker, that needs updates with almost every new Issue (and sometimes in between) due to mechanics changes. Last but not least, we are in the planning stages of an overhaul and revamp of the entire Titan Network.

This is a volunteer project, but we're really trying hard to not make it an amateur project. That means that if you're on our team, you'll get a fair amount of leeway in release schedules and such since we're all doing this in our spare time. However, we do have standards that we either are adhering to or are working to improve, such as using a version control system and a trouble ticket system. While you don't necessarily have to be a guru to join the team, we are looking for people who have more than just a passing experience in web site development, people who have been instrumental in rubber meeting road.

"So Tony, this sounds kind of hard. If I don't get paid, why would I do something like this?" Well, a few reasons. First of all, the Titan Network is arguably the most respected and well-known set of City of Heroes web sites out there. Both City Info Tracker and the Paragon Wiki get between two and three million page loads per month each and are used by over 30,000 people each month. Being involved with it is something to be proud of, and especially being an active developer on one of its projects generally gets respect and gratitude from the community.

On a more practical note, it's also something you can put on your résumé. Yes, just because you don't get paid for it doesn't mean that you can't show it off to potential employers, people who will pay you gobs of money if you have a proven track record, such as helping to design and maintain a popular gaming web site getting millions of page loads every month.

Last, but not least, it's cool. Using CIT, for example, is really neat. Actually getting to design CIT so that it suits your exact specifications, now that's just plain nifty. You would no longer have to think, "I wish they would [insert feature we're missing now]!" You would have the power to make it happen. (After reasonable discussion and testing, of course.)

So how about it? Do you want to work with a team of interesting and smart folks who share your interest in the game? Do you want to be able to tell your friends, "I made that."? Do you want the catgirls or catboys (or both!) falling at your feet and swooning in reverence? Drop me a PM or send me an e-mail at tonyv@cohtitan.com, and we'll talk about how you can fit in!

Yes, it is most definitely completely legal. From the User Agreement, section 6b:

The oddest job I had was when the local Galleria mall brought a giant Garfield balloon from the Macy's parade to inflate in the big atrium at the center of the mall. They needed holders to keep the thing from bashing into the glass roof while it was inflated. (A process that takes a total of around eight hours, by the way.) They did it while the mall was closed on a Sunday night, so from around 8:00pm one Sunday night until almost 5:00am early Monday morning, I and around eighty other people held onto ropes to hold the balloon down. We had to schedule our bathroom breaks to make sure that we always had enough people holding the ropes.

Yes, for eight hours one night, my job description was "balloon weight."

If you install the new launcher, you don't have to accept the EULA when you run it, just when you sign into the game.

What's the big deal? I downloaded the launcher today and ran it, and it worked fine. It costs you one extra click on the login screen, but it saves you a click on the loader utility. Plus, if I recall correctly, the loader better handles downloading and installing updates. And if you have other NCsoft games, you launch them all from the same utility. It seems to me that these are all good things, not bad. (Well, except the number of clicks, which comes out in the wash.)

One feature I'd like to see them add is a context menu on the system tray icon that would let you launch a game directly from the icon. Right now, it just has Open and Exit. It should also have City of Heroes, City of Heroes Test, and any other NCsoft games you have installed, so that you don't even have to hit the launcher icon to play.

Here's a quick tip: If you take the train to one end of Steel Canyon or Skyway City and your mission (or whatever it is you're going to see or do) is on the other end, just go around the wall and take the train you just came out of to the other end. Since you're going somewhere else without moving between zones, there is no loading screen and the trip will be relatively instantaneous.

Here's one that's come in handy for various purposes.

Almost everyone knows that you can use the /screenshotui command to turn the GUI on and off in your screenshots. However, what a lot of people don't know is that you can take lossless screenshot images using the /screenshot_tga command. I have the following base keybinds in a file that I load on every character:

I'd probably round up the Titan Network crew and see if they wanted to move on to some other game to make awesome.

Hey.

Hey all, sorry in advance if this has already been asked and answered, but does anyone know at exactly what time the Weekly Strike Target gets switched over to the new task/strike force?

For example, I see that on March 1, the WST changes to the Apex task force. Exactly when on March 1 does that happen? Midnight UTC? Midnight Eastern? Midnight Pacific? Some other time on Tuesday morning?

Also, I think I saw a reference to it somewhere, but what determines whether you get the rewards, when you start the task force or when you end the task force? For example, if the cutoff is Midnight UTC on March 1 and I start a Sister Psyche task force at 11:00pm UTC on February 28, will I get the rewards? What if I start an Apex task force and finish it at 2:00am UTC March 1?

Any citations, if you have them, would be helpful. I'll add the info to the wiki so that I won't have to ask again when I forget in a couple of weeks.

/offtopic

Every time I see this topic bubble up, I hear Aretha Franklin singing, "You've got to think! (Think!) Think about what you're trying to do to me, yeah, think! (Think, think!) Let yourself go, let your mind be free!"

I think it's some kind of song about playing on the Freedom server.

(Yes, I know it's "You'd better think," not "You've got to think." But when I see this topic bubble up, that's not what Aretha is singing.)

Mine is:
Currently listening to Pink Floyd's Ummagumma

It's kind of new to me, though.

On Thursday, February 24 at approximately 12 noon ET, all character badge data will be wiped from the City Info Tracker database on the Titan Network. Verified and unverified badge data will all vanish and badge totals will be reset to 0. However, all other character information will be preserved. I will post a follow-up notice once the maintenance is complete and it is safe to re-verify badge data.

After the release of Going Rogue, CIT suffered from a number of bugs that led to inappropriately verified badge information. Despite our best efforts to clear as much of the invalid data from our systems as we could, we undoubtedly have missed some. More recently, Titan Sentinel also had an unexpected manifest problem that contributed additional invalid verification data. We've worked hard to fix the problems that caused these situations. A clean slate will allow our users to re-verify their badges and have confidence that the information on the site is once again valid.

We're also taking this opportunity to make some architectural changes to the part of the database that stores character badge data. These changes should improve the performance of that table, contributing to a more responsive site.

We sincerely apologize for this necessary inconvenience. Please bear with us as we continue to make CIT better.