Von Krieger

He looks like he's having that whole eyes bug out choking thing from being outside the domes on Mars in Total Recall going on.

Quaaaaaaaaaaid!

Yes, that screencap of the three Titan Weapons concepts was posted elsewhere.

As you very well know.

Because you're kind of linking to it.

From my Photobucket gallery.

Looking over the archived Ustream for the bits I missed.

The New Tutorial
-Meant to be dynamic and action-driven, rather than burying you under a wall of text
-The New Tutorial is shorter than the old ones, but some of the mechanics and such are spread out over story arcs lasting up to level 20.

Redesigned Atlas Park and the new sewer trial are supposed to be amazing.

The low level sewer trial apparently features some new mechanics.

Trial fights again both the Praetorian and Hamidon forces. Both are after a secret that "Once uncovered would shatter the world of Praetoria pretty much permanently, and the goal of the trial is to get to that secret before it's too late."

(I want to be the first to throw out a Hamidon/Cole lovechild.)

Zwillenger thinks that the Underground Incarnate trial is the most visually stunning thing in the game he's ever seen.

First Ward, the new co-op zone is located in Praetoria, and is acessed from Underground Imperial City, Talos Island, and Cap du Diable.

Diabolique's Tower is, in part, inspired by the building from the end of Ghostbusters.

There is an homage to the "Are you a God?" line in upcoming Incarnate content.

First Ward used to be the major region of Praetoria, the bayside city center, but was devastated by the Hamidone Wars.

Was hit by massive natural disasters by the Hamidon.

First Ward was decided to be not worth saving, and stricken from the roles. Was placed under the charge of unofficial members of Cole's forces. There is no official oversight.



Mother Mercy hospital in First Ward. I haven't seen this anywhere else. So forgive me if it's been shown before. It's the headquarters of PRaetor Tillman and her forces.

First Ward is a very diverse area.

A lot of things pushed to the margins of Cole's empire wound up in First Ward.

The Carnival of Light are not the Resistance, but are Resistance aligned. They are the combined forces of the mystical and magical forces that are good guys, essentially.

They take some visual cues from the Carnival of Shadows, but also the Midnight Squad and the Legacy Chain, as they've gone through major events in the Praetorian timeline that forced them to band together.

Zwill hopes that lore enthusiasts are taking notes (Hi Zwill!) because "This is some juicy knowledge right here."

On the documents First Ward has the subtitle of "Praetoria's Dirty Little Secret."

Not all Seers make the cute, the the ones with an Eldritch Horror headcrab infestations are the ones that have been experimented on and slipped out of control. The group of headcrab coiffed Seers is called the Awakened. Their storyline is going to be dug into.

All villain groups in First Ward are explored in the story arcs.

Zwill: Looking over all the art, "I figured our motto for First Ward: "We Got Tentacles.""

Black Scorpion: "We've got tentacles. Luckily all the tentacles wrapped around buildings are dead. Because after all, Empire Cole defeated the Hamidon. Right? RIGHT?!"

Other devs express their rather eye-winking, shifty postured consent.

BS: "The tentacles are dead, but they might not exactly stay that way..."

Zwill: "Dun dun dun!"


The Seed of Hamidon is an in-zone giant monster, it is a mothership-colonizer for the Hamidon. It is sent in to test the defenses if the first ward and to see if it is ripe for colonization for the Terrarian Plague. It drops viral seedlings/probes/spores.

It is a new type of GM rather than just pile on it, you have to take down the podlings in zone and then damage the mothership.

You can be well outside of the city zone and see the Seed floating around the buildings in First Ward.

BS has been bothered for awhile that you could be in zone for hours and not see the GM's. It's impossible to miss the Seed.

Serene Sorceress and the snake peoples are members of a faction dubbed the Talons of Vengeance. War Witch is relieved that she FINALLY got her Praetorian version.

The deb team seems to keep bringing War Witch back just so they can kill her some more.

The Talons have a connection to the Furies of mythology. There is a relation to the Well of the Furies.

Some confusion as to if the dev team works off of a storyline dartboard, golden tablets they found buried (and possibly having Protean translate them with his face hidden in a hat), or have story pieces attached to items that a tank of manatees fetch.

Zwill: "Cole bless the Manatees."

Personally I think they receive them through divination from the entrails of forum moderators and the less visible members of the Community Relations team.

The flame path aura in the screenshots is the Blazing Path Aura. The blue energy one is called Streak. They are a part of the Paragon Rewards Program, the thing replacing Veteran Rewards.

I've got Oblits slotted left and right, and my build focused more on getting me to 32.5 s/l and melee defense than boosting recharge. It's a general all-purpose build. I went with Cardiac myself and things have improved immensely. I also took Ageless because most of the times I die it is due debuffs, so I went with the debuff protection and have found myself really enjoying the End boosting and Recharge boosting aspects of it as well.

Here's what they showed.

I missed the first 34 minutes due to sleeping. Came in just before Time Manipulation was being discussed.

-Time Manipulation is a buff/debuff set
-It has one power that enhances the buffs/debuffs applied by other powers. Not sure if it's ally, enemy, both, or what.



-Two handed melee weapons set is dubbed Titan Weapons
-Not just huge broad swords, but several kinds of large weapons
-Starts out slow and builds 'momentum' which uses faster and faster animations

-Isolator/Jailbird badges are going to still be in the game somehow
-They are not removing badges anywhere, and will have ways to earn every badge still
-Dr. Aeon rewrote the introductory Ouroburos arcs

-You will be able to see every piece for sale in the Tailor
-Non-bought pieces will have a lock icon and can be bought then and there
-There will be more tailors placed in the game

-VIP's will not be able to ride free players as mounts

As I rack my brain trying to think of heroic mastermind concepts, the ones I come up with are not ones that are comics, per se. The various Pokemon trainers are essentially a sort of mastermind. The Power Rangers, or at least the early season that I remember, without the Giant Mecha aspect would seem to me very much MM-like, since they typically all had similar powers, but different weapons.

The main character from the SNES game Robotrek might qualify as a Mastermind, since he did zero fighting and just built and buffed his robot minions.

If we had a mastermind set where the pets merged into one giant Mega-Pet as a possible power that would likely open up the heroic concept more, since that's something you see in a lot of shows. Voltron, Power Rangers, the gestalts from Transformers.

I wanted to say The Darkness might qualify, but I'm not familiar with much more than the general concepts, and I don't think he'd qualify as a Hero.

Dar from The Beastmaster and Squirrel Girl (AN ACTUAL COMIC EXAMPLE!) might work if we had an animal based MM set.

Pretty much I keep coming up with any group of individuals that team up that sport similar power/abilities might work as MM concepts if we had costume customization options. Pro wrestling stables (like DX or the nWo), your typical cast of RPG heroes/heroines, Power Rangers/Sailor Moon-like teams, and pretty much anything else that follows a formula of a group that works together more often than alone to fight their foes or something similar.

My diseased brain is saying that GWAR and KISS and other themed metal bands with three letter acronym/allcaps names might count.

In my case I can't play anything that doesn't have mez protection. So I'm not going "How can I get mez protection on my Emp/Rad?" I'm going "How can I make a defender with mez protection?"

In the case of every AT except Blasters and Kheldians there is an option somewhere along the way that will give me mez protection. Some need more than others. But a Kheldian is the only one that has to utilize a comparatively large number of slots to not outright suck while getting its mez protection.

Kheldians are essentially the only AT that does not get a potential option for mez protection.

All the melee classes get a Mez protection ability.

Traps and Forcefield have their Def bubbles that also sport Mez Res.

Controllers and Dominators get Indomitable Will.

Despite also being Ranged/Shield types, the VEAT's have mez res.

Blasters have Defiance which allows them to use their Tier 1 and 2 attacks even when mezzed.

Dominators get mez res while in Domination.

None of the other AT's have to give up anything but a power slot to get their mez protection in most cases.

Compared to all the other defensive sets, Khelds kind of get the shaft. Their autopower, while occassionally useful, is pretty 'meh' compared to all the others. Only Invulnerability has its shields broken up the way Khelds do, but they get the much more useful Smashing/Lethal as their must-pick power, and almost all Invuln's toggles come with some sort mez or status protection.

Having Kheld mez protection in Dwarf Form makes things essentially worse than Blaster Defiance. Not only do you have to take another power and spend quite a few slots to be effective while 'mezzed,' you have to put up with the shapeshifting animation (at least twice).

Blasters also have to use some slots to make their Defiance attacks useful, but they are a part of a Blaster's normal powers, and very often are a part of a Blaster's best possible attack chain.

So in order to not suck while under mez protection a Kheldian has to put slots into 3-4 attack powers that come along with the form, whereas a Blaster is required to get 2 of their Defiance attacks at level 1.

Yeah, it seems like each major zone got its own dev/OCR person in it. We had somebody running Infernal in St. Martial.

I think there were two or three leagues worth of us in St. Martial last night. The lag was incredible, I couldn't move for up to a minute at a time, and at one point things were going so slow, I just put Ball Lightning on autofire and left the PC for about fifteen minutes to come back to only having one or two War Walker GM's having fallen.

Though it was rather interesting, especially when a beach in the space-time continuum allowed for two spawns of AV-GM's in Fortune's Wheel.

I'm going to guess that the voucher thing is for the "Aura/Cape at Level 1" type of things, rather than the costume unlocks.

Highlights from today's Dev Chat:

-Kirby Dots Aura: Tunnel Rat has been wanting to do it for a long time (and has snuck them in on some Clockwork and Antimatter powers), but had no idea if anyone would want it until it was mentioned in the thread.

-Doppleganger Lore Pets: Dubbed "Too powerful for the Lore slot" with some not at all subtle hinting from Black Scorpion.

-Black Pebble: Possibly seen on camera. Footage was blurry. More likely Bigfoot in a Black Pebble suit.

-Separate Auras and Path Auras: Probably too resource taxing to do.

-New Auras: We were shown the Boils, Ghosts, Slime, and Magnetic Auras.

-Ascension Armor: Comes in Aura and Aura-free versions. Aura is tintable and is in addition to any aura you already have.

-Merit Costs for cosmetic items: Mentioned as "20 Empyrean Merits for the really high stuff, but most of it is a lot lower." Also "Entering beta, so is subject to change."

-Keyes Reactor Trial: Will not canonically blow up Praetoria if you fail.

-Tunnel Rat: Disarmed Black Pebble of the Nerf Gattling Gun and gave as good as she got from his many shots all evening.

-Incarnate Emblems: Chest emblems of all the Incarnate Slot logos are going to be made available.

-Scrappers: Ice Armor, Black Scorpion made a show of writing it down as something to discuss.

-Merging Blue and Redside Ouroburos: Would take a LOT of effort in order to due so, essentially rewrites of the contact engine, mission engine, travel engine, and Ouroburos engine. Was on the list of things to do for Going Rogue but was put by the wayside due to time and effort involved.

-Zone where we can use our Incarnate shifts. Got mention along the lines of "Didn't we already...?" and then frantic hushing from Second Measure with a wink and a finger over the lips.


EDIT: Oh! Crap! Thanks for reminding me, bAss.

A new, god-like NPC with incredible power is being added, where you will be able to set your preference for having the movement portion of buffs active or inaction, as well as being able to set preference on Mystic Fortune.

This Super-Incarnate will also tell you which of the Praetorian Archvillains you've defeated and still need for your Dimensional Warder badge.

That NPC's name? Null the Gull.

And considering how fragile pets are in the Incarnate trials...

Octuple. The word you're looking for is octuple.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=251519

There you go. Googled Weekly Strike Target.

Of the non Alpha Slot abilities we have:

Massive Ranged AoE Attack (Blaster-y)
Massive AoE Buff (Defender-y)
Debuffs added to every attack (Corruptor-y/Defender-y)
Pets (Mastermind-y/Controller-y/Dominator-y)

So I am thinking that we might get some of the following:
Massive Single Target Attack, maybe Melee (Stalker-y)
Defensive toggle (Tanker-y)
Mez type attack of some sort (Controller-y/Dominator-y)
Autopower self-buff, like a raise in HP or Regen or Recovery or something (Brute-y/Scrapper-y/Tanker-y)

I think it would be Plant/Thorn/Ice, with Carrion Creepers, Thorntrops, Sleet, and Ice Storm.

I took the Ageless Destiny rather than barrier on my SS/Fire/Mu to cover the same Def debuff hole, and it works quite well for me. The +Rech and +End also help with a blue bar sucking monstrosity like SS/Fire and the losses in Recharge one makes in order to get good S/L/Melee defenses.