Von Krieger

Zwill is wearing his plaid abomination.



TANGENT: Fantasy Football

Talk about the CoH Player Summit. Or Pummit as Black Pebble still insists on calling it.

TechnoBabel: A pummet? Black pebble, that's just silly, it's a PLayer sUMMIT! It's clearly a PLUMMIT!

http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/n...yer_summit.php



They're giving away the Rulu-Shin costume code at the summit.

Makes me sad cause I want those gloves and chest as player parts.

Registration opens at 8:30.

TANGENT: Hobie's coffee cake

TANGENT: What to call people from the Justice server.

Texas Justice and some other Justicites (which Zwill says sounds like a micro-organism) are doing a bacon-y waffle-y thing somewhere.

T_Arcson: When I die, I want to go to a bacony waffley place.

psychoti: Denny's is where you go when you're evacuating from a Hurricane and have to fight looters that think your computer is free because it's in a locked car.

Freshly-shaven Positron will be there.

Nothing will be streamed since Zwill will be working behind the scenes on things.

Zwill says it is likely there will be announcements about powers.

TANGENT: Dinnah's Fried Chicken

Going to talk to a new person today. Zwill does his Mr. Rogers impression. OR possible George Bush Sr.

Panel session 1:
Art Panel w/ Noble Savage: Design a costume set workshop
Powersets and Abilities w. Arbiter Hawk, Black Scorpion, Positron, and Synapse

Panel Session 2:
Art Panel II: Art Attack
Lore Panel: SSA's and Where do we go from there?: Posi, Dr. Aeon, and Brian Green.

Chat is still discussing Zwill's bad Mr. Rogers impersonation.

Panel Session 3:
Design of End Game and Beyond: Baryonx, Protean, Arbiter Hawk, and
Paragon Market: Conveiniance vs Time

That will have announcement of new features for the paragon market.

Samuraiko: I am going in costume as "that woman that scares the hell out of Matt Miller"

Karaoke contest with door prizes.

New dev guy arrives! I dub him the lovechild of Jack Black and Justin Beiber. Zwill is horrified. But says it on air.



The new dev's redname is ThinkTank., in honor of one of the recent costume pieces.

I think his name is Cord Carney or something like that.

He started on kids movie tie-in PSP titles. His first game worked on was Over the Hedge.

He did PvP map work for The Agency.

One of the first things he's worked on is the Halloween event.

It was mostly another designer that has "Left the City of Heroes project" and given to him at the stage where it was mostly bug fixing.

12:56 MentalMaden-1: Can Think Tank sing Tribute for us?

Zwill: "They say you look like Jack Black."

TT: "Actually people tell me mostly they tell me I look like the lead singer from Death Cab for Cutie."

CHAT INDUCED TANGENT: Bands

12:57 CoHSteelclaw-1: wait... does anyone think this looks like a new band combination? Tenacious Z
12:57 CoHChaosCreator: the hair looks like ashton kutcher.

TT: "I'm still trying to find a barber in the area."

Zwill: "You know we have a FlowBee over there."

Zwill: "We don't talk about 4chan, lest they be summoned. OH WAIT, BEASTYLE IS ALREADY HERE!"

Zwill: "You worked on the new Circle of Thorns."

TT: "IT was a lot of fun. There was a lot of feedback. There were pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages, there was a novel written about them. The pieces were just about finished, but we could redo the coloration and how the pieces were spread across sets."

"There were about 70 model entries. We ended up having maybe 5 unique minions and 5 unique Lt's. So we started by collecting information off the forums. Some forum members had made some well-thought out presentations on how the old CoT looks could be carried over to the CoT sets."

"I printed out old version of the CoT with an eye for coloration. The problem we had was the minions were all brown and silver, the highlights are really bold, when you set it to that you get really silver. And like all the LT's were gold, you looked at them and saw pure gold."

"So we went with a dingy dirty brown, green, and a dirty grey for the minions. As they level up they get more detailed, more ornate, more spiky. We looked at the Lt's like they were and copied the color schemes to keep them recognizeable."

"One of the named guys stayed as they were before. But the mages, the bosses, all got updated."

Chat is talking about the CoT Pope Hat.

"Every single CoT was supposed to have a variation of the skirt. But the Lt's were running around without skirts. It brings to mind a Simpsons reference. Flanders in his suit on the mountain."

Zwill: "Stupid sexy Flanders."

TT: "I've got CoT in the new thing I'm working on that I can't talk about. Though someone on the forum referred to them in a comic as a Marde Gras float, and I don't think it's fair. Though they are a bit more flamboyant than they were."

TT: "Our main goal with the trial was to hit it out of the park from the art department, create a real evocative setting. It was one of the first things I saw."

Talk about the Trial's artwork.



TT: "I think this is one of the best holiday events I've seen in an MMO, and I play a lot of MMO's. It's new art assets"

Zwill: "There are some easter eggs lurking around the front door."



Talk about the wolf and the new four legged model rig. It's the first one in the game.

TT doesn't know that it's a big deal.

Chat spasm that this is BIG.



Zwill: "What was the goal for challenge level?"

TT: "We didn't want to make an Incarnate level difficulty trial. If you were a free play you could log in and do the sewer trial three times and be fifteen in an hour. Halloween is 15 and goes up to 29."

Zwill: "You get exemplared down to 30, I think."

Zwill corrects himself that the trial is MAXIMUM 4 people, not MINIMUM 4 people, which is what he said last week.

It's 4 players due to all the narrow spaces. They tried it with other team sizes, but more than that and it gets messy.

They originally wanted it to be 5+, but going from level 5 to 29, we can't count on them having anything to survive the Abomination.

Some people in the office wish it was more difficult.

There is a bonus object badge: summon and kill 99 zombies and the boss in 12 minutes.

There's a bonus EB that you can spawn, but he doesn't give a badge.

Talk about the murder of crows costume change emote.

Yup, as I thought it looks like the emote is Sorceress Serene's teleport. AWESOME!

Zwill: "I'm Jewish, Irish, Asian. Kilt wearing samurai with a big nose and a guilt complex."

TANGENT: Scotch and other boozes.

A player sent a case of wine to the devs as a thank you.

TT has fears over player-sent dev gifts.

Zwill says it would be a problem with any other game community, but he's never had bad things happen from player sent food.



An item Zwill was sent by a player.

TT: "People are asking about the new incarnate powers, I wish I could talk about them, but I can't."

Zwill talks a little about them on the podcast.

One of the new judgments looks awesome.

Zwill used to work at a winery.

TANGENT: '97 California wines

TT is a World Designer, but the lines between World and Content are constantly eroding.

He's trying to learn everything as it comes up.

TT played CoH at launch, a Rad/Rad defender was his first.

"Are there any eras you'd like to design for, ala Cimiora being ancient rome?"

TT is a fan of middle eastern stuff. "Something like old Babylon would be awesome. With the towers an hanging gardens and ziggurauts and lapis lazuli."

I'd like to take a note to remind you all that ziggurats are bad for your health. And I spelled lapis lazuli right on the first try.

Zwill wants to see some ancient Indian stuff.

TT likes weird hodgepodges, combing high tech and medieval. It's one of his favorite things. In one of The Agency maps he put a Buddhist temple on top of a skyscraper.

"I'm a huge sucker for fantasy. I like gritty low fantasy."

"Ultimately I like anything I can make a crazy statement with. I like making outlandish areas, just on the edge of reality. Absurd, but you can imagine it existing just barely."

THINKTANK DOES NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH PVP.

Talk about the moonbase ends with:

Zwill: "Well we have..."

TT: "We can't talk about that."

Mention of the Blood of the Black Stream.

Everyone is trying to find the date the Halloween trial ends: November 2nd.

TT: "Long enough to get sick of it."

"Central zone as a gathering place for incarnate trials?"

Zwill says they have talked about it, but they want to encourage team-up teleporter.

They don't want to try and shift where players hang out.

TT: "To give a steady stream of new content we're reusing a lot of old areas, revitalizing places people don't really go any more instead of making a new zone. I can't name names."

Talk about using city locations in some of the trials/task forces,

1:29 ArachnosCommander: You should destroy Boomtown. More.

1:30 Turgenev: Dark Astoria. Technically, except for a small few week window about five years ago, noone has ever actually SEEN the zone.

1:30 jbtrimar: Work on Boomtown. I don't think those buildings should still be smoking after 7 years

Zwill: "Psychoti is essentially asking do you hate heroes, villains, or both?"

TT: "I played mostly villains because I wanted to be a Corruptor."

He's gone blueside now.

Talk about how Mercy Island isn't his favorite zone and how he gets out ASAP.

TT spent all his PP on Barbarian and CoT costumes.

Zwill just got Crushing Uppercut.

psychoti: Q: (just a clarification) That's not really what I meant, I meant as a world designer, do you prefer working on areas with more of a darker tone, a lighter tone, or something that is a mixture of both

TT: "I'm a sucker for color."

1:34 CoHSteelclaw-1: You heard it hear first! TYE DYE ZONE in Issue 22!

TT: "You can do dark and gritty, but do vibrant at the same time."

TT: "It's on the evil overlord list. Confuse the people by dressing in bright colors. Walk around with M. Bison shoulder pads dressed in bright pink and yellow. You’d be TERRIFIED of that guy."

ArachnosCommander: Q: Can we get a rainbow zone that rains rainbow raindrops? with rainbow unicorns that shoot rainbow lazers from their eyes?

TT: "You've guessed it, exactly! That's what I'm working on!"

I was looking at Mids database in Set Bonuses for some reason and stumbled across a few entries that I'd never heard of before:

Inexhaustibility: Out of Combat +Hit Points/Endurance
Large Critical Hit Bonus
Small Critical Hit Bonus
Neuron's Alacrity

Putting them into brackets allows you to see them and their effects. Inexhaustibility sounds interesting, and does Neuron's Alacrity mean we're going to be seeing Praetorian named IO's showing up?

Anyone know where the info was found on these? I keep as up to date as I can on most goings on in regards to CoH, but I've never heard of these.

We start off a bit late this week due to technical difficulties. Beastyle hears curses, hammering, and a goat from Zwill's cubicle. My guess he is offering a sacrifice to the tech support gods and reading dark magicks from the dreaded Tomes of Service.

Zwill is wearing a plaid Ye Olde Baker Boy this week.




I'm mentioned on air as being the dev chat statistician and Zwill apologies for the record low 1.5 tangents last week.

Zwill asks about if talking about tangents is a tangent. Someone in the background says it counts as on topic.

Zwill wants to talk about what's going on this weekend.

He is still baffled as to why this image is his default.



Steelclaw: Buy Your Used Car at Positron's Used Car Emporium!

Talking about the game-a-thon that Paragon will be doing. Zwill asks us to support him and not TheNet or Positron.



Zwill says they might be Ustreaming a DnD game.

Zwill: "I think he's using it as an excuse to use every miniature he has."

They will be playing DnD 4e.

They're got a goodly portion dedicated to City of Heroes.

If they reach $2000 in donations, we get to pick the song Positron does on Dance Central.

I suggest "Dancing Queen."

Zwill: "Friday, really? I'd stab my eardrums out."

"Can't Touch This, but he has to wear the parachute pants."

TANGENT: Zubaz and 90's fashion

TANGENT: Zwill talks about Tahiti to Avatea

Zwill wishes he could show us a map of CoH log ins, but it contains personal information so he can’t. They can tell brand new players. Two players log in from Taiwan and Tel Aviv, Finland, Lithuania, all for the first time.

Zwill: "Hey, this one kind of looks like it's in North Korea."

Avatea: "It's Kim Jong Il."

Zwill has to bite his tongue about Kim Jong Il.

Zwill: "If I said anything I would be in SO much trouble."

coh_beastyle: He's in his own one-person SG. He's quite ronery.

Samuraiko: now we know who's in Warburg collecting nukes

TANGENT: Zwill's new hat, and all of them being plaid. Zwill shills Kangol hats.

TANGENT: The new Avengers trailer.

Zwill: "I can't imagine anyone they could have gotten to play Tony Stark better than Robert Downey Jr."

He's worried about the guy who is going to play Banner/The Hulk.

This continue for awhile. Talk about Lou Ferrengo doing voice for the Hulk.

Announcement of the COH: Freedom Player Summit, 2011.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...82#post3931082

There will be more info next week.

Zwill advises to fly into San Jose.

Zwill: "It's 100 percent fan service. Q and A and panels all day long."

coh_beastyle: NOT THAT KIND OF FANSERVICE

Zwill: "No! No! NO! OH MY GOSH NO! NOT THAT KIND OF FAN SERVICE!"

Zwill is redfaced with embarrassment.



TheNetPQA: Ill be dressing up as Desdemona

They are not likely to broadcast on Ustream. They're looking to record the panels and post them later.

Zwill: "Or as Black Pebble likes to call it, the Pummit. *whispers* What is a pummit? Why does he call it a pummit? I don't know!"

The event is only one day. They're looking to do some stuff the night before, maybe.

They will be telling us new things at the summit.

Zwill will not allow ZombieMan to crash at his place.

Panels will overlap, so you will have to pick and choose. Zwill says they'll be art, design, and production and things people want to actually see.

Food will be included.

coh_beastyle: On the menu: souls

Halloween event? Soon™, they're actually doing some final testing today.

Zwill tries to help Solasau with his tech trouble.

Zwill says we can film whatever we like at the summit.

Gemesis: q: Will you ever host a triva event and give away your hats as prizes?

"No! I love my hats! But I have a bunch of old, sweaty, disgusting promotional game baseball caps you guys can have."

Zwill says that for booth babes they already have TheNet as Desdemona, and wants to convince Beastyle to go as Miss Liberty.

Chat wants Zwill to go as Sister Psyche or Swan.

psychoti: Just as long as there is not a Nopantsitron or Stateofundressman....

"No. Never. No. Nein. Not going to happen. Swan? Maybe I could go as Miss Swan."

Zwill does his impression of Miss Swan from Mad TV.

TANGENT: Same actress on Family Guy.

Sexy Jay will not dress up as Sister Psyche either.

Zwill does not know Kung Fu, but does know Tae Kwan Do, Hopkido, and Rasslin'.

I ask what Zwill's Rasslin' finisher is.

Zwill: "Crossface, butcher, with barbed wire."

Zwill demonstrates for the unfortunates who don't know wrestling what one of those is.

TANGENT: Zwill's high school wrestling career.

Zwill does a little happy dance when he realizes that they're done with Praetorian Invasions. They want to hit a server once a month with a Praetorian event. I cannot screencap the dance.

There will be another dev judged costume contest soon.

Chat wants a GIF of the Zwill Happy Dance.

Beastyle wants to put the dance to music on YouTube.

Zwill: "Numa Numa? Really? REALLY?!"

CoHSteelclaw: BEAST: Do a split screen... with the Truffle Shuffle from Goonies on one side and Zwillinger on the other

Hint at Halloween stuff? "Watch the Paragon Market."

Shot from the Halloween trail, starts at level 14. This is the tunnel running from the basement to the graveyard. Minimum of 4 to start.



It is a limited time event.

"I did not buy the fireman helmets. All my characters are ironic and I don't have a concept for it."

Zwill can neither confirm or deny things in the works for the winter event.

milkweasel: Q: When the sig character dies, will the arcs involving them be wiped from the game or rewritten to fight other sigs?

They're changing all the stuff associated with them.

"It's not an insignificant amount of work."

They plan on adding more trials and improving and expanding the LFG system.

"It makes Second Measure cry when people don't use the Team Up Teleporter."

Talk of Free players going to Premium.

There is a fix in the works for SG Base logos. Zwill thinks it's fixed in an internal build.

CHAT INDUCED TANGENT: James Franco

Zwill: "If you don't know what a terrible James Franco movie is, go see Your Highness. You'll understand."

Zwill forgot to jiggle the mouse and we get some video stutter and blue screen.

CHAT INDUCED TANGENT: Composition of Zwill's hat.

Zwill has 10 hats.

Chat wants to see Zwill wearing them all at once in a majestic towering pillar of hats, ala TF2.

coh_beastyle: Tarnishe notte my towering pillar of hats

1:33 CoHDesiBoy: Q: does aquaman count as a real superhero?
1:33 coh_beastyle: He counts as being outrageous, DesiBoy.
1:34 hellkat9940: But is he truly outrageous?
1:34 coh_beastyle: Truly, truly, truly.

Zwill: "Eeeeeeh. I'll leave that up to you guys."

Someone in the background mentions that the New 52 DC Aquaman was pretty good.

VIP in-game customer service is in beta testing right now.

CHAT INDUCED TANGENT: Zwill's New 52 comics that he has.

The facepalm emote will stay exclusive to Facebook.

Zwill is planning on forwarding the confusion over Fireman Helmets being under Hats.

Second Measure stops by and calls Zwill an attention *****.



Zwill shows Second Measure's phone, which has a background of a puppy.

Zwill: "The eyes pierce the soul."

Talk about the barf emotes, devs have them.

Zwill: "We have THREE barf emotes? REALLY?"

Zwill: "What a shock, Colin Brown did the barf and vomit emotes. From the maker of the Rocket Board comes vomit!"

There are more ViDocs planned.

Talk about the cool art in the ViDoc.

ZombieManCoH: that art work should change each month to show an evovling story

"I'll pass that along!"

Zwill: "Basically I'm a paid troll. I post lolcats."

Closing talk about the pummit.

Crab Spider + Leviathan Power Pool.

Supression
Arm Lash
Frag Grenade
Venom Grenade
Frenzy
Omega Maneuver

School of Sharks
Arctic Breath
Bile Spray

You can also go Super Jumping and pick up Spring Attack for another AoE.

And there are the three pet summons you can get, which might not be AoE in and of themselves, but are free damage.

Plus Crabs are pretty survivable, especially if you can pick up some defensive set bonuses. And with Maneuvers they're always welcome on teams. ^_^

*cuddles softcapped, permahasten, all three pets permaed Crab who has more Res and HP than an /FA Brute*

Oddly enough I was actually thinking about these when I went to bed last night.

Concealment: I was thinking an AoE Stealth+Def, rather like Steamy Mist or Shadow Fall, but lower power and none of the +Res, of course.

Leadership: I was thinking a toggle power that provided a little bit of recharge, some recovery and regeneration, and a little bit of Endurance reduction. Call it Optimization, or something like that. Sort of teaching one's team to be more effective in their movements and such.

Presence: As was said above, an effectless Taunt aura was what I came up with for this one.

Fighting: Was kind of torn on this one, I was thinking maybe 2-3ish mez protection, or something like Street Justice's Sweeping Cross. Pretty solid hitting strike, but as a narrow cone.

Medicine: I was thinking an AoE heal plus a small Max HP buff.

I did end up finding that spreadhseet, but poking around inside it I could only find cell references and such that were too complex for me to decipher.

I did PM Arcana, but she never seems to be on on the weekends.

Thanks for those numbers, Numi. Wouldn't happen to have anything on DoT's in there, would you?

I've been trying all sorts of searches, but my google-fu is failing me. :P

Heck, one of them got this very post as a result.

Can anyone else confirm this? Or did I just miss an option somewhere?

In standard VK fashion, I'm trying to design an EAT to fill out the elemental damage gap in them of Fire. Cause we have Peacebringers for Energy, Warshades for Negative, Smashing, Lethal, Toxic and Psi are kind of represented by the VEATs. So I'm trying to build one for fire.

So my problem is I've fixated on a concept of extrapolating from Demon Summoning. PB's are Radiation+Energy, WS's are Ice+Dark, so I was figuring on this EAT being essentially a theoretical lovechild of Fire, Spines, and Sonic to get the result of a Hellfire-themed EAT.

And as usual my brain is over-complicating things. It demands that I go into the most obscene detail possible and work out the damage scales, effects scales, endurance counts, and recharge times for all the attacks involved. And possibly the defenses as well. >.<

So does anyone out there know the formulas used to generate melee, ranged, and the various AoE attacks?

Once given the numbers I can stuff them into an Excel spreadsheet with neatly labelled columns to give me the details for the attacks I need.

Actually I need that and a formula to discern the proper Rech from Damage, and Damage from Rech.

Since I'm trying to figure out how much DS and Sonic got their numbers smacked down to comepnsate for their -Res.

Zwill apparently bought the magazine and this week is wearing a plaid Killer Exclusive.



The whiteboard reads Street Justice.

TANGENT: Zwill complains about his coffee.

We have some things to talk about before Synapse arrives, with the Intrepid Informer article on StJ going up now.

They're working on writing up an article on the Paragon Points/Tokens issue. There was a bug in the system database.

They'll be awarding the points on the 11th or 12th, and working their way back to the 1st over the next seven months until it gets back to your proper billing date if it's before the 13th.

Paragon Reward tokens were meant to reward on your billing date, but instead they're awarding on the date you would've received your veteran badges, as there is a huge, complex formula involved with that. They will still be going out on a monthly basis.

They'll be trying to get a post clarifying this later today.

Zwill: "Oh my, that's an interesting e-mail. No, it's not pron!"

Yes, he said pron.

CoH is getting involved with a charity called Extra Life. Paragon Studios will be playing games in shifts and they're going to Ustream it.



Starting 8 am on October 15.

http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?...01&teamID=5927

That's the link to Paragon Studios.

They'll be playing CoH and Rock Band.

Zwill wants Posi to do Def Leppard on Rock Band.

Posi in chat says he'll do Dance Central.

I will NOT be transcribing that Ustream.

They will be playing of the Children's Hospital of Oakland. This is through the Children's Miracle Network.

Posi's high school license plate was DEPH LEP.

Chat thinks Rock Band: Van Canto would be awesome. Van Canto is an acapella metal cover band.

A Wild Synapse has appeared in a Space Invaders t-shirt



Synapse made a Fire/StJ tank, Zwill has made an EnergyStJ or SyJ/Energy something that's a little girl, and an SR/StJ or StJ/SR something. Sorry, I was putting the photos in the post. :-P

Zwill notes he only makes ironic characters.

In the office discussion is StJ has been inspired in part from the long fight scene with Rowdy Roddy Piper in the film They Live.

Syn says it was inspired by being Batman-esque, more of the Arkham Asylum batman, with bonecurshing blows. He thought it could be done with alternate animations, but Second Mesaure thought there was space thematically for StJ to exist. Syn thought that room would be made for it with the combo system.

It's a revision of Dual Blades' combo system, made more flexible due to the complaints that you have limited attack chains and are essentially forced into get all the attack powers.

Zwill loves the gritty, fast paced feel of StJ.

StJ has a bit of animation blending so that the return to idle stance gets interrupted and chained into the next attack.

http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/n...r_issue_13.php

We go into the article.

There's two kind of attack powers, combo builders and combo finishers.

Zwill: "No c-c-c-combo breakers!"

Combo levels 1 and 2 just increase damage, combo level 3 has an alternate affect.

Zwill calls the Tier 9 a Shoryuken. Well, he calls it a Hadoken and has Synapse correct him.

Zwill says he'll never get to level 50 again and that he had to "Far... er... run tips."

Initial Strike, Tier 1

Syn: "The bread and butter attack, builds levels quickly, has a chance to stun."

Heavy Blow, Tier 2

Chance to knockdown. The first two chain together in early levels.

Sweeping Cross, Tier 3

The first finisher, though you don't need combo levels to use it. It can almost get into Superior damage range at Combo 3.

The narrowness of the cone is due to the reach of the animation as well as it being a pretty good damage and recharge. The cone is small to keep it quick.

Combat Readiness, this sets Build Up power
Automatic 3 combo levels, plus some damage and tohit. Not as much as Build Up.

Discussion that it's good for an emergency to get the 3 combo points and fire off a hold or fear effect.

Rib Cracker

Primarily a debuff power, changed a lot in beta. Used to have a big debuff and didn't do much damage. But the stacking nature with several people made it ridiculous.

Zwill: "Also known as the knee to the junk power."

Syn: "It's kind of a got to have power."

Also a combo builder.

Taunt/Confront/Placate

Syn: "It's taunt, moving on."

Spinning Strike
It's smaller than the Whirling xxxx type powers on purpose to give it more damage. It's also a Targetted AoE rather than a PBAoE.

Shin Breaker
Does Superior damage and is a combo builder, slows and reduces defense. Stalkers get this instead of Rib Cracker. Syn thought it was better to have a big, solid hit to use after Assassin Strike than the debuff.

Crushing Uppercut

Syn: "Kind of a Knock Out Blow clone."

Does a ton of damage, at Combo 3 does more damage than KO blow. It does Scale 4 damage. It's one of the heaviest hitting attacks in the game.

The Freedom focus group was all "Meh." About StJ, but in Beta people played it to the detriment of other sets.

Zwill: "There is no better time to be a defender. Lots of meat shields. I was on a Sewer Trial, and the defender was just following around this glob of melee."

Assassin Strike has 2 different kinds of uppercuts. The animator made two of them and asked which one they wanted, so art lead said "Both!" It's not customizeable, I don't think.

Know which finisher to use.

Syn: "You have a tight knit group, target the guy in the middle, use spinning strike. Since it comes from him and not you. Big solid guy, Crushing Uppercut. A handful of guys together, use Sweeping Strike."

Zwill: "This feels like a rather endurance light set, even with Hasten."

Chat mentions this Ustream has had surprisingly few tangents. Zwill says it's because he and everyone else are so exciting.


Combos

Syn: "There is no wrong way to build a combo except using a finisher in the middle of building a combo. An effective combo is Build Up, Assassin Strike, Placate, Shing Breaker, Crushing Uppercut. Or saving Build up and hitting Crushing Uppercut to just about kill a boss."

The stalker set has both AoE powers, unlike some others.


Do not underestimate the secondary effects

StJ has a lot of AoE crowd control, Zwill thinks it might be more than other melee sets.

Good damage mitigation with soft and hard controls.


Focus on the big guy

Syn: "If you have Spinning Strike and Sweeping Cross you'll be able to drop this hail of closely packed AoEs. If you focus on a boss your splash damage will take out minions and LT's."

Zwill: "Don't do all single target damage, but use the big guy as an anchor."


Chaining Finishers

Syn: "Stalkers can't change finishers quite as elegantly."

Use Sweeping Cross and then fire Combat Readiness into Spinning Strike to fire off two AoE's with the damage bonus.

Comabt Readiness allows you to essentially chain finishers.


Zwill mentions a StJ thread of Street Justice character names by Zombie Man. It seems to be a mix of Chuck Norris movies and meat cuts.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=274086

Zwill: "Crunch Buttsteak."

Syn: "Big McLargeHuge."

Zwill: "I don't know if I can say this."

"To streamline the Paragon Market interface, can it be improved to filter out content they already have access to? Or better, can that be available via browser, so I can shop while I'm at work?"

They have some stuff in place to prevent you from buying stuff you already have and they're working on the filters for it.

They are looking into an out of game Paragon Market.


Street Justice is the powerset Syn has had the most fun with in designing. Mentioning how everyone refers to the set as "Nate's abuse of power powerset."

Steelclaw: "So, Synapse, after all the work on Street Justice, how does it feel to be Second Measure's [PANCAKE]?"

The question makes both laugh, but they don't read it out on air.


"Any chance to use Street Justice's combo system going forward?"

Syn: "Yes! There's a set coming up that kind of combines StJ's combo mechanic with another mechanic you've seen in game already."


They think the next powerset they're releasing is really amazing and they wish the could talk about it.


"What decides if a powerset is free for VIP or purchasable?"

It's not Synapse's call and is up to business development and marketing.

When you see the name of the next set you'll be thinking "Oh, that's going to be like this." But it will turn out to be completely different. Both think the set is really cool.


The Praetorian enemies are going to be adjusted to have their difficulty toned down, as they have too many attacks compared to other mobs of a similar level in the game.


Synapse has idea for new mechanics for old sets, but due to people playing them for so long he doesn't think it would be a good idea to do so. So he'll be making news sets with those ideas, as CoH is very alt friendly.

Talk of alt-itis and how CoH is the one that most encourages alts.


"If you were tasked with creating an aT, what sort of options would you like to implement?"

Syn: "I want it to fill a role not being filled, or filling a roll in a new way. Like Melee Support. We have VEAT's, but they're more passive support, not active with like healing and buffing away. A more active roll with lots of powers to click. Not just fire and forget toggles."

Zwill: "More active and reactive stuff with player participation."

Syn: "Yeah."


They took the MA license out of the store due to performance concerns. They'll add it back in eventually, but for right now MA is quite a bit of resources, a lot of map servers since people use the heck out of it. Thus they've made it a VIP perk.

Zwill: "We are hitting huge numbers for our peak concurrent player count. We'll be seeing even more in since our new ad compaign starts today."

Syn: "It's huge. Like bigger than launch."

There servers are performing pretty well thus far.


They've talked with ATI and gotten the crashing bug fixed.

The option to color ears the color of the facemask seems to have poofed (at least when making a new character) with the merger of the Standard and Masks With Hair categories.

I've done it with a purpled out SS/Fire/Mu with my lore pets. I soloed Adamastor and got the Kraken and Scrapyard down to 20% HP before my pets poofed.

I could probably do it if I went and filled my tray with medium or large reds rather than small ones to keep up my damage up at the cap for the entirety of the Lore pet time.

Some energy in the Lore pets might've been in there, but I was using Burn and three SS attacks. I don't have the single target blast.

I managed to get Scrapyard down to 20% and Kraken to 25%ish.

Deathsurge ate my lore pets with his AoE's.

Well, I'm rather proud of myself. With two trays worth of reds and my Warworks lore pets I managed to defeat Adamastor with my SS/Fire/Mu Brute!

May not be a surprise to anyone else, but I was rather stunned with my success.

Notes are late as I had been up for 20 hours when the stream started and was so out of it I was running into things. 320 pound guy with no spatial awareness is a bad thing.

I went to bed and proceeded to sleep for 18 hours.

---

Posi has been up for 4 hours at this point, and turns into a pumpkin around 6 PM.

War Witch and Black Scorpion are also there. Zwill speculates that BS does not actually go home, but rather has a pod in the back. So does the Television.

Zwill goes over the Freedom: Live things for free to players and premiums.

Z wishes Lady Recluse a happy 26th birthday and realizes that he does not remember being 26 and proceeds to rack his brains to figure out what he was doing for 9 years ago.

Z: "Let's see what was I doing 9 years ago?"

Positron wanders in, bearing a T-shirt sporting "I'm not cheating, I'm playing by my own rules" on the front.

Posi: "Nine years? That's it?"

Posi flips Zwill the bird.



Zwill: "Did you just flip me off on Ustream? Really? No one will screengrab that!"

Mwahahahahaha.

Talk about Modern Family.

Zwill was catching up on Castle and thought it was too much serious business and not enough Nathan Fillion hijinx.

Both know that they are slowly activating Premium Accounts to be able to play for free.

The servers are physically being moved, apparently.

Ustream drinking game rule 1: Drink when Zwill says whatnot.

Tangents are unedited podcasts. Posi says he's heard some edited podcasts and they come out very dry.

Zwill plugs Extra Life Radio by Scott Johnson.

Z complains about the brightness, wondering if the light above him is usually on. Posi says it is.

Posi comes in early in the morning and makes sure that all the lights are on. If they aren't, he'll go around and start flipping switches.

There was a 6 car accident on Posi's commute. It was cleared before he got there. He got all of the traffic and none of the rubbernecking.

Zwill comments on southern CA traffic, and the two discuss the difference between South and North CA language.

The CoH OVR team changed their Twitter handle to @CityOfHeroes.

Zwill will neither confirm or deny rewarding the guy that got them that. He will NOT be running around with early Street Justice, only Zwill and Posi.

Posi: "I heard George RR Martin joined Twitter just so he could kill 140 characters."

Zwill: "*laughs* Nerd literature joke!"

Talk about Google+

If any players work at Google and can hook them up with a Corporate page, talk to Zwill.

"Will there be a section for free or premium players on the forums?"

They're working on that as a possibility, it depends on the functionality they can get out of the account log in services.

Someone in Ustream keeps getting told to hush because they're spamming "I WANTS TO HIDE THE GLOWY BITS OF HASTEN!" or something similar.

Posi: "No, you mean you want to hide the glowy bit of Hasten in PvP."

Zwill says they are aware that players want to customize power pools.

Posi says that Tunnel Rat is very aware of the situation as she gets 4-500 PMs a day about the situation.

Both restate that this is not an invitation to PM her yet another 4-500 times a day.

Having it on Null the Gull has a stopgap option is just that. They would rather do it right.

Zwill was playing around with colors on the forums for VIP's, so some people have gold names.

They are getting so many questions Zwill is going to ignore any in all caps.

Zwill: "It is not cruise control for win."

Posi:" Cool. It's cruise control for cool."

Zwill: "It’s not that either."

Chat: "With the Talons of Vengeance could we maybe see a serpentine lower body on the market?"

Posi says that's not going to work. Sad VK is sad.

They don't differentiate upper and lower body animations, so all the animations on Snakes and Talons are customly done. They are complete custom rigs from head to toe.

99.9% of the attack animations wouldn't work. It's one of the very few things Posi has to say no to.

Prices on the Paragon Market will always be evaluated, they have a weekly meeting on that.

Zwill says almost everything will have a sale on it at some point.

The free reward token for 1200 points is in the game now, if you don't get it, file an appeal.

Zwill likes his Time/Fire Defender as his Zwillinger character on Exalted. He leveled to 20 in the sewer trials and is doing arcs in First Ward. He just finished the one after you reunite the monarch and "what's her name."

Zwill enjoyed watching Noble Savage beating up some stuff.

"Can returning players unlock their old MM's and controllers?"

Posi gives the information on that: buy it, get rewards high enough to unlock it for free.

Dr. Aeon has been flatted by the reaction to the signature story arcs. Zwill is going to play through on his defender today.

Players with yellow names in game are flagged as Helpers. Purple names are "Help me." You hit the H key to bring that up.

"Paragon point cards in stores?"

Neither are sure about plans for that, but it is feasible.

Posi bought a mic like the one Zwill uses because he wants to do a podcast. He got it on Amazon for $86.

Zwill hopes they will get an even better mic once they set up a proper broadcast studio inside Paragon.

VIP Tier 9 rewards were planned to rotate every 3-4 months, but due to the current problem of being unable to get your Paragon Rewards points up front they're re-evaluating it. They're brainstorming a lot of ideas. Like having 2 up there at a time.

There WILL be ways to get them if you've missed them, eventually.

They would really like the Mission Teleporter to be sold in the store, but there is something going on with it preventing them from it right now.

They do plan on doing holiday things with the market. Zwill wants to cut off complaints early and notes that the holidays will likely be US and Canadra's holidays.

Currently existing level pacts will not break if one player goes Premium, but there are no longer any new level pacts.

"Will the sex change be fixed on costume editing?"

Wow, of all the things I was expecting to type, THAT was not one of them.

Posi says there are a lot of bugs introduced, and that how soon you see it fixed will be based on how high of a priority it is.

They will avoid religious themed holiday sales. Posi kind of makes non-commital noises about it and mentions Festivus.

Zwill: "As good as Seinfeld was, it's not a religion! We're not going to have a Hasidic Jew-themed Hanukah sale with a hat with like the curly hair."

Posi: "Send your e-mails to..."

Zwill: "I suppose if demand is high enough."

Talk about the Hebrew Hammer.

Zwill's dad is Jewish, saw it with him and he laughed.

Talk about Happy Holidays/Merry Christmas controversy. Zwill says Happy Holidays because he has no idea what someone celebrates and wants to be all inclusive.

I myself say Happy Holidays because if someone gets all puffed up and offended I can tell them to have a merry Christmas, but a horrible Christmas Eve and New Year's.

More Festivus talk.

Zwill: "IT'S NOT A REAL HOLIDAY!"

Posi: "Dude, feats of strength, aluminum pole, airing of grievances. As a community manager you should really get behind the airing of grievances."

Zwill: "As a community manager I am not allowed to air my grievances where anyone can hear me."

Chat: "How about a Spring holiday that starts with "Hamidon Spawns in Bloom"?"

There is a great design on the table for a summer event, and Posi would love it to happen. They are trying to schedule time for it to get it out for next summer.

Arbiter Whiteboard is not present. So neither is the whiteboard, and at the moment he's not testing anything secret anyway.



Zwill shows that chat his Wildstar t-shirt.

Zwill: "Argh. EVERY Ustream!"

Posi: "Every Ustream he's going to ask. Have you answered him yet?"

Zwill: "I think we have. I know it's a requested feature."

That was Kheldian Sashes, by the by.

Talk about CoH-specific holidays.

"Game time cards to Paragon Points?"

Nope.

Zwill needs 2 more followers on Twitter to reach 1300.

The official CoH account has almost 4000.

Zwill refuses to shill his personal twitter, but shows Posi a terrifying picture of himself.

Posi: "That's not you!"

Zwill: "It's me!"

Posi: "Wow, you look a lot more Asian surrounded by Asian people."

Zwill: "This is true."

Zwill does not show us the picture of him being 21 with blonde highlights in his hair.

Talk about Blue Steel becoming Street Justice/Shield. Zwill looks confused, Posi says that Blue Steel is the Chuck Norris of the game.

Zwill: "Oh, like 'Behind Blue Steel's shield is another shield?'"

Posi: "Maybe he could be a StJ/Shield Brute, but I'm not going to tell him that he has to be anything. You can tell him."

Chat: "Blue Steel does not have powers, powers have Blue Steel."

TheNet: "Blue Steels powersets are Blue Steel/Blue Steel."

"Is there content in the works for the level 30-40 range, it's where interesting things start dying out."

Zwill gives the generic answer of there is always never content in the works.

Posi: "What's the level range for that new zone?"

Zwill: "What new zone?" *dramatic denial movements*

"A shared vault amongst all characters on an account?"

Both agree it's a great suggestion.

"Fingers?"

Posi: "There was one earlier in the Ustream!"



Posi: "Adding fingers involves redoing every glove and hand model in the game."

"Will the City Representative ever get a new outfit?"

Posi: "No, that was on sale at Marshall's and we don't pay her that much."

Talk about the forum log-in bug. Posi confirms it's not just players; the devs have to deal with it too. It's a VBulletin bug. So complain over there.

"Ok, back to the snake ladies, how about a Praetorian Epic AT?"

Posi: "Still won't work. 1, You still have all the emotes. 2, you'd want people that wanted to play Snakemen. So now we're doing even more individual animation. Adding a new player rig exponentially increases the work for an emote or a power pool."

Zwill did not know there can be female Crab soldiers and male Widows.

Zwill: "In the time we do that we could do how many powers, how many emotes?"

Chat wants to be a centaur Cthulhu.

Zwill: "But there is only one Cthulhu!"

Z apologizes for not knowing about males and females being able to be both VEAT's.

He's not played much of the EAT's. He has a 30 Warshade.

Chat: "Posi, my group and I made a Shadow Shard in Second Life, would you like to see it?"

Posi: "That would involve me installing and logging in to Second Life."

Zwill: "Not that that is anything wrong with dolphin and unicorn..." *trying frantically to come up with a T for Teen friendly term* "...bodyparts."

Posi: "Racist."

Zwill: "I don't have anything against bondage uniform dolphins!"

Talk about the G4 show "Portal."

"Upgrading older faces with normal mapping?"

That would be a more art team question.

"SSA maps in AE?"

Posi: "If you PMed Dr. Aeon to ask for the e-mail address to Paypal to I'm sure he could find time for all sorts of stuff."

There is work being done on new faces. Zwill taunts us by saying they're really cool.

Personal Player Housing is a possibility, Posi has written designs for it 3-4 times. It just has to get on the design schedule.

Zwill: "Player Housing is like one of the biggest drains on server resources in existence."

Zwill turns on slow mode.

"Any way of getting rid of weapon redraw?"

Posi: "We'd have to rebalance the powers. We gave them increased accuracy due to Weapon Redraw."

"Any chance of getting player done artwork of their toons featured on the weekly coffee talks?"

Zwill: "Sure! That would be nice, send your artwork to..." *terrible coffee burp*

Posi: "I can find my image of Positron from 1991."

Zwill: "Absolutely, send your T for Teen images to the community team. It could be a segment!"

Posi: "Submit like a one paragraph bio as well so we have something to read. Tell what server you're on."

Zwill: "Good morning, Second Measure!"

2M: "Good morning, attention whores!"

Both act terribly offended.

Send character art to: cohcommunity@paragonstudios.com

They're apparently going to announce something on Monday.

Zwill: "Some people have found the information, but it's something we'd like to reveal in an appropriate time and format?"

Staff Fighting?

Zwill understands frustration about the downtimes, but they have downtime when it affects the lowest number of players.

Zwill: "It's not a perfect world or a perfect system. But the servers are in Texas, US Central time zone. We have to do it when we can get people to work on it, and affect the least number of people. I apologize for the inconvenience. But we have to do it when we're able to."

A lot of things involve SQL database stuff, so they can't have things to be written to it. And you can't hot-swap hardware.

Zwill goings into all the things that have to go into updates.

Some things can be done while the game is running, but would essentially make the game unplayable.

Lady Recluse asks a really snottily phrased question that treats the VIP headstart as a Beta that people are paying for.

Zwill says that the headstart is not a beta and that CoH is a living, constantly updated game. And that there is "Your game experience may change" in the EULA for just this reason.

Zwill: "It's never going to be a finished product it is always going to change and evolve. Just because something is live does not mean something is going to change. I have never seen a 100% bug free product. It does NOT happen. We try to fix everything we can, but some things just don't show up until we hit live servers."

Posi: "If you were there Day 1, you'll notice that the scrollbar couldn't scroll down to select the last two servers on the list. No way we could've found that without having al the servers on the list."

Hip details like Liefeld pouches or Knives of Artimas tactical webbing are a possibility so long as they don't clip with other pieces.

"Devs coming to UK meet and greet/UK PAX event?"

Zwill: "Let's see how well Freedom does."

There are no current plans to release the Cape of the Four Winds. Some people at the studio have said "Over my dead body" regarding that.

But the devs will never say never to anything. Except City Vault.

Zwill: "It would kill the game."

The in-game advertizing tech is currently broken, has not been touched in years, and they don't even own part of the codebase for it.

They put in all the recent billboards by hand.

"Will there be a new currency system put into place with the next set of incarnate slots?"

Posi: "That is going to depend on how much you guys are currently banking the old currency."

No ETA on the Costume Slot 5 bug fix.

"Any estimate on the amount of new players coming in? Are you expecting a tsunami or..." *Zwill makes a terrible face* "A gentle stream."





Posi: "We are bracing for a tsunami."

Zwill: "We are expecting a lot of people, hence the hardware and database upgrades."

"Any chance of users seeing an all inclusive list of non-explotive bugs or issues?"

They'd have to develop a whole new system for it, and it wouldn't really be accurate. You'd see the things they're working on and looking into, but they could never get an all inclusive list.

"Any chance of a Pro wrestling powerset where you can pick up and toss around your opponent?"

Posi: "Put on your gamer designer hat for a moment. Okay. Now imagine two people with that powerset fighting the same guy."

Z mimes his head exploding.

Posi: "That is why the Matrix Online locked other players out of combat."

Zwill: "I had friends that worked on that game. Those poor guys."

Clear Mind will likely never be a team buff because theyt would it was highly abuseable in that state.

"Supergroup rename option?"

Posi: "If you're really nice to Customer Service and they're not absolutely slammed with other things."

Zwill: "It involves database editing, and is not a service we currently offer."

Zwill had a SG called the World Task Force. It got renamed.

Posi: "We've talked about the game, let's tangent!"

Zwill: "What could we tangent about?"

TANGENT: Crepes/Pancakes/Waffles.

Posi likes IHOP.

Zwill is grossed out.

Posi: "Aren't you FROM LA, where they put the health rating right on the door? Eight of the top 10 cleanest restaurants? Taco Bell."

Zwill tries to pronounce *hoorb,* Posi says they'll bring Second Measure over once he tends to his hair.

Talk about the official costume contests.

Posi: "There we some really great entrants in that. Stephan Walking."

Both go into groaning giggles.

Posi: "I rallied for him."

Zwill: "Especially when he was break dancing."

They want to make that a regular thing for the Exalted server, making it a VIP perk.

"If a character dies in the SSA will they be removed from the rest of the game?"

Posi: "Lord Recluse Strike Force, yes. We've got a big list of things that we have to change."

Zwill: "Yes, they're all over the game. ALL over the game."

The Rooster Teeth AE arcs might've been accidently filtered.

"Why does Sunstorm have to look at the Earth for Humans billboard all day?"

Posi: "I think someone did that half on purpose."

TAGENT: Quoting lyrics fro "Ironic"

"Enabling Auction House in bases?"

It's a huge bandwidth hog. It has to download the entire AH database to the instance server. If you're in a base by yourself it may not be a problem, but if you're on a map being used by other people it will degrade their experience. Imagine thousands of players doing that at once.

Posi has to go.

The publishing team is working on the filter for AE, it is currently being worked on.

"More CoH comics?"

Zwill: "At this time, no. We've introduced the comic-style loading screens for the SSA's and tutorial loading screens. So we're focusing on that."

Zwill: "Both Second Measure and Black Pebble are watching the Ustream. Scary."

Zwill quit smoking a year and a half ago.

"When does Jay show up to entertain us?"

Zwill: "Jay entertains us every day."

"Inherent resistances for power sets? Like Ice Blast getting some Ice resistance?"

Zwill: "It's a great idea, but there are so many powersets out there."

NCSoft Europe sets the prices and conversion rates, not Paragon.

"PvP Danger Room in SG bases?"

Intersting idea, Zwill will pass it along.

"List of questions answered on Ustream?"

Zwill: "Irritating question. Just imagine what it would be like for me to say this, read that, and typing it out all at once. We record these Ustreams, so go back and watch the older Ustreams."

Does the questioner not know that I do these and post them at every chance I get? Will someone who knows who that was point them in the direction of these things?

Zwill, I am disappoint that you didn't mention my recaps! *angryface*

"More detailed descriptions for the market items?"

They're limited to the number of characters they can use in the tooltip box.

There are also localization concerns. German is a very lengthy language, so they have to account for an additional 30% of characters. The longest word in German is the word for a little hat that the captain of a little boat on the Rhine river that he would wear during a rainstorm. He heard it from a German localization guy at GamesCom, who rattled it off and took him a minute and a half to say.

Antidisestablishmentarianism is no longer the longest word in the English language. Zwill can't remember what it is.

Arbiter Whiteboard arrives.

There is no dress code for Paragon Studios.

Zwill: "The dress code is wear pants, and sometimes that is optional."

They are aware of the problems with SG base logos.

Zwill goes to check if he's been drafted for the Freedom PvP league.

Restatement of SS to Scrappers being ported over eventually, as well as everything else within reason.

There will be some changes to the forums made, including a revamp of the forum rules which will be posted ahead of time for community criticism and discussion.

They will be trimming some barely used forums, consolidating some, and getting rid of others.

"Why is everything that is being worked on a secret?"

Zwill: "There are a couple of reasons. Sometimes things change, or change throughout the design process. A designer has an idea, the designer takes it to his bosses who go "That's great, but how about this, this and this?", then it goes to Engineering who laughs at it balefully and goes "That's not possible with our current system. But what we can do is something more like this." So the designers change it so it will work.

The other answer is marketing; you have to strategically release information so it makes the biggest splash."

The costume mannequins outside Icon are individually made.

Zwill attempts to sing Happy Birthday to Lady Recluse in German and French, but finds that it's too complex. So he sings in English.

Though he is distracted by MARTy being triggered for everyone. Zwill starts sending an e-mail that Skynet is active.

Zwill: "DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"

E-mail is sent.

Zwill finally sings. Jokingly he does it Stevie Wonder style, which someone off camera calls him being mean for.

Zwill: "Stevie Wonder himself has mocked his head bob!"

Continued delays with the singing.

It takes him like 8-10 minutes for him to finally sing after announcing it. :-P

The MARTy thing is apparently just an error message and you earn rewards normally. They have people looking into it.