Von Krieger

QA has donuts! Zwill refers to Random QA Guy as Arbiter Donut.

Zwill has apparently accidently said something unpleasant in French by accident. Again.

Double XP weekend got delayed due to some urgent changes that need to be ported to live ASAP. It's a bug and a lot of optimization and performance enhancement.

Pics from Comicon!












They had one guy there pretty much all weekend.









Doc Aeon has snuck in in the background.



Zwill wants to talk to Black Scorpion to see if he can get a Tier 9 "Summon Asian Man" for Desdemona.

Tangent: Bowling!

Signature Story arc update on the Website. Zwill breaks out the radio announcer voice and reads the website copy.

http://www.cityofheroes.com/includes...comic_cvr1.jpg
http://www.cityofheroes.com/includes...s/ssa_lava.jpg

Goals of the signature story arc from design:

Wanting to tell an interesting and impactful story. Likening it to the work in Praetoria like the Aaron Walker story arc. The goal is to tell a good story, not merely making it for the shock value.

You're directly taking part as a hero and as a villain. The stories are different, along similar lines. Essentially seeing the same story from heroic and villainous points of view.

There are going to be unique, never before seen things in game done for them. New maps at the very least.

It's not quite a standalone story, there are bits of lore from other places tied in.

Internally they call the story arc something that infuriates Positron. He mutes the mic to say it. Boo.

Devs are in the training room now for the EU meet and greet event.

More than likely the arcs will come along with the first maintenance period of the month.



Doc Aeon has been working on the new sewer trial, "Death From Below". Baronyx worked on the Underground trial.

Zwill was hoping they'd call it "Down the Drain."

Doc Aeon: "What is flushed cannot be unflushed."

The goal with it was to improve the sewers using the tech they have and to give players a fun, exciting sewer romp. Maybe 25 minutes and a bonus at the end. Damage, Accuracy, Endurance, Defense, and Recovery that last til level 22.

You can run it at 50 and be exemped down.

Each stage of the event has a trainer, there's a hospital, and inspiration vendor, etc etc, to make it as smooth and as fun as possible for low level characters.

It will be done through the LFG tool.

It's a relatively easy trial.

Both sides have their own version of it.

Zwill and Aeon have been playing through some player AE arcs. Zwill likes Becky's Revenge.

They're going through and playing arcs on a weekly basis.

Starting this month they will be picking a Dev Choice.

Q and A time!

Minimum size for the sewer trial is 4, maximum is 8.

In Atlas they're giving a proper storyline and not the random "Kill 5 Skulls in a neighborhood" stuff. Like the Praetoria stuff with branching contacts. The goal is to make you feel more heroic and attached to Atlas Park and give the place more of a story, as well as giving the neighborhoods some defining stories.

Tangent: Zwill's Diet Coke/Coffe burps.

Tangent: Missing white board, Other QA Guy's Action Figures.



Mercy Island's goal was to make you feel more villainous and not "Oh hey, go fight evil snakes" and not make you feel like a lackey to Arachnos. Also to streamline Mercy Island and changing the spawn points. So you don't have to run all the way back from Fort Darwin when you die.

Tangent: IT guys doing work in background

Some storylines involving the Infected and Longbow's presence in Mercy.

Level range of signature story arcs: They vary.

Plans to update Port Oakes or King's Row?

They're going to systematically review and update older content, so odds are eventually. But there is nothing they have that they can share yet.

They're already working on Issue 22 and 23, and maybe Issue 24.

Zwill and Aeon creep us out with an unreheased, simultainious "In the year 2000!"

Shadowstar and Sunstorm's arcs have been put into place in Atlas properly.

The sig story arcs will not need to be unlocked by doing papers or being introduced by another contact.

Mention of Samuraiko's signature story arc video.

Will Black Pebble ever become an ingame contact or trainer?

Aeon: "Not if I have anything to say about it!"

Zwill: "How about a Zwillenger contact?"

Aeon: "Not if I have anything to say about it!"

Zwill will have to go to Proetean to get himself in there, but will have it pronounced Zvillenger.

Dr. Aeon knows beforehand when things are Nemesis Plots.

The new contact thing will make it so you might not have to unlock contacts, you can just pop out of the Sewer trial at level 8 and get missions from Mr. Bocor.

They still have Facebook Facepalm codes available.

Dark Watcher says go run ITF on training room! They're wanting to track performance issues. Possibly fix of Lag Hill in the works!

The regular sewers are untouched, so you can still sewer sweep.

"Will revamped arcs outside the new tutorial get voiceover?"

Tangent: Avatea and Freitag and giggling madly in the background. Zwill wants screenshots.

Voice is just for the tutorial and possibly PopHelp.

Zwill is registered on Google+ and is going to see what they offer for businesses.

" Are there chat bubbles still as well as voice overs? I read the CoH content, sound is off by default."

There are captions to display what is in the voice overs, but they were not on the SDCC build.

"Will there be more Dean McArthur goodness?"

Dr. Aeon hopes so, Dean is his favorite contact and the first one he wrote for.

Tangent: Desk eating the IT guy.

League content for MA?

Interesting idea but apparently broke Zwill's brain of how that would work.

"Can you make the Galaxy City Echo available at level 1? It *is* a level 1 zone after all."

Nope. Ouroburos was the best way to do it, though they lowered it to level 14 access.

Hinting that destroyed Galaxy is part of the sewer trial.

My SS/Fire/Mu handles Rikti just fine, though she was built to be 1 purple away from Smashing, Lethal, and Melee softcap. I've never had a problem with Rikti to be honest. Only thing that has ever given her fits is Defense debuffing.

Yeah, but you have to 1, have a base, 2, have the IO's not be looted from other SG members, and 3, zone in and zone out again to put them on the market.

Yup. The game codes just pile time on top of time. It's okay to use.

Day 3 of Comicon begins with dead voiced Zwill and him trying to get Ustream to record, but it not working.

Tunnel Rat joins us.



Black Pebble booed.

We have lots of VFX to talk about. Zwill doesn't have any Beam Rifle effects, but Massively does.

TR has seen two Slave Leias, Zwill has seen about a dozen and some plus-sized Klingons. Beastyle is lamenting not being able to go in chat. He's going to go cry.

Harry Potter kids, Captain Americas, and a VERY accuracy Leeloo Dallas. "Kind of gravity defying, actually."

Zwill has also seen several Sailor Bubbas.

Crowd shots! Which did not screencap for some reason.

Tunnel Rat offered to buy Black Pebble lunch, but every time she asks he's already dug through the dumpster.

Beastyle: Black Pebble actually has two maverick nerf guns taped under the table.

http://www.cityofheroes.com/images/i...r_H_4_logo.jpg

She worked on the Energy Wings. They are not an aura, but actually a back piece.

They close when you land.

Single color tint to them.

Black Pebble keeps hitting the table.

"People have been requesting elemental wings for awhile, so I made something with a firey/electric feel to it. I looked at videos on youtube of electrical current, but slowed way down. Also some of David's costume art, though they didn't end up looking too much like them."

Long term player being put on camera.



Kviri (Sp?) from the forums.

"I've been loving everything I've been seeing for I21 and Freedom, I21 especially cause I'm going to keep paying."

Spongebob Squarepants walks by.

Costume code giveaway!



Zwill shows his Hero ID, they have the Olympian Guard costume code. (Which activates on Tuesday)

Zwill isn't giving his away since he wants his on his personal account.

Tunnel Rat's is a 30 day game code.

Praetorian Guard costume code! Not yet active!

http://www.cityofheroes.com/images/i..._path_aura.jpg

Streak trail aura.

"It's a little dimmer now, because from behind it obscured a portion of the screen."

Tunnel Rat and her husband, Leo, are both VFX artists for CoH.

http://www.cityofheroes.com/images/i...0aura_logo.jpg

Crack/Seismic aura was made by her husband.

http://www.cityofheroes.com/images/i..._path_aura.jpg

Fire trail aura, another Leo effect. Tunnel Rat is giggling and trying not to snort on Ustream. Apparently Flaming Trail and Fits the Bill are enough to make TR giggle. Referencing Black Scorpion making the pun while introducing Null the Gull.

http://www.cityofheroes.com/images/i...rono_shift.jpg

Time Manipulation screenie.

Zwill gives shout outs to the team in Seattle that did the teaser trailer.

"When I thought of time control I was thinking of the 50 shows with the clocks and the nifty swirl in the background. Twilight Zone, Doctor Who. It's kind of corny looking now, but I took the swirl and modernize and make it more smokey and existing in the real world. For your debuffs the swirl is swirling very slowly counter clockwise, and for buffs it goes clockwise very very quickly."

"Especially for a buff set you should be able to tell your good and bad buff and debuff effects apart."

Guild Wars 2's Leah Rivera, content designer, crashes the Ustream. And my screencap does not catch her. I got a bit of t-shirt and nose.

"We tried to rule out clock imagery very quickly, as it was dependent on iconography, not very abstract, unlike other sets. Like we don't have apples falling on people for gravity."

"We should add apples and Isaac Newton to Propel!" (from the chat)

Beam rifle set, still no images.

Leo worked on Beam Rifle, not TR. She can guess at his inspiration.

Zwill is distracted by a Mr. Incredible costume.

"We wanted it to look unique, Leo took inspiration from lightning and thunderbolts and not the straight nondescript laser. Kind of like Ghostbusters. The don't cross the streams lightning bolt."

Zwill takes offense to calling the Ghostbusters blast a lightning bolt.

"Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!"

"More like plasma than a laser, has a really violent motion to it."

Zwill is dying and summons Second Measure and leaves the camera.

TR has not seen the Ghostbusters movie all the way through. Just pieces.

The rest of the booth is shocked and horrified. TR hides under the desk in shame. The players are looking at her and pointing.

Second Measure's wife had not seen Princess Bride until recently.

SO! BEAM RIFLE!

Leo HAS seen Ghostbusters. TR is not a big dork, but she did marry one.

"They get a lot more dramatic and cooler as you get to the tier 9, like most of our effects."

"Cutting beam, the cone attack ,is fantastic. It sends out this array of beams connected at the end, it's a really long cone, not the longest in the game, but it feels like it. It's largely a single target powerset, so it's nice to have a big cone in the middle of it."

Both the beam and the weapon are customizable.

It can be called a FREEM! Rifle.

"Leo's almost as good as you these days."

Adam West Batman tangent.

Ghostbusters is as old as Tunnel Rat.

COSTUME CODE! Blast. I typed a G as a C and missed it.

"Street Justice has fantastic animations but the visual and audio effects really make the set."

It was a TR set.

"They're very hard hitting. Instead of Kinetic Melee that’s a beautiful flowing animation. I wanted these to look like they'd take your head off. Street Fighter was one of the games I took inspiration from. There's a lot of camera shake in there too, it makes it feel like you've hit them really hard."

"One of the secondary effects on a Street Justice attack is making your opponents cower in fear. IT has to look like a brutal, terrifying attack."

"I think we've killed Black Pebble. He just died."

"He's just fainted. A Slave Leia carrying a McRib walked by."

Black Pebble smites TR with a water bottle.

"I've always been interested in having something less formal martial artsy, something more fist fighting without taking Box on every character. So I was very passionate about this. We were looking through the forums and gathering common requests for power sets. A lot of people wanted a down and dirty Street Justice kind of feel. Clockwork 01 started giving me a lot of hassle about how it was Nate's Abuse of Power Powerset."

Zwill mentions yesterday that Posi referred to it as the Knee to the Junk power and dismisses Tunnel Rat to go watch Ghostbusters.

FINAL COSTUME CODE! Missed it!

Second Measure speaks from the diaphragm so Zwill won't have to adjust the mic.

Doing one more just in case that one was already used.

It looks like two people somehow got the code.

Talking about the Mercy and Atlas revamps.

"I logged in at the City Hall and went "Huh, I've seen that before." And then turned and was just awestruck."

Mercy has a unique look and character, they just wanted to do a few tweaks and add some symmetry between the zones.

"Kind of one of the hidden gems of the Rogue Isles."

"We wanted to make Mercy Island more accessible to people, and have people start in Mercy the town and then head out to Fort Darwin. Longbow have taken over Fort Darwin, so the ultimate end in the story is to take over Fort Darwin."

"Contrary to popular belief Devs love redside."

They're reworking the story of Arachnos, knowing you're a big bad guy and them wanting you on their side. Less a lackey and more of a proper supervillain.

Different division phases, you fight some longbow, then come back and interrogate someone right where you fought earlier.

"I think the Mercy storyline is a lot more epic than the Atlas storyline. There is something about just taking it to longbow."

Zwill thinks the story makes a lot more sense and far fewer snakes. There are a few snakes around but they wanted to tell a more powerful story.

More long term players!

Liquid and Fatare/Iris Fatare from Virtue. His second Comicon, her third or fourth.

Tangent! Talking about the meet and greet. Zwill raves about the Cheeseburger egg rolls. As does Second Measure. The two players didn't get any of those.

Zwill: "Congratulations, you've been caught in a tangent!"

Iris:" No nerf guns, though."

Zwill: "Back at the office."

They saw First Ward yesterday, though not for very long.

She's excited about the Praetorian Hamidon.

The Seed of Hamidon looked small in screenshots, but as seen in the trailer it's SO BIG.

Iris: "Time manipulation is really cool, it's a good compliment to the existing powersets."

Liquid: "Gravity works with the whole time and space thing."

They all thing we're going to get a flood of Time Lords.

Everyone loves the 10 costume slots.

Tunnel Rat left her Hero ID and was adamant that we not be shown her picture. So Zwill shows us. I missed it to screencap it. So Tunnel Rat will not kill me.

Reminder that everything in the store is not finalized, items, prices, even stuff in the game.

Q: What happens to references to breaking out of Break Out redside? Q: What happens to the Destined Ones arc?

"We've gone though the writing and I think we've got most of the references in there and changed them."

Destined one arc: "We'll talk about that in more detail later."

The new zones do not have neutral yellow reticule mods. It was concept for Praetoria.

Zwill will get me a Vicky code when he gets back to the office due to my diligent and tireless community service by summarizing these.

Tunnel Rat has found out of Zwill's showing of her ID photo.

Titan Weapons will be a powerset that needs to be purchased.

Beastyle is banned from describing one of the animations.

VIPS do not get automatically get all powersets. They will get some. They've had powersets in the expansions exclusive.

"Sometimes we'll have something small in the market every week, sometimes they'll be medium like a whole costume set, sometimes it will be big like a powerset."

Discussion of the Paragon Rewards stuff that we've covered before.

It looks like the subscribers there at the start will be in Tier 9.

From the way Nate phrases things, Tier 9 VIP will be costume sets that are rotated in and out. HE said costume sets, plural.

"What we're planning for the second one is amazing, but I wouldn't call it beautiful."

New archetypes: "We've had meetings, but never come up with anything that could not be covered by the basic archetypes. IT amazes me of how the CoH team has made it so that almost all superheroes can be encompassed by the archetypes we have. We're always looking for something new though."

"We took the archetypes in character creation and placed them into different playstyles to help out new players as the number of AT's can be overwhelming."

"We wanted it to be absolutely clear to new players to see what they're getting in to."

"People have been looking at the Ghost Widow picture and going "Oooooooh!""

Talk about the Desdemona picture really exemplifying the pet classes.

They do have things in mind for SG bases, but they can't talk about it. It's not Issue 21.

Tier 1 Paragon Rewards is for free, since you get a token for free to show you what it's like.

Honestly it sounds to me more like "We went above and beyond the call of duty to make these powers look good knowing that people have to buy them." as opposed to "Screw these free powersets. We can just make crap and send it out because it's free."

Time Manipulation is a free to play powerset and it looks gorgeous. To me it seems more like the devs saying that they're doing their best to make sure for-pay powersets look awesome rather than free powersets being the suck.

Something that has helped me with respecs is taking a screenshot of my power trays and Enhancement slotting before the respec.

Whoops. Must've misclicked. Had no idea it was on purple.

Aside from the Panacea set and about three of the purples, I've got everything in the build currently slotted. Not necesarily at level 50, but I've still got all the set bonuses.

So anyway I was wondering if there were any little performance tweaks that could be done with Infernal here to make her perform a bit better, or if I've got things pretty much as good as they can get.

I farm with her, I do trials with her, I run normal content with her. So I'm looking to try and get the best survivability and damage capacity that I can from her. So I'd like to keep her at 32.5 Melee/Smashing/Lethal defense or above so I can pop a purple or two and be softcapped at the various stages.

I know I could get a bit more recharge by swapping out Static Discharge for Mu Lightning and stuffing another purple set in there, but I kind of like the cone.

But aside from that does anyone see any little tweaks that could be made to improve things?

I've got her on Tier 4 Cardiac Core, Ion Core, Reactive Radial, Ageless Radial, and running with the two damage Warworks for help with single targets that are huge sacks of HP.

I'm rather happy with the build and am just curious if there is anything I could shift around to squeeze out the last few bits of optimal performance.

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.942
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Infernal Infested: Level 50 Natural Brute
Primary Power Set: Super Strength
Secondary Power Set: Fiery Aura
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Mu Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Punch -- Hectmb-Dmg/Rchg(A), Hectmb-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(13), Hectmb-Acc/Rchg(13), Hectmb-Dmg/EndRdx(19), Hectmb-Dam%(36)
Level 1: Fire Shield -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(3), RctvArm-ResDam(25), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(31), GA-3defTpProc(43)
Level 2: Haymaker -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(3), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(11), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(43)
Level 4: Healing Flames -- Panac-Heal(A), Panac-EndRdx/Rchg(5), Panac-Heal/Rchg(5), Panac-Heal/EndRedux/Rchg(11), Panac-Heal/EndRedux(40)
Level 6: Blazing Aura -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(7), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(7), Oblit-%Dam(36), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(37), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37)
Level 8: Knockout Blow -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(9), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(9), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(21)
Level 10: Temperature Protection -- S'fstPrt-ResKB(A), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(15)
Level 12: Boxing -- Dmg-I(A)
Level 14: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 16: Plasma Shield -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(17), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(17), RctvArm-ResDam(34)
Level 18: Rage -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(19)
Level 20: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 22: Consume -- Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg(A), Efficacy-Acc/Rchg(23), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(23)
Level 24: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(25)
Level 26: Tough -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam(27), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(27), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(48)
Level 28: Burn -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(29), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(29), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(37), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(40), Oblit-%Dam(46)
Level 30: Weave -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(31), LkGmblr-Def(31)
Level 32: Foot Stomp -- Armgdn-Dmg/Rchg(A), Armgdn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Armgdn-Acc/Rchg(33), Armgdn-Dmg/EndRdx(33), Armgdn-Dam%(34), FrcFbk-Rechg%(34)
Level 35: Fiery Embrace -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(36)
Level 38: Rise of the Phoenix -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(39), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(39), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(40), Oblit-%Dam(46)
Level 41: Electrifying Fences -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(42), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(42), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(42), Posi-Dam%(43)
Level 44: Ball Lightning -- Ragnrk-Dmg(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(45), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(45), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(45), Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(46)
Level 47: Static Discharge -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(48), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(48), Posi-Dam%(50), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(50)
Level 49: Tactics -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 50: Cardiac Core Paragon
Level 50: Ion Core Final Judgement
Level 50: Reactive Radial Flawless Interface
Level 50: Warworks Core Superior Ally
Level 0: Marshal
Level 0: High Pain Threshold
Level 0: Invader
Level 0: Born In Battle
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Fury
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(A), Mrcl-Rcvry+(21), Numna-Heal(50)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-End%(A), P'Shift-EndMod(15)
------------
Set Bonus Totals:

• 9% DamageBuff(Smashing)
• 9% DamageBuff(Lethal)
• 9% DamageBuff(Fire)
• 9% DamageBuff(Cold)
• 9% DamageBuff(Energy)
• 9% DamageBuff(Negative)
• 9% DamageBuff(Toxic)
• 9% DamageBuff(Psionic)
• 22.9% Defense(Smashing)
• 22.9% Defense(Lethal)
• 6% Defense(Fire)
• 6% Defense(Cold)
• 9.75% Defense(Energy)
• 9.75% Defense(Negative)
• 6% Defense(Psionic)
• 22.9% Defense(Melee)
• 7.88% Defense(Ranged)
• 6% Defense(AoE)
• 90% Enhancement(Accuracy)
• 87.5% Enhancement(RechargeTime)
• 5% FlySpeed
• 101.2 HP (6.75%) HitPoints
• 5% JumpHeight
• 5% JumpSpeed
• Knockback (Mag -4)
• Knockup (Mag -4)
• MezResist(Immobilize) 8.8%
• MezResist(Stun) 6.6%
• 21% (0.35 End/sec) Recovery
• 32% (2 HP/sec) Regeneration
• 10.7% Resistance(Fire)
• 10.7% Resistance(Cold)
• 5% RunSpeed