je_saist

I know what you are trying to ask... and I'm trying to figure out the best way to answer.

I think the best answer is this: The EXP / reward system does not change when you hit level 50

You still gain experience at level 50, but you just are not shown the amount of experience, and nor is it accumulated towards another level: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Experience

You do not move to some new section of code implemented just for level 50 rewards. All that happens at level 50 is that the experience amount is converted to additional influence: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Debt

Does that answer your question?

suggestions and ideas under For Fun.

I can tell you what the response would be though: that's what SuperGroup Bases and Pocket D can used for.

Depends on who you ask.

From a practical point of view, Cryptic had no long term plans for City of Heroes. Cryptic basically kicked this game into maintenance mode after the Marvel Lawsuit resulted in Cryptic building Marvel Universe Online. Cryptic's lack of long term plans, or resources to put those plans into action, are why things like a "true end-game" and "power-customization" are only arriving years after the launch of the game.

From a developer said point of view, I do not believe any official explanation was ever given. However, I do know that Going Rogue does shed some light on the potential problems of writing and implementing such content or capabilities.

One of the new upgrades in Going Rogue was the yellow reticule target enemies. Outside of an attack, these enemies will ignore the player. These yellow-box enemies were used to populate the Praetorian World with NPC's that were still enemies, but not enemies. Almost immediately players began complaining that these same enemies weren't yellow boxed outside of specific areas. These boards, and the beta / test chats were filled with players questioning why their Loyalist was getting shot at by Cole's troops, and why their Resistance members were getting shot at by Resistance Groups.

The simple fact is... THE ENGINE DOES NOT WORK LIKE THAT.

There is no system in place to determine whether or not an enemy should attack a player based on player faction. Adding a system to enable the combat system to flag enemies to attack or ignore players based on faction would add extensive computational and network bandwidth requirements.

How bad could that system be? Well, go grab a character with super-speed, or use a dual-build or a triple-build slot to make a character with super-speed. Drop by Vidiot Maps and look for a location badge somewhere that you haven't gotten. I suggest

Now, as a super-speeder, run over that badge and keep on running.

Notice anything about the difference in time from when you ran over that location badge till you were awarded that location badge? That is the lag issue when doing a database look up.

As far as we are aware, the yellow-box target in Praetoria is a bit of a cheat. We believe that the enemies are given a power suppressing perception to 0ft, and that attacking de-suppresses the power. The behavior seems to be an inverse of the hide system used by Stalkers.


So that's one of the technical limitations of enabling players to join factions. The game system and network really can't handle keeping up with players combat options based on faction flags.

there is also the Story limitation. Both Going Rogue and City of Villains shed some more light on the underlying problems.

In City of Villains players are given the opportunity to openly fight against the Arachnos. Most of the fights come down to two rationals. The first rational is that the player is participating in Arachnos in-fighting. The second rational is that the player has successfully broken away from Project Destiny and is an equal to Lord Recluse (unlocking the Lord Recluse Strike Force). Even after achieving this high position, players are still introduced to contacts like they were mere bugs, not fit for the tasks the contact has to offer.

This shows one of the first limitations: there was no system in the game to change the content that the player experiences based on the things the player has done.

in Going Rogue players can participate in story arcs involving the Loyalists and the Resistance. These stories were able to address one of the limitations from City of Villains. Actions taken by the player could have a direct effect on the text and storyline progression of the player. However, there still is the limitation to this upgrade that the changes in text and conditional behavior still have to be written and entered into the system.

These stories also had to work around other limitations, such as the inability to flag enemies based on faction. Ergo, the stories were written to place characters as operating outside the normal chain of command. Placing all of the players under Praetor White's Powers Division gave a convenient rational for why Resistance players would be relatively welcomed through various Praetorian locations. The solution also gave a convenient rational for Loyalists attacking Cole's own forces, as the players would appear to be working undercover.


As evidenced there are major technical and content creation hurdles that prevent the developers from integrating players as Part of an Enemy NPC Group. Even assuming the developers were able to deal with the technical issues without having to increase network bandwidth requirements as well as processing requirements, the content-creation itself is a formidable barrier.

There are other limitations, such as what is referred to as immersion. Even if the developers went ahead and implemented systems for players to join enemy NPC groups, there still is the massive problem that stories are written without the player as a member of that group in mind.

Imagine for a second that you join the Trolls. You get your 'Dine from the Family. Why would you, as a Troll, fight the family?

Or imagine for a second that you join the Cabal. They don't hate anybody but the Red Caps. In the Croatoa storyline they attack you because they think you are working for the Red Caps. Even then, by the time you complete Katie Hannon Task Force, you have ostensibly made peace with the Witches and are now one of them... So why would a Cabal witch go and attack Rularuu?

Sure, to many players such questions aren't a big deal. To others, it is a huge-game-breaking cliff.

This is, why I think, the developers ultimately just left such concepts up to the players to implement as a role-play. Rather than dumping resources into making systems to make players part of one group or another, the players are given the freedom to pretend they are from one group or another, and make their own justification up for what they do.

Is that really why the developers backed down?

Again, there has never been an official explanation that I'm aware of. That does not mean there wasn't one. It just means I'm not aware of one.

Slight problem. How I described it is how it works, and I've put together damn near enough computers and run the tests myself.

The only situation where 3gb of memory can be presented in a dual-channel memory configuration is if you have a 4 stick setup, with 2 sticks 1gb, 2 sticks 512mb, and they are matched in capacity on each memory channel.

you thinking it's the log file bug?

I'll deal with this first since it's the easiest to answer.

Do you have a 32bit Operating system? NO!

Do you have a 64bit operating system? YES!

2gb Dual-channel is pretty much the fastest memory configuration 32bit operating systems can manage. The practical limit for how much memory a 32bit operating system can address is somewhere just under 4gb of ram. The practical limit of how much memory a 32bit operating system can present to the user is a little over 3gb of Ram: http://h20331.www2.hp.com/Hpsub/down...%2003Nov05.doc

Since Memory is binary, it really only works in multiples of two. Since 3gb / 2 = 1.5gb, you can see the problem in a dual channel memory configuration addressing 3gb of Ram.

On pretty much every chipset sold by AMD, Nvidia, and Intel, you'll lose memory performance forcing the computer to run in a single channel mode that can address 3gb of RAM under 32bit operating systems.

The exception is Intel's I7 processor which has a triple-channel memory controller... and yes... 3gb would be the fastest 32bit memory configuration for an Intel I7.

Also, if you have something like Physical Address Extension enabled you can indeed run more than 4gb of memory in a 32bit operating system. I won't go into why this isn't something you want to do here.

64bit system's don't have these memory limitations, so if you are running a 64bit system, go ahead and move to 4gb of ram.

* * *

Now, as to your other question...

Ultra-Mode, and all of the Ultra-Mode options, do strain the central processor to an extent. It is possible that updates or changes to the game may have introduced a performance regression for your particular system.

In the CoH engine there is only One Single Knock Effect

There is no existing mechanic that separates the knock-effects outside of the effect magnitude scaling.

This is why when you slot knockdown powers with knock-increase, stuff goes flying.

Now, should the game be updated to support 3 different states of Knock effect? Oh Hells Yes it should. That would fix a lot of the problems players have with powers causing knockback that are supposed to only cause KnockUp or KnockDown.

That is not why they would fix it.

They would fix it because the code to enable the Hamidon enhancements to begin with was described once as being a complete mess.

To try and make my point here, consider that while you can combine non-invention origin enhancements, you cannot (couldn't? I can't check right now) email enhancments that are +'d.

Fixing the underlying problems with the enhancement system itself, either by writing a new system from scratch, or by patching up the existing system, would remove some of the unintentional benefits of that old system.

Again, the only reason it was not done in the past is because the system largely worked and Cryptic was not interested in performing engine maintenance. Now Paragon Studios has the staff to fix up those engine problems, which makes it more likely those issues will be dealt with.

One of the reasons why it was non-priority is that was an effect of the original hamidon code and the developers did not have the resources to deal with re-programming how Hamidon enhancements worked.

Now that Paragon Studios HAS staff to work on engine upgrades, I wouldn't be so confident that the bug won't be addressed.

Would you have preferred I use the term Proc instead?

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...74&postcount=8

I use the term Pet to describe an action taking place outside of the power itself. Not as a Mastermind Pet or a Controller Pet. Please learn the difference.

There is also the Wedding Band from Peeble's Story arc in Striga. The original version can hard-cap Fire Tank resistances.

The bad news is that the Ouro versions is far less powerful.

I would note that when anybody has to go to reality Television to make money, they've pretty much hit the so called Epic-Failure mark.

Slight problem. All of those expenses occurred after LoTR failed as a subscription based game. The damage had already been done.

What it sounds like is you are trying to inverse the situation that Turbine went through, placing their decision to lay off staff and shut down a studio as a move after making the decision to go a Free-to-play business plan. It was the other way around. The free-to-play business plan was only implemented after Turbine had lost lots of money, layed off lots of developers, and sold themselves.

That's not trimming. That is Cauterization

No, the real test would be if Turbine could return to it's original size before the layoffs at the left-over studio on the strength of it's profits alone. The financial reporting methods of Time Warner would make this difficult to determine though. It is possible that Time-Warner could subsidize expansion and development of Turbine games in the same way Infogrames subsidizes the expansion and development of Cryptic games.

This really depends on the market niche. Games which offer unique hooks will likely still be able to command subscription prices.

What is more likely is that average subscription price will fall. We'll see more games with $10 a month or $8 a month service charges, rather than $15 a month.

For Turbine or Paragon Studios?

Paragon Studios has the luxury of having the only game of it's kind with no competitors. Anybody who wants to play the City of Heroes experience will need to play City of Heroes. That means for the forseeable future CoH will continue to be able to command a subscription price-point with no need for a free-to-play business model.

That being said, it is possible that Paragon Studios / NCSoft will examine the possibility of combining subscription titles such as AION and City of Heroes and offering discounts and other perks to subs of both games.

For Turbine, I think that financially, they have stabilized on their free-to-play model. They are not growing, but they are not shrinking either. Which seems to work well enough for Turbune. That still does not make them a poster child.

Remember, MIDS is not an official Paragon Studios Product. It is a community made tool, and may or may not be accurate.

Now, as to what Fiery Embrace does, it adds Pet Fire Damage to all attacks. This can actually have some... interesting... consequences.

One of those is that if you are your damage cap and you trigger Fiery Embrace, you'll actually go over the damage cap for the attacking power since Fiery Embrace activates as a Pet Damage class attack, separate from the original attack.

Comparing FPS's to MMO's, at least in this matter, is inaccurate at best, and especially on a platform where games have to be dumbed down in order to function.

There have been lots of FPS games with both PvE and PvP play in the launch version that have had great sales, but never developed a real multiplayer community. Just off the top of my head, Aliens Versus Predator (the first one), AvP2 (the second one), Aliens Versus Predator (the third game), Pariah, No One Lives Forever, No One Lives Forever 2, Red Faction and it's subsequent sequels, Far Cry, Crysis, and Turok.

Even one of the great FPS games of all time, Half-Life, never really developed a multi-player community of it's own. Yet two of the Half-Life modifications, Counter-Strike and Team Fortress, went onto to become the most played Multi-player games in the world.

So, it's a bit of a mugs game to say that just because a game launches with PvP and PvE features, it will develop communities for both. The very real market fact is that very few games, even in the FPS realm, develop communities around the multi-player features. When a title is able to cultivate a multi-player community, publishers will go out of their way to hammer out franchises sequel after franchise sequel to cater to that limited market.

PvP is largely doomed to fail in any MMO where the game balance is focused on making classes inherently different.

A deliberately imbalanced game can work if leveraging the imbalances requires mechanical input skill on the part of the players, or if the underlying system can account for those differences.

For an example of how imbalanced multiplayer can be made to work even when the game is horribly unbalanced, go pick up a copy of Monolith's AvP2 (the GOOD Aliens Versus Predator game).

I don't disagree with any particular point you make here...

but I disagree with the sentiment.

Boomtown was an excellent idea... 7 years ago. I remember my first time going into Baumtown and having a Holy Excrement moment at the scale of the damage.

I think most players understand why Baumtown, as a zone, hasn't been moved forward, and it's for the same reason very few of the other zones have been updated / revamped. There was no intent on the part of Cryptic Studios to update the zones, and so no resources were furnished to make updating possible.

Now under NCSoft's ownership Paragon Studios has both the time and money to do things they couldn't do at Cryptic. However, doing things takes time. Paragon Studios has to make decisions about where to best apply available resources for each issue release. Do resources get focused on revamping older content? Do resources get focused on making new content? Do programmers work on fixing old sections of code? Do programmers just write entirely new sections of code to outright replace old sections? Etc. Etc.

To be fair, I wouldn't call any zone a waste of resources.

I would call PvP Development a waste of resources... because... let's face it... PvP is not what Paragon Studios does best.

Again to re-iterate the statement I've made before, Paragon Studios is going to best serve the PvP community by handing development of a PvP game off to another developer.

That removes the potential drain on resources from Paragon Studios, and allows Paragon Studios to focus on what they do best.

I wanted to touch on this topic directly since I brought up the AOL-Time Warner financial reports on Turbine after the sale. Ironik already pointed out the biggest problems with the idea that Turbine was a poster child, namely the laying off of large numbers of staff, the closing of an entire studio, and the fire sale to AOL-Timer Warner.

One of the subjects I've talked about before on the CoH boards is how Lord of the Rings Online was the right product at the right time to make a freemium model work. It was a high quality fantasy MMO in a market saturated with Fantasy MMO's. After going Free-to-play Turbine didn't need to draw from the WoW market. Turbine just needed to draw from the market that would like to play a WoW type game, but didn't want to invest in a subscription.

Does that make Turbine a poster child?

Oh hell no. They lost millions of dollars, and one of the reasons they succeeded in regaining profitable status is because they laid a massive amount of employees, shut down a whole studio, and stopped working on any other projects.

That's not really a business model that other companies want to follow.

Seconded.

NPD and other tracking agencies typically don't track online sales or subscriptions, so unless an online vendor states any given number of sales / subscriptions openly in a financial report, proving whether or not sales were good or bad can be difficult.

That being said, the financial numbers published by AOL Timer Warner for Warner Brothers Home Entertainment after the buyout do indicate that Turbine was a financial sinkhole, indicating that Lord of the Rings was indeed loosing money, and was indeed hurting for subscribers.

Most of the current D.D.R. values are flagged to ignore buffs and enhancements. The developers have not enabled any sanctioned method for players to increase or change these D.D.R. values of any armor class, nor do the developers intend to implement such a change.

However, there is a known exploit / bug where Hamidon Enhancements that boost Defense Values boost D.D.R. values.

The only exceptions that I'm aware of are Super Reflexes and Shield Defense which does not have D.D.R. values flagged to ignore buffs or enhancements.