je_saist

Not hostile, just realistic.

PvP itself does not have to be based on a hide and sack type of gameplay. However, the type of a gameplay that is supported by a map is generally determined by the construction of that map.

For example, you can force a Capture the flag game-mode on non CTF maps in Red Eclipse, even remakes of classic Q3A type maps. Just because you can do that, does not mean that you'll get a good play experience.

Those are also other games.

Those games are not City of Heroes

Okay, this is where we get into the game's history.

PvP play has been in the game since about Issue 4 Colosseum: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Issue_4

Throughout the entire time that it is has been in-game, PvP play has never attracted more than single digit player percentages. The developers have tried numerous carrots over the years to get players into the PvP zones, such as the Shivans in Bloody Bay, the Rockets in Warburg, exclusive badges to all zones, and requiring Villains to enter PvP zones to complete their History badges. Back in Issue 13 the developers tried again, revamping the base concepts of PvP to player-feedback, and separating PvP powers from PvE powers, allowing the developers to balance PvP play experience separate of PvE experience.

The developers also talked about one of their greatest failures, the Gladiator PvP mode which allowed players to compete in a Pokemon-like battle using NPC characteres. The developers thought it was going to be a huge hit.

None of those attempts at PvP play have worked.

Case in point, many of the older PvP players left after Issue 13, unhappy with the changes that were brought to the system.

This now brings us up to date. There's a pretty good reason the developers generally haven't scheduled any resources to PvP development. It simply isn't profitable for this game.

The vast majority of City of Heroes subscribers have largely rejected PvP play. Suggestions to convert existing zones to co-op, or to convert an entire zone to Open-World-PvP, have largely been met with derision and vitriolic speech from vast majority of the player-base.

Why would it be a problem? Because if the developers forwarded this idea, it'd make the backlash on the CoT revamp seem tame.

Not... really relevant.

Okay... this is a little bit harder to address. The PvP base raids were based around the concept of Items of Power, which were global buffs to SuperGroup members. The reality was that very few supergroups ever participated in the raids when they were enabled. Very, very, very few supergroups could afford the prestige to rebuild their base after an attack... and oh yes... you did lose items bought with prestige in a Base Raid.

The base raids themselves were an ill-conceived attempt to, once again, attract a PvP player-base. As with the other attempts... it didn't work.

Now, would an objective based gameplay be a viable draw for PvP players? No, but I'll get to that in a moment or three.

Okay, and here we come to the final point: Loads of Other Games are Built from the Ground up with PvP play in Mind.

The reality for City of Heroes is that the game was never built with PvP play in mind. PvP play, as we know it, was shoe-horned into the game.

The reality for City of Heroes is that most other MMO's have large teams whose sole dedication is PvP development. Unless Paragon Studios decides to match the investment other games have in PvP, Paragon Studios is never going to be able to compete.

The reality for City of Heroes is that it does not have to compete in the PvP market. For over 7 years now City of Heroes has been the MMO that has proven that MMO's do not need a PvP component to be successful or profitable.

Bringing this back around to your request:

You might find it exciting to risk a possible ganking of your avatar wandering around a zone.

The rest of the player base? The 95% (or greater) that has never touched PvP play to begin with? The majority of the player base that plays City of Heroes specifically because PvP play is not required and can be avoided while performing 99.9% of the game's content?

I would think they would disagree with you.

hmm. First I've seen of the perl script, but it's probably worth looking at if it's calling for the patcher and running Xdelta directly.

read the first post again.

There are over 70+ costumes involved in this revamp.

Please read the thread.

Most of the comments so far have been positive and to the effect that the developers listened to the players and made changes that most of the players like.

There is a major difference between the oh hell no, not that from the original thread and the I love it / You Are Much Closer / Needs a few more tweaks that this thread is generating.

Last I checked, very few people are saying this.

One of the earlier posters on the subject of "why" also had the following to say:

Post asking why: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...9&postcount=58
Post explaining why: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...3&postcount=68
Original Poster's final comment: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...6&postcount=77

As usual Johnny, your post deviates so far from what is actually happening, I am forced to ask whether or not you bothered to actually read this thread, or if you just hoped that nobody would call you on it.

So this is how the C.o.T are getting sonic based powers...

Yeah, but which Foreshadow version?

His Korean Costume, the one he showed up in the Cinematic trailer with?

Or the.. ahem... THING... he got shoved into because somebody in marketing thought his Korean look wouldn't go over well outside of Korea?

... well... I max slotted brawl... and put a slot in Rest....

You mean the pictures taken by multiple players at the con, some of which found their way to the forums, but others of which were posted about in-game and on third-party sites also showing just how bad the costumes were?

You win 1 Ignorance point.

*awards you 1 Steelclaw point*

Positron spoke about this subject on both Ustream and in the now locked thread: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=328

Granted, the costumes shown off at Comic-Con were anything BUT a knock out of the park. To use the baseball term, it was a bunted foul.

Kind of subjective here. Keep in mind that at 9 years old, the CoT would have been originally designed back in 2001 or 2002, and rendered in probably 2002.

The current costumes, for what they are, were likely the best effects that could be achieved back then.

One of the factors to keep in mind is that Video Games are, at their core, simply representations. On some levels we accept that "insert rendered object here" is supposed to look like "insert real object here"

Both design and technical reasons are in effect here.

The technical reason is that the Cot's old "robe" design was a cheat in the rendering system.

The design reason is that now with the tools available, the in-game CoT can be closer to the mental picture of the CoT, but the design still has to fit the technical limitations.

Updating the costumes to use the newer tech that has been developed in the past 9 years meant dropping some of the costume cheats. Unfortunately, that means that a significant number of costumes have to be completely changed.

Which is where we get into "the original changes didn't look anything like the old costumes"

The costumes proposed here are, at the very least, now reminiscent of the old designs, even if the robe-effect is once again achieved through a cheat in costume design.

Then it sounds like this time the Art Guys hit the right target.

They'e Mage, they're mage in tights! (tight tights)
Wandering around the Caverns looking for Fights!

Hmm... let's see...

70+ costumes certainly indicates everything in the CoT is getting revamped.

Kind of a difficult question to answer beyond "I'm having a crash"

As far as I'm aware the City of Heroes Client does not support a -verbose command, nor is there a command to log from the console option that is available for the game client.

As far as obtaining more information on the crash itself, you could look to tools like: WhatisHang: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/what_is_hang.html

Outside of basically telling AMD "I had a crash in this game with this hardware and this driver set" there's really not a whole lot else a common user can do.

... must... resist... Striperalla... joke...

I can pretty much tell you that is the case.

Origin is baked in around the same level as Archtype. According to Positron, Archtype-Respecs were pretty much functionally impossible. Given what's been stated about Origin in the past, I would suspect that it's going to be in the same "functionally-impossible" position.

Zwillinger was previously with EA.

Currently EA fields two MMO developers.

Only one of those developers put out a new MMO while Zwill was at EA.

Shouldn't be too hard to figure out which MMO Zwill is talking about.

here's a hint.

It involved a lot of Battle, and really big Hammers.

eh, I got a 5770 to boot at full clocks off a 300watt, so yeah, it's possible.

Just not really recommended.

if Steam would launch the Coh client directly, it'd be one plot I could get behind.