NCSoft Meet & Greet - Pictures & Info


13th_Stranger

 

Posted

Hello all,

Posted this on the Triumph boards but thought I would share with you all.

I had the pleasure of being able to attend the NCSoft Meet & Greet on May 13th, and Rella (my wife) and I had a blast

First off, here are some pics:

First off, the venue (Howie's) was HUGE!

I mean the largest LAN center in North America HUGE!

DJ Jester from w00t Radio was there spinning tunes!

All the VIPs got an NCSoft unlimited play pass, of which we took advantage.

I met Matt Miller (Positron)...

... who swung by Rella's computer to do some "analogue datamining" and talk game.

CuppaJo stopped by too, and I got a shot with Matt, Cuppa, and Rella.

Matt gave me bunny ears (didn't even know until I posted this )

Also saw and listened to Richard Garrett (Lord British) talk about Tabula Rasa...

... and saw Pann from Auto Assault.

CuppaJo and Matt are excellent people, approachable, and very easy to talk to. Matt seemed especially interested in Rella's character's backstories and badge collections

There were also a lot of free handouts, to include t-shirts, autographed comics, free software, game cards, hats, etc. (some of which I luckily aquired).

So here's some other intel from the shindig from talking to Matt and some other folks (all info is tentative and subject to change of course):
<ul type="square">[*] Trench Coats will be part of the Veteran Rewards System. You will earn this Prestige item after ~3 months of having an active account.[*] Costume bugs are being looked into, although no word yet about the "pointy ears" issue (read the Test server forums for back info)[*] In Recluse's Victory, no one will be able to control more than one Heavy at any time. Heavies will not despawn until the Heavy or its owner is defeated.[*] For those who didn't know and are OCD about badges, there will be exactly ONE (1) Infected in Recluse's Victory that spawns every two hours. Kill him 100 times to get that Isolator badge you missed in Outbreak. Posi said it would be annoyingly hard, after all, so you asked for it [*] I asked Matt if Avilans and BotBS are still on the board, but he misunderstood my questions and said that they will not be the next EAT released. This leads me to speculate that villains will probably get Coralax EATs in I8.[/list]I'll post more info as I think of it.

And to CuppaJo, Positron, and GM Eric, and all the other NCSoft staff who made this possible, thanks for throwing a great party!


 

Posted

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For those who didn't know and are OCD about badges, there will be exactly ONE (1) Infected in Recluse's Victory that spawns every two hours. Kill him 100 times to get that Isolator badge you missed in Outbreak. Posi said it would be annoyingly hard, after all, so you asked for it



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Ouch. Ok, when i7 goes live, I'll wait till the major badge-aholics are done before even thinking about it.


 

Posted

HAH!

Positron made you his lil Bunny Foo-Foo.


"I see your words..." ~The most menacing thing a forumite could say

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
or those who didn't know and are OCD about badges, there will be exactly ONE (1) Infected in Recluse's Victory that spawns every two hours. Kill him 100 times to get that Isolator badge you missed in Outbreak. Posi said it would be annoyingly hard, after all, so you asked for it

[/ QUOTE ]


HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Wow! That is so [censored]!

Let the gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands commence!

Is he like standing on a pedestal somewhere or like hiding in an alley? I bet Sally is unhappy now, she's not the hardest to find or most camped anymore.


 

Posted

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HAH!

Positron made you his lil Bunny Foo-Foo.

[/ QUOTE ]

It was han honor to be "bunnied" by the Pos-Man himself

And "100 times" isn't accurate, it would actually be 100 minus however many Infected you actually did defeat in Outbreak. You have to defeat at least 9 (IIRC?) to get out of Outbreak, so 91 times at the most


 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
And "100 times" isn't accurate, it would actually be 100 minus however many Infected you actually did defeat in Outbreak. You have to defeat at least 9 (IIRC?) to get out of Outbreak, so 91 times at the most

[/ QUOTE ]
The thing is, the number of Infected you defeated didn't start getting tracked until Issue 2.


61866 - A Series of Unfortunate Kidnappings - More than a coincidence?
2260 - The Burning of Hearts - A green-eyed monster holds the match.
379248 - The Spider Without Fangs - NEW - Some lessons learned (more or less.)

 

Posted

If trenchcoats are the 3 month reward.....I can't wait to see what we get for longer.........


 

Posted

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[ QUOTE ]
And "100 times" isn't accurate, it would actually be 100 minus however many Infected you actually did defeat in Outbreak. You have to defeat at least 9 (IIRC?) to get out of Outbreak, so 91 times at the most

[/ QUOTE ]
The thing is, the number of Infected you defeated didn't start getting tracked until Issue 2.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow, good point! Never even thought of that. Which means my main (created before I2) would have to get 100 kills.

Not like I'm going to loose any sleep not having that one badge which isn't needed for any accolades (although I know some are super-obssesed)


 

Posted

i just want to thank the devs for being there, especially after spending the week at E3. you all need a vacation now (espeically Posi, who was apparently still checking the boards everyday)


Goodbye, I guess.

@Lord_Nightblade in Champions/Star Trek Online

nightblade7295@gmail.com if you want to stay in touch

 

Posted

The idea is teh funnay though.

The most wanted guy in all of CoH. A poor lil' Infected. Running from entire legions of level 50 Heroes.


 

Posted

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The idea is teh funnay though.

The most wanted guy in all of CoH. A poor lil' Infected. Running from entire legions of level 50 Heroes.

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I guess the only speedup you can do is to be in a team of 8 when one of the team defeats him, so you all get credit.


 

Posted

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The idea is teh funnay though.

The most wanted guy in all of CoH. A poor lil' Infected. Running from entire legions of level 50 Heroes.

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Man, that would've been a good story tie in. Needs to be in the comic. Somehow, this poor infected is the key to Recluse winning the various time streams and both sides want to capture him!

Sucks to be him.


global: @SuperSean

Undersecretary of Awesome

 

Posted

ATRAtwo wrote:

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[ QUOTE ]
The idea is teh funnay though.

The most wanted guy in all of CoH. A poor lil' Infected. Running from entire legions of level 50 Heroes.

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I guess the only speedup you can do is to be in a team of 8 when one of the team defeats him, so you all get credit.

[/ QUOTE ]

I bet people there trying to actually do the battle might be miffed to be dismissed by people teaming up to hunt down that poor Contaminated Thug. I can totally see this happening.

--NT


They all laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian.
But I showed them, and nobody's laughing at me now!

If I became a red name, I would be all "and what would you mere mortals like to entertain me with today, mu hu ha ha ha!" ~Arcanaville

 

Posted

Heh... anyone ever noticed that Cuppa has yet to be photographed without a beverage?


 

Posted

A friend from my SG and I also chatted with Posi and Cuppa.

I posted about Pistol Corrupters (and "no pistol scrappers") in the thread devoted to that.

My observation and editorializing after talking with Positron on "why weren't early powersets bugfixed until 2 years later?":

If power bugfixing is your bugaboo, get uber-skilled with databases, and check the job listings. Joe MMO Player is likely happier that there are X+Y powers instead of just X powers with bugfixes, even though we veterans want our main's or alt's powersets fixed. This problem is only solvable by increasing the pool of applicants with Geko-like skills, which thankfully happened when Darth Geko got his two apprentices, Darth Castle and Darth Worked-on-another-MMO.

You'll note I did not directly quote Posi. That was INTENTIONAL, so nobody misquotes him based on my post. Castle &amp; Co are bugfixing our powers *now*, so let's move on. Thankfully we got Castle &amp; Co BEFORE the 44 new MMO announcements/launches at E3.

(Castle apparently was the main DB guy in Master of Orion III)

Tidbits I learned about SERVER TRANSFER that I'm intentionally not attributing to any particular Cryptic or NCSoft employee:

In the end, this is a billing issue. Assume for the moment that it would be a nominal sub-$1 fee, just enough so people don't overload the servers with transfer requests.

There then needs to be a communication network between NCSoft's billing, and Cryptic's game servers, to both add a charge onto the player's account and complete the transfer successfully.

Cryptic wants this to happen. However, a rabid legion of fans assaulting NCSoft isn't gonna help, so prayer and/or positive thinking is about the best way you can help in this matter.

I'll go out on a limb here, though, and say that perhaps if CoH/V had lots more subscribers, Cryptic would have more leverage with NCSoft. That's my personal idea that I just invented with this post.

So, go and get your friends addicted to our fine game. Worst case scenario is that they have a great time :-) Best case is NCSoft builds the web interface between Cryptic and NCSoft's billing system.

I think the CoH/V Korea launch is soon or has already happened, so perhaps that will be enough of a cash infusion to make it happen faster.

Other stuff:

The original poster pulled more info out of Positron than I did, but I also had fun drinking a Dr. Pepper while Posi drank one of the Monster energy drinks from Howie's Game Shack.

CuppaJo being more NCSoft than Cryptic, my SG friend and I just kicked back talking with her and Cryptic's Producer, who wore the nametag "Serdar" and whose real name I forgot (oops!) but who is "Jack's (Statesman's) boss and the guy who keeps the business (Cryptic) running."

CuppaJo and Serdar were extremely cool. We mostly had a lot of small talk and just had a good time, which is pretty cool for people who'd never met each other in person before Sat night.

I'm not a mindless dev-praiser, but I will say that I think the interface of the forums make us treat everything like business instead of friendship, and that's a shame.

I'm not friends with Posi, Cuppa, Serdar, Tisirin (almost forgot you!) and the rest, but I could easily be friends with them if I saw them on a regular basis.

***They simply made it that easy to like them.***

Oh, the next meetup *may* be in Texas again. (All the NCSoft forum board people like CuppaJo and company work there, so all they need do is rent a Net Cafe and drive, rather than fly, hotel, yada yada.)

Posi, Cuppa, and the rest: hope you're not only out here for meetups because of E3, but I'll certainly make the effort to attend any further meetups in Southern California. The combination of the devs and publishers being so very cool with the fans is a big part of CoH/V's success, on and offline.


 

Posted

Excelent post!

I also found out that while NCSoft's US office is in Austin, Posi and a lot of the dev team is actually in the SF Bay area. It would be great for Posi to be at a meet &amp; greet in Austin, but he'd still have to fly (poor guy )

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not a mindless dev-praiser, but I will say that I think the interface of the forums make us treat everything like business instead of friendship, and that's a shame.

I'm not friends with Posi, Cuppa, Serdar, Tisirin (almost forgot you!) and the rest, but I could easily be friends with them if I saw them on a regular basis.

***They simply made it that easy to like them.***

[/ QUOTE ]

Couldn't have said it better myself.


 

Posted

I went to the NcSoft event too and had a chance to ask Positron and CuppaJo lots of questions. They were very patient and answered almost everything I asked. Here is what I remember (all subject to change, of course):

Wings, Trenchcoats - Both are coming very soon. Trenchcoats will be unlocked by the long term subscriber program. Wings are costume options and will not be specific to any certain AT.

I asked Positron if currently exclusive villain powers will be made available for heroes. His answer was "we have discussed it". He wouldn't say anything more on that.

Updates to Boomtown, Faultline, and the Rikti Crash Site are currently being worked on and expected for Issue 8. We will be able to enter the ship. The zones are being redesigned with new art, contacts, etc using Striga and Croatoa as models.

They are datamining lots of base stuff including base rent. There will probably be some adjustments, but no promises there.

Hero/Villain teaming - There will be lots more coming. Some big threat/enemy will require heroes and villains to put aside their differences and work together.

Pocket D - lots more stuff is coming.

SG size issues, such as basing membership on account rather then character -They looking into it, but its not a high priority because relatively few supergroups are running out of space.

Skills - Not coming. Ever. They tried 9 different systems and couldn't find a fun one.

Universities - They will be doing something with them in Issue 8.

Game Events - More are planned. There will be a Halloween/Fall event this year.

Level 50 content - Currently in the works. This has become a higher priority because the percentage of players with a level 50 has grown.

Fighting an evil version of yourself - Its something they would like to do, but it would require quite a bit of programming. The biggest issue would be for masterminds, since there is currently no AI to handle NPC versions of them.

5th Column - They are going to be coming back. The gladiator badge is not all we will see of them.

Heroic animal-themed costumes - Sounds nice but not a high priority.

Positron said that badge junkies will hate him for one of the villain I7 contacts - There is a badge that you can only get if you complete all of a certain contact's missions. And every mission is timed and can be failed. He said that the times are not long, but not so short that it is impossible. Also, you can only get the badge by doing the missions yourself. joining someone else for them will not award it.

Server transfer - It is in the works. There will likely be a fee for doing it. This is because they can't completely automate the process and will have to hire people to move characters over and change names when necessary.


Again, please note that this is all subject to change and to my own memory of what was said there.


 

Posted

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Server transfer - It is in the works. There will likely be a fee for doing it. This is because they can't completely automate the process and will have to hire people to move characters over and change names when necessary.


Again, please note that this is all subject to change and to my own memory of what was said there.

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Btw, an idea of my own:

Assume server transfers are available. Instead of waiting to see if your name was taken and you have to rename yourself, do the following:

1) log in an existing char on the new server, or make one.

2) /friend the name of the hero you want to transfer

3) If that name appears on your friend list, you'll be renaming yourself. If it does not appear, pray that it stays that way, and file for the transfer, but have a backup name (like superhero- instead of superhero) ready that you've already vetted with /friend.

You could also be a name-hog and make a char with the same name to hold it until just before you file the transfer, when you delete the placeholder, and THEN file.


 

Posted

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Wings are costume options and will not be specific to any certain AT.

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This is the first time I've seen this spelled out so definitely. Thankyou!

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Updates to Boomtown, Faultline, and the Rikti Crash Site are currently being worked on and expected for Issue 8. We will be able to enter the ship. The zones are being redesigned with new art, contacts, etc using Striga and Croatoa as models.

[/ QUOTE ]

Perfect. Just what we've been asking for... revamped old zones instead of too many new ones!

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Skills - Not coming. Ever. They tried 9 different systems and couldn't find a fun one.

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9?!?

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5th Column - They are going to be coming back. The gladiator badge is not all we will see of them.

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even MORE confirmation, whee!

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Also, you can only get the badge by doing the missions yourself. joining someone else for them will not award it.

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Ai. That's harsh. I foresee cries of anguish as connections drop, servers go down for maintenance, and other grievous things happen.


 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And "100 times" isn't accurate, it would actually be 100 minus however many Infected you actually did defeat in Outbreak. You have to defeat at least 9 (IIRC?) to get out of Outbreak, so 91 times at the most

[/ QUOTE ]
The thing is, the number of Infected you defeated didn't start getting tracked until Issue 2.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow, good point! Never even thought of that. Which means my main (created before I2) would have to get 100 kills.

Not like I'm going to loose any sleep not having that one badge which isn't needed for any accolades (although I know some are super-obssesed)

[/ QUOTE ]

You *have* to defeat at least six or seven to actually go through the tutorial. So if you have an i0 (before you could bypass the tutorial) it should be incredibly easy to check dates and "retro-award" defeating that many.


Still here, even after all this time!


 

Posted

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SG size issues, such as basing membership on account rather then character -They looking into it, but its not a high priority because relatively few supergroups are running out of space.

[/ QUOTE ]

Um, what the heck are they smoking? With alts in a SG, it only takes 20-25 people to max out SG (or be close to this.)

Just because you only have 72 or so, doesn't mean you didn't want more people in the SG.


Still here, even after all this time!


 

Posted

Excellent post Terminotaur - more great info!

Edit:
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Wings, Trenchcoats - Both are coming very soon. Trenchcoats will be unlocked by the long term subscriber program. Wings are costume options and will not be specific to any certain AT.

[/ QUOTE ]

Will Obsidius (my main and a gargoyle) finally get wings? Perchance to dream...


 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
SG size issues, such as basing membership on account rather then character -They looking into it, but its not a high priority because relatively few supergroups are running out of space.

[/ QUOTE ]

Um, what the heck are they smoking? With alts in a SG, it only takes 20-25 people to max out SG (or be close to this.)

Just because you only have 72 or so, doesn't mean you didn't want more people in the SG.

[/ QUOTE ]

QFT

Much of my SG consists of altoholics like me or people with multiple 50s and too much free time on their hands. We've got coalitioned splinter groups to handle the larger numbers but none of the prestige those alts earn can go to supporting the main SG base.


Mr Slowburn - 50 fire/kin troller
Cosmic - 50 grav/storm troller
Cyberprowl - 50 ma/dark scrapper
Mi-graine - 50 emp/psi defender
Alberta Beef - 50 fire/ice tank
Mythtery - 41 ill/rad troller
Gargantua - 39 ws
Kotor - 38 db/wp scrapper

Fungal - 50 plant/psi dom
Snarky - 38 thug/dark MM

 

Posted

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Also, you can only get the badge by doing the missions yourself. joining someone else for them will not award it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hallelujah. Now if only they will fix up most of the other mission badges like that, I'll be happy.


 

Posted

Also...

I predict a "Trenchcoats at 3 months?!" frenzy.

And am I the only one amused by the fact that Pann had red devil eyes in his picture, and looked nothing like Peter Pan?