Article Discussion: Redesigning Hamidon
By
AmazingMOO,
Posted on: 2007-03-22 13:31 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
I'm very much looking forward to trying the new, revamped Hami raid. IMHO, any new or redone upper level content is very much welcome. I just wish there were more of it.
Should've left hami and added NEW content.
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Should've left hami and added NEW content.
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You mean more of the same cookie cutter missions they've been adding since launch? No thanks. New content to the Devs is adding a new zone and simply copying and pasting the same missions that we've been doing in to it.
At least with Hamidon I get something to figure out with my SG again. It's been a while.
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From a still mostly unwanted level 50 Dom perspective, having to wait for the Stonecor teams to destroy all X and Z Mitos before holds will "sort of work" on Hami and the Y Mitos (who are probably no more difficult or easy to destroy the the other Mitos) isn't really a role but rather the delusion of a role. Hopefully they haven't gone the route of "mez won't work until it's pointless to bother," but I have very little faith that this dev team actually understands what makes players *feel* useful.
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That's funny. When the devs said that they had designed the Statesman TF so that every AT would feel useful, you guys complained that the LRSF wasn't designed that way. And then when the devs say that they've redesigned Hamidon so that every AT will feel useful... you guys complain because you just *know* that "Stonecor" will be the only useful AT.[list]
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To be honest, this isn't an official site so the reviewer are probably under some misconception about Hamidon.
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City of Heroes / City of Villains: Redesigning the Hamidon
By Christopher Bruce, Cryptic Developer
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Yeah, I actually found it a little annoying that one of the Devs knows so little about the game (even if he were trying to use "elder god" in a figurative sense) that he referred to defeating Hammi as sending it (him) back to the dimension from which he came.
Duh, read through a story arc of the game you code for once in a while.
It just looks bad to me. Cryptic's own developers (at least this one) know very little about the background of something that they are writing an article on... one that said dev knows full well is going to get published online and read by actual players.
I mean, come on, spend the 1-2 minutes it'll take to skim through the text of the arc and find the part about Hamidon being a scientist who mutated himself. 
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What if it wasn't a matter of "just" a mutation? What if when he mutated himself, what actually happened was that it opened a gate to the Elder God Hamidon who then uses his body as a way into our world? What if this Elder God consumed the scientist's body in such a way so as to not require the scientist's actual body to reform here, which would explain the lack of such a body each time the Hamidon is defeated, or assuming this, repulsed from this dimension?
It's possible there is more to this than we currently know.
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I like the theory, but the fact that the scientist's name was Hamidon Pasalima before his transformation is a bit problimatic. 
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We fixed the issue with the article's backstory to match the game's lore.
Lighthouse
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Awww, I was enjoying coming up with alternate theories to tie it in. 
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To be honest, this isn't an official site so the reviewer are probably under some misconception about Hamidon.
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City of Heroes / City of Villains: Redesigning the Hamidon
By Christopher Bruce, Cryptic Developer
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Yeah, I actually found it a little annoying that one of the Devs knows so little about the game (even if he were trying to use "elder god" in a figurative sense) that he referred to defeating Hammi as sending it (him) back to the dimension from which he came.
Duh, read through a story arc of the game you code for once in a while.
It just looks bad to me. Cryptic's own developers (at least this one) know very little about the background of something that they are writing an article on... one that said dev knows full well is going to get published online and read by actual players.
I mean, come on, spend the 1-2 minutes it'll take to skim through the text of the arc and find the part about Hamidon being a scientist who mutated himself.
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What if it wasn't a matter of "just" a mutation? What if when he mutated himself, what actually happened was that it opened a gate to the Elder God Hamidon who then uses his body as a way into our world? What if this Elder God consumed the scientist's body in such a way so as to not require the scientist's actual body to reform here, which would explain the lack of such a body each time the Hamidon is defeated, or assuming this, repulsed from this dimension?
It's possible there is more to this than we currently know.
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I like the theory, but the fact that the scientist's name was Hamidon Pasalima before his transformation is a bit problimatic.
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We fixed the issue with the article's backstory to match the game's lore.
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Darn you Lighthouse! You ruined the fun of us theorizing about the "New" Hamidon!
This space is intentionally left blank.
Looks like the site is down. 
Some kind of Python error.
Toons found here.
Gamer cards found here.
Proud member of Angels of Wrath and South of Heaven.
MA#: 65131 Play it today.
There are sgs with 75 members that: each member is a seperate account/player/not-an-alt; all 75 of these players are on simultaneously, above 45 and want to do a hamidon raid?
50 seems fine if that's the price we need to pay for a decent framerate and the ability to see the hamidon.
The only awkward situation I foresee is an optimal strategy that requires a certain AT and no more of that AT being allowed into that Hive till a less optimal player leaves the zone... talk about awkward.
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Looks like the site is down. Some kind of Python error.
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I got that to, but just start deleting the end of the URL until you find a path that works. I found that by taking off the very end piece and just loading it from ../articles/ let me get to where I wanted.
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To be honest, this isn't an official site so the reviewer are probably under some misconception about Hamidon.
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City of Heroes / City of Villains: Redesigning the Hamidon
By Christopher Bruce, Cryptic Developer
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Yeah, I actually found it a little annoying that one of the Devs knows so little about the game (even if he were trying to use "elder god" in a figurative sense) that he referred to defeating Hammi as sending it (him) back to the dimension from which he came.
Duh, read through a story arc of the game you code for once in a while.
It just looks bad to me. Cryptic's own developers (at least this one) know very little about the background of something that they are writing an article on... one that said dev knows full well is going to get published online and read by actual players.
I mean, come on, spend the 1-2 minutes it'll take to skim through the text of the arc and find the part about Hamidon being a scientist who mutated himself.
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What if it wasn't a matter of "just" a mutation? What if when he mutated himself, what actually happened was that it opened a gate to the Elder God Hamidon who then uses his body as a way into our world? What if this Elder God consumed the scientist's body in such a way so as to not require the scientist's actual body to reform here, which would explain the lack of such a body each time the Hamidon is defeated, or assuming this, repulsed from this dimension?
It's possible there is more to this than we currently know.
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I like the theory, but the fact that the scientist's name was Hamidon Pasalima before his transformation is a bit problimatic.
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We fixed the issue with the article's backstory to match the game's lore.
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Let me guess you mixed the Hamidon up with Rularuu?
Um, what happens if you are a part of the 50 person raid in 'Hive 2' and everything is going well but then your internet goes out for whatever reason and when you get back online 'Hive 2' is full because some leecher just jumped in and took your spot in the zone? Thats my biggest concern about the small zone population.
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I got that to, but just start deleting the end of the URL until you find a path that works. I found that by taking off the very end piece and just loading it from ../articles/ let me get to where I wanted.
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One major thing I like is 50 toon cap in the Hive instead of making in to a CoP or Trail out of it. That and FAR less leechers. Last nigth at the Guardian raid, we start with around 50, it jumped to 80 near the end of the Mito phase and doubled to around 160 after Hami took his dirt nap. Basically, 110 people showed up to leech off the work of 50 other people.
ADD ON: I agree with CrimsonScorpion on that point.
Toons found here.
Gamer cards found here.
Proud member of Angels of Wrath and South of Heaven.
MA#: 65131 Play it today.
I'm not really seeing this as an improvement on the griefing or leeching issues. Although griefers are more limited in how much damage they can cause (no yellow dawn), there can still be issues. Leeching is still easy, and potentially locks a useful raid member out of the zone. Relocating the raid to another zone instance is not necessarily easy.
Suggestion: The Hive always has at least (say) 5 instances open. That way a group can choose an instance without having to muck around trying to open a new one.
I'm amazed that I was wrong all this time to think that holds were the devs' "secret strategy". Even with the original mito attack range, Geko's strategy sounds quite impractical (people were considering exactly that approach, but the execution never came together to my knowledge) and completely excludes tanks, scrappers, and controllers. I don't entirely understand how making Hamidon immune to holds was not possible - if he can have a hold mag of 100 (now increased to 500), why not just make it mag 1,000,000?
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Um, what happens if you are a part of the 50 person raid in 'Hive 2' and everything is going well but then your internet goes out for whatever reason and when you get back online 'Hive 2' is full because some leecher just jumped in and took your spot in the zone? Thats my biggest concern about the small zone population.
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o.O
Some random leecher won't know if your internet went out. And if Hami can be defeated by a smaller group, it would probably be easier to organize a raid. So, in that situation, I'd run in and spawn Hive 3 and start in on a global channel for more raiders.
Hey gang. Here's what happened. Matt's been swamped with Inventions and I9. He approached me a few days ago about helping him write this article as I was the one who wrote the original design doc on all of the changes we're making to Hamidon in Issue 9. I wrote out the article for curse-gaming and at the very top, I left a blank section to talk a bit about Hamidon's back story, the history of raids over the years, and reveal what Geko's original idea as far as player strategy was.
I'll admit, I was a bit hazy on the back story. I've done the arc myself and I had the vague memory that it had something to do with a mutated scientist named Hamidon, but couldn't remember the details. All I could remember was his creation of the Devouring Earth, and part with Terra and the love letter. I didn't want to mess anything up and get the facts wrong, so I just left that section empty and set it back to Position for him to fill in. When I read over what he'd written, I didn't think that sounded like what I remembered. "But he's Positron," I thought, "Surely he'd know.
Well, he got it mixed up obviously. Between his own hazy memory and more importantly just being really busy fixing things for Issue 9, he came up with something about an ancient god. Brian, one of our mission/story writers, set out an email shortly after the article went up that that basically said "The Hamidon is a what what of what?"
So Brian, who actually knows what's going on in the story and was conveniently ill the day we sent this article out, has rewritten the backstory and we've asked curse-gaming to update the article.
Other than that, I hope everyone enjoys the article. I had a lot of fun writing it.
Back Alley Brawler?!?!?
I do agree that new content is always welcome and needed. I am also looking forward to "testing" this new Green Jelly.
It'll be cool to try to win against a new improved Hamidon with new tactics and new builds and new ideas.
It's just that why do we have to get "new" content at the expense of the "old" one?
I mean, why lose the Hamidon encounter (as we know it) altogether? One of the greatest if not THE GREATEST things about the Hamidon encounter is the ability to socialize with hundreds of people at the same time.
Is it a lag fest? Sure?
Do our computers lag? Yep.
But that's well compensated by that Social enviorment. Hamidon raids are one of the better ways for "old timers" and "new timers" to socialize, to meet new people or old friends. Meeting old friend's new toons, new costumes, etc...meeting "newbies" to Hamidon raids and teaching them and getting to knowing them.
That will all be lost if the new Hive spawns at 50 people
(I believe that the old Hive spawned at 300).
I wish Devs would reconsider their decision about instancing the Hive for 50 players only. If you trully think - as we do - that Hamidon Raids are a Social event, then DO NOT limit the raids to 50 players only.
Please.
Bio-Flame,
an "old timer" and old Infinity Hamidon Raid Leader
(you know, one of the three dudes that first published this Holding strategy - yes, THAT old )
PS
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I'm amazed that I was wrong all this time to think that holds were the devs' "secret strategy". Even with the original mito attack range, Geko's strategy sounds quite impractical (people were considering exactly that approach, but the execution never came together to my knowledge)
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It was executed before, but not too many times. "Not too many times" as in like less than 2-3 times or so.
All points about Hami aside, this kind of dev communication is absolutely fantastic.
Mr. Bruce outlines
- a game mechanic
- the flaws with said game mechanic
- ideas to improve the game mechanic
- challenges encountered while improving the game mechanic
- testing methodology
- possible future changes to the game mechanic
It was informative and fun. I particularly liked the part where he details the problems and changes to the game caused by emergent player behavior. It was also nice to see acceptance of that same behavior and information that the encounter could always change in the future to account for new strategies.
Very, very good writeup, Mr. Bruce.
New Red Name!!??!!
=O_O=
Gleeee!!!!
*pounces Back Alley Brawler and smuthers him with Otter Huggles*
=^o^=
And here I was going to post how I'm a little, okay, really dissapointed that the 'new' design sounds to be 'more-of-the-same' but 'easier'. Maybe it's just how I read the article though. *shrug*
=. .=
hamidon still sucks and is a tedious affair, adding a couple of extra tasks to the event does nothing to resolve the fact that fighting a blob of jelly just isnt fun. Statesman wishes they invested more time into the hamidon in the first place as it didnt come out the way they envisioned, this is just puting a band aid on a decapitation victim. Hamidon should have evolved into a Galactus like entity IMO
I am also fearful of the way the devs equate rediculously hard with fun, the rollbacked AV/GM buff is a prime example as is the exclusionary setup of the last mission in the RSF which renders many ATs simply unwanted.
Punching deadly jelly = dull dull dull
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Hey gang. Here's what happened. Matt's been swamped with Inventions and I9. He approached me a few days ago about helping him write this article as I was the one who wrote the original design doc on all of the changes we're making to Hamidon in Issue 9. I wrote out the article for curse-gaming and at the very top, I left a blank section to talk a bit about Hamidon's back story, the history of raids over the years, and reveal what Geko's original idea as far as player strategy was.
I'll admit, I was a bit hazy on the back story. I've done the arc myself and I had the vague memory that it had something to do with a mutated scientist named Hamidon, but couldn't remember the details. All I could remember was his creation of the Devouring Earth, and part with Terra and the love letter. I didn't want to mess anything up and get the facts wrong, so I just left that section empty and set it back to Position for him to fill in. When I read over what he'd written, I didn't think that sounded like what I remembered. "But he's Positron," I thought, "Surely he'd know.
Well, he got it mixed up obviously. Between his own hazy memory and more importantly just being really busy fixing things for Issue 9, he came up with something about an ancient god. Brian, one of our mission/story writers, set out an email shortly after the article went up that that basically said "The Hamidon is a what what of what?"
So Brian, who actually knows what's going on in the story and was conveniently ill the day we sent this article out, has rewritten the backstory and we've asked curse-gaming to update the article.
Other than that, I hope everyone enjoys the article. I had a lot of fun writing it.
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Cryptic is truly sitcom material.
BTW, I'm reading the frontpage article right now. Very well written, interesting, in-depth and detailed. Bravo! *applauds*
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Hey gang. Here's what happened. Matt's been swamped with Inventions and I9. He approached me a few days ago about helping him write this article as I was the one who wrote the original design doc on all of the changes we're making to Hamidon in Issue 9. I wrote out the article for curse-gaming and at the very top, I left a blank section to talk a bit about Hamidon's back story, the history of raids over the years, and reveal what Geko's original idea as far as player strategy was.
I'll admit, I was a bit hazy on the back story. I've done the arc myself and I had the vague memory that it had something to do with a mutated scientist named Hamidon, but couldn't remember the details. All I could remember was his creation of the Devouring Earth, and part with Terra and the love letter. I didn't want to mess anything up and get the facts wrong, so I just left that section empty and set it back to Position for him to fill in. When I read over what he'd written, I didn't think that sounded like what I remembered. "But he's Positron," I thought, "Surely he'd know.
Well, he got it mixed up obviously. Between his own hazy memory and more importantly just being really busy fixing things for Issue 9, he came up with something about an ancient god. Brian, one of our mission/story writers, set out an email shortly after the article went up that that basically said "The Hamidon is a what what of what?"
So Brian, who actually knows what's going on in the story and was conveniently ill the day we sent this article out, has rewritten the backstory and we've asked curse-gaming to update the article.
Other than that, I hope everyone enjoys the article. I had a lot of fun writing it.
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You do realise you've ruined the City of Heroes Gods Death Match I was lining up don't you? and I was gonna bet on the Hamidon owning them
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Hey gang. Here's what happened. Matt's been swamped with Inventions and I9. He approached me a few days ago about helping him write this article as I was the one who wrote the original design doc on all of the changes we're making to Hamidon in Issue 9. I wrote out the article for curse-gaming and at the very top, I left a blank section to talk a bit about Hamidon's back story, the history of raids over the years, and reveal what Geko's original idea as far as player strategy was.
I'll admit, I was a bit hazy on the back story. I've done the arc myself and I had the vague memory that it had something to do with a mutated scientist named Hamidon, but couldn't remember the details. All I could remember was his creation of the Devouring Earth, and part with Terra and the love letter. I didn't want to mess anything up and get the facts wrong, so I just left that section empty and set it back to Position for him to fill in. When I read over what he'd written, I didn't think that sounded like what I remembered. "But he's Positron," I thought, "Surely he'd know.
Well, he got it mixed up obviously. Between his own hazy memory and more importantly just being really busy fixing things for Issue 9, he came up with something about an ancient god. Brian, one of our mission/story writers, set out an email shortly after the article went up that that basically said "The Hamidon is a what what of what?"
So Brian, who actually knows what's going on in the story and was conveniently ill the day we sent this article out, has rewritten the backstory and we've asked curse-gaming to update the article.
Other than that, I hope everyone enjoys the article. I had a lot of fun writing it.
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Cool, thanks for clearing that up BAB!
It's about time, but this will bring trouble.