Discussion: Message From Positron 4 Year Anniv!
By
8_Ball,
Posted on: 2008-04-28 10:08 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
Great address, way to keep blowing our socks off. People are still reeling with all of the I12 stuff that they don't even hands their on yet and you go and do this ...
I knew creating a user generated content aspect to the game you'll be leaping the mmorpg experience forward beyond anything I've heard of in development let alone being added to a pre-existing game.
If you don't use that opportunity to re-market the hell out of this game it would be a crime.
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Please use this thread to discuss the below announcement.
When I look back upon the game that we shipped in 2004, I cant help but look at all the things that were missing from it. Things we added immediately, and things we added recently. Badges were not in the initial launch. Heck, level 41 to 50 were not shipped with City of Heroes! As the game has progressed, I think we have added more free features with our updates than any other MMO on the planet. Multiple zones, missions, features and systems have been added to the base game over the past four years, making the game better and better with every update.
Every time I visit the Tailor in the game, I say to myself Heh, I couldnt even change my costume when City of Heroes launched. Every time I Exemplar down to play content with my lower level friends, I note that this too was not a feature in the game four years ago. Now I actively seek out Inventions and Recipes both in missions and on the Black Market. The Invention System worked out very well for both City of Heroes and City of Villains, and was not part of the plan when we were finishing up CoH in the first quarter of 2004. Just over this last six months weve also added our Ouroboros Flashback System, Weapon Customization, and more quality of life features than the game had ever seen (until Issue 12).
Thats not to say we havent been without our missteps.
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Awwww Posi's giving me flash backs .Make us 4 year Vets Feel Old gonna start telling stories that start with "Back in My day" oh may as well "Back in my day... We didn't get no stinkin capes at level 20. You Youngins get it easy with your wings and your Shoulder capes. All we got was a Towel and a Safty Pin and you know we made it work." I got Villian Stories too " Back in My day.... All Mercy Island Missions exited into Atlas Park With their Police Drones of Death.But did I complain nah. I sliped into City Hall and got an "International Spy" Badge if I remember right it was something bout "Spy". Rushed one to many monorail Police drones back then so its a little hazzy."
Can't wait to see whats next and get a shot at the beta to see what goes wrong with it during testing so I have more stories to tell th Youngins when they get use to everything running smoothly.
P.S. I will not be happy until Positron is Grey to me.
"When chaos happens... I'll be right in the middle of it."
Let Your Spirit Fly!!!
Kid K
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[u]Most Wealthy Archetypes[u]
Heroes: Scrappers
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How is this not Controllers? 
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IOed out Spines/Darks that farm demons 
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I cant tell you how excited I am for our games future, and although we have some major announcements yet to be made, one of the things I can talk about is a feature that we are planning. Similar in concept to our character creator, it allows you, the players, to create missions and story arcs for your characters and others to participate in. Youll be able to pick the map, villain group, and objectives, as well as write the dialog and any clues needed for the missions. When you are satisfied with it, you can upload it and have other players across all servers play it and rate it. Fame will come to the players whose stories rate the best overall. It is features like these that we never dreamed of including when we first shipped, but are excited to be able to offer players very soon.
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As if I haven't been telling my family all this time that City of Heroes is by far, hands down the best game I have EVER played. Ever.
It has kept my interest longer than any other game I've ever played and, while I dabble in WoW and LOTRO, (and briefly in EQ Mach 1 as well as SWG, before it turned to the devil) CoH just has the 'IT' factor for me. It's the creative freedom that you allow we players that keeps us coming back. And this feature is just going to drive me insane. I just recently informed my family that I thought CoH couldn't get any more awesome (with the advent of 36 character slots PER SERVER).
And the you do this to me.
I have whole story arcs about my characters I could finally implement. I could, theoretically, play through a fight were Snow Tyger actually has to face down her personal nemesis. Aradea's time-hoping mission to save the world could become a reality... ... ... ... (stares blankly at the screen as her brain goes into high gear, over heats, and ultimately shuts down.)
Could life as I know it at this very early in the morning moment possibly get any better? I submit that it can not.
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I can't say I like the Create Your Own Story Arc (it will really, really muddle with canon). But thanks for telling us.
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Cannon? Since when in anything in the world of comic books ever truly cannon? 
Retcon for the WIN! :P
This is incredible.. BUT.. I only have 1 request. PLEASE allow EBs in the player-created content and put Hardcase in as an EB.. so my villain can spend an entire ARC beating the crap out of that sanctimonious jerk!
"Well, there's going to be some light music and a short note of apology saying, 'The universe ended last week, we're really sorry, we don't know what you're doing here, didn't you get the message?'"- Steve Moffat
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Thanks so much guys............ Champions better watch out......
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Agreed, I think this is Posi and Co's way of saying "Game on".
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QFT.
I was thinking the same thing myself.
Happy 4 year anniversary!!!!! 
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This is incredible.. BUT.. I only have 1 request. PLEASE allow EBs in the player-created content and put Hardcase in as an EB.. so my villain can spend an entire ARC beating the crap out of that sanctimonious jerk!
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Yeah, that would be sweet.
Maybe Phipps too...
Uber Talgrim - level 50 emp/dark defender
Uber Rod - level 50 dark melee/regen scrapper
Rod Valdr - level 50 invuln/SS tanker
Talgrim - level 50 ninja/dark mastermind
OMG!! Please add these costume designs now!
Bein able to write our own story arcs and have others play/rate them is amazinly sweet. I have lots of ideas already thanks Posi and Devs.
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Similar in concept to our character creator, it allows you, the players, to create missions and story arcs for your characters and others to participate in. Youll be able to pick the map, villain group, and objectives, as well as write the dialog and any clues needed for the missions. When you are satisfied with it, you can upload it and have other players across all servers play it and rate it.
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Woah. Awesome.
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you know the 1st thing I thought of when I read this message was posting "Awesome" on the reply thread.
so here it goes...
Awesome
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Most Wealthy Archetypes
Heroes: Scrappers
Villains: Brutes
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NERF Wealth!
Ha!
Chekmate, Lvl 50 AR/Dev blaster
BlueEyed Murder, lvl 50 MA/Regen scrapper
Hard Feelings, lvl 50 energy/willpower brute
"The Bell" - stop a mysterious group with ties to a WW2-era mythic German superweapon. arc id 76773
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So, to me, this sounds like I can create my own farming mission!
Outdoor Battle Maiden mission + werewolfs = win!
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I can imagine the player created missions being non-reward until they are approved in some way.
I had envisioned a story arch that would end in a PvP death match. Of course this would be difficult to implement
Red Hot Rage lvl 50 scrapper
SG: Visions of the Victorious
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So, to me, this sounds like I can create my own farming mission!
Outdoor Battle Maiden mission + werewolfs = win!
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I can imagine the player created missions being non-reward until they are approved in some way.
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Well I can see it being defaulted like normal mishes. If we are able to put our own AV's in the arc then they should reward properly. I mean an AV is an AV and the minions, LTs, Bosses already have their coding for xp + difficulty settings I am sure, so I don't see where there can be an issue with rewards.
This is just RP Gold.....
I am a customer for life, well until the server dies >.>. *whispers* it was like this since I made an account
If player created content works out, I really hope they improve upon it. I'd love nothing more than to create an expansive story-arc involving my ninja Mastermind. In fact, I'd absolutely love to create not only an arc or two villain side to prove loyalty to him (I want to make a VG at 50, heh), It'd be great to have a story arc or two heroside to go against him. It should definitely be possible to put your own characters in or customize your own (maybe even the NPCs people will fight) using the costume creator for the arc, perhaps with some added pieces from NPC mobs? For that matter, are there plans to implement a badge system for these?
I'll refrain from using the over used a-word and instead quote a Waffle: SPLEEEEE!!!
I am SO creating a mission where a bunch of AI heroes are beating up Positron for having to run through his Task Force.
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Since City of Heroes launched:
<ul type="square">[*] More than 32 million characters created thats 4 times the population of New York City![*] Players have spent a combined 292 centuries playing City of Heroes and City of Villains[/list]
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Well that's a bit misleading. That's 32 million characters over 12 parallel instances of New York City, (assuming we're not counting the European New York Cities, (Old York Cities?) or the test servers). Roughly that's 1/3rd the population capacity. On the other hand the same population sure fills up 12 parallel Rhode Islands quick.
The 292 centuries number really comes down to on the order of 24 centuries of parallelism.
Very impressive still. Yay us!
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Since City of Heroes launched:
<ul type="square">[*] More than 32 million characters created thats 4 times the population of New York City![*] Players have spent a combined 292 centuries playing City of Heroes and City of Villains[/list]
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Well that's a bit misleading. That's 32 million characters over 12 parallel instances of New York City, (assuming we're not counting the European New York Cities, (Old York Cities?) or the test servers).
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If I may quibble with your quibbling, since we're not counting Euro or Test, there are only 11 US servers. In addition, just dividing characters/servers assumes all servers have the same population, which they clearly don't.
I don't actually think Posi's point was misleading at all, since the raw number of characters is still the raw number of characters, and there is no real-world analog to something that exists in 11 parallel dimensions so drawing a comparison to NY was fine as far as I was concerned. But that's just me.
And I agree - yay us
My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.
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This is incredible.. BUT.. I only have 1 request. PLEASE allow EBs in the player-created content and put Hardcase in as an EB.. so my villain can spend an entire ARC beating the crap out of that sanctimonious jerk!
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I want a show-down mission.
U'Kon Gr'ai versus RV Positron.
Let's Dance!
Great feature, devs. Thank You!
Arc #6015 - Coming Unglued
"A good n00b-sauce is based on a good n00b-roux." - The Masque
Nice! Great news Positron!
A lot of people are asking for the ability to put in custom created AV's or EB's for their missions. I really doubt this is a possibility, because that would take more data storage on NCSoft's end than is really feasible. Every created enemy would be like an additional character slot they're giving us on their server.
So that got me thinking; why not allow this and tie it -to- our character slots? Let us create a character using the character creator, pick their power sets, appearance, and everything like usual, and allow that character to take up one of our character slots. This character could then be used in our custom created missions, at the cost of one of our regularly allotted slots.
Or one step further: allow the custom mission creator to use any character existing in our slots on a given server in our mishes. The game already has many eloquent systems in place to allow this to happen. If I place my level 30 brute as a villain in a level 50 arc? He gets sked up to 50 to fight. If I place him as a villain in a level 10 arc, he gets exemped down to level 10 to fight.
This would allow us to make whatever we want for custom bosses, whether heroic or villainous, and at the same time require that we give up something in return, character slots. So there'd be a hard cap on how many we could have, and it wouldn't require any additional data storage on NC's end: just code the mission to call up that character's stored information.
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A lot of people are asking for the ability to put in custom created AV's or EB's for their missions. I really doubt this is a possibility, because that would take more data storage on NCSoft's end than is really feasible. Every created enemy would be like an additional character slot they're giving us on their server.
So that got me thinking; why not allow this and tie it -to- our character slots? Let us create a character using the character creator, pick their power sets, appearance, and everything like usual, and allow that character to take up one of our character slots. This character could then be used in our custom created missions, at the cost of one of our regularly allotted slots.
Or one step further: allow the custom mission creator to use any character existing in our slots on a given server in our mishes. The game already has many eloquent systems in place to allow this to happen. If I place my level 30 brute as a villain in a level 50 arc? He gets sked up to 50 to fight. If I place him as a villain in a level 10 arc, he gets exemped down to level 10 to fight.
This would allow us to make whatever we want for custom bosses, whether heroic or villainous, and at the same time require that we give up something in return, character slots. So there'd be a hard cap on how many we could have, and it wouldn't require any additional data storage on NC's end: just code the mission to call up that character's stored information.
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And the minute you deleted a character from the slot, your map would break. Can o' worms, I'm afraid.
"OK, first of all... Shut Up." - My 13-Year-Old Daughter
29973 "The Running of the Bulls" [SFMA] - WINNER of the Mighty Big Story Arc Contest !
- The Stellar Wind Orbital Space Platform
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I think we may all be jumping the gun a little with our hopes for the mission/arc creator. I suspect that the first iteration will be a simple (and I use that term loosely) port of what Posi said specifically: Youll be able to pick the map, villain group, and objectives, as well as write the dialog and any clues needed for the missions.
I suspect that after the players have been able to use it and get a feel for it, then the devs will probably give us more tools to flesh out the missions in more detail, more options, possible cutscenes/mob placement/pet inclusion/AV design/FREEM shading
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But my guess is that the first run at this may be pretty rudimentary. That will help another purpose as well: not to scare away non-programmers with an interface that is so complex that only experts can use it.
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I look forward eagerly to the vast possibilities
Arc #6015 - Coming Unglued
"A good n00b-sauce is based on a good n00b-roux." - The Masque
Nice! I want to thank Posi for being awesome.
Any chance we can get more of those fun facts?
~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~
Virtue-CoH
Jordan Lee 50 ma/regen scrapper
ReapersAdvocate 50 BS/regen scrapper
Sara's Screams 50 sonic/dev blaster and 510 badges
Anarchy's Maiden 50 kat/regen scrapper
Olivete 50 Stone/Fire Tanker
@Jordan Lee