City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Steelclaw's Handy-Dandy Super Sidekicking Translation

Bookkeeper_Jay

By Bookkeeper_Jay,
Posted on: 2009-08-13 11:16 in CoH and CoV General Discussions

 

Posted

Positron recently made an announcement regarding the new features available in Issue 16. Since I am the proud owner of the Cynical Steelclaw Parody and Translation Device (patent pending), I decided to run the announcement through the system and see what popped out.

What follows is a parody translation of the original speech with the Cynicism knob turned waaaaay up to the maximum. None of it is me though.. I swear... a computer program did the whole translation thing on its own... really...

Yeah…

Quote:
I am pleased to tell you that in Issue 16: Power Spectrum we have two new features that are made to better facilitate the game experience by streamlining many processes that players spend time setting up.
Translation: The best way we came up for shortening the time it takes you players to “set up” is by giving you only pre-fabricated characters from which to choose. Closed Beta goers threatened to burn down our office building so we put that one in the Recycle Bin. This is what we get for trying to help… go figure.

Quote:
The first of these is the new difficulty settings. A lot of in-game Broadcasts are powerful characters looking for “pads” so they can artificially increase their team-size to provide more of a challenge for greater rewards. With the new difficulty settings, these players can set their team size without having to bother other players with their Broadcasts. If they want to be treated as a team of 8, even when solo, they can.
Translation: If you a team of eight players all with their difficulty set to view them as a team of eight, then the mission propagated as though it were a team of size of 64. This wasn’t as fun as it sounded since the maps were generally so filled with enemies the lag only allowed one frame of animation to be rendered every 3 minutes or so… We’re going to address this prior to Open Beta.

Quote:
The second feature is what we have come to call “Super-Sidekicking” but actually applies to all types of Sidekicking: Exemplaring, Lackeying, and Malefactoring as well. With this system, everyone in the team will find themselves automatically level adjusted to the level of the owner of the Mission that is currently selected. If there is no mission that is currently active, then the level is set to the leader of the Team.
Translation: Mission Leaders will have the glorious ability to grief their team mates! A clever Mission Leader who is 50th level will lure his 10th or lower level team into a high-level world map. When they are engaged in combat with the enemies there the Team Lead will say “I have to afk for a moment” then Hover far above the battle. He will then set the mission to the lowest level character on the team. Hilarity ensues.

Quote:
If you are below the level you are getting set to, you are automatically sidekicked up to one level below the owner’s level, just as if you had sidekicked to them. If you are above the level, then you will be lowered to the level of the owner, just as if you exemplared down.
Translation: That means you at-home role players had better practice changing your costumes really quickly. If the mission changes you have to be prepared to figure out immediately if you are side-kicking, exemplaring or are the mission holder so you can put on your Robin, Superman or Batman costume as appropriate.

Quote:
The players don’t need to do anything for this to happen, it all happens automatically. This means that no matter what level ranges you have in your group, you can ALWAYS play together and you can ALWAYS get XP. Yes, we are even changing the way exemplaring works so that you get XP while you are fighting at a lower level. There will be an option of having the “old way” of exemplaring, and earning extra Inf. instead, for those players who want to earn some more Inf. instead of levels.
Translation: So you will ALWAYS get XP when running at a lower level. So if my 50 exemplars down to 30th level for a mission or two he will earn experience points. Let me guess… he doesn’t keep them when he goes back to 50…. I’ll even make a wild stab in the dark about what happens to those lost experience points… do they become… oh I dunno… Tickets of some kind?

Quote:
Gone are the days of having to play “Mentor Tetris” (as we’ve come to call it) to make sure everyone in the team is SK’ed/EX’ed to the right person so that everyone is receiving XP, or having to tell your friend that they can’t join your team because you don’t have enough people to make sure everyone is SK’ed and earning rewards.
Translation: No more Mentor Tetris? Great… just great… As if this game didn’t have too few Mini-Games in it to begin with… now all I’m left with is “Set-Up-Goal-Posts-And-Kick-Around-Whatever-The-Gravity-Dom/Troller-Summoned-With-Propel” Soccer games!

Quote:
One of the other advantages to this system is that the level adjustments take place no matter where you are in the game. No more “My sidekick is out of range” messages. If you are about to undergo a large level shift, you will have a dialog box pop-up giving you warning and the ability to leave the team (handy if you are in combat at the time and don’t want to suddenly be fighting at a lower level). The range of levels that this dialog pops up is adjustable in the Options screen.
Translation: Dialog Box will read “You are about to drop from level 49 to level 5. Do you accept this drop?” Within a week the entirety of City of Heroes/Villains will be filled with level 49 characters whom never turn their computers off and refuse to quit their teams.

Quote:
Now we are aware of a couple things that this system doesn’t do so well, and we are attempting to address most of them in the coming weeks. The first of this is the fact that you lose access to powers, especially the most-recently earned ones, when you Exemplar down. We are looking into some sort of fix for this.
Translation: We haven’t yet decided if we’re going to have an in-game image of one of the Devs appear and hand you a handkerchief or if we’ll provide you with a customer service number specifically for this issue: 1-800-WAA-AAAH.

Quote:
Next is the fact that sometimes you just want to un-exemplar and kick some butt, especially when things look bad for the team. If you leave the team you will automatically start fighting at your superior level. This will enable you to save your team’s bacon at the cost of eating up any of the rewards they might have earned for those guys you defeat.
Translation: We’re actually considering an alternative to this that would allow the characters who remained on the team to continue earning influence, salvage and recipe drops. Said drops will be drawn directly from the team-quitting character’s inventory.

Quote:
Badge hunters in the closed beta have pointed out that some badges are simply favorable to get once you outlevel the content where they are given. Since Super-Sidekicking makes manipulating the levels more difficult, we’re going to re-examine the requirements on some badges, and lower them where appropriate. Mentor badge credit is still given whenever you are the Mission Owner, and someone is auto-sidekicked to you.
Translation: We understand that some Badge Hunters who had to grind away and earn these badges the “old way” will probably be upset about these changes. We also understand that most of these same Badge Hunters were upset when we… snrkt… removed all those badges from Mission Architect. And you were peeved when… heh… when we… heehee… made so many badges that were “exclusive” available through Candy Cane purchases during the… ha ha haaa… Winter Event. We would like to state that… aaah haa… our Badging community is…. Ha haa haaaa… Imp…. Snrkt… Important to us… and… and… heee heee heeee… we take your concerns seriously… BWA HAA HAAAA HAAAAAA!!

Quote:
Now one thing that is getting removed by this new system that is not going to be fixed is the ability to “bridge”. Bridging is the practice of sidekicking a low level character to JUST the right level to cap their XP earning on each entity defeated by the group. This was a side effect of how the Sidekicking system worked. While we have made adjustments to the Sidekicking system many times over the course of the life of the game to combat this, Super-Sidekicking eliminates bridging completely, since all rewards will be in parity.
Translation: NEENER NEENER NEEEEEEEENER!

Quote:
Before we went and removed this playstyle completely from City of Heroes we wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing. We did extensive datamines to see how many accounts were actually participating in a “bridge” team, and were surprised to see just how low of a percentage it actually was. This may be a case where it is possible that the “advertising” in /broadcasts for bridge teams actually made the practice seem more pervasive than it really was.
Translation: Our datamining was extensive and pervasive. We entered Peregrine Island where such requests frequently occurred. We announced in Broadcast “Hello there, we are the Development team and we are looking to stamp out Bridging. Are there any Bridgers currently playing here tonight?” Our exhaustive research has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt there is NO bridging going on in our game.

Quote:
With the ability to bridge removed, we should see an end to those Broadcasts, in addition to /tells to characters who are in the right level range for being a bridge. To us cutting down on annoying spam only makes your game experience better. (Which reminds me, we’ve added new features to the in-game Email system to either shut it off entirely, or only receive emails from people on your friends list and/or people in your Supergroup. Another step in the battle against annoying in-game spam.)
Translation: Actually, I am SO happy about this one I can’t bring myself to parody it…

Quote:
With both the new difficulty levels and Super-Sidekicking, players can use the difficulty slider to increase the level of the entities in the mission so that they can earn more rewards. But this, at least, comes with the risk inherent with fighting higher level entities and larger spawns. As for low level characters missing out on accelerated leveling speeds, we are increasing the rewards they earn from level 1 to 20 (about 20% across the board) so that every player can get through the lower levels faster, not just those that know “the tricks”.
Translation: This is only our first step in accelerating early level characters. By Issue 21 we hope to introduce our new Tutorial feature. When speaking to Coyote the final time he will ask you “Do you wish to speak with Ms. Liberty in Atlas Park, Back Alley Brawler in Galaxy City, Blue Steel in Kings Row (5th level), Valkyrie in Steel Canyon (10th level), Mirror Spirit in Faultline (15th level) or Luminary in Talos Island (20th level)” We are also considering simply making those same level advances available in the On Line Store.

My mind wanders so often you've probably seen its picture on milk cartons. - Me... the first person version of the third person Steelclaw

 

Posted

Gweee-hehehehe!

Excellent post, Steelclaw's Computer Program That Does Sarcastic Things!

 

Posted

And yet I'm pretty sure farmers aren't laughing sadly, heh, heh.

 

Posted

Dude you need a job to occupy your time! Funny post.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by DechsKaison View Post
Farmers will love i16.

PLers and RMTers? Not so much.
Thanks for the correction, dude. My mind was loopy when I posted that.

 

Posted

The way I put it:

Now you've got no excuse to stay in the AE out of 'convenience'.

 

Posted

I'm not entirly sure it was Stellclaws computer that did this. I suspect Steelclaw had a finge.. Err Claw in this.

Nice job SC.

//Jack

The Kickers base.

Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
-Groucho Marx

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by DechsKaison View Post
Farmers will love i16.

PLers and RMTers? Not so much.
I AGREE.
But I already know some PLers who don't mind.