COH Mythbusters

Myth: I like pie.


Truth: I Really....REALLY...REALLLY like Pie

The devs nerf Accuracy every Issue, especially Shadow Maul from Dark Melee Set.

I love this one:

You have to let the Paladin be completed so you can defeat him for the badge. Stop attacking the construct!!!

Myth: There are cartels of players, supported by the devs, to keep the prices on the consignment markets artificially high.

Truth: There are players who enjoy market PVP that keep the market prices dynamic.

That the paladin construction wouldn't spawn if you camped one of the sites...

Myth: You either play for fun or for min-maxing.
Fact: A focus on game mechanics or rewards doesn't magically prevent one from having fun.

Myth: There is a Forum Cartel.

Fact: There is no secret organization, and if there was they certainly would not allow me to post this to draw attention to themselves unless it was a carefully planned move to help disperse the rumor of the existence of any such cartel.


FEAR TOM CURL!!

Myth: There are no tankers redside.
Fact: MMs are perfectly capable of tanking, and because of pets, can surpass the aggro cap.

Myth: Entering and leaving the Matrix room slightly moves your camera angle permanently.

When they first added the Luska/Giant octopus event to the game, the myths about how to get to to spawn were legion.

-The dock worker protests much be broken up to spawn Luska. (beats me how)
-The dock worker protests much be joined up to spawn Luska. (solidarity, brothers!)
-You MUST have an 8-person team, and every member must be at a protest (viva la revolution!)
-If you click on every protester, at every protest.
-If you/your whole team is in the water.
-If you visit certain key "activation" points in IP.
-If a team finishes a Respec trial.
-If the Kraken is defeated.
-If the Kraken respec's.
-If someone disrespects the Kraken.
-Luska only appears at night/during the day/if your toggles are on/if your toggles are off/if you clap REALLY hard and BELIEVE, damn you.

This was before the <Activity> channel, so spotting her was pretty much reliant on luck and word of mouth.

Myth: Enhancement Diversification caused subscribership to fall.
Fact: Subscribership actually went up after Enhancement Diversification was rolled out, and maintained higher numbers for over a year. (I'm not making that up, it's was in NCsoft's quarterly reports.) To people's credit, Jack Emmert supported the myth when, in an interview once, he referred to how ED caused people to leave. Undoubtedly a few did, but the vast majority stayed, and the game got a huge boost from City of Villains, which was released at the same time. So next time someone tells you, "This is going to be another Enhancement Diversification!"... We can only hope!



Myth: Map patches and splash screen modifiers aren't against the Terms of Service.
Fact: They most assuredly are. CuppaJo posted a sticky that has remained up for over five years in the Player Guides forum saying that Client modifications are against the Terms of Service, and later posted in the same thread after discussion about map patches, "Even if you are just photoshopping a pic or turning off a sound, it is a violation." This is a subject near and dear to my heart, since I've written a map patch myself. Their current attitude seems to be that if it's harmless and doesn't cause copyright violation, they don't pursue it. In some cases, such as the Splasher utility, they've come very close to semi-endorsing it as okay, but where the rubber meets the road--in the Terms of Service and the EULA, they are technically not allowed, and NCsoft/Paragon Studios are well within their rights to nuke these utilities if they so desire at any time. Will they? Probably not. Can they? Absolutely yes.

Myth: I can use characters I create in City of Heroes in other commercial ventures.
Fact: As soon as you create any character or other intellectual property in the game or on these forums, according to the terms of the EULA, you are transferring all rights to that intellectual property to NCsoft. As NCsoft then has sole ownership, including all rights to publish and commercialize that intellectual property, legally, you are obligated to get their express written permission to use it in your own commercial work. It does not matter if you owned the intellectual property before using it in the game. This is another case of "they wouldn't enforce that!" Maybe, maybe not, but the fact is that they can enforce it if they choose to. Also, there have been references to community reps saying that the clause is there to protect NCsoft, not go after people. Again, maybe, maybe not, but community reps aren't lawyers, and it doesn't change what the EULA--the only thing a court would consider binding--actually says. Short version: Never, ever, ever create anything in the game that you might want to someday use to make money on your own.

Myth: Farming helps the game by creating a supply of recipes on the market, thus making them cheaper.
Fact: Very tenuous claim at best. Farming increases the supply of some recipes on the market. Specifically, the recipes that commonly drop during missions, the kind that anyone can easily get via merits or tickets. However, because farmers reap in sums of influence that are vastly higher than what is obtainable via regular play, typically for the specific purpose of purchasing extremely rare items from the market, the prices of those items skyrockets out of the reach of almost everyone but marketeers and other farmers, making rare items much less available than they would have otherwise been. It's basic economics. In a recession, the prices of ultra-luxurious items (yachts, Learjets, etc.) don't fall until the ultra-rich can't afford them any more. If the ultra-rich are making money during a recession, the prices of these items actually go up.

Myth: Paragon Studios and/or NCsoft are working in collusion with RMT spammers
Fact: I see this one pop up every once in a while. Hopefully, the claim is ludicrous enough on the face of it for most people that it doesn't need addressing. Still, the simple fact is that several steps have been taken to keep RMT spammers from doing what they do. They have added commands to report spammers and repeatedly asked players to petition people who are spamming. They added a UI element (the spam button in e-mail) specifically for the purpose of making it easier. They have changed the way that trials work--to the detriment of showing players the full range of what is possible in the game--in order to stop spammers from sending tells. Now, they've nerfed the e-mail system entirely to stop them. They've also added word filters for some of the spam sites so that's not even possible to say their names or e-mail the actual site name to someone. All of this, of course, overlooks the simple fact that if Paragon Studios and/or NCsoft wanted to make money off of selling influence, there is absolutely nothing stopping them from selling it themselves and not having to pay a middleman a cut of the profit. It is not unprecedented for a large gaming company to do this with very popular games. The simple fact is that they are doing their best--some would argue going too far sometimes--to stop RMT.

Myth: Jack Emmert is the Antichrist
Fact: Granted, this is more a matter of opinion than fact, but a lot of people forget that Jack Emmert was instrumental in getting this game to where it is today. Without him, it's entirely possible that there would be no City of Heroes at all, or that it would have been so dinky that it would have failed years ago. Like it or not, there are still a lot of remnants of his vision in the game, and there are a great many fun things that he originated. Before NCsoft and Cryptic parted ways, he had a very high degree of fan praise on these very forums (well, the old UBB forums, anyway...), and I see the same small contingent of vitriol spat at Matt Miller today as I sometimes saw when Jack was in charge. In short, nothing has changed from before, except that Jack now heads up a competing product. He was, and still is, a very competent game designer, and like any red-blooded human being has strengths and weaknesses just like the crew that is now in charge that alternately produces awesomeness and frustration. (But fortunately, must more awesomeness than frustration.)

Myth: Development is easy
Fact: I see this one pop up sometimes in the form of people saying stuff like, "Just add a button to..." or "Just change the..." or "It has been doing this for years." The fact is that game development is a very hard, tedious process. When you change one little thing, it is possible that dozens of other things might be affected. In my own development efforts, I have run across so many bugs that resulted from side effects of things I had no idea were related, I can't count them. You can't just go in and quickly change something. After doing so, there has to be a comprehensive battery of review, QA, in-house testing, and player testing for even the most simple and minor of things. That's not to say that there aren't important things that need to be done or that it's not frustrating when something breaks, but sometimes I think that when new features such as the changes in Issue 16 are magically rolled out over the course of a few hours on a lazy Tuesday morning, players don't get the fair sense of how many years of hard work have been put into this game and how hard implementing stuff like this really is.

Myth: CO will be the zenith of Super Hero games. Built from he experience of CoH and CoV it will learn from the mistakes of it's cousin and provide a well balanced, open ended experience right out of the gate for the players.


Fact:.....just read the forums

Myth: Defeating 100 Bane Spiders in Grandville will spawn the Arachnos Flier.
Fact: The Flier works on its own schedule, thanks.

Myth: Detention Field does not work on AVs.
Fact: Yes, it sure does.

Myth: You can land on the Atlas Park blimp:
Truth: "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaah!" *KER-SPLAT*

Myth: You need multiple teams to spawn Caleb in Nerva Archipelago.
Truth: I've seen it spawned by a single team of 8 players.

Myth: His name is Quarterfield.
Truth: It's Quaterfield, and that will cost you an extra defeat all.

Myth: In the hero respecs, you MUST defeat all the mobs in the hallway next to the Reactor Core.
Truth: While this can be useful, especially with teleporting Rikti and Sky Raiders, you can just skip this step.

Myth: The Devs are filthy sadists.
Truth: Regen is overperforming, IH now has an unenhanceable 6 minute recharge. (I kid, I kid!)

Ooh! I forgot a highly contentious one!

Myth: The Fifth Column were removed because of the European release conflicting with anti-Nazi laws
Fact: The devs and reps have repeatedly denied this claim outright. It's impossible to ever know this for 100% certain without having taken part in the conversations at the studio. The European release did closely coincide with the removal of the Fifth Column, and there is a sliver of possibility that someone mentioned in passing, "Will this fly?" However, if it was--and again, it has been repeatedly denied that it was--claims that is was actually relevant have the credibility of a conspiracy theory. The most blatant symbol of Nazism--the swastika--does not appear anywhere in or out of the game related to the Fifth Column, and the laws usually referenced specifically apply to symbology, not to descriptions. The only reference to Nazism is the historical context in which the Fifth Column arose. Additionally, devs and reps have repeatedly made reference to the "story bible" they have, a description of things that have occurred and will occur in the City of Heroes universe up to years in advance. It is extremely unlikely that a major change like the Council taking over the Fifth Column would have been thrown in at the last second. Finally, the Fifth Column gladiator was added around Issue 7 and now, they have reappeared in several zones. Hopefully, that will drive the final nail in the coffin of the myth that the Fifth Column can't be portrayed in European countries, especially Germany, where this myth is often cited to apply and in which the European servers are in fact located (Frankfurt, to be exact).