Ultra Mode? or Ultra fail?

Not totally fair. Junior high means there's still time to achieve 5th grade literacy and thinking skills.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

You have actually, but only because FX is, in fact, a very sophisticated forumbot.

Frankly, you're blind if all you saw was shadows. True reflections in water and glass, reflective physics in the water surface, imperfections in the glass reflections, contoured reflexions on costume pieces and such, DETAILED shadows ( Which actually is quite a big deal ).... Lots more than just "adding shadows" ( which are already there )

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

I don't think so. Then again if you what you are saying is that you or someone else posted something similar earlier in the thread then I freely admit that only read the OP and a few other posts, most which bashed the OP.

It's human nature to vent when it seems that some people are getting something cool and you feel excluded. I don't hold that against them.

With as good a return on tech questions as FX has, he can't be a bot. Too sensible and understanding.

Okay, fair warning, I'm about to ramble here as I try to piece everything together for the benefit of answering this post, answering the Original Post, and for those who are searching the forums.

I think part of the confusion was the idea from HeroCon that everything the developers showed there was absolutely everything that is going to be in Going Rogue, Period!

There were, and are, quite a few posters who were, and are, convinced that the Going Rogue expansion was not going to be anything above, over, beyond, in addition to, plus, etc. what the developers showed off at HeroCon. Part of this perception was based on the release date of the initial Going Rogue information, the date of the HeroCon convention, and the amount of time between previous announcements of content and release dates.

Well, most players "knew" that the initial Going Rogue email was an accidental leak from the "3rd party marketing firm" that handles the mass emails to City of Heroes subscribers. The email sent out earlier last year was a purported mock-up based on initial plans floating around NCNorCal's office. Rather than run through a complicated series of deniles or vague answers, NCNorCal and NCSoft decided to own up to the email. NCNorCal quickly threw together a website and a teaser video and pushed it to main website, with I believe a red-named developer confirming later that the teaser video was pretty much put together in the time between the accidental email and the Going Rogue sub-site, just to have something to put on the site.

Several players interpreted the Going Rogue announcement to mean that development was in full swing, and that the expansion was probably targeted to counter the upcoming Champions Online. Even I stated this in a few places online. Some game reviewers and analysts attributed the rushed launch of Champions Online to Cryptic attempting to get their game out before the Going Rogue expansion landed.

From what we know now, when the email was sent out, Going Rogue was only in the pre-planning stages. Yes, there was some work being done on the underlying content creation, and I suspect that work on Ultra Mode was already underway as well, but it was very likely that the actual content of the game, the stories, the task forces, the missions, and the new morality mechanics for side switching.. probably were just story-boards sitting in Mr. Miller's office. We also "relatively" know that HeroCon was supposed to be the "big reveal" for Going Rogue. If the email hadn't been leaked, the first official confirmation of the expansion would have landed late last year.

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The What's In Going Rogue confusion was further complicated by comments made before, during, and after HeroCon by the developers. One of the things we need to remember about NCNorCal, now renamed to Paragon Studios, is that they have shown a great deal more flexibility as a development house. The case in point is the Issue 13, Issue 14, Issue 15, and Issue 16 releases.

Remember, Architect Entertainment was supposed to be an Issue 13 release. Day Jobs were supposed to be an Issue 14 release. However, the development staff pushed Architect Entertainment back to work on the character-creation aspect, while features such as Day Jobs that were supposed to be in Issue 14 were wrapped up and implemented in the game earlier than planned. Issue The rapid switching of development priorities and planned feature expansions were a series of events that most players couldn't have imagined Cryptic allowing.

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Bringing this back to Going Rogue. It's very likely that in the lead-up to HeroCon, the development staff had planned for an early 2010 release. However, there were several factors that figured into the state of their plans.

The first factor was the collapse of Champions Online. Cryptic Studios Management appearently had not learned any of the lessons from either City of Heroes or City of Villains, implementing game changing nerfs(1), a free-form power system, and skipping out on content.

One of the common complaint's "today" from players of City of Villains is that the content just isn't there. One would think that Cryptic Studios Senior management would make sure that nobody could complain about lack of content in their game. That... didn't happen.

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The second factor was the delay of DC Universe Online to presumed Q2 2010 release. With City of Heroe's main 2009 competitor shooting itself in the foot, with a pistol, then shooting the other foot with a shotgun, then dropping a grenade down it's pants, development priorities changed.

I, admittedly, have little respect for SOE. Mostly because I was a Planetside player, and I'm still very bitter over how SOE handled the title. Many other gamers have little respect for SOE because of other games like Star Wars Galaxies or Everquest 2 that also experienced drastic changes to base mechanics. However bad SOE games get over the course of their lives, most SOE games tend to start out very well with high production values and good support.

There is also little doubt that DC Comics and SOE were closely watching Cryptic's second attempt at a super-hero game, and that both companies will do their best to ensure they don't commit the same mistakes.

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Bringing this back around to City of Heroes, Paragon Studios and NCSoft watched one competitor sink itself, and have to deal with a second competitor who is more than likely not going to make the same mistakes with their game. So, if you were an executive or manager within NCSoft or Paragon Studios... what would you do?

Would you rush a product that isn't quite ready yet out the door just to get it on the shelves?

Or would you push that product back so that the development staff has as much time as is reasonably possible to work on the title, while staggering content releases that are almost ready for the Live Servers?

I think it's clear what path Paragon Studios and NCSoft decided to take.

We now know the pricing of Going Rogue is $30 for the basic package, and $40 for the collectors edition. This is actually a decent expansion price range. We also know that Issue 17 contains one of the features touted as a Going Rogue feature from Hero-Con, which is of course, the newly written graphics engine, Ultra Mode,

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From an external viewpoint, the confusion is being caused by the development staff and publisher rapidly changing their development and publishing plans to best fit the current situation.

Ergo, we are seeing a repeat of Issue 13, 14, 15, and 16. Content that is planned for attachment with one expansion is being pushed to another expansion, or is being released early. We'll likely see adjustments made to the game over the succeeding issues as the developers get more live-server feedback and hard-numbers... similar to how AE was still being rebalanced in Issue 16 to fit the stated developer objectives announced almost a year earlier.

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I do want to touch on one of the potential reasons why Ultra Mode is being released as part of Issue 17, rather than being coupled with Going Rogue. One of the popular misconceptions on these forums is that you have to buy Going Rogue to get access to Ultra Mode. By explicitly placing Ultra Mode in a free expansion the misconception should be addressed.


Okay, I hope this might explain to the original poster why he might be confused on what exactly the plans are for the game... the Dev staff and publisher are changing those plans on the fly...

I also hope this might explain to other players searching the forums some of the background events that are causing some of the changes in what was planned.

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(1): I don't use the term "nerfs" very often, preferring to use the term rebalancing. As a former player of Planetside, Everquest, and Ultima Online, I'm fairly confident in saying that City of Heroes hasn't actually experienced a true nerf. Speaking for myself, I understand a lot of the power revisions introduced in the game, such as the change from Instant Healing from a toggle to a click, or the change of acrobatics from 100mag to 9mag. I, personally, understood the design behind Enhancement Diversification, and agreed with the reasoning. I just didn't agree with the timing. (calls Nostalgic Critic over to do that Casper ghost pop-up). Implementing such a major change after the game had already been in retail for over a year and was on it's first retail expandalone...

Well. City of Heroes did wind up faring better than other games that changed the base mechanics. This is likely because ED didn't actually change how the game was played... and the development staff was able to work the restrictions into helping Invention Origin Enhancements become a micro-game with a game.

With that being said, I think the changes made by Cryptic to Champions Online at launch do qualify as a nerf. Looking through their patch notes, I'm hard pressed to identify design logic or design reasoning behind many changes. It does remind me a lot of Everquest or Planetside where a developer's fiat determined various changes to the game.

You found The Spoo!

No, I meant exactly what I said. I had serious deja vu reading your post, like "YOU" had said it, verbatim, before.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Not necessarily. If their current computer has a low end vidja card and/or monitor, it may very well have looked like nothing more than additional shadows.

On my old compy, I could see more than just shadows, but after my recent upgrade, I can see all KINDS of stuffs I couldn't see before.

OP, have you watch the footage from Hero Con? The 14:00 mark is when they start to show the fancy Ultra Mode stuff.