Discussion: Formspring.me 4/23 Dev Q&A Transcript

I'm more annoyed at not getting extra pages.
Two slots does seem rather stingy, and pretty much worthless for those who are already on 36 on the server where all their friends play.

Word.


Honestly I for one got a bit out of this Q&A. There was some stuff I didn't know in there, not a lot, but a little. Plus I like the art for the new hospital.

Honestly there were some questions that were old but so what. I know not everyone reads the forums as much as I do, or searches for every last new scrap of info on the game like I do, some people may have gotten something new out of it. Either way, it's one more way the devs are communicating with us, and I'll take it over no communication, any day.

I agree. I don't think they'd use exact copies of a pool for the ATs coming over either. Change a few numbers and swap a couple powers here and there.

[QUOTE]There are two different ways to get the City of Heroes Going Rogue expansion: as a separate expansion, or as part of the Complete Collection.

The separate City of Heroes Going Rogue expansion costs $29.99 (€19.99 / £17.99) and requires you to already have City of Heroes. The separate expansion doesn’t include game time, so you must be an active subscriber to play. The separate expansion does not include the Complete Collection Item Pack. The separate expansion will only be available digitally, and will be available for prepurchase starting in March (see below for more information on what you get from prepurchasing this separate expansion).

The City of Heroes Going Rogue: Complete Collection costs $39.99 (€29.99 / £26.99) and includes City of Heroes Going Rogue as well as City of Heroes, City of Villains, 30 days of game time, and the Complete Collection Item Pack. With the game time and previous expansions included, it is ideal for those who are new to City of Heroes franchise (perhaps as a gift!), but also a good value for players not interested in prepurchasing. The Complete Collection will be available both digitally and at retail (in North America) starting in July and cannot be prepurchased (only the separate expansion can be prepurchased).

Starting at launch in July, players who prepurchased or bought just the separate City of Heroes Going Rogue expansion will be able to upgrade to the Complete Collection. The upgrade will include the Complete Collection Item Pack, but it won’t include any game time.[QUOTE]

First off, sorry, but I have no idea how to multi quote differant posts, but cutting and pasting I'm ok with, so I just cut and pasted the above from the ways to get GR, which In sure your all familiar with.

As you see, it's only the pre purchase thats $29.99, the full game expansion is $10 more. Now if that's not a full game price I din't know what is, but you will be able to ungrade GR to the full version if you pre purchased, you just wont get a months free gaming. I'm sure that people created a few threads about the bonus gametime and pack ammounting to more than $10 somewhere, I could be wrong. So whilst I agree with you, anyone who wanted Pistols and Demons NOW!! are going to be paying a cheaper price now if they don't upgrade later, the actual Going Rogue retailing at launch is comparable to a full game.

And again, I will just say, I am pointing this out for many of you, do you actually think that I am saying this for purely selfish reasons. I have still got 5 or 6 spare slots on Virtue and over a dozen on my next three servers I play on a lot to buy, should I choose to. I also have some servers I don't play much on at all, but have characters on, that I will probably be playing on more. Everyone who has played on just one server, and calls it home, and just wants to stay on that server would benefit from several suggestions brought up over slots on this thread. If I only played on one server now it would most definately be full. If you want to say your happy with what we're getting, or about the price, then thats fine, if we didn't have an issue that gave us all two slots at the time for nothing I would be happy about it to probably, but I along with 99% of the playerbase will be paying for a completely new area that they could expand on.

In future issues who's to say that Preatoria doesn't expand to be at least like The Rogue Isles is in zones and size, we never know it already could be, 1-20 we know thats in, as Preatorians decide then if they're good or evil, but 31-50, who knows yet. I am just saying, wouldn't it be nice if we got more than two. A free server transfer window like they did at Xmas would be nice during the anniversary celebrations, so people that were expecting more or now they realise that it's more then the pistols and demons and preatorian characters they wanted, the Kinetic Melee and Electric Control characters they now want can be factored in on there favourite servers where all their online friends are.

Anyway, It's obvious we all can't wait to get our hand on GR to start with, so much to do on it when it comes out, and where to start to with it. I just hope it's oh so close to been complete as I am worried that 3 months maximum to keep up with the retail release will not be enough time to stress test it in open beta to iron things our for its proper release.

Ahem Haligonian, you say.....Keith's? Propeller IPA or Garrison IPA is where it is at, or anything else they brew.

*shrug* I don't like CO partially because thugs in stupid suits are actually a threat there. You can't change that no matter what you call them but add a few futuristic weapons, a body armor, rename them and then the situation suddenly changes a lot - then you can start calling them "super villains" because they are essentially using "super tech". Largely in this case the feeling about being "hero" is about what kind of enemies you face, not just what they are called - at least for me. If this didn't matter you might as well fight cardboard boxes titled "super villain"...

I very much prefer CoX in that you can actually fight multiple enemies and prevail - it gives a sense of power. However what feels weird in CoX that it doesn't matter that much if the enemy is a gun and baseball wielding thug clad in street clothes, crossbow and torch wielding luddite, trained submachine gun wielding soldier, or energy rifle wielding body armored rikti - they are all treated equally when it comes to spawns. It's small things like these that chip away from the "fun factor" for me.

If devs ever get around to creating CoX2 I'd like to see "standard" spawn having varied amount of opponents based on power level while the reward stays same. So those gun wielding thugs would come in Perez Park sized groups where as (power) armored soldiers would come in regular spawns and true enemy "supes" being one vs one enemies. There should be a clear rule what makes a mook so we don't see paragon protectors as mooks and even mooks should have different levels of power.

My main complaint about current games falls to three categories: boring missions, stupid enemies, and finally no sense of growth in power (i.e. doesn't matter if you blast level 1 spider with lightning bolt or level 60 red spider with electric doom - both are still spiders, and usually the "spell" ends up looking exactly same, just with a fancy new name).

Why can't any game studio already create tiered mmos where enemies don't have actual levels just tiers so a) you can't outlevel them and quests so easily and b) you don't have to worry as much (as a developer) about covering all level ranges because when it comes to enemies and quests there are only three or four "levels". So tier1 enemies would be even match as long as you are within that tier, and the enemies that you face change significantly in power level as you move through tiers. I.e. in fantasy terms orc --> minotaur --> giant, or even giant spider --> chimera --> dragon. Power levels should follow this same progression to get actual sense of growing in power which most MMOs (in my opinion) lack. Keep levels for new powers, points and whatever.

Seriously...the pictures that display while one zones is significant??.....if this is priority for the great majority of the player base as well as the devs......wow...& WOW.

I'm with you on this.

Before this Q and A thing took place , I saw where it was going. When Castle nudged me on one of my posts, Pointing towards my being wrong, My first instinct was to gather information and make another "point", but if I did THAT <again>, then not only would we have lost Castle on this issue, he probably would have put me on ignore, turned off his pm's: Leaving us without a sympathetic ear. The better idea was to meet this effort and participate, I don't mind being wrong. I was in fact, hoping that I WAS wrong. So I participated and I was disappointed just like many others that were asking the SAME questions about bases. I stayed on that forum and followed it every minute of the day. I gave it my best effort. The results are frustrating as I knew they would be.

Becoming hot headed just means you are passionate about what you do. Its a good thing, but posting while in this state of frustration is not. I had to get up walk away <for two days> and cool off before I started playing.

Negative attitudes are contagious! nobody was going to catch MINE.

My advice is, cool off before posting. Lets not start the name calling thing, or our points will be missed AGAIN. The outcome and whats to follow are going to be heavily influenced by our behavior. Lets groom this situation in a positive manner. This isn't over.

In the end this Q/A wasn't useless.

We have a few devs here, reading our posts, interacting with us. That means they care! It's impossible to miss how important bases are to us. We need to make the most of this by being polite, keeping the communication open, and keeping them interested! I'm sure more information about bases will result as I'm certain they will bring this up to the rest of the team.

I'm anxious to see what happens next!

Learning from mistakes is the most valuable super power our dev team has. Lets help develop that super power by forgiving more often.

Way to blow it hugely out of context?
I was curious wether they would actually get around to re-vamping the loading screens, which havent changed since launch, to include the new shinies of Ultra Mode. I got an answer, one I did not previously have, by reading the Q&A. So, all those going 'Waaah, want naow Entitlement!' saying that this was pointless and there was no new answers; there were. Admittedly not all of them, but a number. If you dont find them meeting your standards...well...tough? You are surprised at the marketting department after how long of them being just like this?

tl;dr
It'll be ready...when it's ready.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

to correect this. 30 is for the fullgame, the "complete" edition is with two additional costume sets(alpha and omega), new auras and a few other extras, it is more comparable to a collectors edition or an additional booster pack. the 30 dollar version is the full version of gr. the full version of cov was either 50 or 60 dollars(with the collectors edition being more), i dont recall exactly, though that still is a difference of at least 20 dollars, or 5 slots purchased. that is what i am basing it on.

I've been saying this for a long time?! all of the F2Play games get fancy comercials but we dont?!

Do you know any Hugh Females?

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Because the art department's slogan is "No fat chicks?"

No snu-snu for you then.

Actually, the Collectors Edition of COV was 70 Dollars.

I should think that the length of your answer would be a clear indicator of why the question wasn't answered fully in the QA. It's probably pretty much the answer a dev would give if they had been tasked to do a memo on it, but the fact that your name isn't red means someone gets to ding you, whereas if it had been Castle it would have 2 pages of kudos.

Only if you were overcharged. I don't think it was ever that expensive through official channels.

I got it from Game Stop.

It had the Concept Art Book, Maps of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles, Hero Clix Figures, etc...

It was also in a big box too.

2 extra character slots per account, I agree, feels a little low - but I'm speaking as an altaholic.

Compared to COV? I don't think we CAN compare the two. Well, we can, but it doesn't help the call for more slots. To wit:

- COV was an "expanshalone." It could be played on its own. GR cannot.
- COV (on release) had five ATs completely of its own. GR does not.
- There was not a slot purchase plan in place at COV release. There is now. (Well, other than "Buy both, get 12 slots.")
- There were no extra slots, period, at COV release. Those that owned both got twelve and that was it.

Now, the people I think it sucks most for are the EU server players. And while I'm quite vocally against the horrid idea of server mergers, I'm all for a server LIST merge so they can spread out some. (I realize there are issues with it.) More slots for them, in many instances, would be a godsend. And it would just be gravy for us in NA to get them.

The point, however, is that there's enough difference in the game, environment and releases that "extra server slots now because we got them then" doesn't really fly on its own.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Actually, yes, it was. My Gamestop receipt from release (kept because I had to send proof in to get the missing Ghost Widow heroclix from NC) shows $69.99 before store credit. 10/28/2005.

And in the spirit of "Show your work" (or "Pics or it didn't happen,")

See my Guides and Tutorials