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

I still think "Doyenne of Digits" is better for you. Either that or "Redname Understudy" or somesuch. "Redname Sock Puppet!" Yes!

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)

Somewhere between, "we have endeavored to make improvements that are useful in as general a case for Defenders as possible, without adding to their already strong effect when combined with multiple Defenders," and adding a MM set where the primary has force multiplication on top of whatever force multiplication MM secondaries add.

Its a good thing MMs can't team like defenders.

*scratches head*

Sarcasm, right?

I'm more of the Illusion controller behind CoH/CoV. I tell everyone what to do, and then they ignore me and go off in completely random directions attacking whatever they want to or in at least one case trying very hard to scare everything in sight.

That's the worst CoH news I've received in quite some time. Not only is it not on the way, it's not even planned.

Hopefully the unsubstantiated rumor about cross-server play is true.

Just rampant speculation from people reading things into dev comments and a mistake made on the training room.

Don't get your hopes up; "unsubstantiated" means there's really no reason at all to believe it. It's just that this answer left nothing else to hope for.

To be fair, a lot of that is due to Champions' free-form powers system. There is a far wider range of performance (especially solo) in CO than in CoH... some characters are in for a hard fight against three or four +1 Henchmen while others are in no particular danger against a pair of +2 Master Villains. I ended up making some characters that fit in both of those categories... my Powered Armor / Gadgeteer / Sorcery tankmage was almost immortal while my electric blaster faceplanted constantly. Kind of like my CoH Electric blasters do.

Feasible? Yes. Worthwhile? Who knows.

And the costume bit is JUST from David's view of things. That doesn't even count the animations that would have to be adjusted for Huge from the female model/ for female from the Huge model.

Creating alternate versions of a given costume part requires a character artist to rescale and refinish each one by hand. The process is repeated for each other category, so adding a 4th category would require that much more time for every single piece that's in the game. It's neither simple or fast.

So to get Female Huge, the tradeoff would've been losing at least a quarter of everything else in the game: 25% fewer costumes, 25% fewer enemies, etc. On top of that, you have to take into consideration the animation time involved. Every category receives custom-scaled animations whenever there's a weapon, cape, or other object involved (so the hands fit properly).

Bottom line, it's a massive undertaking that wouldn't really get us a lot of bang for the buck. Three scalable body types covers the vast majority of characters that players want to make, so while it'd be nice to have another one, the price is unfortunately too high.

Totally agree, with the amount of customisation we currently have, i'ld rather they spent more time on content/game mechanics than adding something to a feature we have so much of already.

Edit: First after a red name bust!

One day a farmer in Texas finds himself in the middle of a heavy rainstorm. The local river is overflowing its banks and the entire area begins to flood. As the water begins to reach the farmer's front porch, a police officer shows up. The man says "come with me, I'll take you to safety."

The farmer crosses his arms and says stubbornly, "I have faith: God will save me."

The police officer drives away. The water continues to rise and reaches the second floor of his house. A boat comes up to his window and the man in the boat says to the farmer, "Jump aboard, I'll save you."

The farmer again says, "I have faith: God will save me."

The boat motors away. The water continues to rise and reaches up to the roof. As the farmer stands on the roof a helicopter flies over and drops a ladder to him. The pilot yells down to the farmer "climb up the ladder and I'll save you."

The farmer yells back "I have faith: God will save me."

The helicopter flies away. The water comtinues to rise and sweeps the farmer off the roof, drowning him.

The farmer finds himself in heaven. God sees him there and says "what are you doing here?"

And the farmer says "I put my faith in You and you let me drown."

And God says, "What do you mean, I let you drown? I sent you a police officer, a boat, and a helicopter, what more did you need?"

That would imply that she was also responsible for all of the mistakes Geko (the original powers balance person) made, just to look good when she pointed them all out.

...wait a minute.

You know, sometimes I get the feeling I'm talking to myself...

You could always just add bewbs as a chest piece option and a couple female-ish looking faces to the already existing Huge body type.

Done.

Of course, the only 'skirt' they'd get is the kilt, but it's a start.

I had a supportive response but never mind... its pointless to comment or get involved in these discussions anymore.

I'm grateful for what we've got; I just wish more could've been planned, prioritized, and executed better back in the day. Six years on, the quality of the game has vastly improved - its just such a shame it took this long to reconsider doing everything that was shelved, rolled back and outright vetoed all those years ago. And *still* we've got to do without on some things. Its not a complaint - just a regret (or perhaps a lament). You guys have done sheer wonders with the IP since it left Cryptic's hands - please don't underestimate how grateful we are that you stayed on and still give it your all after 6+ years.

Though they may not seem like much in the long run, it really is those little personal touches and attention to "trivial" details that make this great rather than good enough.

That kind of commitment means a lot - thank you.

Right.

It strikes me as odd that they are concerned about top end, edge case performance when it comes to possible improvements for defenders and corruptors and yet when releasing a new set for an AT that is top end and edge case already, they feel free to dance on that edge with abandon.

thats the best suggestion I have seen to fix this issue.

this also makes me wonder if we can lift the bounderies on what a person can wear such as letting men wear women clothing... this may sound a bit gay in theory but it would enhance the costume options we already have exponentially. some costume parts are deffinitly strictly female in design, particularly the ones with a chest but other parts such as gloves and waist and boots could be used for alternate combinations and new design freedoms.

the only real difference I can see in male costume parts in general are those few distinctive chest options and some hair styles. so can at least SOME of the female parts be made available not as brand new parts but as "ported over" parts from female to male?

Perhaps it seems odd because the devs don't see it that way, because they don't agree with all of the assumptions in that statement. For example we don't know that - for the average player - Masterminds have consistently superior performance.

The devs are always concerned about at least two things simultaneously when thinking about things such as this. First: does the change affect the performance of average or typical players in roughly the way desired, plus or minus some spread. Second: does the change affect maximal or extremal performance too much to be considered practical. The first criteria is a measure of the change's effectiveness in performing the task desired. The second criteria is a guard rail that disqualifies certain changes that have unacceptable side effects.

When the devs say they don't "balance" things based on extreme performance cases, that's true only in one context: targeting changes. They still think about them when it comes to design limits. Given two possible changes, one of which addresses 50% of the problem, and the other which addresses 90% of the problem and also causes extreme problems in a few edge cases, the devs are more likely to choose the former over the latter, with some exceptions to that rule. The edge cases don't affect the devs judgment on balance, but they do factor into decisions about whether to do something at all, balanced or not.

While I know the basics of the rules here, most of them are subject to judgment. I can't predict with certainty how Castle (or any other dev) will interpret and apply those rules. But just because I can't predict this, doesn't mean its completely inconsistent from the perspective of the devs. Its the application of judgment that makes the execution of these design rules sometimes seem inconsistent from an outside perspective.

(Its also the case that MMOs are collaborations. Castle might decide one way today, he might get overridden by War Witch or Positron tomorrow, he might allow Synapse to make a call different from his own the next day, and then they might all have a meeting and come to a consensus decision about something that is a blend of - but not entirely representing any one of - all of their sensibilities, all as part of the process of collaboration. You don't get to have one single vision for every single detail of game design in a game this big, and few game designers would likely work for someone who tried to impose one.)

Would it be possible to re-visit the limits on the female body sliders, possibly allowing the current model to get closer to Huge?

Edit: too slow.

I'm sad but placated. Thank you for taking the time to provide this answer.