January 2011 Producer's Letter to the Community

Actually, I'm just incredibly busy. Positron says my red name should have been "Double Booked".

I've only gotten to page 2 of this thread, but just needed to say this quickly:

I'm really encouraged that the devs have a new resolution to communicate more with the community, and that the watchword is inclusiveness for the endgame (though time will tell if the balance between challenging and fun vs challenging and frustrating is gotten right)...

...but please, oh God, save us from the NCsoft launcher. Please make it optional to use it. I liked the CoH launcher once it started switching between ports that weren't typical peer to peer network related (as my ISP throttles those ports severely).

In comparison, I've had to use the NCsoft launcher for Tabula Rasa, Exteel, Dungeon Runners and Aion. TR had issues with the download, but some fighting with the launcher got it working. Exteel and DR were ok...

...but Aion... ah, Aion started working properly and then rapidly went down the drain when I stopped the game for six months, then tried updating it for the double xp weekends. To this day, it still gives a version number error, useless help info - something akin to "unable to download correct version manifest, the server may be under maintenance, please try again later" and refuses to patch. I've no clue what it is up to, the NCsoft support knowledgebase has nothing on the error, it might possibly be because my version numbers are too backdated for it. If I were driven enough, I might debug my way through the obstacle. But I really can't be bothered. I rather not play the game and save money by not subscribing.

That is not something you want your on-the-fence CoH players to feel while choosing between the three superhero MMO games now out on the market. Get them into the interesting game fast and quick, not playing the debug patch error game.

First off, my friendliest of welcomes to Second Measure!

I'm very pleased that communication with the community has been deemed important by the developer team. It's something that I'm sure almost all of us at the boards consider a step in the right direction.

It's all very well moving forward and fighting the competition with new systems and bigger and better things, but is there any word on older topics being brought into the game? Further powerset proliferation? Power pool, epic AT, or epic pool colourisation? Have there been any advances in allowing us power customisation in AE (my personal want)? The same tech copied over to Doppelgangers? These are the sorts of things I hope to be hearing about as a player. The new end-game content and such has made many people very happy, but some of us are hoping for things we got a while ago to be added to and developed.

Again, very happy to hear that communication is important to you as well as us. My thanks for the letter, and I look forward to reading more of them in the future.

At the risk of sidelining the thread, no. If I delete 10 gigs worth of Aion off my PC, it will get replaced with a Steam game or another MMO of that size, rather than sit through NCsoft launcher installation once more. I download at speeds of 1-2 MB/sec on Steam, 200kb/sec using CoH launcher, and about 50-150kb/sec using NCsoft's launcher.

Um... in a vain attempt to steer this post back to questions for Second Measure...

Does the hinted at "furry" pack contain hunched over, beast-like running animation? If so, you can have my pre-order for it right now. :P

Hmm... It's really really hard to think of questions when we have nothin' concrete for the future. Waiting for I19.5 news? Check. Waiting for I20? Check. Waiting for more Praetoria additions? Check. Waiting for more hints of epic storyline? Check. All covered already, and the answer seems to be wait for us to tell you more.

Hmm... Big red ball?

For The Love Of God, NO NcSoft lanucher!!!!!!!
If it ain't broke dont fix it and our little no frills luncher aint broke, its perfect.

the difference in huge. I have tried the NCSoft launcher at different times over the past 4 years. Every time I have started a new install. The last time is worked less than half the time and I found it an unneeded step to get to the game I wanted to play. Again, please don't make this mandatory!

I used the NCSoft Launcher for TR, Xteel, and Dungeonrunners and loathed it constantly. The CoX Launcher/Updater works just fine and isn't annoyingly slow.

Must admit, I love the animations and powers of the new GR clockwork, particle beams, lasers..they look fantastic (used them in my AE arcs).. they are great.

Welcome aboard, Second Measure.

Also, throw my hat into the "Make the NCSoft loader optional" ring. My experience with it has been terrible.

I just really hope the devs have finally realized that adding the same content over and over causes many to burn out. A 7 year old game should have more variety than this one. I was hoping we would see quicker result but oh well. I guess it might be time to break until i20.

I would like to add my own 2 cents now: The NCSoft Launcher is a piece of garbage. I used it when I tried eXteel, and it was CRAP.

PLEASE! I BEG you. Do NOT make this a manditory thing! So far, from what I have read, the only people supporting the change to the NCSoft Launcher are people who have never used it.

Also, good by GF and Hello SM.

Animal Parts Pack: Looking nice so far. And if anyone here HASN'T seen the cat parts, here is a pic: (Its the one on the far right)