Dev Chat Highlights, August 4: Paragon Market

Ghost Falcon is not available, but Avatea is. Despite her complaints about not being photogenic.

Tangent: Avatea being 1/8 Japanese.

We'll be talking about the Paragon Market Place.

Zwill is most excited about the additional costume slots and up to 12 more character slots.

Tangent: Nemesis mole machines burrowing up through the floor. (Construction at the office)

This month's dev choice award: Becky's Revenge.

Zwill still has a bit of a cough and Avatea didn't sleep last night. Both have the Con Rot. So does Second Measure.

Tangent: Avatea in front of the Purple Route sign.

Zwill has nothing to say about PvP. Posi wants to do some things, but it has to be put on the schedule.

Zwill plays Grav/TA in PvP and does not pwn noobs, but rather annoys them with glue arrow and sandboxing them with his wormhole or whatever.

Positron arrives and Avatea leaves.

Tangent: Hamidon Coughdrops

Tangent: Positron's beard

Posi is channeling Ghost Falcon.

Someone is making hand gestures from just off camera.

Avatea was excited about Dual and Team Inspirations.

Dual inspirations are meant to be more efficient, since there is a brief cool down time before you can use another Insp.

Posi plays a game "How long can I keep the two insps from the tutorial in my tray?" he's gotten a character to 50 with the red one still there.

Buy the booster packs right now to save money, since things will be more expensive ala carte.

Science Pack size/gender changer will be sold by itself in the store.

12 more character slots for sale!

Posi: "Once you guys fill out 48 and are asking for another 12, we'll see."

Characters are actually a rather large chunk of data. They used to be small, but the more badges they add the bigger the character files get.

Costume slots are most definitely account wide. ZombieMan says costume slots are $4 each, or 5 for $20.

The powersets are called Purchasable Powersets rather than Premium Powersets to avoid confusion.

There are more VIP sets planned.

Table thumping!

Jiggling the mouse!

Positron reminds us that the store prices are still in beta and still in flux. It's easier to bring prices down than raise them up.

Posi: "We don't want to Netflix this up."

Zwill reminds himself to cancel the blu-ray portion of his Netflix.

"We can put a 48,000 monocle in if you guys want it."

Tangent: Insanely overpriced DLC in other games and on iPhone.

Unlimited number of purchaseable mission architect story slots.

Tangent: Zwill gets lots of popups now that there is Facebook integration on Steam. "I just want to play some TF2! Don't you people WORK?"

Tangent: If someone really REALLY wanted a private server, Posi could give them a quote on getting one. Several thousand bucks a month.

You can move the shopping interface around on your screen.

Comicon was essentially a real-world test of the store, since the server wasn't 20 feet away. Buying costume pieces and getting them was almost instantaneous.

They're going to keep adding to the store and optimizing and streamlining it.

Tangent: Posi needs to re-apply the Anti-Zwillenger juice so he does not catch the Con Plague.

Tangent: Katy Perry video

Tunnel Rat has FINALLY seen Ghostbusters from start to finish.

"THERE IS NO POSI, ONLY ZUUL!"

They're considering Premium services on Ustream so those of us without Adblock can view Ustream CoH vids without ads.

The store will mark things that you've already purchased in the store and in packs.

The CoT redesign is going according to player feedback, though Posi says that some people still won't like it.

"How old is Posi?"

40.

Posi reminds us that the photos were camera phone pictures on a reflective screen. He's hoping he can get us actual in game screenshots of the outfits.

The CoT graphics are 9 years old and exist for all 50 levels, so those two things are why they're getting a big revamp for Freedom.

They've noticed the threads popping up about redesigning Azuria and John St. John-Smythe and they're talking internally about putting action to those suggestions.

The contact NPC's and the walking around NPC's are lesser polygon models on purpose because there are so many of them. A lot of contacts are on the older, smaller polycount rig, and they can upscale them to the newer rig/player character rig. But not every costume piece works.

"I know the answer to this is probably going to be 'no', but - is there any chance whatsoever of modifications to the engine that will stop allowing civilians to push heroes around?"

They investigated this a few months ago and there were some big parts of the game that it broke, like vault doors, as they've relied on that tech for things they probably shouldn't have.

"You've said multi-month subscriptions get tokens in a lump sum up front. What about multimonth accounts at launch? Do they get tokens for their remaining months in a lump on launch day?"

Last Zwill knew, Paragon Reward tokens are awarded in a lump sum and

"Dual Monitor Support?"

Windowed and stretching is not fun with your character split in half.

Zwill doesn't know if the engine supports it.

Posi says he'll talk to Second Measure, but it's not a high priority thing.

"Can you buy PP in game? Can you buy sub time in game? Anything that you need to pay through NCSoft master account?"

Yes to get PP in game. You can click on "Become a VIP" in the marketplace, Arbiter Donut is made to look it up. Zwill doesn't know.

"how's the work on the 4-leg rig coming along?"

They have to get the three leg rig working first. So they can add white boards, telescopes, and cameras.

"are story purchases: a) everything for a month, b) by the story permanently, c) if b is right, as a pack of related stories?"

It will be a hero arc and a villain arc or a longer arc if it's the same for both. Posi expects once the story is complete there will be a discounted bundle.

Once you purchase a chapter you keep it forever. If you are a VIP and drop down to Premium you'll lose the complementary chapters and will have to buy them. Unless you already bought them.

They are repeatable and are minimum 1 person task forces.

"Any chance of the ability to purchase a lifetime VIP sub? I'd drop $300-500 on that easy."

Zwill: "No!"

Posi says they looked at other games and through rumblings through the industry a lot of them regret doing that.

"an I bring along non-VIP players on a signature arc that they haven't bought?"

Posi: "Unfortunately no. And that's because I will let slip they have better than normal rewards."

Zwill has to check that the nerf gun is still there.

The AT-bound IO's?

"Not an I-21 launch thing, an experimental thing."

They're working internally on issue 22 and 23.

"Co-Op Shadow Shard?"

They know it's wanted, but will be a great deal of work.

There are a lot of additional things they plan for the store.

"Cool down on enhancement unslotters?"

None currently.

Zwill thanks the folks that were on the training room to help with the stress test last night, as they found a major bug..

"Positron, could you again clarify that "power-set" and "archtype" respecs are not a possibility for the future of the game?"

Posi: "They are not on the schedule. They are a lot, A LOT of work. Some people in the office were asking about them. AT respecs seem impossible, and powerset respecs are easier, but still very very hard. I don't know what we'd have to price them at to make them worth the effort."

"Buying character slots to number twelve?"

Posi: "Probably best to buy 4 sets of 3"

Posi once more recommends buying the booster packs now.

"Titan Weapons with a Rularuu version?"

Zwill: There was a Mutant weapon...

Posi: A Rularuu weapon got concepted.

"Vanguard titan weapon?"

Yes!

"Backpacks in Paragon market?"

Posi: "All I can say is watch us at PAX."

"I want a clockwork duke as a titan weapon"

Posi: "No."

Zwill: "Can we use Free to Play Players as Titan Weapons?"

"Who will die during the who will die story arc?"

They mute the thing and mumble for a joke.

" any plans on new guns to weapon customization?"

Yes, Posi has seen some.

"are IO recipes available for paragon points?"

Not at launch.

Quote:

Originally Posted by reiella Until I see something that states to the contrary, going to assume VK is right .

Holy cow that was fast.

Vanguard Titan Weapon! Not confirmed, but on the list of weapons that people want.

Sounds great. Thanks for the post.

As always, thanks for posting these VK.

I actually caught some of this one between paperwork, phone calls, and the roof being torn off our office.

And I have to say, holy hell, my heart goes out to VK, Posi, and everyone else who has to sort through the absolute deluge of waste, troll, and idiotic questions that flood the chat channel in there. Not cool people, not cool at all.

But hey, just in case you didn't catch my question about something completely unrelated, I'll ask it forty more times in caps.

Thanks as always, from people like me who can't watch this stuff at work.

Was an informative chat. And if they release powerset respecs for 50 dollars at any point, I can be blamed!

While many packs will be cheaper to buy before FREEDOM, not so with the Party Pack. At $0.50 per emote, a la carte with PPs is cheaper.

Nice to hear the PPs can be bought in-game. I hope our Latin American players can now buy all the extras they want.

I am convinced of one thing today. Avatea should be on ALL of the ustream chats...

As always, thanks so much for posting this, Von Krieger.

DumpleBerry. I hope you are not referring to my question. Posi and Zwill asked me to put it in, and there was a chat delay. My only hope of my question being seen or answered was to repeat myself.

Probably referring to my CoT question.

Which was important thanks!

This is great! Even when watching the video and chat live I sometimes miss details and always like to come read your notes. Thank you, Von Krieger!

Comments on a few points:

Probably a dumb question, but...

If you buy more character slots for a server from the Paragon Market, can you immediately make characters in those slots, or are you just buying "potential slots," but you still have to pay to unlock them? Like we now have 36 potential slots, but we have to pay to unlock 24 of them.

It would be nice if the market offered a character slot bundle of up to 6 slots (instead of a maximum of 5).

"Buy the booster packs right now to save money, since things will be more expensive ala carte."

Does anyone else see a problem with this? I'm not trying to start an argument but, it seems silly that my money will not go as far as it used to for the same items.