Dev Chat Highlights, August 31: The Nut of Hamidon, with Arbiter Hawk

Pre-show chat tangent, still trying to pick out a name for Arbiter Elbow/Donut/Haircut. Arbiter Backdrop is suggested and I point out that's only if he's in Japan. Otherwise he's Arbiter Belly-to-Back Suplex.

We're getting started a bit late as Zwill is photoshopping PAX pic to right the PAX peeps of PAX pox.

And also acquiring coffee.

Beastyle has made Ecto Cooler and it has apparently ruined his tastebuds with its ambrosial deliciousness.

We have a Server-corn on the whiteboard today.



Zwill and Freitag have been up since 4 this morning.

Arbiter Background/Haircut/Donut/Sunnyvale/Elbow aka Blaire has returned to college. He'll be back after his semester or year is up.

Zwill forgot to update the Ustream producer software.

Positron (in chat) "UStream Producer Pro 2: Producer Harder"

Antec made 4 custom CoH Antec cases. Zwill says calling them badass would be an understatement.

Zwill took pictures of the cases, but they didn't turn out very well.

They had an art panel at PAX.

They kept the presentation short so they could have a longer Q and A session.

Zwill: "Other MMO's are powered by hamsters. Not us. We're powered by Unicorns."

They had a meet and greet on Friday and Zwill hasn't had time to photoshop them up.

Team Evil Marketing.



Some giant mech thing from the game War Machine at PAX.



Panel on Saturday. Here's a portion of the line to get in.



They announced that there will be a VIP headstart, but there were some problems preventing them from giving a date that they might have to push back.

Zwill: "A wild Arbiter Hawk appears!"



Hawk brought notes.

Jeff Hamilton aka Arbiter Hawk has been working at Paragon for about a year as assistant system, he does monsters and villains and zone events and such. He started off in QA. Even though he's not QA anymore, he's kept the Arbiter name.

Hawk has an Altoid from Zwill.

Zwill says he ought to have a 5 Hour Energy between each panels.

coh_beastyle: "When I was a kid, I thought "caffeine" meant flavor. So when I was younger I used to buy jolt because it advertised, "Twice the caffeine!""

Tangent on product shilling and cars.

Hawk worked on the Seed of Hamidon zone event.

http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/n...ite_update.php



"We wanted to do a couple things that we hadn't gotten a chance to do. It's simultaneously a Zone Event and a Giant Monster."

"We wanted to create a Praetorian zone event, the core of which was a giant monster encounter. And take the opportunity to stage and encounter primarily in the air. You could kind of count the Rikti drop ships, but those weren't really meant to be destroyable."

He notes that Caleb doesn't count since the bane of my badge hunting existence spawns due to ground-related objectives.

The idea behind the Buoyant Membrane power is that Hamidon is a blend of science and magic. Every time you kill a seedling it covers you in buoyant goo. It's like Group Fly, even invincible pets are affected by it. You can also buy it from a Seed Hunter. 10,000 INF per 2 minutes. It stacks up to 20-30 minutes total. They sell it in the zone the entire time. The power is useable only in First Ward.

Hawk: "It's a pink-purple cloud. I tinted it on the weekend. What do you want from me?"

Zwill: "Don't drink and design kids!"

Hawk: "It's the same color as the ectoplasm in the seedlings, so it's consistant."

It should be compleatable for a group of 8-12 people that are in the level of the zone.

There was so much content in First Ward they had to expand the level range to 29. At 25 a lot of beta testers were easily outlevelling the 8 arcs.

Tangent: Nerf guns, Zwill wants the chain firing one. At his old workplace they mounted the Nerf Vulcan on an AV projector cart and put cardboard armor around it so it was like a SWAT vehicle.

They set up an ambush on people coming out of the elevator with it.

"We figured out a way to make the buffs from the seedlings be additive instead of multiplicative. For each of these alive do this additionally. That was kind of tricky."

It's kind of like Fiery Embrace for the Seed.

Zwill: (Bad German accent) "Now is the time on coffee talk when ve ask ze qvestions!"

Chat says Hawk needs thick coke bottle glasses. Zwill says his are too thin, as they're for astigmatism.

I baffle him with a stigmata/astigmatism pun.

Tangent: PAX security story, Zwill in an elevator with Wil Wheaton.

"What else have you designed recently?"

He did some work on the villaingroups in First Ward, like some of the ones that appear only in missions. The Dregs, rough tough mercenaries and surviving First Ward citizens. It's not a cohesive group like the 5th Column has a leader and ranks. It's like this is a survivor who found an assault rifle.

Hawk has indeed seen Ghostbusters. But has not seen Fifth Element. Tunnel Rat can now lord it over him.

Avatea: "Multipass!"

Zwill: "WHERE IS EVERYONE GETTING THESE HOTWING CHIPS?! THEY HAVE THOSE IN THE VENDING MACHINE NOW?"

"What would you do if you could update any 'old' aspect of the game, what would it be?"

Zwill: "Remember this is purely hypothetical and oh my gosh we have more chips over here right now."

"That's tricky. A lot of the stuff in the game right now is stuff people like the way it is. Even if we revamped something old we'd be adjusting rules on the fly and we'd have to be cautious doing that. If I were to take all a powerset's attacks and make them something else, people who liked the set the way it is would have a fit. Some people would love it and some people would not love it."

"Is Combat Phasing disabled in areas where there are zone events?"

They technically could put combat phasing in a zone event, but it would be hard to make all of the information players would need to complete the zone event play out.

He gives a complex example involving Skulls and Hellions fighting in a theoretical zone event.

They're not totally incompatible, but they would try and avoiud meshing them together unless it was something designed on its own.

Hawk thinks Null the Gull's group fly setting extends to the Buoyant Membrane.

Phased areas are disabled during a Rikti invasion.

Zwill refuses to show a picture of his Indiana driver's license with a beard because he knows I'll take a screenshot of it.

Servercorns are not magically resistant to fixes.

"How many times have you defeated the Avatar of Hamidon?"

Hawk: "OVER 9000! We've been tweaking him all over the place. Sometimes making him too easy, other times too hard. Or too binary, where you needed certain powersets in the league to be effective."

If you're on top of the 'Ghostbuster's Tower' in first ward you might catch the edge of his debuff cloud or his blasts. There are some safe places to stand.

Zone event mobs don't drop inspirations, Hawk says he'll look into it since they ought to be. They have their own reward tables for them, since they'd be easy to farm.

Hawk: "I wanted to hack together like a shark blast so you can hold out your hand and a laser shoots out and you shoot a shark at your target."

Zwill: "The nemesis pony does not exist! It's a rumor! IT DOES NOT EXIST!"

Hawk: "Please look into this red light."

Hawk's favorite of the game's system is the Invention system since it allows you to do so very many things you couldn't otherwise do. He says it's like infinite variability.

" Can we get a Servercorn Blast or Sharp Blunt Damage powers?"

Hawk: "I could make them. But they wouldn't pass art control."

Dopplegangers couldn't be used to make it look like a statue.

No plans to revisit and update old giant monster encounters.

He cannot tell us anything about the new Halloween event.

For next week's Ustream cast Zwill will get us screenies of the Halloween event.

Hawk did powers for the Abomination.

Zwill says he'd bring Jay on, but he'd talk about the Special Forces Lebanese art instructor who had a daughter with a weird name.

Quote:

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

Question: since we can't use free players as mounts, can VIPs with Grav Control summon them to hurl at their enemies with [Propel]?

Thank you for your hard work.

will read after work, but quick reply, i giggle immaturely at the title.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Thank you for the notes!

I wonder if Zwillinger talking about furute Issues and saying "21.5" was a mistake, or a slip?

Wow my traps toons are not going to have fun on the Seed of hamidon encounter at all, are they.

So if the game runs on Server-corns, does that mean they have to find a virginal intern who can approach the server and reset it when it crashes?

im disappointed they wont revisit old GM encounters, compared to the seed of hami encounter, the old GMs are lackluster, kind of like boomtown vs revamped atlas or mercy

if they are not planning on revamping old GMs, i do hope that they add in more GMs though, i feel every zone should have at least 2 GMs for variety and to have something special happening in the zone