Dev Chat Highlights, September 13: Happy Birthday VK, Here's Some Server Downtime and Issue 21! 1of2

Here's the first 6 hours of today's Livestream for anyone who didn't want to get up eartly and suffer through TANGENTMANIA, brother!

*flexes pythons*

Part II is here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=271507

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It's VK's birthday, and CoH is giving me Issue 21!

I come in to find an apparently dead Zwillinger. Someone off camera pokes him.

The whiteboard is missing for once!



Zwill greets us and talks about Fantasy Football and Tom Brady doing awesome things.

I go to check my Fantasy Football team and find Tom went and scored 76 points. The rest of my team combined? 124.

Chat recommends Beastyle going to slap Zwill awake, Beastyle says he'll have to trade slaps with Zwill so he's kept awake.

Zwill sings Bohemian Rhapsody.

Positron arrives, wearing a Fancy Fedora painted with a Distinctive Lack of Hue. Zwill is wearing his usual Peculiarly Drab Tincture Baker Boy.



Talking about the tech issues with the Paragon Rewards program at the moment. They are still planning on having the Paragon Reward tokens be delivered up front, but they can't get it in place for the Freedom launch. They will be fixing it but will not set a timeframe.

Out of all the items in the store A LOT of things have come down in price. Posi says one or two things might have gone up, but almost all price changes were downward.

Talk about the 6 server transfers for 6 dollars.

Zwill: "I'll buy that for a dollar!"

Posi: "By Grabthor's hammer, what a savings."

Posi didn't like Galaxy Quest the first time he saw it, but when he watched it with a bunch of other Trek fans it transcended itself.

Discussion of Galaxy Quest.

Zwill marks out for the Bilbo Baggins song Leonard Nimoy did.

Both sing it.

Posi says the Y in MARTy stood for Yolk, but Zwill didn't like that.

It can stop rewards for 1-10 minutes.

They will be adjusting the system.

The code for MARTy is TOTALLY DIFFERENT from the Incarnate Trial participation metric. They share nothing code related.

It does not affect incarnate rewards or Incarnate XP.

They usually try to wear Paragon related attire for dev chats. Positron just wears whatever geek-related item is clean.

There is going to be a 21.5 before Issue 22.

Zwill says there will be some surprises on the store today.

Posi has a coffee burp and the chat room wonders if he's having a heart attack.

Posi relates a story about heart attack and heartburn having similar symptoms. He had chest pains for a day and went to the ER after calling a nurse line, that told him to go to the ER after 10 minutes of questions. They hooked him up to an EEG machine.

Stuff in the Collector's Edition items are not going to be in the store.

Posi: "Certain people will have to be not employed at the company for that to happen."

Chat question, short version: "OMFUX Y U NERF FARMIN?!?!?!?!?!?"

It's not aimed at AE or anything like that.

I'll likely be trying if I can trigger MARTy with my fire farmer.

They say they will be looking at how often it's getting triggered.

Zwill: "It's like a garden, it's not a fire and forget thing. We will be paying attention to it and tending to it."

They don't have a firm date in mind for cycling the VIP Tier 9 rewards.

The rotation design was made in mind with being able to get your tokens up front. They might be looking into changing the cycling depending on if they can get that fixed or not.

There will be a sale in the Market every week.

They've got what's going in the market and what's going on sale up until May.

The patcher has the Issue 21 patch downloading now.

Filtering out previously purchased items from the store is a design goal.

MARTy was not announced because it's an anti-exploit measure, and they don't announce exploit related items and fixes. So as to not have an exploit fix announced in Beta and have weeks of it being used on Live by people who did not know about it otherwise.

The market is currently in-game only, but they are wanting to make it be easily acessable to take your money.

Zwill: "Make your checks payable to Andy Belford..."

Zwill's wife plays CoH, but mostly plays with the Costume Creator.

There are going to be winter event improvements, but no Winter trial.

Starting with I21's launch you get 550. Everyone has been getting 400 points a month. If you get 550 think of it as a bonus.

Zwill: "It's safe to say you'll see some items come back on sale again."

Posi: "If it sells like gangbusters, guess what? It's going on sale again!"

City Vault is officially dead. It turned out to be a massively huge negative impact on bandwidth.

The quick downloader isn't going live with the headstart.

They won't allow gifting of paragon points until their customer service department is satisfied that it can't be taken advantage of.

Blood of the Blackstream/Avallians.

Posi: "We had things that were people's ideas, they were hinted at and had some minor stuff in game. Those people don't work here any more. We have people here with their own ideas. What kind of boss would I be if I said "You can't do your ideas, you have to do ideas from people who were here three years ago. You have to go in and find the hidden threads and work from the loose documentation we have on them.""

"It's just like when a new writer comes on to a comic book."

Black Scorpion comes in to sit for Zwill as he takes a bio break.

BS: "I find the old design documents on things, stuffed in corners, written on forgotten whiteboards, that sort of thing."

They were going to do the Avellians as an EAT because their animation system was thought to require wing animations included in the files for attacks. So when they discovered that they could do it without tying animation code for wings into every power, they added wings as a costume piece.

Discussion of the bug with Rest popping in and then popping out of the tray.

/Bug command is looked at less often than the Bug forums. They look over the bug forums constantly.

"Any chance of future EATS?"

Posi: "There is always a chance of future AT's, Epic or no."

They plan on doing more MM sets, but they are the biggest drain on resources they have. They try to make them special.

Posi: "It's the biggest drain for the least bang, since we can't proliferate them."

Chat demands BS join the club and wear a hat.

Dominator love is on the list but BS can't state a timeframe. There are some sets looked into for proliferation, but not with I21.

Arbiter Hawk and BS have been looking at KB/KD with Khelds especially. It's on the list of issues that they think about all the time. It's been talked about with a per character setting.

The Information Kiosks were one of the aforementioned big bandwidth hogs. They didn't work very well, and so they didn't put any in CoV and Praetoria. So they don't plan on doing anything with them.

"If there are bandwidth hogs, does that mean there is bandwidth bacon?"

Discussion of bandwidth bacon.

Posi says they have a lot of ideas for UI upgrades, but everything they wanted would make it take 1.5 years. If they'd did everything they wanted to do for the UI and upgrading it they'd just start testing it internally today.

"Where do you hide the bodies?"

BS: "They fade out after 30 seconds unless you're on a BAF."

Synapse has FOUR dogs.

BS: "No one has brought one to the office yet."

Posi: "Some people used to but there were, how shall we say, accidents. People didn't want to step in that at work."

There are further zone revamps planned.

Allowing players to build maps for MA?

Posi: "Maybe in the far future. It might be prone to being abused."

Zwill has donned a pair of Extrodinary Abundance of Tinge Summer Shades in his Misc slot.



Posi says to Zwill that he can't answer questions for 8 hours because eventually they'll run out of safe answers and have to make stuff up.

Zwill: "And I'll start singing."

So they go into the Underground Incarnate Trial.

Lunch at Paragon today? Costco Pizza.

Posi goes into the background of the trial.

Desdemona's tattoo prevents her from being mind controlled. Positron calls it a "Circle of Protection" that makes Zwill crack up. They reference something I'm not getting because I'm playing with my box of birthday Gobstoppers.

Zwill and Posi accidently refer to the trial's boss as the Seed and not Avatar of Hamidon.

Posi says in terms of mechanics the trial is on the easier scale and is probably the easiest one they've done mechanics wise. Not a lot of gimmicks, and it's more like a standard door mission.

"Will the more complex Trial mechanics ever show up for simpler solo-able missions, like a showdown with an elite boss?"

Posi: "It is possible, but we kind of want to avoid that. We don't want players to go through solo content and come up with a gimmick-y boss fight."

Positron can give the sewer trial a backstory if you give him 10 minutes.

9:29 coh_beastyle: Backstory: There are enemies in the sewers!
9:29 coh_beastyle: Take them out!

"So if you remove the Vahzilok from the sewers, is that a Vahzectomy?"

Groaning laughs all around.

Posi: "When I was going through for the first time and found the trainer, I was like: this wasn't in the design document but this is awesome!"

I21 is indeed a 2.5 GB patch, they've reorganized a lot of the file structure.

Zwill and Posi joke around about staff fighting and Posi mentions he hasn't yelled at anybody in Paragon in years.

Somehow we've gone back to questions and Posi just now notices it.

HOORAY! THE CHAT HAS OFFICIALLY TANGENTED THE HOSTS!

Zwill: "I am easily distracted!"

Posi talks about the backstory of the Incarnate Trial.

Me to Zwill via Ustream PM: "I AM AN EASILY ZWILL DISTRACTING SHINY THING!"

Zwill (on air): "Thanks, Von Krieger."

There will eventually be a wrap up to the Praetorian storyline.

The Underground is a longer trial and there are not a lot of ways to shortcut things, and because of that it has increased rewards for that time.

Posi plugs his blog MMODesigner.com

Positron mentions www.trails-end.com, click on the link that says "I am Support" and search for Andre M. in Foster City of Pack 447 as the result of him having a Fleur de Lis on his hat as he's a cubscout leader. So if you want to buy popcorn, go there! Since 70% of the proceeds go directly to his troop. Link in the corner where it says "I'm currently supporting no one."

"how will MARTy work with the XP Booster store item?"

Posi: "They won't. It does not look at things like XP Boosters, or Double XP weekend, or team-size bonuses. It works just off the base rewards rate."

Back to Underground trial.

They're using the new tech for contacts to have an image of the head of the person that Desdemona is following in the trials.

"Is there any way to say 'Crap, I'm the tank. Desdemona shouldn't follow me!' and pass her off to a different player?"

Posi: "IT ought to be fine, she's pretty tough."

"What if you're in first person view?"

Posi: "So YOU'RE the one!"

Posi: "One of the ideas we had was giving you a badge for tripping MARTy, but that got shot down with pretty quick as a TERRIBLE idea."

Desdemona does follow through stealth.

"Why is the Lichen-infested WW so annoying?"

Posi: "Because I am a cruel, cruel game designer."

"Avatar of Hamidon costume pieces? Those shoulders are sweet!"

Posi: "It's on a totally different rig, sorry guys."

Posi: "The store will be up when the server goes live. Please don't break it."

Posi: "There was a time when the team designed encounters that we couldn't beat because we knew the players could. But that was too brute force and didn't really end up being as fun as the more gimmick-based bosses we use now."

"I have seen fights from other games and we are never going to be anywhere NEAR the amount of complexity in battles. Keyes Island is about the upper limit of what we're going to do, and if you compare it to other games, it's a cakewalk."

"Where do you draw the line between "frustrating" and "challenging"?"

Posi: "About four or five attempts with zero progress made."

Zwill: "Not taking into account PEBKAC, of course."

(PEBCAK = Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair.)

Posi states once more that they have plans in mind for incarnate trials and powers for many issues into the future.

Jumping onto the PVP question that keeps coming up.

Posi goes to get water.

Zwill: "We have plans for it, but nothing I can discuss yet. Right now we're trying to focus attention on players and community like the upcoming PVP league and the just-finished PVP boot camp. I'm here to bring you team down, this guy. Literally. I'm here to bring you're team down. I'm TERRIBLE."

There are plans for new 30-39 content.

VK: "Zwill, can you tell me once again who's bad?"

I manage to provoke Zwill into sing "Bad" and "Fat."

"Which in game group would you join?"

Zwill: "Maybe the Goldbrickers, since I like jetpacks. Definitely not the Syndicate. I would nopt be a Ring Mistress, though I would not mind hanging out with those guys. Maybe I would join the Knives of Artemis so I could throw caltrops at you guys repeatedly. I hate Knives of Artemis."

Posi links to the popcorn: http://www.trails-end.com/estore/hom...equestid=16406

The Signature Story Arcs will not be going live today, but with Freedom proper.

TANGENT: POKEMON!

Posi's team was all evolved Eevees, and the dog trio.

Beastyle names them off camera and pops in to show his Lucario figure.

Posi: "I played Red and Yellow. Then tried the next one and it was the same game again. I got Pearl on DS and IT'S THE SAME GAME AGAIN!"

"Which NPC would you want to live with?"

Posi: "Manticore, a billionaire!"

Posi has avoided Minecraft thus far, he has League of Legends installed, but not played, and his copy of Marvel vs Capcom 3 is on his xbox unopened.

TANGENT: Digimon

Zwill: "The Go-Bots of Pokemon."

Posi gives a story about the handheld Tamigotchi style Digimon and there used to be fights between people with Digimon. Until after a fight instead of a KOed pokemon there was a gravestone.

TANGENT: Furbies.

Manticore used to work for another game studio right next to a toy store and the office was filled with Furbies.

Someone in chat mentions that at Wal*Mart one of their duties was to patrol the aisle and make cure no one was teaching the furbies dirty words.

Positron thinks the best CoH tie-in toy would be LEGO's.

Posi: "The Orenbega playset."

Zwill: "The Orange Bagel playset? That would be terrible. Building all the stairs. Nothing but stairs."

The look for another topic.

Posi: "Why we destroyed galaxy city, maybe? Because I just hated it. The players can guess why. Because we had two start zones on one side, and one on the other. And considering what we're releasing today..." Hinting at the Atlas Park and Mercy revamps.

Talking about Zwill's posting in the "Will You Miss Galaxy City" thread:



Some talk about RP servers.

Posi: "Official means customer service requirements that we don't want to deal with. We're much happier with unofficial RP servers since the community can monitor it themselves."

Posi: "When were designing powersets we looking for things we haven't done before, cool things, comic book things. Adding to the genre to superheroes, to MMOS, etc. We want to make sure that what we do is going to be cool."

It either begins with animations or power designs. Titan Weapons began with an Animation proof of concept With Beam Rifle it was the other way around.

They have templates with any given power sets, the first two powers in a set usually have similar purposes. There are others that are usually in there, like Taunt or Aim or Build Up.

Sometimes they need new tech to pull it off; the Titan Weapons momentum mechanic is mentioned.

Zwill: "Someone says I know you're on Ustream, but you'll probably not be paying attention and mention this."

Zwill goes to grab something to give away.

Posi: "A five dollar bill!"

Posi: "I had a boss with a list of rules on his wall that I never read, rules to interact with him. I went to Universal Studios and I got change for $14 with 7 $2 bills. I've never seen so many $2 bills in one place. I show them to my boss and he says "Any $2 bills I can claim and give you $2 in exchange for." And I liked my job, so I did."



Sean "Single" "Dr. Aeon" McCann shows up in his Color of a Gentleman's Business Pants Fancy Fedora and accuses Positron of stealing his hat.

Chat dubs this pairing Spy vs. Spy.

Chat wonders if Dr. Aeon is the prize that is being given away.

" Since we can now take Travel powers at Tier 3, will the requirement for other Pool Powers be similarly changed?"

Posi: "No, because it breaks a lot of stuff, like characters!"

"Who's the current Art Lead, I need to know who to bug."

Posi: "Right now at this very second we don't have one."

"Will we get new stuff in the AE?"

Posi: "Want to talk about it Sean "I got hired here because of my awesome AE missions" McCann."

Aeon: "You tell me Mr. Matt "Makes the decisions" Miller."

Posi: "No, that would be Nate "Second Measure" "We don't have enough time for this issue" Birkholtz."

Aeon rates his wants:

Dialogue Trees: 10/10
Cut scenes: "If we'd put them in it would be enough time to do 3/4 other things"
Custom maps: "It would have to be enough to be another AE-like system."
Button to give XP/rewards:

Aeon: "It's called SS/Fire."

Posi: "No, a button."

Aeon: "Footstomp. The button is called Footstomp."

Dialogue trees is the thing he'd want to see the most.

Positron makes a mad dive for the mouse as the screensaver starts to take root.

Posi just called Zwill Rain Man because him and someone else is going "Uh oh, uh oh!" off camera.

TANGENT: Fantasy Football in the office. Posi had the #2 score in the league and he played Bryan Clayton, who had the highest score. The other two teams in the division had the lowest and second lowest score.

Posi: "Fantasy Football, the RPG for people who used to beat up the people who used to play DnD in high school."

Aeon relates his own fantasy football story. He went with his gut and picked an entire team named Kevin without regard to if they were any good or not. And was told to never play again. He would only take trades for players named Kevin. Positron nixed another player from trying to steal Aeon's only good Kevin.

"Most likely sport to put in CoH?"

Soccer or rugby.

TANGENT: Sports movies.

" So with 21 going live hows the schedule in house for I22 work?"

Posi: "Are you working on I22 now?"

Aeon: "Is this question going to get me fired?"

Posi: "Of course not!"

Aeon: "Then yes, I'm working on I22."

Posi: "We have things planned out to Issue 29? Who told you that? But yes, we have things planned out to I29."

TheNet shows up to show off his awesome hair.




Chat dubs TheNet "Arbiter Beiber" and wonders if he's really a girl.

First Ward was almost all Protean.

Posi: "Do you know the story behind hoorb? No? I don't know it either!"

Aeon: "Do you want me to make it up?"

Posi: "What I need you to make up is one for the sewer trial."

Aeon: "There is one! With the destruction of Galaxy City the Hydra is creeping out from it's lower sewer lair into the higher one. For heroes it's stopping it, for Villains it's harvesting power from it."

TANGENT: Languages, California English, Cot and Caught being pronounced the same.

Zwill returns with swag.

They roll a d100. Voodoo Girl beats me to 87, as does Mega-Troll who had it before either of us.

damienkellis: Megatroll has won the T-shirt. Now I, Starscream, am the leader of the Decepticons... no, wait.

TANGENT: LotR and the Giant Eagle explanation. Aeon uses his Comic Book Guy voice.

Ghost Falcon comes over with a sign.



I have 12 pages of notes so far and many hours to go.

For the Star Wars blu ray edition: Alderaan shot first: http://i.imgur.com/xWweh.gif

Discussion of Death Star shooting the planet Yavin 4.

Positron references BadAstronomy.com with talking about the amount of antimatter needed to destroy a planet, and the core of a gas giant being made of metallic hydrogen.

Second Measure comes in to see the GIF and asks "Is that real?"

Posi: "How dumb are you?"



The whiteboard returns!

They're going to go to a Part 2 now as they're reaching the recording limit. Zwill has to do the T for Teen thing again.

Noble Savage and Tunnel Rat may be stopping by.

War Witch stops by.



For I21 War Witch was more of a professional nag than contributing anything. She has two content Strike Teams, Alpha and Omega.

WW shows two sets of dog tags that the details cannot be made out of on the video. Alpha team was the start area team and Omega was endgame content.

The Eden and Sewer trials came about as the result of Strike Teaming at Cryptic. WW's team was the only one that actually got something in game.

TANGENT: Groupon and Crepes.

TANGENT: Boysonberries. Hybrid of Black and Raspberries. I did not know that. And also Loganberries apparently.

Chat says "Don't eat too many Loganberries or else you'll end up with Logan's Runs."

Another chat member is still working on the whole Yokes and Reins thing from earlier.

Zwill has a meeting in 15 minutes.

TANGENT: WW's vest.

TANGENT: Zwill cannot make short jokes, WW can, Zwill can only make Asian jokes.

Some sort of horrible singing from Zwill.

WW is ashamed for him.

WW has a Russian Blue cat named Miko after some kind of rocket.

Chat says WW and Zwill ought to have a talk show.

TANGENT: Lavern and Shirley.

TANGENT: Zwill's bartending career and the Colorado Bulldog. Which is apparentl like a White Russian with Coca Cola. I wouldn't know. You can fit all the alcohol I've drunk into a 2 liter bottle.

TANGENT: Milk types.

"WW task force!"

Zwill: "What would that be? Go to the UPS store and get my package. Literally a FedEx quest."

TANGENT: Perfumes

WW says it's hat day and she didn't get the memo. I heard my name mentioned for some reason then he went into something else.

Chat says WW looks like one of the Newsies.



TANGENT: Newsies and Christian Bale.

Zwill wanted to call the sewer trial Down the Drain.

Death From Below is an in-joke, the Sewers had special spawns that dropped down that were internally known as Death From Above.

"What NPC would you like in the house?"

Zwill: "There is the SFW answer and the NSFW answer. I would say Fusionette. She'd be fun."

Zwill: "Titan Weapons in I21.5?"

WW: "I can shrug just like you can. Synchronized shrug on 3, 1, 2, 3!"

Favorite Kung Fu movie?

Zwill: "Kung Fu hustle. No, The Last Dragon is not kung fu, it's Black Fu, there's a difference."

Zwill singing the Glow and The Last Dragon.

Someone off camera suggests that the 'hoorb' sound is a joke based on the male jumping sound.

Second Measure comes in to do Dillo's voice, as related to him by Pitt, the guy that wrote him.

WW: "It reminds me of a dog eating peanut butter."

2M: "I just wanted to stop by and prevent a grave injustice from being done."

Beastyle suggests that it's like the Bug from MIB.

Zwill thinks that Meg Ryan would play WW in the CoH movie.

Chat:
Natalie Protman
Milla Jovovich

Apparently I missed some more chat on the dream casting for the CoH movie.

Patrick Stewart as Positron!

Beastyle suggest Gary Oldman as Relucse.

"Will dual pistols get unlockables?"

Zwill: "If it's requested often enough."

WW: "Kevin Spacey as Positron."

Zwill: "I could dig that. That would work!"

TANGENT: Felicia Day

Zwill gives his PAX Wil Wheaton story.

Both hosts have an Altoid.

Celebs playing CoH, Abraham Benrubi and Jim Butcher.

Continued casting for CoH movie.

Charisma Carpenter as Mother Mayhem.



Avatea comes in to sub for Zwill, who is on his second bio break of the session.

Talking about WW's height in comparison to Avatea. WW is 5'1 and a bit, Avatea is 6'1"

Continued talk about height and lack thereof and it's advantageous and disadvantages.

Avatea speaks French for a bit.

Freitag wanders in and says that Armenia in Germany is like Canada of Germany because they say 'Eh."

IRL costume pieces?

Avatea wants cupid wings.

I try to convince Freitag to sing "It's a Small World" in German so it will sound scary.

We get the translation of the first few verses from Zwill and Avatea, but no singing it from Freitag.

Avatea and WW head off and Patrice gets his chair back.



I ALMOST get a screenshot of Patrice looking at the camera, but only snag his elbow.

A wild Baryonyx appears!



Bar does a bit of everything. Powersets, villains, etc.

Desdemona's pathing and AI and getting her to follow was the hardest part of the trial, as the Underground is a fairly massive place. The other big problem was getting her there with her demons in tow.

The other major challenge was selling a world that had been infected by the Devouring Earth. You start out getting little hints of infection and then end up in a completely alien world.

Zwill: "We're tying a bow on the Pratorian storylines and this is the start of that, measuring out the ribbon and cutting it."

If they do one trial at a time it'll be both types of Incarnate XP, and if they do 2 it'll be one and one. Due to length it gives massive amounts and 2 Empyrean merits at the end.

Some more talk about Desdemona, Zwill shows his Going Rogue Desdemona Mousepad.



Bar and Arbiter Hawk did all the villain groups in First Ward.

Zwill has some problems with Ustream.

I get up to grab snacks and the Carinvals of Light, War, and Vengeance designs.

Talking about the Parallel Worlds thing, the Hamidon and magic in Praetoria are the two major differences.

Bar has to be warned about touching the table.

Talking about the Oracle bosses using new, unique, lightning from the sky type powers.

The Awakened have a visceral, violent, brutish psionic feel to them. Mentions of some of their powers, like a boost to Psi damage for the mobs around them, a Fear effect that grows stronger, and a Psi melee attack.

Zwill gives us bad news that they're run into some problems, so they might go past the time goal.

They'd already set the entitites in First Ward to be able to scale up to level 34, so it wasn't hard to scale it up from 20-25 to 20-29. They were planning on using the groups in future content at a higher level, and so it was easy to change the zone levels based on player feedback.

Positron comes over to deliver a note "STOP HITTING THE TABLE."

Bar: "Regarding the Carnival of Light pieces I've already told the costume team "Shut up and take my money.""

Zwill is being summoned away and Avatea returns to be our question reader.



Praetoria is a world of differences and don't expect any groups to be exactly the same in future content.

I suggest Praetorian Malta wear Hawaiian shirts. That is shot down.

"Why are Gorgons so annoying?"

They're Elite bosses to begin with and scaled down. They have some nasty Broadsword attacks and we wanted to sell them as fully corrupted and have natural, brutal combat ability.

The Underground design has been going on since at least Bar joined in February.

Mention is made of incarnate trial difficulty. BAF and Lambda are not level shifted, Underground is level shifted by 1. Future trials will go higher.

"Will Praetoria ever be invaded with Shivans?"

Bar: "The connection with the Shivans to the Batallion with the Coming Storm... maybe. Just remember that the shivans are mainly a threat to Primal Earth. You can count on the Shivans appearing at some point in the future."

Bar did not work on the Halloween event. The event was Doug Woolsey and Court Carney and Arbiter Hawk.

Zwill is back and Avatea leaves.

"My favorite part of designing new content is taking powers and systems that we already have and challenge your expectations and preconceptions and to make ways to think outside of the box. It doesn't always work but one of the most exciting parts is making new and interesting experiences for you guys."

"My personal favorite part of the new issue would probably be the Atlas Park revamp out of all the things I didn't work on. It and the tutorial. Seeing AP and Mercy changed from what I knew since the being, not having to go from Kalinda to the city of Mercy. Seeing that content evolving into something new and enjoyable is something I love to see."

Bar is kicked out to make room for Noble Savage, who has brought his SPAM cup for moral support.



Zwill passes out altoids to yet another guest.

Zwill flashes Action Comics #1 and Dectective Comics #1. He says he really likes the art style.

NS: "I come from a comic book background so I'mn happy to see companies doubling down on their investments, making it fresh and cool and relevant."

Talk of NS's comic book connections.

We are nearly at 500 people watching, almost match the marathon Ustream of Doom.

NS: "With Freedom we were thinking what artistic direction would be the best to represent us as what we'd like to be. What we settled on is the semi-realistic concept painting style. Within the concept art community there are a lot of people that work in Paitn and Photoshop in that kind of exaggerated style, but also inspired by like Alex Ross and painters in the comic community as well. Not like comic line art and super-bright colors. Our game is a little less cartoony."

Zwill: "We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we're a little less tongue in cheek than some other people.

Talking about Alex Ross's use of photo references and props, like sewing a leather Batman cape to make the end result look more realistic.

Talk about Bob Ross (no relation) and happy trees.

NS does a quick "photosource" of a smiley face to Zwill.



Zwill: "And that is why they pay you the big bucks.

NS: (to self) "You're fired, clear out your desk."

Talking about the CoT revamp. They don't blame Leatherpup.

NS: "With any new feature you never know how people will respond to it. That is what beta is for. We are willing to make changes. But the way it was revelaed was not on our terms, it was a blurry shot, on like the worst character shown. IT was incomplete, some pieces were still in concept and not complete yet. There are like 70 pieces between all the CoT characters."

"I thought the creepiest thing about the CoT was the black, faceless, glowing eyes thing. And I thought that ought to be the defining thing for the Thorns. I thought the bosses ought to be scary and not like normal guys. I wanted the bosses to be poo your pants scary. The response I got from the players was wanting to see that look on everything. The way players expect them to be, and that's alright. We wanted to get everything right, get the colors right. And the best thing is that with the revamp players will get these too."

"The original conception was never tights; it was originally sewn together snakeskin. If you look close at the 3D art you'll see some little dots and sparkles. It's not a latex texture, it's scalier."



"This is a compromise we have to make to get this out to the players, because the robes wouldn't work."

Zwill: "Someone from chat mentions "Well, where do you think all the Snakes went?""

Both laugh.

Talk about David's Alice in Wonderland covers on DA.

http://david-nakayama.deviantart.com/

The 1 PM estimate is no longer accurate, Zwill is asking for an update.

We are now on hour 6.

Q and A time. Zwill has to leave.

"What villain groups would you like to update?"

NS: "From one perspective it's like the older the group the more I'd like to update it, if only to get an HD kind of redo. I'm seeing a lot of skulls and hellions vote. I like the Freaks the way they are, if we touched them it would be the lightest possible touch. Sky Raiders, maybe. They all have a place in my heart and making them cooler and better and upgrading them would be making an awesome project."

"Just think of the Skulls making a sacrifice to join the gang. Think of that whole bone-grafted mask thing, and go more designs involving bones other than skulls."

"Jetpack backpacks, would so love to do that. We're in a back detail reinissance, we're doing backpacks, wings, non-cape stype back details."

"We'd love to do more Vanguard stuff."

"I can neither confirm nor deny specific plans. I see a lot of request for the Egyptian theme too (spammed by one guy a million times tonight), I'd love to draw some of those."

"The Tsoo I wouldn't really want to touch."

"Arctic Theme, some of the Barbarian parts might be good for that."

"The Avatar of Hamidon is one of my favorite pieces we did recently, by concept artist William Ballser. Taking the concept of an existing villain group and evolving it. We have this group of evil nature spirits, led by this jelly. With PRaetoria we have a greyer morality, a darker nature. Bill went with sort of a burned wood look for the caparace, combining it with some Cthulhu elements and the same blue jelly. Same with the Seed and the other Hamidon creatures we do in the future."

Zwill addresses the OTHER spammed topic. The little devil horns are missing on male and huge models. David mentions something like that is probably a tech issue. It's not the only piece that's missing or an outlyer. He'd like to make a list of things like that and fix them. Like cigars for females.

Zwill leaves again.

"Sheathed weapons, that's a trick. You'd need extra animation support. A weapon slung on your back for a back detail. The tech challenge there is that it would be there all the time and when you drew your weapon you'd have two weapons. It would be two cases of new tech in order to do it."

"Least favorite costume piece? I don't dislike any of them, but there's some I never use. There are like some big popeye arm gloves that I never use."

Zwill: "The steampunk arms. Yeah, I never use them, though I have seen some people use them for cool costumes."



Talk about possibly releasing some of the other CoT concept art. Someone in chat wants to try modeling it.

They are aware of the scrollbar issue with the client, Zwill was pulled away for that just now. It's being worked on.

"I've seen seeing requests that you guys have been making while we've been talking, and you guys are going to be really happy with some things coming down the pipeline."

Zwill: "We've been kind of branching out beyond the usual capes and tights superhero concepts."

NS: "The most requests we get are from non-super hero things. The top requests are for genres that have not been covered at all. Comics have so many genres, and we're a comic book game, not merely a superhero game."



Zwill: "There are a lot more Barbarian pieces, more like Red Sonja that we'll be showing coming down the line."

NS: "Jay has been working on those."

Talk about updating trenchcoats. Zwill mentions Jay has a long technical explanation for why trenchcoats work as they are.

Zwill is going to break for lunch after a time, giving everyone time to eat lunch. My tummy thanks you, Zwill!

je-saist: *snerks* I just had an evil thought. The next time Zwill yawns, Avatea leaps in, gags him with a cleave-gag, then drags Zwill off camera while David sips calmly from the cup.

NS: "That would be some good internet TV."

Asking the chat what people would like for costumes.

They finally address the third costume part spammer of battle damage.

I request Rikti and Carnies.

Zwill: "Flowing spawn style capes would be a nightmare for the graphics engine."

NS: "Liefield set. Like really tiny feet and like pouches everywhere. And you can't talk any more."

"The Steampunk set is one of the most useful and recombineable sets we've ever done, way to go Cheryl."

"Ape face? If we did another animal pack that would be something to go in."

Zwill: "And dinosaurs!" *mimics dinosaur*

NS: "We are not going to do anime giant eyes. But the way they exaggerate armor is far game. But we're not going to have humans be a totally different sort of human."

TANGENT: Two Pinoy guys doing some lip-synching thing and doing some Anime type thing and their translation of that into real life is creepy and hilarious.

http://wimp.com/guyscartoon/

NS: "We have such a backlog on back pieces. I'd like to do an update of just back pieces to kind of get that filled out."

Both would like to see some 50's era sci-fi, as well as the more silly Clown type thing, that they have to do over Positron's dead body.

They are taking a break, Zwill has to follow up with some folks and the peoples at Paragon have to eat.

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I watched the same thing Krieger. I am very impressed by your synopsis.

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Good thread is good.

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[url=http://vox-doom.deviantart.com]Take A Gander At This.[/url]

Thank you VK

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total kick to the gut

This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.

Posi, when he does play his Xbox, seems to play the weirdest or outdated things.

I know he's refused my invite to join him in Rock Band 2 at least a dozen times.

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Current Badge Hunter: Plot Device (Rad/Thermal/Dark) - 1,268 Xbox Live: Friggin Taser

King of Electricity, Lead Inmate running the Carl and Sons asylum, the "Man" behind the Establishment, Given Honor in Hat Form By Paragon City (Favorite Forum Poster 2006!), Master of Ceremonies of the Fair Use Law podcast

Thanks much, VK

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My job sometimes involves minute taking. Is there any chance you could head over to Scotland to fill in for me?


(and thanks)

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Happy Birthday VK!

As always, thank you for the updates.

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Good job dude! thanks again VK and happy b-day.

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Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!

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Thanks again for always doing this for people short on free time like me.
And Happy B Day!!

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Thanks again and Happy Birthday!


I was actually able to be a part of the Ustream chat unlike all the other times so I was there until noon when they had to start a 2nd stream.

I even got a few of my questions answered

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Leader of The LEGION/Fallen LEGION on the Liberty server!
SSBB FC: 2062-8881-3944
MKW FC: 4167-4891-5991

Part 2 should have all the Sexy Jay stuff in it

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@Golden Girl

City of Heroes comics and artwork

I gave Part II it's own thread because it's just so damned big.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=271507

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