Dev Chat Highlights, September 22: Flipping the Bird with Positron during the Downtime

Notes are late as I had been up for 20 hours when the stream started and was so out of it I was running into things. 320 pound guy with no spatial awareness is a bad thing.

I went to bed and proceeded to sleep for 18 hours.

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Posi has been up for 4 hours at this point, and turns into a pumpkin around 6 PM.

War Witch and Black Scorpion are also there. Zwill speculates that BS does not actually go home, but rather has a pod in the back. So does the Television.

Zwill goes over the Freedom: Live things for free to players and premiums.

Z wishes Lady Recluse a happy 26th birthday and realizes that he does not remember being 26 and proceeds to rack his brains to figure out what he was doing for 9 years ago.

Z: "Let's see what was I doing 9 years ago?"

Positron wanders in, bearing a T-shirt sporting "I'm not cheating, I'm playing by my own rules" on the front.

Posi: "Nine years? That's it?"

Posi flips Zwill the bird.



Zwill: "Did you just flip me off on Ustream? Really? No one will screengrab that!"

Mwahahahahaha.

Talk about Modern Family.

Zwill was catching up on Castle and thought it was too much serious business and not enough Nathan Fillion hijinx.

Both know that they are slowly activating Premium Accounts to be able to play for free.

The servers are physically being moved, apparently.

Ustream drinking game rule 1: Drink when Zwill says whatnot.

Tangents are unedited podcasts. Posi says he's heard some edited podcasts and they come out very dry.

Zwill plugs Extra Life Radio by Scott Johnson.

Z complains about the brightness, wondering if the light above him is usually on. Posi says it is.

Posi comes in early in the morning and makes sure that all the lights are on. If they aren't, he'll go around and start flipping switches.

There was a 6 car accident on Posi's commute. It was cleared before he got there. He got all of the traffic and none of the rubbernecking.

Zwill comments on southern CA traffic, and the two discuss the difference between South and North CA language.

The CoH OVR team changed their Twitter handle to @CityOfHeroes.

Zwill will neither confirm or deny rewarding the guy that got them that. He will NOT be running around with early Street Justice, only Zwill and Posi.

Posi: "I heard George RR Martin joined Twitter just so he could kill 140 characters."

Zwill: "*laughs* Nerd literature joke!"

Talk about Google+

If any players work at Google and can hook them up with a Corporate page, talk to Zwill.

"Will there be a section for free or premium players on the forums?"

They're working on that as a possibility, it depends on the functionality they can get out of the account log in services.

Someone in Ustream keeps getting told to hush because they're spamming "I WANTS TO HIDE THE GLOWY BITS OF HASTEN!" or something similar.

Posi: "No, you mean you want to hide the glowy bit of Hasten in PvP."

Zwill says they are aware that players want to customize power pools.

Posi says that Tunnel Rat is very aware of the situation as she gets 4-500 PMs a day about the situation.

Both restate that this is not an invitation to PM her yet another 4-500 times a day.

Having it on Null the Gull has a stopgap option is just that. They would rather do it right.

Zwill was playing around with colors on the forums for VIP's, so some people have gold names.

They are getting so many questions Zwill is going to ignore any in all caps.

Zwill: "It is not cruise control for win."

Posi:" Cool. It's cruise control for cool."

Zwill: "It’s not that either."

Chat: "With the Talons of Vengeance could we maybe see a serpentine lower body on the market?"

Posi says that's not going to work. Sad VK is sad.

They don't differentiate upper and lower body animations, so all the animations on Snakes and Talons are customly done. They are complete custom rigs from head to toe.

99.9% of the attack animations wouldn't work. It's one of the very few things Posi has to say no to.

Prices on the Paragon Market will always be evaluated, they have a weekly meeting on that.

Zwill says almost everything will have a sale on it at some point.

The free reward token for 1200 points is in the game now, if you don't get it, file an appeal.

Zwill likes his Time/Fire Defender as his Zwillinger character on Exalted. He leveled to 20 in the sewer trials and is doing arcs in First Ward. He just finished the one after you reunite the monarch and "what's her name."

Zwill enjoyed watching Noble Savage beating up some stuff.

"Can returning players unlock their old MM's and controllers?"

Posi gives the information on that: buy it, get rewards high enough to unlock it for free.

Dr. Aeon has been flatted by the reaction to the signature story arcs. Zwill is going to play through on his defender today.

Players with yellow names in game are flagged as Helpers. Purple names are "Help me." You hit the H key to bring that up.

"Paragon point cards in stores?"

Neither are sure about plans for that, but it is feasible.

Posi bought a mic like the one Zwill uses because he wants to do a podcast. He got it on Amazon for $86.

Zwill hopes they will get an even better mic once they set up a proper broadcast studio inside Paragon.

VIP Tier 9 rewards were planned to rotate every 3-4 months, but due to the current problem of being unable to get your Paragon Rewards points up front they're re-evaluating it. They're brainstorming a lot of ideas. Like having 2 up there at a time.

There WILL be ways to get them if you've missed them, eventually.

They would really like the Mission Teleporter to be sold in the store, but there is something going on with it preventing them from it right now.

They do plan on doing holiday things with the market. Zwill wants to cut off complaints early and notes that the holidays will likely be US and Canadra's holidays.

Currently existing level pacts will not break if one player goes Premium, but there are no longer any new level pacts.

"Will the sex change be fixed on costume editing?"

Wow, of all the things I was expecting to type, THAT was not one of them.

Posi says there are a lot of bugs introduced, and that how soon you see it fixed will be based on how high of a priority it is.

They will avoid religious themed holiday sales. Posi kind of makes non-commital noises about it and mentions Festivus.

Zwill: "As good as Seinfeld was, it's not a religion! We're not going to have a Hasidic Jew-themed Hanukah sale with a hat with like the curly hair."

Posi: "Send your e-mails to..."

Zwill: "I suppose if demand is high enough."

Talk about the Hebrew Hammer.

Zwill's dad is Jewish, saw it with him and he laughed.

Talk about Happy Holidays/Merry Christmas controversy. Zwill says Happy Holidays because he has no idea what someone celebrates and wants to be all inclusive.

I myself say Happy Holidays because if someone gets all puffed up and offended I can tell them to have a merry Christmas, but a horrible Christmas Eve and New Year's.

More Festivus talk.

Zwill: "IT'S NOT A REAL HOLIDAY!"

Posi: "Dude, feats of strength, aluminum pole, airing of grievances. As a community manager you should really get behind the airing of grievances."

Zwill: "As a community manager I am not allowed to air my grievances where anyone can hear me."

Chat: "How about a Spring holiday that starts with "Hamidon Spawns in Bloom"?"

There is a great design on the table for a summer event, and Posi would love it to happen. They are trying to schedule time for it to get it out for next summer.

Arbiter Whiteboard is not present. So neither is the whiteboard, and at the moment he's not testing anything secret anyway.



Zwill shows that chat his Wildstar t-shirt.

Zwill: "Argh. EVERY Ustream!"

Posi: "Every Ustream he's going to ask. Have you answered him yet?"

Zwill: "I think we have. I know it's a requested feature."

That was Kheldian Sashes, by the by.

Talk about CoH-specific holidays.

"Game time cards to Paragon Points?"

Nope.

Zwill needs 2 more followers on Twitter to reach 1300.

The official CoH account has almost 4000.

Zwill refuses to shill his personal twitter, but shows Posi a terrifying picture of himself.

Posi: "That's not you!"

Zwill: "It's me!"

Posi: "Wow, you look a lot more Asian surrounded by Asian people."

Zwill: "This is true."

Zwill does not show us the picture of him being 21 with blonde highlights in his hair.

Talk about Blue Steel becoming Street Justice/Shield. Zwill looks confused, Posi says that Blue Steel is the Chuck Norris of the game.

Zwill: "Oh, like 'Behind Blue Steel's shield is another shield?'"

Posi: "Maybe he could be a StJ/Shield Brute, but I'm not going to tell him that he has to be anything. You can tell him."

Chat: "Blue Steel does not have powers, powers have Blue Steel."

TheNet: "Blue Steels powersets are Blue Steel/Blue Steel."

"Is there content in the works for the level 30-40 range, it's where interesting things start dying out."

Zwill gives the generic answer of there is always never content in the works.

Posi: "What's the level range for that new zone?"

Zwill: "What new zone?" *dramatic denial movements*

"A shared vault amongst all characters on an account?"

Both agree it's a great suggestion.

"Fingers?"

Posi: "There was one earlier in the Ustream!"



Posi: "Adding fingers involves redoing every glove and hand model in the game."

"Will the City Representative ever get a new outfit?"

Posi: "No, that was on sale at Marshall's and we don't pay her that much."

Talk about the forum log-in bug. Posi confirms it's not just players; the devs have to deal with it too. It's a VBulletin bug. So complain over there.

"Ok, back to the snake ladies, how about a Praetorian Epic AT?"

Posi: "Still won't work. 1, You still have all the emotes. 2, you'd want people that wanted to play Snakemen. So now we're doing even more individual animation. Adding a new player rig exponentially increases the work for an emote or a power pool."

Zwill did not know there can be female Crab soldiers and male Widows.

Zwill: "In the time we do that we could do how many powers, how many emotes?"

Chat wants to be a centaur Cthulhu.

Zwill: "But there is only one Cthulhu!"

Z apologizes for not knowing about males and females being able to be both VEAT's.

He's not played much of the EAT's. He has a 30 Warshade.

Chat: "Posi, my group and I made a Shadow Shard in Second Life, would you like to see it?"

Posi: "That would involve me installing and logging in to Second Life."

Zwill: "Not that that is anything wrong with dolphin and unicorn..." *trying frantically to come up with a T for Teen friendly term* "...bodyparts."

Posi: "Racist."

Zwill: "I don't have anything against bondage uniform dolphins!"

Talk about the G4 show "Portal."

"Upgrading older faces with normal mapping?"

That would be a more art team question.

"SSA maps in AE?"

Posi: "If you PMed Dr. Aeon to ask for the e-mail address to Paypal to I'm sure he could find time for all sorts of stuff."

There is work being done on new faces. Zwill taunts us by saying they're really cool.

Personal Player Housing is a possibility, Posi has written designs for it 3-4 times. It just has to get on the design schedule.

Zwill: "Player Housing is like one of the biggest drains on server resources in existence."

Zwill turns on slow mode.

"Any way of getting rid of weapon redraw?"

Posi: "We'd have to rebalance the powers. We gave them increased accuracy due to Weapon Redraw."

"Any chance of getting player done artwork of their toons featured on the weekly coffee talks?"

Zwill: "Sure! That would be nice, send your artwork to..." *terrible coffee burp*

Posi: "I can find my image of Positron from 1991."

Zwill: "Absolutely, send your T for Teen images to the community team. It could be a segment!"

Posi: "Submit like a one paragraph bio as well so we have something to read. Tell what server you're on."

Zwill: "Good morning, Second Measure!"

2M: "Good morning, attention whores!"

Both act terribly offended.

Send character art to: cohcommunity@paragonstudios.com

They're apparently going to announce something on Monday.

Zwill: "Some people have found the information, but it's something we'd like to reveal in an appropriate time and format?"

Staff Fighting?

Zwill understands frustration about the downtimes, but they have downtime when it affects the lowest number of players.

Zwill: "It's not a perfect world or a perfect system. But the servers are in Texas, US Central time zone. We have to do it when we can get people to work on it, and affect the least number of people. I apologize for the inconvenience. But we have to do it when we're able to."

A lot of things involve SQL database stuff, so they can't have things to be written to it. And you can't hot-swap hardware.

Zwill goings into all the things that have to go into updates.

Some things can be done while the game is running, but would essentially make the game unplayable.

Lady Recluse asks a really snottily phrased question that treats the VIP headstart as a Beta that people are paying for.

Zwill says that the headstart is not a beta and that CoH is a living, constantly updated game. And that there is "Your game experience may change" in the EULA for just this reason.

Zwill: "It's never going to be a finished product it is always going to change and evolve. Just because something is live does not mean something is going to change. I have never seen a 100% bug free product. It does NOT happen. We try to fix everything we can, but some things just don't show up until we hit live servers."

Posi: "If you were there Day 1, you'll notice that the scrollbar couldn't scroll down to select the last two servers on the list. No way we could've found that without having al the servers on the list."

Hip details like Liefeld pouches or Knives of Artimas tactical webbing are a possibility so long as they don't clip with other pieces.

"Devs coming to UK meet and greet/UK PAX event?"

Zwill: "Let's see how well Freedom does."

There are no current plans to release the Cape of the Four Winds. Some people at the studio have said "Over my dead body" regarding that.

But the devs will never say never to anything. Except City Vault.

Zwill: "It would kill the game."

The in-game advertizing tech is currently broken, has not been touched in years, and they don't even own part of the codebase for it.

They put in all the recent billboards by hand.

"Will there be a new currency system put into place with the next set of incarnate slots?"

Posi: "That is going to depend on how much you guys are currently banking the old currency."

No ETA on the Costume Slot 5 bug fix.

"Any estimate on the amount of new players coming in? Are you expecting a tsunami or..." *Zwill makes a terrible face* "A gentle stream."





Posi: "We are bracing for a tsunami."

Zwill: "We are expecting a lot of people, hence the hardware and database upgrades."

"Any chance of users seeing an all inclusive list of non-explotive bugs or issues?"

They'd have to develop a whole new system for it, and it wouldn't really be accurate. You'd see the things they're working on and looking into, but they could never get an all inclusive list.

"Any chance of a Pro wrestling powerset where you can pick up and toss around your opponent?"

Posi: "Put on your gamer designer hat for a moment. Okay. Now imagine two people with that powerset fighting the same guy."

Z mimes his head exploding.

Posi: "That is why the Matrix Online locked other players out of combat."

Zwill: "I had friends that worked on that game. Those poor guys."

Clear Mind will likely never be a team buff because theyt would it was highly abuseable in that state.

"Supergroup rename option?"

Posi: "If you're really nice to Customer Service and they're not absolutely slammed with other things."

Zwill: "It involves database editing, and is not a service we currently offer."

Zwill had a SG called the World Task Force. It got renamed.

Posi: "We've talked about the game, let's tangent!"

Zwill: "What could we tangent about?"

TANGENT: Crepes/Pancakes/Waffles.

Posi likes IHOP.

Zwill is grossed out.

Posi: "Aren't you FROM LA, where they put the health rating right on the door? Eight of the top 10 cleanest restaurants? Taco Bell."

Zwill tries to pronounce *hoorb,* Posi says they'll bring Second Measure over once he tends to his hair.

Talk about the official costume contests.

Posi: "There we some really great entrants in that. Stephan Walking."

Both go into groaning giggles.

Posi: "I rallied for him."

Zwill: "Especially when he was break dancing."

They want to make that a regular thing for the Exalted server, making it a VIP perk.

"If a character dies in the SSA will they be removed from the rest of the game?"

Posi: "Lord Recluse Strike Force, yes. We've got a big list of things that we have to change."

Zwill: "Yes, they're all over the game. ALL over the game."

The Rooster Teeth AE arcs might've been accidently filtered.

"Why does Sunstorm have to look at the Earth for Humans billboard all day?"

Posi: "I think someone did that half on purpose."

TAGENT: Quoting lyrics fro "Ironic"

"Enabling Auction House in bases?"

It's a huge bandwidth hog. It has to download the entire AH database to the instance server. If you're in a base by yourself it may not be a problem, but if you're on a map being used by other people it will degrade their experience. Imagine thousands of players doing that at once.

Posi has to go.

The publishing team is working on the filter for AE, it is currently being worked on.

"More CoH comics?"

Zwill: "At this time, no. We've introduced the comic-style loading screens for the SSA's and tutorial loading screens. So we're focusing on that."

Zwill: "Both Second Measure and Black Pebble are watching the Ustream. Scary."

Zwill quit smoking a year and a half ago.

"When does Jay show up to entertain us?"

Zwill: "Jay entertains us every day."

"Inherent resistances for power sets? Like Ice Blast getting some Ice resistance?"

Zwill: "It's a great idea, but there are so many powersets out there."

NCSoft Europe sets the prices and conversion rates, not Paragon.

"PvP Danger Room in SG bases?"

Intersting idea, Zwill will pass it along.

"List of questions answered on Ustream?"

Zwill: "Irritating question. Just imagine what it would be like for me to say this, read that, and typing it out all at once. We record these Ustreams, so go back and watch the older Ustreams."

Does the questioner not know that I do these and post them at every chance I get? Will someone who knows who that was point them in the direction of these things?

Zwill, I am disappoint that you didn't mention my recaps! *angryface*

"More detailed descriptions for the market items?"

They're limited to the number of characters they can use in the tooltip box.

There are also localization concerns. German is a very lengthy language, so they have to account for an additional 30% of characters. The longest word in German is the word for a little hat that the captain of a little boat on the Rhine river that he would wear during a rainstorm. He heard it from a German localization guy at GamesCom, who rattled it off and took him a minute and a half to say.

Antidisestablishmentarianism is no longer the longest word in the English language. Zwill can't remember what it is.

Arbiter Whiteboard arrives.

There is no dress code for Paragon Studios.

Zwill: "The dress code is wear pants, and sometimes that is optional."

They are aware of the problems with SG base logos.

Zwill goes to check if he's been drafted for the Freedom PvP league.

Restatement of SS to Scrappers being ported over eventually, as well as everything else within reason.

There will be some changes to the forums made, including a revamp of the forum rules which will be posted ahead of time for community criticism and discussion.

They will be trimming some barely used forums, consolidating some, and getting rid of others.

"Why is everything that is being worked on a secret?"

Zwill: "There are a couple of reasons. Sometimes things change, or change throughout the design process. A designer has an idea, the designer takes it to his bosses who go "That's great, but how about this, this and this?", then it goes to Engineering who laughs at it balefully and goes "That's not possible with our current system. But what we can do is something more like this." So the designers change it so it will work.

The other answer is marketing; you have to strategically release information so it makes the biggest splash."

The costume mannequins outside Icon are individually made.

Zwill attempts to sing Happy Birthday to Lady Recluse in German and French, but finds that it's too complex. So he sings in English.

Though he is distracted by MARTy being triggered for everyone. Zwill starts sending an e-mail that Skynet is active.

Zwill: "DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"

E-mail is sent.

Zwill finally sings. Jokingly he does it Stevie Wonder style, which someone off camera calls him being mean for.

Zwill: "Stevie Wonder himself has mocked his head bob!"

Continued delays with the singing.

It takes him like 8-10 minutes for him to finally sing after announcing it. :-P

The MARTy thing is apparently just an error message and you earn rewards normally. They have people looking into it.

Quote:

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

Thank you as always VK! Only one thing jumped out at me as being 'Scary'.

"There will be some changes to the forums made, including a revamp of the forum rules which will be posted ahead of time for community criticism and discussion."

I really don't know what else they could clamp down on. Hopefully all this alludes to is consolidation of lesser used subsections and maybe even a reversal on the no games ever ban.

Appreciate the effort transcribing, as always

Man, check out the thumb crook Posi's got going on. That's some grade-A finger giving right there.

Thanks again

Quote:

Originally Posted by Von Krieger They want to make that a regular thing for the Exalted server, making it a VIP perk. ...

Any chance the costume contests could be done at say....10am-noon EDT Mon-Fri? I mean, I don't even have a chance at these since I work nights


Or just do them on a Saturday...

F p a r n!!!

Thanks, as always, for putting in the time and effort to post these notes, Von Krieger.

Well, Arachnos "Widow"....

I've worked on other games which had gender gated equivalents of AT's, so it's not entirely unheard of.

And I'm sure I've teamed with them, I just rarely pay attention to what other people are doing when I'm teamed, unless we're talking PVP.

Zwill says they are aware that players want to customize power pools.
Having it on Null the Gull has a stopgap option is just that. They would rather do it right.
___________________________________

Doing it right would have been having power pools customizable before the system was introduced. Sometimes stuff needs to just be done period... just put it on Null already.

well, he can answer for himself, obviously, but i can see why someone might think that. veats are based off existing ingame factions, and looking at soa and widows in the actual game, they are(outside of some concept art for female soa's) rigidly gender segregated. so since playing an eat means you are locked into the story of the epic, it wouldn't be surprising if the game said that soa is an exclusively male group and wids are an exclusively female group.

also, while female soas are pretty popular(i have a mid level one myself), i have only ever seen one male widow in game. maybe they are more popular elsewhere, but at least on liberty they are a rarity. Did male wids ever get buttcapes? females have them, but i recall at the time, it was female only.

dang he fast.

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

"Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis " is the longest word listed in major dictionaries, although its linguistically termed a coined word: i.e. it was specifically coined to be a long word, and isn't otherwise used in natural language.

The longest word sometimes cited is a chemical formula for a known large protein, and chemical formulas are not universally recognized as genuine "words" but rather semantic formulas. It also cannot be posted without doubling the maximum post size. Its the formula for titin, which is an extremely long protein present in muscle, and is about 190 thousand letters long.


As to auction houses in bases, the obvious answer would be to write a web front end to the auction houses and use the same pass-thru technique the store uses. But you'd need much better web developers to do that reasonably well.

A guy with so much psychic potential he gets specifically placed in a previously all female faction of Arachnos in order to realize it? The concept just kinda fell on me the minute they said the SoAs werent gender exclusive.

My male Fortunata is now my new main and by far my favorite character. Give em a try sometime Z!

I should so send in the art I've had commissioned of Posi and Tava - I have it on good authority from Matt that when a couple of the devs saw one of the pics, they completely freaked out (and it's a T for Teen pic, too!). just to see if Zwill will show it on the Ustream.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Thank you for the notes! Glad you did the smart thing and slept first before posting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DumpleBerry City of Heroes! City of heroes heroes city of city city city. "City heroes of villains? Going Rogue!" Freedom freedom freedom city of heroes, heroes, heroes, of of of city of Freedom Rogue! Villains rogue heroes of of city of freedom, DumpleFreedoms

Hah! That reminds me of a Captain O.G. Readmore kids cartoon where everyone only said "OG!"