Dev Chat Highlights, October 19: The Lovechild of Jack Black and Justin Bieber w/ new dev ThinkTank

Zwill is wearing his plaid abomination.



TANGENT: Fantasy Football

Talk about the CoH Player Summit. Or Pummit as Black Pebble still insists on calling it.

TechnoBabel: A pummet? Black pebble, that's just silly, it's a PLayer sUMMIT! It's clearly a PLUMMIT!

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



They're giving away the Rulu-Shin costume code at the summit.

Makes me sad cause I want those gloves and chest as player parts.

Registration opens at 8:30.

TANGENT: Hobie's coffee cake

TANGENT: What to call people from the Justice server.

Texas Justice and some other Justicites (which Zwill says sounds like a micro-organism) are doing a bacon-y waffle-y thing somewhere.

T_Arcson: When I die, I want to go to a bacony waffley place.

psychoti: Denny's is where you go when you're evacuating from a Hurricane and have to fight looters that think your computer is free because it's in a locked car.

Freshly-shaven Positron will be there.

Nothing will be streamed since Zwill will be working behind the scenes on things.

Zwill says it is likely there will be announcements about powers.

TANGENT: Dinnah's Fried Chicken

Going to talk to a new person today. Zwill does his Mr. Rogers impression. OR possible George Bush Sr.

Panel session 1:
Art Panel w/ Noble Savage: Design a costume set workshop
Powersets and Abilities w. Arbiter Hawk, Black Scorpion, Positron, and Synapse

Panel Session 2:
Art Panel II: Art Attack
Lore Panel: SSA's and Where do we go from there?: Posi, Dr. Aeon, and Brian Green.

Chat is still discussing Zwill's bad Mr. Rogers impersonation.

Panel Session 3:
Design of End Game and Beyond: Baryonx, Protean, Arbiter Hawk, and
Paragon Market: Conveiniance vs Time

That will have announcement of new features for the paragon market.

Samuraiko: I am going in costume as "that woman that scares the hell out of Matt Miller"

Karaoke contest with door prizes.

New dev guy arrives! I dub him the lovechild of Jack Black and Justin Beiber. Zwill is horrified. But says it on air.



The new dev's redname is ThinkTank., in honor of one of the recent costume pieces.

I think his name is Cord Carney or something like that.

He started on kids movie tie-in PSP titles. His first game worked on was Over the Hedge.

He did PvP map work for The Agency.

One of the first things he's worked on is the Halloween event.

It was mostly another designer that has "Left the City of Heroes project" and given to him at the stage where it was mostly bug fixing.

12:56 MentalMaden-1: Can Think Tank sing Tribute for us?

Zwill: "They say you look like Jack Black."

TT: "Actually people tell me mostly they tell me I look like the lead singer from Death Cab for Cutie."

CHAT INDUCED TANGENT: Bands

12:57 CoHSteelclaw-1: wait... does anyone think this looks like a new band combination? Tenacious Z
12:57 CoHChaosCreator: the hair looks like ashton kutcher.

TT: "I'm still trying to find a barber in the area."

Zwill: "You know we have a FlowBee over there."

Zwill: "We don't talk about 4chan, lest they be summoned. OH WAIT, BEASTYLE IS ALREADY HERE!"

Zwill: "You worked on the new Circle of Thorns."

TT: "IT was a lot of fun. There was a lot of feedback. There were pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages, there was a novel written about them. The pieces were just about finished, but we could redo the coloration and how the pieces were spread across sets."

"There were about 70 model entries. We ended up having maybe 5 unique minions and 5 unique Lt's. So we started by collecting information off the forums. Some forum members had made some well-thought out presentations on how the old CoT looks could be carried over to the CoT sets."

"I printed out old version of the CoT with an eye for coloration. The problem we had was the minions were all brown and silver, the highlights are really bold, when you set it to that you get really silver. And like all the LT's were gold, you looked at them and saw pure gold."

"So we went with a dingy dirty brown, green, and a dirty grey for the minions. As they level up they get more detailed, more ornate, more spiky. We looked at the Lt's like they were and copied the color schemes to keep them recognizeable."

"One of the named guys stayed as they were before. But the mages, the bosses, all got updated."

Chat is talking about the CoT Pope Hat.

"Every single CoT was supposed to have a variation of the skirt. But the Lt's were running around without skirts. It brings to mind a Simpsons reference. Flanders in his suit on the mountain."

Zwill: "Stupid sexy Flanders."

TT: "I've got CoT in the new thing I'm working on that I can't talk about. Though someone on the forum referred to them in a comic as a Marde Gras float, and I don't think it's fair. Though they are a bit more flamboyant than they were."

TT: "Our main goal with the trial was to hit it out of the park from the art department, create a real evocative setting. It was one of the first things I saw."

Talk about the Trial's artwork.



TT: "I think this is one of the best holiday events I've seen in an MMO, and I play a lot of MMO's. It's new art assets"

Zwill: "There are some easter eggs lurking around the front door."



Talk about the wolf and the new four legged model rig. It's the first one in the game.

TT doesn't know that it's a big deal.

Chat spasm that this is BIG.



Zwill: "What was the goal for challenge level?"

TT: "We didn't want to make an Incarnate level difficulty trial. If you were a free play you could log in and do the sewer trial three times and be fifteen in an hour. Halloween is 15 and goes up to 29."

Zwill: "You get exemplared down to 30, I think."

Zwill corrects himself that the trial is MAXIMUM 4 people, not MINIMUM 4 people, which is what he said last week.

It's 4 players due to all the narrow spaces. They tried it with other team sizes, but more than that and it gets messy.

They originally wanted it to be 5+, but going from level 5 to 29, we can't count on them having anything to survive the Abomination.

Some people in the office wish it was more difficult.

There is a bonus object badge: summon and kill 99 zombies and the boss in 12 minutes.

There's a bonus EB that you can spawn, but he doesn't give a badge.

Talk about the murder of crows costume change emote.

Yup, as I thought it looks like the emote is Sorceress Serene's teleport. AWESOME!

Zwill: "I'm Jewish, Irish, Asian. Kilt wearing samurai with a big nose and a guilt complex."

TANGENT: Scotch and other boozes.

A player sent a case of wine to the devs as a thank you.

TT has fears over player-sent dev gifts.

Zwill says it would be a problem with any other game community, but he's never had bad things happen from player sent food.



An item Zwill was sent by a player.

TT: "People are asking about the new incarnate powers, I wish I could talk about them, but I can't."

Zwill talks a little about them on the podcast.

One of the new judgments looks awesome.

Zwill used to work at a winery.

TANGENT: '97 California wines

TT is a World Designer, but the lines between World and Content are constantly eroding.

He's trying to learn everything as it comes up.

TT played CoH at launch, a Rad/Rad defender was his first.

"Are there any eras you'd like to design for, ala Cimiora being ancient rome?"

TT is a fan of middle eastern stuff. "Something like old Babylon would be awesome. With the towers an hanging gardens and ziggurauts and lapis lazuli."

I'd like to take a note to remind you all that ziggurats are bad for your health. And I spelled lapis lazuli right on the first try.

Zwill wants to see some ancient Indian stuff.

TT likes weird hodgepodges, combing high tech and medieval. It's one of his favorite things. In one of The Agency maps he put a Buddhist temple on top of a skyscraper.

"I'm a huge sucker for fantasy. I like gritty low fantasy."

"Ultimately I like anything I can make a crazy statement with. I like making outlandish areas, just on the edge of reality. Absurd, but you can imagine it existing just barely."

THINKTANK DOES NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH PVP.

Talk about the moonbase ends with:

Zwill: "Well we have..."

TT: "We can't talk about that."

Mention of the Blood of the Black Stream.

Everyone is trying to find the date the Halloween trial ends: November 2nd.

TT: "Long enough to get sick of it."

"Central zone as a gathering place for incarnate trials?"

Zwill says they have talked about it, but they want to encourage team-up teleporter.

They don't want to try and shift where players hang out.

TT: "To give a steady stream of new content we're reusing a lot of old areas, revitalizing places people don't really go any more instead of making a new zone. I can't name names."

Talk about using city locations in some of the trials/task forces,

1:29 ArachnosCommander: You should destroy Boomtown. More.

1:30 Turgenev: Dark Astoria. Technically, except for a small few week window about five years ago, noone has ever actually SEEN the zone.

1:30 jbtrimar: Work on Boomtown. I don't think those buildings should still be smoking after 7 years

Zwill: "Psychoti is essentially asking do you hate heroes, villains, or both?"

TT: "I played mostly villains because I wanted to be a Corruptor."

He's gone blueside now.

Talk about how Mercy Island isn't his favorite zone and how he gets out ASAP.

TT spent all his PP on Barbarian and CoT costumes.

Zwill just got Crushing Uppercut.

psychoti: Q: (just a clarification) That's not really what I meant, I meant as a world designer, do you prefer working on areas with more of a darker tone, a lighter tone, or something that is a mixture of both

TT: "I'm a sucker for color."

1:34 CoHSteelclaw-1: You heard it hear first! TYE DYE ZONE in Issue 22!

TT: "You can do dark and gritty, but do vibrant at the same time."

TT: "It's on the evil overlord list. Confuse the people by dressing in bright colors. Walk around with M. Bison shoulder pads dressed in bright pink and yellow. You’d be TERRIFIED of that guy."

ArachnosCommander: Q: Can we get a rainbow zone that rains rainbow raindrops? with rainbow unicorns that shoot rainbow lazers from their eyes?

TT: "You've guessed it, exactly! That's what I'm working on!"

Quote:

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

thanks VK

As for tomorrow's event, can someone knock me out until it is live because I want to play it so much.

Thank you, VK.

Shame about the Circle of Thorns pieces.

Welcome to the ranks of the red names, ThinkTank. We look forward to providing you with more feedback - and we're all eagerly anticipating the new Halloween event.

Oh, and "Evil Mardi Gras Mages" is a perfectly appropriate description of the new CoT.

I take a small measure of pride in saying something weird enough during each Ustream that VK thinks worthy of inclusion in his recaps.

But I REALLY didn't think that snark of mine was gonna make it in this one!

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Hmm... Big nosed, kilt wearing, samurai with a guilt complex? Sounds like my next character costume!

Also, I'm confused, did TT confirm we're getting nothing else of the CoT's or did he say we are but he can't talk about it?

finally, Think Tank, I highly encourage that if you ever can, talk to the Devs about a Babylon themed zone or iTrial. I mean it's implied in the lore that Gilgamesh was the first Incarnate.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Think Tank gave an unintended clue about the SSA mastermind

Thanks again

Thanks again for the recap.

Thank you for sharing these highlight, Von Krieger!

He DOES look like Jack Black

However, and this a big however; Circle of Thorns colours badly need looking at again.
The minions and LTs are fine. But dear god the Bosses nearly gave me an aneurism. I mean, Ruin Mages? And ESPECIALLY the Death Mages. What part of 'Black and PINK is not scary!' doesn't kick in, here? Blue and yellow/orange just clash horrifically. I mean, can someone send these guys a colour wheel? Please?

(Give me your job, damn your eyes!! )

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Thanks for the notes Should be cool

I will admit I, like ThinkTank, love sci fi and fantasy blends, one thing I think that most infamous of RPG series does excellently, Final Fantasy