City Of Heroes Freedom Friday: 12/30/11

Here we go!

Welcome to Freedom Friday, where we answer your City of Heroes Freedom™ questions!

Magnus Löfstrand: Any chance of adding a permanent version of the "instant snowstorm" temp power to the store? The permanent snowball is nice, but the snowstorm would suit my cold dominiation/ice blast defender better :-)

City of Heroes: No plans at this time, however it's an interesting idea!

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Joe Blowski: Hello

So the character unlocks to play ? It says I have 2 for the server and 2 global unlocks. Does that mean I can unlock 4 of my characters on one server if I want to or 2 on a server and the other 2 have tom be on different servers ? Also if I unlock someone can I lock them again and unlock a different character or once unlocked are they unlocked for good ?

Thanks

Jen 'Ael' Davies: Unlocked for good. You only get 2 toons total as a free player, but any slots that have been unlocked/purchased beforehand will still be available to keep once free.

City of Heroes: Yes, if you have two character slots on one server, plus two Global Character Slot Tokens, you can unlock up to four characters on one server, or two on one server and spread the global unlocks across other servers. Once you unlock a character, they will remain unlocked and you cannot lock them again unless you become VIP, then switch back to Premium. This will allow you to rechoose your characters.

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Patrick Toman: Are we getting close to a patch that will fix the power tray emptying bug?

City of Heroes: We are working on a fix for the issue. Thank you for your patience.

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Lynn Owens: Whats the point of having a free account if you cant do anything on a free account all my toons are useless till i re-u... just saying lol

City of Heroes: Free players have access to much of the 7 years of content, can play to level 50, have access to teams, and much more! Not all content is unlocked for Free players, however, and there are some advantages to being a Premium or VIP player.

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Russ Petersen: Are there any plans to revamp the other 5 Signature Character Task forces? Positron is extremely well done and fun now that it's been redone and broken into 2 parts. The other TFs are... not.

City of Heroes: We'll be sure to update players on any changes made to TFs!

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Adam Wilkie: why does my toon have the inventor badge but i cant invent anything without a liscense/

Eric Sutton: The inventor badge just means you have went through the invention tutorial, nothing more.

City of Heroes: As Eric Sutton said, the Inventor badge is granted for completing the Invention System tutorial. The Invention System is available as a 30-day license in the Paragon Market™, as a Tier 7 bonus on the Paragon Rewards Tree, or automatically granted to VIPs.

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Janus Søndergaard Hjorth: Regarding the VIP loyalty program "Salute to Statesman", I have a question: I recently finished active subscription, which means that I stopped auto-paying to the game and then today bought 6´1 months of game time. DURING THIS WHOLE PERIOD I HAVE NOT STOPPED BEING A VIP, so my question is if I still have a chance at the Loyalty program?

Savannah Smith: The Loyalty stuff is granted to those who maintain a paid subscription for the specified time period. So yes, remain a VIP, and you get the items.

City of Heroes: I apologize, I might've missed your question earlier. That is correct; VIPs who maintain their subscription, unbroken, from December 1, 2011 through March 31, 2012 will receive the Salute to Statesman Loyalty items.

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Eric Horvath: well we ever get a Mu EAT, or at least an option to the electric powersets to have that Mu style lightning?

City of Heroes: We know it's something that's been requested. Nothing to report on that at this time.

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Eric Horvath: also will the female widow's male costume slots ever get fixed? im not buying a supertailor JUST to fix it.

City of Heroes: Regarding the female Widows, I'll pass it along.

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Tim Lehnerer: With the coming death of Statesman, are we likely to see a vengeance-crazed Lord Recluse try to kill his killer (for depriving him of the chance to take Statesman out himself)?

City of Heroes: You'll have to wait and see.

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Savannah Smith: When are you going to proliferate this to Twitter and Google+? I know a number of folks who don't have FB accounts, and would like to ask questions.

City of Heroes: We have been considering doing something along these lines for our Twitter account. We will also be promoting our Google+ page in the new year, so if you have Google+, stay tuned!

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Nezz Constantine: Do you have any new Melee Armor sets planned in the near future? Seems like we have been getting a lot of attacks with titan weapons, Kinetic Melee, Street justice and such but no new armor set to pair them with.

Savannah Smith: Nezz, I wouldn't expect it. They said they've spent quite a bit of time with Melee, and it's time to move to other stuff, like range or control. They'll come back to Melee eventually, but the others need love, too.

City of Heroes: Nothing to say about defensive sets just yet.

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Alan Thixton: Are there any more power sets coming out soon? Also as a VIP, I have never used the free to play option. But I have a child with autism and he likes it, should I try it with him? It or will we be unequal?

Savannah Smith: Staff Meele, Darkness Control and (I think it's named) Darkness Assault are coming with I22.

City of Heroes: Darkness Control will be the upcoming free Power Set for VIPs, coming with Issue 22. Staff Melee will be released during the timeframe of Issue 22.

City of Heroes: Savannah Smith, Staff Melee will not be released with Issue 22, but during the timeframe of Issue 22. Apologies for any confusion from previous Freedom Friday answers. Also, Darkness Assault is Power Proliferation.

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Jeff Smith: I22 coming in feb or march? Also, when are next incarnate slots open for business? And can you all please nerf the sewers?

Savannah Smith: Current plans are to start I22 Beta in mid- to late January.

City of Heroes: No plans at this time for changes to Death From Below. Issue 22 VIP Beta will be early next year; no release date for I22 just yet. Please look forward to the Beta!

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Brian Getzmeyer: Any chance we might see a revamp of some older powers set. I mean why would people choose Katana when there is all these new mechanics for Dual Blades and Titan weapons.

City of Heroes: Existing Power Sets may receive tweaks, however you will not likely see complete revamps of a Power Set's mechanics. Each Power Set offers different strengths and unique play.

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Chuck Ganoe: With the changes coming to Dark Astoria, what is planned for Adamaster, will he be moved to somewhere else for a chance at his defeat badge or will he only be in the echo version of the zone?

Savannah Smith: Adamastor will still be there, but he won't be the focus anymore. Instead, Mot will be.

City of Heroes: I don't believe we've announced what will become of Adamaster, but we will definitely let players know where to find him post-revamp.

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David Mason: Permanent snowball is nice, but what I really want is permanent Jingle Jet!

City of Heroes: That's one request for permanent Instant Snowstorm, and one request for permanent Jingle Jet today. Seems like players would like holiday powers year-round...

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Nezz Constantine: Will you ever consider increasing the the base item cap from 20,000 to something higher like 60,000? Given the seriousness of base building among a large crowd of players and the massive base plots allotted to us, there is no way to possible even moderately decorate an entire maximum base plot nicely without hitting the item cap 1/4th of the way decorating the maximum plot.

City of Heroes: I'll ask about it. I'm not sure how much of a resource increase that would create per base, however; more items requires more server resources. That being said, I have seen some wonderful bases created within the cap; check out some of our Base Spotlights on the website for examples!

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Derron EJ Burns: Why couldnt I buy the vip pack it said something about we cant and i really want it....

City of Heroes: Which VIP pack? The VIP Starter Kit from the NCsoft Store?

Derron EJ Burns: Yeah it wouldnt let me...

City of Heroes: You should be able to purchase the VIP Starter Kit. Please note that the Starter Kit can only be used to activate NEW accounts, and cannot be used with an existing Premium or VIP account.

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Paul Pacheco: Wondering...what is ( if any) the purpose of those blue volcano things in the WINTER EVENT? I know they fling youinto the air...but am I missing anyhting???

City of Heroes: The vents allow you to reach areas above you. That's all. If you fall off the slopes, for example, or just reach the bottom after your run, you can use them to propel yourself back up to the top.

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Savannah Smith: When will we get: Big Red Ball, Carp Melee/Carp Armor, and Dual Archery?

City of Heroes: I don't know about the Big Red Ball and Carp Melee/Armor, but I think Dual Archery is out of the cards at this point. I thought I heard someone just before break talking about Quad Archery...(just kidding, just kidding)

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Savannah Smith: Also: Claws and Katana/Ninja Blade - When will they get some love, and have more weapon choices?

City of Heroes: Nothing to report on weapon options for Claws, Katana, or Ninja Blade at this time.

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Eric Horvath: Will there ever be an incarnate license? Hardly worth paying the VIP just for that system alone. Unless it is exclusive, which would be a bummer.

Savannah Smith: AFAIK, Incarnte stuff is VIP Exclusive.

City of Heroes: Incarnate content is VIP only. There are no plans for an Incarnate License.

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Yves Marquez: Is there a way for new player to Join a supergroup even though they are not vip? And will there be patch for fixing the bug for mastermind pets ?

City of Heroes: Premium players who unlock Tier 2 of the Paragon Rewards Tree are able to join Supergroups. Free players start with one Paragon Rewards Token; your first purchase of Paragon Points (any amount) will grant you a second Paragon Rewards Token and make you a Premium player, allowing you to join Supergroups. (Subsequent purchases of 1200 Paragon Points grant 1 bonus Paragon Rewards Token per)

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Stephen Manning: Have you given any thoughts to adding additional rewards the tier 9 VIP rewards other then just the exclusive costume sets.. things like powersets (non exclusive obviously), enhancement storage slots, character slots, invention salvage slots, costume slots, system unlocks (like cape/aura unlocks) and other things of that nature.

City of Heroes: Thus far, we have announced costume sets for the Tier 9 VIP Rewards. As rewards get closer to cycling out, we'll announce what's coming up next.

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Savannah Smith: Are there any plans to have a handy dandy web interface for the Paragon Market, like a certain other super hero MMO developed by Cryptic has?

City of Heroes: An out-of-game store? It's definitely been one of the biggest requests we've heard. There's a lot of moving parts behind something like that, however. We are always looking to make the Paragon Market™ interface more accessible, but at this time I don't have anything to report on a web store.

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Alan Thixton: I would like to be able to buy cards for VIP time and store points at wallyworld (WalMart) and gamestop or spot or whatever....i can never find them there or they are out of stock. I need to spread the C O H peeps!

City of Heroes: If you can find NCsoft timecards, they will be honored.

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Simon McCoy: So will my Tier 1 Zombies ever get pants? The poor things freeze in the winter ...

City of Heroes: Zombies don't feel the cold. Which is probably lucky for them in this weather...aside from having to be a zombie.

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Eliseo Chavez: Are we going to be able to test all of I22 on the upcoming ViP Beta Update?

Savannah Smith: AFAIK, they always have the entire issue available for testing in Beta. It might come in parts and pieces, but eventually, it's all there.

City of Heroes: We haven't announced which parts of Issue 22 Beta we'll be rolling out when, but VIP players will be able to test all of Issue 22 before it goes Live.

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Kaitlyn Montenegro: Here i am again...
With the mandatory question:
...
Hmmmm...
Drank too much beer... I will revert to my previous mandatory question...
Can we Vips get a movement power that lets us transform free players into ponies and ride then?

City of Heroes: We were working on something like that, but someone fired a shoulder-mounted hamster into the box containing that code. It's all lost now. So, no, no transforming Free players into ponies and riding them around Paragon City.

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Tim Lehnerer: Will there ever be any moonbase / space station / spaceship content? I'd love to get into orbit and pummel fascists.

City of Heroes: Well you see, the truth about the moonbase is [REDACTED]

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Nezz Constantine: Here is a super serious issue I have, I hope to get some insight.

Does NCSoft have any plans on changing their password policy for game log in to be able to include special characters and a greater password length than 13 characters? As a... CNS graduate, I find it very unsettling that the password policy is not very strong. Especially for some one like me who has had a lot invested in time and items in the game. I iz scurred to be hacked in other words.

City of Heroes: NCsoft and Paragon Studios takes our users' account security EXTREMELY seriously; we have several security measures in place to help prevent unauthorized access of customer data. While I am not aware of any changes to password length or special characters upcoming, please rest assured that NCsoft keeps password data very secure.

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Brian Getzmeyer: Is construction in Steel Canyon ever gonna finish? I mean, only took a day for Atlas to be revamped. What the heck are they building that take this long for construction.

City of Heroes: Construction workers gotta keep busy!

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Savannah Smith: I've seen some confusion, in-game, about how to obtain Maelstrom's Pistol. Specifically, the ability to purchase it in Ouroboros.

My thought is that in order to see the recipe for sale, you have to A) Be on a character that uses Dual Pistols (Dual Pistols Blaster, Defender, or Corruptor, or a Thugs Mastermind), and B) Have the badge awarded for running the TPN Trial.

Is this correct?

City of Heroes: You should be on a Dual Pistols character when you visit Empyrean Michael.

Savannah Smith: Ah, no need to comlpete TPN? Nice! I shall report back to those who were wondering! Thanks again!

City of Heroes: You do have to complete TPN for it, WITH that Dual Pistols character. Sorry for any confusion. Also please be aware that the purchase from Empyrean Michael is not account wide.

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J Brandon Miller: While NCsoft Timecards would be honored on the rare chance you can find them in your area, they only count towards subscription time. I feel that there is a large portion of the playerbase that would take advantage of buying Paragon Points ...if we could find them at our local Walmart in card form at current price scale or better.

Personally, I wouldn't mind dropping a hundred or so dollars per account if I could do it all at once with Paragon Point Cards from a local retailer, and not be confined to the interface we have now.

Savannah Smith: There's a thread on the forums about Point Cards. They know we want them. They know we want them bad.

City of Heroes: The idea of Paragon Points cards is something that I know has come up, however unfortunately I don't have any further information.

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Jay BoH: Any hints if we will be able to purchase an account-wide midnighter's badge to get into Cimerora? I think I speak for a lot of people - we are tired of running that arc for every single character.

City of Heroes: We have definitely heard player request on that.

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Alan Thixton: Any plans to bring coh to consoles?

City of Heroes: There are no plans for a console version of City of Heroes Freedom.

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Rutager Jones: I'm sure this horse is long dead from serious beatings but when will bases get some love again ? .................................................. ..........................
fingers crossed for the shooting range and targets from the Rikti Warzone base and user made NPCs to walk around their bases or man control consoles :]

City of Heroes: We recently showed bases some love with the vertical placement of items, something that had been a big request from players. We definitely want to show bases and base builders more love in the future.

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Savannah Smith: We have the Ski Chalet for Winter. Any plans for a Party Pool for Summer? And maybe something for Spring and Fall, as well? And speaking of Base Love: I'd LOVE to have an option to have displays of SG member costumes, like you can find in the Batcave in Batman comics.

City of Heroes: The 'costumes' idea for bases is interesting. I am not sure how feasible it is, however. As for a "Summer" area in Pocket D, it's something that we have heard the request for; it came up at the Player Summit. It'd definitely beat running to Faultline to have a pool party, wouldn't it?

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Jay BoH: Any idea when more info will come out regarding the tier 9 power for Dark Control?

City of Heroes: As we get closer towards I22 Beta. The tier 9 power is very cool, and we're definitely excited to show you all!

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Magnus Löfstrand: The Winter Holiday pack doesn't contain any of the special event badges, right? I ended up collecting lots of candy canes and bought the majority of event costume pieces because I wanted the special badges attached to them. Just need to know that I didn't waste my time :-P

Savannah Smith: Correct. No badges are to be sold on the market, except Knowledgeable.

Magnus Löfstrand: Thanks. At least now I know that I didn't waste my time gathering enough candy canes to get the 4 new characters I've made since last year the full set of event badges from the candy keeper (and running around killing frostlings and opening gifts for those badges).

City of Heroes: To add to what Savannah Smith said, when we were working on the model for City of Heroes Freedom, we had a lot of talks about what would and would not go into the Paragon Market. We made the decision early on to never put badges (outside of Knowledgeable, which is free) on the Paragon Market. Gating badges with Paragon Points is something that we will not do.

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Ron Cameron: Will the LFG function ever be improved? I mean will there ever be a possibility to enter missions while waiting in queue? Other *unnamed* games have this as an option.

Savannah Smith: They said at the Player Summit that being able to enter missions while in LFG is something they're working on. They really want us to have that option.

City of Heroes: As Savannah Smith said, we would like for players to have that option.

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Tim Lehnerer: I've tried using the Character Copy Tool multiple times to get characters on the beta server and it hasn't worked. Is there anything I can do to get it running for me?

Savannah Smith: Ah yeah. Reports on the forums are that the Copy Tool is looking to die again...

City of Heroes: We are currently looking into the Character Copy Tool. I do apologize for any inconvenience; it is something we are aware of and working on.

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Jay BoH: Do sales numbers determine the frequency of availability for items such as attuned enhancements?

City of Heroes: In a way, yes. Frequency of items also has to do with giving value to our customers; if we see that players would like more of a specific type of item in the Paragon Market, based off requests and sales, we do look at that.

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Ron Cameron: As a suggestion, How about a 'chains' weapon option for melee characters, in the future?

City of Heroes: Chain melee would be similar to whip melee. (In fact, a chain could be a substitute whip model) The problem with whip melee is that the animations for it are difficult. We actually tried to before; it unfortunately did not lo...ok very good modeling and animating a physical whip that would lash out on attack, then coil up. It was a bit easier with the fire whip that Demon Summoning Masterminds use, because it doesn't need to coil up afterwards; it just dissipates. A chain would present the same problems as a physical whip.

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Tim Lehnerer: And lastly, who put the bomp in the bomp ba bomp ba bomp? Who put the rama in the rama lama ding dong? Who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop? Is it possibly the same person for all three?

City of Heroes: I have no idea, but I'd like to shake his hand.

J Brandon Miller: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usgKxVkvjiw

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