City Of Heroes Freedom Friday: 2/10/12 - Did You Know That CoH Is A Clone? Neither Did I!

They can afford to be. A lot of the things that the Distinguished Competition and the Competition that Once-owned-this-game want to do is get themselves up to the functionality found in this game.

If you follow the leader, you can be fairly transparent about that fact. You can even telegraph when you are going to take a new route, because you are fairly sure the leader will be unable to change course to match you (Don't be surprised if the leader makes a course correction or two when he doesn't see you in his rear view mirror anymore, I have no doubt that the CtO-o-t-g started cursing up a storm when CoH went Freedom, since their going free was their only chance catch up, and now they are in the dust again). If you are the leader, you need to play things a little closer to the vest to keep the guys following you guessing.

Fair enough. Still does not diminish the frustration of being in the dark all the time.

Oh, god, no, we're not. And it boggles me that anyone can even begin to think we are...

Technically, we've gotten to see 4 new darkness-themed powersets upcoming in the next Issue on the Beta Server, so that's kind of like being in the dark.

/em gibbsmack

There's a difference between "not knowing what they're doing" and "not doing what you think they should be doing." Your response smacks more of the latter, and isn't really useful beyond "I don't like it because I don't like it."

I see what you did there!

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

I have gotten VERY used to the idea that every wednesday when I come home from work, I'm going to spend an hour with UStream watching that day's recording. I've just gotten far too much info, insight into the underpinnings of the game, and the personalities behind the Red Names and the challenges they face to *NOT* "do my part" and tune in every week to watch the recordings.

My favorite guests to have on the broadcast (in no particular order) are:
Dr. Aeon
Synapse
Tunnel Rat

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

No, my response smacks of, "They have terrible ideas about what "usability" means. Also: history? Why would you want a history of something you spent money on?" Quite frankly, if you look around the forums or ask around in-game, you'll find pretty much everyone agrees with me.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Kinda hard to ASK questions to a recorded Ustream... Like I said...I work Mon-Fri 8A-5P. I already watch the Ustream or read the notes form it every week.

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

Maybe you should just open your eyes.

/Agreed

I tried a few times to get in on this but missed it due to work. I finally got to ask some questions a week ago. I can't believe I went to lunch late just for that.

It's a good idea, but questions rarely get answered.

I'd suggest they just have more regular updates. I'm sure they have development meetings, maybe filter the notes through marketing and update us every two weeks.

Edit:\

Thank you Zwill for answering some questions. It wa smuch more time effective to take 2 minutes to read your post than the hour it takes to read through the run around on Freedom Fridays.

...few people end up working within their major, but here you are- not just a community manager, but a for a *gaming* community. You don't get much more drama than that.

Any more methodical and cautious and rigor mortis would set in. Truth be told, I thought base improvements were pretty much dead until these last two QoL items happened. Any way to maintain the recent momentum?

Mine Would be if you kindly please take your hands off my eyes now. Because I hope there is more than a cake when you lift them.

What kind of base improvements would you be looking for? I'd wager that "adding new items" to bases (and adding new tilesets) would possibly be the easier changes, since it should be just adding data to existing datasets, but anything else probably would get really wonky really fast.

Take, for example, trying to make base raids feasible again. Even if all the code issues were addressed, you'd have the issue that, since that idea was conceived, we've allowed base item placement in ways that would be easily exploitable in raids-- to the point that you'd need to either create a validator that would flag a base as "raid-compatible" or not (or invalidate so many of the creative base designs that we have out there.

So... maybe make bases more of a "social space?" with more interactions with objects (like click-to-sit-on-chairs, etc).... you know... make them something that will get USED more often... well, that runs into one of the other issues with bases- according to Positron, they consume more resources than other instanced maps... and from what I can see via my end, he's right- for many of these bases with staggering numbers of items, it consumes a LOT more resources.

That's not necessarily bad, but additional resources means additional costs.... and in a FreetoPlay system, you try to stress the opposite- encourage play that takes less resources.

When you realize the resources that are just used to instantiate an extremely-decorated base just so a character can rez in the base and run out the nearest teleporter, it really does seem to be a ridiculous waste (and I AM one of those people that loves to tinker with ridiculous base settings). I'd half expect them to offer new base enhancements that'll let you use the base teleporters, storage, & medbay without ever entering the base, just to eliminate this drain. Whether that would be seen as a "base improvement" by the people that use bases, though, remains to be seen.

I agree with this. My favorite guests tend to be Synapse and Second Measure.

I am glad the FX team knows that we hate the Hasten FX, and that we want pool customization. Now if they would only do something about it. I REALLY wish the producers would allow them to move forward on this, even if it has to be purchased in the market to get it done.

Hmm.... well, you'd have to consider how the wall styles would fit on the new room structures. will they stretch or contract poorly on the curved/angled surfaces? If so, and you have to add code to address when these shapes appear, you're probably stumbling toward legacy code that's best classified as "for GOD's SAKE, MAN, DO NOT TOUCH THIS!"

Then again, if you just added large angular and curved pieces to the "floor/ceiling trim" you could get close to a rounded-corner or even octogonal look. You're just adding more data options to the existing data sets (if they haven't run out of identifiers)...

Good post with several valid points. Since you asked me specifically, I'll respond one last time (this subject is near and dear to my heart but I don't want to threadjack this too much... we can take this to the base construction forum if you wish).

First off, there are lots of bad consequences from a "systems" perspective with continuing with the status quo. With mounds of prestige piling up with absolutely nothing to spend it on but decorating, nobody should be surprised that mansions of glory have spung up everywhere consuming considerable server resources. Next, add in limited storage capacity and next to nothing in terms of supergroup activities and rewards and people (especially the devs) should expect major growth in solo bases. And, I'm sorry but, it will take more than banning offine sg invites to stem this tide which is another "bad thing" according to the devs. The "do nothing" alternative is not really as attractive as it might first appear.

I'm going to forego the temptation to list bullets (again) to answer the question of what I'm looking for. Suffice to say that has been done many times over... mostly to no avail (although many of the included ideas are quite good; see base construction forum stickies). Ultimately, what I'm really looking for is a change in mindset. I'm looking for a dev that won't do "the pained eye roll" every time you mention bases face to face. I'm looking for a dev that can look beyond liability and see opportunity. I'm looking for a dev that sees that supergroups tie in very nicely to the lore of comics in general and can tie in nicely to the lore of this game. There once was such a "vision". But it's been warped by players after being largely abandoned by the devs. I'm looking for it to come back. Will it? I dunno.

And with that, I'm out.

The comment referenced above had to be a joke when it was originally made, right? Whips are too hard to do because there's nowhere to hang them on the body? What?

I have characters who run around with swords, sledgehammers, axes, and assault rifles all apparently strapped to their backs in some sort of invisible sheaths, but we can't have whips because there is nowhere to hang them on the body?

Again I say... what???

My guess is that they'll have a role in the Coming Storm, also known as The Battalion. As the Lost took the same mutation as Hero 1 did from the Rikti. Azuria's wand.