Coffee talk highlights March 14 2012

-just- missed watching the damn thing live, sooo hitting up the recording. Some decent goodies already

First thing, the Pummit is going to have a lot of giveaways: computer mice, keyboards, and a couple graphics cards.

Attendees may have a chance to play an upcoming Incarnate Trial. It's still being worked on though.

Pen and paper roleplaying games will be going on, different gaming stations. A whole gaming night. Zwillinger will have Flux. positron will run a pen and paper game. Think Tank and Protean will be DM'ing too. It'll all be first come first serve. No rock paper scissors.

Positron has done an interview. The death of all podcasting is fact checking. They felt the questions were good, targeted properly at the game. Team teleporter thing is coming (ASSEMBLE!) Not a giant leprechaun.

The panther stealth power additional tray shall be the Pop-up Powerbar (PUP). They can do different things with the tray, giving additional powers for things like using a temp power (Lambda acids/nades) or gray out powers and give you different ones. That'll work well for personal story missions, letting you use their powers without your powers interfering. Or a mechasuit power, let you use the suits powers. Zombieman suggests using it for the flying disc.

Zwill suffers some brain failure from lack of coffee. Kirkland was a potential name for Paragon Studios. Positron doesn't like Krispy Kreme.

There will be a panel for making a case to revamp zones. Why revamp King's Row? it's the logical progression from Atlas Park. it needs a bit of a scrubbing, modernize things a bit. he would love to pick Perez Park, put a crater where the forest maze was. Bit too radical for a simple revamp though. The devs do want to nuke Perez Park though. I22 was supposed to be Perez Park and Dark Astoria but they realized they only had enough manpower/resources to focus on one.

Mechasuit costume: Positron was a fan of Robotech when it was still called Macross. Never been a big fan of Battletech. Zwill used to like mechwarrior, prefers faster paced mech games.

Questions!

Q: banana control power set? Positron eats bananas for lunch

Q: When will art be submitted to the UStream art thread? Zwill hasn't checked it in a while.

Q: Can we have left/right shoulder or glove options? Assymetrical options eat up a lot of texture space. Lowers the texture resolution to a level that's un-acceptable (In most cases) Few and far between. Fire and ice set has some. They are the exceptionr ather than the rule

Q: Whose idea was it to change 800 pts for the leprachaun? Don't recall. pricing is mostly set by the business team but it goes up for review. Time to time, stuff will go up where players don't agree with the price. This is the first time they've done a pet with a buff, did not know where to set the bar. always easiest to set it too high and pull it back down. The price will be re-evaluated if it doesn't sell. Everything in the store goes on sale at some point in time. Maybe not the pet, but seeing it in the future it might be lower price based on feedback and reaction.

Q: 3 extra enhancement slots broke stuff badly. Has it been shelved? yes. Too much work for them to get that to work.

Q: how much time does it take to get an issue to work, is it immediate or does it take some time? Between 4 and 6 months to work on an issue depending on who is available and what projects are going.

Q: Will we see new tip missions? Some of the writers have asked to do tip missions. Don't know where it is on the schedule. Not just writing missions, designing them from the ground up, implementing, testing, etc.

Q: Praetorian flashbacks? There's a tech problem with phasing that they're trying to hammer out. if that's figured out then they can do the flashbacks. Till then, not happening.

Q: Can some flashback missions be made to use mayhem/safeguard maps? They're looking at it to see if they can be done in flashback. Dr. Aeon needs to do more research on them.

Q: Will we ever look at moving Ustream sessions to a site that doesn't pop-up ads? positron suggests a kickstarter. Google+ a possibility but only when they flip the hangout function over. Ustream is the best solution available and most cost efficient and most tools. other options are pricey or lacking needed features that work out of the box.

Q: New incarnate content: are new powers going to use new currencies? No new currency, just keeping astrals and empyreans.

Q: With new tech, can we get a mech as a travel power? Can look into it. Something with the costume change stuff and PUP, stuff is aligning to happen. Problem with mechs in our game: they cannot go backwards.

Q: Will the current incarnate salvage work for future incarnate powers? Not sure about incarnate salvage. Arbiter Hawk is the guy to ask. We don't want to add new currency to the game, but its a challenge to figure out how the new slots challenging to acquire but still using the new currency. Positron and Hawk were discussing it. Going to beta with 1 thing to see how it works out, contingencies will be in place in case it proves to be unpopular.

Q: Will the last 5 incarnate slots be saved for the Battalion content or will we get to see them released with remaining praetorian trials? One will be released with a remaining praetorian trial. Guaranteed.

planning is done with varying degrees of roughness through Issue 34. Files being generated for 23 and 24. Actual physical work up to 2 issues at a time, planning far out in advance. Big picture planning is done many months in advance.

Contest launching today! very similar to last billboard contest but this time it's a movie poster contest. Create a movie poster for an unknown reason and submit it to possibly be put in the game (FOREVER). it's a movie that would exist in the City of Heroes universe. Your pallette is wide open, not tied to any lore or existing companies etc. Just 'what a movie made in the CoH universe would be'. Pick 10 finalists, ANY of the 10 (tho not all) will appear. 1st place will be a year of VIP status, 2nd place will be 6 months, 3rd place be 3 months. Everybody in top 10 will get at least 1 month of VIP. Even if a poster isn't used, may use the idea behind it.

Q: Mention of Rularuu and the Well through the new dialogue with Prometheus is there a chance for the Shadow Shard to get a revamp that makes it an Incarnate Zone like Dark Astoria? There is story coming involving the Shadow Shard

Q: Certain tempowers like the jetpack, any chance of it as a static costume power? Looking at some parts based on jet packs.

Q: Will the new powersets be proliferated to AE? Yes. Usually takes time to get implemented there. Bug Dr. Aeon.

Q: Fix ALL the wings. The wings scrunch up when using ninja/beast run. Solution: Don't use them!

Q: Finished mealplanning for the weekend? Meal by meal basis!

Q: What's taking staff fighting so long to come out? We have a cadence with putting out power sets, don't want to release a ton of power sets at once and not have anything for the rest of the year. Stuff timed as to when they want it to come out.

Q: Update the old Freedom Phalanx costumes? Probably not. Recent interview had them reconcept out Positron's armor. An idea of redoing some stuff. Decision comes down to 'Redo an old character or make a new character' they will tend towards the new characters. Dr. Aeon will kill them all anyway.

Q: Are you looking at the pace of incarnate progress in Dark Astoria? Earning rate in DA is based on 'Trials are better and faster', always been the mantra. The rate has been discussed and tweaked, they're happy with the end result. Some changes are coming, Arbiter Hawk added something in that'll make it slightly faster. The solo path is always going to be slower than Incarnate trials. Not everybody agrees, but that's alright, it's a decision the devs have chosen.

Q: Didn't quite hear the question, something about unique costume pieces. Something given to a Freedom Phalanx member would be something not given to players whereas something involved with a new villain group they'll keep an eye on for giving to players eventually, so any new villain group has the potential to be new costume stuff.

Q: A lot of people requesting to make catalysts account bound rather than character bound. Proposal on the table that's being discussed on Friday. There is no such thing as accountbound salvage atm. It'd have to be a voucher character time, how do you make it a drop? Current idea: You get one dropped, you can turn it in for an account bound voucher.

Q: How would you feel about adding shards to the Dark Astoria drops? Phasing them out entirely. Change the old trials and the WST? We'll see. As we unlock the higher tier stuff then yes, getting through the lower tier stuff shouldn't be a slog. Ramping up the drop rates is something they'll look at doing. Something to do after 1 or 2 more slots have opened up.

And that's all!

This could be the Tyrant Trial - or the Hamidon Trial - or both in one Trial

Mechapowersuits?
SQUEE!!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Golden Girl This could be the Tyrant Trial - or the Hamidon Trial - or both in one Trial

I'd actually say both at once seems likely. Like maybe once we take down Cole we basically break Praetoria's last line of defense and have to stop Hamidon ourselves. For bittersweet ending: despite our best efforts, Hamidon still ends up killing enough of Praetoria that humanity is doomed there with no hope of recovery.

For less ambiguity, Cole has become so obsessed with destroying us, he's completely neglected his duty to keep Hamidon at bay, so we need to defeat Hamidon while Cole harasses the trial groups.

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.

Devoured Tyrant.

Calling it now.

One comment missed was that the newer powersets will be proliferated to AE... just not idea when.

Thanks for the write-up!

I want:
New costumes for Freedom Phalanx. They suck. Big time!
Shadow shard revamped.
Catalyst to account vouchers.

From the way they worded it, it sounds like there are at least 2 more Praetorian Trials still to come.

It's about the same height as the leprechaun - but imagine it the size of the Kronos Titan as an avatar of the Well that's created by Tyrant trying to take too much power from the Well - that'd look cool, especially if the fight was in Tyrant's lava lair - that'd be a really neat way of bringing the Praetorian content full circle.

Or it's a representation of the Well personified. In his latest discussion about Incarnate stuff Prometheus very clearly refers to the Well we're drawing from as a "he".

Q: 3 extra enhancement slots broke stuff badly. Has it been shelved? yes. Too much work for them to get that to work.

Boo

This saddens me.

Here is hoping they can do the whole catalyst/voucher thing.... my one toon has an excess of catalysts and the RNG hates the other toon which could use them.

Quote:

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