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Community => Task Force Hail Mary => Topic started by: downix on September 01, 2014, 09:01:52 PM

Title: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 01, 2014, 09:01:52 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on September 01, 2014, 09:11:17 PM
Wow.

I'm speechless.

You guys think big!

I'm hoping we can ask you some questions here (in terms of how this arrangement would work out), but I'll refrain until I see if it's okay.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Phaerius on September 01, 2014, 09:12:33 PM
Seems about what I'd hoped for, glad you guys are taking what you can get. Wish you all a bunch of luck and glad to hear that its familiar faces indeed that are doing this. I'm also really glad to hear that its going to be an umbrella to include all of the offspring projects.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Samuraiko on September 01, 2014, 09:13:45 PM
Um... wow.

I... errrr... wow.

(10 minutes later)

Okay, next question - "licensing the IP"... does that mean if, say, someone wanted to start writing books for the CoH IP, that spinoff company would be the one we'd talk to? Or is it solely for GAMING purposes?

(Yes I realize that's contingent on said sale actually going through.)

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 01, 2014, 09:13:51 PM
*fangirling* Keep doing what you do!!!! thank you for update!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 01, 2014, 09:14:20 PM
Thank you very much for all of the efforts that you have undertaken in order to bring City of Heroes back from the grave.

I don't really know what else to say. It's a shame we couldn't get i24, but that's more of an "oh well" than anything else. You've all done an exceedingly excellent job, and we really appreciate it.

If there's anything we can do to help, please let us know, but I get the feeling just cheering you guys on and being decent is going to be our best move at this point.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on September 01, 2014, 09:15:34 PM
Thank you.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lupur on September 01, 2014, 09:16:11 PM
downix

Thank you.

That is all.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sullster on September 01, 2014, 09:16:20 PM
Thank you for your efforts.

Looking forward to future updates no matter the outcome.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 01, 2014, 09:16:29 PM
Just want to say thank you for your efforts. What ever outcome happens, you will always have my gratitude
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on September 01, 2014, 09:16:42 PM
Thank you for fighting the good fight.  We're all here hoping you'll succeed. 

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: PopeJonPaul on September 01, 2014, 09:16:47 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Spatch1971 on September 01, 2014, 09:17:19 PM
My thanks to those involved, and for today's revelation and progress report.  I mainly lurk here on the forums, but felt compelled to post today and extend my well wishes to this group who have been fighting to resurrect CoH.  Keep up the great work!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Turgenev on September 01, 2014, 09:17:28 PM
Thank you, Nathaniel. The clarification is appreciated and welcome, and you have all the luck an old, retired Controller can muster.


-T.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sophronisba on September 01, 2014, 09:18:17 PM
This is pretty freaking impressive work. Kudos. No matter how it turns out, you guys rock.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkwave on September 01, 2014, 09:18:41 PM
Echoing the thoughts of many here, thank you so much for progressing this to this level. Fingers crossed everyone can get what they want!  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Biz on September 01, 2014, 09:19:34 PM
Thank you and good luck! If there's anything we can do in the meantime please let us know. Even if you just need us to wait faster!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 01, 2014, 09:19:43 PM
I will take issue 23. Ha, I would take issue 6. I would take issue 1! I will take anything!

[pssst, is there any chance we could work those I24 costume pieces in eventually... ?  8) ]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on September 01, 2014, 09:20:23 PM
This is....intriguing!
So many questions...but ... I'll keep my trap shut for now.

Very interesting stuff!

But..with Windows 9 supposedly being released very soon...some estimates at April, 2015, others say even earlier because of the flop that Windows 8 is...that really limits the time of this migration, I'm thinking. Or maybe it doesn't. No rule says we have to get Windows 9 right away - at least, I hope not.

Still, I have a bunch of questions and comments, but I have to absorb this...I'm swimming in it right now. It was a refreshing big toe dunk at first, now I'm splashing in the deep end wondering I should call out "Marco" and listen for "Polo"...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pearl Dragon on September 01, 2014, 09:23:06 PM

Still wanting, hoping, and not giving up.  Thank you!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Artillerie on September 01, 2014, 09:23:25 PM
Thank you for the news :) Wishing you all the best for the onward progress of the venture, it all sounds very interesting!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on September 01, 2014, 09:23:37 PM
To heck with it, I'm going to ask my questions. The worst that can happen is they can be ignored. :D

First, THANK YOU SO MUCH for the update. Win or lose, success or failure, at least you've made the effort and you've gone farther than anyone else has to this point. You have my gratitude-- and that of many others-- for making the effort. You have all given us hope in a dark time.


Questions:

1. When you say the other games will have the option to remove the "Spiritual" successor and go with something more official, will they be allowed to allowed to use the lore of COX (hero groups, villains, etc), and the various AT mechanics? Will they be buying a license to allow this?

2. Who will own the IP of COX? This will be a completely separate company from MWM?

3. If successful, will you continue working as part of MWM AND the COX venture?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fleur_uk on September 01, 2014, 09:23:39 PM
Thank you :) wow eeek .... :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 01, 2014, 09:24:02 PM
Thank you for all the time and effort you have put forth so far, and I hope everything goes well of course!

Er, are you really planning to migrate everyone off the original CoH right away when Windows 9 launches, or only years from now after everyone has universally adopted Windows 9, at which point CoH will no longer run for anyone because it won't be compatible with Win 9?   Because MS is showing off Win 9 publicly this September and wants to release it in 2015.  So how would you even get a reverse-engineered server completed for CoH before Win 9 launches?  I was figuring reverse-engineering would take 6 months to a year at a best-case scenario.

It's interesting that all the CoH spiritual successors may have the ability to reference CoH without penalty.  That could be opening a can of worms if they're not all ultimately high-quality games though.  I suspect NCSoft will do ongoing reviews of each game before it launches just in case. 

This sounds like it could be interesting, but it also all sounds a really long ways off.  I hope Team Hail Mary doesn't get harassed to death in the interim, and I wish the whole team the best of luck in getting CoH back and the sequels off the ground.  And even if it all comes to naught, I appreciate the time and dedication that everyone involved has shown.

Thanks, and have a great day!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 01, 2014, 09:24:18 PM
Um... wow.

I... errrr... wow.

(10 minutes later)

Okay, next question - "licensing the IP"... does that mean if, say, someone wanted to start writing books for the CoH IP, that spinoff company would be the one we'd talk to? Or is it solely for GAMING purposes?

(Yes I realize that's contingent on said sale actually going through.)

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
The goal is to have a spot to go for yes, writing books, licensing logos for shirts, etc.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tubbius on September 01, 2014, 09:27:30 PM
Best wishes on everything!  I23 Maintenance Mode can work.  Here's hoping we can access it, play it, and rebuild on it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 01, 2014, 09:27:58 PM
Downix, and everyone else at MWM, Ironwolf, and everybody that has been involved in this process so far (yes, that includes NCSoft):

Thank you.

Thank you for taking the time, and looking to do it right.

Thank you for the hope this brings.

Thank you for working to bring our home back.

I know there is a long way to go, and I know there is a lot more to do, and I know this idea isn't in the bag. I sincerely hope it works to everyone's satisfaction.

Thank you.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 01, 2014, 09:28:29 PM
I will do my best Wayne and Garth...

"We're not worthy!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: TheBeatnik on September 01, 2014, 09:28:46 PM
There's plenty to ponder here.

While I'm still digesting the news and speculating about implications, let me add my thanks to the team. Good luck, I'll be pulling for you guys.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: DemonCaller on September 01, 2014, 09:29:19 PM
I'm floored. At least the part of me that kept saying that this was yet another failed pass is floored.

You just gave me another reason to get my computer fixed to get back up and running. Maybe even get that flame orange case I started to get it last month.

Tying CoH into CoT and Valance? All I can say is " Holy Mother of God and Rassilon!" (it's what I say when I'm floored like this, k?) That is ambitious.....

I gotta admire you for thinking big...no matter what happens. Thank you!

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackout on September 01, 2014, 09:29:50 PM
I'm not sure as to whether Downix pulled a Nemesis or a Requiem here, but either way well done sir! And thank you very much for your efforts!
I will admit as well that it is very encouraging to finally hear something concrete about this deal and get confirmation that it is 101% real, so thanks very much for that too :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 01, 2014, 09:30:33 PM
Wooooot!


We're nearly there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mental Minister on September 01, 2014, 09:30:47 PM
Thanks for the update and for you hard work. As for now I will continue to wait patiently for the outcome.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on September 01, 2014, 09:31:38 PM
Okay. I guess I have one more question because it's unclear to me.

So "COX 1.5" would be a port of COX into the Unreal Engine. Does that mean there would be no official COX 2?

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 01, 2014, 09:32:28 PM
This is....intriguing!
So many questions...but ... I'll keep my trap shut for now.

Very interesting stuff!

But..with Windows 9 supposedly being released very soon...some estimates at April, 2015, others say even earlier because of the flop that Windows 8 is...that really limits the time of this migration, I'm thinking. Or maybe it doesn't. No rule says we have to get Windows 9 right away - at least, I hope not.

I would be willing to have a CoX-dedicated PC that I did nothing else with, but keep the game on.

Here's my question [rhetorical only at this point]: if we get the game back, are we going to be able to use the game version we have DLed on our PC, the original one I mean? Or would we have to buy and install a new one?

Is the old version so tied to our original accounts that we could not use it? I would happily buy a new copy, I'm just curious.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FourSpeed on September 01, 2014, 09:32:37 PM
Interesting news.

Thanks for the update, and your team's efforts, downix.

GL on finalizing the deal in the (relatively?) near future. 

It's a shame you can't seem to get the source code for I23/24 (something compilable at least). If it's
true that Win-9 would likely break the binary anyway, that seems like a fairly short-lived resurrection
(W9 is rumoured to release Q2-Q3 of 2015).

I suppose anything is better than nothing, but that news is both intriguing ... and disappointing in its way.

In any case that doesn't detract from the grattitude I feel for making those efforts - thank you.


Regards,
4
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lava-Lad on September 01, 2014, 09:33:03 PM
Thank you, Downix and the whole team!  Your approach has worked well enough to get this far, so keep up the good work and let us know when we can pop the corks!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amethyst.andi on September 01, 2014, 09:34:08 PM
Thank you so much, guys.  It is very much appreciated.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shifter on September 01, 2014, 09:34:13 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: r00tb0ySlim on September 01, 2014, 09:35:37 PM
Excellent news!!  The teams respectful approach to NCSoft speaks volumes, well done!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sihada on September 01, 2014, 09:36:51 PM
I'm grateful to the team for all of their hard work.

I am curious to see how the community is going to handle mutiple CoH games all competing for their gaming dollars. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: skippy7721 on September 01, 2014, 09:38:26 PM
Thank you for everything Nate.

Okay, here is my question. Is there any plans for an additional Kickstarter?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 01, 2014, 09:38:37 PM
Okay. I guess I have one more question because it's unclear to me.

So "COX 1.5" would be a port of COX into the Unreal Engine. Does that mean there would be no official COX 2?

My understanding from his comment is CoX 1.5 will be in stopped at i23 and in maintenance mode with unreal engine while CoT, H&V, Valiance would be the CoX2 spiritually. That was my interpretation
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Phaetan on September 01, 2014, 09:39:31 PM
Quote
I am curious to see how the community is going to handle mutiple CoH games all competing for their gaming dollars.

With the preface of "If this works:"

With confused gratitude after a long drought would be my guess.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MaxEternal on September 01, 2014, 09:40:29 PM
Thank you for your efforts and may the negotiations go well!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HelpfulHands on September 01, 2014, 09:40:48 PM
Thanks to all involved in this project, as well as all of the spiritual successors, for keeping the dream and hope of us returning home alive.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dr Toerag on September 01, 2014, 09:41:49 PM
Thank you so much :). I can't think beyond that yet, I'm too happy!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pogoman on September 01, 2014, 09:43:31 PM
I am going to say this... THANK YOU TO ALL INVOLVED WITH THIS!
I'm just a humble blog talk radio host that keeps people up to date on all the happenings of the "successor" games and COH-returning related news. This IS big news. NOT the big news some people wanted but it is obviously BIG news! I wish you luck in continuing talks and will await updates regarding this!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dvandom on September 01, 2014, 09:44:21 PM
There's a whole lot of legal issues around the user data.  IIRC, the EULA players agreed to did NOT give NCSoft the ability to transfer the data to anyone else, or at least makes it legally iffy if they were to try.  So it's best to just leave that out of the negotiations entirely.  The usual IANAL, I'm not involved in the negotiations, I didn't actually read the entire EULA for comprehension, etc.

---Dave
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on September 01, 2014, 09:44:35 PM
Awesome.  Thank you for your efforts and for the infomation -- good luck, we're all counting on you.
 :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shifter on September 01, 2014, 09:45:23 PM
Now that this is public, please, please, please do not hesitate to reach out to the community we can do anything at all to help.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 01, 2014, 09:45:37 PM
My understanding from his comment is CoX 1.5 will be in stopped at i23 and in maintenance mode with unreal engine while CoT, H&V, Valiance would be the CoX2 spiritually. That was my interpretation

Revival will not sit in maint. mode. The game will be updated, and expanded.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Inkblaster on September 01, 2014, 09:46:00 PM
At this point the original game is 10 years old, so if all we get is a true successor, and they have the license to use the sidekick technology, arguably the best unique feature that nobody else has come close to, in a sequel game, that's cool.

Good luck un-masked stranger.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: WolfSoul on September 01, 2014, 09:46:29 PM
Thanks so much.

I could cry, but I'm saving that for the "We got it!" announcement.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Serpine on September 01, 2014, 09:47:48 PM
Downix,

Awesome news.  Questions:

* So would APR be another separate company licensing from CoH IP?

* Where does CoH2 fit into this: Is that like APR part 2 (APR being a stopgap to address Windows 9)?

* Would you end up being the president of CoH IP, APR, and MWM?

* Is the line "This could be expanded for any of them, should the desire be there" intended to indicate that a successor project could just license so aggressively that they essentially merge with APR for forming CoH2 (I'm basically thinking in terms of something like CoT blending their creations into the material from APR to create a seamless game entity)?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fleur_uk on September 01, 2014, 09:48:16 PM
Downix,
Can we still have our game without the source code? and Thank you again, and for such a detailed post.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 01, 2014, 09:48:35 PM
Revival will not sit in maint. mode. The game will be updated, and expanded.

Well that's good to know :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Demilion on September 01, 2014, 09:49:16 PM
I am giddy with anticipation on how this will turn out!  Good.  Bad.  I don't care, progress is being made  :D


For my curiosity, how is everyone going to 'regulate' the multiple CoX games out there?  Multiple universes?  Crossovers?  Whatever the outcome may be, I am grateful for every game developer's hardships on their project(s) and efforts for a better tomorrow!






....and yes, I'm still in withdrawals of CoX ._.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 01, 2014, 09:49:44 PM
I'm totally confused.... I have absolutely NO understanding of coding etc etc and this announcement was a lil too technical for me or something.


If everything goes as planned:


CoH as we knew it in Issue 23 will be coming back.. yes?


The whole Windows 9 thing is confusing me... are you saying that when Windows 9 hits... CoH Issue 23... won't work??


Sorry but I have read the statement 5 or 6 times and am totally not understanding what will happen if everything goes through.


Can someone dumb it down for me?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 01, 2014, 09:49:59 PM
Downix,
Can we still have our game without the source code? and Thank you again, and for such a detailed post.

Kind of, Yeah. It means no updates to the original game, however.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Synfoola on September 01, 2014, 09:50:18 PM
Just got word of this on FB.

Fantastic stuff, gang. We're all grateful for the tenacity and patience you've exhibited to pull this off. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dev7on on September 01, 2014, 09:51:29 PM
Wow thank you Nate. I hope we pull this off.  ;D WE ARE HEROES!!!! THIS IS WHAT WE DO!!!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fleur_uk on September 01, 2014, 09:51:54 PM
Cheers Irishgirl, No clue on all the tech stuff.  xx
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 01, 2014, 09:52:16 PM
To heck with it, I'm going to ask my questions. The worst that can happen is they can be ignored. :D

First, THANK YOU SO MUCH for the update. Win or lose, success or failure, at least you've made the effort and you've gone farther than anyone else has to this point. You have my gratitude-- and that of many others-- for making the effort. You have all given us hope in a dark time.


Questions:

1. When you say the other games will have the option to remove the "Spiritual" successor and go with something more official, will they be allowed to allowed to use the lore of COX (hero groups, villains, etc), and the various AT mechanics? Will they be buying a license to allow this?

2. Who will own the IP of COX? This will be a completely separate company from MWM?

3. If successful, will you continue working as part of MWM AND the COX venture?
1) a license of some sort will be needed to meet the obligations of protecting the property. We do not want the next Scarlet Blade to use the material without any say so.

2) a holding company, independent of MWM.

3) for this, I am the salesman. I will leave it to others to manage, as MWM is enough management for me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: InOnePiece on September 01, 2014, 09:52:50 PM
Thanks for the news, and continued best wishes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nadia Luma on September 01, 2014, 09:53:04 PM
Seriously even the thought of this happening slightly fills the void this game left behind. The pure excitement that I have right now packs the hole in my heart.
I'm truly grateful as much as everyone else of the effort you have put in for best community of gamers I've ever had the pleasure of playing along side.

Again Thank You so much.

I hope in the end we all get what we want.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nasty Rascal on September 01, 2014, 09:54:45 PM
So...the important question simply is... What can we do to help?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 01, 2014, 09:55:47 PM
I am still confused. Will there be a CoH2 or JUST the spinoff projects?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 01, 2014, 09:56:07 PM
I'm totally confused.... I have absolutely NO understanding of coding etc etc and this announcement was a lil too technical for me or something.
If everything goes as planned:
CoH as we knew it in Issue 23 will be coming back.. yes?
The whole Windows 9 thing is confusing me... are you saying that when Windows 9 hits... CoH Issue 23... won't work??
Sorry but I have read the statement 5 or 6 times and am totally not understanding what will happen if everything goes through.
Can someone dumb it down for me?

For starters, for those who don't know.... I run APR. Nate and I have been in talks for a little while now, and I've got a pretty good handle on what the plan is. I'll try and answer some people's questions as best I can, So poor Nate isn't having to do everything.

CoH Issue 23 is planned to make a return, yes. However, the team will not have the ability to make ANY updates to it. No new content, no new costume pieces, no patching out bugs.

On windows 9, I have no information. Most likely there will be compatability issues with running something as old as CoH. Also, see above...No new content.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 01, 2014, 09:56:09 PM
So...the important question simply is... What can we do to help?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ghost Hero on September 01, 2014, 09:56:16 PM
I would like to chime in with my thanks.  Keep on going team!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lava-Lad on September 01, 2014, 09:57:04 PM
Kind of, Yeah. It means no updates to the original game, however.

Enter the heroes of SCoRE
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lava-Lad on September 01, 2014, 09:58:31 PM
For starters, for those who don't know.... I run APR. Nate and I have been in talks for a little while now, and I've got a pretty good handle on what the plan is. I'll try and answer some people's questions as best I can, So poor Nate isn't having to do everything.

CoH Issue 23 is planned to make a return, yes. However, the team will not have the ability to make ANY updates to it. No new content, no new costume pieces, no patching out bugs.

On windows 9, I have no information. Most likely there will be compatability issues with running something as old as CoH. Also, see above...No new content.

Does that include player generated content?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 01, 2014, 09:58:51 PM
Enter the heroes of SCoRE
Score is server only. This issue is of client. They will have the same issue.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 01, 2014, 09:58:58 PM
For starters, for those who don't know.... I run APR. Nate and I have been in talks for a little while now, and I've got a pretty good handle on what the plan is. I'll try and answer some people's questions as best I can, So poor Nate isn't having to do everything.

CoH Issue 23 is planned to make a return, yes. However, the team will not have the ability to make ANY updates to it. No new content, no new costume pieces, no patching out bugs.

On windows 9, I have no information. Most likely there will be compatability issues with running something as old as CoH. Also, see above...No new content.
What is APR?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: erich on September 01, 2014, 09:59:06 PM
Thanks for your hard work in trying to bring the game back to the community.

I updated my site with this information and also informed my facebook group (players that were on Liberty).

They will be excited to hear this.

Thanks again!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: bugzee on September 01, 2014, 09:59:13 PM
Thanks Nate, I am grateful for the efforts. Is source code access completely off the table? This "holding company", they are the ones to basically port the existing i23 binary to a new updated engine? Or did I not understand what you posted..?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Winter Fable on September 01, 2014, 09:59:18 PM
I'm totally confused.... I have absolutely NO understanding of coding etc etc and this announcement was a lil too technical for me or something.


If everything goes as planned:


CoH as we knew it in Issue 23 will be coming back.. yes?


The whole Windows 9 thing is confusing me... are you saying that when Windows 9 hits... CoH Issue 23... won't work??


Sorry but I have read the statement 5 or 6 times and am totally not understanding what will happen if everything goes through.


Can someone dumb it down for me?
This ^^^^^Thank You for all the work you have done,and I'm probably in the minority on this but,does this mean we can have  CoX back like it was.I loved the fact that it was simple and easy to play,how the powers worked and team dynamics.If possible that is what I would want.The new versions may look better but I'm not sure anything will ever play like our beloved game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FourSpeed on September 01, 2014, 09:59:21 PM
Downix,
Can we still have our game without the source code? and Thank you again, and for such a detailed post.
I'm purely speculating here, but the interpretation I have from downix's post (PLEASE correct me if I've
misinterpreted) is:

1>  *IF* they get that COH-I23 binary, that could be run in maintenance mode on pre Win-9
software environment and server(s). There's no character or account data, so I assume any players
would (by necessity) start from scratch. Nothing has been mentioned about pricing or vet rewards etc.

2> MWM - CoT would be able to be released as COH 1.5

3> Future ? ? ?


So, presuming the first IF becomes fact, I'd say "yes, we can get our game back", but for how long they
are willing to host it, and how long you want to keep your PC at Win 8(?) or earlier, and at what costs,
remain open questions.


Regards,
4
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: PreciousRoy on September 01, 2014, 09:59:41 PM
I know this isn't a yes or a promise... but as a City of Titans Kickstarter, this is just about the best possible news I could have hoped for... was not what I was expecting... and makes me very, very happy.

Thanks for everything you and the team are doing-- I23 and CoT, too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 01, 2014, 10:01:45 PM
EDIT: dumb question, I will reword
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 01, 2014, 10:02:50 PM
I'm purely speculating here, but the interpretation I have from downix's post (PLEASE correct me if I've
misinterpreted) is:

1>  *IF* they get that COH-I23 binary, that could be run in maintenance mode on pre Win-9
software environment and server(s). There's no character or account data, so I assume any players
would (by necessity) start from scratch. Nothing has been mentioned about pricing or vet rewards etc.

2> MWM - CoT would be able to be released as COH 1.5

3> Future ? ? ?


So, presuming the first IF becomes fact, I'd say "yes, we can get our game back", but for how long they
are willing to host it, and how long you want to keep your PC at Win 8(?) or earlier, and at what costs,
remain open questions.


Regards,
4
My question is does this give them the ability to have a CoH2 not just "spiritual successors? Obviously I am happy and grateful but it would be nice to know this isn't the only possibity either.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 01, 2014, 10:03:10 PM
I'm purely speculating here, but the interpretation I have from downix's post (PLEASE correct me if I've
misinterpreted) is:

1>  *IF* they get that COH-I23 binary, that could be run in maintenance mode on pre Win-9
software environment and server(s). There's no character or account data, so I assume any players
would (by necessity) start from scratch. Nothing has been mentioned about pricing or vet rewards etc.

2> MWM - CoT would be able to be released as COH 1.5

3> Future ? ? ?


So, presuming the first IF becomes fact, I'd say "yes, we can get our game back", but for how long they
are willing to host it, and how long you want to keep your PC at Win 8(?) or earlier, and at what costs,
remain open questions.


Regards,
4
Not quite for #2. Under the plan, the CoT build would be licensed to Atlas Park Revived to make CoH 1.5.
Same engine, different games. May have a shared user database and crossover opportunities, but that it up to MWM and APR.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackout on September 01, 2014, 10:03:24 PM
This might not be the best question, but do you think that moving CoX over to the unreal engine will have any negative repercussions? It might just be me but I can't help but worry that it might lose some of its visual charm. Like I said might be a stupid question, but I still can't help but worry a little.  ???
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shifter on September 01, 2014, 10:03:38 PM
I'm not to concerned about the Windows 9 incompatibility thing, we have emulators for nearly every operating system ever created at our fingertips.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on September 01, 2014, 10:04:10 PM
Ok...since a couple of you are answering questions, yay!

Issue 23 - good. I can work with that. That means that ski chalet will still be open. Very, very good! Love to ski. (not in real life, I'd break my legs)

A migration to APR - did I get the right? First, CoH as we knew it would be up, live, only no character data. All starting from scratch. Better that than nothing. Then, we migrate to APR, which is like a CoH 1.5 because it's on Unreal 4 and can handle Windows 9. No time table for this, because nobody is forcing us to use Win 9.

Then, eventually, one or more of the "spiritual successors" would come out with their respective games, and if they use CoH stuff, they would deal with the new licensing company that would own the rights to CoH. They drop the "spiritual", because they would be the real successors to the game. But - Valiance, MWM, and I guess Heroes and Villains - they are each making their own game, I thought. Who's working on CoH 2.0? Or did I make an inferential leap that has no legs to land with?

I keep reading and I'm just overloaded, so I'm sorry if you've spelled it out in black and white and I just didn't get it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 01, 2014, 10:06:14 PM
I guess my main confusion is:


WTH is CoH 1.5??


Is there plans for a CoH2?


How long will CoH 1 be online/playable?


Is CoH 1.5 just CoH1 but "altered" to run on Unreal 4??



Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 01, 2014, 10:06:31 PM
Ok...since a couple of you are answering questions, yay!

Issue 23 - good. I can work with that. That means that ski chalet will still be open. Very, very good! Love to ski. (not in real life, I'd break my legs)

A migration to APR - did I get the right? First, CoH as we knew it would be up, live, only no character data. All starting from scratch. Better that than nothing. Then, we migrate to APR, which is like a CoH 1.5 because it's on Unreal 4 and can handle Windows 9. No time table for this, because nobody is forcing us to use Win 9.

Then, eventually, one or more of the "spiritual successors" would come out with their respective games, and if they use CoH stuff, they would deal with the new licensing company that would own the rights to CoH. They drop the "spiritual", because they would be the real successors to the game. But - Valiance, MWM, and I guess Heroes and Villains - they are each making their own game, I thought. Who's working on CoH 2.0? Or did I make an inferential leap that has no legs to land with?

I keep reading and I'm just overloaded, so I'm sorry if you've spelled it out in black and white and I just didn't get it.
I really hope CoH 2 would be part of this.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 01, 2014, 10:06:52 PM
For starters, for those who don't know.... I run APR. Nate and I have been in talks for a little while now, and I've got a pretty good handle on what the plan is. I'll try and answer some people's questions as best I can, So poor Nate isn't having to do everything.

CoH Issue 23 is planned to make a return, yes. However, the team will not have the ability to make ANY updates to it. No new content, no new costume pieces, no patching out bugs.

On windows 9, I have no information. Most likely there will be compatability issues with running something as old as CoH. Also, see above...No new content.

any inkling of a time frame? 2 to 6 months? etc?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shifter on September 01, 2014, 10:07:34 PM
...as a City of Titans Kickstarter, this is just about the best possible news I could have hoped for...

As another Kickstarter supporter, I just wanted to say that this mirrors my thoughts exactly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 01, 2014, 10:08:08 PM
Quote
The CoH IP would be spun to its own company, to handle licensing. This company would itself license the existing engine from NCSoft for the creation of a maintenance mode, using a binary copy of the i23 server.

The existing user database and characters are not part of this arrangement at this time, nor is the source code.

Is it possible to elaborate upon the code situation?
1: without the source code, is it possible to add new powers to the game (with or without new animations), or are the various databases hard-coded into the source code rather than maintained in an external database?
2: if it is possible to add new powers, does the studio intend to add future issues with new powers, powersets, etcetera, or is there no chance, or is it still up in the air depending on what tools are found that can be used to edit the databases?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 01, 2014, 10:08:54 PM
I am surprised :) (I take a nap and wake up to something great.) Keep up the great job.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chaparralshrub on September 01, 2014, 10:09:54 PM
Amazing... I am so happy for this!  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 01, 2014, 10:10:25 PM
Ok...since a couple of you are answering questions, yay!

Issue 23 - good. I can work with that. That means that ski chalet will still be open. Very, very good! Love to ski. (not in real life, I'd break my legs)

A migration to APR - did I get the right? First, CoH as we knew it would be up, live, only no character data. All starting from scratch. Better that than nothing. Then, we migrate to APR, which is like a CoH 1.5 because it's on Unreal 4 and can handle Windows 9. No time table for this, because nobody is forcing us to use Win 9.

Then, eventually, one or more of the "spiritual successors" would come out with their respective games, and if they use CoH stuff, they would deal with the new licensing company that would own the rights to CoH. They drop the "spiritual", because they would be the real successors to the game. But - Valiance, MWM, and I guess Heroes and Villains - they are each making their own game, I thought. Who's working on CoH 2.0? Or did I make an inferential leap that has no legs to land with?

I keep reading and I'm just overloaded, so I'm sorry if you've spelled it out in black and white and I just didn't get it.

This is how I read this, too
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Heliopause on September 01, 2014, 10:10:36 PM
I'm floored! I let out a vocal OMG in the grocery store when I just saw this.  :o  I don't understand the technical stuff but the prospect of CoX returning makes me giddy.  Impressive work folks.

This news is gonna spread like wildfire I think.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/07/30/leaderboard-which-dead-mmo-is-your-favorite/
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 01, 2014, 10:10:49 PM
I only have one request for anything that supposed to take over the current CoX. Do not include i13 pvp and keep the pvp mechanism like pre i13 please. A situation where you try to make everyone win will never work, because there will always be FoTM, atleast the FoTMs in pre i13 and gameplay was vastly more enjoyable.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkfaith on September 01, 2014, 10:11:30 PM
This is fantastic news. Even if it flops in the end, I'm happy to see the effort that's being made. Thank you to everyone working on this!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 01, 2014, 10:12:40 PM
I only have one request for anything that supposed to take over the current CoX. Do not include i13 pvp and keep the pvp mechanism like pre i13 please. A situation where you try to make everyone win will never work, because there will always be FoTM, atleast the FoTMs in pre i13 and gameplay was vastly more enjoyable.

Large parts of I13 PVP are hardcoded and cannot be removed without the source code.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Chanaluss on September 01, 2014, 10:13:03 PM
keep up the good work, you've given me and my friends reason to hope again
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on September 01, 2014, 10:14:03 PM
Not quite for #2. Under the plan, the CoT build would be licensed to Atlas Park Revived to make CoH 1.5.
Same engine, different games. May have a shared user database and crossover opportunities, but that it up to MWM and APR.

So Downix, I'll add to the slightly confused... under the plan (assuming all goes unchanged) WHO is releasing/running CoH 23?  The new IP holding company itself? A player to be designated later?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sermon on September 01, 2014, 10:16:06 PM
I would guess that CoH 1.5 is once CoH is ported to UE4 and it is revived, in some sense, from maintenance mode.

It seems that "CoH 2" will have to be one of the other projects we are already anticipating, be it CoT, Heroes and Villains, etc.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FourSpeed on September 01, 2014, 10:16:28 PM
Not quite for #2. Under the plan, the CoT build would be licensed to Atlas Park Revived to make CoH 1.5.
Same engine, different games. May have a shared user database and crossover opportunities, but that it up to MWM and APR.
Ahhh, thanks for the clarification, downix.

Given that CoH 1.5 (et al) is still a significant ways down the road yet, the obvious question(s) I'd have
would regard COH-I23, as it's probably the piece that could be implemented soonest (presumably).

1> Do you have any information on when/if COH-I23 would be made available to you?

2> Given that #1 occurs, is there any eta on when you'd be putting a host in place for players to access?

3> Is there any shareable information regarding costs, packages, vet rewards etc.

4> Is there anything that the community can do to assist in any way with that?


Don't get me wrong - While I'm highly interested in CoT and future efforts, the #1 Clarion Call in here
has been "Get the game back" -- which to me, translates as a playable version of where we were when
the rug was yanked out. Based on your post, I guess that means COH-I23, so that's the focus of my questions.


Thanks and Regards,
4
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on September 01, 2014, 10:16:49 PM
Large parts of I13 PVP are hardcoded and cannot be removed without the source code.

So Codewalker, what might this plan mean for certain unnamed other projects -- good news?  neutral? 
I just invite your general speculation  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 01, 2014, 10:19:03 PM
Large parts of I13 PVP are hardcoded and cannot be removed without the source code.

Not so much in the current CoX, for CoT, H&V, etc. I guess that's up the the individual directors of those projects. Just wanted to throw it out to use the events leading up to i13 pvp as a case study what not to do in order to not alienate a community base. Sorry I just reread my comment and wasn't clear on that :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nebularian on September 01, 2014, 10:19:47 PM
I'm not to concerned about the Windows 9 incompatibility thing, we have emulators for nearly every operating system ever created at our fingertips.

Not worried either...I will probably be running Windows 7 until 9 proves itself LOL
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: themamboman on September 01, 2014, 10:20:38 PM
So, why is it assumed that Windows 9 will be incompatible?  Do they drop support for ancient OpenGL?

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Klendarin on September 01, 2014, 10:20:53 PM
Wow, interesting news.  Thanks for all of your hard work and patience.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 01, 2014, 10:21:34 PM
Not worried either...I will probably be running Windows 7 until 9 proves itself LOL

Honestly the only reason I even run 7 is the audio mixer ^^;
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 01, 2014, 10:21:58 PM
question will Iron Wolf still give updates, or will that fall to Missing Worlds now?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Yoru-hime on September 01, 2014, 10:22:31 PM
Team APR (and Ironwolf),

Best of luck to you all. However this ends, your work has been an inspiration as to what fans are capable of when they work in a positive manner and try to make great things happen.

I am, of course, a bit disappointed in some of the limitations of what is available (source code and I24, in particular), but I'm sure it's not from lack of effort on your part.

I know we're a long way from the finish line, but here's hoping that we're all taking to the skies again sometime soon.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on September 01, 2014, 10:24:45 PM
I could actually see this working whereas other buy out attempts might not.

And perhaps the merchandising and licensing of the COX IP could lead to better things in the future. :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Black Wildfire on September 01, 2014, 10:25:07 PM
I just want to add my gratitude for everything that is being done. This is a lesson in patience for all of us. Thank you for giving us hope. Even if things don't work out the way we would like I am still grateful for the effort.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: themamboman on September 01, 2014, 10:25:18 PM
And details such as how we will gain access (subscription, micro-transactions, etc) haven't been released yet (or maybe even decided upon).

Can't wait for more details.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Des_Tructive on September 01, 2014, 10:26:08 PM
1.) Thank you.

2.) The implication fo what you're working on is just... MIND... BLOWN.

3.) Thank you.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on September 01, 2014, 10:26:54 PM
First, my thanks to you, Nate, and the Hail Mary team which has been working so hard on the negotiations with NCSoft.  Please know how very much we're behind you, and how much I for one appreciate everything that's been done so far, and all that is yet to come.

I noticed Tony V has posted this in at least one COH group on FB.  Is it all right to go ahead and share your announcement with the other CoH groups on FB?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 01, 2014, 10:27:12 PM
question will Iron Wolf still give updates, or will that fall to Missing Worlds now?

MWM isn't officially involved, so updates wouldn't come from them. I don't have actual information on this, but I'd speculate that information would come from Nate or Ironwolf.

Aside from that, CoT updates would come from MWM, APR updates would come from me, and so on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nebularian on September 01, 2014, 10:28:01 PM
I do have one concern...and I hope it is not taken in the wrong way.

Some one else pointed out that the focus of this effort/sub-forum is the return of COH.  The Project Zs have their own places.

My concern is about conflict of interest. Basically we are asking the Project Zs to support a competitor. (even if it IS COH).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 01, 2014, 10:28:47 PM
MWM isn't officially involved, so updates wouldn't come from them. I don't have actual information on this, but I'd speculate that information would come from Nate or Ironwolf.

Aside from that, CoT updates would come from MWM, APR updates would come from me, and so on.
nice :) thank you for clearing this up for me :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 01, 2014, 10:28:54 PM
And details such as how we will gain access (subscription, micro-transactions, etc) haven't been released yet (or maybe even decided upon).

Can't wait for more details.

I don't think any of that has really been discussed yet. It's prolly very dependent on the terms of the purchase agreement with NCSoft.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lava-Lad on September 01, 2014, 10:30:06 PM
I just want to add my gratitude for everything that is being done. This is a lesson in patience for all of us. Thank you for giving us hope. Even if things don't work out the way we would like I am still grateful for the effort.
This for me too.

I'm going to stop asking questions for the time being and let you all (Downix and co) release info as appropriate.  I'm just so happy that there are even talks with NCSoft to resolve this impasse that I just want to bask in the hope.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nadia Luma on September 01, 2014, 10:31:47 PM
I think NC Soft also deserves some Thanks. The hurt they hit us with far greater than any of our in game battles. I'm glad they have at least opened the door to somewhat make better the situation after all this time. It may not be sure thing yet but at least it's hope.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arnabas on September 01, 2014, 10:32:58 PM
For starters, for those who don't know.... I run APR. Nate and I have been in talks for a little while now, and I've got a pretty good handle on what the plan is. I'll try and answer some people's questions as best I can, So poor Nate isn't having to do everything.

CoH Issue 23 is planned to make a return, yes. However, the team will not have the ability to make ANY updates to it. No new content, no new costume pieces, no patching out bugs.

On windows 9, I have no information. Most likely there will be compatability issues with running something as old as CoH. Also, see above...No new content.

Ok....

So correct me if I am wrong (or tell me if I am right), but this is my understanding (if everything works out):

--CoH comes back, frozen at issue 23. Nothing new to ever be added to it. Also, it will be gone again with the arrival of Windows 9, this time never to return.

--When the Coming Storm (Windows 9) arrives, players will have to choose one (or more) successor to continue playing. Each successor will take the IP and go off on their own, effectively as alternate universes that can (but may not) reference the original game. So CoH will die again, but live on in altered form. Analogy: Superman the comic is cancelled, but you can continue on with Christopher Reeve Superman, Brandon Routh Superman, Tom Welling Superman, Henry Cavill Superman, DCAU Superman, or some other iteration, as you prefer.

About right?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: erich on September 01, 2014, 10:33:08 PM
I think NC Soft also deserves some Thanks. The hurt they hit us with far greater than any of our in game battles. I'm glad they have at least opened the door to somewhat make better the situation after all this time. It may not be sure thing yet but at least it's hope.

Agree 100%. I'm very grateful they have been having these types of discussion to bring our game back to us.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dev7on on September 01, 2014, 10:33:34 PM
Why does NCsoft still want the other half of the IP rights to City of Heroes?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 01, 2014, 10:33:41 PM
I think NC Soft also deserves some Thanks. The hurt they hit us with far greater than any of our in game battles. I'm glad they have at least opened the door to somewhat make better the situation after all this time. It may not be sure thing yet but at least it's hope.


The easiest thing for NCSoft to do is nothing. So if this pans out, they deserve a good amount of thanks.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 01, 2014, 10:34:01 PM
I think NC Soft also deserves some Thanks. The hurt they hit us with far greater than any of our in game battles. I'm glad they have at least opened the door to somewhat make better the situation after all this time. It may not be sure thing yet but at least it's hope.

Don't want to sound off saying this, but NC Soft will get my thanks after I'm actually playing the game. My thanks currently is to everyone who organized getting this far
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Urd on September 01, 2014, 10:34:19 PM
Thanks for the update, will be pulling for this to happen and hopefully what the future plans hold.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fleur_uk on September 01, 2014, 10:35:15 PM
I'm purely speculating here, but the interpretation I have from downix's post (PLEASE correct me if I've
misinterpreted) is:

1>  *IF* they get that COH-I23 binary, that could be run in maintenance mode on pre Win-9
software environment and server(s). There's no character or account data, so I assume any players
would (by necessity) start from scratch. Nothing has been mentioned about pricing or vet rewards etc.

2> MWM - CoT would be able to be released as COH 1.5

3> Future ? ? ?


So, presuming the first IF becomes fact, I'd say "yes, we can get our game back", but for how long they
are willing to host it, and how long you want to keep your PC at Win 8(?) or earlier, and at what costs,
remain open questions.


Regards,
4

1.  Happy :D that seems fine as I have newish puter, but had to pay to have win. 7 on it instead of 8.....how does that makes sense, but I refuse to install anything until windows 9 proves worthy :)?  Character from scratch is way better than none at all :)

2.  ? Just want CoH at this point <3

3.  Hoping future will include a way to develop CoH further <3 (((hoping))

Fingers crossed and thanks for explanation for us untechies ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: rayvn on September 01, 2014, 10:35:25 PM
Thank you for all your work on this.  I want CoH to come back and I want CoT and the other games to all be successful.  This gives me a glimmer of hope but I also hope that you and your team have some good attorneys on your side to lock down the rights you do acquire as firmly as possible.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on September 01, 2014, 10:36:08 PM
The inability to make fixes kind of worries me - issues can occur due to windows updates or other changes to the client side.
Issues can also occur due to database...

If anything like this occurs, it could literally shut the entire game down.
Crying shame you couldn't get the I23 source.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on September 01, 2014, 10:36:45 PM
OH and MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION OF ALL

What do we CALL the negotiating team  "Downix and friends"?  Want us to stay with "Team Hail Mary"?
(Mysterions doesn't quite seem appropriate anymore)

And what should we call Big Brother and the Holding Company? "New IP Company" seems kind-of clumsy

Typing is hard when you're drunk on Cognac
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dpawtows on September 01, 2014, 10:37:47 PM

What do we CALL the negotiating team  "Downix and friends"?  Want us to stay with "Team Hail Mary"?
(Mysterions doesn't quite seem appropriate anymore)


Team Beard?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 01, 2014, 10:38:04 PM
Ok...since a couple of you are answering questions, yay!

Issue 23 - good. I can work with that. That means that ski chalet will still be open. Very, very good! Love to ski. (not in real life, I'd break my legs)

A migration to APR - did I get the right? First, CoH as we knew it would be up, live, only no character data. All starting from scratch. Better that than nothing. Then, we migrate to APR, which is like a CoH 1.5 because it's on Unreal 4 and can handle Windows 9. No time table for this, because nobody is forcing us to use Win 9.

Then, eventually, one or more of the "spiritual successors" would come out with their respective games, and if they use CoH stuff, they would deal with the new licensing company that would own the rights to CoH. They drop the "spiritual", because they would be the real successors to the game. But - Valiance, MWM, and I guess Heroes and Villains - they are each making their own game, I thought. Who's working on CoH 2.0? Or did I make an inferential leap that has no legs to land with?

I keep reading and I'm just overloaded, so I'm sorry if you've spelled it out in black and white and I just didn't get it.

This is what I got. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: WolfSoul on September 01, 2014, 10:38:32 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RMoH55T-oI

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BraveStar on September 01, 2014, 10:38:39 PM
Many, many thanks to the negotiation team and NCsoft!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: bugzee on September 01, 2014, 10:38:48 PM
The inability to make fixes kind of worries me - issues can occur due to windows updates or other changes to the client side.
Issues can also occur due to database...

If anything like this occurs, it could literally shut the entire game down.
Crying shame you couldn't get the I23 source.

Yes I think that without the source code, its just like reviving the game for a little while so you can say your final goodbyes... But I wonder if the source code is completely off the table, or is it just not part of the current talks?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fleur_uk on September 01, 2014, 10:40:56 PM
The inability to make fixes kind of worries me - issues can occur due to windows updates or other changes to the client side.
Issues can also occur due to database...

If anything like this occurs, it could literally shut the entire game down.
Crying shame you couldn't get the I23 source.

I remember reading somewhere that the community used to help with coding and stuff when we played CoH? Correct me if I am wrong.  Maybe when we finally get the game, and see what there is there are those who are much more cleverminded to sort/fix any faults in the code that would prevent implementing it? Or is it a problem that noone actually has the update, because it wasn't downloaded or patched into the game??  Sorry if that was really neanderthal. ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Black Gold on September 01, 2014, 10:41:06 PM
Ok....

So correct me if I am wrong (or tell me if I am right), but this is my understanding (if everything works out):

--CoH comes back, frozen at issue 23. Nothing new to ever be added to it. Also, it will be gone again with the arrival of Windows 9, this time never to return.

--When the Coming Storm (Windows 9) arrives, players will have to choose one (or more) successor to continue playing. Each successor will take the IP and go off on their own, effectively as alternate universes that can (but may not) reference the original game. So CoH will die again, but live on in altered form. Analogy: Superman the comic is cancelled, but you can continue on with Christopher Reeve Superman, Brandon Routh Superman, Tom Welling Superman, Henry Cavill Superman, DCAU Superman, or some other iteration, as you prefer.

About right?

This is basically how I interpreted it.  It's not so much getting CoH permanently back. but getting it licensed so that it can be cannibalized to make  the spiritual successors  "less spiritual" and more official by having the ability to directly reference some CoH properties? Unless I read that wrong.....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FourSpeed on September 01, 2014, 10:41:11 PM
So, why is it assumed that Windows 9 will be incompatible?  Do they drop support for ancient OpenGL?

To a greater or lesser degree, every version of Windows has been incompatible with prior versions. That's
exactly why they have a "Compatibility Mode" built-in. That said, that mode has historically been pretty
spotty in the past, and when it is the end result is usually frequent BSODs. Not a good thing in a game.

Additionally, assuming the host server itself is not unix based, that would also imply that server would need
to be kept at an appropriate Windows level as they cannot recompile the game for the new environment.


Regards,
4
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: WolfSoul on September 01, 2014, 10:42:11 PM
COH comes back with I23, to be moved onto Unreal4 to both update AND get around whatever problems Windows 9
will cause. That's COH1.5

The successors, all of them, are to be considered COH2, as it were.


Ok....

So correct me if I am wrong (or tell me if I am right), but this is my understanding (if everything works out):

--CoH comes back, frozen at issue 23. Nothing new to ever be added to it. Also, it will be gone again with the arrival of Windows 9, this time never to return.

--When the Coming Storm (Windows 9) arrives, players will have to choose one (or more) successor to continue playing. Each successor will take the IP and go off on their own, effectively as alternate universes that can (but may not) reference the original game. So CoH will die again, but live on in altered form. Analogy: Superman the comic is cancelled, but you can continue on with Christopher Reeve Superman, Brandon Routh Superman, Tom Welling Superman, Henry Cavill Superman, DCAU Superman, or some other iteration, as you prefer.

About right?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remidi on September 01, 2014, 10:43:46 PM
*scratches head*  I'm a bit cornfuzzled by all this, but for now I'll just say thanks for all the hard work, and you have my best wishes for success.  Everything else will shake out eventually.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 01, 2014, 10:45:02 PM
The inability to make fixes kind of worries me - issues can occur due to windows updates or other changes to the client side.
Issues can also occur due to database...

If anything like this occurs, it could literally shut the entire game down.
Crying shame you couldn't get the I23 source.
Yes I think that without the source code, its just like reviving the game for a little while so you can say your final goodbyes... But I wonder if the source code is completely off the table, or is it just not part of the current talks?

I'm not directly involved in the talks with NCSoft, but from what I understand the source is completely off the table, and many of the tools required simply don't exist anymore.
This is where Revival comes in. The plan is kind of...to replace CoH with it. CoH 1.5/CoH 2 if you will. Same setting, same stories you've all known and loved. New engine, new updates, new stories for you to, hopefully, come to love.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 01, 2014, 10:45:18 PM
COH comes back with I23, to be moved onto Unreal4 to both update AND get around whatever problems Windows 9
will cause. That's COH1.5

The successors, all of them, are to be considered COH2, as it were.

I read it this way, too. Not an expert, but that was how I understood it, too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Eskreema on September 01, 2014, 10:45:38 PM
I just wanted to say thank you and good luck, we're all counting on you. (Leslie Neilson)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 01, 2014, 10:46:09 PM
And details such as how we will gain access (subscription, micro-transactions, etc) haven't been released yet (or maybe even decided upon).

Can't wait for more details.

Please remember what Nate said, this is far from final and may never get that far: 

So where are we now?

Right now, still discussing terms, ideas, limits. The challenges we have been given we stepped up for and handled. Likely there will be discussions and adjustments right up until the moment the deal is signed. The whole thing may fall apart. For all we know, everything done so far has been nothing but a delaying tactic so they can say once again that they tried to work with the community to no avail. But until such time that becomes clear, we will continue forward in good faith.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 01, 2014, 10:47:59 PM
I'm not directly involved in the talks with NCSoft, but from what I understand the source is completely off the table, and many of the tools required simply don't exist anymore.
This is where Revival comes in. The plan is kind of...to replace CoH with it. CoH 1.5/CoH 2 if you will. Same setting, same stories you've all known and loved. New engine, new updates, new stories for you to, hopefully, come to love.

This may be a stupid question, but when CoX 1.5 comes in, will the data be x-fered (toons, global, items, in, Sg, Sg Base, Etc) be also ported over from the new CoX under your control or will we need to restart everything again when CoX 1.5 come out? Either way in fine with both
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arnabas on September 01, 2014, 10:48:12 PM
I guess what I am most curious about is whether any successor will have the same gameplay at all, or whether we'll be playing an entirely new and different game that just happens to be set in Paragon City, or even in some other city with characters saying ''Yeah, I used to live in Paragon, but I moved here recently. Glad I don't have to deal with Rikti anymore!''

Also, each game being CoH 2, means that there isn't really one official continuation, just various Elseworlds continuations.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 01, 2014, 10:49:15 PM
I guess what I am most curious about is whether any successor will have the same gameplay at all, or whether we'll be playing an entirely new and different game that just happens to be set in Paragon City, or even in some other city with characters saying ''Yeah, I used to live in Paragon, but I moved here recently. Glad I don't have to deal with Rikti anymore!''

It seems to me like the whole idea with CoH 1.5 is to basically have CoH live on in a more future-proofed way. Exactly CoH, just updatable, more features to AE, etc.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: erich on September 01, 2014, 10:49:25 PM
Please remember what Nate said, this is far from final and may never get that far: 

So where are we now?

Right now, still discussing terms, ideas, limits. The challenges we have been given we stepped up for and handled. Likely there will be discussions and adjustments right up until the moment the deal is signed. The whole thing may fall apart. For all we know, everything done so far has been nothing but a delaying tactic so they can say once again that they tried to work with the community to no avail. But until such time that becomes clear, we will continue forward in good faith.

Delay what? Saying no? That doesn't seem very rational to me at all. They're a corporation, they could have ended it at anytime. I highly doubt they have ANY reason to delay talks. What's the end game? What do they gain by delaying?

It's just best to not speculate on it anymore and take it as it is. Good news.

Just my opinion on it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sermon on September 01, 2014, 10:50:21 PM
This may be a stupid question, but when CoX 1.5 comes in, will the data be x-fered (toons, global, items, in, Sg, Sg Base, Etc) be also ported over from the new CoX under your control or will we need to restart everything again when CoX 1.5 come out? Either way in fine with both

I would guess that they will make a good faith effort to migrate everything from CoX 1 to 1.5.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 01, 2014, 10:50:36 PM
This may be a stupid question, but when CoX 1.5 comes in, will the data be x-fered (toons, global, items, in, Sg, Sg Base, Etc) be also ported over from the new CoX under your control or will we need to restart everything again when CoX 1.5 come out? Either way in fine with both

That's something I can't really answer yet, as I don't have an answer myself. For the sake of not having any broken hearts, I'd expect it to be a fresh start.
I do plan on looking into it, however there are alot of technical issues to work around.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 01, 2014, 10:51:26 PM
I would guess that they will make a good faith effort to migrate everything from CoX 1 to 1.5.

This, basically.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 01, 2014, 10:51:41 PM
That's something I can't really answer yet, as I don't have an answer myself. For the sake of not having any broken hearts, I'd expect it to be a fresh start.
I do plan on looking into it, however there are alot of technical issues to work around.

Understood thanks for the reply
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: artbunker on September 01, 2014, 10:54:06 PM
To all parties involved in this process, thank you very much . See you guys in Paragon  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shifter on September 01, 2014, 10:54:54 PM
What group would be actually running the CoH 1 to 1.5 servers?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: bugzee on September 01, 2014, 10:55:21 PM
It seems to me like the whole idea with CoH 1.5 is to basically have CoH live on in a more future-proofed way. Exactly CoH, just updatable, more features to AE, etc.

Rereading Nate's post gave me that impression too. I think the big thing is that CoH 1.5 devs will have the right to recreate the game that we love, but on a new engine. And that the other spiritual successors no longer have to be scared of getting the pants sued off of them for resembling CoX. And that the i23 game will live on, but for how long?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Eskreema on September 01, 2014, 10:56:37 PM
Lol, so basically in Arcana's vision the pitching off of dimentions is made by the Rularuu/"spiritual" successors, the portal technology is unreal4, and the unsuitable passage of time is Microsoft/ascended hami.... How trite.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dal on September 01, 2014, 10:59:15 PM
Thank you so much for this.  :D I'm really hopeful now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lintboy on September 01, 2014, 10:59:23 PM
OK, but how does this affect us Mac users? Will I23 run on OSX Mavericks (10.9.x) or Yosemite (10.10.x)?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 01, 2014, 11:00:04 PM
OK, but how does this affect us Mac users? Will I23 run on OSX Mavericks (10.9.x) or Yosemite (10.10.x)?

Whatever the current I23 Mac client runs on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 01, 2014, 11:00:36 PM
Rereading Nate's post gave me that impression too. I think the big thing is that CoH 1.5 devs will have the right to recreate the game that we love, but on a new engine. And that the other spiritual successors no longer have to be scared of getting the pants sued off of them for resembling CoX. And that the i23 game will live on, but for how long?

Yes, this is what I read, too
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 01, 2014, 11:01:21 PM
One thing I have to say Irish_Girl is that you've been awesome answering everyone's questions, and imagining your polite tone coming from your avatar with each post has been a delight :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dalghryn on September 01, 2014, 11:01:50 PM
This really looks like a very short-term existence for CoH.  It can't be fixed or updated and will likely die again fairly soon if Windows 9 and beyond makes its coding incompatible.  If that's accurate, I may not set myself for another fall and just wait until COT etc.

That said, the big plus I see is the "spiritual successors'" being able to use COH from a story-telling perspective.  That would be tremendous.  I haven't seen anything about how that would affect their efforts to date, however.  They've put a tremendous amount of time into world-building and character creation in hopes of creating that spiritual successor, so now do they throw all that out and start from scratch to recreate CoH (2)?  Do they try to add elements of CoH to CoT/Valiance/H&V to make the worlds one (and potentially dilute both), or what?

I also balk at the word "licensing" as it was used a couple of time.  Licenses can always expire; contracts can be broken.  Will NCSoft now have some kind of hold or say in the successors if they choose to incorporate aspects of CoH into their games?

For now, I'm going to stick with Plan "A" and just wait patiently for the successors.  If NCSoft has any involvement in the post-revival CoH, I'm just not sure I'll be able to trust it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dal on September 01, 2014, 11:02:35 PM
This may be a stupid question, but when CoX 1.5 comes in, will the data be x-fered (toons, global, items, in, Sg, Sg Base, Etc) be also ported over from the new CoX under your control or will we need to restart everything again when CoX 1.5 come out? Either way in fine with both
I don't think they can guarantee anything as of now. There is a good chance some data wouldn't be compatible, I think.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 01, 2014, 11:03:20 PM
http://apr.pc-logix.com/  really suffers from a lack of recent updates, but perhaps soon they will have something wonderful to post!


We're nearly there!    ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 01, 2014, 11:03:44 PM
What group would be actually running the CoH 1 to 1.5 servers?
Depends on negotiations. My hope is to self-host by the holding company.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shifter on September 01, 2014, 11:05:01 PM
Depends on negotiations. My hope is to self-host by the holding company.

Thanks again for the info : )
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: gypsyav on September 01, 2014, 11:05:28 PM
Thanks for the efforts everyone is putting in for this. I'm really happy to hear about the APR project continuing. While I give kudos to the successor projects my heart is with the original game and none of the successor projects really appealed to me.

If this deal goes through it will be nice to fly through the air of Paragon again.

Edited: Spelling
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MattTreck on September 01, 2014, 11:06:25 PM
First of all I would like to thank your entire team and everyone involved. I would also like to thank everyone at NCSoft for being so understanding and willing to cooperate with the team attempting to purchase the game.

Now I have a comment and I seriously do not want anyone to get upset, because I am incredibly excited at the prospect of us getting our game back. But there is something that seriously bothers me.

Based upon what I have read, (if) we get our game back, it stays at Issue 23. Period. No updates at all. No fixes for client bugs, nadda, zit. When Windows 9 is released, and it (maybe) doesn't work. We're done, we can not play anymore (if we upgrade to Win 9 of course.). This is incredibly disturbing to me as it essentially means that the game is being revived to (in my eyes) die (probably) within a year, as we expect Windows 9 to come Spring of next year.

Now there is obviously another way to look at this, the game is revived temporarily while we move over to whatever you would like to call CoT+Atlas Park Revival, CoH 1.5 as it is being referred to. That's great and I seriously look forward to that, and will most likely play it. I've been an avid supporter of CoT since the beginning. Here is my concern.

We now have three games. We have CoH, then we have CoT, then we have CoT plus Atlas Revival. We have City of Heroes which isn't getting any new players because of guaranteed no content updates, added on to the lack of support on newer operating systems.

I personally am just not convinced that this is going to work out well. I can't fully express why but I am uneasy about playing the game for a year then going through the same stuff we went through exactly 2 years ago. I am not convinced that any port to UE4 will still feel like City of Heroes. It might, and perhaps the different games that spawn will be even better than City of Heroes. But I do not think it will be City of Heroes.

I am sorry if what I have typed is somewhat vague, and please understand I am not attempting to spark an arguement or insult anyone working on any of these projects. I am extremely happy and grateful at what our community has accomplished in the past two years and will never give up on it. I will play City of Titans, whatever City of Titans + Atlas Revival comes to, if it does, and I will of course play City of Heroes shall it be re-opened. I will give all of them my support.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 01, 2014, 11:07:01 PM
It seems to me like the whole idea with CoH 1.5 is to basically have CoH live on in a more future-proofed way. Exactly CoH, just updatable, more features to AE, etc.

You'll have to bear in mind that the system would still be an approximation of the existing CoH.  It can't/won't be exact. This isn't a good or a bad thing, but it *will* be a thing.

That said, it will be a thing that will last longer and will be able to grow.

For this reason, best effort on the migration most likely will be limited to Characters and Costumes.  It's going to be a long while before anyone can give you anything other than a solid "We're gonna try".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 01, 2014, 11:07:08 PM
any idea if COX maint will be able to run holiday events? possibly?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackstar5 on September 01, 2014, 11:08:04 PM
O.k. I'll hold off my nerdgasm for now, everything looks good( not as good as I had hoped but it's still not pancaked so)
I thank you for your efforts and am hopeful that NCsoft does sell the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Optimus Dex on September 01, 2014, 11:09:31 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 01, 2014, 11:10:01 PM
OK, but how does this affect us Mac users? Will I23 run on OSX Mavericks (10.9.x) or Yosemite (10.10.x)?

As they have stated there is no source code for CoH nor the ability to patch, add anything or make any changes, let's hope I23 runs on your Macs as-is.  Otherwise, do you have an older Mac that used to run CoH?

Thanks so much, Irish Girl, for even attempting to salvage CoH.  Who exactly will be reverse-engineering it and  running it, and do they have any sort of time frame of how long that will take?

The person who brought up the point about any potential bugs or clashes with machines that have gotten new updates (even Windows 7 updates quite regularly) potentially causing CoH to crash brought up some interesting thoughts.  I guess I would rather know up front that CoH may not be running reliably for that long if at all, and that no modifications would ever be able to be made to it.  This sounds more a case of licensing the IP for new games based on CoH than anything.  And Nate did mention in his initial post in this thread that the deal could all fall apart.  For me, my biggest hope was to play CoH again, and it does bother me that all the source code is now gone and the tools used are gone now as well.  I don't think NCSoft had any plans to sell CoH to anyone.  I hope they are changing their minds now, and not just hoping we eventually give up and fade away.  I'm cautiously optimistic and I'm realistic too.  I don't think CoH running as we knew it is going to be very long-term, if it can even be reverse-engineered in time to be of any use even for a short-term thing (not criticizing!  I can't do it!  Glad it's not reliant upon me!   :P  so anything's better than nothing!).

I hope multiple backups of this CoH I23 server image are made and stored so that if the one players are using becomes borked somehow through database corruption or what have you, they can put another backup up and not be up the creek permanently.  Also, I hope reliable character progress can be backed up on a regular basis, not to mention reused in the event of said corruption bringing down the server.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 01, 2014, 11:11:08 PM
As they have stated there is no source code for CoH nor the ability to patch, add anything or make any changes, let's hope I23 runs on your Macs as-is.  Otherwise, do you have an older Mac that used to run CoH?

My first thought for this is that it may be worth it to use bootcamp to run Windows XP/7 if your mac can't just play CoX out of the box.

You'll have to bear in mind that the system would still be an approximation of the existing CoH.  It can't/won't be exact. This isn't a good or a bad thing, but it *will* be a thing.

That said, it will be a thing that will last longer and will be able to grow.

For this reason, best effort on the migration most likely will be limited to Characters and Costumes.  It's going to be a long while before anyone can give you anything other than a solid "We're gonna try".

I think of it a lot like the various mega man fangames people have created from scratch with SDL.

They'll have the original to play around with, actively, in order to test it and make it as percievably close as possible.

There might be a hole here or there - and Mega Man vs CoH is like a toaster versus a clockwork in terms of complexity... but I believe it's possible :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 01, 2014, 11:12:51 PM
One thing I have to say Irish_Girl is that you've been awesome answering everyone's questions, and imagining your polite tone coming from your avatar with each post has been a delight :)

Lmao! Thanks. Yeah, I'm going to be picturing myself very politely screaming in everyones faces all day now! :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: artbunker on September 01, 2014, 11:14:53 PM
I know the details arent final yet, but  I have to be the downer here.

1.How much will it cost for subscribers to get on  the revived COH ?

2. Will it be monthly plans agian or some one time fee?

3.If the game is free to play again, will subscribers at least get something special for paying month after month again until the shift over to REVIVAL? I know incarnate content is the reward and all, but $15 a month for a relaunched 2003 game is gonna be kinda hard to sell to folks without incentives .

I'll be there of course and your plan for the game sounds great overall. I just am curious as to the three questions I asked thats all
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 01, 2014, 11:18:25 PM
There might be a hole here or there - and Mega Man vs CoH is like a toaster versus a clockwork in terms of complexity... but I believe it's possible :)

It's really hard to be certain. most of  reports I've had on the game part of the engine has not been what I would call kindly spoken of.  That said, the community has a lot of collected data that can be examined.  Even with that and careful study, the number of variables are such that I have to expect that it will be "mostly" alike and hopefully that will be adequate for everyone.  The question becomes one of what is a better use of time?  Rebuilding Paragon and Co in another mechanics engine ( H&V, CoT, etc ) or doing the best to emulate CoH in a new codebase.

I don't envy the decision makers there.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wyrm on September 01, 2014, 11:19:52 PM
Sincere thanks to everyone involved in working to make this happen.  You've truly gone above and beyond.  My thanks also to NCSoft for willing to come to the table and discuss the possibility of re-opening CoH and providing options for future growth of the IP.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lapucelle on September 01, 2014, 11:22:34 PM
It's been a long, long road from the forming of TFHM till now.

I'd like to thank everyone involved, from IronWolf to Rae to Nate. I like to think I helped here and there, as well.

Irish, there's a lot of work to do, but I can't wait to see you guys do it.

It's just such a relief to finally be able to talk about it.

- Warcabbit
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 01, 2014, 11:23:11 PM
I THINK I have this right:


CoHi23 comes back as is...and in the meantime they will work on putting CoH1.5 onto Unreal 4. Once CoH1.5 is ready to go they will TRY to port over all our data from CoHi23. Once we are in CoH 1.5 then they can add stuff to it....


That is how I am understanding it. so basically CoHi23...for about a year-ish while they make CoH1.5. So CoH will still be around even after Windows 9 since CoH1.5 can run on Windows 9.


So for example.. I run Windows 7...and if I decide to upgrade to Windows 9... I need to wait for CoH1.5 to come out.




Am I right?? close??
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on September 01, 2014, 11:23:37 PM
Depends on negotiations. My hope is to self-host by the holding company.

Thanks for the clarification, Downix {and again, just a general "THANK YOU"}

I guess for now its "The Holding Company"

(how about WHIP for We have IP)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 01, 2014, 11:24:19 PM
It's really hard to be certain. most of  reports I've had on the game part of the engine has not been what I would call kindly spoken of.  That said, the community has a lot of collected data that can be examined.  Even with that and careful study, the number of variables are such that I have to expect that it will be "mostly" alike and hopefully that will be adequate for everyone.  The question becomes one of what is a better use of time?  Rebuilding Paragon and Co in another mechanics engine ( H&V, CoT, etc ) or doing the best to emulate CoH in a new codebase.

I don't envy the decision makers there.

If I had it my way, I'd be fine with indefinite maintenance - and that's honestly something I wish was on the table. One of those ways its just enough 'off' may be something that makes it a whole lot lesser in some way... but hope springs eternal, and I have faith that with enough time and effort, something fun can come out of all of this :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 01, 2014, 11:25:05 PM
Thanks so much, Irish Girl, for even attempting to salvage CoH.  Who exactly will be reverse-engineering it and  running it, and do they have any sort of time frame of how long that will take?

Right now it's pretty much just me working on it, and unfortunately I'm spending the next week packing and cleaning to move. (I should be packing right now, actually. Heh)
I don't have a time frame, I wish I did. It kind of depends on if it stays just me, or if...and how many...people join the project.
Really, I think that's going to depend on talks between myself and the licensing company that (hopefully) picks up the license.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mentalshock on September 01, 2014, 11:26:22 PM
It's been a long, long road from the forming of TFHM till now.

I'd like to thank everyone involved, from IronWolf to Rae to Nate. I like to think I helped here and there, as well.

Irish, there's a lot of work to do, but I can't wait to see you guys do it.

It's just such a relief to finally be able to talk about it.

- Warcabbit

  No kidding.   Considering it was my initial idea that triggered VV and the others to make the inital attempt, to see someone else pick up the ball and run with it as far as it will go makes me proud.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on September 01, 2014, 11:26:44 PM
Lmao! Thanks. Yeah, I'm going to be picturing myself very politely screaming in everyones faces all day now! :P

Hey Irish Girl, thanks to you too for your part in this.

If you rebuild AE functionality, may I suggest that when you rebuild Base Builder you use a variant of AE rather than re-create as it was originally developed??? -- just a thought/suggestion (I hope you have the opportunity for it to be a problem)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: SypherVendetta on September 01, 2014, 11:28:09 PM
I was one of those naysayers that believed coh was dead, i believed at the time that nothing would happen and was frustrated with people who followed this ideal that it could be revived, looking back on my decision to be that way well i hate to admit it but maybe i was wrong, and i applaud everyone's faith and hope in the revival of city of heroes.

That being said i have a question, it was my understanding that even 2 years ago NCSoft were looking to make COH2 anyway, the acquisition of Unreal Engine 4 and the unnamed titles they had in the pipeline suggested this, Matt Miller referenced this in his youtube video about buying the game when they knew months in advance which prompted them to be asked by NCSoft to make COH2 but that quickly fell on it's head once the shutdown was confirmed outright, can you confirm if there was any mention of this at all?

I made a facebook post on the coh survivors page (before being perma banned) about the proof i had that this is what they were doing, i know it won't happen now, but maybe getting funding approval from NCSoft to help the revival team may be a good option in the long run and could be the best move for everyone, but my main concern is that will make it 4 super hero online games, some of us work, some of us don't have the time to log in to all of them including games we currently play now, will there be some kind of integration between the 4 if all of this goes the way we want it to?

An idea if you do see this a business venture is that each time you log in to a game you get a boost on your account for the next game to use for leveling then once you log in to game b you get a double boost for game B and so forth, you catch my drift? that could be a potential time shaver for people who are paying gold customers or even F2P if you wanted and are too busy to play all of them, it gives them the incentive to play them then.

Thanks again Nate and everyone else for their hard work, if you're ever in cardiff wales, i will personally buy you a beer  8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 01, 2014, 11:29:07 PM
If you rebuild AE functionality, may I suggest that when you rebuild Base Builder you use a variant of AE rather than re-create as it was originally developed??? -- just a thought/suggestion (I hope you have the opportunity for it to be a problem)

You mean you don't love stacking gray counters? :(

(https://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y287/kistulot/SolidWall_zps3a087e5f.png)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: themamboman on September 01, 2014, 11:30:40 PM
Ok....

--CoH comes back, frozen at issue 23. Nothing new to ever be added to it. Also, it will be gone again with the arrival of Windows 9, this time never to return.

--When the Coming Storm (Windows 9) arrives, players will have to choose one (or more) successor to continue playing. Each successor will take the IP and go off on their own, effectively as alternate universes that can (but may not) reference the original game. So CoH will die again, but live on in altered form. Analogy: Superman the comic is cancelled, but you can continue on with Christopher Reeve Superman, Brandon Routh Superman, Tom Welling Superman, Henry Cavill Superman, DCAU Superman, or some other iteration, as you prefer.

About right?

Highly unlikely that they'd tell the players to upgrade the day Win9 is released.  That would be extremely uncool.  However, depending on the state of the CoH1.5, it may, in fact, cause many players to avoid the upgrade (or keep an older machine around).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 01, 2014, 11:30:59 PM
You mean you don't love stacking gray counters? :(

(https://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y287/kistulot/SolidWall_zps3a087e5f.png)

For some reason I forgot what the number of max pieces you are allow to have in a SG base before it crashes
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 01, 2014, 11:32:16 PM
For some reason I forgot what the number of max pieces you are allow to have in a SG base before it crashes

It is insanely high. I did a lot with my small little one-room-and-a-secret-alcove (mostly just for IO storage because I was saving purps for my PB)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 01, 2014, 11:32:50 PM
CoHi23 comes back as is...and in the meantime they will work on putting CoH1.5 onto Unreal 4. Once CoH1.5 is ready to go they will TRY to port over all our data from CoHi23. Once we are in CoH 1.5 then they can add stuff to it....

I would expect that CoHi23 will live as long as we can rationally keep it up. None of the conversations I have been in have suggested anything resembling a full cutover.  That said, we all have to realisticly expect that CoHi23 is on life support.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackshear on September 01, 2014, 11:34:15 PM
Well, I will stick to my previous strategy:  Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, wait patiently.  Ironwolf did a good job reporting what he could of the situation in a way that kept my expectations realistic.  His posts were so informative that Downix's post contained no bombshells at all for me.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but I won't give up hope even if this effort fails.  CoH will continue to devalue the longer it remains inactive, and NCSoft's personnel will change over time.  I think sooner or later NCSoft will be willing to let the property go.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Risha on September 01, 2014, 11:35:40 PM
Thank you, thank you, thank you!  Thank you, Nate and team.  Thank you Irish Girl.  Thank you Ironwolf.

If I had it my way, I'd be fine with indefinite maintenance - and that's honestly something I wish was on the table. One of those ways its just enough 'off' may be something that makes it a whole lot lesser in some way... but hope springs eternal, and I have faith that with enough time and effort, something fun can come out of all of this :)

Well, I just took an XP computer offline but kept for some other old programs.  I would probably be there for CoX I23 in maintenance mode forever, as well as subscribing to new game(s), until the new games won me over.   I understand that as an old and cranky program it might break, and, as someone said, having backups would be good (I am not a tech).

Thank you
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 01, 2014, 11:35:53 PM
Hey Irish Girl, thanks to you too for your part in this.

If you rebuild AE functionality, may I suggest that when you rebuild Base Builder you use a variant of AE rather than re-create as it was originally developed??? -- just a thought/suggestion (I hope you have the opportunity for it to be a problem)

There are some really cool ideas floating around for A.E. and Bases, but those are both beasts that will be tackled much later on. They might not even be present in an initial release.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 01, 2014, 11:36:00 PM
I know the details arent final yet, but  I have to be the downer here.

1.How much will it cost for subscribers to get on  the revived COH ?

2. Will it be monthly plans agian or some one time fee?

3.If the game is free to play again, will subscribers at least get something special for paying month after month again until the shift over to REVIVAL? I know incarnate content is the reward and all, but $15 a month for a relaunched 2003 game is gonna be kinda hard to sell to folks without incentives .

I'll be there of course and your plan for the game sounds great overall. I just am curious as to the three questions I asked thats all

Unfortunately, I think it's way to early for there to be answers to these questions.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 01, 2014, 11:39:20 PM
Rebuilding AE, hmmm, my suggestions.  Allow for map designing.  Really.  Alot of the warehouses and the office maps, sewer maps to were all very linear, i'd love to see people including z axis and more interesting non-linear map design.  Non linear map design is the pre-requisite in many ways to non-linear multiple choice gameplay to, in many ways.  Imagine being presented with a multiple choice scenario, where the choice you make isn't in the dialogue, but in what pathway you chose to do simply from moving down that pathway know?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 01, 2014, 11:41:00 PM
I would expect that CoHi23 will live as long as we can rationally keep it up. None of the conversations I have been in have suggested anything resembling a full cutover.  That said, we all have to realisticly expect that CoHi23 is on life support.

The hope is to make it so that when Revival launches people don't look at it and go "Ugh, since I23 doesn't work well anymore I GUESS I'll go play that P.O.S." and instead go "Hey! It's City of Heroes, but with new and awesome stuff!"
If it's not home, I haven't done my job well enough.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on September 01, 2014, 11:47:29 PM
The whole Windows 9 thing is confusing me... are you saying that when Windows 9 hits... CoH Issue 23... won't work??
Can someone dumb it down for me?
CoH was originally released when Windows 98 was not entirely off the market yet. No software exists on its' own - and the problem here is it's not just old, it's built for old supporting packages. After a while backwards compatibility is dropped - or outright breaks due to other changes, and nobody gets around to fixing it.
The "maintenance mode only" deal means that they can't patch any issues that may appear when running the game in Win 9.
Thanks Nate, I am grateful for the efforts. Is source code access completely off the table? This "holding company", they are the ones to basically port the existing i23 binary to a new updated engine? Or did I not understand what you posted..?
If source is off the table, so is porting the game. APR would not be a "port" but a recreation of the game from scratch using completely different engine and tools.
Is it possible to elaborate upon the code situation?
1: without the source code, is it possible to add new powers to the game (with or without new animations), or are the various databases hard-coded into the source code rather than maintained in an external database?
2: if it is possible to add new powers, does the studio intend to add future issues with new powers, powersets, etcetera, or is there no chance, or is it still up in the air depending on what tools are found that can be used to edit the databases?
Without source code, nothing can be added. Whether powers can be modified (balance etc) depends on how much of the numbers and power mechanics are hardcoded into the server.
Here's my question [rhetorical only at this point]: if we get the game back, are we going to be able to use the game version we have DLed on our PC, the original one I mean? Or would we have to buy and install a new one?
Is the old version so tied to our original accounts that we could not use it? I would happily buy a new copy, I'm just curious
From what I understand (and I might be wrong), it's just a matter of pointing the client to a new authentication server. This can be done without the need for anything but a specially made shortcut.
So, why is it assumed that Windows 9 will be incompatible?  Do they drop support for ancient OpenGL?
It's not assumed, but if it turns out to be so, there won't be any way to patch the game.
I remember reading somewhere that the community used to help with coding and stuff when we played CoH? Correct me if I am wrong.  Maybe when we finally get the game, and see what there is there are those who are much more cleverminded to sort/fix any faults in the code that would prevent implementing it? Or is it a problem that noone actually has the update, because it wasn't downloaded or patched into the game??  Sorry if that was really neanderthal. ;)
Reasonably sure that either you misread something, or the parties involved are under NDAs regarding the source code. TFHM would have a running copy of a server, but not the source code. Thus, no fixes, ever.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Xenos on September 01, 2014, 11:49:16 PM
Thank you Nate (et al) for the update and your efforts. And thank you giving us hope that CoH might return to life.

I know there will be time for questions later, but as you mention Windows 9, I am wondering if any consideration been given to the Mac version of COH? I fully realize that it represents an additional layer in what I am sure is a complex deal, but with a growing base of Mac users, it might be something worth considering. If its too complicated, no biggie, but if the Transgaming Mac client could be part of the deal it might be a nice asset.

In any case, best of luck.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: TECHWON on September 01, 2014, 11:50:37 PM
COH Forever
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 01, 2014, 11:52:46 PM
I lived and worked in Japan for many years, and while obviously not identical there are a great many similarities in the business culture's of Japan and Korea.  Sounds like the Hail Mary team did just the right thing in their approach and its a shame that earlier efforts had not followed a similar tact.  It's clear that this isnt yet a done deal and from my experience in East Asia its very possible that this deal could stay in limbo for a while and then a polite "no thank you" issued.  So Im prepared for that, and I think everyone else should be as well.

But, Ive also got my CC ready for whatever account creation with whatever holding company turns up with CoH i23 servers!

Thanks to the team for making this effort, truly in the spirit of heroes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 01, 2014, 11:54:38 PM
There are some really cool ideas floating around for A.E. and Bases, but those are both beasts that will be tackled much later on. They might not even be present in an initial release.
could that also be for account based holdings like in Co?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackshear on September 01, 2014, 11:56:56 PM
There are some really cool ideas floating around for A.E. and Bases, but those are both beasts that will be tackled much later on. They might not even be present in an initial release.

So long as I can reupload my saved AE mishes once it is relaunched.  AE was important for roleplayers because it gave us the ability to create actual content for our stories.  Hidden amongst all the farms there was some great RP-related content on AE!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JKPhage on September 01, 2014, 11:58:32 PM
All I can say is that you guys continue to amaze me. I can't say thank you enough for all that you do. Keep up the good work, and know that we're all pulling for you to make it work somehow. We have faith that you will!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rubberlad on September 01, 2014, 11:59:53 PM
Not surprised but I hope it works out. Good luck!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nalerenn on September 02, 2014, 12:01:08 AM
I have no words for how happy this news made me. Or how excited.

Back when I played City of Heroes in the early years of the EU community, I was in the latter years of high school, but I had thought 'Man, I would love to get a job working on this game'. I'd even say that it was thanks to City of Heroes that I decided to go into college to study games design. City of Heroes sadly was shut down during my college year and since then, numerous issues got in the way of continuing my studies. But I didn't quit, I decided to work on things on the side in the meantime. I even messaged Ironwolf and sent him details to forward to the team. Knowing now it was MWM? Blows my mind and reignites that dream from ten years ago.

Nate, and everyone at MWM and those not who are working on this deal, there are no words adequate for the thanks I have for your work here. That's not an exagguration, I am honestly at a loss for words (despite the wordy post, natch). So what I say next, know that what I mean is orders of magnitude greater, even if we still are at a stage where the deal might not happen.

Thank you.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hyperstrike on September 02, 2014, 12:05:39 AM
For people worrying about "how long can a CoH 1.0 implementation last".

As long as they can keep the servers stable, honestly, it's almost indefinitely.

There is, currently, NOTHING in the Win9 pipeline that looks to affect anything CoH could do AT ALL.

The biggest hurdle will be building a working game loader/patcher, as a certain amount of the game is primarily client-side stuff that CAN be accessed/worked with/fixed at will.  Just so long as the server and client agree on the acceptable version number.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Beltor on September 02, 2014, 12:06:00 AM
Forum Stalker checking in. I chose to stay until the end. Glad to say that may be a long way to go.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hagis on September 02, 2014, 12:07:01 AM
/em salute

Long time player here. (Since just before Issue 4.) Posted a bit here and there on the game forums back in the day. Got my wife into CoH, and watched her go from being burned-out on the world's largest fantasy-themed MMO to someone who cackled with unfettered joy every time her sparkle fairy-based electric/electric/electric blaster dropped a world of hurt on the baddies. Then the game got shut down and we were in shock....and then we found out she was pregnant, and our gaming hobby got shoved aside as more important things took precedence.

Fast forward two years (to the day!) that we found out CoH was shutting down, and we're both trying to figure out if it'll be possible for our little one to join us in Paragon someday.

As a gamer and a fan, I am happy that there's a chance to get the game back. As a father, I remember the times I played on PUGs where others were playing with their kids, and I remember how most people were cool with that. Maybe it meant slowing things down for a mission or two, but the majority of folks were okay with that. From where I sit, you can't put a price on that. My wife and I mourned the loss of the game, but it was the community that we truly and deeply missed.

And now, I can only sit back in humble amazement and watch what this community has done. Not one, not two, but three successor games......plus a continuation in the Atlas Park Revival Project.....youtube videos galore (can't wait to see what Samuraiko puts together if this works out)....

Please allow me to add my and my wife's thank-yous to the chorus. Consider our expectations managed, our excitement tempered, and our gratitude unbending.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lapucelle on September 02, 2014, 12:08:36 AM
Step by step, day by day. The deal isn't signed yet. But you guys deserved to know where we stand, and you'll be there with us every step of the way.


Be happy for what we got today, but there's still a lot of steps between now and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGButr9F8eY

- Warcabbit
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Achilles6 on September 02, 2014, 12:12:41 AM
so...still in a holding pattern. gotcha.  :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 02, 2014, 12:16:04 AM
Without source code, nothing can be added. Whether powers can be modified (balance etc) depends on how much of the numbers and power mechanics are hardcoded into the server.

Do you have a definite source for this belief?
If the database with power information is external to the source code (and it makes sense that, just as map and sound files are external, good programmers would keep a database external to the executing code), then clearly it would be possible to add to that database, if the database format can be figured out. Since it was once figured out in reading the data (as we can see in Mid's and in the powers data here on Titan), we can clearly add more powers (and probably powersets) to the database.

Now comes a less certain question, and it is this: once the studio hacks the database format, and adds in a new powerset and powers for it, what happens? Is the executable code written so that it will read all the way to the end of the database, regardless of how many powersets it may contain, and display all of those powersets as appropriate? Or is it hard-coded to know that a Blaster character has access to exactly X primary powersets, and therefore will not read X+1 powersets for Blasters, even if a new Blast set is created?

So the real question, I think, is whether the code for reading the powers database allows for an extendable database, or whether it has a fixed size. I have a strong belief that it will be possible to hack the database and add new powers... that is not such a difficult task, and I think it's been at least partially done before (the reading part, but writing should follow from it). But I have no information on whether the code will accept a database that is modified in size, or not, and be able to display it in the game in usable format. It may read a new powerset into memory, but not show it as an available powerset at character generation, for example.

Do you have more information regarding the extensibility of the powers database than I do (which means, any at all)?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 02, 2014, 12:17:01 AM
Congrats to all involved, and thank you. Regardless of what comes, thank you for continuing to try.

With that said, one of the things about this info that has me intrigued is the possibility of having multiple games set in the same City of Heroes continuity. Something that has long been a dream of mine in MMO terms is to have some kind of "cross world" continuity- ideally, the same game engine, but with different servers emulating different cities, worlds, and/or genres but by which you could 'port your character from one to the other.

Now, that doesn't sound exactly like what might be happening here, but there still is that possibility in terms of continuity of story that could be a chance for something very revolutionary in MMO gaming. In comic terms, it would be like having a server for Marvel's New York City based heroes, a server for their Los Angeles based heroes, etc. You could have both the East and West Coast Avengers active at the same time! Sure, since these current games seem to be using their own engines and things, you couldn't just have your main show up on the other system, but depending on how well MWM, Valiance, APR, and H&V play together, they could still theoretically design storylines that reference one another, keep continuities interwoven, while still playing with the CoH sandbox. It really could be something unlike anything any other MMO or MMOs have attempted (at least, to my knowledge).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ThePhlebotomist on September 02, 2014, 12:17:56 AM
Thank you so much for working to bring back City of Heroes.

I hope as the relationship develops over time, I24 and someday the source code can be included in the partnership.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: worldshaking00 on September 02, 2014, 12:24:21 AM
Thanks for letting us know, one way or the other.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: adarict on September 02, 2014, 12:28:09 AM
While the news is interesting, I'm not seeing how this is much better than what we knew yesterday. It is one step closer, to be sure, but if I understand the update, all we have gained is confirmation that NCSoft is willing to actually consider a deal. Maybe I misread it, but I didn't see them say even the licensing of the IP is a done deal. Everything else is just what the negotiations are wanting.

Assuming the deal goes through with the terms they are discussing, I had a question about moving forward. According to the terms, we would end up with the binaries of I23. This would allow the group to put up a working server. No updates etc. Ok, I get that. I don't know exactly what APR/cox 1.5 really is, or how they are moving to unreal engine. Are they just building it from scratch and including the old environment and missions etc? My question is, if the binaries are turned over, and the IP rights are licensed, does that give the new device group the ability to legally reverse engineer the server? Would that even be worthwhile? I don't know if reverse engineering would make Cox 1.5 easier or not. If nothing else it could at least give them the ability to do updates to the original game.

Unreal would make a lot of things nicer in Cox, but it would also make it into a different game. No matter how much they try, it isn't going to play exactly like the original. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but still.

Maybe I misunderstood the whole announcement, but it just seems like people are jumping to conclusions and maybe setting themselves up for disappointment. It is a positive thing and a step in the right direction, but nowhere near any kind of certainty.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lapucelle on September 02, 2014, 12:30:19 AM
Well, now you know who's the negotiating party.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on September 02, 2014, 12:31:42 AM
Maybe I misunderstood the whole announcement, but it just seems like people are jumping to conclusions and maybe setting themselves up for disappointment. It is a positive thing and a step in the right direction, but nowhere near any kind of certainty.

Well, I don't think the CoH fanbase would be the CoH fanbase if we didn't assume the best would play out.

But, to their credit, Ironwolf, Downix, TonyV, Irish Girl - all of them have said that nothing is certain yet. We just have to wait for what can be.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on September 02, 2014, 12:34:02 AM
Truly inspired work from MWM and APR! You all have my respect and gratitude!

I also supported the kickstarter, and ever imagined anything this amazing. I cannot begin to imagine the time and effort this must have taken on a volunteer basis. Which leads me into my next question (which, suppose, is more of a concern).

I knew what I was getting into with CoT. But now the lines are blurred a bit. Will this continue to be a volunteer effort? From a volunteer studio? Are there plans to stand up a brick-and-mortar studio with employees who work on these projects? You all possess a far greater business acumen than I, so I won't go into the blah, blah...MMO's cost millions. But MMO's cost millions... and take years of development from a dedicated, full-time (plus) staff. You'll need much more capital than the 600K from KS.

I'm not doubting your ability to make this happen, I'm just unsure about the longevity and staying power of the group as it stands now (given what we know).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Alpha Series on September 02, 2014, 12:35:55 AM
Thank you, Nate and the restoration team. Also, Thanks to Ironwolf. I 'm hoping for the best and wish all of us the best of luck! Here's to the best possible outcome!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: adarict on September 02, 2014, 12:36:26 AM
Well, now you know who's the negotiating party.

That's true, though to be honest, I never really cared much who was negotiating. Based on how far it appeared to have gone, anyone negotiating at this point would have had the money and desire to be worthwhile, even it it wouldn't last long. Getting anything at this point would be better than nothing, so who was doing the buying was never a major concern to me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: TinFoil on September 02, 2014, 12:41:51 AM
I just want to say thank you. No matter what the outcome, it's wonderful to see a team with passion and worldly understanding trying to save an experience we all love so much.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ad_Astra on September 02, 2014, 12:45:21 AM
OMG!

Next year in Paragon City?

(hoping it's a reasonable time line...)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pmoyer on September 02, 2014, 12:47:12 AM
Wow.

This is certainly unexpected news.  While the inability to bring across the user data for the characters due to license issues is somewhat unfortunate, I suppose that's one way to do a brute-force respec.  ;)  And for those of us who used Sentinel+ to store our characters before the end, that's a resource for us to recreate them.  (badge re-collection will be a pain, but hey...)

As long as whatever gets moved over (and later CoH 1.5/2/whatever) is able to be run on a Mac like the I23/I24.beta clients, I think I'll be happy.

Not that this will stop me from supporting CoT... the updates I've been reading have been definitely encouraging, especially the lore developments...

/torch

--- Philip
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 02, 2014, 12:48:26 AM
 While I am still somewhat confused by reading the post.. I definitely an very thankful for all the time work and effort put in to get the community of City of Heroes their home back..

 Man I was hoping for character data..

 My biggest concern is the maintenance mode.. if everything goes through.. how long does that last.. I would hate to get back in.. remake stuff and then.. oh well sorry we dont want to run this anymore.. good bye..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: themamboman on September 02, 2014, 12:49:22 AM
Rereading Nate's post gave me that impression too. I think the big thing is that CoH 1.5 devs will have the right to recreate the game that we love, but on a new engine. And that the other spiritual successors no longer have to be scared of getting the pants sued off of them for resembling CoX. And that the i23 game will live on, but for how long?

Apologies if this has been mentioned so far (still catching up on the thread):

If CoH1.5 is created on a new engine, to recreate the feel of the original game, and it is the content that is licensed, I wonder if they would make the engine open source?

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 02, 2014, 12:51:43 AM
Right now it's pretty much just me working on it, and unfortunately I'm spending the next week packing and cleaning to move. (I should be packing right now, actually. Heh)
I don't have a time frame, I wish I did. It kind of depends on if it stays just me, or if...and how many...people join the project.
Really, I think that's going to depend on talks between myself and the licensing company that (hopefully) picks up the license.

*whispers to Irish Girl*  psssssst talk to SCoRE about teaming up....  (Wish I knew more about them!  Do they have code?  just a backup? How many of them are there?  Still hoping SCoRE doesn't give up at any rate!!)

*ducks*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 02, 2014, 12:52:05 AM
While I am still somewhat confused by reading the post.. I definitely an very thankful for all the time work and effort put in to get the community of City of Heroes their home back..

 Man I was hoping for character data..

I assumed they never get that unless NCsoft had went bankrupt and had to sell the assets; just never made sense for NCSoft to give it up for any reasons.

I just want NCSoft to say yes to the IP so I have someone to throw my money at to play COH.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 02, 2014, 12:54:07 AM
Thank you so much for all your hard work (and for going about it the right way!)

Also, what you have done must have been pretty dang impressive, because it brought Turgenev out of hiding! WOW.

For starters, for those who don't know.... I run APR. Nate and I have been in talks for a little while now, and I've got a pretty good handle on what the plan is. I'll try and answer some people's questions as best I can, So poor Nate isn't having to do everything.

CoH Issue 23 is planned to make a return, yes. However, the team will not have the ability to make ANY updates to it. No new content, no new costume pieces, no patching out bugs.

On windows 9, I have no information. Most likely there will be compatability issues with running something as old as CoH. Also, see above...No new content.

I'm totally ok with this, but my question based on that is.... Does that mean when Win 9 is released, the maintenance mode CoH is effectively shut down? Or, does it mean that the maintenance mode will run in perpetuity and Win 9 users simply won't be able to play the game? (I say this because I don't plan on upgrading to Win 9....also, some of us play CoH on OS X)...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dr. Bad Guy on September 02, 2014, 12:57:20 AM

 My biggest concern is the maintenance mode.. if everything goes through.. how long does that last.. I would hate to get back in.. remake stuff and then.. oh well sorry we dont want to run this anymore.. good bye..
Windows 7 sunset is 1/14/2020. That will probably be the last stable Win os for City. I'm sure somebody will be able to cludge something together to run it on a Win 9 system. Me personally,  at that point I'm sure I'll be neck deep in VO and COT
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dr. Bad Guy on September 02, 2014, 12:59:02 AM
Could always build a Linux box.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Winter Fable on September 02, 2014, 12:59:40 AM
For people worrying about "how long can a CoH 1.0 implementation last".

As long as they can keep the servers stable, honestly, it's almost indefinitely.

There is, currently, NOTHING in the Win9 pipeline that looks to affect anything CoH could do AT ALL.

The biggest hurdle will be building a working game loader/patcher, as a certain amount of the game is primarily client-side stuff that CAN be accessed/worked with/fixed at will.  Just so long as the server and client agree on the acceptable version number.
Thank You Hyperstrike,that makes me fell better if that is the case.I understand most of you want a newer version of the game but I love it just the way it was.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lapucelle on September 02, 2014, 01:01:45 AM
A lot of your questions really depend on what happens next. We need to see if we can get CoH up and running. The old girl isn't in the best shape, we're going to need to build a new environment for her to live in. Auth, login, whole nine yards. We don't know about Windows 9 yet. We haven't seen it, and neither has anyone outside Microsoft, that I'm aware of.

This is just a _guess_, but I'm guessing that we'll get it running in limping mode, enough to check everything's there, show it off a little, and then we'll have to raise some money for servers to get her open. Again, this is just my best guess. CoT money is for CoT, we'd need new cash for this. Maybe a bank loan. Anyhow, once we get her up and limping, we'll be able to see what we need to do to get her running again. (I don't even know if we'll get the website and webstore.)

We're doing our best for you. We know what you want. We _are_ you.

And with your help, we're one step closer to Saving CoH.

- Warcabbit

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 02, 2014, 01:03:53 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Black Gold on September 02, 2014, 01:04:43 AM
So if NCSoft licenses out the IP to this third party company and the successor games utilize the IP does that mean NCSoft makes money on the game they essentially shut down when we pay fees related to the successor games we will play?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 02, 2014, 01:04:47 AM
A lot of your questions really depend on what happens next. We need to see if we can get CoH up and running. The old girl isn't in the best shape, we're going to need to build a new environment for her to live in. Auth, login, whole nine yards. We don't know about Windows 9 yet. We haven't seen it, and neither has anyone outside Microsoft, that I'm aware of.

This is just a _guess_, but I'm guessing that we'll get it running in limping mode, enough to check everything's there, show it off a little, and then we'll have to raise some money for servers to get her open. Again, this is just my best guess. CoT money is for CoT, we'd need new cash for this. Maybe a bank loan. Anyhow, once we get her up and limping, we'll be able to see what we need to do to get her running again. (I don't even know if we'll get the website and webstore.)

We're doing our best for you. We know what you want. We _are_ you.

And with your help, we're one step closer to Saving CoH.

- Warcabbit

remember, there are many of us that donated to kickstarter once, and will do it again.........dont be afraid to ask for help
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 01:05:33 AM
*whispers to Irish Girl*  psssssst talk to SCoRE about teaming up....  (Wish I knew more about them!  Do they have code?  just a backup? How many of them are there?  Still hoping SCoRE doesn't give up at any rate!!)

*ducks*

-Whispers back to Surelle- Pssssssst, IDK who works on SCoRE! and I think what SCoRE and I are doing are kinda on different paths. But, I don't think they should give up either! (If SCoRE does exist, and one of the people who may or may not be working on it feel like getting in touch with me...)

-ducks-
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: bugzee on September 02, 2014, 01:05:46 AM
As for i23 CoH staying live forever without any updates (if thats the case), I just wanted to point something out: I still play a multiplayer game called Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and it still has quite a following. That game came out 2002! I23 as it is, still has years left in it. And the truth is, if City of Heroes were to come back online, it would be played for many years to come, provided the servers don't get unplugged. As for Windows 9 being a problem, maybe... But I don't think its confirmed that the game wont work in Win9. And if it doesn't, I'm sure the community can come up with workarounds for that. I'm being cautiously optimistic here about the game's revival, as Nate pointed out, its not a done deal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 02, 2014, 01:07:35 AM
Windows 7 sunset is 1/14/2020. That will probably be the last stable Win os for City. I'm sure somebody will be able to cludge something together to run it on a Win 9 system. Me personally,  at that point I'm sure I'll be neck deep in VO and COT

 Im not concerned about how long Windows 7 will be around.. I am more concerned whether once again it will just END and we will all be in the lurch again..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Spellcaster Hana on September 02, 2014, 01:08:10 AM
Wow, thanks for the update.

There are some things about the proposal that I find confusing but it's weird that I'm feeling not hopeful at all but having more of mixed feelings about all this instead. Maybe being tied to NCSoft or having no concrete result of the negotiations is what's causing me to feel like this...

I'd rather hear some kind of good news that favors us but this is still news, in a limbo kind of way.

Anyway, you guys got farther than the past TFHM team. Great job having some progress!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Septipheran on September 02, 2014, 01:09:01 AM
Jumping out of the woodwork to say thanks to everyone involved in making this happen. I'm cautiously optimistic like everyone else, but I did want to add my voice to the chorus of people willing to contribute to a Kickstarter or whatever fundraising means might be used to help get the ball rolling once (if) it gets to that point.


-Whispers back to Surelle- Pssssssst, IDK who works on SCoRE! and I think what SCoRE and I are doing are kinda on different paths. But, I don't think they should give up either! (If SCoRE does exist, and one of the people who may or may not be working on it feel like getting in touch with me...)

-ducks-

Come on, it's probably Codewalker.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 01:10:08 AM
I'm totally ok with this, but my question based on that is.... Does that mean when Win 9 is released, the maintenance mode CoH is effectively shut down? Or, does it mean that the maintenance mode will run in perpetuity and Win 9 users simply won't be able to play the game? (I say this because I don't plan on upgrading to Win 9....also, some of us play CoH on OS X)...

Since I'm not on the team that would be running CoH's maint. mode, I can't make promises on their behalf. But... I'm pretty sure the i23 server will run in perpetuity. The server is completely separate from any Operating System concerns.
CoH will run on anything that it currently runs on. It's the same client you've all got now. As to if it'll run well on Windows 9, I can't say until I've got a copy of Windows 9 I could test on.
As for OSX, I don't own a Mac but I do believe there's an Issue 23 version of the Mac Client floating around.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Viridian Surge on September 02, 2014, 01:14:17 AM
Thanks Tony V and the rest of the Titan Network for keeping this website and forums going. Thanks to the original TFHM folks for making the original post shutdown effort on our behalf. Tony, your level-headedness has help keep us public-spirited people focused on hope and civility.

Thanks Ironwolf for helping get this most recent effort rolling and for your keeping us posted on developments towards getting City of Heroes rebooted.

Thanks Downix for yours and the Hail Mary team for all your gallant efforts to help bring us back City of Heroes in maintenance mode with a look to the future of City of Heroes and it's successors.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Oskmey on September 02, 2014, 01:14:34 AM
Just wanted to throw my thanks in there too. I had always hoped to see the City again. If we have to start our characters over, I am good with that. There are only two things that I would definitely want: my original in game name (which is my forum name here) and to know when to throw money behind the project.

Thank you again and good luck on the next steps.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 02, 2014, 01:15:53 AM
http://mmofallout.com/city-of-heroes-the-mask-comes-off/

Almost there!  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 01:16:56 AM
Im not concerned about how long Windows 7 will be around.. I am more concerned whether once again it will just END and we will all be in the lurch again..

I can't imagine a scenario where this happens. Too many people who are involved in process are too emotionally invested in it.

I'll say right not, I would fight tooth and nail and then some before I let that happen again. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rubberlad on September 02, 2014, 01:18:05 AM
...and then we'll have to raise some money for servers to get her open. Again, this is just my best guess. CoT money is for CoT, we'd need new cash for this. Maybe a bank loan.

Anyone else, I'd not hesitate. Missing Worlds Media... I'd say use whatever's left of the $600k that was put up for CoT (cause if given the choice, I think more folks would get behind CoH as the tried and true game they knew versus CoT, the still in the planning stages successor that no one has seen yet -- but I'm sure there's a fierce vocal minority that'd disagree).

Then again if you're already talking fundraising to finance new servers, then where's the money coming from to support the "doable" magic number that's been thrown out and potentially ok'ed by NCsoft? Do you guys have it or you're waiting to crowdfund that too once NCsoft agrees to a deal?

No offense but having all these eggs in MWM's basket is really making me nervous.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: r00tb0ySlim on September 02, 2014, 01:18:55 AM
Since I'm not on the team that would be running CoH's maint. mode, I can't make promises on their behalf. But... I'm pretty sure the i23 server will run in perpetuity. The server is completely separate from any Operating System concerns.
^^This^^  at least let's hope so as far as maintenance mode is concerned...perpetuity is our friend ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 02, 2014, 01:20:25 AM
Pretty sure that Codewalker has stated precisely what the differences are between the SCoRE team, should they actually exist, and their efforts, that may or may not actually be happening, and what the good folks at Team Hail Mary (or is it Atlas Park Revival, and can downix throw a headcount of Titan members who are on that team into his OP so we know who here is actually on the team and who just sounds really, really smart?) are doing. He and/or Blondeshell or Agge could probably even throw up links to threads where he's done exactly that, but things are moving so fast, here, let's not worry about that ATM.

And, while there may or may not be individuals within the ranks of the Titan Community who are more knowledgeable than many, if not all, the former official devs, the "S" in SCoRE stands for "secret." If there is anything that the last few days has shown about this community, it's that, when there is a secret that really needs to be kept, the folks who actually have it will do a pretty damned good job of keeping it, even if they can't help from letting people know that they have it. (If any of that made sense...)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Septipheran on September 02, 2014, 01:20:33 AM
Anyone else, I'd not hesitate. Missing Worlds Media... I'd say use whatever's left of the $600k that was put up for CoT (cause if given the choice, I think more folks would get behind CoH as the tried and true game they knew versus CoT, the still in the planning stages successor that no one has seen yet.

Then again if you're already talking fundraising to finance new servers, then where's the money coming from to support the magic number that's been thrown out and potentially ok'ed by NCsoft? Do you guys have it or you're waiting to crowdfund that too once NCsoft agrees to a deal?

Don't you think it'd be a bit on the unethical side to use the funds that people gave for a certain project (COT) for something entirely different (COH revival?) I tend to personally agree with you, but I can't see how re-purposing the funds would work practically.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lapucelle on September 02, 2014, 01:21:27 AM
Yep, as I said, CoT money needs to stay with CoT. This would need to be clean money.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kaliuwaa on September 02, 2014, 01:22:17 AM
Sincere "Mahalo" from this fanchick! 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 02, 2014, 01:22:46 AM
Since I'm not on the team that would be running CoH's maint. mode, I can't make promises on their behalf. But... I'm pretty sure the i23 server will run in perpetuity. The server is completely separate from any Operating System concerns.
CoH will run on anything that it currently runs on. It's the same client you've all got now. As to if it'll run well on Windows 9, I can't say until I've got a copy of Windows 9 I could test on.
As for OSX, I don't own a Mac but I do believe there's an Issue 23 version of the Mac Client floating around.
if I understand, cox maint. will be i23, so will cox 1.5 have i24?
again I want to say thank you to Missing Worlds and everyone involved in this, also will there be a kick starter before cox maint. goes online?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 01:23:16 AM
Don't you think it'd be a bit on the unethical side to use the funds that people gave for a certain project (COT) for something entirely different (COH revival?) I tend to personally agree with you, but I can't see how re-purposing the funds would work practically.

I don't believe they would do that. From everything I've heard, the intention is to keep Missing Worlds Media and the licensing group completely separate.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Septipheran on September 02, 2014, 01:27:00 AM
I don't believe they would do that. From everything I've heard, the intention is to keep Missing Worlds Media and the licensing group completely separate.

That's what I figured, not to mention the fact that a lot of people have been working pretty hard on that game. While some people might not be interested in it, it would be a shame to see it all go to waste.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know how exactly these negotiations are being bankrolled? I'm assuming that one of NCSoft's first questions was "can you afford to buy this game?" Obviously MMO's are expensive... I'm assuming that either a.) Nate and co. have some pretty beefy resources independent from the MWM/COT fund (in which case I'm a little  curious as to why said funds were raised in the first place, but I digress) or b.) MWM's propensity for raising a boat load of money was enough of a sign of financial prowess for NCSoft to continue negotiations under good faith (but that seems a bit too good to be true.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: epic on September 02, 2014, 01:27:40 AM
Thanks a bunch. Cant wait to get back to RV.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cobra Man on September 02, 2014, 01:30:03 AM
I may have missed this when I read through the thread but I have 3 questions.

1. Why is the source code off the table? Is it;

a) NCsoft don't have it

or

b) NCsoft don't want to part with it


2. Why are the existing user database and characters not part of this arrangement? Wouldn't it be good business practice to try and get as many ex-players back as they can. The prospect of players being able to recover beloved characters and SG bases etc would be a very powerful draw. There must be some way to invite players back.

3. Was any thought given to finishing and using i24?


Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CreVo on September 02, 2014, 01:33:48 AM
Everyone in this thread needs to understand Issue 24 was -very- far along but it was not done. Animations, effects, balancing, and probably a lot more we don't even know about weren't finished. It would require future active development and input from the old developers. The latter part probably being the easiest to accomplish due to how involved they are with the community even still. Would be nice to have though ;[
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 02, 2014, 01:37:18 AM
Don't you think it'd be a bit on the unethical side to use the funds that people gave for a certain project (COT) for something entirely different (COH revival?) I tend to personally agree with you, but I can't see how re-purposing the funds would work practically.

Wow, you came out of hiding, Bro! :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Without_Pause on September 02, 2014, 01:38:02 AM
Glad the game is coming back. The CoH 1.5 part sounds like a mess until it gets cleared up. Let's just say I would like certain projects to have no part in CoH but apparently they are now free to do so. Again, how it is currently worded is done poorly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Septipheran on September 02, 2014, 01:38:29 AM
Wow, you came out of hiding, Bro! :D

Haha. I did. If it makes you feel any better, whenever I've checked in for news I always stopped to read your posts.  8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Atlantea on September 02, 2014, 01:40:03 AM
Well this is certainly good news!

Thanks to all for the efforts and the patience.

I think I get what you're saying about the technical aspects of things after a thorough read of the thread. These can mostly be worked with, adapted to, or outright kludged. I'm 100% certain that someone somewhere will be able to keep the original COH/COV game running even beyond 2020 if there's still enough people willing to play.

The MAIN thing that gives me hope though is in fact the IP being released. With THAT - the stories, the concepts, even visual designs - you can keep the world of Paragon City going INDEFINITELY through many iterations and games!

That's ENORMOUS. I can't overstate how important that is. If THAT part of the deal goes through as described, then the game really HAS been changed! In ALL senses of the word!

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 02, 2014, 01:40:09 AM
Since I'm not on the team that would be running CoH's maint. mode, I can't make promises on their behalf. But... I'm pretty sure the i23 server will run in perpetuity. The server is completely separate from any Operating System concerns.
CoH will run on anything that it currently runs on. It's the same client you've all got now. As to if it'll run well on Windows 9, I can't say until I've got a copy of Windows 9 I could test on.
As for OSX, I don't own a Mac but I do believe there's an Issue 23 version of the Mac Client floating around.

Thanks for your answer, Irish_Girl. I sent you a PM.

Side note.... This guy's avatar is basically how I was when I was reading the announcement:

(Click my name above to see my avatar)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 01:43:13 AM
Thanks for your answer, Irish_Girl. I sent you a PM.

Side note.... This guy's avatar is basically how I was when I was reading the announcement:

No problem, Today seems to be pretty much dedicated to answering peoples questions! :D
And oooh, a PM!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rubberlad on September 02, 2014, 01:45:53 AM
I don't believe they would do that. From everything I've heard, the intention is to keep Missing Worlds Media and the licensing group completely separate.

There's a difference between unethical and what's potentially mismanaged.

Mind you, Nate says they started talking to NCsoft in September 2013 - that's prior to the CoT kickstarter going live. Personally, if I'd known there was a discussion in progress with NCsoft, I wouldn't have then gone out and asked folks for money to fund the spiritual successor of a game that I was actively (but quietly) trying to buy back. That alone has all sorts of red flags - but I digress.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Septipheran on September 02, 2014, 01:48:58 AM
There's a difference between unethical and what's potentially mismanaged.

Mind you, Nate says they started talking to NCsoft in September 2013 - that's prior to the CoT kickstarter going live. Personally, if I'd known there was a discussion in progress with NCsoft, I wouldn't have then gone out and asked folks for money to fund the spiritual successor of a game that I was actively (but quietly) trying to buy back. That alone has all sorts of red flags - but I digress.

The thing about that is that the effort to buy back COH was never (and still isn't) guaranteed. COT is and was a sure thing, something they knew they could do, so I can't say I blame them for moving forward as if COH wouldn't be back. If these negotiations fall apart, I'm willing to bet that a lot of people will be glad that COT is still being developed. A lot of people will probably play both games also, in the event that COH is saved.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rubberlad on September 02, 2014, 01:51:17 AM
The thing about that is that the effort to buy back COH was never (and still isn't) guaranteed. COT is and was a sure thing, something they knew they could do, so I can't say I blame them for moving forward as if COH wouldn't be back. If these negotiations fall apart, I'm willing to bet that a lot of people will be glad that COT is still being developed. A lot of people will probably play both games also, in the event that COH is saved.

CoT is *not* a sure thing. Kickstarter has a history of successfully funded campaigns that never materialized (for one reason or another). And as stated elsewhere on this forum. the Kickstarter campaign was for CoT in Unreal Engine 3 - and then all of that work was scrapped post-successful fundraising. UE4 was not part of the plan and its just as much a big risk/potential to fail. See "State of the Game" updates where the team says they've had multiple setbacks getting the game off the ground in UE4. At this point its a dead heat between CoT versus CoH --- and I'd feel much better about both projects as separate, potentially successful opportunities if MWM wasn't holding all the cards.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Septipheran on September 02, 2014, 01:53:01 AM
CoT is *not* a sure thing. Kickstarter has a history of successfully funded campaigns that never materialized (for one reason or another). And as stated elsewhere on this forum. the Kickstarter campaign was for CoT in Unreal Engine 3 - and then all of that work was scrapped post-successful fundraising. UE4 was not part of the plan and its just as much a big risk/potential to fail. See "State of the Game" updates where the team says they've had multiple setbacks getting the game off the ground in UE4.

I'm not going to sit here and argue with you since it seems like you're mostly being cynical. I will concede that "sure thing" might have been a poor choice in words, so feel free to re-read my post as "sure-er thing" and the point should still stand. Hope you enjoy the rest of your night.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 02, 2014, 01:53:58 AM
Mind you, Nate says they started talking to NCsoft in September 2013 - that's prior to the CoT kickstarter going live. Personally, if I'd known there was a discussion in progress with NCsoft, I wouldn't have then gone out and asked folks for money to fund the spiritual successor of a game that I was actively (but quietly) trying to buy back. That alone has all sorts of red flags - but I digress.

Given the number of failed buyout attempts that were NOT publicized (but I believe the people involved had information about), putting everything on hold for a plan that had slim-to-none odds of success sounds like the worse choice to me.

They're still probably only low-to-moderate IMO, so I wouldn't start counting any chickens just yet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rubberlad on September 02, 2014, 01:59:18 AM
Given the number of failed buyout attempts that were NOT publicized (but I believe the people involved had information about), putting everything on hold for a plan that had slim-to-none odds of success sounds like the worse choice to me.

They're still probably only low-to-moderate IMO, so I wouldn't start counting any chickens just yet.

Oh I'm not. I'm pleased that NCsoft is still willing to negotiate 2 years later. But that's about all.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Atlantea on September 02, 2014, 02:03:03 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: themamboman on September 02, 2014, 02:06:35 AM
I hope it is safe to assume that holiday events and other special events (like Rikti invasions) would be returning.  As I understood at the time, they were settings on the server anyway.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kminamyer28 on September 02, 2014, 02:07:16 AM
Just wanted to say thanks to EVERYONE involved in this and the other efforts (CoT and Atlas Park Revival).  I was a big player for six years (main toon Mega Volt on Guardian).  I have tried the three subpar wanna-be's (DC Online, Marvel Heroes, and Champions) and none of them had the community, design, play ability, or even the customization options (Marvel only allows their heroes).

Again....Thanks for all the work everyone is doing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 02, 2014, 02:07:52 AM
I hope it is safe to assume that holiday events and other special events (like Rikti invasions) would be returning.  As I understood at the time, they were settings on the server anyway.

Yes, I think they were switches to turn on certain events based on the date.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: SteveTheDwarf on September 02, 2014, 02:08:47 AM
Just wanted to pop in from lurking and say thank you to all involved in this process. I look forward to whatever future news may come, good or bad.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 02, 2014, 02:15:41 AM
Old clunky game engine? Incompatibility with Win 9?

DOESN'T MATTER.

It's the IDEAS and the Intellectual Property that is the real heart and soul of City of Heroes - and if THAT part of the deal goes through as described, then that part of the game - the concepts - the background stories - the characters - the NPCS - the visual design...

THAT PART will have been put in the hands of people who actually CARE about it!

Eventually the game engine will HAVE to change, one way or another. But moving it to Unreal Engine - and allowing other games to be part of the City of Heroes story and reference it..

GOOD GOD... That's HUGE.

Do you know what this means? SERIOUSLY? Have you thought it out to the extreme?

I just have. And it boggles my mind.

Imagine not one or two - but perhaps a DOZEN games - all in the same overall universe story-wise.

IF... IF this is not just NCSoft yanking people around again. If they really allow the IP to go. Then game engines don't matter. CODE doesn't matter.

The Story and the World of City of Heroes can live on even if the original game engine is (or has to be) discarded.

City of Heroes?

Imagine WORLD OF HEROES as a FRANCHISE.

As someone who's previously dealt with licensing intellectual property from a parent company for an established fan base, I completely agree with Atlantea.

Having the City of Heroes IP at your disposal makes nearly everything else pale in comparison. (A workable game version's nice, too, though. :) )
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 02, 2014, 02:16:45 AM
As long as they can keep the servers stable, honestly, it's almost indefinitely.

Not quite as simple as that.  The servers are even more environmentally.. challenged.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 02, 2014, 02:18:12 AM
Issues with the game engine and source code and the like pale into insignificance compared to freeing the IP from NCSoft...

Imagine WORLD OF HEROES as a FRANCHISE.

Agreed. I would imagine that Team Hail Mary and those that are in the "know" have suspected this, and while I appreciate that everyone really just wants to play CoH again (lord knows I do), I think if they are able to get the IP that is a far, far, greater coup than just getting the game up and running.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, depending on how much CoT, Valiance, H&V, and who knows who else are willing to work together, this could be a really unprecedented opportunity to create something more than just a single game, but for all of us to be able to participate in (and perhaps create) stories set in the City of Heroes 'verse.

I think it could be a really amazingly wonderful thing if they are able to get this going and set up.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Xenos on September 02, 2014, 02:18:50 AM
As for OSX, I don't own a Mac but I do believe there's an Issue 23 version of the Mac Client floating around.

There is an I23 and an I24 client for the Mac OS, so technically there should not be a issue. If there is an obstacle it might be an licensing issue with Transgaming who created the Mac version. But it surely wouldn't hurt to ask about it during the negotiations.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 02, 2014, 02:24:11 AM
-Whispers back to Surelle- Pssssssst, IDK who works on SCoRE! and I think what SCoRE and I are doing are kinda on different paths. But, I don't think they should give up either! (If SCoRE does exist, and one of the people who may or may not be working on it feel like getting in touch with me...)

If SCoRE is the group I am aware of I do not think, in good concious we could cooperate.  I'll have to doiuble check, I may have my "They who shall not be named" crossed up.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on September 02, 2014, 02:25:54 AM
Folks, I think many of these comments are putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. There's nothing cast in stone. Nothing in writing. Just an offer on the table. Nothing more, nothing less.

First, this licensing entity must be formed, right?

Then they have to get the rights to CoH so that they can license it to whomever would wish to make use of the lore, characters and such.

Then there's the matter of this Hail Mary team getting the game up and running from some binary copy - whatever that may mean. Uncompiled? <shrug> I'll leave that to you folks that know a lot more about it than I do. I'd be lucky to compile a "hello world" sucessfully.

My guess is that there will be at least another 3 months minimum under the best of conditions to get things running again. More likely 6 to 9 months - if the planets are all in alignment.

And that's okay. It's a better scenario than what we had before. Now, we have a glimmer of hope.

As for MWM and the Phoenix project - please continue your efforts on that project. It's what we paid for. This CoH deal may never come to pass.
I certainly hope it will, but it may not.

As for Atlas Park Revival - um...I know I took a break from the forums for a bit - but I'd never even heard of this before. Today's the first time I've seen it mentioned anywhere. Guess this was another effort that escaped my attention.

My guess is that our Sentinel files are still pretty much useless under this scenario?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 02, 2014, 02:26:31 AM
 Can someone explain this in plain english..

 To me it looks like..

  NC Soft sells IP to another company or sets up another company who will run CoH in maintenance mode..

  APR will work to transfer current Issue 23 CoH into Unreal Engine 4 so it can update CoH effectively making in CoH 1.5

  MWM will continue to develop City of Titans.. and effectively City of Titans since I will be able to licence the IP no longer making it a " spiritual successor " but an ACTUAL successor with the possibility of importing the CoH 1.5 ???

 Is that close ??
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 02, 2014, 02:26:37 AM
I just want to say something. This is partially an expansion of my last post on the previous page. But hear me out.

People on this thread and elsewhere seem to be focussed on the technical aspects and "when can I log in again"?

Issues with the game engine and source code and the like pale into insignificance compared to freeing the IP from NCSoft.

Read the following again:

Old clunky game engine? Incompatibility with Win 9?

DOESN'T MATTER.

It's the IDEAS and the Intellectual Property that is the real heart and soul of City of Heroes - and if THAT part of the deal goes through as described, then that part of the game - the concepts - the background stories - the characters - the NPCS - the visual design...

THAT PART will have been put in the hands of people who actually CARE about it!

Eventually the game engine will HAVE to change, one way or another. But moving it to Unreal Engine - and allowing other games to be part of the City of Heroes story and reference it..

GOOD GOD... That's HUGE.

Do you know what this means? SERIOUSLY? Have you thought it out to the extreme?

I just have. And it boggles my mind.

Imagine not one or two - but perhaps a DOZEN games - all in the same overall universe story-wise.

IF... IF this is not just NCSoft yanking people around again. If they really allow the IP to go. Then game engines don't matter. CODE doesn't matter.

The Story and the World of City of Heroes can live on even if the original game engine is (or has to be) discarded.

City of Heroes?

Imagine WORLD OF HEROES as a FRANCHISE.

I'm having a hard time being too interested in that. City of Heroes was a great GAME. As a world it was only good, and many of the creative minds that worked on it, or played in it, could create another very interesting world. But keeping the particular world alive is more important and relevant for financial reasons, than for reasons of imagination.

On the other side, I've read lots and lots of books. Many of them were set in great universes (Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Star Trek, Star Wars)... and many of the books were just bad. Getting a dozen games, of different types, all related to City of Heroes... means next to nothing, if the games are bad. And if they're good, they could be good whether they're tied into CoH or not. I am not in the slightest bit hopeful that a related game is going to be a great game just because it's set in the CoH world. It could be great, yes, but if a team makes a great game... they would have made a great game whether they set it in the CoH or the CoT world.

The game itself (code and design) are what matter to me, because they are a clearly superior product.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 02, 2014, 02:34:44 AM
I may have missed this when I read through the thread but I have 3 questions.
1. Why is the source code off the table? Is it;
a) NCsoft don't have it
or
b) NCsoft don't want to part with it

It's a little more complicated.  There are weird ownership issues and what is and is not transferable from an entity that may or may not legally exist, etc. It's a rats nest and it kills things.

2. Why are the existing user database and characters not part of this arrangement? Wouldn't it be good business practice to try and get as many ex-players back as they can. The prospect of players being able to recover beloved characters and SG bases etc would be a very powerful draw. There must be some way to invite players back.

Largely this has to do with back end storage and the way that NCSoft chose to do it making it very difficult to yank out.

3. Was any thought given to finishing and using i24?

No Comment.
[/quote]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hyper Ai on September 02, 2014, 02:34:50 AM
I for one am extremely glad I backed MWM on kickstarter. If the community didn't pool together like they did to support one of our successors, this may never have happened.

It's sad to hear they probably wont get our data or the source code for updates ect., but all in all I'm really excited. I can't wait to see what unfolds with all of this great news. I really appreciate all of the hard work you guys put in getting us our game back. I can't thank you enough.

The CoX community truly is a great one.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: WolfSoul on September 02, 2014, 02:34:55 AM
That's what I've been thinking about. Frankly, I could just plotz!  ;D


I just want to say something. This is partially an expansion of my last post on the previous page. But hear me out.

People on this thread and elsewhere seem to be focussed on the technical aspects and "when can I log in again"?

Issues with the game engine and source code and the like pale into insignificance compared to freeing the IP from NCSoft.

Read the following again:

Old clunky game engine? Incompatibility with Win 9?

DOESN'T MATTER.

It's the IDEAS and the Intellectual Property that is the real heart and soul of City of Heroes - and if THAT part of the deal goes through as described, then that part of the game - the concepts - the background stories - the characters - the NPCS - the visual design...

THAT PART will have been put in the hands of people who actually CARE about it!

Eventually the game engine will HAVE to change, one way or another. But moving it to Unreal Engine - and allowing other games to be part of the City of Heroes story and reference it..

GOOD GOD... That's HUGE.

Do you know what this means? SERIOUSLY? Have you thought it out to the extreme?

I just have. And it boggles my mind.

Imagine not one or two - but perhaps a DOZEN games - all in the same overall universe story-wise.

IF... IF this is not just NCSoft yanking people around again. If they really allow the IP to go. Then game engines don't matter. CODE doesn't matter.

The Story and the World of City of Heroes can live on even if the original game engine is (or has to be) discarded.

City of Heroes?

Imagine WORLD OF HEROES as a FRANCHISE.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: epawtows on September 02, 2014, 02:35:46 AM
I may have missed this when I read through the thread but I have 3 questions.

1. Why is the source code off the table? Is it;

a) NCsoft don't have it

or

b) NCsoft don't want to part with it


2. Why are the existing user database and characters not part of this arrangement? Wouldn't it be good business practice to try and get as many ex-players back as they can. The prospect of players being able to recover beloved characters and SG bases etc would be a very powerful draw. There must be some way to invite players back.

3. Was any thought given to finishing and using i24?

Any one of a number of reasons for not going for the source code.  What if NCSoft used bits of CoH code in other games?  Or, heck, programmers who worked on CoH code worked on other games, who may or may not have used bits of earlier jobs in newer ones?  Even NCSoft might not be able to figure out *how* to sell the old source without creating legal issues for their still-active games.  Or, at least, not without spending so much time and effort onto documenting what went where that would cost far more than they're likely to get out of this deal.   
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ice Trix on September 02, 2014, 02:37:05 AM
The game engine matters far more than the IP to me. Both would be great & I do love the lore, but if I had to choose one or the other, it would be the game engine.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 02, 2014, 02:44:03 AM
Thanks to everyone involved in this for the wonderful news so far, and I hope to hear more wonderful news in the days and weeks to come!

One quick request to the forum administrators: Now that the people involved are formally announcing who they are, can we get some sort of designation of their status (whether a title, icon, what have you) in order to differentiate their presumably-official posts from speculation by people like me? Thanks!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: DarkCurrent on September 02, 2014, 02:44:49 AM
My problem is with the word license.  That sounds to me like ncsoft willstill have their claws in the ip.  Not just for coh, but for successors who use any of it. 

Why on earth would those three projects agree to that when they are creating their own worlds?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 02, 2014, 02:45:31 AM
It's a rats nest and it kills things.
That you said this to someone named Cobra Man made me chuckle a little. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lapucelle on September 02, 2014, 02:48:47 AM
The game engine matters far more than the IP to me. Both would be great & I do love the lore, but if I had to choose one or the other, it would be the game engine.

Remember, the engine is different from the game. The engine is simply what renders and runs the game. The game itself, the rules and art and everything, are IP.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 02, 2014, 02:50:41 AM
My problem is with the word license.  That sounds to me like ncsoft willstill have their claws in the ip.  Not just for coh, but for successors who use any of it. 

...

I'm glad you said it and not me.  But I have been thinking it!  Let's hope there wouldn't be mandatory income levels required or else NC is free to shut down the IP-based games and the backup of CoH again too....  But alas, it sounds like they are quite far away from a concrete deal anyway and it's been almost a year of contacting them already.  So in the end none of this may matter.

SCoRE, I put my faith in you!  Please don't give up! 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 02, 2014, 02:51:45 AM
My problem is with the word license.  That sounds to me like ncsoft willstill have their claws in the ip.  Not just for coh, but for successors who use any of it. 

Why on earth would those three projects agree to that when they are creating their own worlds?

This is a great point. Personally, I don't mind if NCSoft is affiliated. However, wouldn't that mean that all three games would have to pay licensing fees to NCSoft forever? Wouldn't that have a major impact on whether or not their respective games could stay alive, should it get to a point (God forbid) that any of the teams have money problems? Couldn't that potentially shut down all three games if NCSoft decides to pull the license?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cobra Man on September 02, 2014, 02:53:35 AM
That you said this to someone named Cobra Man made me chuckle a little. :)

I did have a wry smile but the question wasn't really answered.

Is it the case that NCsoft have chosen not to release the source code or do they simply not have it anymore?

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ObsidianPhoenix76 on September 02, 2014, 02:56:26 AM
The game engine matters far more than the IP to me. Both would be great & I do love the lore, but if I had to choose one or the other, it would be the game engine.

But...  The only problem with that is the game engine is pretty specific to City of Heroes.  Thus if we do not get the IP, the engine will not make much of a difference.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 02, 2014, 02:58:49 AM
Remember, the engine is different from the game. The engine is simply what renders and runs the game. The game itself, the rules and art and everything, are IP.

Correct. Without the IP, you may still have a melee-based character who uses a sword and is highly resistant to damage, but you'll never again run an ITF on your fully-IOed Kat/Inv Scrapper. It's the content that makes City of Heroes what it is, not just the mechanics.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 02, 2014, 03:01:58 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 02, 2014, 03:03:56 AM
That's not how I read Nate's post. What it sounds like is the IP will be sold, lock, stock, and barrel, to a new "City of Heroes" company that will own it. They will be able to license the IP to others to use for various things (games, publishing, etc.), but they, in turn will be licensing the game engine from NCSoft so that a maintenance mode CoH game can be provided.

Obviously, not a part of the team myself, so I could very well be misunderstanding, but that is the way the OP reads to me.

Ah, well... That sounds like a MUCH better deal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 02, 2014, 03:04:00 AM
From what I understand (and I might be wrong), it's just a matter of pointing the client to a new authentication server. This can be done without the need for anything but a specially made shortcut.

For the EQ and WoW private servers I have knowledge of, it's replacing a single file, or even just manually editing an IP or two in the file already on your machine to point at the new servers. Pretty easy stuff if you have more computer knowledge than the average grandma. Haven't poked around in my i23 install but I can't see it being drastically different for CoH.

Others have raised Win7 concerns for 2020...I assure you, your OS won't turn into a pumpkin that day. You'll have to be a little more careful, but it'll still work for quite some time as companies generally aren't eager to end support to an OS still in wide use and recognized as excellent, even after MS has.

I still ran a 2k Pro box as late as 08, and only upgraded to XP then because the mobo released the magic smoke. I'll upgrade to 7 on this machine when some critical piece of hardware fails enough to force a reinstall or a power outage manages to trash the OS partition more than is worth the effort to recover. 9? maybe 2022... (and the gaming box on 7 runs i23 flawlessly, with Icon at least).

Anyway...I'm glad to see this is all in the hands of folks who truly love it and want to do well by it. Best of luck to MWM!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shifter on September 02, 2014, 03:05:29 AM
CoT money is for CoT, we'd need new cash for this. Maybe a bank loan.

Setup a direct donation method specifically earmarked for this and ask the community. WE WILL HELP...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AnElfCalledMack on September 02, 2014, 03:06:41 AM
Computer science note: The "binary" version they're talking about is most likely compiled machine code, ready to run. If it wasn't compiled, it'd still be source code, and thus (to some degree) patchable. Once they get the file, it's just a matter of setting up servers for authentification and gameplay, then redirecting the client to the new servers. Now, setting up those servers to handle their potential load, making sure everything can talk to each other properly, and getting a copy of the i23 client to distribute to people who've lost their old ones (Personally, my old laptop is nearly dead and not up to gaming, so I'll need a new client if we get this) - that will all take time, money and effort. So I'm not suggesting that this will be particularly easy. But the offer currently on the table is a ready-to-run copy (and only the ready-to-run version) of the server code, and the capacity to license the IP so they can distribute the game client. Pretty much the minimum possible to create a functional maintenance mode, but it'll work - and the capacity for the IP to be further licensed, allowing for new media in a much-loved world, is an exciting benefit.

Also, re the licensing - did you miss the part where it would be a separate holding company? NCSoft itself would not control the decision-making about who got licenses and whether to withdraw them (though I imagine enough gore and gratuitous sex could get your license application rejected, still). It'd depend on the specifics of the spin-off, but there would be a very limited degree of control here. The licensing company would have the sole purpose of arranging suitable licenses, and games like CoT, VO and H&V are about as suitable as it gets.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: DarkCurrent on September 02, 2014, 03:06:49 AM
That's not how I read Nate's post. What it sounds like is the IP will be sold, lock, stock, and barrel, to a new "City of Heroes" company that will own it. They will be able to license the IP to others to use for various things (games, publishing, etc.), but they, in turn will be licensing the game engine from NCSoft so that a maintenance mode CoH game can be provided.

Obviously, not a part of the team myself, so I could very well be misunderstanding, but that is the way the OP reads to me.

Yes it is this holding company i'm not sure of.  Are they getting total ip rights and engine license ?  Or just license for both?

I absolutely would refuse licensing the ip from ncsoft.  If you did, they'd own the soul of every successor.

Hopefully this can be clarified by nate.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 02, 2014, 03:12:49 AM
Yes it is this holding company i'm not sure of.  Are they getting total ip rights and engine license ?  Or just license for both?

I absolutely would refuse licensing the ip from ncsoft.  If you did, they'd own the soul of every successor.

Hopefully this can be clarified by nate.

He addressed it a little bit earlier (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10284.msg158155.html#msg158155), when he mentioned it would be separate from MWM. By extension, it seems to me that it would also be separate from NCSoft.

And the engine itself will only be licensed, as noted in the OP. He also mentions (in a later post) that he thinks the game would be run by the holding company.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 02, 2014, 03:13:34 AM
Would someone be kind enough to PM and explain what SCoRE is.  I think I know, and Ive found a blog site by that name associated with CoH.  But if someone could be kind enough to hook me up with the 411 on this Id appreciate it ... see I no longer have CoH installed ...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 02, 2014, 03:16:54 AM
Computer science note: The "binary" version they're talking about is most likely compiled machine code, ready to run. If it wasn't compiled, it'd still be source code, and thus (to some degree) patchable. Once they get the file, it's just a matter of setting up servers for authentification and gameplay, then redirecting the client to the new servers. Now, setting up those servers to handle their potential load, making sure everything can talk to each other properly, and getting a copy of the i23 client to distribute to people who've lost their old ones (Personally, my old laptop is nearly dead and not up to gaming, so I'll need a new client if we get this) - that will all take time, money and effort. So I'm not suggesting that this will be particularly easy. But the offer currently on the table is a ready-to-run copy (and only the ready-to-run version) of the server code, and the capacity to license the IP so they can distribute the game client. Pretty much the minimum possible to create a functional maintenance mode, but it'll work - and the capacity for the IP to be further licensed, allowing for new media in a much-loved world, is an exciting benefit.

Also, re the licensing - did you miss the part where it would be a separate holding company? NCSoft itself would not control the decision-making about who got licenses and whether to withdraw them (though I imagine enough gore and gratuitous sex could get your license application rejected, still). It'd depend on the specifics of the spin-off, but there would be a very limited degree of control here. The licensing company would have the sole purpose of arranging suitable licenses, and games like CoT, VO and H&V are about as suitable as it gets.

This helped explain the tech side greatly - cheers!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 02, 2014, 03:17:29 AM
Yes it is this holding company i'm not sure of.  Are they getting total ip rights and engine license ?  Or just license for both?

I absolutely would refuse licensing the ip from ncsoft.  If you did, they'd own the soul of every successor.

Hopefully this can be clarified by nate.
Purchase IP, license engine.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 02, 2014, 03:19:35 AM
can someone explain the APR relationship and how it affects things going forward ??
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 02, 2014, 03:21:02 AM
I'm having a hard time being too interested in that. City of Heroes was a great GAME. As a world it was only good, and many of the creative minds that worked on it, or played in it, could create another very interesting world. But keeping the particular world alive is more important and relevant for financial reasons, than for reasons of imagination.

On the other side, I've read lots and lots of books. Many of them were set in great universes (Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Star Trek, Star Wars)... and many of the books were just bad. Getting a dozen games, of different types, all related to City of Heroes... means next to nothing, if the games are bad. And if they're good, they could be good whether they're tied into CoH or not. I am not in the slightest bit hopeful that a related game is going to be a great game just because it's set in the CoH world. It could be great, yes, but if a team makes a great game... they would have made a great game whether they set it in the CoH or the CoT world.

The game itself (code and design) are what matter to me, because they are a clearly superior product.

Agreed.  I really didn't care about the Freedom Phalanx and Arachnos stuff.  The storylines and background history mean very little to me.  I cared that I was able to log in an make a superhero and interact with a great community, and make a little personal storyline niche for myself.

Granted the villain groups, TF's and Incarnate were wrapped around all that stuff but they don't make or break the game for me.  I understand the IP is a major key to going forward, but if they renamed every last power description, good guy, bad guy and anti-hero it wouldn't bug me one bit.  So long as the mechanics, the chat channels and the community were around I'd be happy.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 02, 2014, 03:22:28 AM
can someone explain the APR relationship and how it affects things going forward ??

Irish_Girl posted this (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,9675.msg158361.html#msg158361) a few pages back.

As she is APR, that's about as official a statement as you'll find!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 02, 2014, 03:23:45 AM
can someone explain the APR relationship and how it affects things going forward ??

As best I can tell, APR will be up to bat first with the CoX 1.5. but I am not entirely clear on that. They will be holding station until new content is ready to roll. (?)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 02, 2014, 03:24:32 AM
Irish_Girl posted this (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,9675.msg158361.html#msg158361) a few pages back.

As she is APR, that's about as official a statement as you'll find!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh thanks that makes things clear..

so we get CoH in Unreal.. and MWM develops Titans.. got it
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Peacemaker on September 02, 2014, 03:25:46 AM
Great news!  This made my day.  Good luck to all persons involved!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shifter on September 02, 2014, 03:25:58 AM
On the bright side, static binaries means no more nerfs ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 02, 2014, 03:26:03 AM
Computer science note: The "binary" version they're talking about is most likely compiled machine code, ready to run. If it wasn't compiled, it'd still be source code, and thus (to some degree) patchable. Once they get the file, it's just a matter of setting up servers for authentification and gameplay, then redirecting the client to the new servers. Now, setting up those servers to handle their potential load, making sure everything can talk to each other properly, and getting a copy of the i23 client to distribute to people who've lost their old ones (Personally, my old laptop is nearly dead and not up to gaming, so I'll need a new client if we get this) - that will all take time, money and effort. So I'm not suggesting that this will be particularly easy. But the offer currently on the table is a ready-to-run copy (and only the ready-to-run version) of the server code, and the capacity to license the IP so they can distribute the game client. Pretty much the minimum possible to create a functional maintenance mode, but it'll work - and the capacity for the IP to be further licensed, allowing for new media in a much-loved world, is an exciting benefit.

Also, re the licensing - did you miss the part where it would be a separate holding company? NCSoft itself would not control the decision-making about who got licenses and whether to withdraw them (though I imagine enough gore and gratuitous sex could get your license application rejected, still). It'd depend on the specifics of the spin-off, but there would be a very limited degree of control here. The licensing company would have the sole purpose of arranging suitable licenses, and games like CoT, VO and H&V are about as suitable as it gets.
Precisely this.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 03:26:47 AM
Purchase IP, license engine.

The shortest, most to-the-point explanation I've seen all day.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 02, 2014, 03:27:13 AM
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh thanks that makes things clear..

so we get CoH in Unreal.. and MWM develops Titans.. got it

That's my read on things, although getting CoH 1.5 in Unreal will be an undertaking in and of itself. The good thing about that though would be that it could be expanded upon (in theory), which a maintenance mode i23 can't.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 02, 2014, 03:27:51 AM
On the bright side, static binaries means no more nerfs ;)

Have no fear, I'm pretty sure I can fish up the binary offsets for the Regen powers in order to reduce their effectiveness periodically.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Atlantea on September 02, 2014, 03:28:52 AM
Have no fear, I'm pretty sure I can fish up the binary offsets for the Regen powers in order to reduce their effectiveness periodically.

(https://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a40/Hecubus1080/TV%20Movie%20Music/vader-nooooo.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 02, 2014, 03:29:26 AM
Ill throw in some cash to help someone go "find" character data  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 03:30:27 AM
Correct. Without the IP, you may still have a melee-based character who uses a sword and is highly resistant to damage, but you'll never again run an ITF on your fully-IOed Kat/Inv Scrapper. It's the content that makes City of Heroes what it is, not just the mechanics.

With an in-depth enough knowledge, mechanics can be replicated. Fairly easily. If I know that a Fire blaster, using Flares does, we'll say 6 DPS at level 1 without enhancements...then I can simply tell Unreal that a Level 1 Flares, with no enhcs, does 6 DPS.

But, without the I.P....I can't make that Fire Blaster.

There's a touch of misunderstanding going around, that moving to Unreal means that something about the gameplay will change. That's simply not true.
Is it likely that adjustments to certain things will be made during Beta? Yeah, just like during CoH. The devs would test, and adjust.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 02, 2014, 03:30:50 AM
On the bright side, static binaries means no more nerfs ;)

O rly? Challenge accepted xD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shifter on September 02, 2014, 03:34:49 AM
Have no fear, I'm pretty sure I can fish up the binary offsets for the Regen powers in order to reduce their effectiveness periodically.

O rly? Challenge accepted xD

You two are EEEEEEVIL, LOL.
 ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 03:36:00 AM
That's my read on things, although getting CoH 1.5 in Unreal will be an undertaking in and of itself. The good thing about that though would be that it could be expanded upon (in theory), which a maintenance mode i23 can't.

A fairly large undertaking, as I've learned. Not an entirely unpleasant one however.
Also, Expanding on it is the plan. Perhaps not exactly how Positron would have... ;P Since everyone knows what his plan was now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 02, 2014, 03:36:46 AM
O rly? Challenge accepted xD

*Gives an evil eye towards scorpion shield, then a little angel says maybe buff up the other ancillery pools to allow them to match up to mace, also please don't nerf power build up you'd make the ancilleries it's in useless(especially in the face of mace mastery)*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: sindyr on September 02, 2014, 03:38:27 AM
Let me come right out and admit that the apparent loss of the i24 perfection patch has hit me harder than expected. So let me ask, is there a way to get i24? I would move a lot of mountains to get i24 back. Is it a money thing? I am so in mourning for it I would donate quite a bit to get us that issue - perhaps other people would too.

Do we have to give up on i24 CoX now, or is there a way?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AnElfCalledMack on September 02, 2014, 03:38:56 AM
Would someone be kind enough to PM and explain what SCoRE is.  I think I know, and Ive found a blog site by that name associated with CoH.  But if someone could be kind enough to hook me up with the 411 on this Id appreciate it ... see I no longer have CoH installed ...
SCoRE (I thought it stood for Source Code Reverse Engineering?) is a rumoured attempt to reverse-engineer the source code of the game, and construct a functional server without buying or licensing anything. I know of no evidence that the project is even occurring, but it's something of an urban myth either way. The idea of reverse-engineering was brought up around the closure, but as it operates in very shady legal areas, any detailed discussion took place in private.

Legally, the EULA prohibited reverse-engineering, but there's an argument that NCSoft terminated the EULA and TOS by shutting down the servers. Regardless, this reverse-engineering would be gross copyright breach if used for a commercial purpose, and is in very unclear territory even if used free-of-charge and by not-for-profit organisations, depending on the jurisdiction it's judged in and the degree to which creating a private server for a no-longer-available game constitutes "fair use" of the IP and code, since the owner isn't actually losing subscription fees. There's very little precedent here. Honestly, the only one I can think of is the VCR decision - that designing technology that changes the parameters (such as time), but not the content, on a household scale counts as "fair use" under US copyright laws.

It has nothing to do with replacing your client - like I said, the license from the new CoH holding company would almost certainly include a license to distribute the game client to players.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 02, 2014, 03:42:15 AM
Purchase IP, license engine.

they probably use that engine in other places and dont want to sell it outright
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AnElfCalledMack on September 02, 2014, 03:49:32 AM
Let me come right out and admit that the apparent loss of the i24 perfection patch has hit me harder than expected. So let me ask, is there a way to get i24? I would move a lot of mountains to get i24 back. Is it a money thing? I am so in mourning for it I would donate quite a bit to get us that issue - perhaps other people would too.

Do we have to give up on i24 CoX now, or is there a way?

Negotiations are ongoing, and very little is off the table. However, we are not in the room and we aren't sure how unwilling NCSoft is to budge on it. For example, they may not have a binary of i24 - only source code for the patch. Thus, they'd have to give the team the full source code (something they are very unwilling to do, it seems) and allow the new company to compile the i24 server. And while money will help change minds, sometimes, there is only so far they are willing to move. In the end, we have to trust the people doing the negotiating - for many of them, these sorts of deals are their job, and they know how to get as much as they can and when something is truly off the table.

The deal isn't closed, so we don't have to give up on anything right yet. i24 isn't part of the package right now, but that might shift - perhaps as a concession to some other demand, or for a price the group can meet. But nothing is signed, and pushing too hard could mean we get nothing. So hope by all means, but be prepared that we may well not get it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ParagonKid on September 02, 2014, 03:53:35 AM
Not to sound unappreciated of the efforts, because I absolutely do respect all the hard work everyone has put in, but the outcome, as I understand how it currently stands, seems unappealing to me. The last thing I ever wanted to see is City in maintenance mode. Doubly so with all data wiped. The returning community will be a shell of what it once was, the game itself a walking corpse that will never see improvement, never grow, never change, for however long they can keep the server(s?) going, which may not be long. While I had no issues paying a subscription back in the day, ditto for buying stuff on the market, I did so knowing I was supporting a team that was constantly growing the game, which everyone thought would be around for many many more years.

I simply have no desire to pay for, or have faith in, a game that has no real future. so I probably wont return if pay to play is on the table, or anything in the market costs anything, which it most certainly will be the case since I know even running a game in maintenance mode isn't free.

YMMV, however, and I do not besmirch anyone who just wants the game back. So do I, but just not at all costs.
To quote Stephen King's Pet Sematary: "Sometimes dead is better."

Never say never though, and call me if ever 'City of Heroes 2' is entering closed beta.
 :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shifter on September 02, 2014, 03:55:31 AM
Regardless, this reverse-engineering would be gross copyright breach if used for a commercial purpose, and is in very unclear territory even if used free-of-charge and by not-for-profit organisations, depending on the jurisdiction it's judged in and the degree to which creating a private server for a no-longer-available game constitutes "fair use" of the IP and code, since the owner isn't actually losing subscription fees. There's very little precedent here.

Hmm... If you add a couple of pads to "fight club", is it now "kickboxing", a legitimate legal sport?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Jade77 on September 02, 2014, 04:00:38 AM
Been along time since I popped in here (not that I was by a whole loot to begin with).  This is great news and I await the final results.  Kudos to all the hard work done to get this far.

Will any of the former staff of Paragon Studios be jumping on board to get this up and running when (fingers crossed) it happenes.

Really hope we can get the character data back too.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AnElfCalledMack on September 02, 2014, 04:04:17 AM
Hmm... If you add a couple of pads to "fight club", is it now "kickboxing", a legitimate legal sport?
In some jurisdictions, probably. Or you might need a ref and some waivers as well. The weird thing about doing stuff on the internet, though, is that you never know whose laws you'll be judged by for sure.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 02, 2014, 04:06:07 AM
The last thing I ever wanted to see is City in maintenance mode. Doubly so with all data wiped.

I do not doubt the validity of your feelings. However, they are not shared by many others. Manymany others.

Quote
To quote Stephen King's Pet Sematary: "Sometimes dead is better."

If you don't want to play in maintenance mode, no one is forcing you to. However, many others feel quite differently.

We've had two years of death. That is more than enough for me, and no I did not find it "better." Not one day went by when I did not miss the game. Many of us have mourned for the whole two years.

If you don't want to play, then don't. Fair enough. I just want my world back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Black Gold on September 02, 2014, 04:06:53 AM
That's not how I read Nate's post. What it sounds like is the IP will be sold, lock, stock, and barrel, to a new "City of Heroes" company that will own it. They will be able to license the IP to others to use for various things (games, publishing, etc.), but they, in turn will be licensing the game engine from NCSoft so that a maintenance mode CoH game can be provided.

Obviously, not a part of the team myself, so I could very well be misunderstanding, but that is the way the OP reads to me.

EDIT: Specifically-

That latter paragraph, also, reads as if the spiritual successors may be exempt from licensing fees as part of this arrangement (though other successor games not in current negotiations probably would not).

Again, I may be reading too much between the lines.

 I can't see how you interpreted any of that from what was written. I read it as this 3rd party company would license it from NCSoft and be able to lease it out.  And saw nothing at all about exception from fees.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 02, 2014, 04:08:36 AM
Mind, too, that maintenance mode isn't what is currently foreseen as the last stages of the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 02, 2014, 04:10:15 AM
I can't see how you interpreted any of that from what was written. I read it as this 3rd party company would license it from NCSoft and be able to lease it out.  And saw nothing at all about exception from fees.

That latter part was perhaps my reading into things, yes. As for the former part, check out this post (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10284.msg158458.html#msg158458) from Nate.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 02, 2014, 04:11:41 AM
I did have a wry smile but the question wasn't really answered.

Is it the case that NCsoft have chosen not to release the source code or do they simply not have it anymore?

My understanding is it is not on the table, a no go.  My recollection of the way is a mix of they won't and they can't.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 02, 2014, 04:12:46 AM
Negotiations are ongoing, and very little is off the table. However, we are not in the room and we aren't sure how unwilling NCSoft is to budge on it. For example, they may not have a binary of i24 - only source code for the patch. Thus, they'd have to give the team the full source code (something they are very unwilling to do, it seems) and allow the new company to compile the i24 server.

Forgive a no doubt really ignorant question, but why would they be so fierce about the source code for a game from 2004...? they cant possibly still be basing one of their current games off of it, this just seems kind of bonkers to me. How could that code be anything other than a curiosity in today's gaming world?

[Except to us, natch.]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 02, 2014, 04:15:46 AM
Forgive a no doubt really ignorant question, but why would they be so fierce about the source code for a game from 2004...? they cant possibly still be basing one of their current games off of it, this just seems kind of bonkers to me. How could that code be anything other than a curiosity in today's gaming world?

[Except to us, natch.]
Imagine a moment that CoH and, say, Lineage II share some key piece of code. Now, Lineage II is still in service in Asia, so this code, if sold, would cause a major problem for NCSoft in supporting their millions of customers in Asia. Now imagine CoH and Aion shared some other code. Then CoH and Guild Wars 2.... just how do you untangle the spiderweb of interconnected strands between all of these games which may or may not share code? NCSoft may not even know how tangled things are.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Black Gold on September 02, 2014, 04:17:41 AM
That latter part was perhaps my reading into things, yes. As for the former part, check out this post (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10284.msg158458.html#msg158458) from Nate.
Ah ty I hadn't seen that part. But. who would own this spin off company?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dannii on September 02, 2014, 04:18:07 AM
I'm just curious as to why there is no source code out there.  I recently graduated from college and every bit of code I wrote, I kept, and that includes code from members of team projects that I was involved with.  I would assume that I am not the only one who does this.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: themamboman on September 02, 2014, 04:19:17 AM
SCoRE (I thought it stood for Source Code Reverse Engineering?) is a rumoured attempt to reverse-engineer the source code of the game, and construct a functional server without buying or licensing anything.

There was more than one team.  It stood for "Secret Cabal of Reverse Engineers".  It was server-side simulation only, nothing to do with the client side, apart from changing the command-line to point to the new server.


Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: States on September 02, 2014, 04:20:40 AM
I'm patient.. I've waited this long for it to return or something like that to come along. Something better than DCUO.. As long it comes along I'm good
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 02, 2014, 04:22:23 AM
Imagine a moment that CoH and, say, Lineage II share some key piece of code. Now, Lineage II is still in service in Asia, so this code, if sold, would cause a major problem for NCSoft in supporting their millions of customers in Asia. Now imagine CoH and Aion shared some other code. Then CoH and Guild Wars 2.... just how do you untangle the spiderweb of interconnected strands between all of these games which may or may not share code? NCSoft may not even know how tangled things are.

OIC. Well, you're right, that would be a problem for sure.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 02, 2014, 04:23:27 AM
Forgive a no doubt really ignorant question, but why would they be so fierce about the source code for a game from 2004...? they cant possibly still be basing one of their current games off of it, this just seems kind of bonkers to me. How could that code be anything other than a curiosity in today's gaming world?

[Except to us, natch.]

Could be used as another bargaining chip to milk more money away from the buyer. Like I stated in the previous thread (that's why it was not surprise to me when I heard the account data was not included in this deal), a company doesn't give the entire package away, they piecemeal everything and anything to squeeze as much out of their buyers. Logically we think, they have no use to it, they should just include it. Almost a final dick move in a negotiation process. Your company has zero or no use for the piece of the product, but if there is someone willing to buy it, game on. This is not a bash on NC Soft, but just how all competent business run. Never give something away if you can make a profit to make your quarterly statement look that much better
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Niklarus on September 02, 2014, 04:25:58 AM
Thanks for the clarification, Downix {and again, just a general "THANK YOU"}

I guess for now its "The Holding Company"

(how about WHIP for We have IP)


I'm coming upon the news a little late and going through all the forum posts, so pardon me if someone's made this joke already, but how about Big Brother and the Holding Company?  'Cause CoH will always have a piece of my heart.   8)

http://youtu.be/9hcxbIln3sc (http://youtu.be/9hcxbIln3sc)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 02, 2014, 04:26:15 AM
There was more than one team.  It stood for "Secret Cabal of Reverse Engineers".  It was server-side simulation only, nothing to do with the client side, apart from changing the command-line to point to the new server.
Well, you're talking out yer butt. Who are you again? ;) It *is* one team (but more than one person), and it *is* attempting to reverse engineer *the game*, not just the server. More than that is privileged information, and even *I* - as a Titan Mod - am not privy to most of it.

I think you may be confusing what's going on with Titan Network's "SCoRE" team.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 02, 2014, 04:28:58 AM
Ah ty I hadn't seen that part. But. who would own this spin off company?

Gerhardt Eisenstadt.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 02, 2014, 04:29:40 AM
Forgive a no doubt really ignorant question, but why would they be so fierce about the source code for a game from 2004...? they cant possibly still be basing one of their current games off of it, this just seems kind of bonkers to me. How could that code be anything other than a curiosity in today's gaming world?

[Except to us, natch.]

You are correct that the source code is dated for a 2004 game.
And even the 2012 version of it would be a monstrocity.

However when resurrecting a game, it seems to me that what is paramount is not so much the source code per se, but rather how did it 'feel' to the player.

Having the code offer clues when writing a contemporary model. Getting the feel right is more important than the coding language. If it doesn't 'feel' like CoX, then even the most exemplary code would not connect with the player.

Hopefully the new devs have shown enough skill to convince NCSoft that bumps in the road will not be disasterous.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Black Gold on September 02, 2014, 04:29:54 AM
Gerhardt Eisenstadt.

Say what?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: TonyV on September 02, 2014, 04:30:07 AM
Hey all, I just want to point out some things that I'm reading into Nate's post that I think a lot of people are missing.

First of all, regarding access to existing character data, I24, and various game improvements, I'm going to highlight a few words that I feel are more important than people are giving them credit for being:

The proposal as it stands right now (this is not a final form, just the current proposal on the table) is this:
...
The existing user database and characters are not part of this arrangement at this time, nor is the source code.

The funny thing about business negotiations is that things change.  The stuff that Nate put in this post is a starting point just to get NCsoft to the table, not an ending point.  So until the ink is dry and more details are released, please don't count out the possibility that these things might actually come to pass.  And even after the ink is dry, don't discount the possibility that Nate and crew eventually go back to the bargaining table to get more stuff depending on how things go after the relaunch.

Speaking of which, I don't want to always be the Debbie Downer, but I'd be remiss if I didn't also point out these lines that a lot of people are ignoring:

Right now, still discussing terms, ideas, limits. The challenges we have been given we stepped up for and handled. Likely there will be discussions and adjustments right up until the moment the deal is signed. The whole thing may fall apart. For all we know, everything done so far has been nothing but a delaying tactic so they can say once again that they tried to work with the community to no avail. But until such time that becomes clear, we will continue forward in good faith.

Please always keep in the back of your mind that this is NOT a done deal.  I've seen a lot of posts here and on Facebook from people essentially claiming that Nate posted about the game's relaunch.  He didn't.  He posted about how he and his crew are still trying to negotiate for the game's relaunch.  Now, this isn't entirely bad news because personally, I think it's exciting that even on the two-year anniversary of the game's shutdown announcement people are still trying to relaunch the game.  But I will reiterate again that I want to make sure that people are cautiously optimistic.

Last, but not least, there is one thing I outright disagree with Nate about in his post:

...migrate people off of the classic game engine before it finally becomes unsuitable (we expect this to happen around when Windows 9 is released, due to binary compatibility).

I dunno, maybe he's actually tested the classic game client on Windows 9, since there are beta versions of it out there.  But if not, I would be inclined to strongly suspect that the classic game client would work fine on Windows 9, just as it does on Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.  To my knowledge, there aren't any binary incompatibilities unless you try to play on a different platform (such as Windows RT), and in my experience, it is highly unusual for Microsoft to do anything to break backwards compatibility to that extent.  I may be wrong and end up eating those words, so as I always ask people, take my secondhand information worth a grain of salt.  But I've seen a lot of posts in here about how once Windows 9 comes out, the classic CoH game client will be toast, and I just don't think that's correct and I encourage people to not worry so much about that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 04:31:44 AM
Gerhardt Eisenstadt.

A) Lol.
B) No. Nope. Nuh uh. Not even once. Niet. Nein.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 02, 2014, 04:33:30 AM
Thanks Tony!

We're nearly there!  ;D


Edited for stupidity
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Black Gold on September 02, 2014, 04:34:15 AM
So would this spin off licensing company be a subsidiary of NCSoft?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: epawtows on September 02, 2014, 04:34:57 AM


I simply have no desire to pay for, or have faith in, a game that has no real future. so I probably wont return if pay to play is on the table, or anything in the market costs anything, which it most certainly will be the case since I know even running a game in maintenance mode isn't free.


While it is still way to early to know how this will pan out, but some of the fees paid on the 'maintenance mode' I23 'classic" CoH might be used to pay expenses used to make the Unreal 4 "CoH 1.5" version.  Particularly if those two are being managed by the same company.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 02, 2014, 04:35:27 AM
Interesting news.
It may not be the best news possible, but it's still good news. For now i shall remain cautiously optimistic.
Additionally i have revised my hopes for playing City of Heroes again to realistically be sometime in 2015 at the earliest, which is many orders of magnitude better than never.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 02, 2014, 04:35:53 AM
A) Lol.
B) No. Nope. Nuh uh. Not even once. Niet. Nein.

And yet, would it not be the ultimate victory? Mwahahahahaaaa!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 04:37:14 AM
-Just read Tony's post. Seriously, I'm not going to quote something that freaking long -IG

A wild TonyV appears! With some good points, no less.

On the windows 9 topic... It will prolly run the client, if nothing else with some form of Comparability Mode. I think it's being a little over-focused on, personally.
People will always have the option to just...not move to Windows 9. -shrug- or Dual Booting, or having a separate PC set aside for it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 04:38:41 AM
So would this spin off licensing company be a subsidiary of NCSoft?

No.
Ok, well...I'm not in a position to speak officially on that. But, from everything I've heard speaking with Nate...It's highly, highly unlikely.
If so...What's even the point? They'd just re-open Paragon Studios.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 04:40:09 AM
And yet, would it not be the ultimate victory? Mwahahahahaaaa!

He was Emperor of the Americas for like 6 hours, and we still haven't stopped hearing about it. I can't even imagine what it'd be like if he owned the universe...

Shudder to think...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 02, 2014, 04:54:51 AM
For those who do not know Korean business methods, it is considered highly rude to directly email someone, but to instead get an introduction from a third party business associate. This meant we had to find someone who was not part of NC Soft to formally introduce us to Mr. Yoon. Fortunately, we had two people who could do just that, a former NC West employee and a former co-worker of mine who had started a media company which works with NC Soft on developing properties for the Asian market.
Thanks so much for all the effort.

And...Holy smokes!   No wonder this is so complicated.  Cultural differences really throw a monkey wrench into it.  What we may consider "logical" might be completely out of the question for another culture.  Makes me appreciate the hard work which has gone into this even more.  Looks like a very slow and tedious process.   Hope this works out but that process above makes me cautious.  Maybe I'm reading it differently than everyone else who is celebrating.   Hope SCoRE is still pushing ahead just in case.   
For people worrying about "how long can a CoH 1.0 implementation last".

As long as they can keep the servers stable, honestly, it's almost indefinitely.

There is, currently, NOTHING in the Win9 pipeline that looks to affect anything CoH could do AT ALL.

The biggest hurdle will be building a working game loader/patcher, as a certain amount of the game is primarily client-side stuff that CAN be accessed/worked with/fixed at will.  Just so long as the server and client agree on the acceptable version number.
This is heartening to read.    My fondest hope was to get CoH running with someone who intended to keep it running. 
Since I'm not on the team that would be running CoH's maint. mode, I can't make promises on their behalf. But... I'm pretty sure the i23 server will run in perpetuity.
That sounds even better.  :)
I can't imagine a scenario where this happens. Too many people who are involved in process are too emotionally invested in it.

I'll say right not, I would fight tooth and nail and then some before I let that happen again. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
And that is a great way to illustrate to everyone just how much you guys are us.

Purchase IP, license engine.
That helps me a lot.  Thanks Downix.
There's a touch of misunderstanding going around, that moving to Unreal means that something about the gameplay will change. That's simply not true.
Is it likely that adjustments to certain things will be made during Beta? Yeah, just like during CoH. The devs would test, and adjust.
Thanks Irish Girl...I was one of those who didn't quite understand this.    Keeping the same gameplay for CoH 1.5 is huge to me....I'm officially very excited about seeing it now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: TonyV on September 02, 2014, 04:58:46 AM
A wild TonyV appears! With some good points, no less.

I deliberately stayed out of the conversation for a while because I wanted to give everyone a chance to digest it and see which way the conversation steered. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 05:01:23 AM
I deliberately stayed out of the conversation for a while because I wanted to give everyone a chance to digest it and see which way the conversation steered. :)

I think it ended up going in a 'People asking a lot of questions that I hopefully answered well' direction. I wish I had answers to give to the questions that are left open, unfortunately even I'm at 'Wait and see' on those.

P.S.: I'm so not good at 'wait and see'!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AnElfCalledMack on September 02, 2014, 05:02:15 AM
So would this spin off licensing company be a subsidiary of NCSoft?
From what we've heard, no. It would be formed by the consortium of buyers, and purchase the IP to CoH outright. It would license the server engine for maintenace mode from NCSoft. It would also issue licenses to each of the Plan Z games if their developers wanted/needed them. Part of this is possibly because more than just MWM is involved in this, and it simplifies the process if each interest can just take shares of City of Heroes Inc. based on their contribution to the purchase. Part of it is also that then for NCSoft, it's not another game studio buying their IP - it's just been cut loose to do its own thing, having made the company a reasonable sum in the process.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Timelord Tom on September 02, 2014, 05:04:15 AM
This may have already been expressed by someone else, but let me second, or third, or hundredth it...

"The CoH IP would be spun to its own company..." And who, pray tell, would own this company?

Wishing all goes for the best possible future for COH's return AND longevity, but still standing in the skeptics corner.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 02, 2014, 05:08:12 AM
Nemesis Holding Co., a Limited Liability Company.

I like that sound of that. Is it just me?  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 02, 2014, 05:09:52 AM
So would this spin off licensing company be a subsidiary of NCSoft?
A subsidy, no. The specific ownership details are still very much up in the air. I know what my preference would be, but this is an area where we can expect NCSoft to have a lot of say in the particular legal structure. My goal (being very specific here, this is my personal goal) is to have this be a form of trust.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tubbius on September 02, 2014, 05:10:15 AM
I just want to say something. This is partially an expansion of my last post on the previous page. But hear me out.

People on this thread and elsewhere seem to be focussed on the technical aspects and "when can I log in again"?

Issues with the game engine and source code and the like pale into insignificance compared to freeing the IP from NCSoft.

Read the following again:

Old clunky game engine? Incompatibility with Win 9?

DOESN'T MATTER.

It's the IDEAS and the Intellectual Property that is the real heart and soul of City of Heroes - and if THAT part of the deal goes through as described, then that part of the game - the concepts - the background stories - the characters - the NPCS - the visual design...

THAT PART will have been put in the hands of people who actually CARE about it!

Eventually the game engine will HAVE to change, one way or another. But moving it to Unreal Engine - and allowing other games to be part of the City of Heroes story and reference it..

GOOD GOD... That's HUGE.

Do you know what this means? SERIOUSLY? Have you thought it out to the extreme?

I just have. And it boggles my mind.

Imagine not one or two - but perhaps a DOZEN games - all in the same overall universe story-wise.

IF... IF this is not just NCSoft yanking people around again. If they really allow the IP to go. Then game engines don't matter. CODE doesn't matter.

The Story and the World of City of Heroes can live on even if the original game engine is (or has to be) discarded.

City of Heroes?

Imagine WORLD OF HEROES as a FRANCHISE.

Consider it imagined.

:)

Sounds a LOT like the basic relationship between the Star Wars canon and the Expanded Universe, in a way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 02, 2014, 05:13:23 AM
"The CoH IP would be spun to its own company..." And who, pray tell, would own this company?
There are a lot of options for setting up a company which makes "ownership" a complex and confusing thing. Is it set up as a standard IP Holding Company or as an Active Trust? Just two of the dozens of options on the table. I'd rather put this down when it is more clear what direction things will be going in.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hyperstrike on September 02, 2014, 05:28:49 AM
And even the 2012 version of it would be a monstrocity.

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=s9.favim.com%2Forig%2F131017%2Fmemes-meme-pictures-Favim.com-999669.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kribbla on September 02, 2014, 05:49:33 AM
I'm not directly involved in the talks with NCSoft, but from what I understand the source is completely off the table, and many of the tools required simply don't exist anymore.
This is where Revival comes in. The plan is kind of...to replace CoH with it. CoH 1.5/CoH 2 if you will. Same setting, same stories you've all known and loved. New engine, new updates, new stories for you to, hopefully, come to love.

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=soshable.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F09%2Fshut-up-and-take-my-money.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 02, 2014, 05:56:11 AM
Nate,

Thanks for working on this. I have offered my services to Power_Girl and I'll offer them to you. You need anything I can do, I think you still have my email. But it sounds like you need lawyers more than 2-D computer artists. But if you do, let me know.

Best,

MWRuger
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cephalic_Disavow on September 02, 2014, 05:59:55 AM
This is very exciting, I love CoH alot but it needed updated so bad.
Running it on Unreal will definitely lighten the workload and produce minimal lag.
Not to mention those graphics:)

I leave my hope in you guys if this deal goes through.

City invented the superhero MMO genre and was the only one to do it right,
It seems it's departure inspired people enough to want to give us that feeling back.

And for that I thank you guys so much for your efforts, stay strong and patient!
I'll crack a nice glass of wine for CoH 1.5 tonight!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 02, 2014, 06:01:22 AM
On the windows 9 topic... It will prolly run the client, if nothing else with some form of Comparability Mode.

This is what seems likeliest to me. Regardless of anything else, it's a major MMO which means it has to have been fairly standards compliant. Generally the older games that didn't play fast and loose with things to try and get something running or squeeze more performance do just fine under compat mode.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 02, 2014, 06:04:40 AM
P.S.: I'm so not good at 'wait and see'!

You are one of us!!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 02, 2014, 06:10:57 AM

I dunno, maybe he's actually tested the classic game client on Windows 9, since there are beta versions of it out there.  But if not, I would be inclined to strongly suspect that the classic game client would work fine on Windows 9, just as it does on Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.  To my knowledge, there aren't any binary incompatibilities unless you try to play on a different platform (such as Windows RT), and in my experience, it is highly unusual for Microsoft to do anything to break backwards compatibility to that extent.  I may be wrong and end up eating those words, so as I always ask people, take my secondhand information worth a grain of salt.  But I've seen a lot of posts in here about how once Windows 9 comes out, the classic CoH game client will be toast, and I just don't think that's correct and I encourage people to not worry so much about that.

Wait. Something worked with Windows Vista? :)

But more importantly, did it work with windows 3.11?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 06:18:58 AM
I dunno, maybe he's actually tested the classic game client on Windows 9, since there are beta versions of it out there.  But if not, I would be inclined to strongly suspect that the classic game client would work fine on Windows 9, just as it does on Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.  To my knowledge, there aren't any binary incompatibilities unless you try to play on a different platform (such as Windows RT), and in my experience, it is highly unusual for Microsoft to do anything to break backwards compatibility to that extent.  I may be wrong and end up eating those words, so as I always ask people, take my secondhand information worth a grain of salt.  But I've seen a lot of posts in here about how once Windows 9 comes out, the classic CoH game client will be toast, and I just don't think that's correct and I encourage people to not worry so much about that.

In fact, it's almost a certainty that the old client will run fine in Windows 9.  It already runs fine in Windows 8/8.1, and 9 is absolutely NOT going to be as different as some people seem to think it is.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 06:22:57 AM
I think it ended up going in a 'People asking a lot of questions that I hopefully answered well' direction. I wish I had answers to give to the questions that are left open, unfortunately even I'm at 'Wait and see' on those.

P.S.: I'm so not good at 'wait and see'!

The main thing I'm getting from this, with regards to your Atlas Park Revival project and CoH 1.5, is that oh boy, you are REALLY going to need some help!

No one could possibly hope to code CoH 1.5, solo, in any achievable time scale. Not for the kind of end result the player base would expect.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Perplexite on September 02, 2014, 06:23:43 AM
Wanna chip in and say Thank You for taking the time to inform us! It means a whole bucket of lots to me and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Will keep my eye out and leave my karma-account open to you!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kiario on September 02, 2014, 06:40:19 AM
Thanks to Downix and all involved. Good news :)

By the way, should we not have one thread for this? Its confusing with three.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Warhawk2012 on September 02, 2014, 06:51:50 AM
I don't know what to say.  I am singularly blown away by this news.  That you guys have made, not only this effort, but exercised infinitely greater patience than I could have mustered.  You have my respect and admiration, regardless of which way this goes.  You have all demonstrated one of the underlying things that brought this community together...Hope!  We await an answer...patiently.  It's the least we can do.  Thank you all once again.

[EDIT: Removed completely unnecessary quote of giant original post. ~Agge]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: esqesque on September 02, 2014, 07:00:18 AM
First off, kudos to everyone involved with getting this far in the negotiations. Whatever else may happen, you have my (at least) thanks and gratitude.

One thing I've noticed in all the talk is there is no discussion about whether CiOX, COH or whichever successor(s) emerge will be Mac-compatible or supported. It may be too early to say, but is that anticipated? (And if I've missed that discussion, please forgive me).

(Wrote the person who came to COX because I could play it on my Mac).

Thanks again!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AnElfCalledMack on September 02, 2014, 07:10:18 AM
First off, kudos to everyone involved with getting this far in the negotiations. Whatever else may happen, you have my (at least) thanks and gratitude.

One thing I've noticed in all the talk is there is no discussion about whether CiOX, COH or whichever successor(s) emerge will be Mac-compatible or supported. It may be too early to say, but is that anticipated? (And if I've missed that discussion, please forgive me).

(Wrote the person who came to COX because I could play it on my Mac).

Thanks again!
If the old Mac client still works, it'll be fine. The negotiations are pretty strictly server-side. But if new OSX updates have broken the client (and it's hard to tell if they have without a server to test on), then there won't be many tools to update it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 07:22:54 AM
The main thing I'm getting from this, with regards to your Atlas Park Revival project and CoH 1.5, is that oh boy, you are REALLY going to need some help!

No one could possibly hope to code CoH 1.5, solo, in any achievable time scale. Not for the kind of end result the player base would expect.

Well, I wasn't planning on staying solo! Especially since I code one BUGGY Hello World.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 07:24:50 AM
Well, I wasn't planning on staying solo! Especially since I code one BUGGY Hello World.

Must be a damned scary prospect, having that dropped in your lap!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 07:26:20 AM
First off, kudos to everyone involved with getting this far in the negotiations. Whatever else may happen, you have my (at least) thanks and gratitude.
One thing I've noticed in all the talk is there is no discussion about whether CiOX, COH or whichever successor(s) emerge will be Mac-compatible or supported. It may be too early to say, but is that anticipated? (And if I've missed that discussion, please forgive me).
(Wrote the person who came to COX because I could play it on my Mac).
Thanks again!

As long as the Issue 23 client worked on OSX, which to my knowledge it did. I doubt anything's changed in that time on OSX's side to break that.

Revival will be available on Windows, and Mac OSX. I'm not confident to say that the OSX version will launch alongside the PC release, only that there will be one.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: zaran on September 02, 2014, 07:28:55 AM
Thanks to all for getting this far.

To Nate and the rest of TFHM, thank you for your continued efforts.

To IronWolf, thank you for kickstarting the process again and not giving up hope.

To Mr. Yoon, thank you for being willing to listen to our request and introduce us to Mr. Chung. You honor us with your trust.

To Mr. Chung, thank you for listening to us and for continuing to work toward a result that NC Soft and ourselves can be happy with. 

To TonyV and everyone here at Titan Network, thanks for keeping the dream alive.

And to everyone else, thanks for being part of the greatest game community in the world.

I look forward to the day I can fly again. If not in CoH, then in Titan City or elsewhere. The important thing is that I will not fly alone.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rigo42 on September 02, 2014, 07:30:14 AM
Thank you for this, many of us understand the reason for the long wait times. This is just how this business works. I am glad you are finally able to get this off your shoulders :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blue storm on September 02, 2014, 07:48:53 AM

Another voice echoing what others have been expressing : amazement at the scope and gratitude.

I know how difficult what you are trying to achieve is and I commend your effort and the manner in which they are being pursued. I am confident in your capability to achieve that goal, and will hold the torch for as long as necessary in the meantime

Let's put me up of a lifetime sub(s) ;-)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 02, 2014, 07:57:52 AM
Yes I think that without the source code, its just like reviving the game for a little while so you can say your final goodbyes... But I wonder if the source code is completely off the table, or is it just not part of the current talks?
Bones! Revive the prisoner... Jim it'll kill him! He is dead anyway.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 02, 2014, 08:01:17 AM
Imagine a moment that CoH and, say, Lineage II share some key piece of code. Now, Lineage II is still in service in Asia, so this code, if sold, would cause a major problem for NCSoft in supporting their millions of customers in Asia. Now imagine CoH and Aion shared some other code. Then CoH and Guild Wars 2.... just how do you untangle the spiderweb of interconnected strands between all of these games which may or may not share code? NCSoft may not even know how tangled things are.
Couldn't you just sign a piece of paper saying we wont sue you no matter what?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 02, 2014, 08:04:42 AM
While it is still way to early to know how this will pan out, but some of the fees paid on the 'maintenance mode' I23 'classic" CoH might be used to pay expenses used to make the Unreal 4 "CoH 1.5" version.  Particularly if those two are being managed by the same company.
I am curious. Would we have the ability to edit and add content to the CoH 1.5 version?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 08:07:01 AM
I am curious. Would we have the ability to edit and add content to the CoH 1.5 version?

That would kinda be the whole point...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 02, 2014, 08:07:59 AM
This is what seems likeliest to me. Regardless of anything else, it's a major MMO which means it has to have been fairly standards compliant. Generally the older games that didn't play fast and loose with things to try and get something running or squeeze more performance do just fine under compat mode.
Lets be honest it would be SUICIDE for Microsoft to screw this like this up. They need a STUD OS and this would NOT be a stud OS... I hope they arnt that dumb... they might not get away with it this time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 02, 2014, 08:08:58 AM
That would kinda be the whole point...
I mean just because it is compatible with windows 9 ETC. doesn't mean it is editable ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 08:17:13 AM
I mean just because it is compatible with windows 9 ETC. doesn't mean it is editable ;)

It's being written from scratch... Of course it's editable...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 08:20:35 AM
It's being written from scratch... Of course it's editable...

Windows 9: Muffin Edition?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: SypherVendetta on September 02, 2014, 08:31:04 AM
If everything goes as planned you could always turn to crowd funding on kickstarter and the community i'm sure will help one way or the other, i know i definitely would like to help out in some shape or form, even if it's holding a banner outside starbucks at 7am to get people to play this game haha!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 08:34:47 AM
If everything goes as planned you could always turn to crowd funding on kickstarter and the community i'm sure will help one way or the other, i know i definitely would like to help out in some shape or form, even if it's holding a banner outside starbucks at 7am to get people to play this game haha!

I would love to see that, lol. People could never say you weren't dedicated.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlBQuirky on September 02, 2014, 08:54:02 AM
So much going behind the scenes I had no idea about!  Wonderful news and thank you, THANK YOU for this update :)

My best thoughts, wishes, and prayers for your continued success :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 02, 2014, 09:09:27 AM
It's being written from scratch... Of course it's editable...
Well my bad it hasn't been super clear I guess.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Verziga on September 02, 2014, 09:11:47 AM
Long time lurker but had to register now to say thanks to all involved. Your efforts are hugely appreciated.

On the character data front...would there be any scope to offer an 'instant lvl 50' option for a small fee similar to WOW's instant lvl 90 that they recently added? It might appease those who aren't too keen on starting from scratch. I've got less than no idea at all how anything technical works and whether that would even be possible.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 02, 2014, 09:18:15 AM
*Normally* on a technical basis that'd be pretty easy. This isn't a normal situation, tho...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Verziga on September 02, 2014, 09:25:45 AM
*Normally* on a technical basis that'd be pretty easy. This isn't a normal situation, tho...

Yeah that's what I figured. Personally, I'd have no problem starting from scratch anyway. The whole point of any game is to play it after all.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 02, 2014, 09:49:14 AM
While a free 50 is probably not easily doable with current ideas... there would be less issue with say, being given XP boosters. It's basically just 2x xp, but if you had enough of them... :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 02, 2014, 09:54:36 AM
Yeah that's what I figured. Personally, I'd have no problem starting from scratch anyway. The whole point of any game is to play it after all.

Exactly. I'm more concerned at this point with simply being able to get a few of the names I was most attached to. I have the costumes saved, I have money to repurchase the unlocks, and the journey IS the point...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Jetfire99 on September 02, 2014, 10:15:51 AM
Must not get hopes up but ... a chance ... this is enough. Even if it doesn't make it thanks chomper this is more than I expected.

Embryon and Operative Mauser .... stir in stasis
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: DarkCurrent on September 02, 2014, 10:16:14 AM
Purchase IP, license engine.

Thank you, sir.

That makes a lot more business sense.  Hopefully, it can be done quickly and cleanly.  Then the successors can stop struggling renaming ats and things.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 02, 2014, 10:35:32 AM
So for those asking what is APR?   :o

APR stands for Atlas Park Revival.  What is Atlas Park Revival?  :-\

Atlas Park Revival is Irish_Girl's project to take the existing geometries...the meshes as it were of the existing environment of City of Heroes and recreate them using Unreal Engine.  To what end?  To create the environment for an updated City of Heroes game with a newer game engine.  So while the Issue23 build of City of Heroes will not be able to be updated at all due to lack of the original source code.  APR will be using a license from the COT (City of Titans) build, which uses Unreal Engine 4, to make the next generation of City of Heroes.  Same COH IP, similar COH game play, updated graphics and capabilities.  What is being dubbed City of Heroes 1.5.  This version will be able to be updated with new content, power sets, story arcs etc.

Irish_Girl can correct me if I am incorrect in any of my understandings of this project.   ;D

Here is the link to the webpage.  http://apr.pc-logix.com/

Here is an example pic of Atlas Park in Unreal Engine.  http://apr.pc-logix.com/uploads/gallery/album_1/gallery_1_1_14817.jpg

Here is a video done in Unreal Engine.  http://youtu.be/Bg_xIAekCys



Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sihada on September 02, 2014, 10:38:32 AM
Starting from scratch: Love it. The clean slate means that hero names that were attached to accounts that were never coming back will be available.  Already making my list of hero names I'm hoping to be able to grab.

SCORE: Someone else already said this and I agree: they appear to be an urban myth. It's romantic to think that there is a secret cabal of programmers laboring in obscurity to reverse engineer the server or the game in whole. The problem is that there is no evidence that they exist, or that they've made any progress.

I23/24: Don't care so long as I can play CoH with my kids.

Source Code: There are a host of reasons why a company wouldn't release this. It may contain code licensed from elsewhere that prohibits this kind of transfer. It may contain code that is used in other properties (Lineage, etc) where exposing the source could introduce security risks, etc.

Naysayers: we've already had one person decide they won't pay since they didn't get exactly what they want. More people like this will emerge as time passes. My hope is that enough people are willing to put their money where their mouth is when it comes time to enter their CC#.  Even maintenance mode will cost money to operate, and if it's a money-loser from month to month then there's not going to be much incentive to keep it running.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 02, 2014, 10:43:21 AM
Every time I read this thread title I think "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for these meddling kids".

So, if I understand this all correctly:

City of Heroes as an Intellectual Property gets purchased by a company/trust/group/whatever.
Said group licenses the i23 game from NCSoft and runs maintenance mode servers.
Said group licenses a design studio to port existing City of Heroes to a new engine (U4).
Said group also (possibly) licenses the various successor projects, allowing them to use City of Heroes IP in their work.

At an indeterminate point in time, i23 game closes (license from NCSoft is no longer required) and City of Heroes in U4 becomes the sole City of Heroes game available, in a modern engine, with continuing development.

Some of these stages may occur concurrently.

If I'm right, can I get a HELL YES?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on September 02, 2014, 10:44:24 AM
Can someone enlighten me to as what the source code would be exactly? Is that different from the game engine?

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 10:58:33 AM
Every time I read this thread title I think "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for these meddling kids".

So, if I understand this all correctly:

City of Heroes as an Intellectual Property gets purchased by a company/trust/group/whatever.
Said group licenses the i23 game from NCSoft and runs maintenance mode servers.
Said group licenses a design studio to port existing City of Heroes to a new engine (U4).
Said group also (possibly) licenses the various successor projects, allowing them to use City of Heroes IP in their work.

At an indeterminate point in time, i23 game closes (license from NCSoft is no longer required) and City of Heroes in U4 becomes the sole City of Heroes game available, in a modern engine, with continuing development.

Some of these stages may occur concurrently.

If I'm right, can I get a HELL YES?

I think you're mostly wise in this instance, apart from one part.

The "Classic COH" servers wouldn't necessarily have to shut down at any point at all for the U4 engined version, though I suspect it eventually would.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 11:01:08 AM
Can someone enlighten me to as what the source code would be exactly? Is that different from the game engine?

Source code is the huge list of instructions from which the game is created.  Like a novel isn't a novel without the words that make up the sentences that form the chapters that make the story.

The game engine is just a term used to describe the code that displays the game world to the players.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: TinFoil on September 02, 2014, 11:06:29 AM
Can someone enlighten me to as what the source code would be exactly? Is that different from the game engine?

The source code is the actual programming of the game. It is what tells a Fireblast to do 30 damage. Having the source code would allow folks to change that value to 40 damage or 15 damage. The game engine is basically the collection of all the source code running together to allow you to move around and actually play the game. The Binary (which is what the proposal is to obtain) is all that source code and game engine packaged up and ready to run. Folks controlling it won't be able to make changes, but we'll still have the finished package to play.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 02, 2014, 11:08:03 AM
I would like to address some other concerns.  One.  That Missing Worlds Media is using funds from the Kickstarter for the new holding company purchasing the COH Intellectual Property.  This is not so.  Funds from the Kickstarter raised for City of Titans are designated for City of Titans.  New funds will need to be raised separately at some point for the COH revival should the deal with NCSoft get approved.

That MWM somehow misused their funding to switch game engines from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4.  And that this transition set them back irreparably.
Unreal Engine 3 has zero MMO support.  Meaning that MWM would have had to either create their own code for handling the MMO portion of the game, or contract a third party to do so.  Such would have taken an unknown amount of time.  Unreal Engine 4 on the other hand has built in MMO support.  This is why when MWM was offered the chance to upgrade their licenses to the newer version they did so enthusiastically.  As this would be one less thing to have to work out. 

As to the setbacks...that has to do with the character rig on which our avatars will be built upon.  MWM was a little too ambitious with the amount of sockets the character rigs could hold and to how many pieces would make up the rig, and where their seams connected the pieces together would look and work in their game engine.  Some of the seams did not move properly once the rig was in motion.  Too many sockets used up too many resources leading to instability. 

It is my understanding that they are on the third iteration of the character rig.  Once all the kinks are worked out progress will proceed.  While this sets back the avatar builder somewhat it does not affect other portions of the game such as the background world building, lore, or art assets being created.  There are multiple paths all being worked on simultaneously.

Just because other Kickstarter projects have failed does not mean that this project has to fail.  As with any project their is a risk of failure.  There is also the possibility of success.  I prefer to be enthusiastically supportive of City of Titans and why I have contributed to the Kickstarter campaign.  If they start a new Kickstarter to revive City Of Heroes, I will contribute to that as well.  We can all be naysayers and be negative and say that all of this is a pipe dream and give up our hopes or we can be positive and look to a brighter tomorrow.  I prefer to do the latter.  Nuff said.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: thunderforce on September 02, 2014, 11:14:14 AM
This is excellent news, of course, but I wonder if we should be concerned about the implications for City of Titans (and the other successor projects, if they come to fruition). Realistically, a rejuvenated CoH - let alone a CoH/APR being actively updated - cuts their potential customer base (and the motivation for their project) drastically. I hope it's not going to wither on the vine (at the very least, I hope any successor project that does fold allows the others to use its assets...)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on September 02, 2014, 11:18:40 AM
Wow! This is... better than I thought we might get, even though I know it's not a done deal.

I kind of hoped that i24 might be on the table, but I did not expect that to be the case. I kind of assumed that, if the game were going to come back, it would probably be in maintenance mode. Again, that's okay with me. Even without having character data, I'm actually okay with it. A part of me would even kind of enjoy starting from scratch. We would all be in it together, supporting each other on the climb back to 50.

What I did NOT expect was the inclusion of APR, CoT, etc etc etc. To me, that is a HUGELY wonderful thing! How I read that was that yes, CoH would come back in i23 maintenance mode, but then we would know that it was working its way onto UE4 for a semi-but-not-quite-sequel. Based on the stuff I've seen of APR, it would be in pretty great hands. I am praying so hard to see this go through. Honestly, I think it would be a great deal.

Thank you, to those of you who have been working so hard to get us this far. I hope to see you in the City, to have the opportunity to team up with you or just express my thanks in-game.

Thank you, Irish-Girl; you have been so good at answering everyone's questions, and your work with APR is lookin' solid so far!

Thanks Nate/downix, for the update on where we stood. I was getting antsy, but now that I have a sense of where we're going I can wait a little longer.

And thank you to everyone else who has been instrumental to the NCSoft deal getting this far!

To celebrate, I will listen to the CoH soundtrack all day at work today! Especially that Ouroboros music. Love me that Ouroboros music (watched the Ouroboros APR recreation on youtube this morning).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 02, 2014, 11:20:07 AM

That MWM somehow misused their funding to switch game engines from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4.  And that this transition set them back irreparably.
Unreal Engine 3 has zero MMO support.  Meaning that MWM would have had to either create their own code for handling the MMO portion of the game, or contract a third party to do so.  Such would have taken an unknown amount of time.  Unreal Engine 4 on the other hand has built in MMO support.  This is why when MWM was offered the chance to upgrade their licenses to the newer version they did so enthusiastically.  As this would be one less thing to have to work out. 

This is an exceptionally prudent choice, by my understanding of things. I'm part of a small indie studio that's just starting out, and our lead codemonkey has raved about the wonders of UE4.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: nactishe on September 02, 2014, 11:21:35 AM
Why not book a meeting with Taek Jin Kim, and two or three of you get on a plane to Korea? I would help fund such a visit, and I'm sure others would as well. It wouldn't be that expensive if you fly economy. You can schedule a meeting directly with Taek via the executive admin call direct, they all speak very good english (as most attended school in USA). I think its awesome what you guys are doing, but there us nothing better than a face-to-face meeting. Especially with Korean business.

whadya think? up for the trip? let us know how to help fund it!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: parabola on September 02, 2014, 11:28:29 AM
Source code vs compiled (binary). Source code is the understandable language used to write a program using some kind of editor. The languages vary but they tend to look like reasonably normal language with commands in English words. So 10 print "hello world", 20 goto 10 is an example of source code. However a computer can't directly run this. It compiles this into binary which is going to something like 10011010001011011110etcetc. You can imagine the sheer scale of the 1's and 0's for something the size of coh. Even if you have the source you need the tool used to interpret it or you'll also be left with gibberish. So no source and no tools essentially means a program that can be run but that can't be developed at all.

Endless thanks to all involved in this. If funds ever become an issue please let us know!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on September 02, 2014, 11:31:20 AM

At an indeterminate point in time, i23 game closes (license from NCSoft is no longer required) and City of Heroes in U4 becomes the sole City of Heroes game available, in a modern engine, with continuing development.


My big concern about all this, at some point when the "COH 1.5" game  goes live, do our characters from the I23 servers get ported over, or do we have to start all over again?  Personally, I would have to wait until the newer game goes live - I don't care to do the leveling grind twice.  Not to mention the iTrials grind.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 02, 2014, 11:34:29 AM
To save on heartbreak, there are no promises being made that you will be able to transfer your I23 build characters to COH 1.5.  They will cross that bridge when they get there as it were... 8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Gamerchamp on September 02, 2014, 11:34:42 AM
Hello guys just wanted to thank each and everyone involved in all these efforts past and future what you guys are doing right now will go down in history for sure.

We will definitely be backing you up so please don't hesitate to ask for help we will be happy to provide it keep doing what your doing because you all just plain rock.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 02, 2014, 11:39:22 AM
Have no fear, I'm pretty sure I can fish up the binary offsets for the Regen powers in order to reduce their effectiveness periodically.

It wouldn't be a new issue without a Regen nerf ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wulfen on September 02, 2014, 11:40:45 AM
If this gets pulled off, this will be awesome.  Since after the proposed port to UE4 is completed, the game can once again begin expanding.  With a (possible) link to the 'successor games' they could be construed as different cities in the same world/universe.

World of Heroes!  Universe of Heroes! Multiverse of Heroes!  (and Villains lol)

Plus additions to Paragon City.

On that note, will Mission Architect still be active?  (I assume and hope so) with Player Generated Content being generated again, then the players will help expand the universe that way as well.

Anything I can do, I will.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 11:41:08 AM
Here is an example pic of Atlas Park in Unreal Engine.  http://apr.pc-logix.com/uploads/gallery/album_1/gallery_1_1_14817.jpg

I much prefer this picture.  8)
(See spoiler)

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://scontent-a-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/t31.0-8/p180x540/1966260_274962145997342_2074759972_o.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on September 02, 2014, 11:42:50 AM
I much prefer this picture.  8)
(See spoiler)

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://scontent-a-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/t31.0-8/p180x540/1966260_274962145997342_2074759972_o.jpg)

I like this so hard.

It also makes me want to play the game so badly it hurts, haha! For now, at least, that's what dreams are for :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AnElfCalledMack on September 02, 2014, 11:44:17 AM
Can someone enlighten me to as what the source code would be exactly? Is that different from the game engine?
So, when you write a program you use a programming language, like C# or Python. This lets you use a series of preset commands, and to define your own commands for later use. The source code is basically a text file that contains a whole bunch of words and punctuation in that language that says what you want the program to do under any and all circumstances. But computers aren't very good with words. They need their instructions in as simple a form as possible, which is called "machine code" or a "binary file". Also an "executable file", because the computer can just do what it says. A compiler takes the text file full of words, and turns it into binary instructions the processor can understand. But editing machine code is very difficult, especially for something as big as a full game. Some people can do it, but it's slow, laborious, and prone to devastating errors. Doing enough work to add entire powersets (like adding i24 would involve) is theoretically possible, but the timescale would be immense. Like, decades or more.

The game engine is what makes the game's variables change. It's what rolls to hit, makes a bad guy's HP go down when you hit them with a power, and gives you inf and a chance at drops when you defeat them. The game engine and the game client (which has all the art, maps, effects, text, etc) both have source code, designed to interact in a bunch of ways to let you play the game and see the same world as everyone else. But it's the binary files, the machine code, that actually let them work. So if NCSoft released binaries for the server and client, you'd be able to play, but not edit. If they released the source code, you could edit to your heart's content, but you'd need to find or build a compiler before you could use the modified game code.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: SypherVendetta on September 02, 2014, 11:44:24 AM
That MWM somehow misused their funding to switch game engines from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4.  And that this transition set them back irreparably.
Unreal Engine 3 has zero MMO support.  Meaning that MWM would have had to either create their own code for handling the MMO portion of the game, or contract a third party to do so.  Such would have taken an unknown amount of time.  Unreal Engine 4 on the other hand has built in MMO support.  This is why when MWM was offered the chance to upgrade their licenses to the newer version they did so enthusiastically.  As this would be one less thing to have to work out. 

Marvel Heroes uses unreal engine 3 and it is an arpg mmo, and it has become really popular and tons of fun now, so to say UE3 has zero mmo support is well wrong.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 11:46:05 AM
Irish_Girl can correct me if I am incorrect in any of my understandings of this project.   ;D

And no, Your post seems pretty spot on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 02, 2014, 11:46:11 AM
Windows 9: Muffin Edition?

Editable, not edible.
Or... maybe edible is better.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Gamerchamp on September 02, 2014, 11:48:09 AM
I much prefer this picture.  8)
(See spoiler)

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://scontent-a-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/t31.0-8/p180x540/1966260_274962145997342_2074759972_o.jpg)

Wow so that's what Atlas Park looks like in Unreal 4 that is just stunning just imagine what the rest would look like *drools*.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 11:50:49 AM
Marvel Heroes uses unreal engine 3 and it is an arpg mmo, and it has become really popular and tons of fun now, so to say UE3 has zero mmo support is well wrong.

UDK/UE3 had horrendous MMO support. Most MMOs that used UE3 had to implement a lot of things themselves. While yes, there are MMOs that use UE3, It's far from Ideal.
I remember a certain very, very long day with Neo and myself working on APR trying to figure out HOW to make it act like an MMO.

For us, it was far FAR less time and effort to move to Unreal Engine 4, than it would have to try and fight with UE3. Plus, the engine is just SO much easier to work with.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 02, 2014, 11:51:56 AM
I much prefer this picture.  8)
(See spoiler)

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://scontent-a-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/t31.0-8/p180x540/1966260_274962145997342_2074759972_o.jpg)

That was the picture I was actually looking for.... ;D

I so want to go there...  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 11:53:23 AM
That was the picture I was actually looking for.... ;D

I so want to go there...  ;)

;D Yeah, It's pretty. You guys should see it in-game. hehe.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 11:55:53 AM
For us, it was far FAR less time and effort to move to Unreal Engine 4, than it would have to try and fight with UE3. Plus, the engine is just SO much easier to work with.

So, for the curious, would it be possible to enlighten us as to the current state of progress in APR?  Do you have any zones "finished"?  Can you walk around in any of them? Is there any kind of character creation in the works?

Also, just as an aside, are you re-creating the map geometries from scratch, or are you importing it from the game files?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kiario on September 02, 2014, 11:56:13 AM
;D Yeah, It's pretty. You guys should see it in-game. hehe.

Is that what the team has been proving to NCsoft :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 11:56:27 AM
;D Yeah, It's pretty. You guys should see it in-game. hehe.

Well, you could always crank up FRAPS and show us... ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 11:58:04 AM
Is that what the team has been proving to NCsoft :)

So far as I know, NCSoft hasn't seen anything from Revival. I'm not directly part of the purchasing effort, so I'm not privy to what they show NC.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 02, 2014, 12:10:15 PM
 Its great to see that Nc Soft is actually talking and open to possibly selling the IP, but we have a long way to go still. I applaud everyone who has worked on this to #SaveCoH.

 I am still hopeful that somehow character data can be rescued. One of my biggest concerns if character data is not available are that many veterans will not return to the game. I was thinking about this last night and im coming from my own personal view and I know the shared views of others.. Its twelve years later since the launch of City of Heroes. I am not the person I was then. I am married now.. with a family.. different responsibilities that require more time. I dont have the time to sit and play hours and hours and hours on end like I did previously. And in all honesty I dont want to play the same content over and over and over AGAIN that I already have. If I had to start over and remake every character and earn and purchase all those enhancements all over again I just dont know if I would want to do that. Would I remake everyone.. no.. but they are some core character that I would and even those are 25-30 plus characters..

 And having no idea what will happen to the maintenance mode long term or if those character will be ported over to CoH 1.5... Its a very challenging situation.. I know several people in my SG that I have remained in contact with feel the same way..

 Everyone of us will ABSOLUTELY play if/when the games comes back. The question is will they support the game like they did in years past.. will they stay long term..

 At this point im taking the Tony V position more seriously.. be patient.. and wait until everything unfolds..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 12:16:47 PM
So, for the curious, would it be possible to enlighten us as to the current state of progress in APR?  Do you have any zones "finished"?  Can you walk around in any of them? Is there any kind of character creation in the works?
Also, just as an aside, are you re-creating the map geometries from scratch, or are you importing it from the game files?

I suppose I could be convinced to bring some APR-related enlightenment to the masses.
Let's see here... Zone wise...

Atlas Park - The zone with the most work into it, by far. Perhaps 70% finished. All the streets are laid out, many of the buildings are in place, Trees are even starting to be put down in places.
Steel Canyon - 20-30% completed
Galaxy City - 20-30% completed
Independence Port - 10% completed
Founders Falls - 20-30% completed
Talos Island 10-20%
Perez Park - 10%
"The Hollows" - 10%
Sirens Call - 5%
Pocket D - 50%
and of course, the zone we unveiled our move to Unreal Engine 4 with...
Ouroboros - 95%

Technically, I can walk around any of the zones atm. I'm nothing but a Rikti Drone, and I've got no powers or anything.
Since we're going to be using a version of the City of Titans UE4 build, more work on character creation and powers and what have you is dependent on their work schedule. Not that APR is lacking in work in the mean time!

The geometries from the meshes are currently mostly pulled from Legacy CoH, but rarely are they un-modified. Many meshes have simply had to be re-built from scratch for one reason or another.
Don't even get me started on textures. -shakes head- 64x64 textures for the sides of buildings might have cut it in 2004.

I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff...I really should write all this down. heh
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 12:22:32 PM
I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff...I really should write all this down. heh

Neat!

It's fascinating stuff, too!  How much work was involved in the Town Hall building, as an example?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on September 02, 2014, 12:33:27 PM
Its great to see that Nc Soft is actually talking and open to possibly selling the IP, but we have a long way to go still. I applaud everyone who has worked on this to #SaveCoH.

 I am still hopeful that somehow character data can be rescued. One of my biggest concerns if character data is not available are that many veterans will not return to the game. I was thinking about this last night and im coming from my own personal view and I know the shared views of others.. Its twelve years later since the launch of City of Heroes. I am not the person I was then. I am married now.. with a family.. different responsibilities that require more time. I dont have the time to sit and play hours and hours and hours on end like I did previously. And in all honesty I dont want to play the same content over and over and over AGAIN that I already have. If I had to start over and remake every character and earn and purchase all those enhancements all over again I just dont know if I would want to do that. Would I remake everyone.. no.. but they are some core character that I would and even those are 25-30 plus characters..

 And having no idea what will happen to the maintenance mode long term or if those character will be ported over to CoH 1.5... Its a very challenging situation.. I know several people in my SG that I have remained in contact with feel the same way..

 Everyone of us will ABSOLUTELY play if/when the games comes back. The question is will they support the game like they did in years past.. will they stay long term..

 At this point im taking the Tony V position more seriously.. be patient.. and wait until everything unfolds..

At the risk of being a little late for work, Heatstroke, I think many of us vet players can relate to your position. Am I looking forward to finding the time to clobber 1000's of Longbow, or waiting possibly years until enough people have incarnate level characters and we can form a large enough league with enough savvy players to take down Marcus Cole in The Really Hard Way badge effort?

Short answer is, "Heck yeah!".

I'm sure I'm not alone in saying this. You'll have help in getting all the things you want in game, pretty much every step of the way, regardless of what server you call home.
This time around, there will be things that we'll see that we missed the first twenty or thirty times around. At least, I'm pretty sure I will.

Gotta jet.
And yeah, patience is a virtue - and kind of like a muscle. Use it or lose it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 12:37:24 PM
Neat!

It's fascinating stuff, too!  How much work was involved in the Town Hall building, as an example?

Town hall... If I never have to work on that building again, It'll be too soon.
Heh, Sorry. The town hall was the very first building I started working on. I was pretty much learning everything as I went, as well.

Basically, for any standard object. I use a method that I picked up waaay back when from Arcanaville, to pull a capture of CoH as it's running. (Thank you, Demos.)
This capture is a huge mess of everything that's being rendered at that time. So if I want, say, the Blimp. I have to pick out the blimp, and delete everything else. (Which can sometimes be quite a pain). Next up is making sure the model doesn't need any editing, some of the old models are...old. But we'll skip that for now.
The next part is by far my least favorite: re-skinning the UVW Mapping. Basically, in non-game-dev speak, this means attaching the texture so it shows correctly. So that the numbers on the side of our blimp are, well, actually in the correct spot. This is not an easy process, nor a fun one.
If everything looks good, I export the model and then import it to Unreal 4.
...Then I realize I did something wrong, and have to go back and fix it. Repeat that a few times.

A simple object like a trash can might take an hour, one of the pretty skyscrapers in Atlas Park tends to take a few days.

TL;DR: City Hall is my most hated object in Atlas Park now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 12:40:11 PM
TL;DR: City Hall is my most hated object in Atlas Park now.

Well, in that case... I'm sure I read somewhere that UE4 makes destructible objects easy to do... ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 12:43:11 PM
Well, in that case... I'm sure I read somewhere that UE4 makes destructible objects easy to do... ;)

REALLY early back in APR's development, still in UE3, I was seriously considering making the entire zone destroyable... lol.
I should have taken pictures of the statue of Atlas, shot to pieces. lol.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fridgy Daiere on September 02, 2014, 12:51:59 PM
Personally, if I'd known there was a discussion in progress with NCsoft, I wouldn't have then gone out and asked folks for money to fund the spiritual successor of a game that I was actively (but quietly) trying to buy back. That alone has all sorts of red flags - but I digress.

The single largest obstacle for any of the successor projects was holding the community together long enough to release the games.  It's like the "be back" rule of sales: if the customer leaves the premises saying "I'll be back," statistically he WON'T be back.  The goal then, is to keep him in the store until the sale is final.

In this scenario, going for the IP and launching CoX in maintenance mode enables all of the successor projects to keep us in the store, as it were.  Instead of the fanbase scattering to the four winds--making later marketing of the new products much more difficult for any of the new projects--we will be nicely grouped.  Instead of CoX being a distant fond memory, it will be fresh on our minds, again making marketing of the new games much more efficacious.

Rather than raising red flags, this strategy displays both business acumen and a strong sense of fair play.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on September 02, 2014, 01:10:59 PM
For the EQ and WoW private servers I have knowledge of, it's replacing a single file, or even just manually editing an IP or two in the file already on your machine to point at the new servers. Pretty easy stuff if you have more computer knowledge than the average grandma. Haven't poked around in my i23 install but I can't see it being drastically different for CoH.
Literally running the executable with an extra parameter. Can be solved with a custom launcher easily.
Would someone be kind enough to PM and explain what SCoRE is.  I think I know, and Ive found a blog site by that name associated with CoH.
Secret Cabal of Reverse Engineers.
I don't know exactly what APR/cox 1.5 really is, or how they are moving to unreal engine. Are they just building it from scratch and including the old environment and missions etc?
Yes.
My question is, if the binaries are turned over, and the IP rights are licensed, does that give the new device group the ability to legally reverse engineer the server? Would that even be worthwhile? I don't know if reverse engineering would make Cox 1.5 easier or not. If nothing else it could at least give them the ability to do updates to the original game.
It would not affect CoX 1.5 much if at all. If it becomes legal to reverse engineer the server and there is a live instance, I believe it would aid SCoRE's efforts quite a bit.
I'm totally ok with this, but my question based on that is.... Does that mean when Win 9 is released, the maintenance mode CoH is effectively shut down? Or, does it mean that the maintenance mode will run in perpetuity and Win 9 users simply won't be able to play the game? (I say this because I don't plan on upgrading to Win 9....also, some of us play CoH on OS X)...
The latter, as far a I understand.
tony one issue that been posted is a red flag to me. they posted that coh would be in maintenance mode till windows 9 comes out.
No, they didn't. What Nate said is that they are expecting Windows 9 to have compatibility problems with the game. If that is the case, it will become an issue by the time Win 9 gets widely adopted (unless you keep an XP/ 7 / 8 system around), but by then CoH 1.5 should be available as a replacement. I'm guessing there may be some sort of second sunset after the majority of the player base switches to CoH 1.5
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 02, 2014, 01:12:01 PM
So for those asking what is APR?   :o

APR stands for Atlas Park Revival.  What is Atlas Park Revival?  :-\

Atlas Park Revival is Irish_Girl's project to take the existing geometries...the meshes as it were of the existing environment of City of Heroes and recreate them using Unreal Engine.  To what end?  To create the environment for an updated City of Heroes game with a newer game engine.  So while the Issue23 build of City of Heroes will not be able to be updated at all due to lack of the original source code.  APR will be using a license from the COT (City of Titans) build, which uses Unreal Engine 4, to make the next generation of City of Heroes.  Same COH IP, similar COH game play, updated graphics and capabilities.  What is being dubbed City of Heroes 1.5.  This version will be able to be updated with new content, power sets, story arcs etc.

Irish_Girl can correct me if I am incorrect in any of my understandings of this project.   ;D

Here is the link to the webpage.  http://apr.pc-logix.com/

Here is an example pic of Atlas Park in Unreal Engine.  http://apr.pc-logix.com/uploads/gallery/album_1/gallery_1_1_14817.jpg

Here is a video done in Unreal Engine.  http://youtu.be/Bg_xIAekCys

That looks fantastic and I am very impressed with the whole shebang!   My main concern is that it would take way too long to bring this project to completion even with a large team of volunteers who knew what they were doing but were working for free around their "real jobs, lives and families."

That being said, sign me up, Irish_Girl!   ;D  I really want to volunteer my help with this project (and getting the CoH backup running) if the NCSoft talks don't go south on everyone.  I'm an Irish Girl myself (okay, not so much a girl, I'm 48), currently in college for Digital Forensics.  I'm more of a hardware person by nature but I need to learn code inside and out anyway.  So what do you use?  C?  Point me in a direction and I will go there.  Incidentally, my daughter does 3D modeling for SOE games (they hired her while she was still in high school off some Blender samples she sent them) and would like to get involved should this project go live as well.  She does do basic coding too but she's really more into 3D modeling. 

Send me a PM.  Hit us up. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 02, 2014, 01:27:20 PM
I think you're mostly wise in this instance, apart from one part.

The "Classic COH" servers wouldn't necessarily have to shut down at any point at all for the U4 engined version, though I suspect it eventually would.

Thanks for the Sig addition, squire!

And I finally remembered where my avatar image is stored online. Everyone loves a unique David Nakayama original.

To be even slightly on-topic about this, while I'm aware this isn't even remotely a done deal, the direction this is going is awesome, to be frank (join the army).

I eagerly anticipate more news!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: smokesignal on September 02, 2014, 01:40:55 PM
Amazing work and outstanding effort. Please be assured that even if some vets like myself seem absent and uninvolved, we remain attentive and excited. I don't care if I have to start at level one with absolutely nothing, I'll be there in my tights ready to throw fire.

Love.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FreckledAvenger on September 02, 2014, 01:48:33 PM
*comes out of deep lurker mode*

This is really good news. REALLY. Even though nothing's set in stone yet, it's amazing to hear about the effort that you all have put in to keep the hope alive.

And like many have said before me, I'm ready with wallet or skills or both to help out however I can!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hobgoblin Steve on September 02, 2014, 01:57:22 PM
Amazing work and outstanding effort. Please be assured that even if some vets like myself seem absent and uninvolved, we remain attentive and excited. I don't care if I have to start at level one with absolutely nothing, I'll be there in my tights ready to throw fire.

Love.

Id like to quote this for truth, as someone who checks this board a million times a day for updates :)

Thanks to everyone involved, we can't wait
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Turgenev on September 02, 2014, 01:58:27 PM
Question on "binary compatibility" with Windows 9. Is there more detail on what the incompatibility is?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 01:59:50 PM
Question on "binary compatibility" with Windows 9. Is there more detail on what the incompatibility is?

It's an assumption, and a pretty unlikely one at that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 02, 2014, 02:00:48 PM
I see a lot of possibilities and it is great that the team is thinking out of the box.

For those worried about the Original CoH shutting down - this opens the possibility that you may be able to fund your own server. If you have funds once the game is in escrow and you can load that snapshot onto a server - nothing would stop you from leasing your own copy and hosting a server.

All of the other folks can now license to actually use all the old lore in their game. I see a lot of continuity for the game this way. If you only ever want to play the old game - it will eventually fade away, but now it may live in many other ways and even that fading could take years to come. This is honestly better than what I had hoped for - now we just need to see if NCSoft is indeed actually open to the discussion.

Well done all and this is just step one. More work to be done and I am inspired!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on September 02, 2014, 02:04:27 PM
Question on "binary compatibility" with Windows 9. Is there more detail on what the incompatibility is?
There is as far as we know no actual incompatibility discovered yet. The issue is that when there is one - because that will eventually happen, if not with plain Win 9 then with Win 9 SP 1 (or whatever SP-equivalent terminology is used) or whatever comes after that - there won't be any way to patch the game and fix it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on September 02, 2014, 02:05:36 PM
Quote from: lapucelle link=topic=10284.msg158440#msg158440 date=1 The game itself,409626127
Remember, the engine is different from the game. The engine is simply what renders and runs the game. the rules and art and everything, are IP.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 02, 2014, 02:27:00 PM
There is as far as we know no actual incompatibility discovered yet. The issue is that when there is one - because that will eventually happen, if not with plain Win 9 then with Win 9 SP 1 (or whatever SP-equivalent terminology is used) or whatever comes after that - there won't be any way to patch the game and fix it.
Another thing is how long will it take to get people to move to Win 9?

I know many folks still use WinXp and Windows 7. Developers want to future proof their product - users tend to hold on to the old until it won't do what they want it to.

The good part of this is the old game if this is simply a snapshot of the last server backup would be quick to get running. To get the accounting side done would take longer than to get the game up I would imagine.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: epawtows on September 02, 2014, 02:28:57 PM
I am curious. Would we have the ability to edit and add content to the CoH 1.5 version?

While I believe this has been answered by others already, since the question was directed at me:

Yes, content could be added to the CoH 1.5 version (that would be the version that runs in Unreal4, as opposed to CoH 1.0, the legacy CoH engine). 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Potajito on September 02, 2014, 02:36:46 PM
God this makes me so happy. Now let us give you our money!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 02, 2014, 03:03:14 PM
So for those asking what is APR?   :o

APR stands for Atlas Park Revival.  What is Atlas Park Revival?  :-\

Atlas Park Revival is Irish_Girl's project to take the existing geometries...the meshes as it were of the existing environment of City of Heroes and recreate them using Unreal Engine.  To what end?  To create the environment for an updated City of Heroes game with a newer game engine.  So while the Issue23 build of City of Heroes will not be able to be updated at all due to lack of the original source code.  APR will be using a license from the COT (City of Titans) build, which uses Unreal Engine 4, to make the next generation of City of Heroes.  Same COH IP, similar COH game play, updated graphics and capabilities.  What is being dubbed City of Heroes 1.5.  This version will be able to be updated with new content, power sets, story arcs etc.
"Similar game play" sounds more vague than what Irish Girl posted yesterday.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 02, 2014, 03:07:54 PM
I suppose I could be convinced to bring some APR-related enlightenment to the masses.
Let's see here... Zone wise...

Atlas Park - The zone with the most work into it, by far. Perhaps 70% finished. All the streets are laid out, many of the buildings are in place, Trees are even starting to be put down in places.
Steel Canyon - 20-30% completed
Galaxy City - 20-30% completed
Independence Port - 10% completed
Founders Falls - 20-30% completed
Talos Island 10-20%
Perez Park - 10%
"The Hollows" - 10%
Sirens Call - 5%
Pocket D - 50%
and of course, the zone we unveiled our move to Unreal Engine 4 with...
Ouroboros - 95%

Technically, I can walk around any of the zones atm. I'm nothing but a Rikti Drone, and I've got no powers or anything.
Since we're going to be using a version of the City of Titans UE4 build, more work on character creation and powers and what have you is dependent on their work schedule. Not that APR is lacking in work in the mean time!

The geometries from the meshes are currently mostly pulled from Legacy CoH, but rarely are they un-modified. Many meshes have simply had to be re-built from scratch for one reason or another.
Don't even get me started on textures. -shakes head- 64x64 textures for the sides of buildings might have cut it in 2004.

I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff...I really should write all this down. heh
I would be willing to watch a video of you walking around in those zones.  Not boring at all to me.  :D

I see a lot of possibilities and it is great that the team is thinking out of the box.

For those worried about the Original CoH shutting down - this opens the possibility that you may be able to fund your own server. If you have funds once the game is in escrow and you can load that snapshot onto a server - nothing would stop you from leasing your own copy and hosting a server.
That's very cool....this would be a reason to think the game is never going away again.

I am still hopeful that somehow character data can be rescued. One of my biggest concerns if character data is not available are that many veterans will not return to the game. I was thinking about this last night and im coming from my own personal view and I know the shared views of others.. Its twelve years later since the launch of City of Heroes. I am not the person I was then. I am married now.. with a family.. different responsibilities that require more time. I dont have the time to sit and play hours and hours and hours on end like I did previously. And in all honesty I dont want to play the same content over and over and over AGAIN that I already have. If I had to start over and remake every character and earn and purchase all those enhancements all over again I just dont know if I would want to do that. Would I remake everyone.. no.. but they are some core character that I would and even those are 25-30 plus characters..
I just ran into this issue this morning.  I used to play with a married couple and we hung out on Skype while we played.   They, like me, played almost exclusively with lvl 50 characters.   We ran the various TF's together mostly.   The guy was way more into tricking out his characters with purples than I was.   We used to get into discussions about the merits of frankenslotting vs all purple sets.   He always went with purple sets no matter what.   Anyway...

I kept him up to date on all this and sent him a message last night with what we just heard.   He just came out and said he wouldn't come back without his characters.  (He had a LOT more 50s than I did so would be losing much more)  That's two accounts lost right there.   

I'll be coming back of course.  I used to run two accounts because I liked to dual-box and team different characters together for fun.   I'll probably run two accounts again...can't be sure though.  The incentive for that won't be there at the beginning with a "fresh start".   A lot will depend on how quick I can get a couple of my old favorites back to 50 in playing shape again.   A little worried about my two Tankers I tended to play a couple of times a month.   I was a good enough Tanker for radio mishes and stuff, but wouldn't dare try to tank a TF.   Something tells me my Tankers won't be coming back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Marshman on September 02, 2014, 03:10:30 PM
Well, I wasn't planning on staying solo! Especially since I code one BUGGY Hello World.


Hahaha!!  That line is extremely funny to programmers or former programmers over 40.  LOL.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 03:15:55 PM
I kept him up to date on all this and sent him a message last night with what we just heard.   He just came out and said he wouldn't come back without his characters.  (He had a LOT more 50s than I did so would be losing much more)  That's two accounts lost right there.   

A bit of a short sighted view, really. Sure, he's lost his stuff, BUT, right now all his stuff is gone anyway. In fact, we might ALL just consider all of that stuff deleted and gone for ever.  I don't see that as a reason not to go back to the game though.. After all, it wasn't the stuff we loved, it was the game and the community, wasn't it?

If love of the stuff was more important than the love of the game, then I guess he never really loved the game anyway.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 02, 2014, 03:16:09 PM
"Similar game play" sounds more vague than what Irish Girl posted yesterday.

There is a reason for the vague they have to get a team together (if NCSoft makes the sale) start having discussion with who ever the lead is on vision and what directions they want to take the storyline and game play. Also they have to convert from one engine to another so some things may not translate the same for what ever reason.

Heck UO is still running and it came out in 1997 and the game play changed over the years and had to change to keep working in the new OS not everything but parts of it had to change to keep the game running.

The reality is technology changes and you either change with it or it goes away

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 02, 2014, 03:17:18 PM
I kept him up to date on all this and sent him a message last night with what we just heard.   He just came out and said he wouldn't come back without his characters.  (He had a LOT more 50s than I did so would be losing much more)  That's two accounts lost right there.   

Time will tell.  After putting time and effort into something it's understandable that his immediate reaction is to wall up and not want to return. After a few days or weeks he may soften up and be willing to think about starting over.  What did he say about CoH2?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 03:19:01 PM
"Similar game play" sounds more vague than what Irish Girl posted yesterday.

Even if all the game mechanics are copied exactly in CoH1.5 (which is the intent), it will STILL only play "similarly".

The only way you'll get identical gameplay, is in the original game, and even THAT has changed over the years. Really, read the box.  You'll find similar words to "Gameplay experience may change over time" printed on there.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: DragonLord on September 02, 2014, 03:25:08 PM
I'm just like most of you very excited with the news from yesterday , I've watching these forums since Hail Mary started, been following it wherever and whenever I could checking back every so often for news of coh return. I would love to get the whole game back as a whole, but even if we don't they are going to get my full support . I came in to coh as one of the first beta tester group of people they sent emails too ,  the first hour I played it I was hooked and there I stayed till the end. I met a lot of great people over the years on coh , we played on just about every server because we filled up all of our slots before they gave of the chance to buy more slots, that added to the obsession for building more toons to play. We began on Justice as The Freedom Force, and then we branched out to the other servers under Alt-Holic Anonymous. I can't wait till the day that we get the word to login.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 02, 2014, 03:25:47 PM
I am curious. Would we have the ability to edit and add content to the CoH 1.5 version?


That's very much up in the air as it's know parts of the toolset just aren't there anymore and what is is informationally incomplete.

*edit* Yay Reading comprehension.  More coffee before posts. That answer applies to CoHi23, not the 1.5/UE4 Adaptation.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Von Krieger on September 02, 2014, 03:29:23 PM
I know many folks still use WinXp and Windows 7. Developers want to future proof their product - users tend to hold on to the old until it won't do what they want it to.

I went kicking and screaming and had to be dragged from Windows XP by the near total lack of support/drivers for XP64.

So when I got a new PC, I went with Windows 7. I then proceeded to bludgeon it with a half a dozen programs so that the bloody thing looked and worked like Windows XP.

Like the changed Start > All Programs functionality, screw the new arrangement, I'm working off the better part of two decades worth of muscle memory. That was the first thing I changed. :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 03:31:27 PM
So when I got a new PC, I went with Windows 7. I then proceeded to bludgeon it with a half a dozen programs so that the bloody thing looked and worked like Windows XP.

What a horrible thing to do to Windows 7! The poor thing! You mutilated it!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 02, 2014, 03:37:05 PM
I went kicking and screaming and had to be dragged from Windows XP by the near total lack of support/drivers for XP64.

So when I got a new PC, I went with Windows 7. I then proceeded to bludgeon it with a half a dozen programs so that the bloody thing looked and worked like Windows XP.

Like the changed Start > All Programs functionality, screw the new arrangement, I'm working off the better part of two decades worth of muscle memory. That was the first thing I changed. :P

I left as is when I upgraded to win7 but I do Infrastructure support so I have to keep up with the changes my main WS at work for my job is a server OS I been using 2008r2 for about 3 years now as my workstation. I have to deal with anything from 2012r2 to 2003 so my muscle memory is screwed having to hop between all the differences amazing you will start typing a command and you are like crap that does not work in that OS and have to remember what the old one is  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 02, 2014, 03:46:01 PM
A bit of a short sighted view, really. Sure, he's lost his stuff, BUT, right now all his stuff is gone anyway. In fact, we might ALL just consider all of that stuff deleted and gone for ever.  I don't see that as a reason not to go back to the game though.. After all, it wasn't the stuff we loved, it was the game and the community, wasn't it?

If love of the stuff was more important than the love of the game, then I guess he never really loved the game anyway.
He's a nice guy.  No real reason to insult him.   The definition of "the game" is not the same for everyone.   Some think of it as just the blank state of the game, others see it as what they personally built it to be.

He loved the game a lot.   He and his wife are just playing another game now that they have built into a state where they enjoy it very much (they want me to join them but other games don't interest me frankly).   
Time will tell.  After putting time and effort into something it's understandable that his immediate reaction is to wall up and not want to return. After a few days or weeks he may soften up and be willing to think about starting over.  What did he say about CoH2?
That may indeed be the case.   He didn't comment about CoH2 (or even CoH 1.5).   I plan to keep in contact with them since we played together so much.
Even if all the game mechanics are copied exactly in CoH1.5 (which is the intent), it will STILL only play "similarly".

The only way you'll get identical gameplay, is in the original game, and even THAT has changed over the years. Really, read the box.  You'll find similar words to "Gameplay experience may change over time" printed on there.
That's true and of course the reason some people stop playing games.

Either it will feel like CoH or it won't.   I plan to find out.   Knowing they are going for the same feel is important to me.

I was commenting that "similar game play" sounds more like what CoT is going for.   That's different than what Irish Girl said:
There's a touch of misunderstanding going around, that moving to Unreal means that something about the gameplay will change. That's simply not true.
Is it likely that adjustments to certain things will be made during Beta? Yeah, just like during CoH. The devs would test, and adjust.
That sounds like the goal is much more than "similar".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 02, 2014, 03:46:29 PM
A bit of a short sighted view, really. Sure, he's lost his stuff, BUT, right now all his stuff is gone anyway. In fact, we might ALL just consider all of that stuff deleted and gone for ever.  I don't see that as a reason not to go back to the game though.. After all, it wasn't the stuff we loved, it was the game and the community, wasn't it?

If love of the stuff was more important than the love of the game, then I guess he never really loved the game anyway.

I feel where they're coming from. I'll still play, but I won't be able to get what I had back. I'm ok with this, but others aren't. And that's ok too.

He's essentially saying that when his characters died, the game died with them. I'm not so sure that accusing him of "never loving the game" is in order though, considering how much time he had put into it. Perhaps the love of the game and the love and care he put into his characters is too much for him to bear parting with. That doesn't mean he didn't love the game. In fact, it could mean exactly the opposite. Perhaps he loved the game TOO much. People were very, very attached to their characters. I'm not afraid to say I shed some tears when it finally hit me that I wouldn't be able to ever play my Warshade (as he was) again. This game meant something to people.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 02, 2014, 03:52:10 PM
When you downloaded the game and played City of Heroes pre-sunset, the NDA protected the PLAYERS from having their data shared willy nilly by possible unscrupulous sales to company that you didn't intend to have YOUR personal data. As far as the current people wanting that information assigned in the Revival, I am sure MANY do not want that data shared/sold to another party.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on September 02, 2014, 03:55:35 PM
For those worried about the Original CoH shutting down - this opens the possibility that you may be able to fund your own server. If you have funds once the game is in escrow and you can load that snapshot onto a server - nothing would stop you from leasing your own copy and hosting a server.

I really wish that were the case, but if they're buying the IP and only leasing the engine I really don't see how The Holding Company would have the ability to legally provide the server snapshot.

But its a wonderful thought.  And thank you for getting all this rolling.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 03:56:44 PM
He's a nice guy.  No real reason to insult him.   The definition of "the game" is not the same for everyone.   Some think of it as just the blank state of the game, others see it as what they personally built it to be.

I didn't insult him.  If you took it that way, well... All I can say is it wasn't intended to be one, at all.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 02, 2014, 03:57:26 PM
Suggestion to Titan mods: add downix to the mod list for this sub-forum, please.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: InOnePiece on September 02, 2014, 04:01:06 PM
Since we're going to be using a version of the City of Titans UE4 build, more work on character creation and powers and what have you is dependent on their work schedule.

I guess I'm not really understanding this point from everything, and it's probably just my own density. What I am assuming is that the basic way the powers are chosen and enhanced is identical between CoH and CoT. In other words, you choose Hover, then you six slot it, then you put enhancements in it - but not six of the same kind because, you know, that would be weird. What does it mean for APR to use CoT's build?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 02, 2014, 04:07:19 PM
I see a lot of possibilities and it is great that the team is thinking out of the box.

For those worried about the Original CoH shutting down - this opens the possibility that you may be able to fund your own server. If you have funds once the game is in escrow and you can load that snapshot onto a server - nothing would stop you from leasing your own copy and hosting a server....

I can't picture NCSoft even remotely agreeing to let whomever run copies of CoH wherever and whenever they want, or making that snapshot available to more than just the Hail Mary Team (and they'll probably only get one snapshot at that-- hope they at least make a few copies in case the original backup gets corrupted!).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 02, 2014, 04:08:27 PM
I didn't insult him.  If you took it that way, well... All I can say is it wasn't intended to be one, at all.
He did indeed love the game.   It's just that the game as he knew it is gone if his characters are gone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 02, 2014, 04:12:27 PM
He did indeed love the game.   It's just that the game as he knew it is gone if his characters are gone.

Well, if this all even happens (which, given NCSoft's prior track record, still isn't that likely), it sounds like your friend won't be playing the original CoH.  That's fine.  It's understandable.  But it's his loss.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 02, 2014, 04:13:01 PM
"Similar game play" sounds more vague than what Irish Girl posted yesterday.

There are varying degrees of optimism as to how closely CoH can be mechanically emulated - will your level 50 with the same slots slotted while killing Skullz:

  * be the same play
  * feel like the same play
  * feel close enough to the same play that only certain build combinations will feel slighted **
  * feel close enough even though nothing is perfect but most everyone is happy
  * Look, you get Paragon City back, everything else is cake.

Most likely it will be the middle three barring some documentation coming to light that I've been told doesn't exist.

This completely discounts the possibility that the 1.5 ( really not keen on that labelling ) will be City of Titans game engine, set in the CoH universe(s) which would be somewhere between the latter two on that list.

** Let's be realistic, this will happen even when the i23 servers come back up. :)

 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 02, 2014, 04:20:25 PM
Well, if this all even happens (which, given NCSoft's prior track record, still isn't that likely), it sounds like your friend won't be playing the original CoH.  That's fine.  It's understandable.  But it's his loss.
Important to remember that "his loss" happens whether he comes back or not if his characters are gone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wammo on September 02, 2014, 04:23:51 PM
I am left stunned at this news. I am excited on the one hand and yet on the other a bit disappointed. It is disappointing to think that the game will not evolve and continue to be expanded and disappointing to think the game will once again end at some point due to the release of Windows 9.

I am also left with a HUGE question...will this new release/version of the game still be playable on the Mac?

Any reservations/disappointments aside...I am happy we may be playing again someday.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hyperstrike on September 02, 2014, 04:24:13 PM
That MWM somehow misused their funding to switch game engines from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4.  And that this transition set them back irreparably.
Unreal Engine 3 has zero MMO support.  Meaning that MWM would have had to either create their own code for handling the MMO portion of the game, or contract a third party to do so.  Such would have taken an unknown amount of time.  Unreal Engine 4 on the other hand has built in MMO support.  This is why when MWM was offered the chance to upgrade their licenses to the newer version they did so enthusiastically.  As this would be one less thing to have to work out. 

There's also the fact that the license terms for UE4 are actually FAR friendlier than they are for UE3.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hyperstrike on September 02, 2014, 04:26:20 PM
Marvel Heroes uses unreal engine 3 and it is an arpg mmo, and it has become really popular and tons of fun now, so to say UE3 has zero mmo support is well wrong.

Yes.  And Marvel had to basically build all their MMO structure from scratch, because UE3 is primarily an FPS/TPS engine.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 02, 2014, 04:27:52 PM
I guess I'm not really understanding this point from everything, and it's probably just my own density. What I am assuming is that the basic way the powers are chosen and enhanced is identical between CoH and CoT. In other words, you choose Hover, then you six slot it, then you put enhancements in it - but not six of the same kind because, you know, that would be weird. What does it mean for APR to use CoT's build?
No, CoT's power system is different, more flexible. The adapting will be up to APR.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 02, 2014, 04:29:06 PM
There are varying degrees of optimism as to how closely CoH can be mechanically emulated - will your level 50 with the same slots slotted while killing Skullz:

  * be the same play
  * feel like the same play
  * feel close enough to the same play that only certain build combinations will feel slighted **
  * feel close enough even though nothing is perfect but most everyone is happy
  * Look, you get Paragon City back, everything else is cake.

Most likely it will be the middle three barring some documentation coming to light that I've been told doesn't exist.

This completely discounts the possibility that the 1.5 ( really not keen on that labelling ) will be City of Titans game engine, set in the CoH universe(s) which would be somewhere between the latter two on that list.

** Let's be realistic, this will happen even when the i23 servers come back up. :)
I do expect it to look different (that's part of the appeal right there).   If the animations aren't exactly alike that won't bother me.   I mostly just want all the powers to work the same way.   Baddies falling down a different way on my ice slick will still be awesome.   And if I'm still slotting everything the same way after crafting the enhancement the same way, I'm fine.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 02, 2014, 04:30:08 PM
I am also left with a HUGE question...will this new release/version of the game still be playable on the Mac?

I cannot speak 100% authoratively on the intents of the management team for the intended 1.5 side of the house, but I have personally played UE4 assets for our side of things on Windows and a Steambox. MacOS is well supported, the toolchain is even native - I just haven't tried that particular build yet, though I think I should do that today.

Our primary targets are Windows and Mac. Linux(s) is highly desired but right now looks limited to debians that are very close to SteamOS specs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 02, 2014, 04:31:20 PM
I am left stunned at this news. I am excited on the one hand and yet on the other a bit disappointed. It is disappointing to think that the game will not evolve and continue to be expanded and disappointing to think the game will once again end at some point due to the release of Windows 9.

I am also left with a HUGE question...will this new release/version of the game still be playable on the Mac?

Any reservations/disappointments aside...I am happy we may be playing again someday.
Something tells me the OP should be updated with answers to the questions and answers throughout the thread.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 02, 2014, 04:32:10 PM
The news is spreading:


http://www.examiner.com/article/details-revealed-of-negotiations-for-city-of-heroes-return


Not just in the US either....


http://www.jeuxonline.info/actualite/45610/resurrection-partielle-licence-city-of-heroes
France


http://www.playmassive.de/mmo-news/id56136/city-heroes-vertrag-rueckkehr-coh-steht-wohl-vor-abschluss.html
Germany

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 02, 2014, 04:33:22 PM
Long time lurker here.  I am so happy that I might get the chance to go home again.

Every time I sit down to my computer, part of me is thinking "I wish I was logging into CoH".

On losing old account info and character data: 

The several hundred million in INF and all those IOs will be missed, but not too much.  I can always get more.
Starting my alternate selves over again is no big deal.  I deleted and restarted dozens of characters (yes even level 50's) over the years.
Losing my SG and Base?  Well yeah that hurts.  That base took me literally years to build.  But, I'll adapt and thrive anyway.
Losing all those purchased unlocks and all my vet rewards (if we do...) will be really painful.  I'd come to rely on some of those rewards.
[I'm looking at you Mr. "skip hover" reward].  Plus Doctor Device just won't be the same without his Hover Board.  But, again, I'll adapt if I have to.

At the end of the day, all that truly matters is getting to go home again.

FYI - Irish_Girl:  I know bubkiss about 2D/3D Modelling, but if you ever need a code-monkey for "normal" programming,
I'm more than happy to lend a hand.


Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hyperstrike on September 02, 2014, 04:37:32 PM
Question on "binary compatibility" with Windows 9. Is there more detail on what the incompatibility is?

Basically there's some noise about Intel pushing an IA-128 architecture and having a Win9 version available.

If that's the case, you probably wouldn't see IA-32 (32-bit Windows compatibility).  But the number of people running 128-bit Windows up front is going to be RIDICULOUSLY small (assuming it's a non-zero number to begin with).

For anyone running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Win9, at least at this juncture, there's nothing in the pipeline that should interfere with CoH.

I've been following Win9 fairly carefully (as I'd like to avoid the crap that sank Win8).  And, thus far, I haven't seen anything else that should be problematic to the operations of CoH.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 02, 2014, 04:41:27 PM
"Similar game play" sounds more vague than what Irish Girl posted yesterday.

so many of the basic design decisions for COX were superior to anything out there. I currently play swtor and am always asking "Why in the XXXX dir you do it this way???" cox was so far ahead of the other mmos it isnt even funny.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 02, 2014, 04:41:52 PM
Basically there's some noise about Intel pushing an IA-128 architecture and having a Win9 version available.

If that's the case, you probably wouldn't see IA-32 (32-bit Windows compatibility).  But the number of people running 128-bit Windows up front is going to be RIDICULOUSLY small (assuming it's a non-zero number to begin with).

For anyone running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Win9, at least at this juncture, there's nothing in the pipeline that should interfere with CoH.

I've been following Win9 fairly carefully (as I'd like to avoid the crap that sank Win8).  And, thus far, I haven't seen anything else that should be problematic to the operations of CoH.
Don't be hating on windows 8!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 04:43:55 PM
I am also left with a HUGE question...will this new release/version of the game still be playable on the Mac?

That's been asked, and answered, a least a dozen times since last night...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hyperstrike on September 02, 2014, 04:44:10 PM
Don't be hating on windows 8!

I don't hate Windows 8.

I simply think it's a decent OS with pathetically broken UI that doesn't belong on anything other than a tablet.

So the proper term is "disdain".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 04:45:12 PM
Yes.  And Marvel had to basically build all their MMO structure from scratch, because UE3 is primarily an FPS/TPS engine.

Also, the Marvel game is... dreadful. :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 02, 2014, 04:45:23 PM
I also balk at the word "licensing" as it was used a couple of time.  Licenses can always expire; contracts can be broken.  Will NCSoft now have some kind of hold or say in the successors if they choose to incorporate aspects of CoH into their games?

This crossed my mind as well; I don't want NCSoft having so much as a single tentacle on CoT. I don't want them anywhere near that game, they can keep their little grubbies to themselves.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on September 02, 2014, 04:46:19 PM
I know many folks still use WinXp and Windows 7.
"Still" nothing. I only switched to Win 7 this year because I replaced my old desktop. :p
I really wish that were the case, but if they're buying the IP and only leasing the engine I really don't see how The Holding Company would have the ability to legally provide the server snapshot.
Sub-leasing is a thing. It depends on the lease terms from NCSoft, obviously.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 02, 2014, 04:48:55 PM
Massively.  http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/09/02/ncsoft-might-allow-players-to-resurrect-the-city-of-heroes-ip/ (http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/09/02/ncsoft-might-allow-players-to-resurrect-the-city-of-heroes-ip/)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 02, 2014, 04:50:37 PM
No, CoT's power system is different, more flexible. The adapting will be up to APR.

Yeah, I was curious about this as well. My understanding was that the powersets are very different and not locked to any specific role. Not sure how you would create a COH fire/fire blaster in APR without reworking a lot of the avatar creation system to limit selections. I think gameplay style is likely to be quite different if it is just a straight port from CoT to APR without some serious modding of the engine. But there is no way for us on the outside looking in to know.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 02, 2014, 04:51:54 PM
Yeah, I was curious about this as well. My understanding was that the powersets are very different and not locked to any specific role. Not sure how you would create a COH fire/fire blaster in APR without reworking a lot of the avatar creation system to limit selections. I think gameplay style is likely to be quite different if it is just a straight port from CoT to APR without some serious modding of the engine. But there is no way for us on the outside looking in to know.
You can make a new UI which does the job, as the results are under the hood
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rubberlad on September 02, 2014, 04:54:54 PM
I would like to address some other concerns.  One.  That Missing Worlds Media is using funds from the Kickstarter for the new holding company purchasing the COH Intellectual Property.  This is not so.  Funds from the Kickstarter raised for City of Titans are designated for City of Titans.  New funds will need to be raised separately at some point for the COH revival should the deal with NCSoft get approved.

That MWM somehow misused their funding to switch game engines from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4.  And that this transition set them back irreparably.
Unreal Engine 3 has zero MMO support.  Meaning that MWM would have had to either create their own code for handling the MMO portion of the game, or contract a third party to do so.  Such would have taken an unknown amount of time.  Unreal Engine 4 on the other hand has built in MMO support.  This is why when MWM was offered the chance to upgrade their licenses to the newer version they did so enthusiastically.  As this would be one less thing to have to work out. 

As to the setbacks...that has to do with the character rig on which our avatars will be built upon.  MWM was a little too ambitious with the amount of sockets the character rigs could hold and to how many pieces would make up the rig, and where their seams connected the pieces together would look and work in their game engine.  Some of the seams did not move properly once the rig was in motion.  Too many sockets used up too many resources leading to instability. 

It is my understanding that they are on the third iteration of the character rig.  Once all the kinks are worked out progress will proceed.  While this sets back the avatar builder somewhat it does not affect other portions of the game such as the background world building, lore, or art assets being created.  There are multiple paths all being worked on simultaneously.

Just because other Kickstarter projects have failed does not mean that this project has to fail.  As with any project their is a risk of failure.  There is also the possibility of success.  I prefer to be enthusiastically supportive of City of Titans and why I have contributed to the Kickstarter campaign.  If they start a new Kickstarter to revive City Of Heroes, I will contribute to that as well.  We can all be naysayers and be negative and say that all of this is a pipe dream and give up our hopes or we can be positive and look to a brighter tomorrow.  I prefer to do the latter.  Nuff said.

Actually there’s a lot more that can be said on the points you raised (although I admire your ability to gloss over any and all criticism with a stroke of the Rainbow Brite wand):

1)   MWM didn’t know Unreal 3 engine wasn’t MMO-tech friendly (at least that reason wasn’t clearly stated when they announced the switch to UE4 which came *after* the Kickstarter campaign had already successfully concluded. If they knew prior to the campaign that UE3 wasn’t the right tool but they went ahead with marketing the campaign as a UE3 tool… (while *also* knowing that they had jumpstarted a renew discussion with NCsoft to buy back the CoH IP) well, that opens up a whole new can of worms. That said, I think your spin on these events very unlikely and/or didn’t happen. What I think is more likely is that the MWM team made the decision to switch to UE4 later (and post Kickstarter award) because the UE team saw they’d gotten $600k cash in the Kickstarter campaign and wanted a piece of that action – so why not make the suggestion to the team to upgrade?

2)    MWM isn’t a fully-staffed, self-reliant resource company; it is (or was) a woman-owned, small-business and loosely organized start-up company that is completely dependent on its volunteers to get the job done. How a “company” dependent on volunteers to get one project up and running (CoT) can suddenly think themselves successfully aligned/fully staffed (albeit with part-time volunteers) and resourced to take on a *second* MMO-driven product (even if its CoH revived) using a second and wholly separate fundraising opportunity without publicly acknowledging how they’re going to pay for the pre-negotiated “doable” rate that NCsoft is supposedly comfortable with (but then there goes Warcabbit saying they’ll need fundraising for new servers, networking, etc. on top of producing the money that actually *buys* the IP itself)… that’s not a company with good business sense or a detailed 5-year plan. That’s a bunch of guys flying by the seat of their pants trying to wing this (and maybe take some cash/bonus IT equipment/career development training home on the side, or hopefully get bought out by a bigger game developer/publisher down the road which is another great way to cash in).

3)   Like everyone here, I love CoH and I *want* to believe that the IP can be purchased, the engine licensed, and everything will be happy, hunky dorey come login day – but that’s a lot of blind faith to have in one company (let alone a volunteer-based company) and I’m just not that naive (stupid? yes; naive? no...). Opportunities for fiscal mismanagement come fast and often (even when started with the best of intentions) and that’s not cause to always see everything branded “ Save CoH” as only a good thing. In theory, yes it’s great news; in practical execution, those “i”s had better be dotted and every “T” crossed” on the business operations plan before any money ever changes hands.

Bottom line: there’s good reason to be happy if NCsoft is opening the door to discussions again (regardless of whomever they speak to – and it’s sad to think Brian Clayton’s team came so very close only to lose out because they didn’t want to license the engine -- *if* that was the real reason why their negotiations fell apart) but there’s also good reason to be cautious, reasonably skeptical and ask the tough, sobering questions which can still keep these projects on the road to potential future success. This is a publicly funded initiative, after all, so while folks can yell in another thread “YEAH, BUT WHAT DID YOU DO TO HELP?!” the answer is – we helped contribute the money required to make (COT/COH) happen (which you couldn't and still can't do without the fan base's financial support) ---- and now I say to the MWM team – good job getting on getting NCsoft to open this door again; good luck developing not one but two MMO IP’s simultaneously with a part-time volunteer staff, and most importantly --- in the immortal words of RuPaul herself…

“...DON’T F*CK IT UP.”
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Magus Prime on September 02, 2014, 04:55:35 PM
Thank you, Downix.  Eager to see what the future brings!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 02, 2014, 05:05:25 PM
That's been asked, and answered, a least a dozen times since last night...

Maybe we should compile a list of FAQ's with quoted answers by downix and Irish_Girl
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 02, 2014, 05:10:52 PM
You can make a new UI which does the job, as the results are under the hood

Very Cool. You know, if this works, there might be other licensing opportunities for CoT if it is that flexible. Imagine if you wanted to do a legit space opera game with Psi powers, blasters, etc. and could mode CoT to do a traveller-esque experience. It could radically effect MMO development cycles if it could work as a starting platform MMO.

To me, it seems that you have to include so many powers and effects for a Superhero game that you have almost everything you need for other genres. If MWM pulls this off, well let's just say, OMG that's freaking cool!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: adarict on September 02, 2014, 05:11:33 PM

Either it will feel like CoH or it won't.   I plan to find out.   Knowing they are going for the same feel is important to me.

I was commenting that "similar game play" sounds more like what CoT is going for.   That's different than what Irish Girl said:That sounds like the goal is much more than "similar".

That was one of my points.  If they change the engine, there is the possibility that it still won't "feel" the same.  Doesn't mean it WON'T, and obviously, they are planning to keep it as close as possible, but when you are trying to take something that was heavily modified in the first place, to make it work the way we remember, and force it into a new engine, there may be some things that you either can't directly emulate, or it requires a lot more work and workarounds to make it do the same thing.

I think it is admirable that 1.5 is aiming to mirror the old mechanics as close as possible, but there is always the possibility that it can't be entirely done.  From Irish Girl's comments, she appears to be the sole person working on it.  If there are things that don't have a one to one equivalent, it may take her much longer to find a way around it.  I would also assume though, that there WILL be additional people working on it, so it may end up being a non-issue.

And just to be clear, I'm not implying that it is impossible, or that the 1.5 project is doomed.  I just don't think people should EXPECT to see the exact old game with new graphics.  Some things might still feel "off".  Those minor things could end up being ironed out through the process.  It is really too early to say one way or the other.  UE4 might be flexible enough that it isn't an issue, I have no idea.  I just don't think it is a good idea to be so unequivocal about there being no significant changes to the feel of gameplay itself due to the change of engine, especially this early in the process.

Overall, I am still quite interested in 1.5.  Having the old system back with a shiny facelift would be pretty darn fantastic.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ezuka on September 02, 2014, 05:17:12 PM
I think an FAQ sticky for this would be really helpful.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 05:18:00 PM
Overall, I am still quite interested in 1.5.  Having the old system back with a shiny facelift would be pretty darn fantastic.

Look at it this way...  If you don't like the "Update", you'll still have CoH1.0  to play.

Win/Win in my books.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: candidate on September 02, 2014, 05:21:56 PM
Quote
I simply think it's a decent OS with pathetically broken UI that doesn't belong on anything other than a tablet.

LOL, another one that has not heard of Startisback and other apps, that bring the start button back.

And prolly not even tried Windows 8.



Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tacitala on September 02, 2014, 05:26:22 PM
Thank you to everyone involved and the best of luck to you on pulling this off.  No pressure or anything ;)

Say what?

A totally trust worthy individual (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Nemesis_%28Archvillain%29) (and his bio at the side makes me giggle)

Windows 9: Muffin Edition?

Muffins?
(https://i636.photobucket.com/albums/uu85/Tacitala/derpy_nocomputer_zps36dc88f1.gif)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 02, 2014, 05:27:39 PM
LOL, another one that has not heard of Startisback and other apps, that bring the start button back.

And prolly not even tried Windows 8.

I've tried it and also tried three different programs that bring the start menu and desktop back, and I still don't care for it. I think it's a FABULOUS tablet interface (and if I can ever afford the Surface Pro 3, I'll certainly have Win 8.1 on it), but between Win 7 and 8, Win 7 is the clear winner for desktop users--especially for desktop users like me who own hundreds of PC games (ranging from 1998 releases to today) and have gotten them all to somehow finally work on Win 7. Sorry, but I won't be migrating over to 8 anytime in the near (or far) future. I'm happy you like it, but it's not everything to everyone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 02, 2014, 05:29:44 PM
You can make a new UI which does the job, as the results are under the hood

To expand slightly. The under the hood system for powers/effects was built to be general purpose rather than to emulate an an exact et of powersets. As the sets are built, new wrinkles get added. It should be straight forward to tailor new sets that are close.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dpawtows on September 02, 2014, 05:32:45 PM
I guess I'm not really understanding this point from everything, and it's probably just my own density. What I am assuming is that the basic way the powers are chosen and enhanced is identical between CoH and CoT. In other words, you choose Hover, then you six slot it, then you put enhancements in it - but not six of the same kind because, you know, that would be weird. What does it mean for APR to use CoT's build?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/959841
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fleur_uk on September 02, 2014, 05:35:34 PM
I've tried it and also tried three different programs that bring the start menu and desktop back, and I still don't care for it. I think it's a FABULOUS tablet interface (and if I can ever afford the Surface Pro 3, I'll certainly have Win 8.1 on it), but between Win 7 and 8, Win 7 is the clear winner for desktop users--especially for desktop users like me who own hundreds of PC games (ranging from 1998 releases to today) and have gotten them all to somehow finally work on Win 7. Sorry, but I won't be migrating over to 8 anytime in the near (or far) future. I'm happy you like it, but it's not everything to everyone.

This^^ Tried it and hated,loathed,curses it  >:(

But to each their own :) I'm also a happy 7 user and will be until Win 9  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fleur_uk on September 02, 2014, 05:37:45 PM
I think an FAQ sticky for this would be really helpful.

Mint idea :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 05:46:50 PM
I've tried it and also tried three different programs that bring the start menu and desktop back, and I still don't care for it. I think it's a FABULOUS tablet interface (and if I can ever afford the Surface Pro 3, I'll certainly have Win 8.1 on it), but between Win 7 and 8, Win 7 is the clear winner for desktop users--especially for desktop users like me who own hundreds of PC games (ranging from 1998 releases to today) and have gotten them all to somehow finally work on Win 7. Sorry, but I won't be migrating over to 8 anytime in the near (or far) future. I'm happy you like it, but it's not everything to everyone.

Please guys... This is not the place for that particular argument...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 02, 2014, 05:47:00 PM
Actually there’s a lot more that can be said on the points you raised (although I admire your ability to gloss over any and all criticism with a stroke of the Rainbow Brite wand):

1)   MWM didn’t know Unreal 3 engine wasn’t MMO-tech friendly (at least that reason wasn’t clearly stated when they announced the switch to UE4 which came *after* the Kickstarter campaign had already successfully concluded. If they knew prior to the campaign that UE3 wasn’t the right tool but they went ahead with marketing the campaign as a UE3 tool… (while *also* knowing that they had jumpstarted a renew discussion with NCsoft to buy back the CoH IP) well, that opens up a whole new can of worms. That said, I think your spin on these events very unlikely and/or didn’t happen. What I think is more likely is that the MWM team made the decision to switch to UE4 later (and post Kickstarter award) because the UE team saw they’d gotten $600k cash in the Kickstarter campaign and wanted a piece of that action – so why not make the suggestion to the team to upgrade?

2)    MWM isn’t a fully-staffed, self-reliant resource company; it is (or was) a woman-owned, small-business and loosely organized start-up company that is completely dependent on its volunteers to get the job done. How a “company” dependent on volunteers to get one project up and running (CoT) can suddenly think themselves successfully aligned/fully staffed (albeit with part-time volunteers) and resourced to take on a *second* MMO-driven product (even if its CoH revived) using a second and wholly separate fundraising opportunity without publicly acknowledging how they’re going to pay for the pre-negotiated “doable” rate that NCsoft is supposedly comfortable with (but then there goes Warcabbit saying they’ll need fundraising for new servers, networking, etc. on top of producing the money that actually *buys* the IP itself)… that’s not a company with good business sense or a detailed 5-year plan. That’s a bunch of guys flying by the seat of their pants trying to wing this (and maybe take some cash/bonus IT equipment/career development training home on the side, or hopefully get bought out by a bigger game developer/publisher down the road which is another great way to cash in).

3)   Like everyone here, I love CoH and I *want* to believe that the IP can be purchased, the engine licensed, and everything will be happy, hunky dorey come login day – but that’s a lot of blind faith to have in one company (let alone a volunteer-based company) and I’m just not that naive (stupid? yes; naive? no...). Opportunities for fiscal mismanagement come fast and often (even when started with the best of intentions) and that’s not cause to always see everything branded “ Save CoH” as only a good thing. In theory, yes it’s great news; in practical execution, those “i”s had better be dotted and every “T” crossed” on the business operations plan before any money ever changes hands.

Bottom line: there’s good reason to be happy if NCsoft is opening the door to discussions again (regardless of whomever they speak to – and it’s sad to think Brian Clayton’s team came so very close only to lose out because they didn’t want to license the engine -- *if* that was the real reason why their negotiations fell apart) but there’s also good reason to be cautious, reasonably skeptical and ask the tough, sobering questions which can still keep these projects on the road to potential future success. This is a publicly funded initiative, after all, so while folks can yell in another thread “YEAH, BUT WHAT DID YOU DO TO HELP?!” the answer is – we helped contribute the money required to make (COT/COH) happen (which you couldn't and still can't do without the fan base's financial support) ---- and now I say to the MWM team – good job getting on getting NCsoft to open this door again; good luck developing not one but two MMO IP’s simultaneously with a part-time volunteer staff, and most importantly --- in the immortal words of RuPaul herself…

“...DON’T F*CK IT UP.”

I have some misgivings that are quite a bit different. Irishgirl is not related to MWM in her APR effort. CoT is the main product of MWM. Nate and a couple of other guys are those who had the contacts and resources to enter the negotiations. Getting the IP for one project and a different company/group getting the IP for their project is definitely not a bad thing.

My issues are now Irishgirl is about to be thrown to the sharks. I hope she can get some direction on a business manager because in my dealings on the original project 3 or 4 very unscrupulous people tried to get a foot in the door. She will need help in programming but also with business acumen.

This is a VERY cutthroat business and with a high potential of failure for the best run companies. I am excited but also prudent. I have approached Tony V to ask Irishgirl if she wants a forum section for her APR effort here or on a completely different site? It is time to organize the hordes of willing helpers - but also to direct them in meaningful ways. I have a lot of questions on Unreal 4.

Rubberlad - UnReal 3 does not have native MMO support - it can be added on as a bolt on effort. However UnReal 4 it is integrated and the timing was such very little time would be lost in porting assets from UR3 to UR4 compared to having to either write the code or pay someone to write them for UR3.

The Engine in UR4 is far superior and has many additional features. Features that make developing far faster:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOvfn1p92_8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AMY7I_eHjk

In the Tech Demo look at the Cave section! Wow!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 02, 2014, 05:54:07 PM
Please guys... This is not the place for that particular argument...

It's also not the place for comments about whether someone you don't know really loved the game....or the place to post about My Little Pony.... or the place to talk about pancakes....or the place to discuss whether or not you liked Champions Online.....or the place....well, you get the idea.

Simply put, this will happen regardless of whether or not you like it.

An active community who will have to wait a long, long, long time to get back in the game they love will eventually turn to other discussions/speculation to pass the time.

*shrug*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 02, 2014, 05:54:49 PM

My issues are now Irishgirl is about to be thrown to the sharks. I hope she can get some direction on a business manager because in my dealings on the original project 3 or 4 very unscrupulous people tried to get a foot in the door. She will need help in programming but also with business acumen.


This is something I worry about as well. I could see her getting overwhelmed by offers of help. But hopefully more experienced people will be able to help with this. I hope so anyway.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 02, 2014, 05:58:10 PM
I'm just curious as to why there is no source code out there.  I recently graduated from college and every bit of code I wrote, I kept, and that includes code from members of team projects that I was involved with.  I would assume that I am not the only one who does this.

Gratz on the graduation. And I'm not a part of this project, just a well wisher.

And yeah, I kept all my code while I went through college too.

Several problems with your concept though.
I'm presuming that the CoH code is gagillions of lines long considering it's been being developed for 8+ years. Much of which was probably black boxed so the original developers know only the X code and later developers know Y code.

Normally any code you write while working at a company is the sole property of said company and you can get sued if you used it outside of that company.

And the code may be still in use through a different application. NCSoft may or may not know this and wants to err of the safe side. It happens all the time.
When I was working for Sprint, I saw pieces of code used for several different projects and legacy code that was still standing from the 70s and 80s. With that code several people where still developing using it, but there was only one person who really understood it.

I don't know how they are reverse engineering the project (decompiler, deassember, what have you) but we have to realize that some of the code they find may not have been seen/worked on since 02.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 02, 2014, 06:08:18 PM
Gratz on the graduation. And I'm not a part of this project, just a well wisher.

And yeah, I kept all my code while I went through college too.

Several problems with your concept though.
I'm presuming that the CoH code is gagillions of lines long considering it's been being developed for 8+ years. Much of which was probably black boxed so the original developers know only the X code and later developers know Y code.

Normally any code you write while working at a company is the sole property of said company and you can get sued if you used it outside of that company.

And the code may be still in use through a different application. NCSoft may or may not know this and wants to err of the safe side. It happens all the time.
When I was working for Sprint, I saw pieces of code used for several different projects and legacy code that was still standing from the 70s and 80s. With that code several people where still developing using it, but there was only one person who really understood it.

I don't know how they are reverse engineering the project (decompiler, deassember, what have you) but we have to realize that some of the code they find may not have been seen/worked on since 02.

Since it is based off the Cryptic Engine it is possible that there may be backdoors into existing Cryptic products. Then you could get a snapshot of the game up and running but unwinding the reverse engineering would have you use different solutions to things than the original code did and so the SCoRE folks could potentially be in a very good spot :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hyperstrike on September 02, 2014, 06:17:27 PM
LOL, another one that has not heard of Startisback and other apps, that bring the start button back.

And prolly not even tried Windows 8.

LOL, another one who assumes instead of simply asking for clarification (and thus, gets it wrong).

We have installs of Startisback/Classic Shell running on multiple machines (both ours and client devices).  This covers not only Win8, but Server 2012.

Additionally, on many of our clients we're simply not ALLOWED to install things of this nature.  Meaning that remote admin of the machine is a wretched experience.

The problem goes a LOT deeper than just the Start button though.  Metro/Modern is a prime study in unnecessary obfuscation/removal of UI functionality.

And that's about as far as I'm going with this.  Since it risks derailing this thread.

Suffice it to say that I'm probably more familiar with Windows than you are and leave it at that.
So please don't be so quick to write someone expressing displeasure off as a luddite.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 02, 2014, 06:24:14 PM
Missing Worlds Media was created for the purpose of making a spiritual successor to City of Heroes.  They are not going to be developing two MMO's simultaneously.  It is not all on MWM's shoulders to pull off everything.  A separate holding company will be responsible for licensing the IP.  A separate effort will be bringing back the I23 servers up and running again.  Yet another project [APR] will be transitioning the COH IP to Unreal Engine 4.  Just because Nate was one of the people involved in the negotiations does not mean that he, and by extension MWM, is going to be running everything.  He has already stated that he is not interested in running the holding company.  He has his hands full already.

I am not following blindly.  Nor am I looking at these efforts cynically.  I am supporting the game that I love as are all those who are doing their best to make all these plans a reality.  We will see if they can pull this off or not.  In the words of Yoda...

http://youtu.be/BQ4yd2W50No
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 02, 2014, 06:27:21 PM
Missing Worlds Media was created for the purpose of making a spiritual successor to City of Heroes.  They are not going to be developing two MMO's simultaneously.  It is not all on MWM's shoulders to pull off everything.  A separate holding company will be responsible for licensing the IP.  A separate effort will be bringing back the I23 servers up and running again.  Yet another project [APR] will be transitioning the COH IP to Unreal Engine 4.  Just because Nate was one of the people involved in the negotiations does not mean that he, and by extension MWM, is going to be running everything.  He has already stated that he is not interested in running the holding company.  He has his hands full already.

I am not following blindly.  Nor am I looking at these efforts cynically.  I am supporting the game that I love as are all those who are doing their best to make all these plans a reality.  We will see if they can pull this off or not.  In the words of Yoda...

http://youtu.be/BQ4yd2W50No
Once the holding company is set up, my role is done.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 02, 2014, 06:31:23 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Turgenev on September 02, 2014, 06:34:03 PM
Also, what you have done must have been pretty dang impressive, because it brought Turgenev out of hiding! WOW.


Hush, ya punk. I've been busylike. :P I'm always watching. I've just had to worry about swimming lessons, crib mods, managing a corporate buyout and subsequent RIF at my company this summer, which is still echoing...

I come home, I read "Puff the Magic Dragon" to MiniTurg, sing "Let It Go" like I'm Kermit the Frog, and I'm just knackered.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on September 02, 2014, 06:34:11 PM
For those who do not know Korean business methods, it is considered highly rude to directly email someone, but to instead get an introduction from a third party business associate. This meant we had to find someone who was not part of NC Soft to formally introduce us to Mr. Yoon. Fortunately, we had two people who could do just that, a former NC West employee and a former co-worker of mine who had started a media company which works with NC Soft on developing properties for the Asian market.

Introductions in place, we made the leap from US-bound people to members of the Korean firm. This was very carefully done, very slowly orchestrated. By July, we had gotten to the point that Mr. Yoon had passed us to Sangwon Chung from NC Soft's Strategic Partnership Development Team.
Quote
Why this group?

Because we approached them like another Korean company. We respected their company culture. And most importantly, we were patient. We had periods where we heard nothing for weeks.

The group itself began as three people. It has grown, some people more connected to the inner workings than others. Some former Cryptic and Paragon employees have given us advise on things ranging from what is needed to run the old server binaries to how the Paragon Market worked.

It's water under the bridge at this point, but the fact that negotiations conducted this way have produced a positive response lends credence to my conclusions that NCSoft had shut down CoH and Paragon Studios as if it were a Korean subsidiary, with what, from their view, was a significant amount of patience on their part that we didn't accept their decision as 'proper' customers should have. It also explains why the several attempts to purchase the CoH IP from NCSoft have failed, as they weren't conducted with the appropriate degree of propriety. From our point of view, that NCSoft has established itself as an international game publisher while failing to accept that business practices in other countries are significantly different, but I can see where, culturally, failing to retain those business practices would be an admission of failure on their part.

That the cultural divide has caused distorted perceptions on both sides is regrettable; had something like this been started back when the shutdown was announced, it might have been possible for the game to have been preserved prior to shutdown -- and, possibly, working through a front, to have enabled Paragon Studios to have bought itself free of NCSoft with CoH and continued the game. Regardless, I am impressed by the effort you have put into trying to salvage the game through processes acceptable to them, and I hope to see its success.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 02, 2014, 06:34:16 PM
Once the holding company is set up, my role is done.

I have a hammer saws and a nailgun if it would help.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 02, 2014, 06:43:11 PM
I have a hammer saws and a nailgun if it would help.

Your don't need those fancy tools. You can fix everything with duck tape
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 02, 2014, 06:46:27 PM

Hush, ya punk. I've been busylike. :P I'm always watching. I've just had to worry about swimming lessons, crib mods, managing a corporate buyout and subsequent RIF at my company this summer, which is still echoing...

I come home, I read "Puff the Magic Dragon" to MiniTurg, sing "Let It Go" like I'm Kermit the Frog, and I'm just knackered.

lol, awww... MiniTurg. I like it.

I honestly can't wait to try out more of your AE arcs if the game gets back up and running! :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 02, 2014, 06:46:54 PM
Your don't need those fancy tools. You can fix everything with duck tape

we are building it out of ducks? thats gonna drive people quackers...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 02, 2014, 07:00:11 PM
Birds of a feather?

http://youtu.be/3Zl2fi7UFf4
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wammo on September 02, 2014, 07:02:05 PM
That's been asked, and answered, a least a dozen times since last night...

Sorry FloatingFatMan...I didn't have the stamina to read all 25 pages to find my answers. Please know my tone in that sentence is friendly and genuine...you are one my favorite posters on here. I hope we might put answers on the OP to avoid such events.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wammo on September 02, 2014, 07:07:43 PM
At risk of asking another question answered in these many pages...

All things considered...if this deal gets done as proposed in the OP...how long before we get to log in? Any estimates?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 02, 2014, 07:09:37 PM
All things considered...if this deal gets done as proposed in the OP...how long before we get to log in? Any estimates?

Nope. No ETA's. Announcing any now would be foolhardy at best.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 07:14:47 PM
Sorry FloatingFatMan...I didn't have the stamina to read all 25 pages to find my answers. Please know my tone in that sentence is friendly and genuine...you are one my favorite posters on here. I hope we might put answers on the OP to avoid such events.

My apologies if my tone came over as brusque, that wasn't the intent. :)

Second time today, I've done that.  I'm on a roll! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wammo on September 02, 2014, 07:16:15 PM
My apologies if my tone came over as brusque, that wasn't the intent. :)

Second time today, I've done that.  I'm on a roll! :p

No need for apologies at all. I assumed no such tone...we good :-)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 07:17:24 PM
At risk of asking another question answered in these many pages...

All things considered...if this deal gets done as proposed in the OP...how long before we get to log in? Any estimates?

My dad has a pat answer for questions like this, but if you're not a Brit, you probably won't get it...

"When Nelson gets his eye back!"  :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: powergridpete on September 02, 2014, 07:18:30 PM
This is great news!  I have no idea why NCSoft closed down CoH in the first place.  Name a better MMO that closed?  You probably can't.  MMO's don't reopen every day, in fact, I can't name one.  Looking forward to it.  Great job!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wammo on September 02, 2014, 07:24:28 PM
My dad has a pat answer for questions like this, but if you're not a Brit, you probably won't get it...

"When Nelson gets his eye back!"  :p
I'm not a Brit but I think I get the idea of what you mean by that....

I grow impatient but realize I have no choice but to wait...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 02, 2014, 07:24:45 PM
This is great news!  I have no idea why NCSoft closed down CoH in the first place.  Name a better MMO that closed?  You probably can't.  MMO's don't reopen every day, in fact, I can't name one.  Looking forward to it.  Great job!

I can't even name a better MMO, let alone one that closed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 02, 2014, 07:28:14 PM

   I am speechless. Fingers tightly crossed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 02, 2014, 07:35:24 PM
we are building it out of ducks? thats gonna drive people quackers...
Duck tape is made using duck cloth layered between the adhesive and the plastic backing. While it's popularly referred to as "duct tape" in many places it's actually a terrible tape to use on ducts since it doesn't hold up well at all in heat. Actually it's generally not a good tape for any sort of long term use since even in cooler environments it tends to get crumbly over time instead of turning into a gummy mess like in hotter environments.

i'd post more on topic comments and questions, but so far that's been pretty well handled by other people, so i'm mostly reading and offering incidental kvetching.
Kudos to downix, TonyV, Irish Girl, and everyone else on staying on top of things and responding with such clarity and patience.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 02, 2014, 07:38:47 PM
Duck tape is made using duck cloth layered between the adhesive and the plastic backing. While it's popularly referred to as "duct tape" in many places it's actually a terrible tape to use on ducts since it doesn't hold up well at all in heat. Actually it's generally not a good tape for any sort of long term use since even in cooler environments it tends to get crumbly over time instead of turning into a gummy mess like in hotter environments.

i'd post more on topic comments and questions, but so far that's been pretty well handled by other people, so i'm mostly reading and offering incidental kvetching.
Kudos to downix, TonyV, Irish Girl, and everyone else on staying on top of things and responding with such clarity and patience.

Well you are also explaining Duct(k) tape so that's a huge bonus!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: TonyV on September 02, 2014, 07:44:53 PM
   I am speechless. Fingers tightly crossed.

Not any more, you have a post now!  We've been waiting so long for you to show up, where have you been!!?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: powergridpete on September 02, 2014, 07:45:28 PM
I can't even name a better MMO, let alone one that closed.

Good point... the character creator alone is better than half of the MMO's out there.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 02, 2014, 08:00:10 PM
Not any more, you have a post now!  We've been waiting so long for you to show up, where have you been!!?

 I must admit that, most un-heroically, since the cataclysm that hit our game, I have been in a modified fortress of...um...er..moping but, no more :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 02, 2014, 08:15:24 PM
At risk of asking another question answered in these many pages...

All things considered...if this deal gets done as proposed in the OP...how long before we get to log in? Any estimates?

Hell I like this kind of speculation so Ill take a stab at it.  Say deal wraps up by Nov. 1.  Say then it takes the holding company two more months to get its act together (raise some cash, build website, account registration, organize servers, test things, etc.).  So Id guess at the very earliest Feb. 2015.

Im sure others savy in these matters have a clearer crystal ball.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: TonyV on September 02, 2014, 08:47:08 PM
30 minutes without any posts in this thread?  I haven't looked outside my window lately, is the world still there?

/e pokes the anthill...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 02, 2014, 08:51:23 PM
Be careful man, it might be fire ants.  It could even be army ants or some other super deadly ant!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UozWJTuhbMQ

I was trying to find a video with even deadlier ants......
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ashen Fury on September 02, 2014, 08:53:35 PM
Im amazed.  This is such fantastic news! Getting the IP itself is potentially even more exciting than the client sure to the sheer potential of what could be done with it! Great job guys,  thank you so much for your efforts,  ill keep my fingers crossed!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: nicoliy on September 02, 2014, 08:54:20 PM
I'm still hopeful, but not counting any chickens yet. I very much want to be back in CoH, but I can see where that road is long off - if it happens. None the less, I too am thankful for those working on this, your efforts are much appreciated.

Now back to also stalking City of Titans forums for updates from the weekend conventions.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 02, 2014, 08:54:29 PM
At risk of asking another question answered in these many pages...

All things considered...if this deal gets done as proposed in the OP...how long before we get to log in? Any estimates?

Way too early to expect login date announcments. 

Even if the deal goes through this month (hoping it does), I wouldn't expect to be able to log in until winter 2014 at the earliest. 

Pure speculation of course.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 02, 2014, 08:59:51 PM
30 minutes without any posts in this thread?  I haven't looked outside my window lately, is the world still there?

/e pokes the anthill...
I think its due to everyone soaking up all of the information we have at the moment :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 02, 2014, 09:01:48 PM
Duck tape is made using duck cloth layered between the adhesive and the plastic backing. While it's popularly referred to as "duct tape" in many places it's actually a terrible tape to use on ducts since it doesn't hold up well at all in heat. Actually it's generally not a good tape for any sort of long term use since even in cooler environments it tends to get crumbly over time instead of turning into a gummy mess like in hotter environments.

i'd post more on topic comments and questions, but so far that's been pretty well handled by other people, so i'm mostly reading and offering incidental kvetching.
Kudos to downix, TonyV, Irish Girl, and everyone else on staying on top of things and responding with such clarity and patience.

duck tapes primary purpose it to hold swords together..along with strapping tape
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on September 02, 2014, 09:08:39 PM
I think its due to everyone soaking up all of the information we have at the moment :)
No, everyone is several dozen concepts deep into Icon and/or Mid's
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: nikitastorm on September 02, 2014, 09:10:01 PM
I am cautiously optimistic. There's a LOT going on in this announcement, and a lot of work ahead, should a deal come to fruition with NCSoft. One of the things mentioned is still a bit confusing to me, even though someone has tried to explain it, and that is the concept that APR will be using MWM's CoT build. I am SO not getting that. But, you know what? I really probably don't NEED to get it. :)  The rest of it makes sense.

I would love to offer help to someone out there, but, about the only thing I am really good at that you might need is proofreading. I am pretty good at catching typos, providing examples of better grammar and better ways to word things. If any of the companies or individuals that are working on these projects is in need of those skills from me, please, feel free to contact me.

Oh, and I think I might have an explanation for some of the folks who are confused about the idea of NCSoft licensing the game engine. It is my understanding (and any part of this might be wrong) that NCSoft does not own the game engine. I believe that Cryptic still actually owns the engine. It is also my understanding that Cryptic licensed the game engine to NCSoft "in perpetuity" (as long as they needed it). I further understood that someone from Cryptic (Jack Emmert, perhaps?) made a statement to the effect that Cryptic would not stand in the way of NCSoft selling the game and would allow them to license the game engine to a third party to facilitate that. So, while the game IP (intellectual property) in any acceptable deal would be sold without (too many crazy) strings to our Hail Mary Team, the game engine would require that NCSoft license it, since it is not theirs to sell.

If I am incorrect, please point it out gently. :)

-- Storm
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hyperstrike on September 02, 2014, 09:23:20 PM
Okay I haven't really addressed this directly yet.

Here's how I feel about the proposition put forth in the original thread.

"I wish you luck.  But until it's a Done Deal, I'm not holding my breath.  NC has demonstrated that they'll string someone along and then simply stop communicating."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 02, 2014, 09:25:30 PM
I would love to offer help to someone out there, but, about the only thing I am really good at that you might need is proofreading. I am pretty good at catching typos, providing examples of better grammar and better ways to word things. If any of the companies or individuals that are working on these projects is in need of those skills from me, please, feel free to contact me.
-- Storm

Let me also throw my hat in that ring.  I've worked as a professional proofreader/editor, written copy, worked on fund raising grants/proposals, and even taught English to confused looking Japanese kids and adults.  Anyone on any of the given teams needs help with writing and editing I'd be glad to lend a hand.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 02, 2014, 09:32:37 PM
I know people have concerns about I23maint being outmoded when win 9 comes out. aslong as you dont upgrade you will continue to be fine for the next 6 years at least. I for one cant wait for a hami raid under unreal4 engine...gonna be awesome
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 02, 2014, 09:34:13 PM
I am cautiously optimistic. There's a LOT going on in this announcement, and a lot of work ahead, should a deal come to fruition with NCSoft. One of the things mentioned is still a bit confusing to me, even though someone has tried to explain it, and that is the concept that APR will be using MWM's CoT build. I am SO not getting that. But, you know what? I really probably don't NEED to get it. :)  The rest of it makes sense.
<snip>
-- Storm

As I understand it, APR has nothing to do with MWM or CoT. Their job will be to get old CoHi23 to work on a newer MMO engine,. a copy that can be edited, and patched, derived from the binary CoHi23 version. This will be referred to as CoH 1.5
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 02, 2014, 09:40:30 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Optimus Dex on September 02, 2014, 09:46:42 PM
Its great to see that Nc Soft is actually talking and open to possibly selling the IP, but we have a long way to go still. I applaud everyone who has worked on this to #SaveCoH.

 I am still hopeful that somehow character data can be rescued. One of my biggest concerns if character data is not available are that many veterans will not return to the game. I was thinking about this last night and im coming from my own personal view and I know the shared views of others.. Its twelve years later since the launch of City of Heroes. I am not the person I was then. I am married now.. with a family.. different responsibilities that require more time. I dont have the time to sit and play hours and hours and hours on end like I did previously. And in all honesty I dont want to play the same content over and over and over AGAIN that I already have. If I had to start over and remake every character and earn and purchase all those enhancements all over again I just dont know if I would want to do that. Would I remake everyone.. no.. but they are some core character that I would and even those are 25-30 plus characters..

 And having no idea what will happen to the maintenance mode long term or if those character will be ported over to CoH 1.5... Its a very challenging situation.. I know several people in my SG that I have remained in contact with feel the same way..

 Everyone of us will ABSOLUTELY play if/when the games comes back. The question is will they support the game like they did in years past.. will they stay long term..

 At this point im taking the Tony V position more seriously.. be patient.. and wait until everything unfolds..


I will be 61 tomorrow . I started playing COH around my birthday in 2004. I am not the same person I was then either. If and when the game comes back I will play it , I will have a subscription or maybe 2. My sons played as did my daughter in law. They plan on playing again. I have a friend and Sg mate who played - he is ready to play again.
 There were things I never did in game , power sets I never tried. So I will support the game and patiently await COH 1.5 or COH 2. I miss the Paragon City - I can redo characters and start new one. I tried DCU Online - hated it , Champions Online was not very good at all. I don't do Elves and Dwarves games. So bring on COH in maintenance mode till something better is finished.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Frankenstein on September 02, 2014, 09:53:04 PM
I am stupid-ludicrous excited about this.   And windows 9?  I will build a rig to NEVER UPGRADE to play City.  I will buy outdated parts at marked up prices!  I WILL KILL THIS GO.. wait uh.. nm...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 02, 2014, 09:53:09 PM
This is something I worry about as well. I could see her getting overwhelmed by offers of help. But hopefully more experienced people will be able to help with this. I hope so anyway.
Interesting point.   This will be a double-edged sword.   Offers to help should increase greatly (I know nothing, and can't help feeling the urge to help as well), but sorting through those offers and putting together a "team" might not be so easy.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 02, 2014, 09:58:06 PM
My issues are now Irishgirl is about to be thrown to the sharks. I hope she can get some direction on a business manager because in my dealings on the original project 3 or 4 very unscrupulous people tried to get a foot in the door. She will need help in programming but also with business acumen.
If only the programming stuff was the only skill needed!   
Quote
The Engine in UR4 is far superior and has many additional features. Features that make developing far faster:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOvfn1p92_8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AMY7I_eHjk

In the Tech Demo look at the Cave section! Wow!
The prospect of running an ITF in UR4 is exciting.   Maybe the "valley of lag" would go away even as the graphics made a huge leap forward.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dareon Kale on September 02, 2014, 10:16:20 PM
It all makes me wish I had an applicable skill set to apply to the effort. Alas, a degree in kinesiology does not lend itself well to graphics development, coding, or negotiating business agreements. I'm left with just being thankful for the efforts of others, and hoping our current Korean overlords find sufficient value in the sale and licensing of our favorite City. However, if any of you technically apt individuals need some help refining your workout regimen, let me know. We can't have you guys running out of energy or falling into disrepair after all.  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 10:19:14 PM
30 minutes without any posts in this thread?  I haven't looked outside my window lately, is the world still there?

/e pokes the anthill...

/e pokes back

I go to sleep, and the thread jumps forward 5 pages! So...many posts I want to reply to. @_@
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 02, 2014, 10:21:09 PM
Since it is based off the Cryptic Engine it is possible that there may be backdoors into existing Cryptic products. Then you could get a snapshot of the game up and running but unwinding the reverse engineering would have you use different solutions to things than the original code did and so the SCoRE folks could potentially be in a very good spot :)

I'm really finding all of this very fascinating from a technical level. Even though I'm just looking at it from afar.

... I'm still mentally floating out in Oro since I looked at the U4 video. That is way beyond my wildest hopes.
So, even if the worst case happens, I still have this experience.

My opinion guys, enjoy this whole journey while you can. If we get everything we want, we can enjoy the ride. If not, we still had that ride to look back on.

Side note: This forum has given me a lot of info about CoT and it's progress that I don't feel like I'd gotten looking through their website and announcements.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on September 02, 2014, 10:21:31 PM
I don't have a lot in the way of technical skills that I could offer to help, but I am a very good writer, with a lot of practice at science fiction and fantasy writing. I am also an excellent editor and proofreader, if/when the time comes along. So, if my aid with things like APR is ever needed, I'm right here.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 10:23:00 PM
Look at it this way...  If you don't like the "Update", you'll still have CoH1.0  to play.

Win/Win in my books.

and hopefully you'll send APR an E-Mail saying why you don't like the update, and what you feel we could do to make it more fun.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 10:29:14 PM
As I understand it, APR has nothing to do with MWM or CoT. Their job will be to get old CoHi23 to work on a newer MMO engine,. a copy that can be edited, and patched, derived from the binary CoHi23 version. This will be referred to as CoH 1.5

This is correct. I'm not part of MWM, nor are they involved directly in APR. We do have an agreement in place, where APR will be taking a version of their game code, and modifying it for our needs.

How can I try and explain this... Ok. Think of Unreal Engine 4 as a canvas.
Now, the final product we want is a drawing of Statesman.
What they're going to do, is sketch out the drawing and give us a copy of that sketch.
Then it'll be up to us to fill in the eyes, and nose, and color.

EDIT: This prolly makes no sense, I've been awake for like 10 minutes after sleeping something awful. Apologies.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 02, 2014, 10:31:07 PM
I can't even name a better MMO, let alone one that closed.
+1
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 02, 2014, 10:34:28 PM
Be careful man, it might be fire ants.  It could even be army ants or some other super deadly ant!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UozWJTuhbMQ

I was trying to find a video with even deadlier ants......
Since it's a super hero game:

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=upload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fen%2Fa%2Fae%2FAuntmay.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 02, 2014, 10:36:23 PM
Be careful man, it might be fire ants.  It could even be army ants or some other super deadly ant!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UozWJTuhbMQ

I was trying to find a video with even deadlier ants......

I've used this one before but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2PLls02gOU
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Peregrine Falcon on September 02, 2014, 10:37:13 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Urd on September 02, 2014, 10:40:43 PM
Be careful man, it might be fire ants.  It could even be army ants or some other super deadly ant!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UozWJTuhbMQ

I was trying to find a video with even deadlier ants......

Argentine Ants are pretty annoying.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 02, 2014, 10:45:11 PM
Since it's a super hero game:

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=upload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fen%2Fa%2Fae%2FAuntmay.jpg)

Ok, Harpo. You win. Your response was waaaay better than mine. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 02, 2014, 10:50:18 PM
/e pokes back

I go to sleep, and the thread jumps forward 5 pages! So...many posts I want to reply to. @_@

Tell me about it. Took me several hours to catch up...

Hey, wait a minute. Don't you have a job to do?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH9hvFHlspc
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hyperstrike on September 02, 2014, 10:50:46 PM
Completely correct! If a woman owns it, that's pretty shady right there! DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

There's the real possibility that it's organized this way as a form of tax dodge.  Not that dodging taxes is really WRONG or anything (show me where it's stated that a company or person is OBLIGATED to pay maximum possible taxes).

Quote
Geez Louise, like the sex of the owner is even relevant. That is the very last of our worries, why was this even mentioned. Thumbs down.  >:(

It can be.  If it's organized this way with a titular "owner" for tax purposes, but actually run by someone else, this can be semi-shady, and the IRS (as they are wont to do) tends to frown on companies that set up this way in a less than legitimate manner.

Essentially the implication being made is that MWM is not a fully operational company in the classic sense.  But is a poorly capitalized, loosely organized federation of developers in a conveniently packaged shell corporation designed to minimize monetary liabilities.  Which really isn't all that far from the truth.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fable on September 02, 2014, 10:55:07 PM
Just a thought/question. Assuming all goes well.

So if we start playing the zombified version of CoH then decide to switch to "CoH 1.5" will we have to start over a third time? Or are you guys thinking of some way to transfer character data from one to the other.

Obviously this question makes a lot of assumptions.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sophronisba on September 02, 2014, 11:01:34 PM
Quote
If it's organized this way with a titular "owner" for tax purposes, but actually run by someone else, this can be semi-shady, and the IRS (as they are wont to do) tends to frown on companies that set up this way in a less than legitimate manner.

Yes, but what does that have to do with the sex of the owner? Why would a woman-owned company be more suspect than a man-owned company?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 02, 2014, 11:05:11 PM
Just a thought/question. Assuming all goes well.

So if we start playing the zombified version of CoH then decide to switch to "CoH 1.5" will we have to start over a third time? Or are you guys thinking of some way to transfer character data from one to the other.

Obviously this question makes a lot of assumptions.

This largely depends upon four things.

1) What entity is made responsible for Legacy ( i23 )

2) How exportable the character data ultimately is

3) If the entity in 1 wants to allow this with the entity ( presumably APR ) running Next ( 1.5 )

4) The adaptation of CoH to the UE4 based interpretation of CoH is close enough that a direct port is reasonable.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 02, 2014, 11:08:34 PM
It can be.  If it's organized this way with a titular "owner" for tax purposes, but actually run by someone else, this can be semi-shady, and the IRS (as they are wont to do) tends to frown on companies that set up this way in a less than legitimate manner.

Essentially the implication being made is that MWM is not a fully operational company in the classic sense.  But is a poorly capitalized, loosely organized federation of developers in a conveniently packaged shell corporation designed to minimize monetary liabilities.  Which really isn't all that far from the truth.
Of course as MWM is not set up in this way for tax purposes, but for copyright and trademark protection, does not apply.

If anything, we've rather overpaid our taxes to-date, as I know if we used our international nature of volunteers to our advantage, we could have used accounting tricks to avoid paying more. (set up subsidies in the Netherlands, Cayman and Ireland, and bam, "what taxes?" Good old Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich)
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.zerohedge.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fimages%2Fuser5%2Fimageroot%2F2012%2F04%2FDouble%2520Irishi.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 02, 2014, 11:09:13 PM
I've used this one before but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2PLls02gOU

Hey!  THEM is one of my favorite old horror movies of all time!  Now I'm gonna find it on youtube because those movies....easy to find em!  And I wanna play fallout 3 now all of a sudden(though I like new vegas better).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 02, 2014, 11:10:20 PM
My dad has a pat answer for questions like this, but if you're not a Brit, you probably won't get it...

"When Nelson gets his eye back!"  :p

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=img.pandawhale.com%2Fpost-11756-I-understood-that-reference-gi-GkxF.gif)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Xaphan on September 02, 2014, 11:20:32 PM
Coming out of a long lurking period to poke my head out. Been keeping up with the efforts so far, but absolutely floored by the latest news, and still trying to read up on everything.

I know of course nothing is set in stone yet, and I must remain cautious about my optimism, but I can't help but feel excited about this. It's going to be hard to remain patient and await the next tidbit of news. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 02, 2014, 11:31:03 PM
There's the real possibility that it's organized this way as a form of tax dodge.  Not that dodging taxes is really WRONG or anything (show me where it's stated that a company or person is OBLIGATED to pay maximum possible taxes).

So businesses owned by women are not subject to taxation? I am learning a lot here today.  8)

I was just amused and annoyed that the person whom I was quoting seemed to view "woman-owned" as fitting right in with his list of other objectionable criteria. Truly: whut.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 02, 2014, 11:32:50 PM
With all the "help" offers, I may as well mention the one thing I do.   Music.

I was wondering if CoH 1.5 would use the same music (not a bad thing at all...I LOVED the music in CoH) since that is probably a part of the IP?

If not, I could contribute.  Electronicy stuff, dubstep, traditional stuff...got it all.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2014, 11:44:46 PM
I was wondering if CoH 1.5 would use the same music (not a bad thing at all...I LOVED the music in CoH) since that is probably a part of the IP?

Barring something unseen...It will be using the original music, where appropriate.

That said... As a game that's going to be expanding, It will need new music at some point.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 02, 2014, 11:47:22 PM
Barring something unseen...It will be using the original music, where appropriate.

That said... As a game that's going to be expanding, It will need new music at some point.
This might a dumb question but will 1.5 have all of the zones and a few new zones?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on September 03, 2014, 12:05:18 AM
I feel where they're coming from. I'll still play, but I won't be able to get what I had back. I'm ok with this, but others aren't. And that's ok too.

He's essentially saying that when his characters died, the game died with them. I'm not so sure that accusing him of "never loving the game" is in order though, considering how much time he had put into it. Perhaps the love of the game and the love and care he put into his characters is too much for him to bear parting with. That doesn't mean he didn't love the game. In fact, it could mean exactly the opposite. Perhaps he loved the game TOO much. People were very, very attached to their characters. I'm not afraid to say I shed some tears when it finally hit me that I wouldn't be able to ever play my Warshade (as he was) again. This game meant something to people.

My heart goes out to folks who are troubled by the lack of character data being transferred.
I remember chatting with one of the NPC's that would tell me how many hours my character had logged...well over 5000. Badge count was over 1200, 1323, I think. Had almost all of them. Those lengthy shard TFs, the pvp badges! Ugh..that was back when Siren's Call was new and was super-awesome(pre-issue 13)! I'd hate to have to get those again post-issue 13!
But - please remember to tell your friends this: nothing is cast in stone. Character data *might* get put on the table. I'm not at all sure how that would get worked out, or how much extra it would cost, but it's in the realm of possibility. I don't think it's likely, but it is possible.

As a player that had a ton of level 50's, well, if you have the time, it's easy to do. It really is easy once you know how. But, circumstances change. Some of you who were kids when you played are now adults. You have jobs. Some of you who were young adults have now graduated and not only have a job, but a wife and one or more children. Even if the wife and kids are on board, there are so many other things that take precedence over game time. Homework, if you're kids are playing. Can't be missing the book reports and the math questions for a task/strike force!
In my case, I'm actually concerned that I'll blimp out again after having lost a great deal of weight. I'm not even sure I can play CoH without pop-tarts or pizza nearby. I'm not sure Ezekiel Bread and tuna will fill that same roll. (Role! Had to sneak a weak pun in.)

Time does change things. I'm not at all sure I want to play 14 hours a day, even on a weekend like I did before. (I was unemployed for a year in 2011) That's just playing to be playing, forgetting about the real world. I'll be far more casual than I ever was - but you can bet I'll get me a level 50 as quickly as I can so I can lead those iTrials.

Which - now that I think of it, those will be interesting. Didn't we have to be subscribed to play those? I'm not at all sure we'll be able to play those unless the new team can somehow make everyone appear to be a subscriber. Not at all sure how that will be worked out. I'm so glad that's not my problem - yet!  ;D

I would tell your friend not to worry about it. A lot of us do understand that time that was invested in the characters. I do get the disappointment, and the reluctance to reinvest that time (again!) with the only reward being the return of what you already had. That's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. No hard feelings here. I've a feeling we'll be missing several people with that view. Guess that's life in the big City of Heroes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cyclone Jack on September 03, 2014, 12:06:26 AM
This progress makes me smile.

See:   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 03, 2014, 12:07:19 AM
Barring something unseen...It will be using the original music, where appropriate.

That said... As a game that's going to be expanding, It will need new music at some point.
Not a bad thing at all.   Those tracks still sound awesome to me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hyperstrike on September 03, 2014, 12:11:55 AM
Yes, but what does that have to do with the sex of the owner? Why would a woman-owned company be more suspect than a man-owned company?

Because some states have tax breaks and incentive programs for woman and miniority-owned businesses.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hyperstrike on September 03, 2014, 12:14:24 AM
Of course as MWM is not set up in this way for tax purposes, but for copyright and trademark protection, does not apply.

If anything, we've rather overpaid our taxes to-date, as I know if we used our international nature of volunteers to our advantage, we could have used accounting tricks to avoid paying more. (set up subsidies in the Netherlands, Cayman and Ireland, and bam, "what taxes?" Good old Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich)
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.zerohedge.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fimages%2Fuser5%2Fimageroot%2F2012%2F04%2FDouble%2520Irishi.jpg)

Exactly.  And while the cheapskate in me wonders "why the hell are you giving them so much money?", the pragmatist applauds you for not playing these games from the outset.  If it happens later, fine.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tessachan on September 03, 2014, 12:14:34 AM
I'm... overwhelmed?! Delighted, amazed, dizzy! This could be the biggest coup in MMO history! Ok, ok, I'll calm down, a little empathy & fortitude, right, I'm calming down <heart beating fast>. OMG, you totally rock the planet! Thank you, most humbly & gratefully, thank you.

Tessa
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hyperstrike on September 03, 2014, 12:17:12 AM
So businesses owned by women are not subject to taxation? I am learning a lot here today.  8)

I was just amused and annoyed that the person whom I was quoting seemed to view "woman-owned" as fitting right in with his list of other objectionable criteria. Truly: whut.

No, as I stated elsewhere, minority and female-owned businesses in some states have particularly targeted tax breaks, incentive programs and are able to take advantage of programs that can lead to government contracts and the like.

In some cases, companies are setting up shill corporations as an "in" to take advantage of these benefits.  Hence the stigma of "woman owned business".

Stopping this tangent discussion as well.  As it's off-point and will inevitably lead to thread derailment.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 03, 2014, 12:24:58 AM
Since it's a super hero game:

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=upload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fen%2Fa%2Fae%2FAuntmay.jpg)
Ok, Harpo. You win. Your response was waaaay better than mine. :)
"Honest, I thought she was a lich! Look at those claws, that staring, cadaverous face; how was I to know?!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 03, 2014, 12:41:20 AM
This might a dumb question but will 1.5 have all of the zones and a few new zones?

With how beautiful Irish_Girl made Ouroboros, I believe she can complete Khalisti Warf :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amrobinson on September 03, 2014, 12:42:03 AM
It seems to me like the whole idea with CoH 1.5 is to basically have CoH live on in a more future-proofed way. Exactly CoH, just updatable, more features to AE, etc.

I really, really would like to believe this.

Really.

brought to you by
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.idx360.com%2Fwarlockinc%2Flordminion.png)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 03, 2014, 12:43:47 AM
Barring something unseen...It will be using the original music, where appropriate.

That said... As a game that's going to be expanding, It will need new music at some point.

I was wondering about this last night. I am delighted to hear this. I want all the original music right where it is now, and if we add new stuff of course that gets new music, but existing zones should keep their music.

I am really old school and when Mercy and Atlas got revamped, the fact that they lost their old music just about brought tears to my eyes. I LIKED knowing just what to expect as my level 2 ran out of Fort Darwin. Past the Shotgun Arbiter they would run, right out the gate and cue the music. [And I missed the Shotgun Arbiter, too..... he was a tradition, like seeing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer at Christmastime.]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shifter on September 03, 2014, 12:46:10 AM
;D Yeah, It's pretty. You guys should see it in-game. hehe.
I would be willing to watch a video of you walking around in those zones.  Not boring at all to me.  :D

I also would love to see your progress on YouTube. Perhaps once you have IP you could monitorzie the videos to get a little bit of money coming in that way while sharing your work with the community and promoting all at the same time.

On an unrelated note, I have a question for one of programmers on here. A VERY long time ago, I used a decompiler to turn a finished program back into it source code. No comments of course, and it produced some pretty horrifically ugly source code, but it worked none the less. Is that still the case now adays? I'm sure you know where I'm going with this.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shockacon on September 03, 2014, 12:52:39 AM
Hello,

I have a shot-in-the-dark question about the characters and the possibility of them being lost. When the sunset announcement was first made, someone (and I forget whom it was and apologize) had a program that made XML files out of toon information. After reading the OP, I scrounged around and found several XML files I made of the toons I wanted to save for the heck of it. Would it even be possible to think that those files could be used to incorporate rebuilt toons for the game if everything with this business deal goes through?

Shockacon
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 03, 2014, 12:54:00 AM
I have a shot-in-the-dark question about the characters and the possibility of them being lost. When the sunset announcement was first made, someone (and I forget whom it was and apologize) had a program that made XML files out of toon information. After reading the OP, I scrounged around and found several XML files I made of the toons I wanted to save for the heck of it. Would it even be possible to think that those files could be used to incorporate rebuilt toons for the game if everything with this business deal goes through?

Hello Shockacon, and welcome to the conversation :)

Basically there's loads of missing information in those files, and it being used professionally is unlikely. It was never intended to be used for a commercial relaunch, just if we got a private server going.

Sadly, it seems Sentinel+ files will be of little use to us going forward, except to make note of builds/costumes/etc.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: DarkCurrent on September 03, 2014, 12:56:45 AM
Is the paragon store part of the I23 code deal?  A lot of things such as powerstes were only purchaseable there?  If things like account info are gone, how can premium sets be available without the store?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Little David on September 03, 2014, 12:57:53 AM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=adultimum.net%2Fstudio%2Fcityofheroes%2Fblog%2Flittledavidlookingoverwip3.png)

This is literally how I reacted when I read this thread. Though if I really had the cigar, it would have fallen out of my mouth by now.

Holy crap, man. Thank you so much for all you've done. For both the City of Heroes and the City of Titans.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 03, 2014, 01:18:05 AM
Time does change things. I'm not at all sure I want to play 14 hours a day, even on a weekend like I did before. (I was unemployed for a year in 2011) That's just playing to be playing, forgetting about the real world. I'll be far more casual than I ever was - but you can bet I'll get me a level 50 as quickly as I can so I can lead those iTrials.

That's precisely why I had so many 50s and had the time to create a Warshade guide that was 50+ pages long as well as dozens of "sample builds" inserted into it... I was unemployed for much of 2008-2009 (due to the 2008 economic meltdown), and playing every day then was what I did to keep myself from going deeper into depression and self-loathing about my inabilities to do anything at the time.

One of these days, I'm going to create a thread and detail exactly everything that CoH meant to me, but I need to do it during a time that I won't be breaking down crying half the time. I need to be able to finish it. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 03, 2014, 01:23:06 AM
Hello,

I have a shot-in-the-dark question about the characters and the possibility of them being lost. When the sunset announcement was first made, someone (and I forget whom it was and apologize) had a program that made XML files out of toon information. After reading the OP, I scrounged around and found several XML files I made of the toons I wanted to save for the heck of it. Would it even be possible to think that those files could be used to incorporate rebuilt toons for the game if everything with this business deal goes through?

Shockacon

That and I can edit mine to have whatever I want and what was missing hey I need a couple extra purple sets and maybe a couple pvp IO's I was missing
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sihada on September 03, 2014, 01:23:29 AM
I used a decompiler to turn a finished program back into it source code. No comments of course, and it produced some pretty horrifically ugly source code, but it worked none the less. Is that still the case now adays? I'm sure you know where I'm going with this.
Decompilers only work really well for certain types of programming languages, and the CoH binary is almost certain not one of them.

More to the point, if CoH were to license the binary, the sort of thing you're suggesting would be in violation of the spirit of the agreement, if not the letter.

Assuming that we get what's described: I23 with no ability to modify or update, I propose that we be happy with that until the CoH1.5 project(s) come to fruition.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lava-Lad on September 03, 2014, 01:28:42 AM
Completely correct! If a woman owns it, that's pretty shady right there! DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

Geez Louise, like the sex of the owner is even relevant. That is the very last of our worries, why was this even mentioned. Thumbs down.  >:(

Agreed
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 03, 2014, 01:29:42 AM
That and I can edit mine to have whatever I want and what was missing hey I need a couple extra purple sets and maybe a couple pvp IO's I was missing

You'll trip the cheater alarm.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 03, 2014, 01:31:07 AM
Completely correct! If a woman owns it, that's pretty shady right there! DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

When I read the post you're talking about, all I could think of is...

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.startrek.com%2Fuploads%2Fassets%2Fdb_articles%2F0379b23e9845c9c652488c13f7bb557fc62a3642.jpg)

"Everyone knows fe-males don't have the lobes for business!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fable on September 03, 2014, 01:31:27 AM
Decompilers only work really well for certain types of programming languages, and the CoH binary is almost certain not one of them.

More to the point, if CoH were to license the binary, the sort of thing you're suggesting would be in violation of the spirit of the agreement, if not the letter.

Assuming that we get what's described: I23 with no ability to modify or update, I propose that we be happy with that until the CoH1.5 project(s) come to fruition.

So basically any efforts on 1.5 would be from the ground up?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 03, 2014, 01:35:29 AM
So basically any efforts on 1.5 would be from the ground up?

Irish_Girl has gone into the specifics of the APR efforts so far, and they're basically deconstructing the game bit by bit. It isn't exactly from scratch, but it isn't using the original code.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 03, 2014, 01:35:48 AM
Not a bad thing at all.   Those tracks still sound awesome to me.

The only request if anything is to some what overhaul the attack sounds. The "wobble" from psi attacks and Ice Slick making the same sound as Assault Rifle "Buckshot" are some of the reasons why I played CoX on mute
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 03, 2014, 01:44:40 AM
When I read the post you're talking about, all I could think of is...

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.startrek.com%2Fuploads%2Fassets%2Fdb_articles%2F0379b23e9845c9c652488c13f7bb557fc62a3642.jpg)

"Everyone knows fe-males don't have the lobes for business!"

Oh Quark! And you wonder why Major Kira always turns you down.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 01:57:53 AM
When I read the post you're talking about, all I could think of is...

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.startrek.com%2Fuploads%2Fassets%2Fdb_articles%2F0379b23e9845c9c652488c13f7bb557fc62a3642.jpg)

"Everyone knows fe-males don't have the lobes for business!"
This has made my evening. Lol.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on September 03, 2014, 02:01:33 AM
That's precisely why I had so many 50s and had the time to create a Warshade guide that was 50+ pages long as well as dozens of "sample builds" inserted into it... I was unemployed for much of 2008-2009 (due to the 2008 economic meltdown), and playing every day then was what I did to keep myself from going deeper into depression and self-loathing about my inabilities to do anything at the time.

One of these days, I'm going to create a thread and detail exactly everything that CoH meant to me, but I need to do it during a time that I won't be breaking down crying half the time. I need to be able to finish it. :)

Um...was your coh forum name Dechs Kaison? If so, you should know I modeled my own warshade after that playstyle. It was an epic guide.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 03, 2014, 02:12:59 AM
That's precisely why I had so many 50s and had the time to create a Warshade guide that was 50+ pages long as well as dozens of "sample builds" inserted into it... I was unemployed for much of 2008-2009 (due to the 2008 economic meltdown), and playing every day then was what I did to keep myself from going deeper into depression and self-loathing about my inabilities to do anything at the time.

One of these days, I'm going to create a thread and detail exactly everything that CoH meant to me, but I need to do it during a time that I won't be breaking down crying half the time. I need to be able to finish it. :)
That was you?

You were my hero! Enabled me to turn my "this sucks" guy into an awesome kick-ass monster!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 03, 2014, 02:23:30 AM
No, everyone is several dozen concepts deep into Icon and/or Mid's

Yes, I admit to this. I have been going through MIDS looking at each build for my characters and finishing a few unfinished builds. 

Not sure if I'll bring all my characters back if the game returns, but my core characters will return.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: themamboman on September 03, 2014, 02:30:58 AM
It appears that the Valiance Online team has declined reworking their game to make it part of City of Heroes universe.  It was announced on their facebook page.  They were respectful of Paragon and Nate and MWM but it sounds like they've gone too far into development to go back and rewrite everything.

No worries, I'll play their game too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 03, 2014, 02:39:04 AM
Um...was your coh forum name Dechs Kaison? If so, you should know I modeled my own warshade after that playstyle. It was an epic guide.

That was you?

You were my hero! Enabled me to turn my "this sucks" guy into an awesome kick-ass monster!

No, no, no.... Credit where credit is due! Dechs was one of my own personal heroes...His guide on the softcapping defenses was what got me really into min/maxing and inspired me to enhance and fully revise my guide two years later! (And, dare I say, my original guide was what inspired him to write his Warshade guide!) I had many a good conversation with him, and we linked each other's guides within our own guides. My forum name was AlienOne there as it is here. His guide was primarily geared towards tri-form Warshading (fantastic guide!), and my guide was specifically for human-only form Warshading. We each tackled Warshades via different playstyles, although we both took a page from each other's book and tried out each other's builds.

He was a total legend in the Kheldian community. I can't take credit for his work. Is he even around these boards? I have never seen him...

Here's my original guide--you can see him in the comment section ask me if I was going to write a tri-form guide and then threaten to make his own (I'm glad he did!):
https://web.archive.org/web/20120906174916/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=190529

And here is my "newly revised" guide (at the time) posted two years later, which I thought was way more thorough and much more in-depth:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120906052513/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=280670

And here is Dech's guide:
http://dechskaison.blogspot.com/2011/01/mfing-warshade.html
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 03, 2014, 02:50:09 AM
He was a total legend in the Kheldian community.

Not just for Khelds - his guide to tanking were why I became a good tank! Without them I dunno where I'd be!

I've been wishing I could find some modern (i23 compliant, not just for the relaunch but because PBs changed a LOT) PB buildcraft theory to read over just as something to pass the time, but I haven't had much luck in searching.

I'd forgotten his name because I read all of his guides thoroughly after the tank guide helped me learn so much, but it was awhile ago. Couldn't remember his handle. Even if I can't do anything with the info, reading this sort of thing is really fun for me... so thanks for the links! :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 03, 2014, 02:51:46 AM
Not just for Khelds - his guide to tanking were why I became a good tank! Without them I dunno where I'd be!

I've been wishing I could find some modern (i23 compliant, not just for the relaunch but because PBs changed a LOT) PB buildcraft theory to read over just as something to pass the time, but I haven't had much luck in searching.

I'd forgotten his name because I read all of his guides thoroughly after the tank guide helped me learn so much, but it was awhile ago. Couldn't remember his handle. Even if I can't do anything with the info, reading this sort of thing is really fun for me... so thanks for the links! :D

Not a problem! I plan to finish up my guide if/when CoH goes back up... I only had to finish up the Incarnate section (and add a few videos) before it was complete. If you happen to read one of my guides, please read the second one--it's much better, easier to read, and more thorough. I only posted the first one I wrote because I wanted to show Dech's comment... :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: felix on September 03, 2014, 02:56:18 AM
I also learned what I know about tanking from Dechs Kaison. (DA/SS Tank) And then I met him, just a few nights after the end was announced. Great guy.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 03, 2014, 02:56:24 AM
That Tank Guide.. was more than a Guide.. It was Literature....


http://dechskaison.blogspot.com/2011/06/last-rule-of-tanking.html
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 03, 2014, 03:11:50 AM
Great guy.

For sure... He was one of the people that (to me) embodied everything that was good about the CoH community. The fact that I got to know him, interact with him, and even receive compliments from him (and Smiling Joe--another forum legend) is really what gave me a sense of self-worth at the time. I know that may sound a little crazy, but going through unemployment for over a year and having no one hire you will do many things to a person's psyche.

City of Heroes was way, way, way more meaningful to some people than a lot of the business people over there in Korea even realized (I think). I think a lot of the CoH devs understood it though...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Desmartica on September 03, 2014, 03:16:08 AM
Oh, I used to read all of you guys' stuff too.

But...you probably already knew that.

AIB

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXVQYFI83HE

Kheld Friday!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 03, 2014, 03:17:22 AM
Oh, I used to read all of you guys' stuff too.

But...you probably already knew that.

AIB

Alien In Black!!! Yeah! All kinds of people coming out of hiding lately! :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 03, 2014, 03:17:31 AM
I know that may sound a little crazy, but going through unemployment for over a year and having no one hire you will do many things to a person's psyche.

Sittin on about three at the moment on this end, I know that exact feeling. I used CoH very similarly.

Glad we all still have eachother here, even if it isn't the same... for now :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 03, 2014, 03:25:47 AM
Sittin on about three at the moment on this end, I know that exact feeling. I used CoH very similarly.

Glad we all still have eachother here, even if it isn't the same... for now :)

+1

Hang in there. In my experience, it can only get better--and it did!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 03, 2014, 03:31:33 AM
+1

Hang in there. In my experience, it can only get better--and it did!

Good things are better when you wait
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 03, 2014, 03:33:55 AM
Completely off topic, but ... does anyone know if the hosts of the CoH Podcast are still around?  Chooch and Viv.  That was a great podcast ... here's hoping it returns with CoH redux.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: saipaman on September 03, 2014, 03:36:29 AM
I'm not directly involved in the talks with NCSoft, but from what I understand the source is completely off the table, and many of the tools required simply don't exist anymore.

I wouldn't be surprised if all the source code wasn't gone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Eiko-chan on September 03, 2014, 03:37:58 AM
I'm cautiously optimistic about this, but given the way the world seems to react to me, I'm just going to say I'm not really convinced this thing is going to happen.  Prove me wrong, world!

Anyway, I've got one little question for Irish_Girl: are there any plans to expand APR to the Rogue Isles, or is it a Hero-only project?  Villains were made homeless too!  :'(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ParagonKid on September 03, 2014, 04:22:32 AM
I'm curious though, apologies if this was asked already, but what of costume codes and booster packs? If the game comes back, will you even be able to generate and sell/give out codes? Otherwise, wouldn't stuff like Justice and Sinister costume sets, Pocket D Tiki VIP, Arachnos Helmets and the like be gone forever?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 03, 2014, 04:28:51 AM
I'm curious though, apologies if this was asked already, but what of costume codes and booster packs? If the game comes back, will you even be able to generate and sell/give out codes? Otherwise, wouldn't stuff like Justice and Sinister costume sets, Pocket D Tiki VIP, Arachnos Helmets and the like be gone forever?
Other than "people are talking to NCsoft", there is literally no more information out there yet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 03, 2014, 04:36:25 AM
Sittin on about three at the moment on this end, I know that exact feeling. I used CoH very similarly.

Glad we all still have eachother here, even if it isn't the same... for now :)

So this is where the unemployment line is. I've done the dance for about 3, then got a temp gig and now looking again.

We'll make it.

Good news is I do have a couple masters degrees now. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 03, 2014, 04:39:45 AM

 The hour is late and the sun set quite a few hours ago and I find myself still in awe and daring to hope that coh may in fact be resurrected..just wow...
  Not sure if we could ever get our original chars. back however, if the game itself could be restored to us I would certainly be happy and ready to re-sub immediately. I can't sleep tonight, no way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 03, 2014, 04:48:39 AM
Not just for Khelds - his guide to tanking were why I became a good tank! Without them I dunno where I'd be!

I've been wishing I could find some modern (i23 compliant, not just for the relaunch but because PBs changed a LOT) PB buildcraft theory to read over just as something to pass the time, but I haven't had much luck in searching.

I'd forgotten his name because I read all of his guides thoroughly after the tank guide helped me learn so much, but it was awhile ago. Couldn't remember his handle. Even if I can't do anything with the info, reading this sort of thing is really fun for me... so thanks for the links! :D

Dechs' guides were great and his warshade guide helped me tune up my three warshades.  He did ask me once to review his PB guide as I recall since he knew I enjoyed PB's.

Should the game return I'll have to see about locating and updating my guide to speeding up Stone Brutes/Tanks.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: impiousimp on September 03, 2014, 04:52:39 AM
Where does one volunteer to help APR or COT?

I don't have MAD art skills, but I have decent ones. 

http://kuraichan.deviantart.com
http://impiousimp.deviantart.com
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: PsychicKitty on September 03, 2014, 05:10:12 AM
so basically its another we have to wait till next year for more information.....

uh huh

 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 03, 2014, 05:15:30 AM
so basically its another we have to wait till next year for more information.....

uh huh


   I don't think that is what is being said.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 05:21:47 AM
I'm cautiously optimistic about this, but given the way the world seems to react to me, I'm just going to say I'm not really convinced this thing is going to happen.  Prove me wrong, world!

Anyway, I've got one little question for Irish_Girl: are there any plans to expand APR to the Rogue Isles, or is it a Hero-only project?  Villains were made homeless too!  :'(

I was wondering how long it would take for somebody to ask me about redside. Um... It's planned? That's, unfortunately, all the detail I really have on it ATM.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 03, 2014, 05:22:04 AM
so basically its another we have to wait till next year for more information.....

uh huh

It's more "even if everything goes off without a hitch from here on out, it is an unreasonable assumption to imagine CoH back up and running before next year"

There will likely be news - but even if the deal happens there's financing, there's servers, there's getting everything working...

Unfortunately, this isn't as easy as "We can do it, you don't get anything out of saying no, you agree? Cool, flip the switches and we're back in Paragon City."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 05:27:35 AM
Unfortunately, this isn't as easy as "We can do it, you don't get anything out of saying no, you agree? Cool, flip the switches and we're back in Paragon City."

That would be lovely. There's a lot of work that would need to be done after the acquisition, however.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amrobinson on September 03, 2014, 05:28:06 AM
Let me come right out and admit that the apparent loss of the i24 perfection patch has hit me harder than expected. So let me ask, is there a way to get i24? I would move a lot of mountains to get i24 back. Is it a money thing? I am so in mourning for it I would donate quite a bit to get us that issue - perhaps other people would too.

Do we have to give up on i24 CoX now, or is there a way?

I was literally salivating at the prospect of i24 and the goodies within...significant blasters enhancements (my signature character is an elec/en blaster), a new concept of power pools, which instead of filling in holes in a character could actually be used to flavor the character's power suite (gadgets, sorcery, etc), and so on.

Given a choice between regaining my horde of prior characters and i24, I'd go for the latter in a heartbeat.

brought to you by
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.idx360.com%2Fwarlockinc%2Flordminion.png)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 03, 2014, 05:56:31 AM
Let me come right out and admit that the apparent loss of the i24 perfection patch has hit me harder than expected. So let me ask, is there a way to get i24? I would move a lot of mountains to get i24 back. Is it a money thing? I am so in mourning for it I would donate quite a bit to get us that issue - perhaps other people would too.

Do we have to give up on i24 CoX now, or is there a way?

Well ish 24 wasn't complete as far as the IO changes and probably some other areas as well, then of course there would have to be some testing to iron out any major kinks and flaws.

I would very much love to see ish 24 should the game return, but ish 23 will be fine.  The main thing is that the game would be back.

I'd say get ish 23 up and running, then convert to Unreal 4 engine and THEN start adding in issue 24 elements into the new engine.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 03, 2014, 06:02:00 AM
I was wondering how long it would take for somebody to ask me about redside. Um... It's planned? That's, unfortunately, all the detail I really have on it ATM.

Just as a small suggestion, and I'm 100% you have your own plan for progressing, but were -I- doing APR, I'd focus on just getting Atlas Park functioning, getting the game mechanics in place, doing just ONE powerset and AT initially and getting small selection of missions going.  That gives you enough to have something for people to beta test and should reduce the immediate workload.

One you have the basics going, the rest will follow much more quickly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 03, 2014, 06:04:04 AM
It's more "even if everything goes off without a hitch from here on out, it is an unreasonable assumption to imagine CoH back up and running before next year"

To my mind, the most important bit of news after the "Yes", is just WHO will run this holding company and "own" the CoH IP?  It's going to have to be someone we all really trust to do the right thing with it.

I know who I'd have in mind... (Looks towards the forum banner)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 03, 2014, 06:14:00 AM
I was wondering how long it would take for somebody to ask me about redside. Um... It's planned? That's, unfortunately, all the detail I really have on it ATM.

Gold Side! Gold Side!

All Hail Emperor Cole!

(But seriously, I'm sure you've got a lot on your plate, and even more to come, and we don't have anything close to a sure win yet, so I wouldn't want to pile it one even further.

That said, Praetoria is my personal favorite part of CoX, and I'd be more than happy to lend whatever meager help I could to getting that side of things up and running, should it ever come to pass.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 03, 2014, 06:26:10 AM
Someone had asked about why Atlas Park Revival would be using the City of Titans Build.

I am not a programmer.  Let me state this right up front.  My brother is the game programmer in the family.  So this is my understanding.  So the game has two main parts.  You have the game engine.  In this case Unreal Engine 4.  Both City of Titans and Atlas Park Revival are using the same game engine.  So you have compatibility there.  Unreal Engine basically renders the environment, the characters, the mobs, the powers via particle effect animations etc..,

However the engine still needs instructions on what to display, when to display it, where to display it, etc...
This is where the build comes in to play.  By using a modified version of the COT build it gives APR a leg up on the code end of the game without having to right their own code.  They will most likely need to tweak, modify, adapt such code to better suit the look and feel of the game.  Even with the MMO support built in you still need to tell the engine what to do.  This is my layman understanding of the process.  I am sure others with more programming expertise will feel free to correct/criticize any errors in my post.   :P

Keeping in mind that we do not have the COH source code....this means no new content...no new powersets, no new anything....this is why I23 will be maintenance mode only.  By using the COT build you get the ability to alter the code, add new code and adjust as needed.  This means new content, new story arcs, new power sets, new zones, etc.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 03, 2014, 06:31:31 AM
Gold Side! Gold Side!

All Hail Emperor Cole!

You! You! Loyalist!  LOL  :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 03, 2014, 07:01:05 AM
Someone had asked about why Atlas Park Revival would be using the City of Titans Build.

I am not a programmer.  Let me state this right up front.  My brother is the game programmer in the family.  So this is my understanding.  So the game has two main parts.  You have the game engine.  In this case Unreal Engine 4.  Both City of Titans and Atlas Park Revival are using the same game engine.  So you have compatibility there.  Unreal Engine basically renders the environment, the characters, the mobs, the powers via particle effect animations etc..,

However the engine still needs instructions on what to display, when to display it, where to display it, etc...
This is where the build comes in to play.  By using a modified version of the COT build it gives APR a leg up on the code end of the game without having to right their own code.  They will most likely need to tweak, modify, adapt such code to better suit the look and feel of the game.  Even with the MMO support built in you still need to tell the engine what to do.  This is my layman understanding of the process.  I am sure others with more programming expertise will feel free to correct/criticize any errors in my post.   :P

Keeping in mind that we do not have the COH source code....this means no new content...no new powersets, no new anything....this is why I23 will be maintenance mode only.  By using the COT build you get the ability to alter the code, add new code and adjust as needed.  This means new content, new story arcs, new power sets, new zones, etc.

You are definitely on the right track with your explanation.

Let me add that CoT is being created by people who want the same feel as we had with CoH. That pretty much means that a certain portion of their code is probably set very similar to what would have to be created for CoH 1.5.
Things like a costume creator would have already been started and that gives Irish_Girl and anyone helping her a leg up in the process.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 07:03:48 AM
On the subject of doing the Rogue Isles, and Praetoria....
When I started the project...My goal was Atlas Park. Hence the name "Atlas Park Revival".
Partially because I had high hopes that it would only be a few months before we got the game back.
Obviously, the scope of that project has expanded greatly. Cosmically, even.
Even more so since I started working closely with this crazy guy by the name of Nate Downes.

Anything and everything that was a part of City of Heroes, I want to re-build.
Everything from Atlas Park, to Grandville, to Nova Praetoria. '
At the moment, I do not have a plan on where Villain side and Praetoria fit into the schedule.
After the next week, I'm going to start looking at expanding the team quite a bit. That's something that I'll be discussing with the team after I've grown it a little, and everyone's settled in.

I know that's essentially a really fancy way of saying "-shrug-", and I'm really sorry I don't have a better answer as of yet.
Paragon Studios always had to make hard choices with Redside, because such a small portion of the playerbase was reported to be there.
I don't want the Rogue Isles to fall into the same state of disrepair. Even if only 30 percent of players are there, that's still 30 percent, and I always felt having Redside (and later Gold) was critically important to making City of Heroes what it was.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 03, 2014, 07:05:53 AM
This has made my evening. Lol.
Hummmman fe-males doing business AND wearing clothes! What is the galaxy coming too?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 07:07:22 AM
You are definitely on the right track with your explanation.

Let me add that CoT is being created by people who want the same feel as we had with CoH. That pretty much means that a certain portion of their code is probably set very similar to what would have to be created for CoH 1.5.
Things like a costume creator would have already been started and that gives Irish_Girl and anyone helping her a leg up in the process.

and that's exactly why we made an arrangement for us to build off their code.
Why have two separate groups re-invent the wheel, when we can work together?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 07:08:17 AM
Hummmm-On

:P Say it proper.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on September 03, 2014, 07:52:28 AM
I just want to say thanks again to the people who are out there trying things like this on behalf of the rest of us. It's a lot of effort that you didn't have to take on, and while there's no guarantees about the outcome, there is one certainty - we'd never even have a chance if it weren't for you guys trying. So... y'know... thanks! :)

Hopefully this goes well, and leads to many good things!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 03, 2014, 08:09:02 AM
I know that's essentially a really fancy way of saying "-shrug-", and I'm really sorry I don't have a better answer as of yet.

To me, this reads as being reasonable.

At the moment, you're a one person team. As a woman who often would fly from one end of a zone to another while chattin with her SG friends or RPing a patrol, Paragon City alone is HUGE. There's a reason pre fly speed buffs people would go afk to bio or grab a drink between missions if the next door was on the other side of say, IP. Making assumptions on how quickly you could build all of Paragon - hazard zones and all - and then the Rogue Isles, Gold Side... that sounds premature. Especially with how everyone is struggling not to hold their breaths.

Really hope there'll be some way I can help - I have entirely too much free time and being a part of this would be epic.

But that's no pressure, this community is full of talented people ready and happy to help rebirth our city in new shiny tech. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 03, 2014, 08:13:19 AM
I'd love to know what Matt Miller and some of the former Paragon folks think of all this.  Positrons twitter is silent on the matter.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 08:16:23 AM
I'd love to know what Matt Miller and some of the former Paragon folks think of all this.  Positrons twitter is silent on the matter.

He might not feel he's in a position where it would be inappropriate for him to say anything on the matter, as well as concern over impacting his career.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 03, 2014, 08:21:51 AM
New Shiny Tech!  We wants it!  We needs it!  my preciousssss.....

http://youtu.be/Gk4Ntcq5uNg
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: impiousimp on September 03, 2014, 08:30:51 AM
@Irish_Girl

How many volunteers do you have?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 08:38:24 AM
@Irish_Girl
How many volunteers do you have?

At the moment It's just myself, with some occasional helping keeping the website running from Neo Ravencroft.
That's going to be changing soon however. I plan on ramping up the team size.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kribbla on September 03, 2014, 09:23:43 AM
I have some dumb question about this Source Code Thing.
Will it be possible for the Future Devs without this Code, let's say, to edit the Title Screens to Rename the Game, change the Picture or change the Server List if less Server will be available?

Sorry for this stupid Question. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 03, 2014, 09:27:43 AM
I have some dumb question about this Source Code Thing.
Will it be possible for the Future Devs without this Code, let's say, to edit the Title Screens to Rename the Game, change the Picture or change the Server List if less Server will be available?

Sorry for this stupid Question. :)

Until they get their hands on it and play around, assume that w/o source code, i23 will be the same as it was when Paragon ran it.

That seems the safe bet to me :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 03, 2014, 09:37:31 AM
I have some dumb question about this Source Code Thing.
Will it be possible for the Future Devs without this Code, let's say, to edit the Title Screens to Rename the Game, change the Picture or change the Server List if less Server will be available?

Sorry for this stupid Question. :)

The pictures, no. That will almost certainly need the source code.

The server list, yes. That's going to be database based and is a variable list of values.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 09:52:47 AM
The pictures, no. That will almost certainly need the source code.

The server list, yes. That's going to be database based and is a variable list of values.

The title screen background could be changed, Kinda. I know of a nifty little program called NeoSplasher that does exactly that.
Never used it, but I hear it works quite well.

EDIT: But really...Yeah... As it was, is as it will be. Very little possible modification.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 03, 2014, 09:56:07 AM
The title screen background could be changed, Kinda. I know of a nifty little program called NeoSplasher that does exactly that.
Never used it, but I hear it works quite well.

I think that mods one of the PIGGS?  Without the source code, they're not going to be able to build patch updates, so to change that, they'd have to send out a whole new PIGG, and who knows if they've hardcoded file offset locations in those....  Not worth the effort and risk, IMO.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 10:03:53 AM
I think that mods one of the PIGGS?  Without the source code, they're not going to be able to build patch updates, so to change that, they'd have to send out a whole new PIGG, and who knows if they've hardcoded file offset locations in those....  Not worth the effort and risk, IMO.

Prolly not worth it, and it's not like there would be new content to show off on the main screen.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on September 03, 2014, 10:46:25 AM
Hummmman fe-males doing business AND wearing clothes! What is the galaxy coming too?

Back to the Dabo tables, Quark
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on September 03, 2014, 11:09:54 AM
Quote
Even if only 30 percent of players are there, that's still 30 percent, and I always felt having Redside (and later Gold) was critically important to making City of Heroes what it was.

Personally, I would put less of a priority on Gold side.   The devs royally screwed up on so much of the content there, as far as soloability goes.   There are a number of missions that are a royal pain on a DPS toon, and virtually impossible on a support.   And since everyone stopped playing there, getting a team was difficult.   After all, why go through all that pain when you can rinse/repeat a DFB?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 03, 2014, 11:25:09 AM
Both City of Titans and Atlas Park Revival are using the same game engine.  So you have compatibility there.  Unreal Engine basically renders the environment, the characters, the mobs, the powers via particle effect animations etc..,

However the engine still needs instructions on what to display, when to display it, where to display it, etc...
This is where the build comes in to play.  By using a modified version of the COT build it gives APR a leg up on the code end of the game without having to right their own code.  They will most likely need to tweak, modify, adapt such code to better suit the look and feel of the game.  Even with the MMO support built in you still need to tell the engine what to do. 

Seems perfectly sensible, and even optimal if you want to keep the feel close.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on September 03, 2014, 11:28:21 AM
At the moment It's just myself, with some occasional helping keeping the website running from Neo Ravencroft.
That's going to be changing soon however. I plan on ramping up the team size.

I'd be happy to help, in any way I can. I'm not the BIGGEST techy (maybe I could get my brother-in-law involved there) but I'm a writer, with a weird and wild imagination, and I tend to look at things from different angles.

And I'm sure if you asked around here you'd have TONS of people who would want to get involved.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 03, 2014, 11:42:43 AM
At the moment It's just myself, with some occasional helping keeping the website running from Neo Ravencroft.
That's going to be changing soon however. I plan on ramping up the team size.

I am ready to learn UnReal 4 and start helping. I have a few questions - the $19 a month is it for just one "slot" or rather per person? I just wondered if it can be installed on more than one computer at a time for that price - if so we could pool the licenses.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cobra Man on September 03, 2014, 11:46:54 AM
I suppose I could be convinced to bring some APR-related enlightenment to the masses.
Let's see here... Zone wise...

Atlas Park - The zone with the most work into it, by far. Perhaps 70% finished. All the streets are laid out, many of the buildings are in place, Trees are even starting to be put down in places.
Steel Canyon - 20-30% completed
Galaxy City - 20-30% completed
Independence Port - 10% completed
Founders Falls - 20-30% completed
Talos Island 10-20%
Perez Park - 10%
"The Hollows" - 10%
Sirens Call - 5%
Pocket D - 50%
and of course, the zone we unveiled our move to Unreal Engine 4 with...
Ouroboros - 95%

Technically, I can walk around any of the zones atm. I'm nothing but a Rikti Drone, and I've got no powers or anything.
Since we're going to be using a version of the City of Titans UE4 build, more work on character creation and powers and what have you is dependent on their work schedule. Not that APR is lacking in work in the mean time!

The geometries from the meshes are currently mostly pulled from Legacy CoH, but rarely are they un-modified. Many meshes have simply had to be re-built from scratch for one reason or another.
Don't even get me started on textures. -shakes head- 64x64 textures for the sides of buildings might have cut it in 2004.

I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff...I really should write all this down. heh


Hey Irish Girl  :D

Would it possible to share some images or clips of the zones that you've started on that haven't been put online so far?

If you've already fielded this question please ignore it - I couldn't see it being asked in this thread.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 11:58:29 AM

Hey Irish Girl  :D

Would it possible to share some images or clips of the zones that you've started on that haven't been put online so far?

If you've already fielded this question please ignore it - I couldn't see it being asked in this thread.

I have not fielded said question, actually.
Yeah, I think I can scrounge up some teasers if you guys really want.
I'm not sure if I want to turn this thread into a Revival picture show however... I suppose it's teeeeeechnically not off topic?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 12:01:12 PM
I am ready to learn UnReal 4 and start helping. I have a few questions - the $19 a month is it for just one "slot" or rather per person? I just wondered if it can be installed on more than one computer at a time for that price - if so we could pool the licenses.

I'd have to re-read the UE4 license agreement... But yes, I believe it's $19 per person. You don't have to pay monthly, I don't. You only need to pay initially, and when you need updates from Epic.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: themamboman on September 03, 2014, 12:01:31 PM

Hey Irish Girl  :D

Would it possible to share some images or clips of the zones that you've started on that haven't been put online so far?

If you've already fielded this question please ignore it - I couldn't see it being asked in this thread.
https://www.facebook.com/AtlasParkRevival
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 03, 2014, 12:52:59 PM
I'd have to re-read the UE4 license agreement... But yes, I believe it's $19 per person. You don't have to pay monthly, I don't. You only need to pay initially, and when you need updates from Epic.

Ok, I will pick it up and download it tonight. I will also make the offer that if any graphic artists don't have the $19 let me know I may be able to speak to Epic and make an arrangement to buy more than one and be able to give out the codes.

Irishgirl, I asked Tony V but I am not sure he asked you - do you want a section of the forums for this project? It might be nice to have threads for each part of the effort?

Now time to change focus for me! The deal is in process and we know the future of our new home is UnReal 4. Deal or no deal anything we do can be ported to CoT as it will not be NCSoft's work but ours. To me this is a good way to help as we could share assets with CoT as they will be with this project.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 03, 2014, 01:01:50 PM
Ok, I will pick it up and download it tonight. I will also make the offer that if any graphic artists don't have the $19 let me know I may be able to speak to Epic and make an arrangement to buy more than one and be able to give out the codes.

Irishgirl, I asked Tony V but I am not sure he asked you - do you want a section of the forums for this project? It might be nice to have threads for each part of the effort?

Now time to change focus for me! The deal is in process and we know the future of our new home is UnReal 4. Deal or no deal anything we do can be ported to CoT as it will not be NCSoft's work but ours. To me this is a good way to help as we could share assets with CoT as they will be with this project.

Yeah, I'm already delving into my "Mastering Unreal Technology" book and I'll be purchasing a license myself by the end of the week and hopefully expanding on the tiny sliver of knowledge I gained about Unreal about a decade ago... I'm sure thousands of things have changed since then.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sihada on September 03, 2014, 01:03:52 PM
So basically any efforts on 1.5 would be from the ground up?
Not entirely.

Thanks to the efforts of many folks in the community, a great deal of the data that drives the game is known and documented (e.g. how much damage does a level-1 energy bolt do?  How much damage is added by one damage enhancement, etc.).  Because so much of this is known, re-implementing those numbers into a new engine is actually one of the smaller tasks ahead of the developers.

Also, the new developers get to reap the benefits of all of the balancing work done by the CoH team during the game's lifecycle.  Balancing game systems is some of the hardest work in game design; while CoH isn't perfectly balanced, it's way ahead of where a completely new game would be.

Most importantly, there is a concrete picture of what the finished product should resemble.  I'm a software developer, and I can't overstate the value of this.  Once the MWM developers start getting playable builds, they'll be able to run their build side-by-side with I23 CoH and say, "does this feel like COH?  Is this better?  Is this worse?  Is it too different?  Not different enough?  Is this what we want?  Is this what we believe the community will want?"

So, from the perspective of actually writing code and building the game, they are starting from scratch.  However, they get the benefit of years of pre- and post-launch design work.

Hope this answers your question. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 03, 2014, 01:09:46 PM
Yeah, I'm already delving into my "Mastering Unreal Technology" book and I'll be purchasing a license myself by the end of the week and hopefully expanding on the tiny sliver of knowledge I gained about Unreal about a decade ago... I'm sure thousands of things have changed since then.

I actually tinkered with UnReal 3 a bit back and made a map and was flying around in it. However UnReal 4 is completely on another level. I know once we get things organized we can start sharing best practices and any easy ways we find to do things. I was even considering taking a look at re-creating Icon if possible - because having the character creator back as a stand-alone would damn near be worth $5-10 dollars on its own.

Of course their would be one in game but having the stand-alone as an option and I know UR4 supports mobile phones too. So a character creator app for $5 might be a great way to start funding the project.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 03, 2014, 01:14:13 PM
Not entirely.

Thanks to the efforts of many folks in the community, a great deal of the data that drives the game is known and documented (e.g. how much damage does a level-1 energy bolt do?  How much damage is added by one damage enhancement, etc.).  Because so much of this is known, re-implementing those numbers into a new engine is actually one of the smaller tasks ahead of the developers.

Also, the new developers get to reap the benefits of all of the balancing work done by the CoH team during the game's lifecycle.  Balancing game systems is some of the hardest work in game design; while CoH isn't perfectly balanced, it's way ahead of where a completely new game would be.

Most importantly, there is a concrete picture of what the finished product should resemble.  I'm a software developer, and I can't overstate the value of this.  Once the MWM developers start getting playable builds, they'll be able to run their build side-by-side with I23 CoH and say, "does this feel like COH?  Is this better?  Is this worse?  Is it too different?  Not different enough?  Is this what we want?  Is this what we believe the community will want?"

So, from the perspective of actually writing code and building the game, they are starting from scratch.  However, they get the benefit of years of pre- and post-launch design work.

Hope this answers your question. :)

Also in UR4 a lot of this information can be directly entered and those exact values copied over. So in CoH 1.5 that bolt will do the exact same damage. It saves a ton of time and people don't have to be programmers to enter data once we have the Engine figured out. Some of the grunt work can then be done by basically anyone. This is a huge advantage and with thousands of willing minions to proofread, double and triple check values - it should be very helpful.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 03, 2014, 01:23:58 PM
I actually tinkered with UnReal 3 a bit back and made a map and was flying around in it. However UnReal 4 is completely on another level. I know once we get things organized we can start sharing best practices and any easy ways we find to do things. I was even considering taking a look at re-creating Icon if possible - because having the character creator back as a stand-alone would damn near be worth $5-10 dollars on its own.

Of course their would be one in game but having the stand-alone as an option and I know UR4 supports mobile phones too. So a character creator app for $5 might be a great way to start funding the project.

That's an EXCELLENT suggestion. Putting some kind of functionality for saving a costume you created within the app and importing it into the game would be invaluable. I'm imagining some people in the community having jobs where they travel and can't always log in. But, while they're in a hotel, they can tinker around on the app on their iPad or Android device and come up with some ideas for a new toon.

I know some of the coding members of our community's heads would explode, but wouldn't it be cool to have an app for Mid's Hero Designer as well? Or....even better, make the costume creator and Mid's into one standalone "Hero Designer" app that allows you to literally design your hero from the ground up (costume creation AND power selections)! I'd pay for that!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 01:25:15 PM
Yeah, I think I can scrounge up some teasers if you guys really want.
I'm not sure if I want to turn this thread into a Revival picture show however... I suppose it's teeeeeechnically not off topic?

Ok, so...by special request. New pictures of REALLY unpolished stuff.
Warning: Seriously under construction.
Images will be hidden under spoiler tags, so Agge doesn't smack me with her mod hat.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t31.0-8/10644522_329455817214641_6698756546108573220_o.jpg)

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://scontent-a-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/t31.0-8/10543567_329455773881312_5889642776631709311_o.jpg)
The plaza of Steel Canyon's University.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/t31.0-8/10648348_329455763881313_9190186255596272964_o.jpg)
The first shot of Independence Port.
In this picture, you might be able to see the hintings of one of my favorite changes that I'm making.
If you're flying along, and you look out past the War Walls...You can see the rest of Paragon City in the distance.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/t31.0-8/10580708_329455787214644_2155914609070580591_o.jpg)
Another shot of I.P. a tad closer to the bridge.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t31.0-8/10669372_329455810547975_2418838020023202468_o.jpg)
I have no idea where this is. I think it's from a different game. /sarcasm

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t31.0-8/10669040_329455807214642_4537574222062157673_o.jpg)
This picture...is Paragon City from above. It should have the War Walls for just about all of the cities zones. Only Atlas Park, Independance Port, and Founders Falls have any of the zone detail showing in this image however.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 03, 2014, 01:30:11 PM
Wish I could offer help but I am not a coder or a graphic artist; I am an infrastructure guy. I can help support servers VMware and stuff like that good luck with all the code and unreal ports you guys got a lot of work ahead of you. I just hope NCSoft does the right thing I have faith that it will happen
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: DragonLord on September 03, 2014, 01:31:10 PM
I've read so much in the past two days on every forums and Facebook  Fansites  and now a lot of the gaming magazines are posting about the possible second coming of city of heroes, I just hope that NC Soft see this as a positive to let the players play the game that we all loved for so long.Yesterday I decided to download the icon and play around with it I didn't want to get hook back into that like this I want the whole thing even if its without our toons I JUST WANT TO PLAY.   Like my other passion is Disney im going to quote a song title LET it Go. Long time player.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 03, 2014, 01:33:50 PM
My sister is wanting to use UR4 for our studio's project and has a license. Might be time for me to pick up one as well if I can help out with it. I don't have the sort of clear memories of a lot of it to build the world again, but I'd cheerfully help with data entry.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 03, 2014, 01:34:12 PM
I am ready to learn UnReal 4 and start helping. I have a few questions - the $19 a month is it for just one "slot" or rather per person? I just wondered if it can be installed on more than one computer at a time for that price - if so we could pool the licenses.

I'll pay for a license for my use in the team. I also have CS6 licensed and legal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Eiko-chan on September 03, 2014, 01:34:37 PM
I know that's essentially a really fancy way of saying "-shrug-", and I'm really sorry I don't have a better answer as of yet.
It's better than the "Nah, screw villains" I could have expected from NC, so I'll take it!  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on September 03, 2014, 01:40:06 PM
So so happy to see you are making paragon city visible through war walls. I always thought that would be a nice touch.

For work that you're doing mostly alone, I am incredibly impressed!

It brings my excitement for this (even just the possibility) to a whole new level!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on September 03, 2014, 01:53:25 PM
I don't know how anyone is keeping track of offers to help...

I don't know much about programming. 

I do know Photoshop pretty well, and have a legal version.  I could pop for the UE4 License...  But I don't want to drown anyone with yet another offer to help.  Is there a sticky or something about who to contact to see if my skill set(s) is needed?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 03, 2014, 01:54:42 PM
Where does one volunteer to help APR or COT?

I don't have MAD art skills, but I have decent ones. 

http://kuraichan.deviantart.com
http://impiousimp.deviantart.com

I do stick figures that have been in accidents so I wont volunteer
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 01:59:15 PM
On the subject of inquiry as to joining APR...
That is a subject I'll be dealing with next week. Most of this week is being dedicated to cleaning, packing, and carrying boxes of stuff (All of which I'm sure I'll regret owning as I'm having to carry it up 3 flights of stairs.)
I don't really have the time, or focus to try and organize people at the moment, and it would just end up being a mess I'd have to untangle next week anyways.

As for joining City of Titans...
I'm not involved there, so... don't look at me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on September 03, 2014, 02:01:27 PM

As for joining City of Titans...
I'm not involved there, so... don't look at me.

Why?  Are they coming apart?

I LOVE that old joke!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 03, 2014, 02:01:48 PM
I do stick figures that have been in accidents so I wont volunteer

In UR4 you don't have to necessarily be a great artist - I am not. But you can apply the textures and make the maps that others define. Let's say one person lays out the buildings and then the next person applies the textures required, it frees the artist to keep working and not do the simple but time consuming task of texturing everything.

If you want to see how simple it can be download the UnReal 3 Engine and tinker around. Watch a few youtube videos on how to do it and you will be pleasantly surprised how quick you can catch on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 03, 2014, 02:10:10 PM
On the subject of inquiry as to joining APR...
That is a subject I'll be dealing with next week. Most of this week is being dedicated to cleaning, packing, and carrying boxes of stuff (All of which I'm sure I'll regret owning as I'm having to carry it up 3 flights of stairs.)

Remember.. If it's still in a box 6 weeks later, throw it out... You don't need it. :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 03, 2014, 02:12:00 PM
The main thing is to remember - Irishgirl calls the shots.

With so much excitement people will become over excited and think their way is better. One person has to be the lead. Irishgirl is that person until she says oh hell no, or decides she would rather design more than coordinate. Don't forget that she has been doing this alone. The offers of help can be overwhelming.

A new website or forum here is going to definitely be needed. A list of volunteers and skills - all the good stuff that needs to be done. I don't doubt that we have some highly qualified people to help. Once the dust settles it is time to do the hard work.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 03, 2014, 02:27:19 PM
I'd have to re-read the UE4 license agreement... But yes, I believe it's $19 per person. You don't have to pay monthly, I don't. You only need to pay initially, and when you need updates from Epic.

I just went to the page, and it says "$19/mo"... Are you sure it's not a monthly charge?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 03, 2014, 02:28:46 PM
I just went to the page, and it says "$19/mo"... Are you sure it's not a monthly charge?
You can opt to buy one month and not to continue. You do not get any updates that way, and they do several a month.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 03, 2014, 02:36:31 PM
You can opt to buy one month and not to continue. You do not get any updates that way, and they do several a month.

Ah, ok. I guess in a development sense, everyone who is part of the development team would only have to pay again if an update was released that was needed in order to improve the development of the game. This may be a question for if Irish_Girl gets her own section of the forums, but I'll go ahead and ask it now since one doesn't exist at the moment: if Irish_Girl is developing the APR in one version of Unreal 4, and some of us pay for/download whatever the latest version of Unreal 4 is, will that cause conflicts/problems when we share assets, due to version mismatches?

I'm still learning how the system works.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 03, 2014, 02:48:55 PM
Ah, ok. I guess in a development sense, everyone who is part of the development team would only have to pay again if an update was released that was needed in order to improve the development of the game. This may be a question for if Irish_Girl gets her own section of the forums, but I'll go ahead and ask it now since one doesn't exist at the moment: if Irish_Girl is developing the APR in one version of Unreal 4, and some of us pay for/download whatever the latest version of Unreal 4 is, will that cause conflicts/problems when we share assets, due to version mismatches?

I'm still learning how the system works.
You can download older versions as well. Just need to standardize on a version.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 03, 2014, 03:02:03 PM
Hey Downix, I asked a question a few pages back, but as you're in the thread now, I'll ask it again...

Assuming we get the deal inked... Who would actually own the IP rights for CoH?  I know you said there'd be a "holding company", but who will be deciding who runs this?  Is there a group already in mind? Do we know them?  Are they us?

I'm just a little concerned the IP will end up with someone who might not have our or the games interests at heart.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 03, 2014, 03:02:38 PM
Where does one volunteer to help APR or COT?

I don't have MAD art skills, but I have decent ones. 

http://kuraichan.deviantart.com
http://impiousimp.deviantart.com
That looks great to me!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 03, 2014, 03:11:20 PM
Hey Downix, I asked a question a few pages back, but as you're in the thread now, I'll ask it again...

Assuming we get the deal inked... Who would actually own the IP rights for CoH?  I know you said there'd be a "holding company", but who will be deciding who runs this?  Is there a group already in mind? Do we know them?  Are they us?

Not to speak for Downix, but he did answer this question in a couple of ways already- here (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10284.msg158542.html#msg158542) and here (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10284.msg158544.html#msg158544). I get the sense that it is still very much up in the air, and he may not have any more specifics.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 03, 2014, 03:12:23 PM
On the subject of inquiry as to joining APR...
That is a subject I'll be dealing with next week. Most of this week is being dedicated to cleaning, packing, and carrying boxes of stuff (All of which I'm sure I'll regret owning as I'm having to carry it up 3 flights of stairs.)
I don't really have the time, or focus to try and organize people at the moment, and it would just end up being a mess I'd have to untangle next week anyways.

Would you prefer to do such "team building" over at the APR website? If so, maybe a comment to that effect and a link could be added to a (as yet theoretical) FAQ here.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 03:13:21 PM
That looks great to me!
I agree. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 03, 2014, 03:13:44 PM
Hey Downix, I asked a question a few pages back, but as you're in the thread now, I'll ask it again...

Assuming we get the deal inked... Who would actually own the IP rights for CoH?  I know you said there'd be a "holding company", but who will be deciding who runs this?  Is there a group already in mind? Do we know them?  Are they us?

I'm just a little concerned the IP will end up with someone who might not have our or the games interests at heart.
That is still one of the negotiating points, ownership percentages as well as control, and a lot of that depends on other conditions. They trade x for y, that kind of thing.

Simply put, as this area is still one of the major negotiating points, could majorly derail if I go into details.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 03, 2014, 03:19:10 PM
Not to speak for Downix, but he did answer this question in a couple of ways already- here (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10284.msg158542.html#msg158542) and here (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10284.msg158544.html#msg158544). I get the sense that it is still very much up in the air, and he may not have any more specifics.

Ah, I must have missed those when I was skipping... Cheers.

I know who gets my vote in looking after the IP though... Titan Network!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 03, 2014, 03:19:52 PM
That is still one of the negotiating points, ownership percentages as well as control, and a lot of that depends on other conditions. They trade x for y, that kind of thing.

Simply put, as this area is still one of the major negotiating points, could majorly derail if I go into details.

Fair enough! Certainly don't want THAT to happen! :O
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 03, 2014, 03:34:19 PM
Ah, I must have missed those when I was skipping... Cheers.

No worries- it's easy to miss things in a thread this active. I've been paying close attention to info on the holding company, out of personal interest (not just in CoH; I used to work for a literary rights holding company in LA.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 03, 2014, 03:50:06 PM
Ok, so...by special request. New pictures of REALLY unpolished stuff.
Warning: Seriously under construction.
Images will be hidden under spoiler tags, so Agge doesn't smack me with her mod hat.


Truly truly gorgeous, Irish_Girl!  (the maps are looking good, too! ;) )

I do have one request though... Something maybe everyone will agree even if it wouldn't actually be the same as CoH...

Car models that actually look decent, instead of the HIDEOUS things that were in CoH! Ugh! Truly.. Ugh!

Oh, and maybe a bus or two! ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 03:53:49 PM
Truly truly gorgeous, Irish_Girl!  (the maps are looking good, too! ;) )
I do have one request though... Something maybe everyone will agree even if it wouldn't actually be the same as CoH...
Car models that actually look decent, instead of the HIDEOUS things that were in CoH! Ugh! Truly.. Ugh!
Oh, and maybe a bus or two! ;)

Flattery will get you nowhere, son of Harkonnen!
However, I will go out on a limb to confirm decent looking cars, and even busses.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Apogee on September 03, 2014, 03:55:34 PM
How about children when it comes time to populate the city?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 03, 2014, 03:56:23 PM
Flattery will get you nowhere, son of Harkonnen!
However, I will go out on a limb to confirm decent looking cars, and even busses.

Oh I dunno... It seemed to have gotten me somewhere... ;)

Awesome news though! Thankies muchly! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 03, 2014, 03:58:08 PM
I removed posts pertaining to MWM and Kickstarter issues, including my own.

There is an entire section of the forums for that discussion. This is for the talks on the new deal and the projects spinning from that deal. If I did wrong Agge will slap me down.

If we get another section for APR effort there are some that could be moved such as those pertaining to UR4 licensing and such. We could maybe get the definite information on UR4 and make a sticky since several efforts are using this engine.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 03, 2014, 03:59:07 PM
Truly truly gorgeous, Irish_Girl!  (the maps are looking good, too! ;) )

I do have one request though... Something maybe everyone will agree even if it wouldn't actually be the same as CoH...

Car models that actually look decent, instead of the HIDEOUS things that were in CoH! Ugh! Truly.. Ugh!
+1 

And since we can stand on the blimp...maybe cars that we can jump on and ride too?   :D

Isn't there a topic somewhere about what made CoH "feel" like CoH?    I wonder if some people would not want things like that to change?

I don't mind one bit.   I don't mind if animations, sound FX, and textures change.  I'm mostly wanting the powers to work the same.    As much as the fire imps' stupidity was infuriating at times...keep 'em dumb.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 03, 2014, 04:02:11 PM
How about children when it comes time to populate the city?

I think an update could possibly add a wider variety of folks without too much extra effort. You can even buy pre-made artwork from the UR4 market place:

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace you can buy everything from characters to textures to buildings and everything in between - I bet even a Moonbase.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 03, 2014, 04:05:47 PM
Isn't there a topic somewhere about what made CoH "feel" like CoH?    I wonder if some people would not want things like that to change?

If it's in a new engine, I think that it's a little silly not to take advantage of said new engine and improve models and textures where appropriate.

I don't mean important stuff like the general look and how the game plays, but inconsequential stuff like the background npc's, textures, stuff like that.. All can be improved to add to the ambience.  Look at the rebuild of Atlas Park that Paragon Studios gave us.  I don't recall -anyone- not loving it when the devs presented it to us. It was -gorgeous-

Sounds can mostly stay as they are, though maybe some can be muted (super speed, targetting drone), more can be added such as a gentle breeze sound or birds in the background.. Maybe kids playing in the park during the day, a faint hum/sizzle from the war walls when you're near them...  Maybe even some weather affects from time to time...

OK, I'm getting carried away now.  My point is though, I don't see any harm in little tweaks to improve then overall game world.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 03, 2014, 04:09:13 PM
OK, I'm getting carried away now.  My point is though, I don't see any harm in little tweaks to improve then overall game world.
Same.   It's actually very exciting to look at the APR pics.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 03, 2014, 04:21:07 PM
If it's in a new engine, I think that it's a little silly not to take advantage of said new engine and improve models and textures where appropriate.

I don't mean important stuff like the general look and how the game plays, but inconsequential stuff like the background npc's, textures, stuff like that.. All can be improved to add to the ambience.  Look at the rebuild of Atlas Park that Paragon Studios gave us.  I don't recall -anyone- not loving it when the devs presented it to us. It was -gorgeous-

Sounds can mostly stay as they are, though maybe some can be muted (super speed, targetting drone), more can be added such as a gentle breeze sound or birds in the background.. Maybe kids playing in the park during the day, a faint hum/sizzle from the war walls when you're near them...  Maybe even some weather affects from time to time...

OK, I'm getting carried away now.  My point is though, I don't see any harm in little tweaks to improve then overall game world.
You can use the existing material for LOD purposes as well you know.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 03, 2014, 04:26:27 PM
Irish_Girl has spoken about the volume and complexity to bringing red-side and gold-side back to CoH 1.5. I want to re-affirm: all the content, blue, red, gold, will be included in the frozen CoHi23 zombie CoH with all the understanding that the negotiations and  game store recreation being accomplished. Or did I miss something in the details?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 03, 2014, 04:32:01 PM
Irish_Girl has spoken about the volume and complexity to bringing red-side and gold-side back to CoH 1.5. I want to re-affirm: all the content, blue, red, gold, will be included in the frozen CoHi23 zombie CoH with all the understanding that the negotiations and  game store recreation being accomplished. Or did I miss something in the details?

To the best of my knowledge, the Issue 23 Legacy CoH would be CoH as it before the shutdown. No more, No less.

Oh the APR-related complexity of things... Gold side would prolly be the easiest side to do. Least amount of content, as well as most everything being fairly new models and textures.
The Rogue Isles however...are a nightmare. A nightmare that will require a lot of scratch built assets, and textures to replace the poor rats nest that was thrown together very quickly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 03, 2014, 04:45:16 PM
Until they get their hands on it and play around, assume that w/o source code, i23 will be the same as it was when Paragon ran it.

That seems the safe bet to me :)

   I could easily live with i23 :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 03, 2014, 04:47:32 PM
   I could easily live with i23 :)

Out of curiosity, since we will be stuck in i23, did anyone ever get that one badge for killing the tyrant without using any of the lights in the iTrail? I remember people said that badge was only achievable when they unlocked more incanate powers
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mental Minister on September 03, 2014, 04:59:15 PM
To the best of my knowledge, the Issue 23 Legacy CoH would be CoH as it before the shutdown. No more, No less.

Oh the APR-related complexity of things... Gold side would prolly be the easiest side to do. Least amount of content, as well as most everything being fairly new models and textures.
The Rogue Isles however...are a nightmare. A nightmare that will require a lot of scratch built assets, and textures to replace the poor rats nest that was thrown together very quickly.

That was one of the main reasons I didnt play villains much till gold side was introduced. I loved the Villain Archtypes corruptors being my favorite but by the time I got to St. Martial I found myself logging back to Blue side.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 03, 2014, 05:18:31 PM
On the subject of inquiry as to joining APR...
That is a subject I'll be dealing with next week. Most of this week is being dedicated to cleaning, packing, and carrying boxes of stuff (All of which I'm sure I'll regret owning as I'm having to carry it up 3 flights of stairs.)
I don't really have the time, or focus to try and organize people at the moment, and it would just end up being a mess I'd have to untangle next week anyways.

As for joining City of Titans...
I'm not involved there, so... don't look at me.

If you like, I could go back through this thread and gather the names of the people who offered and send them to you next week.  If you do, I'll put up a post to recruit and collect names there. Just let me know.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 03, 2014, 05:22:34 PM
Question:

Does the i23 snapshot include the Test Server?

The reason I ask is that was running i24 at the time of close so people who wanted to could create characters there for i24 goodness. Since there won't be any further development it would essentially be just a server a server with I24 on it.

I was thinking it might soften the blow for people who really wanted to play 124.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: WolfSoul on September 03, 2014, 05:33:02 PM
I so agree with this! It was difficult trying to be in a city that was supposed to be so futuristic technologically but had cars from bad 1970's cop shows.

Though I would just RP that people had "beater" cars because of so many superpowered fights. Who would buy a Rolls Royce or BMW just to watch it trashed between a fire blaster and Clockwork scavangers?


Truly truly gorgeous, Irish_Girl!  (the maps are looking good, too! ;) )

I do have one request though... Something maybe everyone will agree even if it wouldn't actually be the same as CoH...

Car models that actually look decent, instead of the HIDEOUS things that were in CoH! Ugh! Truly.. Ugh!

Oh, and maybe a bus or two! ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 03, 2014, 05:38:15 PM
I so agree with this! It was difficult trying to be in a city that was supposed to be so futuristic technologically but had cars from bad 1970's cop shows.

Though I would just RP that people had "beater" cars because of so many superpowered fights. Who would buy a Rolls Royce or BMW just to watch it trashed between a fire blaster and Clockwork scavangers?
Sales ad:
Those things are so rugged they can get hit by a semi and still stay intact.

Sure, they're uglier than sin, but when you are worried about the next fist-fight between Errmad and Rat-A-Tat, nothing does better than Paragon Motors!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 03, 2014, 05:48:47 PM
I'd have to re-read the UE4 license agreement... But yes, I believe it's $19 per person. You don't have to pay monthly, I don't. You only need to pay initially, and when you need updates from Epic.

PLEASE, PLEASE bear in mind, the updates are hot and heavy at this time and sometimes don't quite play well with others.

If you're going to take this strategy, pick a release and keep all the new folks on it until you move everyone forward.  We're having a  time of it and we'vre a little more used to the release rates. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 03, 2014, 06:07:22 PM
Sounds like a winner. If we get it now we can start in learning the system anyways. It will take quite a while to get familiar with it and I may start taking a look at the whole Icon thing and seeing if it can be ported over - with of course the permission of Codewalker. I will send him a PM.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 03, 2014, 06:27:43 PM
Anyone else notice that the press coverage seems to be focused on the "spiritual successor" side of the deal with next to no mention of CoH i23 getting back online?

Anyway, all these articles are getting enthusiastic comments.  I hope someone over in Korea realizes that doing this deal could greatly help their PR image.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 03, 2014, 06:36:14 PM
Anyone else notice that the press coverage seems to be focused on the "spiritual successor" side of the deal with next to no mention of CoH i23 getting back online?

Anyway, all these articles are getting enthusiastic comments.  I hope someone over in Korea realizes that doing this deal could greatly help their PR image.

To be fair at this point there is really nothing decided. The fact they are making an article based on a possibility alone is heartening.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dal on September 03, 2014, 06:40:38 PM

Thanks to the efforts of many folks in the community, a great deal of the data that drives the game is known and documented (e.g. how much damage does a level-1 energy bolt do?  How much damage is added by one damage enhancement, etc.).  Because so much of this is known, re-implementing those numbers into a new engine is actually one of the smaller tasks ahead of the developers.


That's great! Thank goodness CoH offered us all of the numbers. :) And there's still City of Data. http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on September 03, 2014, 06:43:06 PM
guys can you please wait on bringing back CoH until I finish grad school

I know it's gonna be like a year and a half but it would really be super-helpful and great if I didn't have to choose between my first MMO love and my professional future
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 03, 2014, 06:44:02 PM
Well, I'm sure I'm one of many spamming offers to help but I'm a web UI dev/polyglot/generalist with about 7 years of experience and this UE4 web technology UI plugin interests me a lot:

http://coherent-labs.com/ue4/

I plan on learning my way around it this weekend just as a point of interest but I'd be delighted by any opportunity to help bring back COH in one form or another. I've been meaning to pick up some C/C++ skills for a while now for the Node binding utility and UE4 looks like a fun way to do it. R/L name is Erik Reppen. Feel free to look me up on Stack/Linked In.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 03, 2014, 06:47:06 PM
guys can you please wait on bringing back CoH until I finish grad school

I know it's gonna be like a year and a half but it would really be super-helpful and great if I didn't have to choose between my first MMO love and my professional future

Sorry bud...it's several thousand to 1.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 03, 2014, 06:53:14 PM
Question I keep forgetting to ask:

What's informing their reluctance to release source code for a code base that's been around this long? Is there a liability issue or something?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 03, 2014, 06:54:54 PM
guys can you please wait on bringing back CoH until I finish grad school

I know it's gonna be like a year and a half but it would really be super-helpful and great if I didn't have to choose between my first MMO love and my professional future

Focus on your future bro. When the deal is done (I didn't say if, I said when. Not sure if that is over confidence of me in my happy place) this game will be waiting for you to be enjoyed :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taliseian on September 03, 2014, 06:55:16 PM
Content Creation Question -

I'm no artist - can barely draw a straight line.  But I've been delving more into fiction writing over the past few years and plan to participate in NaNoWriMo this year with a CoH based short story about one of my Heroes.

If I wanted to get involved in the writing/storyline/questing part, what would be a good way to get started?  Should I start delving into UE4 stuff as well?

Thanks in advance...


T
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: powergridpete on September 03, 2014, 07:02:58 PM
My excitement is tempered with the new development, but I am completely stoked for I23 CoH server.  Maybe it is because the I23 CoH server is the most likely to be online first. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 03, 2014, 07:04:23 PM
Question I keep forgetting to ask:

What's informing their reluctance to release source code for a code base that's been around this long? Is there a liability issue or something?

There is a possibility that this source or part may be in other Cryptic engines and may have backdoors to the system. NCSoft would have to explain any other reason and they aren't doing so yet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: General Sherman on September 03, 2014, 07:07:05 PM
There is a possibility that this source or part may be in other Cryptic engines and may have backdoors to the system. NCSoft would have to explain any other reason and they aren't doing so yet.

And nobody wants someone entering their backdoor uninvited :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 03, 2014, 07:19:06 PM
Content Creation Question -

I'm no artist - can barely draw a straight line.  But I've been delving more into fiction writing over the past few years and plan to participate in NaNoWriMo this year with a CoH based short story about one of my Heroes.

If I wanted to get involved in the writing/storyline/questing part, what would be a good way to get started?  Should I start delving into UE4 stuff as well?

Thanks in advance...


T

Not speaking for Irish Girl

But I think new content creation is a long ways off. First you need to get the existing content ported for Hero side, then red side and gold side. That is a lot of work to do before you start on new content.

Just my suspicion but APR is going to use CoT's engine (which isn't finished yet) and will need to be modded and tinkered with to make it like CoH. That can't start until MWM is done with most of it. In the meantime, recreating the City, Rouge Isles and Pretoria in UE4 is a pretty big task in itself.

At some point though APR will have to recreate the missions and such and that will sorta be content creation but mostly copy and paste work or maybe just a lot of typing. Hopefully I23 will be running and some of it can come from there and certainly side-by-side comparisons can be done to insure that it is as close as possible.

But from her posts I think that it will be a week or two before she can start in earnest because of her move.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 03, 2014, 07:32:29 PM
And nobody wants someone entering their backdoor uninvited :o

"Donut, you can ruin anything!"

;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: General Sherman on September 03, 2014, 08:02:28 PM
"Donut, you can ruin anything!"

;)

Sorry, momentary lapse of sanity.

But nice RvB reference ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 03, 2014, 08:07:17 PM
Sorry, momentary lapse of sanity.

But nice RvB reference ;D

Thought that to, didn't comment LOL.  I was to busy laughing.  Shame they killed him off :(.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 03, 2014, 08:08:32 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wammo on September 03, 2014, 08:33:56 PM
Just a thought that came to my mind...

I wonder what the real population will be upon relaunch. I know this is again speculation but have any of you taken a moment to consider how many or few of us there are who want to play again? I think this really should be taken into account when considering how many servers to launch.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 03, 2014, 08:42:21 PM
I look at City of Titans, Valiance Online, and  Heroes and Villains being like the Chinese, the Mexican, and the Italian restaurants that setup in the same area because not everyone wants chinese (or mexican or italian) every time, but its all good food and customers know the neighborhood to get their options. It can't be about all of one and none of the others.

I personally know of people playing World of Warcraft, Rift, and League of Legends, at different times, of course but all in the same week.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 03, 2014, 08:47:21 PM
I am having friends from coh that I havent talked to in a couple of years or more contact me. there are a LOT of people watching this.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 03, 2014, 09:00:00 PM
I am having friends from coh that I havent talked to in a couple of years or more contact me. there are a LOT of people watching this.
We are getting the band back together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzOHq5WbQ8k
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fable on September 03, 2014, 09:11:13 PM
Just a thought that came to my mind...

I wonder what the real population will be upon relaunch. I know this is again speculation but have any of you taken a moment to consider how many or few of us there are who want to play again? I think this really should be taken into account when considering how many servers to launch.

I think you're forgetting the amount of new comers. I was surprised by a lot of the comments on the 3 articles. There were a lot of "I had no idea this game had this kind of community, I think I'll check it out if it comes back" kind of comments. It may not be as popular or it could be more popular because the attention it didn't previously have. I feel like it could go either way. Look at the CoT kickstarter, there's obviously a lot of interest in this type of game. Just look at steams numbers on CO, I think we're all good.

Plus, most of us are old and have disposable income ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: DeathSentry on September 03, 2014, 09:14:33 PM
Given that its binary and not source code; it appears that we get the benefit of licensing and using coh but will definitely depend on the successors to take it forward
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 03, 2014, 09:15:41 PM
Anyone else notice that the press coverage seems to be focused on the "spiritual successor" side of the deal with next to no mention of CoH i23 getting back online?

Anyway, all these articles are getting enthusiastic comments.  I hope someone over in Korea realizes that doing this deal could greatly help their PR image.

  I have to admit,my interest is totally about coh i23 etc., getting back online.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 03, 2014, 09:19:06 PM
Out of curiosity, since we will be stuck in i23, did anyone ever get that one badge for killing the tyrant without using any of the lights in the iTrail? I remember people said that badge was only achievable when they unlocked more incanate powers

  Not I :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 03, 2014, 09:22:58 PM
We are getting the band back together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzOHq5WbQ8k


  WOOT!  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 03, 2014, 09:31:32 PM
Out of curiosity, since we will be stuck in i23, did anyone ever get that one badge for killing the tyrant without using any of the lights in the iTrail? I remember people said that badge was only achievable when they unlocked more incanate powers

That was the The Really Hard Way Badge (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/The_Really_Hard_Way_Badge), and at least 154 characters were verified to have earned it (http://cit.cohtitan.com/badges/list/Accolade/all/). In order to participate in the Magisterium Trial (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Magisterium_Trial), you had to have unlocked your Lore and Destiny slots, but not Hybrid.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Xaphan on September 03, 2014, 09:35:27 PM
Out of curiosity, since we will be stuck in i23, did anyone ever get that one badge for killing the tyrant without using any of the lights in the iTrail? I remember people said that badge was only achievable when they unlocked more incanate powers
I got that on 2 or 3 of my characters (2 I'm sure of, the third I can't remember for sure). The group I was with was among the first to get it, but not the very first.
It was hard, but not impossible. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 03, 2014, 09:43:06 PM
I'm curious though, apologies if this was asked already, but what of costume codes and booster packs? If the game comes back, will you even be able to generate and sell/give out codes? Otherwise, wouldn't stuff like Justice and Sinister costume sets, Pocket D Tiki VIP, Arachnos Helmets and the like be gone forever?

I'm not part of any of these teams, but I'll give some thoughts on this since no one else has.

The only costume parts that should not be accessible are those that were released after I23 because everything else would be in the I23 pigg files. I'm guessing that the I24 pigg files wouldn't be valid, even though they're still downloadable, because the server software would be hard-coded to expect the I23 versions. But all other art assets would still exist in the files.

However, access to the costume pieces and powers was account-based before, so I think future access would have to be determined by how the new authentication server was set up and the flags that would indicate who could use what. All of that would be decided by the people who are in charge of actually running the maintenance servers, though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 03, 2014, 09:46:34 PM
There is a possibility that this source or part may be in other Cryptic engines and may have backdoors to the system. NCSoft would have to explain any other reason and they aren't doing so yet.
Correct me if my memory is faulty.

Wasn't there some discussion about the difficulty in reverse engineering the source code because it was supposedly invented especially for CoH and was not exactly well put together?

If it was then used for other games as well, that sounds like a big mess that would not be good news for the other games.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 03, 2014, 09:49:16 PM
3. Speaking of successors, the pending "officialness" of the successors does give me concern about splitting the player base. Obviously people will play different games based on their preferences, but I can't help but wonder if the successors would want to "team up" with pricing? E.g. give a special reduced sub price to all three games (rather than $15 a month each, $30 total for all three). Something like that.
That is a unique sounding idea.   There does seem to be some spirit of "we are in this together" among the different groups (which is awesome).  And discounts do result in more net income at times. (Discount Tuesdays at theaters for instance)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 03, 2014, 09:49:23 PM

 apologies to the board-didn't mean for a few of my posts to enter here all back-to-back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 03, 2014, 10:12:37 PM
We are getting the band back together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzOHq5WbQ8k

Thank you for that clip. The first video next to it was "Briefcase full of Blues". For those who don't know, it was an album released about the same time. Featuring the actual Blue brothers singing. I'm listening to it now. It's awesome.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 03, 2014, 10:27:33 PM
Regarding population numbers, here's my anecdotal evidence.

Since the news of the hail mary effort I've talked with 5 former CoH players and all have said they would return to the game.  I've told other gaming friends who never played about the possibility of a CoH return; 7 of those folks are interested.  So thats 12 people who on just hearing about CoH redux are already potential player/buyers. 

Here's the key point.  They all asked "how much."  The consensus was that they want to return or try the game for the first time, but no one wanted to pay a premium.  There are die hards who have stated loud and clear that they would pay anything to get CoH back.  Thats all well and good but the games return would be best served by pricing itself attractively to bring in on-the-fence returnees and brand new players. 

Personally I'd be willing to pay $10-$15 on a CoH redux Steam purchase that unlocks a chunk of costume elements and archetypes, and then a monthly sub of under $10.  Some kind of free account option would serve to get new people to try the game.  I missed to chance to play CoH when it went free to play so Im not too sure what the options were. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 03, 2014, 10:34:42 PM
I missed to chance to play CoH when it went free to play so Im not too sure what the options were. 

One thing that I admit has upset me a bit has been the hostility towards F2P. The F2P conversion did not kill the game. Everyone at Paragon said it was the best thing they ever did for the game financially. The people who don't pay may not financially boost up the game while costing resources...

But if I can't play with my fiancee when the game comes back, I'm not going to be as happy. We're both pretty tight, and while I could try to cover both of us for some things, odds are at least one of my friends are going to want to not pay if there's that option. It won't make the game money, but it will make me more invested, they'll be likely to buy things and sub when they can, etc. Free players make the game better by providing an active player base and as such should be treated well!

So I'd really hope that any team would want to be in the more-inclusive brand of F2P than not. At first you couldn't even join a super group... and that would stop 9/10ths of the free people from playing. I'm okay with no ticket rewards from AE, but no rewards at all? Since no one will have bought going rogue if we dont get the account data, I'd say the alignment system being F2P really hurts no one. It just lets f2P players explore more content, encourage more people to play, etc. :)

If you're a person who can pay, and can pay more than just a sub fee, dont be angry at free players. Think of it as your chance to give to the community by supporting their play experience, just as they support yours :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Last Known Hero on September 03, 2014, 10:37:35 PM
That was the The Really Hard Way Badge (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/The_Really_Hard_Way_Badge), and at least 154 characters were verified to have earned it (http://cit.cohtitan.com/badges/list/Accolade/all/). In order to participate in the Magisterium Trial (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Magisterium_Trial), you had to have unlocked your Lore and Destiny slots, but not Hybrid.

My brother and Shifter were one of those actually :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 03, 2014, 10:42:25 PM
There is a possibility that this source or part may be in other Cryptic engines and may have backdoors to the system. NCSoft would have to explain any other reason and they aren't doing so yet.
Lock that stuff down... make us sign our field trip wavers saying we cant sue you and you cant sue us. Secondly if Star Trek Online(cryptic) or Lineage 2(NCsoft) is using a "Backdoor" from an archaic game such as CoH they REALLY almost deserve whatever would happen... that's like saying you cant use Windows 95 because it is a massive security threat to Windows 9 that isn't even out yet. Downright lazy if they left the same "backdoors" in those games.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 03, 2014, 10:45:16 PM
  I have to admit,my interest is totally about coh i23 etc., getting back online.
That and I am more concerned about CoH 1.5/2. I am grateful for the spiritual successors but truthfully I could care less. They aren't City of Heroes and Never will be no matter how hard they try.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 03, 2014, 10:46:09 PM
Lock that stuff down... make us sign our field trip wavers saying we cant sue you and you cant sue us.

From a business standpoint this would be an unacceptable liability.

It's like selling someone a keyring, and making them pinkie swear not to ever use one of the keys. You just don't do it.

We'll just have to accept what they're willing to offer - and hey, I'm giving NCSoft respect for even ATTEMPTING this. Do you remember how much over the top racism alone was spewed their way amidst the shutdown, nevermind some of the other forms of nastiness? Being willing to even look at CoH again in more than a "yes, it existed, cool" sort of way is worthy of a little cheer I think :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 03, 2014, 10:47:46 PM
Lock that stuff down... make us sign our field trip wavers saying we cant sue you and you cant sue us. Secondly if Star Trek Online(cryptic) or Lineage 2(NCsoft) is using a "Backdoor" from an archaic game such as CoH they REALLY almost deserve whatever would happen... that's like saying you cant use Windows 95 because it is a massive security threat to Windows 9 that isn't even out yet. Downright lazy if they left the same "backdoors" in those games.
Ironwolf is not a coder, so he may not know the right terminology.

I think the better phrase may be "sharing code libraries." Things like internal user authentication libraries - things which it would make sense to share between multiple games.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 03, 2014, 10:48:36 PM
That and I am more concerned about CoH 1.5/2. I am grateful for the spiritual successors but truthfully I could care less. They aren't City of Heroes and Never will be no matter how hard they try.
Nor should they be.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 03, 2014, 11:00:11 PM
It's pretty exciting to witness all of this!


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 03, 2014, 11:09:31 PM
Thought that to, didn't comment LOL.  I was to busy laughing.  Shame they killed him off :(.

Dude, Donut is the Kenny of BvR ("Saying it the other way sounds stupid."). Check out season 12. He came back about half a dozen episodes ago. :D

But, to the "getting our stuff back" debate, I offer this: I petered out on GW well before GW2 came out, so I don't know if characters transfer, but, given the roadmap that downix laid out in the OP, I have no problem throwing money at CoH: Resurgence until one of the forthcoming projects is in release form. I won't even bother with recreating any of my favorite toons until I've settled into whichever of the new games feels the most like "home." Until then, I look forward to seeing you all back in Atlas Park, whichever version we all land in!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 03, 2014, 11:11:00 PM
Until then, I look forward to seeing you all back in Atlas Park, whichever version we all land in!

here here! :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 03, 2014, 11:17:41 PM
From a business standpoint this would be an unacceptable liability.

It's like selling someone a keyring, and making them pinkie swear not to ever use one of the keys. You just don't do it.

We'll just have to accept what they're willing to offer - and hey, I'm giving NCSoft respect for even ATTEMPTING this. Do you remember how much over the top racism alone was spewed their way amidst the shutdown, nevermind some of the other forms of nastiness? Being willing to even look at CoH again in more than a "yes, it existed, cool" sort of way is worthy of a little cheer I think :)

I could also point out that creating a backdoor is perhaps the second to last step when an actual hacker is launching an attack on someone.  You leave a backdoor open and then turn around and fix the exploit you used.  One way it's done anyways.  If thats the kind of backdoor you guys are speaking of.  I didn't reply right away as I wasn't sure if Iron Wolf was using the kind of back door I was thinking of or some other back door.  But it's generally bad practice to have one, I say close it right away.  An admin or moderator/gm wouldn't need one anyways with proper design.  Most companies are smart enough not to have one, even more-so since security through obscurityis not security.  Just an old saying.  (No, I am not a hacker or info sec person, I did take classes in that, but I didn't take them for that reason, took them to reinforce my networking knowledge in hopes to get a job easier, didn't work at all).

And I remember alot of the nasty things people said.  Honestly felt that, well, alot of people really revealed themselves to be complete jerks during the shutdown, it kind of revealed who the real friends were in a sense.  I think only a few friends of mine I made in CoX are still friends today, a few here and there turned out to be complete $#%#$^$.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: naztmann on September 03, 2014, 11:17:58 PM
So, I'm a bit of a lurker around here, but I had to jump on to add my thanks to what is the massive collection of thanks from the CoX community and these forums. If this went through it would be amazing, but just to hear that you have put all of this time and effort into this is awesome enough as it is. It really shows how much you care about this community both on these forums as well as people who haven't experienced the CoX games or maybe aren't quite so vocal on here. So from anyone who was a huge fan back may be too much of a lurker to get a chance to say it:

Thank you for all the work you've been doing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: DarkCurrent on September 03, 2014, 11:19:40 PM
If player accounts are gone, how will premium purchases that were only available from the paragon store (e.g. Nature Affinity) be available on an I23 relaunch?

And would the paragon store even be available in any such relaunch?  As I understood, the store was a separate server / entity.  Would it be part of CoH IP?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 03, 2014, 11:21:58 PM
Speaking of security, another thing they may want to look into should they get the game, update the password system for it.  Not allowing the use of special characters is a very very big problem, as even just adding any of @#$%! for example could greatly increase the passwords strength, and reduce the length one has to make a password to really make it secure.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on September 03, 2014, 11:25:27 PM
Out of curiosity, since we will be stuck in i23, did anyone ever get that one badge for killing the tyrant without using any of the lights in the iTrail? I remember people said that badge was only achievable when they unlocked more incanate powers

The Magisterium iTrial was what I would call "Gated Content". In order to participate, not only did you have to be VIP (only subscribers could do incarnate stuff, if I recall correctly) but you had to have Lore and Destiny unlocked. This iTrial was for me, one of the most incredible experiences. It took a truly special league of players to be able to take Cole down without using the lights. For some leagues, even with the lights, he was tough enough, lol.

Without lights, it pretty much needed to be an almost choreographed chaos so that players could be grouped for buffs, but scatter ASAP when that lightning blast was about to pop. I got this badge on three different characters on two different servers and other than facing the Avatar of Hamidon with insufficient Clarions, I can't think of a more challenging finale. In all honesty, I don't think a league without wise incarnate choices will do well, lights or not. Kudos to @Amygdala of Champion and @Xtreme Raze on Liberty for leading those efforts. ( I think @Lady Clara and @Placta may have also led successful runs on Champion, but I can't recall - such a tightnit community of both servers, if one was there, the others usually were as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: TonyV on September 03, 2014, 11:28:23 PM
A new website or forum here is going to definitely be needed. A list of volunteers and skills - all the good stuff that needs to be done.

Just as a side note, I'd rather not set up Atlas Park Revival forums here.

That's not to be mean, but what I'm afraid of is splitting up the dissemination of information across multiple sites.  I think that all Atlas Park Revival stuff needs to be consolidated on the Atlas Park Revival site.  Not that I mind people asking questions or congregating here or anything, but I don't want anyone to confuse the Titan Network with the official Atlas Park Revival site.  Information here is secondhand, while information there is firsthand.

In fact, I'm in the process of telling the other projects (City of Titans and Heroes and Villains) that I'm going to be retiring their forums here, since both have their own web sites now up and running and have for a long time.  We'll still have a general "Plan Z" discussion forum, and I don't mind folks making posts there to basically say, "Hey, look at what's going on over at our official site!", but to be honest, it's better for them this way in that they can go ahead and get their own user base created and set up.  The only reason we really had their forums here to start with was as kind of a stopgap measure until they got their own sites up and running.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on September 03, 2014, 11:29:33 PM
guys can you please wait on bringing back CoH until I finish grad school

I know it's gonna be like a year and a half but it would really be super-helpful and great if I didn't have to choose between my first MMO love and my professional future

I wish you great success in grad school! But, having been through it, I know that you can find an hour here and there to play - you'd just have to read faster with the same comprehension. Practice now!

And remember, on your thesis: Pick a topic the professors know next to nothing about. That way, you'll know more than everyone else in the room. They will likely be too busy to read up on the topic as much as you will have. You'll be the only expert in the room.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 03, 2014, 11:35:19 PM
The Magisterium iTrial was what I would call "Gated Content". In order to participate, not only did you have to be VIP (only subscribers could do incarnate stuff, if I recall correctly) but you had to have Lore and Destiny unlocked. This iTrial was for me, one of the most incredible experiences. It took a truly special league of players to be able to take Cole down without using the lights. For some leagues, even with the lights, he was tough enough, lol.

Without lights, it pretty much needed to be an almost choreographed chaos so that players could be grouped for buffs, but scatter ASAP when that lightning blast was about to pop. I got this badge on three different characters on two different servers and other than facing the Avatar of Hamidon with insufficient Clarions, I can't think of a more challenging finale. In all honesty, I don't think a league without wise incarnate choices will do well, lights or not. Kudos to @Amygdala of Champion and @Xtreme Raze on Liberty for leading those efforts. ( I think @Lady Clara and @Placta may have also led successful runs on Champion, but I can't recall - such a tightnit community of both servers, if one was there, the others usually were as well.

The Magisterium ITrial was by far my favorite, simply cause it was a conclusion of the praetorian war.  And it didn't end in a perfect heroic way either.  The whole imperial city was destroyed and the chaos Praetoria was left in meant it was very vulnerable to it's hamidon.  A very unfortunate end to the war, in a way though, it seemed like the war ended that way as a kind of statement that war is on so many levels wrong, and really is a big last resort.  Praetoria attacked primal earth, forcing primal earth to respond to it and generally forcing primal earth to invade since praetoria wasn't going to stop attacking.

So the praetorian hamidon was left with a very exposed and crippled humanity that was rather badly mislead into a war by it's leader who saw no other option.  I cannot say things would be good had the praetorians won, in fact I'd say the world would have been screwed.  But it was either praetoria lost or both sides lost.

It's a shame it ended that way, but I liked the Magisterium trial because of that.  You kind of saw the ultimate consequences of the war(they even say the hamidon is on the way to finish the city off at the end if I recall).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cobra Man on September 03, 2014, 11:37:35 PM
Ok, so...by special request. New pictures of REALLY unpolished stuff.
Warning: Seriously under construction.
Images will be hidden under spoiler tags, so Agge doesn't smack me with her mod hat.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t31.0-8/10644522_329455817214641_6698756546108573220_o.jpg)

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://scontent-a-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/t31.0-8/10543567_329455773881312_5889642776631709311_o.jpg)
The plaza of Steel Canyon's University.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/t31.0-8/10648348_329455763881313_9190186255596272964_o.jpg)
The first shot of Independence Port.
In this picture, you might be able to see the hintings of one of my favorite changes that I'm making.
If you're flying along, and you look out past the War Walls...You can see the rest of Paragon City in the distance.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/t31.0-8/10580708_329455787214644_2155914609070580591_o.jpg)
Another shot of I.P. a tad closer to the bridge.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t31.0-8/10669372_329455810547975_2418838020023202468_o.jpg)
I have no idea where this is. I think it's from a different game. /sarcasm

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t31.0-8/10669040_329455807214642_4537574222062157673_o.jpg)
This picture...is Paragon City from above. It should have the War Walls for just about all of the cities zones. Only Atlas Park, Independance Port, and Founders Falls have any of the zone detail showing in this image however.

Thanks for that :)

I'm now looking forward to the revamped CoH. It just struck me that it just wont be the the buildings and infrastructure that gets redone. NPC's, mobs  .. GM's will also be redone.

I wonder  ... are there plans to include speech in the revamp?

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 03, 2014, 11:37:42 PM
Ironwolf is not a coder, so he may not know the right terminology.

I think the better phrase may be "sharing code libraries." Things like internal user authentication libraries - things which it would make sense to share between multiple games.
That makes more sense. I wish there was a cure for that stuff I am assuming they/we are having issues isolating that stuff?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 03, 2014, 11:41:25 PM
We'll still have a general "Plan Z" discussion forum, and I don't mind folks making posts there to basically say, "Hey, look at what's going on over at our official site!", but to be honest, it's better for them this way in that they can go ahead and get their own user base created and set up.

I agree with all of your post, Tony, but wanted to single this aspect out as awesome. The little updates and discussions for all of the successor projects are neat and useful here, but there really are benefits to the in depth communication being elsewhere :)

The Magisterium ITrial was by far my favorite, simply cause it was a conclusion of the praetorian war. 

I'm one of the few people who was really disappointed by the outcome of "Praetorian Fatigue." I'll agree Primal Earth needed some love, but it felt a very unsatisfying way to end things. I get that their Hamidon is uber in a million ways, but evacuating what few people we could and leaving a world to be overrun just made me feel really disappointed.

If anyone on a successor wants to make my day, slipping in a hint about an alternate timeline where valiant heroes refused to gave up and fought the Hamidon back as a team would win my heart, wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.

But that said, gameplaywise? SO FUN. I only got to try badging it once or twice, but it felt like all of the best parts of the other trials without any of the filler. Sure, some filler to start (good for iXP though!) then bam three bosses, one boss, huge boss.

Tanking Tyrant was suuuch an amazing feeling. There really was nothing else like it :)

I wonder  ... are there plans to include speech in the revamp?

I may be the one person who feels this way, but I prefer it when games don't have speech, so all of the conversation uses my character's actual name.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 03, 2014, 11:42:04 PM
I'm still trying to find time to just start writing again.  I was writing for VO occasionally, had three parts on a lore page for a character of mine.  I really should visit on some other character of mine here perhaps.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 03, 2014, 11:45:51 PM
The Magisterium iTrial was what I would call "Gated Content". In order to participate, not only did you have to be VIP (only subscribers could do incarnate stuff, if I recall correctly) but you had to have Lore and Destiny unlocked. This iTrial was for me, one of the most incredible experiences. It took a truly special league of players to be able to take Cole down without using the lights. For some leagues, even with the lights, he was tough enough, lol.

Wait, wait, wait--you were supposed to finish that thing? I thought that you just started the trial, fought the first two hundred fifty or so guys, and then quit.

Huh. Learn something new every day.

 :) ;) :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 03, 2014, 11:47:48 PM
...(they even say the hamidon is on the way to finish the city off at the end if I recall).

Quote
Upon defeat of Tyrant: (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Magisterium_Trial#Phase_4)

You've ruined everything! You have no comprehension of what you've unleashed on this world... this multiverse!

I had the power to save us all... to fight off the storm on the horizon...

We are undone...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 03, 2014, 11:51:27 PM


Well, in war, who's the good guy?  It's usually just whatever side you were on by default, not who you wanted to fight with but who you were forced to fight for.  To him, we were the bad guys, to primal earth we were the good guys :/.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 04, 2014, 12:04:13 AM
I'd love to know what Matt Miller and some of the former Paragon folks think of all this.  Positrons twitter is silent on the matter.

I do notice that his Twitter self-describes his work not as a Cryptic team member working on STO but as the Ex-Lead Designer of City of Heroes.   :D  So I imagine his heart is with this effort, deep inside anyway.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 04, 2014, 12:05:10 AM
That makes more sense. I wish there was a cure for that stuff I am assuming they/we are having issues isolating that stuff?
If they were isolated, they would be removed - from CoH. This would then deliver less than a game server, and something which was completely unplayable.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 04, 2014, 12:15:03 AM
I wish you great success in grad school! But, having been through it, I know that you can find an hour here and there to play - you'd just have to read faster with the same comprehension. Practice now!

And remember, on your thesis: Pick a topic the professors know next to nothing about. That way, you'll know more than everyone else in the room. They will likely be too busy to read up on the topic as much as you will have. You'll be the only expert in the room.

I'm thinking a thesis on CoHI23 would work out well for you. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 12:16:54 AM
Sales ad:
Those things are so rugged they can get hit by a semi and still stay intact.

Sure, they're uglier than sin, but when you are worried about the next fist-fight between Errmad and Rat-A-Tat, nothing does better than Paragon Motors!

Paragon Motors: Awful car, but cheap to insure!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on September 04, 2014, 12:19:28 AM
I'm thinking a thesis on CoHI23 would work out well for you. :)
Would have to tie it into Medical Informatics.  Maybe something about peds patients?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 04, 2014, 12:21:18 AM
I agree with all of your post, Tony, but wanted to single this aspect out as awesome. The little updates and discussions for all of the successor projects are neat and useful here, but there really are benefits to the in depth communication being elsewhere :)

I'm one of the few people who was really disappointed by the outcome of "Praetorian Fatigue." I'll agree Primal Earth needed some love, but it felt a very unsatisfying way to end things. I get that their Hamidon is uber in a million ways, but evacuating what few people we could and leaving a world to be overrun just made me feel really disappointed.

If anyone on a successor wants to make my day, slipping in a hint about an alternate timeline where valiant heroes refused to gave up and fought the Hamidon back as a team would win my heart, wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.

But that said, gameplaywise? SO FUN. I only got to try badging it once or twice, but it felt like all of the best parts of the other trials without any of the filler. Sure, some filler to start (good for iXP though!) then bam three bosses, one boss, huge boss.

Tanking Tyrant was suuuch an amazing feeling. There really was nothing else like it :)

I may be the one person who feels this way, but I prefer it when games don't have speech, so all of the conversation uses my character's actual name.

Extensive voiceover is probably not a good idea anyway. It's expensive, time-consuming, and much harder to edit. I also never liked hearing somebody else's idea of a voice for my Avatar. It never quite fits.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rexidus on September 04, 2014, 12:21:23 AM
Hello there everyone.  I was a long time City of Heroes player and fan dating from the pre-archetype era before release (ie 1999-2000 ish).  I backed City of Titans as much as I could and continue to be eagerly awaiting the release of that.

So I saw this news today and had to come out to share my joy and wish you guys luck.  I truly want you guys to succeed.  So keep at it guys.  This is a worthy endeavor. :)


Ryoku- aka Golden-Eagle of Pinnacle; former leader of the Alliance of Champions and former prominent member of the Pinnacle RP Congress.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 04, 2014, 12:25:30 AM
If they were isolated, they would be removed - from CoH. This would then deliver less than a game server, and something which was completely unplayable.
At least we could write our own substitute in its place and get the source code(if this is NCsofts only concern) then keep going with the original game code.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 04, 2014, 12:26:10 AM
Would have to tie it into Medical Informatics.  Maybe something about peds patients?

Dude! Medical Informatics, go on with your bad self. Is this Health records or research or CDC kind of related info grouping?

Erm, I mean peds patients. lmao. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Xaphan on September 04, 2014, 12:30:23 AM
Extensive voiceover is probably not a good idea anyway. It's expensive, time-consuming, and much harder to edit. I also never liked hearing somebody else's idea of a voice for my Avatar. It never quite fits.
It also adds an other layer of things that need to be done when making new missions, which means that content creation would take longer. When the project eventually finishes re-creating old content and gets onto the creation of new content, it also makes it harder to change things after lines have been recorded.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 04, 2014, 12:31:18 AM
If it's in a new engine, I think that it's a little silly not to take advantage of said new engine and improve models and textures where appropriate.

I don't mean important stuff like the general look and how the game plays, but inconsequential stuff like the background npc's, textures, stuff like that.. All can be improved to add to the ambience.  Look at the rebuild of Atlas Park that Paragon Studios gave us.  I don't recall -anyone- not loving it when the devs presented it to us. It was -gorgeous-

Sounds can mostly stay as they are, though maybe some can be muted (super speed, targetting drone), more can be added such as a gentle breeze sound or birds in the background.. Maybe kids playing in the park during the day, a faint hum/sizzle from the war walls when you're near them...  Maybe even some weather affects from time to time...

OK, I'm getting carried away now.  My point is though, I don't see any harm in little tweaks to improve then overall game world.

Why don't you download Unreal 4 and join the efforts?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 04, 2014, 12:31:50 AM
At least we could write our own substitute in its place and get the source code(if this is NCsofts only concern) then keep going with the original game code.

I suspect the auth-layer for COH which I gather was really several apps you communicated with that were running at once is not quite as conveniently modular as that. Even if it was, they probably wouldn't want to risk missing something. It's a bummer though. Getting portions of the source would got a long way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 12:33:21 AM
PLEASE, PLEASE bear in mind, the updates are hot and heavy at this time and sometimes don't quite play well with others.

If you're going to take this strategy, pick a release and keep all the new folks on it until you move everyone forward.  We're having a  time of it and we'vre a little more used to the release rates. :)

At the moment I'm stable on 4.0.2. Aside from content, I haven't had a real reason to update past that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 04, 2014, 12:37:39 AM
At the moment I'm stable on 4.0.2. Aside from content, I haven't had a real reason to update past that.

Ack. You've missed a LOT of improvements. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 12:54:25 AM
Extensive voiceover is probably not a good idea anyway. It's expensive, time-consuming, and much harder to edit. I also never liked hearing somebody else's idea of a voice for my Avatar. It never quite fits.

Personally... While Voices are neat. I'm against using extensive voice work in an MMO. It's time consuming, it can be expensive, and it drastically limits your ability to modify content, or push new content.
A player will almost never feel quite right having some random voice coming from their character, which would be immersion shattering in a game like City of Heroes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cobra Man on September 04, 2014, 01:02:22 AM
Personally... While Voices are neat. I'm against using extensive voice work in an MMO. It's time consuming, it can be expensive, and it drastically limits your ability to modify content, or push new content.
A player will almost never feel quite right having some random voice coming from their character, which would be immersion shattering in a game like City of Heroes.

I was actually meaning NPC's, signature characters, AV's etc - everything except our own characters.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 04, 2014, 01:21:07 AM
The Secret World has done an amazing job utilizing voice work into an MMO.  Your character never speaks. Cutscenes are always observing conversations between NPCs or from an NPC to you, not you speaking back. 
 
It does bring the world to life in a way that MMOs could use to attract the younger generation of players. That being said, it should be used sparingly, and a mix of voice and text is the best approach, in my opinion.
 
So for example:
 
NPC 1 (V.O.): "So if the Trolls aren't put down fast, Superadine is going to flood the streets. I don't even want to imagine what Skyway City will look like after that happens. Are you in?"
 
Your character:  select one of the following text box responses
   [I'm in. Let's move.]
 X[I agree, but I have something I have to first.  I'll be back, I promise]
   [I'm sorry, but this mission isn't for me. Good luck and godspeed.]
x- represents your selection
 
NPC 1: (V.O.) "OK, but please don't take too long. Those shipments could start hitting the streets any time now."


 
 
Also, @Irish Girl:  You are amazing. That work you've done is incredible.  Not only does it REALLY feel like CoH, it looks even better! I'll be in touch to help once you settle on a way to contact you and begin organizing.  I'll be bringing the CS6 suite and my own UE4 to the cause. :-)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Luna Eclypse on September 04, 2014, 01:41:39 AM
Took me a couple days to really process everything that was just revealed here but, oh goodness... this fills me with so much excitement and optimism.  ;D

That's about all I can say, the potential positive outcome to all of this is so monumental. I'm mostly speechless.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 04, 2014, 01:45:16 AM
Speaking of security, another thing they may want to look into should they get the game, update the password system for it.  Not allowing the use of special characters is a very very big problem, as even just adding any of @#$%! for example could greatly increase the passwords strength, and reduce the length one has to make a password to really make it secure.

That is a myth pass phrases are the real security the special characters makes it way easier to hack because of the way computer algorithms work it is all math and computers are really good at math

This explains it is simple terms

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=imgs.xkcd.com%2Fcomics%2Fpassword_strength.png)

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 04, 2014, 01:53:45 AM
Paragon Motors: Awful car, but cheap to insure!

Paragon Motors, trusted to be thrown by grav control since 2004
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 04, 2014, 01:58:20 AM
Paragon Motors, trusted to be thrown by grav control since 2004

Do not worry you have time to dodge because it takes them 10 years to throw the stupid car  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cobra Man on September 04, 2014, 01:58:55 AM
The Secret World has done an amazing job utilizing voice work into an MMO.  Your character never speaks. Cutscenes are always observing conversations between NPCs or from an NPC to you, not you speaking back. 
 
It does bring the world to life in a way that MMOs could use to attract the younger generation of players. That being said, it should be used sparingly, and a mix of voice and text is the best approach, in my opinion.
 
So for example:
 
NPC 1 (V.O.): "So if the Trolls aren't put down fast, Superadine is going to flood the streets. I don't even want to imagine what Skyway City will look like after that happens. Are you in?"
 
Your character:  select one of the following text box responses
   [I'm in. Let's move.]
 X[I agree, but I have something I have to first.  I'll be back, I promise]
   [I'm sorry, but this mission isn't for me. Good luck and godspeed.]
x- represents your selection
 
NPC 1: (V.O.) "OK, but please don't take too long. Those shipments could start hitting the streets any time now."


 
 
Also, @Irish Girl:  You are amazing. That work you've done is incredible.  Not only does it REALLY feel like CoH, it looks even better! I'll be in touch to help once you settle on a way to contact you and begin organizing.  I'll be bringing the CS6 suite and my own UE4 to the cause. :-)

Pretty much this :)

The Secret World was just about the only game that I could bring myself to play after CoH was closed.

The immersive nature of that game was helped immeasurably by the use of speech integrated NPC's.

I would certainly recommend that any revamp of CoH uses speech.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ObsidianPhoenix76 on September 04, 2014, 02:05:04 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyn_YuMLSNc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyn_YuMLSNc)

Almost there!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on September 04, 2014, 02:07:13 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyn_YuMLSNc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyn_YuMLSNc)

Almost there!

I literally watched that exact video earlier today. It made me cry, it was so beautifully done!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 02:07:43 AM
By the way...  A note to anyone who has/will PM me...
Forgive me if I don't respond right away. I'll try to at least respond to PM's before the day's out.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: gypsyav on September 04, 2014, 02:22:19 AM
I may be the one person who feels this way, but I prefer it when games don't have speech, so all of the conversation uses my character's actual name.

Nope, you're not the only one. I have trouble focusing on audible communications and just end up feeling lost in games with speech.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 04, 2014, 02:22:53 AM
Downloading the UnReal 4 client now.

The version is the newest one but I assume you can rollback. I did not see options to get a different one.

I did get word from Codewalker that he is fine with porting Icon over to UnReal 4. Now to figure out how to do all this stuff!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 04, 2014, 02:23:41 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyn_YuMLSNc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyn_YuMLSNc)

Almost there!

Darn it all, I have to stop watching those CoH videos (That one, the "City of Heroes Remains", the original one from
Angry Angels, and of course anything from SamuraiKo).  Now I have to type through watery eyes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 04, 2014, 02:25:35 AM
I literally watched that exact video earlier today. It made me cry, it was so beautifully done!
   totally agreed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 04, 2014, 02:25:43 AM
Nope, you're not the only one. I have trouble focusing on audible communications and just end up feeling lost in games with speech.

I play most MMO's with out sound now I use to rock my kids to sleep in one arm while playing DAOC and it was hard to do with headsets back then they did not have near the wirless options they do now and it was a lot more back then on the ones they did. I just started playing with the sound off so when i transition games I was just use to playing with no sound so I just turn it off and play music.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 04, 2014, 02:29:46 AM
I play most MMO's with out sound now I use to rock my kids to sleep in one arm while playing DAOC and it was hard to do with headsets back then they did not have near the wirless options they do now and it was a lot more back then on the ones they did. I just started playing with the sound off so when i transition games I was just use to playing with no sound so I just turn it off and play music.

I think that's why it's always best to use a mix.  Players who prefer no dialogue should get the option for subtitles or text boxes, and players who prefer dialogue get the option for dialogue alongside the others.
 
 
The key is to keep a minimal addition to the game that adds a level or realism and professionalism to help games compete with more elaborate titles and systems, and bring the world more "to life" without taking away from anything. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 04, 2014, 02:32:41 AM
Aaaand for the  double:
 
 
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
 
I will gladly get a second mortgage if it meant we could somehow get Bio Armor online if CoH goes back up. 
 
 
I mean Bio Armor was just so...pretty...and good...and pretty. 
 
 
Did I mention how pretty it was?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 04, 2014, 02:33:29 AM
 already thinking of how mind-blowing it would be, and on top of that, the chance to re-unite with some dear friends from the game again.....man, 2 nites in a row, tearing-up...that's not "good form" for a Blaster,lol :)  All Blessings upon all those who have been laboring so hard to bring this about.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 04, 2014, 02:35:16 AM
that's not "good form" for a Blaster,lol :)

I seem to remember a Blaster being thought of as good as long as they didn't die every few seconds, run from the tank when they had aggro, and didn't kill the team by pulling a room the tank wasn't expecting. So, from where I'm standing, you're doing a fine job :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: gypsyav on September 04, 2014, 02:40:12 AM
I just thought of another problem with speech. Suppose you want to update something down the road. You have the following choices:

It's different in a game that isn't going to be seeing a lot of updates but I wouldn't want theme to be held up over concerns like this.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 04, 2014, 02:42:17 AM
I seem to remember a Blaster being thought of as good as long as they didn't die every few seconds, run from the tank when they had aggro, and didn't kill the team by pulling a room the tank wasn't expecting. So, from where I'm standing, you're doing a fine job :)
a Blaster that..that..doesn't die ?   no such critter,lol ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Phaetan on September 04, 2014, 02:46:49 AM
I don't know about that.  Erkia Enriche (Water/Mental Blaster) was pretty sturdy, even coping with being Goldside.

I just wish I'd gotten more time to play with her before shutdown, as it was a really fun character, both concept and power-wise.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 04, 2014, 02:51:11 AM
I just thought of another problem with speech. Suppose you want to update something down the road. You have the following choices:
  • You try to hire the original voice actor to voice the new content
  • You hire a new actor to redo all the content so the voice is consistent throughout the game
  • You hire a new actor for the new content and hope the change in voices doesn't break immersion for people
  • New content gets no voice overs

It's different in a game that isn't going to be seeing a lot of updates but I wouldn't want theme to be held up over concerns like this.

swtor broke the bank on voice overs and now hasnt had any class story released since the start of the game. it is very limited as to what content they can add.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Phaetan on September 04, 2014, 02:52:29 AM
Another minor point about voiceovers is that it isn't terribly friendly for international players or the hearing-impaired.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shifter on September 04, 2014, 02:56:50 AM
Ok, so...by special request. New pictures of REALLY unpolished stuff.
Warning: Seriously under construction.

Very cool. Thanks for passing those along : )
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 04, 2014, 02:56:59 AM
Another minor point about voiceovers is that it isn't terribly friendly for international players or the hearing-impaired.

    there are aspects of voice-over that I think can be very fun . Perhaps if live voice-actors were added who would really communicate and keep it fresh, people would like it more ?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cobra Man on September 04, 2014, 02:59:57 AM
Another minor point about voiceovers is that it isn't terribly friendly for international players or the hearing-impaired.

The easy fix is to have an option for subtitles that cab be turned on/off.

No problem.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ObsidianPhoenix76 on September 04, 2014, 03:00:58 AM
Darn it all, I have to stop watching those CoH videos (That one, the "City of Heroes Remains", the original one from
Angry Angels, and of course anything from SamuraiKo).  Now I have to type through watery eyes.

Ok then I will not post my farewell video...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 04, 2014, 03:02:07 AM

   I know the feeling,mate :) but noooo, please post video :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Phaetan on September 04, 2014, 03:03:19 AM
Not to be rude, hopelives, but that  completely ignores the point I'd brought up.  And live speech would be even more unhelpful for them, as they couldn't even count on accurate subtitles/translations on the fly.

Plus the sheer scale of the voicework for something with the amount of content as CoH would be daunting.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 04, 2014, 03:04:57 AM
Downloading the UnReal 4 client now.

The version is the newest one but I assume you can rollback. I did not see options to get a different one.

I did get word from Codewalker that he is fine with porting Icon over to UnReal 4. Now to figure out how to do all this stuff!

If it were Node.js, it would be easy. But we can't all live in divine providence : D

Actually I'm really psyched about UE4 and embarrassed at myself for not realizing how big of a deal it was while moping over COH's apparent death. 19 bucks for anybody? It's a game changer. Still not as painless as Node.js is on the install equation mind you but nothing is perfect.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ObsidianPhoenix76 on September 04, 2014, 03:06:14 AM
   I know the feeling,mate :) but noooo, please post video :)

Don't say I did not warn you....

While not a professional as others, I thought I did ok with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAFUpmFMaIY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAFUpmFMaIY)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Talon Blue on September 04, 2014, 03:06:34 AM
I am so tempted to fire up Mids and start planning. I'm holding back to be safe and not get caught up by expectation. But after being away from CoH for so long, I really hope the deal goes through.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 04, 2014, 03:06:50 AM
Not to be rude, hopelives, but that  completely ignores the point I'd brought up.  And live speech would be even more unhelpful for them, as they couldn't even count on accurate subtitles/translations on the fly.

Plus the sheer scale of the voicework for something with the amount of content as CoH would be daunting.
i do understand your point and that not everyone would be able to hear the voice-actors, but that's  where your work-a-round ideas would work great for then, no ?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 04, 2014, 03:14:41 AM
Pretty much this :)

The Secret World was just about the only game that I could bring myself to play after CoH was closed.

The immersive nature of that game was helped immeasurably by the use of speech integrated NPC's.

I would certainly recommend that any revamp of CoH uses speech.

I stopped playing but I did love that about TSW and that experience vs what SWTOR was reporting on the development side of it inform many of my opinions on the matter. But you do have to be careful even with that precaution. MMO might go decades. Voice actors get hit by buses and heart attacks. You only get so many opportunities to record potential flashbacks with Aunt May and nobody ever has pre-emptive money to invest.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 04, 2014, 03:16:36 AM
Don't say I did not warn you....

While not a professional as others, I thought I did ok with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAFUpmFMaIY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAFUpmFMaIY)
i really do understand, and am sorry for your loss. CoH was the last  game, the last mmo that my wife and I played before she passed on,and we both loved it. So I do understand how hard it is to go on. Bless You,Mate,always.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 04, 2014, 03:26:34 AM
a Blaster that..that..doesn't die ?   no such critter,lol ;)

You need to hang out with me.. my Blasters do not die constantly...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on September 04, 2014, 03:35:18 AM
You need to hang out with me.. my Blasters do not die constantly...

Water/dark and Archery/mm were pretty big murder-machines.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 04, 2014, 03:37:50 AM
You need to hang out with me.. my Blasters do not die constantly...

My first toon was a Defender that I played as a "Fake Blaster/Fake Healer" that did die constantly. I would imagine that it took me about eighteen times the normal XP to finally make it to 50. When I finally made a real blaster, it died just as often. . .


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 04, 2014, 03:41:30 AM

 well, time for me to sleep. Stay strong,friends. I wish you all the best of nights :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 04, 2014, 04:00:35 AM
Ok guys, recall, this is still still very much tentative, so I would not recommend buying anything just yet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 04, 2014, 04:06:01 AM
Water/dark and Archery/mm were pretty big murder-machines.

My elec/elec/elec blaster had a hard time facing enemies able to do much more than gently poke her - immensely satisfying.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 04, 2014, 04:08:35 AM
Ok guys, recall, this is still still very much tentative, so I would not recommend buying anything just yet.

Well, what was Irish_Girl going to do with Atlas Park Revival before this deal was put on the table with NCSoft?    ;)   Don't worry, Downix, it's only $19.00 US.  I doubt many of us are planning on getting a bunch of updates or anything at this point.  And $19.00, that's barely over a month's cost for a CoX sub.  Don't take it as a pressure thing where you guys suddenly have to make NCSoft ink a deal.  We know it's still unlikely it will all really happen.  Think of it as free advertising for Unreal 4, and think of us as a bunch of CoX players antsy to get back in touch with our game however we can.   We're all just noodling around at this point.  Worst case, maybe you will someday get a few free donations to the UE4 cause for CoT.   :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 04, 2014, 04:09:03 AM
Don't say I did not warn you....

While not a professional as others, I thought I did ok with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAFUpmFMaIY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAFUpmFMaIY)
Amazing stuff.   As a person who got emotionally attached to characters, your Crystal character must have meant the world to you.  Got me all choked up thinking about you and your daughter.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 04, 2014, 04:35:56 AM
All talk aside, thank you guys for the work you've done. Seriously, it's just beyond belief. I'm 39. I played Space Invaders on an Atari 800 tape drive. I wrote for Game Informer magazine for a few years. I write code now. I know how this stuff usually goes as a gamer, a developer, and somebody who got a front row seat to much of the gaming industry for a few years just as the mega-publishers were really starting to assert themselves as IP-strip-mining douchebags.

Whether it pans out or not, I have never seen anything like this happen in my life. I was finally able to watch the Q&A video with Matt Miller about COH's end from way back because of your efforts (it was too soul-crushing before now). And just in case you don't recall, I think you should all be reminded of this particular MM quote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYBzs5P3eBs

28:34

Quote
"...we've had discussions you know, like the designers the programmers and I, you know, who've all found other jobs and everything and we're like, could you imagine what would happen if they actually did succeed? In like getting City of Heroes back and like could you imagine them looking through our code trying to figure out exactly what made this game work? And everyone's like, 'That could never happen. They would... they'd be lost...'"

I'm pretty sure that guy loved this fanbase but he still underestimated it. I did too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 04, 2014, 04:36:55 AM
Ok guys, recall, this is still still very much tentative, so I would not recommend buying anything just yet.

Yet this is still more fun then logging into Diablo III trying to pass the time

How sad is that
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Arc X on September 04, 2014, 04:44:53 AM
I've only read to page 32 so far and seeing Alien One post about how Deschs guide to the Softcap helped him. It was Deschs guide that also helped me immensely but also reading Alien One, Sailboat, THB and Arcanavilles post on the CoH forums. I still have a copy of Arcanas MA/SR Mids build that was posted, was using it compare my build which didn't have all those purples she had.
   Anyways I just wanted to say Thank You to them for all the great information they shared on the CoH forums.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 04, 2014, 04:45:39 AM
I was finally able to watch the Q&A video with Matt Miller about COH's end from way back because of your efforts (it was too soul-crushing before now). And just in case you don't recall, I think you should all be reminded of this particular MM quote:

That quote always makes me gigglecackle like a mad scientist uncontrollably.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 04, 2014, 04:49:46 AM
Why don't you download Unreal 4 and join the efforts?

Oh I've considered it. For the moment though, my work are keeping me busy studying for Microsoft certification, and that's taking up most of my free time. :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Biz on September 04, 2014, 04:56:41 AM
Would it be possible to do something similar to what was done with Ironwolf and the New Efforts thread? Where there is relevant info posted/added to the initial post? Maybe this could also be the questions answered section? Just to avoid the drama that occurred in the New Efforts thread where people were saying "OFF TOPIC/ HATE SIFTING THRU NONSENSE / BARK BARK BARK".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Spellcaster Hana on September 04, 2014, 04:59:09 AM
Ok, so...by special request. New pictures of REALLY unpolished stuff.
Warning: Seriously under construction.
Images will be hidden under spoiler tags, so Agge doesn't smack me with her mod hat.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t31.0-8/10644522_329455817214641_6698756546108573220_o.jpg)

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://scontent-a-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/t31.0-8/10543567_329455773881312_5889642776631709311_o.jpg)
The plaza of Steel Canyon's University.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/t31.0-8/10648348_329455763881313_9190186255596272964_o.jpg)
The first shot of Independence Port.
In this picture, you might be able to see the hintings of one of my favorite changes that I'm making.
If you're flying along, and you look out past the War Walls...You can see the rest of Paragon City in the distance.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/t31.0-8/10580708_329455787214644_2155914609070580591_o.jpg)
Another shot of I.P. a tad closer to the bridge.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t31.0-8/10669372_329455810547975_2418838020023202468_o.jpg)
I have no idea where this is. I think it's from a different game. /sarcasm

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t31.0-8/10669040_329455807214642_4537574222062157673_o.jpg)
This picture...is Paragon City from above. It should have the War Walls for just about all of the cities zones. Only Atlas Park, Independance Port, and Founders Falls have any of the zone detail showing in this image however.

Holy fudge! These looks awesome! Now I really want to play CoX again...
I know I shouldn't keep my hopes up until a decision has been made, but you have just given me more hope not to give up!  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 04, 2014, 05:01:40 AM
I wonder  ... are there plans to include speech in the revamp?

From someone who plays EQ2...trust me, it's not as awesome as you expect. Occasionally kinda cool, like the Sarnak newbie quests, but more often annoying, glitchy, and repetitive.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 04, 2014, 05:04:46 AM
ive definitely tempered my enthusiasm.. I havent looked at Mids for a whole two days..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remidi on September 04, 2014, 06:32:06 AM
I played Space Invaders on an Atari 800 tape drive.

My first computer game was Pong.  Yes, I'm that darned old.  But I still remember that rush from knowing that the thing on the screen was moving because *I* told it to.  I think that's why I love CoH so much.  No other game has captured that pure feeling of being in control of my own computer universe.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mental Minister on September 04, 2014, 06:36:44 AM
Holy fudge! These looks awesome! Now I really want to play CoX again...

You said it after seeing these pics I want to hit the Super Speed and rip through Paragon
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amrobinson on September 04, 2014, 06:39:43 AM
It suddenly occurs to me, have I stopped and said "thank you" to all of the wonderful people who have done so much to bring back our beloved City of Heroes?

The only MMO I really have cared to play?

Hmm....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amrobinson on September 04, 2014, 06:40:35 AM
THANK YOU ONE AND ALL!!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 04, 2014, 06:41:23 AM
My first computer game was Pong.  Yes, I'm that darned old.  But I still remember that rush from knowing that the thing on the screen was moving because *I* told it to.  I think that's why I love CoH so much.  No other game has captured that pure feeling of being in control of my own computer universe.

I'd add no other MMO has given me the feeling of character ownership.  Closest thing to a paper and pencil RPG vibe Ive found in an MMO.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 04, 2014, 07:08:04 AM
Sooooo...

I have to put this disclaimer in: I'm not a part of the downix licensing team, or for that matter a part of any of the CoH2.0 dev teams.  So I'm most definitely not speaking for any of them nor claiming any special insider knowledge on that particular score.  I have read the thread, and 850 posts and a bunch of emails telling me to read 850 posts, so I thought I would share my thoughts, mostly because this development is interesting and partially because I haven't posted a wall of text about City of Heroes in a couple of years.  So, partially responding to whatever I remember from the thread, and partially responding to questions people have asked me out of band:

1.  I'm sure downix has his reasons, but I'm not sure announcing a deal in the works to us was the best move prior to the deal actually being finalized.  Go ahead shoot me now.  Its energizing for the community, and that's great, but barring some special circumstance I'm unaware of, in all honestly I believe we can do nothing to help them, and we could always accidentally create a circumstance that hurts them, and I would rather they succeed than know about them trying.  Mostly, I'm just saying this because more than one person has asked me.  But I recognize the position they were in, and I'm not explicitly going to knock the decision.  I just hope it all works out.

2.  With MWM and H&V and whatever is behind door number [redacted], does this matter?  Heck yes it matters.  For me, I think if they succeed, the licensed engine could be the bridge between the original game and the successor games not necessarily in the way I think many others are thinking: somehow making characters there and eventually moving them to the successor game(s).  I think the great thing about a licensed I23 City of Heroes is that it could be the community builder that preserves and grows the community and potential playerbase for any successor games that are almost certainly still years away.  This community has remained surprisingly (to me) still active, if significantly muted, over the time since shutdown.  But an actual playable game would be a useful anchor to the CoH community.  It would be a sign of success we could all point to.  It could be a way to evangelize the gameplay and player community we all miss and want back.  And it could help bring success to 2.0 projects by priming a generation of potential customers and players.

3a.  Without the source code, are we crippled in terms of adding or altering content?  Not necessarily.  The game content was not explicitly "programmed" into the game engine, it resided in database files that its no secret people have been decoding and reverse engineering since the days of Iakona (and me, and Codewalker, and lots of others).  It is possible, if difficult, to add things like power sets to the game without the explicit source code.  It might require some hacks to make work, but nothing outside the wheelhouse of, say, Icon's developers.  When Codewalker threatens to keep nerfing regen in I24, that's not just possible, but way too easy for him.  Without the appropriate dev tools, some things would be a lot harder than others - like say making those damn escort critters actually follow your ass correctly - but nothing's impossible, even without source.  Difficult, possibly prohibitively so in some cases, but anything that only involves data (geography, entity definitions, power definitions, basic mission design) is probably at least somewhat modifiable without source.

3b.  Why is source off the table?  Almost certainly IP issues.  High risk zero reward for NCSoft.

4.  Why license the engine and the IP, but not the character data?  Its possible NCSoft doesn't want to open a legal can of worms.  Legally, I believe they have the right to relicense that data due to the provisions of the EULA, but what if some players do not want us to have their character data?  Its possible.  They may not have a legal leg to stand on, but its probably not worth it for NCSoft to take that risk.  And while I don't think this is true, if the only copies NCSoft currently has of the character data are in backup files that also contain other stuff, like say chat logs?  They may not want to go anywhere near the stuff, or take the one in a hundred chance that some operator somewhere accidentally releases the wrong thing to a third party.

5.  Is there a conflict of interest in having MWM people form an entity to control the licensing of CoH IP?  I certainly can't speak for them, but I don't think that's necessarily true.  The question is what the mission statement of that entity becomes, if they succeed.  If their up-front mission statement is to in effect create a sort of RAND licensing model for allowing all reasonable projects that want to incorporate that material access to it, and those terms are explicitly and publicly stated, I don't see a problem.  Part of that mission statement would be a completely hands-off approach to how any downstream project eventually forks that material into their own vision for their own game.  If they can do that, I don't see a problem.

I should also point out that alternatively, there's no explicit requirement to "play fair" as it were.  Its great if they choose to do so, and they seem (from what I've read) to want to go in that direction.  But worrying about whether they can live up to that seems highly premature before they actually reach a deal and before they actually announce the specifics of how they intend to manage the property if they acquire it.  I would say if they manage to pull this off, they are entitled to more than a little latitude in how they decide to manage its use.  It sounds like a tremendous amount of effort sustained over a long period of time.  If they succeed, as far as I'm concerned they've earned the right to handle that part any way they want.

6.  Should we be worried the game client won't work by the time they get access to the game?  Well, on the one hand the game client did work in Win7x64, and I think I tested it in Win8 beta successfully.  Win9 might break it, but if it does it will likely be in the OpenGL support, which might be tweakable to make it work regardless.  Personally I don't think this is as big a deal as downix suggests.

Also, Windows 8 sucks.  Even Microsoft is backpedaling from it faster than a bear with an umbrella at the circus.

7.  About that game server.  If they get it, I wish them luck making it work.  Its not impossible, of course, but I know a little something about how the game servers worked, and without saying something that will get me banned from the ... oh wait, I forgot, I'm not rambling on the game forums this time.  Because I'm not affiliated with any group or team, I can't get anyone in trouble but myself here, so I'll just say for those speculating, no, the game server wasn't a bunch of Linux boxes or anything like that: it was Windows based.  It had several moving parts.  It was clunky.  When someone decided to herd up all of Crey's Folly and nuke it and crashed the entire Freedom server, someone was probably RDPing into something and restarting something.  Like manually.  Running CoH servers on a large scale (i.e. enough players to run a Magisterium or more) is not just about spinning up some AWS instances and running the installer.  Its about loading the right hamsters in the right wheels next to the right water bottles and then cleaning their cages periodically while making sure they don't fall asleep or eat each other.

And they get hungry.

8.  Am I concerned MWM solicited Kickstarter money when they were working to try to license CoH?  Not at all.  This was, and still is a long shot.  I funded the Kickstarter knowing that many Kickstarter developments fail, that even if it succeeded in shipping a game it might not be a game I ultimately wanted to play, that no matter what happened it would be years before I saw final results, and knowing that there were other things in motion that might or might not preempt that work.  I don't know anything more today than I did when I funded the Kickstarter, and I don't honestly believe anyone else really does either. 

9.  My vision isn't trite.   :P

10.  Power Arc X: when the servers come back on, come see me for those purples.

11.  Pherdnut: I spent over six months getting to about 70% awareness of how the animation system worked and how it interacted with the combat engine when the game was still alive, circa 2007ish.  At that time, I probably knew the details as well as anyone.  It almost melted my brain.  Every other question I asked BaB was "Why?  Why?  WHY???"  And he'd just shrug.  The game implementation is like that, only more of your brain leaks out of your ears.  That's why Codewalker is the only player I fear.  He likes it.  That's Cthulhu kinds of wrong.

12.  Irish_Girl: I'm happy to see all that work on glintercept is still being used.

13.  Nyx:  http://www.octanecreative.com/ducttape/duckvsduct.html

14.  TonyV:  notice I posted the off-topic stuff in a post with a ton of on-topic stuff.  I still remember my forum-jitsu.

-A
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 07:18:01 AM
That quote always makes me gigglecackle like a mad scientist uncontrollably.

That's because you're (no offense) totally nuts, C.W.
Oh, and from what I've heard...you probably know more about CoHs code than the Paragon devs did.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 04, 2014, 07:18:49 AM
I just asked someone about this whole thing as well and they were concerned with it.  They fear that should this go through NCSoft will just use the licsence to shut CoT down when it comes out.  So whats really happening to the IP itself?  We know they are licensing the binary of the game engine but what about the IP.  Who's licensing the IP itself, the company that buys the IP entirely or NCSoft?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 04, 2014, 07:26:34 AM
If it were Node.js, it would be easy. But we can't all live in divine providence : D

Actually I'm really psyched about UE4 and embarrassed at myself for not realizing how big of a deal it was while moping over COH's apparent death. 19 bucks for anybody? It's a game changer. Still not as painless as Node.js is on the install equation mind you but nothing is perfect.

I feel the same way. To the point that I almost want to wait for CoH 1.5 and not play CoHI23 at all.

Like that would ever happen. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 04, 2014, 07:34:34 AM
Whether it pans out or not, I have never seen anything like this happen in my life. I was finally able to watch the Q&A video with Matt Miller about COH's end from way back because of your efforts (it was too soul-crushing before now). And just in case you don't recall, I think you should all be reminded of this particular MM quote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYBzs5P3eBs

28:34

I'm pretty sure that guy loved this fanbase but he still underestimated it. I did too.

That quote from Matt makes me think of a developer I used to know. He put a time bomb in some of the old code just in case he ever got layed off. He had to reset it every month or so to stop it from going off.
He always thought no one would ever be able to find it or determine what it did.

I got the axe a couple months after he told me so I never found out if anything ever happened from it. Then again, the company did go under just a little while after that... hmmmm.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 07:36:12 AM
When Codewalker threatens to keep nerfing regen in I24, that's not just possible, but way too easy for him.
That's because CW is scary.

Why is source off the table?  Almost certainly IP issues.  High risk zero reward for NCSoft.
I believe it's because pieces of the code base are shared between City of Heroes, and NCSofts other games. They don't want to give away code they actively use.

Also, Windows 8 sucks.  Even Microsoft is backpedaling from it faster than a bear with an umbrella at the circus.
No comment. (-whispers- Sucks, SO much.)

7.  About that game server.  If they get it, I wish them luck making it work.
Yeah...Somehow that sounds about right...

It almost melted my brain.  Every other question I asked BaB was "Why?  Why?  WHY???"  And he'd just shrug.  The game implementation is like that, only more of your brain leaks out of your ears.
No small part of the reason some of us are jumping at the excuse to move to a new engine...

That's why Codewalker is the only player I fear.  He likes it.  That's Cthulhu kinds of wrong.
See above. Codewalker is crazy. Also, scary. Crazy scary.

Irish_Girl: I'm happy to see all that work on glintercept is still being used.
I've made quite frequent, and extensive use of it so far.

TonyV:  notice I posted the off-topic stuff in a post with a ton of on-topic stuff.  I still remember my forum-jitsu.[/quotes] So far he's been nice enough not to throw anything at me for sliding off topic at times. Maybe he just didn't notice. -ninja-


I just hope it all works out.
So do we all. So do we all...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 04, 2014, 07:36:41 AM
That quote from Matt makes me think of a developer I used to know. He put a time bomb in some of the old code just in case he ever got layed off. He had to reset it every month or so to stop it from going off.
He always thought no one would ever be able to find it or determine what it did.

I got the axe a couple months after he told me so I never found out if anything ever happened from it. Then again, the company did go under just a little while after that... hmmmm.

What an idiot.  That would be classed as industrial sabotage. People have gone to prison for that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 04, 2014, 07:40:33 AM
What an idiot.  That would be classed as industrial sabotage. People have gone to prison for that.

Programmers are known for their hubris.  Big time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 04, 2014, 07:41:26 AM
Programmers are known for their hubris.  Big time.

Only a very small number of us!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 04, 2014, 07:44:39 AM
Only a very small number of us!

Almost every information security expert I met very noticeably thinks otherwise.  I still see very stupid password systems out there in place on very modern and very new websites and i'm left utterly facepalming for it.  Then there are those who try to make encryption, and the horror stories of how easily said programmer-made encryption gets utterly busted since it wasn't made by professional cryptographers.  The NISTS are out there for a reason.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 07:47:11 AM
Ok guys, recall, this is still still very much tentative, so I would not recommend buying anything just yet.

I've gotta re-iterate this as well. There's still no guarantees. Don't start spending a bunch of money on stuff just yet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 04, 2014, 07:52:50 AM
What an idiot.  That would be classed as industrial sabotage. People have gone to prison for that.

I absolutely agree, but this was back in the late 90s. No security experts around. Heck, our server room at the time was a group of about 30 NT machines linked together.

IT students thought a great way of getting ahead in the business was to hack into something big, get caught, do some jail time, get recruited upon release.
And folks, that is true. Not only did people think that way, some actually pulled it off.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 04, 2014, 07:55:05 AM
Programmers are known for their hubris.  Big time.

Yep. None of them saw the real potential that I knew. Control of the world in two short words, IT Union.

Want to ship our jobs oversees? Ok... where's your data again?
Oh, we can keep our jobs. Let's talk about a raise.

I really should have played more villains. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 04, 2014, 07:58:17 AM
I absolutely agree, but this was back in the late 90s. No security experts around. Heck, our server room at the time was a group of about 30 NT machines linked together.

IT students thought a great way of getting ahead in the business was to hack into something big, get caught, do some jail time, get recruited upon release.
And folks, that is true. Not only did people think that way, some actually pulled it off.

Of course, these days you get a criminal record, and then bet barred from ever holding any reasonable paying job for your entire life unless you get lucky somehow.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 04, 2014, 08:03:40 AM
Of course, these days you get a criminal record, and then bet barred from ever holding any reasonable paying job for your entire life unless you get lucky somehow.

Yep. Barred by the same people who used stunts like that to get into the industry in the first place. :)


OH, I never actually said this, but thanks to all of you who have worked so diligently on this. Those who have gone before and failed and to the new crew who is coming closer than many of us thought possible.

Not to be sacrilegious, but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2SkqaCO9c4

And finally, just thinking back on all of this Task Force Hail Mary stuff over the years. One thing keeps rolling over and over in my mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib43Lfdivdw
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 04, 2014, 08:10:34 AM
Yep. Barred by the same people who used stunts like that to get into the industry in the first place. :)

This makes me want to link to a Youtube clip from Hackers - the part where the villain on a skateboard rides by holding onto the car and grabs up the disk without stopping.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 04, 2014, 08:15:21 AM
That quote from Matt makes me think of a developer I used to know. He put a time bomb in some of the old code just in case he ever got layed off. He had to reset it every month or so to stop it from going off.
He always thought no one would ever be able to find it or determine what it did.

Not that you necessarily were implying this, but that wasn't what Matt was referring to.  He was referring to the fact that half the time the programmers were altering the code, they didn't always know why previous developers did what they did.  Then the next guy would make changes, wondering just what the heck that guy was thinking when he did what he did.  To understand the codebase, you didn't need to just be a programmer, you needed to be an archaeologist.

Back around 2010ish, I believe, the players started to post about yet another one of those crazy conspiracy theories about how the game rewards were rigged in a particular way.  Except I started to get a weird jibe about this one, and started following the discussion carefully.  Based on the tests the players were posting, there was no way random chance could have accounted for their observations, all but eliminating observer bias.  So I began collecting my own data and adding it to the data being posted, and started talking to pohsyb about those observations, emphasizing that in my opinion, this particular problem (rewards sometimes being given in nearly identical amounts in similar ways in multiple runs of the same mission) was not just another "accuracy is nerfed" threads.  He decided to look, and discovered that deep within the code of the reward system one of the developers had written their own random number generator rather than use the standard rand().

Why, why, WHY?  Who knows.  But they did, and it was totally broken, and under certain circumstances could generate "random" results so bad they essentially made certain mission rewards predictable.  Which, in an MMO played by dozens or hundreds of people at a time, is a *really* bad rand.

Now imagine you have ten years of that lurking around, mixed in with code written back when 8 gigs of ram was a really big server and bit-masking was the official Cryptic Studios sport.

You know how you can spot the Cryptic/Paragon developer in a crowd?  Yell "physics engine" and see which one ducks.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 08:25:36 AM
-facepalms- That's...special, and sadly...Unsurprising.

I didn't know you were so knowledgeable about CoH's code base, Arcana.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 04, 2014, 08:30:13 AM
That story was... impressive. It really is one of those moments where a part of me goes "how did CoH never just randomly implode from someone walking backwards, to the left, and then hopping twice?"

Thanks for sharing it :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on September 04, 2014, 08:37:29 AM
I just thought of another problem with speech. Suppose you want to update something down the road. You have the following choices:
  • You try to hire the original voice actor to voice the new content
  • You hire a new actor to redo all the content so the voice is consistent throughout the game
  • You hire a new actor for the new content and hope the change in voices doesn't break immersion for people
  • New content gets no voice overs

It's different in a game that isn't going to be seeing a lot of updates but I wouldn't want theme to be held up over concerns like this.
Option five: Employ speech synthesis.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 08:41:21 AM
That story was... impressive. It really is one of those moments where a part of me goes "how did CoH never just randomly implode from someone walking backwards, to the left, and then hopping twice?"

Because Paragon Studios worked very, very hard to keep things in a state of barely-falling-apart.
Things like that explain why occasionally...a server or two would just suddenly stop running. Used to joke that an intern kept tripping over power cords.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 04, 2014, 08:41:51 AM

Just a little nitpick: MWM is not part of the negotiations for the IP/license. Nate (Downix); who is President of MWM, headed the efforts, but his involvement is his involvement and not MWM. At least that is the way I understood things....

Sooooo...

8.  Am I concerned MWM solicited Kickstarter money when they were working to try to license CoH?  Not at all.  This was, and still is a long shot.  I funded the Kickstarter knowing that many Kickstarter developments fail, that even if it succeeded in shipping a game it might not be a game I ultimately wanted to play, that no matter what happened it would be years before I saw final results, and knowing that there were other things in motion that might or might not preempt that work.  I don't know anything more today than I did when I funded the Kickstarter, and I don't honestly believe anyone else really does either.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 04, 2014, 08:43:14 AM
Because Paragon Studios worked very, very hard to keep things in a state of barely-falling-apart.
Things like that explain why occasionally...a server or two would just suddenly stop running. Used to joke that an intern kept tripping over power cords.

I always believed them when they said Mot spilled blood on the servers.

...well okay secretly I believed Mot had a taste for Clamato...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 04, 2014, 08:50:37 AM
Just a little nitpick: MWM is not part of the negotiations for the IP/license. Nate (Downix); who is President of MWM, headed the efforts, but his involvement is his involvement and not MWM. At least that is the way I understood things....

Honestly I just want to understand what they mean by a central company licensing the CoX IP, tbh.  Would NcSoft still own the IP or are they licensing to the central company liscencing the CoX IP to the successors?  To my understanding the company owns the IP but I want to make sure I understand it right.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 08:55:47 AM
Just a little nitpick: MWM is not part of the negotiations for the IP/license. Nate (Downix); who is President of MWM, headed the efforts, but his involvement is his involvement and not MWM. At least that is the way I understood things....
This is correct.

Honestly I just want to understand what they mean by a central company licensing the CoX IP, tbh.  Would NcSoft still own the IP or are they licensing to the central company liscencing the CoX IP to the successors?  To my understanding the company owns the IP but I want to make sure I understand it right.

The plan, as I understand it, is for a new company to be formed. NCSoft would sell the I.P., and license the CoH engine to this company.
This company would then set up and run the Legacy City of Heroes server, and then license the I.P. to MWM and Revival. (and eventually, others I believe.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on September 04, 2014, 08:58:38 AM
I'm one of the few people who was really disappointed by the outcome of "Praetorian Fatigue." I'll agree Primal Earth needed some love, but it felt a very unsatisfying way to end things. I get that their Hamidon is uber in a million ways, but evacuating what few people we could and leaving a world to be overrun just made me feel really disappointed.

I don't think that was how it was meant to end.  I24 had a new Incarnate Arc (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Number_Six) where you went back to Pretoria and help them power up their anti-Hamidon defenses, as well as take down a number of Avatars of Hamidon yourself, so there seemed to be plans to let the player fight back against Hamidon in Pretoria, and possibly eventually win.

Sadly, we'll probably never know what Paragon had planned for Pretoria in the future.  Of course, with a new team at the helm, there's no reason that Issue 25 (or, more likely, Vol 2, Issue 1) can't have some Incarnates dealing with Pretorian Hamidon while the majority deals with the Battalion.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 09:02:09 AM
Sadly, we'll probably never know what Paragon had planned for Pretoria in the future.  Of course, with a new team at the helm, there's no reason that Issue 25 (or, more likely, Vol 2, Issue 1) can't have some Incarnates dealing with Pretorian Hamidon while the majority deals with the Battalion.

Hrm... if only there was someone in this thread who might end up in a position of authority on such matters...

Oh wait. ;P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 04, 2014, 09:07:21 AM
That story was... impressive. It really is one of those moments where a part of me goes "how did CoH never just randomly implode from someone walking backwards, to the left, and then hopping twice?"

In July (I think) of 2004 Triumph randomly imploded.  I was logged in, playing, and poof, d/c.  I logged back in and discovered that everyone else had been kicked simultaneously. 

Also, I was stuck in a mountain and couldn't get out.  At all.

No one I knew with teleport logged back on for quite some time, so while I waited for a friend to teleport me back to the surface world I flew around under the map and randomly shot at the feet of spawns that other players were street sweeping.

That's some serious mind screw there when the game is only a few months old, most of the players aren't really sure what's normal and what's not, they can't see you, you're playing an energy blaster with a lot of knockback, and you can actually shoot critters that are standing on the ground.  If you were a player on Triumph in July of 2004, were logged in on crash day, and had critters randomly erupt from the street in Talos Island while you were street sweeping: sorry.

I think after that day, developers were no longer allowed to hop in the office.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on September 04, 2014, 11:16:49 AM
In July (I think) of 2004 Triumph randomly imploded.  I was logged in, playing, and poof, d/c.  I logged back in and discovered that everyone else had been kicked simultaneously. 

Also, I was stuck in a mountain and couldn't get out.  At all.

No one I knew with teleport logged back on for quite some time, so while I waited for a friend to teleport me back to the surface world I flew around under the map and randomly shot at the feet of spawns that other players were street sweeping.

That's some serious mind screw there when the game is only a few months old, most of the players aren't really sure what's normal and what's not, they can't see you, you're playing an energy blaster with a lot of knockback, and you can actually shoot critters that are standing on the ground.  If you were a player on Triumph in July of 2004, were logged in on crash day, and had critters randomly erupt from the street in Talos Island while you were street sweeping: sorry.

I think after that day, developers were no longer allowed to hop in the office.

The mental images that I have from that story are pretty hilarious. I keep imagining someone trying to fight off Hellions and then seeing them go flying back for no apparent reason. There must've been chaos on Triumph that day!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lava-Lad on September 04, 2014, 11:38:41 AM
I am so tempted to fire up Mids and start planning. I'm holding back to be safe and not get caught up by expectation. But after being away from CoH for so long, I really hope the deal goes through.

I have started rolling leveling SO builds (it's like a blast from the past - pre the invention system)!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on September 04, 2014, 11:43:23 AM
That quote always makes me gigglecackle like a mad scientist uncontrollably.

And that's different than normal... how, exactly?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 04, 2014, 12:26:25 PM
3a.  Without the source code, are we crippled in terms of adding or altering content?  Not necessarily.  The game content was not explicitly "programmed" into the game engine, it resided in database files that its no secret people have been decoding and reverse engineering since the days of Iakona (and me, and Codewalker, and lots of others).  It is possible, if difficult, to add things like power sets to the game without the explicit source code.  It might require some hacks to make work, but nothing outside the wheelhouse of, say, Icon's developers.  When Codewalker threatens to keep nerfing regen in I24, that's not just possible, but way too easy for him.  Without the appropriate dev tools, some things would be a lot harder than others - like say making those damn escort critters actually follow your ass correctly - but nothing's impossible, even without source.  Difficult, possibly prohibitively so in some cases, but anything that only involves data (geography, entity definitions, power definitions, basic mission design) is probably at least somewhat modifiable without source.

That's kind of what I thought... we may be able to keep adding new powers and powersets (animations may be more of an issue), and thus keep issuing new Issues for a while.

Another possible advantage may be that the tools used to edit the databases... may well be separate from the rest of the source code. Frankly, they really should be. So it may be possible to acquire database-editing tools for the powers, NPCs, maybe even sounds & animation databases, without having to delve into source code. Especially since we wouldn't want/need to adjust them, so getting an executable database-editing module is good enough, we would not need the source code for it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 04, 2014, 12:47:51 PM
Honestly I just want to understand what they mean by a central company licensing the CoX IP, tbh.  Would NcSoft still own the IP or are they licensing to the central company liscencing the CoX IP to the successors?  To my understanding the company owns the IP but I want to make sure I understand it right.
Central company owning the IP, licensing it out to other entity.

And yay on Arcana knowing the RAND model.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 04, 2014, 12:49:55 PM
That's kind of what I thought... we may be able to keep adding new powers and powersets (animations may be more of an issue), and thus keep issuing new Issues for a while.

Another possible advantage may be that the tools used to edit the databases... may well be separate from the rest of the source code. Frankly, they really should be. So it may be possible to acquire database-editing tools for the powers, NPCs, maybe even sounds & animation databases, without having to delve into source code. Especially since we wouldn't want/need to adjust them, so getting an executable database-editing module is good enough, we would not need the source code for it.
Database editing, not worried about it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 04, 2014, 01:20:20 PM
7.  About that game server.  If they get it, I wish them luck making it work.  Its not impossible, of course, but I know a little something about how the game servers worked, and without saying something that will get me banned from the ... oh wait, I forgot, I'm not rambling on the game forums this time.  Because I'm not affiliated with any group or team, I can't get anyone in trouble but myself here, so I'll just say for those speculating, no, the game server wasn't a bunch of Linux boxes or anything like that: it was Windows based.  It had several moving parts.  It was clunky.  When someone decided to herd up all of Crey's Folly and nuke it and crashed the entire Freedom server, someone was probably RDPing into something and restarting something.  Like manually.  Running CoH servers on a large scale (i.e. enough players to run a Magisterium or more) is not just about spinning up some AWS instances and running the installer.  Its about loading the right hamsters in the right wheels next to the right water bottles and then cleaning their cages periodically while making sure they don't fall asleep or eat each other.

And they get hungry.

I don't want to be a worry-wart or a nay-sayer, because I really, really want to go home again...

But I'm pretty much in the habit of "if Arcana says it, I believe it" from the old forum days.

And this statement reads to me like: "Even IF they manage to get the I23 binaries, there's a good chance things still won't work and we won't be getting back to Paragon anytime before 1.5 and/or the successors"

I certainly hope and pray that's not the case.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 04, 2014, 01:25:43 PM
I don't want to be a worry-wart or a nay-sayer, because I really, really want to go home again...

But I'm pretty much in the habit of "if Arcana says it, I believe it" from the old forum days.

And this statement reads to me like: "Even IF they manage to get the I23 binaries, there's a good chance things still won't work and we won't be getting back to Paragon anytime before 1.5 and/or the successors"

I certainly hope and pray that's not the case.

I read that as "because we have Arcana around, we can get pretty much anything to work."

:P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ObsidianPhoenix76 on September 04, 2014, 01:28:17 PM
Amazing stuff.   As a person who got emotionally attached to characters, your Crystal character must have meant the world to you.  Got me all choked up thinking about you and your daughter.

Yep.  I spent the last days making sure she hit 50.  The clip in my video of her leveling was when she hit 50.  It took me 5 fdays after the shutdown to compile all of the video I recorded, and another 3 to get the video made.

And my new Avatar here on the forums is my re-build of her.  I just can't wait to get her started again.  Changing her from nrg/nrg blaster to titan weapon/nrg aura scrapper.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 01:35:31 PM
I certainly hope and pray that's not the case.

I doubt Nate and the team would be trying to get the I23 server image if they didn't think they could get it to work.
I don't know the exact condition of the server image, myself. (This is what I get for not being rich, or speaking Korean. I don't get to go to the really interesting meetings.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 04, 2014, 01:38:40 PM
I've gotta re-iterate this as well. There's still no guarantees. Don't start spending a bunch of money on stuff just yet.

I see this a little differently, I see that a LOT of work is going to have to be done to get any of these games working. Anything we can add to the mix means less work for whatever one of these things makes it into production. I do see a possibility that we have 4 failed games and the Original chugging along alone.

However since WE are making things - not NCSoft if one part fails we can hand the work over to a remaining part.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: SemanticAntics on September 04, 2014, 01:55:41 PM
Sadly, we'll probably never know what Paragon had planned for Pretoria in the future.  Of course, with a new team at the helm, there's no reason that Issue 25 (or, more likely, Vol 2, Issue 1) can't have some Incarnates dealing with Pretorian Hamidon while the majority deals with the Battalion.

I really like the sound of this.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Turjan on September 04, 2014, 01:56:45 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 01:57:17 PM
Nate and I do have to make sure that if this deal falls through... We don't want to have a mob of people with fire and pitchforks calling for one, or both, of our heads because people spent money.

Personally, If people want to learn Unreal Engine 4...Go and buy it. Drop 20 bucks, then cancel your sub. I encourage people learning this stuff. It's a lot of fun, and you learn a lot about how/why certain things are they way they are in games.
However, if you're buying it because you want to contribute to Revival. Wait. I'd hate to have people pony up cash, just for us to get a no-go from above. That is only partially due to the above listed fear of Pitchfork-wielding mobs.

I will warn you, however. Something nobody thought to tell me when I got into learning Game creation. Get into it far enough, and you'll never look at games the same way. You start to look at how you think things were built, and how you might build them better/differently. Seriously, I look at games and I like...see Wireframes and scripts, lol.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: SemanticAntics on September 04, 2014, 01:58:29 PM
That's an EXCELLENT suggestion. Putting some kind of functionality for saving a costume you created within the app and importing it into the game would be invaluable. I'm imagining some people in the community having jobs where they travel and can't always log in. But, while they're in a hotel, they can tinker around on the app on their iPad or Android device and come up with some ideas for a new toon.

I know some of the coding members of our community's heads would explode, but wouldn't it be cool to have an app for Mid's Hero Designer as well? Or....even better, make the costume creator and Mid's into one standalone "Hero Designer" app that allows you to literally design your hero from the ground up (costume creation AND power selections)! I'd pay for that!

I'd pay for such a thing, too. Twice, even.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 01:59:03 PM
Of course, with a new team at the helm, there's no reason that Issue 25 (or, more likely, Vol 2, Issue 1) can't have some Incarnates dealing with Pretorian Hamidon while the majority deals with the Battalion.

I kind of like the whole "Volume 2, Issue 1" thing. I've wondered.. Would Revival's first issue be...Issue 1? or Issue 24?
and either way, isn't that a little confusing?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on September 04, 2014, 01:59:07 PM
I'm just hoping that, if this deal works out, We can finally see what Battalion was going to look like!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 04, 2014, 02:00:49 PM
I will warn you, however. Something nobody thought to tell me when I got into learning Game creation. Get into it far enough, and you'll never look at games the same way. You start to look at how you think things were built, and how you might build them better/differently. Seriously, I look at games and I like...see Wireframes and scripts, lol.

I'm the same with application software. I've been an app developer for 20+ years, so every app I use, I start to pick apart...  Even Windows!

If I wasn't busy studying hard for some annoying Microsoft certifications my work are insisting I take (if I want to keep my job!), I'd love to take a look at game devving... But at my age, I've only got so much space in my brain for new stuff! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 04, 2014, 02:02:46 PM
From someone who plays EQ2...trust me, it's not as awesome as you expect. Occasionally kinda cool, like the Sarnak newbie quests, but more often annoying, glitchy, and repetitive.

I'm on Freeport and Nagafen!   ;D  And yeah, you think voiceovers are bad there, try Elder Scrolls Online.  Zenimax actually got rid of some of them-- including this long-winded banker girl that would give you a five-minute spiel every single time you tried to put something into or withdraw something out of the bank.  OY.  Personally I think voiceovers are the least of our worries, and get annoying and repetitive fast.  At least you can blindly click through the banker chat in a chat window-based NPC chat MMO.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 04, 2014, 02:03:08 PM
I kind of like the whole "Volume 2, Issue 1" thing. I've wondered.. Would Revival's first issue be...Issue 1? or Issue 24?
and either way, isn't that a little confusing?

I think the "Volume, Issue 1" is an excellent idea, actually! So Revival's first release would be exactly that! 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 02:03:24 PM
I'm just hoping that, if this deal works out, We can finally see what Battalion was going to look like!

Posi talked briefly about how they're basically a giant swarm of random alien races, slaved into the army.
So. I guess, picture any mostly-humanoid, bi-pedal alien wearing kick-ass space body armor. Bam. Battalion.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: SemanticAntics on September 04, 2014, 02:04:00 PM
Ok, so...by special request. New pictures of REALLY unpolished stuff.
Warning: Seriously under construction.
Images will be hidden under spoiler tags, so Agge doesn't smack me with her mod hat.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t31.0-8/10644522_329455817214641_6698756546108573220_o.jpg)

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://scontent-a-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/t31.0-8/10543567_329455773881312_5889642776631709311_o.jpg)
The plaza of Steel Canyon's University.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/t31.0-8/10648348_329455763881313_9190186255596272964_o.jpg)
The first shot of Independence Port.
In this picture, you might be able to see the hintings of one of my favorite changes that I'm making.
If you're flying along, and you look out past the War Walls...You can see the rest of Paragon City in the distance.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/t31.0-8/10580708_329455787214644_2155914609070580591_o.jpg)
Another shot of I.P. a tad closer to the bridge.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t31.0-8/10669372_329455810547975_2418838020023202468_o.jpg)
I have no idea where this is. I think it's from a different game. /sarcasm

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t31.0-8/10669040_329455807214642_4537574222062157673_o.jpg)
This picture...is Paragon City from above. It should have the War Walls for just about all of the cities zones. Only Atlas Park, Independance Port, and Founders Falls have any of the zone detail showing in this image however.

Those look incredible! Very exciting.

I will warn you, however. Something nobody thought to tell me when I got into learning Game creation. Get into it far enough, and you'll never look at games the same way. You start to look at how you think things were built, and how you might build them better/differently. Seriously, I look at games and I like...see Wireframes and scripts, lol.

I have found this to be true with most any form of production. I've done a little bit of coding, web design, audio production, and video production over the years and I find that very often while using/listening/watching some piece of content I often wonder how it was made, and how I would do it if I had to re-create it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 04, 2014, 02:04:44 PM
I'm on Freeport and Nagafen!   ;D  And yeah, you think voiceovers are bad there, try Elder Scrolls Online.  Zenimax actually got rid of some of them-- including this long-winded banker girl that would give you a five-minute spiel every single time you tried to put something into or withdraw something out of the bank.  OY.  Personally I think voiceovers are the least of our worries, and get annoying and repetitive fast.  At least you can blindly click through the banker chat in a chat window-based NPC chat MMO.

For me, voice overs are great for cut scenes, but forget it for anywhere else... They just get annoying after a bit.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 04, 2014, 02:08:41 PM
I will warn you, however. Something nobody thought to tell me when I got into learning Game creation. Get into it far enough, and you'll never look at games the same way. You start to look at how you think things were built, and how you might build them better/differently. Seriously, I look at games and I like...see Wireframes and scripts, lol.

I'm the same way with films after getting my degree and experience in it... My fiance sees a scene and is thinking about the plotline, and I see a scene and I'm thinking about angles and lights and lines and markers and green screen...lol

There are always positives and negatives to becoming an expert in something... ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 04, 2014, 02:09:36 PM
That's why Codewalker is the only player I fear.  He likes it.  That's Cthulhu kinds of wrong.

I am going to print this out and frame it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 04, 2014, 02:10:48 PM
I will warn you, however. Something nobody thought to tell me when I got into learning Game creation. Get into it far enough, and you'll never look at games the same way. You start to look at how you think things were built, and how you might build them better/differently. Seriously, I look at games and I like...see Wireframes and scripts, lol.

Kind of like Neo at the end of The Matrix . . .  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 02:11:30 PM
On the subject of voice work... I'm not currently planning on adding Voice work to Revival. That's not to say it's never going to happen, ever. But if it did...It would be around like...the 4th or 5th issue at the earliest.

...I'd have to spend at least that long finding the right voices for the characters.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: tripthicket on September 04, 2014, 02:20:35 PM
On the topic of folks downloading/learning/using Unreal Engine 4:

Should one have any prerequisite knowledge? Know how to program in one or more languages first? Would a program like Blender make constructs that would then plug in to Unreal Engine 4, or is the capability of making such constructs already a part of UE4?

Looks like I gots some research to do. TO THE INTERNET-MOBILE!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 02:25:00 PM
On the topic of folks downloading/learning/using Unreal Engine 4:

Should one have any prerequisite knowledge? Know how to program in one or more languages first? Would a program like Blender make constructs that would then plug in to Unreal Engine 4, or is the capability of making such constructs already a part of UE4?

Looks like I gots some research to do. TO THE INTERNET-MOBILE!!

Assets like models, and textures have to be built in 3rd party programs such as 3DS Max, and Photoshop. Blender's a good free alternative to Max. I don't use it myself, but I've seen good things built with it. Really, you can use any 3D modeling program that can export in .FBX.
As for textures... I use GIMP. It's fairly robust, and I no longer have a copy of Photoshop. While there are certainly things Photoshop can do that GIMP can't...I've found them to be pretty irrelevant.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: tripthicket on September 04, 2014, 02:32:26 PM
Assets like models, and textures have to be built in 3rd party programs such as 3DS Max, and Photoshop. Blender's a good free alternative to Max. I don't use it myself, but I've seen good things built with it. Really, you can use any 3D modeling program that can export in .FBX.
As for textures... I use GIMP. It's fairly robust, and I no longer have a copy of Photoshop. While there are certainly things Photoshop can do that GIMP can't...I've found them to be pretty irrelevant.

Good to know. I have a subscription to Adobe's Creative Cloud, so access to lots of programs there. Will try noodling around in Blender first, perhaps.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: feculenz on September 04, 2014, 02:35:09 PM
Stunned and amazed at the grace and subtlety involved.  Thank you for being discrete and patient.  And good luck with the entire project.  It feels to me that we will be back and the idea of COH 1.5 is not a terrible one at all. WE all just want to fly again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 04, 2014, 02:36:30 PM
There are a LOT of Youtube videos on programming in UR4. I am hoping once APR gets up and going with it's own site we can pool the experience that Irishgirl has learned to do the maps.

Understand there is a LOT of work to do beyond maps.

Character creator - I am going to see if I can make an Icon port basically to render all the models and existing costume parts - this alone is a LOT of work. Codewalker used a program to map to existing assets - we have to create the assets and the Creator.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Styrj on September 04, 2014, 02:37:02 PM
Irish_Girl:  Will APR have any type of Beta test schedule planed?  For what its worth, you got my support!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 04, 2014, 02:38:27 PM
Assets like models, and textures have to be built in 3rd party programs such as 3DS Max, and Photoshop. Blender's a good free alternative to Max. I don't use it myself, but I've seen good things built with it. Really, you can use any 3D modeling program that can export in .FBX.
As for textures... I use GIMP. It's fairly robust, and I no longer have a copy of Photoshop. While there are certainly things Photoshop can do that GIMP can't...I've found them to be pretty irrelevant.

You see these are the things we need to pool and link to - all the software and engines used so we have a standard version and can freely work back and forth.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 04, 2014, 02:42:29 PM
Personally, If people want to learn Unreal Engine 4...Go and buy it. Drop 20 bucks, then cancel your sub. I encourage people learning this stuff. It's a lot of fun, and you learn a lot about how/why certain things are they way they are in games.

That was my thought.

As mentioned before, I'm part of a small (2 person) studio that had 2 separate projects going. The other person bought a license for her project, but at the time I figured since I'd be scoring it, and working on my own project under a different toolkit as well, I wouldn't bother because it was just extra expense and wasted time on something I'm tenuous on at best. But between the fact it COULD be useful to have a second set of hands and eyes, and a second brain working on problems, AND maybe potentially help for this? I just might.

It's cheap enough not to be a big deal if I buy it and just can't grok.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 03:06:27 PM
Irish_Girl:  Will APR have any type of Beta test schedule planed?  For what its worth, you got my support!

The support is appreciated! Unfortunately, I couldn't even hazard as a guess at a release schedule yet.
I think I can pretty comfortably say it would prolly be before 2020. Yeah... Almost definitely before 2020.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ooglymoogly on September 04, 2014, 03:07:32 PM
Assets like models, and textures have to be built in 3rd party programs such as 3DS Max, and Photoshop. Blender's a good free alternative to Max. I don't use it myself, but I've seen good things built with it. Really, you can use any 3D modeling program that can export in .FBX.
As for textures... I use GIMP. It's fairly robust, and I no longer have a copy of Photoshop. While there are certainly things Photoshop can do that GIMP can't...I've found them to be pretty irrelevant.

any thought of putting together a kickstarter, or similar effort, to raise money for this project? seems a rather prodigious amount of work and some additional assistance with tools, people, project management, etc would likely help.

Between MWM, H&V, APR, Valiance, and CoH revival/binary, this group has almost created the game version of marvel's movie universe...

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 03:07:59 PM
You see these are the things we need to pool and link to - all the software and engines used so we have a standard version and can freely work back and forth.

APR's site is in some serious dis-repair atm. I'll be seeing about dealing with that first thing after the move.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 03:13:28 PM
any thought of putting together a kickstarter, or similar effort, to raise money for this project? seems a rather prodigious amount of work and some additional assistance with tools, people, project management, etc would likely help.

Between MWM, H&V, APR, Valiance, and CoH revival/binary, this group has almost created the game version of marvel's movie universe...
Do you mean a kickstarter for buying the I.P., or for funding Revival?

On Revival's side... I honestly haven't given much thought to stuff like that until very recently. Only with the legitimacy that having a license to use the I.P. would bring would allow me to do stuff like run a Kickstarer. I haven't really needed it up until this point anyways, since it's something I'd been doing solo. Not like I had to pay myself for my work!

As far as the rest goes...from what I understand Valiance Online, and Heroes and Villains have both turned down the offers of inclusion into the CoH-verse.
That would just leave Revival, City of Titans, and Legacy City of Heroes under the banner.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 04, 2014, 03:16:40 PM
3a.  Without the source code, are we crippled in terms of adding or altering content?  Not necessarily.  The game content was not explicitly "programmed" into the game engine, it resided in database files that its no secret people have been decoding and reverse engineering since the days of Iakona (and me, and Codewalker, and lots of others).  It is possible, if difficult, to add things like power sets to the game without the explicit source code.  It might require some hacks to make work, but nothing outside the wheelhouse of, say, Icon's developers.  When Codewalker threatens to keep nerfing regen in I24, that's not just possible, but way too easy for him.  Without the appropriate dev tools, some things would be a lot harder than others - like say making those damn escort critters actually follow your ass correctly - but nothing's impossible, even without source.  Difficult, possibly prohibitively so in some cases, but anything that only involves data (geography, entity definitions, power definitions, basic mission design) is probably at least somewhat modifiable without source.
That's good to hear.   You never know what can happen if something is possible.  The desire for I24 might be strong enough to make the possible a reality.
Quote
Also, Windows 8 sucks.  Even Microsoft is backpedaling from it faster than a bear with an umbrella at the circus.
My gf certainly hates it with a passion.  She rarely gets angry...but Win 8 does the trick.
Quote
11.  Pherdnut: I spent over six months getting to about 70% awareness of how the animation system worked and how it interacted with the combat engine when the game was still alive, circa 2007ish.  At that time, I probably knew the details as well as anyone.  It almost melted my brain.  Every other question I asked BaB was "Why?  Why?  WHY???"  And he'd just shrug.  The game implementation is like that, only more of your brain leaks out of your ears.  That's why Codewalker is the only player I fear.  He likes it.  That's Cthulhu kinds of wrong.
There must be some difference between this and the "source code", right?    Because my mind is not understanding how CoH had such a messy mess that seems to have been created especially for it....but then it may be being used in other NCSoft games?    I'm not quite understanding the process that would allow for the mess to happen in the first place...I understand even less that the company would then use that mess for other games.   The one benefit to "the mess" in my mind was that it would be useless to NCSoft because it couldn't be used for other games...now I'm hearing the opposite.   Or I think that's what I'm hearing...that can't be right, can it?

Also...this makes me want to team with Codewalker.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 04, 2014, 03:17:19 PM
The support is appreciated! Unfortunately, I couldn't even hazard as a guess at a release schedule yet.
I think I can pretty comfortably say it would prolly be before 2020. Yeah... Almost definitely before 2020.

I kinda get the impression that some folks think CoH1.5 won't be too difficult to do, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Whilst it IS in effect, just copying the existing game, it STILL has to be written from scratch! All the assets must be re-created (zone maps, mission maps, objects, textures, animations), the UI written, the power mechanisms design, the mission system done, the chat system, enhancements, inventions, IO's, -everything-.  The only slightly easier thing it's got going for it is that we know the numbers for the powersets.

It's every bit as big a job as the successor projects, and will be MUCH more prone to criticism as it's meant to be replicating CoH.

It's not impossible, but it's absolutely NOT an easy job, by any shake of the imagination. Don't expecting it to launch with Windows 9 (which is the initial impression I got from Nate's post, and I'm sure others thought that too).

Irish_Girl has a HUGE job here, and I wish her all the best for it, but it's not gonna be quick.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ooglymoogly on September 04, 2014, 03:18:41 PM
I meant a kickstarter for Revival - the IP bit is obviously well underway. I don't think now would be the appropriate time to launch it given everything you seem to have on your plate, not to mention the IP deal with NCSoft isn't finalized. However, were that to come to fruition, it might help you create a solid entity to concentrate efforts on and around the migration to 1.5. and with the number of people involved here and 'watching' the process you have the start of a solid base of potential funders.

just a thought
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 04, 2014, 03:22:56 PM
There must be some difference between this and the "source code", right?    Because my mind is not understanding how CoH had such a messy mess that seems to have been created especially for it....but then it may be being used in other NCSoft games?    I'm not quite understanding the process that would allow for the mess to happen in the first place...I understand even less that the company would then use that mess for other games.   The one benefit to "the mess" in my mind was that it would be useless to NCSoft because it couldn't be used for other games...now I'm hearing the opposite.   Or I think that's what I'm hearing...that can't be right, can it?

The main issue with any "code reuse" isn't actually going to be code reuse as such.. It's pretty unlikely any of the game code in CoH lives on in other NCSoft games as it's the only product Cryptic wrote under NCSoft's publishing banner.

What WILL be a problem though, is any code that talks to NCSoft's accounts systems.  This is stuff like the login authentication, store access, content gated behind being a subscriber...  They're not going to want anyone to see that, and they're probably not going to want the bother of digging it out of the CoH codebase to remove it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 04, 2014, 03:28:08 PM
I see this a little differently, I see that a LOT of work is going to have to be done to get any of these games working. Anything we can add to the mix means less work for whatever one of these things makes it into production. I do see a possibility that we have 4 failed games and the Original chugging along alone.

However since WE are making things - not NCSoft if one part fails we can hand the work over to a remaining part.

That's the spirit!  My point exactly.  We're all working on a volunteer basis anyway, from APR to CoT.  Worst case scenario and CoT winds up with more UE4 contributions if they like them and can ever make use of them.  We all just want our world back again in whatever form it has to take.  They're probably the most likely to bring a successor project to completion anyway, what with the kickstarter funding they've had. 

It's for this reason, though, that I think MWM should definitely not make any changes at all to the current CoT world or lore (not that they have, I'm sure they haven't) until such time as a doable deal ever becomes signed and sealed.  And if it's too late at that point for MWM to revamp and redo CoT (as Heroes and Villains has said at this point it already is for them) then the IP can still stand strong for i23 CoX, APR/CoX1.5 and a CoX2 (unless APR spins off and adds so much it becomes CoX2).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 04, 2014, 03:29:54 PM
I kinda get the impression that some folks think CoH1.5 won't be too difficult to do, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Whilst it IS in effect, just copying the existing game, it STILL has to be written from scratch! All the assets must be re-created (zone maps, mission maps, objects, textures, animations), the UI written, the power mechanisms design, the mission system done, the chat system, enhancements, inventions, IO's, -everything-.  The only slightly easier thing it's got going for it is that we know the numbers for the powersets.

It's every bit as big a job as the successor projects, and will be MUCH more prone to criticism as it's meant to be replicating CoH.

It's not impossible, but it's absolutely NOT an easy job, by any shake of the imagination. Don't expecting it to launch with Windows 9 (which is the initial impression I got from Nate's post, and I'm sure others thought that too).

Irish_Girl has a HUGE job here, and I wish her all the best for it, but it's not gonna be quick.

Yes and no, all of the existing missions and lore are there already written for 1.5 to start. The port over is not easy - but it is easier than creating new worlds completely. The other side of it is to start off you don't need new content - you just need everything back in place under the new engine and with the new graphics so that you can start new development.

I would not expect to see new stuff on opening day - just having all the old stuff back up and running in UR4 would be awesome.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 03:33:45 PM
I kinda get the impression that some folks think CoH1.5 won't be too difficult to do, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Whilst it IS in effect, just copying the existing game, it STILL has to be written from scratch! All the assets must be re-created (zone maps, mission maps, objects, textures, animations), the UI written, the power mechanisms design, the mission system done, the chat system, enhancements, inventions, IO's, -everything-.  The only slightly easier thing it's got going for it is that we know the numbers for the powersets.
It's every bit as big a job as the successor projects, and will be MUCH more prone to criticism as it's meant to be replicating CoH.
It's not impossible, but it's absolutely NOT an easy job, by any shake of the imagination. Don't expecting it to launch with Windows 9 (which is the initial impression I got from Nate's post, and I'm sure others thought that too).
Irish_Girl has a HUGE job here, and I wish her all the best for it, but it's not gonna be quick.

Also keeping in mind the fact that a lot of objects from CoH have aged very poorly. My intent is to raise the bar for CoH's graphic fidelity. So a lot of asset's and especially textures have to be re-created from scratch, or quite heavily modified from the original.
Because of the fairly recent Revamp of the zone, Atlas Park has a benefit that most everything in the zone is only a couple years old. So not as much work needs to be done there. Praetoria will also share that silver lining.

As for the time consumption from the coding aspect... This is a huge reason why the agreement is in place between Revival and MWM to build off of City of Titan's code base. So...say...Instead of having to build a character system from the ground up, we'll instead be modifying one to fit Revival's needs. Seems to make more sense than having 2 teams building near identical code from scratch.

It is quite a large job, which is why I'm hoping to recruit some hopefully talented people to work on it with me. Don't expect it to be done quick, or to be in beta next month just because "It's just coh".

Also, I should have FloatingFatMan be my PR whenever I want people to think my work is REALLY hard.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 04, 2014, 03:37:38 PM
Yes and no, all of the existing missions and lore are their already written for 1.5 to start. The prot over is not easy - but it is easier than creating new worlds completely. The other side of it is to start off you don't need new content - you just need everything back in place under the new engine and with the new graphics so that you can start new development.

I would not expect to see new stuff on opening day - just having all the old stuff back up and running in UR4 would be awesome.

Sure, we have the existing content to re-use, but I'd be surprised if it was in any kind of portable form... Also, having the content to plug into the new game is one thing, but first you must write the parts of the game to plug it in to...  This will, of course, be made easier by using UE4's "mission engine" (or whatever they call it for serving maps etc), but it's still not a quick job.

Essentially, we're writing CoH completely from scratch. The story content is only a tiny part of that job.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 03:38:14 PM
Yes and no, all of the existing missions and lore are there already written for 1.5 to start. The port over is not easy - but it is easier than creating new worlds completely. The other side of it is to start off you don't need new content - you just need everything back in place under the new engine and with the new graphics so that you can start new development.

I would not expect to see new stuff on opening day - just having all the old stuff back up and running in UR4 would be awesome.

It's a benefit and a curse. On the one hand, it's A LOT of time saved. We're not having to design a new world, and write all the stories. They already exist.

On the other hand... People know what the world is, and how things look. They've got a certain expectation of how things are.
I fully expect the first couple weeks of Revival's beta to be a FLOOD of bug reports that basically read "This sign post is supposed to be 4 further down the road. And the color of the sky isn't quite blue enough."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 04, 2014, 03:40:21 PM
Also keeping in mind the fact that a lot of objects from CoH have aged very poorly. My intent is to raise the bar for CoH's graphic fidelity. So a lot of asset's and especially textures have to be re-created from scratch, or quite heavily modified from the original.
Because of the fairly recent Revamp of the zone, Atlas Park has a benefit that most everything in the zone is only a couple years old. So not as much work needs to be done there. Praetoria will also share that silver lining.

As for the time consumption from the coding aspect... This is a huge reason why the agreement is in place between Revival and MWM to build off of City of Titan's code base. So...say...Instead of having to build a character system from the ground up, we'll instead be modifying one to fit Revival's needs. Seems to make more sense than having 2 teams building near identical code from scratch.

It is quite a large job, which is why I'm hoping to recruit some hopefully talented people to work on it with me. Don't expect it to be done quick, or to be in beta next month just because "It's just coh".

Also, I should have FloatingFatMan be my PR whenever I want people to think my work is REALLY hard.

I think one of the biggest challenge you may face will be base building. I remember asking why can't we get the stuff in Pocket D into our base (pool table, the Jack Daniel bottles, etc) and WarBase, a veteran basemaker said he asked Matt Miller the same question the response was the code left behind from the old dev team (Jack's) was so integrated with the system, you move one thing, it breaks another. Don't know if you are going to run into that problem or even planned  to do base making yet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 04, 2014, 03:41:21 PM
Also, I should have FloatingFatMan be my PR whenever I want people to think my work is REALLY hard.

Heh, I probably see it a bit clearer than many because I'm a programmer by trade, have been for over 20 years.  I don't write games, but I DO write huge, complicated application software.  Right now we're working on porting all our legacy VB6 code over to C#.  This is going to take us at LEAST 2 years, just to get back to the current status quo...  And this is just a sales/invoicing/production system...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 04, 2014, 03:41:39 PM
I have found this to be true with most any form of production. I've done a little bit of coding, web design, audio production, and video production over the years and I find that very often while using/listening/watching some piece of content I often wonder how it was made, and how I would do it if I had to re-create it.
Must work the same for every industry.   My poor brother is not fond of pizza because he used to work at a pizza place in high school.

And I listen to music differently than most people.   I'll notice a cool hi-hat part or bass line while other people only seem to hear the lead vocal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 04, 2014, 03:43:22 PM
On the subject of voice work... I'm not currently planning on adding Voice work to Revival. That's not to say it's never going to happen, ever. But if it did...It would be around like...the 4th or 5th issue at the earliest.

...I'd have to spend at least that long finding the right voices for the characters.

(How's your moving going?  What am I asking-- moving is always a major pain in the butt!  You poor thing, you should take a vacation once you're done....)

And as far as any voiceovers in APR go, I don't know that it'd be worth it in the end.  Do you know how Hellgate:  London's developers Flagship Studios, funded with mega millions and headed by former Blizzard folk, went down in a burning ball of flame?  They tried to do too much and make their game everything to everybody, nothing ever got finished, eventually they had to launch anyway and it all fell apart.

Just think about the work ahead for APR:  Trying to get all the zones, every NPC, every quest, every class and subclass and power set and costume piece and body shape in from Praetoria, the Rogue Isles and Paragon City.....  This took what, over 100 people at many points probably over a decade of full-time work (and probably longer days) to bring CoX to Issue 23?  Granted they were down to 15 people left I think when Cryptic split, but they were a lot larger than anything we've got going here for most of that decade and as Paragon Studios.  I'm not saying it won't ever get done (and I'm not saying it ever will either), but they had a lot more experience than most of us do here, and adding unnecessary extra burdens like voiceovers that may only rapidly become player annoyances down the road anyway seems detrimental.

Oh, and while I am trying to find my place in this potential APR outfit whether it winds up being eventual digital security, or menial, basic, repetitive tasking (copying missions over?) or what have you, I'd just like to ask:  Do we get our assets for Blender transitioning from the torrent download?  Let me dig around and try to find it.  NCSoft so nicely deleted CoX out of my NC Launcher and off my computer without my knowledge or consent right after the shutdown.  Will the Icon download help?  I had that on my PC after the shutdown but just reformatted earlier this week.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 03:45:04 PM
Must work the same for every industry.   My poor brother is not fond of pizza because he used to work at a pizza place in high school.

And I listen to music differently than most people.   I'll notice a cool hi-hat part or bass line while other people only seem to hear the lead vocal.

The one exception I've found to this is a friend from high school. He worked at KFC for 3 and a half years...and he still LOVES KFC.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 04, 2014, 03:46:53 PM
THANK YOU ONE AND ALL!!!
     Amen to that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 04, 2014, 03:51:20 PM
It's a benefit and a curse. On the one hand, it's A LOT of time saved. We're not having to design a new world, and write all the stories. They already exist.

On the other hand... People know what the world is, and how things look. They've got a certain expectation of how things are.
I fully expect the first couple weeks of Revival's beta to be a FLOOD of bug reports that basically read "This sign post is supposed to be 4 further down the road. And the color of the sky isn't quite blue enough."

and the sun never DID move east to west or the moon for that matter.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 03:51:36 PM
I think one of the biggest challenge you may face will be base building. I remember asking why can't we get the stuff in Pocket D into our base (pool table, the Jack Daniel bottles, etc) and WarBase, a veteran basemaker said he asked Matt Miller the same question the response was the code left behind from the old dev team (Jack's) was so integrated with the system, you move one thing, it breaks another. Don't know if you are going to run into that problem or even planned  to do base making yet.

I loved the base system. I loved seeing what players had built, I loved building myself... It was an amazing addition to CoH.

We're very unlikely to have the same kind of issues that they faced working on the Base system, as we'll be a little more mindful when building it in the first place. Also, I'll flay any programmer that doesn't comment their code.

Bases are a planned feature, one that I'm looking forward to. I can say that I want to drastically increase how much stuff you guys have available to place in bases, and the kinds of things you can do in a base. I also love Base Raiding. So, it's safe to expect to see it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 03:53:14 PM
Heh, I probably see it a bit clearer than many because I'm a programmer by trade, have been for over 20 years.  I don't write games, but I DO write huge, complicated application software.  Right now we're working on porting all our legacy VB6 code over to C#.  This is going to take us at LEAST 2 years, just to get back to the current status quo...  And this is just a sales/invoicing/production system...

-whistles- That certainly....does not sound like fun. I do not evny you your job, Sir.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 04, 2014, 03:54:13 PM
Bases are a planned feature, one that I'm looking forward to. I can say that I want to drastically increase how much stuff you guys have available to place in bases, and the kinds of things you can do in a base. I also love Base Raiding. So, it's safe to expect to see it.

Oh my that makes me happy. I can probably now complete making my "City Base" (could do that before because of the number limitation) with a Buffalo Wild Wings in it too xD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 04, 2014, 03:54:39 PM
The main issue with any "code reuse" isn't actually going to be code reuse as such.. It's pretty unlikely any of the game code in CoH lives on in other NCSoft games as it's the only product Cryptic wrote under NCSoft's publishing banner.

What WILL be a problem though, is any code that talks to NCSoft's accounts systems.  This is stuff like the login authentication, store access, content gated behind being a subscriber...  They're not going to want anyone to see that, and they're probably not going to want the bother of digging it out of the CoH codebase to remove it.
Ok, that makes sense.   Thanks FFM.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 04, 2014, 03:54:49 PM
Because my mind is not understanding how CoH had such a messy mess that seems to have been created especially for it....but then it may be being used in other NCSoft games?    I'm not quite understanding the process that would allow for the mess to happen in the first place...I understand even less that the company would then use that mess for other games.   The one benefit to "the mess" in my mind was that it would be useless to NCSoft because it couldn't be used for other games...now I'm hearing the opposite.   Or I think that's what I'm hearing...that can't be right, can it?

The whole code reuse thing is pure speculation that people are throwing out there as a possibility.

The one instance of code reuse that I think is likely is in the authentication code. I know for a fact that COH uses a modified version of the Lineage II authentication protocol to log in, so it's likely that component is built off of NCSoft's code rather than Cryptic's.

Beyond that, I doubt it. I think it's very unlikely that anyone currently working for NCSoft has even looked at the code, much less has any idea how it works. That's quite possibly part of the problem.

In order to offer it as part of the deal, they'd have to get experienced programmers to pick it apart and make a list of issues for the lawyers to vet. Things like proprietary info specific to NCSoft's server environment, commercial code licensed from third parties that needs to be accounted for, etc. Off the top of my head it's apparent from disassembling the binary that quite a few libraries are statically linked, an audit of those would need to be done to determine if they are allowed to redistribute them / transfer the license and under what conditions. They would also need to remove any pieces that can't be transferred, which would likely leave it in an unbuildable (though not necessarily unsalvagable) state. Things get murky if there are any instances of third-party code copied into the main source, and from what I hear the COH programmers looooved CTRL+C/CTRL+V.

Given that they don't have anyone on staff experienced with the code (and we can assume from dev statements that it's not well documented), that's a very big project, and it would take quite a lucrative offer to make it worth the cost of undertaking.

Alternatively, it could just be that parting with source code they own is something that they simply Do Not Do, Under Any Circumstance. It's not an uncommon attitude in the corporate software world. NCSoft has licensed binaries to people before -- several of their games in the European market are operated by third parties -- but they don't get access to the source and are dependent on NCSoft for patches and updates. As far as I know, they have never sold or licensed source code to anyone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 04, 2014, 03:55:29 PM
and the sun never DID move east to west or the moon for that matter.

  ah yes..can that be fixed ? lol, j/king ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 04, 2014, 03:58:00 PM
Personally, I think the original CoH base system is one thing you should NOT try to replicate. It was ugly as sin and made it a right chore to get anything decent looking.

You can do better, loads better. :p  Personally.. I kinda like how they do it in DCUO.  Just a collection of big empty rooms you can decorate how you like. Just don't gate the furnishings behind drops and let the users buy additional rooms to add on to it (including multiple levels).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 04, 2014, 04:00:28 PM
It's a benefit and a curse. On the one hand, it's A LOT of time saved. We're not having to design a new world, and write all the stories. They already exist.

On the other hand... People know what the world is, and how things look. They've got a certain expectation of how things are.
I fully expect the first couple weeks of Revival's beta to be a FLOOD of bug reports that basically read "This sign post is supposed to be 4 further down the road. And the color of the sky isn't quite blue enough."
Hmmm....I'm kind of expecting and dare I say...looking forward to little changes like that.   Heck...even fairly big changes to how some things look wouldn't bother me.   Kinda like the different Captain America costumes in the three movies he's in....they all work for me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 04:02:03 PM
(How's your moving going?  What am I asking-- moving is always a major pain in the butt!  You poor thing, you should take a vacation once you're done....)

And as far as any voiceovers in APR go, I don't know that it'd be worth it in the end.  Do you know how Hellgate:  London's developers Flagship Studios, funded with mega millions and headed by former Blizzard folk, went down in a burning ball of flame?  They tried to do too much and make their game everything to everybody, nothing ever got finished, eventually they had to launch anyway and it all fell apart.

Just think about the work ahead for APR:  Trying to get all the zones, every NPC, every quest, every class and subclass and power set and costume piece and body shape in from Praetoria, the Rogue Isles and Paragon City.....  This took what, over 100 people at many points probably over a decade of full-time work (and probably longer days) to bring CoX to Issue 23?  Granted they were down to 15 people left I think when Cryptic split, but they were a lot larger than anything we've got going here for most of that decade and as Paragon Studios.  I'm not saying it won't ever get done (and I'm not saying it ever will either), but they had a lot more experience than most of us do here, and adding unnecessary extra burdens like voiceovers that may only rapidly become player annoyances down the road anyway seems detrimental.

Oh, and while I am trying to find my place in this potential APR outfit whether it winds up being eventual digital security, or menial, basic, repetitive tasking (copying missions over?) or what have you, I'd just like to ask:  Do we get our assets for Blender transitioning from the torrent download?  Let me dig around and try to find it.  NCSoft so nicely deleted CoX out of my NC Launcher and off my computer without my knowledge or consent right after the shutdown.  Will the Icon download help?  I had that on my PC after the shutdown but just reformatted earlier this week.

Well... So far... I've spent far too much time answering questions, and not enough packing! Ack! I'm not good at slowly working up to a move, lol.

I agree on the subject of voice overs. Especially when the same time and effort could instead be spent giving player's the ability to ride a Motorcycle, or add in new zones, new TFs. What about a Praetorian Seer Epic AT? More base items?

As for the torrent... It should just be the CoH client with ICON tossed in. Which is what I use to get my rips from, yes. There's a certain amount of setting up to get them however. Which is something I'll sit down and document later.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 04:03:40 PM
and the sun never DID move east to west or the moon for that matter.

Coincidentally... Revival's sun also doesn't currently move east to west. It's moving NW to SE If memory serves.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 04, 2014, 04:04:21 PM
Well... So far... I've spent far too much time answering questions, and not enough packing! Ack! I'm not good at slowly working up to a move, lol.

I agree on the subject of voice overs. Especially when the same time and effort could instead be spent giving player's the ability to ride a Motorcycle, or add in new zones, new TFs. What about a Praetorian Seer Epic AT? More base items?

As for the torrent... It should just be the CoH client with ICON tossed in. Which is what I use to get my rips from, yes. There's a certain amount of setting up to get them however. Which is something I'll sit down and document later.

Don't you mean ride on nemesis steam ponies?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 04, 2014, 04:04:50 PM
Coincidentally... Revival's sun also doesn't currently move east to west. It's moving NW to SE If memory serves.

You're gonna fix that, right? ;)

... AFTER you've finished your packing, though!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 04, 2014, 04:09:01 PM
Personally, I think the original CoH base system is one thing you should NOT try to replicate. It was ugly as sin and made it a right chore to get anything decent looking.

You can do better, loads better. :p  Personally.. I kinda like how they do it in DCUO.  Just a collection of big empty rooms you can decorate how you like. Just don't gate the furnishings behind drops and let the users buy additional rooms to add on to it (including multiple levels).

Its not ugly if you stack stuff :D. I liked it because you had the ability to stack items and make completely new and imaginative rooms. I seen stuff where people made penthouse, Pokemon Hospitals that look like a the real thing, I even recreated the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) with complete flight deck and the illusion you are going downstairs to see the reactor room. DCUO base making doesn't offer stacking
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 04:10:12 PM
Hmmm....I'm kind of expecting and dare I say...looking forward to little changes like that.   Heck...even fairly big changes to how some things look wouldn't bother me.   Kinda like the different Captain America costumes in the three movies he's in....they all work for me.
Don't expect Revival to be an exact Carbon copy of City of Heroes. Obviously, It would be madly impractical for the team to ensure that every little thing like sign posts are pixel perfectly placed.
There might be other changes to. Like..You ever notice how there's no real hospital in the city? Those little medical clinics are fine for Medivacing a bruised up Her...but how many civilians do you think have their babies there?

There's not going to be grand sweeping changes like the AP Revamp, or the DA makeover. But do expect to see some stuff here and there.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 04, 2014, 04:11:26 PM
The whole code reuse thing is pure speculation that people are throwing out there as a possibility.

The one instance of code reuse that I think is likely is in the authentication code. I know for a fact that COH uses a modified version of the Lineage II authentication protocol to log in, so it's likely that component is built off of NCSoft's code rather than Cryptic's.

Beyond that, I doubt it. I think it's very unlikely that anyone currently working for NCSoft has even looked at the code, much less has any idea how it works. That's quite possibly part of the problem.

In order to offer it as part of the deal, they'd have to get experienced programmers to pick it apart and make a list of issues for the lawyers to vet. Things like proprietary info specific to NCSoft's server environment, commercial code licensed from third parties that needs to be accounted for, etc. Off the top of my head it's apparent from disassembling the binary that quite a few libraries are statically linked, an audit of those would need to be done to determine if they are allowed to redistribute them / transfer the license and under what conditions. They would also need to remove any pieces that can't be transferred, which would likely leave it in an unbuildable (though not necessarily unsalvagable) state. Things get murky if there are any instances of third-party code copied into the main source, and from what I hear the COH programmers looooved CTRL+C/CTRL+V.

Given that they don't have anyone on staff experienced with the code (and we can assume from dev statements that it's not well documented), that's a very big project, and it would take quite a lucrative offer to make it worth the cost of undertaking.

Alternatively, it could just be that parting with source code they own is something that they simply Do Not Do, Under Any Circumstance. It's not an uncommon attitude in the corporate software world. NCSoft has licensed binaries to people before -- several of their games in the European market are operated by third parties -- but they don't get access to the source and are dependent on NCSoft for patches and updates. As far as I know, they have never sold or licensed source code to anyone.
Thanks to you as well, CW.

If I can sum up the first possibility:

Yes the CoH code is a mess that no other game has any use for.
But mixed in with that mess are some things that NCSoft uses for other games and they (understandably) don't want to hand those little bits out to people.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 04:15:05 PM
Don't you mean ride on nemesis steam ponies?
Yes. Yes, I do.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 04:16:16 PM
You're gonna fix that, right? ;)

... AFTER you've finished your packing, though!

It's just something I haven't bothered to get around to. It's a simple matter of changing the Rotation value of the blueprint that drives the day/night cycle. ;P That's a fix for lackeys.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 04, 2014, 04:17:00 PM
Don't expect Revival to be an exact Carbon copy of City of Heroes. Obviously, It would be madly impractical for the team to ensure that every little thing like sign posts are pixel perfectly placed.
There might be other changes to. Like..You ever notice how there's no real hospital in the city? Those little medical clinics are fine for Medivacing a bruised up Her...but how many civilians do you think have their babies there?

There's not going to be grand sweeping changes like the AP Revamp, or the DA makeover. But do expect to see some stuff here and there.

You know what I always felt CoH was missing in the zones? Ambience!  It never really FELT like a real city... Starting from the looks and working all the way down to dogs barking, traffic jams, kids playing in parks, WEATHER!!!

Now I know people would complain if you remodelled places so they actually looked more like a real city (including more realistic roads and hills etc), but it'd sure help the ambience!

Imagine playing CoH in a zone that looked something like those in such games as Watch_Dogs or GTA V...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 04, 2014, 04:17:56 PM
It's just something I haven't bothered to get around to. It's a simple matter of changing the Rotation value of the blueprint that drives the day/night cycle. ;P That's a fix for lackeys.

That was probably Paragon's reasoning too, and thus it got forgotten about! ;)

Dot the i's and cross the t's, dear! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 04, 2014, 04:18:44 PM
Nate and I do have to make sure that if this deal falls through... We don't want to have a mob of people with fire and pitchforks calling for one, or both, of our heads because people spent money.

Personally, If people want to learn Unreal Engine 4...Go and buy it. Drop 20 bucks, then cancel your sub. I encourage people learning this stuff. It's a lot of fun, and you learn a lot about how/why certain things are they way they are in games.
However, if you're buying it because you want to contribute to Revival. Wait. I'd hate to have people pony up cash, just for us to get a no-go from above. That is only partially due to the above listed fear of Pitchfork-wielding mobs.

I will warn you, however. Something nobody thought to tell me when I got into learning Game creation. Get into it far enough, and you'll never look at games the same way. You start to look at how you think things were built, and how you might build them better/differently. Seriously, I look at games and I like...see Wireframes and scripts, lol.

Do you have a rough(very rough) estimate for how long it should be for a deal decision? ie weeks, months, ets or will everyone refreshing this conversation cause tony to implode from bandwith costs?  :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 04:19:03 PM
Personally, I think the original CoH base system is one thing you should NOT try to replicate. It was ugly as sin and made it a right chore to get anything decent looking.

You can do better, loads better. :p  Personally.. I kinda like how they do it in DCUO.  Just a collection of big empty rooms you can decorate how you like. Just don't gate the furnishings behind drops and let the users buy additional rooms to add on to it (including multiple levels).

It certainly could have used improvement. The ability to stack and clip things, I think, are crucial.
and I seriously always wanted multiple floors. That would have been so amazing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 04, 2014, 04:20:22 PM
You know what I always felt CoH was missing in the zones? Ambience!  It never really FELT like a real city... Starting from the looks and working all the way down to dogs barking, traffic jams, kids playing in parks, WEATHER!!!

Now I know people would complain if you remodelled places so they actually looked more like a real city (including more realistic roads and hills etc), but it'd sure help the ambience!

Imagine playing CoH in a zone that looked something like those in such games as Watch_Dogs or GTA V...

Speaking of stuff that I felt was missing freeways outside of Skyway. Just seems odd. Not saying put in freeway in other zones because I guess Skyway Freeway is what gives Skyway it's identity, but just seems off xD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 04:21:59 PM
That was probably Paragon's reasoning too, and thus it got forgotten about! ;)

Dot the i's and cross the t's, dear! :p

For paragon I'm sure it was more a matter of not knowing WHAT code controlled the sun...
If they did, I'm sure they tried to fix it at some point...Just to find that suddenly the sun was a rock, Bases didn't work, every mission had 10 pancake rooms, cat's and dogs got along, and the sky was a picture of Spock.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 04:25:20 PM
You know what I always felt CoH was missing in the zones? Ambience!  It never really FELT like a real city... Starting from the looks and working all the way down to dogs barking, traffic jams, kids playing in parks, WEATHER!!!

Now I know people would complain if you remodelled places so they actually looked more like a real city (including more realistic roads and hills etc), but it'd sure help the ambience!

Imagine playing CoH in a zone that looked something like those in such games as Watch_Dogs or GTA V...

A friend and I have been playing through Watch_Dogs recently, and inFamous:Second Son not long ago... and I couldn't help but think "Imagine Paragon City looking this...Real."
Something I want to try and achieve in Revival, as best I can.
and I *may* have certain...plans in regards to weather.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 04, 2014, 04:26:59 PM
Also keeping in mind the fact that a lot of objects from CoH have aged very poorly. My intent is to raise the bar for CoH's graphic fidelity. So a lot of asset's and especially textures have to be re-created from scratch, or quite heavily modified from the original.
Because of the fairly recent Revamp of the zone, Atlas Park has a benefit that most everything in the zone is only a couple years old. So not as much work needs to be done there. Praetoria will also share that silver lining.

As for the time consumption from the coding aspect... This is a huge reason why the agreement is in place between Revival and MWM to build off of City of Titan's code base. So...say...Instead of having to build a character system from the ground up, we'll instead be modifying one to fit Revival's needs. Seems to make more sense than having 2 teams building near identical code from scratch.

It is quite a large job, which is why I'm hoping to recruit some hopefully talented people to work on it with me. Don't expect it to be done quick, or to be in beta next month just because "It's just coh".

Also, I should have FloatingFatMan be my PR whenever I want people to think my work is REALLY hard.

Irish Girl, I repeat my offer to go back through this thread and collect up the folk that are offering to help and send you a list of them. I'll contact them and collect emails for you as well, if you wish. Then you can merge them with the ones who contacted you directly.

Even if you don't want me as a designer, I'm a whiz at really boring stuff like list management, drupal, and other officy stuff.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 04:28:28 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 04:30:43 PM
Speaking of stuff that I felt was missing freeways outside of Skyway. Just seems odd. Not saying put in freeway in other zones because I guess Skyway Freeway is what gives Skyway it's identity, but just seems off xD

I wondered about that myself... Skyway always just kind of felt like there were freeways just for the sake of having freeways. Very, very odd.
A couple weeks ago, I briefly considered nuking Skyway City from orbit and just making up some story as to why it didn't exist anymore. lol.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 04, 2014, 04:34:48 PM
I wondered about that myself... Skyway always just kind of felt like there were freeways just for the sake of having freeways. Very, very odd.
A couple weeks ago, I briefly considered nuking Skyway City from orbit and just making up some story as to why it didn't exist anymore. lol.

Oh, don't do that! Let's fix it instead. I always that that Skyway should be a zone with two layers. One bright, shiny and in the sky (new buildings, hi-tech look) and another below the freeways (derelict buildings, sewer entrances almost maze like)


I would keep it as is to start and then revamp it after everything is working.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 04:37:06 PM
Oh, don't do that! Let's fix it instead. I always that that Skyway should be a zone with two layers. One bright, shiny and in the sky (new buildings, hi-tech look) and another below the freeways (derelict buildings, sewer entrances almost maze like)
I would keep it as is to start and then revamp it after everything is working.

That's not a half bad idea, truth be told. But It'll be awhile before zones get any major re-vamping.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 04:40:08 PM
Irish Girl, I repeat my offer to go back through this thread and collect up the folk that are offering to help and send you a list of them. I'll contact them and collect emails for you as well, if you wish. Then you can merge them with the ones who contacted you directly.

Even if you don't want me as a designer, I'm a whiz at really boring stuff like list management, drupal, and other officy stuff.

Repeat? Oh dear, did I miss a first offer? If so, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... D:
Thanks for the offer, I'll pass for the moment. I want to set up something a little more organized over on the APR forums after the move.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 04, 2014, 04:44:31 PM
No worries. Anything that will help, you need only ask.

It might not be fair, but a many people are pinning a lot of hope on your efforts. I just don't want that to become a crushing responsibility.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 04, 2014, 04:46:13 PM
Oh, don't do that! Let's fix it instead. I always that that Skyway should be a zone with two layers. One bright, shiny and in the sky (new buildings, hi-tech look) and another below the freeways (derelict buildings, sewer entrances almost maze like)


I would keep it as is to start and then revamp it after everything is working.

This makes sense. There are lots of example of this that you can take inspiration from. FF7 Has Midgar where this is demonstrated

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=img3.wikia.nocookie.net%2F__cb20130423225800%2Ffinalfantasy%2Fimages%2F0%2F0f%2FFf7-midgar.jpg)

Another example would be from Deus Ex Human Revolution

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.joystickdivision.com%2FDeus%2520Ex%2520Hangsha_small.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 04, 2014, 04:59:22 PM
Repeat? Oh dear, did I miss a first offer? If so, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... D:
Thanks for the offer, I'll pass for the moment. I want to set up something a little more organized over on the APR forums after the move.

Speaking of which... I created a forum account over there, but I can't seem to post. Every time I click post, nothing happens except the post button changing to a "saving post" message, but the post never appears.

Also, that Deus Ex pic is AMAZING.

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.joystickdivision.com%2FDeus%2520Ex%2520Hangsha_small.jpg)


EDIT:
Nevermind, seems fixed today. I was trying to post yesterday, and it wasn't working. I was just able to post a couple minutes ago.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 04, 2014, 05:05:29 PM
I miss base editing :( Base editing was almost like a whole game in and of itself to me. I taught a lot of people base editing and was paid by several SGs to do their bases for them. While it had it's limitations...those limits pushed me harder to find a way around them. The clipping issue was my biggest beef, but am proud to say I found ways around that and no base I ever did for pay or my own base had clipping/flicker issues. Sigh... memories.... hopefully when CoHi23 comes back I can get back to playing...and building :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 04, 2014, 05:09:41 PM
EDIT:
Nevermind, seems fixed today. I was trying to post yesterday, and it wasn't working. I was just able to post a couple minutes ago.

Yeah, I had Neo (who runs the website) fix it yesterday. People should be able to make accounts and post normally.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on September 04, 2014, 05:12:25 PM
I kinda get the impression that some folks think CoH1.5 won't be too difficult to do, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Whilst it IS in effect, just copying the existing game, it STILL has to be written from scratch! All the assets must be re-created (zone maps, mission maps, objects, textures, animations), the UI written, the power mechanisms design, the mission system done, the chat system, enhancements, inventions, IO's, -everything-.  The only slightly easier thing it's got going for it is that we know the numbers for the powersets.

It's every bit as big a job as the successor projects, and will be MUCH more prone to criticism as it's meant to be replicating CoH.

It's not impossible, but it's absolutely NOT an easy job, by any shake of the imagination. Don't expecting it to launch with Windows 9 (which is the initial impression I got from Nate's post, and I'm sure others thought that too).

Irish_Girl has a HUGE job here, and I wish her all the best for it, but it's not gonna be quick.

I'd aluded to this early on in the thread, that it requires man-years of effort and many, many simoleons for an established software shops to stand up an MMO of this magnitude. I do believe that CoX 1.5 is absolutely doable on a volunteer basis, but I also believe it won't happen any time in the short-term.

I applaud both Irish_Girl and Nate for their individual efforts on these projects. It takes a special kind of person to shoulder that kind of work on his/her own time, presumably in addition to commitments from gainful employment they may already have.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 04, 2014, 05:14:01 PM
Personally, I think the original CoH base system is one thing you should NOT try to replicate. It was ugly as sin and made it a right chore to get anything decent looking.

You can do better, loads better. :p  Personally.. I kinda like how they do it in DCUO.  Just a collection of big empty rooms you can decorate how you like. Just don't gate the furnishings behind drops and let the users buy additional rooms to add on to it (including multiple levels).
This is much along the lines CoT is planning.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Without_Pause on September 04, 2014, 05:14:47 PM
As far as the rest goes...from what I understand Valiance Online, and Heroes and Villains have both turned down the offers of inclusion into the CoH-verse.
That would just leave Revival, City of Titans, and Legacy City of Heroes under the banner.

I'm not sure how VO's copy/paste of CoH is going to fly if they aren't part of the deal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 04, 2014, 05:16:17 PM
Do you have a rough(very rough) estimate for how long it should be for a deal decision? ie weeks, months, ets or will everyone refreshing this conversation cause tony to implode from bandwith costs?  :o
It could take months, honestly. Until the deal is set it is slow going.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: bugzee on September 04, 2014, 05:17:10 PM
I remember looking at the COH pigg files a while back and seeing that the maps and pretty much most of the content in the game were in them and not the executable. So if this proposed deal does materialize, we still may be able to add new content and maps to the game. I would like to hear from some others who have done more exploring of the .piggs. None of us have seen the server side of things however. Have you explored the COH files? Do you think adding *some* content is at least possible?

[edit] Went back a few pages and saw that others noted the same ideas. Good to see that the subject came up!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Raven on September 04, 2014, 05:20:56 PM
That was probably Paragon's reasoning too, and thus it got forgotten about! ;)

Dot the i's and cross the t's, dear! :p
True on the city feel. I always wanted to race the cars running beside them or jump on the roof and car surf down the street.  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 04, 2014, 05:24:44 PM
This makes sense. There are lots of example of this that you can take inspiration from. FF7 Has Midgar where this is demonstrated

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=img3.wikia.nocookie.net%2F__cb20130423225800%2Ffinalfantasy%2Fimages%2F0%2F0f%2FFf7-midgar.jpg)

Another example would be from Deus Ex Human Revolution

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.joystickdivision.com%2FDeus%2520Ex%2520Hangsha_small.jpg)

I like this! I would probably go less futuristic but that's the basic idea for sure.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 04, 2014, 05:28:28 PM
I'm not sure how VO's copy/paste of CoH is going to fly if they aren't part of the deal.

I've played one of the alpha builds of VO, and I wouldn't call it a copy/paste at ALL. There are similarities (it's about heroes and it's based in a city), but copy/paste would involve using same names, storylines, powersets, locations, designs, etc.... They have utilized NONE of that.

That's essentially like calling DC Universe Online a copy/paste of City of Heroes just because it's a heroes game. You can be a spritual successor superhero game that plays similarly without being a copy/paste.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 04, 2014, 05:31:04 PM
True on the city feel. I always wanted to race the cars running beside them or jump on the roof and car surf down the street.  :P

Now and then you could surf a truck until it cornered, but most of the time I just slid off, but yeah, I was always trying anyway!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fridgy Daiere on September 04, 2014, 05:52:33 PM
It certainly could have used improvement. The ability to stack and clip things, I think, are crucial.
and I seriously always wanted multiple floors. That would have been so amazing.

And either smaller doorways or (and this would be preferred) the ability to place things in a doorway.  That being said, let's not put the cart before the horse.

First, we need the game!   ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 04, 2014, 06:31:41 PM
I wondered about that myself... Skyway always just kind of felt like there were freeways just for the sake of having freeways. Very, very odd.
A couple weeks ago, I briefly considered nuking Skyway City from orbit and just making up some story as to why it didn't exist anymore. lol.

Didn't some of the larger destroyed zoned have larger streets and highway? I am thinking Rikti War Zone, Boomtown, and Faultline
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 04, 2014, 06:33:03 PM
And either smaller doorways or (and this would be preferred) the ability to place things in a doorway.  That being said, let's not put the cart before the horse.

First, we need the game!   ;)

Let's not put the cart before the Nemesis steam pony
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 04, 2014, 06:35:19 PM
The whole code reuse thing is pure speculation that people are throwing out there as a possibility.

The one instance of code reuse that I think is likely is in the authentication code. I know for a fact that COH uses a modified version of the Lineage II authentication protocol to log in, so it's likely that component is built off of NCSoft's code rather than Cryptic's.

Beyond that, I doubt it. I think it's very unlikely that anyone currently working for NCSoft has even looked at the code, much less has any idea how it works. That's quite possibly part of the problem.

In order to offer it as part of the deal, they'd have to get experienced programmers to pick it apart and make a list of issues for the lawyers to vet. Things like proprietary info specific to NCSoft's server environment, commercial code licensed from third parties that needs to be accounted for, etc. Off the top of my head it's apparent from disassembling the binary that quite a few libraries are statically linked, an audit of those would need to be done to determine if they are allowed to redistribute them / transfer the license and under what conditions. They would also need to remove any pieces that can't be transferred, which would likely leave it in an unbuildable (though not necessarily unsalvagable) state. Things get murky if there are any instances of third-party code copied into the main source, and from what I hear the COH programmers looooved CTRL+C/CTRL+V.

That's the problem in a nutshell, but I should point out that while its possible large blocks of code were reused in other NCSoft products like the authentication code, its also possible that the reverse happened: a developer hired to add code to CoH "borrowed" code from somewhere else.  That would be a potential problem, but the liability associated with that problem died with CoH.  Unless, of course, they start handing out the source code to people.

A code audit wouldn't just be necessary to make sure that NCSoft was not giving away someone else they wanted: that's actually not as big a deal because the downside there is low.  The huge potential minefield is the potential they would be giving away something they didn't actually own.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Xaphan on September 04, 2014, 06:42:59 PM
What I'd always wanted for bases in CoH was separate bases for social stuff and raiding stuff. A lot of the stuff in the old bases, the big 1x1 doorways you couldn't put anything in for example, were there because of the raiding system... and the fact that raiding was removed just made them all the more frustrating! So I think that creating bases from the bottom up without any intent to make them raidable would just make things so much nicer.

But that's not to say to forget about raiding entirely. Raiding was fun, when we could do it! So instead, have a separate, smaller base that's only purpose is for raiding. It could have much stricter rules on where or how you could place things (since it wouldn't be used for social stuff), so you wouldn't have to worry about things like people cheating by doing things like using a glitch to stack tables and make it impossible to reach certain items. It could be much more controlled, and I think it would make for a better raiding system.
(as an additional note, why just have PvP raids? We could have PvE raids too, where you have to defend the base you built from waves of enemies! That way, even the lonely 1 person SGs could get in on the fun)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 04, 2014, 06:43:25 PM
Speaking of which... I created a forum account over there, but I can't seem to post. Every time I click post, nothing happens except the post button changing to a "saving post" message, but the post never appears.

Also, that Deus Ex pic is AMAZING.

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.joystickdivision.com%2FDeus%2520Ex%2520Hangsha_small.jpg)


EDIT:
Nevermind, seems fixed today. I was trying to post yesterday, and it wasn't working. I was just able to post a couple minutes ago.

Aye, Hangsha is the funnest section of deus ex: Human revolution.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 04, 2014, 06:43:38 PM
I will warn you, however. Something nobody thought to tell me when I got into learning Game creation. Get into it far enough, and you'll never look at games the same way. You start to look at how you think things were built, and how you might build them better/differently. Seriously, I look at games and I like...see Wireframes and scripts, lol.

I look at games, particularly MMOs, and I see ... a need to improve math programs in the US education system.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 04, 2014, 06:49:01 PM
I look at games, particularly MMOs, and I see ... a need to improve math programs in the US education system.

Even just modding a game will cause you to look at that game differently.  The game Myth 2, soulblighter for example, instead of a molotove being seen thrown by a dwarf, I see a 15% chance it'll promote to a "dwarf bottle unlit" per impact the "Dwarf bottle lit" makes, 85% chance it'll actually explode.  I also see a .010 velocity error when I see an unskilled bowman firing at something, with .02 velocity error reduction for every kill a bowman has.  And so on effectively :P.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ParagonKid on September 04, 2014, 06:54:21 PM
Regarding Skyway City:

I'd have to dig out the novels but IIRC, their take on the zone was more interesting. Skyway was, at least by the mid 1980's, kind of failed Art-Deco-Jet-Age-Dream with elevated tube pedways (the titular Skyways) over snaking freeways. Like if someone left the 1964 World's Fair and EPCOT to rot in the economic downturn of the 70's. It was also the city's telecom broadcasting hub since the golden age of radio due to it's elevation, with the ever increasing number of antennas and dishes being added to the art deco towers over the decades being a particular source of urban blight.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 04, 2014, 07:02:19 PM
I look at games, particularly MMOs, and I see ... a need to improve math programs in the US education system.

The math wizard waves
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 04, 2014, 07:09:10 PM
The math wizard waves

Actually I see a sore lack of physics knowledge when I see mmorpg gameplay.  They just do all hit rolls wheres the real projectiles?  Actually I can only think of one, no, three real time strategy games even where physics truely mattered in rts's.  So that leaves me feeling games still have a ways to go when it comes to physics.  At least mmorpgs for sure need physics to matter more.

Edit: I know, went a little in the head upstairs in this one but, really.  If a fireball follows me, it's hit roles, if I can sidestep it, it's physics.  If throwing a projectile that weighs more than may other projecties causes it to fall short due to my applying the same velocity/force, compared to others, thats physics.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on September 04, 2014, 07:20:36 PM
Heh, I probably see it a bit clearer than many because I'm a programmer by trade, have been for over 20 years.  I don't write games, but I DO write huge, complicated application software.  Right now we're working on porting all our legacy VB6 code over to C#.  This is going to take us at LEAST 2 years, just to get back to the current status quo...  And this is just a sales/invoicing/production system...

These youngsters, unfortunately not many games are written in the COBOL and FORTRAN that I did most of my programming in :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 04, 2014, 07:29:24 PM
These youngsters, unfortunately not many games are written in the COBOL and FORTRAN that I did most of my programming in :)

I learned fortran 4 on punched cards....loooong time ago
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 04, 2014, 07:31:38 PM
These youngsters, unfortunately not many games are written in the COBOL and FORTRAN that I did most of my programming in :)

I wrote a GUI in RPG II once.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 04, 2014, 07:34:06 PM
I learned fortran 4 on punched cards....loooong time ago

oops excuse me, did you drop this card?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 04, 2014, 07:39:04 PM
Actually I see a sore lack of physics knowledge when I see mmorpg gameplay.  They just do all hit rolls wheres the real projectiles?  Actually I can only think of one, no, three real time strategy games even where physics truely mattered in rts's.  So that leaves me feeling games still have a ways to go when it comes to physics.  At least mmorpgs for sure need physics to matter more.

Edit: I know, went a little in the head upstairs in this one but, really.  If a fireball follows me, it's hit roles, if I can sidestep it, it's physics.  If throwing a projectile that weighs more than may other projecties causes it to fall short due to my applying the same velocity/force, compared to others, thats physics.

The difference being game designers are often explicitly not trying to do accurate physics.  But I don't think most game designers are explicitly not trying to do accurate arithmetic.

When I beta tested Champions Online, I decided to analyze the effectiveness and performance of the defensive powers (of course).  I concluded they were wildly unbalanced, and in some cases explicitly broken mechanically.  I summarized my observations and sent them to the devs, asking if they wanted to discuss further.  I never heard back from them the three separate times I tried.  When they launched, players complained they were horribly unbalanced and in some cases broken.  The devs posted something that basically said trust us, we have a spreadsheet.

That's when I stopped testing Champions Online.  You can't argue with "I have a spreadsheet, ergo I'm right."  Even if the math is so horribly wrong that not only can you prove its wrong, you can even prove what must have gone wrong in the sheet without even looking at it (which I posted, then went back to testing combat clocks in City of Heroes and really didn't bother analyzing CO very much past that point).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on September 04, 2014, 07:40:37 PM
Quote
Quote from: Arcana on Today at 07:08:04 am
That's why Codewalker is the only player I fear.  He likes it.  That's Cthulhu kinds of wrong.

With words like that, it's clear that the CoH Legacy is in safe hands.

As Codewalker once said, 'It's only code.'

Meaning, good programmers who know what they are doing, like a challenge and know their maths...

...sounds like we're just waiting on a deal. 

It's like I said previously.

1.  Get Legacy back at Issue 23.  I just want to play the original.
2.  CoH 1.5.  Port to a modern engine.  (Zones are already designed.  We know the combat/powers system and numbers?  We're often told the combat mechanic is quite simple.  In that case, I look forward to it's visceral and kinetic ballet being replicated in Unreal 4 Engine. :P  We know the missions etc.)  Ie.  Look at Icon and port the 'on Hard Drive' assets to Unreal Engine 4 which is a belter of a release.  That kind of leaves the Server side of things to reverse engineer still?  But couldn't savvy Code 'Warriors' ;) be able to at least pick apart and look at the Issue 23 'map' image and deconstruct it to have a look at how the server side works rather than 'guessing' (apologies for this presumption...in advance...) re: SCORE?  If the engine is different to data based and spreadsheet aspects of the game can be 'observed' and decoupled (even) then perhaps the assets can be developed...and ported over to Unreal 4 Engine...?  For me.  CoH is the Combat (allegedly quite simple?) mechanic, the interface, graphical assets, zones, sounds, missions and obviously the server side.  How much of this is hard wired into the 'engine' and how much sits on top how tightly coupled it is...hard for me to say.  I'm not a programmer with that level of access or experience.
3.  Spiritual successors can carry on with their mandate.
4. A true CoH 2?  *shrugs.  That's kind of what points 2 and 3 are in summation.

Azrael.

PS.
Quote
When I beta tested Champions Online, I decided to analyze the effectiveness and performance of the defensive powers (of course).  I concluded they were wildly unbalanced, and in some cases explicitly broken mechanically.

Tell me about it.  CO.  Basically 'broken.'

CoH.  The Combat was ballet.  The 'numbers' worked.  The zones sublime in tone.  The archetypes sang.  The teaming mechanic simplicity finessed.  Any flaws the game had were, for the most, part of it's 'original' charm.  (Apart from the incarnate design, interface and 'mega legion missions' which sucked and strayed far from the game's who modus, simplicity of interface and easy to pick up.  I'd have preferred they kept the standard powers interface for incarnate powers.  Which this pokey little nest fest interface.  Terrible.  Unintuitive.)

Lightning in a bottle.

As for 'realism' - who wants that?  You can see the pitfalls of that thought process in any Marvel movie.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 04, 2014, 08:00:24 PM

I will warn you, however. Something nobody thought to tell me when I got into learning Game creation. Get into it far enough, and you'll never look at games the same way. You start to look at how you think things were built, and how you might build them better/differently. Seriously, I look at games and I like...see Wireframes and scripts, lol.

Follow the White Rabbit.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 04, 2014, 08:02:54 PM
The difference being game designers are often explicitly not trying to do accurate physics.  But I don't think most game designers are explicitly not trying to do accurate arithmetic.

When I beta tested Champions Online, I decided to analyze the effectiveness and performance of the defensive powers (of course).  I concluded they were wildly unbalanced, and in some cases explicitly broken mechanically.  I summarized my observations and sent them to the devs, asking if they wanted to discuss further.  I never heard back from them the three separate times I tried.  When they launched, players complained they were horribly unbalanced and in some cases broken.  The devs posted something that basically said trust us, we have a spreadsheet.

That's when I stopped testing Champions Online.  You can't argue with "I have a spreadsheet, ergo I'm right."  Even if the math is so horribly wrong that not only can you prove its wrong, you can even prove what must have gone wrong in the sheet without even looking at it (which I posted, then went back to testing combat clocks in City of Heroes and really didn't bother analyzing CO very much past that point).

So many players knew CO, actually, the devs didn't even know the math behind any of the powers they designed.  It was blown wide open when people were using power combinations to achieve 10k+ damage hits with attacks that only did around 200-300 damage hits.  I remember someone saying to me, "anyone who has any intelligence will leave this game when something better comes along, only people I've talked to who'll stay with this game no matter what were all complete idiots".  And I can fully see why the person said that, because when you actually play CO you can definently tell the game is so horribly imbalanced and fundamentally broken that it's more like to scream" build this thing cause it's not only an agro holding tank, it out damages all the damage and only need slight healing in fire and ice!" or "Don't do X because Y does the same thing cheaper, faster and more effectively without any tradeoffs!".

When I look at CO, and city of heroes, I end up respectively looking at Invisible War and the original deus Ex.  The original Deus Ex was an awesome game, and certainly earned a lot of respect.  City of heroes was the same way as deus ex, an awesome game that earned it's respect.  Both games had very solid writing and while they did have problems, they were also well balanced to.  JC Denton wasn't a mary sue, he had his faults and it readily became apparent in his dialogue(emotionless, blindly patriotic initially, yet still tended to say something funny once in a while by accident at times).

Invisible war, everyone dispised it.  One speed runner described it as a "neat game with a LOT of problems" and most describe it as a linear, generic shooter that marked the beginning of the decline of first person shooters, it lowered the fps standard severely.  The story writing was poor, at best, at worst Alex D is very mary/marty sueful, in that he/she is the sole peice of the puzzle EVERY SINGLE FACTION NEEDS.  NPCs are even dumber in invisible war, to, the game has less options as well.  Even in a case where someone did once try to be a 100% pacifist, he felt the game litterally had no thinking behind it, unlike the original, to.

And Champions online makes very similar mistakes.

It gives a very bad example as to what a super hero mmorpg could be like, in which everyone is a mary sue, just like invisible war's alex D is a mary sue(there are litterally NO consequences for your actions in invisible war, none, zip, zilch, every single faction INSTANTLY forgives anything you do in it no matter how monstrous it is).  NPCs worship you in an especially creepy way in CO, the freeform system screams only use the best, story writing is bad, you name it.  There really isn't much thinking, other than the character build, and it's easy to fall asleep playing it even.

CO's biggest problem perhaps was developers just running loose with just messing up what makes an rpg good, failing even what it'd really take to make an mmorpg good consequently.  I should bring up that video where a guy found out you could become 100% invincible in the game due to a glitch, or the same guy acheving I think 100k damage hits on enemies.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on September 04, 2014, 08:03:28 PM
As for Skyway.  Leave it alone.  Though it was infuriating without travel powers... :P  I had a bit of fun there on the way up to L22 and SOs...  The Lost, Clocks etc always gave me a hard time.  But russian roulette on street sweeps...  *eye twitches.

It's like the Hollows or Perez.  It has it's own charm.  All the zones in vanilla CoH did.

I was so fond of the original zones I didn't like them being revamped in a way.

The worst revamp being the patronising Hollows revamp.  It was better before.  Even better when Tanks could pull half the map... :D

Azrael.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 04, 2014, 08:06:25 PM
You see these are the things we need to pool and link to - all the software and engines used so we have a standard version and can freely work back and forth.

Might I suggest a brief conversation with some MWM folks. I bet they have a lot of that kind of thing already pooled.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 04, 2014, 08:19:13 PM
Heh, I probably see it a bit clearer than many because I'm a programmer by trade, have been for over 20 years.  I don't write games, but I DO write huge, complicated application software.  Right now we're working on porting all our legacy VB6 code over to C#.  This is going to take us at LEAST 2 years, just to get back to the current status quo...  And this is just a sales/invoicing/production system...

I feel your pain FFM.

That's the kind of thing that always drove me crazy. Does the VB6 code still work correctly? Does it need things that can only be written in C#?

I only spent a year as a code monkey but about 12 doing all the surrounding support. Everything from Configman to Sys Admin to Application Manager and support.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on September 04, 2014, 08:24:35 PM
Might I suggest a brief conversation with some MWM folks. I bet they have a lot of that kind of thing already pooled.

The Irish Girl/Atlas Revival project getting more prominence and even an official seal of approval for an Unreal Engine Port is a terrific example of what Iron Wolf was getting at regarding a communal aspect to CoH development.

Sure.  Such things need co-ordinating.

However, you look at Unreal Engine 4 and the licensing options and the accessible pricing...and the Revival project is ripe to test the accessible model with community based development.  And what better community than the CoH?

...the time is ripe for Iron Wolf's vision provided the CoH deal can be officially stamped with the 'unmasked' developer team.

The patient nature of dealing with a Korean culture/business makes perfect sense now.

Posts from Iron Wolf and Codewalker have intimated these cultural differences before.

But it's clear we're going to have to be even more patient.  Maybe even months or even another half a year.  Be nice to have an announcement by the 2nd anniversary though!

Getting an official seal of approval to license the engine and sub-license the IP to APR and others sounds like an inspirational idea.  It lays the gauntlet down to the CoH community at least as far as a 1.5 CoH port to Unreal 4 goes.

Me?  I'm happy playing Issue 23 for ten more years. :D

It's not a 'no' yet.  And 'Unmasked' seem to be doing everything in their powers to understand NC Soft's business culture.  It's a delicate matter of honour.

The intimation is that we know a lot more about why the original bid failed and will know even more if this one fails.

But it hasn't so far...

Azrael.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 04, 2014, 08:24:42 PM
Personally, I think the original CoH base system is one thing you should NOT try to replicate. It was ugly as sin and made it a right chore to get anything decent looking.

You can do better, loads better. :p  Personally.. I kinda like how they do it in DCUO.  Just a collection of big empty rooms you can decorate how you like. Just don't gate the furnishings behind drops and let the users buy additional rooms to add on to it (including multiple levels).

I still want my little bookstore that you have to go and move a particular statue and book in order to open up the base. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 04, 2014, 08:33:22 PM
I still want my little bookstore that you have to go and move a particular statue and book in order to open up the base. :)

If I had anything to do with it (which I don't), and improvements to base building were ok, I think it would be in order to create possibilities for people to make secret entrances, hidden passageways, and other cool things that are certainly part of superhero lore. That's what a lair is all about, right? :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on September 04, 2014, 08:34:05 PM
I don't like any of the movie Captain America outfits.  They all sucked.  The one they patronised in the Cap PR black and white war propaganda promo from the 1st film I liked best.

'Realistic.'  Pfft.

Azrael.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cobra Man on September 04, 2014, 08:43:37 PM
Deleted.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 04, 2014, 08:44:18 PM
I feel your pain FFM.

That's the kind of thing that always drove me crazy. Does the VB6 code still work correctly? Does it need things that can only be written in C#?

I only spent a year as a code monkey but about 12 doing all the surrounding support. Everything from Configman to Sys Admin to Application Manager and support.

oh, it works... But our main client is in the throws of moving to Windows 8, and though the apps themselves work fine in that, the IDE is another matter entirely...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 04, 2014, 08:44:53 PM
These youngsters, unfortunately not many games are written in the COBOL and FORTRAN that I did most of my programming in :)

http://academic.microfocus.com/code/index.asp
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 04, 2014, 08:53:07 PM
As for Skyway.  Leave it alone.  Though it was infuriating without travel powers... :P  I had a bit of fun there on the way up to L22 and SOs...  The Lost, Clocks etc always gave me a hard time.  But russian roulette on street sweeps...  *eye twitches.

It's like the Hollows or Perez.  It has it's own charm.  All the zones in vanilla CoH did.

I was so fond of the original zones I didn't like them being revamped in a way.

The worst revamp being the patronising Hollows revamp.  It was better before.  Even better when Tanks could pull half the map... :D

Azrael.

My main suggestions for zones is to make sure that Super Speed can be used effectively in all of them as a travel power, or else give super speed vertical movement capability
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 04, 2014, 08:55:38 PM
Probably a bit early to be asking for major changes to the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 04, 2014, 08:59:53 PM
oh, it works... But our main client is in the throws of moving to Windows 8, and though the apps themselves work fine in that, the IDE is another matter entirely...

Moving to Windows 8? No more discussion needed. Just take their money, shake your head and do some work.

Personally, I think most business systems should be functional on Unix/Linux based OSs.

Hmmm, work systems that are on a stable environment so we don't need to upgrade every other year? That can run for months at a time without having to reboot? That don't suffer the same security issues that make script kiddies so happy (I know, there are other problems though)?
That couldn't possibly work.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 04, 2014, 09:03:54 PM
We could have PvE raids too, where you have to defend the base you built from waves of enemies! That way, even the lonely 1 person SGs could get in on the fun)
Very cool idea!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: felix on September 04, 2014, 09:06:43 PM
I look at games, particularly MMOs, and I see ... a need to improve math programs in the US education system.

This, a thousand times, this.

Giffen
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 04, 2014, 09:38:53 PM
(as an additional note, why just have PvP raids? We could have PvE raids too, where you have to defend the base you built from waves of enemies! That way, even the lonely 1 person SGs could get in on the fun)

Back when bases and base raids were still new, I made a suggestion to the devs that today I would describe as "make base raids like a tower defense mini-game where one player makes the base and adversary players create teams of PvE enemies that they can send against the base" (back then I think I described it more in terms of gladiator-style PvP arena crossed with base raid).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 04, 2014, 09:46:28 PM
To me, it seems like if anyone wanted raidable bases, the multiple floors idea would help quite a bit with that concept. Of course I greatly prefer the flexibility bases got when you no longer had to follow raid rules, but being able to have a floor designated as such could be a neat idea for those who want that variety of gameplay :)

I know this is a bit of a "distant future" thing, but it occurred to me so, sharin'!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 04, 2014, 09:48:29 PM
Back when bases and base raids were still new, I made a suggestion to the devs that today I would describe as "make base raids like a tower defense mini-game where one player makes the base and adversary players create teams of PvE enemies that they can send against the base" (back then I think I described it more in terms of gladiator-style PvP arena crossed with base raid).

So like a Moab (DoTA, LoL, Infinite Crisis, etc) type of deal but instead of picking your heroes, you pick make them? :O I don't know if that is what your are getting at, but that would be fun :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 04, 2014, 09:53:10 PM
So like a Moab (DoTA, LoL, Infinite Crisis, etc) type of deal but instead of picking your heroes, you pick make them? :O I don't know if that is what your are getting at, but that would be fun :P

Just so someone less polite doesnt correct you - the abbreviation is MOBA (for Mutiplayer Online Battle Arena iirc).

But I do like how Moab sounds so I might call them that for awhile on purpose :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 04, 2014, 09:53:21 PM
Moving to Windows 8? No more discussion needed. Just take their money, shake your head and do some work.

Personally, I think most business systems should be functional on Unix/Linux based OSs.

Hmmm, work systems that are on a stable environment so we don't need to upgrade every other year? That can run for months at a time without having to reboot? That don't suffer the same security issues that make script kiddies so happy (I know, there are other problems though)?
That couldn't possibly work.

First thing finding Linux Admins and then and the stupidity of the general population sorry; I just see it way to often as easy as Windows is to use the general user base is dumber than a stump

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 04, 2014, 09:57:44 PM
Moving to Windows 8? No more discussion needed. Just take their money, shake your head and do some work.

Personally, I think most business systems should be functional on Unix/Linux based OSs.

Hmmm, work systems that are on a stable environment so we don't need to upgrade every other year? That can run for months at a time without having to reboot? That don't suffer the same security issues that make script kiddies so happy (I know, there are other problems though)?
That couldn't possibly work.

Your average user cannot even use the microsoft management console let alone type commands into a linux kernal.  Heck an average user couldn't even do 2+2 at times let alone learn what git is.

Edit, addtional thought:  If a persons brain shuts off such they cannot even do 2+2 on a computer and then when your troubleshooting for them and trying to tell them how to do things and then they repeatedly do something ENTIRELY DIFFERENT EVERY TIME AND BREAK THE MACHINE MORE.....they shouldn't be within a mile of a linux machine.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on September 04, 2014, 09:58:12 PM
What would be cool is if Teleport had it's animation removed and became instantaneous.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 04, 2014, 10:06:11 PM
Just so someone less polite doesnt correct you - the abbreviation is MOBA (for Mutiplayer Online Battle Arena iirc).

But I do like how Moab sounds so I might call them that for awhile on purpose :D
Mother
Of
All
Bananas
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 04, 2014, 10:06:22 PM
  Not trying to be pushy or anything but may we log into coh now please  :)      ( i know, i know,but with this news...could explode,lol )
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 04, 2014, 10:13:03 PM
Your average user cannot even use the microsoft management console let alone type commands into a linux kernal.  Heck an average user couldn't even do 2+2 at times let alone learn what git is.

Edit, addtional thought:  If a persons brain shuts off such they cannot even do 2+2 on a computer and then when your troubleshooting for them and trying to tell them how to do things and then they repeatedly do something ENTIRELY DIFFERENT EVERY TIME AND BREAK THE MACHINE MORE.....they shouldn't be within a mile of a linux machine.

So much lol in your replies.

Ok, last bit on this for me since we're waaaay off topic.

If done correctly, the admin will lock down the machine in such a way as it just functions for business needs and the user can't even find the rest of the files. This makes the Linux/Unix machine perfect for business as most users will effectively operate a dummy terminal.

Not that I would ever be so cruel. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 04, 2014, 10:15:15 PM
So much lol in your replies.

Ok, last bit on this for me since we're waaaay off topic.

If done correctly, the admin will lock down the machine in such a way as it just functions for business needs and the user can't even find the rest of the files. This makes the Linux/Unix machine perfect for business as most users will effectively operate a dummy terminal.

Not that I would ever be so cruel. :)

I know LOL, I'm just speaking half of my experiences from college and also my experiences in tech support over the last couple years :).  Litterally had a person who just couldn't follow instructions on the phone, and then there was one who's brain had shut off one day, I felt especially bad for that person.

And yeahh I totally understand that second part, and I knew a few who were that cruel :).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 04, 2014, 10:16:04 PM
So like a Moab (DoTA, LoL, Infinite Crisis, etc) type of deal but instead of picking your heroes, you pick make them? :O I don't know if that is what your are getting at, but that would be fun :P

The thing is, we were so close to being able to do that by the time CoH was shut down.  What we didn't have back when base raids were first created, but we did have by I23, was the AE custom critter creator.  It would not have been hard (in design terms if not engine coding terms: I understand base code was tapioca pudding) to envision an interface where players created their own gladiator-style super(hero/villain) teams and used them by releasing them into player bases that had opted-in to allow them to be used in an AE base-raid interface.

Combine that with an enhanced demorecord feature that allowed you to replay the base raid over and over from the perspective of any of the combatants and floating camera views, and I think that could have been really interesting.  And if you could take over and control any of your team during the raid?  I think you'd have a mini-game that some players would play even more than the conventional game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 04, 2014, 10:24:38 PM
Hmmm, work systems that are on a stable environment so we don't need to upgrade every other year? That can run for months at a time without having to reboot? That don't suffer the same security issues that make script kiddies so happy (I know, there are other problems though)?
That couldn't possibly work.

Honestly, it would take too much work to teach most normal users to switch to a different desktop.  Not even that Linux is necessarily harder, Mac OSX is not harder to use than Windows but try switching OSX users to Windows, or Windows users to OSX: same problem.  Users get locked in to a certain look and feel, and its difficult to unlearn.

For most office automation use cases, I find properly managed VDI to be just as bulletproof running Windows as any other solution, and even easier to maintain.  It is hard to break a Linux desktop, but its *impossible* to break a VDI desktop that can be reset to the same state it had at the beginning of the day at the push of a button with no possibility of the user being able to damage or corrupt the hardware in any way.

Mandatory on-topic mental muse: I wonder if VMware's GPU hypervisor support would allow you to run CoH clients in the cloud and stream the game to well-connected (low lag) users?  You'd never have to worry about hardware or OS support issues ever again.  Game companies are building games that support streaming now, but I wonder if it could be retrofitted into "classic CoH."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 04, 2014, 10:48:43 PM
oops excuse me, did you drop this card?

More fun: dropping ALL your cards after walking into a door because a pretty girl smiled at you as you were walking by. (Didn't happen to me; I "grew up" on BASIC on a Commodore64. My uncle likes to toss that one at me when I complain about debugging. :) )
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Without_Pause on September 04, 2014, 11:10:26 PM
I've played one of the alpha builds of VO, and I wouldn't call it a copy/paste at ALL. There are similarities (it's about heroes and it's based in a city), but copy/paste would involve using same names, storylines, powersets, locations, designs, etc.... They have utilized NONE of that.

That's essentially like calling DC Universe Online a copy/paste of City of Heroes just because it's a heroes game. You can be a spritual successor superhero game that plays similarly without being a copy/paste.

They lifted animations from DM and SS quite blatantly. They have a video for showing the area in one of the zones, and it was as close to copy/paste from what I could tell. Maybe they changed things, but from what I have seen has rubbed me the wrong way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 04, 2014, 11:28:44 PM
Just so someone less polite doesnt correct you - the abbreviation is MOBA (for Mutiplayer Online Battle Arena iirc).

But I do like how Moab sounds so I might call them that for awhile on purpose :D

Ha ty for the catch, was fast typing and mistyped that
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Benjonesart on September 04, 2014, 11:31:24 PM
They lifted animations from DM and SS quite blatantly. They have a video for showing the area in one of the zones, and it was as close to copy/paste from what I could tell. Maybe they changed things, but from what I have seen has rubbed me the wrong way.


Correct Without_pause, we HAVE used things from COH to create an air of familiarity because of the nature of it being a successor game, but as an art director I have worked for many hours upon hours to create unique costumes, designs, particle affects, animations, and character designs that are completely new for the Valiance Online world. Our goal was and still is to give the community what it wants and they originally said they wanted something close to City of Heroes. Most of the things as you so aptly put "lifted" from COH are in homage to the game we are sprouting from, but as time moves on, so will our development of powers, designs and lore. In my humble opinion we are the most "non-copy" of the COH brand as it stands. But thank you for your input.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 04, 2014, 11:34:05 PM
The thing is, we were so close to being able to do that by the time CoH was shut down.  What we didn't have back when base raids were first created, but we did have by I23, was the AE custom critter creator.  It would not have been hard (in design terms if not engine coding terms: I understand base code was tapioca pudding) to envision an interface where players created their own gladiator-style super(hero/villain) teams and used them by releasing them into player bases that had opted-in to allow them to be used in an AE base-raid interface.

Combine that with an enhanced demorecord feature that allowed you to replay the base raid over and over from the perspective of any of the combatants and floating camera views, and I think that could have been really interesting.  And if you could take over and control any of your team during the raid?  I think you'd have a mini-game that some players would play even more than the conventional game.

Groups like you I admire in CoX, you are given lemons and instead of making lemonade like everyone else, you think outside the box and make Pledge cleaner xD After making this type of game, you will spring more people to emulate your ideas and springs up innovation. Hats off to you :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lapucelle on September 04, 2014, 11:47:41 PM
The thing is, we were so close to being able to do that by the time CoH was shut down.  What we didn't have back when base raids were first created, but we did have by I23, was the AE custom critter creator.  It would not have been hard (in design terms if not engine coding terms: I understand base code was tapioca pudding) to envision an interface where players created their own gladiator-style super(hero/villain) teams and used them by releasing them into player bases that had opted-in to allow them to be used in an AE base-raid interface.

Combine that with an enhanced demorecord feature that allowed you to replay the base raid over and over from the perspective of any of the combatants and floating camera views, and I think that could have been really interesting.  And if you could take over and control any of your team during the raid?  I think you'd have a mini-game that some players would play even more than the conventional game.

If you look at our Kickstarter, you will notice something very much like this in the PvP update. I call it Dungeon Keeper mode.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FelixMWM on September 04, 2014, 11:55:32 PM
The difference being game designers are often explicitly not trying to do accurate physics.  But I don't think most game designers are explicitly not trying to do accurate arithmetic.

When I beta tested Champions Online, I decided to analyze the effectiveness and performance of the defensive powers (of course).  I concluded they were wildly unbalanced, and in some cases explicitly broken mechanically.  I summarized my observations and sent them to the devs, asking if they wanted to discuss further.  I never heard back from them the three separate times I tried.  When they launched, players complained they were horribly unbalanced and in some cases broken.  The devs posted something that basically said trust us, we have a spreadsheet.

That's when I stopped testing Champions Online.  You can't argue with "I have a spreadsheet, ergo I'm right."  Even if the math is so horribly wrong that not only can you prove its wrong, you can even prove what must have gone wrong in the sheet without even looking at it (which I posted, then went back to testing combat clocks in City of Heroes and really didn't bother analyzing CO very much past that point).

Well, I am one of the folks directly responsible for the math on City of Titans. Since I have a spreadsheet, it will all be balanced. Just kidding.

However, in all seriousness, I intend to be as transparent as possible about our math. We are trying to learn the lessons about obfuscating mechanics. As a matter of fact, I am pretty proud of what we have come up with so far. Both the function and the lens are pretty cool.

Felix
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 04, 2014, 11:58:54 PM

I will warn you, however. Something nobody thought to tell me when I got into learning Game creation. Get into it far enough, and you'll never look at games the same way. You start to look at how you think things were built, and how you might build them better/differently. Seriously, I look at games and I like...see Wireframes and scripts, lol.

 
It's the same with film.  Once you get into the production side of film you never watch a movie the same way again.  That being said, it does fade eventually to where you enjoy films like you used to while you watc them, but also have a whole appreciate AFTER you watch it (or in games, play something) when you begin critiquing/analyzing, etc.
 
 
:-)
 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chasearcanum on September 05, 2014, 12:26:51 AM
Late to the game, as usual these days. 

Love what I'm seeing here.  will do whatever I can to support it, contribute to it, or distract the trolls away from it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 05, 2014, 12:28:12 AM
You  know, every time I sysadmins and power users talking about how stupid users I have to wonder how many of them would attempt open heart surgery or to rebuild a car engine.

Personally I want someone who is operating on me or fixing my car to know what the hell they are doing and not be an amateur who went to Tom's Heartware site to bone up on the latest techniques and tools.

Just like starting your car, which most of you probably have a vague idea of how it works, most computer users just want to boot and go to the internet. It is not their fault that you geniuses can't design OS's that work, or hardware that's compatible or come up with virus proof systems. Frankly heart surgeons and mechanics have a success rate that most of you only wish computer systems had.

The next time somebody starts slinging around medical terminology or the like and you haven't a clue, just remember they are doing to you what you do to everyone else who doesn't understand the minutia of your trade.

They aren't stupid just because they don't what goes on under the hood of the computer that they want to buy  any more than you are for not understanding how a petrochemical plant works when you want to buy a bag of fertilizer.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lapucelle on September 05, 2014, 12:43:17 AM
Heart surgery, not so much. Rebuild car engine? Done it once on a VW Bug, once on a Honda Civic. My Tech Director - Nate, you know? He's going to be doing it this weekendish, I believe, as his Beetle has taken a little nap.

Of course, he also was one of the founding Gentoo kernel guys, so... er. Well, I don't _know_ if he's done any heart surgery, but he's worked with NASA on some rocket engines.

Some guys _are_ just that damn good. Doctor Tyche is one of them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 05, 2014, 01:02:19 AM
Honestly, it would take too much work to teach most normal users to switch to a different desktop.  Not even that Linux is necessarily harder, Mac OSX is not harder to use than Windows but try switching OSX users to Windows, or Windows users to OSX: same problem.  Users get locked in to a certain look and feel, and its difficult to unlearn.

For most office automation use cases, I find properly managed VDI to be just as bulletproof running Windows as any other solution, and even easier to maintain.  It is hard to break a Linux desktop, but its *impossible* to break a VDI desktop that can be reset to the same state it had at the beginning of the day at the push of a button with no possibility of the user being able to damage or corrupt the hardware in any way.

Mandatory on-topic mental muse: I wonder if VMware's GPU hypervisor support would allow you to run CoH clients in the cloud and stream the game to well-connected (low lag) users?  You'd never have to worry about hardware or OS support issues ever again.  Game companies are building games that support streaming now, but I wonder if it could be retrofitted into "classic CoH."

I certainly wouldn't argue your points. I agree with them even while most of my Admin days were supporting groups of IT workers.

The biggest problem with VDI usage is that the users think people don't know who is doing what. So they invariably get caught doing silly things.

The VMware's GPU hypervisor support idea is interesting. Without an idea of the user count, how would you even begin to know the hardware requirements on the backend?
I'm not even sure how thing like the fact that CoH is a thick client would affect the scenario. Would it increase throughput required over other games?

Obviously, I'm not as up on my VDI as this question is just giving me a headache. Great thought though :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 05, 2014, 01:10:02 AM
just saw the news clip regarding this on IGN.. hopefully the news will help negotiations..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 05, 2014, 01:16:47 AM
Heart surgery, not so much. Rebuild car engine? Done it once on a VW Bug, once on a Honda Civic. My Tech Director - Nate, you know? He's going to be doing it this weekendish, I believe, as his Beetle has taken a little nap.

Of course, he also was one of the founding Gentoo kernel guys, so... er. Well, I don't _know_ if he's done any heart surgery, but he's worked with NASA on some rocket engines.

Some guys _are_ just that damn good. Doctor Tyche is one of them.

That deserves a heartily said "Duuuuuude!".

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 05, 2014, 01:18:27 AM
-facepalms- That's...special, and sadly...Unsurprising.

That is kind of funny.

Of course, the (tiny) conspiracy theorist in me wonders if whomever that programmer was did that deliberately for his/her own benefit?  ;D

Quote
I didn't know you were so knowledgeable about CoH's code base, Arcana.

I recall reading a lot of Arcana's posts towards the end there on the CoH forums, and realizing just how closely he knew the code. IIRC (and correct me if I'm wrong or if I'm spouting things "man was not meant to know," Arcana), he was actually working with the devs on several things behind the scenes, in either a freelance or unofficial way.

I actually thought Codewalker was him when I started posting here until I saw posts by Arcana himself, just because it was obvious CW had at least as much knowledge of the programming code as Arcana had expressed (and it seems perhaps more.)

In other news, I really enjoyed your "Last City of Heroes" story and event that you ran on the servers, Arcana, and am glad to have been able to participate in it. Thank you for that.

Drew/Zombie Hustler
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 05, 2014, 01:20:13 AM
Hrm... if only there was someone in this thread who might end up in a position of authority on such matters...

Should that state of affairs ever come to pass, you must- absolutely must!- allow me to be a part of it in some way, shape or form. You can have my first born.

(Mind you, I'd probably have to clear that in some way with whomever the mother in such a case would be...)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 05, 2014, 01:22:27 AM
Of course, he also was one of the founding Gentoo kernel guys, so... er.

Gentoo, huh? He neglected to mention that...

Well, I'll try not to hold it against him.

:P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 05, 2014, 01:24:40 AM
Gentoo, huh? He neglected to mention that...

Well, I'll try not to hold it against him.

:P

Well ya know, what happens in Gentoo development...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 05, 2014, 01:29:30 AM
Personally, If people want to learn Unreal Engine 4...Go and buy it. Drop 20 bucks, then cancel your sub. I encourage people learning this stuff. It's a lot of fun, and you learn a lot about how/why certain things are they way they are in games.

I agree. While it would be fun to be able to learn and contribute to a (still up in the air) revival, I'm actually considering using that as an excuse to pick it up and learn it simply because I think learning it could benefit me in the long run.

Quote
I will warn you, however. Something nobody thought to tell me when I got into learning Game creation. Get into it far enough, and you'll never look at games the same way. You start to look at how you think things were built, and how you might build them better/differently. Seriously, I look at games and I like...see Wireframes and scripts, lol.

True. I think that happens with pretty much anything you start to delve into beyond its entertainment value, though. I know that when I worked in and around Hollywood, I started looking at film and tv more critically; same with writing, when I started looking into doing it professionally.

And even years after quitting being a cable installation tech, I still find it hard not to walk around the neighborhood noticing all the GO 95 violations and sloppy in-house wiring jobs by my local cable company. *shudder*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 05, 2014, 01:31:53 AM
I kind of like the whole "Volume 2, Issue 1" thing. I've wondered.. Would Revival's first issue be...Issue 1? or Issue 24?

I suggest doing what Priest and Bright did when Quantum and Woody was revived (after its first cancellation); start the numbering where at what would have been the current issue if it had never been cancelled.

Figure- what- two issues per year?

Issue 28?  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 05, 2014, 01:35:20 AM
Groups like you I admire in CoX, you are given lemons and instead of making lemonade like everyone else, you think outside the box and make Pledge cleaner xD After making this type of game, you will spring more people to emulate your ideas and springs up innovation. Hats off to you :D

Just a friendly reminder that while I often talk about technical details of game design, that's mostly from my history with City of Heroes; I'm not on the MWM team (or either of the others).  The people that most deserve thanks are the ones that are working to acquire the rights to CoH, and the ones working explicitly on successor games like MWM.  At best, I'm like you guys, doing the easy part of coming up with ideas.  They are the ones that have to do the hard part of turning them into reality.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 05, 2014, 01:37:01 AM
If you look at our Kickstarter, you will notice something very much like this in the PvP update. I call it Dungeon Keeper mode.

I'm afraid I'm a little behind on my Kickstarter emails.  But I am getting them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 05, 2014, 01:40:49 AM
A couple weeks ago, I briefly considered nuking Skyway City from orbit and just making up some story as to why it didn't exist anymore. lol.

Well, a good chunk of it did get nuked in the iTrial days...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 05, 2014, 01:43:03 AM
I look at games, particularly MMOs, and I see ... a need to improve math programs in the US education system.

And grammar.

(I wish I'd kept logs of all the editing problems I sent off to the Paragon team to correct typos and grammar issues in the various missions over the years.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 05, 2014, 01:46:24 AM
I'd have to dig out the novels but IIRC, their take on the zone was more interesting. Skyway was, at least by the mid 1980's, kind of failed Art-Deco-Jet-Age-Dream with elevated tube pedways (the titular Skyways) over snaking freeways.

That sounds really awesome, and parallels a thought I had after the earlier Skyway posts in this thread: when someone mentioned a revamp of it, I immediately thought of Neutropolis in Praetoria, and some of the architecture there, as well as just the "sleek, futuristic" colors and textures they used for it.

(Fitting, really, considering that both play home to the Steven Barry's of their respective worlds.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 05, 2014, 01:50:35 AM
You  know, every time I sysadmins and power users talking about how stupid users I have to wonder how many of them would attempt open heart surgery or to rebuild a car engine.

Personally I want someone who is operating on me or fixing my car to know what the hell they are doing and not be an amateur who went to Tom's Heartware site to bone up on the latest techniques and tools.

Just like starting your car, which most of you probably have a vague idea of how it works, most computer users just want to boot and go to the internet. It is not their fault that you geniuses can't design OS's that work, or hardware that's compatible or come up with virus proof systems. Frankly heart surgeons and mechanics have a success rate that most of you only wish computer systems had.

The next time somebody starts slinging around medical terminology or the like and you haven't a clue, just remember they are doing to you what you do to everyone else who doesn't understand the minutia of your trade.

They aren't stupid just because they don't what goes on under the hood of the computer that they want to buy  any more than you are for not understanding how a petrochemical plant works when you want to buy a bag of fertilizer.

In my youth I used to think all users were idiots.  I've come to realize that while some are idiots, equal percentages of the technical people are also idiots.  The difference is that the technical people are paid to know this stuff, and are failing their responsibilities.  The users aren't explicitly paid to know this stuff, and most look like idiots because the people whose job is to educate them are idiots.

Its rare for me to find genuinely idiotic users that can't learn.  I have far more patience with users who want to learn, but simply do not have the context to pick things up quickly and need time to absorb it all, than I have for know-it-all techs that think they know everything, then blame the laws of physics for not generating the result they know is supposed to happen when they type the wrong command for the fifth time.

In fact, I would much rather work with users that know nothing, than technical types that know a lot, but more than half of which is wrong.  Many supposed tech people slinging stupid user jokes are actually themselves net negative in useful knowledge.

Not that I don't think its funny when users do weird or unexpected things: I'm only human (as far as anyone knows).  But while I will laugh at someone that slips on a banana peel and falls, I will also extend a hand and help them up and help them pick up their stuff.  I may laugh at "stupid users" but I will also spend hours teaching them, no matter how long it takes, as long as they are willing to learn.

If you can't teach it, you don't really know it.  The same was true for City of Heroes.  Easy to laugh at the newbees, but for every newbee that didn't know what we knew, there were other players laughing at all the things we didn't know or knew incorrectly.

By "we" not me specifically of course, but you know: other we.  And even I spent much of my first day playing trying to figure out why the train refused to take me anywhere when I walked through the door and onto the train.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 05, 2014, 01:51:03 AM
Gentoo, huh? He neglected to mention that...

Well, I'll try not to hold it against him.

:P
Back then it was called Enoch, then Dan got the bright idea of renaming it. This was just before someone (looks innocent) showed him BSD /ports.... And the monster was born.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 05, 2014, 02:06:19 AM
I recall reading a lot of Arcana's posts towards the end there on the CoH forums, and realizing just how closely he knew the code. IIRC (and correct me if I'm wrong or if I'm spouting things "man was not meant to know," Arcana), he was actually working with the devs on several things behind the scenes, in either a freelance or unofficial way.

Most of what I worked on didn't specifically require knowledge of the code: even the game devs themselves rarely looked at or had any specific knowledge of the code (unless they were working with a programmer to debug something).  In fact, most of my knowledge of the code I acquired when the game was up was due to working with devs on odd problems that required *them* to reference the code in some way, and some of that knowledge they passed on to me.

Quote
I actually thought Codewalker was him when I started posting here until I saw posts by Arcana himself, just because it was obvious CW had at least as much knowledge of the programming code as Arcana had expressed (and it seems perhaps more.)

If you want a really good conspiracy theory, there was a brief moment when I thought Codewalker could have been an unauthorized handle for pohsyb (think: Codewalker -> CW -> CW Bennet -> pohsyb).  But I think pohsyb would have told me if he was doing that.  Then again, both pohsyb and Codewalker have an evil streak, so its not entirely impossible CW^2 has been punking me for years.

In fact, even if they are separate people just saying this publicly is probably going to cause them to start pretending to be the same person now.  The next version of Icon will probably look like an IOS8 app just to make me start acting like that Ancient Aliens guy.

Quote
In other news, I really enjoyed your "Last City of Heroes" story and event that you ran on the servers, Arcana, and am glad to have been able to participate in it. Thank you for that.

It was specifically the beta server, and I and I'm sure everyone who helped me stage that appreciate it.  It wasn't just me, but as we sort of hijacked a running server without permission and all, I will leave it up to the other participants if they want to out their specific involvement.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 05, 2014, 02:06:58 AM

Correct Without_pause, we HAVE used things from COH to create an air of familiarity because of the nature of it being a successor game, but as an art director I have worked for many hours upon hours to create unique costumes, designs, particle affects, animations, and character designs that are completely new for the Valiance Online world. Our goal was and still is to give the community what it wants and they originally said they wanted something close to City of Heroes. Most of the things as you so aptly put "lifted" from COH are in homage to the game we are sprouting from, but as time moves on, so will our development of powers, designs and lore. In my humble opinion we are the most "non-copy" of the COH brand as it stands. But thank you for your input.

Thanks for popping in, Ben. :)

Many of us certainly do look forward to your updates. Personally, I think your team's transparency on where you're currently at and what progress you're making is a standard by which most other companies should operate.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 05, 2014, 02:11:07 AM
Back then it was called Enoch, then Dan got the bright idea of renaming it. This was just before someone (looks innocent) showed him BSD /ports.... And the monster was born.

(tangent)

I'm a big BSD fan (and sometimes developer), so I can't fault you for showing him ports.

It's just the mess of mutually incompatible bleeding-edge dependency hell that Gentoo ended up turning the ports tree INTO that made me swear to never install it again. Maybe it's changed since then, but these days if I have no other choice but Linux I'll usually go with Debian. Closest to the BSD minimalist and conservative design philosophy I've been able to find in the Linux world.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 05, 2014, 02:14:14 AM
It was specifically the beta server, and I and I'm sure everyone who helped me stage that appreciate it.  It wasn't just me, but as we sort of hijacked a running server without permission and all, I will leave it up to the other participants if they want to out their specific involvement.

I think I know at least one of them (and knew him in person a long, long time ago, in a galaxy called Arizona, though I didn't realize he'd joined the CoH team until the very end), but to you and them, it was a really nice sendoff.

Which also reminds me, I need to go back and reread your Immortal Game story and a couple of posts you've made about Rularuu (I think here on the forums) to see how well they mesh with a recent theory I came up with regarding the alternate Earths of the Paragon universe and how they might tie in with Prometheus and the Well of Humanity.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 05, 2014, 02:20:14 AM
Why, why, WHY?  Who knows.  But they did, and it was totally broken, and under certain circumstances could generate "random" results so bad they essentially made certain mission rewards predictable.  Which, in an MMO played by dozens or hundreds of people at a time, is a *really* bad rand.

I laughed hard. Very very hard.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lapucelle on September 05, 2014, 02:21:02 AM
I'm afraid I'm a little behind on my Kickstarter emails.  But I am getting them.
It was one of the early ones, back during the KS itself.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 02:21:50 AM
Some guys _are_ just that damn good. Doctor Tyche is one of them.

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure Nate is a mutant that actually gets 48 hours a day.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 05, 2014, 02:23:57 AM
On the subject of voice work... I'm not currently planning on adding Voice work to Revival. That's not to say it's never going to happen, ever. But if it did...It would be around like...the 4th or 5th issue at the earliest.

...I'd have to spend at least that long finding the right voices for the characters.

FWIW, the CoT policy on Voice work is "If you can't do it right, you shouldn't try"  and we're choosing not to risk it. Superhero dialog teeters VERY corny making it difficult to pull off straight even by frontline talent.  If we had a more universal theme, like, say Freedom Force, it's a lot easier.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 05, 2014, 02:26:14 AM
(tangent)

I'm a big BSD fan (and sometimes developer), so I can't fault you for showing him ports.

It's just the mess of mutually incompatible bleeding-edge dependency hell that Gentoo ended up turning the ports tree INTO that made me swear to never install it again. Maybe it's changed since then, but these days if I have no other choice but Linux I'll usually go with Debian. Closest to the BSD minimalist and conservative design philosophy I've been able to find in the Linux world.
I am the same way. Portage is one of the reasons I left Gentoo. I have a soft spot for OpenBSD (yes, even with Theo attached) and Debian myself, although I run a mainly customized Linux setup myself.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: fearalice on September 05, 2014, 02:27:23 AM
"If you can't do it right, you shouldn't try"

We need to shut down ALL these beacons
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 02:27:29 AM
And grammar.

(I wish I'd kept logs of all the editing problems I sent off to the Paragon team to correct typos and grammar issues in the various missions over the years.)

Its understandable to see that in an memo, especially coh. Think about just how many lines of written text there are... that's ALOT to spell check.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 05, 2014, 02:27:48 AM
FWIW, the CoT policy on Voice work is "If you can't do it right, you shouldn't try"  and we're choosing not to risk it. Superhero dialog teeters VERY corny making it difficult to pull off straight even by frontline talent.  If we had a more universal theme, like, say Freedom Force, it's a lot easier.

Your policy on voice work should be "if you think you can do it right, hit yourself in the forehead with a hammer until you change your mind."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 05, 2014, 02:28:25 AM
Speaking as someone who has had to help a lot of people with tech they weren't very good with, the only thing that only bothered me was when someone was asking for my help and upset they had to learn something. I literally had people who called me scream "I bought this computer so I wouldn't have to think!"

People who are just bad at computers, inexperienced, etc, were pleasant as long as they were patient with themselves and willing to keep an open mind. It only got bad when someone was stubbornly convinced the technology was the enemy.

Unless ya know, it's WIndows 8.

(Not kidding, but at the same time, I respect those who can stand it, or OS X. I actually have a laptop atm that came with win 8, and I upgraded it to 7. Can't get the trackpad to use trackpad drivers, or the ethernet port to work... but it's still otherwise a huuuge improvement!)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Phaetan on September 05, 2014, 02:36:02 AM
Arcana being the voice of reason yet again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 02:36:35 AM
Your policy on voice work should be "if you think you can do it right, hit yourself in the forehead with a hammer until you change your mind."

Gonna have to give Arcana thumbs up here, and agree.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 02:47:29 AM
Unless ya know, it's WIndows 8.

(Not kidding, but at the same time, I respect those who can stand it, or OS X. I actually have a laptop atm that came with win 8, and I upgraded it to 7. Can't get the trackpad to use trackpad drivers, or the ethernet port to work... but it's still otherwise a huuuge improvement!)

I'll say one thing on win 8. I have it on my Surface RT, and it's actually quite fantastic on my tablet. It works smashingly well on tablet, not... so much on PC.

Ive got both a Surface RT, and a Galaxy Tab 7in. I use the surface far more.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 05, 2014, 02:50:50 AM
I'll say one thing on win 8. I have it on my Surface RT, and it's actually quite fantastic on my tablet. It works smashingly well on tablet, not... so much on PC.

Ive got both a Surface RT, and a Galaxy Tab 7in. I use the surface far more.

The idea of a tablet with a desktop OS (but a UI designed for tablets) has appealed to me since before tablets became a huge thing. The idea of carrying around the sheer library of applications and games that run on a windows PC...

It wasn't a bad idea to try to make a touchscreen UI on Microsoft's part - it was just bad to not see that it would be taken with the same level of love as Vista was.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 05, 2014, 02:53:07 AM
In my youth I used to think all users were idiots.  I've come to realize that while some are idiots, equal percentages of the technical people are also idiots.  The difference is that the technical people are paid to know this stuff, and are failing their responsibilities.  The users aren't explicitly paid to know this stuff, and most look like idiots because the people whose job is to educate them are idiots.

Its rare for me to find genuinely idiotic users that can't learn.  I have far more patience with users who want to learn, but simply do not have the context to pick things up quickly and need time to absorb it all, than I have for know-it-all techs that think they know everything, then blame the laws of physics for not generating the result they know is supposed to happen when they type the wrong command for the fifth time.

In fact, I would much rather work with users that know nothing, than technical types that know a lot, but more than half of which is wrong.  Many supposed tech people slinging stupid user jokes are actually themselves net negative in useful knowledge.

Not that I don't think its funny when users do weird or unexpected things: I'm only human (as far as anyone knows).  But while I will laugh at someone that slips on a banana peel and falls, I will also extend a hand and help them up and help them pick up their stuff.  I may laugh at "stupid users" but I will also spend hours teaching them, no matter how long it takes, as long as they are willing to learn.

If you can't teach it, you don't really know it.  The same was true for City of Heroes.  Easy to laugh at the newbees, but for every newbee that didn't know what we knew, there were other players laughing at all the things we didn't know or knew incorrectly.

By "we" not me specifically of course, but you know: other we.  And even I spent much of my first day playing trying to figure out why the train refused to take me anywhere when I walked through the door and onto the train.

You're starting to sound suspiciously like a UI dev.

I've known and liked geniuses who couldn't code for a team or maintainability for a damn. The problem is that when you can hold a spectacular quantity of information in your head, taking a simple get-the-data web service problem that already has the DB layer and HTTP handler stuff all but written for it, and breaking it into a spectacularly atomically granularized 25 class solution that uses all of the Design Patterns (with some edits) doesn't really seem like that big of a deal to you to understand. Sure it takes 7 seconds to do a simple 1 row/column lookup and spit it back out in an HTTP response but think of the componentization man! We might maybe need any one of these 25 tiny little pieces to get reused one day!

Myself, I'm partially a UI dev because I'm a GUI  moron. Every problem a person could have understanding this stuff, I run into and I hate them all. I actually like Win 8. Why? WindowsBtn + Q to search for an app. I have a desktop with explorer for doing explorer stuff and I have WindowsBtn + Q. And a taskbar to pin stuff, which has always worked well for me. It's all I freaking need. And it doesn't take 25 minutes to load the silly thing for a change. The tiles are ridiculous. Removal of the start menu completely unnecessary. But it's just another crap OS that at least performs well to my eyes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 05, 2014, 02:54:55 AM
I'll say one thing on win 8. I have it on my Surface RT, and it's actually quite fantastic on my tablet. It works smashingly well on tablet, not... so much on PC.

Ive got both a Surface RT, and a Galaxy Tab 7in. I use the surface far more.

Everything that makes Win8 detestable on a desktop makes it functional on a tablet.  Everyone else understands that, from Apple to the Linux community and Android.  Microsoft was still and apparently still is locked into a "Windows everywhere" mindset that says all anyone should need is Windows, and Windows should be good enough for everyone everywhere.  I see some signs of cracks there, but I still think its a point of religion at Microsoft that Windows is the greatest OS ever, and everyone should have the privilege of running The One True OS on everything.  See: WinCE, Windows Mobile 1-5, Windows 8.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 05, 2014, 02:56:26 AM
<all the really informative and useful stuff snipped for brevity>
13.  Nyx:  http://www.octanecreative.com/ducttape/duckvsduct.html (http://www.octanecreative.com/ducttape/duckvsduct.html)
<see previous snippage>
Heh. Thank you. Some other site had referenced the fabric layer in duck tape as being part of the source of the name, but the water resistance makes even more sense. It's still a terrible long term solution for ducts or anything else that regularly gets hot, cold or even exposed to weather, but it is really useful as a quick temporary repair or rigging.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lapucelle on September 05, 2014, 02:58:46 AM
Everything that makes Win8 detestable on a desktop makes it functional on a tablet.
http://www.dell.com/us/p/dell-venue-8-pro/pd
I really, really enjoy this little beast. Great battery life, and so portable. And you can use a USB2Go adapter and a USB to serial and plug it right into a firewall's serial port.
Or run Maya on it.
Or, er, read comics.
I do wish it had more RAM.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Neutrio on September 05, 2014, 03:55:55 AM
I will warn you, however. Something nobody thought to tell me when I got into learning Game creation. Get into it far enough, and you'll never look at games the same way. You start to look at how you think things were built, and how you might build them better/differently. Seriously, I look at games and I like...see Wireframes and scripts, lol.


or is Irish_Girl trying to say:


Quote
Seriously, I look at games and I like ... see ... there's way too much information to decode the game. You get used to it, though. Your brain does the translating. I don't even see the wireframes & scripts. All I see is building, bench, redcap


/e ducks   :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 05, 2014, 04:21:09 AM
FWIW, the CoT policy on Voice work is "If you can't do it right, you shouldn't try"  and we're choosing not to risk it. Superhero dialog teeters VERY corny making it difficult to pull off straight even by frontline talent.  If we had a more universal theme, like, say Freedom Force, it's a lot easier.

It's a good policy if it doesn't prevent you from asking how you could do it right. I think the important thing to start with is the writing. Modern superhero movies don't generally indulge in such dialog. A lot of the COH stuff walked a very blurry line and did it well but maybe that's the thing that's better left unattempted when you don't have funds for voice talent that's better able to compensate for wooden dialog. But I'm trying and failing to think of anything Robert Downey Jr said in in the entire Iron Man trilogy that could have been Freedom Force-esque in the wrong hands.

But more practically speaking, it's expensive, and voice actors getting hit by buses are even harder to compensate for than programmers getting hit by buses when they play an ongoing role in the game. There's a lot of good reasons to not mess with it right out of the gate. But maybe it wouldn't hurt to think about it when there's more to convince the right fans of the COH phenom that there's more than a stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality going on here.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 05, 2014, 04:22:38 AM
Honestly, it would take too much work to teach most normal users to switch to a different desktop.  Not even that Linux is necessarily harder, Mac OSX is not harder to use than Windows but try switching OSX users to Windows, or Windows users to OSX: same problem.  Users get locked in to a certain look and feel, and its difficult to unlearn.

For most office automation use cases, I find properly managed VDI to be just as bulletproof running Windows as any other solution, and even easier to maintain.  It is hard to break a Linux desktop, but its *impossible* to break a VDI desktop that can be reset to the same state it had at the beginning of the day at the push of a button with no possibility of the user being able to damage or corrupt the hardware in any way.

Mandatory on-topic mental muse: I wonder if VMware's GPU hypervisor support would allow you to run CoH clients in the cloud and stream the game to well-connected (low lag) users?  You'd never have to worry about hardware or OS support issues ever again.  Game companies are building games that support streaming now, but I wonder if it could be retrofitted into "classic CoH."

We start our POC on that this year I say that the way the Hospital moves may be next year; I am just glad I no longer do Customer support side I been on the infrastructure side for the last 6+ years.

On your questions on the Hypervisor with the new enhanced graphic acceleration support it may be a possibility If i remember correctly that came in 5.0 and they upgrade it further with the last two releases. I have not used that function but hardware wise on the server side the speed is there and with some of the new hardware and ram scheduled to come out over the next two years Cisco released 40GbE last year and 100GbE from them or someone else should be here before we know it not sure of the cost but hey.

That may be the next future for gaming companies to make money hey do not worry about your PC being old for X$$ a month extra run are games from the cloud PC optimized for XXX game never worry about updating again. No patching your machine after an update it will be already patched when the server come back on line; maybe I should be pitching this to some big company.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 05, 2014, 04:52:30 AM
Regarding future plans for CoH: check out the Lore AMA article at the wiki: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA It has the three Lore AMAs collected there. Good stuff!

Regarding Atlas Revived zone changes: I say start off with everything as is, barring minor improvements. If something happens storywise, or just doesn't make sense in the first place, go ahead and change it, but for the most part I think it should start from CoH and build from there. I do like how you've laid out the entire city in one thing; FYI, the first Top Cow comic's opening scene shows a shot of the city from outside the walls - there appears to be lots of forest (yeah they're sort of non-canonical, just saying - more of my thoughts on that here: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,9677.msg153257.html#msg153257).

As for Skyway being the only place with freeways... maybe they were built in a giant circle around the city - Paragon was built before cars were invented, and the trains are pretty good, so maybe the interstates just run in a circuit around the city? Or maybe the Rikti destroyed them in the first war - major lines of transportation ought to go, after all.

Regarding Valiance and Heroes & Villains "opting out" of the licensing deal: are they opting out entirely? Because even if they don't use any story or characters or lore, or even say "this is an alternate dimension", I would have thought they would want to slap a CoH sticker on the game and say "Official City of Heroes Successor!" Just to get that boost, even if they use nothing else.

So like a Moab (DoTA, LoL, Infinite Crisis, etc) type of deal but instead of picking your heroes, you pick make them? :O I don't know if that is what your are getting at, but that would be fun :P

A CoH MOBA would be SWEET! With the licensing deal, it could actually happen. I would LOVE to see some sort of porting between a MOBA and CoH of characters - even if it was just costumes onto the MOBA's generic versions of your toon (e.g. all fire / eng blasters, when ported, would become the moba version of a fire / eng blaster) or just a costume onto an existing character.

Regardless, it would still be great to have a MOBA team of Cole and the Praetorians versus States, Recluse, and other Primal Earth folks, or other crazy combinations. The minions could be Clockwork vs. Longbow, or something like that. The plethora of characters and power ideas would make creating new champion concepts pretty easy.

You can do better, loads better. :p  Personally.. I kinda like how they do it in DCUO.  Just a collection of big empty rooms you can decorate how you like. Just don't gate the furnishings behind drops and let the users buy additional rooms to add on to it (including multiple levels).

Huh - I played the intro mission to placing things in a base, but it seemed to me like I could only place items at certain points - I couldn't move them freely. Is that unlocked later, or did I miss something?

As for 'realism' - who wants that?  You can see the pitfalls of that thought process in any Marvel movie.

How so?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 05:15:05 AM
Those AMA's are WONDERFUL fountains of information and insight. I've gone over all fo them with a fine toothed comb.
Expect that these may not remain canon though to Revival however. I'm not saying for sure that they won't, but don't be surprised.

I agree. The most important goal is to get everything built and playable. Changes, and major updates are what Issues are for after all.
For the surrounding of Paragon, I'd planned to take a look at the geography of Rhode Island..and go kind of based off that. (I live on the opposite side of the country, so I actually have no idea what RI is like.)
The layout of Paragon City in Revival is based mostly off of the CoH DVD Edition map...er...or was it the CoV Collectors edition... Can't remember. There are some minor changes...mostly because I think whoever put the map together was REALLY drunk. (I.P. isn't even half the size it is on the map, for example)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 05:22:47 AM
Ok, so the dust has been cleared off the APR site somewhat. People can feel free to start doing stuff over there at their hearts content.
http://APR.pc-logix.com  (http://APR.pc-logix.com)

For those of you who are fans of chat, the "Game Chat" tab near the top will take you to the IRC channel.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 05, 2014, 05:35:53 AM
For those of you who are fans of chat, the "Game Chat" tab near the top will take you to the IRC channel.

If it isn't too much trouble, could I get the server/channel info? :)

I prefer using a client, lets me multitask easier when I have... too many tabs open.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 05:40:44 AM
If it isn't too much trouble, could I get the server/channel info? :)

I prefer using a client, lets me multitask easier when I have... too many tabs open.

Isis.pc-logix.com
Channel: #AtlasParkRevival
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lenya on September 05, 2014, 05:59:02 AM
Wow. I never expected it would come to a second chance.
Whatever the outcome is, you guys rock.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 05, 2014, 07:39:37 AM
Most of the things as you so aptly put "lifted" from COH are in homage to the game we are sprouting from, but as time moves on, so will our development of powers, designs and lore. In my humble opinion we are the most "non-copy" of the COH brand as it stands. But thank you for your input.

All good points, plus there are only so many reasonable ways for the human body to move! Invariably anything based on, say, various punches will have significant similarity if there's any attempt at all to keep movements realistic.

On that note...I haven't kept up so much due to some initial frustration with your launcher, but the single biggest thing I can say to any of the projects: Study how the body moves. Learn about various martial arts forms and why they move and strike how they do. Learn about gymnastics, boxing, ballet, endurance running, sprinting.

Getting it right is subtle. Getting it wrong is glaring.

(Yes, I do plan to play VO. I'll be looking at it more...this is more general than specific criticism of anything you guys are doing!)

We need to shut down ALL these beacons

*snrk* That's become a running joke around here.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 05, 2014, 07:45:48 AM
The idea of a tablet with a desktop OS (but a UI designed for tablets) has appealed to me since before tablets became a huge thing. The idea of carrying around the sheer library of applications and games that run on a windows PC...

It wasn't a bad idea to try to make a touchscreen UI on Microsoft's part - it was just bad to not see that it would be taken with the same level of love as Vista was.

 actually, my opinion of win-vista is much higher now that win-8 came out lol ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 08:46:23 AM
I can understand what they wanted to do. The idea of a unified experience is, on the surface, a pleasant idea.
Steve Balmer wasn't wrong about that, he just didn't understand that it doesn't work. Tablets, phones, and PCs are all *very* different beasts used for very different purposes.
I use Android on my Galaxy Note II, but I hate it on my Galaxy Tab... Win8 disgusts me on PC, but I love it on my Surface... and Windows 7 would be garbage on anything but my Desktop.
Fortunately, the new leadership at Microsoft understand the mistake and are working to correct it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 05, 2014, 09:08:23 AM
*nods as if he knows much of anything*

I don't want an identical experience between using my PC, phone and tablet, but I do want an integrated experience: they should all talk to each other as a unified whole (hardware limitations withstanding).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 05, 2014, 09:35:50 AM
I can understand what they wanted to do. The idea of a unified experience is, on the surface, a pleasant idea.
Steve Balmer wasn't wrong about that, he just didn't understand that it doesn't work. Tablets, phones, and PCs are all *very* different beasts used for very different purposes.

Honestly, he should have known better.  Trying to make things like phones, tablets, and PCs use exactly the same interface is literally like believing that Excel and Word should have the same interface.  They might have the same look and feel, but because they are different apps performing completely different things trying to shoehorn both into exactly the same interface (not just common elements, but exactly the same interface in all respects) would be ludicrous.  Anyone who knows anything about user interfaces should know better, and I'm pretty sure Balmer knew better but still tried to force it to promote Microsoft's Windows-everywhere strategy.

Quote
Fortunately, the new leadership at Microsoft understand the mistake and are working to correct it.

Not sure I agree.  On the one hand, Nadella seems to better recognize the priority of cloud computing and Microsoft as a services company that sells software and not a software company that offers services.  On the other hand, the "one Windows" strategy continues to smell like "Windows-everywhere" just in a different form.  Yes, its not exactly the same and "one Windows" doesn't specifically presume identical interfaces across the platform.  But its still this belief that one thing can be the right thing everywhere, and that one thing is Windows.

Personally, I think they learned the wrong lesson from the failure of Windows RT.  I think that only reinforced their belief that anything short of full 100% Windows is something consumers will treat as a toy and will not accept.  But that had more to do with the limitations of RT, and less with the idea that only full versions of Windows are "good enough" for consumers.  It'll be interesting to see how Windows Mobile fares under Nadella and the one-Windows strategy in the long term.  Does one-Windows leave enough latitude for Windows Mobile to evolve independently and agilely verses competitors (IOS, Android)?  We'll see.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 05, 2014, 09:50:14 AM
*nods as if he knows much of anything*

I don't want an identical experience between using my PC, phone and tablet, but I do want an integrated experience: they should all talk to each other as a unified whole (hardware limitations withstanding).

So, when are you getting a Mac, you dirty little iPhone/iPad owner, you! ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 09:51:51 AM
Honestly, he should have known better.  Trying to make things like phones, tablets, and PCs use exactly the same interface is literally like believing that Excel and Word should have the same interface.  They might have the same look and feel, but because they are different apps performing completely different things trying to shoehorn both into exactly the same interface (not just common elements, but exactly the same interface in all respects) would be ludicrous.  Anyone who knows anything about user interfaces should know better, and I'm pretty sure Balmer knew better but still tried to force it to promote Microsoft's Windows-everywhere strategy.

Yeah, I agree he should have known better. I think I'm mainly pointing out it wasn't malicious, just *really* stupid. Which...I guess is kind of obvious really.
Balmer was really a salesman at heart I think. He saw what he believed people would want and tried to jump on that. Or maybe he just wanted to be really relevant one last time before retiring. -shrugs-

Not sure I agree.  On the one hand, Nadella seems to better recognize the priority of cloud computing and Microsoft as a services company that sells software and not a software company that offers services.  On the other hand, the "one Windows" strategy continues to smell like "Windows-everywhere" just in a different form.  Yes, its not exactly the same and "one Windows" doesn't specifically presume identical interfaces across the platform.  But its still this belief that one thing can be the right thing everywhere, and that one thing is Windows.
Personally, I think they learned the wrong lesson from the failure of Windows RT.  I think that only reinforced their belief that anything short of full 100% Windows is something consumers will treat as a toy and will not accept.  But that had more to do with the limitations of RT, and less with the idea that only full versions of Windows are "good enough" for consumers.  It'll be interesting to see how Windows Mobile fares under Nadella and the one-Windows strategy in the long term.  Does one-Windows leave enough latitude for Windows Mobile to evolve independently and agilely verses competitors (IOS, Android)?  We'll see.

I'm REALLY interested to see what Nadella does going forward. He's so unlike Balmer, it's almost night and day. Personally, I think he'll be good for the company as long as he doesn't go OVERBOARD with his streamlining of the company. (Although I think that could be said for anything, really. All things in moderation?)
He's kind of done well so far in that he didn't just walk in and make sweeeping changes to the company overnight.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 05, 2014, 09:52:18 AM
Personally, I think they learned the wrong lesson from the failure of Windows RT.  I think that only reinforced their belief that anything short of full 100% Windows is something consumers will treat as a toy and will not accept.  But that had more to do with the limitations of RT, and less with the idea that only full versions of Windows are "good enough" for consumers.  It'll be interesting to see how Windows Mobile fares under Nadella and the one-Windows strategy in the long term.  Does one-Windows leave enough latitude for Windows Mobile to evolve independently and agilely verses competitors (IOS, Android)?  We'll see.

^ Shame on you, Arcana! It's Windows PHONE! :p

Windows Mobile was shamelessly murdered years ago!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 09:53:07 AM
So, when are you getting a Mac, you dirty little iPhone/iPad owner, you! ;)

Says FFM from his specially made iHarkonnen Floating Man-Holster 5s
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 10:40:24 AM
Isis.pc-logix.com
Channel: #AtlasParkRevival

Uh, Whoops. That should actually be Irc.pc-logix.com. Not Isis.
My bad.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 05, 2014, 10:41:34 AM
Uh, Whoops. That should actually be Irc.pc-logix.com. Not Isis.
My bad.

Isis, huh?

/em Looks suspiciously at Irish_Girl...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 10:45:12 AM
Please, I don't have the time to be any form of radical extremeist. I've got far to many things to do.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 05, 2014, 10:46:12 AM
Please, I don't have the time to be any form of radical extremeist. I've got far to many things to do.

Hrrrmmm... I'll be keep an eye on you!  (Until CoH1.5 releases, anyway! :p )
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 10:50:23 AM
Hrrrmmm... I'll be keep an eye on you!  (Until CoH1.5 releases, anyway! :p )

I'm surprised you wouldn't want to keep watching in eager anticipation of new content.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 05, 2014, 10:52:23 AM
I'm surprised you wouldn't want to keep watching in eager anticipation of new content.

By then, it'll be TWO eyes on you! ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on September 05, 2014, 10:55:45 AM
I'm surprised you wouldn't want to keep watching in eager anticipation of new content.

I read that as continent for a second... totally freaked me out.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lava-Lad on September 05, 2014, 11:18:44 AM
What would be cool is if Teleport had it's animation removed and became instantaneous.
I think that the flash effect could stay (or void/rift animation for WS) could stay, but on the whole, it does take too long and makes the power less effective as a main travel power.  Generally +1
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 11:23:40 AM
I think that the flash effect could stay (or void/rift animation for WS) could stay, but on the whole, it does take too long and makes the power less effective as a main travel power.  Generally +1

I kind of agree... Teleport always seemed less, well, FUN than the other travel powers to me. Prolly because of the delay.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lava-Lad on September 05, 2014, 11:26:03 AM
oops excuse me, did you drop this card?
Those better be numbered!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dal on September 05, 2014, 11:31:03 AM
Don't expect Revival to be an exact Carbon copy of City of Heroes. Obviously, It would be madly impractical for the team to ensure that every little thing like sign posts are pixel perfectly placed.
There might be other changes to. Like..You ever notice how there's no real hospital in the city? Those little medical clinics are fine for Medivacing a bruised up Her...but how many civilians do you think have their babies there?

There's not going to be grand sweeping changes like the AP Revamp, or the DA makeover. But do expect to see some stuff here and there.
I think most people wouldn't mind if you applied some creative license to the game, really. I think that would even make it less of a burden when redesigning some zones. Don't get stuck on the details if they are keeping you from moving on. And you can always come up with some lore reason as for why some things are different later.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 05, 2014, 11:47:20 AM
I kind of agree... Teleport always seemed less, well, FUN than the other travel powers to me. Prolly because of the delay.

It was a lot better with the teleport bind where it zoomed out when you held down the shift key who ever built the teleport .exe bind builder rocks
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 11:53:07 AM
I think most people wouldn't mind if you applied some creative license to the game, really. I think that would even make it less of a burden when redesigning some zones. Don't get stuck on the details if they are keeping you from moving on. And you can always come up with some lore reason as for why some things are different later.

Honestly I think the community is so large, and passionate about the game that no matter what I do, or don't do...someone will be upset. I add a hospital to a zone, Some people will be upset that there's not supposed to be a hospital in that zone. I don't add things, and some players will be upset that I'm not changing enough stuff.
Nature of the beast. You can't be afraid of it though, otherwise you're frozen. You just have to make the decisions that you think will be best for the game, and hopefully...make as many players as happy as possible!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 05, 2014, 11:54:15 AM
So, when are you getting a Mac, you dirty little iPhone/iPad owner, you! ;)

When I won't have wasted several thousand pounds on software for Windows. :D

And I was sort of talking about the ideal scenario rather than one I'm specifically aiming for. Cheeky git.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on September 05, 2014, 11:58:28 AM
Honestly I think the community is so large, and passionate about the game that no matter what I do, or don't do...someone will be upset. I add a hospital to a zone, Some people will be upset that there's not supposed to be a hospital in that zone. I don't add things, and some players will be upset that I'm not changing enough stuff.
Nature of the beast. You can't be afraid of it though, otherwise you're frozen. You just have to make the decisions that you think will be best for the game, and hopefully...make as many players as happy as possible!

Actually I was wondering if there had been any discussion/thought on creating an APR thread that talks about things like FAQ and possible changes (aesthetic and otherwise) that might come to CoX 1.5. Not so much an APR general discussion (salutes and says "General Discussion) thread, but not a "tell us what you think" thread either. Kind of something in between.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 05, 2014, 12:09:31 PM
Honestly I think the community is so large, and passionate about the game that no matter what I do, or don't do...someone will be upset. I add a hospital to a zone, Some people will be upset that there's not supposed to be a hospital in that zone. I don't add things, and some players will be upset that I'm not changing enough stuff.
Nature of the beast. You can't be afraid of it though, otherwise you're frozen. You just have to make the decisions that you think will be best for the game, and hopefully...make as many players as happy as possible!

I think one thing you (and everyone else) needs to bear in mind is that CoH became a game where travel and convenience were simple and everywhere.

One of the best examples is the Hollows. Pre-travel powers, mission doors at the far end of the zone, and no hospital. I think most of us have stories about the long slog back from Atlas Park. And then War Witch revamped the zone. Cleaned up the mission door assignments and spawn points. Added a hospital.

From the perspective of a fresh character going through the zone, all of these were vast improvements. From my personal perspective as a veteran of the old version, I think it really only needed the hospital.

And that really my point: convenience and travel tweaks are A-OK, because CoH was all about letting you get to the action and back to the action quickly and simply (which is not the same as easily, because a challenging spawn in the right/wrong place could make it more exciting, as long as it wasn't impossible to avoid/defeat).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 12:09:42 PM
Yeah, that could be a thing. I think Tony want's stuff like that to take place on the APR website however, So I'll leave that up to his decision.
I'll most likely do one on the APR forum as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 05, 2014, 12:15:54 PM
Yeah, that could be a thing. I think Tony want's stuff like that to take place on the APR website however, So I'll leave that up to his decision.
I'll most likely do one on the APR forum as well.

You're probably going to want discussion topics for just about every area of every zone... And that's just for the map!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on September 05, 2014, 12:16:27 PM
Yeah, that could be a thing. I think Tony want's stuff like that to take place on the APR website however, So I'll leave that up to his decision.
I'll most likely do one on the APR forum as well.

Good idea. Boy, I should get signed up on the APR website :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 05, 2014, 12:18:02 PM
Yeah, that could be a thing. I think Tony want's stuff like that to take place on the APR website however, So I'll leave that up to his decision.
I'll most likely do one on the APR forum as well.

Tum-tee-tum... *saunters in the direction of the APR forums*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 05, 2014, 12:23:09 PM
Tum-tee-tum... *saunters in the direction of the APR forums*

*Races past...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 12:25:19 PM
You guys crack me up sometimes. lol.
I'm also hanging out in the chat, if anyone's bored.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 05, 2014, 12:27:16 PM
You guys crack me up sometimes. lol.

This is my hobby in life, to crack as many people up as possible!

Sometimes, tools are necessary. ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 05, 2014, 12:29:22 PM
This is my hobby in life, to crack as many people up as possible!

Sometimes, tools are necessary. ;)

Are you calling me a tool?! Grrrr... I shall have my revenge, you... Catgirl, you!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on September 05, 2014, 12:30:07 PM
You guys crack me up sometimes. lol.
I'm also hanging out in the chat, if anyone's bored.

What is this chat of which I am hearing? I was not aware of such a thing!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 05, 2014, 12:36:46 PM
What is this chat of which I am hearing? I was not aware of such a thing!

Head over to the Atlas Park Revival site, register for it, and select the "Game Chat" option, which will open up an IRC chat client.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 05, 2014, 12:37:29 PM
For some reason Irishgirl I can't see the verification script to prove I am human, I guess this means I am not a human. well good to know.

I will try on another browser.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 05, 2014, 12:41:43 PM
Clearly, you're outed as a wolf!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 12:49:27 PM
Sorry you're having trouble, Ironwolf. I don't know much about the verification myself, as it's something the web admin set up.
The forums are telling me you're good, So I don't know if you got it to work...or if it's just being dumb.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 05, 2014, 12:50:43 PM
Sorry you're having trouble, Ironwolf. I don't know much about the verification myself, as it's something the web admin set up.
The forums are telling me you're good, So I don't know if you got it to work...or if it's just being dumb.

And the moral of the story is...

Don't cry, wolf.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 05, 2014, 01:04:22 PM
And the moral of the story is...

Don't cry, wolf.

Ouch.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 05, 2014, 01:10:04 PM
Sorry. Should probably have something in my profile warning about puns.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 05, 2014, 01:16:19 PM
Honestly I think the community is so large, and passionate about the game that no matter what I do, or don't do...someone will be upset. I add a hospital to a zone, Some people will be upset that there's not supposed to be a hospital in that zone. I don't add things, and some players will be upset that I'm not changing enough stuff.
Nature of the beast. You can't be afraid of it though, otherwise you're frozen. You just have to make the decisions that you think will be best for the game, and hopefully...make as many players as happy as possible!

Well, I for one am upset! I was looking over the Oro U4 Video and it's all wrong! The whole place is too clean. When you look at it from distance the whole thing should be blurry!

There are shadows. Stained Glass. Textures. Day and Night? Come on!

:)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 05, 2014, 01:31:33 PM
Well, I for one am upset! I was looking over the Oro U4 Video and it's all wrong! The whole place is too clean. When you look at it from distance the whole thing should be blurry!

There are shadows. Stained Glass. Textures. Day and Night? Come on!

:)

Is this more what you were looking for?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQUStLK1tXk

(best viewed in 144p)

:P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 05, 2014, 01:48:36 PM
Is this more what you were looking for?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQUStLK1tXk

(best viewed in 144p)

:P

Yes!

All I want is my game back.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on September 05, 2014, 01:50:33 PM
Head over to the Atlas Park Revival site, register for it, and select the "Game Chat" option, which will open up an IRC chat client.

Thank you! As soon as I'm not at work and can get to my computer I will do this
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 01:56:14 PM
I'm honestly not sure if that was sarcasm, or not.
So. I'll...answer...somewhere in between?

Everything shown for Revival should be taken with a big fat "Work in Progress" label. I don't believe I had Depth of Field enabled when I recorded the video, which is what makes far away objects look blurry. I find it annoying when I'm working, so I tend to leave it disabled.
I've added more trees in since this was taken. I still need to build the other floating islands, and add the leaves on the ground...

Ah, well. At least the zone isn't pink.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 05, 2014, 01:56:44 PM
I have moved over to APR for discussions on that game - I will be back and forth to view updates on the Resurgence of CoH 1.0 and efforts to restore that into life.

Honestly we must show a professional, organized front or NCSoft will dismiss us as laughable. We need business plans, we need job assignments and planning for all the various facets of the game. I am not a good organizer - I am a doer. Give me something to do or let me fnd something that needs to be done and I am persistant in doing it. I know personally I can go off the reservation at times and need to be reined in. But I am not afraid of work and won't back off a challenge.

We need the skills of the people here and those to come to get this done.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 02:05:07 PM
Actually I was wondering if there had been any discussion/thought on creating an APR thread that talks about things like FAQ and possible changes (aesthetic and otherwise) that might come to CoX 1.5. Not so much an APR general discussion (salutes and says "General Discussion) thread, but not a "tell us what you think" thread either. Kind of something in between.

I set something along these lines up over at the APR site.
You can find it here: http://apr.pc-logix.com/index.php?/topic/62-revival-faq-and-discussion/
I'll do my best to answer any questions there as quickly, and thoroughly as I can...As well as adding more information to the top post.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 05, 2014, 02:07:58 PM
Well, I was just chatting to IG over at APR and threw out a few project management thoughts for future consideration.

While it's just her doing the work, a lot of that stuff isn't required, but I absolutely agree that this needs full-on project management treatment. Which is not my skillset, though I know a fair bit of theory.

To be quite honest, I'm an absolute master of procrastination, so any form of active responsibility involving other people is right out. I am, though, highly detail-oriented, and grind doesn't bore me. I will quite happily perform a repetitive task for hours on end. Just don't expect anything from me in advance of a deadline.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 05, 2014, 02:09:48 PM
I'm honestly not sure if that was sarcasm, or not.
So. I'll...answer...somewhere in between?

Everything shown for Revival should be taken with a big fat "Work in Progress" label. I don't believe I had Depth of Field enabled when I recorded the video, which is what makes far away objects look blurry. I find it annoying when I'm working, so I tend to leave it disabled.
I've added more trees in since this was taken. I still need to build the other floating islands, and add the leaves on the ground...

Ah, well. At least the zone isn't pink.

I'm sorry. It was all sarcasm. I'm feeling punchy already today.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 05, 2014, 02:12:50 PM
Honestly I think the community is so large, and passionate about the game that no matter what I do, or don't do...someone will be upset. I add a hospital to a zone, Some people will be upset that there's not supposed to be a hospital in that zone. I don't add things, and some players will be upset that I'm not changing enough stuff.
Nature of the beast. You can't be afraid of it though, otherwise you're frozen. You just have to make the decisions that you think will be best for the game, and hopefully...make as many players as happy as possible!

Just imagine their voices are the comic book guy from the Simpsons. It's what I do. It's amazing how grumpy superhero fan language really fits him perfectly.

As far as I'm concerned its: Character Creator? Check. That inspiring heroic music? Check. Atlas got a sex change? Meh... Close enough.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 05, 2014, 02:38:44 PM
I think one thing you (and everyone else) needs to bear in mind is that CoH became a game where travel and convenience were simple and everywhere.

To play Devil's Advocate, that is one thing that I think they went a bit overboard on, in particular with i23 and the warp holes (whatever they were called) that pretty much made all other forms of zone-to-zone travel completely redundant.

I get the intent- to make things more player (particularly new player) friendly, but I think keeping some degree of relative inaccessibility made the game more immersive.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 05, 2014, 02:44:07 PM
To play Devil's Advocate, that is one thing that I think they went a bit overboard on, in particular with i23 and the warp holes (whatever they were called) that pretty much made all other forms of zone-to-zone travel completely redundant.

I get the intent- to make things more player (particularly new player) friendly, but I think keeping some degree of relative inaccessibility made the game more immersive.

I agree with this. Traveling the city, going from place to place.. You felt part of the world.

Between Pocket D, Ouroboros, Bases teleporters, Mission teleport... You never needed to walk anywhere by the end.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 05, 2014, 02:46:03 PM
To play Devil's Advocate, that is one thing that I think they went a bit overboard on, in particular with i23 and the warp holes (whatever they were called) that pretty much made all other forms of zone-to-zone travel completely redundant.

I get the intent- to make things more player (particularly new player) friendly, but I think keeping some degree of relative inaccessibility made the game more immersive.

Ah, now, there we can agree. I think it all went a bit too far, myself. Remember back when it was green line, yellow line, and travel powers only? I certainly do. And some of the shortcuts were good (I liked base porters, and Pocket D) but by the end it had swung too much towards allowing quick, effortless, riskless travel to anywhere you wanted to go.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 05, 2014, 02:46:28 PM
I agree with this. Traveling the city, going from place to place.. You felt part of the world.

Between Pocket D, Ouroboros, Bases teleporters, Mission teleport... You never needed to walk anywhere by the end.

This'll be unpopular, but IMO, the only time you should have been allowed to teleport to a mission, was if it were a timed mission.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ooglymoogly on September 05, 2014, 02:46:35 PM
quick sort of off-topic question for the MWM folk/Downix - will potentially pertain to Irish_Girl with APR as well, I suppose.

are you still raising money for CoT?

i know the kickstarter wrapped last year (2014 seems to be chugging along, doesn't it) but are you still raising capital outside of that effort? i ask because there are a number of people who clearly support your enterprise and I'm sure could spare the money to periodically contribute. Plus, the excitement pertaining to the current efforts of resurrecting CoH has brought some additional awareness to the fore, not to mention Marvel/comic books having taken over the entertainment sphere during past few years.

You guys don't have the pedigree or initial funding base to do what Chris Roberts has done with Star Citizen ( link here for those unaware of it: http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/4/5960489/star-citizen ) but there seems no reason you couldn't emulate his 'template', albeit to a smaller degree.

just a thought.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 05, 2014, 03:14:24 PM
This'll be unpopular, but IMO, the only time you should have been allowed to teleport to a mission, was if it were a timed mission.
a once per day tp wasnt bad...we tended to save those for reeally bad ones
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 05, 2014, 03:49:00 PM
Those AMA's are WONDERFUL fountains of information and insight. I've gone over all fo them with a fine toothed comb.
Expect that these may not remain canon though to Revival however. I'm not saying for sure that they won't, but don't be surprised.

I'm still working on the sorted version of the AMA (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA/Sorted). So I've read through them numerous times, and they are great. Yes, Positron did reserve the right to change everything in the event that CoH comes back; fortunately, there's enough left open in the lore that the "Coming Storm" can still be anything - hints were dropped in game, sure, but nothing was absolutely certain.

quick sort of off-topic question for the MWM folk/Downix - will potentially pertain to Irish_Girl with APR as well, I suppose.

are you still raising money for CoT?

i know the kickstarter wrapped last year (2014 seems to be chugging along, doesn't it) but are you still raising capital outside of that effort? i ask because there are a number of people who clearly support your enterprise and I'm sure could spare the money to periodically contribute. Plus, the excitement pertaining to the current efforts of resurrecting CoH has brought some additional awareness to the fore, not to mention Marvel/comic books having taken over the entertainment sphere during past few years.

There's a thread about that here: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/please-put-another-kickstarter-your-webpage-star-citizen

They are selling shirts. Or were? I don't know.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 05, 2014, 03:53:20 PM
To play Devil's Advocate, that is one thing that I think they went a bit overboard on, in particular with i23 and the warp holes (whatever they were called) that pretty much made all other forms of zone-to-zone travel completely redundant.

I get the intent- to make things more player (particularly new player) friendly, but I think keeping some degree of relative inaccessibility made the game more immersive.

I agree with this. Traveling the city, going from place to place.. You felt part of the world.

Between Pocket D, Ouroboros, Bases teleporters, Mission teleport... You never needed to walk anywhere by the end.

a once per day tp wasnt bad...we tended to save those for reeally bad ones

I enjoyed it, and knew plenty of other people who did.

Honestly, I've never understood this "I didn't like it, so we should take it out of the game" mentality... Can you imagine where CoH would have been if all the devs took that stance? (see quote in my signature below)... More options means more people will be able to make it their own personalized experience--much like having so many costume options in the costume creator. One of the beautiful things about really good developers is their intelligence in creating features for games that even they themselves may not use within their own playstyle.

There were people who liked to farm in CoH, and that's all they did. And they ENJOYED it! And then there were the people who constantly decried the "evilness" of farming. Same thing for AE. Why can't people just enjoy the game for what it was and what it offered without trying to impose their own sense of "how a game should be played?"

I mean, that IS what Jack Emmert was hated so much for....right?

I'm sorry, but "take away this nice feature because I don't like it and I think everyone should do things the hard way" is not a good excuse to take something out of a game. I'm not saying that's what you guys were suggesting, but that's inevitably where that conversation leads. Change things that are game-breaking, but don't change things that are "quality of life enhancements." There were MULTIPLE uses for having a "teleport across zones feature--one of which was for those of use who liked to break our own records for task force speed runs for the hell of it... I know that's not something everyone did, but...you don't see me saying "I think a requirement for unlocking villain side content is you have to do X Task Force in XX amount of time," do you?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 05, 2014, 03:56:17 PM

So when I try to go to the irc address LI provided... I get a page that says:




Well hello there, welcome to SuPeRMiNoR2's site.
There is nothing much here, so you might as well just go away.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 05, 2014, 03:58:59 PM
I enjoyed it, and knew plenty of other people who did.

There were people who liked to farm in CoH, and that's all they did. And they ENJOYED it! And then there were the people who constantly decried the "evilness" of farming.

Guilty of this, for some reason farming was really relaxing and the purple drops and inf/prestige was just an added benefit. I dunno, just mowing through mobs while listening to The Eagles, NWA, Journey, 2 Pac, Mozart, Offsprings, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, etc was very relaxing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 05, 2014, 03:59:08 PM
So when I try to go to the irc address LI provided... I get a page that says:




Well hello there, welcome to SuPeRMiNoR2's site.
There is nothing much here, so you might as well just go away.


Did you go to it with a web browser?  It's an IRC server... You need an IRC client like mIRC...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 05, 2014, 04:00:43 PM
Guilty of this, for some reason farming was really relaxing and the purple drops and inf/prestige was just an added benefit. I dunno, just mowing through mobs while listening to The Eagles, NWA, Journey, 2 Pac, Mozart, Offsprings, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, etc was very relaxing.

I have to admit that although I wasn't much of a farmer (I mainly organized TFs and did build experiments and personal challenges), there was certainly something to just forcing my brain to take a break from organizing/thinking and just repeating a favorite map over and over to some relaxing music....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Jumping Spider on September 05, 2014, 04:08:09 PM
This was not the news I was hoping for.

I absolutely despise the way some Asian companies do business.  They will buy properties from and interests in western companies.  Too much 'saving face' all the damn time is annoying.  Selling the cancelled property and having someone revive it and be successful with it would cause them to lose face:  they would be seen as incompetent or short-sighted.  In Asian companies, you are not allowed to criticize your superiors, or even offer advice.

Shenzhen Kexiang Mould Tool Co blames Astin Martin for their recent problems, even though they were supplying AM with plastic components that were counterfiet DuPont plastics.  It wasn't the sub-contractor's fault, or that they were selling these counterfiets, it was AM's fault for discovering it and doing something about it.

I'm sure someone in the cockpit of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 saw they were too low too soon, but wouldn't say anything.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 05, 2014, 04:12:31 PM
a once per day tp wasnt bad...we tended to save those for reeally bad ones

Such as all the SHARD TF's......especially Dr Q's.....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 05, 2014, 04:20:11 PM
I enjoyed it, and knew plenty of other people who did.

Honestly, I've never understood this "I didn't like it, so we should take it out of the game" mentality... Can you imagine where CoH would have been if all the devs took that stance? (see quote in my signature below)... More options means more people will be able to make it their own personalized experience--much like having so many costume options in the costume creator. One of the beautiful things about really good developers is their intelligence in creating features for games that even they themselves may not use within their own playstyle.

There were people who liked to farm in CoH, and that's all they did. And they ENJOYED it! And then there were the people who constantly decried the "evilness" of farming. Same thing for AE. Why can't people just enjoy the game for what it was and what it offered without trying to impose their own sense of "how a game should be played?"

I mean, that IS what Jack Emmert was hated so much for....right?

I'm sorry, but "take away this nice feature because I don't like it and I think everyone should do things the hard way" is not a good excuse to take something out of a game. I'm not saying that's what you guys were suggesting, but that's inevitably where that conversation leads. Change things that are game-breaking, but don't change things that are "quality of life enhancements." There were MULTIPLE uses for having a "teleport across zones feature--one of which was for those of use who liked to break our own records for task force speed runs for the hell of it... I know that's not something everyone did, but...you don't see me saying "I think a requirement for unlocking villain side content is you have to do X Task Force in XX amount of time," do you?

Yeah that was jack's philosophy.

As to all the portals they setup to warp you to other zones, I can see such portals in Praetoria as it is a different universe with some different laws. 

However for Primal Earth, all they needed to do was adjust the Ouroborus exit portal so that on blueside it was linked to all zones and same for red side.  I always thought it odd that the exit portal from Ouroborus was so limited as you are leaving temporal limbo to return to the timestream as it were.

Mission TP I had no problem with as the SHARD TF's needed it.

Also if your base had all the teleporters that was good too.

A QOL adjustment I would like to see is this: the power to teleport to your base and to Pocket D I think could use an upgrade.  They were created back at the time when they didn't want us to have a quick escape power, then came Ouroborus portals....    Anyway, instead of an interruptible energy build up with long recharge, change them both to be like the Ouroborus portal, a portal appears and you warp to either your base or Pocket D.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 05, 2014, 04:29:27 PM
Yeah that was jack's philosophy.

As to all the portals they setup to warp you to other zones, I can see such portals in Praetoria as it is a different universe with some different laws. 

However for Primal Earth, all they needed to do was adjust the Ouroborus exit portal so that on blueside it was linked to all zones and same for red side.  I always thought it odd that the exit portal from Ouroborus was so limited as you are leaving temporal limbo to return to the timestream as it were.

Mission TP I had no problem with as the SHARD TF's needed it.

Also if your base had all the teleporters that was good too.

A QOL adjustment I would like to see is this: the power to teleport to your base and to Pocket D I think could use an upgrade.  They were created back at the time when they didn't want us to have a quick escape power, then came Ouroborus portals....    Anyway, instead of an interruptible energy build up with long recharge, change them both to be like the Ouroborus portal, a portal appears and you warp to either your base or Pocket D.

That would be a great QoL improvement without doing away with various features completely. I think I could only use the mission teleporter once a task force, so it wasn't something that would be considered "overpowered." However, the ability to skip crossing HUGE zones during a TF (especially for people who did mainly TFs on a regular basis) was a definitive QoL improvement. It'd be a step back to take that option away just because some people prefer to walk the zone every time...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 05, 2014, 04:58:52 PM
That would be a great QoL improvement without doing away with various features completely. I think I could only use the mission teleporter once a task force, so it wasn't something that would be considered "overpowered." However, the ability to skip crossing HUGE zones during a TF (especially for people who did mainly TFs on a regular basis) was a definitive QoL improvement. It'd be a step back to take that option away just because some people prefer to walk the zone every time...

I agree, Mission TP must be retained if the game returns.  For those that dont have travel powers, or patience at times, or for the SHARD TF's.

also if super speed could gain vertical movement and possibly even to run on air as the Flash has been at times known to do....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 05, 2014, 05:01:40 PM
I agree, Mission TP must be retained if the game returns.  For those that dont have travel powers, or patience at times, or for the SHARD TF's.

also if super speed could gain vertical movement and possibly even to run on air as the Flash has been at times known to do....

Technically, this was possible as well... I had a few fun builds where I combined Super Jump and Super Speed... Even Combat Jumping coupled with Super Speed really made zone traversing extremely fun..."am I going to make it over that wallllllllll.....YESSSS!"

I swear, during some of my TF speed runs, I had a zone mapped out and jumps timed in such a way that it was reminiscent of the speed runners in Super Mario who had every move timed just right... Fun times! I want my game back! :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nightmarer on September 05, 2014, 05:08:51 PM
This is my hobby in life, to crack as many people up as possible!

True that, the FFM's Cracked Commando Unit T-Shirt I have proves it!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 05, 2014, 05:15:38 PM
I agree, Mission TP must be retained if the game returns.  For those that dont have travel powers, or patience at times, or for the SHARD TF's.

also if super speed could gain vertical movement and possibly even to run on air as the Flash has been at times known to do....

But.. Nobody RAN the Shard TF's!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 05, 2014, 05:17:23 PM
True that, the FFM's Cracked Commando Unit T-Shirt I have proves it!

OMG! I'd forgotten about those!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 05, 2014, 05:20:09 PM
But.. Nobody RAN the Shard TF's!

Lol.

The shard TF's for me were "one and done", their repeat value wasn't much to me. Granted they had some nice reward merit payout but still....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 05, 2014, 05:20:51 PM
Technically, this was possible as well... I had a few fun builds where I combined Super Jump and Super Speed... Even Combat Jumping coupled with Super Speed really made zone traversing extremely fun..."am I going to make it over that wallllllllll.....YESSSS!"

I swear, during some of my TF speed runs, I had a zone mapped out and jumps timed in such a way that it was reminiscent of the speed runners in Super Mario who had every move timed just right... Fun times! I want my game back! :D

ah yes I remember having that for a time on an alt.  Fun times :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Super Firebug on September 05, 2014, 05:33:26 PM
Technically, this was possible as well... I had a few fun builds where I combined Super Jump and Super Speed... Even Combat Jumping coupled with Super Speed really made zone traversing extremely fun..."am I going to make it over that wallllllllll.....YESSSS!"

I swear, during some of my TF speed runs, I had a zone mapped out and jumps timed in such a way that it was reminiscent of the speed runners in Super Mario who had every move timed just right... Fun times! I want my game back! :D

If a speedster can propel himself forward that fast with that much force, there's no reason why he can't use that force to propel himself upward higher than normal, and at least have a Ninja-Run-type leap.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stonehead on September 05, 2014, 05:36:49 PM
Greetings!  I've been lurking around here since the CoH sunset, but I wanted to de-cloak for a moment to say thanks to the many people keeping this effort alive. I know we shouldn't be expecting any real news for months, but the excitement of the past week has got me checking this message board daily for the first time in... well, since late 2012.

I was never an extremely active poster on the old CoH boards, and I've been even less active here.  I've followed the progress of the various spiritual successors through Facebook and the Kickstarter emails, but other than that I've been out of touch with the CoH community.  The sunset happened at a point when I REALLY needed to put more time & effort into my career.  Other than backing the CoT Kickstarter, I had to bow out of any Hail Mary efforts.  So it's truly heart-warming to see so many familiar faces are still around, still standing strong, still holding their /em torches high.

Regardless how this all turns out, I'm positive we'll all be heroes (and yes, villains) again someday, either in one of the successors or - fingers crossed - in the original game we fell in love with.  Either way, everyone involved with the potential revival and/or successor projects has my thanks.  I promise not to bring out the pitchforks if this all falls apart, because hey, at least you guys tried.  But if it succeeds, I promise to buy you all a pint in Pocket D on opening day.  Cheers!

d
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 05, 2014, 05:38:18 PM
Lol.

The shard TF's for me were "one and done", their repeat value wasn't much to me. Granted they had some nice reward merit payout but still....

They should have made a Shadow Shard Accolade with a pwr for going through those gauntlet xD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 05, 2014, 05:38:34 PM
If a speedster can propel himself forward that fast with that much force, there's no reason why he can't use that force to propel himself upward higher than normal, and at least have a Ninja-Run-type leap.

To be honest, if he DOESN'T, he'll be a greasy spot on the wall.. :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 05, 2014, 05:41:53 PM
I have a silly question that mostly likely is yet to be determined.

If NCSoft does indeed sell the IP and we get back the game at I23, has there been a determination as to what image/update we might be talking about? I23 the day it was pushed to live or the state of the game just prior to shutdown?

The reason I'm asking is to see if our last three sets would be included. Bio Armor, Nature Affinity and Water Blast. Unless my memory is failing (and it could be) wasn't each of these placed in the game after I23 was released?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 05, 2014, 05:47:22 PM
I have a silly question that mostly likely is yet to be determined.

If NCSoft does indeed sell the IP and we get back the game at I23, has there been a determination as to what image/update we might be talking about? I23 the day it was pushed to live or the state of the game just prior to shutdown?

The reason I'm asking is to see if our last three sets would be included. Bio Armor, Nature Affinity and Water Blast. Unless my memory is failing (and it could be) wasn't each of these placed in the game after I23 was released?

Natures affinity and water blast was in the game. Bio Armor was WIP
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 05, 2014, 05:49:15 PM
Natures affinity and water blast was in the game. Bio Armor was WIP

I guess my question is were they released before I23 went live. If we get the sale, but we receive an image created on I23 release date... you get my point.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 05, 2014, 05:51:29 PM
I guess my question is were they released before I23 went live. If we get the sale, but we receive an image created on I23 release date... you get my point.

Yes they were live except bioarmor, those were premium content you had to buy even for subscribers
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 05, 2014, 05:51:37 PM

They are selling shirts. Or were? I don't know.
We are introducing a new T-shirt design each month with a promotional sale of it for that month. By the time we hit game beta, the storefront should be opened up for the most popular designs.

The order form can be found here: http://cityoftitans.com/t-shirt-order-form (http://cityoftitans.com/t-shirt-order-form)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 05, 2014, 05:52:39 PM
To play Devil's Advocate, that is one thing that I think they went a bit overboard on, in particular with i23 and the warp holes (whatever they were called) that pretty much made all other forms of zone-to-zone travel completely redundant.

I get the intent- to make things more player (particularly new player) friendly, but I think keeping some degree of relative inaccessibility made the game more immersive.

To play Devil's ... Prosecutor?  Travel wasn't just a convenience for getting to content.  Ubiquitous travel was a critical part of why City of Heroes was an extremely casual-friendly game.  We could casual-team in a way you really do not see in other MMOs.  In no other MMO I've seen did we have the dual elements of friendly chat channels ("looking for two for ITF run") and almost ludicrous ubiquitous travel capability ("I'm in, OMW").  In most MMOs, if you want to join a team in progress, and you aren't lucky enough to be standing right next to them at the time, you're screwed.  That's why so many MMOs designed for and needed "meeting zones" where players could hook up for teams.  Chat channels to organize teams?  Why?  If you aren't already on their team how do you expect to get to their mission, or their zone?  You have to literally be there when the team organizes. 

In City of Heroes, you could actually see a request for team on a global channel being organized on another server, say I'm in, log out, log into any character of your choice (of sufficient level) on that server, run/fly/jump/tp to the rally point from where ever you logged out, and join the team in less time than it takes for a team to walk to their mission in any other MMO.  You don't fully appreciate how powerful that is to make a game friendly to casual players until you play an MMO where those two features - simple global chat and ultrapowerful travel - don't exist.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 05, 2014, 06:01:02 PM
Yes they were live except bioarmor, those were premium content you had to buy even for subscribers

Good enough. I was not sure on release dates on those sets.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 05, 2014, 06:03:39 PM
To play Devil's ... Prosecutor?  Travel wasn't just a convenience for getting to content.  Ubiquitous travel was a critical part of why City of Heroes was an extremely casual-friendly game.  We could casual-team in a way you really do not see in other MMOs.  In no other MMO I've seen did we have the dual elements of friendly chat channels ("looking for two for ITF run") and almost ludicrous ubiquitous travel capability ("I'm in, OMW").  In most MMOs, if you want to join a team in progress, and you aren't lucky enough to be standing right next to them at the time, you're screwed.  That's why so many MMOs designed for and needed "meeting zones" where players could hook up for teams.  Chat channels to organize teams?  Why?  If you aren't already on their team how do you expect to get to their mission, or their zone?  You have to literally be there when the team organizes. 

In City of Heroes, you could actually see a request for team on a global channel being organized on another server, say I'm in, log out, log into any character of your choice (of sufficient level) on that server, run/fly/jump/tp to the rally point from where ever you logged out, and join the team in less time than it takes for a team to walk to their mission in any other MMO.  You don't fully appreciate how powerful that is to make a game friendly to casual players until you play an MMO where those two features - simple global chat and ultrapowerful travel - don't exist.

I play swtor...so I understand exactly what you are saying.. also..you dont have to pay to take a train to steel canyon, or anywhare else..you dont have to pay to repair armor damaged just by playing your character normally..not even a death penalty..take a 50 tank and run level 10 content and you will still have repair costs..I have paid well over 200k repair in a single progression raid session.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 05, 2014, 06:06:02 PM
We are introducing a new T-shirt design each month with a promotional sale of it for that month. By the time we hit game beta, the storefront should be opened up for the most popular designs.

The order form can be found here: http://cityoftitans.com/t-shirt-order-form (http://cityoftitans.com/t-shirt-order-form)

Please remember, not everyone's a skinny Small! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on September 05, 2014, 06:10:03 PM
But.. Nobody RAN the Shard TF's!

There was a loony called @Electric_Eddie or similar who for several years on Freedom ran all the shard TFs over all the US 3 day holiday weekends, he was a kin, my granite was his tank of choice for several of them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 05, 2014, 06:14:47 PM
Heh. Thank you. Some other site had referenced the fabric layer in duck tape as being part of the source of the name, but the water resistance makes even more sense. It's still a terrible long term solution for ducts or anything else that regularly gets hot, cold or even exposed to weather, but it is really useful as a quick temporary repair or rigging.
I used to use duct tape to hem my military issue pants in the Coast Guard.   (They come without being hemmed at the bottom)   It worked for months at a time through multiple washings.   True story.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 05, 2014, 06:15:50 PM

Just stares....
Kindly lay off the "Asian" stereotypes... thanks.

This was not the news I was hoping for.

I absolutely despise the way some Asian companies do business.  They will buy properties from and interests in western companies.  Too much 'saving face' all the damn time is annoying.  Selling the cancelled property and having someone revive it and be successful with it would cause them to lose face:  they would be seen as incompetent or short-sighted.  In Asian companies, you are not allowed to criticize your superiors, or even offer advice.

Shenzhen Kexiang Mould Tool Co blames Astin Martin for their recent problems, even though they were supplying AM with plastic components that were counterfiet DuPont plastics.  It wasn't the sub-contractor's fault, or that they were selling these counterfiets, it was AM's fault for discovering it and doing something about it.

I'm sure someone in the cockpit of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 saw they were too low too soon, but wouldn't say anything.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 05, 2014, 06:31:19 PM
Honestly I think the community is so large, and passionate about the game that no matter what I do, or don't do...someone will be upset. I add a hospital to a zone, Some people will be upset that there's not supposed to be a hospital in that zone. I don't add things, and some players will be upset that I'm not changing enough stuff.
Nature of the beast. You can't be afraid of it though, otherwise you're frozen. You just have to make the decisions that you think will be best for the game, and hopefully...make as many players as happy as possible!
Well at least you know that in advance.  :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 05, 2014, 06:42:42 PM
This was not the news I was hoping for.

I absolutely despise the way some Asian companies do business.  They will buy properties from and interests in western companies.  Too much 'saving face' all the damn time is annoying.  Selling the cancelled property and having someone revive it and be successful with it would cause them to lose face:  they would be seen as incompetent or short-sighted.  In Asian companies, you are not allowed to criticize your superiors, or even offer advice.

Shenzhen Kexiang Mould Tool Co blames Astin Martin for their recent problems, even though they were supplying AM with plastic components that were counterfiet DuPont plastics.  It wasn't the sub-contractor's fault, or that they were selling these counterfiets, it was AM's fault for discovering it and doing something about it.

I'm sure someone in the cockpit of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 saw they were too low too soon, but wouldn't say anything.
I think you are missing a key part, NcSoft owns Cox, which means the team has to play by their rules.
To counter your "this is not the news you were hoping for." I disagree, it shows that the team is hard at work to try and the game back. I have high hopes  that one of these days I will read on these boards that the game is coming back. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 05, 2014, 06:47:18 PM
I enjoyed it, and knew plenty of other people who did.
I found the faster travel options very useful for those days when I only had 30 minutes to play or something.   Spending that time travelling wouldn't exactly make the best use of it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 05, 2014, 06:49:42 PM
Repeat the mantra: NCSoft is selling the IP. (Everything else is gravy.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: saipaman on September 05, 2014, 06:50:26 PM
There was a loony called @Electric_Eddie or similar who for several years on Freedom ran all the shard TFs over all the US 3 day holiday weekends, he was a kin, my granite was his tank of choice for several of them.

I ran the Shard TFs with that guy.  Towards the end, there was more interest in the Shard because of all the teleport powers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fable on September 05, 2014, 07:00:27 PM
Repeat the mantra: NCSoft is selling the IP. (Everything else is gravy.)

I don't think they have a much better option to be honest.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 05, 2014, 07:08:23 PM
This was not the news I was hoping for.

I absolutely despise the way some Asian companies do business.  They will buy properties from and interests in western companies.  Too much 'saving face' all the damn time is annoying.  Selling the cancelled property and having someone revive it and be successful with it would cause them to lose face:  they would be seen as incompetent or short-sighted.  In Asian companies, you are not allowed to criticize your superiors, or even offer advice.

Shenzhen Kexiang Mould Tool Co blames Astin Martin for their recent problems, even though they were supplying AM with plastic components that were counterfiet DuPont plastics.  It wasn't the sub-contractor's fault, or that they were selling these counterfiets, it was AM's fault for discovering it and doing something about it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-did-gm-take-so-long-to-respond-to-deadly-defect-corporate-culture-may-hold-answer/2014/03/30/5c366f6c-b691-11e3-b84e-897d3d12b816_story.html

Quote
I'm sure someone in the cockpit of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 saw they were too low too soon, but wouldn't say anything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 05, 2014, 07:24:24 PM
If a speedster can propel himself forward that fast with that much force, there's no reason why he can't use that force to propel himself upward higher than normal, and at least have a Ninja-Run-type leap.

That's sorta how I imagined my character doing that... It wasn't really "Combat Jumping" to me... It was exactly that. He was so fast that he was able to use some of that kinetic energy to propel himself higher--that or it could be "explained" that he used his loose clothing as sort of a parachute effect to use the wind to float up a bit higher... :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 05, 2014, 07:26:18 PM
That's sorta how I imagined my character doing that... It wasn't really "Combat Jumping" to me... It was exactly that. He was so fast that he was able to use some of that kinetic energy to propel himself higher--that or it could be "explained" that he used his loose clothing as sort of a parachute effect to use the wind to float up a bit higher... :)

My fastest super speeder was also a kineticist.  Yes, I had super speed on a kin, and inertia reduction.

One thing I'd really like though, rocket/grenade/.......and dynamite jumping!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 05, 2014, 07:36:33 PM
Before ninja run on my katana/sr back in the old days at one point my travel power was quickness + swift + sprint with SO's in them and Combat Jumping

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 05, 2014, 07:44:25 PM
If a speedster can propel himself forward that fast with that much force, there's no reason why he can't use that force to propel himself upward higher than normal, and at least have a Ninja-Run-type leap.

Well, technically there's lots of reasons.

Ultimately, in a superhero/villain game where physics-bending and physics-breaking content is the norm, the rationale for why some things are allowed and some things are not allowed rest on more intricate and complex holistic decisions about what's best for the game overall.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 05, 2014, 07:49:36 PM
Well, technically there's lots of reasons.

Ultimately, in a superhero/villain game where physics-bending and physics-breaking content is the norm, the rationale for why some things are allowed and some things are not allowed rest on more intricate and complex holistic decisions about what's best for the game overall.

Yeah, such as "If I can jump x amount of distance with super speed, why would anyone ever get super jump?"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kribbla on September 05, 2014, 07:49:46 PM
I guess my question is were they released before I23 went live. If we get the sale, but we receive an image created on I23 release date... you get my point.

From ParagonWiki:
This set was added to the game for Blasters, Corruptors, and Defenders on July 10, 2012, as an update to Issue 23.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 05, 2014, 07:59:00 PM
Let me put this in in my own thoughts:

If we don't get the game back we can make our own game. We can import all of the graphics and missions - even the characters with minor changes - because - CoH ran on the Cryptic engine and had different names for its characters. Making your own game with similar gameplay is not illegal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 05, 2014, 08:02:43 PM
I have a silly question that mostly likely is yet to be determined.

If NCSoft does indeed sell the IP and we get back the game at I23, has there been a determination as to what image/update we might be talking about? I23 the day it was pushed to live or the state of the game just prior to shutdown?

The reason I'm asking is to see if our last three sets would be included. Bio Armor, Nature Affinity and Water Blast. Unless my memory is failing (and it could be) wasn't each of these placed in the game after I23 was released?

It has been mentioned several times now that the i23 we would be given is a snapshot from the servers the night the game closed down.  I think we're safe.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 05, 2014, 08:02:53 PM
Let me put this in in my own thoughts:

If we don't get the game back we can make our own game. We can import all of the graphics and missions - even the characters with minor changes - because - CoH ran on the Cryptic engine and had different names for its characters. Making your own game with similar gameplay is not illegal.

If we did this (due to not getting the game), would having zones that look exactly the same (as in Atlas Park Revival) be a problem, even if we named the zone something else? I'm not sure how "copyright" stuff works within games...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 05, 2014, 08:09:15 PM
FWIW, the CoT policy on Voice work is "If you can't do it right, you shouldn't try"  and we're choosing not to risk it. Superhero dialog teeters VERY corny making it difficult to pull off straight even by frontline talent.  If we had a more universal theme, like, say Freedom Force, it's a lot easier.

This actually really saddens me. First, because with my set up reading long boxes of text becomes a bit tedious and takes me OUT of the game world, but more importantly...
 
To me it's a sign of a game that will already feel "dated" by design in ways new players might find unpalatable.  I work with teenagers and can tell you that this younger generation sees games where all dialogue is text based as outdated to the point of being "quaint."  It seems rather like the mindset Nintendo took with HD graphics and Dialogue in the last generation console wars, and we see how that turned out.  At least the 200 or so of us who have a Wii U do. Not keeping up with the direction of the medium REALLY hurt Nintendo badly.  To the point that they may never recover, even after releasing and entirely new console to try and make up the losses.
 
Of course, as someone with an extensive background in writing, I wholeheartedly disagree with your comments on super hero dialogue.  Have you ever watched ANY of the current Marvel Universe cartoons on Disney?  Or any of the JLU series? The reason that dialogue is "good" while the 1980 Superfriends dialogue is "bad" has nothing to do with the medium itself, it has to do with expectations. 
 
Good dialogue is good dialogue. Bad dialogue is bad dialogue. If you're writing "corny" dialogue that's not because of the genre, it's because of bad writing or because the assumption is that somehow it "should" be corny.  That was the expectation in the 60s, 70s, and 80s for Super Heroes, both in style, story line, and dialogue. They were campy and over the top.  It isn't the expectation any more, and unless you want to pull a Champions Online, which pursued that antiquated view of Super heroes to its detriment, then your writing shouldn't have any dialogue bordering on "corny", so it shouldn't need Morgan Freeman to pull off.
 
Just my 2 cents.   
 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 05, 2014, 08:20:35 PM
I have an open question, where there is an update will it be posted in this thread or Iron Wolf's? Also want to say thank you for trying to get this game back :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nightmarer on September 05, 2014, 08:27:08 PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster

Heck, I do remember that and I was just 7 years old. It was way beyond the terrorism we were starting to get familiar with on those days.-
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 05, 2014, 08:30:37 PM
If we did this (due to not getting the game), would having zones that look exactly the same (as in Atlas Park Revival) be a problem, even if we named the zone something else? I'm not sure how "copyright" stuff works within games...

They will not be the same. While the project to make the same zones is happening - they will not be pixel perfect copies. Some other enviromental things will be added. Do yourself a favor and go look at any CoH video and then search for an UnReal 4 engine demo - they will be light years in difference.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 05, 2014, 08:42:53 PM
They will not be the same. While the project to make the same zones is happening - they will not be pixel perfect copies. Some other enviromental things will be added. Do yourself a favor and go look at any CoH video and then search for an UnReal 4 engine demo - they will be light years in difference.

It's still a direct copy of the zone layout, and much of the geometry and quite a few textures are being ripped from the client. That's a clear copyright violation if the IP deal doesn't go through. It doesn't matter if you clean them up first, the fact that you started from it as a base makes it a derivative work.

You'd have to not only use completely different zone layouts, but also create all your assets from scratch (or buy/find free ones to use) to be in the clear.

Edit: Look at it this way. Creating a Mickey Mouse character in Unreal and making a game around it, even if you didn't directly get it from somewhere, still violates Disney's copyright.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on September 05, 2014, 08:44:45 PM

This actually really saddens me. First, because with my set up reading long boxes of text becomes a bit tedious and takes me OUT of the game world, but more importantly...
 
To me it's a sign of a game that will already feel "dated" by design in ways new players might find unpalatable.  I work with teenagers and can tell you that this younger generation sees games where all dialogue is text based as outdated to the point of being "quaint."  It seems rather like the mindset Nintendo took with HD graphics and Dialogue in the last generation console wars, and we see how that turned out.  At least the 200 or so of us who have a Wii U do. Not keeping up with the direction of the medium REALLY hurt Nintendo badly.  To the point that they may never recover, even after releasing and entirely new console to try and make up the losses.
 
Of course, as someone with an extensive background in writing, I wholeheartedly disagree with your comments on super hero dialogue.  Have you ever watched ANY of the current Marvel Universe cartoons on Disney?  Or any of the JLU series? The reason that dialogue is "good" while the 1980 Superfriends dialogue is "bad" has nothing to do with the medium itself, it has to do with expectations. 
 
Good dialogue is good dialogue. Bad dialogue is bad dialogue. If you're writing "corny" dialogue that's not because of the genre, it's because of bad writing or because the assumption is that somehow it "should" be corny.  That was the expectation in the 60s, 70s, and 80s for Super Heroes, both in style, story line, and dialogue. They were campy and over the top.  It isn't the expectation any more, and unless you want to pull a Champions Online, which pursued that antiquated view of Super heroes to its detriment, then your writing shouldn't have any dialogue bordering on "corny", so it shouldn't need Morgan Freeman to pull off.
 
Just my 2 cents.   
 

Play CO for about 30 minutes.  They have voice talent.  It's bad.  As in pure sliced Velveeta cheesy bad.

Why spend the money for the voice acting if it's going to be... bad? 

TSW does OK voice acting.  It's via cutscenes and works well.  But it's rather jarring to be walking towards a contact and suddenly, "WHAM!" cutscene.

I don't have a problem with reading dialog boxes (and I'm not saying that settles it.)  Often, in voice overs, I miss what is said...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Super Firebug on September 05, 2014, 08:55:46 PM
Play CO for about 30 minutes.  They have voice talent.  It's bad.  As in pure sliced Velveeta cheesy bad.

Yeah, that ought to be long enough to include the treat that is Kevin Poe's scenery-chewing monologue.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 05, 2014, 09:07:26 PM

30 minutes that's about how long I played CO lol!

Play CO for about 30 minutes.  They have voice talent.  It's bad.  As in pure sliced Velveeta cheesy bad.

Why spend the money for the voice acting if it's going to be... bad? 

TSW does OK voice acting.  It's via cutscenes and works well.  But it's rather jarring to be walking towards a contact and suddenly, "WHAM!" cutscene.

I don't have a problem with reading dialog boxes (and I'm not saying that settles it.)  Often, in voice overs, I miss what is said...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 05, 2014, 09:25:40 PM
DCUO Super Speed is one of the best things ever. SUPER fun to run up the side of a building, and leap into the air off of it!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 05, 2014, 09:38:21 PM
It has been mentioned several times now that the i23 we would be given is a snapshot from the servers the night the game closed down.  I think we're safe.

Thanks. Even though I've read every bit of this thread, somehow that bounced right out of my mind.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Moonlighter on September 05, 2014, 09:50:23 PM

Here would be my big questions.

~ Will account data be saved? I don't mind rebuilding characters from scratch, but I would be really sad to lose my Veteran rewards and all the costumes and power sets I bought.

~ Any chance we could get the test server build or see it at some point? The changes on the test server were awesome. The blaster changes in particular rocked.

Moonlighter
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 05, 2014, 09:56:53 PM
Here would be my big questions.

~ Will account data be saved? I don't mind rebuilding characters from scratch, but I would be really sad to lose my Veteran rewards and all the costumes and power sets I bought.

~ Any chance we could get the test server build or see it at some point? The changes on the test server were awesome. The blaster changes in particular rocked.

Moonlighter

The account data information does not look like it's included in the snapshot of the deal we have been told about. But as was stated, it is just a peak into what could be the deal and is not a final deal in any way.

As for the test server, it was never in a finished state. While you (and me) may have been excited to see the changes to blast sets, what was in beta was not finalized.
For example, corrupter DP damage was higher than that of Blasters. That was just one that I saw.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 05, 2014, 10:00:45 PM
Uh, Whoops. That should actually be Irc.pc-logix.com. Not Isis.
My bad.

Somehow it worked anyway, so I'll be there! :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 05, 2014, 10:21:38 PM
It has been mentioned several times now that the i23 we would be given is a snapshot from the servers the night the game closed down.  I think we're safe.

For the sake of easy reference:

Power Sets Sorted by Date (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/User:Blondeshell/Power_Sets#Power_Sets_Sorted_by_Date)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 05, 2014, 10:28:49 PM
Before ninja run on my katana/sr back in the old days at one point my travel power was quickness + swift + sprint with SO's in them and Combat Jumping
I still remember teaming with this guy with no travel power.   He kept telling me he didn't need it.   It was pretty early in my playing career so I was pretty skeptical and thought he was a little wacky.   

But then he kept getting to the mish doors about the same time I did give or take.    I was blown away.   He finally told me he was using Hurdle+CJ.    Man...he could move fast.    That's when I started taking Hurdle instead of Swift.   :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 05, 2014, 10:29:11 PM
Let me put this in in my own thoughts:

If we don't get the game back we can make our own game. We can import all of the graphics and missions - even the characters with minor changes - because - CoH ran on the Cryptic engine and had different names for its characters. Making your own game with similar gameplay is not illegal.
I like it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 05, 2014, 10:33:19 PM
I still remember teaming with this guy with no travel power.   He kept telling me he didn't need it.   It was pretty early in my playing career so I was pretty skeptical and thought he was a little wacky.   

But then he kept getting to the mish doors about the same time I did give or take.    I was blown away.   He finally told me he was using Hurdle+CJ.    Man...he could move fast.    That's when I started taking Hurdle instead of Swift.   :D

I did the same, built a toon called "No Travel Power Man".
His battle cry was "It's fun to run!"
Title: How is this paid for
Post by: Heliopause on September 05, 2014, 10:44:28 PM
Question.  What entity gets up and running, and maintains the MMO's infrastructure on the back end and how would that get paid for if anyone would care to speculate?  I don't know how MMO architectures work but I'm sure it is complex and expensive.   

Thanks.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 05, 2014, 11:29:16 PM
I agree with this. Traveling the city, going from place to place.. You felt part of the world.

Not to mention that IMO, some areas shouldn't have simply been "open season" for everyone. I know that- as a newbie- I had had enough troubles using the trams to get to areas that were too high level for me, and had some serious wake up experiences ("D'OH!"), but that problem simply got exacerbated towards the end with all the open transit.

Add to that that so many zones at that point had close story arc/continuity ties, and should have been more transitioned into. First Ward notably comes to mind (as a Praetoria lover). I think it was already kind of an oddity to have that zone so open to non-Praetorians, but to just have it available to enter as a first level hero in Paragon City was kind of weird.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 05, 2014, 11:36:29 PM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 05, 2014, 11:43:06 PM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 06, 2014, 12:23:33 AM
Disclaimer (I should probably preface all my posts with this....lol):

This is not a personal attack against anyone quoted below--I am simply quoting them to give reference for what I am about to say. I have no fight with anyone here. I actually believe that we're a great community and everyone here who is a friend of the effort to get the game back is a friend of mine. This is simply a little statement/rant about what I've observed about gaming wants/expectations over the past few decades.

As a noob I remember not being able to figure out how the trains worked so I made the mistake of walking though the Zone entrance for Skyway City as a lowly level 5 and getting attacked by a mob of clockwork.  Which then ended up sending me to the Skyway medical clinic.  Then me having to try and run all the way back to Atlas Park without drawing aggro.  LOL  I died many, many times....but I got there eventually.

And you have a great memory to share of those times because of it. ;)

Not to mention that IMO, some areas shouldn't have simply been "open season" for everyone. I know that- as a newbie- I had had enough troubles using the trams to get to areas that were too high level for me, and had some serious wake up experiences ("D'OH!"), but that problem simply got exacerbated towards the end with all the open transit.

Add to that that so many zones at that point had close story arc/continuity ties, and should have been more transitioned into. First Ward notably comes to mind (as a Praetoria lover). I think it was already kind of an oddity to have that zone so open to non-Praetorians, but to just have it available to enter as a first level hero in Paragon City was kind of weird.

Not to mention that IMO, some areas shouldn't have simply been "open season" for everyone. I know that- as a newbie- I had had enough troubles using the trams to get to areas that were too high level for me, and had some serious wake up experiences ("D'OH!"), but that problem simply got exacerbated towards the end with all the open transit.

Add to that that so many zones at that point had close story arc/continuity ties, and should have been more transitioned into. First Ward notably comes to mind (as a Praetoria lover). I think it was already kind of an oddity to have that zone so open to non-Praetorians, but to just have it available to enter as a first level hero in Paragon City was kind of weird.

There are those of us out here in the world that actually prefer to learn by experience than being "throttled" or "forced" into doing something. I'd rather pull an "oops, guess that death means I wasn't supposed to be there yet!" than find out via some kind of message "NO. YOU CANNOT ENTER THIS AREA." On top of this, an open world allows for various challenges ("let's see... I wonder if I enhance with this and choose this and this power, can I go up against an enemy 5 levels higher than me when I'm level 15....") I maintain that more options is better.

If you can't tell, I don't like the "linear story/combat" experience. It suggests there is only "one way to play." And if you make a game that only allows for "one way to play," you really cut down on the amount of people it will appeal to. A truly well-made game (as we all well know since we've all played CoH) is one that allows many personalities and many demographics and many walks of life play it in their own way and have their own experience. Like to travel? Great, we've got it for you. Like to skip the travel? Great, there's options for that as well. Like to do story-based short missions? We've got it. Rather do a longer-term series of missions? We have task forces. You're a PvP person? We've got several zones that are for nothing but that. Interested in just dressing up and RP'ing? You can do that too.

Most other modern games (even in the MMO genre) have very limited costume options, extremely limited ways you can play, and--if you're not the Elder Scrolls, Fallout, or Grand Theft Auto--sometimes even limit where you can go. It's as if most developers out there aren't really interested in selling their game. They're more interested in creating something they themselves would play their own way. That's fine in a sense (why wouldn't you design a game you wanted to play?), but then comes the question of sustainability. If you don't have more options to appeal to more people built into the game, you can guarantee there will be a flood of people who will try your game, not like it, and move on.

However, if you build a TON of options in a game like CoH did, you grab a very wide audience that stays loyal to the game because they're allowed to play it how they want to.

What about the people who did nothing but build their base all day? What if they were pigeon-holed into something else and prevented from doing that? What do you think would happen to them? They'd move on and find a game that allowed them to express themselves the way they wanted. Can you imagine what it would be like if you couldn't adjust your UI to exactly how you preferred it? Or put your powers where you wanted?

I can completely understand if something is game-breaking. Or, imbalanced. Or overpowered. I'm not talking about those things. Remember all the people who complained about the new graphics? They still could play the game on their old machines in the resolution they always could, but because there was a new "option" for people who could take advantage of it, they complained. Because they didn't (or couldn't) use it.

I don't know... I just feel like a lot of people don't realize that if they wish for QoL enhancements to get taken away, or fewer options, or nerfs, they're most likely ruining someone else's favorite experience. The immediate reaction of MOST people with this "I don't like it so it shouldn't be there" attitude always seems to be "if you don't like it, you can always leave."

Fine. So, let's say a huge chunk of people decide to leave because they start to get aggravated that they're not allowed to travel like they want to. Or, they don't have as much of an "open world" as they'd like. Then there are not enough people there to support the game you told them to leave. And....suddenly there isn't a whole lot of people to play with...or, even worse, it gets shut down. Would you be happy with the results of "if you don't like it, leave" in an MMO world?

Maybe I should have been a Producer. :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 06, 2014, 12:38:34 AM
Yes, Positron did reserve the right to change everything in the event that CoH comes back; fortunately, there's enough left open in the lore that the "Coming Storm" can still be anything - hints were dropped in game, sure, but nothing was absolutely certain.

It should just turn out to be a big hurricane.

"That's it?!?!?!?" (Runs off to kick Prometheus' - aka Chicken Little's - butt.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 06, 2014, 12:40:18 AM

This actually really saddens me. First, because with my set up reading long boxes of text becomes a bit tedious and takes me OUT of the game world, but more importantly...
 
To me it's a sign of a game that will already feel "dated" by design in ways new players might find unpalatable.  I work with teenagers and can tell you that this younger generation sees games where all dialogue is text based as outdated to the point of being "quaint."  It seems rather like the mindset Nintendo took with HD graphics and Dialogue in the last generation console wars, and we see how that turned out.  At least the 200 or so of us who have a Wii U do. Not keeping up with the direction of the medium REALLY hurt Nintendo badly.  To the point that they may never recover, even after releasing and entirely new console to try and make up the losses.
 
Of course, as someone with an extensive background in writing, I wholeheartedly disagree with your comments on super hero dialogue.  Have you ever watched ANY of the current Marvel Universe cartoons on Disney?  Or any of the JLU series? The reason that dialogue is "good" while the 1980 Superfriends dialogue is "bad" has nothing to do with the medium itself, it has to do with expectations. 
 
Good dialogue is good dialogue. Bad dialogue is bad dialogue. If you're writing "corny" dialogue that's not because of the genre, it's because of bad writing or because the assumption is that somehow it "should" be corny.  That was the expectation in the 60s, 70s, and 80s for Super Heroes, both in style, story line, and dialogue. They were campy and over the top.  It isn't the expectation any more, and unless you want to pull a Champions Online, which pursued that antiquated view of Super heroes to its detriment, then your writing shouldn't have any dialogue bordering on "corny", so it shouldn't need Morgan Freeman to pull off.
 
Just my 2 cents.   
 

The problem isn't that all voice acting is bad or all superhero scripted dialog is silly.  The problem is that voice dialog and the gameplay scaffolding that goes along with it is much more frictional in MMOs specifically than in single player games.  In single player games the game runs at whatever pace you want.  But in MMOs you have to design all (or almost all) content on the presumption that teams will run it.  And SWTOR isn't considered "advanced" because of its voice scenes.  Its generally considered to be "annoying" when not being played single-player.

Good design is not about using the most technically advanced features possible.  Its about fitting form to function in the best way possible with available technology.  With written text its possible for some players in the team to read quickly and dismiss the text at their own pace while other players can read slower, and with the right technology even go back and read it again if they can't read it fast enough.  I screencapped all dialog in CoH specifically to allow myself to do that, and I'm the fastest reader I know.  Absolutely no one was reading mission dialog faster than I was, but it was still convenient for me to save for future reference.  Its not as easy to do that for voice acted cutscenes.

That's separate from the fact that good voice acting costs money which has to be diverted from being spent on making more content.  Its just very difficult to integrate more than atmospheric voice content into MMOs in a way that isn't disruptive to multiplayer gameplay.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Heliopause on September 06, 2014, 12:44:22 AM
I never understood why COH was shutdown in the first place.  It apparently was making a profit and more so after moving F2P from what I understand.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 06, 2014, 12:46:12 AM
To play Devil's ... Prosecutor?  Travel wasn't just a convenience for getting to content.  Ubiquitous travel was a critical part of why City of Heroes was an extremely casual-friendly game.  We could casual-team in a way you really do not see in other MMOs.  In no other MMO I've seen did we have the dual elements of friendly chat channels ("looking for two for ITF run") and almost ludicrous ubiquitous travel capability ("I'm in, OMW").  In most MMOs, if you want to join a team in progress, and you aren't lucky enough to be standing right next to them at the time, you're screwed.  That's why so many MMOs designed for and needed "meeting zones" where players could hook up for teams.  Chat channels to organize teams?  Why?  If you aren't already on their team how do you expect to get to their mission, or their zone?  You have to literally be there when the team organizes. 

Certainly a good point, and one I hadn't thought about (probably because I'm primarily a solo player, but when I did team, this was definitely a useful feature).

I was largely thinking of how it impacted story elements (particularly at the end; I can go to Praetoria right after completing the Newbie Intro mission? Cool! What the heck is Praetoria, again?)

Then again, that was always a problem inasfar as new content went in other areas as well- losing a sense of cohesion and continuity. So not strictly a "ubiquitous travel" dilemma.

I can't help but think there could be some more middle ground here, but I definitely grant you this point.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 06, 2014, 12:51:17 AM
But then he kept getting to the mish doors about the same time I did give or take.    I was blown away.   He finally told me he was using Hurdle+CJ.    Man...he could move fast.    That's when I started taking Hurdle instead of Swift.   :D

One of my mains (Great White Hunter) was like this. It just didn't fit his theme to have any of them. While I later would occasionally pick up a jetpack now and then, he didn't generally have any major difficulties when it came time to team up.

Now, if they'd have gotten some vehicles into the game, I'm fairly certain I'd have grabbed one for him.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 06, 2014, 12:55:13 AM
As a noob I remember not being able to figure out how the trains worked so I made the mistake of walking though the Zone entrance for Skyway City as a lowly level 5 and getting attacked by a mob of clockwork.  Which then ended up sending me to the Skyway medical clinic.  Then me having to try and run all the way back to Atlas Park without drawing aggro.  LOL  I died many, many times....but I got there eventually.

That happened to me a lot, because exploring is one of the things I most enjoy about video games- seeing the different locations and sights, creatures/enemies, etc. I remember taking an excessively long time trying to get to Founder's Falls with my (probably around level 8 or 9) character when I first started, just because I wanted to see all the zones. Died so very, very many times. lol
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 06, 2014, 12:58:23 AM
I don't know... I just feel like a lot of people don't realize that if they wish for QoL enhancements to get taken away, or fewer options, or nerfs, they're most likely ruining someone else's favorite experience. The immediate reaction of MOST people with this "I don't like it so it shouldn't be there" attitude always seems to be "if you don't like it, you can always leave."

Fine. So, let's say a huge chunk of people decide to leave because they start to get aggravated that they're not allowed to travel like they want to. Or, they don't have as much of an "open world" as they'd like. Then there are not enough people there to support the game you told them to leave. And....suddenly there isn't a whole lot of people to play with...or, even worse, it gets shut down. Would you be happy with the results of "if you don't like it, leave" in an MMO world?

Maybe I should have been a Producer. :P

By in large I was a strong supporter of expansive gameplay options in City of Heroes.  And there is a lot of truth to the statement that many people were very cavalier about advocating the removal of gameplay options that other players felt were important to their enjoyment of the game.  But I think there is a significant amount of truth to the reverse that people were completely blind to, and that is that it is not necessarily true that all gameplay additions were "free" in the sense of not intrinsically removing others.

My canonical example was to note how so many people stated that the archetype system was one of CoH's most unnecessary gameplay restrictions, and that allowing players to just pick whatever powers they wanted was the best option.  If people *wanted* to play under more restrictions, they could just do that, so the idea went.  How could adding more options possibly devalue the existing ones?  Champions Online was a godsend in this respect, because it allowed to me stop arguing the hypothetical, and just point.  Champions Online, by allowing ranged combat and high end defenses to be freely mixed, basically destroyed the melee fighter option.  It was simply illogical to deliberately handicap yourself by neglecting to take ranged attacks, and doing so put you at an incredible disadvantage to other players, at least at launch and for a long time afterward.  Simply put, by adding one option - ranged scrappers - they destroyed another as a practical matter if not technically - the melee fighter.  In City of Heroes, there are actually *more* distinct power combination options precisely because the archetype lanes create pockets of valid powerset combinations separated by some distance.

The practical aspect of this change was that CO had far less replay value than CoH did, and even the devs had to acknowledge that moving from the hypothetical framework system they had kicked around in beta to the more open one had actually removed replayability - thus the F2P option was more restricted in powerset combinations.  In essence, they brought archetypes back.

Its not always obvious what you give up when to get something else, and I saw just as many players see no problem with adding options that devalued other ones as I did players seeing no problem with taking options away.  There is very often a balancing act when  new options are added, and its not easy to know when a new option is a genuinely free option to add (i.e. it has no undesireable side effects).

Adding options can cost you players in exactly the same way removing them can.  Keep this firmly in mind: the kind of gameplay that City of Heroes encouraged by virtue of dev, well, to put it bluntly, incompetence, was one in which Holy Trinity gameplay was devalued, role-based teaming was not enforced, and players were far more able to solo than in any previous (and in nearly all successive) MMOs.  Sounds great now, but at the time those additional options for gameplay *cost* City of Heroes a lot of players.  The devs were getting a lot of feedback that the game was too easy, that Tankers were useless and therefore not fun to play, that too many players were soloing and not joining teams, making those that wanted teamed play less able to find teams on a consistent basis for harder content.  A lot of players don't remember or were not around to read these same comments on the forums.  I think most people today would say the price of losing those players was unfortunate, but better for the game in the long run.

Just remember what we're saying when we say its always good to add options because you never want to turn away players, when the only way we got those options was by losing players.  There's no such thing as bloodless MMO design.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 06, 2014, 01:01:15 AM
I don't know... I just feel like a lot of people don't realize that if they wish for QoL enhancements to get taken away, or fewer options, or nerfs, they're most likely ruining someone else's favorite experience. The immediate reaction of MOST people with this "I don't like it so it shouldn't be there" attitude always seems to be "if you don't like it, you can always leave."

No, I get your point (and I'm certainly not taking offense). I do like that there were a myriad of travel options available in the game to get from point A to B. One of the reasons I preferred the Rogue Isles and Praetoria were because the designers by that point had learned that gigantic zones filled with (largely) unused, unoccupied territory you had to slog through to get to your missions wasn't really great design. I think when they made the trams "All Access" rather than having separate Blue and Green lines (or whatever the colors were), that was a good choice.

I do still think they went somewhat overboard at the end, though. When you have portals sitting right next to the Tramlines that fulfill the same function as the tramlines (plus give you even greater access to zones those trams don't reach), it makes having those trams redundant.

And I liked the trams. I felt that was a really cool touch that just added that depth of immersion to the world and made it feel more like a "real" place.

So, it's more a question of what was IMO excess, rather than access.

EDIT: Or what Arcana said in more eloquent fashion. lol!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dr. Bad Guy on September 06, 2014, 01:13:49 AM
There was a loony called @Electric_Eddie or similar who for several years on Freedom ran all the shard TFs over all the US 3 day holiday weekends, he was a kin, my granite was his tank of choice for several of them.
Eddie had all kinds of alts and they all were Eddies. Entangled,Electric and so on. Good guy and friend. He kind dropped outa sight. We figured he got a girlfriend or something.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dr. Bad Guy on September 06, 2014, 01:17:14 AM


Edit: Look at it this way. Creating a Mickey Mouse character in Unreal and making a game around it, even if you didn't directly get it from somewhere, still violates Disney's copyright.
And Disney will hammer you so hard that there will be no evidence that you ever existed in this dimension(or any others that they have access to).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kistulot on September 06, 2014, 01:24:29 AM
Adding options can cost you players in exactly the same way removing them can.  Keep this firmly in mind: the kind of gameplay that City of Heroes encouraged by virtue of dev, well, to put it bluntly, incompetence, was one in which Holy Trinity gameplay was devalued, role-based teaming was not enforced, and players were far more able to solo than in any previous (and in nearly all successive) MMOs.  Sounds great now, but at the time those additional options for gameplay *cost* City of Heroes a lot of players.  The devs were getting a lot of feedback that the game was too easy, that Tankers were useless and therefore not fun to play, that too many players were soloing and not joining teams, making those that wanted teamed play less able to find teams on a consistent basis for harder content.  A lot of players don't remember or were not around to read these same comments on the forums.  I think most people today would say the price of losing those players was unfortunate, but better for the game in the long run.

Just remember what we're saying when we say its always good to add options because you never want to turn away players, when the only way we got those options was by losing players.  There's no such thing as bloodless MMO design.

Devaluing the trinity, every AT able to solo content... that kind of thing is what made CoH fun to me, and I know a lot of other people agreed. What you call incompetence, I call people being able to play the game in mathematically suboptimal ways while still succeeding. Sure people didnt need to play just their role, but if you wanted a team, it wasn't "hey, support looking for team" and waiting for a team with support open... it was looking for a team with an open slot.

These things made CoH good - not bad - and the fact that you cant find that just anywhere else is why I miss the game so much.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 06, 2014, 01:37:01 AM
What you call incompetence, I call people being able to play the game in mathematically suboptimal ways while still succeeding.

Actually, I think Arcana's comment about incompetence was meant to imply that it was incompetent because it happened by accident, rather than via design. If the devs had designed all the ATs to solo deliberately, it would have been good design. But since the devs wanted Controllers to be a teaming AT, then having Fire/Kins soloing the way they did, was poor design.

Their design was that Scrappers were to be used for soloing, and everyone else should have problems. And Tankers and Controllers should be desired on teams (but more than 1-2 usually was not that desirable). Since things didn't turn out as they wanted, they clearly did not achieve what they wanted.

That what they got instead turned out to be good is more of a happy accident than competent design.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Phaetan on September 06, 2014, 01:37:35 AM
I'm pretty sure that Arcana wasn't calling these things bad.  Merely that many of the defining and endearing features of CoH were unintended consequences of dev decisions and not acts of commission.

That narrative did seem to play out multiple times by what I've read of the development of the game over the years.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 06, 2014, 01:39:27 AM
Devaluing the trinity, every AT able to solo content... that kind of thing is what made CoH fun to me, and I know a lot of other people agreed. What you call incompetence, I call people being able to play the game in mathematically suboptimal ways while still succeeding. Sure people didnt need to play just their role, but if you wanted a team, it wasn't "hey, support looking for team" and waiting for a team with support open... it was looking for a team with an open slot.

These things made CoH good - not bad - and the fact that you cant find that just anywhere else is why I miss the game so much.

Indeed, I remember CO recently added a mission that forced players to bring the healer along, and man I was so miserable for it.  Anytime teams were forming they'd spend thirty minutes to an hour forming the "perfect" team to do the mission.  Now I feel for those who get obsoleted, somewhat, but it's more pity than anything.  Times change, but I feel mmorpg players have let themselves be stuck so far in the past that everyone else moved forward and is still having fun, while fun to an mmorpg player these days has become "I got the item YES YES! preceeded by miserable "God damnit give me the item already!".

It's not the trinity itself, but more that mmorpgs never ever change.  If they do something, it's a very mideocre effort because they are to scared to move forward and branch out, or dig deeper layers of depth for themselves.  City of heroes actually had depth in spades, it had enough depth that it'd have a hard time climbing out of that depth.

I honestly blame the players, in the case of those who moved on over being useless because their over specialied attackless buffless healer was useless and not needed, or their taunt-only attackless tanker was useless, rather than the game, because the reality was, they weren't adapting.  They wanted a game that played exactly like every single other game to the bone with only a graphical/style carpet over it.  Which, defeats the purpose of designing any game to begin with.  A game should be identifiable among the others of it's genre, city of heroes was known as city of heroes, not everquest clone #30.

My personal favorite quote of all time came from Warren Specter, about game developers.  "We need to show them that they are lame, no matter how much money they make."  He was refering to the huge amount of modern developers who just make generic games, because they really aren't true game developers.  There are so many counter strike/halo clones(modern military shooters) and in the mmorpg scene, there are what many people call WoW clones that truely are WoW clones, though everquest clone should probably be the better term :/.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 06, 2014, 01:42:36 AM
The post i made above, i'd even say City of heroes was, because you had countless ways of playing it, it was the fallout of mmorpgs in a way.  Fallout was an rpg where you could manipulate the environment in so many ways, people who like it will frequently say that it's a game that if you picked any skill set, you'd probably still be able to beat it.  In city of heroes case, you could do well with any archtype/powerset combination.  You don't see that in other mmorpgs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 06, 2014, 02:10:02 AM
Thanks for not taking offense. I like to start dialogue, and all of your input is exactly what I was hoping for. Arcana posting on it was a huge bonus, because she brings a ton of experience and knowledge to the discussion.

Devaluing the trinity, every AT able to solo content... that kind of thing is what made CoH fun to me, and I know a lot of other people agreed. What you call incompetence, I call people being able to play the game in mathematically suboptimal ways while still succeeding. Sure people didnt need to play just their role, but if you wanted a team, it wasn't "hey, support looking for team" and waiting for a team with support open... it was looking for a team with an open slot.

These things made CoH good - not bad - and the fact that you cant find that just anywhere else is why I miss the game so much.

Absolutely agreed.

The post i made above, i'd even say City of heroes was, because you had countless ways of playing it, it was the fallout of mmorpgs in a way.  Fallout was an rpg where you could manipulate the environment in so many ways, people who like it will frequently say that it's a game that if you picked any skill set, you'd probably still be able to beat it.  In city of heroes case, you could do well with any archtype/powerset combination.  You don't see that in other mmorpgs.

Yes! I know saying "good game design" and "bad game design" is completely subjective (just like saying "good art" and "bad art"), but this--what CoH did--is what I see as good game design--regardless of whether or not it happened via accident. Getting halfway through a game and then realizing you'd picked the "wrong" skillset isn't what I'd call very good design. Then again, there ARE games out there that appeal to the demographic that likes that kind of punishing gameplay. Path of Exile is a great example of this. I personally financially supported that game primarily because of the fact that I like that dev team and their transparency, hard work, dedication, and approachability. However, I can't seem to get past level 40 because the game is so inexorably in-depth and complex that you literally have to study it to make any sense of what works and what doesn't. You can actually get up to a very high level (say, level 70) only to realize that you made some wrong choices in your passive skill tree a while back, and it's too late. Your character can advance no further. It's either delete and make another character (after hundreds of hours invested), or hope for another major game update in a few months that gives you a free respec. Although I'm glad that games like that exist for people that have the time (and fortitude) to invest in them, I'm certainly thankful CoH didn't have that philosophy. And, I'm positive that, if it did, the type of community that philosophy would have produced would have been entirely different.

I haven't finished my Master's in Game Design yet (halfway done but taking a break), but as you can see, I can talk about design philosophy all year long. I believe design philosophy is closely related to understanding psychology. Every game designed is an exploration into exactly who and what is drawn to it and who clings to it. This is why I say the design philosophy for Path of Exile produces an entirely different kind of community that it maintains. Read the Diablo 3 forums...then read the Mass Effect forums....then read the archived CoH forums... Each entirely different game with entirely different design philosophies produced a different community (as a whole) that embraces it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 06, 2014, 02:12:22 AM
By in large I was a strong supporter of expansive gameplay options in City of Heroes.  And there is a lot of truth to the statement that many people were very cavalier about advocating the removal of gameplay options that other players felt were important to their enjoyment of the game.  But I think there is a significant amount of truth to the reverse that people were completely blind to, and that is that it is not necessarily true that all gameplay additions were "free" in the sense of not intrinsically removing others.

My canonical example was to note how so many people stated that the archetype system was one of CoH's most unnecessary gameplay restrictions, and that allowing players to just pick whatever powers they wanted was the best option.  If people *wanted* to play under more restrictions, they could just do that, so the idea went.  How could adding more options possibly devalue the existing ones?  Champions Online was a godsend in this respect, because it allowed to me stop arguing the hypothetical, and just point.  Champions Online, by allowing ranged combat and high end defenses to be freely mixed, basically destroyed the melee fighter option.  It was simply illogical to deliberately handicap yourself by neglecting to take ranged attacks, and doing so put you at an incredible disadvantage to other players, at least at launch and for a long time afterward.  Simply put, by adding one option - ranged scrappers - they destroyed another as a practical matter if not technically - the melee fighter.  In City of Heroes, there are actually *more* distinct power combination options precisely because the archetype lanes create pockets of valid powerset combinations separated by some distance.

The practical aspect of this change was that CO had far less replay value than CoH did, and even the devs had to acknowledge that moving from the hypothetical framework system they had kicked around in beta to the more open one had actually removed replayability - thus the F2P option was more restricted in powerset combinations.  In essence, they brought archetypes back.

Its not always obvious what you give up when to get something else, and I saw just as many players see no problem with adding options that devalued other ones as I did players seeing no problem with taking options away.  There is very often a balancing act when  new options are added, and its not easy to know when a new option is a genuinely free option to add (i.e. it has no undesireable side effects).
Good thing to consider for sure.

But it seems like any QoL improvement was met with the "doom" response from some on the old boards.   I used to have a list in my head of all the things which were "never going to happen" which ended up happening.   Power customization, server transfers, and changing back and forth from heroside to villainside were some of them.

I wonder if some of those people blamed the shutdown on us getting all those various QoL improvements?    ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 06, 2014, 02:12:42 AM
[...] Arcana [...] she [...]

Fix'd!  8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 06, 2014, 02:13:21 AM
Fix'd!  8)

Ah, my apologies. I modified my original post to reflect that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 06, 2014, 02:17:02 AM
Of course, as someone with an extensive background in writing, I wholeheartedly disagree with your comments on super hero dialogue.  Have you ever watched ANY of the current Marvel Universe cartoons on Disney?  Or any of the JLU series? The reason that dialogue is "good" while the 1980 Superfriends dialogue is "bad" has nothing to do with the medium itself, it has to do with expectations. 

Sadly, I don't write, so I cannot possibly take that viewpoint. What I can say, having just started a rewatching kick on Young Justice is - um - yes. It is.  The quality and delivery is better, but it's still corny - and at at least a power of ten beyond the budget.  Your ability to let it slide is a personal thing - just like I can gleefully sit through "Gordon Lives!"
 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 06, 2014, 02:21:57 AM
Thanks for not taking offense. I like to start dialogue, and all of your input is exactly what I was hoping for. Arcana posting on it was a huge bonus, because she brings a ton of experience and knowledge to the discussion.

I think my initial post might have been polarizing due to my use of the word "restricted" in mentioning the many ways to reach new zones, when that wasn't so much the intent. It was more the idea that it rendered other means redundant, and I think it could have been equally achieved via a different means, and one that was more in keeping with the content of the game.

In fact, it was really just that one specific type of zoning that came with i23- the TUNNEL system- that turned me off. Most of the other increased travel types were welcome by me, and I had no problem with the teleports and options that people could acquire.

But again, some of the comments made here were also points of view I hadn't considered, so of course, open dialogue is great.

And speaking of archetypes- I always thought they were fairly well done, and the power proliferation I think helped in keeping the options as open as possible while still maintaining a semblance of game balance as opposed to a "free for all" like people mention with CO.

IIRC, there was a "ranged striker" in the works, so I'm not sure if that would have mucked things up or not (Arcana mentioned that kind of minimizing some of the melee options in CO).

I still wish there had been more done with the various Origins, though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: simonthezealot on September 06, 2014, 02:22:30 AM
I hate to be negative, but I'm honestly worried that NCSoft might throw the whole deal out of the window because MWM might be asking for too much. I personally think there's definitely a reason NCSoft has been sitting on the City of Heroes rights as hard as they have; they probably plan on making a City of Heroes 2 at some point in the future. Even if it's not for another decade or more. I truly hope that they don't throw the whole deal out because of the attempt to try to get City of Heroes licensing for the various other superhero MMO projects going on. I, personally, have no interest in the successors to City of Heroes, and I hope MWM considers attempting to reopen negotiations if things fall through, but only with the request to run i23 City of Heroes servers.

I might be speaking too soon, but I definitely wanted to voice my concern ahead of time. I still absolutely appreciate and applaud what the group is doing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 06, 2014, 02:40:06 AM
Disclaimer (I should probably preface all my posts with this....lol):

This is not a personal attack against anyone quoted below--I am simply quoting them to give reference for what I am about to say. I have no fight with anyone here. I actually believe that we're a great community and everyone here who is a friend of the effort to get the game back is a friend of mine. This is simply a little statement/rant about what I've observed about gaming wants/expectations over the past few decades.

And you have a great memory to share of those times because of it. ;)

There are those of us out here in the world that actually prefer to learn by experience than being "throttled" or "forced" into doing something. I'd rather pull an "oops, guess that death means I wasn't supposed to be there yet!" than find out via some kind of message "NO. YOU CANNOT ENTER THIS AREA." On top of this, an open world allows for various challenges ("let's see... I wonder if I enhance with this and choose this and this power, can I go up against an enemy 5 levels higher than me when I'm level 15....") I maintain that more options is better.

If you can't tell, I don't like the "linear story/combat" experience. It suggests there is only "one way to play." And if you make a game that only allows for "one way to play," you really cut down on the amount of people it will appeal to. A truly well-made game (as we all well know since we've all played CoH) is one that allows many personalities and many demographics and many walks of life play it in their own way and have their own experience. Like to travel? Great, we've got it for you. Like to skip the travel? Great, there's options for that as well. Like to do story-based short missions? We've got it. Rather do a longer-term series of missions? We have task forces. You're a PvP person? We've got several zones that are for nothing but that. Interested in just dressing up and RP'ing? You can do that too.

Most other modern games (even in the MMO genre) have very limited costume options, extremely limited ways you can play, and--if you're not the Elder Scrolls, Fallout, or Grand Theft Auto--sometimes even limit where you can go. It's as if most developers out there aren't really interested in selling their game. They're more interested in creating something they themselves would play their own way. That's fine in a sense (why wouldn't you design a game you wanted to play?), but then comes the question of sustainability. If you don't have more options to appeal to more people built into the game, you can guarantee there will be a flood of people who will try your game, not like it, and move on.

However, if you build a TON of options in a game like CoH did, you grab a very wide audience that stays loyal to the game because they're allowed to play it how they want to.

What about the people who did nothing but build their base all day? What if they were pigeon-holed into something else and prevented from doing that? What do you think would happen to them? They'd move on and find a game that allowed them to express themselves the way they wanted. Can you imagine what it would be like if you couldn't adjust your UI to exactly how you preferred it? Or put your powers where you wanted?

I can completely understand if something is game-breaking. Or, imbalanced. Or overpowered. I'm not talking about those things. Remember all the people who complained about the new graphics? They still could play the game on their old machines in the resolution they always could, but because there was a new "option" for people who could take advantage of it, they complained. Because they didn't (or couldn't) use it.

I don't know... I just feel like a lot of people don't realize that if they wish for QoL enhancements to get taken away, or fewer options, or nerfs, they're most likely ruining someone else's favorite experience. The immediate reaction of MOST people with this "I don't like it so it shouldn't be there" attitude always seems to be "if you don't like it, you can always leave."

Fine. So, let's say a huge chunk of people decide to leave because they start to get aggravated that they're not allowed to travel like they want to. Or, they don't have as much of an "open world" as they'd like. Then there are not enough people there to support the game you told them to leave. And....suddenly there isn't a whole lot of people to play with...or, even worse, it gets shut down. Would you be happy with the results of "if you don't like it, leave" in an MMO world?

Maybe I should have been a Producer. :P

you just described SWTOR perfectly
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 06, 2014, 02:44:13 AM
Certainly a good point, and one I hadn't thought about (probably because I'm primarily a solo player, but when I did team, this was definitely a useful feature).

I was largely thinking of how it impacted story elements (particularly at the end; I can go to Praetoria right after completing the Newbie Intro mission? Cool! What the heck is Praetoria, again?)

Then again, that was always a problem inasfar as new content went in other areas as well- losing a sense of cohesion and continuity. So not strictly a "ubiquitous travel" dilemma.

I can't help but think there could be some more middle ground here, but I definitely grant you this point.

I think people for get that a newbie is only level 1 and a newbie for a short time, but everyone is there for a long time.  nerfing someone to buffer their newbieness will only help for a very short period, but removing options will effect a much larger group for a very long time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 06, 2014, 03:07:10 AM
I hate to be negative, but I'm honestly worried that NCSoft might throw the whole deal out of the window because MWM might be asking for too much. I personally think there's definitely a reason NCSoft has been sitting on the City of Heroes rights as hard as they have; they probably plan on making a City of Heroes 2 at some point in the future. Even if it's not for another decade or more. I truly hope that they don't throw the whole deal out because of the attempt to try to get City of Heroes licensing for the various other superhero MMO projects going on. I, personally, have no interest in the successors to City of Heroes, and I hope MWM considers attempting to reopen negotiations if things fall through, but only with the request to run i23 City of Heroes servers.

I might be speaking too soon, but I definitely wanted to voice my concern ahead of time. I still absolutely appreciate and applaud what the group is doing.

Actually, the whole thing went the opposite way of that:  MWM was ONLY asking to buy the IP, so all the successor games could reference CoX without, ya know, getting their arses sued off.  It was reportedly NCSoft themselves who said, "And hey, we've got this backup of the servers the night the game shut down, so do you guys want that too?"  to which Nate and the others said, "Hell yeah!"   ;D  We still don't know, NCSoft could back out at any point, but it was actually their idea to get CoX running again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: simonthezealot on September 06, 2014, 03:09:34 AM
Actually, the whole thing went the opposite way of that:  MWM was ONLY asking to buy the IP, so all the successor games could reference CoX without, ya know, getting their arses sued off.  It was reportedly NCSoft themselves who said, "And hey, we've got this backup of the servers the night the game shut down, so do you guys want that too?"  to which Nate and the others said, "Hell yeah!"   ;D  We still don't know, NCSoft could back out at any point, but it was actually their idea to get CoX running again.

This is definitely good to hear, but where did you see this? It's not in the original post, so I'm just curious.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 06, 2014, 03:14:26 AM
Actually, the whole thing went the opposite way of that:  MWM was ONLY asking to buy the IP, so all the successor games could reference CoX without, ya know, getting their arses sued off.  It was reportedly NCSoft themselves who said, "And hey, we've got this backup of the servers the night the game shut down, so do you guys want that too?"  to which Nate and the others said, "Hell yeah!"   ;D  We still don't know, NCSoft could back out at any point, but it was actually their idea to get CoX running again.

I keep forgetting about that tidbit. If memory serves, you're correct. NCSoft brought up the I23 server during negotiations, as far as I understand.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 06, 2014, 03:26:22 AM
Actually, I think Arcana's comment about incompetence was meant to imply that it was incompetent because it happened by accident, rather than via design. If the devs had designed all the ATs to solo deliberately, it would have been good design. But since the devs wanted Controllers to be a teaming AT, then having Fire/Kins soloing the way they did, was poor design.

Their design was that Scrappers were to be used for soloing, and everyone else should have problems. And Tankers and Controllers should be desired on teams (but more than 1-2 usually was not that desirable). Since things didn't turn out as they wanted, they clearly did not achieve what they wanted.

That what they got instead turned out to be good is more of a happy accident than competent design.

Exactly so. As deep into the game as I4 the devs were still designing around archetypes as if they had far more fixed roles on teams than the players felt they should, and were still thinking in terms that trinity-style gameplay could still  be salvaged.  The "everyone should be able to solo" informal design rule didn't really become a genuine design rule as far as I know until CoV.  Look at CoV archetypes, and notice the shift in design.  CoV is obviously "post-trinity." 

But if the devs actually had a strong grasp of how to make the numbers do what they wanted, we would have never gotten the City of Heroes we ended up with.  To put it in direct terms, the devs did not have enough control over the numbers to fine-tune archetype power between "lame" and "overpowered" so most things ended up overpowered relative to the design.  At launch, powerset combination meant more to your overall power than archetype.  Invuln/SS tanker?  Godzilla.  MA/DA scrapper?  Doormat.  Dark defender?  Awesome.  Electric/Fire Blaster?  Roadkill.  Emp/Electric defender?  Useless except as a sidekick.  By the time they figured out how to fix it, it was too late to fix: City of Heroes became the best MMO in the history of MMOs to solo in, because the devs handed out powerlevels most admins don't have in other MMOs.  They couldn't bring down the overpowered stuff to "correct" levels except in the extreme cases, so they were forced to buff the players upward to balance archetypes out.  Players always complained about nerfs, but the history of City of Heroes is an 80/20 buff to nerf empower-o-rama.

Incidentally, the last vestige of trinity-thinking lasted surprisingly long.  It was the legacy of Blasters having no alternate design ethic once trinity was no longer the law of the land.  In my opinion, it wasn't until Arbiter Hawk started to look at Blasters - literally in I23 - that I think Blasters escaped trinity-thinking; the last archetype to do so.  Also, just a bit too late because I24 would have been the first issue to contain the start of non-trinity Blasters (one of my regrets was that I think in AH I finally had a Blaster ally on the dev team that thought about them somewhat like I did, and was willing to experiment with them outside the glass-cannon trinity model, and I'll never know where we could have eventually gotten Blasters to).

In any case, none of this was even remotely by design.  It was 100% accident.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 06, 2014, 03:29:07 AM
you just described SWTOR perfectly

Snark will cost you 50 Jedi points.  I'm afraid you're no longer allowed to use your Light-side keyboard.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 06, 2014, 03:29:33 AM
A request to the powers that be.  Can we get a stickied post, possibly like a dev tracker type locked thread, to keep theposts pertaining to the deal/negotiations that only includes posts from Nate maybe.  This thread like the others onthe topic get easily derailed and its a bit of a job sifting through it to find the important posts.  Nothing wrong with all the excitement and chatter, I'd just like to be sure to catch the really important posts if and when they are made.

PS perhaps an 'editors choice' thread with the very best and most clear/concise posts.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 06, 2014, 03:35:53 AM
Snark will cost you 50 Jedi points.  I'm afraid you're no longer allowed to use your Light-side keyboard.

thats why I am a darth.....hahahaha
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 06, 2014, 03:42:05 AM
A request to the powers that be.  Can we get a stickied post, possibly like a dev tracker type locked thread, to keep theposts pertaining to the deal/negotiations that only includes posts from Nate maybe.  This thread like the others onthe topic get easily derailed and its a bit of a job sifting through it to find the important posts.  Nothing wrong with all the excitement and chatter, I'd just like to be sure to catch the really important posts if and when they are made.

PS perhaps an 'editors choice' thread with the very best and most clear/concise posts.

I suspect that the next actual update with real information we get will either be "we did it" or "derailed" and will be made in a different announcement thread.  That's not the sort of thing you just post an update into a 63 page thread and say "oh, by the way, we own City of Heroes now: who wants pie."

Not trying to slam you or anything, just pointing out that the acquisition team should not, and probably will not, post actual updates about actual negotiations (and would be bordering on brain-dead if they did), so the only discussion you're likely to get past the first day or so when they were answering specific direct questions are excited players just happy to be talking about anything specific.

In fact there were rumors swirling just before the announcement that I believe the actual announcement was made to prevent wild speculation.  I do not believe it was intended to be the start of a negotiation blog.  If those rumors hadn't surfaced (because of the thing with the thing, its a done deal now) I don't think we'd even have this thread to talk about yet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 06, 2014, 03:42:21 AM
A request to the powers that be.  Can we get a stickied post, possibly like a dev tracker type locked thread, to keep theposts pertaining to the deal/negotiations that only includes posts from Nate maybe.  This thread like the others onthe topic get easily derailed and its a bit of a job sifting through it to find the important posts.  Nothing wrong with all the excitement and chatter, I'd just like to be sure to catch the really important posts if and when they are made.

PS perhaps an 'editors choice' thread with the very best and most clear/concise posts.
There is pretty much not going to be any more information until the talks are further along. Right now, all we're doing is waiting. And all we can do while waiting is talk amongst each other. Further announcements should be in their own thread. You can bookmark downix's posts if you want (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;area=showposts;sa=messages;u=20958), but he doesn't only post about the deal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 06, 2014, 03:44:43 AM
There is pretty much not going to be any more information until the talks are further along.

Yeah, There's not really going to be weekly updates or anything. I think most people's questions have been answered at this point. Now I think it's really just waiting, and killing time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 06, 2014, 04:07:51 AM
I'm posting via my phone ATM. I'm posting in the dark in my house without electricity.  I didn't express myself too well. I don't think I made myself clear.

There are a great many posts, most of which are side chatter.  There are some that are very informative.  Some that help clear up questions from new folks dropping in.  Perhaps an 'editors' choice thread would be useful.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 06, 2014, 04:10:02 AM
Yeah, There's not really going to be weekly updates or anything. I think most people's questions have been answered at this point. Now I think it's really just waiting, and killing time.

    I am, and always will be, an enrg/enrg blaster, please, just tell me where to find this "time" that needs killing and I shall happily oblige  ;) 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 06, 2014, 04:10:51 AM
I suspect that the next actual update with real information we get will either be "we did it" or "derailed" and will be made in a different announcement thread.  That's not the sort of thing you just post an update into a 63 page thread and say "oh, by the way, we own City of Heroes now: who wants pie."


That would be the perfect way to announce it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 06, 2014, 04:11:12 AM
I fully admit to putting microfiliments in Sprint because it said it boosted jumping. Years later I found out it was adding inches to my jump height only.

I adored fully slotted hover pre-ed, but power boost made it spiffy.

Hover, hurdle, Cj and super speed. Couldn't do without them. The control and speed in combat just hasn't been matched (or smoothly animated) in the hero mmos since.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 06, 2014, 04:11:57 AM
That would be the perfect way to announce it.


  lol :) pie is always good.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 06, 2014, 04:12:24 AM
I'm posting via my phone ATM. I'm posting in the dark in my house without electricity.  I didn't express myself too well. I don't think I made myself clear.

There are a great many posts, most of which are side chatter.  There are some that are very informative.  Some that help clear up questions from new folks dropping in.  Perhaps an 'editors' choice thread would be useful.

Are you attempting to eschew electricity until the game is back?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 06, 2014, 04:13:51 AM
I fully admit to putting microfiliments in Sprint because it said it boosted jumping. Years later I found out it was adding inches to my jump height only.

I adored fully slotted hover pre-ed, but power boost made it spiffy.

Hover, hurdle, Cj and super speed. Couldn't do without them. The control and speed in combat just hasn't been matched (or smoothly animated) in the hero mmos since.

The Guards Jolteh?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 06, 2014, 04:16:42 AM
I keep forgetting about that tidbit. If memory serves, you're correct. NCSoft brought up the I23 server during negotiations, as far as I understand.

I don't remember hearing this detail until the time of this posting.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 06, 2014, 04:18:27 AM
I don't remember hearing this detail until the time of this posting.

  That particular fact is the most important part to me-that would be so awesome of NCsoft to do that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 06, 2014, 04:19:18 AM
I don't remember hearing this detail until the time of this posting.

I don't remember that bit either. Just might be new information.

OK people, we might have just had an update. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 06, 2014, 04:19:56 AM
I don't remember that bit either. Just might be new information.

OK people, we might have just had an update. :)

 OMG.....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 06, 2014, 04:21:58 AM
I don't remember that bit either. Just might be new information.

OK people, we might have just had an update. :)

ninja updates ftw!!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on September 06, 2014, 04:22:34 AM
I suspect that the next actual update with real information we get will either be "we did it" or "derailed" and will be made in a different announcement thread.  That's not the sort of thing you just post an update into a 63 page thread and say "oh, by the way, we own City of Heroes now: who wants pie."

Mmmmm... pie...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fable on September 06, 2014, 04:28:36 AM
"oh, by the way, we own City of Heroes now: who wants pie."

Classic. I'm putting in my sig. It's even better than your "no bloodless MMO design" comment, and I like that a lot.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 06, 2014, 04:30:32 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lava-Lad on September 06, 2014, 04:32:55 AM
There are those of us out here in the world that actually prefer to learn by experience than being "throttled" or "forced" into doing something. I'd rather pull an "oops, guess that death means I wasn't supposed to be there yet!" than find out via some kind of message "NO. YOU CANNOT ENTER THIS AREA." On top of this, an open world allows for various challenges ("let's see... I wonder if I enhance with this and choose this and this power, can I go up against an enemy 5 levels higher than me when I'm level 15....") I maintain that more options is better.

If you can't tell, I don't like the "linear story/combat" experience. It suggests there is only "one way to play." And if you make a game that only allows for "one way to play," you really cut down on the amount of people it will appeal to. A truly well-made game (as we all well know since we've all played CoH) is one that allows many personalities and many demographics and many walks of life play it in their own way and have their own experience. Like to travel? Great, we've got it for you. Like to skip the travel? Great, there's options for that as well. Like to do story-based short missions? We've got it. Rather do a longer-term series of missions? We have task forces. You're a PvP person? We've got several zones that are for nothing but that. Interested in just dressing up and RP'ing? You can do that too.
.
.
.
However, if you build a TON of options in a game like CoH did, you grab a very wide audience that stays loyal to the game because they're allowed to play it how they want to.
.
.
.

Fine. So, let's say a huge chunk of people decide to leave because they start to get aggravated that they're not allowed to travel like they want to. Or, they don't have as much of an "open world" as they'd like. Then there are not enough people there to support the game you told them to leave. And....suddenly there isn't a whole lot of people to play with...or, even worse, it gets shut down. Would you be happy with the results of "if you don't like it, leave" in an MMO world?

Maybe I should have been a Producer. :P

Like those crazy human form WS people :P!  Tri for WS, human form for PB...it is known ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 06, 2014, 04:36:46 AM


   Good night to all, I'm off to sleep and have dreams of being in tf's running through my mind, lol. Peace.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 06, 2014, 04:45:24 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 06, 2014, 04:56:04 AM
The image of Mickey Mouse is a trademark of Disney, not a copyright. And it's still in force. And Disney is willing to sue.

http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/deadmau5-disney-in-legal-dispute-over-mickey-mouse-ear-trademark-201439

Disney will be picky with who they go after. They will go after Deadmou5, but they won't go after Hamas' Mickey Mouse xD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 06, 2014, 04:56:09 AM
Mmmmm... pie...

That reminded me.... I used to be admin over a few channels on Freedom. One of them was "Freedom TF" which was (obviously) used for organizing TFs. One day, i posted an admin message about pie, and suddenly the channel lit up with "insert pie here" jokes...

Here's a few of the screenshots I took of the submissions (you'll probably have to view the picture's original size to actually read it):

http://s69.photobucket.com/user/ilwzxvn/library/Pie
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 06, 2014, 04:58:56 AM
Disney will be picky with who they go after. They will go after Deadmou5, but they won't go after Hamas' Mickey Mouse xD

Indeed...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 06, 2014, 05:17:46 AM
I remember in the summer of 2004, the idea of an all-defender team was considered a fad, a novelty, but not effective. People who played on the trinity-free team concepts experienced how powerful such teams could be. With corruptors, and masterminds, the variety of 8 buff/debuffers increased. The fulcrum shift was nerfed (bzzzzortch!). Radiation Infection was nerfed. Fluffy was nerfed. Hurricane was nerfed but the all 8 buff/debuffers were undaunted. In the end they threw a bone to the kinetics for team speed boost and also team bubbles and sonic rings.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 06, 2014, 05:43:13 AM
That reminded me.... I used to be admin over a few channels on Freedom. One of them was "Freedom TF" which was (obviously) used for organizing TFs. One day, i posted an admin message about pie, and suddenly the channel lit up with "insert pie here" jokes...

Here's a few of the screenshots I took of the submissions (you'll probably have to view the picture's original size to actually read it):

http://s69.photobucket.com/user/ilwzxvn/library/Pie

The subject or word spork came up one time on the pinnacle channel and a couple of us took it and ran with it filled the channel with the word word spork. I mean everything from have a sporking time; or what the spork. The universal utensil is also a universal word
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 06, 2014, 05:44:15 AM
Disney will be picky with who they go after. They will go after Deadmou5, but they won't go after Hamas' Mickey Mouse xD

They recently lost their suit against Deadmou5, in fact he is now counter suing because they used one of his tracks without permission on one of their kids TV shows!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 06, 2014, 05:46:49 AM
Exactly so. As deep into the game as I4 the devs were still designing around archetypes as if they had far more fixed roles on teams than the players felt they should, and were still thinking in terms that trinity-style gameplay could still  be salvaged.  The "everyone should be able to solo" informal design rule didn't really become a genuine design rule as far as I know until CoV.  Look at CoV archetypes, and notice the shift in design.  CoV is obviously "post-trinity." 

But if the devs actually had a strong grasp of how to make the numbers do what they wanted, we would have never gotten the City of Heroes we ended up with.  To put it in direct terms, the devs did not have enough control over the numbers to fine-tune archetype power between "lame" and "overpowered" so most things ended up overpowered relative to the design.  At launch, powerset combination meant more to your overall power than archetype.  Invuln/SS tanker?  Godzilla.  MA/DA scrapper?  Doormat.  Dark defender?  Awesome.  Electric/Fire Blaster?  Roadkill.  Emp/Electric defender?  Useless except as a sidekick.  By the time they figured out how to fix it, it was too late to fix: City of Heroes became the best MMO in the history of MMOs to solo in, because the devs handed out powerlevels most admins don't have in other MMOs.  They couldn't bring down the overpowered stuff to "correct" levels except in the extreme cases, so they were forced to buff the players upward to balance archetypes out.  Players always complained about nerfs, but the history of City of Heroes is an 80/20 buff to nerf empower-o-rama.

Incidentally, the last vestige of trinity-thinking lasted surprisingly long.  It was the legacy of Blasters having no alternate design ethic once trinity was no longer the law of the land.  In my opinion, it wasn't until Arbiter Hawk started to look at Blasters - literally in I23 - that I think Blasters escaped trinity-thinking; the last archetype to do so.  Also, just a bit too late because I24 would have been the first issue to contain the start of non-trinity Blasters (one of my regrets was that I think in AH I finally had a Blaster ally on the dev team that thought about them somewhat like I did, and was willing to experiment with them outside the glass-cannon trinity model, and I'll never know where we could have eventually gotten Blasters to).

In any case, none of this was even remotely by design.  It was 100% accident.
That's kinda humorous reading.   Sometimes you just get lucky I guess.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 06, 2014, 05:48:36 AM
Actually, the whole thing went the opposite way of that:  MWM was ONLY asking to buy the IP, so all the successor games could reference CoX without, ya know, getting their arses sued off.  It was reportedly NCSoft themselves who said, "And hey, we've got this backup of the servers the night the game shut down, so do you guys want that too?"  to which Nate and the others said, "Hell yeah!"   ;D  We still don't know, NCSoft could back out at any point, but it was actually their idea to get CoX running again.
As others said...this is really really REALLY cool to hear.    I mean...that changes my view of NCSoft 100%.   ...And it buffs my confidence as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 06, 2014, 05:50:40 AM
That reminded me.... I used to be admin over a few channels on Freedom. One of them was "Freedom TF" which was (obviously) used for organizing TFs. One day, i posted an admin message about pie, and suddenly the channel lit up with "insert pie here" jokes...

Here's a few of the screenshots I took of the submissions (you'll probably have to view the picture's original size to actually read it):

http://s69.photobucket.com/user/ilwzxvn/library/Pie
My memory sucks...but now I remember why the name "Alien One" sounds so familiar.   (Probably from the old forums too)   That was an awesome channel.   A lot of people thought you couldn't get any good teams on Freedom but my experience was the exact opposite.    Forming a team was easy as....pie.   :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 06, 2014, 05:52:51 AM
I remember in the summer of 2004, the idea of an all-defender team was considered a fad, a novelty, but not effective. People who played on the trinity-free team concepts experienced how powerful such teams could be. With corruptors, and masterminds, the variety of 8 buff/debuffers increased. The fulcrum shift was nerfed (bzzzzortch!). Radiation Infection was nerfed. Fluffy was nerfed. Hurricane was nerfed but the all 8 buff/debuffers were undaunted. In the end they threw a bone to the kinetics for team speed boost and also team bubbles and sonic rings.
Those were very welcome buffs.   I had a keybind for SB...but it was still a pain until that change.

And one of my favorite things was all Controller teams.   Really had to talk a few people into it at times.   I would send out tells explaining what I was doing and many would come back with, "How can that work?"     I pretty much said, "Trust me...if you don't love it after the first mob, I will understand if you want to quit".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amrobinson on September 06, 2014, 06:26:59 AM
I think one thing you (and everyone else) needs to bear in mind is that CoH became a game where travel and convenience were simple and everywhere.

One of the best examples is the Hollows. Pre-travel powers, mission doors at the far end of the zone, and no hospital. I think most of us have stories about the long slog back from Atlas Park. And then War Witch revamped the zone. Cleaned up the mission door assignments and spawn points. Added a hospital.

From the perspective of a fresh character going through the zone, all of these were vast improvements. From my personal perspective as a veteran of the old version, I think it really only needed the hospital.

And that really my point: convenience and travel tweaks are A-OK, because CoH was all about letting you get to the action and back to the action quickly and simply (which is not the same as easily, because a challenging spawn in the right/wrong place could make it more exciting, as long as it wasn't impossible to avoid/defeat).

I always found the original Hollows to be a fun change.

Slinking around the zone to far doors without a travel power, dodging mobs several levels higher than I was, meeting up with random pug teammates for trysts with Frostfire...it was all a hoot!

I have one (min/max) friend who refused to set foot in Hollows...he felt it was a gigantic waste of time not to be killing everything every second he was in there, save 30 seconds for travel time.

Kids these days, they don't know what they're missing!

brought to you by
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.idx360.com%2Fwarlockinc%2Flordminion.png)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 06, 2014, 06:35:06 AM
I always found the original Hollows to be a fun change.

Slinking around the zone to far doors without a travel power, dodging mobs several levels higher than I was, meeting up with random pug teammates for trysts with Frostfire...it was all a hoot!

I have one (min/max) friend who refused to set foot in Hollows...he felt it was a gigantic waste of time not to be killing everything every second he was in there, save 30 seconds for travel time.

Kids these days, they don't know what they're missing!


The main purpose of the Hollows was to teach players about the importance of aggro range.  Something you learn VERY quickly when the place is full of mobs of 4, 6, or even 8+ gangers, all hanging around waiting to get biblical on your ass.  The "fix" very much neutered it, I feel.

All the place needed was a hospital, that's it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pep Rally on September 06, 2014, 06:49:19 AM

 And Tankers and Controllers should be desired on teams (but more than 1-2 usually was not that desirable).


Of course, 1-2 Tanks weren't desirable. You needed 8 for a good team...especially on Tuesdays.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 06, 2014, 07:00:25 AM
Of course, 1-2 Tanks weren't desirable. You needed 8 for a good team...especially on Tuesdays.

Hehe, hey tankers are pretty good archtypes, just you want to do more than just soak hits and holding taunt down :).  Tanker damage was way underrated.  They weren't brutes or scrappers but they could still hit more than hard enough to destroy mobs quickly enough.  Besides 8 tankers can easily force multiply up with leadership :).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 06, 2014, 07:31:18 AM
I was only ever to attend one Tanker Tuesday in the entire run of the game. It was epic.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 06, 2014, 07:32:03 AM
I remember in the summer of 2004, the idea of an all-defender team was considered a fad, a novelty, but not effective. People who played on the trinity-free team concepts experienced how powerful such teams could be. With corruptors, and masterminds, the variety of 8 buff/debuffers increased. The fulcrum shift was nerfed (bzzzzortch!). Radiation Infection was nerfed. Fluffy was nerfed. Hurricane was nerfed but the all 8 buff/debuffers were undaunted. In the end they threw a bone to the kinetics for team speed boost and also team bubbles and sonic rings.

Honestly, from the moment the first steam roll buff/debuff teams left port, nothing really slowed them down.  The FS and RI changes had no impact on them, and really hurricane wasn't a steamroll power anyway.  The changes to speed boost and FF/Sonic shields were more QoL changes than effectiveness changes.

The craziest team - in steam roll terms - I was ever on was an eight player all controller team with nothing but Ill/Fire and Rad/Kin/Emp back around I5-ish.  I think it was an Ill/Rad (me), two Ill/Kins, two Fire/Kins, a Fire/Emp, and two Fire/Rads.  Its hard to even describe how ridiculous that team was.  Things melted so fast that the pets were often just running in circles because their targets dropped dead before they arrived.  We were leapfrogging in two and three groups of players trying to get far enough of the pack to even hit anything.  I would run out of the pack to the next full spawn and hit them with flash, and by the time I deployed the PA everything was dead all around me from the team catching up.

We were the poster children for "Geko didn't know how to add" when it came to stacking effects.  Even after the arrival of inventions, epic powers, Incarnate abilities, and level shifts, I *still* am not certain I was ever on another team with more firepower, and I'm including fully populated BAFs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 06, 2014, 07:46:33 AM
I always found the original Hollows to be a fun change.

Slinking around the zone to far doors without a travel power, dodging mobs several levels higher than I was, meeting up with random pug teammates for trysts with Frostfire...it was all a hoot!

I have one (min/max) friend who refused to set foot in Hollows...he felt it was a gigantic waste of time not to be killing everything every second he was in there, save 30 seconds for travel time.

Kids these days, they don't know what they're missing!

brought to you by
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.idx360.com%2Fwarlockinc%2Flordminion.png)

foxfire was the mission that got my wife and I hooked on COX. I loved that one.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 06, 2014, 08:20:34 AM
I keep forgetting about that tidbit. If memory serves, you're correct. NCSoft brought up the I23 server during negotiations, as far as I understand.
I have to admit that almost makes it sound like they haven't asked for any of the other stuff?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 06, 2014, 09:43:25 AM
Don't quote me on them bringing up the I23 thing... I really just vaguely remember someone mentioning it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 06, 2014, 09:59:13 AM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 06, 2014, 10:10:26 AM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ChristopherRobin on September 06, 2014, 10:35:39 AM
/em Salute.

Thank you very much Nate (and group) for never giving up on the game and community that I love.
Make us super again!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: impiousimp on September 06, 2014, 10:37:38 AM
IF anyone wants to kill time I put up a thread in the roleplay section that wants some attention.  Just a RP concept.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Urd on September 06, 2014, 11:03:01 AM
I always found the original Hollows to be a fun change.

Slinking around the zone to far doors without a travel power, dodging mobs several levels higher than I was, meeting up with random pug teammates for trysts with Frostfire...it was all a hoot!

I have one (min/max) friend who refused to set foot in Hollows...he felt it was a gigantic waste of time not to be killing everything every second he was in there, save 30 seconds for travel time.

Kids these days, they don't know what they're missing!

brought to you by
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.idx360.com%2Fwarlockinc%2Flordminion.png)

I myself had no problem getting to the doors in the hollows, it was waiting for the other folks to show up. It always seemed like there were 2 or 3 people who never seem to make it. So yeah, its a colossal waste of time just hanging out for an hour or two. Never mind there was no trainer or hospital in the zone. That doesn't make for a good impression for new players when the contacts push folks to the hollows. A few boring waits at doors or long delays will certainly sour folks on the zone and maybe even the game.

Well the devs decided that yes, the zone was "broken" and revised it. It was *too late* the damage was done. It was something that should have been fixed while it was on test server.

At this point, that's the past, mistakes should be used as a learning experience. I'd rather focus on the first priority.

Getting the game back!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on September 06, 2014, 11:37:59 AM
I loooooved The Hollows, actually! It was one of my favorite haunts, especially at low levels. I got so good at finding it that I can even remember now where the doors to the place are. I would go there just to take out the Trolls, Lost and Outcasts that lurked on the hills. The missions were kind of fun. And! I got to encounter my first elite boss there.

I'll never forget the frustration when I went in to fight Frostfire by myself and died dozens of times, having to schlepp all the way back across the Hollows from the hospital just to do it all over again. And when I finally beat him? Man, it was exhilarating.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on September 06, 2014, 11:45:29 AM
Quote
We were the poster children for "Geko didn't know how to add" when it came to stacking effects.  Even after the arrival of inventions, epic powers, Incarnate abilities, and level shifts, I *still* am not certain I was ever on another team with more firepower, and I'm including fully populated BAFs.

I joined a number of the all Fire/Rad teams on Freedom - I think they were on Tuesdays.  Amazing how mobs just melted away. :)

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 06, 2014, 01:01:03 PM
I keep forgetting about that tidbit. If memory serves, you're correct. NCSoft brought up the I23 server during negotiations, as far as I understand.

I know I read that flying by here....somewhere....Oh Lord, what thread was it in and where?  Blargh!  I don't remember, nor who mentioned it.  I mainly remember it because it surprised me and made me jump in my seat a little bit.   ;)  I guess at the end of the day we'll either get CoX back or we won't, so we have to make do with a lot of waiting meantime. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 06, 2014, 01:06:48 PM
Hehe, hey tankers are pretty good archtypes, just you want to do more than just soak hits and holding taunt down :).  Tanker damage was way underrated.  They weren't brutes or scrappers but they could still hit more than hard enough to destroy mobs quickly enough.  Besides 8 tankers can easily force multiply up with leadership :).

In which Issue? At Issue 1, Tankers did pretty low damage. I recall at least two damage boosts for them, and one was pretty significant. After that, yeah, Tanks became a much better soloing AT. Also, because it was after the Global Defense Nerf, their defenses were no longer so overdone, and you actually had use for multiple defensive options either because you wanted to buff the Tank or you wanted multiple Tanks or something.

Basically, in the beginning, they were unwanted and superfluous after the first Tanker, and ridiculously OP defensively. But after a good amount of decent fixes, they became a solidly-balanced AT that fit in a playstyle outside of the healer-tanker-control (or maybe damage in CoH) trinity.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 06, 2014, 01:11:02 PM
Honestly, from the moment the first steam roll buff/debuff teams left port, nothing really slowed them down. 
...
We were the poster children for "Geko didn't know how to add" when it came to stacking effects. 

I always thought that the real place where we needed Diminishing Returns was not so much in slotting as in buff/debuff stacking. They should have stacked linearly in "buff value", but then the total buffage should have been put through a curved function before applying its in-game effects so that it would be far harder to buff or debuff to the caps. Using linear equations and limiting with floors and caps was so... overly simplistic.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on September 06, 2014, 01:13:33 PM
In which Issue? At Issue 1, Tankers did pretty low damage. I recall at least two damage boosts for them, and one was pretty significant. After that, yeah, Tanks became a much better soloing AT. Also, because it was after the Global Defense Nerf, their defenses were no longer so overdone, and you actually had use for multiple defensive options either because you wanted to buff the Tank or you wanted multiple Tanks or something.

Basically, in the beginning, they were unwanted and superfluous after the first Tanker, and ridiculously OP defensively. But after a good amount of decent fixes, they became a solidly-balanced AT that fit in a playstyle outside of the healer-tanker-control (or maybe damage in CoH) trinity.

I recall Ironwolf saying pretty much that. That they were originally just going after the IP and then the option to buy I23 came up.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 06, 2014, 01:15:17 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 06, 2014, 01:19:43 PM
My memory sucks...but now I remember why the name "Alien One" sounds so familiar.   (Probably from the old forums too)   That was an awesome channel.   A lot of people thought you couldn't get any good teams on Freedom but my experience was the exact opposite.    Forming a team was easy as....pie.   :D

Yup! That was me! I ran two or three other popular team-forming channels as well... I was all about doing those Task Forces! :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lava-Lad on September 06, 2014, 01:29:27 PM
I myself had no problem getting to the doors in the hollows, it was waiting for the other folks to show up. It always seemed like there were 2 or 3 people who never seem to make it. So yeah, its a colossal waste of time just hanging out for an hour or two. Never mind there was no trainer or hospital in the zone. That doesn't make for a good impression for new players when the contacts push folks to the hollows. A few boring waits at doors or long delays will certainly sour folks on the zone and maybe even the game.

Well the devs decided that yes, the zone was "broken" and revised it. It was *too late* the damage was done. It was something that should have been fixed while it was on test server.

At this point, that's the past, mistakes should be used as a learning experience. I'd rather focus on the first priority.

Getting the game back!


I don't know if it was so bad.  It was in the early Hollows that I really learned about the community.  What seemed like a constantly staffed taxibot service who would port you from the farthest corner of the zone to the Atlas gate for leveling, etc.  there were lots of other examples of folks helping each other in those early days, but the cooperative and supportive atmosphere created by these "wastes of time" led to the (generally) pervasive pay-it-forward player (sometimes us agaist the Devs) mentality.  IMHO, it was things like the really difficult missions/story arcs/TF's and the opportunities to help each other that led those of us more interested in community over competition to stay while others moved on to say LoL.  I'm not saying that you have to love the hollows or even play in the hollows, but I think that the introduction of challenges that no toon at that time could solo was (intentional or not) was instrumental in developing our current community.

But, what do I know.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: bugzee on September 06, 2014, 01:30:49 PM
Here was his original riot gear Hollows look.

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i25.tinypic.com%2F2cesxt2.jpg)

It looks like there is long blond hair coming out the back of the helmet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 06, 2014, 01:40:55 PM
It looks like there is long blond hair coming out the back of the helmet.

Omg, It totally does. That's one thing that drove me INSANE. I wanted SO badly to be able to use hats with different hairs. I loved some of the hats, but all my characters have long hair....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 06, 2014, 02:07:00 PM
I don't know if it was so bad.  It was in the early Hollows that I really learned about the community.  What seemed like a constantly staffed taxibot service who would port you from the farthest corner of the zone to the Atlas gate for leveling, etc.  there were lots of other examples of folks helping each other in those early days, but the cooperative and supportive atmosphere created by these "wastes of time" led to the (generally) pervasive pay-it-forward player (sometimes us agaist the Devs) mentality.  IMHO, it was things like the really difficult missions/story arcs/TF's and the opportunities to help each other that led those of us more interested in community over competition to stay while others moved on to say LoL.  I'm not saying that you have to love the hollows or even play in the hollows, but I think that the introduction of challenges that no toon at that time could solo was (intentional or not) was instrumental in developing our current community.

But, what do I know.

Yeah, and it usually takes circumstances like that to actually show new people just how great the community was. I know some of you hated those particular circumstances, but sometimes the "worst situations" bring out the best in us as human beings. I'm not encouraging "make the game as horrible as possible," but this is yet another example of Arcana's explanation of "happy accidents." This time, a horrible travel situation turned into a proof-positive example of what sort of community CoH had.

There are some people out there (my fiance is one of them) that just live to help others. That's how they're built. Making a "perfect game" where everyone can do it all themselves kind of takes away from any "gift" that these type of people can offer to others. I realize the same argument could be made for allowing every archetype to solo (doesn't allow others to help), but I still believe that the teaming aspect of CoH was extremely fun regardless of whether or not you could solo. I liked that you COULD solo if none of your friend were on or you simply didn't feel like doing any "people interaction" at the time, but the way the archetypes were built, you still felt like you were a major contributing factor to the overall success of the team.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 06, 2014, 02:32:02 PM
I'm reminded of one of the great legends of Union: Mother's Love (or Mumsy, to most of us).

ML was an Empath who frequently hung around in the Hollows dropping buffs and heals on lowbies for hours at a time, just to be nice.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 06, 2014, 02:40:50 PM
I'm reminded of one of the great legends of Union: Mother's Love (or Mumsy, to most of us).

ML was an Empath who frequently hung around in the Hollows dropping buffs and heals on lowbies for hours at a time, just to be nice.

Exactly... I actually had an Empath Defender that I made specifically to do just that.... My fav thing to do was just join new lowbie teams doing sewer runs and keep everyone alive while they passed the "boring" levels (as I like to call them)... :)

I didn't do it often, but sometimes it was really fulfilling to get a few reactions from people who were really new to the game.... "Wow, what kind of a community IS this?!?!?" as if all their previous gaming experiences were with teenage Call of Duty players that call each other horrible names....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: therain93 on September 06, 2014, 02:43:18 PM
foxfire was the mission that got my wife and I hooked on COX. I loved that one.

Frostfire
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Alteran on September 06, 2014, 02:55:53 PM
Yup! That was me! I ran two or three other popular team-forming channels as well... I was all about doing those Task Forces! :D

You and me both Alien.  I really miss running TFs with you bud. 

I've been missing the community more and more now that my daughter is old enough to really enjoy playing games, and not just hitting the space bar on my scrapper with ninja jump.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 06, 2014, 02:57:26 PM
Frostfire

you are right, thats what I get for posting at 3 in the morning
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 06, 2014, 03:03:11 PM
They recently lost their suit against Deadmou5, in fact he is now counter suing because they used one of his tracks without permission on one of their kids TV shows!

This article, from today, states that the suit you are refering to is on-going and that Disney properly licensed the music, despite Deadmau5 objections.

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/2014/09/06/deadmau5_accuses_disney_of_copyright_infringement.html

Or do you mean another suit? Can you give me a link? I'm curious about this.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on September 06, 2014, 03:21:48 PM
That's not the sort of thing you just post an update into a 63 page thread and say "oh, by the way, we own City of Heroes now: who wants pie."


^^^When things work out, THIS had better be the post that signifies our eventual homecoming.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: TheBlaze22b on September 06, 2014, 03:24:01 PM
"oh, by the way, we own City of Heroes now: who wants pie."
Amazing, Congratulations on the Great Work :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 06, 2014, 03:40:03 PM
Pretty sure it was meant to be funny, in keeping with the general tone and humor of the community, rather than a real announcement. Also, I'm 100% positive that the actually announcement will be much less brief, will probably come from downix, and will likely get its own thread.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 06, 2014, 04:21:50 PM
This article, from today, states that the suit you are refering to is on-going and that Disney properly licensed the music, despite Deadmau5 objections.

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/2014/09/06/deadmau5_accuses_disney_of_copyright_infringement.html

Or do you mean another suit? Can you give me a link? I'm curious about this.

I had read an article in Spin Magazine that seemed to imply that Disney's suit was over, or rather that's how I read it. However, revisiting the article I see that I was mistaken and reading things into that were not there.

My Bad  :-X   >>Spin Article<< (http://www.spin.com/articles/deadmau5-disney-lawsuit-trademark-cease-and-desist-logo-song-theft/)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 06, 2014, 04:33:15 PM
I had read an article in Spin Magazine that seemed to imply that Disney's suit was over, or rather that's how I read it. However, revisiting the article I see that I was mistaken and reading things into that were not there.

My Bad  :-X   >>Spin Article<< (http://www.spin.com/articles/deadmau5-disney-lawsuit-trademark-cease-and-desist-logo-song-theft/)

Hey np, thanks for clarifying, I appreciate it.

Having worked in IP for years, I have an interest in this stuff.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 06, 2014, 04:36:39 PM
"oh, by the way, we own City of Heroes now: who wants pie."
Amazing, Congratulations on the Great Work :D

C'Mon guys, can you get it right?

Acquired: City of Heroes. Pie: Required?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 06, 2014, 04:49:36 PM
Exactly... I actually had an Empath Defender that I made specifically to do just that.... My fav thing to do was just join new lowbie teams doing sewer runs and keep everyone alive while they passed the "boring" levels (as I like to call them)... :)

I didn't do it often, but sometimes it was really fulfilling to get a few reactions from people who were really new to the game.... "Wow, what kind of a community IS this?!?!?" as if all their previous gaming experiences were with teenage Call of Duty players that call each other horrible names....
It worked great on a Sonic fender too. shield the lowbies and put the -res tag on the tank.

and just as an informational, I declare this national camp and cheese day. I just watched the 1994 Roger Corman version of Fantastic Four. And now I'm getting ready to watch the 1978 Dr. Strange flick.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 06, 2014, 04:51:32 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on September 06, 2014, 04:53:50 PM
C'Mon guys, can you get it right?

Acquired: City of Heroes. Pie: Required?

Acquired: Mandatory proper licensing.

Primary Objective: Research: Proper way :restoring: dimensional fortitude

Secondary Objective: Consumption: pastries.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Battlechimp on September 06, 2014, 05:02:58 PM
Exactly... I actually had an Empath Defender that I made specifically to do just that.... My fav thing to do was just join new lowbie teams doing sewer runs and keep everyone alive while they passed the "boring" levels (as I like to call them)... :)

I didn't do it often, but sometimes it was really fulfilling to get a few reactions from people who were really new to the game.... "Wow, what kind of a community IS this?!?!?" as if all their previous gaming experiences were with teenage Call of Duty players that call each other horrible names....

I still remember very early on in the game, running through Perez Park on m emp/nrg defender and seeing someone broadcasting "Will teleport and rez people 10k inf". Mind you this was back before issue 1. No market, no one had high level characters to gift money to lower level ones.  The Max amount of inf that you could trade at one time was just 10k or rather 9999. So for someone under lvl 10, that was asking a lot.

I started broadcasting "Will TP and rez people. Tips are welcome but not required!"  Got lots of tells asking for help.... and a rather angry one for ruining his business....

And then along those lines, have to give props to the Taxibots.  What other game out there has a player group that is formed to get people around the game (free of charge) across multiple servers?  Their help in the low zones, especially the hazard zones, pre hospital, the badge tours, those were awesome

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pep Rally on September 06, 2014, 05:28:04 PM
In which Issue? At Issue 1, Tankers did pretty low damage. I recall at least two damage boosts for them, and one was pretty significant. After that, yeah, Tanks became a much better soloing AT. Also, because it was after the Global Defense Nerf, their defenses were no longer so overdone, and you actually had use for multiple defensive options either because you wanted to buff the Tank or you wanted multiple Tanks or something.

Basically, in the beginning, they were unwanted and superfluous after the first Tanker, and ridiculously OP defensively. But after a good amount of decent fixes, they became a solidly-balanced AT that fit in a playstyle outside of the healer-tanker-control (or maybe damage in CoH) trinity.


I started playing CoH in Issue 2(My 10 year anniversary would be in 2 weeks), and I didn't find Tanker damage to be bad at all once I picked up enough attack powers to form a chain, and slot them with SOs.  You had to wait until a higher level since you had to split powers/slots between offense, and defense(most probably focused on defense first since you're a tank) whereas scrappers/blasters usually focused on damage first.

Another thing that could skew perception of tanker damage was you could survive against much higher level foes than other ATs. Trying to whittle down a +5 bad guy reduces your damage much more than +2s. Don't up the mission difficulty too much just because you can laugh at their meager attempts to kill you.

Once I learned those 2 things, my Tanks became my second best solo-ers(behind my scrappers).



Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 06, 2014, 05:41:23 PM
Acquired: Mandatory proper licensing.

Primary Objective: Research: Proper way :restoring: dimensional fortitude

Secondary Objective: Consumption: pastries.

Step 1: Get CoX
Step 2: Get Pie
Step 3: ?????
Step 4: Profit
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 06, 2014, 07:10:48 PM
In which Issue? At Issue 1, Tankers did pretty low damage. I recall at least two damage boosts for them, and one was pretty significant. After that, yeah, Tanks became a much better soloing AT.

In a sense, but compared to what?  At release, the tanker damage mod was 0.65, which is 81% of the value they were buffed to at 0.8.  But Scrappers were also buffed, after Tankers, from 1.0 to 1.125.  They also got pervasive crits in I1.  Although a few powers already did crits, those were also buffed.  Even assuming a 5% crit rate (it was 10% vs higher ranked targets) the effective Scrapper mod was closer to 1.18.  So looking at the modifiers as a base for comparison, tanker damage was about 65% of scrappers at release, and 68% of scrappers after the first round of damage buffs on both.  Relative to what everyone else was dealing out, Tanker damage wasn't actually significantly lower at release than it was later on.

What's more, although they did do low damage at Issue 1, interestingly their damage was more effective at release prior to Issue 1 for a not well-known technical reason.  The purple patch wasn't introduced until after release and just before Issue 1.  Prior to the introduction of the purple patch, there was no serious impediment to attacking targets large numbers of combat levels higher than you were, provided only that you could survive them.  Tankers with their high defenses and health could far more effectively attack targets as high as +8 or even +10 and gain huge rewards for it.  Even with their lower damage, they could in many cases gain higher levels of rewards by leveraging their high defenses and using their lower offense against juicier targets.  It wasn't until the purple patch was added to the game that Tankers could no longer translate their superior defenses into ultrahigh reward rates irrespective of offensive output.

Completely separate from that, Tankers were still strong solo archetypes compared to most of the others because of another historical issue: prior to the devs adding difficulty sliders, all missions including solo missions always spawned bosses (unless they were explicitly coded to *not* spawn bosses).  That made soloing significantly more difficult for the average player playing archetypes like blasters and defenders.  Tanker damage made soloing slower, but datamining proved that defenders to a smaller degree, and blasters to a ridiculous degree, were dying at far higher rates than other archetypes in solo missions.

For a significant time after release, I would say that as an archetype as a whole, Tankers were the second best archetype to solo behind Scrappers.  Blasters were far too fragile.  Most defenders had similarly low damage and were more vulnerable.  Most controllers also had low damage prior to pets (and not all controllers had pets) and only some combinations had effective means of boosting offense in solo missions.

My pre-I5 soloing chart would be:

Scrappers
High level Controllers
Tankers
Defenders
Low level Controllers
Blasters

Of course, specific builds and specific players could individually succeed with anything.  But averaged across the entire playerbase, I'm pretty confident that's how effective the original archetypes were at soloing from I1 until at least I5.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 06, 2014, 07:27:08 PM
C'Mon guys, can you get it right?

Acquired: City of Heroes. Pie: Required?

  LOL !  At any rate. on that hopefully great day,  i23 will rise from ..well wherever it is they have it stashed, and we will get to play the game 4ever & ever amen :)  Addendum: on that day also, let it be known, that pie & cake will no longer be called, "..a lie".    :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 06, 2014, 07:44:35 PM
In which Issue? At Issue 1, Tankers did pretty low damage. I recall at least two damage boosts for them, and one was pretty significant. After that, yeah, Tanks became a much better soloing AT. Also, because it was after the Global Defense Nerf, their defenses were no longer so overdone, and you actually had use for multiple defensive options either because you wanted to buff the Tank or you wanted multiple Tanks or something.

Basically, in the beginning, they were unwanted and superfluous after the first Tanker, and ridiculously OP defensively. But after a good amount of decent fixes, they became a solidly-balanced AT that fit in a playstyle outside of the healer-tanker-control (or maybe damage in CoH) trinity.

When I talk of the game as I see it I'm usually refering to Issue 8 and beyond.  I started playing CoX when villain side came out, ironically because I had bought the good vs evil edition I played hero side the most initially.  It was a couple months in after that I was beginning to drop the trinity and start designing more around multipliers or doing more than one thing in a team.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 06, 2014, 08:02:53 PM
Exactly so. As deep into the game as I4 the devs were still designing around archetypes as if they had far more fixed roles on teams than the players felt they should, and were still thinking in terms that trinity-style gameplay could still  be salvaged.  The "everyone should be able to solo" informal design rule didn't really become a genuine design rule as far as I know until CoV.  Look at CoV archetypes, and notice the shift in design.  CoV is obviously "post-trinity." 

But if the devs actually had a strong grasp of how to make the numbers do what they wanted, we would have never gotten the City of Heroes we ended up with.  To put it in direct terms, the devs did not have enough control over the numbers to fine-tune archetype power between "lame" and "overpowered" so most things ended up overpowered relative to the design.  At launch, powerset combination meant more to your overall power than archetype.  Invuln/SS tanker?  Godzilla.  MA/DA scrapper?  Doormat.  Dark defender?  Awesome.  Electric/Fire Blaster?  Roadkill.  Emp/Electric defender?  Useless except as a sidekick.  By the time they figured out how to fix it, it was too late to fix: City of Heroes became the best MMO in the history of MMOs to solo in, because the devs handed out powerlevels most admins don't have in other MMOs.  They couldn't bring down the overpowered stuff to "correct" levels except in the extreme cases, so they were forced to buff the players upward to balance archetypes out.  Players always complained about nerfs, but the history of City of Heroes is an 80/20 buff to nerf empower-o-rama.

Incidentally, the last vestige of trinity-thinking lasted surprisingly long.  It was the legacy of Blasters having no alternate design ethic once trinity was no longer the law of the land.  In my opinion, it wasn't until Arbiter Hawk started to look at Blasters - literally in I23 - that I think Blasters escaped trinity-thinking; the last archetype to do so.  Also, just a bit too late because I24 would have been the first issue to contain the start of non-trinity Blasters (one of my regrets was that I think in AH I finally had a Blaster ally on the dev team that thought about them somewhat like I did, and was willing to experiment with them outside the glass-cannon trinity model, and I'll never know where we could have eventually gotten Blasters to).

In any case, none of this was even remotely by design.  It was 100% accident.

I recall another game that ended up a crown jewel by accident.  Deus Ex was originally meant to be a pure stealth game, but the developers accidentally went a little overboard in providing to many weapons for the player....

...then they added a lot of combat augmentations....while forgetting it was a stealth game they were designing.

The best part of it was, thats what made deus ex so great.  In doing those two things, and of course adding the skills system in addition to the augmentation system, they made a beautiful role playing game/first person shooter hybrid that rpg players and fps players could both seriously enjoy.  Heck its a game I seriously say everyone should play.  I know some people avoid fps's like the plague, but those people could probably get through deus ex if they'd just think their way through it.  It's a game where by accident actually does allow you to get through it with little to no shots fired from a gun.  You don't have to be the crack shot to win even on realistic.

And unlike system shock 2 before it, you didn't need X or Y skill to beat the game.  In fact this video series shows beating the game through absolute max creative use of crates, no skills, augmentations or inventory items allowed; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAVRpvgYVMg&list=PL67B3634D970D5603 .

Just as deus ex was one of those games that accidentally entered the odd side of the game industry as a true freeform game, city of heroes accidentally exposed the mmorpg to non trinity play in the truer form, unintentionally, but would it want to go back giving up all of that freedom? :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 06, 2014, 08:06:08 PM
In which Issue? At Issue 1, Tankers did pretty low damage. I recall at least two damage boosts for them, and one was pretty significant. After that, yeah, Tanks became a much better soloing AT. Also, because it was after the Global Defense Nerf, their defenses were no longer so overdone, and you actually had use for multiple defensive options either because you wanted to buff the Tank or you wanted multiple Tanks or something.

Basically, in the beginning, they were unwanted and superfluous after the first Tanker, and ridiculously OP defensively. But after a good amount of decent fixes, they became a solidly-balanced AT that fit in a playstyle outside of the healer-tanker-control (or maybe damage in CoH) trinity.

I remember just after launch I would play on a team with my brother and some of his friends.  One of them was an invul tanker that would do nothing but stand in the middle of the room and just taunt over and over again.  I'm pretty sure he would just bind it and go afk sometimes.  For awhile tank's were only good at standing around and soaking damage heh.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scott Jackson on September 06, 2014, 08:13:30 PM
Thank you, Nate and Ironwolf - and unnamed others - who've carried the deal this far.  Thank you, NCSoft, for being willing to try once again.

I wish Irish_Girl and the negotiating team the very best of luck.  Let us know when (and how) you need us.   :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lapucelle on September 06, 2014, 08:15:57 PM
Scott! Good to see you. Thanks for posting, and thanks for starting this whole thing off.
- Warcabbit
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 06, 2014, 08:23:23 PM
Thank you, Nate and Ironwolf - and unnamed others - who've carried the deal this far.  Thank you, NCSoft, for being willing to try once again.

I wish Irish_Girl and the negotiating team the very best of luck.  Let us know when (and how) you need us.   :)

  Ditto ! Of course, since I am not well versed in the computer sciences, about all I can do is send best wish's, and lol,cash when the time comes of course. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 06, 2014, 08:47:37 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pep Rally on September 06, 2014, 08:51:20 PM
I remember just after launch I would play on a team with my brother and some of his friends.  One of them was an invul tanker that would do nothing but stand in the middle of the room and just taunt over and over again.  I'm pretty sure he would just bind it and go afk sometimes.  For awhile tank's were only good at standing around and soaking damage heh.

That's on the player. Don't blame the AT. You can't expect to do damage when you don't take, enhance, and use your attacks.  You actually hold aggro better when you mix attacks(damage+gauntlet) with Taunt as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Feign on September 06, 2014, 08:54:15 PM
Well, looks like I'm about a week late to this party, but I'm just gonna say holy crap I'm excited!

I'm a little nervous about any kind of business doings with NC, but I'm sure it's an inflated fear from their past slights feeling so personal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 06, 2014, 08:55:59 PM

 well I don't care that it's old, just want it back  :)   
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 06, 2014, 09:22:19 PM
The Guards Jolteh?

Yes! I actually ran into Infinite Zen in DCUO over the summer.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dollhouse on September 06, 2014, 09:42:13 PM
That's on the player. Don't blame the AT. You can't expect to do damage when you don't take, enhance, and use your attacks.  You actually hold aggro better when you mix attacks(damage+gauntlet) with Taunt as well.

Exactly. And some Tanker primaries were better than others at getting and holding aggro. WP/ was never that good at it, yet my very best Tanker was WP/DB. The key? You could slot the area attacks in /DB to grab more aggro (and some of the IO sets for WP/ had taunt boosts, too). It took a careful build, but I got that character to be one hell of an aggro magnet...and quite survivable (MSTF, etc), too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 06, 2014, 09:47:13 PM
Yes! I actually ran into Infinite Zen in DCUO over the summer.

Hey hey Jolty! Welcome to the gawk n wait.

Nice on the Zen find. If you find him again say hi from me. it's me Shadey. figured I wanted a less common name.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 06, 2014, 09:57:33 PM
Exactly. And some Tanker primaries were better than others at getting and holding aggro. WP/ was never that good at it, yet my very best Tanker was WP/DB. The key? You could slot the area attacks in /DB to grab more aggro (and some of the IO sets for WP/ had taunt boosts, too). It took a careful build, but I got that character to be one hell of an aggro magnet...and quite survivable (MSTF, etc), too.

There were some other ways to help out too.

Placing de-buff procs into the aura went a really long way to shoring up the taunt. Almost no one used those procs so they were really cheap. The only time I saw them not really working was when a tank/brute would actually use the taunt power and as soon as the duration on it was gone they would jump me again.

Someone showed me that trick long ago. Later I used two on my Time/Ice defender and it worked really well. I thought I was a tank. I played him like a tank... Heck, I was a tank but with better AOEs... but less HP. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 06, 2014, 10:00:31 PM
I remember just after launch I would play on a team with my brother and some of his friends.  One of them was an invul tanker that would do nothing but stand in the middle of the room and just taunt over and over again.  I'm pretty sure he would just bind it and go afk sometimes.  For awhile tank's were only good at standing around and soaking damage heh.

Its more correct to say that some players who played tanks were only good at standing around and soaking damage.  It was never true that the problem rested with the archetype itself.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 06, 2014, 10:00:58 PM
The main purpose of the Hollows was to teach players about the importance of aggro range.  Something you learn VERY quickly when the place is full of mobs of 4, 6, or even 8+ gangers, all hanging around waiting to get biblical on your ass. 
I have to admit the Hollows was where I learned that.    Figured out how to zoom out the camera so I could see danger better.   Learned how much space I needed to thread the needle between two groups too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 06, 2014, 10:01:53 PM
Okay, here is another funny story.  Some friends of mine were killing time waiting for some other SG members to show up and we thought, hey, lets go mess around in the Hollows.  We were at least level 20+ so no worry about aggro.  As we were walking around we run into a bunch of trolls beating drums and doing the "Troll Dance".  You know the one where they hop from one foot to another....  So we were like, Hey let's join in.  So some of us used the emote for large or small drums beating on them like they were bongos...some joined in the dance.  When a low level player sees us and walks up wanting to know why the trolls were ignoring us.  We tried to warn him to back off but it was too late....he aggroed the mob and we had no choice but to put them down or watch the new player get mauled.  Then after we all had a good laugh.   ;D

Here is a pic of my Police officer character Troll's Taskforce Ted citing a troll in the Hollows for loitering.  LOL

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i56.tinypic.com%2Fsynh92.jpg)
lol...I love that.  :D

This game is way too fun.   Got such a strong urge to log on right now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 06, 2014, 10:03:32 PM
I joined a number of the all Fire/Rad teams on Freedom - I think they were on Tuesdays.  Amazing how mobs just melted away. :)
I did some of those as well.    Ever play with a toon called "Satan's Loogie"?  (Exactly what it sounds like...his bio was....interesting)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 06, 2014, 10:05:05 PM
Yup! That was me! I ran two or three other popular team-forming channels as well... I was all about doing those Task Forces! :D
I was probably a member of all of them.   Always plenty of options to choose from and the teams were full of good players.  (Maybe there is a correlation between knowing about chat channels and being a good player?)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 06, 2014, 10:08:37 PM
Exactly... I actually had an Empath Defender that I made specifically to do just that.... My fav thing to do was just join new lowbie teams doing sewer runs and keep everyone alive while they passed the "boring" levels (as I like to call them)... :)

I didn't do it often, but sometimes it was really fulfilling to get a few reactions from people who were really new to the game.... "Wow, what kind of a community IS this?!?!?" as if all their previous gaming experiences were with teenage Call of Duty players that call each other horrible names....
My favorite was hanging out between the Hospital in Atlas and the Hollows gate to give out SB.   More than once a newly SB'ed toon would take off for a few feet only to come to an abrupt halt to look around and see what the heck just happened.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 06, 2014, 10:10:04 PM
I was probably a member of all of them.   Always plenty of options to choose from and the teams were full of good players.  (Maybe there is a correlation between knowing about chat channels and being a good player?)

Elitist. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 06, 2014, 10:21:00 PM
Elitist. :)
Ha!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 06, 2014, 10:22:31 PM
Found it:
That original quote is not as clear as I would like with the idea that NCSoft offered I23.   It just states that the team only asked initially for the IP.   There is nothing there about what led to I23 being included.  :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remidi on September 06, 2014, 10:29:47 PM
I have a small question.  With all the talk about coding and what will and won't be possible if we get the game back, I have one question - will we be able to rebuild our supergroup bases?  Obviously I've written off the old one, but since I was the base builder for our SG, I need to make plans for the new one.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 06, 2014, 10:34:50 PM
My favorite was hanging out between the Hospital in Atlas and the Hollows gate to give out SB.   More than once a newly SB'ed toon would take off for a few feet only to come to an abrupt halt to look around and see what the heck just happened.

I did this with Fulcrum Shift. Yes, I didn't join the team lol, just played guardian angel.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 06, 2014, 10:48:26 PM
I did this with Fulcrum Shift. Yes, I didn't join the team lol, just played guardian angel.

Now i'm going back into the good memories of nuking things with a fulcrum shifted energy blast nova.  From a defender or corruptor.  I had an energy blast/kin corruptor in the works near the shutdown, I wanted to see just how much damage I could get a nova to do in the hands of a corruptor.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scott Jackson on September 06, 2014, 11:19:11 PM
Scott! Good to see you. Thanks for posting, and thanks for starting this whole thing off.
- Warcabbit

Thanks, Warcabbit!  From your CoT updates, I get that you're very dedicated to the feel of CoH gameplay as I was, and it's too bad we didn't get the chance to work side by side over these two years.

Whatever I may have done to help get Plan Z rolling and make it seem real and achievable, I count that as time well spent.  I wish that life hadn't stepped in the way of me playing a bigger part, but it brings a smile to my face every time this community gets past another inevitable tough choice or technical hurdle.  It's great to see everyone steaming ahead, all charged up with engine software and volunteers and financing, and then recall those early days... an odd mix of "We can't let it end like this" anger/courage while the shutdown counter ticked to zero, trying to spread hope and confidence that one way or another the City would return.  That we could eventually have the City back in 5 different incarnations would have been astonishing at the time, even more so that a Plan Z project begun with zero cash and no intent to approach NCSoft might end up connecting the right people and tactics for a TFHM win.

I can hardly wait to see these games, worlds, and characters [back] in action.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: jendragon on September 06, 2014, 11:36:58 PM
Character creator - I am going to see if I can make an Icon port basically to render all the models and existing costume parts - this alone is a LOT of work. Codewalker used a program to map to existing assets - we have to create the assets and the Creator.

Would it not be easier for Codewalker to port Icon instead?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 06, 2014, 11:42:01 PM
I have a small question.  With all the talk about coding and what will and won't be possible if we get the game back, I have one question - will we be able to rebuild our supergroup bases?  Obviously I've written off the old one, but since I was the base builder for our SG, I need to make plans for the new one.

Assuming it pans out, any feature that was active in the game at the time it was closed should be available. What they won't be able to do is add a ton of new stuff easily.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 07, 2014, 12:12:04 AM
Would it not be easier for Codewalker to port Icon instead?
Good point. The main stuff missing was the server if I understand right.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 07, 2014, 12:13:13 AM
Assuming it pans out, any feature that was active in the game at the time it was closed should be available. What they won't be able to do is add a ton of new stuff easily.
So the Christmas event/Halloween events were not active. Wouldn't that mean none of that stuff?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 07, 2014, 12:29:15 AM
Would it not be easier for Codewalker to port Icon instead?

Doing a direct port is more complicated than it might sound. Clothes actually have physics nowadays. And even the skintight stuff is probably going to need new textures.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 07, 2014, 12:31:23 AM
Would it not be easier for Codewalker to port Icon instead?

I think he is busy on something else.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 07, 2014, 12:48:53 AM

Neither was the Summer Blockbuster...which means the Overwhelming Force IO set probably won't be in play :( I have been going under that premise when making my builds. I just hope the Super Packs are in the game otherwise we lose all our AT IOs :( :( :(

So the Christmas event/Halloween events were not active. Wouldn't that mean none of that stuff?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 07, 2014, 01:06:38 AM
That original quote is not as clear as I would like with the idea that NCSoft offered I23.   It just states that the team only asked initially for the IP.   There is nothing there about what led to I23 being included.  :(
Well i'm not going to search for that now, i have to get ready for a club night.  :P Anyway, i was responding to the part of the discussion about NCsoft offering the game to the NuDevs when the initial inquiry was about the IP. It's not going to get any clearer, because at that time Ironwolf didn't know it was specifically the i23 version that was being offered. That wasn't known until somewhere much closer to the time this thread was created. So you won't get much more clarity than you already have since you found out at about the same time as everyone but the NuDev team.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 07, 2014, 01:11:39 AM
Neither was the Summer Blockbuster...which means the Overwhelming Force IO set probably won't be in play :( I have been going under that premise when making my builds. I just hope the Super Packs are in the game otherwise we lose all our AT IOs :( :( :(
Thing is that all seasonal events can be switched on and off without changing the game code, so no access to the source is required. Various seasonal events have been turned on and off in the past without any need to push out a patch every time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkfaith on September 07, 2014, 01:24:43 AM
Thing is that all seasonal events can be switched on and off without changing the game code, so no access to the source is required. Various seasonal events have been turned on and off in the past without any need to push out a patch every time.

Indeed. If I remember correctly, many of them were run for us in the days between the announcement and the final day, and there was definitely no patching in that period.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on September 07, 2014, 01:36:21 AM
*nods as if he knows much of anything*

I don't want an identical experience between using my PC, phone and tablet, but I do want an integrated experience: they should all talk to each other as a unified whole (hardware limitations withstanding).

Well, after years of fighting it, I finally got a smart phone. And, it would seem, compared to me, it is smart. For some reason, it wants to be integrated with my gmail account. I really don't understand why. I love the notion of using the phone to see where the cheapest gas is on my commute to and from work. Using a phone for e-mail? That makes no sense to me. Even though the keyboard is three times the size of my old flip phone, I cannot fathom the mind of the person who thought people would want to update their fb status from a phone or send an email from a phone. I don't care much for this integration -- at least, not until I learned I could upload my workout to google drive and then access and edit that same workout via the smartphone (with an app for the editing). That kind of integration I can deal with.

As for Windows 8, or really, any new operating system... I know why Microsoft creates newer versions - they want more revenue. But, I really dislike upgrading to an OS that has a different look and feel. And Windows 8 does indeed look and feel different. I'm waiting for 9..and maybe even 10 before I upgrade. I'm not a big fan of change, it seems.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Heliopause on September 07, 2014, 02:35:28 AM
I did this with Fulcrum Shift. Yes, I didn't join the team lol, just played guardian angel.

I'd hang out in Atlas and give all the noobs Inertial Reduction and they'd be like, holy shit what just happend!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amrobinson on September 07, 2014, 02:59:59 AM
  lol :) pie is always good.

Not pie, cake!

http://www.vexxarr.com/archive.php?seldate=090709 (http://www.vexxarr.com/archive.php?seldate=090709)

I loved blasters, from my very early days until the last day of play.

My signature character was Kid Shockwave (hopefully known to fellow incarnates on Freedom), an elec/energy/elec blaster, and I had a ball with him.

Even though fire blasters are clearly more powerful.

Kid traveled through 3 servers, before I was done with him.

brought to you by
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.idx360.com%2Fwarlockinc%2Flordminion.png)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amrobinson on September 07, 2014, 03:05:52 AM
I myself had no problem getting to the doors in the hollows, it was waiting for the other folks to show up. It always seemed like there were 2 or 3 people who never seem to make it. So yeah, its a colossal waste of time just hanging out for an hour or two. Never mind there was no trainer or hospital in the zone. That doesn't make for a good impression for new players when the contacts push folks to the hollows. A few boring waits at doors or long delays will certainly sour folks on the zone and maybe even the game.

Well the devs decided that yes, the zone was "broken" and revised it. It was *too late* the damage was done. It was something that should have been fixed while it was on test server.

At this point, that's the past, mistakes should be used as a learning experience. I'd rather focus on the first priority.

Getting the game back!


I swear, I was not referring to, um...you can't prove anything!

(honey, lock the doors!)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 07, 2014, 03:45:05 AM
Not pie, cake!

http://www.vexxarr.com/archive.php?seldate=090709 (http://www.vexxarr.com/archive.php?seldate=090709)

I loved blasters, from my very early days until the last day of play.

My signature character was Kid Shockwave (hopefully known to fellow incarnates on Freedom), an elec/energy/elec blaster, and I had a ball with him.

Even though fire blasters are clearly more powerful.

Kid traveled through 3 servers, before I was done with him.

brought to you by
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.idx360.com%2Fwarlockinc%2Flordminion.png)

 oh no, you forced me to say it.. " the cake is a lie".   lol (joking)   I miss my blasters.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 07, 2014, 03:45:15 AM
Quote
That's on the player. Don't blame the AT. You can't expect to do damage when you don't take, enhance, and use your attacks.  You actually hold aggro better when you mix attacks(damage+gauntlet) with Taunt as well.

I...uh...wasn't.  I wasn't even talking bad about them.  This was literally at the very start of the game.  He never dropped aggro, he never died, and he had a team full of people to kill stuff for him.  So he wasn't even a bad tank.  There was just literally no point for him to attack.  Plus that was never related to aggro, it was related to damage.  And at the very start of the game a tank was not capable of herding up whole maps and killing everything quickly like they were later in the game they just didn't have the DPS which was the point of my post.  They were what all tanks in every game are.  Meat shields.  It wasn't about aggro because no tank in CoH should have aggro trouble ever.  Pre Issue 1 or current issue 23 aggro should have never been a concern for any tank.

Quote
Exactly. And some Tanker primaries were better than others at getting and holding aggro. WP/ was never that good at it, yet my very best Tanker was WP/DB. The key? You could slot the area attacks in /DB to grab more aggro (and some of the IO sets for WP/ had taunt boosts, too). It took a careful build, but I got that character to be one hell of an aggro magnet...and quite survivable (MSTF, etc), too.

My example was before /DB.  Before Willpower.  Before IO's and before sets.  And again, had nothing to do with aggro.  It had to do with Issue 0 tank damage.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 07, 2014, 03:47:02 AM
Also: keep in mind, at the beginning of the game, some mez toggles meant the tank COULDN'T move unless they wanted to remove their mez protection.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Achilles6 on September 07, 2014, 04:24:20 AM
ahhhhhhh...the "good ol' days". *cough* *cough*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pep Rally on September 07, 2014, 04:34:18 AM
I...uh...wasn't.  I wasn't even talking bad about them.  This was literally at the very start of the game.  He never dropped aggro, he never died, and he had a team full of people to kill stuff for him.  So he wasn't even a bad tank.  There was just literally no point for him to attack.  Plus that was never related to aggro, it was related to damage.  And at the very start of the game a tank was not capable of herding up whole maps and killing everything quickly like they were later in the game they just didn't have the DPS which was the point of my post.  They were what all tanks in every game are.  Meat shields.  It wasn't about aggro because no tank in CoH should have aggro trouble ever.  Pre Issue 1 or current issue 23 aggro should have never been a concern for any tank.

My example was before /DB.  Before Willpower.  Before IO's and before sets.  And again, had nothing to do with aggro.  It had to do with Issue 0 tank damage.

My point was that Tanks did have good DPS if the Tank was built to have good DPS.
My blasters would have low DPS, too, if I only took the first attack, and didn't slot it.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pep Rally on September 07, 2014, 04:44:12 AM
Also: keep in mind, at the beginning of the game, some mez toggles meant the tank COULDN'T move unless they wanted to remove their mez protection.

Yeah, most Invuls were either Tele-tanks, or perma-unstoppable Empath heartattack inducers. Since I was only level 30 by the time I3 rolled around, I never got to play as the latter, and I refused to be the former because cheerleaders just shouldn't teleport under any circumstances.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tahquitz on September 07, 2014, 04:50:58 AM
Catching this almost a week later (My school district opened three weeks ago, Fall Rush hasn't died down just yet), I am impressed.  NCSoft may not be completely heartless after all.  Coming up on two years and we haven't completely disappeared as one expects when a game is closed has to stand for something.

Thanks for the work behind the scenes, Downix, and I'll try supress my yin to fish for details on a tentative discussion until something has been officially done.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 07, 2014, 05:09:54 AM
...  cheerleaders just shouldn't teleport under any circumstances.

 on that point, I would have to say, " why not?" lol :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 07, 2014, 05:20:40 AM
Would it not be easier for Codewalker to port Icon instead?

Porting a program that loads another program and modifies parts of it over to a completely different game engine is like porting a Ferrari from a Navy Battleship to Swedish Meatballs. It's a nonsensical thing to say.

If you want a character creator in Unreal, you have to make one. That means creating the code to run the user interface, and to load appropriate 3D models and textures, skin them to a skeleton, make animations if you want any, etc.

You probably can't even use the GL ripping tool that the revival team is using to get geometry for the zones. It can pull static models, but models for costume pieces are far from static and have already been distorted to skin them to the player skeleton by the time the model is rendered. Reversing that unknown distortion (the exact transformation varies from frame to frame) would be almost as much work as just creating new models.

In other words, no, that's not something I'll be doing. :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 07, 2014, 05:33:59 AM

 I guess if I had a question it would be this : If, NCsoft made the deal,which included i23, would it then be possible when the deal is closed,for someone to load the game onto a server and then hit the "on" switch and "Viola", the game is ready to play ?   (be kind, I am not a tech )  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 07, 2014, 05:42:03 AM
Porting a program that loads another program and modifies parts of it over to a completely different game engine is like porting a Ferrari from a Navy Battleship to Swedish Meatballs. It's a nonsensical thing to say.

If you want a character creator in Unreal, you have to make one. That means creating the code to run the user interface, and to load appropriate 3D models and textures, skin them to a skeleton, make animations if you want any, etc.

You probably can't even use the GL ripping tool that the revival team is using to get geometry for the zones. It can pull static models, but models for costume pieces are far from static and have already been distorted to skin them to the player skeleton by the time the model is rendered. Reversing that unknown distortion (the exact transformation varies from frame to frame) would be almost as much work as just creating new models.

In other words, no, that's not something I'll be doing. :P

Mmmmm... meatball covered Ferrari.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fable on September 07, 2014, 05:42:37 AM
I guess if I had a question it would be this : If, NCsoft made the deal,which included i23, would it then be possible when the deal is closed,for someone to load the game onto a server and then hit the "on" switch and "Viola", the game is ready to play ?   (be kind, I am not a tech )  :)

I would say no. There's still the store to open, accounts systems to set up, I'm sure they'd have to test the servers, and a ton of other stuff I'm sure. But that's just a guess, I'm sure someone more qualified will chime in. Probably saying the same thing. Months I'd say.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dr. Bad Guy on September 07, 2014, 05:49:43 AM
Mmmmm... meatball covered Ferrari.

Mmmmmmm...Ferrari on a STTEEEKKK!!!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 07, 2014, 05:54:40 AM
I guess if I had a question it would be this : If, NCsoft made the deal,which included i23, would it then be possible when the deal is closed,for someone to load the game onto a server and then hit the "on" switch and "Viola", the game is ready to play ?   (be kind, I am not a tech )  :)

Being kind, let's just call that a very high level view.

And while trying not to be a jerk, the following is probably not nearly all inclusive.

Some things that will have to be covered include: What servers? Who's admining them? Syncing all the systems (database, engine, clients). Providing security for the servers. Testing the servers. Testing the clients. Testing the engine. Web site? In-game store setup. Advertising the game is coming back. Calculating how many clients the server can support and how many could be expected. Calculating costs for running the game. Calculating cost for subscription. What to do with vet rewards and the like. Auditing the game (should have come earlier in this list). Beginning to look into the needs of the CoH 1.5 group. I'm guessing lawyers will need to be involved somehow. Initial cost outlay. 

and oh yeah, setting up the new company who does all of that and hiring de peoples who will do the stuff needed. :)

Hope that's not too depressing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 07, 2014, 05:59:07 AM
Being kind, let's just call that a very high level view.

And while trying not to be a jerk, the following is probably not nearly all inclusive.

Some things that will have to be covered include: What servers? Who's admining them? Syncing all the systems (database, engine, clients). Providing security for the servers. Testing the servers. Testing the clients. Testing the engine. Web site? In-game store setup. Advertising the game is coming back. Calculating how many clients the server can support and how many could be expected. Calculating costs for running the game. Calculating cost for subscription. What to do with vet rewards and the like. Auditing the game (should have come earlier in this list). Beginning to look into the needs of the CoH 1.5 group. I'm guessing lawyers will need to be involved somehow. Initial cost outlay. 

and oh yeah, setting up the new company who does all of that and hiring de peoples who will do the stuff needed. :)

Hope that's not too depressing.
oh, ok, thank you for the clarification.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 07, 2014, 06:05:39 AM
oh, ok, thank you for the clarification.  :)

Believe me, I'd rather things went your way too. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ParagonKid on September 07, 2014, 06:20:06 AM
CoH taught us the greatest super power of all is to command attention just by saying "Ah-urrr!" and punching your palm.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pep Rally on September 07, 2014, 06:24:15 AM

 on that point, I would have to say, " why not?" lol :)

If you studied the cheer-science you wouldn't need to ask.

The danger of setting off a cheer-bomb is just too great.

 In layman's terms, a cheerleader's natural positive energy could react violently with subspace as (s)he passes through during 'ports, which could lead to a chain reaction, and cheerplosion of epic proportions. 

Do you want to be responsible for the cheer-cloud that would cover the eastern seaboard, causing untold peppiness, and choreographed athletic dancing?

I sure don't.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Everfreefire on September 07, 2014, 06:34:12 AM
Do you want to be responsible for the cheer-cloud that would cover the eastern seaboard, causing untold peppiness, and choreographed athletic dancing?

This is why I love this community.

Also, yes. Yes I do. It would be funny.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 07, 2014, 06:34:41 AM
If you studied the cheer-science you wouldn't need to ask.

The danger of setting off a cheer-bomb is just too great.

 In layman's terms, a cheerleader's natural positive energy could react violently with subspace as (s)he passes through during 'ports, which could lead to a chain reaction, and cheerplosion of epic proportions. 

Do you want to be responsible for the cheer-cloud that would cover the eastern seaboard, causing untold peppiness, and choreographed athletic dancing?

I sure don't.

 ROFL! forgive me my temporary insanity, what must I have been thinking,lol  :)

[[EDIT: Fixing quote error. ~Agge]]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 07, 2014, 06:38:05 AM
Do you want to be responsible for the cheer-cloud that would cover the eastern seaboard, causing untold peppiness, and choreographed athletic dancing?

I sure don't.
......says the person named Pep Rally ...just sayin' ...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 07, 2014, 06:41:23 AM

 There is another mmo, one that was "retired" named Asheron's Call. The company is Turbine, now part of Warner. Anyway, when they decided they were basically done doing anything more with it, they offered players a one time small fee and you can play it basically 4ever. That was a really nice way to go out. Players & company both happy.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 07, 2014, 09:23:39 AM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 07, 2014, 09:30:00 AM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 07, 2014, 09:45:30 AM
Porting a program that loads another program and modifies parts of it over to a completely different game engine is like porting a Ferrari from a Navy Battleship to Swedish Meatballs. It's a nonsensical thing to say.

Yeah well if I wrote the spec for the animation system down that would read like porting a Lamborghini from the Love Boat to the Swedish Chef, and yet that one is already in the game client.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 07, 2014, 09:48:53 AM
CoH taught us the greatest super power of all is to command attention just by saying "Ah-urrr!" and punching your palm.

I don't specifically recall that custom animation for Fulcrum Shift.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: PseudoCool on September 07, 2014, 10:13:40 AM
I'd love to say that "I hate to be the downer" here.. but frankly.. I'm a bit.. well.. passably upset here about this:

First off - NCSoft is a company.. their not going to license anything to someone without getting something in return.  This means either an outlay of money on the front end, or a monthly residual from subscriptions.  I'm curious where the new companies involved are coming up with this capital, or where they plan to come up with it when the negotiation is close to being finalized?

Secondly - as much as I want to be happy about this news.. and oh believe me I soooo want to be happy about it.. the reality is, as much as we love and trust MWM and APR.. there shouldn't be a single one of us here who trusts ANYTHING coming from NCSoft.  The mere fact that they have a title sitting on the digital shelf doing nothing for their bottom line yet refuse to sell the whole sheebang without an immense amount of legalese, is just mind blowing.  Yes, yes.. I know the Korean corporate culture thing.. ya ya yadda.  Reality is, the deal is starting to sound like some of the small snippets that NCSoft was attaching to anyone who wanted to buy the IP outright before closing.  To me, that's a laundry list of red flags.

Thirdly - the Hail Mary Team.. you guys have done a great job even getting NCSoft to open it's doors, and your work is commendable to an extreme level that no text on a board could adequately convey.  That being said.. I hope with all I am that you all continue to fight the good fight, and keep the players in mind that have supported you in many ways.  Even guys like me who generally stay away from message boards because.. well.. quite obviously.. what I have to say people generally don't want to hear :)

Lastly.. and this is where I think I have the biggest problem here with all of this:

Your looking at having a series of superhero MMO's launch as "successor" to CoX.  That's awesomesauce.. total awesomesauce.. HOWEVER.. it also means that each of the companies are going to be competing for a rather small gaming market segment of player funded dollars.  This means longer times between updates and expansions, no matter the financial model you use, because your only getting a small segment of the market share.  This is going to eventually cause a lot of friction, and even downright hostility between the companies involved.  We've all seen it before, especially with the various movements of CoH over the early years.  And frankly, I know I don't want to see it again.  I would suggest putting your collective heads together, and at least a couple of you merging over, with the consent of a majority of your player base that's financially supported you obviously, and making a banner under which the teams, like true heroes, work together to achieve a common goal.  In this case.. producing the best game possible, and keeping as many of us "refugee's" under the same digital roof.  Now, it's already been posted that Valiance want's no part of this arrangement, and that's on them frankly.  They've got their little red ball and they can run off with it and do their own thing, that's their right.  But really.. what's the point of taking the player base from CoX (say it was 100K players) and splitting it all up over 2 or 3 different successor games?  Especially if 2 of those games are running on the same engine already?  I think the arguments of the past when CoX was ripped away from us by the "evil monsters of digimon land" need to get laid to rest, and the two of you at least need to get onboard and start pooling resources and talent.. and get this ball rolling down the hill so fast that even superspeed can't keep up!


And that ladies and gents.. is my 2 cents.  Or nickel.. heck.. let's call it a dime for inflation :)

No matter how it goes.. I know where my money's already gone and where I'll be playing.  I have no problems with that funding moving into a joint company that's going to run CoH-I23 and be the successor company with CoH1.5/CoH2.0.. long as I get my kickstarter bene's that is, and get to use shadowmaul on circle of thorns again at least :)

*flips on my little fly toggle and heads back to the top of the world in AP*

PseudoCool
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 07, 2014, 10:32:18 AM
Whoo. That's a wall of text! Ok, Let's see if I can help out here.

First off! You're not going to hear a whole lot laid out on this topic, due to the nature of business negotiations. But, Think of it like this.
Do you think NCSoft would even talk to someone if there wasn't proof the group could put money on the table?

Secondly (I'm not copying your layout to be an ass, it's just convenient I swear.)
It's not just Korean culture, It's business. Businesses don't just decide "Oh, we're prolly not going to do something with this I.P. again... Eh, we'll give it away." They instead sell it. Which is what NCSoft is doing now. It's good business.

Thirdly ...Well, I'm not technically part of TFHM, so I can't really...say anything here. Uh, moving along?

Lastly!
I honestly don't think this is going to be all that much of a problem in the long run. These games aren't all going to be releasing at the same time, and each one is different. Champions Online, and DCUO certainly didn't cut into CoH's profits; despite many doomsayers doomsaying that CO would be the end of CoH. There are *a lot* of people who play games, and I think finding players for a Super Hero MMO is going to be MUCH easier than back in the day. Love of super heroes isn't limited to geeks anymore.

...If I came off at all as antagonistic; I fully give my most heartfelt apology. I've been moving furniture for the last few hours, and I fear that may have made me a little...Snippy.
If not, Carry on citizens!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 07, 2014, 10:34:49 AM
Your policy on voice work should be "if you think you can do it right, hit yourself in the forehead with a hammer until you change your mind."

It's actually not that safe for work, but in general, yes.  I was being diplomatic.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 07, 2014, 10:58:49 AM
First off - NCSoft is a company.. their not going to license anything to someone without getting something in return.  This means either an outlay of money on the front end, or a monthly residual from subscriptions.  I'm curious where the new companies involved are coming up with this capital, or where they plan to come up with it when the negotiation is close to being finalized?

Things are still very preliminary.

Secondly - as much as I want to be happy about this news.. and oh believe me I soooo want to be happy about it.. the reality is, as much as we love and trust MWM and APR.. there shouldn't be a single one of us here who trusts ANYTHING coming from NCSoft.  The mere fact that they have a title sitting on the digital shelf doing nothing for their bottom line yet refuse to sell the whole sheebang without an immense amount of legalese, is just mind blowing.  Yes, yes.. I know the Korean corporate culture thing.. ya ya yadda.  Reality is, the deal is starting to sound like some of the small snippets that NCSoft was attaching to anyone who wanted to buy the IP outright before closing.  To me, that's a laundry list of red flags.

The point I almost never see brought up ( and this is part of my response to 4 as well ) with CoH shuttering is that folks seem to have a hard time grasping that the value and "is it profitable enough" metrics of a property are not goin g to be the same for every operation. If the RoI isn't what's desired, well, that's that.   

Your looking at having a series of superhero MMO's launch as "successor" to CoX.  That's awesomesauce.. total awesomesauce.. HOWEVER.. it also means that each of the companies are going to be competing for a rather small gaming market segment of player funded dollars.  This means longer times between updates and expansions, no matter the financial model you use, because your only getting a small segment of the market share.  This is going to eventually cause a lot of friction, and even downright hostility between the companies involved.  We've all seen it before, especially with the various movements of CoH over the early years.  And frankly, I know I don't want to see it again.  I would suggest putting your collective heads together, and at least a couple of you merging over, with the consent of a majority of your player base that's financially supported you obviously, and making a banner under which the teams, like true heroes, work together to achieve a common goal.  In this case.. producing the best game possible, and keeping as many of us "refugee's" under the same digital roof.  Now, it's already been posted that Valiance want's no part of this arrangement, and that's on them frankly.  They've got their little red ball and they can run off with it and do their own thing, that's their right.  But really.. what's the point of taking the player base from CoX (say it was 100K players) and splitting it all up over 2 or 3 different successor games?  Especially if 2 of those games are running on the same engine already?  I think the arguments of the past when CoX was ripped away from us by the "evil monsters of digimon land" need to get laid to rest, and the two of you at least need to get onboard and start pooling resources and talent.. and get this ball rolling down the hill so fast that even superspeed can't keep up!

Ultimately, it's an individual matter for each product. In the case of the Legacy server, pretty much all the sunk costs have be recovered or written off. It becomes operations and profit. Minimal infrastructure based on the last general design diagram I had for the system would be fairly small, allowing for it to run fairly barebones. Less than the associated meatspace costs.

For everyone else, well, that's personal, but I get the general impression no ones under the delusion of getting fanatically rich or expect to be building the next benchmark franchise.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 07, 2014, 11:12:07 AM
For Chandra....I mean Irish_Girl...just because... he he he

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i60.tinypic.com%2F34i1m3o.jpg)

Haha, Nice.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 07, 2014, 11:47:32 AM
If you want a character creator in Unreal, you have to make one. That means creating the code to run the user interface, and to load appropriate 3D models and textures, skin them to a skeleton, make animations if you want any, etc.
The character creator is part of the code base that's being provided by MWM.

You probably can't even use the GL ripping tool that the revival team is using to get geometry for the zones. It can pull static models, but models for costume pieces are far from static and have already been distorted to skin them to the player skeleton by the time the model is rendered. Reversing that unknown distortion (the exact transformation varies from frame to frame) would be almost as much work as just creating new models.
Not unless you're really sneaky! ;D
Demo's are fantastic; the ability to edit them doubly so. Hint: Ragdoll code.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ArchPilgrim on September 07, 2014, 01:17:38 PM
There is another mmo, one that was "retired" named Asheron's Call. The company is Turbine, now part of Warner. Anyway, when they decided they were basically done doing anything more with it, they offered players a one time small fee and you can play it basically 4ever. That was a really nice way to go out. Players & company both happy.

Ah, the memories.  AC was my first MMO, and left there to play Horizons for a goodly while.  (Loved the crafting there, and playing a dragon!). After that City of Heroes.  After that primarily LOTRO, but always came back to CoX.  Just never got over Flying, Radio Missions, Wenty's and Base/IO crafting...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pep Rally on September 07, 2014, 02:13:07 PM
Haha, Nice.

Hey Irish Girl, is there a place I can see your toon's bio/costume?

I have a friend who's half Irish, and I made a toon based on her named Irish Lass.
 
Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/POPNDOUGH/IrishLass1.jpg)

(https://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/POPNDOUGH/Newlass1b.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pep Rally on September 07, 2014, 02:26:34 PM
This is why I love this community.

Also, yes. Yes I do. It would be funny.

It's always funny until the peppiness wears off. Everyone gets all cranky about pulling every muscle in their body because they didn't stretch out properly beforehand.  It's not a pretty sight. The pulled groins alone would fill every hospital emergency room.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 07, 2014, 02:30:28 PM
I was probably a member of all of them.   Always plenty of options to choose from and the teams were full of good players.  (Maybe there is a correlation between knowing about chat channels and being a good player?)

Hahaha, yeah, that's a possibility. People who knew about the "good" channels were mostly people who had been recommended to join them or been told about them from players who observed their skills/contributions in other task forces. I wasn't one of those channel admins who advertised for the channels I ran... Everyone who was there was usually brought in by someone else who was already a member. I prefer when something grows by word of mouth/recommendation than via advertisement, because most of the time, you get a better "quality" crowd....(haha)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 07, 2014, 02:42:20 PM
IG's costumes hadn't really been "Irish" themed in...many years.

Her final main costume was somewhat plain, but I liked it. Especially when she was beating people with her sword.
EDIT: Which she usually did while screaming madly, and listening to Motorhead.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://i1375.photobucket.com/albums/ag457/Cailyn_Alaynn/IG_zps13b390fb.png)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: RedWarlock on September 07, 2014, 02:53:14 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 07, 2014, 03:17:20 PM
Quote


First off - NCSoft is a company.. their not going to license anything to someone without getting something in return.  This means either an outlay of money on the front end, or a monthly residual from subscriptions.  I'm curious where the new companies involved are coming up with this capital, or where they plan to come up with it when the negotiation is close to being finalized?

Of course they arent and I dont think anyone here is expecting them to do so. However from one of Ironwolfs earlier conversations apparently a price has already been discussed and the team called the price "doable". The question is what exactly does that price buy? But I dont think anyone is expecting some altruism on the part of NC Soft because it is a business..

Quote
Secondly - as much as I want to be happy about this news.. and oh believe me I soooo want to be happy about it.. the reality is, as much as we love and trust MWM and APR.. there shouldn't be a single one of us here who trusts ANYTHING coming from NCSoft.  The mere fact that they have a title sitting on the digital shelf doing nothing for their bottom line yet refuse to sell the whole sheebang without an immense amount of legalese, is just mind blowing.  Yes, yes.. I know the Korean corporate culture thing.. ya ya yadda.  Reality is, the deal is starting to sound like some of the small snippets that NCSoft was attaching to anyone who wanted to buy the IP outright before closing.  To me, that's a laundry list of red flags.

There are several things involved. First off there is this consistent mindset that NC Soft is a personality of singular consciousness that has some type of vendetta against the CoH community. They shut the game down because it was a business.. and YES Business have a whole lot of legalese.. Its not like your buying a loaf of bread from your grocery store. As someone who has been working over a business deal in his own personal life for over a year now and its STILL in the early stages.. it takes time.. and YES there are a lot of legal details to hash out..  and that has NOTHING to do with Korean culture.. thats business culture..

Quote
Thirdly - the Hail Mary Team.. you guys have done a great job even getting NCSoft to open it's doors, and your work is commendable to an extreme level that no text on a board could adequately convey.  That being said.. I hope with all I am that you all continue to fight the good fight, and keep the players in mind that have supported you in many ways.  Even guys like me who generally stay away from message boards because.. well.. quite obviously.. what I have to say people generally don't want to hear :)

Well Said !!!

Quote

Lastly.. and this is where I think I have the biggest problem here with all of this:


Your looking at having a series of superhero MMO's launch as "successor" to CoX.  That's awesomesauce.. total awesomesauce.. HOWEVER.. it also means that each of the companies are going to be competing for a rather small gaming market segment of player funded dollars.  This means longer times between updates and expansions, no matter the financial model you use, because your only getting a small segment of the market share.  This is going to eventually cause a lot of friction, and even downright hostility between the companies involved.  We've all seen it before, especially with the various movements of CoH over the early years.  And frankly, I know I don't want to see it again.  I would suggest putting your collective heads together, and at least a couple of you merging over, with the consent of a majority of your player base that's financially supported you obviously, and making a banner under which the teams, like true heroes, work together to achieve a common goal.  In this case.. producing the best game possible, and keeping as many of us "refugee's" under the same digital roof.  Now, it's already been posted that Valiance want's no part of this arrangement, and that's on them frankly.  They've got their little red ball and they can run off with it and do their own thing, that's their right.  But really.. what's the point of taking the player base from CoX (say it was 100K players) and splitting it all up over 2 or 3 different successor games?  Especially if 2 of those games are running on the same engine already?  I think the arguments of the past when CoX was ripped away from us by the "evil monsters of digimon land" need to get laid to rest, and the two of you at least need to get onboard and start pooling resources and talent.. and get this ball rolling down the hill so fast that even superspeed can't keep up!

Disagree for one reason.. you are basing the player base on one game that never got support. never got advertising... the Super Hero culture has EXPLODED in the last several years since the shutdown and its not set to slow down any time soon..

We really have no idea how huge the playerbase potentially is..

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 07, 2014, 03:26:47 PM
I agree with Heatstroke on the "superhero explosion," here in NA anyway.  Not only is every movie and sequel a runaway hit (too many to list here), but other superhero games like Marvel Superheroes Online have launched recently and are going like gangbusters, besides CO and DCUO still being around (and DCUO at least is still getting a good amount of major updates).

There's room for CoX i23, there's room for a CoX 2 or 1.5 (a.k.a. APR), and there will be room for CoT by the time it ever launches too.  Look how many pointy-eared fantasy MMOs there are out there!  And you still see new ones coming every day!  I find it hard to believe those players aren't the very same moviegoers watching all the new superhero movies too.  Not to mention that even superhero movie-goers who have never played the games would likely want to try new superhero games. 

There's a market there, but like any company selling something, you have to actively target and advertise to your market.  You have to find them, and let them know you're there, and then nudge them into coming over to try your product.  Incentive deals, ads, it's been done so often because it works, and that's for every business, not just the ones in the gaming industry.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 07, 2014, 03:45:59 PM
Quote
Some have said that If CoH i23 will be shut down after Windows 9 happens, that it might feel painful, like when the game was shut down before, but I think it would be a fantastic transition.

1. I don't understand this idea that the day Windows 9 is released, it will drop a nuclear warhead on CoX from which the game will never recover. What? I don't recall any other Windows release that bothered us who were playing this game, why is 9 some unthinkable Armageddon/DOOM?

2. Do YOU run out and buy the new Windows the day it is released, and install it right away? I sure don't. In fact, I don't bother upgrading until.... I buy a new computer. I would be more than willing to maintain two PCs JUST to run this game, were that necessary.

But we don't yet know that it will be.

3. Windows 9 will be here looooooooooooooooooong before CoT/CoX2. Not much of a transition, if you ask me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: tripthicket on September 07, 2014, 03:48:46 PM
I know it would be hella (and prohibitively) expensive, but can you just imagine settling into your seat for Avengers II, Thor III, Captain America III, etc., and seeing an advertisement for City of Titans/Heroes and Villains/Valiance Online/City of Heroes 1.5 stuck amongst the previews? I think, just to be sure, I'd better wear some Depends when I go to the theater for the next few years...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 07, 2014, 03:57:59 PM
Some things that will have to be covered include: What servers? Who's admining them? Syncing all the systems (database, engine, clients). Providing security for the servers. Testing the servers. Testing the clients. Testing the engine. Web site? In-game store setup. Advertising the game is coming back. Calculating how many clients the server can support and how many could be expected. Calculating costs for running the game. Calculating cost for subscription. What to do with vet rewards and the like. Auditing the game (should have come earlier in this list). Beginning to look into the needs of the CoH 1.5 group. I'm guessing lawyers will need to be involved somehow. Initial cost outlay. 

We know what servers now, and who will be running them.

Testing the servers etc, ok I'll give you that one.

In-game store setup is, unless I greatly miss my guess, a thing that could be done AFTER game launch. We did without a cash shop for what, at least 5 years? It could wait for a few months post-launch.

Costs for running the game should pretty much be an already known quantity.

Vet rewards.... will have to be re-earned. Just wait and see. I would bet on it. If you don't have your old account, how could they possibly verify this? Anyone and everyone could claim to have been there at original launch.

The needs of the CoX 1.5 group are an issue that can be addressed way after the reopening of CoX: IMO, the reopening should be paramount over all.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 07, 2014, 03:59:47 PM
I know it would be hella (and prohibitively) expensive, but can you just imagine settling into your seat for Avengers II, Thor III, Captain America III, etc., and seeing an advertisement for City of Titans/Heroes and Villains/Valiance Online/City of Heroes 1.5 stuck amongst the previews? I think, just to be sure, I'd better wear some Depends when I go to the theater for the next few years...

That would be cool, but an advertisement like that might well run into the millions of dollars I am thinking.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: RedWarlock on September 07, 2014, 04:08:00 PM
I don't understand this idea that the day Windows 9 is released, it will drop a nuclear warhead on CoX from which the game will never recover... Windows 9 will be here looooooooooooooooooong before CoT/CoX2. Not much of a transition, if you ask me.

Downix opened this thread suggesting i23 might start to become incompatible with Windows 9 and that would be a time to start migrating to CoH 1.5... So it sounded like some kind of transition was envisioned at that point. Like I said, I think it's all positive and that even bringing people into play i23 for a short (or long) time could be a good way to engage the community in anticipation of CoT/CoX2...

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on September 07, 2014, 04:10:12 PM
Lastly.. and this is where I think I have the biggest problem here with all of this:

Your looking at having a series of superhero MMO's launch as "successor" to CoX.  That's awesomesauce.. total awesomesauce.. HOWEVER.. it also means that each of the companies are going to be competing for a rather small gaming market segment of player funded dollars.  This means longer times between updates and expansions, no matter the financial model you use, because your only getting a small segment of the market share.  This is going to eventually cause a lot of friction, and even downright hostility between the companies involved.  We've all seen it before, especially with the various movements of CoH over the early years.  And frankly, I know I don't want to see it again.  I would suggest putting your collective heads together, and at least a couple of you merging over, with the consent of a majority of your player base that's financially supported you obviously, and making a banner under which the teams, like true heroes, work together to achieve a common goal.  In this case.. producing the best game possible, and keeping as many of us "refugee's" under the same digital roof.  Now, it's already been posted that Valiance want's no part of this arrangement, and that's on them frankly.  They've got their little red ball and they can run off with it and do their own thing, that's their right.  But really.. what's the point of taking the player base from CoX (say it was 100K players) and splitting it all up over 2 or 3 different successor games?  Especially if 2 of those games are running on the same engine already?  I think the arguments of the past when CoX was ripped away from us by the "evil monsters of digimon land" need to get laid to rest, and the two of you at least need to get onboard and start pooling resources and talent.. and get this ball rolling down the hill so fast that even superspeed can't keep up!


And that ladies and gents.. is my 2 cents.  Or nickel.. heck.. let's call it a dime for inflation :)

No matter how it goes.. I know where my money's already gone and where I'll be playing.  I have no problems with that funding moving into a joint company that's going to run CoH-I23 and be the successor company with CoH1.5/CoH2.0.. long as I get my kickstarter bene's that is, and get to use shadowmaul on circle of thorns again at least :)

*flips on my little fly toggle and heads back to the top of the world in AP*

PseudoCool

Here's what I don't think you're understanding. While it's true that a portion of CoH's playerbase were and are incredibly loyal and played CoH exclusively, I don't think this is the case with the larger portion of CoH's playerbase.

Most people that can afford it will indeed play not just one game, but many different games. I backed CoT. Primarily because I wanted to get in on the ground floor of a game that I am fairly certain I'll enjoy, much the same way I liked CoH. Is that going to be the only game I play? If CoH issue 23 is online, I will have a tough time serving both of those "masters" in the figurative sense. But, that's just me. I know with 100% certainty that other players I met on CoH will play all of these games, if for no other reason than to change up the pace a little, as well as play SWToR, Rift, and whatever other games are out there that capture their interest. @lumberjack Jill, @hazygreys (not to be confused with his twin sister @hazygrays), @arbegla, @internaut, @PW, @Puros..so many other players played more than one game. Not sure how they found the time, but not everyone played 14 hours at a stretch like I did. (won't be playing like that again, I hope. Going to try and limit myself to 3 farming runs and 4 iTrials per weekend when I get to 50 with a couple of characters.)

I know times are tough for some of you (economically) but the economy does seem to be slowly picking up. I know I have more disposable income than I had two years ago.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wizzyboy296 on September 07, 2014, 04:42:07 PM
So thats mean, City of Heroes is returns?  :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 07, 2014, 04:50:55 PM
besides CO and DCUO still being around (and DCUO at least is still getting a good amount of major updates).

The All Access changes are the best thing to ever happen to DCUO. There's a fairly large contingent of folks for who it was never quite "primary MMO" material, but who consider EQ or EQ2 their primary. Once DCUO became "free with all the goodies" to the folks who liked Everquest, the population jumped. Because dammit, sometimes there's nothing quite as satisfying as running a 6 ft tall tigress to punch something in the face with claws or call in an air strike made of hard light.  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 07, 2014, 04:55:48 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 07, 2014, 04:57:24 PM
So thats mean, City of Heroes is returns?  :o

Maybe, yes that is the plan, but nothing is resolved yet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 07, 2014, 05:02:02 PM
The needs of the CoX 1.5 group are an issue that can be addressed way after the reopening of CoX: IMO, the reopening should be paramount over all.
Aww.... -insert obviously over the top pouting face here-

But, in all seriousness.
I don't foresee any way in which our needs would interfere at all with the Legacy servers re-opening ASAP.
More likely than anything, I'd see if the Legacy team needed anything from us to expedite their work.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 07, 2014, 05:38:18 PM
I frankly don't think the market can sustain multiple supers MMOs - at least not the the CoX successors, CoH i23 redux, CO, DCUO, and MarvelHeroes all trying to occupy the same space.  Throw in single player supers games and the market would be saturated.  Hell, the MMO and gaming market is arguably over saturated period.

So, I image the CoX successors will condense into one in the next couple of years - either some will die or they will be gobbled up by the biggest fish.  My bet is in the end you will see CoH legacy servers and one new successor (likely CoT).  No offense intended to the fans or makers of successor projects - I'm sure those trying to develop successor games realize the hill they have to climb.

The i23 servers coming back online though would be an important step.  If successful and with notable numbers (say I dunno 50k players in a 10 year old game would be notable), I think one of the successor projects could point to said numbers as an example to would be investors and raise capital.

Anyway, that's my rather smoky crystal ball prediction.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on September 07, 2014, 06:16:06 PM
I've said this before, but I can't believe that having four or five super superhero games is over-saturating the market  when there are dozens of generic elves-and-wizards fantasy MMOs (with more opening every day).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 07, 2014, 06:17:44 PM
I've said this before, but I can't believe that having four or five super superhero games is over-saturating the market  when there are dozens of generic elves-and-wizards fantasy MMOs (with more opening every day).


I agree wholeheartedly!


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MaidMercury on September 07, 2014, 06:21:37 PM
I appreciate the effort made by Missing Worlds Media, Inc.
Thank you very much  :roll:
I read your article about your talks and *Korean etiquette and...
I still don't understand what this is alluding to, - it's like,  NCsoft is tossing out a few bread crumbs and saying
'we'll get back to you'.

As far as NCsoft allowing anyone access to the game, -I'll believe it when I see it.
I'm sure THEY didn't play games gobbling up Paragon Studios but they sure are playing mind games
to 3rd party vendors, and US, the loyal CoH subscribers that helped maintain their business.

* Who's truly being rude here? ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: bugzee on September 07, 2014, 06:26:46 PM
By the fans, for the fans! That's why we will succeed one way or another.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 07, 2014, 06:29:08 PM
I've said this before, but I can't believe that having four or five super superhero games is over-saturating the market  when there are dozens of generic elves-and-wizards fantasy MMOs (with more opening every day).

I think this depends on how you define MMO - I'm talking about AAA MMORPG titles, and Im not aware of "dozens" of these in the fantasy genre.  And what's the market share of these "dozens" of fantasy MMOs?  Whats their profit margin, and how viable are they?  Whats their opportunity for development and expansion?  Id point to ArcheAge, from what Ive read they've had less than terrific success in keeping players.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on September 07, 2014, 06:33:15 PM
I appreciate the effort made by Missing Worlds Media, Inc.
Thank you very much  :roll:
I read your article about your talks and *Korean etiquette and...
I still don't understand what this is alluding to, - it's like,  NCsoft is tossing out a few bread crumbs and saying
'we'll get back to you'.

As far as NCsoft allowing anyone access to the game, -I'll believe it when I see it.
I'm sure THEY didn't play games gobbling up Paragon Studios but they sure are playing mind games
to 3rd party vendors, and US, the loyal CoH subscribers that helped maintain their business.

* Who's truly being rude here? ;)

Its alluding to doing business in East Asia and the need at times to approach matters a certain way if you want to be successful. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 07, 2014, 06:46:29 PM
1. I don't understand this idea that the day Windows 9 is released, it will drop a nuclear warhead on CoX from which the game will never recover. What? I don't recall any other Windows release that bothered us who were playing this game, why is 9 some unthinkable Armageddon/DOOM?

2. Do YOU run out and buy the new Windows the day it is released, and install it right away? I sure don't. In fact, I don't bother upgrading until.... I buy a new computer. I would be more than willing to maintain two PCs JUST to run this game, were that necessary.

But we don't yet know that it will be.

3. Windows 9 will be here looooooooooooooooooong before CoT/CoX2. Not much of a transition, if you ask me.

With all due respect to downix, I believe his fears about Windows 9 are premature and probably exaggerated.  The CoH client ran stably on Win7x64, and I suspect unless Win9 fundamentally breaks OpenGL there will be a way to make the client work in Win9, since I highly doubt Win9 is going to be jettisoning the Win32 environment.

In fact being based on OpenGL insulates us partially from DirectX version problems killing the client, which is a plus.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 07, 2014, 06:51:11 PM
Lastly.. and this is where I think I have the biggest problem here with all of this:

Your looking at having a series of superhero MMO's launch as "successor" to CoX.  That's awesomesauce.. total awesomesauce.. HOWEVER.. it also means that each of the companies are going to be competing for a rather small gaming market segment of player funded dollars.  This means longer times between updates and expansions, no matter the financial model you use, because your only getting a small segment of the market share.  This is going to eventually cause a lot of friction, and even downright hostility between the companies involved.  We've all seen it before, especially with the various movements of CoH over the early years.  And frankly, I know I don't want to see it again.  I would suggest putting your collective heads together, and at least a couple of you merging over, with the consent of a majority of your player base that's financially supported you obviously, and making a banner under which the teams, like true heroes, work together to achieve a common goal.  In this case.. producing the best game possible, and keeping as many of us "refugee's" under the same digital roof.

Unfortunately, PseudoCool, sometimes mommy and daddy decide they can't live together anymore and have to start living apart.  They both love you, and its not your fault, but you can't fix everything that breaks.  Sometimes you have to build something new instead.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 07, 2014, 06:54:11 PM
With all due respect to downix, I believe his fears about Windows 9 are premature and probably exaggerated.

I think more than anything it was most likely just an example of a future problem. Perhaps a poorly laid out one.

Disclaimer: I know basically squat about Win 9.
I've heard rumor that Win 9 won't be shipping with an x32 version. That still leaves the really simple solution of...not using Windows 9.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 07, 2014, 07:01:35 PM
So thats mean, City of Heroes is returns?  :o
Why does this sound like "Gone to the Americans"?

I like it and hope it's worded just like that later.   :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 07, 2014, 07:03:59 PM
Vet rewards.... will have to be re-earned. Just wait and see. I would bet on it. If you don't have your old account, how could they possibly verify this? Anyone and everyone could claim to have been there at original launch.
I wouldn't have a problem with everyone being a "veteran".    I might even suggest that most of the players will be long time vets.   It was that way at shutdown and everything was ok.   I can't see a downside.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: saipaman on September 07, 2014, 07:07:12 PM
I was a paying customer from launch until shutdown.

I have no problem with either starting vet rewards over.  I also have no problems giving them out to everyone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Exxar on September 07, 2014, 07:15:21 PM
I think this depends on how you define MMO - I'm talking about AAA MMORPG titles, and Im not aware of "dozens" of these in the fantasy genre.  And what's the market share of these "dozens" of fantasy MMOs?  Whats their profit margin, and how viable are they?  Whats their opportunity for development and expansion?  Id point to ArcheAge, from what Ive read they've had less than terrific success in keeping players.
Aion, TERA, Rift, LOTRO, WoW, DDO, Everquest 1 & 2, Neverwinter, Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy whichever and I'm sure I've forgotten some. There are a bunch of them upcoming too, from Everquest 3 to Archeage and that Allods sequel or whatever it is.



And since this is my first post in this topic, unfathomable and limitless thanks to everyone working on getting our beloved game back :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 07, 2014, 07:16:35 PM
I was a paying customer from launch until shutdown.

I have no problem with either starting vet rewards over.  I also have no problems giving them out to everyone.

Here is the link to the vet rewards:
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Veteran_Rewards

Given that many rewards were tailor or respec tokens or new costume pieces, and a few were weapons like the nemesis staff and blackwand, another was access to flight powers at Level 6, the base teleport power, the reveal map power and a few other minor things,  I really don't see it as game breaking if the game returns and we all start anew with our characters but all vet rewards are issued along with all the paragon tokens to unlock the special costumes such as mecha armor and other armors that were available.

Costumes tied to Task Forces such as the roman costume could be regained by doing the ITF
Holiday event costumes could wait until the event rolls around again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 07, 2014, 07:17:03 PM
I think more than anything it was most likely just an example of a future problem. Perhaps a poorly laid out one.

Disclaimer: I know basically squat about Win 9.
I've heard rumor that Win 9 won't be shipping with an x32 version. That still leaves the really simple solution of...not using Windows 9.

I ran City of Heroes on Windows 7 Ultimate x64 the last three years of the game or so.  You did not need to run it on an x32 version of Windows.  In fact I heard more players had problems on Windows 7 x32 than on Windows 7 x64 (because Win7 x64 dealt a little more gracefully with that memory leak that was prevalent on the client).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 07, 2014, 07:24:49 PM
Aion, TERA, Rift, LOTRO, WoW, DDO, Everquest 1 & 2, Neverwinter, Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy whichever and I'm sure I've forgotten some. There are a bunch of them upcoming too, from Everquest 3 to Archeage and that Allods sequel or whatever it is

And since this is my first post in this topic, unfathomable and limitless thanks to everyone working on getting our beloved game back :)

WoW, Everquest, Everquest 2, Everquest Next, Everquest Landmark, LOTRO, TERA Online, Neverwinter, Final Fantasty 11, Final Fantasty 14, Rift, Aion, Lineage, Lineage 2, Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, ArcheAge, Age of Conan, Asheron's Call, and of course...the first MMO to ever re-launch after being shuttered: Asheron's Call 2.
Does one count WildStar? What about Blade & Soul?
But the list really does go on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 07, 2014, 07:27:35 PM
I ran City of Heroes on Windows 7 Ultimate x64 the last three years of the game or so.  You did not need to run it on an x32 version of Windows.  In fact I heard more players had problems on Windows 7 x32 than on Windows 7 x64 (because Win7 x64 dealt a little more gracefully with that memory leak that was prevalent on the client).

-facepalms- Derp. As I should know... Since I run a lot of x32 programs on my x64 computer... and have been around a computer once or twice in my life.
Forgive me, It's one of those days...
No sleep, and no coffee... Ugh.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 07, 2014, 08:25:16 PM
Ah, the memories.  AC was my first MMO, and left there to play Horizons for a goodly while.  (Loved the crafting there, and playing a dragon!). After that City of Heroes.  After that primarily LOTRO, but always came back to CoX.  Just never got over Flying, Radio Missions, Wenty's and Base/IO crafting...

Ahhh horizons.  That game had so much potential,  have they dragons ever reached adulthood in that game?  I stopped playing shortly after the first huge content update. When the goat dudes were released.  You had to raid the.....evil place....and fight the....evil angel?  Its been about a decade  now so I can't quite remember.  It's a shame they never achieved the things they wanted with that game.  It was well before it's time.

Also I remember two people could play on the same account at the same time from different computers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 07, 2014, 08:28:43 PM
The character creator is part of the code base that's being provided by MWM.

Right, so you'll have to wait on that to be ready, then modify it to work with COH's character model. From what I've seen of CoT character model regions so far, I don't expect them to be directly compatible.

Quote
Not unless you're really sneaky! ;D
Demo's are fantastic; the ability to edit them doubly so. Hint: Ragdoll code.

Ragdoll only gets you part of the way there, since the "neutral" (0) position of the bones in the player skeleton is not a zero-transformation state. You'll still have to get everything rotated and positioned around the origin just right so that they'll line up when transformed back to the appropriate place on the skeleton. All those cumulative transformations will inevitably introduce a small amount of shearing or non-linear transformation, though probably only perfectionists like me would be bothered by it.

You also lose bone bindings and weights for the verticies in the capture process, which is a much bigger deal for costume parts than is is for say, buildings.

Either way, it's still a huge effort to do that for every costume part, and it's not something that can be simply "ported".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 07, 2014, 08:49:52 PM
You also lose bone bindings and weights for the verticies in the capture process, which is a much bigger deal for costume parts than is is for say, buildings.

Either way, it's still a huge effort to do that for every costume part, and it's not something that can be simply "ported".

Are the actual meshes in the PIGG files not exportable in any way?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 07, 2014, 09:14:08 PM
I think more than anything it was most likely just an example of a future problem. Perhaps a poorly laid out one.

Disclaimer: I know basically squat about Win 9.
I've heard rumor that Win 9 won't be shipping with an x32 version. That still leaves the really simple solution of...not using Windows 9.

Vista x64 was perfectly compatible and stable; I played exclusively on it when the servers were still around. Win7 x64 is perfectly compatible and stable for Icon, tho I only switched to it last December and thus never tried it on live servers. Can't rule out something bizarre with networking due to that, but no one else has reported anything so I find it unlikely.

Unless you mean 9 is going to completely and totally break all 32 bit compatibility, which seems suicidally stupid, I don't think Win9 x64 is any likelier to suffer than Vista or 7.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ArchPilgrim on September 07, 2014, 09:22:41 PM
I was a paying customer from launch until shutdown.

I have no problem with either starting vet rewards over.  I also have no problems giving them out to everyone.

Same.  Biggest issue for me, as I recall, was that as long time subscriber who left for awhile then came back after the f2p switch, I had every slot on all my toons filled with crafted IOs for which I then had to pay rent or else they were inactive.  And the base was full of crafted and set IOs as well.

So, i23 will come back online (God willing) with that same f2p construct, yes?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 07, 2014, 09:24:57 PM
Same.  Biggest issue for me, as I recall, was that as long time subscriber who left for awhile then came back after the f2p switch, I had every slot on all my toons filled with crafted IOs for which I then had to pay rent or else they were inactive.  And the base was full of crafted and set IOs as well.

So, i23 will come back online (God willing) with that same f2p construct, yes?

Unknown what type of payment system would exist, but bases and characters are not expected to return.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 07, 2014, 09:56:22 PM
Quote
*I make a remark to the effect that the relaunch of i23 take precedence over all, including successors to the game*

Aww.... -insert obviously over the top pouting face here-

But, in all seriousness.
I don't foresee any way in which our needs would interfere at all with the Legacy servers re-opening ASAP.
More likely than anything, I'd see if the Legacy team needed anything from us to expedite their work.

Don't get me wrong, its not that I don't think successors to the game are not important, because they are. Definitely. I just think everyone will wait a little more patiently if they have something worthy to do while we wait. It'll take a lot of pressure off the CoT team, for instance, if everyone is happily getting their level 50s Hybrid'ed out. .

I'm just all thrilled thinking about CoT with SoAs in it: WHEEEE. And I'm picturing groups like the Carnival of Shadows, rendered in the Unreal engine. That would be unreal, for sure.

I still need to quit thinking like this is a done deal though, lest I jinx things.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 07, 2014, 10:02:28 PM
I wouldn't have a problem with everyone being a "veteran".    I might even suggest that most of the players will be long time vets.   It was that way at shutdown and everything was ok.   I can't see a downside.

I would be fine with all rewards being available to everyone, but I'm not going in expecting that unless we're told we are getting that.

Since we are not getting the CODE, but just a mirror of the game, I don't think we will get vet rewards for free... because without the source code, how could they go in there and make this happen? [I am incredibly ignorant about coding stuff <------- disclaimer] They would have to modify the code, which can't be modified...? That's why I'm thinking its going to be business as usual as we all start from scratch.

But hey, if it can be done I am all for it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AnElfCalledMack on September 07, 2014, 10:16:16 PM
I would be fine with all rewards being available to everyone, but I'm not going in expecting that unless we're told we are getting that.

Since we are not getting the CODE, but just a mirror of the game, I don't think we will get vet rewards for free... because without the source code, how could they go in there and make this happen? [I am incredibly ignorant about coding stuff <------- disclaimer] They would have to modify the code, which can't be modified...? That's why I'm thinking its going to be business as usual as we all start from scratch.

But hey, if it can be done I am all for it.
Vet rewards are a function of the user database, not the game code. The legacy derver team will need to write a new user database, and it'd be relatively simple to have it set things like "X months veteran" or "VIP" on all new users by default, which the code would then handle normally. That is, however, a commercial decision for an entity that doesn't exist yet, so we'll see what gets announced if there's a final deal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 07, 2014, 11:03:50 PM
IF NCSoft kept account data, it would be a small matter for them to check the vet status of each account and send the owner of said account a verification that could then be submitted to MWM granting all the rewards thereof.

I'd even pay for the priviledge. To cover the overhead needed to recover my data.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dareon Kale on September 07, 2014, 11:14:10 PM
You could link the Vet rewards to levels. You get this or that at level 5, 10, 15, etc. with the caveat that once unlocked on any given character, it would be unlocked for every other toon on your account. I suppose that could be a little rough on the folks with severe altitis who never actually finish leveling a toon, though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 07, 2014, 11:18:32 PM
IF NCSoft kept account data, it would be a small matter for them to check the vet status of each account and send the owner of said account a verification that could then be submitted to MWM granting all the rewards thereof.

I'd even pay for the priviledge. To cover the overhead needed to recover my data.

Me thinks the people can negotiate this with NC Soft while also paying them X amount of dollars just to access the data. They will say, we don't want access to the information, but we will negotiate a price for the end users to have access to that data. If that end user is willing to pay to have their data retrieved, then you can charge them X more amount of dollars individually. In a sense this will have NC Soft double dipping for the same piece of information and will probably be incising enough for them to release it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: saipaman on September 07, 2014, 11:21:57 PM
A lot will depend on just what is in this mysterious 'server image'.

This could simply be a cover to use files that an employee "liberated" before the shutdown.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 07, 2014, 11:22:28 PM
I suppose you could link vet rewards to levels, but then they wouldn't really be vet rewards anymore.

It matters little until we know how this plays out in the end anyways.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on September 07, 2014, 11:24:54 PM
Given that NcSoft apparently didn't keep anything other than an image of the game, is it likely they will have the data that can indicate how long someone was subbed to a game that no longer exists?

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 07, 2014, 11:26:11 PM
Play CO for about 30 minutes.  They have voice talent.  It's bad.  As in pure sliced Velveeta cheesy bad.

Why spend the money for the voice acting if it's going to be... bad? 

TSW does OK voice acting.  It's via cutscenes and works well.  But it's rather jarring to be walking towards a contact and suddenly, "WHAM!" cutscene.

I don't have a problem with reading dialog boxes (and I'm not saying that settles it.)  Often, in voice overs, I miss what is said...

Which was exactly my point: the dialogue in CO is bad because it's BADLY WRITTEN, just like everything else in the game. They went with the ridiculous, over the top antiquated views of a comic book universe and it was their downfall across the board.
 
The dialogue in TSW is well written, and so, it's good. 
 
It's all about the writing.

As for "missing things", that's where you should have the proper combination, as I said before, so those like yourself can just turn off voiceovers, and those like myself, who often "miss" things in text boxes because it's too hard and time consuming to read, each have options that satisfy us.
 
Also, voice over work really isn't that expensive. Seriously.  It's not.  I know that from experience.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 07, 2014, 11:33:50 PM
IF NCSoft kept account data, it would be a small matter for them to check the vet status of each account and send the owner of said account a verification that could then be submitted to MWM granting all the rewards thereof.

I'd even pay for the priviledge. To cover the overhead needed to recover my data.
That could cause some people problems, since they no longer have their original email account however, there could be a work around for this issue.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 07, 2014, 11:53:09 PM
The problem isn't that all voice acting is bad or all superhero scripted dialog is silly.  The problem is that voice dialog and the gameplay scaffolding that goes along with it is much more frictional in MMOs specifically than in single player games.  In single player games the game runs at whatever pace you want.  But in MMOs you have to design all (or almost all) content on the presumption that teams will run it.  And SWTOR isn't considered "advanced" because of its voice scenes.  Its generally considered to be "annoying" when not being played single-player.

Good design is not about using the most technically advanced features possible.  Its about fitting form to function in the best way possible with available technology.  With written text its possible for some players in the team to read quickly and dismiss the text at their own pace while other players can read slower, and with the right technology even go back and read it again if they can't read it fast enough.  I screencapped all dialog in CoH specifically to allow myself to do that, and I'm the fastest reader I know.  Absolutely no one was reading mission dialog faster than I was, but it was still convenient for me to save for future reference.  Its not as easy to do that for voice acted cutscenes.



 
I'm sorry but you're stating a bunch of your preferences as facts.  There is NOTHING about voice acting that takes any longer than any other cut scene, and in fact, can be much faster than text based cut scenes that don't have a "skippable" option.  If there IS a skippable option, there is nothing about voice over cut scenes that make them somehow "unskippable" anymore than text based ones.   
 
It sounds like you're suggestion is we shouldn't have cut scenes at all, which CoH already has.  And lets not forget that voice over work can be done outside of cut scenes, as well.  Why do you think they added voice over work to the newer tutorial?  To make the game feel less dated than it really was.
 
The devs believed exactly what I'm saying: purely text based MMOs feel dated, and it's a strike against them.
 
You may be willing to take that strike. So may the makers of CoT/Coh 1.5, etc.  But it is a strike. 
 
And it's one that really doesn't seem, to me anyway, to offer any advantages to it that couldn't easily be countered by simply making voice over work optional. 
 
And voice over work isn't that expensive. I know this from experience. As a matter of fact, it's something that a group of volunteers from the community could get done fairly quickly, probably for free, and in a quality that is at least as good as that on The Secret World, from the comfort of their own PCs at home.  I teach Film production, I've got extensive experience in making voice overs, including with effects, etc.  Even still, if you wanted to hire professionals, you can get quality services doing one hour sessions of recordings for around 500 dollars, and each addition hour being just 100 dollars. So lets imagine that if we did EVERY cut scene existing in City of Heroes, and added in just ambiance voice over work for 50 contacts (A quick "hello" when you walk up, etc.), based on my experience as a QUICK guess from memory of the game, we're talk 10 hours of voice over work, maximum.  Assuming you'd need 5 male and 5 female voice actors to cover the number of contacts you have in the game, you'd be running around 14,000 dollars if you used ALL ten of them for the ENTIRE 10 hours.  In reality, you wouldn't, you'd be using each one for about 2 hours, so more likely a total cost of 6,000 dollars.
 
6,000 dollars.  That's for every cut scene in the game to have a voice over option, and for 50 of the most famous/popular contacts to have ambient voice over work. 
 
And it can be done much cheaper. Some quality voice acting talent work for 25 dollars a page for non-broadcast work.   
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 08, 2014, 12:01:50 AM
You are correct opprime2828, voice talent is very affordable.

My wife writes voice over script for marketing. Cost of talent and production is miniscule, updating easy.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkfaith on September 08, 2014, 12:02:56 AM

 
I'm sorry but you're stating a bunch of your preferences as facts.  There is NOTHING about voice acting that takes any longer than any other cut scene, and in fact, can be much faster than text based cut scenes that don't have a "skippable" option.  If there IS a skippable option, there is nothing about voice over cut scenes that make them somehow "unskippable" anymore than text based ones.   
 
It sounds like you're suggestion is we shouldn't have cut scenes at all, which CoH already has.  And lets not forget that voice over work can be done outside of cut scenes, as well.  Why do you think they added voice over work to the newer tutorial?  To make the game feel less dated than it really was.
 
The devs believed exactly what I'm saying: purely text based MMOs feel dated, and it's a strike against them.
 
You may be willing to take that strike. So may the makers of CoT/Coh 1.5, etc.  But it is a strike. 
 
And it's one that really doesn't seem, to me anyway, to offer any advantages to it that couldn't easily be countered by simply making voice over work optional. 
 
And voice over work isn't that expensive. I know this from experience. As a matter of fact, it's something that a group of volunteers from the community could get done fairly quickly, probably for free, and in a quality that is at least as good as that on The Secret World, from the comfort of their own PCs at home.  I teach Film production, I've got extensive experience in making voice overs, including with effects, etc.  Even still, if you wanted to hire professionals, you can get quality services doing one hour sessions of recordings for around 500 dollars, and each addition hour being just 100 dollars. So lets imagine that if we did EVERY cut scene existing in City of Heroes, and added in just ambiance voice over work for 50 contacts (A quick "hello" when you walk up, etc.), based on my experience as a QUICK guess from memory of the game, we're talk 10 hours of voice over work, maximum.  Assuming you'd need 5 male and 5 female voice actors to cover the number of contacts you have in the game, you'd be running around 14,000 dollars if you used ALL ten of them for the ENTIRE 10 hours.  In reality, you wouldn't, you'd be using each one for about 2 hours, so more likely a total cost of 6,000 dollars.
 
6,000 dollars.  That's for every cut scene in the game to have a voice over option, and for 50 of the most famous/popular contacts to have ambient voice over work. 
 
And it can be done much cheaper. Some quality voice acting talent work for 25 dollars a page for non-broadcast work.

"Isn't that expensive" is relative. MWM, and probably CoH 1.5, have a very limited budget. Very limited. That $6000 is that many fewer tools for their people to work with. That many fewer software licenses, that much less hardware. Makes the budget tighter on servers. As far as bang for their buck, there are probably better ways they can spend that money. Does that cut out the option of adding voiceover work later? No, of course not, but there are probably better ways to spend their limited development money pre-release, so I wouldn't expect to see voice work at release.

If they can add it in a way that they're happy with, and doesn't take away from other potential features, sure. But when your budget is $600,000ish to develop a whole MMO, $6000 can be a lot.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 08, 2014, 12:07:22 AM
For the record...I could give a crap less about voice acting..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 08, 2014, 12:09:09 AM

 
I'm sorry but you're stating a bunch of your preferences as facts.  There is NOTHING about voice acting that takes any longer than any other cut scene, and in fact, can be much faster than text based cut scenes that don't have a "skippable" option.  If there IS a skippable option, there is nothing about voice over cut scenes that make them somehow "unskippable" anymore than text based ones.   
 
It sounds like you're suggestion is we shouldn't have cut scenes at all, which CoH already has.  And lets not forget that voice over work can be done outside of cut scenes, as well.  Why do you think they added voice over work to the newer tutorial?  To make the game feel less dated than it really was.
 
The devs believed exactly what I'm saying: purely text based MMOs feel dated, and it's a strike against them.
 
You may be willing to take that strike. So may the makers of CoT/Coh 1.5, etc.  But it is a strike. 
 
And it's one that really doesn't seem, to me anyway, to offer any advantages to it that couldn't easily be countered by simply making voice over work optional. 
 
And voice over work isn't that expensive. I know this from experience. As a matter of fact, it's something that a group of volunteers from the community could get done fairly quickly, probably for free, and in a quality that is at least as good as that on The Secret World, from the comfort of their own PCs at home.  I teach Film production, I've got extensive experience in making voice overs, including with effects, etc.  Even still, if you wanted to hire professionals, you can get quality services doing one hour sessions of recordings for around 500 dollars, and each addition hour being just 100 dollars. So lets imagine that if we did EVERY cut scene existing in City of Heroes, and added in just ambiance voice over work for 50 contacts (A quick "hello" when you walk up, etc.), based on my experience as a QUICK guess from memory of the game, we're talk 10 hours of voice over work, maximum.  Assuming you'd need 5 male and 5 female voice actors to cover the number of contacts you have in the game, you'd be running around 14,000 dollars if you used ALL ten of them for the ENTIRE 10 hours.  In reality, you wouldn't, you'd be using each one for about 2 hours, so more likely a total cost of 6,000 dollars.
 
6,000 dollars.  That's for every cut scene in the game to have a voice over option, and for 50 of the most famous/popular contacts to have ambient voice over work. 
 
And it can be done much cheaper. Some quality voice acting talent work for 25 dollars a page for non-broadcast work.
Your argument falls apart. You said $6k for everything, but then $25/page. Both of these numbers are suspect, so let's go and look at what real professionals cost, and how much VO runtime real game titles have.

For a typical MMORPG, we are talking about 100,000 minutes of dialog to voice. According to Interactive Voices, Inc, one of the largest VO management groups in the US, the going rate is $100 per minute of recorded dialog. That's $10 million to record.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 08, 2014, 12:26:46 AM
If the revived CoX has about 34000 subs at $15, it will net $500k/month.

Makes a $6000 investment seem a no-brainer.  :roll:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 08, 2014, 12:32:37 AM
If the revived CoX has about 3400 subs at $15, it will net $500k/month.

Makes a $6000 investment seem a no-brainer.  :roll:
There is no $6k investment here. It's a $10,000,000 investment.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on September 08, 2014, 12:35:38 AM
There is no $6k investment here. It's a $10,000,000 investment.


Excuse me?

Did you say 10 million dollars?

Is that the asking price for what NcSoft is offering?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 08, 2014, 12:36:25 AM
No.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fable on September 08, 2014, 12:41:53 AM
For the record...I could give a crap less about voice acting..

+1

It'd be a huge waste of time/recorces. I doubt many people care eough about voice overs to warrant their inclusion. Just look at it this way. Money made from their addition would more than likely not bring a ROI sufficient enough or in a timely enough manner to justify it, if at all.

On the topic of vet rewards. I'm sure a kickstarter would help to fund APR, why not make them a backer perk for legacy and 1.5 (assuming its the same company). That way people that want to back the project and get the vet rewards sooner could purchase them and everyone else could earn them with time. You could even spread them out over a realistic backed amount and what vet rewards you don't pony up for can be earned over time with credited time equalling backer level.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 08, 2014, 12:46:32 AM
Ah, the memories.  AC was my first MMO, and left there to play Horizons for a goodly while.  (Loved the crafting there, and playing a dragon!). After that City of Heroes.  After that primarily LOTRO, but always came back to CoX.  Just never got over Flying, Radio Missions, Wenty's and Base/IO crafting...

 totally agree. I never created a char. in coh/cov that did not have flying,lol,just couldn't do it-loved flying :)  I do Lotr a little and enjoy it when I do. That also is done by turbine,and seeing how well they treat us Asheron's Call fans, I have no fear they will ever abandon Lotr either. They have created a lot of trust and confidence by their actions and other company's would do very well to imitate that :) 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 08, 2014, 12:53:20 AM
For the record...I could give a crap less about voice acting..

I find it intrusive and stupid. The best examples I have run into so far can be found in DCUO; the voice acting over there is almost bearable. But I don't need bosses spouting the same tagline 400 times during a boss-fight; I end up turning my sound off.

CoX did not need voice-overs, and lets just leave it at that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 08, 2014, 12:57:12 AM
downix,
VO is way over charging at $100/min. You are paying for the shiny logo and smiles.

Having sold advertising and marketing in large metro areas, I can tell you that voice talent is not paid by the minute.

They are paid by the unit of work.

I hired voice talent for extremely reasonable prices.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 08, 2014, 12:59:03 AM
1. I don't understand this idea that the day Windows 9 is released, it will drop a nuclear warhead on CoX from which the game will never recover. What? I don't recall any other Windows release that bothered us who were playing this game, why is 9 some unthinkable Armageddon/DOOM?

2. Do YOU run out and buy the new Windows the day it is released, and install it right away? I sure don't. In fact, I don't bother upgrading until.... I buy a new computer. I would be more than willing to maintain two PCs JUST to run this game, were that necessary.

But we don't yet know that it will be.

3. Windows 9 will be here looooooooooooooooooong before CoT/CoX2. Not much of a transition, if you ask me.

   I will just say this about that,lol, if i23 comes back to us alive,and somehow it couldn't be made to work on win-9, then to blazes with win-9, I'll stick with 7 and be happy :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 08, 2014, 01:01:31 AM
For the record...I could give a crap less about voice acting..

I'm with you.  I couldn't care less about voice acting either.  Quite frankly, if we get i23 CoX back without any account data, that alone will be a miracle.  All this other silly stuff being repeatedly stubbornly over and over is completely unimportant.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on September 08, 2014, 01:08:51 AM
And it can be done much cheaper. Some quality voice acting talent work for 25 dollars a page for non-broadcast work.

Hell, I'm not a professional, but I have a pretty versatile voice and I'd PAY to do it.  All I'd ask is if someone asked "Who is voicing that guy?" you let them know.  Who knows?  It may bring me more voice work.

And do I think it needs it?  No.  But if you add it those who don't like it should have the option to mute it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 08, 2014, 01:11:40 AM
There is no $6k investment here. It's a $10,000,000 investment.

swtor spent a rediculous amount on VO, and skimped on the rest of the game
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: RedWarlock on September 08, 2014, 01:14:09 AM
APR and the i23 server are completely separate. The i23 server (what some have started referring to as "Legacy City of Heroes" when also talking about APR) is going to be running City of heroes, Issue 23. It will not/can not be updated, as the source code is not being made available. (This is required for modifying either the server or client in any meaningful way.)

Atlas Park Revival (A.K.A: APR, Revival, CoH 1.5, CoH 2, "Wow, That's pretty.") is a project that is re-building the entirety of City of Heroes inside a more modern game engine. Specifically, Unreal Engine 4. It will be the same City, same game play, same lore and enemies. But it will be running on new technology that will allow us to update the game almost indefinitely, as well as do things that were nearly impossible with the old engine.
If you'd like to know more: http://apr.pc-logix.com/index.php?/topic/62-revival-faq-and-discussion/ (http://apr.pc-logix.com/index.php?/topic/62-revival-faq-and-discussion/)

Thank you Irish Girl for the clarification. I was a big supporter of the CoT Kickstarter campaign because I got inspired. Your project looks really amazing too - if you do a Kickstarter campaign, I will contribute to yours like I did for CoT. Count me among those who thinks that well done Super Hero MMOs can coexist and have a workable business model that can fund them. What I love about this whole effort is that we are re imagining the possibilities for creating and funding games. We are pushing back against the idea that big companies need to set the agenda for what we all will pay to play. We can set the agenda.

Thanks for all the great work all of you are doing to create the next generation of our creative world.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 08, 2014, 01:19:11 AM

Excuse me?

Did you say 10 million dollars?

Is that the asking price for what NcSoft is offering?
No, that is how much it would cost to meet the level of voice acting suggested, using standard rates.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mandrake on September 08, 2014, 01:20:35 AM
PRE-EDIT: Wrote up a huge industry post about this since I have worked in it and still do on the side. It doesn't matter, I will just say this:

The money being talked about here is not even close to being realistic. If you can find real voice actors to do a good job that do multiple voices for $6k for an entire MMO? Please send me their names because I could make a friggin' fortune off of those people. Literally a fortune if they are really any good at all. As in, I could retire inside of 2 years.

So if you want to pay bottom dollar and get a crappy sounding game - I guess. If not, then the price is ridiculous for this kind of project when it is completely not needed. Remember you need more than one man and woman. Most can only do 3 to 5 believably different voices if they are good. There are a lot of toons in CoX and a ton of content.

Some people might like voice work - to me and many others it just shatters the role playing experience because it breaks whatever voice you have created and attached to that character in your mind.

I would say that if you really want voice over work, then research it start to finish with all content required, get with the companies, find out how much it will cost, and get it funded - then approach whoever about making a version of the game or an option within the game for that or something. I for one do not want voice overs in the game to ruin what I already have in my mind for the characters I love in CoX. As far as the new projects coming out - it's up to them but I hope there is an option to disable any voice overs if they go with them.

Later!
Mandrake
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 08, 2014, 01:21:03 AM
downix,
VO is way over charging at $100/min. You are paying for the shiny logo and smiles.

Having sold advertising and marketing in large metro areas, I can tell you that voice talent is not paid by the minute.

They are paid by the unit of work.

I hired voice talent for extremely reasonable prices.
$100/min of finished audio VO work is cheap. I've seen it go to the tens of thousands.

VO work is more than just the voice actors, it is the producers, the sound engineers, the mixers, the studio rental.

And realize that you need to run the same dialog over multiple times, one for each language supported. It is not hard to see how you can get 100k minutes of dialog quickly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 08, 2014, 01:23:11 AM
I would say that if you really want voice over work, then research it start to finish with all content required, get with the companies, find out how much it will cost, and get it funded - then approach whoever about making a version of the game or an option within the game for that or something.
That's close to what we did, only we did several breakdowns - for all VO, for just cutscenes, for tutorials, and used preliminary estimates of the content volume involved.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tiberian Fiend on September 08, 2014, 01:33:22 AM
Voice acting is nice, but I turned the sound off in CoH after the first 3-4 years and started tuning in to internet radio.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 08, 2014, 01:44:17 AM
On a completely different note..

Downix how do you see the current wave of press affecting negotiations if at all?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 08, 2014, 01:48:39 AM
Me thinks the people can negotiate this with NC Soft while also paying them X amount of dollars just to access the data. They will say, we don't want access to the information, but we will negotiate a price for the end users to have access to that data. If that end user is willing to pay to have their data retrieved, then you can charge them X more amount of dollars individually. In a sense this will have NC Soft double dipping for the same piece of information and will probably be incising enough for them to release it.

I like the way you think.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on September 08, 2014, 01:51:59 AM
First of all, let me apologize for stating the following, which may upset some people, but they're based on my opinions, which I believe I'm entitled to, as much as you are to yours.

So, Catching up on several discussion threads here:

1)  AAA MMORPGs?  All I can say is "One Person's Treasure is Another Person's Trash"  Spare me another over-hyped Elf, Troll, Demon-laden fantasy world.  It may be mean of me, but I've gotten a bit of enjoyment out of reading all the spin-meisters at MMORPG.com and other sites trying to
sell the next "latest and greatest of all" MMOs to what seems to be a bunch of drooling, mindless followers, who give a game they haven't even played yet almost perfect scores on the website's game lists.  Of course a month after the latest MMO has been released, most of the players who just couldn't wait for the "Ultimate Experience" have run off to the next MMO 'event'.  Ah, the public can be so fickle.

2) Voice acting in MMOs.  Personally, I consider it to be a nice option for those who read at the pace of a snail, or have other reading disabilities.  As long as it's included as a bypassable option, I can live with VOs.  My main problem with Voice Overs is that I can read the text quite a bit quicker than it is normally spoken, and I usually know where it's going to end up anyhow, so I consider VOs to be a waste of my time. YMMV.

3) Quite a few people seem worried about the transfer of account data (which may or may not still exist) between NCSoft and the prospective new IP Owners, for the purposes of Awards, Badges, etc.  Tabbing to another window, thru the City Info Tracker site I've got a pretty comprehensive list of my characters' badges, etc, with ownership validated via communication with the game when it was still active. Is there any way that info could be used by the prospective IP Managers to reinstate earned items to our re-created characters? I'm really surprised I haven't seen any mention of that option here, since people keep asking about Sentinel data transfers (which aren't accepted for various reasons.)

Next Year in Paragon City!

Sugoi
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 08, 2014, 01:53:55 AM
I wouldn't have a problem with everyone being a "veteran".    I might even suggest that most of the players will be long time vets.   It was that way at shutdown and everything was ok.   I can't see a downside.

I think the simplest way to do it is to have a "sped up" vet reward system upon launch, in reverse.  You can basically "rebuy" your vet rewards at launch for a one time fee for a limited time.  x amount per tier.  The first week of launch you can rebuy up to the last tier, for x amount.  The second week, you can buy up to the second to last tier, for x amount, and pay and additional y amount for the final tier, the next week x amount gets you to the third to last tier, and you have to pay extra for the last two, etc.   
 
This way the game gets some much needed capital, players are incentivized to return quickly because the faster they are back the cheaper the vet rewards are, etc. 

 
I would also extend this temporary sale to players who can purchase unlocked level 50s, recipe sets, etc. for a limited time, to help get the game back to full, thriving, hussel and bussel. The faster we have hamis going, incarnate trials, etc. along with new toons the more likely this is to succeed.

 
 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 08, 2014, 02:04:50 AM
Your argument falls apart. You said $6k for everything, but then $25/page. Both of these numbers are suspect, so let's go and look at what real professionals cost, and how much VO runtime real game titles have.

For a typical MMORPG, we are talking about 100,000 minutes of dialog to voice. According to Interactive Voices, Inc, one of the largest VO management groups in the US, the going rate is $100 per minute of recorded dialog. That's $10 million to record.

Downix I'm not sure where you're getting your figures from, but the figures I used are direct quotes from actual companies. As I said, I have experience with this.  And the 25 dollars per page is for total narration (as in audio book,) not pages of dialogue.
 
It's honestly NOT an expensive feature, as the poster who said their wife actually works in the field as well verified.  And Interactive Voices is for broadcast level, unionized voice work.  That's like saying we can't use Unreal 4 because it would be too expensive for players and citing an Alienware quote for $5000 per PC.
 
Also, as I pointed out, you wouldn't be doing a TSW level voice acting install, which would be 100,000 minutes. We're talking, at most, 2 hours for all TFs, plus a few hours of ambient dialogue. 
 
Just enough to removed the "Dated" feel from a text based game and make it seem less like a "quality" issue and more like a designer's choice to rely heavily on text.
 
If you'd like, I can post -links- to companies that provide quality voice over work/talent at the prices I'm describing.   
 
And again, that ignores the option I gave of tapping into the community.  Having worked in the production field I'm promising you you could EASILY come up with a volunteer voice over group that would record these for free, and you can still play quality control and make sure it sounds professional, just like you're doing right now with Irish Girl and APR. 
 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 08, 2014, 02:09:16 AM
No, that is how much it would cost to meet the level of voice acting suggested, using standard rates.

 
No disrespect Downix, but you're wrong on this one. 
 
 
Just plain wrong. 
 
And you've now got three people who have worked in this exact field telling you so.   You're comparing budgets and companies used in AAA productions to what we're talking about, and that makes no sense.  If we had that mentality, CoT would never have made it out of kickstarter. It's like someone saying "you can't make an MMO for less than a million dollar kick starter.  Star Wars The Old Republic cost 200 million to make."
 
Sure, it did.  But you aren't making ST:TOR and it didn't HAVE to cost that much. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 08, 2014, 02:13:43 AM
$100/min of finished audio VO work is cheap. I've seen it go to the tens of thousands.

VO work is more than just the voice actors, it is the producers, the sound engineers, the mixers, the studio rental.

And realize that you need to run the same dialog over multiple times, one for each language supported. It is not hard to see how you can get 100k minutes of dialog quickly.

I've done just that for nowhere near the outrageous prices  you have been quote, using WELL KNOWN talent, employing sound engineers and so on.

Your prices in no way represent the actual market value.
 Peace on!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 08, 2014, 02:27:27 AM
And for the my last post:
 

 
If you were actually going with big-screen actors, the SAG rates for voice-over work are $760 per four hour session.  Four hours.  Those are the guild rates.  I'm not sure what the heck someone is doing paying 100 dollars per minute. This rate, by the way, is for big name screen and VO stars like Keith David, etc. 
 
Which I don't think anyone would even think of suggesting be used.


Also, voice-over recording is very simple, technically, and doesn't require a professional studio any fancier than what the game will already be using to create sound effects.
 
 
I mean heck, in my basic IB Film class I require students to do a sound design project where they have to create an entire scene, complete with voice-over talent, complete foleying, and score, and they do it in three days as high schoolers.
 
And the most of it is better than what you hear in Champions Online and DCUO. And they're only using the Adobe Creative suite, pop filters, shotgun mics, etc.

 
Ok, I'm done now. It's really not a deal breaker for me. Just something I think would bring in more, in the long run, than it would cost to implement, and help any game released survive a little longer into the future. 
 
Also Downix, for the record, good work. I'm incredibly excited for WHATEVER you guys come up with, whatever happens with this deal. You guys rock.  :-) 
 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lapucelle on September 08, 2014, 02:40:09 AM
Okay, guys. No dying on this hill. Right now, with our _extremely_ limited budget, we're not looking into doing voice acting. We are leaving the potential for adding such into the game later, but it's probably not something we're going to launch with, for a number of reasons, not all of which involve purely monetary matters.

If we were, in fact, to add voice acting, it would be for cinematic moments, and for short greeting phrases, much in the way Wildstar does - I independently thought of the concept before it launched into beta. Enough flavor to get the feel of the person you're talking to, but not to read the entire dialogue.

We cool?

- Warcabbit
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 08, 2014, 02:40:35 AM
 the veteran stuff doesnt bother me.. Id like to see a way to regain the levels and IO's but that gets very close to Pay 2 Win which I realize a very large majority have an issue with..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 08, 2014, 02:44:01 AM
the veteran stuff doesnt bother me.. Id like to see a way to regain the levels and IO's but that gets very close to Pay 2 Win which I realize a very large majority have an issue with..

I wondered if they could just give all subscribers XP buffs.  Everquest 2 does this.  And if they opened up all vet and shop power set/costumes to subscribers too, we'd be back to where our old accounts were in no time.  And think about how fun it would be just getting characters leveling again.  It would be like back at launch, only with 23 issues' worth of extra fringe benefits.   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on September 08, 2014, 02:50:59 AM
In full honesty, the only vet rewards I really gave a damn about was the vet pieces.

http://s1292.photobucket.com/user/Resselydoc/media/Archangel_zps3fbe1734.jpg.html
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Phaetan on September 08, 2014, 02:57:50 AM
Of course, the Paragon Store itself was actually ran by an outside company unless I'm terribly mistaken.  This would make reopening it for business a little more complex.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mandrake on September 08, 2014, 03:01:26 AM
I'm kind of surprised there is such a desire for previous character data. I miss my characters and all don't get me wrong, but I am actually looking forward to the day that I can start them from scratch and play them from 'start to finish' all over again. Sure, you could always /respec but think about starting over with a clean slate right from the start. Especially getting to start over and getting to play all of that content all over the place that we just played as it came out.

I can't imagine *not* wanting to re-explore the whole world again one I'm back inside the game - plenty of time to get all of the location badges, and plenty of others as I'm sure I won't be the only one vying for raids to be spawned, TFs to be formed, you name it.

I dunno - I guess it would be cool to just have all my toons waiting for me, but again - I'm kind of looking forward to logging in, and having a bunch of empty slots staring back at me... just waiting for me to create (and destroy)! :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 08, 2014, 03:03:22 AM
Of course, the Paragon Store itself was actually ran by an outside company unless I'm terribly mistaken.  This would make reopening it for business a little more complex.

I think you are correct..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 08, 2014, 03:16:00 AM
I'm kind of surprised there is such a desire for previous character data. I miss my characters and all don't get me wrong, but I am actually looking forward to the day that I can start them from scratch and play them from 'start to finish' all over again. Sure, you could always /respec but think about starting over with a clean slate right from the start. Especially getting to start over and getting to play all of that content all over the place that we just played as it came out.

I can't imagine *not* wanting to re-explore the whole world again one I'm back inside the game - plenty of time to get all of the location badges, and plenty of others as I'm sure I won't be the only one vying for raids to be spawned, TFs to be formed, you name it.

I dunno - I guess it would be cool to just have all my toons waiting for me, but again - I'm kind of looking forward to logging in, and having a bunch of empty slots staring back at me... just waiting for me to create (and destroy)! :)

I doubt we will get our characters or account info back.  However, even if we did, we could still roll new characters too.  You could do the "start to finish" thing again that way as well.  But in the end, it's not only not likely we'll see our old characters or accounts ever again, but let's face it, it's not exactly set in stone that CoX will ever get up and running again either.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 08, 2014, 03:21:55 AM
A lot will depend on just what is in this mysterious 'server image'.

This could simply be a cover to use files that an employee "liberated" before the shutdown.
That statement makes slightly less than no sense. They are negotiating with NCsoft to acquire the server image. NCsoft owns the game outright; IP, source code, account information, server images, everything. There was no need for an employee to "liberate" anything since NCsoft owned it lock, stock, and barrel.

That's like being being the owner of a store and sneaking in through a skylight to open up every morning. Sure, you can do that, but why the hell would you?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 08, 2014, 03:30:26 AM
Your argument falls apart. You said $6k for everything, but then $25/page. Both of these numbers are suspect, so let's go and look at what real professionals cost, and how much VO runtime real game titles have.

For a typical MMORPG, we are talking about 100,000 minutes of dialog to voice. According to Interactive Voices, Inc, one of the largest VO management groups in the US, the going rate is $100 per minute of recorded dialog. That's $10 million to record.

Does that include the actors as well?  I work in a recording studio and while we specialize in music we do voice over's too sometimes for commercials and auditions.  Nothing to big but we have done a few auditions for people trying to get small roles in some well known animated movies.  We charge an hourly rate of $60 an hour for our services.  Given we are doing 10-20 minutes of VO at a time.  And we certainly are not one of the biggest VO companies in the US either.  I was just curious what was included for that rate because if you had actors already paid and you were confident in their ability to capture the moment you could record all 100,000 minutes for $99,960 at our studio.  Still way more money then $6000.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 08, 2014, 03:37:52 AM
Given that NcSoft apparently didn't keep anything other than an image of the game, is it likely they will have the data that can indicate how long someone was subbed to a game that no longer exists?

Not exacty, what is being negotiated is to lease the IP, have a holding company run the Legacy CoH using an image and NCSoft keeps the source code. It is available but not for sale as apparently it gives away the setup of some other games. The data may not be possible to link to this image - easily. They have said repeatedly - FOR NOW.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 08, 2014, 03:56:43 AM
Does that include the actors as well?  I work in a recording studio and while we specialize in music we do voice over's too sometimes for commercials and auditions.  Nothing to big but we have done a few auditions for people trying to get small roles in some well known animated movies.  We charge an hourly rate of $60 an hour for our services.  Given we are doing 10-20 minutes of VO at a time.  And we certainly are not one of the biggest VO companies in the US either.  I was just curious what was included for that rate because if you had actors already paid and you were confident in their ability to capture the moment you could record all 100,000 minutes for $99,960 at our studio.  Still way more money then $6000.
That would include the actors.

And that is 100,000 minutes *finished*, not raw recording time. With a typical recording ratio of 12:1, that means 1.2 million minutes of audio recorded, if you went straight through. Considering half to 2/3rd of time is not actively recording, we're looking at closer to 3.6 million minutes of studio time. It would be $3.6 million to rent your studio for such a project. Add in the voice actors....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 08, 2014, 03:57:38 AM
Not exacty, what is being negotiated is to lease the IP, have a holding company run the Legacy CoH using an image and NCSoft keeps the source code. It is available but not for sale as apparently it gives away the setup of some other games. The data may not be possible to link to this image - easily. They have said repeatedly - FOR NOW.

If NCSoft is just leasing the ip then couldn't they if CoT included CoH cannon...couldn't they shut CoT down later then? :S
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 08, 2014, 04:04:45 AM
If NCSoft is just leasing the ip then couldn't they if CoT included CoH cannon...couldn't they shut CoT down later then? :S

You show promise my apprentice.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 08, 2014, 04:07:13 AM

 
No disrespect Downix, but you're wrong on this one. 
 
 
Just plain wrong. 
 
And you've now got three people who have worked in this exact field telling you so.   You're comparing budgets and companies used in AAA productions to what we're talking about, and that makes no sense.  If we had that mentality, CoT would never have made it out of kickstarter. It's like someone saying "you can't make an MMO for less than a million dollar kick starter.  Star Wars The Old Republic cost 200 million to make."
 
Sure, it did.  But you aren't making ST:TOR and it didn't HAVE to cost that much.

swtor cost 200 mill because of the VO. and now they cant add story content without breaking the old stuff. I have 18 55's already and hearing the same vo over and over gets old real fast.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 08, 2014, 04:09:17 AM
Not exacty, what is being negotiated is to lease the IP, have a holding company run the Legacy CoH using an image and NCSoft keeps the source code.
Downix said NCsoft is SELLING the IP (e.g. the story/characters part of the game), not leasing it.

NCsoft is LEASING the engine (e.g. the mechanics part of the game) to CoHI23.

Whatever company is set up to PURCHASE the IP will then turn around and lease it to successors, if they want.

EDIT: Ugh, I'm getting so damn tired of people not reading.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 08, 2014, 04:09:54 AM
I wondered if they could just give all subscribers XP buffs.  Everquest 2 does this.  And if they opened up all vet and shop power set/costumes to subscribers too, we'd be back to where our old accounts were in no time.  And think about how fun it would be just getting characters leveling again.  It would be like back at launch, only with 23 issues' worth of extra fringe benefits.   ;D

I will have 2 accounts subscribed as soon as they tell me its possible...sounds great to me
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on September 08, 2014, 04:29:54 AM

EDIT: Ugh, I'm getting so damn tired of people not reading.

You dissin' mah Irondawg?!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 08, 2014, 04:41:31 AM
Downix said NCsoft is SELLING the IP (e.g. the story/characters part of the game), not leasing it.

NCsoft is LEASING the engine (e.g. the mechanics part of the game) to CoHI23.

Whatever company is set up to PURCHASE the IP will then turn around and lease it to successors, if they want.

EDIT: Ugh, I'm getting so damn tired of people not reading.

Thats what I read to in the Downix post.  I even asked what was the case just in case as a friend of mine was rather worried.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on September 08, 2014, 04:42:41 AM
That would include the actors.

And that is 100,000 minutes *finished*, not raw recording time. With a typical recording ratio of 12:1, that means 1.2 million minutes of audio recorded, if you went straight through. Considering half to 2/3rd of time is not actively recording, we're looking at closer to 3.6 million minutes of studio time. It would be $3.6 million to rent your studio for such a project. Add in the voice actors....

I believe the problem is they think you are speaking of the short term, when you are in-fact speaking of the price of the long-term finished product.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on September 08, 2014, 04:47:02 AM
Downix said NCsoft is SELLING the IP (e.g. the story/characters part of the game), not leasing it.

NCsoft is LEASING the engine (e.g. the mechanics part of the game) to CoHI23.

Whatever company is set up to PURCHASE the IP will then turn around and lease it to successors, if they want.


So, am I understanding ... Nate got the ball rolling, but now it's in the hands of South Korean folks who are negotiating a deal to buy the IP for a company.
And Nate will not be involved in running that company, but we don't know who exactly WILL be running that company (which may not exist but is being planned for)

So the masks for the folks who are negotiating and potentially purchasing and running and putting up the MOO-LAH for all this are still on.  No?

Or am I missing something -- I keep seeing that the structure of the company is not yet determined, but I also read that "we know who will be running the servers" --
Do we know who WILL be involved in the new IP company if the deal is successful, and we're just not saying... or does nobody know...  confus-ed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 08, 2014, 04:52:52 AM

If you'd like, I can post -links- to companies that provide quality voice over work/talent. community.

...just like you're doing right now with Irish Girl and APR.

I can clear up any speculation on this topic. Revival is not planned to have voice work at launch.
CoT I can't comment on, since I'm not their lead.

If you guys are willing,  I would actually appreciate it if you would post some of the informative you have on the subject over on the Revival forums.  I am actually interested to see it, and of course want to be as informed as I can be for possible additions to the game.

And to clarify, Nobody vets my work. Nate sees most Revival updates when everyone else does.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 08, 2014, 04:53:19 AM
I believe the problem is they think you are speaking of the short term, when you are in-fact speaking of the price of the long-term finished product.
I always try and think long-term here. Otherwise you run out of money.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 08, 2014, 04:55:48 AM
I hired voice talent for extremely reasonable prices.

I know this is going to sound like a smartass post, please understand that it is not.

Were they *good* voice talent?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 08, 2014, 04:56:39 AM
So, am I understanding ... Nate got the ball rolling, but now it's in the hands of South Korean folks who are negotiating a deal to buy the IP for a company.
And Nate will not be involved in running that company, but we don't know who exactly WILL be running that company (which may not exist but is being planned for)

So the masks for the folks who are negotiating and potentially purchasing and running and putting up the MOO-LAH for all this are still on.  No?

Or am I missing something -- I keep seeing that the structure of the company is not yet determined, but I also read that "we know who will be running the servers" --
Do we know who WILL be involved in the new IP company if the deal is successful, and we're just not saying... or does nobody know...  confus-ed.
That depends on the particulars of the deal. There are a half-dozen possible structures laid out, with different possible people depending on the structure.

It could be a lot of different combinations of bits and elements and ideas. We simply do not know yet where the cards will fall. All we do know is that we are sitting at the table, and that the cards are being shuffled before dealing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 08, 2014, 04:56:45 AM
No.

.........
/Aggelakis?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 08, 2014, 04:58:46 AM
Right, so you'll have to wait on that to be ready, then modify it to work with COH's character model. From what I've seen of CoT character model regions so far, I don't expect them to be directly compatible.

Ragdoll only gets you part of the way there, since the "neutral" (0) position of the bones in the player skeleton is not a zero-transformation state. You'll still have to get everything rotated and positioned around the origin just right so that they'll line up when transformed back to the appropriate place on the skeleton. All those cumulative transformations will inevitably introduce a small amount of shearing or non-linear transformation, though probably only perfectionists like me would be bothered by it.

You also lose bone bindings and weights for the verticies in the capture process, which is a much bigger deal for costume parts than is is for say, buildings.

Either way, it's still a huge effort to do that for every costume part, and it's not something that can be simply "ported".


Yes,  yes it is. I didn't say it would be easy.  Nor that I've ever been accused of an excess of sanity, or a lack of ambition.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 08, 2014, 05:09:20 AM
That depends on the particulars of the deal. There are a half-dozen possible structures laid out, with different possible people depending on the structure.

It could be a lot of different combinations of bits and elements and ideas. We simply do not know yet where the cards will fall. All we do know is that we are sitting at the table, and that the cards are being shuffled before dealing.

I prefer to think that the cards were dealt, but they are now placing bets and raises. Then they will get new cards and see if anyone folds. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Arc X on September 08, 2014, 05:21:03 AM
All I know is that when a VO scene happens in any game it means perfect time for a bio break or go get more munchies/drinks.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on September 08, 2014, 05:46:53 AM
All I know is that when a VO scene happens in any game it means perfect time for a bio break or go get more munchies/drinks.

Would the first option be considered to be a vowel movement?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 08, 2014, 05:52:21 AM
Not that we have a vote, but I would prefer to forgo the voice over, just don't want it nor need it.


Would the first option be considered to be a vowel movement?


*Snort!*

That hit the funny bone  ;D


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Xenos on September 08, 2014, 06:15:49 AM
That would include the actors.

And that is 100,000 minutes *finished*, not raw recording time. With a typical recording ratio of 12:1, that means 1.2 million minutes of audio recorded, if you went straight through. Considering half to 2/3rd of time is not actively recording, we're looking at closer to 3.6 million minutes of studio time. It would be $3.6 million to rent your studio for such a project. Add in the voice actors....

Let me start out by saying I personally have no interest whatsoever in spoken dialog in the game. None.

But as someone else who has hired VO talent and directed VO sessions for broadcast and corporate projects, I have to agree with the people who consider these numbers quite inflated.

I don't mean any offense by disagreeing, but it sounds to me like you got some bad advise when you were investigating the cost of spoken dialog.

In any case though...I am happy without it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 08, 2014, 06:24:47 AM
For the record...I could give a crap less about voice acting..
Reading your response made me smile and think of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw)

You just said you do actually care about voice acting.    ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 08, 2014, 06:37:30 AM
I think the simplest way to do it is to have a "sped up" vet reward system upon launch, in reverse.  You can basically "rebuy" your vet rewards at launch for a one time fee for a limited time.  x amount per tier.  The first week of launch you can rebuy up to the last tier, for x amount.  The second week, you can buy up to the second to last tier, for x amount, and pay and additional y amount for the final tier, the next week x amount gets you to the third to last tier, and you have to pay extra for the last two, etc.   
 
This way the game gets some much needed capital, players are incentivized to return quickly because the faster they are back the cheaper the vet rewards are, etc. 

 
I would also extend this temporary sale to players who can purchase unlocked level 50s, recipe sets, etc. for a limited time, to help get the game back to full, thriving, hussel and bussel. The faster we have hamis going, incarnate trials, etc. along with new toons the more likely this is to succeed.
No problem with either idea here.    8)    I'm not rich, but money is still much less important than time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 08, 2014, 06:48:31 AM
I truly wish the first post would be amended or there was a FAQ regarding this... tired of seeing the same questions and misconceptions over and over and over.


Can someone create a sticky post of FAQs regarding all of this please to help calm the hysteria over who is doing what (MWM is not running/buying CoHi23)... that Windows 9 does not mean the death of CoHi23 etc etc..


I know why people are confused...because there is so much chatter in between relevant posts and they are easily missed; which is why I think a sticky FAQ that is locked should be implemented by someone who can in PLAIN language explain things to people.



Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 08, 2014, 06:51:53 AM
Let me start out by saying I personally have no interest whatsoever in spoken dialog in the game. None.

But as someone else who has hired VO talent and directed VO sessions for broadcast and corporate projects, I have to agree with the people who consider these numbers quite inflated.
  • The talent rates are high, and yes, we are talking about "good" talent.
  • I am not sure where you get the 12:1 ratio. The people I've worked with nail this in 2, maybe 3 takes. Nowhere near 12:1.
  • Editing a V/O is comparatively easy and fast. Not like video. It shouldn't take an editor and producer long to get this sorted.
  • Also 100,000 minutes sounds like a lot of dialog, that's well over 1,500 hours. I'd think this is a worst case scenario and not a minimum amount. That number I'd expect to be significantly lower. And therefore your multiplier would be lower as well.

I don't mean any offense by disagreeing, but it sounds to me like you got some bad advise when you were investigating the cost of spoken dialog.

In any case though...I am happy without it.
To be clear, 100,000 minutes is for all languages needed to support. Your typical MMORPG today really should support English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Japanese and Russian. So, reality, discussing about 225 hours of in-game dialog, which is actually pretty conservative for modern MMO's. SWTOR is a monster at over 600 hours of dialog. (I wish I was joking here)

Now, if you opt for the more conservative approach, like WoW and Wildstar, short clips which are not reflective of any mission text, you still wind up with hours of these snippets.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 08, 2014, 07:09:32 AM
That would include the actors.

And that is 100,000 minutes *finished*, not raw recording time. With a typical recording ratio of 12:1, that means 1.2 million minutes of audio recorded, if you went straight through. Considering half to 2/3rd of time is not actively recording, we're looking at closer to 3.6 million minutes of studio time. It would be $3.6 million to rent your studio for such a project. Add in the voice actors....

Ya I had a part I deleted about how that was assuming everyone could get it in 1 shot and everything was perfect the first time around.  Which has never happened in any studio session I have ever done.  And that was figured including bounce time too.  It would take several hours just to bounce that much audio.  And assuming it needed no processing at all, no de-essing, no reverb, nothing.  Also after looking at that, I think I should tell my boss to try to do more video game and movie VO.  Sounds like there is money to be made in it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 08, 2014, 07:11:25 AM
Ya I had a part I deleted about how that was assuming everyone could get it in 1 shot and everything was perfect the first time around.  Which has never happened in any studio session I have ever done.  And that was figured including bounce time too.  It would take several hours just to bounce that much audio.  And assuming it needed no processing at all, no de-essing, no reverb, nothing.  Also after looking at that, I think I should tell my boss to try to do more video game and movie VO.  Sounds like there is money to be made in it.
If you do, let me know and I'll forward your info to my friends in Microsoft.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 08, 2014, 07:19:37 AM

 
I'm sorry but you're stating a bunch of your preferences as facts.  There is NOTHING about voice acting that takes any longer than any other cut scene, and in fact, can be much faster than text based cut scenes that don't have a "skippable" option.  If there IS a skippable option, there is nothing about voice over cut scenes that make them somehow "unskippable" anymore than text based ones.   
 
It sounds like you're suggestion is we shouldn't have cut scenes at all, which CoH already has.  And lets not forget that voice over work can be done outside of cut scenes, as well.  Why do you think they added voice over work to the newer tutorial?  To make the game feel less dated than it really was.
 
The devs believed exactly what I'm saying: purely text based MMOs feel dated, and it's a strike against them.
 
You may be willing to take that strike. So may the makers of CoT/Coh 1.5, etc.  But it is a strike. 
 
And it's one that really doesn't seem, to me anyway, to offer any advantages to it that couldn't easily be countered by simply making voice over work optional. 
 
And voice over work isn't that expensive. I know this from experience. As a matter of fact, it's something that a group of volunteers from the community could get done fairly quickly, probably for free, and in a quality that is at least as good as that on The Secret World, from the comfort of their own PCs at home.  I teach Film production, I've got extensive experience in making voice overs, including with effects, etc.  Even still, if you wanted to hire professionals, you can get quality services doing one hour sessions of recordings for around 500 dollars, and each addition hour being just 100 dollars. So lets imagine that if we did EVERY cut scene existing in City of Heroes, and added in just ambiance voice over work for 50 contacts (A quick "hello" when you walk up, etc.), based on my experience as a QUICK guess from memory of the game, we're talk 10 hours of voice over work, maximum.  Assuming you'd need 5 male and 5 female voice actors to cover the number of contacts you have in the game, you'd be running around 14,000 dollars if you used ALL ten of them for the ENTIRE 10 hours.  In reality, you wouldn't, you'd be using each one for about 2 hours, so more likely a total cost of 6,000 dollars.
 
6,000 dollars.  That's for every cut scene in the game to have a voice over option, and for 50 of the most famous/popular contacts to have ambient voice over work. 
 
And it can be done much cheaper. Some quality voice acting talent work for 25 dollars a page for non-broadcast work.

1.  Voice overs are not the same thing as voice acting.

2.  I did not compare voice acting to non-voice cut scenes.  I compared voice acting to text-based dialog.

3.  There *always* exists a way to make text-based dialog run at a better pace for all players of a team than voice acted dialog.  Its called "reading."

4.  Whether voice acting is "expensive" or not is a semantic game involving the definition of "expensive" I'm not playing.  What I said was that it diverts resources from making more content without an obvious gameplay benefit.

5.  I'm unaware of any dev that was quoted as saying the lack of voice dialog made City of Heroes feel "dated," and I would consider it particularly odd if they did because voice acting is still not standard fare for most MMOs today.

6.  Rereading my post, I find no statement that could be characterized as presenting preference as fact.  That voice acting is frictional isn't a preference, its provably true (cut scenes in general were sufficiently frictional that players demanded a way to bypass them in things like the BAF, which resulted in the "skip if every character has already run the BAF at least once" code).  That most or all content in MMOs is designed on the presumption that it will be run by teams is also a fact.  I'm willing to go out on a limb and state that my observations of opinion surrounding the game is sufficient to state that there is no general consensus among players that voice acting in SWTOR is appreciated as a significant advancement, and even if it is not its not a statement of my preference being presented as fact; its an observation of player preference in general.  My statements about the process of reading text appears to be true on their face.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 08, 2014, 07:22:37 AM
Some people might like voice work - to me and many others it just shatters the role playing experience because it breaks whatever voice you have created and attached to that character in your mind.

Everyone likes to dish on WoW because it's biggest, but I like its approach to voice. A few major plot characters are voiced, we have the famous Blizzard cutscenes that are on par with AAA *movies*, and very few "Shut down ALL the beacons!" moments. Your character grunts when hit, has a battle cry and a death cry, but everything else is voluntary and done via commands. Most NPCs greet you, many with a few words of their native language. It all sets a mood/tone very effectively.

EQ2 was much more hit or miss. The usual range of battle cries and grunts is well done and like WoW, adds flavor...particularly the distinctive Iksar "Sup!". Sounds cheesy but it's actually pretty endearing.

The Sarnak are beautifully voice acted. For an "evil" race in a neutral city...it gives them depth instead of seeming like the programmer forgot to flag the banker to have a faction. It shows so many small points about this young, proud society...that their females are equal warriors, that they have everything from eager young ones and bad cooks to hardened sneaks willing to fight dirty. Incredibly, incredibly well done.

And then the single worst voice acting I've seen comes later in the game. It's immersion breaking and poorly done. Out in Velious, there are a couple quests which run you thru different options and your response is a very derpy "I don't know!". It's practically offensive...it's the sort of tone someone might use mocking someone with an intellectual disability.

Add to that there are only 2 voices for it...one male, one female...and it's cringe inducing. Maybe my barb SK really is a bit...slow. Not how I saw her but tolerable I guess. For my Ikky Beastlord who has an entirely different voice to use the exact same dopey sound effect was completely immersion shattering.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 08, 2014, 07:30:26 AM
I'm not particularly bothered by VA in MMO's really.  Whilst it might be nice to ge a greeting from your contact, it's by no means necessary.  Now, VA to add -ambience-, that I'd go with. Screams in the distance when there's a building fire, or someone getting mugged, or a giant monster rampaging, maybe the occasional half heard conversation of someone using a phone, police radio chatter as a squad car passes you by.  That kind of stuff is fine by me, but spoken mission texts and cutscenes? Not really bothered.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: RedWarlock on September 08, 2014, 07:34:57 AM
I truly wish the first post would be amended or there was a FAQ regarding this... tired of seeing the same questions and misconceptions over and over and over.


Can someone create a sticky post of FAQs regarding all of this please to help calm the hysteria over who is doing what (MWM is not running/buying CoHi23)... that Windows 9 does not mean the death of CoHi23 etc etc..


I know why people are confused...because there is so much chatter in between relevant posts and they are easily missed; which is why I think a sticky FAQ that is locked should be implemented by someone who can in PLAIN language explain things to people.

Yes, would be very helpful...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 08, 2014, 07:38:44 AM
Of course, the Paragon Store itself was actually ran by an outside company unless I'm terribly mistaken.  This would make reopening it for business a little more complex.

Also insane.  MWM would be better off outsourcing the City of Titans store to a nine year old's lemonade stand.

The Freedom store was the kind of awful I could write a book about.  No aspect of it, from how the contract was awarded to the vendor selected to the initial design to the awful awful code that implemented it to its performance and (lack of) functionality to the ludicrous rate at which issues were addressed.  It was literally so bad if it was a senior high school programming project I would have given it an F.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 08, 2014, 07:48:09 AM
If you do, let me know and I'll forward your info to my friends in Microsoft.

That would be awesome actually.  My boss would be much more willing to pursue the idea if I tell him that.   I'll pass what you said onto him
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Phaetan on September 08, 2014, 08:41:58 AM
The Freedom store was the kind of awful I could write a book about.

Oh, undoubtedly.  I know that you are much more knowledgeable about the details, but what I'd observed as a player included things like staff admitting that things needed changed at one point, but they couldn't get the people running the store to respond in a timely manner when something was wrong.  I intentionally left out the problems with the service as it existed, as I felt pointing out that bringing the store back up as it was would involve negotiations with yet another company was a sufficiently large ice bath.

I seem to recall that the interface very similar to other services of the sort that they provided to other games, so likely they have proprietary control of the store as it existed.  Dies that sounds correct to you, Arcana?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 08, 2014, 08:47:00 AM
I wondered if they could just give all subscribers XP buffs.  Everquest 2 does this.  And if they opened up all vet and shop power set/costumes to subscribers too, we'd be back to where our old accounts were in no time.  And think about how fun it would be just getting characters leveling again.  It would be like back at launch, only with 23 issues' worth of extra fringe benefits.   ;D

An option might be about 6 months of DXP and by then the store will be up and running and XP/INF boosters and super packs will be available for purchase.   As to leveling again from scratch, well I can PL/Grind as well as the next person but with all the characters I had prior to shutdown I don't see them all coming back from scratch as there were too many.

Also the anniversary badges would have to start over from the beginning or else be offered all at once so that people can catch up quickly on adding them to their badge collecting alts.  :)

Now if they could arrange a way for us to pay a one time fee to regain our account  data and characters, that would be worth considering.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 08, 2014, 10:30:10 AM
If you do, let me know and I'll forward your info to my friends in Microsoft.

WHAT?!?!? Microsoft never gets it right the first time around?

I must meditate on this....

:P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 08, 2014, 10:30:35 AM
Also insane.  MWM would be better off outsourcing the City of Titans store to a nine year old's lemonade stand.

The Freedom store was the kind of awful I could write a book about.  No aspect of it, from how the contract was awarded to the vendor selected to the initial design to the awful awful code that implemented it to its performance and (lack of) functionality to the ludicrous rate at which issues were addressed.  It was literally so bad if it was a senior high school programming project I would have given it an F.

(/Looks around)

DAMN.

Edit: Not disagreeing, as it was a pain looking for the stuff I was actually interested in, but we're kind of stuck with the UI as is if the game comes back, right?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 08, 2014, 11:43:05 AM


Now if they could arrange a way for us to pay a one time fee to regain our account  data and characters, that would be worth considering.

I would pay up to $100 bucks to get that back.. easily..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 08, 2014, 11:47:44 AM
  • I am not sure where you get the 12:1 ratio. The people I've worked with nail this in 2, maybe 3 takes. Nowhere near 12:1.

My understanding of the explanation is is not that  that is 12:1 takes/usable takes as it is 12:1 minutes/usable minutes.  I admint it still seems high to me noit working in that field but I expect that a good bit of that is "leaked time."

  • Editing a V/O is comparatively easy and fast. Not like video. It shouldn't take an editor and producer long to get this sorted.

True, but what would you expect the time ratio is there? 

  • Also 100,000 minutes sounds like a lot of dialog, that's well over 1,500 hours. I'd think this is a worst case scenario and not a minimum amount. That number I'd expect to be significantly lower. And therefore your multiplier would be lower as well.

The thing to remember here is the multiplier by number of languages.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 08, 2014, 11:49:02 AM
I would pay up to $100 bucks to get that back.. easily..

 agreed
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 08, 2014, 11:51:25 AM
agreed

NOT agreed! I'd pay a fair and reasonable fee, not exceeding $20 and preferably more like in the $10 range.  I absolutely wouldn't pay $100 though! I'd rather just restart everything if that's how much is asked for!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on September 08, 2014, 12:02:20 PM
Also insane.  MWM would be better off outsourcing the City of Titans store to a nine year old's lemonade stand.

The Freedom store was the kind of awful I could write a book about.  No aspect of it, from how the contract was awarded to the vendor selected to the initial design to the awful awful code that implemented it to its performance and (lack of) functionality to the ludicrous rate at which issues were addressed.  It was literally so bad if it was a senior high school programming project I would have given it an F.

Yeah, the store was implemented very poorly.  I hated how some aspects of the game seemed to disable, like purchased costume pieces & auras, when the store went down.   There needed to be a delineation between already purchased items and the store, that would not be impacted by its availability.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on September 08, 2014, 12:51:57 PM
The store itself wasn't great, however, as far as content is concerned, it's arguably one of the better MMO stores to come out in that regard.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ArchPilgrim on September 08, 2014, 12:54:01 PM
I'm not particularly bothered by VA in MMO's really.  Whilst it might be nice to ge a greeting from your contact, it's by no means necessary.  Now, VA to add -ambience-, that I'd go with. Screams in the distance when there's a building fire, or someone getting mugged, or a giant monster rampaging, maybe the occasional half heard conversation of someone using a phone, police radio chatter as a squad car passes you by.  That kind of stuff is fine by me, but spoken mission texts and cutscenes? Not really bothered.

Amen.  Well said, Sir!

I really hate it when threads are derailed by Flaming Egos on display.  I was rather hoping for (1) the nice sticky FAQ to be posted, and (2) to be able to quietly sit on our collective hands and wait for meaningful news re: the ongoing negotiations.

Speculation be damned.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on September 08, 2014, 01:49:51 PM
One thing I've never been able to understand about any MMO store, be it LOTRO, TSW, COH... They're all freakin' slow.  I have broadband that occasionally works (Yeah, I'm lookin' at YOU, Comcast.)  Opening the stores in games is usually painful.  Things take forever to load.  Search?  Good luck with that. 

I'd love to have a store pretty much the exact opposite of LOTRO's:  Responsive, fast, searchable...  Is that too much to ask?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 08, 2014, 01:51:25 PM
I loathed the paragon store for that exact reason.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 08, 2014, 02:08:47 PM
One thing I'm really going to miss:  being unable to recreate certain characters "perfectly".

My first character, Tau Zero, was still using costume pieces and a face that were no longer available
(having been replaced by later skins).

For quite a few years, he could never go to Icon.  But since he had the "perfect" costume that didn't matter. :)

I'll miss my vet rewards, I'll miss my base (a lot), and I'll miss all the "other" progress I had in the game,
but I'll miss Tau's old costume most of all.

Still, I'll happily give it all up just to be playing again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Exxar on September 08, 2014, 02:30:21 PM
I'd love to have a store pretty much the exact opposite of LOTRO's:  Responsive, fast, searchable...  Is that too much to ask?
Apparently all games do stores as in-game browser windows which load complete web pages off the store's servers. Even if the art for stuff in the store is already in the game files, it's not read from the user's computer but from the webpage instead. GW2 in its upcoming feature pack is the first game to implement loading of store assets from game files themselves as far as I know of.

So basically, the slow loading is due to transferring a crapton of images from a web server that probably isn't even scaled well and is nowhere near the CDN where the rest of the game is delivered from. The search queries themselves are probably even worse since the stores are often done by third parties and/or just adapted from preexisting solutions so their optimization sucks.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 08, 2014, 02:53:40 PM
^ When CoH was still running, I was on a 50mbit/sec line. The store was STILL slow as molasses...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fridgy Daiere on September 08, 2014, 03:05:16 PM
Reading your response made me smile and think of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw)

You just said you do actually care about voice acting.    ;D

And your response made me think of my new favorite song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc) by Weird Al!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 08, 2014, 03:19:46 PM
My understanding of the explanation is is not that  that is 12:1 takes/usable takes as it is 12:1 minutes/usable minutes.  I admint it still seems high to me noit working in that field but I expect that a good bit of that is "leaked time."
Leaked time as well as dialog adjustments. It costs extra to go back, so most studios I've dealt with have turned to dialog adjustments in-studio. "Ok, try changing the dialog this way." Frankly, for many projects, the ratio wound up closer to 20:1 or greater. I used 12:1 because that is considered normal in the game VA field today.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 08, 2014, 03:23:11 PM
NOT agreed! I'd pay a fair and reasonable fee, not exceeding $20 and preferably more like in the $10 range.  I absolutely wouldn't pay $100 though! I'd rather just restart everything if that's how much is asked for!

Restart + subscription fees + costs of things like the tech pack, science pack, mutation pack, super packs could well equal above $100.

Alternatively,  since Codewalker explained to me the problems with the Sentinel files: IF they could still be used to partially restore characters such as name, level, powers, IO slotting, the amount of inf on the character and all the salvage they have stored on them, that would be fine.  I would then happily head to the tailor shops to reload stored costume files,  and happily pursue the reacquisition of all the badges and rerun the incarnate arc and trials.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 08, 2014, 04:09:02 PM
^ When CoH was still running, I was on a 50mbit/sec line. The store was STILL slow as molasses...

Exactly the same here.... I am on a 90Mbps line, and the store was so ridiculously slow, it was....well....ridiculous.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Last Known Hero on September 08, 2014, 04:28:44 PM
Leaked time as well as dialog adjustments. It costs extra to go back, so most studios I've dealt with have turned to dialog adjustments in-studio. "Ok, try changing the dialog this way." Frankly, for many projects, the ratio wound up closer to 20:1 or greater. I used 12:1 because that is considered normal in the game VA field today.

Sorry just a quick question I'm sure it's been answered, what are the odds of getting open source from you guys after? Maybe a payable model, would be nice to play CoH/CoH1.5 on your own terms, plus it gets rid of the fear of it shutting down again. I'd be more than happy to pay even $200 for the ability to modify the 1.5 and develop more content.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 08, 2014, 04:37:19 PM
Restart + subscription fees + costs of things like the tech pack, science pack, mutation pack, super packs could well equal above $100.

Alternatively,  since Codewalker explained to me the problems with the Sentinel files: IF they could still be used to partially restore characters such as name, level, powers, IO slotting, the amount of inf on the character and all the salvage they have stored on them, that would be fine.  I would then happily head to the tailor shops to reload stored costume files,  and happily pursue the reacquisition of all the badges and rerun the incarnate arc and trials.

I didn't really pay much attention to any 3-rd party stuff [other than Mid's builder] while CoH was live.  What is this Sentinel?  Was it something that
you had to sign up for and manually synch or did it grab everybody's data somehow? 

Even if it could be used to retrieve character data [in a technical sense], I don't think it could be used [in fairness terms] if it would only let some users restore.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 08, 2014, 04:38:40 PM
Sentinel CANNOT be used to restore characters to any kind of commercial server, so forget about it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dpawtows on September 08, 2014, 05:05:34 PM
Sentinel CANNOT be used to restore characters to any kind of commercial server, so forget about it.

If anybody tried... folks would start selling Sentinel+ files of purpled-out 50's on Ebay.   Imagine the customer service nightmare when somebody sells multiple copies of the same character, and thus multiple folks insisting that the toon is 'theirs'.  And that's before the gold-farmer types decide to start hacking up fake 50's to sell.....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 08, 2014, 05:06:29 PM
If anybody tried... folks would start selling Sentinel+ files of purpled-out 50's on Ebay.   Imagine the customer service nightmare when somebody sells multiple copies of the same character, and thus multiple folks insisting that the toon is 'theirs'.  And that's before the gold-farmer types decide to start hacking up fake 50's to sell.....

Wow, that's a really great point!

Not to mention that whomever this group is that's trying to buy CoX and get it running in maintenance mode, I hope they've got experience with anti-hacking/anti-botting and gold farmer chat and mail suppression.  There's a lot of work that goes into running any MMO.  I also hope they can properly protect our new account info once they get it (doubt we'll ever get our old accounts/characters back, but the new ones will still need to be backed up and stored securely and properly too).

And I just hope this small lot of us left here on these boards are enough players to keep the overhead paid with "enough" leftover profit to our new overlords.

Wow, I can just worry about anything given two minutes to think about it, huh?   :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 08, 2014, 05:43:04 PM
Wow, that's a really great point!

Not to mention that whomever this group is that's trying to buy CoX and get it running in maintenance mode, I hope they've got experience with anti-hacking/anti-botting and gold farmer chat and mail suppression.  There's a lot of work that goes into running any MMO.  I also hope they can properly protect our new account info once they get it (doubt we'll ever get our old accounts/characters back, but the new ones will still need to be backed up and stored securely and properly too).

And I just hope this small lot of us left here on these boards are enough players to keep the overhead paid with "enough" leftover profit to our new overlords.

Wow, I can just worry about anything given two minutes to think about it, huh?   :P

Well for starters, no more trial accounts.  Someone starts a new account the first month is free, after that if they don't like it the account goes inactive until they decide to return.  Also once an account has been inactive for say 90 days, the character names become available again thus we get a mass reduction in name grieving.  Names are still first come, first serve, but if you aren't playing anymore then you shouldn't expect your names to remain.

The gold farmers should be watched out for and neutralized when possible and of course maximum possible security on our accounts.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sihada on September 08, 2014, 05:53:06 PM
It seems rather like the mindset Nintendo took with HD graphics and Dialogue in the last generation console wars, and we see how that turned out.  At least the 200 or so of us who have a Wii U do.

As of June 30, 2014, Nintendo reports 6.68 million Wii U units and 36.67 million software units have been shipped worldwide.  That's hardly a failure.  More to the point, it would be a stretch to say that the reason that the Wii U isn't doing as well as the XBox One or PS4 is because of decisions made about voice acting.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ParagonKid on September 08, 2014, 06:24:34 PM
My thoughts and concerns on any potential subscription/payment model:
(this assumes any major changes probably CAN'T be made to the existing F2P system that was in place when the game shut down)

-We absolutely need free/trial accounts in some form. So many potential new players have expressed interest in trying the game should it come back, but asking them for pay to try a 10 year old MMORPG in this oversaturated F2P market is an unessisary roadblock to adoption.

-I think everyone who pays a one-time fee (say $50) should be set to Premium status, as defined by the old system, and immediately receive their 87 Months of Vet Status, all costume sets, power sets, Origin packs, Going Rogue and access to Pretoria. This is only fair to people who spent so much time and money back in the day to get some of it back at a reasonable price.

-VIP status should also return for players wishing to support the game monthly. My concerns are two-fold, however. First, I fear the returning number of paying VIPs will not be enough to keep the Incarnate system afloat; I don't think we'll have enough people willing to pay monthly to reliably fill Incarnate trials. My other concern is that many of the perks of VIP status are now moot (Access to Exalted, Priority server queueing, Premium in-game customer support ).

-With Sentinel not on the table, I think the potential new owners of the game should consider using the admin tools to instant level a number of trusted community members to 50 and kit them out so they can begin to float the AH economy, assist new players and in general round out the population so everyone isn't clustered in Atlas/Mercy/NP the first week.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 08, 2014, 06:26:25 PM
(/Looks around)

DAMN.

Edit: Not disagreeing, as it was a pain looking for the stuff I was actually interested in, but we're kind of stuck with the UI as is if the game comes back, right?

Not really, because the store wasn't part of the game.  The store interface was actually a web store running in an embedded browser in the client.  That's why there was exactly zero integration between the store and the game: except for the authentication and session tokens, you could have been running the store on a completely different computer for all it knew.

That also means that even if NCSoft handed the entire game to someone, it would not include the store.  The store was not an NCSoft system.

Also, speaking as someone that does PCI assessments, the store would have failed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 08, 2014, 06:29:38 PM
Well for starters, no more trial accounts.  Someone starts a new account the first month is free, after that if they don't like it the account goes inactive until they decide to return.  Also once an account has been inactive for say 90 days, the character names become available again thus we get a mass reduction in name grieving.  Names are still first come, first serve, but if you aren't playing anymore then you shouldn't expect your names to remain.

The gold farmers should be watched out for and neutralized when possible and of course maximum possible security on our accounts.

Was there ever a gold farming problem in CoH? Seems to me they gave up almost the instant they started.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 08, 2014, 06:33:52 PM
I used to get RMT spam all the time before they blocked trial accounts from sending in-game email. I also knew a couple of people who admitted to buying influence. Always seemed a little silly to me since inf was so easy to get, but I guess some people have to have everything Right Nao(TM).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 08, 2014, 06:37:29 PM
^ When CoH was still running, I was on a 50mbit/sec line. The store was STILL slow as molasses...
Exactly the same here.... I am on a 90Mbps line, and the store was so ridiculously slow, it was....well....ridiculous.

Your internet connection had nothing to do with the speed of the store.  It was written horribly.  The front end looked like someone spent ten minutes browsing Ajax for Dummies and decided to write the most unoptimized javascript and style sheets in history, and the back end felt like it was running on dBase on a commodore 64.  You could have been connected to the internet with a gigabit feed and the store would still have run exactly as slow.

I know this because the store traffic was also unencrypted.  Yes, the thing you could spend money on did not encrypt its data.  You couldn't even blame SSL for the speed of the store.

Can't blame the devs for this one: as far as I know the Paragon devs had nothing to do with it because it was outsourced to "experts in monetization".  Someplace somewhere I have the name of the company scribbed down, but my brain seems to be blocking out the details of the experience.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 08, 2014, 06:39:22 PM
I used to get RMT spam all the time before they blocked trial accounts from sending in-game email. I also knew a couple of people who admitted to buying influence. Always seemed a little silly to me since inf was so easy to get, but I guess some people have to have everything Right Nao(TM).

I do remember the spam, but I always just laughed because it was obvious that they didn't know the game they were in.

You could always find a PL if you wanted one. If you took two days you could get a fire/kin farmer doing that, or you could just self PL through AE in about 10 hrs of game time to create a brutish farmer... Or several other kinds if you spent  15 hrs.

The whole thing just seemed crazy to me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nightmarer on September 08, 2014, 06:40:20 PM
I loathed the paragon store for that exact reason.

That reminds me of something, see, I have this question for you guys, when we the deal is successfully finished, if I am not mistaken, you guys will get an I23 disk image that cannot be modified but, will there be a chance of adding a store or will you have to use the old NCSoft one because the iomage disk does not admit any kind of modification? and, if you have to use the old NCSoft store, I guess getting the data for old characters could be a feasible option, right?

Apologies if these questions have aready been replied, I've read that the character data was not (at that moment) part of the deal but I haven't read anything regarding the game store for the upcoming Legacy CoH.-
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Luna Eclypse on September 08, 2014, 06:41:35 PM
Names are still first come, first serve, but if you aren't playing anymore then you shouldn't expect your names to remain.

This is where I'd like to see them take a page from CO's book. Anyone can use a name that is already taken, because you're identified by your global handle overall and it can optionally be shown in chat as well as your toon name.

So if your global was @Sinistar and mine was @LunaEclypse but we both wanted to name a character "Mr. Sassypants," We'd come up in chat as...

@Sinistar-Mr. Sassypants: LF2M for ITF!
@LunaEclypse-Mr. Sassypants: LOLZ same name but my pants are sassier!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 08, 2014, 06:44:54 PM
I know this because the store traffic was also unencrypted.  Yes, the thing you could spend money on did not encrypt its data.  You couldn't even blame SSL for the speed of the store.



Holy sheep dip batman! That's one of the more egregious things I've heard.

Is that even legal? In today's market I would imagine they would get their behinds sued for that kind of thing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 08, 2014, 06:47:04 PM
That reminds me of something, see, I have this question for you guys, when we the deal is successfully finished, if I am not mistaken, you guys will get an I23 disk image that cannot be modified but, will there be a chance of adding a store or will you have to use the old NCSoft one because the iomage disk does not admit any kind of modification? and, if you have to use the old NCSoft store, I guess getting the data for old characters could be a feasible option, right?

Apologies if these questions have aready been replied, I've read that the character data was not (at that moment) part of the deal but I haven't read anything regarding the game store for the upcoming Legacy CoH.-

Its impossible for NCSoft to give someone a read-only game.  The game doesn't work like that.  What people are talking about is the fact that without the game source code you can't easily make modifications to the game engine, and without all of the dev authoring tools and documentation it will be difficult to add new content to the game.

And as I mentioned above, the Freedom store was not actually part of the game: it was run as a separate service with a separate back end and a separate interface that was run in an embedded browser.  I think its all but impossible we're going to be getting that back.  But fortunately, any web developer with knowledge of PHP could probably write a better store in a weekend, minus things like item images and text descriptions.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 08, 2014, 06:50:38 PM
I know this because the store traffic was also unencrypted.  Yes, the thing you could spend money on did not encrypt its data.  You couldn't even blame SSL for the speed of the store.

Say what? Then why did I spend all that time helping TonyV set up a SSL MITM proxy so that he could capture store traffic for... reasons?

(actually the reasons were to try to snag the item images for use on the wiki, but anyway)

Maybe it didn't at first, but by the end it was definitely using SSL. Now... that little adventure made it obvious that the in-game browser wasn't checking the validity of the SSL certificate's signer, leaving it easily vulnerable to man in the middle attacks. That's nearly as bad as not using SSL at all, though not entirely surprising given the security "measures" that the coh team typically employed.

Edit: Also, Playspan is the name of the company that provided the store. They had a contract with NCSoft for to monetize several of their games, and along with some clues in the client, the contract signing is what tipped me off to the microtransaction model nearly a year before they announced it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 08, 2014, 06:58:23 PM

Absolutely not. You cannot select a few "trusted" players etc etc. There are many EQUAL ways for everyone to give a surge to the economy and IO sets out there... such as giving X amount of merits to X amount of your first toons.... like 9,999 merits to your first 10 toons created on your account. No system that goes into effect should benefit a few off the bat and not everyone.

-With Sentinel not on the table, I think the potential new owners of the game should consider using the admin tools to instant level a number of trusted community members to 50 and kit them out so they can begin to float the AH economy, assist new players and in general round out the population so everyone isn't clustered in Atlas/Mercy/NP the first week.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 08, 2014, 07:03:05 PM
Sorry just a quick question I'm sure it's been answered, what are the odds of getting open source from you guys after? Maybe a payable model, would be nice to play CoH/CoH1.5 on your own terms, plus it gets rid of the fear of it shutting down again. I'd be more than happy to pay even $200 for the ability to modify the 1.5 and develop more content.

Improbable to impossible barring Epic going OS with UE4.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 08, 2014, 07:09:29 PM
Say what? Then why did I spend all that time helping TonyV set up a SSL MITM proxy so that he could capture store traffic for... reasons?

(actually the reasons were to try to snag the item images for use on the wiki, but anyway)

Maybe it didn't at first, but by the end it was definitely using SSL. Now... that little adventure made it obvious that the in-game browser wasn't checking the validity of the SSL certificate's signer, leaving it easily vulnerable to man in the middle attacks. That's nearly as bad as not using SSL at all, though not entirely surprising given the security "measures" that the coh team typically employed.

They must have added that after launch, because I analyzed the store without SSL intercept.

I don't think any faults in the store are the fault of the Paragon team.  They outsourced development of the store to one of those MMO monetization companies, although at the moment I can't find my notes as to which one it was.


Edit: yes, that's the name; Playspan.  What really irked me was that the store we got didn't even look remotely as polished as the ones they claimed to have done on their website, which means either their marketing lied, or we got the C-team of implementers from the Philippines.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Last Known Hero on September 08, 2014, 07:12:24 PM
Improbable to impossible barring Epic going OS with UE4.

Well the team can actually OS their own code and leave the modder/content developer in charge of paying for their monthly license to UE4's source, this is confirmed by Unreal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 08, 2014, 07:16:58 PM
This is where I'd like to see them take a page from CO's book. Anyone can use a name that is already taken, because you're identified by your global handle overall and it can optionally be shown in chat as well as your toon name.

So if your global was @Sinistar and mine was @LunaEclypse but we both wanted to name a character "Mr. Sassypants," We'd come up in chat as...

@Sinistar-Mr. Sassypants: LF2M for ITF!
@LunaEclypse-Mr. Sassypants: LOLZ same name but my pants are sassier!

That would require a modification to the game code. Not possible with the currently tabled deal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 08, 2014, 07:17:05 PM
Well the team can actually OS their own code and leave the modder/content developer in charge of paying for their monthly license to UE4's source, this is confirmed by UE4.

Assumes facts not in evidence. Hence improbable to impossible.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 08, 2014, 07:18:23 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wammo on September 08, 2014, 07:19:04 PM
Another day and a step closer to the moment I log in and take my defender to a team playing the sewers, hollows or some such...ah the thought makes Monday a little easier...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 08, 2014, 07:19:51 PM
Absolutely not. You cannot select a few "trusted" players etc etc. There are many EQUAL ways for everyone to give a surge to the economy and IO sets out there... such as giving X amount of merits to X amount of your first toons.... like 9,999 merits to your first 10 toons created on your account. No system that goes into effect should benefit a few off the bat and not everyone.

It's just a database... They can pack the store themselves with a few scripts.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Last Known Hero on September 08, 2014, 07:21:56 PM
Assumes facts not in evidence. Hence improbable to impossible.

What has been assumed?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 08, 2014, 07:28:56 PM
What has been assumed?

That all assets we make use of will be relicensable to a third party/releasable to the world.  We're trying, but it is unwise to commit to anything other than "we're trying" at this juncture.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 08, 2014, 07:32:40 PM
-With Sentinel not on the table, I think the potential new owners of the game should consider using the admin tools to instant level a number of trusted community members to 50 and kit them out so they can begin to float the AH economy, assist new players and in general round out the population so everyone isn't clustered in Atlas/Mercy/NP the first week.

I seriously doubt that would be needed. 

While it's true that things might be a bit "cramped" in AP, etc for a few days, I honestly doubt it will even be a week before some folks have new 50's.
There are plenty of folks who enjoy the power-level route and will be itching to get back to the top-end content.

I'm in no hurry though, heck it took me almost 3 years before I had my first 50 (amongst my many, many, alts).  One of my old forums sigs was "Over 2000 levels gained and only 1 level 50".

What I am interested in (not really concerned about, but definitely interested in) is how the auction house is going to shake out for awhile.

In the very beginning, there will be a distinct lack of resources.  After all, everyone is going to need all of their luck charms  . . .

Once the supply starts to actually build, then there's going to be a strong imbalance of Inf. available, since we won't have the many years of
"wealth redistribution" that occurred to empower the alts with Inf.

Normally, I'd sell the first few rare salvage and purples and such from each Alt (since I have enough supply squirreled away in my base for my needs)
which provided each Alt with it's base cash.  Now though, I'm not sure how I'd want to handle it...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 08, 2014, 07:36:45 PM
-With Sentinel not on the table, I think the potential new owners of the game should consider using the admin tools to instant level a number of trusted community members to 50 and kit them out so they can begin to float the AH economy, assist new players and in general round out the population so everyone isn't clustered in Atlas/Mercy/NP the first week.

I don't think this is necessary. There will be people out there who can level themselves to fifty in less than a weekend; they don't need dev tools, just a day or two off of work and plenty of Mountain Dew. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 08, 2014, 07:43:13 PM
I would pay up to $100 bucks to get that back.. easily..
I might go that high too.   Would hope for something in the $50 range though.  I know it might be a pain to look up account info, so it's a task worth paying for.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 08, 2014, 07:48:05 PM
I might go that high too.   Would hope for something in the $50 range though.  I know it might be a pain to look up account info, so it's a task worth paying for.

If there's a reliable way to get account information then it should be given to everyone.  As it stands, it doesn't sound like it was backed up with a method easily organizable or perusable.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 08, 2014, 07:52:26 PM
And your response made me think of my new favorite song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc) by Weird Al!
Ha!  I love that song!  (Don't use numbers for words...unless you are Prince)

It's amazing that Al is still so popular. (He just had his very first #1 album)  Gotta give him credit...apparently his humor is timeless.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 08, 2014, 07:54:55 PM
Restart + subscription fees + costs of things like the tech pack, science pack, mutation pack, super packs could well equal above $100.

Alternatively,  since Codewalker explained to me the problems with the Sentinel files: IF they could still be used to partially restore characters such as name, level, powers, IO slotting, the amount of inf on the character and all the salvage they have stored on them, that would be fine.  I would then happily head to the tailor shops to reload stored costume files,  and happily pursue the reacquisition of all the badges and rerun the incarnate arc and trials.
That would definitely be a time consuming task for someone....ergo worth paying for.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 08, 2014, 07:56:29 PM
That would definitely be a time consuming task for someone....ergo worth paying for.

Not.  Going.  To.  Happen.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 08, 2014, 08:00:27 PM
If anybody tried... folks would start selling Sentinel+ files of purpled-out 50's on Ebay.   Imagine the customer service nightmare when somebody sells multiple copies of the same character, and thus multiple folks insisting that the toon is 'theirs'.  And that's before the gold-farmer types decide to start hacking up fake 50's to sell.....
Two question immediately pop into my head:

1-Would that be very prevalent?   Sounds like a rare thing to me.   We are talking about a pretty small player base here.  The number of people from that already small number couldn't be much.   We often hear about how great the CoH playerbase is so if that's true, the number of players doing this couldn't be very large.   We can't make both claims.

2-I can't imagine many people would want to pay for a fake Sentinel file...then pay again to have it put into the game.  That's a double hit to the wallet.    We aren't talking about paying $10 for a billion influence here.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 08, 2014, 08:01:03 PM
Okay, guys. No dying on this hill. Right now, with our _extremely_ limited budget, we're not looking into doing voice acting. We are leaving the potential for adding such into the game later, but it's probably not something we're going to launch with, for a number of reasons, not all of which involve purely monetary matters.

If we were, in fact, to add voice acting, it would be for cinematic moments, and for short greeting phrases, much in the way Wildstar does - I independently thought of the concept before it launched into beta. Enough flavor to get the feel of the person you're talking to, but not to read the entire dialogue.

We cool?

- Warcabbit

 
Very. This is exactly the way I think voice acting works best in an MMO.  NEVER have the player's character speak, since that voice is one they should decide on, the the devs, and then use it to, as you said, "get the flavor" of the world but not fully take over.   
 
And I didn't mean to hijack  the thread.  I just was expressing that I think the "costs" had been very much overstated.  Ironically, one of my current students just told me today that one of my former students just got hired full time for voice acting.  I had to laugh a little.
 
Anyway, like I said, I think you guys are doing a great job, even if I don't agree with every decision you make.  I trust you guys to make them, in the end.
:-)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Last Known Hero on September 08, 2014, 08:03:30 PM
That all assets we make use of will be relicensable to a third party/releasable to the world.  We're trying, but it is unwise to commit to anything other than "we're trying" at this juncture.

Ah my apologies. I guess I should not have assumed assets would be custom. I personally don't use anything else on released products for this reason exactly :P

But my point still does stand. The team can still release their work, you just added that it has the possibility that they might not be doing all the work
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 08, 2014, 08:07:36 PM

Yes,  yes it is. I didn't say it would be easy.  Nor that I've ever been accused of an excess of sanity, or a lack of ambition.

 
 
I really wish this forum had a "like" button. :-)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 08, 2014, 08:11:00 PM
Ah my apologies. I guess I should not have assumed assets would be custom. I personally don't use anything else on released products for this reason exactly :P

But my point still does stand. The team can still release their work, you just added that it has the possibility that they might not be doing all the work

Quite, but it also becomes an issue of maintaining documentation on assets changing hands, etc.

More than once in my career I've had a project hard core hit the breaks because COTS dependancies didn't move forward or were otherwise just not available.

Now, I'll grant you that this might not ultimately be a huge issue. Texture library  unavailable? Sound library unavailable? Replacable. Not optimal, but replaceable. 

Code libraries may be a bigger deal. 

Not to mention just the general negatives we'll have to deal with if we shutter and cannot for some reason release absolutely 100% of a "roll your own CoT server" on shutdown day +1.


What we want to do and what we are ultimately able to do in the end may not be compatible. I'd rather not commit to something I cannot be certain is at least 90% attainable. I'm funny that way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 08, 2014, 08:11:22 PM
Not.  Going.  To.  Happen.
That sounds familiar.

Heard that one a lot on the old boards for a long list of things that we eventually got.   ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 08, 2014, 08:12:54 PM

 
 
I really wish this forum had a "like" button. :-)

And I wish it had a "dislike" button.  You're really pounding this whole voiceover thing into the ground.  No one cares at this point, the CoT devs have said forget it, CoX isn't even remotely ours yet and it's only a snapshot with no source code coming (so no changes to CoX will happen) if it ever goes back up, and Revival isn't planning on voiceovers either.  Enough already, give it up.  Like this thread isn't clogged enough.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 08, 2014, 08:13:38 PM
That sounds familiar.

Heard that one a lot on the old boards for a long list of things that we eventually got.   ;)

Slightly different. It's been stated again and again why the Sentinel+ files are useless for any retail relaunch of the game. I do wish people would stop bringing it up, it's getting old.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 08, 2014, 08:15:11 PM
Sought out the opinion of the one true "gamer" I know...my brother.

Asked him about how important he thought voice work is in games in current games.   He didn't seem to think it was very important.   He also agreed that it often sounds really cheesy.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 08, 2014, 08:16:45 PM
Slightly different. It's been stated again and again why the Sentinel+ files are useless for any retail relaunch of the game. I do wish people would stop bringing it up, it's getting old.

And allowing some players to use backed up characters that hardly anyone else even knew there was a way to get is unfair to the general player base (and I have Sentinel backups of all 38 of my characters, so I'm not saying this for my own sake).  It would put a lot more people off than it would ever help.  Not to mention that Sentinel was not ever meant to be functional for a commercial release, and is not.

Let's hope we do manage to get CoX up and running again someday.  At that point I think most people willing to come back will be willing to level again from scratch anyway.  Maybe they could run a double XP event for the first month of launch or something.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 08, 2014, 08:17:04 PM
Slightly different. It's been stated again and again why the Sentinel+ files are useless for any retail relaunch of the game. I do wish people would stop bringing it up, it's getting old.
I don't think you read the post I was replying to.

This isn't talking about loading them into the game.   This was about paying someone to look at them and try to recreate your old character as much as possible.   It would be quite time consuming....and thus would require that you pay for it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 08, 2014, 08:17:15 PM
Not.  Going.  To.  Happen.

besides, it just seems like a backdoor for pay to win.

What if they went this route, but not everyone could pay that amount...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 08, 2014, 08:20:29 PM
And allowing some players to use backed up characters that hardly anyone else even knew there was a way to get is unfair to the general player base (and I have Sentinel backups of all 38 of my characters, so I'm not saying this for my own sake).  It would put a lot more people off than it would ever help.  Not to mention that Sentinel was not ever meant to be functional for a commercial release, and is not.

Let's hope we do manage to get CoX up and running again someday.  At that point I think most people willing to come back will be willing to level again from scratch anyway.  Maybe they could run a double XP event for the first month of launch or something.
I know I'm heading for a PL team right after launch.   Might actually be fun...who knows?   Hearing about how quickly it can be done is taking the sting out of it for me.

I would like to settle on whether something is a very obscure thing (people who know about Sentinel) or widespread (people who would use Sentinel files to cheat).   Seems like that idea jumps back and forth depending on the argument.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 08, 2014, 08:23:48 PM
I don't think you read the post I was replying to.

This isn't talking about loading them into the game.   This was about paying someone to look at them and try to recreate your old character as much as possible.   It would be quite time consuming....and thus would require that you pay for it.

I think it's fairly safe to say that either everyone will get their chars back, or no one will.  Anything else will just cause the new owners PR problems.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 08, 2014, 08:24:08 PM
I used to get RMT spam all the time before they blocked trial accounts from sending in-game email. I also knew a couple of people who admitted to buying influence. Always seemed a little silly to me since inf was so easy to get, but I guess some people have to have everything Right Nao(TM).
Or right Meow!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 08, 2014, 08:28:16 PM


What I am interested in (not really concerned about, but definitely interested in) is how the auction house is going to shake out for awhile.

In the very beginning, there will be a distinct lack of resources.  After all, everyone is going to need all of their luck charms  . . .

Once the supply starts to actually build, then there's going to be a strong imbalance of Inf. available, since we won't have the many years of
"wealth redistribution" that occurred to empower the alts with Inf.


 
 
I was wondering the other day if it was possible for the Devs to "pre-stack" the market upon launch.  Could they examine the price ranges/availability of IOs from before the close and simply recreate the same market, only with (initially) lower costs?
 
Or even more, I'm curious how the coding for the market works at all, since it was clearly also linked to our own individual accounts.  So if they have a snapshot of Wentworths from the day the market closed, does that include at least SOME character data?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 08, 2014, 08:28:20 PM
I know I'm heading for a PL team right after launch.   Might actually be fun...who knows?   Hearing about how quickly it can be done is taking the sting out of it for me.

I would like to settle on whether something is a very obscure thing (people who know about Sentinel) or widespread (people who would use Sentinel files to cheat).   Seems like that idea jumps back and forth depending on the argument.

Isn't the question moot since Codewalker (who should know) says it is not useful for this purpose? That being the case the ease of hacking or who knows about is a pointless discussion.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 08, 2014, 08:32:44 PM

 
 
I was wondering the other day if it was possible for the Devs to "pre-stack" the market upon launch.  Could they examine the price ranges/availability of IOs from before the close and simply recreate the same market, only with (initially) lower costs?
 
Or even more, I'm curious how the coding for the market works at all, since it was clearly also linked to our own individual accounts.  So if they have a snapshot of Wentworths from the day the market closed, does that include at least SOME character data?

No. They shouldn't even if they could for a number of reasons that involve how the economy in the game works. If they want to make I/O's easily available, put them in the cash store and make them account bound.

If they cannot restore character data the market will be empty. Very simple. It will be just like when the markets merged but will take longer to restock.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 08, 2014, 08:33:07 PM
I know I'm heading for a PL team right after launch.   Might actually be fun...who knows?   Hearing about how quickly it can be done is taking the sting out of it for me.

I would like to settle on whether something is a very obscure thing (people who know about Sentinel) or widespread (people who would use Sentinel files to cheat).   Seems like that idea jumps back and forth depending on the argument.

I think there is something lots of folks are forgetting. Leveling up could be done in a hurry without dbl exp and without PLing. Just running full teams I could get a character from about 40-50 in a Saturday. That's approximately half the exp required to get from 1-50.

While I would think doing a dbl exp weekend (or even week) at the outset (if/when) was a good idea, it's just not necessary in a game where you could conceivably hit 50 in a 3 day weekend by just playing.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 08, 2014, 08:33:41 PM
I think it's fairly safe to say that either everyone will get their chars back, or no one will.  Anything else will just cause the new owners PR problems.
So now I have to wonder if anything will be for sale.   If you sell something to one person, then others won't have it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 08, 2014, 08:34:34 PM
And allowing some players to use backed up characters that hardly anyone else even knew there was a way to get is unfair to the general player base.

I disagree with the bolded part. If you were in any global channel or teamed at all after the shutdown announcement, you'd be hard-pressed not to have heard at least somebody talking about Sentinel. Everyone I knew was going out of their way to try and spread the word. You'd have to have either stopped playing prior to that or have your head buried pretty far down in the sand to not even be aware of it.

Choosing not to use it is another matter entirely.

The only people I would use the word "unfair" to describe would be those who got their VIP status jacked up by billing cycle, and ncsoft refused to fix it. They couldn't get into many of their characters to save them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 08, 2014, 08:35:27 PM
Isn't the question moot since Codewalker (who should know) says it is not useful for this purpose? That being the case the ease of hacking or who knows about is a pointless discussion.
Hmmmm...you should also read the post I was replying to.

This wasn't about using the Sentinel files to actually load a character into the game.   CW explained why that is not a good idea.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 08, 2014, 08:37:40 PM
And I wish it had a "dislike" button.  You're really pounding this whole voiceover thing into the ground.  No one cares at this point, the CoT devs have said forget it, CoX isn't even remotely ours yet and it's only a snapshot with no source code coming (so no changes to CoX will happen) if it ever goes back up, and Revival isn't planning on voiceovers either.  Enough already, give it up.  Like this thread isn't clogged enough.

 
 
O.o 
 
Pretty sure I wasn't the only one in the discussion, and actually didn't even start the discussion about voice acting(or come in to it until several pages in.) We're just having a discussion about a TON of "possibilities" to what the future may hold.  I guess if it's interrupting other discussions in here about...what the future may hold or what we'd like to see/not see/wonder how they'll fix stuff...
 
Anyway, I'm pretty sure I also said that I was moving on and was happy with the Devs regardless, yesterday, so I'm not sure why you're being rude now.
 
*shrug*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 08, 2014, 08:39:12 PM
I disagree with the bolded part. If you were in any global channel or teamed at all after the shutdown announcement, you'd be hard-pressed not to have heard at least somebody talking about Sentinel. Everyone I knew was going out of their way to try and spread the word. You'd have to have either stopped playing prior to that or have your head buried pretty far down in the sand to not even be aware of it.

Choosing not to use it is another matter entirely.

The only people I would use the word "unfair" to describe would be those who got their VIP status jacked up by billing cycle, and ncsoft refused to fix it. They couldn't get into many of their characters to save them.

Yeah, I heard about it in plenty of time to back up all the characters that were important to me. I have no idea how it will ever be useful that I spent the time to do that at this point in time, but yeah, I was in charge of 3 different quite popular TF channels, and you couldn't go more than 30 minutes at a time without having someone pop in and say "have you guys heard of this Sentinel thing?"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 08, 2014, 08:39:29 PM
I disagree with the bolded part. If you were in any global channel or teamed at all after the shutdown announcement, you'd be hard-pressed not to have heard at least somebody talking about Sentinel. Everyone I knew was going out of their way to try and spread the word. You'd have to have either stopped playing prior to that or have your head buried pretty far down in the sand to not even be aware of it.

Choosing not to use it is another matter entirely.

The only people I would use the word "unfair" to describe would be those who got their VIP status jacked up by billing cycle, and ncsoft refused to fix it. They couldn't get into many of their characters to save them.

Yeah, I announced it every time I logged in on Liberty. But you know, even on the last day there were still people who hadn't heard about it. I gave out the link like 2 hours before it closed. I think there were people who just didn't know.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 08, 2014, 08:41:07 PM
Isn't the question moot since Codewalker (who should know) says it is not useful for this purpose?

Whining about it to the buyers is pointless, though since they're relative amateurs and closer to the community compared to most corporate behemoth-run studios, I wouldn't go far as to say it's completely impossible, just extremely unlikely.

Discussing it in the community is less so, because it is still relevant to the future of the game.

As an example, if I had the choice of playing on the official servers and starting over from scratch, or importing all of my characters on a private server with a dozen of my friends, I can tell you that I wouldn't be spending much time on the official servers. The canon and continuity of my small group is more important to me than the overall population, and I know I wouldn't be the only one to make that choice.

The 38 level 50s aren't even that big a deal as most of them except a couple are effectively retired, it's the 80 or so in various stages of progress that it would sting to lose.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 08, 2014, 08:43:10 PM
Say what? Then why did I spend all that time helping TonyV set up a SSL MITM proxy so that he could capture store traffic for... reasons?

(actually the reasons were to try to snag the item images for use on the wiki, but anyway)

You could've just done what I did to get item images for the wiki: cropping screenshots in Photoshop. Low-tech, sure, but it worked.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 08, 2014, 08:43:29 PM
I disagree with the bolded part. If you were in any global channel or teamed at all after the shutdown announcement, you'd be hard-pressed not to have heard at least somebody talking about Sentinel. Everyone I knew was going out of their way to try and spread the word. You'd have to have either stopped playing prior to that or have your head buried pretty far down in the sand to not even be aware of it.

Choosing not to use it is another matter entirely.

The only people I would use the word "unfair" to describe would be those who got their VIP status jacked up by billing cycle, and ncsoft refused to fix it. They couldn't get into many of their characters to save them.

I guess I didn't know everyone you knew. I'd never heard of Sentinel until reading about it through titan.

It is possible that I heard someone mention Sentinel on the in game chats, but it wouldn't have been any kind of explanation of it just halfway through a conversation... I don't remember hearing about it at all.

I used several chat channels but missed most of the last couple weeks of the game because it made me sad to play. And that's not really the point of playing a game, now is it? ;)

FYI, was playing since I2. Mostly on Infinity, but some chars on lots of other servers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 08, 2014, 08:43:47 PM
And allowing some players to use backed up characters that hardly anyone else even knew there was a way to get is unfair to the general player base (and I have Sentinel backups of all 38 of my characters, so I'm not saying this for my own sake).  It would put a lot more people off than it would ever help.  Not to mention that Sentinel was not ever meant to be functional for a commercial release, and is not.

Let's hope we do manage to get CoX up and running again someday.  At that point I think most people willing to come back will be willing to level again from scratch anyway.  Maybe they could run a double XP event for the first month of launch or something.

 
From the talk I've heard, more people are concerned about losing their vet rewards and the "pool" they'd built up of inf/recipes/etc. to make leveling easier than they are the actual level 50 character him/herself. 
 
I'm really wondering what the answer is.  I don't mind starting over from scratch.  I kinda mind starting over from scratch and not having that pool of inf to fully SO my character as soon as I hit 22, cause man...I hated the days of having to try and figure out which SO I was going to buy with my measly little funds, and I REALLY mind the idea that my characters, recreated, will be super gimped compared to before because there just aren't that many Numinas or LoTGs or fully crafted sets out there anymore, and even if there were, those Archetype IOs are simply non-existent.
 
 
I'm sure there's an answer somewhere to get us, not back to where we were, but close enough that once the "we're home" feeling wears off people don't settle into a "but it's just not the same" feeling.  I just don't think any of us know what it is yet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 08, 2014, 08:44:46 PM
Whining about it to the buyers is pointless, though since they're relative amateurs and closer to the community compared to most corporate behemoth-run studios, I wouldn't go far as to say it's completely impossible. Discussing it in the community is less so, because it is still relevant to the future of the game.

As an example, if I had the choice of playing on the official servers and starting over from scratch, or importing all of my characters on a private server with a dozen of my friends, I can tell you that I wouldn't be spending much time on the official servers. The canon and continuity of my small group is more important to me than the overall population, and I know I wouldn't be the only one to make that choice.

The 38 level 50s aren't even that big a deal as most of them except a couple are effectively retired, it's the 80 or so in various stages of progress that it would sting to lose.

Well, more power to you if you can make it happen. I would gladly do both. If SCoRE can manage it, I'll gladly use them!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 08, 2014, 08:45:39 PM
As an example, if I had the choice of playing on the official servers and starting over from scratch, or importing all of my characters on a private server with a dozen of my friends, I can tell you that I wouldn't be spending much time on the official servers. The canon and continuity of my small group is more important to me than the overall population, and I know I wouldn't be the only one to make that choice.
I gotta admit that sounds interesting.   The ultimate "family".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Last Known Hero on September 08, 2014, 08:46:31 PM
Quite, but it also becomes an issue of maintaining documentation on assets changing hands, etc.

More than once in my career I've had a project hard core hit the breaks because COTS dependancies didn't move forward or were otherwise just not available.

Now, I'll grant you that this might not ultimately be a huge issue. Texture library  unavailable? Sound library unavailable? Replacable. Not optimal, but replaceable. 

Code libraries may be a bigger deal. 

Not to mention just the general negatives we'll have to deal with if we shutter and cannot for some reason release absolutely 100% of a "roll your own CoT server" on shutdown day +1.


What we want to do and what we are ultimately able to do in the end may not be compatible. I'd rather not commit to something I cannot be certain is at least 90% attainable. I'm funny that way.

I can agree, I wasn't talking day 1 but I would like to see it. To me as it stands I don't know if I'm willing to invest all over again for something that can be taken away. Completely my personal opinion but I don't think I'm interested otherwise, which is also why I'm dying to get special community of really Eager players back to us all, even with missing content. I'd rather invest time and money into giving control to ourselves, especially if it could have us creating content.

Not holding my breath but I'm a dreamer. Works nicely in my fantasy land but that's about it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 08, 2014, 08:47:40 PM
If it happened I Would probably recreate only some of my many alts on the official server. There were many that I was soloing anyway so A private server would be fine for that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 08, 2014, 08:50:33 PM
I disagree with the bolded part. If you were in any global channel or teamed at all after the shutdown announcement, you'd be hard-pressed not to have heard at least somebody talking about Sentinel. Everyone I knew was going out of their way to try and spread the word. You'd have to have either stopped playing prior to that or have your head buried pretty far down in the sand to not even be aware of it.

Choosing not to use it is another matter entirely.

The only people I would use the word "unfair" to describe would be those who got their VIP status jacked up by billing cycle, and ncsoft refused to fix it. They couldn't get into many of their characters to save them.

I was thinking more of the players who came and went over the years or even within CoX's final year, but weren't active near the time of the shutdown or had given up and moved on.  Many players could still have characters of value to them that they'd like to play if CoX ever starts running again.  Sentinel backups would cause more harm than good (and I have mine!  But I'd rather forgo using them than aggravate other potential players-- the CoX i23 team is going to need all the money it can get so CoX doesn't get shut down once again!).  Luckily, Codewalker, like you said, they could never be used for a commercial relaunch of CoX anyway, and that's not what Sentinel was meant for.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 08, 2014, 08:52:28 PM
I plan on resurrecting my A-list of toons, about a dozen or so, eventhough I played several on every server.

Starting over is fine, but I wouldn't mind getting my entire account back either.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 08, 2014, 08:54:05 PM
Was there ever a gold farming problem in CoH? Seems to me they gave up almost the instant they started.

There were gold farmers, yes.  However as Codewalker states once they shut down chat and email functions for the trial accounts it got better.

That's why I say that if the game returns, no trial accounts: period.
That helps cut out gold farmers, and those that used trial accounts for name griefing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 08, 2014, 08:57:40 PM
Hmm....what about a "Legacy Pre-launch" week where they work public beta-testing with helping to restore some of our older characters.   Former players can "sign up" for beta-testing by submitting their old global handle to the new Devs. I know, the devs have no way of verifying, but it makes it "feel" legit in some small way.  They issue an invite to the open beta weekend/whatever, and the former players are given "rewards" for up to three characters they recreate.  These characters get faster XP, the drop rate is increased, and access to all tiers of vet rewards on their account.
 
At the end of beta those characters and their belongings are brought to the live server at launch, where XP rates and drop rates are readjusted back to normal.  Suddenly a large group of people have restored some goods in the market, have 50s ready for end game content, etc. but a small enough number they'll likely be re-rolling more toons again very soon to help rebuild the community.
 

Very rough idea, but it could be a way to kill two birds with one stone: beta testing and restoring some of our characters to their former, truly superior glory just in time to help the rest of the community. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 08, 2014, 08:57:57 PM
Also folks, I wouldn't count on getting the same number of servers we used to have. Those of you with 80+ chars might have to settle for way less.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 08, 2014, 08:59:13 PM
My question for APR and any direct successor (taking place in Paragon itself, in the same universe) would be how they're taking care of the old missions. APR I guess I can see including them, but I kind of think it would be nice to start fresh. Rather than including older "go here, kill 10 guys, go there" type missions, start from the very beginning with more innovative stuff. And build in a way to accommodate changing NPCs / story - whether that's phasing or what, I don't know, but making the NPCs of the world a little less static.

the veteran stuff doesnt bother me.. Id like to see a way to regain the levels and IO's but that gets very close to Pay 2 Win which I realize a very large majority have an issue with..

For me, Pay 2 Win is only an issue in PvP, which is supposed to have players starting at a level playing field, as far as in-game gear etc. goes.

If NCSoft is just leasing the ip then couldn't they if CoT included CoH cannon...couldn't they shut CoT down later then? :S

I still don't get why the other two games turned down the licensing deal. They don't have to include CoH lore, right? And it'd be pretty hard to do anything other than "this is an alternate dimension" at this point, given the work that's been put in specifically to make the lore different from CoH.

So why not take the licensing, slap on an "Official CoH successor" sticker, and go with that?

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 08, 2014, 08:59:24 PM
Also folks, I wouldn't count on getting the same number of servers we used to have. Those of you with 80+ chars might have to settle for way less.

Aye, I would anticipate the number of servers being halved, and the ones that do return would the names of the servers that tended to bigger populations such as Freedom and Virtue. 

I can't see the euro servers returning, one of them maybe.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 08, 2014, 09:00:35 PM
I'm really wondering what the answer is.  I don't mind starting over from scratch.  I kinda mind starting over from scratch and not having that pool of inf to fully SO my character as soon as I hit 22, cause man...I hated the days of having to try and figure out which SO I was going to buy with my measly little funds,...

(Don't know if this has been mentioned on one of the hundreds of pages recently.)

One idea might be to do a one-time inf grant to the first character created on an account. I'm thinking something reasonably small, like 5-10 million, that would give a nice cushion for starting characters, but not enough to be worth creating bunches of fake accounts to transfer to your main.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 08, 2014, 09:01:55 PM
Aye, I would anticipate the number of servers being halved, and the ones that do return would the names of the servers that tended to bigger populations such as Freedom and Virtue. 

I can't see the euro servers returning, one of them maybe.

 
 
But...but Justice.  It was...Justice.  It was where I knew 9 out of 10 teams I'd get on knew what they were doing but were still in it just for the fun.
 
I know it was lonely, but still...
 
 ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 08, 2014, 09:05:09 PM
The only people I would use the word "unfair" to describe would be those who got their VIP status jacked up by billing cycle, and ncsoft refused to fix it. They couldn't get into many of their characters to save them.

Perhaps I misunderstood the point of Sentinel when I snagged it before the shutdown - I had largely thought the only practical utility it could have was in restoring what the character looked like, possibly the character sheet stuff.

Is it purely build info?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 08, 2014, 09:06:10 PM
Also folks, I wouldn't count on getting the same number of servers we used to have. Those of you with 80+ chars might have to settle for way less.

And what was the default for open character slots per server?  6?  But the max per server was what, 36?  I'm wondering how that will be arranged too.

I do recall somebody in one of these megathreads saying something about the server list possibly being the same (they were all housed on only 2 computers anyway in the end years), because bits of data from the i23 backup image would be pointing to one or another....but I don't know if it was an official statement or not, and besides that, this whole CoX i23 thing is far from a done deal at this point.

Mainly I just hope whomever the i23 financial backers are, they are a pro studio with experience doing this kind of thing (the overall running of an MMO).  Perhaps Shard is one of them, it seems it from his posts, but I don't know.  Whomever it is, they've got a lot to hurdle making sure that even if they get CoX i23 back up, they can keep everyone including the buyers happy enough that it doesn't go back down again.  I admire their perseverance and good intentions, though; without them and Ironwolf plus Nate/MWM (and all the silent former PS peeps, Titan Admins and whomever else has helped behind the scenes) we'd have no hope at all, right now anyway.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 08, 2014, 09:06:52 PM
There were gold farmers, yes.  However as Codewalker states once they shut down chat and email functions for the trial accounts it got better.

That's why I say that if the game returns, no trial accounts: period.
That helps cut out gold farmers, and those that used trial accounts for name griefing.

Musta been life on the not so full Infinity server that saved me from that kind of thing. I heard them but just ignored the accounts and within a minute or so they went away.

No trial accounts sounds like shooting your foot to get rid of an itch though. If the game comes back, won't the new company be trying what they can to get new players? It wouldn't and shouldn't be just about those of us who went before.

If the game sale gets announced, it's going to create a pretty good buzz around the gaming community. This will get lots of people wanting to know what this CoH thing was all about and they might sign up for a trial account when they wouldn't for a full game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 08, 2014, 09:07:29 PM
You could've just done what I did to get item images for the wiki: cropping screenshots in Photoshop. Low-tech, sure, but it worked.

I wouldn't call Photoshop "low-tech." It's more like using a power shovel when what you need is a gravel sifter. Maybe. I suck at analogy, suddenly.

On the topic of veteran rewards, since I only can check these threads once per day (or about every 11 pages), I would offer these two cents:

I don't care. :)

Since what we're going to get is, for all practical purposes, a "layover stop" on the way to CoH 1.5 with a connecting flight to CoH2/CoT, I'm just looking forward to getting back in there with you crazy Dutch bastiches while cooler, wiser, more savvy heads get the next stages ready for us. Personally, though, I would prefer an all or nothing approach. If there is a way, turn on all rewards for everyone, because, well, why not. This would require shutting off the "clock," though, which would likely be somewhere in the code. The more probable option is nothing, and we all start the clock over. That's fine, too. I'll feel a bit "nerfed," at first, but I'll get over it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 08, 2014, 09:08:29 PM
Perhaps I misunderstood the point of Sentinel when I snagged it before the shutdown - I had largely thought the only practical utility it could have was in restoring what the character looked like, possibly the character sheet stuff.

Is it purely build info?

It's both. Sentinel files contain the costumes (mostly; it needs some massaging to get to back to an editable costume), builds as in powers and enhancements, XP totals and level, influence, inventory of savlage/recipes/enhancements, and badges.

It's not a complete record of the character as there is some serverside state that the client doesn't have access to, like story arc completion and reward tokens, but it's a close enough approximation for a small or medium sized server of trusted friends.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 08, 2014, 09:10:14 PM
Also folks, I wouldn't count on getting the same number of servers we used to have. Those of you with 80+ chars might have to settle for way less.

Counting on em, no.

But the new company shouldn't go into it with any fully formed conclusions either. There will be a buzz if the sale is announced and that should be monitored to see what kind of crowd may be gathering.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 08, 2014, 09:11:57 PM
Also folks, I wouldn't count on getting the same number of servers we used to have. Those of you with 80+ chars might have to settle for way less.

4 accounts in my household, and we played on almost every server except for Freedom and Virtue.

If it's a single server and we don't get at least 100 characters per account, I'm taking my business elsewhere.





...





Kidding.



Probably.  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: bugzee on September 08, 2014, 09:23:59 PM
Doesn't it make sense that the APR/1.5 team should also be the ones to run the legacy i23 servers? Monthly sub costs will help cover the 1.5 development costs as well as keep the i23 servers running. It would also mean that the APR/1.5 devs will have access to the database so that eventually they can figure out how to make a script/tool that ports the i23 users over to APR/1.5 once its ready.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 08, 2014, 09:29:55 PM
...
I still don't get why the other two games turned down the licensing deal. They don't have to include CoH lore, right? And it'd be pretty hard to do anything other than "this is an alternate dimension" at this point, given the work that's been put in specifically to make the lore different from CoH.

So why not take the licensing, slap on an "Official CoH successor" sticker, and go with that?

Lots of reasons:  Maybe their lore, stories and quest lines are too far along (or will be by the time the CoX IP ever really gets purchased, if it ever does) for them to begin anew.  Or maybe they will have to (or worry that later they will have to) pay for the rights to license the CoX IP.  They may also worry that whomever controls the IP may be able to shut them down later.

And as none of us know even the details of what is on the table now never mind if it will go through or not (or what form it will be in if it ever does go through), we really can't blame them one bit.  I don't.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 08, 2014, 09:42:59 PM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Last Known Hero on September 08, 2014, 09:44:35 PM
Doesn't it make sense that the APR/1.5 team should also be the ones to run the legacy i23 servers? Monthly sub costs will help cover the 1.5 development costs as well as keep the i23 servers running. It would also mean that the APR/1.5 devs will have access to the database so that eventually they can figure out how to make a script/tool that ports the i23 users over to APR/1.5 once its ready.

APR and 1.5 are separate teams and that could be more legal work to halt development. But the one team handling 1.5/i23 shouldn't have a problem with that regardless since they would have access to our account information.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tubbius on September 08, 2014, 09:54:32 PM

 
 
But...but Justice.  It was...Justice.  It was where I knew 9 out of 10 teams I'd get on knew what they were doing but were still in it just for the fun.
 
I know it was lonely, but still...
 
 ;D

I was on Justice!  All 4 years, 3 months!  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 08, 2014, 10:02:56 PM

 
 
But...but Justice.  It was...Justice.  It was where I knew 9 out of 10 teams I'd get on knew what they were doing but were still in it just for the fun.
 
I know it was lonely, but still...
 
 ;D

Can't be more lonely than Triumph xD I think the most I've seen online was less 100 and when I made a toon on Freedom in the final months just to do some incarnate raids, I almost had an epileptic seizure seeing how many people play the game O.o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Phaetan on September 08, 2014, 10:08:30 PM
Pinnacle player here.  If we aren't quarantined given a server of our own, drunker badgers will be everywhere on the servers.  I think you know the only reasonable answer to this.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 08, 2014, 10:10:12 PM
Perhaps I misunderstood the point of Sentinel when I snagged it before the shutdown - I had largely thought the only practical utility it could have was in restoring what the character looked like, possibly the character sheet stuff.

Is it purely build info?

Its intended utility was to restore the character; however, it's an unofficial program and due to obvious time limitations, it's been stated that it was more "the best we can do to back up your characters before shutdown" and less "a way to restore your characters when the game comes back". There would be issues trying to design a way of importing your Sentinel file back into the game, and it's unlikely at best that any official revival would be willing (or even able) to resolve them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Gorgor on September 08, 2014, 10:12:20 PM
Yeah, I heard about it in plenty of time to back up all the characters that were important to me. I have no idea how it will ever be useful that I spent the time to do that at this point in time, but yeah, I was in charge of 3 different quite popular TF channels, and you couldn't go more than 30 minutes at a time without having someone pop in and say "have you guys heard of this Sentinel thing?"

I never heard of it either, and had my 60 month+ badges, played continuously since the shutdown announcement, and dual boxed with both paid accounts.

To me, backing up my character meant taking screen captures of the powers and enhancement loadouts.

I heard there was a way to save your base, too, in a 3d way, as well as to save a demo or video.  I waited too long and tried to install a video capture freebie with a few hours to go and failed miserably, so a few dozen screencaps is all I have of that work of art (and not one damned desk used as a giant brick!)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 08, 2014, 10:32:00 PM
Also folks, I wouldn't count on getting the same number of servers we used to have. Those of you with 80+ chars might have to settle for way less.
A lot of my alt-itis back in the old game was a lot of figuring out what I really liked.  At this point, if we get the game back, I'm looking at just 3 characters - 1 each for Blueside, Redside and Goldside.  And I think that should do it for me, as I tried every class and quite a few powerset combos, and the list of what really works for me is actually fairly small.  I'd rather concentrate on the areas that really work for me, rather than those that were just so-so for me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zubenelgenubi on September 08, 2014, 10:39:15 PM
Alternatively,  since Codewalker explained to me the problems with the Sentinel files: IF they could still be used to partially restore characters such as name, level, powers, IO slotting, the amount of inf on the character and all the salvage they have stored on them, that would be fine.  I would then happily head to the tailor shops to reload stored costume files,  and happily pursue the reacquisition of all the badges and rerun the incarnate arc and trials.

IO slotting, Influence, and salvage might have been duplicated by one character taking all the good stuff out of base storage, making a Sentinel file out of it, then passing the IO's, Inf, etc. off to another character who is then backed up by another Sentinel file, rinse repeat. So I don't know if they would allow that.

For me, it's the BADGES and the COMPLETED STORIES and ARCS that I want back. I would be sad if my characters did not have all of their hideously expensive IO's still slotted, but the badges and records of the stories completed are that character's history. I would feel comfortable re-creating my characters if I had that at least. IF character date is never obtained, I would be very, very grateful if the new devs allowed us to use the Sentinel files to at least re-load our character's story history.

I am one of those for whom regaining all that history is very important.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 08, 2014, 10:45:43 PM
.........
/Aggelakis?
More like:
(https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2581/3779834896_a9c1d7f4d7_o.png) (https://flic.kr/p/6L1Deb)
 ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dpawtows on September 08, 2014, 10:48:10 PM
I disagree with the bolded part. If you were in any global channel or teamed at all after the shutdown announcement, you'd be hard-pressed not to have heard at least somebody talking about Sentinel. Everyone I knew was going out of their way to try and spread the word. You'd have to have either stopped playing prior to that or have your head buried pretty far down in the sand to not even be aware of it.


I'm not so sure about that.  One the actual last day of the game, I made an offhand remark about Sentinel+ files to some fairly hard-core CoH player friends and was shocked when they hadn't heard of it.  And then the promptly logged off to go install it and make a lotta copies.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 08, 2014, 10:56:24 PM
IO slotting, Influence, and salvage might have been duplicated by one character taking all the good stuff out of base storage, making a Sentinel file out of it, then passing the IO's, Inf, etc. off to another character who is then backed up by another Sentinel file, rinse repeat. So I don't know if they would allow that.

For me, it's the BADGES and the COMPLETED STORIES and ARCS that I want back. I would be sad if my characters did not have all of their hideously expensive IO's still slotted, but the badges and records of the stories completed are that character's history. I would feel comfortable re-creating my characters if I had that at least. IF character date is never obtained, I would be very, very grateful if the new devs allowed us to use the Sentinel files to at least re-load our character's story history.

I am one of those for whom regaining all that history is very important.
I suspect you will be disappointed.  The Sentinel files don't contain your story history, and I really wouldn't bet on being able to upload them to a static copy of i23.

See here:  http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10284.msg160734.html#msg160734

It would be nice to get our characters back, but at this point, it doesn't look like that will happen.  But half a loaf is still better than none.  If I have to work up my characters again from scratch, I can live with that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 08, 2014, 11:19:43 PM

It would be nice to get our characters back, but at this point, it doesn't look like that will happen.  But half a loaf is still better than none.  If I have to work up my characters again from scratch, I can live with that.

And truth be told, there are a few characters I'm excited to do again and to do them properly this time.  My main, Warrior 2, was originally a energy/fire blaster. The combo has zero synergy, and honestly didn't fit with his concept overall, anyway, but I was new to MMOs and had no idea what I was doing.
 
Now I'll recreate him as either a fire melee/energy aura brute or a fire/energy melee blaster.
 
I'll definitely be keeping my kinetics/dual pistols corruptor, but will likely change several of his power choices. 
 
And I can't wait to finally be able to try my dark/nature affinity or dark/time troller. :-)
 

So...this is all happening on Friday, right? I need to get this stuff done!  ;-)   
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on September 08, 2014, 11:19:51 PM

As an example, if I had the choice of playing on the official servers and starting over from scratch, or importing all of my characters on a private server with a dozen of my friends, I can tell you that I wouldn't be spending much time on the official servers. The canon and continuity of my small group is more important to me than the overall population, and I know I wouldn't be the only one to make that choice.


That's a pretty nice scenario, IMHO.

Personally I'm hoping that the new IP corporation makes it possible that fans who know the SCoRE are empowered to help all the rest of us... as a new  CoRE to the community.
 ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 08, 2014, 11:21:33 PM

 
 
But...but Justice.  It was...Justice.  It was where I knew 9 out of 10 teams I'd get on knew what they were doing but were still in it just for the fun.
 
I know it was lonely, but still...
 
 ;D

I only cited Freedom and Virtue as examples, I would expect Justice to return as well. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Apogee on September 08, 2014, 11:22:06 PM
Mark me down as another who never heard of Sentinel until after the shutdown.  I pretty much only grouped with a small circle of friends who had all quit by the end.  I am not too upset about having to start over but I am quite sad that I will lose many of my names.  I had quite a few names that were 'grandfathered' and would no longer be available if the character was reset.  I can only assume that I will not be able to get the names again if/when we get I23 back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 08, 2014, 11:24:43 PM
IIRC City of Heroes granted you 8 free slots per server.  When City of Villains came out they added another 4 free slots for a total of 12 useable slots per server.  You could then get more slots via anniversaries and rewards or just paying money for additional slots.

I believe the max amount of slots per server was increased to 48, purchase/earn slot tokens to open them.

If half the servers returned and still had that many possible slots that would be fine.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 08, 2014, 11:41:38 PM
I believe the max amount of slots per server was increased to 48, purchase/earn slot tokens to open them.

If half the servers returned and still had that many possible slots that would be fine.

I think that's right. If memory serves, I had 4 full pages of characters for Infinity and had to delete several to make new ones... damn altitus.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 08, 2014, 11:47:35 PM
I think that's right. If memory serves, I had 4 full pages of characters for Infinity and had to delete several to make new ones... damn altitus.

Let your inner Alt flow through you my young apprentice!  ;D

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fable on September 08, 2014, 11:58:01 PM
Doesn't it make sense that the APR/1.5 team should also be the ones to run the legacy i23 servers? Monthly sub costs will help cover the 1.5 development costs as well as keep the i23 servers running. It would also mean that the APR/1.5 devs will have access to the database so that eventually they can figure out how to make a script/tool that ports the i23 users over to APR/1.5 once its ready.

I was under the impression that ARP=1.5 and they'd more than like be running legacy. Was I wrong?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: bugzee on September 09, 2014, 12:07:20 AM
I was under the impression that ARP=1.5 and they'd more than like be running legacy. Was I wrong?

Yes, its my understanding that the Atlas Park Revival project is aka 1.5. I'm suggesting that they be the ones to run the i23 servers as well, if that wasn't the plan already.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 09, 2014, 12:07:59 AM
I was under the impression that ARP=1.5 and they'd more than like be running legacy. Was I wrong?

From my understanding 1.5 will be almost (not exact) carbon copy of CoX with a clean code. The almost is factored by the limitation and possibility from translating over engines. The plus side of having 1.5 they said they can then make updates to the game. The i23 version can't be manipulated. That was my take on the conversation so far.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 09, 2014, 12:26:57 AM
Also folks, I wouldn't count on getting the same number of servers we used to have. Those of you with 80+ chars might have to settle for way less.
True.   I got lucky on that one.   2 accounts on Freedom with all the slots.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on September 09, 2014, 12:29:26 AM
From my understanding 1.5 will be almost (not exact) carbon copy of CoX with a clean code. The almost is factored by the limitation and possibility from translating over engines. The plus side of having 1.5 they said they can then make updates to the game. The i23 version can't be manipulated. That was my take on the conversation so far.

I gather APR/1.5 will actually be a special instance of CoT's code modified to be a work-alike for CoH (however close that can actually be).  Now mind you, there are things I'd LIKE them to not do exactly like CoH (the alphabetical/numeric chest insignias always struck me as too large and kind-of crappy looking for one) -- but it will be something to see how close to the actual game they can get (assuming 1.5 or CoT actually succeeds in implementing at all)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 09, 2014, 12:30:30 AM
Aye, I would anticipate the number of servers being halved, and the ones that do return would the names of the servers that tended to bigger populations such as Freedom and Virtue. 

I can't see the euro servers returning, one of them maybe.
Since this is a unique situation, I wonder if different servers could be funded by different groups of people and have the various servers still all work together?    If there are enough European players, maybe there is a way for them to run it?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 09, 2014, 12:40:03 AM
I was under the impression that ARP=1.5 and they'd more than like be running legacy. Was I wrong?

The conditions of running legacy are still on the negotiating table. That said, presently I would expect that is unlikely, purely as a staffing and infrastructure situation.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 09, 2014, 12:40:13 AM
I gather APR/1.5 will actually be a special instance of CoT's code modified to be a work-alike for CoH (however close that can actually be).  Now mind you, there are things I'd LIKE them to not do exactly like CoH (the alphabetical/numeric chest insignias always struck me as too large and kind-of crappy looking for one) -- but it will be something to see how close to the actual game they can get (assuming 1.5 or CoT actually succeeds in implementing at all)

This seems a bit strange to me. Were the MWM folks far enough along for this? I didn't get the impression they were up to this stage.

Last word on their CC I'd heard was that they were having issues with the character model. It was showing its seems or something like that.

And If they were going to share their engine, it would need lots of rework to fit the CoH gameplay. The forums over there are full with differences planned to "improve" the CoH model but not a lot of showable pieces. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 09, 2014, 01:05:25 AM
I believe the max amount of slots per server was increased to 48, purchase/earn slot tokens to open them.

Truth.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Character_Slot
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 09, 2014, 01:07:46 AM
Huh. I actually liked the store, but then again, my exposure to MMO stores is extremely limited, so I'm probably not a good judge.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 09, 2014, 01:21:34 AM
My question for APR and any direct successor (taking place in Paragon itself, in the same universe) would be how they're taking care of the old missions. APR I guess I can see including them, but I kind of think it would be nice to start fresh. Rather than including older "go here, kill 10 guys, go there" type missions, start from the very beginning with more innovative stuff. And build in a way to accommodate changing NPCs / story - whether that's phasing or what, I don't know, but making the NPCs of the world a little less static.

In terms of APR, I'd imagine it would be simplest, and probably bring less grief to the development team, to simply port it all over as is. After all, there are likely still those who love even those "go here, kill 10 guys" missions and would miss them.

What I think would be cool, though, would be to try and consolidate a lot of those different missions and things into newer, revised story arcs that could then also be added to the game, much the way some of the older content was revised by the Paragon devs. It would bring a freshness and replayability to the game while not removing something someone else might still enjoy.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mandrake on September 09, 2014, 01:23:42 AM
Huh. I actually liked the store, but then again, my exposure to MMO stores is extremely limited, so I'm probably not a good judge.

Agreed - wife and I were actually just discussing how our 'high speed' internet is pretty crappy (1.5M/s in the boonies) and neither of us recall the store ever being terribly slow. My wife played LOTRO and it was a horrendously slow process.

I loved the way that CoH had costume pieces right there 'on the rack' with everything else. If you wanted it, you could buy it from right there, but no constant sales pitch. The ability to buy was very easy but unlike most game stores - CoH never got into the whole shove it in your face method of sales. Plus, it was all fun stuff! Costume pieces, boosts, inspirations, etc. It could make the game more fun and perhaps a little quicker, but you could not just blow a ton of money and go stomp people.

Although, my wife especiallly did blow a ton of money in the shop for costume pieces mostly. LOL
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 09, 2014, 01:54:46 AM
And your response made me think of my new favorite song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc) by Weird Al!

That was freaking wonderful, thank you so much!


We're almost there!    ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lava-Lad on September 09, 2014, 02:23:46 AM
That's a pretty nice scenario, IMHO.

Personally I'm hoping that the new IP corporation makes it possible that fans who know the SCoRE are empowered to help all the rest of us... as a new  CoRE to the community.
 ;)

Agreed!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 09, 2014, 03:41:09 AM
I still don't get why the other two games turned down the licensing deal. They don't have to include CoH lore, right? And it'd be pretty hard to do anything other than "this is an alternate dimension" at this point, given the work that's been put in specifically to make the lore different from CoH.

So why not take the licensing, slap on an "Official CoH successor" sticker, and go with that?

I can guess.  The successor projects have already invested a lot of time and energy into developing their own lore.  In fact, its probably the case that a significant percentage of the developers in all successor games are primarily or in some fashion lore writers.  Given that, opening the door to the possibility of integrating original CoH IP would be a tremendous distraction for them that can only lead to bad things happening. 

For people who think options are always a good thing, I invite you to watch the original version of the Poseidon Adventure.  What options did was turn forty survivors into six survivors and thirty-four corpses.  That's surprisingly analogous to how development teams often react to being allowed to entertain too many options.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lapucelle on September 09, 2014, 03:43:33 AM
That's my job! Picking the best out of the options I see. Or making new ones.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 09, 2014, 03:53:17 AM
Also folks, I wouldn't count on getting the same number of servers we used to have. Those of you with 80+ chars might have to settle for way less.

There were many different concerns the dev team had to balance with regard to character slots, but I believe the only really important one for a maintenance mode server (or servers) is disk space to hold the character information.  And disk space is not today what it was when CoH released, or even when it shut down.  If they wanted to allow everyone to have a hundred slots per server, I don't think that would be difficult to do.  It would cost more to have more storage online, but it wouldn't likely cost a lot in absolute terms.  There might be hard coded slot limits in the code, but I'm sure CW could just patch those away if I randomly posted that I thought he couldn't do it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 09, 2014, 04:35:43 AM
From my understanding 1.5 will be almost (not exact) carbon copy of CoX with a clean code. The almost is factored by the limitation and possibility from translating over engines. The plus side of having 1.5 they said they can then make updates to the game. The i23 version can't be manipulated. That was my take on the conversation so far.

This is my take also.  I would expect that holiday events and anniversary badges should still be doable on legacy ish 23, but for lore changes, updates, patches, possible character restoration, we'd need 1.5
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 09, 2014, 04:37:19 AM
I can guess.  The successor projects have already invested a lot of time and energy into developing their own lore.  In fact, its probably the case that a significant percentage of the developers in all successor games are primarily or in some fashion lore writers.  Given that, opening the door to the possibility of integrating original CoH IP would be a tremendous distraction for them that can only lead to bad things happening.

I get that the lore is beyond changing at this point, I still think it would be worth it to get an "Official CoH Successor!" label on a game, even if that's the only thing they "license".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 09, 2014, 04:37:49 AM
Huh. I actually liked the store, but then again, my exposure to MMO stores is extremely limited, so I'm probably not a good judge.

Here's what I remember about the store: when I needed it, it worked. I never suffered any temporary missing costumes or powers when the store glitched out.  Guess I was lucky.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 09, 2014, 04:49:08 AM
It's both. Sentinel files contain the costumes (mostly; it needs some massaging to get to back to an editable costume), builds as in powers and enhancements, XP totals and level, influence, inventory of savlage/recipes/enhancements, and badges.

It's not a complete record of the character as there is some serverside state that the client doesn't have access to, like story arc completion and reward tokens, but it's a close enough approximation for a small or medium sized server of trusted friends.

Well not to flog the dead horse or anything, but your description still makes me think that sentinel files may be able to semi restore characters if at all possible.  If I'd have to go out and regain the badges all over again, that's fine.

1. I won't make certain mistakes like I did originally
2. As a restored 50, many of the badges would be a snap to get.
3. I wouldn't mind rerunning the incarnate arcs to regain the badges and reopen my incarnate powers.
4. If the costume can't be restored, toss some tailor tokens and go to the tailor shop.

Now granted there is something in the files that can indicate the file was edited/altered but of course that won't stop some people and thus yes it is possible for "bootleg Sentinel files" to emerge. There will be always people that want to cheat the system.  However those that receive submitted Sentinel files would have to check and compare them to previously submitted files for example

John Smith submits a file for a blaster that was 50, 2 billion inf, fully purple slotted, 9999 of each salvage item in the game, 9999 reward merits, 9999 rikit merits, etc  and the blaster is named The Duke of Nuke.  First off I suspect the restoration team would raise an eyebrow at such a character whether they restore it or not.

Then sometime after someone named Jake Riley submits a Sentinel file for a blaster named Nuke of Duke and aside from the name, the rest is the same..... somehow I don't think Jake would get his character back as such a file would like be "bootleg".

As to those that didn't hear of Sentinel or didn't use it....well that it is too bad, however that shouldn't be a reason to stop those that did use Sentinel to use the files to at least somewhat restore their toons.

But anyway, we shall have to wait and see.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 09, 2014, 04:51:10 AM
Here's what I remember about the store: when I needed it, it worked. I never suffered any temporary missing costumes or powers when the store glitched out.  Guess I was lucky.

Personally, the worst I ever experienced with the store was a lag of about 3 minutes between buying a power set and it being delivered to my account.

But if there was no SSL connection on it, or it was faulty that is a huuuuge red flag. Either the purchases are secure or it shouldn't be allowed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 09, 2014, 05:08:22 AM
Well not to flog the dead horse or anything, but your description still makes me think that sentinel files may be able to semi restore characters if at all possible.  If I'd have to go out and regain the badges all over again, that's fine.

1. I won't make certain mistakes like I did originally
2. As a restored 50, many of the badges would be a snap to get.
3. I wouldn't mind rerunning the incarnate arcs to regain the badges and reopen my incarnate powers.
4. If the costume can't be restored, toss some tailor tokens and go to the tailor shop.

Now granted there is something in the files that can indicate the file was edited/altered but of course that won't stop some people and thus yes it is possible for "bootleg Sentinel files" to emerge. There will be always people that want to cheat the system.  However those that receive submitted Sentinel files would have to check and compare them to previously submitted files for example

John Smith submits a file for a blaster that was 50, 2 billion inf, fully purple slotted, 9999 of each salvage item in the game, 9999 reward merits, 9999 rikit merits, etc  and the blaster is named The Duke of Nuke.  First off I suspect the restoration team would raise an eyebrow at such a character whether they restore it or not.

Then sometime after someone named Jake Riley submits a Sentinel file for a blaster named Nuke of Duke and aside from the name, the rest is the same..... somehow I don't think Jake would get his character back as such a file would like be "bootleg".

As to those that didn't hear of Sentinel or didn't use it....well that it is too bad, however that shouldn't be a reason to stop those that did use Sentinel to use the files to at least somewhat restore their toons.

But anyway, we shall have to wait and see.

I had a friend with 87 billion inf and a base full of high quality purples. what are the chance he would get restored?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 09, 2014, 05:12:52 AM
Pinnacle player here.  If we aren't quarantined given a server of our own, drunker badgers will be everywhere on the servers.  I think you know the only reasonable answer to this.

A cull? :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 09, 2014, 05:16:39 AM
Mark me down as another who never heard of Sentinel until after the shutdown.  I pretty much only grouped with a small circle of friends who had all quit by the end.  I am not too upset about having to start over but I am quite sad that I will lose many of my names.  I had quite a few names that were 'grandfathered' and would no longer be available if the character was reset.  I can only assume that I will not be able to get the names again if/when we get I23 back.

You'd only lose them if you were slow getting back into the game and re-creating them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 09, 2014, 05:18:05 AM
Yes, its my understanding that the Atlas Park Revival project is aka 1.5. I'm suggesting that they be the ones to run the i23 servers as well, if that wasn't the plan already.

ARP is 1.5, but they will not be running the legacy game. That is planned to be run by whoever runs the holding company that will own the IP.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on September 09, 2014, 05:34:24 AM
As an example, if I had the choice of playing on the official servers and starting over from scratch, or importing all of my characters on a private server with a dozen of my friends, I can tell you that I wouldn't be spending much time on the official servers. The canon and continuity of my small group is more important to me than the overall population, and I know I wouldn't be the only one to make that choice.

[Dreamy eyed look] Private server... Heaven...[/Dreamy eyed look]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zubenelgenubi on September 09, 2014, 05:41:18 AM
 :D
I had a friend with 87 billion inf and a base full of high quality purples. what are the chance he would get restored?

I'd say zero, as 2 billion influence was the max a character could hold.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 09, 2014, 05:46:58 AM
I disagree with the bolded part. If you were in any global channel or teamed at all after the shutdown announcement, you'd be hard-pressed not to have heard at least somebody talking about Sentinel. Everyone I knew was going out of their way to try and spread the word. You'd have to have either stopped playing prior to that or have your head buried pretty far down in the sand to not even be aware of it.

Choosing not to use it is another matter entirely.

The only people I would use the word "unfair" to describe would be those who got their VIP status jacked up by billing cycle, and ncsoft refused to fix it. They couldn't get into many of their characters to save them.

I am one of those people.  I knew about it right after the shutdown announcement.  And yet I still never backed up my character's.  Woops.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 09, 2014, 05:49:49 AM
:D
I'd say zero, as 2 billion influence was the max a character could hold.

I would say you are wrong. there were ways to hold it in 20 billion chunks. I saw him pay the guy that built his base for him with a full set of armageddons
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 09, 2014, 05:53:44 AM
:D
I'd say zero, as 2 billion influence was the max a character could hold.
Your point?  I ended the game with about 15 billion INF.  Hint - it wasn't all on one character.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Super Firebug on September 09, 2014, 06:02:02 AM
That was freaking wonderful, thank you so much!

YES! I just found that song off of the link you pointed to, and heard it for the first time. I LOVE IT! Some people's spelling, grammar, syntax, punctuation, etc., these days just drive me up a wall. In looking for information online, I've actually given up on trying to find it on some search-hit web pages where the composition is so bloody awful that it's almost painful to try to read them. It's really not that difficult. If some folks would just listen to themselves saying, "I could care less", they'd hear themselves saying that they COULD, in fact, care less. And it's easy to remember that "too" is only used for emphasis or to mean "also", "two" is only used as a number, and "to" is never used as either. "It's" is used only a contraction; after all, we don't use apostrophes in any other possessive pronoun (a lot of people seem to use extra apostrophes before a word-ending "s" - just in case, I guess). And I totally agree with the video's comment about the fact that it's people who KNOW stuff like this that are being called "stupid". :( Unfortunately, trying to correct this kind of thing is like trying to hold back the tide with a fork.

Sorry; had to get that off my chest, or I might've exploded. Rant mode cancelled. Carry on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 09, 2014, 06:07:03 AM
[Dreamy eyed look] Private server... Heaven...[/Dreamy eyed look]

Homer Simpson..... "Mmmmmmm.........Private server......"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 09, 2014, 06:40:39 AM
Homer Simpson..... "Mmmmmmm.........Private server......"

And the day that happens... There goes I23.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 09, 2014, 06:41:39 AM
I had a friend with 87 billion inf and a base full of high quality purples. what are the chance he would get restored?
:D
I'd say zero, as 2 billion influence was the max a character could hold.
I would say you are wrong. there were ways to hold it in 20 billion chunks. I saw him pay the guy that built his base for him with a full set of armageddons

Well, technically speaking it wasn't possible to hold more than 2 billion inf on an individual character.  If only characters were restored, its unlikely anyone holding 87 billion was holding it in 48 characters, and wouldn't get that influence back with character restores.

The only way to hold more than 2 billion in inf per character was to hold it using auction house bids.  You bid for something that you know the order will never be filled, and you bid 1-2billion in for that item or items.  That bid "ties up" influence in the auction house, and theoretically speaking you can retrieve it by logging into that character and cancelling the bid.  With enough auction house slots in use by enough characters, its possible to hold extremely large amounts of actual influence, separate from bases holding valuable items.

But unless bases themselves are restored, the valuable stuff wouldn't come back.  And unless the auction houses come back with actual order data, the largest repository of influence in the game would also be vaporized.  At shutdown I had over a hundred billion inf (I'm not even certain without looking at logs how much more than that) in more than one account.  But I probably had only about 10 billion on various characters, and even that was only because I started retrieving inf from auction house storage and giving it away after the shutdown announcement.

I am also unaware of any way to hold influence in a single 20 billion chunk.  And if I knew of someone that would build an elaborate base for just the price of a full set of armageddons, I would have had him build one on every server I played on.  Even before Freedom I had more of the things than I knew what to do with, because my "acquisition rate" exceeded the rate at which I could level alts.

That's what happens when you spend years triple and quadruple boxing test after test after test of the game mechanics, and then one day in I19 you decide to just put all of them on automatic farming pilot.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 09, 2014, 11:50:33 AM
You'd only lose them [grandfathered character names] if you were slow getting back into the game and re-creating them.

Not true, unfortunately.

My wife, Pix, had two character names historically that can never be recovered in i23 CoH: Lu (her original Kat/Regen scrapper) and Ow (a sonic blaster, but I forget the secondary).

Why? Because at one point the game was updated to require a minimum of 3 characters to a toon's name.

So unless CW can work some serious magic...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 09, 2014, 11:58:55 AM
There were many different concerns the dev team had to balance with regard to character slots, but I believe the only really important one for a maintenance mode server (or servers) is disk space to hold the character information.  And disk space is not today what it was when CoH released, or even when it shut down

It's not about disk space and never was, at least in remotely modern times. It wasn't even about disk space by the time Ultima Online came around. It's about the size at which the database becomes unmanageably unwieldy and slow.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kierthos on September 09, 2014, 12:57:34 PM
Hell, I didn't have that many characters. I'd be happy with 16 character slots, as long as we get to play again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kierthos on September 09, 2014, 12:59:06 PM
Hell, I didn't have that many characters. I'd be happy with 16 character slots, as long as we get to play again.
Geez, you aren't kidding. At work, I'm trying to do some database cleanup on a set of tables that are probably two-thirds cruft.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on September 09, 2014, 01:08:29 PM
Hell, I didn't have that many characters. I'd be happy with 16 character slots, as long as we get to play again.

I sentinel+'d 130 or so characters and that was about half of them, 48 slots used on Victory and numerous free transfers used to move lesser played 50s to other servers :)

That said I'd only recreate a few then remake some in CoT.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 09, 2014, 01:41:57 PM
It's not about disk space and never was, at least in remotely modern times. It wasn't even about disk space by the time Ultima Online came around. It's about the size at which the database becomes unmanageably unwieldy and slow.

If your database chokes at a few million small records, I'd suggest not using a terrible database.  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on September 09, 2014, 02:00:44 PM
If your database chokes at a few million small records, I'd suggest not using a terrible database.  ;D

It does beg the question, though... I'd imagine I/O would probably be the biggest bottleneck for an MMO database cluster. Do characters and all their related data get shunted off to a specific instance of the game db, with some appliance managing the load balancing for new characters? And which would be a better design ...normalized, or more of a flat schema?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: thunderforce on September 09, 2014, 02:09:07 PM
It does beg the question, though... I'd imagine I/O would probably be the biggest bottleneck for an MMO database cluster.

For World of Walking, maybe, but CoX can only have had a few tens of thousands of characters online (ie, with information about them being needed frequently) simultaneously at most. At launch time I was working for... well, let's just say a very large database vendor in California... and seriously, if that was a problem with CoX-launch-era hardware, get a better database.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 09, 2014, 02:36:51 PM
It does beg the question, though... I'd imagine I/O would probably be the biggest bottleneck for an MMO database cluster. Do characters and all their related data get shunted off to a specific instance of the game db, with some appliance managing the load balancing for new characters? And which would be a better design ...normalized, or more of a flat schema?

Not really. In my experience RAM is the biggest limiting factor, because MMOs like to keep all of their active state in memory, which includes characters that are logged on. They only get flushed to the database when they log off, or at certain key points like zoning. Most MMOs, even if they use something structured like SQL, treat it as dumb bulk storage. Some of the later Cryptic MMOs like STO and Neverwinter don't even bother with that and just keep character records as text files in a file system.

This was obviously the case in COH design as well, as had been seen plenty of times when characters went "back in time" after a crash or unexpected server shutdown. Their active state never got saved back to the db.

So number of offline characters is not really much of an issue. Again, if your database can't handle occasionally looking up an indexed record out of a few million that rarely get touched, your database is awful and should be replaced.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on September 09, 2014, 04:34:10 PM
Not really. In my experience RAM is the biggest limiting factor, because MMOs like to keep all of their active state in memory, which includes characters that are logged on. They only get flushed to the database when they log off, or at certain key points like zoning. Most MMOs, even if they use something structured like SQL, treat it as dumb bulk storage. Some of the later Cryptic MMOs like STO and Neverwinter don't even bother with that and just keep character records as text files in a file system.

This actually reminds me of a project I worked on back in the Microsoft DNA days, where the architect of a classic asp website had built a monstrosity of custom nested vb6 objects, "hydrated" it from the db, then stuffed it into the IIS session for each user. Changes were made back to the db only after the user logged off or the session ended. Ahhh... the bad ol' days.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 09, 2014, 05:01:38 PM
So number of offline characters is not really much of an issue. Again, if your database can't handle occasionally looking up an indexed record out of a few million that rarely get touched, your database is awful and should be replaced.

So, you've hinted several times that CoH didn't use SQL Server, and that you've seen the DB in the past... So what DID they use for it? Something custom? Delimited text files? Oracle? MySQL? ....... dBase III?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 09, 2014, 05:03:48 PM
You know, Codewalker...I'm starting to get the feeling you don't like databases. *grin*

Seconding FFM's question...you've hinted in the past at what they didn't do, mind giving us a little info about what they did?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 09, 2014, 05:51:30 PM
There might be hard coded slot limits in the code, but I'm sure CW could just patch those away if I randomly posted that I thought he couldn't do it.

And that IS what you think, right? Right? :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chasearcanum on September 09, 2014, 05:54:03 PM
Not really. In my experience RAM is the biggest limiting factor, because MMOs like to keep all of their active state in memory, which includes characters that are logged on. They only get flushed to the database when they log off, or at certain key points like zoning. Most MMOs, even if they use something structured like SQL, treat it as dumb bulk storage. Some of the later Cryptic MMOs like STO and Neverwinter don't even bother with that and just keep character records as text files in a file system.

This was obviously the case in COH design as well, as had been seen plenty of times when characters went "back in time" after a crash or unexpected server shutdown. Their active state never got saved back to the db.

So number of offline characters is not really much of an issue. Again, if your database can't handle occasionally looking up an indexed record out of a few million that rarely get touched, your database is awful and should be replaced.

Prior to the CoH/WoW/EQ2 era, most developers established expectations that 10,000 concurrent users was the cap.  When WoW releaseed, it capped out at 2,500 per server (remember the long waiting queues?) because of performance issues, and even after optimization, last I heard, the max was not over 7,000.  IIRC, CoH's cap during some tests were around that.

SWG learned very late in development that their db vendor had been off on its capabilities (by a factor of 100), and this was particularly painful for them with how their assets were created and tracked (rather than having a 'weaponid' pointing to a specific weapon type, which stored that weapon's data, every weapon, armor, etc was unique with its own stats). 

EVE online built what was at the time the world's largest solid state drive to manage its massive datasets at launch and still had incredible latency issues.

There's often conceit that "getting better hardware" will solve these woes, but the reality is that "more, better hardware" only gets you so far, and many game developers re-learn this lesson every few years after spending boatloads on the "better database/hardware/middleware."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on September 09, 2014, 05:56:11 PM
So, you've hinted several times that CoH didn't use SQL Server, and that you've seen the DB in the past... So what DID they use for it? Something custom? Delimited text files? Oracle? MySQL? ....... dBase III?

...Progress? *shudder*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 09, 2014, 06:19:50 PM
So, you've hinted several times that CoH didn't use SQL Server, and that you've seen the DB in the past... So what DID they use for it? Something custom? Delimited text files? Oracle? MySQL? ....... dBase III?

A Kajillion years ago, I was in the military stationed in Korea when they were transitioning to Wang PCs with 286 processors and from dos to Win 3. Our server had a (Then) massive 150MB HD which it needed every bit of to handle the Bicycle/Vehicle/Valuable Property database that I had to learn dBase III+ and FoxBase to write. We were required to have the DB but there was none existing to plug in. Many of the other bases in Korea ended up plugging in mine. That's the grand sum total of my programing experience. . .

*Sigh*

Would that I had stuck with it, I might be able to comprehend some of what's involved with the port to UE4. I still build PCs, but I have no skills at all in programming.

*Sigh*


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wizzyboy296 on September 09, 2014, 06:20:21 PM
We're almost there!    ;D

Why are you saying that?  ???
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 09, 2014, 06:21:37 PM
So, you've hinted several times that CoH didn't use SQL Server

I must have been misquoted, because I never said that.

What I did say was that CoH didn't use SQL Server for static data, such as powers, missions, archetype modifier tables, etc.

It most certainly did use SQL for storage of dynamic data like character records and account data. Though from what I hear it used it rather badly -- simple load/store of entire rows, in some cases loading a full table into memory to query in the code instead of letting the db do it, and lots of unstructured data shoved into text and blob fields. I attribute this to a conflict between NCSoft corporate mandating the use of MS SQL, and the programmers who wanted to store things in flat files (see also the Cryptic Studios "SQL considered harmful" presentation I've linked before). Had there been an actual experienced DBA on staff during the design and implantation process, I suspect things would have ended up quite different.

You know, Codewalker...I'm starting to get the feeling you don't like databases. *grin*

On the contrary, I'm a huge fan of well-designed database schemas and leveraging things like SQL to enable database servers to optimize the queries, manage the caching, and guarantee consistency. The technology is mature and they are very, very good at it. PostgreSQL is my jam.

That said, I have no problem admitting that there are some data structures that relational storage is simply not the best choice for.



*EDIT: Except for MySql. MySql is terrible and if you use it for anything other than a simple read-mostly website, you are bad and should feel bad.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 09, 2014, 06:23:30 PM
IO slotting, Influence, and salvage might have been duplicated by one character taking all the good stuff out of base storage, making a Sentinel file out of it, then passing the IO's, Inf, etc. off to another character who is then backed up by another Sentinel file, rinse repeat. So I don't know if they would allow that.

For me, it's the BADGES and the COMPLETED STORIES and ARCS that I want back. I would be sad if my characters did not have all of their hideously expensive IO's still slotted, but the badges and records of the stories completed are that character's history. I would feel comfortable re-creating my characters if I had that at least. IF character date is never obtained, I would be very, very grateful if the new devs allowed us to use the Sentinel files to at least re-load our character's story history.

I am one of those for whom regaining all that history is very important.

Completed stories is exactly one of the things that is missing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 09, 2014, 06:37:01 PM
Is it time for pie??????? blueberry???pecan???chocolate???maybe even hot apple pie with bluebell ice cream....and sprinkles
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 09, 2014, 06:42:37 PM
Ah, makes sense! Ty for the reply and apologies for teasing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 09, 2014, 06:49:57 PM
Is it time for pie??????? blueberry???pecan???chocolate???maybe even hot apple pie with bluebell ice cream....and sprinkles

Pizookie sounds good right about now
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 09, 2014, 06:52:34 PM
Ah, makes sense! Ty for the reply and apologies for teasing.

No worries, I took it as being in jest. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Apogee on September 09, 2014, 06:54:00 PM

South Korea was observing a 3 day National holiday (Sept 7-9).  As it is early morning (Wed, Sept 10th) give them a chance to grab some coffee and get back into the swing of things :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 09, 2014, 06:55:49 PM
Why are you saying that?  ???

Can't you feel it? Great things are happening in our community! I am certain that this is not a fluke or a false start, these are the post conceptual moments of our beloved City of Heroes rebirth! Bask in the afterglow cause soon the labor will start. . .


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 09, 2014, 06:56:30 PM
Indeed Remaugen, we are almost there!  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wizzyboy296 on September 09, 2014, 06:58:40 PM
Can't you feel it? Great things are happening in our community! I am certain that this is not a fluke or a false start, these are the post conceptual moments of our beloved City of Heroes rebirth! Bask in the afterglow cause soon the labor will start. . .


We're almost there!   ;D

I can feel it! Yes! YEs! YES! OWER HOME WILL RETURN! :D ;D But by the way, will it be everything the same texture and 3D models and powers and everything in CoH Freedom the same? i like the character model just let me know! :)


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 09, 2014, 07:01:53 PM
Can't you feel it?

I could, but then the nice policeman said I had to stop it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 09, 2014, 07:10:42 PM
@Remaugen, @Wizzyboy:  If it happens, I will celebrate.  But for all we know at this point, it may be next Christmas before we even hear any more news on what is happening behind the scenes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on September 09, 2014, 07:15:38 PM
I could, but then the nice policeman said I had to stop it.

BADA BING! BADA BOOM!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 09, 2014, 07:29:19 PM
Can't you feel it?

They talk about us! Telling lies...well, THAT's no surprise!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 09, 2014, 08:16:00 PM
I could, but then the nice policeman said I had to stop it.


We soooo need a like button for moments like this one. . .


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 09, 2014, 08:31:18 PM
But by the way, will it be everything the same texture and 3D models and powers and everything in CoH Freedom the same? i like the character model just let me know! :)


We're almost there!   ;D

I really don't know, but I think (just suspect really) that Irish Girl (APR) is ripping many of the existing textures from the game to import into her UE4 engine, so I have a feeling that most of the look and feel will remain, but with improvements.


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 09, 2014, 08:37:03 PM
We're almost there!   ;D
Again, in point of fact we don't know that.  I practically feel obliged to quote Inigo Montoya here: "You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on September 09, 2014, 08:38:56 PM
Again, in point of fact we don't know that.  I practically feel obliged to quote Inigo Montoya here: "You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means."

Stop rhyming! I mean it!

<.<
>.>

...anybody want a peanut?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: slickriptide on September 09, 2014, 08:41:52 PM
So, a question for @Downix - If this, ah, "holding company" comes into being, whose primary purpose is to act as a licensor of the CoX IP and possibly a "publisher" of the I-23 server, would this company be limited in the types of licenses it could grant? That is, would this IP company be able to license a novel, or a CCG, or an action figure, or would it be limited strictly to licensing MMORPG versions of CoX?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 09, 2014, 08:47:06 PM
Again, in point of fact we don't know that.  I practically feel obliged to quote Inigo Montoya here: "You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means."

The main thing is we have hope and now you know it isn't a false message - it is a real possibility and if all else fails we have a notion of how to approach NCSoft and the fact that they ARE approachable. I have said in the past once you find out some of what happened and put all the pieces together - NCSoft wasn't the ogre people thought they were.

If you still harbor resentment towards NCSoft look at the type of deal they are willing to make - have you ever heard of something like this? They are willing to set up a holding company - yes in partnership with NCSoft and allow people to License the City of Heroes brand to be official games based off the original.

They are even willing to set up a company to run the Legacy CoH and let it be self sustaining. I can't help but think that NCSoft has realized they do minimal work, they get money back in licensing and likely a cut of the Legacy server profits little. It is a perfect deal with no risk - because they can just close the game again if needed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 09, 2014, 09:12:59 PM
The main thing is we have hope and now you know it isn't a false message - it is a real possibility and if all else fails we have a notion of how to approach NCSoft and the fact that they ARE approachable. I have said in the past once you find out some of what happened and put all the pieces together - NCSoft wasn't the ogre people thought they were.

If you still harbor resentment towards NCSoft look at the type of deal they are willing to make - have you ever heard of something like this? They are willing to set up a holding company - yes in partnership with NCSoft and allow people to License the City of Heroes brand to be official games based off the original.

They are even willing to set up a company to run the Legacy CoH and let it be self sustaining. I can't help but think that NCSoft has realized they do minimal work, they get money back in licensing and likely a cut of the Legacy server profits little. It is a perfect deal with no risk - because they can just close the game again if needed.
I know it's not a false message, but from everything you and downix have told us so far, it's also not a fast process.  Who said anything about resentment towards NCSoft?  If anything, this has made me far more positively disposed towards them than I have been for over 2 years now.  That said, the one detail that has shone through these negotiations to date is that they have been prolonged ones, and may continue on for quite some time into the foreseeable future.  In short, we are not "almost there," unless one has a very...extended definition of the word "almost."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 09, 2014, 09:17:24 PM
If you still harbor resentment towards NCSoft look at the type of deal they are willing to make - have you ever heard of something like this? They are willing to set up a holding company - yes in partnership with NCSoft and allow people to License the City of Heroes brand to be official games based off the original.

They are even willing to set up a company to run the Legacy CoH and let it be self sustaining. I can't help but think that NCSoft has realized they do minimal work, they get money back in licensing and likely a cut of the Legacy server profits little. It is a perfect deal with no risk - because they can just close the game again if needed.

All that we know for certain is they are willing to listen to someone pitch an idea for setting up a holding company, letting legacy coh be self sustaining, and sub-licensing the IP.

Whether there is any possibility they'd agree to that kind of thing, or whether an agreement can be reached to do so, that's all up in the air. It's way too premature to be thinking "we're almost there". For all we know they only agreed to listen out of politeness due to the way they were approached.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 09, 2014, 09:22:48 PM
In short, we not "almost there," unless one has a very...extended definition of the word "almost."


You can continue to be the Debbie Downer if you choose. It's just a matter of positive outlook for me, by comparison to where we were last year, or even before this project became public. . .


We really are "Almost There"   ;D 


Edit: My gut feeling is we will be playing the legacy I23 image around Halloweenish. No, I have nothing concrete at all to base that on, but I don't think it is unrealistic either. . .
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 09, 2014, 09:28:47 PM
Quit sending out those negative vibs, man!  8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 09, 2014, 09:33:51 PM
Quit sending out those negative vibes, woman!  8)
You can be as optimistic as you want, but I (and Codewalker) are being the voices of reason here at present.  Our current position is not "almost there," it's "hopefully we can end up getting the game back, but that's likely to be next year, at least, and that's if the deal goes through."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 09, 2014, 09:33:59 PM
Ironwolf:
 
My understanding throughout this entire thread has been that NCSoft wouldn't be setting up a joint holding company and collecting royalties into the future, but would be selling the IP to MWM entirely for a one time fee.  MWM would then set up their OWN holding company to handle the IP. 
 
Am I misunderstanding? If I am that makes me slightly less excited about this deal since it gives NCSoft some serious veto power over future games designed by MWM and any of the successors. 
 
Can you clarify if I misunderstood either your recent post of what is being negotiated? 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 09, 2014, 09:35:13 PM
Edit: My gut feeling is we will be playing the legacy I23 image around Halloweenish. No, I have nothing concrete at all to base that on, but I don't think it is unrealistic either. . .
Will you bet $100 on that?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 09, 2014, 09:39:22 PM
There were many different concerns the dev team had to balance with regard to character slots, but I believe the only really important one for a maintenance mode server (or servers) is disk space to hold the character information.  And disk space is not today what it was when CoH released, or even when it shut down.  If they wanted to allow everyone to have a hundred slots per server, I don't think that would be difficult to do.  It would cost more to have more storage online, but it wouldn't likely cost a lot in absolute terms.  There might be hard coded slot limits in the code, but I'm sure CW could just patch those away if I randomly posted that I thought he couldn't do it.

And it may have to do with what "clever" shortcuts they chose to take to save that space as well  - which may not be avoidable.  Wouldn't be the first time I had to curse someone's custom bitpacking scheme.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 09, 2014, 09:41:00 PM
ARP is 1.5, but they will not be running the legacy game. That is planned to be run by whoever runs the holding company that will own the IP.

Nothing specific is known/declared about who will run the Legacy servers.  That's a common misread.  It's still a negotiation point.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 09, 2014, 09:42:44 PM
Will you bet $100 on that?


No  :P  I have already hedged by adding "ish" to Halloween, because I really don't have any evidence at all, just a gut feeling that:


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 09, 2014, 09:44:21 PM
If your database chokes at a few million small records, I'd suggest not using a terrible database.  ;D

Because schema growth is *always* well thought out and rebuilt.

Do recall which version of SQLServer we're dealing with here...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 09, 2014, 09:49:47 PM
2008R2. Why they didn't just call it SQL2010 is beyond me to this day, at least the client components are sane and just call it 10.50.  From my experience with SQL Server in general and given how it's used, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work as-is with 2012 or even 2014 if you wanted.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 09, 2014, 09:51:48 PM
2008R2. Why they didn't just call it SQL2010 is beyond me to this day, at least the client components are sane and just call it 10.50.  From my experience with SQL Server in general and given how it's used, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work as-is with 2012 or even 2014 if you wanted.
I'm using SQL Server 2012 here at work.  It's mostly an improvement over our previous version - at least as far as my work goes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 09, 2014, 09:56:52 PM
I'm not a huge fan of the cartoonification of SQL management studio, but the server component is solid enough.

Just remember to turn on MVCC if you do a lot of concurrent read and write transactions. It still defaults to ancient row-level locking for some unfathomable reason. Oh sorry, I mean "Optimistic Concurrency Control" (aka read_committed_snapshot) -- maybe Microsoft doesn't want you to know they didn't invent it, or something...  :roll:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 09, 2014, 10:00:56 PM
So, a question for @Downix - If this, ah, "holding company" comes into being, whose primary purpose is to act as a licensor of the CoX IP and possibly a "publisher" of the I-23 server, would this company be limited in the types of licenses it could grant? That is, would this IP company be able to license a novel, or a CCG, or an action figure, or would it be limited strictly to licensing MMORPG versions of CoX?

Theoretically no, though there may be outstanding agreements that NCSoft could require to still be honored as part of the ownership transfer. For example, let's say in 2009, McFarlane acquired five year exclusive personalities (Iconics, etc ) license.  Frequently these kind of agreements are ended when a rights transfer - but not always. NC Soft could require it be honoured as part of the transfer.  THAT IS JUST AN EXAMPLE!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 09, 2014, 10:08:15 PM
Ironwolf:
 
My understanding throughout this entire thread has been that NCSoft wouldn't be setting up a joint holding company and collecting royalties into the future, but would be selling the IP to MWM entirely for a one time fee.  MWM would then set up their OWN holding company to handle the IP. 
 
Am I misunderstanding? If I am that makes me slightly less excited about this deal since it gives NCSoft some serious veto power over future games designed by MWM and any of the successors. 
 
Can you clarify if I misunderstood either your recent post of what is being negotiated?
Misunderstanding at least one element badly, it would not be MWM buying anything. It would be a small group, independent of any current company, buying the IP and setting up the holding company.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 09, 2014, 10:17:51 PM
Ironwolf:
 
My understanding throughout this entire thread has been that NCSoft wouldn't be setting up a joint holding company and collecting royalties into the future, but would be selling the IP to MWM entirely for a one time fee.  MWM would then set up their OWN holding company to handle the IP. 

No, MWM will not be the IP holder. The Holding company will be it's own entity, not a subsidiary or other similar child entity of MWM. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 09, 2014, 10:26:58 PM
2008R2. Why they didn't just call it SQL2010 is beyond me to this day, at least the client components are sane and just call it 10.50.  From my experience with SQL Server in general and given how it's used, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work as-is with 2012 or even 2014 if you wanted.

Hmm. My info says they didn't move that far or are running it in 2000? compatibility mode..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 09, 2014, 10:45:48 PM
All that we know for certain is they are willing to listen to someone pitch an idea for setting up a holding company, letting legacy coh be self sustaining, and sub-licensing the IP.

Whether there is any possibility they'd agree to that kind of thing, or whether an agreement can be reached to do so, that's all up in the air. It's way too premature to be thinking "we're almost there". For all we know they only agreed to listen out of politeness due to the way they were approached.
"If wishes were horses then beggars would eat."
So, until a deal is signed the only thing that's certain is that NCsoft is willing to listen to proposals. Which is nice and all, but i will definitely continue hedging the bet with CoT, VO, and H&V. At this moment VO seems to be farther along towards being a playable game, and of the other two my experiences with UE4 have been a lot more positive than Hero Engine, but we'll see how that all works out in the end. Until an actual deal is announced i'm going to stay with the estimate that we're at least three months from being able to play CoH again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on September 09, 2014, 10:47:21 PM
I'm using SQL Server 2012 here at work.  It's mostly an improvement over our previous version - at least as far as my work goes.

I'm really liking the new BI and Integration tools in 2012, even if we're just barely utilizing them. The BIDS studio is buggy and borked, though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 09, 2014, 11:33:04 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 09, 2014, 11:36:11 PM
The main thing is we have hope and now you know it isn't a false message - it is a real possibility and if all else fails we have a notion of how to approach NCSoft and the fact that they ARE approachable. I have said in the past once you find out some of what happened and put all the pieces together - NCSoft wasn't the ogre people thought they were.

If you still harbor resentment towards NCSoft look at the type of deal they are willing to make - have you ever heard of something like this? They are willing to set up a holding company - yes in partnership with NCSoft and allow people to License the City of Heroes brand to be official games based off the original.

They are even willing to set up a company to run the Legacy CoH and let it be self sustaining. I can't help but think that NCSoft has realized they do minimal work, they get money back in licensing and likely a cut of the Legacy server profits little. It is a perfect deal with no risk - because they can just close the game again if needed.

Whoa there fella.  We heard from Nate that they were just introduced to the Partnership Person in July, that they're just beginning with mentioning things they want as the initial offer on the table and there is a long way to go.  So please don't put lots of words into NCSoft's mouths either, okay? 

You say "They are willing to set up a holding company - yes in partnership with NCSoft and allow people to License the City of Heroes brand to be official games based off the original.  They are even willing to set up a company to run the Legacy CoH and let it be self sustaining."

Um, so they have approved all this and the deal is signed?  Because according to Nate, NCSoft is only looking at the deal that Nate put forth and nothing more right now.  Don't make it like things are signed, sealed and delivered when they're far from it please.  And also, you said:

"It is a perfect deal with no risk - because they can just close the game again if needed."  Uh, this is far from perfect, in fact it is terrible.  So it can be "Goodbye CoX once again" at any time on the whim of NCSoft once again?  Yeesh.

For one, I don't think this deal is anywhere near finalized in any way shape or form, or NCSoft and whomever is trying to get i23 would be announcing it from the mountaintops.

Also, I'm going to mention here that just because there may be a deal that has been put forth by Nate & Crew for NCSoft to begin deliberating on, that does not make NCSoft so great nor does it make Paragon Studios bad or in the wrong for not getting a deal signed at CoX's shuttering.  Maybe NCSoft was going way overboard in the Greed Department originally; maybe the bar was set so high to keep CoX open that no one could possibly reach that bar.  ...  And maybe it still is or will be.   ;)  Let's hope whomever is trying to scrounge up the money to do all this can ascertain this as well as pro studios like Paragon Studios could, too, for their sakes as well as ours.

And if you had time I would tell you the laundry list of NCSoft's underhanded behavior in many other of its MMORPGs over the years, but you'd need about five hours, dude.  You might want to ask Richard Garriott and the $28 million he won in a lawsuit from your Wonder Heroes NCSoft over Tabula Rasa, and the way they forged his signatures and shut his game down in its infancy behind his back after telling him to his face that everything was fine before he went on a vacation.  Or try playing Aion sometime-- they make major game changes like making it take twice as long and cost twice as much in-game gold to level and craft, then they put insanely priced XP pots in the shop.  Not to mention that the game has been completely overrun with gold farmers and lag for five 1/2 years since beta.  Lineage 2 has been similarly completely overrun with gold farmers and botters --  and both since way before F2P was even a twinkle in NCSoft's eye.  I put it down to payola to NC to look the other way about a decade ago to be honest.

I could go on and on, but it kind of makes me ill the way you gush about NCSoft, when they are in fact nothing of the sort.  And I absolutely do not like how in previous statements you have made negative comments about Paragon Studios, without whom you would have never had a game at all.

We'll see about this deal, someday, if it doesn't get blown to the wind with all the rest.  But it's nowhere a done deal so please take the rose colored glasses off.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 10, 2014, 12:01:53 AM
Misunderstanding at least one element badly, it would not be MWM buying anything. It would be a small group, independent of any current company, buying the IP and setting up the holding company.

Right. Sorry, I actually did know that part, I just forgot since I know You are involved in some way between the two. Still, can you clarify the rest of my question?  Will NCSoft somehow still be a co-holder of the IP, at least as far as negotiations at this point are going? Is that what they're asking for, or are they talking about selling the IP entirely to the new company?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on September 10, 2014, 12:06:36 AM
I didn't read all the comments. So I just wanted to Thank everyone who had anything to do with this.

It's not a done deal yet but atleasts it's something.

One question I saw asked was what's everyone going to do. When all these games are out?

For me personally I plan to support all of them in one form or another. I've keeped two subs going to the games I play. Depending on how I play them. When I played COH I had three subs going at one time. After COH closed I had a sub with StarWars KOTOR and another one with WOW at the sametime. I was also playing various F2P games that I'd put money into when I had some extra to spend. That's what I plan to do with these games. If COH comes back, I'll sub to it, then sub to which ever of the other games I'm playing the most. Then depending on the payment options (cash shops ect) of the one's that I play when I need breaks from my mains. I'll spend money on them when I have extra.

I like the way this deal is sounding, hopefully all will go well and we'll be back home soon.

/holdtorch.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 10, 2014, 12:08:26 AM
Right. Sorry, I actually did know that part, I just forgot since I know You are involved in some way between the two. Still, can you clarify the rest of my question?  Will NCSoft somehow still be a co-holder of the IP, at least as far as negotiations at this point are going? Is that what they're asking for, or are they talking about selling the IP entirely to the new company?
You literally quoted him saying the new company would be buying the IP. Buying means the seller retains no ties.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amrobinson on September 10, 2014, 12:10:01 AM
I suspect you will be disappointed.  The Sentinel files don't contain your story history, and I really wouldn't bet on being able to upload them to a static copy of i23.

See here:  http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10284.msg160734.html#msg160734

It would be nice to get our characters back, but at this point, it doesn't look like that will happen.  But half a loaf is still better than none.  If I have to work up my characters again from scratch, I can live with that.

Can we get a program to convert Sentinel xml files into .costume files?

This way we can download the costume images of our characters into the character designer module.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 10, 2014, 12:17:56 AM
Can we get a program to convert Sentinel xml files into .costume files?

This way we can download the costume images of our characters into the character designer module.

Senticon: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=9637.0

It requires a lot of fiddly stuff I don't/don't want to understand.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: InOnePiece on September 10, 2014, 12:18:07 AM
It is a perfect deal with no risk - because they can just close the game again if needed.
How does this happen if they are selling the IP to a separate holding company? Are you assuming some kind of clause in the deal that says the IP reverts back to them if the holding company has to close within "x" years?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 10, 2014, 12:18:12 AM
Can we get a program to convert Sentinel xml files into .costume files?

This way we can download the costume images of our characters into the character designer module.
I just made sure to save all my costume files - all 600 of them.  I was amazed the number had really gotten that large.  But then, there were evenings where I spent hours just hanging out at Icon, trying on new outfits.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 10, 2014, 12:20:49 AM
Hmm. My info says...

Sent you a PM.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: tripthicket on September 10, 2014, 12:29:59 AM
I have a lot of spare time on my hands lately, so I've been able to more or less keep up with the discussion here in this thread and in the New Efforts thread. That doesn't at all guarantee that my understanding of Things As They Stand is accurate on any or all points; I've been taking a new medication for a few months that I'm beginning to suspect is interfering with my concentration and memory. I'm posting now because I see a lot of speculation evolving through imperfect repetition into fact(s)(for some), as well as imprecise language here or there from inside parties sparking more speculation to go off in the wrong directions. Since I myself have come to doubt (some of) what I know, I'll just leave this dump truck full of salt here for any and all to use as they see fit, and ask that the parties truly in the know please correct me if you feel it's necessary.

At this point, Downix and a group of unknowns is in negotiations with NCSoft to try to obtain some part of City of Heroes. These negotiations have been ongoing for several months, and are likely to continue for several more before an agreement is reached. What that agreement will consist of is unknown and at this time cannot be known. While Downix & Co. are asking for certain things, such as the outright purchase of the City of Heroes intellectual property, there is no guarantee whatsoever that a period of negotiations measured in years will conclude with NCSoft agreeing to anything. If this worst case scenario comes to pass, it will be because NCSoft is acting from a business standpoint, not because they have any negative emotions towards fans of the game.

While Downix is a part of the negotiating team, AND he is a member of staff of Missing Worlds Media, it is untrue that Missing Worlds Media is in negotiations with NCSoft in any way, shape, form or manner.

Missing Worlds Media is of course forging ahead with their City of Titans game, which they are planning to be a spiritual successor to City of Heroes. How long it will be before that game is ready for release is also probably a period of time measured in years still.

Heroes and Villains is another game in development, which also has as part of its vision that it will be a spiritual successor to City of Heroes. I'm not aware of their progress to date, but I would be unsurprised if they too will not have their game ready for launch after a period of time measured in years.

Valiance Online is another game under development, in the superhero genre, and I am also unsure of their progress to date. I have read one or two things that make me think they may be ready before launch before the other two games-in-development, but I could well be wrong, and things happen to all of our best-laid plans anyway.

There is (what I understand to be) a rumor that Downix & Co went to NCSoft asking to purchase the City of Heroes IP, and that in the negotiations, NCSoft offered to also sell an image of City of Heroes as it was when it shut down. Such an image could supposedly be set up and run, but without the ability to make any changes whatsoever. This is because NCSoft is not selling the underlying code for the game. Speculation, wild and informed and a hybrid perhaps of both, has centered on the existence of  proprietary code that NCSoft may have used in some of their other games, or that the underlying code may be entangled with players' financial data. It also seems very unlikely that characters and other player possessions will be available for sale, for likely the same reasons. It seems very unlikely, given such speculation, that the underlying code will ever be sold, but nothing is set in stone until the signatures dry on the purchase agreement.

I am using the word 'likely' (and its variant, 'unlikely') far too much.

At this point in my post, we see that there are four things happening: three games are under development by three different studios, and a fourth entity, acting on its own behalf (although if they are successful, no matter the degree of success, their efforts will benefit us all) is in negotiations with NCSoft.

That's not all! A fifth entity, currently known as Atlas Park Revival (hi, Irish_Girl!), is and has been for a very long time (early 2013? earlier?) working to recreate City of Heroes in Unreal Engine 4 (which Missing Worlds Media is also using for City of Titans). If I understand correctly, it was originally named the Atlas Park Revival because that's what they first intended to do: recreate Atlas Park in UE4. Also, to the best of my knowledge and at the present moment in time, there are a total of 2 people undertaking this monumental task, in their spare time and without pay.

I don't know if this next is a rumor, or an actual secret group, or something else entirely. All I do know is that some people have called them SCORE. What they're trying to do, if they actually exist, I have no real knowledge of. So I'll just leave this out there.

Downix & Co went into the negotiations with NCSoft hoping to outright purchase the City of Heroes IP, as far as I understand it. For the moment, let's leave all of the rest of what else might be being discussed to the side. Should NCSoft actually agree to sell that IP, a completely separate entity, as yet unnamed and with no details as to its makeup, would become the legal owners of that IP. Who would actually be employed by that company is unknown, but I believe it will not be any of the studios currently developing their own games, nor will it be Atlas Park Revival. This new company will outright own the IP, so NCSoft will not be able to dictate what is done with it. This would seemingly include the inability to shut any game down that is affiliated with the City of Heroes IP. Again, I point out that nothing is set in stone.

This COH IP-holding company would then be free to license said IP to whomever it wished, to be used in just about any manner imaginable. Games, clothing, toys, books, candy bars--as I said, anything. A significant benefit, and the one most likely to be used first, is that any game is free to ask for a license of the IP, to use it as much or as little as is agreed upon. The best example I've read is that, once they purchase such a license, any of the games that are intending to be a spiritual successor to City of Heroes can then legally advertise themselves as a just plain successor, no matter how much or how little of the IP they choose to use.

While no further real news has been forthcoming, other than the initial announcement on September 1st that, yes, negotiations are underway with NCSoft, I believe that Missing Worlds Media has already expressed their desire to license the City of Heroes IP, although it will likely (there's that word again!) not affect their lore or other aspects of their game to a great degree. I also have heard (second- or third-hand) that Valiance Online and Heroes and Villains have stated their intention of not licensing the IP. Understandably, such a license would be a minor matter anyway to any studio developing their own game, even if said studio was trying to look and feel much like City of Heroes.

It's been rumored, and it may well not be a rumor, that NCSoft is willing to sell the Issue 23 image of City of Heroes so that it may be stood up and we can play our beloved game just as we did those last few months. I think this undertaking is more and more being referred to as Legacy CoH. I don't know if this project would need to obtain a license from the holding company, or if NCSoft would have any kind of attachment to it. Even if NCSoft was still attached in some manner to this Legacy CoH, it would not in any way affect the IP holding company or any of the current game projects under development. In my opinion, and as I understand the nature of the image that's supposedly being offered, we would be able to play the game, just as it was. Except not.

THE FOLLOWING IS MY OPINION ONLY. Any programming experts or those actually in negotiations, PLEASE chime in and correct or clarify my next statements.

No access to the underlying code means those running Legacy COH would be UNABLE to make any changes whatsoever. It goes much farther than not being able to fix any bugs. No player account data (from the code) means nothing any of us had in-game will be there: no characters, no bases, no INF, no IOs, no Vet Rewards, nothing. Since the underlying code can't be accessed, there's no way to just give everybody everything (or anything). No access to financial data MAY mean no store; if so, costumes or powersets or other things available for purchase through that store MAY not be available at all, and we couldn't change that--no access to the code. Any special events (Halloween, Christmas, Rikti invasions, etc.) may not happen because even if it's just flipping a switch to turn it on, that switch is most probably located in the code that we won't have access to. I'd go on, but I think my point is made. Understand, I **WANT** to be wrong in this regard, but until someone with actual knowledge of the connections between image and code steps in to say otherwise, I don't think I am.

I'm not even sure programmers could work to fix the above things, even if they wanted to--again, no access to any code. I don't think new code could just be attached to the image, as the image is not code. Imagine a music CD you've purchased, or a CD that's not rewriteable and that you've already filled. Even if half of your music or data is garbled in some manner, you can't fix it. Return it to the store or start over from scratch--those are your options. And I really, REALLY want to be wrong here. I have some small knowledge of computers and programming, nothing that would rise to the level of employment, but enough to make me feel discouraged in this manner.

But enough. I was trying to stick to facts as I understood them, so let's finish up this massive tome.

If a City of Heroes IP-holding company is formed after NCSoft sells the IP outright, I think the Atlas Park Revival intends to license the IP. Further, I think Missing Worlds Media may loan some of their underlying code in Unreal Engine 4 to the APR folks. I think the Atlas Park Revival folks, who are currently trying to recreate Atlas Park in UE4, will then move towards recreating (with some improvements here and there) all of City of Heroes. This undertaking has come to be commonly known as City of Heroes 1.5. The APR folks will NOT be running Legacy CoH. Just like the CoH IP-holding company, Legacy CoH will be an entirely new company. When (not if; being optimistic here) CoH 1.5 is launched, THEN the APR folks (or whatever they'll be calling themselves by then) will start working on new content/issues/updates for CoH 1.5.

CoH 1.5 has sometimes been referred to as CoH 2, but it really won't be. It'll be a continuation of the old game, with improvements and new content. There is probably never going to be a game that outright calls itself City of Heroes 2.

So, to sum up:

Downix and a party of unknowns are negotiating with NCSoft to purchase the COH IP (and possibly more).
Downix IS part of Missing Worlds Media, but MWM is NOT in negotiations with NCSoft.
IF the CoH IP is sold, it will be owned by a new, yet-to-be-formed company, unaffiliated with NCSoft in any way, which can choose to license the IP to whomever they wish.
MWM is developing City of Titans, and will likely license the CoH IP, but not change their game significantly.
Valiance Online is developing their game, but will likely not license the CoH IP.
Heroes and Villains is developing their game, but will likely not license the CoH IP.
Atlas Park Revival is currently working to reproduce Atlas Park in Unreal Engine 4.
If the image of Issue 23 is also sold, yet another company will be formed to get it up and running. This may be known as Legacy CoH.
Not having access to the underlying code for the Issue 23 image MAY cause significant problems with SOME aspects of the game.
Atlas Park Revival will also license the CoH IP and keep working to reproduce City of Heroes in UE4.
Once APR has done that, they will begin work on new content for their game, currently labeled City of Heroes 1.5.
If absolutely everything goes as planned/desired, the City of Heroes IP will be free of NCSoft involvement, we will be able to play the game as it was before it shut down, and there will be FOUR studios that can be considered as continuations of the City of Heroes dream working to bring us the future.

Not too shabby.

I apologize for the monster post. I do believe I got most of the facts straight, and I hope I clearly labeled my opinion, where applicable, as just that. I'll say it again: those in the know or with actual programming or game-construction experience, PLEASE step in and put things right where I may have put them wrong.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 10, 2014, 12:32:35 AM
You literally quoted him saying the new company would be buying the IP. Buying means the seller retains no ties.

 
Right. But when Ironwolf stated this:


If you still harbor resentment towards NCSoft look at the type of deal they are willing to make - have you ever heard of something like this? They are willing to set up a holding company - yes in partnership with NCSoft and allow people to License the City of Heroes brand to be official games based off the original.

They are even willing to set up a company to run the Legacy CoH and let it be self sustaining. I can't help but think that NCSoft has realized they do minimal work, they get money back in licensing and likely a cut of the Legacy server profits little. It is a perfect deal with no risk - because they can just close the game again if needed.

it seems a slightly different path: what they are selling is the ability to license the IP to the new company, in partnership with NCSoft.  I'm fully aware that Ironwolf may have mistyped, or misunderstood since he's not a direct insider, either, but I have no doubt he knows more than I do.  So all I'm asking for is a bit of clarification to see if the way Ironwolf stated it is what's being discussed (NCSoft partnering with the new holding company which is buying rights to license the IP but with NCSoft retaining royalties and some control of the licensing) or if it's an outright sale as Downix's posts seem to suggest.
 
Just curious, since one excites me much more than the other, is all.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 10, 2014, 12:34:41 AM

 
Right. But when Ironwolf stated this:

it seems a slightly different path: what they are selling is the ability to license the IP to the new company, in partnership with NCSoft.  I'm fully aware that Ironwolf may have mistyped, or misunderstood since he's not a direct insider, either, but I have no doubt he knows more than I do.  So all I'm asking for is a bit of clarification to see if the way Ironwolf stated it is what's being discussed (NCSoft partnering with the new holding company which is buying rights to license the IP but with NCSoft retaining royalties and some control of the licensing) or if it's an outright sale as Downix's posts seem to suggest.
 
Just curious, since one excites me much more than the other, is all.

Downix is the one (one of the ones) doing the negotiating. What he says trumps literally anyone else, even Tony, Codewalker, etc.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 10, 2014, 12:36:51 AM
*Golf Clap for Ahmad*



We're almost there!    ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 10, 2014, 12:50:29 AM
THE FOLLOWING IS MY OPINION ONLY. Any programming experts or those actually in negotiations, PLEASE chime in and correct or clarify my next statements.

No access to the underlying code means those running Legacy COH would be UNABLE to make any changes whatsoever. It goes much farther than not being able to fix any bugs. No player account data (from the code) means nothing any of us had in-game will be there: no characters, no bases, no INF, no IOs, no Vet Rewards, nothing. Since the underlying code can't be accessed, there's no way to just give everybody everything (or anything). No access to financial data MAY mean no store; if so, costumes or powersets or other things available for purchase through that store MAY not be available at all, and we couldn't change that--no access to the code. Any special events (Halloween, Christmas, Rikti invasions, etc.) may not happen because even if it's just flipping a switch to turn it on, that switch is most probably located in the code that we won't have access to. I'd go on, but I think my point is made. Understand, I **WANT** to be wrong in this regard, but until someone with actual knowledge of the connections between image and code steps in to say otherwise, I don't think I am.
If the i23 image can't host a working cash shop, or an in-game market (Wentworth's / Black Market), and doesn't even allow seasonal events to be turned on or off, then it's basically sunk before even being installed on a server.  Even I might not bother to come back in that case, as I all could do would be to just run around with characters full of empty slotted powers, and with limited costume selection, to boot.  Not sure there's much of a point there - if all I want to do is just fly around the city, I've already got Titan Icon.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 10, 2014, 12:54:41 AM
If the i23 image can't host a working cash shop, or an in-game market (Wentworth's / Black Market), and doesn't even allow seasonal events to be turned on or off, then it's basically sunk before even being installed on a server.  Even I might not bother to come back in that case, as I all could do would be to just run around with characters full of empty slotted powers, and with limited costume selection, to boot.  Not sure there's much of a point there - if all I want to do is just fly around the city, I've already got Titan Icon.

Really, Janessa?  If you think about it, the game was out for most of its life before the cash shop was active, and a good chunk of its life before WW and the BM, and the seasonal events made up a very small portion of the year's gameplay, overall.  Honestly, you could still buy any IO sets you really needed through merits earned. A ton of the costume pieces could be unlocked as well.  It wouldn't be as fast or as "fun" as the old days, but do you really think it wouldn't even be worth coming back?
 
I think about 80% of the game would still be functioning just fine, albeit much more slowly.  And considering at that point we'd be even more assured it was just a temporary situation until the game is truly reborn in the new iterations...
 
 
All of this being hypothetical until we know a)its happening, and b)how, exactly, it's going to work.  :)
 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 10, 2014, 12:54:50 AM
If the i23 image can't host a working cash shop, or an in-game market (Wentworth's / Black Market), and doesn't even allow seasonal events to be turned on or off, then it's basically sunk before even being installed on a server.  Even I might not bother to come back in that case, as I all could do would be to just run around with characters full of empty slotted powers, and with limited costume selection, to boot.  Not sure there's much of a point there - if all I want to do is just fly around the city, I've already got Titan Icon.


I would be all over it so that I can make toons to jump onto CoH 1.5/2 as soon as it launches. I23 was fun to play, it would still be fun to play even if it was frozen. ANYTHING to get back into bashing bad guys and flying the skies of CoX.


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BraveStar on September 10, 2014, 01:06:50 AM
If the i23 image can't host a working cash shop, or an in-game market (Wentworth's / Black Market), and doesn't even allow seasonal events to be turned on or off, then it's basically sunk before even being installed on a server.  Even I might not bother to come back in that case, as I all could do would be to just run around with characters full of empty slotted powers, and with limited costume selection, to boot.  Not sure there's much of a point there - if all I want to do is just fly around the city, I've already got Titan Icon.

Even if they can't get the marketplace working, I see no reason why they couldn't just grant all accounts access to all of the purchasable items.

As for Wentworths/Black Market, I was never terribly fond of it anyway.  ;) I actually preferred the way the game played before it was added. If they can't get it going, then I'm sure this crowd will find some way around it. Heck, it might just mean Super Groups become more important again, just as a means of sharing salvage.  :D That could be a fun twist in and of itself.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 10, 2014, 01:08:53 AM
If the i23 image can't host a working cash shop, or an in-game market (Wentworth's / Black Market), and doesn't even allow seasonal events to be turned on or off, then it's basically sunk before even being installed on a server.  Even I might not bother to come back in that case, as I all could do would be to just run around with characters full of empty slotted powers, and with limited costume selection, to boot.  Not sure there's much of a point there - if all I want to do is just fly around the city, I've already got Titan Icon.

chances are the cash shop just sent a "this is unlocked message" for slots/costume stuff etc. it was applied to character data (wild guess here) ww/bm was on the game, as were holiday events. they could switch on events without patching, most likely from the server console. they wont be able to add stuff, but they systems are already in the image. they should be able to run a batch turning all characters "on" for costume options etc.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 10, 2014, 01:09:28 AM
No access to the underlying code means those running Legacy COH would be UNABLE to make any changes whatsoever. It goes much farther than not being able to fix any bugs. No player

There was, at last I was aware, the possibility of some degree of regression corrections ( due to Windows patches, etc ) was not absolutely out, but I'm unsure if anyone has yet to do due diligence on if that is practically doable ( IE, can anyone actually still build the client from code, etc. )

account data (from the code) means nothing any of us had in-game will be there: no characters, no bases, no INF, no IOs, no Vet Rewards, nothing. Since the underlying code can't be accessed, there's no way to just give everybody everything (or anything). No access to financial data MAY mean no store; if so, costumes or powersets or other things available for purchase through that store MAY not be available at all, and we couldn't change that--no access to the code. Any special events (Halloween, Christmas, Rikti invasions, etc.) may not happen because even if it's just flipping a switch to turn it on, that switch is most probably located in the code that we won't have access to. I'd go on, but I think my point is made. Understand, I **WANT** to be wrong in this regard, but until someone with actual knowledge of the connections between image and code steps in to say otherwise, I don't think I am.

The account oriented stuff is accurate as of today.  The event things probably is again, something that will require due diligence.

If a City of Heroes IP-holding company is formed after NCSoft sells the IP outright, I think the Atlas Park Revival intends to license the IP. Further, I think Missing Worlds Media may loan some of their underlying code in Unreal Engine 4 to the APR folks. I think the Atlas Park Revival folks, who are currently trying to recreate Atlas Park in UE4, will then move towards recreating (with some improvements here and there) all of City of Heroes. This undertaking has come to be commonly known as City of Heroes 1.5. The APR folks will NOT be running Legacy CoH. Just like the CoH IP-holding company, Legacy CoH will be an entirely new company. When (not if; being optimistic here) CoH 1.5 is launched, THEN the APR folks (or whatever they'll be calling themselves by then) will start working on new content/issues/updates for CoH 1.5.

Who will be running the legacy server is yet to be determined.

CoH 1.5 has sometimes been referred to as CoH 2, but it really won't be. It'll be a continuation of the old game, with improvements and new content. There is probably never going to be a game that outright calls itself City of Heroes 2.

Also remains to be seen.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 10, 2014, 01:14:12 AM
chances are the cash shop just sent a "this is unlocked message" for slots/costume stuff etc. it was applied to character data (wild guess here) ww/bm was on the game, as were holiday events. they could switch on events without patching, most likely from the server console. they wont be able to add stuff, but they systems are already in the image. they should be able to run a batch turning all characters "on" for costume options etc.
Truthfully, this was rather along the lines I was thinking.  The in-game market is likely part of the code already, turning the seasonal events on and off ought to be hackable without that much trouble in the worst-case scenario (you'd think there must be some sort of control console tool for the game that would allow at least this much basic control capability), and Arcana has recently stated that she could write us a better cash shop market than the one we had in her sleep.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 10, 2014, 01:22:16 AM
I always suspected the store was just a plugin and not part of the game code. But honestly that was just an assumption on my part, I really don't know.


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 10, 2014, 01:25:52 AM
I always suspected the store was just a plugin and not part of the game code. But honestly that was just an assumption on my part, I really don't know.
That was recently confirmed - the cash shop was not only a plug-in, it was managed by a 3rd-party company.  So we would just need a new plug-in - something the new owners would be very highly motivated to do.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tubbius on September 10, 2014, 01:48:30 AM
I want to see the game again.  When I installed Windows 7, I lost my City installation, so Icon is no longer an option as-is.  :(  Here's hoping everything works out reasonably soon and completely well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 10, 2014, 01:57:57 AM
I want to see the game again.  When I installed Windows 7, I lost my City installation, so Icon is no longer an option as-is.  :(  Here's hoping everything works out reasonably soon and completely well.
Just download a fresh copy of CoH i24 and then install Titan Icon.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 10, 2014, 02:04:20 AM
I want to see the game again.  When I installed Windows 7, I lost my City installation, so Icon is no longer an option as-is.  :(  Here's hoping everything works out reasonably soon and completely well.

 
I think you'll be happy if you click this link: 
 
http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=9531.0
 
I had the same issue, losing the hard drive that had my CoH install as well as all of my Sentinel files, but at least this let me redowload and get Icon working again.

Good luck!  PM me if you run in to any problems. Maybe I can help.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on September 10, 2014, 02:09:46 AM
Quit sending out those negative vibs, man!  8)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AEj3LA2vSo

Negative waves, man...  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chasearcanum on September 10, 2014, 02:10:19 AM
That was recently confirmed - the cash shop was not only a plug-in, it was managed by a 3rd-party company.  So we would just need a new plug-in - something the new owners would be very highly motivated to do.

Correct.  Not sure of the original vendor, but middleware agencies like that are a big part of current game development.  Why build your own in-game store when you can get a license at a fraction of the cost?  CoH was very much scratch-built at the start, but I know at least the marketplace was 3rd party licensed.

One obstacle-- different vendors have different API's.  We (well... they, but I'm a "we" in spirit) won't have access to the source code to alter the API's to a new vendor's system.  If we don't go with the original middleware vendor, we would likely be limited to making a "wrapper" that would exist between the marketplace and the game.  the wrapper would interact with the new vendor's apis and translate it to the old vendor's format that the CoH engine is expecting.  Depending on what values are expected and security measures are in place, this could be quite the enjoyable challenge.

A less likely risk: some vendors consider their API interfaces to be propretary, meaning they could object to us using them... even if we just want to do it via "wrapper" to get around the source code limitation.  This is unlikely to stall the project, but vendors can try to eke out fees that are less than the legal costs to challenge them.  this is becoming far too common in the industry, but we'd be 'small prizes' and may not be worth the effort.

It might just be that they run the game with the in game store just generating an error, then manage access to the game and resources through a more manual interface-- run a "donation paypal" account with various rewards that you set through a custom-made interface to the existing db.  More cumbersome, but depending on the middleware interfacing issues and costs, may be more do-able (and similar to what some emulator communities are doing).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chasearcanum on September 10, 2014, 02:13:37 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AEj3LA2vSo

Negative waves, man...  :)

+450 points for bringing Kelly's Heroes into the conversation.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 10, 2014, 02:17:31 AM

You can continue to be the Debbie Downer if you choose. It's just a matter of positive outlook for me, by comparison to where we were last year, or even before this project became public. . .


We really are "Almost There"   ;D 


Edit: My gut feeling is we will be playing the legacy I23 image around Halloweenish. No, I have nothing concrete at all to base that on, but I don't think it is unrealistic either. . .

I think your gut needs more beer. We are not guaranteed that there will be a deal for legacy CoH by October, 2014. The 'online store' plug in to service the micro-transactions has to be adapated from NCSoft sources or rewritten and tested as a plug-in to the I-23 system. If that took 3 months, I would be happy. The I-23 zombie CoH needs some kind of staff to maintain the game and answer player service tickets. This staffing will take time. Plus, putting the binary copy from NCSoft on physical servers and getting the game rolling will take time. The shortest interval will be the dissemination of the revival of an active zombie game through the various social media to alert veteran CoH players it's time to play.

Having said all that... we really are "Almost There" :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 10, 2014, 02:18:59 AM
I think your gut needs more beer. We are not guaranteed that there will be a deal for legacy CoH by October, 2014. The 'online store' plug in to service the micro-transactions has to be adapated from NCSoft sources or rewritten and tested as a plug-in to the I-23 system. If that took 3 months, I would be happy. The I-23 zombie CoH needs some kind of staff to maintain the game and answer player service tickets. This staffing will take time. Plus, putting the binary copy from NCSoft on physical servers and getting the game rolling will take time. The shortest interval will be the dissemination of the revival of an active zombie game through the various social media to alert veteran CoH players it's time to play.

Having said all that... we really are "Almost There" :)

Plus will players have to download a new launcher and any revised I23 COH files?  I never uninstalled mine as I like to use ICON at times, but that doesn't mean that it will be what I need to play again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 10, 2014, 02:37:42 AM
More Beer it is!



We're almost there!    ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 03:02:22 AM
Hey guys!
So, I'm at my new place. Everything's still a little chaotic, but I've at least got my computer hooked up.
I thought I'd take a break and catch up on what I missed. Which...Seems to have been a lot!


-puts on hard hat- Agge, please don't hit me for the storm of replies!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 03:03:11 AM
More like:
(https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2581/3779834896_a9c1d7f4d7_o.png) (https://flic.kr/p/6L1Deb)
 ;)

I wondered how many other players remembered this, lol. I was trying to not so subtly reference it ;P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 10, 2014, 03:09:22 AM
There was, at last I was aware, the possibility of some degree of regression corrections ( due to Windows patches, etc ) was not absolutely out, but I'm unsure if anyone has yet to do due diligence on if that is practically doable ( IE, can anyone actually still build the client from code, etc. )

It actually sounds like new content isn't completely impossible, just a kludge-ridden pain in the ass. It's a pity it wasn't a Java codebase. Then it would be like 30% code and 70% XML to generate more code. Actually no, wait a minute. That would suck major butt.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Eoraptor on September 10, 2014, 03:10:30 AM

 
I think you'll be happy if you click this link: 
 
http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=9531.0
 
I had the same issue, losing the hard drive that had my CoH install as well as all of my Sentinel files, but at least this let me redowload and get Icon working again.

Good luck!  PM me if you run in to any problems. Maybe I can help.
yup, tequila had me up and runing quickly once it downloaded everything ( that itself took a few tries, but nothing insurmountable) you won't have your old toon data, sadly, but you'll be able to tour the ghost town at least
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 03:10:39 AM
Lots of reasons:  Maybe their lore, stories and quest lines are too far along (or will be by the time the CoX IP ever really gets purchased, if it ever does) for them to begin anew.  Or maybe they will have to (or worry that later they will have to) pay for the rights to license the CoX IP.  They may also worry that whomever controls the IP may be able to shut them down later.

And as none of us know even the details of what is on the table now never mind if it will go through or not (or what form it will be in if it ever does go through), we really can't blame them one bit.  I don't.

I haven't spoken to either teams, So this is pure speculation.
There's also the concern that agreeing to something like that forfeits a certain level of control. You can't simply have the Rikti come in and blow up the planet, it would conflict with what's going on in the I.P. in other places.
Basically, the only way to have no real concerns is to make your story take place in an Alternate time-line/universe/dimension that has very little story ties to CoH. At that point, why even bother calling it a CoH successor?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 03:21:06 AM
Doesn't it make sense that the APR/1.5 team should also be the ones to run the legacy i23 servers? Monthly sub costs will help cover the 1.5 development costs as well as keep the i23 servers running. It would also mean that the APR/1.5 devs will have access to the database so that eventually they can figure out how to make a script/tool that ports the i23 users over to APR/1.5 once its ready.

Uh. It's honestly not something I'd given any direct thought, nor have I bothered to talk with Nate about it at all.
Either way would prolly go the same...
Revival/Other group forms a special team of people to handle the running of the server. That team runs said server.

A portion of the income being diverted to APR... I certainly wouldn't complain. It would open some doors that are currently closed to me at the moment.
Something like that couldn't be begun to think about until a lot of other things were worked out first. (What do players have to pay for, how much are they paying, what are the maint. costs, how much are we paying staff, is there Engine license fees...Etc.)

While us being the ones running it would indeed make things like working on a system to move characters from Legacy to i23 easier (As well as being able to have a dedicated research environment, where we can double check content and mess with things without worry of effecting the Live environment.), I would hope who ever is running Legacy would be willing to work closely with us when needed. (As well as being able to have a dedicated research environment, where we can double check content and mess with things without worry of effecting the Live environment.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 03:22:59 AM
Aye, I would anticipate the number of servers being halved, and the ones that do return would the names of the servers that tended to bigger populations such as Freedom and Virtue. 

There's no reason that the server list has to be halved. Or even one less. Aside from HDD space, it wouldn't make much difference.
All of the Live servers were running on one computer anyways. Then I believe the Auth server it's own machine, as well as Beta.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 03:25:29 AM
My question for APR and any direct successor (taking place in Paragon itself, in the same universe) would be how they're taking care of the old missions. APR I guess I can see including them, but I kind of think it would be nice to start fresh. Rather than including older "go here, kill 10 guys, go there" type missions, start from the very beginning with more innovative stuff. And build in a way to accommodate changing NPCs / story - whether that's phasing or what, I don't know, but making the NPCs of the world a little less static.

My intention is to include all current content from City of Heroes, then add new content to it...New stories and such. Then perhaps later on look into updating older content.
I don't think I can give more detail on story and such at this time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 10, 2014, 03:25:45 AM
Truthfully, this was rather along the lines I was thinking.  The in-game market is likely part of the code already, turning the seasonal events on and off ought to be hackable without that much trouble in the worst-case scenario (you'd think there must be some sort of control console tool for the game that would allow at least this much basic control capability), and Arcana has recently stated that she could write us a better cash shop market than the one we had in her sleep.

In order for you to be able to buy stuff directly in the costume designer, there has to be something resembling a web service or easily converted to web-service DB-layer already in place. IIRC, there were a bunch of art assets that weren't available anywhere else. Those would be nice to have if doing a new independent shop but we'd probably be screwed on that. I was shocked to discover that was web technology. They must have been querying one field at a time with ajax.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 10, 2014, 03:32:40 AM
My intention is to include all current content from City of Heroes, then add new content to it...New stories and such. Then perhaps later on look into updating older content.
I don't think I can give more detail on story and such at this time.
I do not know if this was asked does this include some of the i24 material?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 03:33:08 AM
Slightly different. It's been stated again and again why the Sentinel+ files are useless for any retail relaunch of the game. I do wish people would stop bringing it up, it's getting old.

No matter how good Sentinel is... It's unlikely any team that doesn't HATE their GMs and support staff would ever use it.

For starters, they will hear A LOT of rage like this:
"My CoH account was VIP until about a week before the shut down. By the Sentinel was available, I couldn't re-sub. So I only got like 5 of my characters. How is it fair that (Some guy) gets his 80 characters. It's not fair. "
(True story btw. Had to let my account slip because I had an extra few expenses that month. Only got a few of my 50s because of it.)
Now, they can either limit the number of Sentinel characters (Some guy) has to make me happy, or make (Some Guy) happy. Either way, You're the bad guy.

IF Sentinel was used, Which I'm not supporting. The best bet, I believe, would be to restore character name, inf, level, Bio, and powers/slots. No badges, no costumes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 03:34:55 AM
This seems a bit strange to me. Were the MWM folks far enough along for this? I didn't get the impression they were up to this stage.
Last word on their CC I'd heard was that they were having issues with the character model. It was showing its seems or something like that.
And If they were going to share their engine, it would need lots of rework to fit the CoH gameplay. The forums over there are full with differences planned to "improve" the CoH model but not a lot of showable pieces.

They're not. We'll be getting their code base when it's useable. Until then, we've got plenty to do.
I've commented a few times that we'll be modifying the code to suit Revival, and add the features we need.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 03:37:08 AM
I do not know if this was asked does this include some of the i24 material?

I do not believe so, I've actually been wondering when someone was going to ask this!



Maybe! ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 03:42:08 AM
On the contrary, I'm a huge fan of well-designed database schemas and leveraging things like SQL to enable database servers to optimize the queries, manage the caching, and guarantee consistency. The technology is mature and they are very, very good at it. PostgreSQL is my jam.

I'd consider asking CodeWalker for his opinions on database usage for Revival when the time came for that...
...But I'm pretty sure he'd just eat my soul...and then prolly code a bot to make posts that sounds like me, so nobody knows I'm dead.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: saipaman on September 10, 2014, 03:44:27 AM
IF Sentinel was used, Which I'm not supporting. The best bet, I believe, would be to restore character name, inf, level, Bio, and powers/slots. No badges, no costumes.

Just getting the names back would be grand. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 03:45:27 AM
Just getting the names back would be grand.

Isn't that easy enough? Just make a character with the name you want.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: -Psi- on September 10, 2014, 03:49:12 AM
I do not believe so, I've actually been wondering when someone was going to ask this!



Maybe! ;D

I gots ta have my Martial Combat! I need it! I crave it!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 10, 2014, 03:58:18 AM
Isn't that easy enough? Just make a character with the name you want.

Everyone is getting a little freaky without your loving support. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 10, 2014, 04:01:33 AM
I do not believe so, I've actually been wondering when someone was going to ask this!

Maybe! ;D
If you plan on eventually including new material, why not?  The data for the new contacts and missions is already recorded in ParagonWiki.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sermon on September 10, 2014, 04:01:39 AM
I never used Sentinel (neither did any of my friends). I think we were too pessimistic to bother :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 04:06:12 AM
I never used Sentinel (neither did any of my friends). I think we were too pessimistic to bother :(

Pessimism is the main reason I used Sentinel+. I didn't expect to get the game back, in any way.
Pulling my characters was a way for me to immortalize them. NCSoft doesn't have Irish Girl, I do. She's napping on my E:/ drive.
E:/Cox/Sentinel/Irish Girl.Victory.Irish Girl

Coincidentally, Pessimism is the same reason I started APR. Never thought we'd get the game back through official channels. Hopefully, I'll be proven wrong.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 10, 2014, 04:07:31 AM
I never used Sentinel (neither did any of my friends). I think we were too pessimistic to bother :(

I saved a few toons, then decided it was too much effort with no promise of return, so I went back to playing. Ended up loosing that HDD so it's moot anyway.


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 04:13:29 AM
If you plan on eventually including new material, why not?  The data for the new contacts and missions is already recorded in ParagonWiki.

Technically, this is irrelevant. But I'll mention it anyways.
I never got to try i24. My account was Premium when the shutdown notice came, and before that I had a policy of avoiding test until Issues went live. Preferred to experience the new content Live.

On to the more relevant part!
For starters, when it comes to some thing, Story especially... I'd prefer not to yay/nay anything just yet. My maybe wasn't a coy way of saying no, I've just not made a decision one way or the other.
I don't know the specifics of i24, I've neglected to go actually dig into the details quite yet. Personally, I consider it cannonical grey area.
It was content made by Paragon Studios, led by Positron. So that gives it serious weight.
However...it was not Live, finished content... So that means I can argue it's not canon.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 04:15:14 AM
Everyone is getting a little freaky without your loving support. :)

So I noticed! For the sake of not inflating my own ego more than it already is, I'm going to assume it's just a complete coincidence. :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sermon on September 10, 2014, 04:16:46 AM
We're almost there!   ;D

Definitely hoping. Kinda looking forward to rerolling some characters. Probably wouldn't do exact copies, but I can't say. I doubt I would ever get back to 15+ 50s like I had before, but who knows.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: rebel 1812 on September 10, 2014, 04:20:44 AM
I do not believe so, I've actually been wondering when someone was going to ask this!



Maybe! ;D

It was my understanding that i24 was basically done had and had alot of innovative stuff.  Think of the marketing potential to be able to include that.  Also does anyone have an idea the earliest it could be back online?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 10, 2014, 04:23:24 AM
Technically, this is irrelevant. But I'll mention it anyways.
I never got to try i24. My account was Premium when the shutdown notice came, and before that I had a policy of avoiding test until Issues went live. Preferred to experience the new content Live.

On to the more relevant part!
For starters, when it comes to some thing, Story especially... I'd prefer not to yay/nay anything just yet. My maybe wasn't a coy way of saying no, I've just not made a decision one way or the other.
I don't know the specifics of i24, I've neglected to go actually dig into the details quite yet. Personally, I consider it cannonical grey area.
It was content made by Paragon Studios, led by Positron. So that gives it serious weight.
However...it was not Live, finished content... So that means I can argue it's not canon.
Well, it was basically through testing and was about to be released, so it's arguably like 95% canon.  And you really should go read the arcs here:

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Provost_Marchand_(Primal_Earth)
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Number_Six
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Mission:Inside_Information_-_Praetoria%27s_Hidden_Treasure
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Mr._G_(Primal_Earth)
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Heldenjaeger
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Inconspicuous_Female_39757#Brass_Tuesday
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/The_Major

Especially if you're a Praetorian player (like me), they are absolutely not to be missed.  It was awesome just to read them!  I deeply regret that I did not get to actually play them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 10, 2014, 04:27:11 AM
Definitely hoping. Kinda looking forward to rerolling some characters. Probably wouldn't do exact copies, but I can't say. I doubt I would ever get back to 15+ 50s like I had before, but who knows.


I am willing to start over if everyone else has too, but yet, I had some toons with a lotta love invested that I would love to get back if there is any way too.


Technically, this is irrelevant. But I'll mention it anyways.
I never got to try i24. My account was Premium when the shutdown notice came, and before that I had a policy of avoiding test until Issues went live. Preferred to experience the new content Live.

On to the more relevant part!
For starters, when it comes to some thing, Story especially... I'd prefer not to yay/nay anything just yet. My maybe wasn't a coy way of saying no, I've just not made a decision one way or the other.
I don't know the specifics of i24, I've neglected to go actually dig into the details quite yet. Personally, I consider it cannonical grey area.
It was content made by Paragon Studios, led by Positron. So that gives it serious weight.
However...it was not Live, finished content... So that means I can argue it's not canon.


I hope that at least some, if not most or all, of I24 and of the stuff planned mentioned in the Loregasms eventually makes it's way into the game. But it's understandable if it doesn't. Those writers are no longer participating in your project.



We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chasearcanum on September 10, 2014, 04:38:29 AM
No matter how good Sentinel is... It's unlikely any team that doesn't HATE their GMs and support staff would ever use it.

For starters, they will hear A LOT of rage like this:
"My CoH account was VIP until about a week before the shut down. By the Sentinel was available, I couldn't re-sub. So I only got like 5 of my characters. How is it fair that (Some guy) gets his 80 characters. It's not fair. "
(True story btw. Had to let my account slip because I had an extra few expenses that month. Only got a few of my 50s because of it.)
Now, they can either limit the number of Sentinel characters (Some guy) has to make me happy, or make (Some Guy) happy. Either way, You're the bad guy.

IF Sentinel was used, Which I'm not supporting. The best bet, I believe, would be to restore character name, inf, level, Bio, and powers/slots. No badges, no costumes.

I've been wondering about this.  I think we're going to attract a certain type of player back, and I'm not sure if it'll be the type that'll feel that "keeping up with the joneses" is THAT important.  What will be important to many is reuniting with the hero they lost... as they remember them.  Grinding all over again to get back that character- ALL the characters they lost- may discourage more from returning than people upset over the "they get x".

I think we can accomodate some of one without risking too much ire from others.  We all understand that there's going to be an expense to get this started up.  Some perks to people that contribute may be acceptable, while others may seem to be too much pay-to-win... but thoughts include:

- Reserve a name- contributors can reserve one name per contribution per week leading up to the official launch.
- Contributors could purchase an uber-xp-boost to make leveling negligible. 
- Contributors could get a reward of x000 Architect entertainment tickets (or task force rewards, etc), giving users the ability to redeem them for specific loot or take their chances and see what they get. (helps make up for the lost loot drops due to the rapid autoleveling).
- I know the dev tools included the ability to reward XP outright.  This was mostly used in betas to autolevel, but if introduced in moderation, it might be something that can become a well-managed reward to participants in events.  People that win community events- heck, people that CREATE and ORGANIZE community events could gain leveling rewards in some way, and I think, given the history of the game, very few would consider such contributions unearned.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 10, 2014, 04:42:14 AM

I am willing to start over if everyone else has too, but yet, I had some toons with a lotta love invested that I would love to get back if there is any way too.



I hope that at least some, if not most or all, of I24 and of the stuff planned mentioned in the Loregasms eventually makes it's way into the game. But it's understandable if it doesn't. Those writers are no longer participating in your project.



We're almost there!   ;D

Just my opinion, but with all the stuff that was in I24, I would almost say it was game breaking. So many things at once, the only way I could see it working is by expanding the end game by a large amount. And that's what I think they had to have been up to near the end.


And I have to comment on "We're almost there!".

You happen to be a person who sees the glass as half full.
Others see it as half empty.
I look at the glass and say "OMG it's almost gone! We'll have to forage for liquids!... Hey, you look like you have some water over there...".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 10, 2014, 04:43:55 AM
If I were on the negotiating team, it would still bug the crap out of me that nobody really knows why they shut it down in the first place.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 04:52:47 AM
I hope that at least some, if not most or all, of I24 and of the stuff planned mentioned in the Loregasms eventually makes it's way into the game. But it's understandable if it doesn't. Those writers are no longer participating in your project.

CopyPasta from the Revival FAQ thread:

"Will your updates follow the plans laid down by Matt "Positron" Miller, and the other Paragon Studio's developers?
Personal, I have a great respect for Positron, and the rest of the dev team. However, It is unlikely that we'll stay exact to their plans. There wouldn't be any surprises!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sermon on September 10, 2014, 04:54:01 AM
If I were on the negotiating team, it would still bug the crap out of me that nobody really knows why they shut it down in the first place.

Perhaps the people who know can't talk about it. I suspect Ncsoft wasn't interested in any other projects PS was working on. They probably saw CoH as profitable, but didn't have a direction for the studio as a whole. If PS had another successful product on the horizon, we would probably see CoH at least in the state of GW currently.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 04:56:14 AM
If I were on the negotiating team, it would still bug the crap out of me that nobody really knows why they shut it down in the first place.

I think the reasons are pretty well known. I can't remember much off hand...and I don't want to misinform, so I'll leave off for now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 10, 2014, 05:04:48 AM
I think the reasons are pretty well known. I can't remember much off hand...and I don't want to misinform, so I'll leave off for now.

And honestly, the team doesn't really need people who are still upset at the negotiating table. No need to add any animosity at this point.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 05:08:19 AM
And honestly, the team doesn't really need people who are still upset at the negotiating table. No need to add any animosity at this point.

It could only serve to make things more difficult, honestly. It's hard to deal in that manner if you're harboring that kind of resentment, or anger.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 10, 2014, 05:10:42 AM
Nothing specific is known/declared about who will run the Legacy servers.  That's a common misread.  It's still a negotiation point.

You expect a one woman operation (no disrespect to Irish_Girl), to develop APR -and- run the legacy game, on her own? Riiiiiight...

My post was based on what Nate said.  The current plan is for the holding company to run the legacy game.  That might change, but that's the intended plan.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 10, 2014, 05:11:03 AM
Stop rhyming! I mean it!

<.<
>.>

...anybody want a peanut?
*like*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 10, 2014, 05:12:50 AM
I didn't read all the comments. So I just wanted to Thank everyone who had anything to do with this.

It's not a done deal yet but atleasts it's something.

One question I saw asked was what's everyone going to do. When all these games are out?

For me personally I plan to support all of them in one form or another.
Same here.   I'm giving all of them some of my attention.   I'm sure I'll have one which emerges as my favorite (The legacy CoH is the odds-on favorite here), but still plan to keep contact with the others as well.    Can't wait to try them!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 05:13:13 AM
You expect a one woman operation (no disrespect to Irish_Girl), to develop APR -and- run the legacy game, on her own? Riiiiiight...
My post was based on what Nate said.  The current plan is for the holding company to run the legacy game.  That might change, but that's the intended plan.

Well, I am pretty fantastic... :P
I imagine if anyone's intention was to have me do it, it would have been brought to my attention already. I could be wrong, I'm not psychic. -shrugs-
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 10, 2014, 05:31:41 AM
Plus will players have to download a new launcher and any revised I23 COH files?  I never uninstalled mine as I like to use ICON at times, but that doesn't mean that it will be what I need to play again.

 I never was able to bring myself to uninstall any of it,lol,still lies dreaming on my hard drive.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 10, 2014, 05:38:23 AM
Especially if you're a Praetorian player (like me), they are absolutely not to be missed.  It was awesome just to read them!  I deeply regret that I did not get to actually play them.

I second that, as someone who was primarily playing on Beta towards the sunset. The i24 content was really, really well done (with the possible exception of the Rogue/Vigilante arcs, which- while I appreciate the sentiment and intent behind them and fully support it- were not terribly well written. One was better than the other- I forget which- but not much.)

Also, it wasn't just Praetorian goodness- the two King's Row story arcs were well done and helped progress the game's early levels with some new content beyond that introduced in Freedom's new starting game.

Provost Marchand's arc is as much Brickstown focused as it is Praetorian, and Mr. G's villain arc- well, I have to say it is probably the single best story arc in the game. Not just for its tying up of Praetorian storylines, but for its links and call-outs to Villain content (it had some different features depending on which arcs/badges you had on your character). It was amazing. I wish I could recall who wrote that one (I suspect it might have been Dr. Aeon/Sean McCann?)

EDIT: Interesting. Just looked over the Mr. G arc on the Paragonwiki. Looks like it is incomplete- or perhaps the person or persons running it did not have all the villain badges. There was a notable difference in the Crimson Revenant part on that page and what happened when I ran it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 10, 2014, 05:45:18 AM
I saved a few toons, then decided it was too much effort with no promise of return, so I went back to playing. Ended up loosing that HDD so it's moot anyway.


We're almost there!   ;D

My Coh Files including Sentinel files are on a drive on my system and also backed up to each of my 5 external drives.  Perhaps a bit of overkill but one never knows.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 10, 2014, 05:45:34 AM
And honestly, the team doesn't really need people who are still upset at the negotiating table. No need to add any animosity at this point.

I wasn't trying to stir up resentment, though I'll admit I certainly did my best when it went down. It's just nice to understand what the other side values when you're negotiating. Especially when one option puts you back in that place of never knowing when they might kill it again because you don't really know why they did in the first place.

I had lots of nasty ideas. Now I'm just very confused and have absolutely no idea given the turn of events.

I'll take a precarious position over nothing I guess, but i don't know that the successors would want to risk any ties to the IP under those circumstances. Which is a bummer. I love that multiverse stuff. Top 10 was rad.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 10, 2014, 05:47:59 AM
My Coh Files including Sentinel files are on a drive on my system and also backed up to each of my 5 external drives.  Perhaps a bit of overkill but one never knows.

   wish I had known about sentinel then but was just too damn depressed to be hearing much of anything.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: TonyV on September 10, 2014, 05:49:44 AM
For a typical MMORPG, we are talking about 100,000 minutes of dialog to voice. According to Interactive Voices, Inc, one of the largest VO management groups in the US, the going rate is $100 per minute of recorded dialog. That's $10 million to record.

To be fair, that rate (https://www.voices.com/resources/rates) is the maximum rate based on ad hoc recording needs.  Yeah, if you only need one minute of voice recording, that's what they'd charge.  It also notes "...or $1500 for a 45-minute recording," or $33 per minute.  Like most things, the more you need, the cheaper it is.

In the case of most video games, I strongly suspect that the work is contracted by the job, not by the minute, although based on some reasonable expectation of how long the actual dialogue is.  Think of it as the difference between taking a taxi if you just need to travel a few miles down the road in a pinch, versus renting a car for the day if you have extended travel plans over a longer period of time.

The $10 million figure is ludicrous, and without some kind of detailed accounting, you'll never convince me that it would cost that much for even the most expensive voice actors to do voice-over for a triple-A game title.  For that amount, to extend the analogy, you could just buy a car--or in this case, hire on a full-time cast of voice actors to do as much recording as you want, whenever you want.  Seriously, an average voice actor makes around $50k per year, and even if you double that to account for insurance, taxes, etc., you'd be able to maintain a staff of 100 full-time voice actors.

"Oh, but that's not including studio time!"  Okay, an average rate for professional studio time is around $200 or $300 per hour, call it an even $250, and that includes the sound engineer.  That would cost you around $500k per year, or the salaries of 5 of your full-time voice actors (remember, their total compensation plus taxes was doubled for this example), so you'd only be able to maintain a staff of 95 full-time voice actors, including studio time and a sound engineer, for $10 million.

In reality, it wouldn't cost nearly that much.  For one thing, if you contract voice actors from a company like Interactive Voices, they supply all of the equipment and expertise to do the recording.  You just need to supply the script and do any post-production necessary, which probably won't be much once they give you the finished product.  Second of all, like I said above, $100 is a maximum rate based on ad hoc recording needs; the cost of a full job such as what would be required for a game would be much, MUCH less, and likely could be negotiated as a whole project instead of a per-hour or certainly a per-minute deal.

Third of all, this is assuming that you want to go the route of using a company such as Interactive Voices.  One of the advantages of a project such as City of Titans is that we have a community to draw upon here that could do the work.  Not that they shouldn't be compensated, but I daresay that most people in this community would probably be willing to do the work for much, much less than even the cheapest rate quoted by a professional voice services company.

In short, if you don't like voice-over, there's nothing wrong with saying, "I don't like voice-over."  Some folks will disagree, but you know, thems the breaks, as a developer you have to get used to that.  But holy crap, man, don't try to justify such a position by quoting some outrageously exaggerated cost for having it.  Some of the times when I was most irritated at Paragon Studios was when I felt like they just didn't want to do something and tried to handwave it off and shut people down by saying it was "too expensive" or had vague "legal issues".  I'd like to break that culture.  And with a topic such a voice-over, which could easily be turned off by a click of an option by someone who doesn't like it, I don't see what the downside would be; it should at least be a fair topic of discussion without resorting to, "It would cost $10 million..."

Also, 100k hours?  Geez, man, even that's split across seven languages, that's 10 days straight of dialogue without stopping.  An average audio book is 15 hours long; a game with 10 days straight of dialogue would be around 16 read novels long.  :o  I'm sorry, but I'm not buying that number either, even if that's supposed to account for retakes and whatnot.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 10, 2014, 05:50:20 AM
There's no reason that the server list has to be halved. Or even one less. Aside from HDD space, it wouldn't make much difference.
All of the Live servers were running on one computer anyways. Then I believe the Auth server it's own machine, as well as Beta.

Well here's my reasoning: COH has a large fan base, yes.  In the time since the shutdown the fanbase still exists but some attrition has likely occurred with fans moving on to new games and life experiences and some may have given up hope of CoH returning.

Now if the game comes back I'm sure all the MMO news sites will basically go nuts with the news and will be reporting it as much as possible. then of course there will come some advertising to get the word out.

But logically speaking, to expect the entire fanbase to be back online on day one of relaunch is being extremely optimistic. Granted it would be nice to see but still.......

So let's say ALL the servers come back, and then there is an implosion in terms of players. Some leave again, some never came back, etc.  Then what happens? Will the servers be consolidated as some games have done like SWTOR, and from what I hear Wildstar is about to do the same.  Or will all the servers be up and running with some being dead zones like they were long before CoH was shut down?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 10, 2014, 05:54:43 AM
I think the reasons are pretty well known. I can't remember much off hand...and I don't want to misinform, so I'll leave off for now.

Weren't they merging with Nexon or something?  I remember the main reason being "Corporate restructuring and refocus" or some such.

However if my memory isn't too dusty, CoH was still turning a profit at shutdown. Maybe not as large a profit as it once did, but in business profit IS profit last time I checked and killing a still golden goose isn't usually the best way to think. 

However as stated my memory may be a bit dusty, and of course all the facts at the time were not disclosed.

The fact that NCSoft IS talking to people about CoH raises my opinion of them back up to a more moderate level.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 10, 2014, 05:57:26 AM
However if my memory isn't too dusty, CoH was still turning a profit at shutdown. Maybe not as large a profit as it once did, but in business profit IS profit last time I checked and killing a still golden goose isn't usually the best way to think. 

CoH was making a modest profit as far as we know; Paragon Studios, however, were operating at a loss due to the 2 "secret" projects they were working on.

When you're merging with another company, and they look at the books and see a loss making unit, big questions are going to be asked.  CoH was a victim of big business, nothing more.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 10, 2014, 05:59:05 AM
CoH was making a modest profit as far as we know; Paragon Studios, however, were operating at a loss due to the 2 "secret" projects they were working on.

When you're merging with another company, and they look at the books and see a loss making unit, big questions are going to be asked.  CoH was a victim of big business, nothing more.

Ah yes, so that is what it was. 

Hm, too bad NCSoft couldn't just take the game from Paragon Studios and let it sit in maintenance mode instead of shutting down, then they could sit back and shop it around to a new studio while the game was running.  But I suspect that idea has a few flaws.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 10, 2014, 06:00:01 AM
I think the Atlas Park Revival folks, who are currently trying to recreate Atlas Park in UE4, will then move towards recreating (with some improvements here and there) all of City of Heroes.
Just to chime in.   Give Irish Girl credit...she's already gotten some stuff beyond Atlas Park started.   Check it out:

http://apr.pc-logix.com/gallery/category/2-official-gallery/ (http://apr.pc-logix.com/gallery/category/2-official-gallery/)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 10, 2014, 06:00:57 AM

 
Right. But when Ironwolf stated this:

it seems a slightly different path: what they are selling is the ability to license the IP to the new company, in partnership with NCSoft.  I'm fully aware that Ironwolf may have mistyped, or misunderstood since he's not a direct insider, either, but I have no doubt he knows more than I do.  So all I'm asking for is a bit of clarification to see if the way Ironwolf stated it is what's being discussed (NCSoft partnering with the new holding company which is buying rights to license the IP but with NCSoft retaining royalties and some control of the licensing) or if it's an outright sale as Downix's posts seem to suggest.
 
Just curious, since one excites me much more than the other, is all.
Downix summed it up perfectly at one point with a simple:

Buying the IP
Leasing the Engine
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 10, 2014, 06:03:11 AM
CopyPasta from the Revival FAQ thread:

"Will your updates follow the plans laid down by Matt "Positron" Miller, and the other Paragon Studio's developers?
Personal, I have a great respect for Positron, and the rest of the dev team. However, It is unlikely that we'll stay exact to their plans. There wouldn't be any surprises!"
At first I was like, "Awww...that's not going to be trying to duplicate CoH as much as possible".

But then I thought about it a bit and decided that the game has to change, and there were many different people who had a hand in the direction over the years.   There really wasn't "one vision".

And if anyone has earned the right to be a creative force, you have.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 10, 2014, 06:11:18 AM
Well, to be fair, I think even the Devs have noted in the AMA Lore talks that a lot of the plans they've discussed were not set in stone and that some things they have revealed in those talks in particular might change should they have the opportunity to work on CoH again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 06:12:06 AM
But logically speaking, to expect the entire fanbase to be back online on day one of relaunch is being extremely optimistic. Granted it would be nice to see but still.......
So let's say ALL the servers come back, and then there is an implosion in terms of players. Some leave again, some never came back, etc.  Then what happens? Will the servers be consolidated as some games have done like SWTOR, and from what I hear Wildstar is about to do the same.  Or will all the servers be up and running with some being dead zones like they were long before CoH was shut down?

Each server was it's own living community. Going from server to server every place was different. The decoration was the same, but the feel was different.
I disagree with closing, or merging servers for a few reasons.
For one, it effectively kills a community of people that have grown to love said community.

Now, you do have to do possibly deal with dwindling server pops. So deal with it creatively, don't just force people somewhere they may not want to go.
Maybe pick a few servers with larger communities, or something else special about them. Make a GMOD letting people know that these are high pop servers, give players free transfers to said servers. -shrugs-

Some players LOVE those dead zones, btw.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: zaran on September 10, 2014, 06:13:04 AM
There's no reason that the server list has to be halved. Or even one less. Aside from HDD space, it wouldn't make much difference.
All of the Live servers were running on one computer anyways. Then I believe the Auth server it's own machine, as well as Beta.

No technical reason.

The reality is that there is going to be fewer people playing when CoX comes back and having that smaller population spread across 15 servers will make for some empty servers. I think it would be better if a small set of servers were brought up to start and more can be added when load/demand for it arises.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 10, 2014, 06:14:02 AM
  Even though the final plan of Positron & team had not left the test-server at that time, I have to say that their final works would be deemed canon, or at the very least
closer to canon than anything that anyone else could or would do. In my humble opinion.

 ps. none of that matters atm of course as we aren't near to the game even being back, if it will be back etc.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 06:14:38 AM
At first I was like, "Awww...that's not going to be trying to duplicate CoH as much as possible".

But then I thought about it a bit and decided that the game has to change, and there were many different people who had a hand in the direction over the years.   There really wasn't "one vision".

And if anyone has earned the right to be a creative force, you have.

I should clarify in that post that I'm referring specifically to the Lore discussed in the AMAs/Loregasms.
Issue 0 - Issue 23 I hold true as canon.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 10, 2014, 06:24:25 AM
I should clarify in that post that I'm referring specifically to the Lore discussed in the AMAs/Loregasms.
Issue 0 - Issue 23 I hold true as canon.
Again, I really think you're doing the CoH fanbase (and yourself) a huge disservice by just arbitrarily writing off Issue 24, simply on the grounds that you hadn't played it yet.  You would have, if they'd just held off the closing announcement for even 1 month, it was that close to live release.  And for that, you would dismiss it entirely as unworthy of any consideration?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 10, 2014, 06:30:13 AM
Each server was it's own living community. Going from server to server every place was different. The decoration was the same, but the feel was different.
I disagree with closing, or merging servers for a few reasons.
For one, it effectively kills a community of people that have grown to love said community.

Now, you do have to do possibly deal with dwindling server pops. So deal with it creatively, don't just force people somewhere they may not want to go.
Maybe pick a few servers with larger communities, or something else special about them. Make a GMOD letting people know that these are high pop servers, give players free transfers to said servers. -shrugs-

Some players LOVE those dead zones, btw.
Excellent idea.   Let people know what kind of server it is if possible.   People who played the low population servers had no interest in the Freedom type servers.   Those (like me) who did like the high population servers would be equally unhappy on the less populated servers.    I think we'll all end up where we are happy in the end...may as well make the journey easier.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 10, 2014, 06:34:01 AM
Again, I really think you're doing the CoH fanbase (and yourself) a huge disservice by just arbitrarily writing off Issue 24, simply on the grounds that you hadn't played it yet.  You would have, if they'd just held off the closing announcement for even 1 month, it was that close to live release.  And for that, you would dismiss it entirely as unworthy of any consideration?

She never said that.  Try reading her actual words instead of inventing random stuff in your head.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 06:36:05 AM
Again, I really think you're doing the CoH fanbase (and yourself) a huge disservice by just arbitrarily writing off Issue 24, simply on the grounds that you hadn't played it yet.  You would have, if they'd just held off the closing announcement for even 1 month, it was that close to live release.  And for that, you would dismiss it entirely as unworthy of any consideration?

I have not said that, nor is that my intent. I simply stated that I had no intent one way or the other, and my reasoning behind that decision. I have every intent to take some time and dig through the links that were given me, and the i24 patch notes on Paragon Wiki.
It would be inappropriate for me to just dismiss something in that manner, and I have too much respect to dismiss Posi' and team's work without serious consideration.

Typically, if I'm talking about a decision that people might have strong feelings on like this. I lean, publicly, towards the least popular one so that players are prepared for the worst.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 10, 2014, 06:36:16 AM
Each server was it's own living community. Going from server to server every place was different. The decoration was the same, but the feel was different.
I disagree with closing, or merging servers for a few reasons.
For one, it effectively kills a community of people that have grown to love said community.

Now, you do have to do possibly deal with dwindling server pops. So deal with it creatively, don't just force people somewhere they may not want to go.
Maybe pick a few servers with larger communities, or something else special about them. Make a GMOD letting people know that these are high pop servers, give players free transfers to said servers. -shrugs-

Some players LOVE those dead zones, btw.

The good thing about starting fresh is people will now have a choice where to start out at instead of how I originally picked my home server (Triumph: The first server I clicked on) If people want them to go to a small server let them. The only downside is with the population more aware where the larger servers are, hopefully they (the people who are setting up the severs) will take account more people will gravitate to the larger servers and will increase the loads of the server so the servers will never be Red or Grayed out from too many people in the server
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 10, 2014, 06:43:55 AM
CoH was making a modest profit as far as we know; Paragon Studios, however, were operating at a loss due to the 2 "secret" projects they were working on.

When you're merging with another company, and they look at the books and see a loss making unit, big questions are going to be asked.  CoH was a victim of big business, nothing more.

  It's too bad they didn't choose to spin-off the loss-making units as a separate company, and only keep the healthy unit to be doing the merger, would have made them a lot more "attractive".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 10, 2014, 06:45:47 AM
  It's too bad they didn't choose to spin-off the loss-making units as a separate company, and only keep the healthy unit to be doing the merger, would have made them a lot more "attractive".

Personally, I would have just canned the 2 projects and downsized Paragon Studios to keep the profit making side running, but they chose what they chose. :/
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 10, 2014, 06:50:36 AM
Personally, I would have just canned the 2 projects and downsized Paragon Studios to keep the profit making side running, but they chose what they chose. :/

 yes, I thought of that as well but maybe their was no one strong enough "at the helm" to force those types of decisions. Either way, yes, your idea would have been the best I'd think.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 10, 2014, 07:06:32 AM
All of the Live servers were running on one computer anyways.
No. No no no no no. All the live servers were *virtualized*....but they were *definitely* run on a whole *stack* of computers, if not multiple banks. Oh, man. There's no way in hell you'd be able to play the game on one computer.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 07:10:28 AM
No. No no no no no. All the live servers were *virtualized*....but they were *definitely* run on a whole *stack* of computers, if not multiple banks. Oh, man. There's no way in hell you'd be able to play the game on one computer.

I'll go ahead and blame the derp on being tired from moving. Yeah. That's it.
;P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hopelives on September 10, 2014, 07:10:37 AM
  Well friends, the night grows late and it's time to start my patrol of the skies over Atlas. I hope to see each and every one of you there with me again someday. Hopelives !  *Salutes all and fly's away*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 10, 2014, 07:16:04 AM
I have not said that, nor is that my intent. I simply stated that I had no intent one way or the other, and my reasoning behind that decision. I have every intent to take some time and dig through the links that were given me, and the i24 patch notes on Paragon Wiki.
It would be inappropriate for me to just dismiss something in that manner, and I have too much respect to dismiss Posi' and team's work without serious consideration.

Typically, if I'm talking about a decision that people might have strong feelings on like this. I lean, publicly, towards the least popular one so that players are prepared for the worst.

To back up your stance on this Irish_Girl.

A good for instance on why I24 should not be portioned in the Cannon is that there were still issues being worked out.

There were issues with it you can see just by logging into Icon Beta. Such as Dual Pistol damage for corrupters was higher than that of blasters. and much of the corrupter damage was... different than expected.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 10, 2014, 08:08:10 AM
The I-23 zombie CoH needs some kind of staff to maintain the game and answer player service tickets. This staffing will take time.

If someone was willing to train me I'd be willing to GM/Guide for a set number of hours a week gratis. Unemployed, no children, just a small indie game studio which doesn't have set hours so I could find the time anytime needed, long as it didn't conflict with my single commitment per week.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 10, 2014, 09:14:56 AM
If your database chokes at a few million small records, I'd suggest not using a terrible database.  ;D

The way I would put this is if your mapserver dies after you try to grant a few powers to a couple hundred characters simultaneously, I'd suggest not using a terrible database.

Of course, only I would put it this way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 10, 2014, 09:20:32 AM
(True story btw. Had to let my account slip because I had an extra few expenses that month. Only got a few of my 50s because of it.)

I've always thought that of every tragedy to come from this, that situation was the single cruelest.

You expect a one woman operation (no disrespect to Irish_Girl), to develop APR -and- run the legacy game, on her own? Riiiiiight...

Far as the development goes, she got the proof of concept out the door quite impressively. She would have her pick of volunteers now, due to that.

I strongly suspect she's going to do fine with her chosen corner of things, which is APR, not Legacy.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 10, 2014, 09:33:45 AM
No. No no no no no. All the live servers were *virtualized*....but they were *definitely* run on a whole *stack* of computers, if not multiple banks. Oh, man. There's no way in hell you'd be able to play the game on one computer.

I never found out definitively if the live servers were actually virtualized, but I have strong reasons to believe they were not.  That option was not practical when the game launched, and what I know of the server architecture is that it would not have benefited significantly from server consolidation.  It could have been virtualized by default eventually just as a server standardization practice, but its also possible they were kept in legacy configurations on bare metal.

Server instances definitely ran on multiple hosting servers, but that doesn't mean it would be impossible to run on a single server.  In fact, if you think the servers were virtualized then its definitely possible to migrate a set of virtual servers to a single computer and play it.  The single computer just has to be fast enough to handle the load you want to host, which for a small enough number of players would not be difficult.

To put it another way, my desktop at work probably has several times the speed that the entire server cluster hosting Triumph had when that server was activated, based on what you could have afforded to buy in 2003 when that server's hardware was purchased.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 10, 2014, 09:35:31 AM
A good for instance on why I24 should not be portioned in the Cannon is that there were still issues being worked out.

There were issues with it you can see just by logging into Icon Beta. Such as Dual Pistol damage for corrupters was higher than that of blasters. and much of the corrupter damage was... different than expected.

On the other hand, I really want my bugged Power Thrust back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 10, 2014, 10:13:55 AM
To be fair, that rate (https://www.voices.com/resources/rates) is the maximum rate based on ad hoc recording needs.  Yeah, if you only need one minute of voice recording, that's what they'd charge.  It also notes "...or $1500 for a 45-minute recording," or $33 per minute.  Like most things, the more you need, the cheaper it is.

In the case of most video games, I strongly suspect that the work is contracted by the job, not by the minute, although based on some reasonable expectation of how long the actual dialogue is.  Think of it as the difference between taking a taxi if you just need to travel a few miles down the road in a pinch, versus renting a car for the day if you have extended travel plans over a longer period of time.

The $10 million figure is ludicrous, and without some kind of detailed accounting, you'll never convince me that it would cost that much for even the most expensive voice actors to do voice-over for a triple-A game title.  For that amount, to extend the analogy, you could just buy a car--or in this case, hire on a full-time cast of voice actors to do as much recording as you want, whenever you want.  Seriously, an average voice actor makes around $50k per year, and even if you double that to account for insurance, taxes, etc., you'd be able to maintain a staff of 100 full-time voice actors.

"Oh, but that's not including studio time!"  Okay, an average rate for professional studio time is around $200 or $300 per hour, call it an even $250, and that includes the sound engineer.  That would cost you around $500k per year, or the salaries of 5 of your full-time voice actors (remember, their total compensation plus taxes was doubled for this example), so you'd only be able to maintain a staff of 95 full-time voice actors, including studio time and a sound engineer, for $10 million.

In reality, it wouldn't cost nearly that much.  For one thing, if you contract voice actors from a company like Interactive Voices, they supply all of the equipment and expertise to do the recording.  You just need to supply the script and do any post-production necessary, which probably won't be much once they give you the finished product.  Second of all, like I said above, $100 is a maximum rate based on ad hoc recording needs; the cost of a full job such as what would be required for a game would be much, MUCH less, and likely could be negotiated as a whole project instead of a per-hour or certainly a per-minute deal.

Third of all, this is assuming that you want to go the route of using a company such as Interactive Voices.  One of the advantages of a project such as City of Titans is that we have a community to draw upon here that could do the work.  Not that they shouldn't be compensated, but I daresay that most people in this community would probably be willing to do the work for much, much less than even the cheapest rate quoted by a professional voice services company.

In short, if you don't like voice-over, there's nothing wrong with saying, "I don't like voice-over."  Some folks will disagree, but you know, thems the breaks, as a developer you have to get used to that.  But holy crap, man, don't try to justify such a position by quoting some outrageously exaggerated cost for having it.  Some of the times when I was most irritated at Paragon Studios was when I felt like they just didn't want to do something and tried to handwave it off and shut people down by saying it was "too expensive" or had vague "legal issues".  I'd like to break that culture.  And with a topic such a voice-over, which could easily be turned off by a click of an option by someone who doesn't like it, I don't see what the downside would be; it should at least be a fair topic of discussion without resorting to, "It would cost $10 million..."

Also, 100k hours?  Geez, man, even that's split across seven languages, that's 10 days straight of dialogue without stopping.  An average audio book is 15 hours long; a game with 10 days straight of dialogue would be around 16 read novels long.  :o  I'm sorry, but I'm not buying that number either, even if that's supposed to account for retakes and whatnot.

It's always by the hour. I've never heard of a VO actor accepting pay "by the job" although spokesperson gigs could pay a salary. This is also not something where you can just throw together a bunch of decent amateur actors and expect it to pan out. Even strong actors aren't necessarily decent VO actors. 50K? Yeah, maybe if we're talking primarily cheesy local ad talent. Scroll a little bit further down in the article you probably pulled that from to get a better idea. My wife does VO for corporate training. The work isn't always there but when it is, it's 100s an hour. She's also worked for Nintendo. We recently met a guy who was the voice of Chevy for a few years. Millions. This is not a cost that is easy to estimate. There are unions. There are varying talent levels. And yeah, those takes can often go well past a dozen. You can't compare line reads to reading a book. The successors could never afford SWTOR-level VO. They might be able to afford some cinematic VO here and there. But IMO, it is a very smart policy to not make it a priority until they've figured out how they're going to do it without being awful. Because nothing stinks like crummy to mediocre VO.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 10, 2014, 12:04:19 PM
It's always by the hour. I've never heard of a VO actor accepting pay "by the job" although spokesperson gigs could pay a salary. This is also not something where you can just throw together a bunch of decent amateur actors and expect it to pan out. Even strong actors aren't necessarily decent VO actors. 50K? Yeah, maybe if we're talking primarily cheesy local ad talent. Scroll a little bit further down in the article you probably pulled that from to get a better idea. My wife does VO for corporate training. The work isn't always there but when it is, it's 100s an hour. She's also worked for Nintendo. We recently met a guy who was the voice of Chevy for a few years. Millions. This is not a cost that is easy to estimate. There are unions. There are varying talent levels. And yeah, those takes can often go well past a dozen. You can't compare line reads to reading a book. The successors could never afford SWTOR-level VO. They might be able to afford some cinematic VO here and there. But IMO, it is a very smart policy to not make it a priority until they've figured out how they're going to do it without being awful. Because nothing stinks like crummy to mediocre VO.

Yeah, I've worked in post production for over 10 years now. Best I can say is...

However high your estimates are for good work...expect sticker shock.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 10, 2014, 12:42:42 PM
I haven't spoken to either teams, So this is pure speculation.
There's also the concern that agreeing to something like that forfeits a certain level of control. You can't simply have the Rikti come in and blow up the planet, it would conflict with what's going on in the I.P. in other places.
Basically, the only way to have no real concerns is to make your story take place in an Alternate time-line/universe/dimension that has very little story ties to CoH. At that point, why even bother calling it a CoH successor?

Considering how many different timelines already exist in CoH, it would not be unreasonable to say that there is a "main CoH" universe, a "Titan CoH" universe, etc. Then you agree with all the others that you can make events/missions set in their universes, but these events cannot actually change their universes. But you do get license to change your own base universe, plus any others that you claim as your "main alternate story areas" (that are not claimed by others). This gives you a good deal of freedom.

The only problem is if one project (Titans) writes a mission based in the universe of APR and using NPC X, and then APR does a major event that kills off NPC X. But that would be, IMO, rare enough that you could communicate with each other and either set some NPCs as "always available for other universes to use", or have Titans update their missions to contact through X's successor.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wizzyboy296 on September 10, 2014, 02:03:38 PM
JanessaVR, cut it off...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 10, 2014, 02:09:12 PM
I never found out definitively if the live servers were actually virtualized, but I have strong reasons to believe they were not.

I'm going to bow out of this line of discussion after this as to not risk poking bears, but a little bird hinted that mapservers were not virtualized (after all, what would be the point since all shards dynamically balance maps across them), but dbservers were along with some of the global stuff. Which makes sense as you need a dbserver per shard, so virtualizing allows them to pool resources and not need as many physical machines for them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 10, 2014, 02:25:42 PM
I never found out definitively if the live servers were actually virtualized, but I have strong reasons to believe they were not.  That option was not practical when the game launched, and what I know of the server architecture is that it would not have benefited significantly from server consolidation.  It could have been virtualized by default eventually just as a server standardization practice, but its also possible they were kept in legacy configurations on bare metal.

My understanding is they were, that there was significant refactoring done in order to pull that off around the F2P time.  That said, I have no data on the actual vm footprint so I cannot commit on the number of bits of metal needed to minimally run, let alone provide redundancy for maintenance, etc.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkfaith on September 10, 2014, 02:56:44 PM
I have not said that, nor is that my intent. I simply stated that I had no intent one way or the other, and my reasoning behind that decision. I have every intent to take some time and dig through the links that were given me, and the i24 patch notes on Paragon Wiki.
It would be inappropriate for me to just dismiss something in that manner, and I have too much respect to dismiss Posi' and team's work without serious consideration.

Typically, if I'm talking about a decision that people might have strong feelings on like this. I lean, publicly, towards the least popular one so that players are prepared for the worst.

It would be my fond wish that even if the story content of I24 doesn't make it into 1.5, things like the unfinished power sets and the blaster changes eventually do. I was really excited about the new Pools!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 10, 2014, 02:59:33 PM
To be fair, that rate (https://www.voices.com/resources/rates) is the maximum rate based on ad hoc recording needs.  Yeah, if you only need one minute of voice recording, that's what they'd charge.  It also notes "...or $1500 for a 45-minute recording," or $33 per minute.  Like most things, the more you need, the cheaper it is.

In the case of most video games, I strongly suspect that the work is contracted by the job, not by the minute, although based on some reasonable expectation of how long the actual dialogue is.  Think of it as the difference between taking a taxi if you just need to travel a few miles down the road in a pinch, versus renting a car for the day if you have extended travel plans over a longer period of time.

The $10 million figure is ludicrous, and without some kind of detailed accounting, you'll never convince me that it would cost that much for even the most expensive voice actors to do voice-over for a triple-A game title.  For that amount, to extend the analogy, you could just buy a car--or in this case, hire on a full-time cast of voice actors to do as much recording as you want, whenever you want.  Seriously, an average voice actor makes around $50k per year, and even if you double that to account for insurance, taxes, etc., you'd be able to maintain a staff of 100 full-time voice actors.

"Oh, but that's not including studio time!"  Okay, an average rate for professional studio time is around $200 or $300 per hour, call it an even $250, and that includes the sound engineer.  That would cost you around $500k per year, or the salaries of 5 of your full-time voice actors (remember, their total compensation plus taxes was doubled for this example), so you'd only be able to maintain a staff of 95 full-time voice actors, including studio time and a sound engineer, for $10 million.

In reality, it wouldn't cost nearly that much.  For one thing, if you contract voice actors from a company like Interactive Voices, they supply all of the equipment and expertise to do the recording.  You just need to supply the script and do any post-production necessary, which probably won't be much once they give you the finished product.  Second of all, like I said above, $100 is a maximum rate based on ad hoc recording needs; the cost of a full job such as what would be required for a game would be much, MUCH less, and likely could be negotiated as a whole project instead of a per-hour or certainly a per-minute deal.

Third of all, this is assuming that you want to go the route of using a company such as Interactive Voices.  One of the advantages of a project such as City of Titans is that we have a community to draw upon here that could do the work.  Not that they shouldn't be compensated, but I daresay that most people in this community would probably be willing to do the work for much, much less than even the cheapest rate quoted by a professional voice services company.

In short, if you don't like voice-over, there's nothing wrong with saying, "I don't like voice-over."  Some folks will disagree, but you know, thems the breaks, as a developer you have to get used to that.  But holy crap, man, don't try to justify such a position by quoting some outrageously exaggerated cost for having it.  Some of the times when I was most irritated at Paragon Studios was when I felt like they just didn't want to do something and tried to handwave it off and shut people down by saying it was "too expensive" or had vague "legal issues".  I'd like to break that culture.  And with a topic such a voice-over, which could easily be turned off by a click of an option by someone who doesn't like it, I don't see what the downside would be; it should at least be a fair topic of discussion without resorting to, "It would cost $10 million..."

Also, 100k hours?  Geez, man, even that's split across seven languages, that's 10 days straight of dialogue without stopping.  An average audio book is 15 hours long; a game with 10 days straight of dialogue would be around 16 read novels long.  :o  I'm sorry, but I'm not buying that number either, even if that's supposed to account for retakes and whatnot.
I am going by the numbers given to me only. I have no reason to doubt the word of my contacts in Bioware, Cryptic or Trion, and they all gave similar numbers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 10, 2014, 04:55:53 PM
I want to see the game again.  When I installed Windows 7, I lost my City installation, so Icon is no longer an option as-is.  :(  Here's hoping everything works out reasonably soon and completely well.

The installer programs (Tequila for Windows) don't need the CoH files. I also installed Windows 7, clean install, and used the installer to get Icon in all its glory - the only thing I manually downloaded was Tequila, which took care of everything else.

So, a question for @Downix - If this, ah, "holding company" comes into being, whose primary purpose is to act as a licensor of the CoX IP and possibly a "publisher" of the I-23 server, would this company be limited in the types of licenses it could grant? That is, would this IP company be able to license a novel, or a CCG, or an action figure, or would it be limited strictly to licensing MMORPG versions of CoX?
Theoretically no, though there may be outstanding agreements that NCSoft could require to still be honored as part of the ownership transfer. For example, let's say in 2009, McFarlane acquired five year exclusive personalities (Iconics, etc ) license.  Frequently these kind of agreements are ended when a rights transfer - but not always. NC Soft could require it be honoured as part of the transfer.  THAT IS JUST AN EXAMPLE!

Are you saying "Theoretically no" to the "Would it be limited?" question, or the "would it be able to license CCG, novel, etc.?" question? If it's the former, great! I am super excited to see things like CCG expansion, MOBA, comics / novels, etc. If you're saying "no" to the latter question, why would that be the case?

Additionally, who are you? I'm curious - your sig indicates you're with MWM, and your posts indicate you may have knowledge of the negotiations, but you've never been officially introduced in these threads.


In short, we are not "almost there," unless one has a very...extended definition of the word "almost."

Yeah, I've found the "we're almost there" 'signature' to be annoying, because it is not true at all, and may give false hope to people that something will actually happen soon.

Side note: why type it in to every post, and not just add it as a real sig?

"It is a perfect deal with no risk - because they can just close the game again if needed."  Uh, this is far from perfect, in fact it is terrible.  So it can be "Goodbye CoX once again" at any time on the whim of NCSoft once again?  Yeesh.

Perfect for NCsoft, assuming that's the sort of deal they work out. I am sort of wondering if the holding company for the IP, even if it's independent on paper, will be beholden to NCsoft in any way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 10, 2014, 05:24:09 PM
Technically, this is irrelevant. But I'll mention it anyways.
I never got to try i24. My account was Premium when the shutdown notice came, and before that I had a policy of avoiding test until Issues went live. Preferred to experience the new content Live.

On to the more relevant part!
For starters, when it comes to some thing, Story especially... I'd prefer not to yay/nay anything just yet. My maybe wasn't a coy way of saying no, I've just not made a decision one way or the other.
I don't know the specifics of i24, I've neglected to go actually dig into the details quite yet. Personally, I consider it cannonical grey area.
It was content made by Paragon Studios, led by Positron. So that gives it serious weight.
However...it was not Live, finished content... So that means I can argue it's not canon.

Speaking personally, my preferences (which should, of course, be given accommodation because I am the Most Important Person in the World) would be to at least see the gameplay changes incorporated into APR--the things everyone was looking forward to like the Blaster changes, the new powersets (already had ideas for a Dual Pistols/Martial Combat and a Spines/Bio-Armor character) and the Rogue/Vigilante-specific storyarcs (as I thought it added a lot to the flavor of the alignment system if those alignments went down different story paths). I care substantially less about the specific story content.

And I don't so much mind not being able to import my Sentinel files, but I'd be a trifle upset if the APR migration didn't allow you to import active characters from the re-released game. Starting over once is frustrating, starting over twice is doubly frustrating. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 10, 2014, 05:27:50 PM
My intention is to include all current content from City of Heroes, then add new content to it...New stories and such. Then perhaps later on look into updating older content.
I don't think I can give more detail on story and such at this time.

I don't know anything about actually making a game, so that's why I'm wondering about it. Wouldn't it be easier to just build all the content in with new tech from the start? Older missions were created before things like phasing and choices within missions were offered, and have a certain mindset underlying their structure (go here, kill X amount, kill X boss, for example). Plus, contacts that change could actually be built in somehow - if you read the Lore AMAs, they talk about why it was going to be hard for Scirocco to switch sides - all the stuff he was involved in, the missions, everything would have to be changed. Why not build some sort of mission / contact designing thing that allows for more fluid changes to the game from the get go?

I have to say that some of what motivates this is my editing of the Wiki. Because of the way the Wiki formatting is set up, it can't deal all that easily with things like the Statesman and Psyche's deaths in their individual articles. And the pseudo-static nature of MMOs has some similar type of issues. So I think building from the start for a dynamic world, and missions that use cool options, is better than just porting over old school "kill all" style missions.

Isn't that easy enough? Just make a character with the name you want.

I would suggest something similar to STO - global handles. There's a certain amount of uniqueness needed in a superhero game, to be sure, but I think it's better to make more people happy.

I hope that at least some, if not most or all, of I24 and of the stuff planned mentioned in the Loregasms eventually makes it's way into the game. But it's understandable if it doesn't. Those writers are no longer participating in your project.

As far as the Lore AMA stuff, I think it would be worth really getting a more in-depth description of the nature of powers / reality. Even if the storyline (Coming Storm, Battalion, etc.) doesn't happen, there's already TONS of stuff in game built on these sort of grand ideas about the nature of the universe.

Most of the stuff built on it is Incarnate stuff, which I never liked, but it's still there.

A good for instance on why I24 should not be portioned in the Cannon is that there were still issues being worked out.

There were issues with it you can see just by logging into Icon Beta. Such as Dual Pistol damage for corrupters was higher than that of blasters. and much of the corrupter damage was... different than expected.

That's game mechanics, which is going to be different anyways, probably. I think that the storyline stuff is good to include - the Praetorian arcs do need some resolution. Mechanics, power sets, things like that: take them if they're good, but leave 'em if not. Power sets should be added as much as possible - even if they weren't finished, we can see the design intent behind them, and build from there.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 10, 2014, 05:48:00 PM
Additionally, who are you? I'm curious - your sig indicates you're with MWM, and your posts indicate you may have knowledge of the negotiations, but you've never been officially introduced in these threads.
I figured everyone knew who David was. He's my right-hand man for the technical department in MWM. Also means he knows everything I know, to serve as bus insurance (as in if I get run over by a bus...). You cannot keep a secret from someone in IT.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 10, 2014, 06:25:57 PM
I'm going to bow out of this line of discussion after this as to not risk poking bears, but a little bird hinted that mapservers were not virtualized (after all, what would be the point since all shards dynamically balance maps across them), but dbservers were along with some of the global stuff. Which makes sense as you need a dbserver per shard, so virtualizing allows them to pool resources and not need as many physical machines for them.
It could also explain certain odd behaviors I could attribute to dbservers getting variable performance on an unoptimized consolidated server.  But yeah, this is probably one of those talks about the birds and the bears.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 10, 2014, 06:27:04 PM
2008R2. Why they didn't just call it SQL2010 is beyond me to this day, at least the client components are sane and just call it 10.50.

Probably because of Windows 2008R2.  The bigger question is why they used that naming convention, because that was horrible for everyone involved given the changes in 2k8R2.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: jendragon on September 10, 2014, 06:44:45 PM
Personally, I think the original CoH base system is one thing you should NOT try to replicate. It was ugly as sin and made it a right chore to get anything decent looking.

You can do better, loads better. :p  Personally.. I kinda like how they do it in DCUO.  Just a collection of big empty rooms you can decorate how you like. Just don't gate the furnishings behind drops and let the users buy additional rooms to add on to it (including multiple levels).

This is much along the lines CoT is planning.

No, don't give me rooms to just decorate.  I like being able to take a huge room and giving it three levels of living space.  It was clunky, but people pulled out based editing miracles which looked like weight rooms, auto mechanic shops, the inside of a space ship/satellite, some people even turned their bases into small towns where you were walking the streets.  I like the freedom to turn the inside of the bases into what you need for that particular room.  I was editing various bases during the last year, and learning a ton from base editors who were willing to teach me.  I even borrowed ideas I saw and figured out how they were done.  Before CoH was turned off, I was wowing myself with what I was pulling off in the editor.  I want to be able to make a base that suits the people in it.  Be they vampires, mutants, dimensional beings from other places. I don't want a cookie cutter room that I just decorate.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 06:45:01 PM
Yeah, I've found the "we're almost there" 'signature' to be annoying, because it is not true at all, and may give false hope to people that something will actually happen soon.

I think people are just trying to be optimistic. Those of us running a project (APR, the purchase, CoT, etc) have asked the community to do the hardest thing possible: Sit and wait.
I can understand some eagerness for that to be over.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 06:51:09 PM
Speaking personally, my preferences (which should, of course, be given accommodation because I am the Most Important Person in the World) would be to at least see the gameplay changes incorporated into APR--the things everyone was looking forward to like the Blaster changes, the new powersets (already had ideas for a Dual Pistols/Martial Combat and a Spines/Bio-Armor character) and the Rogue/Vigilante-specific storyarcs (as I thought it added a lot to the flavor of the alignment system if those alignments went down different story paths). I care substantially less about the specific story content.

And I don't so much mind not being able to import my Sentinel files, but I'd be a trifle upset if the APR migration didn't allow you to import active characters from the re-released game. Starting over once is frustrating, starting over twice is doubly frustrating. :)

It's entirely possible, and likely that the i24 gameplay changes will make it in. I haven't had a chance to go do my homework on i24 quite yet, but I figure the changes being made were for the best...especially since everyone seems so keen on getting them!

As for character importing... I literally cannot say yay or nay at this time. It's not a matter of me choosing one way or the other. Given the choice, I'd choose being able to import people's characters! However, there are technical hurdles that I have little experience in. (Databases and the like: Not my area of expertise. Never had to work with them really.
Also, whoever is running Legacy has to be willing to play ball, which since nobody's been given that task yet...I can't just PM them and be like "Sup. So, how about stuff? What about things?"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 10, 2014, 06:59:46 PM
I would suggest something similar to STO - global handles. There's a certain amount of uniqueness needed in a superhero game, to be sure, but I think it's better to make more people happy.
I just pictured a SG where every character has the same name.   That would crack me up...the creative potential of this community would take that and run with it, I'm betting.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 10, 2014, 07:02:34 PM
I just pictured a SG where every character has the same name.   That would crack me up...the creative potential of this community would take that and run with it, I'm betting.


Hi! I'm Darryl. and this is my brother Darryl.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 10, 2014, 07:15:45 PM
I just pictured a SG where every character has the same name.   That would crack me up...the creative potential of this community would take that and run with it, I'm betting.
On Liberty my sister ran an SG "The Power Of One"

Every member had a variation of "One" or "1" in their name.

Was always fun running down the street to see "Noone saved us!" "Someone is awesome" and "Anyone will save me!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 10, 2014, 07:23:05 PM
It's entirely possible, and likely that the i24 gameplay changes will make it in. I haven't had a chance to go do my homework on i24 quite yet, but I figure the changes being made were for the best...especially since everyone seems so keen on getting them!

As for character importing... I literally cannot say yay or nay at this time. It's not a matter of me choosing one way or the other. Given the choice, I'd choose being able to import people's characters! However, there are technical hurdles that I have little experience in. (Databases and the like: Not my area of expertise. Never had to work with them really.
Also, whoever is running Legacy has to be willing to play ball, which since nobody's been given that task yet...I can't just PM them and be like "Sup. So, how about stuff? What about things?"

Don't worry--I think I speak for everyone when I say that we understand that you're not able to give us answers yet. This is the pre-tentative-stage-of-negotiations-not-yet-completed-which-may-lead-to-a-series-of-discussions-which-could-be-implemented-in-some-form-leading-to-a-sequence-of-decisions-which-could-then-possibly-be-worked-on-pending-technical-hurdles-not-yet-known-which-will-eventually-lead-to-some-form-of-game-which-will-go-through-an-alpha-leading-to-a-beta. so things are bound to change before the game goes live. :) But it never hurts to get ideas out there early while everything is still fluid, and you're being a great listener right now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: -Psi- on September 10, 2014, 07:51:00 PM
I just pictured a SG where every character has the same name.   That would crack me up...the creative potential of this community would take that and run with it, I'm betting.

Green Lantern called. He wants his idea back! You stole it!  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 10, 2014, 07:51:40 PM
I am going by the numbers given to me only. I have no reason to doubt the word of my contacts in Bioware, Cryptic or Trion, and they all gave similar numbers.

I hate to bow back into this discussion, but again, that seems a bit odd. After all, what do you think your contacts at Bioware, Cryptic, or Trion would have told you about the costs of implementing an entire MMO?  Within the budget you're currently working? Of course not, since they're working with triple A titles and companies that likely use greatly inflated costs.
 
I'm fine if you don't decide to include Voice work.  Honestly. I think it's a strike against your game that will hurt you, if only slightly, and I GREATLY want your game to succeed, but if you all decide its fine, cool.
 
But I'm a little surprised at a)the numbers you giving not matching what I know from the industry first hand, and what others in here know as well, and even what the SAG union rates are, and b)that your mindset for this seems to be so opposed to the mindset of the entire rest of MWMs entire concept.
 
*shrug* 
 
Like I said, I meant no disrespect to you, and didn't even start this thread, but do feel that all of us should be able to voice our opinions/challenge ideas and decisions, etc. without feeling like we suddenly get shunned or treated as if we're a nuisance.  Sadly, that's exactly how I felt like I was treated in the end by some people in the discussion, when all I, Tony V, and others are trying to do is state our opinions and our knowledge. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 10, 2014, 08:05:37 PM
I just pictured a SG where every character has the same name.   That would crack me up...the creative potential of this community would take that and run with it, I'm betting.

I remember a couple of smallish groups on Guardian who took advantage of the font that character names
were shown in to use lower L's, upper I's, and 1's to make multiple toons with the same displayed "name"

Always a hoot to see them running together, same names, same costumes, etc.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 10, 2014, 08:12:49 PM

Hi! I'm Darryl. and this is my brother Darryl.

I think it would we "Hi I'm Darryl, and this is my brother, Durrel" Also could be worse, you can be one of George Foreman's son xD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 10, 2014, 08:16:02 PM
I just pictured a SG where every character has the same name.   That would crack me up...the creative potential of this community would take that and run with it, I'm betting.

Actually there was a PvP Match where the entire 8 man team changed their names to have different variations of IIIIIIIIII. That was interesting to see people call out targets.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 10, 2014, 08:24:53 PM
Actually there was a PvP Match where the entire 8 man team changed their names to have different variations of IIIIIIIIII. That was interesting to see people call out targets.
Glorious chaos, I'm sure.  :)

On a similar note, a friend of mine with an Illusion Controller spent some time working up a cleverly-crafted costume that looked like the phantoms in Phantom Army.  He would throw them out and then "hide in the crowd," so to speak.  Rather surprised me the first time I saw it - I said "Where'd you get a 4th phantom?  And where are you?"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 10, 2014, 08:25:25 PM
On Liberty my sister ran an SG "The Power Of One"

Every member had a variation of "One" or "1" in their name.

Was always fun running down the street to see "Noone saved us!" "Someone is awesome" and "Anyone will save me!"

O.o

Heyyyyyy..... That's what I did! Even the SG's name was "CorpsOne"....lol

I had a neat backstory and everything!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 10, 2014, 08:49:36 PM
Glorious chaos, I'm sure.  :)

On a similar note, a friend of mine with an Illusion Controller spent some time working up a cleverly-crafted costume that looked like the phantoms in Phantom Army.  He would throw them out and then "hide in the crowd," so to speak.  Rather surprised me the first time I saw it - I said "Where'd you get a 4th phantom?  And where are you?"

 
I did the same thing!  I loved it. :-)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 10, 2014, 08:52:25 PM
Like I said, I meant no disrespect to you, and didn't even start this thread, but do feel that all of us should be able to voice our opinions/challenge ideas and decisions, etc. without feeling like we suddenly get shunned or treated as if we're a nuisance.  Sadly, that's exactly how I felt like I was treated in the end by some people in the discussion, when all I, Tony V, and others are trying to do is state our opinions and our knowledge.
I understand where you are coming from. From studio costs, to localization, to the need to redesign the entire character rig yet again, to even the sheer volume of content we are discussing here, it is beyond what is practicable for MWM to consider at this point. (I cannot speak for APR) I used worst-case scenario costs, which is how I baseline most budgeting work. That is one of the reasons why MWM is under budget at this point. Voice acting's worst-case scenario however is far greater a spread.

Now, what has been ignored in all of these discussions is that both CoT and APR are running on the Unreal Engine. It is easy to conceive of someone adding a semi-official "Voice Actor" module, using fan made vocal talent, which could be used in either game.

In other words, if you want voice acting, you guys have the power to make it happen.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 10, 2014, 08:55:41 PM
I just pictured a SG where every character has the same name.   That would crack me up...the creative potential of this community would take that and run with it, I'm betting.

We have 3 Inaris in my SG in CO....only one is a white fox, go fig.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 10, 2014, 09:04:51 PM
I understand where you are coming from. From studio costs, to localization, to the need to redesign the entire character rig yet again, to even the sheer volume of content we are discussing here, it is beyond what is practicable for MWM to consider at this point. (I cannot speak for APR) I used worst-case scenario costs, which is how I baseline most budgeting work. That is one of the reasons why MWM is under budget at this point. Voice acting's worst-case scenario however is far greater a spread.

Now, what has been ignored in all of these discussions is that both CoT and APR are running on the Unreal Engine. It is easy to conceive of someone adding a semi-official "Voice Actor" module, using fan made vocal talent, which could be used in either game.

In other words, if you want voice acting, you guys have the power to make it happen.

 
Thanks for the response. 
 
This last comment makes me excited. One of the best aspects I've found in The Secret World is the ability built in to the game to add mods by players that tweak the user experience in valuable ways. 
 
Will CoT be trying to allow the same sort of modding?  It is AWESOME to be able to make your UI, etc. customizable.  The ability to create autosorting of loot, autoselling at vendors, etc. is such great QoL material, and outsourcing it to players is brilliant. I'd be STOKED if I found out that CoT, at least, was planning on that being at least a possibility. 

 ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 10, 2014, 09:05:56 PM
I'm certainly willing, if I can be remotely useful to you.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 10, 2014, 09:10:09 PM
Thanks for the response. 
 
This last comment makes me excited. One of the best aspects I've found in The Secret World is the ability built in to the game to add mods by players that tweak the game itself in valuable ways. 
 
Will CoT be trying to allow the same sort of modding?  It is AWESOME to be able to make your UI, etc. customizable.  The ability to create autosorting of loot, autoselling at vendors, etc. is such great QoL material, and outsourcing it to players is brilliant. I'd be STOKED if I found out that CoT, at least, was planning on that being at least a possibility. 

 ;D
Some limited modding is within scope. Won't be able to make walls go transparent or highlight other PC's on a PvP map, but things like UI mods (which a voice acting module would be, if you think on it) are at least on the table for discussion.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 09:13:58 PM
(I cannot speak for APR) I used worst-case scenario costs, which is how I baseline most budgeting work.
Worst case scenario is the best way to budget. It's how I prefer to do everything.
and I can speak for APR (Surprising, no?). I think I've mentioned before. It's something I might consider in the future, but I'm not worrying about it for now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 09:16:51 PM
Now, what has been ignored in all of these discussions is that both CoT and APR are running on the Unreal Engine. It is easy to conceive of someone adding a semi-official "Voice Actor" module, using fan made vocal talent, which could be used in either game.
In other words, if you want voice acting, you guys have the power to make it happen.


Thanks for the response. 
This last comment makes me excited. One of the best aspects I've found in The Secret World is the ability built in to the game to add mods by players that tweak the user experience in valuable ways. 
Will CoT be trying to allow the same sort of modding?  It is AWESOME to be able to make your UI, etc. customizable.  The ability to create autosorting of loot, autoselling at vendors, etc. is such great QoL material, and outsourcing it to players is brilliant. I'd be STOKED if I found out that CoT, at least, was planning on that being at least a possibility. 

Hrm. Nate has a good point, one I hadn't even thought of. What basically made Unreal what it is today was it's modability.
Mods for APR...I'm going to have to give the subject a long, in depth think. There are obviously things you don't want players to be able to do in an MMO, and other restrictions based on the nature of the game... But some things that would be awesome.

Hrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Expect no definitive answer on this subject for awhile.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 10, 2014, 09:17:29 PM
Actually there was a PvP Match where the entire 8 man team changed their names to have different variations of IIIIIIIIII. That was interesting to see people call out targets.

I think I remember that. They did it for targeting purposes and it worked pretty well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on September 10, 2014, 10:12:12 PM
Hrm. Nate has a good point, one I hadn't even thought of. What basically made Unreal what it is today was it's modability.
Mods for APR...I'm going to have to give the subject a long, in depth think. There are obviously things you don't want players to be able to do in an MMO, and other restrictions based on the nature of the game... But some things that would be awesome.

Hrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Expect no definitive answer on this subject for awhile.

While I wouldn't mind seeing mods that allow changes to the look and feel of the UI, what I don't want to see are any DPS meters or other tools that could be used to denigrate or harass other players.  I had enough of that crap in WoW.



Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 10, 2014, 10:32:18 PM
While I wouldn't mind seeing mods that allow changes to the look and feel of the UI, what I don't want to see are any DPS meters or other tools that could be used to denigrate or harass other players.  I had enough of that crap in WoW.

Yeah I wouldn't want people demanding very specific requirements for team setups or leagues.  I was actually turned off enough as it was with the incarnate trials when the occasional jerk-head demanded everyone be +3 for just about any incarnate trial.  Let alone dps meters that give such jerk heads a reason to kick players based on not being specialized enough in damage.  I could only see it if something came; you'd only see fire blasters being taken, corruptors and defenders would be pidgin holed by these kinds of jerks into only buffing/debuffing, no, change that, probably only being kins with only speed boost and FS and same jerks demanding only healing from them due to some healing per second bar, I could go on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 10, 2014, 10:37:19 PM
We have 3 Inaris in my SG in CO....only one is a white fox, go fig.

That is so weird! My daughter's name is Inari, and back when the game was still live she loved to play with the character creator. So I have tons of characters (I had slots to spare) named things like "Inari-Chan", and "Fox Girl", and similar names that appealed to a six-year-old. It's kind of funny to think of people using it as an actual character name.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 10, 2014, 10:38:31 PM
Yeah I wouldn't want people demanding very specific requirements for team setups or leagues.  I was actually turned off enough as it was with the incarnate trials when the occasional jerk-head demanded everyone be +3 for just about any incarnate trial.  Let alone dps meters that give such jerk heads a reason to kick players based on not being specialized enough in damage.  I could only see it if something came; you'd only see fire blasters being taken, corruptors and defenders would be pidgin holed by these kinds of jerks into only buffing/debuffing, no, change that, probably only being kins with only speed boost and FS and same jerks demanding only healing from them due to some healing per second bar, I could go on.

That...sounds...AMAZ---- Horrible, Awful, just bad...
Worst of all, it sounds not-fun...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 10, 2014, 10:39:10 PM
Agreed on restricting what others can view. Your own DPS? Fine. Anyone else's? No thanks. If I want to slot 1 damage, 3 accuracy, 2 recharge in all my damage powers as a scrapper, that's nobody's business but mine, as long as everyone's having fun.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 10, 2014, 10:40:28 PM
I haven't spoken to either teams, So this is pure speculation.
There's also the concern that agreeing to something like that forfeits a certain level of control. You can't simply have the Rikti come in and blow up the planet, it would conflict with what's going on in the I.P. in other places.
Basically, the only way to have no real concerns is to make your story take place in an Alternate time-line/universe/dimension that has very little story ties to CoH. At that point, why even bother calling it a CoH successor?

I don't think anyone ever had the notion of some large, sweeping MMO version of the MCU, where Kevin Feige and Joss Whedon must be consulted on all major plot developments. (Pretty sure no one here would mind a little input from Joss Whedon, though.) Each of the projects had its own lore in development, but it may have been a collective (within each group) creative decision not to try to make what they had come up with mesh with the established more of CoH.

Also, when doesn't one comic book or other run a multi-issue story line where the fate of the world hangs in the balance, only for Jubilee (or Aquaman, or whoever the lamest character in said comic franchise is) to come up with some zero hour anal extraction that saves the day? The Rikti are here to destroy the world? Good thing they only landed in Paragon City! ;) (Really! Magneto would have a much easier time if he started with, say, Dubuque, Iowa...)

I do have a question for you, though, Irish_Girl: Are you having to build the power mechanics from scratch, or is there a system for that built into the engine? (I probably could watch a few hours of tutorial videos, but I'm not there, yet.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 10, 2014, 10:45:26 PM
Yeah I wouldn't want people demanding very specific requirements for team setups or leagues.  I was actually turned off enough as it was with the incarnate trials when the occasional jerk-head demanded everyone be +3 for just about any incarnate trial.  Let alone dps meters that give such jerk heads a reason to kick players based on not being specialized enough in damage.  I could only see it if something came; you'd only see fire blasters being taken, corruptors and defenders would be pidgin holed by these kinds of jerks into only buffing/debuffing, no, change that, probably only being kins with only speed boost and FS and same jerks demanding only healing from them due to some healing per second bar, I could go on.
Yikes.  Were you, perchance, on Freedom server?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 10, 2014, 10:46:32 PM
Some limited modding is within scope. Won't be able to make walls go transparent or highlight other PC's on a PvP map, but things like UI mods (which a voice acting module would be, if you think on it) are at least on the table for discussion.

That's very cool.  Have you seen the kind of modding TSW allows, and how it's done?  If not, check it out (I can help if needed) and if so, is that akin to what you're talking about? You can't mod things that affect actual gameplay but can mod just about anything that deals with UI, interactions with NPCs, etc.  It's really fascinating. 
 
Here's a link to a page where you can see some of the modding it allows. 
 
http://www.curse.com/tsw-mods/tsw
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 10, 2014, 10:51:18 PM

I hate to bow back into this discussion, but again, that seems a bit odd. After all, what do you think your contacts at Bioware, Cryptic, or Trion would have told you about the costs of implementing an entire MMO?  Within the budget you're currently working? Of course not, since they're working with triple A titles and companies that likely use greatly inflated costs.
 
I'm fine if you don't decide to include Voice work.  Honestly. I think it's a strike against your game that will hurt you, if only slightly, and I GREATLY want your game to succeed, but if you all decide its fine, cool.
 
But I'm a little surprised at a)the numbers you giving not matching what I know from the industry first hand, and what others in here know as well, and even what the SAG union rates are, and b)that your mindset for this seems to be so opposed to the mindset of the entire rest of MWMs entire concept.
 
*shrug* 
 
Like I said, I meant no disrespect to you, and didn't even start this thread, but do feel that all of us should be able to voice our opinions/challenge ideas and decisions, etc. without feeling like we suddenly get shunned or treated as if we're a nuisance.  Sadly, that's exactly how I felt like I was treated in the end by some people in the discussion, when all I, Tony V, and others are trying to do is state our opinions and our knowledge.

I wasn't trying to shut anybody down either. I just don't think it's that crazy for an MMO's worth of dialogue to get that high. Although what you're thinking could easily be a 100th of something like Bioware levels of dialog and still be ambitious compared to what COH had before. Also, not knowing at least one of you was a pro, I didn't want people to get the idea that VO is any less challenging than on-camera or stage.

I don't think anybody would fault you guys for trying to demo something. I might even be able to help out with the UI plugin stuff depending on what route they take with that. I think the biggest challenge would be finding talent to suit the circumstances. VO is bread and butter for a lot of actors. It's what pays the bills between doing all the things that don't really. I've actually already poked around to see if anybody within my wife's circle of friends happened to be a huge COH fan. No dice : ( and there's no way in Hell I'd ask these guys to work for imaginary peanuts unless they really really loved the game or at least had something to show them that might excite them.

So try the Irish_Girl route. Just start doing stuff, then some more stuff, and then a crap-ton more stuff and see what comes of it when you start showing it to people. One inspired and very good character VO actor could do an awful lot.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 10, 2014, 10:55:41 PM
Yeah I wouldn't want people demanding very specific requirements for team setups or leagues.  I was actually turned off enough as it was with the incarnate trials when the occasional jerk-head demanded everyone be +3 for just about any incarnate trial.  Let alone dps meters that give such jerk heads a reason to kick players based on not being specialized enough in damage.  I could only see it if something came; you'd only see fire blasters being taken, corruptors and defenders would be pidgin holed by these kinds of jerks into only buffing/debuffing, no, change that, probably only being kins with only speed boost and FS and same jerks demanding only healing from them due to some healing per second bar, I could go on.

I think the main thing about this is not so much the ability to see actual DPS, etc. it's a design decision by the devs that make certain scenarios almost require very specific team make ups. Thankfully, City of Heroes was so well balanced (and from what Arcana and others shared in this thread, accidentally so) that just about any team could tackle just about any scenario if they just worked together.
 
In short, even if we had meters above our heads broadcasting our stats directly to other players all the time, I don't see teams getting that picky unless there were some serious changes to the general gameplay and mission design.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 10, 2014, 11:17:12 PM

I think the main thing about this is not so much the ability to see actual DPS, etc. it's a design decision by the devs that make certain scenarios almost require very specific team make ups. Thankfully, City of Heroes was so well balanced (and from what Arcana and others shared in this thread, accidentally so) that just about any team could tackle just about any scenario if they just worked together.
 
In short, even if we had meters above our heads broadcasting our stats directly to other players all the time, I don't see teams getting that picky unless there were some serious changes to the general gameplay and mission design.

Well put sire!  CoH wasn't so liberal with grouping because we didn't have DPS mods or charts at the end of instances.  It was because any character could be good, and it only takes a short time of playing it to see the game can be played any variety of ways.  It was the community and the mechanics of the game that made it this way, I don't see that changing because of a hypothetical mod.  People who want to play the games the way LaughingAlex mentioned will probably just play a different game.  As I and several of my friends who are experienced raiders in other MMO's and other stat counters like my self I met in CoH.  Always left that type of attitude at the door when logging in CoH.  CoH is about fun.  Other MMO's are about progress and feeding my addiction to stat counting.

Quote
When the occasional jerk-head demanded everyone be +3 for just about any incarnate trial

The only time I ever ran into this or asked for this personally was if it was a  Master Of iTrail.  And the +3 was more about just so you knew they had their incarnate powers and had probably experienced the trial a few times.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 10, 2014, 11:25:28 PM

I think the main thing about this is not so much the ability to see actual DPS, etc. it's a design decision by the devs that make certain scenarios almost require very specific team make ups. Thankfully, City of Heroes was so well balanced (and from what Arcana and others shared in this thread, accidentally so) that just about any team could tackle just about any scenario if they just worked together.
 
In short, even if we had meters above our heads broadcasting our stats directly to other players all the time, I don't see teams getting that picky unless there were some serious changes to the general gameplay and mission design.

Yeah, the game itself was extremely balanced.  Honestly odds are only extreme SHFG guys would be forceful, but see to a normal shfg even a 2-3% increase over something else is enough to justify kicking others who don't use it.  It's the personality of the players.  Most CoX players were very smart and balanced individuals who didn't cave into that mentality.  Only a few here and there.  The other thing though is we'll likely have as many newer players as we do veterans, cause those who never got to try it out but wanted to since it shut down, will likely jump at the opportunity to try the game out.  They'll need our help to become productive members of the community who don't turn into scrubs/shfg's.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 10, 2014, 11:30:15 PM
While I wouldn't mind seeing mods that allow changes to the look and feel of the UI, what I don't want to see are any DPS meters or other tools that could be used to denigrate or harass other players.  I had enough of that crap in WoW.

I agree, we don't need to see the DPS that someone else can do. Focus on your toons and have fun.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blackjak on September 10, 2014, 11:33:32 PM
I'd just like to add my take on VO's for COT as well, since I am one of the lucky individuals who would be recording, editing, mixing and mastering any VO for MWM. Here are 4 quick reasons not to do VO in COT:

1. VO is expensive for quality work. It's safe to say a norm of $100-$250/page of script (~200-300 words), recording studio time (pretty much as stated before ~$250/hr) and other more nominal costs. It is true that my time is free and that helps a ton, but for quality i would still need to rent space in a studio for the quality that is expected. We could go cheap and do the VO with volunteers in a less than commercial studio, but that would just be...well...no. Better a game with great sound effects and music than a game with great sound and music that was interrupted by Uncle Pete's uncomfortably stilted cheesiness. BTW, another factor in the cost; we have TONS of NPC's in the gates already with more to come. They would all need voices. Which leads us to:

2. VO can actually be limiting. We intend to do continual issues on a regular basis and that means more dialogue, of course. No bid deal. However, what if something changes? The actor who did your signature hero's voice is not for hire anymore, the old dialogue ages badly compared to the new ones, new story arcs makes an NPC's dialogue from before take a different light that would have been misrepresented in some phrasing, etc. These could be handled, but it would take time away from other content, such as new powerset sounds, which are more important in the grand scheme of things.

3. Last, but not least, the voice just doesn't match up with your idea of what the character sounds like. We have all had that annoying experience. RP is an integral part of this community and such a juxtaposition would ruin things for a lot of people.

4. CoX did not have VO. Why? I am of the opinion that they had some of the same reasons as we do, but I also think it adds to the general appeal of the genre of superheroes. They are bigger than life, but silent in their most pure form: the comicbook. We are making a superhero game, but in essence we are making a comicbook game. Every voice that is "heard" is uniquely yours, just as your character is unique.

So TL;DR: VO is expensive, time consuming, somewhat limiting and rarely ends up being perfect. As much as we would love to be able to do it, we would like to avoid all of the negatives that come with it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on September 10, 2014, 11:46:22 PM
On Liberty my sister ran an SG "The Power Of One"

Every member had a variation of "One" or "1" in their name.

Was always fun running down the street to see "Noone saved us!" "Someone is awesome" and "Anyone will save me!"

This reminds me of a couple of ex professional footballers in the UK, who bought two horses, and called them "Some horse" and "Another horse" then ran them in the same races to make the commentator sound like an idiot.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: sweatcake66 on September 11, 2014, 12:11:13 AM
I would like too see support for Linux user's in 1.5 and or 2.0. I know this can not happen in the i.23 ver. thanks to all that are making this a possible.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 11, 2014, 12:17:54 AM
Server instances definitely ran on multiple hosting servers, but that doesn't mean it would be impossible to run on a single server.  In fact, if you think the servers were virtualized then its definitely possible to migrate a set of virtual servers to a single computer and play it.  The single computer just has to be fast enough to handle the load you want to host, which for a small enough number of players would not be difficult.

Woohoo! You mean I could solo CoH on my home PC forever?  :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 11, 2014, 12:57:04 AM
I would like too see support for Linux user's in 1.5 and or 2.0. I know this can not happen in the i.23 ver. thanks to all that are making this a possible.

Looks like more than just talk to me. I mean they got the silly thing running in Mozilla with asm.js

https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/unreal-engine-4-and-linux
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 11, 2014, 01:17:02 AM
I would like too see support for Linux user's in 1.5 and or 2.0. I know this can not happen in the i.23 ver. thanks to all that are making this a possible.

Revival will probably end up running on just about anything that Unreal Engine 4 support. Which is pretty much anything short of dishwashers, microwaves, and commadore 64s.
and I'm pretty sure support for Samsung Washing Machines is coming in winter.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: skoogmik on September 11, 2014, 01:19:26 AM
A question for Irish_Girl,

If the purchase is successful, will you be receiving the IP rights for Issue 24?  I know that
running Issue 24 is out of the question, but it would be nice to able to use the new Issue 24
skeletal motion files and their related power sets in follow up projects.

Keep up the great work.  ;D

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zubenelgenubi on September 11, 2014, 01:21:18 AM
Completed stories is exactly one of the things that is missing.

Well, badges then. They took literally YEARS to earn. Not fond of the idea of grinding them out again...   :gonk:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 11, 2014, 01:27:49 AM
Revival will probably end up running on just about anything that Unreal Engine 4 support. Which is pretty much anything short of dishwashers, microwaves, and commadore 64s.
and I'm pretty sure support for Samsung Washing Machines is coming in winter.
Never dis the Commodore.....

(seriously, don't do it, those things are so hackable I'd not be surprised if someone has figured out a way to make it compatible)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 11, 2014, 01:35:31 AM
So try the Irish_Girl route. Just start doing stuff, then some more stuff, and then a crap-ton more stuff and see what comes of it when you start showing it to people. One inspired and very good character VO actor could do an awful lot.

I love that this is called the "Irish Girl route". Which is totally accurate lol.

One of my biggest concerns with VO is finding voices that fit Signature Characters... Who sounds good as Statesman? Does Sister Psyche sound cheesy?
One good one could go a long way to changing my mind, if people are that interested.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 11, 2014, 01:38:48 AM
EDIT: Interesting. Just looked over the Mr. G arc on the Paragonwiki. Looks like it is incomplete- or perhaps the person or persons running it did not have all the villain badges. There was a notable difference in the Crimson Revenant part on that page and what happened when I ran it.

I was documenting those arcs on a copy of my main hero turned villain. While I had all of the villain-side badges, I had not acquired all of the villain-side souvenirs. So it's possible there could have been a discrepancy based on that.

/e shrug
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 11, 2014, 01:39:18 AM
A question for Irish_Girl,

If the purchase is successful, will you be receiving the IP rights for Issue 24?  I know that
running Issue 24 is out of the question, but it would be nice to able to use the new Issue 24
skeletal motion files and their related power sets in follow up projects.

Keep up the great work.  ;D

The I.P. is covers everything City of Heroes related. Including anything that would have been in i24.
However, I have no way to access any CoH animations. The deal would not include any of the original development files, and to my knowledge there is no way to convert the games animation files into a usable format.
I bet not even CODEWALKER could do it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 11, 2014, 01:39:35 AM
Well, badges then. They took literally YEARS to earn. Not fond of the idea of grinding them out again...   :gonk:
Oh, surely you look forward to doing a Dr. Quaterfield TF again!  A whole 12 hours of unbridled, pure joy!  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zubenelgenubi on September 11, 2014, 01:41:06 AM

IF Sentinel was used, Which I'm not supporting. The best bet, I believe, would be to restore character name, inf, level, Bio, and powers/slots. No badges, no costumes.

I understand "no badges" at least in theory - because there are those who take the attitude "if I can't have what that person earned, then he shouldn't have it either." I completely fail to agree with it, but I understand it as a concept.

But why not costumes?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 11, 2014, 01:42:21 AM
Oh, surely you look forward to doing a Dr. Quaterfield TF again!  A whole 12 hours of unbridled, pure joy!  :)

I *LOVED* Dr. QTF. SO MUCH.
Managed to get one done in like 2 and a half hours once. I think magic was involved.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 11, 2014, 01:46:09 AM
I *LOVED* Dr. QTF. SO MUCH.
Managed to get one done in like 2 and a half hours once. I think magic was involved.
2 and a half hours?!  How the hell did you pull that off?!  It really did take my SG 12 hours to complete that monster.  We finally had to break for sleep and log back in the next day to finish it.  We still tell horror stories about that one...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 11, 2014, 01:47:01 AM
I understand "no badges" at least in theory - because there are those who take the attitude "if I can't have what that person earned, then he shouldn't have it either." I completely fail to agree with it, but I understand it as a concept.
But why not costumes?

For the same reason no badges. It's not about fairness, it would be about prevent bugs/issues.
My idea is based on information from Codewalker talking on the subject.

Sentinel+ only records what the client had access to, which doesn't include a lot of server side flags.
Does character have X costume pieces? Y/N, and so forth.
Badges are more complicated. Having the badge to access Ouroboros wouldn't give you access to the Citadel, the flag does. But the flag is triggered by getting the badge. If you can't get the badge because you already have it...Then you can never gain access to Ouroboros.
Unless I misunderstood something, Which is possible since I stopped paying too much attention after Codewalker said "Not going to work."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Alteran on September 11, 2014, 01:49:44 AM
I *LOVED* Dr. QTF. SO MUCH.
Managed to get one done in like 2 and a half hours once. I think magic was involved.

Wonder if we were on one together. I went through a bit where I would run one at least once a month. Ahhh good times.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 11, 2014, 01:52:21 AM
2 and a half hours?!  How the hell did you pull that off?!  It really did take my SG 12 hours to complete that monster.  We finally had to break for sleep and log back in the next day to finish it.  We still tell horror stories about that one...
Mainly... a team of people that worked really well together. We were all 50, with decked out characters. My scrapper alone could solo just about AV in the game, and the rest of the team was about equal in strength to myself. We just decided to give it our all. I expected we'd do it in like...8 hours, not 2 and a half...
At least 2 of us were 7.5 year vets at that point...so no lack of experience heh

I really wish I still had the screenshots from the TF...
It was great...We decided to go on and do MoSTF, which we beat. Then MoDrKTF, which we beat. Then I think we finished with an ITF.
Wonder if we were on one together. I went through a bit where I would run one at least once a month. Ahhh good times.
I don't know, I played on Victory. I would have been the angry red head with a giant sword named Irish Girl.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 11, 2014, 01:54:31 AM
Yeah, I've found the "we're almost there" 'signature' to be annoying, because it is not true at all, and may give false hope to people that something will actually happen soon.

Side note: why type it in to every post, and not just add it as a real sig?


It both fascinates and bothers me that anyone cares enough to be annoyed or complain about it or refute it in a signature, and I type it out each time because I like saying it. We ARE almost there compared to where we were before we became aware that these these talks started back in March(?). We are almost there in the sense that I have real hope that things will work as planned and we WILL be there soon. The future is much brighter than it was, darkness is being dispelled by the light at the end of the tunnel and all that other cliched poetic stuff. It's just me being optimistically happy, don't let it bother you, if you don't agree then it's fine that we disagree!


I just pictured a SG where every character has the same name.   That would crack me up...the creative potential of this community would take that and run with it, I'm betting.


On Champion I had an SG and a VG, (House Remaugen and Clan Remaugen on accounts with those globals and a third account Family Remaugen) all of which every one of my toons was named (***) Remaugen, all based off of a storyline from a character in our old Tabletop Mutants and Masterminds game.


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 11, 2014, 02:03:42 AM
2 and a half hours?!  How the hell did you pull that off?!  It really did take my SG 12 hours to complete that monster.  We finally had to break for sleep and log back in the next day to finish it.  We still tell horror stories about that one...

Team Transporter.

Pay2Win at its finest.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 11, 2014, 02:07:20 AM
Team Transporter.

Pay2Win at its finest.
Sigh...I wish.  We did it before that came out.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Crazywulf on September 11, 2014, 02:11:02 AM
Best news all year, Mjr. D will be there when the doors open. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Phaetan on September 11, 2014, 02:18:25 AM
As someone with horrid ping times, the Team Transporter made it so much more tolerable for me on task forces, as I could almost keep up with other people.

Pay2Win or not, I did not regret that purchase.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Von Krieger on September 11, 2014, 02:25:41 AM
I remember a couple of smallish groups on Guardian who took advantage of the font that character names
were shown in to use lower L's, upper I's, and 1's to make multiple toons with the same displayed "name"

Always a hoot to see them running together, same names, same costumes, etc.

Parallel Illusion, I do believe. And I also think that the | character could be used as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 11, 2014, 02:37:56 AM
Parallel Illusion, I do believe. And I also think that the | character could be used as well.

My daughter, my parents and I all made identical quadruplet gravity controllers that way:  Emerald Image they were called.  It was a fun idea, and when people would circle us, freaking out, only one of us would ever speak and say,

"I think you've had one too many drinks at Pocket D!"   ;D  But after a while, three of them got deleted (I kept mine though, and leveled her on various teams to 36 I think).  It was just too bloody confusing.

"Did you just throw down that immob or did I?"  Lol.  It's more disorienting than you think when all four have the same powers and are fighting the same groups of mobs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: gec72 on September 11, 2014, 02:46:35 AM
Green Lantern called. He wants his idea back! You stole it!  :P

I had a SG (started with friends, eventually became a 1-person group) called the Laser Corps, which was based not on the idea that they were all one color, but that they were all variations of the same basic uniform in DIFFERENT colors: Orange Laser, Magenta Laser, Cyan Laser, etc.

Of course then Geoff Johns had to come along with his darned rainbow idea. :|
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 11, 2014, 03:11:19 AM
As someone with horrid ping times, the Team Transporter made it so much more tolerable for me on task forces, as I could almost keep up with other people.

Pay2Win or not, I did not regret that purchase.

Same.... Such a great item. I certainly appreciated its value.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 11, 2014, 03:24:04 AM
My daughter, my parents and I all made identical quadruplet gravity controllers that way:  Emerald Image they were called.  It was a fun idea, and when people would circle us, freaking out, only one of us would ever speak and say,

"I think you've had one too many drinks at Pocket D!"   ;D  But after a while, three of them got deleted (I kept mine though, and leveled her on various teams to 36 I think).  It was just too bloody confusing.

"Did you just throw down that immob or did I?"  Lol.  It's more disorienting than you think when all four have the same powers and are fighting the same groups of mobs.


That's maximum awsome! I love it!



We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 11, 2014, 03:29:25 AM
As someone with horrid ping times, the Team Transporter made it so much more tolerable for me on task forces, as I could almost keep up with other people.

Pay2Win or not, I did not regret that purchase.
And I contest that things like the Team Transporter are actually "Pay to Win."  My litmus test was "Can what this power does be done without it, even if doing it without the power is slower and/or less efficient?"  And the Team Transporter passes this test.  It's completely possible to run/fly to missions without it, it's just faster to use the Team Transporter to do the same thing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 11, 2014, 03:38:17 AM
I was documenting those arcs on a copy of my main hero turned villain. While I had all of the villain-side badges, I had not acquired all of the villain-side souvenirs. So it's possible there could have been a discrepancy based on that.

No worries, and I'm sorry if I sounded like I was criticizing your efforts. Sent you a PM with the info that I was referring to that I noticed was missing.

I appreciate all the hard work you and everyone does at Paragonwiki, particularly in preserving City of Heroes above and beyond any actual playable game's existence.  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on September 11, 2014, 04:03:59 AM

I do have a question for you, though, Irish_Girl: Are you having to build the power mechanics from scratch, or is there a system for that built into the engine? (I probably could watch a few hours of tutorial videos, but I'm not there, yet.)

Actually, Irish Girl, Downix... Nate made reference to APR getting an instance of the CoT code to build CoH1.5 -- could you folks elaborate on what you're thinking about that? 

As I understood it, CoT was not going to be a direct copy of the power sets, AT's and gameplay of CoH, so what would be involved in modding the CoT game to be CoH 1.5  -- how close are you thinking you could come considering the differences? And would that actually be less work than creating the entire game mechanic from scratch?

Before the reveal, IronWolf made several references to the ability to "easily" port the game to Unreal, which, I seem to recall, caused Codewalker spasms that did shake the foundations of the world -- I know APR is porting the images of the buildings and the textures of the maps, but isn't that kind-of an art project compared to actually building a working model even of Atlas Park?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amrobinson on September 11, 2014, 04:08:14 AM
Senticon: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=9637.0

It requires a lot of fiddly stuff I don't/don't want to understand.

I don't have a Sentinel.jar file, but I do have a SentinelPlus.exe file.

Where can I download a copy of Sentinel.jar again?

Thanks.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 11, 2014, 04:08:18 AM
And I contest that things like the Team Transporter are actually "Pay to Win."  My litmus test was "Can what this power does be done without it, even if doing it without the power is slower and/or less efficient?"  And the Team Transporter passes this test.  It's completely possible to run/fly to missions without it, it's just faster to use the Team Transporter to do the same thing.

I don't think there is any question that a team on which everyone dropped the $10 to get the team transporter can complete the Dr. Q TF significantly faster than a team without it.

That's less time spent waiting around for people to arrive, much faster merit-to-time ratio, much better average XP/inf/drops per minute, and in general having more fun and being able to do other fun things sooner.

That satisfies just about every definition of "winning" I can think of in COH.  It's not intended as a moral judgment, but given its 15 minute recharge compared to the 2 hour recharge of personal mission teleport power, I think a solid case can be made that the transporter was firmly in the "pay to win" category.

(and believe me, I used the hell out of that team transporter)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 11, 2014, 04:11:25 AM
We'll have to agree to disagree, I guess.  If they were selling super-nukes that let me one-shot Hami, then that's Pay To Win.  Purely cosmetic items, or "convenience powers" fall outside of that, in least in my view.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 11, 2014, 04:21:46 AM

Hi! I'm Darryl. and this is my brother Darryl.
On Liberty my sister ran an SG "The Power Of One"

Every member had a variation of "One" or "1" in their name.

Was always fun running down the street to see "Noone saved us!" "Someone is awesome" and "Anyone will save me!"
I knew it!   Give this community an opportunity and just stand back and watch them go to work!  :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 11, 2014, 04:22:09 AM
Green Lantern called. He wants his idea back! You stole it!  :P
Awww!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 11, 2014, 04:22:55 AM
And I contest that things like the Team Transporter are actually "Pay to Win."  My litmus test was "Can what this power does be done without it, even if doing it without the power is slower and/or less efficient?"  And the Team Transporter passes this test.  It's completely possible to run/fly to missions without it, it's just faster to use the Team Transporter to do the same thing.
My litmus test for pay to win mostly used "Does it make it faster and/or easier to defeat enemies and/or complete missions than what can be readily acquired in game?" For me at least i did not count travel time to missions as part of completion speed, so Team Transporter was not p2w in my opinion. Some of the items in the packs pretty much failed the test despite how much i personally enjoyed them.

I don't think there is any question that a team on which everyone dropped the $10 to get the team transporter can complete the Dr. Q TF significantly faster than a team without it.

That's less time spent waiting around for people to arrive, much faster merit-to-time ratio, much better average XP/inf/drops per minute, and in general having more fun and being able to do other fun things sooner.

That satisfies just about every definition of "winning" I can think of in COH.  It's not intended as a moral judgment, but given its 15 minute recharge compared to the 2 hour recharge of personal mission teleport power, I think a solid case can be made that the transporter was firmly in the "pay to win" category.

(and believe me, I used the hell out of that team transporter)
Well it was faster, but i'm not sure it was much faster compared to the difference between a team of fully IOd characters used by experienced players who knew the game and maps well and a minimum level team new to the Shadow shard. Even before Team Transporter was available we could get some really fast Dr. Q runs by using things like Ouro Portals, knowledge of the Shadow Shard's mechanics and map connections to minimize travel between missions, teleport relays, people leaving the mission early to set up teleport relays, etcetera.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 11, 2014, 04:24:36 AM
Glorious chaos, I'm sure.  :)

On a similar note, a friend of mine with an Illusion Controller spent some time working up a cleverly-crafted costume that looked like the phantoms in Phantom Army.  He would throw them out and then "hide in the crowd," so to speak.  Rather surprised me the first time I saw it - I said "Where'd you get a 4th phantom?  And where are you?"
Nice...I did the same thing.   One of the costumes of my avatar actually.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 11, 2014, 04:30:02 AM
Interesting that I just stumbled across this documentary called "I Know that Voice" (2013).   http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2113683/ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2113683/)  It's about voice actors.  Some really well known people are in it.  (The Sponge Bob guy, Simpson's voices, Animaniacs, South Park, and many more...including Mark Hamill)

They eventually get into talking about voice acting for games...so that might be worth checking out for anyone who wants to see the work that goes into it.   They really have a lot of things to record.    It starts about an hour into it.   It's streaming on Netflix.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 11, 2014, 04:31:14 AM
I knew it!   Give this community an opportunity and just stand back and watch them go to work!  :D

I had a stalker called "justablaster". I would yell "Dont mind me, Im just a blaster"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amrobinson on September 11, 2014, 04:33:20 AM
I don't know anything about actually making a game, so that's why I'm wondering about it. Wouldn't it be easier to just build all the content in with new tech from the start? Older missions were created before things like phasing and choices within missions were offered, and have a certain mindset underlying their structure (go here, kill X amount, kill X boss, for example). Plus, contacts that change could actually be built in somehow - if you read the Lore AMAs, they talk about why it was going to be hard for Scirocco to switch sides - all the stuff he was involved in, the missions, everything would have to be changed. Why not build some sort of mission / contact designing thing that allows for more fluid changes to the game from the get go?

I have to say that some of what motivates this is my editing of the Wiki. Because of the way the Wiki formatting is set up, it can't deal all that easily with things like the Statesman and Psyche's deaths in their individual articles. And the pseudo-static nature of MMOs has some similar type of issues. So I think building from the start for a dynamic world, and missions that use cool options, is better than just porting over old school "kill all" style missions.

I would suggest something similar to STO - global handles. There's a certain amount of uniqueness needed in a superhero game, to be sure, but I think it's better to make more people happy.

As far as the Lore AMA stuff, I think it would be worth really getting a more in-depth description of the nature of powers / reality. Even if the storyline (Coming Storm, Battalion, etc.) doesn't happen, there's already TONS of stuff in game built on these sort of grand ideas about the nature of the universe.

Most of the stuff built on it is Incarnate stuff, which I never liked, but it's still there.

That's game mechanics, which is going to be different anyways, probably. I think that the storyline stuff is good to include - the Praetorian arcs do need some resolution. Mechanics, power sets, things like that: take them if they're good, but leave 'em if not. Power sets should be added as much as possible - even if they weren't finished, we can see the design intent behind them, and build from there.

I would bet serious money that somewhere out there, there is a person with saved text from all of the story arcs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: bugzee on September 11, 2014, 04:34:24 AM
I love that this is called the "Irish Girl route". Which is totally accurate lol.

One of my biggest concerns with VO is finding voices that fit Signature Characters... Who sounds good as Statesman? Does Sister Psyche sound cheesy?
One good one could go a long way to changing my mind, if people are that interested.

I have a contact in hollywood who says he can get Steven Wright to do all the voice overs for the APR project. He's a big COH fan and already said he's willing to do it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 11, 2014, 04:39:25 AM
I would bet serious money that somewhere out there, there is a person with saved text from all of the story arcs.

That has to be true, I cannot imagine that the lore bible simply does not exist anymore.


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 11, 2014, 04:48:34 AM
We're almost there!   ;D
You're more optimistic than I am, but I'm ok with your optimism because optimism is what drives accomplishment.   The realists and pessimists will not be "foolish" enough to try things which are a "long shot".    The optimists invent the light bulb and fly to the moon.   So there is definitely a place for them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 11, 2014, 04:53:06 AM
Well spoken, Harpospoke.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 11, 2014, 04:53:14 AM
I have a contact in hollywood who says he can get Steven Wright to do all the voice overs for the APR project. He's a big COH fan and already said he's willing to do it.

I'm trying to imagine who would be the best character for Steven Wright's voice- for some reason, Arbiter Sands comes to mind.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 11, 2014, 04:55:24 AM
That has to be true, I cannot imagine that the lore bible simply does not exist anymore.


We're almost there!   ;D
Only a minimum of two months to go compared to the billions of years that CoH didn't exist. Even if CoH comes back in ten years it'll be less than an eye blink compared to the lifespan of the universe!
We're almost there!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 11, 2014, 04:56:34 AM
Are you saying "Theoretically no" to the "Would it be limited?" question, or the "would it be able to license CCG, novel, etc.?" question? If it's the former, great! I am super excited to see things like CCG expansion, MOBA, comics / novels, etc. If you're saying "no" to the latter question, why would that be the case?

Essentially. But again, any contractual obligations required by NCSoft are far from hammered out, assuming anything new ever happens in the negotiatians.

Additionally, who are you? I'm curious - your sig indicates you're with MWM, and your posts indicate you may have knowledge of the negotiations, but you've never been officially introduced in these threads.

I do a little bit of everything for MWM.  I'm frequently plan B. :)

[edit] Trim better, ya nutter
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 11, 2014, 04:57:39 AM
I had a stalker called "justablaster". I would yell "Dont mind me, Im just a blaster"
It's stuff like that which really makes me want to log in again.  :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 11, 2014, 04:57:51 AM
I'm trying to imagine who would be the best character for Steven Wright's voice- for some reason, Arbiter Sands comes to mind.

This is prolly going to sound really bad...but...who is Steven Wright?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 11, 2014, 04:58:45 AM
I just pictured a SG where every character has the same name.   That would crack me up...the creative potential of this community would take that and run with it, I'm betting.

I'd go with the Le Thuys if pulling that gag....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 11, 2014, 05:05:20 AM
This is prolly going to sound really bad...but...who is Steven Wright?
A guy with Larry's hairstyle from the 3 Stooges with a monotone voice.   Funny stand-up comedian.   Played "the guy on the couch" in Half Baked.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 11, 2014, 05:06:16 AM
I would like too see support for Linux user's in 1.5 and or 2.0. I know this can not happen in the i.23 ver. thanks to all that are making this a possible.

UE4 supports this and at least so far, it hasn't been a problem so long as you are running a setup that is very similar to a SteamOS box.  I keep an image of it up and periodically pull the current build over there to make sure it's still working.  Doesn't do so good on my Fedora rig, on the other hand. Haven't spent much time sorting out why as of yet - it's sort of a bonus target platform rather than a priority right now.

I'm inclined to think, however, anyone who's adamant about their main box being Linux will have minimal trouble coping with a dualboot Steam setup so long as they don't have a philsophical opposition to Steam.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 11, 2014, 05:07:39 AM
This is prolly going to sound really bad...but...who is Steven Wright?

*Gasp!*  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5ErMolRE8M

I was unaware that there were adults who did not know Steven Wright  :o . . .


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 11, 2014, 05:11:01 AM
UE4 supports this and at least so far, it hasn't been a problem so long as you are running a setup that is very similar to a SteamOS box.  I keep an image of it up and periodically pull the current build over there to make sure it's still working.  Doesn't do so good on my Fedora rig, on the other hand. Haven't spent much time sorting out why as of yet - it's sort of a bonus target platform rather than a priority right now.
I'm inclined to think, however, anyone who's adamant about their main box being Linux will have minimal trouble coping with a dualboot Steam setup so long as they don't have a philsophical opposition to Steam.

If CoT runs on it, then Revival should as well. I don't use Linux, nor have the experience with it to test and troubleshoot for it. At some point I'll see about grabbing up someone who does, which I'll be having to do for OSX as well anyways.
Windows -> OSX -> Linux. My OS chain of priorities.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 11, 2014, 05:11:20 AM
Actually, Irish Girl, Downix... Nate made reference to APR getting an instance of the CoT code to build CoH1.5 -- could you folks elaborate on what you're thinking about that? 

As I understood it, CoT was not going to be a direct copy of the power sets, AT's and gameplay of CoH, so what would be involved in modding the CoT game to be CoH 1.5  -- how close are you thinking you could come considering the differences? And would that actually be less work than creating the entire game mechanic from scratch?

The underlying power system in CoT is largely a freeform system that will be used (internally ) to construct the externally exposed powersets.  By that token, the CoH powersets would be similarly constructed and presented.  There will likely have to be some adjustments with probabilities, but that should be the majority of the conversion. We planned ahead.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 11, 2014, 05:14:01 AM
Nice...I did the same thing.   One of the costumes of my avatar actually.

I think a lot of Illusion controllers did this.  I know I did.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 11, 2014, 05:16:13 AM
*Gasp!*  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5ErMolRE8M
I was unaware that there were adults who did not know Steven Wright  :o . . .
We're almost there!   ;D

Prolly one of those "before my time" kind of things. lol

"My birth certificate has an expiration date" lmao.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 11, 2014, 05:17:09 AM
Actually, Irish Girl, Downix... Nate made reference to APR getting an instance of the CoT code to build CoH1.5 -- could you folks elaborate on what you're thinking about that? 
MWM was planning on offering stripped down framework versions of various systems on the Unreal marketplace anyways, to cover a variety of system we need to build which other games may be able to use, like the costume building blueprints. A way to shortcut a lot of development time.

For the rest, Shard did a solid job explaining.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 11, 2014, 05:23:18 AM
There will likely have to be some adjustments with probabilities, but that should be the majority of the conversion. We planned ahead.

The MWM folks are crazy planny. I'm pretty sure they'd already planned that APR would use their codebase before I knew who/what a "Downix" even is.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 11, 2014, 05:41:33 AM
The MWM folks are crazy planny. I'm pretty sure they'd already planned that APR would use their codebase before I knew who/what a "Downix" even is.

I can neither confirm nor deny that was a consideration....<cough>
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 11, 2014, 05:46:27 AM
I can neither confirm nor deny that was a consideration....<cough>

Heh. You guys are almost as crazy as I am.


EDIT: Holy Page 100, Batman!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 11, 2014, 05:57:10 AM
Heh. You guys are almost as crazy as I am.


EDIT: Holy Page 100, Batman!


In my dream "World of Heroes" we would be able to take our toons between alternate dimensions (CoH 1.5 <--> CoT). Is MWM "Planny" enough to make that a real possibility?   8) 



We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 11, 2014, 06:12:59 AM
*Gasp!*  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5ErMolRE8M

I was unaware that there were adults who did not know Steven Wright  :o . . .


We're almost there!   ;D

I've never heard of him either, nor do I recognise him.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 11, 2014, 06:16:12 AM

In my dream "World of Heroes" we would be able to take our toons between alternate dimensions (CoH 1.5 <--> CoT). Is MWM "Planny" enough to make that a real possibility?   8) 



We're almost there!   ;D

They will have different power systems and AT's, so I'd call that pretty unlikely.

Well, unless you want to arrive powerless and probably naked due to different costumes, too...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 11, 2014, 06:26:34 AM
Admittedly it's a dream world, but she did say they were crazy planny! Dropping a bug now might spur alternate plans. . . .  ;)


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on September 11, 2014, 07:33:03 AM
I've never heard of him either, nor do I recognise him.

My all time favorite comedian.  Glad to know he's a CoX fan.

Quote
Cop pulled me over for speeding and asked, "Don't you know the speed limit is 55 miles per hour?"  And I said, "I know, but I wasn't going to be out that long."
  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 11, 2014, 08:28:29 AM
Well, unless you want to arrive powerless and probably naked

Add in drunk and that would make Triumph the nexus of all dimensions.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: sweatcake66 on September 11, 2014, 10:45:10 AM
UE4 supports this and at least so far, it hasn't been a problem so long as you are running a setup that is very similar to a SteamOS box.  I keep an image of it up and periodically pull the current build over there to make sure it's still working.  Doesn't do so good on my Fedora rig, on the other hand. Haven't spent much time sorting out why as of yet - it's sort of a bonus target platform rather than a priority right now.

I'm inclined to think, however, anyone who's adamant about their main box being Linux will have minimal trouble coping with a dualboot Steam setup so long as they don't have a philsophical opposition to Steam.

I dualboot win7 with OpenSuse, I also play around with Unity 3d. With Unity got to select windows, Linux, or Mac when doing the build. But ya that is great news, i have some friends will not even think of placing windows of any ver. on their computers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on September 11, 2014, 12:39:47 PM
My all time favorite comedian.  Glad to know he's a CoX fan.
  :)

Quote
I went to the general store. They wouldn't let me buy anthing specific.
  ;D

I saw him at at a little place called the Comedy Corner in West Palm Beach many, many, many years ago.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 11, 2014, 12:46:48 PM
The underlying power system in CoT is largely a freeform system that will be used (internally ) to construct the externally exposed powersets.  By that token, the CoH powersets would be similarly constructed and presented.  There will likely have to be some adjustments with probabilities, but that should be the majority of the conversion. We planned ahead.

Seriously, hurry up and get CoT done already !!!  8) ;D  :gonk:

I freely admit to not paying much attention at first (other than the Kickstarter), as it did really seem to be a long shot.

The more I hear, and the more I read on the CoT site, is making me think we may actually end up with something that

might be *better* than CoH {Gasp!  Yeah, I went there.} :roll:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: thunderforce on September 11, 2014, 02:06:23 PM
I would suggest something similar to STO - global handles. There's a certain amount of uniqueness needed in a superhero game, to be sure, but I think it's better to make more people happy.

Indeed, although I've no idea how technically feasible it is, STO's "one world, instanced zones, easy zone instance switching" is utterly marvellous and I would be delighted to see it in any post-CoX game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 11, 2014, 02:30:44 PM
However, I have no way to access any CoH animations. The deal would not include any of the original development files, and to my knowledge there is no way to convert the games animation files into a usable format.
I bet not even CODEWALKER could do it.

Nice try...

I really am too busy with other projects to do anything more than point you in the right direction. I'm certainly not going to write conversion tools, especially since a while back I took time out to explain the geo structure (which isn't even the animations, just the geometry) to a few people who approached me about creating a "other model formats -> geo" converter, but none of them came through or got very far with it. At the moment I'm much more interested in creating new geos and animations for the coh engine than extracting them.

However, it seems that reading and writing custom file formats without the help of a library to do it for you is something of a lost art. I blame the .NET and Java culture for this, leading many people to learn programming in a way that leaves them without a practical understanding of how the lower levels they're building on actually work, and dependent on someone else to solve the hard problems in a library for them.

But if you want some pointers for animations... how comfortable are you with bit packing and the math behind quaternions?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 11, 2014, 02:44:04 PM
how comfortable are you with bit packing and the math behind quaternions?

You mean a quaternion isn't just an extra Minion on the Quarterfield TF?  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on September 11, 2014, 04:33:46 PM
Heh. You guys are almost as crazy as I am.


EDIT: Holy Page 100, Batman!

You want crazy?

I played Five Nights at Freddy's before bed.

Easily scarier than Amnesia or Outlast.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 11, 2014, 05:03:17 PM
I hadn't heard of Steven Wright either.

The I.P. is covers everything City of Heroes related. ... The deal would not include any of the original development files

Does anyone know if it includes concept art? The Lora AMA mentions that unreleased concept art (specifically referring to the Battalion in the question) has to stay unreleased due to some sort of contractual thing. I hope it would expire or whatever, allowing it to be used or released.

And I contest that things like the Team Transporter are actually "Pay to Win."  My litmus test was "Can what this power does be done without it, even if doing it without the power is slower and/or less efficient?"  And the Team Transporter passes this test.  It's completely possible to run/fly to missions without it, it's just faster to use the Team Transporter to do the same thing.
That's less time spent waiting around for people to arrive, much faster merit-to-time ratio, much better average XP/inf/drops per minute, and in general having more fun and being able to do other fun things sooner.

That satisfies just about every definition of "winning" I can think of in COH.  It's not intended as a moral judgment, but given its 15 minute recharge compared to the 2 hour recharge of personal mission teleport power, I think a solid case can be made that the transporter was firmly in the "pay to win" category.

I still maintain that "Pay to Win" only applies to PvP. If you're using paid powers to complete things faster, and get more items... well, for me, I don't care. Sure, you're "winning," but you're beating NPCs. Whereas in PvP, the whole conceit of that endeavor is that everyone starts on a level playing field gear wise, and skill / build choices / etc. allow you to defeat other players. If you pay for an item that allows you to easily defeat other people in PvP, that is the literal definition of paying to win.

The only time "Pay to Win" would be an issue in PvE is in the market, but I think it was amply demonstrated that you didn't need great drops or lots of drops to be a marketeer.

I would bet serious money that somewhere out there, there is a person with saved text from all of the story arcs.

My concern with the wiki is not that arcs are missing, it's the fact that the current format for articles doesn't allow as much freedom as I would like for adding dynamic content. If you look at Sister Psyche's page, there is indeed a section about her wedding to Manticore (but nothing about Who Will Die). The issue is that it's sort of... I don't know, almost like a piecemeal way of doing things to just add "and then this happened!" at the bottom of the article for major events like weddings and deaths. There was never any need for contact articles to have a better way of presenting dynamic content, because there was little that changed in game requiring it. So the lack of forethought (poor choice of words as it implies negligence or lack of smarts which it wasn't, but close enough) in wiki formatting led to what is in my opinion a poor way of displaying info that happens to contacts / NPCs after their initial appearance. I just don't want something similar to happen to any successor game, where they don't have a way to make their characters do cool things.

The Rikti are here to destroy the world? Good thing they only landed in Paragon City! ;)

This is why I would want a CoH 2 to expand its scope. We heard about the first Rikti War - over 20 cities hit; we heard about Mot popping up in other places - the entire population of Chicago devoured (!!); The Dawn Patrol - obviously doing their thing over in the UK. A more worldly scope would be pretty sweet.

Are you saying "Theoretically no" to the "Would it be limited?" question, or the "would it be able to license CCG, novel, etc.?" question? If it's the former, great! I am super excited to see things like CCG expansion, MOBA, comics / novels, etc. If you're saying "no" to the latter question, why would that be the case?
Essentially. But again, any contractual obligations required by NCSoft are far from hammered out, assuming anything new ever happens in the negotiatians.

Wait... I asked "Is it option A or option B?" and your answer is "Essentially." :P I think the implication is that you're saying "essentially" to the "licensing would not limited" part, which is good!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nightmarer on September 11, 2014, 05:25:28 PM
using fan made vocal talent, which could be used in either game.

In other words, if you want voice acting, you guys have the power to make it happen.

I have a sexeh accent!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 11, 2014, 05:44:08 PM
I have a sexeh accent!

I just had a premonition of BABs with a South Georgia accent...

Damn you Forest Gump!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 11, 2014, 06:07:16 PM
I still maintain that "Pay to Win" only applies to PvP. If you're using paid powers to complete things faster, and get more items... well, for me, I don't care. Sure, you're "winning," but you're beating NPCs. Whereas in PvP, the whole conceit of that endeavor is that everyone starts on a level playing field gear wise, and skill / build choices / etc. allow you to defeat other players. If you pay for an item that allows you to easily defeat other people in PvP, that is the literal definition of paying to win.

The only time "Pay to Win" would be an issue in PvE is in the market, but I think it was amply demonstrated that you didn't need great drops or lots of drops to be a marketeer.

Totally agreed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 11, 2014, 06:20:20 PM
Heh. You guys are almost as crazy as I am.


Here's 1 thing I was wondering... Do you plan to bring Galaxy City back, or go with how the zone was in i23?

Please please please please please bring Galaxy City back! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 11, 2014, 06:22:53 PM
Here's 1 thing I was wondering... Do you plan to bring Galaxy City back, or go with how the zone was in i23?

Please please please please please bring Galaxy City back! :p
I confess I'd love that as well.  I took it as a point of pride that some of my best characters were "Galaxy Girls," starting off there instead of in Atlas Park.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on September 11, 2014, 06:29:46 PM
<<SNIP>>

how comfortable are you with bit packing and the math behind quaternions?

Is it just me, or does this sound like something from "Buckaroo Banzai"?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 11, 2014, 06:32:22 PM
Yeah I wouldn't want people demanding very specific requirements for team setups or leagues.  I was actually turned off enough as it was with the incarnate trials when the occasional jerk-head demanded everyone be +3 for just about any incarnate trial.

Well, I am never FOR that sort of thing. Learned pretty quick, though, that if you tried to do something like run the Underground Trial and about 2/3 of the league was not AT LEAST +2, when you got to that last War Walker there might be some problems. So I never booted anyone; but I could be known to look through the roster and ask those who had one, if they'd consider switching to a higher level 50 for the good of the league, so to speak.

Some of those upper-level trials had baddies in 'em that could be kinda.... mean for folks who were on toons that hardly had Judgement, even.

MAN I miss Judgement. When you had Judgement, you were a GOD. Especially Dark or Pyronic. Until you met that War Walker, anyways.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Von Krieger on September 11, 2014, 06:51:22 PM
I just realized that I don't recall if there's a repository anywhere of data regarding enemy power effects.

There's City of Data for PC power effects, but there's probably at least as many, if not more, NPC attacks.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 11, 2014, 07:05:06 PM

The only time "Pay to Win" would be an issue in PvE is in the market, but I think it was amply demonstrated that you didn't need great drops or lots of drops to be a marketeer.


I never relied on drops, great or not, or even farming, AE tickets or even flipping salvage (except for mundane stuff to open up wentworth slots) and I had billions. I bought low and sold for what people willing pay for pre-crafted I/O's. No need for luck.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 11, 2014, 07:12:06 PM
I never relied on drops, great or not, or even farming, AE tickets or even flipping salvage (except for mundane stuff to open up wentworth slots) and I had billions. I bought low and sold for what people willing pay for pre-crafted I/O's. No need for luck.
I did all of the above, and more!  :)  I did whatever it took to accumulate INF.  By the end, however, it was pretty easy as the devs started just selling INF directly in the cash shop.  "No they weren't!", you say?  "Sure they were", I reply.  They sold Super Packs.  Spend $100 on those, and dump what you don't need on the market, or use the Reward Merits from them to buy Luck of the Gambler recipes (or whatever else was going for high prices on the market at the time).  It was basically a cash-for-INF marketing scheme, which I took gleeful advantage of.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 11, 2014, 07:12:45 PM
I've read a lot about voice overs on this thread and since I think it unlikely to happen, I'm not fussed.

But I will say this, I'm not particularly impressed with it in any MMO I've played.  Yes, I've played Secret World and even dabbled in Star Wars Old Republic, before I remembered why I'm done with Star Wars, and while it's fine the first time through, it's annoying on second trips. Now if the game is like Secret World where alt-ing is pretty pointless that's fine. But a game like CoH that encourages alt-ing? I'd pass on it.

For me, it's much faster to read the text then to someone read through it again. Essentially the same problem I have with internet video articles when a short block of text would do.

So if it were a democracy, I'd vote NO on VO.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 11, 2014, 07:17:05 PM
I did all of the above, and more!  :)  I did whatever it took to accumulate INF.  By the end, however, it was pretty easy as the devs started just selling INF directly in the cash shop.  "No they weren't!", you say?  "Sure they were", I reply.  They sold Super Packs.  Spend $100 on those, and dump what you don't need on the market, or use the Reward Merits from them to buy Luck of the Gambler recipes (or whatever else was going for high prices on the market at the time).  It was basically a cash-for-INF marketing scheme, which I took gleeful advantage of.

I guess I did the same thing. I used the merits ti outfit characters rather than acquiring it on the market. So I spent far less of the INF i earned. It was just so much easier to get the sets at 35 that way then hoping that someone would have it for sale at a price I wanted to pay.

I did have some level locked toons who did alignment missions to get Alignment merits so they could generate I/O's at specific levels. Of Course my level 35 guy got the most play but I don't really consider that farming.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 11, 2014, 07:21:51 PM
Wait... I asked "Is it option A or option B?" and your answer is "Essentially." :P I think the implication is that you're saying "essentially" to the "licensing would not limited" part, which is good!

Mostly - we don't know. If the IP is sold, there are no limitations save any contractual obligations made in the sale, such as honoring an existing contract to a third (fifth?) party.  But the counter proposal/offer response hasn't happened yet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 11, 2014, 07:25:06 PM
I just realized that I don't recall if there's a repository anywhere of data regarding enemy power effects.

There's City of Data for PC power effects, but there's probably at least as many, if not more, NPC attacks.

All of the NPC powers are in City of Data as well, if you know where to look (http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/summon.php?id=Tyrant_P_Endgame_Tyrant_02).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 11, 2014, 07:36:37 PM
I still maintain that "Pay to Win" only applies to PvP. If you're using paid powers to complete things faster, and get more items... well, for me, I don't care. Sure, you're "winning," but you're beating NPCs. Whereas in PvP, the whole conceit of that endeavor is that everyone starts on a level playing field gear wise, and skill / build choices / etc. allow you to defeat other players. If you pay for an item that allows you to easily defeat other people in PvP, that is the literal definition of paying to win.

The only time "Pay to Win" would be an issue in PvE is in the market, but I think it was amply demonstrated that you didn't need great drops or lots of drops to be a marketeer.

That's a sort of player-centric view of pay to win where the definition of "winning" is mostly congruent with "beating other players."  But I think it fails to capture the sense that City of Heroes was a game, to distinguish it from an open sandbox, say.  Many players took the position that the purpose of the "game" was to give the players whatever they wanted that the dev team could reasonably accomplish: that's why (although I'm not saying you're saying this per se) many players felt that increasing reward rates was something the devs only failed to do out of malice: since its trivial to simply increase those numbers, and takes no real effort on their parts, the only reason for not doing it is to punish or otherwise manipulate players.

But neither Cryptic nor Paragon viewed CoH in that way.  As open as they tried to make the game in many ways, it was still something they considered an actual game with rules and reward systems and content structures that were about delivering a structured playing environment.  Given that, there is a lot of validity to the statement that if the devs placed strong limits on  most players, but allowed some of them to buy their way past those limits, that was a form of pay to win, in that it was a way to pay to break the rules.  Not everyone thought the rules should even have been there in the first place, but that's not really relevant.

I tended to take the more moderate position that something became pay to win not just when it improved performance but did so in a way that significantly exceeded the normal design rules by a higher margin than non-exploitive non-purchased gameplay could accomplish.  So in the case of Codewalker's example of using the store-bought team teleporter on DocQ, I think for me that's a grey area that comes very close to the line.  It does significantly improve the rate at which  you could earn merits, and if you were *fast enough in all respects* you could earn merits significantly faster than most other activities I could think of.  There's definitely a pay to win aspect to that.  But its not so much higher that I think its definitively pay to win, when combined with the fact that the *overall* reward rate for running a highly accelerated DocQ is still not outside the rate the standard game supported with non-exploitive reasonably optimal gameplay.  I think quick-ITFs would, in the long run, meet or exceed fast-Q (not on pure merits, but overall) with less need for perfectly optimized gameplay.  Since quick-ITFs could be run by any reasonably powerful team without the need for any purchased powers or marginally ultrahigh or ultrarare game rewards, that places fast-Q for me on the edge, but not necessarily obviously far over the edge.

Fast-Q is, however, a good illustration of how the eye should be kept on the overall prize - net overall reward earning rate - and not on overly specific gameplay elements (like critter defeat rate or offensive output) when deciding if something boosts players' ability to exceed what the game design intended in ways fundamental to the way the game rewards gameplay.  Gameplay-rewarding game rewards are the way *the game* defines "winning" even if it doesn't call it that.  That's the definition that I think should be the primary one when judging "pay to win."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taliseian on September 11, 2014, 08:01:51 PM
My thoughts on several subjects...

Voice Overs - was nice in SWTOR, the first or second time.  After that, I played sans in-game music and voices.  Not sure if the investment was worth it for SWTOR, or for MMOs in general.

Pay To Win - pretty much guaranteed to insure I'll never pay a dime or even play.  Rift does it well in my opinion,  you can buy vanity stuff and mounts, but you still have to craft or earn the real gear. 

PvP - Don't care for it personally, but I know a lot of people who do.  My opinion is that you never want to have something for PvE to have any connection to PvP either in access or components.  Also, it may be easier to balance if you give some sort of mystical/science reason that powers work differently so that you can do what you need to do to balance power for PvP and not worry about it's effects in PvE.

Galaxy City - I prefered the original GC.  My main leveling path was always Atlas, it was fun to run there every now and then.  However, toward the end it did seems as if the lowbies were split and that made some grouping options more difficult so I could understand why game-wise they made the change.


T
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Takinalis on September 11, 2014, 08:05:40 PM
Is it soup yet? (Will there be soup?)  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Optimus Dex on September 11, 2014, 08:06:45 PM
Here's 1 thing I was wondering... Do you plan to bring Galaxy City back, or go with how the zone was in i23?

Please please please please please bring Galaxy City back! :p



Galaxy City was one of my favorite zones and my favorite starting zone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 11, 2014, 08:14:28 PM


Galaxy City was one of my favorite zones and my favorite starting zone.

Yep I ALWAYS started my heroes in Galaxy City, at least up to the point where I couldn't any longer.

If we get a vote (hmm maybe a bribe would help?), then I'd vote that APR restore Galaxy City to a viable zone.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 11, 2014, 08:19:07 PM


Galaxy City was one of my favorite zones and my favorite starting zone.

It was also the site of the longest running RP social spot on the Union server (the unofficial EU RP server).  When we lost GC, we lost our -home-! :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 11, 2014, 08:22:57 PM
Is it just me, or does this sound like something from "Buckaroo Banzai"?

Its not my planet monkey boy!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 11, 2014, 08:28:10 PM
I've read a lot about VO on this thread and since I think it unlikely to happen, I'm not fussed.

But I will say this, I'm not particularly impressed with it in any MMO I've played.  Yes, I've played Secret World and even dabbled in Star Wars Old Republic, before I remembered why I'm done with Star Wars, and while it's fine the first time through, it's annoying on second trips. Now if the game is like Secret World where alt-ing is pretty pointless that's fine. But a game like CoH that encourages alt-ing? I'd pass on it.

For me, it's much faster to read the text then to someone read through it again. Essentially the same problem I have with internet video articles when a short block of text would do.

So if it were a democracy, I'd vote NO on VO.

Just a tip for future posters--I got about halfway through this post before I realized it wasn't about Valiance Online. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 11, 2014, 08:31:32 PM
Just a tip for future posters--I got about halfway through this post before I realized it wasn't about Valiance Online. :)

Yeah, might be useful to actually use the word voiceover regarding that subject, since we've got letters for the other ones (CoT, CoH, VO, and APR)...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 11, 2014, 08:50:00 PM
Is it soup yet? (Will there be soup?)  :P

No soup for you!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLfmEZYdtrY
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 11, 2014, 08:50:09 PM
Here's 1 thing I was wondering... Do you plan to bring Galaxy City back, or go with how the zone was in i23?

Please please please please please bring Galaxy City back! :p

Unfortunately I think it was stated that NCSoft has an image of the game in issue 23 status so for Galaxy to return would likely have to be in COH 1.5

What was funny was that way before the shutdown I had some old characters parked in tutorial that I never activated.  When I was making some CoH vids before shut down I saw those characters were still in the original tutorial so I was able to film the old and new one.

Also by running the old tutorial I was able to pick Galaxy City to start and it was the original fully functional GC.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on September 11, 2014, 09:03:21 PM
Unfortunately I think it was stated that NCSoft has an image of the game in issue 23 status so for Galaxy to return would likely have to be in COH 1.5

What was funny was that way before the shutdown I had some old characters parked in tutorial that I never activated.  When I was making some CoH vids before shut down I saw those characters were still in the original tutorial so I was able to film the old and new one.

Also by running the old tutorial I was able to pick Galaxy City to start and it was the original fully functional GC.

Least you got Ouroburos.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 11, 2014, 09:20:39 PM
Unfortunately I think it was stated that NCSoft has an image of the game in issue 23 status so for Galaxy to return would likely have to be in COH 1.5

That's why I asked Irish_Girl...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 11, 2014, 09:36:04 PM
Just a tip for future posters--I got about halfway through this post before I realized it wasn't about Valiance Online. :)

Fixed. Sorry about that!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 11, 2014, 10:10:02 PM
I confess I'd love that as well.  I took it as a point of pride that some of my best characters were "Galaxy Girls," starting off there instead of in Atlas Park.

Could be interesting to bring it back as a War Zone sort of area being rebuilt, like Faultline.  Make a whole new slew of storylines trying to take back/rebuild the city.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 11, 2014, 10:14:18 PM
I just realized that I don't recall if there's a repository anywhere of data regarding enemy power effects.

There's City of Data for PC power effects, but there's probably at least as many, if not more, NPC attacks.

I'm very willing to bet Youtube could help with the vast majority of those, unless you're talking mechanics.  If that's the case, I know I've seen a wiki somewhere where it lists every NPCs attacks and effects.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on September 11, 2014, 10:16:39 PM
You're more optimistic than I am, but I'm ok with your optimism because optimism is what drives accomplishment.   The realists and pessimists will not be "foolish" enough to try things which are a "long shot".    The optimists invent the light bulb and fly to the moon.   So there is definitely a place for them.

I like this attitude. This is an awesome attitude.

I spent years upon years being a pessimist, and all it ever got me was depressed. For the past few years though, I've been choosing to be optimistic. And I gotta say... even if it doesn't change the outcome of anything, at least I feel better this way. At a bare minimum, embracing optimism caused a considerable improvement to my mental health. I consider that an accomplishment :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 11, 2014, 10:29:44 PM
It was also the site of the longest running RP social spot on the Union server (the unofficial EU RP server).  When we lost GC, we lost our -home-! :(

I imagine that APR (with the stated aim of duplicating i23 in UE4) will still have it destroyed. However... I'd say there's a good case for urban renewal.

Can you imagine GC being rebuilt as a modern suburban environment? Actual houses, a mall, maybe the odd manor house, too...

And lurking behind all of that good, clean urban bliss, corporate warfare, gang violence, and a corrupt police force.

Just throwin' ideas out there.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 11, 2014, 10:50:06 PM
[old_joke]Well if MWM does get CoT going as a spiritual successor, set me up as a madness mage. [/old_joke] *insert groan here*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 11, 2014, 10:51:46 PM
I imagine that APR (with the stated aim of duplicating i23 in UE4) will still have it destroyed. However... I'd say there's a good case for urban renewal.

Can you imagine GC being rebuilt as a modern suburban environment? Actual houses, a mall, maybe the odd manor house, too...

And lurking behind all of that good, clean urban bliss, corporate warfare, gang violence, and a corrupt police force.

Just throwin' ideas out there.

I feel old, which special task force destroyed Skyway City? Is that being rebuilt, too?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Von Krieger on September 11, 2014, 11:02:47 PM
All of the NPC powers are in City of Data as well, if you know where to look (http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/summon.php?id=Tyrant_P_Endgame_Tyrant_02).

Good to hear. ^_^
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on September 11, 2014, 11:24:55 PM
I feel old, which special task force destroyed Skyway City? Is that being rebuilt, too?
Admiral Sutter TF (http://http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Admiral_Sutter_Task_Force).  It wasn't *destroyed* but it took a considerable amount of damage from the Praetorian strike.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on September 11, 2014, 11:37:29 PM
But if you want some pointers for animations... how comfortable are you with bit packing and the math behind quaternions?

Quaternions make my ears bleed.  They're a means of measuring rotation that uses four elements.  The advantage is you can avoid gimble lock you can get in euler rotation (X,Y,Z).  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrUCBOlJdt4

I've done some scripting in LSL for SecondLife and their rotation system is in quaternions.  When I have to deal with rotations I just do it in euler and convert it when I'm done.  Ugly, but I can usually get the result I want.

I read a tutorial on quaternions once.  I was almost comprehending it and suddenly someone hit the warp drive and I was left in the dust.  At the end of the tutorial was a note saying unless you've taken a course in higher math you have no shot at understanding this.  I wish they had put that note at the front!

Not that I have the smarts/knowledge/desire to take this on.  Just saying I know what that Q word means and it makes my brain hurt.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 11, 2014, 11:47:08 PM
I like this attitude. This is an awesome attitude.

I spent years upon years being a pessimist, and all it ever got me was depressed. For the past few years though, I've been choosing to be optimistic. And I gotta say... even if it doesn't change the outcome of anything, at least I feel better this way. At a bare minimum, embracing optimism caused a considerable improvement to my mental health. I consider that an accomplishment :)
I still struggle with it in some things.   I'm generally optimistic...like I see that everything is getting better over time for humans instead of the common perception that things are always getting worse.   I assume this will continue instead of the normal "doom" most seem to believe in.

But sports...augh...I'm totally pessimistic.   I had to stop watching.   Just one mistake by my favorite teams and I would instantly assume they were doomed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 12, 2014, 12:32:19 AM
I feel old, which special task force destroyed Skyway City? Is that being rebuilt, too?

Admiral Sutter TF (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Admiral_Sutter_Task_Force).  It wasn't *destroyed* but it took a considerable amount of damage from the Praetorian strike.

Fixed that link for ya.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 12, 2014, 12:54:03 AM
I still struggle with it in some things.   I'm generally optimistic...like I see that everything is getting better over time for humans instead of the common perception that things are always getting worse.   I assume this will continue instead of the normal "doom" most seem to believe in.


I guess someone never worked at Sprint... DOOOOOOOOOOOOM.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 12, 2014, 02:04:18 AM
I guess someone never worked at Sprint... DOOOOOOOOOOOOM.

Could be worse, you can work for Comcast
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 12, 2014, 02:16:48 AM
Could be worse, you can work for Comcast

Even worse, Funcoland/Gamestop
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tyger42 on September 12, 2014, 02:40:25 AM
Quaternions make my ears bleed.

Their voices are kinda annoying. But they're cute under those masks....oh, wait, that's Quarians.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fable on September 12, 2014, 02:45:13 AM
Even worse, Funcoland/Gamestop

Haha, Funcoland, now that's a name I haven't heard since I was a kid.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AnElfCalledMack on September 12, 2014, 02:55:20 AM
Their voices are kinda annoying. But they're cute under those masks....oh, wait, that's Quarians.
Tali's voice is the cutest thing about Mass Effect and I will hear nothing to the contrary. Unless it's about Legion or EDI. (grumbles about unnecessary gender restrictions on romance plots)

But yeah. Quaternions. I've had to use them all of twice, but oh god the multiplication rules. They look like complex numbers, only one step more. I always found it easier to just do them as matrices if it absolutely had to be quaternions, because matrix multiplication makes a certain kind of sense.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 12, 2014, 02:59:42 AM
Yep I ALWAYS started my heroes in Galaxy City, at least up to the point where I couldn't any longer.
If we get a vote (hmm maybe a bribe would help?), then I'd vote that APR restore Galaxy City to a viable zone.

Psh! I can not be bribed! ...Unless it's something from a whole list of things which could totally be used to bribe me. -cough-

I will say that I do have plans in regards to Galaxy City. I won't say what quite yet, but I think you guys will like it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Paragon Avenger on September 12, 2014, 03:12:16 AM
Duh, it's Atlas Park Revival not Galaxy City revival.
Wow, a separate game for each zone.

So not a good idea.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Von Krieger on September 12, 2014, 03:18:13 AM
Galaxy City is remade as a theme park celebrating the life, times, and exploits of the man,. the myth, the legend, Dillo.

Hoorb.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on September 12, 2014, 03:19:18 AM
Galaxy City is remade as a theme park celebrating the life, times, and exploits of the man,. the myth, the legend, Dillo.

Hoorb.
Amazing air sounds.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Paragon Avenger on September 12, 2014, 03:30:38 AM
They could combine Galaxy City with Dark Astoria.
Make it either Dark City or Astoria Galaxy.
Or Dark Galaxy.

Our Hero, Super Flying Wolf scans Dark Galaxy for signs of mischief.
"Help me!"  A cry is heard.  SFW soars to the aid of the distressed.
"What seems to be the problem, ma'am?" SFW asks.
"I thought I saw a naked flying wolf." The Distressed Citizen said.
"Hey, you try getting overalls over wings lady." SFW asserted.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 12, 2014, 03:31:11 AM
I will say that I do have plans in regards to Galaxy City. I won't say what quite yet, but I think you guys will like it.

You're totally going to rename it Meteor City, aren't you?

"Come visit the wonders of Shivatown!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 12, 2014, 03:42:08 AM
They could combine Galaxy City with Dark Astoria.
Make it either Dark City or Astoria Galaxy.
Or Dark Galaxy.

Dark Galaxy sounds like a Silent Hill-esque kind of zone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 12, 2014, 03:46:48 AM
Dark Galaxy sounds like a Silent Hill-esque kind of zone.
That was the old Dark Astoria - truthfully I loved it a lot more than the new version, though I did love the new Lovecraftian storyline that came with the new zone.  I loved to just fly around the old Dark Astoria, flying blind through the dense fog, with undead everywhere and possibly Adamastor lurking about.

Moth Cemetery was delightfully spooky...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 12, 2014, 03:57:00 AM
You're totally going to rename it Meteor City, aren't you?

"Come visit the wonders of Shivatown!"

nope, it will be an amusement park for villains, Tragic Kingdom
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on September 12, 2014, 04:11:10 AM
The underlying power system in CoT is largely a freeform system that will be used (internally ) to construct the externally exposed powersets.  By that token, the CoH powersets would be similarly constructed and presented.  There will likely have to be some adjustments with probabilities, but that should be the majority of the conversion. We planned ahead.

Thanks, to Shard, Downix and IG for your responses -- it sounds awesome.

how comfortable are you with bit packing and the math behind quaternions?

Man, Quternions would have made a great name for the mysterious team before Nate's announce.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 12, 2014, 04:14:44 AM
That was the old Dark Astoria - truthfully I loved it a lot more than the new version, though I did love the new Lovecraftian storyline that came with the new zone. 

Overall, I prefer "new" DA, because there is actually content there now, as opposed to endless tracts of barely populated (by BP) space, but I do wish they'd have found a way to keep the fog in it. Probably not quite as dense, but some degree of it.

That and the occasional NPC "ghosts" that you'd see wandering in the fog.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 12, 2014, 04:24:49 AM
Overall, I prefer "new" DA, because there is actually content there now, as opposed to endless tracts of barely populated (by BP) space, but I do wish they'd have found a way to keep the fog in it. Probably not quite as dense, but some degree of it.

That and the occasional NPC "ghosts" that you'd see wandering in the fog.
Yes, the new zone is an exotic, overt horror show of eldritch abominations openly walking the streets, but what you can't see is always scarier.  The old DA had that feeling in spades.  Even disregarding the Banished Pantheon zombies wandering everywhere, you could never shake the feeling that some unknown horror was lurking around the corner, or just ahead of you, concealed by the fog...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 12, 2014, 04:42:32 AM
Agreed. I can't recall for certain, but I want to say the sound/music ambience was different in Old DA, too- quieter, eerier. Was there a lot more "noise" in the new DA, or am I just misremembering and it was the same?

I recall the Devs talking about why they got rid of the fog in one of the new DA previews on the website, but I always wondered if they really thought twice about it. Limited experience with mapping and textures and things; is it a big deal to render fog in an MMO?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on September 12, 2014, 04:42:35 AM
We could do this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFREs4GaJVU

Replace the word "Slab" with "Game" and it's a slam dunk!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 12, 2014, 04:43:46 AM
Nice try...
I really am too busy with other projects to do anything more than point you in the right direction. I'm certainly not going to write conversion tools, especially since a while back I took time out to explain the geo structure (which isn't even the animations, just the geometry) to a few people who approached me about creating a "other model formats -> geo" converter, but none of them came through or got very far with it. At the moment I'm much more interested in creating new geos and animations for the coh engine than extracting them.
However, it seems that reading and writing custom file formats without the help of a library to do it for you is something of a lost art. I blame the .NET and Java culture for this, leading many people to learn programming in a way that leaves them without a practical understanding of how the lower levels they're building on actually work, and dependent on someone else to solve the hard problems in a library for them.
But if you want some pointers for animations... how comfortable are you with bit packing and the math behind quaternions?

Hey, I'd like to think that was a *GREAT* try! :D
I've never pretended to be any sort of programmer. At all. I'm SO not.
So...It might be less surprising when I say that I have NO idea what quaternions are, or what bit packing is. :\

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on September 12, 2014, 04:50:08 AM
Hey, I'd like to think that was a *GREAT* try! :D
I've never pretended to be any sort of programmer. At all. I'm SO not.
So...It might be less surprising when I say that I have NO idea what quaternions are, or what bit packing is. :\

Its a method of expressing rotation.  See my earlier post on quaternions.  Ornot.  You'd probably be happier not knowing.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 12, 2014, 04:54:29 AM
Thanks, to Shard, Downix and IG for your responses -- it sounds awesome.
Man, Quternions would have made a great name for the mysterious team before Nate's announce.

Why is my name the one in bold? Nate's name should prolly be the one in bold. lol
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 12, 2014, 04:55:37 AM
Does UE4 support random events such as weather changes? I would love to finally see it rain every now and then, or snow!


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 12, 2014, 05:12:52 AM
Does UE4 support random events such as weather changes? I would love to finally see it rain every now and then, or snow!


We're almost there!   ;D

Just one more level of immersion, Remaugen!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 12, 2014, 05:18:24 AM
Haha, Funcoland, now that's a name I haven't heard since I was a kid.

Yes, may Funcoland/Gamestop one day go the way of Blockbuster Video....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Von Krieger on September 12, 2014, 05:32:27 AM
Hey, I'd like to think that was a *GREAT* try! :D
I've never pretended to be any sort of programmer. At all. I'm SO not.
So...It might be less surprising when I say that I have NO idea what quaternions are, or what bit packing is. :\

My inner MST3k demon wants me to say that bit packing is a slang term for when two robots "interface," if you know what I mean.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 12, 2014, 05:37:48 AM
Just one more level of immersion, Remaugen!


Yes!

We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 12, 2014, 05:47:31 AM
My inner MST3k demon wants me to say that bit packing is a slang term for when two robots "interface," if you know what I mean.

Oh dear...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 12, 2014, 06:18:47 AM
Yes, may Funcoland/Gamestop one day go the way of Blockbuster Video....

I see your Blockbuster and raise you a Circuit City
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 12, 2014, 06:50:45 AM
Yes, the new zone is an exotic, overt horror show of eldritch abominations openly walking the streets, but what you can't see is always scarier.  The old DA had that feeling in spades.  Even disregarding the Banished Pantheon zombies wandering everywhere, you could never shake the feeling that some unknown horror was lurking around the corner, or just ahead of you, concealed by the fog...
Very well said.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on September 12, 2014, 07:58:55 AM
Galaxy City is remade as a theme park celebrating the life, times, and exploits of the man,. the myth, the legend, Dillo.

Hoorb.

Now that's who we need to get for recording voiceovers. Dillo.

Ooh, and Flambeaux. I can just imagine the glorious wackiness that would ensue with that pair narrating everything ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mooties on September 12, 2014, 08:19:32 AM
Now that's who we need to get for recording voiceovers. Dillo.

Ooh, and Flambeaux. I can just imagine the glorious wackiness that would ensue with that pair narrating everything ;D
I bet War Witch and Ghost Widow, or maybe even just a Carny, would make for interesting narrating.
It would be interesting to see some things narrated from their point of view!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 12, 2014, 09:08:44 AM
Quaternions make my ears bleed.  They're a means of measuring rotation that uses four elements.  The advantage is you can avoid gimble lock you can get in euler rotation (X,Y,Z).  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrUCBOlJdt4

I've done some scripting in LSL for SecondLife and their rotation system is in quaternions.  When I have to deal with rotations I just do it in euler and convert it when I'm done.  Ugly, but I can usually get the result I want.

I read a tutorial on quaternions once.  I was almost comprehending it and suddenly someone hit the warp drive and I was left in the dust.  At the end of the tutorial was a note saying unless you've taken a course in higher math you have no shot at understanding this.  I wish they had put that note at the front!

Not that I have the smarts/knowledge/desire to take this on.  Just saying I know what that Q word means and it makes my brain hurt.

There are two "intuitive" perspectives on quaternions: a "computational" one that, if you're a math geek, will highlight how the quaternion computations are synonymous with algebraic transformational math, and a "geometric" one that will highlight what quaternion computations actually do.  The former presumes significant knowledge in higher math, particularly linear algebra (i.e. matrix math).  The latter doesn't require that.  In fact, there's actually a kid-friendly way to explain quaternions, which I'll get to in three paragraphs.

What quaternions "do" is take the following perspective on rotational transformations.  Imagine an object with a head and a tail and imagine rotating that object about all three axis but in such a way that the tail of the object is still at the origin.  Even though you applied three different rotations (about x, y, and z) in fact the combination of those three rotations could be summarized by looking at where the head of the object ended up.  Imagine drawing a line from the origin - where the tail is - to the head.  That vector represents one part of the net rotation, describing the final direction the object is pointing.  If you then rotate the object around that vector, like holding the tail and the head in each hand and then spinning the object, you can get to whatever orientation the object is in.  In other words, one vector (direction) and one additional number (rotation) can describe any net amount of rotation.  That's basically what quaternion representation does**. 

To add two rotations, in geometric terms what you're doing is thinking about those rotations as "point, then spin."  Do that twice, once for each rotation, and you end up with the net total rotation.  The math to combine two quaternions is multiplication, not addition, but that's the basic principle.

One interesting thing about quaternions is that if you think about the perspective they encapsulate - point, and spin - there is only one unambiguous way to represent any set of 3D rotations.  With Euler rotations about x, y, and z, there are generally multiple ways to specify the orientation of an object, because there are multiple ways to rotate an object about all three axis in a way that ends up in a certain orientation.  And the reason it doesn't suffer the gimbal lock problem is obviously because this perspective only dictates two "rotations," an orientation direction and then rotation about that direction.  Neither one alters gimbal axis.

And now the kid-friendly version.  Basically, a quaternion is: point in any direction with your open hand, and then bank your fingers left or right.  All rotations can be described by math that basically does that: point and bank.  Multiplying quaternions works to add rotations because of the fact that "coincidentally" (not a coincidence, but you can think of it as such if you're not a math major) the math to multiply complex numbers just happens to be identical in formulas to the trig formulas to convert rotations into complex numbers.  And quaternion math works better than Euler rotations for the simple reason that Euler rotations don't offer a unique way to represent a rotation in space.  Quaternions do (there's only one way to point in a direction and then bank your fingers: no other point and bank ends up in the same orientation).  That makes the math more efficient, eliminates gimbal lock, and solves lots of other problems involving rotational interpolation (what does it mean to go "halfway" from zero to a final rotation is easy: swing your arm half-way to the final pointing direction, and bank your fingers half-way, and you're done: every kid knows how to do this when they pretend their hand is an airplane and they fly it around the kitchen).

Anyway, that's how I remember quaternion math.  Although I learned it via linear algebra, and had to come up with the flying-hand version myself a couple years later.


** Technically, quaternion representation uses a unit vector (whose length is one unit) and an additional number that is the length of the vector, to represent the rotation about the axis.  So you can think of it as a pointing direction and a rotation about that axis, or you can also think of it as a four-dimensional vector whose magnitude is equal to the magnitude of rotation.  The former is a little easier to visualize than the latter, although the latter is better to think about when you get down to the whats and whys of quaternion arithmetic - the mathy part.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 12, 2014, 09:57:18 AM
Alright, I'm digging through the Issue 24 change log.
There certainly were quite a number of changes... But, So far...Everything looks good.
So. I *think* I'm going to go ahead and say it...

Revival will feature Issue 24.


Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 12, 2014, 09:59:58 AM
Stuff. Also, Things.

Ah, Yes. Arcana and Codewalker... the only two people on this forum who can frequently make my head hurt.
Scary smart.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 12, 2014, 10:13:11 AM
http://youtu.be/evlrs5Bi_6E
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 12, 2014, 10:21:49 AM
http://youtu.be/evlrs5Bi_6E


O _ O

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 12, 2014, 10:23:54 AM
Ah, Yes. Arcana and Codewalker... the only two people on this forum who can frequently make my head hurt.

So... the matrix math one would probably be overkill then.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dr. Bad Guy on September 12, 2014, 11:12:15 AM
I see your Blockbuster and raise you a Circuit City

See your CC and raise you a Crazy Eddie.  His prices are INSANE!!!

http://youtu.be/F8_-vG4sdJs
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on September 12, 2014, 11:23:35 AM
See your CC and raise you a Crazy Eddie.  His prices are INSANE!!!

http://youtu.be/F8_-vG4sdJs
I bought a lot of my first NES games from them.  I distinctly remember buying Metroid, DK and DK Jr. from them, and they usually had a NES and SMS set up to play games on.  (It's where I played the SMS version of Ghostbusters)

Um... this relates, really.  Because it was video games, and City of Heroes is a video game.  And I like City of Heroes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 12, 2014, 11:45:27 AM
I see your Blockbuster and raise you a Circuit City

Also CompUsa and Computer City
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cobra Man on September 12, 2014, 12:16:49 PM
Alright, I'm digging through the Issue 24 change log.
There certainly were quite a number of changes... But, So far...Everything looks good.
So. I *think* I'm going to go ahead and say it...

Revival will feature Issue 24.

Makes sense.

i24 looks to be a real improvement right across the board.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on September 12, 2014, 12:38:43 PM
Has anyone else noticed that the cityofheroes.com "Sunset pag

There are already FB speculations about it.

Might this be a positive sign for the ongoing Hail Mary negotiations, or just a webpage corruption for cityofheroes.com?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 12, 2014, 12:42:10 PM
Makes sense.
i24 looks to be a real improvement right across the board.

I just didn't want to agree to jumping on board something I didn't know the details on.
It will be easiest to just incorporate most of these changes from the get go, instead of having to make them with the next issue. So, that's what I'm going to do.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 12, 2014, 12:45:44 PM
Has anyone else noticed that the cityofheroes.com "Sunset pag

There are already FB speculations about it.

Might this be a positive sign for the ongoing Hail Mary negotiations, or just a webpage corruption for cityofheroes.com?

I can't get there from here (firewall/dns blocker in effect), and your comment looks to be only partial there.

But if you mean that something has happened to the sunset page over at coh.com, I'd expect that's either
purely coincidence or else maybe NCSoft is cleaning up their old stuff.

It would be HIGHLY unlikely that they would put out any kind of "teaser" actions in regards to open negotiations,
and certainly not in such an obscure manner.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 12, 2014, 12:58:08 PM
It appears CityofHeroes.com won't resolve.
I'm guessing it's just technical issues, webserver down or something.
-shrugs-
If the deal's gone through, I haven't heard about it. And there's no reason for them to take the website down in anticipation. If they turn CityofHeroes.com over...people would just notice it going to a new website on the day of the announcement, or a few days after more likely.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ObsidianPhoenix76 on September 12, 2014, 01:08:48 PM
http://youtu.be/evlrs5Bi_6E

Oooof.  I feel like that after a day of tech support.....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fridgy Daiere on September 12, 2014, 01:14:57 PM
Cityofheroes.com won't resolve; coh.com redirects to NCSoft's homepage instead of bringing up the sunset notice like it did before...

Edit: They both still appear to be registered to NCSoft.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on September 12, 2014, 01:26:37 PM
Makes sense.

i24 looks to be a real improvement right across the board.
Players were calling it "Fix Everything (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Issue_24)", and almost universally looking forward to it.

That makes it all the more sad that the game was cut down before it could be released.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 12, 2014, 01:34:13 PM
Cityofheroes.com won't resolve; coh.com redirects to NCSoft's homepage instead of bringing up the sunset notice like it did before...

Edit: They both still appear to be registered to NCSoft.

I just tried both with the same results.  I seriously doubt it has much to do with Nate's offer either, though. 

After all, even Nate said in his initial post in this thread that NCSoft may only be listening politely for now only to say afterward that no suitable buyer was found.  I admire the team that approached them, but it wouldn't surprise me if they wound up having wasted their time in the end.  If NCSoft wanted to sell, their best opportunity came and went two years ago and involved pro studio and creators of CoX, Paragon Studios of course. 

I have the feeling Big Brother wanted not only his hands in the pie but also both feet and his face too, and Paragon wanted out from under the Big Money Drain and constant threats of closure.  That's only my conjecture, though, having played many of NCSoft's MMOs in the past and seen many if not most of them suffer similar shutdowns (not to mention experiencing the couple still limping along that they run themselves, oy).

Let's just hope that the team who put an initial offer onto the table this past July can correctly ascertain if NCSoft's demands are going to be too unreasonable.  Sparkly rose-colored glasses are fine for backseat drivers, but not for those who are going to be saddled with heavy debts, all the trappings of running a business and 24/7 maintenance responsibilities.  The only ones who had true records of the amount of paying customers (and what that figure was) would be Paragon Studios.  NCSoft isn't going to give out that information (I highly doubt it anyway), and besides, it's been two years:  What percentage of those former paying customers will even be back, especially without account info and characters waiting anymore?  Again, the best opportunity was with Paragon Studios, when all of that was still intact and the game could be modified and added to besides, and by people who created that code and knew it inside out.  It's too bad NCSoft blew it then.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dal on September 12, 2014, 02:23:36 PM

But if you mean that something has happened to the sunset page over at coh.com, I'd expect that's either
purely coincidence or else maybe NCSoft is cleaning up their old stuff.

Yep, it's been two years, whatever purpose the sunset page had is long gone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 12, 2014, 02:26:07 PM
Alright, I'm digging through the Issue 24 change log.
There certainly were quite a number of changes... But, So far...Everything looks good.
So. I *think* I'm going to go ahead and say it...

Revival will feature Issue 24.
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=t.wallpaperweb.org%2Fwallpaper%2Fmiscellaneous%2F1600x1200%2FPop_the_Top_and_Celebrate.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fable on September 12, 2014, 02:29:27 PM
I just tried both with the same results.  I seriously doubt it has much to do with Nate's offer either, though. 

After all, even Nate said in his initial post in this thread that NCSoft may only be listening politely for now only to say afterward that no suitable buyer was found.  I admire the team that approached them, but it wouldn't surprise me if they wound up having wasted their time in the end.  If NCSoft wanted to sell, their best opportunity came and went two years ago and involved pro studio and creators of CoX, Paragon Studios of course. 

I have the feeling Big Brother wanted not only his hands in the pie but also both feet and his face too, and Paragon wanted out from under the Big Money Drain and constant threats of closure.  That's only my conjecture, though, having played many of NCSoft's MMOs in the past and seen many if not most of them suffer similar shutdowns (not to mention experiencing the couple still limping along that they run themselves, oy).

Let's just hope that the team who put an initial offer onto the table this past July can correctly ascertain if NCSoft's demands are going to be too unreasonable.  Sparkly rose-colored glasses are fine for backseat drivers, but not for those who are going to be saddled with heavy debts, all the trappings of running a business and 24/7 maintenance responsibilities.  The only ones who had true records of the amount of paying customers (and what that figure was) would be Paragon Studios.  NCSoft isn't going to give out that information (I highly doubt it anyway), and besides, it's been two years:  What percentage of those former paying customers will even be back, especially without account info and characters waiting anymore?  Again, the best opportunity was with Paragon Studios, when all of that was still intact and the game could be modified and added to besides, and by people who created that code and knew it inside out.  It's too bad NCSoft blew it then.

What's up Buzz Killington. Way to bring the voice of reason into the discussion...

But like I said in the other thread. What are their options? They could never put out another CoH game and expect people to hop on board. Are they just going to sit on the IP for ther rest of time? They'll sell, some money's better than no money. The IP is, in my opinion, useless to them. 

Edit: for this. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f68VXKMZT1Q
 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ortophonic on September 12, 2014, 02:52:00 PM
I don't even know what's going on as of late, but it sounds exciting therefor I am excited... YAAAYYY!!!

Now time to dig back a few pages to see what started this hubbub.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: K26dp on September 12, 2014, 03:11:17 PM
Alright, I'm digging through the Issue 24 change log.
There certainly were quite a number of changes... But, So far...Everything looks good.
So. I *think* I'm going to go ahead and say it...

Revival will feature Issue 24.

You are going the work of deities. Thank you.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: K26dp on September 12, 2014, 03:16:13 PM
I recall the Devs talking about why they got rid of the fog in one of the new DA previews on the website, but I always wondered if they really thought twice about it. Limited experience with mapping and textures and things; is it a big deal to render fog in an MMO?

I'm pretty sure it was simply "we made all these new art assets, it would be nice if players could actually see them".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 12, 2014, 03:17:03 PM
My inner MST3k demon wants me to say that bit packing is a slang term for when two robots "interface," if you know what I mean.

No, I don't know what you mean.

Please provide intimate details including drawings, diagrams, powerpoint, photos, focus group discussion, noir video, claymation and most importantly interpretive dance.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fridgy Daiere on September 12, 2014, 03:31:15 PM
I just spent 3 hours paying bills and balancing the checkbook; I needed a good belly laugh, thanks!  Although it was a good thing I had already finished my coffee...

No, I don't know what you mean.

Please provide intimate details including drawings, diagrams, powerpoint, photos, focus group discussion, noir video, claymation and most importantly interpretive dance.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Excidia on September 12, 2014, 04:03:13 PM
claymation:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtvKo2m2BpY

interpretive dance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poHHDC5XSno

I figure those are the most important two, I'll let someone else take care of the rest.

excidia
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on September 12, 2014, 04:13:32 PM
Alright, I'm digging through the Issue 24 change log.
There certainly were quite a number of changes... But, So far...Everything looks good.
So. I *think* I'm going to go ahead and say it...

Revival will feature Issue 24.
(https://i.imgur.com/g9044aZ.gif)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 12, 2014, 04:14:48 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/g9044aZ.gif)

LOL
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 12, 2014, 05:01:40 PM
So... the matrix math one would probably be overkill then.

It's only OVERkill when there isn't enough left of the bodies to loot.
Everything else is an appropriate level of kill.

With a special case when there is no loot to begin with, at which point OVERkill is when the planet's rotation is affected by the damage.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 12, 2014, 05:15:05 PM
That's a sort of player-centric view of pay to win where the definition of "winning" is mostly congruent with "beating other players."
...
Gameplay-rewarding game rewards are the way *the game* defines "winning" even if it doesn't call it that.  That's the definition that I think should be the primary one when judging "pay to win."

It is a player-centric view. I am of the opinion that people who consider getting game rewards faster through paid items "pay to win" are jealous (I am guilty of such jealousy myself). I mean, so what if someone gets more merits than you? I know very very well that it's hard to see people who have more play time than you get more stuff, and just as hard to see people with less play time get more stuff because they paid for it. I know this because I've had thoughts that it "wasn't fair" that a casual player like me, playing a few hours a week, was gated from content either because of time or money. Yes, if you define "winning" as "in-game rewards" than someone with money and time will be able to "win" more and "win" faster. I hadn't thought of it in exactly those terms, but that is a good way of putting it. Still, it's better for me to zen out and be cool about people "winning", because what do they get? Digital items? I can still play the game, even if it's only a few hours a week. Yes, I'm jealous of those who can afford the time or money to get sweet in-game items, but it's not worth it for me to sacrifice time or money to get game items.

I guess the thing for me is the fact that there's no way to "beat" an MMO with that definition - they're specifically designed so that people come back to play them again and again. Yes, you can go through all the stories and reach max level, get all the achievements, but there's still recurring events to play, items to get, money to accrue... I guess the thing is that if achieving MMO items or rewards counts as "winning", there isn't much of anything to "win". Even if you do get all the things and all the money, there's still RP or PvP, or just hanging out to do.

Furthermore, many people do judge their item gathering against others - so even if you're "winning" against the game's rewards system, you can still be competing and trying to "win" against other players.



I'm about to go to a meeting for work, so this post was a bit ill-thought out, sorry if it's rambling or illogical.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nitekilla on September 12, 2014, 05:18:16 PM
I have a question for Irish_Girl regarding APR work.  Is all this work you are doing at risk?  If NCSoft does not sell the IP rights then you can't use any of the creations you have been working on all this time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 12, 2014, 05:23:12 PM
Yes, the new zone is an exotic, overt horror show of eldritch abominations openly walking the streets, but what you can't see is always scarier.  The old DA had that feeling in spades.  Even disregarding the Banished Pantheon zombies wandering everywhere, you could never shake the feeling that some unknown horror was lurking around the corner, or just ahead of you, concealed by the fog...

And I love the way that you saw civilians, the same way you did in other zones, but they faded away as you approached like the ghosts they were. So creepy, seeing crowds all around you but knowing you were alone...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 12, 2014, 05:26:27 PM
Alright, I'm digging through the Issue 24 change log.
There certainly were quite a number of changes... But, So far...Everything looks good.
So. I *think* I'm going to go ahead and say it...

Revival will feature Issue 24.


Woot!   ;D
There was a lot of good stuff happening in I24.


It appears CityofHeroes.com won't resolve.


I noticed that too, I have been checking every other day or so. Of course it means nothing, but it continues to fuel my optimism!


We're almost there!   ;D

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 12, 2014, 05:32:52 PM
Alright, I'm digging through the Issue 24 change log.
There certainly were quite a number of changes... But, So far...Everything looks good.
So. I *think* I'm going to go ahead and say it...

Revival will feature Issue 24.
Wonderful!  As you may have discerned, I'm very passionate about CoH lore.  :)

And i24 was the final chapter of a 2 year, 7 issues long epic saga with Praetoria.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Napalmrain on September 12, 2014, 05:52:47 PM

I noticed that too, I have been checking every other day or so. Of course it means nothing, but it continues to fuel my optimism!


I think it does mean something has happened. That page was up for a long time, and all of a sudden when the deal is close to happening it goes down? I think the deal is done and they no longer have the rights to display that page. And the new owners are getting ready for a new page reveal incoming soon.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sophronisba on September 12, 2014, 06:14:30 PM
Eh, I'm a little skeptical of that reasoning. If the domain didn't still belong to NCSoft, then it wouldn't be redirecting to their home page.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 12, 2014, 06:18:49 PM
I think it does mean something has happened. That page was up for a long time, and all of a sudden when the deal is close to happening it goes down? I think the deal is done and they no longer have the rights to display that page. And the new owners are getting ready for a new page reveal incoming soon.
From your lips to the ears of the gods of gaming...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ortophonic on September 12, 2014, 06:21:38 PM
I think it does mean something has happened. That page was up for a long time, and all of a sudden when the deal is close to happening it goes down? I think the deal is done and they no longer have the rights to display that page. And the new owners are getting ready for a new page reveal incoming soon.

I'm really hoping this.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hobgoblin Steve on September 12, 2014, 06:23:49 PM
Eh, I'm a little skeptical of that reasoning. If the domain didn't still belong to NCSoft, then it wouldn't be redirecting to their home page.

I don't buy it either, however to answer your question;

its possible they redirect it for purposes of branding rights. That is, a deal happened (again, I don't think so, but just to play the advocate here) and part of it is that any likeness or branding is now rights of X..etc..

So, you go to the webpage, and it redirects due to not being able to lead to the assumption that NCSOFT owns those images/game/whathaveyou.

:shrugs: my quick analysis of the situation
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 12, 2014, 06:29:13 PM
It is a player-centric view. I am of the opinion that people who consider getting game rewards faster through paid items "pay to win" are jealous (I am guilty of such jealousy myself). I mean, so what if someone gets more merits than you?

The reason why I say the standard should be what the game design reflects is that in the end, whether any one player thinks something is reasonable or not, they have to face the truth that whatever the devs think will ultimately alter the game around them.

You can care whether other players earn more rewards than you or you can not care.  But MMO devs care, and ours specifically cared, and those facts will ultimately cause your gameplay experience to change.  If enough people quickQ, the average datamined runtime for Q would drop and its base merit value would drop.  If the average leveling rate dramatically increased the devs would have adjusted the difficulty higher or the rewards lower - they did it twice before (in both cases *increasing* reward rates to improve leveling speed because it was lower than their target).

Pay to win doesn't just matter in terms of player psychology, although MMO devs are also often concerned about that.  Its also because it can become the new norm, and that has a direct impact on *everyone's* game play.

For most MMOs, its also true that you can accuse players of being jealous, but if it makes them less likely to continue to subscribe and play the game it doesn't matter if that feeling is valid or not.  MMOs are not about teaching gaming morality, they are about convincing people to spend their valuable time and money on them because their entertainment value is deemed worthy.  Its a careful dynamic balance delivering that value in an MMO where everyone's needs are different but in subtle and not so subtle ways everyone will be comparing what they get against what they perceive as everyone else getting.  And fairness, as abstract and ill-defined as it is, is critical to keeping players around.  A perception of unfairness is one of the most destructive forces in any multiplayer environment.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 12, 2014, 06:32:29 PM
I think it does mean something has happened. That page was up for a long time, and all of a sudden when the deal is close to happening it goes down? I think the deal is done and they no longer have the rights to display that page. And the new owners are getting ready for a new page reveal incoming soon.

That seems unlikely to me.  Some of the authoritative DNS servers no longer resolve the name.  Some still do.  Some resolve www. and others only .cityofheroes.com.  The server itself seems to be completely down.  That sounds more like a mistake or improper housekeeping than a deliberate attempt to do something structured.

If NCSoft was going to sell the CityofHeroes domain name along with the IP, they would have transferred ownership of the domain registration to the buying party, and let the buying party make changes as *they* were ready for them.  What I'm seeing now is too haphazard for me to believe its deliberately part of an acquisition.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on September 12, 2014, 06:39:56 PM
I think it does mean something has happened. That page was up for a long time, and all of a sudden when the deal is close to happening it goes down? I think the deal is done and they no longer have the rights to display that page. And the new owners are getting ready for a new page reveal incoming soon.

Yeah, I'm done trying to read the nuances of random events hoping for coh return.  I wanna press release.

Then I want to know where to send my $15 each month.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on September 12, 2014, 06:41:41 PM
Sentinel+ only records what the client had access to, which doesn't include a lot of server side flags.
Does character have X costume pieces? Y/N, and so forth.
Badges are more complicated. Having the badge to access Ouroboros wouldn't give you access to the Citadel, the flag does. But the flag is triggered by getting the badge. If you can't get the badge because you already have it...Then you can never gain access to Ouroboros.
Unless I misunderstood something, Which is possible since I stopped paying too much attention after Codewalker said "Not going to work."
It depends on how much fine control you have over the import process. I see no technical reason why an import tool can't be configured so that, if the character being imported has badge X, that means that the import process needs to set flag Y in the character record that gets created. Granted, this is going to give the import tool a large number of special-case conditions for specific badges, but remember that the Sentinel+ tool was created to dump as much information about a character as possible without having access to any data not available to the client; an import tool would presumably be created with full access to the back-end data structures. Whether expending the resources to make an import tool aware of the links between badges and character flags is worthwhile is a value judgement that will have to be made as part of the decision-making about how to restore the game if and when an agreement is closed with NCSoft.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 12, 2014, 07:29:04 PM
Alright, I'm digging through the Issue 24 change log.
There certainly were quite a number of changes... But, So far...Everything looks good.
So. I *think* I'm going to go ahead and say it...

Revival will feature Issue 24.

Irish, this would be fantastic. I've been rereading what was listed on Paragon wiki for ish 24.
can you list ish 24 changes that are not yet listed on paragon wiki?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on September 12, 2014, 07:34:42 PM
Why is my name the one in bold? Nate's name should prolly be the one in bold. lol

Actually, I just did that because I didn't spell out your name and I was falling asleep when I made that post -- literally falling asleep -- at my desk.  Hitting enter was the last thing I did before stumbling over to brush my teeth for bed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 12, 2014, 08:05:27 PM

I will say that I do have plans in regards to Galaxy City. I won't say what quite yet, but I think you guys will like it.

 
Back before the remake, I always hoped Galaxy City would become the entry pointo for lunar/space based missions.  Galaxy City redone as the high tech, space industry hub of the US/Paragon City. 
 
It could have occasional "launch sounds" like you had in Bloody Bay, which represented ships launching, etc. and have a build like Portal Corp but whose portals led to instellar locations the way that Portal Corp's led to multiversal locations.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 12, 2014, 08:18:23 PM

 
Back before the remake, I always hoped Galaxy City would become the entry pointo for lunar/space based missions.  Galaxy City redone as the high tech, space industry hub of the US/Paragon City. 
 
It could have occasional "launch sounds" like you had in Bloody Bay, which represented ships launching, etc. and have a build like Portal Corp but whose portals led to instellar locations the way that Portal Corp's led to multiversal locations.

rebuild Galaxy City as a the launch area that takes us to the Lunar Zone....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 12, 2014, 08:25:25 PM

 
Back before the remake, I always hoped Galaxy City would become the entry pointo for lunar/space based missions.  Galaxy City redone as the high tech, space industry hub of the US/Paragon City. 
 
It could have occasional "launch sounds" like you had in Bloody Bay, which represented ships launching, etc. and have a build like Portal Corp but whose portals led to instellar locations the way that Portal Corp's led to multiversal locations.


Awesome! Galaxy City rebuilt as a spaceport, that's too perfect!


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nightmarer on September 12, 2014, 08:31:26 PM
That's why I asked Irish_Girl...

Cunning...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 12, 2014, 08:39:10 PM

Awesome! Galaxy City rebuilt as a spaceport, that's too perfect!


We're almost there!   ;D

The thing that would make this work, even post-redo, is the fact that Galaxy City was the site of a massive attack by a new space based threat.  The rebuilding also making it the "base of operations" for our now incredibly important space industry/defense/expansion would make sense, given that.  It's location within Paragon City also gives it closer access to Rikti space ship technology, which could be part of the basis for our own.
 
Which is kinda cool, too, if you think about it.  The Rikti invasion, our greatest threat to date, become the key to our defense against even bigger extra-terrestrial threat. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 12, 2014, 08:41:54 PM
Irish, this would be fantastic. I've been rereading what was listed on Paragon wiki for ish 24.
can you list ish 24 changes that are not yet listed on paragon wiki?

FYI, you can see everything that uses the "Issue 24" template here: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category:Patch_Watchlist#Issue_24

That link has any page noted as being changed by I24, whether it's all new (e.g. several contacts) or modified (e.g. several power sets).

You can also see the pages that use "future content" templates here: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category:Future_Content_Templates

Click on a template, then in the left toolbar menu click "what links here" to see the pages tagged by those templates. The only really useful one is here: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Unimplemented

I would say that the most important parts of I24 being added, as far as any CoH 1.5 or beyond are concerned, are the contacts and storyline. Anything else is mechanics, which are going to be different anyways.

The second most important part is the apparent addition of LUA scripting to missions. I'm not a programmer, so I don't really have a good idea of what that actually means, but it's my understanding it would have given the devs almost infinitely more freedom to do crazy things during missions, from branching decisions to NPC behavior to whatever.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 12, 2014, 08:44:08 PM

The thing that would make this work, even post-redo, is the fact that Galaxy City was the site of a massive attack by a new space based threat.  The rebuilding also making it the "base of operations" for our now incredibly important space industry/defense/expansion would make sense, given that.  It's location within Paragon City also gives it closer access to Rikti space ship technology, which could be part of the basis for our own.
 
Which is kinda cool, too, if you think about it.  The Rikti invasion, our greatest threat to date, become the key to our defense against even bigger extra-terrestrial threat.

Seriously cool really, and perfectly logical given that lore was heading towards the Moonbase, this definitely ranks with the "great ideas" and deserves to be looked at.


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 12, 2014, 09:48:07 PM
No, I don't know what you mean.

Please provide intimate details including drawings, diagrams, powerpoint, photos, focus group discussion, noir video, claymation and most importantly interpretive dance.

I will give you one word: spudger.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackshear on September 12, 2014, 10:18:27 PM
So. I *think* I'm going to go ahead and say it...

Revival will feature Issue 24.

That would be cool.  I don't mind admitting that for me the most exciting prospect by far is the revival of the original game.  I wish much good luck to any sequel efforts, but that's for the relatively far future as far as I can tell.  I, first and foremost, want City itself to return.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 12, 2014, 10:18:40 PM
FYI, here's an interview that I haven't seen posted: http://www.mmogames.com/gamearticles/bringing-back-paragon-interview-city-of-heroes/
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 12, 2014, 10:39:16 PM
FYI, here's an interview that I haven't seen posted: http://www.mmogames.com/gamearticles/bringing-back-paragon-interview-city-of-heroes/

Looks to have been posted yesterday, nothing new that hasn't been stated but still good to see.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 12, 2014, 10:39:45 PM
Loving the Galaxy City ideas.

Just one thing: the Galaxy Girl statue must, must, MUST be there. Preferably in a ped-collision-box and enemy-free space.

Do this, and I guarantee that a number of Unionites will love you forever.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 12, 2014, 10:44:03 PM
FYI, here's an interview that I haven't seen posted: http://www.mmogames.com/gamearticles/bringing-back-paragon-interview-city-of-heroes/

Thanks for posting this, Felderburg.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 12, 2014, 10:47:03 PM
The second most important part is the apparent addition of LUA scripting to missions. I'm not a programmer, so I don't really have a good idea of what that actually means, but it's my understanding it would have given the devs almost infinitely more freedom to do crazy things during missions, from branching decisions to NPC behavior to whatever.

They did some really cool things in i24 with this, and I know they were cackling with glee at all of its practicalities.

One particularly cool mission that comes to mind, when your player went in and started fighting the baddies, all the "non-enemy" NPCs started pouring out of the room in terror.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 12, 2014, 10:49:00 PM
They did some really cool things in i24 with this, and I know they were cackling with glee at all of its practicalities.

One particularly cool mission that comes to mind, when your player went in and started fighting the baddies, all the "non-enemy" NPCs started pouring out of the room in terror.

I look forward to playing that!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Von Krieger on September 12, 2014, 11:10:11 PM
No, I don't know what you mean.

Please provide intimate details including drawings, diagrams, powerpoint, photos, focus group discussion, noir video, claymation and most importantly interpretive dance.

Next, who was he? Next, how did you feel at the time? Next, how did you feel afterward? What did you feel? What did you think? Were you pleased, frightened, ecstatic, disgusted? What did he say? What words did you speak? That's what I want to know. Now, tell me, now, now, all of it, NOW, TELL ME, YES! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6snGcj3sBRM) (Some moderatley NSFW noises, but it's Nine Inch Nails, so that's to be expected.)

[[EDIT: Fixing URL link. ~Agge]]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 12, 2014, 11:19:45 PM
Irish, this would be fantastic. I've been rereading what was listed on Paragon wiki for ish 24.
can you list ish 24 changes that are not yet listed on paragon wiki?

All the Issue 24 information that I have access to is from Paragon Wiki. The Issue 24 page is a little lacking, but the actual patch note page...
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Patch_Notes/2012-08-08_Beta (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Patch_Notes/2012-08-08_Beta)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 12, 2014, 11:20:22 PM
Actually, I just did that because I didn't spell out your name and I was falling asleep when I made that post -- literally falling asleep -- at my desk.  Hitting enter was the last thing I did before stumbling over to brush my teeth for bed.

lmao. Ah, yes. Been there,done that. Repeatedly. A lot.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 12, 2014, 11:23:31 PM
Loving the Galaxy City ideas.

Just one thing: the Galaxy Girl statue must, must, MUST be there. Preferably in a ped-collision-box and enemy-free space.

Do this, and I guarantee that a number of Unionites will love you forever.

Galaxy Girl rebuilt in GC would be the CoX version of the phoenix
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Acanous on September 13, 2014, 12:41:32 AM
lmao. Ah, yes. Been there,done that. Repeatedly. A lot.
Saved for later use, out of context :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 13, 2014, 01:29:32 AM
Saved for later use, out of context :D

Score! I completely missed that opportunity! 


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 13, 2014, 02:39:52 AM
Loving the Galaxy City ideas.

Just one thing: the Galaxy Girl statue must, must, MUST be there. Preferably in a ped-collision-box and enemy-free space.

Do this, and I guarantee that a number of Unionites will love you forever.
Also Virtuites.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 13, 2014, 03:14:18 AM
Is this CoH 1.5 going to be able to import characters from CoH Legacy ??
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 13, 2014, 03:18:26 AM
Is this CoH 1.5 going to be able to import characters from CoH Legacy ??

That would be the hope.


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 13, 2014, 05:44:56 AM
I think it does mean something has happened. That page was up for a long time, and all of a sudden when the deal is close to happening it goes down? I think the deal is done and they no longer have the rights to display that page. And the new owners are getting ready for a new page reveal incoming soon.
Oh lord... could be the best "page cannot be displayed error" in the history of mankind.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amrobinson on September 13, 2014, 05:45:08 AM
Nice try...

I really am too busy with other projects to do anything more than point you in the right direction. I'm certainly not going to write conversion tools, especially since a while back I took time out to explain the geo structure (which isn't even the animations, just the geometry) to a few people who approached me about creating a "other model formats -> geo" converter, but none of them came through or got very far with it. At the moment I'm much more interested in creating new geos and animations for the coh engine than extracting them.

However, it seems that reading and writing custom file formats without the help of a library to do it for you is something of a lost art. I blame the .NET and Java culture for this, leading many people to learn programming in a way that leaves them without a practical understanding of how the lower levels they're building on actually work, and dependent on someone else to solve the hard problems in a library for them.

But if you want some pointers for animations... how comfortable are you with bit packing and the math behind quaternions?

Haven't done any bit packing since the 90's.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 13, 2014, 05:55:46 AM
Is this CoH 1.5 going to be able to import characters from CoH Legacy ??

If not, that would be disappointing to start anew in Coh Legacy only to have to start anew again in 1.5.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 13, 2014, 06:56:14 AM
The second most important part is the apparent addition of LUA scripting to missions. I'm not a programmer, so I don't really have a good idea of what that actually means, but it's my understanding it would have given the devs almost infinitely more freedom to do crazy things during missions, from branching decisions to NPC behavior to whatever.

LUA is a well-known light-weight programming and scripting language.  Angry Birds most noteably is written in LUA.  The devs added a LUA execution engine to the game engine and started adding hooks to certain parts of the game.  In theory you could change the behavior of the game in any way by writing LUA scripts instead of changing and recompiling the game code.

In practice, that requires (ironically) changes to the game engine to make work.  Put simply, if you want to be able to write some LUA code that says something like "if player clicks on door then spawn three minions" you have to add functions to LUA you could call from your scripts that could do things like call a function when the player took an action, or instructed the game engine to do something like spawn a minion.  These functions would need to be integrated into your LUA engine in order to allow the game engine to call LUA scripts (to trigger scripted behavior) and to allow the LUA scripts to invoke game engine behaviors (to make things happen in the game).  That part was only just getting started.  They could do things with the LUA engine in I24 and I25, but there was a lot more work to do to give the devs "infinite freedom" to do whatever they wanted with the scripting engine.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Saedor on September 13, 2014, 02:01:28 PM
Again, no new info, but still good media coverage...

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/09/03/city-of-heroes-license-could-be-resurrected
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 13, 2014, 02:10:48 PM
Again, no new info, but still good media coverage...

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/09/03/city-of-heroes-license-could-be-resurrected

At least all these media mentions show NCSoft that players still care about CoX.  After all, if no one knew what it was or cared that it was dead, no one would bother reporting on it.  Clearly the mainstream gaming media knows that CoX still burns brightly in the hearts of many (as it does in some of their hearts too probably) or they wouldn't waste page space on it.  So I hope NCSoft doesn't get too upset about all the  writeups.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on September 13, 2014, 03:29:53 PM
At least all these media mentions show NCSoft that players still care about CoX.  After all, if no one knew what it was or cared that it was dead, no one would bother reporting on it.  Clearly the mainstream gaming media knows that CoX still burns brightly in the hearts of many (as it does in some of their hearts too probably) or they wouldn't waste page space on it.  So I hope NCSoft doesn't get too upset about all the  writeups.

As long as they stay positive in tone and message
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 13, 2014, 03:39:40 PM
Save city of heroes mentioned the legacy server would be time sensitive and would have to piggy back APR to stay on longer. I had a hard enough time playing those final 3 months when I knew things were ending.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 13, 2014, 04:05:54 PM
Save city of heroes mentioned the legacy server would be time sensitive and would have to piggy back APR to stay on longer. I had a hard enough time playing those final 3 months when I knew things were ending.

But knowing that our story will continue with APR/CoX 1.5 removes those worries for me.


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 13, 2014, 04:20:46 PM
Save city of heroes mentioned the legacy server would be time sensitive and would have to piggy back APR to stay on longer. I had a hard enough time playing those final 3 months when I knew things were ending.

Yes but should COH return, that doesn't mean that APR/1.5 will launch soon after.  Also didn't some of the articles mention that legacy CoH should remain online after 1.5/APR launches?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on September 13, 2014, 04:43:44 PM
Admitting freely that I'm a very non-computer-technical player, I have a question about player data.

Everything I've read so far states that no player data is on the table for the Hail Mary Team deal.   This of course means no recovering character builds.

What about character costumes?  I know that when I open up the ICON program -- (and a million thanks! to everyone who had a hand in restoring at least this part of the game for us) -- all my "saved" costume files for ALL my characters are there, presumably because they're still stored in the CoH files on my PC.

If that's the case, would all our costume-designs, at least the "Saved" ones, still be available to us should the deal go through and City of Heroes be opened up again for play?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 13, 2014, 04:49:47 PM
I think it's highly doubtful the "Load Costume" button would be removed, so you ought to be able to re-use all saved costumes that have valid pieces.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 13, 2014, 05:07:47 PM
Yes but should COH return, that doesn't mean that APR/1.5 will launch soon after.  Also didn't some of the articles mention that legacy CoH should remain online after 1.5/APR launches?

I'm not worried even about data going from legacy to 1.5. I'm worried about that sense of speed and movement COH legacy has that every hero mmo has lacked. Champions has only lunge powers for in fight movement thanks to the severe movement suppression (cohs seemed to start suppression at the beginning of the attack animation). Dcuo isn't horrible but the animation quality is poor compared to the other two.

And no, I'm not counting Marvel Heroes point to move interface (shutter).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dal on September 13, 2014, 05:19:23 PM
Admitting freely that I'm a very non-computer-technical player, I have a question about player data.

Everything I've read so far states that no player data is on the table for the Hail Mary Team deal.   This of course means no recovering character builds.

What about character costumes?  I know that when I open up the ICON program -- (and a million thanks! to everyone who had a hand in restoring at least this part of the game for us) -- all my "saved" costume files for ALL my characters are there, presumably because they're still stored in the CoH files on my PC.

If that's the case, would all our costume-designs, at least the "Saved" ones, still be available to us should the deal go through and City of Heroes be opened up again for play?
I think they should be, given you have the costume files in the appropriate folder once we get the game back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 13, 2014, 05:22:27 PM
Admitting freely that I'm a very non-computer-technical player, I have a question about player data.

Everything I've read so far states that no player data is on the table for the Hail Mary Team deal.   This of course means no recovering character builds.

What about character costumes?  I know that when I open up the ICON program -- (and a million thanks! to everyone who had a hand in restoring at least this part of the game for us) -- all my "saved" costume files for ALL my characters are there, presumably because they're still stored in the CoH files on my PC.

If that's the case, would all our costume-designs, at least the "Saved" ones, still be available to us should the deal go through and City of Heroes be opened up again for play?


No one can make any promises, but I think Blondshell is right, if the load costume button remains and you still have valid costumes in your folders, then I think you should be able to load them.


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cymmetri on September 13, 2014, 05:22:55 PM
Alright, I'm digging through the Issue 24 change log.
There certainly were quite a number of changes... But, So far...Everything looks good.
So. I *think* I'm going to go ahead and say it...

Revival will feature Issue 24.

Issue 24: RESURGENCE.

 :'(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 13, 2014, 05:37:13 PM
Save city of heroes mentioned the legacy server would be time sensitive and would have to piggy back APR to stay on longer. I had a hard enough time playing those final 3 months when I knew things were ending.

why would it be time bombed? it does not have to come down..as long as people are playing it. no one said there was a time bomb attached. win 9 could possibly kill it, but even that wont effect you if you dont upgrade win versions. 2020 is a long way away.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ultimate15 on September 13, 2014, 06:15:50 PM
Again, no new info, but still good media coverage...

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/09/03/city-of-heroes-license-could-be-resurrected

IGN also made a video of this article and posted it to their Youtube page (they may do this with all of the articles they release, but still): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK6sBGijSQk

However - and this is just something I wanted to bring up to everyone - there is a new thread over on the big City of Heroes Facebook page (the one with over 4,000 members) regarding this article and the comments are hinting at some confusion with the i23/i24 stuff. Irish_Girl, I think people were taking your 'announcement' regarding i24 for APR as the state in which the game will be brought back via maintenance mode. I'm not sure if someone wants to step in and clarify over there that maintenance mode will be i23, but I figured I'd let ya'll know! :) Because...YEAH.

Also, omg this is all so exciting. I'm crossing every finger and hair I have that NCSoft will see this through with us. Take my money. This is what we do.

Step 1: get the game back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 13, 2014, 06:23:20 PM
First, a BIG fan of the idea (hope?) that CoX will be back in the future.

Second, I would be ecstatic to remake all my toons (ok, maybe 5-10 of them...major altaholic here). I am sure I never experienced the whole set of missions CoX had to offer. While I would probably try to get one up ASAP to gather inf/recipes/components for aiding the other toons, I have already thought about how I might change my original Mid's build (just downloaded it again and been playing with alts for the past few days).

I would like anything they were testing in i24 (?) to be added but whatev. I think the changes on the forums were geared towards some real balance to the Blaster sets (most NEVER used sniper blast or nukes for obvious reasons). My fav toon class was the MMs. Took me forever to get those macros down and understand how to make more but it will all come back to me soon (I hope). Being able to solo GMs again, that will be the best.

Lastly, I thought I understood that the potential time limitation was somehow part of the unfinished agreement. Such that, once/if CoH1.5 and/or CoT come out, they (NCSoft?) would make the CoH Legacy be shut off again. That's how I took the posts here and elsewhere. I am sure this is not set in stone, but that's how I interpreted it. This would be OK I guess so long as I can play CoT or CoH 1.5/APR once CoX closes (again) AND that the ability to play either of those games doesn't suddenly cost me another disc purchase in addition to the monthly sub.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 13, 2014, 06:41:45 PM
Just had a funny thought, should the game get restored we should all obtain blue auras for our characters to signify the hope that we all had that the game could be restored one day.



"Look to the stars, for HOPE burns bright!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 13, 2014, 06:43:53 PM
No one can make any promises, but I think Blondshell is right, if the load costume button remains and you still have valid costumes in your folders, then I think you should be able to load them.

The primary caveat on using saved costumes in any resurrected game is that some costume parts needed to be unlocked to be used by the player or by a specific character, and so the same limitations would apply there.

There's a second, more minor caveat in that even when the game was running there were some older costumes that were in a sense "grandfathered" to the player in that you could have them and save them, but they would not load back.  A part might have been renamed or replaced or some other thing happened and you couldn't really select it anymore, but the character itself still had it.

The basic rule is that if you could have rebuilt your character's appearance in theory in a brand new account in CoH, that costume will almost certainly load into a resurrected I23.  Otherwise, a saved costume would probably still work in a resurrected I23 provided you unlocked all the parts through gameplay or purchase, or the operators of the game unlocked them for you.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 13, 2014, 07:14:37 PM
The primary caveat on using saved costumes in any resurrected game is that some costume parts needed to be unlocked to be used by the player or by a specific character, and so the same limitations would apply there.

There's a second, more minor caveat in that even when the game was running there were some older costumes that were in a sense "grandfathered" to the player in that you could have them and save them, but they would not load back.  A part might have been renamed or replaced or some other thing happened and you couldn't really select it anymore, but the character itself still had it.

The basic rule is that if you could have rebuilt your character's appearance in theory in a brand new account in CoH, that costume will almost certainly load into a resurrected I23.  Otherwise, a saved costume would probably still work in a resurrected I23 provided you unlocked all the parts through gameplay or purchase, or the operators of the game unlocked them for you.

Perhaps they should compile a list of all badges of all types, map, history, defeat, achievment, etc that unlocked costume pieces/weapons, for example: defeat 100 rularuu bosses = badge + rularuu weapon unlock.

Then should the game return and we have to start anew, they make sure those costume bits are locked again and issue a reminder that such things will have to be unlocked again even IF you had a saved costume with the item.

Also the Ouroborus badge/power was obtained by being exposed to time travel either by obtaining certain badges or someone opening an Ouro portal for you and you go get the map badge in the zone.  Should the game return and they somehow find a way to use Sentinel to slightly restore our characters and they are concerned that having badge X will not activate power Y upon restoration, then do not restore the ouro badge/power and also remove any badge that may have unlocked it and issue a statement to all that they must regain said badge to regain the Ouro power.  If memory serves one of the Recluse Victory map badges enables one to have the Ouro power, and their were other ways to get it.  I need to find that old guide to Ouroborus....

Also that could also be used for the incarnate powers. Sure we had them, but if characters cannot be restored with them, then remove all the badges that unlock incarnate powers, though do NOT remove the achievement badges from the trials as they were not tied to the powers.  Then characters can just run the Incarnate tutorial missions to unlock the ability to become incarnate, then they can run the trials ad nauseum again to unlock the available incarnate power badges and slots.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 13, 2014, 07:44:45 PM
I'm just going to throw this in here:  If the CoX i23 image ever does get rezzed, whomever is running it is going to need to run it on a shoestring budget to keep it running at all.   There will be no full CS team "restoring" this, "compiling lists" of that, or working on "petitions" for much of anything.  Even some people on these boards have stated they will only play if it's free because they're broke etc. and here resides the last bastion of CoX fandom by far, let's face it.  And If there are 100 active users currently posting on CoH Titan I'd be surprised.

Perhaps there were 60,000 people playing at the time of shutdown, with maybe half of those either paying for subs, or for cash shop items, or both.  That number will likely be even lower once the CoX image comes back.  There isn't going to be character or account info available for many reasons that have already been detailed multiple times on these forums.  There will be no code changes because there is no code.  The engine is dated now. 

I'll be the first in line to pay and play, believe me, but I think we need to be realistic about our expectations.  I wouldn't be surprised if the CoX i23 team winds up volunteering much of their work time as it is.  People just need to be more reasonable in their expectations and accept a....more streamlined experience.  And that's if NCSoft just doesn't politely say no and walk away, of course.  And I still say if they'd wanted to sell, CoX would have already been long gone to Paragon Studios back at the end of 2012.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Beltor on September 13, 2014, 08:07:42 PM
Going through the old files from COH, I discovered not only the saved costumes but also the saved custom keybinds. With those put in the correct folder when legacy COH returns, I don't see any reason why those keybinds can't be used again. I was a programmer in the 80's and although my computer languages are obsolete (no Apple, Tandy, or Commodores used anymore), the programming principles are still useful. The COH program would have to be altered to make the costume data and keybind data unuseable. You just need to make sure the data is in the right place to be read.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fanta on September 13, 2014, 08:24:09 PM
I'm just going to throw this in here:  If the CoX i23 image ever does get rezzed, whomever is running it is going to need to run it on a shoestring budget to keep it running at all.   There will be no full CS team "restoring" this, "compiling lists" of that, or working on "petitions" for much of anything.  Even some people on these boards have stated they will only play if it's free because they're broke etc. and here resides the last bastion of CoX fandom by far, let's face it.  And If there are 100 active users currently posting on CoH Titan I'd be surprised.

Perhaps there were 60,000 people playing at the time of shutdown, with maybe half of those either paying for subs, or for cash shop items, or both.  That number will likely be even lower once the CoX image comes back.  There isn't going to be character or account info available for many reasons that have already been detailed multiple times on these forums.  There will be no code changes because there is no code.  The engine is dated now. 

I'll be the first in line to pay and play, believe me, but I think we need to be realistic about our expectations.  I wouldn't be surprised if the CoX i23 team winds up volunteering much of their work time as it is.  People just need to be more reasonable in their expectations and accept a....more streamlined experience.  And that's if NCSoft just doesn't politely say no and walk away, of course.  And I still say if they'd wanted to sell, CoX would have already been long gone to Paragon Studios back at the end of 2012.

At this point, not expecting much.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 13, 2014, 08:40:40 PM
More press. It's gettin' back to where we need a "Thank the media" thread, again. :)

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/09/02/city-of-heroes-spiritual-successor-could-become-an-official-resurrection/?fb_action_ids=812603425445864&fb_action_types=og.likes
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 13, 2014, 09:22:38 PM
It's all been good press so far!


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 13, 2014, 09:49:53 PM
Another brick in the wall.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 13, 2014, 09:50:00 PM
It's all been good press so far!


Well of course-- there aren't many die-hard fans of CoX compared to games like LoL, WoW or Tera (all in the millions of players) but even 60,000 people or whatever can put up quite a stink when their game (which was old yet still turning a halfway-decent profit) is the victim of a knee-jerk shutdown. 

And let's face it, I doubt other older MMOs that are still up and running like Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot,  LoTRO, DDO, Saga of Ryzom, Planetside, Anarchy Online and even probably some of the newer ones like Age of Conan or The Secret World can even boast that many active players....yet they're all still up and running.

Let's hope there's some way to shoestring budget a comeback for CoX where it can perpetuate itself without getting drowned in debt to NCSoft....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 13, 2014, 09:51:10 PM
Going through the old files from COH, I discovered not only the saved costumes but also the saved custom keybinds. With those put in the correct folder when legacy COH returns, I don't see any reason why those keybinds can't be used again.

You can also load them up just fine with Icon, which was among the first things I'd tried because my keybinds...let's just say they're quite different than defaults for most things made in the past 15 years.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 14, 2014, 12:49:54 AM
Thought you guys might be interested to see this. Comparison of the original Paragon Transit Authority texture, and the new one that's been made for Revival.
Obviously, the new one is the right half.
Shout out to Fangoria for the work.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://i1375.photobucket.com/albums/ag457/Cailyn_Alaynn/PTANvO_zps9ed5b535.png)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 14, 2014, 12:56:28 AM
Nice!


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Urd on September 14, 2014, 12:59:09 AM
Thought you guys might be interested to see this. Comparison of the original Paragon Transit Authority texture, and the new one that's been made for Revival.
Obviously, the new one is the right half.
Shout out to Fangoria for the work.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://i1375.photobucket.com/albums/ag457/Cailyn_Alaynn/PTANvO_zps9ed5b535.png)

Nice clean look, I like it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 14, 2014, 01:16:24 AM
Super nice, Irish!  You really consider every little detail.   :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 14, 2014, 01:23:55 AM
Thought you guys might be interested to see this. Comparison of the original Paragon Transit Authority texture, and the new one that's been made for Revival.
Obviously, the new one is the right half.
Shout out to Fangoria for the work.

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://i1375.photobucket.com/albums/ag457/Cailyn_Alaynn/PTANvO_zps9ed5b535.png)
That is very nice. Fingers crossed that this comes to fruition.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 14, 2014, 01:57:36 AM
I'm just going to throw this in here:  If the CoX i23 image ever does get rezzed, whomever is running it is going to need to run it on a shoestring budget to keep it running at all.   There will be no full CS team "restoring" this, "compiling lists" of that, or working on "petitions" for much of anything.  Even some people on these boards have stated they will only play if it's free because they're broke etc. and here resides the last bastion of CoX fandom by far, let's face it.  And If there are 100 active users currently posting on CoH Titan I'd be surprised.

Perhaps there were 60,000 people playing at the time of shutdown, with maybe half of those either paying for subs, or for cash shop items, or both.  That number will likely be even lower once the CoX image comes back.  There isn't going to be character or account info available for many reasons that have already been detailed multiple times on these forums.  There will be no code changes because there is no code.  The engine is dated now. 

I'll be the first in line to pay and play, believe me, but I think we need to be realistic about our expectations.  I wouldn't be surprised if the CoX i23 team winds up volunteering much of their work time as it is.  People just need to be more reasonable in their expectations and accept a....more streamlined experience.  And that's if NCSoft just doesn't politely say no and walk away, of course.  And I still say if they'd wanted to sell, CoX would have already been long gone to Paragon Studios back at the end of 2012.

I think that City of Heroes for its last couple of years received almost no advertizing, and almost no publicity.

I also think that a revival of CoH is going to get an internet ton of free publicity just because of the story of its revival. This will bring in a lot of former players who aren't aware of Titan network, and it will also get a lot of other MMORPG players who didn't know about it, to check it out on the basis of "Hey, there must be something interesting in this game if people were fighting for years to bring it back".

I think that it will hit a lot higher than it had at the end, and that number will go up if the dev team can find a way to add new powers and new powersets (even without new artwork). You can easily subcontract someone to create new powersets for a while, and that would be cheaper than running a development team, while giving a vibe saying that the game is not just going to be kept alive as a zombie, that there will be new updates.

I'm a lot more worried about the deal actually closing, than about having a fizzle of a launch if it does close.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 14, 2014, 02:09:52 AM
Perhaps they should compile a list of all badges of all types, map, history, defeat, achievment, etc that unlocked costume pieces/weapons, for example: defeat 100 rularuu bosses = badge + rularuu weapon unlock.

What a great idea!  8)

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Unlockable_Costume_Pieces/Charts
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category:Content_That_Unlocks_Things
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Unlockable_Weapons
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Weapon_Customization
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Shield_Customization
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Costume_Sets
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 14, 2014, 03:21:53 AM
I think that City of Heroes for its last couple of years received almost no advertizing, and almost no publicity.

I also think that a revival of CoH is going to get an internet ton of free publicity just because of the story of its revival. This will bring in a lot of former players who aren't aware of Titan network, and it will also get a lot of other MMORPG players who didn't know about it, to check it out on the basis of "Hey, there must be something interesting in this game if people were fighting for years to bring it back".

I think that it will hit a lot higher than it had at the end, and that number will go up if the dev team can find a way to add new powers and new powersets (even without new artwork). You can easily subcontract someone to create new powersets for a while, and that would be cheaper than running a development team, while giving a vibe saying that the game is not just going to be kept alive as a zombie, that there will be new updates.

I'm a lot more worried about the deal actually closing, than about having a fizzle of a launch if it does close.

Please remember that there will be NO new powersets, no patches, no updates, no anything.  There is NO code, only a snapshot image backup of i23 the night the servers went down permanently.  It's going to be CoX i23 in maintenance mode, period, and let's face it, the chances of a deal actually happening are pretty low, so even maintenance mode would be a miracle over what we've got now (and let's hope there's not the constant looming threat of another NCSoft-sponsored closure along with it).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: rebel 1812 on September 14, 2014, 04:32:41 AM
If not, that would be disappointing to start anew in Coh Legacy only to have to start anew again in 1.5.

I agree with that.  I think its the whole point of 1.5; namely to take over for when COH is no longer supported by the O/S.  That means saving the characters is core to the mission.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 14, 2014, 04:34:35 AM
Please remember that there will be NO new powersets, no patches, no updates, no anything.  There is NO code, only a snapshot image backup of i23 the night the servers went down permanently.  It's going to be CoX i23 in maintenance mode, period, and let's face it, the chances of a deal actually happening are pretty low, so even maintenance mode would be a miracle over what we've got now (and let's hope there's not the constant looming threat of another NCSoft-sponsored closure along with it).

The deal as it stands is acceptable, but not ideal.

Frankly, I am simply hoping we will be able to play.
Updates would be a dream come true, but I'm not holding my breath.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 14, 2014, 04:41:17 AM
I agree with that.  I think its the whole point of 1.5; namely to take over for when COH is no longer supported by the O/S.  That means saving the characters is core to the mission.
The other rather significant point is to allow the game to have continuing support and development. CoH 1.0 will not have source code or developer tools, there will be no way to make significant additions or changes to the original game going forward. CoH 1.5 will be fully expandable and be running on a modern engine.
Some people might not see it this way, but to me it would be perfectly acceptable to have to start over in 1.5 if i want to play new content. In the past i frequently remade characters when new sets came out that better realized the character concepts, and besides all 1.0 characters will have been recently remade anyway. Although i suspect transferring account-based unlocks for things like rewards and costume pieces should be relatively easy since a new account system will have to implemented anyway.




Edit: "a new account system will have to be reimplemented"? Really? Since i haven't registered with the Department of Redundancy Department i feel compelled to tweak the wording slightly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 14, 2014, 04:43:39 AM
The other rather significant point is to allow the game to have continuing support and development. CoH 1.0 will not have source code or developer tools, there will be no way to make significant additions or changes to the original game going forward. CoH 1.5 will be fully expandable and be running on a modern engine.
Some people might not see it this way, but to me it would be perfectly acceptable to have to start over in 1.5 if i want to play new content. In the past i frequently remade characters when new sets came out that better realized the character concepts, and besides all 1.0 characters will have been recently remade anyway. Although i suspect transferring account-based unlocks for things like rewards and costume pieces should be relatively easy since a new account system will have to reimplemented anyway.

I hope for the best and expect the worst.  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 14, 2014, 05:45:06 AM
I hope for the best and expect the worst.  :P
If this attempt to gain access to the IP falls through, I dont expect anyone will attempt another. I know business negotiations take a while But I have seen military appropriations for new gear go faster than this.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taliseian on September 14, 2014, 06:24:09 AM
Please remember that there will be NO new powersets, no patches, no updates, no anything.  There is NO code, only a snapshot image backup of i23 the night the servers went down permanently.  It's going to be CoX i23 in maintenance mode, period, and let's face it, the chances of a deal actually happening are pretty low, so even maintenance mode would be a miracle over what we've got now (and let's hope there's not the constant looming threat of another NCSoft-sponsored closure along with it).

...and I am 100% OK with that.

APR/CoH 1.5 is in the works, and there is CoT, and there is VO, and there could possibly be CoH 2.0 made in UE4 down the road.

Even if **none** of those ever launch, I would be happy with CoH i23 Maintenance.


T
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 14, 2014, 07:56:26 AM
Admitting freely that I'm a very non-computer-technical player, I have a question about player data.

Everything I've read so far states that no player data is on the table for the Hail Mary Team deal.   This of course means no recovering character builds.

What about character costumes?  I know that when I open up the ICON program -- (and a million thanks! to everyone who had a hand in restoring at least this part of the game for us) -- all my "saved" costume files for ALL my characters are there, presumably because they're still stored in the CoH files on my PC.

If that's the case, would all our costume-designs, at least the "Saved" ones, still be available to us should the deal go through and City of Heroes be opened up again for play?
This isn't fair to those of us who weren't able to save our costumes and characters. Why should you not have to start from scratch when I do?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 14, 2014, 08:09:07 AM
Not having your costumes saved is somewhat of a choice, as it was a built in feature of the Character Editor in City of Heroes.
If you didn't, it's easy enough to re-create a costume. You could do it right now using ICON.



(P.S.: I warned people this argument was coming. Granted, I said it would be about Sentinel+ files...)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 14, 2014, 08:09:17 AM
This isn't fair to those of us who weren't able to save our costumes and characters. Why should you not have to start from scratch when I do?
You can start right now and begin creating costumes and saving them, with ICON. Then you won't be starting from scratch.
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Titan_Icon
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on September 14, 2014, 08:55:46 AM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 14, 2014, 10:12:57 AM
This isn't fair to those of us who weren't able to save our costumes and characters. Why should you not have to start from scratch when I do?

If you weren't able to save character data and costumes that is one thing, if you were not WILLING to do that is something else.

Also with ICON you can begin recreating costumes right now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 14, 2014, 10:15:24 AM
I just finished my own COH/COV costume project.  Recreating after several months all 126 costumes from characters I can still remember having played after a 2 year hiatus.  I had deleted my original COH client and files when the game finally shutdown in 2012.  While I did save some costumes and Sentinel + files on all of my most played toons (roughly about 30 characters), I did not save them all.  I was thrilled to be able to get Icon and be able to look at my old toons.  So before I could forget everything I made up a spreadsheet of all the characters I could still recall, with origins, powersets, and began remaking all the costumes I missed after the shutdown.   This was fine until my Nvidia card in my old legacy computer died.  That brought the project to a crashing halt after about 80% completion.

Then I got a new computer with all the bells and whistles.  Now I was able to re-download the client and Icon and resume work.  I finally got to run around the game in Ultra Mode for the first time.  Man I wish I could have done that when the game was live. 
I know I am still missing some characters as I had every server slot used up that was either free or as a reward which should be a little over 150 characters.  But they probably were only played once and forgotten.  Seeing some of the new I24 costume bits is bittersweet.  Maybe they will see the light of day some day.   :-\

This. I have been slowly tinkering around and rebuilding some former costumes. I had some saved already but am recreating a few.  However should the game resume I will be restarting characters in a simple costume I saved called "civilian mode", a fairly nondescript costume for all of their first costume slot then once they are rebuilt enough and I regain any unlocked costume pieces that are needed, they can suit up.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 14, 2014, 10:16:14 AM
If you weren't able to save character data and costumes that is one thing, if you were not WILLING to do that is something else.

Anyways, as the ability to load costumes from .costume files is a feature of the City of Heroes client...It's not exactly something that could be disabled or removed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cymmetri on September 14, 2014, 12:14:53 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 14, 2014, 12:57:57 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 14, 2014, 02:28:42 PM
Please remember that there will be NO new powersets, no patches, no updates, no anything.  There is NO code, only a snapshot image backup of i23 the night the servers went down permanently.  It's going to be CoX i23 in maintenance mode, period, and let's face it, the chances of a deal actually happening are pretty low, so even maintenance mode would be a miracle over what we've got now (and let's hope there's not the constant looming threat of another NCSoft-sponsored closure along with it).

Why would I remember that? I don't accept the argument that this is the case, and I think it's made to keep expectations low.

Updates usually mean some code changes, but it is possible to make some updates without changing the code. For example, since it doesn't involve adding new powers, just changing existing ones, it seems possible to make a close approximation to the i24 Blaster changes without needing to recompile anything. Fast snipes, non-draining nukes, and changing one power in the Manipulation sets to have some defensive boost.

Then, it may possible to add new powers (and probably powersets) without having to recompile, if I understand Codewalker. Granted, it would require hacking into the executable to determine the location of some offsets so that you can properly reference a new power ID, so I'm not sure if it will be done. But it's significantly less than a full rebuild, because a rebuild requires the entire code to be rewritten in order to avoid compile errors. But changing a single variable inside an executable, while not trivial, is a completely different task than decoding and rebuilding the entire executable. And if you can do that and start adding new powersets, the return on the investment is probably pretty good, considering that they will all be premium content.

I'm not sure if the team WANTS the issues related to new updates. But if they're willing to deal with them (and I would, if I were in their shoes, because the advertising for a game with updates is so much stronger than advertising for a zombie game), they should be able to manage a positive return on the hacking investment required to add new powersets.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 14, 2014, 04:28:56 PM
Provided that all goes well, and I think it will, updates WILL COME in the form of Atlas Park Revival to CoH 1.5 as it is being called, once the legacy data has all been imported to the Unreal 4 engine. Then we will see things continue. As it stands we will not be able to update the legacy code, just run the image.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scott Jackson on September 14, 2014, 04:58:33 PM
Until it's revealed - in detail - what NCSoft would provide, it's premature to rule out every category of update to Legacy as impossible.  Config files, manual edits to database tables, and other creative tweaks can be done to most software to have significant effects on how it behaves, even without the source code.  For anyone who has ever done something along the lines of modding a game, operating a private game server, or editing your Windows configuration manually, you've got some sense of what I mean.  None of those require possession or edits of the source code.

Whether the Legacy operators would want to spend effort on such things is a separate question.  As long as APR shows steady progress, I expect there will be minimal demand to modify Legacy, except perhaps to implement the easiest pieces of i24 or to give players some shortcuts for rebuilding characters.  They may choose as a matter of business to do neither; it's too early to tell.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tatterdamalion on September 14, 2014, 05:33:45 PM
Alright, I'm digging through the Issue 24 change log.
There certainly were quite a number of changes... But, So far...Everything looks good.
So. I *think* I'm going to go ahead and say it...

Revival will feature Issue 24.

I24 is what I was hoping for. Blasters rejoice!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Techbot Alpha on September 14, 2014, 05:43:01 PM
I really need to have a go with Icon, heh.

Gah, stop getting me so excited damnit!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on September 14, 2014, 05:54:46 PM
I24 is what I was hoping for. Blasters rejoice!

For blasters, a killer and long over due release.

Now, if only Irish Girl would commit to 'fixing' defenders and allow them to apply Force Field: Insulation and Deflector shields to THEMSELVES!!!  (That would stop Defenders from having difficulty soloing.  That's a fair trade off for 'only having' blasts at 65% of Blaster hitting power.)  Under this, Defenders could actually 'tank' to a degree or adopt the junior tank label.

As opposed to being a human punching bag for even mediocre mobs.

A 'yes' to the current negotiations really would kickstart the Renaissance project on the famous Unreal 4 engine.  I can see from the artwork ported thus far...you slavishly trying to honour the original source material.  I like the heart in that.

Torch aloft.

Azrael.

PS. 
Quote
I really need to have a go with Icon, heh.

A real gift to the community.  Icon is delicious.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 14, 2014, 07:07:00 PM
This isn't fair to those of us who weren't able to save our costumes and characters. Why should you not have to start from scratch when I do?
As has already been pointed out everyone who played CoH had the option to save as many costumes as they wanted to save. The tools for doing so were part of the game itself. All you had to do was save the costume while in the tailor screen and then not delete the folder with the costume files in it.
So, yeah, that part's only an issue if someone wasn't up to making the most cursory effort to save costumes.

The recent changes to the costume creator that were live as of i23 actually made it easier to use some of the legacy pieces that were no longer accessible. i had several alts who used the transparent torso and the Malaise pants again since i was able to save the old costumes and then use the pieces by loading the costume and not opening up the subsection that had the legacy pieces when  editing the costume. Of course now that it was possible to save the unavailable pieces in a costume file another option was to directly edit a costume file to add those pieces and then load that, but that's very slightly more technical than just loading the old costume and not editing the sections with legacy pieces.

So if/when i23 relaunches i can at the least recreate a few of my more ghostly and/or bizarre characters.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 14, 2014, 07:27:17 PM
Fair is in the eye of the complainer.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on September 14, 2014, 07:43:04 PM
This isn't fair to those of us who weren't able to save our costumes and characters. Why should you not have to start from scratch when I do?

I hate this argument. It's like "Oh, I didn't prepare, and you did, so it's your fault and everyone who prepared should restart like me."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 14, 2014, 08:44:53 PM
For blasters, a killer and long over due release.

Now, if only Irish Girl would commit to 'fixing' defenders and allow them to apply Force Field: Insulation and Deflector shields to THEMSELVES!!!  (That would stop Defenders from having difficulty soloing.  That's a fair trade off for 'only having' blasts at 65% of Blaster hitting power.)  Under this, Defenders could actually 'tank' to a degree or adopt the junior tank label.

As opposed to being a human punching bag for even mediocre mobs.


Modding two powers in one set would fix every issue with Defenders? Really?

This brings up something that concerns me about the whole possibility of the game coming back. I hope that the people who would be in control would keep with the spirit and design of the game and not just add things because we (the forumites) keep asking for it. Each change needs to be hashed out, tested, balanced against the game as it stands and with a plan as to where it's going.

I'm going out on my limb again to state that I24 was not complete. I keep hearing from everyone about how it was this perfect thing and it was going to fix the entire game. Maybe it was (or not) but it was not complete in beta. You can see it if you pull up icon beta and look around. (I don't think the icon mod actually put in damage amounts, but I could be wrong).

As to the I24 changes themselves:
It seems to me that these "fixes" that were to be introduced in I24 were a bit odd. So many changes (that had been back burnered for years) in one issue?

I can think of two obvious possible reasons for this.
One, the devs knew something was up and the game was getting close to closing. This would have been a push for new players to save the game.
Two, the devs were settling the game with an eye to the future issues. As in, they had something planned which would have included much harder content.

Both of these possibilities leaves the possibility that I24 (without development scrutiny) could have been as much game breaking as game changing.

When you start looking at the numbers, there was a huuuge increase in DPS on the way for blasters, defenders and corrupters.
Did this "balance" need to take place for those ATs because they were so inferior to the melee and control characters? I'm not convinced of that.

How does this all affect the interactions for teaming? AV killing? Soloing? Pre 50 content? Post 50 content?

I've left out the other changes, but they all would need evaluation too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: K26dp on September 14, 2014, 08:58:27 PM
I'm going out on my limb again to state that I24 was not complete. I keep hearing from everyone about how it was this perfect thing and it was going to fix the entire game. Maybe it was (or not) but it was not complete in beta. You can see it if you pull up icon beta and look around. (I don't think the icon mod actually put in damage amounts, but I could be wrong).

As to the I24 changes themselves:
It seems to me that these "fixes" that were to be introduced in I24 were a bit odd. So many changes (that had been back burnered for years) in one issue?

I can think of two obvious possible reasons for this.
One, the devs knew something was up and the game was getting close to closing. This would have been a push for new players to save the game.
Two, the devs were settling the game with an eye to the future issues. As in, they had something planned which would have included much harder content.

Both of these possibilities leaves the possibility that I24 (without development scrutiny) could have been as much game breaking as game changing.

When you start looking at the numbers, there was a huuuge increase in DPS on the way for blasters, defenders and corrupters.
Did this "balance" need to take place for those ATs because they were so inferior to the melee and control characters? I'm not convinced of that.

How does this all affect the interactions for teaming? AV killing? Soloing? Pre 50 content? Post 50 content?

I've left out the other changes, but they all would need evaluation too.

I24 was essentially complete. It was on the test server for a month prior to the announcement. Positron has said it was a week away from release. The other powersets that are visable in ICON were not intended for I24.

And yes, it would created a DPS and survivability increase for ranged characters. That was the whole purpose, because they were significantly inferior to melee and control characters. And you are correct, they intended to up the difficulty of future content.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Napalmrain on September 14, 2014, 09:02:55 PM
I hate this argument. It's like "Oh, I didn't prepare, and you did, so it's your fault and everyone who prepared should restart like me."

And the argument "I had some out of game program to save some data makes me special, so I dont want to start over and am looking for any way I can to get my stuff back" is better?

Everybody wants their shit back. Aint gonna happen unless the new company gets all user data from NCsoft. If they allow the special people to get their stuff but not others, shit will not fly. All or none.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 14, 2014, 09:04:20 PM
And the argument "I had some out of game program to save some data makes me special, so I dont want to start over and am looking for any way I can to get my stuff back" is better?

Everybody wants their pancake back. Aint gonna happen unless the new company gets all user data from NCsoft. If they allow the special people to get their stuff but not others, pancake will not fly. All or none.

That strikes me as being just as selfish as any other view.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cobra Man on September 14, 2014, 09:18:14 PM
I24 was essentially complete. It was on the test server for a month prior to the announcement. Positron has said it was a week away from release. The other powersets that are visable in ICON were not intended for I24.

And yes, it would created a DPS and survivability increase for ranged characters. That was the whole purpose, because they were significantly inferior to melee and control characters. And you are correct, they intended to up the difficulty of future content.

Meh.

My blasters were never inferior to melee and control toons. I might not have been able to stand toe to toe with mobs but not many were left standing after a few seconds :)

It looks like i24 improvements will make blasters almost overpowered ... or maybe there's no 'almost' about it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 14, 2014, 09:18:40 PM
And the argument "I had some out of game program to save some data makes me special, so I dont want to start over and am looking for any way I can to get my stuff back" is better?

Everybody wants their pancake back. Aint gonna happen unless the new company gets all user data from NCsoft. If they allow the special people to get their stuff but not others, pancake will not fly. All or none.


They are not talking about getting their characters/toons back. But if you still have your original install of CoH, then if you had any saved costumes they should still be in their folder. That's all, nothing to get upset about, in fact, if you go into Icon you can make and save costumes right now if you want. No promises that they will work, but logic say's they should.

Sentinel files are off the table, no one will be able to use them so it's not even an issue. No reason to argue or get upset about it.


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 14, 2014, 09:22:09 PM
I24 was essentially complete. It was on the test server for a month prior to the announcement. Positron has said it was a week away from release. The other powersets that are visable in ICON were not intended for I24.

And yes, it would created a DPS and survivability increase for ranged characters. That was the whole purpose, because they were significantly inferior to melee and control characters. And you are correct, they intended to up the difficulty of future content.

Appreciate the input. Never heard the Posi statement.

I was actually speaking specifically to the damage numbers of corrupters I can see in Icon Beta. They are out of whack with the blaster versions. As in dual pistol corrupter damage was higher than dual pistol blaster damage. That kind of thing.

And just following through with the logic, then if Irish_Girl and company put in a I24, then they will need to be prepared for more difficult content in the future...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 14, 2014, 09:23:26 PM
Meh.

My blasters were never inferior to melee and control toons. I might not have been able to stand toe to toe with mobs but not many were left standing after a few seconds :)

It looks like i24 improvements will make blasters almost overpowered ... or maybe there's no 'almost' about it.

That was my gut reaction for corrupter/defenders.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 14, 2014, 09:34:18 PM
When you start looking at the numbers, there was a huuuge increase in DPS on the way for blasters, defenders and corrupters.
Did this "balance" need to take place for those ATs because they were so inferior to the melee and control characters? I'm not convinced of that.

I'm absolutely convinced Blasters needed buffs.  Arbiter Hawk agreed, but he felt there were issues with many powers that happened to affect blasters, like nukes, and wanted to address them as well.  There were a lot of different changes all over the place because Arbiter Hawk got the green light to make many of these changes.  I was specifically discussing these changes with him for months right up to literally a day or two before the shutdown announcement.  They might seem random, but they were not.  They represented a significant shift in thinking, because a different dev was given permission to make sweeping changes across much of the power base (those changes still still needed to be approved, but AH's thought process was much different from Castle's, say, or Black Scorpions.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: rebel 1812 on September 14, 2014, 09:38:41 PM
The other rather significant point is to allow the game to have continuing support and development. CoH 1.0 will not have source code or developer tools, there will be no way to make significant additions or changes to the original game going forward. CoH 1.5 will be fully expandable and be running on a modern engine.
Some people might not see it this way, but to me it would be perfectly acceptable to have to start over in 1.5 if i want to play new content. In the past i frequently remade characters when new sets came out that better realized the character concepts, and besides all 1.0 characters will have been recently remade anyway. Although i suspect transferring account-based unlocks for things like rewards and costume pieces should be relatively easy since a new account system will have to implemented anyway.




Edit: "a new account system will have to be reimplemented"? Really? Since i haven't registered with the Department of Redundancy Department i feel compelled to tweak the wording slightly.

If they are building it, then they can build a coverter for backwards compatibility.  This was the idea behind sentential+.  Characters are just data after all.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 14, 2014, 09:56:49 PM

They are not talking about getting their characters/toons back. But if you still have your original install of CoH, then if you had any saved costumes they should still be in their folder. That's all, nothing to get upset about, in fact, if you go into Icon you can make and save costumes right now if you want. No promises that they will work, but logic say's they should.

Sentinel files are off the table, no one will be able to use them so it's not even an issue. No reason to argue or get upset about it.


We're almost there!   ;D

This is a most excellent post.   :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Napalmrain on September 14, 2014, 10:03:57 PM

They are not talking about getting their characters/toons back. But if you still have your original install of CoH, then if you had any saved costumes they should still be in their folder. That's all, nothing to get upset about, in fact, if you go into Icon you can make and save costumes right now if you want. No promises that they will work, but logic say's they should.

Sentinel files are off the table, no one will be able to use them so it's not even an issue. No reason to argue or get upset about it.


We're almost there!   ;D

In that case, its no big deal. <3 Icon.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 14, 2014, 10:10:18 PM
Regarding Issue 24.... Even if a Atlas Park Revived includes it, what does that mean? Storyline and lore, contacts, things like that are probably able to be added no problem. But everyone's talking about game mechanics changes, buffing this, buffing that, blasters are great now... But it's my understanding that APR will use a different engine from CoH anyways! Which means that all the combat powers are going to be starting from scratch anyways, right? Unless APR is somehow able to exactly copy the behavior of the CoH engine, it seems to me that most anything involving powers and their use, and hard numbers, is going to be built from square one again anyways. Or am I wrong?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 14, 2014, 10:30:09 PM
And the argument "I had some out of game program to save some data makes me special, so I dont want to start over and am looking for any way I can to get my stuff back" is better?

Everybody wants their pancake back. Aint gonna happen unless the new company gets all user data from NCsoft. If they allow the special people to get their stuff but not others, pancake will not fly. All or none.

sentinal was an outside program with extensive character data, which I never actually used. saving your costume was a button in icon and at character creation that you could save a costume. it make zero difference to game play. and it was made by the devs and everyone that played had access too. you can hack costume data till the cows come home and all you will have is messed up costumes. everyone can bring back their keybinds and costume data with zero change to the game code. if you didnt save yours too bad.it was part of the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 14, 2014, 10:36:13 PM
I'm absolutely convinced Blasters needed buffs.  Arbiter Hawk agreed, but he felt there were issues with many powers that happened to affect blasters, like nukes, and wanted to address them as well.  There were a lot of different changes all over the place because Arbiter Hawk got the green light to make many of these changes.  I was specifically discussing these changes with him for months right up to literally a day or two before the shutdown announcement.  They might seem random, but they were not.  They represented a significant shift in thinking, because a different dev was given permission to make sweeping changes across much of the power base (those changes still still needed to be approved, but AH's thought process was much different from Castle's, say, or Black Scorpions.

yes, blasters in particular were falling behind the other ATs.

It would be that shift in thinking that I was picking up on. My whole argument was based on my thoughts that there seemed to be such a shift.
Changes don't go on in a vacuum (except when talking about a game that does not currently exist :) ) so a shift in thinking would have affected the game. Without those who were running the game in place, anyone going forward with an I24 would have to be particularly aware of this... That's really my whole argument.

If there was a plan, does APR know of it and its details long term?.... that sounds like awful English, but I think it's correct.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 14, 2014, 10:39:09 PM
Regarding Issue 24.... Even if a Atlas Park Revived includes it, what does that mean? Storyline and lore, contacts, things like that are probably able to be added no problem. But everyone's talking about game mechanics changes, buffing this, buffing that, blasters are great now... But it's my understanding that APR will use a different engine from CoH anyways! Which means that all the combat powers are going to be starting from scratch anyways, right? Unless APR is somehow able to exactly copy the behavior of the CoH engine, it seems to me that most anything involving powers and their use, and hard numbers, is going to be built from square one again anyways. Or am I wrong?
Well the whole point to CoH 1.5 is to replicate the mechanics of CoH 1.0 at shutdown as closely as possible and iterate from there, much like the Devs had done since Issue 0. So the current plan is build 1.5 using the numbers and combat mechanics of Issue 24 and then continue from that point. So the changes to 1.5 are at the base software code and graphics engine level, gameplay will be kept the same as the original game as much as possible.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 14, 2014, 11:27:29 PM
I do not intend this to be a criticism on the abilities of the Legacy team or Atlas Park Revival team. This is probably the biggest rant outside of the vintage CoH posts regarding defenders.

I feel I must share some things about the turn of events regarding a deal that is NOT even completed yet. Fellow CoX players, there seems to be some rampant misinformation still swirling around.

First: The CoH Hail Mary / Legacy team initiated negotiations to buy the IP, intellectual property from NCSoft. The current understanding is that NCSoft countered by adding a binary copy of CoX I-23. There is NO indication that NCSoft has made any inclusion of the characters and CoX player data in the deal. For one, strictly speaking they legally cannot. The players in their agreement with NCSoft were afforded privacy in their agreement so NCSoft would not sell that data to third parties interested in soliciting the player base for MMO related marketing.

Second: Even if NCSoft were so inclined as to reinterpret the rules, and look the other way to bring player data to the deal, it is my opinion, the would want to do this in one big file transfer and not parcel out individual player legacy data requests. Finding individual player data records would be far more difficult than retrieving Lois Lerner's famous lost email. In terms of practicality, a Legacy player data request would be intriguing trying to make a connection from Legacy players via a master file sold to Legacy team of former CoH player data. NCSoft isn't going to individually fish out player data files, and the Legacy team isn't buying a huge player database which would be utilized fractionally for the Legacy population at a price I could only imagine.

Third: Just as surely as Statesman's character and story belong to NCSoft and that IP. Joe's Captain Underpants was never his to profit on. Joe could write fan-fiction on certain fan websites, but licenses for T-shirts, novels, songs, or movies with Captain Underpants are strictly against the user's player agreement with NCSoft. Those characters were NEVER yours, even realizing how much you enjoyed the experience with your previous characters. This is why Marvel sued NCSoft or Cryptic, not the players regarding the unlicensed likenesses of the eleventy-seven Wolverine inspired characters running around  belonged to CoH.

Fourth: I don't quite understand the intense feeling of entitlementd that folks are claiming over their level 50s. We as a community have lacked any CoH fix for almost 2 years. There is a chance and I mean IF the Legacy deal goes through, that we could play our characters from the creation to however long the servers last again. Isn't that what we originally enjoyed? Isn't playing I-23 or beta I-24 what we crave? All power to the Atlas Park Revival, but this clamor over what we may get in the Legacy deal is unwarranted.

[/rant]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 14, 2014, 11:29:21 PM
yes, blasters in particular were falling behind the other ATs.

It would be that shift in thinking that I was picking up on. My whole argument was based on my thoughts that there seemed to be such a shift.
Changes don't go on in a vacuum (except when talking about a game that does not currently exist :) ) so a shift in thinking would have affected the game. Without those who were running the game in place, anyone going forward with an I24 would have to be particularly aware of this... That's really my whole argument.

If there was a plan, does APR know of it and its details long term?.... that sounds like awful English, but I think it's correct.

I am betting that there will be contact with the devs if and when the deal goes through....probably some cool conversations aboit that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 14, 2014, 11:33:58 PM
First: The CoH Hail Mary / Legacy team initiated negotiations to buy the IP, intellectual property from NCSoft. The current understanding is that NCSoft countered by adding a binary copy of CoX I-23. There is NO indication that NCSoft has made any inclusion of the characters and CoX player data in the deal. For one, strictly speaking they legally cannot. The players in their agreement with NCSoft were afforded privacy in their agreement so NCSoft would not sell that data to third parties interested in soliciting the player base for MMO related marketing.

With regards to the user data, I cannot think of any scenario - when CoH was live or going forward - where this was not done without an opt in.  We certainly would not operate without one.

Second: Even if NCSoft were so inclined as to reinterpret the rules, and look the other way to bring player data to the deal, it is my opinion, the would want to do this in one big file transfer and not parcel out individual player legacy data requests. Finding individual player data records would be far more difficult than retrieving Lois Lerner's famous lost email.

Umm.  Short of the records no longer existing, I'm going have to disagree there.

Third: Just as surely as Statesman's character and story belong to NCSoft and that IP. Joe's Captain Underpants was never his to profit on. Joe could write fan-fiction on certain fan websites, but licenses for T-shirts, novels, songs, or movies with Captain Underpants are strictly against the user's player agreement with NCSoft. Those characters were NEVER yours, even realizing how much you enjoyed the experience with your previous characters. This is why Marvel sued NCSoft or Cryptic, not the players regarding the unlicensed likenesses of the eleventy-seven Wolverine inspired characters running around  belonged to CoH.

Not entirely certain what point you're looking to make here.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: halcyonforever on September 14, 2014, 11:45:27 PM
 .
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 14, 2014, 11:52:31 PM
I do not intend this to be a criticism on the abilities of the Legacy team or Atlas Park Revival team. This is probably the biggest rant outside of the vintage CoH posts regarding defenders.

I feel I must share some things about the turn of events regarding a deal that is NOT even completed yet. Fellow CoX players, there seems to be some rampant misinformation still swirling around...



Well said... but I really wanted a vintage Psylenz styled rant regarding defenders. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 15, 2014, 12:07:10 AM
1 transferring the client data in bulk to a different company would require consent. That would require a working account architecture for users to give it. Both not going to happen
2 it is explicitly mentioned that user data is not included
3. Pointing out the silliness of the users perceived ownership of their characters when making them in coh explicitly gave it away

This I24 rant is really getting far from reality.

:) you said it a lot shorter than I did.

Shard - I don't understand your point:  I cannot think of any scenario - when CoH was live or going forward - where this was not done without an opt in

My cheeky point about Lois Lerner's emails is that they DO exist and the player character data DOES exist but at what cost to the Legacy team to negotiate its release?

My point about characters is that Captain Underpants ALWAYS belonged to NCSoft never to Joe. How do you expect to get back what was never yours?

Are you agreeing with me or writing off my rant, Halcyonforever? This I24 rant is really getting far from reality.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 15, 2014, 12:49:18 AM
1 transferring the client data in bulk to a different company would require consent. That would require a working account architecture for users to give it. Both not going to happen

Would? Maybe.  I do not have recall of the terms and conditions of various iterations of the User Agreement particularly with how it pertains to the product being acquired if if licensing the executables conflicts with that.

3. Pointing out the silliness of the users perceived ownership of their characters when making them in coh explicitly gave it away

This seems to conflict on some levels of logic with the 1st category.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 15, 2014, 12:53:20 AM
Shard - I don't understand your point:  I cannot think of any scenario - when CoH was live or going forward - where this was not done without an opt in

It's pretty much face value.

My cheeky point about Lois Lerner's emails is that they DO exist and the player character data DOES exist but at what cost to the Legacy team to negotiate its release?

Is there a cat or isn't there?

My point about characters is that Captain Underpants ALWAYS belonged to NCSoft never to Joe. How do you expect to get back what was never yours?

As I said for the other fellow speaking for you - I cannot comment on the state of the various EULAs or their legal enforcability, but this kind of comment is a bit dickish.
Are you agreeing with me or writing off my rant, Halcyonforever? This I24 rant is really getting far from reality.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 15, 2014, 01:03:09 AM
I feel the need to make three point given some of the topics in the last 20-30 or so posts:

#1. Why is anybody actually fretting about what they're not going to have or what other people couldn't but hypothetically could have when we still don't even know if we're actually going to get to play COH ever again yet? Yes, there's room for optimism but there's no guarantees and if karma just happens to be spiteful, you're asking for it.

#2. The only way anyone's getting their level 50s back is if everybody gets their data back, which also is not going to !@#$ing happen. Speaking as somebody who was relatively late to the game, it's really not all that horrendously unfun to level your way through it. I restarted my favorite character on two different servers just so I could play with friends.

#3. The character creator is awesome. Why would anyone complain about having to reimagine old characters with it?

But the good news is: "Holy crap, we might actually get to play COH again!" So stop looking for !@#$ to complain about until we know what we have, because it might still be a two-year wait before we even get to play something remotely similar. I personally couldn't care less if I'm a level 1 in  a sea of level 50s. It didn't stop the game from being fun my first and last 100 or so times.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 15, 2014, 01:11:24 AM
It's pretty much face value.

what was not done without an opt in?

Quote
As I said for the other fellow speaking for you - I cannot comment on the state of the various EULAs or their legal enforcability, but this kind of comment is a bit dickish.

Dickish or not the TRUTH hurts! The characters were NEVER yours.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 15, 2014, 01:12:54 AM
I feel the need to make three point given some of the topics in the last 20-30 or so posts:

#1. Why is anybody actually fretting about what they're not going to have or what other people couldn't but hypothetically could have when we still don't even know if we're actually going to get to play COH ever again yet? Yes, there's room for optimism but there's no guarantees and if karma just happens to be spiteful, you're asking for it.

#2. The only way anyone's getting their level 50s back is if everybody gets their data back, which also is not going to !@#$ing happen. Speaking as somebody who was relatively late to the game, it's really not all that horrendously unfun to level your way through it. I restarted my favorite character on two different servers just so I could play with friends.

#3. The character creator is awesome. Why would anyone complain about having to reimagine old characters with it?

But the good news is: "Holy crap, we might actually get to play COH again!" So stop looking for !@#$ to complain about until we know what we have, because it might still be a two-year wait before we even get to play something remotely similar. I personally couldn't care less if I'm a level 1 in  a sea of level 50s. It didn't stop the game from being fun my first and last 100 or so times.

HERE HERE, exactly the spirit of my earlier posts
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 15, 2014, 01:23:54 AM

I don't quite understand the intense feeling of entitlement that folks are claiming over their level 50s. We as a community have lacked any CoH fix for almost 2 years. There is a chance and I mean IF the Legacy deal goes through, that we could play our characters from the creation to however long the servers last again. Isn't that what we originally enjoyed? Isn't playing I-23 or beta I-24 what we crave? All power to the Atlas Park Revival, but this clamor over what we may get in the Legacy deal is unwarranted.


First I think you need to correctly interpret the difference between desire and entitlement. There are people like myself who desire to have their character data restored if at all possible. Some like myself are willing to pay a fee if that actually helps offset the cost IF it were even available. Thats not entitlement..

There is also the issue that the servers COULD be shut down again.. that issue will need to be addressed. How long will maintenance mode last should it be acquired.. two years ?? four years ??

Is what you crave what I, or anyone else might crave.. not necessarily.. we all played City of Heroes.. but many for various different reasons and what you see as integral and important may not have the same meaning to another..

The clamor of what we may or many not get is certainly warranted because is the community and all its varying opinions, wants, needs and desires that make up the game... not simply the assets. Its the community that raised money for CoT for MWM to get the development tools they needed.. so the community has a right to express its opinion.. prayerfully in a respectful manner..

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scott Jackson on September 15, 2014, 01:27:31 AM
The EULA between NCSoft and the player did not make your original characters the property of NCSoft.  Instead, it granted NCSoft a perpetual license to use your characters (for marketing purposes and so forth), while you still kept the rights to use them elsewhere - such as in Champions Online or a movie.  Of course, you couldn't copy NCSoft's game assets (esp. costume pieces) into your movie or Champions, so you'd need to use CO's costumes when playing CO or the original artwork from your movie studio's graphics team to display your character in that movie.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/EULA/September_2011

Section 6, paragraph (b), second sentence and beyond applies to your original characters.  The first sentence applies to your non-original characters, such as a Statesman clone (which NCSoft owned but permitted you to use in-game) or "Wulverin3" with an X-Men costume (which they did not allow, due to Marvel's ownership).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 15, 2014, 01:34:21 AM
The EULA between NCSoft and the player did not make your original characters the property of NCSoft.  Instead, it granted NCSoft a perpetual license to use your characters (for marketing purposes and so forth), while you still kept the rights to use them elsewhere - such as in Champions Online or a movie.  Of course, you couldn't copy NCSoft's game assets (esp. costume pieces) into your movie or Champions, so you'd need to use CO's costumes when playing CO or the original artwork from your movie studio's graphics team to display your character in that movie.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/EULA/September_2011

Section 6, paragraph (b), second sentence and beyond applies to your original characters.  The first sentence applies to your non-original characters, such as a Statesman clone (which NCSoft owned but permitted you to use in-game) or "Wulverin3" with an X-Men costume (which they did not allow, due to Marvel's ownership).

This is surprising news to me, indeed. I stand corrected. Is that an MMO industry standard?

It doesn't change my mind that character data from vintage CoH would ever end up in CoH Legacy.

edit:

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/EULA/March_2004 (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/EULA/March_2004) does have notable differences, but I confess I am no lawyer
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 15, 2014, 01:41:53 AM
First I think you need to correctly interpret the difference between desire and entitlement. There are people like myself who desire to have their character data restored if at all possible. Some like myself are willing to pay a fee if that actually helps offset the cost IF it were even available. Thats not entitlement..

There is also the issue that the servers COULD be shut down again.. that issue will need to be addressed. How long will maintenance mode last should it be acquired.. two years ?? four years ??

Is what you crave what I, or anyone else might crave.. not necessarily.. we all played City of Heroes.. but many for various different reasons and what you see as integral and important may not have the same meaning to another..

The clamor of what we may or many not get is certainly warranted because is the community and all its varying opinions, wants, needs and desires that make up the game... not simply the assets. Its the community that raised money for CoT for MWM to get the development tools they needed.. so the community has a right to express its opinion.. prayerfully in a respectful manner..

Nobody raised money to get COH back. That it's even remotely possible is like the Avengers banding together by accident and involved a select group of individuals working very hard to pull it off. Hope springs eternal and certainly we'd all love to be able to just log in and start giving somebody money again with all our old stuff back, but so help me, if one ounce of this infectious community desire to get their old toys back subliminally pushes a negotiation over the edge because they asked for it at the worst possible time, then yes, I'm going to say it was because people felt entitled.

You can't do what has been done to bring this game back and on this particular topic, your money's no good here, so, everybody, please, zip it on the butthurt about the old data until we know whether we're for sure getting the game back in the first place. Don't even think about it until then.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 15, 2014, 01:44:11 AM

There is also the issue that the servers COULD be shut down again.. that issue will need to be addressed. How long will maintenance mode last should it be acquired.. two years ?? four years ??


In practical terms, it really only needs to last until until APR (CoH 1.5) comes online. There is no reason to run it beyond that as all the new content with be on APR. So no one will need the legacy server.


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ultimate15 on September 15, 2014, 01:46:24 AM
First I think you need to correctly interpret the difference between desire and entitlement. There are people like myself who desire to have their character data restored if at all possible. Some like myself are willing to pay a fee if that actually helps offset the cost IF it were even available. Thats not entitlement..

There is also the issue that the servers COULD be shut down again.. that issue will need to be addressed. How long will maintenance mode last should it be acquired.. two years ?? four years ??

Is what you crave what I, or anyone else might crave.. not necessarily.. we all played City of Heroes.. but many for various different reasons and what you see as integral and important may not have the same meaning to another..

The clamor of what we may or many not get is certainly warranted because is the community and all its varying opinions, wants, needs and desires that make up the game... not simply the assets. Its the community that raised money for CoT for MWM to get the development tools they needed.. so the community has a right to express its opinion.. prayerfully in a respectful manner..

I don't think pinballdave is trying to argue that people don't have a right to express their opinion - if you want to voice a 'wishlist' of some kind, then go for it. *shrugs* I think he was merely expressing his OWN opinion that people getting their knickers in a twist about wanting this or wanting that will in no way have ANY effect on what the deal will or will not finally come to with NCSoft, should they even decide to humor the APR & Legacy teams with their efforts. I think at this point, the team knows what would obviously be the ideal for the COH community- which, of course, would be all of us retaining our character and account information and starting back up right where we left off.

...But unfortunately, the chances of that becoming the reality of our situation is becoming less and less. It's looking like that will NOT be happening, unless some major changes are made through the deals and negotiations (which still could happen, of course). So if you want to voice your complaints and stick to your montra of "Well it won't be the same, this is unfair, I still hate NCSoft..." yadda yadda, then go for it. You have ever right to do that (and I'm not saying you're doing that specifically, HEATSTROKE). But the rest of us will remain patient and optimistic, continue to fight and be grateful, and see how the cards unfold knowing that the people behind these efforts are doing their best to get our game back.

Step 1: get the game back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 15, 2014, 01:51:58 AM
I don't think pinballdave is trying to argue that people don't have a right to express their opinion - if you want to voice a 'wishlist' of some kind, then go for it. *shrugs* I think he was merely expressing his OWN opinion that people getting their knickers in a twist about wanting this or wanting that will in no way have ANY effect on what the deal will or will not finally come to with NCSoft, should they even decide to humor the APR & Legacy teams with their efforts. I think at this point, the team knows what would obviously be the ideal for the COH community- which, of course, would be all of us retaining our character and account information and starting back up right where we left off.

...But unfortunately, the chances of that becoming the reality of our situation is becoming less and less. It's looking like that will NOT be happening, unless some major changes are made through the deals and negotiations (which still could happen, of course). So if you want to voice your complaints and stick to your montra of "Well it won't be the same, this is unfair, I still hate NCSoft..." yadda yadda, then go for it. You have ever right to do that (and I'm not saying you're doing that specifically, HEATSTROKE). But the rest of us will remain patient and optimistic, continue to fight and be grateful, and see how the cards unfold knowing that the people behind these efforts are doing their best to get our game back.

Step 1: get the game back.

Indeed I am optimistic, more than I was a month ago even. I think I did say in my rant "All power to Atlas Park Revival" that's where we can get the omissions, bells, and whistles. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 15, 2014, 01:52:01 AM
I can think of two obvious possible reasons for this.
One, the devs knew something was up and the game was getting close to closing. This would have been a push for new players to save the game.
Two, the devs were settling the game with an eye to the future issues. As in, they had something planned which would have included much harder content.

If they wanted to bring an influx of players they would have done it with new content. Bug fixes are only really exciting to current players because they're tired of dealing with said bugs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 15, 2014, 01:54:28 AM
If there was a plan, does APR know of it and its details long term?.... that sounds like awful English, but I think it's correct.

We know what anyone who read the Issue 24 patch notes, and the Loregasm AMA's knows.
Sadly, I don' t have any inside knowledge into what the Paragon Studios devs were thinking or planning.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 15, 2014, 01:56:01 AM
Indeed I am optimistic, more than I was a month ago even. I think I did say in my rant "All power to Atlas Park Revival" that's where we can get the omissions, bells, and whistles. :)

Bells, Whistles, increased Aggo Caps, and a Wombat Master AT.

NOTE: I might be lying.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 15, 2014, 01:56:04 AM
In practical terms, it really only needs to last until until APR (CoH 1.5) comes online. There is no reason to run it beyond that as all the new content with be on APR. So no one will need the legacy server.


We're almost there!   ;D

This brings me back to my concern.. I make new characters.. APR goes up.. if I cant switch them over.. then why build them up again on CoH Legacy ??
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 15, 2014, 01:59:40 AM
"Is there any chance we'll be able to move our characters from Legacy CoH to Revival?
It's something I plan on looking into. However, I can't make any promises at this time. We're not sure what technical limitations we might face with this."

We're not going to be handling the Legacy server, nor do I know for sure there wouldn't be any technical issues...So I can't make any promises. It is something I want to try and make happen however.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 15, 2014, 02:00:54 AM
Bells, Whistles, increased Aggo Caps, and a Wombat Master AT.

NOTE: I might be lying.

It's not nice to joke about Wombat Masters.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 15, 2014, 02:02:21 AM
This brings me back to my concern.. I make new characters.. APR goes up.. if I cant switch them over.. then why build them up again on CoH Legacy ??

For the chance to play again! And with a bit of hope that they will go over to 1.5. No reason to worry or feel futility, instead, just look forward with hope and be happy to play again!


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 15, 2014, 02:08:45 AM
I24 was essentially complete. It was on the test server for a month prior to the announcement. Positron has said it was a week away from release. The other powersets that are visable in ICON were not intended for I24.

And yes, it would created a DPS and survivability increase for ranged characters. That was the whole purpose, because they were significantly inferior to melee and control characters. And you are correct, they intended to up the difficulty of future content.

Hardly.  My blaster kicked ass like it was his career.  Different classes were good at different things.  Sure a stalker could kill an elite boss faster then me.  But I could kill the rest of the trash and groups in half the time it would take them to do it.  They were not inferior, if you wanted to play a single target character with naturally high defenses then you play a melee character.  If you want more AoE damage and to be the focused DPS.  Play a ranged character.  It is like that in every game.  My blaster could do anything a melee character or control character could do in CoH besides the obvious differences of I didn't use control powers and I didn't use my fists.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 15, 2014, 02:10:54 AM
For the chance to play again! And with a bit of hope that they will go over to 1.5. No reason to worry or feel futility, instead, just look forward with hope and be happy to play again!


We're almost there!   ;D

what he said..I just want to play...NAO!!!!!just joking..but they really need to expedite negotiations before my brains melt playing swtor
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 15, 2014, 02:13:30 AM
Hardly.  My blaster kicked ass like it was his career.  Different classes were good at different things.  Sure a stalker could kill an elite boss faster then me.  But I could kill the rest of the trash and groups in half the time it would take them to do it.  They were not inferior, if you wanted to play a single target character with naturally high defenses then you play a melee character.  If you want more AoE damage and to be the focused DPS.  Play a ranged character.  It is like that in every game.  My blaster could do anything a melee character could do in CoH.
the datamined numbers didnt agree with you. a scrapper could take on half of some maps by himself and not slow down...try that on a blaster and you better have wakies. yet they both had same job..DPS. your feeling doesnt make the math not true.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 15, 2014, 02:14:28 AM
the datamined numbers didnt agree with you. a scrapper could take on half of some maps by himself and not slow down...try that on a blaster and you better have wakies. yet they both had same job..DPS. your feeling doesnt make the math not true.

My blaster soloed on X8+2.  I could clear a whole map by my self too without slowing down.  And solo AV's, and Solo TF's.

Feeling has nothing to do with it.   I am going by experience.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 15, 2014, 02:20:59 AM
You can see it if you pull up icon beta and look around. (I don't think the icon mod actually put in damage amounts, but I could be wrong).

Bad example. Icon disables the in-game store availability checks for things that have been unlocked, so it shows a lot of WIP stuff that was not scheduled to go live with I24.

It seems to me that these "fixes" that were to be introduced in I24 were a bit odd. So many changes (that had been back burnered for years) in one issue?

Yeah, that was kind of the point.

I can think of two obvious possible reasons for this.
One, the devs knew something was up and the game was getting close to closing. This would have been a push for new players to save the game.
Two, the devs were settling the game with an eye to the future issues. As in, they had something planned which would have included much harder content.

Three, they were addressing long-standing disparity issues, many of which were created by melee power creep. As in, melee ATs have gotten many buffs over the years bringing their damage to substantially higher levels than originally possible, not to mention new and clearly overpowered sets like Titan Weapons and Shield Defense.

Ranged sets, on the other hand, were mostly ignored during the same time period and had not seen the same level of increase. When a Brute can do almost as much damage as a Blaster, and have personal defenses to do it much more safely, there's a problem.

Personally, I would have nerfed Brutes. However, the Paragon devs decided to buff Blasters instead, and the other ranged ATs as well to a lesser degree.

When you start looking at the numbers, there was a huuuge increase in DPS on the way for blasters, defenders and corrupters.
Did this "balance" need to take place for those ATs because they were so inferior to the melee and control characters? I'm not convinced of that.

You must not be looking at the same numbers I am. When I compare the I23 data to the I24 data, the only significant changes I see are:


That's about it for the shared changes. Blasters of course got some extra utility, survivability, and longevity added to their secondaries. That was also needed, as the design for blaster secondaries hadn't been touched since launch, and was massively outdated.

I was actually speaking specifically to the damage numbers of corrupters I can see in Icon Beta. They are out of whack with the blaster versions. As in dual pistol corrupter damage was higher than dual pistol blaster damage. That kind of thing.

I've seen you post this a few places, but I have no idea what you think you're seeing. As someone who was watching every patch as it came out to do detailed comparison against the previous in order to find any undocumented changes, if Corruptors had been significantly altered I think I would have noticed. Their attack set numbers were mostly untouched from I23 to I24, other than fixing Scourge damage in a couple places where it was calculated wrong.

If you're looking at the in-game power info "real numbers" displays, those have always been hit or miss for whether or not they work correctly. They tended to be a bit buggy and get confused by special mechanics like Swap Ammo or Corruptor Scourge. Check City of Data instead, it was loaded with the final I24 beta build shortly before the shutdown.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 15, 2014, 02:26:14 AM
Bells, Whistles, increased Aggo Caps, and a Wombat Master AT.

NOTE: I might be lying.

Joking or not, I would strongly caution against making arbitrary changes to core mechanics like aggro caps just because you think it might be "better" or have a personal opinion.

There's a reason that a lot of people liked playing CoH, a reason that even the original developers achieved by accident and didn't fully understand. The more you tinker, the more you risk accidentally removing that reason.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lapucelle on September 15, 2014, 02:32:52 AM
More press. It's gettin' back to where we need a "Thank the media" thread, again. :)

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/09/02/city-of-heroes-spiritual-successor-could-become-an-official-resurrection/?fb_action_ids=812603425445864&fb_action_types=og.likes

You know, that's a good idea. If you guys could collect all the CoH and CoT and APR news articles, I'd appreciate it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kierthos on September 15, 2014, 02:37:49 AM
I'll tell you, I wouldn't mind having access to the I24 power sets, especially Martial Combat for Blasters.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zubenelgenubi on September 15, 2014, 02:50:21 AM
Sentinel files are off the table, no one will be able to use them so it's not even an issue. No reason to argue or get upset about it.

Some of us with 8 years of time and energy invested in our badge characters may disagree that there's "no reason" to get upset about losing all of that. Just sayin'.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 15, 2014, 02:59:56 AM
what was not done without an opt in?

would not, not was not.

Dickish or not the TRUTH hurts! The characters were NEVER yours.

And you've legal qualifications to back up that interpretation of every version of the EULA in every jurisdiction on the globe then?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 15, 2014, 03:06:31 AM
Some of us with 8 years of time and energy invested in our badge characters may disagree that there's "no reason" to get upset about losing all of that. Just sayin'.

But who will you pissed at? The people bringing it back who couldn't get that data or the only people in a position to give it back who aren't going to for reasons that make a lot more sense than why they shuttered it in the first place?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 15, 2014, 03:14:18 AM
Some of us with 8 years of time and energy invested in our badge characters may disagree that there's "no reason" to get upset about losing all of that. Just sayin'.

It is all lost now. It's not on the table for negotiation. Yes, I want all my toons back, my bases, badges and loot, but the simple fact is that we are not likely to see any of it ever again.

So instead, look forward to getting the game back! Seriously, if loosing all your loot hurts so much that you don't wanna come back, well you don't have too. Bottom line is, getting upset isn't gonna help you any and may just make you bitter. Be happy that we are probably getting our game back, and if anything else comes along, it's gravy, but just don't expect or demand it.


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 15, 2014, 03:14:36 AM
I24 was essentially complete. It was on the test server for a month prior to the announcement. Positron has said it was a week away from release. The other powersets that are visable in ICON were not intended for I24.

And yes, it would created a DPS and survivability increase for ranged characters. That was the whole purpose, because they were significantly inferior to melee and control characters. And you are correct, they intended to up the difficulty of future content.

Really.. SIGNIFICANTLY inferior to Melee and Control...

So my PbAoE Rad/Fire Blaster that could EASILY (and did so often) Hold Doors on the BAF with NO help was inferior.. That same blaster made Spines Scrappers cry with the damage output he did AND could wade right into the middle of mobs and mow them down without taking a scratch???

Or My Elec/Elec Blaster than could drain and keep a mob on Zero end all day long forcing them to use their weakest possible attacks.. AND who has three single target holds so he could lock down any LT or Boss easily was inferior ??

Or my Fire/Mental Blaster that had Fire/Kins on mission ask me regularly.. what build IS that ??? Inferior AT" Hardly..

Inferior players on Blasters.... definitely..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 15, 2014, 03:22:38 AM
For one, strictly speaking they legally cannot. The players in their agreement with NCSoft were afforded privacy in their agreement so NCSoft would not sell that data to third parties interested in soliciting the player base for MMO related marketing.

Legal protection for privacy is not nearly as extensive as many people think. In fact, it's pretty damn near nonexistent outside of medical and education records.

I'd also like to remind everyone that Champions Online changed owners with all character data and most account information intact.  Twice.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 15, 2014, 03:22:44 AM
It is all lost now. It's not on the table for negotiation. Yes, I want all my toons back, my bases, badges and loot, but the simple fact is that we are not likely to see any of it ever again.

So instead, look forward to getting the game back! Seriously, if loosing all your loot hurts so much that you don't wanna come back, well you don't have too. Bottom line is, getting upset isn't gonna help you any and may just make you bitter. Be happy that we are probably getting our game back, and if anything else comes along, it's gravy, but just don't expect or demand it.


We're almost there!   ;D

Its not on the table NOW..but as someone who is negotiating some things in real life.. not on the table NOW doesnt necessarily mean forever..

And you can EXPECT anything you want to.. thats the problem.. people often expect little.. so they get little.. we are SO afraid of being let down or disappointed we are trained not to ask... not to expect.. and definitely dont hope.. because your hope may be let down..

I learned a LONG time ago.. You have not... because you ASK NOT..

Think about it.. at one time there was for many NO HOPE we would ever see City of Heroes return in any form or fashion.. We were told Nc Soft NEVER negotiates.. but now we have hope...

So people cant HOPE that somehow character data can be recovered... to that I say boulderdash...

hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things

So therefore.. I hope..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 15, 2014, 03:23:06 AM
It is all lost now. It's not on the table for negotiation. Yes, I want all my toons back, my bases, badges and loot, but the simple fact is that we are not likely to see any of it ever again.

So instead, look forward to getting the game back! Seriously, if loosing all your loot hurts so much that you don't wanna come back, well you don't have too. Bottom line is, getting upset isn't gonna help you any and may just make you bitter. Be happy that we are probably getting our game back, and if anything else comes along, it's gravy, but just don't expect or demand it.

You know, if we do ever get CoX back, my very first 50 was a katana scrapper, and I don't think a level went by where I didn't wish I had rolled broadsword.  Hey, now I can finally make Lemon Slice a broadsword scrapper without feeling like I'm behind all my family and friends in levels, haha.   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 15, 2014, 03:24:40 AM
Legal protection for privacy is not nearly as extensive as many people think. In fact, it's pretty damn near nonexistent outside of medical and education records.

I'd also like to remind everyone that Champions Online changed owners with all character data and most account information intact.  Twice.

True, but it was the same developers all through, and the game didn't go down and wind up in storage (as account/pmt/contact/email info became passe) for two years in between.   ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 15, 2014, 03:25:18 AM
the datamined numbers didnt agree with you. a scrapper could take on half of some maps by himself and not slow down...try that on a blaster and you better have wakies. yet they both had same job..DPS. your feeling doesnt make the math not true.

You go get any scrapper you want.. and Ill get my Rad/Fire blaster that plays 90% of the time in melee.. not only would you be shocked and amazed.. you might even be embarrassed...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 15, 2014, 03:27:46 AM
True, but it was the same developers all through, and the game didn't go down and wind up in storage (as account/pmt/contact/email info became passe) for two years in between.   ;)

I agree, but those are technical and/or administrative issues, not legal ones.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 15, 2014, 03:32:31 AM
You go get any scrapper you want.. and Ill get my Rad/Fire blaster that plays 90% of the time in melee.. not only would you be shocked and amazed.. you might even be embarrassed...

Anecdotal experiences of one person playing a specific powerset combo with (presumably) an expensive IO build do not make a good balance point for an entire AT.

I won't argue that some blaster combos could be very good in the hands of an experienced player. But only if you learned to work around things that players of other ATs didn't have to, and for not nearly as much of a damage lead as they used to have.

I bet a well built Elec/SD or a TW/Fire brute could give you a serious run for your money, and probably take on much larger groups while they're at it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 15, 2014, 03:40:22 AM
My blaster soloed on X8+2.  I could clear a whole map by my self too without slowing down.  And solo AV's, and Solo TF's.

Feeling has nothing to do with it.   I am going by experience.

the game wasnt balanced against fully IO'd toons. It was balanced against regular 50's with so's. And I watched fully IO'd scrappers doing the same x8+3 and x8+4 all the time. but with everyone at lvl 50 so build, blasters were way behind.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 15, 2014, 03:44:54 AM
Bells, Whistles, increased Aggo Caps, and a Wombat Master AT.

NOTE: I might be lying.
Wombat Master, eh? So a mix Wombat Armor (you cover yourself in wombats), Wombat Assault (you use wombats like a cestus and have a wombat firing cannon, and Wombat Summoning (you... uh... summon wombats. Obviously.)? Maybe even the Wombat Travel pool.  8)
Now that Matt's out of the picture you could also add Carnies/Clowns as a Mastermind set.  ;D

Oh, and while increased aggro caps could be interesting i'd hope they'd still be below the aggro caps of the first several years and that AoE caps would be increased proportionally. (Not that i minded having a friend herd about 25% of Crey's Folly into a seething mass.) ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 15, 2014, 03:45:57 AM
And I watched fully IO'd scrappers doing the same x8+3 and x8+4 all the time.

+4x8 was the gold standard for farming with IOd brutes, scrappers, and some controllers. The classes with high resists especially could reach ridiculous levels of survivability when also softcapped.

+2x8 is significantly easier and not even in the same league. Not bad for a blaster though.

(and I'm saying this as someone whose two favorite ATs were blasters and controllers. Melee types with half their powers being passive bored me to tears. Blasters could survive, but required much, much more skill and had to stop doing damage to do things like abuse LoS and the AI)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 15, 2014, 03:48:17 AM
You go get any scrapper you want.. and Ill get my Rad/Fire blaster that plays 90% of the time in melee.. not only would you be shocked and amazed.. you might even be embarrassed...

can you do it with so's?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 15, 2014, 03:58:52 AM
the game wasnt balanced against fully IO'd toons. It was balanced against regular 50's with so's. And I watched fully IO'd scrappers doing the same x8+3 and x8+4 all the time. but with everyone at lvl 50 so build, blasters were way behind.

Its true I could never get to +3 or +4 the way some scrappers could.  Perhaps the changes in I24 would have changed that.  And yes its true that even a top notch blaster fell behind a top notch scrapper.  But any character who didn't use IO's and sets and then complained that things were underpowered or out of balance is because they were using, in my opinion, unfinished characters.  The IO's and sets were given to us for a reason, they could drastically improve your character.  It's not the games fault or the slightly unbalanced mechanics of the game if you decide not to use the tools given to you.

I am not saying you had to IO or use sets to have fun before people say "Not all of us like to do that"

I am saying you can't expect to be on par with the people that do.  I found myself barely falling behind good scrappers.

I never played characters with SO's once IO's were out.  So I can't say how balanced or unbalanced the game play was for them.  I can however say, my blaster was one hell of a force to be reckoned with.  And I, subjectively speaking, never felt underpowered.  I personally felt the I24 changes would make him slighty overpowered.  (Not that I wasn't stoked for them)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tubbius on September 15, 2014, 04:03:43 AM
Going to keep hoping.  Truly and dearly want to see Tubbius gracing the platform of Atlas Park again in his Santa suit, ordering folks to do silly things in the middle of a costume contest. . . like this!

(https://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u25/Roderic_Cliche/screenshot_110430-23-53-14_zps428eda44.jpg) (http://s164.photobucket.com/user/Roderic_Cliche/media/screenshot_110430-23-53-14_zps428eda44.jpg.html)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 15, 2014, 04:12:40 AM
Its true I could never get to +3 or +4 the way some scrappers could.  Perhaps the changes in I24 would have changed that.  And yes its true that even a top notch blaster fell behind a top notch scrapper.  But any character who didn't use IO's and sets and then complained that things were underpowered or out of balance is because they were using, in my opinion, unfinished characters.  The IO's and sets were given to us for a reason, they could drastically improve your character.  It's not the games fault or the slightly unbalanced mechanics of the game if you decide not to use the tools given to you.

I am not saying you had to IO or use sets to have fun before people say "Not all of us like to do that"

I am saying you can't expect to be on par with the people that do.  I found myself barely falling behind good scrappers.

I never played characters with SO's once IO's were out.  So I can't say how balanced or unbalanced the game play was for them.  I can however say, my blaster was one hell of a force to be reckoned with.  And I, subjectively speaking, never felt underpowered.  I personally felt the I24 changes would make him slighty overpowered.  (Not that I wasn't stoked for them)
they had to make sure people could level up a toon. I had 34 50's that could farm stuff up for my lowbies...but I do remember being a lvl 4 energy/fire blaster and having some one open a trade window for me and give me 50k inf..It was like being given the keys to the city........
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 15, 2014, 04:18:19 AM
I've seen you post this a few places, but I have no idea what you think you're seeing. As someone who was watching every patch as it came out to do detailed comparison against the previous in order to find any undocumented changes, if Corruptors had been significantly altered I think I would have noticed. Their attack set numbers were mostly untouched from I23 to I24, other than fixing Scourge damage in a couple places where it was calculated wrong.

If you're looking at the in-game power info "real numbers" displays, those have always been hit or miss for whether or not they work correctly. They tended to be a bit buggy and get confused by special mechanics like Swap Ammo or Corruptor Scourge. Check City of Data instead, it was loaded with the final I24 beta build shortly before the shutdown.

Thanks for the response walker.

First let me say that most of my information comes from mids and from the information provided by things like Icon Beta. If the information is incorrect, then so be it. I was unaware that the formal numbers are provided through City of Data. I made an (probably silly) assumption that the damage values listed in Icon beta would be the numbers being played with in beta at the time of close. That's where I saw the corrupter damage changes.

You must not be looking at the same numbers I am. When I compare the I23 data to the I24 data, the only significant changes I see are:...

Looking specifically at the snipe change and doing a simple single target attack chain for psi blast for defenders (so I could simulate high recharge without doing a full build) using only SOs and a rech of 120%:
Pre I14 changes you get a single target rotation of (Mental Blast + Subdue + Will Dom + TK blast) with a dps of 88.53.
Using a fast snipe in the rotation you get 130.75 dps (TK +WD + Psi Lance + Subdue).
While you can do things like add considerably more rech and tighten the chain, this still represents a significant increase in single target damage (~48%)
The same should hold true for blasters and corrupters if they can achieve perma-snipe. This makes the value much more than no longer useless.

Crashless nukes just add to the overall aoe damage and I wouldn't really try to determine how much.

It was really the totality of the changes and some of the numbers I could see from icon beta that gave me pause as to the whole of I24 and it's readiness. 

Three, they were addressing long-standing disparity issues, many of which were created by melee power creep. As in, melee ATs have gotten many buffs over the years bringing their damage to substantially higher levels than originally possible, not to mention new and clearly overpowered sets like Titan Weapons and Shield Defense.

As for melee power creep, the I24 ranged changes just provides more scope creep as a whole. This is why I was thinking that the reason would have been one or both of those I provided and not necessarily just to redress past grievances.


I'm also only just becoming aware of how much information some of you were given by the company or was shared by development.

I just played the game. :)


Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 15, 2014, 04:22:34 AM
(and I'm saying this as someone whose two favorite ATs were blasters and controllers. Melee types with half their powers being passive bored me to tears. Blasters could survive, but required much, much more skill and had to stop doing damage to do things like abuse LoS and the AI)

One of the reasons I loved PB's so much.  It just wasn't a case of just pressing 1-2-3-4 repetitively... You had to actually PLAY the char, shift tactics constantly, adjust your role as the situation demanded.  It actually took skill and concentration.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 15, 2014, 04:28:11 AM
One of the reasons I loved PB's so much.  It just wasn't a case of just pressing 1-2-3-4 repetitively... You had to actually PLAY the char, shift tactics constantly, adjust your role as the situation demanded.  It actually took skill and concentration.

Bah! skill's overrated and concentra... what was I talking about?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 15, 2014, 04:33:15 AM
My blaster soloed on X8+2.  I could clear a whole map by my self too without slowing down.  And solo AV's, and Solo TF's.

Feeling has nothing to do with it.   I am going by experience.

You go get any scrapper you want.. and Ill get my Rad/Fire blaster that plays 90% of the time in melee.. not only would you be shocked and amazed.. you might even be embarrassed...

Lots of players had these anecdotes.  They are all but irrelevant to the issue of game balance.  Fascinating and entertaining they might be to other players and the devs, they played exactly zero role in creating or balancing powersets or critter capabilities.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 15, 2014, 04:38:56 AM
This is surprising news to me, indeed. I stand corrected. Is that an MMO industry standard?

Its more an issue of US copyright law.  US copyright law does not allow someone to assert authorship rights over something you make, except in only a few very specific circumstances, the largest of which is work for hire (where I hire you to make something for me, and demand the copyright of that work be assigned to me as a part of contracting that work).  Its illegal for someone to attempt to assert blanket ownership of any work you make otherwise, so MMO operators in the US cannot really say "we own your characters."  It would be an illegal, and therefore unenforceable contract.  They can, however, demand an unlimited non-exclusive license for them to use your work and sublicense it in any way they see fit.  That grants them all the effective rights of ownership except preventing you from using the work in other settings.  However, MMO operators do not grant you a similar license, so while you may own your character in the US by virtue of the "copyright on birth" doctrine, you do not own the specific graphics textures that make up your costume nor any of the copyright IP you might mention in a backstory, like Galaxy City or the Crey Corporation. 

That severely limits what of your character you could use in other settings.  You could remake your character's appearance using different art assets and rewrite its backstory eliminating all references to City of Heroes IP but keeping the basic concepts.  But while NCSoft can use your stuff, you can't use theirs (without a license).

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 15, 2014, 04:58:00 AM
I personally felt the I24 changes would make him slighty overpowered.  (Not that I wasn't stoked for them)

There was no time in the existence of the game that any archetype wasn't overpowered relative to the game's balance standard for players with sufficient dedication to maximal slotting and optimal gameplay.

The game wasn't designed to be balanced around maximal slotting and optimal gameplay.  It was designed around the median player performance, as determined by watching all the players who played the game and measuring their median performance.  Under that metric, there was never a single moment in the existence of the game where blasters as an archetype were not severely underperforming all other archetypes.  We're talking 25%-50% underperformance.

That's not 25%-50% under the other archetypes.  That's 25%-50% under the median performance: many archetypes were over the median performance, which made the gap between blasters and the higher performing archetypes (i.e. scrappers) higher than that.  The single largest contributor to this underperformance was that blasters were dying at a far higher rate than all other archetypes.  Solo, teamed, low level, intermediate level, high level, max level.  In all types of content.  The numbers say that if you think you were doing well on a blaster, there were ten players doing just as well on every other archetype and a hundred players doing vastly worse on blasters.  If you didn't see this, your experience was not representative of the playerbase as a whole.

The truth is, nobody cares about min/maxers or the power gaming elite, nor should they.  The developers didn't need to care about us.  We could always excel under any circumstances.  The devs cared about the typical player, because those were the ones that kept the lights on.  They represented the bulk of the players, the bulk of the playing time, and the bulk of the subscription revenue.  They needed the game to present a roughly level playing field to them, and that's ultimately where the devs spent most of their energy.  And I would have eviscerated them if they hadn't.

My calculations suggested that in broad strokes, I24 blasters when played by the average player would probably be in the general vicinity of I23 median performance in solo play during leveling conditions.  Slightly under on average, but close enough.  My worry was that the collateral buffs on archetypes like defenders and corruptors would increase the median performance enough to where blasters would fall below the median again.  But I think at least for the average player, blasters would start to become competitive with scrappers as offensively focused characters.

The people already farming +2x8 with blasters?  The I24 buffs would have less of an impact on them relative to average players in most cases, because those players were already reaching saturation levels of power that small to moderate buffs have more difficulty improving.  And if they did, small price to pay to improve things for the other 95% of players.  The same thing happened with the invention system.  It let the 5% become far more powerful, but it also lifted most of the other 95% to moderate levels of performance far more consistent with the newer balance standard for players post-I5 (particularly when it came to soloing).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 15, 2014, 05:01:34 AM
Its more an issue of US copyright law.  US copyright law does not allow someone to assert authorship rights over something you make, except in only a few very specific circumstances, the largest of which is work for hire (where I hire you to make something for me, and demand the copyright of that work be assigned to me as a part of contracting that work).  Its illegal for someone to attempt to assert blanket ownership of any work you make otherwise, so MMO operators in the US cannot really say "we own your characters."  It would be an illegal, and therefore unenforceable contract.
i thought i recalled the EULA for DCU Online saying they get sole ownership of any characters/creative works you use in their game or forums to the extent that you own it. Basically you automatically transfer all rights to DC/Sony by using it in the game or forums. It might not be technically legal, much like other companies' non-disparagement clauses, but frequently having lawyers trumps being in the right if the person in the right can't afford a protracted legal battle.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 15, 2014, 05:02:43 AM
As for melee power creep, the I24 ranged changes just provides more scope creep as a whole. This is why I was thinking that the reason would have been one or both of those I provided and not necessarily just to redress past grievances.

The largest melee buff in the history of the game didn't even directly come from the powers team.  It came when BaB decided to streamline and improve the animations for most of the melee attacks.  In a few cases they got slightly slower (specifically, the hyperfast punches).  In most cases the got significantly faster.  Average DPA in some cases increased by 30% (most notoriously with Claws, although that was part of more general rebalancing of the set).  There was very little discussion on the forums about how much better the melee sets got, but I noticed.  One interesting area where ranged sets underperformed melee sets - on average they were significantly slower to activate relative to damage.  Average DPA, in other words, was far lower.

I bet most players would also be surprised as to which archetypes - melee focused or ranged focused - actually had more overall AoE potential.  Hint: not the one that included Blaster primaries.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 15, 2014, 05:04:07 AM
i thought i recalled the EULA for DCU Online saying they get sole ownership of any characters/creative works you use in their game or forums to the extent that you own it. Basically you automatically transfer all rights to DC/Sony by using it in the game or forums. It might not be technically legal, much like other companies' non-disparagement clauses, but frequently having lawyers trumps being in the right if the person in the right can't afford a protracted legal battle.

The NCSoft EULA said that as well.  And then a few lines later, it said that to the extent that was not legal, you agree to provide them with a non-exclusive unlimited license.  So in the US, they have a license to your work.  In any country where copyright law allows direct assignment of ownership, they own your stuff.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 15, 2014, 05:12:34 AM
Now that Matt's out of the picture you could also add Carnies/Clowns as a Mastermind set.  ;D

I never quite understood the vehement opposition to this MM set. Okay, I could see where an entire Clown summoning MMAT could be repetitive, but if you added some variety into it- a circus set, with clowns, a cannonball guy, some trapeze artists, maybe even a tiny elephant- it needn't be so limiting.  ;D

Speaking of- that's one thing I wish they had done with the MM sets- make existing villain groups selectable as your pets. A Skulls set, for example.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 15, 2014, 05:16:15 AM
I always wanted a Clowns MM set. Can you imagine anything more evil?

When summoned they could all drive up in one little car and climb out one at a time.
Squirting acid flower attack. Confetti bucket confuse attack. One of the little red rubber bulb brass horns used in a sonic attack. Giant mallet. Little ankle biting dogs, it all works!

Just too much fun to be had!

Edited to add schtuff!



We're almost there!    ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mental Minister on September 15, 2014, 05:36:54 AM
I always wanted a Clowns MM set. Can you imagine anything more evil?

I always wanted assault rifle control power for troller and doms. Kinda like the spec ops pets for Masterminds.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on September 15, 2014, 05:54:11 AM
I always wanted a Clowns MM set. Can you imagine anything more evil?

When summoned they could all drive up in one little car and climb out one at a time.
Squirting acid flower attack. Confetti bucket confuse attack. One of the little red rubber bulb brass horns used in a sonic attack. Giant mallet. Little ankle biting dogs, it all works!

Just too much fun to be had!

Edited to add schtuff!

We're almost there!    ;D

I had made a villain clown not long before the end.  "All clowns are evil.  Some more so than others."

This would be great.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Techbot Alpha on September 15, 2014, 06:35:23 AM
One thing I have to admit that I've really missed; posts by Arcana.

There's just something reassuringly solid about them. Like you could throw them and use them to take down a charging bull rhino with their weight. And I mean that in a good way!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 15, 2014, 06:47:25 AM
One thing I have to admit that I've really missed; posts by Arcana.

There's just something reassuringly solid about them. Like you could throw them and use them to take down a charging bull rhino with their weight. And I mean that in a good way!

I concur, always good reading.


We're almost there!   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: archaist on September 15, 2014, 07:44:07 AM
+4x8 was the gold standard for farming with IOd brutes, scrappers, and some controllers. The classes with high resists especially could reach ridiculous levels of survivability when also softcapped.

+2x8 is significantly easier and not even in the same league. Not bad for a blaster though.

(and I'm saying this as someone whose two favorite ATs were blasters and controllers. Melee types with half their powers being passive bored me to tears. Blasters could survive, but required much, much more skill and had to stop doing damage to do things like abuse LoS and the AI)

Hi everyone! I've been a long time lurker on the forums for a few months now, and with all the talk of farming and the balance of blasters I thought I would give my 2 cents about the subject. Not that it means that much xD   

Back in the game I was a major farmer, it was practically all I did. I loved to deck out a character in full purples and farm with it, earning the money for the next farmer I would make, that's how I played CoH - LOL. And I played everything: spine/reg, fire/kin, el/shield, I even learned the ws and had pretty fast clear speeds with him, etc. Most heroes need to reach the softcaps and perma hasten and the accolades were a must for farm speed. I also loved to take peoples mid builds and compare/improve to make mine numerically better until I found the best possible build for farming(Changes to IO sets were a nightmare). However, my fav was always my arch/mm. Everything really needed to be on the +4x8 standard, like codewalker mentioned, and my arch/mm was really the only blaster I had that didn't struggle on this difficulty. While my other ATs could clear pretty easy, even the ws, blasters just in general felt weak in moving from one mob to another because of the lack on single target dps after you had taken out the easier peons.

TL;DR Blasters Single target dmg in the +4x8 mode was lack luster in comparison to other farming ATs.

Sorry for the convoluted post, just the topic that I miss the most about CoH!
We're almost there!   ;D
 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lupur on September 15, 2014, 08:30:32 AM
re: Farming

Err.. I played part-time since CoV and full time once GR came out. ( V1GIL4NT3 4 LYF!! )

The only farming I ever took part in was to lvl up my toons for either proof of concept or re-building ( I may or may not have squealed like a little girl when I read the notes about //Reg being ported to Brutes ).

...

Oh, and also the Rikti Monkeys for the badge.. and the Nemesisses ...

The lure of the shiny compels you!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 15, 2014, 08:33:49 AM
You know, if we do ever get CoX back, my very first 50 was a katana scrapper, and I don't think a level went by where I didn't wish I had rolled broadsword.  Hey, now I can finally make Lemon Slice a broadsword scrapper without feeling like I'm behind all my family and friends in levels, haha.   ;D

Ah....thank you actually. I had a broadsword/elec stalker who I had a ton of fun with in spite of her major drawbacks ("Whaddaya mean the Volt Suit doesn't hide the scraping sound?!") but I always wondered if there was something wrong with me that I liked her just fine as broadsword vs katana after having played both. She'd started life as a scrapper, I just for the life of me never got the hang of scrappers, and when hubby wanted to pair a toon...rerolled her stalker. Ridiculously fun.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 15, 2014, 08:44:35 AM
There's just something reassuringly solid about them. Like you could throw them and use them to take down a charging bull rhino with their weight. And I mean that in a good way!

There's a bad way?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Prism Almidu on September 15, 2014, 09:12:06 AM

Err.. I played part-time since CoV and full time once GR came out. ( V1GIL4NT3 4 LYF!! )


That alignment pretty much does fit Terezi, doesn't it? Playing around in Icon I recently made a couple attempts at John and Gamzee outfits... a shame there's no zodiac chest symbols, but I made do... if I knew how to insert images, I'd share, but I have little experience with forums of any kind.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Iron-Emerald on September 15, 2014, 09:39:41 AM
I loved playing my energy/energy blaster and could handle most solo content fine in either standard blasting or blapper mode. One of my most enjoyable memories was a scrapper asking me to help fight an AV in Dark Astoria where I ended up tanking and walloping the AV. (Less impressive than it sounds since I had 3 incarnate level shifts and the scrapper had I think 1.) It really was a fun challenge to work out the best way to cope with different opponents and it felt really fulfilling to finally get a strong build together at level 50 and to feel genuinely tough.

But I was flabbergasted when I got my dark melee / invulnerable scrapper up to higher levels. My blaster was the only high level character I had at the time, and while I could handle the content solo at least it took quite a while going through the 40's since I had to play carefully when the situation demanded it and couldn't crank the difficulty up too much. My scrapper on the other hand just powered through the 40's and got the last two levels street sweeping in Dark Astoria. I remember feeling stunned at how easy it was compared to going through the same content with my blaster. And once my level 50 build was together the scrapper was crazy tough against most opponents. I felt comparatively overpowered, but it was great fun playing +4/x8 and wading into groups to do my 'scrapper nuke'. (Soul Drain + Spring Attack + Dark Consumption + Shadow Maul)

Weirdly I thought the scrapper was underpowered for ages after spending a lot of the 20's fighting circle ghosts...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Clave Dark 5 on September 15, 2014, 11:07:21 AM
There's a bad way?

I've seen forum posters make comments that are so dense they could be used to kill a charging bull rhino with, so yes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 15, 2014, 12:42:15 PM
Lots of players had these anecdotes.  They are all but irrelevant to the issue of game balance.  Fascinating and entertaining they might be to other players and the devs, they played exactly zero role in creating or balancing powersets or critter capabilities.

I wasnt referring to game balance.. I was referring to capabilities..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 15, 2014, 01:06:47 PM
There's a bad way?

Rhino poaching is very bad
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 15, 2014, 01:09:37 PM
Bells, Whistles, increased Aggo Caps, and a Wombat Master AT.

NOTE: I might be lying.

"I am Wombatman..."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 15, 2014, 01:19:51 PM
"I am Wombatman..."

Remember Wombats are marsupials, so the females have that special pouch. You know for weapon concealment and stuff
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 15, 2014, 01:25:48 PM
There was no time in the existence of the game that any archetype wasn't overpowered relative to the game's balance standard for players with sufficient dedication to maximal slotting and optimal gameplay.

The game wasn't designed to be balanced around maximal slotting and optimal gameplay.  It was designed around the median player performance, as determined by watching all the players who played the game and measuring their median performance.  Under that metric, there was never a single moment in the existence of the game where blasters as an archetype were not severely underperforming all other archetypes.  We're talking 25%-50% underperformance.

That's not 25%-50% under the other archetypes.  That's 25%-50% under the median performance: many archetypes were over the median performance, which made the gap between blasters and the higher performing archetypes (i.e. scrappers) higher than that.  The single largest contributor to this underperformance was that blasters were dying at a far higher rate than all other archetypes.  Solo, teamed, low level, intermediate level, high level, max level.  In all types of content.  The numbers say that if you think you were doing well on a blaster, there were ten players doing just as well on every other archetype and a hundred players doing vastly worse on blasters.  If you didn't see this, your experience was not representative of the playerbase as a whole.

The truth is, nobody cares about min/maxers or the power gaming elite, nor should they.  The developers didn't need to care about us.  We could always excel under any circumstances.  The devs cared about the typical player, because those were the ones that kept the lights on.  They represented the bulk of the players, the bulk of the playing time, and the bulk of the subscription revenue.  They needed the game to present a roughly level playing field to them, and that's ultimately where the devs spent most of their energy.  And I would have eviscerated them if they hadn't.

My calculations suggested that in broad strokes, I24 blasters when played by the average player would probably be in the general vicinity of I23 median performance in solo play during leveling conditions.  Slightly under on average, but close enough.  My worry was that the collateral buffs on archetypes like defenders and corruptors would increase the median performance enough to where blasters would fall below the median again.  But I think at least for the average player, blasters would start to become competitive with scrappers as offensively focused characters.

The people already farming +2x8 with blasters?  The I24 buffs would have less of an impact on them relative to average players in most cases, because those players were already reaching saturation levels of power that small to moderate buffs have more difficulty improving.  And if they did, small price to pay to improve things for the other 95% of players.  The same thing happened with the invention system.  It let the 5% become far more powerful, but it also lifted most of the other 95% to moderate levels of performance far more consistent with the newer balance standard for players post-I5 (particularly when it came to soloing).

Quoted, just because....yeah.

This post is like eating a full meal while every other post is like a light danish--sweet, tastes good, but doesn't fill you up. ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 15, 2014, 03:00:52 PM
and my arch/mm was really the only blaster I had that didn't struggle on this difficulty.

Funny you should mention that, because I almost threw out arch/mm as an example of the top end of blasters that could be quite competitive with other ATs on SOs alone, when most other blaster set combinations could not.

In fact, MM and the dynamics with Drain Psyche are a big part of what inspired the "sustain" mechanic that was added to the other secondaries. MM itself was not touched because it was already considered okay, and even a bit OP due to how high you could stack the +Regen when target saturated. If MM had been included in the balance pass, that would have had to be nerfed, and they didn't want to do that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on September 15, 2014, 03:05:31 PM
My first character was an Electric/Electric Blaster.  Regardless of what powers I took and how I slotted him (and even after I finally managed to get him to 50+1 - the game closed before I could get him any further), he was the weakest character I had, in terms of both damage output and survivability.  Even playing him on the Beta server for a while (which included a respec to give him powers from Sorcery) was only a marginal improvement.  He could barely handle x1/+0, and by the end I had him at x1/-1 (with Bosses turned off).

And, again, it's not like he was on SOs.  I had loads of IO sets, and my main attacks were all six-slotted.  I had, at some points, Tough and Weave and Charged Armor.  But nothing helped.  He was weak and fragile regardless of what I did.  He was so terrible that I never made another Blaster ever again.

So maybe one purpled-out Rad/Fire was decent, but I don't think that it means Blasters as a whole were decent.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 15, 2014, 05:16:03 PM
My first character was an Electric/Electric Blaster.  Regardless of what powers I took and how I slotted him (and even after I finally managed to get him to 50+1 - the game closed before I could get him any further), he was the weakest character I had, in terms of both damage output and survivability.  Even playing him on the Beta server for a while (which included a respec to give him powers from Sorcery) was only a marginal improvement.  He could barely handle x1/+0, and by the end I had him at x1/-1 (with Bosses turned off).

And, again, it's not like he was on SOs.  I had loads of IO sets, and my main attacks were all six-slotted.  I had, at some points, Tough and Weave and Charged Armor.  But nothing helped.  He was weak and fragile regardless of what I did.  He was so terrible that I never made another Blaster ever again.

So maybe one purpled-out Rad/Fire was decent, but I don't think that it means Blasters as a whole were decent.

I played an elec/nrg on infinity and an elec/elec on freedom as my first toons to 50. No knockback at range and less aggro than fire. Short circuit, power sink and power boost turned most mobs into statues.

Solo? Power thrust and stuns on the elec/nrg and holds on the elec/elec backed up by power sinks drain and tesla cages 100 percent recovery stoppage.

And no issues at +1, x3ish, but I wasn't set up for soft capped defense. I'd often go with no bosses just to kill faster for drops (even though my firex3 dom, fire/kin controller and elecx3 brute did it better).

If you're looking to take on elite bosses and swarms of Cimerorans... Drains cut through their annoying resistantences. Just remember - you're not a meatshield. My elec/nrg had 1606 hp, nice regen and a number of all around set bonuses but still wouldn't run around on my own in task forces.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 15, 2014, 05:16:31 PM
The EULA between NCSoft and the player did not make your original characters the property of NCSoft.  Instead, it granted NCSoft a perpetual license to use your characters (for marketing purposes and so forth), while you still kept the rights to use them elsewhere - such as in Champions Online or a movie.  Of course, you couldn't copy NCSoft's game assets (esp. costume pieces) into your movie or Champions, so you'd need to use CO's costumes when playing CO or the original artwork from your movie studio's graphics team to display your character in that movie.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/EULA/September_2011

Section 6, paragraph (b), second sentence and beyond applies to your original characters.  The first sentence applies to your non-original characters, such as a Statesman clone (which NCSoft owned but permitted you to use in-game) or "Wulverin3" with an X-Men costume (which they did not allow, due to Marvel's ownership).

FYI, the section is here:

Quote from: Aforementioned EULA on Paragon Wiki
6. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

    (a) You acknowledge, and further agree, that You have no IP right related to any Service, Content, Software, or any combination of the foregoing or parts thereof except the limited license provided in Section 2 above.

    (b) You acknowledge, and further agree, that You have no IP right related to any Account ID, any NCsoft Message Board ID, any communication or information on any NCsoft Message Board provided by You or anyone else, any information, feedback or communication related to the Game, any Character ID or characteristics related to a Character ID, any combination of the foregoing or parts thereof, or any combination of the foregoing with any Service, Content, Software, or parts thereof. To the extent You may claim any such IP right(s), You hereby grant NCsoft a worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, sub-licensable, perpetual and irrevocable license and full authorization to exercise all rights of any kind or nature associated with such IP right(s), and all ancillary and subsidiary rights thereto, in any languages and media now known or not currently known. Your license to NCsoft includes, but is not limited to, all necessary trademark licenses, all copyright licenses needed to reproduce, display, publicly perform, distribute and prepare derivative works of any such IP right, and all patent licenses needed to make, have made or otherwise transfer, use, offer to sell, sell, export and import related to such IP right(s). In addition to the provisions of Section 13 below, You further agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless NCsoft with respect to any claim by third-parties that any such license to any such IP right(s) misappropriates, violates or infringes any third-party IP right or other proprietary right.

My favorite part is the "any languages and media now known or not currently known"... I love the idea of a future language being created, or an ancient language being discovered, and NCsoft saying "we can license your hero in that language!"

I would say that this paragraph is pretty darn vague. But Mercedes Lackey et al. did use characters created in CoH as characters in a wholly unrelated universe, which they were able to do as I recall by setting the universe in a way completely unrelated to CoH. Yes, they were super powered people who had the same names and personalities, but that was sort of it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: SemanticAntics on September 15, 2014, 05:57:15 PM
The game wasn't designed to be balanced around maximal slotting and optimal gameplay.  It was designed around the median player performance, as determined by watching all the players who played the game and measuring their median performance.  Under that metric, there was never a single moment in the existence of the game where blasters as an archetype were not severely underperforming all other archetypes.  We're talking 25%-50% underperformance.

That's not 25%-50% under the other archetypes.  That's 25%-50% under the median performance: many archetypes were over the median performance, which made the gap between blasters and the higher performing archetypes (i.e. scrappers) higher than that.  The single largest contributor to this underperformance was that blasters were dying at a far higher rate than all other archetypes.  Solo, teamed, low level, intermediate level, high level, max level.  In all types of content.  The numbers say that if you think you were doing well on a blaster, there were ten players doing just as well on every other archetype and a hundred players doing vastly worse on blasters.  If you didn't see this, your experience was not representative of the playerbase as a whole.

This makes me feel a lot better at my many, many failed attempts at playing a Blaster. I just couldn't ever get them off the ground.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 15, 2014, 06:08:57 PM
+4x8 was the gold standard for farming with IOd brutes, scrappers, and some controllers. The classes with high resists especially could reach ridiculous levels of survivability when also softcapped.

+2x8 is significantly easier and not even in the same league. Not bad for a blaster though.

(and I'm saying this as someone whose two favorite ATs were blasters and controllers. Melee types with half their powers being passive bored me to tears. Blasters could survive, but required much, much more skill and had to stop doing damage to do things like abuse LoS and the AI)

Except Sonic/Ice blasters. Sleeps, holds, slows, knockdown and knockbacks made this a breeze (pun intended) to play. I would slap a double sleep on them blast them off their feet slap snowstorm on them to make them crawl, sleep them again and repeat. Not always the fastest but easily the safest blaster.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on September 15, 2014, 06:27:36 PM
This makes me feel a lot better at my many, many failed attempts at playing a Blaster. I just couldn't ever get them off the ground.

I sort of went with it by creating Captain Incompetent, an electric blaster.  When he would faceplant I'd start commenting on the floor.  "This tastes like Johnson's Wax!" or "I do believe this is Scotchgard carpet!"  Sometimes its fun to embrace the suck.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 15, 2014, 06:42:43 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 15, 2014, 06:43:13 PM
I sort of went with it by creating Captain Incompetent, an electric blaster.  When he would faceplant I'd start commenting on the floor.  "This tastes like Johnson's Wax!" or "I do believe this is Scotchgard carpet!"  Sometimes its fun to embrace the suck.

I really wanted to sometime make a redshirt character in city of heroes(making a redshirt in star trek online would be pointless), who died every mission after making some comment that usually preceded a quick cannon-fodder death.  Especially when someone had vengeance.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 15, 2014, 06:45:27 PM
I sort of went with it by creating Captain Incompetent, an electric blaster.  When he would faceplant I'd start commenting on the floor.  "This tastes like Johnson's Wax!" or "I do believe this is Scotchgard carpet!"  Sometimes its fun to embrace the suck.

On more than one occasion I suggested, not entirely jokingly, that Soul Transfer should be the Blaster inherent.  Would have made playing blasters a lot more fun for a lot more people I think.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: skoogmik on September 15, 2014, 07:00:28 PM
Hey guys,

Have you seen the latest from Angelus Animi?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBTWXcAsMHo
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on September 15, 2014, 07:24:18 PM
My first character was an Electric/Electric Blaster.  Regardless of what powers I took and how I slotted him (and even after I finally managed to get him to 50+1 - the game closed before I could get him any further), he was the weakest character I had, in terms of both damage output and survivability.  Even playing him on the Beta server for a while (which included a respec to give him powers from Sorcery) was only a marginal improvement.  He could barely handle x1/+0, and by the end I had him at x1/-1 (with Bosses turned off).

And, again, it's not like he was on SOs.  I had loads of IO sets, and my main attacks were all six-slotted.  I had, at some points, Tough and Weave and Charged Armor.  But nothing helped.  He was weak and fragile regardless of what I did.  He was so terrible that I never made another Blaster ever again.

So maybe one purpled-out Rad/Fire was decent, but I don't think that it means Blasters as a whole were decent.
Although I don't disagree with your sentiment, not being able to handle x1/+0 on a 50+1 IO'd Elec^3 Blaster (after the I24 buffs) is...kinda bad.  I always felt weak on my Elec^3, but I could certainly handle more than x1/+0 (I never got the chance to try him on I24 Beta :'().
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on September 15, 2014, 07:30:10 PM

There's a reason that a lot of people liked playing CoH, a reason that even the original developers achieved by accident and didn't fully understand. The more you tinker, the more you risk accidentally removing that reason.

Words of wisdom.

The 'lightning in a bottle' captured nature of CoH's original development is true.  So much so, Cryptic couldn't replicate the 'Golden Goose' with Champions.

The gods had spoken.

Azrael.

PS.  As for blasters...a water blaster was sheer poetry.  No end drop novas...rinse and repeat fast recharge...and water corkscrew healing DoT?

*Be still his heart...*a flutter.

...now all we needed was those insta snipes...and revisions to all the other blaster sets...

...imagine having deflection or insulation shields as epic choices?

No you say?

Only like the charmed lives Scrappers had...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 15, 2014, 07:31:12 PM
Hey guys,

Have you seen the latest from Angelus Animi?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBTWXcAsMHo

Niiiiiiiice!  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on September 15, 2014, 07:33:49 PM
Brute.

+4, x8.

SS/Shield.

Game over.

Quick.  Devastating.  Well.  Against Council anyhow... :D

Azrael.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 15, 2014, 07:42:32 PM
I think I tried +4/x8 with my FF/Bots MM once, but I found it too slow. I had survivability, but each group took forever. Give me +1/x8 and speed. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 15, 2014, 08:04:01 PM
Mine was a Dark/Elec Brut and a Dark/SD Tank for solo fun. The Dark/SD was my lame attempt to do damage equal to my head of the league's SS/Fire Tank, BY-TOR. He could melt stuff so fast, it was insane. I thought the dmg buff from shield and the one for Soul Drain, plus all my def and minus def attacks would turn me into a killin machine, but only did well against the low spawns (minions to lts only). Anything higher than lts and it took forever to kill one. Still, I did survive like no one's business.

The Dark/Elec brute got better once I got the right IO sets in him. Otherwise his def was piss poor. He could really shine against anything doing S/L/E dmg though, and once they upped the elec armor set to get energize (?), my healin was amazing and so was the power cost of all those toggles.

Ah, good times.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pearl Dragon on September 15, 2014, 08:12:20 PM
Hey guys,

Have you seen the latest from Angelus Animi?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBTWXcAsMHo

Fantastic! Angelus Animi, your videos are enjoyed by our whole family, and make us feel much closer to the game.  Now can you make a Halloween video? ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on September 15, 2014, 09:35:21 PM
Fantastic! Angelus Animi, your videos are enjoyed by our whole family, and make us feel much closer to the game.  Now can you make a Halloween video? ;)

I love this video so much!  I laughed out loud when I saw Faathim dancing outside the Pocket D window.   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: gypsyav on September 15, 2014, 11:31:30 PM
I love this video so much!  I laughed out loud when I saw Faathim dancing outside the Pocket D window.   ;D

Now I have to go back and watch it again. I missed that. LOL
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Battlechimp on September 16, 2014, 12:02:33 AM
Although I don't disagree with your sentiment, not being able to handle x1/+0 on a 50+1 IO'd Elec^3 Blaster (after the I24 buffs) is...kinda bad.  I always felt weak on my Elec^3, but I could certainly handle more than x1/+0 (I never got the chance to try him on I24 Beta :'().

On the other side of the coin, I had a elec^3 blaster I was running +1 or +2/x8 even before becoming incarnate.  And my IO build, I'd call a bit haphazard.  I was lazy when IOs came out so my build was "what sort of sets can I fit in for some decent bonuses without requiring me to respec. And then there's also I tend to lean more towards concept over build.  So I did things like every attack that could take it, I put in the stun proc from the end mod set (can't remember the name off hand).  And with elec^3 that's almost every single attack :)

I remember running in a SG team, and after running a few missions, someone wanted to see what a farm mission was like since they hadn't done one before. One person had one, so we went in, the majority the team never having experienced one before.  Lots of death. I was on a low level def at the time (not even able to slot DOs yet)  I said I was going to bring on some who was a bit more durable.  Came back with my elec blaster. First comment I saw when I reentered the mission' "You wanted someone more durable and you got a blaster?"

Short circuit + power sink + ball lightning, everything was down to brawl.  After mowing through a few groups, I got the comment "OK, you weren't kidding about the more durable thing"

It is all anecdotal, everyone has a story of where they couldn't do something with one type of character, followed by someone who says they were a killing machine, a lot comes down to personal okay style and interest.  Like, I never could get the hang of playing a Kheld. Which of course means, someone will come along saying something like  "I soloed the AVs in the STF with my PB!" :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 16, 2014, 12:33:31 AM
On the other side of the coin, I had a elec^3 blaster I was running +1 or +2/x8 even before becoming incarnate.  And my IO build, I'd call a bit haphazard.  I was lazy when IOs came out so my build was "what sort of sets can I fit in for some decent bonuses without requiring me to respec. And then there's also I tend to lean more towards concept over build.  So I did things like every attack that could take it, I put in the stun proc from the end mod set (can't remember the name off hand).  And with elec^3 that's almost every single attack :)

I remember running in a SG team, and after running a few missions, someone wanted to see what a farm mission was like since they hadn't done one before. One person had one, so we went in, the majority the team never having experienced one before.  Lots of death. I was on a low level def at the time (not even able to slot DOs yet)  I said I was going to bring on some who was a bit more durable.  Came back with my elec blaster. First comment I saw when I reentered the mission' "You wanted someone more durable and you got a blaster?"

Short circuit + power sink + ball lightning, everything was down to brawl.  After mowing through a few groups, I got the comment "OK, you weren't kidding about the more durable thing"

It is all anecdotal, everyone has a story of where they couldn't do something with one type of character, followed by someone who says they were a killing machine, a lot comes down to personal okay style and interest.  Like, I never could get the hang of playing a Kheld. Which of course means, someone will come along saying something like  "I soloed the AVs in the STF with my PB!" :)

So awesome when someone does something uncommon with a build and turns it into a surprise.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 16, 2014, 12:56:43 AM
On the other side of the coin, I had a elec^3 blaster I was running +1 or +2/x8 even before becoming incarnate.  And my IO build, I'd call a bit haphazard.  I was lazy when IOs came out so my build was "what sort of sets can I fit in for some decent bonuses without requiring me to respec. And then there's also I tend to lean more towards concept over build.  So I did things like every attack that could take it, I put in the stun proc from the end mod set (can't remember the name off hand).  And with elec^3 that's almost every single attack :)

I remember running in a SG team, and after running a few missions, someone wanted to see what a farm mission was like since they hadn't done one before. One person had one, so we went in, the majority the team never having experienced one before.  Lots of death. I was on a low level def at the time (not even able to slot DOs yet)  I said I was going to bring on some who was a bit more durable.  Came back with my elec blaster. First comment I saw when I reentered the mission' "You wanted someone more durable and you got a blaster?"

Short circuit + power sink + ball lightning, everything was down to brawl.  After mowing through a few groups, I got the comment "OK, you weren't kidding about the more durable thing"

It is all anecdotal, everyone has a story of where they couldn't do something with one type of character, followed by someone who says they were a killing machine, a lot comes down to personal okay style and interest.  Like, I never could get the hang of playing a Kheld. Which of course means, someone will come along saying something like  "I soloed the AVs in the STF with my PB!" :)

Hail, electric brother!

Ahem. Remember when you could six slot short circuit with drains (math was a full drain of +1s, +2s took ball lightning on top of that) and was already inherently accurate? I used to map sweep freakshow in the back of Creys Folley. I found out later I was doing extra damage to them! Yeah, I'm observant.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on September 16, 2014, 12:59:32 AM
Hey guys,

Have you seen the latest from Angelus Animi?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBTWXcAsMHo

Funny!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 16, 2014, 01:12:59 AM
Funny!

Funny and filling me with anticipation!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ultimate15 on September 16, 2014, 01:22:41 AM
Hey guys,

Have you seen the latest from Angelus Animi?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBTWXcAsMHo

...Seriously, what a flipping epic video. I can't stop watching these, lol. Do we know if this Angelus player has lurked around these forums some? I want to give them an e-shake. Well done. Well done indeed.

Ugh. Are we there yet?  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 16, 2014, 01:23:35 AM
Hey guys,

Have you seen the latest from Angelus Animi?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBTWXcAsMHo

How hard would it be to have live DJs at the Pocket D, I wonder?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 16, 2014, 01:27:36 AM
On the other side of the coin, I had a elec^3 blaster I was running +1 or +2/x8 even before becoming incarnate.  And my IO build, I'd call a bit haphazard.  I was lazy when IOs came out so my build was "what sort of sets can I fit in for some decent bonuses without requiring me to respec. And then there's also I tend to lean more towards concept over build.  So I did things like every attack that could take it, I put in the stun proc from the end mod set (can't remember the name off hand).  And with elec^3 that's almost every single attack :)

I remember running in a SG team, and after running a few missions, someone wanted to see what a farm mission was like since they hadn't done one before. One person had one, so we went in, the majority the team never having experienced one before.  Lots of death. I was on a low level def at the time (not even able to slot DOs yet)  I said I was going to bring on some who was a bit more durable.  Came back with my elec blaster. First comment I saw when I reentered the mission' "You wanted someone more durable and you got a blaster?"

Short circuit + power sink + ball lightning, everything was down to brawl.  After mowing through a few groups, I got the comment "OK, you weren't kidding about the more durable thing"

It is all anecdotal, everyone has a story of where they couldn't do something with one type of character, followed by someone who says they were a killing machine, a lot comes down to personal okay style and interest.  Like, I never could get the hang of playing a Kheld. Which of course means, someone will come along saying something like  "I soloed the AVs in the STF with my PB!" :)

you are not alone...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 16, 2014, 01:36:04 AM
you are not alone...

I tanked recluse on the stf with all towers up on a fire fire blaster..og course i was playing keep away but i was tanking
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 16, 2014, 01:46:22 AM
I tanked recluse on the stf with all towers up on a fire fire blaster..og course i was playing keep away but i was tanking

Spider-man "tanked" tons of baddies well above his pay grade thanks to (coughpopularityandhackwritingcough) dodging and bravely running away! Why can't we?!

Also... Inspirations are as good as the writers being on your side on COH. Right?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 16, 2014, 01:48:25 AM
Joking or not, I would strongly caution against making arbitrary changes to core mechanics like aggro caps just because you think it might be "better" or have a personal opinion.

There's a reason that a lot of people liked playing CoH, a reason that even the original developers achieved by accident and didn't fully understand. The more you tinker, the more you risk accidentally removing that reason.

As an amusing side note: http://ts4news.com/post/94541924952/89-features-missing-from-the-sims-4

People notice when you start messing with things in their favorite game--or as in this case, taking away scores of things away that people liked in the "predecessor." Sometimes I think devs don't think we'll notice if they change "one little thing."

We do.

Let's hope that the people working on spiritual successors try to remember this every day when going in to work. You can certainly make a game your own and give it its own flavor, but you can't fundamentally change things or take things away without people noticing.

I don't think there's another archetype that I enjoy half as much as I did the Warshade. There just isn't anyone out there (short of Atlas Park Revival) that seems to want to make something that plays like it. I guess that's why I am so excited about APR--it's an opportunity to get back to playing the archetype I really connected with in an MMO.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Arc X on September 16, 2014, 02:01:30 AM
I really wish that the devs had put a ranged aoe immobilize power into the secondary powers for Blasters instead of the pbaoe powers. That would've at least kept the mobs using their ranged attacks against you. That would've allowed you to then have your ranged Def at least give you a fighting chance to stay alive vs using a pbaoe powers that made you have the mobs surround you and then pound you into a pulp and get a free hospital trip.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Arc X on September 16, 2014, 02:02:52 AM
That was concerning the blasters secondary powers ^^^
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 16, 2014, 02:14:38 AM
I really wish that the devs had put a ranged aoe immobilize power into the secondary powers for Blasters instead of the pbaoe powers. That would've at least kept the mobs using their ranged attacks against you. That would've allowed you to then have your ranged Def at least give you a fighting chance to stay alive vs using a pbaoe powers that made you have the mobs surround you and then pound you into a pulp and get a free hospital trip.

I dont get these people who made these blasters that constantly died at every turn.. I made plenty of blasters.. and I didnt die every 32 seconds and rarely did I build any defense into any of them.. in fact I only did it with one..

Ive always thought that many of the people who played blasters probably started playing as a scrapper or tank first.. then tried a blaster and played with the same scrapperlock mentality..  and died... a lot... and then went.. blasters suck.. I started playing with a blaster.. so I kind of learned.. who was dangerous to me and who I could take down quick.. and learned how to use other skills to limit my aggro and stay alive..

But even then I didnt die ALL the time..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 16, 2014, 02:22:34 AM
All you people are crazy.

A fully slotted RotP can do 650+ damage. So all you really need is to run into any crowd, nuke, faceplant, RotP.

Embrace your true nature blasters.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: halcyonforever on September 16, 2014, 02:51:29 AM
Yeah. My blaster was ice/ice and played very differently than my scrapper.

I mostly did a lot of kiting because of ice's slow effect. Made lots of things very doable.

I mostly lived as my mastermind though. Constantly summoning buffing and sending soldiers to dir
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 16, 2014, 03:16:18 AM
All you people are crazy.

A fully slotted RotP can do 650+ damage. So all you really need is to run into any crowd, nuke, faceplant, RotP.

Embrace your true nature blasters.  :)

I actually had a Fire/Fire Blaster that would do this quite regularly... It was a fun--albeit very different--sort of playstyle. It certainly amused my teammates! lol
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 16, 2014, 03:19:36 AM
...Seriously, what a flipping epic video. I can't stop watching these, lol. Do we know if this Angelus player has lurked around these forums some? I want to give them an e-shake. Well done. Well done indeed.

You should try reading some of the other sections. ;)

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10326.0.html
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on September 16, 2014, 03:50:20 AM
Gah...dammit. I watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpu2hcNDMcE and now my urge to play the game again is doubled.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 16, 2014, 03:53:24 AM
I actually had a Fire/Fire Blaster that would do this quite regularly... It was a fun--albeit very different--sort of playstyle. It certainly amused my teammates! lol

It does sound like fun. :)

I sort of did it for a thorn/fire scrapper I had, but not with intent.

In honor of your effort, I've created a new blaster for myself. If I get to play him, he might just be my second blaster to 50 cuz he looks that good... to me anyway. Dunno how often I'd actually get to use RotP though.

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10335.0.html
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dev7on on September 16, 2014, 03:54:49 AM
Hey guys,

Have you seen the latest from Angelus Animi?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBTWXcAsMHo

LOL! That just made my day! Awesome video!  ;D 8) 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tubbius on September 16, 2014, 04:15:57 AM
So. . .

If Coke can bring back Surge on Amazon as an exclusive after 12 years. . .

Surely NCSoft can let our gang get City back on the Internet after 2.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pearl Dragon on September 16, 2014, 04:19:20 AM
So. . .

If Coke can bring back Surge on Amazon as an exclusive after 12 years. . .

Surely NCSoft can let our gang get City back on the Internet after 2.  :)

Sounds reasonable to me  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Arc X on September 16, 2014, 04:24:16 AM
All you people are crazy.

A fully slotted RotP can do 650+ damage. So all you really need is to run into any crowd, nuke, faceplant, RotP.

Embrace your true nature blasters.  :)
Ummm , I was talking about Blasters Secondary Powers not Ancillary Powers. And yes RotP was an awesome and fun power.
If this doesn't post correctly I apologize.  Still learning the forums. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 16, 2014, 04:33:06 AM
So. . .

If Coke can bring back Surge on Amazon as an exclusive after 12 years. . .

Surely NCSoft can let our gang get City back on the Internet after 2.  :)

I agree.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Arc X on September 16, 2014, 04:41:19 AM
I really wish that the devs had put a ranged aoe immobilize power into the secondary powers for Blasters instead of the pbaoe powers. That would've at least kept the mobs using their ranged attacks against you. That would've allowed you to then have your ranged Def at least give you a fighting chance to stay alive vs using a pbaoe powers that made you have the mobs surround you and then pound you into a pulp and get a free hospital trip.
I should clarify.  I was talking more about the tier 3/4 powers. I know on my Ice/Ice/Fire  and my Elec/Elec/Elec I would of preferred Frostbite over Chilling Embrace @lvl10 and Lightning Cages over Lightning Field. Yes I know it treads a little on the trollers/doms but the blaster description from the 3 ring binder states that blasters have very good control powers and are second only to the Controllers if my memory serves me right.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 16, 2014, 05:11:44 AM
I would like to take a moment here to send a shout out to Ironwolf for all his work in keeping us informed and placing himself in the spotlight and the crossfire for so long.

Now he has stepped out of the spotlight and is volunteering his help with APR, a real trooper and worthy of our praise and respect.

When the game does return, I seriously hope that Ironwolf receives some form of honor, a signature character, or a statue or maybe even a mission contact, whatever, he deserves that acknowledgement!

Thank you very much Ironwolf!

We will now return to our regularly scheduled thread content. . .
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 16, 2014, 07:34:48 AM
We will now return to our regularly scheduled thread content. . .

I believe our regularly scheduled content is me answering people's questions, and other people arguing about Sentinel+/the character database.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AnElfCalledMack on September 16, 2014, 08:47:56 AM
I should clarify.  I was talking more about the tier 3/4 powers. I know on my Ice/Ice/Fire  and my Elec/Elec/Elec I would of preferred Frostbite over Chilling Embrace @lvl10 and Lightning Cages over Lightning Field. Yes I know it treads a little on the trollers/doms but the blaster description from the 3 ring binder states that blasters have very good control powers and are second only to the Controllers if my memory serves me right.
Trollers and Doms, of course. But yes, a real CC would be nice, rather than just an immob (not that you can't make good use of an immob, but it's conditional) would be nice for a class that's supposed to have minor battlefield control to supplement their very good damage.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 16, 2014, 09:23:46 AM
I dont get these people who made these blasters that constantly died at every turn.. I made plenty of blasters.. and I didnt die every 32 seconds and rarely did I build any defense into any of them.. in fact I only did it with one..

Ive always thought that many of the people who played blasters probably started playing as a scrapper or tank first.. then tried a blaster and played with the same scrapperlock mentality..  and died... a lot... and then went.. blasters suck.. I started playing with a blaster.. so I kind of learned.. who was dangerous to me and who I could take down quick.. and learned how to use other skills to limit my aggro and stay alive..

But even then I didnt die ALL the time..

I leveled basically every alt exactly like the first: buying what I could based on what I earned, farming nothing, PLing never, soloing and teaming in pick up teams when I could.  As an experienced player, I could play anything and make it work without dying often, but every time I started to forget how difficult it was to play blasters, I could always roll a new one and be reminded.  Its also difficult to play without doing things automatically that most players don't know or aren't skilled enough to do, that you do without thinking and makes the experience easier, that because you don't think about it you don't give enough credit for your survival either.

Just little things like the fact I was always moving when playing blasters and not just standing still and shooting from range contributed to my survival.  True but virtually unknown fact about CoH: moving more than a certain amount would cause the critters to subtly alter how they chose which powers to use to attack.  Running around in circles around a spawn could reduce incoming damage by as much as *half*.  Sometimes, things you don't even realize are making the game easier are making it a lot easier.  Beginners are not efficient inspiration users.  They don't fire attacks efficiently.  They do not manage endurance as well as veteran players do instinctively.  They don't pace themselves well.  They don't know when they are in over their heads, because it often happens fast.  And very small differences in build decisions, like when to take attacks and when to take toggles, and when to take but not use a power until it can be slotted, can make a huge difference.  Beginning players did not understand that sometimes you take a power but don't use it, because unslotted it wastes time and endurance and can actually kill you, but slotted it could be a huge benefit.

Also, people tend to remember what they want to remember, particularly when it comes to the leveling experience.  They tend to forget how easy or hard things were, and mostly remember their final level 50 enhanced experience, and they assume they can extrapolate downward from there.  Someone I knew in-game once told me a particular blaster combination was trivial to play.  To prove it they leveled one to about 16ish, and proceeded to destroy a spawn with it.  I told him that was great, now do it five times in a row.  He was killed fighting the fourth.  Its easy to kill one spawn.  But if you end that fight with even slightly less than full health, sustaining that pace is impossible.  Many players "tested" themselves in conditions that did not replicate actual gameplay, in terms of having to fight maybe 30 spawns in a mission in ten minutes all in a row.  They assumed if they could defeat one strong spawn, they could repeat that task indefinitely.  Not the case.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 16, 2014, 11:45:28 AM
Like, I never could get the hang of playing a Kheld. Which of course means, someone will come along saying something like  "I soloed the AVs in the STF with my PB!" :)

I soloed the AVs in the STF with my PB. And my Warshade. ;)

Well, at least... I tanked them while the rest of the team took care of other things (like taking down the towers at Lord Recluse). :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ultimate15 on September 16, 2014, 12:36:57 PM
I believe our regularly scheduled content is me answering people's questions, and other people arguing about Sentinel+/the character database.

Yep! Sounds about right.  :D But we kind of love you for it.

And on the topic of questions...are we theeeeere yet? I wonder how things are going with Nate and his team. *tries to exercise patience*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 16, 2014, 12:53:32 PM
And on the topic of questions...are we theeeeere yet?

YE-Wait...No.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Balince on September 16, 2014, 01:56:03 PM
YE-Wait...No.

Sneaky, sneaky. Sounds like a might be happening but can't say anything type of answer, or I wish it was happening but everything is quiet right now. Don't know which one!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 16, 2014, 02:15:39 PM
I leveled basically every alt exactly like the first: buying what I could based on what I earned, farming nothing, PLing never, soloing and teaming in pick up teams when I could.  As an experienced player, I could play anything and make it work without dying often, but every time I started to forget how difficult it was to play blasters, I could always roll a new one and be reminded.  Its also difficult to play without doing things automatically that most players don't know or aren't skilled enough to do, that you do without thinking and makes the experience easier, that because you don't think about it you don't give enough credit for your survival either.

Just little things like the fact I was always moving when playing blasters and not just standing still and shooting from range contributed to my survival.  True but virtually unknown fact about CoH: moving more than a certain amount would cause the critters to subtly alter how they chose which powers to use to attack.  Running around in circles around a spawn could reduce incoming damage by as much as *half*.  Sometimes, things you don't even realize are making the game easier are making it a lot easier.  Beginners are not efficient inspiration users.  They don't fire attacks efficiently.  They do not manage endurance as well as veteran players do instinctively.  They don't pace themselves well.  They don't know when they are in over their heads, because it often happens fast.  And very small differences in build decisions, like when to take attacks and when to take toggles, and when to take but not use a power until it can be slotted, can make a huge difference.  Beginning players did not understand that sometimes you take a power but don't use it, because unslotted it wastes time and endurance and can actually kill you, but slotted it could be a huge benefit.

Also, people tend to remember what they want to remember, particularly when it comes to the leveling experience.  They tend to forget how easy or hard things were, and mostly remember their final level 50 enhanced experience, and they assume they can extrapolate downward from there.  Someone I knew in-game once told me a particular blaster combination was trivial to play.  To prove it they leveled one to about 16ish, and proceeded to destroy a spawn with it.  I told him that was great, now do it five times in a row.  He was killed fighting the fourth.  Its easy to kill one spawn.  But if you end that fight with even slightly less than full health, sustaining that pace is impossible.  Many players "tested" themselves in conditions that did not replicate actual gameplay, in terms of having to fight maybe 30 spawns in a mission in ten minutes all in a row.  They assumed if they could defeat one strong spawn, they could repeat that task indefinitely.  Not the case.

 I think that for me I started playing blasters when the game was young (2 months after launch). So I learned very early how to manage aggro... how much of a mob I could take on at once.. which foes mez and HOW they mez.. How to use range to my advantage.. how to break line of sight.. using hover to stay out of melee... how to pull... etc etc.. and then as blaster got small improvements.. and then Epic Pools and IO's they got easier to me..

I can certainly understand if you started playing a Scrapper or Tank.. and then tried a blaster.. its an immediate shock.. and Level 35-45 feel like an eternity...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 16, 2014, 02:17:58 PM
Sneaky, sneaky. Sounds like a might be happening but can't say anything type of answer, or I wish it was happening but everything is quiet right now. Don't know which one!

More like a teasing answer.

Here's my brief description of the rules as we need to follow them right now:

1) Wait.

2) Be patient.

3) Wait patiently.

4) If it comes from anyone but Downix, it's not information.

5) Keep waiting. Patiently.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Takinalis on September 16, 2014, 02:27:40 PM
http://www.subzin.com/quotes/M21877fe3c/Idiocracy/Oh%2C+yeah%2C+baby.+I+can+wait+so+good.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 16, 2014, 02:36:11 PM
More like a teasing answer.
1) Wait.
2) Be patient.
3) Wait patiently.
4) If it comes from anyone but Downix, it's not information.
5) Keep waiting. Patiently.

More like turbo sarcasm.
Ah...Yeah. Waiting. Lots of different kinds of waiting.
I'd make #2 something like...post on the Titan/APR/CoT/whatever forum a bunch. Um...It keeps everyone involved? -shrugs-

To be fair, I'd consider (I sound totally biased saying this, I'm aware.) anything coming from myself pretty safe information. Nate's information supersedes mine of course, but I get my information directly from him.
So... Maybe....
1) Nate
2) Myself/IronWolf
3)TonyV
4)Others
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 16, 2014, 02:53:43 PM
I should clarify.  I was talking more about the tier 3/4 powers. I know on my Ice/Ice/Fire  and my Elec/Elec/Elec I would of preferred Frostbite over Chilling Embrace @lvl10 and Lightning Cages over Lightning Field. Yes I know it treads a little on the trollers/doms but the blaster description from the 3 ring binder states that blasters have very good control powers and are second only to the Controllers if my memory serves me right.

Technically tanks/brutes had better control than blasters. It's really how you want to define CC. Meat shields hold the agro, while troller/doms literally hold targets.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 16, 2014, 03:01:59 PM
I can certainly understand if you started playing a Scrapper or Tank.. and then tried a blaster.. its an immediate shock.. and Level 35-45 feel like an eternity...

For me, it was the opposite. I started with a blaster as my first main, and I literally ran out of storyarc content by level 38 because it took me about twice as long to get through each level. :) (This was back around I3.) I then decided to try a fire/fire tank, because the new changes to tankers sounded intriguing, and it was an immediate shock to me how durable I was without sacrificing significant damage. (This was before Burn got perma-nerfed, natch.)

I eventually did go back and get that blaster to 50, but it was the beginning of my love affair with melee archetypes that never ended. Because they give up very little to blasters in terms of damage, but gain so much in terms of survivability.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on September 16, 2014, 03:33:53 PM
My first character was a Energy/Energy Blaster. He was also my first 50. My second character was a Fire/Fire Blaster which was my second 50. After those the MA/SR scrapper felt a little like cheating. But I had definitely learned how to play my blasters.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 16, 2014, 04:19:27 PM
More like turbo sarcasm.
Ah...Yeah. Waiting. Lots of different kinds of waiting.
I'd make #2 something like...post on the Titan/APR/CoT/whatever forum a bunch. Um...It keeps everyone involved? -shrugs-

To be fair, I'd consider (I sound totally biased saying this, I'm aware.) anything coming from myself pretty safe information. Nate's information supersedes mine of course, but I get my information directly from him.
So... Maybe....
1) Nate
2) Myself/IronWolf
3)TonyV
4)Others

Fair enough: I was coming from the perspective that Nate is a direct part of the negotiations and that by definition any information from other sources is second-hand.

I am certainly in no way attempting to reduce your part in this, IG (nor Ironwolf's or Tony's, or anyone else for that matter). Believe me, I have every respect for what you have achieved with APR, and what Ironwolf did to get this process going, and Tony making the Titan Network the CoH community centre.

So, I respect and accept your revised priority of information. I was mostly just trying to be short and snappy.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 16, 2014, 04:27:52 PM
Fair enough: I was coming from the perspective that Nate is a direct part of the negotiations and that by definition any information from other sources is second-hand.
I am certainly in no way attempting to reduce your part in this, IG (nor Ironwolf's or Tony's, or anyone else for that matter). Believe me, I have every respect for what you have achieved with APR, and what Ironwolf did to get this process going, and Tony making the Titan Network the CoH community centre.
So, I respect and accept your revised priority of information. I was mostly just trying to be short and snappy.

True. Anything Nate says takes priority in regards to the negotiations. Being the guy in charge OF the negotiations kind technically makes him the most well informed.
It wasn't so much a concern of any lack for respect I may/may not have felt due. More...I wanted to make sure that if Ironwolf or I say something in regards to the negotiation...it doesn't get ignored by someone new, or someone who may have misunderstood your comment.

Also, if this is the worst English you've ever read...it is prolly because I am the most TIRED person on the planet right now. Seriously. Why am I even still awake?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 16, 2014, 05:06:30 PM
True. Anything Nate says takes priority in regards to the negotiations. Being the guy in charge OF the negotiations kind technically makes him the most well informed.
It wasn't so much a concern of any lack for respect I may/may not have felt due. More...I wanted to make sure that if Ironwolf or I say something in regards to the negotiation...it doesn't get ignored by someone new, or someone who may have misunderstood your comment.

Also, if this is the worst English you've ever read...it is prolly because I am the most TIRED person on the planet right now. Seriously. Why am I even still awake?

Worst the not read ever English have I.

Y0|_| c0|_|1o| |-|4\/3 60|\|3 f|_|11 1337.

Or just some stream of consciousness type of rambling affair which takes an age to comprehend such that you are constantly reminding people why punctuation is important but it doesn't matter because all that matters is getting your words down so that everybody can read your infinite wisdom which they should because otherwise they will be missing out on the greatest thing ever and it will all be GONE TO THE AMERICANS!

Seriously, though, get some 5133p.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 16, 2014, 05:50:52 PM
I think my first 50 was a Grav/FF troller and boy was that a combo that did NOT kill fast. Always played toons based on theme and I wanted a Telekinetic feel. 2nd serious toon was a Energy/Energy blaster and that was...different. Killed fast and got killed fast, but I did realize early on that I played him like a blapper. Someone on my team said I should just play a Scrapper, so I made one; a Claws/Invuln Scrapper (made him to copy the powers of Mimic on the Exiles).

He SLAUGHTERED stuff. It was ridiculous how easy he was to fight with. You all remember teamin to beat down on FrostFire? My trio of ingame friends all died halfway in, I survived till they got back and we finished the mission. One of the team said he was pimped out for staying alive so long, I just thought he was durable as all get out.

After that, I returned to other sets just to test them out. Tanks were my LEAST favorite hero side. When CoV was out, I made all of them, but only really liked Brutes, Stalkers and MMs (not counting my Hunter Soldier I built). MMs were bar none the MOST fun I had as a villain and I was soooooo happy they let you bring them hero side with the Going Rouge set up. Did that ASAP and loved having him on the team. Once I learned a LITTLE about Macros and how I could position the troops so I didn't have to fight, it was so much fun. Hell, many times I tried to make SOLOing MMs just so I could say I beat this GM or AV all by myself (me and my minions of course). I really missed the MMs. Sure they bogged down everyone's gaming a little with the amount of graphics the game had to portray, but IMHO it made the game more fun. And when everyone got "pets" with the incarnate system, I think everyone realized how useful pets were.

now if we can only convince the new games' devs to make ALL pets controllable like MM pets (re: Irish Girl...hint hint wink wink), that would be fantastic.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mad skills on September 16, 2014, 06:16:57 PM
Also, if this is the worst English you've ever read...it is prolly because I am the most TIRED person on the planet right now. Seriously. Why am I even still awake?
It seems that you do not do much sleeping based on the times of your posts, which may appear kind of stalkerish of me but I really just pay attention to the posts of a few individuals on this forum. With that said, no need for a restraining order. :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 16, 2014, 06:19:50 PM
More like turbo sarcasm.
Ah...Yeah. Waiting. Lots of different kinds of waiting.
I'd make #2 something like...post on the Titan/APR/CoT/whatever forum a bunch. Um...It keeps everyone involved? -shrugs-

To be fair, I'd consider (I sound totally biased saying this, I'm aware.) anything coming from myself pretty safe information. Nate's information supersedes mine of course, but I get my information directly from him.
So... Maybe....
1) Nate
2) Myself/IronWolf
3)TonyV
4)Others

I am just a regular poster now. I am spending time learning to make levels in UR4 and scraping paint/painting my house and getting ready to blow the doors off the little village we live in now at Halloween, I am preparing a smoke machine, green strobe lights and music/sound effects to come out of my houses cuppola!

Then we can bestow bounty to any kids who dare to visit!

I am actually finding UR4 is VERY easy to make levels in.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 16, 2014, 06:23:10 PM
Words of wisdom.

The 'lightning in a bottle' captured nature of CoH's original development is true.  So much so, Cryptic couldn't replicate the 'Golden Goose' with Champions.

The gods had spoken.

Azrael.

PS.  As for blasters...a water blaster was sheer poetry.  No end drop novas...rinse and repeat fast recharge...and water corkscrew healing DoT?

*Be still his heart...*a flutter.

...now all we needed was those insta snipes...and revisions to all the other blaster sets...

...imagine having deflection or insulation shields as epic choices?

No you say?

Only like the charmed lives Scrappers had...

Indeed, city of heroes had alot of it's best things on accident.  The original developers definently never realized that, cryptic when they made CO really just did the same thing Ion storm did when they made deus ex IW: they never realised what made their original great game a hit(refering to deus ex).  They listened to all the wrong people that had a very very narrow view of things.  Then they never figured out or realized what city of heroes had, the devs that didn't touch CoX wouldn't have known that there were so many alternate playstyles.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 16, 2014, 06:24:29 PM
I think that for me I started playing blasters when the game was young (2 months after launch). So I learned very early how to manage aggro... how much of a mob I could take on at once.. which foes mez and HOW they mez.. How to use range to my advantage.. how to break line of sight.. using hover to stay out of melee... how to pull... etc etc.. and then as blaster got small improvements.. and then Epic Pools and IO's they got easier to me..

I can certainly understand if you started playing a Scrapper or Tank.. and then tried a blaster.. its an immediate shock.. and Level 35-45 feel like an eternity...

I started off playing blasters myself, but I think while you can learn bad habits by playing other characters even players that started with blasters tended to have a lot of difficulty.  The very fact that we're discussing all the ways to make blasters playable when no such discussion surrounds the other archetypes in terms of just surviving and leveling (except a little when it comes to defenders) is a measure of the gap in difficulty between the archetypes.

True story: when leveling my Ill/Rad I actually found myself in a Skyraiders mission fighting a Jump Bot boss and literally running out of endurance while fighting him.  At no time was he any sort of threat because I could just perma-blind him, but low level pre-containment controllers did relatively low levels of damage and with no stamina I had to pace myself for several minutes just perma-holding him until he died of boredom.  In general, that's not the sort of problem Blasters had.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on September 16, 2014, 06:31:02 PM
My first 50 was an AR/Fire blaster. I mostly duoed with a friend and it took a year (and over 1000 hours) to get him up to 50. I had a few other blasters, but it was probably the set I enjoyed the least because post 30 the number of enemies who could lock me down with stuns, sleeps, and holds just took all the fun out of it for me.  It wasn't worth spending my limited playing time on a character who could be so easily defeated when I had other alternatives that fared much better.

While I miss my Controllers dearly, the lack of enemies who can immobilize my character for significant periods of time is one of the reasons I like Champions Online so much.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 16, 2014, 06:34:34 PM
Indeed, city of heroes had alot of it's best things on accident.  The original developers definently never realized that, cryptic when they made CO really just did the same thing Ion storm did when they made deus ex IW: they never realised what made their original great game a hit(refering to deus ex).  They listened to all the wrong people that had a very very narrow view of things.  Then they never figured out or realized what city of heroes had, the devs that didn't touch CoX wouldn't have known that there were so many alternate playstyles.

Cryptic wasn't completely blind to what made CoH great when they made CO, but their original ideas I would characterize as trying to replace them with something else interesting, like replacing archetypes with a more interesting developmental system.  The problem was they didn't possess the technical sophistication to pull it off, and ended up with a very flat open powers system.  It was that flatness that killed replayability more than just the pure openness.  They were experimenting with other ideas in beta, but for various reasons they fell through.  I thought frameworks had promise, but at some point they just up and terminated the idea, I believe (but this is just my guess) because they realized they couldn't pull it off before launch.

I also think they learned the wrong lessons from City of Heroes, one of which was not that all these elements of CoH were important to making a strong casual-friendly game (global chat, ubiquitous movement, simple gear, etc) but rather that you can incrementally add these things over years and people will wait around for them.  The notion that because MMOs are always in development so its not critical what you launch with is something you also see in the fact that they repeated the same mistake CoH made at launch: have insufficient content to level properly.  They thought they could get away with thin content twice, but they were wrong.  When CoH launched in 2004, there wasn't even WoW to compete with.  In 2009 when Champions Online launched players were more discriminating and competition for attention in the MMO space was ten times higher.

I don't blame Cryptic for trying to be different.  I can blame them for making the same mistake of having insufficient numerical control over their game (and thinking a couple of spreadsheets a proper systems analyst makes), thinking your players will give you years to screw around figuring things out, and focusing too much on outdated MMO dictates and not enough on the player experience in general.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tubbius on September 16, 2014, 07:24:23 PM
I am just a regular poster now. I am spending time learning to make levels in UR4 and scraping paint/painting my house and getting ready to blow the doors off the little village we live in now at Halloween, I am preparing a smoke machine, green strobe lights and music/sound effects to come out of my houses cuppola!

Then we can bestow bounty to any kids who dare to visit!

I am actually finding UR4 is VERY easy to make levels in.

Speaking as an epileptic who's photosensitive, please be careful about the green strobe lights.  Many children and parents don't know if strobes will trigger anything before it happens.  That said, I hope you have a great time setting up for Halloween.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 16, 2014, 07:30:46 PM
I am just a regular poster now. I am spending time learning to make levels in UR4 and scraping paint/painting my house and getting ready to blow the doors off the little village we live in now at Halloween, I am preparing a smoke machine, green strobe lights and music/sound effects to come out of my houses cuppola!

Then we can bestow bounty to any kids who dare to visit!

I am actually finding UR4 is VERY easy to make levels in.
that's cool :) are you still the middle man?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nightmarer on September 16, 2014, 07:54:37 PM
GRRR, all this discussion about blasters makes me pine for good old Defiance, I wish it could be implemented in COH 1.5 instead of that ultra-lame "able to use T1 and T2 primary attacks while mezzed", old defiance was thousands of times more epic
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 16, 2014, 08:02:11 PM
GRRR, all this discussion about blasters makes me pine for good old Defiance, I wish it could be implemented in COH 1.5 instead of that ultra-lame "able to use T1 and T2 primary attacks while mezzed", old defiance was thousands of times more epic
I disagree for me it made blasters playable again, I just wish the devs kept the old flares animation :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 16, 2014, 08:15:50 PM
that's cool :) are you still the middle man?

Nope, I am out of the loop and unless this one fails - happily so. If it fails then all hands on deck and we can try something else. I actually think this will work as NCSoft could have just walked away at any time. The fact they are showing interest and not losing the game files just the IP probably helps considerably. They have literally nothing to lose in this deal as the game pops back up same as when it shut and they get money. Win/Win for everyone. Then other groups can lease any IP they want to add to their own canon and it seems a fair deal.

The card game idea that Matt Miller was taling about might be one of those benefitting from this deal. Once the IP is open to be leased it will be fun to see what projects spawn from it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Talon Blue on September 16, 2014, 08:17:11 PM
I so want to fire up Mids right now and start planning, I just don't want to get my hopes up too strongly. Even still, I don't have an abundant amount of time to be playing MMO's this semester. ...I'll make it my Christmas wish.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 16, 2014, 08:18:15 PM
Speaking as an epileptic who's photosensitive, please be careful about the green strobe lights.  Many children and parents don't know if strobes will trigger anything before it happens.  That said, I hope you have a great time setting up for Halloween.

The strobes are up in the cuppola of our house and no kids will be going close to them. The idea isn't to overwhelm just to add a few little touches. Big spooky looking Victorian house - meet smoke machine and strobes go with the sounds of monsters in the attic.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rigo42 on September 16, 2014, 08:24:21 PM
Mids sounds like a really fun idea. Thanks
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 16, 2014, 08:51:08 PM
Nope, I am out of the loop and unless this one fails - happily so. If it fails then all hands on deck and we can try something else. I actually think this will work as NCSoft could have just walked away at any time. The fact they are showing interest and not losing the game files just the IP probably helps considerably. They have literally nothing to lose in this deal as the game pops back up same as when it shut and they get money. Win/Win for everyone. Then other groups can lease any IP they want to add to their own canon and it seems a fair deal.

The card game idea that Matt Miller was taling about might be one of those benefitting from this deal. Once the IP is open to be leased it will be fun to see what projects spawn from it.

Well it's both good and bad that you are out of the loop.  Good that you can focus on other things, bad in that many of us are waiting with baited breath for news of our beloved game.

Here's hoping that NCSoft signs on the dotted line.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 16, 2014, 08:52:25 PM
I so want to fire up Mids right now and start planning, I just don't want to get my hopes up too strongly. Even still, I don't have an abundant amount of time to be playing MMO's this semester. ...I'll make it my Christmas wish.

I recently went through mids and completed some incomplete builds for some characters I didn't get to finish then went back through and checked the builds for my core characters and made a few minor adjustments.

Felt nice to be using MIDS again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 16, 2014, 09:00:10 PM
Well it's both good and bad that you are out of the loop.  Good that you can focus on other things, bad in that many of us are waiting with baited breath for news of our beloved game.

Here's hoping that NCSoft signs on the dotted line.

It's not going to happen any faster or slower whether Nate or Ironwolf is the one telling us when it happens.  And as for information leaking out early, I think we've all had enough of the trouble that comes of that (Facebook anyone?).  We're better off not knowing anything more or hearing anything more until the deal is either finalized or permanently turned down.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tubbius on September 16, 2014, 09:09:37 PM
Licensing out the IP could be nice.  It would be great to see a finished City of Heroes RPG or more HeroClix figures, for instance, or maybe even a new comic book or a movie some day.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 16, 2014, 09:28:48 PM
Legal protection for privacy is not nearly as extensive as many people think. In fact, it's pretty damn near nonexistent outside of medical and education records.
If only.  I work in healthcare IT, and when people say their medical records are private, I laugh and laugh and laugh...

It would certainly be nice if that were true, however.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 16, 2014, 09:30:14 PM
I leveled basically every alt exactly like the first: buying what I could based on what I earned, farming nothing, PLing never, soloing and teaming in pick up teams when I could.  As an experienced player, I could play anything and make it work without dying often, but every time I started to forget how difficult it was to play blasters, I could always roll a new one and be reminded.  Its also difficult to play without doing things automatically that most players don't know or aren't skilled enough to do, that you do without thinking and makes the experience easier, that because you don't think about it you don't give enough credit for your survival either.

Just little things like the fact I was always moving when playing blasters and not just standing still and shooting from range contributed to my survival.  True but virtually unknown fact about CoH: moving more than a certain amount would cause the critters to subtly alter how they chose which powers to use to attack.  Running around in circles around a spawn could reduce incoming damage by as much as *half*.  Sometimes, things you don't even realize are making the game easier are making it a lot easier.  Beginners are not efficient inspiration users.  They don't fire attacks efficiently.  They do not manage endurance as well as veteran players do instinctively.  They don't pace themselves well.  They don't know when they are in over their heads, because it often happens fast.  And very small differences in build decisions, like when to take attacks and when to take toggles, and when to take but not use a power until it can be slotted, can make a huge difference.  Beginning players did not understand that sometimes you take a power but don't use it, because unslotted it wastes time and endurance and can actually kill you, but slotted it could be a huge benefit.

Also, people tend to remember what they want to remember, particularly when it comes to the leveling experience.  They tend to forget how easy or hard things were, and mostly remember their final level 50 enhanced experience, and they assume they can extrapolate downward from there.  Someone I knew in-game once told me a particular blaster combination was trivial to play.  To prove it they leveled one to about 16ish, and proceeded to destroy a spawn with it.  I told him that was great, now do it five times in a row.  He was killed fighting the fourth.  Its easy to kill one spawn.  But if you end that fight with even slightly less than full health, sustaining that pace is impossible.  Many players "tested" themselves in conditions that did not replicate actual gameplay, in terms of having to fight maybe 30 spawns in a mission in ten minutes all in a row.  They assumed if they could defeat one strong spawn, they could repeat that task indefinitely.  Not the case.

Hadn't had a chance to reply to any of your posts.  I wont quote the first one but it was basically that balancing is based on the game as a whole and the exceptional blaster.  Very true, it was just hard to look at it that way because my blaster had done so well, but that is very accurate it doesn't matter if some people can excel at the class if the people as a whole cannot.

But in regards to the above post.  This made me realize that I actually have forgotten what it was like to level a blaster.  I only had my one blaster, he was the only one I ever needed.  And I had been max level for a long time.  I had forgotten how long it took me to learn all of the things you mentioned.  My blaster was always moving as well, I knew just when to use my inspirations and I knew how much I could burst DPS without draining my self completely.  I had learned how to fight different enemies in different ways, somethings that slaughtered some enemies didn't phase others.  But that did take time, several years in fact to make him into the character he was.

I was never implying I didn't want changes to Blasters.  I just spent so much time on mine, from the day I started playing to the day I finished(shutdown), that I didn't realize that it might not be that simple for everyone else.  So when I hear that they aren't good my first thought was "yes they are" but really what was being said is "it takes more effort to make them good then other classes"  I had years to get to know my character, and he grew with the game so it would be near impossible to remember all the changes he went through and the challenges it took to make him better.

Also I am just a blaster at heart I guess so I am quick to defend them.  I could never get into the melee classes besides my Invul/Fire Tank.  It just seemed so boring standing there and hitting buttons.  Get me involved and put my characters life on the line.  Love earning that victory against uncertain odds.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 16, 2014, 09:52:52 PM
Please redirect me if there's a better place to ask but I'm wondering if any of the Unreal 4 types have tried Daz 3D + Decimator to export characters to an Unreal Engine 4-friendly lower-poly count format. I like Daz enough that it feels like Decimator would be worth springing for if the results are decent. Makehuman's not bad, but I just don't have the blender skills to take it much further yet and it's not as exciting to try and get university mo-cap data working on a bunch of ken dolls with blender t-shirts that all have the same haircut.

I'm also wondering if it's likely Titan will be using Apex file formats for the clothing. I could see the physics on that stuff being potentially heavy for an MMO client for a general audience much of which is coming from a 10-year-old game, but zomg t3h costumez!!.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 16, 2014, 10:26:22 PM
As an amusing side note: http://ts4news.com/post/94541924952/89-features-missing-from-the-sims-4

People notice when you start messing with things in their favorite game--or as in this case, taking away scores of things away that people liked in the "predecessor." Sometimes I think devs don't think we'll notice if they change "one little thing."

We do.
As for TS4, you've got that right.  TS3 has kept me company for 2 years without CoH.  But I cancelled my pre-order of TS4 as soon as the advance reviews started coming in.  They took everything I loved about TS3 and threw it away, taking several steps back in game evolution; people already call TS4 "The Sims 1.4" or "The Sims 2.5," and review after review keeps rolling in about what a disappointing game it is and how all the good features were taken out or heavily nerfed.

A lesson for CoH successor devs indeed...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 16, 2014, 10:44:46 PM
As for TS4, you've got that right.  TS3 has kept me company for 2 years without CoH.  But I cancelled my pre-order of TS4 as soon as the advance reviews started coming in.  They took everything I loved about TS3 and threw it away, taking several steps back in game evolution; people already call TS4 "The Sims 1.4" or "The Sims 2.5," and review after review keeps rolling in about what a disappointing game it is and how all the good features were taken out or heavily nerfed.

A lesson for CoH successor devs indeed...

Wow, that's so bizarre!  I always wonder why developers ever bother nerfing single-player games.  What do they care if you're as powerful as a god all alone in your computer chair?  Lol.  I mean, they already made money off of you when you bought the box.  Why would they want to tick you off and lose you again before the extra DLC or expansions come out?   :P  It's not like you're competing with anyone or "leveling too fast" against other players or anything.  You're the only one there!

Oh well.   Sorry for the thread derail.  Back to thumb-twiddling and seat spinning until we finally hear word back about how the negotiations for CoX are going....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 16, 2014, 10:46:26 PM
As for TS4, you've got that right.  TS3 has kept me company for 2 years without CoH.  But I cancelled my pre-order of TS4 as soon as the advance reviews started coming in.  They took everything I loved about TS3 and threw it away, taking several steps back in game evolution; people already call TS4 "The Sims 1.4" or "The Sims 2.5," and review after review keeps rolling in about what a disappointing game it is and how all the good features were taken out or heavily nerfed.

A lesson for CoH successor devs indeed...

Okay... That sucks. But why did you buy an EA sequel in 2014? Was it EA's abuse or incompetence that won you over? It was Origin wasn't it? Origin is awesome.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Battlechimp on September 16, 2014, 10:47:37 PM
GRRR, all this discussion about blasters makes me pine for good old Defiance, I wish it could be implemented in COH 1.5 instead of that ultra-lame "able to use T1 and T2 primary attacks while mezzed", old defiance was thousands of times more epic

For me, I'm the complete opposite. I hated the original defiance.  But once the new one came out... wow, I liked playing blasters before, but that was a huge game changer for me.  I absolutely loved being able to still shoot (or use things like power thrust) while held/mezzed

The old defiance I barely got any use out of it.  The damage buff only really made any noticeable difference (at least to me) when you were almost dead, so one, maybe two shots while getting huge buffs then you died. Dying on a blaster is usually so quick, you only got a second or two use out of the buff.  But using powers while held.... got use out of that all day long
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 16, 2014, 10:52:50 PM
Okay... That sucks. But why did you buy an EA sequel in 2014? Was it EA's abuse or incompetence that won you over? It was Origin wasn't it? Origin is awesome.
Oh, yeah, Origin is just so awesome I don't have words for it!  ;)

Honestly, the only time Origin comes into play for me with TS3 is when the game is updating.  Aside from that, I don't allow it run or auto-start on my PC.

As for TS3, I was looking for something to fill the CoH void and Champions didn't look like it.  At the time, TS3 Supernatural had just come out and that looked interesting to me.  With that and TS3 World Adventures, I've had a chance to run around exotic settings, casting spells and having exotic adventures.  A "poor man's substitute" for CoH, but it's kept me company, gaming-wise.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 16, 2014, 11:05:03 PM
Oh, yeah, Origin is just so awesome I don't have words for it!  ;)

Honestly, the only time Origin comes into play for me with TS3 is when the game is updating.  Aside from that, I don't allow it run or auto-start on my PC.

As for TS3, I was looking for something to fill the CoH void and Champions didn't look like it.  At the time, TS3 Supernatural had just come out and that looked interesting to me.  With that and TS3 World Adventures, I've had a chance to run around exotic settings, casting spells and having exotic adventures.  A "poor man's substitute" for CoH, but it's kept me company, gaming-wise.

Well I think I'm a rarity in hating EA and Origin so much that I refuse to play Mass Effect 3 until it's Origin-free. There's no substitute for COH, IMO. Nothing really sates that craving. The only non-ancient games I've been hooked to for a while have been FTL, Neverwinter Nights 2 and the new X-Com games. Secret World was 'meh. SWTOR really did turn out to be WoW with glowbats. And Champions was just awkward. Also I suspected they were involved with COH's closing at the time and was full of bile and hatred. Maybe I should try it again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 16, 2014, 11:16:10 PM

The old defiance I barely got any use out of it.  The damage buff only really made any noticeable difference (at least to me) when you were almost dead, so one, maybe two shots while getting huge buffs then you died. Dying on a blaster is usually so quick, you only got a second or two use out of the buff.  But using powers while held.... got use out of that all day long

I always felt like they got the inherents for Blasters and Scrappers reversed.  Defiance 1.0 was based on the idea that as your HP dropped, your damage went up, which doesn't work on a toon meant to be a glass cannon. The HP dropping meant you were pretty much already dead.  Likewise, the idea that you landed a "critical" hit, to me, meant the mark of precision a marksman would have.  Blasters should have been the ones having critical hits that did the occassional double ranged damage because it was a very accurate shot, while Scrappers, who were the ones often in the thick of things, had the will to defy the odds and fight even harder the more they were hurt.  Granted, that's eventually what Brutes got, but it should have been Scrapper's inherent first. Brutes Fury should have been more like Dominators' inherent, where they built it over time and then could release it at will in a fit of rage. Interestingly, this would also have solved the problem brutes had of having to constantly fight non-stop in order to do decent damage, and would even have allowed us to have Ice Brutes. :-(  It would also have made the change they made to brutes where you gain fury faster and lose it more slowly unnecessary.   

For me, it should have gone:
 
Blasters: Inherent: Critical hits = Your expert control over your attacks sometime hit so perfectly they do more damage than expected. (extra damage when an attack "crits".)

Scrappers: Inherent: Defiance: = Your a fighter, inside and out, and the more pain you take, the more determined you are to dish it out. (as your HP drops, your damage increases.)

Brutes: Inherent: Fury: = As a brute, you are driven by rage. The more you fight, the deadlier you become. (This would have been changed to become more like domination, where you build rage while fighting (attacking or being damaged) and unleash when charged to give you a massive temporary boost in damage. Unlike domination, it could be released at any time, but the more charged it is the bigger than damage boost.)

 
Of course, the two archetypes I'm missing most are Corruptors and Controllers.
 
Corruptors: I have yet to find a game where debuffing is as useful as it was in CoH.  The other three MMOs I've used really seem to make debuffing negligible, at best.  Corruptors, with their ability to debuff and their ability to Scourge, were just plain FUN.  The right combos made you feel perfectly useful on a team but also perfectly able to solo. 
 
Controllers:  I just haven't found another game that takes controlling seriously at all.  They seem almost completely unique to City of Heroes, and they were a great balance for just about any team make up.
 
 
My favorites, in order, are:
 
Corruptors: Scourge FTW!
Brutes: The best of both worlds from a melee standpoint. Hulk Smash!
Controllers: Pets and holds and buffs, oh my!
Blasters: I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of all this dying.
Masterminds: All your base are belong to us!
Fortunatas: Now you see me, now you're dead.
Scrappers: I'll just tank these guys while the tank makes his way back from the hospital.
Stalkers: Nothing like killing a boss in one hit. Repeatedly.
Defenders: Honestly, Defenders rock. I know that. But I found them SOOO hard to solo.
Banes: Meh.  Cool guns...but crab arms?  No thank you.
Tankers: Boring. But survivable.
Warshades: So fun.  Seriously.  So fun.
Peacebringers: I hate knockback...but so fun.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 16, 2014, 11:20:27 PM
Please redirect me if there's a better place to ask but I'm wondering if any of the Unreal 4 types have tried Daz 3D + Decimator to export characters to an Unreal Engine 4-friendly lower-poly count format. I like Daz enough that it feels like Decimator would be worth springing for if the results are decent. Makehuman's not bad, but I just don't have the blender skills to take it much further yet and it's not as exciting to try and get university mo-cap data working on a bunch of ken dolls with blender t-shirts that all have the same haircut.

The majority of our assets are coming from either Houdini or Maya.

I'm also wondering if it's likely Titan will be using Apex file formats for the clothing. I could see the physics on that stuff being potentially heavy for an MMO client for a general audience much of which is coming from a 10-year-old game, but zomg t3h costumez!!.

Apex clothing is a big part of the plan.  The most recent art update showed a simple piece of apexable clothing.  By our estimation, the "current average" video card at the time of launch will be more than capable of what we're expecting.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 16, 2014, 11:55:59 PM
Nope, I am out of the loop and unless this one fails - happily so. If it fails then all hands on deck and we can try something else. I actually think this will work as NCSoft could have just walked away at any time. The fact they are showing interest and not losing the game files just the IP probably helps considerably. They have literally nothing to lose in this deal as the game pops back up same as when it shut and they get money. Win/Win for everyone. Then other groups can lease any IP they want to add to their own canon and it seems a fair deal.

The card game idea that Matt Miller was taling about might be one of those benefitting from this deal. Once the IP is open to be leased it will be fun to see what projects spawn from it.
I understand this :) You are awesome to get the ball rolling again. I know I have said this many times but it needs to be said again thank you for everything you did :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 17, 2014, 12:59:00 AM
The majority of our assets are coming from either Houdini or Maya.

Apex clothing is a big part of the plan.  The most recent art update showed a simple piece of apexable clothing.  By our estimation, the "current average" video card at the time of launch will be more than capable of what we're expecting.

Awesome. Just caught up with that update. Drooled. Now I just need to figure out the cheesy cheap-o and open source ways to get some of that done.

Edit: You guys really need to find a killer comic artist to add some art to those story updates. There has to be one in this community somewhere.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 17, 2014, 01:27:14 AM
I was never implying I didn't want changes to Blasters.  I just spent so much time on mine, from the day I started playing to the day I finished(shutdown), that I didn't realize that it might not be that simple for everyone else.  So when I hear that they aren't good my first thought was "yes they are" but really what was being said is "it takes more effort to make them good then other classes"

Compared to most other MMOs, blasters were good.  Its just that everything else was spectacular.  CoH blasters would be overpowered in almost any other MMO, but in City of Heroes players expectations were far higher.  Just like seeing players in other MMOs unable to get from one spot to another spot because an inconvenient tree was in the way makes most CoH players gag, in most MMOs the response to "my character dies a lot" is usually "get help, slow down, buy the right gear, or all three" but in City of Heroes that was (in my opinion) unacceptable.

Whether Blasters were overpowered, underpowered, or just right, was a function of the reasonable expectations players were primed to have, based on the performance of just about every other archetype in the game.  Not about whether they could function at all, which they could.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 17, 2014, 01:36:11 AM
GRRR, all this discussion about blasters makes me pine for good old Defiance, I wish it could be implemented in COH 1.5 instead of that ultra-lame "able to use T1 and T2 primary attacks while mezzed", old defiance was thousands of times more epic

Evidence suggests that the playerbase was in fact as silly as Statesman implied he thought they were, when he suggested that the best way to make the most of Defiance (1.0) was to tell your team mates not to heal you.  D1.0's net overall contribution to the game statistically was even more dead blasters, with the words "check out my damage" still on their lips while the rest of them was still smoldering.

If you grew up playing blapper like I did for a lot of my early career and you could handle it, D1.0 was awesome.  If you were any of the blasters that D1.0 was actually supposed to help at the time, it was giving a swarm of moths a lit candle for Christmas.

Giving an archetype that is dying too often a damage buff that only works when they are about to die would have been the most awesome punking of an MMO playerbase of all time, if the devs had done it intentionally.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ultimate15 on September 17, 2014, 01:46:01 AM
It's not going to happen any faster or slower whether Nate or Ironwolf is the one telling us when it happens.  And as for information leaking out early, I think we've all had enough of the trouble that comes of that (Facebook anyone?).  We're better off not knowing anything more or hearing anything more until the deal is either finalized or permanently turned down.

Honestly, I kinda agree with this.

I am by no means the most appropriate/informed figure, nor am I by any means in a position of authority of any kind in these matters. However, I absolutely mirror Surelle's sentiments - perhaps it would be best to just hold off on any further updates with the masses until things are absolutely finalized/confirmed? As Nate had pointed out in the first post, there are certain business methods at play here that need to be taken highly into consideration with every step in the process.

...But yeah. It's hard to be patient. Like...really hard. AND THESE ANGELUS VIDEOS, UGH.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 17, 2014, 02:22:59 AM
It's not going to happen any faster or slower whether Nate or Ironwolf is the one telling us when it happens.  And as for information leaking out early, I think we've all had enough of the trouble that comes of that (Facebook anyone?).  We're better off not knowing anything more or hearing anything more until the deal is either finalized or permanently turned down.

My sentiments exactly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 17, 2014, 02:35:00 AM
Who here remembers when blasters would fly up real hi in zones, drop and take max dmg (left with one health) before popping aim/build up and nuke? Used to MURDER crowds that way.

I like your idea for swapping out the old Defiance with scrappers' innate. It would make much more sense that way, I agree.

As to favorite ATs (and how I feel about them):
MM (SOOO much fun. For the person who thinks s/he knows everything. Once you get the concept of how to control them down, it is so much gravy)
Scrapper (Decent def/res, nice Health, and HUGE damage. Favorite quote: Look at these CRITTIES!)
Stalker (So close to Scrapper, its almost the same, but who doesn't like to stealth smack stuff. I mean really? Plus the skippin minions all the way to the boss before team teleport? Priceless.)
Defender/Corruptor (Luv the buffs more than the dmg, so that's why the order is Def>Corr for me. My Dark/Ice Def used to MELT stuff on the Tar Patch. Dual NUKES FTW!)
Soldiers (I liked all of them, even made one straight Hunter using the rifle although I did dip into BANE armor. I wasn't completely stupid. Crabs would have looked better, IMHO, if they made the 4 legs pop up one over each shoulder and one next to each side of your toon's waist.)
Brutes (I must say, I didn't like Brutes as much as Scrappers/Stalkers cuz I always felt I had to either TANK for the team I was on OR run everywhere ASAP to keep my FURY up.)
Blasters (Was more of a Blapper first and a Blaster second but whatev. Still fun doin damage but soloing was a true pain.)
Trollers/Dominators (Was fun for the buffs/debuffs but really lacked in the dmg dept for my trollers (never fire/kin and never will). And Doms were the opposite. They felt like safe Blasters...if that makes any sense, but no real debuffing.)
Tanks (They were fun at times, nice to feel the breeze from all that whiffing when you had one with soft capped def, but in the end, Brutes were even better I thought. Still, my Supergirl clone was pretty pimped out.)
Fortunata/Warshades/PBs (HATED all three.  These sets (as well as Soldiers above) seemed to be more geared towards teammate cooperation. I mean, did you ever run with two or more of these on your 8-man team? Good GAWD the BONUSES!! Always tried to like them, I really did. Rerolled them several times but alas, Fortunata was boring, and WSs and PBs kept getting ganked when I would solo and hit those purple slingin A...Holes.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 17, 2014, 03:32:33 AM
GRRR, all this discussion about blasters makes me pine for good old Defiance, I wish it could be implemented in COH 1.5 instead of that ultra-lame "able to use T1 and T2 primary attacks while mezzed", old defiance was thousands of times more epic
For me, I'm the complete opposite. I hated the original defiance.  But once the new one came out... wow, I liked playing blasters before, but that was a huge game changer for me.  I absolutely loved being able to still shoot (or use things like power thrust) while held/mezzed

Both were good, IMO. Defiance 1.0 was especially a life saver for me in PvP. I think by the time 2.0 came out, I had drifted in and out of the game, and PvP had died :/ So 2.0 was great in PvE.

Who here remembers when blasters would fly up real hi in zones, drop and take max dmg (left with one health) before popping aim/build up and nuke? Used to MURDER crowds that way.

Oh man, when I got really desperate I tried that in PvP one time... except the bad guy had dropped caltrops, so I hit the ground... and that was it. His words were something like: "What is this zone coming to? Now we've got dead blasters falling from the skies."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 17, 2014, 03:36:35 AM
The majority of our assets are coming from either Houdini or Maya.
Apex clothing is a big part of the plan.  The most recent art update showed a simple piece of apexable clothing.  By our estimation, the "current average" video card at the time of launch will be more than capable of what we're expecting.

The community was nice enough to give MWM the money to spend on nice tools in the form of the kickstarter, and they're lucky enough to have people experienced in it. (Both are things I'd love to get my hands on!)

Personally, I am *SO* freaking excited for Apex enabled clothing in CoT and Revival. It's something that constantly drove me mad in CoH. It's the #1 reason I never worse skirts, dresses, or long hair. TOO...FREAKING...STATIC. GAH.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 17, 2014, 03:39:03 AM
Please redirect me if there's a better place to ask but I'm wondering if any of the Unreal 4 types have tried Daz 3D + Decimator to export characters to an Unreal Engine 4-friendly lower-poly count format. I like Daz enough that it feels like Decimator would be worth springing for if the results are decent. Makehuman's not bad, but I just don't have the blender skills to take it much further yet and it's not as exciting to try and get university mo-cap data working on a bunch of ken dolls with blender t-shirts that all have the same haircut.

I'm also wondering if it's likely Titan will be using Apex file formats for the clothing. I could see the physics on that stuff being potentially heavy for an MMO client for a general audience much of which is coming from a 10-year-old game, but zomg t3h costumez!!.

I have not tried Daz 3D myself, and I...don't...actually know much about it.
Makehuman however, I am a big fan of. It's still got a long ways to go, but the concept is an amazing one. Especially if you're trying to develop a game or something on a tight budget.

And assuming your computer isn't from 10 years ago... It should run fine. There are always settings to reduce graphics if you run into lag.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 17, 2014, 03:40:24 AM
Licensing out the IP could be nice.  It would be great to see a finished City of Heroes RPG or more HeroClix figures, for instance, or maybe even a new comic book or a movie some day.

I would...go to some very great lengths for more CoH HeroClix.
Really for any CoH swag in general! :D
I SO don't have enough!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 17, 2014, 03:47:01 AM
It's not going to happen any faster or slower whether Nate or Ironwolf is the one telling us when it happens.  And as for information leaking out early, I think we've all had enough of the trouble that comes of that (Facebook anyone?).  We're better off not knowing anything more or hearing anything more until the deal is either finalized or permanently turned down.

I think it's really unlikely that there will be any new information until the deal either goes through or dies. There...just isn't anything to tell. -shrugs-
If so...it will most likely come straight from Nate. I doubt he'd pass up the honor of being the one to tell people the game is back. (Although...He might pass on being the one to say the deal failed...)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 17, 2014, 03:49:50 AM
It seems that you do not do much sleeping based on the times of your posts, which may appear kind of stalkerish of me but I really just pay attention to the posts of a few individuals on this forum. With that said, no need for a restraining order. :P
Not entirely, no. Often, I sleep at somewhat random times as well.

And no...not...stalkerish per say. Although, I think I might be locking my bedroom windows when I go to sleep...for...totally un-related reasons...
;P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Troo on September 17, 2014, 04:05:59 AM
hmmmmmm......
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 17, 2014, 04:15:23 AM
If only.  I work in healthcare IT, and when people say their medical records are private, I laugh and laugh and laugh...

It would certainly be nice if that were true, however.

Oh so you are like me punished want EMR are you using we have Epic
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 17, 2014, 04:25:35 AM

I always felt like they got the inherents for Blasters and Scrappers reversed.  Defiance 1.0 was based on the idea that as your HP dropped, your damage went up, which doesn't work on a toon meant to be a glass cannon. The HP dropping meant you were pretty much already dead.  Likewise, the idea that you landed a "critical" hit, to me, meant the mark of precision a marksman would have.  Blasters should have been the ones having critical hits that did the occassional double ranged damage because it was a very accurate shot, while Scrappers, who were the ones often in the thick of things, had the will to defy the odds and fight even harder the more they were hurt.  Granted, that's eventually what Brutes got, but it should have been Scrapper's inherent first. Brutes Fury should have been more like Dominators' inherent, where they built it over time and then could release it at will in a fit of rage. Interestingly, this would also have solved the problem brutes had of having to constantly fight non-stop in order to do decent damage, and would even have allowed us to have Ice Brutes. :-(  It would also have made the change they made to brutes where you gain fury faster and lose it more slowly unnecessary.   

For me, it should have gone:
 
Blasters: Inherent: Critical hits = Your expert control over your attacks sometime hit so perfectly they do more damage than expected. (extra damage when an attack "crits".)

Scrappers: Inherent: Defiance: = Your a fighter, inside and out, and the more pain you take, the more determined you are to dish it out. (as your HP drops, your damage increases.)

Brutes: Inherent: Fury: = As a brute, you are driven by rage. The more you fight, the deadlier you become. (This would have been changed to become more like domination, where you build rage while fighting (attacking or being damaged) and unleash when charged to give you a massive temporary boost in damage. Unlike domination, it could be released at any time, but the more charged it is the bigger than damage boost.)

 
Of course, the two archetypes I'm missing most are Corruptors and Controllers.
 
Corruptors: I have yet to find a game where debuffing is as useful as it was in CoH.  The other three MMOs I've used really seem to make debuffing negligible, at best.  Corruptors, with their ability to debuff and their ability to Scourge, were just plain FUN.  The right combos made you feel perfectly useful on a team but also perfectly able to solo. 
 
Controllers:  I just haven't found another game that takes controlling seriously at all.  They seem almost completely unique to City of Heroes, and they were a great balance for just about any team make up.
 
 
My favorites, in order, are:
 
Corruptors: Scourge FTW!
Brutes: The best of both worlds from a melee standpoint. Hulk Smash!
Controllers: Pets and holds and buffs, oh my!
Blasters: I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of all this dying.
Masterminds: All your base are belong to us!
Fortunatas: Now you see me, now you're dead.
Scrappers: I'll just tank these guys while the tank makes his way back from the hospital.
Stalkers: Nothing like killing a boss in one hit. Repeatedly.
Defenders: Honestly, Defenders rock. I know that. But I found them SOOO hard to solo.
Banes: Meh.  Cool guns...but crab arms?  No thank you.
Tankers: Boring. But survivable.
Warshades: So fun.  Seriously.  So fun.
Peacebringers: I hate knockback...but so fun.

except on scrappers then you are punishing sets /da because of COF and defensive sets because they get hit less so resistance base sets would have an easier time of controlling damage taken to optimize their damage output and mix in the heals as needed. Where on defense based scrappers it is way to random. Sorry being low on health and gaining damage is the stupidest idea ever no matter what AT a better would have been what /sr scrappers got later when health drop they had resistance scale so if they had two unlucky hits they had a chance to survive that would have made more sense. Also scrappers are suppose to be offensive melee hence the crit.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 17, 2014, 04:30:47 AM
The community was nice enough to give MWM the money to spend on nice tools in the form of the kickstarter, and they're lucky enough to have people experienced in it. (Both are things I'd love to get my hands on!)

Personally, I am *SO* freaking excited for Apex enabled clothing in CoT and Revival. It's something that constantly drove me mad in CoH. It's the #1 reason I never worse skirts, dresses, or long hair. TOO...FREAKING...STATIC. GAH.
heard it here first flowing hair coming to city of legacy :D (sorry couldn't help myself).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 17, 2014, 04:45:38 AM
I have not tried Daz 3D myself, and I...don't...actually know much about it.
Makehuman however, I am a big fan of. It's still got a long ways to go, but the concept is an amazing one. Especially if you're trying to develop a game or something on a tight budget.

And assuming your computer isn't from 10 years ago... It should run fine. There are always settings to reduce graphics if you run into lag.

Daz is free and like Makehuman really handy for generating people rapidly. It also has this cool figure morphing thing that's really good at handling clothes across a wide variety of shapes but also kind of amazing for adjusting humans along gender, age, and all sorts of other criteria. People add morphs on the market that let you morph into more monstrous or robotic forms and you can single out limbs, etc...

The stuff that costs is accessories, figures, morphs, clothes, etc... people put on market but also one utillity that's more like a missing feature, IMO, a poly-count reducer called decimator that you kind of need if you want to do in-game stuff with the models which are too high fidelity without it. It definitely produces better looking humans than Makehuman but of course it's not open-source and Decimator is a hundred bucks.

I kind of wish they had a smut tag for the store though. Because even if one enjoys smut, you never want to look at both smut and practical stuff at the same time. There's a lot of smut.

Edit: I broke down and got the Decimator plugin. Even if I never use this stuff professionally, it's too much fun to play with. Should have a clue as to whether it's worth a damn for UE4 purposes in a few days but I imagine it is. I was able to import an unmodified model successfully. And then it crashed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 17, 2014, 05:00:05 AM
Also scrappers are suppose to be offensive melee hence the crit.

Ah, one of my many pet peeves.  Scrappers were supposed to be the best soloers, back when that meant something (i.e. everyone else was supposed to not be).  Fair enough.  But then the dev team decided that scrappers didn't have a sufficiently good role on teams.  Imagine that: the best soloer doesn't have a role on teams.  So they decided that Scrappers needed something extra, particularly verses Tankers (this is what believing in Trinity play will do: make you stupid).  So the devs decided that since Tankers were supposed to be better at fighting lots of things at once, Scrappers would be better at focusing damage on single harder targets.  So the devs decided to add criticals. 

Then somehow "criticals for bosses" became "criticals against everything, but just even more for bosses."  *And then* someone decided that even that wasn't enough: to really be the best melee boss killer it was not enough to crit, Scrappers also needed a higher damage modifier than Blasters.  So Scrappers not only gained supposedly team-oriented criticals (with no explanation for how that actually made them more valuable on teams), they also gained higher damage than Blasters.  Which was ok, because Blasters had a team role - ranged damage - so it was ok for Scrappers to have the "(more) melee damage team role."

Except that's *not* the Blaster role or design.  Blasters are not "ranged damage:" two seconds reading the powerset descriptions in the manual will confirm that.  They are supposed to be the offensive specialists, with ranged damage, melee damage (in most cases), and some (mostly personal) utility.  Furthermore, there's no such thing as the ranged damage role and the melee damage role.  No team specifically needs melee or ranged damage, they just need damage.

By the time the devs figured this all out, it was too late.  And I'm not convinced all the devs actually figured this out.

Ironically, by the time the devs were done, Scrappers were indeed the best soloers.  By virtue of having half of Tanker defenses and more than all of Blaster damage.

Now, there were a lot of debates about which archetype really dealt more damage, most of them revolving around one person's anecdotes against another person's anecdotes or edge case comparisons.  But here's the thing: Scrappers had the higher damage modifier (right up until Blasters ranged damage got boosted to the same modifier as part of D2.0), higher DPA single target attacks on average, and more AoE potential per set on average (I wrote several articles based on this, anyone else is free to count them up).  If Blasters somehow dealt more damage on average, given the fact that the devs were required to create powers based on a formula both archetypes had to follow equally, that would have to be the most amazing coincidence in the history of game design.  How does the archetype that on average have better numbers in all respects somehow end up dealing less damage?  That could only happen by miraculous numerical design, which the devs were singularly incapable of.

(The other argument, that range improves offense by reducing the need to move to the target, is theoretically valid but I studied that one also: its not enough in most cases to change things enough because most of the movement scrappers have to do to move to successive targets is movement blasters have to mostly duplicate to cross a similar distance within missions, and because player base movement was fairly quick - if most missions had ambushes from behind, range would have a higher impact here than it actually did).

Since I'm already standing at Pet Peeve Podium, might as well finish the thought.  To solo well, you basically need two things: enough damage, and enough defense.  Stay alive long enough, shoot stuff fast enough.  Notice that's how Scrappers were designed from the beginning.  Setting them aside, the other four archetypes were "designed to team" by taking one of those two away.  For Tankers, Defenders, and Controllers, its damage.  For Blasters, its defense.  When the devs decided to make "everything able to solo" they focused on offense: to solo well, you needed to kill reasonably fast.  Ergo, the devs tried to add offense to Tankers, Controllers, and Defenders.  In the case of Tankers and Controllers, over time they succeeded.  In the case of Defenders, it was iffy.  Then they called it a day.  Guess what they forgot to do?

Until Arbiter Hawk started looking at them, Blasters were literally stuck in a "you can't buff Blaster defenses, because reasons" even though the rationale for that decision was broken for literally every other archetype in existence.  That reason was not even carried through to CoV.  Basically, the "you can't buff Tanker damage" rule was overridden by the "but they have to be able to solo" rule.  Same for Controllers.  But they kept the rule for Blasters, and only blasters.  And no one on the dev team could ever adequately explain why.  Not even Arbiter Hawk, whose answer basically was "I don't believe in that rule."  Thus: I24.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amrobinson on September 17, 2014, 05:11:33 AM
I am just a regular poster now. I am spending time learning to make levels in UR4 and scraping paint/painting my house and getting ready to blow the doors off the little village we live in now at Halloween, I am preparing a smoke machine, green strobe lights and music/sound effects to come out of my houses cuppola!

Then we can bestow bounty to any kids who dare to visit!

I am actually finding UR4 is VERY easy to make levels in.

I would think there would be a big use for designing rooms as well as entire levels.

For example, in the warehouse map on CoH, it would be easy to design whole new rooms to plug into the map (yes, a bunch of new rooms where added to warehouses at one point).

But for a little effort by a lot of different people, there could be a huge amount of variety in a single given map.

Do a big box store map, and you've added a map that's probably the same every time you see it.

Add a database of 50+ additional rooms to the warehouse map, and you can run a hundred missions and see different combinations each time.

Finally, there are going to be a lot more people able and willing to design up a room, compared to the number of people who can and will do an entire level.

And just maybe some of the people who do those rooms will find they've progressed enough to handle more elaborate tasks as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 17, 2014, 05:28:49 AM
<blaster stuff>

Blasters tended to have better debuffs though didn't they? I wouldn't know for sure. I only occassionaly wandered into foreign AT territory from Mastermindlandia but CheruBAM the gigantic-pissed-off-mutant-cupid blaster is quite possibly one of my proudest character creator wins and I got him to 20ish mostly casually soloing without a ton of effort. I definitely found blasters more fun than scrappers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 17, 2014, 07:11:47 AM
Blasters tended to have better debuffs though didn't they?

Blasters had generally among the lowest modifiers for almost all buffs and debuffs except self (melee) damage buff.  They had the highest self damage buff modifier.  Or rather they shared the highest self damage buff modifier.  With Scrappers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Phaetan on September 17, 2014, 09:24:52 AM
Scrappers also used their melee damage modifier for ranged attacks instead of the proper (lower) ranged damage numbers, correct?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 17, 2014, 09:38:19 AM
Scrappers also used their melee damage modifier for ranged attacks instead of the proper (lower) ranged damage numbers, correct?

Yep.  When I asked the devs about that, I got a shrug.  I believe what happened was that one dev made the ranged modifier very low, to give ranged archetypes an advantage over melee characters using ranged attacks.  And then another dev decided that was too low, and rather than fight the balance fight to adjust the ranged table just used the melee table instead.

Thus was a major balancing table made almost completely irrelevant.  I'm not sure if that was an accidental misuse of the table or deliberate and creative misinterpretation of the design rules.  But once done, it was almost impossible to undo.  About the only time you saw the melee archetypes using the correct table for their ranged attacks was with their epic sniper blasts.

Which is difficult to give the devs credit for, because melee archetype sniper blasts is not a sentence they were ever supposed to make me type.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on September 17, 2014, 09:48:14 AM
Ah, one of my many pet peeves.  Scrappers were supposed to be the best soloers, back when that meant something (i.e. everyone else was supposed to not be).  Fair enough.  But then the dev team decided that scrappers didn't have a sufficiently good role on teams.  Imagine that: the best soloer doesn't have a role on teams.  So they decided that Scrappers needed something extra, particularly verses Tankers (this is what believing in Trinity play will do: make you stupid).  So the devs decided that since Tankers were supposed to be better at fighting lots of things at once, Scrappers would be better at focusing damage on single harder targets.  So the devs decided to add criticals. 

Then somehow "criticals for bosses" became "criticals against everything, but just even more for bosses."  *And then* someone decided that even that wasn't enough: to really be the best melee boss killer it was not enough to crit, Scrappers also needed a higher damage modifier than Blasters.  So Scrappers not only gained supposedly team-oriented criticals (with no explanation for how that actually made them more valuable on teams), they also gained higher damage than Blasters.  Which was ok, because Blasters had a team role - ranged damage - so it was ok for Scrappers to have the "(more) melee damage team role."

Except that's *not* the Blaster role or design.  Blasters are not "ranged damage:" two seconds reading the powerset descriptions in the manual will confirm that.  They are supposed to be the offensive specialists, with ranged damage, melee damage (in most cases), and some (mostly personal) utility.  Furthermore, there's no such thing as the ranged damage role and the melee damage role.  No team specifically needs melee or ranged damage, they just need damage.

By the time the devs figured this all out, it was too late.  And I'm not convinced all the devs actually figured this out.

Ironically, by the time the devs were done, Scrappers were indeed the best soloers.  By virtue of having half of Tanker defenses and more than all of Blaster damage.

Now, there were a lot of debates about which archetype really dealt more damage, most of them revolving around one person's anecdotes against another person's anecdotes or edge case comparisons.  But here's the thing: Scrappers had the higher damage modifier (right up until Blasters ranged damage got boosted to the same modifier as part of D2.0), higher DPA single target attacks on average, and more AoE potential per set on average (I wrote several articles based on this, anyone else is free to count them up).  If Blasters somehow dealt more damage on average, given the fact that the devs were required to create powers based on a formula both archetypes had to follow equally, that would have to be the most amazing coincidence in the history of game design.  How does the archetype that on average have better numbers in all respects somehow end up dealing less damage?  That could only happen by miraculous numerical design, which the devs were singularly incapable of.

(The other argument, that range improves offense by reducing the need to move to the target, is theoretically valid but I studied that one also: its not enough in most cases to change things enough because most of the movement scrappers have to do to move to successive targets is movement blasters have to mostly duplicate to cross a similar distance within missions, and because player base movement was fairly quick - if most missions had ambushes from behind, range would have a higher impact here than it actually did).

Since I'm already standing at Pet Peeve Podium, might as well finish the thought.  To solo well, you basically need two things: enough damage, and enough defense.  Stay alive long enough, shoot stuff fast enough.  Notice that's how Scrappers were designed from the beginning.  Setting them aside, the other four archetypes were "designed to team" by taking one of those two away.  For Tankers, Defenders, and Controllers, its damage.  For Blasters, its defense.  When the devs decided to make "everything able to solo" they focused on offense: to solo well, you needed to kill reasonably fast.  Ergo, the devs tried to add offense to Tankers, Controllers, and Defenders.  In the case of Tankers and Controllers, over time they succeeded.  In the case of Defenders, it was iffy.  Then they called it a day.  Guess what they forgot to do?

Until Arbiter Hawk started looking at them, Blasters were literally stuck in a "you can't buff Blaster defenses, because reasons" even though the rationale for that decision was broken for literally every other archetype in existence.  That reason was not even carried through to CoV.  Basically, the "you can't buff Tanker damage" rule was overridden by the "but they have to be able to solo" rule.  Same for Controllers.  But they kept the rule for Blasters, and only blasters.  And no one on the dev team could ever adequately explain why.  Not even Arbiter Hawk, whose answer basically was "I don't believe in that rule."  Thus: I24.

Yes.  Scrappers led a very charmed life.  And seemed to get 'moAR' as the game went on while Defenders and Blasters gathered cob webs.

Blasters were long overdue their overhaul.  (Water blasters being a promising preview of the revamp.)

...and Defenders?  Botched.  Corruptors pretty much took the wind out of their sails.

...as did most of the CoV archetypes eclipsed their predecessors in CoH.

After playing a SS/Shield brute there was no going back to 'tanks' for me.  (Having said that I rolled a very impressive Energy Melee/Invul' soft capped and high dam res' tank.)

Again.  Defenders.  (They actually had a revamp?  I must have missed it... :P  Having tried to solo a FF/Energy Defender twice at the beginning and ending of the game...)  Give me mezzo protection on the Dark Dark...which was fine apart from said protection.

Give me insulation and deflection shields that I can apply to myself(!) for my FF/Energy defender.  Give me baseline blaster damage.  Then I can tank, buff and blast.  i.e. actually contribute rather than being a  bubble bot.  After being a punching bag on soloing for 40 levels...at least let me self buff those two powers for my epics for heavens sakes.

I just resigned myself to playing a Dominator in the end.  It had the 'best' of all worlds.  I could scrap, control, defend, blast, blap...  I thought it was great.  With Perma Domi and Hasten I could take out lower levelled AVs.  Blast damage could have been higher.  But great fun to play.

Azrael.

PS. True. 
Quote
There was no time in the existence of the game that any archetype wasn't overpowered relative to the game's balance standard for players with sufficient dedication to maximal slotting and optimal gameplay.

The game wasn't designed to be balanced around maximal slotting and optimal gameplay.  It was designed around the median player performance, as determined by watching all the players who played the game and measuring their median performance.  Under that metric, there was never a single moment in the existence of the game where blasters as an archetype were not severely underperforming all other archetypes.  We're talking 25%-50% underperformance.

That's not 25%-50% under the other archetypes.  That's 25%-50% under the median performance: many archetypes were over the median performance, which made the gap between blasters and the higher performing archetypes (i.e. scrappers) higher than that.  The single largest contributor to this underperformance was that blasters were dying at a far higher rate than all other archetypes.  Solo, teamed, low level, intermediate level, high level, max level.  In all types of content.  The numbers say that if you think you were doing well on a blaster, there were ten players doing just as well on every other archetype and a hundred players doing vastly worse on blasters.  If you didn't see this, your experience was not representative of the playerbase as a whole.

The truth is, nobody cares about min/maxers or the power gaming elite, nor should they.  The developers didn't need to care about us.  We could always excel under any circumstances.  The devs cared about the typical player, because those were the ones that kept the lights on.  They represented the bulk of the players, the bulk of the playing time, and the bulk of the subscription revenue.  They needed the game to present a roughly level playing field to them, and that's ultimately where the devs spent most of their energy.  And I would have eviscerated them if they hadn't.

My calculations suggested that in broad strokes, I24 blasters when played by the average player would probably be in the general vicinity of I23 median performance in solo play during leveling conditions.  Slightly under on average, but close enough.  My worry was that the collateral buffs on archetypes like defenders and corruptors would increase the median performance enough to where blasters would fall below the median again.  But I think at least for the average player, blasters would start to become competitive with scrappers as offensively focused characters.

The people already farming +2x8 with blasters?  The I24 buffs would have less of an impact on them relative to average players in most cases, because those players were already reaching saturation levels of power that small to moderate buffs have more difficulty improving.  And if they did, small price to pay to improve things for the other 95% of players.  The same thing happened with the invention system.  It let the 5% become far more powerful, but it also lifted most of the other 95% to moderate levels of performance far more consistent with the newer balance standard for players post-I5 (particularly when it came to soloing).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cobra Man on September 17, 2014, 11:12:26 AM
Blasters tended to have better debuffs though didn't they? I wouldn't know for sure. I only occassionaly wandered into foreign AT territory from Mastermindlandia but CheruBAM the gigantic-pissed-off-mutant-cupid blaster is quite possibly one of my proudest character creator wins and I got him to 20ish mostly casually soloing without a ton of effort. I definitely found blasters more fun than scrappers.

Some blaster debuffs were extremely effective. Electicity has endurance drain. Ice has slow movement/recharge. Fire has additional DPS.

When you add in the sheer amount of damage a well slotted blaster was able to generate those debuff effects enhanced the capability of the blaster concerned.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 17, 2014, 11:28:24 AM
Some blaster debuffs were extremely effective. Electicity has endurance drain. Ice has slow movement/recharge. Fire has additional DPS.

When you add in the sheer amount of damage a well slotted blaster was able to generate those debuff effects enhanced the capability of the blaster concerned.

The energy drain was a fav of mine.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: rebel 1812 on September 17, 2014, 12:25:46 PM
why are a couple people changing the topic from every thread to blasters being underpowered and needing a buff?  You've said you two cents on many threads, not everyone agrees that blasters were underpowered and needed a buff.  Move on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 17, 2014, 12:35:15 PM
Rebel, when Arcana says that Blasters were objectively underpowered, you can bet she has the maths to back her statement up. It's easy to argue that you don't believe Blasters needed anything, but much harder to sustain that argument when the other side can say "okay, but even by the design rules of CoH, blaster damage was actually below par" and show you why.

Just ask Arcana to provide her "real" rule-following blaster nuke damage figures. They're eye-openers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 17, 2014, 01:03:57 PM
You know, I started CoX with an electric/fire blaster on Virtue.  Her name was Celestial Dawn, but after a while I just called her the Human Debt Machine.   :P  Suddenly I found myself switching mains to my katana/invulnerability scrapper, who became my first 50.  I don't think Dawn ever made it past 36.

I don't do any of the number crunching I see going on here, but this forum as of late has really explained a lot.   ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 17, 2014, 01:17:33 PM
My sentiments exactly.

I did say I was only in it until they went public and that only circumstances put me in the middle. I know in these days of selfies and attention seeking it night be rare - but I am just a guy with a family minding my own business as much as I can. Now I am spending every daylight hour after work out in the yard either scraping and painting the house or cutting down some old dead walnuts that I am chopping up to use in the barn to replace some of the original supports. Wrestling with 8 foot long 12 inch inch diameter black walnut logs is......interesting.

Now I am a knight of the SCA and so I am now planning on what I am going to carve onto those logs. I can't have mundane things on my barn :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Yoru-hime on September 17, 2014, 01:33:21 PM
You know, I started CoX with an electric/fire blaster on Virtue.  Her name was Celestial Dawn, but after a while I just called her the Human Debt Machine.   :P  Suddenly I found myself switching mains to my katana/invulnerability scrapper, who became my first 50.  I don't think Dawn ever made it past 36.

I don't do any of the number crunching I see going on here, but this forum as of late has really explained a lot.   ;)

Yeah, it's fun reading a good solid AT analysis again. Especially when Arcana's involved.

Quote from: Arcana
Giving an archetype that is dying too often a damage buff that only works when they are about to die would have been the most awesome punking of an MMO playerbase of all time, if the devs had done it intentionally.

This had me laughing for a while.

My first blaster (energy/energy) never made it to the top either. I did eventually get one blaster all the way to 50, several years and a lot of player experience later, but that first one stalled out in about the mid-30s, same as yours. I think the AVs in solo missions really brought him to a halt. There was no way to down-level or skip them at the time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 17, 2014, 01:34:22 PM
Ironwolf: You know you need to post pics when it's done, yeah?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fridgy Daiere on September 17, 2014, 01:34:36 PM
I can't have mundane things on my barn :)

Quote of the day...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 17, 2014, 01:47:54 PM
why are a couple people changing the topic from every thread to blasters being underpowered and needing a buff?  You've said you two cents on many threads, not everyone agrees that blasters were underpowered and needed a buff.  Move on.

who elected you hallway monitor? Its an interesting discussion on the games inner workings while we await news, go back under your rock.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: DragonLord on September 17, 2014, 01:59:10 PM
This waiting for any news is killing me and my friends . Not having a place to interact to relieve tension from work every day makes coming home very hard .  I've a few games out there and they are just not the same.  Getting that news a few weeks back just fueled the passion of playing again.  I've been even playing with the Icon download thank you for that as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 17, 2014, 02:06:15 PM
This waiting for any news is killing me and my friends . Not having a place to interact to relieve tension from work every day makes coming home very hard .  I've a few games out there and they are just not the same.  Getting that news a few weeks back just fueled the passion of playing again.  I've been even playing with the Icon download thank you for that as well.

Well....  It may not be until next year until we hear anything more either way.  Nate & The Hail Mary team have been working on contacting NCSoft for the better part of a year, and they were just finally able to get the first offer onto the table for NC to look over this past July.  It will be cool if something eventually comes of it all, but not all that surprising if it doesn't.  We are really devoted to our old game, but I don't expect NC to care nearly as much as they're the ones who shuttered it and refused to sell it to Paragon Studios two years ago so it could continue on uninterrupted.

Cross your fingers, but don't hold your breath.  There, that was the daily CoX exercise of the day.   :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: thunderforce on September 17, 2014, 02:53:44 PM
Personally, I liked old Defiance, but I wasn't so fussed about effectiveness and even before debt was nerfed in the early issues I regarded the occasional faceplant as part of the fun. It's not that Defiance would save me reliably, but that now and again I'd pop a Bone Smasher or Power Burst (short-ranged, as God intended) at the critical moment and obliterate the last enemy, which was very satisfying.

(Conversely, new Defiance... all very well, but with good inspo management, doesn't really do much.)

I read with interest the discussion about ranged vs. melee damage modifiers on Scrappers and Blasters. Is there any compensating effect in terms of the base damage/cast-time value in the powersets?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 17, 2014, 04:14:00 PM
The problem with old defiance is that it violated one of the cardinal rules of multiplayer game design. It made it so that a buff from a teammate (i.e. force field bubbles, maneuvers, etc) could actually reduce your effectiveness.

When your design encourages people to ask to be excluded from team buffs, you have a problem.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: thunderforce on September 17, 2014, 04:19:27 PM
The problem with old defiance is that it violated one of the cardinal rules of multiplayer game design. It made it so that a buff from a teammate (i.e. force field bubbles, maneuvers, etc) could actually reduce your effectiveness. When your design encourages people to ask to be excluded from team buffs, you have a problem.

Notwithstanding the notorious States suggestion, I never saw that actually happen [1]. If Defiance doesn't kick in, great! We had enough buffs. If we don't, well, at least Defiance might save the day.

But this is consistent with my view of liking old-Defiance because it was occasionally amazing, not because it was particularly effective overall. It made for good stories, not big numbers.

[1] Conversely, for all that Speed Boost was superb, one got this request often from people too malco to manage the extra movement speed...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 17, 2014, 05:08:30 PM
The problem with old defiance is that it violated one of the cardinal rules of multiplayer game design. It made it so that a buff from a teammate (i.e. force field bubbles, maneuvers, etc) could actually reduce your effectiveness.

When your design encourages people to ask to be excluded from team buffs, you have a problem.

Reminds me of one of the least talked about advantages of the Sonic Resonance set for defenders, free endurance... well, basically.
The big trick that Sonic/ added for team buffing was a significant amount of res and some status protection. this could sustain a team, but not at 100% health. Mostly it kept teams at 80-90% just given the general flow of gameplay.
At those percentages Vigilance gave a huge end discount that meant you could run just about any and every toggle you could get your hands on and still blast away.

With other defenders, Vigilance worked against their powers. The more efficient you were at healing, flooring tohit, adding defense and just about anything else, the worse your endurance discount was while teaming.

Yes, vigilance was semi-broke... more broke than not.
So, I guess that since I24 was the fix blasters (I mean fix everything) issue, I25 was going to be... "and defenders too". :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 17, 2014, 06:27:06 PM
I read with interest the discussion about ranged vs. melee damage modifiers on Scrappers and Blasters. Is there any compensating effect in terms of the base damage/cast-time value in the powersets?

Nope.  Not that I blame him because it greatly improved the flow of many of those sets and made them more fun to play (always one of the objectives of the game designers) but the melee sets started off slightly better than the ranged sets in terms of relative cast time and base damage (specifically, in DPA), and then got massively better when BaB revamped their animations.  That's when sets like War Mace and Battle Axe, known for a long time as being hideously slow, became almost lightning fast relative to their damage.  In fact if you didn't actually play some of those melee sets and were not regular forum participants in the appropriate discussion threads, you might not have even realized just how fast they got because its not something that was generally discussed.

To put it into perspective, if Defenders - and only Defenders - somehow got the same kind of average animation improvements that the melee sets got on average, they would have essentially found themselves with a higher damage modifier than Corruptors.

Something I think most players did not know.  There was a formula that dictated exactly what the recharge of an attack would be.  Simplifying a bit, attacks were designed to deal a certain Scale damage.  That scale was multiplied by the archetype damage modifier to get the actual damage the attack dealt.  So if you give Power Bolt, which does Scale 1.0 damage to a level 50 Blaster, that attack does 55.61 points of damage.  The exact same attack when given to a level 50 Defender does 36.15 damage.  That's 65% of the Blaster number, and without getting into the math that's part of the basis for saying that Blaster (ranged) damage modifier was 1.0, and Defender was 0.65.

Power Bolt's recharge was 4s.  All attacks (there were a few exceptions but they were always special cases) that dealt Scale 1.0 damage had 4 second recharge.  They had to, because recharge was dictated by a formula: Recharge = (Damage - 0.36)/0.16.  For Scale 1.0, its (1-0.36)/0.16 = 4.  For Scale 1.64 (Power Blast), its (1.64-0.36)/0.16 = 1.28/.16 = 8.  And so on.  Except for secondary effects (including, remarkably, damage over time) pretty much all attacks that dealt the same damage looked alike in this regard (there was a modified version of this formula for AoEs).  There was another formula for endurance cost (Scale * 5.2) **(see below).

Here's the kicker: there was no formula for cast time.  There was just the general rule of thumb that attacks that deal more damage should take longer to cast.  Beyond that, there was no other *numerical* rule to guide the devs.  And because of that, I am pretty certain I know what happened next.  Psychology guided designers' intuition to visualize melee attacks as tending to be faster, and ranged attacks as tending to be slower.  Its natural: we tend to visualize punches, swings, stabs, and kicks as being fast because they have to be: we also visualize an opponent trying to avoid them.  But we tend to visualize shots, throws, and blasts as a slightly more mechanical point-aim-fire process that lasts slightly longer.

This bias was not strong, but it didn't need to be because all it takes in City of Heroes is for one set of attacks to activate a quarter of a second faster on average to be dealing almost 20% more damage (when average cast times are about a second and a half).  And for complex math reasons, sometimes a whole lot more than that.

Allowing designers to have some intuitive input into how a power looks has some potentially important game balance ramifications, but in City of Heroes specifically (and Champions Online to some respect, with a combat system obviously influenced by CoH and Cryptic's prior experience) allowing designers to have any sort of artistic or intuitive input into how an attack looks is extremely dangerous.  That's because in City of Heroes the amount of damage a character can deal starts off limited by cycle time, but past the 20s and SO-level enhancements it shifts to being limited by cast time.

("Cycle time" is cast time plus recharge, the total amount of time it takes between when you activate a power and when you can activate the same power again).

Why?  Because at low levels and at low recharge, you're always waiting for attacks to recharge.  It doesn't ultimately matter what they do, what matters is how long it take for the next one to be ready to shoot.  When you are waiting for powers to recharge, recharge is the most important thing.  But once you have four or five attacks and start slotting for recharge, you tend to always have attacks ready to fire.  What matters is not how long it takes to wait for an attack to be available, what matters is how quickly you can get an attack off and move on to the next attack.  The faster your attacks are, the more damage you can squeeze in per second.  In fact, a simple heuristic that tended to generate something close to the mathematically optimal attack chain was simply to always use the attack that dealt the most damage per unit time (DPA).  You fire that, then of the remaining available attacks you use the one with the highest DPA again, and repeat.

In other words, how much damage a given offensive set could ultimately deal for high level players wasn't originally dictated by the power designers.  It was dictated by the animators who did not know that they were responsible for that.  I'm pretty sure even BaB did not know that until I essentially told him.  He originally thought the animation times could at best only weakly influence damage, and recharge was far more important.  But when I showed him my DPA-based damage calculations and he saw how they fairly accurately predicted the effects of faster cast time on Claws, he very quickly realized how much power the animation time wielded.

There were some attempts to rectify this problem towards the end, but none of them really got traction.  The VEATs in particular used a cast time vs damage scale formula that was different than all the other archetypes when they were introduced that I think was flawed in some respects but a step in the right direction, but that experiment did not spread beyond the VEATs.


** This fundamental rule of endurance meant that pre-I9 inventions, I could tell that pretty much all of the players that claimed to be able to "fight continuously without running out of endurance" without needing stamina were lying, unless they were one of the few builds that had endurance management powers or were doing something crazy with slotting.  Attack DPA generally ranged between 0.5 and 1.5 and averaged between 0.7 and 1.0 within a set.  At the low end a player had to burn at least 3.64 eps unslotted, or about 1.82 eps with three SO equivalents of endurance slotting.  That's higher than player endurance recovery without stamina: 1.67 eps.  And it presumes you are not using any other powers besides attacks.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Moonlighter on September 17, 2014, 06:44:51 PM
Why?  Because at low levels and at low recharge, you're always waiting for attacks to recharge.  It doesn't ultimately matter what they do, what matters is how long it take for the next one to be ready to shoot.  When you are waiting for powers to recharge, recharge is the most important thing.  But once you have four or five attacks and start slotting for recharge, you tend to always have attacks ready to fire.  What matters is not how long it takes to wait for an attack to be available, what matters is how quickly you can get an attack off and move on to the next attack.  The faster your attacks are, the more damage you can squeeze in per second.  In fact, a simple heuristic that tended to generate something close to the mathematically optimal attack chain was simply to always use the attack that dealt the most damage per unit time (DPA).  You fire that, then of the remaining available attacks you use the one with the highest DPA again, and repeat.

In other words, how much damage a given offensive set could ultimately deal for high level players wasn't originally dictated by the power designers.  It was dictated by the animators who did not know that they were responsible for that.  I'm pretty sure even BaB did not know that until I essentially told him.  He originally thought the animation times could at best only weakly influence damage, and recharge was far more important.  But when I showed him my DPA-based damage calculations and he saw how they fairly accurately predicted the effects of faster cast time on Claws, he very quickly realized how much power the animation time wielded.

I can't tell you how often I had a frustrating discussion trying to explain this on a non-scrapper board.

Moonlighter~
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nightmarer on September 17, 2014, 06:52:07 PM
If you grew up playing blapper

Oh sorry, was there any other way to play blasters? must have missed that memo  :P

Having said that, for non blapper types, I understand why people say that Defiance 1.0 was useless most of the time and I am sure it made no sense numerically since it only worked what? 1 time on over 100 attempts? However, THAT time it worked, whoah, it was glorious.-
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 17, 2014, 07:28:44 PM
Oh sorry, was there any other way to play blasters? must have missed that memo  :P

I knew someone that went through a phase where the way he played his energy blaster was to run right into the next spawn and Nova it, then yell "Help!" and die on the spot.  Then wait for the team to clean up the spawn and rez him, and then use nothing but his ranged attacks from a distance until Nova was recharged again.  And this was pre-Leeroy Jenkins.

That was when I began to realize I was doing it all wrong.  Because he only did that on teams he knew he could get away with it.  On lesser teams, he played more conservatively.  And that's when I realized that all this power the devs were dumb enough to give us was wasted on just killing things faster.  What it could do was allow us to play City of Heroes like no other players would ever be allowed to play anything, and get away with it.  Leeroy Jenkins wiped his team with him.  But before that ever happened, CoH players were pulling stunts far stupider, and often surviving to pull even stupider stunts next (or at least, not killing everyone else around them).

In City of Heroes, power was opportunity.  Opportunity to see if a team of scrappers could brawl the Envoy of Shadows to death (if they were high enough level, they could).  Opportunity to see how many times you can use Soul Transfer in a single room (my record: fifteen in the LRSF trying to solo an entire room of Longbow).  Opportunity to see what would happen if eight blasters set off their nukes simultaneously fighting Nightstar (she'll kill all of you: might want to avoid that one).

If you were a veteran player and you spent all your time and energy trying to do what everyone else was doing, just faster, you were not seeing all the game had to offer.  Sometimes you had to stop and nuke the roses.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 17, 2014, 07:35:07 PM
Every single one of Arcana's posts should be framed and put up in a museum. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 17, 2014, 07:39:31 PM
The problem with old defiance is that it violated one of the cardinal rules of multiplayer game design. It made it so that a buff from a teammate (i.e. force field bubbles, maneuvers, etc) could actually reduce your effectiveness.

When your design encourages people to ask to be excluded from team buffs, you have a problem.

Old defiance also encouraged very bad and very stupid play on the behalf of blasters.  I played blasters in the time of defiance 1.0 and I can say, about 80% of my kills were when I was at full health.  I NEVER allowed my enemies to hit me, because I knew even just 2 shots could kill me if there was a boss there.  So my strategy was to shock and awe, to alpha strike, myself, rather than let them alpha strike me.  Bad blasters always let their enemies do what they wanted to do; pound them.  They missed the definition of the word "blast" in blaster.  Your supposed to hit them especially hard whenever possible, and not give them a chance to react.  Edit: Which meant not letting them hurt you so you weren't going to benefit from defiance 1.0.

Edit: Defiance 1.0 didn't really allow you to keep the initiative to.

The same problem could be said of vigilance.  Which was never changed.  It encouraged very bad play from defenders.  Good defenders didn't let anyone take damage in the first place, only healing after damage finally did get through the buffs.  But if you let enough damage through to teammates to benefit from vigilance, about 99% of the time the entire team would be wiped out seconds later.  I cannot count how many teams repeatedly wiped due to bad empaths who never did anything but heal simply cause the damage far out-damaged the healing they put out and the sheer lack of fortitude being cast on anyone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 17, 2014, 07:42:21 PM
Reminds me of one of the least talked about advantages of the Sonic Resonance set for defenders, free endurance... well, basically.
The big trick that Sonic/ added for team buffing was a significant amount of res and some status protection. this could sustain a team, but not at 100% health. Mostly it kept teams at 80-90% just given the general flow of gameplay.
At those percentages Vigilance gave a huge end discount that meant you could run just about any and every toggle you could get your hands on and still blast away.

With other defenders, Vigilance worked against their powers. The more efficient you were at healing, flooring tohit, adding defense and just about anything else, the worse your endurance discount was while teaming.

Yes, vigilance was semi-broke... more broke than not.
So, I guess that since I24 was the fix blasters (I mean fix everything) issue, I25 was going to be... "and defenders too". :)

In that case it would have been a second buff for defenders, since they got a damage buff built into vigilance when they soloed.  I do agree vigilance needed a change though, as it just didn't do much.  At least the game was very very blunt in saying not to rely on vigilance due to the high damage enemies did.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Arc X on September 17, 2014, 07:50:06 PM
I love when Arcana post a wall of text. It's full a facts, number's and even a story or two.  Great reading.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 17, 2014, 07:50:43 PM
How does the archetype that on average have better numbers in all respects somehow end up dealing less damage?

I agree that in general Blasters were not good enough in being damage specialist and got penalized on defense unfairly for it, but Blaster AoEs were both larger in area, usually larger in maximum targets, and more easily placed where necessary. You could target the mob in the center of a spawn easily, but it was sometimes harder to jump into the center of a spawn if there were already too many mobs there, even if the PBAoE attacks of most Scrappers had the same radius of usual Blaster AoEs.

I think that in general, Blasters did more AoE damage than Scrappers, not numerically in a chain (unless the calculation makes adjustments for area covered and/or maximum targets), but in normal gameplay.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 17, 2014, 08:02:12 PM
I agree that in general Blasters were not good enough in being damage specialist and got penalized on defense unfairly for it, but Blaster AoEs were both larger in area, usually larger in maximum targets, and more easily placed where necessary. You could target the mob in the center of a spawn easily, but it was sometimes harder to jump into the center of a spawn if there were already too many mobs there, even if the PBAoE attacks of most Scrappers had the same radius of usual Blaster AoEs.

I think that in general, Blasters did more AoE damage than Scrappers, not numerically in a chain (unless the calculation makes adjustments for area covered and/or maximum targets), but in normal gameplay.
so blasters hit more, did less damage, got agro from more enemies, and died because of no defense....not a good plan.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 17, 2014, 08:05:54 PM
I agree that in general Blasters were not good enough in being damage specialist and got penalized on defense unfairly for it, but Blaster AoEs were both larger in area, usually larger in maximum targets, and more easily placed where necessary. You could target the mob in the center of a spawn easily, but it was sometimes harder to jump into the center of a spawn if there were already too many mobs there, even if the PBAoE attacks of most Scrappers had the same radius of usual Blaster AoEs.

I think that in general, Blasters did more AoE damage than Scrappers, not numerically in a chain (unless the calculation makes adjustments for area covered and/or maximum targets), but in normal gameplay.

When you have two builds, one that is 100% offense with no survivability, and another that retains about 80% offense and has a huge increase in survivability, the later will out-damage the former simply because it has the staying power.  Thats why glass cannons often suck.  I'd also say though that bad play from blasters contributed to, though I think the fact that scrappers had better staying power made the difference.

Edit: To clarify, many blasters didn't try to do AoE damage correctly.  In fact, a huge majority didn't.  OR they targetted very poorly and missed a larger percentage of the group they were targetting.  They didn't know how to adjust fire, basically.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 17, 2014, 08:31:45 PM
The problem with old defiance is that it violated one of the cardinal rules of multiplayer game design. It made it so that a buff from a teammate (i.e. force field bubbles, maneuvers, etc) could actually reduce your effectiveness.

When your design encourages people to ask to be excluded from team buffs, you have a problem.

I had a teammate who loved to speed boost the team, once in a mission. Normally, I had no problem with this, except in a cave map. For whatever reason, I always got "snagged" on terrain features, which annoyed the hell out of me. He never would allow me the chance to get out of range, if I asked, so I would always either delay entering or rush ahead to avoid the boost. :)

(I know. It's my problem, rather than a general problem with the game, but I felt it bore pointing out.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nightmarer on September 17, 2014, 08:44:20 PM
I knew someone that went through a phase where the way he played his energy blaster was to run right into the next spawn and Nova it, then yell "Help!" and die on the spot.  Then wait for the team to clean up the spawn and rez him, and then use nothing but his ranged attacks from a distance until Nova was recharged again.  And this was pre-Leeroy Jenkins.

That was when I began to realize I was doing it all wrong.  Because he only did that on teams he knew he could get away with it.  On lesser teams, he played more conservatively.  And that's when I realized that all this power the devs were dumb enough to give us was wasted on just killing things faster.  What it could do was allow us to play City of Heroes like no other players would ever be allowed to play anything, and get away with it.  Leeroy Jenkins wiped his team with him.  But before that ever happened, CoH players were pulling stunts far stupider, and often surviving to pull even stupider stunts next (or at least, not killing everyone else around them).

In City of Heroes, power was opportunity.  Opportunity to see if a team of scrappers could brawl the Envoy of Shadows to death (if they were high enough level, they could).  Opportunity to see how many times you can use Soul Transfer in a single room (my record: fifteen in the LRSF trying to solo an entire room of Longbow).  Opportunity to see what would happen if eight blasters set off their nukes simultaneously fighting Nightstar (she'll kill all of you: might want to avoid that one).

If you were a veteran player and you spent all your time and energy trying to do what everyone else was doing, just faster, you were not seeing all the game had to offer.  Sometimes you had to stop and nuke the roses.

I don't know what to say, I wish my English was better since I have this feeling there is something here I am not fully getting. All I can say is I loved soloing blasters on old defiance because when it allowed (by sheer luck if you wish) get rid of a full group with a shred of life on my bar it felt great, something similar to playing a SR scrapper at the time, just much harder but fun nonetheless and I miss it.-
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 17, 2014, 09:02:08 PM
In that case it would have been a second buff for defenders, since they got a damage buff built into vigilance when they soloed.  I do agree vigilance needed a change though, as it just didn't do much.  At least the game was very very blunt in saying not to rely on vigilance due to the high damage enemies did.

But when considering the damage buff that defenders got for solo you have to remember the binary nature of vigilance. it was either or. One while solo and one while on teams. No other inherent worked like that.

And the teaming buff given was at cross purpose to the goal of defending which was to keep the team full and happy. What it actually accomplished was to help force more defenders into an offender mentality (which actually wasn't abnormal as far as I was concerned).
When a defender behaves as an offender they often don't have the time to get themselves in the exact position required for their team to give that big aoe buff or time things just right for that targeted heal so they just jump in and do their thing. This leaves the team just a bit less protected than before and sometimes that makes the team take more damage than it would from a defender only stance. This, in turn, gives the offender more end discount and allows him to behave even more like an offender as he can blast and run around like the proverbial chicken without much care to endurance needs.

Personally, I think that's one of the reasons traps was such a comfortable set for players. It's very nature made it an aggressive set in teams and that gave the defender lots of endurance to play with. Add to that the defenses and mitigation it could produce in short order which gave the player a pretty good amount of safety and it builds on itself.

I still think that defenders needed work with vigilance and the only real thing I can think of that defenders needed in a pinch was status resistance. Status protection would be too much, but a scaling resistance would allow the defender to be mezzed for less time giving him a chance to break free in time to help the team if all hell broke lose whether he was offending or defending. Plus it's kind of unique and it fits the theme of defending.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 17, 2014, 09:08:01 PM
I think that in general, Blasters did more AoE damage than Scrappers, not numerically in a chain (unless the calculation makes adjustments for area covered and/or maximum targets), but in normal gameplay.

I set out to prove just that to make the case that since Blasters did better AoE anyway, the devs should focus on enhancing that to distinguish them from other damage dealers.  After doing a very in-depth analysis on paper (not just chain calculations, but an actual engineering analysis of the gameplay of AoE usage) and a large amount of data collection in-game, I managed to prove the opposite: that on average, the higher target caps and larger AoE area did not confer a significant advantage to blasters outside of certain min/max conditions.

Part of the problem was that formula I mentioned.  AoEs that had larger area of effect also recharged slower.  That meant you did not get larger area of effect "for free."  In fact, if you could not directly translate larger area of effect into more targets hit *consistently* then having larger AoEs was actually a *penalty*.  Because you paid for that larger area of effect in higher endurance costs and slower recharge whether you hit ten targets or two.

And if you could take advantage of larger maximum target caps without dying, you almost certainly would have to be performing vastly better than the devs datamined blaster performance.  Which is another way of saying the devs' datamining of archetype performance proves very few blasters were capable of taking advantage of the higher target caps (which keep in mind we're talking about the difference between 10 and 16 in most cases), which is another way of saying those higher target caps weren't helping the vast majority of blasters.

Critter AI also conspired to neutralize blaster AoE advantages.  There were basically two kinds of critters.  The first kind tended to charge up to you and engage from melee - "melee preferred" critters.  Then there were the kind that preferred to stand off and fire from range most of the time, engaging in melee only occasionally - "ranged preferred."  The problem here is that neither of them preferred to stand in a 20 foot circle.  The melee engagers would cluster around players allowing them to be hit with smaller AoEs or PBAoEs.  The ranged engagers preferred to scatter wider than a 20 foot AoE could consistently hit.  And the fact you often had both in the same spawns meant critters tended to split up into groups separated by significant distance, further diluting the effects of large AoEs.

In high density large team missions where the critters were wall to wall, larger AoEs with higher target caps had a definite advantage.  But there was no way for Blasters to translate that into an advantage on a consistent basis.  And when they could make effective use of them at all, it was often on teams where the offensive advantage of those large AoEs translated into extra XP for everyone, while the aggro associated with them translated into debt for just the blaster himself or herself. 

That actually creates a situation where those AoEs can actually cost blasters performance relative to everyone else.  In solo missions those AoEs don't generate significantly more damage than melee AoEs but they cost more, and in teams they can create more debt for the blaster than they incrementally help reward earning rates.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 17, 2014, 09:11:17 PM
I don't know what to say, I wish my English was better since I have this feeling there is something here I am not fully getting.

Put simply, City of Heroes allowed players to have so much more power compared to most MMOs that players could afford to do weird things that were just fun, without having to worry about being killed by the game if they did not play absolutely perfectly.  A bad day in City of Heroes was often better than a good day in other MMOs that emphasized much more difficult combat with much more restrictions on the abilities of the players.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 17, 2014, 09:16:18 PM
I had a teammate who loved to speed boost the team, once in a mission. Normally, I had no problem with this, except in a cave map. For whatever reason, I always got "snagged" on terrain features, which annoyed the hell out of me. He never would allow me the chance to get out of range, if I asked, so I would always either delay entering or rush ahead to avoid the boost. :)

(I know. It's my problem, rather than a general problem with the game, but I felt it bore pointing out.)
Believe it or not, I actually used to train for that situation, and have started using Titan Icon to train for it again.  When a large Oranbega cavern was cleared out, I would practice full speed runs of Flight (which I always have slotted as fast as it will reasonably go), down twisty-turny hallways lined with torches with the objective to make it to the end without snagging myself on any obstacles along the way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Phaetan on September 17, 2014, 09:24:11 PM
Thanks for discussing all this, Arcana. many of your points are things that I'd gotten a feel for being true in the game, but I'd not had the resources and done the math like you have to add greater credence to them.

Very interesting reads, to be sure.  And I will never forget the surprise I had when I went from my first character (Elec/Dev Blaster) to my first alt (SS/Will Brute.)  While I love my blaster and she was my first Incarnate, there was little comparison in the play experience between the two characters...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 17, 2014, 09:36:34 PM
But when considering the damage buff that defenders got for solo you have to remember the binary nature of vigilance. it was either or. One while solo and one while on teams. No other inherent worked like that.

And the teaming buff given was at cross purpose to the goal of defending which was to keep the team full and happy. What it actually accomplished was to help force more defenders into an offender mentality (which actually wasn't abnormal as far as I was concerned).
When a defender behaves as an offender they often don't have the time to get themselves in the exact position required for their team to give that big aoe buff or time things just right for that targeted heal so they just jump in and do their thing. This leaves the team just a bit less protected than before and sometimes that makes the team take more damage than it would from a defender only stance. This, in turn, gives the offender more end discount and allows him to behave even more like an offender as he can blast and run around like the proverbial chicken without much care to endurance needs.

I think that a lot of people here would...um, no pun intended, defend...the idea that a good defender should be able to attack while still using their buffs and heals. The "offenders" were actually far more useful in the later stages of the game than people who thought of the archetype as purely a protect-and-heal role, because by the time everyone was in their 30s many archetypes were sufficiently well protected through their own powers as to not need tons of defensive buffs. When you're a level 40 defender teaming with two tankers, a scrapper, a blaster and three controllers, your heals are not going to be needed. Your damage, on the other hand, is always welcome. :)

That said, if I was reworking Vigilance I might make it into a conscious choice rather than a passive effect--that is to say, something you could choose to be an endurance discount or a damage buff, rather than something the game chose for you. Giving you the option between damage and endurance makes it more useful in different situations, instead of being something that you only wanted sometimes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 17, 2014, 09:38:58 PM
I had a teammate who loved to speed boost the team, once in a mission. Normally, I had no problem with this, except in a cave map. For whatever reason, I always got "snagged" on terrain features, which annoyed the hell out of me. He never would allow me the chance to get out of range, if I asked, so I would always either delay entering or rush ahead to avoid the boost. :)



 
You know, that's another thing I've not found in any other MMO: anything CLOSE to the buffing power of Kinetics.  Seriously.  Nothing has come even close. Not even just because of Fulcrum Shift, but speed boost, Increased Density, and even the debuffing.  Nothing has come close in any game I've played.
 
 
Man CoH was magical.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 17, 2014, 10:00:59 PM
I think that a lot of people here would...um, no pun intended, defend...the idea that a good defender should be able to attack while still using their buffs and heals. The "offenders" were actually far more useful in the later stages of the game than people who thought of the archetype as purely a protect-and-heal role, because by the time everyone was in their 30s many archetypes were sufficiently well protected through their own powers as to not need tons of defensive buffs. When you're a level 40 defender teaming with two tankers, a scrapper, a blaster and three controllers, your heals are not going to be needed. Your damage, on the other hand, is always welcome. :)

That said, if I was reworking Vigilance I might make it into a conscious choice rather than a passive effect--that is to say, something you could choose to be an endurance discount or a damage buff, rather than something the game chose for you. Giving you the option between damage and endurance makes it more useful in different situations, instead of being something that you only wanted sometimes.

I agree with you totally there, and I'd make it something one can benefit from without letting everyone take tons of damage.  90% the reason I loved time manipulation, it had a lot of things to help offensively later while not sacrificing the early game, I could see using the defenders endurance discount to help with it's steep end cost if it actually worked in a way that wasn't counter intuitive to team play.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 17, 2014, 10:11:11 PM
I think that a lot of people here would...um, no pun intended, defend...the idea that a good defender should be able to attack while still using their buffs and heals. The "offenders" were actually far more useful in the later stages of the game than people who thought of the archetype as purely a protect-and-heal role, because by the time everyone was in their 30s many archetypes were sufficiently well protected through their own powers as to not need tons of defensive buffs. When you're a level 40 defender teaming with two tankers, a scrapper, a blaster and three controllers, your heals are not going to be needed. Your damage, on the other hand, is always welcome. :)

That said, if I was reworking Vigilance I might make it into a conscious choice rather than a passive effect--that is to say, something you could choose to be an endurance discount or a damage buff, rather than something the game chose for you. Giving you the option between damage and endurance makes it more useful in different situations, instead of being something that you only wanted sometimes.

I probably didn't describe things as well as I could have. Let me give my definitions of Pure defending, hybrid and offending strategies.
In the early days of CoH (mostly due to trinity thinking) there were many defenders who skipped almost all of their blast sets. I never believed in this kind of defending, so damage was always part of my playstyle.
From about the moment I first read about repeat offenders and the strategy they employed, I kind of formed my own opinion on defending vs. offending. Later, I discerned a third layer which is kind of a hybrid. If viewed as strategy, each has a place in the sun and a very good defender can switch between those when needed.

A Pure defender is one who places first emphasis on his/her team defensive capabilities. They start to see things like if times correctly, Twilight Grasp will become an autohit (if you can get the power to hit just as the mob faceplants then it hit's all but automatically). Doing tricks like this will, by necessity, require the player to lose an opportunity to blast to make sure the team gets the correct healing it needs. Blasting comes something to do as cycles allow.

Offending is the player playing a defender as aggressively as possible. Scrapperlock becomes a trait here and the player only uses the buffs/debuffs as they need them. If a team member gets them then that's a plus. You've got things to do. As you've pointed out this is a strategy that plays very well on veteran and higher level teams.

Then there was a hybrid of the two. Delaying an aoe buff because the player was finishing off a Lt. is perfectly acceptable since you are still adding to the team as a whole. Since you are as concerned with your offensive capability you might not get each person covered with your aoe. If you are tossing out a twilight grasp, you won't really take time to pull off your trick and just rely on your normal acc to get the hit. Using flash arrow, you can't take the time to make sure it will hit every enemy because you need to get the offense going.

Each shortcut you take from pure defending gives just a bit more opportunity for your team to take damage giving you an end discount. Keeping these three strategies in mind, vigilance end discount helps the offending end more.
Even solo, the offending mindset (mandatory for solo) benefits the player cuz, well... moar damage n' stuff.


Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on September 17, 2014, 10:36:09 PM
And that's when I realized that all this power the devs were dumb enough to give us was wasted on just killing things faster.  What it could do was allow us to play City of Heroes like no other players would ever be allowed to play anything, and get away with it.  Leeroy Jenkins wiped his team with him.  But before that ever happened, CoH players were pulling stunts far stupider, and often surviving to pull even stupider stunts next (or at least, not killing everyone else around them).

On Pinnacle this practice was known as, "Hold my beer and watch this!".

Put simply, City of Heroes allowed players to have so much more power compared to most MMOs that players could afford to do weird things that were just fun, without having to worry about being killed by the game if they did not play absolutely perfectly.  A bad day in City of Heroes was often better than a good day in other MMOs that emphasized much more difficult combat with much more restrictions on the abilities of the players.

Besides which, penalties for dying were also lighter, especially as XP debt was "nerfed" into pointlessness over the years.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 17, 2014, 10:48:26 PM
On Pinnacle this practice was known as, "Hold my beer and watch this!".

Besides which, penalties for dying were also lighter, especially as XP debt was "nerfed" into pointlessness over the years.

Usually any debt that was accumulated was even further nullified with patrol xp
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 17, 2014, 10:49:07 PM
But they kept the rule for Blasters, and only blasters.  And no one on the dev team could ever adequately explain why.  Not even Arbiter Hawk, whose answer basically was "I don't believe in that rule."  Thus: I24.

I knew you where happy with I24 because you said your favorite was a blaster I always felt for the blaster I got a few up to the 30's not my cup of tea but my fire/mm was my best Posi TF soloer for farming merits that was about the only time I played it after i got to the 30's.

Man I24 was looking so good for Blasters  and yet if we get the game back in maintenance mode it is I23 which means more wait time for Blasters before they get fixed
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 17, 2014, 10:56:55 PM
I can't tell you how often I had a frustrating discussion trying to explain this on a non-scrapper board.

Moonlighter~

Waves at Moonlighter good to see the old scrapper forum people posting
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 17, 2014, 11:30:26 PM
so blasters hit more, did less damage, got agro from more enemies, and died because of no defense....not a good plan.

It was possible, but good blasters waited a couple of seconds for the Tank to get aggro, or for the Controller to control the mobs, or for the Defender to debuff, and then they were okay.

It was also possible that they were on bad teams where none of that happened, and they tasted floor. But that's where Scrappers were better not because of damage potential, but because on bad teams you needed kind of an ability to solo since the team wasn't supporting you properly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 17, 2014, 11:40:12 PM
In high density large team missions where the critters were wall to wall, larger AoEs with higher target caps had a definite advantage.  But there was no way for Blasters to translate that into an advantage on a consistent basis.  And when they could make effective use of them at all, it was often on teams where the offensive advantage of those large AoEs translated into extra XP for everyone, while the aggro associated with them translated into debt for just the blaster himself or herself. 

That actually creates a situation where those AoEs can actually cost blasters performance relative to everyone else.  In solo missions those AoEs don't generate significantly more damage than melee AoEs but they cost more, and in teams they can create more debt for the blaster than they incrementally help reward earning rates.

Well, yes. It was only on medium-large teams where the Blaster's larger AoEs gave it the advantage. Soloing, the Scrapper had the advantage because, being alone, he could influence the mob locations in order to pack them into his smaller AoEs. And it's certainly true that the Blaster's AoE advantage on teams is a team advantage, while its weaker defenses is a personal disadvantage. If you are talking about advancement rates, then Blasters were clearly the problem child.

What I mean is that if you have a decent team, and you're adding a member for damage, usually you got a bit better improvement by adding a Blaster. Most decent teams had enough defense to protect the Blaster, either some controls to keep mobs from splitting into melee/ranged groups or a Tank doing the same, and enough mobs per spawn to take advantage of the increased AoE sizes. There were many arguments on the forums about "why would you want a Blaster when a Scrapper does more damage", and my point was always that IN TEAMS, Blaster damage was fine. It was when soloing or when on bad teams, that Blasters had their issues.

That's why I usually argue on the side of Blaster DAMAGE being okay despite Scrappers doing better in calculations. Because in the conditions where Blasters are supposed to shine (as a damaging part of a team), they do fine. It's not the damage (at least, not the AoE damage) where they were lacking, it's the defense. As you mentioned, the Devs kept fixing team-oriented ATs by giving them the damage to solo, but never did fix the one team-oriented AT that needed defensive improvement to solo.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 17, 2014, 11:45:25 PM
It was possible, but good blasters waited a couple of seconds for the Tank to get aggro, or for the Controller to control the mobs, or for the Defender to debuff, and then they were okay.

It was also possible that they were on bad teams where none of that happened, and they tasted floor. But that's where Scrappers were better not because of damage potential, but because on bad teams you needed kind of an ability to solo since the team wasn't supporting you properly.

There was an added bonus with scrappers

With  the right secondary and build you could tank most the game
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 17, 2014, 11:55:26 PM
It was possible, but good blasters waited a couple of seconds for the Tank to get aggro, or for the Controller to control the mobs, or for the Defender to debuff, and then they were okay.

It was also possible that they were on bad teams where none of that happened, and they tasted floor. But that's where Scrappers were better not because of damage potential, but because on bad teams you needed kind of an ability to solo since the team wasn't supporting you properly.

unfortunately if I was solo, I didnt have any of those agro management tools
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 18, 2014, 01:09:30 AM
Put simply, City of Heroes allowed players to have so much more power compared to most MMOs that players could afford to do weird things that were just fun, without having to worry about being killed by the game if they did not play absolutely perfectly.  A bad day in City of Heroes was often better than a good day in other MMOs that emphasized much more difficult combat with much more restrictions on the abilities of the players.

 
That's the thing I've noticed about CoH versus other MMOs.  I always feel "weak" in other MMOs, even with strong characters, and consistently find the need to have the perfect team with the perfect makeup and everyone playing their roles in a very specific way (and in The Secret World, going so far as having specific powers slotted to use at specific moments) because the mechanics of any given "difficult" situation require that specific approach to succeed and no other method will work.  City of Heroes had content that was difficult, but not because it required some specific team makeup, but usually because it required strategy and coordination.  Any team could do an STF or an LGTF or a 5th Column TF, as long as they worked together.  You could have no defender whatsoever, or have four defenders and no blaster.  If you were short on tankers the controller could take over to keep Recluse busy, etc.  The key was in teaming well, not in having some specific role. But even with this freedom, you could STILL fail if your team didn't work together. 
 
I was on well balanced teams that failed big TFs, and I was on hodge podge teams that steam rolled.  When the incarnate trials came about, things got even tougher, but STILL didn't usually require specific archetypes or power combinations, just team coordination.  Even Hami raids, arguably the "hardest" raid in the game, was all about coordinating.  No kins showed up?  Thats ok as long as everyone coordinates.  Short on scrappers for melee damage?  Thats ok. Shuffling around some blasters with melee attacks to kill those teams, etc. 
 
It is even more impressive when consider that they were doing this on an engine far older and more limited than some of the newer engines being used in these new MMOs.     
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 18, 2014, 01:12:08 AM
Put simply, City of Heroes allowed players to have so much more power compared to most MMOs that players could afford to do weird things that were just fun, without having to worry about being killed by the game if they did not play absolutely perfectly.  A bad day in City of Heroes was often better than a good day in other MMOs that emphasized much more difficult combat with much more restrictions on the abilities of the players.

I almost want to make this my forum sig.

As to blasters: My main was an elec/nrg/elec blaster that blapped, held, stunned and drained. Am I better off re-making it as an elec/nrg/elec dominator or elec/kin/power corruptor?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 18, 2014, 01:57:52 AM
Your idea for an elec/NRG/elec dom is not a bad one. The two pets from the elec control side are pretty helpgul and there is also an aura in that powerset that drains baddies END so fast. Plus Nrg secondary does really nice single target damage. I think you will like it. But make sure Mu Mastery is not better than elec Mastery for your ancillary powers. Never know till you check (in Mids for now).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 18, 2014, 02:06:10 AM
There was an added bonus with scrappers

With  the right secondary and build you could tank most the game

Oh, yeah, there's no real question that, player preference of playstyle aside, Scrappers were clearly better than Blasters. If you did not have a preference for blasting, or ranged combat, or the blast sets over the melee sets for graphics or such, all of the melee characters were better than Blasters. Even Stalkers before the Assassin Strike changes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: archaist on September 18, 2014, 02:07:52 AM
Your idea for an elec/NRG/elec dom is not a bad one. The two pets from the elec control side are pretty helpgul and there is also an aura in that powerset that drains baddies END so fast. Plus Nrg secondary does really nice single target damage. I think you will like it. But make sure Mu Mastery is not better than elec Mastery for your ancillary powers. Never know till you check (in Mids for now).

In my experience Mu was almost always better. Easier to slot effectively and good damage.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 18, 2014, 02:33:02 AM
What I mean is that if you have a decent team, and you're adding a member for damage, usually you got a bit better improvement by adding a Blaster.

I was once told that statistically speaking, Blasters and Scrappers did roughly the same amount of damage on teams.  Given that statistically Blasters were dead more often than Scrappers suggests that when they were alive they did deal somewhat more damage in teams overall as you suggest.  However, that's just one situation among the totality of the game, and even in that situation Blaster damage dealing was only somewhat more effective, and only when they were alive, and their overall net contribution to the team still did not outstrip Scrappers.

That statistical data point was another confirmation of my analysis that Blasters were not in fact outdamaging anything nor could they on average.  One individual Blaster might do a lot, but that would be in spite of their design not because of it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 18, 2014, 02:44:09 AM
Your idea for an elec/NRG/elec dom is not a bad one. The two pets from the elec control side are pretty helpgul and there is also an aura in that powerset that drains baddies END so fast. Plus Nrg secondary does really nice single target damage. I think you will like it. But make sure Mu Mastery is not better than elec Mastery for your ancillary powers. Never know till you check (in Mids for now).

I would have gone Elec/Eng Dominator also.  You're not going to blap with the corruptor, whereas the Dominator has enough control to make blapping even more effective.  And Conductive Aura was great not just because of the end drain but also because it had some recovery and regen in it.

As to the patron, I would go Mu in general for the theme, but if you really want to blap there's always Primal and energy transfer.  Its a little dangerous with the -HP, but you're a dominator: its not like anything is actually going to be shooting at you.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 18, 2014, 03:16:17 AM
One of my best soloists was a blaster, Elec/Elec/(Elec), she did 50 pretty much on her own and with relative ease. None of my scrappers did that, though a few came fairly close. My Stalkers also made it with a little help.

I have been following this Blaster/Scrapper thing on both threads, the math detail escapes me, I was never really interested in those Min/Max details, I just wanted playability.

The Arachnos/Night Widow was another one that soloed her way pretty easily to 50, as did my Arachnos Soldier/Bane Spider, she waltzed her way to 50 in record time (record for me anyway).

Tank(s) and Brute did ok, but they didn't make it to 50 without a lot of help.

Defenders, Controllers and Dominators and needed a lot of help. They absolutely sucked solo.

None of my PB or Warshades made 50, they were the worst solo for me.

I had one toon, a scrapper, who was power leveled to 50 in just a few days, I always felt guilty about it and seldom played him afterward.

But surprisingly, the toon I loved the most needed the most help to finish those last 5 levels to 50, my Ninja MM did great solo to 45, but could not go past that on her own. Folks would reject MMs for their teams seemingly automatically, and forget ITrials, no one wanted to allow Pets in ITrials.

While I understand, it made me wish longingly for a solo path to incarnate content.

That is what I would like to see the most if new content does come along, a choice of solo incarnate paths.   ;)

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 18, 2014, 03:35:25 AM
I almost want to make this my forum sig.

As to blasters: My main was an elec/nrg/elec blaster that blapped, held, stunned and drained. Am I better off re-making it as an elec/nrg/elec dominator or elec/kin/power corruptor?

You are much better off as an Elec/Nrg/Elec or Elec/Elec/Elec Dominator.. I played an Elec/Kin Corruptor and the Dominator was a much better sapper..

BTW there is no Elec Mastery Pool for Dominators.. Its the Mu Mastery which is still electrical attacks..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 18, 2014, 03:36:32 AM



Dominators and needed a lot of help. They absolutely sucked solo.



Blasphemy !!!!!!!!

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 18, 2014, 03:46:51 AM
Blasphemy !!!!!!!!

My Signature Villain, Dr Remaugen, was a Dominator, Mind/Psionic. He only made it to the low 30s and even that took a lot of team help. He was almost my most hopeless toon, behind my Peace Bringer of course.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 18, 2014, 03:51:03 AM
You are much better off as an Elec/Nrg/Elec or Elec/Elec/Elec Dominator.. I played an Elec/Kin Corruptor and the Dominator was a much better sapper..

BTW there is no Elec Mastery Pool for Dominators.. Its the Mu Mastery which is still electrical attacks..

Power boost makes drains easier and the attacks are flashier in nrg (I don't care how weak whirling was seen to be as the animation was fantastic) than elec but oy... Knockback. I had an elec/elec/elec dom that was great fun. May toss a coin on it. I could always roll it as a StJ/elec brute.

Arcana, I tried et on a grav/nrg dom and couldn't believe how strong it was. Power boost + aid self makes up for the -hp.

Trying to remember all the elec toons I had now...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 18, 2014, 04:10:19 AM
Power boost makes drains easier and the attacks are flashier in nrg (I don't care how weak whirling was seen to be as the animation was fantastic) than elec but oy... Knockback. I had an elec/elec/elec dom that was great fun. May toss a coin on it. I could always roll it as a StJ/elec brute.

Arcana, I tried et on a grav/nrg dom and couldn't believe how strong it was. Power boost + aid self makes up for the -hp.

Trying to remember all the elec toons I had now...

I miss my fire/fire tank...spine/regen scrapper.. ill/emp troller

one did an all ILL ITF..it was a blast..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 18, 2014, 04:27:43 AM
Power boost makes drains easier and the attacks are flashier in nrg (I don't care how weak whirling was seen to be as the animation was fantastic) than elec but oy... Knockback. I had an elec/elec/elec dom that was great fun. May toss a coin on it. I could always roll it as a StJ/elec brute.

Arcana, I tried et on a grav/nrg dom and couldn't believe how strong it was. Power boost + aid self makes up for the -hp.

Trying to remember all the elec toons I had now...

Knockback was one power.. ThunderStrike.. which I didnt take.. and even if you did you could put the -KB IO in it and now its Knockdown.. even better..

Flashiness is very subjective..

And yes Power Boost did help with the end drain.. but a Elec Dom will drained end pretty darn fast as it is.. and with Mu you take Powersink.. and voila.. they lose end.. you gain end.. win win..

Both would work well.. both would be better than a Corruptor..

Now to complete sidetrack.. I wish I had the time to build my Mind/Elec/Mu Dom... that would have been awesome..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 18, 2014, 05:04:04 AM
Any team could do an STF or an LGTF or a 5th Column TF, as long as they worked together.  You could have no defender whatsoever, or have four defenders and no blaster.  If you were short on tankers the controller could take over to keep Recluse busy, etc.  The key was in teaming well, not in having some specific role. But even with this freedom, you could STILL fail if your team didn't work together. 

This is a good point, and certainly true in my experience. Even if you've all faceplanted several times, you could still manage to pull things together.

I remember doing I think it was a Sara Moore TF (the only Shard TF I ever ran), and we got to the final boss, must have TPKd 5 or 6 times, and then finally someone was able to step in with a good plan, get everyone coordinated on the same page, and we managed to beat him. It was neck and neck, but we did it, all because we were able to finally get the team coordination we needed to put us over that edge.

Turned out to be a really satisfying badge for the effort (and those Shard TFs, well... I'm sure I don't need to tell any of you how long those were.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 18, 2014, 05:29:53 AM
My Signature Villain, Dr Remaugen, was a Dominator, Mind/Psionic. He only made it to the low 30s and even that took a lot of team help. He was almost my most hopeless toon, behind my Peace Bringer of course.
My 3rd 50 was a Mind/Psi Dom, almost entirely solo'd. He was a painbringer and crowd destroyer.

TP into the middle of the crowd, drain psyche, unleash hell. I made regen scrappers look bad after that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 18, 2014, 05:41:01 AM
In my experience Mu was almost always better. Easier to slot effectively and good damage.

Not to mention a pocket healer pet
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 18, 2014, 05:45:42 AM
Your idea for an elec/NRG/elec dom is not a bad one. The two pets from the elec control side are pretty helpgul and there is also an aura in that powerset that drains baddies END so fast. Plus Nrg secondary does really nice single target damage. I think you will like it. But make sure Mu Mastery is not better than elec Mastery for your ancillary powers. Never know till you check (in Mids for now).

Probably the fastest sapper (and possible the best) was a elec/psi dom. Run in Drain Psyche, have your aura going, spam jolting chain target has no end. Build was so effective I could drain AVs on iTrails. Too bad they cheat because even with 0 end showing they still can spam attacks xD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 18, 2014, 05:46:40 AM

Defenders, Controllers and Dominators and needed a lot of help. They absolutely sucked solo.

....


 Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.

SOME defenders absolutely sucked solo.

Empathy was fairly steady solo since they could heal themselves, but their best buffs were ally buffs.
Forcefield defenders could scrape along to solo. Dispersion bubble was a moderate defense with pretty good status protection. They had one of the best golden parachutes in the game (Personal forcefield), but no multiplier for themselves.
Sonic defenders were much the same as Forcefields, except they did have a decent single target resistance debuff

then we get to some builds that could solo fairly well:

Dark Miasma
Kinetics
Storm summoning
Radiation
Nature's Affinity
Time Manipulation, being a later powerset design, most of the multipliers were cast on the defender itself.

But why fight it? Why say you have to solo to be a successful powerset? In Fall of 2004, the time was ripe. After a brief stint in a Guardian supergroup "buff me, BUFF ME", ArticQuark and Kleine Teufel formed the supergroup on Triumph that was an all defender supergroup. We would team with anyone, but we made a home where defenders, cast off from scrapper/tank-centric teams that didn't need defenders, would combine on multiple defender teams. And VOILA, team multiplier turned neutrino bolt and psychic blast into boss killers.

By the way the best blasters knew to wait until they heard the BZZzzzxortccccccchhhhhhh and the monitor flashed before hitting the nuke.

[/psylenzdefenderrant]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 18, 2014, 05:48:49 AM

Dominators and needed a lot of help. They absolutely sucked solo


Lies xD. I should know, All of my toons except 5 were all dom/troller 30+ Only combination that would absolutely suck to solo is a full support illi/ troller. With containment passive, soloing was not a problem for trollers and doms having decent dmg it wasn't that bad
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 18, 2014, 05:50:15 AM
Blasphemy !!!!!!!!

For any archetype position, you can always find at least one person that earnestly believed it.  I knew someone that believed his Invuln tanker was more squishy than his Invuln scrapper, even though that was literally mathematically impossible.  He was one of those players that believed the numbers did not necessarily represent actual game play.  There's exactly zero chance that was due to anything other than an extremely weird perception, but nothing I said ever dislodged him from it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Moonlighter on September 18, 2014, 05:56:29 AM
Waves at Moonlighter good to see the old scrapper forum people posting

Is it bad that I miss the scrapper forums and Mid's almost as much as I miss City of Heroes? The scrapper forums were/are the gold standard I hold all other MMO forums to; there just isn't another official forum I've seen that is as good. Elitist Jerks comes close, but it isn't official, nor was it as friendly at least from my experience.

Moonlighter~
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 18, 2014, 05:59:31 AM
My 3rd 50 was a Mind/Psi Dom, almost entirely solo'd. He was a painbringer and crowd destroyer.

TP into the middle of the crowd, drain psyche, unleash hell. I made regen scrappers look bad after that.

After the dominator buffs, I rolled a Mind/Psi specifically to see how dominators played after them.  It was bordering on ludicrous how powerful that combination was.  Mass confusion is a ridiculous power to give to players.  Drain Psyche is a massively powerful power for players that could leverage it properly.  And terrify is an amazing cone considering it terrifies the targets for longer than most fights actually last on top of actually doing damage.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on September 18, 2014, 06:17:10 AM
......must resist the altaholicism....my first toon will be an elec/ice troller or maybe an elec/fire brute. ARGH!

I need help :( LOL.

I've also been pondering a grav/time troller...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 18, 2014, 06:21:42 AM
......must resist the altaholicism....my first toon will be an elec/ice troller or maybe an elec/fire brute. ARGH!

I need help :( LOL.

I've also been pondering a grav/time troller...

Suggest a dark/time controller instead.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Techbot Alpha on September 18, 2014, 06:22:15 AM
Is it bad that I miss the scrapper forums and Mid's almost as much as I miss City of Heroes? The scrapper forums were/are the gold standard I hold all other MMO forums to; there just isn't another official forum I've seen that is as good.

Not bad at all. That sums up my findings exactly, really. Every other game forum, from general discussion to the RP sections, has invariably been filled with utter dross and elitist scum-bags. I think Skyrim/Elder Scrolls was the most mild, with TOR and WoW reaching levels of 'WTF' that I had prior been ignorant to the existence of.

I really, really miss the CoH forums and community... Well, with the odd exception of course, but such is life :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 18, 2014, 06:24:35 AM
Suggest a dark/time controller instead.

I had fun with a fire/ice blaster..ice slick right around a corner was fun. My first defender was rad/rad. I ran with a steady team but one particular room i dropped rad infection on a rikti in the middle, every rikti in the room turned and blasted me. our tank was stunned at how fast I died.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 18, 2014, 06:38:14 AM
Suggest a dark/time controller instead.

I actually liked my Grav/Time controller myself.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on September 18, 2014, 06:38:38 AM
Quote
Quote from: Arcana on Yesterday at 07:28:44 pm

And that's when I realized that all this power the devs were dumb enough to give us was wasted on just killing things faster.  What it could do was allow us to play City of Heroes like no other players would ever be allowed to play anything, and get away with it.  Leeroy Jenkins wiped his team with him.  But before that ever happened, CoH players were pulling stunts far stupider, and often surviving to pull even stupider stunts next (or at least, not killing everyone else around them).




On Pinnacle this practice was known as, "Hold my beer and watch this!".

On Infinity it was a custome that when you first dinged 50 you soloed the next mob. :) (if you was in a group of course). Hmm... think I'll bring that back and make a keybind that says "Go forth and die" while pointing at the mob. :P


Quote
Suggest a dark/time controller instead.

I thought about that too but I thought grav/time would look cool together for some reason.. Honestly I'll probably do both before it's all said and done. When I was playing my favorite AT was Master Minds and second was Controllers. I was trying to make one of every combination for each AT (except Nin/trick arrow oh god, I just couldn't make it threw the low levels lol). I got most of the MMs done and quite a few trollers done. So I guess if City of Heroes ever opens it's door to us again. I'll start over again, the hard part is deciding which one first. LOL!

I know the first MM I'm going to make is going to be a bots/trap for farming. The first brute will probably be either elec/fire or claws/fire for farming ( did ss/fire for so long I want something different.).

All the other ATs, I'll probably get to eventually LOL!.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 18, 2014, 06:54:10 AM
For any archetype position, you can always find at least one person that earnestly believed it.  I knew someone that believed his Invuln tanker was more squishy than his Invuln scrapper, even though that was literally mathematically impossible.  He was one of those players that believed the numbers did not necessarily represent actual game play.  There's exactly zero chance that was due to anything other than an extremely weird perception, but nothing I said ever dislodged him from it.

Never underestimate player incompetence! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on September 18, 2014, 06:56:46 AM
Quote
I actually liked my Grav/Time controller myself

What was your favorite part about that combo?

I was really considering it just because I thought they'd mesh well with each other. I can hardly remember what most of the gravity powers where. Except for the one that threw things at people of course. :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 18, 2014, 07:09:27 AM
What was your favorite part about that combo?

I was really considering it just because I thought they'd mesh well with each other. I can hardly remember what most of the gravity powers where. Except for the one that threw things at people of course. :P

Wormhole was fun :)  LGTF mission 4, wormholed the Rikti into the Hamidon and sat back and watched the fun.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 18, 2014, 07:10:58 AM
On Infinity it was a custome that when you first dinged 50 you soloed the next mob. :) (if you was in a group of course). Hmm... think I'll bring that back and make a keybind that says "Go forth and die" while pointing at the mob. :P


I thought about that too but I thought grav/time would look cool together for some reason.. Honestly I'll probably do both before it's all said and done. When I was playing my favorite AT was Master Minds and second was Controllers. I was trying to make one of every combination for each AT (except Nin/trick arrow oh god, I just couldn't make it threw the low levels lol). I got most of the MMs done and quite a few trollers done. So I guess if City of Heroes ever opens it's door to us again. I'll start over again, the hard part is deciding which one first. LOL!

I know the first MM I'm going to make is going to be a bots/trap for farming. The first brute will probably be either elec/fire or claws/fire for farming ( did ss/fire for so long I want something different.).

All the other ATs, I'll probably get to eventually LOL!.

elec fire should be good, as to claws I can't remember how much weapon redraw there was between attacks, same with fire/fire.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on September 18, 2014, 07:14:49 AM
Quote
elec fire should be good, as to claws I can't remember how much weapon redraw there was between attacks, same with fire/fire

I had a claws/fire, I liked it because I listen to music while I play and sometimes it looked like he was dancing to the music.

Quote
Wormhole was fun :)  LGTF mission 4, wormholed the Rikti into the Hamidon and sat back and watched the fun.

That does sound like fun, I'll have to remember that. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 18, 2014, 08:22:42 AM
What was your favorite part about that combo?

I was really considering it just because I thought they'd mesh well with each other. I can hardly remember what most of the gravity powers where. Except for the one that threw things at people of course. :P

Funny that.  For me it wasn't a pure power thing, it was more of an experience thing.  The sets seemed to visually mesh well for one thing.  The combo had a very "controlly" feel to it with the additional soft control of Time.  Propel was a fun power. 

On the effectiveness score, I will say keeping distortion field around basically permanently did offer a containment bonus, albeit a random one.  In fact, "find the held guy and propel him" was one of the fun things about the combo.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 18, 2014, 08:28:58 AM
For any archetype position, you can always find at least one person that earnestly believed it.  I knew someone that believed his Invuln tanker was more squishy than his Invuln scrapper, even though that was literally mathematically impossible.  He was one of those players that believed the numbers did not necessarily represent actual game play.  There's exactly zero chance that was due to anything other than an extremely weird perception, but nothing I said ever dislodged him from it.

The only way I can see that being true is that his kill rate as a tanker was far enough below his kill rate as a scrapper that he couldn't defeat enemies fast enough to prevent his health dropping faster than it would on his scrapper.

Just to make some numbers up: if on a tanker you are 20% more resistant to damage than on a scrapper, and kill foes at 80% of the speed, you incoming damage is going to be 3% higher on the tanker, over time.

Which would mean that the tanker would see bigger swings on the health bar per fight than the scrapper did, leading to the perception that the tanker was "squishier".

I leave it to Arcana to compare scrapper and tanker (SO slotted) vs 10 foes with reasonable DPS incoming and outgoing to find out which one ends the fight on a smaller percentage of health. (Because I'm pretty sure I'd screw up the maths.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 18, 2014, 08:45:04 AM
The only way I can see that being true is that his kill rate as a tanker was far enough below his kill rate as a scrapper that he couldn't defeat enemies fast enough to prevent his health dropping faster than it would on his scrapper.

Just to make some numbers up: if on a tanker you are 20% more resistant to damage than on a scrapper, and kill foes at 80% of the speed, you incoming damage is going to be 3% higher on the tanker, over time.

Hypothetically possible on paper, not possible in a practical sense with Invuln if you take Invincibility in both cases.

This reminds me, one of the things players (people in general, really) were not good at was intuitively extrapolating performance, because changes that are quantitatively easy to extrapolate could have qualitative differences not easy to extrapolate.  One analysis I did involved looking at sets like Willpower and Invulnerability that had scaling mitigation.  You might think, because the numbers were basically the same, that Willpower scaled the same for Tankers as Scrappers, with the obvious difference that Tankers had higher health.  And in a numerical sense, it did.  But in a really important qualitative sense, the set scaled differently for Tankers and Scrappers.  If you analyzed average critter damage as a function of archetype health and factored in Willpower's non-regenerative mitigation, an interesting fact emerged.  The amount of extra regen you got for each target you added around a Scrapper was, under most normal circumstances, less than the damage that critter would deal.  But for tankers, the reverse was true: the regen provided was slightly higher than the damage each critter would do.  That means if you were a Willpower tanker, herding made you *more* survivable.  If you were a Scrapper, herding made you *less* survivable, unless you had enough invention slotting to increase your overall mitigation high enough.  Which if you think about it, is kind of what you would want to happen if you could make it happen as a designer.   Purely accidental in the case of Willpower, mind you.

Invuln, and invincibility in particular, scaled differently.  Under the same analysis conditions, on Tankers each target you added reduced survivability, to a point.  Around six or seven targets, it leveled off.  Meaning, as you herded up more minions around you, you'd see more and more incoming damage, up to about six.  After that, herding more had no effect: the defensive increase roughly matched the additional incoming damage, so you could tank ten about as well as six, at least approximately.

I always found that to be interesting.  Nobody else seemed to, but that's ok.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on September 18, 2014, 08:53:25 AM
Quote
The sets seemed to visually mesh well for one thing.

Yep, that's what's gotten me wanting to make one, I just think the powerset combo would mesh well with one another. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 18, 2014, 09:03:56 AM
Arcana, I could read about your analyses for hours, and never get bored.

Insightful, thoughtful, and considered, every single one.

And I find that analysis between Invuln and Willpower to be very interesting. I can't help but consider that a very human expectation is that if herding up to 6 foes got progressively harder, any reasonable person would expect to see 7 or 8 to likewise be progressively harder, and 9 or 10 harder still. If someone was at the ragged edge against 7 foes, I expect they would rebel against the idea of facing 10.

Perception bias is a truly fascinating thing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on September 18, 2014, 09:13:01 AM
Put simply, City of Heroes allowed players to have so much more power compared to most MMOs that players could afford to do weird things that were just fun, without having to worry about being killed by the game if they did not play absolutely perfectly.  A bad day in City of Heroes was often better than a good day in other MMOs that emphasized much more difficult combat with much more restrictions on the abilities of the players.
I'm a little late, but this.  I miss playing an MMO that, at the endgame, felt similar to console RPGs at endgame, where my character was an unstoppable juggernaut (or the unstoppable Juggernaut).  The main game I'm playing now doesn't feel that way at all.  I always feel like I'm on the verge of dying, even though I'm 93% of the way to the level cap - so, the equivalent of a level 46 CoH character - and wearing the best gear I can get for my level.

Actually, that's one of the things that surprised me most about CoH when I first started to play.  When I tried my first Brute, I didn't know what to expect.  I didn't realize how survivable they were, since in every other MMO the difference in defense between a melee class and a mage class was usually fairly small, but the difference going from a Blaster to a Brute, even at low levels, was insane.

Technically, I went from Blaster to Mastermind to Brute, but that feeling was definitely there.  When I first started playing the Brute (Elec/Invuln, my forum namesake), I felt exposed due to not having any pets to keep enemy focus off of me, but then I soon realized I didn't need them, because most things just slid off his back.  The Stone/Stone Tanker I made after that was even more durable (though slower to kill things and quicker to run out of Endurance, and it took me a while to get into the right mindset to play him).

And then, later on, getting to play with Power Pools and Epic Pools and Set bonuses and later even Incarnate powers to be even more survivable.... there's still nothing like it in the MMO world.  I miss that.  I seriously miss that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 18, 2014, 10:49:21 AM
For any archetype position, you can always find at least one person that earnestly believed it.  I knew someone that believed his Invuln tanker was more squishy than his Invuln scrapper, even though that was literally mathematically impossible.  He was one of those players that believed the numbers did not necessarily represent actual game play.  There's exactly zero chance that was due to anything other than an extremely weird perception, but nothing I said ever dislodged him from it.

I've found players have an idea of a hero or super powered being they want to make. Only a few powers or powersets meet the theme and if it/they don't play to their imagination or standards you get generalized comments about the abilities of the entire AT.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 18, 2014, 11:47:31 AM
For any archetype position, you can always find at least one person that earnestly believed it.  I knew someone that believed his Invuln tanker was more squishy than his Invuln scrapper, even though that was literally mathematically impossible.  He was one of those players that believed the numbers did not necessarily represent actual game play.  There's exactly zero chance that was due to anything other than an extremely weird perception, but nothing I said ever dislodged him from it.

I admit, invulnerability didn't feel that invulnerable. lol

Is it possible that his scrapper had mondo amounts of defense/dodge and therefore the math behind inv did not come as much into play as it does with a tank who might not take as much def?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Prism Almidu on September 18, 2014, 11:54:06 AM
My main was a Dark/Dark/Soul corruptor... fun to play the entire level range, even before I really got into a groove with it. Corruptors were always my favorite archetype idea... ranged damage and support abilities, with more of a focus on damage than the defenders had. Scourge is always amusing to see ticking away. I ended up using the Reactive Interface, though I'm beginning to think Diamagnetic would have been more defensible given the -tohit. Speaking of Reactive, does anyone know if there was a reason that Reactive's damage proc was moderate where every other Interface that did damage was minor? I'm not really fond of fire magic/powers, I initially wanted to use Spectral, but the damage won me over.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on September 18, 2014, 12:33:20 PM
Is it bad that I miss the scrapper forums and Mid's almost as much as I miss City of Heroes? The scrapper forums were/are the gold standard I hold all other MMO forums to; there just isn't another official forum I've seen that is as good. Elitist Jerks comes close, but it isn't official, nor was it as friendly at least from my experience.

Moonlighter~

Did the title not give it away?  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 18, 2014, 12:41:57 PM
I actually liked my Grav/Time controller myself.

Grav/Time was excellent.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on September 18, 2014, 12:43:03 PM
I was once told that statistically speaking, Blasters and Scrappers did roughly the same amount of damage on teams.  Given that statistically Blasters were dead more often than Scrappers suggests that when they were alive they did deal somewhat more damage in teams overall as you suggest.  However, that's just one situation among the totality of the game, and even in that situation Blaster damage dealing was only somewhat more effective, and only when they were alive, and their overall net contribution to the team still did not outstrip Scrappers.

That statistical data point was another confirmation of my analysis that Blasters were not in fact outdamaging anything nor could they on average.  One individual Blaster might do a lot, but that would be in spite of their design not because of it.

I played many, many blasters, and really hated the argument that blasters didn't need defense because they had range. It didn't make much difference when the mobs had ranged attacks that could easily neutralize a blaster in just a couple hits (base damage plus DOT).

Then there were the bosses who'd add spam holds to the mix (Insanity Mages, Gunslingers, Rikti, DE...). Seemed like range wasn't really that much of an advantage.

Energy/Energy had a few nice attacks that could keep a boss on the ropes long enough to whittle it down, but if either bone smasher, stun, or total focus missed, you were out of luck. Come to think of it, they were basically scrappers with no defense, anyhow.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 18, 2014, 12:51:31 PM
It is amazing to me that so many others had great luck with Dominators, all of mine frustrated me to no end. I usually played solo and honestly, I never learned all the tricks for each AT, but some of them worked so much better for me than others. Maybe is was just the RNG playing with my head.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 18, 2014, 12:55:49 PM
I played many, many blasters, and really hated the argument that blasters didn't need defense because they had range. It didn't make much difference when the mobs had ranged attacks that could easily neutralize a blaster in just a couple hits (base damage plus DOT).

Then there were the bosses who'd add spam holds to the mix (Insanity Mages, Gunslingers, Rikti, DE...). Seemed like range wasn't really that much of an advantage.

Energy/Energy had a few nice attacks that could keep a boss on the ropes long enough to whittle it down, but if either bone smasher, stun, or total focus missed, you were out of luck. Come to think of it, they were basically scrappers with no defense, anyhow.

At the very least Blasters should have been given some innate ranged defense..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 18, 2014, 01:02:35 PM
OK, enough talk about Blasters, lets talk about something else.....hmm....Controllers?

My first "real" character, made about a week into the game (this would have been somewhere around I2),
was a Mind Control. 

Now, remember this was pre-containment day, damage for Controllers was admittedly rather low.

I remember how the boards would explode anytime the subject of Mind Control not having "pets"
came up and how so many folks said that Mind Control was worthless because of it. 

Of course, when folks talked about Controller pets, what they really meant was "fire imps"...

Meanwhile, I'd been happily solo'ing darn near everything the game had thrown at me up to that point,
thinking "Weak?  Not a chance.  OK, so yes it takes forever to actually kill anything....but everything I
see is a statue the entire time I'm killing them."  Well, except for those 5th Column robots, those were a pain.

Controllers remained my overall favorite AT from then on.  I played every AT (many many many alts worth),
but Controllers always felt the most "super" to me.

PsiBorg was one of my few permanent 50's, immune from possible deletion, and just as much fun to play
on the last days as he was during I2.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 18, 2014, 01:04:49 PM
It is amazing to me that so many others had great luck with Dominators, all of mine frustrated me to no end. I usually played solo and honestly, I never learned all the tricks for each AT, but some of them worked so much better for me than others. Maybe is was just the RNG playing with my head.

Dominators were kind of tricky. If you played one before the Dominator buffs that came later certainly it could lead to frustration. If you were a person that utilized IO's then you could achive Perma-Dom. Once you got there... Dominators become a very strong class because of their ability to control, their resistance to Mezzing and the damage they can put out..

But yes it can be rough going..but once you get there.. you can steam roll...

My Fire/Psi regularly farmed the wall in Cimerora for drops and influence.. I had an Ice/Thorn that would make scrappers ask me.. what the heck is that ??

In all honesty I think ANY toon can be played well in this game.. Some combos will work better than others in circumstances but anything can be effective..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Beltor on September 18, 2014, 01:12:51 PM
For any archetype position, you can always find at least one person that earnestly believed it.  I knew someone that believed his Invuln tanker was more squishy than his Invuln scrapper, even though that was literally mathematically impossible.  He was one of those players that believed the numbers did not necessarily represent actual game play.  There's exactly zero chance that was due to anything other than an extremely weird perception, but nothing I said ever dislodged him from it.

It may have been because scrappers don't always have to tank as long as Tankers. Because scrappers do more damage than tankers they take out enemies faster and don't have to endure the beatings as long. I noticed that on my Brute.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on September 18, 2014, 01:21:58 PM
Dominators were kind of tricky. If you played one before the Dominator buffs that came later certainly it could lead to frustration. If you were a person that utilized IO's then you could achive Perma-Dom. Once you got there... Dominators become a very strong class because of their ability to control, their resistance to Mezzing and the damage they can put out..

But yes it can be rough going..but once you get there.. you can steam roll...

My Fire/Psi regularly farmed the wall in Cimerora for drops and influence.. I had an Ice/Thorn that would make scrappers ask me.. what the heck is that ??

In all honesty I think ANY toon can be played well in this game.. Some combos will work better than others in circumstances but anything can be effective..

I had a Mind/Psi Dom (Moral Decay) on Victory. He was the only redside toon I played to 50, and if I recall correctly, it was all coasting downhill after about level 30. It was very fun toon to play, with VERY different strategies between solo and team.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kierthos on September 18, 2014, 01:27:26 PM
I only had a couple level 50s (even though I played for years). My first was a Shield/Superstrength Tanker, but my favorite character was my 2nd level 50, a Rad/Rad Defender named Brass Reactor. Rad/Rad is a pretty solid combination, and for the most part, I solo'd.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 18, 2014, 02:19:01 PM
After playing since the first day - I got to where just rolling a character up was boring, so I would either make a concept or study all the powers and then design a playstyle that often was beyond what you were supposed to do or was done in a completely different manner.

My first character was a blaster and my last alt was a blaster. I loved the blaster playstyle and so I designed one specifically based on using range as my best defense. I chose Sonic/Ice/Ice as the best ranged choice.

Primary:

Shriek - Ranged, Minor DMG(Smash/Energy), Foe -Res
Scream - Ranged, Moderate DoT(Smash/Energy), Foe -Res
Howl - Ranged (Cone), Medium DMG(Smash/Energy), Foe -Res(All)
Shockwave - Ranged (Cone), Minor DMG(Smash/Energy), Foe Knockback, -Res(All)
Shout - Ranged, Heavy DMG(Smash/Energy), Foe -Res(All)
Amplify - Self +To-Hit, +DMG
Siren's Song - Ranged (Cone), Minor DMG(Energy), Foe Sleep
Dreadful Wail - PBAoE, Extreme DMG(Smash/Energy), Foe Disorient, -Res(All), Self -Recovery

Secondary:

Chilblain - Ranged, Moderate DoT(Cold), Foe Immobilize, -Recharge, -SPD
Chilling Embrace - Toggle: PBAoE, Foe -Recharge, -SPD, -DMG
Build Up - Self +DMG, +To-Hit
Ice Patch - Location (PBAoE), Foe Knockdown
Shiver - Ranged (Cone), Foe -Recharge, -SPD
Freezing Touch - Melee, Minor DMG(Cold), Foe Hold
Frozen Aura - PBAoE, Foe Sleep

Power Pools:
Super Speed, Combat Jumping,

Cold Mastery:
Snow Storm - Toggle: Ranged (Targeted AoE), Foe -Recharge, -SPD
Flash Freeze - Ranged (Targeted AoE), Minor DMG(Cold/ Lethal), Foe Sleep
Frozen Armor - Toggle: Self +Res(Cold), +DEF(Smash, Lethal)
Hoarfrost - Self Heal, +Max Health, +Res(Toxic)

Looking through the powers I found a gameplay style that was based completely on slowing the enemy or repulsing them from me so that I could destroy them at range. I had 3 sleeps, one mass knockback/knockdown (when slotted) that when used when they hit Ice Patch would even send bosses flying or flopping - I had multiple slows -Damage toggle if they close, a self heal, Armor and multiple holds. I could sleep nearly anything in the game and then tear them apart at will. In team the stacked sleeps still worked and the enemy slowed to a crawl and with -resistance in every Sonic attack and -slow with every ice attack was the safest and most powerful blaster I ever had.

I was able to tank Lord Recluse for over 30 seconds when the tank died using my armor and the -damage from Chilling Embrace and my self heal. After we got the tank on his feet I stayed with him debuffing Lord Recluse's damage and we had no further trouble. The rest of the team was amazed to see me surviving when the tank had the defense catastrophic failure and died in seconds and yet there I was still fighting and slowing recluse.

The only problem with Sonic was the god awful sounds effects. Mix a Sonic Blaster in with a Demon MM and everyone had a headache.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on September 18, 2014, 03:09:01 PM
My first Dom that I seriously used was Gravity/Electric/Mu.  It took me a long time to get the hang of playing him (possibly hampered by the fact neither powerset is considered all that great), and I don't think he really came into his own until I hit 32 and got the Singularity, but he became one of my favorite characters, and Dominators became one of my favorite classes.  I made a second one (Earth/Ice/Leviathan) a couple of weeks after the shutdown announcement was made, and got her to 50+2 before it was all over.

I was just starting to get into Controllers when the game shut down, but I was enjoying my Dark/Dark 'troller, and I really wish I could have gotten him to 50 before it was all over (but I only got him into the 20s).  If the game comes back I'll probably try again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 18, 2014, 03:15:38 PM
I tried an ice/ice? dom first. It was very frustrating. I put doms aside, but then they changed the dominators so I tried the new electric  dom set with electric attack. Wow, that girl really let me learn dominators solo, and I soon was an asset on teams. It was a dom, yet it had a defendery feel with all the debuff and drains, the patch of doooooom. The only drawback was when the classic team 'boss' told me to stop using jolting chain because of too much kb.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on September 18, 2014, 03:45:03 PM
Oh, yeah, I did have Elec/Elec and Fire/Fire Doms, too, but they never got too far.

I'm just sorry I never got to try Plant Control or an Illusion 'Troller..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 18, 2014, 03:54:55 PM
I alted a little before sunset on Illusion/Time. It seemed very offense minded
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 18, 2014, 04:02:35 PM
Oh, yeah, I did have Elec/Elec and Fire/Fire Doms, too, but they never got too far.

I'm just sorry I never got to try Plant Control or an Illusion 'Troller..

I had a 50 plants/thermal troller that I loved, and an Illusion/kinetics troller that I only pulled off the road at 46 because I got sick of being looked upon as a speed boost dispenser.   ;)  But the plants/thermal was pretty effortless to play on teams, and the illusion/kinetics I was planning on soloing from 46-50 but didn't get to it before the closure; illusion/kin is actually the most solo-friendly troller to me.  They do more damage than the rest.  I also had a 50 fire/empathy troller and she was about my favorite on teams.

I had a 50 dark/dark fender, but he was more a "hallway-style troller," which is probably why I played a fender at all.    I liked teaming with the trollers better, but that's just my own opinion.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 18, 2014, 04:23:57 PM
I alted a little before sunset on Illusion/Time. It seemed very offense minded

Time manipulation was everything I wanted Rad to be. You replace the toggle debuffs with consoladated click debuffs that could be furthered powered with your initial debuff (Time Crawl I think it was called), a powerful heal with HoTs, and they got rid of less than useful powers (Mutation, EMP (these two are not entirely less than useful, but what Time replaces them with is certainly an upgrade), Lingering Radiation (used to be a real killer, b they nerf the crap out of -regan so it was only useful in PvP, then i13 made Rad pvp toons useless) and Fallout (I used this power once in i2 then realized vengeance was better use for dead players) for useful powers: ground AoE Hold, a single target hold, Farsight, temporal selection (give an ally the crack version of fortitude :O) and an upgraded version of Accelerated Metabolism.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 18, 2014, 04:59:53 PM
I alted a little before sunset on Illusion/Time. It seemed very offense minded
This was my main character before the shutdown.  Illusion/Time was the very best combo I had found for locking down whole groups of enemies.  And they go well together thematically as well - "time is an illusion."  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 18, 2014, 05:15:37 PM
Dominators were kind of tricky. If you played one before the Dominator buffs that came later certainly it could lead to frustration. If you were a person that utilized IO's then you could achive Perma-Dom. Once you got there... Dominators become a very strong class because of their ability to control, their resistance to Mezzing and the damage they can put out..

But yes it can be rough going..but once you get there.. you can steam roll...

My Fire/Psi regularly farmed the wall in Cimerora for drops and influence.. I had an Ice/Thorn that would make scrappers ask me.. what the heck is that ??

In all honesty I think ANY toon can be played well in this game.. Some combos will work better than others in circumstances but anything can be effective..

Did you finish the Ice/Thorn? I started one of those and got into my 30s with it, but never got it completed. Were you ever able to solve the alpha issue with it? For me, it was either I died on the first volley or I was fine. Never anything in between.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on September 18, 2014, 05:20:22 PM
My first character was a blaster and my last alt was a blaster. I loved the blaster playstyle and so I designed one specifically based on using range as my best defense. I chose Sonic/Ice/Ice as the best ranged choice.

When I got the game the first character I made was a Sonic/Ice blaster.  I still feel an attachment to that character of course, though I never got it to 50.  The funny thing is that the character was on the control-heavy side, and I found myself paying more attention in a fight to using Sirens Song, Screech, Ice Patch and Shiver than to getting the most damage in.  So it occurred that perhaps I really wanted to play a controller instead.

I made a Fire/Kin, though perhaps not for the reasons people would expect.  In the mid-30s on my blaster, I teamed with a Fire/Storm and was impressed by the imps.  I decided that I wanted a more buff-oriented secondary to buff those imps, and /Kin looked like a good choice.  I had no concept of farming or powerlevelling at the time, and in fact that character never took Hot Feet.  That character was my first 50 (and is the source of my handle).  I was completely hooked on 'trollers and my first 4 50s came from that AT.

One of my favourites by the end was Plant/Rad.  I put a lot of time into that build and it was a monstrous soloer.  It has the advantage of doing well early too, with the high damage of the AoE immobilize, the potent Seeds of Confusion coming at level 8, and the excellent early /Rad powers in AM and RI.  I think if the game does come back that might be the first character I get going.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 18, 2014, 06:14:45 PM
Dominators were kind of tricky. If you played one before the Dominator buffs that came later certainly it could lead to frustration. If you were a person that utilized IO's then you could achive Perma-Dom. Once you got there... Dominators become a very strong class because of their ability to control, their resistance to Mezzing and the damage they can put out..

From my experience, one of the indirect sources of frustration for Dominators was that their powerset design strongly encouraged a hybrid melee-ranged combat style that many players were not used to.  If you played and excelled with an Controller, or a non-Bot Mastermind, or a Blapper, you were more likely to transition smoothly to a Dominator.  If you tended to focus on ranged blasters, non-ranged scrappers, or defenders, you might have had a harder time.

Some players were also frustrated by the relative lack of AoEs, but what Dominators lacked in quantity they made up for in execution potential, because you could use control to better leverage your AoEs, particularly PBAoEs.

And of course there's Domination.  If you could leverage Domination well, that also made a huge difference.  And you didn't need to perma Domination to get more mileage out of it than other players.  Because Domination also refreshed endurance, if you could afford to use more endurance than was otherwise sustainable and pace yourself so that Domination tended to refresh endurance when you were very low, in effect that meant you were able to do more per minute than a player that didn't pace themselves that way.  That tended to translate indirectly into more damage, faster kill rate, and faster overall play.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 18, 2014, 07:36:55 PM
Put simply, City of Heroes allowed players to have so much more power compared to most MMOs that players could afford to do weird things that were just fun, without having to worry about being killed by the game if they did not play absolutely perfectly.  A bad day in City of Heroes was often better than a good day in other MMOs that emphasized much more difficult combat with much more restrictions on the abilities of the players.

I would also say though that, the combat other mmorpgs emphasized is laced to an extreme with the artificial kind of difficulty.  They only allowed for perhaps the most extremely narrow, restrictive strategy, and only that.  If you did anything else in them, you lost automatically.  If you did that one strategy, you won easily all the time.  But the strategy didn't allow for any kind of backup plan nore allowed the team to defend itself in a changing situation.  The holy trinity is useless in pvp, because of the same reasons mmorpgs become hard when things don't go perfectly to plan.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 18, 2014, 08:06:03 PM
I had a teammate who loved to speed boost the team, once in a mission. Normally, I had no problem with this, except in a cave map. For whatever reason, I always got "snagged" on terrain features, which annoyed the hell out of me. He never would allow me the chance to get out of range, if I asked, so I would always either delay entering or rush ahead to avoid the boost. :)

(I know. It's my problem, rather than a general problem with the game, but I felt it bore pointing out.)

I didn't think that was so much the player but bad map design.  You had a lot of static meshing that wasn't solid enough to prevent people from being stuck.  Some caves such as the counsel caves for instance should have had invisible walls placed in front of the piping to prevent people from getting jammed into them.  I'd have also smoothed the floors some, but I'd totally have made the walls much flatter for gameplay sake and to prevent static mesh disasters.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 18, 2014, 08:19:37 PM
I didn't think that was so much the player but bad map design.  You had a lot of static meshing that wasn't solid enough to prevent people from being stuck.  Some caves such as the counsel caves for instance should have had invisible walls placed in front of the piping to prevent people from getting jammed into them.  I'd have also smoothed the floors some, but I'd totally have made the walls much flatter for gameplay sake and to prevent static mesh disasters.
I had always assumed that this was deliberate for the Oranbega cave designs, which is why I would train myself in speed-running them without getting snagged on the torches.  I always thought that was a situation where I appreciated being one of the (apparently) few people who played CoH with a game controller - flight especially was smooth and sure for me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 18, 2014, 08:21:08 PM
Believe it or not, I actually used to train for that situation, and have started using Titan Icon to train for it again.  When a large Oranbega cavern was cleared out, I would practice full speed runs of Flight (which I always have slotted as fast as it will reasonably go), down twisty-turny hallways lined with torches with the objective to make it to the end without snagging myself on any obstacles along the way.

That sounds like work! I just wanna play the game! :P

Seriously, that doesn't sound like a bad idea. I'll have to get going on that, since we're almost there.

;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 18, 2014, 09:31:58 PM
I liked my Grav/Time, and I agree that it fit thematically too (master of time and space). The dmg was always meh, but the SLOWS from both powersets were enough to make all the baddies to crawl. And I found that Time had a lot of both soft and hard controls in its set as well. Very nice toon, called mine Too Much AwesomeSauce and he looked like Dr. Manhattan. I think I really got to like grav despite its problems because it had such a clean look to it.

I had a Mind/Elec dom (Jed I Am) and she was fun too but real slow on the killing. I did ok solo, and I slept a lot of baddies, and confused a bunch too. But on a team, most complained about the confuse taking away from XP and sleep being almost completely useless as most targets were hit with AoE dmg, waking them immediately. I think Psi was my tertiary set (nice status protection in that) and it fit with the theme. no travel except ninja run (just because I bought jet packs by this point) and I really got used to ninja run, you can do some impressive stuff with that one power.

As for the Invuln tank vs scrapper argument earlier, I always felt the same as you friend. My Scrapper seemed tougher than my Tank for some reason. It could be the speed at which I killed or maybe just the different attack powers (claws on Scrapper, SS on Tank). Not sure but I KNOW my scrapper was more fun to play at least, that could be it too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Acanous on September 18, 2014, 09:39:02 PM
any update on the timeline? I just got a new PC. Old one fragged itself. Lost all my builds save two (Which I still have in Email format)
I...have no idea how to rebuild Acanous :<
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 18, 2014, 10:42:31 PM
Did you finish the Ice/Thorn? I started one of those and got into my 30s with it, but never got it completed. Were you ever able to solve the alpha issue with it? For me, it was either I died on the first volley or I was fine. Never anything in between.

Early on yes the Alpha was tricky.. in the end my build had enough S/L defense that I would just wade in and go to town..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 18, 2014, 10:48:46 PM
any update on the timeline? I just got a new PC. Old one fragged itself. Lost all my builds save two (Which I still have in Email format)
I...have no idea how to rebuild Acanous :<
My best advice is to start playing around in Mids again.  I've had to re-familiarize myself with it, but I swear I'm actually making improvements in my new builds that didn't occur to me last time around.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Urd on September 18, 2014, 10:52:28 PM
It is amazing to me that so many others had great luck with Dominators, all of mine frustrated me to no end. I usually played solo and honestly, I never learned all the tricks for each AT, but some of them worked so much better for me than others. Maybe is was just the RNG playing with my head.

I had many issues with Dominators was early on, the "Happy Fun Button" you were happy when Domination was up and sad when it wasn't. Controllers: When I compared my Dominator to any of my controllers, I would rather play a controller. After the buffs to Dominators, they were much better. I had two, a fire/fire and a mind/psi. If only they had an illusion one. :( Strangely I consider Dominators as a Blaster replacement rather than an alternate Controller.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 18, 2014, 11:09:01 PM
From my experience, one of the indirect sources of frustration for Dominators was that their powerset design strongly encouraged a hybrid melee-ranged combat style that many players were not used to.  If you played and excelled with an Controller, or a non-Bot Mastermind, or a Blapper, you were more likely to transition smoothly to a Dominator.  If you tended to focus on ranged blasters, non-ranged scrappers, or defenders, you might have had a harder time.

Some players were also frustrated by the relative lack of AoEs, but what Dominators lacked in quantity they made up for in execution potential, because you could use control to better leverage your AoEs, particularly PBAoEs.

And of course there's Domination.  If you could leverage Domination well, that also made a huge difference.  And you didn't need to perma Domination to get more mileage out of it than other players.  Because Domination also refreshed endurance, if you could afford to use more endurance than was otherwise sustainable and pace yourself so that Domination tended to refresh endurance when you were very low, in effect that meant you were able to do more per minute than a player that didn't pace themselves that way.  That tended to translate indirectly into more damage, faster kill rate, and faster overall play.

make sense my firsts two blasters were Nrg/Nrg and  Elec/Elec which I played as Blappers and I was pretty decent with Controllers as well
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 18, 2014, 11:13:14 PM
Melee characters in general just weren't for me.  My philosophy is: "If you're close enough to touch the enemy, then they're close enough to touch you - and that's too close!"  I tried to ensure range 100 (at least) for all my powers and keep my distance, hovering with Fly, ready to escape if things went badly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on September 18, 2014, 11:44:20 PM
It is amazing to me that so many others had great luck with Dominators, all of mine frustrated me to no end. I usually played solo and honestly, I never learned all the tricks for each AT, but some of them worked so much better for me than others. Maybe is was just the RNG playing with my head.

Plant/fire dom was actually one of the best builds in the game, min/maxingwise.

Melee characters in general just weren't for me.  My philosophy is: "If you're close enough to touch the enemy, then they're close enough to touch you - and that's too close!"  I tried to ensure range 100 (at least) for all my powers and keep my distance, hovering with Fly, ready to escape if things went badly.

Had a dark/shield scrap, a Widow, a claw/dark scrapper, a ninja/ninja stalker, a titan/elec, SS/fire, and a STJ/regen scrapper for melee characters, i'm probably forgetting a few.

Titan/elec couldn't really die because everything it fought got sapped, it had infinite energy, and defensive sweep really made it hard to hit.

Dark/shield murdered entire packs (Including bosses) in about two seconds.

Claws/dark could not die when I got cardiac alpha (Before that...*Shiver*)

Nin/nin was softcapped, and could handle itself fairly well, since bosses died really quick.

Widow was sort of like playing a more badass claws character with psychic powers and a laughably easy softcap...Kickass.

SS/fire/fire- Remember how I said dark/shield cleared entire packs in 2 seconds? This guy cleared entire maps in mere minutes.

STJ/regen: Liked STJ, but I didn't feel like it meshed with regen at all. My worst melee character, not fun, (Subjective, I know) and lacked some damage on the AOE front.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 19, 2014, 12:01:47 AM
Edgar/Bug: Y'know, I've noticed an infestation here. Everywhere I look, in fact. Nothing but undeveloped, unevolved, barely conscious pond scum, totally convinced of their own superiority as they scurry about their short, pointless lives.

Zap-Em Man: Well, yeah. Uh... don't you want to get rid of 'em?

Edgar/Bug: Ah... in the worst way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 19, 2014, 12:11:08 AM
Melee characters in general just weren't for me.  My philosophy is: "If you're close enough to touch the enemy, then they're close enough to touch you - and that's too close!"  I tried to ensure range 100 (at least) for all my powers and keep my distance, hovering with Fly, ready to escape if things went badly.

In my own quaint and defenderish way of thinking, there were multiple ranges.

1. There was melee aka fluffy aka disruption anchor aka hurricane range, and trapper range. Get in close, get cozy and debuff

2. There was near range. This range was intended not to be close enough to land a punch, but a good place for radiant aura, heal aura, the time auras, the dispersion bubbles (cover all the melee folks) and KINETIC range. (Can you hear the Bzzzzzzooooorrrrrrrtttccccccch! and see the monitor flicker?)

3. Who am I leaving out? Well dark defenders could go pretty much anywhere even without his posse of defender cousins, but for more maximum healing with twilight grasp it was preferable to be in with his peeps, outside melee range. The other fellow I forget so often is trick arrow. Generally, he would best stay at the far outside range of the heal auras, try to stay inside dispersion buffs; mezz protection is golden.

The safest place is right beside your bubbler.. or fluffy xD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 19, 2014, 12:14:18 AM
The safest place is right beside your bubbler.. or fluffy xD
Actually, I found the safest place was a good 200'+ out, sniping from very long range.  Extra fun - you hit one, but you're so far way that halfway to you he gets bored, turns around and goes back.  Then you hit him again and finish him off.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 19, 2014, 12:16:34 AM
...

Widow was sort of like playing a more badass claws character with psychic powers and a laughably easy softcap...Kickass.

...

I know some of you might NOT be surprised but I thought of widows, especially night widows, as being a defender with really awesome secondary melee attacks. Mind link was way too powerful for ordinary melee characters :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 19, 2014, 12:39:32 AM
any update on the timeline? I just got a new PC. Old one fragged itself. Lost all my builds save two (Which I still have in Email format)
I...have no idea how to rebuild Acanous :<

If you have a picture, I'm sure somebody can figure it out.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dareon Kale on September 19, 2014, 02:52:00 AM
I enjoyed my Grav/Time controller. I was working towards perma chronoshift and farsight, but alas, the sunset caught me. I put the +chance to hold proc in Distortion Field for even more randomly frozen in time goodness. Between that, Time Crawl, and Time's Juncture, the distance from me to the mob was irrelevant. They weren't going to close the gap anytime soon.

That being said, I miss my one 'finished' toon. MA/Regen scrapper with perma Hasten/Dull Pain. He was an unkillable monster with so much recharge that I ALWAYS had a button of some sort available if things got hairy. No tank, controller just died, and the defender is sucking on fumes? Yeah, I had a button for that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 19, 2014, 03:16:41 AM
I had always assumed that this was deliberate for the Oranbega cave designs, which is why I would train myself in speed-running them without getting snagged on the torches.  I always thought that was a situation where I appreciated being one of the (apparently) few people who played CoH with a game controller - flight especially was smooth and sure for me.

I would never, ever say that bad map design is deliberate, more the person designing it was very artistic, but did not account for gameplay or abilities.

A good example of shoddy map design that has poor gameplay one can look at today, is the Villa's in the New Vegas DLC Dead Money.  You cannot tell where you are going.  The creator see was very heavily focused on a survival horror aspect, and made a maze, but he made it in a way that not only discouraged exploration, but also caused people to just get frustrated and irritable.  The whole intention was to make it very scary, but it was the speakers, cloud and very well hidden bear claw traps made it a rather uneventful trial and error game.  You'd run to one spot trying to find the speaker thats killing you and shoot it, if it wasn't a destroyable one.  Often you'd end up finally finding a radio, reloading a game, then knowing exactly where to run and shoot it.  OR you were stumped and looking up a walkthrough.  It wasn't scary, nore fun, due to the bad design of the maps.

It wasn't intentional, and you can see alot of signs of that.  Even more-so since EVERYTHING looked alike(even the enemies were identical to one another).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 19, 2014, 04:13:14 AM
I put the +chance to hold proc in Distortion Field for even more randomly frozen in time goodness. Between

ARG !!!!! Back to Mids !!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 19, 2014, 05:06:34 AM
I was once told that statistically speaking, Blasters and Scrappers did roughly the same amount of damage on teams.  Given that statistically Blasters were dead more often than Scrappers suggests that when they were alive they did deal somewhat more damage in teams overall as you suggest.  However, that's just one situation among the totality of the game, and even in that situation Blaster damage dealing was only somewhat more effective, and only when they were alive, and their overall net contribution to the team still did not outstrip Scrappers.

That statistical data point was another confirmation of my analysis that Blasters were not in fact outdamaging anything nor could they on average.  One individual Blaster might do a lot, but that would be in spite of their design not because of it.

I have to say I loved Blasters but reading through what you wrote made me rethink my time playing. I still love blasters but I now realize that I employed many strategies to stay alive that just become second nature.

1. Never stop moving ( I came from a FPS background so this was cake.)
2. Thin out the crowd. I would always weed out a few guys by pulling to avoid a whole mob. Just pull a few.
3. Slot for positional defense.
4. ALWAYS keep yellow, purple and green inspirations.
5. Bug Out if you have to. Many is the time when I bailed on a fight, retreated, waited until things were less hairy and powers had recharged.
6. Slot stealth proc as soon as you can.
7. Know your secondary inside and out. You will need some of those powers to survive.
8. Even on a team, always plan to save yourself. There might be somebody who could save you but you always relied on your own resources when you could.

But I have to say I think it made me a better player and playing blasters was always fun to me, but I can see your points, I just never realized that I adjusted for them. I always though blasters were pretty tought because, well, mine at 50 could play +4 x8 against some enemy groups.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: archaist on September 19, 2014, 06:20:45 AM
3. Slot for positional defense.

I loved using the mental manipulation set and slotting contagious confusion in world of confusion. I would not care about position too much as most of the melee creeps were fighting for me. The more baddies, the better chance for the proc to go off, so I would run head long into large groups.

6. Slot stealth proc as soon as you can.

Not sure if this is what you are referring to, but one of the quirks I always had was slotting +stealth in sprint. As I would often use blessing of the zephyr set in my super speed to help hit soft cap or at the very least for the kb reduction without adding slots.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 19, 2014, 06:36:50 AM
ARG !!!!! Back to Mids !!!

Bah, humbug! No proc of frozen fun. Must make sure Chrono Shift is perma... play later.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 19, 2014, 07:01:06 AM

I always try to put the Lockdown proc in Distortion Field... it truly does make a difference :)

ARG !!!!! Back to Mids !!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kiario on September 19, 2014, 09:39:48 AM
Hi,

Was it this weekend positron had something to reveal?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on September 19, 2014, 11:54:35 AM
Hi,

Was it this weekend positron had something to reveal?

Lordy I hope so.

This is actually my first time hearing about this; I haven't been able to get on in ~a week.

Can someone enlighten me/us?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on September 19, 2014, 12:25:59 PM
.. I've been here constantly, but this is the first I'm hearing about Positron revealing anything.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 19, 2014, 12:52:30 PM
.. I've been here constantly, but this is the first I'm hearing about Positron revealing anything.

Nothing on his Twitter that I can see either. Kiario's probably just making it up.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 19, 2014, 01:31:20 PM
A Pure defender is one who places first emphasis on his/her team defensive capabilities. They start to see things like if times correctly, Twilight Grasp will become an autohit (if you can get the power to hit just as the mob faceplants then it hit's all but automatically).

I meant to reply to this the other day, but got distracted and forgot about it until we were talking about /Dark in the controller thread. The above statement is incorrect. Twilight Grasp is never autohit, and timing it like that would have zero impact on the actual hit chance.

The reason is simple: TG requires a live foe as a target. If you manage to activate the power, then the target is alive at the moment you activate it.

To-hit rolls happen at the start of power activation. This is most obvious with powers that have a long delayed hit like Propel -- you can see the hit roll in the combat log instantly, allowing you to "predict the future" and know if it was a hit or miss long before you see it happen onscreen.

The point is that if the target dies on the next combat tick, or even later in the same one, it doesn't matter -- the hit roll has already happened and it's already been determined if TG hit or missed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 19, 2014, 01:44:48 PM
For those of you wanting to get Chronoshift (or other awesome self buffs with HUGE recharge times), make sure you got a power that does KB (propel works, I think Lift does too) and put one of those KB IOs that has the +100%RC procs in it. I used that thing to GREAT effect on my Grav/Time troller. The +RC doesn't last long (like 10 secs I think) but I spammed propel all the time (HUGELY fun watching the weird things it would port in and throw at the baddies; pool table was fun). It was so useful, I never had to slot hasten with three RC IOs.

And I heard nothing about Positron posting anything, is that for real or what? Can't imagine he would even be involved. I don't understand the appeal of bringing in the old devs for the proposed CoX Legacy. It can't be modded and what would the devs do even?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on September 19, 2014, 02:02:14 PM
Worst the not read ever English have I.

Y0|_| c0|_|1o| |-|4\/3 60|\|3 f|_|11 1337.

Ghu, this reminds me of a screenshot I've got tucked away somewhere from the first Winter Lord event that's still giggleworthy even after all these years. My Nrg/Nrg Blaster in Perez Park, in the air over the plaza east of the passage to Steel Canyon, having defeated one of the smaller snowman spawns and getting the message "You receive 1337 experience."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Excidia on September 19, 2014, 04:10:23 PM
The only announcement I can remember regarding Positron and September is that he tweeted that under the original proposed timeline, CoH2 would go live in Sep 2014.  Obviously that's not happening.

e-
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 19, 2014, 04:12:47 PM
The only announcement I can remember regarding Positron and September is that he tweeted that under the original proposed timeline, CoH2 would go live in Sep 2014.  Obviously that's not happening.

e-

That you know of.... O.o

(hehe)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 19, 2014, 04:15:07 PM
I meant to reply to this the other day, but got distracted and forgot about it until we were talking about /Dark in the controller thread. The above statement is incorrect. Twilight Grasp is never autohit, and timing it like that would have zero impact on the actual hit chance.

The reason is simple: TG requires a live foe as a target. If you manage to activate the power, then the target is alive at the moment you activate it.

To-hit rolls happen at the start of power activation. This is most obvious with powers that have a long delayed hit like Propel -- you can see the hit roll in the combat log instantly, allowing you to "predict the future" and know if it was a hit or miss long before you see it happen onscreen.

The point is that if the target dies on the next combat tick, or even later in the same one, it doesn't matter -- the hit roll has already happened and it's already been determined if TG hit or missed.

Dear kind coding type smart person. At one time in CoH certain aoe defender heals DID not work between the to-hit check of the activation and the pseudopet that distributed the heal because the target was dead. I think this most frequently happened to kinetics. I also think this was fixed near the sunset.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 19, 2014, 04:19:31 PM
Yes, I remember that well. Powers like Transfusion/Transference (but NOT Twilight Grasp) that spawned a pseudopet at the target would activate, but fail to spawn the pseudopet if the target died before the hit delay.

I don't remember exactly when it was fixed -- I kind of think around the same time many ally buffs were made into AoEs -- but there was much rejoicing from my Kins.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 19, 2014, 04:26:23 PM
Yes, I remember that well. Powers like Transfusion/Transference (but NOT Twilight Grasp) that spawned a pseudopet at the target would activate, but fail to spawn the pseudopet if the target died before the hit delay.

I don't remember exactly when it was fixed -- I kind of think around the same time many ally buffs were made into AoEs -- but there was much rejoicing from my Kins.

AoE speed boost, such a wonderful thing, and still the complaints  I SAID DONT SPEEDBOOST ME!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 19, 2014, 04:35:32 PM
AoE speed boost, such a wonderful thing, and still the complaints  I SAID DONT SPEEDBOOST ME!

Until I installed more ram and a better gfx card, speedboost was not my friend. lol

After the upgrade, it was speedcrack for me ALL the time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Arc X on September 19, 2014, 04:47:05 PM
Was Positron announcement about a kick starter for a card game with several former Paragon Studios employees ?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 19, 2014, 04:52:24 PM
Was Positron announcement about a kick starter for a card game with several former Paragon Studios employees ?

I believe that was Arbiter, not Positron.

Cool game! ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 19, 2014, 05:12:51 PM
I meant to reply to this the other day, but got distracted and forgot about it until we were talking about /Dark in the controller thread. The above statement is incorrect. Twilight Grasp is never autohit, and timing it like that would have zero impact on the actual hit chance.

The reason is simple: TG requires a live foe as a target. If you manage to activate the power, then the target is alive at the moment you activate it.

To-hit rolls happen at the start of power activation. This is most obvious with powers that have a long delayed hit like Propel -- you can see the hit roll in the combat log instantly, allowing you to "predict the future" and know if it was a hit or miss long before you see it happen onscreen.

The point is that if the target dies on the next combat tick, or even later in the same one, it doesn't matter -- the hit roll has already happened and it's already been determined if TG hit or missed.

Yes, absolutely you have to fire it off before the critter dies. If you fire it off before the critter is killed but the animation hits after it dies something weird happens. The timing is actually something closer to "you observe the bad guy is close to dead and you have a teammate on him, your teammate clicks his final power (a hit but damage isn't dealt yet), you click TG, damage from teammate is delivered to the critter, your animation hits and you get the heal".
I know, that it makes absolutely no logical sense that this affects tohit.

What I'd observed was not actually auto hit, but using that trick well over a 1000 times I swear I only missed maybe twice. Normally I would just dismiss such things as luck of the dice but the probability of this would have been too weird for me not to think there was some sort of strangeness in the code. 

I even went so far as to tell one of my SG mates about it to see if he saw the same results. After practicing it, he thought it was a large increase in chance of it hitting too.

It could have been a false observation, I grant that. However, the observation continued throughout me using Dark Miasma. This dates back to either late I1 or I2. Back when TG had its really wonderful looking but completely unreasonably long animation (like 4 seconds or something).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 19, 2014, 05:17:56 PM
Yes, absolutely you have to fire it off before the critter dies. If you fire it off before the critter is killed but the animation hits after it dies something weird happens. The timing is actually something closer to "you observe the bad guy is close to dead and you have a teammate on him, your teammate clicks his final power (a hit but damage isn't dealt yet), you click TG, damage from teammate is delivered to the critter, your animation hits and you get the heal".
I know, that it makes absolutely no logical sense that this affects tohit.

What I'd observed was not actually auto hit, but using that trick well over a 1000 times I swear I only missed maybe twice. Normally I would just dismiss such things as luck of the dice but the probability of this would have been too weird for me not to think there was some sort of strangeness in the code. 

I even went so far as to tell one of my SG mates about it to see if he saw the same results. After practicing it, he thought it was a large increase in chance of it hitting too.

It could have been a false observation, I grant that. However, the observation continued throughout me using Dark Miasma. This dates back to either late I1 or I2. Back when TG had its really wonderful looking but completely unreasonably long animation (like 4 seconds or something).
It's a false observation. There is no point in which Twilight Grasp would fail to do a tohit check and still heal. If it fails to do a tohit check, it doesn't get activated. IIRC Twilight Grasp had a higher than average chance to hit (or maybe that was Transfusion...), and you probably put accuracy enhancements in there. Possibly had some tohit buffs/bonuses. It's rarely going to miss under those circumstances.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on September 19, 2014, 05:31:52 PM
I think it's really unlikely that there will be any new information until the deal either goes through or dies. There...just isn't anything to tell.

"In our negotiations with NCSoft, we have finally agreed on the type of tea that will be served at the meeting, and which variety of moon cake will be distributed to the participants."

 ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on September 19, 2014, 05:41:39 PM
"In our negotiations with NCSoft, we have finally agreed on the type of tea that will be served at the meeting, and which variety of moon cake will be distributed to the participants."

 ;D

Hey, that's progress.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 19, 2014, 05:51:34 PM
As long as it's still ongoing, we have hope.

In the meantime, it's giving me lots of time to work on optimizing builds to within an inch of their lives in Mids, updating and selecting costumes, preparing extensive zone/contact/mission spreadsheets, and re-familiarizing myself with the zones, even going on mock zone exploration badge tours (so that I can remember where they all are).

In short, I'm trying to use the wait time productively, gaming-wise.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fridgy Daiere on September 19, 2014, 06:16:01 PM
AoE speed boost, such a wonderful thing, and still the complaints  I SAID DONT SPEEDBOOST ME!

Three words for them:  Null the Gull.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on September 19, 2014, 06:18:00 PM
Since the news became more official at the beginning of the month, I haven't been able to help myself from thinking about which old characters I want to remake, what new ones I would make, and what I would do first.  I know I should just direct my attention elsewhere and be grateful if news breaks of a reboot, but I can't find another gaming experience that's nearly as satisfying.

What makes it more poignant for me is that I missed the last year and a half or so of the game due to a particularly nasty arm injury.  So, I missed a lot of the incarnate content, there were many powersets I never got to see, and I couldn't be part of the final days.  Now being in a better condition to play and presented with the possibility of returning to a game and community that I really enjoyed, it's hard not to get excited about it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 19, 2014, 06:24:57 PM
Three words for them:  Null the Gull.

His witty repartee will forever be missed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 19, 2014, 06:39:52 PM
Yes, absolutely you have to fire it off before the critter dies. If you fire it off before the critter is killed but the animation hits after it dies something weird happens. The timing is actually something closer to "you observe the bad guy is close to dead and you have a teammate on him, your teammate clicks his final power (a hit but damage isn't dealt yet), you click TG, damage from teammate is delivered to the critter, your animation hits and you get the heal".
I know, that it makes absolutely no logical sense that this affects tohit.

What I'd observed was not actually auto hit, but using that trick well over a 1000 times I swear I only missed maybe twice. Normally I would just dismiss such things as luck of the dice but the probability of this would have been too weird for me not to think there was some sort of strangeness in the code. 

I even went so far as to tell one of my SG mates about it to see if he saw the same results. After practicing it, he thought it was a large increase in chance of it hitting too.

It could have been a false observation, I grant that. However, the observation continued throughout me using Dark Miasma. This dates back to either late I1 or I2. Back when TG had its really wonderful looking but completely unreasonably long animation (like 4 seconds or something).

Unfortunately, I have to assert the most likely explanation is observer bias.  The game engine simply couldn't malfunction in the way you're describing, for the simple reason that the moment you activate TG it rolls its to hit roll and decides whether to hit or miss immediately.  Anything that happens after that can't change that outcome.  What you're saying you are observing, in game engine terms, is that TG is activated, the game engine decides whether the power hits or misses, but if it has already rolled a miss and the target dies, the game engine decides to change its mind and call it a hit.

Its possible for a power that hits to subsequently fail to apply its effect if something later interferes with the process, like the issue with pseudo-pets, or the game engine could malfunction and not apply those effects because of a bug.  But its not possible for a power that misses to subsequently apply its effects anyway (technically, anything is possible with a software bug but this is vastly more unlikely than the reverse for the simple reason hit decisions can't be "appealed later" in the game engine).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 19, 2014, 06:51:45 PM
I meant to reply to this the other day, but got distracted and forgot about it until we were talking about /Dark in the controller thread. The above statement is incorrect. Twilight Grasp is never autohit, and timing it like that would have zero impact on the actual hit chance.

The reason is simple: TG requires a live foe as a target. If you manage to activate the power, then the target is alive at the moment you activate it.

To-hit rolls happen at the start of power activation. This is most obvious with powers that have a long delayed hit like Propel -- you can see the hit roll in the combat log instantly, allowing you to "predict the future" and know if it was a hit or miss long before you see it happen onscreen.

The point is that if the target dies on the next combat tick, or even later in the same one, it doesn't matter -- the hit roll has already happened and it's already been determined if TG hit or missed.

I will say though that whenever i 'deleyed' an attack in an attack chain that had previously missed, I was always able to get a hit as long as my accuracy was 80+.  In fact you could if you fought for a long time notice patterns in the to hit roles in that they seemed to be timer based.

I can understand the point your making here though.  Just it was a trick I learned in the game after talking to a math instructor during statistics one day, in that he mentioned "well, it might be a clock-based random number generator rather than a true random number generator".  I started testing it out and was sometimes able to start counting the rng hits.  Mostly if I missed in an attack, and my general to hit wasn't super high i'd deley by half a second more than I normally would when I got to an attack.  Hit every time where-as before I'd miss that one attack in the chain every, single, time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 19, 2014, 06:57:36 PM
I will say though that whenever i 'deleyed' an attack in an attack chain that had previously missed, I was always able to get a hit as long as my accuracy was 80+.  In fact you could if you fought for a long time notice patterns in the to hit roles in that they seemed to be timer based.

That sounds like the streakbreaker kicking in. It resets when you have a lower to-hit threshold, but it was literally impossible to miss two 95% chance attacks in a row. If you watched the combat log, it would have said something like this:

Missed! Your Pie Throw power had a 95% chance to hit, you rolled 0.97.
Hit! Your Pie Throw power was forced to hit by the streakbreaker.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 19, 2014, 07:04:06 PM
That sounds like the streakbreaker kicking in. It resets when you have a lower to-hit threshold, but it was literally impossible to miss to 95% chance attacks in a row. If you watched the combat log, it would have said something like this:

Missed! Your Pie Throw power had a 95% chance to hit, you rolled 0.97.
Hit! Your Pie Throw power was forced to hit by the streakbreaker.

This is in an attack chain in which, I had say 3-4 attacks.  I'd launch attacks 1-2 and they'd hit,t hen the third would miss in that chain every time.  In fact often I'd see this happen in that, say i'm using MA, I launch crane kick and there were moments where it'd miss every time.  OR any heavy attack.  Thing is streak breaker didn't apply to individual attack powers but to previous hit roles in that, say I launched storm kick before crane kick and it hit, there would never be a reason to apply it suddenly to crane kick.  And I'd miss with it easily enough.  I then look at the hit roles, often i'd get the same numbers in that attack that was missing UNTIL I deleyed and then I'd get something different, finally.  The combat dialogue would NOT say a streak breaker happened it'd give a normal role.

It wasn't streak breaker, I didn't bother deleying when I had 95% to hit most the time but as I said I really strongly suspect the random number generator for combat is time based.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 19, 2014, 07:07:51 PM
Yeah the streakbreaker was...nice, I guess. It meant you hit once for every ten swings IIRC (so 9 misses in a row, the next to hit check was guaranteed to hit. The reverse was hilarious though; you could hit I think 9 times in a row and were guaranteed to MISS on the next (10th) attack. REALLY annoying if that was your NUKE or a HUGE hitting attack.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on September 19, 2014, 07:08:34 PM
Hi,

Was it this weekend positron had something to reveal?

Maybe this was it? http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/7006643-queue-revamp (http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/7006643-queue-revamp)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 19, 2014, 07:10:03 PM
"In our negotiations with NCSoft, we have finally agreed on the type of tea that will be served at the meeting, and which variety of moon cake will be distributed to the participants."
 ;D


You're joking, but sometimes that's not far off from the truth. -facepalms-
Not to say that's how it's going in this case, since I don't know personally.
Gah, I wish I could be a fly on the wall at those meetings. lol
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 19, 2014, 07:12:55 PM

You're joking, but sometimes that's not far off from the truth. -facepalms-
Not to say that's how it's going in this case, since I don't know personally.
Gah, I wish I could be a fly on the wall at those meetings. lol
I just wish we KNEW there were meetings still taking place. I am sure they are, but would be nice to know.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 19, 2014, 07:13:45 PM

Maybe this was it? http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/7006643-queue-revamp (http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/7006643-queue-revamp)

I think you're on to something... ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 19, 2014, 07:25:45 PM
Unfortunately, I have to assert the most likely explanation is observer bias.  The game engine simply couldn't malfunction in the way you're describing, for the simple reason that the moment you activate TG it rolls its to hit roll and decides whether to hit or miss immediately.  Anything that happens after that can't change that outcome.  What you're saying you are observing, in game engine terms, is that TG is activated, the game engine decides whether the power hits or misses, but if it has already rolled a miss and the target dies, the game engine decides to change its mind and call it a hit.

Its possible for a power that hits to subsequently fail to apply its effect if something later interferes with the process, like the issue with pseudo-pets, or the game engine could malfunction and not apply those effects because of a bug.  But its not possible for a power that misses to subsequently apply its effects anyway (technically, anything is possible with a software bug but this is vastly more unlikely than the reverse for the simple reason hit decisions can't be "appealed later" in the game engine).

I certainly understand your thought that it was observer bias and I'm willing to state that it might very well be that. That was what I thought for a fairly long time too. After all, Achmeds Raison would dictate it (it's not spellt that way?).

Like I said earlier, I first noticed this back in the bad ol' Dark Miasma days. I was in Perez Park doing street sweep with some friends bemoaning my healz lack of hitting ability and activation time. I would hit TG and it would tell me miss/hit and a teammate would spot my target, have tea, saunter up to him, engage in battle, defeat the bad guy and have a celebration in the time it would take for my TG to finish its animation (me exaggerate?).

My thought would have been is there such a thing as an instantaneous queue surrounding to hit rolls considering many times the damage comes after the fact? How would that affect to hit chances if any (probably not but a place to consider).

The other thought (which I considered more likely at the time) was that it was a mea culpa to the dark miasma defender for his crappy animation time. Sort of
If TG
then Look at state on mob
     If state = yes                       //the baddie has been hit but damage not delivered
     and damage > Health
     then TG hit = yes                 //mea culpa you so so broken dark maismist.
Else
continue.

At the time (and mostly today) I had no real idea how coding was done for this or any other game around. I even had a thematic rationale for it. That the dark maismist was ripping the soul of the recently departed (never saw that in the power description though :) ).

LaughingAlex brought up a good thought too. It is possible that it was a unintended consequence of steakbreaker and I was just "feeling" the right time for advantage.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 19, 2014, 07:26:50 PM
I will say though that whenever i 'deleyed' an attack in an attack chain that had previously missed, I was always able to get a hit as long as my accuracy was 80+.  In fact you could if you fought for a long time notice patterns in the to hit roles in that they seemed to be timer based.

As the unofficial tohit system moderator, I can say no such effect ever turned up.  Moreover, once real numbers was added I kept *all* my logs with all options turned on to investigate.  Because of my many long-ranged tests of the game combined with my gameplay, I have a huge number of tohit rolls I can analyze.  Because of the many suggestions that the tohit rolls were biased in some way, I did an analysis of tohit rolls in which I analyzed first ten million, then over 100 million tohit rolls for randomness, using most of the randomness tests I am aware of.  There was only one non-random signal detected in the tohit roll values, and that was due to the way the game rounded off tohit rolls for display which affected the hundredth (of a percent) digit and skewed it in an odd way.  In other words, when your tohit roll was 72.35%, the "5" could have actually been slightly non-random.

This was actually on-going testing; if the game was still runnning my next stop was going to be to retest with five hundred million rolls and then one billion.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 19, 2014, 07:38:27 PM
The other thought (which I considered more likely at the time) was that it was a mea culpa to the dark miasma defender for his crappy animation time. Sort of

The powers system doesn't work in a way that something like that would be possible. The code is generic and rigid, and the data for the power fills in the effects, with some limited "If X" conditions that can be applied. Something like forcing a hit is part of the code and works the same for every power with no way to override it.

I think it's more likely a psychological phenomena that makes it seem to hit more often under certain circumstances.

However, the sure way to find out is to -- at the first available opportunity -- roll a dark defender and enable logging so that the hit rolls get saved to a file. Do a test with normal usage of Twilight Grasp on a target at full health. Then, repeat the test, with the same number of uses of the power, with a higher level friend one-shotting the enemy just as you activate the power. Compare the statistical distribution of the reported hit rolls.

I'd be up for helping to put together such an experiment if and when conditions make it possible.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 19, 2014, 07:38:31 PM
I can say from long experience if I popped a small Yellow inspiration on my blaster - my next attack almost always missed - it was so obvious that I would use a lesser damage attack that activated quick and then the major attack.

I played the game for 8+ years and it was a standing joke - I would face palm if I nuked right after the small Yellow and whiffed. I would go arrrgggghhh - forgot! I know Arcana you are going to tell me it was not true but it happened with Clockwork regularity.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 19, 2014, 07:39:34 PM

You're joking, but sometimes that's not far off from the truth. -facepalms-
Not to say that's how it's going in this case, since I don't know personally.
Gah, I wish I could be a fly on the wall at those meetings. lol

Is it meetings or is it more waiting interminably long periods of time for e-mails?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 19, 2014, 07:47:39 PM
I can say from long experience if I popped a small Yellow inspiration on my blaster - my next attack almost always missed - it was so obvious that I would use a lesser damage attack that activated quick and then the major attack.

Nonsense.

Everybody knows that Aim+Build Up is a much better way to guarantee a miss on a blaster than using a yellow insp.

Kidding, of course, but I know the feeling well.

It's also a perfect example of confirmation bias in action. Even though 1 out of every 20 attacks on average misses, you're more likely to notice it happening in conditions where you really want a hit, such as right after using damage or accuracy increasing cooldowns. Eventually, after repeated occurrences, it starts to feel like a correlation where in reality there is none.

And though I know that on an intellectual level it's impossible, and remember plenty of times when I hit for massive damage, I can't shake the feeling that I *almost always* missed after using Aim+BU.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 19, 2014, 07:49:17 PM
Is it meetings or is it more waiting interminably long periods of time for e-mails?

In this day and age I'd say emails are quite a bit more likely than people from different countries regularly sitting around a room together. Even conference calls can be problematic with time zone differences.

I'd be surprised if they had even had one face-to-face meeting at this point. Maybe if there was a convenient time and place when representatives would be there anyway, but otherwise why would you bother until the very final stages?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 19, 2014, 07:51:55 PM
I can say from long experience if I popped a small Yellow inspiration on my blaster - my next attack almost always missed - it was so obvious that I would use a lesser damage attack that activated quick and then the major attack.

I played the game for 8+ years and it was a standing joke - I would face palm if I nuked right after the small Yellow and whiffed. I would go arrrgggghhh - forgot! I know Arcana you are going to tell me it was not true but it happened with Clockwork regularity.

I remember having  this thought too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 19, 2014, 08:05:25 PM
I can say from long experience if I popped a small Yellow inspiration on my blaster - my next attack almost always missed - it was so obvious that I would use a lesser damage attack that activated quick and then the major attack.

I played the game for 8+ years and it was a standing joke - I would face palm if I nuked right after the small Yellow and whiffed. I would go arrrgggghhh - forgot! I know Arcana you are going to tell me it was not true but it happened with Clockwork regularity.

I thought I was the only one! It seemed like a sick joke.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 19, 2014, 08:08:43 PM
After all, Achmeds Raison would dictate it (it's not spellt that way?).

FYI - that's "Occam's Razor".  (Paraphrased):  When given a choice between multiple possible choices, the simplest one is usually the correct one.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 19, 2014, 08:25:19 PM
We have to be able to come up with some kind of "law" that we can call "Achmed's Raison!" It's too cool a name not to use! :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 19, 2014, 08:26:08 PM
FYI - that's "Occam's Razor".  (Paraphrased):  When given a choice between multiple possible choices, the simplest one is usually the correct one.

lol. I knew I'd get someone. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 19, 2014, 08:29:39 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 19, 2014, 08:33:55 PM

I think it's more likely a psychological phenomena that makes it seem to hit more often under certain circumstances.


I do believe Codewalker just called me nuts. :)

While I'd be willing to help with the test you suggest, in order for it to be confirmable, we would need larger numbers than we could provide.

Like I'm telling you anything new.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 19, 2014, 08:34:59 PM
Nonsense.

Everybody knows that Aim+Build Up is a much better way to guarantee a miss on a blaster than using a yellow insp.

QFT.

Also:

Achmed's Raison - I KILL YOU!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 19, 2014, 08:35:27 PM
I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to have to start using the term "Achmed's Raisin" in conversations just to see the reactions.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 19, 2014, 08:37:06 PM
AoE speed boost, such a wonderful thing, and still the complaints  I SAID DONT SPEEDBOOST ME!


I had bad video display/graphics issues with SB, it made it very hard to play until I upgraded my rig.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 19, 2014, 08:42:20 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 19, 2014, 09:22:15 PM
Yeah the streakbreaker was...nice, I guess. It meant you hit once for every ten swings IIRC (so 9 misses in a row, the next to hit check was guaranteed to hit. The reverse was hilarious though; you could hit I think 9 times in a row and were guaranteed to MISS on the next (10th) attack. REALLY annoying if that was your NUKE or a HUGE hitting attack.
Nope. Streakbreaker only worked on forcing misses into hits. It never forced a hit into a miss. Ever. (For players *and* NPCs.)

And it forced hits based on the tohit of the hits involved. Read up on it. It wasn't "nice...I guess". It was pretty awesome. http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Streakbreaker#The_Streak_Breaker
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 19, 2014, 09:37:03 PM
Oh, I am thinking how ANY power that has a ToHit component has a 5% chance of failing (or a 5% chance of hitting?), no matter how high your accuracy and how low the target's defense, is that right? I know for a fact that there has been plenty of times where I should have never missed and I still whiffed.

Personally, while frustrating, I actually like both aspects of this hit/miss, including the StreakBreaker, as it gives a lowbie a chance to still hit his/her target. Sadly, if you are that low on the acc table, the damage you do is probably guaranteed to be lame sauce. Still, who didn't feel EPIC hitting a purple AV even if you did 5 dmg  8)

See, it is stuff like this that made CoX sooo much better than any other game, they really put a lot of effort into the game mechanics.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 19, 2014, 09:41:52 PM

You're joking, but sometimes that's not far off from the truth. -facepalms-
Not to say that's how it's going in this case, since I don't know personally.
Gah, I wish I could be a fly on the wall at those meetings. lol
Or the chair that downix farts on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 19, 2014, 09:42:24 PM
Both. The maximum hit chance is 95%, and the minimum is 5%.

The reason for this is rooted in the D20 rules that the original designers (mostly Jack) were fond of, having played games like Champions tabletop. Rolling a 20 is a critical success, rolling a 1 is a critical failure, and both usually apply unconditionally regardless of any other skills or variables. If instead of dice you are using a computer to generate random numbers, a 1 out of 20 chance is 5%.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 19, 2014, 09:46:21 PM
Yeah, that makes more sense. I liked the chance I could miss, frankly. Otherwise everyone would slot acc and dmg and that's it. I mean lets face it, who cares how much it cost to cast the attack or how long it took to recharge (assuming you had a semi-decent attack chain) so long as you ALWAYS hit and did MAX dmg. Wouldn't be as fun IMHO.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 19, 2014, 09:46:48 PM
I can say from long experience if I popped a small Yellow inspiration on my blaster - my next attack almost always missed - it was so obvious that I would use a lesser damage attack that activated quick and then the major attack.

I played the game for 8+ years and it was a standing joke - I would face palm if I nuked right after the small Yellow and whiffed. I would go arrrgggghhh - forgot! I know Arcana you are going to tell me it was not true but it happened with Clockwork regularity.

I had a standing invitation on the forums for anyone who thought they could either demonstrate this to me in-game, or log it.

Apparently, turning on logging made the effect go away.  It seems chatlogs were an accuracy buff.

Keep in mind, I spent hundreds of hours investigating *all* credible or common reports like this.  On the basis of those investigations I discovered that luck and insight inspirations were mislabeled, a reward randon number generator was bugged, two separate defense buffs accidentally got dropped from the code but not the patch notes, and a bunch of other strange or extremely hard to find (prior to real numbers at least) bugs.  I was definitely not ignoring those reports.  But this sort of thing would have been trivial for me to detect if it actually existed, and I tested for this effect on different powersets, on different archetypes, at different times, on different servers, in different combat conditions.  I had people tell me that the reason why I couldn't find it was because you had to pop an odd number of yellows and use an attack on a whole number animation frame for it to work - and I specifically engineered a test to check for that.

Understand: everyone who believed this believed it was all but obvious.  Exactly zero of them could either make it happen in my presence or have it happen while they were chatlogging.  It *only* happened when the only thing looking were players, and nothing was actually recording the event.  Also, something most players didn't know: the servers logged these events.  On two separate occasions I asked the devs to check *server logs* based on a player's report of the event, and the servers disagreed with the player's recollection of the events.  It took too much effort to ask the devs to check logs unless I was absolutely certain, and after going to bat for the players twice to check on this kind of event I imposed a "you have to convince me first" rule before I would take it to the devs.  For this specific issue, no player ever achieved that mark.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BraveStar on September 19, 2014, 10:11:10 PM
I never found accuracy a problem as much as endurance. I don't remember when they changed the way endurance was handled, but in later years I remember having lowbie characters run out of endurance half way through fighting a group with 2 minions and a Lieutenant and I always hated having to take a long break to rest seemingly between every encounter (again, on lowbies - I admit it, I'm an alt-o-holic).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 19, 2014, 10:20:20 PM
Nope. Streakbreaker only worked on forcing misses into hits. It never forced a hit into a miss. Ever. (For players *and* NPCs.)

And it forced hits based on the tohit of the hits involved. Read up on it. It wasn't "nice...I guess". It was pretty awesome. http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Streakbreaker#The_Streak_Breaker

And I thoght the streaker breaker stopped us from superspeeding around atlas park nekkid.....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 19, 2014, 10:23:58 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 19, 2014, 10:24:52 PM
I never found accuracy a problem as much as endurance. I don't remember when they changed the way endurance was handled, but in later years I remember having lowbie characters run out of endurance half way through fighting a group with 2 minions and a Lieutenant and I always hated having to take a long break to rest seemingly between every encounter (again, on lowbies - I admit it, I'm an alt-o-holic).

Endurance was both a blessing and a curse.  We need some sort of gating mechanism to keep us from spamming constantly, and recharge alone can't be it, because the only thing WORSE than having no endurance would be having plenty but having no attacks recharged.  Ever fight an NPC who did massive -recharge and you know what I'm talking about.  Still, the way lowbies would run out of endurance so quickly was just painful.   
 
I still prefer it to "builders" like Champions Online uses. The idea is cool "lets give them an attack that they can use even when out of endurance, to refill" but since so many builders just felt like weak attacks, I felt like I was being FORCED to use my weaker attacks all the time just to keep my endurance up.  It made my toon feel weaker, overall. I hated it.
 
The Secret World relies on counters and gating some powers behind having "resources" built by certain attacks.  This was slightly better than Champions' version, since some of the resource builders were decent attacks, but it involved more micromanaging than I really wanted, and forced you in to very specific attack chains.  Build, build, build, build, build, use big three resource consumer, build two more times, use big five resource consumer, start over.   Sometimes you don't want to start out with smaller attacks.  You want to run in, Nova, and then clean up if you can.  If you have to build "resources" to Nova, that becomes impossible. You ALWAYS have to start off with the same attacks.
 
I'd love it if an MMO came up with a system where energy for attacks was based on endurance that naturally regenerated like CoH, but most attacks could still be activated when out of endurance, just with reduced effectiveness. So you start a fight with your blaster and it lasts longer than you expected, but you have no blues? You can keep fighting but as you get more and more tired you start doing less and less damage until you take a break or pop a blue.
 
Something that lets you keep fighting and avoid a faceplant when you're out of end, but still gates you a little and makes you slow down between fights, etc. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 19, 2014, 10:28:20 PM
I never found accuracy a problem as much as endurance. I don't remember when they changed the way endurance was handled, but in later years I remember having lowbie characters run out of endurance half way through fighting a group with 2 minions and a Lieutenant and I always hated having to take a long break to rest seemingly between every encounter (again, on lowbies - I admit it, I'm an alt-o-holic).
Dude, invest in those +recov and +recov/+regen IOs in the healing set. One of each and one BIG numina lvl 50 Heal IO in every one of my toons. Plus, you can add the chance of +end (performance shifter IO proc) into stamina (it ill randomly proc a decent chunk of End every so often IIRC).

From there, make sure to get ALL your +Max End Accolades. That extra 10 (?) end is a huge difference.

Lastly, while I never waste a LOT of end redux in my attack powers (unless they are 15 or more End to cast), I do make sure the togs get some lubbin.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 19, 2014, 10:28:55 PM
I never found accuracy a problem as much as endurance. I don't remember when they changed the way endurance was handled, but in later years I remember having lowbie characters run out of endurance half way through fighting a group with 2 minions and a Lieutenant and I always hated having to take a long break to rest seemingly between every encounter (again, on lowbies - I admit it, I'm an alt-o-holic).

That's why early game slotting was important to me. I would only put in end redux, acc, rech before DOs in every power (never damage or anything else). For DOs, those three would be there and probably another acc then damage if I had any slot open. And damage powers got slots before anything else.

When I got to SOland, I would respec.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 19, 2014, 10:32:40 PM
Dude, invest in those +recov and +recov/+regen IOs in the healing set. One of each and one BIG numina lvl 50 Heal IO in every one of my toons. Plus, you can add the chance of +end (performance shifter IO proc) into stamina (it ill randomly proc a decent chunk of End every so often IIRC).

From there, make sure to get ALL your +Max End Accolades. That extra 10 (?) end is a huge difference.

Lastly, while I never waste a LOT of end redux in my attack powers (unless they are 15 or more End to cast), I do make sure the togs get some lubbin.

 
Unfortunately, none of that applies to lowbies, who can't slot Numina's Conv. until 25, and can't get those accoldes until late game.  I THINK Performance Shifter +end proc was available at level ten, but you couldn't take Stamina that early, if I recall, anyway.  If you took Swift at level 6, Health at level 8, then I guess you could get it at level 10, now that I think about it, but that means you haven't taken any actual powers since level four. 
 
By the time those things really came in to play, end was becoming less of an issue.  Those things just made end move from a rare issue to a non-issue.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 19, 2014, 10:40:15 PM

 
Unfortunately, none of that applies to lowbies, who can't slot Numina's Conv. until 25, and can't get those accoldes until late game.  I THINK Performance Shifter +end proc was available at level ten, but you couldn't take Stamina that early, if I recall, anyway.  If you took Swift at level 6, Health at level 8, then I guess you could get it at level 10, now that I think about it, but that means you haven't taken any actual powers since level four. 
 
By the time those things really came in to play, end was becoming less of an issue.  Those things just made end move from a rare issue to a non-issue.

Ah, the choices we have to make!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 19, 2014, 10:57:06 PM
 
Unfortunately, none of that applies to lowbies, who can't slot Numina's Conv. until 25, and can't get those accoldes until late game.  I THINK Performance Shifter +end proc was available at level ten, but you couldn't take Stamina that early, if I recall, anyway.  If you took Swift at level 6, Health at level 8, then I guess you could get it at level 10, now that I think about it, but that means you haven't taken any actual powers since level four. 
 
By the time those things really came in to play, end was becoming less of an issue.  Those things just made end move from a rare issue to a non-issue.

Inherent fitness made this possible much earlier and in fact pretty much ended END problems for me. I would slot what ever dropped until I hit 12 and either frankenslot level 15's doubles or triples or just slot level 15 IO's. They were more effective and I didn't have to worry about them until 25.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 19, 2014, 10:57:58 PM

 
Unfortunately, none of that applies to lowbies, who can't slot Numina's Conv. until 25, and can't get those accoldes until late game.  I THINK Performance Shifter +end proc was available at level ten, but you couldn't take Stamina that early, if I recall, anyway.  If you took Swift at level 6, Health at level 8, then I guess you could get it at level 10, now that I think about it, but that means you haven't taken any actual powers since level four. 
 
By the time those things really came in to play, end was becoming less of an issue.  Those things just made end move from a rare issue to a non-issue.

Ah but then they gave us all 4 from the Fitness pool at lvl 2. THat was so sweet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 19, 2014, 10:58:44 PM
Inherent fitness made this possible much earlier and in fact pretty much ended END problems for me. I would slot what ever dropped until I hit 12 and either frankenslot level 15's doubles or triples or just slot level 15 IO's. They were more effective and I didn't have to worry about them until 25.

Yeah, inherent fitness really did change the game for the better in just about every way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: adarict on September 19, 2014, 11:50:13 PM

Yeah, inherent fitness really did change the game for the better in just about every way.

I would disagree with that. It made things easier, not necessarily better. Of course that also depended on what you considered fun. Inherent fitness meant not having to plan as much, and reduced strategy. You seldom had to consider your active powers or chain, because end wasn't an issue anymore.

I didn't care about the rest of the fitness pool. They were nice to have but didn't really make a difference in my play, but stamina made a huge difference. To be fair, there were definitely times where inherent fitness made me happy. Especially when I just wanted to hop on and smack things around. I didn't always want to have to figure out how to last through the fight. I mostly played defenders solo, so it was not uncommon for a fight to last long enough that I had to be careful with my endurance.

Inherent fitness to me was mostly beneficial to people who already knew what they were doing. For new people, it encouraged sloppy playing. That isn't to say it was wrong. Just that, for me personally, I preferred knowing how to manage resources and how all my powers impacted that. If you never have to worry about it 90 percent of the time, when that 10 percent situation comes up, it can be a rude awakening. Possibly REQUIRING an awaken. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on September 20, 2014, 12:34:20 AM
On the yellow inspiration issue, I have to side with those who believe it.  I always felt that I had to pop several yellows to get any benefit - just 1 small yellow seemed to make things worse. And even with several yellows, I always seemed to miss on the first hit attempt after. 

Never knew that anyone else noticed this until these posts.   And you can point out your tests all you want,  I know what happened in my own experience.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 20, 2014, 01:12:35 AM
As the unofficial tohit system moderator, I can say no such effect ever turned up.  Moreover, once real numbers was added I kept *all* my logs with all options turned on to investigate.  Because of my many long-ranged tests of the game combined with my gameplay, I have a huge number of tohit rolls I can analyze.  Because of the many suggestions that the tohit rolls were biased in some way, I did an analysis of tohit rolls in which I analyzed first ten million, then over 100 million tohit rolls for randomness, using most of the randomness tests I am aware of.  There was only one non-random signal detected in the tohit roll values, and that was due to the way the game rounded off tohit rolls for display which affected the hundredth (of a percent) digit and skewed it in an odd way.  In other words, when your tohit roll was 72.35%, the "5" could have actually been slightly non-random.

This was actually on-going testing; if the game was still runnning my next stop was going to be to retest with five hundred million rolls and then one billion.

I'd regularly find my to hit rolls in attack chains for alot of attacks consistently hover in 3-5% at times, rarely straying, actually.  I'd look at to hit roles all the time.  I had other moments where some mob rolled 33.5%, 34.7, then 32% in all three attacks he had on me(hitting EVERY time).

Not saying the to hit roles are biased but really if one attacks fast enough strangely I noticed very strange numbers rolling.  I wouldn't say at all in fact that the random number generator was evenly distributed.  Each 1% should have a 1% chance of rolling, but just from play experience overall I found that not to be the case.  This is from play experience and looking at the numbers in actual combat at the time the game was running.

Edit: I would say, more the hit roles were strange, at best.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 20, 2014, 01:19:58 AM
Both. The maximum hit chance is 95%, and the minimum is 5%.

The reason for this is rooted in the D20 rules that the original designers (mostly Jack) were fond of, having played games like Champions tabletop. Rolling a 20 is a critical success, rolling a 1 is a critical failure, and both usually apply unconditionally regardless of any other skills or variables. If instead of dice you are using a computer to generate random numbers, a 1 out of 20 chance is 5%.
Champions uses 3d6, not a d20, when attacking or making skill rolls, so it wasn't as simple as a straight 5% of the time attacks always hit and 5% of the time always miss.  Attack rolls follow a bell curve rather than the flat distribution of d20 based games, so that Champions and the Hero System have automatic succeed or fail results .46% of the time instead of 5% when rolling, which does make the automatic hits or misses more noteworthy since they each happen a bit less than a half a percent of the time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AnElfCalledMack on September 20, 2014, 01:22:43 AM

Endurance was both a blessing and a curse.  We need some sort of gating mechanism to keep us from spamming constantly, and recharge alone can't be it, because the only thing WORSE than having no endurance would be having plenty but having no attacks recharged.  Ever fight an NPC who did massive -recharge and you know what I'm talking about.  Still, the way lowbies would run out of endurance so quickly was just painful.   
 
I still prefer it to "builders" like Champions Online uses. The idea is cool "lets give them an attack that they can use even when out of endurance, to refill" but since so many builders just felt like weak attacks, I felt like I was being FORCED to use my weaker attacks all the time just to keep my endurance up.  It made my toon feel weaker, overall. I hated it.
 
The Secret World relies on counters and gating some powers behind having "resources" built by certain attacks.  This was slightly better than Champions' version, since some of the resource builders were decent attacks, but it involved more micromanaging than I really wanted, and forced you in to very specific attack chains.  Build, build, build, build, build, use big three resource consumer, build two more times, use big five resource consumer, start over.   Sometimes you don't want to start out with smaller attacks.  You want to run in, Nova, and then clean up if you can.  If you have to build "resources" to Nova, that becomes impossible. You ALWAYS have to start off with the same attacks.
 
I'd love it if an MMO came up with a system where energy for attacks was based on endurance that naturally regenerated like CoH, but most attacks could still be activated when out of endurance, just with reduced effectiveness. So you start a fight with your blaster and it lasts longer than you expected, but you have no blues? You can keep fighting but as you get more and more tired you start doing less and less damage until you take a break or pop a blue.
 
Something that lets you keep fighting and avoid a faceplant when you're out of end, but still gates you a little and makes you slow down between fights, etc.
But if you wanted to run in and nova in TSW, you just take melee weapons, because they recharge to full resources out of combat. Or Blood Magic, and cast that first nuke from health - you even get a buff to your Blood spells from doing that.
Yes, the rotations are fairly fixed, but that's largely because you have two weapons and only seven power slots. So the optimal setup is usually one builder, two consumers, and four utility/burst damage cooldowns, so you're not wasting the slots. Maybe a spare AoE ability if you're doing mixed content and don't want to swap abilities between fights.

The thing that makes fixed rotations so powerful in TSW is actually the passives, most notably Elemental Force (every 8th attack is a guaranteed critical), which can give huge benefits if you ensure that your biggest, most powerful attacks land on the forced crit. Especially if you're stacking Crit Power and Penetration to make that attack hurt even more. Want to mix it up from build-to-five-then-consume? Try Fists with Adrenalise. Go build-build-consume with your fist weapon, mixing in your off-hand consumer to avoid capping out. Try Bloodline/Bloodshot/Finish the Movement for one-to-one consumers to builders, plus occasional "free" bloodshots from HP. Also works with Exquisite Corpse as a healing build! Look at a Balanced Blade impair build, where you can spam your consumer until the stun wears off. Or open with an Anima Charged Thor's Hammer for a huge free single-target nuke. Use your builders to apply Afflicted and/or Weakened, then have your consumers benefit from it. Or slant your build towards procs and multi-hit abilities, so your "weak" attacks can be a major source of damage, not just your consumers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 20, 2014, 01:25:42 AM
Champions uses 3d6, not a d20, when attacking or making skill rolls, so it wasn't as simple as a straight 5% of the time attacks always hit and 5% of the time always miss.  Attack rolls follow a bell curve rather than the flat distribution of d20 based games, so that Champions and the Hero System have automatic succeed or fail results .46% of the time instead of 5% when rolling, which does make the automatic hits or misses more noteworthy since they each happen a bit less than a half a percent of the time.

Very correct.

Loved Champs tabletop, hated the mmo.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 20, 2014, 01:28:58 AM
We have always played our D20 tabletop games with natural die roll of one always being a Failure or Critical Failure and twenty always being a Success or Critical Success. Champion or not, it is a long standing traditional D20 house rule.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 20, 2014, 01:44:07 AM
I thought that was Claven's Maxim.

Not wordy enough.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 20, 2014, 01:51:08 AM
We have always played our D20 tabletop games with natural die roll of one always being a Failure or Critical Failure and twenty always being a Success or Critical Success. Champion or not, it is a long standing traditional D20 house rule.

True, D20 games use the rule a natural 1 is auto fail, and a natural 20 auto succeed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 20, 2014, 01:54:25 AM
Champions uses 3d6, not a d20, when attacking or making skill rolls, so it wasn't as simple as a straight 5% of the time attacks always hit and 5% of the time always miss.  Attack rolls follow a bell curve rather than the flat distribution of d20 based games, so that Champions and the Hero System have automatic succeed or fail results .46% of the time instead of 5% when rolling, which does make the automatic hits or misses more noteworthy since they each happen a bit less than a half a percent of the time.

Ive rolled a few 3's..... ah so sweet to see those Three 1's
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 20, 2014, 02:11:38 AM
Champions uses 3d6, not a d20, when attacking or making skill rolls, so it wasn't as simple as a straight 5% of the time attacks always hit and 5% of the time always miss. 

D&D then, which does use D20. I've never played Champions myself so I (wrongly) assumed it was the same.

Minor aside, the Knights of the Old Republic console games used a D20 variant. Literally, you could swap over to the console page in the menu and see the dice rolls. It has the "20 = automatic hit" rule but I don't believe it uses the 1 as a failure.

I don't think the MMO based on it uses anything close to the same system, but it's something I always found amusing about the originals.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 20, 2014, 02:21:54 AM
I never found accuracy a problem as much as endurance. I don't remember when they changed the way endurance was handled, but in later years I remember having lowbie characters run out of endurance half way through fighting a group with 2 minions and a Lieutenant and I always hated having to take a long break to rest seemingly between every encounter (again, on lowbies - I admit it, I'm an alt-o-holic).
Dude, invest in those +recov and +recov/+regen IOs in the healing set. One of each and one BIG numina lvl 50 Heal IO in every one of my toons. Plus, you can add the chance of +end (performance shifter IO proc) into stamina (it ill randomly proc a decent chunk of End every so often IIRC).

From there, make sure to get ALL your +Max End Accolades. That extra 10 (?) end is a huge difference.

Lastly, while I never waste a LOT of end redux in my attack powers (unless they are 15 or more End to cast), I do make sure the togs get some lubbin.

Unfortunately, none of that applies to lowbies, who can't slot Numina's Conv. until 25,

Close. It couldn't be slotted until level 27 (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Numina%27s_Convalescence:_Regeneration/Recovery#Recipe).
Quote
and can't get those accoldes until late game.

That depended on if you were a hero or a villain.

Heroes could theoretically get The Atlas Medallion (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Hero_Accolade_Powers#The_Atlas_Medallion) and Portal Jockey (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Hero_Accolade_Powers#Portal_Jockey) at level 1, but villains were restricted to level 30 for Born in Battle (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Villain_Accolade_Powers#Born_in_Battle) and level 45 for Marshal (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Villain_Accolade_Powers#Marshal).
Quote
I THINK Performance Shifter +end proc was available at level ten,

Actually, level 18 (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Performance_Shifter:_Chance_for_%2BEndurance#Recipe).
Quote
but you couldn't take Stamina that early, if I recall, anyway.  If you took Swift at level 6, Health at level 8, then I guess you could get it at level 10, now that I think about it, but that means you haven't taken any actual powers since level four. 

Prior to becoming inherent in Issue 19, Stamina (http://paragonwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Fitness&oldid=141724) unlocked at level 20, so you could've had up to nine non-pool powers (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Leveling_Chart) at that point.

Not trying to bust your butt on these. Time simply clouds the memory. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 20, 2014, 02:22:33 AM
I'd regularly find my to hit rolls in attack chains for alot of attacks consistently hover in 3-5% at times, rarely straying, actually.  I'd look at to hit roles all the time.  I had other moments where some mob rolled 33.5%, 34.7, then 32% in all three attacks he had on me(hitting EVERY time).

The game does use a PRNG, which means it's not perfectly random, but over time is a good approximation of it.

However, even if it was an overly streaky RNG (which I don't believe it is), the hit rolls in the situations you're describing aren't actually sequential outputs from it. Between one attack and the next, the engine generates dozens, possibly hundreds of random numbers. Hit rolls for enemy attacks, hit rolls each tick for pulsing damage auras against each enemy in range, hit rolls for what any other players on the map are doing, hit rolls for each target of an AoE, drop table rolls if anything was defeated by an AoE, hit rolls for targets possibly affected by Gauntlet if you're a tanker, and so on.

IOW, you're getting a stream of pseudorandom numbers, which is being sampled at nondeterministic times based on user input and complex conditions. Even if the RNG isn't perfect, you're going to get pretty good entropy out of it due to inherent randomness in how the numbers are used. Arcana's statistical studies over the years support that result.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 20, 2014, 02:25:07 AM
True, D20 games use the rule a natural 1 is auto fail, and a natural 20 auto succeed.

Unless you have a DM who makes you roll a 100 sider when you roll a 1 to see how stupid you were.

Last time I played D&D. I had an argument with someone in our party. We decided to duel to the cut to settle things. I rolled a 1 followed by a ...1.
According to my DM, I slipped and fell on my own sword. My character was no more.

There are fails and then there are fails. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 20, 2014, 02:43:48 AM
D&D then, which does use D20. I've never played Champions myself so I (wrongly) assumed it was the same.

Minor aside, the Knights of the Old Republic console games used a D20 variant. Literally, you could swap over to the console page in the menu and see the dice rolls. It has the "20 = automatic hit" rule but I don't believe it uses the 1 as a failure.

I don't think the MMO based on it uses anything close to the same system, but it's something I always found amusing about the originals.
Champions is my all time favorite tabletop superhero game due to the enormous flexibility and customization of characters, so i'm slightly familiar with it. (Although i haven't actually played the game since a bit after 5th Edition was released.) As i recall most of the original CoH devs were also big Champions fans. Now for standard fantasy games i usually play D20 based games, mostly a 3.5 game set in the Forgotten Realms at the moment, but i've played a lot of non-D20 games.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 20, 2014, 02:49:53 AM
I'd regularly find my to hit rolls in attack chains for alot of attacks consistently hover in 3-5% at times, rarely straying, actually.  I'd look at to hit roles all the time.  I had other moments where some mob rolled 33.5%, 34.7, then 32% in all three attacks he had on me(hitting EVERY time).

Not saying the to hit roles are biased but really if one attacks fast enough strangely I noticed very strange numbers rolling.  I wouldn't say at all in fact that the random number generator was evenly distributed.  Each 1% should have a 1% chance of rolling, but just from play experience overall I found that not to be the case.  This is from play experience and looking at the numbers in actual combat at the time the game was running.

Edit: I would say, more the hit roles were strange, at best.

If you still have combat logs, I would be more than happy to analyze them for tohit roll anomalies.  What I discovered based on analyzing all of my tohit rolls was:

1.  Every possible tohit roll showed up equally often within the limits of statistical variance, with one exception: 100.00 and 0.00 showed the obvious inevitable roundoff issue (they each showed up half as often as all other rolls).  This was not statistically significant for players.
2.  Every possible tohit roll followed every possible tohit roll within statistical limits.  In other words, whenever you rolled 5.12, the odds of rolling any of all possible rolls was identical.
3.  Every possible range of tohit rolls followed every other possible tohit roll range within statistical limits.  In other words, if you rolled under 50%, it was equally likely the next roll would be under or over 50%.  The same statement could be made for odd and even rolls, for rolls within the ten decimal bands, the one hundred single point bands, and the 5% bracket bands.
4.  Rolls 5% and under and 95% and over happened with exactly the correct statistical likelihood.
5.  Rolls on different servers showed the same even distribution, for all the servers examined.
6.  Rolls that occurred before or after streakbreaker events showed the same flat distribution.
7.  Events designated with a percent chance to hit occurred as often as their defined chance specified relative to all potential occurrences.
8.  Using the tohit rolls as a binary source created a file that was basically incompressible.
9.  The difference between successive tohit rolls modulo 100 showed the same distribution as the tohit rolls themselves.
10.  Plotting tohit rolls using pairs and triples as two and three dimensional vectors showed no signs of clustering.

Also, the developers told me the game engine used the clib rand() or something similar, which while some versions are known to have some cryptographically significant biases, contain no biases that an MMO player could possibly detect through gameplay.  The only way for players to see what you were seeing would be if the tohit system used a broken rand.  And a broken rand would be something I would have detected almost immediately.

Its like this: I can conceive of someone bringing loaded dice to a game.  If the dice consistently rolled 5s more often, you could believe the dice might be skewed.  But if someone suggested during a game that the dice were consistently rolling lower numbers when a bus drove by, and higher numbers when a Honda commercial was on television, you'd doubt their observations because dice don't work that way.  They can be fair or skewed, but they can't choose when to be skewed.  In the same way, the CoH tohit system can't roll different random numbers depending on whose playing or what powersets are being used or what the condition of the characters is, because RAND() cannot be aware of those things.

You might have been seeing *something*.  Years of people reporting all sorts of goofy behavior involving defense turned out to be the simple fact that people were relying on the value of lucks being correct in their description.  Because they were not, the game did not behave as they expected it to.  And because of that, their minds began trying to come up with an explanation for the odd behavior but because they continued to trust the inspiration label, their mental model theories *could not* match reality.  So they became bizarre instead.  People reported to me that lucks did not work at all, unless you overstacked them.  People reported to me that lucks would sometimes simply stop working a few seconds after using them.  Some people reported that using reds would cancel out a luck.  Some people said that some lucks worked fine while others were "broken" and you could tell which ones were broken because they were a slightly different color (spoiled?).

The truth was that lucks that were labelled as being +25% were actually +12.5% (the others were all mislabeled also).  That's all.  And once I discovered that, at least some of the observations I thought were insane started to have a potential explanation.  If you think two small lucks will floor a minion (+50% defense), when they actually cause the minion to start hitting half as often (from 50% chance to hit to 25%), you might not notice that enough to realize the lucks were doing something.  Then you stack two more and suddenly the minion stops hitting all together (because if a minion is hitting one in 20 they might not even live long enough to get the one lucky hit).  Ergo, you start believing Lucks don't start working until you overstack them.  You might start believing that sometimes they do work (because you pop them and get lucky and the critter starts missing) and then they stop working (because the critter hits twice in a row).  You might start seeing "hits one quarter of the time" as "sometimes not hitting at all and sometimes hitting a lot" and start auto-correlating that to other events: the hits start coming when I pop a red, or a green, or the cat walks into the room.

*All* of those weird luck observations were the result of a text typo that no one including the devs caught until I tested them (very pre-real numbers).  The players were seeing something, but I guarantee they were not seeing what they thought they were seeing.  And interestingly, within a couple months of my posting the lucks and insights article, all such player reports basically stopped.

So I never assume players are completely imagining things.  I'm simply saying that whatever you thought you saw, the one thing it almost certainly could not have been was a skewed random tohit roll.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 20, 2014, 03:06:21 AM
Champions is my all time favorite tabletop superhero game due to the enormous flexibility and customization of characters, so i'm slightly familiar with it. (Although i haven't actually played the game since a bit after 5th Edition was released.) As i recall most of the original CoH devs were also big Champions fans. Now for standard fantasy games i usually play D20 based games, mostly a 3.5 game set in the Forgotten Realms at the moment, but i've played a lot of non-D20 games.

A part of me wonders if Champions itself was the cause of the devs believing that the mathematics for designing a game like City of Heroes was not very difficult, and could be copied pretty much right from a PnP game.

It can't; there are complex mathematical reasons why this is a horrible idea that basically come down to three things:

1.  In PnP games human GMs moderate the extremes.  In fact, in many editions of Champions there are explicit warnings in the rulebooks strongly suggesting to human GMs that they either consider not even allowing the power or making sure its not abused by the players.  Human GMs can look at a Fire/Fire tank that wants to run a mission with nothing but flammable villains and say "yeah, no."  A computer will happily go along with that.  If you want your character weakness in Champions to be lactose intolerance, fine, I'll let it go.  Then I'll drown you with the Milk Monster.

2.  PnP games are designed for a specific combat pace where coarser numbers generate controllable and manageable combat for the human beings.  Computer games are designed for a far faster pace where small numerical issues can quickly snowball.  If you were twice as powerful as the enemies in D&D, that still didn't mean you could blast through the game.  That advantage was muted by the framework of the gameplay.  In City of Heroes, if you were twice as powerful as the PvE critters, you could herd up a bunch and rapidly accelerate your kill rate.  Combining #1 with #2 could obliterate whole zones.

3.  In PnP games, the numerical combat is only a small fraction of everything that goes on.  In most MMOs, its 90% of what goes on.  You can't make up for loose combat with other activities.  Champions was *horribly* unbalanced.  It was *balanced enough* for humans to play it.  But numerically speaking, the designers didn't do all that great a job with it, in spite of what many players think.  And what's more, the designers knew it: they knew that the system allowed for ridiculous extremes and presumed human GMs would leverage that when possible and control it when necessary.

The really short version is that what makes a good PnP system is to have the expressive power to allow the GM and the players to have the latitude to create a good playing environment.  What makes a good MMO system is that its mechanically predictable, and does what the designers intended when they aren't around to dictate what happens.  Those two goals are largely incompatible.

I tried to explain this on the Champions Online beta boards, and boy was I hammered there (one helpful individual, because I was posting anonymously there, suggested that before I make such outrageous claims I go find Arcanaville on the CoH boards so that person could set me straight).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 20, 2014, 03:08:16 AM
The game does use a PRNG, which means it's not perfectly random, but over time is a good approximation of it.

However, even if it was an overly streaky RNG (which I don't believe it is), the hit rolls in the situations you're describing aren't actually sequential outputs from it. Between one attack and the next, the engine generates dozens, possibly hundreds of random numbers. Hit rolls for enemy attacks, hit rolls each tick for pulsing damage auras against each enemy in range, hit rolls for what any other players on the map are doing, hit rolls for each target of an AoE, drop table rolls if anything was defeated by an AoE, hit rolls for targets possibly affected by Gauntlet if you're a tanker, and so on.

IOW, you're getting a stream of pseudorandom numbers, which is being sampled at nondeterministic times based on user input and complex conditions. Even if the RNG isn't perfect, you're going to get pretty good entropy out of it due to inherent randomness in how the numbers are used. Arcana's statistical studies over the years support that result.

Go figure, what likely when it generates the numbers, it may be that the game is choosing similar numbers to much as somewhere in there the clock ends up repeating in the time frame, maybe dozens of times, but still in a way that I end up with the weird results I'd get in an actual fight.

I mean you should NOT see an enemy mob get three numbers that are so close together, and at the same time in an attack chain, the same attack shouldn't be missing repeatedly on such similar numbers.  The streak breaker was good but it didn't prevent every ounce of sillyness.

I could make a small chart of how combat went, say the hit chance was 87%, rolling above would be a miss.

I saw crap like this happen regularly;

Chain 1:
Attack 1: 40 = hit
Attack 2: 64 = hit
Attack 3: 88.1 = miss (streak break detects a miss but sees that the last attack was a hit, disregards it)

Same combat, repeating the same attacks using exact same powers.
Chain 2:
Attack 1: 35 = hit
Attack 2: 75 = Hit
Attack 3: 89.5= Miss, (because once again the last two hit, the streak breaker DOESN'T force it to hit.)

The same power in that chain missed twice now....

Chain 3:
Attack 1: 42 = hit (again)
Attack 2: 70 = hit
Attack 3: 91 = miss again because I still hit on attack 2 and streak breaker doesn't trip.

Same power missed again......

At this point, i'd see the random number god was screwing with me.  This crap shouldn't be happening, so what I'd do is delay the action for #3, and hit finally.

The reason my earlier post mentions 34, 33 and 35 was because, likewise, a boss hit me three times in a row with almost litterally those numbers(there were decimals involved but I cannot remember the EXACT numbers).  Things like that are the core reason that I suspect a clock is involved in the pseudo random generator somewhere deeper down.

Numbers like that had no trouble repeating for me.  I still wouldn't say it was biased but very very strange in behavior.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 20, 2014, 03:36:07 AM

The really short version is that what makes a good PnP system is to have the expressive power to allow the GM and the players to have the latitude to create a good playing environment.  What makes a good MMO system is that its mechanically predictable, and does what the designers intended when they aren't around to dictate what happens.  Those two goals are largely incompatible.

I tried to explain this on the Champions Online beta boards, and boy was I hammered there (one helpful individual, because I was posting anonymously there, suggested that before I make such outrageous claims I go find Arcanaville on the CoH boards so that person could set me straight).

Some unpredictability makes for more interesting games, but I do see what you mean there.  The sad thing is CO would behave even less consistently then any other game I played to be honest, in that there were so many bugs that people found ways to become invincible, or pull off 10,000 damage hits from attacks that should have only done at the most a tenth of that.  Go figure.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 20, 2014, 03:37:57 AM
Numbers like that had no trouble repeating for me.  I still wouldn't say it was biased but very very strange in behavior.

I honestly don't see what the problem is from your description.  For an attack with 87% chance tohit, the sequence hit, hit, miss will occur about ten percent of all attack chains.  And the misses *have to be* similar numbers, because misses have to be between 87 and 100.

You're doing something called "double-counting."  You are noting that you're seeing the third attack miss three times in a row which is uncommon, and the third roll is very similar which is uncommon, and asserting that's even more uncommon.  But actually, you are describing the same event in two different non-independent ways.

What Codewalker is talking about is that if the rand was somehow generating non-random numbers, because its the same rand for a number of different players on the same server instance, the only way for you to see what you are seeing is not just for the rand to be broken, you would have to somehow pick out those weird rolls yourself.  If just one other player fired an attack instead of not firing it, or held fire instead of firing it, your weird random number roll would disappear.  Those other players would have to somehow be conspiring to take just the right number of random rolls to leave behind the ones that are generating your weird results.  Even if you think the game server is acting strangely in some way, how could those other players possibly conspire with the server to do that?  Because if they don't, nothing the server's random number generator does can slip those numbers to you.

Its like a deck of cards you are picking the top card off of.  If you get a string of weird cards, you might think the deck was loaded that way.  But if in between the cards you took a random number of people took a random number of cards for themselves, then the only way for your cards to show an unusual pattern would be for all those people to be in on the trick.  Otherwise, they would disrupt any strangeness that was put into the deck.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on September 20, 2014, 03:50:45 AM
I tried to explain this on the Champions Online beta boards, and boy was I hammered there (one helpful individual, because I was posting anonymously there, suggested that before I make such outrageous claims I go find Arcanaville on the CoH boards so that person could set me straight).

That one made me laugh.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 20, 2014, 04:27:17 AM
I honestly don't see what the problem is from your description.  For an attack with 87% chance tohit, the sequence hit, hit, miss will occur about ten percent of all attack chains.  And the misses *have to be* similar numbers, because misses have to be between 87 and 100.

You're doing something called "double-counting."  You are noting that you're seeing the third attack miss three times in a row which is uncommon, and the third roll is very similar which is uncommon, and asserting that's even more uncommon.  But actually, you are describing the same event in two different non-independent ways.

What Codewalker is talking about is that if the rand was somehow generating non-random numbers, because its the same rand for a number of different players on the same server instance, the only way for you to see what you are seeing is not just for the rand to be broken, you would have to somehow pick out those weird rolls yourself.  If just one other player fired an attack instead of not firing it, or held fire instead of firing it, your weird random number roll would disappear.  Those other players would have to somehow be conspiring to take just the right number of random rolls to leave behind the ones that are generating your weird results.  Even if you think the game server is acting strangely in some way, how could those other players possibly conspire with the server to do that?  Because if they don't, nothing the server's random number generator does can slip those numbers to you.

Its like a deck of cards you are picking the top card off of.  If you get a string of weird cards, you might think the deck was loaded that way.  But if in between the cards you took a random number of people took a random number of cards for themselves, then the only way for your cards to show an unusual pattern would be for all those people to be in on the trick.  Otherwise, they would disrupt any strangeness that was put into the deck.

I'm just going by experience of things I remember actually HAPPENING IN THE GAME.  What part of that don't you understand?  And it DID happen regularly to me.  It happened regularly until I was usually late 30s or early 40s when I started really stacking +to hit in addition to accuracy.  I always had an effective chance to hit of 120 or so, a good 25-35 above the max chance to hit of 95% for a reason.

I'm going by, again, what happened to ME when I played the game.

Edit: Oh, also notice the OTHER numbers are similar to each other to, because frequently they WOULD be.

Another Edit:  That same post those were 9 attacks in a row in the same combat to, or should be seen as such.  I'll clear that up a bit.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Moonlighter on September 20, 2014, 04:29:38 AM
What I discovered based on analyzing all of my tohit rolls was:

The one thing I noticed was that using temp powers in my chain messed up the streak breaker because of the lower accuracy of those attacks. Don't know if that was a "real" thing or not.

Moonlighter~
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 20, 2014, 04:53:55 AM
The game does use a PRNG, which means it's not perfectly random, but over time is a good approximation of it.

However, even if it was an overly streaky RNG (which I don't believe it is), the hit rolls in the situations you're describing aren't actually sequential outputs from it. Between one attack and the next, the engine generates dozens, possibly hundreds of random numbers. Hit rolls for enemy attacks, hit rolls each tick for pulsing damage auras against each enemy in range, hit rolls for what any other players on the map are doing, hit rolls for each target of an AoE, drop table rolls if anything was defeated by an AoE, hit rolls for targets possibly affected by Gauntlet if you're a tanker, and so on.

IOW, you're getting a stream of pseudorandom numbers, which is being sampled at nondeterministic times based on user input and complex conditions. Even if the RNG isn't perfect, you're going to get pretty good entropy out of it due to inherent randomness in how the numbers are used. Arcana's statistical studies over the years support that result.

swtor has problems with their implementation of the rng... things like a 20% of reverse engineering an item, rolling 142 times and not getting it. thats not that uncommon in swtor. a rng will explain variances in a lot of things and outcomes that just suck, but there are points that you have to question the code that applies the rng. it is always possible you made an oops. I never appreciated how accessable COX devs were to discuss the game they made.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 20, 2014, 05:05:18 AM
I honestly don't see what the problem is from your description.  For an attack with 87% chance tohit, the sequence hit, hit, miss will occur about ten percent of all attack chains.  And the misses *have to be* similar numbers, because misses have to be between 87 and 100.

You're doing something called "double-counting."  You are noting that you're seeing the third attack miss three times in a row which is uncommon, and the third roll is very similar which is uncommon, and asserting that's even more uncommon.  But actually, you are describing the same event in two different non-independent ways.

What Codewalker is talking about is that if the rand was somehow generating non-random numbers, because its the same rand for a number of different players on the same server instance, the only way for you to see what you are seeing is not just for the rand to be broken, you would have to somehow pick out those weird rolls yourself.  If just one other player fired an attack instead of not firing it, or held fire instead of firing it, your weird random number roll would disappear.  Those other players would have to somehow be conspiring to take just the right number of random rolls to leave behind the ones that are generating your weird results.  Even if you think the game server is acting strangely in some way, how could those other players possibly conspire with the server to do that?  Because if they don't, nothing the server's random number generator does can slip those numbers to you.

Its like a deck of cards you are picking the top card off of.  If you get a string of weird cards, you might think the deck was loaded that way.  But if in between the cards you took a random number of people took a random number of cards for themselves, then the only way for your cards to show an unusual pattern would be for all those people to be in on the trick.  Otherwise, they would disrupt any strangeness that was put into the deck.

when wing recipes were release, I never got one in the entire time before the next release. And i leveled multiple toons to 50 in that time. over 1 million prestige earned in that time. other people were cleaning up withthe things but not me.I had an idea that my random number "seed" or whatever was twisted, but how do you prove it. all I wanted was a pair of wings and couldnt get one to save my life.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: tripthicket on September 20, 2014, 05:55:45 AM
I tried to explain this on the Champions Online beta boards, and boy was I hammered there (one helpful individual, because I was posting anonymously there, suggested that before I make such outrageous claims I go find Arcanaville on the CoH boards so that person could set me straight).

What do you call it when you, the expert in question, are dismissed and told to go get the real answers from yourself, elsewhere? A mix of pride and exasperation? Prideration? Exasperide? I'd almost be willing to bet that no one else on these forums have even so much as heard about this type of thing happening to anyone else, anywhere, let alone seen it for themselves.

That gets a badge, right?  8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 20, 2014, 06:56:41 AM
The one thing I noticed was that using temp powers in my chain messed up the streak breaker because of the lower accuracy of those attacks. Don't know if that was a "real" thing or not.

Moonlighter~

That was a real thing.  The way the streakbreaker worked was basically this: for every entity capable of using powers, the game kept a counter of all the times anything they did which required a tohit roll missed.  So at any moment in time, the game knew how many misses in a row that particular entity - including player characters - had seen in a row.  On every hit, that counter reset to zero.  What's more, the game *also* kept a second value, and that value was the *worst* tohit required you had experienced up to that point.

Its that second value that most players either didn't know about or kept forgetting about.  What it meant was this: if you started missing, switching to a more accurate attack would not automatically reset the streakbreaker.  Say you're using nothing but attacks that have a net overall chance tohit of 95%, and you keep hitting.  The streakbreaker counter would read zero, and the streakbreaker tohit value would be probably also be zero (or possibly 1.0, but that's an implementation thing not important here).  At some point though, you whip out some crappy unslotted attack that has a 75% chance to hit the target, and you miss.

At that moment, the streakbreaker would record a 1 in the counter and 0.75 in the tohit value.  Now, if you keep swinging with that attack because the streakbreaker is programmed to allow a maximum of 3 misses at 75%, the streakbreaker won't do anything until the counter reads three.  When it reads three, on the next swing the streakbreaker will kick in and automatically force a hit.

But what if, after that first miss, you switch to a more accurate attack?  Many players believed that since their current swing has a 95% chance tohit and the streakbreaker kicks in on one miss for 95%, that next swing would be forced to hit by the streakbreaker.  Nope.  The streakbreaker does not use the tohit required of the current attack.  It uses the *lower* of the current attack or the streakbreaker tohit value.  That value sits at 75%, so the streakbreaker will remain stuck at allowing 3 misses.  It will continue to do so until you hit normally or you reach 3 and the streakbreaker forces a hit.

What's more, if you miss three times and think the next attack is guaranteed and so you whip out an even crappier attack, something that has an overall chance to hit of, say, 35%, then the streakbreaker will use that value, since its lower than the current value of 75%, and that value allows for up to 6 misses.  Moreover, the streakbreaker value will reset downward to 35%, and stay there until you generate a hit or reach 6 misses.

The streakbreaker "trigger" is the worst net tohit you experienced during your current miss streak.  You cannot game the system by tossing in a more accurate attack to reset it.  Remember the streakbreaker is giving away free hits you shouldn't get normally.  It will only do so under the specific circumstance of the player using attacks with a certain tohit or better experiencing a certain amount of misses in a row.  If you use a crappy attack and it misses, you're committed to the streakbreaker trigger for that attack, unless you use something even worse.  But you can only buy yourself out of that trigger by actually hitting something, or reaching the trigger.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 20, 2014, 07:01:14 AM
I had an idea that my random number "seed" or whatever was twisted, but how do you prove it.

You take the Visual C++ clilb rand, write a program that generates random numbers with it, prove its streaky, and write a paper on it.  You could probably make enough money doing that to buy the wings outright just on the publicity alone.  In fact, if any player was right about this and it didn't turn out to be a broken rand like the mission reward one that was discovered, *I* would write that paper and get rich and famous.  Mostly famous, but still.

I'm not exaggerating when I say if it was possible to prove, there was a huge incentive to do so.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 20, 2014, 07:07:28 AM
I'm just going by experience of things I remember actually HAPPENING IN THE GAME.  What part of that don't you understand?

Anyone who remembers what I had to deal with in this regard while the game was running knows I understand quite well.  If you ever find any sort of log or evidence to support your recollection, let me know, I would be interested to analyze it.  That data may contain evidence of some problem related to your observations which might be useful to future players of the game.  Otherwise, I have no useful observations to make beyond the general admonishment to neutral observers that the stated behavior was mechanically impossible for the game engine.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 20, 2014, 07:17:21 AM
What do you call it when you, the expert in question, are dismissed and told to go get the real answers from yourself, elsewhere? A mix of pride and exasperation? Prideration? Exasperide?

Hilarity.  I have a copy of a PM from a CO player somewhere, sent to me after CO launched, thanking me for the work I did testing CO defensive secondaries.  It goes on to state that he was thankful CO had players like me, rather than that despicable Arcanaville he disliked in City of Heroes for being a know-it-all.

You know, I did post under a different pseudonym there, but I made no effort to disguise my writing style.  When someone materializes in CO and immediately starts talking about game design and testing defensive powers, I assumed I would be outed in days.  It never happened.  And its not like there were lots of other players doing that.  Or any, really, to the degree I was, at that time.  Sometimes I was posting about the exact same topic on both forums at the same time.  I mean that should have been a dead giveaway for someone that was actually paying attention to my posts in both places, as apparently some people were (invariably, people who were not my greatest fans it seems).

The closest I came to outing myself came when someone on the CO forums began talking about how all the devs in CoH actually hated me and talked about me behind my back.  BaB, in particular, was singled out for claiming I was a nuisance on a beta server chat channel.  At that exact moment, I was working with BaB on a project he requested I look at, so I asked him about it.  He said he had no idea why anyone would think that, but he said he was willing to post there personally to correct the record.  The fact that he was willing to do that demonstrated to me it was all nonsense, and I told him not to bother.  I decided it was better to just let it go.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 20, 2014, 07:33:48 AM
I'm just going by experience of things I remember actually HAPPENING IN THE GAME.  What part of that don't you understand?  ...

I'm going by, again, what happened to ME when I played the game.
Please note: what you are talking about is your observations, not mechanics. Read up on 'observational bias' and 'selective memory'.

What Arcana is talking about is how the game actually operates.

(note my emphasis in the quote)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 20, 2014, 07:57:25 AM
Hilarity.  I have a copy of a PM from a CO player somewhere, sent to me after CO launched, thanking me for the work I did testing CO defensive secondaries.  It goes on to state that he was thankful CO had players like me, rather than that despicable Arcanaville he disliked in City of Heroes for being a know-it-all.

You know, I did post under a different pseudonym there, but I made no effort to disguise my writing style.  When someone materializes in CO and immediately starts talking about game design and testing defensive powers, I assumed I would be outed in days.  It never happened.  And its not like there were lots of other players doing that.  Or any, really, to the degree I was, at that time.  Sometimes I was posting about the exact same topic on both forums at the same time.  I mean that should have been a dead giveaway for someone that was actually paying attention to my posts in both places, as apparently some people were (invariably, people who were not my greatest fans it seems).

The closest I came to outing myself came when someone on the CO forums began talking about how all the devs in CoH actually hated me and talked about me behind my back.  BaB, in particular, was singled out for claiming I was a nuisance on a beta server chat channel.  At that exact moment, I was working with BaB on a project he requested I look at, so I asked him about it.  He said he had no idea why anyone would think that, but he said he was willing to post there personally to correct the record.  The fact that he was willing to do that demonstrated to me it was all nonsense, and I told him not to bother.  I decided it was better to just let it go.

*snigger*

As someone who uses the grand total of 2 online pseudonyms, this tickles me. Particularly since your language and technical writing style are fairly distinctive.

The first case sounds like an interesting case of denial - he considered "Arcanaville" to be an insufferable knowitall, and couldn't conceive that you would not use your "name" status in a different forum, so you simply had to be someone else.

The second one just sounds like an internet-brave idiot.

Edit: woot! Post 100!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 20, 2014, 08:31:18 AM
Anyone who remembers what I had to deal with in this regard while the game was running knows I understand quite well.  If you ever find any sort of log or evidence to support your recollection, let me know, I would be interested to analyze it.  That data may contain evidence of some problem related to your observations which might be useful to future players of the game.  Otherwise, I have no useful observations to make beyond the general admonishment to neutral observers that the stated behavior was mechanically impossible for the game engine.

Honestly it's something I'll do so should the game come back.  I think though and was thinking about it that the new team may want to check into things on the server side.  Because the to hit rolls themselves were server side, we could only see so much.

Thing is I am not sure we'll know exactly whats going on.  See I asked said instructor back in the day about this as I said earlier, and he did mention that there are multiple random number generators, a more predictable one usually is attached to some kind of clock somewhere.

It shouldn't just be mechanically impossible but statistically impossible but what I mentioned happened to me, well, did :/.  I was left surprised and it's the whole reason I asked the guy I asked.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 20, 2014, 08:43:58 AM
Humans are pattern seekers. We are also fundamentally awful at dealing with probabilities. And the answer could be as simple as "that set of random numbers came up", with exactly the same probability as any other set of random numbers.

Would you care if the results had been 20, 66, 15, 40, 12, 03, 10, 65, 18?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 20, 2014, 10:06:20 AM
Honestly it's something I'll do so should the game come back.  I think though and was thinking about it that the new team may want to check into things on the server side.  Because the to hit rolls themselves were server side, we could only see so much.

Pretty much every tohit roll generated for any power was displayed in Real Numbers.  I myself specifically asked pohsyb to add that channel of data so I could see what was happening when testing things, and also to help confirm other aspects of Real Numbers was working correctly.  That code was put deep in the actual tohit system; it was not something grafted onto the individual powers and could send wrong numbers to the console.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 20, 2014, 10:16:04 AM
See... To make sure Revival plays like CoH... I'm just going to ask Arcana to beta test.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 20, 2014, 10:58:31 AM
It shouldn't just be mechanically impossible but statistically impossible but what I mentioned happened to me, well, did :/.  I was left surprised and it's the whole reason I asked the guy I asked.
Please. Read up on 'observational bias' and 'selective memory'. It is, in fact, impossible for the game to behave like that. At this point, the mechanics are well-documented, and so thoroughly tested as to be pretty much zero on the 'mystery' scale.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AnElfCalledMack on September 20, 2014, 11:26:29 AM
swtor has problems with their implementation of the rng... things like a 20% of reverse engineering an item, rolling 142 times and not getting it. thats not that uncommon in swtor. a rng will explain variances in a lot of things and outcomes that just suck, but there are points that you have to question the code that applies the rng. it is always possible you made an oops. I never appreciated how accessable COX devs were to discuss the game they made.
Hmm... 142 trials, 80% chance of failure...

0.8^142 = 1.7x10^-14. Less than one in fifty-seven trillion. Pretty phenomenally unlikely, even with millions of players and hundreds of items to roll on.
I'd suggest that the "20% chance" may not actually be 20%. At a 5% chance of success per roll, you'd get 0.95^142 = 6.87x10^-4, or one in 1456 (and a bit). With several million players, this sort of thing being "not uncommon" would be entirely reasonable. But these sorts of errors are far more likely to be developer error - the tooltip has an old value that they lowered in alpha testing, or they accidentally set the success chance to 0.02 instead of 0.2, or something like that - than real faults in the random number generator. The RNG itself is a pretty standard piece of code most developers don't mess with, and the effects of a flawed or streaky RNG don't discriminate by player. Arcana can tell you what a bad RNG looks like, and it doesn't look like some "cursed" players never getting thing X after lots of tries. It's not the devs saying "screw you in particular". It's randomness being random over a large population, which means a few individuals getting unlikely results.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on September 20, 2014, 12:57:44 PM
Please note: what you are talking about is your observations, not mechanics. Read up on 'observational bias' and 'selective memory'.

What Arcana is talking about is how the game actually operates.

(note my emphasis in the quote)

I remember the issues about accuracy, streakbreaker, toHit coming up in the CoH forums. I also remember (vaguely) someone suggesting we track our misses in game so that we'd have something to show, to demonstrate that it wasn't just our perceptions. Pretty sure the game's combat logs made it clear if we hit or missed a target. With that advice, I actually did what was suggested - and you know what? It was the craziest thing.

I stopped missing all the time.

I was going to close the combat log window to see if I started missing again, but I decided against it and kept it open.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 20, 2014, 01:05:58 PM
all the devs in CoH actually hated me and talked about me behind my back.  BaB, in particular, was singled out for claiming I was a nuisance on a beta server chat channel.

I shouldn't bring up chat logs where everyone on the team complains about that know-it-all Arcanaville on the forums who keeps dissing their favorite ATs or powersets, claiming that it sucks? And worse, using numbers? Man, we spent many farming hours trading Arcanajokes and remembering past Arcanaposts. It was almost like Hermione's first year at Hogwarts, only on the internets.

True story, almost.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 20, 2014, 01:07:20 PM
I remember the issues about accuracy, streakbreaker, toHit coming up in the CoH forums. I also remember (vaguely) someone suggesting we track our misses in game so that we'd have something to show, to demonstrate that it wasn't just our perceptions. Pretty sure the game's combat logs made it clear if we hit or missed a target. With that advice, I actually did what was suggested - and you know what? It was the craziest thing.

I stopped missing all the time.

I was going to close the combat log window to see if I started missing again, but I decided against it and kept it open.

Everyone knows that the combat log windows grants an unenhanceable +33% ToHit bonus.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 20, 2014, 01:37:26 PM
Hmm... 142 trials, 80% chance of failure...

0.8^142 = 1.7x10^-14. Less than one in fifty-seven trillion. Pretty phenomenally unlikely, even with millions of players and hundreds of items to roll on.
I'd suggest that the "20% chance" may not actually be 20%. At a 5% chance of success per roll, you'd get 0.95^142 = 6.87x10^-4, or one in 1456 (and a bit). With several million players, this sort of thing being "not uncommon" would be entirely reasonable. But these sorts of errors are far more likely to be developer error - the tooltip has an old value that they lowered in alpha testing, or they accidentally set the success chance to 0.02 instead of 0.2, or something like that - than real faults in the random number generator. The RNG itself is a pretty standard piece of code most developers don't mess with, and the effects of a flawed or streaky RNG don't discriminate by player. Arcana can tell you what a bad RNG looks like, and it doesn't look like some "cursed" players never getting thing X after lots of tries. It's not the devs saying "screw you in particular". It's randomness being random over a large population, which means a few individuals getting unlikely results.

20% is thge stated chance. if its different.....they either arent telling the truth or are really bad with numbers. and swtor devs went over 3 months with a nightmare boss for a 16 man raid that could be solod by standing behind a pillar and using ranged attacks. after multiple patches, they ended up adding a mechanic to the fight to stop it. putting up an invisible wall there should have worked.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on September 20, 2014, 03:10:18 PM
I feel awful.  I paid  little attention to the math and spent more time having fun.
Not saying you guys didn't have fun playing either....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 20, 2014, 03:29:51 PM
I feel awful.  I paid  little attention to the math and spent more time having fun.
Not saying you guys didn't have fun playing either....

Getting into Metamath (great, now I have another toon to Mids out...) was the endgame for years pre-Inventions. And there's something about min/maxing numbers that speaks to the innergeek in you when you love a particular power combo.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 20, 2014, 03:39:02 PM
A part of me wonders if Champions itself was the cause of the devs believing that the mathematics for designing a game like City of Heroes was not very difficult, and could be copied pretty much right from a PnP game.

It can't; there are complex mathematical reasons why this is a horrible idea that basically come down to three things:

1.  In PnP games human GMs moderate the extremes.  In fact, in many editions of Champions there are explicit warnings in the rulebooks strongly suggesting to human GMs that they either consider not even allowing the power or making sure its not abused by the players.  Human GMs can look at a Fire/Fire tank that wants to run a mission with nothing but flammable villains and say "yeah, no."  A computer will happily go along with that.  If you want your character weakness in Champions to be lactose intolerance, fine, I'll let it go.  Then I'll drown you with the Milk Monster.

2.  PnP games are designed for a specific combat pace where coarser numbers generate controllable and manageable combat for the human beings.  Computer games are designed for a far faster pace where small numerical issues can quickly snowball.  If you were twice as powerful as the enemies in D&D, that still didn't mean you could blast through the game.  That advantage was muted by the framework of the gameplay.  In City of Heroes, if you were twice as powerful as the PvE critters, you could herd up a bunch and rapidly accelerate your kill rate.  Combining #1 with #2 could obliterate whole zones.

3.  In PnP games, the numerical combat is only a small fraction of everything that goes on.  In most MMOs, its 90% of what goes on.  You can't make up for loose combat with other activities.  Champions was *horribly* unbalanced.  It was *balanced enough* for humans to play it.  But numerically speaking, the designers didn't do all that great a job with it, in spite of what many players think.  And what's more, the designers knew it: they knew that the system allowed for ridiculous extremes and presumed human GMs would leverage that when possible and control it when necessary.

The really short version is that what makes a good PnP system is to have the expressive power to allow the GM and the players to have the latitude to create a good playing environment.  What makes a good MMO system is that its mechanically predictable, and does what the designers intended when they aren't around to dictate what happens.  Those two goals are largely incompatible.

I tried to explain this on the Champions Online beta boards, and boy was I hammered there (one helpful individual, because I was posting anonymously there, suggested that before I make such outrageous claims I go find Arcanaville on the CoH boards so that person could set me straight).
Absolutely agreed. Champions, and the Hero System in general, absolutely requires a human GM with an understanding of how the game works to be at all balanced. The most degenerate situation is one where the GM is inexperienced with the system and some or all of the players are experienced. Even without trying to aggressively min/max it's easy to come up with overpowered characters. Any MMO that tries to duplicate the character creation flexibility will run into the same issues without having an experienced GM monitoring all the characters, which no current MMO system can do without human assistance. Jack's insistence on hiding real numbers was an absurd attempt at keeping the players equally "inexperienced", which was ludicrous on several levels. It worked about as well as security through obscurity ever has.

Some unpredictability makes for more interesting games, but I do see what you mean there.  The sad thing is CO would behave even less consistently then any other game I played to be honest, in that there were so many bugs that people found ways to become invincible, or pull off 10,000 damage hits from attacks that should have only done at the most a tenth of that.  Go figure.
Which was actually a pretty good recreation of playing pnp Champions with a newbie GM. i had a Martial Artist character in one friend's game who was a *bit* overpowered. Not because of any single power being OP by itself, but because of how the various offensive and defensive abilities i had taken stacked together to make a character who was extremely hard to stop or defend against without employing fairly exotic/tailored attacks and defenses. This wasn't really deliberate, it's just the GM used pretty straightforward and simplistic NPC designs. That and the borderline absurd amount of active points in Dex. In my defense i hadn't played in a while and he hadn't set an active point limit on characteristics.  :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 20, 2014, 03:45:23 PM
I feel awful.  I paid  little attention to the math and spent more time having fun.
Not saying you guys didn't have fun playing either....
i rarely paid close attention to the math while actually playing even though it was always something i was always aware of at the back of my mind, so to speak. It mostly came to the fore when i wasn't actively in combat. Awareness of the underlying math has always enhanced my enjoyment of any activity.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ultimate15 on September 20, 2014, 05:00:08 PM
Alright, everyone. Let's take a break from these CRAZY long 'math' posts (seriously, my head is starting to hurt lol) and watch a video about what it would be like to have the Power Rangers in Paragon:

http://youtu.be/RqKkGYH4lPY

God, I miss this. I wonder if there's ANYTHING we can do in the meantime to help Nate and his team out? Anything at all? Or do we have no choice but to play the waiting game until a decision is made? I'd like to assist, if I can.

#arewethereyet?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 20, 2014, 05:09:10 PM
I feel awful.  I paid  little attention to the math and spent more time having fun.
Not saying you guys didn't have fun playing either....
I spent all my time in game having fun. Whatever I was doing, it was fun; if it wasn't fun, I stopped doing it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: gypsyav on September 20, 2014, 05:38:07 PM
I spent all my time in game having fun. Whatever I was doing, it was fun; if it wasn't fun, I stopped doing it.

Same here, I never worried about the math. Just what was fun for me. When I started playing I had to do math all day at my job, didn't really want to worry about it when I was home.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 20, 2014, 05:59:40 PM
I feel awful.  I paid  little attention to the math and spent more time having fun.
Not saying you guys didn't have fun playing either....

Actually, I often recommended to new players that they avoid the forums altogether.  Not because our forums were particularly nasty, ours were far better than most in that regard.  Actually ironically because the discussion tended to be more civil than average, it could lull you into getting more involved in discussing the minutia of the game to the detriment of actually playing the game.  Many players could discuss the fine points of the game without it hurting their enjoyment of the game.  Not every player could.  If you couldn't, you shouldn't, so I suggested.  There's no shame in admitting that you had no interest in discussing the dry mathematics of the game.  The nice thing about City of Heroes is that you didn't need to know anything about the math of the game to enjoy playing it at a reasonably high level.

Heck I didn't even use Mids to build my own characters until around I18 (I did use it a lot to analyze other players builds).  I preferred to just build from the seat of my pants, so to speak.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 20, 2014, 06:00:32 PM
Same here, I never worried about the math. Just what was fun for me. When I started playing I had to do math all day at my job, didn't really want to worry about it when I was home.

Some of us found the math to be fun.
Personally, I found the math to be a means to more fun. I...had a thing for building characters that were as O.P. as humanly possible, heh.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Baja on September 20, 2014, 06:39:06 PM
Some of us found the math to be fun.
Personally, I found the math to be a means to more fun. I...had a thing for building characters that were as O.P. as humanly possible, heh.

I kind of regret not putting more effort into this. I built a ss/wp brute that I loved, problem was I sucked at building regen builds. I could build defense builds all day long with ease, but I'm pretty sure just about anyone could do defense builds quite easily. I'm not exactly the best mathematician but the kind required to make these sort of builds isn't exactly the most complex stuff :P definitely plan on giving it another shot if this game is revived.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 20, 2014, 06:50:10 PM
Some of us found the math to be fun.
Personally, I found the math to be a means to more fun. I...had a thing for building characters that were as O.P. as humanly possible, heh.

Me too, some called me a mad scientist with some of my builds.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 20, 2014, 06:54:56 PM
I feel awful.  I paid  little attention to the math and spent more time having fun.
Not saying you guys didn't have fun playing either....

I had fun to man :).  I usually didn't check my numbers unless I saw something very unusual happen or had a bad streak.  My builds were designed more to maximize the fun for me at times, I didn't make a min/max build simply cause I thought it was the "best and only thing that should be used" but more "Ok this is how to get the most out of this character for me", and I had fun doing that.  In fact I felt that, other than some lame pure healer build that was obsolete and useless in a competent team that there was no real wrong way to play a character for the most part, just needed to know what the crown jewels were in the sets :).

I had fun coming up with strategies and I did that by simply playing the archtypes and using my judgement on how the powers were used.  IOing a character only took me a 10th of the time in comparison(though I never stopped tweaking and adjusting a build after I did that in between fights and roleplaying).

Edit: Heck, I'd say i'm still doing that today, just in a different game.  (fallout: new vegas w/ project nevada currently, but I also experimented alot with skyrim with the skyrim redone mod)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 20, 2014, 06:59:56 PM
I feel awful.  I paid  little attention to the math and spent more time having fun.
Not saying you guys didn't have fun playing either....

Different strokes for different folks.  PnP RPGs, CCGs etc have people who love to run the numbers too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on September 20, 2014, 07:00:46 PM
Alright, everyone. Let's take a break from these CRAZY long 'math' posts (seriously, my head is starting to hurt lol) and watch a video about what it would be like to have the Power Rangers in Paragon:

http://youtu.be/RqKkGYH4lPY

God, I miss this. I wonder if there's ANYTHING we can do in the meantime to help Nate and his team out? Anything at all? Or do we have no choice but to play the waiting game until a decision is made? I'd like to assist, if I can.

#arewethereyet?

...Wait, how did he get a 1586 hit at the 0:57ish mark?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 20, 2014, 07:06:18 PM
Alright, everyone. Let's take a break from these CRAZY long 'math' posts (seriously, my head is starting to hurt lol) and watch a video about what it would be like to have the Power Rangers in Paragon:

http://youtu.be/RqKkGYH4lPY


I don't think anything has ever made me root for the bad guys more. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 20, 2014, 07:13:45 PM
...Wait, how did he get a 1586 hit at the 0:57ish mark?

Probably a kin/sonic defender in there.  Thats a very easy number to see with such a character in a team.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 20, 2014, 07:13:58 PM
Please. Read up on 'observational bias' and 'selective memory'. It is, in fact, impossible for the game to behave like that. At this point, the mechanics are well-documented, and so thoroughly tested as to be pretty much zero on the 'mystery' scale.

The easiest way to explain this concept is to simply remember that really cool car you wanted. You know, the one you couldn't quite afford?
Remember how about the time you started wanting that car you would see it everywhere when you went out. It seemed like the whole da** town was driving that car.... observational bias.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 20, 2014, 07:28:45 PM
Please note: what you are talking about is your observations, not mechanics. Read up on 'observational bias' and 'selective memory'.

What Arcana is talking about is how the game actually operates.

(note my emphasis in the quote)

So your saying i'm lying or something? (*facepalms*)  I really wish I could say the crap that happened to me alot didn't but whatever man, I remember moments where I wasn't having issues where the same attack missed every time in combat even with that usual accuracy SO, even more-so when I was stuck on crappy DO's and still found it missing every time in the attack chain.

These are MY play experiences, NOT yours.  May have not happened to you but did happen to me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 20, 2014, 07:38:44 PM
^ Well, prove it then! Give Arcana your combat logs for analysis.  Otherwise, anecdotal evidence and observational bias.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 20, 2014, 07:46:15 PM
^ Well, prove it then! Give Arcana your combat logs for analysis.  Otherwise, anecdotal evidence and observational bias.

Why the hell would I have combat logs from a machine from 4-5 years ago on a game that shut down?  HOLY FUCKING COW!  You guys really do think I'm a stinking lower then life evil liar who deserves to die then!?!?!?!

I WOULD if I had the fucking things, now i'm getting angry at everyone here for this.  This is unforgivable, this is like those days when that one kid lied to teachers who KNEW he was lying and STILL punished ME for it EVERY TIME.

You guys have the audacity to just call me a liar over a thing like this when the game is shut down so I have no way to fucking prove things like that happen!?  I would love to have this game bakc now purely so I could.  I'll never forget this.  Nore will I get over it unless you guys apologize RIGHT NOW for causing me to get post traumatic memories all over again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 20, 2014, 07:56:03 PM
Why the hell would I have combat logs from a machine from 4-5 years ago on a game that shut down?  HOLY pancaking COW!  You guys really do think I'm a stinking lower then life evil liar who deserves to die then!?!?!?!

I WOULD if I had the pancaking things, now i'm getting angry at everyone here for this.  This is unforgivable, this is like those days when that one kid lied to teachers who KNEW he was lying and STILL punished ME for it EVERY TIME.

You guys have the audacity to just call me a liar over a thing like this when the game is shut down so I have no way to pancaking prove things like that happen!?  I would love to have this game bakc now purely so I could.  I'll never forget this.  Nore will I get over it unless you guys apologize RIGHT NOW for causing me to get post traumatic memories all over again.

No one is calling you a liar. They are saying that your memory is faulty in regards to what you believe happened whether it did or not. The fact is you don't have the data to prove what you experienced. They have data that shows what you claim can't happen. From my point of view your case is weaker. Eyewitness testimony is pretty unreliable unless it has been witnessed by multiple party's and even then it can be whole wrong.

You are sure you are right, but have no proof. They are sure they are right and have proof. Be positive and say that when the game comes back you will secure the proof that you are right and I am certain that they will all apologize. If you are wrong then you can apologize.

Seriously, arguing with math is a bad idea unless you have maths on your side and right now you don't.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 20, 2014, 08:01:09 PM
Why the hell would I have combat logs from a machine from 4-5 years ago on a game that shut down?  HOLY pancaking COW!  You guys really do think I'm a stinking lower then life evil liar who deserves to die then!?!?!?!

I WOULD if I had the pancaking things, now i'm getting angry at everyone here for this.  This is unforgivable, this is like those days when that one kid lied to teachers who KNEW he was lying and STILL punished ME for it EVERY TIME.

You guys have the audacity to just call me a liar over a thing like this when the game is shut down so I have no way to pancaking prove things like that happen!?  I would love to have this game bakc now purely so I could.  I'll never forget this.  Nore will I get over it unless you guys apologize RIGHT NOW for causing me to get post traumatic memories all over again.

I don't think anyone's calling you a liar. I know I'm not. As a matter of fact, I believe I started this whole thing when I brought up my observation about Twilight Grasp.

That being said, I do think that observational bias is the easiest solution for these kinds of observations. Now observational bias cannot be proved any more than any bug in the code simply because there is no code to look through.

There could only be a couple of people on this forum who might have accessed the game engine directly and seen the code (and I don't even know this). Everyone else is really just spouting an opinion, Including those whose opinion is Arcana and Codewalker are correct... well, that might be more of a theorem at this point. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FemFury on September 20, 2014, 08:07:25 PM
So your saying i'm lying or something? (*facepalms*)

It might be good to calm down.  No one called you a liar (that I saw, didn't read the whole thread)

If you want to turn what people are saying into a criticism, then the worst they are saying is "you are probably mistaken in how you are interpreting this."

And if you find "I think you are mistaken" as an out-of-bounds criticism, then note two things:
1)  you are implicitly making the exact same assertion. You are saying you think Arcanaville is mistaken in her knowledge of the way the computer code works.
2)  as far as discussions on the internet go, this is a pretty mild criticism.

When people bring up concepts like observer bias, confirmation bias, and the fallibility of human memory, keep in mind that the people that bring up these issues usually are the type of people who are perfectly aware the same criticisms apply to themselves.  Which is why they are also usually very good about wanting to use objective measures like data and scientific rigor to double-check things.

It's not a insult, it's an attempt to set the criteria which would resolve the argument in an objective manner.

When people say that these phenomena apply to human cognition, they are including themselves.
(Insert mandatory joke about Arcanaville really being a computer instead of a human here)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 20, 2014, 08:08:28 PM
No one is calling you a liar. They are saying that your memory is faulty in regards to what you believe happened whether it did or not. The fact is you don't have the data to prove what you experienced. They have data that shows what you claim can't happen. From my point of view your case is weaker. Eyewitness testimony is pretty unreliable unless it has been witnessed by multiple party's and even then it can be whole wrong.

You are sure you are right, but have no proof. They are sure they are right and have proof. Be positive and say that when the game comes back you will secure the proof that you are right and I am certain that they will all apologize. If you are wrong then you can apologize.

Seriously, arguing with math is a bad idea unless you have maths on your side and right now you don't.

Go figure I'll get it for sure, but heres a problem.

I have especially difficult issues with liars and even more-so when I start feeling people accuse me of such if i'm especially sure(and I know how good my memory is, everyone I know in real life can back me up there).  I was primarily bullied as a kid and the bullies were the teachers themselves.  They'd believe a kid they KNEW was lying even more-so when evidence was right there that he was lying.  The only teacher I ever forgave was the one that, at the very, very last day of grade school I had, was the one that finally decided enough was enough and punished the other bullies.  Even then though I felt it was especially late.

Thing was this was every day practically, I feared going to school and getting framed for something else I clearly didn't do.  I felt everyone in the school was an enemy.  My entire child hood and my teen years were utterly destroyed by it.  Now normally I can shrug off the thought but then when someone does, well, you know, the memories just shoot up.  I wish I never had em, I hate that i have them, I hate that I remember the personality I had at that time(everyone was an enemy as far as I was concerned).

It....sigh....sorry guys I just tend to lose it when, meh.  My memory in a way had become a curse for me, it kills my morale and my mood when I see things that trigger those memories(just the mere sight of a bully on TV is often enough let alone this :S).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 20, 2014, 08:12:20 PM
When people say that these phenomena apply to human cognition, they are including themselves.
(Insert mandatory joke about Arcanaville really being a computer instead of a human here)

Excuse me. I did not insert that kind of joke.


Mine was more of a Arcana's a math professor kind of thing. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 20, 2014, 08:14:20 PM
It....sigh....sorry guys I just tend to lose it when, meh.  My memory in a way had become a curse for me, it kills my morale and my mood when I see things that trigger those memories(just the mere sight of a bully on TV is often enough let alone this :S).

Don't worry about it. We all got triggers about something.

Mine is about when people accuse me of trying to take over the world. it really bugs me when I think they've found out about my... um... disregard that... nothing to see here.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 20, 2014, 08:14:46 PM
I don't think anyone's calling you a liar. I know I'm not. As a matter of fact, I believe I started this whole thing when I brought up my observation about Twilight Grasp.

That being said, I do think that observational bias is the easiest solution for these kinds of observations. Now observational bias cannot be proved any more than any bug in the code simply because there is no code to look through.

There could only be a couple of people on this forum who might have accessed the game engine directly and seen the code (and I don't even know this). Everyone else is really just spouting an opinion, Including those whose opinion is Arcana and Codewalker are correct... well, that might be more of a theorem at this point. :)

Could be all three of us are on to something.  Trying to calm down but may be that random number god can still occur, go figure.  May be more to it then any of us suspect, I mean do we have the code for the server side of things?

But I do wish the game to come back because as I said, I remember seeing those kinds of things happening that some people say shouldn't be.  I agree they shouldn't have but go figure they did.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FemFury on September 20, 2014, 08:16:15 PM
Excuse me. I did not insert that kind of joke.


Mine was more of a Arcana's a math professor kind of thing. :)

*checks the rulebook*

Does seem to fit in with the general tradition of forum in-jokes about Arcanaville. 

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=hotmeme.net%2Fmedia%2Fi%2Fe%2F3%2Fcxk-for-future-use-glab-futurama-im-going-to-allow-this.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kriiden on September 20, 2014, 08:44:03 PM
Not to change topics or anything (I am deliberately trying to change topics)

So...about Lusca. What do you think she'll(He'll, it?) look like in the revival? I loved fighting that sushi!

Also waiting patiently for any updates from Mr. Downes...(Thanks for everything so far mate!)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 20, 2014, 08:46:25 PM
Could be all three of us are on to something.  Trying to calm down but may be that random number god can still occur, go figure.  May be more to it then any of us suspect, I mean do we have the code for the server side of things?

But I do wish the game to come back because as I said, I remember seeing those kinds of things happening that some people say shouldn't be.  I agree they shouldn't have but go figure they did.

It is certainly possible that we have observed something in the code. Problem is there is no code to check about it (well, NCSoft has it). Add to this that Arcana has spent considerable amounts of time looking into things that were similar when the game was going.

The absolute best way that I know to determine if there was indeed  something strange in code is to "step through" the code itself. This is a function of most development environments where you can go line by line into the code while the code is in an active state thereby giving you all of the values going on in any single line of code.

The second best (and sometimes much easier) is through data mining. This is basically statistical analysis of the output of the code. In our case it's things like tohit probabilities. This is the information that we've been discussing throughout this argument.
Through this kind of analysis, Arcana (ville) has gotten quite a reputation for excellence and deservedly so not only with our little group but also with the dev team when the game was live.

Final point here, Arcana specifically stated that she does not ever say that people are wrong in their observations, but that we need some sort of evidence in order to positively conclude any observation.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 20, 2014, 08:51:47 PM
*checks the rulebook*

Does seem to fit in with the general tradition of forum in-jokes about Arcanaville. 

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=hotmeme.net%2Fmedia%2Fi%2Fe%2F3%2Fcxk-for-future-use-glab-futurama-im-going-to-allow-this.jpg)

lmao. That was pure awesome.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 20, 2014, 08:56:42 PM
...Wait, how did he get a 1586 hit at the 0:57ish mark?

I just figured they were high level differences, maybe a L50 attacking a L15 to L20?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nealix on September 20, 2014, 10:48:21 PM
Any new information on the progress of the deal yet?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 20, 2014, 10:52:01 PM
Any new information on the progress of the deal yet?

When something is to be heard, you won't need to look far.  It is very unlikely any information will be heard until the deal goes through or falls apart.  At this point I am pretty sure we are no longer privy to any kind of information after what has happened each time a little bit of news comes up.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 20, 2014, 11:01:49 PM
Any new information on the progress of the deal yet?

Nope.  I would imagine that Team Hail Mary will make a separate post in this forum if it ever gets to the point where CoX is being resurrected (or even if the deal ends permanently with a "No"). 

As it took them 10 months just to get introduced to the right person so they could begin talks, and the first iteration of a proposed deal was just put onto NCSoft's table to peruse this past July, I doubt we'll hear much of anything for a while.  I'm guessing it won't be until next year the earliest if we ever hear anything more at all, but that's just my guess based upon how slowly NCSoft moves, and how little of a priority a decade-old game they shuttered due to its lack of importance to them could ever be in their eyes.  We'll just have to wait and see I guess. 

I know it's hard, though.  I keep thinking how nice it would be to be hitting the slopes of the ski chalet this Christmastime, even if it was with a level 1.   :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 20, 2014, 11:08:13 PM
see my edit

Too bad you got rid of the PhD part, it was worth saving.  I deal with that on a daily basis and fully agree.  Letters after your name don't make you infallible.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zubenelgenubi on September 20, 2014, 11:16:14 PM
I had a standing invitation on the forums for anyone who thought they could either demonstrate this to me in-game, or log it.

Apparently, turning on logging made the effect go away.  It seems chatlogs were an accuracy buff.

Keep in mind, I spent hundreds of hours investigating *all* credible or common reports like this.  On the basis of those investigations I discovered that luck and insight inspirations were mislabeled, a reward randon number generator was bugged, two separate defense buffs accidentally got dropped from the code but not the patch notes, and a bunch of other strange or extremely hard to find (prior to real numbers at least) bugs.  I was definitely not ignoring those reports.  But this sort of thing would have been trivial for me to detect if it actually existed, and I tested for this effect on different powersets, on different archetypes, at different times, on different servers, in different combat conditions.  I had people tell me that the reason why I couldn't find it was because you had to pop an odd number of yellows and use an attack on a whole number animation frame for it to work - and I specifically engineered a test to check for that.

Understand: everyone who believed this believed it was all but obvious.  Exactly zero of them could either make it happen in my presence or have it happen while they were chatlogging.  It *only* happened when the only thing looking were players, and nothing was actually recording the event.  Also, something most players didn't know: the servers logged these events.  On two separate occasions I asked the devs to check *server logs* based on a player's report of the event, and the servers disagreed with the player's recollection of the events.  It took too much effort to ask the devs to check logs unless I was absolutely certain, and after going to bat for the players twice to check on this kind of event I imposed a "you have to convince me first" rule before I would take it to the devs.  For this specific issue, no player ever achieved that mark.

And all of this is why Arcanaville is the most drop-dead smexy female in the entire Western Hemisphere.  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 20, 2014, 11:16:52 PM
Too bad you got rid of the PhD part, it was worth saving.  I deal with that on a daily basis and fully agree.  Letters after your name don't make you infallible.

But it dose make your name sound better :P. Look at Stephen Colbert.
Her Excellency The Rev. Sir Doctor Stephen Tyrone Mos Def Colbert, D.F.A., Heavyweight Champion of the World✱✱ featuring Flo Rida La Premiere Dame De France
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 20, 2014, 11:40:18 PM
Did anyone run mastermind pets when they would go batpoop crazy leave the fight go back down a corridor and go into a room you already cleared, stand and flex at some invisible foe Dragonball Z style?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on September 20, 2014, 11:42:55 PM
Nope.  I would imagine that Team Hail Mary will make a separate post in this forum if it ever gets to the point where CoX is being resurrected (or even if the deal ends permanently with a "No"). 

As it took them 10 months just to get introduced to the right person so they could begin talks, and the first iteration of a proposed deal was just put onto NCSoft's table to peruse this past July, I doubt we'll hear much of anything for a while.  I'm guessing it won't be until next year the earliest if we ever hear anything more at all, but that's just my guess based upon how slowly NCSoft moves, and how little of a priority a decade-old game they shuttered due to its lack of importance to them could ever be in their eyes.  We'll just have to wait and see I guess. 

I know it's hard, though.  I keep thinking how nice it would be to be hitting the slopes of the ski chalet this Christmastime, even if it was with a level 1.   :)

I've given up my hopes of Christmas in the Chalet this year.  If this is the normal pace of business for NCSoft I'm surprised they ever managed to BUY CoH.  Or buy paperclips for that matter.  Still, they're talking and that at least is encouraging.  I would just stop reading and come back in about six months and see if there is any movement, but I just know as soon as I wander off that would be when something would break.  And I want to be in on this at the earliest possible moment.  So I guess I'll skim messages and try to be patient.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on September 20, 2014, 11:47:03 PM
Did anyone run mastermind pets when they would go batpoop crazy leave the fight go back down a corridor and go into a room you already cleared, stand and flex at some invisible foe Dragonball Z style?

Mastermind pets had notoriously bad AI.  Shame they were never able to fix that, but then the AT probably would have been even more stupid overpowered than it already was.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 20, 2014, 11:52:21 PM
Did anyone run mastermind pets when they would go batpoop crazy leave the fight go back down a corridor and go into a room you already cleared, stand and flex at some invisible foe Dragonball Z style?

Cant' say I did.  Did you know that I once discovered a new status condition?  If you Terrorized someone and put them in the tremble stance, then stunned them, the critter would sometimes just start walking slowly away in a straight line.  I called this state "Oblivious" because they could not even be taunted out of that mode until it wore off.

Fear + Disorient = Oblivious.  Strangely, that actually makes sense; it actually happens in horror movies.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 20, 2014, 11:56:57 PM
Quote
it actually happens in horror movies.
  :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 20, 2014, 11:59:53 PM
Cant' say I did.  Did you know that I once discovered a new status condition?  If you Terrorized someone and put them in the tremble stance, then stunned them, the critter would sometimes just start walking slowly away in a straight line.  I called this state "Oblivious" because they could not even be taunted out of that mode until it wore off.

Fear + Disorient = Oblivious.  Strangely, that actually makes sense; it actually happens in horror movies.

Henchmen: "I think our work is done here. let's split up. Medic... Go check if he's dead by punching him."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 21, 2014, 12:27:42 AM
Cant' say I did.  Did you know that I once discovered a new status condition?  If you Terrorized someone and put them in the tremble stance, then stunned them, the critter would sometimes just start walking slowly away in a straight line.  I called this state "Oblivious" because they could not even be taunted out of that mode until it wore off.

Fear + Disorient = Oblivious.  Strangely, that actually makes sense; it actually happens in horror movies.

That makes it official. I will be making a Dark/Nrg Dom if the game returns.

That sounds worth it to me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 21, 2014, 12:31:07 AM
Too bad you got rid of the PhD part, it was worth saving.  I deal with that on a daily basis and fully agree.  Letters after your name don't make you infallible.

Argghhh... must control impulse to make an alt named Elmr PhD.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 21, 2014, 12:47:43 AM
That makes it official. I will be making a Dark/Nrg Dom if the game returns.

That sounds worth it to me.

Arcanabilivious?

Obliville?

Obshadious?

Horror Movie Karma Monster?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 21, 2014, 12:47:46 AM
Mastermind pets had notoriously bad AI.  Shame they were never able to fix that, but then the AT probably would have been even more stupid overpowered than it already was.

Be glad that mastermind pets never had the power to merge into a gestalt.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 21, 2014, 12:49:58 AM
When the game comes back, not if, I will remake my original stormy in a Storm/Water blast - so powerful
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 21, 2014, 12:53:29 AM
Arcanabilivious?

Obliville?

Obshadious?

Horror Movie Karma Monster?

Monster Under the Bed?

Infernal Spawn of Evil? (and make it look like the card)

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=ecx.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FI%2F41iidgd7K7L.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Baja on September 21, 2014, 01:21:11 AM
Mastermind pets had notoriously bad AI.  Shame they were never able to fix that, but then the AT probably would have been even more stupid overpowered than it already was.

I think ninjas/mercs were the worst. I could very well be wrong, but in my personal experience these two would go apeshit any chance they got. Bots were great to me, rarely did I have a problem with them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: adarict on September 21, 2014, 01:29:15 AM
I think ninjas/mercs were the worst. I could very well be wrong, but in my personal experience these two would go apeshit any chance they got. Bots were great to me, rarely did I have a problem with them.

I never had any real trouble with the AI on my bots, but ninjas were horrible. They always acted like their AI was set to "attack the target unless you see a squirrel"

I didn't play masterminds often. Did zombies, they didn't seem bad. My bots was the highest I ever took a mastermind, and I only got to 48. I had 2 ninjas though, and they never seemed to focus on what I wanted them to. One glitch I saw numerous times that made me giggle, was if I knocked a target over like some boxes or something, my ninjas would stand in front of the boxes and just jump up and down. Wouldn't go over or around it, just kept jumping straight up over and over.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on September 21, 2014, 01:37:13 AM
I think ninjas/mercs were the worst. I could very well be wrong, but in my personal experience these two would go apeshit any chance they got. Bots were great to me, rarely did I have a problem with them.

Bots were great but they loved to run into melee and spam Brawl, which was especially troubling on a /Dark MM since the heal is PBAoE.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 21, 2014, 01:47:46 AM
I hear ninjas were spazzes that did melee all the time. Bots were great and so were my mercs, pack animals were ok. Never got into thugs for long, and I never tried the demons or the undead. All of them I used had AI issues where I would have to click the follow me on passive macro a TON to get them to leave crap alone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Baja on September 21, 2014, 01:54:04 AM
I hear ninjas were spazzes that did melee all the time. Bots were great and so were my mercs, pack animals were ok. Never got into thugs for long, and I never tried the demons or the undead. All of them I used had AI issues where I would have to click the follow me on passive macro a TON to get them to leave crap alone.

I ended up macro'ing follow me to a side mouse button for this reason alone :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 21, 2014, 02:08:52 AM
My staple macros were:

FORT (They would go to where I click and stay in defensive stance); SORTI (Go where I click and be aggressive); ATTK (attack my target); FOLO (Follow me on Defensive so I get to split dmg to them); PASS (follow me on Passive). I did it with the WHOLE group of them so I didn't have the fine control I saw so many great MMs employ, but I was getting there.

If I had my way, I would have the three BEST minions go fight and leave the three lil ones to follow me on defensive to keep some protection when I needed it and also have a way to split those three hi and three low ones to two separate points to fight (to get a lil cross fire going AND to keep the AoEs from killing them all in a hot minute).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 21, 2014, 03:10:38 AM
I am hopeful I can make a bots/time mastermind again.  That was a character that was becoming quite a powerhouse.  It was quite challenging to keep her and her squad of robots alive, even more-so in the dreaded lambda trial that masterminds struggled with, due to the slow moving nature of the beast that is commanding a small army.  But it was fun, it had a "slow but truely unstoppable" feel to the class, and I liked that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 21, 2014, 03:16:45 AM
bots were my fav MM set.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 21, 2014, 03:25:48 AM
bots were my fav MM set.

Same here, tried the others and didn't like them. Even demons.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 21, 2014, 03:28:17 AM
But it dose make your name sound better :P. Look at Stephen Colbert.
Her Excellency The Rev. Sir Doctor Stephen Tyrone Mos Def Colbert, D.F.A., Heavyweight Champion of the World✱✱ featuring Flo Rida La Premiere Dame De France

Esquire
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 21, 2014, 03:31:48 AM
Cant' say I did.  Did you know that I once discovered a new status condition?  If you Terrorized someone and put them in the tremble stance, then stunned them, the critter would sometimes just start walking slowly away in a straight line.  I called this state "Oblivious" because they could not even be taunted out of that mode until it wore off.

Fear + Disorient = Oblivious.  Strangely, that actually makes sense; it actually happens in horror movies.

I liked it when I hit them with Sleep then Stun, and they stumbled towards me.  Made my job solo'ing with my Sonic/Elec blapper so much easier.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amrobinson on September 21, 2014, 03:33:20 AM
Champions is my all time favorite tabletop superhero game due to the enormous flexibility and customization of characters, so i'm slightly familiar with it. (Although i haven't actually played the game since a bit after 5th Edition was released.) As i recall most of the original CoH devs were also big Champions fans. Now for standard fantasy games i usually play D20 based games, mostly a 3.5 game set in the Forgotten Realms at the moment, but i've played a lot of non-D20 games.

George MacDonald, one of the three developers of Champions, actually worked on CoH for a while.
Sadly, he would never share game secrets with me. :'(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 21, 2014, 03:35:10 AM
I think ninjas/mercs were the worst. I could very well be wrong, but in my personal experience these two would go apeshit any chance they got. Bots were great to me, rarely did I have a problem with them.

I hated the random KB in Robot laser blasts.  LASERS.  Those stupid things broke up the team I had with my wife's Plant/Energy dom :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 21, 2014, 03:38:51 AM
Same here, tried the others and didn't like them. Even demons.

Yeah, the demons talked back to much. Had to fire them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on September 21, 2014, 03:47:43 AM
I hated the random KB in Robot laser blasts.  LASERS.  Those stupid things broke up the team I had with my wife's Plant/Energy dom :(

Why?  Entangle and Roots both do -KB.  If anything a Plant Dom was the perfect partner.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 21, 2014, 03:52:52 AM
Why?  Entangle and Roots both do -KB.  If anything a Plant Dom was the perfect partner.

Timing, and their stupid 'run into melee' - it annoyed her to no end.

I had much better luck with Zombies and Thugs, even with the suicidal Arsonist.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 21, 2014, 03:53:02 AM
Yeah, the demons talked back to much. Had to fire them.

yes that blasted demon roar......anytime I had a demon MM on the team with me I had to mute game volume to turn off speakers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 21, 2014, 03:57:54 AM
I'd like an opinion please;  having just rewatched TRON, TRON UPRISING and TRON LEGACY I've been trying to think of what TRON would be in CoH.

Scrapper is the most likely class or else brute. Then again brute may be more Rinzler then TRON.

But the power sets?  Shield? Doesn't have a throw shield attack but you can still make an energy shield for thematic reasons.  Energy armor?  Seems fitting.   Electric armor?

For melee:  staff fighting? staffs were used as weapons in the franchise.  Street justice?  Martial arts?

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 21, 2014, 04:17:34 AM
Timing, and their stupid 'run into melee' - it annoyed her to no end.

I had much better luck with Zombies and Thugs, even with the suicidal Arsonist.

How did zombie damage hold up to bots? I had a reasonably old bots, but wanted to try zombies.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 21, 2014, 04:21:33 AM
I'd like an opinion please;  having just rewatched TRON, TRON UPRISING and TRON LEGACY I've been trying to think of what TRON would be in CoH.

Scrapper is the most likely class or else brute. Then again brute may be more Rinzler then TRON.

But the power sets?  Shield? Doesn't have a throw shield attack but you can still make an energy shield for thematic reasons.  Energy armor?  Seems fitting.   Electric armor?

For melee:  staff fighting? staffs were used as weapons in the franchise.  Street justice?  Martial arts?

Kinetic Melee. Even has a ranged attack. As for the defense, costume auras make about any set work but shield with one of the pure energy shields on your costume would do the trick.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 21, 2014, 04:39:49 AM
Kinetic Melee. Even has a ranged attack. As for the defense, costume auras make about any set work but shield with one of the pure energy shields on your costume would do the trick.

absolutely Kin Melee. The animations even look right.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Baja on September 21, 2014, 04:51:46 AM
I'd like an opinion please;  having just rewatched TRON, TRON UPRISING and TRON LEGACY I've been trying to think of what TRON would be in CoH.

Scrapper is the most likely class or else brute. Then again brute may be more Rinzler then TRON.

But the power sets?  Shield? Doesn't have a throw shield attack but you can still make an energy shield for thematic reasons.  Energy armor?  Seems fitting.   Electric armor?

For melee:  staff fighting? staffs were used as weapons in the franchise.  Street justice?  Martial arts?

Personally I'd make a katana/super reflexes scrapper. There's a laser katana you can earn (or maybe get with a costume set I can't remember) and sr has very little gfx. You could even turn the gfx off if you really wanted a true tron look. I just think the tron concept is not to get hit so it'd make sense to have defence rather than resist. That's just my two cents though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 21, 2014, 05:33:53 AM
I hated the random KB in Robot laser blasts.  LASERS.  Those stupid things broke up the team I had with my wife's Plant/Energy dom :(

There was usually knock immunity applied to immobs....I'd also say though, that incarnated masterminds with reactive actually melted enemies lightning fast, so much so knockback couldn't do anything.  Then there was the knockback to knockdown IO.....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: tripthicket on September 21, 2014, 05:52:23 AM
An ancient memory just poked at me, and I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this issue.

Why did Staff Fighting have a breakdancing move, where the character would spin around on its back, as part of its animation? Eye of the Storm was the power in question, I believe. Looked a bit silly and out of place, IMO.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 21, 2014, 06:05:49 AM
An ancient memory just poked at me, and I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this issue.

Why did Staff Fighting have a breakdancing move, where the character would spin around on its back, as part of its animation? Eye of the Storm was the power in question, I believe. Looked a bit silly and out of place, IMO.

Its funny when done in granite armor
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Reiraku on September 21, 2014, 06:37:29 AM
Eagle's Claw looked better in granite armor.

POW!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 21, 2014, 07:44:22 AM
An ancient memory just poked at me, and I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this issue.

Why did Staff Fighting have a breakdancing move, where the character would spin around on its back, as part of its animation? Eye of the Storm was the power in question, I believe. Looked a bit silly and out of place, IMO.

The funny issue of impractical animations could be said about some of the weapon draw animations, particularly both "Broadsword" and titan weapons.  Dual weapons to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYiXEPHLeUY

This video explains it all as to why drawing a sword from the back is a bad idea.

Course the breakdance move with staff fighting was funny in a way, I didn't mind it to much, guess the developers were borrowing to much from the matrix.  At least they didn't cave into another, annoying sword misconception I know always pisses people off when it's proven wrong, go figure :).  But then alot of animations were silly when it came to weapons in CoX.

Edit: I'd also say that about dual pistols the sheer sillyness of rain of bullets.  The one attack that physically isn't possible unless the character was firing very low velocity rounds.  I always roleplayed it as mini grenades or something. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Todogut on September 21, 2014, 10:16:31 AM
... our forums ... were far better than most

I enjoyed reading parts of the forums, particularly the player-created guides and the folders about archetypes and power sets. Often, I would read someone's post about a power set combination that they loved playing, and their passion and enthusiasm would inspire me to go into the game and play.

Quote
There's no shame in admitting that you had no interest in discussing the dry mathematics of the game.

Thank you, Arcana. Your statement of compassion for the mathematically challenged has given me the courage to come forward and speak.

Hello, my name is Todogut, and I... I had no interest in the mathematics of the game.

There! I actually said it--out loud! Oh, my goodness! What a feeling of relief... it's oddly empowering.

Let me explain: when I was a kid, my grandma bought Rubik's Cubes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik's_Cube) for both me and my brother. He was good at math and science while I preferred writing and drawing. Hence, my brother was fascinated by the Cube, and he spent hours playing with it and studying it... until he mastered it.

At his college fraternity parties, my brother's standard ice-breaking conversation starter was to walk up to people (often co-ed guests), present the Cube, and invite them to twist it around and mix up the colors as much as they liked. Then he would take back the Cube and twist it in a rapidly rotating pattern, while smiling and looking the person in the eyes (not looking at the Cube), and solve it within seconds. Yes, this party trick really did impress smart college girls.

Me? The first time I twisted my Cube, I quickly became dismayed when I could not figure out how to return it to its original state. Frustrated, I put the Cube down. And never felt compelled to pick it up again.

It was a similar experience for me in CoH with invention origin enhancement sets (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancement_Sets). Oh, I understood that enhancement sets could make my characters more powerful by adding more bonuses than standard enhancements... and I collected purple enhancement sets and stored them inside a base; but, I never equipped any of them.

I read on the CoH forums, someone described enhancement sets as "essentially, a big puzzle". I don't like puzzles.

One night in-game, my supergroup buddy, who is a whiz at math, asked me, are you using sets yet? I answered, no, they're too complicated. Aghast at my response, he instructed me to view the Combat Attributes (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Combat_Attributes) or "Real Numbers" display and patiently explained how sets made his character's numbers better than mine.

The next time we played together, he asked, have you slotted any sets yet? No, I hadn't. He argued, but, we looked at the numbers last time. Yeah, that was the too complicated part.

Another player once advised me on how to get over my sets hang-up: just go into Mids' and play around with them. Mm... that wasn't my idea of "play".

Instead, I was happy with crafting level 50 Invention Origin enhancements (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Invention_Origin_Enhancements). They were pretty powerful, and they were simple. For some powers, just slot three accuracy and three damage enhancements, and my toon was good to go.

I didn't have to keep track of esoterically named sets and calculate their combined bonuses and try to figure out if my scheme optimized my character's performance for his (or her) roleplaying concept... ugh! Not my idea of "fun".

But, I had tolerance and compassion for those who loved sets.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ryuplaneswalker on September 21, 2014, 01:12:47 PM
Quote
But, I had tolerance and compassion for those who loved sets.

Gotta do something with that cash and merits.



Anyways...this is awesome  in a can and I sincerely hope you can pull it off, if you guys need funding for it yell and i will go on the ramen diet and put every last extra cent I have into the pot for it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 21, 2014, 01:41:43 PM
Gotta do something with that cash and merits.



Anyways...this is awesome  in a can and I sincerely hope you can pull it off, if you guys need funding for it yell and i will go on the ramen diet and put every last extra cent I have into the pot for it.

Is that the same pot you are using to cook your ramens?

mmmm, copper flavored ramen.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ryuplaneswalker on September 21, 2014, 02:22:52 PM
Pfft Pots, the ramen i buy is in styrofoam cups.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 21, 2014, 02:24:43 PM
Pfft Pots, the ramen i buy is in styrofoam cups.

Cups!? CUPS!? Luxury!!

The Ramen I buy is 20 years past its sell by date, has been eaten 3 times already, is made out of straw, AND I have to eat it out of a muddy puddle!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 21, 2014, 02:29:42 PM
How did zombie damage hold up to bots? I had a reasonably old bots, but wanted to try zombies.

It wasn't the damage so much as the lack of random KB and more dependable combat actions.

I ran a Zombie/Time and was reasonably satisfied with their effectiveness. 

I kept my Bots/Traps as a solo toon and it played just fine, pets don't care about KB :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on September 21, 2014, 02:31:25 PM
Cups!? CUPS!? Luxury!!

The Ramen I buy is 20 years past its sell by date, has been eaten 3 times already, is made out of straw, AND I have to eat it out of a muddy puddle!

You were lucky...  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 21, 2014, 02:35:11 PM
There was usually knock immunity applied to immobs....I'd also say though, that incarnated masterminds with reactive actually melted enemies lightning fast, so much so knockback couldn't do anything.  Then there was the knockback to knockdown IO.....

That required a desire to run a villain to L50.  As much as I liked my bots/traps, I did not like CoV.  Even after GR and the ability to alter alignments I couldn't motivate myself enough to bring him over to CoH side for several months, and altitis kept me from ever getting him higher than L39.  The shut down squelched my motivation even more.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ryuplaneswalker on September 21, 2014, 02:35:33 PM
It wasn't the damage so much as the lack of random KB and more dependable combat actions.

I ran a Zombie/Time and was reasonably satisfied with their effectiveness. 

I kept my Bots/Devices as a solo toon and it played just fine, pets don't care about KB :)

I had a Zombie/Sonic Banshee based character.

There was GOOD times had with her really good times, Self heals + Plus resistances on pets ended up better than I could imagine, and I always had a good target for The Anchor Debuff.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 21, 2014, 04:20:25 PM
Yeah, the demons talked back to much. Had to fire them.

No, no no, they just wanted something to do. I had a simple /em macro to get the posse to emote.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 21, 2014, 04:27:08 PM
How did zombie damage hold up to bots? I had a reasonably old bots, but wanted to try zombies.

Zombie/sonic was very good. So was zombies/thermal since the fire shields were very good against...fire. Zombies/dark was formidable, especially with fluffy doing that Chill of the Night debuff in his retrofitted melee position. Many found it unbelievable, but with the right timing of bumping the foes with hurricane, your group was very sturdy. Don't underestimate the effectiveness of 6 slotted steamy mist.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 21, 2014, 04:28:50 PM
No, no no, they just wanted something to do. I had a simple /em macro to get the posse to emote.

Great memories of doing the last 5 levels on my demon mm during halloween in grandville. a team of 8 with 4 or 5 masterminds at the garage doors trick or treating..enemies just dissolving in front of us.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 21, 2014, 04:40:50 PM
...


If I had my way, I would have the three BEST minions go fight and leave the three lil ones to follow me on defensive to keep some protection when I needed it and also have a way to split those three hi and three low ones to two separate points to fight (to get a lil cross fire going AND to keep the AoEs from killing them all in a hot minute).

I did just this on my demons, when soloing, I called it a split stance. The two lieutenant pets I put on defensive/follow, they didn't go in as much. The three little guys and the big Demon I put on attack aggressive. Then I would follow the big demon where the aggro led us. In most cases the hellfire and cold demonling liked to go in and fight with the big boy. The fire demonling usually stayed right behind my mastermind flinging fire at the enemy. It worked well for me. Of course all good masterminds had a bugout/regroup follow/passive macro. The whole goal of the split stance was to get the Demon boss to get out his ice sword and going into berzerker ice sword circle mode. This technique worked with demons/poison, demons/sonic, and demons/thermal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Beltor on September 21, 2014, 04:44:19 PM
Demons/Dark was well rounded. Demons had resistance to all but En,Neg, and Psy and the Ember demon had an AOE buff aura that did the same. Dark Miasmos buffed En,Neg, and Psy. So if you kept the Ember near, you and all friendlies nearby had a resistance to all 8 elements.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 21, 2014, 04:49:12 PM
Demons/Dark was well rounded. Demons had resistance to all but En,Neg, and Psy and the Ember demon had an AOE buff aura that did the same. Dark Miasmos buffed En,Neg, and Psy. So if you kept the Ember near, you and all friendlies nearby had a resistance to all 8 elements.

The big twilight grasp heal radius of the MM and the fluffy cannot be overstated. Chill of the Night Pbaoe on fluffy was soooo nice with melee attacking pets.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Battlechimp on September 21, 2014, 04:50:38 PM


Another player once advised me on how to get over my sets hang-up: just go into Mids' and play around with them. Mm... that wasn't my idea of "play".


I have to say, I was largely like this when IOs came out.  I didn't feel like looking into the numbers. I didn't really use Mids  all that much.  I'd start a build in minds then go "you know, I could be in game beating stuff up right now" before to long.  So my first characters to get sets were a couple of my blasters.  Didn't use mids, just looked at set bounses and went, what are the best bonuses I can get from sets that won't require me to respec. My DP/nrg blaster was first and her survivability went way up.  Then did my elec/elec blaster and decided it'd be fun to put the end mod stun process into all his attacks. So we're not exactly talking efficient slotting here.  And he became a beast and my most survivable blaster.

So that made me want IO out a few of my scrappers.  But with them I wanted to get as much def and resist that I could.  But was dreading sitting there staring at mids and crunching the numbers.  Luckily, had a few people in my SGwho loved using mids, so I asked them to make me a build for my ma/sr and fire/fire scrappers, told him that they had to have certain powers, no purples, no pvp iOS.  Then after those two, just having a general idea of what I was looking at for a build made it much easier for me to extrapolate that into builds for my other melee characters
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 21, 2014, 04:57:18 PM
Great memories of doing the last 5 levels on my demon mm during halloween in grandville. a team of 8 with 4 or 5 masterminds at the garage doors trick or treating..enemies just dissolving in front of us.

You get a bubbling, sonic, and thermal mastermind together and your platoon of pets are very well shielded.

edit: and it was a short time ... but the Nature's Affinity guys could setup those patches in front of the doors for more reckless abandon
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on September 21, 2014, 04:59:03 PM
I remember returning to the game once burn was unnerfed. @Daleaha, a player on Liberty who had a zillion badges, told me about IO sets. I'd just teamed with him and saw him tank Lord Recluse with a blaster (he made wise use of purples, but still!) That was all I needed to see.

But, copying builds from the forums and tweaking them to suit my own style of play - it was a bit of drudgery at first, but once I saw how it all came together, it got easier.

Yes, I'd rather have been playing for that hour I spent on mids'. But, I think it may have saved me time in the long run with more efficient playing. Less time spent waiting for endurance, less time being face planted, etc.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 21, 2014, 05:02:19 PM
I tended to MIDs when I couldn't be playing the game. Server maint, patches, spare time at school...etc.
As well as downtime while playing, Loading screens and such.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 21, 2014, 05:02:42 PM
I remember returning to the game once burn was unnerfed. @Daleaha, a player on Liberty who had a zillion badges, told me about IO sets. I'd just teamed with him and saw him tank Lord Recluse with a blaster (he made wise use of purples, but still!) That was all I needed to see.

But, copying builds from the forums and tweaking them to suit my own style of play - it was a bit of drudgery at first, but once I saw how it all came together, it got easier.

Yes, I'd rather have been playing for that hour I spent on mids'. But, I think it may have saved me time in the long run with more efficient playing. Less time spent waiting for endurance, less time being face planted, etc.

My characters were mostly recharge whores
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Clave Dark 5 on September 21, 2014, 05:37:31 PM
Cups!? CUPS!? Luxury!!

The Ramen I buy is 20 years past its sell by date, has been eaten 3 times already, is made out of straw, AND I have to eat it out of a muddy puddle!
You were lucky...  ;D

And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.  *harrumph*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 21, 2014, 06:00:26 PM
George MacDonald, one of the three developers of Champions, actually worked on CoH for a while.
Sadly, he would never share game secrets with me. :'(
Champions or CoH secrets? Not that Champions had many secrets other than maybe the hodge-podge of lore that was constantly being revised anyway. The rest of the system was pretty clear, so i'm guessing CoH secrets.
Still, it's pretty cool that he was involved with CoH. Did he have any involvement with CO?

An ancient memory just poked at me, and I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this issue.

Why did Staff Fighting have a breakdancing move, where the character would spin around on its back, as part of its animation? Eye of the Storm was the power in question, I believe. Looked a bit silly and out of place, IMO.
Because if you watch videos of staff-based martial arts there are actual moves very much like that. As a martial art staff fighting tends to be rather acrobatic and dance-like, much like capeoira.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 21, 2014, 06:22:21 PM
Cups!? CUPS!? Luxury!!

The Ramen I buy is 20 years past its sell by date, has been eaten 3 times already, is made out of straw, AND I have to eat it out of a muddy puddle!

Maybe you should shop at a store that rotates their stock a little. Just saying.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: archaist on September 21, 2014, 06:25:27 PM
My characters were mostly recharge whores

This This This! I loved the invisibility power pool just to throw a LotG or the +6 to Hit in a 1 slotted grant invis or invis.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 21, 2014, 07:47:32 PM
There was no time in the existence of the game that any archetype wasn't overpowered relative to the game's balance standard for players with sufficient dedication to maximal slotting and optimal gameplay.

The game wasn't designed to be balanced around maximal slotting and optimal gameplay.  It was designed around the median player performance, as determined by watching all the players who played the game and measuring their median performance.  Under that metric, there was never a single moment in the existence of the game where blasters as an archetype were not severely underperforming all other archetypes.  We're talking 25%-50% underperformance.

That's not 25%-50% under the other archetypes.  That's 25%-50% under the median performance: many archetypes were over the median performance, which made the gap between blasters and the higher performing archetypes (i.e. scrappers) higher than that.  The single largest contributor to this underperformance was that blasters were dying at a far higher rate than all other archetypes.  Solo, teamed, low level, intermediate level, high level, max level.  In all types of content.  The numbers say that if you think you were doing well on a blaster, there were ten players doing just as well on every other archetype and a hundred players doing vastly worse on blasters.  If you didn't see this, your experience was not representative of the playerbase as a whole.

The truth is, nobody cares about min/maxers or the power gaming elite, nor should they.  The developers didn't need to care about us.  We could always excel under any circumstances.  The devs cared about the typical player, because those were the ones that kept the lights on.  They represented the bulk of the players, the bulk of the playing time, and the bulk of the subscription revenue.  They needed the game to present a roughly level playing field to them, and that's ultimately where the devs spent most of their energy.  And I would have eviscerated them if they hadn't.

My calculations suggested that in broad strokes, I24 blasters when played by the average player would probably be in the general vicinity of I23 median performance in solo play during leveling conditions.  Slightly under on average, but close enough.  My worry was that the collateral buffs on archetypes like defenders and corruptors would increase the median performance enough to where blasters would fall below the median again.  But I think at least for the average player, blasters would start to become competitive with scrappers as offensively focused characters.

The people already farming +2x8 with blasters?  The I24 buffs would have less of an impact on them relative to average players in most cases, because those players were already reaching saturation levels of power that small to moderate buffs have more difficulty improving.  And if they did, small price to pay to improve things for the other 95% of players.  The same thing happened with the invention system.  It let the 5% become far more powerful, but it also lifted most of the other 95% to moderate levels of performance far more consistent with the newer balance standard for players post-I5 (particularly when it came to soloing).
Epic post.   It definitely wasn't the imagination of Blaster players that they were behind other AT's.   The running joke about dying was a running joke for a reason.   :)    And you are absolutely right that the top tier players should not be who the game is balanced around.

I would like to mention something though.   After reading your post, I started thinking about how I felt after logging into the game and deciding which character to play.   Different characters fit different moods.  A Scrapper mood or a Controller mood was a completely different thing than a Blaster mood.   I had 3 lvl 50 Blasters and I played them a lot.   Ice/Ice, Fire/Fire, AR/Dev. (Yep...I went with matching theme most of the time)   I certainly never played them when I felt like turning off my brain and just jumping into a fight....that was Scrapper time!   My AR/Dev didn't really die much...but that's just because I played him very slowly as a solo toon.   Like...glacial speed.   I spent time planning each fight and setting up bombs and caltrops.  I enjoyed it very much.  Cracked me up to lure a tough boss into a hallway and watch him step on my maze of tripmines.   Makes me smile thinking about it right now.    Same deal with the Ice/Ice...the holds, sleep, knock-down, and slows made for an interesting experience figuring out ways to defeat enemies that could wipe me out in a stand-up fight.   The Fire/Fire...I just got him some defense and used inspirations to kill everything as quick as possible.  A lot less thinking there.   ;D

I'm not saying I would be against Blaster buffs...you outlined very well why they needed it and a Blaster player has every right to point out how unfair that is.   But is it possible that Blasters were a different "flavor" in the game that added something the playerbase enjoyed?   As Codewalker pointed out with other facets of the game... was this another fortunate accident that made the game great?   i.e.....added to the wide variety of playstyles?   I was as frustrated as anyone with Blasters and became a Controller nut after starting with a Blaster.   But I eventually figured out how to play them and came to enjoy it when the mood stuck me.   Is it possible that players who loved Blasters loved them because they required more "thinking"?  I dunno...just a thought.

Again...not implying "Blasters were fine!".   They were clearly behind the other AT's in survival-ability.

I always wanted a Clowns MM set. Can you imagine anything more evil?

When summoned they could all drive up in one little car and climb out one at a time.
Squirting acid flower attack. Confetti bucket confuse attack. One of the little red rubber bulb brass horns used in a sonic attack. Giant mallet. Little ankle biting dogs, it all works!

Just too much fun to be had!
That's friggin' awesome!

I can certainly understand if you started playing a Scrapper or Tank.. and then tried a blaster.. its an immediate shock.. and Level 35-45 feel like an eternity...
I thought I remembered reading that more people started with Blasters than any other AT.  (I know I did)   So my "shock" was when I tried a different AT and found out how much easier they were!    ;D

GRRR, all this discussion about blasters makes me pine for good old Defiance, I wish it could be implemented in COH 1.5 instead of that ultra-lame "able to use T1 and T2 primary attacks while mezzed", old defiance was thousands of times more epic
I found that to be a huge improvement.   So many times I was able to get out of a jam because I was able to deal damage while mezzed.

But surprisingly, the toon I loved the most needed the most help to finish those last 5 levels to 50, my Ninja MM did great solo to 45, but could not go past that on her own. Folks would reject MMs for their teams seemingly automatically, and forget ITrials, no one wanted to allow Pets in ITrials.

While I understand, it made me wish longingly for a solo path to incarnate content.

That is what I would like to see the most if new content does come along, a choice of solo incarnate paths.   ;)
I loved MM's as well, but I couldn't help noticing that teams would rather not deal with the pets.   They were two of my solo only toons.    A solo Incarnate path would definitely help out there.

Wormhole was fun :)  LGTF mission 4, wormholed the Rikti into the Hamidon and sat back and watched the fun.
Love Wormhole.   One of the many powers that could give you big laughs.

I played many, many blasters, and really hated the argument that blasters didn't need defense because they had range. It didn't make much difference when the mobs had ranged attacks that could easily neutralize a blaster in just a couple hits (base damage plus DOT).
I used to read that on the old forum.   "Range is your defense!".   I would immediately wonder why my secondary had so many melee powers if that were true.   There is no way the AT was designed to stay at range when you look at the secondaries.

I remember how the boards would explode anytime the subject of Mind Control not having "pets"
came up and how so many folks said that Mind Control was worthless because of it. 

Of course, when folks talked about Controller pets, what they really meant was "fire imps"...
Awww!  No love for Singy, Poo-Man, Snowman, and all the Illusion pets?   I loved those guys!   None of them are nearly as dumb as imps either.   Way less irritation.    ;D

Understand: everyone who believed this believed it was all but obvious.  Exactly zero of them could either make it happen in my presence or have it happen while they were chatlogging.  It *only* happened when the only thing looking were players, and nothing was actually recording the event.
That instantly made me think of the Invisible Boy from Mystery Men.  (my favorite comic book movie)  He could only turn invisible when no one was watching.

See... To make sure Revival plays like CoH... I'm just going to ask Arcana to beta test.
*like*  (we need a like button)

I spent all my time in game having fun. Whatever I was doing, it was fun; if it wasn't fun, I stopped doing it.
QFT

...Although I do have to admit I did all the Shadow Shard TF's "just to say I did them once".   I suppose the sense of accomplishment afterward does count as "fun" in a way though.

Spider-man "tanked" tons of baddies well above his pay grade thanks to (coughpopularityandhackwritingcough) dodging and bravely running away! Why can't we?!

Also... Inspirations are as good as the writers being on your side on COH. Right?
The ultimate writer-power has to be Batman.   There are writers who actually write stories where he can not just survive a fight with Superman for more than a split-second...but actually win!   That's gotta be the craziest, most illogical story ever.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 21, 2014, 07:53:24 PM
I always wanted a Clowns MM set. Can you imagine anything more evil?

When summoned they could all drive up in one little car and climb out one at a time.
Squirting acid flower attack. Confetti bucket confuse attack. One of the little red rubber bulb brass horns used in a sonic attack. Giant mallet. Little ankle biting dogs, it all works!

Just too much fun to be had!

Edited to add schtuff!



We're almost there!    ;D

Yup, very awesome.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 21, 2014, 08:05:14 PM
Maybe you should shop at a store that rotates their stock a little. Just saying.

Enlightenment is thisaway!  =>  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 21, 2014, 10:21:55 PM
Enlightenment is thisaway!  =>  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

They are so funny. I remember when they ran the Circus every Saturday night after SNL in the 70's. Great fun.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: archaist on September 21, 2014, 10:51:15 PM
Monty Python and the Holy Grail will forever be in my favorite movies list.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 21, 2014, 11:30:25 PM
They are so funny. I remember when they ran the Circus every Saturday night after SNL in the 70's. Great fun.

Remember Saturday night? Extravagance!

Every Friday evening, 2 minutes before midnight, the matron would come around and beat us with a mill stone about the head and shoulders for 27 hours, blood and brains shloshing in the muck and make us clean it up just before a breaky of sulfuric acid and quicklime. Be lucky if we could remember our own name let alone Saturday night.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Medispider Reznov on September 22, 2014, 12:14:26 AM
Fat chance to hope for Arachnos to be back? :(

* sobs quietly for his Wolf-spider*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 22, 2014, 01:12:53 AM
The Issue 23 server would be as it was when the game shut down, and APR will have Arachnos Soldiers/Widows.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tubbius on September 22, 2014, 02:10:57 AM
I am very tired.  I miss City.  It would be nice to have it installed and fully playable right now, because this week really looks like it's going to be un-fun: lots of work and a court date Friday.  :(

Here's hoping that now the mask is off that the deal can skate right along and business will conclude amicably for all.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on September 22, 2014, 02:21:00 AM
I am very tired.  I miss City.  It would be nice to have it installed and fully playable right now, because this week really looks like it's going to be un-fun: lots of work and a court date Friday.  :(

Here's hoping that now the mask is off that the deal can skate right along and business will conclude amicably for all.

As an atheist and non-Santa-Claus believer (sawry, dude) I can never say I'm praying for this, as prayer has been conclusively proven to do nothing whatsoever.

At the same time, I WANT this, and I HOPE for this, and I'm totally with you on this. "Please,oh, please, oh, please" is not really a prayer. But damned if I haven't been muttering it anyway. Not sure why. Maybe it's just human nature showing itself despite our advancements and my attempts to evolve beyond it all.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 22, 2014, 03:23:45 AM
As an atheist and non-Santa-Claus believer (sawry, dude) I can never say I'm praying for this, as prayer has been conclusively proven to do nothing whatsoever.

At the same time, I WANT this, and I HOPE for this, and I'm totally with you on this. "Please,oh, please, oh, please" is not really a prayer. But damned if I haven't been muttering it anyway. Not sure why. Maybe it's just human nature showing itself despite our advancements and my attempts to evolve beyond it all.

As a protestant christian and one who believes in the historical deeds of Saint Nicholas, I'm not praying to God for CoX either.  But I do hope for our game to return, and I hope the people at the forefront of this venture find success.  But this should not the place for a discussion on faith and religion juxtaposed against personal entertainment and virtual game worlds.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 22, 2014, 03:59:12 AM
As a protestant christian and one who believes in the historical deeds of Saint Nicholas, I'm not praying to God for CoX either.  But I do hope for our game to return, and I hope the people at the forefront of this venture find success.  But this should not the place for a discussion on faith and religion juxtaposed against personal entertainment and virtual game worlds.
As someone who doesn't have any particular stake in the validity or lack thereof of any combination of gods, spirits, and ineffable entities i agree with all sentiments expressing a desire to play again. Go team!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 22, 2014, 04:02:24 AM
As someone who doesn't have any particular stake in the validity or lack thereof of any combination of gods, spirits, and ineffable entities i agree with all sentiments expressing a desire to play again. Go team!

Consensus!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 22, 2014, 05:02:52 AM
I believe in pie.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 22, 2014, 05:15:47 AM
Right, that's it! I'm getting fed up with waiting now.

Either give me my game back now, or I start taking clothes off!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 22, 2014, 05:29:05 AM
Right, that's it! I'm getting fed up with waiting now.
Either give me my game back now, or I start taking clothes off!
Vile Harkonnen! Keep your rags on!
T for Teen, sir!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 22, 2014, 05:29:20 AM
I believe in pie.
I believe in Cake.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: tripthicket on September 22, 2014, 05:35:53 AM
I believe I'll have more pie and cake!  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 22, 2014, 05:42:39 AM
I believe I'll have more pie and cake!  ;D

A la mode!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on September 22, 2014, 05:46:52 AM
A la mode!
pie...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: GamingGlen on September 22, 2014, 06:15:17 AM
a quote:
Why did Staff Fighting have a breakdancing move, where the character would spin around on its back, as part of its animation? Eye of the Storm was the power in question, I believe. Looked a bit silly and out of place, IMO.

a response:
Because if you watch videos of staff-based martial arts there are actual moves very much like that. As a martial art staff fighting tends to be rather acrobatic and dance-like, much like capeoira.

My comment:
I hated that animation and refused to take the power because of it, or rather, I respec'd out of it first chance I got.  Same went for Hail of Bullets in the Duel Pistols set, I never took that power.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 22, 2014, 10:00:25 AM
I believe in Cake.

Well unfortunately, the cake is a lie.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 22, 2014, 10:12:49 AM
Well unfortunately, the cake is a lie.

So my option is "Or Death"...?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lamer on September 22, 2014, 11:46:33 AM
As an atheist and non-Santa-Claus believer (sawry, dude) I can never say I'm praying for this, as prayer has been conclusively proven to do nothing whatsoever.

At the same time, I WANT this, and I HOPE for this, and I'm totally with you on this. "Please,oh, please, oh, please" is not really a prayer. But damned if I haven't been muttering it anyway. Not sure why. Maybe it's just human nature showing itself despite our advancements and my attempts to evolve beyond it all.

OK, can we keep the baiting for a religious argument out of this topic? This is not a topic for such discussion.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ryuplaneswalker on September 22, 2014, 12:22:08 PM
a quote:
Why did Staff Fighting have a breakdancing move, where the character would spin around on its back, as part of its animation? Eye of the Storm was the power in question, I believe. Looked a bit silly and out of place, IMO.

a response:
Because if you watch videos of staff-based martial arts there are actual moves very much like that. As a martial art staff fighting tends to be rather acrobatic and dance-like, much like capeoira.

My comment:
I hated that animation and refused to take the power because of it, or rather, I respec'd out of it first chance I got.  Same went for Hail of Bullets in the Duel Pistols set, I never took that power.

I feel your pain there, I so wish I could have done Ryu as a Titan Weapon/Dark Armor Brute* but the animation for the last power in Titan Weapons was just..NOT an attack he would ever do.

*OH GOD THE ENDURANCE COSTS OF THAT, OH GOD  :gonk:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kierthos on September 22, 2014, 12:23:47 PM
Yeah... if/when we get the game back, we need an alternate animation for Eye of the Storm.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 22, 2014, 12:26:39 PM
I liked the animations with Eye of the Storm and Hail of Bullets (Or was it Bullet Rain?). They both seemed dumb and impractical, but still cool the first few hundred times I saw them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zerohour on September 22, 2014, 01:43:40 PM
As an atheist and non-Santa-Claus believer (sawry, dude) I can never say I'm praying for this, as prayer has been conclusively proven to do nothing

Was it really necessary to make this distinction to a bunch of internet people?  When you wish for something to happen, you're praying. Every time you think to yourself "oh please let this work" or something to that effect...you're praying. You don't have to be religious to pray.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on September 22, 2014, 01:55:37 PM
Eye of the Storm was actually one of my favorite animations in that set.   Not my absolute favorite - that'd be Sky Splitter, the final power in the set.  That one felt like it hit really hard.

But Eye of the Storm got a lot of use.

As for "why"... well, I can't speak for the odd breakdancing part at the end, but the rest of it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENqMy1BU2-Y (although, now that I watch that video, #10 would have made a nice animation)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 22, 2014, 02:19:38 PM
OK, can we keep the baiting for a religious argument out of this topic? This is not a topic for such discussion.

Wholeheartedly agree.

That, and I hate when people make statements that have no links to back up such statements. You can't make a statement like "conclusively proven" without linking to said study that "conclusively proved" it.

Otherwise, just leave it alone. ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 22, 2014, 03:35:05 PM
Vile Harkonnen! Keep your rags on!
T for Teen, sir!

Strictly speaking, he did not specify whose clothes he would be taking off. Maybe he's going around to the homes of all those weird people who dress their pets up like they were people and engaging in some vigilante pet justice?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 22, 2014, 04:38:53 PM
Strictly speaking, he did not specify whose clothes he would be taking off. Maybe he's going around to the homes of all those weird people who dress their pets up like they were people and engaging in some vigilante pet justice?

I've met FFM. I'm hoping he's planning to take the clothes off [redacted], [redacted], or [redacted]. Because the sight of FFM in the nud falls under "glory that mortal eyes were never meant to see".

Make of that what you will.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 22, 2014, 05:29:12 PM
Right, that's it! I'm getting fed up with waiting now.

Either give me my game back now, or I start taking clothes off!

Just don't go stark raving mad please.  There is plenty of that here....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSX3piF5ww8

And some more of that here......http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Update%201-10/

Quote "Also due to laziness and poor time management skills on the part of the workdwarves, no clear glass was ever produced, and As Urdimanil went insane. He started babbling at dwarves nearby, then ran halfway across the bridge, dove into the channel, removed his pants, and went streaking haphazardly across the hallways until he reached his room. He has been locked in to prevent his lack of garb from upsetting the more sensitive ladydwarves. Note - he later died of thirst."

Though I think Senkis the second was the best...nmmmhmmm...

http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Headshoots/Update%2014/

I actually enjoyed that second lets play more than the first one....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 22, 2014, 05:34:07 PM
I've met FFM. I'm hoping he's planning to take the clothes off [redacted], [redacted], or [redacted]. Because the sight of FFM in the nud falls under "glory that mortal eyes were never meant to see".

Make of that what you will.

Don't you mean Feyd-Rautha, not the Baron?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 22, 2014, 05:39:06 PM
And now for something completely different...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRU6tQdyYqQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRU6tQdyYqQ)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 22, 2014, 05:49:05 PM
Don't you mean Feyd-Rautha, not the Baron?

No, he means me alright... For I am glorious!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 22, 2014, 06:10:28 PM
Staff fighting - pained me. I have done bojitsu for 39 years now and have done great weapons fighting in the SCA for 24. I even offered to send video's of strikes and combinations that would look good in the game, instead we got something I refuse to play.

It is ugly and with none of the flowing smooth movement or the quick strikes that I love.

As a martial artist - I can't play it - shudders.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 22, 2014, 06:18:03 PM
Vile Harkonnen! Keep your rags on!
T for Teen, sir!
Can't we all just get along? :D Btw I like cake and pie for the win :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on September 22, 2014, 06:34:56 PM
Staff fighting - pained me. I have done bojitsu for 39 years now and have done great weapons fighting in the SCA for 24. I even offered to send video's of strikes and combinations that would look good in the game, instead we got something I refuse to play.

It is ugly and with none of the flowing smooth movement or the quick strikes that I love.

As a martial artist - I can't play it - shudders.

Typically experienced to experts have the hardest time coping with reasonable approximations and alterations for enhanced excitement and drama. Two almost twenty years for tabletop to recover from "experts."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 22, 2014, 07:39:19 PM
Staff fighting - pained me. I have done bojitsu for 39 years now and have done great weapons fighting in the SCA for 24. I even offered to send video's of strikes and combinations that would look good in the game, instead we got something I refuse to play.

It is ugly and with none of the flowing smooth movement or the quick strikes that I love.

As a martial artist - I can't play it - shudders.

I suspect at least part of the problem comes from having to animate each "move" (power) independently so that they could return to a default status, allowing attacks to be chained together in any order. It's hard when you have to go back to an identical stance after every move to make it look flowing or smooth, unfortunately.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 22, 2014, 08:20:18 PM
No, he means me alright... For I am glorious!

Indeed you are Baron! Indeed you are.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 22, 2014, 10:07:34 PM
Staff fighting - pained me. I have done bojitsu for 39 years now and have done great weapons fighting in the SCA for 24. I even offered to send video's of strikes and combinations that would look good in the game, instead we got something I refuse to play.

It is ugly and with none of the flowing smooth movement or the quick strikes that I love.

As a martial artist - I can't play it - shudders.

I often got bothered by Katana's myself.  Actually the only melee weapon sets I enjoyed were claws, titan weapons and staff but I also felt that staff fighting had it's silly sides here and there.  With katana's, clipping got to me severely every time with certain outfits.  Granted i'd still prefer other sets, statistically over the katana as well, simply because it wasn't a bursty set(I prefer bursts over smaller hits, and even claws felt more bursty than a katana).  But the clipping was an especially annoying thing for me.  Then course theres the mentality of bad roleplayers and katana's, but thats more due to a certain faulty mindset some people have that tends to ruin things for those who have a more level headed view of the weapon.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 22, 2014, 11:00:40 PM
Staff fighting - pained me. I have done bojitsu for 39 years now and have done great weapons fighting in the SCA for 24. I even offered to send video's of strikes and combinations that would look good in the game, instead we got something I refuse to play.

It is ugly and with none of the flowing smooth movement or the quick strikes that I love.

As a martial artist - I can't play it - shudders.

Haha a lot of the Kanata attacks are wrong as well you would never do a jumping spin for an aoe. There is a Ryu that does a leaping attack. Flashing steal is one that is a common cut. Spinning upper cut (Golden dragon) makes me laugh
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 22, 2014, 11:13:03 PM
Haha a lot of the Kanata attacks are wrong as well you would never do a jumping spin for an aoe. There is a Ryu that does a leaping attack. Flashing steal is one that is a common cut. Spinning upper cut (Golden dragon) makes me laugh

The funniest thing, the most impractical weapon, titan weapons, which would be impossible to yield anyways, not to mention swinging something smaller would allow you to do more damage with such strength, at the very least the characters behave with some slight attention to the physics; they don't swing it cloud style and they just let the weapon carry them.  But then I'm often left pondering, how the hell would a titan weapon/LR avoid anything when they couldn't change directions or anything when swinging such a collosal, impractical weapon?  It's silly in a way, though not to say I didn't like titan weapons(fav weapon set actually, so much funny AoE).

I think the big issue with the melee weapons is theres to much time for an opponent to anticipate the moves from them though.  And course, the fact that they all draw from the back, which I already posted a video made by someone who pointed out why it's a very, very bad idea.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 22, 2014, 11:18:48 PM
The funniest thing, the most impractical weapon, titan weapons, which would be impossible to yield anyways, not to mention swinging something smaller would allow you to do more damage with such strength, at the very least the characters behave with some slight attention to the physics; they don't swing it cloud style and they just let the weapon carry them.  But then I'm often left pondering, how the hell would a titan weapon/LR avoid anything when they couldn't change directions or anything when swinging such a collosal, impractical weapon?  It's silly in a way, though not to say I didn't like titan weapons(fav weapon set actually, so much funny AoE).

I think the big issue with the melee weapons is theres to much time for an opponent to anticipate the moves from them though.  And course, the fact that they all draw from the back, which I already posted a video made by someone who pointed out why it's a very, very bad idea.

You never put a katana on your back it was worn on your left side (Katana is a right handed art) and your blade is facing up in the sheath (curve side is up) There is an entire art just on drawing the sword as a strike. You can actually do a partial draw and block the other guys sword draw; then finish the draw cutting him dead. I had a Katana/sr and sometimes I would laugh at my toons attack. Funny stuff for sure
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 22, 2014, 11:26:49 PM
Vile Harkonnen! Keep your rags on!
T for Teen, sir!

 
Tell that to Mother Mayhem. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 23, 2014, 12:28:25 AM
But then I'm often left pondering, how the hell would a titan weapon/LR avoid anything when they couldn't change directions or anything when swinging such a collosal, impractical weapon?

Titan weapons don't avoid anything. Instead, if the anything doesn't successfully avoid the Titan weapon, the anything gets smashed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 23, 2014, 12:33:57 AM
The funniest thing, the most impractical weapon, titan weapons, which would be impossible to yield anyways, not to mention swinging something smaller would allow you to do more damage with such strength, at the very least the characters behave with some slight attention to the physics; they don't swing it cloud style and they just let the weapon carry them.  But then I'm often left pondering, how the hell would a titan weapon/LR avoid anything when they couldn't change directions or anything when swinging such a collosal, impractical weapon?  It's silly in a way, though not to say I didn't like titan weapons(fav weapon set actually, so much funny AoE).

I think the big issue with the melee weapons is theres to much time for an opponent to anticipate the moves from them though.  And course, the fact that they all draw from the back, which I already posted a video made by someone who pointed out why it's a very, very bad idea.

in a game that I am arresting purse snatchers with radiation poisoning, excessive force doesnt seem to be a problem. having my demons restore the "peace" with hellfire is right there next to that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 23, 2014, 12:56:34 AM
in a game that I am arresting purse snatchers with radiation poisoning, excessive force doesnt seem to be a problem. having my demons restore the "peace" with hellfire is right there next to that.
Yes, the game left it up to you to define what "defeated" meant, but I'm hard pressed to come up with a non-lethal definition of a "Decapitation" attack.  Still, I've had friends who insisted that the villains they "defeated" all ended up safely in the Zig, whereas I insisted that I killed every last one of them and spared the taxpayers the expense of housing them (briefly, until they broke out again later that afternoon).  Seriously, why do they even bother processing prisoners in at the Zig?

My favorite superhero was always Frank Castle.  He knew the right way how to deal with violent criminals...permanently.  I never had any real respect for the idiotic catch-and-release superheroes who never seemed to notice that maybe they should try something else after the 100th time their mortal nemesis escaped from prison yet again...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 23, 2014, 12:57:21 AM
Staff fighting - pained me. I have done bojitsu for 39 years now and have done great weapons fighting in the SCA for 24. I even offered to send video's of strikes and combinations that would look good in the game, instead we got something I refuse to play.

It is ugly and with none of the flowing smooth movement or the quick strikes that I love.

As a martial artist - I can't play it - shudders.

If I could handle the game's under-abundance of physics and literacy, I think you could have eventually gotten used to break dancing staff swings.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 23, 2014, 01:08:55 AM
Yes, the game left it up to you to define what "defeated" meant, but I'm hard pressed to come up with a non-lethal definition of a "Decapitation" attack.  Still, I've had friends who insisted that the villains they "defeated" all ended up safely in the Zig, whereas I insisted that I killed every last one of them and spared the taxpayers the expense of housing them (briefly, until they broke out again later that afternoon).

Given that it almost never rained in Paragon City, I'm not sure if it was cheaper to be constantly mopping them off the sidewalk.

Then again, I think its much easier to decapitate someone without killing them, than it would be to telepathically convince a trash can it was injured to the point of detonation.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 23, 2014, 01:09:57 AM
Yes, the game left it up to you to define what "defeated" meant, but I'm hard pressed to come up with a non-lethal definition of a "Decapitation" attack.  Still, I've had friends who insisted that the villains they "defeated" all ended up safely in the Zig, whereas I insisted that I killed every last one of them and spared the taxpayers the expense of housing them (briefly, until they broke out again later that afternoon).  Seriously, why do they even bother processing prisoners in at the Zig?

My favorite superhero was always Frank Castle.  He knew the right way how to deal with violent criminals...permanently.  I never had any real respect for the idiotic catch-and-release superheroes who never seemed to notice that maybe they should try something else after the 100th time their mortal nemesis escaped from prison yet again...
The ones you killed did not break out later that day...their CLONES were set lose!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 23, 2014, 01:20:21 AM
The ones you killed did not break out later that day...their CLONES were set lose!

Its also possible Paragon City was a Westworld amusement park for meta humans.  It explains the fake currency, why we all thought we defeated the same Frostfire, and why the same woman has been getting her purse stolen on every block of the City for over ten years.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 23, 2014, 02:07:39 AM
*Shudder* That's spooky. . .
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on September 23, 2014, 02:28:24 AM

 
Tell that to Mother Mayhem.

Chest Cleavage isn't enough to go beyond a t rating or pg-13 rating and hasn't been for quite sometime.

Honestly I wish instead of using game ratings that alternate textures/sounds existed for parental controls... Sort of a way for parents to censor out content they don't want minors seeing. That way games can't be held back by a rating. Sometimes I wish when I punched a weak hellion across the map that it resulted in atleast a little bit of blood but we'll never have that in a t rated game unfortunately... (yet not long ago that was allowed in the older mortal kombat games by entering a password)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Baja on September 23, 2014, 02:44:50 AM

Honestly I wish instead of using game ratings that alternate textures/sounds existed for parental controls... Sort of a way for parents to censor out content they don't want minors seeing.

That's existed forever, it's called "paying attention to your kids" although this ancient technique has been long ignored, some practioners of this ancient art still exist today.

Seriously though blaming companies for what your kid has seen on a video game, movie, etc is just laziness. Maybe if people tried to take interest in what their kids were into, or even just taught their children to be open and honest, we as adult consumers wouldn't have to miss out on things like this.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 23, 2014, 03:07:54 AM
Wholeheartedly agree.

That, and I hate when people make statements that have no links to back up such statements. You can't make a statement like "conclusively proven" without linking to said study that "conclusively proved" it.

Otherwise, just leave it alone. ;)

Uh, excuse me! I watch Men Who Stare At Goats, and, in it, Colonel The Dude proved that it was bupkis!

:D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 23, 2014, 03:15:59 AM
Yes, the game left it up to you to define what "defeated" meant, but I'm hard pressed to come up with a non-lethal definition of a "Decapitation" attack.  Still, I've had friends who insisted that the villains they "defeated" all ended up safely in the Zig, whereas I insisted that I killed every last one of them and spared the taxpayers the expense of housing them (briefly, until they broke out again later that afternoon).  Seriously, why do they even bother processing prisoners in at the Zig?

My favorite superhero was always Frank Castle.  He knew the right way how to deal with violent criminals...permanently.  I never had any real respect for the idiotic catch-and-release superheroes who never seemed to notice that maybe they should try something else after the 100th time their mortal nemesis escaped from prison yet again...

While you could always pretend to be the like the great Hitokiri Battōsai when it comes to Katana you where a great swordsman that warder and defend the weak to pay for him crimes and used a reverse blade sword. See you just bashed in there heads and sent them to the hospital but hey you did not cut of his head it is all good
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 23, 2014, 03:21:10 AM
While you could always pretend to be the like the great Hitokiri Battōsai when it comes to Katana you where a great swordsman that warder and defend the weak to pay for him crimes and used a reverse blade sword. See you just bashed in there heads and sent them to the hospital but hey you did not cut of his head it is all good
If you leave them alive, I say the job's not done.

Take a bite out of crime in Praetoria.  It's for the good of the empire, really.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 23, 2014, 03:22:54 AM
Its also possible Paragon City was a Westworld amusement park for meta humans.  It explains the fake currency, why we all thought we defeated the same Frostfire, and why the same woman has been getting her purse stolen on every block of the City for over ten years.

http://movies.zap2it.com/movies/the-truman-show/20974?aid=zap2it (http://movies.zap2it.com/movies/the-truman-show/20974?aid=zap2it)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 23, 2014, 04:22:15 AM
in a game that I am arresting purse snatchers with radiation poisoning, excessive force doesnt seem to be a problem. having my demons restore the "peace" with hellfire is right there next to that.

lol
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 23, 2014, 04:42:20 AM
Yes, the game left it up to you to define what "defeated" meant, but I'm hard pressed to come up with a non-lethal definition of a "Decapitation" attack.  Still, I've had friends who insisted that the villains they "defeated" all ended up safely in the Zig, whereas I insisted that I killed every last one of them and spared the taxpayers the expense of housing them (briefly, until they broke out again later that afternoon).  Seriously, why do they even bother processing prisoners in at the Zig?

My favorite superhero was always Frank Castle.  He knew the right way how to deal with violent criminals...permanently.  I never had any real respect for the idiotic catch-and-release superheroes who never seemed to notice that maybe they should try something else after the 100th time their mortal nemesis escaped from prison yet again...
Of course there are a few places in the real world where if you have the power (and the agreement of the local authorities to look the other way while you exercise it) you can execute people on the spot for crimes as vicious as vandalism, graffiti, robbery, burglary, associating with undesirables, attempting to fight back when their friends are attacked by a heavily armed (or superpowered) self-appointed militia, exposing their head in public, looking suspicious or any other thing that offends you. Those places usually make the Rogue Isles look utopian by comparison if you're not among the elites, of course, but it's a great place if you think Western concepts of due process and trials are decadent ploys to interfere with dispensing divine justice. Which is just about all you could ever ask for once you realize you're infallible and inerrant.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 23, 2014, 04:56:58 AM
in a game that I am arresting purse snatchers with radiation poisoning, excessive force doesnt seem to be a problem.

I know radiation blast's damage wasn't very high, but I think its exaggerating a bit to claim that your blasts took several hours to bring down a minion.  Ice melee sometimes brought down critters by ultimately giving them pneumonia, but that was before the buffs to Frozen Aura.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 23, 2014, 07:37:39 AM
You never put a katana on your back it was worn on your left side (Katana is a right handed art) and your blade is facing up in the sheath (curve side is up) There is an entire art just on drawing the sword as a strike. You can actually do a partial draw and block the other guys sword draw; then finish the draw cutting him dead. I had a Katana/sr and sometimes I would laugh at my toons attack. Funny stuff for sure

I know you would never put a blade on the back silly I actually posted something earlier about that.  I honestly laughed at a lot of melee attacks though.  As I said, only enjoyed claws/titan weapons/staff fighting, even then I thought a few moves were at best impractical.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 23, 2014, 07:38:50 AM
in a game that I am arresting purse snatchers with radiation poisoning, excessive force doesnt seem to be a problem. having my demons restore the "peace" with hellfire is right there next to that.

We are talking about the practicality of things actually, like animations.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 23, 2014, 09:16:57 AM
We are talking about the practicality of things actually, like animations.

Some of us are.

The point is that while its perfectly acceptable to point out that the martial and melee weapon techniques are not realistic in depiction, its also equally valid to point out that's not a fair criticism for a game in which the devs had no intention of making them realistic and actively strove to make them not realistic, by attempting to make them over-the-top visually interesting instead.  Also because the devs felt realism in that area was a triviality given the fact that there exists no practical katana technique that counters being incinerated, electrocuted, or brainfried.  Accounting for the accurate physics of wielding extremely large objects as melee weapons would be an odd priority when those same laws of physics are ignored when wielding lightning.

There's no such thing as the correct technique to wield a broadsword against a giant robot with a flame thrower and force fields.  The correct technique in that situation uses your feet, not your arms, and involves running very fast in the opposite direction.

Some players prioritized certain things over other things, like the technique of martial arts kicks, and believed other things like the mechanics of warhulks or the physics of radiation blasts were things you were supposed to punt to the devs.  But other players felt differently, and the devs squared that circle by not caring about any of it, to any serious degree except where designers voluntarily chose to selectively use it to guide style.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: thunderforce on September 23, 2014, 10:02:46 AM
Some players prioritized certain things over other things, like the technique of martial arts kicks, and believed other things like the mechanics of warhulks or the physics of radiation blasts were things you were supposed to punt to the devs.

(I completely agree with what you wrote, I'm just overanalysing).

I think what always struck me about Martial Arts, especially before the release of alternative power animations, was that it was a sort of cousin of Irish dancing; all blows were delivered with the legs, with the arms as useless appendages.

(Someone's going to say, "Cobra Strike", but back in the day (as doubtless Arcana knows) Cobra Strike did piddly damage (less than Brawl) and, with Stamina and its prerequisites and a travel power and its prerequisites to fit into the early picks, it was pretty hard to fit it in. Amusingly, the last vestige of this is that Cobra Strike "deals high damage, but has a great chance of Disorienting your target."

"But"? "And", surely? That "but" is left over from when it "deals minor damage, but has a great chance ...")
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 23, 2014, 10:30:42 AM
I think what always struck me about Martial Arts, especially before the release of alternative power animations, was that it was a sort of cousin of Irish dancing; all blows were delivered with the legs, with the arms as useless appendages.

I suspect that's because when they were first designing the sets, Dark Melee became the all punch set so MA became the (mostly) all kick set. 

Quote
(Someone's going to say, "Cobra Strike", but back in the day (as doubtless Arcana knows) Cobra Strike did piddly damage (less than Brawl) and, with Stamina and its prerequisites and a travel power and its prerequisites to fit into the early picks, it was pretty hard to fit it in. Amusingly, the last vestige of this is that Cobra Strike "deals high damage, but has a great chance of Disorienting your target."

Cobra Strike was awful.  It used to do Scale 0.25 damage (yep, that is in fact lower than Brawl: 0.36 scale) and 11.92 seconds of stun (at level 50: that scaled from 8 seconds at level 1), with recharge of 20 seconds and 1.67 seconds of cast time (it is literally burned into my memory).  Many MA took Cobra Strike because they thought it was a better power than it actually was (wishful thinking) and many because for a long time MA was so bad, Cobra Strike wasn't all that weird compared to the other options. 

MA was a beautiful looking set (at least to me) but it was originally a kind of awful that players who were not around at release cannot fathom.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on September 23, 2014, 10:40:00 AM
I always loved the Eagle Claw animation. I never managed to get a MA character high enough to learn it, though.  (The closest I ever came was a MA/SR Scrapper, but he was only level 20-ish when the game went down)

Once you accept that even the "normal" powersets aren't supposed to have realistic animations or effects, it's easier to take.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: thunderforce on September 23, 2014, 10:49:46 AM
Many MA took Cobra Strike because they thought it was a better power than it actually was (wishful thinking) and many because for a long time MA was so bad, Cobra Strike wasn't all that weird compared to the other options.  MA was a beautiful looking set (at least to me) but it was originally a kind of awful that players who were not around at release cannot fathom.

I played from EU release (ie, issue 3), and surely Cobra Strike was that weird, compared to the other options. Thunder/Storm/Crane Kick, Dragon's Tail, and Eagle's Claw all do proper damage, and the Build Up makes six powers better than Cobra Strike (and IIRC even Crippling Axe Kick is slightly less ineffectual than Cobra Strike, and the Taunt at least has some situational uses...)

I never took Cobra Strike on the MA/Regen Thunderforce (and Quick Recovery masked some of MA's deficiencies, slotting for recharge more than end redux so the attacks one did have could cycle a bit quicker); I rerolled her as MA/Willpower shortly after issue 11, realising Willpower was the set Regen wanted to be, but the same was true of Quick Recovery. I don't remember when after issue 18 I realised Cobra Strike was now Crane Kick in a different hat and not useless at all, but with Inherent Fitness it was easy to fit it in...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 23, 2014, 01:10:27 PM
I know radiation blast's damage wasn't very high, but I think its exaggerating a bit to claim that your blasts took several hours to bring down a minion.  Ice melee sometimes brought down critters by ultimately giving them pneumonia, but that was before the buffs to Frozen Aura.

you misunderstand what I was saying. I liked rad blast. I just thought giving someone radiation poisoning and leukemia(possibly) for purse snatching was a tad bit extreme. punching them , yes...burning their face off, not so much.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Techbot Alpha on September 23, 2014, 01:11:47 PM
If we do get CoH back, and there ever is the chance to work on it more, then anyone in charge of animation would do well to look at Dark Souls and especially Dark Souls 2 when it comes to Titan Weapons done in a semi-realistic way without being too visually boring. While I dislike a lot of the changes to DS2, I can't fault them for making giant, eff-off swords and the like look visually powerful.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Peryton on September 23, 2014, 02:08:54 PM
There's no such thing as the correct technique to wield a broadsword against a giant robot with a flame thrower and force fields.

This is my new favorite quote.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: primeknight on September 23, 2014, 02:41:36 PM
you misunderstand what I was saying. I liked rad blast. I just thought giving someone radiation poisoning and leukemia(possibly) for purse snatching was a tad bit extreme. punching them , yes...burning their face off, not so much.

In a world where bullets are more like slaps to the face, and you can fling fireballs at a person just as easily as making the ground quake and enclosing someone in rock,  punching someone in the face so hard they fly vs giving someone radiation poisoning temporarily all seems to fit nicely in to this strangely violent world.  I mean, this is a world that is one bugs bunny cartoon away from arresting villains by dropping anvils on their heads.   Gravity Controllers were basically there: what's the real difference between flinging a forklift vs and anvil: at that point it's basically tomato tomaatoo potato potaato. 

In City of Heroes the police would have clapped and cheered as Captain Anvil dropped cast iron justice from the sky just for the crime of intimidating a pedestrian, while in reality (our reality) that same hero would probably go to jail for um...life. 

It's all just cupcakes.  (e.i. unimportant details, and nothing to get worked up about)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 23, 2014, 02:56:54 PM
I think what always struck me about Martial Arts, especially before the release of alternative power animations, was that it was a sort of cousin of Irish dancing; all blows were delivered with the legs, with the arms as useless appendages.

Little known fact: The ancient masters who taught martial arts to the heroes of Paragon City were 90% T-Rexes by demographic.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Medispider Reznov on September 23, 2014, 03:50:38 PM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I understand it's this.

1. CoX will be back online if the deal doesn't go south
2. The game is on a shackle from NCsoft
3. The game will never receive an update.
4. We have to shill out a load of money yet again to buy the stuff we paid for before, and have to wait for X months to get back our Loyalty rewards?

Is that correct?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 23, 2014, 03:52:04 PM
We neither confirm nor deny anything, Medispider!  :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 23, 2014, 04:01:00 PM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I understand it's this.

1. CoX will be back online if the deal doesn't go south
2. The game is on a shackle from NCsoft
3. The game will never receive an update.
4. We have to shill out a load of money yet again to buy the stuff we paid for before, and have to wait for X months to get back our Loyalty rewards?

Is that correct?

Sort of:

1. Yes, the game will be back unless something goes drastically wrong - doubtful since they are taking things very slowly and making NCSoft happy.
2. The game code is not for sale - just a purchase of the IP by a Holding company who will oversee leases for other uses
3. The game "could" receive an update if someone were to be reverse engineering the game and was capable of doing it - or was inclined to do it. Someone once said - its just code - code can be changed.
4. No idea how it will work for money yet - however there currently is no game. The folks working on this have never had a dime of cash and yet must somehow pay for servers and to run and support the game. You can look at it like you lost something - or you can look at it like you found a way to buy a ticket home.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 23, 2014, 04:01:14 PM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I understand it's this.

1. CoX will be back online if the deal doesn't go south
2. The game is on a shackle from NCsoft
3. The game will never receive an update.
4. We have to shill out a load of money yet again to buy the stuff we paid for before, and have to wait for X months to get back our Loyalty rewards?

Is that correct?

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Medispider Reznov on September 23, 2014, 04:03:52 PM
Also all I could hear in my head while reading was

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hKPWrX85U8
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on September 23, 2014, 04:04:17 PM
There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

What about unknown knowns?  Things that we know but don't know that we know?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Medispider Reznov on September 23, 2014, 04:07:24 PM
Just to clarify I am in no way shape or form disgruntled about the lose of data - because pitching everything up for sale is surely a way to rent out servers and possibly hire people to work the code over.

and dose "Shut up, and take my money!" even has to be said at this point?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 23, 2014, 04:07:39 PM
What about unknown knowns?  Things that we know but don't know that we know?

The unknown knowns are the the knowns which are known, but due to no hard information knowning the knowns we have to assume they are unknown.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 23, 2014, 04:13:32 PM
I might be a little reserved about shilling out a load of money if I knew the servers would promptly go right back offline once Windows 9 was released. Then it would feel like I shelled out money a second time only to realize I still couldn't play the original City of Heroes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: General Sherman on September 23, 2014, 04:18:23 PM
There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

You just made my brain twitch o.O
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Raven on September 23, 2014, 04:20:48 PM
Its also possible Paragon City was a Westworld amusement park for meta humans.  It explains the fake currency, why we all thought we defeated the same Frostfire, and why the same woman has been getting her purse stolen on every block of the City for over ten years.
Here was something I never understood. We as heroes should have been helping that woman. Like help her 10 times and get a boyscout badge or something. HA!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Medispider Reznov on September 23, 2014, 04:35:39 PM
I always beat up Gangs if they were hustling regular NPCs in Rogue Isles, watching gangs beat on each other was amusing tho
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on September 23, 2014, 04:46:05 PM
1. Yes, the game will be back unless something goes drastically wrong - doubtful since they are taking things very slowly and making NCSoft happy.

Glad to read this.  Obviously no guarantees, but from where things were when you were in the loop, you feel it looked very likely the deal would go through?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Medispider Reznov on September 23, 2014, 04:51:43 PM
Also I know I am greatly GREATLY offtopic on this, but I've been desperately looking for this for years - even before CoX was scheduled to go down.


My question is - Where do I find the old CoV Character creation music? The one that basically sounded like a bombastic version of the Main CoV Login theme
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on September 23, 2014, 04:56:43 PM
Some players prioritized certain things over other things, like the technique of martial arts kicks, and believed other things like the mechanics of warhulks or the physics of radiation blasts were things you were supposed to punt to the devs.  But other players felt differently, and the devs squared that circle by not caring about any of it, to any serious degree except where designers voluntarily chose to selectively use it to guide style.

I've been teaching martial arts professionally for 13 years, and I can't say the game's animations ever bothered me for being "unrealistic" for a number of reasons.  They were really no worse from that point of view than what you see in movies all the time.

Aside: What actually bugs me about martial arts in media these days is that, for some bizarre reason, it has become fashionable to display it in such a way that you can't actually see anything that's going on, as if that somehow makes it more impressive.  I suspect this is a mixture of just being a cinematographic (is that a word?) fad and the fact that many such actors don't actually have the skills they're trying to portray.  However, while I can speak from a fairly knowledgeable place on the martial arts side of things, I don't know enough about film to say much from that perspective.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 23, 2014, 04:57:29 PM
If we do get CoH back, and there ever is the chance to work on it more, then anyone in charge of animation would do well to look at Dark Souls and especially Dark Souls 2 when it comes to Titan Weapons done in a semi-realistic way without being too visually boring. While I dislike a lot of the changes to DS2, I can't fault them for making giant, eff-off swords and the like look visually powerful.

Without the source code, changing animations will be nigh on impossible; we need to tools to package updates to the PIGGS, and the tools to create the animations in the format CoH uses...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: DeathSentry on September 23, 2014, 06:07:58 PM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I understand it's this.

1. CoX will be back online if the deal doesn't go south
2. The game is on a shackle from NCsoft
3. The game will never receive an update.
4. We have to shill out a load of money yet again to buy the stuff we paid for before, and have to wait for X months to get back our Loyalty rewards?

Is that correct?
1. true..
2., 3. Am wondering about this..so we get the licensing to use the IP but without source code no updates really...and wondering about windows 9 compatability..so wondering what is the ultimate benefit of this effort then? Get it back, play till windows 9, stop... though I guess the other games (VO, CoT, H&V, AP Revival) can use some of the names, etc.. others please correct me if I'm wrong but is that it?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 23, 2014, 06:22:02 PM
windows 9 compatability.., play till windows 9, stop
once Windows 9

-clears throat-
Ignore the windows 9 thing.
CoH isn't going to just EXPLODE the day windows 9 came out. Nate intended it as one of a variety of examples that makes APR a good idea.

The CoH server wouldn't be updated to an O.S. that the server couldn't run on, and even if the client wasn't compatible with Windows 9...There's the options that have been mentioned before like dual booting, or having an old machine set aside for CoH, or simply not updating to windows 9.

and if people haven't found reasons to move to Revival at that point, I'd seriously need to step up my game! xD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 23, 2014, 06:25:17 PM
and if people haven't found reasons to move to Revival at that point, I'd seriously need to step up my game! xD
Have you considered holding a Kickstarter once we (hopefully) get the game back and you acquire an IP license?  I threw $1,000 at City of Titans and I'd be happy to throw another $1,000 your way (in exchange for suitable in-game prezzies, naturally).  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 23, 2014, 06:26:51 PM
1. true..
2., 3. Am wondering about this..so we get the licensing to use the IP but without source code no updates really...and wondering about windows 9 compatability..so wondering what is the ultimate benefit of this effort then? Get it back, play till windows 9, stop... though I guess the other games (VO, CoT, H&V, AP Revival) can use some of the names, etc.. others please correct me if I'm wrong but is that it?

At this point, 2-4 are all up in the air until 1 can be more firmly settled. I believe (and IrishGirl can correct me if I'm wrong) that plans for the Atlas Park Revival project include some way to migrate data from the revived CoH to the updated engine. Naturally, though, this is still so early in the planning stages that nobody can confirm even that there will be a revived CoH, let alone whether it will be possible to import data from it to another game and what form that will take.

That said, from their comments here, everyone involved with the revival seems to be very aware that the playerbase doesn't want to start over twice, so I think it's definitely high in their list of priorities. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 23, 2014, 06:29:01 PM
So my option is "Or Death"...?

There's other options?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 23, 2014, 06:29:38 PM
1. true..
2., 3. Am wondering about this..so we get the licensing to use the IP but without source code no updates really...and wondering about windows 9 compatability..so wondering what is the ultimate benefit of this effort then? Get it back, play till windows 9, stop... though I guess the other games (VO, CoT, H&V, AP Revival) can use some of the names, etc.. others please correct me if I'm wrong but is that it?

Some have said that Win 9 won't kill every other game and program in the known world - on top of that a LOT of people still use Windows XP.

Look at this chart: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-windows-xp-market-share-2014-2

As of Feb of this year more people were STILL on Windows XP than Windows 8 in 2014.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 23, 2014, 06:40:52 PM
Some have said that Win 9 won't kill every other game and program in the known world - on top of that a LOT of people still use Windows XP.

Look at this chart: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-windows-xp-market-share-2014-2

As of Feb of this year more people were STILL on Windows XP than Windows 8 in 2014.

Ya I am sticking with Windows 7 as long as possible.  Unless Microsoft comes into my house and forces me to install Windows 9.  Which they just might do!  With their legions of footsoliders
Quote
1. true..
2., 3. Am wondering about this..so we get the licensing to use the IP but without source code no updates really...and wondering about windows 9 compatability..so wondering what is the ultimate benefit of this effort then? Get it back, play till windows 9, stop... though I guess the other games (VO, CoT, H&V, AP Revival) can use some of the names, etc.. others please correct me if I'm wrong but is that it?

At this point I would say its too early to know exactly whats going to happen.  They could announce that CoH won't be brought back until virtual reality has become flawless allowing us to actually live as our heroes.  Until the deal is finished, and  Nate announces the terms of the deal and all that goodness.  It is all still very much so up in the air.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Medispider Reznov on September 23, 2014, 06:55:03 PM
Personally I'm coazy with Windows 7 and I have no plans on moveing
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 23, 2014, 07:05:43 PM
Personally I'm coazy with Windows 7 and I have no plans on moveing
Damn straight, I've actively avoided moving anyone at our company to Win8 and certainly won't touch it at home.  Win7 is a nice next step up from XP, while Win8 is really just a mess.  Even Microsoft's own people call it "the new Vista" in-house.  They're tripping over themselves trying to get Win9 out the door, while laying a bunch of people off.  They really didn't get rid of Ballmer soon enough, though I'm not convinced the new guy is much better.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Beltor on September 23, 2014, 07:08:20 PM
Windows so far has had ways to run older software. Likely COH will still be runable on Windows 9 in some form of compatible mode. Personally I'm sticking to 7 for a while longer anyway.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 23, 2014, 07:09:06 PM
Some have said that Win 9 won't kill every other game and program in the known world - on top of that a LOT of people still use Windows XP.

Look at this chart: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-windows-xp-market-share-2014-2

As of Feb of this year more people were STILL on Windows XP than Windows 8 in 2014.

Indeed, Windows XP is tried and proven, you won't see it going away for quite a while.  Only problems I can see is security, even THEN people tend to take things into there own hands and if you have professionals working on that, and they implement proper layering in security often you won't have a problem there.  Simply turning off unnecessary features for instance can significantly harden a system.

XP has very low requirements likewise, and I recall they do have 64 bit versions of it, so it's not likely to fall to far behind on modern machines, one could easily look up driver tweaks and other adjustments to get more out of the system on XP if they were really committed to it.  These factors are critically important for efficient networking and many people weren't supportive of the massive increase in resources vista imposed that windows 7 and 8 both have.  In fact windows 8 is about as unsupported as Vista is.  In fact even my last job most of us were at best hesitant to help someone on windows 8, we still did but it wasn't a surprise when someone on the other end blamed 8.

Personally I prefer 7 and XP to vista.  I found there were to many shenanigans with vista.  But I miss the ease of finding things in XP, alot.  But this is saying more about me than the OS's.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 23, 2014, 07:09:20 PM
you misunderstand what I was saying. I liked rad blast. I just thought giving someone radiation poisoning and leukemia(possibly) for purse snatching was a tad bit extreme. punching them , yes...burning their face off, not so much.

I don't tend to use a lot of smileys.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Medispider Reznov on September 23, 2014, 07:13:03 PM
I'm a newb on the block I admit to it, but I have a question - why didn't anyone ( because I checked for this regularly... not here tho >.>) just set up a privet server of the game and make it run like that? Before this possibility arose obviously, I'd much rather see a server that runs with NCsoft's blessing. ( even though I hate then with a venomous passion )

http://www.returnofreckoning.com/index.php

Warhammer seams to have done just that and EA doesn't seam to care.

And before people say NCsoft is rigerouse about these things - no it isn't, in the times od darkness and youth.... aaaround 2007-8 or so, me and my friends played Lineage 2 on privet servers, and the amounts of those servers were UNCANNY, I had a metric shitton of servers to pick from, high rates, low rates, custom events, custom PVP it was a hassle just to pick one, and NCsoft was either wholly ignorant of these ( which I kinda doubt, there were thousands) or quite frankly didn't care.

Was this due to technical issues, or...?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 23, 2014, 07:15:44 PM
The unknown knowns are the the knowns which are known, but due to no hard information knowning the knowns we have to assume they are unknown.

Actually, there is such a thing as an unknown known.  These are things you know, but don't know you know.  I used to field questions from players all the time on the forums, and sometimes someone asked a question that was worded in a weird or twisted way that obscured the answer, and rather than answer it I would translate the question into something that was simpler.  Then the player realized they knew the answer to the question all along, they just didn't know they knew the answer because they were thinking about the question in an inaccessible way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 23, 2014, 07:16:20 PM
I'm a newb on the block I admit to it, but I have a question - why didn't anyone ( because I checked for this regularly... not here tho >.>) just set up a privet server of the game and make it run like that? Before this possibility arose obviously, I'd much rather see a server that runs with NCsoft's blessing. ( even though I hate then with a venomous passion )

http://www.returnofreckoning.com/index.php

Warhammer seams to have done just that and EA doesn't seam to care.

And before people say NCsoft is rigerouse about these things - no it isn't, in the times od darkness and youth.... aaaround 2007-8 or so, me and my friends played Lineage 2 on privet servers, and the amounts of those servers were UNCANNY, I had a metric shitton of servers to pick from, high rates, low rates, custom events, custom PVP it was a hassle just to pick one, and NCsoft was either wholly ignorant of these ( which I kinda doubt, there were thousands) or quite frankly didn't care.

Was this due to technical issues, or...?
Because we don't have the source code for the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 23, 2014, 07:21:02 PM
I'm a newb on the block I admit to it, but I have a question - why didn't anyone ( because I checked for this regularly... not here tho >.>) just set up a privet server of the game and make it run like that? Before this possibility arose obviously, I'd much rather see a server that runs with NCsoft's blessing. ( even though I hate then with a venomous passion )

http://www.returnofreckoning.com/index.php

Warhammer seams to have done just that and EA doesn't seam to care.

And before people say NCsoft is rigerouse about these things - no it isn't, in the times od darkness and youth.... aaaround 2007-8 or so, me and my friends played Lineage 2 on privet servers, and the amounts of those servers were UNCANNY, I had a metric shitton of servers to pick from, high rates, low rates, custom events, custom PVP it was a hassle just to pick one, and NCsoft was either wholly ignorant of these ( which I kinda doubt, there were thousands) or quite frankly didn't care.

Was this due to technical issues, or...?

I would say that one direct impediment to doing this with City of Heroes is that its significantly different to leak the source code for a game being developed by hundreds of developers, and a game being developed primarily by a dozen.  Safety in numbers: if a private server was leaked out of Paragon, I would have a decent shot at guessing *who* did it.  For Lineage or Warhammer, that would be far more difficult.

Additionally, there are private servers for some MMOs and not others.  This is a very hit and miss thing you have to get lucky to see.  There's no reason to believe that if it happens for any particular MMO its easy to do for every MMO technically or practically.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 23, 2014, 07:31:45 PM
I'm a newb on the block I admit to it, but I have a question - why didn't anyone ( because I checked for this regularly... not here tho >.>) just set up a privet server of the game and make it run like that? Before this possibility arose obviously, I'd much rather see a server that runs with NCsoft's blessing. ( even though I hate then with a venomous passion )

Was this due to technical issues, or...?

There may or may not have been an ongoing effort to do exactly that, which may or may not be continuing. :) Basically, everything server-side needs to be reverse-engineered from the client in order to make a playable game on a private server (because as Arcana mentioned, it was not leaked to the plaers like some other MMO source code), and this is not something that can be done easily or quickly by hobbyists. In addition, since there may be potential legal hassles invovled (it's probably legal to undertake such an activity, but nobody wants to be in the position to have to hire a lawyer to prove that) any efforts along those lines are proceeding so far under the radar that some people believe they don't exist. Either that, or they don't exist. I'm not sure. :)

So short answer: Yes, technical issues. But not necessarily insurmountable ones, in the event that the deal falls through.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 23, 2014, 07:39:42 PM
It is legal to reverse engineeer - it is illegal to do anything with the product of that reverse engineering.

So you can look to see how something was done - but you can't then sell a product made the same way - except in some countries you can. In the USA nope.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Medispider Reznov on September 23, 2014, 07:41:56 PM
as far as I know the way L2 escaped the loop hole, was the fact that they didn't take any payment for the privilege of playing, and used only Donations ( and gave out some "gifts" for your trouble)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 23, 2014, 07:43:37 PM
It is legal to reverse engineeer - it is illegal to do anything with the product of that reverse engineering.

So you can look to see how something was done - but you can't then sell a product made the same way - except in some countries you can. In the USA nope.

Sell it, no... But how about give it away? I'm not aware of any private MMO server authors selling their emulators...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 23, 2014, 07:45:57 PM
I'm a newb on the block I admit to it, but I have a question - why didn't anyone ( because I checked for this regularly... not here tho >.>) just set up a privet server of the game and make it run like that? Before this possibility arose obviously, I'd much rather see a server that runs with NCsoft's blessing. ( even though I hate then with a venomous passion )

Back in the day I reverse engineered an Ultima Online server.  I did it mainly as a training exercise and time waster for myself, so it took me near to a year to get working.  Trust me, it's not an easy thing to do.

I did end up with a very playable home server of UO (with all the modifications to the game that *I* wanted in place) though . . . well with one limitation that I was never able to find the cause of or fix.  Whenever 2 player characters would first come within visual range of each other, one or both of the clients would crash.  I know it's a bug somewhere in the mob spawn/visual refresh packets, but I never could track it down enough to fix.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: archaist on September 23, 2014, 07:47:05 PM
It is legal to reverse engineeer - it is illegal to do anything with the product of that reverse engineering.

So you can look to see how something was done - but you can't then sell a product made the same way - except in some countries you can. In the USA nope.

Say I reverse engineer CoH and then made it public and didn't take donations or payments? I would just pay for the servers out of my own pocket.

To my knowledge this is still something of a grey area in the USA atm.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Medispider Reznov on September 23, 2014, 07:49:25 PM
Like I said archaist - both L2 and UO servers are alive and well, and they only take donations.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 23, 2014, 07:51:19 PM
Say I reverse engineer CoH and then made it public and didn't take donations or payments? I would just pay for the servers out of my own pocket.

To my knowledge this is still something of a grey area in the USA atm.

To even approach real legality, you'd have to reverse engineer not only the server side, but the client side (and all art assets, etc).  Then you'd really only have the copyright/IP issues to deal with, which of course still leaves you in legal troubles/suable position [especially if you make any money off of it].  But if you're using the existing client software, you're still using their assets.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 23, 2014, 07:54:16 PM
I don't think it is grey - I think it is illegal. that is why such a thing would have to spontaneously appear on a hundred sites at once. Whack a mole is never easy.

It may not be necessary soon, we do have a team working on it, our top men - with their best bad idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoy4_h7Pb3M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j--JqYjvdYk
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Urd on September 23, 2014, 07:54:59 PM
Some have said that Win 9 won't kill every other game and program in the known world - on top of that a LOT of people still use Windows XP.

Look at this chart: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-windows-xp-market-share-2014-2

As of Feb of this year more people were STILL on Windows XP than Windows 8 in 2014.

Windows 8 was an excellent case of why beta testing feedback is important. When putting out a new product, it has to be better and cheaper for people to move to it. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 23, 2014, 07:56:33 PM
Windows 8 was an excellent case of why beta testing feedback is important. When putting out a new product, it has to be better and cheaper for people to move to it.
They had plenty of beta feedback on Win8 - they just chose to ignore it because they know better than us about what we need to be doing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 23, 2014, 08:07:10 PM
Say I reverse engineer CoH and then made it public and didn't take donations or payments? I would just pay for the servers out of my own pocket.

To my knowledge this is still something of a grey area in the USA atm.

I am no expert in the matter.  But I would imagine this could still warrant some kind of repercussions.  The CoH IP would still be NCSofts property and asset.  You may not be making money off of it, but you are using it without their permission.  And would be allowing others to use it as well.  It probably wouldn't be more then a letter telling to shut down the game but I don't think it would be allowed to slide. Considering they haven't allowed it with other titles.

 EA has never really seemed to care about private servers(surprisingly) UO had private servers up when the game was still relatively successful.  They still have plenty.  Same with Earth & Beyond and apparently Warhammer too.  It may just be EA turning a blind eye to it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on September 23, 2014, 09:05:29 PM
Also I know I am greatly GREATLY offtopic on this, but I've been desperately looking for this for years - even before CoX was scheduled to go down.

My question is - Where do I find the old CoV Character creation music? The one that basically sounded like a bombastic version of the Main CoV Login theme

Paragon Wiki is your friend!

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Music

Specifically, the section near the bottom for Character Creation Screen Music.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: archaist on September 23, 2014, 09:11:09 PM
Like I said archaist - both L2 and UO servers are alive and well, and they only take donations.

I don't know enough about these games or private servers in general, but It's my understand that no legal action was taken by the companies against the private servers. It was their choice to let it slide. I don't think that there is currently any precedent in actual law where a company has filed against a private server that was open for free. Which is what I meant by grey area.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Baja on September 23, 2014, 09:47:54 PM
I'm a newb on the block I admit to it, but I have a question - why didn't anyone ( because I checked for this regularly... not here tho >.>) just set up a privet server of the game and make it run like that? Before this possibility arose obviously, I'd much rather see a server that runs with NCsoft's blessing. ( even though I hate then with a venomous passion )

http://www.returnofreckoning.com/index.php

Warhammer seams to have done just that and EA doesn't seam to care.

And before people say NCsoft is rigerouse about these things - no it isn't, in the times od darkness and youth.... aaaround 2007-8 or so, me and my friends played Lineage 2 on privet servers, and the amounts of those servers were UNCANNY, I had a metric shitton of servers to pick from, high rates, low rates, custom events, custom PVP it was a hassle just to pick one, and NCsoft was either wholly ignorant of these ( which I kinda doubt, there were thousands) or quite frankly didn't care.

Was this due to technical issues, or...?

They exist and are most likely in high numbers. If someone like Arcana can hack the test server (or live I can't remember the story) chances are she also had the source. The problem is a lot of coh players aren't actually that friendly to outsiders. As much as this community is constantly self proclaimed as the best community, it's extremely clique based. Don't get me wrong it's not like everyone will just ignore you completely, it's more of a high school situation. Sure they may act friendly and easy going, but make a mistake or disagree and chances are they'll sit and talk s*** about you. I learned this the hard way by making a post about how coh would be shutting down within 1-2 years, within 40 minutes there were 18 pages of raw hate saying how stupid I was for thinking this was possible, a year and a half later it shut down. Another example is the amount of racism and just flat out stupidity projected towards ncsoft at shut down, yeah I was upset and miss this game so much more than any of even my closest friends realize, that doesn't give me or anyone else for that matter the right to say some of the things they did.

Just imagine if any major MMO was run by a group of people who have no code of ethics and is not required to follow any set of rules to remove players, unless your prepared to stroke some serious ego chances are you'll eventually upset the wrong person and have yourself removed. Also seeing how the size of our community is much smaller than some other major names in the industry lots of people just picked up and moved on.

This probably isn't exactly the response most wanted to see but it is just my opinion, I'm sure many disagree and very very few will agree given the circumstances. I was never good at the whole "playing along" thing though, I have this terrible tendency of speaking my mind.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 23, 2014, 10:02:02 PM
Please ignore Baja - there are not any super-secret CoH private servers in existence, ranting conspiracy theories to the contrary.  If there were, there's no way it would have stayed a secret for 2 years and we'd be playing them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 23, 2014, 10:04:57 PM
I don't know enough about these games or private servers in general, but It's my understand that no legal action was taken by the companies against the private servers. It was their choice to let it slide. I don't think that there is currently any precedent in actual law where a company has filed against a private server that was open for free. Which is what I meant by grey area.

It's a common misconception that there's some sort of legal protection granted by violating copyright for non-commercial purposes; in actual fact, this is entirely untrue. The law offers no protection at all in this situation; fanfiction featuring copyrighted characters are illegal, freely distributing a pirated game is illegal (even if the game is out of print), and copying or publicly exhibiting a film without permission of the rights holder is illegal as well. This is because companies have a hard time making money selling a product if someone else is giving it away for free. IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This is in no way, shape or form the same thing as immoral. Please don't take this as a moral judgment on your fanfiction, because I'm cool with it. :)

However, most companies don't send out cease and desist orders on non-commercial copyright infringement, for two reasons. First, there's no money changing hands. If there's no money changing hands, it's not worth paying a lawyer real money to stop. (Note that this can change in a heartbeat, though. As soon as Fox licensed official "Jayne hats", hobbyists everywhere who were giving away free patterns for making your own got hit with C&D orders. Now that there was a financial incentive to get people to buy the hat instead of making it, the IP became valuable and copyright infringement was no longer tolerated.) NCSoft clearly has a basis for assuming there's value to the IP, though, so there's no reason to think they would turn a blind eye to exploitation of their IP even if it was non-commercial.

The second reason is that there's a cost to filing lawsuits against your own fanbase above and beyond paying the lawyers. If you sue anyone who writes fanfic, you're going to wind up with a fanbase that bears you considerable ill-will. Since their money pays your bills, it's worth your while to pick your battles carefully and only go after the egregious violators. In this instance, making a private server would probably be considered egregious, unless you assume like Baja that there are people making Sooper Seekrit Servers for their Sooper Speshul High School Cliques and those aren't on NCSoft's radar.

In general, never assume that you're safe from someone's lawyers just because you aren't making money. All that means is that if they do decide to go after you, you won't be able to afford a lawyer. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Baja on September 23, 2014, 10:07:00 PM
Please ignore Baja - there are not any super-secret CoH private servers in existence, ranting conspiracy theories to the contrary.  If there were, there's no way it would have stayed a secret for 2 years and we'd be playing them.

Really? So if a group of twenty good friends you played coh with said "we have a private server you can play on, just don't tell anyone." You'd go around telling people most likely resulting in a shut down?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 23, 2014, 10:10:43 PM
Really? So if a group of twenty good friends you played coh with said "we have a private server you can play on, just don't tell anyone." You'd go around telling people most likely resulting in a shut down?
If you're so sure that these super-secret private CoH servers "exist and are most likely in high numbers," then provide the slightest shred of actual proof.

If there are that many of them of them out there, surely you can do that.  Talk is cheap - and so are crazy, rambling conspiracy theories.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 23, 2014, 10:16:16 PM
If you're so sure that these super-secret private CoH servers "exist and are most likely in high numbers," then provide the slightest shred of actual proof.

If there are that many of them of them out there, surely you can do that.  Talk is cheap - and so are crazy, rambling conspiracy theories.
id also like too add to this by saying someone would have said something even if it was a secret. plus someone would have found a private server by now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 23, 2014, 10:17:10 PM
It's a common misconception that there's some sort of legal protection granted by violating copyright for non-commercial purposes; in actual fact, this is entirely untrue. The law offers no protection at all in this situation; fanfiction featuring copyrighted characters are illegal, freely distributing a pirated game is illegal (even if the game is out of print), and copying or publicly exhibiting a film without permission of the rights holder is illegal as well. This is because companies have a hard time making money selling a product if someone else is giving it away for free. IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This is in no way, shape or form the same thing as immoral. Please don't take this as a moral judgment on your fanfiction, because I'm cool with it. :)

However, most companies don't send out cease and desist orders on non-commercial copyright infringement, for two reasons. First, there's no money changing hands. If there's no money changing hands, it's not worth paying a lawyer real money to stop. (Note that this can change in a heartbeat, though. As soon as Fox licensed official "Jayne hats", hobbyists everywhere who were giving away free patterns for making your own got hit with C&D orders. Now that there was a financial incentive to get people to buy the hat instead of making it, the IP became valuable and copyright infringement was no longer tolerated.) NCSoft clearly has a basis for assuming there's value to the IP, though, so there's no reason to think they would turn a blind eye to exploitation of their IP even if it was non-commercial.

The second reason is that there's a cost to filing lawsuits against your own fanbase above and beyond paying the lawyers. If you sue anyone who writes fanfic, you're going to wind up with a fanbase that bears you considerable ill-will. Since their money pays your bills, it's worth your while to pick your battles carefully and only go after the egregious violators. In this instance, making a private server would probably be considered egregious, unless you assume like Baja that there are people making Sooper Seekrit Servers for their Sooper Speshul High School Cliques and those aren't on NCSoft's radar.

In general, never assume that you're safe from someone's lawyers just because you aren't making money. All that means is that if they do decide to go after you, you won't be able to afford a lawyer. :)

You know, I have been  wondering for a while now if Icon is legal or not, or if NCSoft knows about it or not (especially as rudimentary negotiations are underway to try and rez CoX).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 23, 2014, 10:18:37 PM
You know, I have been  wondering for a while now if Icon is legal or not, or if NCSoft knows about it or not (especially as rudimentary negotiations are underway to try and rez CoX).
Last I checked, Codewalker (and others here) had already looked into this when Titan Icon was first released, and I'm pretty sure we're in the clear with it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 23, 2014, 10:20:16 PM
I suspect that's because when they were first designing the sets, Dark Melee became the all punch set so MA became the (mostly) all kick set. 

Cobra Strike was awful.  It used to do Scale 0.25 damage (yep, that is in fact lower than Brawl: 0.36 scale) and 11.92 seconds of stun (at level 50: that scaled from 8 seconds at level 1), with recharge of 20 seconds and 1.67 seconds of cast time (it is literally burned into my memory).  Many MA took Cobra Strike because they thought it was a better power than it actually was (wishful thinking) and many because for a long time MA was so bad, Cobra Strike wasn't all that weird compared to the other options. 

MA was a beautiful looking set (at least to me) but it was originally a kind of awful that players who were not around at release cannot fathom.
One of my first characters had and enjoyed the Chun Li version of Storm Kick. In my defense it was my first week playing, i had never played an MMO before despite having friends who were into Evercrack, and i didn't really start reading the forums for another week or so. Nifty looking power. A pity the animation was never reused for anything else AFAIK.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 23, 2014, 10:21:08 PM
id also like too add to this by saying someone would have said something even if it was a secret. plus someone would have found a private server by now.
Quite.  This crazy conspiracy theory suffers from the flaw they all have - that large groups of people can keep a secret - perfectly - for years on end without leaking even a hint of it.  Does anyone here (aside from Baja), really think this community could keep that secret for even 5 whole minutes?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Baja on September 23, 2014, 10:24:31 PM
I see you didn't answer the question and instead became defensive to my -opinions-.

The high numbers things is very much a guess, considering many of the players were very talented with computer science among other things required to reverse engineer or even steal the source. Fact remains though several devs became personal friends with a group of players. If you followed the forums around shut down it became pretty well known the source was left untouched in Europe for several months after shut down, which gave ample time to distribute this to the right people.

But hey once again just my opinion, your disagreement is more than welcome.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 23, 2014, 10:25:11 PM
Quite.  This crazy conspiracy theory suffers from the flaw they all have - that large groups of people can keep a secret - perfectly - for years on end without leaking even a hint of it.  Does anyone here (aside from Baja), really think this community could keep that secret for even 5 whole minutes?
Hellz no, I would be all "Look at what I just found!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Baja on September 23, 2014, 10:26:43 PM
Quite.  This crazy conspiracy theory suffers from the flaw they all have - that large groups of people can keep a secret - perfectly - for years on end without leaking even a hint of it.  Does anyone here (aside from Baja), really think this community could keep that secret for even 5 whole minutes?

I'm pretty sure if the Manhattan project existed, it's more than possible for a small group of people to keep a secret... Just sayin'
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 23, 2014, 10:32:16 PM
Quite.  This crazy conspiracy theory suffers from the flaw they all have - that large groups of people can keep a secret - perfectly - for years on end without leaking even a hint of it.  Does anyone here (aside from Baja), really think this community could keep that secret for even 5 whole minutes?

Yes, tell them to do this

http://www.drawastickman.com/episode1?o=66-69-32-67-82-69-65-84-73-86-69s66-89-58-32-84-72-69-32-66-65-78-68-69-69
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 23, 2014, 10:32:27 PM
I see you didn't answer the question and instead became defensive to my -opinions-.
Defensive?  More like I'm laughing as the idea is so ludicrous.  I just don't want any newbies here to get the wrong idea that these super-secret CoH private servers actually exist, as it's just mean to send people on a snipe hunt.

But to answer your question - yes, I'd be telling everyone!  If I had a copy of the CoH source code I wouldn't waste 2 seconds in uploading it to every file-sharing network on the planet and would be handing out free copies to every single person who wanted one.  And I would have that source code, in very short order, if it were any of my friends that were inviting me to some super-secret private server.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 23, 2014, 10:35:07 PM
I'm pretty sure if the Manhattan project existed, it's more than possible for a small group of people to keep a secret... Just sayin'
As an example of keeping secrets, you picked...the U.S. Government?  They leak like a sieve.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 23, 2014, 10:36:45 PM
I'm pretty sure if the Manhattan project existed, it's more than possible for a small group of people to keep a secret... Just sayin'
that is public knowledge whereas someone going around saying there is a small group playing. This is  flawed because all of the old devs and most players know that the fans of this game wants to play. As for your last sentence this is flawed read the pervious sentence for the answer.
Also why would the old devs only allow a few players to play? I have read Ncsoft searched all of the devs to make sure they did not have a copy of the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 23, 2014, 10:51:14 PM
I see you didn't answer the question and instead became defensive to my -opinions-.

The high numbers things is very much a guess, considering many of the players were very talented with computer science among other things required to reverse engineer or even steal the source. Fact remains though several devs became personal friends with a group of players. If you followed the forums around shut down it became pretty well known the source was left untouched in Europe for several months after shut down, which gave ample time to distribute this to the right people.

But hey once again just my opinion, your disagreement is more than welcome.
I'm pretty sure if the Manhattan project existed, it's more than possible for a small group of people to keep a secret... Just sayin'
Manhattan Project was a top secret military project in wartime that employed a small number of people who actually knew what was being done with thousands of people actively working to screen it. Not nearly the same thing as your hypothesized high number of private servers for a game, servers that could be easily released and copied en masse if a single person of that high number uploaded it to a torrent. Within hours there would be hundreds of copies scattered across dozens of torrent networks.

Private servers only work if someone had access to the original source code and gave it to someone outside the company, which appears not to be the case. Not that there haven't been attempts at creating private servers, but without access to the server source code it's a herculean effort to create your own. You have to not only reverse engineer the protocols that the client uses to talk to the servers you also have to code all the systems that went into making the game work. The combat engine, critter AI, reward tables, XP tables, powers system, map servers, and everything else that made the game work. There was supposedly an unauthorized game server based on the server code from Issue 3 or so and by every account what actually existed was an unplayable, unstable mess that spent more time crashing than doing anything else.

Relatively few MMOs have unauthorized servers because few copies of server code ever make it into the wild, and if you think rewriting server code from scratch can be done easily or quickly without some combination of massive amounts of time and money you're obviously talking out the other end of your GI tract. Especially since one of the most effective ways to keep your own private servers up and running would be to scatter the code far and wide so that NCsoft would have no chance of ever putting the genie back in the bottle. At that point it becomes a waste of time and money to play whack-a-mole going after unauthorized servers for a game that's earning NCsoft nothing as is.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 23, 2014, 11:02:02 PM
If there were a private server, I think Titan Network would have another sister-site! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Baja on September 23, 2014, 11:08:26 PM

Private servers only work if someone had access to the original source code and gave it to someone outside the company, which appears not to be the case. Not that there haven't been attempts at creating private servers...

Sooo it's possible, and has been attempted, but there's no way in all this time anything has been achieved...

Anyways though I'm gunna drop this as it seems to be a pretty touchy subject. Hopefully the guy who asked about private servers read the rest of my response and gets what I mean about the disagreement thing :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 23, 2014, 11:19:50 PM
I see you didn't answer the question and instead became defensive to my -opinions-.

The high numbers things is very much a guess, considering many of the players were very talented with computer science among other things required to reverse engineer or even steal the source. Fact remains though several devs became personal friends with a group of players. If you followed the forums around shut down it became pretty well known the source was left untouched in Europe for several months after shut down, which gave ample time to distribute this to the right people.

But hey once again just my opinion, your disagreement is more than welcome.

But you're not stating an -opinion-. You're stating a (purported) fact. Opinions can't be proven or disproven, only agreed with or disagreed with, but facts are either true or false.

For example, if I went onto a Joss Whedon forum, and stated that "Firefly" sucked and that it was the worst series Whedon made, that would be an opinion. An unpopular one, but I could blow off fans by saying, "Just my opinion, your disagreement is more than welcome."

But if I went on there and stated that the show is still secretly in production, and that Joss Whedon only shows it to fans who he personally likes, and if you haven't seen any episodes it must mean that Joss Whedon hates you, that's a fact. And unless I can provide proof of that fact, people will state that it's untrue. The burden would be on me to prove I'm telling the truth, not on everyone else to prove I'm lying (which would, in this case, involve tying Joss Whedon to a chair and making him talk).

So basically, no, you don't really get to come on here and announce without any evidence that there are private servers. You need to provide proof or admit that it's just conjecture on your part. Because just calling something an opinion doesn't make it one.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 23, 2014, 11:32:36 PM
Damn straight, I've actively avoided moving anyone at our company to Win8 and certainly won't touch it at home.  Win7 is a nice next step up from XP, while Win8 is really just a mess.  Even Microsoft's own people call it "the new Vista" in-house.  They're tripping over themselves trying to get Win9 out the door, while laying a bunch of people off.  They really didn't get rid of Ballmer soon enough, though I'm not convinced the new guy is much better.

 
See, this is funny to me.  I'm running Windows 8 as we speak, and since day 1 I've found it to be superior in EVERY way.  There is, literally, NOTHING I can't do in Windows 8 that I could in 7, and do it faster. The instant on thing is amazing.  It boots almost instantly. Once you learn the shortcuts it becomes even BETTER, and since the 8.1 update, now you can avoid the tiled home screen altogether and boot right to the desktop, and they even returned the windows button functionality.
 
 
I think people who jump the Windows 8 hate bandwagon just made up their minds too soon whether it was good or not.  It's like someone switching from Apple to Windows or vice versa...it's different, so it just isn't as good. 
 
I know a lot of my high school students love Windows 8 once they start playing with it.  I mean, a lot of them. It takes them about 10 minutes to figure out how to actually maneuver in it, and from there on it's just superior to Windows 7.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on September 23, 2014, 11:37:08 PM
That's existed forever, it's called "paying attention to your kids" although this ancient technique has been long ignored, some practioners of this ancient art still exist today.

Seriously though blaming companies for what your kid has seen on a video game, movie, etc is just laziness. Maybe if people tried to take interest in what their kids were into, or even just taught their children to be open and honest, we as adult consumers wouldn't have to miss out on things like this.

Did you even bother to read? These are the type of posts from the official city of heroes forums that always made me facepalm... You suggest an optional/alternate feature and someone feels as if the word optional or alternate means MUST USE.

Optional textures and such would change the rating system... Imagine a game that's truly built for everyone where the rating is a range of E - M or T - M or whatever.... The game could have certain aspects turned off if you didn't want your kids seeing it. Hell I know some people that did indeed have problems with many of the newer costumes especially when it came to children still playing. So with the optional textures feature it would essentially filter them and replace them with a different texture. You don't like your kids seeing characters run around in panties and bras? Well it would replace that with pants and a tshirt. You don't want your kids playing with blood enabled? It gets turned off just as you can turn off animated grass or shadows.

You can't pay attention to your kids when they are over at the neighbors house or a friends house. If they want to play that bloody video game or watch adult material they find a way to... usually at a friends house.

And where exactly did I blame a company? I personally don't have any children but I feel too many games are held back by shooting for a rating when they could simply add options to disable certain aspects of the game. So far all of the current super hero mmos are rated T and soon even our beloved city of titans is shooting for a T rating. Now I'm sure it will be as fun as cox was but it leaves me wondering just how much further you could go with combat system.



Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Baja on September 23, 2014, 11:42:06 PM
There may or may not have been an ongoing effort to do exactly that, which may or may not be continuing. :) Basically, everything server-side needs to be reverse-engineered from the client in order to make a playable game on a private server (because as Arcana mentioned, it was not leaked to the plaers like some other MMO source code), and this is not something that can be done easily or quickly by hobbyists. In addition, since there may be potential legal hassles invovled (it's probably legal to undertake such an activity, but nobody wants to be in the position to have to hire a lawyer to prove that) any efforts along those lines are proceeding so far under the radar that some people believe they don't exist. Either that, or they don't exist. I'm not sure. :)

So short answer: Yes, technical issues. But not necessarily insurmountable ones, in the event that the deal falls through.

Those are some pretty heavy implications right there my good sir. *tips fedora*


Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 23, 2014, 11:42:53 PM
Really? So if a group of twenty good friends you played coh with said "we have a private server you can play on, just don't tell anyone." You'd go around telling people most likely resulting in a shut down?

The main point there is 'just don't tell anyone.'

We saw how the Ironwolf postings spread once they were discovered.  If something like this got out, we'd hear about it.  We haven't, so there are 2 options:

1)  It isn't true, so there is nothing to play.
2)  It is true, some of us are playing on it, and we are keeping our mouths shut, and everyone else isn't playing on it.

Either way is irrelevant to the main point, there is no CoX to play.  There is no point in talking about it.  Even if it were true, IT DOES NOT MATTER.  Maintaining this discussion is pointless.  It's not like someone will notice your discussion and say 'Hey, let's invite that guy.  He seems like the type to not talk.'

So my advice: drop it and wait.

And that's all I got to say about that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 23, 2014, 11:54:24 PM
Quite.  This crazy conspiracy theory suffers from the flaw they all have - that large groups of people can keep a secret - perfectly - for years on end without leaking even a hint of it.  Does anyone here (aside from Baja), really think this community could keep that secret for even 5 whole minutes?

 
I think you're all being a bit jerky to Baja, myself.  He's just saying what he THINKS is the case, just as you are. You have zero proof that there AREN'T private servers somewhere, and he has zero proof that there are. 
 
Ranting about crazy conspiracy theories is just rude.  He wasn't offending you, but you immediately went on the offensive with him, ironically making the case for an earlier part of his post. 
 
Is it likely that if multiple private servers were running SOMEONE would have said something? Yes.
 
Is it possible that private servers are running and people are just being very careful who they invite because this game is so dear to us all that we wouldn't risk it ever getting taken away again?  Also yes.
 
Is it reasonable to assume that because many, many games have been reverse engineered into private servers after shutdown that CoH may very well have been too?
Yes.
 
Does CoH have some aspects to its design that make it reasonable to assume that this HASN'T happened? Yes.
 
Polite disagreement is usually much more preferable than name calling and insults. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 23, 2014, 11:59:24 PM
Defensive?  More like I'm laughing as the idea is so ludicrous.  I just don't want any newbies here to get the wrong idea that these super-secret CoH private servers actually exist, as it's just mean to send people on a snipe hunt.

But to answer your question - yes, I'd be telling everyone!  If I had a copy of the CoH source code I wouldn't waste 2 seconds in uploading it to every file-sharing network on the planet and would be handing out free copies to every single person who wanted one.  And I would have that source code, in very short order, if it were any of my friends that were inviting me to some super-secret private server.

 
 
Why on earth would you do ANY of that?  Why wouldn't you just play on the private server with your friends...privately...forever?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 24, 2014, 12:00:34 AM

 
I think you're being a bit jerky to Baja, myself.  He's just saying what he THINKS is the case, just as you are. You have zero proof that there AREN'T private servers somewhere, and he has zero proof that there are. 
 

But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If I said that I THINK Robert Downey Junior keeps a pet leprechaun in his basement, my belief is not equivalent to your belief that he doesn't just because neither one of us can prove what we think. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 24, 2014, 12:02:24 AM
Why on earth would you do ANY of that?  Why wouldn't you just play on the private server with your friends...privately...forever?
Um...because that would be horribly selfish of me?  If I could return the game to the community...where it belongs...I would do so in a heartbeat.  And if there were a million copies of it floating around the net, it could never be censored.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 24, 2014, 12:09:29 AM
But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If I said that I THINK Robert Downey Junior keeps a pet leprechaun in his basement, my belief is not equivalent to your belief that he doesn't just because neither one of us can prove what we think. :)

 
A better analogy might be if many celebrities were KNOWN to keep pet leprechauns in their basements, and Robert Downey Junior had spoken to many people about how he wanted one, and then you said you THINK he has one, then it's MUCH closer to what we had here.
 
His claim wasn't that extraordinary, and when I read it, at least, it was pretty clear he was saying what he ASSUMED was true and why, even then, it wasn't exactly a great answer due to people's tendency to quickly go off the deep end when they disagree. It would result in people getting kicked form servers and be more of a pain than it's worth.
 
Which I think isn't exactly unsubstantiated given recent discussions.

*cough*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 24, 2014, 12:13:16 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 24, 2014, 12:17:26 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 24, 2014, 12:18:58 AM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=imagizer.imageshack.us%2Fa%2Fimg7%2F4703%2Fmodhat2.jpg)

So how 'bout them negotiations.

(That's mod-speak for "leave it alone, guys".)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 24, 2014, 12:56:35 AM
For reals, guys. I will continue to delete further responses.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 24, 2014, 12:56:51 AM
My Patrol XP must be HUGE. That means that Blaster in permanent lvl 47 limbo is ready to DING 50?! Sweet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Phaetan on September 24, 2014, 12:58:27 AM
If you're going to prattle on after a mod nixes things, you should probably at least least yourself plausible deniability that you hadn't read their warning.

At any rate, if/when we get the game back, I'm looking forward to seeing how things look with something other than the bare minimum graphics settings.  At shutdown, I was using a laptop with integrated graphics, but am now at a desktop.  It was really interesting to see what some of those powers looked like in Icon with Ultra Mode on.

Anyone else have something relatively simple like that which you are anticipating doing for the first time upon resurrection?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 24, 2014, 01:05:21 AM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=imagizer.imageshack.us%2Fa%2Fimg7%2F4703%2Fmodhat2.jpg)

So how 'bout them negotiations.

(That's mod-speak for "leave it alone, guys".)
I do wonder how they are going, but I do understand the quietness of it :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 24, 2014, 01:33:45 AM
See, this is funny to me.  I'm running Windows 8 as we speak, and since day 1 I've found it to be superior in EVERY way.  There is, literally, NOTHING I can't do in Windows 8 that I could in 7, and do it faster. The instant on thing is amazing.  It boots almost instantly. Once you learn the shortcuts it becomes even BETTER, and since the 8.1 update, now you can avoid the tiled home screen altogether and boot right to the desktop, and they even returned the windows button functionality.

Yes, I can do anything on my wife's Windows 8 laptop that I can do on my Windows 7 laptop (physical hardware differences aside), after I spend at least five minutes figuring out where the hell Redmond moved it in the interface. My grandfather is the only one in the family I hadn't gotten migrated from Windows XP, and I'm just leaving him at XP, with an active Kaspersky sub, until he runs into a reason to do otherwise.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on September 24, 2014, 01:43:27 AM
My Patrol XP must be HUGE. That means that Blaster in permanent lvl 47 limbo is ready to DING 50?! Sweet.

How quickly they forget... There was a cap on Patrol XP.  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 24, 2014, 01:51:11 AM
I do wonder how they are going, but I do understand the quietness of it :)

There's a good chance they haven't spoken in weeks and are waiting for the next stage/meeting on xxxxxber 12!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 24, 2014, 02:31:31 AM
How quickly they forget... There was a cap on Patrol XP.  :P

Does 2 years count as "Quickly"?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: adarict on September 24, 2014, 03:01:01 AM
Yes, I can do anything on my wife's Windows 8 laptop that I can do on my Windows 7 laptop (physical hardware differences aside), after I spend at least five minutes figuring out where the hell Redmond moved it in the interface. My grandfather is the only one in the family I hadn't gotten migrated from Windows XP, and I'm just leaving him at XP, with an active Kaspersky sub, until he runs into a reason to do otherwise.

Windows 8 is technically leaps and bounds beyond Windows 7 under the hood. It is also quite good to use on a tablet, or at least with a touch screen. It is also surprisingly good for people doing mundane tasks, or non-power users. On a regular desktop, it tends to be inefficient because too much focus was made on Touchscreen. 8.1 did address some of those issues. Also, for power users, Microsoft again buried or removed things from the normal menus, forcing us to use command lines or to know the exes.

I dislike using Windows 8 for my day to day work, other than when I have to do QA specifically for Windows 8. The Metro/Modern UI is really only suitable for tablets or mobile devices. The leaked builds of Windows 9 appear to be what Windows 8 should have been. With all the negatives I find in 8, I still love the fact that is runs on lower end hardware better than anything since XP. the UI really is the only thing in Windows 8 that is a downgrade from Windows 7. Even that problem can be worked around for power users, it is just annoying to HAVE to do that. I've always wondered why Microsoft never included an option for install that was actually geared towards admits and power users. A profile as it were, so rather than me having to move stuff around, make my own shortcuts, etc, I would just choose a radio button during first boot and all the power user type items would be preselected.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 24, 2014, 03:08:24 AM
Does 2 years count as "Quickly"?
From some perspectives yes.

Not that i ever needed patrol XP to level, there were even occasions with a few alts where i turned XP off to prevent leveling too quickly because i had quixotically decided to run all the TFs and Trials in order and at the appropriate level for the TF/SF/Trial, so a cap to patrol XP wasn't something i paid much attention to in the first place. Honestly, with a bunch of global channels and friends to join up with at almost any time the only characters that were ever slow to level were on low pop servers that i rarely played on.
The only cap i recall not reaching was the inf cap. While it's probable i could've funneled that much inf onto a couple alts, my in game assets, such as they were, were usually scattered across dozens of alts whether as actual inf or various bits and pieces purchased for the alts.

So many things i'd like to do just because i can if/when the game comes back. Hitting all those caps i never got around to trying for while the game was still running... Teaming up with other players... Finding new and silly ways to get characters killed... Making a strong and pretty Brute... Purpling out my Warshade... Defeating Caleb...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on September 24, 2014, 04:03:58 AM
Does 2 years count as "Quickly"?

Fair point.  :'(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 24, 2014, 04:40:08 AM
Defeating Caleb...

Ah good old Caleb, hard to find at first but once he was in visual range......

Man the Giant Monster hunts were fun.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 24, 2014, 07:56:25 AM
If someone like Arcana can hack the test server (or live I can't remember the story) chances are she also had the source.

Just for the record, there were three different possible technical ways I could have done what I did on the beta servers prior to shutdown, and none of them involve possessing the source code.  In fact, possession of the source code would not have helped much in that regard.  And no, I did not possess the source code or use it to pull that off.  The precise way I did that is something I can't share publicly.

If anyone outside of NCSoft possesses the source code to the game servers, they would have to be crazy to even come on the forums to deny it.  It would simply make them a target of speculation.  So there's no real benefit to speculating about it.  Also, speculation has a tendency to rely on guesswork that, long time readers of my posts will recall, I have consistently declared to be, when I'm in a position to know, hopelessly wrong.  Its understandable, but the track record of outsider guesswork has been genuinely dismal, from how the game implements powers to how the game servers function to the architecture of the game systems to even how the devs work on the game.  Pretty much *none* of the guesses I've ever read have been right.  So much so, that when I see someone "guessing" and guess right, I know I've spotted someone playing inside ball and just not admitting it (in fact, I think that's how a lot of insiders spot each other in a variety of areas, not just City of Heroes gaming).

The only reason I'm posting on this subject at all is because I've been a target of speculation for over nine years anyway, so it makes no difference.  Half the playerbase thinks I'm a wizard, and the other half think I'm a complete faker.  There's nothing I can say to change those odds either way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 24, 2014, 08:23:24 AM
See, this is funny to me.  I'm running Windows 8 as we speak, and since day 1 I've found it to be superior in EVERY way.  There is, literally, NOTHING I can't do in Windows 8 that I could in 7, and do it faster.

I'm sure this is true for lots of people, but for the specific case of someone that is running Windows on a non-touch device that multitasks, Windows 8 is only faster for people who somehow work slower when in the presence of odd numbers.

Also, anyone who loads more than a few programs quickly finds themselves in chicklet-hell. 

Objectively, and I'm not the only person who has performed this analysis, Windows 7's interface is far more transparent.  From a human interface design perspective, Windows 8 forces users to figure out and learn a lot more than Windows 7 does.  Sure, you can argue that "once you learn" all its nuances it might be as fast or faster, but that's not the correct way to judge the useability of a UI.  The way to judge a UI is to see how difficult it is for someone to figure out how to make it work, and on that score I've seen and taught people both interfaces: Windows 8 loses and loses big.

Even Microsoft is figuring this out: the success of Windows 9 hinges explicitly on the degree to which it fixes the mistakes Windows 8 makes, not the degree to which it improves on the new features of Windows 8 that didn't exist prior.

Under the hood, in the kernel and core operating system, yes Windows 8 does have many enhancements.  I find the friction associated with using Windows 8 to make me not really care.  Windows 8 doesn't solve a problem.  Windows 7 solved the problem of making Vista's security enhancements significantly less rage-inducing and providing a 64-bit platform that wasn't a complete joke (XP-64).  The only problem Windows 8 solved was saving people money by not having to upgrade to it.

Even the best defense of Metro I've ever read starts by admitting that for power users Metro is complete crap (http://www.dailytech.com/Windows+8+Designer+Metro+is+the+Antithesis+of+a+Power+User/article34354.htm).  I'm not sure I buy all of that writer's assertions, but when you start your defense of Windows 8 with "its interface does suck (for power users) but..." that suggests even within Microsoft people know they did not deal themselves a strong hand with Win8.

In any event, while there are those that say Windows 8 lets them do what they did in Windows 7 better, for me the problem is that what I currently do in Windows 7 I cannot do at all, in any way, in Windows 8.  That makes it non-functional for me, because I don't change the way I work to fit my OS, I run the OS that does what I need it to do.  What I do is multitask, and Win8's interface - and even Win8.1's interface to an extent - just plain sucks at it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: sweatcake66 on September 24, 2014, 10:35:17 AM
I'm sure this is true for lots of people, but for the specific case of someone that is running Windows on a non-touch device that multitasks, Windows 8 is only faster for people who somehow work slower when in the presence of odd numbers.

Also, anyone who loads more than a few programs quickly finds themselves in chicklet-hell. 

Objectively, and I'm not the only person who has performed this analysis, Windows 7's interface is far more transparent.  From a human interface design perspective, Windows 8 forces users to figure out and learn a lot more than Windows 7 does.  Sure, you can argue that "once you learn" all its nuances it might be as fast or faster, but that's not the correct way to judge the useability of a UI.  The way to judge a UI is to see how difficult it is for someone to figure out how to make it work, and on that score I've seen and taught people both interfaces: Windows 8 loses and loses big.

Even Microsoft is figuring this out: the success of Windows 9 hinges explicitly on the degree to which it fixes the mistakes Windows 8 makes, not the degree to which it improves on the new features of Windows 8 that didn't exist prior.

Under the hood, in the kernel and core operating system, yes Windows 8 does have many enhancements.  I find the friction associated with using Windows 8 to make me not really care.  Windows 8 doesn't solve a problem.  Windows 7 solved the problem of making Vista's security enhancements significantly less rage-inducing and providing a 64-bit platform that wasn't a complete joke (XP-64).  The only problem Windows 8 solved was saving people money by not having to upgrade to it.

Even the best defense of Metro I've ever read starts by admitting that for power users Metro is complete crap (http://www.dailytech.com/Windows+8+Designer+Metro+is+the+Antithesis+of+a+Power+User/article34354.htm).  I'm not sure I buy all of that writer's assertions, but when you start your defense of Windows 8 with "its interface does suck (for power users) but..." that suggests even within Microsoft people know they did not deal themselves a strong hand with Win8.

In any event, while there are those that say Windows 8 lets them do what they did in Windows 7 better, for me the problem is that what I currently do in Windows 7 I cannot do at all, in any way, in Windows 8.  That makes it non-functional for me, because I don't change the way I work to fit my OS, I run the OS that does what I need it to do.  What I do is multitask, and Win8's interface - and even Win8.1's interface to an extent - just plain sucks at it.

Just too add my 2 inf in on this subject. I started out with the Commodor 64C, then my first "PC" was a pc with win 3.1, then win 85, Win XP, and just about a year from Microsoft stop supporting XP i jumped to win 7. ( I know I Know bad grammer. with a hint of bad spelling.) Now i run a Win 7 with Linux Opensuse. Linux for surfing the web, paying bills online, and anything non gameing related. I jump on Win 7 to play my games and work/play around with Unity 3D.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on September 24, 2014, 12:41:39 PM
*ahem*

This is not idle speculation about code leaks central.

It is "gods damnit, I hate calling Korea" central. Man my phone bill is going to suck.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 24, 2014, 12:44:10 PM
It is "gods damnit, I hate calling Korea" central. Man my phone bill is going to suck.

You get us our home back (ASAP preferably  ;D), and we'll quite happily pay that phone bill for you.  8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 24, 2014, 12:57:52 PM
*ahem*

This is not idle speculation about code leaks central.

It is "gods damnit, I hate calling Korea" central. Man my phone bill is going to suck.

This thread may have originally started as Korea Central, but it has morphed by necessity into "We Are so Excited we Could Explode so we Need to Talk About Whatever Else we can Think of," because the general populace finding out bits of information about Team Hail Mary almost melted the internet once already.  And no one wants a drippy, goopy, boiling-over internet.

Or...You could say, "A watched pot never boils."

Or...However else you want to say it.  But we are distracting ourselves quite well here, and Team Hail Mary is left to work in peace.  And I think that is the best thing that could happen at this point. 

Let us know right away if a deal gets signed and all the plans are in place to rez CoX, though.    ;D

And for what it's worth, Nate, I think we should all split your phone bill with you, win or lose.   ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 24, 2014, 01:14:52 PM
Half the playerbase thinks I'm a wizard, and the other half think I'm a complete faker.  There's nothing I can say to change those odds either way.

A little under .23% thinks that you're a mouse who is a wizard's apprentice. ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 24, 2014, 01:17:17 PM
To be serious - I would happily pitch in on a kickstarter to pay that phonebill or even set up a quick paypal when you get it.

I know you would raise the funds in one day. You can set a cap at paypal for a limit that stops once you get it - I believe. You aren't asking for money  I know but seriously, I know a lot of us appreciate what you are doing and a being able to even chip in $5 gives people a sense of helping. I was once told a good piece of advise by a friend - allow others to help you - it benefits their souls and lets them feel good about themselves.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 24, 2014, 01:28:41 PM
Heck, if it would help things along, we could more than likely swing enough funds
for semi-regular trips to Korea for face-to-face negotiations.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zerohour on September 24, 2014, 01:41:23 PM
Man this has been a long stretch of zero updates
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fable on September 24, 2014, 01:48:09 PM
Man this has been a long stretch of zero updates

That's a good thing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 24, 2014, 01:48:51 PM
*ahem*

This is not idle speculation about code leaks central.

It is "gods damnit, I hate calling Korea" central. Man my phone bill is going to suck.

the fact that it is going to suck tells me there is activity..this makes me happy...sorry about the phone bill, but thank you for doing it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Medispider Reznov on September 24, 2014, 01:49:40 PM
Koreans don't believe in Skype calls? :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on September 24, 2014, 01:49:48 PM
To be serious - I would happily pitch in on a kickstarter to pay that phonebill or even set up a quick paypal when you get it.

I know you would raise the funds in one day. You can set a cap at paypal for a limit that stops once you get it - I believe. You aren't asking for money  I know but seriously, I know a lot of us appreciate what you are doing and a being able to even chip in $5 gives people a sense of helping. I was once told a good piece of advise by a friend - allow others to help you - it benefits their souls and lets them feel good about themselves.

Graet advice and very true.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 24, 2014, 01:50:34 PM
A little under .23% thinks that you're a mouse who is a wizard's apprentice. ;)

.01% think that you are the alien overmind that foisted justin beiber and new coke on us. :gonk:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on September 24, 2014, 01:51:52 PM
*ahem*

This is not idle speculation about code leaks central.

It is "gods damnit, I hate calling Korea" central. Man my phone bill is going to suck.

The fact you are calling Korea is awesome. Yeah like others have said let bus help ya with that Nate.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on September 24, 2014, 02:05:25 PM
Purpling out my Warshade...

While my WS build wasn't massively expensive, it had enough recharge for perm-Eclipse and it was hella fun.  I've actually been poking around with Mids to get a WS build with perm-Eclipse and decent ranged defense, as I expect that's one of the first goals I would have if the game comes back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on September 24, 2014, 02:08:06 PM
The fact you are calling Korea is awesome. Yeah like others have said let bus help ya with that Nate.

While I don't have access to huge amounts of funds, I am more than willing to provide a little to support efforts to bring the game back, or to subscribe to the game should the opportunity come.  Heck, I'm a lot more willing to put funds towards that than to play any other game available at the moment, which tend to hold my interest for a few weeks tops.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 24, 2014, 02:57:59 PM
Oh, so that's a good question---what kinda toon are you all gonna make first (or second if its a VEAT or HEAT) when/if the game comes back online?

Gonna have to think on it for a mo' but I think it will be a scrapper or stalker for sure.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on September 24, 2014, 03:22:08 PM
Oh, so that's a good question---what kinda toon are you all gonna make first (or second if its a VEAT or HEAT) when/if the game comes back online?

Gonna have to think on it for a mo' but I think it will be a scrapper or stalker for sure.

There was a thread on that under the City of Heroes header.  I actually wrote down a list of the characters I would like to make, but I don't know which ones would be first.  Several, I suspect, before any hit 50.  I would make a few the first day to reserve names of characters I want to remake, even if I don't end up playing them right away.  A few of my "mains" I know I would remake--fire/kin 'troller, plant/rad 'troller, kat/wp scrapper, and WS--and I definitely want to make a demon/dark mm, especially as I have the beginnings of a backstory for that character that I'm fond of.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 24, 2014, 03:28:13 PM
There was a thread on that under the City of Heroes header.  I actually wrote down a list of the characters I would like to make, but I don't know which ones would be first.  Several, I suspect, before any hit 50.  I would make a few the first day to reserve names of characters I want to remake, even if I don't end up playing them right away.  A few of my "mains" I know I would remake--fire/kin 'troller, plant/rad 'troller, kat/wp scrapper, and WS--and I definitely want to make a demon/dark mm, especially as I have the beginnings of a backstory for that character that I'm fond of.
That's a good idea. Part of the fun was making good character names. We had a guy who had the best names, constantly got genericized though when he got caught...Hugh Janus was one of my favs!

I have thought about it and I think I will reroll my Stalker...Street Justice/Ninjitsu wa way fun. I love bein next to the tank when I slap down the caltrops.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sophronisba on September 24, 2014, 03:35:05 PM
I'm remaking my Willpower/War Mace tanker first.

My second character might be a Nature Affinity character; I never got to play that powerset as much as I wanted to.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 24, 2014, 04:14:08 PM
Oh, so that's a good question---what kinda toon are you all gonna make first (or second if its a VEAT or HEAT) when/if the game comes back online?

Gonna have to think on it for a mo' but I think it will be a scrapper or stalker for sure.

Well my most favorite of my "Permanent 50's" were my Mind Control/Radiation Controller and my Martial Arts/Super Reflexes Scrapper.

Those will be the first 2 that get recreated.  Although I'm toying with the idea of altering the Radiation and/or the Martial Arts to other newer sets.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 24, 2014, 04:56:00 PM
You get us our home back (ASAP preferably  ;D), and we'll quite happily pay that phone bill for you.  8)
Tell me about it - pull that off and you can send us the bill!  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 24, 2014, 05:07:52 PM
I suspect at least part of the problem comes from having to animate each "move" (power) independently so that they could return to a default status, allowing attacks to be chained together in any order. It's hard when you have to go back to an identical stance after every move to make it look flowing or smooth, unfortunately.

Is there any way to modify the animations so that they do "flow"? Somehow taking the next cued attack, and ending the current animation so that it flows in to the next one?

under-abundance of literacy

What does this mean?

I liked rad blast. I just thought giving someone radiation poisoning and leukemia(possibly) for purse snatching was a tad bit extreme. punching them , yes...burning their face off, not so much.

Get tough on the small crimes, big crimes won't happen. NYPD's been using that philosophy for years: http://www.lawofficer.com/article/news/staten-island-suspect-s-death

You just made my brain twitch o.O

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns

My question is - Where do I find the old CoV Character creation music? The one that basically sounded like a bombastic version of the Main CoV Login theme

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Music

There's also a thread somewhere with all the music and sound effects from the game available for download.

Quote
http://www.drawastickman.com/episode1?o=66-69-32-67-82-69-65-84-73-86-69s66-89-58-32-84-72-69-32-66-65-78-68-69-69

Who shared this? It's awesome!

As an example of keeping secrets, you picked...the U.S. Government?  They leak like a sieve.

The Manhattan Project was indeed kept super secret.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on September 24, 2014, 05:08:16 PM
On the subject of which characters to make, thought I'd add one: A sonic/mental/elec blaster.  I never got a blaster to 50 (37 was the highest) and always regretted that a little.  This build has access to enough cone attacks to put a pretty ridiculous cone chain together (howl, shockwave, sirens song, psychic scream and static discharge), using the sleep and knockback for control as needed.  Plus, the option to sleep a group before moving in to drain psyche sounds delicious.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 24, 2014, 05:19:49 PM
On the subject of which characters to make, thought I'd add one: A sonic/mental/elec blaster.  I never got a blaster to 50 (37 was the highest) and always regretted that a little.  This build has access to enough cone attacks to put a pretty ridiculous cone chain together (howl, shockwave, sirens song, psychic scream and static discharge), using the sleep and knockback for control as needed. Plus, the option to sleep a group before moving in to drain psyche sounds delicious.
Pretty. Yeah, IF I even make a blaster again, It would probably have to have Mental as the secondary as its the only one (IIRC) that has the plus regen/plus recov move in it.

And sonics (while their sound is annoying) are great for debuffin the resist of baddies, AND there are a LOT of control moves in both Sonic/Mental which should have a nice semi-troller feel to it. But if you don't mind my asking, why ELEC as the ancillary? Not complaining, just curious what you plan to do with it. I would (almost always) go for Mace just to get the Scorp shield which is HUGE defenses.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 24, 2014, 05:23:41 PM
Is there any way to modify the animations so that they do "flow"? Somehow taking the next cued attack, and ending the current animation so that it flows in to the next one?

In the general case not with the CoH game engine without major design modifications.  Its conceivable to do something close to this in theory with some very, very complex animation design (involving designing the rooted verses non-rooted animation sequences carefully and using exclusive mode bits to chop up the animations in a way so that every combination of every staff power pairing has an appropriate stop point), but that would be burning the work you could be using to make several other powersets' animations.


Quote
The Manhattan Project was indeed kept super secret.

Governments don't keep secrets, people do.  At the time, everyone directly involved with the Manhattan Project felt very strongly that there was nothing to be gained by leaking critical information about the project.  The moment the war was over there were those that felt nuclear weapons technology was too dangerous for only one country to have, and its at that point that nuclear secrets began to leak from the US nuclear programs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 24, 2014, 05:47:53 PM
Or...However else you want to say it.  But we are distracting ourselves quite well here, and Team Hail Mary is left to work in peace.  And I think that is the best thing that could happen at this point.

-places Statesman in a huge, sparkly tutu (complete with flashing LEDs)- Distracting enough?
No?

HAMIDON IN A TUTU!
(Cue thunder and evil laughter)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on September 24, 2014, 05:48:10 PM
Pretty. Yeah, IF I even make a blaster again, It would probably have to have Mental as the secondary as its the only one (IIRC) that has the plus regen/plus recov move in it.

And sonics (while their sound is annoying) are great for debuffin the resist of baddies, AND there are a LOT of control moves in both Sonic/Mental which should have a nice semi-troller feel to it. But if you don't mind my asking, why ELEC as the ancillary? Not complaining, just curious what you plan to do with it. I would (almost always) go for Mace just to get the Scorp shield which is HUGE defenses.

Well, not 100% sure on the elec APP, but that's my initial thought for a few reasons.   I'd probably do this as a hero and IIRC I wouldn't be able to access PPP without side-switching, which I probably would rather avoid needing.  I'd also like to have shocking bolt, and the additional cone in static discharge is nice.  I expect I'd build for ranged defense, which wouldn't work very well with scorpion shield; I'd be looking for resistance more.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 24, 2014, 05:52:17 PM
Oh, so that's a good question---what kinda toon are you all gonna make first (or second if its a VEAT or HEAT) when/if the game comes back online?

Gonna have to think on it for a mo' but I think it will be a scrapper or stalker for sure.
How cool would it be if, someone got to 50 and they were able to choose their own H/Veat from all of the enemy groups such as if I wanted a Knives Heat I would need a level 50 plus all the badges under this enemy group :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on September 24, 2014, 06:44:56 PM
Oh, so that's a good question---what kinda toon are you all gonna make first (or second if its a VEAT or HEAT) when/if the game comes back online?

Gonna have to think on it for a mo' but I think it will be a scrapper or stalker for sure.

Dominator.  Elec.  Elec.

Brute.  SS/Shield.

Ice/Ice Blaster.

EM/Invul Tank.

Domi.  Plant/Stone.

...to start with.

I just want to play the original Issue 23 game, cruelly cut down in full flight.

Azrael.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Medispider Reznov on September 24, 2014, 07:00:29 PM
I'd probably bring back my Invul/Ice Tanker just for giggles - this costume made a lot of Americans upset for some reason.

(https://i736.photobucket.com/albums/xx2/supajasiu/Moroz.png)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 24, 2014, 07:01:57 PM
I have a feeling that if NCSoft had any smidgen of idea that they had the code...they wouldn't have the code.
If they did have the code... Then the best thing they could do is to disseminate it as wide and far as possible.
There are lots of ways... and I doubt NCSoft is going to have more luck killing it once it's going than the FBI/RIAA/MPAA/ETC. have had in the last 15 years.

They would not come after us.  They would go after the leaker, and they would be easier to identify than you might think, given the relatively small size of the development team.  But even if there was only a 10% chance that NCSoft's legal team was able to identify them and even wanted to take action, would you actually ask a professional game developer to risk his or her career just so you could play a video game?  Legal action isn't even the worst thing that could happen.  Being blackballed in a very small industry is the worst thing that could happen.

If a dev approached me with the source and asked me to torrent it to the world, I would probably do it but not before first advising them against it.  I could do it untraceably because my fingerprints aren't on the source itself, but its really hard to be certain that the files you have aren't tainted in some way.  A timestamp that gives access away, or meta data that singles you out.  An owner flag on a README file you forgot about, or the IP address of your workstation embedded in that print to PDF you made five years ago.  A test part of the tree only you worked on.  I've worked the other side of the fence, tracking data leaks, and people always make a mistake somewhere.

People are focused on the player side of this, that we could disseminate the source widely, and we could set up servers they couldn't bring down, and NCSoft wouldn't want to go after us.  We're not the problem.  The question is whose career and livelihood are we going to risk to get there.  That's the problem.  If a dev somewhere has the source code, I would not expect them to risk their career releasing it publicly, nor would I ever think to ask them to take that risk.  I would tell them that if they did, someone like me has a decent chance of tracking them down.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 24, 2014, 07:04:24 PM
I'd probably bring back my Invul/Ice Tanker just for giggles - this costume made a lot of Americans upset for some reason.

Maybe its because a lot of Americans have repressed memories of bad childhood experiences with mall Santas.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on September 24, 2014, 07:13:31 PM
I'd probably bring back my Invul/Ice Tanker just for giggles - this costume made a lot of Americans upset for some reason.

(https://i736.photobucket.com/albums/xx2/supajasiu/Moroz.png)

I had an old duo partner who rolled a Russian style character.

We RPG'd the 'frosty' American/Russian cold war relationship thing.

Heh.  He was highly annoying with it too... :P

I always imagined a voice similar to Arnie's when he played a Russian Soldier in that movie...was it 'Red Star?'  That made his character even more annoying... :P

Azrael.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 24, 2014, 07:18:06 PM
Maybe its because a lot of Americans have repressed memories of bad childhood experiences with mall Santas.
HA! I was thinkin it was Ruskie Santa. I wouldn't worry about it, it looked dam cool to me man.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on September 24, 2014, 07:23:59 PM
My old duo partner had an ice tanker.  (I can't recall if it had ice attacks or fire...maybe ice...)

Very impressive I thought.  A real aggro bot.  Very survivable and I liked the 'ice cage' special on self e.g.. Hibernate.  Brilliant stuff.  Nobody's getting in.  And then 'shatter' you're out and duking again.

Yes.  Maybe I'll add an ice/ice tanker to the list...

Azrael.

Is it possible to create a panda hero in Icon?  I know it's in bad taste...but...if WoW can do it...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Excidia on September 24, 2014, 07:25:56 PM
One of the people I regularly gamed with was literally scared of my shadow costume once I added a santa hat.  The character was supposed to be a living shadow, so the costume was simply dark gray tights and the grinning skull face (whatever it's official name was).  For some reason adding the hat set her off.

e-
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 24, 2014, 07:32:04 PM
I'd probably bring back my Invul/Ice Tanker just for giggles - this costume made a lot of Americans upset for some reason.

(https://i736.photobucket.com/albums/xx2/supajasiu/Moroz.png)

I made a toon called Commie Squints. Apparently it offended someone enough to get Gened :S
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 24, 2014, 07:38:16 PM
Stop talking about secret servers, leaking code, etc., etc. Just stop. I've deleted nearly a full page of this crap. Stop! If I've missed anything, PM me so I can delete it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 24, 2014, 07:47:32 PM
And the mods have spoken.  [twice now actually].

OK....so, how about those Vet Rewards?  I can certainly live without them, but wow, I'm gonna miss the "skip Hover" reward.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 24, 2014, 07:54:23 PM
I'm not sure how they would deal with vet rewards.

I was under the impression that 'start over' would be implemented.
It would be the most elegant, simple way given what we know of the plans to date.

Just guessing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Medispider Reznov on September 24, 2014, 07:57:01 PM
I'll only really miss my Vet Arachnos helmet reward.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: WildFire15 on September 24, 2014, 08:18:46 PM
I'm not sure how they would deal with vet rewards.

I was under the impression that 'start over' would be implemented.
It would be the most elegant, simple way given what we know of the plans to date.

Just guessing.

Wouldn't it be easier just to give all the vet awards straight away as a good will gesture of sorts?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Medispider Reznov on September 24, 2014, 08:29:12 PM
I dunno as much as I would love to get ALL THESE THINGS. I just found getting the rewards well... rewarding - you couldnt buy them or drop them or grind your way to them, haveing them was kind of a quiet nod of approval of your loyalty.

I liked that feeling.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on September 24, 2014, 08:33:57 PM
OK....so, how about those Vet Rewards?  I can certainly live without them, but wow, I'm gonna miss the "skip Hover" reward.

This raises a question for me actually.  How much control would they have over such things?  Assuming the deal goes through, will the new owners be able to, for example, give everyone that subscribes a certain level of vet rewards?  Turn on and off seasonal events?  Alter the cost of various purchasable perks?

I don't know what you can and can't do in this regard without being able to access the code.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 24, 2014, 08:35:12 PM
Wouldn't it be easier just to give all the vet awards straight away as a good will gesture of sorts?

I believe it would be easiest not to give vet rewards at all.

I had just about as many of the rewards as you could acquire, so I'd be in favor of getting them back.
But I wouldn't hold my breath.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 24, 2014, 08:38:14 PM
I believe it would be easiest not to give vet rewards at all.

I had just about as many of the rewards as you could acquire, so I'd be in favor of getting them back.
But I wouldn't hold my breath.  ;)

I just want the game back... :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 24, 2014, 08:40:38 PM
How about crediting everyone with two years considering that's the time the game has been down. Give a 3-month window to buy in (includes 2 months preorder time). After that, your time is your time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 24, 2014, 08:49:34 PM
I just want the game back... :(

Me too, my dear Baron.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on September 24, 2014, 08:50:59 PM
-places Statesman in a huge, sparkly tutu (complete with flashing LEDs)- Distracting enough?
No?

HAMIDON IN A TUTU!
(Cue thunder and evil laughter)

I always that the Hamidon needed a giant cone .... Party hat.  Queue up the photoshop!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dareon Kale on September 24, 2014, 09:01:51 PM
I'd probably bring back my Invul/Ice Tanker just for giggles - this costume made a lot of Americans upset for some reason.

(https://i736.photobucket.com/albums/xx2/supajasiu/Moroz.png)

Komrad Kringle, we meet again!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkfaith on September 24, 2014, 09:34:16 PM
I dunno as much as I would love to get ALL THESE THINGS. I just found getting the rewards well... rewarding - you couldnt buy them or drop them or grind your way to them, haveing them was kind of a quiet nod of approval of your loyalty.

I liked that feeling.

Except, vet rewards were no longer vet rewards as of when the game closed. They were Paragon Rewards, and tied to the store token system, so you could buy your way to them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 24, 2014, 09:39:50 PM
Except, vet rewards were no longer vet rewards as of when the game closed. They were Paragon Rewards, and tied to the store token system, so you could buy your way to them.
Which is precisely what I did, as fast as I could.  I waited for years, wanting that Assemble the Team power (and others, like Reveal), and finally I could just bribe my way to the top.  I was thrilled.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Gorvi Guile on September 24, 2014, 09:41:32 PM
I had an old duo partner who rolled a Russian style character.

We RPG'd the 'frosty' American/Russian cold war relationship thing.

Heh.  He was highly annoying with it too... :P

I always imagined a voice similar to Arnie's when he played a Russian Soldier in that movie...was it 'Red Star?'  That made his character even more annoying... :P

Azrael.
Red Heat is the movie, if you're talking about the one with Jim Belushi and Arnie
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 24, 2014, 09:44:32 PM
I'm sure this is true for lots of people, but for the specific case of someone that is running Windows on a non-touch device that multitasks, Windows 8 is only faster for people who somehow work slower when in the presence of odd numbers.

Also, anyone who loads more than a few programs quickly finds themselves in chicklet-hell. 

Objectively, and I'm not the only person who has performed this analysis, Windows 7's interface is far more transparent.  From a human interface design perspective, Windows 8 forces users to figure out and learn a lot more than Windows 7 does.  Sure, you can argue that "once you learn" all its nuances it might be as fast or faster, but that's not the correct way to judge the useability of a UI.  The way to judge a UI is to see how difficult it is for someone to figure out how to make it work, and on that score I've seen and taught people both interfaces: Windows 8 loses and loses big.


At any given time on my PC I'm running Windows Media Center (yes, it's my main DVR hooked up with an HD Homerun) and running multiple browsers, each with multiple tabs (I use a seperate browser each for work and personal browsing) and can be running any portion of Adobe Creative suite or running PC games including graphics intensive MMOs, as well as my music player.  I never have any problem finding what I want. Alt tab to the window of the app/program I want, and it pops up, just like I do in Windows 7.  Want to find an app I don't have open? Just swipe my mouse down from the top right corner and the search bar pops up for me just as fast if not faster than having to click the start tab in Windows 7.   By the way, this is on a far from high end machine.  I'm running and i5 processor with 8 gigs of ram and and GTX 550 video processor.  Not low end, but definitely not high end. 
 
Arcana, what shortcuts or pathways are you using in windows 7 that have been taken away in Windows 8?  Honestly, at home I use Windows 8, at work I use Windows 7, and I really don't see ANY functional difference once I got the 8.1 update and had the ability for it to boot right to the desktop, avoiding the metro interface altogether.
 
 
I'm wondering,  are you relying mostly on the built in "apps" via the metro interface, or using the actual stand alone programs like you would in Windows 7?  Maybe that's the issue. I don't use -any- of the built in apps via the app store or metro interface because they are, by design, bulky and take over the full screen, like you'd see on a tablet, etc.  But those are easily avoided if you're using Windows 8 on a PC.  As a matter of fact, I NEVER even see the metro interface on my home PC.  I boot to the desktop by default and every program I use is one I've installed myself, the same way I would on any other PC.  I don't even know what the market interface looks like on Windows 8 PCs, honestly.
 
Could that be the cause of your frustration?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 24, 2014, 10:28:55 PM
Which is precisely what I did, as fast as I could.  I waited for years, wanting that Assemble the Team power (and others, like Reveal), and finally I could just bribe my way to the top.  I was thrilled.

lol
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 24, 2014, 10:39:45 PM
Some have said that Win 9 won't kill every other game and program in the known world - on top of that a LOT of people still use Windows XP.

Look at this chart: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-windows-xp-market-share-2014-2

As of Feb of this year more people were STILL on Windows XP than Windows 8 in 2014.
I just reformatted my HD and re-installed...Win XP.   :)

From reading this thread, Win 7 will be where I end up next.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 24, 2014, 10:54:53 PM
From reading this thread, Win 7 will be where I end up next.
Wise choice.  The learning curve from XP isn't that hard.  Going to Win8 from XP is like stepping sideways into some weird parallel dimension.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 24, 2014, 11:14:28 PM
*ahem*

This is not idle speculation about code leaks central.

It is "gods damnit, I hate calling Korea" central. Man my phone bill is going to suck.
All I saw was, "they are still talking".   That's good news.
I was once told a good piece of advise by a friend - allow others to help you - it benefits their souls and lets them feel good about themselves.
That's good.  I'm really bad at accepting help...I need to remember that.
Except, vet rewards were no longer vet rewards as of when the game closed. They were Paragon Rewards, and tied to the store token system, so you could buy your way to them.
I didn't even know that. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 24, 2014, 11:57:03 PM
The Manhattan Project was indeed kept super secret.

That simply can't be true if we all know that name. . .  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 25, 2014, 12:32:14 AM
That simply can't be true if we all know that name. . .  ;D

Uh, sure it can. Operative word being "was".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MegaWatt on September 25, 2014, 12:32:28 AM
Hi all first post here....i sort of squeed when i saw this news! i hope it happens - i've been thinking who i'd remake and realizeing my duos with other people can actually work what with level pact (i can play all day and they can come back with out being levels down - yay !)

On the subject of Vet rewards: i'd kind of like mine back.....i had a lot of years built up and liked the costume bits i got from them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 25, 2014, 12:48:11 AM

At any given time on my PC I'm running Windows Media Center (yes, it's my main DVR hooked up with an HD Homerun) and running multiple browsers, each with multiple tabs (I use a seperate browser each for work and personal browsing) and can be running any portion of Adobe Creative suite or running PC games including graphics intensive MMOs, as well as my music player.  I never have any problem finding what I want. Alt tab to the window of the app/program I want, and it pops up, just like I do in Windows 7.  Want to find an app I don't have open? Just swipe my mouse down from the top right corner and the search bar pops up for me just as fast if not faster than having to click the start tab in Windows 7.   By the way, this is on a far from high end machine.  I'm running and i5 processor with 8 gigs of ram and and GTX 550 video processor.  Not low end, but definitely not high end. 
 
Arcana, what shortcuts or pathways are you using in windows 7 that have been taken away in Windows 8?  Honestly, at home I use Windows 8, at work I use Windows 7, and I really don't see ANY functional difference once I got the 8.1 update and had the ability for it to boot right to the desktop, avoiding the metro interface altogether.
 
 
I'm wondering,  are you relying mostly on the built in "apps" via the metro interface, or using the actual stand alone programs like you would in Windows 7?  Maybe that's the issue. I don't use -any- of the built in apps via the app store or metro interface because they are, by design, bulky and take over the full screen, like you'd see on a tablet, etc.  But those are easily avoided if you're using Windows 8 on a PC.  As a matter of fact, I NEVER even see the metro interface on my home PC.  I boot to the desktop by default and every program I use is one I've installed myself, the same way I would on any other PC.  I don't even know what the market interface looks like on Windows 8 PCs, honestly.
 
Could that be the cause of your frustration?

The cause of my frustration with Windows 8.x is that at best, I can maybe get back something close to my Windows 7 experience if I punch it in the face enough times, and absolutely none of the UI changes improves things.

I would prefer to have a non-metro interface because tiling notwithstanding its worthless for multitasking.  I can do that in theory by booting to desktop, if I upgrade to 8.1 and configure for it, wasted effort and something I have to deal with on every Win8 system I end up going anywhere near that isn't mine.  I would prefer a hierarchical start menu to the flat start screen because hierarchical folders are superior to scrolling screens for any computer you aren't holding in your hand and I can't get that at all (without expending a stupid amount of effort hand-crafting a start screen or just flat out downloading a desktop replacement).  And I don't want to leave the desktop just to start another program.  I don't want hotspots on my screen to be popping menus up all over the place, because it limits the amount of screen I can use without worrying about unnecessary distractions.  And I remote control systems at times out of necessity, and most (which is to say: all) remote control does not currently mesh well with systems with overt touch-style interfaces without actual touch-style input.

The question should really be: on a non-touch computer, what can Windows 8.x do that you can't do in Win7 that anyone actually wants to do?  If there isn't any such thing, then the fact that it is different at all is three automatic strikes against it.  Change for no reason is breaking the prime directive of user interface design.  Its the rule no one has any excuse to break.  As you say, I don't actually use a lot of built in Windows apps and features myself (which is why I'm not complaining about the goofy glitches in windows search, the problems with UAE and intermixing legacy and modern apps, etc).  So what I need is Win32/Win64 compatibility, desktop manager, and a way to launch apps.  How does Windows 8.x help me there?  There's no possible way ejecting me to the start screen is faster than a start bar, no matter what sort of sort settings you set on it.  There is no way having multiple hot spots is better for desktop screen use efficiency.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 25, 2014, 01:29:37 AM
The cause of my frustration with Windows 8.x is that at best, I can maybe get back something close to my Windows 7 experience if I punch it in the face enough times, and absolutely none of the UI changes improves things.
 
...

The question should really be: on a non-touch computer, what can Windows 8.x do that you can't do in Win7 that anyone actually wants to do?  I

I have an immense amount of respect for you and your technical expertise, so I'll leave this is my last post on this topic so I don't seem like I'm badgering you.
 
First, don't you think you're overstating the effort needed to make Windows 8.1 boot directly to the desktop?  It, LITERALLY, involves three steps: right click on the task bar, click the navigation tab, then check a box to show the desktop on start or when all apps are closed.  Done. From there on out you never have to see tiles or the metro screen again, unless you want to.   
 
The second part of your question, for me at least, includes instant start up and shutdown, improved speed all around, incredibly fast search and integration of my windows ID with my Xbox Live ID, hotmail (I know, I know), etc. The ease of upgrading, with the ability to upgrade from the Previous OS (windows 7) to the new one without having to reinstall all of my programs or lose any of my data was also a nice bonus. They also added back an (in my opinion) improved version of the start button, where right clicking gives you MUCH faster access to most of the common things you had to dig to get to before, like Device manager, disk manager, power management, etc.   I will say that since I switched to a Nokia Lumia, I'm seeing why, if I had a Windows tablet as well, I'd REALLY like Microsoft's decision to try and get some uniformity in their OS systems across platforms.  That was their long term strategy: to try and make a single Windows system that really feels like it transcends the PC to unify all types of devices. 

Sorry you don't like it, and really, it doesn't matter what OS someone chooses to use.  I just think Windows 8 gets a bad wrap.  It didn't work with the general public, but I think that was as much the public just not seeing the need yet as it was the actual attempt being an inferior one.  They should have made Windows 8's metro menu be the option you enable, instead of the other way around. That alone might have saved it from initial culture shock.  Who knows? 
 
 
Also...to make this topical, I upgraded my Mastermind bots to Windows 8.  They kill even faster now, but no one takes them seriously. ;-)
 
 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 25, 2014, 04:36:12 AM
They should have made Windows 8's metro menu be the option you enable, instead of the other way around.

That would have been one of the best decisions Windows ever made.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 25, 2014, 04:46:54 AM
The cause of my frustration with Windows 8.x is that at best, I can maybe get back something close to my Windows 7 experience if I punch it in the face enough times, and absolutely none of the UI changes improves things.

3 words.  Classic Start Menu.

It took me less than 30 seconds to download and install that to Windows 8, and restore my desktop to the Windows 7 feel.  I never see Metro, everything rocks. :)

Also, boot time from cold to desktop? 5-6 seconds. :D

It really is a shame that, once again, the media have gotten away with ruining the rep of what really is a good OS, with just a few minor issues that were mostly fixed in the first update; just like Vista.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 25, 2014, 05:09:23 AM

I have an immense amount of respect for you and your technical expertise, so I'll leave this is my last post on this topic so I don't seem like I'm badgering you.

I wouldn't worry about that unless you start using an actual live badger.

Quote
First, don't you think you're overstating the effort needed to make Windows 8.1 boot directly to the desktop?  It, LITERALLY, involves three steps: right click on the task bar, click the navigation tab, then check a box to show the desktop on start or when all apps are closed.  Done. From there on out you never have to see tiles or the metro screen again, unless you want to.

First, I didn't say it took an immense amount of effort.  I said it was wasted effort, and only possible if your platform is upgraded to 8.1, and you can only do that on your own personal desktop and not anyone else's desktop without your permission.  So there's the separate question of how usable Windows 8.x is for your own personal tweaked system, and how usable it is in an environment where the choice is to deploy Windows 7 everywhere or Windows 8 everywhere.

And: its impossible to avoid seeing tiles or the metro screen short of a desktop replacement, because that's what Windows 8.1 replaces the start bar with.  You can only avoid seeing it if you don't ever need to start a program ever again that isn't pinned to your task bar.
 

Quote
The second part of your question, for me at least, includes instant start up and shutdown, improved speed all around, incredibly fast search and integration of my windows ID with my Xbox Live ID, hotmail (I know, I know), etc. The ease of upgrading, with the ability to upgrade from the Previous OS (windows 7) to the new one without having to reinstall all of my programs or lose any of my data was also a nice bonus. They also added back an (in my opinion) improved version of the start button, where right clicking gives you MUCH faster access to most of the common things you had to dig to get to before, like Device manager, disk manager, power management, etc.

Windows 8 starts up faster, but that's an improvement in the part of the system that matters least on a regular desktop.  It is a huge improvement on laptops and tablets, although Windows 7 starts up pretty fast with SSD drives.

Calling the ability to upgrade from Windows 7 a benefit of Windows 8 is actually backwards: its Windows 7 that can be upgraded to 8, not Windows 8 that's capable of upgrading Windows 7.  It was XP that could not be upgraded to 7.  If Windows 8 was better than Windows 7 in that regard, it would have been able to do what Win7 could not do: upgrade XP, but of course it can't do that any more than Windows 7 can.

"Integrating" online account information with local account information sounds good on paper.  In practice, its what you set up for grandma so they have one less thing to do.  A lot of everyone else actually hates this feature, and the fact that it takes several steps once again of wasted effort to work around.

The right-click pseudo-start bar is a welcome addition to Windows 8.1, and I'm sure I'll enjoy using it in Windows 9 or Windows 10, whichever one Microsoft gets right, but its a concession to the fact that those things were so difficult to find, remember, and use in Windows 8.  I think its (and this is a general criticism, not one aimed at you specifically) extremely disingenuous for the Windows 8 welcoming committee to sell the story that those features were trivially easy to use, and are now saying that in Windows 8.1 they are even more trivially easy to use than ever before.  That's a bandaid for something that is generally broken in Windows 8: most people can't find things without being told where they are.


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I will say that since I switched to a Nokia Lumia, I'm seeing why, if I had a Windows tablet as well, I'd REALLY like Microsoft's decision to try and get some uniformity in their OS systems across platforms.  That was their long term strategy: to try and make a single Windows system that really feels like it transcends the PC to unify all types of devices.

It has been for many years, and it will be the death of Microsoft if they don't let it go.  Microsoft hasn't had a good day in the non-gaming space since the 90s when they first brain-locked into the Windows-everywhere strategy.


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Sorry you don't like it, and really, it doesn't matter what OS someone chooses to use.  I just think Windows 8 gets a bad wrap.  It didn't work with the general public, but I think that was as much the public just not seeing the need yet as it was the actual attempt being an inferior one.  They should have made Windows 8's metro menu be the option you enable, instead of the other way around. That alone might have saved it from initial culture shock.  Who knows? 

If it was actually meant as a genuine usability improvement, that is what they would have done.  But it wasn't an attempt to actually give users better tools: it was an attempt, as you referenced above, to try to create a one-size-fits-all OS for PCs, tablets, and mobile devices, and Microsoft thought they had the market power to rewrite the standard for how people use PCs.  From a strategic business perspective, Windows 8 was an attempt to reproduce Apple's success with the iPad.  Apple created a market segment out of thin air with the iPad, and in the process they set the standard by which all tablet computers would be judged.  And they were able to create a whole new UI metaphor that people were willing to adopt quickly.  That gave Apple tremendous power over the marketplace.  Microsoft attempted to reverse that strategy and take their dominance on the desktop and translate it into a way to penetrate the tablet space: if everyone was using Windows 8 on the desktop, it would make them more likely to want the Metro interface on their tablets than IOS.

The problem for Microsoft is that it doesn't work that way.  A lot of people blamed the failure of Windows 8 on factors like the fact that people just don't like new things.  But that's absurd.  IOS itself proves that is totally false.  Moreover, Microsoft has never had the backslash to Windows 8 that they had to previous versions of Windows.  People didn't complain wildly when they introduced Windows 95, a radical departure from the Win3 interface.  They complained wildly about the features introduced in Vista, but when they were implemented correctly and with an actual eye to usability the complaints about the very same features mostly disappeared in Windows 7.  The evidence is that people are willing and able to accept new things if they are genuine improvements, and are equally willing to reject them when they are not.

The proof is how absolutely alone Microsoft was and is in their Windows 8 strategy.  Apple uses different interfaces for OSX and IOS, and that differentiation allows each to leverage their platforms in a way users appreciate.  Most Android systems have a similar differentiation, with larger systems having a more desktop-looking interface, smaller tablets and phones having a more IOS-looking interface, and Google is working on a different UI again for wearables.  Would Microsoft put a charms bar on a watch?  Don't answer that; my answer is look at what they did with Windows CE.  They would in fact put a charms bar on a watch.

Windows Mobile 7 is actually a pretty good mobile OS.  But it took years for them to abandon what they were doing before with Windows Mobile prior to that: prior to that Windows Mobile looked like someone tried to squeeze Windows onto a phone, and it was horrible.  I had a Windows mobile phone: settings like muting the phone required going into the control panel and changing a device profile.  That's ludicrous.

If Microsoft doesn't learn their lesson soon, Apple and Google will eat them alive.  Their primary safe haven was the desktop, and Windows 8 shows they think they can bet all those chips on red over and over again because they will never lose.


Now, all of this is not to say that Windows 8 is irredeemable.  Lots of people like it, and in many environments it works well, or at least a lot better.  On tablets its not bad.  In much simpler work environments its not bad.  In non-legacy environments its not bad.  If you like it, I have no problem with that.  But the people that don't like it aren't just too stupid to figure it out, and there is such a thing as objective UI design, and Windows 8 would fail most industrial UI design classes: that's just a fact.  Most importantly, if you're the guy responsible for making a new operating system designed explicitly to be used by the 400 million Windows users out there, there's no question whatsoever that Windows 8 was a giant failure in that regard.  The fact that that guy made maybe half those people happy and pissed the rest off when there was absolutely no reason for that (you mentioned it yourself: if Metro was good enough to sell itself, they didn't have to force it on anyone; it could have been a nice optional extra) makes him an complete idiot.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 25, 2014, 05:26:27 AM
3 words.  Classic Start Menu.

It took me less than 30 seconds to download and install that to Windows 8, and restore my desktop to the Windows 7 feel.  I never see Metro, everything rocks. :)

Also, boot time from cold to desktop? 5-6 seconds. :D

It really is a shame that, once again, the media have gotten away with ruining the rep of what really is a good OS, with just a few minor issues that were mostly fixed in the first update; just like Vista.

The media was not responsible for people not upgrading to it and forcing PC manufacturers to demand the ability to sell Windows 7 again.  It was people like me who saw it, beta tested it, provided feedback that basically said you can't be serious, all but threatened them if they released it they would see to it that it would never be installed on any system they had control of over their dead bodies (actually, I did threaten that), saw that Microsoft decided to call our bluff, and then found out we were not bluffing.

Also, my Windows 7 desktop boots to login prompt in about 15 seconds.  Based on a 10 second time save on boot up, I would have to use Windows 8 for about eight thousand years before that boot time reduction was worth it.  On a laptop or tablet, I might reboot every day, maybe more than once a day.  I reboot my desktop once a month or so.  Meanwhile every time I accidentally triggered the charms bar to pop up that costs me a second or two.  Just those two factors alone mean Windows 8 would cost me more time than it saved me every month.

I'm aware of Classic Start Menu.  I'm also aware that I already have the Classic Start Menu.

When Coca Cola came out with New Coke, I bet an actual Coca Cola employee, someone significantly up the management ladder, my entire lifetime salary against his that Coca Cola would be forced to roll the recipe change back.  First it was explained to me how much money went into New Coke research.  Then it was explained to me that even if the results were less than optimal the company had too much invested to change back.  Then it was explained to me that the reason it was being rolled back was because the media had blown people's reactions to it out of proportion, and given enough time New Coke would have won out.  Needless to say I was never able to collect on that bet.

When Windows 8 came out I bet everyone who defended it that not only would it fail to be deployed in the corporate space, it would be rejected at such a high rate by personal computer users that people would be demanding Windows 7 be loaded over Windows 8 if PC manufacturers forced it upon them.  I haven't really collected much on that bet either, but it clearly happened, and it wasn't the media's fault.  It was entirely Microsoft's fault.  I know when my preferences are in the minority and the majority want to head in a different direction.  Windows 8 was not one of those times.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 25, 2014, 05:48:33 AM
I should make it a point to say that at no time did I state nor did I have any intention to imply that people who like Windows 8, or who feel they are more productive in Windows 8, are wrong.  A lot of that is driven by personal preference, and there's no arguing personal preference.

The problem is that while few people argue that the people who like Windows 8 are wrong, lots of people imply that the people who hate it are idiots.  That's simply not the case.  I spend my professional days learning new things constantly.  I teach people how to use new systems.  I learn how to use new systems.  I install, configure, debug, and deploy new systems.  I'm not incapable of learning new things, and I dare say at my billable rate I better be better at it than most people.  Its not that I'm incapable of making Windows 8 work.  I don't need solutions to make it work.  It simply doesn't work as well, and there are objective reasons why it doesn't work as well.  What I do the most, the things that have the most impact on me, is that I wallpaper my screens with application windows, many of which are real-time updating, looking at and managing a lot of information simultaneously.  I have tons of applications that I need to use randomly at any time on any day: I don't have six apps I use every day and a bunch I only use twice a year. 

People like me do not want to be told how well Windows 8 works.  That's not to say I'm not open to suggestions or ideas in general; in fact if anyone has a recommendation for a remote control software optimized for Windows 8 that does not require touch controls on the client side, I'm all ears.  But I'm here to say that Windows 8 is hated not because the media tells me to hate it (in fact, in the time leading up to and post launch the overwhelming majority of media coverage for Windows 8 was glowing: the reverse was far less common; its only much later that the media seemed to grudgingly accept the fact that public sentiment was not as glowing).  Its not even because its a bad OS - its not a universally bad OS.  Its because it was a disservice to all the users like me for which Windows 8 was 5% improvement, 95% suck-it.   And we were told over and over again we just didn't get it, and that's the only reason why we didn't like it.

What really hurt Microsoft was the fact that the people who hated it were disproportionately two groups: the completely neophyte users, and the power users.  The people in the middle tended on average to like it more.  But the people who tended to like it less were the people who could get into the most trouble with it (neophytes and extremely casual users) and the people who could most damage its deployment (power users and technical support people).

But if you like Windows 8, more power to you.  I have nothing against you at all.  I almost envy you, because you get all of Windows 8's benefits with none of its downsides.  For me, the downsides aren't remotely worth it.  And there must be a lot of people like me, because Microsoft seems to be at least trying to make it up to us, because Microsoft does not develop operating system roadmaps based on bad media coverage.  They do it based on what will sell.


Edit: also, I should mention I haven't taken offense by anything said in the thread so far.  Honest voicing of opinions or honest attempts at information sharing aren't a problem for me.  What I was referring to above was more of the Microsoft party line and the people repeating it in support of Win8 leading up to and just after launch.  Not so much individual people voicing their own personal experience with the OS.  No live badger, so no problem here.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 25, 2014, 05:57:01 AM
You're not the only one who beta tested Vista, or Windows 7, or 8, or going back a ways, Longhorn, XP and Millennium as well as the various server versions.  Microsoft have their reasons for making their decisions, and sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong.

With Windows 8, they made an error of judgement with the regards making Metro the primary UI on the desktop, but for the mobile space, it really is a great UI (I know, I have 2 Windows 8 tablets).  It's an understandable choice though, as they'd gotten caught wrong footed with the sudden surge in mobile OS's and they needed to get in on the action.  A lot of those issues were fixed with 8.1, and the rest will be resolved in 9.

None of that, however, alters one bit the sheer damage done to their rep by the media.  The Vista issues were ridiculously overblown by the media, causing damage so bad that MS were forced to dump it and launch Windows 7, even though there is very little actual difference between it and Vista SP1.  What we have in 7 would have been another Vista service pack if the name itself hadn't been irreparably damaged.

Essentially the same is happening to Windows 8, too.  It has a few problems sure, but those are once again being ridiculously overblown by the media, forcing MS to abandon it and move to 9, even though once again the differences are minimal. So much so that the rumours are 9 will be either a free or very low cost upgrade to 8.

I have no problem with people who prefer 7 over 8, personal preference has always been a major factor in OS choice, but what really annoys me is the way that the media have once again managed to take a massive dump on MS in a completely disproportionate way, yet let them get away completely with what they did to Windows Phone 7 device owners (which really -was- unforgivable).

If people are going to vilify Microsoft for something, do it for the bad things they've deliberately done, rather than the mistakes they've made.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: epawtows on September 25, 2014, 06:12:23 AM
Is it worth it to put out that the Boeing Co. is very firmly using Windows 7 (we actually got rid of our last XP machines this spring).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 25, 2014, 06:14:14 AM
Is it worth it to put out that the Boeing Co. is very firmly using Windows 7 (we actually got rid of our last XP machines this spring).

Corporations are -always- very slow to upgrade to a new OS.  That's the way it's always been and the way it will always be.  The OS itself is never the issue, it's a purely financial thing.  Upgrading isn't a cheap thing, especially for large corps.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 25, 2014, 06:32:10 AM
You're not the only one who beta tested Vista, or Windows 7, or 8, or going back a ways, Longhorn, XP and Millennium as well as the various server versions.  Microsoft have their reasons for making their decisions, and sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong.

With Windows 8, they made an error of judgement with the regards making Metro the primary UI on the desktop, but for the mobile space, it really is a great UI (I know, I have 2 Windows 8 tablets).  It's an understandable choice though, as they'd gotten caught wrong footed with the sudden surge in mobile OS's and they needed to get in on the action.  A lot of those issues were fixed with 8.1, and the rest will be resolved in 9.

None of that, however, alters one bit the sheer damage done to their rep by the media.  The Vista issues were ridiculously overblown by the media, causing damage so bad that MS were forced to dump it and launch Windows 7, even though there is very little actual difference between it and Vista SP1.  What we have in 7 would have been another Vista service pack if the name itself hadn't been irreparably damaged.

Essentially the same is happening to Windows 8, too.  It has a few problems sure, but those are once again being ridiculously overblown by the media, forcing MS to abandon it and move to 9, even though once again the differences are minimal. So much so that the rumours are 9 will be either a free or very low cost upgrade to 8.

I have no problem with people who prefer 7 over 8, personal preference has always been a major factor in OS choice, but what really annoys me is the way that the media have once again managed to take a massive dump on MS in a completely disproportionate way, yet let them get away completely with what they did to Windows Phone 7 device owners (which really -was- unforgivable).

If people are going to vilify Microsoft for something, do it for the bad things they've deliberately done, rather than the mistakes they've made.

My personal opinion is that Microsoft puts a lot of the damage on themselves. With the market dominance they have, they don't need to force feed beta versions on the masses, yet they've done it since NT (at least).

I really don't think that Microsoft was unaware of the reception they were going to get when they decided to go in a different direction with Win 8. After all, they were the company that brought out Vista and NT. Every so often Microsoft gets it into their corporate head to make a change whether people like it or not.
I also don't believe they were caught off guard by all this tablet business. They were trying to get into the tablet business in 2000. What they weren't ready for was the iPad. I personally think that Win 8 was a direct reaction a perceived intrusion onto their turf. 

And I didn't have any real problem with vista. Well, after two days of ripping out everything I could that distinguished it from XP... it worked fine. :)

There are reasons that many admins I know won't personally use a Microsoft OS until at least service pack 2 is out.

In summation.... Excellent.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 25, 2014, 06:34:00 AM
Corporations are -always- very slow to upgrade to a new OS.  That's the way it's always been and the way it will always be.  The OS itself is never the issue, it's a purely financial thing.  Upgrading isn't a cheap thing, especially for large corps.

Yep.

They also can't get any good ROI and other numbers on it because it's effectively maintenance for the company. It's a huge problem for any IT department.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 25, 2014, 06:38:10 AM
Yep.

They also can't get any good ROI and other numbers on it because it's effectively maintenance for the company. It's a huge problem for any IT department.

Our own IT department are currently rolling out Windows 8 across the network.  Almost -EVERYONE- is complaining about it, but at least they have a very very good reason.  We do a lot of client side support for our customers that requires that we connect to their systems, so we use VM's for that so that the VPN's they make us use don't disconnect us from -our- network.  Windows 8's Hyper-V has a huge bug in that it only supports 4:3 resolution screens, which is BLOODY ANNOYING when we all have dual 24" widescreen monitors, and they won't let us install any 3rd party VM solutions!

Why oh why they're not going straight to 8.1, where that problem is fixed, is beyond everyone's comprehension, and IT ain't sayin'... :/
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: epawtows on September 25, 2014, 06:40:21 AM
And lots of issues with adapting all our in-house written software to work with a new OS (trust me, you CAN'T get a COTS application that can check drawings for 787 part assemblies).

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 25, 2014, 06:44:32 AM
Our own IT department are currently rolling out Windows 8 across the network.  Almost -EVERYONE- is complaining about it, but at least they have a very very good reason.  We do a lot of client side support for our customers that requires that we connect to their systems, so we use VM's for that so that the VPN's they make us use don't disconnect us from -our- network.  Windows 8's Hyper-V has a huge bug in that it only supports 4:3 resolution screens, which is BLOODY ANNOYING when we all have dual 24" widescreen monitors, and they won't let us install any 3rd party VM solutions!

Why oh why they're not going straight to 8.1, where that problem is fixed, is beyond everyone's comprehension, and IT ain't sayin'... :/

Sounds like big bidness to me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 25, 2014, 07:20:37 AM
I work for an international finance organisation (big company), and I think we might have finished our Win7 rollout, now. As in, I got my Win7 PC last week. And I was the last person on our floor of the building to get it.

Weird, since I was meant to be one of the first wave, to test it. But that's a different story.

The problem isn't the OS. The problem is the eleventy-five legacy software applications that break in a new OS, but are absolutely essential to the running of a finance organisation that keeps customer data going back in excess of 40 years, and keeps it on the same ancient software it was first put on, because moving that data with an absolute guarantee of no loss of information would... well, it costs. Far more than moving to a new OS and writing a new front-end.

Heck, we had a weird problem with a software upgrade (before the Win7 rollout) that completely nuked another (business essential) application. Nuked to the level of "it's cheaper to drop a second base unit without the update and set up a KVM switch for all of our users than it is to fix this".

Business is weird, sometimes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 25, 2014, 09:39:53 AM
None of that, however, alters one bit the sheer damage done to their rep by the media.  The Vista issues were ridiculously overblown by the media, causing damage so bad that MS were forced to dump it and launch Windows 7, even though there is very little actual difference between it and Vista SP1.  What we have in 7 would have been another Vista service pack if the name itself hadn't been irreparably damaged.

Essentially the same is happening to Windows 8, too.  It has a few problems sure, but those are once again being ridiculously overblown by the media, forcing MS to abandon it and move to 9, even though once again the differences are minimal. So much so that the rumours are 9 will be either a free or very low cost upgrade to 8.

Its debateable whether the differences are minimal, but what is provably true is that the media is following sentiment, not driving it.  To the extent the media is emphasizing the problems with Windows 8 (and emphasized with Vista) they are echoing general sentiment, not creating it.  Media support for Windows 8 ran 10:1 in favor of it at launch, and that shifted over time to the point of overwhelmingly acknowledging the problems with it only when the number of people voicing those concerns only increased over time.

If the media simply didn't cover Windows at all, neither for nor against, Microsoft would still be facing an extremely large backlash against Windows 8. The only difference is that only Microsoft would be sure just how large it was.

Its true that ultimately Microsoft could have addressed the issues in Vista with continued service packs and primarily introduced Windows 7 to repair the damage to the Windows brand done by Vista.  But that was a purely self-inflicted wound: Vista's security model was itself a reactionary response to Microsoft's belief that the Windows brand was being tarnished by the increased visibility of security issues associated with Windows.  They attempted to address those with no deference to useability.  That's always a self-inflicted wound, and they always deserve whatever backlash they get when they do that (as does every other company that makes that error).

How damaging a problem is isn't measured by how difficult it is to fix.  Problems can be extremely damaging and yet resolvable by patches that intrinsically don't do much.  No one is forcing Microsoft to call Windows 8.2 Windows 9; that's their call.  What people want is those problems fixed.  That they don't take much effort to fix makes the problems all the more galling, not retrospectively trivial.  That Microsoft can dodge the negativity caused by their own design errors by simply changing the name of the product is a situation I consider a plus to Microsoft, not a minus.  You can't argue Microsoft is being forced to abandon Windows 8 and yet releasing a successor product that is basically just like it.  That means Microsoft isn't being forced to abandon Windows 8, they are trying to convince people Windows 8.2 shouldn't be judged based on the user experience of Windows 8, but starting with a clean slate by calling it Windows 9.  To the extent that's false, that's false in Microsoft's favor.  Nobody's forcing them to do that.

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If people are going to vilify Microsoft for something, do it for the bad things they've deliberately done, rather than the mistakes they've made.

They originally doubled down on their "mistake" to make the metro interface mandatory and default.  They only backed down when they began to realize that the backlash against that decision wasn't as a lot of people characterized it just media driven.  If it was media driven, it would have gone away within a year.  It was getting worse over time, and costing them a ton of OS sales and deployments.  It was snowballing on them in a lot of ways the media didn't cover a lot, specifically in their channel.  Microsoft is actually pretty good about defending their channel, and particularly their stronger MSPs.  Windows 8 was flat-out damaging them, and that made the situation untenable.

If Microsoft had said "oops our bad, we'll make Metro optional" when it became clear that was a design error, nobody would be talking about this now.  Its been two years and only recently has Microsoft come even close to admitting that was a mistake (technically, Microsoft has never admitted that officially; only the known features of Windows 9 make that case).

In any event, to the extent that media coverage compelled Microsoft to act sooner rather than later, I say its a pretty good use for tech media, which rarely has all that much of an impact generally.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 25, 2014, 09:44:42 AM
Our own IT department are currently rolling out Windows 8 across the network.  Almost -EVERYONE- is complaining about it, but at least they have a very very good reason.  We do a lot of client side support for our customers that requires that we connect to their systems, so we use VM's for that so that the VPN's they make us use don't disconnect us from -our- network.  Windows 8's Hyper-V has a huge bug in that it only supports 4:3 resolution screens, which is BLOODY ANNOYING when we all have dual 24" widescreen monitors, and they won't let us install any 3rd party VM solutions!

Why oh why they're not going straight to 8.1, where that problem is fixed, is beyond everyone's comprehension, and IT ain't sayin'... :/

Its a crazy solution, but I ran into a similar issue once and the way I resolved it was to run the VM minimized, and then RDP into the VM and let the remote desktop client resize a terminal services screen rather than the hardware VM screen.  I don't know if that will work in this case, but its worth trying.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Von Krieger on September 25, 2014, 10:21:39 AM
(https://i736.photobucket.com/albums/xx2/supajasiu/Moroz.png)

Long time defender of Russia, General Winter, I presume?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: thunderforce on September 25, 2014, 10:55:22 AM
Wise choice.  The learning curve from XP isn't that hard.  Going to Win8 from XP is like stepping sideways into some weird parallel dimension.

Particularly, I used to configure XP to look generally like the old familiar ugly '95 interface rather than the new unfamiliar ugly XP interface. I was pleased to find Win 7 can be configured quite readily to the still-familiar ugly '95 interface rather than the old unfamiliar ugly XP interface or the new unfamiliar ugly Win 7 interface.

I'm still happier on a real computer with an actual choice of window managers, but what can one do for videogames, eh?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 25, 2014, 11:10:51 AM
Media support for Windows 8 ran 10:1 in favor of it at launch, and that shifted over time to the point of overwhelmingly acknowledging the problems with it only when the number of people voicing those concerns only increased over time.

Going to have to disagree with you here. Pretty much all the tech media I saw prior to W8's official launch were absolutely slating its UI and generally taking a massive dump on the whole thing, just as much as they did to Vista, too.

Perhaps you were looking at different tech media to me! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 25, 2014, 11:12:06 AM
Its a crazy solution, but I ran into a similar issue once and the way I resolved it was to run the VM minimized, and then RDP into the VM and let the remote desktop client resize a terminal services screen rather than the hardware VM screen.  I don't know if that will work in this case, but its worth trying.

RDP works fine, but it really kills performance, and when you're having to connect to slow client VPN's, having a sluggish VM on top of that isn't what you really want.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 25, 2014, 11:13:05 AM
Particularly, I used to configure XP to look generally like the old familiar ugly '95 interface rather than the new unfamiliar ugly XP interface. I was pleased to find Win 7 can be configured quite readily to the still-familiar ugly '95 interface rather than the old unfamiliar ugly XP interface or the new unfamiliar ugly Win 7 interface.

I'm still happier on a real computer with an actual choice of window managers, but what can one do for videogames, eh?

Did you make Win 95 look like Win 3.1, too? :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Medispider Reznov on September 25, 2014, 11:25:53 AM
I don't plan on vilifying anyone, I just go by the rule of thumb of "everything is shit until proven otherwise" Windows 7 proved to not be shit, Windows 8 failed to do so - if Windows 9 dose as 7 or 8, my decision will be based on that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nalerenn on September 25, 2014, 11:30:26 AM
Long time defender of Russia, General Winter, I presume?
I would've said Cold War personally. Or maybe Nuclear Winter...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Clave Dark 5 on September 25, 2014, 12:58:56 PM
Is it possible to create a panda hero in Icon?  I know it's in bad taste...but...if WoW can do it...
(https://i667.photobucket.com/albums/vv34/clave-dark/PrincessYinyin_zpscbb4c45e.jpg)

I haven't played around with Icon, but I used to make them all the time when the game was live. 

I think this one was my DP blaster; she has an eye patch (because I thought it would be funny for a ranged fighter to lack depth perception), but you can see how the costume creator can indeed make pandas.  I think I had six or seven variations on the panda theme by the end.  I had started doing them before Blizzard made them a 'thing' so if the game does come back, I might have to find something else.  Like tigers...

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: thunderforce on September 25, 2014, 02:09:19 PM
Did you make Win 95 look like Win 3.1, too? :p

No, but I was tempted. Given a choice of ugly interfaces, I'd rather have the devil I know.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 25, 2014, 02:12:56 PM
Particularly, I used to configure XP to look generally like the old familiar ugly '95 interface rather than the new unfamiliar ugly XP interface. I was pleased to find Win 7 can be configured quite readily to the still-familiar ugly '95 interface rather than the old unfamiliar ugly XP interface or the new unfamiliar ugly Win 7 interface.

I'm still happier on a real computer with an actual choice of window managers, but what can one do for videogames, eh?

The Windows 8 look is much uglier to me than the Windows 7 (Aero) or 2000 (Classic) interfaces. Maybe not quite as ugly as the default XP preschool theme, but at least XP gave you the option to change it to classic. What annoys me about Windows 8 is that they took out all window themes except for the ugly new one. I can make it mostly bearable with registry hacks or third party tools to shrink the oversized window borders, but it still looks bad to me.

I'm sure some people love it, and that's fine. What I find rather galling is for Microsoft to assume their One True Theme is what everybody wants. Options! We want options! Taking away choices because users can't be trusted to think for themselves is supposed to be Apple's niche...

Also, bringing up a full-screen UI to launch a program (even in 8.1!) and hidden corner/side hot spots to access important things are both terrible paradigms to use through a windowed remote desktop session. It's probably the sole reason we're sticking with Server 2008R2 at work -- it's that bad to try to admin a 2012 server across a slow link. We're doing what a lot of businesses are and skipping this cycle like we skipped Vista/2008 RTM. Good thing enterprise support is good through 2020.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 25, 2014, 04:29:21 PM
None of that, however, alters one bit the sheer damage done to their rep by the media.  The Vista issues were ridiculously overblown by the media, causing damage so bad that MS were forced to dump it and launch Windows 7, even though there is very little actual difference between it and Vista SP1.  What we have in 7 would have been another Vista service pack if the name itself hadn't been irreparably damaged.

I have to agree. I used Vista SP1 til December of last year or so, and frankly, liked it just fine. The primary reason I upgraded to 7 was that I added a second hard drive, and it made more sense to futureproof a couple extra years in.

The search on the menu is pretty damned awesome, the removing of some of the taskbar options considerably less so, at least for EQ2, and beyond those two things I've honestly noticed very little difference. The machine performs pretty much like always...rock solid, as fast as you'd expect from a 7 year old cpu.

I'll most likely be on 7 til the hdd karks it AND there's a stable, fast option that does what I want available. If I have to replace the hdd before that happens, I'll be going back to 7 til it no longer safely does what I use it for...in the case of that machine, playing games and watching stuff.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 25, 2014, 05:53:27 PM
RDP works fine, but it really kills performance, and when you're having to connect to slow client VPN's, having a sluggish VM on top of that isn't what you really want.

That's odd.  I haven't had that problem with RDP myself logging into local VMs.  Perhaps there's a latency issue on the bridge network on Win8's Hyper-V.  I'll have to test that at some point: I don't recall any changes to that in 8.1, so it might still be an issue.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: adarict on September 25, 2014, 06:03:15 PM
None of that, however, alters one bit the sheer damage done to their rep by the media.  The Vista issues were ridiculously overblown by the media, causing damage so bad that MS were forced to dump it and launch Windows 7, even though there is very little actual difference between it and Vista SP1.

Actually, a bit of clarification.  That comment is incorrect for a significant portion of the userbase for Vista Pre-SP1.  Ignoring the numerous incompatibility problems, which were mostly self inflicted by software developers not making the necessary changes ahead of the release of Vista when they had plenty of time to do so, there were a number of SERIOUS problems with Vista at release.  The network stack was absolutely terrible.  Worked fine for most internet things, but if you needed to actually use a LAN, the file copy performance was orders of magnitude slower than the identical hardware running XP.  There were also serious issues with power management, as in blue screens if you allowed the machine to sleep or hibernate.  There were also issues with multitasking performance, though the only people that usually ran into that, were ones that were running on the edge of the minimum requirements for what they were doing.

To be fair, these issues did NOT affect everyone.  The power management item ended up being a problem with the USB Host adapter driver.  It was TECHNICALLY the fault of manufacturers, but it was the Microsoft installed driver that caused the problem.  I know that there were a number of people who had zero issues.  I spent a LOT of time, both in my work, as well as messing with CoH, trying to overcome any number of issues on Vista.  I also had two identical  (as much as that is possible) Inspiron Laptops that were purchased at the same time.  One of them Installed a fresh copy of Vista, and ran like a champ.  The other was continually plagued by poor overall performance.  Both laptops had the same BIOS, and were configured the same way from a hardware perspective.  Both were installed with Vista Ultimate using the same options.

Vista SP1 was practically a quantum leap over the initial release of Vista, at least for a good number of people.  Part of my job is software QA, and I spent months and months doing hardware and software certifications on Vista for every North American and EU SKU, on literally hundreds of physical machines.  I did those same certifications again when SP1 came out.  There was significant improvement in just about every single area.

Basically, what killed Vista was NOT simply media bias.  There were actual problems with Vista at release that drove that negative press.  Did the press still blow it out of proportion?  Probably.  I mean, most of the items had fixes and/or workarounds shortly after release.  those fixes and workarounds though, don't help the people who are not technically proficient or comfortable messing with their machines.  For those people, as far as they were concerned, Vista just made everything more painful.

Oh, and I ran Vista on my personal machines right up until Windows 7 was released.  I had planned on holding off on Win7 until it had longer in the wild, but I had been running the betas for a long time, and was impressed enough that I didn't bother to wait.  I would agree that Windows 7 in many ways, was just Windows Vista done right.  I think that is what Windows 9 will be as well. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 25, 2014, 06:06:27 PM
Also, bringing up a full-screen UI to launch a program (even in 8.1!) and hidden corner/side hot spots to access important things are both terrible paradigms to use through a windowed remote desktop session. It's probably the sole reason we're sticking with Server 2008R2 at work -- it's that bad to try to admin a 2012 server across a slow link.

Someone told me you can just powershell everything, so I had to kill him.

There are other interesting oddities to Server 2012.  For example, terminal services will work fine without a license, for about six months.  Then it will warn you to put the license in.  Interestingly, there are configuration modes that only work without a license in evaluation mode, and won't work in licensed mode, which can make life interesting when you're first starting to spin those up.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pep Rally on September 25, 2014, 06:08:22 PM
I don't plan on vilifying anyone, I just go by the rule of thumb of "everything is pancake until proven otherwise" Windows 7 proved to not be pancake, Windows 8 failed to do so - if Windows 9 dose as 7 or 8, my decision will be based on that.


When did pancakes become a bad thing? I love pancakes. Especially blueberry ones.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 25, 2014, 06:17:39 PM

When did pancakes become a bad thing? I love pancakes. Especially blueberry ones.

Don't think he's saying pancakes are bad. Actually from "everything is pancake until proven otherwise" he is using pancake is a point marker on how good the situation is until proven otherwise. C'mon now, who in their right mind would think this is bad :P

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.neighborfoodblog.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F10%2Fapple-pancakes-2-731x1024.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 25, 2014, 06:26:16 PM
Bad!?!? You eat that horrific mess, you'll be DEAD! :O
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on September 25, 2014, 06:29:03 PM
I would've said Cold War personally. Or maybe Nuclear Winter...

I had a blaster named Nuclear winter (rad/ice).  His origin was that he was a reactor tech that just happened to be working when the Rikti were going after the reactor core and the heroes were hitting it with coolant....  He managed to stumble right between core and coolant...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Beltor on September 25, 2014, 06:29:43 PM
Bad!?!? You eat that horrific mess, you'll be DEAD! :O

But you'd die happy
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 25, 2014, 06:32:52 PM
Bad!?!? You eat that horrific mess, you'll be DEAD! :O

Well if you eat that, there two places your going to pay for it: at the gym or on your heart. The choice is yours :P

Also Gabriel Iglaseas once said, "why judge life with how long you live instead of what you did? If I die tomorrow from over eating, that's how I want to go out. When the coroner cuts me open, I want the whole room to smell like cheese fries and then he will say, this guy knew how to live."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 25, 2014, 07:32:05 PM
Bad!?!? You eat that horrific mess, you'll be DEAD! :O

but banana pancakes are a life changing miracle....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 25, 2014, 08:10:14 PM
...the numerous incompatibility problems...

That was my personal experience with Vista. I had so many hardware and software incompatability/freezing issues with Vista, it was a wonder I didn't rip all my hair out at the time.

I wound up going back to XP, and then eventually switching to Windows 7. No problems with either of those two operating systems...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 25, 2014, 08:23:06 PM
That was my personal experience with Vista. I had so many hardware and software incompatability/freezing issues with Vista, it was a wonder I didn't rip all my hair out at the time.

I wound up going back to XP, and then eventually switching to Windows 7. No problems with either of those two operating systems...

Never had a single problem with Vista. Ran just fine on my ancient Pentium3 (Northwood) 3ghz CPU with 4 gig ram and an old Radeon 8500.  To steal from Apple (who know all about doing that), everything -just worked- :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 25, 2014, 09:12:09 PM
My main and only problem with windows 8 was the lack of drivers for my Audio Interface when 8.1 came out.   My audiobox suddenly stopped working on my laptop the day I got 8.1, and never worked again on that laptop.  Which wasn't that big of a deal it lead me to get a better AI anyway, and it still works on my Win 7 desktop.  Not that I ever used it, but the Windows 8 app store and all that is usually broken from the get go.  At least in the 3 experiences I have seen with fresh Win 8 computers the app store never worked.  This never bothered me because I didn't use or need the apps.  But for the other 2 less experienced computer users I saw run into the problem freaked out like their computer was broken.  I had a buddy who had a laptop with 1 TB HD, an I7, A Geforce GTX 650, and 16 gigs of ram.  He had his laptop for 2 days and sends me a text saying "This laptop sucks I can't use the netflix app".  Needless to say I facepalmed
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 25, 2014, 09:37:20 PM
C'mon now, who in their right mind would think this is bad :P

Who, after eating that, would be capable of thinking?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 25, 2014, 09:49:09 PM
Bad!?!? You eat that horrific mess, you'll be DEAD! :O

Yes....but then you would already be in heaven anyway so who cares?   ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 25, 2014, 10:07:36 PM
Who, after eating that, would be capable of thinking?

Whoever can think after that, I bet they have the same amount of functional brain power working as this cat

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.kitchencultures.ca%2Fuploads%2F1%2F3%2F8%2F8%2F13880683%2F8676570_orig.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on September 25, 2014, 10:18:09 PM
Is it possible to create a panda hero in Icon?  I know it's in bad taste...but...if WoW can do it...
Someone on Liberty played a number of characters all named "panda (insert variant name here) " and they looked pretty close if I recall.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 25, 2014, 10:26:18 PM
Virtue had its share of pandas.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 25, 2014, 10:29:42 PM
I had a friend Niko that made his toon look like a giant rooster man. Was weird how he could spend hours on the character builder screen just getting the look of his toon right.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 25, 2014, 10:35:53 PM

When did pancakes become a bad thing? I love pancakes. Especially blueberry ones.

For those of you who are (relatively, i.e: since the beginning of the "new efforts") new, there was a lot of, shall we say, lack of self-censorship (swearing) that irritated TPTB slightly, so a script was written to change instances of "sailor-talk" to the word "pancake." Some of us just find it fun to still use the word in place of whatever swear word we really meant. We're kinda Smurfy with the marklars like that. :D

See this Admin thread for more info, if you like: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,7215.0.html
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on September 25, 2014, 10:38:18 PM
Don't think he's saying pancakes are bad. Actually from "everything is pancake until proven otherwise" he is using pancake is a point marker on how good the situation is until proven otherwise. C'mon now, who in their right mind would think this is bad :P

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.neighborfoodblog.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F10%2Fapple-pancakes-2-731x1024.jpg)

The diabetic nurse that takes my blood sugar measurement :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Luna Eclypse on September 25, 2014, 10:43:11 PM
I had a friend Niko that made his toon look like a giant rooster man. Was weird how he could spend hours on the character builder screen just getting the look of his toon right.

Was his name Rooster Rampage? I saw that giant rooster man around Virtue a lot.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Baja on September 25, 2014, 10:47:17 PM
Virtue had its share of pandas.  ;)

I'll never forget the guy who played a character called "Killer Whale", it was a invul/ss tank and he rp'd it perfectly. I only remember seeing him for the first six months or so of coh, I remember there were lots of rumours of him being banned for erp or something along those lines. I also hazily remember something being said of him confronting the devs on the forum about a major issue with the game that also may have lead to his banning. If anyone remembers or knows what actually happened PLEASE let me know, I'd love to hear about that just to put my misinformed nostalgia at ease.

Also yes Panda people existed, although the cat people definitely won the numbers game. Holy yiff balls were there always a lot of car rp'rs...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 25, 2014, 10:57:34 PM
Virtue had its share of pandas.  ;)
I always thought Virtue was the home of the catgirls :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 25, 2014, 11:03:28 PM
I always thought Virtue was the home of the catgirls :D

Haha yeah, after playing on Virtue from day 2 until closure, I can definitely vouch for that!  Even my daughter had one!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 25, 2014, 11:07:56 PM
I had a blaster named Nuclear winter (rad/ice).  His origin was that he was a reactor tech that just happened to be working when the Rikti were going after the reactor core and the heroes were hitting it with coolant....  He managed to stumble right between core and coolant...

MAN I loved my Rad/Ice blaster!  Colored the rad bubbles to look like balls of snow.  I'd run stealthed right into a group, drop an ice patch, then irradiate/neutron bomb until they're all dead. Just keep using Freezing Touch on the boss until all the luits and minions die from neutron bomb and irradiate, and then between Chilling Embrace, Ice Patch, Cosmic Burst, and Freezing Touch, you pretty much can stand one on one with anyone who isn't an AV.  With the Achilles heal proc in both irradiate and Cosmic Burst his resistance is already way down, and with Chilling embrace slowing him, and ice patch and a Ragnarok and some damage procs in irradiate he's toast.

Johny Freeze.  Best blaster ever. 
 
:-)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 25, 2014, 11:11:45 PM
I had a friend Niko that made his toon look like a giant rooster man. Was weird how he could spend hours on the character builder screen just getting the look of his toon right.

My second villain was part of my SG attempting to make a villains VG based on evil farm animals. Mine was a sonic/thermal rooster named "cocka-Doodle Doom."
 
He actually looked surprisingly good considering this was before the feathers and animal heads.  A friend of mine made a stone brute that looked like a bull and named him "Cow Patty."  Watching him drop massive poop looking stones around him was kinda hilarious. 
 
(Also, funny note, apparently if I put a hyphen before the "a" in "cocka-doodle doom" it turns the first part into "pancake-a-doodle doom." )
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pep Rally on September 25, 2014, 11:17:33 PM
For those of you who are (relatively, i.e: since the beginning of the "new efforts") new, there was a lot of, shall we say, lack of self-censorship (swearing) that irritated TPTB slightly, so a script was written to change instances of "sailor-talk" to the word "pancake." Some of us just find it fun to still use the word in place of whatever swear word we really meant. We're kinda Smurfy with the marklars like that. :D

See this Admin thread for more info, if you like: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,7215.0.html

Ah, I remember the troll->unicorn script, but I never noticed the pancake one until this thread.  I haven't been around much since the TPP boards got their own sites.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pep Rally on September 25, 2014, 11:23:04 PM
I would've said Cold War personally. Or maybe Nuclear Winter...

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=img4.wikia.nocookie.net%2F__cb20090906032000%2Ffreedomforce%2Fimages%2F2%2F2e%2FNuclearwinter.png)

http://freedomforce.wikia.com/wiki/Nuclear_Winter

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 25, 2014, 11:32:35 PM
I had a cat character. I played him on one of my alt servers. I called him Salty Toes :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 25, 2014, 11:34:36 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=img4.wikia.nocookie.net%2F__cb20090906032000%2Ffreedomforce%2Fimages%2F2%2F2e%2FNuclearwinter.png)

http://freedomforce.wikia.com/wiki/Nuclear_Winter

I loved Freedom Force and the alternative power sets that fans made. They nailed captain america
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pep Rally on September 25, 2014, 11:38:56 PM
I loved Freedom Force and the alternative power sets that fans made. They nailed captain america

Yeah, me too. I never played the sequel, though, since another superhero game was taking up all my free time.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 25, 2014, 11:43:29 PM
Yeah Freedom Force was fun.

For grins in Mids the other day I designed character builds inspired by the old Eternal Champions.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 26, 2014, 12:10:17 AM
I had a catgirl on Virtue named Purrrrr. 

Because Purr, Purrr, and Purrrr were taken.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 26, 2014, 12:17:50 AM
Ah, I remember the troll->unicorn script, but I never noticed the pancake one until this thread.  I haven't been around much since the TPP boards got their own sites.

The pancake one is actually a carryover from the official COH boards. One of the community reps (I think it was in Zwillinger's reign IIRC) changed the profanity filter to the word pancake. Which was especially amusing because it was a per-character filter (as in replacing letters with *s), so for a while when people swore it would say pancakepancakepancakepancakepancakepancake
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 26, 2014, 01:01:54 AM
The pancake one is actually a carryover from the official COH boards. One of the community reps (I think it was in Zwillinger's reign IIRC) changed the profanity filter to the word pancake. Which was especially amusing because it was a per-character filter (as in replacing letters with *s), so for a while when people swore it would say pancakepancakepancakepancakepancakepancake

 
I always really liked Zwill's modding. I just thought he was awesome.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ryuplaneswalker on September 26, 2014, 01:32:25 AM

 
I always really liked Zwill's modding. I just thought he was awesome.

Zwill was awesome, I remember the day I was just logging on for the first time having parked my Main in Dark Astoria for the day job credit and by the area incarnate raids formed in and Zwill was there...and the first thing I see in Local chat is "RYU FORM UP AN INCARNATE RAID!"

If I remember right he got DCed the moment we logged into the Raid too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 26, 2014, 05:03:42 AM
Zwill was awesome, I remember the day I was just logging on for the first time having parked my Main in Dark Astoria for the day job credit and by the area incarnate raids formed in and Zwill was there...and the first thing I see in Local chat is "RYU FORM UP AN INCARNATE RAID!"

If I remember right he got DCed the moment we logged into the Raid too.

Zwill was a blast, also yes he did get DCed in that raid :(

Also on an ironic note, your mention of the day jobs makes me chuckle about the article where Matt Miller implied he was against alts. The Day Jobs pretty much promoted alt-itis.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 26, 2014, 05:22:11 AM
Yes I admit, I had a cat toon on Virtue.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 26, 2014, 05:31:36 AM
Yes I admit, I had a cat toon on Virtue.

This isn't a confessional, you know... :p

There's nothing wrong with having a cat girl, anyway! I had one, and she was awesome!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 26, 2014, 05:34:10 AM
Zwill was a blast, also yes he did get DCed in that raid :(

Also on an ironic note, your mention of the day jobs makes me chuckle about the article where Matt Miller implied he was against alts. The Day Jobs pretty much promoted alt-itis.

Is "Positron hated alts" going to become the next "power customization is impossible?"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MegaWatt on September 26, 2014, 06:27:27 AM
Alts were good for business, dunno why Positron would have hated them.....i mean it kept people playing for freaking ever like me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amrobinson on September 26, 2014, 06:33:00 AM
Champions or CoH secrets? Not that Champions had many secrets other than maybe the hodge-podge of lore that was constantly being revised anyway. The rest of the system was pretty clear, so i'm guessing CoH secrets.
Still, it's pretty cool that he was involved with CoH. Did he have any involvement with CO?
Because if you watch videos of staff-based martial arts there are actual moves very much like that. As a martial art staff fighting tends to be rather acrobatic and dance-like, much like capeoira.

CoH secrets, of course.  Champions is pretty much an open book (ouch!), and I wrote several of those anyway.

Pretty sure George never had anything to do with CO.

They did buy Demon and Primus off of me, though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 26, 2014, 07:50:25 AM
Alts were good for business, dunno why Positron would have hated them.....i mean it kept people playing for freaking ever like me.

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.poetryfoundation.org%2Fharriet%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F08%2Fpicard-facepalm.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 26, 2014, 08:43:51 AM
I'm sorry EXACTLY where does Positron/Matt Miller say... he HATES alts? I keep seeing this on the forums...and I don't remember him ever saying he hates alts....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 26, 2014, 09:15:08 AM
I'm sorry EXACTLY where does Positron/Matt Miller say... he HATES alts? I keep seeing this on the forums...and I don't remember him ever saying he hates alts....

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.troll.me%2Fimages%2Fancient-aliens-guy%2Fmy-theory-aliens.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 26, 2014, 11:07:05 AM
I'm sorry EXACTLY where does Positron/Matt Miller say... he HATES alts? I keep seeing this on the forums...and I don't remember him ever saying he hates alts....

I have been wondering this my self.  Did he actually say he hated alts, or that he wanted to give players more of a reason to play their main.  Because I remember devs talking about that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: thunderforce on September 26, 2014, 11:09:46 AM
I have been wondering this my self.  Did he actually say he hated alts, or that he wanted to give players more of a reason to play their main.  Because I remember devs talking about that.

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/7676/Altism.html

"Problem", describing things that subtly guide you away from creating alts as features, etc.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Clave Dark 5 on September 26, 2014, 11:26:09 AM
http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/7676/Altism.html

Man, somehow I want to dislike the guy now, ha ha! 

I could argue against his points, but really, why bother over a year-old article?  Besides, I think I'd be preaching to the choir here.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 26, 2014, 11:30:46 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ryuplaneswalker on September 26, 2014, 11:35:23 AM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.troll.me%2Fimages%2Fancient-aliens-guy%2Fmy-theory-aliens.jpg)

-1,000,000 Influence for NOT having Nemesis in that Meme!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 26, 2014, 12:38:07 PM
I think that what Posi was saying is that single character investment is generally a more powerful motivator for people than "and now you do the same thing all over again, just with a different character!"

This will not always be the case. Some people love alting. But I would bet that for the majority (possibly even the vast majority) of people, being able to progress a single character, because there is always something to do on that character, is preferable.

Or, to put it another way, before Inventions, how many people had "finished" the game, and quit because they didn't want to alt? Same question before Incarnates. Even CoH's legendary retention figures could have been better.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 26, 2014, 12:52:07 PM
"Endgame" content, and things to keep you playing your "main" forever is certainly a good thing.

It was something that CoH definitely lacked for the longest time.  I might even argue that they really
hadn't gotten there with the Incarnate stuff.

However, focusing on "endgame" to the exclusion of a rather large segment of your existing population
(ie altoholics) is just as bad as ignoring the other segment that wants to stay with a "main".

I realize there's only so many hours in a day, and only so much can go into an issue at a time, but the
last several issues all really felt to me like the devs were (more or less) done with the "under 50"
content and focused entirely on new raids (and really ONLY raids, given the rather insulting bone being
thrown for solo/small team players who wanted to Incarnate).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 26, 2014, 01:30:46 PM
I never got that Posi hated altoholics from that article. The column was about the insiders perspective on creating MMOs. I can definitely see where the people who are putting all the work into creating all that content, from level 1 to the level cap, and trying to make sure that all of it is of the same quality are going to be a little irked when the bulk of the players are spending the majority of their time in the pre-lvl20 areas. It may have played into their thinking on changing the tutorial and beginning contacts and missions. I know that there are games that I play where it just isn't all that fun to repeat content until I'm into the teens or low 20s. Doesn't exactly encourage me to roll up a different kind of character and see how it handles the missions/quests.

That said, if you're developing a game, you want to keep your community in mind, once you see a trend, while developing follow on content. Obviously, keeping everyone happy is impossible, but Paragon did a pretty good job, overall, of giving us what we liked. Everyone's going to have missteps, but they kept us happy, or we wouldn't be here, now, nearly two years after the game shut down!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hobgoblin Steve on September 26, 2014, 01:31:33 PM
I'll never forget the guy who played a character called "Killer Whale", it was a invul/ss tank and he rp'd it perfectly. I only remember seeing him for the first six months or so of coh, I remember there were lots of rumours of him being banned for erp or something along those lines. I also hazily remember something being said of him confronting the devs on the forum about a major issue with the game that also may have lead to his banning. If anyone remembers or knows what actually happened PLEASE let me know, I'd love to hear about that just to put my misinformed nostalgia at ease.

Also yes Panda people existed, although the cat people definitely won the numbers game. Holy yiff balls were there always a lot of car rp'rs...


how does one RP a whale?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 26, 2014, 01:43:55 PM

how does one RP a whale?

VERY Carefully
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 26, 2014, 02:30:54 PM
I wonder how many cat girls mistakenly took the whale for a fish, and tried to eat him...

You know what? I DON'T want to know.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hobgoblin Steve on September 26, 2014, 02:35:18 PM
I wonder how many cat girls mistakenly took the whale for a fish, and tried to eat him...

You know what? I DON'T want to know.

Mammal.


(whatever!)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on September 26, 2014, 02:41:16 PM
VERY Carefully

Pretend to be Mako's mother.

HIYOOOOOOOOOOO
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 26, 2014, 02:52:24 PM

how does one RP a whale?

Well, judging by the psychic whale incident shortly after the EU/US communities merged, you RP it as far away as possible from certain players! (Unless you want a sword through the head...)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 26, 2014, 02:59:57 PM

how does one RP a whale?

I don't know, but I did spend a lot of mental time trying to figure out what kinds of superpowers a half-man, half-seacow would have, so I could make the story of Subject O, an experiment in creating animal/human hybrids. He was going to be O--the Humanatee!

...please don't hurt me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 26, 2014, 03:10:59 PM
Never had a single problem with Vista. Ran just fine on my ancient Pentium3 (Northwood) 3ghz CPU with 4 gig ram and an old Radeon 8500.  To steal from Apple (who know all about doing that), everything -just worked- :p

Did you buy a "pre-made" system? Just wondering, because I built all my desktop systems for about 10 years (and had to hope that the latest version of Windows allowed for all of those components) up to about 4 years ago when I ultimately decided to use Laptops from then on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 26, 2014, 03:34:55 PM
Did you buy a "pre-made" system? Just wondering, because I built all my desktop systems for about 10 years (and had to hope that the latest version of Windows allowed for all of those components) up to about 4 years ago when I ultimately decided to use Laptops from then on.

I wouldn't have a pre-built if you gave it to me.  I build my own, always have post-Amiga days. Hell, I built my first in 1980, the Sinclair ZX80 DIY kit. A bag of components, a circuit board, some instructions, and a soldering iron! ;)

Those where the days when building your own REALLY meant, building your own! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 26, 2014, 03:48:59 PM
Well, judging by the psychic whale incident shortly after the EU/US communities merged, you RP it as far away as possible from certain players! (Unless you want a sword through the head...)

I must have been otherwise occupied during the 'psychic whale incident'.

Do tell!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 26, 2014, 03:51:14 PM
I don't know, but I did spend a lot of mental time trying to figure out what kinds of superpowers a half-man, half-seacow would have, so I could make the story of Subject O, an experiment in creating animal/human hybrids. He was going to be O--the Humanatee!

...please don't hurt me.

Sorry, but pleas notwithstanding, you really need to be hurt for that :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 26, 2014, 03:53:08 PM
I must have been otherwise occupied during the 'psychic whale incident'.

Do tell!

Long story short, one of our well known Union RPers decided to start off an RP thread involving a psychic whale "villain", 2 or 3 posts in to it, an American RPer dropped into the thread and shoved a dirty great sword through the whales brain, lobotomising it and killing the thread dead...

She never tried open RP on the forums again... :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 26, 2014, 05:06:58 PM
Long story short, one of our well known Union RPers decided to start off an RP thread involving a psychic whale "villain", 2 or 3 posts in to it, an American RPer dropped into the thread and shoved a dirty great sword through the whales brain, lobotomising it and killing the thread dead...

She never tried open RP on the forums again... :(

That sounds like it was funny as hell putting a"dirty great sword through the whales brain"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 26, 2014, 05:09:50 PM
That sounds like it was funny as hell putting a"dirty great sword through the whales brain"

In what way is completely killing the RP thread, funny?  It was barely getting started, when along came this completely brainless pancaking idiot, who completely and utterly ruins it for everyone.

Yeah, funny as hell.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on September 26, 2014, 05:25:20 PM
In what way is completely killing the RP thread, funny?  It was barely getting started, when along came this completely brainless pancaking idiot, who completely and utterly ruins it for everyone.

Yeah, funny as hell.

The whale had been biologically dead for years.  Chopping up the tissue all you want would reveal the whale carcass nothing more than a host for something greater.  The size of the object containing a greater, nefarious purpose.

So, there. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 26, 2014, 05:29:13 PM
The whale had been biologically dead for years.  Chopping up the tissue all you want would reveal the whale carcass nothing more than a host for something greater.  The size of the object containing a greater, nefarious purpose.

So, there.

Except that it wasn't, and it didn't. What it DID do, was greatly upset a close friend and totally put her off EVER wanting to RP with the US RPers, ever again.

All because 1 dipstick couldn't keep his ego in his pants.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 26, 2014, 05:44:50 PM
Please bear in mind that FFM is simplifying for brevity. There was at least one psychic present that was trying to communicate with the whale at the time, most of the heroes were trying to minimise public risk...

And then one person showed up and killed the whole story in one fell swoop.

It was kind of a dick move.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on September 26, 2014, 05:45:13 PM

All because 1 dipstick couldn't keep his ego in his pants.

So THAT'S the sword being discussed.  Who knew?   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 26, 2014, 05:50:47 PM
Speaking of excitement and planning for future toons . . .

Is there anywhere left with a Mid's version that doesn't have I24 changes baked into it ?

Or any way to turn off the I24 stuff in the last version of Mid's?

I never played around with the data portion of the builder and just went with each release's version.

Having just re-downloaded it [all of my CoH related stuff has gotten lost in the past 2 years, due to HDD

issues and bad timing to overwrite my backup drive.], I'm finding all the new pools and such rather distracting.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 26, 2014, 05:51:41 PM
I don't know, but I did spend a lot of mental time trying to figure out what kinds of superpowers a half-man, half-seacow would have, so I could make the story of Subject O, an experiment in creating animal/human hybrids. He was going to be O--the Humanatee!

...please don't hurt me.

Lets see, his bio would go something like this:
Mr. Oliver Limpit, a mild-mannered accountant for a large health care conglomerant, with the help of really questionable/morally ambiguous science and the love of Trichechidae Trichechus, became O--the Humanatee!

As the lone sentinel of the Florida shore, O dispenses marine justice with a swift swat of his well-trained flipper.
Ever vigilant as he munches the tender sea grasses, shoal grass, manatee grass, turtle grass, widgeon grass, sea clover, and marine algae of his aquatic protectorate.

Evil, dread the swift, silent, and signifigantly gassy justice of The Big O.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 26, 2014, 06:17:52 PM
Please bear in mind that FFM is simplifying for brevity. There was at least one psychic present that was trying to communicate with the whale at the time, most of the heroes were trying to minimise public risk...

And then one person showed up and killed the whole story in one fell swoop.

It was kind of a dick move.

While Moby was a dick  :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 26, 2014, 06:55:26 PM
Please bear in mind that FFM is simplifying for brevity. There was at least one psychic present that was trying to communicate with the whale at the time, most of the heroes were trying to minimise public risk...

And then one person showed up and killed the whole story in one fell swoop.

It was kind of a dick move.

So there wasn't anything like "the psychic whale makes the person THINK they killed him" to keep the story going? 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Gorgor on September 26, 2014, 07:08:02 PM
Not sure what's going on in this thread, but can my zombies/poison MM use a chunk of exploded rotting whale flesh as a purple I/O to boost my tier 1 zombie minions' barf attack?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 26, 2014, 07:32:25 PM
So there wasn't anything like "the psychic whale makes the person THINK they killed him" to keep the story going?

I didn't read the thread in question, but what I can say is that a lot of free-flow RP story telling is about creating a safe environment to explore ideas.  If I was a participant in the thread, I might have attempted to do what you are implying could be done: basically declare open combat against someone actively trying to derail the story.  But at best, that's a bandaid: once the mood is spoiled in a thread like that, its spoiled permanently.  You can fight against forum turds like that, and you can even win, but you can't actually defend the thread, unless its completely populated by like-minded forum-combat-capable posters like yourself.  You can't create a safe environment by stomping on all the dangerous people in it.  At the end of the day, you've still created a war-zone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 26, 2014, 07:34:14 PM
SyFy having run out of every other type of movie is working on Catgirls Who Stare at Whales - Sharknado 3.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 26, 2014, 07:34:26 PM
I never got that Posi hated altoholics from that article.

It helps that he never said nor implied that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 26, 2014, 07:37:38 PM
I didn't read the thread in question, but what I can say is that a lot of free-flow RP story telling is about creating a safe environment to explore ideas.  If I was a participant in the thread, I might have attempted to do what you are implying could be done: basically declare open combat against someone actively trying to derail the story.  But at best, that's a bandaid: once the mood is spoiled in a thread like that, its spoiled permanently.  You can fight against forum turds like that, and you can even win, but you can't actually defend the thread, unless its completely populated by like-minded forum-combat-capable posters like yourself.  You can't create a safe environment by stomping on all the dangerous people in it.  At the end of the day, you've still created a war-zone.

Pretty much this. The asshat in question completely ruined the mood.  I tried to continue it (my char really tore into the idiot verbally), but the story was pretty much ruined.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 26, 2014, 08:21:52 PM
So THAT'S the sword being discussed.  Who knew?   ;D

Does light the whole scene in a much more disturbing way, doesn't it? <shudder>

(I'm just going to assume that Rule 34 applies and move on...)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 26, 2014, 08:25:49 PM
Yeah I didn't get the whole "hates alts" thing from that article AT ALL. To me it was more Posi talking about the uniqueness of CoH in that people wanted alts and more alts and more alts...which they could do in CoH compared to other games. To me he is actually talking about one of the things that made CoH so unique and special.... Sure he calls it a "problem" but I think he means it was something they didn't think people would do...and they weren't prepared for at first. I'm not some Posi fanboy but I truly believe people saw the word "problem" and didn't read/comprehend what he was truly saying. I look at that whole article as nothing but Posi tooting CoH's horn for giving people what they wanted and boasting about the ability to make 48 characters with the astronomical power combinations and of course the costume creator....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 26, 2014, 08:46:43 PM
Sure he calls it a "problem"

I think what a lot of people need to realize is that when some people refer to "problem," it's not as much of a negative connotation as you would think. I don't think he was referring to it as a problem as in "we need to eliminate it" as much as he was referring to it as a problem as in "it's not something we planned for and therefore might have had to come up with a solution with our systems to compensate for it."

To put it another way, they might have thought that everyone would have between 2 and 5 characters, and then everyone wound up making around 45 on average (just a guesstimation), so that became a "problem" to them in the sense that maybe it was something they had to adjust to--not "create a cure for."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 26, 2014, 09:02:30 PM
Please bear in mind that FFM is simplifying for brevity. There was at least one psychic present that was trying to communicate with the whale at the time, most of the heroes were trying to minimise public risk...

And then one person showed up and killed the whole story in one fell swoop.

It was kind of a dick move.

I am not dis-agreeing that it was a bit of a dick move.  There is no reason for some one to ruin the fun of others just because its not their kind of fun.  However, you can't let a troll win so easily.  Have it either work in your favor, or re-write, or because it was CoH and based on comic books you have the best and my personal favorite excuse for re-writing stories.  Time travel and parallel dimension's.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 26, 2014, 09:03:27 PM
Does light the whole scene in a much more disturbing way, doesn't it? <shudder>

(I'm just going to assume that Rule 34 applies and move on...)

/me tuts

Such dirty minds you lot, honestly!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 26, 2014, 09:04:47 PM
I am not dis-agreeing that it was a bit of a dick move.  There is no reason for some one to ruin the fun of others just because its not their kind of fun.  However, you can't let a troll win so easily.  Have it either work in your favor, or re-write, or because it was CoH and based on comic books you have the best and my personal favorite excuse for re-writing stories.  Time travel and parallel dimension's.

If it had been a troll, it would have been easy. It wasn't... It was actually someone who was a known RPer...  I won't name names though.  As Arcana said earlier though, he totally ruined the mood.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 26, 2014, 09:23:38 PM
I cannot count how many times the roleplaying mood was spoiled for me in game.  But I cannot count how many more times I found it was in CO.  And it's always someone whos especially and annoyingly biased in some way.  Most often in CO I found people like roleplaying magic characters as 100% invincible vs technology.  Not joking.  It was aggravating at best.  It could even be killed by the person who doesn't like characters more powerful than their own in some way or another or simply wants to have their own plots go full run-away.  I just cannot count how many times.

Honestly I stopped rping in CO 90% of the time because I felt the game didn't allow for any serious plots.  Even more-so when the game environment itself treats you like a mary sue, which encourages alot of people in CO to roleplay just that.  I remember one tool who's character was supposedly related to both Dr. Destroyer AND Viper..........yeah.....no sense...at...all.....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 26, 2014, 09:32:05 PM
/me tuts

Such dirty minds you lot, honestly!

We're American. ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 26, 2014, 09:53:38 PM
I think what a lot of people need to realize is that when some people refer to "problem," it's not as much of a negative connotation as you would think. I don't think he was referring to it as a problem as in "we need to eliminate it" as much as he was referring to it as a problem as in "it's not something we planned for and therefore might have had to come up with a solution with our systems to compensate for it."

To put it another way, they might have thought that everyone would have between 2 and 5 characters, and then everyone wound up making around 45 on average (just a guesstimation), so that became a "problem" to them in the sense that maybe it was something they had to adjust to--not "create a cure for."

Having more players than you've scaled your servers for is a problem; that doesn't mean any MMO developer would hate to have that problem.

The interactivity level between the players and the developers also created lots of other problems, and yet they continued to encourage it.  But there were lots of problems associated with it that were fairly unique to City of Heroes.  A common problem that surrounded that was that players would read far more into what was said than the devs actually meant, sometimes in ways difficult to predict ahead of time.  Case in point.  Then that misperception would sometimes dog the devs indefinitely.

When Matt wrote his article explaining the issues with the AE that required the devs take action to curb the worst abuses, there was a contingent of players that tried to characterize his article as "angry" and the devs response as "vengeful" on his part specifically.  This despite the fact that Positron displayed no anger in the post, and was not involved in the mechanics of the character freeze at all.  I tried repeatedly to explain -to  the best extent I felt was within my purview - precisely what happened there, but no one would listen.  But because of an operator error who was not involved in the nature of the character banning at all, conspiracy theories persisted almost certainly to this day.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 26, 2014, 09:56:17 PM
We're American. ;)

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i1.kym-cdn.com%2Fphotos%2Fimages%2Ffacebook%2F000%2F064%2F320%2Famerica-f-yeah-motivational-escalator.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 26, 2014, 10:01:06 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i1.kym-cdn.com%2Fphotos%2Fimages%2Ffacebook%2F000%2F064%2F320%2Famerica-f-yeah-motivational-escalator.jpg)
I see you a picture and raise you a video :D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R5A0pg4oN8
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pherdnut on September 26, 2014, 10:03:27 PM
I don't know, but I did spend a lot of mental time trying to figure out what kinds of superpowers a half-man, half-seacow would have, so I could make the story of Subject O, an experiment in creating animal/human hybrids. He was going to be O--the Humanatee!

...please don't hurt me.

I like how the severity of awfulness is actually also lamented by the pun itself. If there was a medal of honor for puns. You just earned it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 26, 2014, 10:20:00 PM
Having more players than you've scaled your servers for is a problem; that doesn't mean any MMO developer would hate to have that problem.

The interactivity level between the players and the developers also created lots of other problems, and yet they continued to encourage it.  But there were lots of problems associated with it that were fairly unique to City of Heroes.  A common problem that surrounded that was that players would read far more into what was said than the devs actually meant, sometimes in ways difficult to predict ahead of time.  Case in point.  Then that misperception would sometimes dog the devs indefinitely.

When Matt wrote his article explaining the issues with the AE that required the devs take action to curb the worst abuses, there was a contingent of players that tried to characterize his article as "angry" and the devs response as "vengeful" on his part specifically.  This despite the fact that Positron displayed no anger in the post, and was not involved in the mechanics of the character freeze at all.  I tried repeatedly to explain -to  the best extent I felt was within my purview - precisely what happened there, but no one would listen.  But because of an operator error who was not involved in the nature of the character banning at all, conspiracy theories persisted almost certainly to this day.

God moders(not refering to those who do so in roleplaying, but those who are over reliant on exploits to the point of being unable to do much without them) will always defend their exploits and viciously attack anyone who intends on fixing them.  So naturally these kinds of players are prone to going ballistic, and would have with the AE being fixed.  Here we had a tool that was introduced with the best intentions, to allow people to make their own content and show mmorpgs could move forward, and these douchbags came and ruined it, further setting mmorpg development backwards in a way.

Thing was if not for AE the concept would have never touched mmorpgs, which, is a genre that never gets anything new.  CoX had a lot of unique problems because it was extremely progressive as a game(not talking politics, talking in terms of moving forward in development).  It was a game that broke the trinity, it allowed for limitless numbers of tactics and was now allowing players to make their own content.  This was something that was unheard of, in mmorpgs.  Actual missions where people could fight enemies designed by players.

But MMORPG players, I blame them still, can be very narrow minded and short sighted like that.  They didn't know the intent, i'm positive they didn't.  These are players who only care about end game and max level because they never play other games that are more focused on a real gameplay experience.  They just wanna raid, raid some more, if not, they just wanna pvp, pvp some more, even though there were better games for that kind of instant gratification.  They just never get it because mmorpgs had stayed in the 1990s for so long that the mentality had developed to sabotage any concept other game genres had for decades and on top of that were successful with them.  Many mmorpg players are just far to narrow minded.  I'm sure alot instantly wanted to power level the instant they heard STO and NWO were introducing player mission editors.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 26, 2014, 10:21:13 PM
I think that what Posi was saying is that single character investment is generally a more powerful motivator for people than "and now you do the same thing all over again, just with a different character!"

This will not always be the case. Some people love alting. But I would bet that for the majority (possibly even the vast majority) of people, being able to progress a single character, because there is always something to do on that character, is preferable.

Or, to put it another way, before Inventions, how many people had "finished" the game, and quit because they didn't want to alt? Same question before Incarnates. Even CoH's legendary retention figures could have been better.

I just strongly disagree, both with this and with Positron's position. His article very much smacks of a "my play style is really the right way to play" even in giving lip service to those who play differently.  He even identifies "good" and "bad" reasons to reroll, and I think his reasoning is entirely backward to my preferences. 
 
You can try and argue that he isn't saying it was really a "problem" in the way we typically use the word, but he also uses the phrases "it had become so rampant",  that it's "terrible that our focus gets split between two characters",  and that it's a "bad reason" if you're just wanting to see how that combination works.  When he adds in that "these are lessons other MMOs learned from and are subtly acting upon" and explains fixes like  preventing any real customization at character creation, it's clear he really DID see it as a "problem" and overall, a negative trait to have in an MMO.  And he makes it clear by talking about Rift's approach as a good model, which made him never want to roll an alt.

One of the things that makes many people like myself stop playing the other MMOs out there is the fact that alting really isn't useful/doesn't work.   TSW is the best City of Heroes replacement I've found, but really, once you've played through the entire game, there just isn't much to do but "raid" the same raids over and over.  And since you're doing so on the same toon, with the same powers, it gets entirely redundant.  Since that game does exactly what Positron was applauding, allowing your ONE character to fill any role, it means you don't even need to reroll to see the game from a healer's perspective, you just raid on the same character with a different build. And since people who are high end raiders tend to also be min/maxers you really end up with a bunch of carbon copy builds and never change anyway.   
 
I go back to TSW for about a week, every new moon when they release new content.  I run through it. Then I shelve it again.  That appears to be the case with most in the game, save for the few who stay around to do the end game raiding, which is, literally, the same six raids you've run the entire game.
 
City of Heroes, I ALWAYS had something to do, because players were always trying out new power combinations. Running content you'd run fifty times before, even raids, always felt a little different because your approach was based on your new character's mechanics and style.   The fact that these were ALSO much more personal since they had unique looks, etc. was only icing on the cake.
 
Most studies suggest that the average player blasts through new content in a matter of hours, not weeks.  It's simply not feasible to use "new content" as the draw to maintain a strong player base.  You have to choose between relying on:
-  end game raids for "gear" to keep them logging in, which appeals to a sizeable but limited type of player
-  a strong PVP based MMO, which appeals to a smaller pool of players (and the entire game must be built around to really work)
-  or a reason for players to keep replaying the older content, which is where alting comes in.
 
What CoH did right is focus on the last one, but not ignore the other two.
 
I submit that had City of Heroes NOT had the "problem" he describes, it would have closed down years before it did.  PvP was ALWAYS contentious in the game, and I think a super hero MMO focusing heavily on players fighting each other would be doomed to fail, since the player base likely to want to play a SuperMMO wants to feel heroic and super, and PvP tends to leave a great many players feeling neither.  Raids worked, but I know many players can't stand gear grinding, and this was actually one of the real complaints of the "End Game" Posi did introduce.  It was a raid grindfest, and like most MMOs it really was grinding for powers and gear that we didn't NEED for anything but those grinds.  They started to address that with the DA revamp and solo incarnate content.  The addition of new power sets, and then the ability to sidekick with your friends regardless of your character's levels is what kept the game feeling "fresh" for as long as it did. 
 
 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on September 26, 2014, 11:52:17 PM
Speaking of excitement and planning for future toons . . .

Is there anywhere left with a Mid's version that doesn't have I24 changes baked into it ?

Or any way to turn off the I24 stuff in the last version of Mid's?

I never played around with the data portion of the builder and just went with each release's version.

Having just re-downloaded it [all of my CoH related stuff has gotten lost in the past 2 years, due to HDD

issues and bad timing to overwrite my backup drive.], I'm finding all the new pools and such rather distracting.
how do you get the i24 version? I just downloaded it a week ago and it only has the i23 stuff. I would actually like to build based on the i24 stuff just for giggles.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 27, 2014, 01:06:06 AM
You can try and argue that he isn't saying it was really a "problem" in the way we typically use the word

He uses the word in exactly the same way I do: as something with detrimental effects that theoretically allows for a solution.

As a game designer, there are in fact good and bad reasons to reroll from a game design perspective, assuming as a game designer you have any sort of design goals whatsoever.  For example, if people are rerolling because they've lost interest in continuing to play the game with an alt, or feel the earlier parts of the game are more interesting, that suggests a failure for anyone who wants to make a game entertaining at every level.

There are of course people who think game designers aren't supposed to have any actual goals beyond serving whatever whims players demand, but the reason why no game contains that design ethic is that no one who believes it is capable of producing the effort required to make a functioning MMO.

For those that can't shift perspectives to that of the game designer or implementer rather than the player, I would recommend staying away from developer diaries.  Designers and implementers engineer things with intent and purpose.  You can get lucky and discover that they those things are even more useful in other contexts, but no good designer relies on luck or takes credit for luck.  When players find alternate uses for the things you design, you can acknowledge the fortune involved with that while also realizing it still represents a failing on your part when the original intent and purpose is discarded.  Its easy from the outside for players to believe that it should be solely up to them to decide how a game is played, but no designer who leaves their work up to chance will succeed in the long run.  Ultimately, they will fail miserably and edit themselves out of the genetic pool of the design community.

This ability to simultaneously understand the desires of the players and the fact that the game designers had to have their own design goals as well was something I tried to educate players on while the game was running, particularly when they came to me for advice in communicating their ideas to the devs.  Those who simply refused to acknowledge that the devs not only could but must have a purposeful intent to their work, those who thought that "vision" was a curse word, lets just say were consistently less successful at doing so than the rest.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 27, 2014, 01:14:13 AM
Is it possible to create a panda hero in Icon?

One of my friends on Champion had a toon called Pandamonium that looked pretty good.

I always really liked Zwill's modding. I just thought he was awesome.

Me too, he was a lot of fun!


All this talk of Pandas and Catgirls. On Champion I ran mostly Android Bunnies!

(https://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff236/thomvinson/01Angie.jpg) (http://s238.photobucket.com/user/thomvinson/media/01Angie.jpg.html)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ryuplaneswalker on September 27, 2014, 02:49:50 AM
You people and your Furry things, it is a shame I lost my COH pictures when my harddrive died...else i would show you a true animal hero...


THE SEAGULL!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 27, 2014, 03:19:48 AM
You people and your Furry things, it is a shame I lost my COH pictures when my harddrive died...else i would show you a true animal hero...


THE SEAGULL!

none can stand up to Back Alley Broiler!!!!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Excidia on September 27, 2014, 03:31:29 AM
I am not dis-agreeing that it was a bit of a dick move.  There is no reason for some one to ruin the fun of others just because its not their kind of fun.

Sure there is:  Rule 43

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: tripthicket on September 27, 2014, 04:25:15 AM
If it had been a troll, it would have been easy. It wasn't... It was actually someone who was a known RPer...  I won't name names though.  As Arcana said earlier though, he totally ruined the mood.

I bet I have a pretty good idea as to the answer, given what you've described so far, but what was this 'hero's' reaction to other RPers being upset, and your upbraiding him?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 27, 2014, 07:44:05 AM
I bet I have a pretty good idea as to the answer, given what you've described so far, but what was this 'hero's' reaction to other RPers being upset, and your upbraiding him?

It's been so long, about 5 years now! I just honestly can't remember!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 27, 2014, 08:23:15 AM
He uses the word in exactly the same way I do: as something with detrimental effects that theoretically allows for a solution.

That's precisely what I was trying to say...

There are actually some of us out here in the world that see a "problem" as a delightful opportunity to innovate.

When we see a "problem" of, say, people creating tons of alts, we don't think "people who are creating tons of alts are the problem," we think "what is a viable solution to support this unintended (but welcome) phenomenon?"

There are different ways to figure out a solution to a problem, and the solution doesn't always mean there needs to be a fix for how people prefer to play. That was (I believe) the difference between Posi and Jack--one developer saw a problem as an opportunity to innovate, and the other developer saw people's personal play preferences as the problem.

In the end though, I think most developers are just happy that people are playing their game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on September 27, 2014, 09:58:11 AM
none can stand up to Back Alley Broiler!!!!!

Sadly I don't have a screenshot of my PB with a kilt and bunny ears called Epic McPhail
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ryuplaneswalker on September 27, 2014, 10:45:34 AM
Sadly I don't have a screenshot of my PB with a kilt and bunny ears called Epic McPhail

AR/Ice Manipulation, Named...Frosty the Gunman...he was an android snowman..who went wrong and decided to punish the naughty list...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 27, 2014, 04:09:38 PM
Sure there is:  Rule 43

That isn't what rule 43 is........unless this "sword" was something else.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 27, 2014, 04:17:53 PM
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on September 27, 2014, 04:27:58 PM
Since the "rules of the Internet" are not really a single list (other than Rule 34, which tends to remain constant in all variations), you should really specify which "Rule 43" you mean. There's "You can find anything on the Internet if you are willing to look for it long enough" and "It is a delicious trap. You must hit it", both of which are also Rule 43 on their respective "Rules of the Internet" lists (and are not the only such lists - Urban Dictionary has its own, with a much cruder Rule 43 that I won't copy here, as well as another 4chan site, with its own crude Rule 43 replacing the "delicious trap" one).

But I suspect the one meant here is "The more beautiful and pure a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt it", which certainly applies to the situation in that thread.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 27, 2014, 04:30:58 PM
Since the "rules of the Internet" are not really a single list (other than Rule 34, which tends to remain constant in all variations), you should really specify which "Rule 43" you mean. There's "You can find anything on the Internet if you are willing to look for it long enough" and "It is a delicious trap. You must hit it", both of which are also Rule 43 on their respective "Rules of the Internet" lists (and are not the only such lists - Urban Dictionary has its own, with a much cruder Rule 43 that I won't copy here, as well as another 4chan site, with its own crude Rule 43 replacing the "delicious trap" one).

But I suspect the one meant here is "The more beautiful and pure a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt it", which certainly applies to the situation in that thread.

Ah that may be it then, I have always been more familiar with the crude one.  Although I would have been more taken back if he had said "rule 34" applied to it haha.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 27, 2014, 04:38:10 PM
I knew I should have learned the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 27, 2014, 04:39:05 PM
That isn't what rule 43 is........unless this "sword" was something else.
Rule 43: It is a delicious trap, you must hit it.
(https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3857/15347543286_ac50cba07f_o.gif) (https://flic.kr/p/podaVh)
Which makes a certain sort of sense, i guess.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 27, 2014, 04:43:47 PM
rule #34 - If it exists there IS porn of it on the internet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 27, 2014, 04:49:18 PM
As pointed out, I find multiple rule 43s, but only one rule 34.

Rule 43 You can find anything on the Internet if you are willing to look for it long enough.

Rule 43 The more Beautiful and Pure a thing is - the more satisfying it is to corrupt it.

Rule 43 When you can pancake, you should pancake, you never know when the next opportunity may arise.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 27, 2014, 04:55:24 PM

I just strongly disagree, both with this and with Positron's position. His article very much smacks of a "my play style is really the right way to play" even in giving lip service to those who play differently.  He even identifies "good" and "bad" reasons to reroll, and I think his reasoning is entirely backward to my preferences. 
 
You can try and argue that he isn't saying it was really a "problem" in the way we typically use the word, but he also uses the phrases "it had become so rampant",  that it's "terrible that our focus gets split between two characters",  and that it's a "bad reason" if you're just wanting to see how that combination works.  When he adds in that "these are lessons other MMOs learned from and are subtly acting upon" and explains fixes like  preventing any real customization at character creation, it's clear he really DID see it as a "problem" and overall, a negative trait to have in an MMO.  And he makes it clear by talking about Rift's approach as a good model, which made him never want to roll an alt. 
It does make it difficult to make the case that people just misunderstood one word he used when he backs it up with a bunch of other words that also suggest he didn't approve of alts.   Even if he just has a terrible grasp of the English language you would think his poor choice of wording would occasionally skew in the other direction on that topic.   When it always leans one direction, odds increase that these were his true feelings on the matter.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 27, 2014, 04:59:12 PM
As pointed out, I find multiple rule 43s, but only one rule 34.

Rule 43 You can find anything on the Internet if you are willing to look for it long enough.

Rule 43 The more Beautiful and Pure a thing is - the more satisfying it is to corrupt it.

Rule 43 When you can pancake, you should pancake, you never know when the next opportunity may arise.


Rule 43 I have also seen as a rule to justify creating an abridged series usually as a parody.  There is also the 4chan definition mentioned earlier.  I actually wasn't familiar with the most common use of Rule 43.

My favorite is the "When you can pancake" one though, that is new to me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 27, 2014, 05:06:57 PM
The earlier discussion about the media coverage of Vista and Win 8 made me think about the media coverage of the recent NFL scandals.   From the coverage in sports media, you would think the NFL fanbase is in an uproar and taking to the streets with pitchforks.   But then you see the TV ratings and you realize the only real "outrage"...is in the media itself.   The NFL fanbase doesn't actually seem to care.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/sports/football/tv-ratings-soar-amid-nfls-woes.html

My view of Vista and Win 8 however isn't actually based on any reaction from the media.   I actually don't know what "the media" is for things like that.  I never read any articles on about it.  It's not like CNN or FoxNew covers it.   My perception is 100% from friends and message boards.   I decided against moving to Vista because players on the old CoH boards didn't like it.   Something along the lines of 5-1 against it.   ...So I stuck with XP.   There are of course the few who love those OS and never have any issues at all, but I find that if there is a way to have a problem with a computer related thing...I'll get it.   When XP is working so well for me...I don't have any motivation to change.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 27, 2014, 05:10:23 PM
My favorite is the "When you can pancake" one though, that is new to me.

Thank you, I just made that one up as I was moved by the moment.  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 27, 2014, 05:13:02 PM
So I stuck with XP.   There are of course the few who love those OS and never have any issues at all, but I find that if there is a way to have a problem with a computer related thing...I'll get it.   When XP is working so well for me...I don't have any motivation to change.

You do realise XP is completely out of support now, right? No security patches, nothing.  Also, you're going to start coming across lots of apps that just won't run on it anymore.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: adarict on September 27, 2014, 05:15:49 PM
The earlier discussion about the media coverage of Vista and Win 8 made me think about the media coverage of the recent NFL scandals.   From the coverage in sports media, you would think the NFL fanbase is in an uproar and taking to the streets with pitchforks.   But then you see the TV ratings and you realize the only real "outrage"...is in the media itself.   The NFL fanbase doesn't actually seem to care.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/sports/football/tv-ratings-soar-amid-nfls-woes.html

My view of Vista and Win 8 however isn't actually based on any reaction from the media.   I actually don't know what "the media" is for things like that.  I never read any articles on about it.  It's not like CNN or FoxNew covers it.   My perception is 100% from friends and message boards.   I decided against moving to Vista because players on the old CoH boards didn't like it.   Something along the lines of 5-1 against it.   ...So I stuck with XP.   There are of course the few who love those OS and never have any issues at all, but I find that if there is a way to have a problem with a computer related thing...I'll get it.   When XP is working so well for me...I don't have any motivation to change.

With CoH and Vista, the people with the most problems were the ones with laptops. I spent a ton of time tweaking ATI drivers on Vista laptops. Thank goodness for Billzbubba. I learned more about mobility drivers than I knew existed. In any case, we were able to resolve almost every problem with Vista relating to CoH. This goes back to what is said before though, about how a lot of the problems were directly related to other developers not fixing their code until after Vista was out.
I'm ok with letting some devs off the hook. Not everyone can afford to grab the betas and split their devices time between production and betas. ATI and Nvidia have no such excuse, and made the process significantly more painful for users than it needed to be.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 27, 2014, 05:37:44 PM
Ah that may be it then, I have always been more familiar with the crude one.  Although I would have been more taken back if he had said "rule 34" applied to it haha.

What doesn't Rule 34 apply to?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 27, 2014, 05:47:40 PM
What doesn't Rule 34 apply to?

Rule 34. And Margaret Thatcher.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: houtex on September 27, 2014, 06:12:47 PM
What doesn't Rule 34 apply to?

Rule 35: The exception to Rule 34 is the citation of Rule 34.

'Course, my favorite is Rule 20: Nothing is to be taken seriously.
 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 27, 2014, 06:27:32 PM
What doesn't Rule 34 apply to?

Lol okay ya that's true.

Quote
Rule 34. And Margaret Thatcher.

Shhhh!  If the wrong person catches wind of that statement........Then rule 34 would apply in the form of Margaret Thatcher with some kinda Rule 34 embodiment.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 27, 2014, 07:16:30 PM
Lol okay ya that's true.

Shhhh!  If the wrong person catches wind of that statement........Then rule 34 would apply in the form of Margaret Thatcher with some kinda Rule 34 embodiment.

Actually, some of us on Union used that as a running gag.  My char, being a shapeshifter, could turn herself into Maggie Thatcher, wearing very little... Best not to irritate her, y'know? ;)  Well, not unless you want claw your own eyes out and your brain to shoot its way out through your ear and run for it...

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 27, 2014, 07:25:21 PM
Actually, some of us on Union used that as a running gag.  My char, being a shapeshifter, could turn herself into Maggie Thatcher, wearing very little... Best not to irritate her, y'know? ;)  Well, not unless you want claw your own eyes out and your brain to shoot its way out through your ear and run for it...

I still remember the time she showed up as Margaret Thatcher... In full Mistress of Iron leather.

My poor toon needed therapy.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 27, 2014, 07:28:06 PM
I still remember the time she showed up as Margaret Thatcher... In full Mistress of Iron leather.

My poor toon needed therapy.

And instead, got his sister Sam tromping through his brain! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 27, 2014, 08:06:25 PM
You do realise XP is completely out of support now, right? No security patches, nothing.  Also, you're going to start coming across lots of apps that just won't run on it anymore.
Oh sure....I was reminded of that a lot when it stopped.   It was almost like alarm bells were going off on my PC!   :D

But everything was going along the same as before until I recently reformated and reinstalled XP.   Now suddenly things stopped working.  I can only assume this is related to XP being non-supported now since I never had those things happen the other times I reformated.  (Like Skype won't work for me now!)

This, coupled with a potential for a new rig due to a possible return of a certain game I used to play, is making me look into it.    It seems Win 7 is the way to go.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on September 27, 2014, 08:11:26 PM
Lets see, his bio would go something like this:
Mr. Oliver Limpit, a mild-mannered accountant for a large health care conglomerant, with the help of really questionable/morally ambiguous science and the love of Trichechidae Trichechus, became O--the Humanatee!

As the lone sentinel of the Florida shore, O dispenses marine justice with a swift swat of his well-trained flipper.
Ever vigilant as he munches the tender sea grasses, shoal grass, manatee grass, turtle grass, widgeon grass, sea clover, and marine algae of his aquatic protectorate.


Nooooo, Du gong! -- Doc  tor  Dugong!


(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=venturefans.org%2Fw%2Fimages%2Fthumb%2F6%2F6c%2FDugong.png%2F250px-Dugong.png)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 27, 2014, 08:13:41 PM
Oh sure....I was reminded of that a lot when it stopped.   It was almost like alarm bells were going off on my PC!   :D

But everything was going along the same as before until I recently reformated and reinstalled XP.   Now suddenly things stopped working.  I can only assume this is related to XP being non-supported now since I never had those things happen the other times I reformated.  (Like Skype won't work for me now!)

This, coupled with a potential for a new rig due to a possible return of a certain game I used to play, is making me look into it.    It seems Win 7 is the way to go.

Well, Microsoft own Skype, and have discontinued it for all unsupported OS's.  Really, that's just the beginning of things you're going to see happening.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 27, 2014, 09:04:01 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 27, 2014, 09:20:19 PM
Oh sure....I was reminded of that a lot when it stopped.   It was almost like alarm bells were going off on my PC!   :D

But everything was going along the same as before until I recently reformated and reinstalled XP.   Now suddenly things stopped working.  I can only assume this is related to XP being non-supported now since I never had those things happen the other times I reformated.  (Like Skype won't work for me now!)

This, coupled with a potential for a new rig due to a possible return of a certain game I used to play, is making me look into it.    It seems Win 7 is the way to go.

If you're buying a brand new rig, odds are it will have Windows 8 or 8.1 preinstalled unless you're building your own from scratch.  If it does, I would recommend trying it out for yourself before scratching it down to Windows 7.  When half the population loves it and half hates it, you can't be sure which group you will fall into.  There's no harm in trying it out for yourself first and deciding first hand.  Particularly if you decide you like 8.1 Update 1, which is the version that is closest in UI to Windows 7 (you could also get something like Classic Start to get the start bar back as others have pointed out). 

If you're buying an OS directly yourself, then its more important to choose the right one to not waste money, and there I have my recommendations and others have theirs.

Although in any case, I suspect that the Win7/Win8 schism is going to be mostly resolved by Windows 9, which probably most Win7 and Win8 people will be upgrading to over the next year or three.  The trajectory of Windows 8 is such that its very likely Win9 will be much more of a metro-sprinkled Windows 7 with a better Windows 8 core and enhanced integrated features, which is probably what Windows 8 should have been in the first place.  So you'll be reexamining your desktop choice again pretty soon anyway.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 27, 2014, 11:36:11 PM
Actually, Dell and Toshiba are still selling Win7 computers.  We just bought 3x Dell PCs with Win7-64 Pro on them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 28, 2014, 12:07:21 AM
Actually, Dell and Toshiba are still selling Win7 computers.  We just bought 3x Dell PCs with Win7-64 Pro on them.

Any suggestions? I'm gunna need something when we get the game back.  ???
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 28, 2014, 01:46:21 AM
Any suggestions? I'm gunna need something when we get the game back.  ???

 build it yourself..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 28, 2014, 02:00:14 AM
Any suggestions? I'm gunna need something when we get the game back.  ???

Personally, I'd recommend against pre-built computers. Really, it depends on how skilled you are with hardware, and how much money you have to spend.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amrobinson on September 28, 2014, 03:07:56 AM
Only when context is ignored:  Take the word "terrible:"

Good reasons for making an alt: I discovered I liked something better ("this playstyle fits me better"); I want to make something that will be situationally better sometimes ("I have more fun in PvP" and "My raid needs X").

Bad reason: I have no choice ("I want to see how this top-tier talent works"); I think my choice is wrong ("everyone is playing, so I might as well too"); the game isn't appealing to me anymore ("I'm bored.")

In this paragraph Matt unambiguously provides context to the entire article.  FROM A GAME DESIGNER'S PERSPECTIVE there are good reasons for your players making a lot of alts, and bad ones.  The good ones are: the players genuinely enjoy the variety.  The bad ones are: the players feel compelled to do so because the game limits them in some way that forces the creation of alts.

Not remotely coincidentally, these arguments are exactly the same arguments the players themselves constantly presented to the devs as the basis for making game design decisions.  If this article was written by a player, asking the devs to focus on the "good" reasons why he made alts and not on the "bad" reasons why he made alts, I don't think anyone would have been parsing his words and accusing him of secretly hating alts altogether.  They wouldn't be saying that anyone who uses those words must be hiding a dislike for alts that is leaking through to his semantic choices. 

The article ends on this note:

You don't need a ouija board to guess at the implications of some of the single words Matt uses, when his whole sentences convey the idea unambiguously.

Before Incarnates came out, alts were the game. At least for me.

For everyone else, even if you only ran one character at a time, once you hit 50 you started another.
If you played for years, you ran through a fair number of alts.

Personally, I loved to come up with new character ideas, and match costumes, backgrounds and powersets to them. I didn't actually run all of them, but most.

And when a new powerset came along that I liked, I had to make a new character to try it out.

I also found out that characters I fleshed out and ran casually, I tended to go back to again and again. The few I ran in a min/max mode (running with the same few people and consistently aimed for max xp in minimum time) I never touched again once they hit 50th.

They never really grew in my imagination as real characters.


Sadly, this ends my reign as Lord Minion.

The Powers That Be (jealous of my fame, no doubt), have conspired to strip me of my exalted title, and reduce me to the rank of mere Lieutenant.

In the future, I will settle for my other title.

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.idx360.com%2Fwarlockinc%2Flordspittle.png)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 28, 2014, 03:20:00 AM
Personally, I'd recommend against pre-built computers. Really, it depends on how skilled you are with hardware, and how much money you have to spend.


I had limited skill when I built this PC.. you will need money however..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 28, 2014, 03:25:23 AM
Personally, I'd recommend against pre-built computers. Really, it depends on how skilled you are with hardware, and how much money you have to spend.

build it yourself..

Fair enough.

I have enough savvy to put it together, but not enough to know what goes with what off the top of my head.

I guess I'm asking where I might look to get an understanding of which components are compatible with each other.
Just a nudge in the right direction, plz. Tyvm.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pep Rally on September 28, 2014, 03:37:54 AM
This is a good start.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPIXAtNGGCw

Depending on how much you want to spend, this is a good guide broken up into price ranges:

cpu:   http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106.html

gpu:  http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html

Check google to see cheapest prices. Usually newegg is best for everything(look for rebates) except maybe Microcenter for their CPU/Motherboard combo deals.

If you are gonna go cheap, I'd probably get the  AMD FX-6300 cpu(overclockable), then the most expensive AMD video card you can afford in the R7/R9-series.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tyger42 on September 28, 2014, 03:38:24 AM
Personally, I'd recommend against pre-built computers. Really, it depends on how skilled you are with hardware, and how much money you have to spend.

Building it yourself is still the better option, no doubt, but prebuilts have closed the gap quite a bit...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Takinalis on September 28, 2014, 03:44:01 AM
Screw MTV. I want my CoH!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 28, 2014, 04:14:10 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 28, 2014, 04:21:45 AM
Thanks HEATSTROKE, Pep Rally this is exactly what I needed.  :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on September 28, 2014, 04:48:28 AM
I kind of cheat here.  I'm primarily a software person, not a hardware person.  But I have a friend who builds custom PCs for a living, so whenever I want something new, I just go over it with him and he builds it for me.  The custom gaming PC I'm on now was built by him and it's pretty darn good.  I commissioned it about a year ago to be able to run The Sims 3 in "ultra mode."  I specify the minimum processor, RAM, and hard drives I want, then let him do the rest.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fable on September 28, 2014, 05:35:52 AM
I'm just going to chime in on the modular PSU, don't go any other route. They're so flippn' awesome. Gone are days of a giant bundle of cord coming off it, half of which you don't even need.

My first PC ever was a Dell that my grandma financed for me (bless her heart). After that though I've built every other one I've owned. Its really easy tbh. Its basically plug and go.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 28, 2014, 05:42:59 AM
I'm just going to chime in on the modular PSU, don't go any other route. They're so flippn' awesome. Gone are days of a giant bundle of cord coming off it, half of which you don't even need.

They're affordable enough, and most of the high quality manufactures have them standard now a days..So there's no real reason not to. I love mine.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Reiraku on September 28, 2014, 06:13:17 AM
I'll never forget the guy who played a character called "Killer Whale", it was a invul/ss tank and he rp'd it perfectly. I only remember seeing him for the first six months or so of coh, I remember there were lots of rumours of him being banned for erp or something along those lines. I also hazily remember something being said of him confronting the devs on the forum about a major issue with the game that also may have lead to his banning. If anyone remembers or knows what actually happened PLEASE let me know, I'd love to hear about that just to put my misinformed nostalgia at ease.

Also yes Panda people existed, although the cat people definitely won the numbers game. Holy yiff balls were there always a lot of car rp'rs...

Killer Whale ended up leaving the game when in-game ads became a thing (JETER CLUTCH!). He felt it was terrible that you would have to "opt out" of them rather than "opt in".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 28, 2014, 02:17:10 PM

 :roll:

Killer Whale ended up leaving the game when in-game ads became a thing (JETER CLUTCH!). He felt it was terrible that you would have to "opt out" of them rather than "opt in".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on September 28, 2014, 02:23:31 PM
I'm just going to chime in on the modular PSU, don't go any other route. They're so flippn' awesome. Gone are days of a giant bundle of cord coming off it, half of which you don't even need.

My first PC ever was a Dell that my grandma financed for me (bless her heart). After that though I've built every other one I've owned. Its really easy tbh. Its basically plug and go.

Tried building a PC on my own once, a couple years ago.  Just didn't work out - never could get it to consistently recognize all RAM and was surprised the fan speed was controlled by software vs the motherboard.    Guess you have to have the knack - I don't.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on September 28, 2014, 02:56:35 PM
Tried building a PC on my own once, a couple years ago.  Just didn't work out - never could get it to consistently recognize all RAM and was surprised the fan speed was controlled by software vs the motherboard.    Guess you have to have the knack - I don't.

I watched the youtube videos over and over and over and over.. Once I absorbed the process it was a matter of taking my time.. my system has been running solid for a year now.. no hiccups.. unless you count when my three year old decided to download every game he could find with every possible piece of malware attached..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 28, 2014, 02:59:23 PM
I watched the youtube videos over and over and over and over.. Once I absorbed the process it was a matter of taking my time.. my system has been running solid for a year now.. no hiccups.. unless you count when my three year old decided to download every game he could find with every possible piece of malware attached..

Heh
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 28, 2014, 05:48:38 PM
Well, Microsoft own Skype, and have discontinued it for all unsupported OS's.  Really, that's just the beginning of things you're going to see happening.
Mostly I learned that I can't reformat now.  :(   Skype worked fine last week!   lol...

If you're buying a brand new rig, odds are it will have Windows 8 or 8.1 preinstalled unless you're building your own from scratch.  If it does, I would recommend trying it out for yourself before scratching it down to Windows 7.  When half the population loves it and half hates it, you can't be sure which group you will fall into.  There's no harm in trying it out for yourself first and deciding first hand.  Particularly if you decide you like 8.1 Update 1, which is the version that is closest in UI to Windows 7 (you could also get something like Classic Start to get the start bar back as others have pointed out). 
I'll be building it myself I think.   I am pretty amateur with regard to computers but still managed to build a Pro Tools rig that has worked for several years without a problem.   As Heatstroke outlined, I just read articles about building and got advice from PT users about which parts work together.  Ordered everything and put it together in an afternoon.

Forums like this are the best thing when it comes to that....if you get lost all you really have to do is ask and people will help you.

I did kinda get lucky on the Win 8 thing.   My girlfriend just got it and I got to see it in person.   Admittedly it was difficult to see the screen at times through the fog of curse words emanating from her mouth as she used it though.  She's very expressive.    8)  These days you can instantly put her into a bad mood with the magic word "Windows 8".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 28, 2014, 06:13:32 PM
I did kinda get lucky on the Win 8 thing.   My girlfriend just got it and I got to see it in person.   Admittedly it was difficult to see the screen at times through the fog of curse words emanating from her mouth as she used it though.  She's very expressive.    8)  These days you can instantly put her into a bad mood with the magic word "Windows 8".

Tell her to update to 8.1 (It's free and in the Windows Store). Then get that updated to Update 1, and install Classic Shell. You'll get a big hug from her. ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 28, 2014, 06:33:54 PM
Personally, I'd recommend against pre-built computers. Really, it depends on how skilled you are with hardware, and how much money you have to spend.

Yes, I recommend against that as well... I'd prefer to build stuff myself, but I have to be mobile a lot now, so I prefer to have a laptop. I have had horrible experiences with brands like HP, Toshiba, Lenovo, and Gateway... But, I still have two laptops from ASUS that have years under their belt and they're still running strong.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on September 28, 2014, 08:19:47 PM
I appreciate all the great info!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 28, 2014, 10:58:57 PM
Tell her to update to 8.1 (It's free and in the Windows Store). Then get that updated to Update 1, and install Classic Shell. You'll get a big hug from her. ;)
I will do that!    I'm always in the market for a hug.    ;)   Thanks.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on September 28, 2014, 11:09:50 PM
Personally, I'd recommend against pre-built computers. Really, it depends on how skilled you are with hardware, and how much money you have to spend.

I've posted here (or similar meandering threads) that a CoX-capable machine can be had for less than $200. You can spend more than this if you want, but you will not play any better because of it. I've built 3 (average cost $175), because when the game comes back, I want me AND my two sons, who also played until the end, to be able to jump right back in.

And as far as "skilled with hardware", your fellow CoX-players can and will help out. Find some tech nerd in your metro area. I've already volunteered my own services to any fellow players in or around Phoenix, AZ. We're a community, pancake it, and that's what we're supposed to do for each other.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FelixMWM on September 29, 2014, 12:25:21 AM
I will offer my services, both in PC building and deal finding in Denver, CO.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Apogee on September 29, 2014, 01:12:42 AM
I've posted here (or similar meandering threads) that a CoX-capable machine can be had for less than $200. You can spend more than this if you want, but you will not play any better because of it. I've built 3 (average cost $175), because when the game comes back, I want me AND my two sons, who also played until the end, to be able to jump right back in.

And as far as "skilled with hardware", your fellow CoX-players can and will help out. Find some tech nerd in your metro area. I've already volunteered my own services to any fellow players in or around Phoenix, AZ. We're a community, pancake it, and that's what we're supposed to do for each other.

Wow, $175?  Are you salvaging parts and OS from another computer?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pep Rally on September 29, 2014, 01:22:07 AM
I've posted here (or similar meandering threads) that a CoX-capable machine can be had for less than $200. You can spend more than this if you want, but you will not play any better because of it. I've built 3 (average cost $175), because when the game comes back, I want me AND my two sons, who also played until the end, to be able to jump right back in.

And as far as "skilled with hardware", your fellow CoX-players can and will help out. Find some tech nerd in your metro area. I've already volunteered my own services to any fellow players in or around Phoenix, AZ. We're a community, pancake it, and that's what we're supposed to do for each other.

I'm curious what kind of PC you could build with $200. I'm assuming an APU? Would it be good enough to play newer games as well(like one's that use Unreal Engine 4 for example?). 

The A8-6600k/motherboard combo at microcenter is $103, so that would leave $97 for RAM, a case(w/power supply), and  hard drive?   

I'd probably still want to at least get the newest APU, though. The A10-7850K/ASRock MB combo is $165 at  http://www.microcenter.com/site/products/amd_bundles.aspx

You'd need the ASRock board so you could use 2133 speed RAM to maximize the integrated GPU of that APU.

I bought the $90 FX-6300/Gigabyte MB combo a year ago for my sister's computer. Great for the price.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 29, 2014, 01:57:55 AM
Guys, keep in mind, he said "CoX-capable." Not "Grand Theft Auto V when it gets released next year-capable."

CoX was released 10 years ago. I guarantee you that if you can walk in Wal-Mart and buy a brand new laptop today for $350, you can certainly build a CoX-capable desktop for $200.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on September 29, 2014, 04:11:04 AM
When Coh is getting ready to be released again... I am going to have to figure something out for a new PC. I know the basics of what I want, but have NO skill whatsoever. I almost broke my last PC when I tried to put in a new video card and more RAM lol..so building my own... not a good idea for me :) Hopefully when it comes time for that I will be able to find someone here who can/will build it and ship to me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkojin on September 29, 2014, 05:14:38 AM
Not sure how effective it would be, but one idea for helping people with all this computer building is to have them set up Skype (or something similar) on their current computer, and walk them through everything through video call. Just in case there is no one they could go to locally.

Also, I also volunteer for helping with computer stuff for anyone in Steamboat Springs, CO area (or online via my suggestion).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on September 29, 2014, 05:33:02 AM
I can safely say the worst part of building any given PC is the power supply's installation.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 29, 2014, 07:59:23 AM
I can safely say the worst part of building any given PC is the power supply's installation.

I always thought it was when you discovered your case holes didn't quite line up with your motherboard.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on September 29, 2014, 10:58:28 AM
I always thought it was when you discovered your case holes didn't quite line up with your motherboard.

Close, it's actually every pancaking time you drop a screw into an inaccessible area at the bottom of the case.

Spoiler for Hidden:
EVERY TIME
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 29, 2014, 11:22:27 AM
^ You're all wrong.

The absolute WORST part of building your own PC, is turning it on for the first time.... and nothing happens!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowe on September 29, 2014, 11:57:09 AM
I've never built my own, but I did re-case my existing machine a while ago (moved it from crappy case into much nicer Cooler Master case with extra fans to help with cooling problems). And after hours of laboriously studying the photos I took of the guts to make sure they were the same afterwards, and very, very carefully moving everything across... the damn thing won't deliver POST tones. Still no idea why.

It works, though. So I try not to care.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fridgy Daiere on September 29, 2014, 12:25:50 PM
The absolute WORST part of building your own PC, is turning it on for the first time.... and nothing happens!

I must be very lucky for that never to have happened, then!  However, I have had someone bring me their computer because it wouldn't turn on (for 3 years), discover a faulty power supply, replace said power supply and reboot umpty-million times installing Windows updates with no problems.

When they got it home, it wouldn't boot.  I blame dirty power.

And now for something completely different; Happ and I were meandering through Youtube this morning and came across the original trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eHB9zxtet4) to City of Heroes.  I really like the globe model in Atlas Plaza at 3:05.  (Hint hint nudge nudge, Irish Girl!)

And also one of my favorites (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUVWnMAT5xg) from Samuraiko.  Have a great week, everyone!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on September 29, 2014, 02:00:30 PM
I really like the globe model in Atlas Plaza at 3:05.

I've often wondered why they swapped out from that frame-work globe to the solid version on live AP.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on September 29, 2014, 02:04:36 PM
I've often wondered why they swapped out from that frame-work globe to the solid version on live AP.

At a guess?  People kept getting stuck inside it?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 29, 2014, 02:51:57 PM
At a guess?  People kept getting stuck inside it?

More likely to be a performance related reason.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on September 29, 2014, 02:58:27 PM
I always thought Virtue was the home of the catgirls :D
I had a character in the Legion of Catgirls SG on Guardian, so Virtue wasn't particularly exclusive.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 29, 2014, 03:00:50 PM
At a guess?  People kept getting stuck inside it?
More likely to be a performance related reason.
i would tend to guess both. To make a hollow framework requires a lot more geometry and depending on the size of the openings you might be able to get a result like the old guard towers in various zones before doors were added.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 29, 2014, 03:04:18 PM
I had a character in the Legion of Catgirls SG on Guardian, so Virtue wasn't particularly exclusive.
Same here, actually. i don't think Virtue was especially notable for having a higher catgirl ratio. i'm almost tempted to say as a percentage of the population it was lower, but i don't actually have any numbers to back it up and being a member of the SG would almost certainly skew my personal observations.  :-[
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on September 29, 2014, 03:25:16 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=img4.wikia.nocookie.net%2F__cb20090906032000%2Ffreedomforce%2Fimages%2F2%2F2e%2FNuclearwinter.png)

http://freedomforce.wikia.com/wiki/Nuclear_Winter

Now I'm going to have to go back and shuffle through my Sentinel+ files to see how many Russian heroes/villains I fabricated for backstories.

Very early in the game, I happened to see "для" in chat; a little experimentation proved that CoH was perfectly happy to accept Unicode in chat. So I created a number of characters with foreign origins, particularly Russian/Soviet ones (Yadernii Ogon, Zabastovka Molniy, Umstvenniy Ulan, Stal'naya Deva, Obmorozheniye), and fabricated organizations and individuals to use in them, like the state-sponsored hero group Народная Армия (People's Army), heroes and villains like Генерал Зима and Красная угроза (General Winter and Red Menace), and dug around to find real research facilities that could be used to explain origins, like the I.M.Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry and the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, and made sets of Russian-language chat binds, like replacing the 'Ready!' call with 'Готов!', for a little extra characterization. I never went through and established powersets and costumes for any of the 'background' characters I created, though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on September 29, 2014, 03:29:55 PM
Same here, actually. i don't think Virtue was especially notable for having a higher catgirl ratio. i'm almost tempted to say as a percentage of the population it was lower, but i don't actually have any numbers to back it up and being a member of the SG would almost certainly skew my personal observations.  :-[
I had a cat guy on Guardian who was offered honorary membership in the Legion of Catgrls.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 29, 2014, 04:08:54 PM
When building a new PC give us your list:

1. How much is the budget
2. What will it do
3. How long do you want it to last without updating hardware
4. What Operating system?

Pay attention to the 4 main things Power, Memory, Processor, Motherboard and try to get the best you can afford and see if any have specific issues - like some Motherboards liking only certain memory.

Cpu performance:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-6.html


CPU/Motherboard/Memory combo:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1814671
Cost $1,193


Power supply/Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1837343
Cost  $175
Nice Thermaltake case and PSU


Now drives and such are up to you, what I do is buy a smaller SSD to boot from and then a larger standard drive to run game and such from it:

SSD - Crucial 256gb http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148820
Cost $111

Hard drive - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA5AD1P08389
Cost $90


Video card ASUS DirectCU II R9270X-DC2T-2GD5 Radeon R9 270X 2GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 CrossFireX Support Video Card
Cost $199


A fairly high top of the line system costing total $1769
Now you can mix and match cutting some items and raising others but this would be a very nice gaming rig that will last you quite a few years.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 29, 2014, 04:39:39 PM
To make a PC I have a website at home (unfortunately I don't have access to my home computer right) that helps you plan your PC. This website not only gives you a chart on what components you want, but will also tell you how much power you are going to use in total so you can properly buy a PSU. The website will show deals and promotions that it pulls from all websites for each part you select and if bookmarked,  it will save the choices you made and self update daily with new promotions, sales, and mail in rebates by staying on your cache or you can save the link provided. Furthermore this website gives you a timeline in how much the price of the components all will cost over time. Interestingly enough the next computer I'm making, I'm waiting till Cyber Monday to make it (for obvious reasons) would cost me less than $1,600 (at the current price, not with the Cyber Monday sales) for an iTX rig, i7 3930k, 16gig DDR3, and a EVGA 980 GTX superclocked in. Ill post this website when I get home.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on September 29, 2014, 05:25:51 PM
My first PC ever was a Dell that my grandma financed for me (bless her heart). After that though I've built every other one I've owned. Its really easy tbh. Its basically plug and go.

I still remember my first PC, an ITT Xtra -- an XT clone -- and the things I did with it. Buying a 20Mb hard drive for $400 and wondering how I'd ever have enough programs and data to fill it up. Adding an aftermarket upgrade to boost it from 4.77MHz to (IIRC) 6.8MHz, and discovering that the system had an early SIO chip (the controller for the serial port) that wouldn't run at the higher speed, so I had to pull the computer apart, unsolder the SIO chip to remove it from the motherboard, and solder in a replacement. The upgrade to a 10MHz XT clone, adding an ARLL (Advanced Run-Length Limited) controller card that would let me not quite double the space on a standard hard drive when Seagate was having reliability issues with its RLL drives. Buying a pair of AST RAMpage expanded 2Mb expanded-memory cards that I only had populated to 1.5Mb when the price of 256kb x 1 DIP RAM chips went through the roof. Having to MacGuyver what was essentially a CPU fan because the 1/4" high heat sink glued to the CPU wasn't enough to keep it cool during the summer. Coming away from a computer show with ten copies of a VGA demo on highly-reusable 3.5" 1.44Mb HD floppies when they were new and a box of ten cost $65.00...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkojin on September 29, 2014, 05:38:49 PM
For anyone doing upgrades, or just curious on what is in their current system, this is a great program to have. Totally free, and will even tell you the temp on certain areas of the system (CPU, GPU, HDD, etc).

https://www.piriform.com/speccy
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on September 29, 2014, 06:09:46 PM
Wow, $175?  Are you salvaging parts and OS from another computer?

Not really. I re-used my existing 22" monitor, and a keyboard and mouse. Everything else was acquired. Here's the basic breakdown:

$30-ish for HP mini-desktop with Intel Core Duo (2.1 to 2.4 GHz) and 1 to 4 GB RAM (has PCIx-16 slot for video card -- that's critical) (eBay)
$20-ish to upgrade from 1 to 4 GB RAM (or if it came with more Ram, the above will be higher and this lower) (eBay)
$30 for least expensive new SATAII HDD (NewEgg)
$70 for GeForce 640 GT card PCIx-16 (I got a $40 rebate one 1 of the 3) (NewEgg)
$30 for Windows 7 home premium COA (eBay), downloaded installation ISO from MS web site

Of the 3 mini-desktops I bought, 2 had CDRW/DVD-ROM combo drives and one had DVD-ROM.

I also spent $11 to get a multi-card-reader that would fit into the floppy bay (for only the one I'm keeping).

You have to know enough to get the proper RAM type for the machine, and to buy a machine with a PCIx16 slot and then a video card that goes into that type of slot. FWIW, PICx16 1.0 can almost always take 2.0 cards (which are all you can find new). Almost everything else is so standardized these days that you will be able to slap it all together and it will work.

Note that the eBay stuff was used (of course) whereas the NewEgg parts were new (HDD and video card).

I forgot $1 each for a special type of screw needed to mount the HDD into the "modular bay" of the machines. No biggy there.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 29, 2014, 06:19:56 PM
Not really. I re-used my existing 22" monitor, and a keyboard and mouse. Everything else was acquired. Here's the basic breakdown:

$30-ish for HP mini-desktop with Intel Core Duo (2.1 to 2.4 GHz) and 1 to 4 GB RAM (has PCIx-16 slot for video card -- that's critical) (eBay)
$20-ish to upgrade from 1 to 4 GB RAM (or if it came with more Ram, the above will be higher and this lower) (eBay)
$30 for least expensive new SATAII HDD (NewEgg)
$70 for GeForce 640 GT card PCIx-16 (I got a $40 rebate one 1 of the 3) (NewEgg)
$30 for Windows 7 home premium COA (eBay), downloaded installation ISO from MS web site

Of the 3 mini-desktops I bought, 2 had CDRW/DVD-ROM combo drives and one had DVD-ROM.

I also spent $11 to get a multi-card-reader that would fit into the floppy bay (for only the one I'm keeping).

You have to know enough to get the proper RAM type for the machine, and to buy a machine with a PCIx16 slot and then a video card that goes into that type of slot. FWIW, PICx16 1.0 can almost always take 2.0 cards (which are all you can find new). Almost everything else is so standardized these days that you will be able to slap it all together and it will work.

Note that the eBay stuff was used (of course) whereas the NewEgg parts were new (HDD and video card).

I forgot $1 each for a special type of screw needed to mount the HDD into the "modular bay" of the machines. No biggy there.

You'd need to be seriously careful about shenanigans.  Old equipment can have faults in them, and heck, may even be the reason people are trying to get rid of it is because its about to break, hasn't, but they know it will, so they put it on ebay or craigs list.  At least you get a new hard drive.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 29, 2014, 06:26:35 PM
I still remember my first PC, an ITT Xtra -- an XT clone -- and the things I did with it. Buying a 20Mb hard drive for $400 and wondering how I'd ever have enough programs and data to fill it up. Adding an aftermarket upgrade to boost it from 4.77MHz to (IIRC) 6.8MHz, and discovering that the system had an early SIO chip (the controller for the serial port) that wouldn't run at the higher speed, so I had to pull the computer apart, unsolder the SIO chip to remove it from the motherboard, and solder in a replacement. The upgrade to a 10MHz XT clone, adding an ARLL (Advanced Run-Length Limited) controller card that would let me not quite double the space on a standard hard drive when Seagate was having reliability issues with its RLL drives. Buying a pair of AST RAMpage expanded 2Mb expanded-memory cards that I only had populated to 1.5Mb when the price of 256kb x 1 DIP RAM chips went through the roof. Having to MacGuyver what was essentially a CPU fan because the 1/4" high heat sink glued to the CPU wasn't enough to keep it cool during the summer. Coming away from a computer show with ten copies of a VGA demo on highly-reusable 3.5" 1.44Mb HD floppies when they were new and a box of ten cost $65.00...

I had the 20 meg seagate mfm drive..at a time when 8.4 gig drives could be had for 17k$$$. buying 720 k 3.5 floppies and ising a soldering iron to make them 1.44...hercules graphics...and jumping straight to ega graphics....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on September 29, 2014, 07:05:49 PM
I had a character in the Legion of Catgirls SG on Guardian, so Virtue wasn't particularly exclusive.

Yes LoC on Guardian was a large SG.   :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 29, 2014, 07:27:49 PM
^ You're all wrong.

The absolute WORST part of building your own PC, is turning it on for the first time.... and nothing happens!

Someone I knew once turned on a PC they built for the first time and something happened: smoke came out of the power supply (turned out the PS was damaged in shipping).

That's somewhat worse than nothing happening.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 29, 2014, 07:50:31 PM
^ You're all wrong.

The absolute WORST part of building your own PC, is turning it on for the first time.... and nothing happens!

Nah, the worst part is if someone calls you under these circumstances and your required to go through a script saying this;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn2FB1P_Mn8
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 29, 2014, 08:07:00 PM
Nah, the worst part is if someone calls you under these circumstances and your required to go through a script saying this;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn2FB1P_Mn8

And if you worked IT during the 90s it was the solution to about 90% of all calls. About 8% was something not plugged in.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 29, 2014, 08:15:17 PM
And if you worked IT during the 90s it was the solution to about 90% of all calls. About 8% was something not plugged in.

Don't forget all the "The computers cup holder snapped off" complaints...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 29, 2014, 08:24:16 PM
Don't forget all the "The computers cup holder snapped off" complaints...

I think the worst case I had to deal with was someone who didn't know what the start menu was, and very frequently did something entirely differant than what I asked of her.  It took me 50 minutes to walk the woman through something that would have otherwise just took 6-10 minutes because said person was very prone to just do other things even when the instruction was very clearly stated.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 29, 2014, 08:27:58 PM
I think the worst case I had to deal with was someone who didn't know what the start menu was, and very frequently did something entirely differant than what I asked of her.  It took me 50 minutes to walk the woman through something that would have otherwise just took 6-10 minutes because said person was very prone to just do other things even when the instruction was very clearly stated.

Sounds just like my dad...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 29, 2014, 08:29:46 PM
I think the worst case I had to deal with was someone who didn't know what the start menu was, and very frequently did something entirely differant than what I asked of her.  It took me 50 minutes to walk the woman through something that would have otherwise just took 6-10 minutes because said person was very prone to just do other things even when the instruction was very clearly stated.
i worked at a place in the 90s that had a computer set up in the printer cartridge aisle so that you could look up which one you needed for your printer on your own. We had one of the keys on the keyboard labeled "any" because the signage said "Press Any Key To Begin" and it greatly reduced the number of people asking for help using the self-service system.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 29, 2014, 08:38:33 PM
i worked at a place in the 90s that had a computer set up in the printer cartridge aisle so that you could look up which one you needed for your printer on your own. We had one of the keys on the keyboard labeled "any" because the signage said "Press Any Key To Begin" and it greatly reduced the number of people asking for help using the self-service system.

Untill someone asks "wheres the any key?".  I also fixed printers alot.  In fact, about 80% of the calls I got in a recent job was printers, more printers.  A common mistake was having explorer(no one allowed anything else to be used, grrr) use shrink to fit on a thermal printer.....and the things would produce a huge black mark.  Thankfully i only had a few people who were to unintelligent to fix that, as it was easy to disable that.

Then there were the many cases of not cleaning the things out....ever...and then wondering why the paper didn't feed through because the sensor was blocked.  OR even causing a fire in the thing and then still wanting to fix it.  I could only suggest they'd want to get a new one and make sure to clean it proper, I didn't want them to try and fix it because, well, fire, :/.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 29, 2014, 08:40:25 PM
Another fun story; Instructor in class, an IT Security specialist,(and an extreeemly paranoid one) tries turning a computer on, finds it doesn't.  So he tries to check the power and everything.  Thing still won't turn on.  He decides to pull the machine out of the desk and open it up...found its hard drive was stolen.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on September 29, 2014, 08:45:53 PM
You'd need to be seriously careful about shenanigans.  Old equipment can have faults in them, and heck, may even be the reason people are trying to get rid of it is because its about to break, hasn't, but they know it will, so they put it on ebay or craigs list.  At least you get a new hard drive.

Look for offices that are unloading computers that are just out of warranty. I have a Dell mini that was new enough to be Windows 7 capable (downgraded to Windows XP) that could handle 8GB of DDR2 for under $100, but the place I worked at the time had bought something like 35 of them for $50 to $75 a piece as part of the "replacement package" when we upgraded their server and all of their desktops. (It was a big law firm in a state capitol. :) )
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ObsidianPhoenix76 on September 29, 2014, 08:55:28 PM
I had a character in the Legion of Catgirls SG on Guardian, so Virtue wasn't particularly exclusive.

I remember seeing your group members around all over the place.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 29, 2014, 08:56:18 PM
Look for offices that are unloading computers that are just out of warranty. I have a Dell mini that was new enough to be Windows 7 capable (downgraded to Windows XP) that could handle 8GB of DDR2 for under $100, but the place I worked at the time had bought something like 35 of them for $50 to $75 a piece as part of the "replacement package" when we upgraded their server and all of their desktops. (It was a big law firm in a state capitol. :) )

I'd think they'd take disposing old machines a bit more seriously.....  Because thing is, what does one do with the data on an old drive?  The military destroys the drives.  Companies should be doing that to, because even old data is still a big deal.  It takes so many hard drive wipes to really remove it.

Not to mention "slack" in some systems.

The "Slack" is filler data pulled from RAM to fill empty spots in hard drive sectors.  The file allocated to that space isn't taking up the whole space, so slack fills it in it's place.  An example would be a very small file, say a few kilobytes, only takes up a few sectors, one isn't entirely filled.  So the file system pulls data from ram, just random data, and fills it.  This is a big deal for forensics and sometimes it can contain things you don't want there.

So I really do not recommend using old hard drives, big time.  Ethically I'm hugely against it since one could easily look, even if not looking the old data could still be there....right under your nose.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 29, 2014, 09:01:08 PM

As a game designer, there are in fact good and bad reasons to reroll from a game design perspective, assuming as a game designer you have any sort of design goals whatsoever.  For example, if people are rerolling because they've lost interest in continuing to play the game with an alt, or feel the earlier parts of the game are more interesting, that suggests a failure for anyone who wants to make a game entertaining at every level.
...

For those that can't shift perspectives to that of the game designer or implementer rather than the player, I would recommend staying away from developer diaries.  Designers and implementers engineer things with intent and purpose.  You can get lucky and discover that they those things are even more useful in other contexts, but no good designer relies on luck or takes credit for luck.  When players find alternate uses for the things you design, you can acknowledge the fortune involved with that while also realizing it still represents a failing on your part when the original intent and purpose is discarded.  Its easy from the outside for players to believe that it should be solely up to them to decide how a game is played, but no designer who leaves their work up to chance will succeed in the long run.  Ultimately, they will fail miserably and edit themselves out of the genetic pool of the design community.

Those who simply refused to acknowledge that the devs not only could but must have a purposeful intent to their work, those who thought that "vision" was a curse word, lets just say were consistently less successful at doing so than the rest.

 
I studied both design communication and also rhetoric quite a bit in my undergrad Professional/Technical Writing degree, and my original Thesis for my Masters in Professional Writing was specifically on design decisions in an MMO (relating to communication and new user experiences).
 
I have no problem at all recognizing that designers and players often have different, sometimes opposing, goals.  That being said, in Matt's article his rhetoric clearly implies a very -strong- feeling of dissatisfaction with the desire to create alternate characters in CoH users.  It goes even farther, at times, than dissatisfaction into outright disapproval. 
 
Look at your example of a "failure" or "bad" reason to roll and alt from a design perspective.  It closely alligns to one of Matt's: the desire by a player to reroll "because they've lost interest in continuing to play the game with an alt."  This makes very little sense, from a design standpoint.  It suggests that every player's experience, regardless of archetype choice, powerset choice, etc. be exactly similar. That's the only way, from a design standpoint, you could hope to prevent human users from ever desiring to try another "choice."  Yet if that were the case there would be no need for archetypes or power variety in game in the first place.  Simply make all changes cosmetic and be done with it, So there's never any reason for a user to wonder what the game is like from another set of choices.  That, or allow every single player to have every single option on every single toon in the first place. The second option is actually the one Matt mentions admiring in Rift's design.  It was also the design intention behind The Secret World.
 
If your goal IS to allow players to experience different playstyles and experiences,  then by nature your goal ALSO includes the desire for each playstyle or experience to have benefits and uniqueness.  In a system like that, where the design decision included "differences", then the eventual satisfaction with achievement in one experience or playstyle naturally lends itself to desire experiencing others, as well. That's simply recognizing human behavior in your design choices, and is a direct result of your intended goals. 
 
I would argue that the reason that alts were so prevalent in CoH is precisely because the Devs had such a strong desire, from launch on (I know beta was different) to make sure that the game offered an incredible amount of variety beyond just its amazing cosmetic variation, and each one offered something worth experiencing.  This WAS the intended design.   I think that has been obvious since launch, demonstrated in the decisions to allow multiple character slots at launch, the continuous launch of new power sets which could only be experienced via rolling entirely new characters, and even with the launch of Epic and Heroic Archetypes, which actually REWARDED you for achieving a certain level with an unlocked alt you would actually need to reroll to experience.  Enticing players to want to roll alts was a key part of the design of City of Heroes from at LEAST launch on, not some side effect of a mistake on the devs' part.
 
Regardless. my point was that it's entirely understandable that many players took his article to mean he didn't like Alts, and thought a good MMO would really have little to no need for them, given both his rhetorical structure and diction in that article.  Maybe it was just poorly written and wasn't what was intended, but to pin that on the readers instead of the writer is....misguided.
 

 

 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pengy on September 29, 2014, 09:18:02 PM
I've often wondered why they swapped out from that frame-work globe to the solid version on live AP.

Because Atlas was a large sphere. He can't be accurately depicted as just his bones.

The guy is Atlas's sidekick, Bowling Man.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 29, 2014, 09:38:06 PM

 
I studied both design communication and also rhetoric quite a bit in my undergrad Professional/Technical Writing degree, and my original Thesis for my Masters in Professional Writing was specifically on design decisions in an MMO (relating to communication and new user experiences).
 
I have no problem at all recognizing that designers and players often have different, sometimes opposing, goals.  That being said, in Matt's article his rhetoric clearly implies a very -strong- feeling of dissatisfaction with the desire to create alternate characters in CoH users.  It goes even farther, at times, than dissatisfaction into outright disapproval. 
 
Look at your example of a "failure" or "bad" reason to roll and alt from a design perspective.  It closely alligns to one of Matt's: the desire by a player to reroll "because they've lost interest in continuing to play the game with an alt."  This makes very little sense, from a design standpoint.  It suggests that every player's experience, regardless of archetype choice, powerset choice, etc. be exactly similar. That's the only way, from a design standpoint, you could hope to prevent human users from ever desiring to try another "choice."  Yet if that were the case there would be no need for archetypes or power variety in game in the first place.  Simply make all changes cosmetic and be done with it, So there's never any reason for a user to wonder what the game is like from another set of choices.  That, or allow every single player to have every single option on every single toon in the first place. The second option is actually the one Matt mentions admiring in Rift's design.  It was also the design intention behind The Secret World.
 
If your goal IS to allow players to experience different playstyles and experiences,  then by nature your goal ALSO includes the desire for each playstyle or experience to have benefits and uniqueness.  In a system like that, where the design decision included "differences", then the eventual satisfaction with achievement in one experience or playstyle naturally lends itself to desire experiencing others, as well. That's simply recognizing human behavior in your design choices, and is a direct result of your intended goals. 
 
I would argue that the reason that alts were so prevalent in CoH is precisely because the Devs had such a strong desire, from launch on (I know beta was different) to make sure that the game offered an incredible amount of variety beyond just its amazing cosmetic variation, and each one offered something worth experiencing.  This WAS the intended design.   I think that has been obvious launch, demonstrated in the decisions to allow multiple character slots at launch, the continuous launch of new power sets which could only be experienced via rolling entirely new characters, and even with the launch of Epic and Heroic Archetypes, which actually REWARDED you for achieving a certain level with an unlocked alt you would actually need to reroll to experience.  Enticing players to want to roll alts was a key part of the design of City of Heroes from at LEAST launch on, not some side effect of a mistake on the devs' part.
 
Regardless. my point was that it's entirely understandable that many players took his article to mean he didn't like Alts, and thought a good MMO would really have little to no need for them, given both his rhetorical structure and diction in that article.  Maybe it was just poorly written and wasn't what was intended, but to pin that on the readers instead of the writer is....misguided.
 

 

 

Thats often why I say CoX was a game that could truely be called an mmorpg.  Because it gave such a huge variety of powersets and supported to many playstyles from the onset.  The game had tremendous replayability for it.  I didn't think altitus was necessarily bad.  I did know some people who had so many alts they never got to 50, but I actually had a modest number of 50s and had some altitus myself.

But see, I think Matt was trying to still be the traditional mmorpg developer.  Most traditional mmorpgs, your discouraged from alts, severely, as you only have a limited number of playstyles, and then they just keep raising the level limit.  Replayability in these games is entirely from new content, rather than playing through content with a different playstyle.  Because 3-4 classes often usually is not actually that strong in replayability.  Even less so in a team game, just changes what you do in a team at times.  CoX however you had dozens of combinations of powersets.  So even as a team game, you actually found your tactics changed and the team you wanted to be in changed somewhat with that to at times.  A fire/kin corruptor for instance will want a team with solid defense buffs.  A staff fighting/super reflex scrapper on the other hand wouldn't care so much for defense buffs, he'd want resistance buffs from others.

But most mmorpgs, they want you to have only one other identity, the identity of the character you play.  They try to keep you attached to that one character that you spend so much time investing in.  Its like they want to try and be a second life, but thats actually very poor for replayability.  But MMORPGS see use the carrot on the stick approach to keep players playing, and had done that for a long time.  So instead of trying a new character and seeing if something would play differently, they want you to just keep trying for the carrot, which imo hurts the incentive for lower level stuff to develop.

Thats, kind of why I dropped the rpg from mmo when I speak of a normal mmorpg, I sometimes use the term mmohtg because they just, forget what rpg really means or why for example people may play baldurs gate 2-3 times with different characters and party members.  Or why I for example love new vegas so much on the side, and why I also played skyrim so many times and even played fallout 3 quite a few times(no where near as much as new vegas or skyrim though).  Or even oblivion, which I played a good number of times to(breaking it with various combos of magic/thievery or magic/combat and seeing how taking a few different schools changed the game, especially when using KCAS).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: GamingGlen on September 29, 2014, 10:41:29 PM
i worked at a place in the 90s that had a computer set up in the printer cartridge aisle so that you could look up which one you needed for your printer on your own. We had one of the keys on the keyboard labeled "any" because the signage said "Press Any Key To Begin" and it greatly reduced the number of people asking for help using the self-service system.

When I heard of this issue, I then changed any programs I worked needing that kind of input to have "Press a key".  Issue solved.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 29, 2014, 11:03:27 PM
Here is the website I was referencing to earlier

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/

This is the computer I'm going to make xD

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/j2dcBm
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 29, 2014, 11:24:03 PM
Thats often why I say CoX was a game that could truely be called an mmorpg.  Because it gave such a huge variety of powersets and supported to many playstyles from the onset.  The game had tremendous replayability for it.  I didn't think altitus was necessarily bad.  I did know some people who had so many alts they never got to 50, but I actually had a modest number of 50s and had some altitus myself.

But see, I think Matt was trying to still be the traditional mmorpg developer.  Most traditional mmorpgs, your discouraged from alts, severely, as you only have a limited number of playstyles, and then they just keep raising the level limit. 

 
I totally agree with you on this.  Like I said, I don't think Matt was -wrong- to say what he said, though I very much disagree with his conclusions, but I do think it presented alting in a way that was easily understood to be a very serious negative, even though he gave lip service to "but don't get me wrong, I love you guys." 
 
I also think MMOs need to look at this from a new perspective.  Most evidence suggests that players blast through new content in a matter of days, some just hours, others weeks.  This simply ISN'T a sustainable way to keep players' interest without forcing them to "grind", which turns off a sizeable number of players.
 
You really need to balance replayability and differentiation with continued new content. In short, you want to really try to appeal to as many types of players as you can, and I think CoH did an excellent job at that, once they introduced Incarnate content, even though I don't think it was perfect by any means.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 29, 2014, 11:41:02 PM
Look for offices that are unloading computers that are just out of warranty.

Universities are another good place; at least once upon a time most had surplus sales via their property management departments of old computers and equipment. They may have started to outsource this sort of thing since the last time I spent any significant amount of time at a university, though (last worked for one over 6 years ago)

EDIT: Also, publicsurplus.com is a good place to look.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 29, 2014, 11:44:07 PM
I also think MMOs need to look at this from a new perspective.  Most evidence suggests that players blast through new content in a matter of days, some just hours, others weeks.  This simply ISN'T a sustainable way to keep players' interest without forcing them to "grind", which turns off a sizeable number of players.

But by the same token, "grinding" is exactly what a lot of players look for. It is not a coincidence that the most successful MMO in the history of the world is one that explicitly encourages you to reach the level cap quickly and then spend weeks and months and years working at tiny, incremental improvements to the efficacy of your character. :) It is something that a lot of players look for, and I have first-hand experience of trying to convince people to come from EQ or WoW during the pre-Incarnate days only to be asked, "But what do you do once you hit 50?" Quite literally, they had already mentally skipped the entire leveling process in their heads as inconsequential and wanted to know what the next step was. And when told that you started over again at 1 with a different character, they lost interest in even trying the game.

I understand that everyone here has a hard time wrapping their heads around that, myself included. But we are a self-selected audience of people who wanted what CoH was selling. The larger world of "MMO players" wanted endgame content, and Positron recognized that and gave it to them. I don't think he was mistaken, either in recognizing that deficiency in the game or in working to fix it. If anything, I think he was about twenty issues too late.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 29, 2014, 11:49:17 PM
But by the same token, "grinding" is exactly what a lot of players look for. It is not a coincidence that the most successful MMO in the history of the world is one that explicitly encourages you to reach the level cap quickly and then spend weeks and months and years working at tiny, incremental improvements to the efficacy of your character. :)

...

I understand that everyone here has a hard time wrapping their heads around that, myself included. But we are a self-selected audience of people who wanted what CoH was selling. The larger world of "MMO players" wanted endgame content, and Positron recognized that and gave it to them. I don't think he was mistaken, either in recognizing that deficiency in the game or in working to fix it. If anything, I think he was about twenty issues too late.

 
But I addressed that point, exactly, and said that a wise designer tries to maintain as wide a base as possible, appeal to "grinders", "alters", "RPers" etc. as much as possible.  City of Heroes was doing this fairly well.
 
And lets face it, while WoW had success with the grind, most of Blizzards other attempts to recreate WoW have been less than successful, even when incorporating such established communities as Star Wars fans. 
 
WoW was an outlier in many ways, and as you point out, WoW pretty much has the "grind" community down pat.  Would a developer of a new/competing MMO be wise to try and dip in to WoW's established base, or try to appeal to another base that isn't as interested in the "grind"?  There's not right answer to that, but it does warrant some thought. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 29, 2014, 11:54:14 PM

 
I totally agree with you on this.  Like I said, I don't think Matt was -wrong- to say what he said, though I very much disagree with his conclusions, but I do think it presented alting in a way that was easily understood to be a very serious negative, even though he gave lip service to "but don't get me wrong, I love you guys." 
 
I also think MMOs need to look at this from a new perspective.  Most evidence suggests that players blast through new content in a matter of days, some just hours, others weeks.  This simply ISN'T a sustainable way to keep players' interest without forcing them to "grind", which turns off a sizeable number of players.
 
You really need to balance replayability and differentiation with continued new content. In short, you want to really try to appeal to as many types of players as you can, and I think CoH did an excellent job at that, once they introduced Incarnate content, even though I don't think it was perfect by any means.

I tried playing CO till a few months ago, the numerous things they did wrong drove me away.  Of the three and a half thousand hours I played, I could say I only fully enjoyed 20% of that.  Because nothing new would come along, then they only did end game.  I tried a variety of playstyles, and found the game just got to boring, I was spending more time trying to roleplay and even then, I didn't feel I was doing anything.  The game felt more and more shallow as playstyles were removed, rather than added.  I honestly began feeling I was wasting my time since anything I did would get nerfed to near uselessness.

The other 80% of my time in CO?  Just being logged in, watching youtube videos and maybe roleplaying.  Buuut mostly watching youtube videos while I talked with others.

I was playing the same build over and over again when the dodge nerf came and eventually, I began to fall asleep while actually playing the game and while fighting mobs.  The game got so boring for me.

In fact I actually began playing skyrim, more, and far more, and dreaded logging on to CO for roleplaying.

City of heroes?  I would not be surprised if I had about 7000 hours, easily, and enjoyed 95% of it.  I wish steam would display that, but I was always playing different builds all the time in that game.  From the year 2008 to 2012 I had logged more hours than I can count.  I would play so much in my freetime, go figure.  I wasn't anywhere near as fearful of being nerfed.  I was experimenting with new ideas all the time and still knew I had many more to try.  And the devs wouldn't nerf things so much all the time, only very, very rarely.  So there was no fear of being gimped like I was eventually in CO.

And the game was still challenging in a good way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 30, 2014, 12:01:22 AM
But by the same token, "grinding" is exactly what a lot of players look for. It is not a coincidence that the most successful MMO in the history of the world is one that explicitly encourages you to reach the level cap quickly and then spend weeks and months and years working at tiny, incremental improvements to the efficacy of your character. :) It is something that a lot of players look for, and I have first-hand experience of trying to convince people to come from EQ or WoW during the pre-Incarnate days only to be asked, "But what do you do once you hit 50?" Quite literally, they had already mentally skipped the entire leveling process in their heads as inconsequential and wanted to know what the next step was. And when told that you started over again at 1 with a different character, they lost interest in even trying the game.

I understand that everyone here has a hard time wrapping their heads around that, myself included. But we are a self-selected audience of people who wanted what CoH was selling. The larger world of "MMO players" wanted endgame content, and Positron recognized that and gave it to them. I don't think he was mistaken, either in recognizing that deficiency in the game or in working to fix it. If anything, I think he was about twenty issues too late.

I don't even consider those players rpg players because of that.  They have gotten into their heads that end game and more "power" and more "power" is the be all end all.  Honestly, when I think about that, this makes me think less of these kinds of players.  Because while I didn't mind incarnate content for example, I also enjoyed leveling up and seeing how other things played.  These kinds of players?  Power is the be-all-end-all and the amount of it is the be-all-end-all.  They'd make horrible story writers, though i'm sure that'd be ok for a typical anime(bad one, not good one).

In fact these kinds of players enjoy games that let them get all the way to infinite levels with ever decreasing challenge.  But they hate experimenting to, as they'll often ask other players to make the character for them, rather than figure out and think for themselves.  In fact they'll even say at times "You should only go for this build on class X" outright disregarding if you either found a build someone else came up with or you came up with on your own.  It's almost like, these people don't really know what fun is, they are more playing the games to feel powerful rather than simply have fun.  They only enjoy the power trip, but never actually, well, coming up with any ideas.

I was asked questions like that about CO.  Course, CO had only one leveling path, sigh.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 30, 2014, 12:19:17 AM
Thinking about it, I think alot of mmorpg players could use a serious deconstruction introduction to them.  One that really, really twists things on them to make them really look at themselves.  There is a game for shooters that does that, specifically targetting the call of duty player base and the general lack of story in games like call of duty.  Spec Ops: The line does that.

Heres a scene, I shared this on youtube on I think CoH Survivors, in response to someones feelings about the end of the last incarnate trial, the magistrum trial, we did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b7TaLjdXMc

This is one of the CRUELEST moments in gaming history.  Heres a breakdown;

Player gets to fire a white phosphorus motor: Oh hell yes!  Lets kill these assholes and BURN them to death!  Granted, your rail roaded into this.  This is true of the game in general, one of its main points; the lack of story in modern shooters is your being railroaded all the time.

*player begins firing morters onto "rogue" americans*

As the first part fineshes, you can see Walkers uncaring face, literally reflecting off of the screen.  This is the protagonist, mind you.

Afterwards, the game makes you walk through the carnage you caused.  You see many guys who've been skinned alive, crawling in absolute pain and the guys following Walker are horrified, Walker however is like any common player character, uncaring.

Then the cutscene that changes any sane player comes up.  A solder askes "Why?" in absolute pain.  He's dying and in agony.  Walker looks at the screen, you, the player, saying "You brought this on yourself".  He's not saying that to the soldier, he's saying that directly to you, the player.  Then the awful truth is revealed.  Don't watch the video if you got a weak stomach.

Anyhow, I think mmorpgs could seriously benefit from a deconstruction title to point out what they are really doing; they are going over the top on just giving the player more and more power but they are never, really role playing games.  Your always some side or another but your just mindlessly doing quests all the time, you never see the consequences of your actions or anything.  Heck, I'd say some of the best quests in CoX, amazingly, were perhaps the ones that were especially dark; the vigilante to villain missions.  But I think they could have been better. 

"Oh awesome, you got that increase in power, those precious experience points, now see what the cost of getting it was, you got an innocent person killed with so much pain, jackass(aimed at the reader for effect)."

*Then shows the player just what the hell he really did*

A sane person would be a little bothered.  And honestly, should be in a way with things like that.  Thats good writing for you, it really gives you emotions to think about.

The same can be said of heroic things to, players have to feel it, truely.  But then a deconstruction title wouldn't do well if it was just goody tooshoes.

Edit: Of course it'd be hard to really drive the point, one would need to be creative to.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 30, 2014, 12:47:42 AM
Regardless. my point was that it's entirely understandable that many players took his article to mean he didn't like Alts, and thought a good MMO would really have little to no need for them, given both his rhetorical structure and diction in that article.  Maybe it was just poorly written and wasn't what was intended, but to pin that on the readers instead of the writer is....misguided.

As I used to say on the game forums, extend the benefit of the doubt you wish to receive.  No one survives uncooperative readers: no one.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 30, 2014, 12:48:56 AM
As I used to say on the game forums, extend the benefit of the doubt you wish to receive.  No one survives uncooperative readers: no one.

I agree with ya there...the best written messages can at times be misinterpreted.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 30, 2014, 12:58:31 AM
I don't even consider those players rpg players because of that.  They have gotten into their heads that end game and more "power" and more "power" is the be all end all.  Honestly, when I think about that, this makes me think less of these kinds of players.  Because while I didn't mind incarnate content for example, I also enjoyed leveling up and seeing how other things played.  These kinds of players?  Power is the be-all-end-all and the amount of it is the be-all-end-all.  They'd make horrible story writers, though i'm sure that'd be ok for a typical anime(bad one, not good one).

No one is all one thing (at least, few are).  I liked leveling my alts.  I also had my power-mad days.  Enjoying the end-game power pursuit grind-fest wasn't mutually exclusive from enjoying the more conventional levels of play.

On the day they announced shutdown, my lowest active alt (meaning, an alt I was playing several times a week minimum) was in the teens (a water blaster) and my highest was my main that was running tons of incarnate trials, already had multiple tier 4s in every incarnate slot, and was still trying to make more Lore pets.

I actually believe there were a lot of players that were generalists in that regard; willing and able to enjoy almost any mode of gameplay in the game.  I even occasionally liked to PvP, just to PvP (just to get my ass kicked usually, but I did get the PvP badge with no farming so I did win at least sometimes).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 30, 2014, 01:06:19 AM
No one is all one thing (at least, few are).  I liked leveling my alts.  I also had my power-mad days.  Enjoying the end-game power pursuit grind-fest wasn't mutually exclusive from enjoying the more conventional levels of play.

On the day they announced shutdown, my lowest active alt (meaning, an alt I was playing several times a week minimum) was in the teens (a water blaster) and my highest was my main that was running tons of incarnate trials, already had multiple tier 4s in every incarnate slot, and was still trying to make more Lore pets.

I actually believe there were a lot of players that were generalists in that regard; willing and able to enjoy almost any mode of gameplay in the game.  I even occasionally liked to PvP, just to PvP (just to get my ass kicked usually, but I did get the PvP badge with no farming so I did win at least sometimes).

Go figure.  I was pretty balanced to.  I had lowbies and I had my high level characters.  I tried sets out for science, know?  The only people I was really targeting with that statement were those who'd instantly move on if they saw there was no end game.  Some gamers, for some players power is in a way the big deal for them.  Heck, even I can be that way, somewhat, but I don't enjoy losing challenge.  But I see beyond just the number.  In fact, I don't actually care about bigger, and bigger numbers.  When there is to much obsession with numbers, I feel, in a games development, particularly always increasing the level cap endlessly and then upping the damage numbers, I'm often left "ok what does level really mean then if the cap is always increasing?  Like your devaluing individual levels".

I just feel that way about some people.  As I said, I was targeting the people who left the game when they were told there wasn't an end game.  I remember one guy likewise who hated the level cap of guild wars, it was all he cared about.  Every time he'd log on after factions came out, the only question he'd ask was "did they increase the level cap" and I told him "No and they don't plan to".  He'd log off after.  Every time.  All he cared about was power.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Baja on September 30, 2014, 01:30:23 AM
Go figure.  I was pretty balanced to.  I had lowbies and I had my high level characters.  I tried sets out for science, know?  The only people I was really targeting with that statement were those who'd instantly move on if they saw there was no end game.  Some gamers, for some players power is in a way the big deal for them.  Heck, even I can be that way, somewhat, but I don't enjoy losing challenge.  But I see beyond just the number.  In fact, I don't actually care about bigger, and bigger numbers.  When there is to much obsession with numbers, I feel, in a games development, particularly always increasing the level cap endlessly and then upping the damage numbers, I'm often left "ok what does level really mean then if the cap is always increasing?  Like your devaluing individual levels".

I just feel that way about some people.  As I said, I was targeting the people who left the game when they were told there wasn't an end game.  I remember one guy likewise who hated the level cap of guild wars, it was all he cared about.  Every time he'd log on after factions came out, the only question he'd ask was "did they increase the level cap" and I told him "No and they don't plan to".  He'd log off after.  Every time.  All he cared about was power.


I agree with you for a lot of reasons. I've come to despise the "WoW" mentality. It basically encourages hours played vs enjoyment/skill factors. Tera online was supposed to be a game that focused on skill rather than grinding, but wouldn't you know it the developers started listening to a bunch of WoW guild members saying "moar grind less aiming plox." I wanted to drive there and slap them with the product they ended up releasing.

I suppose this is why I loved CoH for so long, it really focused on fun rather than the whole "hey look at my fancy grindables." It's like okay I get it you have a lot of free time, that's great >.> unfortunately I have a job that gives me maybe 3 hours to kill during weekdays and sat/Sunday off, I really don't have the time or desire to compete in this race.

If I wanted fun I'd play CoH, if I wanted proof of who was the better player I would load up Starcraft 2/Dota 2/LoL something that focuses on actual player abilities.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 30, 2014, 01:52:05 AM
As I used to say on the game forums, extend the benefit of the doubt you wish to receive.  No one survives uncooperative readers: no one.

I also feel he was talking perfect world. If he could go back and rewrite the whole game type stuff. I know there was stuff they would have dearly liked to change..but that wouldnt fly with their player base. Hiney sight is 2020 and all that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 30, 2014, 03:47:01 AM
Go figure.  I was pretty balanced to.  I had lowbies and I had my high level characters.  I tried sets out for science, know?  The only people I was really targeting with that statement were those who'd instantly move on if they saw there was no end game.

Well yeah, but most of those guys were gone by I4, when it became clear that Hamidon was the only end game the devs had the resources to make at the time.

Besides the "no end game, split immediately" group there were players willing to alt for variety, but for whom even alting became a form of grind because the difference between alts wasn't high enough to consistently provide the level of gameplay variety they wanted, and for whom alting was one activity that needed to be balanced with more depth-oriented character progression in the long run.  For those people, higher order progression first in the form of the invention system and second in the form of the incarnate system was a god-send.  It wasn't that they were just passing time until the end game arrived, it was that the end game provided a counterbalance to alt-leveling that made the game more enjoyable overall, and without which many people eventually got bored and quit.

On the subject of numbers, I do think there were players that were too obsessed with numbers to the exclusion of all else, but I think they were the extreme minority.  I think many players misunderstood the fascination with and discussion surrounding numbers as being focused on the numbers, when it was just that numbers were the language of choice for higher powered progression discussions.  For example, the pylon challenge boiled down to a single number: time to defeat.  And it often looked like the players involved were jockeying numbers in their build to get the best (lowest) number in that test.  But for most players involved the numbers were a means to an end of taking their knowledge and skill in building strong characters and giving them a target to focus on.  It was a way to take hypothetical build discussions and prove their worth in an actual scenario where every element of the build from damage output to defensive strength to endurance management had to be balanced in a practical way. 

Believe me there were a lot of pseudo-numbers posters on the forums that made a lot of claims experienced players knew were complete crap, but the discussion required to prove it would sail over the heads of most of the readers of the thread.  That can be very frustrating.  Being able to prove the theory with an unimpeachable practical result was very attractive to many players who otherwise enjoyed discussing build theory.

But at the end of the day, I think most min/maxers weren't really interested in the numbers for their own sake.  They were interested in being able to log into the game and do something interesting or unique with those numbers, with their characters.  And that was part of the attraction of having an "end-game" available which was less end game and more "higher-game."  It was constantly opening doors to more possibilities.  Yes, those possibilities were usually ultimately about more firepower and more staying power, but not always.  For myself, it was about pushing the envelope of gameplay experience.  That's why I tended to focus on improving the strength of my blaster more than, say, my fire tanker.  My fire tanker could farm the dickens past my blaster, but improving that build to do that, only a little faster, wasn't as interesting as taking my blaster and transforming her over time into an ever increasingly powerful energy cannon that could also stay alive, and explicitly through active blasting (knockback is bad?  tell it to the enemy critters I threw into that tree).

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 30, 2014, 04:20:48 AM
there were players willing to alt for variety, but for whom even alting became a form of grind because the difference between alts wasn't high enough to consistently provide the level of gameplay variety they wanted, and for whom alting was one activity that needed to be balanced with more depth-oriented character progression in the long run.  For those people, higher order progression first in the form of the invention system and second in the form of the incarnate system was a god-send.  It wasn't that they were just passing time until the end game arrived, it was that the end game provided a counterbalance to alt-leveling that made the game more enjoyable overall, and without which many people eventually got bored and quit.

...

But at the end of the day, I think most min/maxers weren't really interested in the numbers for their own sake.  They were interested in being able to log into the game and do something interesting or unique with those numbers, with their characters.  And that was part of the attraction of having an "end-game" available which was less end game and more "higher-game."  It was constantly opening doors to more possibilities.  Yes, those possibilities were usually ultimately about more firepower and more staying power, but not always.  For myself, it was about pushing the envelope of gameplay experience.  That's why I tended to focus on improving the strength of my blaster more than, say, my fire tanker.  My fire tanker could farm the dickens past my blaster, but improving that build to do that, only a little faster, wasn't as interesting as taking my blaster and transforming her over time into an ever increasingly powerful energy cannon that could also stay alive, and explicitly through active blasting (knockback is bad?  tell it to the enemy critters I threw into that tree).

I fell directly into this group--specifically the invention system/stay-in-Mids-for-the-same-amount-of-time-I-spent-in-the-game group, and it kept me around for YEARS longer than I ever stayed in any other game (with the possible exception of Diablo 2--but, the same concept applies in those types of games too...constantly striving to be "extremely powerful" by small margins--and by experimentation)... :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on September 30, 2014, 04:29:07 AM
I can safely say the worst part of building any given PC is the power supply's installation.

I'd rather install a thousand power supplies than one mobo, lol.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 30, 2014, 04:40:33 AM
Believe me there were a lot of pseudo-numbers posters on the forums that made a lot of claims experienced players knew were complete crap, but the discussion required to prove it would sail over the heads of most of the readers of the thread.  That can be very frustrating.  Being able to prove the theory with an unimpeachable practical result was very attractive to many players who otherwise enjoyed discussing build theory.
i remember you running the numbers for someone who claimed their Dark/Dark Defender could solo Romulus on the ITF in four minutes. No matter how many people explained using basic math what the actual numbers were and how implausible, if not outright impossible, their claim was they kept insisting that they routinely did it without cheating, but refused to provide any proof. It was almost impressive in a way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 30, 2014, 07:42:51 AM
But at the end of the day, I think most min/maxers weren't really interested in the numbers for their own sake.  They were interested in being able to log into the game and do something interesting or unique with those numbers, with their characters.  And that was part of the attraction of having an "end-game" available which was less end game and more "higher-game."  It was constantly opening doors to more possibilities.  Yes, those possibilities were usually ultimately about more firepower and more staying power, but not always.  For myself, it was about pushing the envelope of gameplay experience.  That's why I tended to focus on improving the strength of my blaster more than, say, my fire tanker.  My fire tanker could farm the dickens past my blaster, but improving that build to do that, only a little faster, wasn't as interesting as taking my blaster and transforming her over time into an ever increasingly powerful energy cannon that could also stay alive, and explicitly through active blasting (knockback is bad?  tell it to the enemy critters I threw into that tree).

As a min maxer I was somewhat that way, I didn't go for the absolute highest numbers on every character, but instead went for practical efficiency in many cases.  A good example would have been my kin/energy defender.  She had enough recharge reduction to get triple-stack fulcrum shift.  I didn't do that using any purple IOs though, I did that through a lot of balancing of IO's, and also made use of leadership as well as very liberal use of siphon speed.  It was me getting those speeds though, in a way, rather than the build I made, because if I didn't make such insane use of siphon speed I would not have gotten such results.

One character I did purple out, was my fortunata, but I did so with cheaper purple IO sets, such as the confuse and hold IO set.  I think if I recall I had one purple set that was in the billion influence range(about 300 mil per piece).  She had perma mind link, which was essential, somewhat, but it wasn't just her near soft capped defenses that really kept her alive, it was stacking large amounts of -recharge, Aura of Confusion, Total Domination, and Psychic Wail that kept her alive.  Incarnate powers were more chosen for pro longevity most of the time.  Incarnate trials I usually brought diamagnetic interface, as the -tohit compensated for the increased to hit.

My storm summoner was likewise an...interesting example.  I didn't IO her anywhere near as heavily, but I didn't have to so much.  It was more how I used the storm powers rather than configuring her IO's, and I was pretty much able to pulverize groups of mobs as they'd not get the chance to retaliate.  She was a cheap character to design.  I found time manipulation equally cheap to min/max, you didn't need defense IOs at all to get soft cap defense with that set(except maaaybe a mastermind(and no, just soft capping smash/lethal/energy doesn't count, I'm talking soft capping everything), but I know for sure a corruptor could soft cap with some pool powers, and I know for sure a defender can soft cap with just farsight and power build up and be over the soft cap).

I think the genious was more, you did get more power but more in the form of the customization options coming across.  It wasn't full on increasing the level cap all the time but just giving people more ways to make an effective character. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 30, 2014, 09:53:33 AM
Buying computer parts makes me cry. So- Much- Money... that I don't have.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on September 30, 2014, 10:05:50 AM
Buying computer parts makes me cry. So- Much- Money... that I don't have.

Be happy. Yesterday I went to get a puncture repaired on my car, and left with 4 new tyres that I couldn't afford! :O
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on September 30, 2014, 01:26:42 PM
After going over Matt's statements again, I can pretty easily take them in either direction.

Either Matt thought alt'ing was bad thing overall and shouldn't be a focus of the game,
or he thought that alt'ing wasn't bad in and of itself, but brought up other design issues
that made things harder for the developers.

Without a follow-on conversation for clarification, I don't think we'll ever be 100% certain
(unless Arcana feels like calling him up and asking  ;D).

The fact remains though, that CoX was/is the single most Alt friendly and Altitis encouraging
MMO ever made.  Heck, the sheer number of possible powerset combinations practically screams
for making multiple characters.

In every other MMO I've ever played (from UO onwards), I'll make 1 or 2 characters at most.  In very
rare circumstances I might even make 3 (one for each of the trinity).  But that's it.  And most likely
characters 2 or 3 will never see the level cap as I'll be getting bored with them long before.

Pretty quickly, typically under 6 months, I'm bored with the game and leaving it behind.  I played CoX
almost every day (at least 300+ days a year) from just after I2 until the shut-down.  That is simply
unheard of for me, and I've never been able to feel as comfortable in any game as I did in Paragon.

Admittedly, I'm not a big-numbers-raid-raid-raid type of player.  I find those gigantic raids more annoying
than fun.  I prefer small groups of friends or even solo, and I'd rather be teaming because I *want* to
team over I *have* to team.  So for me, CoX was a near perfect fit.


Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on September 30, 2014, 02:36:14 PM
I've been thinking about that article as well.  One thing I think is indisputable: it focuses on the negative aspects of creating alts.  Does that mean that Positron's opinion is that alts are a bad thing overall?  Not necessarily. 

Part of the article pushes me to thinking he has a positive view of alts in general.  He states it can be fun for a lot of people, to the point of being the game, and that population is an important reason why City of Heroes survived as long as it did.  I would infer, now, that it is also an important reason why the game may continue to survive in a second life.

It's a little unclear what his opinion is of the resulting lack of a main.  If I had a main in CoH it was my Kat/WP scrapper, which is the first character I used to do any serious badge-hunting, PvP, and to really play much beyond 50, as well as the character that had the most playtime by a significant margin.  But it was also a character I made after I'd played the game for some time, and so I suppose I played the game for years without a main in that sense.  He does, however, explain that other games have "learned" these lessons and are designed to discourage alting to the extent it happened in CoH.  So whether or not Miller's opinion is that there was too much alting in CoH, he is acknowledging that view in the MMO industry.

I'm unsure of his opinion of the RIFT model and the resulting lack of any need to have alts (from what I understand; I've only tried the game very briefly.)  The thing is, I hate that model, but I had to think about why.  When I think of a character's capabilities, that collection of game attributes is inextricably linked to a sense of that character's identity.  If I envision a story for a character then what that character is able to do is integral.  That isn't to say I'm the world's biggest RP'er; indeed not all of my CoH characters had a fleshed-out backstory, but I still had a sense that, for example, my Sonic/Ice blaster's identity is linked to those powersets.  There is a middle ground here of course; my CoH characters didn't have access at level 1 to all the powers they would eventually have, but the progression didn't break any sense of identity.  Genre is also very important.  The superhero genre is perhaps the least forgiving in terms of allowing dramatic capability shifts without a good in-story reason; we expect the general direction of a character's capabilities to be largely "baked-in" with his/her/its origin story.  When a game allows too much freedom to have a character become all things that sense of identity is eroded for me.  If I want to go in a significantly different mechanical direction then I want to develop a new identity for that direction, and watch that identity develop from a "fresh" beginning.

City of Heroes really did embrace that.  Even within an AT you had a huge number of options.  While a lot of games would be fine with a "controller" with perhaps two or three significantly different options, City had dozens.  That ability to stay within a general playstyle I liked and still make a ton of new characters was a huge part of the game's longevity for me.  Whether or not that's "correct," that's the way it was.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Phaerius on September 30, 2014, 02:36:52 PM
I'd rather install a thousand power supplies than one mobo, lol.

I agree with this. I've installed at least eight power supplies at this point, and I've never touched a mobo or processor install. PSU's are really easy if the cording is wrapped up nice and tight and you write down the correct plugs in the correct color co-ordination for everything you need to plug in. That way you don't forget one or try to shove it in backwards. :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 30, 2014, 03:34:57 PM
I don't even consider those players rpg players because of that.  They have gotten into their heads that end game and more "power" and more "power" is the be all end all.  Honestly, when I think about that, this makes me think less of these kinds of players.  Because while I didn't mind incarnate content for example, I also enjoyed leveling up and seeing how other things played.  These kinds of players?  Power is the be-all-end-all and the amount of it is the be-all-end-all.  They'd make horrible story writers, though i'm sure that'd be ok for a typical anime(bad one, not good one).

But the thing is, as a game designer you don't have the luxury of saying, "Your way of having fun isn't as good as my way of having fun." (Despite a previous lead developer for CoH thinking exactly that...) It's Positron's job to accommodate as many playstyles, as many goals, and as many players as he can so long as they're not mutually exclusive and so long as he has the resources to do so. Incarnate content was for the people who saw starting over at level 1 as a waste of time and effort, and wanted to continue making their main character more powerful. That may not be something you saw as useful, and maybe you even think less of people who have that as a goal. (I'm sure they feel the same way about you.) But it doesn't hurt anyone to give them what they want, and it's not like we weren't getting more new powersets to try right up until the end. (Nature Affinity and Beast Mastery, for example, were really cool and innovative.) I'm really just saying that Positron was right to recognize that the game didn't include a lot of people, and to expand it to include those people. As someone who despises being railroaded into a certain playstyle, I'd think you would support that. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kiario on September 30, 2014, 04:05:07 PM
Hello,

Checking in, has there been any progress in September?

Thanks  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 30, 2014, 04:06:22 PM
Hello,

Checking in, has there been any progress in September?

Thanks  :)

There has been talks of pancake but that's about it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 30, 2014, 04:36:19 PM
I think that what Posi was saying is that single character investment is generally a more powerful motivator for people than "and now you do the same thing all over again, just with a different character!"

Which may be true, but with the amount of content in CoH, very rarely was starting from Level 1 "the same thing all over".

For those that can't shift perspectives to that of the game designer or implementer rather than the player, I would recommend staying away from developer diaries.  Designers and implementers engineer things with intent and purpose.  You can get lucky and discover that they those things are even more useful in other contexts, but no good designer relies on luck or takes credit for luck.  When players find alternate uses for the things you design, you can acknowledge the fortune involved with that while also realizing it still represents a failing on your part when the original intent and purpose is discarded.  Its easy from the outside for players to believe that it should be solely up to them to decide how a game is played, but no designer who leaves their work up to chance will succeed in the long run.  Ultimately, they will fail miserably and edit themselves out of the genetic pool of the design community.

This ability to simultaneously understand the desires of the players and the fact that the game designers had to have their own design goals as well was something I tried to educate players on while the game was running, particularly when they came to me for advice in communicating their ideas to the devs.  Those who simply refused to acknowledge that the devs not only could but must have a purposeful intent to their work, those who thought that "vision" was a curse word, lets just say were consistently less successful at doing so than the rest.

I guess the issue for me is that Positron's "vision" ended up being something that I perceived as "let's put in grindy end game raids like every other game!". I can appreciate that he has a vision and that it's important to have one, but if I don't like the vision, I'm not sure where that leaves me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on September 30, 2014, 04:56:08 PM
Hello,

Checking in, has there been any progress in September?

Thanks  :)
Trust me, you won't have to ask when there's more news.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 30, 2014, 05:15:15 PM
But the thing is, as a game designer you don't have the luxury of saying, "Your way of having fun isn't as good as my way of having fun." (Despite a previous lead developer for CoH thinking exactly that...) It's Positron's job to accommodate as many playstyles, as many goals, and as many players as he can so long as they're not mutually exclusive and so long as he has the resources to do so. Incarnate content was for the people who saw starting over at level 1 as a waste of time and effort, and wanted to continue making their main character more powerful. That may not be something you saw as useful, and maybe you even think less of people who have that as a goal. (I'm sure they feel the same way about you.) But it doesn't hurt anyone to give them what they want, and it's not like we weren't getting more new powersets to try right up until the end. (Nature Affinity and Beast Mastery, for example, were really cool and innovative.) I'm really just saying that Positron was right to recognize that the game didn't include a lot of people, and to expand it to include those people. As someone who despises being railroaded into a certain playstyle, I'd think you would support that. :)

You also have the publisher to worry about though, to. 

I, however,  agree with you here fully, and I had nothing against the incarnate trials(I already said a good number of times I actually participated in them myself).  As I said I was especially focused on those few who either left to early or wanted a WoW clone.  To me the incarnate trials just added more customization options at the high level, which was fine.  I didn't see it as an increase to the level cap(it wasn't, anyone who said it was didn't realize your health didn't increase, and even your base damage did not increase, just your attacks gained the damage bonus as if you were fighting enemies a level lower than normal, just as they got the -1 penalty for attacks on ya if they were -1).  In fact i'd say I only found a small % of people participating in the trials even that were total "stop having fun guys".  And alot of people participating, most of them if not a large majority actually had alts and even brought alts in.

City of heroes, was in a state where it was actually improving I felt in the later months, said that many times.  It didn't take an excessive amount of grinding to get a character to the +3 incarnate shift in the incarnate trials though.  It wasn't like say, what destiny did on release(and why so many reviewers are unhappy about that game).  It was such you could actually make progress at a solid pace.  In a way the only players the incarnate trials rubbed the bad way were those who believed they'd never get a purple drop and those who hated end-game grinding.  I can agree with them as much as I can agree with your points.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on September 30, 2014, 06:04:28 PM
But by the same token, "grinding" is exactly what a lot of players look for. It is not a coincidence that the most successful MMO in the history of the world is one that explicitly encourages you to reach the level cap quickly and then spend weeks and months and years working at tiny, incremental improvements to the efficacy of your character. :) It is something that a lot of players look for, and I have first-hand experience of trying to convince people to come from EQ or WoW during the pre-Incarnate days only to be asked, "But what do you do once you hit 50?" Quite literally, they had already mentally skipped the entire leveling process in their heads as inconsequential and wanted to know what the next step was. And when told that you started over again at 1 with a different character, they lost interest in even trying the game.

I understand that everyone here has a hard time wrapping their heads around that, myself included. But we are a self-selected audience of people who wanted what CoH was selling. The larger world of "MMO players" wanted endgame content, and Positron recognized that and gave it to them. I don't think he was mistaken, either in recognizing that deficiency in the game or in working to fix it. If anything, I think he was about twenty issues too late.
I really like this post.

It might be more honest to say that players who prefer the WoW style of play aren't "dumb", "wrong", or "don't like having fun".    They just have fun a different way than CoH players do.

It could just be that we, as a group, are a bit of an outlier in the gaming world.   When we are all together talking about gaming, we of course feel that people who like other types of games are somehow doing it wrong...but they say the same about us.  "Fun" is subjective.

Which is a great way of illustrating why CoH needs to exist.   We might be a small group, but we exist and other games don't do "it" for us.   I've tried other games and nothing else works for me.   I'm only a "gamer" when CoH exists.   Otherwise I don't play games.   There is a real place in this world for the unique thing that is CoH.

Like others said, I'm a bit of a mix.   I had a bunch of "mains".   16 lvl 50s...all of which I played over the course of a month. (some more than others)   I would say I spent 70-80% of my time playing them.   So I had some "WoW" attitude there.   When I leveled a new character, my mind was always on the "finish line".   I didn't really like not having all my powers.   But there was that part of me that did love trying new powersets so I had the "alting" bug too....just not as much as some others.   I still get the itch to try some new combinations.   I mean...Ice/Storm isn't the same as Ill/Storm!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 30, 2014, 06:56:31 PM
There has been talks of pancake but that's about it.

now im hungry again damn you to heck!!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: microc on September 30, 2014, 07:15:23 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=blog.smartyhadaparty.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2010%2F08%2Fcrepes-3ingr-mr-gallery-x1.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 30, 2014, 07:53:09 PM

I'm unsure of his opinion of the RIFT model and the resulting lack of any need to have alts (from what I understand; I've only tried the game very briefly.)  The thing is, I hate that model, but I had to think about why.  When I think of a character's capabilities, that collection of game attributes is inextricably linked to a sense of that character's identity.  If I envision a story for a character then what that character is able to do is integral.  That isn't to say I'm the world's biggest RP'er; indeed not all of my CoH characters had a fleshed-out backstory, but I still had a sense that, for example, my Sonic/Ice blaster's identity is linked to those powersets.  There is a middle ground here of course; my CoH characters didn't have access at level 1 to all the powers they would eventually have, but the progression didn't break any sense of identity.  Genre is also very important.  The superhero genre is perhaps the least forgiving in terms of allowing dramatic capability shifts without a good in-story reason; we expect the general direction of a character's capabilities to be largely "baked-in" with his/her/its origin story.  When a game allows too much freedom to have a character become all things that sense of identity is eroded for me.  If I want to go in a significantly different mechanical direction then I want to develop a new identity for that direction, and watch that identity develop from a "fresh" beginning.


Could you fill me in on how Rift's character progression worked?  You describe it like the character starts at the top or something(which would mean a sore lack of character development is allowed).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zychan on September 30, 2014, 07:56:40 PM
I'm, a little late to the party here, but I wanted to also thank the individuals who have worked so hard on this project.  I had thought (and lamented) that the dream had died, but lo and behold the work goes on!  As many others have noted, if there is anything that the community can do to help, I will happily offer whatever assistance I can! ;D

I played CoX for many years and thoroughly loved it.  It was originally offered as a birthday gift to my wife from a longtime player (inception to closing) and once I "tried" it, I became absolutely engrossed.  I was often a forum lurker and rarely a poster, but I always followed the community up until the shut down.  I have told many people that City was different than anything else that I have experienced and that the difference proliferated all the way down to (perhaps up from?) the community.

In a world of internet hate and elitism, it was (and still is it seems) a relief to find an online community that, more often than not, lifted each other up instead of tearing each other down.  So many times I went to the forums with build questions only to see that someone else had the same ideas I had and that they were addressed constructively and productively.

I look here today and see that the same spirit is still active.  Just a few pages back were a couple people (I didn't quote them because I didn't realize my post was going to ramble in this direction!  :roll:) offering free PC build advice and even offering to do live Skypes to help out fellow community members.  That kind of gesture is wonderful and what always seemed to set the community apart!  And when conflict would occur (as earlier in this thread), it was usually resolved by people calming down and explaining that no offense was intended and rationally setting everything on course.

These are the people that I always enjoyed playing with and I truly hope to fly the skies of Paragon with you again soon!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zychan on September 30, 2014, 07:58:26 PM
Here is the website I was referencing to earlier

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/

This is the computer I'm going to make xD

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/j2dcBm

Thank you for this!  That is indeed a very handy website and I have it bookmarked.  Good luck with your build and the Cyber Monday sales!    ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 30, 2014, 08:05:06 PM
Thank you for this!  That is indeed a very handy website and I have it bookmarked.  Good luck with your build and the Cyber Monday sales!    ;D

Thanks :P Hopefully I can knock off 500 dollars (which essentially is a free 980 GTX) Here's hoping xD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on September 30, 2014, 08:15:58 PM
Quote
The fact remains though, that CoX was/is the single most Alt friendly and Altitis encouraging MMO ever made.  Heck, the sheer number of possible powerset combinations practically screams for making multiple characters.

The joy of playing multiple characters who each had different playstyles and weaknesses was one of the main reasons CoX lasted as long as it did. That wasn't a negative factor, it helped keep the game alive.

My domicile was without internet access for a week, so during that time I did a lot of fooling around in ICON. It was a lot of fun and also made me so homesick that at one point, tears came to my eyes. I try to remind myself that no news is good news, in a way, but I still want this game back to a degree that is almost frightening to me.

I log onto CO every now and then, but that game is so boring. It really truly is. Esp. when you don't know anyone. Thank God for the CoH channel.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 30, 2014, 08:21:35 PM
I really like this post.

It might be more honest to say that players who prefer the WoW style of play aren't "dumb", "wrong", or "don't like having fun".    They just have fun a different way than CoH players do.

It could just be that we, as a group, are a bit of an outlier in the gaming world.   When we are all together talking about gaming, we of course feel that people who like other types of games are somehow doing it wrong...but they say the same about us.  "Fun" is subjective.

Which is a great way of illustrating why CoH needs to exist.   We might be a small group, but we exist and other games don't do "it" for us.   I've tried other games and nothing else works for me.   I'm only a "gamer" when CoH exists.   Otherwise I don't play games.   There is a real place in this world for the unique thing that is CoH.

Like others said, I'm a bit of a mix.   I had a bunch of "mains".   16 lvl 50s...all of which I played over the course of a month. (some more than others)   I would say I spent 70-80% of my time playing them.   So I had some "WoW" attitude there.   When I leveled a new character, my mind was always on the "finish line".   I didn't really like not having all my powers.   But there was that part of me that did love trying new powersets so I had the "alting" bug too....just not as much as some others.   I still get the itch to try some new combinations.   I mean...Ice/Storm isn't the same as Ill/Storm!

Thats true of gaming in general.  It's often very difficult to see why x group of gamers likes Y game when Y game is certainly not a good game to z group of gamers.  I could use oblivion is a good example.  Oblivion, it's not a game I dislike, in fact I played it a lot.  I play skyrim more, because I like it more, but I did play oblivion before.  It has it's own nuances, just the characters are somewhat robotic, the game is, unlike skyrim, extremely hard to immerse oneself in.  But some people did like it, in fact I even liked that enemies leveled up with the player, because one thing I never liked was games just getting easier and easier on me just because I gained some levels.  An overly static world to me gets very boring, and oblivion wasn't so static, in a way.  The npc behavior in towns kind of were, but outside of the towns you'd find the enemies getting better weapons/armor and whatnot.  Now, alot of people HATED that, I didn't mind it so much.

They hated it for a few reasons.  Power-be-all-end-all players hated that they couldn't just level up and rule the world sololy on high level, power leveling had to be done very carefully, just getting level 50 meant nothing if you had low attributes as your enemies would be MORE powerful than you for it.  Roleplayers who played other elder scrolls games understandably dispised it because glass armor and daedric armor, both very rare and very expensive armor, became especially common place, as if marauders had access to huge amounts of daedric hearts, ebony ore and some super smith working for them while bandits had tons and tons of malachite and elven metals.

It was, rather lore breaking in a way.  I could understand that.  But I still enjoyed the game inspite that because at least the game didn't automatically become super easy mode for me right away.  I had to learn how to do that still.  I didn't stay in character go figure, though.  I also avoided doing some side quests at high levels, particularly ones involving the protection of suicidal morons who'd as soon as jump into lava chasing that high health enemy that fell off a bridge.

Moving to fallout 3, I can say that the game, it's lifespan was somewhat limited.  Things would remain unchanged as you leveled up heavily enough, with only some areas scaling with you.  But it was done badly in that, sure they leveled up with you but they just became easier and easier to kill.  In fact, playing on very hard was almost easier than playing on very easy in some ways, because sure the damage was higher and enemies were tougher, but you got so much more experience that enemies started showing up with the good stuff right away.  You ended up with top quality equipment in very little time, even less so than oblivion, merely by setting the game on very hard.  But a lot of people thought fallout 3 did a much better job.  Then of course, new vegas removed the experience gain from that, cut perk rate in half and upped the level cap.

Skyrim on the other hand, handled the leveling system in a far more practical way.  Enemies STILL leveled up with you, but their equipment would cap out, getting equipment that was practical for them to obtain.  Bandit chiefs would wear steel armor/steel plate/nordic carved armor, the last of those three actually being very tough and on part with ebony armor, but was a more steel-based armor, it was made of far more common materials.  Only flaw I could think of was the necessity of smithing and enchanting to get the good stuff, but that I felt was perhaps for the better imo, as you couldn't just automatically get the good stuff by getting a high level.

Course, every one of them had people who disliked these games.  Some people hated smithing and enchanting in skyrim alot, feeling that making your own stuff should never even be allowed OR that only the best stuff should be found(I personally rather a balance, I hate games where if you have a crafting system, it's useless anyways because you just find better stuff, why include crafting then?).  Some people hated that fallout 3 was very easy even on very hard(honestly I was on the fence about it's difficulty, but I don't play skyrim or new vegas on anything higher than normal/adept, especially not skyrim with skyre which makes it utter suicide to play on anything higher than adept).

I already mentioned oblivion, likewise.  Fallout 3?  Well, plasma guns became common just by doing the main quest far enough in.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 30, 2014, 08:26:56 PM
Although in any case, I suspect that the Win7/Win8 schism is going to be mostly resolved by Windows 9

Or not (http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2014/09/30/announcing-windows-10/).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 30, 2014, 08:38:17 PM
Or not (http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2014/09/30/announcing-windows-10/).

Skipping 9?  I wonder how many names of the options will get changed this time....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 30, 2014, 08:49:26 PM
i remember you running the numbers for someone who claimed their Dark/Dark Defender could solo Romulus on the ITF in four minutes. No matter how many people explained using basic math what the actual numbers were and how implausible, if not outright impossible, their claim was they kept insisting that they routinely did it without cheating, but refused to provide any proof. It was almost impressive in a way.

Another poster claimed regen was so weak because without mitigation healing and regeneration were worthless.  They went so far as to claim a single boss could kill regen in three hits.  Normally I assume people are just being hyperbolic or exaggerating to make a point, but this was a bit too far (and it was being used to literally support the point that without damage reduction the regeneration set could not be effective at all) so I offered this poster a way out to back down on that statement.  Instead, they doubled down and claimed they weren't just exaggerating but reporting actual in-game experience.

Calculations trivially proved this statement false, but of course "numbers aren't everything" so I had to resort to making this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKj7yxzrlOs).  I did a back of the envelope calculation of the maximum survivable damage for a level 34 regen scrapper I had.  I unslottted all the inventions and put nothing but SOs and a few common IOs I had lying around, and found a Rikti boss spawn of just about the right damage to be at the break even point, which turned out to be two chief soldiers in melee and a mesmerist boss at range.  It takes a *long* time for them to eventually get me.  Basically, the video shows with Dull Pain up its just not possible for two Chief Soldiers to take down a regen scrapper.  With Dull Pain down it is possible, but impossible for just one to do so.  And this was the worst case scenario where you're not getting any help from the primary.

Funny thing: got no response from that particular poster.  However, they would return every few months or so to make the exact same claim, whereupon I would just post the video in response.  After a while, they stopped making the claim and moved on to other more absurd claims.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 30, 2014, 09:23:38 PM
Another poster claimed regen was so weak because without mitigation healing and regeneration were worthless.  They went so far as to claim a single boss could kill regen in three hits.  Normally I assume people are just being hyperbolic or exaggerating to make a point, but this was a bit too far (and it was being used to literally support the point that without damage reduction the regeneration set could not be effective at all) so I offered this poster a way out to back down on that statement.  Instead, they doubled down and claimed they weren't just exaggerating but reporting actual in-game experience.

Calculations trivially proved this statement false, but of course "numbers aren't everything" so I had to resort to making this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKj7yxzrlOs).  I did a back of the envelope calculation of the maximum survivable damage for a level 34 regen scrapper I had.  I unslottted all the inventions and put nothing but SOs and a few common IOs I had lying around, and found a Rikti boss spawn of just about the right damage to be at the break even point, which turned out to be two chief soldiers in melee and a mesmerist boss at range.  It takes a *long* time for them to eventually get me.  Basically, the video shows with Dull Pain up its just not possible for two Chief Soldiers to take down a regen scrapper.  With Dull Pain down it is possible, but impossible for just one to do so.  And this was the worst case scenario where you're not getting any help from the primary.

Funny thing: got no response from that particular poster.  However, they would return every few months or so to make the exact same claim, whereupon I would just post the video in response.  After a while, they stopped making the claim and moved on to other more absurd claims.

Regen was never really a weak set.  Just that it's main weak point was alpha strikes, 3 bosses won't but 3 bosses, 2-5 lieutenants and a bunch of minions could if they got the attacks in at the same time.  And it depends on the enemies, some enemies are higher damage than others.  Rikti imo are one of the easier groups, not discrediting ya, three bosses struggling to kill you when your using just regeneration by itself..but say a few tank swipers from the freaks?  I know for sure that they can hit far harder then that, I certainly had to use rebirth anytime one of those things got a hit on my fortunata.  Various groups had their strengths and weaknesses.  Rikti were more of a "tried to be well rounded, but not actually excelling at anything".  Cimerorans would have totally been a different story, 3 cimeroran bosses could have taken you down rather quickly due to defense cascading.

Edit: Not saying regeneration is weak, as I said, never was a weak set.  But not every enemy group was ever created equal either.  Guy may still have been stubbern anyways.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on September 30, 2014, 09:24:53 PM
Even though the Posi hates alt thing has been beat into the ground.  I still strongly disagree.  And many of the posts on this forum is proof of what he is saying.

 So many people think the end game was a bad idea because *they* don't like it.  Even though there would be a much smaller amount of players here without the endgame content that was added.  I never see people who like end game content telling people they are playing wrong for making alts in CoH.  Yet on more then one occasion on this very forum there have a been a few posts that basically state they don't appreciate they way people play the game when they enjoy end game content, and enjoy putting a lot of work in their main character. 

It simply makes Posi's article more true, and more relevant.  The game had no shortage of stuff to do for alts, but virtually nothing to do for end game material.  And so when they start adding end game material and focusing on it, after several  years of only focusing on mid game content and content for alts.  People start saying he hates alts, and that basically min/maxers and end game seekers are not welcome in CoH because that isn't what makes "CoH good" as if only the alters opinions matter about the game.  They did not remove low level content, they did not punish people for playing alts, they did not say alting was bad.  All Posi was trying to do was balance out the content in the game.  The game was almost 100% pre-50 content.  So he decided he would try to even that out a little bit.  And when he does it is taking as "He hates alt, loves raiding, and wants to ruin CoH for alters and make it more like WoW".  When really he was just adding more content for other types of players.  Yet he knew because of how popular alting was that this would be a problem met with heavy resistance because of the play style of many of CoH's players.  And that is exactly is what happened and would still be happening if the game was up.  I don't see how appealing to other peoples play styles is "hating alts and making the game like WoW'.  When was alting EVER punished in CoH?  Because I remember when people who weren't huge alters were punished in CoH.  It was 3/4's of the game's existence
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 30, 2014, 09:27:54 PM
I guess the issue for me is that Positron's "vision" ended up being something that I perceived as "let's put in grindy end game raids like every other game!". I can appreciate that he has a vision and that it's important to have one, but if I don't like the vision, I'm not sure where that leaves me.

Living in the real world I suppose.

Many players hated the inventions system, and many of them left because of it.  Many others loved it, and went as far to say that the invention system kept the game fresh for them and caused them to stay when they otherwise might have left.  Its clear in retrospect that the decision to add the invention system had no right answer if you are measuring that by whether the decision causes harm to the playerbase.  Adding it caused harm: not adding it would have caused harm.  The game didn't last long enough to make a similar judgment about the incarnate system, but I suspect a similar thing would have been true: adding it cost players, not adding it would have also cost players in the long run.

I personally think the invention system gained or retained more players than it cost overall: whether you were a single-character focused player or an alt-generator the invention system was overall a net positive, although that would be difficult to prove.  I think the incarnate system was player-neutral at the time of the shutdown, but I think it would have turned positive over time as the developers expanded to non-trial aspects of it.

If you were one of the players that didn't and would never like it, there's nothing much to say.  Its not that I want your gaming experience degraded, but if you asked me if I would have been willing to trade the invention system away to get back the players it cost the game, I would have to honestly answer "no."

Which, incidentally, brushes up against the asymmetry associated with alting.  This is something I actually discussed with the devs occasionally in different guises, in particular when I was part of the Freedom focus group.  This is a huge oversimplification for discussion purposes, but the wedge between those that want focused progression and those that want a variety of alts isn't in their differing desires, its actually how they interact with an overlapping player type: completists.

A "deep" (for lack of a short descriptor) completist wants to do everything on a single character.  If it exists in the game, they want to do it at least once, get it at least once, have at least one of it.  They want every badge, they want everything unlocked, they want to have done every mission at least once.  Every time the devs add something they cannot experience on a single character that is related to making more characters, like power sets, they see that as time that could be spent making the game deeper for them: its an opportunity cost.

However, that's not true going the other way.  an alt-completist wants to try every possible character type: every kind of archetype, every powerset, maybe even every powerset combination eventually.  But they *also* tend to want those alts to be "first class citizens" which means to a large extent if they do it on one, they want to do it on all, or at least a large percentage of them.  They want badges on more than one alt, they want to do mission content on more than one alt, they want to progress to the maximum progressional levels on every alt.

When you add depth to the game rather than breadth, the impact on alt-completists isn't that there's an opportunity cost, its that there's the potential to place a lot of content out of reach.  Now, adding powersets also adds content out of reach of the deep-completists, but because they are deep players they already made that decision to forgo exploring alternate characters in the first place.  Its adding content in an area they already decided not to go.  It hurts less.  If it hurt more, they would be altists.

So in effect, you have a game where you can expand its width (by adding more character options) and its depth (by adding more progressional systems and content).  For those that want depth, increasing the width only hurts a little.  But for those that want width, a significant percentage not only want width they also *need* less depth.  For them, adding depth hurts more.

I think the discussion of "grindy end game" masks a more fundamental problem that the devs perceived in the feedback they got, and is something Matt had on his mind when writing that article.  A game that encourages alting does create a problem that is specific to alting in that there is a group of players you will enable that won't just advocate for more alting options but also *less* everything else.  That's not true in the reverse, and its a problem that can hamper future development of a game.

Personally, I think the dev team believed this problem was mostly intractible.  I tended to think it was not completely intractable: it could be significantly moderated in a way that the Incarnate system itself did not succeed at.  But I think the core of the problem is actually intractable.  My philosophy was "something for everyone, not everything for someone."  That means when in doubt, develop in a way that gives something to each kind of playstyle.  But there's one kind of playstyle that philosophy is incompatible with: the wide-completists.  When you give something to everyone, you will almost certainly be adding things to the game that make it increasingly difficult to be a wide-completist.  In my opinion, that's just the way it goes: if you want to be a wide completist, you need to have a lot of time to do so.

As a developer, you never want to say to a player that you're just not going to develop for them, but the truth is that you either develop for wide-completists, or everyone else, and everyone else usually wins.  The only reason why CoH was compatible with wide-completists in the first place was purely coincidental: they simply didn't have enough developers to outrace most wide-competists until long after launch.  But it wasn't for lack of trying.

As I said, this is oversimplifying a lot, but that's how I tended to see the overlapping player interests.  I don't know if the devs saw it exactly the same way, but I do know there were many times during my discussions with a dev where they would say words to the effect of "we can't do that because" and essentially give a reason congruent to the above: that doing so would make life difficult for one segment of the player population or another.  Its something they thought about a lot.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 30, 2014, 09:39:12 PM
Living in the real world I suppose.

Many players hated the inventions system, and many of them left because of it.  Many others loved it, and went as far to say that the invention system kept the game fresh for them and caused them to stay when they otherwise might have left.  Its clear in retrospect that the decision to add the invention system had no right answer if you are measuring that by whether the decision causes harm to the playerbase.  Adding it caused harm: not adding it would have caused harm.  The game didn't last long enough to make a similar judgment about the incarnate system, but I suspect a similar thing would have been true: adding it cost players, not adding it would have also cost players in the long run.

I personally think the invention system gained or retained more players than it cost overall: whether you were a single-character focused player or an alt-generator the invention system was overall a net positive, although that would be difficult to prove.  I think the incarnate system was player-neutral at the time of the shutdown, but I think it would have turned positive over time as the developers expanded to non-trial aspects of it.

If you were one of the players that didn't and would never like it, there's nothing much to say.  Its not that I want your gaming experience degraded, but if you asked me if I would have been willing to trade the invention system away to get back the players it cost the game, I would have to honestly answer "no."

Which, incidentally, brushes up against the asymmetry associated with alting.  This is something I actually discussed with the devs occasionally in different guises, in particular when I was part of the Freedom focus group.  This is a huge oversimplification for discussion purposes, but the wedge between those that want focused progression and those that want a variety of alts isn't in their differing desires, its actually how they interact with an overlapping player type: completists.

A "deep" (for lack of a short descriptor) completist wants to do everything on a single character.  If it exists in the game, they want to do it at least once, get it at least once, have at least one of it.  They want every badge, they want everything unlocked, they want to have done every mission at least once.  Every time the devs add something they cannot experience on a single character that is related to making more characters, like power sets, they see that as time that could be spent making the game deeper for them: its an opportunity cost.

However, that's not true going the other way.  an alt-completist wants to try every possible character type: every kind of archetype, every powerset, maybe even every powerset combination eventually.  But they *also* tend to want those alts to be "first class citizens" which means to a large extent if they do it on one, they want to do it on all, or at least a large percentage of them.  They want badges on more than one alt, they want to do mission content on more than one alt, they want to progress to the maximum progressional levels on every alt.

When you add depth to the game rather than breadth, the impact on alt-completists isn't that there's an opportunity cost, its that there's the potential to place a lot of content out of reach.  Now, adding powersets also adds content out of reach of the deep-completists, but because they are deep players they already made that decision to forgo exploring alternate characters in the first place.  Its adding content in an area they already decided not to go.  It hurts less.  If it hurt more, they would be altists.

So in effect, you have a game where you can expand its width (by adding more character options) and its depth (by adding more progressional systems and content).  For those that want depth, increasing the width only hurts a little.  But for those that want width, a significant percentage not only want width they also *need* less depth.  For them, adding depth hurts more.

I think the discussion of "grindy end game" masks a more fundamental problem that the devs perceived in the feedback they got, and is something Matt had on his mind when writing that article.  A game that encourages alting does create a problem that is specific to alting in that there is a group of players you will enable that won't just advocate for more alting options but also *less* everything else.  That's not true in the reverse, and its a problem that can hamper future development of a game.

Personally, I think the dev team believed this problem was mostly intractible.  I tended to think it was not completely intractable: it could be significantly moderated in a way that the Incarnate system itself did not succeed at.  But I think the core of the problem is actually intractable.  My philosophy was "something for everyone, not everything for someone."  That means when in doubt, develop in a way that gives something to each kind of playstyle.  But there's one kind of playstyle that philosophy is incompatible with: the wide-completists.  When you give something to everyone, you will almost certainly be adding things to the game that make it increasingly difficult to be a wide-completist.  In my opinion, that's just the way it goes: if you want to be a wide completist, you need to have a lot of time to do so.

As a developer, you never want to say to a player that you're just not going to develop for them, but the truth is that you either develop for wide-completists, or everyone else, and everyone else usually wins.  The only reason why CoH was compatible with wide-completists in the first place was purely coincidental: they simply didn't have enough developers to outrace most wide-competists until long after launch.  But it wasn't for lack of trying.

As I said, this is oversimplifying a lot, but that's how I tended to see the overlapping player interests.  I don't know if the devs saw it exactly the same way, but I do know there were many times during my discussions with a dev where they would say words to the effect of "we can't do that because" and essentially give a reason congruent to the above: that doing so would make life difficult for one segment of the player population or another.  Its something they thought about a lot.

It may be that positron wasn't entirely in touch with the players as much as we'd liked.  OR he fell out of touch after the shut down.  Communicating was something though they(paragon studios) did display at times, but it seems looking at the history of CoX that it was something they got better with time.  Even then they still weren't entirely in touch, perhaps.  The incarnate system was good for those who wanted end game, yes, but not everyone liked it, but then they probably didn't want to make that for everyone.  This is evident with the fact that they still added non-incarnate content.

But then, you also have to remember the player base that was established with CoX BEFORE the incarnate trials was a very different player base than the typical mmorpg, which was even more-so what made CoX so unique.  A LOT of us were more balanced players, many of us had altitus and many of us liked experimenting, and this was because the game took a direction that encouraged that more and more.  So by the time he got to making incarnate content, we the players, the community in many ways was shaped by what CoX was before.  It's just a fact that our game ended up very different then other mmorpgs and in a way that would have been harder to grasp, even for some of the veterans, even.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: skoogmik on September 30, 2014, 09:55:55 PM
On the topic of how the game changes, there is a COH demo at ES 2002.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8GeYQVeiP8
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FelixMWM on September 30, 2014, 10:03:41 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=blog.smartyhadaparty.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2010%2F08%2Fcrepes-3ingr-mr-gallery-x1.jpg)

Blintzkrieg!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Baja on September 30, 2014, 10:16:57 PM
But the thing is, as a game designer you don't have the luxury of saying, "Your way of having fun isn't as good as my way of having fun." (Despite a previous lead developer for CoH thinking exactly that...) It's Positron's job to accommodate as many playstyles, as many goals, and as many players as he can so long as they're not mutually exclusive and so long as he has the resources to do so. Incarnate content was for the people who saw starting over at level 1 as a waste of time and effort, and wanted to continue making their main character more powerful. That may not be something you saw as useful, and maybe you even think less of people who have that as a goal. (I'm sure they feel the same way about you.) But it doesn't hurt anyone to give them what they want, and it's not like we weren't getting more new powersets to try right up until the end. (Nature Affinity and Beast Mastery, for example, were really cool and innovative.) I'm really just saying that Positron was right to recognize that the game didn't include a lot of people, and to expand it to include those people. As someone who despises being railroaded into a certain playstyle, I'd think you would support that. :)

I disagree with this to an extent but can't help but agree to some.

My thing is, yes you can not include certain types of players, almost every single game made does so. There's no possible way to please everyone, WoW recognized this and pushed very strongly towards a very specific type of player. In my opinion though the only reason the game did so well is advertising and their large brand based fan boys, which I won't lie I loves me some blizzard games. I'm conflicted though because I agree that including everyone is not such a horrible idea. At some point though you really will have to make a choice as to which group is more important and I can easily say positron was heavily in favor of the end gamers.

The reason IO's worked out so well, in my mind, is because they were not something implemented from day 1. The core group of players had ample time to gather influence over the years allowing "weekend warriors" (a term this game explicitly mentioned early on in production constantly to remind people it's friendly to those who can't burn 7 hours a day on games) to play and keep up. This is not a feature I have found in any other game. Even in Destiny right now all my friends are 27+ while I'm struggling to get past 23.

CoH set a standard that other games, to this day, cannot keep up with. It said "Screw the other major MMO's we'll make a game that we would enjoy." and so our beautiful city was born. I love this game for that so much. The fact it actually made its own path rather than trying to do the typical business model gaming, focus on what the market already has and hope we can steal their fan base, is something I'll never forget. Very few games these days have the ability to actually make something original.

I understand the whole pleasing everyone thing and concede it's not a horrible idea. I just really believe the roots of this game need to be respected and remembered. Giving lots of time between incarnate patches would allow people like me to continue playing without being "left out" so to speak. It's a very bitter feeling playing a game for so many years only to have players joining within months blasting by you because they rush content.

The other argument I'd present is when is it enough? I think if we've learned anything from WoW recently, it's that people eventually get tired of everything. In the future I really see a lot of companies focusing on multiple games that satisfy different player groups that aren't extremely hard on the wallet. That's just a prediction though since the pay to win concept seems to scare off so many people.

Sorry if this seems rushed, it was :P. I think I've learned a lot from this discussion so far, the opinions/ideas being talked about have opened up my eyes quite a bit.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 30, 2014, 10:18:13 PM
Regen was never really a weak set.  Just that it's main weak point was alpha strikes, 3 bosses won't but 3 bosses, 2-5 lieutenants and a bunch of minions could if they got the attacks in at the same time.

Well yeah, but at that point SR with conventional slotting would faceplant as well.  Comparatively speaking Regen was weaker there, but it wasn't an extreme weakness.  Anything that could kill a regen immediately on the alpha strike would usually kill a different scrapper a few seconds later.

One thing I used to stress was that there was a difference between a theoretical weakness and a practical one.  A theoretical weakness is where set A dies in this situation and set B lives.  A practical weakness is where set A walks away at the end and set B dies at the end.  A theoretical weakness that is not a practical weakness is where set A dies in five seconds and set B dies in ten seconds.  That's a metric useful for comparison, but only in restricted analyses.

Quote
And it depends on the enemies, some enemies are higher damage than others.  Rikti imo are one of the easier groups, not discrediting ya, three bosses struggling to kill you when your using just regeneration by itself..but say a few tank swipers?  I know for sure that they can hit far harder then that, I certainly had to use rebirth anytime one of those things got a hit on my fortunata.

Freakshow Tank Swipers do hit harder per hit, but I don't think they dealt more damage than Chief Soldiers in melee range, at least for the purposes of this test (and against most scrappers).  Two mitigating factors.  First, the Rikti damage is more than half energy: all the ranged shot and about a quarter of the melee hit are energy (the rest of the melee hit is lethal).  All of the tank swiper damage is smash/lethal.  At the time of the video Resilience was resistance to smash/lethal/toxic, not res(all), to the tune of about 9% slotted.  Second, critter AI doesn't use attacks efficiently.  If the tank swiper used all of his attacks efficiently, he'd outdamage the Rikti Soldier by about 25%.  Instead, because he often spams grenade more often than he should, his effective damage output tends to be closer to the Rikti Soldier in raw terms, and with the energy damage edge the Soldier probably deals about the same or more damage as the swiper against most scrappers (SR would, of course, not care).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 30, 2014, 10:37:34 PM
Well yeah, but at that point SR with conventional slotting would faceplant as well.  Comparatively speaking Regen was weaker there, but it wasn't an extreme weakness.  Anything that could kill a regen immediately on the alpha strike would usually kill a different scrapper a few seconds later.

One thing I used to stress was that there was a difference between a theoretical weakness and a practical one.  A theoretical weakness is where set A dies in this situation and set B lives.  A practical weakness is where set A walks away at the end and set B dies at the end.  A theoretical weakness that is not a practical weakness is where set A dies in five seconds and set B dies in ten seconds.  That's a metric useful for comparison, but only in restricted analyses.

Freakshow Tank Swipers do hit harder per hit, but I don't think they dealt more damage than Chief Soldiers in melee range, at least for the purposes of this test (and against most scrappers).  Two mitigating factors.  First, the Rikti damage is more than half energy: all the ranged shot and about a quarter of the melee hit are energy (the rest of the melee hit is lethal).  All of the tank swiper damage is smash/lethal.  At the time of the video Resilience was resistance to smash/lethal/toxic, not res(all), to the tune of about 9% slotted.  Second, critter AI doesn't use attacks efficiently.  If the tank swiper used all of his attacks efficiently, he'd outdamage the Rikti Soldier by about 25%.  Instead, because he often spams grenade more often than he should, his effective damage output tends to be closer to the Rikti Soldier in raw terms, and with the energy damage edge the Soldier probably deals about the same or more damage as the swiper against most scrappers (SR would, of course, not care).

I agree with you on the scrapper part there.  As for the tank swiper I could certainly see power misuse on the AI's behalf as potentially slowing them down in regards to taking you down.  Still possibly faster though in regards to three of them attacking a regen scrapper in those circumstances, possibly.  I thought about cimerorans likewise, and honestly think it may have been overkill to bring them up.  But I regularly fought them on a widow without trouble, buut that was more due to my attacks.  Just letting them hit me, i'd be down in no time, even with my near-soft capped defenses.

I'm now wondering about other enemies.  Enemies I knew were major threats to my main were Arachnos and Malta.  Arachnos's various Tarantula Mistress's and Tarantula queens had -defense, so I know they could debuff the player to make the player more killable, they also had -recharge in the same attacks if i recall(which would have slowed dull pains recharge).  Malta wouldn't I would think be better or worst at killing a defending regen scrapper than the above.  But then again I am not sure how much -recharge the Tarantula Mistresses/queens had compared to a chief mentalist. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 30, 2014, 11:01:50 PM
Here is the website I was referencing to earlier
http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/
This is the computer I'm going to make xD
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/j2dcBm

Oh man. How did I not know about this website?

And...Cuz I had a few minutes while I was eating breakfast...
In case anybody's curious...This is the computer I'm developing Revival on...
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/WdB8P6

EDIT: My keyboard is so old it doesn't even show up on the list... :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on September 30, 2014, 11:54:51 PM
No one is all one thing (at least, few are).  I liked leveling my alts.  I also had my power-mad days.  Enjoying the end-game power pursuit grind-fest wasn't mutually exclusive from enjoying the more conventional levels of play.

...

I actually believe there were a lot of players that were generalists in that regard; willing and able to enjoy almost any mode of gameplay in the game.  I even occasionally liked to PvP, just to PvP (just to get my ass kicked usually, but I did get the PvP badge with no farming so I did win at least sometimes).

 
I completely agree. That's why I think CoH had begun to achieve a balance that few other MMOs have been able to. That's something I desperately hope the developers of the successors are aiming for, as well: balance and variety.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on October 01, 2014, 12:11:38 AM
I fell directly into this group--specifically the invention system/stay-in-Mids-for-the-same-amount-of-time-I-spent-in-the-game group, and it kept me around for YEARS longer than I ever stayed in any other game (with the possible exception of Diablo 2--but, the same concept applies in those types of games too...constantly striving to be "extremely powerful" by small margins--and by experimentation)... :P

 
 
Miss making MIDS builds...so...much.
 
I probably had 50 alts, a large number of 50s and a large number of lowbies.  It usually took me to around level 25 before I knew if I liked a combo/concept/build enough to stick it out for the long haul. I had quite a few builds I'd levelled to 50 only to delete when I was done.
 
To me, that wasn't a sign of failure, it was a matter of taste and priority.  I had a fire/storm controller named The Stellar Stormer.  The concept was a great one: He was a celestial god in an alternate universe, one of quantum size.  He was exiled here only to find that he was no longer the "big fish in the pond."   All of his powers were tinted to look like a swirling galaxy, etc.  He was a fun concept to play, and I'd always wondered if I could make the numbers work on that combo.  I did.  He was fun.  But he wasn't a character or combo that I wanted to go back to much.  I levelled him. I enjoyed him.  That was enough.
 
That was very different than my Dual Pistol/Kinetics Corruptor, Quick Draw. He was just a perfect fit for me, and he didn't get deleted. I ran him through incarnate trials, etc. Then there was my dark/demons MM, Desert Walker.  His dark powers were tinted to look like sand/desert winds.  He was the last survivor of a desert world ravaged by Shivans.  He commanded the last surviving desert beats of his world, here trying to help Earth survive where his people didn't.  He was fun, and I never wanted to deleted him. He was great for solo.  But he was a pain in incarnate trials and I never planned to get him through them.
 
NONE of that was a failure on the part of myself, my choices, or the devs.  They were all different parts of the "game" to me.  They each played differently and served different purposes for me; some thematic, some logistic, some for play style.  And I never felt locked down or like I was somehow missing out.   
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 01, 2014, 12:14:11 AM
I agree with you on the scrapper part there.  As for the tank swiper I could certainly see power misuse on the AI's behalf as potentially slowing them down in regards to taking you down.  Still possibly faster though in regards to three of them attacking a regen scrapper in those circumstances, possibly.  I thought about cimerorans likewise, and honestly think it may have been overkill to bring them up.  But I regularly fought them on a widow without trouble, buut that was more due to my attacks.  Just letting them hit me, i'd be down in no time, even with my near-soft capped defenses.

I'm now wondering about other enemies.  Enemies I knew were major threats to my main were Arachnos and Malta.  Arachnos's various Tarantula Mistress's and Tarantula queens had -defense, so I know they could debuff the player to make the player more killable, they also had -recharge in the same attacks if i recall(which would have slowed dull pains recharge).  Malta wouldn't I would think be better or worst at killing a defending regen scrapper than the above.  But then again I am not sure how much -recharge the Tarantula Mistresses/queens had compared to a chief mentalist.

Cimerorans didn't exist at the time of the test, and keep in mind the point of the test was not to find the hardest hitting boss but to demonstrate the point that a single boss couldn't trivially execute a regen scrapper.  Two melee and one ranged Rikti boss served that point, even if they were not the most dangerous boss you could face.  They were also picked because they did not have unusual secondary effects that could complicate the test, like strong endurance drain, say.

Ignoring resistances, I think the unnamed common faction boss that would deal the most raw damage in melee range at the time would be the council archons.  They are the rare unnamed boss that possess multiple melee (non-AoE) attacks, and that is tough to beat.  Ranged attacks typically dealt only 60% of the damage of melee attacks for the same recharge due to critter damage modifiers.  At range they are not as dangerous and because they are all smash/lethal most melee player characters have ways to resist their attacks, so I think they are not often considered among the most damaging bosses.  But in fact, they pushed the limits of what the devs were supposed to give critters: there was an informal prohibition to not give non-special critters attacks that dealt more than 2.0 scale damage.  The Archons has Eagle's Claw, and their version did 1.96 (for a level 50 boss, that would be about 756 points of damage).

Cimerorans later beat them out I believe, and also because they tended to have a lot of hard-hitting melee attacks.  But I haven't really tried to compare the two: Cims were not just dangerous because of their pure damage, they were dangerous because they possessed a lot of defense debuffs which tended to nullify a lot of the protection melee characters (and others) had gotten used to having (as well as stacking buffs that made them tricky to engage in large numbers).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on October 01, 2014, 12:25:40 AM
Oh man. How did I not know about this website?

And...Cuz I had a few minutes while I was eating breakfast...
In case anybody's curious...This is the computer I'm developing Revival on...
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/WdB8P6

EDIT: My keyboard is so old it doesn't even show up on the list... :(

Surprised that the 600 series didn't drop more in price. For 100 dollars more you can get a 970 GTX O.o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on October 01, 2014, 12:56:07 AM
You'd need to be seriously careful about shenanigans.  Old equipment can have faults in them, and heck, may even be the reason people are trying to get rid of it is because its about to break, hasn't, but they know it will, so they put it on ebay or craigs list.  At least you get a new hard drive.

Yes, we do. But I made it a point to buy from a company (Green Citizen) who buy lots from failed businesses. The three I got have been perfect.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 01, 2014, 01:18:12 AM
Surprised that the 600 series didn't drop more in price. For 100 dollars more you can get a 970 GTX O.o

Yeah, I kind of expected to see it for closer to $100-$150. -shrugs-
It's still a pretty good card, that does it's job well enough that I can't complain.
I've actually got the FTW edition, not the SuperClocked...The FTW wasn't listed however. Too old, or out of stock I guess.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on October 01, 2014, 01:23:52 AM
Could you fill me in on how Rift's character progression worked?  You describe it like the character starts at the top or something(which would mean a sore lack of character development is allowed).

I can't speak in much detail on this.  I'm going mostly on a cursory pass of the game and Miller's article.  The particulars of progression weren't really relevant to my point though; I'm interested in the general notion that a character can be developed to fit into any role at any time.  I find that to be at odds with the development of character identity, and that usually makes a game less enjoyable to me.  It feels to me like a growing trend in MMOs.

It's highly dependent on genre though.  Characters in Eve can learn anything given enough time, but that particular aspect of the game doesn't feel out of place to me.  The thing that makes characters "special" in that game is shared by all of them: they are capsuleers.  Skills represent something that you learn.  In practice, as well, it is effectively impossible to be really good at everything in that game because you can spend years training skills for a particular purpose.  So I don't see character abilities as being tied into identity the same way they would be in CoH.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lupur on October 01, 2014, 01:32:19 AM
Hehehe, my main was constantly being re-imagined, but eventually settled on Regen.

I squealed like a little girl when I found out Regen got ported to Brutes :D

Energy Melle // Regen // Energy Mastery

All attacks except Total Focus and Energy Transfer was slotted for Stun.

Everything else was slotted for recharge. 3 end procs + 3 end IOs had me at stupid end/sec so I didn't bother slotting much for that either :P

I had pretty much no defenses, but enough recharge that with Spiritual, my Dull pain was on 12 sec overlap i seem to recall.

This meant that I had days when I would die repeatedly just versus trash mobs ( 2+sec activation ftw!! )

However, I had days where I just seemed Immortal. I even managed to nearly perma-stun Noctis pre-Incarnates 8)

( proceded to get mushed by mobs cause the team was all 'lol you wanted to solo, gl :P )

If I got a say in additions or modifications to the game?

Regen 4 Tankers

That is all.

Edit: spilling
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 01, 2014, 02:04:42 AM

Cimerorans later beat them out I believe, and also because they tended to have a lot of hard-hitting melee attacks.  But I haven't really tried to compare the two: Cims were not just dangerous because of their pure damage, they were dangerous because they possessed a lot of defense debuffs which tended to nullify a lot of the protection melee characters (and others) had gotten used to having (as well as stacking buffs that made them tricky to engage in large numbers).

A lot of people were rather intimidated by them, I ran into guys who felt the fortunata was made completely useless in the face of cimerorans.  Not really true, since I regularly beat them without much difficulty, but that was because I always had a huge layering of defensive strategies to work with in front of my fortunata's defense stat.  They're attacks were slow so I'd often cripple them with recharge debuffs.

I think the worst enemies anyone could make in the AE though, were storm summoners.  My mission archs had them planned as being a very regular enemy rather early on, with greater frequency in later missions(along with other, nasty powersets).  Freezing rain was best described as something that buffs couldn't actually counter all that effectively, as the effect was a pseudo-auto-hit(only 1 hit was needed for the debuff from it and your talking 30 attacks/second from the pseudo pet), the slow wasn't easy to escape, if you had no knock resistance you were going to slip/slid, even with knock resistance, your still screwed.  Storm summoning enemies also could be given tornado which meant further -defense, and excruciating levels of damage if you had knock protection applied.  Accidentally made my missions in testing impossible to beat, since so many debuffs were in the air players were instantly rendered useless ragdolls.  Even after having huge buff numbers from everything to.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on October 01, 2014, 02:19:54 AM
So in effect, you have a game where you can expand its width (by adding more character options) and its depth (by adding more progressional systems and content).  For those that want depth, increasing the width only hurts a little.  But for those that want width, a significant percentage not only want width they also *need* less depth.  For them, adding depth hurts more.

This is very true. I had to make a conscious decision not to pursue Incarnate powers on all of my 50s, simply because I had so many characters that I wanted to get to 50 that I couldn't see myself then taking the time to max out all their Incarnate tiers as well. (I did have a single character I maxed out Incarnate with, and a few others I dabbled in, but not many.) But ultimately, it was nice to know that Incarnate was there for the eventual day I had 70+ alts at the cap and nothing to do with them. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 01, 2014, 02:22:52 AM
Wow. . . Windows 10 announced already. . .

And thanks for the link to PC parts Picker, cool site!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 01, 2014, 02:28:58 AM
Hehehe, my main was constantly being re-imagined, but eventually settled on Regen.

I squealed like a little girl when I found out Regen got ported to Brutes :D

Energy Melle // Regen // Energy Mastery

All attacks except Total Focus and Energy Transfer was slotted for Stun.

Everything else was slotted for recharge. 3 end procs + 3 end IOs had me at stupid end/sec so I didn't bother slotting much for that either :P

I had pretty much no defenses, but enough recharge that with Spiritual, my Dull pain was on 12 sec overlap i seem to recall.

This meant that I had days when I would die repeatedly just versus trash mobs ( 2+sec activation ftw!! )

However, I had days where I just seemed Immortal. I even managed to nearly perma-stun Noctis pre-Incarnates 8)

( proceded to get mushed by mobs cause the team was all 'lol you wanted to solo, gl :P )

If I got a say in additions or modifications to the game?

Regen 4 Tankers

That is all.

Edit: spilling

You might get a kick out of this: I call it "selling out to regen"

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1496&c=667&a=1334&f=HEX&dc=78DA6594EB4F52611CC79F03870890044145043545B92847486BDDB65699AD2585DA6DBD31C4473C8DA103BAD8BD5ED7D66AEB75B57ADB7FD6E53FA09F7CBF43369EEDECF39CEFF9DD9F734EE1E952DFAFAB6F2F28C377B95A6A34362ED51F35B5AB50AAD865A792E5962BD816370ABAAAB525664F1A51284B7A5BD71ADA5AD3155DD3F552D3DEAD296F7177B76AADEF69BDE56F6F97EDCA4ED3AE557CB8AB1EDC06DBFB6BB5C776C3DEB4AB76733F7465CF2E5B17EBE5A65DDE28941A4D5DDF8F48F28C5C9B7EC5D532D58C43A9BCA91C4932059A69703E033E0B8BB9D1F671AA550336EBE0915B60F236F83C4C53D57219D769B3021E2D903740EF4DB20896A536276B733E506DED5889DC0407CAE0FC16B8253E2EFAB8E833409F307DC2F4C9D2E785D4E8463F0EF727F4D8F799FC026E4B5C4FBB9396E961DC09C69D60DC09C63DCEB82F25AE0F714D1FE7145B03C738AF31CE6B8CF3D292C7CFFAFDA7917BE80C79168C9CE3799C075F499E7EE6E9679E00E307183FC1F849E6DF912441E609CE214E344B5A606C1ECCE6C0D79227C4398522B2899B2A3D0C6686C02979AB0711570D66318749D186E1670CCF428B908E21A546683F42ED8DE419656DA3EC27C3BA33EC6B8E7D65D9972DFDC43983F85727CEE11BF91D9CFA01267E820FC5679C79C64FA0C7A90572114C9C04D3A740437A9964BD9351D4EB146D9AB9A74730879928394AC6C0641C34C527C599A406D1433A00BE93FE6791C331CB99CC05D9376D3DE26FB10E8B9A5FB41CB51CB598D9F9BE9562BD996EAD254BE57A947C8FB2D0A32CF628CB66E7CFD05AE97ECA37A16876FE06CA60679E40E72B6FFDF6CA7383CFE9F3F750338C3BE82ACF53FFD36D9F82FDBF43CD617CC4A9E53F90EFC155EF4134E4BCDBB5BFD7B5BFDFB55F0D891BF7FF01695CCBCF

Its something I played around with for Brutes, focusing on recharge, heal, regen, and +maxhealth (although it has some other stuff in there).

Key features:

More than perma Dull Pain (cycle time ~92 seconds: remember DP has a heal)
Reconstruction cycles in about 15 seconds and heals for about 2/3rds of full (base) health.
Close to the Brute health cap.
IH is up more than half the time.
IH down: 93 h/s.  IH up: 228 h/s.
MoG can be up almost 25% of the time.

Its looney tunes, but might have been a blast to play.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on October 01, 2014, 02:33:33 AM
I liked leveling my alts.  I also had my power-mad days.  Enjoying the end-game power pursuit grind-fest wasn't mutually exclusive from enjoying the more conventional levels of play.

On the day they announced shutdown, my lowest active alt (meaning, an alt I was playing several times a week minimum) was in the teens (a water blaster) and my highest was my main that was running tons of incarnate trials, already had multiple tier 4s in every incarnate slot, and was still trying to make more Lore pets.

I actually believe there were a lot of players that were generalists in that regard; willing and able to enjoy almost any mode of gameplay in the game.

Pretty much this.  I had a stable of 50's that I was dabbling in the incarnate trials and I also had a group of toons ranging from teens to high 40s.  I'd log in a new toon every day and mess around.  Maybe I'd run a Terra Volta and respec, maybe try my luck in a PvP zone, maybe work on alignment swapping, maybe try out a randome AE, maybe mess around with internal Build 1 & 2, maybe I'd badge hunt, maybe I'd run an Oroborous mission, maybe a TF if I had time, maybe a few scanner missions or even (gasp) story content.  Maybe I'd solo, maybe I'd team.  Maybe I'd just sit back and talk on the global channels.

There was no right way to play the game, and the options were awesome.

My only concern was that it seemed like the incarnate trials were starting to pull the veterans away from L1-L50 content and into the post-50s, to the detriment of the younger section of community.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 01, 2014, 02:47:34 AM
I think the worst enemies anyone could make in the AE though, were storm summoners.

You didn't explore the evil side of the AE deeply enough.  I spent a lot of time looking at the custom critter system and tested a lot of combos.  Its hard to say what the worst possible combination was, but there were a lot of hidden nasties in there for people to run into that make storm summoning look like a squib.

Consider: Mind Control/Dark Armor.  Its a ranged mezzer with confuse.  Few non-melee can handle that very well.  As for the melee?  Dark Armor has Soul Transfer as a rez.  Do you have mag 30 stun protection?  How about mag 60 if you accidentally kill two a the same time?  How about mag 90?  And that's only after you get past a bunch of overlapping PBAoE toggles.

I had a list of combos to avoid when making real missions, and this was very high on the list.  Its just too evil.

Along the lines of storm summoning, a combo that only scored 9.8 on the evil-o-meter that was similar but nastier was Earth Control/Cold Domination.  Two autohitting patches - quicksand and earthquake - plus a rain, plus two really awful debuffs (benumb, heat loss).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lupur on October 01, 2014, 03:18:07 AM
You might get a kick out of this: I call it "selling out to regen"

/snip

Its looney tunes, but might have been a blast to play.

Ah, I see what you did there.. shame it breaks my 1 cardinal rule.. NEVAH TAKE HASTEN!!

I just punched this in quickly, so skills are out of order, but this is roughly what I remember having.

This happy little fellow and my SoA grenadier ( double full leadership & trying to perma bots), were the only toons I had purples on; the rest were fodder to feed the masses ( alts )

It's madness but it works.. sometimes :P (http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1536&c=674&a=1348&f=HEX&dc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
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nightmarer on October 01, 2014, 03:25:14 AM
Could you fill me in on how Rift's character progression worked?  You describe it like the character starts at the top or something(which would mean a sore lack of character development is allowed).

Basically, on Rift you have 4 classes, Rogue, mage, Cleric and Warrior. By default, on every class you can have 4 diferent builds and you can swap between builds whenever you wish. For each of said builds, you can use a combination of 3 different talent trees (talent trees are called "souls" in the game) and every class has DPS souls, healing souls, support souls and tanking souls hence you can build, let's say a rogue with a melee dps build, a ranged dps build, a healer build and a tanking build, that's many people you don't need alts in Rift.

Also, you can purchase more builds (I think it is a total of 6 builds) so you could add to your rogue, let's say a PvP build and a melee DPS hiding build (like a stalker) besides all the abovementioned builds.

Also, character progression was exactly the same so it was exactly same content for every alt you were willing to roll hence not really much point in making alts. Having said that, I personally used to have alts for many reasons, first would be playstyle because it is way different tanking with a rogue than with a cleric, or dealing ranged dps with a warrior (yes, warriors had ranged dps souls) than with a mage. Another reason I had alts for was crafting, although I could purchase extra crafting slots so 1 character could have all crafting skills, I preferred doing it for free. Besides, of course, not all souls were available on F2P mode so, instead of purchasing a healing soul for my warrior or my rogue, I preferred to roll a cleric when I could be bothered to do the exactly same content.

Some people mentioned that alting was a complete waste of time because, besides having to go through same content over and over again, you also had to take into consideration all the endgame raiding you had to do if you wanted to gear up 2, 3 or 4 alts however, I always found that argument a bit silly since it was probably petty much same time you would spend raiding to gear up the same character for 2 or 3 different roles. Of course, if you wanted 4 walts fullye geared up for every possible role, well, that was a totally different scenario akin to what Arcana defined as wide-completionists.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 01, 2014, 03:25:27 AM
Ah, I see what you did there.. shame it breaks my 1 cardinal rule.. NEVAH TAKE HASTEN!!

You could yank hasten and burnout, replace with grant vis and taunt (or whatever), and slot GI with Lotg +rech and Lotg anything, and its still pretty zippy.  DP is still plenty perma in particular, and you get back a little bit of the recharge you lost from hasten with the additional Lotg.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nightmarer on October 01, 2014, 03:27:50 AM
You didn't explore the evil side of the AE deeply enough.  I spent a lot of time looking at the custom critter system and tested a lot of combos.  Its hard to say what the worst possible combination was, but there were a lot of hidden nasties in there for people to run into that make storm summoning look like a squib.

Consider: Mind Control/Dark Armor.  Its a ranged mezzer with confuse.  Few non-melee can handle that very well.  As for the melee?  Dark Armor has Soul Transfer as a rez.  Do you have mag 30 stun protection?  How about mag 60 if you accidentally kill two a the same time?  How about mag 90?  And that's only after you get past a bunch of overlapping PBAoE toggles.

I had a list of combos to avoid when making real missions, and this was very high on the list.  Its just too evil.

Along the lines of storm summoning, a combo that only scored 9.8 on the evil-o-meter that was similar but nastier was Earth Control/Cold Domination.  Two autohitting patches - quicksand and earthquake - plus a rain, plus two really awful debuffs (benumb, heat loss).

My worst was testing a mission where minions were darkness manipulators, my ToHit was floored at -300 and the army of fluffies tore me apart in almost no time while I kept swinging at thin air.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FelixMWM on October 01, 2014, 03:39:14 AM
My worst was testing a mission where minions were darkness manipulators, my ToHit was floored at -300 and the army of fluffies tore me apart in almost no time while I kept swinging at thin air.

That sucked and getting hammered by a group of praetorian clockwork nuked my dark regeneration recharge, if you can't kill me in 11 sec... 20 sec... three minutes, you can't kill me. Oh wait, you can.

Felix
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 01, 2014, 04:36:25 AM
Pretty much this.  I had a stable of 50's that I was dabbling in the incarnate trials and I also had a group of toons ranging from teens to high 40s.  I'd log in a new toon every day and mess around.  Maybe I'd run a Terra Volta and respec, maybe try my luck in a PvP zone, maybe work on alignment swapping, maybe try out a randome AE, maybe mess around with internal Build 1 & 2, maybe I'd badge hunt, maybe I'd run an Oroborous mission, maybe a TF if I had time, maybe a few scanner missions or even (gasp) story content.  Maybe I'd solo, maybe I'd team.  Maybe I'd just sit back and talk on the global channels.

There was no right way to play the game, and the options were awesome.

My only concern was that it seemed like the incarnate trials were starting to pull the veterans away from L1-L50 content and into the post-50s, to the detriment of the younger section of community.

So true.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 01, 2014, 04:36:57 AM
You didn't explore the evil side of the AE deeply enough.  I spent a lot of time looking at the custom critter system and tested a lot of combos.  Its hard to say what the worst possible combination was, but there were a lot of hidden nasties in there for people to run into that make storm summoning look like a squib.

Consider: Mind Control/Dark Armor.  Its a ranged mezzer with confuse.  Few non-melee can handle that very well.  As for the melee?  Dark Armor has Soul Transfer as a rez.  Do you have mag 30 stun protection?  How about mag 60 if you accidentally kill two a the same time?  How about mag 90?  And that's only after you get past a bunch of overlapping PBAoE toggles.

I had a list of combos to avoid when making real missions, and this was very high on the list.  Its just too evil.

Along the lines of storm summoning, a combo that only scored 9.8 on the evil-o-meter that was similar but nastier was Earth Control/Cold Domination.  Two autohitting patches - quicksand and earthquake - plus a rain, plus two really awful debuffs (benumb, heat loss).

Pretty nasty but I wouldn't have touched darkness with a 100 fool pole with the mobs I was designing, well, some of them, it was against the theme to an extreme.  Honestly alot of powersets, the buff/debuff ones especially were especially bad when en-massed.  The thing is the numbers that could be stacked in the debuff range, or the cc range, was unimaginably unforgiving, actually you could say it wasn't much different then dealing with a pvp 1.0 multiplier stacking team.

The reason I mentioned storm summoning was due to the fact that 8 tornados was pretty much death to anything and melee couldn't hit anything in 8 hurricanes, let alone with the -recharge stacking from 8 snow storms and -movement from that.  Getting torn down to negative numbers by anything that can was generally bad.

Actually any CC stacked from everything on the map could probably over-run people pretty easily.

Combo's I used that killed fast; kin/sonic blast(fulcrum shift on all mobs).  It had to be killed in moments, because the -resistance stacked a little harshly with the fulcrum shift damage buff.  Set it as an ambush and leave the message off(and if your really evil, set the ambushes to minions).  Said mobs also used /radiation blast alongside kin.

Any mastermind in an ambush; the mobs instantly bring out the henchmen.  But thugs was especially bad, super laggy and stupid fun about it, bring lots and lots of attackers as they'd instantly fire gang war off even before getting in range.  No, I am not kidding about that.  Once I tried spawning an AV to help another, unfortunately the stupid thing spawned 8 of them(and I THINK I gave these mind control).  And they all had gang war fired off.  Considering the AV I was fighting was an enemy with FS(and the full kinetics set)......:S.

Those were just a few things I did in the early missions, let alone later missions.  I was honestly waiting for time manipulation to come along for those.  But then I didn't want to go to brutal on players.

Wished I explored it more, just I had to keep in the theme of the characters.  Darkness powers were universally only good for magic themed characters and mobs, mine were all technological/science based with only a few exceptions.  I did however have other things to keep the difficulty rising for the archs, just needed the right sets to come out.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 01, 2014, 04:39:36 AM
That sucked and getting hammered by a group of praetorian clockwork nuked my dark regeneration recharge, if you can't kill me in 11 sec... 20 sec... three minutes, you can't kill me. Oh wait, you can.

Felix

8 rad emission guys on soloists.....that'd be very cruel and unforgiving fun :).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on October 01, 2014, 05:27:09 AM
It didn't take an excessive amount of grinding to get a character to the +3 incarnate shift in the incarnate trials though.

That's arguable. For a casual player like me, it became too much. Because I'm more of what Arcana calls a "deep completionist" I wanted to have my "main" get to the top tier of power levels. That was just impractical with the playing time I had, and even if I had had lots of time, I don't think I would have enjoyed playing the same limited set of Incarnate Trials ad infinitum. I left around Issue 20 because of that.

Even though I had a single "main", I did have many alts. And while I long ago had given up on all of them being "complete", it would have been nice to have more than one Incarnate level character. I ended up with 2 at +1 or something like that, but it was just too monotonous for me.

Like I said before, the "Posi hates alts" was a bit of hyperbole on my part a few hundred posts ago. But all the same, reading through his blog, I really get the very distinct feeling that his philosophy and the way I wanted / liked to play were at odds, so it might not be a coincidence I left when I did - I don't know the exact timeline of his becoming boss, but it seems reasonable in my head that the grand plan he had in mind was taking effect at the time I left.

I can appreciate that he has a vision and that it's important to have one, but if I don't like the vision, I'm not sure where that leaves me.
Living in the real world I suppose.

To be fair, I started playing CoH the summer before college, so most of the time I played it I was not living in the real world.

Not Pancakes

But those are crepes!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on October 01, 2014, 06:13:04 AM

He became Lead Designer when City of Villains came out....



That's arguable. For a casual player like me, it became too much. Because I'm more of what Arcana calls a "deep completionist" I wanted to have my "main" get to the top tier of power levels. That was just impractical with the playing time I had, and even if I had had lots of time, I don't think I would have enjoyed playing the same limited set of Incarnate Trials ad infinitum. I left around Issue 20 because of that.

Even though I had a single "main", I did have many alts. And while I long ago had given up on all of them being "complete", it would have been nice to have more than one Incarnate level character. I ended up with 2 at +1 or something like that, but it was just too monotonous for me.

Like I said before, the "Posi hates alts" was a bit of hyperbole on my part a few hundred posts ago. But all the same, reading through his blog, I really get the very distinct feeling that his philosophy and the way I wanted / liked to play were at odds, so it might not be a coincidence I left when I did - I don't know the exact timeline of his becoming boss, but it seems reasonable in my head that the grand plan he had in mind was taking effect at the time I left.
Living in the real world I suppose.


To be fair, I started playing CoH the summer before college, so most of the time I played it I was not living in the real world.

But those are crepes!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 01, 2014, 07:43:07 AM
My worst was testing a mission where minions were darkness manipulators, my ToHit was floored at -300 and the army of fluffies tore me apart in almost no time while I kept swinging at thin air.

True story: when the AE was first being tested, "custom critters" were not really customizable to the degree they eventually became - I had a bit of a hand in trying/forcing/begging/ramming the notion that they ought to be.  One reason was that originally, all custom critters basically had every power from both sets, which meant that in a sense, all custom critters were set to "extreme."

This became interesting when you made your minions custom critters, and the very first thing that happened when the player stepped into the room was that every single ranged critter simultaneously fired off *AIM* and then obliterated you through your defenses from long range.

But the most awesome example of needing to tone down powers was gang war.  Imagine a room full of minions.  Now imagine every single one of them possesses gang war.  Now imagine all of them wants to spam it immediately upon you entering the room.  Instant mosh pit, just add player.  Missions could get literally wall to wall with gang war members standing on the heads of other gang war members because there was literally nowhere else for them to stand.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 01, 2014, 07:52:16 AM
True story: when the AE was first being tested, "custom critters" were not really customizable to the degree they eventually became - I had a bit of a hand in trying/forcing/begging/ramming the notion that they ought to be.  One reason was that originally, all custom critters basically had every power from both sets, which meant that in a sense, all custom critters were set to "extreme."

This became interesting when you made your minions custom critters, and the very first thing that happened when the player stepped into the room was that every single ranged critter simultaneously fired off *AIM* and then obliterated you through your defenses from long range.

But the most awesome example of needing to tone down powers was gang war.  Imagine a room full of minions.  Now imagine every single one of them possesses gang war.  Now imagine all of them wants to spam it immediately upon you entering the room.  Instant mosh pit, just add player.  Missions could get literally wall to wall with gang war members standing on the heads of other gang war members because there was literally nowhere else for them to stand.

I know from experience how big those crowds can get.....on an open map, let alone a small space like that.  It was on accident by making 8 archvillains spawn in an ambush and they all cast gang war.  About 120 guys in one crowd...insanity.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 01, 2014, 08:03:31 AM
Like I said before, the "Posi hates alts" was a bit of hyperbole on my part a few hundred posts ago. But all the same, reading through his blog, I really get the very distinct feeling that his philosophy and the way I wanted / liked to play were at odds, so it might not be a coincidence I left when I did - I don't know the exact timeline of his becoming boss, but it seems reasonable in my head that the grand plan he had in mind was taking effect at the time I left.

This is just my opinion, but I think Matt's game design philosophy was "let the devs have some space."  He didn't strike me as someone that wanted to impress his own explicit singular roadmap on everyone else.  In fact, ironically my biggest gripe with Matt is that he didn't always reign in other devs like I think a lead ought to, particularly in terms of storylines.  While others are faulting Matt for the implied sins he never admitted to, one thing he did admit to was believing that prior canon and established backstory should not be considered absolute relative to allowing developers to create what he and they perceived to be good ideas.  He seemed to be of the philosophy that if the team wanted to do something that sounded good, their job was to come up with a reasonably good excuse to comport with canon, not actually follow canon if it interfered.  That's a philosophy I can understand, and I can even support if necessary, but one I would never instantiate on my own.  It clashes with what I consider to be best practice design.

Its hard to reconcile the guy that says if a dev has a good idea that conflicts with prior plans you should usually go for it with the idea that he was simultaneously trying to shove his own personal gameplay preferences onto everyone else.  And under Matt the game implemented a ton of number of quality of life improvements for "unconventional" gameplay, like leveling pacts and day jobs. 

And even though many complained about some of the details of it, the Alpha slot and the shard system was *explicitly* designed to offer a way for players that did not want to run incarnate trials and trial-like tasks a way to get some benefit from the incarnate system - and in many ways the Alpha slot was the most general purpose incarnate power that existed (considering the others couldn't be used outside of trials anyway, at least originally).  The shard system was not originally a pre-planned part of the Incarnate system: it was created in response to feedback. 

There are a lot of compromises in the Incarnate system to address issues with solo players and time-limited players.  Many players didn't think it was enough for them, but they are there nonetheless.  Judged based on whether they made non-participants happy, you could say it was an insubstantial effort.  But judged based on the fact they created such cut-outs at all, when its not generally considered a good idea for end game implementations, it suggests the devs cared more than they were given credit for.

Again: its not supposed to make players who didn't like the system happy, its just meant to convey the sense that making them happy wasn't a trivial thing for the devs to accomplish, on top of everything else they wanted to do.  They didn't deliberately target you, and they didn't have an easy way out, in spite of what many players suggested at the time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Yoru-hime on October 01, 2014, 01:01:15 PM
True story: when the AE was first being tested, "custom critters" were not really customizable to the degree they eventually became - I had a bit of a hand in trying/forcing/begging/ramming the notion that they ought to be.  One reason was that originally, all custom critters basically had every power from both sets, which meant that in a sense, all custom critters were set to "extreme."

This became interesting when you made your minions custom critters, and the very first thing that happened when the player stepped into the room was that every single ranged critter simultaneously fired off *AIM* and then obliterated you through your defenses from long range.

But the most awesome example of needing to tone down powers was gang war.  Imagine a room full of minions.  Now imagine every single one of them possesses gang war.  Now imagine all of them wants to spam it immediately upon you entering the room.  Instant mosh pit, just add player.  Missions could get literally wall to wall with gang war members standing on the heads of other gang war members because there was literally nowhere else for them to stand.

I'm having trouble thinking of a set that doesn't end up being broken when you give the full thing to an x8 spawn worth of minions. All the synergies that can make "All <insert powerset here>" teams incredible would be thrown back in your face with every single spawn. Unless there were sets that the AI was just uniquely unsuited to making full use of.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 01, 2014, 01:42:03 PM
You didn't explore the evil side of the AE deeply enough.  I spent a lot of time looking at the custom critter system and tested a lot of combos.  Its hard to say what the worst possible combination was, but there were a lot of hidden nasties in there for people to run into that make storm summoning look like a squib.

Consider: Mind Control/Dark Armor.  Its a ranged mezzer with confuse.  Few non-melee can handle that very well.  As for the melee?  Dark Armor has Soul Transfer as a rez.  Do you have mag 30 stun protection?  How about mag 60 if you accidentally kill two a the same time?  How about mag 90?  And that's only after you get past a bunch of overlapping PBAoE toggles.

I had a list of combos to avoid when making real missions, and this was very high on the list.  Its just too evil.

Along the lines of storm summoning, a combo that only scored 9.8 on the evil-o-meter that was similar but nastier was Earth Control/Cold Domination.  Two autohitting patches - quicksand and earthquake - plus a rain, plus two really awful debuffs (benumb, heat loss).

I made several custom characters specifically for different uses as a demonstration that mezzing was NEVER necessary to balance the game. I added resistance to all of the bad guys. I then varied the weapons the assorted evil doers used to absolutely stop herding. I added 2 broadsword/katana users to each group and using this model with only at most one debuffing character per group - it made every group exciting and a challenge - I recall having people run it and warning them this is NOT a farm - proceed with caution and seeing them faceplant immediately.

It was not overly hard just an exercise in balance. I made the groups interesting to fight with mixed powers and weapons. Blasters however, could not be held by any of the foes. They could use range - the tanks and scrappers needed the blasters to kill off the melee or in a short time the tanks would be dead. The groups were made to play to the power of having a diversely built team. Not a holy trinity - just rewards in defeat speed for having a varied team.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ArchPilgrim on October 01, 2014, 01:56:48 PM
Pretty much this.  I had a stable of 50's that I was dabbling in the incarnate trials and I also had a group of toons ranging from teens to high 40s.  I'd log in a new toon every day and mess around.  Maybe I'd run a Terra Volta and respec, maybe try my luck in a PvP zone, maybe work on alignment swapping, maybe try out a randome AE, maybe mess around with internal Build 1 & 2, maybe I'd badge hunt, maybe I'd run an Oroborous mission, maybe a TF if I had time, maybe a few scanner missions or even (gasp) story content.  Maybe I'd solo, maybe I'd team.  Maybe I'd just sit back and talk on the global channels.

There was no right way to play the game, and the options were awesome.

My only concern was that it seemed like the incarnate trials were starting to pull the veterans away from L1-L50 content and into the post-50s, to the detriment of the younger section of community.

Absolute dittos.

I've been playing Beyond the Dead on my iPad for about a year.  Every time, something in it reminds me of CoX to the point where I wake up in the morning wanting to log in, run to King's Row for a few Radio Missions, then run to Wenty's to check on my listings and bids.  I want to run to our base, make a few IOs, then maybe use the base editor to make a few design tweaks.  I loved designing and maintaining bases.  Oooo... Then I'd get the urge to run over to Faultline to visit Doc Delilah, et. al.

I had a half-dozen 50's and dozens of alts.  My first 50 was a Fire/Ice Blaster.  She was awesome.  She was a master crafter, guild master, and did all the badge exploration for the teleporters in-base.  I miss running to the Tailor for a costume tweak.  I miss sewer runs with new alts in Atlas Park, and miss beating on Frostfire.  The list goes on.  I absolutely loved being able to pick up any toon and going out for a new adventure.  And I cared not one whit about endgame.  It was about gameplay.

The ugly truth is that endgame, whether in CoX or WoW or wherever, is a Haven for those dwelling in the realm of Ego.  Biggest, Baddest, Best.  Pfffft.  Whatever.  The real treasure here is that CoX handles everyone.  It provided a unifying environment where everyone had the playground of their dreams.  And I miss it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on October 01, 2014, 02:22:24 PM

Its hard to reconcile the guy that says if a dev has a good idea that conflicts with prior plans you should usually go for it with the idea that he was simultaneously trying to shove his own personal gameplay preferences onto everyone else. 


 
I'm not sure it is hard to reconcile the two.  Really, what you could argue is that he was doing with the prior continuity and story lines what he wanted to do to altitis: saying "I have a better idea, and I'm going to try to make it happen whether it really fits the current game or not."
 
Now, to borrow a phrase from Obama, let me be clear:   I loved Posi as a Dev. I even tried Star Trek Online just because he's running it now, and I find Star Trek REALLY boring.   I think CoH was excellent, usually, in listening to their players' feedback and desires.  That doesn't mean that Posi didn't have his OWN desires, and that those desires were at odds, sometimes, with the community.  That's just the nature of design, especially in the technical realm.  But just because he's a smart enough businessman and politician to listen to his customers demands when they're passionate enough, it doesn't mean he didn't have very serious feelings of his own and a desire to take the game in a different direction.
 
To bring it full circle, maybe Posi is like Microsoft, and maybe his vision of curbing alts was similar to Window's vision of Windows 8 being a single user interface for all devices.  Sounds good on paper, may even work, may even be necessary for the continued success of the system, but the shock and bother the idea causes to the customer base might force some careful treading or even a retreat.
 
In my opinion, that's what we saw in this article.  Posi had his opinion and, given free reign and ultimate time, he would have liked to change things quite a bit.  That's not "bad" or "wrong", so we don't need to pretend he wasn't making that desire clear in the article.  It was his opinion and desires shared while reflecting on it months after the shutdown, just as some players' responses were the same thing: opinions and desires about what would have made CoH a better game. 

Personally, I liked the end game Incarnate Stuff, overall.   My only real problem with it was the focus on RAIDS over almost everything else early on.  I always felt like CoH worked best, for me at least, because of the 5-8 man team sizes.  I'd have REALLY liked some of the iTrials more if they had been Task Forces, not large scale raids.  I think the Lambda is the best example of this, followed closely by TPN and Minds of Mayhem. These really could have been set to run from 6-8 members total with the difficulty of the enemies scaled down slightly to compensate for the smaller teams and I think it would have been "better".  First, I think it would have "felt" more super going against some of these foes in smaller teams.  Somehow, piling on to 1 guy with 22 other heroes and still taking 10 minutes to take him down doesn't seem impressive.  Secondly, these could have been run more often/casually, even on smaller servers.  The problem I had was that the only two Task Forces the Incarnate content gave us gave out drastically weaker rewards than the actual Trials, even though, in my opinion, they weren't much different in difficulty.  To me, the way the system was laid out, it really was trying to get everyone in on the "Raids," but due to customer resistance, tossed a few bones out to people who refused.  It's kind of like Windows 10 keeping the metro interface but giving back the start button, with a built in metro interface. :-)
 
I think, had at least a few of the ITrials really been TFs, but offer full rewards like other trials, you may have found the perfect balance. Heck, I always wished they'd included some incarnate content that was gated at -4- players max, and balanced around being really tough on a smaller team, but with nice rewards. Something to say that now that we're so big and powerful, they're going to really challenge us as individual heroes.  It would also have prevented those people who can easily sit back and leech in an over sized raid team.  Feel like a raid, instead of the smaller challenge?  That's cool, run a Baf.   Have a five friends from your SG on, but don't have time/desire to find 10 other players to do a BaF?  That's cool, just run a Lambda or TPN with the six of you.
 

 
     

 
All that being said, I REALLY wish we would have been around long enough to see this come to fruition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9dVlNA1SMM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on October 01, 2014, 03:18:53 PM
I understand that everyone here has a hard time wrapping their heads around that, myself included. But we are a self-selected audience of people who wanted what CoH was selling. The larger world of "MMO players" wanted endgame content, and Positron recognized that and gave it to them. I don't think he was mistaken, either in recognizing that deficiency in the game or in working to fix it. If anything, I think he was about twenty issues too late.

Well I for one am glad that it wasn't added twenty issues earlier. If it had been, it would have attracted a much different playerbase, and it most likely wouldn't have evolved into the sort of game that people would put up this kind of fight over. If CoH had taken the same gameplay path as every other title on the market, then it wouldn't have stood out in the minds and hearts of its players.

Sure, it might have had more players (or less, depending on how it fared against the competitors who offered the same features), and it might have lasted longer (or been shut down much sooner, if a competitor offered the same setup done better), if it had been more standard in terms of player expectations. However, if it had been more standard in terms of player expectations, then it wouldn't have been missed when it left. The players would just have moved on to one of the forty other titles that offered the exact same thing.

I'm glad that it established its own choices in terms of gameplay options, and then made the attempt to add in endgame style raids and such at a later point. In that way, it had said "This is who we are, and we're not apologizing. Now let's try adding some things." I'm glad for it because, it was that willingness to be different that made it something that stood out. Sooner or later it would have shut down anyway, but if it had been just another "grind to the endgame, then grind to the good loot" title, then nobody would have missed it.

But that wasn't our city. We're not just being self-aggrandizing when we say our game wasn't like all the others. Our city was different. Our city was special.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on October 01, 2014, 03:20:03 PM
But the most awesome example of needing to tone down powers was gang war.  Imagine a room full of minions.  Now imagine every single one of them possesses gang war.  Now imagine all of them wants to spam it immediately upon you entering the room.  Instant mosh pit, just add player.  Missions could get literally wall to wall with gang war members standing on the heads of other gang war members because there was literally nowhere else for them to stand.

Now make a few plant control critters and put them on the opposing team.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on October 01, 2014, 03:30:20 PM
Any mastermind in an ambush; the mobs instantly bring out the henchmen. 

That was actually one of the missions I designed, built around an out-of-control Von Neumann machine. Every mob was a robot, every mob was a robot mastermind. Every boss encounter spawned more mobs when they hit their health thresholds. It was just a pure robopalooza! :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on October 01, 2014, 03:43:03 PM


The ugly truth is that endgame, whether in CoX or WoW or wherever, is a Haven for those dwelling in the realm of Ego.  Biggest, Baddest, Best.  Pfffft.  Whatever.

Or perhaps it's for those that enjoy harder enemies, getting stronger characters and like large scale team content? Not everyone is under the stereotype you mentioned....

That's like saying all blacks like watermelon, chicken and sag their pants... neither are true.

Maybe you just played on unfriendly servers because I never ran into the behaviors you speak of in either game. The occasional rude group but that occurs in normal content too. Now I have run into many rude people on forums but for every rude person you meet many more friendly people.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on October 01, 2014, 04:15:53 PM
Basically, on Rift you have 4 classes, Rogue, mage, Cleric and Warrior. By default, on every class you can have 4 diferent builds and you can swap between builds whenever you wish. For each of said builds, you can use a combination of 3 different talent trees (talent trees are called "souls" in the game) and every class has DPS souls, healing souls, support souls and tanking souls hence you can build, let's say a rogue with a melee dps build, a ranged dps build, a healer build and a tanking build, that's many people you don't need alts in Rift.

Also, you can purchase more builds (I think it is a total of 6 builds) so you could add to your rogue, let's say a PvP build and a melee DPS hiding build (like a stalker) besides all the abovementioned builds.

Also, character progression was exactly the same so it was exactly same content for every alt you were willing to roll hence not really much point in making alts. Having said that, I personally used to have alts for many reasons, first would be playstyle because it is way different tanking with a rogue than with a cleric, or dealing ranged dps with a warrior (yes, warriors had ranged dps souls) than with a mage. Another reason I had alts for was crafting, although I could purchase extra crafting slots so 1 character could have all crafting skills, I preferred doing it for free. Besides, of course, not all souls were available on F2P mode so, instead of purchasing a healing soul for my warrior or my rogue, I preferred to roll a cleric when I could be bothered to do the exactly same content.

Some people mentioned that alting was a complete waste of time because, besides having to go through same content over and over again, you also had to take into consideration all the endgame raiding you had to do if you wanted to gear up 2, 3 or 4 alts however, I always found that argument a bit silly since it was probably petty much same time you would spend raiding to gear up the same character for 2 or 3 different roles. Of course, if you wanted 4 walts fullye geared up for every possible role, well, that was a totally different scenario akin to what Arcana defined as wide-completionists.

To add to this, each character could only have 3 crafting skills (and some stuff was limited to 1 a day), so I had some alts just so I had everything covered and some useful things I could crank out a little faster.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on October 01, 2014, 04:22:19 PM
In fact, ironically my biggest gripe with Matt is that he didn't always reign in other devs like I think a lead ought to, particularly in terms of storylines.  While others are faulting Matt for the implied sins he never admitted to, one thing he did admit to was believing that prior canon and established backstory should not be considered absolute relative to allowing developers to create what he and they perceived to be good ideas.

Hmm... I'm not sure how the leeway he gave writers is the same as the leeway he may have given game system devs - especially since he was a lead designer on the I Trials himself. I don't have any issue with him allowing writers to contradict lore that the players never saw, as long as it's consistent with what is already in game (as he states: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA/Sorted#317).

In my opinion, that's what we saw in this article.  Posi had his opinion and, given free reign and ultimate time, he would have liked to change things quite a bit.  That's not "bad" or "wrong", so we don't need to pretend he wasn't making that desire clear in the article.  It was his opinion and desires shared while reflecting on it months after the shutdown, just as some players' responses were the same thing: opinions and desires about what would have made CoH a better game. 

Even if he gave devs some leeway in game design, this quote sort of encapsulates how I see things. And the issue for me is that his desires, as I read them in his column, are not compatible with mine. *shrug* c'est la vie

I think, had at least a few of the ITrials really been TFs, but offer full rewards like other trials, you may have found the perfect balance. Heck, I always wished they'd included some incarnate content that was gated at -4- players max, and balanced around being really tough on a smaller team, but with nice rewards. Something to say that now that we're so big and powerful, they're going to really challenge us as individual heroes.  It would also have prevented those people who can easily sit back and leech in an over sized raid team.  Feel like a raid, instead of the smaller challenge?  That's cool, run a Baf.   Have a five friends from your SG on, but don't have time/desire to find 10 other players to do a BaF?  That's cool, just run a Lambda or TPN with the six of you.

This is a good idea!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on October 01, 2014, 05:11:02 PM

My experience...and pleasure from the game... vastly differs from yours. Aside from some forumites who did not constitute a good balance of the playerbase imo... I NEVER met anyone who did not like doing the itrials. i am a Freedomite...so maybe that is why, but when itrials came to be... the server actually benefited from them. Freedom became a more social server after the itrials.... Pocket D was a wasteland pre itrial... but soon became a VERY busy social hub for the trials and game in general. If it weren't for incarnates I would have probably let my account lapse...after being subbed since Issue 3 continuously. The incarnate content kept me playing and subbed...plain and simple.


You want to know which zone was dead on Freedom... New Dark Astoria. Freedom was always a big "Raid-centric" server with multiple Hamis running each day... and MSR happening numerous times throughout a day. So while I appreciate some people wanted smaller teams etc etc... the entire game was already centered around that...so I rejoiced when the "end-game" finally got more "raids." I always wanted more "raids" through the leveling experience (And no not the zone events). CoH is the only MMO I have ever played and the larger scale trials/raids made me feel like a part of a huge super team fighting to save the world....




 
I'm not sure it is hard to reconcile the two.  Really, what you could argue is that he was doing with the prior continuity and story lines what he wanted to do to altitis: saying "I have a better idea, and I'm going to try to make it happen whether it really fits the current game or not."
 
Now, to borrow a phrase from Obama, let me be clear:   I loved Posi as a Dev. I even tried Star Trek Online just because he's running it now, and I find Star Trek REALLY boring.   I think CoH was excellent, usually, in listening to their players' feedback and desires.  That doesn't mean that Posi didn't have his OWN desires, and that those desires were at odds, sometimes, with the community.  That's just the nature of design, especially in the technical realm.  But just because he's a smart enough businessman and politician to listen to his customers demands when they're passionate enough, it doesn't mean he didn't have very serious feelings of his own and a desire to take the game in a different direction.
 
To bring it full circle, maybe Posi is like Microsoft, and maybe his vision of curbing alts was similar to Window's vision of Windows 8 being a single user interface for all devices.  Sounds good on paper, may even work, may even be necessary for the continued success of the system, but the shock and bother the idea causes to the customer base might force some careful treading or even a retreat.
 
In my opinion, that's what we saw in this article.  Posi had his opinion and, given free reign and ultimate time, he would have liked to change things quite a bit.  That's not "bad" or "wrong", so we don't need to pretend he wasn't making that desire clear in the article.  It was his opinion and desires shared while reflecting on it months after the shutdown, just as some players' responses were the same thing: opinions and desires about what would have made CoH a better game. 

Personally, I liked the end game Incarnate Stuff, overall.   My only real problem with it was the focus on RAIDS over almost everything else early on.  I always felt like CoH worked best, for me at least, because of the 5-8 man team sizes.  I'd have REALLY liked some of the iTrials more if they had been Task Forces, not large scale raids.  I think the Lambda is the best example of this, followed closely by TPN and Minds of Mayhem. These really could have been set to run from 6-8 members total with the difficulty of the enemies scaled down slightly to compensate for the smaller teams and I think it would have been "better".  First, I think it would have "felt" more super going against some of these foes in smaller teams.  Somehow, piling on to 1 guy with 22 other heroes and still taking 10 minutes to take him down doesn't seem impressive.  Secondly, these could have been run more often/casually, even on smaller servers.  The problem I had was that the only two Task Forces the Incarnate content gave us gave out drastically weaker rewards than the actual Trials, even though, in my opinion, they weren't much different in difficulty.  To me, the way the system was laid out, it really was trying to get everyone in on the "Raids," but due to customer resistance, tossed a few bones out to people who refused.  It's kind of like Windows 10 keeping the metro interface but giving back the start button, with a built in metro interface. :-)
 
I think, had at least a few of the ITrials really been TFs, but offer full rewards like other trials, you may have found the perfect balance. Heck, I always wished they'd included some incarnate content that was gated at -4- players max, and balanced around being really tough on a smaller team, but with nice rewards. Something to say that now that we're so big and powerful, they're going to really challenge us as individual heroes.  It would also have prevented those people who can easily sit back and leech in an over sized raid team.  Feel like a raid, instead of the smaller challenge?  That's cool, run a Baf.   Have a five friends from your SG on, but don't have time/desire to find 10 other players to do a BaF?  That's cool, just run a Lambda or TPN with the six of you.
 

 
     

 
All that being said, I REALLY wish we would have been around long enough to see this come to fruition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9dVlNA1SMM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9dVlNA1SMM)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on October 01, 2014, 05:16:15 PM
My experience...and pleasure from the game... vastly differs from yours. Aside from some forumites who did not constitute a good balance of the playerbase imo... I NEVER met anyone who did not like doing the itrials. i am a Freedomite...so maybe that is why, but when itrials came to be... the server actually benefited from them. Freedom became a more social server after the itrials.... Pocket D was a wasteland pre itrial... but soon became a VERY busy social hub for the trials and game in general. If it weren't for incarnates I would have probably let my account lapse...after being subbed since Issue 3 continuously. The incarnate content kept me playing and subbed...plain and simple.


You want to know which zone was dead on Freedom... New Dark Astoria. Freedom was always a big "Raid-centric" server with multiple Hamis running each day... and MSR happening numerous times throughout a day. So while I appreciate some people wanted smaller teams etc etc... the entire game was already centered around that...so I rejoiced when the "end-game" finally got more "raids." I always wanted more "raids" through the leveling experience (And no not the zone events). CoH is the only MMO I have ever played and the larger scale trials/raids made me feel like a part of a huge super team fighting to save the world....

I trend to agree. A small server like Triumph, people would drop what they are doing and do a iTrial because it was "we needs bodies, any bodies just to start an itrial" After itrials were over, people went back to their own devices. You want to know what which zone was dead in Triumph, probably all of them except when an iTrail form literally 50%+ of the population would be in Pocket D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 01, 2014, 06:11:39 PM
I'm having trouble thinking of a set that doesn't end up being broken when you give the full thing to an x8 spawn worth of minions.

That was one of my arguments for changing the system, yes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 01, 2014, 06:14:27 PM
I made several custom characters specifically for different uses as a demonstration that mezzing was NEVER necessary to balance the game. I added resistance to all of the bad guys. I then varied the weapons the assorted evil doers used to absolutely stop herding. I added 2 broadsword/katana users to each group and using this model with only at most one debuffing character per group - it made every group exciting and a challenge - I recall having people run it and warning them this is NOT a farm - proceed with caution and seeing them faceplant immediately.

It was not overly hard just an exercise in balance.

I would say it was trickier than most people thought to make balanced critters, as judged by the *players*.  One thing I liked about the AE was that it gave some authors more of an appreciation of how difficult it is to actually do that.  Its often easy to do what you visualize in your head, the difficult part is realizing what you think is really not so similar to what everyone else thinks; it just seems that way when you're talking about it, less so when it smacks them in their face with a broadsword strike.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 01, 2014, 06:18:52 PM
I'm not sure it is hard to reconcile the two.  Really, what you could argue is that he was doing with the prior continuity and story lines what he wanted to do to altitis: saying "I have a better idea, and I'm going to try to make it happen whether it really fits the current game or not."

You could say that, except that's the exact opposite of what I said.  I didn't say Matt felt he had a better idea than prior continuity allowed and was willing to make it happen whether it fit the game or not, I said Matt allowed other devs to override prior continuity even if he felt it didn't quite fit naturally.  That is literally the opposite mindset.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 01, 2014, 06:19:27 PM
Now make a few plant control critters and put them on the opposing team.

They wouldn't let me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 01, 2014, 06:31:19 PM
Hmm... I'm not sure how the leeway he gave writers is the same as the leeway he may have given game system devs - especially since he was a lead designer on the I Trials himself.

I can't say for certain, but what I can say is that whenever I was informally working with one of the devs on a problem or such it was rare for a dev to imply that a change was going to be rejected by Positron himself.  It was far more likely I'd be told something wouldn't get past a more general internal review.  Part of the problem I think is that none of the devs could consistently keep it all in their heads enough *to* micromanage very much, because there was just so many things going on (keep in mind that Statesman had no idea whatsoever how Defiance worked when he wrote the guide to Defiance.  I had to correct him by actually testing the power and demonstrating it did not work the way he actually documented it to work).

But from the outside looking in, the management style at Paragon seemed to be that the higher-ups decided general high level things and then left it up to the other devs to sort out the details, and when time permitted the devs were allowed significant latitude to pursue other projects of their own interest.  For example power customization came about partially because BaB began investigating it himself first.

Not saying higher ups didn't override devs lower on the totem pole: I'm sure that happened occasionally.  I just didn't see that as a pervasive issue at Paragon.  The people that actually worked there could have a different opinion.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on October 01, 2014, 06:38:21 PM
You could say that, except that's the exact opposite of what I said.  I didn't say Matt felt he had a better idea than prior continuity allowed and was willing to make it happen whether it fit the game or not, I said Matt allowed other devs to override prior continuity even if he felt it didn't quite fit naturally.  That is literally the opposite mindset.

 
Did said writers usually run things by Matt before making these changes?  Was Matt usually involved collaboratively in the writing process and direction of the game?  My experience leads me to the assumption it was, in many ways, a collaborative process, and one in which Matt would have occassional input.  In other words, when someone in the process came up with a storyline that may not fit neatly into the existing game lore or concepts, but was seen by Matt and the rest as "a good direction" for the game to go, then they went, concerns be damned, so to speak.  To me, that is exactly the same mindset I see at play in the article, and would get the two seemingly different mindsets you mentioned to mesh well.  In essence, they are both a subset of a larger mindset of "I'm not the kind of person who is beholden much to the status quo or who is scared to upset the apple cart if I think it's a good direction."  Nothing of that mindset requires the idea to be of his origin. 
 
It also, frankly, explains why he was also willing, at times, to alter course on concepts or design when the community convinced him it was necessary.  I'd suggest it's the kind of mindset that made someone like you so valuable to them.     
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 01, 2014, 06:42:17 PM
My experience...and pleasure from the game... vastly differs from yours. Aside from some forumites who did not constitute a good balance of the playerbase imo... I NEVER met anyone who did not like doing the itrials. i am a Freedomite...so maybe that is why, but when itrials came to be... the server actually benefited from them. Freedom became a more social server after the itrials.... Pocket D was a wasteland pre itrial... but soon became a VERY busy social hub for the trials and game in general. If it weren't for incarnates I would have probably let my account lapse...after being subbed since Issue 3 continuously. The incarnate content kept me playing and subbed...plain and simple.


You want to know which zone was dead on Freedom... New Dark Astoria. Freedom was always a big "Raid-centric" server with multiple Hamis running each day... and MSR happening numerous times throughout a day. So while I appreciate some people wanted smaller teams etc etc... the entire game was already centered around that...so I rejoiced when the "end-game" finally got more "raids." I always wanted more "raids" through the leveling experience (And no not the zone events). CoH is the only MMO I have ever played and the larger scale trials/raids made me feel like a part of a huge super team fighting to save the world....

I, and some of those I teamed with dispised the I trials. I found that now that I am more powerful than ever - I am now lumped into a huge mass of mob mentality. I am spamming powers without seeing any result other than a health bar on a huge being slowly dropping. My best powers are nothing alone and singly I would be wiped out - yet somehow I am supposed to be an Incarnate being - one of galactic powers.

In a TF my contribution can be huge. It is a measurable quantity. Whether we are mowing down Romans, Battling Villians in the States TF or any other of the 8 man missions - I personally can be seen exerting my powers. I am not a spam cloud of special effects rivaling a Hollywood blockbuster. There is satisfaction in skill and knowledge. I recall doing an all Corruptor ITF and after we waltzed through the entire thing without a death getting the Master of ITF badge for some who had never had it - a newer player who had only played WoW was saying I can't believe we are doing this! I pulled both AV's and the Computer at once on that mission and we sailed through it.

This is what Incarnates were to me - a chance to show that my skill and perseverence made me unique in the universe and instead I was generic hero number 25 on the League. I did 2 of these back to back on one of my most powerful characters. The first run I used all my powers - attacked, debuffed and buffed the full reach of my skills. The second run I did NOTHING. I sat back stayed out of the way and you know what? It took the same amount of time. I made little to no difference.

I wanted the "end game" to show that my universe shattering power - made a DIFFERENCE. The idea that I am just another cog in a machine soured me off of these instantly.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on October 01, 2014, 06:44:09 PM
You want to know which zone was dead on Freedom... New Dark Astoria. Freedom was always a big "Raid-centric" server with multiple Hamis running each day... and MSR happening numerous times throughout a day. So while I appreciate some people wanted smaller teams etc etc... the entire game was already centered around that...so I rejoiced when the "end-game" finally got more "raids." I always wanted more "raids" through the leveling experience (And no not the zone events). CoH is the only MMO I have ever played and the larger scale trials/raids made me feel like a part of a huge super team fighting to save the world....

That's weird. I was on the VIP server (Exalted?) and Dark Astoria was the hub for iTrials. Everyone met there because if you were waiting on a trial, there was stuff to kill and missions to run in the meanwhile. I could always log in and find some 10-20 people hanging out by the hospital getting something going.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 01, 2014, 06:50:56 PM
That's weird. I was on the VIP server (Exalted?) and Dark Astoria was the hub for iTrials. Everyone met there because if you were waiting on a trial, there was stuff to kill and missions to run in the meanwhile. I could always log in and find some 10-20 people hanging out by the hospital getting something going.

After rushing in for names, I never used the exalted server. I just couldn't drag myself from Infinity (even with a number of transfers still in my pocket).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on October 01, 2014, 06:58:59 PM
I, and some of those I teamed with dispised the I trials. I found that now that I am more powerful than ever - I am now lumped into a huge mass of mob mentality.
 
...

This is what Incarnates were to me - a chance to show that my skill and perseverence made me unique in the universe and instead I was generic hero number 25 on the League. I did 2 of these back to back on one of my most powerful characters. The first run I used all my powers - attacked, debuffed and buffed the full reach of my skills. The second run I did NOTHING. I sat back stayed out of the way and you know what? It took the same amount of time. I made little to no difference.

I wanted the "end game" to show that my universe shattering power - made a DIFFERENCE. The idea that I am just another cog in a machine soured me off of these instantly.

 
That is exactly why I was hoping at some point for them to include smaller teamed special Incarnate Trials.  If they were set up similar to the Summer Blockbuster event where you were robbing a Casino it would have been PERFECT.
 
Imagine TPN being rewritten in a way where you and three others are teleported into the heart of Imperial City, clearing your way into the buildings together. Once inside, however, you each must split up to accomplish four different tasks in order to make the broadcast reach all of Preatoria:  one must disable the current security systems, one must prevent the power to the station being shut down, one must upload the new broadcast, and one must reprogram the Clockwork in the building to protect the broadcast once you leave.  Each of you face serious threats along the way, but each of you feels like you're contributing as epic individuals.   Then you go to the next station and do the same thing.  In the end, as a team, you confront Maelstrom and three other high ranking officials.  You would feel "incarnate" in that kind of mission, and it would be just as difficult as a raid sized iTrial. 
 
The possibilities for "end game content" are...well...endless, if you're creative.  The key is to not make players feel like their way is "second class" which the new DA, the incarnate TFs, and the "solo path" seemed to do to some with the seriously gimped rewards they offered. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on October 01, 2014, 07:04:30 PM

That's what I took Dark Astoria for...soloing/teaming incarnate content. I did the DA stuff on all my toons because it did make me feel powerful...and challenged (Well that and I loved badges). I always felt that using my incarnate powers outside of itrials or DA was almost like cheating hehe. I usually duoed DA stuff... I think maybe I was on a full team once or twice, but 99.9% time it was a duo. I always thought the rewards could have been bumped up SOME, but not by a huge amount.

I, and some of those I teamed with dispised the I trials. I found that now that I am more powerful than ever - I am now lumped into a huge mass of mob mentality. I am spamming powers without seeing any result other than a health bar on a huge being slowly dropping. My best powers are nothing alone and singly I would be wiped out - yet somehow I am supposed to be an Incarnate being - one of galactic powers.

In a TF my contribution can be huge. It is a measurable quantity. Whether we are mowing down Romans, Battling Villians in the States TF or any other of the 8 man missions - I personally can be seen exerting my powers. I am not a spam cloud of special effects rivaling a Hollywood blockbuster. There is satisfaction in skill and knowledge. I recall doing an all Corruptor ITF and after we waltzed through the entire thing without a death getting the Master of ITF badge for some who had never had it - a newer player who had only played WoW was saying I can't believe we are doing this! I pulled both AV's and the Computer at once on that mission and we sailed through it.

This is what Incarnates were to me - a chance to show that my skill and perseverence made me unique in the universe and instead I was generic hero number 25 on the League. I did 2 of these back to back on one of my most powerful characters. The first run I used all my powers - attacked, debuffed and buffed the full reach of my skills. The second run I did NOTHING. I sat back stayed out of the way and you know what? It took the same amount of time. I made little to no difference.

I wanted the "end game" to show that my universe shattering power - made a DIFFERENCE. The idea that I am just another cog in a machine soured me off of these instantly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 01, 2014, 07:04:47 PM
I can't say for certain, but what I can say is that whenever I was informally working with one of the devs on a problem or such it was rare for a dev to imply that a change was going to be rejected by Positron himself.  It was far more likely I'd be told something wouldn't get past a more general internal review.  Part of the problem I think is that none of the devs could consistently keep it all in their heads enough *to* micromanage very much, because there was just so many things going on (keep in mind that Statesman had no idea whatsoever how Defiance worked when he wrote the guide to Defiance.  I had to correct him by actually testing the power and demonstrating it did not work the way he actually documented it to work).

But from the outside looking in, the management style at Paragon seemed to be that the higher-ups decided general high level things and then left it up to the other devs to sort out the details, and when time permitted the devs were allowed significant latitude to pursue other projects of their own interest.  For example power customization came about partially because BaB began investigating it himself first.

Not saying higher ups didn't override devs lower on the totem pole: I'm sure that happened occasionally.  I just didn't see that as a pervasive issue at Paragon.  The people that actually worked there could have a different opinion.

I answered Statesman on his how to tank example. He stated he picked the one he could survive best and tried to hold those leaving the other mobs to the rest of the team - however he failed to mention that no one else on the team has the ability to survive like a tank does - if you leave the aggro from these to others - they have a far greater chance to fail. I showed a dev that the aggro cap was in fact not true by herding 3 X 8 groups with a tank and doing a constant spiral move and attack pattern - you could hold aggro on nearly 40 enemies if you kept moving and constantly attacking/taunting.

I was told nonsense and then took them into a mission and proved it. You can't keep permanent aggro but you can stop melee and keep the mobs at range - it takes work but knowing the tricks on turning - breaking los and regaining - auras - taunt - punchvoke all could exceed the design. I was one of those guys who tried to break things.

I had a tank in Brickstown and was herding vast amounts when a player stopped to buff me, I said please don't help me. He was indignant - I was not seeking to steal XP and my buffs don't do that. I said wait a minute - defeated all those around me and then explained - I am testing the failure rate and how long I can survive versus certain types of enemies at certain numbers. I explained I can fight x amount of freaks and survive for this long, I can fight this many Crey and so on. Then when I am in a TF and our team has pulled too many - I can yell out I will not be able to survive this more than this long - can someone hold/stun or otherwise lower the amount attacking or I am going to die in about this long of a time, RUN! (f8)

I know that the players often found glitches or "exploits" in how things worked that was not supposed to be possible - like sitting in Creys at a bee spawn and setting a fire blasters fireball on auto and leaving the game running overnight.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 01, 2014, 07:14:33 PM
Did said writers usually run things by Matt before making these changes?  Was Matt usually involved collaboratively in the writing process and direction of the game?  My experience leads me to the assumption it was, in many ways, a collaborative process, and one in which Matt would have occassional input.  In other words, when someone in the process came up with a storyline that may not fit neatly into the existing game lore or concepts, but was seen by Matt and the rest as "a good direction" for the game to go, then they went, concerns be damned, so to speak.  To me, that is exactly the same mindset I see at play in the article, and would get the two seemingly different mindsets you mentioned to mesh well.  In essence, they are both a subset of a larger mindset of "I'm not the kind of person who is beholden much to the status quo or who is scared to upset the apple cart if I think it's a good direction."  Nothing of that mindset requires the idea to be of his origin.

That's a little different though.  I agree I think Matt individually and Paragon collectively were in fact not "beholden" to the status quo although as I said earlier I have direct knowledge of the fact they did consider the status quo beliefs of the playerbase when they developed.  But not being beholden to the status quo is a different thing than being assertive about the actual direction to take next.  That's more of suggesting Matt did not protect the past enough rather than saying he dictated the future too much.

From personal experience, there were many times I felt very certain a particular situation was broken, enough to make the conscious decision to accept that advocating a change would disrupt the status quo and possibly negatively impact some players.  However, I was always far more open to options on how to change a particular situation, and would advocate ideas that were personally not my favorite if I felt a larger percentage of the player population would support it (and thereby accept it if it occurred).  That's a case of not being beholden to the status quo but also not being wedded to a particular vision of future changes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on October 01, 2014, 07:15:09 PM

 
That is exactly why I was hoping at some point for them to include smaller teamed special Incarnate Trials.  If they were set up similar to the Summer Blockbuster event where you were robbing a Casino it would have been PERFECT.
 
Imagine TPN being rewritten in a way where you and three others are teleported into the heart of Imperial City, clearing your way into the buildings together. Once inside, however, you each must split up to accomplish four different tasks in order to make the broadcast reach all of Preatoria:  one must disable the current security systems, one must prevent the power to the station being shut down, one must upload the new broadcast, and one must reprogram the Clockwork in the building to protect the broadcast once you leave.  Each of you face serious threats along the way, but each of you feels like you're contributing as epic individuals.   Then you go to the next station and do the same thing.  In the end, as a team, you confront Maelstrom and three other high ranking officials.  You would feel "incarnate" in that kind of mission, and it would be just as difficult as a raid sized iTrial. 
That's awesome!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 01, 2014, 07:33:55 PM
I, and some of those I teamed with dispised the I trials. I found that now that I am more powerful than ever - I am now lumped into a huge mass of mob mentality. I am spamming powers without seeing any result other than a health bar on a huge being slowly dropping. My best powers are nothing alone and singly I would be wiped out - yet somehow I am supposed to be an Incarnate being - one of galactic powers.

I understand the sentiment, but my experience was qualitatively different.  Yes, there were phases of trials that were largely characterized in that way, but that wasn't universal.  Personally I could solo containment in Lambda, so I could personally accelerate that phase, and there were Lambdas I was on where if I wasn't on it the timer would have failed.  Much of Keyes was a little bit middle ground; everyone wasn't in one place spamming, but usually separated into smaller subgroups.  And while I can understand the perspective that the desire was to see incarnate development in terms of singular achievement, I personally did not feel trivialized during the opening phase of Magisterium because I just liked the crazy fur-ball aspect of that  fight.

Partially, this is just a question of preference and what players wanted out of the experience, but I think its also partially one of perspective.  In most trials, I could actually see what I was doing.  I know what my contribution was, because my actions were not random.  I could do my part, and when necessary go off-script to help someone else (say, supporting engagement spots in BAF).  I could use my buffs when they made the most sense to do so, like Destiny buffs.  If you played that way, and you could see what you were doing, you got different visceral feedback from the trials than if you didn't perceive having any direct impact on the action.

I also think the devs partially oversold incarnate abilities, although that wasn't entirely their fault.  Most of what players expected story-wise and power-wise out of incarnate abilities were rumors driven by players passing on made-up information.  Incarnates were never supposed to be "cosmicly powered beings" like Galactus or even the Silver Surfer, say.  They were supposed to be sort of the next step up in evolution, but not the last step.  Keep in mind that the down-the-road enemies for us were going to be (among other options) the True Rikti, which on the fictional power scale were probably like a cross between the Wraith (physically) and the Asguardians (technologically) in Stargate SG-1.  Not omnipotent beings per se.

In fiction, particularly comic books, power level generally increases exponentially.  That's required for narrative purposes, to differentiate the different levels of power.  But City of Heroes, being a game, had to stick to mostly linear and sometimes vaguely quadratic increases in power.  Anything more would be unrepresentable in the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 01, 2014, 07:36:53 PM

 
That is exactly why I was hoping at some point for them to include smaller teamed special Incarnate Trials.  If they were set up similar to the Summer Blockbuster event where you were robbing a Casino it would have been PERFECT.
 
Imagine TPN being rewritten in a way where you and three others are teleported into the heart of Imperial City, clearing your way into the buildings together. Once inside, however, you each must split up to accomplish four different tasks in order to make the broadcast reach all of Preatoria:  one must disable the current security systems, one must prevent the power to the station being shut down, one must upload the new broadcast, and one must reprogram the Clockwork in the building to protect the broadcast once you leave.  Each of you face serious threats along the way, but each of you feels like you're contributing as epic individuals.   Then you go to the next station and do the same thing.  In the end, as a team, you confront Maelstrom and three other high ranking officials.  You would feel "incarnate" in that kind of mission, and it would be just as difficult as a raid sized iTrial. 
 
The possibilities for "end game content" are...well...endless, if you're creative.  The key is to not make players feel like their way is "second class" which the new DA, the incarnate TFs, and the "solo path" seemed to do to some with the seriously gimped rewards they offered.

I have absolutely no doubt that had the game continued on, this type of thing would have been released by now.  It was just going to take time; there was to my knowledge no serious opposition to doing this in the long run.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on October 01, 2014, 08:33:33 PM
After rushing in for names, I never used the exalted server. I just couldn't drag myself from Infinity (even with a number of transfers still in my pocket).

Oh, I was _on_ all the servers. I only did Incarnate content on one, though. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 01, 2014, 08:55:31 PM
Or perhaps it's for those that enjoy harder enemies, getting stronger characters and like large scale team content? Not everyone is under the stereotype you mentioned....

That's like saying all blacks like watermelon, chicken and sag their pants... neither are true.

Maybe you just played on unfriendly servers because I never ran into the behaviors you speak of in either game. The occasional rude group but that occurs in normal content too. Now I have run into many rude people on forums but for every rude person you meet many more friendly people.

Challenge from harder enemies is often negated by the whole character getting more powerful, even more-so if it's a convenient manner.  I didn't play the incarnate trials for the challenge, I played them more because they were fun at the time.  But I didn't really feel they were that challenging.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 01, 2014, 08:58:12 PM
A thought on Matt Miller and Star Trek Online.  I wouldn't be surprised if there is a LOT of publisher/executive meddling involved with that game.  It wouldn't be a surprise to me at all in fact, because even CO has shown many signs that executive meddling came into play with it under PWE.  Just a thought, they may be forcing him to do things he normally wouldn't though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 01, 2014, 09:06:26 PM
I liked the smaller group events for many reasons. I thought the summer blockbuster was a great way to flesh out powersets. I liked doing Baby New Year ugly baby runs, but not more than 10 times :p. I really enjoyed the signature story arcs. I liked the challange of the Abandoned Sewer trial. This was an epic thing, even without farming the Krakens.

The big event I liked best was the Mothership Raids. Get in there and smoosh some Rikti.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on October 01, 2014, 10:00:16 PM
Now make a few plant control critters and put them on the opposing team.
Army of Me on my Plant Dom was a NIGHTMARE.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tcencho on October 02, 2014, 01:01:16 AM
Simply amazing this is just what I wanted to hear! ^^
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on October 02, 2014, 09:13:21 AM
Or perhaps it's for those that enjoy harder enemies, getting stronger characters and like large scale team content? Not everyone is under the stereotype you mentioned....

That's like saying all blacks like watermelon, chicken and sag their pants... neither are true.

Maybe you just played on unfriendly servers because I never ran into the behaviors you speak of in either game. The occasional rude group but that occurs in normal content too. Now I have run into many rude people on forums but for every rude person you meet many more friendly people.

This.  Some people just like doing big group content.  Some people are always looking to make their character a little stronger, a little more powerful.  It fits their play style and it gives them something to work towards.  Challenging your self to improve your character even if only by .000023% is fun to some people.  Not everyone who plays for this reason is looking for a pissing contest.  Often in my case the only person I was trying to out  do or be better then was my self.  So I agree with your sentiments that not everyone, and in fact in CoH very few people, fall into the stereotype that you quoted in your post.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hemipowered on October 02, 2014, 09:56:43 AM
         I have to chime in here about the I-trials/incarnate powers. I believe they are the single most ingenious update/expansion ever done in an MMO. I thought it was a perfect mix of additional powers and abilities, adding fun to the game without adversely affecting balance TOO much. It is not easy adding a new "system" to work within an existing one--AT ALL. And I, for one, loved the content as well.                                                          My 2 cents--take it or leave it punks...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: thunderforce on October 02, 2014, 10:06:37 AM
Quote from: ArchPilgrim
The ugly truth is that endgame, whether in CoX or WoW or wherever, is a Haven for those dwelling in the realm of Ego.  Biggest, Baddest, Best.
Or perhaps it's for those that enjoy harder enemies, getting stronger characters and like large scale team content?

If there's a distinction between "harder enemies, getting stronger characters" and "Biggest, Baddest, Best", I think I missed it. Doing the same dance with the numbers slightly larger each time is a Skinner box, no more.

Of course there's nothing about large-scale team content that fundamentally ties it to endgame grind.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on October 02, 2014, 10:46:12 AM
         I have to chime in here about the I-trials/incarnate powers. I believe they are the single most ingenious update/expansion ever done in an MMO. I thought it was a perfect mix of additional powers and abilities, adding fun to the game without adversely affecting balance TOO much. It is not easy adding a new "system" to work within an existing one--AT ALL. And I, for one, loved the content as well.                                                          My 2 cents--take it or leave it punks...

I completely agree about the use of "additional powers."  Incarnate powers made your characters feel even more godlike than they were with just IOs, but gating them behind certain content, etc. prevented it from completely destroying the rest of the game.  I actually thought that, had they worked an explanation in to the story a little more (say, something like "the Well will empower its guardians as their will and desire cry out for it the most") it would even have been perfect, thematically.  The idea that we don't always have access to our deepest powers from the well simply because we either aren't actually serving as a guardian of the well at that moment or our will and desire aren't "desperate" enough to dig that deeply.  They started to hint at the costs of digging into the Well, and had that been explored more, that could also have served as a decent explanation for why we don't always access those advanced Incarnate powers.
 
But the implementation was great.  We had new things to give to our characters, with variety enough to still make them unique among the rest, but not in a way that completely wrecked enjoyment in the rest of the game.
 
 
And it wasn't gear. 
 
I hate "gear." 

Especially in an MMO where my character's powers often come from within themselves, not because they found armor made of Uru forged by the Dwarf king and enchanted by yada yada yada.
 
Please don't ever make me grind for gear. 

Please.   
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on October 02, 2014, 11:25:14 AM

I was just wondering about the purchase of the CoH IP ...  if successful.   Does the City of Titans project become COH2,  or do they
become two separate games?

I'd prefer to keep the existing villain groups and lore, but CoT appears to be going down its own path.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on October 02, 2014, 11:39:30 AM
I was just wondering about the purchase of the CoH IP ...  if successful.   Does the City of Titans project become COH2,  or do they
become two separate games?

I'd prefer to keep the existing villain groups and lore, but CoT appears to be going down its own path.
CoT has always been, and will always be, a spiritual successor, not a sequel. It has always been a separate game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 02, 2014, 01:26:31 PM

I completely agree about the use of "additional powers."  Incarnate powers made your characters feel even more godlike than they were with just IOs, but gating them behind certain content, etc. prevented it from completely destroying the rest of the game.  I actually thought that, had they worked an explanation in to the story a little more (say, something like "the Well will empower its guardians as their will and desire cry out for it the most") it would even have been perfect, thematically.  The idea that we don't always have access to our deepest powers from the well simply because we either aren't actually serving as a guardian of the well at that moment or our will and desire aren't "desperate" enough to dig that deeply.  They started to hint at the costs of digging into the Well, and had that been explored more, that could also have served as a decent explanation for why we don't always access those advanced Incarnate powers.
 
But the implementation was great.  We had new things to give to our characters, with variety enough to still make them unique among the rest, but not in a way that completely wrecked enjoyment in the rest of the game.
 
 
And it wasn't gear. 
 
I hate "gear." 

Especially in an MMO where my character's powers often come from within themselves, not because they found armor made of Uru forged by the Dwarf king and enchanted by yada yada yada.
 
Please don't ever make me grind for gear. 

Please.

Yeah, the gear in other mmos felt like a burden rather than an upgrade.

I dislike gear, especially in a supers mmo.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on October 02, 2014, 03:36:14 PM
What I liked about Incarnate powers were that, for the most part, they didn't make you more powerful by just increasing your stats, but by expanding the breadth of your abilities - adding ranged attacks, team buffs, mez/damage procs, and pets to your repertoire.  The exceptions, of course, were Alpha (which, as a pure stat-booster, was fine for a "starting" ability), and Hybrid, which I felt was a bit of a misstep, since it didn't really bring anything new to the table that previous Incarnate tiers weren't already doing (and, often, doing better).

I liked the idea suggested for Genesis in the Loregasms, which was ground patches that would simultaneously buff allies and debuff enemies.  (I know there was an unimplemented version of Genesis in the I24 client, involving replacing previous Incarnate powers with better versions, but from the sound of the Loregasms they'd discarded that idea)  They also mentioned a "debuff one stat to buff another" idea, though they didn't mention which Incarnate slot that was for.  (I'd guess Vitae, but that's only a guess)

And Omega was going to be absurdly overpowered (with several different flavors of "overpowered", from complete invulnerability, to summoning swarms of full-powered clones of yourself, to making all enemies fight for you and then self-destruct, to having a set period of time where all your powers were on instant recharge).  We'd probably have all that and more by now, and dozens of new powersets besides.  It still makes me a little sad, even amidst all the hope and hoopla.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 02, 2014, 08:13:49 PM
If there's a distinction between "harder enemies, getting stronger characters" and "Biggest, Baddest, Best", I think I missed it.

That explains why when I ran iTrials I kept hearing that song from the Karate Kid in my head.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Keyne on October 02, 2014, 08:24:38 PM
The idea that I am just another cog in a machine soured me off of these instantly.

The type of person who prefers Batman:TAS over Justice League. Do you find yourself able to still appreciate both for their merits?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on October 02, 2014, 08:53:32 PM
That explains why when I ran iTrials I kept hearing that song from the Karate Kid in my head.

Huh, for me it was always Eye of the tiger.  Except I would sing it at the top of my lungs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 02, 2014, 09:04:38 PM
Yeah, the gear in other mmos felt like a burden rather than an upgrade.

I dislike gear, especially in a supers mmo.

My thoughts about ever increasing level and gear numbers, is its a carrot on a stick.  So lets say one gets to level 70, and then gets the top gear whats the purpose in playing if it was all raids?  Well, there isn't any at this point as you've done everything you could to get there.  So the developer, rather than adding stuff at that level 70, increases the cap to 80.  Then they increase the damage/armor ratings ect by a fold of 10 or so and then say new and improved.  But it's not, just higher numbers so people can increase the ego they have "Oh i got higher numbers I'm bigger better more powerful NOW HAHAHA" when in reality, they are still the same.  Even more laughable when the enemies level up with them(lookin at you, diablo 3 and reaper of souls).

(and not sayin D3 is a bad game these days but I did feel the number differences between a 60 and 70 was kind of pointless)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on October 02, 2014, 09:20:50 PM
My thoughts about ever increasing level and gear numbers, is its a carrot on a stick.  So lets say one gets to level 70, and then gets the top gear whats the purpose in playing if it was all raids?  Well, there isn't any at this point as you've done everything you could to get there.  So the developer, rather than adding stuff at that level 70, increases the cap to 80.  Then they increase the damage/armor ratings ect by a fold of 10 or so and then say new and improved.  But it's not, just higher numbers so people can increase the ego they have "Oh i got higher numbers I'm bigger better more powerful NOW HAHAHA" when in reality, they are still the same.  Even more laughable when the enemies level up with them(lookin at you, diablo 3 and reaper of souls).

(and not sayin D3 is a bad game these days but I did feel the number differences between a 60 and 70 was kind of pointless)

I think at some point, though, this gets philosophical. All games have their carrots to get you to progress; let's face it, there's no technical reason why you can't turn off XP right away and fight bad guys in Atlas Park as a level 1. Every complaint about "bigger, better, more powerful" and "enemies level up with you" can be applied in microcosm for the journey to level 2.

I agree with you, after a while the ever-increasing cap becomes a bit transparently hamster-wheel-esque (especially with WoW, where they make a special effort to make the old gear easier to obtain so people can get to the new endgame content quickly, so the items you sweated bullets to get a year ago are now dispensed for free in crackerjack boxes), but I don't think that one should be against advancement in principle. Because some people enjoy that. I mean, I'm not a majorly grindy person, but I was horrified to find out that in 5th edition D&D, I'd still have problems with goblins at level 10. What's the fun in leveling up if you don't get to roflstomp the things that used to terrify you, dangit? :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 02, 2014, 09:38:36 PM
I think at some point, though, this gets philosophical. All games have their carrots to get you to progress; let's face it, there's no technical reason why you can't turn off XP right away and fight bad guys in Atlas Park as a level 1. Every complaint about "bigger, better, more powerful" and "enemies level up with you" can be applied in microcosm for the journey to level 2.

I agree with you, after a while the ever-increasing cap becomes a bit transparently hamster-wheel-esque (especially with WoW, where they make a special effort to make the old gear easier to obtain so people can get to the new endgame content quickly, so the items you sweated bullets to get a year ago are now dispensed for free in crackerjack boxes), but I don't think that one should be against advancement in principle. Because some people enjoy that. I mean, I'm not a majorly grindy person, but I was horrified to find out that in 5th edition D&D, I'd still have problems with goblins at level 10. What's the fun in leveling up if you don't get to roflstomp the things that used to terrify you, dangit? :)

 Increasing the Level cap and whatnot, and even increasin a power level is fine, but cannot be the only thing one can do, I feel.  Making a good game takes more than just level cap increasing.  New features and new maps/stories and whatnot matter a lot.  Doom 2 wouldn't for example be quite the game it is today if for example the double barrel shotgun wasn't added and new engine features weren't added to it(remember ultimate doom was enhanced by doom 2's engine).  Just setting a map and then increasing the level cap and upping the numbers is very little by itself.

I notice this in that, mmorpg developers are often, because they focus TO much on level and ever increasing gear/level is many of them become one trick ponies.  Their methods wouldn't work in other genres, and heck, proven to not work.  An example is the original developer of Diablo 3, Jay Wilson, was before that a guy who contributed to WoW.  He used the very methods that worked for WoW on diablo 3 and caused it to be compared to other blizzard titles a total disaster, in that it was an EXTREME grind fest with gear being the be-all-end all.  He probably wasn't sololy to blame, but the guy who made diablo 1 certainly felt that diablo 3 wasn't a game he'd have made or would have made it differently.  That, and Jay's response, lead to Jay resigning from Diablo 3 to move onto other projects...

...Diablo 3 improved many fold since he left in ways that actually made it a good game that wasn't so ludicrously grindy(still a grind but no where near as bad or fake difficulty ridden).

Edit: Course, not all mmorpg developers are that way, paragon studios certainly wasn't a one trick pony, quite the opposite.

Another Edit: Heres a link about the guy. http://www.diablowiki.net/Jay_Wilson

Edit: corrected some things.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on October 02, 2014, 10:27:17 PM
CoT has always been, and will always be, a spiritual successor, not a sequel. It has always been a separate game.

Ok, so we're having the same company maintaining the true successor to CoH and the "spiritual" successor... does anyone else
see a conflict of interest here.  I'd hate to see COH2 go into slow maintenance mode while CoT gets the lions share of development time.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 02, 2014, 10:51:33 PM
Ok, so we're having the same company maintaining the true successor to CoH and the "spiritual" successor... does anyone else
see a conflict of interest here.  I'd hate to see COH2 go into slow maintenance mode while CoT gets the lions share of development time.
Because it's not true. Nate/downix was involved with getting the negotiations started, but will not be a part of the holding company that would be formed to manage the IP. In any event Nate became involved with the latest negotiations as an individual. Missing Worlds Media does not and never has had anything to do with the current team looking to buy the game other than Nate being involved with both. Again, Nate helped get the ball rolling, but at no time has MWM itself been a part of the efforts.

This has been covered a couple times in this thread in posts by downix and others. Do a search for all posts by him or just read the thread. It pops up pretty early on...
Considering that the only mentions about MWM involvement in this thread explicitly lay out that MWM is not involved in the negotiations i'm not entirely sure where you got the idea that they are involved.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on October 02, 2014, 11:11:22 PM
Ok, so we're having the same company maintaining the true successor to CoH and the "spiritual" successor... does anyone else
see a conflict of interest here.  I'd hate to see COH2 go into slow maintenance mode while CoT gets the lions share of development time.

 
I think part of your confusion is from the fact that there actually are no plans for a "CoH 2." There will be CoH and then the successors.  For the time being, CoH will be just issue 23 running in maintenance mode. Eventually, "CoH" will be migrated to the Unreal Engine by Atlas Park Revival, where it will likely get new updates, etc.  but will still be, in all ways possible, CoH as we knew and loved it. The truth is, however, with Atlas Park Revival being a VERY small group effort (one person at this point) it may very well be that City of Titans ends up released before City of Heroes is fully rebuilt in Unreal.  We just don't know.
 
The closest you'll get to a CoH 2 will be the successors like City of Titans.  These will be new games, in new worlds, with new features and mechanics, but inspired by City of Heroes.  And in time, for those who wish to stick with the "old game", they will be able to see it continued on in the Unreal version created by Atlas Park Revival. 
 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on October 03, 2014, 12:07:28 AM
Ok, so we're having the same company maintaining the true successor to CoH and the "spiritual" successor... does anyone else
see a conflict of interest here.  I'd hate to see COH2 go into slow maintenance mode while CoT gets the lions share of development time.

i see a pattern of you not reading. Id hate to see the messages where nate said he would NOT be running coh maint or coh replacement
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on October 03, 2014, 12:30:23 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on October 03, 2014, 12:36:11 AM
MWM has nothing to do with this. Nate Downes is handling the negotiations, not MWM.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 03, 2014, 05:26:58 AM
Since MWM is handling the negotiation/arrangements, I was assuming this licensing company would be a subsidiary.  If not, my misunderstanding.
I wasn't aware APR was a completely separate entity.   But since they said they were using a "CoT build", I assumed a closer relationship.

And no, I haven't read all 1000 pages of both threads, nor do I intend to.  I appreciate the prior two comments, which helped much.   This sardonic response, not so much.

If you're not going to bother to read the information that's contained in the first bleedin' post, what else do you expect when people take you to task?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 03, 2014, 05:49:04 AM
Since MWM is handling the negotiation/arrangements, I was assuming this licensing company would be a subsidiary.  If not, my misunderstanding.

And no, I haven't read all 1000 pages of both threads, nor do I intend to.  I appreciate the prior two comments, which helped much.   This sardonic response, not so much.

Nate Downes is handling the negotiations, NOT MWM. And if you had actually read the FIRST post in the thread you would have pretty much gotten the whole story.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on October 03, 2014, 10:48:07 AM
Seriously, guys, its kind of an easy mistake to make.  Nate Downs is a "face" of MWM, and so when someone sees that he is the one "under the mask" it is a natural assumption to make that he's acting as a member of MWM.  Should people probably not "skim" and then post "concerns"?  Yeah, in a perfect world.  But we're all busy, and sometimes we do things in a less than perfect manner.
 
Lets face it, not all of us are as plugged in and have been following this as long as others. 
 
Do we really need to spend our energy "piling on" instead of just spending that energy clarifying?  In the end, we're all hoping we get our game back.   
 
I'd be willing to bet all of us have done something on the internet at least as "annoying" or whatever as this.  Probably more than once.
 
 
And also...I'd hate to see our conversation about how under powered blasters were in the incarnate trials due to altitis making voice overs too expensive get sidelined. :-P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ryuplaneswalker on October 03, 2014, 11:32:29 AM
Quote
I also think the devs partially oversold incarnate abilities, although that wasn't entirely their fault.  Most of what players expected story-wise and power-wise out of incarnate abilities were rumors driven by players passing on made-up information.  Incarnates were never supposed to be "cosmicly powered beings" like Galactus or even the Silver Surfer, say.  They were supposed to be sort of the next step up in evolution, but not the last step.  Keep in mind that the down-the-road enemies for us were going to be (among other options) the True Rikti, which on the fictional power scale were probably like a cross between the Wraith (physically) and the Asguardians (technologically) in Stargate SG-1.  Not omnipotent beings per se.

I partially disagree here, especially post power colorization and depending on the character.

on Ryu the A huge blast of Black flames, that ignite my foes felt...very Planeswalkerish to me, and the endurance alpha let me run Cloak of Fear thus causing minions who get too close to me to either cower in fear or...whatever oppressive gloom did to stun people.

My Earth/Empathy controller did not get a great deal out of any of the slots..until Hybrid..that 120 seconds of +1 Mag to mezzes let her do hilariously sickening things

My Crab spider loved Lore, because it was 2 more additions to the giant arachnos army that he was.

Really the only thing I ever felt was bad about the incarnate system was the fact we did not have more Lore powers to choose from (I wanted Halloween Zombies Dagnabit!)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on October 03, 2014, 12:17:26 PM
Increasing the Level cap and whatnot, and even increasin a power level is fine, but cannot be the only thing one can do, I feel.  Making a good game takes more than just level cap increasing.  New features and new maps/stories and whatnot matter a lot.  Doom 2 wouldn't for example be quite the game it is today if for example the double barrel shotgun wasn't added and new engine features weren't added to it(remember ultimate doom was enhanced by doom 2's engine).  Just setting a map and then increasing the level cap and upping the numbers is very little by itself.

I notice this in that, mmorpg developers are often, because they focus TO much on level and ever increasing gear/level is many of them become one trick ponies.  Their methods wouldn't work in other genres, and heck, proven to not work.  An example is the original developer of Diablo 3, Jay Wilson, was before that a guy who contributed to WoW.  He used the very methods that worked for WoW on diablo 3 and caused it to be compared to other blizzard titles a total disaster, in that it was an EXTREME grind fest with gear being the be-all-end all.  He probably wasn't sololy to blame, but the guy who made diablo 1 certainly felt that diablo 3 wasn't a game he'd have made or would have made it differently.  That, and Jay's response, lead to Jay resigning from Diablo 3 to move onto other projects...

...Diablo 3 improved many fold since he left in ways that actually made it a good game that wasn't so ludicrously grindy(still a grind but no where near as bad or fake difficulty ridden).

Edit: Course, not all mmorpg developers are that way, paragon studios certainly wasn't a one trick pony, quite the opposite.

Another Edit: Heres a link about the guy. http://www.diablowiki.net/Jay_Wilson

Edit: corrected some things.

This is one of the reasons I loved the fact that CoH didn't increase their level cap and instead focused on other ways to "improve" your character. Considering how many alts most people had, increasing a level cap would only serve to invalidate all the work people had put into a LOT of characters (and divide the playerbase, as not everyone has the same amount of time to go ahead and bump up all their characters to the next level cap)..."what do you need for this task force? A tank? Ok, let me go ahead and switch over to my....oh wait. He hasn't been bumped up to the next level cap yet. :/"

Interesting you guys should use the Diablo series as a comparison... Gear is an important part of the Diablo games...it's not for City of Heroes... In fact, for any aRPG of that style (Dungeon Siege I, II, III, Titan Quest, The Adventures of Van Helsing, Torchlight I, II, Grim Dawn, Path of Exile, etc.) it's about the gear. That's an expected element for those games--so Diablo 3 being "all about the gear" wasn't such a surprise to me--especially since I'd played the other Diablo games and all the other titles I mentioned since 1999. I don't mind a "dangling carrot" gear game, but as someone else pointed out earlier, I agree that it's not something that should be in a superhero game--unless of course it's a very tiny part of it (as in maybe the tech-based heroes that don't actually have supernatural powers and have to use *gear* to pull off their amazing feats...I'm sure having gear-based heroes and non-gear-based heroes in the same game would be a nightmare to balance though).

I think what causes people to bring up Diablo 3 in these kinds of discussions (even though it belongs in an entirely different genre) is because of (like you mentioned) Jay Wilson... He basically tried making Diablo 3 a "partial" MMO. The other two Diablo games (and certainly not ANY of the other aRPG titles except for Path of Exile) require you to be online ALL the time. There were a ton of elements in Diablo 3 that carried directly over from WoW, and although WoW is certainly a success story in terms of MMOs, the Diablo audience (speaking from experience) is NOT the audience that is impressed with WoW game mechanics--or graphics for that matter. I've played D3 since it was released, and I still to this day use the "DarkD3" mod to alter the graphics to be more D2-like. It just doesn't pay to try and make a game that appeals to a certain audience completely different to appeal to another audience. The only reason they got away with it is because they're Blizzard and because D3 was a hugely anticipated title. If you recall, there were a LOT of features announced when D3 was announced that were similar to D2 that didn't make it into the actual released product--which pissed off a LOT of people (check out the Metacritic user scores for reference). This is not even mentioning the whole overhaul to the power/rune/stat system that everyone was used to in D1 & D2. He changed basically everything--powers, game mechanics, mood, graphics, story/lore, and even killed off everyone's favorite character within the first act of a five-act game. Really the only reason I'm still playing is because a new group of people got put in charge of the game and have slowly been moving things towards Diablo 2 territory and making it playable. I'm still pissed about the story though... :P

If Jay Wilson were to take over the City of Heroes franchise in the same manner he made Diablo 3, he'd be making City of Heroes 2 look like Minecraft and play like the Call of Duty games. Would that appeal to the City of Heroes core audience? Hell no. I am all about "innovation," but when you totally change EVERYTHING (and market it like not much has changed), you're going to turn a LOT of people off.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on October 03, 2014, 12:46:30 PM
Ok, so we're having the same company maintaining the true successor to CoH and the "spiritual" successor... does anyone else
see a conflict of interest here.  I'd hate to see COH2 go into slow maintenance mode while CoT gets the lions share of development time.

CoH2 is...nothing and no one.  City of Titans is its own game run by Nate and MWM.  Nate is not making CoH2 in any form.  The deal with NCSoft for CoX involves bringing back a zombie version of CoX, the final snapshot of the servers as they were the night of the closure with nothing else, running in perpetual maintenance mode.  There are no tools, no code, and no former accounts or character info coming in this zombie rez of CoX.  There is no future development, no CoH2.

If the NCSoft deal on the table goes through, and CoX in maintenance mode comes back, there will also be a leasing company (made up of whom?  we don't yet know) leasing out the IP of CoX.  At that point, Irish_Girl is planning on moving the original CoX game, model by model, building by building, piece by piece via Blender into the Unreal 4 engine.  She has some preliminary pics of Atlas Park and peripheral work on a few other zones up on her Atlas Park Revival site.  There is no official team for APR at this time, nor is there fundraising.  It is really known as CoH1.5 because it will be the same game, just moved into Unreal 4 so it can someday be added to and patched, unlike CoX zombie mode.  But neither of those things is possible if NCSoft turns down Team Hail Mary's offer to run the snapshot of CoX and buy out the IP so it can be re-leased for future projects built around the same lore.

But I repeat-- there is NO CoH2 in the works.  So I don't know what you're even talking about.  You're whining into the wind about nothing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on October 03, 2014, 12:58:08 PM
And also...I'd hate to see our conversation about how under powered blasters were in the incarnate trials due to altitis making voice overs too expensive get sidelined. :-P

+1 points for you!  Give this man a cookie :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 03, 2014, 01:21:05 PM

 
I think part of your confusion is from the fact that there actually are no plans for a "CoH 2." There will be CoH and then the successors.  For the time being, CoH will be just issue 23 running in maintenance mode. Eventually, "CoH" will be migrated to the Unreal Engine by Atlas Park Revival, where it will likely get new updates, etc.  but will still be, in all ways possible, CoH as we knew and loved it. The truth is, however, with Atlas Park Revival being a VERY small group effort (one person at this point) it may very well be that City of Titans ends up released before City of Heroes is fully rebuilt in Unreal.  We just don't know.
 
The closest you'll get to a CoH 2 will be the successors like City of Titans.  These will be new games, in new worlds, with new features and mechanics, but inspired by City of Heroes.  And in time, for those who wish to stick with the "old game", they will be able to see it continued on in the Unreal version created by Atlas Park Revival.

APR is only small at the moment because in all honesty until the deal is sealed there is nothing that can be done. I am taking the time to learn UnReal4 engine and a lot of the others are doing the same, learning new skills. Since much of the game is planned to be a direct port - at the beginning a lot of the work is simple grunt stuff. I know that i am working on new maps - one of the main complaints I heard from players was how boring it was to do the same maps over and over.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 03, 2014, 01:31:52 PM
I'm curious what distinction people are looking for between what makes Revival "CoH 1.5" and no "CoH 2"?

I'm curious, because I've heard people on both sides... saying basically "Revival is CoH2" and "Revival is 1.5. Not 2".
What do you guys think makes something a true "CoH 2"?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on October 03, 2014, 01:57:45 PM
I'm curious what distinction people are looking for between what makes Revival "CoH 1.5" and no "CoH 2"?

I'm curious, because I've heard people on both sides... saying basically "Revival is CoH2" and "Revival is 1.5. Not 2".
What do you guys think makes something a true "CoH 2"?

When a "2" is added to a game's title, it usually means there is a different storyline and several differences that make it easy to differentiate between the two games. I think there is confusion about your project because the general knowledge is that you're basically re-making City of Heroes 1 and releasing that "as-is" and then improving on it and adding to it later. To me, that says "1.5" in the same manner that there was a "Scary Movie 3.5" DVD. It was the same movie, but with editing changes, additions, and special features that wasn't included in the original Scary Movie 3.

Now, if what you did was re-make City of Heroes 1 and DIDN'T release it "as-is" and instead concentrated on adding new things (like, for example, a moon base), improved on mechanics, added to the lore, maybe added a powerset or two, etc, and then released it, you could probably call it City of Heroes 2, because it would technically be an all-new experience.

[This is just my opinion based off of how many other companies do things--such as the difference between an expansion pack for Call of Duty (United Offensive) and making an all-new Call of Duty 2]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on October 03, 2014, 02:01:28 PM
I'm curious what distinction people are looking for between what makes Revival "CoH 1.5" and no "CoH 2"?

I'm curious, because I've heard people on both sides... saying basically "Revival is CoH2" and "Revival is 1.5. Not 2".
What do you guys think makes something a true "CoH 2"?

A company actively producing a product and the volunteer effort, while greatly appreciated, is behind us.  I think you guys are fantastic but I want a studio producing the product with engaging content and timely updates. 

....And I send money some where each month too to keep the lights on. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 03, 2014, 02:01:39 PM
I'm curious what distinction people are looking for between what makes Revival "CoH 1.5" and no "CoH 2"?

I'm curious, because I've heard people on both sides... saying basically "Revival is CoH2" and "Revival is 1.5. Not 2".
What do you guys think makes something a true "CoH 2"?

For me, a large part of a sequel would be moving to a new engine, which you've got covered. Anything other than that is just gravy, really...

I guess it should also consist of only new content, not the old missions etc...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 03, 2014, 02:03:09 PM
A company actively producing a product and the volunteer effort, while greatly appreciated, is behind us.  I think you guys are fantastic but I want a studio producing the product with engaging content and timely updates.

You won't be getting that; not a professional game studio, anyway.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Yoru-hime on October 03, 2014, 02:08:15 PM
I'm curious what distinction people are looking for between what makes Revival "CoH 1.5" and no "CoH 2"?

I'm curious, because I've heard people on both sides... saying basically "Revival is CoH2" and "Revival is 1.5. Not 2".
What do you guys think makes something a true "CoH 2"?

I suppose that I'd say that 1.5 is the effort to get the old game ported and operational on a new engine. The code would be different, but it'd still be the original content (at least to start with). ITF, Quarterhell, Mender Lazarus, cape missions and all the rest. There wouldn't be much of a learning curve for me going into APR, just finding out what didn't quite port over exactly the same.

I'd expect that a CoH 2 would share the same IP, but would be a new game with an entirely new set of content.

Not that I value one over the other necessarily.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on October 03, 2014, 02:11:44 PM
I'm curious what distinction people are looking for between what makes Revival "CoH 1.5" and no "CoH 2"?

I'm curious, because I've heard people on both sides... saying basically "Revival is CoH2" and "Revival is 1.5. Not 2".
What do you guys think makes something a true "CoH 2"?

A "2" in the title typically denotes an entirely different game.  Normally with a continuation of the IP story line, but not directly related to the original (ie Diablo, Diablo 2, Diablo 3).

APR is really an odd duck in this regards.  It's stated goal is to port the existing game to modern technology, not to make a "new" game.  That would tend to be labeled as DLC or Expansion level stuff [even though it is probably actually more difficult than just starting over in many regards].

If it was up to me, I'd continue calling it APR until such time as the licensing deals are real and things ramp up to full work.

Then I'd call the entire project -- City of Heroes: Revival  (or possibly City of Heroes:  Forever)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Balince on October 03, 2014, 02:11:51 PM
I'm curious what distinction people are looking for between what makes Revival "CoH 1.5" and no "CoH 2"?

I'm curious, because I've heard people on both sides... saying basically "Revival is CoH2" and "Revival is 1.5. Not 2".
What do you guys think makes something a true "CoH 2"?

This is pretty easy for me. CoH 2 would mean that it's a different game, new powers, new zones, a new storyline, new enhancements system/something totally different, just an all around different game except for the core feel of CoH. Revival would be CoH 1.5 to me because it's just a remake of the same game we knew, with graphic updates and whatever else patches or balances they want to make to the game, also adding a couple new zones, powersets, IO's and stuff like that post release.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Excidia on October 03, 2014, 02:44:15 PM
Doom is still Doom no matter how many times it's ported...Doom 2 is a different game.

Cannon printer hacked to run Doom: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29203776?ocid=socialflow_twitter


e-
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fridgy Daiere on October 03, 2014, 02:51:53 PM
What do you guys think makes something a true "CoH 2"?

Same universe and similar mechanics, but a completely different starting point and all new content.

This is probably why APR has been dubbed CoX 1.5; you'll have a different engine and slightly different mechanics, but everything else (i.e. costumes, powers, stories, main characters, zones, etc.) will be the same, or as close to the same as possible.

At least in the beginning.  ;)  I think the reason I loved the original so much is because it didn't need a 2.0...the game kept expanding and giving us new content with each new issue, so a sequel was unnecessary.  Most of the CoH 2 yearning I read on the old boards had more to do with wanting new engine (graphics, physics, or whatever) capabilities rather than wanting a whole new game.

And that's what you'll be giving us if the NCSoft deal goes through.  That, and hopefully the reality of being able to play indefinitely...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 03, 2014, 03:58:58 PM
Then I'd call the entire project -- City of Heroes: Revival  (or possibly City of Heroes:  Forever)


I like that! Or perhaps "World of Heroes"


Same universe and similar mechanics, but a completely different starting point and all new content.

This is probably why APR has been dubbed CoX 1.5; you'll have a different engine and slightly different mechanics, but everything else (i.e. costumes, powers, stories, main characters, zones, etc.) will be the same, or as close to the same as possible.

At least in the beginning.  ;)  I think the reason I loved the original so much is because it didn't need a 2.0...the game kept expanding and giving us new content with each new issue, so a sequel was unnecessary.  Most of the CoH 2 yearning I read on the old boards had more to do with wanting new engine (graphics, physics, or whatever) capabilities rather than wanting a whole new game.

And that's what you'll be giving us if the NCSoft deal goes through.  That, and hopefully the reality of being able to play indefinitely...


Exactly the way I feel about it too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 03, 2014, 04:03:22 PM
I'm curious what distinction people are looking for between what makes Revival "CoH 1.5" and no "CoH 2"?

I'm curious, because I've heard people on both sides... saying basically "Revival is CoH2" and "Revival is 1.5. Not 2".
What do you guys think makes something a true "CoH 2"?

I would say porting to UR4 - new maps and all the old original stuff allowing for continued development IS CoH2. The graphics and potential will be there. I think a lot of people just don't understand what a difference going to a new engine will make.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on October 03, 2014, 04:13:58 PM
Personally, I liked the end game Incarnate Stuff, overall.   My only real problem with it was the focus on RAIDS over almost everything else early on.  I always felt like CoH worked best, for me at least, because of the 5-8 man team sizes.  I'd have REALLY liked some of the iTrials more if they had been Task Forces, not large scale raids.  I think the Lambda is the best example of this, followed closely by TPN and Minds of Mayhem. These really could have been set to run from 6-8 members total with the difficulty of the enemies scaled down slightly to compensate for the smaller teams and I think it would have been "better".  First, I think it would have "felt" more super going against some of these foes in smaller teams.  Somehow, piling on to 1 guy with 22 other heroes and still taking 10 minutes to take him down doesn't seem impressive.

No, I think that the Incarnate trials as implemented worked reasonably well. What I thought was missing is what you wanted to see -- 'raids' that were TF-sized. The overarching plans of the Praetorians were grandiose enough, and far-reaching enough, to require large groups of heroes to deal with them. What the devs missed, in my opinion, was that while what they were planning needed to be countered, not everything they were doing was monolithic enough to require trial-sized groups; there was endless room to create TF-sized Incarnate content where it was a single team of characters going into Praetoria  (or into Paragon City or the Rogue Isles) to disrupt one or another of the projects the Praetorians were carrying out in support of their main efforts -- an incarnate TF that would have you chasing the supply chain for building the War Walkers to disrupt their production or corrupt their programming, or to destroy the production lines and stockpiles for the drugs that Mother Mayhem uses to help condition telepaths during their induction into the Seers. Going through Paragon City defeating and interrogating members of a villain group that's been bribed to provide safe houses for Praetorian infiltration teams to get the locations of those safe houses, one of which coughs up the location where the portal they used to get here is, going through the portal and destroying that installation, then retreating back through the portal before it blows up. Adding a tier of Incarnate content between the single-person content in Dark Astoria and the trials that we had would have given us a wider range of options for the endgame and given the devs a way to fill out gaps in what we saw of Praetoria.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on October 03, 2014, 04:31:18 PM
You won't be getting that; not a professional game studio, anyway.

Pros gotta start somewhere. Ever occur to you that while for now this is an amateur, volunteer effort, it has every possibility of becoming more if the deal should go thru?

The difference here is practice, an acknowledgement, and a paycheck. She's getting the first, the second will come, and the third with the deal and success.

I have faith in her.

Now, as for where is the line between 1.5 and 2? I'd look to Everquest and Everquest 2 for inspiration on where to draw the line. Everquest got an engine upgrade with Shadows of Luclin, its third expansion. Still the same game, just using more advanced shaders and DX9.0c. Same characters, same mechanics, same starting point and lore/progression, just shinier.

Everquest 2 is a different graphics engine, different mechanics, different characters and classes, entirely different starting point and progression, only partially shared lore.

From everything you've told us so far, ARP is going to be akin to the upgrades EQ got, or WoW will be getting with Warlords of Draenor. Same story, same powersets and mechanics, as closely as possible. Same lore, same starting point, same progression. Merely new, shinier graphics engine to take advantage of advances in hardware and software and continue the story on a clean, supported, and well understood codebase.

IMO CoH 1.5 is appropriate, and that's certainly not intended as an insult!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lamer on October 03, 2014, 04:31:58 PM
I would say porting to UR4 - new maps and all the old original stuff allowing for continued development IS CoH2. The graphics and potential will be there. I think a lot of people just don't understand what a difference going to a new engine will make.

I'll respectfully disagree -- the exact same content, just on a new engine, doesn't seem like a sequel to the game (which would merit the 2) to me. Continues updates are great, but is that enough grounds to label it a sequel? Most MMOs get continued updates but never tick a number up from them. I do agree that it's a lot of work internally to make it work, but I'm not so sure on naming it a sequel. I'd say 1.5 is better for it.

Like I said though, respect your opinion on it -- it's a question of semantics either way, so it's all about opinions!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on October 03, 2014, 04:35:00 PM
I'm curious what distinction people are looking for between what makes Revival "CoH 1.5" and no "CoH 2"?

I'm curious, because I've heard people on both sides... saying basically "Revival is CoH2" and "Revival is 1.5. Not 2".
What do you guys think makes something a true "CoH 2"?
sprinkles on the donuts
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: InOnePiece on October 03, 2014, 04:38:03 PM
Does it have to be either COH 1.5 or 2? Can't we just call it, oh I don't know, COH 10?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azcat on October 03, 2014, 05:12:40 PM
Hello everyone. I haven't kept up with the forum in a while and wanted to know what the latest update was if someone could let me know. Is the game a go, a no or a maybe still.  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 03, 2014, 05:28:10 PM
I'll respectfully disagree -- the exact same content, just on a new engine, doesn't seem like a sequel to the game (which would merit the 2) to me. Continues updates are great, but is that enough grounds to label it a sequel? Most MMOs get continued updates but never tick a number up from them. I do agree that it's a lot of work internally to make it work, but I'm not so sure on naming it a sequel. I'd say 1.5 is better for it.

Like I said though, respect your opinion on it -- it's a question of semantics either way, so it's all about opinions!

I'll be honest, i'd rather a new engine be used for CoH2.  CoH had a fundamental problem with it's rendering engine, thats not really much of a secret.  As for most mmo's not getting a sequal, they never get popular enough in their lifetime to warrent one 90% of the time.  CoH even did very good by mmo standards.  But Everquest as an example would never had gotten a sequal had it not been popular.  WoW hasn't gotten a sequal but it certainly qualifies, likewise.

It really depends if it actually is or not though I'd guess.  Where would CoH 2 take place eh?  The old paragon city?  Just another thought I had, as I personally favor new maps with sequals.

Know, perhaps thats a direction the game could go after we finally get it back.  Besides taking to the stars, start implementing other cities here and there once in a while for the two main sides(or maybe a third to for praetorians).  We had the rogue isles, and the Imperial City, sure but we could use another every so often.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Yoru-hime on October 03, 2014, 05:28:33 PM
Does it have to be either COH 1.5 or 2? Can't we just call it, oh I don't know, COH 10?

<insert binary joke here>

Y'know, for all the theories about how Windows is naming their newest operating system, the idea that someone there is stuck in base 9 hasn't occurred to me until now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on October 03, 2014, 05:40:47 PM
This is pretty easy for me. CoH 2 would mean that it's a different game, new powers, new zones, a new storyline, new enhancements system/something totally different, just an all around different game except for the core feel of CoH. Revival would be CoH 1.5 to me because it's just a remake of the same game we knew, with graphic updates and whatever else patches or balances they want to make to the game, also adding a couple new zones, powersets, IO's and stuff like that post release.

What's kind of interesting is that CoH pretty much had a CoH2 in City of Villains. It met all the criteria except ported over a bunch of powersets.
I don't think that Praetoria quite met the size requirement to be a CoH3 but other than that it had a lot of the elements too.

Fact is that CoH was such a large and constantly expanding game that things like a "true" expansion to a CoH 2 was never needed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 03, 2014, 05:41:00 PM
In fact you know thinking about it the best name for the new update - CoH 2015 or whatever year it comes out.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on October 03, 2014, 05:50:28 PM
Hello everyone. I haven't kept up with the forum in a while and wanted to know what the latest update was if someone could let me know. Is the game a go, a no or a maybe still.  ;D

All the information is in the first post of this topic and the "The mask comes off" topic.  But right now, talks are still ongoing.  It's not a yes or a no yet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on October 03, 2014, 06:05:11 PM
In fact you know thinking about it the best name for the new update - CoH 2015 or whatever year it comes out.

That's a good idea.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 03, 2014, 06:34:19 PM
Or perhaps just renumber the issues, "Vol 2, Issue 1" as the only outward change. . .

I kinda like that! To honor comicbook tradition we could combine some ideas and have:

City of Heroes
Forever
Vol 2 Issue 1

Or something in that general vein.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azcat on October 03, 2014, 06:46:39 PM
Thank you Thunder Glove :) I started reading from the start but then it went all over the place, which I totally understand, I am excited as well. Just hard to pick out the hard facts from wish lists and wants. But thank you for the update :) its all I needed to know.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 03, 2014, 07:32:24 PM
Or perhaps just renumber the issues, "Vol 2, Issue 1" as the only outward change. . .

I kinda like that! To honor comicbook tradition we could combine some ideas and have:

City of Heroes
Forever
Vol 2 Issue 1

Or something in that general vein.

City of Ultimates?
Spectacular City of Heroes?
City of Heroes, 2nd Edition?
Son of the Bride of the Ghost of the Revenge of City of Heroes: this time it's personal!
In a World... Of Heroes


Edit: technically we'll be on Volume 4 as I see cov as vol 2 and gr as vol 3
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on October 03, 2014, 07:46:40 PM
APR is only small at the moment because in all honesty until the deal is sealed there is nothing that can be done. I am taking the time to learn UnReal4 engine and a lot of the others are doing the same, learning new skills. Since much of the game is planned to be a direct port - at the beginning a lot of the work is simple grunt stuff. I know that i am working on new maps - one of the main complaints I heard from players was how boring it was to do the same maps over and over.
That was one of my very few complaints as well.   Knowing exactly what was around every corner did tend to take the mystery out of it.
I'm curious what distinction people are looking for between what makes Revival "CoH 1.5" and no "CoH 2"?

I'm curious, because I've heard people on both sides... saying basically "Revival is CoH2" and "Revival is 1.5. Not 2".
What do you guys think makes something a true "CoH 2"?
A "2" would be a "spiritual successor" like City of Titans to me.   They are trying to make a whole new game that plays similar to CoH with the same "feel".   They want to appeal to the same audience, but are striving to create a new game.

You are actually trying to make your project as much like CoH as possible.  Tiny details from CoH are important to what you are doing.  (loved the tram logo)  In my mind you are working on an update to CoH.   It's a bigger and better version of Ultra-mode to me.   The game will continue on and of course be updated from where it was the same as if the original were still running.

If it was up to me, I'd continue calling it APR until such time as the licensing deals are real and things ramp up to full work.

Then I'd call the entire project -- City of Heroes: Revival  (or possibly City of Heroes:  Forever)
I like that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zychan on October 03, 2014, 08:02:37 PM
Same universe and similar mechanics, but a completely different starting point and all new content.

This is probably why APR has been dubbed CoX 1.5; you'll have a different engine and slightly different mechanics, but everything else (i.e. costumes, powers, stories, main characters, zones, etc.) will be the same, or as close to the same as possible.

At least in the beginning.  ;)  I think the reason I loved the original so much is because it didn't need a 2.0...the game kept expanding and giving us new content with each new issue, so a sequel was unnecessary.  Most of the CoH 2 yearning I read on the old boards had more to do with wanting new engine (graphics, physics, or whatever) capabilities rather than wanting a whole new game.

And that's what you'll be giving us if the NCSoft deal goes through.  That, and hopefully the reality of being able to play indefinitely...

This.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nightmarer on October 03, 2014, 08:12:46 PM
I'm curious what distinction people are looking for between what makes Revival "CoH 1.5" and no "CoH 2"?

I'm curious, because I've heard people on both sides... saying basically "Revival is CoH2" and "Revival is 1.5. Not 2".
What do you guys think makes something a true "CoH 2"?

Why name it 1.5 or 2? Wasn't the game named "City of Heroes: Freedom"?

Now I'd like it to be "City of Heroes: Infinity" or "City of Heroes: Defiant" (anything except Union will do because, you know, it was Union and stuff, no matter how well "City of Heroes: Union" sounds  :P)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on October 03, 2014, 08:17:40 PM
Personally, I really like "City of Heroes: Resurgence" 
 
It not only fits, perfectly, something about picking up right where we left off seems like a tribute to the old Devs.  Issue 24, the issue they were almost finished with, was going to be called Resurgence.  I think calling the new game Resurgence as a tribute to them would be nice.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cymmetri on October 03, 2014, 08:50:34 PM
In fact you know thinking about it the best name for the new update - CoH 2015 or whatever year it comes out.

i24 was named Resurgence.

I'm VERY much for that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dr. Bad Guy on October 03, 2014, 09:13:18 PM
I don't care what you call it.  Call it   Thunder Thighs: An American Oddity for all it matters to me.  Just let me throw money at you and LET ME PLAY!!!!!!!!!!! ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shidan on October 03, 2014, 09:13:41 PM
Yeah, I'm on the Resurgence train. It fits perfectly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: adarict on October 03, 2014, 09:14:59 PM
Whether it is 1.5 or CoH 2 depends on what you are referring to.  If you are talking as if they are software revision version numbers, then Revival could be 2, because it is essentially an all new game from a coding perspective.  If you are referring to it similar to sequels, then Revival would be 1.5.  It isn't a new story or anything, just a "director's cut" so to speak.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: zslane on October 03, 2014, 09:15:36 PM
I ran iTrials enough to get my main up to +4 on two branches of each slot. I did it mostly to see if I could before getting completely fed up with it. I did not grind the iTrials because I thought they were well-designed celebrations of fun. I liked feeling like a powerful superhero, which the iTrials most definitely did not foster; they made me feel like puzzle fodder. Taking my Incarnated main back out into the conventional L1-50 world did though...and if there was any real benefit to be found in the Incarnate powers, for me that was it.

In fact, I felt that the iTrials were the least-CoH-like content ever delivered. I didn't like the fact that defeating the bosses meant learning how to navigate the gimmicks that utilized mechanics not found anywhere else in the game. All the "superhero expertise" gained in levels 1-50 were made irrelevent by virtue of autohit attacks, attacks for which there were no defenses, unique mechanics (like Sequestration in BAF) that no other mission prepares you for and which no other missions make use of. The continuity of gameplay expertise felt violently severed, so much so that the iTrials felt like an entirely different game. I think it is called WoW...

Everything I loved about CoH made me loathe WoW, which I gave a try for about 6 months after taking a break from CoH (around the time the AE was introduced). Imagine my horror when I returned to the game only to find this intriguing Incarnate system was little more than short-form WoW dungeon raiding. I'm sure it appealed to the WoW expats who felt themselves on more familiar ground when they got to it, but it felt like nothing more than a tragically missed opportunity (to add "end game content" that truly felt congruent with the spirit of CoH as a whole, which is to say congruent with the L1-50 game). And the fact that trial leagues always felt compelled to max out the roster, spending more time waiting for qualified members than the trial itself took, made the process a whole new kind of tedious.

If CoT decides to improve upon CoH, I dearly hope they reconsider the end-game phase and conscientiously avoid copying other MMOs. None of them "got it" when it came to understanding what made CoH special. It would seem that the architects of the Incarnate system lost sight of it themselves.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on October 03, 2014, 09:25:25 PM
There is no thing that could be done with the end game that would not have people complaining. Seriously, the thing you want end game to be would have 50,000 other players screaming in protest. Same with me. And with everyone. This is because everyone wants end game tailored to how they like to play the game themselves.

This is not a realistic expectation.

I had no problem with CoX's endgame, because when I got worn out with it I just took a break and went back to leveling new characters up, or having someone go rogue, or any one of the 10,000 other fun things CoX had for us to do. Then when I wanted to work on someone's Hybrid progress, it was time to hope some brave soul was forming an UG trial.

I want this game back so badly I would be willing to run BAF 100 times a day.

But, regardless CoT should do exactly what they want regarding endgame, because they wont please everyone - so they should just do what they want. People are going to scream bloody murder regardless.  8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on October 03, 2014, 09:36:08 PM
Why name it 1.5 or 2? Wasn't the game named "City of Heroes: Freedom"?

Now I'd like it to be "City of Heroes: Infinity" or "City of Heroes: Defiant" (anything except Union will do because, you know, it was Union and stuff, no matter how well "City of Heroes: Union" sounds  :P)

I kinda like City of Heroes: Fred
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on October 03, 2014, 09:56:18 PM
I kinda like City of Heroes: Fred

I want City of Heroes: Tacos Tuesday
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: zslane on October 03, 2014, 10:29:22 PM
There is no thing that could be done with the end game that would not have people complaining. Seriously, the thing you want end game to be would have 50,000 other players screaming in protest. Same with me. And with everyone. This is because everyone wants end game tailored to how they like to play the game themselves.

This is not a realistic expectation.

I had no problem with CoX's endgame, because when I got worn out with it I just took a break and went back to leveling new characters up, or having someone go rogue, or any one of the 10,000 other fun things CoX had for us to do. Then when I wanted to work on someone's Hybrid progress, it was time to hope some brave soul was forming an UG trial.

I want this game back so badly I would be willing to run BAF 100 times a day.

But, regardless CoT should do exactly what they want regarding endgame, because they wont please everyone - so they should just do what they want. People are going to scream bloody murder regardless.  8)

Insofar as no game can please everybody all the time, you're right. But I find it difficult to understand how someone who loved the L1-50 game could love something so incongruent as the iTrials. I totally understand how a new player, fresh from 80 levels of WoW grinding, might race their way through 50 levels of the standard CoH content and then jump for joy upon reaching BAF. I'm sure it felt like home to them. But not to me.

I felt a unique kinship with the kind of players who formed the Taxicab service, or who would see a newbie struggling a bit and dump some Inf on them just because they could. I felt very little kinship with most of the iTrial lovers. From what I gather, the datamining seemed to indicate that only a tiny % of the game's population experienced the Incarnate system, and honestly I'm not that surprised. CoH was a spectacular MMORPG; but IMO the Incarnate system wasn't CoH. It was an alien organism hosted within CoH.

Even from a design perspective, the Incarnate system felt like a massive compromise, as if the devs were stuck between a rock (l33t players seeking end-game progression) and a hard place (a codebase completely hostile to raising of the level cap and the expansion of the power set system that was already straining from the existance of primary, secondary, pool, and epic/patron sets). On the one hand, it could be argued that the Incarnate system was better than no system of advanced powers at all. But the take-away for me is that any "spiritual successor" to CoH under development today ought to seriously re-think its approach to the "end game" and not make it feel like all the other MMOs out there because, frankly, most of us loved CoH precisely because it didn't try to feel like all the others (which mostly just wanted to feel like WoW).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: Artillerie on October 03, 2014, 10:56:56 PM
Insofar as no game can please everybody all the time, you're right. But I find it difficult to understand how someone who loved the L1-50 game could love something so incongruent as the iTrials.

Nonetheless, I loved playing a char to 50 and then getting stuck into the itrials. Got to guess that the people I regularly teamed with did as well.

There was enough content so that people could pick and choose depending on their preferences. Thankfully there were few examples ( I can't actually think of any ) where a player was obliged to complete content that they disliked in order to progress on to something that they would enjoy more.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on October 03, 2014, 11:03:20 PM
You don't like incarnate trials yes I GET IT! But name calling and putting people in stereotypes just because you don't like the content they enjoy is ignorant.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 03, 2014, 11:42:07 PM
Personally, I really like "City of Heroes: Resurgence" 
 
It not only fits, perfectly, something about picking up right where we left off seems like a tribute to the old Devs.  Issue 24, the issue they were almost finished with, was going to be called Resurgence.  I think calling the new game Resurgence as a tribute to them would be nice.
Quite. APR being renamed City of Heroes: Resurgence if things work out is ideal on very many levels. Now we just need to have it happen.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 03, 2014, 11:47:08 PM
I want City of Heroes: Tacos Tuesday
That would be City of Heroes: Tanker Tuesday.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 03, 2014, 11:47:39 PM
Fact is that CoH was such a large and constantly expanding game that things like a "true" expansion to a CoH 2 was never needed.

It's something that was planned... Mainly so they could get away from the old codebase. Heh.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 03, 2014, 11:50:39 PM
That would be City of Heroes: Tanker Tuesday.

If City of heroes 2 took place in Albuquerque, Taco Tuesday would be fin- hmmm, actually maybe not(for the record I do live there now).  Tanker and Taco Tuesday?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 03, 2014, 11:53:11 PM
You don't like incarnate trials yes I GET IT! But name calling and putting people in stereotypes just because you don't like the content they enjoy is ignorant.
Yeah, the whole false dichotomy of "either you ran Incarnate content or were a worthwhile human being who played lower level content and associated with newer players" is exactly that. Many of us did both. Any given day when i logged in there was an equal chance i'd be playing a lower level alt and teaming up with anyone who asked or running an ITF, LGTF or iTrial or randomly trying things to see what happens. Frequently i'd be playing both higher and lower level content in the same session. To me every aspect of the game was a source of entertainment. i wasn't always laughing with the other members of the team, but i was generally laughing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 03, 2014, 11:57:08 PM
Yeah, the whole false dichotomy of "either you ran Incarnate content or were a worthwhile human being who played lower level content and associated with newer players" is exactly that. Many of us did both. Any given day when i logged in there was an equal chance i'd be playing a lower level alt and teaming up with anyone who asked or running an ITF, LGTF or iTrial or randomly trying things to see what happens. Frequently i'd be playing both higher and lower level content in the same session. To me every aspect of the game was a source of entertainment. i wasn't always laughing with the other members of the team, but i was generally laughing.

Yeah I did both myself....The only Itrial I actually dispised was the underground Itrial, but the others I enjoyed playing them fully.  I actually hated how people didn't play the full Magistrum Itrial, because it's not a bad trial and it's not that much longer.  But people just wanted to unlock the slot :/.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on October 04, 2014, 12:25:22 AM
I want City of Heroes: Tacos Tuesday

The great fred likes tacos
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 04, 2014, 12:34:37 AM
City of Heroes: Freeem Forever
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on October 04, 2014, 12:48:34 AM
My only concern was that it seemed like the incarnate trials were starting to pull the veterans away from L1-L50 content and into the post-50s, to the detriment of the younger section of community.

This is an interesting perspective. I think, in part, it depended on your server. I think I can safely say that there were some groups of players who played exclusive of all others - i.e. SG only, or family only, that kind of thing. I'd met a few of them in game while at the market and other places. I came across one who wanted to do incarnate stuff,  but none of his SG mates wanted to - mainly because they were F2P and couldn't. In fact, I think there were a lot of players who didn't do incarnate content because they found sub-50 levels to be fun enough, so why pay money? I raise this point because in a lot of cases, the detriment of the younger section of community (if there was one) was because they were unwilling to sub. Perhaps, if the option to sub were not an option, they might have continued to pay - I can't say, as I never got a look at the accounting.

As for those who were subbed and simply didn't enjoy the incarnate content, what would you have had those of us who did enjoy iTrials do? Stop doing them, team with the lowbies so they could catch up in level, and then roll another alt and start over?

In my case, I played the lower level characters during the day and the incarnate level characters in the evenings. On Liberty, evenings were about the only times you could get enough people to show up so that was the pattern of play I used.

I do want to say that I did see a....divide, if you will, of players who did iTrials, and other players who just didn't like them for whatever reason. They weren't right or wrong, just different. The same goes the other way. Those who liked iTrials weren't right or wrong, just different.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 04, 2014, 12:49:52 AM
The great fred likes tacos

I'm rather spoiled when it comes to tacos.  They have to be of real quality :).  And I espeecialy enjoy Carne Asada.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackstar5 on October 04, 2014, 12:58:57 AM
Lots of people liked the Itrials, I myself wasn't fond of them due to the fact that I was more of a solo/Small team player, did I fault the peeps that loved Itrials? No. Did they fault me? Sometimes when I would respond to and invite with "No thanks , soloing".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on October 04, 2014, 01:59:08 AM
That would be City of Heroes: Tanker Tuesday.

tankers are tough and dont go well with salsa. so that wouldnt work very well
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on October 04, 2014, 02:01:24 AM
Yeah, the whole false dichotomy of "either you ran Incarnate content or were a worthwhile human being who played lower level content and associated with newer players" is exactly that. Many of us did both. Any given day when i logged in there was an equal chance i'd be playing a lower level alt and teaming up with anyone who asked or running an ITF, LGTF or iTrial or randomly trying things to see what happens. Frequently i'd be playing both higher and lower level content in the same session. To me every aspect of the game was a source of entertainment. i wasn't always laughing with the other members of the team, but i was generally laughing.
I know the feeling. I had 34 50's not counting all the alts at lower levels..I loved leveling. I loved croatoa. and striga...and a lot of other places.so it was a tossup as to what i would be playing
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lupur on October 04, 2014, 02:13:45 AM
On Justice there were days where it seemed that 80% of the population were on 50s.. yet no-one was doing any iTrials or even lvl 50 content lol.

Other days, you were hard pressed to find anyone not in a trial or one of the lvl 50 TFs / SFs.

Most of the folks I played with had at least a couple of toons on Rogue / Vigilante specifically so they could do all the content with anyone.

We once had 5x +4 ITF's happening at once, racing for completion.. it was a long night since only the tanks were 50 >.<

I guess on smaller, more casual servers it was more a case of whoever expresses a good idea first generally sets the theme for the night / day.

Generally folks were pretty outspoken in the custom channels, so you could always find someone doing what you felt like doing. it was just funny watching almost the whole server Zerg DA / Pocket D seemingly out of nowhere :P

Basically.. as long as you're willing to play with different folks, and the custom server channels are advertised well enough, I can't imagine that the iTrials would affect your play all that much, whatever you're gunning for.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: tripthicket on October 04, 2014, 02:16:14 AM
I kinda like City of Heroes: Fred

Methinks I hear a Hero Games 5th Rules Edition fan...  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on October 04, 2014, 02:59:08 AM
I actually hated how people didn't play the full Magistrum Itrial, because it's not a bad trial and it's not that much longer.  But people just wanted to unlock the slot :/.

This sort of annoyed me, too. I rarely teamed, because I preferred to solo, but I did like running in iTrials now and again (mostly for the iXP, but also to see the story content there- or try to). I only ever got past the first part of the Magisterium Trial one time, but by then, so many people had dropped, that we didn't stand a chance against the Bosses, and never made it to Cole. (We did take out everyone, IIRC, except for Chimera and Nega-Pendragon.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Battlechimp on October 04, 2014, 04:12:25 AM
This sort of annoyed me, too. I rarely teamed, because I preferred to solo, but I did like running in iTrials now and again (mostly for the iXP, but also to see the story content there- or try to). I only ever got past the first part of the Magisterium Trial one time, but by then, so many people had dropped, that we didn't stand a chance against the Bosses, and never made it to Cole. (We did take out everyone, IIRC, except for Chimera and Nega-Pendragon.)

I was in the same boat.  Almost every single time I joined a Magisterium trial that before it started they were saying  "This is a full run run attempt, just want to be sure everyone is in for the long run". Everyone one would go, sure, yeah, whole thing.  Then once the kill lots part was over, half the league would quit anyways.  Got annoying after a while.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 04, 2014, 04:22:47 AM
Trolls come in all sorts.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pep Rally on October 04, 2014, 05:07:56 AM
That would be City of Heroes: Tanker Tuesday.

As a representative of Tanker Tuesday, I'm okay with sharing Tuesday with Tacos...as well as nachos, burritos, and margaritas for that matter.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nightmarer on October 04, 2014, 05:13:40 AM
I kinda like City of Heroes: Fred

Actually, that's catchy and far better than City of Heroes: Mortimer  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: Burnt Toast on October 04, 2014, 05:26:26 AM

We get it you hated the Incarnate system... BUT please show me where datamining said that only a "tiny %" experienced the Incarnate system....fyi DA is part of the Incarnate system as well as the itrials.


All in all your post simply insinuates that people who do like the itrials are WoW grind fest lovers who are l33t and just want mad loot... who don't care about the community...or love the game as a whole... If that was your intention... congrats because that's what I got from your post :) Way to over-generalize people....

Insofar as no game can please everybody all the time, you're right. But I find it difficult to understand how someone who loved the L1-50 game could love something so incongruent as the iTrials. I totally understand how a new player, fresh from 80 levels of WoW grinding, might race their way through 50 levels of the standard CoH content and then jump for joy upon reaching BAF. I'm sure it felt like home to them. But not to me.

I felt a unique kinship with the kind of players who formed the Taxicab service, or who would see a newbie struggling a bit and dump some Inf on them just because they could. I felt very little kinship with most of the iTrial lovers. From what I gather, the datamining seemed to indicate that only a tiny % of the game's population experienced the Incarnate system, and honestly I'm not that surprised. CoH was a spectacular MMORPG; but IMO the Incarnate system wasn't CoH. It was an alien organism hosted within CoH.

Even from a design perspective, the Incarnate system felt like a massive compromise, as if the devs were stuck between a rock (l33t players seeking end-game progression) and a hard place (a codebase completely hostile to raising of the level cap and the expansion of the power set system that was already straining from the existance of primary, secondary, pool, and epic/patron sets). On the one hand, it could be argued that the Incarnate system was better than no system of advanced powers at all. But the take-away for me is that any "spiritual successor" to CoH under development today ought to seriously re-think its approach to the "end game" and not make it feel like all the other MMOs out there because, frankly, most of us loved CoH precisely because it didn't try to feel like all the others (which mostly just wanted to feel like WoW).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ryuplaneswalker on October 04, 2014, 11:14:52 AM
In a perfect world..where we were able to port everything over to UE4 and be able to develop it (*raises hand* I will help write for it, I would do it for for free..well for cookies) I would name the new release

City of Heroes
Volume 3
Issue 1 : Calm before the Storm.

but have the cover be in classic Silver age...with City of Heroes in big bold letters at the top of the box, the Volume and issue in a little box and "Calm before the storm" in big letters at the bottom.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: Minotaur on October 04, 2014, 11:27:08 AM
Insofar as no game can please everybody all the time, you're right. But I find it difficult to understand how someone who loved the L1-50 game could love something so incongruent as the iTrials. I totally understand how a new player, fresh from 80 levels of WoW grinding, might race their way through 50 levels of the standard CoH content and then jump for joy upon reaching BAF. I'm sure it felt like home to them. But not to me.


I loved the 1-50 game, I had over 250 characters in total and 80+ 50s, very few of them PLd in any way, playing from July 04 to shutdown.

I also enjoyed the incarnate trials, I had many +1s and 20 or so +3s IIRC.

Victory had a fun community of people who regularly did the i-trials and that (as with the rest of the game) is what made it fun. I also solo incarnated a couple of characters.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 04, 2014, 04:08:01 PM

City of Heroes
Volume 3
Issue 1 : Calm before the Storm.



That's not bad at all!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Excidia on October 04, 2014, 05:05:04 PM
I refer to it as CoH:Unreal
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zerohour on October 04, 2014, 05:42:18 PM
Actually, that's catchy and far better than City of Heroes: Mortimer  :P

Fred?  Mortimer?  I don't get it. Did I miss something?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kierthos on October 04, 2014, 06:16:52 PM
Fred might be referring to the HERO system (pen and paper RPG), where the fifth edition was called 'Fred'.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 04, 2014, 06:35:09 PM
Fred might be referring to the HERO system (pen and paper RPG), where the fifth edition was called 'Fred'.
And as far as i know Mortimer is referring to... someone named Mortimer?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on October 04, 2014, 07:14:51 PM
Fred?  Mortimer?  I don't get it. Did I miss something?

i just think fred is a cool name....but then I had a demon mm named baalzebarbie
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 04, 2014, 07:31:35 PM
I refer to it as CoH:Unreal

I would really refrain from including unreal in the title, even with the unreal engine.  I wouldn't want the unreal community coming to us and then complaining about everything because the title is in there.  While the unreal engine has a long history in a lot of great games, the unreal games themselves has had an especially unpleasant fanbase rivaling the sonic fanbase in the level of dividedness, closed-mindedness and dislike towards the games themselves it's especially hard to not to understand why epic games distanced themselves for a time from the unreal games themselves.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: zslane on October 04, 2014, 09:23:08 PM
As for those who were subbed and simply didn't enjoy the incarnate content, what would you have had those of us who did enjoy iTrials do?

I'd have you keep on running the iTrials. Getting rid of them after the fact wouldn't have served anybody's interests.

At the same time, however, I'd like to think that had the devs given us an Incarnate system (which I use to collectively refer to the iTrials as well as the new power system they unlocked) that was consistent with the systems and gameplay of the rest of CoH, more of the subbing CoH community would have eaten it up and enjoyed it even more than what we got. And after all, if you're a big fan of the game and the innumerable ways it was different from all the other MMOs out there, "more like CoH" is axiomatically superior/preferable to "less like CoH",  is it not?

It's too late to do anything about it for CoH, but there's still time to influence the future "successors to CoH". I'm hoping the devs of CoT, H&V, and VO will take the opportunity to reevaluate Paragon Studio's approach to end game content and make theirs more, not less, congruent with the rest of their game(s).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on October 04, 2014, 09:26:59 PM
And as far as i know Mortimer is referring to... someone named Mortimer?
That name always reminds me of this 80s movie called Trading Places starring Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd.   There was another main character played brilliantly by Don Ameche called "Mortimer".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 04, 2014, 10:17:59 PM
That name always reminds me of this 80s movie called Trading Places starring Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd.   There was another main character played brilliantly by Don Ameche called "Mortimer".

Classic movie. Now let's buy Level 30 IO enhancement futures on the Wentworth's market
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on October 04, 2014, 10:18:22 PM
That name always reminds me of this 80s movie called Trading Places starring Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd.   There was another main character played brilliantly by Don Ameche called "Mortimer".

Possibly unrelated, Mortimer was also the original name for Mickey Mouse
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 04, 2014, 11:51:16 PM
Possibly unrelated, Mortimer was also the original name for Mickey Mouse
And at least one or two Mickey Mouse parodies of varying levels of inappropriateness.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on October 05, 2014, 12:49:29 AM
Possibly unrelated, Mortimer was also the original name for Mickey Mouse

I was think of Randolph and Mortimer, they where were a couple of bookies till they got broke then saved by a prince.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 05, 2014, 01:53:55 AM
I was think of Randolph and Mortimer, they where were a couple of bookies till they got broke then saved by a prince.

Those were the same guys as in Trading Places.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on October 05, 2014, 01:56:10 AM
Those were the same guys as in Trading Places.

Yes that is what I was referencing. They also make a cameo in "Coming to America"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on October 05, 2014, 02:58:06 AM
I'd have you keep on running the iTrials. Getting rid of them after the fact wouldn't have served anybody's interests.

At the same time, however, I'd like to think that had the devs given us an Incarnate system (which I use to collectively refer to the iTrials as well as the new power system they unlocked) that was consistent with the systems and gameplay of the rest of CoH, more of the subbing CoH community would have eaten it up and enjoyed it even more than what we got. And after all, if you're a big fan of the game and the innumerable ways it was different from all the other MMOs out there, "more like CoH" is axiomatically superior/preferable to "less like CoH",  is it not?

It's too late to do anything about it for CoH, but there's still time to influence the future "successors to CoH". I'm hoping the devs of CoT, H&V, and VO will take the opportunity to reevaluate Paragon Studio's approach to end game content and make theirs more, not less, congruent with the rest of their game(s).

That's certainly a fair enough thing to hope for. However, in defense of Paragon Studios, I seem to recall reading something Positron(Matt Miller) said about the incarnate content. They had this code that was undocumented, or poorly written, or had other issues that made changes difficult to implement. I think, if they'd had the chance to raise the cap to 60 or 70, they would have done that. Apparently, for whatever reason, that level cap of 50 was there to stay. (I seriously would love to look at that code and see why - not that I'd be able to make much sense of it unless it were in Java or C++.)

So, they came up with the incarnate system - and probably had it planned out since they created Ouroboros.
You did acknowledge the "rock and a hard place" that the dev team found themselves in, but I never thought of it like that. I looked at it like they had an opportunity to solve a problem - which is what a computer programmer is trained to do. It's all about problem solving. Some solutions are eloquent, others are bloated. Kind of like some of the dialogue we see in the forums here.

Some, like Codewalker, express themselves concisely and clearly. Others, like me, use humongous paragraphs to convey what some could do in a sentence or two.

I'd thought at first I strongly disagreed with you, but it seems you did make a qualifying statement about loving to play the 1-50 content. And, I don't think I did. At least, not the way others did. To me, it was always a means to an end. That end used to be level 50, tackling Dreck solo just to see if I could beat him. But with incarnate content, I got tools which would help my squishies deal with AVs like Dreck. Pets, nukes, buffs, debuffs - all in addition to the primary, secondary and Patron/Epic power pools.

I certainly did not enjoy Keyes, except for the AV fight. In fact, except for the AV fights, the only trials I enjoyed were UGT (because of the number of AVs and the guaranteed rare or very rare component.)MoM and the Magisterium. That last fight against Cole, having to zip in and out of lightning blasts was a real hoot. Probably the most fun I've ever had playing the game, particularly when going for The Really Hard Way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on October 05, 2014, 03:25:20 AM
If City of heroes 2 took place in Albuquerque, Taco Tuesday would be fin- hmmm, actually maybe not(for the record I do live there now).  Tanker and Taco Tuesday?

This is what I would expect from a CoH 2 - another city, or a more global approach. Sure, you could do a CoH 2 that took place in Paragon, but then you'd have to deal with figuring out what happened to all the old characters and story lines - if you just create the game in a new engine, and continue the story where CoH 1 left off, then I personally consider that to be more of a 1.75, than a whole new game. APR would be closer to 1.5, because it's not only going to pick up the story right where CoH was, it's going to include all the extant content as well.

I am also in Albuquerque, and the colors of the two sides would obviously have to be changed to red and green.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on October 05, 2014, 01:03:45 PM
Place it in Seattle, and add in Dragons and Trolls as Contacts. We already have hackers and evil corporations (see the Doctor's Friend arc), may as well go full-bore Shadowrun.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 05, 2014, 04:00:34 PM
This is what I would expect from a CoH 2 - another city, or a more global approach. Sure, you could do a CoH 2 that took place in Paragon, but then you'd have to deal with figuring out what happened to all the old characters and story lines - if you just create the game in a new engine, and continue the story where CoH 1 left off, then I personally consider that to be more of a 1.75, than a whole new game. APR would be closer to 1.5, because it's not only going to pick up the story right where CoH was, it's going to include all the extant content as well.

I am also in Albuquerque, and the colors of the two sides would obviously have to be changed to red and green.

Tried going to see the balloons rise today, sigh, stupid wind kept them grounded :(.  I think the biggest challenge for any game taking place in Albuquerque would be the rich and diverse culture here, the sheer variety of artistry and the events one sees around here.  But go figure, it'd be interesting to see a game such as a super hero mmo take place in a location such as this.  My thoughts anyways.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Super Firebug on October 05, 2014, 04:28:38 PM
I get the impression that some are confusing [Title] 2.0, which denotes a major patch/upgrade to a computer program (or, for instance, George Lucas' frequent tweakings of the Star Wars movies), with [Title] 2, which denotes a sequel -- a different story which continues the same characters and overall situation from a previous release (e.g., the Final Fantasy series, or the individual Star Wars movies). I'm certainly having trouble keeping track of which one is being referred to by any given message here. :/ The first is a revision of the same release; the second is a whole separate release.
So, APR might be CoH 1, version 2.0 -- still the same game, but improved.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 05, 2014, 04:48:42 PM
I get the impression that some are confusing [Title] 2.0, which denotes a major patch/upgrade to a computer program, with [Title] 2, which denotes a sequel -- a different story which continues the same characters and overall situation from a previous release (e.g., the Final Fantasy series, or the Star Trek movies 1-10). I'm certainly having trouble keeping track of which one is being referred to by any given message here. :/ The first is a revision of the same release; the second is a whole separate release.

I think a sequal is not just a continuation of the story but more the same world/universe myself.  I think my one of my favorite sequals was skyrim as while it's story is very different then Oblivion's, it takes place in the same world.  Another one I'm familiar with which does continue the same story and takes place in the same world is Myth 2: Soulblighter, with only a few characters from the original surviving.

Then of course, there is the marathon series, 1 and 2 were easily the best, with the development of Durandal as a character. At first he was absolutely hateful towards humanity, only caring about his own freedom and ultimately only really freeing the S'pht for his own ends.  Later games he's still very disregardful of anyones lives he controls(including/excluding the player character), and detached but still loyal to humanity view due to the programming that was built in.  Marathon Infinity was more of a fan-work in the story bungie allowed to be cannon, but explored in a way the player character more and the attachment/detachment from humanity(including the fact your forced to kill your fellow humans as much as the aliens).

I never considered any final fantasy game to be a sequal to the previous one, because while they do often have similarities in stories and even character names, those tend to be more a homage to a previous game then anything.  The star trek movies 1-6 I felt were certainly sequals, though 2-3-4 were chained one after another in a way. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 05, 2014, 09:39:04 PM
I tried to post this before, but an untimely crash lost my post, so here it take two!

Talk of setting the game in other cities got me to thinking of places that might offer a good unique flavor for "World of Heroes". Some of the mobs would be ones we already know, but others should be unique to the location.


Ok, so all the ideas are very rough and probably unworkable without resorting to some stereotypical connotations, but I felt like tossing it out there.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackstar5 on October 06, 2014, 12:17:55 AM
Place it in Seattle, and add in Dragons and Trolls as Contacts. We already have hackers and evil corporations (see the Doctor's Friend arc), may as well go full-bore Shadowrun.
I've been playing the Sega version of Shadowrun lately.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on October 06, 2014, 12:21:46 AM
That was one of my very few complaints as well.   Knowing exactly what was around every corner did tend to take the mystery out of it.

At one of the San Diego Comic-Cons that NCSoft and Paragon Studios had a booth, I asked Positron about the maps. it was clear that the maps were made from 'blocks' that were pre-defined and just stuck together in various ways to make maps, and I wondered whether it would be possible to either 1) create an editor for AE missions that would allow players to stick the indoor map blocks together to make their own maps, or 2) create a map randomizer, so that instead of having a limited number of maps that everyone had memorized, each time you went into a warehouse or office or Council/CoT tunnel you'd be facing a different layout. He said that I was right about the building blocks for the maps, but that the tools they had for manipulating them were too primitive, and required too much detailed hand tweaking in assembly, to make either of those options possible without a lot of time-consuming cleanup of the map-creation system. For example I'm sure everyone has, at some point or another, encountered a map where there's a black wall across a corridor, but if you walk into the wall, the corridor continues on the other side, and if you look back you can see the corridor you came from; this is what happens when the 'joints' between two map blocks are misaligned, and the rendering engine thinks the corridor ends where the join occurs.

With more time to work with it, it should be possible to clean up the 'edges' of the map sections so that each of the joints has a properly-defined size and position, which would allow either or both of those ideas to happen, but the amount of front-end work to make sure that everything can be positioned cleanly would make it a fairly long-term goal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on October 06, 2014, 02:02:19 AM
I've been playing the Sega version of Shadowrun lately.

Fun  game :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on October 06, 2014, 04:00:11 AM
At one of the San Diego Comic-Cons that NCSoft and Paragon Studios had a booth, I asked Positron about the maps. it was clear that the maps were made from 'blocks' that were pre-defined and just stuck together in various ways to make maps, and I wondered whether it would be possible to either 1) create an editor for AE missions that would allow players to stick the indoor map blocks together to make their own maps, or 2) create a map randomizer, so that instead of having a limited number of maps that everyone had memorized, each time you went into a warehouse or office or Council/CoT tunnel you'd be facing a different layout. He said that I was right about the building blocks for the maps, but that the tools they had for manipulating them were too primitive, and required too much detailed hand tweaking in assembly, to make either of those options possible without a lot of time-consuming cleanup of the map-creation system. For example I'm sure everyone has, at some point or another, encountered a map where there's a black wall across a corridor, but if you walk into the wall, the corridor continues on the other side, and if you look back you can see the corridor you came from; this is what happens when the 'joints' between two map blocks are misaligned, and the rendering engine thinks the corridor ends where the join occurs.

With more time to work with it, it should be possible to clean up the 'edges' of the map sections so that each of the joints has a properly-defined size and position, which would allow either or both of those ideas to happen, but the amount of front-end work to make sure that everything can be positioned cleanly would make it a fairly long-term goal.
Sounds like a leftover problem from Legacy that will not be imported into CoH 1.5.   :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 06, 2014, 05:49:29 AM
Place it in Seattle, and add in Dragons and Trolls as Contacts. We already have hackers and evil corporations (see the Doctor's Friend arc), may as well go full-bore Shadowrun.
Perhaps a skyraider Boeing hostile takeover?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 06, 2014, 05:50:49 AM
This is what I would expect from a CoH 2 - another city, or a more global approach. Sure, you could do a CoH 2 that took place in Paragon, but then you'd have to deal with figuring out what happened to all the old characters and story lines - if you just create the game in a new engine, and continue the story where CoH 1 left off, then I personally consider that to be more of a 1.75, than a whole new game. APR would be closer to 1.5, because it's not only going to pick up the story right where CoH was, it's going to include all the extant content as well.

I am also in Albuquerque, and the colors of the two sides would obviously have to be changed to red and green.
or keep rouge isles and paragon but make their proximity more relevant?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 06, 2014, 05:53:39 AM
Or perhaps just renumber the issues, "Vol 2, Issue 1" as the only outward change. . .

I kinda like that! To honor comicbook tradition we could combine some ideas and have:

City of Heroes
Forever
Vol 2 Issue 1

Or something in that general vein.
City of Heroes returns.... again
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 06, 2014, 05:55:33 AM
You won't be getting that; not a professional game studio, anyway.
Why not? Why cant a professional studio be made for City of Heroes 1.5 and beyond?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 06, 2014, 06:16:07 AM
Why not? Why cant a professional studio be made for City of Heroes 1.5 and beyond?

Money.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 06, 2014, 07:52:26 AM
What makes a professional game studio a professional game studio in your eyes?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Roderick on October 06, 2014, 08:21:27 AM
A company actively producing a product and the volunteer effort, while greatly appreciated, is behind us.  I think you guys are fantastic but I want a studio producing the product with engaging content and timely updates. 

....And I send money some where each month too to keep the lights on.

Irish Girl has been working hard, not just for free, but at her own expense - nobody's paying for her hardware or software for her - for years, ever since the shutdown.

She can't form a studio to work on it at this moment, because, technically, what she's doing would be Copyright Infringement and borderline piracy if she were to go commercial.

However, if and when the deal goes through, it's already been confirmed that this project will be official.  At that point,  getting funding, forming a real studii and hiring a team becomes a real possibility. If such a thing happened, what makes you think that the game would remain static at i23/24, as opposed to continuing with "engaging content and timely updates"?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: thunderforce on October 06, 2014, 09:57:09 AM
She can't form a studio to work on it at this moment, because, technically, what she's doing would be Copyright Infringement and borderline piracy if she were to go commercial.

Then, Gratuitous Capitals aside, technically it is even if it's not commercial. "For-profit" has very little relevance to whether or not something violates copyright.

... of course, that is not to say that APR isn't a good thing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Roderick on October 06, 2014, 11:36:28 AM
Then, Gratuitous Capitals aside, technically it is even if it's not commercial. "For-profit" has very little relevance to whether or not something violates copyright.

... of course, that is not to say that APR isn't a good thing.

I probably should have said "if she makes it available for distribution".

Copyright laws don't apply to things made for personal use, and what she's posted online is little more than fan art,  although Unreal isn't a very common medium.

If she starts distributing,  for profit or otherwise, then there are more legal issues than you can shake a stick at - until the deal goes through, and she becomes official.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 06, 2014, 11:55:28 AM
What makes a professional game studio a professional game studio in your eyes?

Several things will be needed, including but not limited to:

* Registered company
* IP rights
* Salaried employees
* Sufficient cash to deliver the product AND to keep it going post-release
* Porfolio

Without the salaried employees or portfolio, you're more likely to be considered an indie studio (which is what I consider MWM to be).  There's nothing wrong with indie studio's btw, but I was responding to someone who said he wanted a "professional studio" to be running CoH. 

No offence to you, IG, but I can't really see you making CoH 1.5 a full on professional studio this side of actually releasing something.  Perhaps in the future, but not for quite some time.

Besides, it's completely not necessary anyway.  Unlike the guy I was responding to, I don't see that a "professional studio" is even remotely needed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 06, 2014, 02:40:43 PM
To me the port to UR4 can be done with volunteers.

Running the game will require a studio at some point. If you want to continue development and sell the product you will need to have some form of an accounting structure and a responsible entity. If you tied it to Steam - that is one way but I would still have it a standalone purchase or be able to run without Steam running as some folks have an irrational hatred for Steam.

Here is the other part - let's say the game is wildly successful and gets 5 million subscribers - people will want to get paid. If you are raking in $10 million a month then you need a structure outlined even if not filled until needed. A Business Plan would be step one after the deal is complete.

Technically what is being done in APR currently is a reverse engineering exercise. Nothing to see there this is not the copyright violation you are looking for.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: thunderforce on October 06, 2014, 03:06:18 PM
Copyright laws don't apply to things made for personal use,

Wrong again. That varies depending on the activity and the jurisdiction. For example, even format-shifting was a violation in the UK until June (!), and under the CDPA '88 one had no right to make a transient copy of a work in the normal course of viewing or watching it (!). [1] And no, the situation is not clear-cut in America, either; nor in the EU in general (so I would be amazed if it was in Ireland...)

Furthermore, if what she's posted is "little more than fan art", given that the overwhelming majority of fan art is copyright violations...

[1] Yes, of course these laws are absurd. I am not trying to defend them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on October 06, 2014, 03:44:36 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on October 06, 2014, 04:12:46 PM
Wrong again. That varies depending on the activity and the jurisdiction. For example, even format-shifting was a violation in the UK until June (!), and under the CDPA '88 one had no right to make a transient copy of a work in the normal course of viewing or watching it (!). [1] And no, the situation is not clear-cut in America, either; nor in the EU in general (so I would be amazed if it was in Ireland...)

Furthermore, if what she's posted is "little more than fan art", given that the overwhelming majority of fan art is copyright violations...

[1] Yes, of course these laws are absurd. I am not trying to defend them.

It's worth mentioning here that what the law says and what the company chooses to enforce are often two very different things. Frequently, they accept and sometimes even encourage fan-created art or fiction as a community-building exercise so long as it's for a non-commercial purpose and no profits are being made. But this should never be mistaken for a legal protection for those activities. In other words, the copyright-holder can shut you down at any time for any reason.

In this case, of course, Irish Girl is doing her work in anticipation of the copyright holder's permission for use, and is not distributing any of her work apart from a few screenshots here and there. She's almost certainly safe on practical grounds, even if she doesn't have explicit permission to do what she's doing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zychan on October 06, 2014, 04:27:39 PM
I tried to post this before, but an untimely crash lost my post, so here it take two!

Talk of setting the game in other cities got me to thinking of places that might offer a good unique flavor for "World of Heroes". Some of the mobs would be ones we already know, but others should be unique to the location.

  • Crescent City: Roughly based on New Orleans along the Gulf Coast, it might feature a Voodoo theme and perhaps humanoid mutant gators roaming the near bayous.
  • Southwest: A rough combination of bits of Texas, New Mexico & Arizona. Cowboy & Indian cults, gang driven drug wars, UFOs and Little Green men, rattlesnakes, coyotes and roadrunners. It may be hard to define a cultural flavor without someone becoming offended by perceived stereotypes though.
  • SoCal / West Coast: I think that Titan City may have this location covered.
  • Emerald City / Northwest: Roughly taken from elements of Seattle and Portland, it could feature zones like "Jet City" (Boeing Field) and of course should have a "Space Needle". It might feature conflicts between the "Green Tree Huggers" and the "Angry Lumberjacks".
  • Steel Town / Motor City: Roughly an industrialised combination of Pittsburgh and Detroit. Poverty stricken neighborhoods surrounded by factories, some run down or abandoned and others as shiny glowing examples of the pinnacle of industry. Organised Crime driven by The Family and of course Nemesis bots everywhere!
  • Maple Leaf City: (Yes it is poorly named) Found along the St Lawrence River, featuring bits of Montreal, Quebec, Ottawa and Toronto. They will battle smugglers, homegrown separatists and stupid American tourists. (Sorry couldn't think of something else uniquely Canadian)
  • Imperial / Royal City: Based largely on London, we will see proper Bobbies roaming the streets and battling soccer hooligans trashing the town after sporting events. Druids attempting to dispel technology, ghosts and rippers, perhaps the Tsoo have a foothold here too.
  • Rio de Paz: This Amazonian / Central American City is based roughly on Rio De Janeiro with other South & Central American Elements. Perhaps we can see a different flavor of voodoo here as well as elements roughly inspired by the Inca's, Aztecs & Mayans. Here too we might see some of the drug wars.
  • Asian City / Island Nation: (Had a real tough time coming up with a name for this one) This city will be situated on a large island and will draw elements from all the great Asian cities. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Seoul should all lend flavor. Tsoo will square off against The Tongs and Triads, and both will fight with the more organised criminal gangs based on the Yakuza and Gangpae. Gargantuan Monster events are pretty much mandatory here as are runaway high tech corporations and technology based villains and cheesey martials arts / kung-fu movie scenes.
  • Cape City: Drawn mainly from African elements, this one might be harder to keep politically correct, but as long as the city was kept polycultural it should be ok. Hidden intelligent, technological gorilla tribes are a comic book staple as are man-beasts. Perhaps we can see some Moreaus here, escaped from some mad scientists labs in large enough numbers to form tribes and gangs. Revolutionaries face off with huge mining companies and the primitive bushman comes face to face with the world of high technology.

Ok, so all the ideas are very rough and probably unworkable without resorting to some stereotypical connotations, but I felt like tossing it out there.

I really like some of these ideas!  I can definitely see a great "feel" for the universe if some of these were implemented.  My favorites were:
Crescent City - love the idea of the Voodoo theme (Mr Bocor.  You will call me Mr. Bocor.) and the Gator men.
Asian City - A GREAT fit for story hooks between the 3 "clans".  Everyone was Kung Fu Fighting!  And the giant monsters?  You nailed it - mandatory with some great story lines about what brings them about!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 06, 2014, 04:36:07 PM
You forgot a publisher who will provide the logistics, finance, marketing/market research, additional capital, legal, Ops, basically majority of the "back of the house."

Actually, you don't -have- to have a publisher these days. That's kinda the point of digital distribution.  You will need to handle all those other things yourself if you don't, though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on October 06, 2014, 04:40:33 PM
Actually, you don't -have- to have a publisher these days. That's kinda the point of digital distribution.  You will need to handle all those other things yourself if you don't, though.

Ya I stated that with the example of Steam. The second paragraph stated what a publisher would cover. If your organization is capable of covering all those bases, then more power to you.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on October 06, 2014, 06:43:26 PM
To me the port to UR4 can be done with volunteers.

Running the game will require a studio at some point. If you want to continue development and sell the product you will need to have some form of an accounting structure and a responsible entity. If you tied it to Steam - that is one way but I would still have it a standalone purchase or be able to run without Steam running as some folks have an irrational hatred for Steam.

Here is the other part - let's say the game is wildly successful and gets 5 million subscribers - people will want to get paid. If you are raking in $10 million a month then you need a structure outlined even if not filled until needed. A Business Plan would be step one after the deal is complete.

Technically what is being done in APR currently is a reverse engineering exercise. Nothing to see there this is not the copyright violation you are looking for.
Good point there.   The possibility of under-performance has been well discussed since it seems "more likely", but what happens if there is over-performance?

A failure can cause stress and conflict in a team for sure, but success can split a group of people too.  That might be something all involved want to give some thought to.   Better make sure everyone will get a piece of it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 06, 2014, 07:10:18 PM
Good point there.   The possibility of under-performance has been well discussed since it seems "more likely", but what happens if there is over-performance?

A failure can cause stress and conflict in a team for sure, but success can split a group of people too.  That might be something all involved want to give some thought to.   Better make sure everyone will get a piece of it.

Success was ironically what drove Notch to sell Mojang to Microsoft, actually.  He never expected minecraft to be such an enourmous success.  A few other members of Mojang moved on to.

I wouldn't be surprised if more players try the game out because it was shut down though, to try and see why it's coming back(or shut down).  One reason people will need to be helping those particular newbies, we need to show who we really are and were before the shutdown.  I also see CoX coming back as potentially extremely beneficial to the mmorpg industry, as right now people are noticing it's stagnation is seriously getting bad.  Wildstar insta-failing practically proves that :/.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: Arcana on October 06, 2014, 08:07:50 PM
Insofar as no game can please everybody all the time, you're right. But I find it difficult to understand how someone who loved the L1-50 game could love something so incongruent as the iTrials.

Speaking for myself, mostly because I didn't find it incongruent.  To me, there's a very straight line you can draw from the L1-50 game which is about power progression, through the invention system which is about enhancement progression, to the incarnate system that is about a higher level hybrid of that.

Now, in terms of the incarnate *content*, it did start off as a large scale raid system, but they were adding other content to it, and if anything it was a far superior experience in my opinion to the original raid system - Hamidon.  It wasn't too dissimilar from, and could be seen as an extension of, zone events, mothership raids, and other larger scale content.

Its also fair to say that the incarnate raid content added something for players who wanted something larger scale than the 4-8 task force system, so in a sense it was also an extension of the task force/strike force system.


Quote
I felt a unique kinship with the kind of players who formed the Taxicab service, or who would see a newbie struggling a bit and dump some Inf on them just because they could. I felt very little kinship with most of the iTrial lovers.

You say that like those were two different exclusive groups of players.


Quote
From what I gather, the datamining seemed to indicate that only a tiny % of the game's population experienced the Incarnate system, and honestly I'm not that surprised.

That was not my understanding.  In terms of overall percentages, it was probably not high, but that's because most players did not have level 50 players: it took a lot more investment in time than most players appreciated to get a character to 50, and all the end game systems were targeted at them.  In terms of players who had at least one level 50, I think the percentage was probably reasonable.  Particularly if you include all players that at least possessed a slotted Alpha power, which was usable outside of iTrials.

Quote
Even from a design perspective, the Incarnate system felt like a massive compromise, as if the devs were stuck between a rock (l33t players seeking end-game progression) and a hard place (a codebase completely hostile to raising of the level cap and the expansion of the power set system that was already straining from the existance of primary, secondary, pool, and epic/patron sets). On the one hand, it could be argued that the Incarnate system was better than no system of advanced powers at all. But the take-away for me is that any "spiritual successor" to CoH under development today ought to seriously re-think its approach to the "end game" and not make it feel like all the other MMOs out there because, frankly, most of us loved CoH precisely because it didn't try to feel like all the others (which mostly just wanted to feel like WoW).

So here's the thing.  There was nothing preventing the devs from raising the level cap.  I'm not sure why you think the gamecode was "hostile" to that, except that I think you think that would have been a good idea.

It would have been a terrible idea.  There's no specific reason to raise the level cap of a game unless your intent is to *stratify* the players at the cap.  A level 50 has content available to her that a level 40 doesn't (barring sidekicking into it).  Levels are *gates* in game design, and you add more when you want to add more gates.  City of Heroes didn't need more content gates, because it didn't have enough players to justify more stratification at the top.  Moreover, the players that did reach the cap had spent a long time there and had built up their characters to exist at the cap through builds and inventions: raising the cap would simply force them to restart those builds from scratch.

The incarnate system was not in my opinion a "compromise" in this sense.  It was actually the correct target to aim for.  Rather than adding more "levels" to the game the Incarnate system created a way to advance through gaining powers and abilities without having to invalidate level 50 builds.  Furthermore, much of that heightened ability was *only* usable in the end game content.  That made it a completely optional enhancement to the game.  Had the devs created (all) incarnate abilities that could be used everywhere, they would have started a chain reaction of power creep where they would have to rebalance PvE content for stronger players - but that would leave non-incarnates behind. 

The fact that some players said they didn't like it and thus did not participate is part of the strength of the system: even moreso than the invention system it could be safely ignored for those that did not want to participate.  If you didn't participate in the invention system, you'd quickly notice the massive strength difference between you and your fellow players in teamed content.  But except for the benefits of Alpha which were not as noticeable, you wouldn't notice a strong difference between you and your incarnate brethren in teamed content outside of the iTrials.

When the invention system was introduced in I9, there was a deliberate intent for it to affect the entire game.  It was technically optional, but the design intent was to essentially replace the standard enhancement system with something better.  It was designed to change the entire game, and it did for those that paid even a small amount of attention to it.  The incarnate system was designed with the opposite intent: to disrupt the conventional game as little as possible, and in that it mostly succeeded.  Changes like restructuring power sets or adding powers and slots or raising the level cap all disrupt the convention game in many ways subtle and not so subtle.  The devs didn't avoid doing those things because they couldn't, they avoided them because they were all bad ideas if you wanted to preserve the L1-50 environment while simultaneously introducing very powerful character progression content.


I should also express my opinion that "most of us" is a phrase to be used sparingly, and only with unimpeachable justification.  I'm generally not comfortable doing it, and I don't think anyone else should either.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on October 06, 2014, 08:39:55 PM
Arcana: 1
Internet: 0
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 06, 2014, 09:33:36 PM
Arcana: 1
Internet: 0

That's the problem with hitting level 50 on the internet: your score pegs at 1.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 06, 2014, 09:44:34 PM
Speaking for myself, mostly because I didn't find it incongruent.  To me, there's a very straight line you can draw from the L1-50 game which is about power progression, through the invention system which is about enhancement progression, to the incarnate system that is about a higher level hybrid of that.

Now, in terms of the incarnate *content*, it did start off as a large scale raid system, but they were adding other content to it, and if anything it was a far superior experience in my opinion to the original raid system - Hamidon.  It wasn't too dissimilar from, and could be seen as an extension of, zone events, mothership raids, and other larger scale content.

Its also fair to say that the incarnate raid content added something for players who wanted something larger scale than the 4-8 task force system, so in a sense it was also an extension of the task force/strike force system.


You say that like those were two different exclusive groups of players.


That was not my understanding.  In terms of overall percentages, it was probably not high, but that's because most players did not have level 50 players: it took a lot more investment in time than most players appreciated to get a character to 50, and all the end game systems were targeted at them.  In terms of players who had at least one level 50, I think the percentage was probably reasonable.  Particularly if you include all players that at least possessed a slotted Alpha power, which was usable outside of iTrials.

So here's the thing.  There was nothing preventing the devs from raising the level cap.  I'm not sure why you think the gamecode was "hostile" to that, except that I think you think that would have been a good idea.

It would have been a terrible idea.  There's no specific reason to raise the level cap of a game unless your intent is to *stratify* the players at the cap.  A level 50 has content available to her that a level 40 doesn't (barring sidekicking into it).  Levels are *gates* in game design, and you add more when you want to add more gates.  City of Heroes didn't need more content gates, because it didn't have enough players to justify more stratification at the top.  Moreover, the players that did reach the cap had spent a long time there and had built up their characters to exist at the cap through builds and inventions: raising the cap would simply force them to restart those builds from scratch.

The incarnate system was not in my opinion a "compromise" in this sense.  It was actually the correct target to aim for.  Rather than adding more "levels" to the game the Incarnate system created a way to advance through gaining powers and abilities without having to invalidate level 50 builds.  Furthermore, much of that heightened ability was *only* usable in the end game content.  That made it a completely optional enhancement to the game.  Had the devs created (all) incarnate abilities that could be used everywhere, they would have started a chain reaction of power creep where they would have to rebalance PvE content for stronger players - but that would leave non-incarnates behind. 

The fact that some players said they didn't like it and thus did not participate is part of the strength of the system: even moreso than the invention system it could be safely ignored for those that did not want to participate.  If you didn't participate in the invention system, you'd quickly notice the massive strength difference between you and your fellow players in teamed content.  But except for the benefits of Alpha which were not as noticeable, you wouldn't notice a strong difference between you and your incarnate brethren in teamed content outside of the iTrials.

When the invention system was introduced in I9, there was a deliberate intent for it to affect the entire game.  It was technically optional, but the design intent was to essentially replace the standard enhancement system with something better.  It was designed to change the entire game, and it did for those that paid even a small amount of attention to it.  The incarnate system was designed with the opposite intent: to disrupt the conventional game as little as possible, and in that it mostly succeeded.  Changes like restructuring power sets or adding powers and slots or raising the level cap all disrupt the convention game in many ways subtle and not so subtle.  The devs didn't avoid doing those things because they couldn't, they avoided them because they were all bad ideas if you wanted to preserve the L1-50 environment while simultaneously introducing very powerful character progression content.


I should also express my opinion that "most of us" is a phrase to be used sparingly, and only with unimpeachable justification.  I'm generally not comfortable doing it, and I don't think anyone else should either.

Though I get the feeling there were more people playing then you probably think Arcana, I agree with all the other points.  Incarnate content was designed to maximize and maintain maximum replayability.  Just increasing the level cap to 60 would have not only invalidated level 50 builds but also not increase replayability any, only decrease it I feel.  It was made such that existing level 50 content wouldn't be made to easy just due to the fact that a level 60 would not be challenged nore be able to fully enjoy level 50 stuff anymore.  So incarnate content was designed to maximize bang for the buck, it expanded end-game options and added new options for character customization, and gave more things to do without making everything at level 50 something you can no longer do.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 06, 2014, 10:08:02 PM
Several things will be needed, including but not limited to:

* Registered company
* IP rights
* Salaried employees
* Sufficient cash to deliver the product AND to keep it going post-release
* Porfolio

Without the salaried employees or portfolio, you're more likely to be considered an indie studio (which is what I consider MWM to be).  There's nothing wrong with indie studio's btw, but I was responding to someone who said he wanted a "professional studio" to be running CoH. 

No offence to you, IG, but I can't really see you making CoH 1.5 a full on professional studio this side of actually releasing something.  Perhaps in the future, but not for quite some time.

Besides, it's completely not necessary anyway.  Unlike the guy I was responding to, I don't see that a "professional studio" is even remotely needed.
Why isn't a professional studio needed? It would be nice have a development team making new content to the game. I want new content if we can get it. Obviously what IG is doing is pretty much miracle worker work but she wont be able to expand the game like a studio on her own. Why would be not want to better our game? Not to mention the money it could bring in and add longevity to the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: GN2 on October 06, 2014, 10:53:10 PM
To me the port to UR4 can be done with volunteers.



The problem there is unless NCsoft gives the team source code access, and by some great boon they figure out a way to reasonably transplant CoH's scripting engine to UE4 (Therefore making it so a great deal of things don't actually have to be rewritten), it would be a massive undertaking almost on par with making an entirely new game.

Even IF they manage to transplant the script, it's going to be a lot of work.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: Teikiatsu on October 06, 2014, 11:50:31 PM
Though I get the feeling there were more people playing then you probably think Arcana, I agree with all the other points.  Incarnate content was designed to maximize and maintain maximum replayability.  Just increasing the level cap to 60 would have not only invalidated level 50 builds but also not increase replayability any, only decrease it I feel.  It was made such that existing level 50 content wouldn't be made to easy just due to the fact that a level 60 would not be challenged nore be able to fully enjoy level 50 stuff anymore.  So incarnate content was designed to maximize bang for the buck, it expanded end-game options and added new options for character customization, and gave more things to do without making everything at level 50 something you can no longer do.

I do still wonder what the end game was for Incarnate.  We've established that the powers were only usable for L45+.  Once all the Incarnate levels were gained, what then?

That meant actual content where it was usable was in PI, RWZ, the Shard, Grandville, RV, and DA if I counted right.  Toss in AE, Alignment and Scanner missions.

Were you supposed to solo that content afterwards?  Just keep running the trials?  Solo AVs, GMs, Hamidon?  New zones?  New arcs?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 07, 2014, 12:44:32 AM
I do still wonder what the end game was for Incarnate.  We've established that the powers were only usable for L45+.  Once all the Incarnate levels were gained, what then?

That meant actual content where it was usable was in PI, RWZ, the Shard, Grandville, RV, and DA if I counted right.  Toss in AE, Alignment and Scanner missions.

Were you supposed to solo that content afterwards?  Just keep running the trials?  Solo AVs, GMs, Hamidon?  New zones?  New arcs?

Thats what I wonder as well.  I suspect they wanted to move towards CoH 2 at around that time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: HEATSTROKE on October 07, 2014, 01:36:35 AM
Speaking for myself, mostly because I didn't find it incongruent.  To me, there's a very straight line you can draw from the L1-50 game which is about power progression, through the invention system which is about enhancement progression, to the incarnate system that is about a higher level hybrid of that.

Now, in terms of the incarnate *content*, it did start off as a large scale raid system, but they were adding other content to it, and if anything it was a far superior experience in my opinion to the original raid system - Hamidon.  It wasn't too dissimilar from, and could be seen as an extension of, zone events, mothership raids, and other larger scale content.

Its also fair to say that the incarnate raid content added something for players who wanted something larger scale than the 4-8 task force system, so in a sense it was also an extension of the task force/strike force system.


You say that like those were two different exclusive groups of players.


That was not my understanding.  In terms of overall percentages, it was probably not high, but that's because most players did not have level 50 players: it took a lot more investment in time than most players appreciated to get a character to 50, and all the end game systems were targeted at them.  In terms of players who had at least one level 50, I think the percentage was probably reasonable.  Particularly if you include all players that at least possessed a slotted Alpha power, which was usable outside of iTrials.

So here's the thing.  There was nothing preventing the devs from raising the level cap.  I'm not sure why you think the gamecode was "hostile" to that, except that I think you think that would have been a good idea.

It would have been a terrible idea.  There's no specific reason to raise the level cap of a game unless your intent is to *stratify* the players at the cap.  A level 50 has content available to her that a level 40 doesn't (barring sidekicking into it).  Levels are *gates* in game design, and you add more when you want to add more gates.  City of Heroes didn't need more content gates, because it didn't have enough players to justify more stratification at the top.  Moreover, the players that did reach the cap had spent a long time there and had built up their characters to exist at the cap through builds and inventions: raising the cap would simply force them to restart those builds from scratch.

The incarnate system was not in my opinion a "compromise" in this sense.  It was actually the correct target to aim for.  Rather than adding more "levels" to the game the Incarnate system created a way to advance through gaining powers and abilities without having to invalidate level 50 builds.  Furthermore, much of that heightened ability was *only* usable in the end game content.  That made it a completely optional enhancement to the game.  Had the devs created (all) incarnate abilities that could be used everywhere, they would have started a chain reaction of power creep where they would have to rebalance PvE content for stronger players - but that would leave non-incarnates behind. 

The fact that some players said they didn't like it and thus did not participate is part of the strength of the system: even moreso than the invention system it could be safely ignored for those that did not want to participate.  If you didn't participate in the invention system, you'd quickly notice the massive strength difference between you and your fellow players in teamed content.  But except for the benefits of Alpha which were not as noticeable, you wouldn't notice a strong difference between you and your incarnate brethren in teamed content outside of the iTrials.

When the invention system was introduced in I9, there was a deliberate intent for it to affect the entire game.  It was technically optional, but the design intent was to essentially replace the standard enhancement system with something better.  It was designed to change the entire game, and it did for those that paid even a small amount of attention to it.  The incarnate system was designed with the opposite intent: to disrupt the conventional game as little as possible, and in that it mostly succeeded.  Changes like restructuring power sets or adding powers and slots or raising the level cap all disrupt the convention game in many ways subtle and not so subtle.  The devs didn't avoid doing those things because they couldn't, they avoided them because they were all bad ideas if you wanted to preserve the L1-50 environment while simultaneously introducing very powerful character progression content.


I should also express my opinion that "most of us" is a phrase to be used sparingly, and only with unimpeachable justification.  I'm generally not comfortable doing it, and I don't think anyone else should either.
[/quot

MIC DROP...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: Arcana on October 07, 2014, 03:21:09 AM
I do still wonder what the end game was for Incarnate.

I think the answer to that question is similar to the answer to the question "what was the end game for the entire game?"  The answer is: the devs didn't have an "end" to their end game plans.

"End game" as an MMO term is a bit of a misnomer in that its not about an "end."  The "end" in endgame refers to the point where conventional level-gating (cf: level cap) ends and content switches from being about getting through the next content gate and starts being about more open ended (if often grindy) development.

What I think was interesting about CoH's "end game" was that it wasn't, in spite of complaints to the contrary, focused purely on raiding.  The initial content was large scale raids, but that was because we didn't have any yet and this was when they were going to be introduced.  But the revamp of Dark Astoria suggested that the incarnate system was going to be a more seamless expansion of the standard content, with zone content, mission content, and task force content to complement the raid content. 

This ventures into a subject I spent a lot of time kicking around on the old forums: what constituted the "core" game and what constituted the "optional" game.  You could argue that the Incarnate system was evolving into Yet Another non-core gameplay mode.  The standard game was the conventional content-based (usually) leveling from 1 to 50, with the associated power and enhancement progression.  The incarnate system as a whole was developing from a raid niche to a more full-fledged game experience with a range of content driven by the core incarnate power system and the raids as a strong core component of progression.

Of course, many people who disliked raiding and disliked the incarnate progressional power system felt that time spent developing it was time diverted from the rest of the game, and player time spent on it diverted players from contributing to the rest of the game.  Both true statements, but also entirely in keeping with the philosophy I subscribed to and generally ascribed to the devs as "something for everyone, not everything for someone."  Part of acknowledging the fact that CoH allowed for diverse playstyles is that it often encouraged and spent valuable dev time on ones you might dislike yourself personally.  I think eventually the great irony of the Incarnate system is that the very players that were complaining about the fact that it was about nothing but raiding would eventually be complaining about the fact that there was all this other stuff happening in it they couldn't experience because they didn't want to participate in the incarnate system.

Optional isn't synonymous with undesirable.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: Teikiatsu on October 07, 2014, 04:05:23 AM
I think the answer to that question is similar to the answer to the question "what was the end game for the entire game?"  The answer is: the devs didn't have an "end" to their end game plans.

Optional isn't synonymous with undesirable.

As far as I could tell it was "Hey, you've made your toon the highest level incarnate possible.  Just like when you make a pre-incarnate L50 in the past, it's time to make a new alt" :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 07, 2014, 07:39:08 AM
I think the answer to that question is similar to the answer to the question "what was the end game for the entire game?"  The answer is: the devs didn't have an "end" to their end game plans.

"End game" as an MMO term is a bit of a misnomer in that its not about an "end."  The "end" in endgame refers to the point where conventional level-gating (cf: level cap) ends and content switches from being about getting through the next content gate and starts being about more open ended (if often grindy) development.

What I think was interesting about CoH's "end game" was that it wasn't, in spite of complaints to the contrary, focused purely on raiding.  The initial content was large scale raids, but that was because we didn't have any yet and this was when they were going to be introduced.  But the revamp of Dark Astoria suggested that the incarnate system was going to be a more seamless expansion of the standard content, with zone content, mission content, and task force content to complement the raid content. 

This ventures into a subject I spent a lot of time kicking around on the old forums: what constituted the "core" game and what constituted the "optional" game.  You could argue that the Incarnate system was evolving into Yet Another non-core gameplay mode.  The standard game was the conventional content-based (usually) leveling from 1 to 50, with the associated power and enhancement progression.  The incarnate system as a whole was developing from a raid niche to a more full-fledged game experience with a range of content driven by the core incarnate power system and the raids as a strong core component of progression.

Of course, many people who disliked raiding and disliked the incarnate progressional power system felt that time spent developing it was time diverted from the rest of the game, and player time spent on it diverted players from contributing to the rest of the game.  Both true statements, but also entirely in keeping with the philosophy I subscribed to and generally ascribed to the devs as "something for everyone, not everything for someone."  Part of acknowledging the fact that CoH allowed for diverse playstyles is that it often encouraged and spent valuable dev time on ones you might dislike yourself personally.  I think eventually the great irony of the Incarnate system is that the very players that were complaining about the fact that it was about nothing but raiding would eventually be complaining about the fact that there was all this other stuff happening in it they couldn't experience because they didn't want to participate in the incarnate system.

Optional isn't synonymous with undesirable.

One thing I felt they could have added in to the incarnate system, that might have interested quite a lot of folks otherwise not too bothered by it, was a way to unlock additional slots for your existing powers. 

And I'm not just saying that as primarily a Kheldian player, either! ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on October 07, 2014, 08:03:51 AM
The devs said in the Loregasms that the ten Incarnate powers were going to be eventually revealed to be only "tier 1" of the Incarnate system, with a second set of ten powers above it, and then ten more above those, and so on ad nauseum.

Frankly, I don't know how they were going to manage to come up with ten more powers that were more insanely overpowered than what they had planned for Omega.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on October 07, 2014, 08:29:18 AM
The devs said in the Loregasms that the ten Incarnate powers were going to be eventually revealed to be only "tier 1" of the Incarnate system, with a second set of ten powers above it, and then ten more above those, and so on ad nauseum.

Frankly, I don't know how they were going to manage to come up with ten more powers that were more insanely overpowered than what they had planned for Omega.

What DID they have planned for Omega?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on October 07, 2014, 08:52:59 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on October 07, 2014, 08:57:19 AM
The problem there is unless NCsoft gives the team source code access, and by some great boon they figure out a way to reasonably transplant CoH's scripting engine to UE4 (Therefore making it so a great deal of things don't actually have to be rewritten), it would be a massive undertaking almost on par with making an entirely new game.

Even IF they manage to transplant the script, it's going to be a lot of work.
APR is getting CoT's code base, which they will then massage into how City works (or as close as they possibly can).

It will never be a transplant from CoH. It was never intended to be. It will be "City...better, faster, stronger".

This saves a ton of headache and work on APR's end. But it does mean it will be delayed until CoT finalizes things. Then again, it will likely take that long to build the look of the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ryuplaneswalker on October 07, 2014, 11:30:54 AM
What DID they have planned for Omega?

Nothing, only that it would be overpowered.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 07, 2014, 11:48:44 AM
It was in the second AMA (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA):
Also in the second AMA:
Frankly, I'm not sure that sounds sustainable.

It wasn't, it was an ever increasing cycle of buffs, and all our chars would have been literal gods long before we reached the end.  Obviously, mobs would also have to increase, so nothing would really change.

CoH would have ended up turning into Exalted...  I'm glad it didn't happen, and assuming things move forwards, I hope Irish_Girl abandons that approach.  There are far better ways to continue progression without falling for this trap.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Everfreefire on October 07, 2014, 12:19:57 PM
Now I'm wondering if there's an Exalted MMO, or if it'd even be possible.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Techbot Alpha on October 07, 2014, 12:21:09 PM
What FFM said.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 07, 2014, 12:27:37 PM
Frankly, I'm not sure that sounds sustainable.

It wasn't, and was never really intended to be. If I'm remembering correctly (and this is to an extent an interpretation of things Posi's said.)
The plan was basically have the players beat the Bastion, then the True Rikit, then the Dimensionless...and then pull a Rikti War type doomsday and start CoH2.
At which point the players would have been cosmic level gods...which would be solved when they just killed all the everything. (Same excuse why there weren't any heroes when CoH started "They all died in the Rikti War.")
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 07, 2014, 12:32:07 PM
CoH would have ended up turning into Exalted...  I'm glad it didn't happen, and assuming things move forwards, I hope Irish_Girl abandons that approach.  There are far better ways to continue progression without falling for this trap.

Picking up the reins off the floor, and dusting them off... I have to say the Incarnate system is giving me one of the biggest headaches.
I wish I could just nuke it from orbit and almost re-make the end game from scratch...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 07, 2014, 02:48:26 PM
Picking up the reins off the floor, and dusting them off... I have to say the Incarnate system is giving me one of the biggest headaches.
I wish I could just nuke it from orbit and almost re-make the end game from scratch...

There's plenty of folks who wouldn't object (but also plenty who would!)

Personally, i never liked the forced story path involved in the whole Incarnate thing, and RP wise, completely and utterly ignored it as the most base kind of railroading.

My main got all those extra powers because of her continuing changes wrought by the Kheldian energy on her latent mutant genes and the other things done to her and consequently, she was becoming more powerful and and less human as time went on...

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on October 07, 2014, 03:26:19 PM
Picking up the reins off the floor, and dusting them off... I have to say the Incarnate system is giving me one of the biggest headaches.
I wish I could just nuke it from orbit and almost re-make the end game from scratch...
There's plenty of folks who wouldn't object (but also plenty who would!)

Personally, i never liked the forced story path involved in the whole Incarnate thing, and RP wise, completely and utterly ignored it as the most base kind of railroading.

My main got all those extra powers because of her continuing changes wrought by the Kheldian energy on her latent mutant genes and the other things done to her and consequently, she was becoming more powerful and and less human as time went on...



I would put myself in the Not Mind category if it weren't for the fact I hated the Incarnate thing so much that Not Mind is well beyond understatement.  You go from all these choices in costume, origin, power and customization, roleplay...  The choices you made didn't matter, because all roads lead to just this.  It felt like an exercise in futility.  If it were replaced with something that didn't feel like such a funnel I would rejoice.

And if you were to make such a change this would be the opportunity to do it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on October 07, 2014, 03:27:07 PM
There's plenty of folks who wouldn't object (but also plenty who would!)

Personally, i never liked the forced story path involved in the whole Incarnate thing, and RP wise, completely and utterly ignored it as the most base kind of railroading.

My main got all those extra powers because of her continuing changes wrought by the Kheldian energy on her latent mutant genes and the other things done to her and consequently, she was becoming more powerful and and less human as time went on...

Imagine how my Incarnate felt--she had no superpowers. Street Justice/Willpower brute, used Ninja Run as my travel power because it was the only one that didn't have a connotation of "superhuman" ability. Ran the whole Dark Astoria run before I even filled my Alpha slot, and had all these people telling me that my Incarnate power was the only thing Mot feared. I was like, "Listen buddy, I punch things. With my fist. If he's afraid of that, we may be in better shape than I thought." :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cymmetri on October 07, 2014, 03:29:29 PM
Picking up the reins off the floor, and dusting them off... I have to say the Incarnate system is giving me one of the biggest headaches.
I wish I could just nuke it from orbit and almost re-make the end game from scratch...

Don't you dare.  >:(

...

I personally loved the first half of incarnation. Hybrid could have been better.
It still kills me that we never got to see through Omega.  :-[
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 07, 2014, 03:42:00 PM
Imagine how my Incarnate felt--she had no superpowers. Street Justice/Willpower brute, used Ninja Run as my travel power because it was the only one that didn't have a connotation of "superhuman" ability. Ran the whole Dark Astoria run before I even filled my Alpha slot, and had all these people telling me that my Incarnate power was the only thing Mot feared. I was like, "Listen buddy, I punch things. With my fist. If he's afraid of that, we may be in better shape than I thought." :)

My main, RP wise, failed and was devoured by Mot... :( She had too much emotional baggage for him to prey on.

Luckily, when others defeated him (we made a thing of it, server-wide, on Union), he spat up most of those he'd devoured and my main came back!  Was a couple of weeks without playing her though!

For those that knew her, the fiction I posted up at the time was pretty heart rending!  I -loved- the Mot storyline. :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on October 07, 2014, 04:38:48 PM
My main, RP wise, failed and was devoured by Mot... :( She had too much emotional baggage for him to prey on.

Luckily, when others defeated him (we made a thing of it, server-wide, on Union), he spat up most of those he'd devoured and my main came back!  Was a couple of weeks without playing her though!

For those that knew her, the fiction I posted up at the time was pretty heart rending!  I -loved- the Mot storyline. :p

I loved it too. One of my all-time favorites, actually. When you gather together all your allies for the final battle against Mot, and he just eats them all...oh, man. That was epic whammy. :) Right down to the fact that it said "Finale" in the story text, even though it wasn't. Headtrip on a massive scale. And then the real finale, where _everyone_ is gathered right down to Apex and War Witch, was awesome-sauce. It really got me into the Incarnate content, and when I found out that raids weren't the kind of ordeal that they were on WoW, I wound up doing some of those too. Having a solo Incarnate path, though, especially one that well-designed, was really important to getting me involved.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dpawtows on October 07, 2014, 05:02:00 PM
It was in the second AMA (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA):
Also in the second AMA:
Frankly, I'm not sure that sounds sustainable.

On possible solution that opens up a whole new can of worms: 
The game allows you to earn X Incarnate powers.   You can only *use* Y of them at any given time, where Y < X.   You can change which ones are active, but not in the middle of a fight.  Choose wisely.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on October 07, 2014, 05:45:04 PM
Even though, as I said, I don't think Incarnate powers were sustainable over the long term, I still love the idea that, even at the endgame, you improve your character by getting new abilities, not like every other game where endgame just means farming to get gear that gives you +10 more HP or +2 more strength than your previous gear did.  Incarnate powers were another layer of customization on top of everything else, and expanded your character's breadth instead of just making numbers bigger (except for Alpha and Hybrid, which is why I think the latter was a bit of a misstep).

.... damn, I still miss this game.  Are we there yet?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on October 07, 2014, 06:16:03 PM
I would be among those who would mind about the Incarnates thing--mainly because it was the only way that my human-only Warshade could not be mezzed all the time. It was a QoL thing I was asking for for years (and the VEATs had), and it finally came about in the form of the Incarnate system...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 07, 2014, 06:25:01 PM
Sounds more like a QoL/Warshade balancing issue, and less a fondness for Incarnate itself.
Unless I'm mis-reading and/or Space Drunk.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 07, 2014, 06:25:55 PM
The problem there is unless NCsoft gives the team source code access, and by some great boon they figure out a way to reasonably transplant CoH's scripting engine to UE4 (Therefore making it so a great deal of things don't actually have to be rewritten), it would be a massive undertaking almost on par with making an entirely new game.

Even IF they manage to transplant the script, it's going to be a lot of work.
Yes and no. We have ALL of the maps and costume parts now. This is what peple are working on first. If you have the entire game done graphically and then just need the gameplay side plugged in - it should be much easier. Having all the source code as a huge spaghetti mess would likely not be possible to port over to UR4 at least easily.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Gorvi Guile on October 07, 2014, 06:39:18 PM
Sounds more like a QoL/Warshade balancing issue, and less a fondness for Incarnate itself.
Unless I'm mis-reading and/or Space Drunk.
Never underestimate a good Space Drunk.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on October 07, 2014, 07:02:22 PM
Sounds more like a QoL/Warshade balancing issue, and less a fondness for Incarnate itself.
Unless I'm mis-reading and/or Space Drunk.

Well, I actually didn't mind some of the Incarnate Trials... I also liked some of the powers that I got with the Incarnate system. Some of the iTrials were "meh" imo, but others weren't bad at all. I mainly just liked the ability to slowly work my way towards various "extra powers" without having the level cap bumped and invalidating all the work I had already put into my Warshade (example: when level caps were bumped 10 levels in Diablo 3, it meant all work, time spent, and gear acquired to max out your level 60 character was completely useless. The equivalent of that in CoH would have been a level bump that invalidated all the sets I had acquired/worked towards)...

But, yes, it was certainly a QoL issue as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 07, 2014, 07:59:57 PM
Frankly, I'm not sure that sounds sustainable.

It isn't.  But I file that away under the category of "plans that would not survive contact with the enemy."  The devs had lots of ideas, but many of them reached the players far modified from their original conception for a number of reasons, practical limitations being the big one. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 07, 2014, 08:01:14 PM
It wasn't, and was never really intended to be. If I'm remembering correctly (and this is to an extent an interpretation of things Posi's said.)
The plan was basically have the players beat the Bastion, then the True Rikit, then the Dimensionless...and then pull a Rikti War type doomsday and start CoH2.
At which point the players would have been cosmic level gods...which would be solved when they just killed all the everything. (Same excuse why there weren't any heroes when CoH started "They all died in the Rikti War.")

I suspect that falls under the category of "we'll cross that bridge when we blow it up."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on October 07, 2014, 08:06:18 PM
Picking up the reins off the floor, and dusting them off... I have to say the Incarnate system is giving me one of the biggest headaches.
I wish I could just nuke it from orbit and almost re-make the end game from scratch...

I don't see how you can do this and still call it a port of COH. I understand the temptation to tinker but I would wait until you have everything up through Issue 24 working as intended before deciding how you want to change it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: sindyr on October 07, 2014, 08:38:12 PM
There are two main threads, not sure which this question belongs in, but here goes:

Have chances improved at all for getting back specifically the Utopian "fix everything" Issue 24 version of CoX?

I would give a LOT to make that happen - and when I say a LOT, I mean open wallet, all my time, etc.

Been away for several weeks (months?) so not in the loop.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dareon Kale on October 07, 2014, 08:53:51 PM
There are two main threads, not sure which this question belongs in, but here goes:

Have chances improved at all for getting back specifically the Utopian "fix everything" Issue 24 version of CoX?

I would give a LOT to make that happen - and when I say a LOT, I mean open wallet, all my time, etc.

Been away for several weeks (months?) so not in the loop.

The only thing on the table is a server image from the day of shutdown which is I23. Unless something has changed, there is no way to acquire an I24 image because, as far as we know, it does not exist.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: opprime2828 on October 08, 2014, 12:08:25 AM
I think the answer to that question is similar to the answer to the question "what was the end game for the entire game?"  The answer is: the devs didn't have an "end" to their end game plans.

"End game" as an MMO term is a bit of a misnomer in that its not about an "end."  The "end" in endgame refers to the point where conventional level-gating (cf: level cap) ends and content switches from being about getting through the next content gate and starts being about more open ended (if often grindy) development.

What I think was interesting about CoH's "end game" was that it wasn't, in spite of complaints to the contrary, focused purely on raiding.  The initial content was large scale raids, but that was because we didn't have any yet and this was when they were going to be introduced.  But the revamp of Dark Astoria suggested that the incarnate system was going to be a more seamless expansion of the standard content, with zone content, mission content, and task force content to complement the raid content. 

This ventures into a subject I spent a lot of time kicking around on the old forums: what constituted the "core" game and what constituted the "optional" game.  You could argue that the Incarnate system was evolving into Yet Another non-core gameplay mode.  The standard game was the conventional content-based (usually) leveling from 1 to 50, with the associated power and enhancement progression.  The incarnate system as a whole was developing from a raid niche to a more full-fledged game experience with a range of content driven by the core incarnate power system and the raids as a strong core component of progression.

Of course, many people who disliked raiding and disliked the incarnate progressional power system felt that time spent developing it was time diverted from the rest of the game, and player time spent on it diverted players from contributing to the rest of the game.  Both true statements, but also entirely in keeping with the philosophy I subscribed to and generally ascribed to the devs as "something for everyone, not everything for someone."  Part of acknowledging the fact that CoH allowed for diverse playstyles is that it often encouraged and spent valuable dev time on ones you might dislike yourself personally.  I think eventually the great irony of the Incarnate system is that the very players that were complaining about the fact that it was about nothing but raiding would eventually be complaining about the fact that there was all this other stuff happening in it they couldn't experience because they didn't want to participate in the incarnate system.

Optional isn't synonymous with undesirable.

 
This.
 
 
The one thing I kind of HOPED was going to happen was that the Devs would take their original approach to "end game content" which, in my opinion, were the HEAT and VEAT achetypes, and combine that with the Incarnate progression system with the Omega slot.  Really, to begin building an "end game" that was neither purely "grindy" nor simpy rolling a new kind of alt, they needed to try and work in the entire game.  A "hybrid" of the three approaches of "end game grind, new content, and rerunning earlier game content, if you will.
 
What do I mean?
 
Well, just as an example...
 
Imagine that the Incarnate/Well storyline, the Oroborous/Mender Silos storyline, the storyline hinted at in the side switching arcs of your undoing the Universe, and the storylines of the 1-50 content all "intersected" with the Omega slot.
 
The original approach with VEATS had you unlocking unique archetypes and then rolling characters that were "leveling" alongside regular 1-50 characters, but also had their own story lines and contacts supplementing that experience.  Imagine that the culmination of the Incarnate story line put your character in the position of being forced into a dilema: the only way to "save the universe" from Battalion (who were consumers of the Wells) was to consume the wells, and all of their power yourself, in essence becoming the "uber being" that your future version warned you about in the side switching story lines.  Essentially, you not only go the route of Emporer Cole, but you go one step further, actually tapping all of the power of ALL the Wells the Battalion had consumed.  Mender Silos warns you that in the future he comes from, this was a plan he encouraged you to take, and doing so, ultimately lead you to becoming as much a threat to the freedom of mankind as the Battalion or Rularru, since you're only a flawed human not meant for omnipotence.  Since you'd have absorbed all of the power of the Wells, and thus the potential energy of every living being in the universe, there were no one heroes left to try and stop you.

What's worse, he doesn't go in to detail but states that your actions will awaken the interest of "those even higher than Battalion, even the Wells", and be the undoing of the entire universe.  He came back in time to try and prevent this mistake from happening again. He gives you a third option, a NEW Nemesis plot, however, which would require the Dream Doctor's help: You consume the wells, defeat the Battalion, then "give up" your omnipotence by destroying your own sentience, willingly allowing the Dream Doctor to imprison your mind in a separate dimension.  You become a new Well, restoring power to heroes around the universe, but also a better "Well."  Unlike previous wells, you will give up all self will, self awareness, and sense of self preservation. Your ID is separated from your body, trapped forever away from the new Well and the very universe you saved.   
 
  This story line unlocks the Omega slot, where your character, still a level 50, has a whole new set of missions unlocked throughout the regular 1-50 game.  Of course, Lord Nemesis isn't completely honest, and after you've killed yourself, you are awoken by Mender Lazarus who tells you that your sacrifice worked, but had some unforseen consequences.  Your restoration of the wells was not perfect, and the timeline -and the power of the well- is in a state of flux.  The well, absent any sense of sentience, is unable to "choose its guardians", and its power is now more easily manipulated and tapped in to.   Some entities are using this as a chance to steal the power of the Well, even altering key moments in history to gather more for themselves from those who otherwise would tap in to it.  Mender Lazarus has restored your sentience to an earlier version of yourself,  (weaker than your omnipotent version but still level 50, still in possession of many of your incarnate powers, etc) to try and correct things. To do this you basically have to reexperince key events of your life, guiding events to make sure that they occur correctly, stopping new threats trying to gather your power for their own purposes, etc. These new experiences come from contacts you had before, as well as new contacts like Mender Lazarus.   

If the technology could be worked out, do something along the lines of what you have with the Nictus and Void Stalkers and HEATS, where when an Incarnate is on the team and is team leader, the villains in the mission spawn as their incarnate level versions, but the mission itself remains the same. So running the Maria Jenkins missions would run the same, but have Incarnate level versions of the baddies if it's an Incarnate's mission.  Also have contacts give additional missions that occur "alongside" the normal missions from the 1-50 content, where you're working to set things right once and for all.  Imagine running the Hollows missions again, only facing Incarnate level Hellions and trolls, using the power of the well to fight you and your team.  Or you're given an extra mission from a contact in Faultline where the 5th Column are trying to kill your younger self as he completes the 5th column Task Force so that you never become a well in the future.  Imagine a single mission given out by Mender Lazarus where you're level 50 incarnate self is fighting a Council attempt to alter the moment when your previous self and 7 others defeated Romulus in ancient Cimerora, and their attempts are resulting in "hiccups" in time.  It would be a fun single mission fighting Incarnate level Council, tie in to the regular 1-50 games missions and stories, and even give an explanation for the crazy lag during an ITF. :-D
 
This way the "end game" is simply "the game" in all its facets.  It includes all of the end game raids, but also reliving the older content in a new way that is still a challenge and makes "sense" from a narrative perspective, and yet doesn't negate your level 50 status or incarnate achievements.  It encourages those "opting in" to incarnate content to still team with those who either haven't yet been able to or have chosen "not to."
 
The story line above is just a poor example of how they could do it, but to me, this sort of hybrid approach of avoiding simply raising the cap, while also avoiding just grinding "raids", and encouraging incarnates to still play with 1-50s AS part of the
end game content that still feels "new" would be a perfect balance. 
 
And honestly, with a little creativity, someone could write a story line where the three major story lines of the game explain it perfectly for something like this. 

It would mean creating Incarnate level versions of all the villains in the game, just like they did the Tsoo, but really, how much harder is that than redoing entire zones and contacts, or adding altogether new ones?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 08, 2014, 12:20:07 AM
I suspect that falls under the category of "we'll cross that bridge when we blow it up."
i generally phrase it as "we'll burn that bridge when we come to it."
But yeah, i couldn't see any way additional Incarnate trees could just keep being stacked and make it work well. As it was i had started to find Incarnate powers annoying since by level 50 i already had too many powers in my trays on many of my alts as it was. While i could have relegated some to keybinds i liked being able to see the icon to keep track of recharge status and remind myself what a given alt's loadout was since i tended to switch characters frequently and they usually had very different builds and playstyles. Generally if i took a power i expected to use it fairly often; i almost never took powers just as IO mules. Using binds to swap power trays on the fly was something i mostly reserved for my Kheldians, but i suppose that one advantage of the Incarnate system was that it had almost convinced me to start doing it more often.

Maybe i could have reduced my temp power trays by creating combined temp power macros. One macro for melee temp attacks, one for ranged temp attacks, one for AoEs, mezzes, etcetera...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 08, 2014, 01:03:16 AM
But yeah, i couldn't see any way additional Incarnate trees could just keep being stacked and make it work well. As it was i had started to find Incarnate powers annoying since by level 50 i already had too many powers in my trays on many of my alts as it was. While i could have relegated some to keybinds i liked being able to see the icon to keep track of recharge status and remind myself what a given alt's loadout was since i tended to switch characters frequently and they usually had very different builds and playstyles. Generally if i took a power i expected to use it fairly often; i almost never took powers just as IO mules. Using binds to swap power trays on the fly was something i mostly reserved for my Kheldians, but i suppose that one advantage of the Incarnate system was that it had almost convinced me to start doing it more often.

Maybe i could have reduced my temp power trays by creating combined temp power macros. One macro for melee temp attacks, one for ranged temp attacks, one for AoEs, mezzes, etcetera...

One bit of cushion the devs had here was that because the Incarnate system was at the end game, and required being level 50 to progress in it, being a little bit overpowered wasn't a big deal, because killing lots of things didn't gain you faster XP - there was no more XP for killing things anymore (not conventionally).  They did have to be concerned about reward earning rates, but even normal rewards were a non-issue for most level 50s.  As a result, it was mostly incarnate XP they had to deal with, and because they needed to worry about inf less and XP not at all, they could relax some of the game balance limits on handing out stacking power.

But as to stacking, I think there were still lots of opportunities to give Incarnates the ability to do ever more exceptional things without just climibing the ladder upward.  For example, Judgment attacks were far more powerful than most, and yet they didn't actually strike individual targets far more strongly than many other attacks already did.  They just hit a lot more (potentially) and to greater instantaneous effect.  But in terms of net DPS?  They were only slightly more powerful.  Strong, flashy, but not massively more numerically powerful was doable.

Consider the ability to shoot while partially phased, like Master Illusionists.  A very flashy and exceptional ability for players to possess, but not really all that much stronger than the damage mitigation we could already buy from the invention system in practical terms (being randomly phased 50% of the time is only 50% damage mitigation: that's less than most power gamers got out of invention defense bonuses).  How about the ability to instantly recharge all tier 1 and tier 2 powers constantly for fifteen seconds?

One of the ideas I had for the Omega slot was that the Omega tree would allow you to create "universal" incarnate slots.  Within a universal Omega slot, you could slot *any* other incarnate power you didn't already have slotted and use it exempted from any exclusivity or global cooldowns.  So for example, you could slot another set of Lore pets, and you could then use your Lore pets and your Omega pets independently, even together.  Or you could slot two Alphas and get the benefit of both.  The Omega tree would have a core/radial/total/partial distinction as to what you could slot and what the overall effect would be (I was toying with the idea of the core tree slotting one full strength incarnate power of the appropriate tier, while the radial tree slotting multiple powers of lower tier).

I think there were lots of ways to give players interesting abilities worth trying to earn, without simply stacking bigger numbers on top of conventional powers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Phaetan on October 08, 2014, 01:59:57 AM
While the unlocking of ever increasing Incarnate tiers didn';t really seem like a solid plan, I was more unhappy with the plans for handling the addition of a new enemy with each such jump.  The idea that each enemy would "call in" to a higher power that was their puppetmaster just before being defeated, over and over, seemed like a very weak framework.  After reading Posi's commentary on such plans, I was somewhat glad that it did not have a chance to come to pass.

I understand that he wanted to keep adding more and more layers or endgame content like this to keep players on the hamster wheel, but the string of increasingly unlikely umaskings seemed rather silly.  Scooby Doo isn't really an ideal role model for plot twists when you presumably intend to keep things somewhat serious.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 08, 2014, 02:14:30 AM
While the unlocking of ever increasing Incarnate tiers didn';t really seem like a solid plan, I was more unhappy with the plans for handling the addition of a new enemy with each such jump.  The idea that each enemy would "call in" to a higher power that was their puppetmaster just before being defeated, over and over, seemed like a very weak framework.  After reading Posi's commentary on such plans, I was somewhat glad that it did not have a chance to come to pass.

I understand that he wanted to keep adding more and more layers or endgame content like this to keep players on the hamster wheel, but the string of increasingly unlikely umaskings seemed rather silly.  Scooby Doo isn't really an ideal role model for plot twists when you presumably intend to keep things somewhat serious.

Keep in mind that from the devs perspective, that is basically how the rest of the game's content worked.  The Skyraiders give way to the Malta, the Lost give way to the Rikti.  There are, in a very literal sense, level 10 villains and level 20 villains and level 30 villains and level 40 villains.  There was some cross pollination, but we essentially aren't fighting Trolls at level 45.

I also do not believe the devs actually said that the different higher villains would always be seen to be mere minions of a higher power.  There might have been a relationship between the Dimensionless and the Battalion, but I doubt there would be one (of this kind) between the True Rikti and either of them.  We also know for a fact (as much as anything is certain) that the Praetorians did not "call in" the Battalion.  The Praetorian story leads into the Battalion one, but not through an unmasking of a higher power.  A *reveal* of a higher power perhaps, but not an unmasking of a puppetmaster.

I will say, though, that this is one area that I believe the devs were notoriously bad at.  Given lots of ways to make a viably consistent story, they always seemed to go the extra mile to make it deliberately more self-contradictory and confusing.  So I wouldn't bet real money they wouldn't have done something goofy here.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 08, 2014, 02:25:00 AM
The only thing on the table is a server image from the day of shutdown which is I23. Unless something has changed, there is no way to acquire an I24 image because, as far as we know, it does not exist.

/raises hand.

Can we polietly and quietly ask a former Paragon Dev about all this talk of images and saved game states and see if we can go Cold Case or Sherlock Holmes on it? Was the test server just not something they focused on saving? What was the name of the developer-only server again?

I'm sure someone's already done this or tried to but it's the first thought I had when I heard of this image-only problem.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 08, 2014, 04:48:59 AM
Can we polietly and quietly ask a former Paragon Dev about all this talk of images and saved game states and see if we can go Cold Case or Sherlock Holmes on it?

No.

As in, no, you cannot ask.  Nor do you want to, when a possible deal to acquire the rights to I23 is still on the table.  Bird in the hand, bird in the hand.

If anyone has an I24 image, and its something they want to share, you won't need to ask.  They'll find us.  If they don't or can't share, no amount of unsolicited asking will change their mind.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on October 08, 2014, 04:56:32 AM
No.

As in, no, you cannot ask.  Nor do you want to, when a possible deal to acquire the rights to I23 is still on the table.  Bird in the hand, bird in the hand.

If anyone has an I24 image, and its something they want to share, you won't need to ask.  They'll find us.  If they don't or can't share, no amount of unsolicited asking will change their mind.

Quite correct.  Let's just get the game back as ish 23 and enjoy it bugs and all while they convert to the U4 engine, THEN see if ish 24 features can be incorporated.

Now IF the game returns and a former dev steps out of the shadows wearing a trenchcoat, hat and mask and says "Pssst!.....I got a golden ish 24 disc here for ya!"  Well then we shall see what happens.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ryuplaneswalker on October 08, 2014, 10:07:17 AM
Quote
I think there were lots of ways to give players interesting abilities worth trying to earn, without simply stacking bigger numbers on top of conventional powers.

Off the top of my head

Lore Style Power that was an AV character instead of a pair of villain group characters
Passive protection to CC
Passive CC reduction
Passive defense
Passive Resistance
An inherent from another AT
A single power from a power set grouping your AT does not have access too. (god this could break things in hilarious ways)
Big Single target attack
Big single target CC
AOE CC
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on October 08, 2014, 01:30:42 PM
 I never had an issue with the Incarnate system. I enjoyed it. It was fun.

 The best thing about it is that it was completely optional.. You didnt HAVE to play it at all if you didnt choose to.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 08, 2014, 03:35:47 PM
I never had an issue with the Incarnate system. I enjoyed it. It was fun.

 The best thing about it is that it was completely optional.. You didnt HAVE to play it at all if you didnt choose to.

Yeah, but I'm fatter than you, so have a bigger... opinion! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on October 08, 2014, 03:41:21 PM
Yeah, but I'm fatter than you, so have a bigger... opinion! :p

..and you float so you have that going for you
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 08, 2014, 08:12:05 PM
The problem there is unless NCsoft gives the team source code access, and by some great boon they figure out a way to reasonably transplant CoH's scripting engine to UE4 (Therefore making it so a great deal of things don't actually have to be rewritten), it would be a massive undertaking almost on par with making an entirely new game.
Even IF they manage to transplant the script, it's going to be a lot of work.

Having access to the Source for CoH wouldn't help as much as some people think. (Not for Revival anyways)
Unfortunately, I don't know what language CoH was coded in... -scratches head- A C language I'd imagine.

But so much of it would have to be...just starting from scratch anyways so that everything can be done cleanly, and well documented. Chunking in spaghetti code would just cause headache.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on October 08, 2014, 08:30:35 PM
Chunking in spaghetti code would just cause headache.

It would, however, be more successful than adding actual spaghetti to your computer.

...learned that the hard way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 08, 2014, 08:39:46 PM
It would, however, be more successful than adding actual spaghetti to your computer.

...learned that the hard way.

"The proof are in the files in this computer!"

/throws PC


"Where are all the files"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on October 08, 2014, 09:09:29 PM
No.

As in, no, you cannot ask.  Nor do you want to, when a possible deal to acquire the rights to I23 is still on the table.  Bird in the hand, bird in the hand.

If anyone has an I24 image, and its something they want to share, you won't need to ask.  They'll find us.  If they don't or can't share, no amount of unsolicited asking will change their mind.

This.

And honestly, if someone had one, I wouldn't want them to present it to anyone in public way. It could very well sour a deal, since it could make NCSoft start to put all sorts of restrictions on what could be/could not be done with the i23 image, if they still agreed to release it at all.
 

Let it go.  Please.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on October 08, 2014, 09:41:17 PM
So on a side note:  a student of mind today told me she officially decided she's going in to art design for video games.  I told her about the Unreal Engine 4 19 dollar deal and she thinks she's going to try it out just to get a heads up on playing around with the software before she goes to school next fall.   
 
 
See, this thread not only is reuniting the community and giving us Arcana knowledge, it's also changing lives one person at a time.
 
  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 08, 2014, 10:13:14 PM
..and you float so you have that going for you
i float as well.

...

Only in water and denser liquids, and i have to make sure i have positive buoyancy, but it still counts, darn it! Unfortunately i'm not as big as the baron and i don't have a Hover harness to avoid the need for water or similar fluids.

For a while i was on tenterhooks, but it's been so long that they became uncomfortable and i've taken to merely dropping in every so often hoping for some news, preferably good.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 08, 2014, 10:15:19 PM
...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on October 09, 2014, 12:02:05 AM
Yeah, but I'm fatter than you, so have a bigger... opinion! :p

You sound like my wife...

Except, you know, she's not a dude.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 09, 2014, 01:31:19 AM
You sound like my wife...

Except, you know, she's not a dude.

I hope your wife doesn't have internet access.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkojin on October 09, 2014, 01:31:42 AM
So on a side note:  a student of mind today told me she officially decided she's going in to art design for video games.  I told her about the Unreal Engine 4 19 dollar deal and she thinks she's going to try it out just to get a heads up on playing around with the software before she goes to school next fall.   
 
 
See, this thread not only is reuniting the community and giving us Arcana knowledge, it's also changing lives one person at a time.
 
  :P

What is this $19 deal for Unreal 4? Do you have a link to any information on it?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 09, 2014, 03:56:38 AM
What is this $19 deal for Unreal 4? Do you have a link to any information on it?

According to this article, the deal is $19/month software subscription, plus 5% royalty fee on any games you sell built on the engine.  http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/19/5526094/unreal-engine-4-subscription-epic-games

But its even better than that: https://www.unrealengine.com/what-is-unreal-engine-4

Its free for schools, and the 5% royalty only kicks in after the first $3000 in sales per quarter.

Which is a really, really, really good deal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on October 09, 2014, 04:12:36 AM
According to this article, the deal is $19/month software subscription, plus 5% royalty fee on any games you sell built on the engine.  http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/19/5526094/unreal-engine-4-subscription-epic-games

But its even better than that: https://www.unrealengine.com/what-is-unreal-engine-4

Its free for schools, and the 5% royalty only kicks in after the first $3000 in sales per quarter.

Which is a really, really, really good deal.
Also, according to Irish Girl, you really only have to pay once.   All you lose is the frequent updates (and access to some resources on the website?)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on October 09, 2014, 05:30:54 AM
I wish I could help out making new zones and or instances or even enemies, but I cannot draw a stick figure :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 09, 2014, 06:21:28 AM
I wish I could help out making new zones and or instances or even enemies, but I cannot draw a stick figure :(

Me too, I am slowly learning 3D graphics in DAZ & Poser, but Blender has me completely baffled and no way in hell can I afford 3D Max. I would love to be a part of something so wonderful as I really have the feeling that Irish Girl and the APR team she develops are gonna knock it out of the park.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: Zombie Hustler on October 09, 2014, 06:36:20 AM
(Lots of stuff about potential Incarnate storyline and things involving Players becoming a Well)

IIRC, the Devs not only strongly hinted at but outright stated that becoming a Well was the ultimate "endgame" of the Incarnate path. I want to say they mention it in one of the Lore AMAs, but I believe that Prometheus more or less points out that is what would happen (and strongly alludes to DJ Zero- formerly the Greek God Cupid- being an example of just such a thing.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: Felderburg on October 09, 2014, 12:18:25 PM
IIRC, the Devs not only strongly hinted at but outright stated that becoming a Well was the ultimate "endgame" of the Incarnate path. I want to say they mention it in one of the Lore AMAs, but I believe that Prometheus more or less points out that is what would happen (and strongly alludes to DJ Zero- formerly the Greek God Cupid- being an example of just such a thing.)

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA/Sorted#292

Although nowhere does it say or imply Zero is Cupid, as far as I know.

I wish I could help out making new zones and or instances or even enemies, but I cannot draw a stick figure :(

Drawing is a very different sort of thing than 3d modeling. And based on what Irish Girl says goes in to converting CoH to Unreal, drawing might not be important at all for some steps.

Plus, new zones and enemies will need stories, so if you have ideas, put those out there, and let someone else do the art.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on October 09, 2014, 01:11:56 PM
I wish I could help out making new zones and or instances or even enemies, but I cannot draw a stick figure :(

Geez there is more than one of us artisticlly challenged types here?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on October 09, 2014, 01:56:28 PM
Geez there is more than one of us artisticlly challenged types here?

Me--in a sense....

I have great photography/film skills, so "artistically" speaking, I'm good there... But, yeah... drawing/painting? I'm in the stick figure category as well...lol
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 09, 2014, 01:57:38 PM
Having access to the Source for CoH wouldn't help as much as some people think. (Not for Revival anyways)
Unfortunately, I don't know what language CoH was coded in... -scratches head- A C language I'd imagine.

But so much of it would have to be...just starting from scratch anyways so that everything can be done cleanly, and well documented. Chunking in spaghetti code would just cause headache.
CoH the main game was in C.
Databases and such could vary.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: microc on October 09, 2014, 06:03:31 PM
ironwolf when coh goes to the real engin can you guys redo water blaster power set to there a flush power....fun watching baddie go down the drain....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 09, 2014, 06:13:57 PM
ironwolf when coh goes to the real engin can you guys redo water blaster power set to there a flush power....fun watching baddie go down the drain....

That would be fun with aoe whirlpool?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 09, 2014, 06:39:34 PM
ironwolf when coh goes to the real engin can you guys redo water blaster power set to there a flush power....fun watching baddie go down the drain....

You'll also be able to get ragdolls to be a lot more scorched and damaged looking to.  Actually I think battle-damage should be somthing CoH 2 should certainly do for characters based on the % of health and how long it was at that %.  Like, get torn down to 60%, character has some scorch marks on his face/armor, slight costume tears, slight nose bleed.  Torn to 30% the face is bruised severely, a modest of blood coming out of the nose(I know, getting ideas from doom), armor if being used in the costume looks dented with paint blasted off, tights badly torn exposing skin underneath(no, we don't need full on nudity from costume damage).  Just, allow for npcs and characters to look a little blasted.  You don't have to go full on mortal kombat 9/X gore with outfit damage, just kind of consider a line know?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 09, 2014, 06:45:41 PM
I'm also extremely impressed when someone pulls off environmental damage.  One of the reasons serious sam is a fun game; trees that get hit by rockets lose leaves and are eventually destroyed if subsequent rockets hit them.  In fact Serious Sam The second encounter, one of the demo playbacks of the original game the player ends up placing himself between a tree and a bio mechanoid major, the biomech fires his rockets, the player dodges in time to see the rockets blowing the leaves off the tree.

Could have trees respawn in actual city zones to real environment damage.  And I'd make it more gradual, in like stages rather than CO's "critical existance failure" in which a crate could be torn down to 1% health and look as fine as another at 100% health.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: GN2 on October 09, 2014, 06:58:07 PM
Having access to the Source for CoH wouldn't help as much as some people think. (Not for Revival anyways)
Unfortunately, I don't know what language CoH was coded in... -scratches head- A C language I'd imagine.

But so much of it would have to be...just starting from scratch anyways so that everything can be done cleanly, and well documented. Chunking in spaghetti code would just cause headache.
Based on pure educated guesswork, I would assume the engine itself was written in C, and they had some sort of separate scripting engine on top of it that used a language more suited to event scripting (such as python or lua)

Though as you've said, starting from scratch may be better in the long run anyway if the horror stories about how poorly maintained and messy the codebase had gotten have any truth to them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 09, 2014, 08:07:09 PM
I know they said in the later days of the game they were using LUA scripting. Earlier something else.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on October 09, 2014, 08:16:55 PM
By later you mean "experimenting with in Issue 24". An I23 image wouldn't use Lua at all (not even present in the engine), and the few uses of Lua in I24 were baby steps. It wasn't hooked to very much in the engine at all.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Samuraiko on October 09, 2014, 09:32:46 PM
As long as someone makes demorecording work with whatever engine the game ends up on, I don't care.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 10, 2014, 01:03:09 AM
As long as someone makes demorecording work with whatever engine the game ends up on, I don't care.

Oh, yeah. I hadn't even thought about incorporating a Demo type system. I'll have to add that to the to-do list.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 10, 2014, 01:48:54 AM
Oh, yeah. I hadn't even thought about incorporating a Demo type system. I'll have to add that to the to-do list.

I am glad Irish_Girl is on our side :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: Zombie Hustler on October 10, 2014, 01:59:25 AM
Although nowhere does it say or imply Zero is Cupid, as far as I know.

Thanks for that link; I knew it was stated somewhere.

As for DJ Zero being Cupid, I believe it was from either Prometheus or one of Zero's Event missions that the link was established- and I don't think it was stated outright, just heavily implied (again, either by Prometheus or by Zero himself).

EDIT: I think it was most closely hinted at in Zero's own dialogue during the most recent Valentine's Event-
Quote from: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Arbiter_Hawk#Get_Cupid.27s_Bow_from_Crey
Question: Where can I find Cupid?
Zero: That... isn't relevant. Cupid is LONG since retired, but his bow and an arrow are in the hands of private collectors.

That bit of dialogue, plus something Prometheus said in one of his things about the Greek Gods and the Wells, IIRC, are what led me to that assumption initially. The Devs later confirmation that Zero was his own Well was just the icing on the cake. But it hasn't been outright stated, no.

(Question for the next Lore AMA?)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on October 10, 2014, 02:08:52 AM
I am glad Irish_Girl is on our side :)

Is she?

Or is she really just a Nemesis Plot?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 10, 2014, 02:32:01 AM
She's a Plotting, tantruming spoiled noble trying to get everyone to make lots and lots of IO's for everyone and there is no game to make IOs in, er, one of us.  Yes, nmmmhmmm, she is :).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on October 10, 2014, 03:04:38 AM
Is she?

Or is she really just a Nemesis Plot?

nemesis is a Irish girl plot
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on October 10, 2014, 03:12:30 AM
nemesis is a Irish girl plot
*like*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 10, 2014, 04:09:20 AM
nemesis is a Irish girl plot

Nice!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 10, 2014, 04:53:21 AM
That's cool and disturbing at the same time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zychan on October 10, 2014, 01:14:51 PM
nemesis is a Irish girl plot

LOL!  Awesome!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 10, 2014, 04:12:59 PM
nemesis is a Irish girl plot

Soon (tm) ... It will be.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on October 10, 2014, 04:38:13 PM
I for one, welcome our new Irish Girl overlords....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: opprime2828 on October 10, 2014, 08:02:25 PM
I for one, welcome our new Irish Girl overlords....

 
Dang it, you beat me to it!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on October 10, 2014, 09:10:43 PM
As long as someone makes demorecording work with whatever engine the game ends up on, I don't care.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
Unreal includes one by default.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 10, 2014, 09:38:43 PM
As long as someone makes demorecording work with whatever engine the game ends up on, I don't care.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Even UE1 had demorecording :).  Once i made a very crappy video with it, course, took me forever to get it right, but, hmmm, I wonder if that mod I used is still out there.....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 11, 2014, 06:08:16 AM
Unreal includes one by default.

-checks item off To-Do list- Totally skipped my mind.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Reiraku on October 11, 2014, 06:33:10 AM
That's progress!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on October 11, 2014, 07:07:20 AM
-checks item off To-Do list- Totally skipped my mind.

jeez! Whaddaya, have a lot on your plate, or something? Busy with a ST:TNG marathon, or something? ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 11, 2014, 09:38:32 AM
jeez! Whaddaya, have a lot on your plate, or something? Busy with a ST:TNG marathon, or something? ;)
SHUT UP WESLY
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 11, 2014, 04:32:29 PM
jeez! Whaddaya, have a lot on your plate, or something? Busy with a ST:TNG marathon, or something? ;)

Actually... Yes. I also just finished Cowboy BeBop.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: skoogmik on October 11, 2014, 05:26:03 PM
Actually... Yes. I also just finished Cowboy BeBop.

Did you also watch the Cowboy BeBop movie?  It is excellent!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 11, 2014, 05:36:37 PM
Did you also watch the Cowboy BeBop movie?  It is excellent!

i remember watching that series on Vhs... In 1999 ...

I teach kids who were born after that. I feel old.

Edit: Spike makes me wish we had a single pistol set. Martial manipulation took care of the rest. (Unless you consider him Martal arts/street justice with super reflexes and a temp power pistol).

Trying to remember if COH had a hand gun model close to his
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on October 11, 2014, 05:38:31 PM
SHUT UP WESLY
/em facepalm
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 11, 2014, 06:08:21 PM
Did you also watch the Cowboy BeBop movie?  It is excellent!


Moooovie? No, I didn't know there was one. I'll have to watch it!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 11, 2014, 06:11:23 PM

Moooovie? No, I didn't know there was one. I'll have to watch it!

... For shame! How could you not know that!? :O
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: skoogmik on October 11, 2014, 06:26:00 PM

Moooovie? No, I didn't know there was one. I'll have to watch it!

A short clip from it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vEeQ-vGrgY
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 11, 2014, 06:51:59 PM
... For shame! How could you not know that!? :O

Too much focus on Revival? xD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 11, 2014, 06:59:29 PM
Too much focus on Revival? xD

Do it again!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hemipowered on October 11, 2014, 08:54:01 PM
       Loved cowboy bebop great series , and the movie---never forget watching the run on adult swim ---working 1500 miles from home and having a "co-worker" give away the big ending right b4 I could get home to watch it. Ugh !!!
please mister may I kill him?  please?       jk?  ok yeah  JK  ...mabye
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on October 11, 2014, 08:58:24 PM
SHUT UP WESLY

Wow. That one actually hurt... :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkojin on October 12, 2014, 12:37:12 AM
SHUT UP WESLY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwhAq3F8NCE
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on October 12, 2014, 01:47:25 AM

Moooovie? No, I didn't know there was one. I'll have to watch it!
It's really good.  It takes place in the middle of the series (between epiodes 22 and 23, to be specific), rather than after the end, so all the main characters are still together.

The original Japanese title is "Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven's Door", though the American title is the much less creative "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 12, 2014, 02:01:55 AM
The original Japanese title is "Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven's Door", though the American title is the much less creative "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie."

Less creative, more descriptive.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on October 12, 2014, 02:13:21 AM
Less creative, more descriptive.
It's actually less descriptive, because "knocking on heaven's door" is VERY descriptive of the movie. The American name just...tells you it's a movie. Which....you already know. Since it's a movie.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 12, 2014, 08:50:59 AM
Too much focus on Revival? xD

You are forgiven! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on October 12, 2014, 03:14:28 PM
i remember watching that series on Vhs... In 1999 ...

I teach kids who were born after that. I feel old.

Edit: Spike makes me wish we had a single pistol set. Martial manipulation took care of the rest. (Unless you consider him Martal arts/street justice with super reflexes and a temp power pistol).

Trying to remember if COH had a hand gun model close to his

Cowboy Bebop the series gos blu-ray December 16th. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Risha on October 12, 2014, 05:26:56 PM
Wow, saw the all caps, underlined update on Message 1 and winced guiltily.  Yeah, I've been all around MWM today reading their boards, looking at the kickstarter I subscribed to.  But, yes, I knew this.  MWM is NOT involved in the buy out....EDIT: and, even more, I misread "2" for "12"  so now I really feel foolish.  Okay, back to work.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 13, 2014, 02:47:37 AM
It would be great to be a fly on the wall or a bug on the phone during those negotiations. I would even pay in bacon ingots for that privilege.

Waiting is hell!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kriiden on October 13, 2014, 04:44:37 AM
It would be great to be a fly on the wall or a bug on the phone during those negotiations. I would even pay in bacon ingots for that privilege.

Waiting is hell!

The wait is driving me utterly insane.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on October 13, 2014, 04:47:08 AM
The wait is driving me utterly insane.

Hope, always hope!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on October 13, 2014, 04:53:34 AM
Hope, always hope!
I concur.

I also like your forum avatar pic thingy, Sinistar :-)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: microc on October 13, 2014, 05:27:57 AM
your not old...when pepsi clear came out I thought pepsi was changing for bottle water.....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 13, 2014, 05:30:37 AM
Hope, always hope!

Indeed!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: archaist on October 13, 2014, 05:32:19 AM
The wait is driving me utterly insane.

 The worst part is I have this site in my homepage links, and I automatically click the latest comment on the top post to look for news. Every now and then the fake city of heroes news happens to be the top post and I go crazy for about 10s every time.   
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 13, 2014, 05:33:17 AM
And so you should archaist!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on October 13, 2014, 06:02:23 AM
I concur.

I also like your forum avatar pic thingy, Sinistar :-)

Thank you :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on October 13, 2014, 07:27:45 AM
I had an idea the other night for helping to spread the word about COH. If and when it comes back.

Live streaming, I don't have a good enough comp yet. But I thought maybe a group could get together to do live streams. You know do regular content, maybe some crazy builds and the regular COH community high jinks.

Then people could actually see the game in action. :)

With that said, back to my corner until we get news. Going back and forth on which toon to hopefully make first.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on October 13, 2014, 01:12:31 PM
I had an idea the other night for helping to spread the word about COH. If and when it comes back.

Live streaming, I don't have a good enough comp yet. But I thought maybe a group could get together to do live streams. You know do regular content, maybe some crazy builds and the regular COH community high jinks.

Then people could actually see the game in action. :)

With that said, back to my corner until we get news. Going back and forth on which toon to hopefully make first.

An excellent idea!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on October 13, 2014, 01:57:14 PM
I had an idea the other night for helping to spread the word about COH. If and when it comes back.

Live streaming, I don't have a good enough comp yet. But I thought maybe a group could get together to do live streams. You know do regular content, maybe some crazy builds and the regular COH community high jinks.

Then people could actually see the game in action. :)

With that said, back to my corner until we get news. Going back and forth on which toon to hopefully make first.

Good idea... Livestreaming wasn't a huge thing when CoH was alive and kicking... I think I'd want to make a "Warshade Build/Playstyle" channel if the game were to go live again. :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackshear on October 13, 2014, 02:02:16 PM
It's actually less descriptive, because "knocking on heaven's door" is VERY descriptive of the movie. The American name just...tells you it's a movie. Which....you already know. Since it's a movie.

Probably a liability related decision...I expect it's not unlike why Vega become M. Bison in Street Fighter II, why scads of names got changed in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, etc.  People can nerdrage about this if they wish, but it's nice to live one's life without getting sued.  It's especially nice to not get sued by the RIAA, a group of people who have raised soullessness to an art form.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on October 13, 2014, 02:52:39 PM
Good idea... Livestreaming wasn't a huge thing when CoH was alive and kicking... I think I'd want to make a "Warshade Build/Playstyle" channel if the game were to go live again. :D

I could enjoy running that type of channel
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on October 13, 2014, 03:12:11 PM
Good idea... Livestreaming wasn't a huge thing when CoH was alive and kicking... I think I'd want to make a "Warshade Build/Playstyle" channel if the game were to go live again. :D

Never used livestraming for CoX, would you use Twitch or another medium?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: archaist on October 13, 2014, 03:21:25 PM
Never used livestraming for CoX, would you use Twitch or another medium?

Twitch if you want to get the viewers and show people the game. Anything less and you just wont get major views. Azubu is the next best thing, but you can't just set up a stream with them like you can on twitch. Hitbox just doesn't have the viewer base to compete. Better yet, through some "beta keys"/invite some major streamers to play, that would be more marketing then CoH ever got in its lifetime.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on October 13, 2014, 04:05:08 PM
Probably a liability related decision...I expect it's not unlike why Vega become M. Bison in Street Fighter II, why scads of names got changed in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, etc.  People can nerdrage about this if they wish, but it's nice to live one's life without getting sued.  It's especially nice to not get sued by the RIAA, a group of people who have raised soullessness to an art form.
Even so, the Japanese version had an alternate subtitle: "Tengoku no Tobira", or "Door to Heaven" which is also relevant to the movie's plot in a way that "The Movie" is not (though it does, admittedly, lose the music-related pun).

In fact, every episode of the show actually had both an English title and a Japanese title (even in the untranslated Japanese version).  For many of them, the Japanese title was just the English title in katakana, but not all of them.  For example, "Toys in the Attic" was also "Yamiyo no Hevi Rokku" ("Heavy Rock of the Dark Night"), and Pierrot Le Fou had a Japanese title of ""Dōkeshi no Chinkonka" ("Requiem for a Clown").  The movie did the same thing.

So there's no reason they couldn't have called it "Cowboy Bebop: The Door To Heaven".  Calling it "The Movie" seems just too on-the-nose, like calling the next Avengers film "Avengers 2: The Movie" instead of "Avengers 2: Age of Ultron."

(And it's not "nerdrage" to dislike or disagree with something.  If a simple statement like "I think 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door' or even 'Door to Heaven' is a better subtitle than 'The Movie'" is something you interpret as rage, then I wonder what you call actual screaming rage)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on October 13, 2014, 05:23:16 PM
Never used livestraming for CoX, would you use Twitch or another medium?

I'd probably use Twitch, since I already have a Twitch channel and have some limited experience with doing streaming through that before. I did a few weeks of streaming some hardcore mode Diablo 3 play a year or so ago.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on October 13, 2014, 08:23:29 PM
I think Twitch would be the best one to use. I tried to stream some Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft on my channel but I don't have a good enough computer.

If/when I do get a good computer. If/when COH comes back. I plan to do a Master Mind/Controller/Dominator channel. :P

I think it'd be cool, I could watch people livestreaming at work. Instead of day dreaming about COH. LOL!

Quote
Better yet, through some "beta keys"/invite some major streamers to play, that would be more marketing then CoH ever got in its lifetime.

Good idea, It'd be exciting for me to see streamers like Mufasaprime or Morikoppa (sp?) stream COH. LOL!

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on October 13, 2014, 08:33:08 PM
I had an idea the other night for helping to spread the word about COH. If and when it comes back.

Live streaming, I don't have a good enough comp yet. But I thought maybe a group could get together to do live streams. You know do regular content, maybe some crazy builds and the regular COH community high jinks.

Then people could actually see the game in action. :)

With that said, back to my corner until we get news. Going back and forth on which toon to hopefully make first.

This would be good for us, but, for the larger gaming community in general, it might be worth trying to get someone like Achievement Hunter interested in devoting an episode to the re-opened or Revival game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shidan on October 13, 2014, 08:54:11 PM
This would be good for us, but, for the larger gaming community in general, it might be worth trying to get someone like Achievement Hunter interested in devoting an episode to the re-opened or Revival game.
That reminds me about that Captain Dynamic series Rooster Teeth did for CoH. I think it was back when Mission Architect came out.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 13, 2014, 10:02:11 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwhAq3F8NCE
OH MY GOD  :roll:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 13, 2014, 10:09:03 PM
So its closing in on 2 months past August any hope? Or should revive my anger for the corporate machine?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on October 13, 2014, 10:18:02 PM
So its closing in on 2 months past August any hope? Or should revive my anger for the corporate machine?
While I breathe, I hope. There is always hope. :-)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on October 13, 2014, 10:19:58 PM
So its closing in on 2 months past August any hope? Or should revive my anger for the corporate machine?

Meh it has been 2 years since the game closed, what is 2 more months xD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 13, 2014, 10:21:30 PM
So its closing in on 2 months past August any hope? Or should revive my anger for the corporate machine?

Oct. 2: Proof the group can run the servers accepted.

Oct. 10: Nothing new to report.

Continue waiting with the rest of us in the Icon Lounge, good sir.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on October 13, 2014, 11:20:46 PM
Oct. 2: Proof the group can run the servers accepted.

Oct. 10: Nothing new to report.

Continue waiting with the rest of us in the Icon Lounge, good sir.


forgive me, I blinked along the way and a few dozen more pages are here.  Did this get posted?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on October 13, 2014, 11:48:11 PM

forgive me, I blinked along the way and a few dozen more pages are here.  Did this get posted?
I think we just saw the post.   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackshear on October 14, 2014, 12:21:48 AM
(And it's not "nerdrage" to dislike or disagree with something.  If a simple statement like "I think 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door' or even 'Door to Heaven' is a better subtitle than 'The Movie'" is something you interpret as rage, then I wonder what you call actual screaming rage)

I'm not accusing anyone here of nerdrage, but this topic reminds me of the many instances of it I have seen on the topic of Japanese to English localization.  I first encountered it in the heady days of USENET, when you could hardly look at rec.arts.anime without someone proclaiming that their favorite show was RUINED FOREVER because Viz was dubbing it or how DARE that AWFUL Ted Woolsey insert Beavis and Butthead references into Final Fantasy VI (NOT III IT'S VI AND THE ENGLISH VERSION IS SO INFERIOR ARGLEBARGLE).

If you are of sufficient years and were USENET capable I'm sure you remember those good times!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on October 14, 2014, 01:46:36 AM
Oct 2nd Proof Accepted ?? Who reported this.. if its not Downix, Im not taking it as news at this point.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Jorge Firebomb on October 14, 2014, 01:53:05 AM
I think what they mean is that the submission of their proof of being able to run the game was accepted, not that NCSoft has accepted that their proof is valid. I would imagine this part will take some time as they look into what was provided and determine if it meets their requirements.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Feign on October 14, 2014, 02:53:32 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwhAq3F8NCE
OH MY GOD  :roll:
No kidding, I hadn't heard a version with the JJ Abrams verse in it before.  That was great!

forgive me, I blinked along the way and a few dozen more pages are here.  Did this get posted?
Oct 2nd Proof Accepted ?? Who reported this.. if its not Downix, Im not taking it as news at this point.
I zipped back and read all the posts in this thread from Oct 2nd and didn't see anything of the sort...  Was it in another thread?
EDIT:  Yep, didn't realize the first post of "New Efforts!" gets modified with each update.  Now I know and you do too!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkojin on October 14, 2014, 03:40:00 AM
Even so, the Japanese version had an alternate subtitle: "Tengoku no Tobira", or "Door to Heaven" which is also relevant to the movie's plot in a way that "The Movie" is not (though it does, admittedly, lose the music-related pun).

In fact, every episode of the show actually had both an English title and a Japanese title (even in the untranslated Japanese version).  For many of them, the Japanese title was just the English title in katakana, but not all of them.  For example, "Toys in the Attic" was also "Yamiyo no Hevi Rokku" ("Heavy Rock of the Dark Night"), and Pierrot Le Fou had a Japanese title of ""Dōkeshi no Chinkonka" ("Requiem for a Clown").  The movie did the same thing.

So there's no reason they couldn't have called it "Cowboy Bebop: The Door To Heaven".  Calling it "The Movie" seems just too on-the-nose, like calling the next Avengers film "Avengers 2: The Movie" instead of "Avengers 2: Age of Ultron."

(And it's not "nerdrage" to dislike or disagree with something.  If a simple statement like "I think 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door' or even 'Door to Heaven' is a better subtitle than 'The Movie'" is something you interpret as rage, then I wonder what you call actual screaming rage)

Door to Heaven would not have worked as well, Knockin' on Heaven's Door would have since every episode of the show was named after a specific song (or type of song). Owned the whole series on DVD, but I lent it to someone that moved out of town shortly afterwards, so now I am really looking forward to that Blu-Ray release coming soon.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 14, 2014, 04:11:23 AM
There's not likely to be much update over the holiday season. NCSoft is likely very, very busy right now dealing with other things... and we're a low-priority matter as far as they're concerned.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 14, 2014, 04:28:33 AM
There's not likely to be much update over the holiday season. NCSoft is likely very, very busy right now dealing with other things... and we're a low-priority matter as far as they're concerned.

Honestly, I won't be surprised if an announcement does come at any time but I won't be surprised to see one after this year is over.  All the same though I just have one of those feelings.  Sometimes I get a dream that comes true in some way, I suspect I may have had one :).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 14, 2014, 04:40:11 AM
I was really holding out for a Halloween launch, but that's looking less likely as each day passes. *sigh*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 14, 2014, 04:41:37 AM
I was really holding out for a Halloween launch, but that's looking less likely as each day passes. *sigh*

I wouldn't expect a launch until sometime after the announcement the game was coming back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on October 14, 2014, 05:59:22 AM
I was really holding out for a Halloween launch, but that's looking less likely as each day passes. *sigh*

If they announced tomorrow that the game was coming back, I wouldn't expect it back online until 2015.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 14, 2014, 11:09:32 AM
Oct 2nd Proof Accepted ?? Who reported this.. if its not Downix, Im not taking it as news at this point.

From Iron Wolf's big thread, the first post gets updated. Most recently:

UPDATE October 2 2014:

Proof of developer viability was submitted and accepted. The ball is in NCsoft's court while they assess the group's expertise and backing. No news is good news.

(Update Oct 10: No change.)

That's it for the post. It just means one more step in the process.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 14, 2014, 01:56:45 PM
I am not sure when NCSoft's fiscal year end is, but I hope they squeeze out some extra 4th quarter earnings with the sale of CoX IP.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 14, 2014, 03:45:05 PM
I am not sure when NCSoft's fiscal year end is, but I hope they squeeze out some extra 4th quarter earnings with the sale of CoX IP.
i like this line of thought. Hopefully NCsoft does as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: High_Beam on October 14, 2014, 07:00:55 PM
<Briefly comes back into phase in the far reaches of the Shard, a faint voice tugging at her>

What?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackshear on October 14, 2014, 07:22:31 PM
I am not sure when NCSoft's fiscal year end is, but I hope they squeeze out some extra 4th quarter earnings with the sale of CoX IP.

I think they just go by the calendar year, but don't quote me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dev7on on October 14, 2014, 07:59:10 PM
From Iron Wolf's big thread, the first post gets updated. Most recently:

UPDATE October 2 2014:

Proof of developer viability was submitted and accepted. The ball is in NCsoft's court while they assess the group's expertise and backing. No news is good news.

(Update Oct 10: No change.)

That's it for the post. It just means one more step in the process.

Really?! They're on their last process of getting City of Heroes back?! Well it's about time they finally made it to the last step of TFHM. All we have to do is wait for the official announcements of City of Heroes return or not? (Which I hope it does!) #SaveCoH!!!! :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on October 14, 2014, 08:10:36 PM
Really?! They're on their last process of getting City of Heroes back?! Well it's about time they finally made it to the last step of TFHM. All we have to do is wait for the official announcements of City of Heroes return or not? (Which I hope it does!) #SaveCoH!!!! :D

You read too much into that statement.  What was meant was -- One more step in getting CoH back has been taken.  Not that there was only one more step left.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FourSpeed on October 14, 2014, 08:11:51 PM
There's not likely to be much update over the holiday season. NCSoft is likely very, very busy right now dealing with other things... and we're a low-priority matter as far as they're concerned.

So, basically, check back in January then?

Quote from: Sinistar
If they announced tomorrow that the game was coming back, I wouldn't expect it back online until 2015.

Yeah ... January...  I'm not sensing anything here in time for Christmas...  Oh well...

In the meantime, GL with the negotiations, Downix, et al.


Regards,
4
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dev7on on October 14, 2014, 08:42:44 PM
You read too much into that statement.  What was meant was -- One more step in getting CoH back has been taken.  Not that there was only one more step left.

 ??? What? I don't understand what you're trying to say.... Can somebody help me explain what the update is talking about so I can understand it better?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 14, 2014, 08:49:50 PM
NCSoft has set up steps to validate that the company managing the IP and running the game can do so.

So far they have accepted each step. If they don't then hopefully they would allow another effort to improve or change whatever NCSoft wasn't happy with. To us each bit of news we live and die on - to NCSoft it is selling something they don't want anyways and don't want to spend a lot of resources on.

Perspective.

We say - gimme, gimme, gimme - they say hey, Chen from the mail room will take your information and we will get back to you. We have their attention now and it is being worked - just slowly, in all honesty it might be that a year end tax thing or blip of cash that pushes up the bottom line is the thing that makes them hurry a bit.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on October 14, 2014, 08:51:11 PM
??? What? I don't understand what you're trying to say.... Can somebody help me explain what the update is talking about so I can understand it better?

NCSoft asked for proof that Nate's group had the ability to actually develop something, and weren't just a bunch of internet yahoos talking a big game with no follow-through.

Nate's group provided something, presumably a tech demo of some sort, or possibly a proposed business plan.

NCSoft said "Ok, that's good enough. We won't outright ignore you. You may continue making your proposal."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Jorge Firebomb on October 14, 2014, 08:53:34 PM
I am skeptical that whatever amount of money is under discussion for this transaction is enough to matter much to NCSoft. This is an IP that has been dormant for two years and they probably have no interest in working with in the future, and it's not like this is a mega corp like EA working on the purchase. The numbers are almost certainly trivial compared to everything else NCSoft is involved in.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Talon Blue on October 14, 2014, 08:58:55 PM
I think they just go by the calendar year, but don't quote me.

I haven't been able to find their Q3 as of yet, their Q2 was announced in August, so I think it is save to assume their Q4 runs through into 2015.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 14, 2014, 09:04:28 PM
I am skeptical that whatever amount of money is under discussion for this transaction is enough to matter much to NCSoft. This is an IP that has been dormant for two years and they probably have no interest in working with in the future, and it's not like this is a mega corp like EA working on the purchase. The numbers are almost certainly trivial compared to everything else NCSoft is involved in.

I agree that to us money is not our focus - to NCSoft it is the primary focus - make the games people want to buy, period.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dev7on on October 14, 2014, 11:30:18 PM
NCSoft asked for proof that Nate's group had the ability to actually develop something, and weren't just a bunch of internet yahoos talking a big game with no follow-through.

Nate's group provided something, presumably a tech demo of some sort, or possibly a proposed business plan.

NCSoft said "Ok, that's good enough. We won't outright ignore you. You may continue making your proposal."

Ok, now I understand. Thanks for explaining that to me. Codewalker and Ironwolf.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 15, 2014, 12:19:32 AM
I haven't been able to find their Q3 as of yet, their Q2 was announced in August, so I think it is save to assume their Q4 runs through into 2015.

It would not be terribly unusual to announce the Q2 June 30 earning in August. My accounting sensibilities would say that NCSoft might want a thin wafer of revenue from the CoH IP sale to pad the 4th qtr in December. But if they DO announce in late December, it would be awhile before we had a playable CoH Legacy.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on October 15, 2014, 12:22:27 AM
I was really holding out for a Halloween launch, but that's looking less likely as each day passes. *sigh*
never give up never surrender :D
Tome it does not look like that, in fact I remember a saying that might help, "good things happen to those who wait." I have learned this at some great expense of my blood pressure, but everyday does get easier :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Feign on October 15, 2014, 01:44:27 AM
I agree that to us money is not our focus - to NCSoft it is the primary focus - make the games people want to buy, period.
And from that they got "Go all in on making Blade and Soul marketable to the Chinese as a FtP Because Chinese gamers are absolutely loaded down with expendable money while they sit back and play foreign MMOs all day long."  Also "Hey this Carbine developer looks legit, exclusively cater entirely to raids!  Everybody who pays money loves raids!  Oh I seem to have lost the bug list, no matter!"

Having focus on your target is great and all, but it isn't all that beneficial when they can't figure out how to hold the gun.

I feel we don't need to find their focus so much as we need to figure out where they're accidentally aiming their money and to be at the target, but also at that place.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on October 15, 2014, 03:18:42 AM
Also "Hey this Carbine developer looks legit, exclusively cater entirely to raids!  Everybody who pays money loves raids!  Oh I seem to have lost the bug list, no matter!"

More like "Hey this Carbine developer is formed from a bunch of ex-WoW developers who left Blizzard. OMG WOW MAKES MEGA $$$$$$"

They just didn't ask which ones.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on October 15, 2014, 05:48:05 AM
So, basically, check back in January then?

Yeah ... January...  I'm not sensing anything here in time for Christmas...  Oh well...

In the meantime, GL with the negotiations, Downix, et al.

The way I see it is if NCsoft decides tomorrow to sell off the game, the new team still has to do some things

1. Set up shop somewhere
2. Receive  any and all software and hardware from NCSoft that is needed.
3. Make very well sure that the Ish 23 image is backed up in triplicate and stored off site safe and secure ;)
4. Determine how many servers are coming back, all or some?  Remember there has likely been some attrition to the CoH fanbase in the past 2 years, it is not logical to expect EVERYONE to return on relaunch day, but one can hope. But that is still the question: will ALL the servers come back? Are ALL needed? It might be better to restore HALF of them at first and then if there is enough demand to active the others one by one and let people transfer characters.
5. Set up the account system
6. Set up the payment system and determine subscription prices if any.
7. Set up website, setup forum
8. Set up download links for those that need to redownload the game
9. Create an update for those that DIDN'T uninstall the game that will point the game to the new servers.
10. Final decision to be made about the Sentinel files, partial restore or not used at all.
11. Possibly setup some sales and incentives to help pacify any lingering anger over the loss of characters (there will be some, it is inevitable), and there will be some players that will have a sense of entitlement about having some incentives at relaunch.  Example: the first month of relaunch the celebrant badge is awarded to all toons that log in, and the first month is Double Xp. 
12. Decide whether or not to let people buy the vet rewards all the way up to Tier 9 and unlock all the costume pieces that come with them.  (I want that mecha armor back)
13. Veteran badges, the system was broken before the shutdown. Will it be fixed or the vet badges junked?
14. Hire GM's
15. Test the blazes out of the game before re-launch and do any major repairs needed. I think it was stated that the game image isn't in the best of shape but I can't recall.
16. When one registers their new account, is it going to be hero only and one would need to purchase a Villain code and a Praetorian code or will it just be all three?  Also will key codes from any old CoH packages still work? I have some of my coh boxes and codes still floating around.
17. Update the Terms of Service as needed.
18. If NCSoft truly sells off the game and will have NO CONTROL at all over its future, that really must be made abundantly clear to everyone. There are some that have some bad feelings towards them which are not entirely unjustified.
19. If any ish 24 elements can be added in, great. If not, that's fine since the game would still be back.

Anyway the above list is just speculation, so who knows?

Hope, Forever Hope.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on October 15, 2014, 06:38:51 AM
4. Determine how many servers are coming back, all or some?  Remember there has likely been some attrition to the CoH fanbase in the past 2 years, it is not logical to expect EVERYONE to return on relaunch day, but one can hope. But that is still the question: will ALL the servers come back? Are ALL needed? It might be better to restore HALF of them at first and then if there is enough demand to active the others one by one and let people transfer characters.
With today's technology instead of 2004's technology, I'd say one server is enough. Maybe two if people are REALLY needing "server flavor wars" :) Almost everything was one giant mega-server already [insert various caveats from CW here], the different servers were all playing with each other on all the mapservers, etc.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Jorge Firebomb on October 15, 2014, 06:41:22 AM
Sinistar makes some very good points, though I think he's being a little optimistic about how many people will come back after two years. I'm not convinced that there will be enough demand for more than one server for the game, to be honest. Is this something where they could do some sort of cloud hosting where they could more easily expand capacity if necessary? I honestly think it would be best to fragment the userbase as little as possible, and you would think that modern hardware could handle more load than the original servers did, assuming the code behind the game wouldn't choke on memory limits or something.

Regardless, even if the deal was signed right this second, there would be a decent amount of time before the game would be able to go live. I also hope I'm wrong about how many people would come back, I'd love to see a vibrant community able to fill all the original servers again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on October 15, 2014, 06:59:02 AM
Sinistar makes some very good points, though I think he's being a little optimistic about how many people will come back after two years. I'm not convinced that there will be enough demand for more than one server for the game, to be honest. Is this something where they could do some sort of cloud hosting where they could more easily expand capacity if necessary? I honestly think it would be best to fragment the userbase as little as possible, and you would think that modern hardware could handle more load than the original servers did, assuming the code behind the game wouldn't choke on memory limits or something.

Regardless, even if the deal was signed right this second, there would be a decent amount of time before the game would be able to go live. I also hope I'm wrong about how many people would come back, I'd love to see a vibrant community able to fill all the original servers again.

My questions about the servers are indeed based on optimism/hope, with a touch of realism thrown in.  :)

I would love to see everyone back on relaunch day, whenever that happens.  But reality being what it is, to say there is no attrition to the fan base is unrealistic.  Some will not want to start over again, some have moved on to other life activities and hobbies, some may have hated the game towards the end and were glad of the shutdown (blasphemy!),  and of course the ill will that some will feel towards NCSoft.

Also a valid point was raised by the poster above, with server tech the way it is now one server may well be enough, but then there is the old expression about all the eggs in one basket.  Perhaps two servers?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shidan on October 15, 2014, 09:32:06 AM
My personal wishes are for only one server, or all of them. As otherwise I wouldn't be able to find the people I don't have contact with, and that would be sad.  :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Techbot Alpha on October 15, 2014, 09:44:18 AM
My personal wish, if APR goes ahead, is for whoever is in charge of environments tears down every freaking skyscraper in Paragon and re-builds them to 1) look like actual buildings with windows in sensible places and obeying the laws of physics, 2) re-organise the road-map of zones, especially Atlas, to actually look like a city, rather than a drunken motorway that stumbled into an urban zone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on October 15, 2014, 10:23:34 AM
Here's a nice pic of the sun,  kinda reminds me of Eochai

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/15/tech/nasa-sun-jack-o-lantern/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on October 15, 2014, 11:37:26 AM
The way I see it is if NCsoft decides tomorrow to sell off the game, the new team still has to do some things

1. Set up shop somewhere
2. Receive  any and all software and hardware from NCSoft that is needed.
3. Make very well sure that the Ish 23 image is backed up in triplicate and stored off site safe and secure ;)
4. Determine how many servers are coming back, all or some?  Remember there has likely been some attrition to the CoH fanbase in the past 2 years, it is not logical to expect EVERYONE to return on relaunch day, but one can hope. But that is still the question: will ALL the servers come back? Are ALL needed? It might be better to restore HALF of them at first and then if there is enough demand to active the others one by one and let people transfer characters.
5. Set up the account system
6. Set up the payment system and determine subscription prices if any.
7. Set up website, setup forum
8. Set up download links for those that need to redownload the game
9. Create an update for those that DIDN'T uninstall the game that will point the game to the new servers.
10. Final decision to be made about the Sentinel files, partial restore or not used at all.
11. Possibly setup some sales and incentives to help pacify any lingering anger over the loss of characters (there will be some, it is inevitable), and there will be some players that will have a sense of entitlement about having some incentives at relaunch.  Example: the first month of relaunch the celebrant badge is awarded to all toons that log in, and the first month is Double Xp. 
12. Decide whether or not to let people buy the vet rewards all the way up to Tier 9 and unlock all the costume pieces that come with them.  (I want that mecha armor back)
13. Veteran badges, the system was broken before the shutdown. Will it be fixed or the vet badges junked?
14. Hire GM's
15. Test the blazes out of the game before re-launch and do any major repairs needed. I think it was stated that the game image isn't in the best of shape but I can't recall.
16. When one registers their new account, is it going to be hero only and one would need to purchase a Villain code and a Praetorian code or will it just be all three?  Also will key codes from any old CoH packages still work? I have some of my coh boxes and codes still floating around.
17. Update the Terms of Service as needed.
18. If NCSoft truly sells off the game and will have NO CONTROL at all over its future, that really must be made abundantly clear to everyone. There are some that have some bad feelings towards them which are not entirely unjustified.
19. If any ish 24 elements can be added in, great. If not, that's fine since the game would still be back.

Anyway the above list is just speculation, so who knows?

Hope, Forever Hope.


Smart.... most of the bases covered here - hope the f2p model for static I23 comes back.   ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on October 15, 2014, 11:50:51 AM
Sinistar makes some very good points, though I think he's being a little optimistic about how many people will come back after two years. I'm not convinced that there will be enough demand for more than one server for the game, to be honest. Is this something where they could do some sort of cloud hosting where they could more easily expand capacity if necessary? I honestly think it would be best to fragment the userbase as little as possible, and you would think that modern hardware could handle more load than the original servers did, assuming the code behind the game wouldn't choke on memory limits or something.

Regardless, even if the deal was signed right this second, there would be a decent amount of time before the game would be able to go live. I also hope I'm wrong about how many people would come back, I'd love to see a vibrant community able to fill all the original servers again.


I've been telling everyone I know on the SWG Basilisk server (swgemu) and I've run across old players interested and people who a:) had never heard of CoX but were intrigued enough by yt clips (and my ott game descriptions) to say they'd try it when it returns and b:) players who had heard of it and had always wanted to try it, but for a myriad of reasons never got around to it before shutdown.... I think we can drum up enough player interest at (re)launch to fill some servers... :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 15, 2014, 12:56:04 PM
Here's a nice pic of the sun,  kinda reminds me of Eochai

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/15/tech/nasa-sun-jack-o-lantern/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Now I so much want to smash his pumpkin stick figure into the ground!  :gonk:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on October 15, 2014, 01:55:09 PM
16. When one registers their new account, is it going to be hero only and one would need to purchase a Villain code and a Praetorian code or will it just be all three?  Also will key codes from any old CoH packages still work? I have some of my coh boxes and codes still floating around.

Villains were freely available in the game for years before the shutdown, I'm thinking Praetorians would have ended up the same way given the time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on October 15, 2014, 02:35:55 PM
The way I see it is if NCsoft decides tomorrow to sell off the game, the new team still has to do some things

1. Set up shop somewhere
2. Receive  any and all software and hardware from NCSoft that is needed.
3. Make very well sure that the Ish 23 image is backed up in triplicate and stored off site safe and secure ;)
4. Determine how many servers are coming back, all or some?  Remember there has likely been some attrition to the CoH fanbase in the past 2 years, it is not logical to expect EVERYONE to return on relaunch day, but one can hope. But that is still the question: will ALL the servers come back? Are ALL needed? It might be better to restore HALF of them at first and then if there is enough demand to active the others one by one and let people transfer characters.
5. Set up the account system
6. Set up the payment system and determine subscription prices if any.
7. Set up website, setup forum
8. Set up download links for those that need to redownload the game
9. Create an update for those that DIDN'T uninstall the game that will point the game to the new servers.
10. Final decision to be made about the Sentinel files, partial restore or not used at all.
11. Possibly setup some sales and incentives to help pacify any lingering anger over the loss of characters (there will be some, it is inevitable), and there will be some players that will have a sense of entitlement about having some incentives at relaunch.  Example: the first month of relaunch the celebrant badge is awarded to all toons that log in, and the first month is Double Xp. 
12. Decide whether or not to let people buy the vet rewards all the way up to Tier 9 and unlock all the costume pieces that come with them.  (I want that mecha armor back)
13. Veteran badges, the system was broken before the shutdown. Will it be fixed or the vet badges junked?
14. Hire GM's
15. Test the blazes out of the game before re-launch and do any major repairs needed. I think it was stated that the game image isn't in the best of shape but I can't recall.
16. When one registers their new account, is it going to be hero only and one would need to purchase a Villain code and a Praetorian code or will it just be all three?  Also will key codes from any old CoH packages still work? I have some of my coh boxes and codes still floating around.
17. Update the Terms of Service as needed.
18. If NCSoft truly sells off the game and will have NO CONTROL at all over its future, that really must be made abundantly clear to everyone. There are some that have some bad feelings towards them which are not entirely unjustified.
19. If any ish 24 elements can be added in, great. If not, that's fine since the game would still be back.

Anyway the above list is just speculation, so who knows?

Hope, Forever Hope.

While I expect some things that look a lot like this have to happen, I think it very unlikely that they will all happen after the deal is signed.  It strikes me as very unwise to sign the deal unless the company set up to do so has already established plans and capability for things like backing up the image, setting up servers and putting a pay model into place.  NCSoft has required a show of technical ability from the group and I would expect it comes in the form of several of these tasks.  As such I would expect that some time is required after the deal is signed, but not to the point that they're figuring these things out from scratch.

Granted I don't know much about this subject so I could be completely wrong, but it's what makes sense to me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fridgy Daiere on October 15, 2014, 03:03:04 PM
Actually, quite a lot of that -- including website (unpublished, of course) -- can be done before the deal ever goes through. That which cannot be physically completed due to lack of actual game servers in hand can be outlined and planned for with the underlying infrastructures in place.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sihada on October 15, 2014, 03:20:50 PM
Quote
I wouldn't expect a launch until sometime after the announcement the game was coming back.
I wouldn't expect a launch until 2016, if it happens at all (which is not certain yet).  NCSoft isn't going to hand someone a DVD with a "setup.exe" that they can double-click to start the server.  Once the transfer of the server actually happens, it will take months to get it operational and ready for the earliest alpha testers.

COH isn't going to be under the Christmas tree, this year or next.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 15, 2014, 03:40:49 PM
Actually, quite a lot of that -- including website (unpublished, of course) -- can be done before the deal ever goes through. That which cannot be physically completed due to lack of actual game servers in hand can be outlined and planned for with the underlying infrastructures in place.

I wouldn't expect them to do -anything- that costs money to do, before they get the deal signed.  Otherwise, if it goes south, they've just thrown money away.

Sure, they'll PLAN stuff, but that's as far as they'll go until they get that magic signature.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on October 15, 2014, 03:47:57 PM
I wouldn't expect a launch until 2016, if it happens at all (which is not certain yet).  NCSoft isn't going to hand someone a DVD with a "setup.exe" that they can double-click to start the server.  Once the transfer of the server actually happens, it will take months to get it operational and ready for the earliest alpha testers.

COH isn't going to be under the Christmas tree, this year or next.

Hopefully It's not THAT bad. Having a server image means it's already installed and was running. They may even be able to run this on a virtual server instead of a physical one. The game had a front-end split bouncing users between 1 account server (authentication), 1 map server and multiple game server. It's likely there was also a back-end split probably to have the database centralized. If they have images for both (or all 3) of those servers, it will take maybe a month of dedicated effort to get it all up and running. You can bet it will be a dedicated effort.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sihada on October 15, 2014, 04:19:48 PM
Quote
Hopefully It's not THAT bad. Having a server image means it's already installed and was running. They may even be able to run this on a virtual server instead of a physical one. The game had a front-end split bouncing users between 1 account server (authentication), 1 map server and multiple game server. It's likely there was also a back-end split probably to have the database centralized. If they have images for both (or all 3) of those servers, it will take maybe a month of dedicated effort to get it all up and running. You can bet it will be a dedicated effort.

I have no doubts as to the dedication of the people involved; its the complexity of the task that is the issue.  I think that 30 days from "here's the server(s)" to "ready for players" is overly optimistic.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BraveStar on October 15, 2014, 05:15:52 PM
Speaking as a former service tech, I doubt restoring the servers will take that long. We use disk images for a reason - restoring a system from scratch can take days and customers don't like being out of service for even an hour, let alone a week. With a good disk image we can have a system up and running again in a few hours.

The more difficult bits will be writing the new code to handle accounts, etc. How long that takes will depend on the people involved and how much time they have. If it were me, I would have started working on it months ago - as soon as the deal looking like a reasonable possibility. Don't forget that our new devs aren't just doing this as a business - they're fans too and want this game to return just as much as we do.

All that said, speculation really doesn't do us any good - there are just too many variables involved. The game will be up when it's up, but it won't take a year. The best thing we can do is give them time and our support.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 15, 2014, 05:53:06 PM
I guess a lot depends on what the image looks like - is it the image of the final with all servers or is it each seperate server. How quickly could the server be running again - honestly hardware wise in a week or less - an all nighter could likely get it up in one day. What I would do after that is to immediately proceed into an open Beta period.

Then while it is being play tested you write the interface and launcher and build the accounting system. This does a lot of good things - gets interest back - gets players flooding in - free advertising and maybe sponsors! Once the game is stable and running fine and all is in place a full Pre-Launch day and account purchasing.  After the short Pre-Launch - you fire it up for production. I personally see a timeline of closing the deal to Beta testing - 1 week to 1 month. Then a 3-4 month period while accounting is being set.

I would say full production in 3-4 months roughly. Server images are not hard to load - that is what they were made to do. Setting up a long term infrastructure takes longer but that is why you have a Beta period to work out the bugs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on October 15, 2014, 05:53:09 PM

16. When one registers their new account, is it going to be hero only and one would need to purchase a Villain code and a Praetorian code or will it just be all three?  Also will key codes from any old CoH packages still work? I have some of my coh boxes and codes still floating around.

Free accounts had access to Villains before. I was never anything but F2P, with the exception of purchasing my Kheldian unlocks. Why would we start with less, on that?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on October 15, 2014, 05:57:54 PM
Speaking as a former service tech, I doubt restoring the servers will take that long. We use disk images for a reason - restoring a system from scratch can take days and customers don't like being out of service for even an hour, let alone a week. With a good disk image we can have a system up and running again in a few hours.

The more difficult bits will be writing the new code to handle accounts, etc. How long that takes will depend on the people involved and how much time they have. If it were me, I would have started working on it months ago - as soon as the deal looking like a reasonable possibility.  Don't forget that our new devs aren't just doing this as a business - they're fans too and want this game to return just as much as we do.

All that said, speculation really doesn't do us any good - there are just too many variables involved. The game will be up when it's up, but it won't take a year. The best thing we can do is give them time and our support.

This is a super post.  5 stars!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on October 15, 2014, 06:05:24 PM
I guess a lot depends on what the image looks like - is it the image of the final with all servers or is it each seperate server. How quickly could the server be running again - honestly hardware wise in a week or less - an all nighter could likely get it up in one day. What I would do after that is to immediately proceed into an open Beta period.

Then while it is being play tested you write the interface and launcher and build the accounting system. This does a lot of good things - gets interest back - gets players flooding in - free advertising and maybe sponsors! Once the game is stable and running fine and all is in place a full Pre-Launch day and account purchasing.  After the short Pre-Launch - you fire it up for production. I personally see a timeline of closing the deal to Beta testing - 1 week to 1 month. Then a 3-4 month period while accounting is being set.

I would say full production in 3-4 months roughly. Server images are not hard to load - that is what they were made to do. Setting up a long term infrastructure takes longer but that is why you have a Beta period to work out the bugs.

Problem being that you'd actually need the account system finished first, or else how could all these eager beta testers log in?   ;)

Such a pain am I, hehe.

But still a nice list of ideas anyway.

Personally, my biggest concern is that no one really cares enough over at NCSoft to allow this to pick up enough steam for it to really happen.  I am hoping against hope that they are not just politely stringing Nate & crew along (as he even mentioned they might be in his original post) with no real intent of letting anything happen, rather just hoping we'll all give up and move on quietly if they make us wait long enough.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on October 15, 2014, 07:25:10 PM
Free accounts had access to Villains before. I was never anything but F2P, with the exception of purchasing my Kheldian unlocks. Why would we start with less, on that?

Once upon a time, CoV was a standalone game, so older players may have forgotten (or not even noticed) that the two games were combined into one.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on October 15, 2014, 08:57:02 PM
Speaking as a former service tech, I doubt restoring the servers will take that long. We use disk images for a reason - restoring a system from scratch can take days and customers don't like being out of service for even an hour, let alone a week. With a good disk image we can have a system up and running again in a few hours.

The more difficult bits will be writing the new code to handle accounts, etc. How long that takes will depend on the people involved and how much time they have. If it were me, I would have started working on it months ago - as soon as the deal looking like a reasonable possibility. Don't forget that our new devs aren't just doing this as a business - they're fans too and want this game to return just as much as we do.

All that said, speculation really doesn't do us any good - there are just too many variables involved. The game will be up when it's up, but it won't take a year. The best thing we can do is give them time and our support.
You are right in that server restoration should not take long, the main thing will be creating the accounting system.

Still, we shall see.   

Forever Hope.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Jorge Firebomb on October 15, 2014, 09:31:57 PM
Problem being that you'd actually need the account system finished first, or else how could all these eager beta testers log in?   ;)

Such a pain am I, hehe.

But still a nice list of ideas anyway.

Personally, my biggest concern is that no one really cares enough over at NCSoft to allow this to pick up enough steam for it to really happen.  I am hoping against hope that they are not just politely stringing Nate & crew along (as he even mentioned they might be in his original post) with no real intent of letting anything happen, rather just hoping we'll all give up and move on quietly if they make us wait long enough.

Honestly, if they had no intention of selling the game, why would they have an executive (presumably reasonably high up in the hierarchy) waste his time talking to anybody at all? It's not like they would get any significant bad press for just ignoring a small group of Americans who happen to have liked one of their old games. I really do think that the only reason they would have taken the process this far is if they are serious about getting at least some value out of a property that is basically dead to them.

I mean right now the City of Heroes IP (and associated game) are assets on their ledger that are rapidly losing value. The smart business decision is to sell it sooner rather than later, and to get as much value as they can out of it for themselves. NCSoft has made some questionable moves lately, but they are still a pretty successful business, and they didn't get that way by accident.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 15, 2014, 10:39:54 PM
Any super hero social-type mmo game needs to get out there while the current movie trend is super hero universes! There's so much momentum right now. Get it, advertise it and make the money while you can!

/slapsself

Sorry.. carry on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on October 15, 2014, 11:53:31 PM
With today's technology instead of 2004's technology, I'd say one server is enough. Maybe two if people are REALLY needing "server flavor wars" :)

Strawberry!!
No! Blueberry!

No! Bacon!!!

We need 3.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BraveStar on October 16, 2014, 12:18:42 AM
I'm told we will need 3.14159265358979 servers...

Oh wait, no, wrong kind of pie. In that case, I vote for dutch apple. I love dutch apple pie.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Paragon Avenger on October 16, 2014, 02:10:14 AM
You need a session state server a database server an intrusion detection server a whole farm of web servers and a game server.
So, all that said and calculated, I got no clue what I'm talking about.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on October 16, 2014, 03:02:33 AM
Strawberry!!
No! Blueberry!

No! Bacon!!!

We need 3.

Paragon, Titan and FREEEM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 16, 2014, 03:07:53 AM
Waffle, Bacon & Cake.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 16, 2014, 04:14:18 AM
Don't forget pie and coffee.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 16, 2014, 05:44:43 AM
I would really prefer, "Champion", "Not Champion" & "Wannabe Champion". . . ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Jorge Firebomb on October 16, 2014, 05:53:44 AM
I was probably one of the only people that played on Victory, I suppose. To me it doesn't matter what the server is named, or if there are multiple servers what they are named. I think I'd actually prefer it if whatever name(s) got chosen was brand new.

I'm also skeptical that it will be necessary to have more than one, but if they do need a theme I'm all for very silly choices.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 16, 2014, 05:59:06 AM
I was probably one of the only people that played on Victory.

Victory was actually my home!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 16, 2014, 05:59:55 AM
Don't forget pie and coffee.

No, Ice cream and coffee.....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Iron-Emerald on October 16, 2014, 07:16:45 AM
Victory was actually my home!

Mine too! I spent many hours patrolling the streets mostly alone there. Especially being a New Zealander so in a quiet time zone anyway.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on October 16, 2014, 07:29:34 AM
Mine too! I spent many hours patrolling the streets mostly alone there. Especially being a New Zealander so in a quiet time zone anyway.

So...Likely when I was on most of the time. Hah.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on October 16, 2014, 08:29:39 AM
So...Likely when I was on most of the time. Hah.

Yup, I was there too at that time in the UK mornings.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on October 16, 2014, 01:36:55 PM
Victory was actually my home!

My home too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on October 16, 2014, 02:05:34 PM
Guardian For Life!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wizzyboy296 on October 16, 2014, 02:53:22 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qcjoOdVHR8 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9kM0wgW3Eo


i will be back soon......
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wizzyboy296 on October 16, 2014, 02:56:51 PM
don't get me wrong, the game returns at the end of 2014 like it comes in January 2015. New year!  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 16, 2014, 03:24:13 PM
Virtue was my main server, although I spent time on a number of other server!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 16, 2014, 03:45:53 PM
Victory was actually my home!
My first characters were on Victory, but by the end of 2004 i rarely played there having shifted to Guardian and later on to Champion. However, my original MA/SR, Seiben (inspired by the Tuned androids from GUNNM/Battle Angel Alita), was still occasionally in play up until shutdown. Seiben had one of my favorite outfits, using the tails jacket and a red scarf, that could no longer be recreated elsewhere.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Talon Blue on October 16, 2014, 03:54:05 PM
Started in Victory, but I moved on to Virtue after the free server transfer week.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackgrue on October 16, 2014, 04:56:35 PM
Virtue from start to finish. I'm an RPer and virtue's community was AMAZING for roleplayers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 16, 2014, 05:03:52 PM
Virtue from start to finish. I'm an RPer and virtue's community was AMAZING for roleplayers.
The other servers were a little less impressive from an RP perspective. i was PUGing on Champion one time running some Croatoa missions and a teammate and i started doing some in character banter during missions and one of the other teammates was initially confused as hell by it and then after it was explained kept complaining about how weird it was for people to chat in character. It may or may not have been the same team that included a Blaster with Whirlwind always running who would charge into each new spawn and scatter them everywhere and then get faceplanted more often than not. Sort of annoying, but also sort of hilarious.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tubbius on October 16, 2014, 05:14:30 PM
Justice was my home.  :)

Also, the community college where I work is throwing a costume contest for Halloween.

It hit me hard inside when I saw those words yesterday.  :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on October 16, 2014, 05:22:54 PM
I played mainly on Liberty, but had characters on almost every server.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on October 16, 2014, 05:55:39 PM
Virtue was technically my "home" server for heroes, and Infinity for villains, but in practice I spent time on all the servers pretty frequently. To be honest, I never saw much evidence of the server cultures or server rivalries...most everyone I played with was fun, friendly and helpful no matter where I was. (And those very few that weren't didn't seem confined to one server, more's the pity.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Jorge Firebomb on October 16, 2014, 06:17:46 PM
It's kind of funny, the only reason I know what server I played on is because I still have the game installed on my old PC, and that includes the "playerslot.txt" file. I know later on in the game's life, a friend of mine had said he kind of wished we were on a different server (can't remember which one) because they seemed more active or something, I don't remember the exact details.

I doubt anybody would remember me, because I played early on and never hit max level with anybody, but I had a tanker named (of all things) Stoic Defender and a stalker named Timonia as my highest characters. My tanker was supposed to be a guy with good martial arts skills and an indomitable will, but at launch the best powerset combination to fit that theme seemed to be energy melee (representing using ki to power his attacks) and invulnerability. If I was able to remake him now, I'd probably use willpower and street justice instead.

Man I hope I get to remake that character, I really liked him. My stalker would remain energy melee and regen because that just fits the concept so well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on October 16, 2014, 06:19:44 PM
As long as it brings me food, the server's name isn't relevant.

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=carolinaepicurean.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F05%2Frestaurant-server.jpg)










 :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on October 16, 2014, 06:21:53 PM
I only played on Triumph and learned how to adapt for a mostly solo game play. When I decided to go to freedom in the Twilight months, I almost had a brain aneurysm seeing how many people are online even at odd hours (the number of people on Freedom at odd hours would still be more people on Triumph at peak hours) I thought to myself, "so this is where the MMO part I was missing is"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on October 16, 2014, 06:23:57 PM
Virtue was my main server, although I spent time on a number of other server!

Started on Pinnacle but migrated to Virtue after finding an RP SG
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on October 16, 2014, 06:48:49 PM
I guess a lot depends on what the image looks like - is it the image of the final with all servers or is it each seperate server. How quickly could the server be running again - honestly hardware wise in a week or less - an all nighter could likely get it up in one day. What I would do after that is to immediately proceed into an open Beta period.

Then while it is being play tested you write the interface and launcher and build the accounting system. This does a lot of good things - gets interest back - gets players flooding in - free advertising and maybe sponsors! Once the game is stable and running fine and all is in place a full Pre-Launch day and account purchasing.  After the short Pre-Launch - you fire it up for production. I personally see a timeline of closing the deal to Beta testing - 1 week to 1 month. Then a 3-4 month period while accounting is being set.

I would say full production in 3-4 months roughly. Server images are not hard to load - that is what they were made to do. Setting up a long term infrastructure takes longer but that is why you have a Beta period to work out the bugs.

Amen.

Azrael.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Klendarin on October 16, 2014, 07:21:25 PM
Justice was my home.  :)

Also, the community college where I work is throwing a costume contest for Halloween.

It hit me hard inside when I saw those words yesterday.  :(

Actually, what got me last night was watching the Peanuts Halloween special with the kids and hearing Charlie Brown say "I got a rock..."  The Halloween event was always my favorite.  :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on October 16, 2014, 07:41:57 PM
Actually, what got me last night was watching the Peanuts Halloween special with the kids and hearing Charlie Brown say "I got a rock..."  The Halloween event was always my favorite.  :(

Funniest thing I did with a group I was in was a STF, everyone had a "Rock" temp power and we got LR low enough and everyone threw a rock at him killing him. Then we took that concept into RV and got someone down to near death, BU+Aim and threw rocks at them taking them out.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on October 16, 2014, 07:48:18 PM
My 50's were on Infinity. But, I had characters scattered across all the servers, except for Freedom.

The SG I was in that I liked the most (Bouquet of Roses) was on Champion.

The character concept that I liked the best (Serenity Dark) was on Guardian.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlphaFerret on October 16, 2014, 10:46:24 PM
My primary server was Champion.  However, I did have a lot of redside on Pinnacle, along with 5-8 toons on both Freedom and Virtue.....sometimes you wanted to ensure that you could find a team.
Champion had some real nice groups.  Our small sg, Agents of Chaos, still keeps in touch and plays other games together.  Hopefully all of us Champion server heroes and villains get a chance to meet up in Paragon once again;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackshear on October 16, 2014, 11:11:43 PM
Started out in Champion in late 2007, where we had a semi-RP SG.  I rolled a few toons on Triumph, mostly to run with PUGs and test builds before rolling the "real" versions on Champion.

In 2009 the group of people I was playing with largely jumped to CO.  A few of them even bought lifetime memberships, for reasons I will never understand.  I tried CO along with them, but didn't care for it and came galloping back to CoH.  Unfortunately, my SG was gutted and it didn't look like it was going to ever make a comeback.  I decided RP was for me, so I started rolling toons on Virtue, and there I stayed until the game folded.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: TheBeatnik on October 16, 2014, 11:42:43 PM
My very first character was created on Infinity, but before long I recreated him on Virtue, where he became my signature main. Which led to a sadly appropriate moment on closedown night- as the final minutes approached, I was in Gemini Park (through the magic of Ouroboros) listening to The Cape while taking every chance to spend time with characters I'd known for years. In the last 3 minutes, I got disconnected, couldn't get back onto Virtue, and wound up back on Infinity, on that very first character, flying over a deserted King's Row looking for other players. That's my final memory of the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MegaWatt on October 17, 2014, 02:09:15 AM
I dont even remember what city i started on - i played shortly after launch and i am ashamed to say quit until CoV came out....then i played on Virtue for a loooong time after that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brightfires on October 17, 2014, 02:33:33 AM
Liberty was always my "home server", though I also had a few characters that I played pretty often on Virtue and Union... Of the three, I was by far the most comfortable with the quieter community on Liberty.

Union had some interesting people to chat with, but I found myself mostly soloing as far as game-play went when I was there. It was a Euro server and I'm in Seattle, so there were just never many people on when I was. That made it very easy to pretend that Adammas and Niaera had the City to themselves, which had a certain appeal.

Virtue... Well, if I'm being completely honest about it, I didn't care for Virtue at all. I know many of you loved the place, but I found it crowded and a little too goofy. Those times when I tried to team with non-roleplayers, I ended up with total nutballs who were more about doing stupid things "for the LOLs" than actually playing the game. When I teamed with roleplayers, it wasn't much better. They'd stand around chatting in their SG channels or private groups (Even when there were others on the team who weren't in the SG or members of those groups, and so couldn't join in-) for long stretches of time, more or less ignoring anyone else who happened to be there. After the fourth or fifth time in row where I ended up spending half an hour standing around the lobby of an office building doing absolutely nothing but watching other people emote at each other, I sort-of swore off of teaming on Virtue, too. It's not my place to tell anyone who liked the Virtue culture that they were having BadWrongFun, but it wasn't my cup of tea.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on October 17, 2014, 03:14:10 AM
First Justice.. and then Virtue.. Wife played on Victory and then Freedom
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: amrobinson on October 17, 2014, 04:21:34 AM
Started on Infinity, because it sounded cool.

Moved to Champion later, when I figured out it was actually in my time zone. Did over a third of my gaming there.

Finally moved to Freedom when players were starting to getting scarcer, and I really got into pugging.

Spent most of the time in the last few months hanging out in Dark Astoria and running incarnate missions.



Anyone out there remember Kid Shockwave, my elec/en/elec blaster?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on October 17, 2014, 12:36:19 PM
Started on Infinity, because it sounded cool.

Moved to Champion later, when I figured out it was actually in my time zone. Did over a third of my gaming there.

Finally moved to Freedom when players were starting to getting scarcer, and I really got into pugging.

Spent most of the time in the last few months hanging out in Dark Astoria and running incarnate missions.



Anyone out there remember Kid Shockwave, my elec/en/elec blaster?

Wow, I thought I was the only one representin' Freedom around here... ;)

Yeah, if doing a PuG at any time of the day was your thing (was certainly mine!), then Freedom was the place to be! :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 17, 2014, 02:03:16 PM
I played on Virtue, Freedom and Exalted occasionally.

I started on Champion but the huge nerf bat of ED saw our 50 person SG drop to 3, then 2 and finally me. So I left for Virtue about a year after ED.

When people discuss the reason for the death of CoH - the ED massacre is among one of the huge reasons. I will agree, switching to IO's was a good idea but to swing the nerf hammer without a solid concrete system ready to take its place was a foolish idea. I know personally of over 40 people who left.

I tried to get some to try it after the IO system was in place and they just said - they like to nerf too much - not coming back. It really was soul destroying at the time and after a month our so - I took a 3 month break myself - still paid just had to get away from the Jack Emmert style of communication.

I have been playing several other games lately and you know what I found missing? The other games have no soul. There is little reward for being heroic. In fact most games it is far more rewarding to kill others, destroy the things they have built and to generally be a complete asshat. I don't engage in the taunting or other nonsense and don't care if the other person does, but it lacks depth. No benefit for being kind or for helping someone else. The games are a shallow reflection of our society.

In CoH you can be - an Angel healing and buffing lower level players without being in their team. You can pull villians away from your teammates, you can complete quests to try and stop evil and to have an outcome based on decisions you made. There is a certain pureness to the game - that nothing else comes close to. In many ways it calls to the positive side of people instead of rewarding the negative.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on October 17, 2014, 02:41:28 PM
I played on Virtue, Freedom and Exalted occasionally.


In CoH you can be - an Angel healing and buffing lower level players without being in their team. You can pull villians away from your teammates, you can complete quests to try and stop evil and to have an outcome based on decisions you made. There is a certain pureness to the game - that nothing else comes close to. In many ways it calls to the positive side of people instead of rewarding the negative.

unless "you can do something for me."  Give me gold, give me loot, give me heal."  go away.  God forbid you ask a question. Want in the supergroup?  Can you commit to 20 hours a week and pay gold gold gold gold? Go away.

Sadly no thanks.  The element was in coh too, but damn getting 2-8 strangers together for a mission or an afternoon was easy and fun.  Oh I miss coh, the supergroup and the strangers too Today...

I could not make elder scrolls online work for me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on October 17, 2014, 02:49:02 PM
I played on Virtue, Freedom and Exalted occasionally.

I started on Champion but the huge nerf bat of ED saw our 50 person SG drop to 3, then 2 and finally me. So I left for Virtue about a year after ED.

When people discuss the reason for the death of CoH - the ED massacre is among one of the huge reasons. I will agree, switching to IO's was a good idea but to swing the nerf hammer without a solid concrete system ready to take its place was a foolish idea. I know personally of over 40 people who left.

I tried to get some to try it after the IO system was in place and they just said - they like to nerf too much - not coming back. It really was soul destroying at the time and after a month our so - I took a 3 month break myself - still paid just had to get away from the Jack Emmert style of communication.

I have been playing several other games lately and you know what I found missing? The other games have no soul. There is little reward for being heroic. In fact most games it is far more rewarding to kill others, destroy the things they have built and to generally be a complete asshat. I don't engage in the taunting or other nonsense and don't care if the other person does, but it lacks depth. No benefit for being kind or for helping someone else. The games are a shallow reflection of our society.

In CoH you can be - an Angel healing and buffing lower level players without being in their team. You can pull villians away from your teammates, you can complete quests to try and stop evil and to have an outcome based on decisions you made. There is a certain pureness to the game - that nothing else comes close to. In many ways it calls to the positive side of people instead of rewarding the negative.

Well said.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: robo40 on October 17, 2014, 05:26:55 PM
Agreed on Emmert communication and ED.  The only time I lapsed play from Beta to shutdown was due to ED and the ridiculous assertion that "game integrity" mattered more than player enjoyment.  Didn't trust them for a while.  But in the end, turned out to far and away be the best online environment I've ever enjoyed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ShadowMokadara on October 17, 2014, 06:03:08 PM
I played on Virtue, Freedom and Exalted occasionally.

I started on Champion but the huge nerf bat of ED saw our 50 person SG drop to 3, then 2 and finally me. So I left for Virtue about a year after ED.

When people discuss the reason for the death of CoH - the ED massacre is among one of the huge reasons. I will agree, switching to IO's was a good idea but to swing the nerf hammer without a solid concrete system ready to take its place was a foolish idea. I know personally of over 40 people who left.

I tried to get some to try it after the IO system was in place and they just said - they like to nerf too much - not coming back. It really was soul destroying at the time and after a month our so - I took a 3 month break myself - still paid just had to get away from the Jack Emmert style of communication.

Feel free to throw things at me, but I believe ED was 100% necessary to move the game forward. IOs are what made builds way more complex and fun. However, I think the problem with ED was as you said, Jack Emmert's terrible communication.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on October 17, 2014, 06:23:49 PM
I started out on Guardian, but moved to Freedom in 2005. I would visit Guardian every now and then, but it was seriously dead every time I went after 2010. RIGHT before the announcement..like a week before ... I logged onto my one Guardian toon...and stood there for nearly 30 mins in Atlas before seeing anyone :(


I never regretted moving to Freedom... made some great friends... learned a lot about builds..and that's where I learned about base building and marketeering :)


I absolutely loved ED... it made sense to me. Then when IOs came... it made even more sense. Of all the people I knew on Freedom...none quit because of ED...sure a few griped and threatened to quit, but none actually did. I played with the same core group of people from 2005 to 2010. I did have a friend quit in late 2006 because he didn't want CoV but did want base access etc... :( He did come back in 2009 though until the game shut down.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on October 17, 2014, 06:45:44 PM
ED was necessary.  IOs were fantastic.

The problem was that ED should NOT have been pushed out until the IO system was ready.

At the very least, it should have been said that ED was a first step being taken with for a new
system that was coming soon.

But, since they didn't want to "let the cat out of the bag" about the IO system, all the players saw
was a game-wide massive nerf for no apparent reason, and all the messages from the powers that
be was "tough noogies".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JennSpace on October 17, 2014, 06:58:47 PM
I started playing as a vilain back when City of Vilains came out but after a while, I stopped ravaging the city because this didn't feel right, nor did it ever feel right, to be honest... Jenn is an heroine in her heart and when I bought City of Heroes, I played on Champion for many years. During the f2p year or so, I switched to Exalted but I spent most of my 4000+ hours on Champion.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 17, 2014, 07:19:43 PM
ED was necessary and it was POORLY implemented. There were other factors that were implemented at the same time, very upsetting changes. Controllers couldn't affect as many foes in a spawn. Tanks couldn't taunt as many foes which really got teammates killed. If that wasn't enough the  duration of these effects was reduced and the recharge times were lengthened.

In the long run, I can go along with making the changes. I still believe that if duration of mezzes of controllers were reduced, they would figure out that a crap ton enemies would soon be all over them. Tanks that could taunt big piles in hazard zones would taunt away, but the risk/reward and defense/resistances versus the extra damage would require teammates to bail them out of situations where that tank's damage wasn't enough to prevail before endurance ran out. I never like that Fire Tanks could taunt all of Crey's Folly and come out unscathed against large numbers.

Duration of effect, with recharge time, and number effected, I always thought 2 out of 3 would be plenty of nerf.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 17, 2014, 08:02:57 PM
Or they could have made the taunt power affect a greater amount of foes - but reduced your attack power recharge speed.

Now you can take a lot of aggro but are unlikely to win alone. With the help of your TEAM - you will be fine. A good balance if you want to take taunt as an aggro relief.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: skoogmik on October 17, 2014, 09:06:23 PM
I played on Virtue, Freedom and Exalted occasionally.

I started on Champion but the huge nerf bat of ED saw our 50 person SG drop to 3, then 2 and finally me. So I left for Virtue about a year after ED.


Out of curiosity, which of the Champion Server's SGs were you in?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 17, 2014, 10:20:19 PM
ED was necessary and it was POORLY implemented. There were other factors that were implemented at the same time, very upsetting changes. Controllers couldn't affect as many foes in a spawn. Tanks couldn't taunt as many foes which really got teammates killed. If that wasn't enough the  duration of these effects was reduced and the recharge times were lengthened.

In the long run, I can go along with making the changes. I still believe that if duration of mezzes of controllers were reduced, they would figure out that a crap ton enemies would soon be all over them. Tanks that could taunt big piles in hazard zones would taunt away, but the risk/reward and defense/resistances versus the extra damage would require teammates to bail them out of situations where that tank's damage wasn't enough to prevail before endurance ran out. I never like that Fire Tanks could taunt all of Crey's Folly and come out unscathed against large numbers.

Duration of effect, with recharge time, and number effected, I always thought 2 out of 3 would be plenty of nerf.

If buffs debuffs and crowd control were all nerfed to much the game tough would just turn into a holy trinity grindfest though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 17, 2014, 10:26:15 PM
Or they could have made the taunt power affect a greater amount of foes - but reduced your attack power recharge speed.

Now you can take a lot of aggro but are unlikely to win alone. With the help of your TEAM - you will be fine. A good balance if you want to take taunt as an aggro relief.

I agree with you; there were many ways to balance the ATs so there were no monolithic indestructible beasts. Do we want tanks to taunt as many spawns as they can, but there should be caveats so they don't solo all of Crey's Folly. We want mezzers to mezz a large number but perma-hold making every fight a cake-walk is no challenge. The GDF nerfs at the time of the ED nerfs was doubly onerous. In my book they were worse. Duraction, recharge, and number affected. At most  2 out of 3 would be bearable.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 17, 2014, 10:34:36 PM
No, I am not advocating nerfing mezzes and taunts, I am saying with moderate balancing, we can have taunt get the aggro on sizable  groups, and controllers mezz good sized groups. Balancing considerations to keep overachiever solo play is what I would back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JennSpace on October 17, 2014, 10:38:32 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on October 17, 2014, 11:39:54 PM
ED was necessary.  IOs were fantastic.

The problem was that ED should NOT have been pushed out until the IO system was ready.

ED was necessary for PvP, which turned out to be unnecessary in the long run.

IOs were great.

The way ED was promoted was an insult to the intelligence of the player base.  "We're going to give you more slotting options by taking away some of your slotting options!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 18, 2014, 12:25:57 AM
ED was necessary for PvP, which turned out to be unnecessary in the long run.

IOs were great.

The way ED was promoted was an insult to the intelligence of the player base.  "We're going to give you more slotting options by taking away some of your slotting options!"

It'd be to late and a poor decision though to move the game back to ED if we got it back though.  IO's would probably become largely unused and everyone would be forced into endless hamidon raiding :/.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on October 18, 2014, 01:45:15 AM
The problem wasnt ED.. nor was it the fact that the IO system wasnt in place.. it was the flat out LIE that Emmert told the community.. THAT was the issue..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 18, 2014, 02:09:13 AM
ED was necessary and it was POORLY implemented. There were other factors that were implemented at the same time, very upsetting changes. Controllers couldn't affect as many foes in a spawn. Tanks couldn't taunt as many foes which really got teammates killed. If that wasn't enough the  duration of these effects was reduced and the recharge times were lengthened.

In the long run, I can go along with making the changes. I still believe that if duration of mezzes of controllers were reduced, they would figure out that a crap ton enemies would soon be all over them. Tanks that could taunt big piles in hazard zones would taunt away, but the risk/reward and defense/resistances versus the extra damage would require teammates to bail them out of situations where that tank's damage wasn't enough to prevail before endurance ran out. I never like that Fire Tanks could taunt all of Crey's Folly and come out unscathed against large numbers.

Duration of effect, with recharge time, and number effected, I always thought 2 out of 3 would be plenty of nerf.
While it's not completely accurate back then i was fond of saying "If the Devs are given two different options that could be used to nerf a power set to bring it more in line with the other sets instead of choosing one or the other they'd just do both at once." That's not completely true, but in some cases i really think it was pretty accurate. To be fair it also happened at a time when they still didn't have a really good understanding of how combat worked from a mechanical and numerical standpoint.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 18, 2014, 02:16:55 AM
ED was necessary for PvP, which turned out to be unnecessary in the long run.

IOs were great.

The way ED was promoted was an insult to the intelligence of the player base.  "We're going to give you more slotting options by taking away some of your slotting options!"
ED was at least as necessary for the PvE game in my opinion. Although in my opinion something that resembled more of a diminishing returns slope would've been preferred to the "1) good, 2) good, 3) almost as good, 4+) why did you even bother?" cliff we received.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on October 18, 2014, 02:41:11 AM
ED...

I just didn't care for the acronym...

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 18, 2014, 03:12:18 AM
ED...

I just didn't care for the acronym...
But it was so unintentionally apt.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on October 18, 2014, 04:09:08 AM
ED was at least as necessary for the PvE game in my opinion.

How do you figure?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on October 18, 2014, 04:39:42 AM
ED was at least as necessary for the PvE game in my opinion. Although in my opinion something that resembled more of a diminishing returns slope would've been preferred to the "1) good, 2) good, 3) almost as good, 4+) why did you even bother?" cliff we received.

Issue with ED even after the fact there was no point in slotting anything in 99% of the powers other than acc/rch/damg/end
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on October 18, 2014, 05:00:42 AM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 18, 2014, 05:38:06 AM
Issue with ED even after the fact there was no point in slotting anything in 99% of the powers other than acc/rch/damg/end

It's why I loved my Elec/Nrg blaster. Boost Range and Power Boost made that type of slotting all the more useful.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on October 18, 2014, 02:30:03 PM
 i think its hilarious that years later people are still upset over it.. ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on October 18, 2014, 03:06:07 PM
ED...

I just didn't care for the acronym...
I joined after ED (I know it was after CoV came on as I bought the dual pack at wallyworld), so I have no feelings about the ED nerf hammer comin down. I DO remember that I thought this "ED" guy must be a real asshat as everyone seemed to hate him.

IIRC, I "heard" the reason for ED was to keep scrappers/blasters from one slotting acc and 5 slotting dmg in their main attacks as the damage (especially with BU+AIM) would wreck AVs. At least, that's what I heard. Not sure if it really ruined anything for me cuz either as I joined or shortly after, the IO sets were in effect and I remember thinking "great, something NEW to have to learn to play this game". Of course, once I got MIDs, that was some happy times. I still plan out my toons ever hoping to play CoX again.

Here's to the OCT 2nd update and to (a hopeful) Xmas launch! (disclaimer: I am NOT affiliated with anyone of importance in these negotiations)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on October 18, 2014, 03:29:55 PM
How do you figure?

I've been a game designer, coding for a UO shard for a lot of years, and I can tell you the situation from the point of view of the developers:

They designed a game, tried to balance it, with a reasonable balance between risk, reward, and fun. The amount of work that you have to do before players start really testing it, is huge. By the time that you really get a good idea of how things work out, a lot of stuff has been built and used by a lot of players. So, you kind of have to guess how the game will play out, how things will balance, etc.

This being pretty far back in MMORPG history, they didn't have all that many examples to look at, so they had to guess. Guess how players will play, guess how players will select powers and slot them and use (or not use) them (remember how long it took them to fix Fear powers, and I think that they've only fixed one Phase power).

Now, a year or more into the game, they see that.... they guess well on some things, and not so well on others. The game is doing okay, but there are some clear balance issues. Basically, they did not anticipate, or want, Tanks herding 200 Wolves and jumping into Dumpsters. Leaving aside the aggro and target caps that they put in, they never wanted Tanks to be able to do that, defensively. Or Blasters to 1-shot most mobs by 6-slotting with Damage, 6-slotting Hasten, Aim, and Build-Up, and always being at the damage cap. So, the game was not playing the way that they thought was good.

Now, at this point, they absolutely have to change some things. Some options are:
1: Their own vision of how the game plays. Frankly, they did this to some degree, but I agree with them that accepting Tanks who can go AFK in the middle of 100 even-con mobs is not acceptable game balance.
2: Some major game design changes, such as the more mobs are attacking you, the more likely they are to hit you (you can dodge a couple of guys shooting at you, but you can't dodge 100 with the same level of ability), or some other way to limit defenses. And then they'd have to do something about the damage-capped Blasters. And about Controllers. And about... forget it. Too many changes, and you get back to the starting problem: you're guessing how things will work.
3: Powerset balances. This actually did happen, it was called the GDN (Global Defense Nerf). I agreed with it also, and you can see that even now with just SOs, characters can still be built to play at +6/x2 (maybe even higher), and IMO that is clearly enough defense considering how they wanted the game to play.
4: Slotting balances, otherwise known as ED. I don't really agree with the "drop off a cliff" curve that they used, but the concept is the best thing that they could have done, for one simple reason: it forced the players to slot powers more like the Devs expected the powers to be slotted when they balanced them. Given that the design and balance of the powers took months if not years, and it would take months if not years to rebalance powers so that the game plays with more balance in risk-reward-fun, and it takes a lot less time to put in ED, clearly some form of ED was the best solution.

I know that players at the time were all like "But why do we have to play the game the way YOU want us to play it!!", but that misses a major point: The reason that you have to play the game the way the Devs envision it, or at least be strongly influenced to play it, is because that's how the Devs designed the game and balanced the NPC threat, the rewards, the missions, etc. ED is a lot smaller change than re-balancing everything else around the realization that min-maxing with 5-6 Damage SOs, or Resist SOs (with Stamina 6-slotted). The game at the time was unbalanced, and even most of the players who complained about the solution at least were willing to admit the problem. What they did not see was that from the Dev side, putting in the solutions that the players wanted were more of a gamble, and a lot more work. It didn't make sense for them to do a lot of extra work with less expectation of a successful balancing adjustment, when they could put in the relatively-simple ED.

And if they had explained this clearly at the time, I think that it would have ended up pretty much a non-issue.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 18, 2014, 03:54:03 PM
EDIT: Massive wall of off-topic text removed.

ED hurt badly but it hit only a few months after I started the game. I only had to break about 5-6 months of habits. (not 17-18 months as those who played from launch). ED turned my Class Cannon into a Class Water Cannon with only lowered mob accuracy and a global end reduction to powers for balancing back in the players' favor.

There's no better proof how great CoH's core gameplay is than the numbers of us that stayed and thrived after ED hit.

What was the distance between Issue 6 and Issue 9? 15-18 months? I remember after CoV launched it was a really long time before Issue 7 landed with Grandville, Electric Melee/Armor, etc.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 18, 2014, 04:08:30 PM
How do you figure?
Mostly because it did help reduce the rather extreme variation in effective power level among builds and powersets, and balance is important even in PvE. Honestly i don't have the inclination to retread the ground that was covered years ago in discussing why ED was a good idea, regardless of how well it was initially presented and implemented, and i'm not sure where to find the links at this point. Actually blacksly already covered the basics fairly well, so i'll defer to their post.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on October 18, 2014, 04:34:55 PM
All MMO's have a system like ED in place.  Unless CoH is your first MMO (Which I know for some it is) there is no reason to really be all THAT surprised about ED when they added it.  It was a bit of a strange diminished returns system but that's all it was.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 18, 2014, 04:51:19 PM
All MMO's have a system like ED in place.  Unless CoH is your first MMO (Which I know for some it is) there is no reason to really be all THAT surprised about ED when they added it.  It was a bit of a strange diminished returns system but that's all it was.

Yeah, yer right but it was DIFFERENT.
"And I don't like things that are different"
Mr. Plinkett

j/k
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 18, 2014, 08:15:46 PM
All MMO's have a system like ED in place.  Unless CoH is your first MMO (Which I know for some it is) there is no reason to really be all THAT surprised about ED when they added it.  It was a bit of a strange diminished returns system but that's all it was.

ED wasn't the problem, the lies were the problem.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 18, 2014, 08:17:51 PM
ED wasn't the problem, the lies were the problem.

They probably should have just been honest that they didn't want people ignoring all the buff sets, debuff sets and CC because they were capping defense and only using kins and empaths, or only using damage enhancements or spending all day raiding hamidon.  The devs, from what someone told me, wanted people to experiment more instead of just building only a very small portion of potential character combinations.  If they were more honest that they felt people were ignoring all the options and they were putting ED in to make people try other things, well.....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on October 18, 2014, 08:48:05 PM
I've been a game designer, coding for a UO shard for a lot of years, and I can tell you the situation from the point of view of the developers:

They designed a game, tried to balance it, with a reasonable balance between risk, reward, and fun. The amount of work that you have to do before players start really testing it, is huge. By the time that you really get a good idea of how things work out, a lot of stuff has been built and used by a lot of players. So, you kind of have to guess how the game will play out, how things will balance, etc.

This being pretty far back in MMORPG history, they didn't have all that many examples to look at, so they had to guess. Guess how players will play, guess how players will select powers and slot them and use (or not use) them (remember how long it took them to fix Fear powers, and I think that they've only fixed one Phase power).

Now, a year or more into the game, they see that.... they guess well on some things, and not so well on others. The game is doing okay, but there are some clear balance issues. Basically, they did not anticipate, or want, Tanks herding 200 Wolves and jumping into Dumpsters. Leaving aside the aggro and target caps that they put in, they never wanted Tanks to be able to do that, defensively. Or Blasters to 1-shot most mobs by 6-slotting with Damage, 6-slotting Hasten, Aim, and Build-Up, and always being at the damage cap. So, the game was not playing the way that they thought was good.

Now, at this point, they absolutely have to change some things. Some options are:
1: Their own vision of how the game plays. Frankly, they did this to some degree, but I agree with them that accepting Tanks who can go AFK in the middle of 100 even-con mobs is not acceptable game balance.
2: Some major game design changes, such as the more mobs are attacking you, the more likely they are to hit you (you can dodge a couple of guys shooting at you, but you can't dodge 100 with the same level of ability), or some other way to limit defenses. And then they'd have to do something about the damage-capped Blasters. And about Controllers. And about... forget it. Too many changes, and you get back to the starting problem: you're guessing how things will work.
3: Powerset balances. This actually did happen, it was called the GDN (Global Defense Nerf). I agreed with it also, and you can see that even now with just SOs, characters can still be built to play at +6/x2 (maybe even higher), and IMO that is clearly enough defense considering how they wanted the game to play.
4: Slotting balances, otherwise known as ED. I don't really agree with the "drop off a cliff" curve that they used, but the concept is the best thing that they could have done, for one simple reason: it forced the players to slot powers more like the Devs expected the powers to be slotted when they balanced them. Given that the design and balance of the powers took months if not years, and it would take months if not years to rebalance powers so that the game plays with more balance in risk-reward-fun, and it takes a lot less time to put in ED, clearly some form of ED was the best solution.

I know that players at the time were all like "But why do we have to play the game the way YOU want us to play it!!", but that misses a major point: The reason that you have to play the game the way the Devs envision it, or at least be strongly influenced to play it, is because that's how the Devs designed the game and balanced the NPC threat, the rewards, the missions, etc. ED is a lot smaller change than re-balancing everything else around the realization that min-maxing with 5-6 Damage SOs, or Resist SOs (with Stamina 6-slotted). The game at the time was unbalanced, and even most of the players who complained about the solution at least were willing to admit the problem. What they did not see was that from the Dev side, putting in the solutions that the players wanted were more of a gamble, and a lot more work. It didn't make sense for them to do a lot of extra work with less expectation of a successful balancing adjustment, when they could put in the relatively-simple ED.

And if they had explained this clearly at the time, I think that it would have ended up pretty much a non-issue.

I don't deny any of that, but considering this is a superhero game and the idea is to be powerful I'd ask why they couldn't have done any or all of the following instead:

1) Don't change the existing villain difficulty, but make them worth less XP
2) Make spawn groups bigger
3) Make newer villain groups tougher and/or more accurate
4) Buff the under-performing sets

I can see the reasons behind ED, mechanically speaking.  But business-wise I didn't like being treated like an idiot, and from an RPG perspective I didn't like to see superheroes drained of their powers for no reason besides they were too super.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 18, 2014, 08:52:07 PM
They probably should have just been honest that they didn't want people ignoring all the buff sets, debuff sets and CC because they were capping defense and only using kins and empaths, or only using damage enhancements or spending all day raiding hamidon.  The devs, from what someone told me, wanted people to experiment more instead of just building only a very small portion of potential character combinations.  If they were more honest that they felt people were ignoring all the options and they were putting ED in to make people try other things, well.....

The whole thing was a complete and utter PR disaster, and following it up with the Purple Nerf just made things worse.  ED, the technology, was needed.  But when it came out it was incomplete... They only did half the job and gutted everyone's toons and didn't give players the other half, which was IO's, for several years later...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Jorge Firebomb on October 18, 2014, 09:10:56 PM
I thankfully wasn't very high level when the ED nerf came along, despite playing from launch. I think I was in my 30s on my highest level character. I was just very bad at focusing on one character and leveling, so I had a lot of low level characters and mostly just did missions with friends who were even lower level than I was, so I spent a lot of time mentoring and not really earning XP. From my perspective, the ED nerf barely registered, as I had never had Hami-Os or six resist IOs in temporary invulnerability or anything like that. I think that the introduction of IOs and sets should have happened at the same time as the ED nerf, because I think once the sets were available the game was in a much better spot than before ED.

It's a shame they weren't able to properly communicate the changes to the players, and an even bigger shame that the IOs and sets were not implemented at the same time as ED. At least if the game comes back in maintenance mode, you won't have to worry about any sudden, poorly-explained nerfs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on October 18, 2014, 09:50:30 PM
I'm kinda glad I missed the whole ED kerfuffle.  I didn't start until very late Issue 16 (only a few weeks before Issue 17 landed), so I missed ED by years.  I never played a version without it (and, in fact, I couldn't have, since the first Mac version also was several years after ED).

Living in a post-ED world, my characters have never felt weak or useless (and, in fact, I felt more powerful with mid-game CoH characters than I've ever felt with endgame characters on any other MMO - one of the reasons I miss it so), so I wonder what those pre-ED days were like.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on October 18, 2014, 10:42:16 PM
I don't deny any of that, but considering this is a superhero game and the idea is to be powerful I'd ask why they couldn't have done any or all of the following instead:

1) Don't change the existing villain difficulty, but make them worth less XP
2) Make spawn groups bigger
3) Make newer villain groups tougher and/or more accurate
4) Buff the under-performing sets

I can see the reasons behind ED, mechanically speaking.  But business-wise I didn't like being treated like an idiot, and from an RPG perspective I didn't like to see superheroes drained of their powers for no reason besides they were too super.

1: That doesn't address the BALANCE issue between the uber min-maxed characters and the normal ones. Believe me, some characters back then were pretty weak to play with. Making mobs worth less XP would hurt everyone, but the min-max builds would survive it a lot better than the average builds.

2: That also doesn't address the same issue. Make spawns bigger and the weak-average characters get hurt, while the uber characters just say "thank you for giving me more mobs to herd to the Blaster who will Inferno them in one shot".

3: They certainly could have added mobs like Cimerorans, but it leaves those mobs with hurting the weak characters more. It also still allows characters to avoid the newer mobs and focus on killing Praetorians, Nemesis, or whatever they already could handle.

You see, the problem with solutions 1-3 is that not all characters were of the group that was so powerful that it was playing the game in ways that the Devs did not wish to see. A lot of characters were not doing that, and back then a lot of sets were pretty weak, for whatever reasons. Since then, your solution #4 has been implemented a lot, but back then SR sucked, Ice Armor did also, I think that Dark Armor was still in the suck category, most Blasters were terrible except when used on herding teams (after the Smoke Grenade fix), etc. You couldn't implement solutions to just make the mobs harder, or you would hurt the newbie players more than the min-maxing power gamers.

Now, #4 is certainly something to do. But it basically ignores the problem, because it doesn't do anything about the overpowered characters herding and nuking 200 mobs at a time. So it's a good point, but it's a completely different issue from the balance problem between the min-maxed character and the average-weak ones. At the time, some version of ED seemed like the best solution. I don't think too many players, even those with game design experience, agreed too much with the exact type of diminishing returns used, and nobody liked how it was described and justified by the Devs, but it was not overall too bad a solution. And I can even get behind releasing it while still working on the other part of the balance (adding IOs), because of how long it took to create the IO system.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on October 19, 2014, 12:23:44 AM
1: That doesn't address the BALANCE issue between the uber min-maxed characters and the normal ones. Believe me, some characters back then were pretty weak to play with. Making mobs worth less XP would hurt everyone, but the min-max builds would survive it a lot better than the average builds.

2: That also doesn't address the same issue. Make spawns bigger and the weak-average characters get hurt, while the uber characters just say "thank you for giving me more mobs to herd to the Blaster who will Inferno them in one shot".

3: They certainly could have added mobs like Cimerorans, but it leaves those mobs with hurting the weak characters more. It also still allows characters to avoid the newer mobs and focus on killing Praetorians, Nemesis, or whatever they already could handle.

You see, the problem with solutions 1-3 is that not all characters were of the group that was so powerful that it was playing the game in ways that the Devs did not wish to see. A lot of characters were not doing that, and back then a lot of sets were pretty weak, for whatever reasons. Since then, your solution #4 has been implemented a lot, but back then SR sucked, Ice Armor did also, I think that Dark Armor was still in the suck category, most Blasters were terrible except when used on herding teams (after the Smoke Grenade fix), etc. You couldn't implement solutions to just make the mobs harder, or you would hurt the newbie players more than the min-maxing power gamers.

Now, #4 is certainly something to do. But it basically ignores the problem, because it doesn't do anything about the overpowered characters herding and nuking 200 mobs at a time. So it's a good point, but it's a completely different issue from the balance problem between the min-maxed character and the average-weak ones. At the time, some version of ED seemed like the best solution. I don't think too many players, even those with game design experience, agreed too much with the exact type of diminishing returns used, and nobody liked how it was described and justified by the Devs, but it was not overall too bad a solution. And I can even get behind releasing it while still working on the other part of the balance (adding IOs), because of how long it took to create the IO system.

1) People will always find a way to min/max.  That's a game within a game to some players.  And how one person min/maxes does not impact another player's PvE experience
2) Fair point, but so could multiple tanks and multiple blasters after ED.
3) That goes back to idea #1.  Sure they could go back, but get slower advancement.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 19, 2014, 12:45:16 AM
1) People will always find a way to min/max.  That's a game within a game to some players.  And how one person min/maxes does not impact another player's PvE experience
2) Fair point, but so could multiple tanks and multiple blasters after ED.
3) That goes back to idea #1.  Sure they could go back, but get slower advancement.
1) ED reduced the difference in performance between min/maxed and average characters; the other solution that comes to mind would've been drastically reducing enhancement values. And yes, unless everyone solos having certain character builds' performance be many times greater than another player's does affect PvE experience on several levels.
2) By a greatly reduced margin.
3) Sort of sabotages the whole superheroic game experience. Reducing the difference between optimal and average builds was a much better solution overall.

ED was an example of how to go about doing the right thing the wrong way. In the end i think it greatly improved the game despite being poorly handled in the beginning. i was more irritated that only Controllers received any compensation for the multiple pet nerf. The "well Controllers are a pet class and Defender's aren't" justification always sounded like bullshit to me since Controllers were always more about control than pets and not every set even had pets. And while i'm at it i could also go into everything wrong with the design of Petrifying Gaze even before it also got hit with the global control nerf. Seriously, even at shutdown it was still the overall worst primary set power from a performance standpoint.  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 19, 2014, 01:19:10 AM
1) ED reduced the difference in performance between min/maxed and average characters; the other solution that comes to mind would've been drastically reducing enhancement values. And yes, unless everyone solos having certain character builds' performance be many times greater than another player's does affect PvE experience on several levels.
2) By a greatly reduced margin.
3) Sort of sabotages the whole superheroic game experience. Reducing the difference between optimal and average builds was a much better solution overall.

ED was an example of how to go about doing the right thing the wrong way. In the end i think it greatly improved the game despite being poorly handled in the beginning. i was more irritated that only Controllers received any compensation for the multiple pet nerf. The "well Controllers are a pet class and Defender's aren't" justification always sounded like bullshit to me since Controllers were always more about control than pets and not every set even had pets. And while i'm at it i could also go into everything wrong with the design of Petrifying Gaze even before it also got hit with the global control nerf. Seriously, even at shutdown it was still the overall worst primary set power from a performance standpoint.  :P

Oh the pre-GDF/ED nerf days, when our all Defender SG strongly suggested each teammate take recall friend so that the most number of Fluffies could be teleported up to the next floor. I don't see anything over-powered at all to have half a dozen fluffies running around.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on October 19, 2014, 01:51:08 AM
And while i'm at it i could also go into everything wrong with the design of Petrifying Gaze even before it also got hit with the global control nerf. Seriously, even at shutdown it was still the overall worst primary set power from a performance standpoint.  :P

Heh, maybe (I actually doubt it, I think we can find some worse stuff if we really look hard), but even if so, it's only because Poison was only available as a secondary set. Because Paralytic Poison was the exact same power, but took longer to activate.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 19, 2014, 02:15:27 AM
Oh the pre-GDF/ED nerf days, when our all Defender SG strongly suggested each teammate take recall friend so that the most number of Fluffies could be teleported up to the next floor. I don't see anything over-powered at all to have half a dozen fluffies running around.
i was on a team fighting Jurrassik before ED (the instanced Monster version, not the open world GM), and my five Fluffies locked him down with no other sources of holds on the team. Dark Miasma with 4-5 Fluffies in tow was sometimes a little broken.

Heh, maybe (I actually doubt it, I think we can find some worse stuff if we really look hard), but even if so, it's only because Poison was only available as a secondary set. Because Paralytic Poison was the exact same power, but took longer to activate.
Ah, i only played Poison a little bit, but it seems odd to put an ST hold with no other secondary effects of any kind in a buff/debuff set. Especially when every single control set had some sort of damage and/or debuff secondary effect in their ST holds.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on October 19, 2014, 04:36:06 AM
Im still flabbergasted that with the IO system wherein you can easily shore up weaknesses and become extremely overpowered AND the Incarnate abililties..

people are still talking about ED like it just happened.. just mindblowing to me..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BraveStar on October 19, 2014, 04:49:04 AM
Im still flabbergasted that with the IO system wherein you can easily shore up weaknesses and become extremely overpowered AND the Incarnate abililties..

people are still talking about ED like it just happened.. just mindblowing to me..

LOL I was reading this and thinking something similar. Didn't IOs and particularly sets pretty much reverse everything ED did? I was never one to worry much about the exact numbers (maybe I should have), but it seemed to me that a character loaded up with sets was miles more powerful than one with SOs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on October 19, 2014, 08:03:04 AM
LOL I was reading this and thinking something similar. Didn't IOs and particularly sets pretty much reverse everything ED did? I was never one to worry much about the exact numbers (maybe I should have), but it seemed to me that a character loaded up with sets was miles more powerful than one with SOs.

Probably, the difference is that it was a lot harder to do than just six slotting damage. I don't think the Devs were against people having monsters, I just don't think they wanted them to be so easy to get and they wanted it to take a lot longer.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on October 19, 2014, 12:31:17 PM
The biggest problems with ED/GDN were:

1.  Bigger impact on some archtypes than others - tankers got hit the most.  While I could see a slight reduction in defense as needed,
the change was way too hamfisted.  And I never could see why they thought reducing my tanker's DPS was a good thing, he already hit like
a limp noodle before the change.

2.  Neither change should have been made before the introduction of IO sets.   When you see your primary character gutted, there isn't much incentive to keep playing.  I think the introduction of CoV hid the fact that they lost a lot of good players.  And definitely a lot of the good will of the player base.

3.  I didn't like that the devs never recognized that messing with tankers PRIMARY powerset was of more significance than with defense sets on other archtypes.  Even pvp was a joke in beta,  I spent more time retoggling my defenses than actually fighting.   Never tried pvp afterwords on live.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JennSpace on October 19, 2014, 04:39:17 PM
The biggest problems with ED/GDN were:

1.  Bigger impact on some archtypes than others - tankers got hit the most.  While I could see a slight reduction in defense as needed,
the change was way too hamfisted.  And I never could see why they thought reducing my tanker's DPS was a good thing, he already hit like
a limp noodle before the change.

2.  Neither change should have been made before the introduction of IO sets.   When you see your primary character gutted, there isn't much incentive to keep playing.  I think the introduction of CoV hid the fact that they lost a lot of good players.  And definitely a lot of the good will of the player base.

3.  I didn't like that the devs never recognized that messing with tankers PRIMARY powerset was of more significance than with defense sets on other archtypes.  Even pvp was a joke in beta,  I spent more time retoggling my defenses than actually fighting.   Never tried pvp afterwords on live.

1. Maybe that's because of Invulnerability but I had a tanker and I didn't see much change, I was able to solo anything before and I kept being able to solo anything after ...I just teamed with some heroes for missions that would have taken me 3 hours to solo. ;) That they made changes, as long as I'm able to do what I want to do in the game then I don't mind so much but I feel others that were hit harder by the changes!

2. Me I kept on playing because of passion but I've been eating comic books for nearly 20 years so I understand how we must have lost a ton of players that were not, let's say, as fanatical about super heroes!  ;D


3. Haha, the only pvp I ever did in CoX was to go to Bloody Bay and wreak havoc inside inside the red side base XDD but that's not really pvp, rather a semi-story arc in a pvp zone! :P OH WAIT, I once fought a brute with my tanker and the fight never ended...  >:( With Kinetic Melee and Invulnerability, I was virtually invincible in close combat. But the vilain had too much hp and we both had the ability to heal ourselves so we just called it a draw like in boxing.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 19, 2014, 05:11:38 PM
Anyway... It's my opinion that post Invention System the game's enhancement system was pretty close to ideal in how it worked, although if i was doing a remake i'd probably make TOs, DOs and SOs function more like IOs and just make it so they never get completely outleveled. No matter how far above the enhancement's level a character is it still provides the minimum boost instead of zeroing out.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on October 19, 2014, 05:38:44 PM
Im still flabbergasted that with the IO system wherein you can easily shore up weaknesses and become extremely overpowered AND the Incarnate abililties..

people are still talking about ED like it just happened.. just mindblowing to me..

It's more of the way it was presented and promoted that still brings this topic up.

We all know ED was a while back and we moved on.  Emmert's migration helped.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 19, 2014, 06:56:30 PM
Anyway... It's my opinion that post Invention System the game's enhancement system was pretty close to ideal in how it worked, although if i was doing a remake i'd probably make TOs, DOs and SOs function more like IOs and just make it so they never get completely outleveled. No matter how far above the enhancement's level a character is it still provides the minimum boost instead of zeroing out.

I can see that. You could change it so no enhancement works worse than -3 levels.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 19, 2014, 07:08:56 PM
It's more of the way it was presented and promoted that still brings this topic up.

We all know ED was a while back and we moved on.  Emmert's migration helped.

A lot of people couldn't ever accept the change and adapt.  It's a trait I frown on actually, because times and things change quite a bit.  I run into people like that in CO at times, or used to, and it was always the same story, they'd go on how badass invincible they were, how much everything was useless to them but healing and the damage buff from fulcrum shift ect.  Then they admit to never ever playing the game with IO's effectively, so I end up drawing the conclusion that they never adapted.  They broke.  And it seems some people still can't seem to go on about it.

I won't be surprised if some people demand ED removed should we get the game back, and I won't be surprised if those people don't at all think about the consequences of such an action in a post IO post incarnate game world.  Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if some suggest such a change without ever even touching the IO system or even seeing ionic judgement in action.

What really amazes me is, as people said, how popular the game was following ED and Emmerts moving on.  In fact, Emmert was and has shown more support for CoX than he has CO, after his departure.  It was his first mmorpg and possibly his most successful.  At least until STO came around but thats debatable I suppose.  Not sure if he was directly involved in STO's development like he was with CO.

In fact alot of people told me, CoX benefited from ED more than actually hurt from it, because things like IOs wouldn't have been doable without ED, the options began to actually matter.  ED to me in many ways, it's like the Skyrim Redone mod for Skyrim, you have had some nerfs(big ones) but you also had so many new styles of play being supported, ultimately in the end.

And lets think about when ED happened, year 2 effectively yes?  And the game lasted for 8 and throughout those 6 it had far, far more players than CO ever had, ever.  Think about that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on October 19, 2014, 07:39:01 PM
I tended to only use the IOs that dropped or got some generics off the AH.

Why?

Because I had a limited number of free hours in the day and I didn't want to spend those hours figuring out builds in Mids or searching for just the right IO in Wentworth's. I'm not saying that's a bad thing-- I understand that different people get their entertainment in different ways-- but for me that sort of thing was not how I wanted to spend my time.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: adarict on October 19, 2014, 08:40:42 PM
The only part of ED I understood the griping about, was how it was communicated. I started just before Issue 3. When ED hit, neither myself nor my wife really felt any effect. To me, even when it first happened, it seemed that the only people seriously impacted, were min/max players. With the exception of during my first month, all of my characters were already using ED slotting. When ED happened, it had no perceptible impact on me or my playing. For people who were slotting everything for damage, I'm sure it was a shock to lose so much power, but I personally don't see how much fun it could have been before. Most of the game must have been like playing on easy mode. I can see how that would be fun once I  a while, but to me, it would just get monotonous.

To each their own I guess. One of the best things to come out of ED, was the hilarity of the forums. It kept me endlessly entertained. 😊the fact that it still engenders such strong feelings in people this long after it all happened, shows how invested people were in the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Jorge Firebomb on October 19, 2014, 09:00:18 PM
Well after ED, some people claimed they no longer felt like superheroes. I personally don't think the overall power of the characters was changed that much, just that they were powerful in slightly different ways.

To those that say that other people being immensely overpowered didn't affect other people's gameplay, that really wasn't true. The min/maxers would often refuse to group with people that didn't also min/max, or just refuse to group in general because they didn't need the help. With a limited number of spawns in the world, that often meant that if you weren't one of the min/max farmers, there wasn't anything to fight outside of missions. I personally enjoy missions a lot more than farming random villains in a zone, but variety of options is good.

The advent of the Architect missions moved all of the zone farmers into the specifically designed farm missions in Architect, so that you could actually fight outdoor enemies even if there were no ED, because all the min/maxers would be in the min/maxed Architect farming missions instead. I'd hate to see ED undone, though, because the IO sets really add a lot of neat options to the game, and without ED there probably would be little incentive to use most of the sets (I admit to possibly being wrong about this, some of those sets have fantastic bonuses).

Just off the top of my head, can you imagine how ridiculous Willpower would be as a tanker primary without ED and with regular IOs available?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JennSpace on October 19, 2014, 09:11:02 PM
The only part of ED I understood the griping about, was how it was communicated. I started just before Issue 3. When ED hit, neither myself nor my wife really felt any effect. To me, even when it first happened, it seemed that the only people seriously impacted, were min/max players. With the exception of during my first month, all of my characters were already using ED slotting. When ED happened, it had no perceptible impact on me or my playing. For people who were slotting everything for damage, I'm sure it was a shock to lose so much power, but I personally don't see how much fun it could have been before. Most of the game must have been like playing on easy mode. I can see how that would be fun once I  a while, but to me, it would just get monotonous.

To each their own I guess. One of the best things to come out of ED, was the hilarity of the forums. It kept me endlessly entertained. 😊the fact that it still engenders such strong feelings in people this long after it all happened, shows how invested people were in the game.

For me, City of Heroes was the superheroine life I can't have in real life because if I try to jump a cliff tonight and fly like Jenn Space ...that probably will be my last message on this board! XDDDD That's why I'm so attached so it and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one feeling that way. Deep down inside, we're all still kids in the heart and playing CoX was bringing us back to that time when we dreamed of being heroes, being adults just give us the vehicle to accomplish our aspirations! ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 19, 2014, 09:18:09 PM
To those that say that other people being immensely overpowered didn't affect other people's gameplay, that really wasn't true. The min/maxers would often refuse to group with people that didn't also min/max, or just refuse to group in general because they didn't need the help. With a limited number of spawns in the world, that often meant that if you weren't one of the min/max farmers, there wasn't anything to fight outside of missions. I personally enjoy missions a lot more than farming random villains in a zone, but variety of options is good.

The advent of the Architect missions moved all of the zone farmers into the specifically designed farm missions in Architect, so that you could actually fight outdoor enemies even if there were no ED, because all the min/maxers would be in the min/maxed Architect farming missions instead. I'd hate to see ED undone, though, because the IO sets really add a lot of neat options to the game, and without ED there probably would be little incentive to use most of the sets (I admit to possibly being wrong about this, some of those sets have fantastic bonuses).

The first paragraph, I can see why they would behave that way.  See a fair number of min/maxers are stop having fun guys.  They adamantly believe their way to play is the only way the game is "supposed to be played" as its to them the highest level of play.  They seriously hate anyone who doesn't, they despise them.  A stop having fun guy in any game is always like that, they have a level of disdain towards "inferior players" and have a belief that if they were as good as they, those "inferior players" would only play exactly as they do.  This also overlaps the complacent gamer syndrome of generally only using the "best tactics" but also encourages them to try and force others to play exclusively as they do.

We even saw this kind of behavior, slightly, in the incarnate trials, some players would try to keep others out of leagues based on how high their level shift was.  Even in incarnate trials that certainly didn't need everyone to be +3 including the BAF and LAMBDA trials.  It did't get wide spread, thank god, but if it did, CoH would have really been doomed for it, because it creates the destructive catch 22 of "can't get +3 because everyone wants me to have +3 to do the things that need to be done to get +3 in the first place".

That'd also tie into the second paragraph, in that many stop having fun guys would definitely get angry with anyone not playing and exploiting AE.  They'd hate any arch that wasn't a farm arch, because they are just taking the game to seriously to have fun with it.  They would take full advantage of a lack of ED to encourage people to only use the "Best" tactics and exclude anyone not doing so, which would damage the game horribly, with imbalances caused by a lack of ED only further encouraging a wide spread complacent gamer syndrome among most gamers getting into the game, leaving everyone who likes to experiment out in the cold, freezing rain with duct tape on their mouths(Can't encourage experimenting when the game is horribly imbalanced, afterall).

And yes, on that last sentence(didn't quote it), I wouldn't imagine how ridiculous some sets would be without ED with IOs, and i'm sure some people would find the "best powerset to max out with IOs" and then demand everyone exclusively play that.  Imagine max defense/resistance sets vs everything, any powerset buffing things like that would as a support be utterly ignored as by rules of complacent gamer syndrome, including almost every support set save kinetics and empathy...

.....just as the tools I met in CO who quit CoX over ED admitted to exclusively inviting at the exclusion of all other defender/troller sets.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on October 19, 2014, 09:40:57 PM
Put me down as another one who didn't get hurt by ED.   I was just too ignorant about how the game worked to even know things like "1 acc + 5 dam ftw!".   So ED didn't feel any different to me.

I did know about the way Jack handled it though and noticed the game changed in a more positive direction (for me) after he left.   He was horrible at communicating with the players and I never cared for his attitude of "a right way to play the game" based upon some story he told about being on an airplane or something.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 19, 2014, 10:03:20 PM
Put me down as another one who didn't get hurt by ED.   I was just too ignorant about how the game worked to even know things like "1 acc + 5 dam ftw!".   So ED didn't feel any different to me.

I did know about the way Jack handled it though and noticed the game changed in a more positive direction (for me) after he left.   He was horrible at communicating with the players and I never cared for his attitude of "a right way to play the game" based upon some story he told about being on an airplane or something.

I feel sorry for him in many ways, as it was like many decisions good intended, but I agree it was the communication of it that messed things up.  Something similar has happened again to CO(but this time it wasn't Emmert in charge of it, an entirely different studio), and it's actually hitting them far harder now than ED ever had hit CoX I feel.  One guy feels he'd been scammed out of 600 dollars.  He was making a wiki for the game and was doing alot, and now this one change in CO that cryptic north had implemented is making him cancel the project in outright fury.  In fact I swear his post has been far more hostile than anything I posted in those forums, and I admit, I'm no angel there.

Admittedly CO improved a little with Emmert leaving it to someone else to, but it was temporary.  He just has poor communication skills I feel.  Had good intentions but, didn't communicate and consequently caused a lot of problems for CoX and later CO.  It's a shame that the devs of CO now did not learn from his mistakes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 19, 2014, 10:24:51 PM
ED was by far more damaging to my Blasters. The 1 ACC + 5 Damage really helped you survive. What people seem to be forgetting is that the IO system was to replace the 1x5 style of slotting.

Not having the new system in place when you axed the other system and then to tell people - oh nothing is different - this helps you! Was a load of codswallop. We can do math and the affect on tanks and blasters was very apparent.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on October 19, 2014, 10:58:17 PM
ED was by far more damaging to my Blasters. The 1 ACC + 5 Damage really helped you survive. What people seem to be forgetting is that the IO system was to replace the 1x5 style of slotting.

Not having the new system in place when you axed the other system and then to tell people - oh nothing is different - this helps you! Was a load of codswallop. We can do math and the affect on tanks and blasters was very apparent.

Actually many blasters then were targeting drone and 6 damage.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lupur on October 19, 2014, 11:07:58 PM
Eh, I haven't looked at these forums for almost a week now.

Just after my last post, I had a dream. A very vivid dream that almost had me call in sick / put in for holidays for a week or more...

You see, the dream I had was that the game was suddenly live; and it all made sense the way it had been done too..

The test the new team was put was to sucesfully run a i23 image server with login authentication under stress.

Since then, all the time has been on developing a in game store and dotting i's and dashing t's...

*sigh* Even in my dreams i'm trying to justify why the game should be up and running already   :-[

its been a sad week in the lup hut   :gonk:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on October 19, 2014, 11:11:52 PM
ED was by far more damaging to my Blasters. The 1 ACC + 5 Damage really helped you survive. What people seem to be forgetting is that the IO system was to replace the 1x5 style of slotting.

Not having the new system in place when you axed the other system and then to tell people - oh nothing is different - this helps you! Was a load of codswallop. We can do math and the affect on tanks and blasters was very apparent.

To be fair, I think that's really not because of ED itself, nor did the Devs communicate poorly with the players because they thought that ED was BETTER.

You see, ED WAS better in terms of long-term DPS. It was probably also better in DPE. And it gave more room for +Damage buffs since you weren't slotted that highly for +Damage. So, it was better, right?

Well, what happened, I think, we can see in multiple Issues afterwards. Arbiter Hawk seemed to be the first Dev that understood Blaster problems, and that Blasters did not depend on DPS... they depended on DP10 (Damage per 10 seconds at the start of the fight), if not DP5. So a change that improved their DPS, but lowered their alpha strike, helped their long-term damage but hurt their survivability. And the DPS of a dead Blaster is 0. So the Devs thought that Blasters were more of a sustained-damage AT, but the best way to play it was with front-loaded damage as an alpha-strike specialist. From their point of view, changing the damage around so that it was less front-loaded but better in a sustained situation, was not really a nerf. From the point of view of players who depended on the alpha strike damage, it was a great nerf.

The Devs then threw around idea after idea, fix after fix, for Blasters, but I don't think that they ever got it. Maybe the solution is insoluble... maybe an AT that can put out large AoE damage, and do so safely if properly supported on teams, cannot be properly balanced for situations when it's not properly supported. I think that the problem is solvable, but it would have required some slightly different design of the powersets, and I don't know if it was solvable AFTER the game came out. Basically, if Blasters had some attacks that were lower DPS, pretty slow-activating, but helped their survival a lot, both AoE and ST, then they would have the option of using those and lowering their DPS (but surviving), or using their better attacks if properly supported on teams. But after the powersets were designed, it may have been a bit hard to do that.

Of course, it could have been done. For example, change Full Auto to Suppressive Fire, an attack that makes the mobs keep their heads down. The damage is lower because you're not aiming carefully for weak spots, but it lowers the opponent Accuracy and Damage for a good amount while the shooting is active, and for half the amount for a few more seconds. Plus it has a chance to knockdown every second while shooting. Change an attack or two in each powerset like this, and Blasters could have played better without support.

They did not, and good Blaster players figured out (especially before IO sets with their Ranged Defense bonuses) that Blaster Defense is synonymous with dead mobs. In other words, Build up/Aim, Dead Mobs before they get to shoot back is a good defense.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kierthos on October 19, 2014, 11:58:42 PM
I didn't mind ED hitting at all.

My first character was a Dark/Dark Defender (the original iteration of "The Sundown Man"), and in the blast set, I was typically running something like this:

TO: 2 Accuracy, 1 End Reduction, 3 Damage
DO and SO: 1 Accuracy, 1 End Reduction, 4 Damage

And I swear, I lost track of how many times I was told I was 'doing it wrong'. Yeah... because I hadn't super-optimized my build by doing the same exact cookie-cutter plan that other people did, how dare I have fun? No, no one actually said the last bit, but a few pick-up groups I was in seemed to be full of full-of-themself-asshats who took great offense at the fact that we didn't mow through a group of bad guys that second or two quicker than we would have if I had "optimized". Of course, I was the sole healer in the group, and when I threatened to leave, they shut up really quickly.

Needless to say, I loved ED and IOs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Jorge Firebomb on October 20, 2014, 12:34:46 AM
Yeah with ED you probably have a lot more build options that are all reasonably equivalent in effectiveness, just with a little different flavor. I do remember a lot of blasters running around with that targeting drone thing going, which apparently let them ignore slotting accuracy into powers at all. However only one secondary set had that power, and since it was "necessary" for an optimized blaster build, there were amazing amounts of completely ignored power sets amongst the min/max people. What's the point of having a dozen or whatever secondary blaster power sets, if the "one true way to play" only lets you use one of them?

I think it's much better to have the system as it existed at shutdown, with ED and IOs and IO sets all coming together to allow multiple paths to high end success. Sure there are still combinations that are better than others, but there are a lot more around that are effective.

Dev communication was the only weakness of early CoH, I think that it got better later though? I didn't pay a lot of attention to the official forums back then, honestly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on October 20, 2014, 01:14:35 AM
Dev communication was the only weakness of early CoH, I think that it got better later though? I didn't pay a lot of attention to the official forums back then, honestly.

Much better.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on October 20, 2014, 01:37:31 AM
Quote
We even saw this kind of behavior, slightly, in the incarnate trials, some players would try to keep others out of leagues based on how high their level shift was.  Even in incarnate trials that certainly didn't need everyone to be +3 including the BAF and LAMBDA trials.  It did't get wide spread, thank god, but if it did, CoH would have really been doomed for it, because it creates the destructive catch 22 of "can't get +3 because everyone wants me to have +3 to do the things that need to be done to get +3 in the first place".

This happened on Infinity, I can't remember their name but there was someone on there "blacklisting" people if they didn't do good enough in Incarnate trials .That and there was an active pvp community on Freedom. Is the reason why my small group of friends and me left the server.

I asked around before I left and apparently they was with the "in crowd" on Infinity. So they had the ability to blacklist people apparently.

I never considered myself a min/maxer but I was a hardcore farmer. Though I had separate alts for separate things. I had my farming characters that I'd farm with. Then all my other characters I'd team with. Then I had my GM characters that I'd farm GMs with. My TF characters that I'd solo TFs with ect....

Thank God I never got into the mind set of my way is the best way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 20, 2014, 01:55:29 AM
This happened on Infinity, I can't remember their name but there was someone on there "blacklisting" people if they didn't do good enough in Incarnate trials .That and there was an active pvp community on Freedom. Is the reason why my small group of friends and me left the server.

I asked around before I left and apparently they was with the "in crowd" on Infinity. So they had the ability to blacklist people apparently.

I never considered myself a min/maxer but I was a hardcore farmer. Though I had separate alts for separate things. I had my farming characters that I'd farm with. Then all my other characters I'd team with. Then I had my GM characters that I'd farm GMs with. My TF characters that I'd solo TFs with ect....

Thank God I never got into the mind set of my way is the best way.

Yeah, I saw elitism imposing catch 22 in guild wars alot.  This was done with all forms of pvp, and I ended up not willing to play for it.  Around that time some friends of mine got me into CoX, I had no regrets moving on from GW.  Ironically they moved on to CO but I think they must have moved on shortly, they had been burned out of enjoying CoX much, at around that time I ended up with new friends.  It was a happy time for me in the end.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on October 20, 2014, 02:44:17 AM
This happened on Infinity, I can't remember their name but there was someone on there "blacklisting" people if they didn't do good enough in Incarnate trials .That and there was an active pvp community on Freedom. Is the reason why my small group of friends and me left the server.

I asked around before I left and apparently they was with the "in crowd" on Infinity. So they had the ability to blacklist people apparently.

I never considered myself a min/maxer but I was a hardcore farmer. Though I had separate alts for separate things. I had my farming characters that I'd farm with. Then all my other characters I'd team with. Then I had my GM characters that I'd farm GMs with. My TF characters that I'd solo TFs with ect....

Thank God I never got into the mind set of my way is the best way.

I think I know of whom you speak regarding Infinity and blacklisting, there was also an arrogant fool like like that on Pinnacle and Protector. 

The best way to play is the one that you enjoy. Your characters are yours and should be built to your preferences, be it name, costume, powers, slotting, etc.  You pay the account fees so YOU are the one that gets to decide what characters to build and how.  If someone wants to offer you advice that one's thing, but the whole  "You will build and play your characters MY WAY or I SHALL BLACKLIST YOU" is the kind of attitude that should be a bannable offense.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lupur on October 20, 2014, 03:54:32 AM
EEEEEWWWWWWwwww.w...!!

See, that's the sort of rubbish that I absolutely abhor in games.

That's the sort of thing that immediately concerned me when incarnates and the new raid system were announced. However, I was quietly confident that the good folks around me wouldn't be reduced to that, and I was mostly correct.

Considering that pre-Hamidon and pre-MoShip prep involved the Raid Leaders having a string of macros that briefly but accurately described each step / persons role, as well as a Q&A period and links to the relevant articles, it was a good chance the the Justice plebs ( me included :D ) were already trained to sit and listen before cutting loose.

I was actually pretty happy to notice that this is pretty much exactly what happened. Obviously, after the first couple of weeks this was all replaced by 'Have we all done this before?' and then the macros and stuff only happened if someone said no.

Honestly though, the number of times I died to Marauder on my EM// brute during Total Focus // Energy Transfer for not noticing Nova Fist, or the number of timed I'd accidentally grab aggro off both of them during a BAF on my Dark//Dark Tank from getting too close or the taunt aoe hitting both for an insta-time out would have gotten me veeerryy blacklisted, probably just outright banned >.<

Generally, the whole " 'OK, so we all know what we have to do?' *nods all around* 'OK, cool. Lets go!' *all proceed to zerg 'cause its funny* " approach worked well for us.

Then again, I never was part of the thuper theriouth thraiding thcrowd. I.. honestly don't think I know anyone on Justice who was..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on October 20, 2014, 03:59:43 AM
Funny, the only time I ever really saw people get blacklisted on Pinnacle was when they made a habit of joining raids then not doing anything.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on October 20, 2014, 05:03:19 AM
I didn't mind ED hitting at all.

My first character was a Dark/Dark Defender (the original iteration of "The Sundown Man"), and in the blast set, I was typically running something like this:

TO: 2 Accuracy, 1 End Reduction, 3 Damage
DO and SO: 1 Accuracy, 1 End Reduction, 4 Damage

And I swear, I lost track of how many times I was told I was 'doing it wrong'. Yeah... because I hadn't super-optimized my build by doing the same exact cookie-cutter plan that other people did, how dare I have fun? No, no one actually said the last bit, but a few pick-up groups I was in seemed to be full of full-of-themself-asshats who took great offense at the fact that we didn't mow through a group of bad guys that second or two quicker than we would have if I had "optimized". Of course, I was the sole healer in the group, and when I threatened to leave, they shut up really quickly.

Needless to say, I loved ED and IOs.
I was so far away from the min/max optimal builds for most of my characters it wasn't funny. I mean, I had Stamina on maybe 5 of the hundred or so characters I had. Up until they made the fitness pool inherent. I put End Redux enhancements in my powers to help offset the lack of Stamina. Even after Stamina was inherent, I rarely actually added any slots to it.

I rarely slotted more than 4 of the same enhancement in a power. So, ED didn't really bother me, and I understood the need for balance between the ATs. I also didn't envy the Devs attempting to provide that balance. Especially since there were 14 ATs that all functioned in vastly different ways. I'm sure that Arcana could come up with some mathematical thingamabob that would illustrate the compounded difficulty each additional AT added in terms of balancing them among each other.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on October 20, 2014, 10:37:27 AM
We even saw this kind of behavior, slightly, in the incarnate trials, some players would try to keep others out of leagues based on how high their level shift was.  Even in incarnate trials that certainly didn't need everyone to be +3 including the BAF and LAMBDA trials.  It did't get wide spread, thank god, but if it did, CoH would have really been doomed for it, because it creates the destructive catch 22 of "can't get +3 because everyone wants me to have +3 to do the things that need to be done to get +3 in the first place".


On the one hand, this drove me nuts. I can certainly understand some frustration stemming from such an incident.

 On the other hand, with regards to Magisterium, it was a gated trial. A lot of players would get mad at me for telling them they needed to be +3 to join. I'd try to explain, and they just didn't get it. But, that was for the best. If they couldn't understand my words before the trial, then they'd likely not follow the instructions during the trial.

For MoiTrial efforts, particularly UGT, I did indeed notice a stark contrast between leagues that had far more +3's and +2's than those leagues with +0's and +1's.  Much of what makes up a successful league is about the players on an individual basis - what they see, how they react to that, the time it takes them to react, the number of kittens available to walk on their keyboard, but overall, team composition was far more important in a lower level league. The lower the overall league average, the more critical buffs and debuffs were. As league leader on my weekly MoUGT runs, I recognized that some players could only play during that one hour window that week. That's it. I only saw those players during that 1 hour. Failure was not an option. No success, no component at the end. All they got were my bad puns for the week. So, yes, some of the iTrials, I'd try to encourage folks to bring their A-game, making note of who was willing to do swap out, and who was not. I can't recall ever turning away anyone if they weren't +3, except for gated trials. But, if it was a badge effort, and I had a choice between a +3 scrapper and a +0 scrapper, I went with the +3.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on October 20, 2014, 10:41:30 AM
You didn't actually need to be +3 for Magi, you just needed to have Lore and Destiny unlocked.  (And just unlocked; you didn't even need to have them slotted)

Of course, Magi aws a fairly brutal Boss Rush, so having +3 did make it all the easier (but, then again, what didn't being +3 make easier?)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on October 20, 2014, 11:03:47 AM
Quote
We even saw this kind of behavior, slightly, in the incarnate trials, some players would try to keep others out of leagues based on how high their level shift was.  Even in incarnate trials that certainly didn't need everyone to be +3 including the BAF and LAMBDA trials.  It did't get wide spread, thank god, but if it did, CoH would have really been doomed for it, because it creates the destructive catch 22 of "can't get +3 because everyone wants me to have +3 to do the things that need to be done to get +3 in the first place".


Even while some people did have this attitude there was still a lot of people willing to teach players who hadn't done it before.  And you weren't intended to jump straight into Mag trail.  It was intended you do BAF/Lambda and the others before it.  I admit to not inviting people who weren't +3 at times.  It wasn't every time, I also often just took who ever wanted to go.  It depended on what I was doing.  If I am going for a Mo run I would discriminate on who I would bring along, if I was short on time and looking for fast runs I would also discriminate to people I know who could do it fast and clean.  But there were also times I would bring whoever and would often happily bring in players that hadn't done it before and help in anyways I can.  Using slightly stricter selection choices in grouping isn't always a bad thing, sometimes you need people you can be sure are right for the role you are looking to fill.  I didn't see it happen in CoH often enough to be a problem though.  It was usually limited to badge runs which in all honesty do require a slightly more "hand picked" team.

It also depended greatly on how patient you were feeling.  I would bring players who had never done Master runs along if I wasn't in a rush or feeling impatient, but everyone has those days where you just don't feel like showing people what to do.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on October 20, 2014, 12:05:07 PM
My SG was usually pretty good about helping others in the SG (even occasionally auditioning new guys into our stuff if we wanted an 8th for TFs) but when the incarnate stuff came out, it was hard getting all your alts through them to get +3 on everything so a lot of us got left along the way. They still went out of their way to make it a SG run and would even schedule days where one or two of us were underpowered (+1 to +2) so long as we all knew what to do. That's the joy of being part of a decent SG I guess.

I really felt for those soloin slobs out there; thank gawd they added the chance to buy with inf your alpha slot. Does anyone know if it was possible to solo grind out the other slots? Would be good to know before the game comes back (hopefully).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on October 20, 2014, 12:29:35 PM
My SG was usually pretty good about helping others in the SG (even occasionally auditioning new guys into our stuff if we wanted an 8th for TFs) but when the incarnate stuff came out, it was hard getting all your alts through them to get +3 on everything so a lot of us got left along the way. They still went out of their way to make it a SG run and would even schedule days where one or two of us were underpowered (+1 to +2) so long as we all knew what to do. That's the joy of being part of a decent SG I guess.

I really felt for those soloin slobs out there; thank gawd they added the chance to buy with inf your alpha slot. Does anyone know if it was possible to solo grind out the other slots? Would be good to know before the game comes back (hopefully).

I was definitely one of those poor slobs. Unfortunately, any SG (on Victory) I joined seemed to fall apart after just a few weeks, and many of the established ones were not very "casual-friendly". The only two characters with whom I had any success in the incarnate content were a fire/fire tank and a warshade. Which is funny, because I was very much a blaster junky. :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Jachim on October 20, 2014, 12:39:01 PM
I was definitely one of those poor slobs. Unfortunately, any SG (on Victory) I joined seemed to fall apart after just a few weeks, and many of the established ones were not very "casual-friendly". The only two characters with whom I had any success in the incarnate content were a fire/fire tank and a warshade. Which is funny, because I was very much a blaster junky. :P

League of Valor was a great SG with good participation! :) Shoulda checked them out.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on October 20, 2014, 12:47:30 PM
For me, City of Heroes was the superheroine life I can't have in real life because if I try to jump a cliff tonight and fly like Jenn Space ...that probably will be my last message on this board! XDDDD

Heh, yeah. 

I can't tell you how many times I just stepped off the edge of a skyscraper and then kicked on Flight
moments before hitting the ground.  And every time, in my head (usually), there was a big Technicolor
ZOOOOM!!!!!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 20, 2014, 01:59:09 PM
Heh, yeah. 

I can't tell you how many times I just stepped off the edge of a skyscraper and then kicked on Flight
moments before hitting the ground.  And every time, in my head (usually), there was a big Technicolor
ZOOOOM!!!!!!

That's funny, mostly cause I often did the same thing!  ;D

There were times when I wished for cartoony (60's Batman TV Show style) splash FX, "Pow!" or "Bam!" on the knockout punch.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 20, 2014, 02:26:17 PM
That's funny, mostly cause I often did the same thing!  ;D

There were times when I wished for cartoony (60's Batman TV Show style) splash FX, "Pow!" or "Bam!" on the knockout punch.

and of course FREEM!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JennSpace on October 20, 2014, 03:11:56 PM
and of course FREEM!

Not to mention BIFF!  ;D XDDD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC8DmmeWcZU
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: robo40 on October 20, 2014, 05:24:20 PM
Im still flabbergasted that with the IO system wherein you can easily shore up weaknesses and become extremely overpowered AND the Incarnate abililties..

people are still talking about ED like it just happened.. just mindblowing to me..

You do know we have nothing better to do while waiting for the game to re-release?  ;)

Seriously, for most of us who played from the start, ED was the low point.  Not because of ED, but because it looked like the devs were incapable of maintaining the franchise.  From IO's onward the game kept getting better, but people who didn't play in the beginning don't appreciate how much harder we had to work for everything, and how much more user friendly the game got.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rampage on October 20, 2014, 05:25:20 PM
and of course FREEM!

That was a planned feature, circa 2008.  Plan for I25

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/April_Fools'_Day

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on October 20, 2014, 06:29:39 PM
I was hoping the Vanity Pet would actually come out. (Instead, the Liger did)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on October 20, 2014, 07:59:17 PM
I really felt for those soloin slobs out there; thank gawd they added the chance to buy with inf your alpha slot. Does anyone know if it was possible to solo grind out the other slots? Would be good to know before the game comes back (hopefully).
It was possible to solo and advance in the incarnate slots. Well, to a point. They hadn't implemented the Hybrid path for solo-ers before the shut-down notice. New Dark Astoria and the MOT story line was the Solo-ers area for Incarnating. I spent a lot of my time there with my Incarnates once it was available.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on October 20, 2014, 08:11:17 PM
I would add that people need to be aware of what they bring, both for good and ill, to an incarnate trial. Whenever I was invited, I would inform the leader how comfortable I was with the content and such like. I always appreciated a team that would take on someone who hadn't done a trial but I also understood when they didn't feel like it.

I almost never did a MoTrial. I didn't want to be responsible for causing someone to fail. There were only a few TF's I would consider doing that for. Really, ITF was the only one I would even consider. The only one I know I had was Master of Apex. The team leader said: "Relax, you can't fail this unless you just don't know how to play at all". He was right, we actually did it pretty darn quick and did it right.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on October 20, 2014, 08:44:39 PM
You do know we have nothing better to do while waiting for the game to re-release?  ;)

Seriously, for most of us who played from the start, ED was the low point.  Not because of ED, but because it looked like the devs were incapable of maintaining the franchise.  From IO's onward the game kept getting better, but people who didn't play in the beginning don't appreciate how much harder we had to work for everything, and how much more user friendly the game got.

Man, I remember those days! We had to Teleport uphill both from the contact to the mission door, and then back from the mission door to the contact. And they wouldn't even let you have their phone number until you completed their Mow My Lawn mission, and even then cell service was poor so we had to maneuver between Steel Canyon's superscrapers to be able to call in the mission complete. And, of course, no superhero's career was complete without being run over by the Tsoo-tsoo Train at level 20. Superheroes these days don't know how easy they have it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on October 20, 2014, 08:52:05 PM
I did know about the way Jack handled it though and noticed the game changed in a more positive direction (for me) after he left.   He was horrible at communicating with the players and I never cared for his attitude of "a right way to play the game" based upon some story he told about being on an airplane or something.

Well now I want to know about the airplane story.


I started playing shortly after I5, and didn't really get involved on forums until a little bit later, so ED didn't hit me at all, really. I didn't have a character above level 20 until well after CoV, so it was well past by the time I could even get SOs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on October 20, 2014, 09:09:45 PM
Not sure why...but just remembered buying my first SO.   Can't even remember the price, but remember feeling there was no way I could ever afford to use them.   I accidentally bought an SO I could not use early on too (Wait...Defense debuff isn't the same as Defense?)....that was a major tragedy in my mind.   I sold it back to the vendor at a loss of course and bitterly cursed the game.  I was doing a lot of guessing at that point.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hemipowered on October 20, 2014, 09:17:18 PM
Who's this ED fellow and why is everyone mad at him??   ED wherever you are mabye go by eddie or edward--try not to piss people off so much... ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JennSpace on October 20, 2014, 09:20:45 PM
Who's this ED fellow and why is everyone mad at him??   ED wherever you are mabye go by eddie or edward--try not to piss people off so much... ;D

XDDD, I was waiting for this one!  ;D Nice analogy!  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 20, 2014, 10:12:37 PM
Who's this ED fellow and why is everyone mad at him??   ED wherever you are mabye go by eddie or edward--try not to piss people off so much... ;D

Hehehaahaha, that was a good one :).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Jumping Spider on October 20, 2014, 10:22:56 PM
ED affected my main a lot, but mostly because of the i5 (iirc) changes to the INV scrapper set.  Capping RESIST in a scrapper set with no real DEF powers hurt a lot.  When they went with the archetype caps, they never really fixed the INV scrapper.  They messed with it a bit, but it was no where near the same experience.  Made me wish for a respec where you could change primary/secondaries...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on October 20, 2014, 11:00:19 PM
Who's this ED fellow and why is everyone mad at him??   ED wherever you are mabye go by eddie or edward--try not to piss people off so much... ;D
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=fc04.deviantart.net%2Ffs39%2Fi%2F2008%2F334%2Ff%2F6%2FEddie_Van_Halen_1982_Tour_by_IamElvis.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on October 20, 2014, 11:02:26 PM
Aggelakis is going to Disneyland. Be good boys, girls, robots, aliens, angels, demons, monsters, etc., etc., etc. while I'm gone! Don't let the place burn down!

(Eabrace is still around to moderate, as are Sekoia, CW, Guy, and TonyV.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on October 20, 2014, 11:19:56 PM
Aggelakis is going to Disneyland. Be good boys, girls, robots, aliens, angels, demons, monsters, etc., etc., etc. while I'm gone! Don't let the place burn down!

(Eabrace is still around to moderate, as are Sekoia, CW, Guy, and TonyV.)

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=s3-ec.buzzfed.com%2Fstatic%2F2013-10%2Fenhanced%2Fwebdr01%2F29%2F14%2Fanigif_original-grid-image-510-1383072252-34.gif)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 20, 2014, 11:29:23 PM
Aggelakis is going to Disneyland. Be good boys, girls, robots, aliens, angels, demons, monsters, etc., etc., etc. while I'm gone! Don't let the place burn down!

(Eabrace is still around to moderate, as are Sekoia, CW, Guy, and TonyV.)

Hey, don't worry we are not like the community that is in a full blown tantrum spiral right now :).(no, not going to bring it up here, but check the section for champions online.).

And not these little guys....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSX3piF5ww8

Is there an option for a youtube video to be shown here by chance anyone?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fridgy Daiere on October 20, 2014, 11:34:34 PM
Not to mention BIFF!  ;D XDDD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC8DmmeWcZU

Did this remind anyone else of Captain Dynamic (http://roosterteeth.com/archive/?id=589)?
Edit:  Specifically, the way he moved...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 20, 2014, 11:38:45 PM
Captain Dynamic never had that much Bat-style!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fridgy Daiere on October 20, 2014, 11:59:21 PM
LOL, I've never seen the outtakes (http://roosterteeth.com/archive/?id=636) of that series before today.  Very cute!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Optimus Dex on October 21, 2014, 12:14:26 AM
Well now I want to know about the airplane story.

Basically Jack was on plane playing a hand held game and after umpteen attempts on a boss  he beat it. and yelled and cheered and people stared. My take on it was he thought it was wonderful that he just kept grinding to beat his boss. Yeah. what fun..

[[EDIT: Fixing quotes. ~Agge]]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on October 21, 2014, 11:38:35 AM
Well now I want to know about the airplane story.

Basically Jack was on plane playing a hand held game and after umpteen attempts on a boss  he beat it. and yelled and cheered and people stared. My take on it was he thought it was wonderful that he just kept grinding to beat his boss. Yeah. what fun..
Lamest. Story. Ever.

[[EDIT: Fixing quotes. ~Agge]]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on October 21, 2014, 01:47:55 PM
Man, I remember those days! We had to Teleport uphill both from the contact to the mission door, and then back from the mission door to the contact. And they wouldn't even let you have their phone number until you completed their Mow My Lawn mission, and even then cell service was poor so we had to maneuver between Steel Canyon's superscrapers to be able to call in the mission complete. And, of course, no superhero's career was complete without being run over by the Tsoo-tsoo Train at level 20. Superheroes these days don't know how easy they have it.

Hey, You! Get Offa My Cloud!

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: tripthicket on October 21, 2014, 03:47:56 PM
Hey, You! Get Offa My Cloud!

This...this is the new Get Off My Lawn! You, my friend, wins one(1) Intarwebz!  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JennSpace on October 21, 2014, 04:59:39 PM
This...this is the new Get Off My Lawn! You, my friend, wins one(1) Intarwebz!  ;D

Not so new, I think Sugoi was referring to the 1965 song ''Get Off My Cloud'' by The Stones ;) XD but still one epic one-liner! ;D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFVnxVDlFyA
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 21, 2014, 05:45:18 PM
Hey, You! Get Offa My Cloud!

Coz Two's a crowd (on my cloud)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on October 21, 2014, 06:17:53 PM
Coz Two's a crowd (on my cloud)

... Get offa my planet!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on October 21, 2014, 07:49:28 PM
... Get offa my planet!
... Get Off Of My Bridge !!! :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 21, 2014, 10:38:52 PM
Get off the BIFROST
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 21, 2014, 10:53:21 PM
Man, I remember those days! We had to Teleport uphill both from the contact to the mission door, and then back from the mission door to the contact. And they wouldn't even let you have their phone number until you completed their Mow My Lawn mission, and even then cell service was poor so we had to maneuver between Steel Canyon's superscrapers to be able to call in the mission complete. And, of course, no superhero's career was complete without being run over by the Tsoo-tsoo Train at level 20. Superheroes these days don't know how easy they have it.

Don't forget when you killed a grizzley with your 3-ring binder.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on October 22, 2014, 01:48:29 AM
Don't forget when you killed a grizzley with your 3-ring binder.

I remember... I yelled for help, and Positron was walking by, but he said something about conning gray and kept walking. So I had to keep hitting it with the binder, and in the process I lost the keycard I had stored in there. I think it was to the vault at MAGI, but I didn't hear about anything bad being stolen from there, so it was probably okay. Then when the grizzly finally went down, I had enough XP to level up, but when I went to Ms Liberty, she refused to train me up because she wouldn't believe me when I said that the bear ate my homework.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on October 22, 2014, 02:12:43 AM
Aggelakis is going to Disneyland. Be good boys, girls, robots, aliens, angels, demons, monsters, etc., etc., etc. while I'm gone! Don't let the place burn down!

(Eabrace is still around to moderate, as are Sekoia, CW, Guy, and TonyV.)

Welcome to my city!

If you want a tour of City Hall while you're here, let me know... ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on October 22, 2014, 02:50:46 AM
Not so new, I think Sugoi was referring to the 1965 song ''Get Off My Cloud'' by The Stones ;) XD but still one epic one-liner! ;D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFVnxVDlFyA

Both of you nailed the compound reference I made up...   

Adding the "Get of my Lawn!" with the classic Rolling Stones song just made sense in a supers reference sort of pun.  grin.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fridgy Daiere on October 22, 2014, 01:53:48 PM
I remember... I yelled for help, and Positron was walking by, but he said something about conning gray and kept walking. So I had to keep hitting it with the binder, and in the process I lost the keycard I had stored in there. I think it was to the vault at MAGI, but I didn't hear about anything bad being stolen from there, so it was probably okay. Then when the grizzly finally went down, I had enough XP to level up, but when I went to Ms Liberty, she refused to train me up because she wouldn't believe me when I said that the bear ate my homework.

This made my day, thanks!   :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on October 22, 2014, 03:59:37 PM
Don't forget when you killed a grizzley with your 3-ring binder.

I thought this might be a reference to something, but all I found when I googled is a binder with a Grizzly on it: http://www.fanatics.com/catalog/product/Montana_Grizzlies_1_3-Ring_Team_Logo_Binder
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 22, 2014, 08:24:29 PM
I thought this might be a reference to something, but all I found when I googled is a binder with a Grizzly on it: http://www.fanatics.com/catalog/product/Montana_Grizzlies_1_3-Ring_Team_Logo_Binder

Strangely enough not what I was thinking, although I did attend the U of MT.  ;D

The original reference was a Bill Cosby comedy bit.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on October 23, 2014, 01:00:53 AM
Strangely enough not what I was thinking, although I did attend the U of MT.  ;D

The original reference was a Bill Cosby comedy bit.
U of MT in Missoula? Same here. What was ur major?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 23, 2014, 01:17:45 AM
U of MT in Missoula? Same here. What was ur major?

Linguistics
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on October 23, 2014, 01:44:46 AM
Linguistics
What dahell u do with that? Does that mean you speak multiple languages?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 23, 2014, 02:14:03 AM
What dahell u do with that? Does that mean you speak multiple languages?

Multiple applications including but not limited to:
Statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective
The descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society.
The study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics.
The psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language.

It does NOT mean being able to speak multiple languages. Although, I can.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 23, 2014, 04:07:26 AM
I grew up in Montana, but both my parents were MSU alumni from Bozeman.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 23, 2014, 11:49:21 AM
In Montana I've lived in the following places:
Billings
Joliet
Redlodge
Belfrey
Fromberg
Missoula
Great Falls
Havre
Belgrade
Fort Benton
White Sulfur Springs
Bridger
 :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on October 23, 2014, 12:21:11 PM
Multiple applications including but not limited to:
Statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective
The descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society.
The study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics.
The psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language.

It does NOT mean being able to speak multiple languages. Although, I can.
Dam. Cool.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 23, 2014, 01:59:41 PM
In Montana I've lived in the following places:
Billings
Joliet
Redlodge
Belfrey
Fromberg
Missoula
Great Falls
Havre
Belgrade
Fort Benton
White Sulfur Springs
Bridger
 :o

Moving to Montana soon, gonna be a dental floss tycoon
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fridgy Daiere on October 23, 2014, 02:39:32 PM
Multiple applications including but not limited to:
Statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective
The descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society.
The study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics.
The psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language.

"Just you wait, 'enry 'iggens, just you wait!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on October 23, 2014, 03:35:25 PM
Well I was following along, even with the obscure references, for awhile there.

Now I'm just lost . . .  ???
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: OzonePrime on October 23, 2014, 03:47:46 PM
Moving to Montana soon, gonna be a dental floss tycoon

Mother's of Invention!  Over-Nite Sensation  great album! :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: OzonePrime on October 23, 2014, 03:50:03 PM
"Just you wait, 'enry 'iggens, just you wait!"

Pygmalion  George Bernard Shaw  great play!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fable on October 23, 2014, 06:08:45 PM
Well I was following along, even with the obscure references, for awhile there.

Now I'm just lost . . .  ???

Frank Zappa man. Get with the program.. 8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on October 23, 2014, 06:13:17 PM
Frank Zappa man. Get with the program.. 8)

Zappa?  I don't remember seeing any Zappa references . . .
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fridgy Daiere on October 23, 2014, 07:12:20 PM
Zappa?  I don't remember seeing any Zappa references . . .

"Moving to Montana"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackstar5 on October 23, 2014, 08:11:15 PM
Zappa?  I don't remember seeing any Zappa references . . .
Any random collection of words could be a Zappa reference
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on October 23, 2014, 08:31:09 PM
May I mambo dogface to the banana patch?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on October 23, 2014, 10:33:20 PM
Frank Zappa man. Get with the program.. 8)

My latter years main was called tower of power :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on October 24, 2014, 12:32:15 PM
And on a completely unrelated note:

Did anyone ever measure out the actual size of Paragon City?

I know that from one end of IP to the other was something like 2.5 miles,
and most of the other zones were about a mile or so across; but with the
city block placements and such, did anyone ever get a real size?

I've just had a few random thoughts lately and I started wondering how big
Paragon actually was compared to other (real-world) cities.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: OzonePrime on October 24, 2014, 01:18:23 PM
May I mambo dogface to the banana patch?
Yes.
It's down the hall, to the left.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 24, 2014, 02:12:29 PM
And on a completely unrelated note:

Did anyone ever measure out the actual size of Paragon City?

I know that from one end of IP to the other was something like 2.5 miles,
and most of the other zones were about a mile or so across; but with the
city block placements and such, did anyone ever get a real size?

I've just had a few random thoughts lately and I started wondering how big
Paragon actually was compared to other (real-world) cities.

I think Irish Girl might have those numbers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Gorvi Guile on October 24, 2014, 03:07:39 PM
I think Irish Girl might have those numbers.
She probably has them memorized, as well as every inch of AP.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 24, 2014, 03:46:15 PM
And on a completely unrelated note:

Did anyone ever measure out the actual size of Paragon City?

I know that from one end of IP to the other was something like 2.5 miles,
and most of the other zones were about a mile or so across; but with the
city block placements and such, did anyone ever get a real size?

I've just had a few random thoughts lately and I started wondering how big
Paragon actually was compared to other (real-world) cities.

At one time when I was measuring distances to to get to places by the train and into IP and Bricks, I discovered that Brickstown by the manual measurements of the zone and distances between the gates to Kings Row and Brickstown from the IP zone... Brickstown is partially subducted under Kings Row :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JennSpace on October 24, 2014, 05:35:42 PM
And on a completely unrelated note:

Did anyone ever measure out the actual size of Paragon City?

I know that from one end of IP to the other was something like 2.5 miles,
and most of the other zones were about a mile or so across; but with the
city block placements and such, did anyone ever get a real size?

I've just had a few random thoughts lately and I started wondering how big
Paragon actually was compared to other (real-world) cities.

Including Peregrine Island and Striga Isle or without? Because Striga Isle in particular, is kinda far from Paragon City... :P XD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: srmalloy on October 24, 2014, 07:03:57 PM
The incarnate system was not in my opinion a "compromise" in this sense.  It was actually the correct target to aim for.  Rather than adding more "levels" to the game the Incarnate system created a way to advance through gaining powers and abilities without having to invalidate level 50 builds.  Furthermore, much of that heightened ability was *only* usable in the end game content.  That made it a completely optional enhancement to the game.  Had the devs created (all) incarnate abilities that could be used everywhere, they would have started a chain reaction of power creep where they would have to rebalance PvE content for stronger players - but that would leave non-incarnates behind.

And it should have been possible, if they had decided it was necessary, to create 'tiers' of Incarnate content staging up from Level 50, so at the first 'level' of content you would only be able to use your Alpha ability, then at the second level your Judgement and Interface abilities could be used, then Lore and Destiny in the third level, Hybrid and Genesis at the fourth level, Mind and Vitae at the fifth, and Omega at the sixth. And this content could be set up to be soloable, as the altered Dark Astoria was, to create an individual track up through the ranks of Incarnates outside the trials that didn't drop characters into situations past what they could handle.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off
Post by: pinballdave on October 24, 2014, 07:26:17 PM
And it should have been possible, if they had decided it was necessary, to create 'tiers' of Incarnate content staging up from Level 50, so at the first 'level' of content you would only be able to use your Alpha ability, then at the second level your Judgement and Interface abilities could be used, then Lore and Destiny in the third level, Hybrid and Genesis at the fourth level, Mind and Vitae at the fifth, and Omega at the sixth. And this content could be set up to be soloable, as the altered Dark Astoria was, to create an individual track up through the ranks of Incarnates outside the trials that didn't drop characters into situations past what they could handle.

This is actually a really good idea I could get behind :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on October 24, 2014, 07:40:41 PM
I was really holding out for a Halloween launch, but that's looking less likely as each day passes. *sigh*
Given the way that negotiations progress with companies in Japan, China, and Korea, the fact that NCSoft has accepted proof of one of the up-front conditions they're asking for is an indicator that they are actually willing to making a deal work -- but I would not be surprised to not see the actual re-launch of the game until next October.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on October 24, 2014, 07:45:37 PM
16. When one registers their new account, is it going to be hero only and one would need to purchase a Villain code and a Praetorian code or will it just be all three?  Also will key codes from any old CoH packages still work? I have some of my coh boxes and codes still floating around.
One of the last archiving steps I took before the shutdown was to go into my NCSoft account management and screenshot my account status page, so I have all of the key codes that I applied to my account over the years.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on October 24, 2014, 07:50:51 PM
And on a completely unrelated note:

Did anyone ever measure out the actual size of Paragon City?

I know that from one end of IP to the other was something like 2.5 miles,
and most of the other zones were about a mile or so across; but with the
city block placements and such, did anyone ever get a real size?

I've just had a few random thoughts lately and I started wondering how big
Paragon actually was compared to other (real-world) cities.
is that number from the actual end of the map on one side and you on the other? The reason I ask is because, I always thought PI was bigger. IP I know is far bigger than the 1 mile number you gave. I had a mission in IP and it was over 2 miles away from what I remember.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on October 24, 2014, 07:56:52 PM
To me it doesn't matter what the server is named, or if there are multiple servers what they are named. I think I'd actually prefer it if whatever name(s) got chosen was brand new.

Bring up the first server named something like "Resurgence", and if the load starts becoming too heavy, bring up a second server with a similarly-themed name and offer free character transfers. If the playerbase comes back strongly enough, open multiple additional servers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on October 24, 2014, 08:50:33 PM
I do remember a lot of blasters running around with that targeting drone thing going, which apparently let them ignore slotting accuracy into powers at all. However only one secondary set had that power, and since it was "necessary" for an optimized blaster build, there were amazing amounts of completely ignored power sets amongst the min/max people. What's the point of having a dozen or whatever secondary blaster power sets, if the "one true way to play" only lets you use one of them?

I never created a /Devices blaster; with the exception of an Ice/Fire and an Elec/Elec, they were all /Energy, primarily for Boost Range, the "Get away from me!" tier-1 punch, and the stuns. I wound up building my AR/EM blaster as an exercise in whether it was possible to make Jack Emmet's" 'Range is a Blaster's defense' claim work. And it worked, more or less; done right, she could drop two minions with Snipe before the spawn would react -- she would be far enough away that the first mob going down wasn't enough schrecklichkeit to wake anyone up; it took the second one going down to make them realize they were under fire. LRM Rocket, which she could use at an even greater range (IIRC, its max range with my slotting was 273 meters with Boost Range up), though, would spread enough damage to aggro the whole spawn.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on October 24, 2014, 09:01:22 PM
I did know about the way Jack handled it though and noticed the game changed in a more positive direction (for me) after he left.   He was horrible at communicating with the players and I never cared for his attitude of "a right way to play the game" based upon some story he told about being on an airplane or something.

And what annoyed me the most about that story was that he didn't seem to understand the difference between accomplishment and fun. Finally defeating that boss after beating his head against it and getting defeated again and again and again gave him a strong feeling of accomplishment, but most people would regard the grind before it as not being much fun.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AnElfCalledMack on October 24, 2014, 09:22:55 PM
At one time when I was measuring distances to to get to places by the train and into IP and Bricks, I discovered that Brickstown by the manual measurements of the zone and distances between the gates to Kings Row and Brickstown from the IP zone... Brickstown is partially subducted under Kings Row :p
Well, the gates lead to connecting highways that aren't necessarily 100% straight lines, or all the same length. We just skip them because who wants more travel time? The in-game world map showed the connections.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Super Firebug on October 24, 2014, 11:07:16 PM
Before this thread started, I used to check ihe "New Efforts" thread several times a day for news. These days, I find myself only interested in seeing if the new "The Deal's a Done Deal" kind of thread has been started yet, and new comments on "Arrow", "The Flash", "Gotham" and "Agents of SHIELD". This site's getting a lot less traffic from me than it used to. (Not that I'm blaming this thread. I figure that it helped me to see that it'll still be quite a while yet before it's done.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 25, 2014, 06:04:31 AM
Before this thread started, I used to check ihe "New Efforts" thread several times a day for news. These days, I find myself only interested in seeing if the new "The Deal's a Done Deal" kind of thread has been started yet, and new comments on "Arrow", "The Flash", "Gotham" and "Agents of SHIELD". This site's getting a lot less traffic from me than it used to. (Not that I'm blaming this thread. I figure that it helped me to see that it'll still be quite a while yet before it's done.)
I don't know how much longer I can wait  :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 25, 2014, 12:59:31 PM
I can wait as long as it takes.  :'(

But that doesn't mean my taunt finger isn't itching!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: SammiK31 on October 25, 2014, 01:07:17 PM
I agree, the suspense is royally killing me! lol Though, if you look at this way, at least there's something to be impatient about. Because if it wasn't for the guys doing what they're doing (awesome work btw, ultimately grateful) we wouldn't have anything to look forward to, and we'd have no hope at all, because no one would be working their butts off to get the game back, so as much as its annoying, and driving me insane, it also makes me happy that someone is doing something for the CoH community that miss the game so much. :) 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on October 25, 2014, 04:58:53 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on October 25, 2014, 06:31:15 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 25, 2014, 06:58:09 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: microc on October 25, 2014, 10:30:08 PM
http://www.memecenter.com/fun/169639/cats-soon (http://www.memecenter.com/fun/169639/cats-soon)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blondeshell on October 26, 2014, 01:35:37 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dareon Kale on October 26, 2014, 01:40:38 AM
Quality use of a Ghostbusters reference, right there.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on October 26, 2014, 06:12:00 PM
Sooo.... I wonder if doing a deal for NCSoft is going to sound more appealing to them now that they're doing a whole bunch of layoffs....

More money in their pockets to sell a dormant title....just sayin'.... ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on October 26, 2014, 09:35:55 PM
Sooo.... I wonder if doing a deal for NCSoft is going to sound more appealing to them now that they're doing a whole bunch of layoffs....

More money in their pockets to sell a dormant title....just sayin'.... ;)

Sadly no.  The layoffs are carbine and the coh sale, which means the world to us, is chump change to NcSoft.  The sale will happen...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on October 26, 2014, 11:31:29 PM
Quality use of a Ghostbusters reference, right there.

One might also say that if they sell CoH that they could enrich the lives of many happy PAYING CoH gamers......
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: microc on October 27, 2014, 04:13:29 AM
pulls power_gammers taunt finger and runs..... :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on October 27, 2014, 06:56:23 AM
pulls power_gammers taunt finger and runs..... :)
Hopes Power_Gamer never used the alias of Spleen at any time in the past.  :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 27, 2014, 10:31:46 AM
Hopes Power_Gamer never used the alias of Spleen at any time in the past.  :o

You hope in vain.  :roll:  lol
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on October 27, 2014, 07:32:12 PM
You hope in vain.  :roll:  lol
At least you were pointed the other way.  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: microc on October 27, 2014, 08:47:43 PM
how can the spleen be a hero...he killed those poor people in the dinner.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 27, 2014, 08:55:00 PM
how can the spleen be a hero...he killed those poor people in the dinner.

That, my friend, is anti-hero basics.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: houtex on October 28, 2014, 04:28:49 AM
He didn't kill them!  They passed out from the stench, it was that horrid, is all.

The Spleen isn't THAT bad a hero...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 28, 2014, 05:15:23 AM
He didn't kill them!  They passed out from the stench, it was that horrid, is all.

The Spleen isn't THAT bad a hero...

In fact he was a necessary cog in the well-oiled machine called The Super Squad!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 28, 2014, 06:06:08 AM
Sadly no.  The layoffs are carbine and the coh sale, which means the world to us, is chump change to NcSoft.  The sale will happen...
You know the longer we "wait" with the ball in their court I cant help but think that maybe...just maybe they are thinking about regurgitating the Development tools and Account data from the corporate bowels? I mean we are on month two... point five... A guy can dream and hope right? It isn't an outrageous thought.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on October 28, 2014, 06:34:14 AM
Quote
You know the longer we "wait" with the ball in their court I cant help but think that maybe...just maybe they are thinking about regurgitating the Development tools and Account data from the corporate bowels? I mean we are on month two... point five... A guy can dream and hope right? It isn't an outrageous thought.

With NCSoft you never truly know until it happens. LOL! I honestly think the longer it takes the more helpful NCSoft will become. That may sound strange to some people but my gut feelings brought me back here so....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zerohour on October 28, 2014, 11:55:50 AM
With NCSoft you never truly know until it happens. LOL! I honestly think the longer it takes the more helpful NCSoft will become. That may sound strange to some people but my gut feelings brought me back here so....
What do you mean your gut feelings brought you back here?  How do you have a gut feeling to be on a forum?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on October 28, 2014, 12:16:52 PM
What do you mean your gut feelings brought you back here?  How do you have a gut feeling to be on a forum?

People who are very intuitive can have "gut feelings" about anything you could think of. They could have a "gut feeling" to take their dog to do its business at a certain time of the day. So, if one hadn't been to a forum in a long while, I could see how someone might have had a random thought about City of Heroes and then suddenly had a gut feeling to come back to these forums and see what was going on.

If that person had actually not known about the current efforts beforehand, I'd venture a guess that their gut feeling to come back here around this time wouldn't have been misleading... ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on October 28, 2014, 01:52:17 PM
I had a gut feeling once ....... but it passed ..........  :roll:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: OzonePrime on October 28, 2014, 03:46:35 PM
I had a gut feeling once ....... but it passed ..........  :roll:

lol :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JennSpace on October 28, 2014, 04:07:41 PM
You know the longer we "wait" with the ball in their court I cant help but think that maybe...just maybe they are thinking about regurgitating the Development tools and Account data from the corporate bowels? I mean we are on month two... point five... A guy can dream and hope right? It isn't an outrageous thought.

That would be great for the players that played since the beginning of City or those that just wanted to find back an old friend. :) Personally, I will restart from scratch but I'd be really happy for all the others that won't do that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on October 28, 2014, 05:46:41 PM
Nate how's that phone bill doing?  :roll:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Urd on October 28, 2014, 06:10:01 PM
I had a gut feeling once ....... but it passed ..........  :roll:

My cats give me "gifts" all the time. People love to pet long haired cats over short haired ones, but if you own a longhair you learn they barf a lot of hairballs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 28, 2014, 06:35:18 PM
My cats give me "gifts" all the time. People love to pet long haired cats over short haired ones, but if you own a longhair you learn they barf a lot of hairballs.

At first, I thought gifts as in some animal the cat had slaughtered.  Had one like that who was a little messy about it.....we ended up getting rid of him because he was just...messy....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 28, 2014, 07:22:23 PM
I had a gut feeling once ....... but it passed ..........  :roll:
How'd that smell?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on October 28, 2014, 07:28:32 PM
My cats give me "gifts" all the time. People love to pet long haired cats over short haired ones, but if you own a longhair you learn they barf a lot of hairballs.

You know what makes it worse?

Longhaired tortie + dat early 80s mottled brown shag carpet. Hairball camouflage!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on October 28, 2014, 08:55:35 PM
My cats give me "gifts" all the time. People love to pet long haired cats over short haired ones, but if you own a longhair you learn they barf a lot of hairballs.

Trust me I know. We have 16 cats and 3 dogs. It's a long story. Good thing is always have people happy to see me when I get home from work.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on October 28, 2014, 08:57:43 PM
You know what makes it worse?

Longhaired tortie + dat early 80s mottled brown shag carpet. Hairball camouflage!

LOL!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on October 28, 2014, 11:06:56 PM
I had a gut feeling once ....... but it passed ..........  :roll:

Is that the polite term for gas nowadays?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on October 29, 2014, 04:50:30 AM
Trust me I know. We have 16 cats and 3 dogs. It's a long story. Good thing is always have people happy to see me when I get home from work.

I own eight cats and LOL, they totally recognize the sound of my car and they are right there, waiting. I think they just like food.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 29, 2014, 05:52:09 AM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=cdn.iwastesomuchtime.com%2F5212012223039fdgdfg.jpeg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on October 29, 2014, 06:19:32 AM
Quote
What do you mean your gut feelings brought you back here?  How do you have a gut feeling to be on a forum?

I meant that I had a gut feeling something was going to happen. So I started coming back to the forums. I think it was a few months later that "A New Effort" happened. So.... maybe what ever I eat that day was that good. I don't know. :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: microc on October 29, 2014, 09:40:17 AM
(https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v340/plushdragon/2b3e7738-88e1-4391-b645-0c779ebc348.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/plushdragon/media/2b3e7738-88e1-4391-b645-0c779ebc348.jpg.html)

That kitten feel sorry if the owners have hardwood floors.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: microc on October 29, 2014, 09:45:11 AM
(https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v340/plushdragon/129133554740283139.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/plushdragon/media/129133554740283139.jpg.html)

be great new power set cat missiles
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 29, 2014, 03:16:16 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=thumbpress.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F04%2FFunny-Cat-Pictures-with-Captions-34.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on October 29, 2014, 07:13:37 PM
(https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v340/plushdragon/129133554740283139.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/plushdragon/media/129133554740283139.jpg.html)

be great new power set cat missiles
Someone actually attached a slice of buttered bread to the back of a cat and dropped the cat?  And it worked?!?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JennSpace on October 29, 2014, 07:39:55 PM
(https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v340/plushdragon/2b3e7738-88e1-4391-b645-0c779ebc348.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/plushdragon/media/2b3e7738-88e1-4391-b645-0c779ebc348.jpg.html)

That kitten feel sorry if the owners have hardwood floors.

Bahahaha, okay I'm outta here, I will die of laughter... ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Urd on October 29, 2014, 11:32:22 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=cdn.iwastesomuchtime.com%2F5212012223039fdgdfg.jpeg)

You only need 1. Please neuter your cats!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: doctorlurkin on October 29, 2014, 11:36:14 PM
Someone actually attached a slice of buttered bread to the back of a cat and dropped the cat?  And it worked?!?
(https://i1282.photobucket.com/albums/a531/doctorlurkin/sVgfNk_zps2c22c2b3.jpeg) (http://s1282.photobucket.com/user/doctorlurkin/media/sVgfNk_zps2c22c2b3.jpeg.html)

pictures sometimes help me...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on October 30, 2014, 01:03:34 AM
Ah. OK.  Cat pictures.  Clearly nothing new
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on October 30, 2014, 12:11:23 PM
Ah. OK.  Cat pictures.  Clearly nothing new

*thumbs up*

Once I saw the first cat pic, I was like, "Oh God, please no...." >.<
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ryuplaneswalker on October 30, 2014, 12:46:53 PM
How'd that smell?

One could say it was a...Choking Cloud....

YEEEAAAAHHHHHH!!!!  8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zerohour on October 30, 2014, 02:22:42 PM
Ah. OK.  Cat pictures.  Clearly nothing new

My thoughts exactly. I'm just trying to remain optimistic that we will all at least get a nice little info present for Christmas at this point.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: SammiK31 on October 30, 2014, 02:32:58 PM
My thoughts exactly. I'm just trying to remain optimistic that we will all at least get a nice little info present for Christmas at this point.

Oooh, how nice would that be?!
"Hi guys, just a quick update, just in time for Christmas THEY ACCEPTED THE DEAL!"

I would scream the house down!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 30, 2014, 06:51:38 PM
(https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v340/plushdragon/129133554740283139.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/plushdragon/media/129133554740283139.jpg.html)

be great new power set cat missiles

He's looks more like a classic photon cat torpedo than a missile :).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 30, 2014, 07:50:19 PM
(https://kzoz.s3.amazonaws.com/jeff-and-jeremy/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Cat-a-pult.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: microc on October 30, 2014, 09:31:37 PM
(https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v340/plushdragon/128871472407686845.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/plushdragon/media/128871472407686845.jpg.html)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: microc on October 30, 2014, 09:34:09 PM
(https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v340/plushdragon/128706844040626054.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/plushdragon/media/128706844040626054.jpg.html)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: microc on October 30, 2014, 09:36:52 PM
(https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v340/plushdragon/128893198730072917.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/plushdragon/media/128893198730072917.jpg.html)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on October 30, 2014, 10:12:16 PM
(https://kzoz.s3.amazonaws.com/jeff-and-jeremy/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Cat-a-pult.jpg)

I see your catapult and raise you a machine gun

http://imgur.com/gallery/xTk1y4c
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on October 30, 2014, 10:35:00 PM
I see your catapult and raise you a machine gun

http://imgur.com/gallery/xTk1y4c
I see your machine gun and raise you a jedi kitty :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z3r9X8OahA
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 30, 2014, 10:53:29 PM
I see your machine gun and raise you a jedi kitty :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z3r9X8OahA

Yeah but lead being melted by a light sabre would still have a high velocity and likely...burn...the jedi........really badly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 30, 2014, 11:01:45 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.wallpaperfo.com%2Fthumbnails%2Fdetail%2F20121108%2Fflames%2520guns%2520internet%2520cats%2520ninjas%2520animals%2520humor%2520smoke%2520unicorns%2520funny%2520rainbows%2520nyan%2520cat%2520memes%25201920x_www.wallpaperfo.com_88.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cryono on October 30, 2014, 11:11:22 PM
well i'm glad this is relevant
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on October 30, 2014, 11:59:14 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.wallpaperfo.com%2Fthumbnails%2Fdetail%2F20121108%2Fflames%2520guns%2520internet%2520cats%2520ninjas%2520animals%2520humor%2520smoke%2520unicorns%2520funny%2520rainbows%2520nyan%2520cat%2520memes%25201920x_www.wallpaperfo.com_88.jpg)

That damn Andre Delambre is at it again...
(NOBODY will get the reference.  Probably not even with a Google.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 30, 2014, 11:59:44 PM
The Fly
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on October 31, 2014, 12:04:51 AM
The Fly

Yeah, but how does the cat fit in?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 31, 2014, 12:15:39 AM
The initial test was on his cat.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on October 31, 2014, 12:19:11 AM
The initial test was on his cat.

Good... the cat vanished, never to be seen again.  Until the end of the novella.  When at his wife's insistence he goes through the machine one more time and emerges... with the cat's head!

I'm thinking thats Andre/Dandelo there!

100 internets for you!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 31, 2014, 12:34:57 AM
Good... the cat vanished, never to be seen again.  Until the end of the novella.  When at his wife's insistence he goes through the machine one more time and emerges... with the cat's head!

I'm thinking thats Andre/Dandelo there!

100 internets for you!

I never read the novel, only watched the movies.  I knew the cat vanished in the original movie forever but it's never brought up, instead the doctor becomes a pacifist out of guilt for accidentally "killing" the cat.  Maybe I should see about the novel but then I'd be half spoiled....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on October 31, 2014, 12:44:02 AM
I never read the novel, only watched the movies.  I knew the cat vanished in the original movie forever but it's never brought up, instead the doctor becomes a pacifist out of guilt for accidentally "killing" the cat.  Maybe I should see about the novel but then I'd be half spoiled....

If you've seen the 1958 movie then you already know how it runs.  There are some subtle differences.  In the short story he's French; in the movie he's French Canadian.  That sort of thing.  But the movie is pretty close to the story.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 31, 2014, 12:55:59 AM
If you've seen the 1958 movie then you already know how it runs.  There are some subtle differences.  In the short story he's French; in the movie he's French Canadian.  That sort of thing.  But the movie is pretty close to the story.

Yeah thats the one I saw.  I admit it was in many ways better done as a story, it wasn't as scary as the 1980s movie but the 1980s movie was all about scaring the person watching it more than it's story.  What makes me feel bad about the scientist in the 1958 movie is how the scientists mind was slowly degrading from the experiment on himself, and how the half of him that transfered to the fly was killed by the spider in the end.  Quite horrifying in a more subtle way than the 1980s movie.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on October 31, 2014, 01:53:21 AM
Yeah thats the one I saw.  I admit it was in many ways better done as a story, it wasn't as scary as the 1980s movie but the 1980s movie was all about scaring the person watching it more than it's story.  What makes me feel bad about the scientist in the 1958 movie is how the scientists mind was slowly degrading from the experiment on himself, and how the half of him that transfered to the fly was killed by the spider in the end.  Quite horrifying in a more subtle way than the 1980s movie.

The spider web thing was horrific and freakin' scary!  The attacking spider belongs to the movie.  In the story his brother, Francois, finds the fly in a spider web in the garden weak but still alive.  He crushes it and buries it in a matchbox at Andre's grave.

It was originally published in Playboy. The whole story is a whopping 30 pages of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents stories for late at night" (which is how I have it) and includes the classic "It's a Good Life" where evil little Anthony wishes people he doesn't like deep into the cornfield.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 31, 2014, 02:27:16 AM
Nice!  Well, purchased a horror game on steam tonight.  Spec Ops: The line.  Been wanting to grab it for a short while :).

So I'll be getting mighty scared tonight and tomorrow after I do the various things I need to do tomorrow.

Also grabbed serious sam 3......so that'll hold me over a little while while I wait for CoH to come back or VO to update, which I think VO is updating soon to.  Especially with the kickstarter up for that game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on October 31, 2014, 02:36:09 AM
SS3 is a blast, I've been cooping it with hubby.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 31, 2014, 06:00:04 AM
I was playing spec ops while I waited for SS3 to load.  And holy mother of god does that thing terrify you.  Events of my playthrough so far:

Defended myself from insurgents....

....fought through more but hostage died.....

....fell into an ambush...

....then americans mistook me for jerks leading the rebels and attack me.....

...so I end up feeling especially rotten....

...a civilian jumps in front of me just before some americans and I felt bad enough had to stop after finishing that chapter...

...so I continue a half hour later and some tense moments came up, walker looks like crap....

....try to save someone and the civilians die and he dies anyways....geesh game stop it already....

and well. "the" scene comes up and i'm left feeling like a psycho....

....am I still sane?  :*(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 31, 2014, 06:04:51 AM
SS3 is a blast, I've been cooping it with hubby.

I think i'll play it tonight.  Balance the horror game and the fun game LOL.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on November 01, 2014, 03:52:46 AM
Nice!  Well, purchased a horror game on steam tonight.  Spec Ops: The line.  Been wanting to grab it for a short while :).

So I'll be getting mighty scared tonight and tomorrow after I do the various things I need to do tomorrow.

Also grabbed serious sam 3......so that'll hold me over a little while while I wait for CoH to come back or VO to update, which I think VO is updating soon to.  Especially with the kickstarter up for that game.

Spec Ops the line is a horror game?  I thought it was more so about the atrocities of war and blindly following orders.  A great horror game out there (or demo I should say) if you are a horror lover is a game known as PT.  It is a demo for the next silent hill game, and boy is it freaking creepy.  I don't know where to find the download but its free.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/silent-hills/P.T._Demo_Walkthrough (http://www.ign.com/wikis/silent-hills/P.T._Demo_Walkthrough)  if you want to take a peak.

Disclaimer - If you don't like creepy horror themed things, then just avoid the link.  It's not bad but still screenshots of a horror game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MegaWatt on November 01, 2014, 04:26:13 AM
no that game wasa game that was made to tell people who bought it that they were horrible for playing video games. one of those stupid 'deconstruction of the genera' pieces of nonsense.....errr in my opinion - i am thankful i didnt buy it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on November 01, 2014, 05:37:56 AM
no that game wasa game that was made to tell people who bought it that they were horrible for playing video games. one of those stupid 'deconstruction of the genera' pieces of nonsense.....errr in my opinion - i am thankful i didnt buy it.

You always were a kidder, Steve (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0moQMdtGF0&index=1&list=PLo4M1tlpv9rua8XVk7dVFfZsQUt8coy9H).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on November 01, 2014, 06:13:38 AM
Spec Ops the line is a horror game?  I thought it was more so about the atrocities of war and blindly following orders.  A great horror game out there (or demo I should say) if you are a horror lover is a game known as PT.  It is a demo for the next silent hill game, and boy is it freaking creepy.  I don't know where to find the download but its free.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/silent-hills/P.T._Demo_Walkthrough (http://www.ign.com/wikis/silent-hills/P.T._Demo_Walkthrough)  if you want to take a peak.

Disclaimer - If you don't like creepy horror themed things, then just avoid the link.  It's not bad but still screenshots of a horror game.

Firstly I am not a fan of "scary puzzle" games that many survival horror games tend to be(hated the tank like controls and the fact that such games, truely, were puzzle games in disguise and almost always are).  But I was more focused on the overall atrocities of war and that war indeed is not a thing to take casually.  It tends to horrify the player with things that can and do sometimes happen in war.  Indeed I can certainly see the deconstruction of modern military shooters in it.

But a game doesn't have to be a puzzle game to scare the crap out of you.  Try playing FEAR sometime.  Enemies jumping out or things unexpected happening that give you a sense of dread is scary, but solving puzzles and then beginning to feel that the entire thing is a puzzle just kills it for me.  Note my opinion of dead money and why I hated that DLC so much, not cause it was hard, but because it was nothing but a "scary puzzle".

no that game wasa game that was made to tell people who bought it that they were horrible for playing video games. one of those stupid 'deconstruction of the genera' pieces of nonsense.....errr in my opinion - i am thankful i didnt buy it.

It's not focused on just video games in general, more the jingoistic pro-war modern military shooter.  Those games it's always americans saving the day from either russia or middle east or some other area in the world where jingoists tend to be scared of.  Games that treat war as a very, very casual thing that it really shouldn't be treated that way, especially when those same games try to be serious but fail.

It doesn't target any other genre, just the pro-war modern military shooter that acts like war is nothing but an action game where the good guy ALWAYS wins.

Edit: Will say that I do enjoy non MMS games a lot.  Serious sam, duke nukem 3d(not it's MMS sequal which IS an MMS), shadow warrior.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cryono on November 01, 2014, 04:02:25 PM
wait am i missing something?

did this thread just ban on-topic posts or something
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on November 01, 2014, 04:16:01 PM
Time for the weekly reminder that there is no real topic to derail until we know something new?

On a further tangent, the Valiance Kickstarter is going nicely. Not a plug, or anything, just an observation. I know some people have picked a favorite, already, but I would like to see all of the projects at least make it to beta.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on November 01, 2014, 10:31:54 PM
Time for the weekly reminder that there is no real topic to derail until we know something new?

On a further tangent, the Valiance Kickstarter is going nicely. Not a plug, or anything, just an observation. I know some people have picked a favorite, already, but I would like to see all of the projects at least make it to beta.

I wish them luck, and I'm sure a lot of hard work is going into it, but it seems a bit....archaic.  Personally there are very few games I would pay to help kickstart, and VO isn't one of those few unfortunately.  But then again, I don't have to send GMAC a check so that they can develop a car I may or may not ever be interested in purchasing several years down the line, hehe.  I just wait for a finished offering and go from there.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on November 02, 2014, 12:09:56 AM
Time for the weekly reminder that there is no real topic to derail until we know something new?

On a further tangent, the Valiance Kickstarter is going nicely. Not a plug, or anything, just an observation. I know some people have picked a favorite, already, but I would like to see all of the projects at least make it to beta.

Same.... I'm actually extremely excited about what they've done and how transparent they've been--and they've constantly been showing what they've been up to. That's a great start in my book. Here's hoping they get a lot of coverage (just like CoT)!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkojin on November 02, 2014, 02:01:30 AM
Spec Ops the line is a horror game?  I thought it was more so about the atrocities of war and blindly following orders.  A great horror game out there (or demo I should say) if you are a horror lover is a game known as PT.  It is a demo for the next silent hill game, and boy is it freaking creepy.  I don't know where to find the download but its free.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/silent-hills/P.T._Demo_Walkthrough (http://www.ign.com/wikis/silent-hills/P.T._Demo_Walkthrough)  if you want to take a peak.

Disclaimer - If you don't like creepy horror themed things, then just avoid the link.  It's not bad but still screenshots of a horror game.

I am not sure if it is available on other systems, but P.T. is in the Playstation Store on PS4 as a free download. And as someone else mentioned, it pretty much is a 'scary puzzle' game in that you are looking for clues about what is going on, and why your character is stuck in an infinite loop of a hallway.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on November 02, 2014, 03:56:53 AM
no that game wasa game that was made to tell people who bought it that they were horrible for playing video games. one of those stupid 'deconstruction of the genera' pieces of nonsense.....errr in my opinion - i am thankful i didnt buy it.

I really think its more so about when you play a video game you are automatically the hero and they are automatically the villain.  And anything you do is right because you are a good guy, and anything they do is bad cause they are a bad guy.  Spec Op's wanted to grab a more realistic take on it.  Their are consequences for your actions in war and people will be affected by the decisions you made.  People will feel the loss of those you killed.  The game is a bit heavy on the de-construction of genre like you said. But it was about time someone made a game that tried to captured some of the evil's of war instead of just pure glory and heroism.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on November 02, 2014, 05:02:29 AM
I really think its more so about when you play a video game you are automatically the hero and they are automatically the villain.  And anything you do is right because you are a good guy, and anything they do is bad cause they are a bad guy.  Spec Op's wanted to grab a more realistic take on it.  Their are consequences for your actions in war and people will be affected by the decisions you made.  People will feel the loss of those you killed.  The game is a bit heavy on the de-construction of genre like you said. But it was about time someone made a game that tried to captured some of the evil's of war instead of just pure glory and heroism.

Thats what I've noticed so far already in spec ops and I haven't gotten all the way through just yet.  Was going to yesterday, but wasn't really in any condition to do much regrettably on friday.  Never get up fast after just having had any plasma drawn from ya, can cause some annoying problems :( and I was left a little off for it.  Anyhow, I am glad from what i've seen of spec ops that it doesn't paint the whole thing in black and white, which is actually I think it's real strong point.

On the opposite spectrum, I'm also having a LOT of fun with serious sam 3.  So far i've just gotten to the first level with the devastator, but since it's a first play through, been missing a lot of the secrets so I am naturally struggling to have sufficient ammo for everything in a couple spots for key weapons.  Not a huge deal, but I am kind of welcoming the challenge of the game.  It's certainly not strong on it's story but admittedly, I'm noticing it's better then some really early ones(at least sam clearly has a crush on someone).  But I like how the game allows you to switch weapons fast and also blast hordes away.  Just wish I knew where a secret minigun was(found a secret cannon and managed to get some nice cannon shots on the occasional biomech major).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on November 02, 2014, 06:46:58 AM
Let's steer at least a little bit back on course, folks, please. :) Digression is fine, but when it's been nearly three pages, we need to get back on track. ;)

We have an Other Games subforum if you'd like to continue discussing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on November 02, 2014, 09:22:21 AM
Quote
Let's steer at least a little bit back on course, folks, please. :) Digression is fine, but when it's been nearly three pages, we need to get back on track. ;)

We have an Other Games subforum if you'd like to continue discussing.

But first, I just wanted to say. I hope to see all the projects go all the way threw to complete launch.


With that out of the way.... more speculation, when does everyone guestamate we'll have a new announcement?

I'm guessing somewhere around the end of December with a bread crumb "maybe" before then.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on November 02, 2014, 12:23:07 PM
But first, I just wanted to say. I hope to see all the projects go all the way threw to complete launch.


With that out of the way.... more speculation, when does everyone guestamate we'll have a new announcement?

I'm guessing somewhere around the end of December with a bread crumb "maybe" before then.

I believe there is incentive to make a sale for extra thin wafer of income for NCSoft before year end
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: brothermutant on November 02, 2014, 01:19:33 PM
But first, I just wanted to say. I hope to see all the projects go all the way threw to complete launch.


With that out of the way.... more speculation, when does everyone guestamate we'll have a new announcement?

I'm guessing somewhere around the end of December with a bread crumb "maybe" before then.
I am guessing we will hear a little bit once a month until it gets finalized, just to keep us interested. We already heard in sept and oct, so I say again in Nov and maybe a December announcement (not saying it will be up in Dec, but I can dream).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on November 02, 2014, 04:46:20 PM
Let's steer at least a little bit back on course, folks, please. :) Digression is fine, but when it's been nearly three pages, we need to get back on track. ;)


Then get Nate to toss us some ambiguous comment so we can obsess on THAT for the next two weeks!

(like my dog trying to get at the bunny under my deck through the spaces in the deck planks)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on November 02, 2014, 05:19:57 PM
Then get Nate to toss us some ambiguous comment so we can obsess on THAT for the next two weeks!

(like my dog trying to get at the bunny under my deck through the spaces in the deck planks)

I hope it is turkey themed.  For our non-American friends I hope it is turkey themed for them too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 02, 2014, 05:23:35 PM
Ooh! Ooh! I know, the theme from the Greatest American Hero!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4JCehDOy54 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4JCehDOy54)

[ontopic]It's great that they are working on getting the game back.[/ontopic]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on November 04, 2014, 12:57:57 AM
Ooh! Ooh! I know, the theme from the Greatest American Hero!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4JCehDOy54 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4JCehDOy54)

[ontopic]It's great that they are working on getting the game back.[/ontopic]

Yay! In the suggested videos list to the side of this are the pilot episode and the "backdoor pilot" for Greatest American Heroine, which I've been trying to find for a few years, now! Thank you! :)

Just to pay lip service to the topic, if Nate could give us a quick, "Hey, so keep the faith! No news is good news," it would settle a lot of frayed nerves. I mean, not mine. I have beer and [substitute MMO] to get me by, but not everyone is as blase. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on November 04, 2014, 09:12:49 AM
Let's steer at least a little bit back on course, folks, please. :) Digression is fine, but when it's been nearly three pages, we need to get back on track. ;)

On topic! Right! I can *DO* On Topic! On topicy topic of topicness!

So how about that heated politcal subje....No....I mean...Wait...That's not on topic...

Toooopiiiiiii....Vin...Boats.....Sports Cars......Picnics..... Jack of Irons in a TuTu....

COH!
 There it is. Found it. Whoo.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on November 04, 2014, 11:24:34 AM
On topic! Right! I can *DO* On Topic! On topicy topic of topicness!

So how about that heated politcal subje....No....I mean...Wait...That's not on topic...

Toooopiiiiiii....Vin...Boats.....Sports Cars......Picnics..... Jack of Irons in a TuTu....

COH!
 There it is. Found it. Whoo.

Hmm... toon idea... Derail Tropic: Beam Rifle/Fire Blaster? Derail Topic: Beam Rifle/Mental?

As for the successor stuff and CoH Legacy - finding other stuff to do, supporting the efforts with your wallet and being positive helps!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on November 04, 2014, 07:29:06 PM
Hmm... toon idea... Derail Topic: Beam Rifle/Mental?


Of course the race would have to be Tro...unicorn.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 05, 2014, 01:01:27 AM
I used my mids to design builds based on Kirito and Asuna from sword art online.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on November 05, 2014, 03:41:12 AM
I used my mids to design builds based on Kirito and Asuna from sword art online.

Is that kind of like Homer Simpson eating the dirt beneath a stadium when he was trying to quit beer?

If so... /points finger: "Get behind me, Satan!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on November 05, 2014, 04:24:28 AM
Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://i1375.photobucket.com/albums/ag457/Cailyn_Alaynn/ScreenShot00002_zpsb8ccd3c7.png)


Anyone feel like a movie?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on November 05, 2014, 04:32:45 AM
Is that theater selling Enriche?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 05, 2014, 04:56:08 AM
Is that kind of like Homer Simpson eating the dirt beneath a stadium when he was trying to quit beer?

If so... /points finger: "Get behind me, Satan!"

Not really, I've been watching SOA quite a bit and figured what archetype and power sets that would have if they were in CoH.   Kirito is broad sword/wp brute until later when he becomes a dual blade/WP brute
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 05, 2014, 04:56:43 AM
Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://i1375.photobucket.com/albums/ag457/Cailyn_Alaynn/ScreenShot00002_zpsb8ccd3c7.png)


Anyone feel like a movie?

Oh that is beautiful!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on November 05, 2014, 06:10:40 AM
Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://i1375.photobucket.com/albums/ag457/Cailyn_Alaynn/ScreenShot00002_zpsb8ccd3c7.png)


Anyone feel like a movie?

Just one question. Are the lights dim because the movie is already playing?

If so, thanks for the invite after the shows already going. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on November 05, 2014, 06:48:42 AM
Just to pay lip service to the topic, if Nate could give us a quick, "Hey, so keep the faith! No news is good news," it would settle a lot of frayed nerves. I mean, not mine. I have beer and [substitute MMO] to get me by, but not everyone is as blase. :)
I saw this on a CoH FB page a week or so ago and posted it in the other thread.  Seems to be exactly what you are looking for.

Nathaniel Downes: Highlight so far is: nothings changed. It is in the back-and-forth period. "Well, if we do this, can you do that" "well yes but then we would need this other thing..."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on November 05, 2014, 09:43:30 AM
I am guessing we will hear a little bit once a month until it gets finalized, just to keep us interested. We already heard in sept and oct, so I say again in Nov and maybe a December announcement (not saying it will be up in Dec, but I can dream).
December announcement or maybe even a launch just in time for an extended winter event :D

I got to thinking about it. Nate had to prove there was people and resources to run CoH classic. That must mean people are in place already so the moment the deal is done work could likely begin I would think?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on November 05, 2014, 09:46:19 AM
I am ok with no news too. The longer we wait the more willing NCsoft will be to sell. We might just get more out of them too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: PsiBug on November 05, 2014, 03:09:17 PM
Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://i1375.photobucket.com/albums/ag457/Cailyn_Alaynn/ScreenShot00002_zpsb8ccd3c7.png)


Anyone feel like a movie?
Excellent! Thanks for posting!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Urd on November 05, 2014, 08:03:14 PM
Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://i1375.photobucket.com/albums/ag457/Cailyn_Alaynn/ScreenShot00002_zpsb8ccd3c7.png)


Anyone feel like a movie?

It wasn't a very good summer for movies this year.

When it was live I ran quite a few of these. The reward of KB to KD IO was worth it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on November 05, 2014, 10:06:02 PM
It wasn't a very good summer for movies this year.

When it was live I ran quite a few of these. The reward of KB to KD IO was worth it.

You said it sister. Bonfire, Tornado, that Peacebringer thing that pissed me off everytime.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on November 06, 2014, 04:34:13 AM
You said it sister. Bonfire, Tornado, that Peacebringer thing that pissed me off everytime.

I still keep thinking that it's usually only bad players that really cause any counter productive scattering.  But I never really scattered enemies willingly, it really depended on the situation whether I launched a tornado or not.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ryuplaneswalker on November 06, 2014, 10:48:20 AM
I still keep thinking that it's usually only bad players that really cause any counter productive scattering.  But I never really scattered enemies willingly, it really depended on the situation whether I launched a tornado or not.

That is why my Storm Summoner was a Merc MM, for all the crappyness of Spec Ops, they played very well with Tornado.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sihada on November 06, 2014, 01:55:06 PM
Quote
December announcement or maybe even a launch just in time for an extended winter event :D
I think you're being optimistic by at least 12 months.  City of Heroes is not going to be under the Christmas Tree for 2014.  If it were, we'd already know about it.

This is going to be a long, long process, and the next piece of news is not going to be an announcement telling us to log in.  Settle down, dial back your expectation accept that it's probably going to be this time next year before anything concrete comes to pass.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BraveStar on November 06, 2014, 03:36:28 PM
Anyone feel like a movie?

That looks a-m-a-z-i-n-g!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on November 06, 2014, 05:16:34 PM
I think you're being optimistic by at least 12 months.  City of Heroes is not going to be under the Christmas Tree for 2014.  If it were, we'd already know about it.

This is going to be a long, long process, and the next piece of news is not going to be an announcement telling us to log in.  Settle down, dial back your expectation accept that it's probably going to be this time next year before anything concrete comes to pass.
That's kind of what I'm thinking - hopefully it'll be a Christmas present for 2015.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on November 06, 2014, 05:17:51 PM
Just one question. Are the lights dim because the movie is already playing?

If so, thanks for the invite after the shows already going. :)

Well, if she invited you early, you might eat all her popcorn! She's not daft! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on November 06, 2014, 05:59:59 PM
Well, if she invited you early, you might eat all her popcorn! She's not daft! :p

More importantly, he might steal all the hot dogs and Dibs!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Defcon Kid on November 06, 2014, 08:38:23 PM
Hi all

Been a long time since my last visit here, when the announcement was released... would anyone be kind enough to make me a summary and avoid me to read more than 190 thread pages and posts pls?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 06, 2014, 08:50:36 PM
Hi all

Been a long time since my last visit here, when the announcement was released... would anyone be kind enough to make me a summary and avoid me to read more than 190 thread pages and posts pls?

Check out the first post of the New Efforts thread, it says it all.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on November 06, 2014, 10:07:44 PM
More importantly, he might steal all the hot dogs and Dibs!

I promise not to steal the dibs... but if you have raisinets then all bets are off.

Lets all go to the lobby, lets all go to the... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9QAPch2o6Q

Speaking of which, I always thought the one thing really missing from CoH was a drive-in theatre running something like the following on the screen... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h3CLhquqko
Maybe on Mercy Island.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 07, 2014, 12:47:56 AM
Excellent idea, Ankhammon!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on November 07, 2014, 01:21:24 AM
Excellent idea, Ankhammon!

I forgot to say it would be a great place for GMs to spawn. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cymmetri on November 07, 2014, 02:33:53 AM
Yes.  :'(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kriiden on November 07, 2014, 08:39:51 AM
...and another two hundred pages go by. I remember people in the other topic saying that they hoped the game would come back by a certain number of pages.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 07, 2014, 07:56:47 PM
Its a waiting game...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on November 07, 2014, 08:21:26 PM
Its a waiting game...

*waits patiently.

Azrael.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 07, 2014, 09:30:51 PM
And the wheels on the bus go round and round!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on November 07, 2014, 10:35:55 PM
...and another two hundred pages go by. I remember people in the other topic saying that they hoped the game would come back by a certain number of pages.
At the current average rate of page growth for this thread...add another year onto current efforts...page 1200?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on November 08, 2014, 12:54:30 AM
Is that theater selling Enriche?

Selling Enriche?

Pfff! Our Illustrious Overseer of All That Is Good, Emperor Cole, provides Enriche free to all of his loyal subjects and those who see the enlightenment of his ways.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on November 08, 2014, 01:09:27 AM
Selling Enriche?

Pfff! Our Illustrious Overseer of All That Is Good, Emperor Cole, provides Enriche free to all of his loyal subjects and those who see the enlightenment of his ways.
All Hail the Emperor!  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on November 08, 2014, 02:15:45 AM
Quote
Its a waiting game...

*tries to farm waiting game... faceplants*

Anyone got a wakie?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on November 08, 2014, 03:00:19 AM
*tries to farm waiting game... faceplants*

Anyone got a wakie?
if you have 2 orange I can give ya another one.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on November 08, 2014, 05:25:36 AM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on November 08, 2014, 05:42:17 AM
*tries to farm waiting game... faceplants*

Anyone got a wakie?

Sorry i have no wakies.  I used them quickloading a lot while playing other games getting killed in them for SCIENCE!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on November 08, 2014, 06:12:09 AM
We will get the game back when Lord Nemesis is good, well and ready... to kill us all. I mean he probably let himself go the last 2 years... those girl scout cookies lordy... I know I would. I would be more lost than a storm trooper when the death star blew up... what now. who do I fight or try to conquer.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on November 08, 2014, 06:32:45 AM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on November 08, 2014, 04:46:40 PM
Selling Enriche?

Pfff! Our Illustrious Overseer of All That Is Good, Emperor Cole, provides Enriche free to all of his loyal subjects and those who see the enlightenment of his ways.

I'll need cole-aid as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Excidia on November 08, 2014, 06:25:08 PM
Learn patience???  How long's that going to take?

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on November 08, 2014, 06:42:38 PM
I want to boot some head too!!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: houtex on November 08, 2014, 06:55:37 PM
Here ya go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5kGUW6M7W0
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Chance Jackson on November 08, 2014, 11:15:07 PM
Hmm... toon idea... Derail Tropic: Beam Rifle/Fire Blaster? Derail Topic: Beam Rifle/Mental?
Played around with a build like that on test or beta when mental became an option I was inspired by Sakurai and the other Esper from Gantz Manga didn't get to far with that one sadly
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on November 09, 2014, 02:33:04 AM
Don't leave without surrendering your rum.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mental Minister on November 09, 2014, 07:25:19 AM
When the best game ever returns "have to stay optimistic" I will role up these feel free to comment and criticize. For Pvp grav/storm/Psi troller. the two other will just be for a bit of both because I love playin brutes. 1. SS/EA/? 2. SJ/SR/fire. I am sure ill mess with mids a bit more but these 3 I am heart set on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on November 09, 2014, 09:28:17 AM
Played around with a build like that on test or beta when mental became an option I was inspired by Sakurai and the other Esper from Gantz Manga didn't get to far with that one sadly

I'd love to see psychics being a viable option again in super hero games.  Between CO and DCUO, only DCUO comes even remotely close, while CO your forced only to do a very specific telekinesis build that generally suffers in terms of fun, and telepathy just plain sucks in the game.  Be nice to sometime role a telepathic toon again who's powerful mind allows for an effective AoE juggernaught while still providing powerful support(ahh it'd be nice to play a fortunata again...)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Number9 on November 09, 2014, 04:47:58 PM
Ive not been following developments since Sept.  Any news or are things steady as she goes?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 09, 2014, 05:17:02 PM
Check the first post of the New Efforts thread.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on November 09, 2014, 05:18:51 PM
Ive not been following developments since Sept.  Any news or are things steady as she goes?

The first post of the thread is a little out of order, but October NCsoft accepted the technical test/task and no news is good news as of mid month.

Edit: now says as of November 9
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kierthos on November 10, 2014, 07:25:48 PM
So it continues to be "No news is good news"?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on November 10, 2014, 10:49:31 PM
So it continues to be "No news is good news"?

with dashes of creeping progress
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 11, 2014, 02:07:32 AM
with dashes of creeping progress

at least its not creepy progress.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on November 11, 2014, 04:04:06 AM
with dashes of creeping progress

I would say - steady progress with so far no setbacks.

I really do believe once the wheeling and dealing is done the point to start will be very short maybe 90 days or so as they setup accounting and perhaps build a launcher.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on November 11, 2014, 04:17:11 AM
I would say - steady progress with so far no setbacks.

I really do believe once the wheeling and dealing is done the point to start will be very short maybe 90 days or so as the setup accounting and perhaps build a launcher.
that's cool to know the deal is still going forward, also I find good news that it would take 90 days or so for the accounting and the launcher :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 11, 2014, 04:19:22 AM
We shall keep our fingers crossed for no setbacks!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 11, 2014, 04:22:33 AM
I would say - steady progress with so far no setbacks.

I really do believe once the wheeling and dealing is done the point to start will be very short maybe 90 days or so as the setup accounting and perhaps build a launcher.

I can see 90 days to 6 months after the deal is signed.  The tortoise beat the hare afterall, I'd rather wait a bit longer to ensure as error-free a relaunch as possible.

Create and test the launcher
Create and test the accounting system, plus decide if it is the old F2P/VIP hybrid or not. 
Set subscription price
Activate servers for beta testing to ensure things are ready
Provide a download of the game for those that uninstalled and an update for those that did not uninstall (I like using Icon) that points the game to the new servers.
Activate website and forums
Set launch date that can be met barring sudden epic problems
Rewrite and revise the old Terms of Service as needed to accommodate new ownership and any legal changes needed.
Adjust any of the old CoH rules that need updating
Hire GM's to police the game and help with stuck characters and teams and swat down exploiters and troublemakers.
Prepare incentives and special offers (people will ask/expect some. I don't but others will)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on November 11, 2014, 04:35:13 AM
Sure would be sweet to be playing by Christmas though. . . *Sigh*

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 11, 2014, 04:54:56 AM
Sure would be sweet to be playing by Christmas though. . . *Sigh*

You know that, I know that, I think everyone here knows it :)

But realistically IF the deal happened tomorrow I could the game back online for the Valentine event rather then the Winter Event.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 11, 2014, 04:57:28 AM
I'm betting we will get a bit of each holiday event when the game relaunches as a welcome gift for faithfully waiting.  :roll:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on November 11, 2014, 05:08:42 AM
I'm betting we will get a bit of each holiday event when the game relaunches as a welcome gift for faithfully waiting.  :roll:
Awesome idea  8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 11, 2014, 05:09:00 AM
I'm betting we will get a bit of each holiday event when the game relaunches as a welcome gift for faithfully waiting.  :roll:

That would be nice.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on November 11, 2014, 03:48:30 PM
I would open the game up for a free open beta as fast as possible.

Then set a $5 monthly fee and have it include EVERYTHING. You get all powers, all special badges and so on.

Next set up the market for buying the usual stuff. Once the game is purchased contact the SCoRE team if they exist and work together to make a possibility for bringing i24 forward to conclusion.

Man, I wish i was a bit closer to retirement.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on November 11, 2014, 04:55:05 PM
And then you'll wish that you were younger.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on November 11, 2014, 06:24:02 PM
I'm betting we will get a bit of each holiday event when the game relaunches as a welcome gift for faithfully waiting.  :roll:

When the game comes back, I'm making my own holiday event! I'm taking a week off work! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on November 11, 2014, 06:36:39 PM
When the game comes back, I'm making my own holiday event! I'm taking a week off work! :p

Well, since I'm already retired (since about 6 months before the sunset notification)  I'll have to top your week off of work and take a week off from Real Life!   ;D

And yeah, I do wish I were younger... sucks when the RL warranty runs out on body parts.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on November 11, 2014, 07:04:25 PM
Well, since I'm already retired (since about 6 months before the sunset notification)  I'll have to top your week off of work and take a week off from Real Life!   ;D

And yeah, I do wish I were younger... sucks when the RL warranty runs out on body parts.

They're trying to reposses mine.. Something about abuse...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on November 11, 2014, 08:08:06 PM
Well, since I'm already retired (since about 6 months before the sunset notification)  I'll have to top your week off of work and take a week off from Real Life!   ;D

And yeah, I do wish I were younger... sucks when the RL warranty runs out on body parts.
I feel young until I try to move.  :roll:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on November 11, 2014, 08:39:46 PM
When the game comes back, I'm making my own holiday event! I'm taking a week off work! :p

If I was a working generation X i'd take a day off for sure, but i'm a millennial, they NEVER give us any days off....ever :(.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on November 11, 2014, 08:44:49 PM
I would open the game up for a free open beta as fast as possible.

Then set a $5 monthly fee and have it include EVERYTHING. You get all powers, all special badges and so on.

Next set up the market for buying the usual stuff. Once the game is purchased contact the SCoRE team if they exist and work together to make a possibility for bringing i24 forward to conclusion.

Man, I wish i was a bit closer to retirement.

*nods.

Azrael.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on November 11, 2014, 08:47:19 PM
If I was a working generation X i'd take a day off for sure, but i'm a millennial, they NEVER give us any days off....ever :(.

Depends on where you work. I get 21 vacation days a year as a millennial
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on November 11, 2014, 08:50:21 PM
Depends on where you work. I get 21 vacation days a year as a millennial

Teletech wasn't prone to give anything and actually regularly lowered wages on me, so they just bluntly didn't care.  Twice I was layed off and both times they lowered my pay, I ended up quitting when they wanted me to replace computer equipment to work for them, on minimum wage, part time.....

It costs 100+ dollars for a modem or router.  The place was paying minimum wage and part time, can't work for someone being that picky with internet equipment on such low wages know?

But never got a day off from em.  They just, didn't care.

Edit: And the second layoff?  That was after they'd just trained me for more responsabilities.  Thats how incompetent they were.  EVERYONE around me encouraged me to not deal with them anymore including even more workaholic friends/relatives.  So...yeah... :S
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 11, 2014, 09:11:42 PM
They're trying to reposses mine.. Something about abuse...

Yeah my specialist, Dr. Rudy Wells tells me my replacement parts are on back order since the price was hiked up to cost an arm and a leg.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on November 11, 2014, 09:14:15 PM
Yeah my specialist, Dr. Rudy Wells tells me my replacement parts are on back order since the price was hiked up to cost an arm and a leg.

On a side note:  I heard that they are making a reboot of The $6 Million Dollar Man.

I sure hope they update that figure though....these days $6 Million would only get you a bionic big toe.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 11, 2014, 09:25:56 PM
I would open the game up for a free open beta as fast as possible.

Then set a $5 monthly fee and have it include EVERYTHING. You get all powers, all special badges and so on.

Next set up the market for buying the usual stuff. Once the game is purchased contact the SCoRE team if they exist and work together to make a possibility for bringing i24 forward to conclusion.

Man, I wish i was a bit closer to retirement.

Now your ideas I like!
As to the special badges, it would be nice to finally have Bug-Hunter and Passport and to have them reactivate all the old anniversary badges.

I'd purchase every costume/power pack again to ensure that certain costumes can be rebuilt, from there it is a matter of rebuilding characters.

Also here's a feature that I wouldn't mind seeing added in: we had the ability to transfer characters to other servers for $10 and we could copy characters to TEST server for free.  So since copying characters was possible, how about for $20 we can copy/clone a character to another server.

Some of us did like having the same name/character on multiple servers and while rolling and leveling characters can be fun, sometimes the TIME factor is a problem.  So if the potential new owners could add that feature that would be nice.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 11, 2014, 09:35:29 PM
On a side note:  I heard that they are making a reboot of The $6 Million Dollar Man.

I sure hope they update that figure though....these days $6 Million would only get you a bionic big toe.

Currently Dynamite comics has a Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman series running that continues the series where they left off,.

Prior to that they had a modern series based on a screenplay by Kevin Smith called The Bionic Man which updated the origin and tech considerably.

Austiin asked Oscar how much the parts would cost and Oscar stated after factoring in the budget for personnel, upgrades, research, repairs, that it would be six million per DAY.

Austin lost one arm, both legs and his eye, but due to the weight of the arms that they had to amputate his left arm and replace it for balance issues, his bones were reinforced, for proper binocular vision his good eye was removed and replaced as well.  He could easily run about 90mph if not faster, he was virtually bulletproof, had built in wifi and a 3 TB computer in his head.   Also per the old CYBORG novels he did have lasers in his eyes.

We got retellings of Bigfoot, the Venus probe, Maskatron and more.  Fun series
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on November 11, 2014, 09:41:53 PM
On a side note:  I heard that they are making a reboot of The $6 Million Dollar Man.

I sure hope they update that figure though....these days $6 Million would only get you a bionic big toe.

Not even a bionic toe according to deus ex HR :).  And the iluminati in the deus ex world LOVES putting explosives in augmented people so they can just say a word and detonate the person for disobeying orders, as well as keeping augmentations as high priced as possible for non members so non members cannot ever get them.  Not to mention neuropozine deliberately kept in short supply as a means to keep prices high to further centralize wealth to themselves.  :)

Yeah, six million dollars wouldn't be close to enough for a fully augmented super human these days.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on November 11, 2014, 09:57:44 PM
They're trying to reposses mine.. Something about abuse...

For sale one liver, one careless owner ...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 11, 2014, 10:12:53 PM

Yeah, six million dollars wouldn't be close to enough for a fully augmented super human these days.

Plus can you imagine the maintenance/upkeep/repair costs?  In Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, the Major and Batu were chatting and it was stated rather clearly that they are essentially property of Section 9 due to their cyborg bodies and upkeep costs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on November 11, 2014, 10:17:26 PM
Plus can you imagine the maintenance/upkeep/repair costs?  In Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, the Major and Batu were chatting and it was stated rather clearly that they are essentially property of Section 9 due to their cyborg bodies and upkeep costs.

I really could not agree with you more on the costs of cyborgs and their maintenance.

The future is in reanimated corpses.

-Dr Vaz
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 11, 2014, 11:50:34 PM
I really could not agree with you more on the costs of cyborgs and their maintenance.

The future is in reanimated corpses.

-Dr Vaz

Hey, if Vampire or Werewolf were to approach me with an invitation to join their club, I would definitely join up....preferably after being briefed about any and all weaknesses, sunlight, silver, etc.

While the idea of being a super cyborg, or a suit of armor like Iron Man has an appeal, the maintenance costs alone would be prohibitive.

Heh,......imagine the costs of maintaining and deploying a GUNDAM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on November 12, 2014, 12:41:33 AM
I would open the game up for a free open beta as fast as possible.

Then set a $5 monthly fee and have it include EVERYTHING. You get all powers, all special badges and so on.

Next set up the market for buying the usual stuff. Once the game is purchased contact the SCoRE team if they exist and work together to make a possibility for bringing i24 forward to conclusion.

I don't know... I sorta liked the f2p model myself - how about f2p for a static, I23 CoX (2004 version) with the store extras for purchase and a small subscription model for the various projects to come?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on November 12, 2014, 12:57:19 AM
Plus can you imagine the maintenance/upkeep/repair costs?  In Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, the Major and Batu were chatting and it was stated rather clearly that they are essentially property of Section 9 due to their cyborg bodies and upkeep costs.
Although the Major actually has had dozens of bodies stashed or "idling" around the globe and her ghost has gone repeatedly body hopping when need arose, and that's not counting what she became later. Although i don't think Section 9 is aware of all of that, and it would be in the Major's interest to not let them know.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 12, 2014, 02:01:30 AM
Although the Major actually has had dozens of bodies stashed or "idling" around the globe and her ghost has gone repeatedly body hopping when need arose, and that's not counting what she became later. Although i don't think Section 9 is aware of all of that, and it would be in the Major's interest to not let them know.

Yes in Stand Alone Complex the Major was definitely secretive about the face that she could and would hop cyber bodies with ease and even operate 2 at once from her home.   Then in Solid State Society she was the Puppeteer.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on November 12, 2014, 02:20:45 AM
I don't know... I sorta liked the f2p model myself - how about f2p for a static, I23 CoX (2004 version) with the store extras for purchase and a small subscription model for the various projects to come?

the I23 maint will have to pay for itself...subscriptions will do that. fully f2p wont
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on November 12, 2014, 02:27:46 AM
On a side note:  I heard that they are making a reboot of The $6 Million Dollar Man.

I sure hope they update that figure though....these days $6 Million would only get you a bionic big toe.

I believe the title for the reboot is going to be The Six Billion Dollar Man, due out in 2016... and for once they aren't trying to re-do it with Mike Myers or Jim Carey as the star.... (shudder).

  Mark Wahlberg's done some enjoyable stuff lately, and I can buy him as someone who was meant to be a normal looking undercover agent most of the time, and not someone with wanna-be movie star looks.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 12, 2014, 02:42:52 AM
I believe the title for the reboot is going to be The Six Billion Dollar Man, due out in 2016... and for once they aren't trying to re-do it with Mike Myers or Jim Carey as the star.... (shudder).

  Mark Wahlberg's done some enjoyable stuff lately, and I can buy him as someone who was meant to be a normal looking undercover agent most of the time, and not someone with wanna-be movie star looks.

Well they mentioned in the new Robocop movie when someone said he looked like a million bucks, some stated 2 billion bucks.

So yeah I can see Colonel Steve Austin running into the billions for his bionic budget. 

Hm, as much as I don't like franchise crossovers, a Bionic Man vs. Robocop mini series could be interesting.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on November 12, 2014, 03:23:55 AM
Well they mentioned in the new Robocop movie when someone said he looked like a million bucks, some stated 2 billion bucks.

So yeah I can see Colonel Steve Austin running into the billions for his bionic budget. 

Hm, as much as I don't like franchise crossovers, a Bionic Man vs. Robocop mini series could be interesting.


I always wanted to see a Robocop - Max Headroom combined universe series.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on November 12, 2014, 04:10:32 AM
It costs 100+ dollars for a modem or router.
WHAT? Maybe if you're getting them made out of solid gold or some shit. My router was $40 and an equivalent modem to the one provided for free by my cable carrier would be about $60.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on November 12, 2014, 04:54:42 AM
They're trying to reposses mine.. Something about abuse...

We've come for your liver...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on November 12, 2014, 05:13:09 AM
I would open the game up for a free open beta as fast as possible.

Then set a $5 monthly fee and have it include EVERYTHING. You get all powers, all special badges and so on.

Next set up the market for buying the usual stuff. Once the game is purchased contact the SCoRE team if they exist and work together to make a possibility for bringing i24 forward to conclusion.

Man, I wish i was a bit closer to retirement.

You're far too easy on everyone.

Free open beta, then $14.99/month to play. This includes everything. It is only fair to recompense the people making this effort somewhat, and to pay the costs associated with startup. Were the game still up now, I would have been paying $14.99/month this whole time. This isn't ripping people off, its a fair price. I totally WISH I was paying $14.99 now, trust me. This game is worth it.

Then set up the market.

When things age in a bit and we get CoT up and running, THEN drop down to $5/month.

That's just me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 12, 2014, 05:17:34 AM

I always wanted to see a Robocop - Max Headroom combined universe series.

Better yet, we have had a few comic miniseries and a Sega and Nintendo video game for this idea but now it is time I think for the ROBOCOP vs TERMINATOR movie to be made.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dareon Kale on November 12, 2014, 01:18:29 PM
You're far too easy on everyone.

Free open beta, then $14.99/month to play. This includes everything. It is only fair to recompense the people making this effort somewhat, and to pay the costs associated with startup. Were the game still up now, I would have been paying $14.99/month this whole time. This isn't ripping people off, its a fair price. I totally WISH I was paying $14.99 now, trust me. This game is worth it.

Then set up the market.

When things age in a bit and we get CoT up and running, THEN drop down to $5/month.

That's just me.

You'd price yourself out of a lot of business with those numbers. What you are willing to pay as an old invested CoH diehard is much different than the average gamer. Specifically when you are asking it for a game that IS dated in the graphics department, and was doomed to obscurity for a few years.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on November 12, 2014, 01:32:10 PM
You're far too easy on everyone.

Free open beta, then $14.99/month to play. This includes everything. It is only fair to recompense the people making this effort somewhat, and to pay the costs associated with startup. Were the game still up now, I would have been paying $14.99/month this whole time. This isn't ripping people off, its a fair price. I totally WISH I was paying $14.99 now, trust me. This game is worth it.

Then set up the market.

When things age in a bit and we get CoT up and running, THEN drop down to $5/month.

That's just me.

I also don't agree with the $15/month idea, because in the past that $15/month bought me access to the game, and ALSO continued development in the game. $15/month for CoH 1.5, maybe, but unless there is a way to continue developing new things for CoH 1.0, and that doesn't appear likely, it's not reasonable to pay full price for a zombie game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on November 12, 2014, 01:34:39 PM
If it was me (and it's not, but if it was :)):

I'd leave the "freemium" model in place.  As much as I personally dislike the F2P schema,
it does bring in new players better than a full subscription-only plan.

Then I'd have the VIP subscription at $9.99 a month.

I would also have a relatively short window (about 6 months) where all the unlockables
are sold in a couple of bundles [costumes bundle, powers bundle, a bundle that included enough
tokens to go to vet reward tier 8, etc].  These could be used to bring a quick infusion of cash
and to bring all of us mostly back to what we had.

Going forward from that, I'd have the normal sales in the store.  I might even add in an Influence pack
and an SG Prestige pack for those folks who simply cannot wait to get their bases back up and running.

I'd also like to see a store purchase able to unlock the "VIP Tier 9" costume sets that they rotated out
of the reward tiers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 12, 2014, 01:42:27 PM
You'd price yourself out of a lot of business with those numbers. What you are willing to pay as an old invested CoH diehard is much different than the average gamer. Specifically when you are asking it for a game that IS dated in the graphics department, and was doomed to obscurity for a few years.

Yes, cuz no one will pay for nostalgia.  ;)

Especially new gamers, who have NO interest in dated graphics.
http://www.gnomonschool.com/blog/3d-modeling/8-bit-art-is-the-future-of-3d-video-game-art-in-the-past (http://www.gnomonschool.com/blog/3d-modeling/8-bit-art-is-the-future-of-3d-video-game-art-in-the-past)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on November 12, 2014, 01:44:46 PM
Not that I expect an answer or anything, because I don't.

But, I'd love to know where exactly things stand. 

Are we to the lawyers talking to each other stage? 
Are we still waiting on some manager's inbox for a proceed/no go answer?

I've personally never been in any kind of business deals at this level
and am basically just curious on how things proceed.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on November 12, 2014, 01:54:46 PM
No one knows except those in the negotiations, and they're not going to tell us anything.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 12, 2014, 02:30:27 PM
No one knows except those in the negotiations, and they're not going to tell us anything.

And its better that way.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on November 12, 2014, 02:52:18 PM
I also don't agree with the $15/month idea, because in the past that $15/month bought me access to the game, and ALSO continued development in the game. $15/month for CoH 1.5, maybe, but unless there is a way to continue developing new things for CoH 1.0, and that doesn't appear likely, it's not reasonable to pay full price for a zombie game.

whoever runs the game will have to find a break even point. they wont run at a loss just to keep people happy.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 12, 2014, 03:08:43 PM
And if $15 a month is too much, then perhaps it is not worth reanimating the game for you.  :P

There must be a compelling reason to reopen CoX on both sides, provider and consumer.   
The work-hours and technical expertise must be compensated (not forgetting an attractive profit margin), and reasonable expectations of the community must be met.

I was willing to play the game for the full subscription price b4 free play, I still paid the sub when free play came around, I was willing to pay it even if they hadn't offered free access til the shutdown.

If that's not you, so be it. But for me, $15/month was a small price to pay for the amount of enjoyment I received in all aspects of the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on November 12, 2014, 03:39:59 PM
If it was me (and it's not, but if it was :)):

I'd leave the "freemium" model in place.  As much as I personally dislike the F2P schema,
it does bring in new players better than a full subscription-only plan.

Then I'd have the VIP subscription at $9.99 a month.

I would also have a relatively short window (about 6 months) where all the unlockables
are sold in a couple of bundles [costumes bundle, powers bundle, a bundle that included enough
tokens to go to vet reward tier 8, etc].  These could be used to bring a quick infusion of cash
and to bring all of us mostly back to what we had.

Going forward from that, I'd have the normal sales in the store.  I might even add in an Influence pack
and an SG Prestige pack for those folks who simply cannot wait to get their bases back up and running.

I'd also like to see a store purchase able to unlock the "VIP Tier 9" costume sets that they rotated out
of the reward tiers.

Lol... pretty much what I was alluding to....

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10284.msg167554.html#msg167554

... the newer games HAVE  to be the subscription draw (APR, CoT, etc.), but the 10 year old original CoH (and the CoV supplement) in its I23 stasis should be f2p for the most part just to draw other players into the CoX world... if they stay, fine, but if they want the updates of a "newer" game, that will be available in the form of a sub to all the newer spin-offs (if that route is chosen)...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on November 12, 2014, 03:48:56 PM
whoever runs the game will have to find a break even point. they wont run at a loss just to keep people happy.

Understood.... that could be in the form of donations, kickstarter, or even a GW model where all that want to play the old, static I23 (like I do) pay a one-time fee for "game" purchase... but it might be a bit unrealistic to expect to pay a high sub fee to an older game with no access to updates... (the current state of SWG[emu] comes to mind... an all volunteer project, static game frozen at a certain point [JTL, ultimately] running on donations and doing well)    ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 12, 2014, 03:52:25 PM
I suppose it depends on what you consider to be a high sub fee.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on November 12, 2014, 05:10:07 PM
I suppose it depends on what you consider to be a high sub fee.

my thought exactly..$15 a month is cheap...1 trip to mcdonalds.....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on November 12, 2014, 05:13:15 PM
my thought exactly..$15 a month is cheap...1 trip to mcdonalds.....

Haven't been to a McDonolds in awhile, but there is no way a meal cost 15 dollars O.o 15 dollars is the price for a food in a sitdown restaurant that doesn't serve dehydrated
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on November 12, 2014, 05:34:43 PM
Haven't been to a McDonolds in awhile, but there is no way a meal cost 15 dollars O.o 15 dollars is the price for a food in a sitdown restaurant that doesn't serve dehydrated

when I go to mcd's, i buy for my wife and I..+ a smoothie..$15 goes fast
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: InOnePiece on November 12, 2014, 05:58:12 PM
Haven't been to a McDonolds in awhile, but there is no way a meal cost 15 dollars O.o

You're not factoring in the healthcare costs associated with eating at McDs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on November 12, 2014, 06:14:06 PM

... the newer games HAVE  to be the subscription draw (APR, CoT, etc.), but the 10 year old original CoH (and the CoV supplement) in its I23 stasis should be f2p for the most part just to draw other players into the CoX world...

And do you actually think money, diamonds and gold bars are going to drop from the sky onto Team Hail Mary to keep CoX going for free?  ....   Really? 

Are YOU going to foot the bill then?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on November 12, 2014, 07:49:12 PM
We had three accounts at my house and we have set aside about 200.00 dollars to get all the old stuff and would be happy to pay 15$ a month.

The truth is we have no idea what the market will bear and any estimates about what it will be like are just guesses. You can state what you are willing to  pay but unless you work for an MMO in marketing you are just guessing like the rest of us.

Maybe you think it should FTP or 5$ a month. I want the game back and I am willing to pay to do so. If you aren't that's cool, but many of us are.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on November 12, 2014, 08:27:18 PM
I have no issue with $15 a month especially if that means everything is unlocked. Just praying there's no freebie players.. at this point no one should be playing for free...the point is for CoHi23 to remain alive and freebies don't help that at all. I have a feeling the sub price will more likely be $10/month though... which I think is completely reasonable.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on November 12, 2014, 08:29:28 PM
my thought exactly..$15 a month is cheap...1 trip to mcdonalds.....

Where?  In Canada?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on November 12, 2014, 08:35:27 PM
And do you actually think money, diamonds and gold bars are going to drop from the sky onto Team Hail Mary to keep CoX going for free?  ....   Really? 

Are YOU going to foot the bill then?

I don't have a problem with $15 for a single sub fee.  I would have a problem with multiple sub fees that I planned for bringing back my wife's toons and son's sandbox. 

I don't see the need for the original sub costs if all that is happening is bringing the game back online with no development.  I do see a need for some type of sub fee to keep servers alive, support crew, and compensation to the people who worked this all out.  And if the money is going to APR or CoT or others, so be it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on November 12, 2014, 09:32:25 PM
Reality has to set in at some point.

This is a retired game being brought back to life. Once the costs are known for support (much of that work may be done by volunteers - GM's and such), hosting and associated costs - likely it could be done by a 3rd party vendor fairly cheap and a minimal staff for accounting and management. Once these are reached then you know what to price it at to run a small profit monthly - I would then take this profit and sink it into CoH 1.5 and possibly form a partnership with the APR team.

Why reinvent the wheel? If the team running the old game has support staff, hosting set up and accounting in place - why would you want to absorb those costs again?

Making enough money to run the game, pay some people and provide for future development would be the key. Alas, we don't know the deal reached - maybe the Classic game is required to be a seperate entity.  I would have to seriously look at my finances to run something like this. I know how much my wife and I both make and to retire early from a good job to move to another uncertan job would have to at least equal what I make now.

It would come down to how does the game start?

Is NCSoft willing to fund the restart with an immediate repay as soon as possible? Would it require a business loan? I don't fancy taking a loan against my 401k to fund the game unless I could run a business plan project costs versus return. If the ROI was under say 3 years - fair enough - otherwise it would be a tough sell.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on November 12, 2014, 10:03:44 PM
You're not factoring in the healthcare costs associated with eating at McDs.

that means....subscribing to COH is good for your health!!!!!

I was able to play coh while just out of intensive care for 6 heart bypasses.......fuuuuuunnnnnn!!!!!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on November 12, 2014, 10:05:43 PM
Reality has to set in at some point.

This is a retired game being brought back to life. Once the costs are known for support (much of that work may be done by volunteers - GM's and such), hosting and associated costs - likely it could be done by a 3rd party vendor fairly cheap and a minimal staff for accounting and management. Once these are reached then you know what to price it at to run a small profit monthly - I would then take this profit and sink it into CoH 1.5 and possibly form a partnership with the APR team.

Why reinvent the wheel? If the team running the old game has support staff, hosting set up and accounting in place - why would you want to absorb those costs again?

Making enough money to run the game, pay some people and provide for future development would be the key. Alas, we don't know the deal reached - maybe the Classic game is required to be a seperate entity.  I would have to seriously look at my finances to run something like this. I know how much my wife and I both make and to retire early from a good job to move to another uncertan job would have to at least equal what I make now.

It would come down to how does the game start?

Is NCSoft willing to fund the restart with an immediate repay as soon as possible? Would it require a business loan? I don't fancy taking a loan against my 401k to fund the game unless I could run a business plan project costs versus return. If the ROI was under say 3 years - fair enough - otherwise it would be a tough sell.
If such people need startup money, I doubt they'd lack for it around here.  I threw $1,000 at City of Titans, another $100 at Valiance, and I'd be willing to throw another $1,000 at the i23 restart company.  If I actually got that $ back, well that's a bonus.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on November 12, 2014, 11:31:32 PM
This is all my personal speculation. I would propose that the folks running the Legacy/zombie version would operate for a break even or very modest wafer thin margin with incentives for patrons in the Revival I 24/Revival/CoH 1.5. Revival is where the Investors will have a more flashy product to sell.

How much would I pay for a game that I would play probably 6  days out of 7 per week? $15/25 days is 60 cents per day. When I was in college I would spend  $1/day on video games and pinball. 60cents is a sacrifice of a can of soda? a cup of coffee? the difference between a regular coffee and a starbucks? For a VIP, $15/mo seems comfortable for one account - especially for my beloved CoH.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 13, 2014, 12:23:56 AM
I don't have a problem with $15 for a single sub fee.  I would have a problem with multiple sub fees that I planned for bringing back my wife's toons and son's sandbox. 

I don't see the need for the original sub costs if all that is happening is bringing the game back online with no development.  I do see a need for some type of sub fee to keep servers alive, support crew, and compensation to the people who worked this all out.  And if the money is going to APR or CoT or others, so be it.

I would like to see $15 for first subscription then say: $10 for additional accounts attached to your main account. 

All proceeds go to server maintenance, electrical/bandwidth fees, staff and of course CoH 1.5
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 13, 2014, 01:33:51 AM
Interesting thought Sinistar :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on November 13, 2014, 02:23:05 AM
The whole process that's been involved in this remarkable attempt to resurrect our beloved game is starting to make me think of Niagara Falls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYP1OBZfFK0

Slowly we turn...  :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 13, 2014, 03:02:45 AM
The whole process that's been involved in this remarkable attempt to resurrect our beloved game is starting to make me think of Niagara Falls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYP1OBZfFK0

Slowly we turn...  :D

Step by step.....Inch by Inch....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 13, 2014, 03:08:58 AM
Keep the flags flying!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 13, 2014, 03:18:24 AM
Just got done in MIDS making up some new brute builds.  Every now and then the mad scientist MIDS builder in me must work.....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on November 13, 2014, 03:19:05 AM
I would like to see $15 for first subscription then say: $10 for additional accounts attached to your main account. 

All proceeds go to server maintenance, electrical/bandwidth fees, staff and of course CoH 1.5

That is along the same lines as I was thinking for premium/VIP, but I think we will still need an F2P hook to bring in new players.


Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on November 13, 2014, 04:00:21 AM
Are YOU going to foot the bill then?

Sure (as I think most of you would)! I've already made mention to something going towards static I23 in a previous post   http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10284.msg167592.html#msg167592   and won't rehash it here...

... but trying to afford to pay present-day (2014) subscription prices for a present-day MMO is one thing, for a 10-y.o. game with no continuation available is quite another and a bit unrealistic for some (I'd personally be willing to invest up to $100 as a one-time purchase fee, but not as a subscription)...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dareon Kale on November 13, 2014, 04:49:58 AM
My thought process is that we would prefer to have more players in the game as opposed to less. It may be a futile effort trying to get new or previously casual players to come back, but I don't think you have much chance at all with the same subscription fees as a currently supported and developed game. yes, the reality is that for most people finding $15/month is easy if they put any effort into it. On the other hand, $5, $7, or $10 looks and feels much cheaper, and I think would go a long way towards bringing back more people. I have no idea how the numbers play out, but you might very well be able to achieve more revenue through volume than price that way. I want very much for the world to feel alive, and not like I am playing in a sandbox by myself.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 13, 2014, 05:47:45 AM
That is along the same lines as I was thinking for premium/VIP, but I think we will still need an F2P hook to bring in new players.

I agree that an F2P hook would be a good idea, however the restrictions on F2P from the old days should be looked at and modified a bit.

The restrictions are here  http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Free_Player#Free

Main thing about Premium/Free accounts was that they lost the ability to use IO's which made a few players irate.  Also they lose incarnate powers, but that is fine. If you want the full power you have to pay.

However the invention restriction could be modified for free/premium accounts in that they CAN create and install IO's but only at a max of level 25. So yes they can get to L50, but they would essentially be at half the strength of a VIP L50 as their slots can only take up to L25 IO's.

Of course for nine issues characters were pretty good with just SO's but the IO's do compensate for Jack's legacy of Enhancement Diversification.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on November 13, 2014, 06:30:52 AM
If you're not willing to pay the usual 15$ fee or the 12 month subscription with discount then you must really not want this game back that badly. 10 year old or not "there is no other game like cox" " I don't have fun in any other game" etc speaks to me that it's worth doing whatever possible to get the game back and to keep it running.

This game isn't going to run at 5$ or 10$ a month unless many people have multiple accounts, buy lots of cash shop items or we end up with huge subscription numbers to pay for the games expenses or the game is flooded with ingame talking ads that nobody likes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 13, 2014, 06:33:13 AM
If you're not willing to pay the usual 15$ fee or the 12 month subscription with discount then you must really not want this game back that badly. 10 year old or not "there is no other game like cox" " I don't have fun in any other game" etc speaks to me that it's worth doing whatever possible to get the game back and to keep it running.

This game isn't going to run at 5$ or 10$ a month unless many people have multiple accounts, buy lots of cash shop items or we end up with huge subscription numbers to pay for the games expenses or the game is flooded with ingame talking ads that nobody likes.

Very correct.

Thank you Noyjitat.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on November 13, 2014, 06:45:23 AM
If you're not willing to pay the usual 15$ fee or the 12 month subscription with discount then you must really not want this game back that badly. 10 year old or not "there is no other game like cox" " I don't have fun in any other game" etc speaks to me that it's worth doing whatever possible to get the game back and to keep it running.

This game isn't going to run at 5$ or 10$ a month unless many people have multiple accounts, buy lots of cash shop items or we end up with huge subscription numbers to pay for the games expenses or the game is flooded with ingame talking ads that nobody likes.
I would not mind paying $15 a month if I could do it all at once just like the game had when it was running. And maybe add a free month.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dareon Kale on November 13, 2014, 07:02:45 AM
One, you have no grid on what I want, how much I want it, or the relative values of...anything to me, much less this game. I admit it. COH was not my entire world. I played other games and liked them. For shame, I know. I did, however, thoroughly enjoy my time in game, and the time I most enjoyed was spent playing with groups of other people.

Two, how is it that $15/month is the magic bullet that makes everything work? Everyone seems so certain that this is the point at which it keeps everything afloat. I'm not locked into a number, and, for the record, I would pay $15/month if that is where the bar is set. I'm also not convinced that it is the clear cut optimum price range.

Sometimes I really wonder if some folks would prefer to just have the game to themselves. If others didn't go through the pangs of separation and loss, then clearly they wouldn't be able to appreciate the game, and perhaps they should play something else.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on November 13, 2014, 07:09:12 AM
One, you have no grid on what I want, how much I want it, or the relative values of...anything to me, much less this game. I admit it. COH was not my entire world. I played other games and liked them. For shame, I know. I did, however, thoroughly enjoy my time in game, and the time I most enjoyed was spent playing with groups of other people.

Two, how is it that $15/month is the magic bullet that makes everything work? Everyone seems so certain that this is the point at which it keeps everything afloat. I'm not locked into a number, and, for the record, I would pay $15/month if that is where the bar is set. I'm also not convinced that it is the clear cut optimum price range.

Sometimes I really wonder if some folks would prefer to just have the game to themselves. If others didn't go through the pangs of separation and loss, then clearly they wouldn't be able to appreciate the game, and perhaps they should play something else.
Too add to this I motion that we table this talk about subs or no sub and what one should pay. All this will do is devolve into a flame war.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 13, 2014, 07:13:59 AM
Too add to this I motion that we table this talk about subs or no sub and what one should pay. All this will do is devolve into a flame war.

Wise policy
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on November 13, 2014, 07:19:26 AM
Too add to this I motion that we table this talk about subs or no sub and what one should pay. All this will do is devolve into a flame war.

Awww...But I was looking forward to making Smores on it...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on November 13, 2014, 08:50:06 AM
Quote
Too add to this I motion that we table this talk about subs or no sub and what one should pay. All this will do is devolve into a flame war.

sorry about that.... *logs off his elec/fire brute* *logs in his elec/storm troller*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on November 13, 2014, 09:37:07 AM
One, you have no grid on what I want, how much I want it, or the relative values of...anything to me, much less this game. I admit it. COH was not my entire world. I played other games and liked them. For shame, I know. I did, however, thoroughly enjoy my time in game, and the time I most enjoyed was spent playing with groups of other people.

Two, how is it that $15/month is the magic bullet that makes everything work? Everyone seems so certain that this is the point at which it keeps everything afloat. I'm not locked into a number, and, for the record, I would pay $15/month if that is where the bar is set. I'm also not convinced that it is the clear cut optimum price range.

Sometimes I really wonder if some folks would prefer to just have the game to themselves. If others didn't go through the pangs of separation and loss, then clearly they wouldn't be able to appreciate the game, and perhaps they should play something else.

This....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on November 13, 2014, 09:39:55 AM
Too add to this I motion that we table this talk about subs or no sub and what one should pay. All this will do is devolve into a flame war.

And this....

 (glad the Navy taught us to have thick skins.... I took no offense from anyone here) ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on November 13, 2014, 05:27:31 PM
And this....

 (glad the Navy taught us to have thick skins.... I took no offense from anyone here) ;)

Barnacles? :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on November 13, 2014, 05:41:45 PM
As I said previously, we won't know what it will cost until the announcement gets made on what the pricing policy is going to be. That will be set by people who have access to a lot more info than we have.

It's pretty simple really. If they decide to charge 15$ per month for a sub and you want to play CoH bad enough to pay it, then you will. If not, then you won't.

If they feel they can make more on volume then they will lower the sub fee. If not, they won't.

We don't set the price. No one has asked for our advice on pricing. All we can decide is what we are willing to pay.

There is no point in people getting a flame war about something like this as we have ZERO control over any of it. Nothing we say about pricing here will matter if once the numbers are crunched they decide to charge 10$ or 15$ or no dollars. People willing to pay $15 a month can't force you to pay it and people who want to pay almost nothing can't force whoever ends up running this to charge any less than they choose to charge for it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on November 13, 2014, 06:28:02 PM
Does this board actually *have* flamewars?  For a bunch of gamers I haven't seen much nerdrage thrown around.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on November 13, 2014, 06:29:24 PM
Does this board actually *have* flamewars?  For a bunch of gamers I haven't seen much nerdrage thrown around.

Our flamewars are more like BBQ skirmishes, but yeah ... no point in agitating anyone over a bunch of "what-ifs" at this point.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on November 13, 2014, 07:21:06 PM
Barnacles? :)

My destroyer (USS Briscoe DD-977) collected its share.... every year it seemed we spent a month docked for refits and water-line sanding..... ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on November 13, 2014, 08:24:59 PM
My destroyer (USS Briscoe DD-977) collected its share.... every year it seemed we spent a month docked for refits and water-line sanding..... ;)

Thankfully I never had to do that, I just got irradiated in a 100 degrees steam plant xD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on November 13, 2014, 09:01:50 PM
Personally I don't care what it costs... my only hope is that there is no f2p option. I liked trial accounts.... At this point I think CoH will need funds from every player to ensure longevity. Last thing I want to see is CoH come back and then be shut down again du to not enough revenue... especially before CoH 1.5.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Urd on November 13, 2014, 11:27:22 PM
Personally I don't care what it costs... my only hope is that there is no f2p option. I liked trial accounts.... At this point I think CoH will need funds from every player to ensure longevity. Last thing I want to see is CoH come back and then be shut down again du to not enough revenue... especially before CoH 1.5.

Its not the most popular decision but I totally agree with it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on November 14, 2014, 02:01:19 AM
 I would pay 10 bucks a month.. More if I got my characters back...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: artbunker on November 14, 2014, 03:22:09 AM
I believe the game should have  the f2p option. For the record, I was a COH subscribed player for 4 years and played on my friends account the whole time the game was running.  The F2P  was one of the best f2p out there. You could play up to 50  and experience the game and .

I  feel that in order to get more folks into the game, it might be a good idea to keep it. Remember , the game was doing better once it went F2P. If folks can see the greatness of the game, and try it out, then they would be willing to pay for the rest of the stuff.

I would still pay the $15/month btw but I believe $10 would be a fairer price to pay. Remmebr folks the other MMO's out there charging are constantly getting new updates . Our game isn't. This is why Im saying $10/month would be a better deal .
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kierthos on November 14, 2014, 04:44:49 AM
I wouldn't mind paying a $15 monthly subscription fee at all, if it meant I got to play CoX again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on November 14, 2014, 04:48:39 AM
You'd price yourself out of a lot of business with those numbers. What you are willing to pay as an old invested CoH diehard is much different than the average gamer. Specifically when you are asking it for a game that IS dated in the graphics department, and was doomed to obscurity for a few years.

The reanimation of CoX isn't for "everyone," not really. Its for us diehards. Not many people who were NOT playing before, will be playing that. Its for those of us who were there, and who miss it terribly. Many of us are willing to pay to get back what was taken from us.

What will really be for "everyone," as in hoping to appeal to everyone, will be CoT/CoX2 or whatever it is called. That's cutting edge. CoX isn't cutting edge and wasn't for years.... we were there because of love. Not cutting edge graphics.... altho the updated bits we were getting were way appreciated of course, but still. It was love, not the lure of New Shinyz.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on November 14, 2014, 05:00:13 AM
Two, how is it that $15/month is the magic bullet that makes everything work? Everyone seems so certain that this is the point at which it keeps everything afloat. I'm not locked into a number, and, for the record, I would pay $15/month if that is where the bar is set. I'm also not convinced that it is the clear cut optimum price range.

Because that was the prior sub price, is why. NC ran the game on $15/month for YEARS. At a profit I might add. I feel at least that much is needed at first, to get the resurrection off the ground. I would actually be willing to pay MORE per month.

I miss this game that badly.

Quote
Sometimes I really wonder if some folks would prefer to just have the game to themselves. If others didn't go through the pangs of separation and loss, then clearly they wouldn't be able to appreciate the game, and perhaps they should play something else.

If new people come into the resurrected game, great! I will welcome them. But..... its really for us. This attempt is not really for new players, its for us old-timers who want this game back worse than Eve wanted that big shiny tempting apple perched on the tippy-top of the Tree of Life. After all, I don't see non-players breaking their necks trying to resurrect the game - nope.

"HOW CAN I GET THAT?!!!" wondered Eve, craning her neck to look past the fluttering fabulous foliage as she lusted after that Apple of Forbidden Knowledge.

"HOW CAN I GET THAT?!!!" wondered the bereft CoX players, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of their old, much-beloved game on the misty horizon, lusting and MIDS-ing and jonesing to play their game again.

....How can we get that? Only the team leading the effort knows what NC wants, but rest assured: it wont happen for free.

Speaking in general: What is $15. I can blow $15 in less than five minutes on Amazon.com after all. [and sad to say, often do.] $15 is lunch money.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on November 14, 2014, 05:06:07 AM
If you're not willing to pay the usual 15$ fee or the 12 month subscription with discount then you must really not want this game back that badly. 10 year old or not "there is no other game like cox" " I don't have fun in any other game" etc speaks to me that it's worth doing whatever possible to get the game back and to keep it running.

"There is no other game like CoX."

It cant be emphasized enough:

THERE

IS

NO

OTHER 

GAME

LIKE

COX.

Nope. Not a one. Even the closest we have, by comparison is a voice in a distant room.

Just sayin'.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on November 14, 2014, 08:56:12 AM
What she said.....


I have to agree with Illusionss completely. I want the game back and I'm willing to pay a decent price every month for it.  At the sametime I want a f2p model because there was times (not long stretches). That I couldn't afford the 15 a month and would rather be f2p than go without.

And I want to echo the fact that there IS NOT ANOTHER GAME LIKE COH! Not until one of the three projects are finished that is and we still don't know for sure. If they'll be what we expect.

Either way, we can pick at this until the next update. It doesn't change the fact that what ever. The people that get the game ask we'll most likely pay it...... I know I will :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 14, 2014, 09:05:57 AM
What she said.....


I have to agree with Illusionss completely. I want the game back and I'm willing to pay a decent price every month for it.  At the sametime I want a f2p model because there was times (not long stretches). That I couldn't afford the 15 a month and would rather be f2p than go without.

And I want to echo the fact that there IS NOT ANOTHER GAME LIKE COH! Not until one of the three projects are finished that is and we still don't know for sure. If they'll be what we expect.

Either way, we can pick at this until the next update. It doesn't change the fact that what ever. The people that get the game ask we'll most likely pay it...... I know I will :P

I must echo the sentiment that there is no other game like CoH, all other super hero games fall short in comparison to CoH.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on November 14, 2014, 10:26:51 AM
In my mind, to me it's not just all other super hero games. It's all other games period. City of Heroes did so many things right.

I still tell people it's the best game I've ever played (of course I mainly play RPGs, rarely anything else). I have a friend at work who's dying to play it because I talk about it so much. LOL!

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on November 14, 2014, 10:50:59 AM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dev7on on November 14, 2014, 11:31:25 AM
I agree with Illusionss.  I too would pay $15 a month to go back to my City.  Even if I have to start over from scratch level wise.  Having the game back is all that really matters.  If they go with F2P I would still sub just to keep the game going.  Not just for me but for everyone else who misses what we had.  Plus all those who never had the opportunity to visit.  I subbed continuously from Nov of 2005 until they refunded subs at shutdown in 2012.  As many have stated...there is no place like home!

You got that right! City of Heroes was MORE than just a game! /em holdtorch!  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on November 14, 2014, 11:55:03 AM
What she said.....


I have to agree with Illusionss completely. I want the game back and I'm willing to pay a decent price every month for it.  At the sametime I want a f2p model because there was times (not long stretches). That I couldn't afford the 15 a month and would rather be f2p than go without.

And I want to echo the fact that there IS NOT ANOTHER GAME LIKE COH! Not until one of the three projects are finished that is and we still don't know for sure. If they'll be what we expect.

Either way, we can pick at this until the next update. It doesn't change the fact that what ever. The people that get the game ask we'll most likely pay it...... I know I will :P

This.... we all will in the end if we want to be back playing.... ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on November 14, 2014, 01:49:20 PM
I agree with Illusionss.  I too would pay $15 a month to go back to my City.  Even if I have to start over from scratch level wise.  Having the game back is all that really matters.  If they go with F2P I would still sub just to keep the game going.  Not just for me but for everyone else who misses what we had.  Plus all those who never had the opportunity to visit.  I subbed continuously from Nov of 2005 until they refunded subs at shutdown in 2012.  As many have stated...there is no place like home!

I agree too.  I'm already in line with a cash-laden fist thrust out.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on November 14, 2014, 02:41:05 PM
I do not know how many new people would pop for the Legacy/binary copy/zombie CoH, I suspect not many; however, I DO believe that the CoX 1.5 on the updated game engine WOULD be something to promote for new players. GO IRISH GIRL!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dareon Kale on November 14, 2014, 05:19:19 PM
This jist of the argument is that it is improbable to get new players into the game before the graphics retrofit, so it is pointless to try? I suppose that's fair enough. My worry is that if the only people who play are on this forum with a handful of others, it will be very difficult to do much of the group oriented content. It was suggested to move on from this topic, so that'll be the last I say on the matter. It is my persistent and genuine desire to see you all in the game again, and, I hope, sooner rather than later.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on November 14, 2014, 05:38:17 PM
This jist of the argument is that it is improbable to get new players into the game before the graphics retrofit, so it is pointless to try? I suppose that's fair enough. My worry is that if the only people who play are on this forum with a handful of others, it will be very difficult to do much of the group oriented content. It was suggested to move on from this topic, so that'll be the last I say on the matter. It is my persistent and genuine desire to see you all in the game again, and, I hope, sooner rather than later.

Keep in mind, there are probably alot of lurkers on the forums and even when the game gets rereleased the news will attract old customers who never even visit the official forums let alone Titian Network
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on November 14, 2014, 07:01:56 PM
Keep in mind, there are probably alot of lurkers on the forums and even when the game gets rereleased the news will attract old customers who never even visit the official forums let alone Titian Network

Many of my online CoH cronies are following this story.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LimbfromLimb on November 14, 2014, 07:20:33 PM
I to miss the game very much but $15 is not going to work for many of us.I do not make much so my family and bills come first.My wife and I played for almost the whole game and we made a point to always team with friends and new players to help the game.In order to play those of us who would pay for our significant other and our kids(we have 2) $15 adds up fast.Please try to remember some of us do not have much in the way of extra funds.Our friends that played want to play together and love this game but some have moved on and will not be back.I feel we need to rebuild the player base so we can keep the game for another 10 years or more
and costing $10 or less will bring more people which will bring a better player experience for all of us.We know there is no game like CoH but real life responsibilities always take priority.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Groundbreaker on November 14, 2014, 07:38:30 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 14, 2014, 07:41:24 PM
Welcome onboard Groundbreaker!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Groundbreaker on November 14, 2014, 08:02:06 PM
Welcome onboard Groundbreaker!

Thanks Power_Gamer :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on November 14, 2014, 08:55:48 PM
Also, thanks for the Taxibot services, Groundbreaker. :-)

Taxibot Belle was the Taxibot that I saw the most during my tenure with CoH. I never failed to stop and say "Hi, and thanks for your selfless service." when I saw her online. Not that ever used the Taxibot services. Most of the issues I had getting around in various zones was because of ambush spawns for level 40+ guys in Steel Canyon. Usually Devouring Earth slogging down the street just as I round the corner, all while I'm still in my lower teens...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on November 14, 2014, 09:07:47 PM
What she said.....

I have to agree with Illusionss completely. I want the game back and I'm willing to pay a decent price every month for it.  At the sametime I want a f2p model because there was times (not long stretches). That I couldn't afford the 15 a month and would rather be f2p than go without.

If I were the one making the decisions - which, natcherlly, I'm not - after I had recouped my initial investment in CoX Resurrected, and after CoT had launched, THEN I might introduce f2p, and only then. I don't mind people who need the game to be free, playing. But it only makes economic sense to NOT put these people making this effort for us, into a financial hole.

I don't want to be all "Hey, people who negotiated with a [at best!] touchy and difficult foreign company for months on end, to get our game back! Hey, superheroes who labored for months to dismantle that doomsday device!! Good work! Good job! I'm glad you got us our game back! Hahaha, I'm not going to give you any financial 'thanks' for that though.... you should do all the work, now give the fruit of your labors to me FOR FREE!"

I'm not at all saying that YOU are saying that. But there will be plenty who will. General observation here.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on November 14, 2014, 09:13:42 PM
Also, thanks for the Taxibot services, Groundbreaker. :-)

Taxibot Belle was the Taxibot that I saw the most during my tenure with CoH. I never failed to stop and say "Hi, and thanks for your selfless service." when I saw her online. Not that ever used the Taxibot services. Most of the issues I had getting around in various zones was because of ambush spawns for level 40+ guys in Steel Canyon. Usually Devouring Earth slogging down the street just as I round the corner, all while I'm still in my lower teens...

I well remember the day my level 15? Dom rounded a corner and ran full tilt into a spawn of about twenty level 40 Malta Titans and their handlers, somewhere in the Fort in Mercy. That was.... an interesting day.

*INSTANT AND HORRIBLE DEATH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*  *hosp*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Groundbreaker on November 14, 2014, 09:25:53 PM
Also, thanks for the Taxibot services, Groundbreaker. :-)

Taxibot Belle was the Taxibot that I saw the most during my tenure with CoH. I never failed to stop and say "Hi, and thanks for your selfless service." when I saw her online. Not that ever used the Taxibot services. Most of the issues I had getting around in various zones was because of ambush spawns for level 40+ guys in Steel Canyon. Usually Devouring Earth slogging down the street just as I round the corner, all while I'm still in my lower teens...

We were playing on Defiant so originally we were just a homage to the Taxibots on the American server. I used to get loads of questions from new players about the game, which I did my best to answer but I was fairly new myself at the time. It took me a long time to realise a lot of people thought we were Admin because they couldn't conceive of a player taking time out to help people so much. I will say you're welcome for what we did, but I think the times I accidentally led Paladins into populated areas probably balances out my karma lol
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on November 14, 2014, 09:35:24 PM
Reading through the replies on here - I have changed my tune a bit.

I think I would offer a 3 tier structure:

1. $15 a month and you get it all - all veteran powers, the same amount of points you used to get a month and all special badges past, present and future to all characters.

2. $5 a month you get to start new and have to build up to the veteran powers (or buy them as an add on for a nominal fee). You get nothing but a shiney new account and a small monthly point allowance.

3. F2P - all the earlier restrictions of a F2P account as of i23.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on November 14, 2014, 09:47:19 PM
Reading through the replies on here - I have changed my tune a bit.

I think I would offer a 3 tier structure:

1. $15 a month and you get it all - all veteran powers, the same amount of points you used to get a month and all special badges past, present and future to all characters.

2. $5 a month you get to start new and have to build up to the veteran powers (or buy them as an add on for a nominal fee). You get nothing but a shiney new account and a small monthly point allowance.

3. F2P - all the earlier restrictions of a F2P account as of i23.
this makes perfect sense, the reason being those who will pay full price should get everything and those who cannot pay can still get on and still play.
Those who want a pay only option needs to understand that this in my opinion will never happen, and the reason for the game to become free to play when it was open was to bring in new players and old.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Optimus Dex on November 14, 2014, 10:16:03 PM
Reading through the replies on here - I have changed my tune a bit.

I think I would offer a 3 tier structure:

1. $15 a month and you get it all - all veteran powers, the same amount of points you used to get a month and all special badges past, present and future to all characters.

2. $5 a month you get to start new and have to build up to the veteran powers (or buy them as an add on for a nominal fee). You get nothing but a shiney new account and a small monthly point allowance.

3. F2P - all the earlier restrictions of a F2P account as of i23.



Sounds prefect. I am ready to pay 15.00 dollars to play COH again. I am willing to pay some to download the game. I just wish we had a date. Ah well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on November 14, 2014, 10:19:29 PM
My reasoning is this lets people have multiple accounts without penalty.

It lets new players try it, free.

It lets poorer players have everything except vet rewards for $5 a month.

It lets those who can afford it - to have everything.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on November 14, 2014, 10:27:42 PM
Reading through the replies on here - I have changed my tune a bit.

I think I would offer a 3 tier structure:

1. $15 a month and you get it all - all veteran powers, the same amount of points you used to get a month and all special badges past, present and future to all characters.

2. $5 a month you get to start new and have to build up to the veteran powers (or buy them as an add on for a nominal fee). You get nothing but a shiney new account and a small monthly point allowance.

3. F2P - all the earlier restrictions of a F2P account as of i23.

The only restriction I would do away with (think it's been talked about couple times here) for f2p/freemium players is the problems with IO. Just disable the bonus and procs of the IOs but leave the buffs. Another one was about the chat system being so restrictive for f2p/freemium. Allow full access to the chat that way you encourage people to interact with the community potentially invest into the system.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on November 14, 2014, 10:50:03 PM
Reading through the replies on here - I have changed my tune a bit.

I think I would offer a 3 tier structure:

1. $15 a month and you get it all - all veteran powers, the same amount of points you used to get a month and all special badges past, present and future to all characters.

2. $5 a month you get to start new and have to build up to the veteran powers (or buy them as an add on for a nominal fee). You get nothing but a shiney new account and a small monthly point allowance.

3. F2P - all the earlier restrictions of a F2P account as of i23.

This is a good system generally, but what happens when you stop paying $15 a month? Are the badges (that I'm using in my example because you used them in yours) suddenly revoked from all your characters? For items like that, there's nothing preventing people from paying $15 once, and then not paying ever again. You can certainly limit things like IOs or the Incarnate system - limiting actual content to $15 / month would be more of an incentive to buy continuously.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on November 14, 2014, 10:51:09 PM
The only restriction I would do away with (think it's been talked about couple times here) for f2p/freemium players is the problems with IO. Just disable the bonus and procs of the IOs but leave the buffs. Another one was about the chat system being so restrictive for f2p/freemium. Allow full access to the chat that way you encourage people to interact with the community potentially invest into the system.
It's a proposition with merit MM3, but toggling off IO rewards is something that might require additional coding to a binary copy - something for  CoX 1.5 but I don't think it's possible with zombie binary copy of Legacy CoX
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Takinalis on November 14, 2014, 11:42:34 PM
I would pay $30 a month, just for the old F2P access. Hell I'd even take a level cap.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Urd on November 14, 2014, 11:43:31 PM
The biggest problem I had with F2P with CoH when we had it was that IMHO it gave away too much. I could play characters 1-50 and had only minor reasons to even pay. (yes I considered going F2P because I gave up very little) You don't need to have good math skills to figure out that you are begging from the players who already pay to pay even more to keep the folks who had no interest in ever paying anyways.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on November 15, 2014, 12:34:05 AM
This jist of the argument is that it is improbable to get new players into the game before the graphics retrofit, so it is pointless to try? I suppose that's fair enough. My worry is that if the only people who play are on this forum with a handful of others, it will be very difficult to do much of the group oriented content. It was suggested to move on from this topic, so that'll be the last I say on the matter. It is my persistent and genuine desire to see you all in the game again, and, I hope, sooner rather than later.
Well, besides these forums i know of several CoH Facebook groups that have relatively little overlap with these forums that are active and encounter people referencing CoH as a game they enjoyed fairly regularly on other gaming sites. At a minimum i would say there's enough people out there who would play in a minute given the opportunity that we could keep several servers pretty busy on fan power alone. Honestly CoH's graphics still compare pretty favorably to some AAA MMOs that are less than three years old.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on November 15, 2014, 12:48:31 AM
Alot of gamers can look past graphics if the gameplay is really good and the game has it's layers of depth.  They like learning things at times and they look at how things tend to move and flow.  An example is quake, lets face it, quake is a very, very old game.  But if you watch someone play on a speed run, even, it's actually very entertaining to see them just move through the levels like a ninja.  City of heroes had solid gameplay, just needed the graphics but when you look at all the powers it had...

Just look at us, many of us here have been unwilling to touch CO or even DCUO, which has the mighty Unreal engine 3, because the gameplay isn't something we liked.  While I may like DCUO, can't say the same for everyone.  But I also still play deus ex, and thats UE1, and barely looks better than quake.

And the artstyle matters, to me, far more than the technology behind it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on November 15, 2014, 12:51:40 AM
The biggest problem I had with F2P with CoH when we had it was that IMHO it gave away too much. I could play characters 1-50 and had only minor reasons to even pay. (yes I considered going F2P because I gave up very little) You don't need to have good math skills to figure out that you are begging from the players who already pay to pay even more to keep the folks who had no interest in ever paying anyways.
Losing IOs on your existing characters made them literally unplayable.  Maybe not a problem if you didn't use them, but a lot of people did.

If you want to look at a game that gives away too much in F2P, take a look at Star Trek Online.  Your character slots are limited and you don't get the Zen stipend that subscribers do but that's about it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AnElfCalledMack on November 15, 2014, 01:37:56 AM
The only restriction I would do away with (think it's been talked about couple times here) for f2p/freemium players is the problems with IO. Just disable the bonus and procs of the IOs but leave the buffs. Another one was about the chat system being so restrictive for f2p/freemium. Allow full access to the chat that way you encourage people to interact with the community potentially invest into the system.
Only problem with giving free accounts full chat is the spam from for-profit farmers, trying to sell powerlevelling or rare drops for real cash. You can ban the spammer, but they just make a new free acc and do it again. I agree it's less than ideal, but it might be necessary
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on November 15, 2014, 02:36:05 AM
Only problem with giving free accounts full chat is the spam from for-profit farmers, trying to sell powerlevelling or rare drops for real cash. You can ban the spammer, but they just make a new free acc and do it again. I agree it's less than ideal, but it might be necessary

Honestly I don't think CoX would be a big enough market for gold farmers to give a crap about. Thinking about cost benefit, the time they spending grinding for inf in CoX, more than likely would have made more money from WoW or ESO or what ever is out there right now
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkfaith on November 15, 2014, 03:05:58 AM
Honestly I don't think CoX would be a big enough market for gold farmers to give a crap about. Thinking about cost benefit, the time they spending grinding for inf in CoX, more than likely would have made more money from WoW or ESO or what ever is out there right now

You would think that, but when the AH was first introduced, and CoH suddenly had an economy...you couldn't go five minutes without blocking at least 5 of them. There were times when the chat was utterly overwhelmed by inf seller spam, and that was long before Freedom. If there's a game that they can potentially make money off of, they're there. I remember clearly playing in the Aion beta...and there were spammers in the -beta-. The servers were going to be wiped, and they were still there, trying to get people to buy their stuff.

I'm not fond of the chat restrictions on free accounts, but I can understand them. We can hope that the spammers would overlook a zombie game with a (relatively) small following, but it would be potentially harmful to a relaunch to count on it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 15, 2014, 03:13:13 AM
spammer were a problem early on in CoH, but  don't remember having to block more than a handful in the final 2 years.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkfaith on November 15, 2014, 03:19:53 AM
spammer were a problem early on in CoH, but  don't remember having to block more than a handful in the final 2 years.

It certainly got a lot better, but most of that can probably be attributed to the chat measures put in place by Paragon, and their diligence in smacking the spammers with the ban hammer. They got it down to a tolerable level, but that doesn't mean the spammers gave up by any means. Really, only someone who handled that at Paragon could give us any sort of statistics on that. If the new people find that they have the wiggle room to relax restrictions after the fact, I'd rather see that happen than relaunching without them and finding themselves overwhelmed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 15, 2014, 03:22:21 AM
i have faith that the team will be on top of it  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on November 15, 2014, 05:37:22 AM
i have faith that the team will be on top of it  ;D


As long as I get my "canadian hockey team " mastermind I will be happy.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on November 15, 2014, 05:41:19 AM
Honestly I don't think CoX would be a big enough market for gold farmers to give a crap about. Thinking about cost benefit, the time they spending grinding for inf in CoX, more than likely would have made more money from WoW or ESO or what ever is out there right now

You'd be surprised, I'd say it'd only take months before a few decide to try and introduce the newly revived CoX to the gold farming blackmarket.  They(the gold farmers and black market dealers) tend to look for every opportunity :/.  Greed drives people to do crazy things afterall, and opportunists will often just be opportunists :(.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on November 15, 2014, 05:48:05 AM

As long as I get my "canadian hockey team " mastermind I will be happy.

Only if I can really get my Evil Clowns MM and not a cruel April Fools Joke!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on November 15, 2014, 06:59:33 AM

As long as I get my "canadian hockey team " mastermind I will be happy.

Wait. There's only 6 players on Canadian hockey teams?

This explains so much. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on November 15, 2014, 10:19:25 AM
And I've been waiting years to play NekoMancer... my female MistressMind in control of a mob of Catgirls! Nyaaaa!  (Neko means Cat in Japanese.... grin)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Scendera on November 15, 2014, 11:06:32 AM
Reading through the replies on here - I have changed my tune a bit.

I think I would offer a 3 tier structure:

Speaking as a card carrying member of the ramen brigade...I think I love you, Ironwolf!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on November 15, 2014, 04:21:32 PM
And I've been waiting years to play NekoMancer... my female MistressMind in control of a mob of Catgirls! Nyaaaa!  (Neko means Cat in Japanese.... grin)
now there is a power set I would love to have :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on November 16, 2014, 04:21:25 AM
Reading through the replies on here - I have changed my tune a bit.

I think I would offer a 3 tier structure:

1. $15 a month and you get it all - all veteran powers, the same amount of points you used to get a month and all special badges past, present and future to all characters.

2. $5 a month you get to start new and have to build up to the veteran powers (or buy them as an add on for a nominal fee). You get nothing but a shiney new account and a small monthly point allowance.
J
3. F2P - all the earlier restrictions of a F2P account as of i23.

This sounds like a pretty good compromise. I dread the return of gold farmers, but am willing to compromise.
[/quote]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 16, 2014, 05:52:57 AM
I can't see Gold Farmers returning to a game that is itself returning from the dead.   
Anytime  a farmer would broadcast they would get reported and their account nuked. 
Then they altered trial accounts as I recall to eliminate certain chat features to stop the gold farmers and that greatly reduced the farm spam.

Once the game returns, simply don't offer trial accounts.  Between Gold Farmers and those that would use trial accounts to try to name grief, we would be better off without them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on November 16, 2014, 06:01:06 AM
I can't see Gold Farmers returning to a game that is itself returning from the dead.   
Anytime  a farmer would broadcast they would get reported and their account nuked. 
Then they altered trial accounts as I recall to eliminate certain chat features to stop the gold farmers and that greatly reduced the farm spam.

Once the game returns, simply don't offer trial accounts.  Between Gold Farmers and those that would use trial accounts to try to name grief, we would be better off without them.

That and the same reason there wasn't gold farmers really near the end.  A) Chat restrictions and B) Influence is super easy to obtain in that game.  There is no reason to buy Inf because it comes in so fast you can make others toons just for holding it.  There is no money to be made selling Inf in City of Heroes.  Sure there are always the occasional go-getters that set up bots to spam any possible game in existence.  But for the most part I imagine it will remain untouched.

Not to mention the community.  I had so much money near the end of the game I would have just given someone millions of inf before they went and bought some.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on November 16, 2014, 06:50:58 AM
That and the same reason there wasn't gold farmers really near the end.  A) Chat restrictions and B) Influence is super easy to obtain in that game.  There is no reason to buy Inf because it comes in so fast you can make others toons just for holding it.  There is no money to be made selling Inf in City of Heroes.  Sure there are always the occasional go-getters that set up bots to spam any possible game in existence.  But for the most part I imagine it will remain untouched.

Not to mention the community.  I had so much money near the end of the game I would have just given someone millions of inf before they went and bought some.

I liked that if you wanted inf it wasnt hard to get. you could build toons without months of painful grinding. I only had 3 billion or so but it was plenty.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on November 16, 2014, 07:14:13 AM
There was a TON at one time. I had my block list full. The chat restrictions among other things fixed that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Groundbreaker on November 16, 2014, 08:09:34 AM
Wasn't there also a cap on how much Inf a trial account could have? I don't remember if that restriction carried over to F2P it probably didn't but a lower Inf cap would deter spammers selling Inf.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 16, 2014, 10:15:11 AM
Wasn't there also a cap on how much Inf a trial account could have? I don't remember if that restriction carried over to F2P it probably didn't but a lower Inf cap would deter spammers selling Inf.

Free/Premium accounts did have a limit on inf.  25 million I believe it was
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on November 16, 2014, 02:02:30 PM
Free/Premium accounts did have a limit on inf.  25 million I believe it was

Various inf caps mid page here mid page: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Influence
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on November 16, 2014, 03:36:26 PM
And I've been waiting years to play NekoMancer... my female MistressMind in control of a mob of Catgirls! Nyaaaa!  (Neko means Cat in Japanese.... grin)
Catgirl Mastermind requires the addition of Catnip Coolers to the game. Actually most of the products and/or services in The Cape Radio ads should be implemented in game if/when we get 1.5 and all that. Oh, and the Rikti-raser. i wish i knew where to find those ads, they were hilarious.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on November 16, 2014, 05:02:24 PM
Catgirl Mastermind requires the addition of Catnip Coolers to the game. Actually most of the products and/or services in The Cape Radio ads should be implemented in game if/when we get 1.5 and all that. Oh, and the Rikti-raser. i wish i knew where to find those ads, they were hilarious.

With NekoMancer's basic build being Thugs/Pain Dom... I figured the Pain Dom powers were just disguised use of Catnip and Kitty Toys to keep the Kittens in line.  And it would be fun to modify all the Thugs powers, taking away all ranged attacks from the set... making the Catgirl Thugs all Scrappers... Just imagine the mayhem when their opponent fires a Catnip Yarn ball via Mortar in the general direction of a supporting group, which the CatnipLocked Kitties would happily run into, and then drag them back with them into the main battle going on...  Catfight, anyone?   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on November 16, 2014, 05:18:06 PM
Clearly, they should all be using Savage Melee (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Savage_Melee) powers.

... I'm sad again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: microc on November 16, 2014, 07:17:50 PM
I always wanted to see snowman mm and Santa.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on November 16, 2014, 09:17:35 PM
Honestly I don't think CoX would be a big enough market for gold farmers to give a crap about. Thinking about cost benefit, the time they spending grinding for inf in CoX, more than likely would have made more money from WoW or ESO or what ever is out there right now

Gold farmers are egalitarian in their efforts, seems to me. Oh well, as long as we have the block/report function in place I will deal with it. And here's hoping CoT rolls out the gate with the same exact functionality.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on November 16, 2014, 10:07:20 PM
Clearly, they should all be using Savage Melee (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Savage_Melee) powers.

Yeowch!!! That looks like it could hurt!   So we merge Thugs (Pack) Powerset with Savage Melee and watch the fur fly....  Teamed with an AOE Healer (Kin is a fav of mine) the Pack would be truly viscious.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on November 16, 2014, 10:37:28 PM
Yeowch!!! That looks like it could hurt!   So we merge Thugs (Pack) Powerset with Savage Melee and watch the fur fly....  Teamed with an AOE Healer (Kin is a fav of mine) the Pack would be truly viscious.

I like kinetics, I can see where it would be so overpowered on a mastermind
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on November 16, 2014, 10:47:58 PM
I like kinetics, I can see where it would be so overpowered on a mastermind

I have to agree with you there... Mastermind was easy enough with Force Field as a secondary. (I soloed a Bots/FF MM 95% of the way thru the Rogue Isles.)  With a Kin secondary, the troops would have been unstoppable.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on November 17, 2014, 05:57:50 AM
I have to agree with you there... Mastermind was easy enough with Force Field as a secondary. (I soloed a Bots/FF MM 95% of the way thru the Rogue Isles.)  With a Kin secondary, the troops would have been unstoppable.

Check the numbers. You could get pretty close to that with /NAff. The tier 9 is worth about a 4 stack of FS with a sizable end discount.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on November 17, 2014, 07:41:36 PM
I can't see Gold Farmers returning to a game that is itself returning from the dead.   
Anytime  a farmer would broadcast they would get reported and their account nuked. 
Then they altered trial accounts as I recall to eliminate certain chat features to stop the gold farmers and that greatly reduced the farm spam.

Once the game returns, simply don't offer trial accounts.  Between Gold Farmers and those that would use trial accounts to try to name grief, we would be better off without them.

One measure was that trial accounts actually could not broadcast without spending some money.  They also had no super group access and generally had no emailing rights(For two weeks) either, which stopped them from spamming any players email.  So the best they could safely do was go to the atlas park auction house.  If they took that away, then made other auction houses behind something very dangerous to get to without travel powers, maybe that'd hurt em?  Even then would that even be necessary?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on November 17, 2014, 07:45:18 PM
That and the same reason there wasn't gold farmers really near the end.  A) Chat restrictions and B) Influence is super easy to obtain in that game.  There is no reason to buy Inf because it comes in so fast you can make others toons just for holding it.  There is no money to be made selling Inf in City of Heroes.  Sure there are always the occasional go-getters that set up bots to spam any possible game in existence.  But for the most part I imagine it will remain untouched.

Not to mention the community.  I had so much money near the end of the game I would have just given someone millions of inf before they went and bought some.

I can think gold farmers MIGHT try to cash in early on, untill they see normal players making more than enough for everything.  Gold farmers also tend to rely on monopolization of markets in local areas, which wasn't possible in city of heroes due to the fact that everyone could make their own "farming instances" in some form or another.  Or even not worry about having a "farming instance" and just go for allignment merits all the time.  Not to mention, areas I suppose they could try to monopolize wouldn't work, and course, gold farmers would more be like scrubs than stop having fun guys, as they'd try to import tactics like they did in other places, fail and never really learn why.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on November 17, 2014, 10:43:45 PM
Early in my CoH gaming career, I actually did purchase influence - completely safe from detection by the devs/mods.  I bought it from my real life friends, who were also members of my SG; who's to say they weren't just being nice to a fellow SG member and global friend?  One of my best friends is cash poor in real life, but a fantastic farmer for his characters.  I have cash, but limited playing time (having to spend long hours earning said cash).  A mutually beneficial arrangement was soon arrived at.

Later on, I found a much better cash-for-INF scheme - I'd purchase Super Packs and sell off unwanted ATOs or just use the Reward Merits from them to buy LotG Recharge recipes and such.  A far better method, at least from my perspective.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on November 17, 2014, 10:52:43 PM
Early in my CoH gaming career, I actually did purchase influence - completely safe from detection by the devs/mods.  I bought it from my real life friends, who were also members of my SG; who's to say they weren't just being nice to a fellow SG member and global friend?  One of my best friends is cash poor in real life, but a fantastic farmer for his characters.  I have cash, but limited playing time (having to spend long hours earning said cash).  A mutually beneficial arrangement was soon arrived at.

Later on, I found a much better cash-for-INF scheme - I'd purchase Super Packs and sell off unwanted ATOs or just use the Reward Merits from them to buy LotG Recharge recipes and such.  A far better method, at least from my perspective.

Many of my profits came from the rewards of Hero Merits and Reward merits.  LotG was good one for a long time.  Several hundred million a pop.

Not to mention you could save money that way too.  Just use the merits instead of the AH to obtain what you need.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 17, 2014, 11:33:35 PM
i never bought influence, but I did hand a lot out.

about 2 billion each month during SG contests + sweet receipes and salvage.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 18, 2014, 12:25:36 AM
One measure was that trial accounts actually could not broadcast without spending some money.  They also had no super group access and generally had no emailing rights(For two weeks) either, which stopped them from spamming any players email.  So the best they could safely do was go to the atlas park auction house.  If they took that away, then made other auction houses behind something very dangerous to get to without travel powers, maybe that'd hurt em?  Even then would that even be necessary?

They could just remove the Auction House from Atlas thus forcing the spammers to try to get to another Zone to lurk at the AH, but given that the spammers didn't really level their characters they wouldn't make it to the AH.

Or they could have it where there is no chatting at all for any account in the AH.  Also neutralize powers in the AH for those that leave noisy demon pets spawns, leave their heal power on auto or go around spamming Speed boost if a kin......so annoying when one is trying to shop in the AH :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on November 18, 2014, 12:36:51 AM
Also neutralize powers in the AH for those that leave noisy demon pets spawns, leave their heal power on auto or go around spamming Speed boost if a kin......so annoying when one is trying to shop in the AH :)
That drove me crazy as well.  Yet another reason my all-time favorite high-Tier reward was Remote Action House Access.  Aside from logging time for Day Job credit, I never bothered to set foot in Wentworth's ever again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on November 18, 2014, 01:29:42 AM
If you're not willing to pay the usual 15$ fee or the 12 month subscription with discount then you must really not want this game back that badly. 10 year old or not "there is no other game like cox" " I don't have fun in any other game" etc speaks to me that it's worth doing whatever possible to get the game back and to keep it running.

This game isn't going to run at 5$ or 10$ a month unless many people have multiple accounts, buy lots of cash shop items or we end up with huge subscription numbers to pay for the games expenses or the game is flooded with ingame talking ads that nobody likes.
Do you have access to some numbers for that?   Just curious where that info comes from.

I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that the cost to run a maintenance-mode CoH legacy game would be much lower than it was when the game was running.   They wouldn't be paying anyone to design new content for one thing.    $15 a month for the previous more costly CoH made sense...I don't see why I should assume the same rate is needed for a cheaper to run CoH.   And I'm not going to ignore the fact that the game made more money after lowering the sub price to zero either.   I don't think "$15" is a dividing line between profitability and non-profitability.   There may need to be a carrot of some sort to get some people to play a game without updates.

$15 a month would push me from 2 accounts down to one I must say.   It might surprise some to learn that because they can afford it that doesn't mean the same is true of everyone.    It might not be "because you don't want the game back that badly".   :P

Coincidentally, I'm in the process of changing banks because my current bank insists on hitting me with a $12 monthly service fee every time my checking account falls below a certain limit.  (While they ignore all the money I keep in savings at that bank) 

 Is $12 a lot of money?   Nope...but that sort of thing adds up across the board and I pay attention to things like that....which is why I'm able to live within a budget and not fall into financial difficulty.   
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on November 18, 2014, 02:39:32 AM
i never bought influence, but I did hand a lot out.

about 2 billion each month during SG contests + sweet receipes and salvage.
I too never bought inf from gold sellers, I earned my 3.25 bil though-out the years that I played. In my first year I was taken for 15 mil from a few ex sg member who I thought was going to trade with me again but they logged and did not log on for 4 months.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 18, 2014, 04:32:29 AM
That drove me crazy as well.  Yet another reason my all-time favorite high-Tier reward was Remote Action House Access.  Aside from logging time for Day Job credit, I never bothered to set foot in Wentworth's ever again.

Yeah nothing like flying to a relatively deserted area of a zone and sit in peace and quiet as one used the AH.

I generally would hit the flight ceiling and be in a corner of a zone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: PesdjetVanguard on November 18, 2014, 05:29:56 AM
$5/week for Ramen Noodles...check

$45/month for 3 accounts on CoX...check

done and done!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dareon Kale on November 18, 2014, 07:25:24 AM
One should not live on ramen alone for too extended a period of time. The consequences to your health over time can be...unfortunate.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on November 18, 2014, 12:28:56 PM
Later on, I found a much better cash-for-INF scheme - I'd purchase Super Packs and sell off unwanted ATOs or just use the Reward Merits from them to buy LotG Recharge recipes and such.  A far better method, at least from my perspective.

Yeah, I did this too. Between ATOs and enhancement converters, you could make a crapton of inf through the market. And with super packs you knew the money was actually going to the studio, rather than some sketchy site that was probably just trying to steal your financial info.

Also, remote auction house access ftw!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 18, 2014, 11:06:38 PM
Yeah, I did this too. Between ATOs and enhancement converters, you could make a crapton of inf through the market. And with super packs you knew the money was actually going to the studio, rather than some sketchy site that was probably just trying to steal your financial info.

Also, remote auction house access ftw!

Another good way for a time was to get the +3  def IO from the PVP IO set, they used to go for 2 billion on the market before conversions became possible.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on November 18, 2014, 11:10:11 PM
Yeah, I did this too. Between ATOs and enhancement converters, you could make a crapton of inf through the market. And with super packs you knew the money was actually going to the studio, rather than some sketchy site that was probably just trying to steal your financial info.

Also, remote auction house access ftw!

Yeah, the whole reason superpacks were added was to combat gold farmers, just the same reason lockboxes were added to mmorpgs.  Both were there to combat gold farmers.  Only game I saw so far that doesn't use boxes to combat gold farming is DCUO, as anything earned from said boxes were purely cosmetic.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on November 18, 2014, 11:20:58 PM
Yeah, the whole reason superpacks were added was to combat gold farmers, just the same reason lockboxes were added to mmorpgs.  Both were there to combat gold farmers.

If that's the actual reason then they are an abject failure in Star Trek Online, as that game still sees plenty of gold sellers (to the point where systems are in place to autoban people who trip certain keywords in chat, which has happened to several legitimate players by accident).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on November 19, 2014, 12:18:19 AM
Another good way for a time was to get the +3  def IO from the PVP IO set, they used to go for 2 billion on the market before conversions became possible.

The level 10 ones you could get with merits went for a lot more than 2BN off market, I sold 3 for 4BN each, and bought back one level 50 for 2BN.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 19, 2014, 12:27:44 AM
The level 10 ones you could get with merits went for a lot more than 2BN off market, I sold 3 for 4BN each, and bought back one level 50 for 2BN.

I heard about that, regrettably mine were only L50's :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on November 19, 2014, 04:14:23 PM
Catgirl Mastermind requires the addition of Catnip Coolers to the game. Actually most of the products and/or services in The Cape Radio ads should be implemented in game if/when we get 1.5 and all that. Oh, and the Rikti-raser. i wish i knew where to find those ads, they were hilarious.

http://www.thecaperadio.com/multimedia/cohaudio.php

That appears to have what you're looking for.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on November 19, 2014, 11:44:27 PM
http://www.thecaperadio.com/multimedia/cohaudio.php (http://www.thecaperadio.com/multimedia/cohaudio.php)

That appears to have what you're looking for.
Oh yes, yes indeed. You have my thanks.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on November 19, 2014, 11:54:56 PM
If that's the actual reason then they are an abject failure in Star Trek Online, as that game still sees plenty of gold sellers (to the point where systems are in place to autoban people who trip certain keywords in chat, which has happened to several legitimate players by accident).

The problem with cryptics games, is that the lockboxes don't actually combat but more encourage it, due to the fact that many people just buy keys and then sell them on auction.

This includes champions online, which actually further perverted the original purpose of the lockbox as they now release overpowered items, then nerf those items and release some other OP item, but then I said that countless times since that day a month ago.

But I can say generally to open a lockbox either takes 100-150 globals or  a dollar, so a blackmarket forming wouldn't be a surprise to me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Winter Fable on November 20, 2014, 01:23:03 AM
Quote
Do you have access to some numbers for that?   Just curious where that info comes from.

I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that the cost to run a maintenance-mode CoH legacy game would be much lower than it was when the game was running.   They wouldn't be paying anyone to design new content for one thing.    $15 a month for the previous more costly CoH made sense...I don't see why I should assume the same rate is needed for a cheaper to run CoH.   And I'm not going to ignore the fact that the game made more money after lowering the sub price to zero either.   I don't think "$15" is a dividing line between profitability and non-profitability.   There may need to be a carrot of some sort to get some people to play a game without updates.

$15 a month would push me from 2 accounts down to one I must say.   It might surprise some to learn that because they can afford it that doesn't mean the same is true of everyone.    It might not be "because you don't want the game back that badly".   :P

Coincidentally, I'm in the process of changing banks because my current bank insists on hitting me with a $12 monthly service fee every time my checking account falls below a certain limit.  (While they ignore all the money I keep in savings at that bank) 

 Is $12 a lot of money?   Nope...but that sort of thing adds up across the board and I pay attention to things like that....which is why I'm able to live within a budget and not fall into financial difficulty.


  This^^^We all want the game back but family and bills come first.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on November 20, 2014, 02:28:04 AM
Well, personally, I'm more than willing and able to pay $50 a month for CoH i23, with no updates - especially if that's the "all possible perks included package."  ;)

And heck, while I'm wildly dreaming, throw in a billion INF, 10,000 Reward Merits, and 1 complete set of each of the Purple IOs (non-PVP) every month, and I'll very happily pay $100 per month for CoH i23 with no updates.

In case you hadn't guessed, I'm totally down with the "bribing your way to victory" method of gaming.  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 20, 2014, 06:13:23 AM
lol
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on November 20, 2014, 07:24:59 AM
Do you have access to some numbers for that?   Just curious where that info comes from.

I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that the cost to run a maintenance-mode CoH legacy game would be much lower than it was when the game was running.   They wouldn't be paying anyone to design new content for one thing.    $15 a month for the previous more costly CoH made sense...I don't see why I should assume the same rate is needed for a cheaper to run CoH.   And I'm not going to ignore the fact that the game made more money after lowering the sub price to zero either.   I don't think "$15" is a dividing line between profitability and non-profitability.   There may need to be a carrot of some sort to get some people to play a game without updates.

$15 a month would push me from 2 accounts down to one I must say.   It might surprise some to learn that because they can afford it that doesn't mean the same is true of everyone.    It might not be "because you don't want the game back that badly".   :P

Coincidentally, I'm in the process of changing banks because my current bank insists on hitting me with a $12 monthly service fee every time my checking account falls below a certain limit.  (While they ignore all the money I keep in savings at that bank) 

 Is $12 a lot of money?   Nope...but that sort of thing adds up across the board and I pay attention to things like that....which is why I'm able to live within a budget and not fall into financial difficulty.

Agreed...

Lol, this is what I was trying to point out in my earlier, less clearer posts (and took a little flak on... hope the message can get through this time)   ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on November 20, 2014, 07:42:04 AM
You may think $15 is a lot for a maintenance mode of COH... but let's not forget that when COH comes back...it will not have the same amount of subscribers. If 10,000 people come back I will be surprised. Let's also not forget COH Legacy also needs to pay for... getting the IP which none of us are aware of the cost. It would not surprise me if the IP etc... is a $2 million endeavor.

10,000 subs at $15 a month...that will take at least a year to pay. That's not including paying the server costs...paragon market costs... etc etc...

If people want COH back... guess what... it's gonna cost money from everyone. The sooner the startup costs are recouped...the sooner they can then reduce the monthly costs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Battlechimp on November 20, 2014, 01:45:07 PM
You may think $15 is a lot for a maintenance mode of COH... but let's not forget that when COH comes back...it will not have the same amount of subscribers. If 10,000 people come back I will be surprised. Let's also not forget COH Legacy also needs to pay for... getting the IP which none of us are aware of the cost. It would not surprise me if the IP etc... is a $2 million endeavor.

10,000 subs at $15 a month...that will take at least a year to pay. That's not including paying the server costs...paragon market costs... etc etc...

If people want COH back... guess what... it's gonna cost money from everyone. The sooner the startup costs are recouped...the sooner they can then reduce the monthly costs.

I think what a lot of people are forgetting is... getting CoH Legacy up and running is NOT the end game.  Getting the IP and getting COH1.5/2 going and licensing out the IP to other products is. 

You are correct that chances are there won't be that many etuning players or even newer ones who want to pay a premimum subscription price for a 10 year old MMO that will never be updated.  So getting the old game up and running is not where they will make bake their investment.  If they can cover operating costs and possibly make a little bit of income , great.  But it'd be beyond foolish to think that they plan on staking it all just to get Legacy going.  And don't forget, even getting the image of the game wasn't the initial plan, NCSoft threw that out there when they made the original pitch for the IP not the game
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on November 20, 2014, 02:33:49 PM
You are correct that chances are there won't be that many etuning players or even newer ones who want to pay a premimum subscription price for a 10 year old MMO that will never be updated.  So getting the old game up and running is not where they will make bake their investment.  If they can cover operating costs and possibly make a little bit of income , great.  But it'd be beyond foolish to think that they plan on staking it all just to get Legacy going.  And don't forget, even getting the image of the game wasn't the initial plan, NCSoft threw that out there when they made the original pitch for the IP not the game

Besides the benefits of new games legally tied into the pre-existing material, I'd still pay $15/Month for the privilege of playing the "10 year old MMO" that had 8-1/2 years of fairly consistent upgrades and updates, resulting in many more options and adventures to play (or re-play) than either of the currently active SuperHeroic MMOs offer combined.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 20, 2014, 03:34:05 PM
Frankly whatever they decide the reasonable price is, I'll pay it!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on November 20, 2014, 04:49:57 PM
You may think $15 is a lot for a maintenance mode of COH... but let's not forget that when COH comes back...it will not have the same amount of subscribers. If 10,000 people come back I will be surprised. Let's also not forget COH Legacy also needs to pay for... getting the IP which none of us are aware of the cost. It would not surprise me if the IP etc... is a $2 million endeavor.

10,000 subs at $15 a month...that will take at least a year to pay. That's not including paying the server costs...paragon market costs... etc etc...

If people want COH back... guess what... it's gonna cost money from everyone. The sooner the startup costs are recouped...the sooner they can then reduce the monthly costs.

I could be wrong but I don't think the IP alone to license will be that much. Now the entire deal all together might be. I also would not be surprised if the purchase price was tied in the game restart, for example NCSoft says you start the game and pay us 50% of the profits until you hit x amount of dollars or you pay us x amount less dollars up front.

Making the cheaper way to start the more expensive option long term. So maybe give us $500k now and you get it or pay us back $1 million over a period of the game being open. I am not speaking of any secrets I know - just some of the rumored figures I had from earlier efforts (not the Paragon Studio buyout). Note, I also don't know what they wanted from NCSoft on those earlier efforts either and so the price may vary with the deal they are trying to reach now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on November 20, 2014, 05:59:54 PM
As long as the whole thing doesn't go sour, I'm up for whatever version/price of CoX they throw at us.  APR will be cool if it ever comes to fruition, but I really just want my CoX City back.  It has enough content to keep me going for years.  I played from the day after launch to shutdown night, and I felt I still had a whole lot more I wanted to do.  I'm happy we may get the chance, and even if it all falls to pieces, I really appreciate Team Hail Mary's efforts to get CoX back to us again.   8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on November 20, 2014, 06:23:51 PM
I agree - I had played since day one and there was still a lot of content I never got to.

I still often come up with new characters and I just did again at lunch while driving! The Mighty Platinum Percussion!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Styrj on November 20, 2014, 06:29:24 PM
As long as the whole thing doesn't go sour, I'm up for whatever version/price of CoX they throw at us.  APR will be cool if it ever comes to fruition, but I really just want my CoX City back.  It has enough content to keep me going for years.  I played from the day after launch to shutdown night, and I felt I still had a whole lot more I wanted to do.  I'm happy we may get the chance, and even if it all falls to pieces, I really appreciate Team Hail Mary's efforts to get CoX back to us again.   8)

What he (or she) said x1000!!  I just to play my City!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on November 20, 2014, 07:52:52 PM
I just want to start giving them money!  Screw how much!

T'is a small wish, I admit, but a wish nonetheless!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 20, 2014, 08:42:21 PM
Like Fry said in Futurama "Shut up, and take my MONEY!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: genesistk on November 20, 2014, 09:08:13 PM
 This game brought out the best in me and everyone I know who played it.  The heroic attitude is infectious.
I will be one of the first to sign up to play, and although I am not rich, I will put my money where my mouth is.
If/When City of Heroes rises from the ashes, I will make sure I do my part to make sure it never falls again.  :)
I felt like my best friend died, even now years after the tragic event.

Thank you so much for the hope,
Thomas Klemensen
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 20, 2014, 10:16:49 PM
This game brought out the best in me and everyone I know who played it.  The heroic attitude is infectious.
I will be one of the first to sign up to play, and although I am not rich, I will put my money where my mouth is.
If/When City of Heroes rises from the ashes, I will make sure I do my part to make sure it never falls again.  :)
I felt like my best friend died, even now years after the tragic event.

Thank you so much for the hope,
Thomas Klemensen

Once we return we should all have the word phoenix as part of some of our character names to symbolize the rising from the ashes of the shutdown. Also we should have blue auras on some of our costumes to symbolize the power of hope.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on November 20, 2014, 10:19:09 PM
Once we return we should all have the word phoenix as part of some of our character names to symbolize the rising from the ashes of the shutdown. Also we should have blue auras on some of our costumes to symbolize the power of hope.

Name is to long sorry :/.  I have another way to celebrate in mind anyways.  I really would like though people advise newbies that healers aren't a requirement for the game and mention the huge variety of alternatives to just healing hitpoints after damage is taken know?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 20, 2014, 10:24:45 PM
Name is to long sorry :/.  I have another way to celebrate in mind anyways.  I really would like though people advise newbies that healers aren't a requirement for the game and mention the huge variety of alternatives to just healing hitpoints after damage is taken know?

Yes the new comers should be given advice by the returning veterans.

Of course some of the Veterans may need some time to get back up to speed on game knowledge too. ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 20, 2014, 10:37:03 PM
Thought we were going to join the Titan SG, I'm still on board with that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 20, 2014, 10:39:48 PM
Thought we were going to join the Titan SG, I'm still on board with that.

I'm down with that. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on November 21, 2014, 12:58:40 AM
Thought we were going to join the Titan SG, I'm still on board with that.

Can you imagine if we could get every returning player to build 1 character specifically to join the Titan SG ?

WOW.  You'd have a massive base built in a week.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 21, 2014, 12:59:56 AM
Can you imagine if we could get every returning player to build 1 character specifically to join the Titan SG ?

WOW.  You'd have a massive base built in a week.

The only thing that would take a bit of time is racking up all the PVP kills to get the Fusion Generator base badge unlocked.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 21, 2014, 01:15:29 AM
The only thing that would take a bit of time is racking up all the PVP kills to get the Fusion Generator base badge unlocked.

Done in two hours, tops!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 21, 2014, 01:35:02 AM
Done in two hours, tops!

yes but would all participants also be able to walk away with the 400 PVP rep point badge? :)

Y'know what could also be a nice adjustment?  When you get the PVP rep badges it halts your PVP rep decay.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on November 21, 2014, 02:57:24 AM
See that I would do - make an Ironwolf character and use him in the Titan SG only.

That would so rock.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 21, 2014, 03:36:18 AM
See that I would do - make an Ironwolf character and use him in the Titan SG only.

That would so rock.

I would gladly join the TITAN SG, too bad I couldn't use the name Sinistar.......unless the new owners allow copycat names, which I highly doubt.

Last thing the new owners need is marvel/dc knocking on their door and introducing them to their new friends "Cease and Desist" :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on November 21, 2014, 07:57:29 AM
Once we return we should all have the word phoenix as part of some of our character names to symbolize the rising from the ashes of the shutdown. Also we should have blue auras on some of our costumes to symbolize the power of hope.
I had Green Lantern (Emerald Radiance: Rad/Energy Defender) and Violet Lantern (Violet Radiance: Earth/Energy Dominator) -like characters in the Color Guard Super Group on Infinity. I would so add a Blue Lantern-like character to that. Granted, none of them were actually dressed like their respective lantern corps uniforms. Although, you could tell that they here homages to those particular lanterns.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkojin on November 21, 2014, 08:33:56 AM
I would gladly join the TITAN SG, too bad I couldn't use the name Sinistar.......unless the new owners allow copycat names, which I highly doubt.

Last thing the new owners need is marvel/dc knocking on their door and introducing them to their new friends "Cease and Desist" :)

They will probably keep the long standing method of "Oh, you want THAT name? Well, now you get to be Generic 915 736 428. Congratulations!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dareon Kale on November 21, 2014, 03:07:05 PM
They will probably keep the long standing method of "Oh, you want THAT name? Well, now you get to be Generic 915 736 428. Congratulations!"

That gives me an idea for a character named Generic 8675309.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nitekilla on November 21, 2014, 06:00:28 PM
Can you imagine if we could get every returning player to build 1 character specifically to join the Titan SG ?

WOW.  You'd have a massive base built in a week.

I seem to remember that CoH had a limit to how many people could join a SG.  Did they remedy that later on?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on November 21, 2014, 06:22:35 PM
it once was 75 and I think they upped it to 150
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 21, 2014, 07:25:03 PM
it once was 75 and I think they upped it to 150

correct
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Reaper on November 21, 2014, 09:28:18 PM
That gives me an idea for a character named Generic 8675309.

Hey!  How did you get Jenny's number?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on November 21, 2014, 09:38:21 PM
Hey!  How did you get Jenny's number?

Damnnn you!  Now that song is stuck in my head.  At least I like the song.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on November 21, 2014, 10:36:27 PM
it once was 75 and I think they upped it to 150

Correct, 150 was the limit. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on November 22, 2014, 01:40:20 AM
Hey!  How did you get Jenny's number?

it was written on the wall. I had a character named jenny 8675309. I got reactions all the time
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on November 22, 2014, 03:20:03 AM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on November 22, 2014, 12:01:06 PM
My step-grand daughter is named Jenni, she is five, we used that song (with altered numbers) to teach her our home phone number which she sings when she she recites her phone number to her teacher.  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on November 22, 2014, 02:12:56 PM
Have just noticed that Downix hasn't been on the forums since 07/11/2014?

Could he be away sorting out a deal....?
Could he be to excited to come on the forums due to some possible good news...?
Or could he just be on a family holiday...? 

I'm hoping for either of the first two choices  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 22, 2014, 02:15:25 PM
Neither, it's forum rash.

He went to get some ointment.
It'll be a few months before it clears up.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on November 22, 2014, 05:59:46 PM
Have just noticed that Downix hasn't been on the forums since 07/11/2014?

Note (for those of us who do dates differently): last visit November 6. Not July 7.

(This is why you'll never see me write dates in that format. It's always written out.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on November 22, 2014, 08:57:54 PM
Note (for those of us who do dates differently): last visit November 6. Not July 7.

(This is why you'll never see me write dates in that format. It's always written out.)

UK for you  ;) Never understood the method of putting the month first ???
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on November 22, 2014, 10:48:56 PM
Have just noticed that Downix hasn't been on the forums since 07/11/2014?

Your setting is set as European Standard/NATO Standard where it is Day/Month/Year

UK for you  ;) Never understood the method of putting the month first ???

I'm assuming it's just someone the US did to stand out. Kind of like how we are on the Standard instead of the metric. Sure metric in all conceivable sense makes more sense (12 in = 1 foot, 3 foot = 1 yard... for something that is "Standard, there isn't a standard conversion rate like how metric dose it xD), but we're 'Merica! We take stuff, bastardize it, and call it American xD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on November 22, 2014, 11:19:18 PM
^ It's called "Imperial" actually, not "standard".  And in the UK, we used an annoying mixture of both imperial AND metric, just to confuse everyone! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on November 22, 2014, 11:29:31 PM
Your setting is set as European Standard/NATO Standard where it is Day/Month/Year

I'm assuming it's just someone the US did to stand out. Kind of like how we are on the Standard instead of the metric. Sure metric in all conceivable sense makes more sense (12 in = 1 foot, 3 foot = 1 yard... for something that is "Standard, there isn't a standard conversion rate like how metric dose it xD), but we're 'Merica! We take stuff, bastardize it, and call it American xD

If I am not mistaken the foot=12 inches measurement came from a King.  People would build things using heel to toe measurements (feet) until one day the King decided it was no longer a rough estimate and would be an actual measurement of his foot (12 inches).  Which would mean this is not a creation of America, seeing how America has never had any Kings.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on November 23, 2014, 12:15:06 AM
If I am not mistaken the foot=12 inches measurement came from a King.  People would build things using heel to toe measurements (feet) until one day the King decided it was no longer a rough estimate and would be an actual measurement of his foot (12 inches).  Which would mean this is not a creation of America, seeing how America has never had any Kings.

Not an American origin, but America is the one of the few countries (if I remember correctly there are 2-4 other countries that hasn't officially adopted the metric system) that use the Standard measurement for some reason.

Edit: Oh I see where the confusion for the origins of Standard was when I said "we bastardized and make it American." I was referring to food, culture, sports, etc
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on November 23, 2014, 01:14:22 AM
^ It's called "Imperial" actually, not "standard".  And in the UK, we used an annoying mixture of both imperial AND metric, just to confuse everyone! :p

We do the same.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on November 23, 2014, 04:54:52 AM
You guys want to talk about confusing measurements....

Try working on a 1980s truck from an American company (GMC Sierra) built in Canada, and worked on by a bunch of different yahoos over the years.
Every other bolt was metric, every other other was imperial.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on November 23, 2014, 05:11:17 AM
Note (for those of us who do dates differently): last visit November 6. Not July 7.

(This is why you'll never see me write dates in that format. It's always written out.)
To be nice i always write it out as something like 7 November 2014. The actual standard is more like 20141107, but that's less human readable for most people even if it simplifies chronological sorts. In any event i have to consciously force myself to do that weird Month/Day/Year thing on forms that require it (of which there are many), it just seems so illogical.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on November 23, 2014, 06:16:04 AM
The actual standard is more like 20141107,

I saved all of my Daily Activity Reports that way when I was in security. Made it much easier to find the correct report on the computer.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on November 23, 2014, 07:13:06 AM
To be nice i always write it out as something like 7 November 2014. The actual standard is more like 20141107, but that's less human readable for most people even if it simplifies chronological sorts. In any event i have to consciously force myself to do that weird Month/Day/Year thing on forms that require it (of which there are many), it just seems so illogical.

Unix time or GTFO.  I will not acknowledge any display of time that is not pure seconds since 1970.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Gaystar on November 23, 2014, 07:33:12 AM
Just want to say hello to everyone...
I've been in Gotham for a while..but Batman got a little jealous of Robin and I. So, I figured it was time to leave there ... 8)

When we get this old gal back up and running, be sure I'll be there!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on November 23, 2014, 05:16:11 PM
You guys want to talk about confusing measurements....

Try working on a 1980s truck from an American company (GMC Sierra) built in Canada, and worked on by a bunch of different yahoos over the years.
Every other bolt was metric, every other other was imperial.
Its like that on my 1997 explorer. Built in Detroit sold and stayed in Colorado. its half metric half standard...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on November 23, 2014, 05:29:39 PM
Unix time or GTFO.  I will not acknowledge any display of time that is not pure seconds since 1970.

Funny that, I always use GMT because anyone not in the united states uses gmt.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on November 23, 2014, 05:37:45 PM
You guys want to talk about confusing measurements....

Try working on a 1980s truck from an American company (GMC Sierra) built in Canada, and worked on by a bunch of different yahoos over the years.
Every other bolt was metric, every other other was imperial.

We had an '83 Chevy Caprice Classic that was assembled in Canada with American subassemblies, same thing, half the bolts were metric.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on November 24, 2014, 05:09:12 AM
UK for you  ;) Never understood the method of putting the month first ???

I figure it's because most people, when talking and asked the date, will say: "It's November seventh,' rather than "It's the seventh of November." Or just the number alone, since the month is assumed to be known.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on November 24, 2014, 05:27:15 AM
I always thought that military date was far more logical, today would be 20141123 (Year/Month/Day) and to be more precise the time would provide the last four additional digits 201411232126 (9:26 PM as I am typing). . .
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on November 24, 2014, 05:22:48 PM
I figure it's because most people, when talking and asked the date, will say: "It's November seventh,' rather than "It's the seventh of November." Or just the number alone, since the month is assumed to be known.

No body I've ever met in the UK does that. We'd just say "It's the 7th".  Sometimes we might add "Of November" after that.  Never heard anyone say "November 7th".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on November 24, 2014, 05:51:12 PM
I always thought that military date was far more logical, today would be 20141123 (Year/Month/Day) and to be more precise the time would provide the last four additional digits 201411232126 (9:26 PM as I am typing). . .

Never seen it like that. From what I was taught we used the simplified NATO standard where it was 2 digits of the day/First 3 of the month/ last 2 of the year so today would be 24NOV14. On a single digit, you needed to put in the leading 0 like 05DEC14. The actual NATO standard is Date-HHMM-Zone-Month-Year is the same fassion
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on November 24, 2014, 07:04:29 PM
Just want to say hello to everyone...
I've been in Gotham for a while..but Batman got a little jealous of Robin and I. So, I figured it was time to leave there ... 8)

When we get this old gal back up and running, be sure I'll be there!
its ok star :)I think many of us is in a different location, myself  I spend some of my time in the delta quadrant and in kingsmouth.
Welcome and I also hope City of comes back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on November 24, 2014, 07:58:35 PM
I work in a company that's going global so all are dates are becoming (for example)  24/11/14 and 24 Nov 14.  That's fine, no problem.

What I do not understand is the inversion of commas and periods.  What I would see as 1, 234.56 is being presented as 1.234,56

Makes my head hurt.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 24, 2014, 08:04:17 PM
I work in a company that's going global so all are dates are becoming (for example)  24/11/14 and 24 Nov 14.  That's fine, no problem.

What I do not understand is the inversion of commas and periods.  What I would see as 1, 234.56 is being presented as 1.234,56

Makes my head hurt.

Some people just want to watch the world burn.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on November 24, 2014, 08:13:05 PM
I work in a company that's going global so all are dates are becoming (for example)  24/11/14 and 24 Nov 14.  That's fine, no problem.

What I do not understand is the inversion of commas and periods.  What I would see as 1, 234.56 is being presented as 1.234,56

Makes my head hurt.

In data people use commas for CSV files, but replacing commas for periods and vise versa, the only explanation I have for that is probably that is how your system interprets the information to be seen as how the actual value supposed to be. That would be strange and confusing why they would do something like, but could be a weird limitation of the system.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on November 24, 2014, 09:36:19 PM
I've seen it on reports for people to read, not just in our upcoming SAP system.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on November 24, 2014, 10:17:46 PM
I've seen it on reports for people to read, not just in our upcoming SAP system.

That's strange, have fun with SAP implementation. (Well you will, but your data people especially if your company is consolidating to a MDM will not xD) We just had ours and the only joy I can say is it is something to put on your resume for crisis management xD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on November 25, 2014, 12:04:28 AM
Never seen it like that. From what I was taught we used the simplified NATO standard where it was 2 digits of the day/First 3 of the month/ last 2 of the year so today would be 24NOV14. On a single digit, you needed to put in the leading 0 like 05DEC14. The actual NATO standard is Date-HHMM-Zone-Month-Year is the same fassion

The reason to do it YYYYMMDDHHMMSS (Year, Month, Day, Hour, Minute, Second) is that when you put that in a spreadsheet, you can sort things chronologically simply by putting them in numeric order. I've seen businesses record dates that way as well. It's less important now that spreadsheet programs are smart enough to read dates directly and put them into any one of a number of different formats, but back in the early days of computing it was the easiest way to make a chronologically-sortable database.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on November 25, 2014, 01:10:59 AM
No body I've ever met in the UK does that. We'd just say "It's the 7th".  Sometimes we might add "Of November" after that.  Never heard anyone say "November 7th".

And if talking about a date decently far off, it would be "November the 7th" or "the 7th of November", never "November 7th".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on November 25, 2014, 02:08:56 AM
You may think $15 is a lot for a maintenance mode of COH... but let's not forget that when COH comes back...it will not have the same amount of subscribers. If 10,000 people come back I will be surprised. Let's also not forget COH Legacy also needs to pay for... getting the IP which none of us are aware of the cost. It would not surprise me if the IP etc... is a $2 million endeavor.

10,000 subs at $15 a month...that will take at least a year to pay. That's not including paying the server costs...paragon market costs... etc etc...

If people want COH back... guess what... it's gonna cost money from everyone. The sooner the startup costs are recouped...the sooner they can then reduce the monthly costs.
It may come down to math.

Would we get more or less subscribers at $10 a month vs $15 a month?   I'm going to guess more.    I don't think we can assume the number would be the same at each price.

And I know they would get $20 a month from me at $10 a month.....vs $15 a month at $15 a month.   Maybe I'm the only one.

And are we forgetting that the game made more money with a F2P option?    It not as simple as "charge more money-make more money".   I would think there would be a sweet spot in there where the amount of money coming in would be maximized.

To be nice i always write it out as something like 7 November 2014. The actual standard is more like 20141107, but that's less human readable for most people even if it simplifies chronological sorts. In any event i have to consciously force myself to do that weird Month/Day/Year thing on forms that require it (of which there are many), it just seems so illogical.
Same here.   Ever since I spent some time in the military, day/month/year makes so much more sense.   I got used to writing 01Jan15.   It makes sense to go from biggest to smallest or vice versa.

Similar thing happened to me with the clock.   I don't get why we just don't do the 24 hour clock like the military does.  The am/pm thing seems kind illogical and goofy.   It would take everyone about a week to get used to it.   1600 makes a lot more sense than 4:00pm to me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on November 25, 2014, 03:35:58 AM
Note (for those of us who do dates differently): last visit November 6. Not July 7.

(This is why you'll never see me write dates in that format. It's always written out.)

My boss is a Brit, at a branch of a British company in (of all places) a minor metro west of Chicago. The "culture clash" jokes never seem to get old, but a lot of the dates (on test equipment, computer software, etc.) show as Brit/European standard, rather than US.

We have a lot more fun than we probably should with the culture differences...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on November 25, 2014, 03:49:23 AM
That's strange, have fun with SAP implementation. (Well you will, but your data people especially if your company is consolidating to a MDM will not xD) We just had ours and the only joy I can say is it is something to put on your resume for crisis management xD

I'm one of the data people :)  I've been transitioning our quality standards into a format that is useable by the Oversight and Assurance teams.  I'm also being trained to train other people.  It's been a hoot.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on November 25, 2014, 04:03:43 AM
And for an on-topic discussion, some modifications to my previous suggestion for pricing, working on the premise that the i23 F2P model is hard-coded:

1) Initial purchase to download the launcher, no more than $30 - This makes everyone a 'Premium' player with a set number of Paragon Points, maybe 12 or 24 month's worth.  (10,000 signups = $300,000 startup)
2) Discounted purchase of Paragon Points/Tokens/Codes/Etc before launch, then go back to standard prices after launch - maybe 2 to 2.5X the benefit
3) Low VIP subscription - $10 per month for the first sub, $5 each for more.
4) No one is a basic F2P player, but non-VIP still use the market.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on November 25, 2014, 05:33:30 AM
No body I've ever met in the UK does that. We'd just say "It's the 7th".  Sometimes we might add "Of November" after that.  Never heard anyone say "November 7th".

I go by stardate.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on November 25, 2014, 06:14:27 AM
I'm one of the data people :)  I've been transitioning our quality standards into a format that is useable by the Oversight and Assurance teams.  I'm also being trained to train other people.  It's been a hoot.

So what your saying is your "The Platinum SAP Specialist" For Deloitte? :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on November 25, 2014, 06:47:52 AM
I go by stardate.

[-27]1346.4
My phone might tell me both standard, and Stardate... -cough-


Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on November 25, 2014, 04:13:17 PM
I've seen it on reports for people to read, not just in our upcoming SAP system.

Oh the joys of transitioning to SAP. Been there. Now I work for a company that uses Oracle. Once you get used to SAP you realize it is better than most of it's competition.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on November 25, 2014, 04:16:47 PM
I've seen it on reports for people to read, not just in our upcoming SAP system.

UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!

Someone call the exorcists! We have a demon on the loose!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on November 25, 2014, 05:17:32 PM
No body I've ever met in the UK does that. We'd just say "It's the 7th".  Sometimes we might add "Of November" after that.  Never heard anyone say "November 7th".

And you lot write your dates that way too :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 25, 2014, 05:39:28 PM
UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!

Someone call the exorcists! We have a demon on the loose!!

Cool, I'll just add them to my collection.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dr. Bad Guy on November 25, 2014, 07:16:55 PM
[-27]1346.4
My phone might tell me both standard, and Stardate... -cough-

A woman that uses stardates? Are you married? Er, ah nevermind my wife would...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: microc on November 26, 2014, 06:12:59 AM
hopfully he dont have any red shirts he wears :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on November 26, 2014, 05:01:44 PM
And you lot write your dates that way too :p

Well, of course! It's the only sensible way to do it, just like driving on the left is the only sensible way to drive!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on November 26, 2014, 07:18:03 PM
Well, of course! It's the only sensible way to do it, just like driving on the left is the only sensible way to drive!

The curious side of me wondered why people don't have the steering wheel in the middle of the car. that is the basic driving factor on which side of the road to drive
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on November 26, 2014, 09:01:49 PM
The curious side of me wondered why people don't have the steering wheel in the middle of the car. that is the basic driving factor on which side of the road to drive

The position of the steering wheel is a consequence of the side of the road driven on, not a cause.

The reason we drive on the left is simple.  Most knights were right handed, they would hang on to their horses reigns with their left, and use their swords with their right during combat. Made it easier to chop bits off your enemies!

The reason others drive on the right is also simple.  They're daft. :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on November 26, 2014, 09:06:43 PM
The reason others drive on the right is also simple.  They're daft. :p

Are you, Sir FloatingFatsalot, calling me Daft?!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 26, 2014, 09:20:03 PM
Are you, Sir FloatingFatsalot, calling me Daft?!

Well, he pulled you into the conversation which make you:
A Draft Daft!

*I laughed*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on November 26, 2014, 09:56:18 PM
Well, he pulled you into the conversation which make you:
A Draft Daft!

*I laughed*

If she didn't comment you would have just called her a Draft Daft Dodger. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on November 26, 2014, 11:02:40 PM
You know what. I'm going to go ahead...and just leave this map here...

http://apr.pc-logix.com/RevivalMap_11_26_2014.png (http://apr.pc-logix.com/RevivalMap_11_26_2014.png)

Call me daft now... Hrmph.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on November 27, 2014, 12:01:50 AM
You know what. I'm going to go ahead...and just leave this map here...

http://apr.pc-logix.com/RevivalMap_11_26_2014.png (http://apr.pc-logix.com/RevivalMap_11_26_2014.png)

Call me daft now... Hrmph.
What's truly daft is that i recognized each map at a glance by the road layouts.  :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lapucelle on November 27, 2014, 06:06:28 AM
Go, Irish, go! Go, Irish, go!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 27, 2014, 05:08:13 PM
You know what. I'm going to go ahead...and just leave this map here...

http://apr.pc-logix.com/RevivalMap_11_26_2014.png (http://apr.pc-logix.com/RevivalMap_11_26_2014.png)

Call me daft now... Hrmph.

Now she is a Drafting Draft Daft Dodger
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on November 27, 2014, 06:31:29 PM
Are you, Sir FloatingFatsalot, calling me Daft?!

Now would I do such a mean spirited thing as that?   :roll:










No. Don't answer that!  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on November 27, 2014, 08:39:03 PM
Now would I do such a mean spirited thing as that?   :roll:










No. Don't answer that!  :P

DO IT AGAIN!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on November 28, 2014, 12:35:26 AM
Now she is a Drafting Draft Daft Dodger

Sounds like a forum title or one of those odd badge names.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on November 28, 2014, 03:15:10 AM
Daft would be Burma/Myanmar.

"We've been driving on this side of the road since we started having cars, but it looked really cool, in this movie I just watched, to drive on the other side. Since I'm a dictator, I can just change the side of the road that we drive on, right?"

What's funny ("funny terrifying," not "funny ha-ha") is that the steering wheels are still on the right, and the bus doors are still on the left. Have fun stepping off the bus into traffic!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on November 28, 2014, 11:08:52 PM
Daft would be Burma/Myanmar.

"We've been driving on this side of the road since we started having cars, but it looked really cool, in this movie I just watched, to drive on the other side. Since I'm a dictator, I can just change the side of the road that we drive on, right?"

What's funny ("funny terrifying," not "funny ha-ha") is that the steering wheels are still on the right, and the bus doors are still on the left. Have fun stepping off the bus into traffic!

Samoa did this in 2009 and there were no immediate accidents.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8243110.stm
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on November 29, 2014, 07:06:59 AM
The position of the steering wheel is a consequence of the side of the road driven on, not a cause.

The reason we drive on the left is simple.  Most knights were right handed, they would hang on to their horses reigns with their left, and use their swords with their right during combat. Made it easier to chop bits off your enemies!

The reason others drive on the right is also simple.  They're daft. :p
Jousting. Not daft. Unfortunately, it's hard to get that long stick aimed correctly with the window up.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on November 29, 2014, 03:51:31 PM
Jousting. Not daft. Unfortunately, it's hard to get that long stick aimed correctly with the window up.

If you're having problems aiming your long stick, you have more problems than a shut window! :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on November 29, 2014, 06:25:09 PM
The curious side of me wondered why people don't have the steering wheel in the middle of the car. that is the basic driving factor on which side of the road to drive

Obviously, because then you'd drive right down the middle of the road. Which might not work on two-way streets.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on November 29, 2014, 07:09:36 PM
Obviously, because then you'd drive right down the middle of the road. Which might not work on two-way streets.

It could work if they widened the road so there was room for two lanes in the middle.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on November 29, 2014, 10:52:29 PM
Obviously, because then you'd drive right down the middle of the road. Which might not work on two-way streets.

In the middle of the road,
You see the darnest things.
Like fat cats driving around in jeeps through the city,
Wearing big diamond rings and silk suits.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on November 30, 2014, 08:28:45 AM
If any of them drive like the people in Paragon City, then you'd be safer in the burning building full of Malta ( or Tsoo, COT, Carnies, or <insert any other villain group here> ).

Or the M.A.G.I. vault if you happen to be a magical artifact.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on November 30, 2014, 03:30:49 PM
Eagerly awaiting the next update on the potential purchase of CoH.

Like some pensive Mexican stand-off.

Hopefully good news is pending.

Azrael.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on November 30, 2014, 07:53:35 PM
Eagerly awaiting the next update on the potential purchase of CoH.

Like some pensive Mexican stand-off.

"Mexican stand-off" sounds like some kind of party platter at El Super Mexicano.  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on November 30, 2014, 10:12:07 PM
"Mexican stand-off" sounds like some kind of party splatter at El Super Mexicano.  ;D

Fixed that for you. :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on December 01, 2014, 01:11:39 AM
Fixed that for you. :p

hehehe

Fooood Fiiiight!!!  *lobs a burrito*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on December 01, 2014, 06:17:46 AM
hehehe

Fooood Fiiiight!!!  *lobs a burrito*

That is not where my mind went at all when I saw splatter..  Hats off to you for keeping it clean there Triplash.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on December 01, 2014, 07:05:08 AM
That is not where my mind went at all when I saw splatter..  Hats off to you for keeping it clean there Triplash.

That's not where my mind -was-, either! :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on December 01, 2014, 09:10:27 AM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kierthos on December 01, 2014, 01:42:45 PM
BeHOLD the AWEsome power of my FULLY-AUTOMATIC GUACAMOLE LAUNCHER!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on December 01, 2014, 08:26:00 PM
BeHOLD the AWEsome power of my FULLY-AUTOMATIC GUACAMOLE LAUNCHER!

EWWWW!!!! Green Slime!!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on December 01, 2014, 09:05:05 PM
Feel the wrath of my Chili con Carnage!

*runs around randomly bopping people with Dual Breadsticks*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 01, 2014, 09:25:11 PM
I actually had a character called Tijuana Chili.

TC was on a pub crawl in Tijuana with some friends and they were eating hot chilis on a bet. TC had eaten them all and was bragging about it. A small wizened Aztec man of ancient age - reached into a pouch and handed a shrivelled pepper to TC. He took the pepper which was golden colored and gleamed in the light with a metallic sheen. He ate the pepper and immediately started radiating fire from all over the place.

The Fire/Fire tank Tijuana Chili was born!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on December 01, 2014, 09:47:54 PM
lol
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on December 01, 2014, 10:07:29 PM
Could have been worse...  Could have become the Ice/Ice Tanker.... Chilli Tijuana
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Risha on December 01, 2014, 11:11:37 PM
I'm sure a lot of us logged on to see if there was any news.   Anyone else face serious depression yesterday/today as the anniversary of the loss of our world rolled around?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on December 01, 2014, 11:23:13 PM
I actually had a character called Tijuana Chili.

TC was on a pub crawl in Tijuana with some friends and they were eating hot chilis on a bet. TC had eaten them all and was bragging about it. A small wizened Aztec man of ancient age - reached into a pouch and handed a shrivelled pepper to TC. He took the pepper which was golden colored and gleamed in the light with a metallic sheen. He ate the pepper and immediately started radiating fire from all over the place.

The Fire/Fire tank Tijuana Chili was born!

"Homer, there is a lesson you must learn."
"If it's about laying off the insanity peppers, I'm way ahead of ya."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BraveStar on December 01, 2014, 11:23:42 PM
Yeah, I was really hoping we'd hear something yesterday.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 02, 2014, 12:13:28 AM
Yeah, I was really hoping we'd hear something yesterday.

You, me and many others were hoping.  :)

If the deal were announced now I'd expect a spring time return.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on December 02, 2014, 01:08:30 AM
I actually had a character called Tijuana Chili.

TC was on a pub crawl in Tijuana with some friends and they were eating hot chilis on a bet. TC had eaten them all and was bragging about it. A small wizened Aztec man of ancient age - reached into a pouch and handed a shrivelled pepper to TC. He took the pepper which was golden colored and gleamed in the light with a metallic sheen. He ate the pepper and immediately started radiating fire from all over the place.

The Fire/Fire tank Tijuana Chili was born!

Fun story.  I'd imagine though that when anyone can eat a full bunch of chilis that it was easy for them :).  It's easy for us to eat hot foods over here, some of them aren't even hot to us anymore.  Heck even before moving down here a lot of hot foods in nebraska had no impact on me when I hate a double-habinaro beef jerky(on a dare more or less at college).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on December 02, 2014, 02:50:05 PM
Could have been worse...  Could have become the Ice/Ice Tanker.... Chilli Tijuana

I read that and totally heard Vanilla Ice sing "Ice ice tanker. . ." complete with the bass line rif.

Makes me wish our toons had their own intro music!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on December 02, 2014, 03:20:24 PM
I read that and totally heard Vanilla Ice sing "Ice ice tanker. . ." complete with the bass line rif.

......... I may or may not have done something like that before.  >.>

Spoiler for Hidden:
Ice Ice Blaster... dun dun dun dunununuh
Ice Ice Blaster... dun dun dun dunununuh

Stop! Refrigerate and listen... Ice is back with a brand new mission
Chilblain grabs a hold of you tightly, frozen like an iceberg daily and nightly

Will it ever melt, yo? I don't know. Mez-resist the hold, you're still slowed
Chilling Embrace rocks the beasts and the vandals, Bitter Freeze Ray turns em into ice candles

dun dun dun dunununuh... dun dun dun dunununuh
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on December 02, 2014, 03:24:03 PM
Feel the wrath of my Chili con Carnage!

*runs around randomly bopping people with Dual Breadsticks*

Nope.  Needs to be a Water Blaster with the "water" colored brown.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on December 02, 2014, 03:56:27 PM
Yeah, I was really hoping we'd hear something yesterday.

I think the people expecting it to happen on a "significant" date are probably not going to get what they want. They're working on a business deal; it happens on its own timetable. Barring a few business-related calendar dates that might relate (end of Q1, Q2, etc; end of fiscal year) I think it's going to happen when it happens. Nate might delay announcement to the next "significant" date if it's close, for a minor news bump, but I'm certainly hoping he doesn't. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on December 02, 2014, 05:04:22 PM
I think the people expecting it to happen on a "significant" date are probably not going to get what they want. They're working on a business deal; it happens on its own timetable. Barring a few business-related calendar dates that might relate (end of Q1, Q2, etc; end of fiscal year) I think it's going to happen when it happens. Nate might delay announcement to the next "significant" date if it's close, for a minor news bump, but I'm certainly hoping he doesn't. :)

Saying that Nate hasn't been active on the forum since November 7th... I'm hoping it's because he is working hard on the deal  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fireheart on December 02, 2014, 05:11:50 PM
Nate is not involved with the deal.  He just helped introduce the players.

Be Well!
Fireheart


EDIT: THIS POST IS WRONG. ~Agge
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on December 02, 2014, 05:40:59 PM
......... I may or may not have done something like that before.  >.>

Spoiler for Hidden:
Ice Ice Blaster... dun dun dun dunununuh
Ice Ice Blaster... dun dun dun dunununuh

Stop! Refrigerate and listen... Ice is back with a brand new mission
Chilblain grabs a hold of you tightly, frozen like an iceberg daily and nightly

Will it ever melt, yo? I don't know. Mez-resist the hold, you're still slowed
Chilling Embrace rocks the beasts and the vandals, Bitter Freeze Ray turns em into ice candles

dun dun dun dunununuh... dun dun dun dunununuh
Hilarious!  I've saved a copy of that one now.  Believe it or not, I actually went to a Vanilla Ice concert back in the late 80's.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on December 02, 2014, 06:44:33 PM
Nate is not involved with the deal.  He just helped introduce the players.

Be Well!
Fireheart

I thought it was Ironwolf who pathed the way for Nate aka "Downix" to speak with NCSoft?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ultimate15 on December 02, 2014, 07:08:45 PM
Nate is not involved with the deal.  He just helped introduce the players.

Be Well!
Fireheart

...Uhhhhh. Huh? I was under the impression that Nate was the one spearheading the entire operation here after IronWolf put all the proper people in communication with eachother?

My name is Confused. Nice to meet you.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on December 02, 2014, 07:53:26 PM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 02, 2014, 08:46:33 PM
I had an Ice toon named Chillin' Villains...LOL

I had one named "Everyone Chill"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 02, 2014, 08:50:01 PM
I got the ball rolling and Nate and friends took it the rest of the way.

He was involved as he was saying his phone bill was feeling the pain of calls to South Korea. It is possible that once the group running the Classic CoH is in place - he may not be involved past that. I know he is doing this for our benefit as MWM is not part of it all.

Nate is/was running with it until the other group is in place to run the server and deal with the IP purchase.

Then we will know our new overlords.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on December 02, 2014, 09:04:53 PM
Hilarious!  I've saved a copy of that one now.  Believe it or not, I actually went to a Vanilla Ice concert back in the late 80's.

I never went to a concert, but I did watch his movie without turning it off. A couple times! ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 02, 2014, 10:36:03 PM
but I did watch his movie without turning it off. A couple times! ;D

Wow, for real? :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 02, 2014, 10:36:33 PM
I got the ball rolling and Nate and friends took it the rest of the way.

He was involved as he was saying his phone bill was feeling the pain of calls to South Korea. It is possible that once the group running the Classic CoH is in place - he may not be involved past that. I know he is doing this for our benefit as MWM is not part of it all.

Nate is/was running with it until the other group is in place to run the server and deal with the IP purchase.

Then we will know our new overlords.

I welcome the new future CoH Overlords :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on December 03, 2014, 05:29:36 AM
I welcome the new future CoH Overlords :)

Once I would have agreed without thinking; but I think back and remember how I was one of those who wanted Venom to be in Raimi's Spider-man 3. "Get him in there!" I said. "He needs to be in there any which kinda way!"

Lo, the powers that be hearkened to the fan's cries, and we did indeed get Venom in S-M3. He just turned out to be that nerdy guy from "That 70s Show." This taught me the folly of speaking without thinking things through; after I was restrained from hurling myself off the nearest big bridge, that is.

So, if the new overlords turn out NOT to be the equivalent of That 70s Venom, I will welcome them wholeheartedly. [I dont at all think they will be, I am just wary of making more rash predictions.]

Henry Rollins for Eddie Brock, dammit. he's old enough, big enough and more than intimidating enough, when he wants to be. But I digress. I actually think this franchise needs a resting period of at least ten years. But thats not here nor there.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on December 03, 2014, 06:23:06 AM
Wow, for real? :)

Yep! I dig cheesy movies. They're fun :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 03, 2014, 06:59:21 AM
Once I would have agreed without thinking; but I think back and remember how I was one of those who wanted Venom to be in Raimi's Spider-man 3. "Get him in there!" I said. "He needs to be in there any which kinda way!"

Lo, the powers that be hearkened to the fan's cries, and we did indeed get Venom in S-M3. He just turned out to be that nerdy guy from "That 70s Show." This taught me the folly of speaking without thinking things through; after I was restrained from hurling myself off the nearest big bridge, that is.

So, if the new overlords turn out NOT to be the equivalent of That 70s Venom, I will welcome them wholeheartedly. [I dont at all think they will be, I am just wary of making more rash predictions.]

Henry Rollins for Eddie Brock, dammit. he's old enough, big enough and more than intimidating enough, when he wants to be. But I digress. I actually think this franchise needs a resting period of at least ten years. But thats not here nor there.

The studio is to be blamed for Venom being forced into SM3.  The should have saved him for #4
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkojin on December 03, 2014, 09:44:42 AM
The studio is to be blamed for Venom being forced into SM3.  The should have saved him for #4

They really should have done a much better job on Venom in that movie, as they completely made it impossible for the introduction of the next villain in that line - Carnage. With the new series, maybe we will get to finally see Venom and Carnage (as they should be). The funny thing is, they teased Carnage as a villain in Amazing Spiderman 2 on the posters. It listed 4 things (drawing a total blank on the first three), with the last one as Carnage. Then we get the first preview and all we see is Electro.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 03, 2014, 10:37:18 AM
They really should have done a much better job on Venom in that movie, as they completely made it impossible for the introduction of the next villain in that line - Carnage. With the new series, maybe we will get to finally see Venom and Carnage (as they should be). The funny thing is, they teased Carnage as a villain in Amazing Spiderman 2 on the posters. It listed 4 things (drawing a total blank on the first three), with the last one as Carnage. Then we get the first preview and all we see is Electro.

As I recall Sam Rami is not a fan of the symbiote characters and was told by the studio to shoehorn Venom into #3.

As to Carnage, he is an irredeemable killer. To put him in would likely generate an R rated Spiderman movie given all the violence that Carnage is capable of.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 03, 2014, 11:59:54 AM
Once I would have agreed without thinking; but I think back and remember how I was one of those who wanted Venom to be in Raimi's Spider-man 3. "Get him in there!" I said. "He needs to be in there any which kinda way!"

Lo, the powers that be hearkened to the fan's cries, and we did indeed get Venom in S-M3. He just turned out to be that nerdy guy from "That 70s Show." This taught me the folly of speaking without thinking things through; after I was restrained from hurling myself off the nearest big bridge, that is.

So, if the new overlords turn out NOT to be the equivalent of That 70s Venom, I will welcome them wholeheartedly. [I dont at all think they will be, I am just wary of making more rash predictions.]

Henry Rollins for Eddie Brock, dammit. he's old enough, big enough and more than intimidating enough, when he wants to be. But I digress. I actually think this franchise needs a resting period of at least ten years. But thats not here nor there.

2 things:
1. if the new Overlords do buy the game and get it out into the wild again away from any other influence - they are much more likely to be willing to sell it again if they go belly up.
2. How can you screw up keeping a game in maintenance mode?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on December 03, 2014, 12:15:23 PM
I wish I had some kind of an idea on who might end up with the big chair in the end...Especially since in a way you could look at them as my boss. lol.

Also, I suppose in a way you could look at me as "one of the new overlords" and nobody's made any comparisons between me and Spider-Man 3 Venom. So that's likely a good sign all around.
(Love Topher Grace, but he's nowhere near the right fit for Eddie Brock. He'd be a better Peter Parker.)

It's kind of hard to screw up a Maint. mode server. Since it's mostly...making sure everything keeps ticking.
But...It's possible...they could say...Politely inform me that I need to shoehorn in Topher Grace as Venom, or turn over Revival.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on December 03, 2014, 12:30:34 PM
But...It's possible...they could say...Politely inform me that I need to shoehorn in Topher Grace as Venom, or turn over Revival.

Don't worry about it! Just put in the character, and then immediately have it generic'd for looking too much like a Marvel copyright. Bam, problem solved.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on December 03, 2014, 01:45:07 PM
LOL,  OK Triplash you win the internetz this morning  :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on December 03, 2014, 03:16:42 PM
They really should have done a much better job on Venom in that movie, as they completely made it impossible for the introduction of the next villain in that line - Carnage. With the new series, maybe we will get to finally see Venom and Carnage (as they should be). The funny thing is, they teased Carnage as a villain in Amazing Spiderman 2 on the posters. It listed 4 things (drawing a total blank on the first three), with the last one as Carnage. Then we get the first preview and all we see is Electro.

Imma put a [citation needed] on this with extreme prejudice.  I did find an ASM2 poster featuring Carnage (http://professoradagio.deviantart.com/art/The-Amazing-Spider-Man-2-Carnage-Official-Poster-435474098), but it's on deviantArt, and (as cool as it looks) is not official.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 03, 2014, 03:18:19 PM
I wish I had some kind of an idea on who might end up with the big chair in the end...Especially since in a way you could look at them as my boss. lol.

Also, I suppose in a way you could look at me as "one of the new overlords" and nobody's made any comparisons between me and Spider-Man 3 Venom. So that's likely a good sign all around.
(Love Topher Grace, but he's nowhere near the right fit for Eddie Brock. He'd be a better Peter Parker.)

It's kind of hard to screw up a Maint. mode server. Since it's mostly...making sure everything keeps ticking.
But...It's possible...they could say...Politely inform me that I need to shoehorn in Topher Grace as Venom, or turn over Revival.

I don't know - while they will be authorized to sell the IP - I don't think they would have any say in your design. To run the classic game server and to authorize leases for the IP seems a relatively simple job. If they - as I would do in their shoes - had a word with the possible SCoRE folks and work on a stand alone version while still hosting the original server.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Risha on December 03, 2014, 04:55:19 PM
Valiance Online put out pre-Alpha last weekend, canny of them.  I got my invite yesterday am and went on about twelve hours later because I didn't like my pre-pre Alpha experience.  I am pleased enough with what I see to throw a little money at them.  The area is much like Atlas Park without looking exactly like it.  The thing is clunky, I played a Street Brawler, a Shadow Controller (who didn't really control well), and a Martial Artist and missions and villains are minimal, but  . . . it will do until COH is up and running and Revival goes.  I foresee subscribing to several games, since I subscribed as much as I could to COT.

Bottom line 1) I like what Valiance Online is doing 2) I think they deserve funding

And, 3, re: a stand alone game of COH, is that even possible?  I don't have any tech chops at all, so I would love that, but OTOH, seeing PEOPLE in Valiance Online was wonderful.  I understand now that I soloed more than I should have -- though you can see by the time of this post that I remain a working writer able to grab a mission now and then as a break.

Thanks for letting me babble.
Robin
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on December 03, 2014, 05:09:10 PM
I understand now that I soloed more than I should have -- though you can see by the time of this post that I remain a working writer able to grab a mission now and then as a break.

Ah, yes, 10 in the morning. The classic time for... uh... what was I supposed to be able to tell by the time you're posting? :p

I will say I did solo a lot in CoH, after getting burned by my first SG being disbanded for no reason. I have mixed feelings about getting overly involved with people on the internet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Risha on December 03, 2014, 06:28:51 PM
Ah, yes, 10 in the morning. The classic time for... uh... what was I supposed to be able to tell by the time you're posting? :p

I will say I did solo a lot in CoH, after getting burned by my first SG being disbanded for no reason. I have mixed feelings about getting overly involved with people on the internet.

LOL, yes, 10.  It should have been 9 but I played VO until 2 am last night so I didn't get up at 7 as I'd anticipated.  I do best in 2 hour shifts.  Up at 8 and 2 hours work and break...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on December 03, 2014, 06:43:06 PM
I hate soloing... no really.. I mean HATE soloing. Of the 8 years I was an active subscriber in CoH... I soloed MAYBE .001%. I think th eonly thing I have ever really soloed was the invention system tutorial a few times and the midnighter arc a few times... Heck even when I pvp'd I liked someone on my team....


As for VO... I think it's important people realize this is not an Alpha or Beta but an early PRE-Alpha.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on December 03, 2014, 06:47:55 PM
2. How can you screw up keeping a game in maintenance mode?

Oh, just look at what happened to CO :).  From maintenance mode to baiting and switching through nerfing and then releasing more powerful lockbox only items so many things as to leave only a mere few builds viable.  Pretty pitiful state of it's game.

Edit: Removed the incarnate post as I misread which thread this was.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on December 03, 2014, 08:33:50 PM
As I recall Sam Rami is not a fan of the symbiote characters and was told by the studio to shoehorn Venom into #3.

Yes, but fans who mention this are letting him off easy. The basic plot structure would have been very similar had they gone with Raimi's idea, with the Vulture filling in Venom's part in the plot; we would still have gotten the Peter/MJ break-up, we would still have gotten the Exposition Butler, we would still have gotten the cop-out of someone else murdering Uncle Ben...

It was a flawed production. The studio didn't improve it, but they don't bear all the blame either.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on December 03, 2014, 08:41:37 PM
Yes, but fans who mention this are letting him off easy. The basic plot structure would have been very similar had they gone with Raimi's idea, with the Vulture filling in Venom's part in the plot; we would still have gotten the Peter/MJ break-up, we would still have gotten the Exposition Butler, we would still have gotten the cop-out of someone else murdering Uncle Ben...

It was a flawed production. The studio didn't improve it, but they don't bear all the blame either.

Interesting
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Battlechimp on December 03, 2014, 11:51:49 PM
Yes, but fans who mention this are letting him off easy. The basic plot structure would have been very similar had they gone with Raimi's idea, with the Vulture filling in Venom's part in the plot; we would still have gotten the Peter/MJ break-up, we would still have gotten the Exposition Butler, we would still have gotten the cop-out of someone else murdering Uncle Ben...

It was a flawed production. The studio didn't improve it, but they don't bear all the blame either.

And don't forget, we would still have gotten the Peter dance scene....  that was all Rami
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 04, 2014, 12:26:08 AM
And don't forget, we would still have gotten the Peter dance scene....  that was all Rami

Well they had to keep from going Rated R so if it was a choice between a bloody violent Peter tearing into people due to the effects of the symbiote or seeing him as a dancing fool to keep the violence down.....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on December 04, 2014, 04:30:34 AM
Well they had to keep from going Rated R so if it was a choice between a bloody violent Peter tearing into people due to the effects of the symbiote or seeing him as a dancing fool to keep the violence down.....

"Middle ground"?  What's that?!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on December 04, 2014, 05:39:18 AM
"Middle ground"?  What's that?!

The place where Peter Jackson decided to make a trilogy out of 3 hours of material?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on December 04, 2014, 05:48:25 AM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on December 04, 2014, 07:04:37 AM
So no Silmarillion movie for you!

Thank the gods for that!

One thing that puzzled me with the LoTR movies. How the hell, in all that time wasting, did they STILL manage to completely forget about Tom Bombadil? They could have made his segment alone into another three movies! :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on December 04, 2014, 07:11:09 AM
One thing that puzzled me with the LoTR movies. How the hell, in all that time wasting, did they STILL manage to completely forget about Tom Bombadil? They could have made his segment alone into another three movies! :P

I'm so glad they didn't... I liked him...but It always felt to me like the beginning of Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Mans Chest.
Movie starts, plot advances... STOP
Now we're going to come deal with this totally unrelated thing for 20 minutes!
Ok, NOW continue the relevant story.

-shrugs- I know I'm likely in the minority for it, but I think the choice was for the best.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on December 04, 2014, 07:20:52 AM
Oh I agree with you, but I'm still astonished that Jackson passed on the opportunity to make his movies even more boring. :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on December 04, 2014, 08:48:40 AM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on December 04, 2014, 01:56:05 PM
So no Silmarillion movie for you!

Aww, too bad. 

I mean if he managed to turn 146 page book into 3 multi-hour movies,
then the Silmarillion could have been at least 10 full "episodes".  :gonk:

Personally, I thought leaving out T.B. was a good choice.  He's an interesting character,
but really had no reason for inclusion. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on December 04, 2014, 03:10:11 PM
Thank the gods for that!

One thing that puzzled me with the LoTR movies. How the hell, in all that time wasting, did they STILL manage to completely forget about Tom Bombadil? They could have made his segment alone into another three movies! :P

Tom Bombadil was, according to JRRT,  an enigma.

He wasn't forgotten, he was left out intentionally because he is out of place in the world.

Tom shows up in other JRRT stories which are clearly not Middle Earth.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on December 04, 2014, 03:24:12 PM
The guy that does Dresden Codak (http://dresdencodak.com/) is illustrating The Silmarillion on his own: http://silmarillionproject.tumblr.com/ The Q&A is here: http://silmarillionproject.tumblr.com/post/72123140655/silmarillion-project-q-a
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: tripthicket on December 04, 2014, 03:58:15 PM
Just poking my head in to see if any progress has been announced. I figured not, since I've been speed-checking FaceBook almost daily (I figure news of City of Heroes' return will be shouted from the mountaintops there). The upcoming holiday season (actually, we're already hip-deep in it) has me and everyone, I'm sure, busy and only getting busier.

Still, as many have said before me, no news is good news.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on December 04, 2014, 05:15:31 PM
Just poking my head in to see if any progress has been announced. I figured not, since I've been speed-checking FaceBook almost daily (I figure news of City of Heroes' return will be shouted from the mountaintops there). The upcoming holiday season (actually, we're already hip-deep in it) has me and everyone, I'm sure, busy and only getting busier.

Still, as many have said before me, no news is good news.  :)

It's quiet... Too quiet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on December 04, 2014, 07:10:57 PM
Thank the gods for that!

One thing that puzzled me with the LoTR movies. How the hell, in all that time wasting, did they STILL manage to completely forget about Tom Bombadil? They could have made his segment alone into another three movies! :P

I think it was because the Tom Bombadil scenes make the hobbits look a lot less competent.

HOBBITS: "Oh no! We've been attacked by this evil tree and we're completely helpless!"

TOM: "Don't worry, old Tom Bombadil will save you! Now you're fine--to get out of my realm safely, just take the left-hand path to avoid the barrow-wights, and you'll be just fine!"

HOBBITS: "Let's strip naked and skip merrily down the right-hand path!"

TOM: "Oh FFS."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on December 04, 2014, 09:37:16 PM
I think it was because the Tom Bombadil scenes make the hobbits look a lot less competent.

HOBBITS: "Oh no! We've been attacked by this evil tree and we're completely helpless!"

TOM: "Don't worry, old Tom Bombadil will save you! Now you're fine--to get out of my realm safely, just take the left-hand path to avoid the barrow-wights, and you'll be just fine!"

HOBBITS: "Let's strip naked and skip merrily down the right-hand path!"

TOM: "Oh FFS."

I liked the National Lampoon version of the Lord of the Rings. I especially like the way they dealt with Tom (Benzedrine). The 'bard song' as interpreted by the lampooners was especially humorous.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 04, 2014, 10:10:21 PM
What's unfortunate is that there are rumors that Hollywood wants to try to make another DUNE movie.....

When will they learn that a book like DUNE cannot be done in ONE movie?  Two movies at least.

The SciFi Channel, back in its glory days got it right when they made the 3 part mini-series. Some of the casting could have been better but it was still done well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on December 04, 2014, 11:36:27 PM
the one thing I wished City of has was a zone with a beach, I know there were zones that had it, but I am referring to is zones like the secret world Kingsmouth. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on December 05, 2014, 12:26:48 AM
I don't know - while they will be authorized to sell the IP - I don't think they would have any say in your design. To run the classic game server and to authorize leases for the IP seems a relatively simple job. If they - as I would do in their shoes - had a word with the possible SCoRE folks and work on a stand alone version while still hosting the original server.

My most fervent hope is that the folks who would end up running the classic game are a CoRE group of developers who really understand the systems.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on December 05, 2014, 12:40:21 AM
Can we please get an assassins creed movie..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on December 05, 2014, 01:03:37 AM
Can we please get a City of Heroes movie...

Fixed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cryono on December 05, 2014, 01:53:17 AM
how about a grim fandango movie
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on December 05, 2014, 02:28:22 AM
Id just like an update of some kind.. even if it is.. still talking.. nothing new to report..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 05, 2014, 02:37:02 AM
My most fervent hope is that the folks who would end up running the classic game are a CoRE group of developers who really understand the systems.

At this point, I wouldn't care much if it was Bill Gates himself that brings the game back as long as the game is back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on December 05, 2014, 02:56:56 AM
At this point, I wouldn't care much if it was Bill Gates himself that brings the game back as long as the game is back.

uhh... no...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 05, 2014, 03:14:25 AM
uhh... no...

There are worse people that could bring it back
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on December 05, 2014, 03:20:14 AM
the one thing I wished City of has was a zone with a beach, I know there were zones that had it, but I am referring to is zones like the secret world Kingsmouth. :)

Crawling with Zombies?   ;D

I don't know, I think there were more than enough Vhazilok to go around...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on December 05, 2014, 03:36:08 AM
I dunno about a city of heroes movie.  Remember the directors who typically made movies based on video games always made sure there was no story, plot or anything.  A city of heroes movie of such low caliber would kill the franchise.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 05, 2014, 03:41:59 AM
I dunno about a city of heroes movie.  Remember the directors who typically made movies based on video games always made sure there was no story, plot or anything.  A city of heroes movie of such low caliber would kill the franchise.

Agreed.

Remember the Mario Bros. movie?  yikes.


Now the first Mortal Kombat was fun, the second one.....ugh.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlphaFerret on December 05, 2014, 04:23:07 AM
The first Mortal Combat had a nice dose of Christopher Lambert....always a winning formula in my book.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on December 05, 2014, 05:32:33 AM
Tom Bombadil could easily be the subject of his own movie. . .


There were CoH movie plans that I am aware of  http://variety.com/2007/digital/news/desanto-visiting-city-of-heroes-1117966386/ (http://variety.com/2007/digital/news/desanto-visiting-city-of-heroes-1117966386/) Tom DeSanto announced in 2007 he had optioned the rights. Around 2010ish I had read those rights were sold to James Cameron but my weak google-fu reveals no evidence of that. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on December 05, 2014, 06:37:43 AM
There are worse people that could bring it back

Indeed... and while I was a Bill Gates fan for the longest time some things over the years have changed my opinion of him.  As far as his company goes in software I am still a loyal pc/windows user but not so much the rest.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on December 05, 2014, 05:02:15 PM
Regarding Bill Gates, that would be fine... I could see him using the IP to help with charitable works.

I liked the National Lampoon version of the Lord of the Rings. I especially like the way they dealt with Tom (Benzedrine). The 'bard song' as interpreted by the lampooners was especially humorous.

Now I'm going to have to find my copy of the Harvard Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings"... and I guess reread Lord of the Rings so I understand all the references...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on December 05, 2014, 06:13:30 PM
Id just like an update of some kind.. even if it is.. still talking.. nothing new to report..

Still talking...It's going slowly, but that's to be expected over the holiday season, and in the wake of such events such as the Carbine layoffs... Nothing much new to report.

At least that's the latest news I've gotten as of a few days ago.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 05, 2014, 06:52:59 PM
Still talking...It's going slowly, but that's to be expected over the holiday season, and in the wake of such events such as the Carbine layoffs... Nothing much new to report.

At least that's the latest news I've gotten as of a few days ago.

Indeed, you mentioned the two words that mean to me that we won't get the final answer until sometime in 2015,  "holiday season".   Barring a massive amount of good luck, that is.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on December 06, 2014, 01:11:25 AM
Still talking...It's going slowly, but that's to be expected over the holiday season, and in the wake of such events such as the Carbine layoffs... Nothing much new to report.

At least that's the latest news I've gotten as of a few days ago.
that in its self is a good thing they are still talking :). Also I kinda knew we would not hear anything for the reminder of the year. Thank you btw for the mini update :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on December 06, 2014, 01:51:31 AM
Quote
that in its self is a good thing they are still talking :). Also I kinda knew we would not hear anything for the reminder of the year. Thank you btw for the mini update

Agreed, I didn't expect any news until at the very least March.

Keep up the great work everyone and Happy Holidays. Incase I don't post anytime soon. LOL!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on December 06, 2014, 02:22:17 AM
that in its self is a good thing they are still talking :). Also I kinda knew we would not hear anything for the reminder of the year. Thank you btw for the mini update :)

exactly still talking is good..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on December 06, 2014, 04:02:20 AM
I'm just worried that the longer this drags on, the more likely the NCSoft folks will swap chairs/leave positions and the whole thing get tossed or started over -- it's not exactly their primary business or way of doing things traditionally.  Still, it's not like there's anything to be done about it ... I was spoiled by the heady days of summer when a deal looked right around the corner.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on December 06, 2014, 01:56:27 PM
I'm just worried that the longer this drags on, the more likely the NCSoft folks will swap chairs/leave positions and the whole thing get tossed or started over -- it's not exactly their primary business or way of doing things traditionally.  Still, it's not like there's anything to be done about it ... I was spoiled by the heady days of summer when a deal looked right around the corner.

Well, yeah, I really hadn't thought of that, but I have been hoping against hope that this isn't some way of just putting us off eternally until Team Hail Mary gives up and goes away.

All we can do is keep our fingers crossed.  And it *has* been nice to think that CoX could return, somehow, some way, all this time, too.   :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on December 06, 2014, 04:19:25 PM
Well, yeah, I really hadn't thought of that, but I have been hoping against hope that this isn't some way of just putting us off eternally until Team Hail Mary gives up and goes away.

Well...they could much more effectively do that by telling us "No.". If they for some reason simple do not, and will not sell...taking it this far just adds fuel to the fire so to speak. What I mean is...Say the deal falls through juuuuuust short of signing...then a bunch of us are going to get together and say "Ok, We're pretty sure we know what went wrong." and try again.
Also, keep in mind that ever hour someone at NCSoft is having to work with the team, or on the deal...is time and money spent out of their pocket.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on December 06, 2014, 05:35:30 PM
... keep in mind that ever hour someone at NCSoft is having to work with the team, or on the deal...is time and money spent out of their pocket.

But speaking from the ignorance zone of the "outside", right now, it looks like NCSoft ISN'T having to spend hours to work with the team

-- it looks like they spent a few hours, took a meeting, read some memos, sent some memos to legal consultants, who read them and replied to the points, took some phone calls, had a lunch, and for the last few months have had the notes covered by other memos on their desks and sitting back in the backlogs of their mail queues -- will they get back to them before the next reorg?

"Well, we have to deal with that potential new investor deal right now, but maybe next month we'll get an hour to discuss this again -- thank you for your patience." 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on December 06, 2014, 07:00:54 PM
I'm just worried that the longer this drags on, the more likely the NCSoft folks will swap chairs/leave positions and the whole thing get tossed or started over -- it's not exactly their primary business or way of doing things traditionally.  Still, it's not like there's anything to be done about it ... I was spoiled by the heady days of summer when a deal looked right around the corner.

I think it's a good concern with no way to mitigate.  Hopefully this will see a conclusion "soon".  I am positive the people in the know will let us know when this comes to a conclusion or next chapter.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on December 06, 2014, 07:25:03 PM
I think it's a good concern with no way to mitigate.  Hopefully this will see a conclusion "soon".  I am positive the people in the know will let us know when this comes to a conclusion or next chapter.

But will they let us know as it slides into limbo's embrace... or is the deal's epitaph "no news is good news"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on December 06, 2014, 08:35:17 PM
Okie dokie, we get it, you're a pessimist. Please don't bring the entire thread down. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on December 06, 2014, 09:18:10 PM
Okie dokie, we get it, you're a pessimist. Please don't bring the entire thread down. :)
It's my point of view that since previous efforts were rebuffed and NCsoft certainly felt no need in the past to even pretend to be interested in selling that this is an authentic negotiation and not some sort of delaying tactic intended to let things peter out. Things could still fall through and require starting over, but that's always a possibility for any deal. At this point no news is no news. It's not especially good, but it is definitely not bad; at the very least it means that a deal is still in the works.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on December 06, 2014, 09:42:16 PM
Okie dokie, we get it, you're a pessimist. Please don't bring the entire thread down. :)

Actually, I was just really, really, really, hoping for somebody to say "No. You're wrong."

3 months of "no news is good news" ... a complete lack of any indications of activity ... an indication of IN-activity ... at what point, barring a definitive "no" which might never come, should some other efforts move?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teddy Bear Ftw on December 06, 2014, 10:20:41 PM
Actually, I was just really, really, really, hoping for somebody to say "No. You're wrong."

3 months of "no news is good news" ... a complete lack of any indications of activity ... an indication of IN-activity ... at what point, barring a definitive "no" which might never come, should some other efforts move?

No. You're wrong. Too late? Too soon?

Pure speculation time...Any proposed deal is going to be slow moving simply due to the fact that it is a business deal.

Nothing happens instantly or even quickly. In the grand scheme of things, it hasn't been that long since the deal was started. Logically, it has been even less time than that since any serious negotiation was taking place.

First thing, that needed to occur was verification that this was a serious offer. That takes time. Each piece has been occurring for less time than the previous step until at some point you arrive at the current step. There isn't much logic in NCSoft determining whether the team was qualified or not just to placate them.

If this deal drags on for another year, then something is certainly off, but simply waiting has no serious negative ramifications.

In the end, not everything is a Nemesis plot.

Just kidding. It is.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on December 06, 2014, 11:17:00 PM
Actually, I was just really, really, really, hoping for somebody to say "No. You're wrong."

3 months of "no news is good news" ... a complete lack of any indications of activity ... an indication of IN-activity ... at what point, barring a definitive "no" which might never come, should some other efforts move?
There is never very much movement in the business world between Halloween and New Years. It especially slows down between Thanksgiving and New Years. And basically nothing happens at all in the week before or after Christmas.

If Nate gets a "no", I'm 100% certain he's going to post that he got a "no". He's not a dick.

Now, like I said before, please stop bringing the entire thread down. We're here for support, not that other stuff.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on December 06, 2014, 11:23:33 PM
Now, like I said before, please stop bringing the entire thread down. We're here for support, not that other stuff.

Ooh, sorry --  I misunderstood.  In which thread would such comments/speculation be appropriate?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on December 07, 2014, 12:22:05 AM
Ooh, sorry --  I misunderstood.  In which thread would such comments/speculation be appropriate?

All right now!  Lol.  Believe me, there aren't many people here who think a positive outcome is set in stone.  But there will be plenty o' time for cryin' if we get a complete "No" at some point.  Moreover, even if we get a "No," we'll be no worse off than we already are.  I wouldn't totally throw in the towel attitude-wise nor would I repeatedly say "We're almost there!" over and over either.  We just don't know.  I doubt CoX is very high on the priority list over there at NCSoft, though, so I really don't expect very much very soon. 

Think about one little drop of water going into the pond.  It can send ripples across the entire pond.  Do you want your ripple to be the one that upsets everyone, riles them up for really no reason (because at present, we really don't know anything)?   Pat your little ripple and calm it down.   ;)  And please remember what I said:  We're no worse off for trying no matter what happens.

This superhero community will live on regardless.  There's CoT coming, maybe there's SCoRE sometime down the road....  And who knows, maybe someday there will be CoX Zombie Edition.

Hey, zombies are really making a comeback in gaming!  DayZ, Walking Dead, Dead Island, and even possibly CoX....   :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on December 07, 2014, 12:45:23 AM
This superhero community will live on regardless.  There's CoT coming, maybe there's SCoRE sometime down the road....  And who knows, maybe someday there will be CoX Zombie Edition.

Hey, zombies are really making a comeback in gaming!  DayZ, Walking Dead, Dead Island, and even possibly CoX....   :P

Don't forget the pre-CU edition SWG (SWGemu.com) - up and shuffling (pre- "28 Days Later" reference!) for over 2 years now....  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 07, 2014, 12:52:17 AM
I know the common logic was that NCSoft hates CoH - that is not what I found.

They disliked certain members of that staff and some serious personality issue derailed the first deal.

NCSoft is still working with our folks and sometimes we forget that they don't make this kind of deal. They also are working slow no doubt because it is a new type of deal with a lot of moving parts. I have absolutely no doubt this will happen the company doesn't hate us.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on December 07, 2014, 01:31:47 AM
I know the common logic was that NCSoft hates CoH - that is not what I found.

They disliked certain members of that staff and some serious personality issue derailed the first deal.

NCSoft is still working with our folks and sometimes we forget that they don't make this kind of deal. They also are working slow no doubt because it is a new type of deal with a lot of moving parts. I have absolutely no doubt this will happen the company doesn't hate us.

Love the optimism. I'd buy you a Xmas gift for the hard work but I think you'd want me to spend it on Coh legacy or a successor project.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on December 07, 2014, 02:01:50 AM
Ooh, sorry --  I misunderstood.  In which thread would such comments/speculation be appropriate?

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10507.0.html
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on December 07, 2014, 02:57:42 AM
There is never very much movement in the business world between Halloween and New Years. It especially slows down between Thanksgiving and New Years. And basically nothing happens at all in the week before or after Christmas.

Yeah...My dad works at a very large software company in the sales dept...and he's basically sitting around with a ton of free time right now because all of his clients have basically frozen up for the holidays.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on December 07, 2014, 03:04:11 AM
Actually, I was just really, really, really, hoping for somebody to say "No. You're wrong."

3 months of "no news is good news" ... a complete lack of any indications of activity ... an indication of IN-activity ... at what point, barring a definitive "no" which might never come, should some other efforts move?

This is pretty normal for corporate procedures.

Personal example: at the beginning of this year I find out that an external group that my company works with plans to sell us one of their product lines that we sell.  I work with this external group *a lot* for testing the stability of this line so I figure I'll be pulled into the tech transfer.  First quarter, nothing.  No mention among the production units.  Second quarter, nothing.  No mention from anyone.  Third quarter, nothing official but I hear the plan is still active.  Finally last month I'm contacted by the quality department informing me I'll need to start transferring their quality standards into my company's templates.  The transfer had been in process the entire time, it was just need-to-know.

When the announcement happens, it'll be abrupt and I reckon we'll be dizzy at how quickly things move.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 07, 2014, 04:38:42 AM
That is what I think as well.

I am sure NCSoft will want everything in place - the sale goes through and bang we have open Beta a month later. It would not surprise me at all.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on December 07, 2014, 05:05:01 AM
I know the common logic was that NCSoft hates CoH - that is not what I found.

They disliked certain members of that staff and some serious personality issue derailed the first deal.

NCSoft is still working with our folks and sometimes we forget that they don't make this kind of deal. They also are working slow no doubt because it is a new type of deal with a lot of moving parts. I have absolutely no doubt this will happen the company doesn't hate us.
I agree, I do not think Nc Soft hates us or the other City of communities. This is the first of its kind with Nc Soft so they are taking their time. I also agree the first attempt might have been too soon imho they should have waited a half a year to calm down and enter the talks in a cool collected way.
I have no doubt that we will get our home back it is just a matter of time. :) (this is just my theory)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 07, 2014, 06:54:42 AM
I agree, I do not think Nc Soft hates us or the other City of communities. This is the first of its kind with Nc Soft so they are taking their time. I also agree the first attempt might have been too soon imho they should have waited a half a year to calm down and enter the talks in a cool collected way.
I have no doubt that we will get our home back it is just a matter of time. :) (this is just my theory)

True this is a first for NCSoft, and I can understand them wanting competent programmers taking ownership even though the game is going to be forever Ish 23 until CoH 1.5 activates.   However aside from the holidays slowing things down, I wonder if the process is being slowed by the lawyers and all the legalities involved?  Both sides want things to be correct in the eyes of the law I'm sure, but sometimes the wheels of justice do grind a bit more slowly then they should.  Though if they can somehow regain our accounts and characters, then the slowness would be very well worth it.

Just speculation of course.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Achilles6 on December 07, 2014, 06:59:30 AM
I don't know....at this point City of Titans may be out before we hear anything more. or is that just me??  :-\
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on December 07, 2014, 07:14:32 AM
There is never very much movement in the business world between Halloween and New Years. It especially slows down between Thanksgiving and New Years. And basically nothing happens at all in the week before or after Christmas.

I certainly can't speak for every business, but wow. I recently made a bit of a career changing move recently. Sort of, getting back to my original career path and using that degree that I pay for in the form of student loans repayment. And I cannot trust my eyes, so very little work gets done. I have a co-worker who shows up to work pretty much when the mood suits her - which admittedly is most of the time, but I've been there less than 2 full weeks and there have been two days when she's shown up 2 hours late. Our immediate supervisor runs to the neighborhood convenience store...2, maybe 3 times a day, plus three or four smoke breaks a day.. and the big boss, I know he stays later than all of us, but he never shows up before 10, and even then he'll head out to lunch and pretty much we'll be lucky to see him until the next day.

It is indeed a wonder ANYTHING ever gets done where I now work, regardless of what time of year it is.

/end rant
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 07, 2014, 08:02:07 AM
I certainly can't speak for every business, but wow. I recently made a bit of a career changing move recently. Sort of, getting back to my original career path and using that degree that I pay for in the form of student loans repayment. And I cannot trust my eyes, so very little work gets done. I have a co-worker who shows up to work pretty much when the mood suits her - which admittedly is most of the time, but I've been there less than 2 full weeks and there have been two days when she's shown up 2 hours late. Our immediate supervisor runs to the neighborhood convenience store...2, maybe 3 times a day, plus three or four smoke breaks a day.. and the big boss, I know he stays later than all of us, but he never shows up before 10, and even then he'll head out to lunch and pretty much we'll be lucky to see him until the next day.

It is indeed a wonder ANYTHING ever gets done where I now work, regardless of what time of year it is.

/end rant

Last time I worked in an environment like that I did the following:

1. Updated resume and sent it out several times a day, even to places that had already received it.

2. Kept secret notes about such things as you describe, including names ,dates, times, etc.

3. See if there was one of the special phone numbers for an employee to call "anonymusly" to report such things.  If there was no such number, then anonymous emails from outside the company to the HR department, and put some of the info in the email to help gain their attention so they could start looking into things.

4. Put on appearance of keeping my head down and doing my job.

5. Find another place to work at ASAP
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on December 07, 2014, 09:28:14 AM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on December 07, 2014, 01:58:38 PM
Hey, In the sober light of a new day, I would like to express an apology to the thread, Agge, and especially Nate and his friends.  Amidst the build discussions and Bombadil debate, I lost track of the purpose of this thread.

To continue the football (Holy Crap -- GO BUCKS!!?!*) analogy of our "Task Force Hail Mary" -- I am a face-painted screaming fan who hasn't actually done ANYTHING who grumbles that the crummy coaching staff oughta be fired because we aren't winning this game FAST ENOUGH!  I'm not even in the stadium, I'm outside in the parking lot getting drunk and stuffing my face with Brats and mad because we're only up by 4 goals. 

I think, especially, I was trying to goad information loose which is really not cool -- I allowed my frustration at the news blackout to overwhelm me.

I want to again thank everybody who is actually doing work on this or who has -- especially Nate and his Planeteers.

* for those not familiar with American College football, the Ohio State University Buckeyes, last night won their championship playoff, scoring 59-0 against the #2 ranked defense in the country, led by their 3rd string Quarterback who had never started a game, who had to take over when their 2nd-string broke his ankle last week

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on December 07, 2014, 04:38:08 PM
I don't know....at this point City of Titans may be out before we hear anything more. or is that just me??  :-\

I think we'll be waiting for city of titans for awhile and I don't mean or intend to sound negative on that. Keep in mind you can only do so much with 700,000 dollars and if the game takes two - three years to develop on top of all other expenses I don't think that's enough to cover payroll. And aren't most of them working on the game and also doing full time jobs?

The good news is when the cox is sold it shouldn't take them forever to get it ready to play and if I had to guess we'll probably be playing Valiance before or close to the time it's ready to play.

Someone from MwM come and slap me if I'm wrong but I think I recall this being basically a volunteer effort and that the kickstarter was to fund all things and software needed to make the game. Not to pay everyone making it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on December 07, 2014, 06:41:53 PM
Hey, In the sober light of a new day, I would like to express an apology to the thread, Agge, and especially Nate and his friends.  Amidst the build discussions and Bombadil debate, I lost track of the purpose of this thread.

I'm pretty sure most of us know the feeling. It's those damn dark nights, man. They get to ya.

/e holdtorch
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on December 07, 2014, 07:03:07 PM
Someone from MwM come and slap me if I'm wrong but I think I recall this being basically a volunteer effort and that the kickstarter was to fund all things and software needed to make the game. Not to pay everyone making it.

I'm not from MwM, but the slapping is unnecessary.
You're correct. The kickstarter money was for software, and other such things needed to create and maintain the game. Not to pay people to work on it. Therefore, yes, it's a volunteer effort at this point...and I'm sure most of the staffers are having to work around full time jobs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on December 07, 2014, 07:32:59 PM
Hey, In the sober light of a new day, I would like to express an apology to the thread, Agge, and especially Nate and his friends.  Amidst the build discussions and Bombadil debate, I lost track of the purpose of this thread.

To continue the football (Holy Crap -- GO BUCKS!!?!*) analogy of our "Task Force Hail Mary" -- I am a face-painted screaming fan who hasn't actually done ANYTHING who grumbles that the crummy coaching staff oughta be fired because we aren't winning this game FAST ENOUGH!  I'm not even in the stadium, I'm outside in the parking lot getting drunk and stuffing my face with Brats and mad because we're only up by 4 goals. 

I think, especially, I was trying to goad information loose which is really not cool -- I allowed my frustration at the news blackout to overwhelm me.

I want to again thank everybody who is actually doing work on this or who has -- especially Nate and his Planeteers.

* for those not familiar with American College football, the Ohio State University Buckeyes, last night won their championship playoff, scoring 59-0 against the #2 ranked defense in the country, led by their 3rd string Quarterback who had never started a game, who had to take over when their 2nd-string broke his ankle last week


You also forget though that football games run a same time span, and also that when a game is won with a curbstomp like the one you mentioned it's actually rather unentertaining for more neutral observers of the game.

If I was to use an analogy of a different game, i'd avoid an actual sport and say use any game where "First to hit X wins".  So heres my analogy, a game of Unreal tournament 3 lasting 15 minutes not being finished by the five minute marker due to the other team getting lucky and killing the flag carrier for 12 minutes after that same flag carrier had already caught 2 flags and is now trying to finish the game with the third flag capture.  It felt like forever and it wasn't all that fun :(.

We are to my knowledge in the last minutes of the game and while we are I think winning we still have to get that last flag in, and sadly the carrier kept getting killed by a scorpion or hellbender on the way back to base this whole time :).(if you wonder why I am so specific, that actually happened to me a couple nights ago).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on December 07, 2014, 07:35:08 PM
I guess a physical sport that could be used would be golf, since that tends to be whoever gets the ball to the hole in the minimum number of strokes wins the end of the game of golf(so to speak) ends when the last hole is sunk rather than when a timer ends.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on December 07, 2014, 08:03:59 PM
Hey, In the sober light of a new day, I would like to express an apology to the thread, Agge, and especially Nate and his friends.  Amidst the build discussions and Bombadil debate, I lost track of the purpose of this thread.

To continue the football (Holy Crap -- GO BUCKS!!?!*) analogy of our "Task Force Hail Mary" -- I am a face-painted screaming fan who hasn't actually done ANYTHING who grumbles that the crummy coaching staff oughta be fired because we aren't winning this game FAST ENOUGH!  I'm not even in the stadium, I'm outside in the parking lot getting drunk and stuffing my face with Brats and mad because we're only up by 4 goals. 

I think, especially, I was trying to goad information loose which is really not cool -- I allowed my frustration at the news blackout to overwhelm me.

I want to again thank everybody who is actually doing work on this or who has -- especially Nate and his Planeteers.

* for those not familiar with American College football, the Ohio State University Buckeyes, last night won their championship playoff, scoring 59-0 against the #2 ranked defense in the country, led by their 3rd string Quarterback who had never started a game, who had to take over when their 2nd-string broke his ankle last week

I understand having no news can be frustrating and while I cannot speak for everyone else I do think we all went down this road a few times :) For myself how I get by and not think about what is going on is I play the secret world and watch movies like the original Fog. :)
Like you even though I some times post it, I am very thankful to nate and the team doing everything they can do get our home back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shifter on December 07, 2014, 11:45:23 PM
My advice for anyone who is having trouble waiting for news: Be a hero in real life till you can be one online, and then continue to be both.

I just finished a 2 day task force to get food and presents to survivors of sexual and domestic abuse in local area shelters.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on December 08, 2014, 12:25:19 AM
Oh yeah, waiting can be tough.  I try hard not to check this website more than once a day and sometimes forget for a couple of days.

Still, we are further than we were 12-1-12.  If Nate or Tony ever says it is dead-dead-dead and no going back than all we can do is thank everyone for trying and say "damn, that was good while it lasted." 

Happy Holidays all!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 08, 2014, 01:39:27 AM
I won't stop until NCSoft says - we will never sell the game. I check the site for information and the community. Where else you gonna go?

There is a reason my title is stubborn as an Elite Boss.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on December 08, 2014, 06:29:49 AM
I won't stop until NCSoft says - we will never sell the game.

This, and farther.
I've been dedicated to City of Heroes for over a decade, almost half my life. Why stop now, or ever?

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on December 08, 2014, 09:09:46 AM
Still talking...It's going slowly, but that's to be expected over the holiday season, and in the wake of such events such as the Carbine layoffs... Nothing much new to report.

At least that's the latest news I've gotten as of a few days ago.
I'll take it.

I can't help thinking that the longer it goes on, the better.   Hard for me to think the talks would become less serious over time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: InOnePiece on December 08, 2014, 06:03:44 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=m.quickmeme.com%2Fimg%2Ffc%2Ffc2fca5cc8833d35c92822a6af386914480a4e7c2411a6329d9742eb6bc89110.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on December 09, 2014, 02:41:07 AM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=m.quickmeme.com%2Fimg%2Ffc%2Ffc2fca5cc8833d35c92822a6af386914480a4e7c2411a6329d9742eb6bc89110.jpg)
Yes, that is what they are telling you.  :)


And I believe them too.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on December 09, 2014, 04:58:02 AM
This, and farther.
I've been dedicated to City of Heroes for over a decade, almost half my life. Why stop now, or ever?

This is what I love about the CoH community - helping one another stay positive, and holding on to hope.  I'd like to add my thanks to everyone else's for the continued work being done by the Hail Mary team!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: nylanfs on December 09, 2014, 09:56:18 PM
Well here's something that could be delaying news.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2014/12/134_169593.html
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackout on December 09, 2014, 10:55:36 PM
Not sure if this will delay much. After all they only have 15% and have stated they do not plan to invest any more in buying more of NCsoft's shares, plus I don't really think Nexon would have any reason to want to delay or stop the restoration of City of Heroes. I may just be being overly optimistic, but I don't think that this will harm the restoration :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: nylanfs on December 09, 2014, 11:18:11 PM
Right, but if the negotiating team wasn't aware of the impending stock purchase until it was almost finalized (which I would assume not). Then they might have to double check the legal status before proceeding farther.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackout on December 09, 2014, 11:41:29 PM
Probably, but I think most of us were expecting to wait a while. As long as we get City of Heroes back, I think most of us are fine with a couple of minor delays.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MaxEternal on December 10, 2014, 12:07:00 AM
Well here's something that could be delaying news.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2014/12/134_169593.html

Maybe I am missing something but a 0.4% purchase doesn't seem too significant to me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on December 10, 2014, 12:21:02 AM
It may have been an additional factor in things lagging (Along with the holidays and the Carbine layoffs) but It shouldn't make any difference going forward.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: artbunker on December 10, 2014, 12:41:18 AM
Well here's something that could be delaying news.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2014/12/134_169593.html

Well this might be a good thing, they are letting  another group rebuild dungeon fighter
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on December 10, 2014, 12:48:01 AM
Maybe I am missing something but a 0.4% purchase doesn't seem too significant to me.
It's certainly not enough to have any direct effect on the negotiations. Now if the announcement had been that Nexon had purchased 73% and was planning to convert NCsoft to a bedding and bathroom accessory company, then that might've had a significant effect, but purchasing a few more shares doesn't affect ownership or much else to do with NCsoft's games and IP.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on December 10, 2014, 01:12:31 AM
Maybe I am missing something but a 0.4% purchase doesn't seem too significant to me.
It's not just .4%. It's a total of 15.1%. Their initial 14.7% purchase plus their affiliate's .4% brings them over the 15% FTC guidelines. More paperwork, etc., etc., etc. Potential delays, etc., etc., etc.

So, regarding the above post by Nyx, that extra .4% is actually a really huge deal in the business world due to the threshold it crosses.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on December 10, 2014, 07:25:45 AM
Slap me if I'm being silly, but IIRC, wasn't the last deal with Nexon the root cause behind our beloved CoH's cruel murder?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 10, 2014, 07:32:27 AM
Slap me if I'm being silly, but IIRC, wasn't the last deal with Nexon the root cause behind our beloved CoH's cruel murder?

I do believe you are correct, that and that Paragon studios was "bleeding money" as I recall.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on December 10, 2014, 02:21:36 PM
Slap me if I'm being silly, but IIRC, wasn't the last deal with Nexon the root cause behind our beloved CoH's cruel murder?

Only in the minds of forum conspiracy theorists.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: nylanfs on December 10, 2014, 03:49:02 PM
Only in the minds of forum conspiracy theorists.

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/12/08/study-suggests-conspiracy-theorists-are-the-most-sane-of-all/

heh
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 10, 2014, 05:47:20 PM
Slap me if I'm being silly, but IIRC, wasn't the last deal with Nexon the root cause behind our beloved CoH's cruel murder?
Not exactly, it may have been the motivating force.

NCSoft wanted to merge with Nexon. At the time only one studio was losing money - Paragon Studio. If you want to merge and show that everything you have is in great shape - you cut all the losing titles. Paragon Studios as I said earlier was losing money - City of Heroes could not run and support 2 other titles. City of Heroes was also tied completely to Paragon Studios. So to pull everything back to Korean oversight and to cut losing titles, they killed PS and also therefore CoH.

Nexon is not the reason they killed the game but it was the motivating factor. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on December 10, 2014, 06:59:37 PM
Not exactly, it may have been the motivating force.

NCSoft wanted to merge with Nexon. At the time only one studio was losing money - Paragon Studio. If you want to merge and show that everything you have is in great shape - you cut all the losing titles. Paragon Studios as I said earlier was losing money - City of Heroes could not run and support 2 other titles. City of Heroes was also tied completely to Paragon Studios. So to pull everything back to Korean oversight and to cut losing titles, they killed PS and also therefore CoH.

Nexon is not the reason the killed the game but it was the motivating factor.

So, the Nexon / NCSoft merger has been in the works for more than 2 years?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on December 10, 2014, 07:19:53 PM
Yes, they started negotiations even before the sunset. I remember articles from the golden age (just before we knew we were getting kicked out).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on December 10, 2014, 07:36:20 PM
Yes, they started negotiations even before the sunset. I remember articles from the golden age (just before we knew we were getting kicked out).

Yeah, the first blurbs about it that I saw were circa June, 2012 or so; the summer before the shutdown.  Although I figured that, due to Nexon's almost-15% shares of NCSoft, that it was really Nexon's control of NCSoft and their urgings behind the shuttering.  That certainly may not be right, though, because goodness knows that NCSoft has shuttered many other of their MMORPGs without warning too!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on December 10, 2014, 08:50:31 PM
Not exactly, it may have been the motivating force.

NCSoft wanted to merge with Nexon. At the time only one studio was losing money - Paragon Studio. If you want to merge and show that everything you have is in great shape - you cut all the losing titles. Paragon Studios as I said earlier was losing money - City of Heroes could not run and support 2 other titles. City of Heroes was also tied completely to Paragon Studios. So to pull everything back to Korean oversight and to cut losing titles, they killed PS and also therefore CoH.

Nexon is not the reason the killed the game but it was the motivating factor.

So they expected Paragon to develop 2 titles out of the profit from Coh? Wow. That seems ... Implosive.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 10, 2014, 08:55:20 PM
So they expected Paragon to develop 2 titles out of the profit from Coh? Wow. That seems ... Implosive.

Not sure who or what was behind that. It was all part of the NDA signed when they left and we never really got to hear what they were making. I heard rumors of a minecraft clone but only rumors. I wouldn't say that was the deal.

At the peak before shutdown Paragon had 80+ employees most of which were programmers of some sort.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on December 10, 2014, 11:07:20 PM
So they expected Paragon to develop 2 titles out of the profit from Coh? Wow. That seems ... Implosive.

I suspect it was ambitions from paragon studios themselves to do something else but it might have been that ncsoft wanted them to develop those projects at a time when they weren't as profitable.  You have to remember that city of heroes profits would go up and down as time went on, the release of issue 24 might have made development of other projects a possability, but ncsoft all we know may have asked them to start sooner than they financially could.  Thats just speculation, and also a common mistake publishers make with developers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on December 11, 2014, 01:11:42 AM
Not sure who or what was behind that. It was all part of the NDA signed when they left and we never really got to hear what they were making. I heard rumors of a minecraft clone but only rumors. I wouldn't say that was the deal.

At the peak before shutdown Paragon had 80+ employees most of which were programmers of some sort.

80+employees? Pfff, that's only what... 13 Masterminds at work?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on December 11, 2014, 07:08:21 AM
Not exactly, it may have been the motivating force.

NCSoft wanted to merge with Nexon. At the time only one studio was losing money - Paragon Studio. If you want to merge and show that everything you have is in great shape - you cut all the losing titles. Paragon Studios as I said earlier was losing money - City of Heroes could not run and support 2 other titles. City of Heroes was also tied completely to Paragon Studios. So to pull everything back to Korean oversight and to cut losing titles, they killed PS and also therefore CoH.

Nexon is not the reason they killed the game but it was the motivating factor.

Yep, that's pretty much what I remembered.  Seeing as NCSoft were PS's parent company, it seems likely it was NCSoft who had PS making those 2 other titles in the first place, and under-development titles NEVER make money until they're released, so PS losing money was NC's fault entirely.  One cannot expect the modest profits of one old title to fully support the development costs of two new ones...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on December 11, 2014, 07:10:12 AM
Yep, that's pretty much what I remembered.  Seeing as NCSoft were PS's parent company, it seems likely it was NCSoft who had PS making those 2 other titles in the first place, and under-development titles NEVER make money until they're released, so PS losing money was NC's fault entirely.  One cannot expect the modest profits of one old title to fully support the development costs of two new ones...

I doubt they did, otherwise the projects would have been stopped long, long ago.

EDIT: Care about CoH completely covering the costs that is.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on December 11, 2014, 07:10:59 AM
I doubt they did, otherwise the projects would have been stopped long, long ago.

At the very least, NCSoft would have had to give them clearance to start the 2 other projects.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 11, 2014, 02:19:04 PM
I agree, NCSoft as companies do - used the smokesceen of the other projects to "technically" correctly identify that Paragon Studios were not making a profit. It was parsing words carefully, they were right and yet also wrong. PS was making a profit on the one title that was in service.

The other 2 in development obviously were losing money. When however you are trying to look good for a new merger you clear the decks and apply a re-organization that is moving in a different direction. In other words quickly clear any loose ends that may stand in the way of making a boatload of money. Those at the top of PS knew it was coming and tried to buy themselves free. I have heard from several sources there was bad blood in both this attempt and the next one the Original Hail Mary. i do not know if it was the same person(s) that were involved.

This current attempt does not have the old players in it nor are they likely dealing with the same people at NCSoft - all of which opens up the possibilities. I do wonder if Chris Chung and his company are involved - if so that would be most awesome - as he was the one who purchased CoH for NCSoft and was key in developing it as a title until - I think 2009.

I could really stand behind that move!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wammo on December 11, 2014, 04:52:45 PM
No news is NOT good news. It is just nothing. Let's not pretend this is a good thing. I am frustrated as are so many others on here. I know we are to be patient and thank our lucky stars that we have ANY chance whatsoever for a resurrection but it does not make the pain of waiting any better to be told "no news is good news."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on December 11, 2014, 05:17:44 PM
No news is NOT good news. It is just nothing. Let's not pretend this is a good thing. I am frustrated as are so many others on here. I know we are to be patient and thank our lucky stars that we have ANY chance whatsoever for a resurrection but it does not make the pain of waiting any better to be told "no news is good news."

It's ok.  I had my spazz out over Labor Day and then a calming peace came over me as I realized there are bigger things going on and the people "in the know" have a lot more to lose than my belly aching.

So if "no news is good news" is not enough, here is a new mantra:  "chill and check in again in a month." 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 11, 2014, 06:22:26 PM
Yes, no news means the folks under NDA are still working and working is going forward. If they say - the deal is over NCSoft won't sell - that is bad news.

I would like you to explain to me how people under an NDA can give us news? It's only a handful of people and if they were to blow it now to mollify a few folks who are impatient and made NCSoft withdraw - how bad would that be?

I fail to understand how having people talking to NCSoft, them agreeing to sell and then working on what is included in the deal - is somehow bad news? We know for a fact that is what's is going on. We aren't making that part up NCSoft let them release that part out to the public.

We are standing in the dark with our torches burning and we can see in the distance a small pinpoint of light, don't drop the torch yet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on December 11, 2014, 06:46:21 PM
... people talking to NCSoft, them agreeing to sell and then working on what is included in the deal...   We know for a fact that is what's is going on. We aren't making that part up NCSoft let them release that part out to the public.

We are standing in the dark with our torches burning and we can see in the distance a small pinpoint of light, don't drop the torch yet.

We can all take heart in this.... not a question of "If" but more like "when".... and wasn't "Patience" on the Virtue server?   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: drmanbot on December 11, 2014, 07:10:04 PM

I fail to understand how having people talking to NCSoft, them agreeing to sell and then working on what is included in the deal - is somehow bad news?

IW,

unless I missed  something, which is easy in 600+ pages, that's the first I heard of them "agreeing to sell." Which is awesomtastic, but somehow I feel like I'm mis interpreting this statement.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on December 11, 2014, 07:13:38 PM
IW,

unless I missed  something, which is easy in 600+ pages, that's the first I heard of them "agreeing to sell." Which is awesomtastic, but somehow I feel like I'm mis interpreting this statement.
It's in the front page of both this and the original thread. A number was given and was deemed doable. That is "agreeing to sell" - now there is just negotiations on what happens then.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: OzonePrime on December 11, 2014, 07:19:25 PM
Yes, no news means the folks under NDA are still working and working is going forward. If they say - the deal is over NCSoft won't sell - that is bad news.

I would like you to explain to me how people under an NDA can give us news? It's only a handful of people and if they were to blow it now to mollify a few folks who are impatient and made NCSoft withdraw - how bad would that be?

I fail to understand how having people talking to NCSoft, them agreeing to sell and then working on what is included in the deal - is somehow bad news? We know for a fact that is what's is going on. We aren't making that part up NCSoft let them release that part out to the public.

We are standing in the dark with our torches burning and we can see in the distance a small pinpoint of light, don't drop the torch yet.

Amen!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 11, 2014, 07:30:09 PM
IW,

unless I missed  something, which is easy in 600+ pages, that's the first I heard of them "agreeing to sell." Which is awesomtastic, but somehow I feel like I'm mis interpreting this statement.

Let me put this a different way:

You walk in and see a car you want to buy - the loan is pre-approved, the price is good but you want some options thrown in. You like the chrome rims and the top of the line stero. The dealer says that will cost you $x dollars extra - they agreed to sell the car - now what do you get for that money?

What if they said - well it will cost another $50k to give you the player accounts. We also could throw in the admin tools for 10K or you can write them yourself. Maybe we found the original written notes and some internal emails discussing the games running and server setups.

There are so many features to discuss and still the original agreement to sell is a given. From what I have heard they did not shut this game down in such a fashion as to sell it. It was shutdown to give proof of IP. So a disk image and little else at least easily acquired.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on December 11, 2014, 07:52:54 PM
Yes, no news means the folks under NDA are still working and working is going forward. If they say - the deal is over NCSoft won't sell - that is bad news.

I would like you to explain to me how people under an NDA can give us news? It's only a handful of people and if they were to blow it now to mollify a few folks who are impatient and made NCSoft withdraw - how bad would that be?

Nobody wants THAT!  We all know and understand about NDA's and appreciate these things take time.  But my gawd, certain parties do like to drag things out a bit! :p

People just want to play again, as soon as possible! It's perfectly understandable that there's a bit of chafing going on, and posting about it really is the only way we have to express that.  Understand; we don't want to risk the deal or pressure the guys working hard on our behalf, we just want to fly again!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on December 11, 2014, 08:00:12 PM
Yes, no news means the folks under NDA are still working and working is going forward. If they say - the deal is over NCSoft won't sell - that is bad news.

I would like you to explain to me how people under an NDA can give us news? It's only a handful of people and if they were to blow it now to mollify a few folks who are impatient and made NCSoft withdraw - how bad would that be?

I fail to understand how having people talking to NCSoft, them agreeing to sell and then working on what is included in the deal - is somehow bad news? We know for a fact that is what's is going on. We aren't making that part up NCSoft let them release that part out to the public.

We are standing in the dark with our torches burning and we can see in the distance a small pinpoint of light, don't drop the torch yet.

uuuummmmm.. I wasnt paying attention and I set my hair on fire...anybody got some neosporin? maybe a lot of bandaids??is there an empath in the house??
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MegaWatt on December 11, 2014, 08:31:00 PM
We can all take heart in this.... not a question of "If" but more like "when".... and wasn't "Patience" on the Virtue server?   ;D

she was but it was an ironic name......wait you didnt mean literally did you ? :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dev7on on December 11, 2014, 09:00:37 PM
Yes, no news means the folks under NDA are still working and working is going forward. If they say - the deal is over NCSoft won't sell - that is bad news.

I would like you to explain to me how people under an NDA can give us news? It's only a handful of people and if they were to blow it now to mollify a few folks who are impatient and made NCSoft withdraw - how bad would that be?

I fail to understand how having people talking to NCSoft, them agreeing to sell and then working on what is included in the deal - is somehow bad news? We know for a fact that is what's is going on. We aren't making that part up NCSoft let them release that part out to the public.

We are standing in the dark with our torches burning and we can see in the distance a small pinpoint of light, don't drop the torch yet.

My torch has been low for the past 2 months now. When Ironwolf gave me some encouragement my torch lid up a little bit. I still have hope and faith that we're all going to come back home soon. Sometimes I feel depressed because it's been 2 years of the shut down already.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on December 11, 2014, 09:45:40 PM
My torch has been low for the past 2 months now. When Ironwolf gave me some encouragement my torch lid up a little bit. I still have hope and faith that we're all going to come back home soon. Sometimes I feel depressed because it's been 2 years of the shut down already.
your not alone in thinking like this, I too sometimes want to know what is going on. Then I remember that I am not apart of the team. I know sometimes I wish I could hoop and holler about no new news but then I remember what I have done in the past. So even though I am sure a lot of people have seen me log in to this website, what might not be known is that I am busy doing other things such as watching youtube videos, watching dvd's, doing homework, or playing the secret world.
I am glad for IW and others for keeping the faith and forging ahead, most of the time this is what I have been trying to do. :)
Also IW I agree with everything you have said, while it can be frustrating to hear no news is good news. It just means everything is still going forward.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sermon on December 11, 2014, 11:28:02 PM
So do we actually know that some people involved are under NDA or is that just speculation as to why some people involved haven't been posting?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sermon on December 11, 2014, 11:30:10 PM
uuuummmmm.. I wasnt paying attention and I set my hair on fire...anybody got some neosporin? maybe a lot of bandaids??is there an empath in the house??

Just a trick arrow defender. If you hold still, I can shoot the fire out.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on December 11, 2014, 11:36:58 PM
uuuummmmm.. I wasnt paying attention and I set my hair on fire...anybody got some neosporin? maybe a lot of bandaids??is there an empath in the house??

My Empath is facepalming then.  You made her feel a lot of pain in her head just for doing that and your asking her to help you when you weren't paying attention and set your hair on fire.  *Casts heal other but then grabs a bucket, fills it with especially cold water out of the cold pipes of the winter, dumps some ice and then dumps it on Ivan's head!*.

"Stop hurting yourself you masochist!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on December 12, 2014, 12:03:34 AM
My Empath is facepalming then.  You made her feel a lot of pain in her head just for doing that and your asking her to help you when you weren't paying attention and set your hair on fire.  *Casts heal other but then grabs a bucket, fills it with especially cold water out of the cold pipes of the winter, dumps some ice and then dumps it on Ivan's head!*.

"Stop hurting yourself you masochist!"

Next alt: Empath/water blast for teammates that set their hair on fire
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on December 12, 2014, 12:12:03 AM
Next alt: Empath/water blast for teammates that set their hair on fire

Actually the empath I was pretending to be was /dark and was showering the guy with ice water out of a sense of general rudeness for causing her a bunch of pain :P.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Battlechimp on December 12, 2014, 12:15:32 AM
[qmchuote author=Sermon link=topic=10284.msg169742#msg169742 date=1418340482]
So do we actually know that some people involved are under NDA or is that just speculation as to why some people involved haven't been posting?
[/quote]

The answer is... we don't know :-)   if they are under a NDA then they couldn't tell us that.  Or even if not, its good business sense not to splash the negotiations across the internet.

Corporate deals like this just do NOT have their details discussed openly with anyone who isn't involved directly with the negotiations.  We've seen this pop up in these threads all the time "why don't we get more info". "Why is it taking so long" a lot of people just have not had any experience with corporate dealings and their expectations do not line up with reality.  Now I'm not saying that as "ha you're stupid for not knowing this" or pointing fingers at anyone.  But the ebb and flow and pacing of these kinds of deals can sometimes be hard to wrap your head around until you've experienced them first hand. 

Even if they gave us an update like "we've agreed on accounts, the image of the game and the IP, now working on the royalties and marketing". In two weeks time all of what they said could be completely different. And having all that play out in the public eye be make negotiations even more of an hardship then they already are.  And then the speed of things, its not like buying a car or even a house.  Proposals and agreements are done through talks, maybe a few days there with the back and forth.  Papers are drawn by legal with what was agreed on.  Coupe weeks to months there depending on the lawyers.  Papers sent to other party, their legal goes over it, again a few weeks there.  Changes are made, counter proposal drawn up, again could be a few weeks there.  Now back and forth like that, with it changing and growing more involved the more things are added.  This is not just sit on the phone for a few hours and hash things out. 

Toss in the research time on what can be sold, the need to prove technical competency, etc.  Its going to take a long time.   And ye, while it might not feel good, the addage  no news is good news.  Really is good news. Because they can't or shouldn't talk about the on going negotiations we can only expect one of two real updates, We got it, or Talks are off.

NCSoft as a corporation will not drag this out just to drag it out as some kind of spiteful act. Doing things like this does cost them money in resources and man hours. Which the dept that is in charge of the negotiations has to, like all parts of a corporation, justify their dept budget.  And however much their salaries plus billable hours from legal need to have a reason more than "we wanted to mess with the American gamers" behind them or someones getting fired :-)

And as emotionally invested as we all are in this game, we have zero actual monetary investment as a player base.... well potential playerbase ,  we'll know what happened when we get one of those two answers, we just have to wait

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on December 12, 2014, 01:00:38 AM
Just a trick arrow defender. If you hold still, I can shoot the fire out.

Healz Arrows ftw!!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on December 12, 2014, 11:40:37 AM
Healz Arrows ftw!!!

While this is a joke, I'd have added a siphon life effect to Poison Gas Arrow (+regen/minor heal to teammates in the AoE/-regen to targets)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on December 12, 2014, 02:28:56 PM
Healz Arrows ftw!!!

I remember a TA def in the early days who knew it was difficult to get teams as a defender if you didn't heal, so called his toon T3h ub3r h34lz0r or similar.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on December 12, 2014, 02:31:06 PM
Yes, no news means the folks under NDA are still working and working is going forward. If they say - the deal is over NCSoft won't sell - that is bad news.

I would like you to explain to me how people under an NDA can give us news? It's only a handful of people and if they were to blow it now to mollify a few folks who are impatient and made NCSoft withdraw - how bad would that be?

I fail to understand how having people talking to NCSoft, them agreeing to sell and then working on what is included in the deal - is somehow bad news? We know for a fact that is what's is going on. We aren't making that part up NCSoft let them release that part out to the public.

We are standing in the dark with our torches burning and we can see in the distance a small pinpoint of light, don't drop the torch yet.
Corporate deals like this just do NOT have their details discussed openly with anyone who isn't involved directly with the negotiations.  We've seen this pop up in these threads all the time "why don't we get more info". "Why is it taking so long" a lot of people just have not had any experience with corporate dealings and their expectations do not line up with reality.  Now I'm not saying that as "ha you're stupid for not knowing this" or pointing fingers at anyone.  But the ebb and flow and pacing of these kinds of deals can sometimes be hard to wrap your head around until you've experienced them first hand. 

Even if they gave us an update like "we've agreed on accounts, the image of the game and the IP, now working on the royalties and marketing". In two weeks time all of what they said could be completely different. And having all that play out in the public eye be make negotiations even more of an hardship then they already are.  And then the speed of things, its not like buying a car or even a house.  Proposals and agreements are done through talks, maybe a few days there with the back and forth.  Papers are drawn by legal with what was agreed on.  Coupe weeks to months there depending on the lawyers.  Papers sent to other party, their legal goes over it, again a few weeks there.  Changes are made, counter proposal drawn up, again could be a few weeks there.  Now back and forth like that, with it changing and growing more involved the more things are added.  This is not just sit on the phone for a few hours and hash things out. 

Toss in the research time on what can be sold, the need to prove technical competency, etc.  Its going to take a long time.   And ye, while it might not feel good, the addage  no news is good news.  Really is good news. Because they can't or shouldn't talk about the on going negotiations we can only expect one of two real updates, We got it, or Talks are off.

NCSoft as a corporation will not drag this out just to drag it out as some kind of spiteful act. Doing things like this does cost them money in resources and man hours. Which the dept that is in charge of the negotiations has to, like all parts of a corporation, justify their dept budget.  And however much their salaries plus billable hours from legal need to have a reason more than "we wanted to mess with the American gamers" behind them or someones getting fired :-)

And as emotionally invested as we all are in this game, we have zero actual monetary investment as a player base.... well potential playerbase ,  we'll know what happened when we get one of those two answers, we just have to wait
Maybe just copy and paste these two posts in lieu of "No news is good news".   :)   They sound more logical and less like a t-shirt.

Seems like the longer it goes on, the better.   I find it very hard to believe the situation gets progressively worse over the course of many months.   Progress can only be going forward over a period of time that long.   Maybe if we are talking a couple of weeks of waiting I could justify the fear of a fatal problem arising, but months and months?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 12, 2014, 02:46:49 PM
Once lawyers get involved the wheels come off. (attempt at humor for those parsing every word)

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on December 12, 2014, 02:52:44 PM
Once lawyers get involved the wheels come off.
Careful the way you word things.   Your word is "gospel" to most.   Just watch this quote be taken as negative news.   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 12, 2014, 04:22:09 PM
Careful the way you word things.   Your word is "gospel" to most.   Just watch this quote be taken as negative news.   ;D

Very true, sorry for the injected humor  :D

What I mean is lawyers move very slowly and for good reason in transferring something like this. I mean let's think like logical people and we make a deal buying the IP and all the goodies and we move forward and the lawyer says, wait you want to install and run the game too? Well that requires these 25 forms to be filled out. I know where I work that is what happens.

I one time had to get some "non-approved" software installed for a new project and it took me 3 months to get legal and the software approval guys to say yes to just clicking on the - I agree to these terms box so I could install it.

So lawyers add the final level of insanity to a slow process.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: sincitymachine on December 12, 2014, 05:26:53 PM
Once lawyers get involved the wheels come off. (attempt at humor for those parsing every word)

As a lawyer, I resemble this remark.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on December 12, 2014, 05:42:11 PM
As a lawyer, I resemble this remark.

SO IT'S ALL -YOUR- FAULT!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on December 12, 2014, 06:22:57 PM
As a lawyer, I resemble this remark.

Hmmm.

"This is all your fault."

"Cognitive dissonance is the unsettling feeling caused by holding two conflicting beliefs simultaneously."

"Do you feel like a hero yet?"

"You are still a good person."

I would touch on some other loading screens from that...one...very mean deconstructive game but I don't want to ruin things here :).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on December 12, 2014, 09:15:32 PM
Hmm, I'll have to see if I can find the old CoH Forum's rules for the proposed Lawyer Powerset.  Seems quite fitting now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on December 12, 2014, 10:07:46 PM

I one time had to get some "non-approved" software installed for a new project and it took me 3 months to get legal and the software approval guys to say yes to just clicking on the - I agree to these terms box so I could install it.

Remember, every one of those damn "I agree to these terms" boxes is a fully binding 50 page contract which you, as an employee of your company, would be committing your company, its directors and its investors to abide by probably for eternity.

We're now using those damn contracts to buy a pack of gum.  If you were required to delay any transaction using such a contract (or else it wouldn't be binding) by the time required for an average person to read and fully understand the terms of the contract, our commercial interests would come up with an alternative and more sensible system REAL DAMN FAST.

Damn.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on December 12, 2014, 10:28:04 PM
Ah, Hah!  For better or worse, I found it in some of my old CoH files:

Power Set Name: Power of Attorney
Primary/Secondary/Pool: Primary
AT: Mastermind
Note: This set deals mostly psi damage; because of this, overall set damage is fairly low. Pets have inherent psi resistance as well as confusion and fear resistance, and can super jump for some strange reason.

1. Psionic Dart: See Dominator/Psionic Dart

2. Call Laywers: Summons 1-3 lawyers (depending on your level) to do your bidding. These lawyers can perform attacks with a handgun or briefcase. They can also use their "logic skills" to occasionally disorient a target. Recharge: Moderate

3. Mental Blast: See Defender/Mental Blast

4. Train Laywers: Provides knowledge to a targeted lawyer and provides them with more power. Recharge: Very Fast
4a. 1st tier pets gain a psionic dart power
4b. 2nd tier pets gain the ability to scramble a target's thoughts
4c. 3rd tier pets gain a single target confuse ability

5. Psionic Scream: See Defender/Psionic Scream

6. Call Advisor: Summons 1-2 advisers (depending on your level) to do your bidding. With their knowledge of the law, they can attack with psionic darts and mental blasts, as well as subdue a target with a powerful immobilize. Recharge: Long

7. Sue: Allows you to sue a target with one of your lawyers. That target is defeated (not always, sometimes it will just deal high stunning damage without pet sacrifice) and the player will recieve triple infamy, but no experience. His teamates gain the regular bonuses however. Using this attack sacrifices a pet at random if the attack performs the instant death. Can not instantly kill AVs/GMs/Elite bosses. You only gain triple infamy when the attack performs it's instant death part, not if the high stunning damage kills. Recharge: Long
7a. For PvP purposes, Sue will only deal the high stunning damage to a player.

8. Call Powerful Lawyer: Summons 1 Powerful Lawyer to do your bidding. This guy's been at his job for quite a while, and he knows how to get the job done right. He can perform psionic control based attacks, as well as can attack with mental blasts. Recharge: Very Long

9. Shape Lawyer: Allows you to "shape" a lawyer and teach them some more powerful techniques. Recharge: Fast
9a. Tier 1 pets gain a psionic scream power
9b. Tier 2 pets gain a leadership power similar to what longbow officers use, but it only increases def/dmg/acc of you and your pets.
9c. Tier 3 pets gain a mass hold and a very powerful psionic blast.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on December 12, 2014, 10:33:20 PM
Quote
We can all take heart in this.... not a question of "If" but more like "when".... and wasn't "Patience" on the Virtue server?

Sure was but they had alts on other servers too. Like Champion, Liberty and Freedom too. ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on December 12, 2014, 10:36:29 PM
Didn't any self-repecting Altaholic have alts on all servers?  I know I did.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 12, 2014, 10:50:06 PM
Didn't any self-repecting Altaholic have alts on all servers?  I know I did.

Yes! I had at least one on every server. But I also had my "big" servers. Those were Liberty and Virtue servers. Liberty I had full up with alts, and then there were my two mains, Del Mannsfield and Safehouse.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on December 12, 2014, 11:01:25 PM
I originally made alts of my favorite characters on all available servers as a form of ID insurance.  It came in handy later on when I would "Dial H for Hero" and pull out whatever the team I was running with really needed to improve the team's DPS or Survival. 

With very few exceptions, I was in no hurry to hit 50 after the 3rd one, so I played to experience new Powerset combos and to help other where I could.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on December 12, 2014, 11:21:08 PM
Didn't any self-repecting Altaholic have alts on all servers?  I know I did.

I'm honestly not sure that I DID have alts on all the servers.  I don't recall all my characters now, but I'm sure that on one server (Liberty?) I didn't have anything except my Steven Colbert tribute "Alpha 7".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on December 13, 2014, 01:15:06 AM
Not only alts on every server, but an SG/VG as well!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on December 13, 2014, 02:15:23 AM
Didn't any self-repecting Altaholic have alts on all servers?  I know I did.
I did not have any alts on Freedom. Other than that, I had at least half a dozen characters on each other the other servers. Infinity and Champion had the most characters, followed by Justice and Guardian. Also, had a SG and/or VG on each server. Except Freedom, of course.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on December 13, 2014, 02:27:33 AM
I'm honestly not sure that I DID have alts on all the servers.  I don't recall all my characters now, but I'm sure that on one server (Liberty?) I didn't have anything except my Steven Colbert tribute "Alpha 7".
My Colbert tribute was Captain Truthiness.  Inv/SS Tanker.  One of his costumes was even a Tek Jansen costume.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on December 13, 2014, 03:40:54 AM
Yeah, I had an alt on every server. Most of my mains were on Freedom, since that's where most of the action was (barely saw anyone on most of the other servers), but yeah... Definitely had one (at least) on every server.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on December 13, 2014, 04:27:34 AM
Ah, Hah!  For better or worse, I found it in some of my old CoH files:

Power Set Name: Power of Attorney
Primary/Secondary/Pool: Primary
AT: Mastermind
Note: This set deals mostly psi damage; because of this, overall set damage is fairly low. Pets have inherent psi resistance as well as confusion and fear resistance, and can super jump for some strange reason. . . . <Snip!>


That is pure awesome!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on December 13, 2014, 11:23:46 AM
I thought it was fun, so I just had to cut and paste the entry for posterity.  And it came in so handy with the recurring discussion of lawyers lately. ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on December 13, 2014, 01:34:59 PM
Not only alts on every server, but an SG/VG as well!

Ah Yes!  A RL Friend of mine loved tinkering with the SG Base Builder, and we grouped our alts together on each server to make a semi-private SG with Base for quick transport and storage of goodies.  Worked out quite well for the basics, and no devisive SG politicking needed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on December 13, 2014, 09:22:58 PM
I had alts on multiple servers, not all of them though. My main focus was always on Champion with an occasional a night on Exalted. In the rare event that Champ was down I would jump on one of my other server alts to try and grab a level.

One of the things I would love to see in the future would be easier movement between servers or the ability to clone & sync a toon across multiple servers. While I am dreaming, let me add a wish for the ability to take my toon back and forth from CoX to CoT! 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on December 13, 2014, 11:12:17 PM
Remaugen,

Here's my 50s by Server

1 - Champion, 2 - Exalted, 6 - Freedom, 3 - Infinity, 3 - Liberty, 1 - Pinnacle, 6 - Virtue

Most other servers had at least one character at level 30+, but my personal in-game activity usually depended on one or more of my Global Friends asking for some assistance, unless I had a pet project in mind.

During the period of time after the Sunset Announcement, I spent most of my time levelling Ramu my Elec/Elec Blaster on Infinity* (1st character I made for the game) and her alt on Virtue, where there was plenty of opportunity to team at the time. During the last month the game was active, I created and leveled her series boyfriend Ataru Moronboshi (who I built as a Heroic Stalker (given his 'normal' abilities in the series).  Result? A few days before game closure, I completed a very long term goal, when they both showed up in City Hall to get a Wedding License, and finally get married.

As far as cloning a character between different servers, it wasn't hard to do in CoX, just create the same AT/Powers template, body shape and load the costume.  I could clone a character in about a minute that way.  As far as syncing the clone to match levels and items, that would be cheating.  Besides that, the journey was always more important than the end game to me anyhow.

I doubt we'll be able to directly transfer characters between CoX and CoT given what they've already disclosed about their version of power enhancement.  But I look forward to the release of their costume creator sub-routine to see how closely I can rebuild the look of my signature characters in CoT, prior to actually playing them in the new game.

* Ramu and Ataru were based on Rumiko Takahashi's all-time classic comedy/SF/Fantasy manga and anime series, Urusei Yatsura "Those Obnoxious Aliens" also known as "Lum". 

Oh, and to those who think it was a 'Harem Anime', it was actually based on the opposite.  Ataru's dream was for a harem, but his dream was never taken seriously by any of the female members of the cast, and in reality (such as it was) only one girl in the universe ever seriously loved him.  (Well, actually two...) The rest of the female cast couldn't stand to be around him, or manipulated him for their own personal amusement.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on December 14, 2014, 04:09:12 AM
Very true, sorry for the injected humor  :D

What I mean is lawyers move very slowly and for good reason in transferring something like this. I mean let's think like logical people and we make a deal buying the IP and all the goodies and we move forward and the lawyer says, wait you want to install and run the game too? Well that requires these 25 forms to be filled out. I know where I work that is what happens.

I one time had to get some "non-approved" software installed for a new project and it took me 3 months to get legal and the software approval guys to say yes to just clicking on the - I agree to these terms box so I could install it.

So lawyers add the final level of insanity to a slow process.
In other words... Get out and push.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on December 14, 2014, 05:11:58 AM
Ah Yes!  A RL Friend of mine loved tinkering with the SG Base Builder, and we grouped our alts together on each server to make a semi-private SG with Base for quick transport and storage of goodies.  Worked out quite well for the basics, and no devisive SG politicking needed.

Did that as well.  Most of my toons were on Virtue and were all members of the "private" SG, The Super-Hero International Taskforce. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 14, 2014, 07:14:32 AM
Same here.  Maintained private SG base for storage and transport.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Acanous on December 14, 2014, 10:51:58 PM
NCSoft as a corporation will not drag this out just to drag it out as some kind of spiteful act. Doing things like this does cost them money in resources and man hours. Which the dept that is in charge of the negotiations has to, like all parts of a corporation, justify their dept budget.  And however much their salaries plus billable hours from legal need to have a reason more than "we wanted to mess with the American gamers" behind them or someones getting fired :-)
Not to say it doesn't happen like that. See FFXIV. "We just want to mess with the American Gamers" was totally a thing, and they DID get fired.

Hopefully that's just not the case HERE. For both parties.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on December 14, 2014, 11:32:19 PM
Not to say it doesn't happen like that. See FFXIV. "We just want to mess with the American Gamers" was totally a thing, and they DID get fired.

Hopefully that's just not the case HERE. For both parties.

Really?  And here I thought the first FFXIV team was just in their own little world, stubbornly ignoring the unified voice of complaints that came from their beta testers for many months before it originally launched.   ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on December 15, 2014, 10:35:43 AM
I had alts on every server except Virtue. I tried Virtue, but stopped playing there after a week or so. I had SGs on Freedom, Exalted, Infinity, Guardian, and Champion. I used the SGs to store purples and pvp ios. I had a 50 on every server; except Virtue. My main server was Freedom though and where I spent 95% of my time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on December 15, 2014, 06:36:43 PM
I had toons on most of the servers but they were just tests and experiments.  Virtue was my server of choice.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on December 15, 2014, 06:57:42 PM
most of my characters were on freedom, virtue, and justice. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 15, 2014, 10:10:28 PM
I had alts scattered amongst all the servers, except Champion. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on December 16, 2014, 06:20:11 PM
I was more of a sequential type (as opposed to alt-a-holic). I started on Champion. Thanks for a fine first few years B.O.S.S. supergroup! Then decided I needed to be on an east coast server, and started my own low-pressure group on Virtue (or was it Justice?), and then had a very few concept characters on Justice (or was it Virtue).

I'd totally settle for 1 server at this point.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 16, 2014, 06:48:31 PM
I may be wrong but with just a disk image to run the game - it would be quite likely the game will come back with all servers in place.

Just firing it up and setting it up as it was in the past would be by far the easiest way to go. That could change as the new owners learn more about the game but I would think that would be the best way to do it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on December 16, 2014, 07:15:02 PM
I would guess the server stuff would be separate. The game is not the database and vice versa. Where a character 'lives' is stored in the database, not in the game code.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Teikiatsu on December 16, 2014, 08:36:01 PM
So would there need to be a serverhub set up for each shard or it doesn't work?  Would the game recognize a consecutive number of servers by alphabet or some other method, and the remaining are grey'd out?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 16, 2014, 09:05:39 PM
I may be wrong but with just a disk image to run the game - it would be quite likely the game will come back with all servers in place.

Just firing it up and setting it up as it was in the past would be by far the easiest way to go. That could change as the new owners learn more about the game but I would think that would be the best way to do it.

See, this is actually something that unnerves me a little bit: the part about dusting off the servers, turning the game on, and getting it running again. In the post mortem with Matt Miller, I recall Matt discussing the fact that there were a ton of moving parts and that it was kind of amazing that they were able to keep it running. I think he said something to the effect that it was able to keep going because there were people who understood how the moving parts worked together on the staff.

Then again, I could totally be misremembering, so don't take my word too seriously; I watched the post mortem a long time ago.

I would be worried about whoever picks up the game learning quickly enough how to work with the servers and keep it running, even if just in maintenance mode. I hope that it would be as simple as just firing it up though. And it's just as true that the new owners would learn a lot about the game, and my worries could prove unfounded.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 16, 2014, 09:14:03 PM
You have the map servers that run the actual game you see and then multiple database servers to tie to whatever database you need to reach.

I guess a lot of the technical details we will find out as they go. I am just thinking if you just have those images they may point to specific addresses that you will need to recreate for them to sync properly. I am certain throw a little money at one of the original techs - who must be known by someone, to help the starting setup and you would be good.

I know if I were running it the goal would be get it running, put it in Beta and work out how to get paid for it all in that order. You need people to test it all and we know a lot of folks who would love to do it for them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 16, 2014, 09:23:00 PM
You have the map servers that run the actual game you see and then multiple database servers to tie to whatever database you need to reach.

I guess a lot of the technical details we will find out as they go. I am just thinking if you just have those images they may point to specific addresses that you will need to recreate for them to sync properly. I am certain throw a little money at one of the original techs - who must be known by someone, to help the starting setup and you would be good.

I know if I were running it the goal would be get it running, put it in Beta and work out how to get paid for it all in that order. You need people to test it all and we know a lot of folks who would love to do it for them.

Ah, I like the sound of that. That helps put some of my concerns to rest. I guess in my eagerness I keep thinking "okay, if this deal works out, then the servers will be turned on THE NEXT DAY," rather than thinking that's most likely not how this stuff goes, haha. I , for one, would be all about Beta-ing that...

...obviously XD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on December 16, 2014, 09:25:02 PM
You have the map servers that run the actual game you see and then multiple database servers to tie to whatever database you need to reach.

I guess a lot of the technical details we will find out as they go. I am just thinking if you just have those images they may point to specific addresses that you will need to recreate for them to sync properly. I am certain throw a little money at one of the original techs - who must be known by someone, to help the starting setup and you would be good.

I know if I were running it the goal would be get it running, put it in Beta and work out how to get paid for it all in that order. You need people to test it all and we know a lot of folks who would love to do it for them.

ME ME ME ME ME ... sorry I guess that is obvious :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 16, 2014, 11:51:40 PM
ME ME ME ME ME ... sorry I guess that is obvious :p

I think its safe to say everyone on Titan would line up to beta test :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Prism Almidu on December 17, 2014, 02:03:39 AM
You're not wrong about that :P In fact, might be a worthwhile thing to post links to beta registration in several of these threads, depending on how many people keep track of only one or two, once registration is a thing that can happen.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on December 17, 2014, 02:16:10 AM
ME ME ME ME ME ... sorry I guess that is obvious :p

I'd sign up right away for it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on December 17, 2014, 02:18:53 AM
I'd sign up right away for it.
pick me... pick me... pick me :D I would sign up for the beta in a instant. :) (even though after doing the beta for sto and co caused me not to do another beta. I would do one for City of. :) )
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 17, 2014, 04:14:58 AM
Whenever the Beta/Relaunch is,  I shall be ill from work, I shall have a mini fridge stocked with goodies and if necessary I will even go back to using caffeine.  (Been cleansed of caffeine for a long time now, feels great)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on December 17, 2014, 04:20:40 AM
I think its safe to say everyone on Titan would line up to beta test :)

I just retired, and would be totally there for Beta testing, just say the word!  See how confident I am that the return of our City will one day happen?  :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on December 17, 2014, 07:37:48 AM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on December 17, 2014, 07:45:58 AM
I just retired, and would be totally there for Beta testing, just say the word!  See how confident I am that the return of our City will one day happen?  :D

Me too (retired and confident) - I have a few 24/7's available for that task....  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Groundbreaker on December 17, 2014, 09:04:40 AM
Just in case this does somehow become the official Beta tester list me and my Girlfriend are in :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on December 17, 2014, 12:45:50 PM
I hope everybody is as willing to pay a sub when the time comes for that, too.   ;)  Because of course, no money = no City.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on December 17, 2014, 12:59:47 PM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 17, 2014, 01:02:49 PM
I payed a Subscription the entire 7 years I played the game until they would not let me throw money at them anymore.  I have no issue with subbing again.   :D

Hear, hear. I didn't learn about the game until around Issue 17, in 2010. I wish I could have played for the entire 8 years, but the 2 I got were unforgettable. I threw so much money at the game: expansions, subscription, not to mention all the goodies in the Paragon Shop. I would return to paid sub in a heartbeat.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Groundbreaker on December 17, 2014, 01:21:48 PM
Definitely willing to pay to play even for maintenance mode.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 17, 2014, 02:06:15 PM
I paid for one sub the entire time the game was live and for about 2 years I had 2 accounts.

I have also promised to start an advertising fund and seed it with $250 a year to get the word out.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mindscythe on December 17, 2014, 02:26:48 PM
I had a paid account from 3 months after launch until end-of-game. I also had a second account for several years up until the end.

I've been spending my "CoH Money" on other games since the City went dark, but as soon as CoH returns, I'll be moving that money back to its home. Happily. While dancing. And singing at the top of my lungs "Take me down to the Paragon City..." :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on December 17, 2014, 03:11:27 PM
I think its safe to say everyone on Titan would line up to beta test :)

I would have mixed feelings about it, actually. I've never liked doing beta testing... but the fact that this beta would be for a game that had already been released, and presumably testing mainly for operational stuff like server loads rather than bugs, might persuade me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Optimus Dex on December 17, 2014, 04:44:54 PM
I hope everybody is as willing to pay a sub when the time comes for that, too.   ;)  Because of course, no money = no City.  ;)


I paid for a sub since September of 2004 and a second sub from 2007 till shutdown. I just need to know who to pay now and I would.  I'm ready to play, in fact past ready.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 17, 2014, 04:47:21 PM

I paid for a sub since September of 2004 and a second sub from 2007 till shutdown. I just need to know who to pay now and I would.  I'm ready to play, in fact past ready.

Never stopped being ready to play :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Groundbreaker on December 17, 2014, 05:46:59 PM
I paid for one sub the entire time the game was live and for about 2 years I had 2 accounts.

I have also promised to start an advertising fund and seed it with $250 a year to get the word out.

I think there are a lot of us in the community that would help out with this.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AmberOfDzu on December 17, 2014, 05:48:30 PM
I would happily pay a sub again!   :D

Even if there were no perks, even if it was just for maintenance mode, even if it was the same price. I think I'd even do a "buy up front" to get started.

I'm kind of hoping there's a paragon market again, so I can throw extra money at them now and then.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fridgy Daiere on December 17, 2014, 06:19:32 PM
Ah Yes!  A RL Friend of mine loved tinkering with the SG Base Builder...

The base builder was my second favorite thing after the costume creator.  Yes, it was a pain in the tuchus, but I loved what the community was able to create with what should have been extremely limiting software (even before the safes!)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: InOnePiece on December 17, 2014, 06:34:26 PM
I have also promised to start an advertising fund and seed it with $250 a year to get the word out.

I was just remembering that when you download Ubuntu you get a screen asking how much you'd like to pay for it, and you can say $0 or anything above that.

Makes me wonder if a similar sub model would work for us. For example, the base monthly sub is $x, but you add in however much you want to chip in towards advertising, or whatever else. If you're pinching pennies maybe you just do the base subscription, and that's fine. But if you are in a position to do more, you can actually decide where you want to put your extra funds and determine how much a month you are willing to spend for the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on December 17, 2014, 08:48:23 PM
A sub? I'd jam my CC number into the box so hard and fast, even Superman would wince!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 17, 2014, 09:50:29 PM
Ah, I like the sound of that. That helps put some of my concerns to rest. I guess in my eagerness I keep thinking "okay, if this deal works out, then the servers will be turned on THE NEXT DAY," rather than thinking that's most likely not how this stuff goes, haha. I , for one, would be all about Beta-ing that...

...obviously XD

I would not be surprised if the servers were up very quickly after the deal is complete. It may well be part of the deal to make sure they are functioning prior to the sale - I know I would want them up to insure I have all the working parts before I handed over a suitcase full of money. That might be part of what is taking time as well.

I guess would you buy some disk images for a couple hundred thousand at least on the - trust us it all works from NCSoft or any other company? That is why I said deals like this have a lot of moving parts. If you were purchasing this you would want at least one server up - it actually makes me smile to think someone out there may have the disks running and is testing it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on December 17, 2014, 09:54:24 PM
A sub? I'd jam my CC number into the box so hard and fast, even Superman would wince!

If Superman is wincing, you MAY be jamming said card into a wrong box.  Just sayin'...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BraveStar on December 17, 2014, 11:38:07 PM
If Superman is wincing, you MAY be jamming said card into a wrong box.  Just sayin'...

Yeah, I was wondering where he was shoving the card as well...  :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on December 18, 2014, 12:56:05 AM
Yeah, I was wondering where he was shoving the card as well...  :o
apparently, in the excitement of jamming the CC into a box, there was an issue with the accuracy of said jamming. Probably because there wasn't enough Endurance to keep Tactics up and there weren't enough ACC enhancements slotted to help counter the -to hit from the excitement.

Don't worry. Although Superman will be walking funny for a few weeks, he'll make a full recovery...eventually.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on December 18, 2014, 01:43:29 AM
I would not be surprised if the servers were up very quickly after the deal is complete. It may well be part of the deal to make sure they are functioning prior to the sale - I know I would want them up to insure I have all the working parts before I handed over a suitcase full of money. That might be part of what is taking time as well.

I guess would you buy some disk images for a couple hundred thousand at least on the - trust us it all works from NCSoft or any other company? That is why I said deals like this have a lot of moving parts. If you were purchasing this you would want at least one server up - it actually makes me smile to think someone out there may have the disks running and is testing it.

May I just say that this very positive attitude you seem to be exhibiting is very contagious. I'm starting to believe that this is going to happen and not that it just might happen... now quit it. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on December 18, 2014, 02:13:02 AM
 Get the game up and running... I will sub like I did the entire 7 plus years I played never missed a month..

 And as I have stated before,,, if there was any remote chance I could get my account back I would be willing to pay up to an additional $100.00 for that as well..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on December 18, 2014, 10:52:13 AM
Quote

A sub? I'd jam my CC number into the box so hard and fast, even Superman would wince!






This over and over again. ;)

I've paid so much money for other games, trying to find a "summer" home it's not even funny. I could of been spending all that money on my virtual home instead.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Gorvi Guile on December 18, 2014, 01:13:20 PM
I would not be surprised if the servers were up very quickly after the deal is complete. It may well be part of the deal to make sure they are functioning prior to the sale - I know I would want them up to insure I have all the working parts before I handed over a suitcase full of money. That might be part of what is taking time as well.

I guess would you buy some disk images for a couple hundred thousand at least on the - trust us it all works from NCSoft or any other company? That is why I said deals like this have a lot of moving parts. If you were purchasing this you would want at least one server up - it actually makes me smile to think someone out there may have the disks running and is testing it.
To those trying to read into every word Ironwolf says: servers...up...deal is complete. trust us it all works...one server up...testing it.

yes!!!!!


j/k don't go nuts people.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 18, 2014, 01:51:16 PM
I am just saying that if I had purchased it - I would want to know the game works as saved.

I can't possibly imagine any other company not wanting the same. In thinking through the deal and what would cause delays - the number 1 thing I thought of is not having enough of the game to get it running. I know I would want to be able to have one server running at least. Otherwise the price for the image would be worth far less. Due diligence means you have to check these things.

NCSoft would want to be sure the game is handled responsibiy and in the hands of someone both technical enough and yet solvent enough in funds to keep it going. The new overlords would want to make sure the software works. I don't mean completely up and running with all datatbases and markets going - but at least the main game functioning. In any sort of negotiation this would not be an unusual or unreasonable request.

I don't have inside information or any news - I was just running through in my head - what would I want before I handed over cash for the CoH rights and game?

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on December 18, 2014, 04:02:40 PM
Yeah, I was wondering where he was shoving the card as well...  :o

I would be shoving it in so hard it would go through every orifice in the universe, simultaneously!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 18, 2014, 04:10:01 PM
I would not be surprised if the servers were up very quickly after the deal is complete. It may well be part of the deal to make sure they are functioning prior to the sale - I know I would want them up to insure I have all the working parts before I handed over a suitcase full of money. That might be part of what is taking time as well.

I guess would you buy some disk images for a couple hundred thousand at least on the - trust us it all works from NCSoft or any other company? That is why I said deals like this have a lot of moving parts. If you were purchasing this you would want at least one server up - it actually makes me smile to think someone out there may have the disks running and is testing it.

Someone else said something to this effect, but your posts have this way of getting right to the point and helping resolve my concerns. Seriously, now I don't even know why I was worrying so much about this deal. Now, it's just about waiting a bit longer!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CaptainMako on December 18, 2014, 04:26:21 PM
Been lurking for a while, only after I checked out Valiance Online did something occur to me. It seems like, between the entire demographic of people who want a City of (fill in potentiality here) revival in one form or another, there is a quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) animosity towards NCSoft amongst some people. There are people like me, who want any form of the game to come back, regardless of the ownership, and who may or may not be satisfied with Champions, Valiance etc. And I'm sure there are others that want nothing to do with NCSoft, after the collective head and heartbreak they've dished out. Most notably I see this from those who were involved with user petitions towards CoH's closure, and were pretty much ignored. There are some extremely distrusting folks out there, and rightfully so.

What I'm afraid of is that some people may see good news, such as a deal being made, flock to it, see the NCSoft tag and turn cheek. Now believe me, I myself am not particularly happy with NCSoft, but I never expected them to keep the game running out of the charity of their hearts. I would love nothing more than to wake up one morning, check the news as I do, and see Paragon City, and especially the Rogue Isles open again. At the same time, I wouldn't mind seeing a project like Valiance (the alpha beta shows some promise, with frequent updates) and Titan make headway without NCSoft overhead.

I think I had something to ask everyone, but after all that I lost it. Something about how bound to NCSoft you might think a City of X revival might be, or how much involvement everyone would prefer to have. NCSoft undoubtedly has resources to offer, its just considering what will come with it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: GN2 on December 18, 2014, 04:44:44 PM
Been lurking for a while, only after I checked out Valiance Online did something occur to me. It seems like, between the entire demographic of people who want a City of (fill in potentiality here) revival in one form or another, there is a quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) animosity towards NCSoft amongst some people. There are people like me, who want any form of the game to come back, regardless of the ownership, and who may or may not be satisfied with Champions, Valiance etc. And I'm sure there are others that want nothing to do with NCSoft, after the collective head and heartbreak they've dished out. Most notably I see this from those who were involved with user petitions towards CoH's closure, and were pretty much ignored. There are some extremely distrusting folks out there, and rightfully so.

What I'm afraid of is that some people may see good news, such as a deal being made, flock to it, see the NCSoft tag and turn cheek. Now believe me, I myself am not particularly happy with NCSoft, but I never expected them to keep the game running out of the charity of their hearts. I would love nothing more than to wake up one morning, check the news as I do, and see Paragon City, and especially the Rogue Isles open again. At the same time, I wouldn't mind seeing a project like Valiance (the alpha beta shows some promise, with frequent updates) and Titan make headway without NCSoft overhead.

I think I had something to ask everyone, but after all that I lost it. Something about how bound to NCSoft you might think a City of X revival might be, or how much involvement everyone would prefer to have. NCSoft undoubtedly has resources to offer, its just considering what will come with it.

There is absolutely no way NCSoft will let their credits be removed from the game. Like them or not, they brought the game back from the brink when they acquired it from Cryptic, and they want their work to be represented. It's the same reason as why Cryptic's logos were still in the game after they no longer owned the rights to it.

If people have a problem with that, they're just going to have to deal with it. Though I can't imagine people being so petty as to refuse to go back to a game they claim to love just because it has someone's logo on it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on December 18, 2014, 04:54:11 PM
I think I had something to ask everyone, but after all that I lost it. Something about how bound to NCSoft you might think a City of X revival might be, or how much involvement everyone would prefer to have. NCSoft undoubtedly has resources to offer, its just considering what will come with it.
There is absolutely no way NCSoft will let their credits be removed from the game. Like them or not, they brought the game back from the brink when they acquired it from Cryptic, and they want their work to be represented. It's the same reason as why Cryptic's logos were still in the game after they no longer owned the rights to it.

If people have a problem with that, they're just going to have to deal with it. Though I can't imagine people being so petty as to refuse to go back to a game they claim to love just because it has someone's logo on it.

I think the logical end question is not just about logos, but how much actual involvement NCsoft has with the game. Based on what I've read here, it seems like the answer is "none," which will help. If they still manage or are involved with the IP licensing company, that might be an issue.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 18, 2014, 04:56:39 PM
There is absolutely no way NCSoft will let their credits be removed from the game. Like them or not, they brought the game back from the brink when they acquired it from Cryptic, and they want their work to be represented. It's the same reason as why Cryptic's logos were still in the game after they no longer owned the rights to it.

If people have a problem with that, they're just going to have to deal with it. Though I can't imagine people being so petty as to refuse to go back to a game they claim to love just because it has someone's logo on it.

There's a saying that I'm particularly fond of when it comes to the kind of mindset that you're talking about. In the saying, we are warned: "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face." It's all about pettiness, about not losing perspective just because you don't like what someone or something did. We see a lot of this short sighted spitefulness in our culture these days. Personally, I would challenge anyone who is planning to refuse to return to CoX due to NCSoft's logo being affixed to it to really think about what they're doing. In the grand scheme of things, the only people they will be harming is themselves.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 18, 2014, 05:02:07 PM
I think the logical end question is not just about logos, but how much actual involvement NCsoft has with the game. Based on what I've read here, it seems like the answer is "none," which will help. If they still manage or are involved with the IP licensing company, that might be an issue.

Really good point, about the involvement. Even if NCSoft were involved, I would probably still play the game. But I would also be nervous, given what happened last time. It comes down to trust for me, more than it does to anger or vengeance. I would probably be less attached to the game; I wouldn't allow myself to get too attached for fear of repeating history.

What makes me a bit more trusting here is that, while CoH would come back in maintenance mode, there would be other projects involved. That, for some reason, gives me a more stable foundation to work with than if it was just CoH coming back.

But, as you said, it seems like NCSoft would have little, if any, involvement, so I don't have trust issues. And the logo being there is not a personal affront to me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 18, 2014, 07:02:33 PM
The logo issue is quite silly. NCSoft did do a lot of development on the game over the years to make it into the finished product at the end. They are right to be proud of the development they did.

Some of the silliness at the end did not help them and they didn't understand their audience. I work for a big company and they recently said in some job positions they will be capping growth as the higher end people are not needed as much as the lower end. This means stagnation at a lower pay scale for newer folks coming in. We had a meeting about it today and the reply was - sorry we don't need more of those people. Then the lady having said it realized how bad that sounded and said - you deserve a better answer than that - the facts won't change but the spin will. I prefer straight no nonsense answers. I hate corp spin and just having one of the people to come out and say - I am not rewarding one of the idiots on the team - would have been more honest than all the newspeak they trotted out.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on December 18, 2014, 07:09:41 PM
I am the exact opposite of those NCSoft naysayers. While I have only ever played one other NCSoft game (Guild Wars 2 for like a week)... I will say this: I am very grateful to NCSoft.


I never played an MMO until I played CoH... not one. Heck aside from some Super Mario Brothers... I never played video games. I started CoH a few weeks after launch..and played it until the last second. I had 3 accounts...all VIP... one at the start...one in late 2004..and another from March 2005. So why am I grateful to NCSoft...the company that closed down the only game I ever loved? Because if it weren't for them...I never would have had experienced CoH. 8 years I played CoH... hundreds of characters...hundreds (ok thousands) of hours of fun...all thanks in no small part to NCSoft. So why would I be angry at them? 8 years... that's a lot longer than I thought I would get. There was a time when things looked bleak in 2006 that Cryptic was going to focus less on CoH due to their deal for their planned Marvel game...this worried me greatly. Then when it came down to it... NCSoft took over as Cryptic exited the picture...in essence saving City of Heroes. So while others hold a grudge and vow to not come back if NCSoft has anything to do with the game...I hold no ill will towards the company that gave me 8 years of a wonderful game.


Was I angry when the announcement came...yes among other emotions. Did I attend the Unity rally...yes I did (AP 6). Did I sign the online petition...donate to the dev dinner.. yep. But you know what happened shortly after the closure...I came to the realization that what they did was justified in their eyes. Could it have been handled better..absolutely. Do people and businesses make mistakes.. uh yes. Do I think NCSoft regrets what they did... yes I do. I had several correspondences with people at NCSoft after the closure...and I can with all honesty say that they felt bad for the way things were handled. BUT... business is business and we don't always agree with decisions that are made by those with much higher positions than ourselves :)


Anyways... I tend to ramble. I just wanted to say that NCSoft is not the devil that some people try to make them out to be...and if people still after all this time can't see the good that NCSoft gave us...that's on them. I know I am grateful to NCSoft for letting me do something no other game has been able to do for me since 11/30/2012.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 18, 2014, 07:18:50 PM
I am the exact opposite of those NCSoft naysayers. While I have only ever played one other NCSoft game (Guild Wars 2 for like a week)... I will say this: I am very grateful to NCSoft.


I never played an MMO until I played CoH... not one. Heck aside from some Super Mario Brothers... I never played video games. I started CoH a few weeks after launch..and played it until the last second. I had 3 accounts...all VIP... one at the start...one in late 2004..and another from March 2005. So why am I grateful to NCSoft...the company that closed down the only game I ever loved? Because if it weren't for them...I never would have had experienced CoH. 8 years I played CoH... hundreds of characters...hundreds (ok thousands) of hours of fun...all thanks in no small part to NCSoft. So why would I be angry at them? 8 years... that's a lot longer than I thought I would get. There was a time when things looked bleak in 2006 that Cryptic was going to focus less on CoH due to their deal for their planned Marvel game...this worried me greatly. Then when it came down to it... NCSoft took over as Cryptic exited the picture...in essence saving City of Heroes. So while others hold a grudge and vow to not come back if NCSoft has anything to do with the game...I hold no ill will towards the company that gave me 8 years of a wonderful game.


Was I angry when the announcement came...yes among other emotions. Did I attend the Unity rally...yes I did (AP 6). Did I sign the online petition...donate to the dev dinner.. yep. But you know what happened shortly after the closure...I came to the realization that what they did was justified in their eyes. Could it have been handled better..absolutely. Do people and businesses make mistakes.. uh yes. Do I think NCSoft regrets what they did... yes I do. I had several correspondences with people at NCSoft after the closure...and I can with all honesty say that they felt bad for the way things were handled. BUT... business is business and we don't always agree with decisions that are made by those with much higher positions than ourselves :)


Anyways... I tend to ramble. I just wanted to say that NCSoft is not the devil that some people try to make them out to be...and if people still after all this time can't see the good that NCSoft gave us...that's on them. I know I am grateful to NCSoft for letting me do something no other game has been able to do for me since 11/30/2012.

Beautifully put, eloquently worded. *Applause*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 18, 2014, 10:50:22 PM
Really good point, about the involvement. Even if NCSoft were involved, I would probably still play the game. But I would also be nervous, given what happened last time. It comes down to trust for me, more than it does to anger or vengeance. I would probably be less attached to the game; I wouldn't allow myself to get too attached for fear of repeating history.

What makes me a bit more trusting here is that, while CoH would come back in maintenance mode, there would be other projects involved. That, for some reason, gives me a more stable foundation to work with than if it was just CoH coming back.

But, as you said, it seems like NCSoft would have little, if any, involvement, so I don't have trust issues. And the logo being there is not a personal affront to me.

The logo is not a big deal to me.

However as has been pointed out the shut down could have been handled better by NCsoft and as a result there are some players that will have trust issues.

The easiest way to fix those issues is that when the deal is done, the ink is dry and the game is coming back online, that the new COH Owners spell out nice in clear in plain English for all to read as to exactly what involvement, if any, that NCSoft will have. 

If it is no involvement, then state it clearly.  If there is some involvement then state it clearly without violating any terms of the sale or NDA's.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on December 19, 2014, 04:31:53 AM
I care nothing about the logo.  They have the right to be recognized for the effort they put into the game.  But, even my resolve is being tested by their business methodology.  I know, I know!  Have faith....no news is good news!  I am trying, but even Joan of Arc would be having a crisis of faith by now!  :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on December 19, 2014, 08:56:59 AM


As I stated in the other thread... this pace is to be expected when dealing with what we are dealing with (disk image) and an international deal. I have seen deals of much smaller components take up to 1.5 years due to small hiccups. The problem is ... people expecting things to happen too quickly... that type of thinking is unrealistic and does nothing but lower morale and is a complete disservice to those fighting/negotiating to bring back CoH.



I care nothing about the logo.  They have the right to be recognized for the effort they put into the game.  But, even my resolve is being tested by their business methodology.  I know, I know!  Have faith....no news is good news!  I am trying, but even Joan of Arc would be having a crisis of faith by now!  :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 19, 2014, 01:15:31 PM

As I stated in the other thread... this pace is to be expected when dealing with what we are dealing with (disk image) and an international deal. I have seen deals of much smaller components take up to 1.5 years due to small hiccups. The problem is ... people expecting things to happen too quickly... that type of thinking is unrealistic and does nothing but lower morale and is a complete disservice to those fighting/negotiating to bring back CoH.

We're all eager to be back in game, and that eagerness can quickly become impatience.

A lot of us don't know how the world of business and negotiation works, so when "The Mask Comes Off" began on Sept. 1, we started thinking "any day now." Only now it's been three months since the mask came off, and now, those who don't see how the negotiations are going, those who have no insider info, are getting antsy. For now, all we can do is take deep breaths, check out Icon, settle for other games. I don't necessarily believe the "no news is good news" adage. No news is just that: no news.

But, when the deal goes one way or another, we will know. If business negotiations typicall take 1 - 1.5 years, as Burnt Toast is saying, then we're on schedule.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on December 19, 2014, 01:53:32 PM
I think the logical end question is not just about logos, but how much actual involvement NCsoft has with the game. Based on what I've read here, it seems like the answer is "none," which will help. If they still manage or are involved with the IP licensing company, that might be an issue.

I suspect NCSoft will always be involved, but that whomever financially backs the i23 Zombie Edition will downplay that involvement as much as possible-- and rightly so.  NCSoft has generated a lot of dislike and distrust in the MMO industry, and not just over the handling and closure of CoX.  But it's either that, or no dice.  So we roll with it and hope for the best.  I think it's pretty naive not to think NCSoft will still control the IP and server backup at least partially.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 19, 2014, 02:15:16 PM
I think there is control and then there is involvement.

If I were NCSoft and paid any attention to gamers, I would play this up as us listening to the gamers. That they "found a way" to bring back an old favorite. They may get a cut of leases for the IP - which would be fair enough and have their name on the game and its websites - which again to me is fair enough.

I never started this entire thing on anything but a business standpoint - I did not care why it was shut as much as would they listen to an effort to buy or return it? Yes, was the word I recieved back - they would listen - in their way. A number of people approached them but in a way that was contrary to their accepted business practices.

Know your enemy and try to make him your friend is one of the first rules of business. If you think NCSoft is bloodthirsty you really need to read about IBM and Intel. IBM started the term FUD Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. I am a huge nerd and some of the stories about what IBM used to do and what Intel did and does do to any threat is very interesting reading. In November 2009, Intel agreed to pay AMD $1.25 billion as part of a deal to settle all outstanding legal disputes between the two companies. It also involved a lot of cross license agreement equal to about $5 billion.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Todogut on December 20, 2014, 04:38:19 AM
I think the logical end question is not just about logos, but how much actual involvement NCsoft has with the game. Based on what I've read here, it seems like the answer is "none," which will help. If they still manage or are involved with the IP licensing company, that might be an issue.

On 12/5/2014, Chris "Warcabbit" Hare was interviewed on episode 76 of the Rolling 20s podcast (http://www.missionstartpodcast.com/podcasts/the-rolling-20s-ep76-we-wake-the-titans). Chris comes on at the 2:08 mark. He described the plan to acquire the CoH IP:

Quote
What would happen is that a new company would be created, if everything goes well, with members from NCSoft and members who work at Missing Worlds Media to control and support the City of Heroes IP, which would then license it out to, for example, City of Titans or other places that seemed interested. So, it's kind of a one arm's reach sort of thing to protect both sides involved.

Had it been specified elsewhere that the holding company will consist of "members from NCSoft and members who work at Missing Worlds Media"? Does this mean that NCSoft will be part of the holding company and be involved ongoing in licensing the CoH IP?

Is Chris' statement just a different way of saying the same info as in Nate Downes' announcement? Or did Chris indicate some different/additional info?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on December 20, 2014, 06:44:12 AM

Is Chris' statement just a different way of saying the same info as in Nate Downes' announcement? Or did Chris indicate some different/additional info?

Unless Nate Downes explicitly posts it or says it directly then it's not news and just conjecture as we all sit in the Vacuum waiting for the Big Annoucement.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on December 20, 2014, 07:52:02 AM
Unless Nate Downes explicitly posts it or says it directly then it's not news and just conjecture as we all sit in the Vacuum waiting for the Big Annoucement.
bingo :D, it would be interesting if the nc soft had a few ex workers or a few to over see the handling company is keeping good with the city of ip.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Todogut on December 20, 2014, 03:47:08 PM
Unless Nate Downes explicitly posts it or says it directly then it's not news and just conjecture

Chris Hare, the project lead with Missing Worlds Media, stated in this thread (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10284.msg158291.html#msg158291) and on Twitter that he is involved. In the podcast cited above, he made statements in an interview. So, it's not just conjecture, and it is news.

During the interview, Chris also stated:

Quote
We gotta get the game working first. And that's what my focus is on these days. If I can get the game working, then I can prove to these people that we are a serious business. They're talking to us, and that's great. But we have to show before we can do.

Does this statement indicate that MWM must "get <City of Titans> working first" to "prove to" NCSoft that MWM is "a serious business" before NCSoft will sell the City of Heroes IP to a holding company consisting of "members from NCSoft and members who work at Missing Worlds Media"?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: PsiBug on December 20, 2014, 04:54:59 PM
(((EDIT: nevermind. looks like a matter of interpretation/ misinterpretation which is probably cleared up now.)))
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lapucelle on December 20, 2014, 05:15:12 PM
On 12/5/2014, Chris "Warcabbit" Hare was interviewed on episode 76 of the Rolling 20s podcast (http://www.missionstartpodcast.com/podcasts/the-rolling-20s-ep76-we-wake-the-titans). Chris comes on at the 2:08 mark. He described the plan to acquire the CoH IP:

Had it been specified elsewhere that the holding company will consist of "members from NCSoft and members who work at Missing Worlds Media"? Does this mean that NCSoft will be part of the holding company and be involved ongoing in licensing the CoH IP?

Is Chris' statement just a different way of saying the same info as in Nate Downes' announcement? Or did Chris indicate some different/additional info?
It is essentially the same information as Nate's announcement.

It is looking likely that the holding company will have at least one person who works for NCSoft under a different hat, in it. As well as at least one person who works for MWM under a different hat.

However, since it will be different hats, while their opinions may be influenced by their other position, the corporation NCSoft would not have direct control over the holding company.

In short, someone's going to be there to make sure the holding company doesn't throw the CoH name on The Hitler Follies of 2045, an all-singing, all-dancing, all-torture extravaganza.

Given that I don't think anyone plans to do that, it's no big deal.

As far as 'working first', no, that's my personal focus. I am focusing on getting City of Titans working as best as anyone can. Note: A game is working _long_ before it is finished. Especially a MMO - think of all the zones we'll have to fill with content _after_ the core game functions are up and running.

I am not aware of any demand that we produce a functional game before they are willing to do this. However, it certainly would improve our bargaining position considerably.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 20, 2014, 07:46:19 PM
I have no problem with this happening - the IP will remain - sort of - in NCSoft's reach.

However what steps are happening towards firing up the old game is our question? Is a group working towards getting that running?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on December 20, 2014, 08:29:07 PM
I have no problem with this happening - the IP will remain - sort of - in NCSoft's reach.

However what steps are happening towards firing up the old game is our question? Is a group working towards getting that running?

The ONLY critical question in my mind is will the holding company be PREVENTING IP use or ENABLING IP use. 

If somebody reverse-engineers a stand-alone server software, will the holding company be more/equally likely than NCSoft to aggressively pursue/prosecute its distribution or will they license it for a nominal fee to enable anybody who wants to play with the toys to have at it?  Will it be closer to APR gets the keys or will it be closer to open-source.

But obviously nobody will know this until after the ink/blood is dry on the signatures.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 21, 2014, 12:49:07 AM
Why the negativity? If they wanted it prevented they simply do NOTHING.

If they designate someone from their company to oversee the distribution of the CoH Ip - does that sound like they don't want to sell? Remember here - money is changing hands.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on December 21, 2014, 02:46:57 AM
The ONLY critical question in my mind is will the holding company be PREVENTING IP use or ENABLING IP use. 

If somebody reverse-engineers a stand-alone server software, will the holding company be more/equally likely than NCSoft to aggressively pursue/prosecute its distribution or will they license it for a nominal fee to enable anybody who wants to play with the toys to have at it?  Will it be closer to APR gets the keys or will it be closer to open-source.

But obviously nobody will know this until after the ink/blood is dry on the signatures.
Some of the people involved in setting up the deal have explicitly stated that the whole point to the holding company is to allow other companies to use the IP in games and other media. You know how you prevent IP use? Leave the situation exactly how it is now. That's why NCsoft shut the game down the way it did in the first place; not to sell it, but to preserve proof of the IP. The entire point of the holding company concept is to make the IP accessible by others.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on December 21, 2014, 05:37:57 AM
Some of the people involved in setting up the deal have explicitly stated that the whole point to the holding company is to allow other companies to use the IP in games and other media. You know how you prevent IP use? Leave the situation exactly how it is now. That's why NCsoft shut the game down the way it did in the first place; not to sell it, but to preserve proof of the IP. The entire point of the holding company concept is to make the IP accessible by others.

Yeah, but it was also stated that the intent of the holding company was to be a company independent of NCSoft to which NCSoft would sell the IP outright.  I'm responding only to the news(rumor?) that NCSoft would have involvement in the holding company. 

That might imply that this is not as much an outright sale of the IP as was originally intended. 

That might also mean that the original intent to get the IP available to all interested players... to anybody in the community that want's to play with it (which I certainly took to imply an acceptance of private servers -- contrary to NCSoft's general policy towards such things)... might no longer be the intention of all the parties governing the holding company.  Since the IP is going to be active and "on the NCSoft radar", then if the above concern is valid, the deal might even be worse for future private servers than the current state...

Or not ... lots of mights and ifs in the above -- as I say nobody could say until the deal is a reality.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on December 21, 2014, 09:23:52 AM
 :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on December 21, 2014, 05:46:00 PM
In short, someone's going to be there to make sure the holding company doesn't throw the CoH name on The Hitler Follies of 2045, an all-singing, all-dancing, all-torture extravaganza.

I totally see where you were going with that, but the visual connotations gave me a gut busting laugh. So much so that I could almost support that as a Monty Python esque humor project!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on December 21, 2014, 06:22:31 PM
Why the negativity? If they wanted it prevented they simply do NOTHING.

If they designate someone from their company to oversee the distribution of the CoH Ip - does that sound like they don't want to sell? Remember here - money is changing hands.
I agree with this statement, if this means we get our home back then I am all for it.
I to do not understand the negativity, this time of year people should be happy :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on December 21, 2014, 07:57:17 PM
  I heard no mention of making the IP available for private servers at all.  If the deal goes through then private servers would damage the profitability of the COH franchise.  Plus I see no need for private servers ...

And you are correct... there was ABSOLUTELY no mention of making the IP available for private servers.

Anyone who saw this deal as improving the environment for future private servers was doing so entirely through inference because the matter was in no way discussed or referred to.  As you have pointed out, expressing your point of view, this deal might well make the environment for private servers more hostile than if no deal ever existed.

"Private servers would damage the profitability of the CoH franchise."  That statement is a matter of reasonable controversy.  There are many who feel private servers, to the contrary, are enhancements to a community of players and allow unfettered exploration of variations on a game and thus greater enthusiasm.  That, however, seems not to be the opinion of NCSoft -- famously.

To my original point, in your view, the holding company will function BOTH to ENABLE use of the IP and to PREVENT use of the IP.  No "Hitler follies" is the specific example given of preventing the IP use. 

This is not a negative to the deal... indeed, if you believe that getting the game back eliminates any need for private servers, then preventing players from setting them up would be an additional positive aspect of the deal.  I just think that folks should consider that this specifically might be among the benefits of getting the game back. 

I'm certainly looking forward to playing the game in any form available.  I hope the deal allows the maximum availability and flexibility to the community and I'm confident that the folks working to buy it feel the same. 

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BraveStar on December 21, 2014, 08:45:54 PM
I would be shoving it in so hard it would go through every orifice in the universe, simultaneously!

Infinite Improbability Credit Card?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on December 21, 2014, 10:27:07 PM
So do you guys want CoH back or not?  Its getting hard to tell.

Sure seems like a lot this and that stipulations flying around.

Seeing how everyone has so many better ideas of how the game should be returned perhaps they should take over the talks.  Get in contact with NCSoft, and then *demand* these things.  See how well that works.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on December 21, 2014, 10:48:12 PM
I am waiting with baited breath!

The only stipulation I have is that it come back  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on December 21, 2014, 11:45:01 PM
So do you guys want CoH back or not?  Its getting hard to tell.

Sure seems like a lot this and that stipulations flying around.

Seeing how everyone has so many better ideas of how the game should be returned perhaps they should take over the talks.  Get in contact with NCSoft, and then *demand* these things.  See how well that works.

To be honest, I would be content with a cookie with a Stateman logo right now. Actually probably should go make one.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on December 22, 2014, 12:19:24 AM
To be honest, I would be content with a cookie with a Stateman logo right now. Actually probably should go make one.

Happens when you wait so long for something for so long... You know ... The feels.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on December 22, 2014, 12:55:11 PM
So do you guys want CoH back or not?  Its getting hard to tell.

Sure seems like a lot this and that stipulations flying around.

Seeing how everyone has so many better ideas of how the game should be returned perhaps they should take over the talks.  Get in contact with NCSoft, and then *demand* these things.  See how well that works.

The best post all weekend
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on December 22, 2014, 05:46:41 PM
In short, someone's going to be there to make sure the holding company doesn't throw the CoH name on The Hitler Follies of 2045, an all-singing, all-dancing, all-torture extravaganza.
It's springtime for Lord Recluse, and the Rogue Isles are smiling...    ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on December 22, 2014, 06:41:05 PM
So do we go back in time and kill the Developers or The Producers?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on December 22, 2014, 06:45:14 PM
So do we go back in time and kill the Developers or The Producers?
As long as we can get a Zero Mostel or Gene Wilder singing number, I'm ok with either.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on December 22, 2014, 07:11:55 PM
(https://scontent-a-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/1972291_10152239888553908_899318350_n.jpg?oh=83ec5c4bc8359c85153dc6b6f8e050d7&oe=54F911D9)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on December 22, 2014, 09:08:54 PM
(https://scontent-a-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/1972291_10152239888553908_899318350_n.jpg?oh=83ec5c4bc8359c85153dc6b6f8e050d7&oe=54F911D9)
Perfect.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on December 22, 2014, 09:43:35 PM
I think there is control and then there is involvement.

If I were NCSoft and paid any attention to gamers, I would play this up as us listening to the gamers. That they "found a way" to bring back an old favorite. They may get a cut of leases for the IP - which would be fair enough and have their name on the game and its websites - which again to me is fair enough.

I never started this entire thing on anything but a business standpoint - I did not care why it was shut as much as would they listen to an effort to buy or return it? Yes, was the word I recieved back - they would listen - in their way. A number of people approached them but in a way that was contrary to their accepted business practices.

Know your enemy and try to make him your friend is one of the first rules of business. If you think NCSoft is bloodthirsty you really need to read about IBM and Intel. IBM started the term FUD Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. I am a huge nerd and some of the stories about what IBM used to do and what Intel did and does do to any threat is very interesting reading. In November 2009, Intel agreed to pay AMD $1.25 billion as part of a deal to settle all outstanding legal disputes between the two companies. It also involved a lot of cross license agreement equal to about $5 billion.

I dont care if all the people working at the I23 maint company stand and shout "hail Ncsoft"!! every day at 2pm central. As long as I can make my fire/em blaster and my Ill/emp troller.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 22, 2014, 10:59:37 PM
Hm,,,,, "Hail NCsoft"?    nah, that's a bit much don't you think?  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on December 23, 2014, 01:17:20 AM
Hm,,,,, "Hail NCsoft"?    nah, that's a bit much don't you think?  :)
(https://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s2/HarpoSpoke/hail-hydra_zps6dcc9b63.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on December 23, 2014, 03:17:20 AM
(https://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s2/HarpoSpoke/hail-hydra_zps6dcc9b63.jpg)

Well done!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 23, 2014, 08:36:10 PM
(https://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s2/HarpoSpoke/hail-hydra_zps6dcc9b63.jpg)

How... sinister. Lol!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Gorvi Guile on December 27, 2014, 01:38:59 PM
It's all fun and games until someone kills the thread...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on December 27, 2014, 03:41:23 PM
It's all fun and games until someone kills the thread...

Activate Howling Twilight - it sounds so cool.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on December 27, 2014, 03:56:42 PM
Activate Howling Twilight - it sounds so cool.

Twilight Grasp should be enough. :)


Completely aside. I still thought the old animation on that power was the best animation in all of CoH. It took over 4 seconds but it looked fantastic. You could fire it off and watch as a teammate destroyed your target (guaranteeing a miss); you would still have enough time to yell about it in the team chat before the thing finished.
For those who never saw it, it was like putting Energy Transfer (but with tendrils forming) in front of TG.   
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BraveStar on December 28, 2014, 12:53:58 AM
There was an angelic rez power that I loved for my angel character. :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 29, 2014, 02:10:32 PM
It's all fun and games until someone kills the thread...

Yeah, pretty amazing... about 4 days passed between posts. Whooaaaa...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on December 29, 2014, 06:48:48 PM
I'm still lurking....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on December 29, 2014, 07:00:03 PM
I'm still lurking....
I feel ya, I too have been lurking, every so often I post something. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 29, 2014, 07:22:05 PM
I spent a couple months lurking, actually. Then one day I decided I wanted to come back into the conversation. Lurking wasn't really working for me. It's what I do. I gotta talk XD
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Bold on December 30, 2014, 06:08:33 AM
Perpetual lurker here. But I'm always listening.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on December 30, 2014, 08:29:42 AM
How... sinister. Lol!
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=bigbible.org.uk%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F08%2Flurking.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 30, 2014, 02:22:08 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=bigbible.org.uk%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F08%2Flurking.jpg)

Hahaha! Cutest lurker ever.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: rebel 1812 on December 30, 2014, 02:32:24 PM
Here's an idea, instead of having to lurk here for updates and instead getting the same old "no news is good news"; why don't we start an email list.  That way where there is an update in the months or years it takes of good news/silence; we can have the news sent to our email.   
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 30, 2014, 02:34:45 PM
Here's an idea, instead of having to lurk here for updates and instead getting the same old "no news is good news"; why don't we start an email list.  That way where there is an update in the months or years it takes of good news/silence; we can have the news sent to our email.

Personally, I'd be down for that. Like a phone tree... only with emails. It would be an awfully long list, and it might take a while to get it together and organized in a way that doesn't leave anyone out accidentally. However, if we got on it, we could have a really effective way of updating folks.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackgrue on December 30, 2014, 02:49:51 PM
me, I check this thread at least... 5 times a day. Just for new news!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 30, 2014, 02:51:17 PM
me, I check this thread at least... 5 times a day. Just for new news!

Same! 5 times is a generous understatement, but it's the same kind of thing. This and "New Efforts" get the refresh button all the time.

Since I'm in confession mode, sometimes I just leave the threads open in a separate tab from whatever work I'm doing and check back on occasion.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on December 30, 2014, 06:20:31 PM
I will keep checking, no matter how long it takes.  At some point, I know I will be rewarded with good news.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on December 31, 2014, 12:20:00 AM
Same! 5 times is a generous understatement, but it's the same kind of thing. This and "New Efforts" get the refresh button all the time.
I will keep checking, no matter how long it takes.  At some point, I know I will be rewarded with good news.

Since we're confessing... me too...  :-[
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on December 31, 2014, 12:52:31 AM
Since we're confessing... me too...  :-[

I check all the time to.  I actually keep these forums open and check, I don't know how many times a day.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pearl Dragon on December 31, 2014, 01:44:04 AM

I check at least once a day. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on December 31, 2014, 02:23:34 AM
I was checking numerous times a day. Now I'm down to just once or so.

 :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on December 31, 2014, 05:22:45 AM
Now I feel inadequate for not always checking every day!    ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on December 31, 2014, 05:42:39 AM
I come check a few times a day. Not to check for news in my case, but rather see if there's any questions that need my attention.
-shrugs-
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on December 31, 2014, 06:38:17 AM
I come check a few times a day. Not to check for news in my case, but rather see if there's any questions that need my attention.
-shrugs-

what did the nemesis fox say?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on December 31, 2014, 07:11:34 AM
I check these threads more than probably any other person on this board. :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Beltor on December 31, 2014, 07:19:50 AM
I only check once a day, but I've been doing so since a little before the shutdown.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on December 31, 2014, 07:46:20 AM
I check these threads more than probably any other person on this board. :p

The varying length of the thread from day to day is indicative of your vigilance. ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 31, 2014, 02:40:58 PM
what did the nemesis fox say?

It's always a me plot.

Or is it...?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on December 31, 2014, 04:12:32 PM
what did the nemesis fox say?

Clank clank clank a-clank-a-clank-clank!


....... No? Hmmm. Let's see.

Oh! I've got it!


I'm steampunk and I know it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V714cfhgE0I)! wigglewigglewigglewigglewiggle yeah
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on December 31, 2014, 05:47:01 PM
I was checking numerous times a day. Now I'm down to just once or so.

 :P

I managed to go a good chunk of Christmas vacation without checking.  Happy New Years all.  Coh in 2015!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Heroette on December 31, 2014, 06:04:12 PM
I only really check it while I am working (to kill free time).  And since I have the next 4 days off, I will have plenty to catch up on when I read it next Monday.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on December 31, 2014, 06:09:25 PM
Clank clank clank a-clank-a-clank-clank!


....... No? Hmmm. Let's see.

Oh! I've got it!


I'm steampunk and I know it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V714cfhgE0I)! wigglewigglewigglewigglewiggle yeah

you forgot the BOOM!!! there was supposed to be an earth shattering Kaboom!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on December 31, 2014, 06:29:03 PM
I check these threads more than probably any other person on this board. :p
i'll take you up on that bet :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on December 31, 2014, 06:29:30 PM
Happiest of new years to all! 2015 is only 10 hours away!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on December 31, 2014, 07:16:53 PM
I check these threads more than probably any other person on this board. :p

lol

I keep this forum open in one of my Chrome tabs at work, so every morning when I start up my computer it's opened. I usually only check it if it looks like another page was added to the thread. I then catch up on all the posts that happened since I last checked it.

Also, Happy New Year's, everyone!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Optimus Dex on December 31, 2014, 09:51:52 PM
Happy New Year all ! I must confess to checking at least 3 times a day. I want my City back and I want to know every new development. Here's hoping for late winter / early spring.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on December 31, 2014, 11:14:05 PM
\o/  Happy and Prosperous New Year to all!  \o/

And since it's 2015, I fully expect to see flying cars, hoverboards, power laces, and hydratable pizzas by the end of the year. Somebody get on that!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: rebel 1812 on December 31, 2014, 11:21:11 PM
I will keep checking, no matter how long it takes.  At some point, I know I will be rewarded with good news.

see thats the point.  Many people are checking and hoping for updates.  That leads to posts asking "is there any news?".  Which leads to posts "no news is good news" and " obviously with NDA they can't give us news".  I think an email list would help with this.  Then the news will come to us when there is news.  Moreover, if this is a future company this would be an invaluable marketing tool.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Battlechimp on January 01, 2015, 12:24:59 AM
see thats the point.  Many people are checking and hoping for updates.  That leads to posts asking "is there any news?".  Which leads to posts "no news is good news" and " obviously with NDA they can't give us news".  I think an email list would help with this.  Then the news will come to us when there is news.  Moreover, if this is a future company this would be an invaluable marketing tool.

I stopped checking for updates a long time ago.  The stage they're at, we're not going to be told anything note worthy until the deal is done, good or bad.  I keep looking the forums for the random stuff people talk about in the mean time :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on January 01, 2015, 04:28:11 AM
i'll take you up on that bet :D
As the main moderator, I keep a close eye here. You all are generally pretty good, but there's always the occasional ruffled feathers, oversnark, or even outright rageface explosion (very few of those these days, thanks guys and gals and otherwise!). As such I check almost hourly. This is my link to the forums: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?action=unread
I see almost literally everything here...if there's been a huge flurry of posts I might skim instead of reading every one, but otherwise I'm like Santa Claus - I'm always watching! Be nice! >:( >:( >:( >:( >:(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on January 01, 2015, 07:10:09 AM
Happy Christmas and Merry New Year's to all who celebrate, Season's Greetings to the rest! May 2015 yield what we're all [here] looking for.....  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on January 01, 2015, 08:40:53 AM
\o/  Happy and Prosperous New Year to all!  \o/

And since it's 2015, I fully expect to see flying cars, hoverboards, power laces, and hydratable pizzas by the end of the year. Somebody get on that!

Add Virtual Reality to that list to. Can you imagine CoH with Virtual Reality? *mind blown*.

I'd have multiple personalities. :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on January 01, 2015, 09:02:02 AM
Add Virtual Reality to that list to. Can you imagine CoH with Virtual Reality? *mind blown*.

I'd have multiple personalities. :(

I can imagine some crazy chick considering experimenting with Revival and Oculus Rift.
-looks around innocently-
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Todogut on January 01, 2015, 11:36:31 AM
... considering experimenting with Revival and Oculus Rift.

Just imagine. (http://youtu.be/dWXNYOxf9qA)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: InOnePiece on January 01, 2015, 02:19:12 PM
(https://31.media.tumblr.com/ebb111bfba9237d10e74e17ad2965240/tumblr_inline_n47aknOBPB1rgy0ee.gif)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on January 01, 2015, 05:06:27 PM
As the main moderator, I keep a close eye here. You all are generally pretty good, but there's always the occasional ruffled feathers, oversnark, or even outright rageface explosion (very few of those these days, thanks guys and gals and otherwise!). As such I check almost hourly. This is my link to the forums: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?action=unread
I see almost literally everything here...if there's been a huge flurry of posts I might skim instead of reading every one, but otherwise I'm like Santa Claus - I'm always watching! Be nice! >:( >:( >:( >:( >:(

Dude, oversnark is one of my primary powers.... Don't gimp me!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 01, 2015, 06:30:50 PM
Happy new years everyone.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on January 01, 2015, 08:48:45 PM
Yeah, happy new years!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pearl Dragon on January 01, 2015, 09:09:01 PM

Happy New Year!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on January 02, 2015, 02:03:25 PM
Dude, oversnark is one of my primary powers.... Don't gimp me!

IT'S OP IT MUST BE NERFED NAO.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on January 03, 2015, 03:04:40 AM
Just imagine. (http://youtu.be/dWXNYOxf9qA)

My chiropractor hates what coh did to my mouse hand from too much coh/pc mmo play... Now think of doing that to my neck... Ugh.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on January 03, 2015, 03:35:25 AM
And a Happy New Year to everyone here!

As for checking, I do check here every few days, but I also know that on the day I log into Facebook and see that EVERY CoH Group is at 20+ posts, I'll know there's at last been an update!   :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dr. Bad Guy on January 03, 2015, 11:07:31 PM
I can imagine some crazy chick considering experimenting with Revival and Oculus Rift.
-looks around innocently-

Yes please. I'll have some of that.  Thank you very much.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on January 05, 2015, 02:27:24 AM
*Crickets*

Slow here today. . .

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on January 05, 2015, 05:02:24 PM
*Crickets*

Slow here today. . .

I am so geared up to re-roll my main as Storm-Water blast
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: lamer on January 05, 2015, 05:12:22 PM
I hope lurkers don't see the inactivity and think "welp, it's dead." It's not. This topic has a purpose, and until we have more info on that purpose, there's not much to talk about. Give it time. The "New efforts" thread seems to have more general discussion on the matter if you're itching to see some active discussion here.

And we continue to wait.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on January 05, 2015, 07:03:34 PM
I hope lurkers don't see the inactivity and think "welp, it's dead." It's not. This topic has a purpose, and until we have more info on that purpose, there's not much to talk about. Give it time. The "New efforts" thread seems to have more general discussion on the matter if you're itching to see some active discussion here.

And we continue to wait.

It's too bad there wasn't a website front page for all this, but I am certain when things are more concrete something will come.

As always thank you for those involved who are working on the Deal of the Century.

EDIT:  Looking forward to COH.COM / CITYOFHEROES.COM return!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on January 06, 2015, 03:01:51 AM
It's too bad there wasn't a website front page for all this, but I am certain when things are more concrete something will come.

As always thank you for those involved who are working on the Deal of the Century.

It only took 4 months for the stream of consciousness to become a trickle... Give it time. I'm still expecting real movement by the end of the fiscal quarter (March 2015)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on January 06, 2015, 05:17:33 PM
It only took 4 months for the stream of consciousness to become a trickle... Give it time. I'm still expecting real movement by the end of the fiscal quarter (March 2015)

Based on any real intel, or just intuition?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on January 06, 2015, 05:23:43 PM
Based on any real intel, or just intuition?
Pure procrastinator's instinct. March is roughly the end of the business year and my hope it's a loose end they tie up.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on January 06, 2015, 06:07:51 PM
Pure procrastinator's instinct. March is roughly the end of the business year and my hope it's a loose end they tie up.

Not everywhere runs April to March you know. That's rather a western thing... Even then, not all companies work to that fiscal year.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on January 07, 2015, 10:02:57 AM
Not everywhere runs April to March you know. That's rather a western thing... Even then, not all companies work to that fiscal year.
Surely Korea works sometime.   

I mean, I already wondered if they would slow down during the holidays and was informed they do indeed have the same holiday tradition.   So at some point, they've got to go back to work like the West, right?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on January 07, 2015, 04:35:12 PM
Surely Korea works sometime.   

I mean, I already wondered if they would slow down during the holidays and was informed they do indeed have the same holiday tradition.   So at some point, they've got to go back to work like the West, right?

Well, yes, but it would be good if people could realize without being continually reminded that rezzing a zombie shutdown version of a long-shuttered game is the least of NCSoft's priorities, I'm sorry.  But they wouldn't have shut down the game in the first place if it was important in any way.  I'll be first in line to play it if and when it comes back, but it isn't going to be under the development of Paragon Studios, nor will it have updates or even bug fixes.  It's just a life-support version of a game that probably no one at NCSoft but the one guy Nate & Crew are currently talking to even knows might get rezzed.  I'd be surprised if 3 people total at NCSoft are even aware that there are talks to license out the IP.

So please, peeps, temper your thoughts with patience.  It could be summer, or next fall, or never.  Let's just hope against hope that it is actually *sometime.*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Prism Almidu on January 07, 2015, 07:41:13 PM
I'd be surprised if 3 people total at NCSoft are even aware that there are talks to license out the IP.



Well, actually... an old friend of mine I recently found out works for NCSoft in Texas as QA, and he was aware of the talks :P
Still, your point is taken, despite my ongoing optimism about returning home to the Rogue Isles
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ultimate15 on January 08, 2015, 09:06:14 PM
Well, actually... an old friend of mine I recently found out works for NCSoft in Texas as QA, and he was aware of the talks :P
Still, your point is taken, despite my ongoing optimism about returning home to the Rogue Isles

...Okay, but was he made aware of the current negotiations with NCSoft by means of strictly just working for the company? Or was he just aware of the talks from reading stuff online and what-not?

That's the important question here lol.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Prism Almidu on January 08, 2015, 09:37:41 PM
I doubt he had enough interest in the game to seek out this forum. I assume it was from virtue of working there, but as we were busy with the Evolve alpha at the time, it only came up briefly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on January 09, 2015, 02:17:55 AM
I doubt he had enough interest in the game to seek out this forum. I assume it was from virtue of working there, but as we were busy with the Evolve alpha at the time, it only came up briefly.
We have had a fair amount of publicity since Ironwolf started. There's also the big stink that went up around September-ish time, where a large number of gamer sites picked up on the effort with Nate's announcement. It's a constant comment item in most of the City Facebook and etc groups. We don't exist in a vacuum here :-)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on January 09, 2015, 01:57:58 PM
We have had a fair amount of publicity since Ironwolf started. There's also the big stink that went up around September-ish time, where a large number of gamer sites picked up on the effort with Nate's announcement. It's a constant comment item in most of the City Facebook and etc groups. We don't exist in a vacuum here :-)

Still, the hoping of a core group of former players (of which I am definitely one!) has little to do with the actual priority level of CoX at NCSoft these days.  People are getting way too antsy over a game that clearly was thought so little of that it was shuttered in the first place.  I seriously doubt that rezzing it or licensing its IP are a big focus for NCSoft or that they have many people working on this. 

And it will be a big job for a small group of people (and something  they're doing around their jobs and families no less) to bring everything up to the pro level needed to rez and run a game, never mind make other pro games based off its IP, but all that has to happen to NCSoft's satisfaction before the wheels begin turning enough to satisfy many people here.  We'll be lucky if anything at all ever happens, so let's try not to get too impatient.   :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sihada on January 09, 2015, 02:47:07 PM
Well, yes, but it would be good if people could realize without being continually reminded that rezzing a zombie shutdown version of a long-shuttered game is the least of NCSoft's priorities, I'm sorry.  But they wouldn't have shut down the game in the first place if it was important in any way.  I'll be first in line to play it if and when it comes back, but it isn't going to be under the development of Paragon Studios, nor will it have updates or even bug fixes.  It's just a life-support version of a game that probably no one at NCSoft but the one guy Nate & Crew are currently talking to even knows might get rezzed.  I'd be surprised if 3 people total at NCSoft are even aware that there are talks to license out the IP.

That's wisdom right here.  This is not a high-visibility or high-priority project for NCSoft; there's no incentive for them to prioritize it above any other intiative.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 09, 2015, 04:18:36 PM
Still, the hoping of a core group of former players (of which I am definitely one!) has little to do with the actual priority level of CoX at NCSoft these days.  People are getting way too antsy over a game that clearly was thought so little of that it was shuttered in the first place.  I seriously doubt that rezzing it or licensing its IP are a big focus for NCSoft or that they have many people working on this. 

And it will be a big job for a small group of people (and something  they're doing around their jobs and families no less) to bring everything up to the pro level needed to rez and run a game, never mind make other pro games based off its IP, but all that has to happen to NCSoft's satisfaction before the wheels begin turning enough to satisfy many people here.  We'll be lucky if anything at all ever happens, so let's try not to get too impatient.   :)

I am hopeful as well things can work out, for so many reasons.  Funny thing is I actually ended up with MORE reasons to want to see this succeed(*looking at you and your cruel, con artist filled fan base, CO, and your con artist DEVS).  As I frequently said, City of heroes isn't dead, but wrongfully accused and in jail for the moment.  It's the communities job to free it.  And I want it to show people that not only can it make it, but it can make it without being a WoW clone.  City of heroes didn't copy other mmorpgs for the most part, unlike it's competition, which either started out it's own game and turned INTO a wow clone, or was a wow clone from the very beginning.

I get bored of both the competitors, and I even fall asleep playing one of them(CO).  Damn it, I need something that keeps me awake.  A game shouldn't be so boring to play as to cause me to fall asleep even if I had two afogatos, a third coffee plus two cans of coka cola or mountain dew.  I suppose more serious sam will have to do at times.  I also liked the faces of city of heroes to, CO's face editor suffers the same oblivion problem of everyone having down syndrome by default while DCUO has no custom faces.

I'm just bored LOL.

And, well, of the three, city of heroes was the most entertaining and I generally never got bored playing it.  Enemies were actually a danger to me and had a variety that made them interesting.  Powersets were different in feel and actual practice.  Controllers weren't just batteries that got yelled at for not playing a very very specific way or not being the very max level(I got yelled at in a tier 3 raid for not being geared for tier 5 or 6 as a controller cause I wasn't providing enough power and they think i'm just a pancakes battery).  Support wasn't just babysitting health bars and crowd control actually WORKED IN TEAMS.

Sorry, rant over.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on January 09, 2015, 07:59:23 PM
Well, yes, but it would be good if people could realize without being continually reminded that rezzing a zombie shutdown version of a long-shuttered game is the least of NCSoft's priorities, I'm sorry.  But they wouldn't have shut down the game in the first place if it was important in any way.  I'll be first in line to play it if and when it comes back, but it isn't going to be under the development of Paragon Studios, nor will it have updates or even bug fixes.  It's just a life-support version of a game that probably no one at NCSoft but the one guy Nate & Crew are currently talking to even knows might get rezzed.  I'd be surprised if 3 people total at NCSoft are even aware that there are talks to license out the IP.

So please, peeps, temper your thoughts with patience.  It could be summer, or next fall, or never.  Let's just hope against hope that it is actually *sometime.*
You may have mistaken my intent...I agree with everything you said.   I'm not really that impatient.  (any more than could be expected)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on January 10, 2015, 02:05:58 AM

And, well, of the three, city of heroes was the most entertaining and I generally never got bored playing it.  Enemies were actually a danger to me and had a variety that made them interesting.  Powersets were different in feel and actual practice.  Controllers weren't just batteries that got yelled at for not playing a very very specific way or not being the very max level(I got yelled at in a tier 3 raid for not being geared for tier 5 or 6 as a controller cause I wasn't providing enough power and they think i'm just a pancakes battery).  Support wasn't just babysitting health bars and crowd control actually WORKED IN TEAMS.

Sorry, rant over.

In my book, no need to apologize.  I thought that was a highly virtuous rant.  Hear, hear.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on January 10, 2015, 04:37:23 AM
As I frequently said, City of heroes isn't dead, but wrongfully accused and in jail for the moment.  It's the communities job to free it...

I like your outlook. It reminds me of something... It reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MVonyVSQoM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on January 10, 2015, 06:08:41 AM
. . .<Snip!> City of heroes isn't dead, but wrongfully accused and in jail for the moment.  It's the communities job to free it. <Snip!>. . .

The Zig's about to shatter!  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on January 10, 2015, 02:05:35 PM
... As I frequently said, City of heroes isn't dead, but wrongfully accused and in jail for the moment.  It's the communities job to free it.  ....

Haha, I love this.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on January 10, 2015, 04:57:48 PM
Why do I sense an oncoming mass of AE missions entitled "Break-In" (or variants thereof) occurring in the immediate future?

And come to think of it, an AE run based on the "Unity" Video would be fun, too!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Whatelse73 on January 12, 2015, 11:26:19 PM
Wow, I just read thru the other posting that led me to this one after 750 pages there. 

This is great, first time poster but I am glad to see what's what here and how much is going on with the process.

I look forward to seeing what happens.  Thanks again for the updates, info and efforts.

Oh, I was an altoholic that had at least over 150 characters across many servers.  So many combinations, so little time.  All of my characters were a Jeff of some sort.  I started playing CoH in August 2009.  I miss it and it seems many in CO miss it too, from the zone chatter that's always going on there when I pop my head in once in a while.

- The Jeffs
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on January 13, 2015, 02:20:14 AM
Wow, I just read thru the other posting that led me to this one after 750 pages there. 

This is great, first time poster but I am glad to see what's what here and how much is going on with the process.

I look forward to seeing what happens.  Thanks again for the updates, info and efforts.

Oh, I was an altoholic that had at least over 150 characters across many servers.  So many combinations, so little time.  All of my characters were a Jeff of some sort.  I started playing CoH in August 2009.  I miss it and it seems many in CO miss it too, from the zone chatter that's always going on there when I pop my head in once in a while.

- The Jeffs

Welcome aboard, Jeff!

*sputters*  over 150 characters!!  Wow!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on January 13, 2015, 03:32:32 PM
Welcome aboard, Jeff!

*sputters*  over 150 characters!!  Wow!!

That many characters won't even fit on Twitter!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mikenovember on January 13, 2015, 06:33:45 PM
Surely Korea works sometime.   

I mean, I already wondered if they would slow down during the holidays and was informed they do indeed have the same holiday tradition.   So at some point, they've got to go back to work like the West, right?

Having worked with (and currently working with) businesses in Asia and elsewhere, they have many holidays we don't, and don't celebrate a number that we do.  Fiscal quarters generally are based on a corporate work cycle, for example several companies here in the states I've worked with you'd consider "American" actually have a starting quarter in mid-summer, June or July and one I've worked with in August. 

Several companies I work with overseas - never stopped for the eastern holiday season.  I myself worked right through it in fact.  Never assume much about overseas (or even stateside) businesses having a set of 'rules'.  Most software based companies work based on product cycles, market share opportunities and so on.  AAA game companies often start to ramp up for the holiday season in May or June, which puts their efforts for development in the February / March time frame, so budgeting might hit around October/November with ramp up in Dec/Jan.   It really depends on the company.  I've seen all kinds of schedules over the years.  Depending on what their big delivery cycles are - that's where you want to look at, and then roll back from there. 

If the company traditionally drops product say in October to account for NA holiday sales, that's one thing if they're focused on on line DLC deliveries over a set of scheduled drop dates with one two titles a year - they'll have a delivery train set up for development, so if that's the case look for their financial quarters based on their stock filings.  (As a rule of thumb... like I said, there's no assurances.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on January 13, 2015, 08:43:27 PM
Welcome aboard, Jeff!

*sputters*  over 150 characters!!  Wow!!

That's not many, I had well over 200 on my main account alone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on January 13, 2015, 09:41:59 PM
That's not many, I had well over 200 on my main account alone.
oh my God it is over 9....err 200 !!! :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on January 13, 2015, 10:57:50 PM
Of course comes the big question: once the game returns; how many will you recreate? The favorites? The powerhouses? All of them?

Or create a few then wait for CoH 1.5?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 13, 2015, 11:47:15 PM
Of course comes the big question: once the game returns; how many will you recreate? The favorites? The powerhouses? All of them?

Or create a few then wait for CoH 1.5?

I think I will probably have 4-5 characters under construction right away but will keep with that.  I don't want to go to heavy on alts this time.

For praetoria, a stalker with kinetic melee/super reflexes.  I had a lot of success with that, and it was a character I was trying to get to 50 when the announcement came.

For hero side, likely a corruptor and maybe a mastermind.

Villain side?  Maybe a brute and scrapper or maybe a brute and dominator.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on January 14, 2015, 12:19:12 AM
I think I will probably have 4-5 characters under construction right away but will keep with that.  I don't want to go to heavy on alts this time.

For praetoria, a stalker with kinetic melee/super reflexes.  I had a lot of success with that, and it was a character I was trying to get to 50 when the announcement came.

For hero side, likely a corruptor and maybe a mastermind.

Villain side?  Maybe a brute and scrapper or maybe a brute and dominator.

Nice choices,  I'm thinking my original hero and villain toons, (blaster and brute) get recreated on their respective alignments, then when possible make them vigilante/rogue for badge gathering on either side.

rebuild primary Tanks, and a praetorian. 

After that will likely tinker with some ideas, and see what they say about characters moving from Legacy CoH to revival 1.5
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on January 14, 2015, 12:24:56 AM
Of course comes the big question: once the game returns; how many will you recreate? The favorites? The powerhouses? All of them?

Or create a few then wait for CoH 1.5?

Well I sentinel'd about 130, but the ones I'd remake first:

Mace/stone brute
Ice/mental blaster
Elec/shield scrapper
SS/fire brute
Dark/stone tank

and my signature toon stone/axe tank
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on January 14, 2015, 01:49:03 AM
Well I sentinel'd about 130, but the ones I'd remake first:

Mace/stone brute
Ice/mental blaster
Elec/shield scrapper
SS/fire brute
Dark/stone tank

and my signature toon stone/axe tank

Oh if only we can use the Sentinels in some way,...


Anyway how was stone/axe?  I had a stone/SS tank that worked great but was thinking of axe when the game got the axe.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on January 14, 2015, 01:52:48 AM
Of course comes the big question: once the game returns; how many will you recreate? The favorites? The powerhouses? All of them?

Or create a few then wait for CoH 1.5?
For myself I have a list on the characters I want to remake. There are those that will be retired  and there will be new characters such as a few from the champions online universe and my main character from the secret world would be made into the City of. universe.:D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Whatelse73 on January 14, 2015, 02:55:42 AM
I liked ranged types and Master Minds.  As soon as Villains came out I knew I would go overboard on the MMs.  I ended up doing every permutation of MM across multiple servers and even one Server that was all MMs.  As they added more secondary sets to MMs I was enjoying them even more. 

I'd definitely roll-up MMs and run with them.  They all had their positives and negatives so it was fun with them all.

I would probably do an electricity blaster because that was my first ever character way back when.  Quite enjoyable. 

I look forward to seeing reopening and even CoH 1.5 if there is one, especially if its in the same universe just with some upgrades.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on January 14, 2015, 11:19:32 AM
I will recreate my Fire/Dark Corruptor first.

I can run him at +1x8 at level 10 and +4x8 at higher levels. Then I can help rebuild the market! That is one of my goals to flood the market. I hope those who get the game actually seed the market to begin with like set every item to 1000 in stock. It would boost those starting out again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Gambit-X on January 14, 2015, 01:27:49 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on January 14, 2015, 02:06:39 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on January 14, 2015, 02:08:52 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dareon Kale on January 14, 2015, 03:02:20 PM
Grav/Time Controller first, I think. After that I'll rebuild a couple of scrappers. MA/Regen and ??/EA, I haven't really decided where to go with the EA toon yet, but I'll probably end up in Street Justice since SS and EM aren't scrapper options. Anything after that will just be building characters that fit whatever theme I'm feeling at the time. No doubt some will be recreations, but many will be new.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on January 14, 2015, 03:33:02 PM
I wish I knew which to make first, but I know four that will have to be made fast. They were basically my last four projects (none completed) and I just can't get them out of my head.

A Beam/Poison Corrupter. Time/Ice, Naff/DP and TA/Sonic Defenders.

After that... several I'm sure.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Groundbreaker on January 14, 2015, 03:49:33 PM
Definitely redoing some of my favourite alts. Whether they will be the first ones I do or not is a question I don't think I can answer until I'm logging in again. :)

Claws/Regen - Scrapper
Willpower/Mace - Tank
Dark/Dark - Defender
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on January 14, 2015, 04:41:47 PM
Then I can help rebuild the market! That is one of my goals to flood the market. I hope those who get the game actually seed the market to begin with like set every item to 1000 in stock. It would boost those starting out again.

I plan on trying my best to seed the market if the new devs don't have those sorts of tools, even though that'll make my toons take much longer. only problem will be the market slot limitations. I figure we'll be best served by posting recipes that aren't common in the base ae rolls. Back when the game was live i'd do things like post salvage for 1 inf all the time but I have to think market slots will be too precious for that kind of thing. Salvage is easy enough to get from ae anyway. And holy hell i almost just wrote "mats" instead of "salvage". Really need CoX back soon :P

Also as far as planned alts, I just checked mids and evidently my jonesing to play has resulted in 33 planned alts already. Hopefully some of them won't seem so appealing when they require leveling and slotting.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 14, 2015, 07:54:35 PM
Grav/Time Controller first, I think. After that I'll rebuild a couple of scrappers. MA/Regen and ??/EA, I haven't really decided where to go with the EA toon yet, but I'll probably end up in Street Justice since SS and EM aren't scrapper options. Anything after that will just be building characters that fit whatever theme I'm feeling at the time. No doubt some will be recreations, but many will be new.

I keep debating if a character should be a grav/time controller myself.  Alot of it boils down to the fact that, I want to really show people how support works in city of heroes when it comes back.  To show that there are so many more things you can do besides just being the healer who never attacks or does anything else know?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on January 14, 2015, 08:40:13 PM
I keep debating if a character should be a grav/time controller myself.  Alot of it boils down to the fact that, I want to really show people how support works in city of heroes when it comes back.  To show that there are so many more things you can do besides just being the healer who never attacks or does anything else know?

I was leveling Grav/Time when the game shutdown.  I really liked the combo, although I think you have to be a veteran player to get the most out of it.

I still think in terms of maximum jack of all trades, you can't beat Ill/Rad.  Its a cliche, but there isn't much that combo is missing.  Heals, confuse, speed, recovery, damage, rez, stealth, rainbow debuffs and indestructible aggro magnets.  The only things it doesn't do are defense and resistance buffs, and endurance drain.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: rezulin on January 14, 2015, 09:04:31 PM
  Please , Please don't put salvage up for 1 inf.  Put it up for 200 inf for common, I think it was 400 for Uncommon, and Rares, well they weren't usually a problem.

  See if you put them up for 1 inf, people will buy them for the minimum and turn around and sell them to vendors at 200 inf per.  This makes the buyer rich, (buy low sell high) and the supply dry up faster than . . than . .  well something that dries up real fast.

  I had friends tell me how they made hundreds of thousands of inf this way.  It blew my mind and made me a little angry too, as the salvage that I needed would be either difficult to find, or priced WAY above what it should (looking at you Luck Charms).

  By setting the floor at vendor buying prices, the supply remains relatively stable, unless someone is actively spending inf to destroy it.

Fuegocito
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on January 14, 2015, 09:11:46 PM
Common salvage vendors for 250, and that's a stupid way to make inf. It's such a tiny amount per piece and you can only bid on / carry so much salvage at once that it's terribly inefficient and takes forever to make a few hundred thousand, which isn't very much. You're actually losing inf compared to spending that time running missions or playing the market.

If you're going to buy vendor trash, level 50 recipes are a better bet, but even they take a while to build up any sizable amount.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AmberOfDzu on January 14, 2015, 09:27:44 PM
Vendoring under-priced items a nice way to get a little starter cash in the beginning, but I'd hate to try to make a lot of inf that way.

I used to list all my common salvage at 1 in the market, and still made money on it. Most players would bid over that, and this made up for the ones who snipped them off at 1inf. I wasn't trying to make a profit on this stuff though -- I was partly being charitable and partly getting the stuff out of my inventory.

The "real" money was in either serious farming, or playing the market in expensive, high-end, enhancements and recipes. I couldn't say which was better, since I didn't farm much or seriously.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on January 14, 2015, 10:38:30 PM
Common salvage vendors for 250, and that's a stupid way to make inf. It's such a tiny amount per piece and you can only bid on / carry so much salvage at once that it's terribly inefficient and takes forever to make a few hundred thousand, which isn't very much. You're actually losing inf compared to spending that time running missions or playing the market.

If you're going to buy vendor trash, level 50 recipes are a better bet, but even they take a while to build up any sizable amount.

Where my characters got their walking around, change in the pocket money for basic IO upgrades was buying recipes on the market low such as level 35 generic Range recipes, or the excotic Level 45  Fly recipe type  of thing. The sellers usually underpriced the recipe and you could flat out vend them at the NPC for 10x more than the value it was sold at.

Most people wanted  level 30/35s or 50s, and I never  bought out all the level 30 and 35s of any type of generic recipe.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on January 14, 2015, 11:48:26 PM
Vendoring under-priced items a nice way to get a little starter cash in the beginning, but I'd hate to try to make a lot of inf that way.

I had a few lowbies who used to pay about 100 inf for salvage at the market, they would load up and then take that over to the vendor and sell it for 250 inf. It all added up surprisingly quickly, and paid for my first few sets of enhancements. I don't know why I used to do that, but I did. I could, and sometimes did transfer cash from loaded level 50s.... sometimes this sort of thing could be a fun little adjunct activity though.

Or maybe I am just weird  8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on January 15, 2015, 01:54:52 AM
Of course comes the big question: once the game returns; how many will you recreate? The favorites? The powerhouses? All of them?

Or create a few then wait for CoH 1.5?
I've had a lot of time both during and after CoH's run to ponder what worked (for me) and what didn't.  By the end, I was playing Controllers almost exclusively, and, as my preferred roles were:

A)  Locking down groups with Holds and Slows
B)  Confusing enemies rather than fighting them myself, or loosing pets on them if I needed to
C)  Stealthing ahead to the end of the mission whenever I could possibly get away with it

My final most optimal choice (for me) was an Illusion/Time Controller.  The absolute best stealth in the game (go look up Stealth for a comparison chart on ParagonWiki), lots of long distance Holds and Slows, a Confuse available, and 2x pets (Phantom Army and Phantasm).  Since the shutdown, I've tweaked it in Mids, and even gotten some help here on the Character Optimization boards to make my last build even more efficient.

So at present, I'm primarily interested in picking up where I left off, though I've toyed with builds for a Fortunata and a Mind Dominator as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on January 15, 2015, 02:14:27 AM
I will recreate my Fire/Dark Corruptor first.

I can run him at +1x8 at level 10 and +4x8 at higher levels. Then I can help rebuild the market! That is one of my goals to flood the market. I hope those who get the game actually seed the market to begin with like set every item to 1000 in stock. It would boost those starting out again.
Some of you guys were playing a different game than me.   wow...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on January 15, 2015, 02:15:14 AM
Lord, I forgot I'll no longer have the field crafter badge...

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on January 15, 2015, 02:20:43 AM
Some of you guys were playing a different game than me.   wow...

You can do insane things with a fire/dark with or without ae-catered missions

And to what I was playing late - mostly brutes and doms with the occasional controller when I wanted a team player.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 15, 2015, 02:35:13 AM
Some of you guys were playing a different game than me.   wow...

I had a fire blast/time manipulation corruptor that could probably have soloed on +4 8x, though I was playing on just 8X for killing speed purposes(more enemies dead = more drops per hour).  I could also do so on my energy/time corruptor, the time/fire defender certainly(yeah, I know, redundancy abound in there).  I could do so on my brute and my fortunata to.

It was how I got purple recipes to drop :).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on January 15, 2015, 03:19:49 AM
I was leveling Grav/Time when the game shutdown.  I really liked the combo, although I think you have to be a veteran player to get the most out of it.

I still think in terms of maximum jack of all trades, you can't beat Ill/Rad.  Its a cliche, but there isn't much that combo is missing.  Heals, confuse, speed, recovery, damage, rez, stealth, rainbow debuffs and indestructible aggro magnets.  The only things it doesn't do are defense and resistance buffs, and endurance drain.

Grav/Time is an awesome build. Here is my build at shutdown

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.96
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build! (http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1548&c=713&a=1426&f=HEX&dc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

: Level 50 Technology Controller
Primary Power Set: Gravity Control
Secondary Power Set: Time Manipulation
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Teleportation
Ancillary Pool: Psionic Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Crush -- HO:Nucle(A), HO:Nucle(3), HO:Nucle(3)
Level 1: Time Crawl -- Acc-I(A)
Level 2: Gravity Distortion -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(5), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(5), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(34), HO:Perox(34)
Level 4: Temporal Mending -- Dct'dW-Heal(A), Dct'dW-Rchg(17), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(19), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(37), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(37)
Level 6: Propel -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(7), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(7), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(25), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(43), HO:Centri(46)
Level 8: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(9), RechRdx-I(9)
Level 10: Crushing Field -- Enf'dOp-Acc/EndRdx(A), TotHntr-Acc/EndRdx(11), GravAnch-Hold%(11), ImpSwft-Dam%(15), Posi-Dam%(17), TotHntr-Dam%(42)
Level 12: Time's Juncture -- HO:Enzym(A), HO:Enzym(13), HO:Enzym(13)
Level 14: Super Speed -- Clrty-Stlth(A)
Level 16: Distortion Field -- BasGaze-Acc/Hold(A), BasGaze-Acc/Rchg(23), BasGaze-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(23), BasGaze-Rchg/Hold(39)
Level 18: Gravity Distortion Field -- BasGaze-Acc/Hold(A), BasGaze-Acc/Rchg(19), BasGaze-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(21), BasGaze-Rchg/Hold(21), HO:Endo(25)
Level 20: Time Stop -- BasGaze-Acc/Hold(A), BasGaze-Acc/Rchg(36), BasGaze-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(36), BasGaze-Rchg/Hold(37)
Level 22: Lift -- HO:Nucle(A), HO:Nucle(36), HO:Nucle(50)
Level 24: Hover -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 26: Wormhole -- Amaze-Stun(A), Amaze-Stun/Rchg(27), Amaze-Acc/Stun/Rchg(27), Amaze-Acc/Rchg(31), Amaze-EndRdx/Stun(34)
Level 28: Farsight -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(29), RechRdx-I(29), LkGmblr-Rchg+(40)
Level 30: Recall Friend -- Zephyr-ResKB(A)
Level 32: Singularity -- HO:Nucle(A), HO:Nucle(33), HO:Perox(33)
Level 35: Slowed Response -- HO:Lyso(A), HO:Lyso(42)
Level 38: Chrono Shift -- Dct'dW-Heal(A), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(39), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(39), Dct'dW-Rchg(40), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(40)
Level 41: Mental Blast -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(42), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(43), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(43), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(45), HO:Nucle(46)
Level 44: Indomitable Will -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(45), RechRdx-I(45), LkGmblr-Rchg+(46)
Level 47: Psionic Tornado -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(48), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(48), Posi-Dmg/Rng(48), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(50), EndRdx-I(50)
Level 49: Temporal Selection -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Containment
Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Flight-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(A), Mrcl-Rcvry+(33)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(31), EndMod-I(31)
Level 50: Nerve Total Core Revamp
Level 50: Void Total Core Judgement
Level 50: Spectral Total Radial Conversion
Level 50: Polar Lights Total Core Improved Ally
Level 50: Ageless Partial Core Invocation
------------
------------
Set Bonus Totals:







Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on January 15, 2015, 04:56:15 AM
Lord, I forgot I'll no longer have the field crafter badge...

Don't remind me, some badges were not worth the grind and having to complete 5000 or so craftings was not worth it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AmberOfDzu on January 15, 2015, 01:20:29 PM
Don't remind me, some badges were not worth the grind and having to complete 5000 or so craftings was not worth it.
But... but.. but... floating crafting table!!  :O
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kierthos on January 15, 2015, 01:39:18 PM
The first character I'd recreate is my Rad/Rad Defender.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on January 15, 2015, 02:51:00 PM
But... but.. but... floating crafting table!!  :O

Make that a purchasable item in the store and I'm in.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on January 15, 2015, 03:58:01 PM
But... but.. but... floating crafting table!!  :O

There are indications in the files that they were planning to sell the floating crafting table power from the Field Crafter badge in the microtransaction store within the next 6 months. I wonder how that would have gone over.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Balince on January 15, 2015, 04:12:56 PM
Going straight to my favorite set I've ever played spines scrapper. My original was spines/regen but I'll have to think about it. As lame as it sounds I loved hearing quills going off. My first welcome to CoH moment, in the hollows teaming with a random spines scrapper and seeing him impale, it was love at first sight lol.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on January 15, 2015, 04:45:24 PM
Don't remind me, some badges were not worth the grind and having to complete 5000 or so craftings was not worth it.
Actually, I thought the portable crafting table was *very* worth it.  Yes, it was a pain in the rear to finally achieve, but combined with remote market access, you could be out at the tail end of the Shadow Shards and make anything on the spot.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on January 15, 2015, 04:51:05 PM

I personally loved having the crafting table and market access. Allowed me to do some crafting/marketeering in between things no matter where I was.
It wouldn't have bothered me if they offered that option to people to buy... I mean it is money being spent towards the game. The crafting table was a convenience and in no way do I consider it a pay2win item. If it would have been account wide... I would have purchased it.



There are indications in the files that they were planning to sell the floating crafting table power from the Field Crafter badge in the microtransaction store within the next 6 months. I wonder how that would have gone over.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on January 15, 2015, 06:37:01 PM
There are indications in the files that they were planning to sell the floating crafting table power from the Field Crafter badge in the microtransaction store within the next 6 months. I wonder how that would have gone over.

The term lead balloon comes to mind....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on January 15, 2015, 07:14:07 PM
  Please , Please don't put salvage up for 1 inf.  Put it up for 200 inf for common, I think it was 400 for Uncommon, and Rares, well they weren't usually a problem.

  See if you put them up for 1 inf, people will buy them for the minimum and turn around and sell them to vendors at 200 inf per.  This makes the buyer rich, (buy low sell high) and the supply dry up faster than . . than . .  well something that dries up real fast.

  I had friends tell me how they made hundreds of thousands of inf this way.  It blew my mind and made me a little angry too, as the salvage that I needed would be either difficult to find, or priced WAY above what it should (looking at you Luck Charms).

It blows my mind also, because its several times faster to street-sweep greens than do that.  "Hundreds of thousands" of inf might sound like a lot, and if you only played low level alts and did not ever level one to high level, it could be a lot.  But as a "get rich" strategy?  To me that's a "get crazy running around" strategy.  A level 50 alt can make that kind of influence just playing the game normally and dumping the drops they get periodically on a time scale of an hour or less on average, and I'm not even talking about farming: I'm talking about a casual player that runs standard missions at standard difficulty and doesn't farm anything.

Keep in mind that if I didn't think it would sell for at least thousands of inf, I would regularly just plain throw it away to make space in my inventory for a potentially better random drop.  Across all my gameplay after Issue 9 launched (when inventions and the auction house were released) its entirely possible that I've thrown away hundreds of millions of inf of stuff collectively, simply because it was not worth the space it was taking up in my inventory.

But lets say I wanted to execute your strategy.  Part of the problem with the cheap stuff is that its cheap because no one wants it, or is only willing to spend very little on it.  Suppose I took a stack of common salvage and put it up for 200 inf.  Its likely that because no one is bidding that amount, that stack would just sit there in my auction house slots.  And sit there.  And sit there.  Eventually, very quickly in fact, I would fill all my auction house slots with common salvage that didn't sell.  Now I couldn't sell anything anymore.  I couldn't even sell any more common salvage and would have to start throwing it away.  Or my inventory fills up and then I don't get any drops any more at all.  Its a self-defeating strategy.  Auction house slots are valuable: too valuable to have a stack of common salvage stuck in it for weeks or months or forever not selling because no one ever comes along and tries to spend what you're asking for it, because lots more people are still willing to dump it for 50, 20, even 1 inf.  If it prevents you from selling even one piece of rare salvage at a good price, it ends up costing you far more than you could ever make.

And it *still* doesn't really alter the supply/demand equation by any noticeable amount.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on January 15, 2015, 07:47:47 PM
Please, Please don't put salvage up for 1 inf.  Put it up for 200 inf for common, I think it was 400 for Uncommon, and Rares, well they weren't usually a problem.

See if you put them up for 1 inf, people will buy them for the minimum and turn around and sell them to vendors at 200 inf per.  This makes the buyer rich, (buy low sell high) and the supply dry up faster than . . than . .  well something that dries up real fast.

I had friends tell me how they made hundreds of thousands of inf this way.  It blew my mind and made me a little angry too, as the salvage that I needed would be either difficult to find, or priced WAY above what it should (looking at you Luck Charms).

By setting the floor at vendor buying prices, the supply remains relatively stable, unless someone is actively spending inf to destroy it.

Fuegocito
LOL, I had friends who loved to do that on the market - buy low and then sell to the trainers.  It was their sure-fire INF-making scheme in the early-to-mid years of CoH, before we all had too much INF to know what to do with and could just e-mail a few million or so to any new characters to keep them well supplied.

I find it a bit amusing that you got angry at this - there's basically no way to stop people from doing it.

In my early days, I actually spent real-world money several times buying large piles of INF.  I was never caught, because I knew the people in RL and they were members of my SG.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 15, 2015, 08:35:36 PM
  Please , Please don't put salvage up for 1 inf.  Put it up for 200 inf for common, I think it was 400 for Uncommon, and Rares, well they weren't usually a problem.

  See if you put them up for 1 inf, people will buy them for the minimum and turn around and sell them to vendors at 200 inf per.  This makes the buyer rich, (buy low sell high) and the supply dry up faster than . . than . .  well something that dries up real fast.

  I had friends tell me how they made hundreds of thousands of inf this way.  It blew my mind and made me a little angry too, as the salvage that I needed would be either difficult to find, or priced WAY above what it should (looking at you Luck Charms).

  By setting the floor at vendor buying prices, the supply remains relatively stable, unless someone is actively spending inf to destroy it.

Fuegocito

I'll say this about the city of heroes auction house.  It was a far more stable platform than what i've seen in DCUO or CO.  The prices if they were high and did start dropping, usually only dropped for legitimate reasons and it was usually gradual.  CO?  Well, often what happens is because everyone can see the prices of the items, you get what I love to call an "Underbid war", in which, due to the rather short timer of putting things up for sale(your auction would expire after only 15 days), some jerks would eventually see your prices, and put the same items up for a lower price and prevent you from selling at all.

Then some other jerk would put their own items up for cheaper and so on and on.  An item that was once say 10-20 globals could drop down to only 5 in a matter of hours.  Items in the thousands of globals or hundreds of globals were the only safe things to put up there.  It was both brutally annoying and frustrating.  This also ensured you couldn't trade at all as a silver, because of the extremely low global cap of only 250.  That may be made worst if/when they make cosmic keys bind on purchase like has happened in NWO.  It's hoped the devs of CO aren't that stupid and that PWE doesn't do that to the game, if it happens the game for sure will die.

Then course DCUO has the same problem but even worst, far, far worst.  Your auction expires in 48 hours, max, and you see some of the same under-bidding wars going on.  Only even very high priced items end up risky to sell.

Thing is city of heroes handled it smart in that, by hiding the prices people were asking for, it allowed not only for people to "negotiate" prices but it also prevented the under-bid wars we'd see.  Putting an underbid up would often cause it to instantly sell as people buying could set a price they were willing to buy, and it'd sell instantly when put up.  That'd tell people selling "maybe I should have asked for more?".  This combined with a lack of a limit and a lack of expiration date, prevented any kind of "Underbidding" wars from starting out of pressure of making sure the items sold.  Prices remained far more stable because of that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kelltick on January 15, 2015, 09:29:32 PM
I'll say this about the city of heroes auction house.  It was a far more stable platform than what i've seen in DCUO or CO.  The prices if they were high and did start dropping, usually only dropped for legitimate reasons and it was usually gradual.  CO?  Well, often what happens is because everyone can see the prices of the items, you get what I love to call an "Underbid war", in which, due to the rather short timer of putting things up for sale(your auction would expire after only 15 days), some jerks would eventually see your prices, and put the same items up for a lower price and prevent you from selling at all.

Then some other jerk would put their own items up for cheaper and so on and on.  An item that was once say 10-20 globals could drop down to only 5 in a matter of hours.  Items in the thousands of globals or hundreds of globals were the only safe things to put up there.  It was both brutally annoying and frustrating.  This also ensured you couldn't trade at all as a silver, because of the extremely low global cap of only 250.  That may be made worst if/when they make cosmic keys bind on purchase like has happened in NWO.  It's hoped the devs of CO aren't that stupid and that PWE doesn't do that to the game, if it happens the game for sure will die.

Then course DCUO has the same problem but even worst, far, far worst.  Your auction expires in 48 hours, max, and you see some of the same under-bidding wars going on.  Only even very high priced items end up risky to sell.

Thing is city of heroes handled it smart in that, by hiding the prices people were asking for, it allowed not only for people to "negotiate" prices but it also prevented the under-bid wars we'd see.  Putting an underbid up would often cause it to instantly sell as people buying could set a price they were willing to buy, and it'd sell instantly when put up.  That'd tell people selling "maybe I should have asked for more?".  This combined with a lack of a limit and a lack of expiration date, prevented any kind of "Underbidding" wars from starting out of pressure of making sure the items sold.  Prices remained far more stable because of that.

Don't ever play EvE Online if those small-time bidding wars bugged ya.  Selling stuff in that game is damn near a full-time endeavor just to make sure your product moves.  Almost instantaneous 0.01 undercutting, depending on which market hub you're at and what product you're trading in, not to mention the price games people would play to take advantage of certain mechanics.  For instance, there is a brief window whereupon setting a price for your goods you are locked out of changing the price again.  During this window you may have made a sale, the market is that fluid.

However, given the small size and (to some) difficulty of reading the font (example: an 8 and a 0 look very similar in the market window) people would take advantage.  A product gets posted at a price of 888.08, hoping the competitor reads it as 888.88, who then lists their product for 888.87, still more expensive than the listing of 888.08 and thus losing out on the potential sale.  And often times you're selling/managing multiple products (can't recall the cap on market orders, but I do know it is over 50 at a time) and thus have multiple products prices to manage, you can quickly lose precious minutes of potential sales, only to have the cycle repeat itself the very second after you correct the price to be the current lowest sale price.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 15, 2015, 09:32:19 PM
Don't ever play EvE Online if those small-time bidding wars bugged ya.  Selling stuff in that game is damn near a full-time endeavor just to make sure your product moves.  Almost instantaneous 0.01 undercutting, depending on which market hub you're at and what product you're trading in.

I chose not to bother with EVE because of how I hear the very in-game economy is tied to actual money.  At the very least I am guessing it's players deciding the prices at least, rather than the company itself, as I also hear it's economy is entirely player driven including the prices of everything in it.  Unlike CO and the whole lockbox schemes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kelltick on January 15, 2015, 09:45:10 PM
I chose not to bother with EVE because of how I hear the very in-game economy is tied to actual money.  At the very least I am guessing it's players deciding the prices at least, rather than the company itself, as I also hear it's economy is entirely player driven including the prices of everything in it.  Unlike CO and the whole lockbox schemes.

Yes and no.  It's rather complex in how products have a price floor (I can get into it with you if you like, but that is, as I said, complex) but they do have a rough price floor.  But yes, save for some worthless NPC goods that have no bearing on player industry and thus the overall game, every product is priced by the players.

As for the real-money tie-in, that is for a product called PLEX, meaning Pilot License EXtension, or a fancy name for gametime.  You purchase the PLEX in pairs w/ real money from CCP (EvE dev) and with those 2 PLEX you are then free to use them, trade them, or sell them on the market for in-game currency - other than CCP setting the real money price for the PLEX, their value in-game is again player driven.  In a sense it's an attempt to dissuade "gold-selling" as you can legally/TOS/EULA agreeably do the same through the game itself.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 15, 2015, 09:52:34 PM
Yes and no.  It's rather complex in how products have a price floor (I can get into it with you if you like, but that is, as I said, complex) but they do have a rough price floor.  But yes, save for some worthless NPC goods that have no bearing on player industry and thus the overall game, every product is priced by the players.

As for the real-money tie-in, that is for a product called PLEX, meaning Pilot License EXtension, or a fancy name for gametime.  You purchase the PLEX in pairs w/ real money from CCP (EvE dev) and with those 2 PLEX you are then free to use them, trade them, or sell them on the market for in-game currency - other than CCP setting the real money price for the PLEX, their value in-game is again player driven.  In a sense it's an attempt to dissuade "gold-selling" as you can legally/TOS/EULA agreeably do the same through the game itself.

I think it's alot smarter and more upfront than the lockboxes we've been seeing in CO then.  As it not only combats gold selling since you have a legitimate system in place but it ensures people are not so easy to "Scam" by the developer themselves.  The fact that everything can be earned in game means that nerfs to items cannot be tied to baiting and switching to I'd believe.  What hurts CO is the fact that, many of the lockbox items are truely lock-box only.  If it's drifter salvage, thats also lockbox only.  And cosmic keys?  Someone somewhere spent money for it, in some way or another.  Zen from Q?  Also from someone who spent money on that.

Items on the drifter store and in lockboxes cannot be earned in game.  So money is spent sooner or later on them thus when they get excessively nerfed, you end up with the outcries you see.  And the severe drop in popularity over the last two months that resulted from that.  It(CO) really is deliberately made to make money rather than be a good game.

Players scamming others is one thing but then whats happened in CO thats, well, the developers doing, whether it was intentional or not it was :S.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kelltick on January 15, 2015, 10:04:06 PM
I think it's alot smarter and more upfront than the lockboxes we've been seeing in CO then.  As it not only combats gold selling since you have a legitimate system in place but it ensures people are not so easy to "Scam" by the developer themselves.  The fact that everything can be earned in game means that nerfs to items cannot be tied to baiting and switching to I'd believe.  What hurts CO is the fact that, many of the lockbox items are truely lock-box only.  If it's drifter salvage, thats also lockbox only.  And cosmic keys?  Someone somewhere spent money for it, in some way or another.  Zen from Q?  Also from someone who spent money on that.

Items on the drifter store and in lockboxes cannot be earned in game.  So money is spent sooner or later on them thus when they get excessively nerfed, you end up with the outcries you see.  And the severe drop in popularity over the last two months that resulted from that.  It really is deliberately made to make money rather than be a good game.

Players scamming others is one thing but then whats happened in CO thats, well, the developers doing, whether it was intentional or not it was :S.

Agree - generally speaking CCP takes a complete hands-off approach to the markets.  There are a few instances where they have changed a few things that have impacts on the market (this ties into the complex price floor I alluded to) but overall they let the market live and breath on its own accord, obvious exploits aside.  In a game where scamming other players is allowed (and some would say encouraged, but that is an arguement in semantics) the devs do keep out of the economy of the game to a surprising large extent, and don't engage in some of the cash-grab activities of other games.

While yes, you can use real money to acquire in-game currency, you still use that in-game currency to acquire products built/looted by other players.  The only cash-shop items are 100% cosmetic (as far as I know, it's been some time since I've played).  There certainly aren't any P2W items, nor lockboxes or anything similar.  So you can use real money to get "space rich" but it doesn't really offer you any advantages over other players other than having the funds available to buy the next shiny ship you want to go get blown up.

CCP is smart in that it knows it has a sizable portion of its playerbase that play the game strictly for the markets.  As a finance/economics guy myself, that was my draw to the game and kept me playing long past when I would have cut and run normally.  Hell, at one point they had their own in-house economist to help monitor things, set the "price-floor" on new ships/items they were introducing into the game, and tweak anything that needed tweaking.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on January 15, 2015, 10:12:16 PM
So you can use real money to get "space rich" but it doesn't really offer you any advantages over other players other than having the funds available to buy the next shiny ship you want to go get blown up.

Or you can put $1,500 worth of plex onto a ship and watch it get blown up

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/12/30/eve-online-player-loses-1-500-in-a-ship-attack/
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 15, 2015, 10:20:31 PM
Agree - generally speaking CCP takes a complete hands-off approach to the markets.  There are a few instances where they have changed a few things that have impacts on the market (this ties into the complex price floor I alluded to) but overall they let the market live and breath on its own accord, obvious exploits aside.  In a game where scamming other players is allowed (and some would say encouraged, but that is an arguement in semantics) the devs do keep out of the economy of the game to a surprising large extent, and don't engage in some of the cash-grab activities of other games.

While yes, you can use real money to acquire in-game currency, you still use that in-game currency to acquire products built/looted by other players.  The only cash-shop items are 100% cosmetic (as far as I know, it's been some time since I've played).  There certainly aren't any P2W items, nor lockboxes or anything similar.  So you can use real money to get "space rich" but it doesn't really offer you any advantages over other players other than having the funds available to buy the next shiny ship you want to go get blown up.

CCP is smart in that it knows it has a sizable portion of its playerbase that play the game strictly for the markets.  As a finance/economics guy myself, that was my draw to the game and kept me playing long past when I would have cut and run normally.  Hell, at one point they had their own in-house economist to help monitor things, set the "price-floor" on new ships/items they were introducing into the game, and tweak anything that needed tweaking.

To the person who just posted before this yes I heard about that :).  Still earnable in game but yeah, I also heard about a war that had cost over 300k.  But, back to the post i'm replying directly to.  I can get behind a game in which the only store-only items are purely cosmetic.  Thats what DCUO does, primarily with things like aura and some costume pieces.  DCUO instead lives on it's subscriptions as you cannot advance beyond a certain combat rating for free, even then as long as you have the dlc's you can advance now as they opened advancement up as you can earn marks of triumph/fury in game and you still have to earn your combat ratings.  That game your subscription really is paying for the game to get new content and to keep it running compared to CO which uses only money for boxes and a tiny, mini scale amount of content per year that is often bland.

Edit: Well, ok not that event specifically but the war last year I recall?  Yeah.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kelltick on January 15, 2015, 10:21:00 PM
Or you can put $1,500 worth of plex onto a ship and watch it get blown up

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/12/30/eve-online-player-loses-1-500-in-a-ship-attack/

It never ceases to amaze me at the stupidity of people in that game.  I still get a kick out of how many people fall for the obvious ponzi schemes and flat-out "investment" scams.  A fool and his money...

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/08/12/biggest-eve-online-scam-ever-recorded-nets-over-a-trillion-isk/
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 15, 2015, 10:25:43 PM
It never ceases to amaze me at the stupidity of people in that game.  I still get a kick out of how many people fall for the obvious ponzi schemes and flat-out "investment" scams.  A fool and his money...

I'm laughing at the whole thing right now, I feel bad for the guy but yeah.  Someone even said that had the plex dropped the attacker would have gotten seven years worth of subscriptions.  Damn LOL, that would have been one hell of a payday.  I wonder though what kind of job this guy had to have done that like really LOL.  Insanity.

Edit: And yeah, stupidity.

Another Edit: Read through what you just shared.  A little despicable to be honest.  Why are the trolls of CO playing CO again when they could be playing Eve?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Battlechimp on January 15, 2015, 11:17:14 PM
In my early days, I actually spent real-world money several times buying large piles of INF.  I was never caught, because I knew the people in RL and they were members of my SG.

With, this I find it mind boggling that you paid real money to a SG mate for inf.  And not in the "why would someone pay real money for influence way". But more in the "A SG member charged you for influence!?".  :)

We apparently ran in very different crowds :). I remember a SG mate mention in chat that he finally worked out. Build for one character, but it'd take him a while to earn enough to get all the IOs he needed.  People started piping in with "What did you need, I'll see what I got". "I have some of those crafted, I'll drop them in the bins". "I got the salvage to craft those I'll mail them to you".  He got almost all he needed from people in the SG

That is one of the biggest things I miss about CoH, that kind of community.  I have yet to join any group in another game that was willing to just help out other members, just because they could. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AmberOfDzu on January 15, 2015, 11:42:49 PM
We apparently ran in very different crowds :). I remember a SG mate mention in chat that he finally worked out. Build for one character, but it'd take him a while to earn enough to get all the IOs he needed.  People started piping in with "What did you need, I'll see what I got". "I have some of those crafted, I'll drop them in the bins". "I got the salvage to craft those I'll mail them to you".  He got almost all he needed from people in the SG

That is one of the biggest things I miss about CoH, that kind of community.  I have yet to join any group in another game that was willing to just help out other members, just because they could.
+1

I had a lot of inf on my CoH account, distributed on quite a few "mule" characters and stored in market bids that were very unlikely to fill (had to be careful with these -- people did get burned occasionally!). But what was most fun was being able to give Inf away. I used to fund costume contests, buy prestige for other people's SG's, and help out needy players with getting their enhancements. Huge amounts of Inf really weren't that useful, and that was part of the charm of CoH -- it was easy for people to show their better, more charitable, nature.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on January 16, 2015, 12:58:08 AM
With, this I find it mind boggling that you paid real money to a SG mate for inf.  And not in the "why would someone pay real money for influence way". But more in the "A SG member charged you for influence!?".  :)

We apparently ran in very different crowds :). I remember a SG mate mention in chat that he finally worked out. Build for one character, but it'd take him a while to earn enough to get all the IOs he needed.  People started piping in with "What did you need, I'll see what I got". "I have some of those crafted, I'll drop them in the bins". "I got the salvage to craft those I'll mail them to you".  He got almost all he needed from people in the SG

That is one of the biggest things I miss about CoH, that kind of community.  I have yet to join any group in another game that was willing to just help out other members, just because they could.
Well, it works out that our poorest (in RL) member happened to be our best farmer and most skilled marketeer; he was positively swimming in cash and loot in-game.  Whereas I make the most (in RL) in our group of friends, but had less time to game.  As I had expensive tastes in-game (give me lots of those lovely purples and LotGs for my L50's!), it seemed a reasonable trade.  I think our typical rate was $10 billion INF for $100 USD.  I must have paid him at least $500 over about 4 years.  We used to joke that he was an honorary Chinese Gold Farmer.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on January 16, 2015, 02:14:21 AM
Oh, I do miss playing the market in game. I just couldn't get over that some people were willing to pay 2 billion inf for one of those 3% resistance IOs from the PvP zones. I'd do those weekly hero merit runs with *every* character I had. Some of them multiple times for the different rewards. Then, when they had several of those mini-arcs, I'd run all of them on all my characters that could easily do them.

I think I must have sold about 20 or so of those after I put them to good use in my favored characters.

In real life, at the time, I'd spent a year unemployed, pretty much broke. Savings account getting smaller and smaller. Heck, I'd play just to feel rich, lol. Ah, those were the days of playing for hours and hours on end...thankfully those days are over.

It was always nice to be able to drop 100 million inf before the Really Hard Way runs to help out those who didn't have all the bells and whistles to give them every edge they could get.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on January 16, 2015, 04:26:42 AM
Oh, I do miss playing the market in game. I just couldn't get over that some people were willing to pay 2 billion inf for one of those 3% resistance IOs from the PvP zones. I'd do those weekly hero merit runs with *every* character I had. Some of them multiple times for the different rewards. Then, when they had several of those mini-arcs, I'd run all of them on all my characters that could easily do them.

I think I must have sold about 20 or so of those after I put them to good use in my favored characters.

At one point, I was farming PvPIOs just to measure the relative drop rate.  I might have been responsible for a significant fraction of the PvP sales prior to F2P at certain times.  When you spend literally years running multi-box sessions measuring defense powers, testing critter AI, farming Empath, measuring the server clock - eventually when the day comes and you decide you want a few PvPIOs to round out a couple of builds, it doesn't take long before your home computers become a PvPIO factory:

(https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7561/16264831056_cb7d5f397f_o.jpg)

If the game does come back, and I have time to play when it does, and the operators decide not to reseed the marketplace (assuming the marketplace itself comes back: those were a separate set of servers from the actual game servers), well, its possible *someone* might try to fill the markets back up again.

(It would probably be in the operators' best interests to just up and give me admin9 rather than have me blitz the game servers with that activity, actually).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on January 16, 2015, 05:56:00 AM
(It would probably be in the operators' best interests to just up and give me admin9 rather than have me blitz the game servers with that activity, actually).

Pfft, AL10 or bust. You need 10 to use the really fun stuff like the I Win Button or Vince Is Evil.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on January 16, 2015, 11:51:28 AM
Or turn it up to 11.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on January 16, 2015, 03:27:03 PM
Or turn it up to 11.

11 is great and all, but I think 12 is more intense.

(https://i.imgur.com/FmVl9l7.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AmberOfDzu on January 16, 2015, 03:44:00 PM
Oh, I do miss playing the market in game. I just couldn't get over that some people were willing to pay 2 billion inf for one of those 3% resistance IOs from the PvP zones.

If one has tens or hundreds of billions, 2 billion for an IO may not seem like much.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on January 16, 2015, 04:48:03 PM
I paid 100 million for something (I think it was the knockback to knockdown IO - out of season) - thats the highest I ever went.

I used to reroll my characters often into a different powerset and I would keep the stuff I would need from their builds and give the rest away.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AmberOfDzu on January 16, 2015, 05:18:26 PM
I didn't usually make builds that required the priciest unique IOs. I would go for purples often, when they made sense, but I think the priciest IOs I went after normally were the LotG's.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Graydar on January 16, 2015, 06:28:29 PM
ughuhuh

I just finished playing Champions and came to the realization that it was a WoW clone with a CoH skin slapped on it, now I am without an MMO. *wah wah wah sound effect*

Wish I could get back to pummeling those sniveling snots in their spandex already. :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on January 16, 2015, 06:47:25 PM
Been thinking about what character I would want to make first--there are many contenders.

The character I played most in the past was my Kat/WP scrapper, which is a bit of a funny choice for me since I didn't play scrappers all that often otherwise.  A couple of other 50s.  I'm actually not sure I want to remake it simply because I spent sooo much time on it that it would be feeling too much like retreading old ground. 

My favourite AT on the whole was the controller, and I had a Plant/Rad I really liked and will almost certainly remake quickly.  Been thinking about Dark/Time too.  Think that would be a fun combo.  I was levelling a Demon/Therm MM which I think I will remake as Demon/Dark, as I like the mechanics better and it actually fits the character concept better too.  But I'm really thinking about my WS.  Hella fun to play.

In terms of how much I spent on builds, that varied quite a bit.  My Kat/WP was built for a lot of health and regen with a couple of purple sets, so even though it was probably my sturdiest character it was nowhere close to the most expensive.  My WS and Plant/Rad really emphasized recharge with decent defense, and that got really expensive.  Totally worth it though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 16, 2015, 07:29:57 PM
I paid 100 million for something (I think it was the knockback to knockdown IO - out of season) - thats the highest I ever went.

I used to reroll my characters often into a different powerset and I would keep the stuff I would need from their builds and give the rest away.

Highest I bought IO's for was about 300 million, but then I was selling purple recipes for that much at the time already.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on January 16, 2015, 07:47:55 PM
There were plenty of people who were actually mega rich in game funds but from someone who never had more than 25 billion, let me say that I would build whatever seemed like it would be fun to play. Most powerful or not wasn't the point for me.

But having stacks of cash meant that if I wanted to spend a stack on LOTG global defense, I would. If I was building blaster towards softcap positional defense I would gladly spend a couple billion on that PvP I/O. It was great fun to pop a purple and Buildup leap into a mob with DP blasters and trigger the T9 power and watch them die. I would and will gladly spend the fake money to do so again.

But I also liked to make level 35 builds with I/O's and so planned the builds out in advance and saved a bunch by being patient, running Alignment missions and using reward merits to buy the elusive shineys.

(PS. I have been told many times that you can't actually softcap positional defense with a blaster. I certainly never did, but I got close enough to make a PBAOE work and not die so, close enough!)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on January 16, 2015, 07:49:48 PM
ughuhuh

I just finished playing Champions and came to the realization that it was a WoW clone with a CoH skin slapped on it, now I am without an MMO. *wah wah wah sound effect*

Wish I could get back to pummeling those sniveling snots in their spandex already. :P

Hmm.  I just recently decided to pick up CO again and give it a spin after a long absence.  I wouldn't describe the game in that way.  In what way does CO feel like WoW to you?  Its definitely not like CoH, but compared to CoH My Little Pony Online is basically a glittery equestrian WoW. 

There is a basic formula for MMOs, and that formula isn't bad on its own: there's a reason why all cars have the steering wheel and brake pad in the same place.  Then every MMO tries to differentiate itself by extending and evolving the formula.  There aren't tons of MMOs that aren't like that.  Eve Online is not like that.  CoH wasn't like that not for lack of trying initially, but more from continuously failing to achieve that and ending up in strange (and sometimes wonderful places).  But I think its a relative thing where I wouldn't say that a Tesla S is basically like an F-150 only smaller and electric, because the steering wheels are both round.  CO's powers are a lot less structured in their design.  CO's gear is a lot more fluffy and a lot more secondary than in WoW.  CO's mission content tends to be less involved.  Street sweeping is less pronounced now than at launch compared to WoW.  CO doesn't "feel" like WoW to me, but that's just my opinion, being an expert in neither of them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 16, 2015, 08:37:50 PM
ughuhuh

I just finished playing Champions and came to the realization that it was a WoW clone with a CoH skin slapped on it, now I am without an MMO. *wah wah wah sound effect*

Wish I could get back to pummeling those sniveling snots in their spandex already. :P

I often cannot play the game more than one or two months at a time.  Some immediately pointed out the quest structure to me as WoW-ish even before it came out of beta.  The longest I played it was one year, but then I got so burned out I went back to city of heroes as they weren't even trying to make any sizable amount of new content any more.  They still don't today I mean, they released a rather ugly bike on the C-store no one will buy, again.

What CO feels like to me, though, I often use a variety of comparisons.

City of heroes had a lot of depth, like the original Deus Ex and even human revolution after it.  Not to mention, higher damage from enemies.

Champions online had very little depth, similar to Deus Ex Invisible war.  And enemies were far less threatening when they lacked a rocket launcher or shotgun.

City of heroes story telling generally improved without making the player character a mary sue.  In a way, it's story telling improved as much as Harry Potter though the series(from somewhat a marty stu to a total deconstruction of that, even revealing harry's pro's becoming more his own flaws).  Enemies would also present a challenge to keep any such feelings of becoming a sue more in check, combined with of course the archtype system in the game made it far harder to make a sue-like character.  You had to solve problems.  If you became overpowered likewise it was because you really knew the game, your character, how to make your character more powerful and you earned it...unlike...

....Champions Online.  Story telling quality mimics more of what you'd expect from a teenage fanboy; a bad mary sue story that gets people upset.  Even the NPCs in the game treat you like your the only person in the spotlight(with npcs walking out of their way to worship you for even the more trivial things).  Enemies were specifically toned down so any badly built character could beat them, then later the archtypes came out and enemies were left weak enough for them.  Then the power creep from On Alert made the game utterly trivial and a snoozefest.  If your an archtype, the game may be slightly challenging, but even then it is likely to be boring.  Freeform?  Everything is curbstomped even if your not min/maxing.  It's all about that power fantasy to make you feel super overpowered right off the bat.  You were practically given the feeling and it ends up hallow for it.  Just as mary sue plots always end up.

One person said this to me.  Champions online is very wide, true, but it's only an inch deep.  City of heroes wasn't just wide, it had multiple layers of soil, sedimentary layers, igneous intrusive, igneous extrusive, and metamorphic layers.  It took time to discover that and it was very satisfying to.  Both games were easy to learn but, city of heroes kept you learning well after the tutorial.  Champions online that learning stops short.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on January 16, 2015, 08:38:33 PM
I paid 100 million for something (I think it was the knockback to knockdown IO - out of season) - thats the highest I ever went.

Yeah, a couple 100 millions is the highest I ever went.... in net worth....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on January 16, 2015, 10:03:59 PM
One person said this to me.  Champions online is very wide, true, but it's only an inch deep.  City of heroes wasn't just wide, it had multiple layers of soil, sedimentary layers, igneous intrusive, igneous extrusive, and metamorphic layers.  It took time to discover that and it was very satisfying to.  Both games were easy to learn but, city of heroes kept you learning well after the tutorial.  Champions online that learning stops short.

Its really difficult to explain from a design perspective, but to me the best games have a balance between freedom and structure.  There must be enough freedom to be interesting, but that freedom has to exist within an environment of structure or its often pointless.  The best analogy I can come up with is painting with black ink on a white canvas.  You can only use so much black ink on the white canvas before it becomes a black canvas with a white drawing.  At some point, removing too much structure makes the freedom that remains an amorphous blob.  I think the City of Heroes powers and archetype system had a good amount of freedom and structure - not perfect, but good.  CO removes too much structure, and you end up with only a little bit of interesting white in a sea of black.  There are more possible combinations of builds in CO, but less interesting combinations.

The *engine* is in many ways far superior.  But its used in a way that blurs so many distinctions between how things work that it actually eliminates some of the choices that CoH has.  The melee landscape was very rich in CoH specifically because the archetype structure made different choices interestingly distinct.  The melee landscape in CO is a lot blander, even if superficially there are more options in some areas.  The buff and control landscape was far superior in CoH, even if it was a little broken.  By being relatively straight forward, the gear system in CoH was more interesting to explore: its a larger, but in my opinion far more confused mess in CO.  There are no easy obvious paths to guide the novice, and optimization is very opaque unless you are an expert. 

I wouldn't say there's nothing to learn past the tutorial.  I would say there's no obvious roadmap to anything past the tutorial.  A CoH player could start with the standard enhancements and graduate to common IOs and then begin experimenting with sets in an organic way.  And its obvious you are looking at three different systems of enhancement, each with advantages over the previous in stages.  You're introduced to them gradually, and you can safely ignore almost all of it without hurting yourself significantly.

If you jump into CO now, starting from scratch, you have to contend with having a primary and secondary offense slot you can put gear in, without any guidance as to what might be good or bad to put in those.  And you only get one each, so you have to make choices immediately.  But from day one you'll be confronted with gear that increases stats, gear that provides powers, gear that modifies powers, and no way to judge what might be better or worse except maybe via the cost of the items - which is *not* always a good guide (and of course just to make life a little more difficult instead of one linear currency value they use a denominated currency, because why not).

So you have six different slots (primary/secondary offense/defense/utility) and yet all of the gear that goes into each slot can theoretically offer stat boosts, offensive or defensive abilities, and offensive or defensive boosts.  That's an example of what I call "worthless detail."  Six different slots, but really six slots with arbitrary distinctions on what you can slot in them.  Right now one of my CO alts has offensive gear that buffs my defense stat and defensive gear that buffs offense, because of course they do.  Its a level of detail that is confusing, but in no way creates any opportunity for more interesting builds than would be possible if all six were generic slots.  In CoH there were set inventions limited to different kinds of powers, and while the bonuses they offered were not always logical, the fact that different archetypes were likely to benefit more from certain sets (by having more of those kinds of powers) meant those differences had an actual impact on build diversity.  A case where structure highlights differences, and lack of structure erases them, making the lack of structure ironically remove choices.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on January 16, 2015, 11:27:49 PM
Oh, I do miss playing the market in game. I just couldn't get over that some people were willing to pay 2 billion inf for one of those 3% resistance IOs from the PvP zones. I'd do those weekly hero merit runs with *every* character I had. Some of them multiple times for the different rewards. Then, when they had several of those mini-arcs, I'd run all of them on all my characters that could easily do them.

I think I must have sold about 20 or so of those after I put them to good use in my favored characters.

In real life, at the time, I'd spent a year unemployed, pretty much broke. Savings account getting smaller and smaller. Heck, I'd play just to feel rich, lol. Ah, those were the days of playing for hours and hours on end...thankfully those days are over.

It was always nice to be able to drop 100 million inf before the Really Hard Way runs to help out those who didn't have all the bells and whistles to give them every edge they could get.

2 billion, you was robbed, I sold 3 level 10 ones for 4 billion each off market, and then went straight to the market and bought a lvl 50 for 2BN, it seemed cheap. Of course enhancement converters fixed all that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 17, 2015, 01:54:42 AM
Its really difficult to explain from a design perspective, but to me the best games have a balance between freedom and structure.  There must be enough freedom to be interesting, but that freedom has to exist within an environment of structure or its often pointless.  The best analogy I can come up with is painting with black ink on a white canvas.  You can only use so much black ink on the white canvas before it becomes a black canvas with a white drawing.  At some point, removing too much structure makes the freedom that remains an amorphous blob.  I think the City of Heroes powers and archetype system had a good amount of freedom and structure - not perfect, but good.  CO removes too much structure, and you end up with only a little bit of interesting white in a sea of black.  There are more possible combinations of builds in CO, but less interesting combinations.

The *engine* is in many ways far superior.  But its used in a way that blurs so many distinctions between how things work that it actually eliminates some of the choices that CoH has.  The melee landscape was very rich in CoH specifically because the archetype structure made different choices interestingly distinct.  The melee landscape in CO is a lot blander, even if superficially there are more options in some areas.  The buff and control landscape was far superior in CoH, even if it was a little broken.  By being relatively straight forward, the gear system in CoH was more interesting to explore: its a larger, but in my opinion far more confused mess in CO.  There are no easy obvious paths to guide the novice, and optimization is very opaque unless you are an expert.

You pretty much nailed on the head regarding CO.  While CO players will often say "Well you have infinite freedom", reality is you don't with it.  Many powers "Nuances" are very bland, or generic, or entirely ignorable.  They appear fine at first but once you discover how little a difference 99% of them make, your often left with the realisation that alot of things play alike in a very generic manner, so you end up discouraged from trying many things or encouraged to only try a few things that do have an impact.

A good example for pve, is the difference between fire, ice and lightning.  Ice has no energy unlock.  It has a scant few good powers, but only really avalanche.  Well, sure, you can use other powers, but avalanche is far better, and ST wise ice has nothing.  With no energy unlock though, and no really interesting or useful secondary effects, it's beaten by fire and lightning.

Even fire struggles to keep up with lightning, likewise, due to it's lack of good ST damage.  The best you can do is flashfire(to trigger clinging flames), fire snake + fireball with unstable to boost conflageration, but then conflageration has to remain at rank 2 because if the badguy moves, you stop doing damage.  You have to do this same thing for all enemies lone enemies or otherwise, cause it's the only high damage combo really.  Fire blast sucks.  It also doesn't have a very strong energy unlock.
'
So then we approach lightning.  Has alot of the same abilities, just different flavors again, but it's energy unlock is far better than fire, negative ions boost the damage of arc lightning, a good ST attack that is almost up there with two gun.  Lightning storm works far better likewise than either avalanche or conflageration.  All you need to guarantee negative ions is ball lightning.  You don't need as many powers as you do fire and your doing top damage.  So lightning beats fire, which beats ice.

Sure, you could use frost breath in ice and ice blast, but why not just use two-gun?  Or arch lightning?  Theme?  It's just far weaker.  And less versatile to boot since you need ice form to make ice blast remotely useful.  Thing is if you look at a lot of sets you see the problem.  I'll get more into this later, Constantine is coming on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 17, 2015, 04:07:32 AM
The, other example that comes to mind for me, is the combos in CO.  No one uses martial arts claws.  Why?  Beast claws.  It's main combo has an advantage that adds the "Shredded" debuff, and causes bleeding at the same time.  With aspect of the beast(rage stacks gained from causing bleed), you can easily use strength and ignore dex and use crit gear instead.  This means you have more defense, and more offense at the same time.

Beast claws main combo out-damages just about every combo, because of shredder and it's bleed-stacking.  It's also easy to throw other combos for the +dodge or maybe better agro grabbing.  Beast claws just, far out-classes other melee combos.  Kind of sad really.  So the savage, besides having regeneration, ends up really popular and devastating.  It's a simple case of "Does everything the others do just better".  And it's just, every kind of type of power in CO kind of falls into that trap, one far outclasses the others of it's type.  Two gun mojo far out-damages ST maintains, conviction far out-classes the self-heals, quarry and night warrior far out-class the other offensive passives ect.  It's, kind of sad and alot of it boils down to everything just being a repainted version of another power with the stats changed but no nuances, so one ends up outclassing the other...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MegaWatt on January 18, 2015, 06:15:31 AM
That is why i do not look at the mechanics of the game and just tromp along like a happy idiot. That probably wont work for every one though and CO did Power armor and Guns -very- well at least to me (who could never manage to make a good PA Character in CoX but who will be trying to if/when it comes back....if i can get some of the cool mecha parts. Err sorry ranting !).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on January 18, 2015, 02:51:01 PM
That is why i do not look at the mechanics of the game and just tromp along like a happy idiot. That probably wont work for every one though and CO did Power armor and Guns -very- well at least to me (who could never manage to make a good PA Character in CoX but who will be trying to if/when it comes back....if i can get some of the cool mecha parts. Err sorry ranting !).

Don't feel bad, I like having superficial knowledge of the underworkings of the beautiful machine that is City of Heroes -- just enough to take advantage of things I should know to and not be a complete noob.  Yes, casual player who played from beta to close and I was still discovering arcs, configurations and "things" until the month of the closing.    I did not have my first 50 until year 3 or 4 of the game but I managed to close the game with almost one 50 for each archtype except the damn arachnos solder and warshade.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Whatelse73 on January 18, 2015, 06:18:58 PM
I liked listening to all the specifics on certain builds, powers, etc.  However, I pretty much went my own way too for certain things depending on my own play style.

I did notice when certain things were squishy or strong (i.e., MM ninjas being very squishy, but good at single target attacks).  But, I still tried to enjoy the various facets of the game.  though I didn't so much get into the warshade/peacemaker, nor the arachnos archetypes.  I tried them out though, but not for me.  I didn't do too many of the tanks either, but I did play them.

I'm sure when we get back into game and even "when" the CoX 1.5 option comes around, there will be plenty of info out there along with testers of various things.  I'm just eager to get back to heroing or villainry at this point. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on January 18, 2015, 07:16:03 PM
That is why i do not look at the mechanics of the game and just tromp along like a happy idiot. That probably wont work for every one though and CO did Power armor and Guns -very- well at least to me (who could never manage to make a good PA Character in CoX but who will be trying to if/when it comes back....if i can get some of the cool mecha parts. Err sorry ranting !).

Don't feel bad, I try to do that myself when I first start playing an MMO.  You're never happier than when you don't know what you don't know.  But at least for me, that's not a situation that can last for long.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on January 19, 2015, 12:37:40 AM
I liked listening to all the specifics on certain builds, powers, etc.  However, I pretty much went my own way too for certain things depending on my own play style.

I did notice when certain things were squishy or strong (i.e., MM ninjas being very squishy, but good at single target attacks).  But, I still tried to enjoy the various facets of the game.  though I didn't so much get into the warshade/peacemaker, nor the arachnos archetypes.  I tried them out though, but not for me.  I didn't do too many of the tanks either, but I did play them.

I'm sure when we get back into game and even "when" the CoX 1.5 option comes around, there will be plenty of info out there along with testers of various things.  I'm just eager to get back to heroing or villainry at this point.

 I remember I was trying a lot of new mastermind combos when the  'raid buff' came out where speed boost, sonic shields, forcefields, thermal-shields, were all now aoe. Raid or not, grouping masterminds with masterminds was scary how buffed all the minions would get. Thermal heals, Pain dom heals, twilight grasp and fluffy heals, along with time manipulation buffs and nature's affinity let MMs rock out with 3 or four masterminds making squishy minions, burly teammates.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on January 21, 2015, 06:08:21 PM
Thugs/devices was probably the most broken mastermind combo I messed around with.

Put both of the defense aura enhancements on the enforcers, got the accuracy/defense alpha, with force field and scorpion shield, neither I, or my minions could be touched, and that goes double for when I had poison gas, caltraps with the knockdown proc, and trip mines/acid motars.


Hell, Gangwar>Burnout>Gangwar was some fun times.

It was nuts.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on January 22, 2015, 07:44:57 PM
I remember a SG mate mention in chat that he finally worked out. Build for one character, but it'd take him a while to earn enough to get all the IOs he needed.  People started piping in with "What did you need, I'll see what I got". "I have some of those crafted, I'll drop them in the bins". "I got the salvage to craft those I'll mail them to you".  He got almost all he needed from people in the SG

That is one of the biggest things I miss about CoH, that kind of community.  I have yet to join any group in another game that was willing to just help out other members, just because they could.

That's how it was for me when I was playing... I had a group of friends (we had our own SGs--I think between us all, we were running around 4 or 5 SGs) that would just hop on Skype and say "Hey, I need _____ does anyone happen to have it?" Most of the time, someone would, and we'd just pass stuff around amongst ourselves.

I think the most inf I ever put down on any char I played was my main character (my Warshade)... I spent about 2 or 3 billion to get him where I wanted him, but that includes around 30 or 40 respecs--and all three builds were full of IOs on him. He had a human-only build, a dual form build, and a tri-form build, and all of them were fully spec'd.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on January 23, 2015, 12:19:08 AM
That's how it was for me when I was playing... I had a group of friends (we had our own SGs--I think between us all, we were running around 4 or 5 SGs) that would just hop on Skype and say "Hey, I need _____ does anyone happen to have it?" Most of the time, someone would, and we'd just pass stuff around amongst ourselves.

I think the most inf I ever put down on any char I played was my main character (my Warshade)... I spent about 2 or 3 billion to get him where I wanted him, but that includes around 30 or 40 respecs--and all three builds were full of IOs on him. He had a human-only build, a dual form build, and a tri-form build, and all of them were fully spec'd.

Shut the front door. You pulled three purpled out builds with only two bill?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on January 23, 2015, 12:44:13 AM
Shut the front door. You pulled three purpled out builds with only two bill?

The only purple explicitly mentioned in the post was the Warshade itself :P And even if it is all purples, it doesn't have to be good purples.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on January 23, 2015, 01:14:23 AM
And getting IOs with tickets, reward merits, and alignment merits meant the only money spent was on crafting & maybe buying salvage.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on January 23, 2015, 01:22:56 AM
The only purple explicitly mentioned in the post was the Warshade itself :P And even if it is all purples, it doesn't have to be good purples.

I've seen his builds on the forums, they are pretty much purpled out.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on January 23, 2015, 01:27:43 AM
The only purple explicitly mentioned in the post was the Warshade itself :P And even if it is all purples, it doesn't have to be good purples.

Players that did not build with high-end enhancements may not realize that there was a wide range of prices for different purple IOs at different times.  For example many control purples at different times could be had for 5 million-ish.  A lot of inf, but not billions-and-billions a lot.  And they got even cheaper after the merit system came out.  Towards the end, you could have made many purple-set builds for hundreds of millions, rather than billions of inf.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on January 23, 2015, 03:37:14 AM
Players that did not build with high-end enhancements may not realize that there was a wide range of prices for different purple IOs at different times.  For example many control purples at different times could be had for 5 million-ish.  A lot of inf, but not billions-and-billions a lot.  And they got even cheaper after the merit system came out.  Towards the end, you could have made many purple-set builds for hundreds of millions, rather than billions of inf.

I never saw any builds on the forums that required purple sets.  For the most part, purples were used for their procs and that's about it.

Reminds me of one ITF where the tanker bragged about all his purple enhancements, then proceeded to die about 3 times more than anyone else on the team.  :)

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on January 23, 2015, 03:51:49 AM
I never saw any builds on the forums that required purple sets.  For the most part, purples were used for their procs and that's about it.

Reminds me of one ITF where the tanker bragged about all his purple enhancements, then proceeded to die about 3 times more than anyone else on the team.  :)

Purples could be an important part of builds, but it really depended.  The character I had that saw the most play was my Kat/WP, which was built largely for health and regen with enough recharge to maintain my attack chain and a smattering of extra defense.  Very few purples, and not a very expensive build relatively speaking.  My plant/rad and WS on the other hand had a ton of purples because they relied so heavily on a lot of recharge.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on January 23, 2015, 04:33:17 AM
I got along without many purples, I didn't really add any until the last few months of the game.

I hope I will get to rectify that situation when the game is reinstated.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on January 23, 2015, 05:22:42 AM
Very few of my builds had many purples...and every build I have done for the relaunch has been devoid of purple and pvp IOs. To me the only good bonuses from purples were usually the 10% recharge, but I never really needed those. The procs could be nice on certain powers, but again not a necessity. I doubt I will use many purples when the game returns...but I do look forward to getting lots of pvp +3% Defense IOs again :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on January 23, 2015, 05:37:47 AM
My claws/regen scrapper was built for maximum recharge. She had a ton of purples in her build. She was the only character I ever IO'd out enthusiastically. And even then I stalled out at about 80% complete...she had empty holes and SOs in the rest of her slots, and no one was the wiser. lol

A few of my other characters had a few pieces here and there, but by and large, most of them actually used SOs or generics. (Heck: my main, Aggelakis, an emp/arch defender, was full of HOs from before the Hami revamp.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 23, 2015, 07:45:56 AM
My fortunata was my only character with purple IO's everywhere, needing the recharge to make farsight permanent.  I had little regrets.  But I also had an extreme-recharge kineticist who didn't have purple recipes, because I was already triple-stacking fulcrum shift on her.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on January 23, 2015, 12:09:36 PM
Players that did not build with high-end enhancements may not realize that there was a wide range of prices for different purple IOs at different times.  For example many control purples at different times could be had for 5 million-ish.  A lot of inf, but not billions-and-billions a lot.  And they got even cheaper after the merit system came out.  Towards the end, you could have made many purple-set builds for hundreds of millions, rather than billions of inf.
I managed to purchase a coupe of complete purple sets for less than 1 mill Inf once. I think it was a fluke of un-nature or something that allowed me to manage it. That and they were the less wanted sets. Immobilize and Slow, I think.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on January 23, 2015, 02:01:56 PM
I frankenslotted everything.

I had mixtures of various IO's, procs and bonuses to get what I wanted. In most cases full sets were not the best case. Often I would have 3 of one type and 3 of another to get the bonus I wanted.

On my sonic/ice blaster I had a number of people ask for my build after seeing her in action. Tanking the ITF on a blaster was fun :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on January 23, 2015, 04:06:13 PM
Shut the front door. You pulled three purpled out builds with only two bill?

Well, the "main" human-only build was completely purpled out. The other two only had a select few purples in them. But, I also mentioned that I had a great network of friends who helped me out. We all passed around things to each other. If I picked up a purple drop that was more suited to, say, a controller, I'd give it to my controller-playing friend who would then eventually hook me up with a purple that might complete a set I was going for on my Warshade. That's how I was able to save some money. Also, I had a habit of doing a LOT of task forces (those who did TFs on Freedom might remember me, because I ran them all the time), and I'd use the merits won from those TFs to buy LotGs, which I would then sell on the market. What I'd get from those sales would go towards finishing up my builds.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on January 23, 2015, 07:22:47 PM
Players that did not build with high-end enhancements may not realize that there was a wide range of prices for different purple IOs at different times.  For example many control purples at different times could be had for 5 million-ish.  A lot of inf, but not billions-and-billions a lot.  And they got even cheaper after the merit system came out.  Towards the end, you could have made many purple-set builds for hundreds of millions, rather than billions of inf.

Thank you.. I dont think many people realized this..

And a A lot of people like myself didnt place purples in every single power that could take a purple..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on January 23, 2015, 07:27:33 PM
Thugs/devices was probably the most broken mastermind combo I messed around with.

Put both of the defense aura enhancements on the enforcers, got the accuracy/defense alpha, with force field and scorpion shield, neither I, or my minions could be touched, and that goes double for when I had poison gas, caltraps with the knockdown proc, and trip mines/acid motars.


Hell, Gangwar>Burnout>Gangwar was some fun times.

It was nuts.

I have a Thugs Device.. I wouldnt consider it broken.. but it was very good..

Bots/Devices would probably be very good as well..

my Bots/FF was a straight Tankermind with the Provoke powers..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on January 23, 2015, 08:03:04 PM
One of the things I plan to do when the game comes back is to really get into masterminds more. I had a few but they never clicked for me, but it sounds like I might have had the wrong approach to playing. I suspect my handling of minions was pretty ham handed and ought to have a more subtle and thoughtful approach.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: rezulin on January 23, 2015, 08:14:41 PM
With my Bot/FF MM I buffed the heck outta them, sent them into harms way using the goto command with them on aggressive, waited a few seconds, then joined them.  Lots of times I would use the teacup emote while the battle raged around me.  For a long time I didn't have the END to attack with all my toggles on, so it was just easier to not attack and burn up all my endurance.  HK-72 was my first toon to hit 50, even though I had been playing CoH for years before CoV came out.

Fuegocito
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on January 23, 2015, 08:51:28 PM
Thugs/devices was probably the most broken mastermind combo I messed around with.

Put both of the defense aura enhancements on the enforcers, got the accuracy/defense alpha, with force field and scorpion shield, neither I, or my minions could be touched, and that goes double for when I had poison gas, caltraps with the knockdown proc, and trip mines/acid motars.

Hell, Gangwar>Burnout>Gangwar was some fun times.

It was nuts.
Question - I've been looking at this in Mids, and the first Defense Aura I can find is in the Superior Command of the Mastermind set, but I'm not seeing the other.  The closest I can see is a 5% Defense bonus in Edict of the Master, but that does not appear to be an Aura power.  Where's the second one?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on January 23, 2015, 08:58:32 PM
There's 3, actually.

Command of the Mastermind
Edict of the Master
Call to Arms (recharge intensive pet, so you can only use it if you have something like Gang War or Hell on Earth)

All three buff the defense of pets within a 40' radius of the character, so a bit less than Supremacy range. They're all technically set bonuses that you get for slotting that one specific enhancement.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on January 23, 2015, 09:47:36 PM
Thanks, Codewalker!  As per rezulin above, Robots are more my thing than Thugs, so I decided to play with a Robotics/FF build.  All this talk of "ultra-high Defense builds" has gotten me inspired to try designing some in Mids.  And between Devices and Force Field, it looks like FF is the better choice for a Secondary, if a high Defense rating is what I'm looking for.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 23, 2015, 11:34:50 PM
I found myself rather fond of bots myself, but I used time manipulation rather than force fields, as long as I kept my minions tight I could keep their defense ratings high and have extreme to-hit ratings on all of them(including the minions).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on January 24, 2015, 01:33:33 AM
I used Bots/traps...and Teleport Foe...and the donut emote. I never had to worry about Endurance, unless I happened to pull the entire x8 mob because some minion was more alert than normal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on January 24, 2015, 01:56:11 AM
Some sets seemed natural: Zombies/Dark, Bots/Traps, but late in the playing I alted and enjoy a lot of less than obvious pairings.

Zombies/Thermal, Zombies/Storm (this one could roll like a juggernaut once you tamed playing hurricane)
Demons/Thermal, Demons/Sonic (put the hellfire lieutenant on aggressive with the sonic tutu)
Bots/Natures Affinity - I didn't have time to flesh out all the synergies, but this was a VERY strong pairing.
Thugs/Poison - Put the Poison debuff PBAoE on the Bruiser and turn them loose. Micromanage the bruiser to keep catching the aggro, no time to chuck rocks.

The best part was the multi mastermind groupings on Exalted with the all mastermind SG. Thermal, Sonic, and Forcefield buffs all the time? Minions ROCK
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on January 24, 2015, 02:26:50 AM
I used Bots/traps...and Teleport Foe...and the donut emote. I never had to worry about Endurance, unless I happened to pull the entire x8 mob because some minion was more alert than normal.

NERF /EM EATDONUT

Bots/Natures Affinity - I didn't have time to flesh out all the synergies, but this was a VERY strong pairing.

I wanted to roll a Bots/NA Mastermind named Binary Tree.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on January 24, 2015, 04:05:16 AM
basically Naff was an extraordinary set all by itself. It only had one real flaw (IMO) and that was the rech time on the tier 9. and you could get that pretty close to perma.

Everything goes well with Nature.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on January 24, 2015, 08:46:04 AM
Some sets seemed natural: Zombies/Dark, Bots/Traps, but late in the playing I alted and enjoy a lot of less than obvious pairings.

Zombies/Thermal, Zombies/Storm (this one could roll like a juggernaut once you tamed playing hurricane)
Demons/Thermal, Demons/Sonic (put the hellfire lieutenant on aggressive with the sonic tutu)
Bots/Natures Affinity - I didn't have time to flesh out all the synergies, but this was a VERY strong pairing.
Thugs/Poison - Put the Poison debuff PBAoE on the Bruiser and turn them loose. Micromanage the bruiser to keep catching the aggro, no time to chuck rocks.

The best part was the multi mastermind groupings on Exalted with the all mastermind SG. Thermal, Sonic, and Forcefield buffs all the time? Minions ROCK

While there were very few actually bad power combinations (YMMV) anywhere, I don't think any Mastermind combos were even particularly challenging.  Which is to say, there weren't very many materially significant anti-synergies among the mastermind primaries and secondaries.  But Necro/Storm maybe is the worst case scenario for anti-synergy among masterminds.  Hypothetically speaking it could be a very strong combo indoors with an experienced player, but in open space you're dealing with a secondary full of repel and knock pairing up with the primary with least amount of effective pet range and some of the dumbest apparent pet AI.

The Mastermind combo I never got the chance to level up was going to be Bots/TA.  I didn't see too many of them, but I did play Bots and TA separately, and I think that would have been a very nasty ranged monster.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on January 24, 2015, 11:12:41 AM
Quote
That is why i do not look at the mechanics of the game and just tromp along like a happy idiot. That probably wont work for every one though and CO did Power armor and Guns -very- well at least to me (who could never manage to make a good PA Character in CoX but who will be trying to if/when it comes back....if i can get some of the cool mecha parts. Err sorry ranting !).

I always play for fun, in any game I play. Until I get to level cap, then I get serious. LOL!

When I played COH, I never made a build in Mid's until I reached 50. That way I can learn my play style with each and every alt (that I didn't PL) and make a build that suited that play style. If I PLed an alt, it usually was because it was going to be used for farming or when I dabbled in pvp (like my ninja/poison MM :P)

Quote
Some sets seemed natural: Zombies/Dark, Bots/Traps, but late in the playing I alted and enjoy a lot of less than obvious pairings.

This may sound odd but I was falling in love with Demon/Storm and Bots/Sonic there near the end. Demon/storm more for the fact that I thought they looked good together. lol. I didn't get Bots/Sonic to level cap but it was pretty sturdy at level 34ish before I left after the announcement. :(


*Edited to add* I know someone mentioned an All MM SG in Exalted, when we get COH back anyone interested in doing an all MM SG again? I'd love to, myself. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Whatelse73 on January 24, 2015, 05:06:01 PM
One of the things I plan to do when the game comes back is to really get into masterminds more. I had a few but they never clicked for me, but it sounds like I might have had the wrong approach to playing. I suspect my handling of minions was pretty ham handed and ought to have a more subtle and thoughtful approach.

There are plenty of playstyles that will suit a MM, you just have to find the powersets that will cause you to enjoy that mix.  I did pretty much every mix of powers just to see how things worked for myself.  I didn't necessarily make it to lvl 32 with each type, but it is fun to try.  (Yes, I'm an altoholic and I go to meetings, so there.)

My first MM was a dark / undead creation.  Then robots.  But eventually I made at least one of each type of minions, then when they newer powersets came out, I made new ones with those too.  Another great thing about CoX, the fact they empowered us "altoholics" to be altoholics.

I found quite a bit of reading about "techniques" for playing MMs and in some cases I used those to great effect.  Others I didn't bother with because they didn't fit my play style. 

I really really loved being a Master Mind, regardless of powersets.  Then, when good and evil came out, I brought MMs over to the hero side and the first thing I did was fly to the top of the Atlas statue for that badge and to get a screenshot with all my minions standing atop it.  (My Thugs/Pain I believe)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on January 24, 2015, 05:10:43 PM
I frankenslotted everything.

I had mixtures of various IO's, procs and bonuses to get what I wanted. In most cases full sets were not the best case. Often I would have 3 of one type and 3 of another to get the bonus I wanted.
`
Same here.   I would even sometimes have 2 of 3 different sets at times for the combination of bonuses and enhancing every aspect of a power.  Kinda nice to get near the ED cap with DAM, ACC, END, and REC.    :D

I had a friend who wanted every power fully slotted with purples and I could never get him to understand how useful other sets and slotting strategies were.   He had fun though, so I suppose it worked out for both of us.   Ahhh the good old days.

Also, I had a habit of doing a LOT of task forces (those who did TFs on Freedom might remember me, because I ran them all the time), and I'd use the merits won from those TFs to buy LotGs, which I would then sell on the market. What I'd get from those sales would go towards finishing up my builds.
I probably teamed with you a lot.   ;D

I did the same thing with LotGs.  Nice way to make money I thought.

*Edited to add* I know someone mentioned an All MM SG in Exalted, when we get COH back anyone interested in doing an all MM SG again? I'd love to, myself. :)
I would love to try that as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on January 25, 2015, 04:32:36 AM
Here is my Thugs/Traps MM at shutdown.I enjoyed him. I had an Issue 23 build ready that was slightly better.


Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.96
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build! (http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1479&c=658&a=1316&f=HEX&dc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

Level 50 Natural Mastermind
Primary Power Set: Thugs
Secondary Power Set: Traps
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Medicine
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Mace Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Call Thugs -- BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg(A), BldM'dt-Dmg/EndRdx(3), BldM'dt-Dmg(3), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(5), BldM'dt-Acc(7), EdctM'r-PetDef(7)
Level 1: Web Grenade -- Acc-I(A)
Level 2: Dual Wield -- Acc-I(A), Dmg-I(9), Dmg-I(9), Dmg-I(50)
Level 4: Triage Beacon -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-Rchg(5), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(11), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(11), Dct'dW-Heal(21)
Level 6: Equip Thugs -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 8: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(45), RechRdx-I(45)
Level 10: Acid Mortar -- AnWeak-Acc/DefDeb(A), AnWeak-Acc/Rchg(15), UndDef-DefDeb/Rchg(17), UndDef-Rchg(27), Achilles-DefDeb/Rchg(27), Achilles-ResDeb%(29)
Level 12: Call Enforcer -- BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg(A), BldM'dt-Dmg/EndRdx(13), BldM'dt-Dmg(13), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), BldM'dt-Acc(23), SvgnRt-PetResDam(31)
Level 14: Super Speed -- Clrty-Stlth(A)
Level 16: Force Field Generator -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(17), DefBuff-I(23)
Level 18: Empty Clips -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(19), HO:Centri(19), HO:Centri(39), HO:Centri(43)
Level 20: Poison Trap -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(21), Lock-%Hold(25)
Level 22: Combat Jumping -- Krma-ResKB(A)
Level 24: Gang War -- HO:Nucle(A), HO:Nucle(25), HO:Nucle(29), RechRdx-I(34), C'Arms-+Def(Pets)(34), ExRmnt-+Res(Pets)(43)
Level 26: Call Bruiser -- BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg(A), BldM'dt-Dmg/EndRdx(31), BldM'dt-Dmg(31), BldM'dt-Acc(33), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(33), S'bndAl-Build%(33)
Level 28: Aid Other -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-Heal(37), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(40), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(40), Dct'dW-Rchg(45)
Level 30: Aid Self -- Dct'dW-Heal(A), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(34), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(43), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(46), Dct'dW-Rchg(50)
Level 32: Upgrade Equipment -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 35: Trip Mine -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(36), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(36), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(36), Sciroc-Acc/Rchg(37), Sciroc-Dmg/Rchg(37)
Level 38: Seeker Drones -- Stpfy-Acc/Rchg(A), Stpfy-EndRdx/Stun(39), Stpfy-Acc/EndRdx(39), Stpfy-Stun/Rng(40), Stpfy-Acc/Stun/Rchg(48)
Level 41: Scorpion Shield -- EndRdx-I(A), DefBuff-I(42), DefBuff-I(42), DefBuff-I(42)
Level 44: Caltrops -- Slow-I(A), P'ngTtl--Rchg%(48), Ragnrk-Knock%(48), Posi-Dam%(50)
Level 47: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 49: Tactics -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Heal-I(A)
Level 1: Supremacy
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(46), EndMod-I(46)
Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A)
Level 50: Musculature Total Core Revamp
------------
------------
Set Bonus Totals:


Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on January 25, 2015, 02:15:41 PM
Hmm.  I just recently decided to pick up CO again and give it a spin after a long absence.

What?  Are you crazy? ;)

On a separate matter entirely.  I'd like to praise Ironwolf for his restraint and his patience.  He handles himself with dignity and grace.  (More so than 'some' on these boards...)

In addition, it was him who got the balling rolling with the current talks (perhaps because he can think outside the box from other another culture's point of view...)

For me, I owe him a debt of gratitude.  I hope the talks pay off and we're playing CoX relatively 'soon.'

Patience is a virtue.  But good to see we're being defiantly patient...

Azrael.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on January 25, 2015, 02:52:07 PM
What?  Are you crazy? ;)

On a separate matter entirely.  I'd like to praise Ironwolf for his restraint and his patience.  He handles himself with dignity and grace.  (More so than 'some' on these boards...)

In addition, it was him who got the balling rolling with the current talks (perhaps because he can think outside the box from other another culture's point of view...)

For me, I owe him a debt of gratitude.  I hope the talks pay off and we're playing CoX relatively 'soon.'

Patience is a virtue.  But good to see we're being defiantly patient...

Azrael.

And virtue is a server so... I can taste the fun already!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on January 25, 2015, 07:03:02 PM
What?  Are you crazy? ;)
You say that like its a bad thing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on January 25, 2015, 10:58:16 PM
I've come to the conclusion that I don't care how, I don't care who, I just want to play CoH again. Good grief I'm so ready to sub up my accounts again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 27, 2015, 08:01:42 AM
I want to play with time manipulation again so badly.  Especially since CO will never have it and even if it did I'm sure they'd gimp it to the point I'd never ever want to roleplay there again(my character being a time manip would be gimped thematically if they gimped time themed powers, thus, I'd never want to play the them in the first place.  It's why I never play telepaths there, same reason).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on January 27, 2015, 11:52:41 AM
I've come to the conclusion that I don't care how, I don't care who, I just want to play CoH again. Good grief I'm so ready to sub up my accounts again.

This +1  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on January 27, 2015, 07:18:46 PM
I've come to the conclusion that I don't care how, I don't care who, I just want to play CoH again. Good grief I'm so ready to sub up my accounts again.

Line forms behind me :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on January 27, 2015, 08:06:27 PM
I want to play with time manipulation again so badly.  Especially since CO will never have it and even if it did I'm sure they'd gimp it to the point I'd never ever want to roleplay there again(my character being a time manip would be gimped thematically if they gimped time themed powers, thus, I'd never want to play the them in the first place.  It's why I never play telepaths there, same reason).
That is very true, for co you could use super speed for cosmetic purposes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 27, 2015, 11:39:05 PM
That is very true, for co you could use super speed for cosmetic purposes.

Thats pretty much the only way at this point.  Or teleport.  The sad thing is, I don't want cryptic north to bother with time manipulating abilities because I know they'd screw it up like they had the new telepathy powers.  The new telepathy powers for example are neigh-useless unless you are already level 40 and even then only with very specific setups and even then better attacks exist.  They just, cannot grasp any concepts of buffing/debuffing or crowd control.  So I wouldn't want them throwing the power themes in.  Because then everyone would be "Well time manipulation sucks so your character must suck" to me.  Because thats kind of the main theme of a few characters, namely, my mains.  I'd be utterly unwilling to even roleplay anymore in such an event.

Every concept I came up with in city of heroes was powerful in gameplay.  Only a couple qualified in CO.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Whatelse73 on January 28, 2015, 02:32:27 AM
Every concept I came up with in city of heroes was powerful in gameplay.  Only a couple qualified in CO.

I know how you feel.  I made a few archetypes in CO and it seemed like even my pets heavy character wasn't much to do for.  Even my "seemingly" powerful characters in CO were wimpy to me. 

Another reason I really really really can't wait for CoX to come back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on January 28, 2015, 01:31:33 PM
I know how you feel.  I made a few archetypes in CO and it seemed like even my pets heavy character wasn't much to do for.  Even my "seemingly" powerful characters in CO were wimpy to me. 

Another reason I really really really can't wait for CoX to come back.

It's funny you guys say that... I too felt my hero in champions was just not super.  I played for two 6 months stints and was really never connected to the character I played.

....and I never went alt-crazy.  I could barely stand playing 5 characters.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on January 28, 2015, 02:07:06 PM
It's funny you guys say that... I too felt my hero in champions was just not super.  I played for two 6 months stints and was really never connected to the character I played.

....and I never went alt-crazy.  I could barely stand playing 5 characters.

That is exactly how I felt playing CO.  This was when it first came out, so I am sure there are things that are different now.  However, the ability to "connect" with your character so much that you look for excuses to play him/her is just something it never inspired in me.  Like you, I had 4 or 5 characters when I left, and I never gave them a second thought when I returned to CoH.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on January 28, 2015, 03:53:41 PM
Yeah, I never felt super in CO.  I put together characters I thought would be fun, but they almost never were.  At best, they were pale imitations of my CoH characters.  My melee characters got easily knocked around the room like pinballs, my ranged characters felt underpowered and fragile (even more than Blasters at their worst), and my attempts at recreating my Controllers and Dominators were just weak Blasters with pets (due to the lack of non-Telepathy CC).  Only my attempt at my Bots/Storm MM felt playable.  (I actually liked him, but having so many characters on the screen slowed things down to a crawl on my old computer)

The game tries to hide how weak you are by making their Minions (I forget what CO calls them) even weaker in comparison, but as soon as you fight a Boss (Villain?) or higher, you start to feel the lack of power.

That said, I haven't even been able to run CO on my shiny new computer to see whether it can handle my Pseudo-Mastermind.  When I tried it, the Launcher opened fine, but when I clicked Play, the Launcher closed, and... that's it.  CO was on my Dock (so it was running), but the actual game window never opened.  I deleted and re-installed a few times, but it never helped.

So I trashed the whole thing and never looked back.  (That's still one of the biggest things I miss about CoH - it was Mac-compatible.  No kludges or workarounds.  If CO wants to win me over, a Mac client is the first thing Cryptic North can do)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on January 29, 2015, 05:59:48 AM
I've come to the conclusion that I don't care how, I don't care who, I just want to play CoH again. Good grief I'm so ready to sub up my accounts again.

Right there with you, I'll wipe my CC out so fast the plastic will melt.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on January 29, 2015, 04:21:20 PM
Right there with you, I'll wipe my CC out so fast the plastic will melt.

I'm imagining this in my mind like that Twilight Zone episode, where the guy that can finally read to his heart's content breaks his glasses....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on January 30, 2015, 12:25:48 AM
Yeah, I never felt super in CO.  I put together characters I thought would be fun, but they almost never were.  At best, they were pale imitations of my CoH characters.  My melee characters got easily knocked around the room like pinballs, my ranged characters felt underpowered and fragile (even more than Blasters at their worst), and my attempts at recreating my Controllers and Dominators were just weak Blasters with pets (due to the lack of non-Telepathy CC).  Only my attempt at my Bots/Storm MM felt playable.  (I actually liked him, but having so many characters on the screen slowed things down to a crawl on my old computer)

The game tries to hide how weak you are by making their Minions (I forget what CO calls them) even weaker in comparison, but as soon as you fight a Boss (Villain?) or higher, you start to feel the lack of power.

That said, I haven't even been able to run CO on my shiny new computer to see whether it can handle my Pseudo-Mastermind.  When I tried it, the Launcher opened fine, but when I clicked Play, the Launcher closed, and... that's it.  CO was on my Dock (so it was running), but the actual game window never opened.  I deleted and re-installed a few times, but it never helped.

So I trashed the whole thing and never looked back.  (That's still one of the biggest things I miss about CoH - it was Mac-compatible.  No kludges or workarounds.  If CO wants to win me over, a Mac client is the first thing Cryptic North can do)


Yeah CO characters are a joke compared to the powerhouses we could build in CoH
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on January 30, 2015, 12:45:46 AM
Yeah, I never felt super in CO.  I put together characters I thought would be fun, but they almost never were.  At best, they were pale imitations of my CoH characters.  My melee characters got easily knocked around the room like pinballs, my ranged characters felt underpowered and fragile (even more than Blasters at their worst), and my attempts at recreating my Controllers and Dominators were just weak Blasters with pets (due to the lack of non-Telepathy CC).  Only my attempt at my Bots/Storm MM felt playable.  (I actually liked him, but having so many characters on the screen slowed things down to a crawl on my old computer)

The game tries to hide how weak you are by making their Minions (I forget what CO calls them) even weaker in comparison, but as soon as you fight a Boss (Villain?) or higher, you start to feel the lack of power.

That said, I haven't even been able to run CO on my shiny new computer to see whether it can handle my Pseudo-Mastermind.  When I tried it, the Launcher opened fine, but when I clicked Play, the Launcher closed, and... that's it.  CO was on my Dock (so it was running), but the actual game window never opened.  I deleted and re-installed a few times, but it never helped.

So I trashed the whole thing and never looked back.  (That's still one of the biggest things I miss about CoH - it was Mac-compatible.  No kludges or workarounds.  If CO wants to win me over, a Mac client is the first thing Cryptic North can do)

Two things about CO compared to CoH.  First, Cryptic learned three lessons developing CoH they put into practice in CO.  One: avoid escalating returns in mechanics (vis-a-vis Defense and Resistance in CoH).  Two: Unrestricted AoE is bad.  Three: hard control is worse.  The power levels in CO are significantly lower than they are in CoH for the most part because of those three reasons.

Second, CO's power system framework is far less forgiving than CoH's.  In CoH, you could literally make a random build using dice and a dartboard, and it would be wonky and weird, but stand up to standard content reasonably well.  Players could build conceptually or cosmetically and still be playable.  In CO, that's really not true.  And CoH's enhancement system is far more transparent, and that's saying something because CoH's is unnecessarily cluttered with trivial and inconsequential detail (sometimes I wonder if the fact that Mathematical Proof salvage is a trivial non-entity that most people discard was a deliberate gag by Castle, but I believe he inherited the names of things).  CO's gear system makes CoH's gear system look like playing tic-tac-toe with only the X's.

If you are an MMO veteran that likes playing build-jockey, its not necessarily difficult to make powerful builds in CO.  But unless you basically straight-up copy someone else's ideas from the forums or think Excel is a past time, a non-veteran MMO player is only going to make very powerful CO build by accident.

Its in many ways a more balanced (in the player vs environment sense) and controlled environment than CoH ever was.  But its also, at least in my experience, a less rich and interesting superhero environment.  I think balance is important, but I think a superhero game needs wild and crazy more than balanced.  I firmly believe you can have both if you design carefully enough, but CoH and CO demonstrate what happens when you can only have one, and each has a different one.  I think the CoH experience is the better one.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 30, 2015, 02:03:44 AM
Two things about CO compared to CoH.  First, Cryptic learned three lessons developing CoH they put into practice in CO.  One: avoid escalating returns in mechanics (vis-a-vis Defense and Resistance in CoH).  Two: Unrestricted AoE is bad.  Three: hard control is worse.  The power levels in CO are significantly lower than they are in CoH for the most part because of those three reasons.

Second, CO's power system framework is far less forgiving than CoH's.  In CoH, you could literally make a random build using dice and a dartboard, and it would be wonky and weird, but stand up to standard content reasonably well.  Players could build conceptually or cosmetically and still be playable.  In CO, that's really not true.  And CoH's enhancement system is far more transparent, and that's saying something because CoH's is unnecessarily cluttered with trivial and inconsequential detail (sometimes I wonder if the fact that Mathematical Proof salvage is a trivial non-entity that most people discard was a deliberate gag by Castle, but I believe he inherited the names of things).  CO's gear system makes CoH's gear system look like playing tic-tac-toe with only the X's.

If you are an MMO veteran that likes playing build-jockey, its not necessarily difficult to make powerful builds in CO.  But unless you basically straight-up copy someone else's ideas from the forums or think Excel is a past time, a non-veteran MMO player is only going to make very powerful CO build by accident.

Its in many ways a more balanced (in the player vs environment sense) and controlled environment than CoH ever was.  But its also, at least in my experience, a less rich and interesting superhero environment.  I think balance is important, but I think a superhero game needs wild and crazy more than balanced.  I firmly believe you can have both if you design carefully enough, but CoH and CO demonstrate what happens when you can only have one, and each has a different one.  I think the CoH experience is the better one.

I think it's a stupid "lesson" to feel that hard control was bad, because it set them up to later make crowd control completely without any use, because they kind of had the attitude of a scrub mentality when many rpgs had hard control in them.  Just you needed to provide means to counter crowd control that was modestly available.  CO initially had solid cc but CC got nerfed so much in the hands of the player, while also buffed in the hands of mobs when players ignored cc resistance.

The, game was kind of setup to railroad players into only very specific builds for a number of the above reasons.  While the second lesson was fine, and the first was ok, the third one just made sure that crowd control was largely unneeded later, when pvp-scrubs would complain about cc in pvp.

Counters and counter-counters are good, but not providing that and just removing something instead removes depth, which is what scrubs want ultimately.  They also ended up going down that path of making everything generic with buff/debuff mechanics becoming weaker and weaker, which eventually lead to just damage/healing/durability we see today.  Everyone is either durable as superman, or as devastating as he can be, but never ever both, or just somewhere in between but ignored in some team situations.  But in one mission(the fire and ice rampage) likewise everyone needs "that healer" to keep them alive.  So we don't really have the true "super hero" experience, consequently. 

While city of heroes was kind of, well if what they say of fallout 1 and 2 is true, it was more a true super hero game as an mmorpg could also be truer to an rpg.  Your chosen power sets truely changed your strategy alot.  There is no difference in CO between fire, lightning or ice other than energy unlock mechanics and a couple other small differences.  In city of heroes energy blasts tendency to knock enemies back, electrical blasts tendency to drain endurance, and ice blasts tendency to slow movement severely and also it's actual crowd control abilities make those three sets function very differently than fire blast.  OR storm summoning was very, very different to force fields ect.

City of heroes could be better looked at in comparison to the x-men, it was a team-game that had a huge, wide array of abilities and it was more interesting to find out how a hero with "X powerset combination" would deal with a bunch of badguys vs a hero with "Y powerset combination", while CO is more like batman or superman, or even just superman, you know he'll win, but it's very very rarely a question of how, especially if the writer never includes kryptonite and lets superman just plow the badguy.  In fact, most CO gameplay is just plowing badguys with the same tactics at differing speeds, end a fight faster or end it slower but always at full health.

Edit: Or even slower and with less health because your chosen powers lead to both less dps and offense simply because they lack things like the critical energy unlock or just do less damage than other powers of the same types.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Whatelse73 on January 30, 2015, 04:07:37 AM
I think it's a stupid "lesson" to feel that hard control was bad, because it set them up to later make crowd control completely without any use, because they kind of had the attitude of a scrub mentality when many rpgs had hard control in them.  Just you needed to provide means to counter crowd control that was modestly available.  CO initially had solid cc but CC got nerfed so much in the hands of the player, while also buffed in the hands of mobs when players ignored cc resistance.

........The, game was kind of setup to railroad players into only very specific builds for a number of the above reasons.  While the second lesson was fine, and the first was ok, the third one just made sure that crowd control was largely unneeded later, when pvp-scrubs would complain about cc in pvp.......


Execellently put Alex.  I think the variety of abilities and their results are a perfect reason why there are so many altoholics in CoX.  Along with the ease of team building in CoX, you got teamed up well and had such a variance of abilities that in most cases you could be quite effective.  (though I experienced plenty of wipes because of wrongly balanced teams, oh well, still fun to do and learn from it.)

The other point brought up would be the vast storyline, expansive set, and scenario of CoX vs Champions.  If CoX is Tolkien's Middle Earth, Champions is "a mile wide and about an inch thick."

The more recent function of Champions is just to get you to do "Alerts" all day long.  You get auto-teamed up, do instances for experience, resources, equipment, etc., finish the mission, exit out, queue for the next instance, rinse and repeat.  That's how you level to 40 now it seems.  After you finish all that, you gear up, team up and do end-game "instances".  Yes, they have similar functions in CoX, but the story is much more compelling and there are significant needs for certain archetypes for certain types of missions.

I have a lifetime with both CO and STO, so they are there if I feel the urge, but I paid a subscription to CoX non-stop because it was worth it.  (And it will be again)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on January 30, 2015, 04:21:29 AM
I used to wonder if my loyalty and love for CoH was due to the fact that it was my first MMO.  After playing three others long enough to see their shortcomings in comparison, I became comfortable with the fact that I was apparently just waiting for the right one to come along, and when it did, I played it from start to finish. 

That assertion is confirmed by all the comments I have read here from people who feel as I do.  I was right to feel that way, and it could not be back soon enough for me!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Whatelse73 on January 30, 2015, 06:01:26 AM
I used to wonder if my loyalty and love for CoH was due to the fact that it was my first MMO.  After playing three others long enough to see their shortcomings in comparison, I became comfortable with the fact that I was apparently just waiting for the right one to come along, and when it did, I played it from start to finish. 

That assertion is confirmed by all the comments I have read here from people who feel as I do.  I was right to feel that way, and it could not be back soon enough for me!

I'm right there with you.  It wasn't my first MMO, I did a couple text-based MUDs back in the 90s, DAoC (first graphic MMO for me), Asheron's call 1&2, then CoH came along in August 2004 and I even bought a brand new computer to play it.  Don't regret it for a minute.

I still play a few different ones depending on my mood.  SWTOR, CO, STO, LOTRO, RIFT, are what I have currently now.  Though 3 of the 5 are "free" because I have lifetimes for them.  If CoX came back (even as I23 with no improvements) I'd be back on it like a wet t-shirt.  Again, I might have the itch to play LOTRO or something else for a while, but if its there, it is there. 

Tough to say what I'd do if a City of Heroes 2 came out though, without seeing CoH 2 first.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on January 30, 2015, 02:23:13 PM
I would try it to see if it is everything that the original was, plus the stuff we always hoped we could see someday.  For me, it would have to at least have the same "spirit", teaming dynamics, and even better power sets for me to say.  But, I would not leave CoH behind unless CoH 2 was a proper successor.  I strayed to CO because I thought that is what it was offering, which turned out not to be so.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on January 30, 2015, 03:14:11 PM
CO just flat out stinks... and its an insult to anyone who actually played the Champions/Hero System PnP games.

It was a terrible terrible game and experience for me. I tried it twice. I would rather fantasize over a dead CoH and look at my Mid's builds than to play a vastly inferior product...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on January 30, 2015, 05:01:41 PM
CO just flat out stinks... and its an insult to anyone who actually played the Champions/Hero System PnP games.

It was a terrible terrible game and experience for me. I tried it twice. I would rather fantasize over a dead CoH and look at my Mid's builds than to play a vastly inferior product...

Word up!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on January 30, 2015, 07:32:42 PM
CO just flat out stinks... and its an insult to anyone who actually played the Champions/Hero System PnP games.

It was a terrible terrible game and experience for me. I tried it twice. I would rather fantasize over a dead CoH and look at my Mid's builds than to play a vastly inferior product...

I would rather fly around a EMPTY Paragon in Icon than play Champions.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on January 30, 2015, 08:30:33 PM
I think it's a stupid "lesson" to feel that hard control was bad, because it set them up to later make crowd control completely without any use, because they kind of had the attitude of a scrub mentality when many rpgs had hard control in them.  Just you needed to provide means to counter crowd control that was modestly available.  CO initially had solid cc but CC got nerfed so much in the hands of the player, while also buffed in the hands of mobs when players ignored cc resistance.
Even at the beginning CO's control was far less than that available in CoH.  And I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a "stupid" lesson.  CoH genuinely had brain-meltingly high levels of control which in any other game would have made it stupidly impossible to balance very well.

It only worked in CoH because we were allowed to become so powerful that pure offense was competitive with hard control, except in situations where hard targets were not easy to kill.  Thus: purple triangles.  But even so, consider how controllers complained their primary was significantly attenuated in Incarnate content.  And conversely consider the flip side case of putting the STF AVs to sleep.  It was never a stable situation in CoH.

What Cryptic failed to learn, what even Paragon didn't always appreciate, and what few game designers seem to acknowledge, is that "game balance" is a context-sensitive term.  There's no such thing as "numerically balanced" in the literal sense, because numbers offer no guidance on balance.  The definition of game balance I developed during my time with CoH was: Balance is about making game play options have the valuations they need to have in order for the gameplay to function as its intended to function.  Notice three words I don't use in my definition: "numbers," "equations," and in particular "equals."  Game balance is not when something is equal to something.  Its when the relationship between X and Y are what they need to be for the game to work properly.  Not necessarily equal.

Hard control in CoH wasn't as bad as it could be because it existed in a world of high-order AoE, of aggro control, of super-high defense.  It existed in a world where high defense and aggro control could neutralize a similar amount of damage, and where high-order AoE could defeat as many foes and hard control could nullify.  It was broken, but it existed in a system of lots of other broken things that happened to (very roughly) balance out.

The lesson Cryptic should have learned, the subtle lesson that escaped most players as well, was that gameplay balance is about presenting equal opportunity options to the player, and the components of those choices must be engineered to offer those choices.  In CoH, you should not be punished or overly rewarded for picking the "right" or "wrong" archetype.  There should be no right or wrong archetype.  And that means the things to give those archetypes must give the player a unique but roughly even ability to succeed.  If you're going to give out super-strong defense and aggro control to one archetype, you have to give out very good crowd control to another, and very high damage to the other.  It wasn't always like that: it was highly unbalanced at launch.  CoH was refined to become that over time, at least to a first order approximation, because Cryptic/Paragon had no choice: they couldn't start from scratch.  But the choice they were forced into was actually the best one for players.

I tried to explain this philosophy during CO early beta.  It did not go well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 30, 2015, 08:44:52 PM

The lesson Cryptic should have learned, the subtle lesson that escaped most players as well, was that gameplay balance is about presenting equal opportunity options to the player, and the components of those choices must be engineered to offer those choices.  In CoH, you should not be punished or overly rewarded for picking the "right" or "wrong" archetype.  There should be no right or wrong archetype.  And that means the things to give those archetypes must give the player a unique but roughly even ability to succeed.  If you're going to give out super-strong defense and aggro control to one archetype, you have to give out very good crowd control to another, and very high damage to the other.  It wasn't always like that: it was highly unbalanced at launch.  CoH was refined to become that over time, at least to a first order approximation, because Cryptic/Paragon had no choice: they couldn't start from scratch.  But the choice they were forced into was actually the best one for players.

I tried to explain this philosophy during CO early beta.  It did not go well.

That context and the overall scale, is exactly why city of heroes is truer to an rpg than most mmorpgs, and how generally the sheer number of options were viable, that is so true, it's about how viable different strategies are, not just number differences.  Thats something that escaped CO's developers.  A good way to describe CoH was that, no one powerset was truely dominant over the others because every effect was truely very effective.  You indeed were not punished for picking a wrong archtype or powerset combination, it just meant your strategy would be different.  While CO you tend to be punished for not picking the right passives or the right superstats.  I could use a recent character as an example, I had to switch to constitution because I found I wasn't gaining much damage at all from the ego superstat.  I switched to constitution primary and my character was not only tougher overall but remained at full health far more often.  And not due to agro loss.

It was due to the fact that crits with constitution HEAL you.  Yeah.  See, I didn't lose any damage overall, as the crits from ego as a primary, were to low anyways.  So I was "rewarded" for switching out ego for constitution.  But I didn't change my strategy, at all.

Balance is certainly context sensitive, and indeed, doubling my durability for only a 2-4% loss in firepower is something thats common in many games out there because they never think about different strategies.  But a trade in city of heroes was often, not so much as a trade, but a total change in strategy when it came to characters and powersets.  Thats what really kicked ass about city of heroes, and it was made to work, that was to me the smarter decision.  I couldn't make such "easy" trades in it, so instead of trading offense/defense or something, I simply looked at what strategy I wanted to use instead.

While CO on the other hand, it ended up with developers who didn't know anything about how their own game was even playing or how to think outside the box as they just made a game about "Smash things up faster or take less damage, your choice, oh if your healing others you'll suck at both of those and crowd control shall be weak".  They tried to be an action game and didn't do that well and then ended up becoming more similar to a generic mmo.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on January 30, 2015, 11:08:32 PM
While CO on the other hand, it ended up with developers who didn't know anything about how their own game was even playing or how to think outside the box as they just made a game about "Smash things up faster or take less damage, your choice, oh if your healing others you'll suck at both of those and crowd control shall be weak".  They tried to be an action game and didn't do that well and then ended up becoming more similar to a generic mmo.

Originally I believe the plan was for CO to launch simultaneously on PCs and consoles.  The gameplay is very obviously (at least to me) influenced by the need for the game to work with console controllers, and to be dominated by console-like "twitchiness."

Although I don't play the game (at least not yet: haven't had the time) I wonder if in a few respects Destiny might be the game CO initially tried to be and failed to be (and I doubt Cryptic ever had the ability to pull off), minus the explicit reference to the superhero genre.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on January 30, 2015, 11:55:43 PM
Originally I believe the plan was for CO to launch simultaneously on PCs and consoles.  The gameplay is very obviously (at least to me) influenced by the need for the game to work with console controllers, and to be dominated by console-like "twitchiness."

Although I don't play the game (at least not yet: haven't had the time) I wonder if in a few respects Destiny might be the game CO initially tried to be and failed to be (and I doubt Cryptic ever had the ability to pull off), minus the explicit reference to the superhero genre.

Go figure, though, I didn't think CO was twitchy, sure the gameplay is fast but, your not really at risk of dying very fast.

I wouldn't say Destiny is what CO tried to initially be, though, because Destiny is more trying to be a modern military massively multiplayer online shooter.  Its got guns, regenerating health and generally expects the player to go through just shooting things.  Not something I can touch after play, 'that', game(not talking about CO either, but, that, game that changed my perspective of gamers, specifically those that play any game with a false sense of reward and success).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on January 31, 2015, 12:03:23 AM
To me the power building attack that you have to spam makes it seem pretty twitchy and button mashy. I tried three times with CO and just couldn't get into it. It is very possible that it failed in my eyes by not being more like CoH. But even when it was the only game in town it didn't really work for me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brou on January 31, 2015, 12:33:38 AM
To me the power building attack that you have to spam makes it seem pretty twitchy and button mashy. I tried three times with CO and just couldn't get into it. It is very possible that it failed in my eyes by not being more like CoH. But even when it was the only game in town it didn't really work for me.
Do you mean the energy builder?
The default mode for energy builder is toggle. It can be made to never toggle off, no matter what, too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on January 31, 2015, 12:59:50 AM
Go figure, though, I didn't think CO was twitchy, sure the gameplay is fast but, your not really at risk of dying very fast.
The block mechanism, for example, is something you don't usually see in MMOs.  Not just the literal block power, but its use in conjunction with obvious wham attack visuals.  And while you can toggle the energy builder as Brou states above, its also an example of a more twitchy mechanic not just because you spam it, but because it is part of a combat execution system that tends to be more real-time and less queued: CoH was more of a queued attack system which tends to be less twitchy because it doesn't have to be as reactive.

There's also a subjective impression I get that CO attacks tends to be, visually, more short and staccato on average.  You don't tend to see attacks like Eagle's Claw in CO for example.  It also seems to me that attacks don't visually flow together as well, and I'm not really sure if that's just a subjective thing or a consequence of the fact CoH animators could reduce their efforts to making powers in a single set flow together as a priority rather than having all attacks flow together equally well across all power sets (because players could pick openly).  But that tends to reinforce visually for me a more twitchy experience.

In CoH I found you could find yourself getting into a fugue state of attacks and powers just flowing out of you while the action happened around you, whereas I find I rarely find myself getting into any rhythm in CO and reacting more on a power-by-power basis.  The fact that power execution tends to be less queued, more rapid, and more reactive on a power by power basis is what I mean by being more "twitchy."  Its more finely grained see-this-do-that than in CoH which was more see-this-do-this-that-and-the-other.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on January 31, 2015, 05:14:32 AM
...  Its more finely grained see-this-do-that than in CoH which was more see-this-do-this-that-and-the-other.

Unless you were a Defender, then it was see-this-do-this-and-tha... Awwww, the team killed them all already... and I was just about ready to fire off some damage too.
Maybe I should jump in ahead of the tank next time...

:)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on January 31, 2015, 06:24:54 AM
CO just flat out stinks... and its an insult to anyone who actually played the Champions/Hero System PnP games.

It was a terrible terrible game and experience for me. I tried it twice. I would rather fantasize over a dead CoH and look at my Mid's builds than to play a vastly inferior product...

I agree, the only resemblance that I could find between the tabletop game and CO was the name. But, to be fair, it is hard, if not impossible, to capture the tabletop flavor in an MMO.

Champions, Villains & Vigilantes, Mutants & Masterminds, DC Heroes (In several flavors), Marvel Super Heroes (in all it's many flavors) can NEVER be captured in an MMO really, so really it's not worth the comparison. Enjoy the Online versions as best you can and cherish the tabletop versions for when you can gather friends around and play them.

Meanwhile, for the solo experience, the online versions just can't be beat!

And being able to team with friends who might be half a world away? Priceless!!!

So CO & DCOU aren't as good as CoX, but for now, we don't have CoX, so enjoy what you can while you can! (If you can!)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on February 01, 2015, 09:32:50 PM
So CO & DCOU aren't as good as CoX, but for now, we don't have CoX, so enjoy what you can while you can! (If you can!)

Exactly why I've been playing a lot of Civilization 5 lately, as well as several fun 4X games as well.  Until CoX is reactivated Superhero MMOs are dead to me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on February 01, 2015, 10:10:14 PM
Exactly why I've been playing a lot of Civilization 5 lately, as well as several fun 4X games as well.  Until CoX is reactivated Superhero MMOs are dead to me.

I admit I still have fun with CO but not often.  But I have been also playing new vegas alot, I am actually experimenting with playing hardcore mode now, it's making me want to change my strategy;

Don't rush dead money(wait till level 20 for solar powered)
Consider more melee specifically for dead money(since thats a survival horror game).
Since I use project nevada, get all the limb regen implants for dead money.(yes, I make a lot of dead money specific adjustments due to it's horrid design).
Do Old world blues first to remove head and torso crippling, combined with limb regen implants and solar powered my character will literally just regenerate during the daytime(and faster than the orange cloud effect).
Don't use the companions to clear anything, do it all by myself(because they are morons who kill themselves, that means I have to do all the work)
So far those are the only real changes, since I notice that maintaining a good supply of food and water is not actually hard in any of the other dlcs.


I may even decide not to bother with dead money though, to.  I also experimented with caravan strategies so I wouldn't be so dependent on huge luck scores.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on February 02, 2015, 02:12:21 AM
Exactly why I've been playing a lot of Civilization 5 lately, as well as several fun 4X games as well.  Until CoX is reactivated Superhero MMOs are dead to me.

Reformatted my old XP box with a fresh image of XP and installed all the needed XP files then loaded it with all the games in my library and hooked it to my 60" LCD TV.   Civilization, Command and Conquer, assorted Star Wars games never looked so good or fun as they do now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: PsychicKitty on February 02, 2015, 10:33:18 AM
I feel like Marvel Heroes Online is a lot more in-line with how City of Heroes used to be.

Its an Isometric game with imposed diablo like controls.  But the flow is more like city of heroes....also some of the developers from city of heroes seam to be working on it.

I have no Idea what the upshot of this 3 year long negotiation with the one person to see if they can get introduced to someone else to talk about getting the rights to run the game again is going to go.

But in the mean time I too have been playing other games....Destiny is one...Marvel Heroes Online is another.....I do occasionally log into DCUO and Champions...but those games just bore the life out of me...too many limitations in those games.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 02, 2015, 08:56:00 PM
I feel like Marvel Heroes Online is a lot more in-line with how City of Heroes used to be.

The space combat in STO has, in my opinion, a weird echo of CoH combat.  Superficially, its nothing like it with range, continuous movement, and directional arcs.  But then it sneaks up on you that STO's power execution system settles into an attack chain rhythm that is remarkably similar at times.  Even moreso that Champions Online, actually.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Whatelse73 on February 02, 2015, 10:53:51 PM

But in the mean time I too have been playing other games....Destiny is one...Marvel Heroes Online is another.....I do occasionally log into DCUO and Champions...but those games just bore the life out of me...too many limitations in those games.

I hear Destiny is coming to PC in March, supposedly.  We shall see if that happens or not, but it would be interesting to play it, if it does.  I can't play consoles because they give me sim-sickness.  Though I have a computer with 200+ games so I don't really need a console.  lol.

I logged into DCUO last summer and they had deleted all my characters since the last time I played, not sure why, though I do know the servers got combined.  Then I played for about a day and was perfectly fine uninstalling it again.  It was interesting for a bit, but just too much the console port, too much just about "gankin newbs" there and less about the story line that should be of importance. Plus, I guess I'm spoiled by CoX because having only 5-6 powers at a time is just frustrating to me, merely for the fact that eventually you'd have to "rebuild" every time you went and did something just to meet the mission given.

I still play CO once in a while, but it is taxing.  They really haven't changed much at all since it first opened over 5 years ago.  I have a lifetime so its paid for (same as for DCUO), but its just not there.  It is as if "they" have given up on it and focus all their attention on Star Trek Online.  STO has updates monthly, CO's updates are "here's this new fluff you can buy from the zen store!"  As opposed to "here's this new part of the city for you to patrol!"

I had high hopes for CO, since there was involvement from CoX alumni, that it would spawn and expand to larger things.  But alas, it did not.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on February 02, 2015, 11:30:43 PM
Quote
I hear Destiny is coming to PC in March, supposedly
I don't think this is true sadly.  I have been playing Destiny since day 1.  I am one of the people who got hooked and are figuring out why they like it so much.  However they can barely add content and bug fixes at the rate they are already.  The game as is short on content and is riddled with bugs that they are supposedly addressing. Making it for the PC would only slow down their progress on it.  It would be putting the carriage before the horse.

I've heard the "steam" sale rumor but I just don't actually believe it.  With how much work they should do on the current game as is, a lot of people would not be happy if they released a PC version before making the current version better.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on February 03, 2015, 03:48:11 AM
I don't think this is true sadly.  I have been playing Destiny since day 1.  I am one of the people who got hooked and are figuring out why they like it so much.  However they can barely add content and bug fixes at the rate they are already.  The game as is short on content and is riddled with bugs that they are supposedly addressing. Making it for the PC would only slow down their progress on it.  It would be putting the carriage before the horse.

I've heard the "steam" sale rumor but I just don't actually believe it.  With how much work they should do on the current game as is, a lot of people would not be happy if they released a PC version before making the current version better.

Last I knew Bungie said there were no plans to develop Destiny for PC.  However, that's really just as well because the end-game grind for ascendant shards/energy gear upgrades, not to mention the extra junk you need to get post-DLC to upgrade gear with, will drive people so crazy they'll quit in a couple months anyway.   I killed myself on PS4 for 2 1/2 months to get all these upgraded exotics, and suddenly post-DLC, the legendary vendor junk was better and I was told to trash everything and start over in a sense.  Pffft to that, I quit and never went back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on February 03, 2015, 04:14:34 AM
Last I knew Bungie said there were no plans to develop Destiny for PC.  However, that's really just as well because the end-game grind for ascendant shards/energy gear upgrades, not to mention the extra junk you need to get post-DLC to upgrade gear with, will drive people so crazy they'll quit in a couple months anyway.   I killed myself on PS4 for 2 1/2 months to get all these upgraded exotics, and suddenly post-DLC, the legendary vendor junk was better and I was told to trash everything and start over in a sense.  Pffft to that, I quit and never went back.

If it weren't for the raids and the beautiful mechanics of that game I would of quit 2 weeks in.  Basically Bungie addresses their mistakes with both the DLC and the original game and say they can fix it.  I have hope.  CoH at launch and CoH at sunset were completely different games.  Diablo 3 was awful for the first year.  I just hold on to the idea that it will one day be a great game.  Plus its a lot of fun to play with a bunch of friends I haven't spoken to in years.

Speaking of which
 
I miss CoH.  Waiting patiently for news.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on February 04, 2015, 06:06:19 AM
I miss CoH.  Waiting patiently for news.

Same, but I am waiting impatiently, I keep trying CO and DCOU but they just don't do it for me, not eveen for an evening. I need me some CoH!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MegaWatt on February 04, 2015, 07:08:32 AM
I played CO for years but the content just isnt there....CoX had the content and was well worth it - if only i can convince my people of that when/if CoX comes back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Baja on February 04, 2015, 10:05:14 AM
Same, but I am waiting impatiently, I keep trying CO and DCOU but they just don't do it for me, not eveen for an evening. I need me some CoH!

I don't mind DCUO every now and then, mainly because it is easy on the eyes. I get what you're saying though, that game is essentially what CoH would look like if the only thing focused on was end game content. With most games focusing on end game grinds lately I'll be lost in euphoria if I get to slowly work my way back to 50 in our wonderful city.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on February 04, 2015, 04:59:04 PM
I don't mind DCUO every now and then, mainly because it is easy on the eyes. I get what you're saying though, that game is essentially what CoH would look like if the only thing focused on was end game content. With most games focusing on end game grinds lately I'll be lost in euphoria if I get to slowly work my way back to 50 in our wonderful city.

Yep, when CoX is back, I plan to level a few toons from 1 to 50 the old-school route.... Through the Hollows and everything.  Ah, great times!  I so miss handing FrostFire his head about 17 times.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on February 04, 2015, 05:14:18 PM
Yep, when CoX is back, I plan to level a few toons from 1 to 50 the old-school route...

There's another way to level?  :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on February 04, 2015, 05:34:58 PM
Yep, when CoX is back, I plan to level a few toons from 1 to 50 the old-school route.... Through the Hollows and everything.  Ah, great times!  I so miss handing FrostFire his head about 17 times.

I wonder, when the game returns, who will be the first to get to 50?  You know some people are going to race to 50 as fast as they can.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on February 04, 2015, 05:35:04 PM
Yep, when CoX is back, I plan to level a few toons from 1 to 50 the old-school route.... Through the Hollows and everything.  Ah, great times!  I so miss handing FrostFire his head about 17 times.

Oh god yes, old school, all the way! No short cut power levelling in the MA for me!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: EmmaStyles on February 04, 2015, 05:45:35 PM
I wonder how many Atlas Parks we will have.  :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 04, 2015, 08:04:38 PM
I wonder how many Atlas Parks we will have.  :D
All of them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on February 04, 2015, 08:13:46 PM
I wonder how many Atlas Parks we will have.  :D

As many as it takes. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on February 04, 2015, 08:14:11 PM
I wonder, when the game returns, who will be the first to get to 50?  You know some people are going to race to 50 as fast as they can.

I won't have to power level to hit 50 fast I will tell you that.  Super teams aplenty with my plans.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on February 04, 2015, 08:19:29 PM
I won't have to power level to hit 50 fast I will tell you that.  Super teams aplenty with my plans.

This reminds me, I'm also gonna race to reform my Supergroup... The Super Hero International Taskforce.



Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Heroette on February 04, 2015, 08:21:05 PM
They should have a badge just for the first one to get to 50.  I don't know what to name it but it should be unique.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on February 04, 2015, 08:24:53 PM
There's another way to level?  :o

Well, you could go fight the giant poo-monsters a few times...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on February 04, 2015, 08:40:19 PM
They should have a badge just for the first one to get to 50.  I don't know what to name it but it should be unique.

the "remembered how to make fire farms way too well" badge?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Samuraiko on February 04, 2015, 09:10:22 PM
They should have a badge just for the first one to get to 50.  I don't know what to name it but it should be unique.

"Content? What content?"

Or better yet...

"Did I miss something?"

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on February 04, 2015, 09:14:31 PM
"Content? What content?"

Or better yet...

"Did I miss something?"

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
Heh.  Indeed - they'll be a race for this, I'm sure, and the power-levelers will miss everything to level up in an afternoon.  Towards the end, I'd gone in the exact opposite direction, using ParagonWiki to assemble a spreadsheet of contacts and mission arcs by zone and level that I didn't want to miss.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on February 04, 2015, 10:01:04 PM
I don't plan to level as quickly as possible, but I also don't plan to try doing every possible arc on my way up either.  I imagine there will be a lot of people running DFB to get things rolling, which I expect I will take part in.  I expect I will also take part in my favourite zones such as Faultline and Croatoa.

While I have a looooong list of characters I would like to make eventually, I have it narrowed down to a "short" list of 8 that I intend to make early on, largely representing my favourite ATs (3 controllers, a WS, 1 tank, 1 MM, 1 blaster and 1 dom.  The blaster is the only AT of those I never took to 50.)  Exactly which of those I will focus on at the beginning and which will be the first to 50, I have no idea.  Keep changing my mind.  I don't expect to be one of the earliest getting to 50 again, but I don't think it will take me that long either.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Beltor on February 04, 2015, 10:23:29 PM
It'll probably take me a while to hit 50 and i'm planning to enjoy every minute.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Heroette on February 04, 2015, 10:25:11 PM
Hell, it took me 2 years to get my first 50 so I sure won't be one of the first.   :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on February 04, 2015, 10:59:15 PM
I don't plan to level as quickly as possible, but I also don't plan to try doing every possible arc on my way up either.  I imagine there will be a lot of people running DFB to get things rolling, which I expect I will take part in.  I expect I will also take part in my favourite zones such as Faultline and Croatoa.

While I have a looooong list of characters I would like to make eventually, I have it narrowed down to a "short" list of 8 that I intend to make early on, largely representing my favourite ATs (3 controllers, a WS, 1 tank, 1 MM, 1 blaster and 1 dom.  The blaster is the only AT of those I never took to 50.)  Exactly which of those I will focus on at the beginning and which will be the first to 50, I have no idea.  Keep changing my mind.  I don't expect to be one of the earliest getting to 50 again, but I don't think it will take me that long either.

I will definitely say speaking of faultline, people will need to do some kind of time based mission to get Oroborous(am I spelling that right?).  There will be a lot more portal sharing earlier on when the game server/servers go back up and everyone has new characters, that'll mean no one has any time related souvenirs at first.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: EmmaStyles on February 04, 2015, 11:08:52 PM
I have so many characters I plan on remaking and the others I never got around to creating.  I plan on taking my time leveling each of them. I have no idea who will be first, second, third and so forth but I do know I am going to enjoy being back in our city. I miss it so but talking about it like this with all of you does make me smile.  :) Thank you; it does keep me dreaming and hoping that we hear something soon.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on February 04, 2015, 11:42:34 PM
Thank you; it does keep me dreaming and hoping that we hear something soon.

You know, dreams are what stuff is made from.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harq on February 05, 2015, 12:24:32 AM
My biggest temptation would be to spend hours creating characters and then not knowing what to do when I'm done with all the choices.  In my head I'd like to think I'll have the self control to just limit myself a little (cause I'm on the wavelength that it won't go away again anytime soon, preferably never) and concentrate on a selected few.  I doubt I'll power my way through with one character. 

I'll probably do what I did when we last had it.  Pick a character, and try to team.  I loved teaming in this game so much.  If for some reason its a dead time or the teams can't stick together for long periods of time.  Then move on to another fave and hope I get success there.  There were times I played a character for a week straight.  Then others where I kept switching every 30 min or so cause my characters or the team just didn't gel.

That's what is so cool about this game.  There are so many options and fun in every zone and at all levels.  I could be a story guy and solo through.  Or play with a group from level one to who knows. I remembered getting a level 1 teaming at the sewers and moving on to radio missions at Kings and on from there.  Then look at the time and I have about 3 Hours before I'm supposed to wake up.

AARRGGH!!!!  I miss this game sooooooooo much!!!!!

Patiently pulling hair and praying to the almighty toe clippings on the floor for the great news (always optimistic) sooner as opposed to later
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on February 05, 2015, 12:57:00 AM
after I reclaim my character names, and make most of them I plan on taking my time going through the content. :) Also I plan on making let's plays, each of the ATs that I play will have its own season. Ie blasters season one, level 1-25 first part of the season with 26-50 the second part. That would be followed by the next at season.
I sooo want to play again :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: zendarin on February 05, 2015, 12:57:12 AM
They should have a badge just for the first one to get to 50.  I don't know what to name it but it should be unique.

John Hancock. The first to sign the Declaration of Independence and he had that cool superhero movie  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on February 05, 2015, 02:05:15 AM
I have so many characters I plan on remaking and the others I never got around to creating.  I plan on taking my time leveling each of them. I have no idea who will be first, second, third and so forth but I do know I am going to enjoy being back in our city. I miss it so but talking about it like this with all of you does make me smile.  :) Thank you; it does keep me dreaming and hoping that we hear something soon.

I miss it greatly at the moment also.

In part it's because I've been trying to distract myself by playing other games--WoW, Sims 3, Hearthstone--but it struck me that WoW breaks what I think should be the cardinal rule of MMOs.  Questing in that game is way easier/more fun when there is nobody else around.  City was the exact opposite; it was awesome solo, but that much more awesome with others.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 05, 2015, 02:22:07 AM
They should have a badge just for the first one to get to 50.  I don't know what to name it but it should be unique.

If the badge is unique, it will not reward the best or even the fastest player.  It will end up rewarding the player with the best ability to game the system to achieve that goal, and it will definitely be rewarded before first sunrise after the game goes live.

Never underestimate badge hunters.  I wouldn't be surprised if a badge hunter hacked their way to that badge ten minutes after the game went live. 

If I wasn't so busy, I wouldn't be surprised if that badge hunter was me.  There's a reason the badge-hunter.com site was originally called "Badge Whores."  I was still acquiring a few last really hard to get badges a month before shutdown on characters that were about to disappear into the aether (Triumph managed to achieve its first, and I believe only, Really Hard Way Magisterium on October 28th, just 33 days before shutdown).

Don't dangle raw meat in front of badgers, is what I'm trying to say.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on February 05, 2015, 02:22:26 AM
Im at the point that I wish there was some kind of news...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on February 05, 2015, 03:01:37 AM
I have already gotten a start on remaking my characters using Icon.  I figure the saved costume and power customization files should save me 30 minutes per character minimum, and get me into a fully populated map to start playing all the sooner.

Yeah, I am really looking forward to that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on February 05, 2015, 04:41:33 AM
I have already gotten a start on remaking my characters using Icon.  I figure the saved costume and power customization files should save me 30 minutes per character minimum, and get me into a fully populated map to start playing all the sooner.

Yeah, I am really looking forward to that.

I'm kind of the same. It will save me some time since I have several characters prebuilt. But I know I'll have to adjust something here or there. I always do.

Are we almost there... oh wait. That's someone else's line. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on February 05, 2015, 05:15:03 AM
I have already gotten a start on remaking my characters using Icon.  I figure the saved costume and power customization files should save me 30 minutes per character minimum, and get me into a fully populated map to start playing all the sooner.

Yeah, I am really looking forward to that.

Here's what I did, made all my heroic and villainous costumes and saved them along with certain power customizations.  However I then made and saved what I call my civilian costume. Regular pants, shoes, shirt, average face, hair, shades and t-shirt, no aura no power customization.   When the game returns I'll just use the civilian suit for initial character creation then as they unlock costume slots I can add the other suits.   Should be fairly quick to load such standard costume apparel.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on February 05, 2015, 05:52:41 AM
I have been wondering how all of that will work WHEN the game comes back.  Will all of the previously unlockable content just be there? Will veteran rewards be available?  Will there be a store where costume pieces can be purchased?  I know they plan to bring it back basically as it was at the time of shut down, but the NCSoft store, and the other real-world money add-ins to the game were a considerable part of it too.  How do we think all of this will be handled?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on February 05, 2015, 05:54:56 AM
They should have a badge just for the first one to get to 50.  I don't know what to name it but it should be unique.

The problem with unique things is...It's not really fair. I suppose it's more that it's not nice, rather than not fair.
It also has the potential to open a can of "F*** the devs." as Badge Whores look at their collection of badges and go "I've got every badge! ...Except all the ones i don't, because they're unique." Now you've got a pissed off badger.

There is a certain kickass coolness to unique things though. I think it threatens to be more trouble than it's worth.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on February 05, 2015, 05:59:40 AM
I could see a badge:

Lvl 50 in 50 day/hours/minutes..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on February 05, 2015, 01:21:51 PM
My biggest temptation would be to spend hours creating characters and then not knowing what to do when I'm done with all the choices.  In my head I'd like to think I'll have the self control to just limit myself a little (cause I'm on the wavelength that it won't go away again anytime soon, preferably never) and concentrate on a selected few.  I doubt I'll power my way through with one character. 

I'll probably do what I did when we last had it.  Pick a character, and try to team.  I loved teaming in this game so much.  If for some reason its a dead time or the teams can't stick together for long periods of time.  Then move on to another fave and hope I get success there.  There were times I played a character for a week straight.  Then others where I kept switching every 30 min or so cause my characters or the team just didn't gel.

That's what is so cool about this game.  There are so many options and fun in every zone and at all levels.  I could be a story guy and solo through.  Or play with a group from level one to who knows. I remembered getting a level 1 teaming at the sewers and moving on to radio missions at Kings and on from there.  Then look at the time and I have about 3 Hours before I'm supposed to wake up.

AARRGGH!!!!  I miss this game sooooooooo much!!!!!

Patiently pulling hair and praying to the almighty toe clippings on the floor for the great news (always optimistic) sooner as opposed to later
That's my view of the game exactly.   Explaining my playstyle would vary depending upon the day.   Such a cool game to support all those various options.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on February 05, 2015, 02:06:35 PM
I haven't messed around with getting characters ready in Icon yet, mostly because I think it would make me even more eager.  I've been content to poke around in Mids and make a list of the builds I want to try.  I expect it wouldn't take me long to get around to Icon if we hear positive news though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on February 05, 2015, 02:09:38 PM
The problem with unique things is...It's not really fair. I suppose it's more that it's not nice, rather than not fair.
It also has the potential to open a can of "F*** the devs." as Badge Whores look at their collection of badges and go "I've got every badge! ...Except all the ones i don't, because they're unique." Now you've got a pissed off badger.

There is a certain kickass coolness to unique things though. I think it threatens to be more trouble than it's worth.

Bug Hunter and Passport were two badges that irritated some badgers
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on February 05, 2015, 03:22:02 PM
I haven't messed around with getting characters ready in Icon yet, mostly because I think it would make me even more eager.  I've been content to poke around in Mids and make a list of the builds I want to try.  I expect it wouldn't take me long to get around to Icon if we hear positive news though.

Ditto.  I won't download the icon either and by no means discourage anyone else. 

I think I would play with the characters and then start to think of the old supergroup and events and then .... Poof back to reality.

Anyway, I need to graduate this spring before I ever immerse myself in a virtual world again!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: adarict on February 05, 2015, 03:29:12 PM
Don't dangle raw meat in front of badgers, is what I'm trying to say.

Of the many descriptions of badge hunters I have seen over the years, this one makes me laugh the most.  It is so very appropriate.  I can't believe I never connected badgers (the people who look for CoH badges) and badgers (the animal).  Thank you for that laugh this morning.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on February 05, 2015, 03:48:11 PM
The thing about badges is, it's a collection system. It was created for people who enjoy a collection mindset and playstyle. And players who enjoy that will never be okay with having 99%. The entire *purpose* of a collection mini-game is that the player is working toward having 100% someday. They go into it knowing full well that the last few items will take patience and persistence; it's what they like about it. They enjoy pushing themselves to "cross the finish line", so to speak. Except when unique and time-limited items are thrown into the mix, they'll never cross that finish line, and they know it. Because there will be items they literally can *never* obtain. For most collectors the only thing that's going to do is foster negativity.

I say, if you want to have rewards that are time-limited or unique, just leave them out of the collection mini-game. For example, CoH lumped everything into badges under various categories - Achievements, Accomplishments, Events, and so on. If there had just been a section for these things where they weren't included in (or left out of) the character's badge count, I think there would have been a lot less resentment from the folks who didn't have them. The badges themselves would have been for things the *character* did (and those would all be things that could be done again at any time by any character, regardless of creation date), while a separate system would track what the *player* had done (things like log in on certain dates, attend events, or win contests).

I think that would be a much better way of handling things, without having to completely do away with unique and time-limited rewards. Because I mean hey, those are still cool for the people who can actually get them. I believe they're only received negatively when you put them on a checklist while knowing that the majority of people will never be able to check them off.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on February 05, 2015, 05:46:53 PM
Of the many descriptions of badge hunters I have seen over the years, this one makes me laugh the most.  It is so very appropriate.  I can't believe I never connected badgers (the people who look for CoH badges) and badgers (the animal).  Thank you for that laugh this morning.

With some of the CoH badgers, it would be more appropriate to call them Honey Badgers! :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 05, 2015, 06:26:08 PM
The thing about badges is, it's a collection system. It was created for people who enjoy a collection mindset and playstyle. And players who enjoy that will never be okay with having 99%. The entire *purpose* of a collection mini-game is that the player is working toward having 100% someday. They go into it knowing full well that the last few items will take patience and persistence; it's what they like about it. They enjoy pushing themselves to "cross the finish line", so to speak. Except when unique and time-limited items are thrown into the mix, they'll never cross that finish line, and they know it. Because there will be items they literally can *never* obtain. For most collectors the only thing that's going to do is foster negativity.

One of the things I tried to explain to the devs with I think not as much success as I would like is that there are primarily two kinds of players that care at all about badges: the casual player that just likes to see them when they happen to get them but won't necessarily expend a lot of effort in pursuit of them, and collector-minded players that "gotta get them all" and pursue badges explicitly hoping to complete the set.  Given that, its illogical from a game design perspective to create badges that are explicitly designed to be unlikely for players to ever acquire.  The casuals won't pursue them at all, and the collectors will try and fail to acquire them and become resentful.  The number of players both willing to pursue unlikely badges and yet not upset about ever not acquiring them would be relatively small compared to the other two groups.  I think the devs saw the badges as CoH's version of an achievement system (a badge type was actually called that) where its not normal for players to complain that every single player was unable to perform every single achievement.  Some achievements were genuinely constructed to be extremely difficult to accomplish and even unlikely for any but a few players to ever achieve.  That's fine.  But the CoH badges were not seen that way and once the community perspective was locked into badges as a collectable, and not a true achievement system, you couldn't simply change the way it was used.

If the devs added an achievement scoreboard completely separate from the badge system, and it was *just* a scoreboard with checkboxes for each one you achieved, and there was no badge icon or title associated with it, badgers would have almost certainly considered it separate from the badge collections they were assembling.  Other players might try to be completist with the achievement scoreboard itself, but that wouldn't have detracted from the badge collection.  But the devs decided to functionally overload the badge system as a) an accolade power unlock, b) a collectable system, and c) an achievement scoreboard.  But a significant functional community formed around (b) before the devs could set the right expectation (and honestly they never did properly try to set the right expectation from the start, when they might have had a chance).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: P51mus on February 05, 2015, 08:38:35 PM
If there had just been a section for these things where they weren't included in (or left out of) the character's badge count, I think there would have been a lot less resentment from the folks who didn't have them.

Sortof like how WoW has feats of strength that don't count towards achievement score?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on February 05, 2015, 11:51:24 PM
here's a question for you all:  What feature added to the game felt like a breath of fresh air that brought some new life to the game, or something that was long overdue?

For me:

1. Mission Architect: breath of fresh air
2. Praetoria: breath of fresh air
3. buffs such as Speed Boost and Force Field bubbles becoming AOE powers; LONG overdue
4. Null the Gull: LONG overdue.  I enjoyed visiting Null and shutting down group fly effect on all my characters and even speed boost on some as well.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on February 06, 2015, 01:20:49 AM
here's a question for you all:  What feature added to the game felt like a breath of fresh air that brought some new life to the game, or something that was long overdue?


Stalker improvements and -kb IO in the long overdue department, enhancement converters in the fresh air department.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on February 06, 2015, 01:45:19 AM
here's a question for you all:  What feature added to the game felt like a breath of fresh air that brought some new life to the game, or something that was long overdue?

Supersidekicking.  Teaming became sooooo much easier.

Ouro.  Not having to try and squeeze in particular badges while levelling was a definite plus.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: RGladden on February 06, 2015, 02:14:30 AM
Nate?  You out there?  Drop us a bone of some kind...ok?  I'm 61 years old and I ain't gettin' any younger.  My longing for the game is like a physical hunger.

Tanks!

And Brutes!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on February 06, 2015, 02:47:25 AM
I could see a badge:

Lvl 50 in 50 day/hours/minutes..

If it were up to me, the badge for the first to hit 50 would be "Premature Ejaculation". Now how does THAT feel ;) ?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 06, 2015, 04:47:15 AM
here's a question for you all:  What feature added to the game felt like a breath of fresh air that brought some new life to the game, or something that was long overdue?

For me it was the invention system in Issue 9.  It wasn't perfect by any means, but in one stroke the basic economy created by the invention system (and the markets that were coupled to it) realized the promise of any player being able to play the game without compromising concept (by opening the door to levels of enhancement that would make standard content playable with literally any build without significant monetary or time-grinding investment) and opened the door for the players to create their own meta-gaming end game by opening the door to ludicrous (relatively speaking) levels of build power that allowed players to set fantastic gaming goals as their own end game achievements (i.e. the Scrapper Challenges, higher-order task force soloing, AV/GM soloing with more options than the classic AV builds).

It wasn't just the gameplay and quantitative changes, I believe a case can be made that the post-I9 game was fundamentally different on not just a technical level but also on a player-community level.  We saw and played the game differently after Issue 9, and we even interacted with each other differently after I9.  The invention system helped, I believe, promote the "there's no wrong way to play" philosophy that was just one of many in the early days, and became the prevalent religion of CoH in the years after Issue 9.  I could say the invention system, rather than being the scourge that some thought it might become before it launched, actually became a strong positive influence that doesn't often get the credit it deserves.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on February 06, 2015, 05:14:30 AM
For me it was the invention system in Issue 9.  It wasn't perfect by any means, but in one stroke the basic economy created by the invention system (and the markets that were coupled to it) realized the promise of any player being able to play the game without compromising concept (by opening the door to levels of enhancement that would make standard content playable with literally any build without significant monetary or time-grinding investment) and opened the door for the players to create their own meta-gaming end game by opening the door to ludicrous (relatively speaking) levels of build power that allowed players to set fantastic gaming goals as their own end game achievements (i.e. the Scrapper Challenges, higher-order task force soloing, AV/GM soloing with more options than the classic AV builds).

It wasn't just the gameplay and quantitative changes, I believe a case can be made that the post-I9 game was fundamentally different on not just a technical level but also on a player-community level.  We saw and played the game differently after Issue 9, and we even interacted with each other differently after I9.  The invention system helped, I believe, promote the "there's no wrong way to play" philosophy that was just one of many in the early days, and became the prevalent religion of CoH in the years after Issue 9.  I could say the invention system, rather than being the scourge that some thought it might become before it launched, actually became a strong positive influence that doesn't often get the credit it deserves.

Yeah the invention system should have received more credit from the players.  after all it did help offset the diversification that Jack was so fond of...

Now the Market.....leaving the price cap at 2 billion inf I was never fond of. I really didn't think there was any IO that was worth 2 billion, not even the +3defense PVP io.  Sure I understand, more defense is great, but for 2 billion inf?  No.   

Price capping and the occasional market seeding would have been nice.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on February 06, 2015, 05:38:02 AM
Yeah the invention system should have received more credit from the players.  after all it did help offset the diversification that Jack was so fond of...

Now the Market.....leaving the price cap at 2 billion inf I was never fond of. I really didn't think there was any IO that was worth 2 billion, not even the +3defense PVP io.  Sure I understand, more defense is great, but for 2 billion inf?  No.   

Price capping and the occasional market seeding would have been nice.
Price capping as in forcing an IO to not go for more than X amount? Not possible. If they can't sell on-market for what they think it's worth, people will just trade off-market. It's just how people work.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on February 06, 2015, 05:47:06 AM
here's a question for you all:  What feature added to the game felt like a breath of fresh air that brought some new life to the game, or something that was long overdue?

Breath of fresh air:
1. Incarnate trials (though I didn't play them much) the introduction to them. Where you walk into Ouro and every bad guy is there attack. Then you just walk past them like their nothing. That got me so excited to see what the game would be like after incarnates.

2. Side switching, I liked villain ATs and I like the villain zones but not many people played villain side. So being able to take my villain ATs over to heroe side opened up a whole new game to me really.

Long overdue:

1. Making buffs AOE, especially for MMs. Giving all your pets their two upgrades one by one. Plus buffing them if your secondary had buffs would kill your endurance.

2. Breaking up some of the TFs into small pieces. Most TFs I did, I usually soloed. I even made characters for the sole purpose of soloing TFs.

3. Enhancement converters, I farmed for my purples. Before Enhancement converters if I got a purple drop I didn't need for the build I was currently working on. I'd sale it for the influence to buy the purple I needed. In the case of Brutes, that usually meant selling the confuse purple or the sleep purple. Which didn't sale for much at all. So using the Enhancement converters, I had a chance to get the purple I needed instead of selling the low end purple and buying the high end purple. I rarely got the hold purples...

4. The KD IO, that opened up some power sets for most people. Who didn't want to play storm, elec blasters ect.. because of the KB. I never got around to getting a KD IO but I still played my demon/storm MM solo or just didn't use certain powers in a group setting.


Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on February 06, 2015, 07:05:14 AM
Much of what Drauger9 said, though I played the incarnate trials alot.  But the various buffs made AoE was perhaps one of the best things done for the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on February 06, 2015, 02:49:10 PM
Now the Market.....leaving the price cap at 2 billion inf I was never fond of. I really didn't think there was any IO that was worth 2 billion, not even the +3defense PVP io.  Sure I understand, more defense is great, but for 2 billion inf?  No.

Things are worth whatever someone is willing to pay for them. In the case of the PVP +3% defense global, they were worth more than 2 billion to quite a few people; that's why they mostly were sold off market. Sure there were a ton of 2B bids on them and someone who got one without knowing better would occasionally post one and it would sell for 2B, but that wasn't a reliable way to get one unless you were very patient due to all the outstanding bids.

Settings price caps on a player makert is pointless and does nothing but discourage use of that market. Seeding it is equally counter-productive as it makes it harder to sell anything and also discourages people from listing items they don't need. If you were going to do that, you might as well just move everything to NPC vendors and remove the market entirely.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ArchPilgrim on February 06, 2015, 02:56:31 PM
Nate?  You out there?  Drop us a bone of some kind...ok?  I'm 61 years old and I ain't gettin' any younger.  My longing for the game is like a physical hunger.

I'd like to echo this sentiment, except I'm 65 and get irritated easily.  What's the holdup?  Yeah, I've read every post in the two main threads, and it's going nowhere.  The delay is BS, IMO.  Someone on our end is getting jacked around.  Who we dealing with here?  They got some IP they don't want, and we've got some cash, capable and willing devs, and a rabid fan base!  What's wrong with this picture?  Sheesh.

In any event, the game changer for me was Inventions.  And SG Base design.

Fav Toons:  Fire/Ice Blaster, Grav/Emp Controller, and Dual Blade/Willpower Brute.

Biggest Frustration: Could never get that Rikti Mothership Badge.  Poobah.

That's it.  Back to lurking, mostly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on February 06, 2015, 03:21:45 PM
I'd like to echo this sentiment, except I'm 65 and get irritated easily.  What's the holdup?  Yeah, I've read every post in the two main threads, and it's going nowhere.  The delay is BS, IMO.  Someone on our end is getting jacked around.  Who we dealing with here?  They got some IP they don't want, and we've got some cash, capable and willing devs, and a rabid fan base!  What's wrong with this picture?  Sheesh.

In any event, the game changer for me was Inventions.  And SG Base design.

Fav Toons:  Fire/Ice Blaster, Grav/Emp Controller, and Dual Blade/Willpower Brute.

Biggest Frustration: Could never get that Rikti Mothership Badge.  Poobah.

That's it.  Back to lurking, mostly.

Patience is a lifelong goal. I am in the same boat as you guys, but we just have to have faith the people with their necks on the line are working.   I am ready to wait for solid news, good or bad.  No amount of demanding will change that.  nda or otherwise. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: RGladden on February 06, 2015, 03:53:23 PM
Patience is a lifelong goal. I am in the same boat as you guys, but we just have to have faith the people with their necks on the line are working.   I am ready to wait for solid news, good or bad.  No amount of demanding will change that.  nda or otherwise.

Two buzzards were sitting in a tree having a conversation.  Saith one to the other..."Patience my ass!  I'm gonna go KILL something!"   :)

The Invention system probably had the most profound impact on the game, tier 1-50.  The bonuses awarded by enhancement sets within that system could make a character well-nigh unkillable by the time they hit tier 40.   And the Incarnate System was just a variation on that theme.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on February 06, 2015, 03:59:52 PM

1. Mission Architect: breath of fresh air
2. Praetoria: breath of fresh air
3. buffs such as Speed Boost and Force Field bubbles becoming AOE powers; LONG overdue
4. Null the Gull: LONG overdue.  I enjoyed visiting Null and shutting down group fly effect on all my characters and even speed boost on some as well.

All of those were nice, but...

1.  I had great fun building a fantastic storyline around the origin of my Supergroup with custom villains and cameos by my favorite toons.  It was deep, and meaningful and led to a climax that actually served a purpose, the formation of a SUPERGROUP!  I worked on it and tweaked t for nearly a year before unleashing it on the population... who promptly ignored it in favor of the latest *fast XP* shoot-em-up.  Oh well, I enjoyed running my own guys through it, but it did kinda suck away all my excitement for the Architect .

2. Praetoia was GREAT FUN the first 3 or 4 times I played through it.  Then, it just became annoying.  If they had added more content after lvl 20 instead of forcing you to travel to Paragon... And added portals so you could travel between Praetoria and Paragon at will...

For me the main improvement was IO enhancements.  I loved playing with those, and was still toying with different mixes and possibilities on the last day. 

Another was the change in Faultline.  That quickly became my favorite zone after it opened.  I used to test my level 20 builds by running them solo through that last story arc.  If they couldn't solo that arc, I'd respec them until they could. (and I had another story arc that was a build-test at level 40.. but i forget what it was now.  At 50, I tested my builds with the incarnate intro arc)

 Ouroboros was also a huge improvement.  Loved being able to go back and replay missed content.  Plus all the other goodies...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on February 06, 2015, 04:25:07 PM
As a player who used to run an all Knownback, stun or disorient team - Ragdoll physics.

Watching everything fly and land in random crumpled poses - was satisfying.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on February 06, 2015, 04:32:42 PM
Is the latest NCSoft / NEXON news likely to throw a serious wrench into the negotiations for CoH?

http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/article/8786/friend-owner-nexon%E2%80%99s-hostile-takeover-ncsoft-becoming-increasingly-likely
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 06, 2015, 05:35:16 PM
Things are worth whatever someone is willing to pay for them. In the case of the PVP +3% defense global, they were worth more than 2 billion to quite a few people; that's why they mostly were sold off market. Sure there were a ton of 2B bids on them and someone who got one without knowing better would occasionally post one and it would sell for 2B, but that wasn't a reliable way to get one unless you were very patient due to all the outstanding bids.

Settings price caps on a player makert is pointless and does nothing but discourage use of that market. Seeding it is equally counter-productive as it makes it harder to sell anything and also discourages people from listing items they don't need. If you were going to do that, you might as well just move everything to NPC vendors and remove the market entirely.

In one sense its a truism that things are always worth what people are willing to pay for in a market-based system, so (at least during the period of time when they sold for this much, pre-merits) the 3% PvPIOs were in fact worth many billions of inf.  But there was another factor at play and that was the fact that the CoH economy became highly degenerate at the top.  There simply were not enough commodities at the top to spend influence on so there were significantly more players with essentially unlimited influence than there was a supply of such things.  In the real world there's always something for a rich person to spend their money on.  In CoH, you could literally run out of things to buy and still accumulate influence at a rate so rapid it also became a challenge to store.  As a result, the top PvPIOs didn't just sell for what their intrinsic value was, and not even what consensus value was, they basically sold for whatever price a rich player decided to spend that day.  The closest analog to the real world is that pre-merits the 3% PvPIOs were the Picasso paintings of the CoH world.  Some days you could barely get 2.5 billion off market.  Some days you could get 5 billion.  It all depended on who you ran into that wanted them that day.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on February 06, 2015, 07:28:24 PM
As a player who used to run an all Knownback, stun or disorient team - Ragdoll physics.

Watching everything fly and land in random crumpled poses - was satisfying.

We had one case where the ragdoll physics and the collision physics conspired to get a lieutenant hooked on the edge of a crate, dangling by one ankle upside-down. He didn't live long given that there were two masterminds in the immediate vicinity, but the memory of the "Zombie Pinata" has lived long for us ever since. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on February 06, 2015, 08:15:25 PM
There simply were not enough commodities at the top to spend influence on so there were significantly more players with essentially unlimited influence than there was a supply of such things.  In the real world there's always something for a rich person to spend their money on.

Indeed the lack of influence sinks and the unbounded inflation that resulted was the primary cause for sky high prices for the very top items with limited supply. Lots of people liked to complain about the market without really understanding the dynamics of how economies work; if they did they would have realized that limited supply or 'ebil marketeers' weren't the problem, but rather too much money existing. A few did realize, as evidenced by the various influence destruction projects.

In some games, you have to routinely repair your gear, or there are (necessary) consumables sold by NPC vendors, or various other methods of counterbalancing the wealth that gets created out of thin air every time an enemy is defeated. COH didn't really have that once you hit the level cap and no longer needed new SOs, you could just accumulate influence forever and never have to spend it. The 2 billion cap was the only limiting factor and required creative methods of storing influence past that.

Even the sometimes exorbitant prices of IO recipes didn't impact that, as if you bought a high end purple for a billion influence, only 100 million of that was removed from the economy. The other 900 million went to another player, ready to bid on something else with. In an off-market trade for the Glad Armor unique, if someone paid 4 billion for it, all 4 billion went to another player and absolutely none of it was removed from the system.

Meanwhile, billions upon billions of influence was being created every day just from enemy defeats in regular missions, task forces, AE farms...

The real 'fix' for the COH economy would be to give rich players something to spend their money on that destroyed it in the process, preferably something repeatable that would keep them coming back for more. High-end vanity pets costing hundreds of millions of inf, inf-purchasable time limited buffs, that kind of thing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on February 06, 2015, 08:44:31 PM
Indeed the lack of influence sinks and the unbounded inflation that resulted was the primary cause for sky high prices for the very top items with limited supply. Lots of people liked to complain about the market without really understanding the dynamics of how economies work; if they did they would have realized that limited supply or 'ebil marketeers' weren't the problem, but rather too much money existing. A few did realize, as evidenced by the various influence destruction projects.

In some games, you have to routinely repair your gear, or there are (necessary) consumables sold by NPC vendors, or various other methods of counterbalancing the wealth that gets created out of thin air every time an enemy is defeated. COH didn't really have that once you hit the level cap and no longer needed new SOs, you could just accumulate influence forever and never have to spend it. The 2 billion cap was the only limiting factor and required creative methods of storing influence past that.

Even the sometimes exorbitant prices of IO recipes didn't impact that, as if you bought a high end purple for a billion influence, only 100 million of that was removed from the economy. The other 900 million went to another player, ready to bid on something else with. In an off-market trade for the Glad Armor unique, if someone paid 4 billion for it, all 4 billion went to another player and absolutely none of it was removed from the system.

Meanwhile, billions upon billions of influence was being created every day just from enemy defeats in regular missions, task forces, AE farms...

The real 'fix' for the COH economy would be to give rich players something to spend their money on that destroyed it in the process, preferably something repeatable that would keep them coming back for more. High-end vanity pets costing hundreds of millions of inf, inf-purchasable time limited buffs, that kind of thing.

The supply of influence being so insane was the core reason I was highly opposed to AE farming, because I knew that it tended to send a very disproportionate amount of influence into the market.  Power leveling from it was one thing as one could stop at 50 but all the 50s doing it see were gaining hundreds of millions of influence in far far less time than anywhere else.  And even after the bug fixes it was still producing way to much influence as 50s would still exploit it for other things and then see the market prices rising far to quickly.  Heck, I worried that some newcomers would see the market, turn heel and run before even realising they only needed a few IO's to get started.

To much influence was in the market and it screwed the game economy up.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on February 06, 2015, 08:48:34 PM
The real 'fix' for the COH economy would be to give rich players something to spend their money on that destroyed it in the process, preferably something repeatable that would keep them coming back for more. High-end vanity pets costing hundreds of millions of inf, inf-purchasable time limited buffs, that kind of thing.
Personally, I'd have loved such things for my stable of L50's.  Maybe City of Titans or Atlas Park Revival can eventually introduce them to their games.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on February 07, 2015, 12:58:06 AM
The supply of influence being so insane was the core reason I was highly opposed to AE farming, because I knew that it tended to send a very disproportionate amount of influence into the market.  Power leveling from it was one thing as one could stop at 50 but all the 50s doing it see were gaining hundreds of millions of influence in far far less time than anywhere else.  And even after the bug fixes it was still producing way to much influence as 50s would still exploit it for other things and then see the market prices rising far to quickly.  Heck, I worried that some newcomers would see the market, turn heel and run before even realising they only needed a few IO's to get started.

To much influence was in the market and it screwed the game economy up.

Given the way people farmed the Peregrine Island missions, I'm not convinced that AE made things drastically worse. A little bit, certainly--it was more efficient, or people wouldn't have done it. But high-level players could certainly generate millions in very short time just by whacking level 54 Button Men. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on February 07, 2015, 03:06:02 AM
Given the way people farmed the Peregrine Island missions, I'm not convinced that AE made things drastically worse. A little bit, certainly--it was more efficient, or people wouldn't have done it. But high-level players could certainly generate millions in very short time just by whacking level 54 Button Men. :)

I'm guessing you never saw the monkey farms, though.  Your talking like, the moment your level 50, millions of influence in moments.  It was insanity.  That gigantic influx was unprecidented.  As it was we were already seeing purple recipies for about 50-100 million influence, it then more than doubled and tripled the prices in record times.  That was perhaps the worst hyperinflation I ever saw in that game, and I played about 80% of the time it was out since inventions came, only left for about oh, one year for champions until champions began to stagnate and the problems it had began to root their ugly heads.

The other thing to remember though to is that, peregrine island farms didn't affect prices anywhere near as much because they also provided access to ALL recipes, AE farms could only provide a limited amount of tickets per character and you also could NOT get purple recipes through AE at all.  So you saw both a drop in supply of purple recipes, slight drop in oranges and a huge influx of oranges.  This caused a significant price shock.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kelltick on February 07, 2015, 07:29:16 AM
All this talk of AE farms just further reinforces my feelings of, "I didn't miss a damn thing by not touching the farms."  I generally avoided AE like the plague, but if there were worthwhile stories to experience I ran them once per character.  Never did see the draw to AE farms...was it really that damn hard to level up/earn inf/whatever that normal gameplay didn't offer?  Goodness...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: archaist on February 07, 2015, 09:55:00 AM
All this talk of AE farms just further reinforces my feelings of, "I didn't miss a damn thing by not touching the farms."  I generally avoided AE like the plague, but if there were worthwhile stories to experience I ran them once per character.  Never did see the draw to AE farms...was it really that damn hard to level up/earn inf/whatever that normal gameplay didn't offer?  Goodness...

To be honest, ya, kinda. I would rather spend less time getting that full purple build and spend more time playing it. Farming provided faster results, what can I say.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on February 07, 2015, 02:56:15 PM
To be honest, ya, kinda. I would rather spend less time getting that full purple build and spend more time playing it. Farming provided faster results, what can I say.
i used to occasionally run some Fire Tanker ambush farms on my Widow, which could actually be challenging sometimes, but i did it mostly to get tickets for uncommon recipes and rare salvage i wanted for various alt builds. 99%+ of the time i never bothered with farms, AE or otherwise, but there were some very entertaining story arcs and missions in AE to play as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on February 07, 2015, 08:29:58 PM
To be honest, ya, kinda. I would rather spend less time getting that full purple build and spend more time playing it. Farming provided faster results, what can I say.

Well here's a problem, getting that influence for those purples through AE just drives the prices up and INCREASES the time for you on later purple builds and for others, defeating the whole point of "getting those purples faster".  I found it far, far faster to actually just play alignment missions on 8x solo than to do anything involving teams or AE.  I was able to make a full purple character pretty much on just purple recipe drops I traded for purple recipes I needed.

Quick Edit, may just post quoting myself if someone misses it:  OF course, the purple farmers like me did not mind those who only got them through raw influence from AE, as we just used the profits to never have to worry about influence for costumes or cheaper stuff again :).

Another Edit: Changed a word.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on February 08, 2015, 12:02:02 AM
I never got the whining about the market.. there were so many ways to get what you wanted. The market was only one..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on February 08, 2015, 01:08:03 PM
I fail to see how AE drove the prices UP...   usually increasing the supply of an item drives the price down.

Without AE, the number of orange recipes on the AH would have been miniscule, since the drop rate from normal play was abysmal.
You would have had a small number of players, who had eons of time to play, running around with the best - while the vast majority would
have been playing with SOs.

As far as purple recipes, I couldn't have cared less.  Never had a build that required one.

For reducing inflation, you need more money sinks.   Maybe have an exchange where you can trade X amount of in game money for cool costume items, alternate MM/Troller skins for pets,  nice consumables, etc.  The cost per transaction on the AH could have been increased a bit.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on February 08, 2015, 05:17:20 PM
I fail to see how AE drove the prices UP...   usually increasing the supply of an item drives the price down.

The supply of purples was not increased. And while you might not have cared about that, others did. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 08, 2015, 06:18:51 PM
The supply of purples was not increased. And while you might not have cared about that, others did. :)

Actually, that's not my recollection, at least not after merits were added.  Based on the way the market reacted when the merit conversion system was put in place, supply did increase when merits were added to the AE.  My rough calculations suggested that supply increased by a factor of three to ten.  It was difficult to narrow that range because not only were prices coming down implying a higher supply, but *demand* was also going down for the logical reason that the merit system was often handing players enhancements without needing to go to the market to get it.  The merit system both destroyed demand and added supply, and the amount of influence added to the system was insignificant by comparison.  Calculations at the time showed that the amount of influence you earned chasing enough merits to make an expensive purple was only a tenth what the purple itself cost.

One weird side effect of the merit system was that the really cheap purples went *up*.  Logic suggested why: when supply for all other purples increased to the point where they were affordable to a larger population *and* it was now possible to earn the expensive ones, more players began making purple-enhanced builds.  Because no one would burn valuable merits on purples costing only a few million, either to use or to sell, the supply of the cheap purples went *down* while demand for them went *up*, exactly the opposite of what happened to the expensive ones.  Super-cheap purples that you could get for less than 5 million at times jumped to about 10 after AE merits, and that puzzled many players who assumed prices would universally go down if anything.

This sort of positive and negative reinforcement effects are why I tended to caution players not to make simple assumptions about what would happen if a certain change was made to the markets in an attempt to make them "better."  As already explained, market caps would actually have the opposite effect their proponents asserted: supply would drop even further as players sought off-market player to player trades, which would keep the prices high but make it even harder to get via the markets themselves: a self-reinforcing market-liquidity-destroying effect.  Farming was similar: farming could both increase and decrease prices, increase and decrease supply, depending on context.  You needed to be an experienced market participant and knowledgeable about how the player community was likely engaged with the markets to really analyze the situation well.  Most of the players that thought the markets were "broken" and suggesting fixes did not have the requisite knowledge to fully understand what the side effects of their suggestions would be, because most tended to avoid participating fully with the markets in the first place.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on February 08, 2015, 07:31:25 PM
Umm... are you thinking about something else? You couldn't buy purple recipes with reward merits, no matter how many you had.

There was also no way to convert between AE tickets and reward merits, or any way to earn merits from AE missions as far as I know. The merit system also predates AE.. they were introduced in Issue 13 and 14, respectively.

You could buy purples for 20 Hero/Villain merits, available only by doing morality missions (2 day minimum to get one), conversion from 50 reward merits (1 day cooldown), and the SSAs once they were added (1 week cooldown for each).

You could also get them for Empyrean merits by doing iTrials, which IIRC also had an internal cooldown on how often they could be earned.

What did make a huge difference on prices across the board was enhancement converters. In general rare stuff like PVP IOs were still expensive, but less so as it tended to average out with the cheaper ones that nobody wanted + the cost of converters.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on February 08, 2015, 08:14:05 PM
The supply of purples was not increased. And while you might not have cared about that, others did. :)

part the problem was uneven drop rates. dome people had purples and other "rare" drops falling on them regularly. others not so much. consistently. when Inventions came out, for the entire release, until the next release where they upped the drop rate, I never had a single wing recipe drop. not a single one. and I ran multiple characters to 50 in that time. people I teamed with would get a them often. while I didnt play "for the drops", I can see where this would cause people to do what they had to do to get $$$ to get what they wanted.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: PsiBug on February 08, 2015, 08:43:51 PM
part the problem was uneven drop rates. dome people had purples and other "rare" drops falling on them regularly. others not so much. consistently. when Inventions came out, for the entire release, until the next release where they upped the drop rate, I never had a single wing recipe drop. not a single one. and I ran multiple characters to 50 in that time. people I teamed with would get a them often. while I didnt play "for the drops", I can see where this would cause people to do what they had to do to get $$$ to get what they wanted.

CRAP!
All of you people talking about drops, and purples, and recipes are making me long for the the game even more!!! I want to play, and badge, and team, and make SG bases, and horde salvage, and play the market and form all-rad teams and all-knockdown groups and and and all-kin groups and all kinds of other nutty groups.  I hope my computer can handle the extra attention...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on February 08, 2015, 08:54:20 PM
I never got the whining about the market.. there were so many ways to get what you wanted. The market was only one..


Agreed, when Going Rogue came out. I found myself farming less and less. Instead, I'd run Hero mission and TFs for merits to buy uniques. Then farm for purples, the only time I really stepped into AE there near the end. Is if I wanted a character to 50 as fast as possible (like my Ninja/Poison MM which was my PVP experiment. LOL).

Thinking about how much the game was improving near the end, makes me want the game back more. :(, I could be dual logged right now, farming on one computer and running Hero mission on the other. :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on February 08, 2015, 09:02:14 PM
LoTG + recharge.  120-250 million a pop for a while.  You could get enough merits for one in no time.  Most merits had access to them as well.  Great source of income as people were always buying them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on February 08, 2015, 09:06:40 PM
LoTG + recharge.  120-250 million a pop for a while.  You could get enough merits for one in no time.  Most merits had access to them as well.  Great source of income as people were always buying them.

Yep, plus the Miracle +end/recov ect... it made getting all the best IOs for you build a thousand times easier to me.

And with the Merit system, if you wanted to stagger you IOs for exemplaring for lower level TFs ect.. you could because you could choice what level the recipe was.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on February 08, 2015, 10:44:15 PM
part the problem was uneven drop rates. dome people had purples and other "rare" drops falling on them regularly. others not so much. consistently. when Inventions came out, for the entire release, until the next release where they upped the drop rate, I never had a single wing recipe drop. not a single one. and I ran multiple characters to 50 in that time. people I teamed with would get a them often. while I didnt play "for the drops", I can see where this would cause people to do what they had to do to get $$$ to get what they wanted.

They're called "random drops" for a reason.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on February 08, 2015, 10:56:08 PM
Agreed, when Going Rogue came out. I found myself farming less and less. Instead, I'd run Hero mission and TFs for merits to buy uniques. Then farm for purples, the only time I really stepped into AE there near the end. Is if I wanted a character to 50 as fast as possible (like my Ninja/Poison MM which was my PVP experiment. LOL).

Thinking about how much the game was improving near the end, makes me want the game back more. :(, I could be dual logged right now, farming on one computer and running Hero mission on the other. :(

My main farm missions were alignment missions because of the alignment merits i'd get for completing them.  They were harder due to harder groups, sure, but that wasn't really a problem for me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on February 08, 2015, 11:18:05 PM
So this is what a conversation at one of those exclusive wall street investor clubs is like. :)

All of us, long time players had gobs of influence to spend and play with. My whole problem with the system we had in game was that it was simply too confusing for anyone who might be somewhat new to the game.

The few times I got a friend involved they would look at things like the prices of certain IOs and think that they had to be playing the game hard core for months and months in order to get even one. Let alone the concept of filling out an entire char with IOs.
In order for them to understand all of the tweaks that could be used to bypass all of that (merits, farming, whatever trick you might want to employ) they had the n00bish glazed look over their eyes and went back to whatever game they were playing before. Kind of a better the devil you know approach.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Arc X on February 08, 2015, 11:41:03 PM
I had a 2 1/2 year period 2008-2010 without  a single purple drop. I would power level friends  and they dropped  like skittles  for them.  I remember  on one Rikti  radio Mish in RWZ  that in the period  of just 2 mobs 3 purples dropped  for them. A few days after that the purples  started dropping  for me at a rate of 1 a day.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on February 09, 2015, 12:02:10 AM
They're called "random drops" for a reason.

the chances of zero hits in literally 100ks is very small. unless you are telling me the odds are different for every player? it wouldnt be the first time the rng was implemented improperly in COH. Its as bad as swtor having a 20% reverse engineering attempt fail 140 times in a row. for multiple people. enough that people started keeping track of it. the rng is a known element. the guy that puts it into place in code is just a normal coder though. he can make mistakes believe it or not.he is just a human.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on February 09, 2015, 12:55:18 AM
the chances of zero hits in literally 100ks is very small. unless you are telling me the odds are different for every player? it wouldnt be the first time the rng was implemented improperly in COH. Its as bad as swtor having a 20% reverse engineering attempt fail 140 times in a row. for multiple people. enough that people started keeping track of it. the rng is a known element. the guy that puts it into place in code is just a normal coder though. he can make mistakes believe it or not.he is just a human.

Just because the chances of something happening are small, that doesn't mean it's impossible.  Is it possible that the RNG was flawed?  Maybe.  But people jump to blame it way too quickly.  It's not always "bugged drop mechanics", sometimes it's just bad luck.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on February 09, 2015, 01:39:03 AM
the chances of zero hits in literally 100ks is very small. unless you are telling me the odds are different for every player? it wouldnt be the first time the rng was implemented improperly in COH. Its as bad as swtor having a 20% reverse engineering attempt fail 140 times in a row. for multiple people. enough that people started keeping track of it. the rng is a known element. the guy that puts it into place in code is just a normal coder though. he can make mistakes believe it or not.he is just a human.
"X number of times in a row" doesn't matter to RNGs that are not built with a failsafe (like City's tohit failure streak breaker). Every single attempt is completely separate and not connected in any way, shape, or fashion to any other attempt. A 20% success rate can definitely fail 140 times in a row...it can technically fail 10000000 times in a row for a really, spectacularly unlucky person.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on February 09, 2015, 01:50:49 AM
"X number of times in a row" doesn't matter to RNGs that are not built with a failsafe (like City's tohit failure streak breaker). Every single attempt is completely separate and not connected in any way, shape, or fashion to any other attempt. A 20% success rate can definitely fail 140 times in a row...it can technically fail 10000000 times in a row for a really, spectacularly unlucky person.

it can. but to have that happen to multiple characters in a row within the space of a month? very unlikely. of course swtor is run on a shoestring and has a very poor development staff. they cant even get the loot difference on an 8 or 16 man raid right in the space of 2 months.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on February 09, 2015, 02:45:21 AM
it can. but to have that happen to multiple characters in a row within the space of a month? very unlikely. of course swtor is run on a shoestring and has a very poor development staff. they cant even get the loot difference on an 8 or 16 man raid right in the space of 2 months.
"unlikely" doesn't mean "can't". It still means "can very rarely".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on February 09, 2015, 03:28:29 AM
"unlikely" doesn't mean "can't". It still means "can very rarely".

a neutron star could hit the earth next week. dont plan on missing work though
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on February 09, 2015, 05:25:13 AM
I had a 2 1/2 year period 2008-2010 without  a single purple drop. I would power level friends  and they dropped  like skittles  for them.  I remember  on one Rikti  radio Mish in RWZ  that in the period  of just 2 mobs 3 purples dropped  for them. A few days after that the purples  started dropping  for me at a rate of 1 a day.

I think I only got 2 or 3 purple drops the entire run of the game.  Seriously, I never seemed to get one.

I did, however, get a substantial amount of respec drops... An oddly huge amount, I always thought.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on February 09, 2015, 05:34:35 AM
a neutron star could hit the earth next week. dont plan on missing work though

No it couldn't.  It would be impossible for us to not see it coming.  Never mind the fact that neutron stars don't behave that way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on February 09, 2015, 05:56:35 AM
No it couldn't.  It would be impossible for us to not see it coming.  Never mind the fact that neutron stars don't behave that way.

When did I say we wouldnt see it coming? and if we did see it coming, what would you do to stop it? and neutron stars dont move through space? alert nasa
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on February 09, 2015, 05:58:01 AM
I think I only got 2 or 3 purple drops the entire run of the game.  Seriously, I never seemed to get one.

I did, however, get a substantial amount of respec drops... An oddly huge amount, I always thought.

I played from I7 to close, had 34 50's. very very rarely did AE and never got a respec drop.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on February 09, 2015, 05:59:57 AM
When did I say we wouldnt see it coming? and if we did see it coming, what would you do to stop it? and neutron stars dont move through space? alert nasa

Well, if we saw it coming then we would know about it right now, because there's no way

why the pancake am I arguing about this
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on February 09, 2015, 07:37:14 AM
Well, if we saw it coming then we would know about it right now, because there's no way

why the pancake am I arguing about this

I didnt say it was likely, just possible. that was the point
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on February 09, 2015, 09:08:59 AM
Quote
So this is what a conversation at one of those exclusive wall street investor clubs is like. :)

All of us, long time players had gobs of influence to spend and play with. My whole problem with the system we had in game was that it was simply too confusing for anyone who might be somewhat new to the game.

I never had gobs of influence :(, I was to much of an altaholic to keep influence around. I did almost hit the influence cap on my old main though. I was trying to get the badge, actually I think I got it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on February 09, 2015, 12:38:43 PM
All this talk of AE farms just further reinforces my feelings of, "I didn't miss a damn thing by not touching the farms."  I generally avoided AE like the plague, but if there were worthwhile stories to experience I ran them once per character.  Never did see the draw to AE farms...was it really that damn hard to level up/earn inf/whatever that normal gameplay didn't offer?  Goodness...
Didn't bother me.   I didn't go there much after making a couple of missions to make myself laugh.   I always meant to try more of the missions people listed on the forums, but rarely got around to it.

I figure, the people in the AE building weren't complaining about the way I was playing, it was only right that I return the favor.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on February 09, 2015, 02:44:33 PM
Its as bad as swtor having a 20% reverse engineering attempt fail 140 times in a row. for multiple people. enough that people started keeping track of it.

"X number of times in a row" doesn't matter to RNGs that are not built with a failsafe (like City's tohit failure streak breaker). Every single attempt is completely separate and not connected in any way, shape, or fashion to any other attempt. A 20% success rate can definitely fail 140 times in a row...it can technically fail 10000000 times in a row for a really, spectacularly unlucky person.

There's even a formula for it. If my math is right, starting fresh and reverse engineering 140 items in a row at a 20% success rate, the chance of all 140 failing is 0.000000000002707685%

Being generous and saying that an average character might reverse engineer 5,000 items within a certain time frame, the chance of seeing a 140 failure streak somewhere in that run of 5,000 is 0.00000000263458%

That's a very small number, so if datamining shows that significantly more than roughly 2.6 out of every 1,000,000,000 players has seen a 140 failure streak, it's a good indication to game designers (at least the ones who know math) that their RNG is broken.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on February 09, 2015, 02:46:54 PM
I played from I7 to close, had 34 50's. very very rarely did AE and never got a respec drop.

I had one toon get three in one mission. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on February 09, 2015, 03:41:59 PM
There's even a formula for it. If my math is right, starting fresh and reverse engineering 140 items in a row at a 20% success rate, the chance of all 140 failing is 0.000000000002707685%

Being generous and saying that an average character might reverse engineer 5,000 items within a certain time frame, the chance of seeing a 140 failure streak somewhere in that run of 5,000 is 0.00000000263458%

That's a very small number, so if datamining shows that significantly more than roughly 2.6 out of every 1,000,000,000 players has seen a 140 failure streak, it's a good indication to game designers (at least the ones who know math) that their RNG is broken.

Did you just use actual math to make a point as opposed to anecdotal "evidence"?  That should be considered a bannable offense IMHO.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on February 09, 2015, 03:50:07 PM
There's even a formula for it. If my math is right, starting fresh and reverse engineering 140 items in a row at a 20% success rate, the chance of all 140 failing is 0.000000000002707685%

Being generous and saying that an average character might reverse engineer 5,000 items within a certain time frame, the chance of seeing a 140 failure streak somewhere in that run of 5,000 is 0.00000000263458%

That's a very small number, so if datamining shows that significantly more than roughly 2.6 out of every 1,000,000,000 players has seen a 140 failure streak, it's a good indication to game designers (at least the ones who know math) that their RNG is broken.

The maths... they burn the eyes...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on February 09, 2015, 04:25:47 PM
You want real eye burning... I only used the formula for the approximation of the upper bound:

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=s0.wp.com%2Flatex.php%3Flatex%3DS%2528N%252CK%2529%2B%253D%2B%255CBig%25281%2B%252B%2B%25281%2B-%2Bp%2529%2528N%2B-%2BK%2529%255CBig%2529p%255E%257BK%257D%26amp%3Bbg%3Dffffff%26amp%3Bfg%3D000%26amp%3Bs%3D0)

Here's the formula you'd need to use to get the exact probability:

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=s0.wp.com%2Flatex.php%3Flatex%3DS%2528N%252CK%2529%2B%253D%2Bp%255E%257BK%257D%2B%252B%2B%255Csum_%257Bj%253D1%252CK%257D%2Bp%255E%257Bj-1%257D%2B%25281-p%2529%2BS%2528N-j%252CK%2529%26amp%3Bbg%3Dffffff%26amp%3Bfg%3D000%26amp%3Bs%3D0)

N = Total number of samples
K = Number of failures in a row
p = Probability (0-1) of desired result, in this case failure, which is 0.8
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on February 09, 2015, 04:30:44 PM
I'll say this about the city of heroes auction house.  It was a far more stable platform than what i've seen in DCUO or CO.  The prices if they were high and did start dropping, usually only dropped for legitimate reasons and it was usually gradual.  CO?  Well, often what happens is because everyone can see the prices of the items, you get what I love to call an "Underbid war", in which, due to the rather short timer of putting things up for sale(your auction would expire after only 15 days), some jerks would eventually see your prices, and put the same items up for a lower price and prevent you from selling at all.

And this is something that continues to drive me up the wall with SWTOR's Galactic Trade Network, which is not an auction house; it's a consignment house. You list an item. getting a 'default' price that you can change, and pay a listing fee based on a percentage of the default price. The item can be listed for up to two days; if it sells, you get your listing fee back and the sale price minus a service charge. If it doesn't sell, you get the item back and your listing fee is refunded. This last, combined with the fact that the 'cartel market' items (i.e., anything you have to spend cartel coins to buy, directly or through the cartel packs) has an absurdly-low default value, means that there's no drawback in listing something for an unreasonable price; you're out nothing if it doesn't sell. The rare, highly-desirable gear and mounts can be listed for tens of millions of credits, and if no one is interested, you're only out the time it takes to relist it -- unless there are other players undercutting your price, you have no incentive to lower the price until you find what people are willing to pay.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on February 09, 2015, 04:32:34 PM
I wonder, when the game returns, who will be the first to get to 50?  You know some people are going to race to 50 as fast as they can.

Not me; the mindset behind having to get to level cap as fast as possible escapes me -- we all know where we're going, so what's the point in rushing to get there as fast as you can when you can slow down a little and enjoy the trip, instead of being fixated on the destination to the exclusion of all else?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on February 09, 2015, 04:56:52 PM
The supply of influence being so insane was the core reason I was highly opposed to AE farming, because I knew that it tended to send a very disproportionate amount of influence into the market.  Power leveling from it was one thing as one could stop at 50 but all the 50s doing it see were gaining hundreds of millions of influence in far far less time than anywhere else.

Now, this was something that never made sense to me about AE missions. Inf -- influence, infamy, or information -- was abstracted as your ability to get other people to do things for you because of your reputation. Out of respect for your service to the city, for influence; out of fear of what you might do to them, for infamy; in response to the leverage it could be used for, for information. But all of these represent how the other people viewed your character. AE missions happen entirely in a virtual world; none of the events that occur in an AE mission affect the 'real world'. Completing a mission inside AE gives you practice in the use of your powers, and would thereby gain you experience. But if a new hero went into the AE building at level 1 and did nothing but AE missions, when they came out to get enhancements, nobody would know who he was; as far as they were concerned, he'd never done anything to protect Paragon City -- in the 'real world', he wouldn't have any influence, because he hadn't done anything in the 'real world'. It doesn't matter how many times you crawled into your electronic navel and soloed Emperor Cole, or Reichsman, or U'kon G'rai; none of that was real. Tickets, sure; that's the AE system's internal reward system to encourage you to participate. But gaining any sort of reputation from defeating virtual ghosts? Not a chance. Level from 1 to 50 inside AE, and you come out and try to play on your reputation, and people are going to ask who you are; they would never have heard of you, except perhaps in a news story about the victims of AE addiction.

AE missions should give you XP and tickets; if you want to earn inf, you should have to go out in the 'real world' and do things that other people can see you doing to build your reputation.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: r00tb0ySlim on February 09, 2015, 06:04:17 PM
Now, this was something that never made sense to me about AE missions. Inf -- influence, infamy, or information -- was abstracted as your ability to get other people to do things for you because of your reputation. Out of respect for your service to the city, for influence; out of fear of what you might do to them, for infamy; in response to the leverage it could be used for, for information. But all of these represent how the other people viewed your character. AE missions happen entirely in a virtual world; none of the events that occur in an AE mission affect the 'real world'. Completing a mission inside AE gives you practice in the use of your powers, and would thereby gain you experience. But if a new hero went into the AE building at level 1 and did nothing but AE missions, when they came out to get enhancements, nobody would know who he was; as far as they were concerned, he'd never done anything to protect Paragon City -- in the 'real world', he wouldn't have any influence, because he hadn't done anything in the 'real world'. It doesn't matter how many times you crawled into your electronic navel and soloed Emperor Cole, or Reichsman, or U'kon G'rai; none of that was real. Tickets, sure; that's the AE system's internal reward system to encourage you to participate. But gaining any sort of reputation from defeating virtual ghosts? Not a chance. Level from 1 to 50 inside AE, and you come out and try to play on your reputation, and people are going to ask who you are; they would never have heard of you, except perhaps in a news story about the victims of AE addiction.

AE missions should give you XP and tickets; if you want to earn inf, you should have to go out in the 'real world' and do things that other people can see you doing to build your reputation.

^^^This...makes sense to me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Samuraiko on February 09, 2015, 06:05:54 PM
It's funny - some people saw the AE as "OMG, new content."

Others as "Hellooooooo, farm central."

Me? "BOOYAH, CUSTOMIZABLE FILMING ENVIRONMENT!"

When the game goes live again, I'll need to finish my 10-mission, 2-part story arc "The War Witch Task Force."

Thank heavens I still have all my AE files, so I won't have to recreate all my previous work.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 09, 2015, 07:14:42 PM
Umm... are you thinking about something else? You couldn't buy purple recipes with reward merits, no matter how many you had.

There was also no way to convert between AE tickets and reward merits, or any way to earn merits from AE missions as far as I know. The merit system also predates AE.. they were introduced in Issue 13 and 14, respectively.

You could buy purples for 20 Hero/Villain merits, available only by doing morality missions (2 day minimum to get one), conversion from 50 reward merits (1 day cooldown), and the SSAs once they were added (1 week cooldown for each).

You could also get them for Empyrean merits by doing iTrials, which IIRC also had an internal cooldown on how often they could be earned.

What did make a huge difference on prices across the board was enhancement converters. In general rare stuff like PVP IOs were still expensive, but less so as it tended to average out with the cheaper ones that nobody wanted + the cost of converters.

I must be conflating AE merits and the merit system, or possibly having an episode of dementia.  And why are you all in my house?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: OzonePrime on February 09, 2015, 07:19:36 PM
lol! :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: OzonePrime on February 09, 2015, 07:22:05 PM
You want real eye burning... I only used the formula for the approximation of the upper bound:

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=s0.wp.com%2Flatex.php%3Flatex%3DS%2528N%252CK%2529%2B%253D%2B%255CBig%25281%2B%252B%2B%25281%2B-%2Bp%2529%2528N%2B-%2BK%2529%255CBig%2529p%255E%257BK%257D%26amp%3Bbg%3Dffffff%26amp%3Bfg%3D000%26amp%3Bs%3D0)

Here's the formula you'd need to use to get the exact probability:

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=s0.wp.com%2Flatex.php%3Flatex%3DS%2528N%252CK%2529%2B%253D%2Bp%255E%257BK%257D%2B%252B%2B%255Csum_%257Bj%253D1%252CK%257D%2Bp%255E%257Bj-1%257D%2B%25281-p%2529%2BS%2528N-j%252CK%2529%26amp%3Bbg%3Dffffff%26amp%3Bfg%3D000%26amp%3Bs%3D0)

N = Total number of samples
K = Number of failures in a row
p = Probability (0-1) of desired result, in this case failure, which is 0.8
Ah, memories. Stats. What fun! :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 09, 2015, 07:43:53 PM
There's even a formula for it. If my math is right, starting fresh and reverse engineering 140 items in a row at a 20% success rate, the chance of all 140 failing is 0.000000000002707685%

Being generous and saying that an average character might reverse engineer 5,000 items within a certain time frame, the chance of seeing a 140 failure streak somewhere in that run of 5,000 is 0.00000000263458%

That's a very small number, so if datamining shows that significantly more than roughly 2.6 out of every 1,000,000,000 players has seen a 140 failure streak, it's a good indication to game designers (at least the ones who know math) that their RNG is broken.

Math I can still do (probably).  To put it in easier to understand terms, the odds of a 140 failure in a row run of something with an independent chance to fail of 80% is 36,931,914,471,142 to 1 - 37 trillion to 1.  The odds of a single player seeing such a run after 5000 tries is about one in 38 billion.  Incidentally, the recursive exact computation for the second calculation is *just* within the bounds of Wolfram Alpha, unless you're a pro subscriber.

And yes, I don't think there's any way the MMO in question has sufficient subscribers to make this observation credible.  However, there are three things that can cause this and bad RND is only one of them.  Misuse of the RND in the code is the second, and improper observation is the third.

And now that I've double checked my notes, I did conflate AE tickets with alignment merits.  That's another thing that's fallen off the edge of FIFO memory.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: r00tb0ySlim on February 09, 2015, 07:55:15 PM
Math I can still do (probably).  To put it in easier to understand terms, the odds of a 140 failure in a row run of something with an independent chance to fail of 80% is 36,931,914,471,142 to 1 - 37 trillion to 1.  The odds of a single player seeing such a run after 5000 tries is about one in 38 billion.  Incidentally, the recursive exact computation for the second calculation is *just* within the bounds of Wolfram Alpha, unless you're a pro subscriber.

And yes, I don't think there's any way the MMO in question has sufficient subscribers to make this observation credible.  However, there are three things that can cause this and bad RND is only one of them.  Misuse of the RND in the code is the second, and improper observation is the third.

And now that I've double checked my notes, I did conflate AE tickets with alignment merits.  That's another thing that's fallen off the edge of FIFO memory.
(https://i.imgur.com/gFSzZh6.gif)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on February 09, 2015, 08:09:04 PM
Math I can still do (probably).  To put it in easier to understand terms, the odds of a 140 failure in a row run of something with an independent chance to fail of 80% is 36,931,914,471,142 to 1 - 37 trillion to 1.  The odds of a single player seeing such a run after 5000 tries is about one in 38 billion.  Incidentally, the recursive exact computation for the second calculation is *just* within the bounds of Wolfram Alpha, unless you're a pro subscriber.

And yes, I don't think there's any way the MMO in question has sufficient subscribers to make this observation credible.  However, there are three things that can cause this and bad RND is only one of them.  Misuse of the RND in the code is the second, and improper observation is the third.

And now that I've double checked my notes, I did conflate AE tickets with alignment merits.  That's another thing that's fallen off the edge of FIFO memory.

Even in CoH there were lots of stupidly rare events going on, my favourite was one of the veteran attacks with a 75% to-hit chance and no modifiers either way (I had the last to-hit displayed at the time so I know this) missing 24 times in a row in among other attacks that were hitting normally so no streakbreaker, then later in the same day it missing 21 times in a row. I suspect some circumstances cause the RNG seed not to regenerate properly and it not actually be random.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on February 09, 2015, 08:29:41 PM
I actually thought I had just missed some way to get purples and merits from AE given that Arcanaposts tend to spout metaphysical certainties.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on February 09, 2015, 08:53:35 PM
Even in CoH there were lots of stupidly rare events going on, my favourite was one of the veteran attacks with a 75% to-hit chance and no modifiers either way (I had the last to-hit displayed at the time so I know this) missing 24 times in a row in among other attacks that were hitting normally so no streakbreaker, then later in the same day it missing 21 times in a row. I suspect some circumstances cause the RNG seed not to regenerate properly and it not actually be random.

I could tell the RNG seed wasn't always wholly random, as I'd frequently see the same attack in an attack chain miss(and often one that does high damage in a single hit).  I also had a peculiar moment when a mob rolled near identical numbers 3 times in a row and hit me three times in a row when he only had a 33% chance I think to hit me.  Now I know I didn't have phenomenal defenses in that fight but, seeing the numbers role so close together as like 26, 28, 29 wouldn't be expected.

I also always, always, always tried to get my end to-hit up to 95% and over that, because of how the rng often worked.  Personally I have never trusted random number generators since that moment and I still find RNG bullcrap to this day in other games.  I'll never forget the numerous "lose five in a row in blackjack in new vegas with TEN LUCK when the win odds are supposed to be a staggering 80% win ratio with TEN LUCK" events, total random number god moment there.  OR 80% chance to hit enemy in vats, fires 6 slugs, all of them narrowly miss.  On hardcore, against a fricken super nightstalker.  Or 6 of my ten precious 10mm rounds in the early game missing that convict leader narrowly in vats when I seriously needed them to hit and had also over 80% chance.

Random number generator my #$%.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on February 09, 2015, 09:04:26 PM
AE missions should give you XP and tickets; if you want to earn inf, you should have to go out in the 'real world' and do things that other people can see you doing to build your reputation.
This makes a huge amount of sense to me.  Perhaps the CoT or APR people will take note of it for their efforts.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 09, 2015, 09:15:20 PM
Even in CoH there were lots of stupidly rare events going on, my favourite was one of the veteran attacks with a 75% to-hit chance and no modifiers either way (I had the last to-hit displayed at the time so I know this) missing 24 times in a row in among other attacks that were hitting normally so no streakbreaker, then later in the same day it missing 21 times in a row. I suspect some circumstances cause the RNG seed not to regenerate properly and it not actually be random.

In most cases I examined where someone thought the streakbreaker was broken, the root cause was due to a mistaken belief that the streakbreaker affected attacks when it affected attackers.  What this meant was that everything you did that incurred a tohit roll, including things like non-autohitting auras, would be part of the streakbreaker streak calculations.  Suppose you are attacking with nothing but well-slotted attacks and also happen to have a damage aura turned on that wasn't slotted.  You could have the aura missing at very low tohit chance and that would allow the streakbreaker to accept a large number of misses in a row, even if all of your "attacks" appeared to have high chance to hit.

But in this case there's another explanation.  At least when it was first enabled the "last tohit" thing in the real numbers display wasn't accurate.  It was the unmodified tohit (meaning before target defense and combat modifiers), much like how Mids did the same thing.  There were technical reasons for this, but unless someone fixed it late that wasn't trustworthy for streakbreaker.  You needed to watch your tohit roll information in your combat chat to be certain of what was going on with the streakbreaker.  I don't think that was ever fixed, although my memory is not as good as when I was a youngin.

The RND used by CoH for tohit calculations itself was, to the best of anyone's ability to detect, random enough for MMO purposes.  It had a bit of a roundoff skew in the ten thousandths place (hundredth of a percent) which no one would notice, and because of the way it was used it had a peculiar alias that ended up making exact rolls of zero and 100 slightly off (also unnoticeable), but that was it.  The slight skews I could detect were several orders of magnitude smaller than anything players could detect observationally, and I could detect those but not the others that were reported.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on February 09, 2015, 09:36:18 PM
I never had gobs of influence :(, I was to much of an altaholic to keep influence around. I did almost hit the influence cap on my old main though. I was trying to get the badge, actually I think I got it.

I did not recall a badge for hitting max - apparently I forgot about the olden days, as the badge was indeed for 2 billion, before being reduced to 500 million: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Leader_Badge



Streak Breaker: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics#The_Streak_Breaker
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on February 09, 2015, 09:37:38 PM
Confirmation bias is a huge part of testing random number generators, especially in an MMO setting. People tend to notice and remember the (statistically likely given enough time) anomalies, such as missing after hitting Aim+Build Up, or oddly specific numbers in sequence, but they forget the thousands and thousands of random rolls that didn't catch their attention. That's why I mentioned developer datamining as a final confirmation before taking people's word on it, with the caveat that the datamining techniques must be done correctly.

One other assumption about COH's use of the PRNG that a lot of people made was that random numbers were specific to them -- that if the RNG got seeded with a particular value, such as the clock, then their attacks all came from a specific sequence based on that seed. That couldn't be further from the truth. The same random number source was used not only for player attacks, but for dozens of other things as well. Other players, enemy critter to-hit rolls, pet to-hit rolls, some randomness used by the AI in its thinking, choosing which animation to play if there are multiple equivalent possibilities (some brawl variants had this, the dice roll emote used it, etc), reward rolls if anything on the same map was defeated.

By the time you queued up another attack, dozens or more random numbers had been generated in the interim. Indeed the unpredictable nature of when random numbers were needed and sampled from the PRNG introduced a lot of real entropy into the system, entropy fed mostly by player actions and amplified by complex interactions of systems. It wouldn't surprise me if that's part of why Arcana's statistical analysis showed a good distribution despite the underlying system being technically deterministic.

Depending on the PRNG algorithm used and if it was cyclical (most decent ones are not), re-seeding the generator might have been completely unnecessary and was probably never done at all once the server was running.

There is only one confirmed instance of an issue with random numbers in COH I can think of: purple recipe drop rates were observed by some players as being far lower than they should have been, and it was brought to developer attention thanks to the tireless efforts of players parsing logs and documenting tens of thousands of drops. I forget which red name posted the final breakdown, but it turned out to not be an issue with the RNG at all (which was functioning perfectly), but rather a bug involving an uninitialized variable in the rewards code. Said bug caused players to sometimes be incorrectly disqualified from the purple drop table, depending on what ended up in a specific memory address. I think that bug may have persisted for nearly a year before it was squashed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 09, 2015, 10:12:03 PM
One other assumption about COH's use of the PRNG that a lot of people made was that random numbers were specific to them -- that if the RNG got seeded with a particular value, such as the clock, then their attacks all came from a specific sequence based on that seed. That couldn't be further from the truth. The same random number source was used not only for player attacks, but for dozens of other things as well. Other players, enemy critter to-hit rolls, pet to-hit rolls, some randomness used by the AI in its thinking, choosing which animation to play if there are multiple equivalent possibilities (some brawl variants had this, the dice roll emote used it, etc), reward rolls if anything on the same map was defeated.

By the time you queued up another attack, dozens or more random numbers had been generated in the interim. Indeed the unpredictable nature of when random numbers were needed and sampled from the PRNG introduced a lot of real entropy into the system, entropy fed mostly by player actions and amplified by complex interactions of systems. It wouldn't surprise me if that's part of why Arcana's statistical analysis showed a good distribution despite the underlying system being technically deterministic.

To be honest, even when this was pointed out on the game forums, it was suggested that this very fact could have made testing impossible to determine the flaw in the RNG, because a pattern in the RNG could be obscured by the fact that a test would not see it most of the time.  It was difficult to respond to this objection in a satisfactory way although basic statistical mechanics says this is not really possible over long testing periods.

Here, however, what I would say is that so long as the RNG generated a sequence of numbers that showed no obvious correlations between n-consecutive generated numbers for sufficiently large n, and showed no signs of generating any particular number over any other, that the added complexity of sampling that generator at pseudorandom intervals cannot make the sequence look significantly more or less random.  To put it more simply, combining two PRNGs does not tend to make the combined system more or less random.  So I assume that if it looked random to me, it probably was and it if wasn't, it wouldn't look so to me, even with the added complexity of sampling.

Quote
Depending on the PRNG algorithm used and if it was cyclical (most decent ones are not), re-seeding the generator might have been completely unnecessary and was probably never done at all once the server was running.

Not just unnecessary, but also a potential source of non-randomness.  Unless you reseed with a genuine source of good entropy, the act of reseeding itself could in some cases make the generated numbers less than random.

Quote
There is only one confirmed instance of an issue with random numbers in COH I can think of: purple recipe drop rates were observed by some players as being far lower than they should have been, and it was brought to developer attention thanks to the tireless efforts of players parsing logs and documenting tens of thousands of drops. I forget which red name posted the final breakdown, but it turned out to not be an issue with the RNG at all (which was functioning perfectly), but rather a bug involving an uninitialized variable in the rewards code. Said bug caused players to sometimes be incorrectly disqualified from the purple drop table, depending on what ended up in a specific memory address. I think that bug may have persisted for nearly a year before it was squashed.

There was one more issue like that I'm aware of, and one actual RNG error (the only one I'm aware of).  In I9 beta, I confirmed that the dev statement that Pool B drops from mission complete 10% of the time was in error and actually occurred at about 7.3%.  But that wasn't a problem with the RNG itself but rather a problem with the way the drop tables were constructed.  The other was the random drop map distribution error: players discovered there were certain maps where the rewards generated were actually predictable with a high degree of certainty, if certain gameplay conditions were met.  I analyzed the player posted data and took that one to pohsyb directly, and he determined that in that part of the code some shmuck wrote their own RAND that was extremely not random and often reseeded with a constant: that made those maps generate the same basic layout much of the time.

Separate from confirmation bias, there's also what I recently read referred to as the Wyatt Earp effect and I used to call the lottery winner effect.  Players, even those with mathematical backgrounds (actually, especially those), would often miscalculate how rare an unlikely occurrence was by misunderstanding what an unlikely occurrence was in the first place.  For example, if you take six six-sided dice and rolled them, it sounds extremely unlikely they would come up 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.  But if you roll six six-sided dice and you are of a mind to over-recognize patterns you might have said the same thing about the dice coming up all ones, or all sixes, or all even numbers, or all odd numbers, or two each of 1, 2, and 3, etc.  The odds of coming up all sixes is 46,656 to one.  But the odds of the dice coming up *interesting-looking* is a lot higher, because people categorize a lot of different possibilities as interesting.

The Wyatt Earp effect is the effect of thinking something extremely unlikely - in this case Wyatt Earp surviving all of his gunfights - must be due to something other than chance.  The problem in this case is that enough people got into gunfights back then that the odds of *one* of them coming out of many gunfights alive is a lot higher than the odds that Wyatt Earp specifically would have done so.  We only talk about Wyatt Earp because he happened to be the one that did.  The odds of winning the lottery are very slim, but someone always does.  That doesn't mean Wyatt Earp wasn't a good gunfighter, it just means we have to be extremely careful about what we attribute to chance, and what is postscript selection that has nothing to do with chance.

To be statistically blunt, the odds of Wyatt Earp surviving all his gunfights is 100%, because we already witnessed it.  We cannot calculate what it "would have been" we can only calculate what the odds of another random person surviving all of those gunfights might have been, and that is a subtle but significantly different thing.

Even when the player correctly notes that something they witnessed was unlikely, that doesn't mean it wasn't actually likely that *someone* saw it, and it just happened to be them.  Ten misses in a row is unlikely.  But so is ten alternating hits and misses.  So is five hits followed by five misses.  So is three hits followed by three misses ten times repeatedly.  If you want to see something unlikely, the fact is every individual sequence is unlikely to occur *again*.  But something has to happen.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on February 09, 2015, 11:34:01 PM
I actually thought I had just missed some way to get purples and merits from AE given that Arcanaposts tend to spout metaphysical certainties.

If I remember correctly if an AE mission was a Dev's choice, the mission creator. Had the option of the mission dropping regular AE rewards or regular PVE content rewards (IE purples). Merits on the other hand I don't remember you being able to get them from AE at all.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 10, 2015, 12:32:01 AM
I actually thought I had just missed some way to get purples and merits from AE given that Arcanaposts tend to spout metaphysical certainties.

There's always at least one parallel universe in which I'm right, and its not my fault you live in the wrong one.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on February 10, 2015, 04:40:37 AM
I must be conflating AE merits and the merit system, or possibly having an episode of dementia.  And why are you all in my house?
Where's the cheese? I've got all this whine but no cheese. How can you not have any cheese?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on February 10, 2015, 05:00:24 AM
(words words words)

The odds of coming up all sixes is 46,656 to one.  But the odds of the dice coming up *interesting-looking* is a lot higher, because people categorize a lot of different possibilities as interesting.

The problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox) of course is that if you have interesting numbers, you must also have non-interesting numbers. if you have non-interesting numbers, you can find the smallest such number, which makes it interesting!  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on February 10, 2015, 03:07:26 PM
In most cases I examined where someone thought the streakbreaker was broken, the root cause was due to a mistaken belief that the streakbreaker affected attacks when it affected attackers.  What this meant was that everything you did that incurred a tohit roll, including things like non-autohitting auras, would be part of the streakbreaker streak calculations.  Suppose you are attacking with nothing but well-slotted attacks and also happen to have a damage aura turned on that wasn't slotted.  You could have the aura missing at very low tohit chance and that would allow the streakbreaker to accept a large number of misses in a row, even if all of your "attacks" appeared to have high chance to hit.

But in this case there's another explanation.  At least when it was first enabled the "last tohit" thing in the real numbers display wasn't accurate.  It was the unmodified tohit (meaning before target defense and combat modifiers), much like how Mids did the same thing.  There were technical reasons for this, but unless someone fixed it late that wasn't trustworthy for streakbreaker.  You needed to watch your tohit roll information in your combat chat to be certain of what was going on with the streakbreaker.  I don't think that was ever fixed, although my memory is not as good as when I was a youngin.

The RND used by CoH for tohit calculations itself was, to the best of anyone's ability to detect, random enough for MMO purposes.  It had a bit of a roundoff skew in the ten thousandths place (hundredth of a percent) which no one would notice, and because of the way it was used it had a peculiar alias that ended up making exact rolls of zero and 100 slightly off (also unnoticeable), but that was it.  The slight skews I could detect were several orders of magnitude smaller than anything players could detect observationally, and I could detect those but not the others that were reported.

This one was when the display was working properly, I could use the same attack and have different results displayed against foes that adjusted it.

I wasn't claiming the streakbreaker was off, I was saying it didn't apply because I'd have sands of mu misses, 3 other attacks some of which hit, sands of mu misses again and I was talking about 24 successive sands of mu misses not 24 successive overall misses.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 10, 2015, 07:18:16 PM
This one was when the display was working properly, I could use the same attack and have different results displayed against foes that adjusted it.

I wasn't claiming the streakbreaker was off, I was saying it didn't apply because I'd have sands of mu misses, 3 other attacks some of which hit, sands of mu misses again and I was talking about 24 successive sands of mu misses not 24 successive overall misses.

I misunderstood your point.  However, I don't believe improper reseeding could explain your observations either.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on February 10, 2015, 07:35:49 PM
Now, this was something that never made sense to me about AE missions. Inf -- influence, infamy, or information -- was abstracted as your ability to get other people to do things for you because of your reputation. Out of respect for your service to the city, for influence; out of fear of what you might do to them, for infamy; in response to the leverage it could be used for, for information. But all of these represent how the other people viewed your character. AE missions happen entirely in a virtual world; none of the events that occur in an AE mission affect the 'real world'. Completing a mission inside AE gives you practice in the use of your powers, and would thereby gain you experience. But if a new hero went into the AE building at level 1 and did nothing but AE missions, when they came out to get enhancements, nobody would know who he was; as far as they were concerned, he'd never done anything to protect Paragon City -- in the 'real world', he wouldn't have any influence, because he hadn't done anything in the 'real world'. It doesn't matter how many times you crawled into your electronic navel and soloed Emperor Cole, or Reichsman, or U'kon G'rai; none of that was real. Tickets, sure; that's the AE system's internal reward system to encourage you to participate. But gaining any sort of reputation from defeating virtual ghosts? Not a chance. Level from 1 to 50 inside AE, and you come out and try to play on your reputation, and people are going to ask who you are; they would never have heard of you, except perhaps in a news story about the victims of AE addiction.

AE missions should give you XP and tickets; if you want to earn inf, you should have to go out in the 'real world' and do things that other people can see you doing to build your reputation.

Wish I saw this earlier and I agree that influence shouldn't be rewarded in AE.  It'd not only make more sense but also prevent the hyper inflation we saw when it did.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on February 10, 2015, 07:42:49 PM
It's funny - some people saw the AE as "OMG, new content."

Others as "Hellooooooo, farm central."

Me? "BOOYAH, CUSTOMIZABLE FILMING ENVIRONMENT!"

When the game goes live again, I'll need to finish my 10-mission, 2-part story arc "The War Witch Task Force."

Thank heavens I still have all my AE files, so I won't have to recreate all my previous work.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

I had a 10 part mission arch in the making.  I'm considering starting it up again, though now I actually have an even better grasp of what I really want to do with it.

As it was I was planning on making it increasingly difficult as the missions progress, but some of the things I'd played since, yeah, I can't wait for city of heroes to be back up.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on February 10, 2015, 07:51:17 PM
I had a 10 part mission arch in the making.  I'm considering starting it up again, though now I actually have an even better grasp of what I really want to do with it.

As it was I was planning on making it increasingly difficult as the missions progress, but some of the things I'd played since, yeah, I can't wait for city of heroes to be back up.
I only ever created one AE mission.  I was originally doing it for the badge/accolade, but I made it into a small comedy arc based on a passing joke from one of my friends.  Since Azuria's always losing things (or having them stolen), he suggested an AE mish where Azuria sends you out to retrieve a rather...explicit...video from her time at Hogwarts.  So I actually made it, to the amusement of my SG, and called it "Azuria's Indiscretions."

The mission souvenir was "A fat stack of hush money - now keep your mouth shut!"  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 10, 2015, 08:02:32 PM
Wish I saw this earlier and I agree that influence shouldn't be rewarded in AE.  It'd not only make more sense but also prevent the hyper inflation we saw when it did.

Not to pick on your specifically, but throughout the game there was talk of "hyper inflation" but there was no such thing that I observed.  Hyperinflation suggests that as time progressed the price of items rapidly increased continuously.  I saw no evidence of that.  There were things that were very expensive, but those prices fluctuated up and down: they did not monotonically go up.

That's important because of what removing inf from the AE would do.  I don't think it would have brought prices down.  In fact, its very likely prices would stay the same.  The price of really expensive stuff was being driven by the players with the largest amount of influence, and those players did not need AE inf to get there.  You wouldn't hurt the rich players by removing AE inf.  You'd be more likely to hurt more casual players that would lose a source of inf that was more likely to be significant (when you don't have a lot of inf, taking any source of it away disproportionately hurts you more than the people who already are swimming in it).

When the markets first opened prices started off low and then quickly ramped up.  But that was because the market was still finding its level and people were still learning what other people were willing to pay for things.  Players were experimenting with marketing strategies.  But after the first six months or so, things started to settle down and after a year prices were fluctuating more than they were inflating, except for the most valuable purples which were not introduced until after the markets had been up for about six months.  They themselves took a year to an year and a half to find a level and stabilize.  After an initial rise in prices, there was a split between the "expensive" purples and the "cheap" purples where some continued to go up and others went down in price over time, which suggests the price changes were more the result of demand pressure than currency inflation.

Ultimately, the problem was not the sources of inf but the sinks for inf.  No matter where the sources were, some players would get a lot and some would get less due to differences in gameplay and the richer players would always dominate the buy-side prices for things.  I emphasized what the problem with the theory that currency supply inflation was the problem with a thought experiment.  Suppose the devs were to take every single player and divide their total influence by ten.  Basically lop off a zero.  Hypothetically speaking, prices for things in the markets would drop.  But practically speaking, the players with more influence would still be buying all the supply and the players with less would still have difficulty.  Its just that rather than 100 million that purple would now be getting bid at 10 million, but your 5 million inf would now be only 500k and it would still be just as expensive relatively speaking as it was before.

The side effects of such a move, though, would probably be to make the gap *worse*.  Consider that the rich players didn't get that way by luck: they had the knowledge, experience, or just plain temperment to farm up all that inf.  They would immediate start doing so again, at probably a faster rate than before to make up for the lost inf.  The players that did not have lots of inf would have to go back to earning it normally.  You might temporarily make the gap between them smaller on an absolute basis, but on a relative basis it would still be just as large and eventually it would be even worse on an absolute basis.

As Codewalker suggested earlier, the only way to close the gap between the rich and the poor is to convince the rich to spend their arsenal of inf on something whose benefits are commensurately lower relative to what the poorer players can get.  Vanity items, for example, can burn a lot of inf without providing a significant benefit to the rich that would allow them to increase their wealth gap.  Consumables that return less inf (in terms of how they can be used) than they cost in statistical terms are another way to do that.  If I have 100 billion inf and you have 10 million, there is simply no way to change the sources of inf that will ever bring us remotely close together.  Let me rent the Atlas blimp for my birthday, on the other hand, and eventually I will have a lot less inf and you'll have some ability to catch up (but of course you'd have a lot fewer blimp parties).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Samuraiko on February 10, 2015, 08:03:05 PM
I only ever created one AE mission.  I was originally doing it for the badge/accolade, but I made it into a small comedy arc based on a passing joke from one of my friends.  Since Azuria's always losing things (or having them stolen), he suggested an AE mish where Azuria sends you out to retrieve a rather...explicit...video from her time at Hogwarts.  So I actually made it, to the amusement of my SG, and called it "Azuria's Indiscretions."

The mission souvenir was "A fat stack of hush money - now keep your mouth shut!"  :)

First one I created on the test server was when Positron wanted us to test the profanity/content filters.

So I made a one-shot mission called "Positron Gets Some." Synapse was the contact, and he set you up with introducing Positron to a bunch of Carnies, and the end-boss Carnie Mistress had a crapton of suggestive dialogue. (And the souvenir was a condom.) When Matt found out about it, his only comment was:

"*facepalm*"

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on February 10, 2015, 08:03:54 PM
I had a 10 part mission arch in the making.  I'm considering starting it up again, though now I actually have an even better grasp of what I really want to do with it.

As it was I was planning on making it increasingly difficult as the missions progress, but some of the things I'd played since, yeah, I can't wait for city of heroes to be back up.
nice :) I too had an ongoing epic arc, however, I stopped when I found out no body was playing them I would spend months on them to get them how I wanted them to be represented. And for my troubles I had to coheres my global friends  into playing them. The only thing I asked is they be brutally honest. My first mission (I call this my George Lucas arc) because I wanted a way for telling what started a great war. It got 50 plays and it was a 4 star. My 4th arc was a 25 5 star arc. Then I started to notice that less people played my last 4 arcs with a total of 6 5 stars. To say the least I was dishearten and I carry this into STO's mission editor. In that I made a return to wolf 359 and it is 50% done then I remembered what is the point. Some people will always play the farming missions.
When City of comes back please,please,please have a way for people to post their arcs here or on the official boards.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on February 10, 2015, 08:08:55 PM
nice :) I too had an ongoing epic arc, however, I stopped when I found out no body was playing them I would spend months on them to get them how I wanted them to be represented. And for my troubles I had to coheres my global friends  into playing them. The only thing I asked is they be brutally honest. My first mission (I call this my George Lucas arc) because I wanted a way for telling what started a great war. It got 50 plays and it was a 4 star. My 4th arc was a 25 5 star arc. Then I started to notice that less people played my last 4 arcs with a total of 6 5 stars. To say the least I was dishearten and I carry this into STO's mission editor. In that I made a return to wolf 359 and it is 50% done then I remembered what is the point. Some people will always play the farming missions.
When City of comes back please,please,please have a way for people to post their arcs here or on the official boards.

I had a really fun arc where, for the 1st 4 missions, you rescued 4 of my hero toons from 4 of my villain toons... with the 5th mission being you team up with the 4 heroes to take down the 4 villains and their minions.   Very fun, and very tough.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on February 10, 2015, 08:20:24 PM
I had a really fun arc where, for the 1st 4 missions, you rescued 4 of my hero toons from 4 of my villain toons... with the 5th mission being you team up with the 4 heroes to take down the 4 villains and their minions.   Very fun, and very tough.
nice :), that is how I figured the last mission, it had to be hard so I made the av /wp and I want to say fire/. There were only three people who played it myself, my brother, and one of his friends. In that arc, I killed Statesman even before Paragon did it :D. I also killed another hero atm I don't recall who though. :(. I want Statesman's death to mean something to Recluse and the world. (That is not to say it did not have the same impact on the game, when Paragon did it.)
My last first three was building up to a Time to Stand my middle arc.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on February 10, 2015, 08:41:48 PM
I misunderstood your point.  However, I don't believe improper reseeding could explain your observations either.

There were other ludicrous sequences as well, upgrading SOs on levelling, a mix of 75% and 80% chances, 24 straight successes followed by 6 straight failures.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 10, 2015, 09:41:58 PM
First one I created on the test server was when Positron wanted us to test the profanity/content filters.

So I made a one-shot mission called "Positron Gets Some." Synapse was the contact, and he set you up with introducing Positron to a bunch of Carnies, and the end-boss Carnie Mistress had a crapton of suggestive dialogue. (And the souvenir was a condom.) When Matt found out about it, his only comment was:

"*facepalm*"

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Architect beta testing was probably the craziest beta test CoH ever conducted.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on February 10, 2015, 10:08:31 PM
I've forgotten, because I never built a mission around one, but could you use the outdoor mission maps for AE?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on February 10, 2015, 10:10:18 PM
I've forgotten, because I never built a mission around one, but could you use the outdoor mission maps for AE?
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Mission_Architect_Unique_Maps
Lots of outdoor maps. (List is not even complete!)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on February 10, 2015, 10:22:43 PM
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Mission_Architect_Unique_Maps
Lots of outdoor maps. (List is not even complete!)

Ah!  I need AE, I just came up with a new idea for an arc while looking through all those.

So, who played through Bill Willingham's AE arc?  Did and other celebrities write arcs that I missed?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on February 10, 2015, 11:07:21 PM
Mercedes Lackey wrote one if I recall.

Bill Willingham's was awesome. He ref'ed V&V for me back in the day. Great GM.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Prism Almidu on February 10, 2015, 11:39:11 PM
I know Jim Butcher wrote one, always meant to play that, never got around to it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on February 11, 2015, 01:16:32 AM
I was fun, based on zombies in the sewer. I teamed with him once and he asked me to play it and try it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Prism Almidu on February 11, 2015, 12:41:40 PM
Lucky you. He's one of my top 5 favorite authors. I seem to recall reading somewhere, maybe on these boards, that he kept having issues with the moderators telling him he couldn't use Harry Dresden as a character name. They weren't able to understand that he owned the copyright or something?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on February 11, 2015, 01:17:45 PM
Lucky you. He's one of my top 5 favorite authors. I seem to recall reading somewhere, maybe on these boards, that he kept having issues with the moderators telling him he couldn't use Harry Dresden as a character name. They weren't able to understand that he owned the copyright or something?

I could see the mods having real trouble with that... Is he the real Jim Butcher? What is the state of his ownership of the character?  What licensing/contract deals have been made through his agents and publishers that we might be violating if he plays this character in our game? etc, etc.

That's a lot for a mod to have to know to make it OK
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on February 11, 2015, 02:34:28 PM
Troy Hickman wrote a great AE arc as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on February 11, 2015, 02:41:53 PM
Lucky you. He's one of my top 5 favorite authors. I seem to recall reading somewhere, maybe on these boards, that he kept having issues with the moderators telling him he couldn't use Harry Dresden as a character name. They weren't able to understand that he owned the copyright or something?

Yes, he had to out himself. They were going to generic his Harry Dresden and he had to come out and say -  uh, I own Harry and I can play him if I want to!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on February 11, 2015, 05:27:25 PM
There were other ludicrous sequences as well, upgrading SOs on levelling, a mix of 75% and 80% chances, 24 straight successes followed by 6 straight failures.

Is that ludicrous? 24 / 30 = 80%
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on February 12, 2015, 12:06:16 AM
The Wyatt Earp effect is the effect of thinking something extremely unlikely - in this case Wyatt Earp surviving all of his gunfights - must be due to something other than chance.  The problem in this case is that enough people got into gunfights back then that the odds of *one* of them coming out of many gunfights alive is a lot higher than the odds that Wyatt Earp specifically would have done so.  We only talk about Wyatt Earp because he happened to be the one that did.  The odds of winning the lottery are very slim, but someone always does.  That doesn't mean Wyatt Earp wasn't a good gunfighter, it just means we have to be extremely careful about what we attribute to chance, and what is postscript selection that has nothing to do with chance.

To be statistically blunt, the odds of Wyatt Earp surviving all his gunfights is 100%, because we already witnessed it.  We cannot calculate what it "would have been" we can only calculate what the odds of another random person surviving all of those gunfights might have been, and that is a subtle but significantly different thing.
It's even crazier with Wyatt Earp.  Not only did he survive every encounter he was ever in....he never was wounded by a bullet!

And this was a guy who was known to walk up to people who were shooting at him and whack them over the head with his handgun.

What Wyatt knew...and another factor in the equation, is that guns back then were not very accurate.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on February 12, 2015, 12:18:14 AM
What Wyatt knew...and another factor in the equation, is that guns back then were not very accurate.

Indeed, it is one thing to be the fastest gun in the West,......but how is your accuracy?  Can you really draw your gun and lock onto the target fast enough to fire accurately?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on February 12, 2015, 01:02:48 AM
Yes, he had to out himself. They were going to generic his Harry Dresden and he had to come out and say -  uh, I own Harry and I can play him if I want to!
I had heard that he was a CoH player, but I could never get someone to confirm his class and powersets (I'm curious how he built Harry).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: mrultimate on February 12, 2015, 02:30:40 AM
Gail Simone also played CoH.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on February 12, 2015, 02:41:40 AM
Is that ludicrous? 24 / 30 = 80%

The overall total is fair, it's that you got 24 successes in a row (c 1 in 500) followed by 6 failures in a row (c 1/7000) so the chance of this happening (all the successes together and all the failures together) is less than one in a million.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on February 12, 2015, 03:57:48 AM
The overall total is fair, it's that you got 24 successes in a row (c 1 in 500) followed by 6 failures in a row (c 1/7000) so the chance of this happening (all the successes together and all the failures together) is less than one in a million.

Yeah, I was thinking as I typed it "that is not sound mathematics..." But whatever.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on February 12, 2015, 04:51:59 AM
The overall total is fair, it's that you got 24 successes in a row (c 1 in 500) followed by 6 failures in a row (c 1/7000) so the chance of this happening (all the successes together and all the failures together) is less than one in a million.

The probability of that happening is the exact same as the probability of any other random sequence of hits and misses that average 80% and is well within the norm.

Long streaks that fall far outside the standard deviation are an aberration (and the odds of such an aberration occurring can be calculated), but that doesn't apply to your example.

What you're saying is the equivalent of saying that picking 1-2-3-4-5-6 as your lottery numbers is foolish because it has less of a chance of coming up due to being 'special'. In truth, that sequence has the same (infinitesimal) odds as any other combination of numbers, and is no less likely simply because the human brain sees a pattern in it.

As Arcana was saying earlier, the odds of a random number generator producing something that humans recognize as a pattern are surprisingly high due to how good we are at pattern recognition. Compare the example you gave to instead getting 6 failures in a row followed by 24 successes, or 12-6-12, or a failure every 6th time exactly (and there are at least 5 distinct sequences that do that with different phasing), and so on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on February 12, 2015, 05:07:47 AM
What Wyatt knew...and another factor in the equation, is that guns back then were not very accurate.


They (Firearms in general) were nearly as accurate then as they are today, it is the shooting technique that has changed and improved the shooters accuracy more than anything else. Although the "Blaze Away" mentality still exists today, the higher capacity handguns improve the odds somewhat, throw enough lead downrange and eventually you are bound to hit something.

"Speed is fine, but accuracy is final". . . (Old gunfighters quote.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kriiden on February 12, 2015, 05:56:29 AM
Yes, he had to out himself. They were going to generic his Harry Dresden and he had to come out and say -  uh, I own Harry and I can play him if I want to!

I also had heard rumors. Nothing concrete. It's awesome he created a story arc.  I hope someone can bring it back along with CoH. I'd like to play it. He is by far my all time favorite author.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on February 12, 2015, 07:09:42 AM

They (Firearms in general) were nearly as accurate then as they are today, it is the shooting technique that has changed and improved the shooters accuracy more than anything else. Although the "Blaze Away" mentality still exists today, the higher capacity handguns improve the odds somewhat, throw enough lead downrange and eventually you are bound to hit something.

"Speed is fine, but accuracy is final". . . (Old gunfighters quote.)

Admittedly though the person who survives firefights the most is the one that has the best cover though.  That was the reason trenches were made during the civil war, with the sheer accuracy of guns in the 1800s it wasn't a matter of luck anymore but whether you had some form of protection.  It was often considered "cowardly" but then any technology that gave someone an "unfair advantage" was when first introduced considered "cowardly".  But most people back then were smart enough to not get into a direct firefight in the open.  It's just misconceptions Hollywood often take advantage of; the gunslingers shooting each other in an honorable contest.  It happened in the 1700s sure, between upper class men, but they often missed back then.

Reality in the old west; people walked up to you and shot you in the back rather than ever challenge you.

I'd say it's not just the techniques that changed, but tactics to.  Cover--->accuracy--->speed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on February 12, 2015, 10:51:06 AM
The probability of that happening is the exact same as the probability of any other random sequence of hits and misses that average 80% and is well within the norm.

Long streaks that fall far outside the standard deviation are an aberration (and the odds of such an aberration occurring can be calculated), but that doesn't apply to your example.

What you're saying is the equivalent of saying that picking 1-2-3-4-5-6 as your lottery numbers is foolish because it has less of a chance of coming up due to being 'special'. In truth, that sequence has the same (infinitesimal) odds as any other combination of numbers, and is no less likely simply because the human brain sees a pattern in it.

As Arcana was saying earlier, the odds of a random number generator producing something that humans recognize as a pattern are surprisingly high due to how good we are at pattern recognition. Compare the example you gave to instead getting 6 failures in a row followed by 24 successes, or 12-6-12, or a failure every 6th time exactly (and there are at least 5 distinct sequences that do that with different phasing), and so on.

Actually this is not really what I was saying (I have a statistics degree btw), what I was suggesting is that IMO p(success after a success) is not the same as p(success after a failure) and this is only one of many examples of this, this was only the most dramatic example, I've seen much longer runs of failures than that for example. I was suggesting that incorrect regeneration of the seed might be one of the possible mechanisms. When you get 12+ failures in a row at 80% and this happens twice in a day for example, you do feel something's up.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on February 12, 2015, 03:31:09 PM
Gail Simone also played CoH.

Mark Waid, too
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Excidia on February 12, 2015, 05:32:31 PM
I had heard that he was a CoH player, but I could never get someone to confirm his class and powersets (I'm curious how he built Harry).

Fire/Energy Blaster IIRC

I remember it being mentioned but can't remember where.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on February 12, 2015, 06:01:02 PM
Actually, Wyatt Earp talked about this issue in his autobiography. He attributed his success in gun fighting to always talking the time to aim. He fought people who out drew him but fired from the hip, or just drew and shot or people who would pull and fan. He shot slower, but hit what he aimed at and generally scoffed at people who used the pray and spray method of gunplay.

He also practiced with the guns he was most comfortable with. In addition, he was pretty smart. When he faced multiple opponents, he brought friends and tried to pick his ground carefully. I'm not saying luck didn't play a part, but he did his best to reduce the part it played as much as he could.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on February 12, 2015, 06:45:26 PM
Fire/Energy Blaster IIRC

I remember it being mentioned but can't remember where.
Huh.  I would have thought Fire Controller.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on February 12, 2015, 06:56:57 PM
Actually, Wyatt Earp talked about this issue in his autobiography. He attributed his success in gun fighting to always talking the time to aim. he fought people who out drew him but fired from the hip and just draw and shoot or people who would pull and fan. He shot slower, but hit what he aimed at and generally scoffed at people who used the pray and spray method of gunplay.

He also practiced with the guns he was most comfortable with. In addition, he was pretty smart. When he faced multiple opponents, he brought friends and tried to pick his ground carefully. I'm not saying luck didn't play a part, but he did his best to reduce the part it played as much as he could.

I'm suddenly reminded of Methos from Highlander.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on February 12, 2015, 07:15:05 PM
Fire/Energy Blaster IIRC

I remember it being mentioned but can't remember where.

I thought he was a fire/FF troller.  At least I seem to recall reading that somewhere.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on February 12, 2015, 07:23:38 PM
Mark Waid, too

And John Rogers (Blue Beetle, showrunner on Leverage and The Librarians). He had a great blog post about how he'd see comics writers on there that he knew had a deadline in two days, because it was so addictive. He called it "crack pizza". :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on February 12, 2015, 09:58:31 PM
I thought he was a fire/FF troller.  At least I seem to recall reading that somewhere.
Yes, that was my best guess as well, if I were trying to spec him in CoH format.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on February 12, 2015, 10:08:30 PM
And John Rogers (Blue Beetle, showrunner on Leverage and The Librarians). He had a great blog post about how he'd see comics writers on there that he knew had a deadline in two days, because it was so addictive. He called it "crack pizza". :)

They were doing research.  Exploring story ideas. 

I guarantee that prior to DCUO and Marvel Heroes EVERY comic professional was on CoX.  Probably after both of those started too, actually.  Bwah-ha-ha-ha!

I mean, where else could they go to live out those fantasies.  All those guys write superhero books for a reason.  And it sure ain't the money or fame. 

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on February 12, 2015, 10:51:05 PM
They were doing research.  Exploring story ideas. 

I guarantee that prior to DCUO and Marvel Heroes EVERY comic professional was on CoX.  Probably after both of those started too, actually.  Bwah-ha-ha-ha!

I mean, where else could they go to live out those fantasies.  All those guys write superhero books for a reason.  And it sure ain't the money or fame.

Here's hoping that once CoH returns that we can get some of the comic writers to return as well as somehow advertise or endorse the game.  Hm, conflict of interests though may prevent the latter.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 13, 2015, 03:05:03 AM
Actually this is not really what I was saying (I have a statistics degree btw), what I was suggesting is that IMO p(success after a success) is not the same as p(success after a failure) and this is only one of many examples of this, this was only the most dramatic example, I've seen much longer runs of failures than that for example. I was suggesting that incorrect regeneration of the seed might be one of the possible mechanisms. When you get 12+ failures in a row at 80% and this happens twice in a day for example, you do feel something's up.

Its too bad you didn't keep combat logs.  I used to recommend that people who had any interest at all in this sort of thing (or anything related to game functionality really) turn on logging and keep it on forever.  They didn't take much space and were highly compressible (meaning if you were concerned about the space you could just designate that windows directory as being compressed).  Even without the game available to test the combat logs, if properly preserved, could be analyzed to determine the extent and frequency of these types of events and whether they occurred at a statistically significant different rate from the norm.

Over the course of the game, I probably analyzed over a hundred different players' logs for various reasons (some bug hunting, some statistical analysis).  They were very useful in particular for determining the precise sequence of events contextualizing different observations.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Excidia on February 13, 2015, 02:57:14 PM
Yes, that was my best guess as well, if I were trying to spec him in CoH format.

Why Controller?  I can't remember him displaying any fire control powers in the books.  Force Fields/Fire Defender makes more sense than Controller IMO.  Blaster also makes sense since he shot fire blasts, force blasts, and even had his kinetic ring for knockback punch.

Later in the series (and after whatever Issue opened up all Archtypes to everyone) you could possibly say Ice/Fiery Dominator since the Mantle of Winter did give him some cold control powers.
e-
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on February 13, 2015, 06:29:24 PM
Why Controller?  I can't remember him displaying any fire control powers in the books.  Force Fields/Fire Defender makes more sense than Controller IMO.  Blaster also makes sense since he shot fire blasts, force blasts, and even had his kinetic ring for knockback punch.

Later in the series (and after whatever Issue opened up all Archtypes to everyone) you could possibly say Ice/Fiery Dominator since the Mantle of Winter did give him some cold control powers.
e-

I've asked Jim Butcher on Twitter what COH Harry was.  No response yet, and I doubt I'll get one.  But it didn't hurt to ask...

As far as the "Why?" part... If Jim Butcher decided that in COH terms, Harry was a Fire/FF troller, then that's what COH Harry was.  Jim knows Harry better than anyone...  That's what he felt best fit Harry Dresden, so he rolled the toon.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on February 13, 2015, 06:39:18 PM
Why Controller?  I can't remember him displaying any fire control powers in the books.  Force Fields/Fire Defender makes more sense than Controller IMO.  Blaster also makes sense since he shot fire blasts, force blasts, and even had his kinetic ring for knockback punch.

Later in the series (and after whatever Issue opened up all Archtypes to everyone) you could possibly say Ice/Fiery Dominator since the Mantle of Winter did give him some cold control powers.
e-
It's admittedly difficult to translate most fantasy spellcasters into CoH terms, given that most of them have a wide variety of powers.  However, Blasters shoot things - and that's pretty much all they can do.  Harry was capable of more than just shooting things until they stopped moving, hence I would hesitate to make him a Blaster.  You could split the difference and go with Dominator.

Molly, at least, is solidly an Illusion Controller, and I doubt that anyone would disagree.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Excidia on February 13, 2015, 07:32:32 PM
As far as the "Why?" part... If Jim Butcher decided that in COH terms, Harry was a Fire/FF troller, then that's what COH Harry was.  Jim knows Harry better than anyone...  That's what he felt best fit Harry Dresden, so he rolled the toon.

I'm not asking why Butcher did anything, I'm asking why people think Controller since I just don't see it.  Harry has zero Controller primary abilities but he does have quite a few Blaster primary and secondary abilities.  He also has quite a few abilities that match Defender powers.

My opinion is that Defender is a lot more likely for a character based on Harry.

If Butcher says troller, that's fine, his character both in and out of the game, and that's what he wanted to play.  I just don't see the character, as written, matching Controller and wonder why people would immediately think it.

e-
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on February 13, 2015, 08:24:21 PM
Some of his wind and kinetics based abilities are more 'controllery', especially early on in the series. He uses them for soft control like knockback/knockdown rather than direct damage. But he doesn't really fit very well into any archetype since he has such a wide range. If there were an Assault/Buff combination maybe.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 14, 2015, 08:52:44 AM
I'm not asking why Butcher did anything, I'm asking why people think Controller since I just don't see it.  Harry has zero Controller primary abilities but he does have quite a few Blaster primary and secondary abilities.  He also has quite a few abilities that match Defender powers.

My opinion is that Defender is a lot more likely for a character based on Harry.

If Butcher says troller, that's fine, his character both in and out of the game, and that's what he wanted to play.  I just don't see the character, as written, matching Controller and wonder why people would immediately think it.

e-
Process of elimination, mostly.  Often when people have discussed CoH analogs to magic users of all kinds controller tended to come up just due to the diversity of effects at your disposal with controllers verses other archetypes.  The other archetypes tend, on average, to be more focused on specific effects.  Eliminating the melee archetypes and Blasters you're generally left with defenders and controllers.  Controllers have defender primaries as their secondary and control sets instead of ranged blasts: that tends to offer far more options for conceptual fidelity.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on February 14, 2015, 10:15:19 AM
Interesting article, I thought about CoH while reading.

http://massivelyop.net/2015/02/13/eff-wants-to-exempt-some-emulated-game-servers-from-copyright-laws/ (http://massivelyop.net/2015/02/13/eff-wants-to-exempt-some-emulated-game-servers-from-copyright-laws/)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on February 14, 2015, 02:51:15 PM
Process of elimination, mostly.  Often when people have discussed CoH analogs to magic users of all kinds controller tended to come up just due to the diversity of effects at your disposal with controllers verses other archetypes.  The other archetypes tend, on average, to be more focused on specific effects.  Eliminating the melee archetypes and Blasters you're generally left with defenders and controllers.  Controllers have defender primaries as their secondary and control sets instead of ranged blasts: that tends to offer far more options for conceptual fidelity.

I've always considered Green Lantern (and other Lanterns) to fall along these lines, too: Defenders, Corruptors, Controllers, and Dominators, with the exact AT depending on the specific Lantern's temperment.  (I could see classic Hal Jordan as a Grav/FF Controller, John Stewart as a FF/Energy Defender, and Guy Gardner as an Energy/FF Corruptor; I see classic - i.e., before all the "emotional spectrum" stuff - Sinestro as a Grav/Energy Dominator, with current "yellow = fear" Sinestro as a Dark/Dark Dominator; etc)

My first Dominator was a Grav/Elec Dominator loosely based on classic Sinestro (the "Elec" part is why it's loosely based, though the Voltaic Sentinel made a nice "construct" thematically), and one of my other Dominators was Fire/Fire, based on Hal Jordan as a Red Lantern.

If I24 had gone live, the new Sorcery pool and its eclectic variety of abilities would have helped create a bit more "jack of all trades" variety for magical characters.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on February 14, 2015, 03:25:17 PM
I've always considered Green Lantern (and other Lanterns) to fall along these lines, too: Defenders, Corruptors, Controllers, and Dominators, with the exact AT depending on the specific Lantern's temperment.  (I could see classic Hal Jordan as a Grav/FF Controller, John Stewart as a FF/Energy Defender, and Guy Gardner as an Energy/FF Corruptor; I see classic - i.e., before all the "emotional spectrum" stuff - Sinestro as a Grav/Energy Dominator, with current "yellow = fear" Sinestro as a Dark/Dark Dominator; etc)

My first Dominator was a Grav/Elec Dominator loosely based on classic Sinestro (the "Elec" part is why it's loosely based, though the Voltaic Sentinel made a nice "construct" thematically), and one of my other Dominators was Fire/Fire, based on Hal Jordan as a Red Lantern.

If I24 had gone live, the new Sorcery pool and its eclectic variety of abilities would have helped create a bit more "jack of all trades" variety for magical characters.
I had an Earth/Energy Dominator she used the crystal animations for the controlery part/ It worked pretty well for constructs and stuff.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on February 14, 2015, 04:30:24 PM
I had an Earth/Energy Dominator she used the crystal animations for the controlery part/ It worked pretty well for constructs and stuff.

I have created one of those in Icon, and I look forward to calling up those costume, and power modification files when CoH makes its return.....whenever that might be.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on February 14, 2015, 05:25:58 PM
Interesting article, I thought about CoH while reading.

http://massivelyop.net/2015/02/13/eff-wants-to-exempt-some-emulated-game-servers-from-copyright-laws/ (http://massivelyop.net/2015/02/13/eff-wants-to-exempt-some-emulated-game-servers-from-copyright-laws/)

That needs to be strongly supported.  Intellectual Property rights (patent and copyright) are temporary licenses granted to ensure IP is made AVAILABLE, not so somebody can lock up IP so that nobody can use it. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on February 14, 2015, 09:29:37 PM
That needs to be strongly supported.  Intellectual Property rights (patent and copyright) are temporary licenses granted to ensure IP is made AVAILABLE, not so somebody can lock up IP so that nobody can use it.

I completely agree, but as long as the almighty dollar is the driving force behind....well pretty much everything, what's right will always be a step behind what's profitable!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 14, 2015, 10:30:13 PM
That needs to be strongly supported.  Intellectual Property rights (patent and copyright) are temporary licenses granted to ensure IP is made AVAILABLE, not so somebody can lock up IP so that nobody can use it.

I should point out this statement is an expression of the legal foundation for intellectual property (copyright and patent) rights within the US Constitution.  It is not the sole legal justification for intellectual property protection worldwide or historically.  There are other legal justifications for intellectual property rights based on the presumption of a fundamental right of creators to control their work.  However, no such specific right exists within the US Constitution itself, and any discussion of the DMCA would of course presume US law.

I have often wondered what a Constitutional scholar would say if someone attempted to argue that while the copyright clause itself limits Congress to limited times and limited purposes in granting IP protection, the Commerce clause theoretically grants significantly more power to do so in an unlimited fashion under the right conditions.  There exists no constitutional legal doctrine I'm aware of that implies the reach of one constitutional clause is automatically limited by an enumerated power in another clause even if not explicitly stated.  That might be an interesting test case for a Supreme Court that wanted to do so to curtail the reach of the Commerce clause.  Although the current court doesn't seem to be such a court.  The Commerce clause seems to consistently be the hammer that drives the Necessary and Proper wedge through Constitutional Gordian Knots (now that's an odd mixed metaphor).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on February 15, 2015, 06:24:55 AM
 
I should point out this statement is an expression of the legal foundation for intellectual property (copyright and patent) rights within the US Constitution.  It is not the sole legal justification for intellectual property protection worldwide or historically.  There are other legal justifications for intellectual property rights based on the presumption of a fundamental right of creators to control their work.  However, no such specific right exists within the US Constitution itself, and any discussion of the DMCA would of course presume US law.

I have often wondered what a Constitutional scholar would say if someone attempted to argue that while the copyright clause itself limits Congress to limited times and limited purposes in granting IP protection, the Commerce clause theoretically grants significantly more power to do so in an unlimited fashion under the right conditions.  There exists no constitutional legal doctrine I'm aware of that implies the reach of one constitutional clause is automatically limited by an enumerated power in another clause even if not explicitly stated.  That might be an interesting test case for a Supreme Court that wanted to do so to curtail the reach of the Commerce clause.  Although the current court doesn't seem to be such a court.  The Commerce clause seems to consistently be the hammer that drives the Necessary and Proper wedge through Constitutional Gordian Knots (now that's an odd mixed metaphor).
What I can say is it does result in money/buying/selling across state lines. The supreme court has ruled it becomes federal once multi state sales become involved among other things. In this case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbons_v._Ogden (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbons_v._Ogden) It was 'permits' in question. It sounds comparable to Ips if you ask me. Both end up as a piece of paper with semi unreal product I think. Close to equal if you ask this scholar.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on February 15, 2015, 07:30:38 PM
I should point out this statement is an expression of the legal foundation for intellectual property (copyright and patent) rights within the US Constitution.  It is not the sole legal justification for intellectual property protection worldwide or historically.  There are other legal justifications for intellectual property rights based on the presumption of a fundamental right of creators to control their work.

But all the international structures include the concept of time limitation on IP as opposed to every other form of property. 

The historical basis of US/English/European law on IP as applied to world trade is the core of all IP law as it exists.  The recognition is that artistic works are not "property" in the sense of lands or resources and that the value to society involves their use as opposed to their suppression.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Balince on February 16, 2015, 04:26:41 PM
The silence killing anyone else? lol..Although over the last month I've become more positive for a CoH return. I think the silence is a good thing but it's also a real patience tester. A general update from someone would be welcomed, I know the NDA's but something really general where maybe we could read between the lines. ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackout on February 16, 2015, 04:45:18 PM
The silence killing anyone else? lol..Although over the last month I've become more positive for a CoH return. I think the silence is a good thing but it's also a real patience tester. A general update from someone would be welcomed, I know the NDA's but something really general where maybe we could read between the lines. ;D

Agreed and double agreed on this. I understand the reason for the silence, but my god I wish we had some news, especially with everyone being worried by the whole nexon thing
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on February 16, 2015, 07:41:40 PM
The anticipation is driving me nuts. Man this is such a drag...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 16, 2015, 07:54:44 PM
But all the international structures include the concept of time limitation on IP as opposed to every other form of property. 

The historical basis of US/English/European law on IP as applied to world trade is the core of all IP law as it exists.  The recognition is that artistic works are not "property" in the sense of lands or resources and that the value to society involves their use as opposed to their suppression.

The older European antecedents of IP law are based on the "moral rights" of creators (cf: droit moral).  This concept did not and does not contain the same presumption that the purpose of artistic protection is to ultimately benefit society or that such works should ever, at any time, necessarily escape the control of the creator.  As a practical matter those rights tended to have expiration dates, but not because of the reason you give as a foundation of the legal justification.  Because that concept did not find its way into the US Constitution, US IP law tends to focus more on the issue of proper financial compensation to creators balanced against the net overall benefit to society, while in many other parts of the world copyright is coupled with other rights not generally recognized in the US, such as the right to preserve the integrity of published works (i.e. to prevent other people from modifying the original work itself, even if financial control is transferred).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on February 16, 2015, 08:29:12 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Reaper on February 16, 2015, 08:43:15 PM
LOL!  Pretty much what I would have expected.  My wife just read the book in preparation of maybe wanting to see the movie, but even she said the book was unrealistic and not that well written.  She said that the movie was bound to be worse so she had no desire of seeing it any time soon.  I was happy to hear that as I also had 0% interest in watching that.

Very funny excerpt though!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 16, 2015, 08:46:47 PM
The Twilight series itself is silly juvenile pulp romance and 50 Shades is the even more ludicrous fanfiction based on that.

Having said that, I think 50 Shades is for many woman what the Transformers movies are for many men: its silly and ridiculous, but then again there's robots and explosions.  Or maybe Pacific Rim is a better comparison.  Its childhood goofiness made (semi-)real.  Everyone knows they're not seeing great cinema, but robots and monsters?  Sure, why not.  Twilight and 50 Shades are many women's juvenile fantasies visualized.  And I think most women know that, but then again, where else are you going to see that on the big screen.

Also, we all know World of Warcraft is not the pinnacle of game design, and yet we've all played it. And we've all played it for much the same reason: our friends were playing it.  50 Shades is a safe outlet because its commonly accepted that everyone "had to read it" or at least "check it out for a few pages."  You're not a pervert for reading 50 Shades, you're just one of millions of other women.  We all have guilty pleasures (Silk Stalkings, anyone?  Anyone?) and I'm not one to judge.  Still not going to see it, because eww, but not going to judge.

On the plus side, I hear it gets that Frozen song out of your head for a couple hours.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Reaper on February 16, 2015, 08:57:45 PM
The Twilight series itself is silly juvenile pulp romance and 50 Shades is the even more ludicrous fanfiction based on that.

Funny you should mention that, she had also said she could see HUGE similarities between those two stories.  :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on February 16, 2015, 11:14:25 PM
The Twilight series itself is silly juvenile pulp romance and 50 Shades is the even more ludicrous fanfiction based on that.

Reminder to potential authors writing awful fanfic: The Internet never forgets!

No matter how much you wish that it would.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on February 16, 2015, 11:31:26 PM
Reminder to potential authors writing awful fanfic: The Internet never forgets!

No matter how much you wish that it would.

I'm sure the author is crying all the way to the bank. :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on February 16, 2015, 11:50:54 PM
I'm sure the author is crying all the way to the bank. :D

Exactly.
I remember a pretty good modern fantasy/vampire series by Laurel Hamilton. It was solid, largely because it didn't give in too much to the "let's add porn to the plot" syndrome. But after a good amount of books, it shifted pretty strongly to the sexual fantasy side of the aisle. to the point where I stopped reading it.

And I always had the feeling that many of her readers were female, and her editor kept getting suggestions about adding more sexual scenes to the books. So I wonder if it was the author who shifted her style, or the audience who told her that's what they want. And in most careers, well, money talks.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 17, 2015, 01:17:26 AM
Exactly.
I remember a pretty good modern fantasy/vampire series by Laurel Hamilton. It was solid, largely because it didn't give in too much to the "let's add porn to the plot" syndrome. But after a good amount of books, it shifted pretty strongly to the sexual fantasy side of the aisle. to the point where I stopped reading it.

And I always had the feeling that many of her readers were female, and her editor kept getting suggestions about adding more sexual scenes to the books. So I wonder if it was the author who shifted her style, or the audience who told her that's what they want. And in most careers, well, money talks.

Based on her Merry Gentry series, I'm thinking it was the author that shifted steadily more kinky rather than being pushed to do so by readership.  Also, from Mary Sue-lite to Mary Sue: the post-doctorate edition.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on February 17, 2015, 01:32:44 AM
The Anita Blake series was good - for the first...umm... five or so books. I kept going up to eight, Blue Moon (I actually owned up to 9, Obsidian Butterfly, but stopped reading after Blue Moon), because I really wanted her to get over the diddling and come back to the story... did it ever happen? There's now like 20 books or something. I see a hussycover every year or two from her. I'm guessing she still hasn't come back to the story.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on February 17, 2015, 01:36:01 AM
Based on her Merry Gentry series, I'm thinking it was the author that shifted steadily more kinky rather than being pushed to do so by readership.  Also, from Mary Sue-lite to Mary Sue: the post-doctorate edition.
Quite.  I started out liking the AB series, but then it degenerated into "all porn and rape all the time" and I stopped buying the books.  I got as far as like halfway through Obsidian Butterfly, and decided that I was done with the series.  From recaps of later books, I'd say that I bailed out just in time, if not a bit late.

And even by then, her writing had gotten so out there with all the torture porn that I really wouldn't want to run into LKH in a dark alley...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on February 17, 2015, 01:52:38 AM
It's funny, but if memory serves, the greater appeal of the book, and by extension the sexual content contained therein, was that like other romance novels, women could process the images using their imagination, which according to many articles that come out after the original book, is the method that makes it appealing to them.  This as opposed to men who prefer the visual method.  By taking it to the big screen, you make it visual, the imagination element is gone, and with it...the appeal of the whole thing for women.  Of course, men were bound not to like it due to the "Twilight" similarities to the surrounding story. 

So, I am not surprised to hear that a higher percentage of women that I know that enjoyed the book(s), saw the movie and did not like it.  This one will make a lot of money out of curiosity, but now that the verdict is in (for the most part), the second, and third ones will have a hard time trying to recapture an audience already lost.  I am sure there are exceptions to all of the above, but by and large, the response has been pretty one sided in my neck of the woods.

*Disclaimer:  No statements made above are intended to be construed, or implied as sexist, or denigrating to either sex.  You can never be too careful when commenting on things of this nature. ;-)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on February 17, 2015, 02:01:18 AM
The older European antecedents of IP law are based on the "moral rights" of creators (cf: droit moral).  This concept did not and does not contain the same presumption that the purpose of artistic protection is to ultimately benefit society or that such works should ever, at any time, necessarily escape the control of the creator.  As a practical matter those rights tended to have expiration dates, but not because of the reason you give as a foundation of the legal justification.  Because that concept did not find its way into the US Constitution, US IP law tends to focus more on the issue of proper financial compensation to creators balanced against the net overall benefit to society, while in many other parts of the world copyright is coupled with other rights not generally recognized in the US, such as the right to preserve the integrity of published works (i.e. to prevent other people from modifying the original work itself, even if financial control is transferred).

Sure, but I thought "moral rights" referred only to the... reputational (??? is perhaps a word???) elements of attribution and creative integrity.  Also, where/when were "droit moral" first codified?  I thought it was a 20th century invention.  I know international IP law was a total mess as late as Tolkien's 1950's/60's unauthorized US publications (total nerd here).  The US element of encouraging distribution certainly governed the US Constitution (as you say) but were there earlier statutes?  Pre-Napoleonic? (or for that matter Napoleonic?)

I recognize the criticality for world commerce in agreed IP law and I fully recognize that even a "use it or lose it" condition would create mock availabilities (say, NCSoft makes CoH available on a single machine in their office lobby for a $20,000/per day subscription once per year -- that's "making it available" to society)  after all, Marvel Comics published a single "Captain Marvel" title as a special to make sure DC didn't get access to the trademark.  But such a thing would require IP holders to make at least that much effort and not drop the property in a file to forget.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 17, 2015, 09:04:43 AM
Sure, but I thought "moral rights" referred only to the... reputational (??? is perhaps a word???) elements of attribution and creative integrity.

For the most part, yes, although because copyright protection as we know it used to be more of a civil issue (handled by contract and private non-governmental entities) the basis for various protections was argued extensively until the 1700s when actual laws start to appear that pass IP protection from private hands and into government hands; in effect making IP protection a legal right (backed by and enforced by the government) rather than a default common law right.  Prior to that, many argued that one of the moral rights of creators was the right to control duplication and distribution.  The debate over this legal notion - which was repudiated by the English government - eventually led to the Statute of Anne; really the first modern law related to the modern right of copyright.

The Statute of Anne starts off:

"Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing, Reprinting, and Publishing, or causing to be Printed, Reprinted, and Published Books, and other Writings, without the Consent of the Authors or Proprietors of such Books and Writings, to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families: For Preventing therefore such Practices for the future, and for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books; May it please Your Majesty, that it may be Enacted..."

I suspect the copyright clause owes some debt to the Statute of Anne.

The Visual Artists Rights Act creates an additional moral right for certain covered works in the US: the right to not have a work of "recognized stature" damaged or destroyed, even if the artist no longer owns either the work or even the copyright to the work itself.  In other words, if you're a famous sculptor and you make an important piece of sculpture, you can demand that it not be deliberately destroyed by its owner even if you sell all other rights away to that new owner.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on February 17, 2015, 03:12:52 PM

The Statute of Anne starts off:

"Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing, Reprinting, and Publishing, or causing to be Printed, Reprinted, and Published Books, and other Writings, without the Consent of the Authors or Proprietors of such Books and Writings, to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families: For Preventing therefore such Practices for the future, and for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books; May it please Your Majesty, that it may be Enacted..."

"for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books; May it please Your Majesty, that it may be Enacted..."

Even then, the justification of the wealth of society is recognized right along with the support of the creator
-- and again, suppression of material is the exact opposite of the intent of the laws.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 17, 2015, 06:54:29 PM
"for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books; May it please Your Majesty, that it may be Enacted..."

Even then, the justification of the wealth of society is recognized right along with the support of the creator
-- and again, suppression of material is the exact opposite of the intent of the laws.

I offered that up specifically to note the controversial nature of who had what rights: the Statute of Anne was passed in 1710, but the basic idea was fought over for over 250 years before it became law.  Prior to that, copyright was a legal battlefield between those with the power to distribute works (publishers), creators, and the crown/government which was presumed to represent everyone else i.e. "the people" but in practice didn't really.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 17, 2015, 11:33:45 PM
To take the pressure off - I thought I would share this review of 50 Shades of Grey by an MMA fighter - Yves Edwards:

Apparently it could have been worse:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/%E2%80%98fifty-shades-of-grey%E2%80%99-male-moviegoer-attacked-3-women-arrested/ar-BBhEms2

Worse for whom I'm not entirely sure, but worse nonetheless.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CMKook on February 18, 2015, 04:18:17 PM
I will take issue 23. Ha, I would take issue 6. I would take issue 1! I will take anything!

[pssst, is there any chance we could work those I24 costume pieces in eventually... ?  8) ]
I dunno about issue 1... we didn't have shit in issue 1 :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on February 18, 2015, 07:28:05 PM
I dunno about issue 1... we didn't have pancake in issue 1 :P

Was issue 1 "city of regens" or was it issue 2 ?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on February 18, 2015, 08:11:28 PM
Issue 1 was badly broken.

Terrible server lag and it wasn't fixed until after Issue 2. I remember rubberbanding backwards half a zone. Issue 3-4 would be the classic uber powerful fixes. All the broken stuff was there as far as being overpowered and yet many bugs were fixed. If you want the SO only no market/Inventions - Issue 3-4 is what you want otherwise known as the Rise of the Fire Tanker.

I once herded the entire Crystal room in the Eden Trial on a Fire Tank - then 2 blasters nuked and destroyed all the Crstals except for the huge amount of baby spawns.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on February 18, 2015, 08:19:05 PM
Issue 1 was badly broken.

Terrible server lag and it wasn't fixed until after Issue 2. I remember rubberbanding backwards half a zone. Issue 3-4 would be the classic uber powerful fixes. All the broken stuff was there as far as being overpowered and yet many bugs were fixed. If you want the SO only no market/Inventions - Issue 3-4 is what you want otherwise known as the Rise of the Fire Tanker.

I once herded the entire Crystal room in the Eden Trial on a Fire Tank - then 2 blasters nuked and destroyed all the Crstals except for the huge amount of baby spawns.
holy crap that's not rubberbanding its unintentional teleporting  :roll:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 18, 2015, 08:37:57 PM
Issue 1 was badly broken.

Terrible server lag and it wasn't fixed until after Issue 2. I remember rubberbanding backwards half a zone. Issue 3-4 would be the classic uber powerful fixes. All the broken stuff was there as far as being overpowered and yet many bugs were fixed. If you want the SO only no market/Inventions - Issue 3-4 is what you want otherwise known as the Rise of the Fire Tanker.

If I recall correctly the one thing you lose in I3 is perma-unstoppable tele-tanks.  I think you still have perma-MoG and perma-Elude.  /Dark and Ice/ were still hosed.  Burn was still ridiculous, and Terra Volta was still a shooting gallery.

When people think of the "good old days" they are mostly thinking about Issue 3, but there are exceptions: Invuln tankers thinking about Issue 1 or AR/Devs thinking about release.  Most people who think pre-I2 were the good old days are either thinking about some very specific narrow circumstances or are probably mistaken.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Parabot on February 18, 2015, 09:36:24 PM
Issue 1 was badly broken.

Terrible server lag and it wasn't fixed until after Issue 2. I remember rubberbanding backwards half a zone. Issue 3-4 would be the classic uber powerful fixes. All the broken stuff was there as far as being overpowered and yet many bugs were fixed. If you want the SO only no market/Inventions - Issue 3-4 is what you want otherwise known as the Rise of the Fire Tanker.

I once herded the entire Crystal room in the Eden Trial on a Fire Tank - then 2 blasters nuked and destroyed all the Crstals except for the huge amount of baby spawns.

I remember that. My first character was AR/Dev blaster. Smoke grenade originally debuffed the mobs' accuracy by about 220%. I could solo most anything as long as I could hit them all with smoke grenade, first. :) Good times. Issue 5 sucked. I quit for 3 months after that and tried a bunch of other stuff but CoH was the only game that could hold my attention.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on February 18, 2015, 09:45:16 PM
If I recall correctly the one thing you lose in I3 is perma-unstoppable tele-tanks.  I think you still have perma-MoG and perma-Elude.  /Dark and Ice/ were still hosed.  Burn was still ridiculous, and Terra Volta was still a shooting gallery.

When people think of the "good old days" they are mostly thinking about Issue 3, but there are exceptions: Invuln tankers thinking about Issue 1 or AR/Devs thinking about release.  Most people who think pre-I2 were the good old days are either thinking about some very specific narrow circumstances or are probably mistaken.

The radiation and dark debuffs had no range limit. You could superspeed to the end of a mission - debuff one and run back and literally draw the entire mission to a couple of waiting blastes and clear the entire mission in 5 minutes. Individually you were weaker in the Issue 3-4 period but as a team you were in many cases unkillable with stacking buffs/debuffs and unranged powers, no aggro cap and no damage cap number.

After inventions solo you were stronger - but team wise you could do insane things like herd 500+ freaks into a dumpster in Creys.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shadowsmith on February 18, 2015, 11:23:21 PM
The radiation and dark debuffs had no range limit. You could superspeed to the end of a mission - debuff one and run back and literally draw the entire mission to a couple of waiting blastes and clear the entire mission in 5 minutes. Individually you were weaker in the Issue 3-4 period but as a team you were in many cases unkillable with stacking buffs/debuffs and unranged powers, no aggro cap and no damage cap number.

After inventions solo you were stronger - but team wise you could do insane things like herd 500+ freaks into a dumpster in Creys.
Oh, I remember accidentally herding an entire floor of tsoo with my dark defender. I was a moron and put my dark debuff on the sorcerer. The sorcerer teleported to near the end of the floor and ran back to us aggroing everything on the way. We were surviving thanks to the debuff until the sorcerer teleported again. Then the mound of caltrops combined with everything else to slaughter us quickly enough.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on February 18, 2015, 11:31:18 PM
The radiation and dark debuffs had no range limit. You could superspeed to the end of a mission - debuff one and run back and literally draw the entire mission to a couple of waiting blastes and clear the entire mission in 5 minutes. Individually you were weaker in the Issue 3-4 period but as a team you were in many cases unkillable with stacking buffs/debuffs and unranged powers, no aggro cap and no damage cap number.

After inventions solo you were stronger - but team wise you could do insane things like herd 500+ freaks into a dumpster in Creys.

8 man defender teams, rolling nukes, bubbles, sonic, kin, dark, rad for the win!! Of course the screen freezing fulcrum shift is a must!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on February 18, 2015, 11:32:41 PM
There were outdoor instances where Mr. Twisty would try to pull the whole map by himself, too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Battlechimp on February 18, 2015, 11:38:58 PM
Back in I1 you also could not use multiple dark armors at the same time.  They couldn't be stacked, so you had to choose which one to use in any given situation.

And then Unyeilding was Unyeilding Stance. It rooted you when you used it.  So a lot of invul tanks took teleport early on. 

And did they fix the katana animations by then?  They had originally used the broadsword animations... can't remember when they gave them their own animations

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 19, 2015, 12:38:53 AM
The radiation and dark debuffs had no range limit. You could superspeed to the end of a mission - debuff one and run back and literally draw the entire mission to a couple of waiting blastes and clear the entire mission in 5 minutes.

Something only old timers could have ever seen was that there used to be this thing where radiation defenders would lock their toggles on a mob in Perez, then fly around the entire park trying to herd literally everything, and then would announce (or sometimes not announce) that they were bringing them to a gate.  Whereupon an entire zone of baddies debuffed to the floor would swarm a gate and literally turn into a shooting gallery.

Until someone killed the anchor.  Then it was 28 Days Later: CoH edition.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on February 19, 2015, 06:39:08 AM
No f'ing politics.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on February 19, 2015, 07:15:35 AM
I once herded the entire Crystal room in the Eden Trial on a Fire Tank - then 2 blasters nuked and destroyed all the Crstals except for the huge amount of baby spawns.

Aaah, those were the days.  I have fond memories of 6 blasters and I nuking almost the whole Drek map, after the fire tank had gathered everything.  Talk about frame drops!  I think it dropped to about 1 frame per 10 seconds after trigging that bugger!  3 of the blasters PC's crashed!

KABOOM!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 19, 2015, 07:52:24 AM
I once herded the entire Crystal room in the Eden Trial on a Fire Tank - then 2 blasters nuked and destroyed all the Crstals except for the huge amount of baby spawns.

I'm trying to remember what precise moment this would have been possible.  Originally, generators buffed each other without limit, which meant people who didn't know that and herded DE would discover the cairns had buffed everything to the resistance cap while the quartz had everything buffed to the tohit ceiling.  Nukes wouldn't hit hard enough to take out multibuffed cairns if I recall correctly until that cross-buffing was removed.  And teams relying on defensive bubbles or powers would simply melt.

It was small consolation when the inexperienced Invuln tank would try to herd up a map of DE and discover his invincibility became suddenly very vincible.  I saw many teams have no choice but to try to reset the map because the concentration of generators was just totally out of their league.

In any case, this sounds like it would have had to happen before the aggro cap and after the generator buff immunity, but I'm not sure what that particular overlap of time was.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: P51mus on February 19, 2015, 09:19:17 AM
The radiation and dark debuffs had no range limit. You could superspeed to the end of a mission - debuff one and run back and literally draw the entire mission to a couple of waiting blastes and clear the entire mission in 5 minutes.

I used to clear missions on my dark/dark defender with that.  Run to the end of the map, toggle darkest night on the end group, go back to the start.  Wait around a corner, drop Tar patch, summon Dark fuzzy, wait for the swarm.  Then Melt them with tentacles/nightfall.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on February 19, 2015, 01:00:11 PM
I used to clear missions on my dark/dark defender with that.  Run to the end of the map, toggle darkest night on the end group, go back to the start.  Wait around a corner, drop Tar patch, summon Dark fuzzy, wait for the swarm.  Then Melt them with tentacles/nightfall.

I'm curious what the benefit of melting them at the entrance is vs just melting them where they are.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ghostly on February 19, 2015, 01:24:42 PM
I'm trying to remember what precise moment this would have been possible.  Originally, generators buffed each other without limit, which meant people who didn't know that and herded DE would discover the cairns had buffed everything to the resistance cap while the quartz had everything buffed to the tohit ceiling.  Nukes wouldn't hit hard enough to take out multibuffed cairns if I recall correctly until that cross-buffing was removed.  And teams relying on defensive bubbles or powers would simply melt.

It was small consolation when the inexperienced Invuln tank would try to herd up a map of DE and discover his invincibility became suddenly very vincible.  I saw many teams have no choice but to try to reset the map because the concentration of generators was just totally out of their league.

In any case, this sounds like it would have had to happen before the aggro cap and after the generator buff immunity, but I'm not sure what that particular overlap of time was.

You know your beloved dead game is actually real dead when, looking for recent updates on a topic related to its actual resurrection, you can only read pages, pages, and more pages of bittersweet old memories and technical issues about obsolete mechanics.  :'(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on February 19, 2015, 02:09:27 PM
You know your beloved dead game is actually real dead when, looking for recent updates on a topic related to its actual resurrection, you can only read pages, pages, and more pages of bittersweet old memories and technical issues about obsolete mechanics.  :'(

 I keep hearing this conversation whenever someone mentions CoH being dead...



The Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead.

[a man puts a body on the cart]

Large Man with Dead Body: Here's one.

The Dead Collector: That'll be ninepence.

The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead.

The Dead Collector: What?

Large Man with Dead Body: Nothing. There's your ninepence.

The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead.

The Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.

Large Man with Dead Body: Yes he is.

The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not.

The Dead Collector: He isn't.

Large Man with Dead Body: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.

The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm getting better.

Large Man with Dead Body: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.

The Dead Collector: Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.

The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I don't want to go on the cart.

Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, don't be such a baby.

The Dead Collector: I can't take him.

The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I feel fine.

Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, do me a favor.

The Dead Collector: I can't.

Large Man with Dead Body: Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won't be long.


ending yet to be decided.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on February 19, 2015, 03:39:00 PM
Awww, Twisted!  That had such a bad ending!  And I was figuring everything would be okay after all that....

Go!  Go change that ending!  Naaaaowwww!   ;D

PS/ Did you make that up?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on February 19, 2015, 04:03:24 PM
Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on February 19, 2015, 04:24:29 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=grbSQ6O6kbs#t=52
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sihada on February 19, 2015, 04:49:11 PM
You know your beloved dead game is actually real dead when, looking for recent updates on a topic related to its actual resurrection, you can only read pages, pages, and more pages of bittersweet old memories and technical issues about obsolete mechanics.  :'(
Amen.  I'm glad for the new sticky and I've turned on notifications, but I'm not holding my breath.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on February 19, 2015, 05:54:10 PM
Quote
You know your beloved dead game is actually real dead when, looking for recent updates on a topic related to its actual resurrection, you can only read pages, pages, and more pages of bittersweet old memories and technical issues about obsolete mechanics.

I like to pretend the hamsters are on strike and once they reach an agreement with the new crew. The game will be back up and running......

I MISS MY DEMON/STORM MM!!!!

Sorry had to get that off my chest. :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on February 19, 2015, 06:00:23 PM
Awww, Twisted!  That had such a bad ending!  And I was figuring everything would be okay after all that....

Go!  Go change that ending!  Naaaaowwww!   ;D

PS/ Did you make that up?

How could you not know the great Monty Python!?!? For shame! You ought to go sit on the Shame Step for that!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: P51mus on February 19, 2015, 06:07:28 PM
I'm curious what the benefit of melting them at the entrance is vs just melting them where they are.

Well, at the time, there was no difficulty slider so soloing would have you facing off against 3 minions or 1 minion/1 leutenant in a group.  Also there was no cap on aggro or AOEs, so you could just gather up an entire map and nuke them at once.

Dragging them to the entrance specifically just made sure I had a safe place to wait for them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 19, 2015, 06:15:59 PM
Well, at the time, there was no difficulty slider so soloing would have you facing off against 3 minions or 1 minion/1 leutenant in a group.  Also there was no cap on aggro or AOEs, so you could just gather up an entire map and nuke them at once.

Dragging them to the entrance specifically just made sure I had a safe place to wait for them.

Just in case it wasn't clear to the player who asked the question, the advantage was speed.  Dark, like Rad, had a set up time.  It took time to cast toggle(s) and many of the powers had longish recharge.  If you were solo and using all that power against just a couple of minions the time it took to kill three was kind of high.  But if you herded them up into a big pile it didn't take that much longer to wipe out the entire pile because AoEs didn't have target caps which meant your kill speed went up dramatically.

After difficulty sliders came out it was possible for a solo player to increase difficulty to the point where the individual spawn points generated enough stuff to be interesting to fight for a very strong player.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 19, 2015, 06:18:41 PM
I like to pretend the hamsters are on strike and once they reach an agreement with the new crew. The game will be back up and running......

(https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3602/3407882081_994dd707bb.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on February 19, 2015, 06:56:35 PM
(https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3602/3407882081_994dd707bb.jpg)

NOOOOOOO!!! WHY! WHY!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on February 19, 2015, 07:18:59 PM
How could you not know the great Monty Python!?!? For shame! You ought to go sit on the Shame Step for that!

I'm ALMOST tempted to convert "The Dead Parrot" to COH terms.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on February 19, 2015, 07:51:43 PM
How could you not know the great Monty Python!?!? For shame! You ought to go sit on the Shame Step for that!

Bet they weigh the same as a duck
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 19, 2015, 08:09:07 PM
I'm ALMOST tempted to convert "The Dead Parrot" to COH terms.

Just don't say mattress.  We may not have a big enough bag for FFM.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Relitner on February 19, 2015, 08:12:26 PM
How could you not know the great Monty Python!?!? For shame! You ought to go sit on the Shame Step for that!

Silly English kuh-nig-it. Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on February 19, 2015, 08:56:38 PM
Just don't say mattress.  We may not have a big enough bag for FFM.

A Mattress?  That's a female Matt, right?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sister Leortha on February 19, 2015, 09:41:04 PM
My favorite pre-ED character was my own personal Sapper.  A Kin/elec-def, built mostly around Short Circut.    I could stealth into the middle of a group, pop SC, which would 100% drain most minions.  I had a couple of other powers set up for END draining for anyone who managed to keep any END after the initial SC.  The drained enemies would wander around, unable to take any useful actions.  At that point it was a simple matter to finish them all off before they started to regain END.

ED brought an end to the player-Sapper.  Pre-ED I could easily floor +1 minions, and even level Lts.  Post ED, I was lucky to take off 3/4 of the END from +0s.  An angry mob of enemies with 1/4 END would slice right through a squishy def.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/User:Sister_Leortha, about 3/4 of the way down, if anyone cares.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 19, 2015, 10:24:38 PM
A Mattress?  That's a female Matt, right?

I think that's a Mattrix.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on February 19, 2015, 10:26:51 PM
How could you not know the great Monty Python!?!? For shame! You ought to go sit on the Shame Step for that!

I'd wager Surelle posted that not expecting it'd prompt the Spanish Inquisition.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 19, 2015, 10:28:25 PM
I'd wager Surelle posted that not expecting it'd prompt the Spanish Inquisition.

That's because no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: adarict on February 19, 2015, 10:30:46 PM
My favorite pre-ED character was my own personal Sapper.  A Kin/elec-def, built mostly around Short Circut.    I could stealth into the middle of a group, pop SC, which would 100% drain most minions.  I had a couple of other powers set up for END draining for anyone who managed to keep any END after the initial SC.  The drained enemies would wander around, unable to take any useful actions.  At that point it was a simple matter to finish them all off before they started to regain END.

ED brought an end to the player-Sapper.  Pre-ED I could easily floor +1 minions, and even level Lts.  Post ED, I was lucky to take off 3/4 of the END from +0s.  An angry mob of enemies with 1/4 END would slice right through a squishy def.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/User:Sister_Leortha, about 3/4 of the way down, if anyone cares.

I wouldn't say that ED ended player sappers.  My Emp/Elec Defender was geared almost entirely to that role, right up until the end.  There were enough end drain powers, combined with EndMod IOs, that there were very few things I couldn't floor their End in pretty short order.  granted, I didn't have the damage output to kill some of the higher end mobs, but between the End drain, and the stacking stuns, I was seldom in any danger from most things in the game.  Notable exceptions did exist of course.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on February 19, 2015, 11:05:21 PM
Awww, Twisted!  That had such a bad ending!  And I was figuring everything would be okay after all that....

Go!  Go change that ending!  Naaaaowwww!   ;D

PS/ Did you make that up?
Although, there are some that are trying to get the Large Man with Dead Body to let CoH  (Dead Body that Claims it Isn't) go. The Large Man with Dead Body insists that CoH is dead. Despite CoH wanting to go for a walk. The decision whether to whack it in the head with a club or let it walk is still under negotiation. I'm leaning towards letting it walk and then I'll change the ending.

Also, as other have pointed out, this is a part from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on February 20, 2015, 01:26:15 AM
Electric control was a pretty good sapper out of the box. I've been fiddling around with a combination of electric blast and patron pool power sink in mids. the numbers look silly but not sure how it'd work out in game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 20, 2015, 02:46:05 AM
Electric control was a pretty good sapper out of the box. I've been fiddling around with a combination of electric blast and patron pool power sink in mids. the numbers look silly but not sure how it'd work out in game.

Endurance drain is difficult to analyze on-paper because recovery is not continuous.  What we think of as continuous endurance recovery is actually more like a periodic heal.  Recovery debuff acts to slow down the ticks, not make them smaller.  And that means in actual play endurance drain combined with recovery debuff can have a more "jumpy" effect than a casual on-paper analysis would suggest.  And if what looks like a continuous drain to zero is actually more of a drain to zero and jumpy on-off recovery that allows critters to fight back in a staccato way.  It takes a lot of experience with drain to be able to reasonable guess what on-paper drain will actually do to critters in real combat.  Averages don't always match reality.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on February 20, 2015, 02:51:41 AM
My favorite pre-ED character was my own personal Sapper.  A Kin/elec-def, built mostly around Short Circut.    I could stealth into the middle of a group, pop SC, which would 100% drain most minions.  I had a couple of other powers set up for END draining for anyone who managed to keep any END after the initial SC.  The drained enemies would wander around, unable to take any useful actions.  At that point it was a simple matter to finish them all off before they started to regain END.

ED brought an end to the player-Sapper.  Pre-ED I could easily floor +1 minions, and even level Lts.  Post ED, I was lucky to take off 3/4 of the END from +0s.  An angry mob of enemies with 1/4 END would slice right through a squishy def.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/User:Sister_Leortha, about 3/4 of the way down, if anyone cares.

My Electric/Electric Dominator, Elec/Psi Dominator and my Elec/Elec BLASTER all disagree...

My Blaster regular drained Mobs to little to no end.. and kept them there..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on February 20, 2015, 03:58:20 AM
Awww, Twisted!  That had such a bad ending!  And I was figuring everything would be okay after all that....

Go!  Go change that ending!  Naaaaowwww!   ;D

PS/ Did you make that up?
I legit had a sad.

To the point that I had to use net-speak to express it.

The author of my quote is sorely lacking in movie-going experiences.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kelltick on February 20, 2015, 07:33:30 AM
My Electric/Electric Dominator, Elec/Psi Dominator and my Elec/Elec BLASTER all disagree...

My Blaster regular drained Mobs to little to no end.. and kept them there..

Same, generally speaking.

I, too, had a Kin/Elec/NRG Defender, and while noticeably less effective post-ED vs. pre-ED, it was still a damn deadly toon.

Tank takes Alpha - jump in, Power Build Up + a slotted Short Circuit = mobs @ 0 END, LT's at effectively 0 END, and Bosses damn close.  Ball Lightning, Transfusion + Transference (all with 1-2 EndMod's) equaled Boss at 0 (no sense hitting the LT's, they're dead before it makes a difference)/EB hurting/AV with a chunk off.  Not what it was pre-ED but a definite boon to teams for sure.  Cycle SC, BL, and both TF's (with PBU as it comes off CD) and before you can blink the EB/AV is stuck in Brawl-only mode.

Slow going solo for sure, but in a team - egads, the "Watch the Blaster tank!" carnage!  As if a /Kin didn't already provide enough... :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Reaper on February 20, 2015, 02:18:11 PM
I could see the Black Knight scene being used for CoH.   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on February 20, 2015, 04:26:34 PM
It's only a flesh wound...anyone have a wakie?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on February 20, 2015, 04:44:52 PM
The author of my quote is sorely lacking in movie-going experiences.

I remember watching it for the (and only) time. By the time I had seen it, all of the (theoretically) funniest lines had been so over quoted around me at various times I found the last line to be the funniest (some sort of naughty joke as I recall). I mean, it was still good, but a bit spoiled.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on February 20, 2015, 05:39:52 PM
Old Man at the Bridge: "What is your favorite Archetype?"

So many memories of discussions started with team members just by firing off one quote from the movie. ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: P51mus on February 20, 2015, 07:04:22 PM
Endurance drain is difficult to analyze on-paper because recovery is not continuous.  What we think of as continuous endurance recovery is actually more like a periodic heal.  Recovery debuff acts to slow down the ticks, not make them smaller.  And that means in actual play endurance drain combined with recovery debuff can have a more "jumpy" effect than a casual on-paper analysis would suggest.  And if what looks like a continuous drain to zero is actually more of a drain to zero and jumpy on-off recovery that allows critters to fight back in a staccato way.  It takes a lot of experience with drain to be able to reasonable guess what on-paper drain will actually do to critters in real combat.  Averages don't always match reality.

I found that post ED drain matched up pretty well with electric armor.  Drain most of their end with power sink, lightning field takes away some of what's left.  Renders the high end usage mobs in the game (I believe rikti bosses were one of them) a lot less dangerous, and against many other enemies acts as a kind of pseudo recharge debuff.  Slowing them down enough that tanker defenses/ regen make them extra harmless.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on February 20, 2015, 07:50:17 PM
Ok, my original "Bring out yer dead" post has been edited to help alleviate any ill feelings and also to go along with the current status of CoH.

Also, What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on February 20, 2015, 08:02:54 PM
Ok, my original "Bring out yer dead" post has been edited to help alleviate any ill feelings and also to go along with the current status of CoH.

Also, What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Yes, but what is the air speed of an unladen Longbow?  Well, before you shoot them out of the air because they're, you know...Longbow.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on February 20, 2015, 08:17:20 PM
Yes, but what is the air speed of an unladen Longbow?  Well, before you shoot them out of the air because they're, you know...Longbow.

That would work a lot better if you had referenced a longbow BALLISTA...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballista (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballista)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on February 20, 2015, 08:27:11 PM
Ok, my original "Bring out yer dead" post has been edited to help alleviate any ill feelings and also to go along with the current status of CoH.

Also, What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

African or European?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 20, 2015, 08:35:55 PM
Also, What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

That depends on who sends it.

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=thebacklot.mtvnimages.com%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F11%2Facfishgif2.gif)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on February 20, 2015, 08:49:21 PM
That would work a lot better if you had referenced a longbow BALLISTA...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballista (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballista)
I was referring to The Whipping Boys of the Rogue Isles (TM), specifically the flying ones:

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Longbow#Longbow_Eagle
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on February 20, 2015, 10:26:18 PM
Ok, my original "Bring out yer dead" post has been edited to help alleviate any ill feelings and also to go along with the current status of CoH.

Also, What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

I finally decided to play new vegas with wild wasteland on for the first time in a long time, with all the things I remember seeing before now there are just so many monty python references.  Including a reference to this ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygy7UDADXDg

Thankfully they couldn't withstand a 10mm pistol, a power fist, and an armored laser drone.

To think, i'll be killing Stripe again soon.....:(.  Maybe a few MFC clusters might work....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on February 20, 2015, 11:39:49 PM
It's only a flesh wound...anyone have a wakie?

my stone/em tank was black knight....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on February 20, 2015, 11:50:09 PM
Also, What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

With or without Speed Boost?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on February 21, 2015, 01:33:49 AM
my stone/em tank was black knight....

Shame that wild wasteland in new vegas didn't allow for npcs to survive any kind of limb loss.  It'd have been funny with the wild wasteland to see a character lose his arms and legs and continue yelling battle cries at you :).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 21, 2015, 01:51:57 AM
Shame that wild wasteland in new vegas didn't allow for npcs to survive any kind of limb loss.  It'd have been funny with the wild wasteland to see a character lose his arms and legs and continue yelling battle cries at you :).
In City of Heroes, you could see some odd things happen to NPCs:

(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4072/4661864152_ec8beb7af1_o.jpg)

I know its a glitch, but I still tried to lobby for a mode where the head would roll away and the body would just fall down and then explode, but I was told something something animation resources something blah blah.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 21, 2015, 01:53:45 AM
my stone/em tank was black knight....

(https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8295/7981878637_c760610533_o.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on February 21, 2015, 02:38:46 AM
Ok, my original "Bring out yer dead" post has been edited to help alleviate any ill feelings and also to go along with the current status of CoH.
??? That's ... an odd thing to do. "Ill feelings"? LOL
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on February 21, 2015, 02:50:32 AM
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4072/4661864152_ec8beb7af1_o.jpg)

She will never walk again after that napalm bath.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on February 21, 2015, 04:59:02 AM
??? That's ... an odd thing to do. "Ill feelings"? LOL
Well, I was petitioned to change it NAO! because of the sads, or something like that...

I'm not sure I can write an alternate ending as well as the Monty Python crew though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on February 21, 2015, 06:38:13 AM
Someone petitioned you to change the ending of a skit done by some wickedly funny dudes in the 70s? No offense, but I don't think you can do better. ;)

Just because someone hasn't seen the movie doesn't mean you need to change any damn thing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on February 21, 2015, 08:27:50 AM
Someone petitioned you to change the ending of a skit done by some wickedly funny dudes in the 70s? No offense, but I don't think you can do better. ;)

Just because someone hasn't seen the movie doesn't mean you need to change any damn thing.

To be honest, I'm 99.9999999999902% sure I couldn't do any better.  :-[

So, how about them coconuts... ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on February 21, 2015, 10:14:42 AM

So, how about them coconuts... ;D

Do you mean to suggest that they're migratory?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on February 21, 2015, 03:07:36 PM
Do you mean to suggest that they're migratory?
The evidence of coconuts in the local grocery store would indicate that they do, somewhat, migrate. Whether that migration is due to swallows (either African of European) or some other manner, I will leave up to you to discuss. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackgrue on February 21, 2015, 03:52:05 PM
The evidence of coconuts in the local grocery store would indicate that they do, somewhat, migrate. Whether that migration is due to swallows (either African of European) or some other manner, I will leave up to you to discuss. :)

Wot, a swallow carryin' a coconut?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on February 21, 2015, 05:29:21 PM
To be honest, I'm 99.9999999999902% sure I couldn't do any better.  :-[

Don't feel bad. It's Monty Python; nobody could do funny better than they did. IMO, honestly, very few people on the planet could even do as well.


Quote
So, how about them coconuts... ;D

Now that would've been an awesome travel power! A ninja run clone where you hop along banging two coconut halves together. For those players who were always asking for horse mounts in the game. ;D

Oooh! And a Walk clone too... Silly Walk.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Battlechimp on February 21, 2015, 07:10:57 PM
To be honest, I'm 99.9999999999902% sure I couldn't do any better.  :-[

So, how about them coconuts... ;D
I have a lovely bunch of coconuts.... my hovercraft is full of eels
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on February 21, 2015, 07:27:52 PM
Don't feel bad. It's Monty Python; nobody could do funny better than they did. IMO, honestly, very few people on the planet could even do as well.


Now that would've been an awesome travel power! A ninja run clone where you hop along banging two coconut halves together. For those players who were always asking for horse mounts in the game. ;D


One important thing i learned from working in a restaurant during my undergrad years is that two ramekins make a pretty good coconut substitute. standard issue kitchen towel works for the grass galloping.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on February 21, 2015, 08:10:23 PM
Don't feel bad. It's Monty Python; nobody could do funny better than they did. IMO, honestly, very few people on the planet could even do as well.


Now that would've been an awesome travel power! A ninja run clone where you hop along banging two coconut halves together. For those players who were always asking for horse mounts in the game. ;D

Oooh! And a Walk clone too... Silly Walk.

Agreed. Monty Python and crew are a hard act to imitate, let alone duplicate.

I have a lovely bunch of coconuts.... my hovercraft is full of eels
And at least one cat with buttered bread affixed to its back. Otherwise, you'd just have a craft.  :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Battlechimp on February 21, 2015, 11:32:10 PM
Agreed. Monty Python and crew are a hard act to imitate, let alone duplicate.
And at least one cat with buttered bread affixed to its back. Otherwise, you'd just have a craft.  :o

Its a quote from the Flying Circus  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on February 22, 2015, 02:21:49 AM
Wot, a swallow carryin' a coconut?

Maybe a swallow piloting a jet-propelled coconut.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Beltor on February 22, 2015, 04:03:01 AM
European or African swallow?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pengy on February 22, 2015, 02:00:30 PM
Turbojet or turbofan?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on February 22, 2015, 04:03:43 PM
Turbojet or turbofan?

Sorry old man I just don't understand your banter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rKYL0tW-Ek
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: dwturducken on February 22, 2015, 07:31:17 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=hotmeme.net%2Fmedia%2Fi%2F5%2Fa%2Fuhq-doctor-who-comments.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on February 23, 2015, 07:48:21 PM
I know its a glitch, but I still tried to lobby for a mode where the head would roll away and the body would just fall down and then explode, but I was told something something animation resources something blah blah.

That would have certainly made it seem more like "arresting" them instead of "blowing them up inside their tanks".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 23, 2015, 08:08:58 PM
That would have certainly made it seem more like "arresting" them instead of "blowing them up inside their tanks".

True story: I had no idea there was even anyone supposedly in the tank until around I6ish.  Its not easy to see unless you look closely, and I didn't put much thought into why a large robotic walking assault robot would be carrying a giant aquarium around.  I guess I thought that's just how Nemesis rolled.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on February 23, 2015, 11:26:05 PM
Well, if we're talking unlimited animation budgets, I wanted my Necromancy mastermind to be able to replace dead(er) minions by animating the bodies of fallen enemies around me.  Which could lead to a Simpsons-esque skit of animating a dead Longbow and have it start wandering around moaning "...brains, brains, brains!"   Then, when it shuffled over to another Longbow agent to attack them...it would then wander off with a disappointed look on its face still moaning "...brains, brains, brains!"  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on February 23, 2015, 11:47:49 PM
True story: I had no idea there was even anyone supposedly in the tank until around I6ish.  Its not easy to see unless you look closely, and I didn't put much thought into why a large robotic walking assault robot would be carrying a giant aquarium around.  I guess I thought that's just how Nemesis rolled.

Do we even know that it's really a person inside there? Given Nemesis, perhaps it's one of their androids (steamdroids?). Because that's probably exactly how Nemesis rolls, with robots inside his robots while they robotically robot their robotic tasks of being robotic robots, yo.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on February 24, 2015, 12:47:04 AM
Agreed and double agreed on this. I understand the reason for the silence, but my god I wish we had some news, especially with everyone being worried by the whole nexon thing
I'm patient, but it doesn't help that I first heard about Marvel trying to get the rights to use Spider-Man in their movies in November and they got the deal done by February.   It is possible to do a never before done type of deal in a short time period.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on February 24, 2015, 01:02:15 AM
I'm patient, but it doesn't help that I first heard about Marvel trying to get the rights to use Spider-Man in their movies in November and they got the deal done by February.   It is possible to do a never before done type of deal in a short time period.

Completely different situation.  Marvel doesn't need to prove to Sony that they can put Spider-Man into a movie.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on February 24, 2015, 04:55:51 AM
I'm patient, but it doesn't help that I first heard about Marvel trying to get the rights to use Spider-Man in their movies in November and they got the deal done by February.   It is possible to do a never before done type of deal in a short time period.

Uhm, I don't think the company that created Spiderman decades ago had to prove they could handle Spiderman in their movies to the company that they licensed the movie rights to.

This whole deal is simply Sony and Disney/Marvel lawyers smoothing things out for what they hope is a mutually profitable relationship. 

I do wonder though if there is a clause in the contract where if Spidey's next movies bomb that would stipulate forfeiture of the rights back to Marvel?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 24, 2015, 04:58:20 AM
Completely different situation.  Marvel doesn't need to prove to Sony that they can put Spider-Man into a movie.

Its different for a completely different reason.  In the case of Marvel and Sony, both sides had extremely high level people that wanted the deal and worked on it personally.  The right people can make a deal happen almost instantly with just a handshake.  I'm pretty certain no such people are involved in the deal currently under discussion.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on February 24, 2015, 07:18:47 AM
Its different for a completely different reason.  In the case of Marvel and Sony, both sides had extremely high level people that wanted the deal and worked on it personally.  The right people can make a deal happen almost instantly with just a handshake.  I'm pretty certain no such people are involved in the deal currently under discussion.


whoever they are, tell them to hurry it up. I have a hami raid to schedule  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: rebel 1812 on February 24, 2015, 01:48:49 PM
I'm patient, but it doesn't help that I first heard about Marvel trying to get the rights to use Spider-Man in their movies in November and they got the deal done by February.   It is possible to do a never before done type of deal in a short time period.

From nov to feb isn't exactly short; but I agree with you.  When a deal takes long it is likely because one side really isn't in to it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on February 24, 2015, 02:29:50 PM
From nov to feb isn't exactly short; but I agree with you.  When a deal takes long it is likely because one side really isn't in to it.

I have been working on a deal in my personal life for almost two years now. Things go sideways.. People cant agree on every position.. It happens... I am at a situation of pause right now because several key people are out of the country at the moment..

 Just because you HEARD about the Marvel Sony deal at a certain time and then a deal was done quickly does not necessarily mean the deal wasnt in the works for a much longer time than that,
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on February 24, 2015, 03:26:11 PM

 Just because you HEARD about the Marvel Sony deal at a certain time and then a deal was done quickly does not necessarily mean the deal wasnt in the works for a much longer time than that,

Nah, it probably only took minutes...

"Hi, Sony, This is Marvel.  You remember that Avengers movie?"
"Yeah"
"It made more money than everything you released last year combined."
"Yeah."
"And the Thor movies"
"Yeah"
"And the Captain America movies"
"Yeah"
"And the Iron Man movies"
"Yeah"
"Can we use Spider Man in the next movie? We'll give you a percentage."
"Yes, please do.  Use him in every movie.  We'll send a catalog, pick any Sony-owned character you want.  Use them all.  Please.  Please!"

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on February 24, 2015, 03:50:55 PM
I was under the impression that the first we heard of it was during the hacking thing, so the emails were probably a lot older than from November? I'm sure that Marvel has been trying since day 1 to get all their properties back.

Regarding Nemesis War Hulks, I think it's them and Longbow Chasers are the only ones where pilots "die" - the Sky Raider Skiffs had their pilots fall out.

(https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//d/d9/WarhulkDetail1.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on February 24, 2015, 04:50:56 PM
Well, if we're talking unlimited animation budgets, I wanted my Necromancy mastermind to be able to replace dead(er) minions by animating the bodies of fallen enemies around me.  Which could lead to a Simpsons-esque skit of animating a dead Longbow and have it start wandering around moaning "...brains, brains, brains!"   Then, when it shuffled over to another Longbow agent to attack them...it would then wander off with a disappointed look on its face still moaning "...brains, brains, brains!"  :)

This just reminds me of when the Rikti War Zone went live as a co-op zone, and the story arc with the rogue Longbow. When the contact said, " Still, it would be best if you could do this without any unnecessary action. I have my own problems with Longbow, but we're all on the same side against the Rikti," I just pictured my level 47 Robot/FF Mastermind with the 'Villain' badge, saying, "Ahahahahahahahahaahahhaaaa! Oh, wait--you were serious? Oh, um, yeah. Minimum casualties, totally. **snerk**"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on February 24, 2015, 05:39:01 PM
This just reminds me of when the Rikti War Zone went live as a co-op zone, and the story arc with the rogue Longbow. When the contact said, " Still, it would be best if you could do this without any unnecessary action. I have my own problems with Longbow, but we're all on the same side against the Rikti," I just pictured my level 47 Robot/FF Mastermind with the 'Villain' badge, saying, "Ahahahahahahahahaahahhaaaa! Oh, wait--you were serious? Oh, um, yeah. Minimum casualties, totally. **snerk**"
Indeed!  I always loved that arc - more Longbow to mow down, and a great chance to work on the badge.  I always thought Vanguard membership should come with an honorary "We Beat Up Longbow For Lunch Money" badge.

Though actually heading over to Nerva with your Vigilante was always the best bet - a "target-rich environment."  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 24, 2015, 05:51:20 PM
I was under the impression that the first we heard of it was during the hacking thing, so the emails were probably a lot older than from November? I'm sure that Marvel has been trying since day 1 to get all their properties back.

Based on information now available, it seems a deal had been in the works for quite some time, but then fell apart.  Then some time after the hacking event something prompted the parties to go back to the deal table, and a deal got cranked out very quickly.  It may even have been the fall out from the hacking scandal that prompted Sony and Marvel to open talks again.

Quote
Regarding Nemesis War Hulks, I think it's them and Longbow Chasers are the only ones where pilots "die" - the Sky Raider Skiffs had their pilots fall out.

Assuming there's a pilot in them (since they are supposed to be armor and not robots) the pilots of Rikti Heavies (Heavy Assault Suits) probably don't fare too well when they explode.

Then again, Skiff pilots don't have parachutes either.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on February 24, 2015, 08:11:52 PM
Its different for a completely different reason.  In the case of Marvel and Sony, both sides had extremely high level people that wanted the deal and worked on it personally.  The right people can make a deal happen almost instantly with just a handshake.  I'm pretty certain no such people are involved in the deal currently under discussion.
That's my impression too.

If NCSoft was as motivated as Sony, I'm sure the "prove you can run the game" part would move much faster.

But I'm patient, I can wait.   I still wouldn't mind if they were more motivated.   
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Battlechimp on February 24, 2015, 11:34:22 PM
This just reminds me of when the Rikti War Zone went live as a co-op zone, and the story arc with the rogue Longbow. When the contact said, " Still, it would be best if you could do this without any unnecessary action. I have my own problems with Longbow, but we're all on the same side against the Rikti," I just pictured my level 47 Robot/FF Mastermind with the 'Villain' badge, saying, "Ahahahahahahahahaahahhaaaa! Oh, wait--you were serious? Oh, um, yeah. Minimum casualties, totally. **snerk**"

Its was great, we slaughtered them all and our side didn't take a single casualty!    What do you mean that's not what you meant?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: UruzSix on February 25, 2015, 01:41:21 AM
Quote
"Hi, Sony, This is Marvel.  You remember that Avengers movie?"
"Yeah"
"It made more money than everything you released last year combined."
"Yeah."
"And the Thor movies"
"Yeah"
"And the Captain America movies"
"Yeah"
"And the Iron Man movies"
"Yeah"
"Can we use Spider Man in the next movie? We'll give you a percentage."
"Yes, please do.  Use him in every movie.  We'll send a catalog, pick any Sony-owned character you want.  Use them all.  Please.  Please!"

Even shorter than that.

"Hi, we're having an Everything Must Go sale (http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2015/0219/After-losses-Sony-takes-a-step-back-from-TVs-and-smart-phones). How much do you want for Spider-Man?"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on February 26, 2015, 01:23:44 AM
Even shorter than that.

"Hi, we're having an Everything Must Go sale (http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2015/0219/After-losses-Sony-takes-a-step-back-from-TVs-and-smart-phones). How much do you want for Spider-Man?"
What I don't get is why FOX is the jerk about it...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on February 26, 2015, 02:02:41 AM
What I don't get is why FOX is the jerk about it...

They are probably keeping a close eye on the Sony deal to see how it works out.  If it looks lucrative, they will look into it, because making money is where their interest lie, but they were never going to fire the first shot.  Their X-Men movies (even the so-so entries) have made them money consistently, so why muddy the waters if you don't have anything to gain by it.  Fan love, and appreciation for a contribution to comic movie continuity does not pay the bills you know!  :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on February 26, 2015, 04:04:17 AM
What I don't get is why FOX is the jerk about it...

Marvel canceled its Fantastic Four comic and is literally rebooting its entire comic lineup just to spite Fox.  Who's really the one being a dick here?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on February 26, 2015, 05:19:53 AM
Marvel canceled its Fantastic Four comic and is literally rebooting its entire comic lineup just to spite Fox.  Who's really the one being a dick here?

I'd imagine if Fox didn't have an FF movie and AOA in the works they'd jump on board. the x-movies make them money but nothing like avengers money. x-men will be ready for another reboot after AOA so maybe then.

and as far as the comics go,it's not as if ending a comic is anything unusual for marvel. it helps them sell more books when they inevitably reboot it in a year. they've been putting out a ton of x-books still and have integrated them into the avengers a lot. just seems as if they're downplaying them because they've been such trash for a long time now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on February 26, 2015, 01:19:54 PM
Marvel canceled its Fantastic Four comic and is literally rebooting its entire comic lineup just to spite Fox.  Who's really the one being a dick here?

I'm guessing that if there is a movie impact, it's the other way around. 

If the new take by Fox on the characters is popular, they don't want to be publishing a comic that doesn't fit.  If two million new fans from the movies want to suddenly buy a comic about their favorite characters...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sugoi on February 26, 2015, 05:39:36 PM
If the new take by Fox on the characters is popular, they don't want to be publishing a comic that doesn't fit.  If two million new fans from the movies want to suddenly buy a comic about their favorite characters...

Easily done, all they have to do is reprint Graphic Novels of the 60 issue run of the Ultimate FF, which was originally run between 2004 and 2009.  After all, that's what the new movie is based on (with a slight 'diversity' twist.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 26, 2015, 06:30:36 PM
I'm guessing that if there is a movie impact, it's the other way around. 

If the new take by Fox on the characters is popular, they don't want to be publishing a comic that doesn't fit.  If two million new fans from the movies want to suddenly buy a comic about their favorite characters...

I'm pretty sure Marvel comics isn't afraid of being out of sync with Fox studios.  While its still speculation that Marvel is canceling FF explicitly to spite Fox, there's strong evidence that Marvel is deliberately downplaying FF because they don't own the movie rights and do not want to promote a competitor.  And of course there are stories like this: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/05/30/artists-given-specific-instructions-not-to-use-fantastic-four-characters/marvel-49/

My own guess is that while there might be some spite involved, I think its equally likely that its a cross-pollination fear that is causing them to shut down FF.  Canceling the comic book at this point has no chance to help or hurt the Fox movie, so that's not really an issue either way.  But in the long run, the Marvel comics universe is one where everyone keeps crossing over with everyone else.  If you're trying to reflect (to a degree) the movies in the comics and the comics in the movies, having properties around that you cannot put on screen creates an editorial problem where every time someone comes up with a bright idea for the comics that happens to include the FF you already know you can't translate it to the movies you make without serious changes.  That's actually the problem they had with Civil War before a miracle happened and Spiderman dropped back into their lap.

Saying "screw Fox lets kill off the FF" seems possible but unlikely.  "Fox is being a pain, lets try to limit how much their stuff intrudes on the rest of the Marvel Universe" seems more likely.  And if it comes off as a jab on Fox, all the better.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on February 26, 2015, 07:23:26 PM
It's a bit ironic that their strategy is downplay the FF but harp on the inhumans as a mutant substitute given that the inhumans started in FF and have been closely tied to them ever since.

i wasn't aware they were using the ultimate FF stuff. the actors they got seem a little long in the tooth to be that young so i guess they're not going with the teenage thinktank bit.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 26, 2015, 08:29:34 PM
i wasn't aware they were using the ultimate FF stuff. the actors they got seem a little long in the tooth to be that young so i guess they're not going with the teenage thinktank bit.

Using elements from Ultimate FF including the new origin story and connecting the team to (presumably) interdimensional travel is possibly a very canny move on the part of Fox.  It simultaneously allows them the freedom to make X-Men and FF completely separate realities while laying the groundwork for connecting the two down the road.  X-Men is already dealing with reality-altering time travel which would be difficult to keep consistent in any fashion with the FF movies, but if they exist in different universes then nothing that happens in X-Men necessarily affects FF and vice versa - until they want it to.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on February 26, 2015, 11:35:55 PM
Saying "screw Fox lets kill off the FF" seems possible but unlikely.  "Fox is being a pain, lets try to limit how much their stuff intrudes on the rest of the Marvel Universe" seems more likely.  And if it comes off as a jab on Fox, all the better.

I don't view these as completely distinct hypothetical statements, frankly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on February 27, 2015, 12:18:14 AM
They are probably keeping a close eye on the Sony deal to see how it works out.  If it looks lucrative, they will look into it, because making money is where their interest lie, but they were never going to fire the first shot.  Their X-Men movies (even the so-so entries) have made them money consistently, so why muddy the waters if you don't have anything to gain by it.  Fan love, and appreciation for a contribution to comic movie continuity does not pay the bills you know!  :o
The last X-movie made a ton.  $748,121,534 worldwide!   So Fox will be keeping that franchise for a long time unfortunately.  ("fortunately" if you like the Fox X-movies)

I'm totally rooting for failure for the FF movie Fox is making.   Would love to see Marvel get those rights back.   Although I guess "rooting for failure" is the same as "rooting for Fox to make a FF movie".   :D     I will never ever ever forgive them for what they did to the Silver Surfer and Galactus. ...and to a lesser degree, Dr Doom.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on February 27, 2015, 06:59:37 AM
Doh, i'd repressed purple cloud Galactus.

I thought they'd decided AOA would be the last x-movie before another reboot. i know jackman is out after that one and the next wolverine. i wish they'd make "Magneto: Nazi Hunter!" instead because i know they're going to screw up apocalypse. of course they couldn't do anything worse to him than marvel's writers after the early 90s have.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on February 27, 2015, 05:32:42 PM
The last X-movie made a ton.  $748,121,534 worldwide!   So Fox will be keeping that franchise for a long time unfortunately.  ("fortunately" if you like the Fox X-movies)

I'm totally rooting for failure for the FF movie Fox is making.   Would love to see Marvel get those rights back.   Although I guess "rooting for failure" is the same as "rooting for Fox to make a FF movie".   :D     I will never ever ever forgive them for what they did to the Silver Surfer and Galactus. ...and to a lesser degree, Dr Doom.

I don't think I could ever root for a creative effort to be a failure just so someone else can have another shot at it. It also assumes that Fox would be willing to lease it out ala Sony instead of just sitting on it, which certainly hasn't been demonstrated.

So much work goes into a movie and, even it's not to my taste, someone worked pretty hard to make it.

I would also add that Marvel leasing out their big characters was not done at gun point. They may regret the deal now, but they didn't when they got paid. In light of the way things turned out, I am sure they have regrets, but who doesn't?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 27, 2015, 07:09:00 PM
I'm totally rooting for failure for the FF movie Fox is making.   Would love to see Marvel get those rights back.   Although I guess "rooting for failure" is the same as "rooting for Fox to make a FF movie".   :D     I will never ever ever forgive them for what they did to the Silver Surfer and Galactus. ...and to a lesser degree, Dr Doom.

Technically speaking, Marvel did it to Galactus first - in the Ultimate Galactus series by Warren Ellis.  I'm pretty certain Fox pulled from that story line and did not invent the "purple cloud" idea on their own.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on February 27, 2015, 07:11:44 PM
I thought they'd decided AOA would be the last x-movie before another reboot. i know jackman is out after that one and the next wolverine.

Then again: http://www.laineygossip.com/Hugh-Jackman-wants-to-play-Wolverine-until-he-dies-because-of-Birdman/37755
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on February 27, 2015, 08:31:30 PM

I'm totally rooting for failure for the FF movie Fox is making.   Would love to see Marvel get those rights back.

Because the other ones went SOOOOOOOO WELL! >_>

You're going to be pleased, my friend.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on February 27, 2015, 09:15:50 PM
They've revealed the F4's costumes for the new movie.  They're... featureless black (or maybe dark blue) jumpsuits.

Exciting and iconic.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on February 27, 2015, 09:57:55 PM
They've revealed the F4's costumes for the new movie.  They're... featureless black (or maybe dark blue) jumpsuits.

Exciting and iconic.

Hm, I can honestly say I have no confidence in their ability to get an FF movie right.

Also,  R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy  :( 
 Star Trek has lost an icon.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on February 27, 2015, 11:56:04 PM
Hm, I can honestly say I have no confidence in their ability to get an FF movie right.

Also,  R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy  :( 
 Star Trek has lost an icon.
I liked the first two...
P.S. KHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNN
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on February 27, 2015, 11:57:09 PM
Then again: http://www.laineygossip.com/Hugh-Jackman-wants-to-play-Wolverine-until-he-dies-because-of-Birdman/37755
He IS wolverine... make me sadddd... He is IMMORTAL.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on February 28, 2015, 03:33:06 AM
I didn't see Rise of the Silver Surfer, but I think the F4 film had its heart in the right place, even if it didn't always work.  Also, Michael Chiklis was perfect as the Thing, both before and after the transformation.  That's another reason I hate the casting for this reboot. I know Jamie Bell is nearly 30, but every image of him on the set makes him look like a petulant 14-year-old.   Unless they're going to have him touch his magic rings together to transform, he should be built like a football player, even before becoming the Thing, not a skinny twerp.

That said, I didn't like the previous F4's version of Dr. Doom, either... but I liked him more than what I've heard of the reboot's Dr. Doom - Victor Domashev the EVIL BLOGGER!  OH NOES!  He'll post funny cat gifs on Tumblr and Facebook and use them to take over the world!

Amusingly, "Doom" is already taken as a screen name on most blogging and social media sites I can find, and none of them are about Victor Von Doom.  The Twitter and Facebook pages are about the video game Doom, the rest are just random pages by random people that aren't in any way connected.  Anyone who tried to become menacing and scary on the Internet by calling himself "Doom" would instead be laughed off the Internet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on February 28, 2015, 09:08:36 PM
There were a few elements of the FF movies that worked OK within the context they set-up for the movies, but I never felt like this was the FF I could love.  Just tolerate.  I am still waiting for them to get it right, and the signs are not looking good so far that this upcoming effort will be any less of a mess.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on February 28, 2015, 11:16:19 PM
There were a few elements of the FF movies that worked OK within the context they set-up for the movies, but I never felt like this was the FF I could love.  Just tolerate.  I am still waiting for them to get it right, and the signs are not looking good so far that this upcoming effort will be any less of a mess.

I wish they'd give FF the first class treatment - 60s era FF as first superheroes, public identities, etc. would be fun.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sermon on March 02, 2015, 06:40:43 PM
I saw this today, for anyone who was interested in trying it out:

http://www.pcgamer.com/unreal-engine-4-is-now-free/
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on March 02, 2015, 06:52:52 PM
Sweet, this is something I've been waiting for, for multiple reasons.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on March 04, 2015, 06:25:36 AM
looks like as time goes by, peoples hope and anticipation seems to be flagging. hope things go well and start to happen.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Darkfaith on March 04, 2015, 06:30:44 AM
looks like as time goes by, peoples hope and anticipation seems to be flagging. hope things go well and start to happen.

I don't think it's necessarily that hope and anticipation is flagging. Not for everyone, at least. I'm still just as hopeful as I was back when this started, I'm just....quiet. Some people may have decided to get on with other things and check back occasionally. Doesn't mean they hope any less, just that they're keeping themselves busy.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on March 04, 2015, 07:11:44 AM
looks like as time goes by, peoples hope and anticipation seems to be flagging. hope things go well and start to happen.

I think we are just waiting for the next news installment (to pick us up).... I get asked all the time on other mmos I frequent by players I've told (about the possible return of CoX) if there is any new word and I just point them all here.

Remember -

   "Patience is a City of Heroes/Villains server"

 ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on March 04, 2015, 08:05:08 AM
I don't think it's necessarily that hope and anticipation is flagging. Not for everyone, at least. I'm still just as hopeful as I was back when this started, I'm just....quiet. Some people may have decided to get on with other things and check back occasionally. Doesn't mean they hope any less, just that they're keeping themselves busy.

This... I still check in daily and have as much hope now as I did when the announcement came. I'm just working on getting a second job. While playing about 5-6 different games across 4 different platforms. LOL!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on March 04, 2015, 02:05:54 PM
looks like as time goes by, peoples hope and anticipation seems to be flagging. hope things go well and start to happen.

Actually, I have more hope than I've had for two years since the shutdown, because now we have *some* chance of getting CoX rezzed.  (Not to mention, and perhaps even more importantly, we have a chance via Atlas Park Revival to not only get a more permanent version of CoX in Unreal 4, but to actually get content and patches added to it over time.)

Hey, I'm not saying it's a *big* chance, mind you, but before this we really had a lot closer to no chance whatsoever.  And I suspect NCSoft realizes by now that fans are just not going to give up, so if they don't hammer a deal out now, we will just go at them with another one down the line.  Moreover, with Wildstar's failure, Nexon's looming takeover bid and the general lack of caring about NCSoft by the MMO player base these days, they could really use a positive PR shot in the arm.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: houtex on March 04, 2015, 04:49:40 PM
The problem is that 'no news is good news' has been the mantra for too long now, such that to me it's a crock of unfettered male cow's unused food that has been deposited in a field, to be forgotten unless stepped in, to have the foragers of that type of material to gather what they can, and then the rest left to slowly erode away as if it had never been there.
 
"Was that over the top?  I can never tell..." - Joker, Batman Forever.

EVEN IF there is no news, Nate should at least participate here and there to ensure that YES, things are still in order, there's still light for this current development, that it is NOT YET EXPIRED.

Waning interest is NOT GOOD for the effort.  There should be some interest, and not a couple of dang rambling threads that aren't anything to do with the original reason for their being there.

It's *cute*, sure... but it's just so unhelpful to those who WANT TO KNOW.

I'm sorry.  the 'flagging interest' angle got to me, and woke me up to the reality.  This site is getting less posts simply because of what I said just now, though, I'm sure of it.

Used to be there were 3-4 new pages of posts to go through.  Now there's less than one.  No wonder Tony's wondering what to do with the site now.

Nate, or whomever, NDA or not, you should probably at least stir the tanks a little.

/soapbox.
//profuse apologies for irrirtating, but hadda say it.
///C'mon NCSoft, sell it. Pretty please, with sugar and whip cream on top.  Or whatever you desire for toppings, really, if it's some sort of sweet korean BBQ or tangy mustard, I'm not partial to any particular one, whatever you want, I'll get it, just SELL already.  *curls up in a fetal position and softy whimpers*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on March 04, 2015, 05:24:02 PM
No wonder Tony's wondering what to do with the site now.

Eh? What do you mean by that?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Excidia on March 04, 2015, 06:02:45 PM
This thread: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10671.0.html

e-
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on March 04, 2015, 07:22:51 PM

"Was that over the top?  I can never tell..." - Joker, Batman Forever.


Jim Carrey was by far my least favorite Joker.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: RGladden on March 04, 2015, 07:43:51 PM
Jim Carrey was by far my least favorite Joker.

He wasn't the Joker.  He was the Riddler.   ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on March 04, 2015, 07:54:47 PM
Updated the first post of both main threads.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 04, 2015, 08:41:00 PM
EVEN IF there is no news, Nate should at least participate here and there to ensure that YES, things are still in order, there's still light for this current development, that it is NOT YET EXPIRED.

Would it help if I programmed a Nate-bot to post, once a day, that the current state of affairs today is identical to what it was yesterday?  Because that is the only thing its likely he could post, even if it made sense for him to post, which it does not.

Its easy to say that even if there is no news he should still participate, but I know exactly what would happen under those conditions.  Instead of people getting tired of hearing nothing, they would get tired of hearing Nate say there's nothing he can say, but with an extra heaping of badgering.

Everyone wants the backstage pass.  Everyone wants the nod-nod wink-wink hint.  When people say they just want him to participate even if he can't say anything, they aren't being genuinely truthful.  They want a target they can squeeze, and they'll just get more angry when their squeezing fails.

All we can do is flag a notify on the wake me thread (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10649.0.html) and try to be patient, or watch the Avengers trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAUoeqvedMo) and dream of Hulkbuster epic archetypes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on March 04, 2015, 08:49:47 PM
I don't want a backstage pass. I just want to play CoH again before I die.

As far as I can tell, everything that can be done is being done. I'm content. If it fails, I do want to hear it as it means that we have to start over. But until we know, one way or another, I am content to talk about CoH and other tangents with my fellows who loved the game as I did and hope for the best.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on March 04, 2015, 08:53:57 PM
He wasn't the Joker.  He was the Riddler.   ;)

Yeah, that was the joke.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on March 04, 2015, 09:13:58 PM
The problem is that 'no news is good news' has been the mantra for too long now, such that to me it's a crock of unfettered male cow's unused food that has been deposited in a field, to be forgotten unless stepped in, to have the foragers of that type of material to gather what they can, and then the rest left to slowly erode away as if it had never been there.
 
"Was that over the top?  I can never tell..." - Joker, Batman Forever.

EVEN IF there is no news, Nate should at least participate here and there to ensure that YES, things are still in order, there's still light for this current development, that it is NOT YET EXPIRED.

Waning interest is NOT GOOD for the effort.  There should be some interest, and not a couple of dang rambling threads that aren't anything to do with the original reason for their being there.

It's *cute*, sure... but it's just so unhelpful to those who WANT TO KNOW.

I'm sorry.  the 'flagging interest' angle got to me, and woke me up to the reality.  This site is getting less posts simply because of what I said just now, though, I'm sure of it.

Used to be there were 3-4 new pages of posts to go through.  Now there's less than one.  No wonder Tony's wondering what to do with the site now.

Nate, or whomever, NDA or not, you should probably at least stir the tanks a little.

/soapbox.
//profuse apologies for irrirtating, but hadda say it.
///C'mon NCSoft, sell it. Pretty please, with sugar and whip cream on top.  Or whatever you desire for toppings, really, if it's some sort of sweet korean BBQ or tangy mustard, I'm not partial to any particular one, whatever you want, I'll get it, just SELL already.  *curls up in a fetal position and softy whimpers*

I am sorry, I wish things were moving faster for everyone in the community.

An NDA is an NDA and that means that can't talk about it. In fact in many cases you can't even respond that you are under NDA. No news is not good news or bad news - it is what we face. We face an uncertain future but a crushing past. Hope is a difficult thing to wrestle with. When this whole thing started we were dead in the water and while some have criticized me for saying too much - if we didn't spread the information then - nothing would have happened.

I know Nate and the new Overlords would love to tell us what is happening. I would like to thank Nate because he is also sheltering who ever is running the game and taking the flack for them. It is not a fun position to be in and yet the players and the game are worth the effort. Hang in there folks, the night is not forever the dawn will come.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on March 04, 2015, 09:28:50 PM
Would it help if I programmed a Nate-bot to post, once a day, that the current state of affairs today is identical to what it was yesterday?  Because that is the only thing its likely he could post, even if it made sense for him to post, which it does not.

Its easy to say that even if there is no news he should still participate, but I know exactly what would happen under those conditions.  Instead of people getting tired of hearing nothing, they would get tired of hearing Nate say there's nothing he can say, but with an extra heaping of badgering.

Everyone wants the backstage pass.  Everyone wants the nod-nod wink-wink hint.  When people say they just want him to participate even if he can't say anything, they aren't being genuinely truthful.  They want a target they can squeeze, and they'll just get more angry when their squeezing fails.

All we can do is flag a notify on the wake me thread (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10649.0.html) and try to be patient, or watch the Avengers trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAUoeqvedMo) and dream of Hulkbuster epic archetypes.
Actually, I'm happy just to receive that "negotiations continue" mini-sort-of-update today.  Even one of those once per month is very welcome.  No backstage pass needed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on March 05, 2015, 01:29:16 AM
Actually, I'm happy just to receive that "negotiations continue" mini-sort-of-update today.  Even one of those once per month is very welcome.  No backstage pass needed.
i think we need someone to create the Nate-bot and have it post "Negotiations continue." once a week in the main threads until such time as the negotiations conclude one way or the other.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: artbunker on March 05, 2015, 01:45:40 AM
I waited two years. i can wait a little longer. Been playing some FFXIV ARR lately. Its a fun game, but too dependent on making certain classes essential for something to be complete. I miss the "you can be anything and complete missions or TF feel of COH.

Now a question that gonna get me banned probably. What exactly was a trail in COH. I did TF's all the time so I knew those well. I knew Incarnate Trials well. But what were regular trials in COH and what were the good for besides EXP?

Finally if anyone ever talks to the old devs, I was wondering why was the Frostfire badge removed from the game?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on March 05, 2015, 01:56:13 AM
The respecs were trials, eden, dfb, abandoned sewers, a couple more i think. but no major difference from a TF.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on March 05, 2015, 02:48:06 AM
I know the silence is killing some people but you have to realize. That it's for our own good and that Nate isn't just Negotiating with NCSoft, he's also (most likely working a full time job), working on City of Titans, while helping with the Negotiating too. So I for one am understanding that he doesn't post here daily.

I actually prefer he don't because I know as well intentioned some may be. They'll try to pressure him into spilling details, details that could cost us the whole deal. Just because they couldn't help but be curious.

So thank you Nate for doing the Wise thing, although I know it must be hard for you. As I remember you was a regular poster here until the start of the negotiations?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 05, 2015, 03:23:42 AM
The respecs were trials, eden, dfb, abandoned sewers, a couple more i think. but no major difference from a TF.

I believe the original idea was that trials would be, in effect, singular missions possibly broken up into segments while task forces were intended to be a chain of missions intended to be completed in sequence.  That distinction was generally ambiguous and it was abandoned fairly quickly.  If they had kept it, they would have had to invent a term specifically for Doc Q, so there would be trials, task forces, and That Thing.

If you were a launch player, of course, at one point the difference was "task forces are the ones that are working, trials are the ones that are not working."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on March 05, 2015, 04:27:20 AM
I believe the original idea was that trials would be, in effect, singular missions possibly broken up into segments while task forces were intended to be a chain of missions intended to be completed in sequence.  That distinction was generally ambiguous and it was abandoned fairly quickly.  If they had kept it, they would have had to invent a term specifically for Doc Q, so there would be trials, task forces, and That Thing.

If you were a launch player, of course, at one point the difference was "task forces are the ones that are working, trials are the ones that are not working."
Trials initially tended to have complex mechanics for the boss fight/climax and be slightly more difficult than task forces. The first trials i was familiar with were the Eden, Sewer, and Respec trials, all of which had special mechanics related to the climax whereas task forces were usually a series of themed missions ending in a fairly standard AV or boss fight. And as you say that distinction pretty much went away as new content was added.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ryuplaneswalker on March 05, 2015, 04:54:11 AM
I am sorry, I wish things were moving faster for everyone in the community.

An NDA is an NDA and that means that can't talk about it. In fact in many cases you can't even respond that you are under NDA. No news is not good news or bad news - it is what we face. We face an uncertain future but a crushing past. Hope is a difficult thing to wrestle with. When this whole thing started we were dead in the water and while some have criticized me for saying too much - if we didn't spread the information then - nothing would have happened.

I know Nate and the new Overlords would love to tell us what is happening. I would like to thank Nate because he is also sheltering who ever is running the game and taking the flack for them. It is not a fun position to be in and yet the players and the game are worth the effort. Hang in there folks, the night is not forever the dawn will come.

[Tim Robbins voice] Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies [/Tim Robbins voice]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: kiario on March 05, 2015, 05:37:07 AM
Its like this, just be thankful that someone is trying to get CoH back.
In mean time, live life as usual. Play some other good games and have fun :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: houtex on March 05, 2015, 05:49:22 AM
Well... that worked, I suppose. :p

I don't feel particularly accomplished or proud or anything of that nature for having poked the fire a little and got some response, but... I think it needed saying.  These threads are a bit of a train wreck, so an update to the top posts is *highly* appreciated, even if it's just another date, another "yep, it's still cookin'."

I absolutely get that the people involved really can't say much of anything.  I mean... that's sort of the whole point of this, I suppose, trying to be 'in line' with NCSoft's wishes on how to negotiate or discuss.

But *surely* even NCSoft, as much as we 'know' about them, couldn't be THAT uptight about a teensy little update.  It's not like we didn't know that the negotiations are even a thing.  All that's needed is a "Update <whatever day it is>: It's still goin' on.  Really." 

A bot, though, would just be disingenuous, but thanks for the suggestion there...

Anyway, the ongoing efforts are appreciated, but man... I know enough about business, software coding, agreements, etc. and all that to be wondering what the REAL hang up is here... I ain't kidding, I can't even imagine why the drag on this...

Ok, standing by as directed... but let it not be so long next time", mmkay?  Thaaanks!" - Bill Lundbergh, Office Space
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on March 05, 2015, 10:43:19 AM
Quote
The problem is that 'no news is good news' has been the mantra for too long now, such that to me it's a crock of unfettered male cow's unused food that has been deposited in a field, to be forgotten unless stepped in, to have the foragers of that type of material to gather what they can, and then the rest left to slowly erode away as if it had never been there.
 
"Was that over the top?  I can never tell..." - Joker, Batman Forever.

EVEN IF there is no news, Nate should at least participate here and there to ensure that YES, things are still in order, there's still light for this current development, that it is NOT YET EXPIRED.

Waning interest is NOT GOOD for the effort.  There should be some interest, and not a couple of dang rambling threads that aren't anything to do with the original reason for their being there.

It's *cute*, sure... but it's just so unhelpful to those who WANT TO KNOW.

I'm sorry.  the 'flagging interest' angle got to me, and woke me up to the reality.  This site is getting less posts simply because of what I said just now, though, I'm sure of it.

Used to be there were 3-4 new pages of posts to go through.  Now there's less than one.  No wonder Tony's wondering what to do with the site now.

Nate, or whomever, NDA or not, you should probably at least stir the tanks a little.

/soapbox.
//profuse apologies for irrirtating, but hadda say it.
///C'mon NCSoft, sell it. Pretty please, with sugar and whip cream on top.  Or whatever you desire for toppings, really, if it's some sort of sweet korean BBQ or tangy mustard, I'm not partial to any particular one, whatever you want, I'll get it, just SELL already.  *curls up in a fetal position and softy whimpers*


Quote
I don't feel particularly accomplished or proud or anything of that nature for having poked the fire a little and got some response, but... I think it needed saying.

Sorry but that didn't seem the intention of your original post.

Quote
These threads are a bit of a train wreck, so an update to the top posts is *highly* appreciated, even if it's just another date, another "yep, it's still cookin'."

I also don't understand how this thread is a train wreck. When it's been stated OVER and OVER that if there was an update. It'd appear, exactly where this current update has appeared.

Quote
But *surely* even NCSoft, as much as we 'know' about them, couldn't be THAT uptight about a teensy little update.  It's not like we didn't know that the negotiations are even a thing.  All that's needed is a "Update <whatever day it is>: It's still goin' on.  Really."

I believe comments like this is exactly what others where talking about. Let's let Nate and crew decide what NCSoft is comfortable with them saying. Their the one's dealing with them, so they are the one that would know how "teensy" an update should be.

Quote
Anyway, the ongoing efforts are appreciated, but man... I know enough about business, software coding, agreements, etc. and all that to be wondering what the REAL hang up is here... I ain't kidding, I can't even imagine why the drag on this...

I don't know you so I don't know what kind of experience you have. But I do know what's been stated here. One dealing with a Korean corporation is a slow process, Two I do know that currently NCSoft is having a power struggle so yeah, I'd think that'd slow things down some. Three, everyone envolved I'm sure has other things their doing/envolved with. So I'd also assume that they may go a week or two without talking. Four, it's March we just got finished with the Holiday season and the Tax season. Those things for me personally take up a lot of my personal time. That would take away from a personal project (Even if it's trying to get the best game in the world back) that I'm working on.

So no I don't feel like it's a:
Quote
it's a crock of unfettered male cow's unused food that has been deposited in a field, to be forgotten unless stepped in, to have the foragers of that type of material to gather what they can, and then the rest left to slowly erode away as if it had never been there.

I know waiting is hard especially when there's a lot of silence (as I've said before) but it's something we'll have to deal with.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Safehouse on March 05, 2015, 12:41:41 PM
I waited two years. i can wait a little longer. Been playing some FFXIV ARR lately. Its a fun game, but too dependent on making certain classes essential for something to be complete. I miss the "you can be anything and complete missions or TF feel of COH.

Now a question that gonna get me banned probably. What exactly was a trail in COH. I did TF's all the time so I knew those well. I knew Incarnate Trials well. But what were regular trials in COH and what were the good for besides EXP?

Finally if anyone ever talks to the old devs, I was wondering why was the Frostfire badge removed from the game?

I love FFXIV ARR. I haven't been able to play in weeks because my gaming computer is shot, and it's the first MMO since COH that I go through withdrawal on when I can't play. Really excited for the expansion and hope it comes up soon.

I agree though, about the game being dependent on the other classes a bit too much. I've also generally been a solo-er in MMOs, except when I have friends on. I don't do PUGs. I've never been fond of the fact that ARR requires you to team up in order to advance the storyline.

One of the things I loved about CoH was that there was a way to advance both through teaming and through soloing. You were never stuck with one path or another. I teamed up when I wanted to, not because I HAD to in order to move onwards and upwards.

That said, I still love it.



[Tim Robbins voice] Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies [/Tim Robbins voice]

(https://i.imgur.com/XS5LK.gif)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on March 05, 2015, 03:55:13 PM
 having been under NDA's with companies ( in a different industries) some companies take them VERY seriously.. If they have asked Nate to say NOTHING during negotiations.. then him saying even a LITTLE something is a violation of trust.. which can definitely short circuit a deal..

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dev7on on March 05, 2015, 04:56:31 PM
What would happen to the team when they passed the NDA?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on March 05, 2015, 05:29:52 PM
What would happen to the team when they passed the NDA?

You mean breach the NDA? In that case, NC Soft can terminate negotiations.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on March 05, 2015, 05:52:42 PM
You mean breach the NDA? In that case, NC Soft can terminate negotiations.

Probably more than that.  NDA's usually include language along the lines of, "If any party screws up the deal, you'll owe the other some amount of cash to make up for the lost opportunity." 

I would imagine that NCSoft would be in this for at least as much as whatever money is being discussed... so if the current offer is (I'm making this up, as I have ZERO knowledge about this particular case) $5 Million, then if Nate breaks the NDA, the deal could fall through AND NCSoft then comes after Nate for the lost revenue of that $5 Million.

So it's not only "No COH," probably, at stake.  There's probably a big chunk o' change at stake, too, if anyone blabs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on March 05, 2015, 06:48:45 PM
Probably more than that.  NDA's usually include language along the lines of, "If any party screws up the deal, you'll owe the other some amount of cash to make up for the lost opportunity." 

I would imagine that NCSoft would be in this for at least as much as whatever money is being discussed... so if the current offer is (I'm making this up, as I have ZERO knowledge about this particular case) $5 Million, then if Nate breaks the NDA, the deal could fall through AND NCSoft then comes after Nate for the lost revenue of that $5 Million.

So it's not only "No COH," probably, at stake.  There's probably a big chunk o' change at stake, too, if anyone blabs.

And possibly salting the earth for anyone wanting to talk coh for a long time.

 It sucks to wait, but it will suck more to be told no deal ever, because something "teeny" came out. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Harpospoke on March 05, 2015, 06:53:35 PM
Doh, i'd repressed purple cloud Galactus.

I thought they'd decided AOA would be the last x-movie before another reboot. i know jackman is out after that one and the next wolverine. i wish they'd make "Magneto: Nazi Hunter!" instead because i know they're going to screw up apocalypse. of course they couldn't do anything worse to him than marvel's writers after the early 90s have.
I'm slightly more hopeful since Days of Future Past.   That was still "Wolverine and friends" but I at least liked it.

Jackman might explode from steroids if he keeps doing these movies, so it might be best for him to do something else.   :o

I don't think I could ever root for a creative effort to be a failure just so someone else can have another shot at it. It also assumes that Fox would be willing to lease it out ala Sony instead of just sitting on it, which certainly hasn't been demonstrated.

So much work goes into a movie and, even it's not to my taste, someone worked pretty hard to make it.

I would also add that Marvel leasing out their big characters was not done at gun point. They may regret the deal now, but they didn't when they got paid. In light of the way things turned out, I am sure they have regrets, but who doesn't?
Oh I know they weren't forced to make those deals that are framed in a way which is detrimental to the characters.  (The studios have to make movies to keep the rights whether the public demand is there or not)  That doesn't make the deals any better.

I'm just hoping Marvel can get the rights back before too much damage is done.   With FF...it may be too late already.

Technically speaking, Marvel did it to Galactus first - in the Ultimate Galactus series by Warren Ellis.  I'm pretty certain Fox pulled from that story line and did not invent the "purple cloud" idea on their own.
The Ultimate stuff is pretty dicey.   I'm not giving Fox a pass because they decided to use a bad idea someone else thought up.    That might just be worse since you can see a bad idea in action first.   I can at least understand the artistic blindness that sometimes happens when a person comes up with an idea.

Actually, I'm happy just to receive that "negotiations continue" mini-sort-of-update today.  Even one of those once per month is very welcome.  No backstage pass needed.
Same.   That's plenty.   I just passed that on to my brother as a matter of fact.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on March 05, 2015, 07:26:15 PM
I'm slightly more hopeful since Days of Future Past.   That was still "Wolverine and friends" but I at least liked it.

The Ultimate stuff is pretty dicey.   I'm not giving Fox a pass because they decided to use a bad idea someone else thought up.   

I thought future past was awful. not X3 awful, but awful. if tyrion + pornstache can't save a movie for me i don't know what will.

The thing with the galactus cloud in the movie is that's all there was - no suggestion of it being a robotic swarm or any attempt to make it cool. also warren ellis has a lot of great stuff in the bank so we can let him slide on the idea. fox notsomuch, especially as that was before first class.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on March 05, 2015, 07:36:25 PM
having been under NDA's with companies ( in a different industries) some companies take them VERY seriously.. If they have asked Nate to say NOTHING during negotiations.. then him saying even a LITTLE something is a violation of trust.. which can definitely short circuit a deal..

can he use descriptive pantomime?     



just joking
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on March 05, 2015, 09:29:06 PM
can he use descriptive pantomime?     

just joking
And now I'm having a flashback to The Silence of the Hams.  The agents will exchange secret information using the FBI's new technique - interpretive dance!  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on March 05, 2015, 10:35:09 PM
And now I'm having a flashback to The Silence of the Hams.  The agents will exchange secret information using the FBI's new technique - interpretive dance!  ;D

As Knee Jerk as NCSoft is.... that'd probably break the NDA too. :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Paragon Avenger on March 05, 2015, 11:24:10 PM
The National Dairy Association won't even let you play serades.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: houtex on March 06, 2015, 05:00:30 PM

Sorry but that didn't seem the intention of your original post.

I also don't understand how this thread is a train wreck. When it's been stated OVER and OVER that if there was an update. It'd appear, exactly where this current update has appeared.

I believe comments like this is exactly what others where talking about. Let's let Nate and crew decide what NCSoft is comfortable with them saying. Their the one's dealing with them, so they are the one that would know how "teensy" an update should be.

I don't know you so I don't know what kind of experience you have. But I do know what's been stated here. One dealing with a Korean corporation is a slow process, Two I do know that currently NCSoft is having a power struggle so yeah, I'd think that'd slow things down some. Three, everyone envolved I'm sure has other things their doing/envolved with. So I'd also assume that they may go a week or two without talking. Four, it's March we just got finished with the Holiday season and the Tax season. Those things for me personally take up a lot of my personal time. That would take away from a personal project (Even if it's trying to get the best game in the world back) that I'm working on.

So no I don't feel like it's a:
I know waiting is hard especially when there's a lot of silence (as I've said before) but it's something we'll have to deal with.



I hate the 'break apart each word of a post to break it down into it's fundamental atoms' thing... you lose the flavor of the overall post that way.  But in order ('cause I'm just not feeling like doing all the formatting crud...)
 
1) Your perception is unfortunately flawed by the fact you don't have my mindset.  So while your observation is yours, my fact is mine, what I said is face value, take it or not.
 
2) Both of them wander about on various and sundry topics for no reason except to just... be there.  Then a post comes along that's relevant to the original first post to bring it back into order, like has apparently been done here.  700 pages of "are we there yet?" isn't possible.  700 pages of "Are we there yet, ooh, shiny, I saw this movie, you know the thing about trains is..." and such is exactly what's been happening here.  I mean, look between your post and mine here... There's X-Men discussion *already*.  Why?  Loosely related at best.
 
3) Nate and the rest can certainly do that.  And be lost.  For without interest, what else besides WAY too much money to say no to (which I'm sure isn't the case) would give NCSoft pressure or incentive to do anything at all?  Be cheaper to sit on a product that nobody wants than even pay the lawyers to do the contracts.  That is what is at stake here, I believe.  Again, referencing Tony's thoughts on what to do about the place, the waning interest, to me, is a problem and one that I would like to see addressed by Nate and the crew.  And all it takes is, WITHOUT violating the NDA, is a simple little message here and there, sprinkled among the masses of Attention Deficited posts, of "guys, honest, it's still going.  Your patience is appreciated, and that's all I can say."  It would poke the fire, keep things going.  At least, that was the thought behind my post.  Whether I'm correct or not would be an interesting debate, I'm sure.  But as been said in the world... even negative publicity is publicity.  If there's interest, beyond these negotiations... we have a better chance, I'm sure of it.
 
4) I get that.  Doesn't mean someone can't poke the fire rather than let it die here.
 
5) And that's your opinion.  Mine is that it's a placeholder that as time wears on, it become exactly what I said.  To others, it's a leaf on the wind, dropped to the ground, and then forgotten as there's other stuff to do or distract.  Point is, while no news may indeed be good news in a certain respect, it also becomes neglected to be bothered with news.. and then worse, forgotten.  I feel that while the imagery might have been brutal, the point is indeed valid.
 
Now.  I've done my bit to be the 'wounded animal' and respond on this critique, for good or bad, and I'll be done with it now, thanks.  Re-critique all you want, if that's your thing, but I'll be stepping aside until I blow up again at some other percieved injustice to the cause. :)
 
 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 06, 2015, 08:17:11 PM
The Ultimate stuff is pretty dicey.   I'm not giving Fox a pass because they decided to use a bad idea someone else thought up.    That might just be worse since you can see a bad idea in action first.   I can at least understand the artistic blindness that sometimes happens when a person comes up with an idea.

I'm not convinced myself its a bad idea: I think most will agree it was poorly executed in the Rise of the Silver Surfer, but that's not the same thing.  Seems to be a matter of taste.  Some (like Vee above, for example) disliked Days of Future Past whereas I thought it was an extremely good X-Men movie.  I can excuse the minor "since when does Kitty Pryde have time travel powers" thing because the overall execution was good, and I like that the focus was on the Xavier/Magneto relationship that seems to be the best part of the current X-stories.  But of course YMMV.

I saw DoFP the week of release and it was a pretty rowdy theater.  When Quicksilver's scene started, the theater actually went almost *silent*.  That happens exactly never.  Focused cinematic genius on display.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on March 06, 2015, 10:04:06 PM
i did love what they did with quicksilver. he couldn't quite make up for blink, bishop and sunspot for me though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Waffles on March 07, 2015, 12:54:40 AM
Let's stop talking about the NDA, how about? Absolutely nothing good can come from bringing it up.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on March 07, 2015, 01:01:36 AM
I saw DoFP the week of release and it was a pretty rowdy theater.  When Quicksilver's scene started, the theater actually went almost *silent*.  That happens exactly never.  Focused cinematic genius on display.

I haven't seen DoFP yet. I've lagging in movie watching lately.  :(

I would point out another cinematic genius moment on display that had the opposite effect in the Avengers. Hulk meets Loki. Loki Monolgues. Hulk SMASH! Audience goes wild. I saw the movie twice in the theaters and never did get to hear what Hulk said after flailing Loki around a bit until after we got the Blue Ray and watched it at home. The writers for a lot of the Marvel movies seem to have the knack for that type of thing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on March 07, 2015, 01:14:01 AM
I haven't seen DoFP yet. I've lagging in movie watching lately.  :(

I would point out another cinematic genius moment on display that had the opposite effect in the Avengers. Hulk meets Loki. Loki Monolgues. Hulk SMASH! Audience goes wild. I saw the movie twice in the theaters and never did get to hear what Hulk said after flailing Loki around a bit until after we got the Blue Ray and watched it at home. The writers for a lot of the Marvel movies seem to have the knack for that type of thing.

Loki still wins the award for most hilarious super-villain take down ever.
You do NOT talk smack to the HULK!

Though one must wonder, Heimdall and Odin are both basically "all-seeing", so one must wonder what their reactions were to what Hulk did to Loki.

I suspect it was probably something along the lines of...."Whoa!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 07, 2015, 02:10:16 AM
I haven't seen DoFP yet. I've lagging in movie watching lately.  :(

I would point out another cinematic genius moment on display that had the opposite effect in the Avengers. Hulk meets Loki. Loki Monolgues. Hulk SMASH! Audience goes wild. I saw the movie twice in the theaters and never did get to hear what Hulk said after flailing Loki around a bit until after we got the Blue Ray and watched it at home. The writers for a lot of the Marvel movies seem to have the knack for that type of thing.

I had the same problem: I didn't even really hear all the concrete crunching until the second viewing.

Although for me the Hulk moment that resonated with me the most was when Banner utters his "I'm always angry" line and changes into the Hulk.  It evoked Peter David's last issue of his run on Incredible Hulk where Rick Jones mentions the last time he sees Banner:

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=40.media.tumblr.com%2F405d13cf445d92773c469cd54e8ec596%2Ftumblr_nhyblpnUj71s79vp8o5_r2_250.png)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on March 07, 2015, 06:34:52 AM
Does he have... googly eyes... on his forehead? o.o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Triplash on March 07, 2015, 07:52:05 AM
Does he have... googly eyes... on his forehead? o.o


Why not? Everything's more fun with googly eyes (http://vandaleyes.net/)  :D

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=41.media.tumblr.com%2F30ba940f76615be476ca36360f0c95c3%2Ftumblr_nke3mt7eYa1rb1x0fo1_1280.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 07, 2015, 08:31:09 AM

Why not? Everything's more fun with googly eyes (http://vandaleyes.net/)  :D
Well, yeah, but in this case Banner is fitted with sensors.  At this point in the story Banner is being held by the military and they are monitoring him so they can bring him down if they detect any sign he's about to change into the Hulk.  That's part of what makes that transformation so dramatic: Banner is actually *trying* to contain the Hulk up to this point, cooperating with the military in having himself imprisoned, but its in this moment that Banner basically gives up his fight with the Hulk, and just becomes the Hulk.  That's the penultimate time Rick sees Banner, but the absolute last time he sees Banner it suggests the war between Banner and the Hulk is over:

(https://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y82/dailyburn/hulk367-3.gif)

Incredible Hulk 467 is something I consider required reading whether you are a fan of the Hulk or not.  If for no other reason than this:

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.comicbookgalaxy.com%2Fimages%2Fgrinarmy.jpg)

This, too, I believe ended up in the Avengers movie by way of reference: when Ruffalo (as Banner) says that at one point he got low and tried to end it, that was a small call back to this story.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on March 07, 2015, 04:12:48 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.comicbookgalaxy.com%2Fimages%2Fgrinarmy.jpg)

This, too, I believe ended up in the Avengers movie by way of reference: when Ruffalo (as Banner) says that at one point he got low and tried to end it, that was a small call back to this story.

Wasn't that a reference to a deleted scene from the Ed Norton movie?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on March 08, 2015, 05:18:36 AM
There is indeed a deleted scene from BLu Ray Ed Norton Hulk

Banner tries to shoot himself in the arctic but Hulk emerges and smashes the ice and you can see a frozen Captain America in the ice.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 09, 2015, 10:10:44 PM
Wasn't that a reference to a deleted scene from the Ed Norton movie?

The references pile up a bit.  This scene from Incredible Hulk 467 is from 1998.  It might be referenced by the Ultimate Hulk in Ultimates circa 2002, where Banner is dropped into a fight to induce him into becoming the Hulk.  *That* is very obviously directly referenced by the Norton Hulk movie where he jumps from the helicopter (2008).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on March 14, 2015, 04:02:21 PM
On a related note, I am getting more excited about the Avengers: Age of Ultron with each passing day.  All of the non-spoiler tidbits, and trailers are hitting all the right notes!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on March 15, 2015, 12:43:52 AM
On a related note, I am getting more excited about the Avengers: Age of Ultron with each passing day.  All of the non-spoiler tidbits, and trailers are hitting all the right notes!
The Marvel branch of Disney has seems to have figured out the right stuff for its movies.

Or, they actually figured out that letting the people who are actually fans of the comics, that they are basing the movie from, write the script and direct the movies actually makes for a better movie...

I'm sure I missed a punctuation in there somewhere...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on March 15, 2015, 01:13:36 PM
The Marvel branch of Disney has seems to have figured out the right stuff for its movies.


No Marvel could not make a movie to save its life.  The previous 20+ years of litter demonstrates that. 
The Mouse purchased them and knows how to make a few billion from intellectual properties.  It has the next 20+ years to rake in the billions.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: therain93 on March 15, 2015, 03:14:55 PM
No Marvel could not make a movie to save its life.  The previous 20+ years of litter demonstrates that. 
The Mouse purchased them and knows how to make a few billion from intellectual properties.  It has the next 20+ years to rake in the billions.

Well, you have to keep in mind, Marvel Studio's was explicitly created to take control of making movies for their properties because licensing it out did not go as well as they liked.  Further to that, the cinematic universe was already conceived (with Thor, Captain America and Avengers planned for) and Iron Man (as well incredible hulk) released before Disney bought Marvel.  So, I would argue that Disney's acquisition was like the bellows fanning a fire that had already ignited and just helped it burn hotter.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on March 15, 2015, 03:47:58 PM
Well, you have to keep in mind, Marvel Studio's was explicitly created to take control of making movies for their properties because licensing it out did not go as well as they liked.  Further to that, the cinematic universe was already conceived (with Thor, Captain America and Avengers planned for) and Iron Man (as well incredible hulk) released before Disney bought Marvel.  So, I would argue that Disney's acquisition was like the bellows fanning a fire that had already ignited and just helped it burn hotter.

There is a really good book by Sean Lowe.  I might have the name misspelled which outlines the licensing fiascos and cinematic bombs Marvel made over the 80's and 90's.  I do not disagree, the x-men/spiderman movies of the early 2000s were good compared to earlier Marvel and a random partner productions and just junk production.  However I still believe going forward Disney will execute those ideas with a real budget.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on March 15, 2015, 03:51:32 PM
No Marvel could not make a movie to save its life.  The previous 20+ years of litter demonstrates that. 
The Mouse purchased them and knows how to make a few billion from intellectual properties.  It has the next 20+ years to rake in the billions.

Their movies so far appear to prove you rather wrong.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on March 15, 2015, 04:02:28 PM
Seems to me that the Disney acquisition gave them the resources to follow through on a plan they had already formulated, and thank goodness for that!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on March 15, 2015, 10:49:25 PM
No Marvel could not make a movie to save its life.  The previous 20+ years of litter demonstrates that. 
The Mouse purchased them and knows how to make a few billion from intellectual properties.  It has the next 20+ years to rake in the billions.
Huh? Marvel Studios was making good movies before the buyout. After the buyout, they're making good movies with a bigger budget.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on March 16, 2015, 12:03:05 AM
Huh? Marvel Studios was making good movies before the buyout. After the buyout, they're making good movies with a bigger budget.

Yeah, you're right.  I had my thoughts confused.  I was thinking with a production company's help. Whatever my point was I am pretty sure I can't find it. lol

Have a good start to the work week!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on March 16, 2015, 02:22:18 PM
Their movies so far appear to prove you rather wrong.

Side note: Just because a movie makes a lot of money does not mean it "proves" it's a good movie.

In fact, on a brief examination of what appeals to the masses these days (think Michael Bay, Justin Bieber, LiL Wayne, etc.), I would submit that if it makes a buttload of money these days, it's probably NOT good. I realize that's a subjective viewpoint, but I don't like the notion that "because it's popular, it's validated" to be above reproach or criticism. I do believe Marvel has fallen prey to several "big budget tropes" I've seen in many horrible films in the past in some of their latest films.

However, that said, I've actually enjoyed *most* of what Marvel has put out the past few years (and that's saying something, considering I'm a DC guy)...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on March 16, 2015, 03:50:46 PM

A good movie is quite subjective. Even movies which I consider complete and utter trash have their fans. One could say Box Office results are indicative of a movie's "goodness," but that's not entirely true either... it simply means enough people wanted to see it to make it profitable. Ask 10 people for a list of good movies and you will get maybe some similarities, but overall.. different lists. One could say an Academy Award for Best Picture means a movie is "good," but I would disagree a lot of the time with that as well. Example... Here are Best Picture winners which i do not think are good movies...and another nominee that I think is good and should have won.


Forrest Gump - Shawkshank Redemption... should have won
Unforgiven - The Crying Game OR A Few Good Men... should have won
Titanic - As Good As It Gets... should have won
Rain Man - Mississippi Burning... should have won
Rocky - Network... should have won
Braveheart - Apollo 13...should have won
Slumdog Millionaire - Milk... should have won.
A Beautiful Mind - Moulin Rouge!... should have won.
Annie Hall - Star Wars... should have won.
Ordinary People - The Elephant Man...should have won.
12 Years A Slave - Dallas Buyers Club... should have won




Just to name a few...

Side note: Just because a movie makes a lot of money does not mean it "proves" it's a good movie.

In fact, on a brief examination of what appeals to the masses these days (think Michael Bay, Justin Bieber, LiL Wayne, etc.), I would submit that if it makes a buttload of money these days, it's probably NOT good. I realize that's a subjective viewpoint, but I don't like the notion that "because it's popular, it's validated" to be above reproach or criticism. I do believe Marvel has fallen prey to several "big budget tropes" I've seen in many horrible films in the past in some of their latest films.

However, that said, I've actually enjoyed *most* of what Marvel has put out the past few years (and that's saying something, considering I'm a DC guy)...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on March 16, 2015, 05:31:34 PM
As I noted, it is subjective, but one cannot argue the fact that standards for movies/TV/music/entertainment have gone way, way down in the past 20 years.

I think it was harder to choose a winner (at least to me) between movies/songs years ago than today. Today's entertainment lacks intellect.

Here's an example:

Pink Floyd's lyrics:

"And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking. Racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older. Shorter of breath and one day closer to death. Every year is getting shorter; never seem to find the time. Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines."

Lyrics from a recent Rihanna song:

He want that cake, cake,
Cake, cake, cake, cake, cake
Cake, cake, cake, cake, cake
Cake, cake, cake

Ooh baby, I like it
You so excited
Don't try to hide it
I'mma make you my bitch
Cake, cake, cake, cake
Cake, cake, cake, cake
Cake, cake, cake, cake
Cake, cake, cake

She sells millions of records, so it must mean it's good, right? >.>

The same could be applied to today's movies.

As someone who has acquired a Film degree, it's painfully obvious to see certain tropes repeated over and over in (especially big budget) movies today.

Again, personal opinion.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on March 16, 2015, 05:48:05 PM
Here's an interesting article mentioning the DC and Marvel movies and that critic's impression of Marvel's movies... I used the term "tropes" and he uses the word "samey," but the point is kind of the same...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminmoore/2015/03/05/dc-comics-movies-edgier-than-marvel-movies/

Don't get me wrong--I will repeat, I did enjoy a good bit of the Marvel movies. It's important to note I'm not knocking them completely...I just think it's ok to like a movie and still be critical of it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on March 16, 2015, 05:52:38 PM
As I noted, it is subjective, but one cannot argue the fact that standards for movies/TV/music/entertainment have gone way, way down in the past 20 years.

I think it was harder to choose a winner (at least to me) between movies/songs years ago than today. Today's entertainment lacks intellect.

Here's an example:

Pink Floyd's lyrics:

"And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking. Racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older. Shorter of breath and one day closer to death. Every year is getting shorter; never seem to find the time. Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines."

Lyrics from a recent Rihanna song:

He want that cake, cake,
Cake, cake, cake, cake, cake
Cake, cake, cake, cake, cake
Cake, cake, cake

Ooh baby, I like it
You so excited
Don't try to hide it
I'mma make you my bitch
Cake, cake, cake, cake
Cake, cake, cake, cake
Cake, cake, cake, cake
Cake, cake, cake

She sells millions of records, so it must mean it's good, right? >.>

The same could be applied to today's movies.

As someone who has acquired a Film degree, it's painfully obvious to see certain tropes repeated over and over in (especially big budget) movies today.

Again, personal opinion.

Well that song is supposed be in the same context of 112 "Peaches and Cream" although not as thought out. I felt music was getting too commercialized since 2004 and the quality in all genre has been on a downward slop. Especially in Rap/Hip-Hop when autotune and snap rap took over. It's like what Chris Rock says, "I love rap, but it's hard to defend it now because in the past you could argue rap on a intellectual level. You could argue Run DMC, NWA. You can't argue, I got hoes in different area codes. You can't argue, move bitch get out of the way." People say you know your getting old when you think this generation's music suck.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on March 16, 2015, 05:54:31 PM
As someone who has acquired a Film degree, it's painfully obvious to see certain tropes repeated over and over in (especially big budget) movies today.

Again, personal opinion.

You are attempting to equate the acting and story telling in a comic book movie to something along the lines of Shindler's List.  You were -always- going to fail that kind of comparison.

A comic book movie is good merely by the auspices of sticking close to the source material, which in the case of comic books, is a good 90% trope.  So far, Marvel have done a bloody good job of doing that, and box office takings are an indicator of that.  Don't go judging them by Oscar winnings standards, they're not that kind of movie.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on March 16, 2015, 06:36:40 PM
They are heavens forbid - ENTERTAINING!

I don't always want a message, a depressing look into someone else's misery or to be preached at for being rich, happy or good looking (none of which apply - except happy).

Sometimes I want to see the Hulk ragdoll Loki. Sometimes I want to see Captain America stand up for what is right. Sometimes i want to see a small grumpy raccoon shoot stuff.

Sometimes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on March 16, 2015, 06:58:48 PM
You are attempting to equate the acting and story telling in a comic book movie to something along the lines of Shindler's List.  You were -always- going to fail that kind of comparison.

A comic book movie is good merely by the auspices of sticking close to the source material, which in the case of comic books, is a good 90% trope.  So far, Marvel have done a bloody good job of doing that, and box office takings are an indicator of that.  Don't go judging them by Oscar winnings standards, they're not that kind of movie.

I think that's limited vision. I think Christopher Nolan's Batman let everyone know that a "comic book movie" can be much, much more than just a "good time" (A good time can be had at any kind of movie, by the way--not just action/comedies). Acting and storytelling can be good in a comic book movie too, and it doesn't have to be covered up by big explosions. Sure, there's plenty of action to be had in a comic book universe, but at the heart of any really *truly* good comic book is a good story, and the heart of any *truly* good comic book movie is good direction (storytelling) and good acting. Heath Ledger proved that the Joker could be taken further than a goofy laugh, and I believe there are many good Marvel characters that could be taken farther than a good looking hunk with a hammer and marginal acting talents.

One doesn't have to look far to see there is great source material in comics to take the comic book movie universe to many, many more places than a simple Michael Bay style popcorn action flick.

Personally, I'd like to see a horror/thriller based on the comic "Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth." If a producer/director would start getting brave enough to stretch comic book movies to more places than just "yay! candy action!" then you'd see much more potential to the comic book universe.

Your vision is limited, and by extension, your argument about "comic book movies and Schindler's List."

I guess bottom line is that I'd like to see more variety in the comic book universe movie-wise. Right now it's all "Michael Bay style." With the exception of the Nolan trilogy, it's ALL been "bubble gum pop." All of it. I'd like to see some variation here and there. Nothing wrong with a funny movie like Guardians of the Galaxy. But let's see something original too. Let's see a horror. Let's see a "whodunit." Let's see a tear-jerker. Let's see one that concentrates on "life outside the action" with a major character.

I thought the first "Sin City" was a great foray into a different look for a comic book movie (not to mention taking it into R-rated and "film noir" territory)... But, I think there's room for more.

Full disclosure:
I'm a Superman fan, and my fav Superman comic series was "The Death of Superman" and "The Return of Superman." Why? Because there was some actual story there. It showed Superman wasn't "all powerful," and more specifically, it showed what life was like for civilians and other superheroes when he was and wasn't around. I'm a firm believer that the crux of a good story is a good conflict, and there are many more conflicts to choose from than the Bond-esque "dude wants to take over/destroy Earth" tired, old trope. Sometimes, the more interesting conflicts are the more personal ones. But, yeah, I guess explosions/Earth doomed/we'll all die/apocalypse = what people want to see and I'm in the small minority of comic book fans that think there's a much larger comic book universe out there than that limited scope.

*goes back to corner*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on March 16, 2015, 07:30:15 PM
It's pretty simple, really.

Marvel Movies = Fun, good time, smiles from start to end with plenty of 'laugh out loud' moments and one-liners to break up the action. Nothing earth shattering or really thought-provoking, but consistently good quality throughout. Individual director and writer creativity is secondary to maintaining a cohesive universe that people can get invested in.

DC Movies = Darker, grittier. Hit or miss quality -- ranging from really good to really bad and everything in between. Lots of director freedom to put their own spin on it, which can either be a good thing, or a very, very bad thing if you're a fan of the source material. Little to no universe consistency at all, and frequent reboots.

It's personal preference, but I'd rather have the cohesive universe over the rare gem of something interesting. The latter I'd rather see from an occasional one-off film than an entire franchise.

I guess bottom line is that I'd like to see more variety in the comic book universe movie-wise. Right now it's all "Michael Bay style." With the exception of the Nolan trilogy, it's ALL been "bubble gum pop." All of it.

Watchmen?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on March 16, 2015, 07:46:15 PM
It's pretty simple, really.

Marvel Movies = Fun, good time, smiles from start to end with plenty of 'laugh out loud' moments and one-liners to break up the action. Nothing earth shattering or really thought-provoking, but consistently good quality throughout. Individual director and writer creativity is secondary to maintaining a cohesive universe that people can get invested in.

DC Movies = Darker, grittier. Hit or miss quality -- ranging from really good to really bad and everything in between. Lots of director freedom to put their own spin on it, which can either be a good thing, or a very, very bad thing if you're a fan of the source material. Little to no universe consistency at all, and frequent reboots.

It's personal preference, but I'd rather have the cohesive universe over the rare gem of something interesting. The latter I'd rather see from an occasional one-off film than an entire franchise.

Watchmen?

I realize it's "simple." That was my point, actually. It's entirely too simple. There needs to be a bit of variety. Everyone knows the difference between the two universes, and they can easily point to it--both universes contain a ton of action--they just present it in a different "light," if you will. One is dark, the other light. But, they're both action. That's *still* limited to one movie genre. My point was to suggest that there can be many ways to tell a story--and there is plenty of source material to choose from to support that.

Watchmen is somewhere between Sin City and Sucker Punch. Zach Snyder is great at stylizing things (and slow motion/hard-hitting action), but I am not a big fan of his storytelling ability. Man of Steel just proved that further. I LOVED the casting for Superman, I liked that he spent a good deal of time to start out the movie on Krypton, and I thought the action was something the Superman universe needed (after 4 movies and a TV series of a Superman/Louis Lane romantic comedy)... But, the storytelling (and the acting on most people's parts) was a bit lackluster/rigid.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on March 16, 2015, 08:11:58 PM
But, the storytelling (and the acting on most people's parts) was a bit lackluster/rigid.

Don't get me started on the Man of Steel "plot". The How it Should Have Ended spoof for that one nailed it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on March 16, 2015, 08:22:58 PM
They are heavens forbid - ENTERTAINING!

I don't always want a message, a depressing look into someone else's misery or to be preached at for being rich, happy or good looking (none of which apply - except happy).

Sometimes I want to see the Hulk ragdoll Loki. Sometimes I want to see Captain America stand up for what is right. Sometimes i want to see a small grumpy raccoon shoot stuff.

Sometimes.


'Specially seeing Hulk ragdoll Loki!  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on March 16, 2015, 09:27:11 PM
Personally, I think any movie company should get writers/directors who are fans of the material that the movie is about. And who will not try to put their own interpretive spin on the story. I understand that there are limits to what a movie and portray compared to a comic book. However, that is not a good enough reason to make a movie called Starship Troopers and then totally disregard the story, which the movie is based on, in favor of your own. Joss Whedon did a very good job of keeping the characters, in the Avengers movie, in line with the characters in the Avengers comics.

I think that is partially the problem that DC movies have. The characters in the movie aren't the same as the characters in the comics.  Of course, with 52 billion DC universes out there, it's hard to keep up.

For the record, I despise the DC 52 universe. They totally ruined many of the characters just for the sake of political correctness and affirmative action.

I also have a beef with Marvel for doing similar things with their characters.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on March 16, 2015, 11:29:26 PM
Personally, I think any movie company should get writers/directors who are fans of the material that the movie is about. And who will not try to put their own interpretive spin on the story. I understand that there are limits to what a movie and portray compared to a comic book. However, that is not a good enough reason to make a movie called Starship Troopers and then totally disregard the story, which the movie is based on, in favor of your own. Joss Whedon did a very good job of keeping the characters, in the Avengers movie, in line with the characters in the Avengers comics.

I think that is partially the problem that DC movies have. The characters in the movie aren't the same as the characters in the comics.  Of course, with 52 billion DC universes out there, it's hard to keep up.

For the record, I despise the DC 52 universe. They totally ruined many of the characters just for the sake of political correctness and affirmative action.

I also have a beef with Marvel for doing similar things with their characters.

To be fair, from what I read and whatnot, the book starship troopers itself was, besides just more about the main characters life in the military, but the only battle was closer to a "Mary Tzu" victory, in that it had only like 1 casualty the entire war, which would have probably been boring on film.  I didn't read the book, but did read that the battle in the book itself was way to lopsided.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on March 17, 2015, 12:44:55 AM
To be fair, from what I read and whatnot, the book starship troopers itself was, besides just more about the main characters life in the military, but the only battle was closer to a "Mary Tzu" victory, in that it had only like 1 casualty the entire war, which would have probably been boring on film.  I didn't read the book, but did read that the battle in the book itself was way to lopsided.

I understand. it still doesn't invalidate the point that established characters (or stories) shouldn't be totally gutted and rearranged just to suit the whim of the writer and/or director. I also understand that most (if not all) of the Marvel movies have tweaked the characters and stories of the movies that have been (and will be) made. However, those tweaks, for the most part, haven't totally changed who the character is or what he's done, so that he, or his story, is unrecognizable.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 17, 2015, 01:52:52 AM
It's pretty simple, really.

Marvel Movies = Fun, good time, smiles from start to end with plenty of 'laugh out loud' moments and one-liners to break up the action. Nothing earth shattering or really thought-provoking, but consistently good quality throughout. Individual director and writer creativity is secondary to maintaining a cohesive universe that people can get invested in.

DC Movies = Darker, grittier. Hit or miss quality -- ranging from really good to really bad and everything in between. Lots of director freedom to put their own spin on it, which can either be a good thing, or a very, very bad thing if you're a fan of the source material. Little to no universe consistency at all, and frequent reboots.

It's personal preference, but I'd rather have the cohesive universe over the rare gem of something interesting. The latter I'd rather see from an occasional one-off film than an entire franchise.

I think a lot of people are overgeneralizing a bit when they talk about the "Marvel" and "DC" movies forgetting that we're talking mostly about a set of movies from a stretch of time of only about fifteen years.  Are the Marvel movies more "fun" and less "gritty?"  I'm not sure: the Marvel movies run a very wide range from Guardians of the Galaxy on one end to Winter Soldier on the other.  Meanwhile the DC movies tend to be associated most with Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy (primarily) and Man of Steel (secondarily) ignoring, say, Green Lantern (which, I'll beat everyone to it, most people want to ignore).  Frankly, unless you go back to the Burton/Schumacher Batmans and the Donner/Lester Superman movies, DC doesn't have enough cinema material I think to really characterize it yet.  Its basically Nolan + MoS, and even MoS has Nolan as a producer.  Marvel has the benefit of a wider range of directorial visions to date.

I think some of the comic book debates are leaking into the cinema debates.  It was always that Marvel was the more popcorn popular books and DC the more "serious" books in terms of story, but I don't think the movies reflect that.  Marvel has its popcorn Iron Man movies, but it also has a much more serious, almost Vertigo-like (by comparison) Captain America storylines.  It has its fantasy Thor movies and its space-adventure Guardians movie.  We'll see where Ant-Man and Inhumans (not to mention Dr. Strange) land, but I think for all that people sometimes complain about Marvel being "safe" movies they are wisely diversifying their slate.  I think eventually DC will do the same - or they'll be out of the game pretty quick.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 17, 2015, 02:12:38 AM
To be fair, from what I read and whatnot, the book starship troopers itself was, besides just more about the main characters life in the military, but the only battle was closer to a "Mary Tzu" victory, in that it had only like 1 casualty the entire war, which would have probably been boring on film.  I didn't read the book, but did read that the battle in the book itself was way to lopsided.

That's not my recollection.  Its been a while since I picked up that book, but the movie does superficially touch on the fact there's two major military encounters that are significant to the story: the first one where they get their butts kicked, and the second one where they attempt to capture the brain (in the novel they are just trying to capture important aliens, possibly including alien "royalty" comparable to insect queens).

The battle of Klendathu, the fight the movie opens on, is described in the book as being so incredibly one-sided - but against humanity - that Earth's ability to project military power is almost annihilated: until they can rebuild the main character finds himself part of a unit that is conducting guerrilla-like hit and run missions against the aliens as the only thing humanity can do after the disaster.  In fact, Rico is one of the very few survivors of that battle from his ship and unit.

its worth noting that Verhoeven did not set out to make a cinematic translation of Starship Troopers.  He was originally going to make a movie based on a totally unrelated script about space marines fighting an insect-like alien race when the superficial similarities between that script's aliens and the Starship Troopers aliens were pointed out to him.  He and his scriptwriter decided to license the Starship Troopers novel but Verhoeven admitted in interviews he couldn't even read it - he felt it was too jingoistic.  They tweaked the script to superficially line up characters and events, but Verhoeven put a distinctly anti-fascist spin on the story that essentially eliminates all but the most cursory similarities to the novel.  Basically, Verhoeven's Starship Troopers is a political satire in the same vein as Robocop is (in fact the original script pre-Starship Troopers was written by Edward Neumeier, who wrote the script for Robocop).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on March 17, 2015, 02:56:24 AM
That's not my recollection.  Its been a while since I picked up that book, but the movie does superficially touch on the fact there's two major military encounters that are significant to the story: the first one where they get their butts kicked, and the second one where they attempt to capture the brain (in the novel they are just trying to capture important aliens, possibly including alien "royalty" comparable to insect queens).

The battle of Klendathu, the fight the movie opens on, is described in the book as being so incredibly one-sided - but against humanity - that Earth's ability to project military power is almost annihilated: until they can rebuild the main character finds himself part of a unit that is conducting guerrilla-like hit and run missions against the aliens as the only thing humanity can do after the disaster.  In fact, Rico is one of the very few survivors of that battle from his ship and unit.

its worth noting that Verhoeven did not set out to make a cinematic translation of Starship Troopers.  He was originally going to make a movie based on a totally unrelated script about space marines fighting an insect-like alien race when the superficial similarities between that script's aliens and the Starship Troopers aliens were pointed out to him.  He and his scriptwriter decided to license the Starship Troopers novel but Verhoeven admitted in interviews he couldn't even read it - he felt it was too jingoistic.  They tweaked the script to superficially line up characters and events, but Verhoeven put a distinctly anti-fascist spin on the story that essentially eliminates all but the most cursory similarities to the novel.  Basically, Verhoeven's Starship Troopers is a political satire in the same vein as Robocop is (in fact the original script pre-Starship Troopers was written by Edward Neumeier, who wrote the script for Robocop).

Go figure, in the movie the humans are about as bad at warfare as it got in the battle of Klendathu, a whole rout happened after only a small number of casualties, they didn't use any air support ect.  It was made more for the humans to lose, granted the humans losing was fine and to again, it'd have been far less entertaining if they won with only a single casualty thanks to power armor.  It was one of the few cases that, odds are it was a smarter over in a way.  What I read of the book was a wikipedia article about it, and they did mention complaints focused on the jingoism and generally pro-fascist tendencies in it.

Speaking of Robocop, watched the 2014 movie today.  I was surprised at how well they did, surprisingly.  While they didn't do everything the same, that was a good thing to me, the story wasn't wholly a clone of the original, but they did capture the very funny parodied political satire the original had in a way.  You had the extremely corporate-bribed biased news media that'd do anything to get a story to the general greed and corruption of omnicorp.  I did read that reviews were mixed, and I can see why, the general fanboy trend is to dislike anything of any slight difference, but looking at the movie more objectively I felt it was pretty solid.

I did feel they missed some of the humor within omnicorp, but honestly I think it was more that the movie had to adapt to the times, as many jokes in the original robocop done today would probably have offended some people.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on March 17, 2015, 01:30:51 PM
I think a lot of people are overgeneralizing a bit when they talk about the "Marvel" and "DC" movies forgetting that we're talking mostly about a set of movies from a stretch of time of only about fifteen years.  Are the Marvel movies more "fun" and less "gritty?"  I'm not sure: the Marvel movies run a very wide range from Guardians of the Galaxy on one end to Winter Soldier on the other.  Meanwhile the DC movies tend to be associated most with Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy (primarily) and Man of Steel (secondarily) ignoring, say, Green Lantern (which, I'll beat everyone to it, most people want to ignore).  Frankly, unless you go back to the Burton/Schumacher Batmans and the Donner/Lester Superman movies, DC doesn't have enough cinema material I think to really characterize it yet.  Its basically Nolan + MoS, and even MoS has Nolan as a producer.  Marvel has the benefit of a wider range of directorial visions to date.

I think some of the comic book debates are leaking into the cinema debates.  It was always that Marvel was the more popcorn popular books and DC the more "serious" books in terms of story, but I don't think the movies reflect that.  Marvel has its popcorn Iron Man movies, but it also has a much more serious, almost Vertigo-like (by comparison) Captain America storylines.  It has its fantasy Thor movies and its space-adventure Guardians movie.  We'll see where Ant-Man and Inhumans (not to mention Dr. Strange) land, but I think for all that people sometimes complain about Marvel being "safe" movies they are wisely diversifying their slate.  I think eventually DC will do the same - or they'll be out of the game pretty quick.

I totally respect you, your intellect, and your opinion, but I'm going to have to disagree on the Marvel movie bit. I don't see a whole lot of difference between Iron Man and Captain America other than they have two different heroes attached to the project. They're both "epic action." The events that happen in each of them may be different, but they're both the same genre movie. Marvel studios themselves don't even argue that point.

Iron Man: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/paramount/ironman/
Captain America - Winter Soldier: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/marvel/captainamericathewintersoldier/

Under the details for each of them, it states specifically that the genre is "action and adventure."

They're both action movies.

Maybe I'm not being clear enough. I'm not stating that Marvel has no capability for creating different stories (although some may argue that point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g42r-ZlIRjI). I'm stating that the genre (action) is the same. Comic book stories aren't all action. The way *most* of the movies are made (DC is just as guilty as Marvel is), the "story" is just the vehicle to carry you from one action scene to another. In my opinion, better stories are ones that concentrate on personal conflict for longer, so you can better relate to the character before he/she does his/her "epic things." In most of the action comic book movies, not nearly enough time is spent on character introduction and development before "ACTION SCENE!!!" The Thor movies are especially guilty of this.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on March 17, 2015, 02:37:23 PM
Regarding comics themselves being sillier or not: I'm pretty sure any of DC's Silver Age comics would be pretty silly and non-serious, so saying DC's movies are like its comics is a bit odd... maybe in the last few decades, but it hasn't always been that way.

Regarding movies based on books: for the most part, adapting a book for a movie isn't all that great, but I will say that Minority Report was done really well. I think they took the basic premise (precogs finger the police chief for a future murder) and took it in a really great, 21st century spin on the story. Yeah, they made the ending a bit happier than any Phillip K Dick story has a right to be, but for the most part, it was a really great adaptation - arguably because it didn't stick straight to the story, but only took the premise and went from there.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on March 17, 2015, 04:21:01 PM
To be fair, from what I read and whatnot, the book starship troopers itself was, besides just more about the main characters life in the military, but the only battle was closer to a "Mary Tzu" victory, in that it had only like 1 casualty the entire war, which would have probably been boring on film.  I didn't read the book, but did read that the battle in the book itself was way to lopsided.

Starship Troopers was a story about people. Robert Heinlein (one of my favorite authors) wrote a story that does not play well with the Hollywood crowd. It was about self sacrifice and duty and in a similar vein to Superman - the people making the film hate the All American hero story. The values on some people have changed and not for the better and that is why movies like American Sniper don't win awards very often. In the box office they are huge hits but the crowd in Hollywood can't stand them. While a non-christian the Christian Bale Moses story was the warped and twisted Hollywood version on an Old Testament tale.

I am seriously thinking of trying something myself after playing with UnReal 4 engine - an animated film instead of a game. It has all the tools you should need to tell some of the stories I would like to see.

Red Nails - Robert E. Howard (a Conan story)
Legend - David Gemmel (a Druss story)

A few others that would be awesome to frame right out of the book.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on March 17, 2015, 04:47:45 PM
Quote from: Ironwolf link=topic=10284.msg176039#msg176039
I am seriously thinking of trying something myself after playing with UnReal 4 engine

As someone who goes way back with some of Epic's founders, and who beta tested Unreal when it was a first person shooter game with a single-player campaign, I feel compelled to point out that the 'R' is never capitalized. Even when they started licensing the engine separately, the trade name was always 'Unreal', or simply the stylized 'U'.

Sorry for the tangent, I've just seen it a lot lately and it's really starting to grate. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on March 17, 2015, 04:50:34 PM
Regarding comics themselves being sillier or not: I'm pretty sure any of DC's Silver Age comics would be pretty silly and non-serious, so saying DC's movies are like its comics is a bit odd... maybe in the last few decades, but it hasn't always been that way.

Regarding movies based on books: for the most part, adapting a book for a movie isn't all that great, but I will say that Minority Report was done really well. I think they took the basic premise (precogs finger the police chief for a future murder) and took it in a really great, 21st century spin on the story. Yeah, they made the ending a bit happier than any Phillip K Dick story has a right to be, but for the most part, it was a really great adaptation - arguably because it didn't stick straight to the story, but only took the premise and went from there.

If the end of minority report was happy i read it completely wrong.
Spoiler for Hidden:
I assumed he was still in the prison as the happy ending would be exactly the ideal he'd dream of if he were in one of those machines.

As to the marvel/dc movie thing - i'm not a huge fan of any of them (apart from watchmen which i thought was well done even sans squid, especially the extended version that had the comic book scenes included.) but i'd like if there was a bit of mix between the lighthearted style and the nolan style. if you could take nolan's grittier filming style, take out the freshman nietzsche and add in some of marvel's sarcastic quips that'd just about work for me. my guess would be the next films would be more mixed, as age of ultron looks to be quite a bit more dark and no one's going to be able to take bats v supes completely seriously with affleck as bats. I'm just hoping for crazy one-armed green arrow in that one.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on March 17, 2015, 04:54:11 PM
Starship Troopers was a story about people. Robert Heinlein (one of my favorite authors) wrote a story that does not play well with the Hollywood crowd. It was about self sacrifice and duty and in a similar vein to Superman - the people making the film hate the All American hero story. The values on some people have changed and not for the better and that is why movies like American Sniper don't win awards very often. In the box office they are huge hits but the crowd in Hollywood can't stand them. While a non-christian the Christian Bale Moses story was the warped and twisted Hollywood version on an Old Testament tale.

I am seriously thinking of trying something myself after playing with UnReal 4 engine - an animated film instead of a game. It has all the tools you should need to tell some of the stories I would like to see.

Red Nails - Robert E. Howard (a Conan story)
Legend - David Gemmel (a Druss story)

A few others that would be awesome to frame right out of the book.

Aye, thats kind of what I was trying to say about starship troopers as a book.  In that it wasn't about the battle with the arachnids but more about Rico's life in a military state.

Eh, you should try playing spec ops the line, you'll end up hating those kinds of stories to :)(actually more end up liking stories that aren't that even more, as it's anything but an "America saves the day" story).  I don't think though it's that people hate the "All american hero" stories but more they don't like stories where it's very very clear who'll win long beforehand.  They tend to be very predictable, and often tend to ignore the kinds of problems with the character and most frequently in movies lack character development, hastily leading towards the dreaded "mary sue" story.

Ahem

Non-american badguy shows up, does something bad without any remorse to show how bad the non-american badguy is.

American steps up to eventually challenge badguy, they may include some journey in there to prolong the story of american killing non-american badguys.  Non-amerian badguys also commit atrocities but never, ever the american good guy.

Non-american badguy henchmen can't hit the broad side of the barn(especially vs main hero).  Standard for other action movies to.

American hero finally has some struggle against badguy, but he comes out scott-free without any character development because he's the hero, and he'll win no trouble.

Mary sue stories are often the same.  And people are not generally jingoistic, only a small number tend to be anymore.

It's predictable.  And it's been deconstructed, see the movie Apocalypse now.  We saw it in video games to alot, leading to the creation of the game Spec Ops: The Line, specifically to deconstruct the many pro-war, jingoistic modern military shooters out there such as modern COD, Battlefield and Medal of honor games.

As for values changing, actually it's more people are aware of the kind of atrocities that can actually happen in war and that realistically they are always committed by both sides.  Even people in the military know that.  People aren't all "Go to war so we can kill non americans!" like the guy below.

Such as this jerk I saw on dateline murder mystery.  The guy was a generic "I want to be a hero by killing someone that isn't perfectly matched to my views of the world".  He believed everyone not only has to follow his religion in the country but they had to be the same race as him and was generally a psychopath.  He joined the military but was dishonorably discharged for pretending to be a ranger, and had very, very unhealthy hero fantasies of killing non-americans as a ranger.

When a few young adults decided to play a prank on his property for his especially aggressive sign, he went out, chased them while shooting at them.  He killed one of them, then tried to make it look like they shot at him.  Course, his lack of ballistics knowledge lead to a critical mistake, considering he'd never killed anyone in the military or saw any actual combat it would have been easy for him to make such a stupid mistake as simply dropping the casings in the same spot, not to mention there was no gun anywhere in the possession of the people he shot at.

He was charged with murder and sentenced to 50 years to life.  Because he wanted to feel like something he wasn't nore will ever be; a hero.

Most people are not like that.  Because most people are realistic about war and the nasty things that can happen in it.  And they know that people are people regardless of their nationality.  We may have been that in the 1950s in the McCarthy days, but people have gotten smarter.

Human beings of the 21st century.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on March 17, 2015, 04:59:19 PM
(apart from watchmen which i thought was well done even sans squid, especially the extended version that had the comic book scenes included.)

I was impressed by how faithful it was to the source material, with the notable large exception at the end (well, and the omission of the Tales of the Black Freighter, but I admit I never really liked that anyway). There were several scenes that looked straight out of the graphic novel, evoking specific panels even.

I would have still preferred the squid, as an unknown alien threat makes for a better rally cry than a force that the governments all know they have zero chance against IMO. But other than that I thought it was an excellent adaptation.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on March 17, 2015, 05:22:43 PM
I've read Starship Troopers many times, as I have most of Heinlein's books and I think that people look at Starship Troopers and see way more than there is in there regarding the author. After all , this is the same guy that wrote Stranger in a Strange Land. He was complex writer who could write from many points of view but never forgot that he was a product of his time. He believed in personal integrity, self sufficiency to the point of mania and honor. You see these traits in almost every book he wrote, his 50's juveniles all the way through The Cat Who Walked Through walls and Job: A comedy of Justice.

Starship Troopers is not about a military state. It is in fact a republic democracy with one huge difference, the only people who can vote or hold office are those who serve a term in the military. The theory is that those who are willing to risk their own lives for society have a better understanding of exactly what they are willing to do and that they understand what they are asking of the military. To me, this is a book, that has more in common with Plato's Republic than a jingoistic propaganda piece.

Many people die in the course of the book, but it might not seem that way because there is essentially only one character that matters to us, Rico. The other characters are for the most part fellow soldiers and soldiers die. You may miss them but the focus is on staying alive, helping the living and fighting the enemy. It focuses on life in the military, the way Heinlein thinks it should be, but is actually more interested in the philosophy of military service. There is discussion about exactly why does one person agree to be in harm's way for people who can't understand them and essentially think they are suckers? That is  until they need someone to defend them. It also discusses how loyalty in the unit works, chain of command and why soldiers sometimes obey orders they know are bad ones. All in all, people who dismiss it as mere jingoism probably think WWI was a little dustup in France.

Regarding the war, in the book, it is very clearly analogous to WWII, which Heinlein served in. There are other battles that are mentioned, but we only see the one Rico participates in. The War starts with a a sucker punch and is followed by Earth getting to it's feet, following initial missteps, eventually starts fighting, island by island...er, I mean planet by planet until the book ends right before the invasion of the home isl..planet of the bugs.

The movie had none of these qualities and was disappointing to me. Even as a satire of fascism it was a failure. Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game does a much better job of this, showing the consequences of this kind of war than this awful, awful movie does.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on March 17, 2015, 05:56:56 PM
I've read Starship Troopers many times, as I have most of Heinlein's books and I think that people look at Starship Troopers and see way more than there is in there regarding the author. After all , this is the same guy that wrote Stranger in a Strange Land. He was complex writer who could write from many points of view but never forgot that he was a product of his time. He believed in personal integrity, self sufficiency to the point of mania and honor. You see these traits in almost every book he wrote, his 50's juveniles all the way through The Cat Who Walked Through walls and Job: A comedy of Justice.

Starship Troopers is not about a military state. It is in fact a republic democracy with one huge difference, the only people who can vote or hold office are those who serve a term in the military. The theory is that those who are willing to risk their own lives for society have a better understanding of exactly what they are willing to do and that they understand what they are asking of the military. To me, this is a book, that has more in common with Plato's Republic than a jingoistic propaganda piece.

Many people die in the course of the book, but it might not seem that way because there is essentially only one character that matters to us, Rico. The other characters are for the most part fellow soldiers and soldiers die. You may miss them but the focus is on staying alive, helping the living and fighting the enemy. It focuses on life in the military, the way Heinlein thinks it should be, but is actually more interested in the philosophy of military service. There is discussion about exactly why does one person agree to be in harm's way for people who can't understand them and essentially think they are suckers? That is  until they need someone to defend them. It also discusses how loyalty in the unit works, chain of command and why soldiers sometimes obey orders they know are bad ones. All in all, people who dismiss it as mere jingoism probably think WWI was a little dustup in France.

Regarding the war, in the book, it is very clearly analogous to WWII, which Heinlein served in. There are other battles that are mentioned, but we only see the one Rico participates in. The War starts with a a sucker punch and is followed by Earth getting to it's feet, following initial missteps, eventually starts fighting, island by island...er, I mean planet by planet until the book ends right before the invasion of the home isl..planet of the bugs.

The movie had none of these qualities and was disappointing to me. Even as a satire of fascism it was a failure. Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game does a much better job of this, showing the consequences of this kind of war than this awful, awful movie does.

Ahh, I was hoping someone with a bit more knowledge of it would step in, thanks for clearing some things up.  A funny thing about books and stories, actually just any kind of story, is how things can change based on the eye of the beholder.  Make no mistake about me and war I'm not one who's a generic anti-war guy, more of a realist about it.  Soldiers go to war, things happen and their personality can change and whatnot.  Sometimes you end up with someone who is able to see things in perspective far more, sometimes you end up with an extreme case of "yeah I got to kill people who were different than me".  A favorite series I'd watched recently, down to one episode left I think, was Generation Kill.

The reason I like it?  Besides being based on a true story you also get to see how the war affects those fighting in it.  Some guys go in having an expectation to "get to kill arabs" and you end up seeing them change in ways you wouldn't expect, ending up more balanced individuals.  A couple are insane to the point of "why is this guy in the service?".  It shows a surprising amount of character development as the characters deal with the general nature of war; it's disgusting, messy and can be very confusing and mistakes happen, really bad ones to even.  Not necessarily the kinds that result in injury to the soldiers themselves but also the kinds that lead to our side committing atrocities of our own on accident.  And understand I'm not being anti-war so much as being the realist.  Try as anyone does crap can and does happen.  It's why the military doesn't like people like the guy I mentioned in my previous post.  It's why rules of war exist to try and prevent atrocities or minimize the chance of atrocities happening.

The same can be said about Spec Ops: The Line, granted it's a fictional story, and even surreal, but the focus of it's story is more a deconstruction of modern military shooters, and also focuses heavily on the character development that happens from the kinds of things they end up doing.  The delta squad goes from being stable-minded individuals to broken war criminals that are no better if not worst than the damned 33rd(who are also war criminals themselves) they ended up fighting.

The way you described the book Starship Troopers honestly makes me want to consider reading it. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on March 17, 2015, 06:15:00 PM
I would highly recommend it.

He said it much better than I did. Starship Troopers is how I think government should be handled. If you have not been in the position to put even your existence on the line - you lack a comprehension of what your peoples lives mean. It is not pro-military or even pro-America because Rico is Brazilian (Pan American) and yet the story shows both the hatred of the silliness of the military at times and the glory and courage of the common soldier rising up to meet the threat.

It could have been the US vs Japan/Germany/Italy or humans vs bugs. Same conflict and the story is done a terrible disservice by the movie. They made the honor and duty part a mockery.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on March 17, 2015, 06:21:55 PM
They made the honor and duty part a mockery.

Now see, I didn't take that away from the movie.  In fact, what I took away from it, having NOT read the book, was that though Rico entered the military for the wrong reasons initially, honour and duty very much became the overriding reason for his remaining.  There was an element of revenge there of course, but by the end of the movie, you could clearly see that honour and duty were the glue holding the squad together.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on March 17, 2015, 06:37:42 PM
Now see, I didn't take that away from the movie.  In fact, what I took away from it, having NOT read the book, was that though Rico entered the military for the wrong reasons initially, honour and duty very much became the overriding reason for his remaining.  There was an element of revenge there of course, but by the end of the movie, you could clearly see that honour and duty were the glue holding the squad together.

As a former service-man, I agree with your opinion  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on March 17, 2015, 06:41:34 PM
Now see, I didn't take that away from the movie.  In fact, what I took away from it, having NOT read the book, was that though Rico entered the military for the wrong reasons initially, honour and duty very much became the overriding reason for his remaining.  There was an element of revenge there of course, but by the end of the movie, you could clearly see that honour and duty were the glue holding the squad together.

Thats kind of what I saw in it as well looking back on it.  Rico had gone from a guy who was joining just because a girl was going in to a man who had other reasons for serving, from honor and duty, and friendship keeping him in.  Revenge served more to keep him in after he'd seen his parents get hit by a meteor sent by the rachnids, he had no reason to go home(had nothing to return to), and at the same time had no where else to go but back to the military at the same time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on March 17, 2015, 06:46:50 PM
I know that I waited nearly 40 years for Hollywood special effects to reach the point where a "Starship Troopers" movie was viable, and when they did, they made a parody of it instead.  I can't even say how much I hated that movie, sigh.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on March 17, 2015, 06:48:17 PM
Now see, I didn't take that away from the movie.  In fact, what I took away from it, having NOT read the book, was that though Rico entered the military for the wrong reasons initially, honour and duty very much became the overriding reason for his remaining.  There was an element of revenge there of course, but by the end of the movie, you could clearly see that honour and duty were the glue holding the squad together.

In the book he joined, really to impress a girl he stood no chance with and then because his father opposed it so much, out of pure stubbornness. You can see this as he cannot articulate why this is important to him or why he is doing it. But eventually, as you suggest, he discovered what it really meant to him and the others who served and he also understands why he stuck it out.

One thing that many who call it fascist or jingoist seem to miss is that it is entirely voluntary to join. There is no draft, and if you wash out, that's it. The one thing you can't do is desert. Even in the war, they only accepted volunteers. Of course, after Rio got hit, they had plenty of volunteers.

One of the interesting aspects of the book is that it is told in first person, but as a recollection. So while there are events that first person Rico doesn't quite get at the time, recollected Rico does and helps explain what we are seeing.

There is a bit where he is given administrative punishment, which is actually much worse than it sounds. Basically, it's lashes, at a post. But recollected Rico explains that it's kind of a compliment. Usually anybody who does something bad enough for that kind of punishment washes out and can never re-enlist. administrative punishment is basically saying you fucked up bad, but we stil think you would make a good soldier.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on March 17, 2015, 07:06:37 PM
In the book he joined, really to impress a girl he stood no chance with and then because his father opposed it so much, out of pure stubbornness. You can see this as he cannot articulate why this is important to him or why he is doing it. But eventually, as you suggest, he discovered what it really meant to him and the others who served and he also understands why he stuck it out.

One thing that many who call it fascist or jingoist seem to miss is that it is entirely voluntary to join. There is no draft, and if you wash out, that's it. The one thing you can't do is desert. Even in the war, they only accepted volunteers. Of course, after Rio got hit, they had plenty of volunteers.

One of the interesting aspects of the book is that it is told in first person, but as a recollection. So while there are events that first person Rico doesn't quite get at the time, recollected Rico does and helps explain what we are seeing.

There is a bit where he is given administrative punishment, which is actually much worse than it sounds. Basically, it's lashes, at a post. But recollected Rico explains that it's kind of a compliment. Usually anybody who does something bad enough for that kind of punishment washes out and can never re-enlist. administrative punishment is basically saying you pancaked up bad, but we stil think you would make a good soldier.

I get a feeling alot of people forget what Jingoism is to though, it's generally a view that not only should a nation be the best(nationalist) but also use military force on everything, everywhere, regardless of the situation.  It's a very extreme form of nationalism in that brute force is the be-all-end-all, when in reality it isn't and misuse of military force can cause far more problems than solve problems just as anything can.  A good example of a jingoistic story can be found in the game Jungle Strike.  You fly an extremely tough "Super Apache" and your destroying targets.....of a drug lords operation.  It also gives said drug lords operation the ability to build nukes as the justification as well as giving them an army.  It's not all that well written or anything.  The only reason it's forgivable, is because it was the early 1990s, game stories back then pretty much existed for the whole justification of the games objectives and rpgs were still in their early stages.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on March 17, 2015, 07:11:55 PM
As I noted, it is subjective, but one cannot argue the fact that standards for movies/TV/music/entertainment have gone way, way down in the past 20 years.

I think it was harder to choose a winner (at least to me) between movies/songs years ago than today. Today's entertainment lacks intellect.

Here's an example:

Pink Floyd's lyrics:

"And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking. Racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older. Shorter of breath and one day closer to death. Every year is getting shorter; never seem to find the time. Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines."

Lyrics from a recent Rihanna song:

He want that cake, cake,
Cake, cake, cake, cake, cake
Cake, cake, cake, cake, cake
Cake, cake, cake

Ooh baby, I like it
You so excited
Don't try to hide it
I'mma make you my bitch
Cake, cake, cake, cake
Cake, cake, cake, cake
Cake, cake, cake, cake
Cake, cake, cake

She sells millions of records, so it must mean it's good, right? >.>

The same could be applied to today's movies.

As someone who has acquired a Film degree, it's painfully obvious to see certain tropes repeated over and over in (especially big budget) movies today.

Again, personal opinion.

Here's the lyrics of a song from Bill Withers (one that reached #3 on the Billboard Top 100), back in 1971:

"I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know"  (The song this lyric comes from also features non-standard English and a double negative in its title)

And here's the lyrics of a #1 song from 1976, by no less a personage than Sir Paul McCartney:

"I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you"

Some artists like Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin went out of their way to make their lyrics flowery and poetic, so comparing their most poetic songs to the least-creative songwriters of today is just not a fair comparison.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on March 17, 2015, 07:23:51 PM
I get a feeling alot of people forget what Jingoism is to though, it's generally a view that not only should a nation be the best(nationalist) but also use military force on everything, everywhere, regardless of the situation.  It's a very extreme form of nationalism in that brute force is the be-all-end-all, when in reality it isn't and misuse of military force can cause far more problems than solve problems just as anything can.

Yes, I think that's fair. Really, I feel this stems from a very profound ignorance of history in general. Jingoism is a hyper aggressive from of diplomacy that tends to see military force as a hammer and all the problems as nails. Gunboat diplomacy is a very clear form of this. The consequences of this form of diplomacy are long lasting. Many of the problems that US policy and diplomacy runs into in Latin America are direct result of the way we used our military power in the last century.

I think it is fitting and proper to be proud of your country but it should always be tempered by an understanding that you are not alone on this planet and trampling over others to preserve profit margins for large corporations can lead to huge problems. Plenty of examples of this historical and recent.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on March 17, 2015, 07:33:39 PM
I've read Starship Troopers many times, as I have most of Heinlein's books and I think that people look at Starship Troopers and see way more than there is in there regarding the author. After all , this is the same guy that wrote Stranger in a Strange Land. He was complex writer who could write from many points of view but never forgot that he was a product of his time. He believed in personal integrity, self sufficiency to the point of mania and honor. You see these traits in almost every book he wrote, his 50's juveniles all the way through The Cat Who Walked Through walls and Job: A comedy of Justice.

Starship Troopers is not about a military state. It is in fact a republic democracy with one huge difference, the only people who can vote or hold office are those who serve a term in the military. The theory is that those who are willing to risk their own lives for society have a better understanding of exactly what they are willing to do and that they understand what they are asking of the military. To me, this is a book, that has more in common with Plato's Republic than a jingoistic propaganda piece.

Many people die in the course of the book, but it might not seem that way because there is essentially only one character that matters to us, Rico. The other characters are for the most part fellow soldiers and soldiers die. You may miss them but the focus is on staying alive, helping the living and fighting the enemy. It focuses on life in the military, the way Heinlein thinks it should be, but is actually more interested in the philosophy of military service. There is discussion about exactly why does one person agree to be in harm's way for people who can't understand them and essentially think they are suckers? That is  until they need someone to defend them. It also discusses how loyalty in the unit works, chain of command and why soldiers sometimes obey orders they know are bad ones. All in all, people who dismiss it as mere jingoism probably think WWI was a little dustup in France.

Regarding the war, in the book, it is very clearly analogous to WWII, which Heinlein served in. There are other battles that are mentioned, but we only see the one Rico participates in. The War starts with a a sucker punch and is followed by Earth getting to it's feet, following initial missteps, eventually starts fighting, island by island...er, I mean planet by planet until the book ends right before the invasion of the home isl..planet of the bugs.

The movie had none of these qualities and was disappointing to me. Even as a satire of fascism it was a failure. Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game does a much better job of this, showing the consequences of this kind of war than this awful, awful movie does.

you can follow his writing style and see how it changes depending on which wife he was currently married to. none of the styles were bad, just distinctly different. look at the publishing date and consider his views on women in the military and what they were at the time. He was an interesting person.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on March 17, 2015, 07:37:30 PM
Very often in the military it starts as serving your country and ends up you are serving to help protect your friends who are there with you.

If you read the book American Sniper it really does come through that way - the movie Lone Survivor also shows it. You start out with one intention in the end you find what is really important - your family often your military family becomes closer than your blood one.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on March 17, 2015, 07:37:36 PM
I would highly recommend it.

He said it much better than I did. Starship Troopers is how I think government should be handled. If you have not been in the position to put even your existence on the line - you lack a comprehension of what your peoples lives mean. It is not pro-military or even pro-America because Rico is Brazilian (Pan American) and yet the story shows both the hatred of the silliness of the military at times and the glory and courage of the common soldier rising up to meet the threat.

It could have been the US vs Japan/Germany/Italy or humans vs bugs. Same conflict and the story is done a terrible disservice by the movie. They made the honor and duty part a mockery.
I liked how it wasnt just serving in the military. they would find something for you to do if you were willing to work, not just combat arms. I wouldnt mind seeing universal service(zero deferments) covering everything form military to building new roads and schools/hospitals etc. use it to ensure that everyone has job skills of some type.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on March 17, 2015, 07:41:05 PM
You see - I want it to be on a volunteer basis. Not everyone can be a soldier but I would like to see a volunteer based National Service for all the other things - however the government adds 50 layers of difficulty on top of how a private company does.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on March 17, 2015, 07:47:09 PM
I was impressed by how faithful it was to the source material, with the notable large exception at the end (well, and the omission of the Tales of the Black Freighter, but I admit I never really liked that anyway). There were several scenes that looked straight out of the graphic novel, evoking specific panels even.

I would have still preferred the squid, as an unknown alien threat makes for a better rally cry than a force that the governments all know they have zero chance against IMO. But other than that I thought it was an excellent adaptation.

That was the only sore spot for me, it really should have been the giant psionic alien squid!

Otherwise I really loved the movie and how loyal it was to the rest of the story.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 17, 2015, 07:53:22 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on March 17, 2015, 07:59:43 PM
Very often in the military it starts as serving your country and ends up you are serving to help protect your friends who are there with you.

If you read the book American Sniper it really does come through that way - the movie Lone Survivor also shows it. You start out with one intention in the end you find what is really important - your family often your military family becomes closer than your blood one.

It's the feeling I had when I was in the Navy. Yes the mission on hand is important, but what is more important is that my brothers and sister in arm will come back home to hug their family. That's why we were taught to always be logical and become emotionless when preforming our duty. Emotions lead to confusion, confusion leads to misinterpreted orders, misinterpreted orders leads to lives lost, lives lost leads to mission failure, and mission failure is not an option.

Even after the military, I feel that just because I'm finish serving, doesn't mean I stop serving. Serving doesn't mean fighting, but doing something for the greater good.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 17, 2015, 08:01:07 PM
Now see, I didn't take that away from the movie.  In fact, what I took away from it, having NOT read the book, was that though Rico entered the military for the wrong reasons initially, honour and duty very much became the overriding reason for his remaining.  There was an element of revenge there of course, but by the end of the movie, you could clearly see that honour and duty were the glue holding the squad together.

I don't think that was Verhoeven's direct intent.  I think Verhoeven was trying to depict a young and impressionable person being essentially brain washed into toeing the line.  I'm not saying that as someone who actually thinks that about the military, but based on the numerous statements Verhoeven made about the movie, like the fact that the hilarious incompetence of the military depicted was deliberate, that the fascist symbolism was explicitly part of the story, and his overall extremely anti-war sentiments.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on March 17, 2015, 08:11:45 PM
Here's the lyrics of a song from Bill Withers (one that reached #3 on the Billboard Top 100), back in 1971:

"I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know"  (The song this lyric comes from also features non-standard English and a double negative in its title)

And here's the lyrics of a #1 song from 1976, by no less a personage than Sir Paul McCartney:

"I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you"

Some artists like Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin went out of their way to make their lyrics flowery and poetic, so comparing their most poetic songs to the least-creative songwriters of today is just not a fair comparison.

Oh, what would I give for a single person in the world to understand even ONE point I ever made...

Whatever, I'm used to it by now. I could name at least one hundred other artists of today that are exactly the same. What did the "I know" end up as? Was there a point to it? Did he actually know something? Oh yeah... It was that when she was away, life wasn't worth living or that the house wasn't a "home" when she was gone. Sir Paul McCartney's message was to convey a love to someone.

Rihanna's song? Ummm... Is there a deep meaning behind wanting the p***y?

Sorry, but you can't convince me that standards haven't dropped.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wammo on March 17, 2015, 08:21:17 PM
I find myself longing for the game today. Such a sad thing to consider I may never log my defender back on again. Let hope continue to ring anew...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 17, 2015, 08:29:34 PM
That was the only sore spot for me, it really should have been the giant psionic alien squid!

Otherwise I really loved the movie and how loyal it was to the rest of the story.

I was fine with losing the squid, and I was overall happy with the translation to cinema, but even though I enjoyed the movie overall I did have two sore spots, the first kinda forgivable and the second less so.

The more forgivable one was the movie's too-literal translation of book four (Dr. Manhattan's soliloquy).  The print version of book four is a very experimental book in an experimental series where they try to convey Manhattan's non-linear sense of time by taking normal comic book conventions and twisting them in various ways, in particular by weaving the print narration and the visual artwork in a way that constantly keeps the reader slightly off balance: mentally leading the reader to one place while depicting something else.  The many definitions of the word "hands" for example, being played with.  The movie can't directly translate that, but it doesn't replace it with anything else.  There's no cinematic version of this attempt.  And its not like its impossible: Christopher Nolan is famous for playing with the cinematic medium to convey feelings central to the story: Memento being the most obvious example of him playing with how the viewer sees the story to convey a sense of what the protagonist's life is like.  Basically, Watchmen the movie loses a moment of printed genius and doesn't even try to replace it with cinematic genius.  Disappointing, but forgivable.

The less forgivable one is one I think most people don't care about, but I do.  Its a little thing, but its extremely critical to the story.  In the books, after the climax when Veidt reveals his plan to the others and they realize they have to keep his secret (except for Rorschach, of course), they don't leave as they do in the movie.  They just sort of surrender.  The book has a denouement where Manhattan confronts Veidt and tells him he's leaving.  Veidt, in his one moment of vulnerability, asks Manhattan "I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end."  And Manhattan tells him "In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."  And then he vanishes, and its there that Veidt has that hollow look he has in the movie.  In the movie, the line is just a throwaway that is delivered by Laurie to Dreiberg where he is the one that says it all worked out in the end and Laurie says words to the effect of "I think Jon would say nothing ever ends."

The scene that is dropped is critical, because its the whole point of the story, or at least Veidt's story.  The movie makes it seem like the whole point is that Veidt's plan will be undone by Rorschach's journal, but that misses the actual point of the story in the book.  The point in the book was that it doesn't *matter* if Rorschach's journal undoes Veidt's plan.  Its that for all of Veidt's intelligence, he doesn't realize that nothing is forever.  He is as his namesake Ozymandias trying to build a foundation that will last forever, when nothing does.  Veidt is smug and arrogant to everyone else around him, but at the end of the story he shows just the slightest bit of doubt, and he seeks absolution from the one being in the universe he thinks can give it to him: Manhattan.  Manhattan's rebuke stings, because in effect Veidt has been judged by the closest thing to God he believes in.  Perhaps that's when he fully appreciates that there will never be a time when he or anyone else can look back and judge whether the scales worked out.  There is no ultimate high horse upon which to judge morally questionable acts like Veidt's.

Veidt believed his intelligence allowed him a superior perspective to everyone else: that he could kill millions because he had the intelligence to know he was saving billions.  That's how he lives with himself committing mass murder.  But if there's no way to be sure how many people will ultimately die over the centuries because of his act, and how many will be saved, if its all ultimately dust in the desert, then there's really no intellectual justification at all.

Without this scene, the hammer doesn't truly fall on Veidt, and Dreiberg's words to him as they leave don't - can't - replace Manhattan's words, because Adrian doesn't consider Dreiberg to be morally superior.  The movie ends with Adrian believing himself to be a martyr.  In the books, he ends as a man whose faith has been shattered.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on March 17, 2015, 08:42:32 PM
you can follow his writing style and see how it changes depending on which wife he was currently married to. none of the styles were bad, just distinctly different. look at the publishing date and consider his views on women in the military and what they were at the time. He was an interesting person.

I agree, he has very distinct changes in his writing style. I didn't care for much of the stuff that he wrote in the vein of See No Evil, Lazarus Long and the like. I thought he started getting back on track for me with Moon is a Harsh Mistress and then really got weird with Number of the Beast and his attempt at a metaverse that encompassed all fictives ever.

That said, Job and the Cat That Walked Through Walls were very good although still odd in many ways. They were enjoyable and from a personal perspective I am glad he finished with something I could really enjoy.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 17, 2015, 08:49:43 PM
Sorry, but you can't convince me that standards haven't dropped.

I think technology has changed things in a way where its a lot easier - for good and bad - for more people to reach larger audiences.  As a result, you do get more homogenization of music, and in fact all art.  But I don't think that's a question of standards being dropped, or the overall quality of art dropping.  I think there is about the same number of good artists today as yesterday.  I think its easier for lesser artists to become more popular, and for more of them to find success.  But I don't think that's necessarily bad.  Those same forces also make it a lot easier for smaller reach artists who a century ago would have never found an audience to find one.  Its just that you have to look harder to find them, away from the center of mainstream distribution channels.

Also: tropes are not good or bad.  Take Inception, which I call Christoper Nolan's love letter to story telling.  Its loaded with tropes of course, but then again its meta-story is about the nature of storytelling: it *has* to have tropes by necessity.  Sure, there are probably too many save the cat scripts out there, but its only recently we've started critiquing things in terms of tropes and structure.  We admire Sergio Leone and call his use of tropes and structure "style."  One can only wonder if he came along today if the spaghetti western would be seen as the creation of a genre, or the tired repetition of a man out of ideas.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on March 17, 2015, 08:58:02 PM
I think technology has changed things in a way where its a lot easier - for good and bad - for more people to reach larger audiences.  As a result, you do get more homogenization of music, and in fact all art.  But I don't think that's a question of standards being dropped, or the overall quality of art dropping.  I think there is about the same number of good artists today as yesterday.  I think its easier for lesser artists to become more popular, and for more of them to find success.  But I don't think that's necessarily bad.  Those same forces also make it a lot easier for smaller reach artists who a century ago would have never found an audience to find one.  Its just that you have to look harder to find them, away from the center of mainstream distribution channels.


I have had this discussion many times with my music and artist friends and they pretty much concur with your view. They would add that the plethora of mediocre music and art tend to drown out the better pieces that are being done.  Basically, very hard to hear one voice when everyone is shouting.

You can easily see this when you look at art and popular culture from the 20's and 30's. Only the cream is still well known. There many recordings and books and films that were made that no one has seen or heard for years. Occasionally, someone will "discover" a work that really is amazing that we have forgotten about, but believe me,  as much as I love early Jazz there is a ton of stuff that sounds exactly the same or with so little difference it doesn't matter.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on March 17, 2015, 08:58:16 PM
I think it is fitting and proper to be proud of your country but it should always be tempered by an understanding that you are not alone on this planet and trampling over others to preserve profit margins for large corporations can lead to huge problems. Plenty of examples of this historical and recent.

That is exactly my view of things, in that one can be a patriot without going so far as to believe "might makes right".  To me patriotism in america isn't just believing in the country just because you were born here or believing ideals it was founded on and whatnot but both.  The country was founded as a republic eventually to both keep the colonies united but also allow for everything to eventually develop towards the society we are familiar with today.

Using the military "As a hammer" and treating every problem "As a nail" kind of makes us little different than everyone the forefathers were leaving behind so long ago and, to me, it steps us backwards.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on March 17, 2015, 09:44:50 PM
Oh, what would I give for a single person in the world to understand even ONE point I ever made...

Whatever, I'm used to it by now. I could name at least one hundred other artists of today that are exactly the same. What did the "I know" end up as? Was there a point to it? Did he actually know something? Oh yeah... It was that when she was away, life wasn't worth living or that the house wasn't a "home" when she was gone. Sir Paul McCartney's message was to convey a love to someone.

Rihanna's song? Ummm... Is there a deep meaning behind wanting the p***y?

Sorry, but you can't convince me that standards haven't dropped.

I could go back further.

"Tutti Frutti Oh Ruti Tutti Frutti Oh Ruti Tutti Frutti Oh Ruti Tutti Frutti Oh Ruti" - and that song IS about sex, nothing more.

I'm not saying the Rhianna song is good, but claiming that music has been going downhill has been sort of a thing for as long as there's been music.  And the argument that one modern song has nonsensical lyrics or little meaning completely ignores the point that plenty of songs have always had nonsensical lyrics or little meaning.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 17, 2015, 10:03:12 PM
I could go back further.

"Tutti Frutti Oh Ruti Tutti Frutti Oh Ruti Tutti Frutti Oh Ruti Tutti Frutti Oh Ruti" - and that song IS about sex, nothing more.

You should have stopped off in the 70s and grabbed "A horse with no name."

There were plants and birds and rocks and things...

Indeed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on March 17, 2015, 10:26:34 PM
You should have stopped off in the 70s and grabbed "A horse with no name."

There were plants and birds and rocks and things...

Indeed.

I'd rather listen to 70's music than 99% of the absolute dross that gets released these days...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on March 17, 2015, 10:32:24 PM
You should have stopped off in the 70s and grabbed "A horse with no name."

There were plants and birds and rocks and things...

Indeed.

I really hope nobody is going to complain about Purple People Eater.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on March 17, 2015, 10:39:01 PM
I'd rather listen to 70's music than 99% of the absolute dross that gets released these days...

You missed out the "and get off my lawn"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on March 17, 2015, 11:00:13 PM
I'd rather listen to 70's music than 99% of the absolute dross that gets released these days...

60's and 70's is my favorite era of music.

Did we seriously have a page or three of discussion on Starship Troopers?  ???
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on March 17, 2015, 11:05:16 PM
Did we seriously have a page or three of discussion on Starship Troopers?  ???
Well my preferred version was done by RiffTrax Live! - it was hilarious.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on March 17, 2015, 11:31:52 PM

Did we seriously have a page or three of discussion on Starship Troopers?  ???

It was a pretty interesting discussion of movie vs source material and always good to talk about Heinlein. Besides, it beats the hell out of another round of "Why haven't we heard anything? DOOOOM! The global conspiracy is keeping things from us about CoH"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on March 17, 2015, 11:34:57 PM
Doom.

Now that was a fun game. :D

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 18, 2015, 12:06:29 AM
You missed out the "and get off my lawn"

I think that's implied by the use of the word "dross."

Also, I actually like The Horse With No Name, but that might be because my parents had the album and I can still hear the song play when the room gets quiet.  In general, for me thought-provoking entertainment is welcome but not mandatory: I mostly like my entertainment entertaining.  I'm more opposed to incompetently stupid than deliberately stupid.  Sharknado is deliberately stupid.  Superman III is incompetently stupid.

Of course, then there's transcendentally bad, like Leonard Part 6 (a movie so bad I find people rarely mention it among lists of worst movies ever, because hysterical blindness blocks all memory of the movie).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 18, 2015, 12:08:17 AM
Doom.

Now that was a fun game. :D

Not a very good movie, though.  Even with Hercules and Judge Dredd in it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on March 18, 2015, 12:16:12 AM

I can go even further back...

I went into the chandlers shop some candles for to buy,
I looked 'round the chandlers shop but no on did I spy
I was disappointed so some angry words I said
When I heard the sound of a (thump thump thump) up above my head

Traditional
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on March 18, 2015, 12:21:12 AM
Not a very good movie, though.  Even with Hercules and Judge Dredd in it.

I totally agree with you there.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 18, 2015, 03:07:59 AM
That is exactly my view of things, in that one can be a patriot without going so far as to believe "might makes right".  To me patriotism in america isn't just believing in the country just because you were born here or believing ideals it was founded on and whatnot but both.  The country was founded as a republic eventually to both keep the colonies united but also allow for everything to eventually develop towards the society we are familiar with today.

Using the military "As a hammer" and treating every problem "As a nail" kind of makes us little different than everyone the forefathers were leaving behind so long ago and, to me, it steps us backwards.
I can go even further back...

I went into the chandlers shop some candles for to buy,
I looked 'round the chandlers shop but no on did I spy
I was disappointed so some angry words I said
When I heard the sound of a (thump thump thump) up above my head

Traditional

Someone tangled the thread again.  Where did I leave those cable ties...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on March 18, 2015, 03:29:29 AM
lol
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on March 18, 2015, 04:38:38 AM
If the end of minority report was happy i read it completely wrong.

Your spoiler'd note is a theory I rather liked when I first heard it. I don't believe it to be the intent of the movie, though. But is a much more Dick ending.

(well, and the omission of the Tales of the Black Freighter, but I admit I never really liked that anyway)

It's my understanding that they released that as an animated feature with the DVD. I saw the theatrical release of Watchmen, because it was the thing to do... I still really think I should have just waited for the 5 hour long, full director's cut. I suspect it would have been better for me.

Sorry, but you can't convince me that standards haven't dropped.

In my Greek class in college, we translated an ancient Greek play that had a dick joke. Sure, it was making fun of Socrates, but still. There's high-falutin' stuff in every era, and low brow stuff in every era. Lucky for us, we have Roman graffiti preserved in Pompeii to prove it the universality of low standards.

Besides, there's plenty of brilliant lyrics in the modern day. Anyone can single out any single song that's crap, and say "things ain't what they used to be!" Or, as those arguing against you did, "things ain't any worse!"  Or as people above this post argue - lots of mediocre drowns out the good, sometimes - but there is indeed plenty of good to be found.

You can easily see this when you look at art and popular culture from the 20's and 30's. Only the cream is still well known.

Read what Neil Gaiman said about 50 Shades of Grey - in short: yes, it's popular now, but there are tons of books that were popular for a short time, that no one remembers now. The classics endure, and consistently sell forever - they aren't a flash in the pan like many huge money makers are.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on March 18, 2015, 05:14:59 AM


Of course, then there's transcendentally bad, like Leonard Part 6 (a movie so bad I find people rarely mention it among lists of worst movies ever, because hysterical blindness blocks all memory of the movie).

It's entirely possible that recent unfortunate revelations have made Leonard part 6 hilarious. I for one am not willing to subject myself to it to find out though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on March 18, 2015, 07:21:41 AM
You missed out the "and get off my lawn"

I don't need to tell people that; the machine gun emplacements are a big enough clue. ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on March 18, 2015, 07:23:45 AM
I mostly like my entertainment entertaining.  I'm more opposed to incompetently stupid than deliberately stupid.  Sharknado is deliberately stupid.  Superman III is incompetently stupid.

Of course, then there's transcendentally bad, like Leonard Part 6 (a movie so bad I find people rarely mention it among lists of worst movies ever, because hysterical blindness blocks all memory of the movie).

If you want to go for worse movies ever, I've got one.  Superman IV *shudder*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on March 18, 2015, 10:15:37 AM
I am pretty sure "Plan 9 From Outer Space" ranks up there.   Cardboard tombstones, Paper plates set on fire as flying saucers.  Not to forget the changes from night to day without any explanation.  An actor with a black cape covering his face for the duration of most of the movie because actor Bela Lugosi died six weeks after they starting filming.   Along with that horrible sci-fi Richard Thomas movie "Battle Beyond The Stars."  Flying, talking Snail ships,  Sybil Danning as a space valkyrie, John Saxon as a laughable villain who almost gets choked to death by an alien's transplanted arm.  I kid you not.  LOL

"But I was going to live forever. I want to live forever!"   *BOOOOOM*  as villains giant spaceship explodes
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on March 18, 2015, 12:12:24 PM
For a truly bad movie: Highlander 5 the Source......it was worse then Highlander 2.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on March 18, 2015, 05:34:08 PM
I would rank Battlefield Earth up there in the top something list of incompetent horibad movies.

The book was great, if a bit long at 1050 pages. the movie (only half of the book) was just... *shudders*

I feel sorry for the actors that were in the movie.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on March 18, 2015, 05:40:53 PM
I am pretty sure "Plan 9 From Outer Space" ranks up there.   Cardboard tombstones, Paper plates set on fire as flying saucers.  Not to forget the changes from night to day without any explanation.  An actor with a black cape covering his face for the duration of most of the movie because actor Bela Lugosi died six weeks after they starting filming.   Along with that horrible sci-fi Richard Thomas movie "Battle Beyond The Stars."  Flying, talking Snail ships,  Sybil Danning as a space valkyrie, John Saxon as a laughable villain who almost gets choked to death by an alien's transplanted arm.  I kid you not.  LOL

"But I was going to live forever. I want to live forever!"   *BOOOOOM*  as villains giant spaceship explodes

Hey! You leave Battle Beyond the Stars alone! I wuvs the flying boobie ship!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on March 18, 2015, 05:55:08 PM
I liked the film score to Battle Beyond The Stars. But we get to hear it many times in James Horner's other scores, many many times.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on March 18, 2015, 06:00:16 PM
I liked the film score to Battle Beyond The Stars. But we get to hear it many times in James Horner's other scores, many many times.

BOOBIESHIP!

(https://i.imgur.com/oIq5pgK.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on March 18, 2015, 06:03:39 PM
They are heavens forbid - ENTERTAINING!

I don't always want a message, a depressing look into someone else's misery or to be preached at for being rich, happy or good looking (none of which apply - except happy).

Sometimes I want to see the Hulk ragdoll Loki. Sometimes I want to see Captain America stand up for what is right. Sometimes i want to see a small grumpy raccoon shoot stuff.

Sometimes.

Sometimes a flower is just a flower.

I actually agree, a lot.  In a day where everything has to be deep and dramatic.  We seem to have lost touch of pure entertainment. Pacific Rim I feel was a great example of this type of movie. 

It was a movie about Giant Mech's fighting Giant Aliens.  Nuff said.

It's okay to just enjoy something for the sake of enjoyment.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on March 18, 2015, 07:45:12 PM
If you want to go for worse movies ever, I've got one.  Superman IV *shudder*

The JJ Abrams Star Trek movies are pretty terrible as well. Sure they are entertaining but the only thing star trek in them is the design appearance of the characters and ships.
All they are is action packed movies with no sustenance.

Here's to hoping he doesn't shit on starwars as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on March 18, 2015, 07:58:11 PM
The JJ Abrams Star Trek movies are pretty terrible as well. Sure they are entertaining but the only thing star trek in them is the design appearance of the characters and ships.
All they are is action packed movies with no sustenance.

Here's to hoping he doesn't pancake on starwars as well.

They were bad, yes; but they pale in comparison to the horror that is Superman IV.   That movie is Highlander 2 bad.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 18, 2015, 08:11:50 PM
Hey! You leave Battle Beyond the Stars alone! I wuvs the flying boobie ship!!

First law of the Varda is we don't talk about the Varda.  Wait...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on March 18, 2015, 08:27:43 PM
They were bad, yes; but they pale in comparison to the horror that is Superman IV.   That movie is Highlander 2 bad.

And yet.. Supergirl was WORSE..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 18, 2015, 08:32:00 PM
I am pretty sure "Plan 9 From Outer Space" ranks up there.   Cardboard tombstones, Paper plates set on fire as flying saucers.  Not to forget the changes from night to day without any explanation.  An actor with a black cape covering his face for the duration of most of the movie because actor Bela Lugosi died six weeks after they starting filming.

I put Plan 9 in a special category, specifically because of Ed Wood.  You could say Ed Wood was the worst writer/director of all time, and you'd probably be right.  However, its also true that in some ways Ed Wood could be described as one of the most successful guerrilla film makers of all time.  Bereft of talent, skill, and common sense, we all still know who he was because he loved making films at a time when doing so was several orders of magnitude harder than it is today.  Ed Wood's movies are like if Kevin Smith had done nothing but tried to make Mallrats and Dogma with nothing but his lunch money and pocket lint, over and over and over again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 18, 2015, 08:42:32 PM
The JJ Abrams Star Trek movies are pretty terrible as well. Sure they are entertaining but the only thing star trek in them is the design appearance of the characters and ships.
All they are is action packed movies with no sustenance.

I'm less critical of the Abrams Star Trek movies.  While I can understand the specific objection of the lack of "Star Trekishness" to them, that's a failing of a large number of Star Trek movies.  Of the previous movies, I'd say grading strictly on the "Trekishness" of the movie the first Abrams movie is similar to that of Wrath of Khan or Undiscovered Country, say.  Into Darkness is very low on that scale, but I would say its not lower than Star Trek Nemesis which most agree was not a good Trek movie but doesn't get nearly the same level of accusation that doesn't even belong among the others.

In many ways, the Abrams movies are a lot like First Contact.  Most agree its entertaining, but most would probably also agree its a major departure from the tone and even character of the TNG series its based on.  And yet the acceptance level of the two movies among a specific segment of the fans is almost completely opposite.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MegaWatt on March 18, 2015, 08:55:49 PM
I think the acceptance of First contact has to with it still being a main time-line movie and having a cast many knew and loved.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on March 18, 2015, 08:58:39 PM
I'm less critical of the Abrams Star Trek movies.  While I can understand the specific objection of the lack of "Star Trekishness" to them, that's a failing of a large number of Star Trek movies.  Of the previous movies, I'd say grading strictly on the "Trekishness" of the movie the first Abrams movie is similar to that of Wrath of Khan or Undiscovered Country, say.  Into Darkness is very low on that scale, but I would say its not lower than Star Trek Nemesis which most agree was not a good Trek movie but doesn't get nearly the same level of accusation that doesn't even belong among the others.

In many ways, the Abrams movies are a lot like First Contact.  Most agree its entertaining, but most would probably also agree its a major departure from the tone and even character of the TNG series its based on.  And yet the acceptance level of the two movies among a specific segment of the fans is almost completely opposite.

The problem with the first Abrams Trek movie is not that it wasn't Trek, it's because it was Aliens in a Brewery.

Still, at least we didn't see that f*****g engine room in the second one.  The only problem with THAT one is that they took probably the BEST of the original Trek movies, the one loved most by ALL the fans, and ruined it.

That was never going to go down well.  In fact... If someone had introduced me to Abrams right after I saw that movie, I'd have kicked him square in the balls.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on March 18, 2015, 09:11:26 PM
I guess I'm just too easy going. I watched all of Trek, starting in the 60's with the original series when it was first broadcast and I just didn't mind them at all.

The Trek Movies are their own thing and ought, I suppose, be considered separately from the TV series. The one that is most like the original series is probably my least favorite, Star Trek The Motion Picture.

But as far as Star Wars or even Star Trek movies go, fans will hate them because fans hate everything. Fortunately, they are such a small part of the movie going world that they have very little effect on the making of film or TV.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on March 18, 2015, 09:29:03 PM

Still, at least we didn't see that f*****g engine room in the second one.  The only problem with THAT one is that they took probably the BEST of the original Trek movies, the one loved most by ALL the fans, and ruined it.


Except, the second movie was NOT a remake of Wrath of Khan.  It was a remake of Space Seed. 

Don't worry, most people make that same mistake.

I thought the movie was entertaining enough, in a don't think about it, kinda way, until the new Spock called the old Spock on the super-duper interstellar skype to get the down-low on what this khan fella was all about... Stopped the movie dead in its tracks, that did.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on March 18, 2015, 09:48:07 PM
I thought the movie was entertaining enough, in a don't think about it, kinda way, until the new Spock called the old Spock on the super-duper interstellar skype to get the down-low on what this khan fella was all about... Stopped the movie dead in its tracks, that did.
Well, they had to work in some sort of reason for Leonard Nimoy's cameo.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on March 18, 2015, 10:02:33 PM
Except, the second movie was NOT a remake of Wrath of Khan.  It was a remake of Space Seed. 

Except for the dialogue that they ripped directly from Wrath of Khan. What pisses me off most is that it could have been a much better movie if it had been an original plot without trying so hard to shoehorn all the references where they didn't really fit.

I still like the HISHE take on it -- the Federation retires all starships because of interplanetary transporters, and refocuses on geriatric care because Khan's superblood cures death.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on March 18, 2015, 10:04:47 PM
The one that is most like the original series is probably my least favorite, Star Trek The Motion Picture.

Because it took what should have been a 45 minute episode and stretched it into a 2 hour movie? ;)

Just a rehash of Nomad anyway...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Urd on March 18, 2015, 10:10:01 PM
I saved my INF, after being dragged to the first JJ Abrams Star Trek there was no way I would waste my time and money on the 2nd.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on March 18, 2015, 10:38:17 PM
I would rank Battlefield Earth up there in the top something list of incompetent horibad movies.

The book was great, if a bit long at 1050 pages. the movie (only half of the book) was just... *shudders*

I feel sorry for the actors that were in the movie.
Tastes vary. It was about twenty years ago that i read the novel and i thought it mediocre at best. It was an uninspired pastiche of far better pulp scifi novels. This was based on having read quite a few scifi stories from the 1930s onward.

To be fair i should go back and reread it some day to make sure it's not because i've conflated it since then with some of the dozens of tepid novels Hubbard wrote postmortem and the vicious nuttery of the scam he started. It would also be a good excuse to reread EE 'Doc' Smith's Skylark series as well for comparison. (The Skylark series was a fun romp anyway inasmuch as it had a level of power creep that made Dragonball Z seem tame; it was somewhere closer to Gurrenn Lagann.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on March 18, 2015, 11:23:48 PM
And yet.. Supergirl was WORSE..

And supergirl has sadly gone steadily downhill since. Really pisses me off too because she's my favorite DC female... I won't get into how the new shittytwo has ruined her.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on March 18, 2015, 11:57:52 PM
Except, the second movie was NOT a remake of Wrath of Khan.  It was a remake of Space Seed. 

Don't worry, most people make that same mistake.

I thought the movie was entertaining enough, in a don't think about it, kinda way, until the new Spock called the old Spock on the super-duper interstellar skype to get the down-low on what this khan fella was all about... Stopped the movie dead in its tracks, that did.

Well we had to get one last appearance of Nimoy as Spock.

Plus I did get a chuckle out of how he reminded nu Spock that he promised to never give him information that could alter his destiny, that it is his path to walk.  Then says "That being said, Khan Noonian Singh is the most dangerous foe the Enterprise ever faced!"

Also his response when asked if they defeated Khan "At great cost, yes."

At great cost......talk about a massive understatement. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pengy on March 19, 2015, 12:07:30 AM
I would rank Battlefield Earth up there in the top something list of incompetent horibad movies.

The book was great, if a bit long at 1050 pages. the movie (only half of the book) was just... *shudders*

I feel sorry for the actors that were in the movie.
I thought the book was the worst juvenile novel masquerading as a pulp adventure I've ever bothered to finish. Seriously, the Psychlos' supremacy is based on no one in the entire Galaxy being smart enough to defeat their 60's-era Programmable Read-Only Memory "security" until the cavemen who hadn't heard of electricity a week previously decrypted it with their Yankee ingenuity beginner's luck? All sharks are lawyers, because why not? Careful avoidance of any concepts a 7th-grader might not be familiar with? Give me a break.

Saved me a couple hours of watching the movie, though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pengy on March 19, 2015, 12:11:56 AM
They were bad, yes; but they pale in comparison to the horror that is Superman IV.   That movie is Highlander 2 bad.
And yet.. Supergirl was WORSE..
I rank them Superman II, Superman, Supergirl, ..., Superman III, big space to fill in with movies you don't like, Superman IV.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on March 19, 2015, 01:18:42 AM
 There was no Superman IV...  (or at least I believe that I have a mental block that doesnt allow me to actually acknowledge it.. or that I actually watched i)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 19, 2015, 01:39:10 AM
Except, the second movie was NOT a remake of Wrath of Khan.  It was a remake of Space Seed. 
Except for the dialogue that they ripped directly from Wrath of Khan.

I consider Into Darkness to be more of a reference-ladened homage, and not really a remake of either the episode or the movie.  Its more of a remix of both, compressed into a single movie.

Quote
What pisses me off most is that it could have been a much better movie if it had been an original plot without trying so hard to shoehorn all the references where they didn't really fit.

I don't think its the references themselves that hurt the movie, its the fact that the Abrams versions of the characters are not strong enough on their own yet to carry that kind of story.  I personally liked the first one, but I will admit there wasn't enough character development in it to make audiences care enough about the characters to put them into Into Darkness.  I think Wrath of Khan works because Kirk, Spock, and the rest are veteran, almost grizzled characters that needed and could stand up to a threat like Khan.  But Khan really should have wiped the floor with what were by comparison the children those characters were.  Khan was as much about the past catching up with the original Kirk and crew in Wrath of Khan as anything, whereas a lot of that gravitas doesn't exist story-wise in Into Darkness.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 19, 2015, 01:47:50 AM
Plus I did get a chuckle out of how he reminded nu Spock that he promised to never give him information that could alter his destiny, that it is his path to walk.  Then says "That being said, Khan Noonian Singh is the most dangerous foe the Enterprise ever faced!"

Also his response when asked if they defeated Khan "At great cost, yes."

At great cost......talk about a massive understatement.

I'm reminded here about what I said about Watchmen earlier.  Defeating Khan was pretty costly, but if you think about it if Khan hadn't tried to kill Kirk, who knows where Kirk and crew would have been when the alien probe came to Earth.  It was very fortunate that Kirk was on his way to Earth when the probe arrived - close enough to intervene but not actually at Earth and disabled, also fortunate that Spock recognized the whale songs which might have been more probable given his recent re-education, and also fortunate they were traveling in a ship they could retrofit into an aquarium to transport the whales back to Earth.  Khan's story doesn't end with the death of Spock, or the destruction of the Enterprise; it never ends.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on March 19, 2015, 02:43:51 AM
I'm reminded here about what I said about Watchmen earlier.  Defeating Khan was pretty costly, but if you think about it if Khan hadn't tried to kill Kirk, who knows where Kirk and crew would have been when the alien probe came to Earth.  It was very fortunate that Kirk was on his way to Earth when the probe arrived - close enough to intervene but not actually at Earth and disabled, also fortunate that Spock recognized the whale songs which might have been more probable given his recent re-education, and also fortunate they were traveling in a ship they could retrofit into an aquarium to transport the whales back to Earth.  Khan's story doesn't end with the death of Spock, or the destruction of the Enterprise; it never ends.

"The trial never ends..."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on March 19, 2015, 03:35:25 AM
There was no Superman IV...  (or at least I believe that I have a mental block that doesnt allow me to actually acknowledge it.. or that I actually watched i)
It was the one about nuclear something something where he fights the guy that looks vaguely like the Sentry.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on March 19, 2015, 04:12:06 AM
I happened to like the JJ Abrams Star Trek Movies, at first I was peeved that they broke continuity, but I don't mind having a second parallel story line, as long as any future TV series (hopefully) remain loyal to the original continuity. . .
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on March 19, 2015, 04:58:11 AM
I happened to like the JJ Abrams Star Trek Movies, at first I was peeved that they broke continuity, but I don't mind having a second parallel story line, as long as any future TV series (hopefully) remain loyal to the original continuity. . .

I never saw into darkness - did they get rid of that pesky black hole in our solar system that wound up causing no problems whatsoever?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on March 19, 2015, 05:30:53 AM
I happened to like the JJ Abrams Star Trek Movies, at first I was peeved that they broke continuity, but I don't mind having a second parallel story line, as long as any future TV series (hopefully) remain loyal to the original continuity. . .

Sadly, continuity and canon are not to be found in Star Trek. By design. Gene was never constrained by it and never recognized it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on March 19, 2015, 05:40:02 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on March 19, 2015, 05:41:10 AM
Sadly, continuity and canon are not to be found in Star Trek. By design. Gene was never constrained by it and never recognized it.

DS9, voyager and TNG all ran in a combined universe. You can find references to throughout all three series of the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, the Dominion, and Gamma Quadrant, Quarks bar in TNG and ofcourse ds9 and the maquis terrorist group appearning near the end of tng. The Enterprise even docks with ds9 at some point in tng and Data meets Dr. Bashir in the Enterprises sickbay. In Voyager the Doctor is sent through the Hirogen communication array where he meets another EMH who talks about the federation trying to get the Romulans involved with a war against the Dominion. I know I probably missed quite a few... But they each continued a story either in background or something that started in either tng or ds9. At one point all three series were being filmed simultaneously which helped with this.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on March 19, 2015, 05:47:12 AM
I happened to like the JJ Abrams Star Trek Movies, at first I was peeved that they broke continuity, but I don't mind having a second parallel story line, as long as any future TV series (hopefully) remain loyal to the original continuity. . .

This unfortunately never happens. It's like they choose to dump the old universe for a newer one in most cases.

And it isn't just the continuity that annoys me... it's just these were more like Starwars movies than star trek movies. Startrek had alot of relaxed scenes, life lessons, morals, hard choices among other things. It had a good balance while these new movies are just shoot it, kill it and blow it up.

As for future tv series... There was talk about a new show taking place shortly after the events of ds9 and voyager but it's been years since that information was first leaked. It was like they canned everything after star trek enterprise was canceled and given it's very piss poor final episode killing of a certain main character with one of the most pointless deaths in all of star trek.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on March 19, 2015, 05:59:05 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on March 19, 2015, 06:07:00 AM
monitor and study Picard to make sure Locutus is indeed gone.  I would also have telepaths scan his mind for any traces of Borg technology secrets that the Federation could use.

I imagine section 31 did this or it would of been written into a future episode as some flashback.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on March 19, 2015, 06:49:27 AM
I imagine section 31 did this or it would of been written into a future episode as some flashback.
Ah, yes.  Section 31.  I've always regarded them as the true heroes of the Federation.  They're the ones who actually dare to get the behind-the-scenes dirty business done that is necessary for the Federation to continue to actually exist.  The Feds are just too over-civilized for their own good.  The innocent Eloi can only frolic freely while the Morlocks take care of the ugly necessities out of their sight.

The DS9 episode "In the Pale Moonlight" was truly the finest Star Trek episode ever - I'm honestly surprised Cisco wasn't issued an invitation to join Section 31 after that magnificent affair.  Even if actual S31 agents weren't involved, I believe it perfectly captures the necessity for its existence and methods.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on March 19, 2015, 07:12:39 AM
BOOBIESHIP!

(https://i.imgur.com/oIq5pgK.jpg)

These are the voyages of the Starship Boobie Prize.  Our continuing mission to engage in relations with alien life forms.  Search out new mind altering technologies and to boldly go where every man has gone before.  *cue James Horner music*

https://youtu.be/9mSgqMOKJho
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on March 19, 2015, 07:25:37 AM
Oh god... I won't be able to resist watching all of DS9 again much longer. I really want to see another star trek show like it someday. It had the perfect mix of everything all the other shows had and instead of the usual 2 part episodes it started the much needed long story arcs that were also present in voyager and enterprise. Along with the greatest space and ground war so far to hit the star trek universe.

STO sorta continues some of what happened with Cardassia and Bajor but I hope to one day see a series pick up where that left off.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on March 19, 2015, 11:34:49 AM
Oh god... I won't be able to resist watching all of DS9 again much longer. I really want to see another star trek show like it someday. It had the perfect mix of everything all the other shows had and instead of the usual 2 part episodes it started the much needed long story arcs that were also present in voyager and enterprise. Along with the greatest space and ground war so far to hit the star trek universe.

STO sorta continues some of what happened with Cardassia and Bajor but I hope to one day see a series pick up where that left off.

DS9 was a blatant ripoff of the Babylon 5 series concept.  B5 was MUCH better imho.
After TNG, never could get into any of the other series, Voyager was so-so, and enterprise was awful.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on March 19, 2015, 12:27:45 PM
Well, I'm glad I was able to stoke the fires of discussion... At least I'm good for something. It was getting to where one reply (or less) would be posted every day or so.

I always say "there are exceptions to everything." If you look hard enough, you can find an example of crap in every era. There's no denying that. I'm not a betting man, but I bet I could find far more examples in THIS era of songs speaking directly (and crudely) of sex than in ANY other era, bar none.

Because "she'd like to lick the lollipop" is about candy, right?

;)

Also, that ship looks more like the uterus to me than boobs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on March 19, 2015, 05:39:17 PM
Also, that ship looks more like the uterus to me than boobs.

In even lighting, sure; but in the movie the lighting is such that you tend to see the boobies more than the rest.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 19, 2015, 06:19:16 PM
I never saw into darkness - did they get rid of that pesky black hole in our solar system that wound up causing no problems whatsoever?

Since that particular black hole only had the mass of the Narata, it wouldn't cause any gravitational problems for the solar system unless you were right next to it.  And then a few hours later it would have detonated due to Hawking evaporation and disappeared.  In fact, we have to invoke a little bit of technobabble to even explain why it was a problem for the Enterprise; we have to presume that black holes created with red matter affect objects with residual warp fields dramatically different than normal objects.  Otherwise the Narata would have just been absorbed by the red matter black hole and then basically vanished without a visible trace, only to explode the next day in a burst of gamma rays.

In fact, the science-based version of that scene might have been even more interesting.  The Narata gets absorbed into the red matter black hole, getting crushed into a micro black hole.  Everyone relaxes.  Then Spock says something like "Captain, we have to leave immediately" but the warp core is damaged and they can't go to warp so they have to leave much more slowly on impulse power.  Because not all of the mass of the Narata fell into the black hole its Hawking lifetime is only minutes, not hours, and as the Enterprise pushes their impulse engines to the limit the Narata's black hole detonates behind them.  As it does, Scotty gets the warp engines back just long enough for them to jump to a safe distance.

Hmm.  If they did that, they would have been accused of stealing from Wrath of Khan.  Ironic.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 19, 2015, 06:21:20 PM
This unfortunately never happens. It's like they choose to dump the old universe for a newer one in most cases.
While it isn't a television series, Star Trek Online is I believe technically considered canonical as far as CBS is concerned, and presumes the original timeline continued on after Spock created the new one inhabited by the Abrams movies.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on March 19, 2015, 06:24:41 PM
While it isn't a television series, Star Trek Online is I believe technically considered canonical as far as CBS is concerned, and presumes the original timeline continued on after Spock created the new one inhabited by the Abrams movies.

Correct. STO is now the official holder of Trek Canonicity.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on March 19, 2015, 07:09:07 PM
Outside of the lightning in a bottle original series...

....DS9 is the true jewel in the Star Trek crown.  (Much as I liked STNG...)

Odo and the Founders rocked.  And Next Gen had nothing to touch the Dominion war.  A diverse cast of characters that bled 'chemistry...' a series which must have written itself.

I remember critics previewing the series saying, 'How many stories can you get out of a space station before you run dry?'

The answer was a master class in Sci-fi writing and series development.  A fitting encapsulation, fleshing out and exploration of all things 'Star Trek.'  'Canon'?  This is as close as it will get.

(As for the dirty under belly of Star Fleet?  Meh.  Right up there with the CIA.)

Azrael.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on March 19, 2015, 08:06:24 PM
Since that particular black hole only had the mass of the Narata, it wouldn't cause any gravitational problems for the solar system unless you were right next to it.  And then a few hours later it would have detonated due to Hawking evaporation and disappeared.  In fact, we have to invoke a little bit of technobabble to even explain why it was a problem for the Enterprise;

So rather than being unbelievably stupid it was maybe unbelievably smart? I'm not sure that changes my overall opinion of the movie but ok :D

I've never been a star trek guy but i gave the first new movie a go because everyone said it was more action than hard sci-fi. I do have to hand it to abrams - I disliked it for completely different reasons than other star trek stuff.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on March 19, 2015, 08:17:41 PM
Correct. STO is now the official holder of Trek Canonicity.

Yikes.  They just lost 18 people from Cryptic in layoffs the other day, including their community manager, and also Matt Miller who was laid off too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on March 19, 2015, 08:19:42 PM
Outside of the lightning in a bottle original series...

....DS9 is the true jewel in the Star Trek crown.  (Much as I liked STNG...)

Odo and the Founders rocked.  And Next Gen had nothing to touch the Dominion war.  A diverse cast of characters that bled 'chemistry...' a series which must have written itself.

I remember critics previewing the series saying, 'How many stories can you get out of a space station before you run dry?'

The answer was a master class in Sci-fi writing and series development.  A fitting encapsulation, fleshing out and exploration of all things 'Star Trek.'  'Canon'?  This is as close as it will get.

(As for the dirty under belly of Star Fleet?  Meh.  Right up there with the CIA.)

Azrael.

Yep. It had several episodes that were actual great scifi writing. I hadn't seen that since the original series. Too bad it ended rather poorly, imo.

Personal favorite was the episode where they get the Romulans on the "good" side in the dominion war.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on March 19, 2015, 09:26:26 PM
Yikes.  They just lost 18 people from Cryptic in layoffs the other day, including their community manager, and also Matt Miller who was laid off too.

I wonder if there's a certain holding company for a certain game that might look to hire Matt to work on their revived game...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on March 19, 2015, 10:37:04 PM
I wonder if there's a certain holding company for a certain game that might look to hire Matt to work on their revived game...

From my point of view that would not be a bad thing. . .
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on March 19, 2015, 11:47:29 PM
Yikes.  They just lost 18 people from Cryptic in layoffs the other day, including their community manager, and also Matt Miller who was laid off too.

If something like that is all that remained to sufficiently prove their ability to do what they say they can do, then hiring Matt could not happen quickly enough!  Of course, they could already be past that point for all we know, but since we don't know much....oh you see where I am going with this!  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on March 20, 2015, 12:32:51 AM
If something like that is all that remained to sufficiently prove their ability to do what they say they can do, then hiring Matt could not happen quickly enough!  Of course, they could already be past that point for all we know, but since we don't know much....oh you see where I am going with this!  ;)
What? Are you saying that there might be an NDA in place making it so that we have little to no information to go on so we can make various unsubstantiated claims that bear no (or very little) resemblance to the truth? Or, more likely, cause us to go off on tangents totally unrelated to the original post of the thread?  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on March 20, 2015, 01:08:40 AM
What? Are you saying that there might be an NDA in place making it so that we have little to no information to go on so we can make various unsubstantiated claims that bear no (or very little) resemblance to the truth? Or, more likely, cause us to go off on tangents totally unrelated to the original post of the thread?  :P

NSA...

No Such Agreement  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on March 20, 2015, 02:00:01 AM
NSA...

No Such Agreement  ;)
Yesterday upon the stair,
I saw a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I think he's from the NSA.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on March 20, 2015, 03:53:58 AM
While it isn't a television series, Star Trek Online is I believe technically considered canonical as far as CBS is concerned, and presumes the original timeline continued on after Spock created the new one inhabited by the Abrams movies.

Now comes the question: when the next Trek movie comes out, will they say that Spock Prime died on New Vulcan, or will they say that he used the Guardian of Forever to return to his proper timeline?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on March 20, 2015, 03:56:06 AM
I wonder if there's a certain holding company for a certain game that might look to hire Matt to work on their revived game...

yes but as I recall the initial effort to save the game before shutdown was derailed in part by a "personality conflict", they never said who the problem person or persons were, so until the ink is dry and the game up and running it may be best to keep former Paragon personnel out of the picture.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on March 20, 2015, 04:09:45 AM
Now comes the question: when the next Trek movie comes out, will they say that Spock Prime died on New Vulcan, or will they say that he used the Guardian of Forever to return to his proper timeline?

How about saying nothing? Just let him fade to history. . .
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on March 20, 2015, 04:28:46 AM
Outside of the lightning in a bottle original series...

....DS9 is the true jewel in the Star Trek crown.  (Much as I liked STNG...)

Odo and the Founders rocked.  And Next Gen had nothing to touch the Dominion war.  A diverse cast of characters that bled 'chemistry...' a series which must have written itself.

I remember critics previewing the series saying, 'How many stories can you get out of a space station before you run dry?'

The answer was a master class in Sci-fi writing and series development.  A fitting encapsulation, fleshing out and exploration of all things 'Star Trek.'  'Canon'?  This is as close as it will get.

(As for the dirty under belly of Star Fleet?  Meh.  Right up there with the CIA.)

Azrael.

We all serve the founders here!
The funny thing is most people don't watch ds9 long enough to know that the show does contain many many episodes that don't take place on the space station.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on March 20, 2015, 06:46:26 AM
If something like that is all that remained to sufficiently prove their ability to do what they say they can do, then hiring Matt could not happen quickly enough!  Of course, they could already be past that point for all we know, but since we don't know much....oh you see where I am going with this!  ;)

If the rumours I heard at the time are true, and I don't know if they are or not, but if they are, they must absolutely NOT hire Matt until any deal is signed, sealed and delivered!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on March 20, 2015, 12:16:51 PM
If the rumours I heard at the time are true, and I don't know if they are or not, but if they are, they must absolutely NOT hire Matt until any deal is signed, sealed and delivered!

Aye.  Be shrewd.  Get the deal done.

Azrael.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on March 20, 2015, 03:12:50 PM
Aye.  Be shrewd.  Get the deal done.

Azrael.

Whichever way gets it done the fastest!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on March 20, 2015, 05:06:07 PM
If the rumours I heard at the time are true, and I don't know if they are or not, but if they are, they must absolutely NOT hire Matt until any deal is signed, sealed and delivered!

I don't know which exact people NCSoft had issues with that worked with Paragon - but there were a few. I agree, let sleeping dogs lie and get it done with the current crew whoever they may be. Then after you own it hire whoever you want to.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on March 20, 2015, 05:18:29 PM
I don't see anyone hiring on any devs formerly from Paragon Studios, unless they're willing to volunteer their help which I seriously doubt.  The i23 CoX zombie rez is a server image only, without the tools that would be needed to update or patch it, and I'd imagine a now-10+ year old game (that will never be updated besides) isn't exactly going to be raking in millions a year; its crew is likely going to have volunteer or near-volunteer pay status.

In fact, the idea for APR mainly came about because the original CoX can never be continued or added to, and may eventually lose all compatibility with modern OSs and hardware.  And as APR, much like City of Titans, is a completely volunteer crew and is likely to stay that way til darned near launch, I don't see anyone from Paragon Studios being able to be paid (much less anywhere near the money they got back at Paragon) to work on it.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 20, 2015, 05:30:34 PM
Now comes the question: when the next Trek movie comes out, will they say that Spock Prime died on New Vulcan, or will they say that he used the Guardian of Forever to return to his proper timeline?

I don't think its going to be difficult to figure out how to handle the death of an actor playing a character that would have been something like a hundred sixty years old.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on March 20, 2015, 05:34:31 PM
I don't see anyone hiring on any devs formerly from Paragon Studios, unless they're willing to volunteer their help which I seriously doubt.  The i23 CoX zombie rez is a server image only, without the tools that would be needed to update or patch it, and I'd imagine a now-10+ year old game (that will never be updated besides) isn't exactly going to be raking in millions a year; its crew is likely going to have volunteer or near-volunteer pay status.

In fact, the idea for APR mainly came about because the original CoX can never be continued or added to, and may eventually lose all compatibility with modern OSs and hardware.  And as APR, much like City of Titans, is a completely volunteer crew and is likely to stay that way til darned near launch, I don't see anyone from Paragon Studios being able to be paid (much less anywhere near the money they got back at Paragon) to work on it.

Indeed. However, it cannot be denied that someone like Posi would be -very- useful in getting that image running again...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on March 20, 2015, 06:32:39 PM
Indeed. However, it cannot be denied that someone like Posi would be -very- useful in getting that image running again...

I like that take on it, but realistically...what are the odds?  As was mentioned, the guy would likely have to do it for the love of the game, and the elation of the players.  So, unless he has a lot of free time, and a lucrative day job, I don't have much hope.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on March 20, 2015, 07:48:12 PM
I somewhat disagree - if you had a central Dev controlling things and you were using volunteers to help with the work you could do some things.

You could approach a college and offer to have their students to program an actual game finishing say Issue 24 or writing the tools and things needed to expand the server image. It is all just code. What has been done before can be done again and in fact improved upon. I don't know the costs of running the reopened game - nor how they expect to pay for it all.  If they could afford a lead Dev to oversee volunteers - that might be a great opportunity.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on March 20, 2015, 08:36:04 PM
I somewhat disagree - if you had a central Dev controlling things and you were using volunteers to help with the work you could do some things.

You could approach a college and offer to have their students to program an actual game finishing say Issue 24 or writing the tools and things needed to expand the server image. It is all just code. What has been done before can be done again and in fact improved upon. I don't know the costs of running the reopened game - nor how they expect to pay for it all.  If they could afford a lead Dev to oversee volunteers - that might be a great opportunity.

I was speaking specifically about Matt Miller, who I am sure at this point in his life would need to be able to make a living first, and if he had time/opportunity, could contribute to something like this.  That is what I thought would be pretty long odds on happening.  However, if they can assemble an able crew from hungry young programmers, just chomping at the bit to prove what they can do, more power to them!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on March 20, 2015, 08:53:57 PM
Now comes the question: when the next Trek movie comes out, will they say that Spock Prime died on New Vulcan, or will they say that he used the Guardian of Forever to return to his proper timeline?
Unlikely... He would not leave without fixing the timeline... I think I can smell USS Relativity in our future... Let be honest this whole debacle is right up their ally.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on March 20, 2015, 08:59:42 PM
We all serve the founders here!
The funny thing is most people don't watch ds9 long enough to know that the show does contain many many episodes that don't take place on the space station.
Heck there is episodes where you don't even see the station. The Dominion war was AWESOME. TNG and TOS were SO slow. Hence why my favorite series was voyager, DS9 and Enterprise. In that order. I actually fell asleep during TOS and TNG they got so dull at times. Haters can hate away but I don't see how you could tell me TOS and TNG were more exiting than the other 3. Voyager and Enterprise in particular had the best balance of exploration, action and character development...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on March 21, 2015, 01:27:44 PM
I was speaking specifically about Matt Miller, who I am sure at this point in his life would need to be able to make a living first, and if he had time/opportunity, could contribute to something like this.  That is what I thought would be pretty long odds on happening.  However, if they can assemble an able crew from hungry young programmers, just chomping at the bit to prove what they can do, more power to them!

I agree... but going down the path of possibilities and regardless of all the "no's" if there was a kickstarter "to finish Issue 24 with Positron" after the IP purchase I would sign up in a heartbeat.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dr. Bad Guy on March 21, 2015, 01:42:02 PM
If there was a kickstarter "to finish Issue 24 with Positron" after the IP purchase I would sign up in a heartbeat.

Seconded.
All in favor?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on March 21, 2015, 01:51:59 PM
Don't forget - if the game can show a profit, then there may be room to hire a Dev.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: artbunker on March 21, 2015, 02:53:08 PM
Outside of the lightning in a bottle original series...

....DS9 is the true jewel in the Star Trek crown.  (Much as I liked STNG...)

Odo and the Founders rocked.  And Next Gen had nothing to touch the Dominion war.  A diverse cast of characters that bled 'chemistry...' a series which must have written itself.

I remember critics previewing the series saying, 'How many stories can you get out of a space station before you run dry?'

The answer was a master class in Sci-fi writing and series development.  A fitting encapsulation, fleshing out and exploration of all things 'Star Trek.'  'Canon'?  This is as close as it will get.

(As for the dirty under belly of Star Fleet?  Meh.  Right up there with the CIA.)

Azrael.

Though I like Babylon 5 better, I was only ever disapointed in one episode of DS9. It was the last episode. I felt it was very rushed and just thrown together. Otherwise it was an excelent series
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on March 21, 2015, 03:25:20 PM
Don't forget - if the game can show a profit, then there may be room to hire a Dev.

I can guarantee that the day this thing comes back online, I will be contributing to their bottom line! 

Here in this forum, I think everyone else can be counted on likewise, but we were pretty much a given, and we won't be enough to ensure profitability.  I am not sure what kind of publicity they are planning, especially when they would need to spend those advertising dollars before they have made a dime off of the game, but they have to get the word out as far, and wide as possible to attract a large enough player base to give themselves a chance. 

The upside is that, this day and age with advent of Twitter, Facebook, etc., you can get a lot of free advertising if you work them right. Perhaps that is the stepping stone they need to utilize to get the initial player base established, so they can then afford to do some paid advertising to increase it further.

Just musing about stuff like this makes me want to play so badly!

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on March 21, 2015, 05:29:31 PM
Don't forget - if the game can show a profit, then there may be room to hire a Dev.

Just not Jack Emmert
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on March 21, 2015, 08:02:19 PM
I can guarantee that the day this thing comes back online, I will be contributing to their bottom line! 

Here in this forum, I think everyone else can be counted on likewise, but we were pretty much a given, and we won't be enough to ensure profitability.  I am not sure what kind of publicity they are planning, especially when they would need to spend those advertising dollars before they have made a dime off of the game, but they have to get the word out as far, and wide as possible to attract a large enough player base to give themselves a chance. 

The upside is that, this day and age with advent of Twitter, Facebook, etc., you can get a lot of free advertising if you work them right. Perhaps that is the stepping stone they need to utilize to get the initial player base established, so they can then afford to do some paid advertising to increase it further.

Just musing about stuff like this makes me want to play so badly!

I'm betting that an announcement of CoX's resurrection would be news significant enough to get a lot of free advertising on various game-related websites.  Plus a lot of us are going to tell every single person we know that's interested in gaming.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on March 21, 2015, 08:42:09 PM
I'm betting that an announcement of CoX's resurrection would be news significant enough to get a lot of free advertising on various game-related websites.  Plus a lot of us are going to tell every single person we know that's interested in gaming.

I agree that the resurrection of City of Heroes should make a newsworthy event on the MMORPG news sites.  That should get people interested in playing the game that never played it before and it would help alert the veteran players that do not monitor this site for news. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on March 21, 2015, 10:49:31 PM
I agree that the resurrection of City of Heroes should make a newsworthy event on the MMORPG news sites.  That should get people interested in playing the game that never played it before and it would help alert the veteran players that do not monitor this site for news.

Probably true. My concern about new players is that they will have to deal with something returning players already know.  That being, the state of the in-game graphics, which are admittedly....a bit behind the times.  Especially when compared to a lot of what is out there.  Let's face it, for some that is the end all be all of their gaming experience.  If it ain't pretty enough, it's a non-starter. 

Those of us that love the game, love it because of the things it does that still stand out as unique in all the MMORPG world.  We don't care that the graphics are not Unreal 4 level (yet).  The youngsters might take one look at those non articulated hands and run screaming! ;-)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on March 21, 2015, 10:54:59 PM
Probably true. My concern about new players is that they will have to deal with something returning players already know.  That being, the state of the in-game graphics, which are admittedly....a bit behind the times.  Especially when compared to a lot of what is out there.  Let's face it, for some that is the end all be all of their gaming experience.  If it ain't pretty enough, it's a non-starter. 

Those of us that love the game, love it because of the things it does that still stand out as unique in all the MMORPG world.  We don't care that the graphics are not Unreal 4 level (yet).  The youngsters might take one look at those non articulated hands and run screaming! ;-)

Realistically, this is probably what will happen.  It's not gonna see any meaningful draw of new players.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on March 21, 2015, 11:00:00 PM
Tastes vary. It was about twenty years ago that i read the novel and i thought it mediocre at best. It was an uninspired pastiche of far better pulp scifi novels. This was based on having read quite a few scifi stories from the 1930s onward.

To be fair i should go back and reread it some day to make sure it's not because i've conflated it since then with some of the dozens of tepid novels Hubbard wrote postmortem and the vicious nuttery of the scam he started.

No need. I can confirm that Battlefield Earth is a mediocre movie based on a mediocre book.

Regarding Star Trek: One of the writers didn't want to use Khan in Into Darkness, but was convinced to do so. So that's interesting.

There was apparently an pitch for an animated show several centuries in the future, with a bit of a darker tone. I'll see if I can find the article(s) about it.

I wonder if there's a certain holding company for a certain game that might look to hire Matt to work on their revived game...
From my point of view that would not be a bad thing. . .

From mine it would. Based on his column and the direction of CoH, I think his views and mine on what makes an MMO fun are pretty different.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on March 22, 2015, 03:29:11 AM
Probably true. My concern about new players is that they will have to deal with something returning players already know.  That being, the state of the in-game graphics, which are admittedly....a bit behind the times.  Especially when compared to a lot of what is out there.  Let's face it, for some that is the end all be all of their gaming experience.  If it ain't pretty enough, it's a non-starter. 

Those of us that love the game, love it because of the things it does that still stand out as unique in all the MMORPG world.  We don't care that the graphics are not Unreal 4 level (yet).  The youngsters might take one look at those non articulated hands and run screaming! ;-)

While the backgrounds and buildings may look a bit behind the times, the characters and powers still look fine.  While great graphics do help, the fun factor is what keeps a game going.

Showed my friends kids the original Wolfenstein 3D and they were appalled at the graphics, yet once they started playing it they started to enjoy it.   Then I installed Duke Nukem 3D onto their PC and they had a blast.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on March 22, 2015, 04:31:46 AM
While the backgrounds and buildings may look a bit behind the times, the characters and powers still look fine.  While great graphics do help, the fun factor is what keeps a game going.

Showed my friends kids the original Wolfenstein 3D and they were appalled at the graphics, yet once they started playing it they started to enjoy it.   Then I installed Duke Nukem 3D onto their PC and they had a blast.

When total biscuit says that the earlier shooters were especially fun, he wasn't joking.  The overall cleverness of them just never gets old compared to so many modern games.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on March 22, 2015, 05:02:22 AM
When total biscuit says that the earlier shooters were especially fun, he wasn't joking.  The overall cleverness of them just never gets old compared to so many modern games.

Yeah, I'll take many of the classics over some of the junk that has been made in recent years.  What was funny is that his kids scoffed at the classic arcade games of yesteryear so I challenged them to a classic of my choice.

Secretly made sure the speakers and subwoofer were at maximum volume, then activated an emulator of SINISTAR.  Knocked their socks off when Sinistar started speaking......
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on March 22, 2015, 05:22:38 PM
You will get no argument from me about the quality of older games.  I have an account at Good Old Games (GoG.com), and have over a dozen of the old LucasArts games.  Some of them can't do any better than 640x480 resolution, but they are made to work flawlessly on modern operating systems, and they still play great!  For anywhere between 5 and 10 dollars (US), they are cheap to own as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on March 22, 2015, 06:57:34 PM
Just not Jack Emmert

I wouldn't worry about that. Jack loves ideas and new shiny things. He would wish it well from a distance at best (much like many of the in-game avatar toting developers).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on March 22, 2015, 07:13:07 PM
You will get no argument from me about the quality of older games.  I have an account at Good Old Games (GoG.com), and have over a dozen of the old LucasArts games.  Some of them can't do any better than 640x480 resolution, but they are made to work flawlessly on modern operating systems, and they still play great!  For anywhere between 5 and 10 dollars (US), they are cheap to own as well.

Most of them run in Scummvm or Dosbox. If you own them and like to tinker, you can get those for free and play that way.

Duke Nukem 3D is pretty freaking awesome. The last time I played it there was a mod that used your graphic card to help emulate the 3d better. It didn't make it true 3D but it did stop the textures from pixelating quite so much.

If you never played it, I would also recommend Blood. Very good game.

If you like adventure, one of the best I ever played was LOOM. It's short, but so good, that I still play it occasionally.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: rebel 1812 on March 22, 2015, 07:51:21 PM
The orginal blood was entertaining due to the horror references.  The sequels were bland by comparison.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on March 22, 2015, 08:06:46 PM
I wouldn't worry about that. Jack loves ideas and new shiny things. He would wish it well from a distance at best (much like many of the in-game avatar toting developers).
don't forget after launch he would blame the gamers for the failure of the game. (hinthint champions online.) Then would start deving on a new game no one asked for.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on March 22, 2015, 08:45:23 PM
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games

bunch of free dos games running off a browser based dosbox iyi
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on March 22, 2015, 08:54:34 PM
I wouldn't worry about that. Jack loves ideas and new shiny things. He would wish it well from a distance at best (much like many of the in-game avatar toting developers).


He's an alitist. Always moving on. :D

Honestly, I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find that most of the COX devs lack anything like the passion we had for the game and would have little interest to coming back to it.


Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: artbunker on March 22, 2015, 09:22:45 PM

He's an alitist. Always moving on. :D

Honestly, I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find that most of the COX devs lack anything like the passion we had for the game and would have little interest to coming back to it.

I think some might come back and play the game and we might now even know it. They spent hours and hours developing their game . I would say they even have more passion that we do. I bet the first day the game comes back or even Revival they will be there admiring the legacy they created.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on March 22, 2015, 09:36:26 PM
I'm hoping we hear something on the 27th April  ;) Whether it be yes we have the game purchased or talks are still on going, even if it is bad news I'd hope to hear something on this day.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on March 22, 2015, 09:51:00 PM
I'm hoping we hear something on the 27th April  ;) Whether it be yes we have the game purchased or talks are still on going, even if it is bad news I'd hope to hear something on this day.

What's so special about that day in particular? Your birthday or something?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on March 22, 2015, 10:14:40 PM
What's so special about that day in particular? Your birthday or something?

It was the day the game launched officially.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on March 23, 2015, 12:09:51 AM
The game launched on the 28th.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on March 23, 2015, 01:15:36 AM
It's not a crazy thought.  If they were looking for a date with some impact beyond the return of the game, doing it on the anniversary of its original launch has some marketing appeal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on March 23, 2015, 01:35:29 AM
I'm betting that an announcement of CoX's resurrection would be news significant enough to get a lot of free advertising on various game-related websites.  Plus a lot of us are going to tell every single person we know that's interested in gaming.

I already told everyone I work with. That their going to play City of Heroes and if they don't. I'm going to make their life a living hell. :P

I think the best advertisement is what my friend did to get me to play. He had me watch him play (He knew I was a farmer, so I saw high level content), once he saw I was interested. He handed me my own copy he bought. Said try it, you have nothing to lose.

That's what got me hooked, imagining all these different power combinations and how they'd work in a farming environment. Then as I got better, I'd ask myself, can a elec/storm defender farm? I'd level one up and try.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on March 23, 2015, 01:53:59 AM
I already told everyone I work with. That their going to play City of Heroes and if they don't. I'm going to make their life a living hell. :P

I think the best advertisement is what my friend did to get me to play. He had me watch him play (He knew I was a farmer, so I saw high level content), once he saw I was interested. He handed me my own copy he bought. Said try it, you have nothing to lose.

That's what got me hooked, imagining all these different power combinations and how they'd work in a farming environment. Then as I got better, I'd ask myself, can a elec/storm defender farm? I'd level one up and try.

A friend of mine got me started.  He'd been playing since the early days, and I was over at his place just after I6 was released, so he had me roll up a character on his account and give it a whirl.  Got up to level 7 or so, and I was hooked.  Bought my own copy soon after and spent most of the next several years playing.  I took a couple of breaks in there, but nothing else held my attention with anything like the same potency.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on March 23, 2015, 03:51:43 AM
The game launched on the 28th.

Someone should tell wikipedia then because they say the 27th.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Heroes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Heroes)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on March 23, 2015, 04:03:34 AM
Someone should tell wikipedia then because they say the 27th.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Heroes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Heroes)

They might be saying that because of 'midnight release' or early access stuff. But the official launch was the 28th.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on March 23, 2015, 04:36:14 AM
When the game finally comes back my jaw will drop in amazement and will keep dropping until it ends up in china and I'll go nuts from too much happiness. 
Please be sure I end up in Mother Mayhems hospital and care.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on March 23, 2015, 09:34:28 AM
They might be saying that because of 'midnight release' or early access stuff. But the official launch was the 28th.

Another good thing they would have going for them to make an annoucement on this date if it was good news, is that the A:AoU is released on the 23rd April so the news would hit within the first week of release, when most attention is about Superheroes and such!

Just my thoughts...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on March 23, 2015, 04:11:08 PM
Another good thing they would have going for them to make an annoucement on this date if it was good news, is that the A:AoU is released on the 23rd April so the news would hit within the first week of release, when most attention is about Superheroes and such!

Just my thoughts...

WTF, why is most of the world getting the movie a full week before the US???  Could be worse I guess, at least we don't have to wait until July 4th like Japan...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: TonyV on March 24, 2015, 01:06:34 PM
They might be saying that because of 'midnight release' or early access stuff. But the official launch was the 28th.

It depends on what time zone you were in.  The game was officially schedule to launch at midnight Central time between April 27 and April 28.  If you were in Central or Eastern time, this would have made the launch on April 28; Pacific and Mountain time would have been late at night on April 27.  Just before launch, however, they changed the time to 11:00pm Central, which made it April 27 in Pacific, Mountain, and Central; and the stroke of midnight between April 27 and April 28 in Eastern.

News item announcing launch (https://web.archive.org/web/20040610014603/http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/item220.html)

So given a choice, I'd call it "scheduled" on April 28, but it actually happened on April 27.

Likewise, I consider the "shutdown" date to be December 1, because it actually happened about 3:20am December 1 Eastern, which was 20 minutes after midnight on December 1 Pacific time.  Only places west of the mainland U.S. had it shut down on November 30, although that was the "official" shutdown date.

P. S.  Although really, I'd consider the game's launch date April 25, since that is when the head start began and the servers were publicly accessible for the first time to people who weren't specifically invited by the devs earlier.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on March 24, 2015, 01:36:15 PM
I considered 4/25 the start, but why split hairs?  Aw, almost 11 years.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 24, 2015, 08:46:57 PM
P. S.  Although really, I'd consider the game's launch date April 25, since that is when the head start began and the servers were publicly accessible for the first time to people who weren't specifically invited by the devs earlier.

When the game "launched" is a bit ambiguous, but I personally consider "general availability" to be the 27th, "head start" to be the 25th, and the "official launch" to be originally scheduled for the 28th and last minute changed to the 27th.  I consider the term "official launch" to be synonymous with "grand opening."  It is whenever the company says it is, not when people can first enter the store and start buying things.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on March 25, 2015, 02:59:24 PM
I considered 4/25 the start, but why split hairs?  Aw, almost 11 years.
4/20 you say?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brighellac on March 26, 2015, 06:26:13 PM
Ironwolf, any news? I understand about the NDA but just hoping.

Also, it's my sense (and I could be wrong) that we will not be getting our previous accounts back.  Does that include just the toons or the vet rewards as well? 

Ok, I'm done with my irritating wild questions and speculation.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on March 26, 2015, 06:38:08 PM
Ironwolf, any news? I understand about the NDA but just hoping.

Also, it's my sense (and I could be wrong) that we will not be getting our previous accounts back.  Does that include just the toons or the vet rewards as well? 

Ok, I'm done with my irritating wild questions and speculation.

All news will go into the sticky thread here:  http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10649.0.html
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on March 26, 2015, 06:50:42 PM
Also, it's my sense (and I could be wrong) that we will not be getting our previous accounts back.  Does that include just the toons or the vet rewards as well?

Correct.  And "account" means everything associated with that account.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on March 26, 2015, 07:38:00 PM
I am not the man now and I have left everything to the new team. They don't need me looking over their shoulder and it is their money and time not mine.

For the purposes of the actual running and business part of the game - to me it is strictly business and needs to be handled with little or no emotion. You don't get upset, angry or vindictive. You want the game back for at least 2 reasons:

1. It is a profitable business.
2. You want the IP and game available for greater expansion

Now the rest of it being fun and all that is a bonus. For a business it must meet the first 2 items.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on March 27, 2015, 01:32:42 AM

Also, it's my sense (and I could be wrong) that we will not be getting our previous accounts back.  Does that include just the toons or the vet rewards as well? 


I had kind of mentally written off that possibility a while back.  If it were possible, it would take longer to get the game running again, and honestly I don't mind starting over too much if it makes it easier, and less complicated to get it up and running.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on March 27, 2015, 03:16:07 AM
I'm beginning to wonder if this goes on much longer, if it will even be relevant.  If any of CoT, Vanguard, etc are off the ground, will there even be enough of the player base left to make it worth it to even restart the game?

Note: I will definitely try a rebooted CoH, but if any of the newer games meet my needs, not sure I'd want to split my time.



Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 27, 2015, 03:17:21 AM
I had kind of mentally written off that possibility a while back.  If it were possible, it would take longer to get the game running again, and honestly I don't mind starting over too much if it makes it easier, and less complicated to get it up and running.

Its not a question of being faster or slower, and more a question of whether NCSoft actually kept the data or not, and whether they'd be willing to give it to anyone else as part of an IP purchase.  The impression I get is the answer to both questions is no.

Hypothetically speaking, the new server operators could give the players anything they wanted to.  The problem is they would have to trust the players were giving them accurate information about what they previously had.  That probably opens a can of worms no one would want to open.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on March 27, 2015, 03:24:55 AM
I'm beginning to wonder if this goes on much longer, if it will even be relevant.  If any of CoT, Vanguard, etc are off the ground, will there even be enough of the player base left to make it worth it to even restart the game?

I guarantee you none of those games will be off the ground before the negotiations are over (regardless of the outcome).

Its not a question of being faster or slower, and more a question of whether NCSoft actually kept the data or not, and whether they'd be willing to give it to anyone else as part of an IP purchase.  The impression I get is the answer to both questions is no.

Would it even be legal anyway?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on March 27, 2015, 05:34:54 AM


Hypothetically speaking, the new server operators could give the players anything they wanted to.  The problem is they would have to trust the players were giving them accurate information about what they previously had.  That probably opens a can of worms no one would want to open.

Ive thought about this just this week

I dont expect to get my data back anymore. I doubt it was kept. However 8 years of toons and IO's and Hami's etc etc I simply dont have the time to invest that anymore.

I would love for the new team to create a way for veteran players to recoup what they lost. And not just veteran badges etc etc.. but the actual characters.. Ive thought of ways this could be done.. but I doubt it would be done..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on March 27, 2015, 07:00:53 AM
I'm beginning to wonder if this goes on much longer, if it will even be relevant.  If any of CoT, Vanguard, etc are off the ground, will there even be enough of the player base left to make it worth it to even restart the game?

Note: I will definitely try a rebooted CoH, but if any of the newer games meet my needs, not sure I'd want to split my time.
Aren't all the "spiritual successors" in pre Alpha phase at best?  I wouldn't worry yet about CoH being irrelevant.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on March 27, 2015, 07:31:42 AM
Aren't all the "spiritual successors" in pre Alpha phase at best?  I wouldn't worry yet about CoH being irrelevant.

Valiance Online has a playable Pre-Alpha.  City of Titans has a city zone.  The other game has...???
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on March 27, 2015, 07:37:18 AM
Aren't all the "spiritual successors" in pre Alpha phase at best?  I wouldn't worry yet about CoH being irrelevant.

that depends on just how slow the negotiations take. in a year from now I expect to see a lot more out of vo and cot. the second either of those goes live with a viable game the value of coh ip drops like a rock. part of what makes coh ip worth anything is peoples willingness to pay to play the i23 maint. without that it is just an old story that people do "do you remember" stories
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on March 27, 2015, 08:24:52 AM
that depends on just how slow the negotiations take. in a year from now I expect to see a lot more out of vo and cot. the second either of those goes live with a viable game the value of coh ip drops like a rock. part of what makes coh ip worth anything is peoples willingness to pay to play the i23 maint. without that it is just an old story that people do "do you remember" stories

If CoH came back tomorrow I don't think i'd play anything else, to tell the truth I don't play anything at the moment due to me being spoilt with CoH, I've tried lot's of different games but nothing has ever caught my attention long enough as CoH. I'm on Icon & Mids most evenings when time allows to mess with builds and costumes and generally have a fly around the zones, which bring back so many good memories. :'(

I'd hope to one day see CoT become something as good as CoH, but only time will tell on that front.

*Keeping fingers crossed for the return, holding torch high*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Styrj on March 27, 2015, 12:26:52 PM
If CoH came back tomorrow I don't think i'd play anything else, to tell the truth I don't play anything at the moment due to me being spoilt with CoH, I've tried lot's of different games but nothing has ever caught my attention long enough as CoH. I'm on Icon & Mids most evenings when time allows to mess with builds and costumes and generally have a fly around the zones, which bring back so many good memories. :'(

I'd hope to one day see CoT become something as good as CoH, but only time will tell on that front.

*Keeping fingers crossed for the return, holding torch high*

What he said +10.  Also, lots of luck to Heroes & Villains.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on March 27, 2015, 06:00:17 PM
If CoH came back tomorrow I don't think i'd play anything else, to tell the truth I don't play anything at the moment due to me being spoilt with CoH, I've tried lot's of different games but nothing has ever caught my attention long enough as CoH. I'm on Icon & Mids most evenings when time allows to mess with builds and costumes and generally have a fly around the zones, which bring back so many good memories. :'(

I'd hope to one day see CoT become something as good as CoH, but only time will tell on that front.

*Keeping fingers crossed for the return, holding torch high*

I've mostly been playing non-mmos.  Decided to rush a character to 70 in diablo 3 this weekend since the ladder is ending in the start of april(double exp week right now).  But mostly been playing new vegas a lot and just messing with mods periodically to keep it fresh.  The same could also be said of skyrim in other times.  I rarely ever touch CO anymore due to how ruined it has become thanks to shfg's/scrubs and the nerf demands from them.

Edit: Included scrubs, they are at fault for that games decline to.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on March 27, 2015, 11:06:18 PM
What I really want in CO is another zone like Vibora Bay and tons of freaking content to do. No level cap increases just more content and possibly some new powersets. Vibora Bay was fun but didn't have nearly enough to do in it.

BTW anyone know what's up with Valiance Online? The website has been a blank page now for a week or more.

edit: Oh found out myself for those curious - https://valianceonline.wordpress.com/
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on March 28, 2015, 02:49:49 AM
I was holding out hope that the comeback would at least be announced by my birthday in mid-March.  So, now that has come and gone with no indication that an announcement is imminent.  I know it was an unsubstantiated hope.  Nobody said anything to lead me to believe that day was anything special in the world of CoH, but I was hoping for some magical convergence that would happen because it was my special day.  I was wrong....damn you universe! *shakes fist at the heavens*  ;) :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on March 28, 2015, 02:53:38 AM
I was holding out hope that the comeback would at least be announced by my birthday in mid-March.  So, now that has come and gone with no indication that an announcement is imminent.  I know it was an unsubstantiated hope.  Nobody said anything to lead me to believe that day was anything special in the world of CoH, but I was hoping for some magical convergence that would happen because it was my special day.  I was wrong....damn you universe! *shakes fist at the heavens*  ;) :o

If it makes you feel better, I'm sure an announcement will happen on someone's birthday.  I'm just not quite sure whose birthday.  But that's just details.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on March 28, 2015, 04:27:15 AM
If it makes you feel better, I'm sure an announcement will happen on someone's birthday.  I'm just not quite sure whose birthday.  But that's just details.
The odds are very in some unknown persons favor ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on March 28, 2015, 04:30:35 PM
If it makes you feel better, I'm sure an announcement will happen on someone's birthday.  I'm just not quite sure whose birthday.  But that's just details.

I am sure most folks would have preferred mine, since it was sooner that whatever the actual release date will end up being, but since I don't get to claim any kind of connection to the date, I am back to taking it as soon as I can possibly get it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on March 28, 2015, 05:18:12 PM
If it makes you feel better, I'm sure an announcement will happen on someone's birthday.  I'm just not quite sure whose birthday.  But that's just details.

Just tell me it's not a known that it will happen on Feb 29th.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on March 28, 2015, 08:32:48 PM
In the immortal words of Jose Jimenez (From the old Ed Sullivan Show...look it up):

"Oh, I hope not!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on March 28, 2015, 11:30:18 PM
What I really want in CO is another zone like Vibora Bay and tons of freaking content to do. No level cap increases just more content and possibly some new powersets. Vibora Bay was fun but didn't have nearly enough to do in it.

BTW anyone know what's up with Valiance Online? The website has been a blank page now for a week or more.

edit: Oh found out myself for those curious - https://valianceonline.wordpress.com/
Too bad that will never happen in co, due to how much deving and respect cryptic/pwe has for that game.
I have been playing the secret world, once in awhile Sto, and I went back to tor. All of these games maybe minus secret world I will/would drop in a heart beat if tomorrow from the team they said "they got the game back". The reason for tor is I need to keep my mmo play style sharp :).
I do not know about Vo, I do last month after the wipe I could not make a new account to login to the alpha.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on March 29, 2015, 01:02:47 AM
Too bad that will never happen in co, due to how much deving and respect cryptic/pwe has for that game.
I have been playing the secret world, once in awhile Sto, and I went back to tor. All of these games maybe minus secret world I will/would drop in a heart beat if tomorrow from the team they said "they got the game back". The reason for tor is I need to keep my mmo play style sharp :).
I do not know about Vo, I do last month after the wipe I could not make a new account to login to the alpha.

they seem to have disappeared for a while. i was checking every day but I have cut back
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on March 29, 2015, 03:51:07 AM
they seem to have disappeared for a while. i was checking every day but I have cut back

The last thing they did recently was upping the prices of existing costume sets.  Before that they allowed people to purchase an account-wide unlock for the global cap if they were silver.  Currently they are just, well, doing little other than absolute necessary bug fixes.  I don't think they really work full time on the game but only on the game once in a while, and probably don't fully care to do so anymore.  Not with the kind of community thats left anymore.

I've been playing diablo 3 again, on my old demon hunter after I got a season wizard to 70 for the sake of some transmog(costume) unlocks.  I notice the drop rates had increased alot, as I got three maurader set pieces today in a short time span to my surprise.  A shame that two of those drops were pieces I already had from previous play sessions.  At least that game gets stuff.  Course i'd be playing city of heroes far more than diablo 3 if it came back.  I'd take a guarantee drop system like CoX's incarnate system over an rng within an rng within another rng system diablo 3 has.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kelltick on March 29, 2015, 04:56:42 AM
The last thing they did recently was upping the prices of existing costume sets.  Before that they allowed people to purchase an account-wide unlock for the global cap if they were silver.  Currently they are just, well, doing little other than absolute necessary bug fixes.  I don't think they really work full time on the game but only on the game once in a while, and probably don't fully care to do so anymore.  Not with the kind of community thats left anymore.

I've been playing diablo 3 again, on my old demon hunter after I got a season wizard to 70 for the sake of some transmog(costume) unlocks.  I notice the drop rates had increased alot, as I got three maurader set pieces today in a short time span to my surprise.  A shame that two of those drops were pieces I already had from previous play sessions.  At least that game gets stuff.  Course i'd be playing city of heroes far more than diablo 3 if it came back.  I'd take a guarantee drop system like CoX's incarnate system over an rng within an rng within another rng system diablo 3 has.
Me thinks he (previous poster(s)) were talking about Valiance Online and their recent website issues and not STO.

I do not know about Vo, I do last month after the wipe I could not make a new account to login to the alpha.

they seem to have disappeared for a while. i was checking every day but I have cut back
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on March 29, 2015, 06:13:37 AM
Me thinks he (previous poster(s)) were talking about Valiance Online and their recent website issues and not STO.

I thought they were talking about CO for a moment considering who he'd replied to and what the person said.  Perhaps I should have clarified there.

And Maurader's carapace #3 drops.  I hate the RNG sometimes, give me boots already D3!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on March 29, 2015, 04:46:54 PM
I thought they were talking about CO for a moment considering who he'd replied to and what the person said.  Perhaps I should have clarified there.

And Maurader's carapace #3 drops.  I hate the RNG sometimes, give me boots already D3!
For my clarification, I was referring to co and VO at the end. So you are right Alex.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on April 04, 2015, 03:03:44 AM
I had a dream about the announcement, it came on the same day I won the lotto! I could quite happily do with both things coming true!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on April 04, 2015, 07:24:56 AM
I wouldn't mind either of those happening for me. :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Graydar on April 04, 2015, 02:51:33 PM
Found a nice Arachnos shirt on eBay. Simple black background and black logo. Anyone else know where I would get a hoodie or something in the UK? :3
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Gorvi Guile on April 05, 2015, 01:11:09 PM
Yes please. Sign me up for both or either of those as well.  :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on April 05, 2015, 05:17:51 PM
I could certainly use the lottery winnings to remodel my car.

I'd love to celebrate by beating baddies black and blue in brickstown...or any other zone in CoH.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 05, 2015, 05:46:38 PM
I could certainly use the lottery winnings to remodel my car.

I'd love to celebrate by beating baddies black and blue in brickstown...or any other zone in CoH.

My dream the other night was a bit odd, I won the lotto, the game was announced as returning, then some greedy criminals mortally wounded me in an effort to get my winnings and a kind professor saved me by transferring my mind into a cyborg body and I arose as a new version of the Eight Man.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on April 05, 2015, 08:07:58 PM
My dream the other night was a bit odd, I won the lotto, the game was announced as returning, then some greedy criminals mortally wounded me in an effort to get my winnings and a kind professor saved me by transferring my mind into a cyborg body and I arose as a new version of the Eight Man.

Tragically awesome origin story!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on April 06, 2015, 11:47:58 AM
My dream the other night was a bit odd, I won the lotto, the game was announced as returning, then some greedy criminals mortally wounded me in an effort to get my winnings and a kind professor saved me by transferring my mind into a cyborg body and I arose as a new version of the Eight Man.
shortly after the staff power-set came out, I made a guy hat used a pool cue. He called himself The Eight Ball. I never did much with him though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 06, 2015, 07:24:29 PM
shortly after the staff power-set came out, I made a guy hat used a pool cue. He called himself The Eight Ball. I never did much with him though.

Well, that's what tends to happen when you're behind The Eight Ball.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 06, 2015, 08:07:13 PM
shortly after the staff power-set came out, I made a guy hat used a pool cue. He called himself The Eight Ball. I never did much with him though.

Now that is a character I would have liked to have seen.

Perhaps one day......

Also, how many Gambit clones did you see after the Staff set was brought into the game?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on April 07, 2015, 12:18:16 AM
Now that is a character I would have liked to have seen.

Perhaps one day......

Also, how many Gambit clones did you see after the Staff set was brought into the game?
I didn't see that many, actually. However, my brother made a guy in a business suit outfit with a staff. His "Hero Name" was Corporate Staff.

Well, that's what tends to happen when you're behind The Eight Ball.
There was a "behind the eight ball" thing in his battlecry. His outfit was combat boots, jeans and a T-shirt (all black) with an 8 on his chest.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on April 07, 2015, 11:05:14 AM
I sort of had a Gambit clone, though that was just the original outfit (and even then, he wasn't so much Gambit as he was Wraith (http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110422110352/marvel_dc/images/b/b5/Wraith_Amalgam.png), from Amalgam Comics).  I was having trouble coming up with a costume for my Staff/Dark Brute, and so I googled for Staff and Darkness, and when he popped up as one of the results, I ran with it.

That was just his starting outfit, of course.  I kept tweaking it until it didn't look like the comics character.  And the background was my own silly creation.  He was Magic-origin (not Mutant), and from memory, his bio was along the lines of "My friends told me not to pick up the Cursed Staff of Darkness.  I said 'How can it be a staff of darkness?  It's all golden and shiny!'  Shows what I know...."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Atlantea on April 09, 2015, 11:44:06 AM
My dream the other night was a bit odd, I won the lotto, the game was announced as returning, then some greedy criminals mortally wounded me in an effort to get my winnings and a kind professor saved me by transferring my mind into a cyborg body and I arose as a new version of the Eight Man.

Hey waitaminute... :o

(https://i.imgur.com/oBFi5r0.png)(https://i.imgur.com/2ovG0ex.png)

(Cyberman 8 was my main on Virtue Server. ;D)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 09, 2015, 11:53:22 PM
Hey waitaminute... :o

(https://i.imgur.com/oBFi5r0.png)(https://i.imgur.com/2ovG0ex.png)

(Cyberman 8 was my main on Virtue Server. ;D)

Now that is a nice variation of the Eight Man.  I've identified all the costume pieces except the gloves which ones did you use?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Atlantea on April 10, 2015, 12:18:21 AM
Now that is a nice variation of the Eight Man.  I've identified all the costume pieces except the gloves which ones did you use?

Thanks! :D

And it was the "Justice" gloves. Just the basic version without the extra plate.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 10, 2015, 03:12:12 AM
Thanks! :D

And it was the "Justice" gloves. Just the basic version without the extra plate.
Ah, of course!  I just finished  building that suit in my ICON, then saved about 4 variations of it, all with different chest number to avoid potential troubles when the game returns.  Tech sleek gloves and boots look good with that setup too.

Got to say, of all the cyborg characters in pop culture:

Eight Man
Cyborg 009
Bionic Man
Robocop
X-51/Machine Man
Astro  Boy
ROM, Spaceknight

and others I can't think of at the moment, I'd rather be the Eight Man then any of the others.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on April 10, 2015, 04:41:38 AM
Got to say, of all the cyborg characters in pop culture:
I'd rather be the Eight Man then any of the others.

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=thechristiannerd.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F05%2Fmuffit1.jpg)

still sure about that?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 10, 2015, 05:30:49 AM
still sure about that?
Pretty sure that's a robot, not a cyborg (as is X-51 and Astro Boy).  If it was actually a cybernetic daggit, that would have been actually kinda horrifying.  Particularly the ears.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 10, 2015, 05:56:05 AM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=thechristiannerd.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F05%2Fmuffit1.jpg)

still sure about that?

That Daggit had to be the most annoying thing of the entire original Galactica series.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on April 10, 2015, 04:32:54 PM
Pretty sure that's a robot, not a cyborg (as is X-51 and Astro Boy).  If it was actually a cybernetic daggit, that would have been actually kinda horrifying.  Particularly the ears.

i was fooled by how realistic the puppet fur was.

also +10 nerd points for x-51 and astro boy. i had resisted the impulse to point out x-51 wasn't a cyborg but you pulled off the trifecta.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BraveStar on April 10, 2015, 11:58:03 PM
i was fooled by how realistic the puppet fur was.

also +10 nerd points for x-51 and astro boy. i had resisted the impulse to point out x-51 wasn't a cyborg but you pulled off the trifecta.

It wasn't a puppet. There was actually a chimpanzee inside of the costume.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on April 11, 2015, 12:22:13 AM
i only said it was puppet fur  8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on April 11, 2015, 03:39:31 AM
You did miss Deathlok. I actually think with Agents of Shield he is less obscure than Machine Man.

Ah, of course!  I just finished  building that suit in my ICON, then saved about 4 variations of it, all with different chest number to avoid potential troubles when the game returns.  Tech sleek gloves and boots look good with that setup too.

Got to say, of all the cyborg characters in pop culture:

Eight Man
Cyborg 009
Bionic Man
Robocop
X-51/Machine Man
Astro  Boy
ROM, Spaceknight

and others I can't think of at the moment, I'd rather be the Eight Man then any of the others.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on April 11, 2015, 02:45:27 PM
Deathlok, yeah gotta love how agents of shield took an already meh character and took away his one interesting feature (i.e. the timeline repairing).

we also missed lady deathstrike and cable (sort of) and donald pierce and raza and oh hell every third marvel character is a cyborg.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on April 11, 2015, 06:01:44 PM
Deathlok, yeah gotta love how agents of shield took an already meh character and took away his one interesting feature (i.e. the timeline repairing).

we also missed lady deathstrike and cable (sort of) and donald pierce and raza and oh hell every third marvel character is a cyborg.

Yeah, you right.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on April 11, 2015, 07:18:38 PM
Deathlok, yeah gotta love how agents of shield took an already meh character and took away his one interesting feature (i.e. the timeline repairing).

we also missed lady deathstrike and cable (sort of) and donald pierce and raza and oh hell every third marvel character is a cyborg.

However, if Agents of Shield is consistent about anything, it is their desire not to give you the whole enchilada at the same time.  If they just trotted out DeathLok with ALL of his currently known abilities, we would not have the enjoyment of see how he gets them in this telling.  Pretty much the same for all the "supers" they show here.  They start with the basics, and grow towards what we know.  In the end, it might still not be everything we know about the character from the comics, but I think the folks at Marvel know their characters, and they know that folks that watch the shows/movies know them too.  I think there is always a deliberate approach to the development process of a super-powered character, as much as there is in any other character.  Where they start is seldom where they will be down the line, if you have the patience to trust them, and stick around that long.

I will be the first to admit, it is not the greatest show on TV right now, but it has gotten considerably better over time, and I love how the events of the movies continually influence the events of the show, and moving everything in the same direction.  Even Daredevil is doing it!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MegaWatt on April 11, 2015, 08:01:51 PM
sadly agents of shield cant use Cable because he's a mutant and fox owns the mutants.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on April 11, 2015, 08:44:02 PM
sadly agents of shield cant use Cable because he's a mutant and fox owns the mutants.

Yeah, I keep hoping that will change, but they seem to do well enough with the X-Men movies to hold on it it.  At least Sony has gotten to the point where they are at least willing to "rent out" Spider Man.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 11, 2015, 09:48:32 PM
Yeah, I keep hoping that will change, but they seem to do well enough with the X-Men movies to hold on it it.  At least Sony has gotten to the point where they are at least willing to "rent out" Spider Man.

Despite the problems with Spiderman 3, Sony really should have worked to keep Rami at the helm for a 4th one. But as I recall Sony and Rami disagreed about who the next  villain should be and it came down to "See ya!" and Rami left.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on April 11, 2015, 11:14:11 PM
Did he want emo carnage?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 12, 2015, 12:41:09 AM
Did he want emo carnage?

Nope, actually last I read Rami does not like Venom or Carnage and the studio kind of sort of forced Venom on him due to fans constantly wanting Venom to appear.

What they should have done was have Eddie and the symbiote merge into Venom, then have Venom be the villain for Spidey 4 instead of shoving him into Spidey 3.

As I recall for SPidey 4, Rami wanted the Vulture and the studio had other ideas and they pretty much agreed to disagree and part ways.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlphaFerret on April 12, 2015, 12:47:31 AM
Well, how is Bruce Campbell supposed to get a part in #4 without Sam?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 12, 2015, 12:47:42 AM
Deathlok, yeah gotta love how agents of shield took an already meh character and took away his one interesting feature (i.e. the timeline repairing).

we also missed lady deathstrike and cable (sort of) and donald pierce and raza and oh hell every third marvel character is a cyborg.

Time Travel really hasn't been brought into Agents of SHIELD so Deathlok time repairing could still happen. There are an infinite amount of timelines after all.

Does Cable count as a cyborg? he has the techno organic virus that makes him part machine but when cured of it he becomes normal flesh and blood.   

Also I forgot about the Marvel Character, Coldblood  7. Then again I think myself and America forgot about him.


As to the Eight Man, having watched some of the 60's cartoon and the 90's OVA which had a new mind in the Eight Man body, I'm trying to figure out what powers he'd have in COH:

1. Super Speed/Stealth/Invisibility are a given
2. Super Reflexes is also a given
3. But his melee powers.....he obviously has super strength and the 90's OVA showed that the mind inside the Eight Man had some serious pent up rage, so super strength, perma rage brute with maxed up fury bar seems right.   On the other hand he does his speed to take down targets so Kinetic Melee also springs to mind....

As to my choice of being the Eight Man, aside from needing an occasional energy boost to his internal power reactor for quick recharges when in battle he has no organic parts that will wear out and break down with age over time. He is 100% machine with the brainwaves of a human programmed into his cyber brain.

Bionic Man and Robocop still have organic parts that will age and wear down and can be susceptible to viruses and illness.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on April 12, 2015, 02:54:49 AM
oh right i forgot about all flesh cable. we'll replace him with spiral, cameron hodge and psylocke :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 12, 2015, 04:26:55 AM
However, if Agents of Shield is consistent about anything, it is their desire not to give you the whole enchilada at the same time.  If they just trotted out DeathLok with ALL of his currently known abilities, we would not have the enjoyment of see how he gets them in this telling.  Pretty much the same for all the "supers" they show here.  They start with the basics, and grow towards what we know.

For the Marvel Cinematic universe, Marvel has pretty well established that they are borrowing from the comics, but not 100% beholden to them.  In fact, Marvel has officially designated the MCU as Earth-199999 within the greater Marvel multiverse, which means by definition it is not identical to the current reality of most of the Marvel mainstream comics.  It is, in a manner of speaking, a Marvel Elseworld.

Separate from that, there's been like, what, five Deathloks?  Not all of them have had similar backstories and abilities.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on April 16, 2015, 12:33:33 AM
For the Marvel Cinematic universe, Marvel has pretty well established that they are borrowing from the comics, but not 100% beholden to them.  In fact, Marvel has officially designated the MCU as Earth-199999 within the greater Marvel multiverse, which means by definition it is not identical to the current reality of most of the Marvel mainstream comics.  It is, in a manner of speaking, a Marvel Elseworld.

Separate from that, there's been like, what, five Deathloks?  Not all of them have had similar backstories and abilities.

The big problem with this idea now is that Marvel is doing its own Crisis event...so what happens to the universes portrayed in animated series (current ones, the past ones wouldn't matter) and the MCU?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 16, 2015, 04:40:37 AM
The big problem with this idea now is that Marvel is doing its own Crisis event...so what happens to the universes portrayed in animated series (current ones, the past ones wouldn't matter) and the MCU?

It would seem practically ridiculous for Marvel to claim in their comics that their own MCU doesn't exist.  That would be ludicrous.  But how they handle that specifically is something I have no idea about.  The notion of alternate realities has always been a fuzzy one for both Marvel and DC; its been more of a fanciful thought than one grounded in any sort of logic - even comic book logic.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on April 16, 2015, 06:40:37 AM
She-Hulk realizes she is just a comic book character.

Deadpool breaks the fouthwall whenever it suits him.

Impossible Man is really Mister Mxyzptlk thus messing with those two universes.

Comic retconning makes it possible to keep comics current with the culture.

So it would be unsurprising if Marvel or DC said any of variation of a universe didn't exist for the convenience of a particular story.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 16, 2015, 05:53:22 PM
She-Hulk realizes she is just a comic book character.

Deadpool breaks the fouthwall whenever it suits him.

Impossible Man is really Mister Mxyzptlk thus messing with those two universes.

Comic retconning makes it possible to keep comics current with the culture.

So it would be unsurprising if Marvel or DC said any of variation of a universe didn't exist for the convenience of a particular story.

For some definition of "exists."  In fact all of your examples point not to alternate universes *not* existing, but to them *actually existing* in unusual and/or unscientific ways.  In each of those cases Marvel writers wanted us to believe alternate universes from the one depicted in the story actually exist for the purposes of narrative context but don't necessarily exist for the purposes of affecting the story except where explicitly noted.

So its possible Marvel could construct a story in which they effectively state that the MCU continuity is an unreachable reality relative to the comic book one, but they would never likely state it did not exist in any form because that's a narrative statement they would never have to make and can do nothing good for the company.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on April 16, 2015, 06:16:46 PM
Where does the impossible man being mr. mxyzptlk come up? Impossible man is from a planet in the marvel universe, Mr. M is from another dimension.

I'd imagine the only reason the MCU hasn't shown up in the comic multiverse yet is because there hasn't been an exiles book since 2009 and because Spider-verse came out prior to the Spidey in MCU deal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on April 16, 2015, 08:08:02 PM
So its possible Marvel could construct a story in which they effectively state that the MCU continuity is an unreachable reality relative to the comic book one, but they would never likely state it did not exist in any form because that's a narrative statement they would never have to make and can do nothing good for the company.

For the record I was not suggesting that they would or should do this, simply that it seemed to be a corner they were backing themselves into.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 16, 2015, 08:33:22 PM
marvel has been backing themselves into a corner for years now.

Also they have a tendency to bring movie elements into the comics thus preventing new readers from being confused as to why things in the movies aren't in the comics, while at the same time annoying many long time readers.

Then of course there are the sales gimmicks that they try such as

1. Superior Spider-man
2. Killing off Captain America for awhile, any comic fan witha  gram of intelligence had to know that wasnt going to last
3.  Now the are on the ethnicity gimmick and trying to show that not all heroes have to be tall, blonde and blue eyed, but of course this also will not last forever.    Examples would be: the new Ms Marvel being Indian/Muslim,  the current female THOR that is able to wield the hammer of THOR while the real THOR is somehow unworthy and now calls himself the ODINSON, Carol Danvers goes from being Ms. Marvel to Captain Marvel as Marvel hasn't got the courage to actually revive Captain Mar-Vell, the Falcon is now Captain America as Steve Rogers has been aged and the serum in his blood neutralized, Richard Ryder Nova is allegedly dead and we have a new Kid Nova flying around,  etc. 

Now once again they are so screwed up that a reboot is needed.

Remember Onslaught/Heroes Reborn/Return?  That was a way to reboot many non mutant Avengers and the Fantastic Four as they were so screwed up at the time, especially IRON MAN

Now instead of a soft reboot of only some titles it looks like the entire Marvel Universe is getting rebooted. That is how screwed up things are. 

But I guess Marvel did better then DC as they are able to go longer without universal restarts like DC does.

And the Jack Kirby Estate won a nice out of court settlement with Marvel as Marvel didn't want the case to to the Supreme Court so there is justice for Kirby at long last.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 16, 2015, 09:13:43 PM
For the record I was not suggesting that they would or should do this, simply that it seemed to be a corner they were backing themselves into.

How?  As far as I understand it (I haven't been following everything) the basic idea is that the main Marvel comics universe (i.e. Earth 616) merges with the Ultimates universe creating an amalgam universe that is a combination of the two plus bits and pieces of other interesting dimensions.  Nothing I've read so far explicitly states that the effects of Secret Wars affects all Marvel dimensions.  Even if anything stated that, Marvel has played fast and loose with what gets included and not included in the main Marvel Multiverse: even something that affected all of the Marvel Multiverse isn't necessarily canonically affecting all of existence itself.  In fact, the Marvel Multiverse canonically acknowledged the existence of the DC Multiverse in the amalgam comics which means in canon Marvel acknowledges that there are cosmic levels of existence outside the Marvel multiverse.  They have plenty of narrative wiggle room no matter what happens in Secret Wars to assert that those events do not affect the MCU or other Marvel realities unless they specifically mention them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on April 16, 2015, 10:00:32 PM
Carol Danvers goes from being Ms. Marvel to Captain Marvel as Marvel hasn't got the courage to actually revive Captain Mar-Vell

revive him again, you mean.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on April 16, 2015, 11:27:55 PM
How?  As far as I understand it (I haven't been following everything) the basic idea is that the main Marvel comics universe (i.e. Earth 616) merges with the Ultimates universe creating an amalgam universe that is a combination of the two plus bits and pieces of other interesting dimensions.  Nothing I've read so far explicitly states that the effects of Secret Wars affects all Marvel dimensions.  Even if anything stated that, Marvel has played fast and loose with what gets included and not included in the main Marvel Multiverse: even something that affected all of the Marvel Multiverse isn't necessarily canonically affecting all of existence itself.  In fact, the Marvel Multiverse canonically acknowledged the existence of the DC Multiverse in the amalgam comics which means in canon Marvel acknowledges that there are cosmic levels of existence outside the Marvel multiverse.  They have plenty of narrative wiggle room no matter what happens in Secret Wars to assert that those events do not affect the MCU or other Marvel realities unless they specifically mention them.

If you haven't been following everything then I've been following less than that, so it's entirely possible that I've misunderstood what they're doing.  I read it as a complete condensation/truncation of the Marvel Multiverse into a single universe (whatever that even means).  But yes, the greatest cosmic power in all of comics is the unshakable handwave of the retcon.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 17, 2015, 12:33:46 AM
revive him again, you mean.

Yes he has been brought back a few times but I consider those to be temporary revivals and not the real thing.

1. Cosmic Powers unlimited #1:  THANOS wants to use the Reality Gem that Warlock gave him to guard to reshape the universe so that death will love him.  As both a test of the gem's powers and because he wanted someone talk him out of it, he revives Captain Mar-Vell.  he instantly divines Thanos true goal about reshaping the universe and talks him out of it. he also states he is resolved to remaining dead and feels that his time is done. Out of respect for Mar-Vell, Thanos sends him back to the afterlife.  Interesting story and it pretty much establishes that until Mar-Vell changes his mind, he isn't coming back

2. CHAOS WAR THE DEAD: Death flees the universe and the dead all return to the realm of the living, but they are still dead and will go back when things are restored. Marv gets "killed" in the story.

3. Silver Surfer: in his series he enters a dimension of the dead and is aided by Mar-Vell.  There was a story hint that it was all a delusion the Surfer experienced, but when he parted ways with Marv, he stated he wished he knew Marv in his life time.  After Surfer was gone, Marv says to himself "Perhaps in another"  This tale was written by Jim Starlin, the man that also wrote Death of Captain Marvel.

4. Civil War: The Return, Marv is pulled from the past to the present and decides he wants to leave a more heroic legacy for himself before he has to go home to perish.  This would later be retconned into it being a Skrull copy that fans have referred to as Captain Skrull-Vell. This cheap fake was killed in the Secret Invasion

5. 90's Warlock miniseries, a villain from the negative zone reanimates Marv's dessicated skeletal corpse for evil purposes. Warlock faces it alongside his allies and the son of Mar-Vell.  Marv is then buried again in his grave.

6.. Avengers vs X-men: the Phoenix is lured to a kree outpost where Marv's body was prepared, the phoenix power destroys the station and all personnel but revives Marv's body and pulls his spirit back from the hereafter.  Marv stated his cancer cells were in stasis by the phoenix power in him.  He then has to relinquish his new life to save his world from the Phoenix. Carol Danvers is inspired to take his name.

So yeah, they seem to enjoy reviving and killing him again, they don't have the guts to bring him back for good given how he initially died.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 17, 2015, 02:21:52 AM
So yeah, they seem to enjoy reviving and killing him again, they don't have the guts to bring him back for good given how he initially died.

I wouldn't exactly put it that way.  It takes no courage to bring a major comic book character back from the dead, given how many times it happens.  It does take some editorial courage to keep them dead, because it happens so less often.  They still want to tell stories about the character every so often, but all of them seem to at least partially narratively rely on the fact that he is dead in a permanent kind of way rare to comic book characters.

Captain Marvel's death is interesting because unusually the story of his death is not the story just of his body ceasing to live, but about how his spirit itself moves on.  That he transcended his physical death is now considered the defining element of his character.  That's why bringing him back permanently is in some respects impossible.  Not because its impossible to pen the words, but because any Captain Marvel that came back permanently wouldn't be the same Captain Marvel because of that fact.  It would be like making a Batman whose parents lived: its not impossible to write the story, but it wouldn't and couldn't be the same Batman.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 17, 2015, 04:21:37 AM
I wouldn't exactly put it that way.  It takes no courage to bring a major comic book character back from the dead, given how many times it happens.  It does take some editorial courage to keep them dead, because it happens so less often.  They still want to tell stories about the character every so often, but all of them seem to at least partially narratively rely on the fact that he is dead in a permanent kind of way rare to comic book characters.

Captain Marvel's death is interesting because unusually the story of his death is not the story just of his body ceasing to live, but about how his spirit itself moves on.  That he transcended his physical death is now considered the defining element of his character.  That's why bringing him back permanently is in some respects impossible.  Not because its impossible to pen the words, but because any Captain Marvel that came back permanently wouldn't be the same Captain Marvel because of that fact.  It would be like making a Batman whose parents lived: its not impossible to write the story, but it wouldn't and couldn't be the same Batman.

When THANOS was restored in the Silver Surfers by Death herself, he had learned and grown from his experiences both in life and in death and was more knowledgeable and wiser about some things. He was still Death's agent and had the whole nihilisitic phase to grow out of, but even without that now he is still Thanos.

Mar-Vell could also be more mature and wiser about things if he were brought back, plus he is still cosmically aware, which is ironic given that power gives him access to all knowledge about things and he couldn't divine a cure for himself.

Also I do remember in the past some editors and writers expressing a reluctance to bring him back due to how he died. Also some fans in the past have expressed their opinion that it would be a slap in the face to all cancer victims and their families if he were brought back.  Personally I think that is taking things a bit too far, but that's just me.

I've read many cosmic stories from Marvel before and after Marv was killed off. With most of them I can honestly say that they would be better if Marv was there.  Infinity War and Crusade being two good examples. 

Sure the other cosmic heroes have stepped up a bit, including Richard Ryder Nova, but that doesn't mean much when the character is suddenly bumped aside and replaced with some stupid kid character just because Jeph Loebs son was a fan of Nova.  Hello Marvel, remember there was a Nova Corps? As in more then ONE Nova??? Not that hard to have both of them is it?

As to Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel, I don't mind that she has the name as it is fitting she use it since she got her powers when Mar_Vell saved her from an explosion.  Too bad the stories of her current series aren't that great.  Also they could revive MArv, have him live with his girlfriend and raise a family and have him show up from time to time and still keep Carol as Captain Marvel. It's not that hard.

However with Secret War coming and the rumored massive reboot of the MU as a result, we shall see what happens.  The picture of the cover of the first issue does show someone in a green and white Kree Captain military uniform flying around...perhaps an earlier version of Mar-Vell?

Marvel Comics has the trademark to publish a Captain Marvel book and for years they have kept it with one shots, mini series, regular series, etc.   Too bad they can't work a deal with DC to obtain the rights to the original Captain Marvel or SHAZAM as he is now referred to.  DC can use SHAZAM but they cant publish a book titled Captain Marvel, they screwed up and let that trademark lapse and Marvel snatched up and created Mar-Vell
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on April 17, 2015, 04:45:40 AM
Isn't Noh-varr still hanging around somewhere? I lost track of him after dark reign. I'd bet if they were going to do a Captain after Carol they'd make it him unless there was a big clamor for Mar-vell to come back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on April 17, 2015, 05:44:31 AM
For some definition of "exists."  In fact all of your examples point not to alternate universes *not* existing, but to them *actually existing* in unusual and/or unscientific ways.  In each of those cases Marvel writers wanted us to believe alternate universes from the one depicted in the story actually exist for the purposes of narrative context but don't necessarily exist for the purposes of affecting the story except where explicitly noted.

So its possible Marvel could construct a story in which they effectively state that the MCU continuity is an unreachable reality relative to the comic book one, but they would never likely state it did not exist in any form because that's a narrative statement they would never have to make and can do nothing good for the company.

Marvel has at least one universe that do not exist within it's canon. Earth-0, the universe in which Taa existed, died in a heat death creating a new universe that we occupy. (Not interested enough to look up any other existing 'non-existing' universes in Marvel's properties)

Retconning is the bread and butter of comic book genre. Arching over the last 70 years or so it has been used to back out of bad story telling. Consequence of writing a serial, especially one that spans such a long period.

From Marvel's own wikia:Clarification of terms "multiverse," "megaverse," and "Omniverse"

Multiverse refers to a group of related realities, usually those sharing the same high-ranking cosmic entities (Eternity for example).

Megaverse refers to a larger group of realities, usually including partial and whole multiverses, which may be considered in some way "closer" to one another, thus making travel between them somewhat easier than between realities not within the same megaverse.

Omniverse is EVERY reality, including those published by other companies.



More on Marvel.com: http://marvel.com/universe/Marvel_Universe#ixzz3XXfBOsMw
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 17, 2015, 06:24:42 AM
Isn't Noh-varr still hanging around somewhere? I lost track of him after dark reign. I'd bet if they were going to do a Captain after Carol they'd make it him unless there was a big clamor for Mar-vell to come back.

Noh_varr as I recall was Captain Marvel in the Dark Avengers for awhile, Carol Danvers now is Captain Marvel instead of Ms. Marvel.  Noh-Varr was last seen in the Avengers vs Xmen event being a traitor to the team as I recall.  I don't know what happened to him after that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 17, 2015, 06:30:04 AM
Marvel has at least one universe that do not exist within it's canon. Earth-0, the universe in which Taa existed, died in a heat death creating a new universe that we occupy. (Not interested enough to look up any other existing 'non-existing' universes in Marvel's properties)

Retconning is the bread and butter of comic book genre. Arching over the last 70 years or so it has been used to back out of bad story telling. Consequence of writing a serial, especially one that spans such a long period.

From Marvel's own wikia:Clarification of terms "multiverse," "megaverse," and "Omniverse"

Multiverse refers to a group of related realities, usually those sharing the same high-ranking cosmic entities (Eternity for example).

Megaverse refers to a larger group of realities, usually including partial and whole multiverses, which may be considered in some way "closer" to one another, thus making travel between them somewhat easier than between realities not within the same megaverse.

Omniverse is EVERY reality, including those published by other companies.



More on Marvel.com: http://marvel.com/universe/Marvel_Universe#ixzz3XXfBOsMw

Unfortunately, while retconning gets rid of bad stories, it also screws up GOOD stories.

Amazing Spider-man #400: Aunt May perishes of old age/natural causes, touching story, a good farewell and she told Peter that she knew for years he was Spider-man.   Then writers and editors change and the editor that took over wanted Aunt May back from the dead and back in the books so it was RETCONNED that it was an actress altered to impersonate Aunt May by Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin as a means to torment Peter. 

Also of course is the fact that to end the Clone Saga which had been over extended and nearly killed the book, Norman Osborn was retconned back to life from having been impaled by his goblin glider after causing the death of Gwen Stacy.

Then there is the huge retcon that was created when Joe Quesada was determined to anger Spiderman fans across the board by having Aunt May shot and dying and no one can help her. Dr Strange cant, Reed Richards can't, Banner can't, Hank Pym can't, Hank McCoy can't, even Dr Doom said he couldn't.  But then here comes MEPHISTO with a deal to offer, Aunt May shall live but he will change things so that Peter and MJ never married.  And Peter and MJ AGREED TO DEAL WITH THE DEVIL.   Here's hoping that Secret War undoes that pathetic travesty of a story.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on April 17, 2015, 08:25:42 AM
What I'm finding hard to understand is can't NCSoft see the potential of bringing back or letting another company bring back (Some profits from this deal) CoH.

After finshing Daredevil last night, catching up with Arrow, Flash and Marvels Agents of Shield, just watched the Batman Vs Superman leaked trailer, followed by Avengers:AoU and looking at the future Tv series and films coming out, this is the day an age of the Comic book films/TV series. The money being made from these is staggering, so why can't they see the potentail of bringing the game back, getting it advertised, because in my opinion it's the best or was the best Hero/Villain MMO out there, nothing came close.

There is so much potential for this game, with the improvements in graphics which have been shown by Irish Girl it is just so hard to see why a business wouldn't take this opportunity to make money.

Just me trying to understand!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 17, 2015, 02:51:36 PM
What I'm finding hard to understand is can't NCSoft see the potential of bringing back or letting another company bring back (Some profits from this deal) CoH.

After finshing Daredevil last night, catching up with Arrow, Flash and Marvels Agents of Shield, just watched the Batman Vs Superman leaked trailer, followed by Avengers:AoU and looking at the future Tv series and films coming out, this is the day an age of the Comic book films/TV series. The money being made from these is staggering, so why can't they see the potentail of bringing the game back, getting it advertised, because in my opinion it's the best or was the best Hero/Villain MMO out there, nothing came close.

There is so much potential for this game, with the improvements in graphics which have been shown by Irish Girl it is just so hard to see why a business wouldn't take this opportunity to make money.

Just me trying to understand!

Unfortunately - from where NCSoft sits - that type of epic 'swimming-in-a-pool-of-money' blockbuster gold that the superhero franchise sees in other forms of media didn't exactly translate with COH as well as NCSoft was hoping it would.

This is all very much my own opinion, so take whatever I say with a grain of salt - but I actually think this is a HUGE reason as to why NCSoft choose to pull the proverbial plug. I think they saw how ape$hit crazy their western market gets over any and all things super heroes...and I think this was why the bar was set so high in the sky for COH. And please don't get it twisted - I think COH was absolutely profitable. I'm just giving my own personal reason as to why NCSoft thought it wasn't profitable enough.

...Which is laaaaaame and is a VERY skewed way to analyze and measure your data success rate? BAH.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on April 17, 2015, 03:12:24 PM
Marvel has at least one universe that do not exist within it's canon. Earth-0, the universe in which Taa existed, died in a heat death creating a new universe that we occupy. (Not interested enough to look up any other existing 'non-existing' universes in Marvel's properties)

Retconning is the bread and butter of comic book genre. Arching over the last 70 years or so it has been used to back out of bad story telling. Consequence of writing a serial, especially one that spans such a long period.

If true, that was retconned into being Earth-92131, the setting of the 1992 X-Men cartoon (and presumably also Spider-Man, as the two shows crossed over).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactus#The_Adventures_of_the_X-Men
http://www.comics.org/issue/214189/
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on April 17, 2015, 03:15:23 PM
Unfortunately - from where NCSoft sits - that type of epic 'swimming-in-a-pool-of-money' blockbuster gold that the superhero franchise sees in other forms of media didn't exactly translate with COH as well as NCSoft was hoping it would.

This is all very much my own opinion, so take whatever I say with a grain of salt - but I actually think this is a HUGE reason as to why NCSoft choose to pull the proverbial plug. I think they saw how ape$hit crazy their western market gets over any and all things super heroes...and I think this was why the bar was set so high in the sky for COH. And please don't get it twisted - I think COH was absolutely profitable. I'm just giving my own personal reason as to why NCSoft thought it wasn't profitable enough.

...Which is laaaaaame and is a VERY skewed way to analyze and measure your data success rate? BAH.

Well, maybe if they'd given it any marketing budget, it would have made even more money.

Of course, if rumors are to be believed, CoH itself was profitable, but Paragon Studios was not.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 17, 2015, 03:49:21 PM
Well, maybe if they'd given it any marketing budget, it would have made even more money.

Of course, if rumors are to be believed, CoH itself was profitable, but Paragon Studios was not.

Oh, for sure. There was very little budget for promotional/marketing efforts of any kind lol. I would have LOVED to see more online/web ads as well as some :15 spots.

But that all costs money, honey.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: archaist on April 17, 2015, 05:15:13 PM
Oh, for sure. There was very little budget for promotional/marketing efforts of any kind lol. I would have LOVED to see more online/web ads as well as some :15 spots.

But that all costs money, honey.

I've always felt that our games community was one giant catch 22. One one hand we love talking about the community and how great people where relative to other games and how the CoH system didn't follow the great trifecta and how you can play how you want without other people (mostly) yelling at you. Then on the other hand people are always talking about how not enough money was ever spent on marketing and the game could have been so much bigger.

But in my eyes those two are mutually exclusive. If NCsoft had pulled in way more people we wouldn't have the community, it be much more wow-esque. Where TFLeader XxxWeedWizard420xxX doesn't take you because you are not an emp def or /kin etc.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 17, 2015, 05:58:52 PM
I've always felt that our games community was one giant catch 22. One one hand we love talking about the community and how great people where relative to other games and how the CoH system didn't follow the great trifecta and how you can play how you want without other people (mostly) yelling at you. Then on the other hand people are always talking about how not enough money was ever spent on marketing and the game could have been so much bigger.

But in my eyes those two are mutually exclusive. If NCsoft had pulled in way more people we wouldn't have the community, it be much more wow-esque. Where TFLeader XxxWeedWizard420xxX doesn't take you because you are not an emp def or /kin etc.

I often think to myself, or even ramble about it RL(a problem I have due to my admittedly tense sanity, though no, I don't ramble when other people are nearby and stop anytime I hear someone within earshot), how much mmorpg players are like master of orion klackons.  Klackons see, are bugs and are also very, very stupid as a species, litterally.  Not so much in the first game, but the second one they were the "uncreative" race, meaning they were ludicrously narrow minded.  They'd only see 1 tech in any field no matter how useful or useless it was, you couldn't choose what you researched, ever.  Not to mention even dumber in MOO3.

MMORPG players are equally as narrow minded in that extreme way.  If healing vs resistance buffing vs defense buffing were presented, they only saw healing and then drew a conclusion "THATS THE ONLY WAY AND THATS FINAL!".  Every "tactic" I see in mmorpg forums are built around a trinity and the terms they often have are about as primitive and backwards as a person who thinks warfare is entirely on sword fighting and surround tactics.  You never see them use the term force multiplier.  You never see them use the term flank(it's adds instead).  Or reinforcements even(adds is used interchangeably for that).

Like, really, have any of these players played strategy games?  Or first person shooters?  Or anything else?  Often the answer is no.  It's simply impossible to not see how narrow-minded many mmorpg players are.  They suffer from a very obsessive one track mind, not just one track mind but obsessively one tracked.  In that they HAVE to go with the first and only options they saw.

In analogy, heres how we tend to see strategic options.

Rule: You cannot have more then one type.  If you research a second type, the previous one is removed due to obsolescence.

Our View and legitimate options:
50 XP
More healing | More resistance | more defense
150 XP
Crowd control | Damage Sponge | Medium debuffs
250 XP
Advanced Healing | Advanced REsistance | Advanced Defenses
600 XP
AoE Crowd Control | Improved Damage Sponge | Advanced Debuffs

We can easily choose "More HEaling", then take "Advanced Defenses".  "Damage Sponge" followed by say "AoE Crowd control" or "Advanced Debuffs".  In other words, we had freedom to choose and avoid redundancies.

The Average MMORPG player/game dev:
50XP
More Healing |
150 XP
Damage Sponge |
250 XP
Advanced Healing |
600 XP
Improved Damage Sponge |

Advanced Healing and Improved Damage sponge renders More Healing and Damage Sponge wasted slots.

Due to also possessing an often repulsive personality, they cannot trade for what we have either.  They cannot avoid the crippling redundancies seen here nore solve them.

In short, they are ludicrously uncreative.

And MMORPGs have also not advanced beyond very very old mechanics, so they must also be feudal (-50% research speed) and -1 research.  In other words, you have a game genre that is litterally stuck in the 1990s, and has only advanced technologically in gameplay only 1 year, at the most.  Because the other "tech choices" they had were all graphics exclusively :).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 17, 2015, 06:51:41 PM
I've always felt that our games community was one giant catch 22. One one hand we love talking about the community and how great people where relative to other games and how the CoH system didn't follow the great trifecta and how you can play how you want without other people (mostly) yelling at you. Then on the other hand people are always talking about how not enough money was ever spent on marketing and the game could have been so much bigger.

But in my eyes those two are mutually exclusive. If NCsoft had pulled in way more people we wouldn't have the community, it be much more wow-esque. Where TFLeader XxxWeedWizard420xxX doesn't take you because you are not an emp def or /kin etc.

While I can't really speak on how different the community would have or would not have grown to become should there have been more people playing the game (I left my crystal ball in my other wizards cloak) I will say that I've always been of the impression that our community had less to do with the quantity and more to do with the quality - and I don't think the gaming 'experience' factors that come with these two things are contingent upon each other.

There are trolls and bad apples in every game - some more so than others. But I'm not convinced that our player base would see a drastic change just in there being more of us. I've met other great players in games like CO, STO, DCUO, etc - and many of them never even played COH. I've always felt that there are gamers out there who would have made great additions to our community - but COH, for one reason or another, just didn't snag them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 17, 2015, 09:58:55 PM
I've always felt that our games community was one giant catch 22. One one hand we love talking about the community and how great people where relative to other games and how the CoH system didn't follow the great trifecta and how you can play how you want without other people (mostly) yelling at you. Then on the other hand people are always talking about how not enough money was ever spent on marketing and the game could have been so much bigger.

But in my eyes those two are mutually exclusive. If NCsoft had pulled in way more people we wouldn't have the community, it be much more wow-esque. Where TFLeader XxxWeedWizard420xxX doesn't take you because you are not an emp def or /kin etc.

I think there would be significant differences between a mega-CoH and WoW due to the nature and structure of the games.  However, I believe there is significant truth to your intuition.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: primeknight on April 18, 2015, 12:36:15 AM

But in my eyes those two are mutually exclusive. If NCsoft had pulled in way more people we wouldn't have the community, it be much more wow-esque. Where TFLeader XxxWeedWizard420xxX doesn't take you because you are not an emp def or /kin etc.

The community for the most part was awesome.  But, as a speed boost-less /kin I got a fair amount of teammates who were confused/frustrated at no SB.  Although to sort of make your point, that happened more when the game was younger and there were more people playing (visibly in Liberty).

Closer to the end no one really cared (although I never tried a master-TF) 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 18, 2015, 06:09:22 PM
The community for the most part was awesome.  But, as a speed boost-less /kin I got a fair amount of teammates who were confused/frustrated at no SB.  Although to sort of make your point, that happened more when the game was younger and there were more people playing (visibly in Liberty).

Closer to the end no one really cared (although I never tried a master-TF)

there is a difference between not caring if a potential party member is any particular power set and wanting  a potential party member to have key powers from whatever power set they took. If I came on a team with a rad defender that took as few rad powers as possible but had every travel power, I would just be riding that team. If they so desired, I fully expect them to tell me thanks but no thanks. Its like petless masterminds, it is possible to make one, but then it is possible to make burlap underwear, dont expect anyone but yourself to wear them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 18, 2015, 06:15:24 PM
The community for the most part was awesome.  But, as a speed boost-less /kin I got a fair amount of teammates who were confused/frustrated at no SB.  Although to sort of make your point, that happened more when the game was younger and there were more people playing (visibly in Liberty).

Closer to the end no one really cared (although I never tried a master-TF)

I'm kind of of the mindset of Ivanhedgehog above, if your skipping the critical powers of a set then your not going to be able to really contribute.  For empathy it was fortitude and the RA's/clear mind and adrenaline boost(and I saw empaths without fortitude, and often also without any attacks as a defender or any control powers as a controller).  Time manipulators should always have at least times juncture and farsight ect.  Some sets skipping key powers were both crippling to the person who had it and to the team and it caused them to leech sadly.

It was also an issue for the arachnos soldiers earlier on with idiots skipping Tactical Training: Maneuvers and if they were widows, mind link.  In fact, idiots tried to argue against taking TT: Maneuvers or any TT power "Cause it was a buff to the team" even though IT HELPED THEM TO.

I have no issues with any particular power set combination, but I did expect key powers to be taken.

I think though the game didn't have alot of try hards as the game made it possible for any one power set combination to work, which served to discredit the try hards.  Course I don't recall to many try hards demanding nerfs excessively on the forums to ruin sets they felt were "cheap" either.

Edit: There were try hards course that demanded defenders do nothing but heal though even later in the games life.  I still remember reading the "defebcers should heal" thread.

(for the few who didn't see it, yes, the thread was litterally called that and defender was mispelled that way)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on April 18, 2015, 06:24:44 PM
I never made a Kin because, while I liked the idea of a general buff-based Support set whose visuals are vague enough to interpret as anything (rather than the more visually-specific buff sets like Fire, Ice, or Sonic, or a buff set with a more specific niche, like Force Field or Empathy), I didn't want to be pigeonholed into being The Speed Boost Guy, so I wound up avoiding the set entirely.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on April 18, 2015, 08:06:42 PM
I'm kind of of the mindset of Ivanhedgehog above, if your skipping the critical powers of a set then your not going to be able to really contribute.  For empathy it was fortitude and the RA's/clear mind and adrenaline boost(and I saw empaths without fortitude, and often also without any attacks as a defender or any control powers as a controller).  Time manipulators should always have at least times juncture and farsight ect.  Some sets skipping key powers were both crippling to the person who had it and to the team and it caused them to leech sadly.

It really depends on your perspective and the point of playing the game.  If you're "playing the game to win" because it's a GAME, then you care about the capabilities of the people you're playing with. 

If you're undertaking missions IN ORDER TO FIGHT EVIL! then you recognize that those heroes who might join you only have those abilities that their individual stories and histories have allowed them to acquire. 

If somebody doesn't need my help on their mission, that's fine -- I can find some evil that needs fighting.  I just wish that Paragon's damn revolving-door justice system didn't put Frostfire right back on the street every time I brought him down!  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on April 18, 2015, 08:22:39 PM
If somebody doesn't need my help on their mission, that's fine -- I can find some evil that needs fighting.  I just wish that Paragon's damn revolving-door justice system didn't put Frostfire right back on the street every time I brought him down!  ;)
They sort of left it up to the player to decide the fate of "defeated" enemies.  Some liked to imagine that they were all teleported to the Zig.  But because Frank Castle and Light Yagami are my personal crime-fighting paragons, I always insisted that anyone my characters "defeated" was 6 feet under.  The best way to fight crime...exterminate the criminals.  As such I really appreciated the newer missions where you would sometimes actually get a choice to flat-out kill someone.  Not "arrest," not "defeat," not "beat up," just flat out kill.  At last, a chance to get rid of someone who would not be taking advantage of a revolving-door justice system!  I always wished we had more missions like that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 18, 2015, 09:08:26 PM
It really depends on your perspective and the point of playing the game.  If you're "playing the game to win" because it's a GAME, then you care about the capabilities of the people you're playing with. 

If you're undertaking missions IN ORDER TO FIGHT EVIL! then you recognize that those heroes who might join you only have those abilities that their individual stories and histories have allowed them to acquire. 

If somebody doesn't need my help on their mission, that's fine -- I can find some evil that needs fighting.  I just wish that Paragon's damn revolving-door justice system didn't put Frostfire right back on the street every time I brought him down!  ;)

If it severely impairs my team for that kineticist to skip fulcrum shift, I'm sorry but I do have a game to win, I do play for fun, and indeed I have fun, but my fun is not to be gimping my team horribly.  I could see a kin without speed boost or fulcrum shift if they are not a high enough level.  But after the QoL patch that made speed boost hit everyone in the team in ONE cast, there is no excuse.

Not to mention said QoL improvement made it very very easy to do all kinds of other things that you are NOT pidgeon holed into being the speed boost guy nore did I really consider a Kin to be the speed boost guy.  I considered kins to be the fulcrum shift damage amplifier that made everything die very very fast.

And to me, I do have shades of grey on it, but again some things I just won't put up with a badly made toon unless it's a retcon trial in which case yeah, I can see why they are doing it.

And no, I am NOT being a stop having fun guy.  An SHFG would pass you up for not picking specific powersets, I don't mind if your a powerset I personally do not enjoy playing.  But I do expect a person to not be ludicrously foolish with their power picks, I put up with that before and found said people to be horribly ineffective.

Look at things from my perspective: I want to have fun and losing repeatedly is NOT fun.  Having people who are horribly ineffective greatly increases the chance of that.  There are powers that, not taking them is just about as foolish as it gets.

It's called having a practical mindset.  I'm being the realist, not the "Ok so I got a kin who has never taken fulcrum shift and speed boost.  Ok I am good!" and then suffer "God dangit we are losing endlessly cause we got so many teammates who don't have any key powers in their powerserts".  I had moments like that, mind you, losses due to a team leader picking people with terrible power picks.  It's called being realistic and practical about the game, not theoretical and ineffective.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 18, 2015, 09:16:58 PM
I'll make another statement here:

Why take a powerset if your going to skip it's key powers at all?  Why not take another powerset to reflect what you want to do better?  Like kineticism but hate speed boost and fulcrum shifting being a support toon?  Take kinetic melee on a scrapper/brute/tanker/stalker instead.  Want to challenge yourself?  Rather than skip a critical power just up the difficulty.

Want to be fast as someone siphoning speed with said melee char?  Take super reflexes to and the quickness power.  Load up on the +recharge IOs when you get the chance and money for it.  You'll never have to be the "speed boost bot" that you fear being.

There is a HUGE difference between being thematic to a point of being impractical and being effective and thematic.  City of heroes made it very, very possible to be both practical and thematic at the same time, just think about what you really want to do with said character and the theme of said character.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on April 18, 2015, 09:24:44 PM
I just wish that Paragon's damn revolving-door justice system didn't put Frostfire right back on the street every time I brought him down!  ;)

To be fair, he did go hero after a while. Guess he wanted to be on the winning team?

Why take a powerset if your going to skip it's key powers at all?

Could be a lack of awareness of "key" powers. There was a tale of an empath that only took the straight heals, and none of the good stuff. Given the general permeating view that "empath = healer," it could very well be that the player didn't even realize that the other stuff was good, since it wasn't a straight fit with the "healing" theme of the set.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on April 18, 2015, 09:27:57 PM
To be fair, he did go hero after a while. Guess he wanted to be on the winning team?

Could be a lack of awareness of "key" powers. There was a tale of an empath that only took the straight heals, and none of the good stuff. Given the general permeating view that "empath = healer," it could very well be that the player didn't even realize that the other stuff was good, since it wasn't a straight fit with the "healing" theme of the set.

When I was leveling my first Fire/Kin I met a controller with Empathy who had taken the heals and didn't realize the values of powers like CM or Fort until I started speaking to her in private chat. Not in a "Don't be stupid. Take this power" kind of way but in a "you'll find this power to be really useful for your team..."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on April 18, 2015, 09:31:10 PM
I'll make another statement here:

Why take a powerset if your going to skip it's key powers at all?  Why not take another powerset to reflect what you want to do better? 

Concept, that's why.

Not everyone played the game the same way, you know.  Many times I ignored key powers in builds because they didn't fit the character concept.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on April 18, 2015, 09:35:07 PM
If it severely impairs my team for that kineticist to skip fulcrum shift, I'm sorry but I do have a game to win, I do play for fun, and indeed I have fun, but my fun is not to be gimping my team horribly.  I could see a kin without speed boost or fulcrum shift if they are not a high enough level.  But after the QoL patch that made speed boost hit everyone in the team in ONE cast, there is no excuse.

Not to mention said QoL improvement made it very very easy to do all kinds of other things that you are NOT pidgeon holed into being the speed boost guy nore did I really consider a Kin to be the speed boost guy.  I considered kins to be the fulcrum shift damage amplifier that made everything die very very fast.

And to me, I do have shades of grey on it, but again some things I just won't put up with a badly made toon unless it's a retcon trial in which case yeah, I can see why they are doing it.

And no, I am NOT being a stop having fun guy.  An SHFG would pass you up for not picking specific powersets, I don't mind if your a powerset I personally do not enjoy playing.  But I do expect a person to not be ludicrously foolish with their power picks, I put up with that before and found said people to be horribly ineffective.

Look at things from my perspective: I want to have fun and losing repeatedly is NOT fun.  Having people who are horribly ineffective greatly increases the chance of that.  There are powers that, not taking them is just about as foolish as it gets.

It's called having a practical mindset.  I'm being the realist, not the "Ok so I got a kin who has never taken fulcrum shift and speed boost.  Ok I am good!" and then suffer "God dangit we are losing endlessly cause we got so many teammates who don't have any key powers in their powerserts".  I had moments like that, mind you, losses due to a team leader picking people with terrible power picks.  It's called being realistic and practical about the game, not theoretical and ineffective.

Within the group of players that I normally ran around with, there was one person that would get simulator sickness occasionally. Usually it happened in caves. She absolutely hated getting Speed Boosted because she couldn't control the character as well and the Simulator sickness symptoms tended to come upon her sooner when SB'd. So, the /kin controller I had did not have Speed Boost. I never got that character high enough in levels to acquire Fulcrum Shift, unfortunately. Now, I used Siphon Speed a a lot and would teleport her to the mission door, unless I had to spend my time siphoning the speed from the same hellion a dozen times because she kept using Recall Friend (before the power had the choice to be accepted) on me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 18, 2015, 09:37:41 PM
Within the group of players that I normally ran around with, there was one person that would get simulator sickness occasionally. Usually it happened in caves. She absolutely hated getting Speed Boosted because she couldn't control the character as well and the Simulator sickness symptoms tended to come upon her sooner when SB'd. So, the /kin controller I had did not have Speed Boost. I never got that character high enough in levels to acquire Fulcrum Shift, unfortunately. Now, I used Siphon Speed a a lot and would teleport her to the mission door, unless I had to spend my time siphoning the speed from the same hellion a dozen times because she kept using Recall Friend (before the power had the choice to be accepted) on me.

I can understand a person not wanting to be speed boosted, just don't see any good reason to skip speed boost when it's such an important asset to the power set.  Hell the QoL improvement to speed boost gave the option to remove the speed buff but keep the massive +recharge and even larger +recovery buff that made it near impossible for people to run out of end.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on April 18, 2015, 11:10:57 PM
To be fair, he did go hero after a while. Guess he wanted to be on the winning team?

I always wondered about that in CoX. Are certain zones supposed to be in a certain time line? Example Faultine, RWZ, IP. In Faultine, it's the start of Fusion and Jim super hero career and you also meet Penelope Yin. Then go RWZ, you see them further in the career, and in IP Yin replaces Sister Psyche for the TF. You can go to IP and see the present "Penelope Yin", but travel to Faultline and see her younger version. Just probably an oversight, but I always found that interesting even in your heroes progression, you are around lvl 15-25 for  Faultline zone where you meet Penelope Yin then in IP you meet her future self around 20-25, but for the Lady Grey TF at lvl 45-50, she is captured and is the younger version.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 18, 2015, 11:22:15 PM
I always wondered about that in CoX. Are certain zones supposed to be in a certain time line? Example Faultine, RWZ, IP. In Faultine, it's the start of Fusion and Jim super hero career and you also meet Penelope Yin. Then go RWZ, you see them further in the career, and in IP Yin replaces Sister Psyche for the TF. You can go to IP and see the present "Penelope Yin", but travel to Faultline and see her younger version. Just probably an oversight, but I always found that interesting even in your heroes progression, you are around lvl 15-25 for  Faultline zone where you meet Penelope Yin then in IP you meet her future self around 20-25, but for the Lady Grey TF at lvl 45-50, she is captured and is the younger version.

I'd say it kind of is by design that way, the timeline was for a time established in a way.  I just wish there was some clarity there though, honestly if I recall many people hated Penelope Yin as a character, due to her sue-like nature(liked by certain villain, replacing someone else, getting a power as a plot demanded ect).  I wondered what they wanted to do with her and Faultline in the long run.  I did notice other time line similarities though, like the character development in Flamebeaux and Blast Furnace; the higher your level, the more evil Flamebeaux and the more good natured Blast Furnace tended to be.

Edit: I also noticed Frostfire becoming more "Good" natured to as your level increased in the alignment missions.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 18, 2015, 11:26:24 PM
I'll make another statement here:

Why take a powerset if your going to skip it's key powers at all?  Why not take another powerset to reflect what you want to do better?  Like kineticism but hate speed boost and fulcrum shifting being a support toon?  Take kinetic melee on a scrapper/brute/tanker/stalker instead.  Want to challenge yourself?  Rather than skip a critical power just up the difficulty.

Want to be fast as someone siphoning speed with said melee char?  Take super reflexes to and the quickness power.  Load up on the +recharge IOs when you get the chance and money for it.  You'll never have to be the "speed boost bot" that you fear being.

There is a HUGE difference between being thematic to a point of being impractical and being effective and thematic.  City of heroes made it very, very possible to be both practical and thematic at the same time, just think about what you really want to do with said character and the theme of said character.

its like a guy that joins the team but tells you he is nonviolent so his blaster cant use any attacks. he will just follow you and counsel the enemies you defeat. I dont think that would go well with many teams.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 18, 2015, 11:27:55 PM
Within the group of players that I normally ran around with, there was one person that would get simulator sickness occasionally. Usually it happened in caves. She absolutely hated getting Speed Boosted because she couldn't control the character as well and the Simulator sickness symptoms tended to come upon her sooner when SB'd. So, the /kin controller I had did not have Speed Boost. I never got that character high enough in levels to acquire Fulcrum Shift, unfortunately. Now, I used Siphon Speed a a lot and would teleport her to the mission door, unless I had to spend my time siphoning the speed from the same hellion a dozen times because she kept using Recall Friend (before the power had the choice to be accepted) on me.

there was an npc that could shut off speed boost for you.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 18, 2015, 11:38:47 PM
its like a guy that joins the team but tells you he is nonviolent so his blaster cant use any attacks. he will just follow you and counsel the enemies you defeat. I dont think that would go well with many teams.

Certainly, like the time I litterally was in a team with an attackless empath who's theme was "person on probation and cannot use any attacks".  Sadly we also had not one but TWO force fielders, myself and someone else.  Said empath roleplayed as being super super bored constantly to a point of being very, very annoying.  Especially since said empath didn't have fortitude, I think because she was to low a level, resulting in even more boredom.  I think it was also made to be a deliberate shot at attackless empaths though, thinking back on it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on April 19, 2015, 12:26:42 AM
MMORPG players are equally as narrow minded in that extreme way.  If healing vs resistance buffing vs defense buffing were presented, they only saw healing and then drew a conclusion "THATS THE ONLY WAY AND THATS FINAL!".  Every "tactic" I see in mmorpg forums are built around a trinity and the terms they often have are about as primitive and backwards as a person who thinks warfare is entirely on sword fighting and surround tactics.  You never see them use the term force multiplier.  You never see them use the term flank(it's adds instead).  Or reinforcements even(adds is used interchangeably for that).

WoW did the trinity. WoW has been hugely successful. Therefore, the way WoW did it is the right way to do it, and doing it any other way will compromise your potential success, because people you're trying to lure away from WoW won't understand what you're doing with the other roles.

And yes, it's that narrow-minded. It's the same reason why we'll continue to see variations and spinoffs of successful TV series, and sequels ad nauseam for successful movies -- it's easier to convince people that doing something the same way as something that has already succeeded is safer and more reliable than doing something different.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on April 19, 2015, 12:40:53 AM
Unfortunately - from where NCSoft sits - that type of epic 'swimming-in-a-pool-of-money' blockbuster gold that the superhero franchise sees in other forms of media didn't exactly translate with COH as well as NCSoft was hoping it would.

This is all very much my own opinion, so take whatever I say with a grain of salt - but I actually think this is a HUGE reason as to why NCSoft choose to pull the proverbial plug. I think they saw how ape$hit crazy their western market gets over any and all things super heroes...and I think this was why the bar was set so high in the sky for COH. And please don't get it twisted - I think COH was absolutely profitable. I'm just giving my own personal reason as to why NCSoft thought it wasn't profitable enough.

There was some advertising in comics in the early days of the game; I remember seeing two-page spreads for CoH back before CoV. I think NCsoft decided to let the game run and see if it would spawn a huge success on its own, then when Paragon Studios took the game F2P and opened the game store, NCsoft looked at it as if it was going to be able to use the store as a cash cow for an endless stream of microtransaction consumables and throwaway cosmetic items, as they did with their other MMOs, but the basic structure of CoX didn't lend itself to that kind of monetization. Faced with the fact that the game was a success, but not a big one, on its own, with the inherent loss of face that would result from closing a profitable venture, NCsoft management loaded Paragon Studios down with a development project that would suck up all of the profits from CoH and more, which gave them a convenient bottom-line loss to point at as justification for closing the studio and the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on April 19, 2015, 12:47:28 AM
Something only old timers could have ever seen was that there used to be this thing where radiation defenders would lock their toggles on a mob in Perez, then fly around the entire park trying to herd literally everything, and then would announce (or sometimes not announce) that they were bringing them to a gate.  Whereupon an entire zone of baddies debuffed to the floor would swarm a gate and literally turn into a shooting gallery.

Or, in the 'wolf farm' mission from Unai Kemen  (jeez; it's May 2015 and I still remember the name of the contact?) on the 'alternate NE corner of Boomtown' map, if you were too near the dumpster when the trip mines went off, you'd get a pop-up window with the message "too many effects to render". You know you're pushing the limits of the game when you overload the game engine.

[[EDIT: Fixing quote tags. ~Agge]]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on April 19, 2015, 02:03:18 AM
Why take a powerset if your going to skip it's key powers at all?  Why not take another powerset to reflect what you want to do better?  Like kineticism but hate speed boost and fulcrum shifting being a support toon?  Take kinetic melee on a scrapper/brute/tanker/stalker instead.  Want to challenge yourself?  Rather than skip a critical power just up the difficulty.

I frequently did builds using Dark Melee because I liked the fast fist-striking power sets -- used it to build most of my speedsters, but I used color customization to remove the "dark" elements and never took that netherworld tentacles thing or a couple of other powers in the set because they didn't fit the concept.  But then I also never used AE because it wasn't "real".  I suspect our play styles wouldn't be a good match for teaming.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 19, 2015, 03:45:59 AM
I frequently did builds using Dark Melee because I liked the fast fist-striking power sets -- used it to build most of my speedsters, but I used color customization to remove the "dark" elements and never took that netherworld tentacles thing or a couple of other powers in the set because they didn't fit the concept.  But then I also never used AE because it wasn't "real".  I suspect our play styles wouldn't be a good match for teaming.

I have seen a team invite a "kin lfg tf"..the team had a stone tank and the kin refused to use sb. kicked the kin and stated over. you choose what powers to take, but I dont have to wait around for you. I have waited for someone that didnt take a travel power. they pulled their weight in missions, just took a little longer to get there.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on April 19, 2015, 03:54:13 PM
My favorites:
Emps that only take heals and skip the buffs
Debuff sets that skip the -regen and -resist powers (the av melters)- Met alot of cold domination and traps users skipping those awesome debuff powers they had
Forcefield users that skip the two click bubbles and only use the toggle
Dark Miasma users that only use howling twilight to revive - it's like you're expecting your team to fail or something? Call me crazy but that aoe -regen is far more useful during a multipe boss or av fight.

Now I never kicked anyone for skipping powers unless I specifically broadcasted for a kin, empath or debuffer. In which case I would send them a tell asking them if they had another character with needed powers or I'd try to find another player to join us and keep them. But if someone say looking for a kin, a debuffer or a empath in broadcast / channel chat it only makes sense that they need the key powers.

I wouldn't run most taskforces without -regen debuffs or those av fights are next to near impossible to complete in a reasonable amount of time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on April 19, 2015, 09:51:33 PM
My favorites:
Emps that only take heals and skip the buffs
Debuff sets that skip the -regen and -resist powers (the av melters)- Met alot of cold domination and traps users skipping those awesome debuff powers they had
Forcefield users that skip the two click bubbles and only use the toggle
Dark Miasma users that only use howling twilight to revive - it's like you're expecting your team to fail or something? Call me crazy but that aoe -regen is far more useful during a multipe boss or av fight.

Now I never kicked anyone for skipping powers unless I specifically broadcasted for a kin, empath or debuffer. In which case I would send them a tell asking them if they had another character with needed powers or I'd try to find another player to join us and keep them. But if someone say looking for a kin, a debuffer or a empath in broadcast / channel chat it only makes sense that they need the key powers.

I wouldn't run most taskforces without -regen debuffs or those av fights are next to near impossible to complete in a reasonable amount of time.
I recall, once, getting an IM asking if I could heal. I was playing my Dark/Dark Defender. My reply was, " I have a heal. " I wasn't invited to the team that the guy was building for some reason. I mean, with acc debuffs, you'd rarely need heals. But, I think, that was back in the times before it was understood just how awesome Defenders could be on a team.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on April 20, 2015, 01:17:40 AM
Lol yeah, dark/dark was pretty damn insane at times. It's one of those debuff sets that's so freaking universal it's unreal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on April 20, 2015, 01:32:46 AM
I recall, once, getting an IM asking if I could heal. I was playing my Dark/Dark Defender. My reply was, " I have a heal. " I wasn't invited to the team that the guy was building for some reason. I mean, with acc debuffs, you'd rarely need heals. But, I think, that was back in the times before it was understood just how awesome Defenders could be on a team.

'my single target regen debuff has a secondary heal effect' would have been a fine answer for either dark or kin  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 20, 2015, 02:19:45 AM
'my single target regen debuff has a secondary heal effect' would have been a fine answer for either dark or kin  ;D

there were a few cases where you needed a heal heavy set. places where you couldnt count on enemy targeted heals to hit. the heal heavy sets could do the trick.also,if you needed cm.   
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlphaFerret on April 20, 2015, 02:32:43 AM
I was running a rad/rad on an 8 hero team, and the leader told me to concentrate on heals and quit throwing that green stuff around...
I did what I was told for a few mobs...then he understood.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on April 20, 2015, 02:50:51 AM
there were a few cases where you needed a heal heavy set. places where you couldnt count on enemy targeted heals to hit. the heal heavy sets could do the trick.also,if you needed cm.   
I can't think of any cases off the top of my head unless you created an AE arc for it. A) The enemy targeted heals were bigger, B) The enemy targeted heals had an acc bonus, and C) The enemy targeted heals had debuff(s). Additionally, the enemy targeted heals came alongside some nasty buffs/debuffs. I would take a Dark or Kin (or pretty much anything) pretty much any day of the week over an Empath or PainDom who mainly focused on their heals.

And I'm saying that as an Empath. My heals were not the biggest bang in my basket - my buffs were. If anything, my heals were *under*slotted...3 Golgies and call it good. My buffs were what kept my teams on their feet. They're the powers I slotted to the nines. They're the powers that my teams appreciated. ("Fort! Oh boy!" "Dos Auras! Oh boy!")
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on April 20, 2015, 02:56:09 AM
I was running a rad/rad on an 8 hero team, and the leader told me to concentrate on heals and quit throwing that green stuff around...
I did what I was told for a few mobs...then he understood.

LOL same here... Leader didnt understand what my debuffs were doing.. and said just concentrate on healing.. and I did.. and they died.. fast...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on April 20, 2015, 03:47:58 AM
there were a few cases where you needed a heal heavy set. places where you couldnt count on enemy targeted heals to hit. the heal heavy sets could do the trick.also,if you needed cm.   

keyes and...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 20, 2015, 07:27:42 PM
I can't think of any cases off the top of my head unless you created an AE arc for it.

I can think of a few cases where the targeted heals would be problematic unless you also possessed significantly higher levels of tohit than most players did.  If you were facing off against DRMs in Carnival of Shadow missions, for example.  If you're running any of the Black Swan missions full of her shadow minions targeted heals could be problematic at higher densities.  Fighting various incarnations of Antimatter would also be a problem.  In the old days, he also had a ridiculously broken hover that basically buffed him to Elude.  And at lower levels, the Skyraiders could be a real pain in the butt with shield generators.  Particularly if you fought them before the generator patch which prevented them from spamming shield generators.  Before that patch, every engineer on the map was eligible to spawn a shield: after the patch they would only spawn it one at a time.  Before the patch, a three engineer spawn cluster would all but nullify targeted heals.  But even with just one, targeted heals were problematic for the lower levels that tended to fight Skyraiders, because a lot of tohit bonuses were not common at those levels.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 20, 2015, 10:29:02 PM
I can't think of any cases off the top of my head unless you created an AE arc for it. A) The enemy targeted heals were bigger, B) The enemy targeted heals had an acc bonus, and C) The enemy targeted heals had debuff(s). Additionally, the enemy targeted heals came alongside some nasty buffs/debuffs. I would take a Dark or Kin (or pretty much anything) pretty much any day of the week over an Empath or PainDom who mainly focused on their heals.

And I'm saying that as an Empath. My heals were not the biggest bang in my basket - my buffs were. If anything, my heals were *under*slotted...3 Golgies and call it good. My buffs were what kept my teams on their feet. They're the powers I slotted to the nines. They're the powers that my teams appreciated. ("Fort! Oh boy!" "Dos Auras! Oh boy!")

try getting an enemy targeted heal to hit on recluse in the STF when the towers are still up. good luck with that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 21, 2015, 12:12:09 AM
Here's a question for you all:

The defeat and achievement badges could not gain progress from AE missions, the premise for that was that people could setup custom farm missions and farm the appropriate targets to get the badge.

Yet we also gained the ability to set regular mission difficulty and spawn size, so someone could set a mission to -1 difficulty and 8 spawn size and farm it to achieve the desired badge.

So...does it matter whether it comes from a regular mission or an AE mission?  We could customize mission difficulty and farm any old skull or troll mission for those badges or whatever defeat badge you were seeking, or custom build a mission in the AE to achieve the same thing? Either way it is farming for the badge

So once the game returns and changes can be made, should the AE be allowed to give progress on defeat/achievement badges?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 21, 2015, 12:15:04 AM
try getting an enemy targeted heal to hit on recluse in the STF when the towers are still up. good luck with that.

Since he could essentially one-shot anything short of a really well-built tank when all the towers were still up (since some of his attacks had dot it would bypass the one-shot code) I'm not sure heals of any kind were really all that useful against him at that point.  Although the biggest problem with targeted heals was not that they wouldn't land, but that if they did land you could generate aggro (because the tank also had trouble hitting LR through his defense, and taunt without damage is extremely fragile).  That's why the critical tower to take out first was usually the red one (which buffed his damage) rather than the orange one (which buffed his defense).  In fact except for a tank grabbing aggro or a really crazy powerful team attempting a blitz run, you probably shouldn't be shooting at LR at all until all the towers are down.

Incidentally, I took a peek at LR's paragonwiki page just to doublecheck my memory on the tower color, and I noticed there was an editor's note about using toggle powers to constantly interrupt Recluse's ability to summon his spider minions.  Missing in the editor's note and the tower capabilities is the fact that one of them (I've forgotten which) had a toggle-breaking power.  Basically, it periodically rendered Recluse "untargettable" for a split second.  Doing so would cause all toggle powers to break off of him.  If you tried to lock toggles on LR, you'd have to keep reapplying those often.  Players that didn't notice this would lose their toggles and often not realize why.

Figuring out what the towers did was one of the first serious power investigations I did after Iakona retired.  In fact, testing the STF was the first and last time I ever did anything in-game with Iakona.  We did some testing of Lord Recluse's abilities in the STF on the beta server right after that very first successful beta server Hami test raid.

Going in reverse, I would often tell STF teams I was on that were having trouble completing the STF that the key to the most difficult parts of it were lucks.  Just a bunch of purples.  Purples would render Ghost Widow - one of the more nasty of the AVs - almost impotent.  Lucks would not neuter LR directly, but it wasn't difficult to render even the blue tower worthless and force LR to get more than a little lucky hitting you.  There was one STF I was on that the entire team was about to give up and the tank literally dropped and gave up, and I convinced the team to stick it out, Ouroed a tray full of large lucks and distributed them to the team, and we promptly dropped GW with the scrapper tanking her, and then two towers down (red and  blue) before they ran out, which was enough for the team to drop LR.  They practically thought I performed a magic trick.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 21, 2015, 12:34:21 AM
Here's a question for you all:

The defeat and achievement badges could not gain progress from AE missions, the premise for that was that people could setup custom farm missions and farm the appropriate targets to get the badge.

Yet we also gained the ability to set regular mission difficulty and spawn size, so someone could set a mission to -1 difficulty and 8 spawn size and farm it to achieve the desired badge.

So...does it matter whether it comes from a regular mission or an AE mission?  We could customize mission difficulty and farm any old skull or troll mission for those badges or whatever defeat badge you were seeking, or custom build a mission in the AE to achieve the same thing? Either way it is farming for the badge

So once the game returns and changes can be made, should the AE be allowed to give progress on defeat/achievement badges?

Whether the AE *should* grant defeat credit is a matter of opinion.  But whenever this type of question came up on the official forums, I always had the same thought, which I often expressed.  The question "does it matter" is obvious: yes it matters.  It obviously matters, because you're asking the question.  If it didn't matter, if there was no difference, you probably wouldn't be contemplating the question.  You almost certainly would not be implying it was worth any amount of effort to make happen.

More specifically, in this case it matters because its a lot easier to farm the architect, and there are defeat badges difficult to achieve through farming repeatable standard content missions.  Whether it should be easier is a separate question.  "Should" is a judgment call (mostly).  But it is objectively different.

In general, I always think people should try to avoid suggesting that there's little or no difference between the status quo and a hypothetical change.  Because every change takes effort and resources, there always has to be a reason *to* do something, not an absence of a reason not to do it.  For some reason, many people appear to think the reverse: that it is important to note that a hypothetical change will not disturb the status quo.  But all changes worth working on, do.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on April 21, 2015, 03:43:41 AM
Here's a question for you all:

The defeat and achievement badges could not gain progress from AE missions, the premise for that was that people could setup custom farm missions and farm the appropriate targets to get the badge.

Yet we also gained the ability to set regular mission difficulty and spawn size, so someone could set a mission to -1 difficulty and 8 spawn size and farm it to achieve the desired badge.

So...does it matter whether it comes from a regular mission or an AE mission?  We could customize mission difficulty and farm any old skull or troll mission for those badges or whatever defeat badge you were seeking, or custom build a mission in the AE to achieve the same thing? Either way it is farming for the badge

So once the game returns and changes can be made, should the AE be allowed to give progress on defeat/achievement badges?

The difficulty slider applied to all missions, including AE.  The difference, as I suspect you realize, is that AE missions could be tweaked such that they represent a lesser threat than the average regular mission; in other words, they're easier.

Now, you may not consider this to be a problem anyway, because farming is farming.  But to the devs, it was antithetical to the purpose they designed for badges.  Farming the regular game for badges is one thing, but gaming the system to make it easier to farm is really an exploit, behavior not intended by the designers of the system.  So naturally they're not going to program a deliberate exploit into their system unless they change their philosophies.  I suspect you'd find any dev in a similar position would agree with that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on April 21, 2015, 03:56:07 AM
So once the game returns and changes can be made, should the AE be allowed to give progress on defeat/achievement badges?
I have an answer you're not going to like:

I don't think AE should have any link to the actual game at all. No XP, no inf, no kill credits, nothing. The only reward should be tickets, which you use to buy thinks things to use in AE, and AE-related badges (not bought with tickets - earned as they were already). That way the farmers go find something else to do, and their crap eventually disappears...and the stories remain, the things that the devs wanted to encourage in the first place.

I also think we should remove the rating system and replace it with thumbsup/thumbsdown. With enough ups, the devs would look it over and judge whether to turn on 'regular rewards' for it - like the Dev Choice stuff before - very exclusive, small number of really good arcs.

[[EDIT: grammar and clarifications]]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on April 21, 2015, 04:05:00 AM
I have an answer you're not going to like:

I don't think AE should have any link to the actual game at all. No XP, no inf, no kill credits, nothing. The only reward should be tickets, which you use to buy thinks to use in AE, and AE-related badges. That way the farmers go find something else to do, and their crap eventually disappears...and the stories remain, the things that the devs wanted to encourage in the first place.

I also think we should remove the rating system and replace it with thumbsup/thumbsdown. With enough ups, the devs would look it over and judge whether to turn on 'regular rewards' for it - like the Dev Choice stuff before - very exclusive, small number of really good arcs.
I wouldn't really object to that - if the Ticket drop rate went up rather considerably.  After all, it won't actually stop farmers - I am one (some of the time), and we'll find other ways to farm.  If CoH was up and running again, and even if we had all the source code to make whatever changes we wanted, you still can't prevent farming.  As the saying goes - you can't stop the game, all you can do is change the rules.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on April 21, 2015, 04:10:55 AM
That's why I said "That way the farmers go find something else to do" :) I don't mind farmers, but I do mind their crap getting in the way of my crap. :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on April 21, 2015, 04:18:51 AM
I wouldn't really object to that - if the Ticket drop rate went up rather considerably.  After all, it won't actually stop farmers - I am one (some of the time), and we'll find other ways to farm.  If CoH was up and running again, and even if we had all the source code to make whatever changes we wanted, you still can't prevent farming.  As the saying goes - you can't stop the game, all you can do is change the rules.

Agreed, I'd just go back to farming purples, TFs, Hero Merits, ect... I actually did near the end. I just love seeing those big purple letters saying RECIPE on my screen. I'd also have an alt doorsitting while I was doing it. AE to me didn't have a farming problem. It had a respect problem, the main reason most people complain about others farming AE was. That the starting zone was flooded with farmers and newbies getting PLed. Who didn't know there was other zones or even more to the game.

Now in the corner of the farmers. It was the perfect place to farm, you roll a new alt on a alt account. There's your alt and the AE building. Then a hop, skip and a jump away is the market. Why would they go anywhere else? Well out of respect, why couldn't you farm/level your alt in Steel Canyon? Sure the trainers and market where a distance away but if you took tp other if you had the extra power slot. Along with your other travel powers. It shouldn't of been to much of a burden.

I'm guilty of farming in Atlas as well, until I personally got tired of the clutter, people wining and realized that I could simply move to another zone. I mean, I had SS, SJ and tp other on my fire brute. The hardest part of moving my alt around was Alt+Tab to the other screen.

On the lowbies wanting to get PLed, if farmers would of moved to other zones. Then the lowbies would of had to get atleast a few levels on their own. Before getting to the zone where farmers where at, or they had to be creative. Like the lowbies on redside :P.

Either way, if everyone would of set their differences aside. Maybe we as a community could of found away to co-exits?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on April 21, 2015, 04:25:15 AM
I have an answer you're not going to like:

I don't think AE should have any link to the actual game at all. No XP, no inf, no kill credits, nothing. The only reward should be tickets, which you use to buy thinks to use in AE, and AE-related badges. That way the farmers go find something else to do, and their crap eventually disappears...and the stories remain, the things that the devs wanted to encourage in the first place.

I also think we should remove the rating system and replace it with thumbsup/thumbsdown. With enough ups, the devs would look it over and judge whether to turn on 'regular rewards' for it - like the Dev Choice stuff before - very exclusive, small number of really good arcs.

Or perhaps make it so each toon only gets XP and Infl once per each AE mission, so that running the same one over and over produces no reward.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 21, 2015, 05:45:46 AM
Or perhaps make it so each toon only gets XP and Infl once per each AE mission, so that running the same one over and over produces no reward.

Trivially exploitable: just keep publishing the same mission over and over, but under different names with trivial differences in content.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on April 21, 2015, 06:20:13 AM
Trivially exploitable: just keep publishing the same mission over and over, but under different names with trivial differences in content.
Indeed.  As a bit of a related trick, a friend of mine hid his best farming AE mishes by giving them garbled, nonsense names; they never showed up on anyone's keyword searches.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on April 21, 2015, 06:47:42 AM
I have an answer you're not going to like:

I don't think AE should have any link to the actual game at all. No XP, no inf, no kill credits, nothing. The only reward should be tickets, which you use to buy thinks things to use in AE, and AE-related badges (not bought with tickets - earned as they were already). That way the farmers go find something else to do, and their crap eventually disappears...and the stories remain, the things that the devs wanted to encourage in the first place.

I also think we should remove the rating system and replace it with thumbsup/thumbsdown. With enough ups, the devs would look it over and judge whether to turn on 'regular rewards' for it - like the Dev Choice stuff before - very exclusive, small number of really good arcs.

[[EDIT: grammar and clarifications]]

I like these ideas, the AE in my opinion was there for people to have their stories on display for others to enjoy or dislike, but at least there was the opportunity for us to express are story telling talents or not in my case  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on April 21, 2015, 07:00:31 AM
Alternately, for easy filtering, you could introduce a flag for all AE mishes.  In exchange for no longer cracking down on them, all AE farming mishes will be left alone by the devs - as long as they are clearly labeled as such.  Then, with a single mouse click on the AE missions search menu, all farming mishes can be filtered out.  This effectively segregates them from all the actual storytelling arcs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on April 21, 2015, 07:42:59 AM
There were several times i decided to level lowbies through actual AE arcs and i never had any trouble finding non-farm arcs with the boolean search function. I can't figure out if people just didn't use that function or if people are more upset that no one was playing their arcs or that people who were playing them expected them to be farms and downrated them.

In any event I'd be really annoyed if the rewards were removed from AE. That's where I'd get all my rare and pricey common salvage. That's basically all I used it for other than occasionally pl'ing friends who were leveling late blooming toons. I was of the opinion that no one should have to suffer through a pre-18 illusion troller like I did, e.g.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on April 21, 2015, 01:06:28 PM
try getting an enemy targeted heal to hit on recluse in the STF when the towers are still up. good luck with that.
The easiest way to tank recluse in this phase is to just taunt him and hover up high in front the tower. Not the buff tower but the big tower that his headquarters. He'll try to get the taunter but wont be able to as he keeps falling and teleporting. ( he automatically teleports if you try to kite him away from the buff towers) Then just hit him with another taunt when he runs back to you so he doesnt unaggro.

Im kinda surprised as I assumed most people knew this trick.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Burnt Toast on April 21, 2015, 02:50:37 PM

That's how I always tanked him... easiest and safest. Then the rest of the team could just focus on the towers.


When I would run with my Illusion/Rad troller friends... we would just have two of us alternate Phantom Army so they always had his attention.

The easiest way to tank recluse in this phase is to just taunt him and hover up high in front the tower. Not the buff tower but the big tower that his headquarters. He'll try to get the taunter but wont be able to as he keeps falling and teleporting. ( he automatically teleports if you try to kite him away from the buff towers) Then just hit him with another taunt when he runs back to you so he doesnt unaggro.

Im kinda surprised as I assumed most people knew this trick.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 21, 2015, 03:19:20 PM
I have an answer you're not going to like:

I don't think AE should have any link to the actual game at all. No XP, no inf, no kill credits, nothing. The only reward should be tickets, which you use to buy thinks things to use in AE, and AE-related badges (not bought with tickets - earned as they were already). That way the farmers go find something else to do, and their crap eventually disappears...and the stories remain, the things that the devs wanted to encourage in the first place.

I also think we should remove the rating system and replace it with thumbsup/thumbsdown. With enough ups, the devs would look it over and judge whether to turn on 'regular rewards' for it - like the Dev Choice stuff before - very exclusive, small number of really good arcs.

[[EDIT: grammar and clarifications]]

I feel that would send AE to the dustbin. the only people using it would be a few rp'ers. not a very good return for the development cost.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on April 21, 2015, 03:28:53 PM
I have an answer you're not going to like:

I don't think AE should have any link to the actual game at all. No XP, no inf, no kill credits, nothing. The only reward should be tickets, which you use to buy thinks things to use in AE, and AE-related badges (not bought with tickets - earned as they were already). That way the farmers go find something else to do, and their crap eventually disappears...and the stories remain, the things that the devs wanted to encourage in the first place.

I also think we should remove the rating system and replace it with thumbsup/thumbsdown. With enough ups, the devs would look it over and judge whether to turn on 'regular rewards' for it - like the Dev Choice stuff before - very exclusive, small number of really good arcs.

[[EDIT: grammar and clarifications]]

I feel the would send AE to the dustbin. the only people using it would be a few rp'ers. not a very good return for the development cost.

The system is (or was) already setup, so just leave it, but like what Agge said just take out all the reward in the system except tickets. For people using AE, I assume the reward would be making the mission and sharing it with people, not the actual reward of XP/Inf and for the few rp'ers (I am not a rp'er so I am assuming), that is reward enough for them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 21, 2015, 04:12:50 PM
I feel the would send AE to the dustbin. the only people using it would be a few rp'ers. not a very good return for the development cost.


The system is (or was) already setup, so just leave it, but like what Agge said just take out all the reward in the system except tickets. For people using AE, I assume the reward would be making the mission and sharing it with people, not the actual reward of XP/Inf and for the few rp'ers (I am not a rp'er so I am assuming), that is reward enough for them.

is the amount of use(the return) enough for the expense(time to make the change)? add in the fact that you leave a prominent hole for any non rp'er using the game. the actual farmers werent that big a nuisance. I did not farm AE, but I feel that turning it into a ghost town wont help the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on April 21, 2015, 05:11:34 PM
is the amount of use(the return) enough for the expense(time to make the change)? add in the fact that you leave a prominent hole for any non rp'er using the game. the actual farmers werent that big a nuisance. I did not farm AE, but I feel that turning it into a ghost town wont help the game.

That could be said about anything in the game. Is PvP worth it to turn back on because it will have a small community. Is base making worth turning back on too? I don't know the technical detail on how it works (if it is just "pulling some switches" or something more complicated), but the the system is already in place, if it doesn't need any or much maintenance to startup again, and not take away from activating the core game, I don't see why not having it in the game. Probably just me, but I know it would suck to be marginalized in the game because your play style is in the minority and for those who enjoyed AE, it feel wrong to discount them when the game comes back. Course this is just my opinion.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 21, 2015, 05:17:34 PM
I kind of agree about AE, honestly I think a better compromise would be that you couldn't gain influence or experience if you had played the game a good while(as in enough to get 2-3 50s).  Newbies were the ones most negatively effected by it, as they'd hit 50 but not know a single thing about the game.  While newcomers did get powerleveled sometimes, yeah, you also have to remember that most wouldn't know where to go to get power leveled.  But AE see, it was right there, in the very first zone you entered. 

One shouldn't be able to legitimately hit 50 without ever leaving atlas park.

That goes for the Sewer trial(the one introduced later, not the original one) to, maybe limit it to level 10 before making it give exp?  Like change it so that it temporarily turns off experience when you are level 10 or higher.  The other task forces don't need this treatment, just the sewer mission.


Edit: And yeah you could up the tickets or something gained from AE, but I think that reward should be confined to higher level characters to.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on April 21, 2015, 06:33:38 PM
That could be said about anything in the game. Is PvP worth it to turn back on because it will have a small community. Is base making worth turning back on too?

Removing PVP or bases would be a considerable amount of work and probably not possible without the source*. Those kinds of things are deeply integrated in the game and aren't modules that can just be pulled out at will.

About the only pieces that you could conceivably bring the game up without, though I don't know why you'd do that, are the ones that relied on an external server process. Ones that we had seen fail at some point or another on live and know for sure are external:

* Account system for microtransactions (though removing this would make everyone lose all their vet rewards and stuff that had once been purchasable, even if it had been granted for free)
* AE Mission Storage
* Auction House
* Global Chat / Friends List / Email (same server for both)
* LFG Queue for Incarnate Trials

The arena matchmaking system might be separate as well, though I can't recall an instance where it didn't work. Even if that could be disabled, PVP zones would still function.



* Unless you're talking about remaking the whole game from scratch, but that's a whole other ball of wax with things that would be a lot more difficult to replicate.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 21, 2015, 06:34:31 PM
I have an answer you're not going to like:

I have *the* answer, and generally almost nobody likes it.  But the real problem with the AE from day one is the devs had the entirely wrong idea about what the AE was even supposed to be.  They saw it as a way to allow players to write their own content.  That's wrong for one simple reason: most players can't write content.  By focusing on making things easy for *authors* they made the experience terrible for *consumers*.  Really, most of the architectural complaints about the AE boil down to that one simple fact.

The focus of the AE should have been on *consumers* of the content, not the writers.  Which is to say, for every decision about the AE, the question should have been whether it improves the experience for players playing the content.  I once told the devs that a big mistake they made was believing 10,000 authors was a success.  50,000 authors is a failure, because there's no possible way 50,000 of our players were even literate, much less competent authors.  Success, for the AE, should not have been 50,000 authors and few players liking the content.  It should have been few authors and 50,000 players loving the content.

We should have been a lot harsher on authors.  We should not have been crying about how unfair it was to authors.  We were looking for a fair rating system for authors.  As an AE author, I say screw the authors.  What matters is that good AE missions survive and reach their audience, and everything else dies.  If you want to publish a nonsensical grammatically random gibberish storm for yourself and your close friends to play, I was all for that - but with the catch that it was likely *no one* would ever find it unless they were explicitly searching for it.  But if you actually wanted total strangers to play your work, it should have had to pass significant stress tests and reviews.

If you're primarily focused on the top 100, or 500, or even 1000 AE missions and arcs, questions like "what rewards should AE arcs have" and "how do we make a search system that works for players" start to become a lot simpler to answer.  When you're talking about the 300,000 streams of consciousness that were actually in the AE, farming arcs were not actually the biggest problem.  They were a symptom of the fact that people needed a reason to play AE content, and "for the rewards" isn't the only such reason people would, but it was the only reason they could easily satisfy.  "For the stories" was an extremely difficult proposition for people not expert in finding things that qualified as stories.

The idea of dev-approved arcs having standard rewards was a good idea in theory, but because of the fact the AE generated more arcs in a day than the entire dev team could play in a week, it was impossible to execute on.  And their hearts really were not in it, AND they were worried about being "fair" to authors, which once again is the cement shoes around the ankles of the AE.  Be fair to the poor players that are going to be exposed to the content.  For a business to be successful, it needs as many customers as possible, not as many employees as possible.

I actually had a lot of respect for Venture, bastard that he was about it, reviewing AE arcs with no concern for authors' feelings at all, and only looking at them from the perspective of the player that had to run them.  Because that's what really matters: does it generate content that players actually want to run and enjoy running.  Its ultimately the only thing that matters, and any AE author who disagrees in my opinion shouldn't be an author.  Even I had trouble being that blunt, and to be honest I think that was a mistake on my part.

So this is what I would do if I was rebooting the AE and had enough resources to yada-yada-yada.  First, anyone can make any arc they want, but that arc would have *no* rewards.  They could play through it, or guide friends through it, and there would be no limitations on what you could do in these.  You could even do things the devs originally banned for being exploitable, because exploits don't matter if there are no rewards.  Fight Hamidon if you want, or spawn all the Praetorians at once.  Test your build against pylons, or herd all of Creys Folly into a dumpster.  No rewards, so nothing is off-limits.  I'm sure there are players that would take advantage of that, rewards be damned.  I would even create arena-like switches for those missions that would allow players to turn on and off certain effects, like travel suppression or the aggro cap (yes this requires a lot of code).

If you actually want your arc to have rewards, you'd have to submit it for approval.  There would be two tiers.  Tier 1 arcs would only award AE tickets and would have to meet certain well documented parameters.  For example, some of those switches would be illegal in tier 1 arcs.  We'd also run an automatic spell checker, and if you can't even be bothered to spell check, you get rejected.  You'd have to show evidence you've put the requisite work into the arc to be deserving of any consideration at all.  If the arc met the limits of most AE arcs, you'd get tier 1 certified quickly and your arc would award tickets.  It would also be searchable as a tier 1 arc.

Tier 2 would be tricky.  Unlike tier 1, it would reward standard rewards.  And trickily, also unlike tier 1 it would have almost no limits.  You could do things in Tier 2 you couldn't in tier 1.  The catch is you'd have to submit the arc for special review.  I would create a set of community reviewers pulled from volunteers with experience making tier 1 and tier 2 arcs, and they would be tasked with reviewing potential tier 2 arcs for problems, exploits, and quality of content.  You'd need to have multiple approvals to be granted tier 2 certification, and you'd also be searchable as a tier 2 arc.

In all cases, people who tried to abuse the submission system in defiance of the guidelines would get warnings, then banned.  Arc creation and publication (for tier 1 and 2) would be a revocable privilege.

On top of all that, I would create a curation system.  Any player could create a curated AE list of their favorite or recommended missions, which players could see in-game.  Good reviewers would tend to get more followers, which would increase the reach of their recommendations.  "Softer" or less discriminating reviewers would tend to get less followers and less credibility.  This would encourage honest reviewing, but open the door to many different perspectives to operate that honesty in.  Someone that honestly likes a lot of combat but hates story could still be counted on to honestly review arcs with that perspective.  Someone that honestly likes story more than combat could be counted on to honestly view arcs with that perspective.  Different players with different perspectives but limited time to search around could gravitate to curators with similar sensibilities.

Not gonna happen, but that's what I think a consumer-focused AE system would look like.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on April 21, 2015, 07:08:23 PM
I have *the* answer, and generally almost nobody likes it.  But the real problem with the AE from day one is the devs had the entirely wrong idea about what the AE was even supposed to be.  They saw it as a way to allow players to write their own content.  That's wrong for one simple reason: most players can't write content.  By focusing on making things easy for *authors* they made the experience terrible for *consumers*.  Really, most of the architectural complaints about the AE boil down to that one simple fact.

The focus of the AE should have been on *consumers* of the content, not the writers.  Which is to say, for every decision about the AE, the question should have been whether it improves the experience for players playing the content.  I once told the devs that a big mistake they made was believing 10,000 authors was a success.  50,000 authors is a failure, because there's no possible way 50,000 of our players were even literate, much less competent authors.  Success, for the AE, should not have been 50,000 authors and few players liking the content.  It should have been few authors and 50,000 players loving the content.

We should have been a lot harsher on authors.  We should not have been crying about how unfair it was to authors.  We were looking for a fair rating system for authors.  As an AE author, I say screw the authors.  What matters is that good AE missions survive and reach their audience, and everything else dies.  If you want to publish a nonsensical grammatically random gibberish storm for yourself and your close friends to play, I was all for that - but with the catch that it was likely *no one* would ever find it unless they were explicitly searching for it.  But if you actually wanted total strangers to play your work, it should have had to pass significant stress tests and reviews.

If you're primarily focused on the top 100, or 500, or even 1000 AE missions and arcs, questions like "what rewards should AE arcs have" and "how do we make a search system that works for players" start to become a lot simpler to answer.  When you're talking about the 300,000 streams of consciousness that were actually in the AE, farming arcs were not actually the biggest problem.  They were a symptom of the fact that people needed a reason to play AE content, and "for the rewards" isn't the only such reason people would, but it was the only reason they could easily satisfy.  "For the stories" was an extremely difficult proposition for people not expert in finding things that qualified as stories.

The idea of dev-approved arcs having standard rewards was a good idea in theory, but because of the fact the AE generated more arcs in a day than the entire dev team could play in a week, it was impossible to execute on.  And their hearts really were not in it, AND they were worried about being "fair" to authors, which once again is the cement shoes around the ankles of the AE.  Be fair to the poor players that are going to be exposed to the content.  For a business to be successful, it needs as many customers as possible, not as many employees as possible.

I actually had a lot of respect for Venture, bastard that he was about it, reviewing AE arcs with no concern for authors' feelings at all, and only looking at them from the perspective of the player that had to run them.  Because that's what really matters: does it generate content that players actually want to run and enjoy running.  Its ultimately the only thing that matters, and any AE author who disagrees in my opinion shouldn't be an author.  Even I had trouble being that blunt, and to be honest I think that was a mistake on my part.

So this is what I would do if I was rebooting the AE and had enough resources to yada-yada-yada.  First, anyone can make any arc they want, but that arc would have *no* rewards.  They could play through it, or guide friends through it, and there would be no limitations on what you could do in these.  You could even do things the devs originally banned for being exploitable, because exploits don't matter if there are no rewards.  Fight Hamidon if you want, or spawn all the Praetorians at once.  Test your build against pylons, or herd all of Creys Folly into a dumpster.  No rewards, so nothing is off-limits.  I'm sure there are players that would take advantage of that, rewards be damned.  I would even create arena-like switches for those missions that would allow players to turn on and off certain effects, like travel suppression or the aggro cap (yes this requires a lot of code).

If you actually want your arc to have rewards, you'd have to submit it for approval.  There would be two tiers.  Tier 1 arcs would only award AE tickets and would have to meet certain well documented parameters.  For example, some of those switches would be illegal in tier 1 arcs.  We'd also run an automatic spell checker, and if you can't even be bothered to spell check, you get rejected.  You'd have to show evidence you've put the requisite work into the arc to be deserving of any consideration at all.  If the arc met the limits of most AE arcs, you'd get tier 1 certified quickly and your arc would award tickets.  It would also be searchable as a tier 1 arc.

Tier 2 would be tricky.  Unlike tier 1, it would reward standard rewards.  And trickily, also unlike tier 1 it would have almost no limits.  You could do things in Tier 2 you couldn't in tier 1.  The catch is you'd have to submit the arc for special review.  I would create a set of community reviewers pulled from volunteers with experience making tier 1 and tier 2 arcs, and they would be tasked with reviewing potential tier 2 arcs for problems, exploits, and quality of content.  You'd need to have multiple approvals to be granted tier 2 certification, and you'd also be searchable as a tier 2 arc.

In all cases, people who tried to abuse the submission system in defiance of the guidelines would get warnings, then banned.  Arc creation and publication (for tier 1 and 2) would be a revocable privilege.

On top of all that, I would create a curation system.  Any player could create a curated AE list of their favorite or recommended missions, which players could see in-game.  Good reviewers would tend to get more followers, which would increase the reach of their recommendations.  "Softer" or less discriminating reviewers would tend to get less followers and less credibility.  This would encourage honest reviewing, but open the door to many different perspectives to operate that honesty in.  Someone that honestly likes a lot of combat but hates story could still be counted on to honestly review arcs with that perspective.  Someone that honestly likes story more than combat could be counted on to honestly view arcs with that perspective.  Different players with different perspectives but limited time to search around could gravitate to curators with similar sensibilities.

Not gonna happen, but that's what I think a consumer-focused AE system would look like.

Sounds like how getting your App approved by Apple (which provides quality control) then going through how Yelp dose their ratings. I always wondered also if an player generated story was so good, they (the devs) would ever consider putting it in the game outside of AE with their own contact NPC.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 21, 2015, 08:41:44 PM
I always wondered also if an player generated story was so good, they (the devs) would ever consider putting it in the game outside of AE with their own contact NPC.

In a manner of speaking, sort of.  First, a side note: one of the big objections about the AE when it was being discussed was that if it had no rewards no one would play it.  To me, that was always obviously false, for this reason: a significant percentage of players engaged in behavior with no rewards prior to the AE.  PvP didn't really have much in the way of rewards: certainly not enough to be considered a legitimate reason to PvP.  RP has no rewards.  Bashing pylons to climb the DPS ladder has trivial rewards.  Soloing AVs has pathetic rewards.  Base building: no rewards.  Costume contests: only if you win.  Players did all sorts of things in City of Heroes that had little to no reward.  AE rewards attracted a certain kind of player, but an AE will less or no rewards wouldn't attract no one.  Just a different kind of player.

I mention this because another objection to the AE was directed at the rating system.  It was thought that the ratings system would be a disaster because it would be a popularity contest.  Popular players would get all the plays and unpopular or unknown ones would have no chance to catch them.  There was some truth to this theory: I specifically tested it by publishing arcs under my primary account and a secondary account no one knew was connected to me.  Arcanaville arcs did get more plays than the other.  But the other did *get* plays, and did get attention.

But in another way, that theory was completely wrong**.  During AE beta there were a lot of "names" making and testing arcs.  I know that I got a lot of plays and attention simply because I was recognizable.  However, the player that got the most attention, the most plays, and the most praise for their arcs wasn't me, not by a long shot, and it wasn't any of those other well-known players.  It was feargas (technically feargas2).  Before AE beta, few players had ever heard of him, but his writing spoke for itself.  Even the devs were impressed: he had a knack of getting the most out of the limited tools we had to make arcs many, including some devs, felt were better than some of the actual content in the game.

My guess is that it would be complicated for the devs to simply lift an AE arc and put it into the standard content in the game.  But in a sense, we know they felt there existed AE content at least as good as what they were writing, because the player known as feargas became the developer known as Dr. Aeon, based in large part on the strength of his AE writing.


** It didn't like to hear it, but "forum wisdom" was an oxymoron
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 21, 2015, 09:39:43 PM
That could be said about anything in the game. Is PvP worth it to turn back on because it will have a small community. Is base making worth turning back on too? I don't know the technical detail on how it works (if it is just "pulling some switches" or something more complicated), but the the system is already in place, if it doesn't need any or much maintenance to startup again, and not take away from activating the core game, I don't see why not having it in the game. Probably just me, but I know it would suck to be marginalized in the game because your play style is in the minority and for those who enjoyed AE, it feel wrong to discount them when the game comes back. Course this is just my opinion.

what i am trying to say is that the game will return with AE as it was, full xp etc. to make the change will take resources and leave a hole where there once was a popular content point. changing that would be equivalent to shutting off pvp IMO. not something good for a maintenance game attempting to regain players.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on April 21, 2015, 09:44:56 PM
what i am trying to say is that the game will return with AE as it was, full xp etc. to make the change will take resources and leave a hole where there once was a popular content point. changing that would be equivalent to shutting off pvp IMO. not something good for a maintenance game attempting to regain players.

Oh I got what you were saying.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on April 21, 2015, 09:47:40 PM
what i am trying to say is that the game will return with AE as it was, full xp etc. to make the change will take resources and leave a hole where there once was a popular content point. changing that would be equivalent to shutting off pvp IMO. not something good for a maintenance game attempting to regain players.
No, removing rewards from AE would be equivalent to removing rewards from PVP.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on April 21, 2015, 09:55:01 PM
No, removing rewards from AE would be equivalent to removing rewards from PVP.

I'm confused. From my take on the conversation, ivanhedgehog is saying to just keep the status quo of how AE was so you don't need to burn resources into making changes. Is that not the what was being discussed or was there something else?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 21, 2015, 10:17:05 PM
I'm confused. From my take on the conversation, ivanhedgehog is saying to just keep the status quo of how AE was so you don't need to burn resources into making changes. Is that not the what was being discussed or was there something else?

Agge appears to be pointing out that the correct analogy to removing rewards from the AE is removing rewards from PvP, not removing PvP.  That's true in the semantic sense.  However, if you believe the conventional rewards for PvP were not significant to participation, *and* you believe AE rewards were critical to participation, you could argue that a comparable analogy for removing AE rewards (and thus nullifying their participatory hook) is eliminating PvP, which is a distinction which pulls on an alternative thread of discussion from recent thread history.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on April 21, 2015, 10:47:20 PM
In a manner of speaking, sort of.  First, a side note: one of the big objections about the AE when it was being discussed was that if it had no rewards no one would play it.  To me, that was always obviously false, for this reason: a significant percentage of players engaged in behavior with no rewards prior to the AE.  PvP didn't really have much in the way of rewards: certainly not enough to be considered a legitimate reason to PvP.  RP has no rewards.  Bashing pylons to climb the DPS ladder has trivial rewards.  Soloing AVs has pathetic rewards.  Base building: no rewards.  Costume contests: only if you win.  Players did all sorts of things in City of Heroes that had little to no reward.  AE rewards attracted a certain kind of player, but an AE will less or no rewards wouldn't attract no one.  Just a different kind of player.

I mention this because another objection to the AE was directed at the rating system.  It was thought that the ratings system would be a disaster because it would be a popularity contest.  Popular players would get all the plays and unpopular or unknown ones would have no chance to catch them.  There was some truth to this theory: I specifically tested it by publishing arcs under my primary account and a secondary account no one knew was connected to me.  Arcanaville arcs did get more plays than the other.  But the other did *get* plays, and did get attention.

But in another way, that theory was completely wrong**.  During AE beta there were a lot of "names" making and testing arcs.  I know that I got a lot of plays and attention simply because I was recognizable.  However, the player that got the most attention, the most plays, and the most praise for their arcs wasn't me, not by a long shot, and it wasn't any of those other well-known players.  It was feargas (technically feargas2).  Before AE beta, few players had ever heard of him, but his writing spoke for itself.  Even the devs were impressed: he had a knack of getting the most out of the limited tools we had to make arcs many, including some devs, felt were better than some of the actual content in the game.

My guess is that it would be complicated for the devs to simply lift an AE arc and put it into the standard content in the game.  But in a sense, we know they felt there existed AE content at least as good as what they were writing, because the player known as feargas became the developer known as Dr. Aeon, based in large part on the strength of his AE writing.


** It didn't like to hear it, but "forum wisdom" was an oxymoron

Great story. never heard that before!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on April 22, 2015, 05:49:05 AM
I like your idea about AE Arcana.

I think a consumer based model for AE would be nice. I did farm AE.....a lot but I also did play some of the content because there was some amazing arcs out there.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on April 22, 2015, 06:02:48 AM
One of the big problems with AE was getting people to see or try your content. I published only three or four missions, not farm mission, but missions that would have formed a story arc when completed. But in the end it was really wasted effort, the best mission (in my opinion) of the arc, only had two reviews and nobody outside my peer group ran it.

No I am not crying in my beer and claiming to be the great unsung author. (The truth is that I am probably the ONLY one who thought they were good.) But the saturation of farms, which is exactly what it seems that many players were looking for, prevented players who are trying to tell stories from getting proper exposure for their missions.

No, I don't know how to fix the problem, because in truth I used some of those leveling farms myself on occasion, but it would have been nice if there had been someone actually in charge or reviewing and rating AE content so that those worthy of exposure actually got out of the gate, rather than the few popular ones that got published early on.

When we get our game back, AE is certainly on the list of things that need fixed. Maybe, if we are lucky, Arcana will volunteer for that task, and she will take charge, kick ass, and give us what we need! (Hint hint hint)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 22, 2015, 07:19:16 AM
One of the big problems with AE was getting people to see or try your content. I published only three or four missions, not farm mission, but missions that would have formed a story arc when completed. But in the end it was really wasted effort, the best mission (in my opinion) of the arc, only had two reviews and nobody outside my peer group ran it.

No I am not crying in my beer and claiming to be the great unsung author. (The truth is that I am probably the ONLY one who thought they were good.) But the saturation of farms, which is exactly what it seems that many players were looking for, prevented players who are trying to tell stories from getting proper exposure for their missions.

No, I don't know how to fix the problem, because in truth I used some of those leveling farms myself on occasion, but it would have been nice if there had been someone actually in charge or reviewing and rating AE content so that those worthy of exposure actually got out of the gate, rather than the few popular ones that got published early on.

When we get our game back, AE is certainly on the list of things that need fixed. Maybe, if we are lucky, Arcana will volunteer for that task, and she will take charge, kick ass, and give us what we need! (Hint hint hint)

I think I've said this before, but I'll say it again.  In many ways, Farm missions in the AE were alot like anime mods on the nexus network.  They were so excessively common that they overshadowed EVERYTHING else.

On the nexus network you had mods like trait/perk overhauls for new vegas(I use one currently), or gameplay overhauls for skyrim ect that just get completely overlooked due to the latest generic naked giant-boob anime girl mod.  Or the latest boob physics mod ect.  All the same it was hard to find good mission archs in architect entertainment because you had "Generic farm 1,7805".  Or "Generic farm 1,7806".  In many ways, I have more respect for the nexus mod community because at least they did have some variety even among the bad anime mods.  But in this case it was horrendous, I mean what difference was there between AE farm missions other than the damage type you faced and how you ended it?

Not to mention it still took skill to make an anime mod.  An AE farm took no skill to really make.

AE should be a tool for creativity I agree with everyone on that and fixing it so it was used as such should certainly be on a priority list when the game is finally back.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on April 22, 2015, 12:43:19 PM
I like your idea about AE Arcana.

I think a consumer based model for AE would be nice. I did farm AE.....a lot but I also did play some of the content because there was some amazing arcs out there.

I liked AE for the stories.  I did level one hero solo from 20 to 40 over a year and then my attention wandered away.  I am not sure if I ever cashed in the tickets.  I played a lot of junk, some good and few excellent missions.... Like rescue Becky the Tarantula from Arachnos.  Come to find out she wasn't a slinky Night Widow as indicated.  She was an 8 legged toxic tarantula that spoke like a valley girl from the 80s.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on April 22, 2015, 01:50:45 PM

When we get our game back, AE is certainly on the list of things that need fixed. Maybe, if we are lucky, Arcana will volunteer for that task, and she will take charge, kick ass, and give us what we need! (Hint hint hint)

Why don't you do it all yourself then (Hint hint hint).   :P

Er, nobody should be volunteering the shirt off anyone else's back or even passing comments to pressure anyone into doing anything, never mind anything as work-intensive as that.  And if the zombie rez of i23 ever does return (which, let's face it, is looking less and less likely) there will be NO tools or code involved in the rez.  This has already been stated by Nate Downes.  So there will be no changes to CoX i23. (This is why APR even exists, so CoX can be added to and patched as time marches on.)   This i23 CoX zombie rez deal is a server snapshot of the night the game went down, period; not even account information will be transferred.   And it's taking a whole team of financial backers to even pay for that.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 22, 2015, 01:57:26 PM
I think I've said this before, but I'll say it again.  In many ways, Farm missions in the AE were alot like anime mods on the nexus network.  They were so excessively common that they overshadowed EVERYTHING else.

On the nexus network you had mods like trait/perk overhauls for new vegas(I use one currently), or gameplay overhauls for skyrim ect that just get completely overlooked due to the latest generic naked giant-boob anime girl mod.  Or the latest boob physics mod ect.  All the same it was hard to find good mission archs in architect entertainment because you had "Generic farm 1,7805".  Or "Generic farm 1,7806".  In many ways, I have more respect for the nexus mod community because at least they did have some variety even among the bad anime mods.  But in this case it was horrendous, I mean what difference was there between AE farm missions other than the damage type you faced and how you ended it?

Not to mention it still took skill to make an anime mod.  An AE farm took no skill to really make.

AE should be a tool for creativity I agree with everyone on that and fixing it so it was used as such should certainly be on a priority list when the game is finally back.

the problem of promoting story arcs could have been solved by asking the devs for a forum space for people to post the names of their story arcs and a short teaser. sub topics could have discussed any number of ae story topics. those that were interested could get the names of what they wanted easily. I tried a few stories but many were just another badly written monologue on someones background story. people that thought they were much better authors than they really were. when they didnt get instant acclaim they blamed farming missions for not letting others see their greatness. removing rewards will not get people to love your epic story arc. It will ensure that the only people that see your epic story arc are those trying to promote their own.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 22, 2015, 04:04:06 PM
the problem of promoting story arcs could have been solved by asking the devs for a forum space for people to post the names of their story arcs and a short teaser. sub topics could have discussed any number of ae story topics. those that were interested could get the names of what they wanted easily. I tried a few stories but many were just another badly written monologue on someones background story. people that thought they were much better authors than they really were. when they didnt get instant acclaim they blamed farming missions for not letting others see their greatness. removing rewards will not get people to love your epic story arc. It will ensure that the only people that see your epic story arc are those trying to promote their own.

I can certainly see bad stories being problematic to.  I saw characters in city of heroes who, i'll be honest, I thought they were straight mary sues.  Heck even one of my own characters had problems that I started ironing out over time(in fact, said character is far more murderous and complex in my latest re-writes of her).  I'd give names but, often newbie roleplayers are to wrapped up in making their character flawless, or they are to wrapped up in their character that if they make a story it's to biased towards there character.

I can very heavily agree with Arcana in regards to reviewing AE archs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brighellac on April 22, 2015, 04:05:16 PM
I miss CEBR and fire farms.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on April 22, 2015, 07:16:37 PM
I don't think AE should have any link to the actual game at all. No XP, no inf, no kill credits, nothing. The only reward should be tickets, which you use to buy thinks things to use in AE, and AE-related badges (not bought with tickets - earned as they were already). That way the farmers go find something else to do, and their crap eventually disappears...and the stories remain, the things that the devs wanted to encourage in the first place.

I don't think it should be totally disconnected. I can see where running AE missions would get you XP, and perhaps inspirations -- it's a simulation, and we see a wide variety of skills for which people are using simulations to hone their skills. Recipes, enhancements, and salvage? No; if there were a way to drag an electronic simulation of, say, a magical artifact into the 'real world' the economy would have been ruined in short order. Influence? Again, no; influence -- and it's variants -- represented, at least according to the devs, your ability to get other people to do things for you, whether from respect for your actions, fear of what you might do to them, or through the intel you have that they want. No matter how many electronic Reichsmen you defeat, no matter how skilled with your powers that your practice has made you, nothing you do inside an AE mission has any bearing on the 'real world' -- if you show up in Paragon City, walk into the AE building, and don't come out until you're 50, you may be highly skilled, but neither the city, nor the movers and shakers in it, have any idea who you are. The tickets? It was convenient to be able to go to the AE and swap tickets for a known payoff, instead of grinding some unknown number of missions for a chance at getting it or paying what the inflated-cost-du-jour is from the AH. And you could argue that the tickets are a competitive payout, the way electronic gaming has been going. Badges and achievements? Part of the purpose of being recognized for defeating, say, Freakshow Tanks was being seen defeating them; crawling into your electronic navel doesn't tell the public anything about you, no matter how many electronic ghosts you send to the Zig.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on April 22, 2015, 07:19:25 PM
The easiest way to tank recluse in this phase is to just taunt him and hover up high in front the tower. Not the buff tower but the big tower that his headquarters. He'll try to get the taunter but wont be able to as he keeps falling and teleporting. ( he automatically teleports if you try to kite him away from the buff towers) Then just hit him with another taunt when he runs back to you so he doesnt unaggro.

Im kinda surprised as I assumed most people knew this trick.

Early on, it was possible for you to get up on the ledge on the front of the building, which put you at just the right height for Recluse to jump up after you, blow the jump, fall down, and keep repeating, leaving you able to taunt him each time he jumped, but the devs got wise to it and tweaked the barrier to move the ledge just outside the mission map limits.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 22, 2015, 07:22:40 PM
people that thought they were much better authors than they really were. when they didnt get instant acclaim they blamed farming missions for not letting others see their greatness.

Well, they didn't only blame farming, and there were those that had realistic expectations, but in a sense trying to write for others is a tricky proposition.  You put yourself out there, and you make yourself vulnerable to the opinions of others.  Its not easy to see criticism as something other than a personal attack.  A lot of people can't do it.  As I said before, not everyone should be authors.

When Mercedes Lackey read my Immortal Game story, I asked for her opinion.  This was a project I had poured over a month of my time into, and over a week writing, and included a lot of my own ideas of CoH cosmology.  While she liked it, she thought there were significant technical flaws in certain areas, some in areas I had focused significant attention to.  And she was absolutely right.  She would have been doing me no favors pulling punches.  How many people get to have a professional writer give them even a few minutes of their time reading their work and suggesting ways to improve it.

Being able to take criticism, particularly from one's self, and use it to improve, is the hallmark of all good professional anythings, and extremely important for authors.  If you couldn't take someone taking your prized work and sticking post-it notes over all of its flaws as they saw it, you were probably not going to be a good AE author.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 22, 2015, 07:28:44 PM
Early on, it was possible for you to get up on the ledge on the front of the building, which put you at just the right height for Recluse to jump up after you, blow the jump, fall down, and keep repeating, leaving you able to taunt him each time he jumped, but the devs got wise to it and tweaked the barrier to move the ledge just outside the mission map limits.

Originally, there was a design flaw where if you pulled LR far enough away, the towers would stop buffing him.  That's mostly why LR teleports back to the towers if you pull him far enough away.  But there were reports of certain spots on the map that if you could pull LR to those spots and hold him there long enough, the tower buffs would eventually stop.  I didn't think that was possible until I saw it for myself.  It was very tricky to do, but I saw it done several times in slightly different places.  I don't think the devs ever fully fixed that, but very few players actually pulled this off consistently.  Part of the situation was that most of the players capable of doing it were also capable of taking down LR without it, so it was a rare thing to see.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 22, 2015, 09:28:12 PM
Early on, it was possible for you to get up on the ledge on the front of the building, which put you at just the right height for Recluse to jump up after you, blow the jump, fall down, and keep repeating, leaving you able to taunt him each time he jumped, but the devs got wise to it and tweaked the barrier to move the ledge just outside the mission map limits.

that is using an exploit, not tanking him. I could do that with my blaster, fly above the street light and he would try to get to you and ignore all others.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 22, 2015, 09:31:11 PM
Well, they didn't only blame farming, and there were those that had realistic expectations, but in a sense trying to write for others is a tricky proposition.  You put yourself out there, and you make yourself vulnerable to the opinions of others.  Its not easy to see criticism as something other than a personal attack.  A lot of people can't do it.  As I said before, not everyone should be authors.

When Mercedes Lackey read my Immortal Game story, I asked for her opinion.  This was a project I had poured over a month of my time into, and over a week writing, and included a lot of my own ideas of CoH cosmology.  While she liked it, she thought there were significant technical flaws in certain areas, some in areas I had focused significant attention to.  And she was absolutely right.  She would have been doing me no favors pulling punches.  How many people get to have a professional writer give them even a few minutes of their time reading their work and suggesting ways to improve it.

Being able to take criticism, particularly from one's self, and use it to improve, is the hallmark of all good professional anythings, and extremely important for authors.  If you couldn't take someone taking your prized work and sticking post-it notes over all of its flaws as they saw it, you were probably not going to be a good AE author.

I have a friend that would judge SCA arts and sciences entries. she would tell you exactly what she thought, and then direct you to people with the in depth knowledge of the subject that could help you. some people had a problem with this, but do you want smoke and lies or do you want to impriove your knowledge?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on April 22, 2015, 09:37:53 PM
the problem of promoting story arcs could have been solved by asking the devs for a forum space for people to post the names of their story arcs and a short teaser. sub topics could have discussed any number of ae story topics. those that were interested could get the names of what they wanted easily.

there was a whole section of the forums for that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 22, 2015, 10:39:31 PM
there was a whole section of the forums for that.

and rather than use it people complained that their arcs were lost in the search list
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 22, 2015, 11:15:59 PM
there was a whole section of the forums for that.

Friction.  If you want something to be used, you reduce the number of steps required to the bare minimum.  By saying people could make their own forum threads or blogs about AE arcs, rather than explicitly put such structure directly into the game where a player had direct access to it at the moment they were browsing the AE the devs were signalling - deliberately or not - that it wasn't worth anyone's time.  Whenever someone would say that something didn't need to be made any easier for players (in user interface terms, not game difficulty) because all that was required was X, Y, and Z, I would remind them that the methodology I used to decrypt the devs coded message contests could be expressed in exactly the same way.  For that matter, writing your own City of Heroes clone is just a matter of doing X, Y, and Z enough times in the right order.

Human user interface design was not one of Paragon's strong suits.  But to be honest, MMO game developers rarely excel at this.  Its almost as if there's a conscious decision to believe that since the game itself is supposed to be challenging, its ok if the interface to the game itself is also challenging.  And its one of the reasons I believe game development is still in its barest infancy even compared to software design in general.  There's a backwardness to it that isn't just accidental but almost embraced.

I've been playing Star Trek Online recently, and STO has had a very persistent bug that crops up under different circumstances where everything in your power tray would either reset or disappear, forcing you to put it all back.  There is a way to save that configuration, but its problematic and can itself sometimes mess up - its also tied to, in City of Heroes terms, saving your build, so imagine if occasionally your power trays would randomize themselves and using an old save of their configuration reslotted your entire character with whatever enhancements you had back when you last saved, emptying those slots if you no longer had that enhancement.  Yeah, its like that (a little more complicated than that because the differences between enhancement slots and devices in the two games affecting available abilities, but close).

For years, STO has had this bug.  For years, they haven't put in the basic capability to save the tray, and only the tray, like we had in CoH.  In any other field of software, this would be embarrassing to the literal point where it ought to drive at least one programmer to fix the bug on their own time, lest they be unable to show their faces in public.  In any other software field, this would be considered a show-stopper bug that was at the very top of the bug list, compelling programmers to do nothing else but fix it, or find a new career placement in the food service industry.  But in the MMO space, its not even particularly unusual in its severity.

To me, as a professional, that's dismaying.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Groundbreaker on April 23, 2015, 08:24:31 AM
As a possible fix for AE how about take away rewards for defeating mobs and just stick to rewards for completing the mission. I don't think no rewards is specifically the answer but farming generally relies on increasing mob size to get greater rewards. Link the rewards to the mission and you make it much more appealing to farm in the "real world" (assuming you get the balance right and don't make it possible to rake in enough stuff from short speed run missions repeated)

One of the things I used AE for was to run plot for my friends. I really liked the idea that I could write my own content and have my friends play it without it impacting their progression in the game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on April 23, 2015, 11:51:22 AM
Why fix what isn't broken?

If you wanted to run a farming mission, you could do that. If you wanted to run one of @PW's cute stories, you could do that, too. If you wanted to take the time and browse through the index and try something completely different, you could do that.

I do understand that some people had a problem with folks who would farm to the point that their characters were level 50, and a couple hours earlier they were level 1 or 4, or whatever - and then the people behind those farmed characters wouldn't be able to fully live up to the expectations of other players, average or elite. Like a tank with 4 travel powers and no shields/armor/auras. It just doesn't make sense to the average player.

Ultimately, so what?!

We all had our people we preferred to team with. Some loved the challenge of trying to make PUGs work. Some would only team with SG members. That was the best thing. You didn't have to spend any time around those people whose style or manner of play went against your idea of how it should be done.

So, leave AE alone. It worked just fine.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Noyjitat on April 23, 2015, 04:05:33 PM
Doesn't matter what game it is. You always have someone wanting something nerfed or removed because they want to police the way others play.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on April 23, 2015, 05:51:42 PM
Doesn't matter what game it is. You always have someone wanting something nerfed or removed because they want to police the way others play.

Absolutely.

I never had a problem with the farmers. There are all kinds of people in the world, and they all serve a purpose. Sometimes it was nice to have someone around that could farm you up if you felt like leveling something up quickly because you had an idea for a build for a hero. I didn't farm much, but I did do it during the last year of CoH's existence--for many reasons. One, I did it for the challenge, because I didn't use the usual Fire/Kin build for farming. I used a Warshade. Let me tell you, it's a heck of a lot more difficult to farm as efficiently with a Warshade as one can with a Fire/Kin. Two, it helped my friends achieve their own build ideas fairly quickly. And deleting that build idea for a different one wasn't as big of a deal when it didn't take you weeks and weeks to get to the top level. Three, because it was a much easier way for my friends to all jump in at whatever times they could and play together. Sometimes doing a task force was more trouble scheduling-wise for the people I hung out with than it was worth. "Ok, let's do a Quartermaster this Saturday".... *Saturday comes* "I've gotta finish this thing with my family"... "I didn't know I had such-and-such going on, but I'll be on later"... "I have to run my kids to practice...." etc., etc. One of us (whoever was on) could just run a farm, and when everyone else logged on, they'd see who was on already, and just head in to an already in-progress farm--rather than one person waiting for an unspecified amount of time just to do one task force.

I had a couple of good friends who farmed because they actually got some comfort out of doing something mindless outside of their normal extremely high-stress real life situations. Some people like watching a mindless action movie for the same reasons. Not because they want to actually "destroy the game"... Because sometimes something like that was cathartic for them.

I never got why there were so many "nerf/remove the farmers!" threads back in the day.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on April 23, 2015, 05:55:58 PM
Sometimes it was nice to have someone around that could farm you up if you felt like leveling something up quickly because you had an idea for a build for a hero.
Exactly, as I've said before, I had a farmer friend on speed-dial for this as I paid him real-world money for this service (and loot that he earned by farming and marketeering).  It's nice to know that for $100 or so, your hot new L50 can be totally tricked out - by this afternoon.  That was nice.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Winter Fable on April 23, 2015, 06:05:30 PM
I never had a problem with the farmers. There are all kinds of people in the world, and they all serve a purpose. Sometimes it was nice to have someone around that could farm you up if you felt like leveling something up quickly because you had an idea for a build for a hero. I didn't farm much, but I did do it during the last year of CoH's existence--for many reasons. One, I did it for the challenge, because I didn't use the usual Fire/Kin build for farming. I used a Warshade. Let me tell you, it's a heck of a lot more difficult to farm as efficiently with a Warshade as one can with a Fire/Kin. Two, it helped my friends achieve their own build ideas fairly quickly. And deleting that build idea for a different one wasn't as big of a deal when it didn't take you weeks and weeks to get to the top level. Three, because it was a much easier way for my friends to all jump in at whatever times they could and play together. Sometimes doing a task force was more trouble scheduling-wise for the people I hung out with than it was worth. "Ok, let's do a Quartermaster this Saturday".... *Saturday comes* "I've gotta finish this thing with my family"... "I didn't know I had such-and-such going on, but I'll be on later"... "I have to run my kids to practice...." etc., etc. One of us (whoever was on) could just run a farm, and when everyone else logged on, they'd see who was on already, and just head in to an already in-progress farm--rather than one person waiting for an unspecified amount of time just to do one task force.

I had a couple of good friends who farmed because they actually got some comfort out of doing something mindless outside of their normal extremely high-stress real life situations. Some people like watching a mindless action movie for the same reasons. Not because they want to actually "destroy the game"... Because sometimes something like that was cathartic for them.

 I never got why there were so many "nerf/remove the farmers!" threads back in the day.

 "Doesn't matter what game it is. You always have someone wanting something nerfed or removed because they want to police the way others play."


This^^^^^^We will need everyone back to keep the game going not just the people we like or agree with.



Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 23, 2015, 07:18:37 PM
I never had a problem with the farmers. There are all kinds of people in the world, and they all serve a purpose. Sometimes it was nice to have someone around that could farm you up if you felt like leveling something up quickly because you had an idea for a build for a hero. I didn't farm much, but I did do it during the last year of CoH's existence--for many reasons. One, I did it for the challenge, because I didn't use the usual Fire/Kin build for farming. I used a Warshade. Let me tell you, it's a heck of a lot more difficult to farm as efficiently with a Warshade as one can with a Fire/Kin. Two, it helped my friends achieve their own build ideas fairly quickly. And deleting that build idea for a different one wasn't as big of a deal when it didn't take you weeks and weeks to get to the top level. Three, because it was a much easier way for my friends to all jump in at whatever times they could and play together. Sometimes doing a task force was more trouble scheduling-wise for the people I hung out with than it was worth. "Ok, let's do a Quartermaster this Saturday".... *Saturday comes* "I've gotta finish this thing with my family"... "I didn't know I had such-and-such going on, but I'll be on later"... "I have to run my kids to practice...." etc., etc. One of us (whoever was on) could just run a farm, and when everyone else logged on, they'd see who was on already, and just head in to an already in-progress farm--rather than one person waiting for an unspecified amount of time just to do one task force.

I had a couple of good friends who farmed because they actually got some comfort out of doing something mindless outside of their normal extremely high-stress real life situations. Some people like watching a mindless action movie for the same reasons. Not because they want to actually "destroy the game"... Because sometimes something like that was cathartic for them.

 I never got why there were so many "nerf/remove the farmers!" threads back in the day.

 "Doesn't matter what game it is. You always have someone wanting something nerfed or removed because they want to police the way others play."


This^^^^^^We will need everyone back to keep the game going not just the people we like or agree with.

The arguement against AE farmers has far more to do with inflation, not scrubdom or shfgdom(the types who police how others play).

The inflation rates caused by farmers can cause items to lose value to much, or in many cases devalue the currency excessively.  See your trying to get a ton of money in the short term when you farm for the game currency itself.  That was the core problem behind AE farms, you had gigantic amounts of influence entering the market but no where near as many items from it, even the ticket rewards couldn't keep up.

When prices were driven up to 100million for orange recipes and 500 million for purple recipes in far far less time than before AE when a purple recipe was only 50 million and the same orange recipe was 15-20 million you knew there was something going on.  To much currency generating from AE farms circulating in the game.  Especially since the other farms didn't produce such gigantic amounts of currency in comparison and tended to generate recipes very frequently.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 23, 2015, 07:24:56 PM
I will say this, the reason the various types of merits were introduced was so that inflation wasn't such a game-killer for people.  If influence was truely the only form of currency in city of heroes, there would be no ladders of opportunity for newcomers other than getting lucky and luck would have been the be-all-end-all for how rich you were in city of heroes.  Merits in value scaled with influence, value wise, because they couldn't be traded and had fixed prices.

If you needed 500 million influence, you could start saving up hero/villain merits across 4-5 toons and buy 4-5 100m recipes with those merits.  If prices for those recipes had increased say 25% then those merits were 25% more valuable as you could simply sell those recipes at the increased cost.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Winter Fable on April 23, 2015, 08:51:29 PM
Say what you will but without tickets in AE I would have never been able to IO my toons.Even with tickets I only did maybe 10 out of whatever the cap was on how many toons we could have.I played for almost 5 years.I didn't have luck with drops or run mish over and over.I'm glad they had tickets,with rolls and salvage no longer costing more than I would ever make over years I could at last see what a build was like I that I read about (or close to it) was like.I played with pugs and a small group so having  IO's build 1 and a SO's build 2 was nice.The IO builds could run almost by themselves but the second SO's build everyone in the team was needed.We were happy to have FF def and Emps or Def Debuffs but when only a few of us were on the IO builds let us finish whatever we ran in the time we had to play.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 23, 2015, 09:03:56 PM
I will say this, the reason the various types of merits were introduced was so that inflation wasn't such a game-killer for people.  If influence was truely the only form of currency in city of heroes, there would be no ladders of opportunity for newcomers other than getting lucky and luck would have been the be-all-end-all for how rich you were in city of heroes.  Merits in value scaled with influence, value wise, because they couldn't be traded and had fixed prices.

If you needed 500 million influence, you could start saving up hero/villain merits across 4-5 toons and buy 4-5 100m recipes with those merits.  If prices for those recipes had increased say 25% then those merits were 25% more valuable as you could simply sell those recipes at the increased cost.

Yep.  Merit's were how I slotted all my characters.  They are how I made my fortune too.  LOTG where rather cheap in terms of merits.  And rather expensive in terms of influence.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on April 23, 2015, 09:18:49 PM
I always wondered about that in CoX. Are certain zones supposed to be in a certain time line? Example Faultine, RWZ, IP. In Faultine, it's the start of Fusion and Jim super hero career and you also meet Penelope Yin. Then go RWZ, you see them further in the career, and in IP Yin replaces Sister Psyche for the TF. You can go to IP and see the present "Penelope Yin", but travel to Faultline and see her younger version. Just probably an oversight, but I always found that interesting even in your heroes progression, you are around lvl 15-25 for  Faultline zone where you meet Penelope Yin then in IP you meet her future self around 20-25, but for the Lady Grey TF at lvl 45-50, she is captured and is the younger version.

They started moving that way... of course, the big problem is that the traditional mechanics for an MMO don't really fit well with a narrative over time. Not only because people joining the game late want to be able to play through content, but also because if you drastically change a zone, older content won't work.

If I made an MMO, I would make every mission have a set time. So you can play the missions in any order you want, but if you want to know the actual story, you look at them sorted by date. So the Faultline missions would be dated 2008 (or whatever) and the IP mission would be dated 2010, say. And you could use phasing or multiple zone instances to put a character in the actual proper zone for their timeline.

there was an npc that could shut off speed boost for you.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Null_the_Gull

Unai Kemen  (jeez; it's May 2015 and I still remember the name of the contact?)

He has a unique name.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 24, 2015, 12:07:17 AM
Say what you will but without tickets in AE I would have never been able to IO my toons.Even with tickets I only did maybe 10 out of whatever the cap was on how many toons we could have.I played for almost 5 years.I didn't have luck with drops or run mish over and over.I'm glad they had tickets,with rolls and salvage no longer costing more than I would ever make over years I could at last see what a build was like I that I read about (or close to it) was like.I played with pugs and a small group so having  IO's build 1 and a SO's build 2 was nice.The IO builds could run almost by themselves but the second SO's build everyone in the team was needed.We were happy to have FF def and Emps or Def Debuffs but when only a few of us were on the IO builds let us finish whatever we ran in the time we had to play.

But tickets were getting you the IOs directly, I was talking about the influence problems caused by AE due to all that influence.

Honestly if AE gave only tickets but no influence I think we'd have been better off when it came to the auction house.  Prices would have lowered significantly rather than rising to ludicrous levels because people got recipes from AE but not influence.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on April 24, 2015, 12:54:22 AM
But tickets were getting you the IOs directly, I was talking about the influence problems caused by AE due to all that influence.

Honestly if AE gave only tickets but no influence I think we'd have been better off when it came to the auction house.  Prices would have lowered significantly rather than rising to ludicrous levels because people got recipes from AE but not influence.

I'd be ok with that. The influence i got from farming AE to get my salvage was laughably negligible compared to what i could make in a fraction of the time marketeering. I usually had the inf to buy the salvage, i just refused on principle to pay the amount rare salvage was going for when i could get it so easily in ae.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 24, 2015, 01:20:37 AM
Why fix what isn't broken?

If you wanted to run a farming mission, you could do that. If you wanted to run one of @PW's cute stories, you could do that, too. If you wanted to take the time and browse through the index and try something completely different, you could do that.

I do understand that some people had a problem with folks who would farm to the point that their characters were level 50, and a couple hours earlier they were level 1 or 4, or whatever - and then the people behind those farmed characters wouldn't be able to fully live up to the expectations of other players, average or elite. Like a tank with 4 travel powers and no shields/armor/auras. It just doesn't make sense to the average player.

Ultimately, so what?!

We all had our people we preferred to team with. Some loved the challenge of trying to make PUGs work. Some would only team with SG members. That was the best thing. You didn't have to spend any time around those people whose style or manner of play went against your idea of how it should be done.

So, leave AE alone. It worked just fine.

Ultimately, you shouldn't fix what isn't broken.  But by only the lowest possible standards could you characterize the AE as "just fine."   While some people explicitly wanted certain conduct removed from the game, even discounting all of those remarks the AE was still broken in many ways by most objective standards.  While you *could* do a lot of things in theory, it didn't really do *any* of the things *anyone* wanted it to do very well at all.  If you wanted the freedom to do whatever you could dream up, and rewards didn't matter to you, you were still bound by the limits the devs placed on AE content explicitly because all content had to be curtailed based on the potential rewards the AE could generate.  If you *only* cared about rewards, you were *also* limited by the design of the system in many ways.  True, *some* of the people who played it for rewards found ways around those limitations, but they were only a small percentage of the whole.  And regardless of what you wanted to use the AE for, I would bet the vast majority of the playerbase was unable to find what they were looking for unless they got lucky.

As to farming itself, it should have been apparent that the devs didn't have strong feelings about farming in principle: if you look at the history of the game objectively the devs rarely took actions to curtail farming even when there were trivial ways to do so.  What they did care about was the largest excesses of the behavior, and they had every right to curtail extreme behavior that affected the game as a whole.  The devs *tried* to allow as much as possible, but there were lots of things that simply exceeded what the game itself could tolerate in the long run.  They often didn't have precision tools to address the worst case problems, so lots of things got caught in the net when they did take action.  But the notion that the devs were trying to "control" players with these actions is really not supported by the facts.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 24, 2015, 01:53:37 AM
But tickets were getting you the IOs directly, I was talking about the influence problems caused by AE due to all that influence.

Honestly if AE gave only tickets but no influence I think we'd have been better off when it came to the auction house.  Prices would have lowered significantly rather than rising to ludicrous levels because people got recipes from AE but not influence.

AE wasnt generating any more inf than the same time played doing other things. so it didnt really make a difference. Increasing the drop rates of purple in the real world would have encouraged people to spend more time in the rest of the game and dropped the prices at the same time. they were high because for many, purples just didnt drop. some people got them on a daily basis and others went months without a drop. if you cant reasonable expect a drop of what you need, you have to grind the cash to buy it. the merits gave people a doable way of getting good stuff. it was a step in the right direction.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 24, 2015, 02:06:04 AM
AE wasnt generating any more inf than the same time played doing other things. so it didnt really make a difference. Increasing the drop rates of purple in the real world would have encouraged people to spend more time in the rest of the game and dropped the prices at the same time. they were high because for many, purples just didnt drop. some people got them on a daily basis and others went months without a drop. if you cant reasonable expect a drop of what you need, you have to grind the cash to buy it. the merits gave people a doable way of getting good stuff. it was a step in the right direction.

You have clearly never seen some of the worst farms out there.  The sheer influence made was insanity at the worst times and when the exploits were in full force you had HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF INFLUENCE IN MINUTES.  But even with the fixes it was very easy to just get dozens of guys and melt them in seconds, the other farms you still had to run from group to group or try to gather them all up and that took time, the AE farms that time was eliminated and hugely increased the speed at which influence could be gained.

When you consider how much influence you got vs the "drop rate" from tickets, there was a huge inflation issue there.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 24, 2015, 02:09:38 AM
I'd be ok with that. The influence i got from farming AE to get my salvage was laughably negligible compared to what i could make in a fraction of the time marketeering. I usually had the inf to buy the salvage, i just refused on principle to pay the amount rare salvage was going for when i could get it so easily in ae.

Probably cause the amount of influence already in the market by the time the fixes came had inflated the prices to insane enough levels that they'd remain insanely high.  For about a month or two we had a game where you had hundreds of influence/hour being earned in AE, so by the time the fixes came it was to late.

You still earned way more influence in AE than in actual missions chosen for farming though, due to the lack of any travel time between mobs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 24, 2015, 03:57:00 AM
You have clearly never seen some of the worst farms out there.  The sheer influence made was insanity at the worst times and when the exploits were in full force you had HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF INFLUENCE IN MINUTES.  But even with the fixes it was very easy to just get dozens of guys and melt them in seconds, the other farms you still had to run from group to group or try to gather them all up and that took time, the AE farms that time was eliminated and hugely increased the speed at which influence could be gained.

When you consider how much influence you got vs the "drop rate" from tickets, there was a huge inflation issue there.

I don't think any exploit in the AE specifically allowed hundreds of millions of inf in a timespan of minutes that managed to escape beta.  Millions per minute is I think about as high as it would go per player.

Also, for every player willing to spend that much time earning influence in the AE, there were probably lots of others that probably earn the same amount of influence in a lot less time through market activities.  I know I could.  And many activities that also count as "farming" have significant influence sinks associated with them.  For example, if you were farming enhancements or PvPIOs, you generally needed somewhere to store them.  The best place was base storage - lots and lots of base storage.  I had four bases literally as full as possible with stuff, with a fifth being worked on at shutdown.  Between functionality and silly cosmetics, its possible I converted thirty billion inf or more into prestige just to accommodate all that base building alone.

Its not entirely clear to me that the net sum of all activities that could be described as "farming" were a huge influence generator.  There were a lot of very large influence sinks in the game as well in the top of the food chain.  In fact, there was a natural negative feedback loop where influence farmers were willing to spend more on stuff, so stuff-farmers farmed and sold more of it to satisfy demand, which is an influence-destroying process (due to the cut the markets took off the top).  The more influence that was in circulation, the less attractive influence farming appeared relative to other methods of getting rich (marketeering being the obvious choice since its relatively simple, takes no special set up, can be performed on any alt, and requires far less effort than AE farming).

Genuine runaway inflation should have pushed all reasonably valuable items up to near the market inf cap (2 billion).  Not only did that never happen, it never even got close.  "Peak purple" if you could call it that for the most expensive purples topped out around 500 million then dropped, probably due to the very effect mentioned above: those prices shifted incentive from farming for the influence to buy them to farming for the enhancements themselves to sell. Given the range of prices, I have often wondered if the markets were sending a soft-signal that the statistical value of those very valuable purples was somewhere between about 100 million and 500 million inf - that the relative effort required to earn that much inf was comparable to the amount of effort required to farm enough drops to get one of the higher value ones (at least at that time, before alternate means of acquiring them or substitutes appeared).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 24, 2015, 04:14:11 AM
I don't think any exploit in the AE specifically allowed hundreds of millions of inf in a timespan of minutes that managed to escape beta.  Millions per minute is I think about as high as it would go per player.

Also, for every player willing to spend that much time earning influence in the AE, there were probably lots of others that probably earn the same amount of influence in a lot less time through market activities.  I know I could.  And many activities that also count as "farming" have significant influence sinks associated with them.  For example, if you were farming enhancements or PvPIOs, you generally needed somewhere to store them.  The best place was base storage - lots and lots of base storage.  I had four bases literally as full as possible with stuff, with a fifth being worked on at shutdown.  Between functionality and silly cosmetics, its possible I converted thirty billion inf or more into prestige just to accommodate all that base building alone.

Its not entirely clear to me that the net sum of all activities that could be described as "farming" were a huge influence generator.  There were a lot of very large influence sinks in the game as well in the top of the food chain.  In fact, there was a natural negative feedback loop where influence farmers were willing to spend more on stuff, so stuff-farmers farmed and sold more of it to satisfy demand, which is an influence-destroying process (due to the cut the markets took off the top).  The more influence that was in circulation, the less attractive influence farming appeared relative to other methods of getting rich (marketeering being the obvious choice since its relatively simple, takes no special set up, can be performed on any alt, and requires far less effort than AE farming).

Genuine runaway inflation should have pushed all reasonably valuable items up to near the market inf cap (2 billion).  Not only did that never happen, it never even got close.  "Peak purple" if you could call it that for the most expensive purples topped out around 500 million then dropped, probably due to the very effect mentioned above: those prices shifted incentive from farming for the influence to buy them to farming for the enhancements themselves to sell. Given the range of prices, I have often wondered if the markets were sending a soft-signal that the statistical value of those very valuable purples was somewhere between about 100 million and 500 million inf - that the relative effort required to earn that much inf was comparable to the amount of effort required to farm enough drops to get one of the higher value ones (at least at that time, before alternate means of acquiring them or substitutes appeared).

I was referring to the overall total amounts of influence entering the market was obscene.  I recall getting 5-6 million influence in a span of a few minutes in an 8 man team.  When you had dozens of teams doing this you had way to much influence entering the market all at once.  People were buying things at whatever price they saw cause they could "just get more influence".  But I still saw people farm AE specifically for the influence/experience rates they provided, cause it also let them get tons and tons more prestige.  And it was still far faster in my experience than the normal farms(in the few moments I did anyhow).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Talon Blue on April 24, 2015, 04:28:44 AM
Someone, I cannot remember it who exactly... posted a thread in the old forums showcasing over 30 days how to effectively use the auction house, AE tickets, and reward merits to basically get 2 billion influence, meanwhile leveling to 50. I used that guide to similar results. There was that supergroup who generate all their prestige by burning influence from the auction house. Influence or really just all the in-game currency together totalled an good MMO game economy, IMO. Purple recipes were affordable with patience. Some PvP io's may have been over the influence cap, maybe... I never bought PvP io's. But there was never any inflation in CoX, ever.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Winter Fable on April 24, 2015, 05:21:32 AM
I did not use the AE tickets to make money I used it for salvage and rolls for recipes so I could slot my toons.I never tried to make money.Maybe it was easier that way but any money I had was spent crafting or getting what I just could not get.A few weeks after AE started the prices on Numina's,Miracle,Luck of the Gambler even Kinetic Combat's were the cheapest I had ever seen them.I bought what I could not to make money but to slot.The same with the +3 def pvp io near the end you could get 1 for a few hundred million,before people would be on the forum or chat channel asking 2 billion or more.On the forum or in game people would say put a bid in wait don't buy it now but look how much time was lost waiting.I'm so glad I for merits and tickets.I knew the game could end at anytime and even with merits and tickets it would have been years and years before I would have been able to IO all the toons I had and all those I still wanted to make.I hope if we get the game back the options are still open to us.I'll still look for fun AE arcs there were some really good ones.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 24, 2015, 05:33:16 AM
I was referring to the overall total amounts of influence entering the market was obscene.  I recall getting 5-6 million influence in a span of a few minutes in an 8 man team.  When you had dozens of teams doing this you had way to much influence entering the market all at once.  People were buying things at whatever price they saw cause they could "just get more influence".  But I still saw people farm AE specifically for the influence/experience rates they provided, cause it also let them get tons and tons more prestige.  And it was still far faster in my experience than the normal farms(in the few moments I did anyhow).

any game that has dailies has farms. dev created farms. so just about every game has issues with gold accumulation. if the devs had upped the drop rate on purples the prices would have dropped. by the time the game closed there were plenty of them around. there was really no need to keep them ultra rare. swtor has taken rare mania to a new low. anything decent in the game is ultra rare and anything bob the intern finger painted is common. There is no need for rampant exclusivity if you have enough content. at some point it becomes a turn off for new players. the single infected that spawned in the tram station in recluses victory was a big middle finger for badge collectors.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on April 24, 2015, 06:39:50 AM
Yeah let's not forget that CoH had the gold standard for MMO economies. Even the most casual player could purple/pvp a toon or 10 to the nines if they were just willing to learn how the market worked and spend a few minutes on it whenever they logged in. Barring that if they were patient enough they could do it with the various merit types. Plus all the best stuff was available in-game through normal play. No having to drop real money for random rolls hoping for the one shiny that was worth the big bucks. So sure, there was a lot of money out there and the sinks were limited, but in general the economy worked amazingly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2015, 07:13:37 AM
When it came to IO's I always preferred L49's to L50 IO's.   

Same ingredients to craft a 49 or 50 IO, but a 49 is half the price of a 50 and with enhancement diversification, the difference between a 49 and 50 IO was negligible
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on April 24, 2015, 07:18:01 AM
I know some of us are hanging on by the finger nails, some taking everything in there stride, but with the City of Heroes Anniversary (2004) coming up next week (Not saying a date as there are mixed views on the release date  ;) )

I was wondering what the odds would be for any news on the purchase or comeback of CoH, ToHit next week... I can't express how much I miss the game, a day doesn't go by without something triggering a memory of something in the game, or thinking that could be a good idea for a name, what powers could I pick to go with the name!

Here's hoping the team are successful and we have our City & Isles back soon.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 24, 2015, 07:30:39 AM
That'd be nice to.  To have an announcement come on the anniversary week would be pretty iconic.

I'm running out of ideas on play throughs for new vegas/tale of two wastelands.  I'm down to making a cyborg-cowgirl.  Yeah, it's that bad.  Granted I already managed to get her the brush gun, and got the perk to make it practical(only need one more perk or two to make it awesome), but i'm not sure.  It feels like a basic sniper.  If I 'aquired' an AM rifle on her i'm sure she'd be no different than my first play through of the game.

I almost logged onto DCUO this night but, I just couldn't bring myself to do it as it's kind of a game where there isn't much replayability with new toons at times.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2015, 01:24:50 PM
Yeah let's not forget that CoH had the gold standard for MMO

It sure did.  In pretty much everything it did.

Azrael.

PS.  As to the whole idea of loot and the 'economy'?  I didn't think the game needed it.  As someone who played from Issue 3 I was quite happy with the game as it was pre-Ed.

Having said that...some twenty issues later I was lethargically getting into the idea of purples (yes, they could be gotten much cheaper by the end...shame they didn't up the drop rate earlier...as somethings were just unavailable...or cost an arm and a leg...  I wish I could have paid in Council body parts...), IOs...defence cap builds etc.  It created an order of magnitude difference to a 'Levelled 50.'

I look back now and think of a few alts I wished I'd gotten an alpha incarnate slot on...or IO'd out.  *(...a tank and a war shade comes to mind...)  I remember spending 4.5 billion on my elec Dominator and it still hadn't hit the defence cap! :P  But I finally got 'perma hasten' after the devs nerfed it all those years ago...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on April 24, 2015, 03:26:36 PM
Yeah let's not forget that CoH had the gold standard for MMO economies. Even the most casual player could purple/pvp a toon or 10 to the nines if they were just willing to learn how the market worked and spend a few minutes on it whenever they logged in. Barring that if they were patient enough they could do it with the various merit types. Plus all the best stuff was available in-game through normal play. No having to drop real money for random rolls hoping for the one shiny that was worth the big bucks. So sure, there was a lot of money out there and the sinks were limited, but in general the economy worked amazingly.

Absolutely agreed. I think there was something there economy-wise for the newbs AND the high rollers. This is not to mention that this was that rare MMO that had an innumerable amount of people willing to help you out to get what you needed. There were MANY people out there that I met that were just like, "Hey, I have this amazing enhancement I just got. I already have everything I need. Why don't you take it and sell it for a bit of influence to get you started out?"

I personally held costume and bio contests on Freedom that had large prize pools of influence and good enhancements like LotGs.

There wasn't a single person out there starting the game that could say that they had no chance of getting what they wanted in that economy.

It just worked.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 24, 2015, 07:32:09 PM
I was referring to the overall total amounts of influence entering the market was obscene.  I recall getting 5-6 million influence in a span of a few minutes in an 8 man team.  When you had dozens of teams doing this you had way to much influence entering the market all at once.  People were buying things at whatever price they saw cause they could "just get more influence".  But I still saw people farm AE specifically for the influence/experience rates they provided, cause it also let them get tons and tons more prestige.  And it was still far faster in my experience than the normal farms(in the few moments I did anyhow).

I'm not sure what "too much" means.  But what I can say objectively is that before I9 the vast majority of players were poor: relative to the cost of living (i.e. buying a reasonable set of level-appropriate SOs) they had far less influence than they need to achieve that goal.  After I9, the average player was or could trivially become rich: relative to the cost of the basics, it was easy to purchase all of those things and then some.  And the reason was both a longer ladder of commodities and a higher amount of influence in circulation.

Its important to realize that every single sale was a transfer of influence from one player to another.  And most sales of extremely high value were from players with lots of influence to players with less influence.  While its true that a few things became very expensive, the vast majority of things became cheap relative to the amount of influence in circulation.

Influence farmers did only three things with their influence.  They destroyed it (like by converting it into prestige).  This had no effect on the economy.  They kept it.  Sequestration also had no impact on the economy.  Or they spent it, and every time they spent it they were transferring that influence to other players.  If it could be demonstrated that the players benefiting from those transfers were an elite minority, then that would be bad.  But all evidence was that it was everyone that benefited.

What's more, as I keep repeating, there's absolutely no evidence that runaway inflation was occurring on the markets.  In fact price were relatively stable in the aggregate after the first year or so of the market.  Individual items would come in vogue and go out of vogue, causing prices to rise then fall, but for the most part what you paid for a Numina's in I11 was what you paid in I16.  So as influence spread throughout the player population, the net effect was for effective prices to drop - there were many instances of normalized deflation in the game.  Consider Crushing Impacts.  At one time, they were worthless.  Then they became the in-vogue thing to use for various builds (because of the recharge set bonus) and their prices skyrocketed, from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions per piece.  Then that wave passed and they dropped in price into the single digit millions.  All evidence shows their prices were affected almost solely by supply/demand pressures, and not by influence supply-driven inflation.

But more significantly and to my point is the fact that when they stabilized in the mid millions, that would still mean that getting a few sets would cost in the tens of millions of inf.  That's a level of inf that pre-I9 only the richest 1% of players were likely to have.  But in I17, say?  That level of influence was considered trivial for any player to reasonably get through basic, simple market activities (i.e. just sell stuff you get as drops).  That situation simply doesn't occur without strong liquidity in the markets, and that strong liquidity was buoyed in large part by players with lots of influence, however they got it.

In a world where everyone only makes influence and has to buy everything, the few players making a lot of influence hurt everyone else by making everything cost more.  But in a world where everyone is also a producer of items, the equation changes.  In simple economic terms, when you're a buyer you don't want rich people increasing prices.  When you're a seller, you do.  When you're both a buyer and a seller, the rich people help you when you're selling more than you're buying, and hurt you when you're buying more than selling.  This means, in net effect, rich players tend to help the poor through their activities, and only start to hurt them when they become rich enough to compete with the rich players for the most expensive stuff.

Its not as simple as eliminating influence farmers would make everything cheaper.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on April 24, 2015, 07:44:44 PM
I know some of us are hanging on by the finger nails, some taking everything in there stride, but with the City of Heroes Anniversary (2004) coming up next week (Not saying a date as there are mixed views on the release date  ;) )

I was wondering what the odds would be for any news on the purchase or comeback of CoH, ToHit next week... I can't express how much I miss the game, a day doesn't go by without something triggering a memory of something in the game, or thinking that could be a good idea for a name, what powers could I pick to go with the name!

Here's hoping the team are successful and we have our City & Isles back soon.

Wouldn't that be so great? 

Personally, I wouldn't bet your paycheck on it though.  Just the fact that there are a few peeps on the forums here who know the code and server architecture as well as the devs did, and yet have not been asked for the slightest bit of help in getting anything going (a fact they have stated here on these boards recently), should tell you that there is still nothing to get going. 

Sorry, I haven't completely given up hope either, but after a year and a half since the start of the efforts, I'm way past holding my breath for a positive result *ever,* never mind right around the corner.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on April 24, 2015, 09:05:44 PM
AE wasnt generating any more inf than the same time played doing other things. so it didnt really make a difference. Increasing the drop rates of purple in the real world would have encouraged people to spend more time in the rest of the game and dropped the prices at the same time. they were high because for many, purples just didnt drop. some people got them on a daily basis and others went months without a drop. if you cant reasonable expect a drop of what you need, you have to grind the cash to buy it. the merits gave people a doable way of getting good stuff. it was a step in the right direction.
I think I managed to acquire about 7 or 8 Purple IOs from drops through out the entire time I played the game. I could even use one of them too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 24, 2015, 10:23:46 PM
I think I managed to acquire about 7 or 8 Purple IOs from drops through out the entire time I played the game. I could even use one of them too.

and some people doing the exact same content got that many a week. that was the problem.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on April 25, 2015, 02:00:58 AM
Wouldn't that be so great? 

Personally, I wouldn't bet your paycheck on it though.  Just the fact that there are a few peeps on the forums here who know the code and server architecture as well as the devs did, and yet have not been asked for the slightest bit of help in getting anything going (a fact they have stated here on these boards recently), should tell you that there is still nothing to get going. 

Sorry, I haven't completely given up hope either, but after a year and a half since the start of the efforts, I'm way past holding my breath for a positive result *ever,* never mind right around the corner.

Is it bad that, the most entertaining thing in life at the moment is cyanide and happiness shorts and web comics while waiting for CoH to return?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on April 25, 2015, 02:50:17 AM
 amazingly the game has been gone for two years and people and still going back and forth over AE.. The reality of the situation is that you could didnt need 2 billion influence to make a character.

There were multiple ways including farming and AE tickets to get what you wanted or needed. I did it all the time.. AE ticket rolls. Merit Rolls.. Hero/Villain Merits.. Buying things outright with Merits... Keep what you want.. sell the rest.. make influence..  I did it all..

Personally I could care less if someone else abused AE to get to level 50 in a few hours and walked out with millions of influence..

One thing I found out about the auction house was that I rarely had to pay top dollar for something.. I would often bid what I was willing to pay and just wait.. Keep playing the game having fun..and eventually I will win a bid or sell my items..

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 25, 2015, 03:15:20 AM
amazingly the game has been gone for two years and people and still going back and forth over AE.. The reality of the situation is that you could didnt need 2 billion influence to make a character.

There were multiple ways including farming and AE tickets to get what you wanted or needed. I did it all the time.. AE ticket rolls. Merit Rolls.. Hero/Villain Merits.. Buying things outright with Merits... Keep what you want.. sell the rest.. make influence..  I did it all..

Personally I could care less if someone else abused AE to get to level 50 in a few hours and walked out with millions of influence..

One thing I found out about the auction house was that I rarely had to pay top dollar for something.. I would often bid what I was willing to pay and just wait.. Keep playing the game having fun..and eventually I will win a bid or sell my items..

Indeed, I did what you did all the time, bought and sold, reward merits, AE tickets, etc. to get what I needed. Plus after studying some of my L50 builds in MIDS and setting mids to show IO's at L49 instead of 50 and checking the minor changes in states like defense and recovery, I then equipped all future characters with L49 IO vs L50 since they were only half the inf needed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on April 25, 2015, 03:51:37 AM
Indeed, I did what you did all the time, bought and sold, reward merits, AE tickets, etc. to get what I needed. Plus after studying some of my L50 builds in MIDS and setting mids to show IO's at L49 instead of 50 and checking the minor changes in states like defense and recovery, I then equipped all future characters with L49 IO vs L50 since they were only half the inf needed.

I usually made my level 50 builds based around level 35-38 in case I exemped down
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on April 25, 2015, 04:04:08 AM
Is it bad that, the most entertaining thing in life at the moment is cyanide and happiness shorts and web comics while waiting for CoH to return?

Well that's not surprising, CaH is only one letter off...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on April 25, 2015, 04:15:25 AM
Indeed, I did what you did all the time, bought and sold, reward merits, AE tickets, etc. to get what I needed. Plus after studying some of my L50 builds in MIDS and setting mids to show IO's at L49 instead of 50 and checking the minor changes in states like defense and recovery, I then equipped all future characters with L49 IO vs L50 since they were only half the inf needed.

I always went for 35's. Great for exemping and more of a challenge because of the lack of supply. They actually often cost more if any where available. Luckily merits! Alignment missions! Converters! Super packs! Archetype IO's! AE!

That really was all there was to it. I'll admit that I was a marketeer, not in the big boy's or girl's league, but i had about 22 billion to keep my alts fed and happy. Once I had that I just bought and sold to keep it all topped off. Sometimes I would just give it to my buddies who weren't interested in working the market.

Arcana is right about the base thing. I spent billions on that because i liked to build bases and doing the Exploration badges.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on April 25, 2015, 02:06:10 PM
I usually made my level 50 builds based around level 35-38 in case I exemped down

I used the second build form for my characters to make an L35 IO build for exemping.

Fun times :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on April 29, 2015, 10:09:39 PM
It disturbs me to see this thread fall behind. . .

Speak up folks, I demand it!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackout on April 29, 2015, 10:15:35 PM
It disturbs me to see this thread fall behind. . .

Speak up folks, I demand it!

Uhh....what....what am I supposed to talk about!?
QUICK RANDOM OFF TOPIC SUPERHERO STUFF!
WONDERFUL ONE OH ONE!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on April 29, 2015, 10:35:43 PM
Uhh....what....what am I supposed to talk about!?
QUICK RANDOM OFF TOPIC SUPERHERO STUFF!
WONDERFUL ONE OH ONE!

bacon
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Heroette on April 29, 2015, 10:47:51 PM
Bacon Ice Cream!!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackout on April 29, 2015, 11:38:02 PM
Bacon Ice Cream!!!

Bacon Icecream supermax supreme sundae!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on April 29, 2015, 11:56:31 PM
Come now. The topic on everyone's mind, other than CoH, should be The Avengers: Age of Ultron. playing in two days. At a theater near you.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 30, 2015, 12:13:54 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHPn5d7wRtk
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BloodRaevynn on April 30, 2015, 12:15:23 AM
Bacon Icecream supermax supreme sundae!

There's an ice cream shoppe in Seattle near Pike Place Market that has maple bacon whiskey ice cream.  You can also get it as a milk shake.  It's amazingly good.  The best cookies I ever had had bacon in them too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: silvers1 on April 30, 2015, 12:45:28 AM
Never did understand the reasoning for disabling level 50 IO effects when exemping down.
Why should I be gimped just because I'm helping someone out?

Hopefully none of the successor projects do something this unreasonable.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 30, 2015, 01:28:38 AM
Never did understand the reasoning for disabling level 50 IO effects when exemping down.
Why should I be gimped just because I'm helping someone out?

Hopefully none of the successor projects do something this unreasonable.

That's not how that works.  The way it works is: if they are going to be disabled in lower level content, higher level benefits can be stronger.  If they won't, they can't.  By not having to worry about whether they will cause balancing problems in lower level content, the devs were able to provide much stronger higher level enhancements.

The one thing I think I can be reasonably certain about after all this time, its that all of the various successor projects now have first-hand knowledge of what the limiting factor is in game development.  Its not technology, its not game balance, and its not making players happy.  Its getting a room full of developers to agree on something.  This is not a non-sequitor.  A lot of players will read the first paragraph and think its bunk.  I think most game developers will realize the first paragraph and the second one are actually saying the same thing in two different ways not obvious to non-developers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on April 30, 2015, 05:07:41 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHPn5d7wRtk

This is wrong in so many ways...DO IT AGAIN!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on April 30, 2015, 06:21:54 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHPn5d7wRtk

Pure awesome, and very entertaining!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on April 30, 2015, 07:05:10 AM
Interesting bit of news I wonder if this would be possible with CoH!

http://massivelyop.net/2015/04/29/everquest-emulator-group-gets-a-written-agreement-with-daybreak/ (http://massivelyop.net/2015/04/29/everquest-emulator-group-gets-a-written-agreement-with-daybreak/)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: SammiK31 on April 30, 2015, 11:13:57 AM
Come now. The topic on everyone's mind, other than CoH, should be The Avengers: Age of Ultron. playing in two days. At a theater near you.

Actually the topic on my mind is Batman vs Superman!!!
Also, what do people think of Suicide Squads Joker?
Keen, or not Keen?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on April 30, 2015, 12:48:41 PM
Interesting bit of news I wonder if this would be possible with CoH!

http://massivelyop.net/2015/04/29/everquest-emulator-group-gets-a-written-agreement-with-daybreak/ (http://massivelyop.net/2015/04/29/everquest-emulator-group-gets-a-written-agreement-with-daybreak/)

I saw that too-- and after all the missteps Daybreak has taken since SOE's split from Sony, it is a welcome sight to be sure.

Turbine is doing something similar for its former Asheron's Call franchise.  All three companies do own their IPs, so that makes it humanely possible for each.  It's just that NCSoft is by far the least human of the three.   :P

Turbine seems to care about their players the most.  Smedley has always had at least a tiny bit of compassion for SOE's player base.  NCSoft hasn't ever really seemed to share that type of sentiment at all, and that's the main problem there. 

There were rumors that ArenaNet had a clause in their Guild Wars contracts saying NCSoft could never shut down one of their games.  Clearly, something went on as GW1 only got put into maintenance mode instead of shuttered last year.   But outside of that, I  think we're screwed.  They've never budged on Infinite Rasa, or given out the rights to Auto Assault, CoX, or any of their other shuttered IPs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on April 30, 2015, 01:20:47 PM
Actually the topic on my mind is Batman vs Superman!!!
Also, what do people think of Suicide Squads Joker?
Keen, or not Keen?

Yes, Batman vs. Superman is the one on my mind...

Suicide Squad Joker could be really good. I like the guy playing him--he's been fantastic in other movies (definite acting talent there), and I'm all for presenting another "version" of the Joker. They (DC) fail if they try to recreate Jack Nicholson's or Heath Ledger's Joker.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on April 30, 2015, 02:50:47 PM
They've never budged on Infinite Rasa, or given out the rights to Auto Assault, CoX, or any of their other shuttered IPs.

I never played Tabula Rasa, but from what I understand Infinite Rasa is actually back in development.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on April 30, 2015, 03:01:47 PM
Movies are nice, but what about The Flash! Best show on TV right now!

I never played Tabula Rasa, but from what I understand Infinite Rasa is actually back in development.

This is true - there was a post on the Infinite Rasa forums that indicated the key issue that allowed them to be taken down was the use of the old NCsoft provided clients. They are building everything themselves this time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on April 30, 2015, 03:55:50 PM
Irish_Girl, I just ran across this on Facebook.  Is this you, or is someone else out there claiming to be the lead on the Unreal-4 migration of CoH?

http://www.gofundme.com/t88k49s
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on April 30, 2015, 05:11:03 PM
Quote
https://www.everquest.com/news/project-1999-daybreak

That's a fantastic beachhead in the player/fan vs corporate mindshare.  Well done to the Everquest '99' fans.  They didn't give up the struggle and have their 'vision' of the game they like or liked playing.

There's no reason why the CoH community can't pile on the pressure to reach a similar sort of agreement with NC Soft.  I really did like Ironwolf's community based idea/approach.  Doesn't seem that dissimilar to what has been achieved above.

CoH is an old game.  2004.  I missed out on the beta and Issue 1 and 2.  By mere months.  My Duo partner was in on the beta and he finally deigned to show me the game I'd read about a year before.  As soon as I saw it...I was hooked as he flew above Steel Canyon with his electricity based blaster alt.

I'd love nothing more than to be able to play the 'early' game right up to the point of Issue 4.  When SO's were all I had to worry about. ;)  Having the community 'leaders' roll out each issue in a time machine of seminal CoX magic.

So, yes.  An exciting development in the MMO space.  'Hope' for the rest of those 'buried' MMO IP games so loved by their fans.

Azrael.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on April 30, 2015, 05:17:10 PM
Irish_Girl, I just ran across this on Facebook.  Is this you, or is someone else out there claiming to be the lead on the Unreal-4 migration of CoH?

http://www.gofundme.com/t88k49s

Hey Nyght,
It's not me, however it is actually Revival's lead programmer, and web admin. Many know her as Michiyo/Caitlyn, and in the past as Neo.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: SammiK31 on April 30, 2015, 05:38:05 PM
Yes, Batman vs. Superman is the one on my mind...

Suicide Squad Joker could be really good. I like the guy playing him--he's been fantastic in other movies (definite acting talent there), and I'm all for presenting another "version" of the Joker. They (DC) fail if they try to recreate Jack Nicholson's or Heath Ledger's Joker.

I completely agree, though, I'm more of a classic Joker lover, I was introduced to Jack Nickleson Joker, and fell in love instantly. I think the Tim Burton Joker, stays close to the comic Joker, and I think thats why I love him. I like tradition.  But, with that being said, I'm open to the idea of new Joker, more modern, urban Joker. I agree that Jared Leto is just an amazing actor! He can pull anything off, and is not afraid to push the limits and try new things. I also love 30 Seconds To Mars :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on April 30, 2015, 06:53:31 PM
Actually the topic on my mind is Batman vs Superman!!!
Also, what do people think of Suicide Squads Joker?
Keen, or not Keen?

I'm not so much thinking about Batman v Superman as worried about it.  Not that I think it will be horrible, but rather I'm not sure they are laying the right groundwork for future material.  Its little things that add up; for example the battle with Batman and Superman in TDK didn't have an air of ridiculousness because of context: we were dealing with a world that basically looked like Robocop's old Detroit and there was also a sense of finality to that fight.  In almost any other context Batman in a suit of powered armor doesn't really fit the character: its not like he can just strap on the Hulkbuster in one story and then easily forget about it afterwards.  Even if it works it taps into some iconic Batman imagery for the immediate payoff but might sacrifice some of the options for the future: where do you go with Batman after he's literally brawled with Superman with his fists?  And where do you go with Superman when he's gone toe to toe with a guy in a suit of armor?

Suicide Squad is the project I'm most interested to see how it all plays out.  Its the absolute crap-shoot, in that sense sort of Warner's Guardians of the Galaxy.  You get the feeling its either going to be fantastic, or a disaster, depending on how well they take risks and land them.  Leto's Joker seems to be emblematic of that.  At first, I wasn't keen on the direction they seemed to be going in, but I've come around to the possibilities.  Heath Ledger's Joker was a radical departure in some respects and a big risk, but it paid off in spades.  Leto's Joker could be equally risky and equally rewarding: bringing back more of the "criminal genius" element combined with a more physically dangerous Joker, like Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter that primarily plays with people's minds but can, if he wants to, be physically ruthless and dangerous.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on April 30, 2015, 07:04:30 PM
Irish_Girl, I just ran across this on Facebook.  Is this you, or is someone else out there claiming to be the lead on the Unreal-4 migration of CoH?

http://www.gofundme.com/t88k49s

I will donate as soon as I get a new card - some moron tried to buy new shoes in Oregon with my card.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on April 30, 2015, 07:51:38 PM
Thanks for the info, Irish_Girl.  I'll try to kick in a little as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on April 30, 2015, 07:53:33 PM
Thanks guys,
Michiyo and I both appreciate it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on April 30, 2015, 08:39:45 PM
I will donate as soon as I get a new card - some moron tried to buy new shoes in Oregon with my card.

Grrrrrr, that's so aggravating, isn't it?  And your credit takes a hit for that, too.  Someone in CA used my Paypal card to buy shoes on bebe.com last month,  right after the giant Paypal hack.  Good thing I noticed it on the bill; I had never even heard of bebe.com before.  I don't know how some people even sleep at night.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on April 30, 2015, 11:27:18 PM
Thanks guys,
Michiyo and I both appreciate it.
Just sent you a contribution.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on April 30, 2015, 11:32:26 PM
I will donate as soon as I get a new card - some moron tried to buy new shoes in Oregon with my card.
Ha, that's nothing!  :)

Years ago, one of my credit card #'s was stolen (free tip - never order food deliveries that insist on a carbon copy of your credit card when they deliver it to your house - cash only, or don't place the order), and they bailed someone out of jail, went out to a big dinner at a restaurant, bought a new wardrobe, and then bought airline tickets out of town!  It was a trip.  I tell my friends it sounds more like the plot of Hollywood movie.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on April 30, 2015, 11:40:56 PM
Ha, that's nothing!  :)

Years ago, one of my credit card #'s was stolen (free tip - never order food deliveries that insist on a carbon copy of your credit card when they deliver it to your house - cash only, or don't place the order), and they bailed someone out of jail, went out to a big dinner at a restaurant, bought a new wardrobe, and then bought airline tickets out of town!  It was a trip.  I tell my friends it sounds more like the plot of Hollywood movie.

Could have been worse.  My mother was once declared dead at her credit card company because her SSN was one digit off from an old woman who had recently died; someone made a typo, so they canceled her card.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on May 01, 2015, 12:52:57 AM
Worst I ever had was my credit card being stolen by some idiot who had hacked a doughnut shop I had (at the time) recently purchased doughnuts from.  I don't think I purchased anything from that place again after that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on May 01, 2015, 04:25:20 AM
Ha, that's nothing!  :)

Years ago, one of my credit card #'s was stolen (free tip - never order food deliveries that insist on a carbon copy of your credit card when they deliver it to your house - cash only, or don't place the order), and they bailed someone out of jail, went out to a big dinner at a restaurant, bought a new wardrobe, and then bought airline tickets out of town!  It was a trip.  I tell my friends it sounds more like the plot of Hollywood movie.

Restaurants are one of the major sources of credit card fraud.  Many of them practically have VISA's fraud department on speed dial (because when someone claims fraudulent charges on their card, VISA works backward to see if any recent charges were at a location that other people who have reported fraud can also trace back to.  Because restaurants are common nexus for random strangers *and* also have higher fraud rates in general, they are often the first port of call for credit card fraud investigations).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mindscythe on May 01, 2015, 01:27:54 PM
Irish_Girl, I just ran across this on Facebook.  Is this you, or is someone else out there claiming to be the lead on the Unreal-4 migration of CoH?

http://www.gofundme.com/t88k49s

I'm happy to help. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Michiyo on May 02, 2015, 03:11:35 PM
Thanks guys I hit my funding goal yesterday, and a few more people donated after the fact!  The parts will be ordered ASAP.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on May 02, 2015, 03:51:12 PM
I donated after since I had said I would on facebook the day before.  Go figure.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on May 02, 2015, 06:33:23 PM
Thanks guys I hit my funding goal yesterday, and a few more people donated after the fact!  The parts will be ordered ASAP.

Congratz Michiyo!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BraveStar on May 03, 2015, 04:34:24 AM
Thanks guys I hit my funding goal yesterday, and a few more people donated after the fact!  The parts will be ordered ASAP.

Just saw this today, but a little extra never hurts. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on May 03, 2015, 07:23:42 PM
I will donate as soon as I get a new card - some moron tried to buy new shoes in Oregon with my card.

I've had mine cloned twice and they tried to buy women's clothes the first time, and designer stuff the second and my bank picked it up straight away as fraud.

Funniest story I heard, somebody had his company credit card stolen on a train, and cancelled it as soon as he noticed a couple of hours later. When he got his bill, he had to explain to both his company and his wife why he'd spent 3 grand on lingerie.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on May 04, 2015, 09:16:02 PM
I've had mine cloned twice and they tried to buy women's clothes the first time

No honey, that was credit card fraud.  Also the five hundred dollars of internet porn and the Ducati.  All fraud.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on May 05, 2015, 10:30:09 PM
No honey, that was credit card fraud.  Also the five hundred dollars of internet porn and the Ducati.  All fraud.

Err - they were using a physical card in a shop (in a different country in one case) with me still possessing the original, which is what I know as cloning.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on May 05, 2015, 11:12:51 PM
... Arcana was "quoting" the lingerie dude talking to his wife.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Flickershow on May 07, 2015, 06:18:03 PM
I'm not so much thinking about Batman v Superman as worried about it.  Not that I think it will be horrible, but rather I'm not sure they are laying the right groundwork for future material.  Its little things that add up; for example the battle with Batman and Superman in TDK didn't have an air of ridiculousness because of context: we were dealing with a world that basically looked like Robocop's old Detroit and there was also a sense of finality to that fight.  In almost any other context Batman in a suit of powered armor doesn't really fit the character: its not like he can just strap on the Hulkbuster in one story and then easily forget about it afterwards.  Even if it works it taps into some iconic Batman imagery for the immediate payoff but might sacrifice some of the options for the future: where do you go with Batman after he's literally brawled with Superman with his fists?  And where do you go with Superman when he's gone toe to toe with a guy in a suit of armor?

Suicide Squad is the project I'm most interested to see how it all plays out.  Its the absolute crap-shoot, in that sense sort of Warner's Guardians of the Galaxy.  You get the feeling its either going to be fantastic, or a disaster, depending on how well they take risks and land them.  Leto's Joker seems to be emblematic of that.  At first, I wasn't keen on the direction they seemed to be going in, but I've come around to the possibilities.  Heath Ledger's Joker was a radical departure in some respects and a big risk, but it paid off in spades.  Leto's Joker could be equally risky and equally rewarding: bringing back more of the "criminal genius" element combined with a more physically dangerous Joker, like Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter that primarily plays with people's minds but can, if he wants to, be physically ruthless and dangerous.

Not really germane to the discussion, precisely, but one of the staging areas for the Suicide Squad shoot is just outside my office here in Toronto--so, exciting, and they blew up last night's commute home due to a tardily announced road closure.  As Liz Lemon would say "Things are happening!"

http://www.cp24.com/news/movie-shoot-forces-closure-of-union-station-go-bus-terminal-1.2362803

No I have not seen anyone famous, but I have to say, they're doing massive trailers and traffic cones really well!  If they're still here when the Pan Am Games start, I can only imagine the traffic craziness.  It will give Jared Leto's Joker something real to play off of.  :)

Flickershow
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on May 20, 2015, 11:51:34 AM
2 week delay here - bump

 :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on May 20, 2015, 12:07:56 PM
2 week delay here - bump

 :(

The other, bigger megathread seems to be doing the trick as an in-house chat while we wait.  I don't really see the point of keeping two chat threads going when they're both just killing time until there's some sort of announcement about the i23 rez/IP lease/etc. 

No big new announcement will be made in either of these threads, let's face it; anything dramatic will have its own announcement thread.  Why wend your way through two chats?  Let this one go.  It was gone fine on its own.   :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on May 20, 2015, 12:20:22 PM
The other, bigger megathread seems to be doing the trick as an in-house chat while we wait.  I don't really see the point of keeping two chat threads going when they're both just killing time until there's some sort of announcement about the i23 rez/IP lease/etc. 

No big new announcement will be made in either of these threads, let's face it; anything dramatic will have its own announcement thread.  Why wend your way through two chats?  Let this one go.  It was gone fine on its own.   :)

If an announcement was made for either good or bad news, where would the announcement be made first you think? Here on the boards, Facebook, Twitter or one of the gaming sites like Massively Overpowered, MMORPG or another option I've not thought about?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on May 20, 2015, 01:02:45 PM
If an announcement was made for either good or bad news, where would the announcement be made first you think? Here on the boards, Facebook, Twitter or one of the gaming sites like Massively Overpowered, MMORPG or another option I've not thought about?

Hopefully ncsoft endorsed press release or published article on a reputable source.  Here... A day or so later. I am certain various emails, forums and websites will be bustling with news.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on May 20, 2015, 02:52:18 PM
If an announcement was made for either good or bad news, where would the announcement be made first you think? Here on the boards, Facebook, Twitter or one of the gaming sites like Massively Overpowered, MMORPG or another option I've not thought about?

I would think Massively OP.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Illusionss on May 21, 2015, 02:12:32 AM
If an announcement was made for either good or bad news, where would the announcement be made first you think? Here on the boards, Facebook, Twitter or one of the gaming sites like Massively Overpowered, MMORPG or another option I've not thought about?

Why not all of 'em at once? I say let's break the Internet for realsies.  8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on May 22, 2015, 09:23:33 PM
I think any way you slice it, when it happens...you will know pretty quickly.  Word like that spreads like wildfire.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on May 24, 2015, 03:19:53 AM
I have already promised to start a fund for advertising and seed it with $250 to start it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on May 24, 2015, 04:07:57 PM
I have already promised to start a fund for advertising and seed it with $250 to start it.

When the time is right Mr. Wolf, just post the URL for me to send the money too. :-)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on May 24, 2015, 04:33:33 PM
I would contribute to an effort like that!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sermon on May 24, 2015, 06:00:04 PM
I have already promised to start a fund for advertising and seed it with $250 to start it.

Lot's of games don't see enough response to justify traditional web advertising. I know Path of Exile dabbled in it, but largelty abandoned it after a couple tries. Interviews, features, giving exclusive news bits to different news sites seems to work best. Also, just being on Steam helps some games immensely. Some of the Rock Paper Shotgun people used to play CoH back in the day. Massively(OP) has always been good to CoH (and it's memory) as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on June 02, 2015, 10:55:58 AM
Just noticed Downix paid the forums a visit on the 30th May 2015, first time on the forums since 31st December 2014!

What do you think could of brought Downix to the forums....? Speculation begins or not!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on June 02, 2015, 02:20:43 PM
Just noticed Downix paid the forums a visit on the 30th May 2015, first time on the forums since 31st December 2014!

What do you think could of brought Downix to the forums....? Speculation begins or not!
Probably seeing if we have been good kids :) Or checking his messages.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on June 02, 2015, 06:26:04 PM
Just noticed Downix paid the forums a visit on the 30th May 2015, first time on the forums since 31st December 2014!

What do you think could of brought Downix to the forums....? Speculation begins or not!

Well, I hope he at least noted that the "wake me when there's real news" thread is up to almost 10,000 hits now.   :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on June 02, 2015, 06:48:28 PM
Well, I hope he at least noted that the "wake me when there's real news" thread is up to almost 10,000 hits now.   :D
I'll admit, I'm responsible for 3 of those hits... :-\
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 02, 2015, 09:04:11 PM
I'll admit, I'm responsible for 3 of those hits... :-\

It would help a lot of forum software had the brains to not count multiple visits to the same unchanged thread by the same account as multiple views.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on June 02, 2015, 09:15:12 PM
It would help a lot of forum software had the brains to not count multiple visits to the same unchanged thread by the same account as multiple views.

The correct algorithm is probably to not count something as a unique visit if the thread is identical to the last time you visited, including the degenerate case where you've never visited before (and thus the thread cannot be identical to the last time you visited).  However, in both cases, that would require extra scoreboarding for counting, and forum software is nothing if not incredibly inefficient in virtually all cases.  If it was written to be fast in the first place, scoreboarding would be easy.  As it is, it would probably cripple most forum software.

For a software category that is among the most used pieces of software on the internet, its all surprisingly bad.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 03, 2015, 05:43:57 AM
Simple enough to do though, just add it to the cookie that already exists on your PC, so it already knows whether you've read that thread or not.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on June 03, 2015, 08:04:27 AM
Simple enough to do though, just add it to the cookie that already exists on your PC, so it already knows whether you've read that thread or not.

I read from multiple PCs, and cookies have some rather small, and browser-specific, limits.  There are other ways to track this client-side, but those as have limits and browser-specific elements.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 03, 2015, 04:39:41 PM
I read from multiple PCs, and cookies have some rather small, and browser-specific, limits.  There are other ways to track this client-side, but those as have limits and browser-specific elements.

Sure, you can't get it perfectly, but you can certainly get a hell of a lot closer than not actually trying! :p  (Not a personal "you" ;) )
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on June 03, 2015, 06:17:15 PM
Sure, you can't get it perfectly, but you can certainly get a hell of a lot closer than not actually trying! :p  (Not a personal "you" ;) )

If the jumbo cookies overflow the client, I'm not sure I would classify that as "not perfectly."  Weird, unexpected things are bound to happen if you try to store the thread history into cookies, and not just to the titan forums.  Cookies are meant to store simple state data.  They are not meant to store databases.  The last time I did serious programming involving web cookies the practical limit on them was about 1k of data.  Not that that was the absolute browser limit, but that trying to handle significantly more data than that would start to cause strange problems with different symptoms on different browsers due to different browsers enforcing different cookie limits in different ways.  Some would have a cookie limit.  Some would have a cookie domain limit for all cookies in a domain.  Some would enforce both overlapping.  Some would officially support a certain limit, but start to malfunction below the limit unpredictably.  And that is totally separate from browsers that clear or suppress tracking cookies.

If Titan somehow wanted to have a special flag for a very few threads where they wanted the count to be accurate, setting that flag in the browser cookie would work.  But in the general case, I think it would go wonky fast.  And not just in terms of broken counters, but in terms of odd browser behavior.  You don't want to be the cause of that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 03, 2015, 08:28:19 PM
Y'know Arcana, I -am- a developer... I know what's involved! ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on June 03, 2015, 09:41:39 PM
Y'know Arcana, I -am- a developer... I know what's involved! ;)

I'm not specifically trying to educate you, I'm just pointing out the massive levels of death and destruction your algorithms appear to revel in.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on June 03, 2015, 09:48:29 PM
I'm not specifically trying to educate you, I'm just pointing out the massive levels of death and destruction your algorithms appear to revel in.

But what good algorithm's don't revel in death and destruction?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on June 03, 2015, 10:38:34 PM
Now I need CoV to comeback so I can Make Al Go Rhythm, a Sonic/Something Corruptor... :o
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackout on June 03, 2015, 11:24:25 PM
Now I need CoV to comeback so I can Make Al Go Rhythm, a Sonic/Something Corruptor... :o

Al Gore Rhythm. He controls plants and fire :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Winter Fable on June 03, 2015, 11:54:59 PM
I only had one sonic character but having time to think about builds and combos I have 3 planned so far.I have so many combos I want to try I'm not even sure I'll make it to 50 with any the first few years :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 04, 2015, 05:45:14 AM
I'm not specifically trying to educate you, I'm just pointing out the massive levels of death and destruction your algorithms appear to revel in.

But, how else am I going to take over the world?!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on June 04, 2015, 08:57:10 AM
But, how else am I going to take over the world?!

Trying to take over the world by breaking everyone's browsers didn't work out for Microsoft, and their attempt was probably better funded.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on June 04, 2015, 12:05:47 PM
Trying to take over the world by breaking everyone's browsers didn't work out for Microsoft, and their attempt was probably better funded.

 ;D

Azrael.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on June 04, 2015, 12:16:47 PM
Trying to take over the world by breaking everyone's browsers didn't work out for Microsoft, and their attempt was probably better funded.

Their attempt only failed because there was another company that took over the world because they tried a better tactic: appealing to everyone's vanity.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 04, 2015, 04:49:00 PM
Trying to take over the world by breaking everyone's browsers didn't work out for Microsoft, and their attempt was probably better funded.

I guess I'm going to have to resort to the fembots then...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on June 04, 2015, 04:52:34 PM
OOOOOOooohh, fembots. Deadly AND that other thing...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on June 04, 2015, 04:58:09 PM
I guess I'm going to have to resort to the fembots then...

For some reason every time I hear fembots, this is the first thing that comes to mind.

(https://i.imgur.com/meoAf.gif)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on June 04, 2015, 07:27:57 PM
I guess I'm going to have to resort to the fembots then...

Next time on the A-Team, Hannibal goes to plan B...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 04, 2015, 07:47:48 PM
For some reason every time I hear fembots, this is the first thing that comes to mind.

I was thinking of something a little more... attention grabbing!

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=home.comcast.net%2F%7Ejimv833%2F3Dportfolio%2Fmetro%2Ffutura1a.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on June 04, 2015, 07:55:55 PM
I was thinking of something a little more... attention grabbing!

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=home.comcast.net%2F%7Ejimv833%2F3Dportfolio%2Fmetro%2Ffutura1a.jpg)

I dunno just having Bender associated with those fembots is more than enough attention :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on June 04, 2015, 09:48:34 PM
Dot Matrix is starting to show her age a bit.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on June 05, 2015, 12:10:00 AM
I WANT MY GAME BACK  :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :gonk: :gonk: :gonk: :gonk: :gonk: :gonk: :gonk: :'( :'( :'( :'( :gonk: :gonk: :gonk: :gonk: :gonk: :(
ps: Doesn't that emoji look like its launching a snot rocket?!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on June 05, 2015, 02:31:32 AM
Curious since Windows 10 is debuting at the end of July (and the "Free Upgrade" icon is on my Task Bar) whether I should bother to get it or wait and see if CoX will still work/be compatible with it.... ?  :gonk:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on June 05, 2015, 02:38:49 AM
Sign up for it, that'll download it automatically but won't install until you say to.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on June 05, 2015, 03:01:14 AM
Curious since Windows 10 is debuting at the end of July (and the "Free Upgrade" icon is on my Task Bar) whether I should bother to get it or wait and see if CoX will still work/be compatible with it.... ?  :gonk:
Reports elsewhere say ICON works with the Win10 preview, so no problems there.

Also, they didn't significantly alter the underlying architecture of the OS.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on June 05, 2015, 03:17:31 AM
I use Icon and I am already running Win 10 (Technical Preview). I have only had a very few problems with Win 10 compatibility, AVG and Chrome both gave me hiccups until they got their upgrades out. On the plus side, I got to play Crimson Skies again which I haven't been able to play since Win XP!

I think Win 10 compatibility issues are going to be very minimal at best, if any at all when the final product releases.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on June 05, 2015, 05:04:04 PM
Curious since Windows 10 is debuting at the end of July (and the "Free Upgrade" icon is on my Task Bar) whether I should bother to get it or wait and see if CoX will still work/be compatible with it.... ?  :gonk:
I follow the conservative rule for Windows version upgrades - wait until Service Pack 1 is released.  I'm not touching Win10 until then.  That will also give 3rd party developers some time to come up with a "make the Win10 Start Menu look like the Win7 Start Menu" app that I can install right after getting Win10 installed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 05, 2015, 06:11:58 PM
I follow the conservative rule for Windows version upgrades - wait until Service Pack 1 is released.  I'm not touching Win10 until then.  That will also give 3rd party developers some time to come up with a "make the Win10 Start Menu look like the Win7 Start Menu" app that I can install right after getting Win10 installed.

They don't do service packs any more, so you're going to  have a long wait.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on June 05, 2015, 08:55:21 PM
They don't do service packs any more, so you're going to  have a long wait.
Then I'll wait until at least Jan, 2016.  Should give the unpaid beta testers early adopters time to help Microsoft work out the bugs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on June 05, 2015, 08:55:40 PM
They don't do service packs any more, so you're going to  have a long wait.

They might have an analog for business customers (rollup points) but otherwise, yes, what most people aren't apparently aware of is that Microsoft has decided to leap into the world of rolling patches.  Windows will basically patch itself, (for the most part) without user intervention *or* acquiescence.

That oughta be interesting.  On the one hand, Microsoft has shown no ability to do that right so far.  On the other hand, *forcing* their patch process to *get* there would be good for everyone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on June 05, 2015, 09:02:49 PM
Then I'll wait until at least Jan, 2016.  Should give the unpaid beta testers early adopters time to help Microsoft work out the bugs.

Every time I upgrade to a new version of Windows, I virtualize my old system and keep that around on the new one.  That way if something horribly breaks in the new version of Windows, I can usually still run my old system, even if I have to level the PC and reload Windows itself.

Its a bit of a sledgehammer, but its impractical for me to be without a functioning computer for too long (I do also have a laptop, but that's not quite the same).  Actually, I'm going to be moving from sledgehammer to bunker-buster for Windows 10: I'm going to take my Win7 PC and virtualize it, then upload it to my corporate private cloud, add the Horizon direct connect plugin to it, and have a copy of my original system available whenever I want to reference it.

On the one hand, that's crazy with a capital "CRAZY."  On the other hand, I built the damn infrastructure, so screw it I'm gonna use it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on June 05, 2015, 09:13:44 PM
Every time I upgrade to a new version of Windows, I virtualize my old system and keep that around on the new one.  That way if something horribly breaks in the new version of Windows, I can usually still run my old system, even if I have to level the PC and reload Windows itself.

Its a bit of a sledgehammer, but its impractical for me to be without a functioning computer for too long (I do also have a laptop, but that's not quite the same).  Actually, I'm going to be moving from sledgehammer to bunker-buster for Windows 10: I'm going to take my Win7 PC and virtualize it, then upload it to my corporate private cloud, add the Horizon direct connect plugin to it, and have a copy of my original system available whenever I want to reference it.

On the one hand, that's crazy with a capital "CRAZY."  On the other hand, I built the damn infrastructure, so screw it I'm gonna use it.
I have an easier - but more expensive - solution that I use.  My best friend builds computers for a living.  So, in Jan, 2016, I'll go to him and say "Build me a new PC and install Windows 10 on it."  My current Win7-Pro machine will thus be working just fine both before and after this event.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on June 05, 2015, 11:32:38 PM
I follow the conservative rule for Windows version upgrades - wait until Service Pack 1 is released.  I'm not touching Win10 until then.  That will also give 3rd party developers some time to come up with a "make the Win10 Start Menu look like the Win7 Start Menu" app that I can install right after getting Win10 installed.

Already done, you can choose to use the classic Win start menu or the Win 8 tiles right from the start.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on June 06, 2015, 12:02:24 AM
They might have an analog for business customers (rollup points) but otherwise, yes, what most people aren't apparently aware of is that Microsoft has decided to leap into the world of rolling patches.  Windows will basically patch itself, (for the most part) without user intervention *or* acquiescence.

That oughta be interesting.  On the one hand, Microsoft has shown no ability to do that right so far.  On the other hand, *forcing* their patch process to *get* there would be good for everyone.

Do these patches still require (read: force) reboot?  I'm hoping not, but I'm expecting...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on June 06, 2015, 12:06:41 AM
Already done, you can choose to use the classic Win start menu or the Win 8 tiles right from the start.
Excellent - the last screenshots I saw of Windows 10 were displaying that damn Metro-style Start Menu and I said "Well, I see the first thing that needs fixing."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on June 06, 2015, 12:09:40 AM
Do these patches still require (read: force) reboot?  I'm hoping not, but I'm expecting...
If I have a SQL query running overnight on my work PC and a damned forced reboot interrupts it, I will be on the phone to MS tech support screaming bloody murder and searching for any hack I can find - legal or not - to stop that from happening again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on June 06, 2015, 12:16:23 AM
If I have a SQL query running overnight on my work PC and a damned forced reboot interrupts it, I will be on the phone to MS tech support screaming bloody murder and searching for any hack I can find - legal or not - to stop that from happening again.
So tell it to update at a different time than your SQL query. Problem solved without haranguing a support tech. People like your claim here get put up on notalwaysright.com.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on June 06, 2015, 12:21:36 AM
So tell it to update at a different time than your SQL query. Problem solved without haranguing a support tech. People like your claim here get put up on notalwaysright.com.
That depends on if MS gives us any control in Windows 10 of when patches are applied and reboots occur.  From the posts above, I'm a little nervous about that.  As far as I'm concerned, the weekends are a great time for updates to happen - during the week, don't bother me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on June 06, 2015, 12:37:06 AM
I've had automatic updates turned off for basically ever. 8.1 whines about it by having a perma alert in solve PC issues, but I can't imagine they'd completely remove the option. Would be waaaaay too much rage if they did.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on June 06, 2015, 05:17:20 AM
Excellent - the last screenshots I saw of Windows 10 were displaying that damn Metro-style Start Menu and I said "Well, I see the first thing that needs fixing."

The start menu is one of the things I like the most about Win 10. Not only do you have the classic menu, but you can also pin the app tiles you choose to the start menu, the best of both worlds!

My only real complaint is the taskbar. I prefer a two row taskbar, I have always preferred the taskbar even over the menu for quick launching stuff, I pin everything to the taskbar. For some reason Win 10 forces it down to a single row with every restart, I have to go back and reset it each time. Annoying, but certainly not a deal breaker by any means. Enough of us have complained that I expect the full release to accommodate those of us who complained by allowing a persistent multi-row taskbar. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 06, 2015, 05:37:01 AM
Every time I upgrade to a new version of Windows, I virtualize my old system and keep that around on the new one.  That way if something horribly breaks in the new version of Windows, I can usually still run my old system, even if I have to level the PC and reload Windows itself.

Its a bit of a sledgehammer, but its impractical for me to be without a functioning computer for too long (I do also have a laptop, but that's not quite the same).  Actually, I'm going to be moving from sledgehammer to bunker-buster for Windows 10: I'm going to take my Win7 PC and virtualize it, then upload it to my corporate private cloud, add the Horizon direct connect plugin to it, and have a copy of my original system available whenever I want to reference it.

On the one hand, that's crazy with a capital "CRAZY."  On the other hand, I built the damn infrastructure, so screw it I'm gonna use it.

I do the opposite.  I run a virtualised environment of the beta for the new version (I'm posting from it right now, in fact), which lets me verify everything still works. If there are any issues, then at launch, I'll dual boot for a bit.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 06, 2015, 05:39:24 AM
That depends on if MS gives us any control in Windows 10 of when patches are applied and reboots occur.  From the posts above, I'm a little nervous about that.  As far as I'm concerned, the weekends are a great time for updates to happen - during the week, don't bother me.

Windows 10 Home users will not be able to turn off automatic updates, though there's no information yet on the reboot part.  Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise users will have the same control over updates as we do now.  Nothing will change on that regard.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 06, 2015, 05:41:50 AM
Already done, you can choose to use the classic Win start menu or the Win 8 tiles right from the start.

Incorrect. The Start menu in Windows 10, although back to just a small menu, is still "metro" styled.

(https://www.thurrott.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/hands-on-hero.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 06, 2015, 05:43:43 AM
Excellent - the last screenshots I saw of Windows 10 were displaying that damn Metro-style Start Menu and I said "Well, I see the first thing that needs fixing."

It IS fixed. It works far far better than the old start menu did (and I use Classic Start in Windows 8 to get my Start menu back, so I know where you're coming from).  It's a good blend of the old and the new.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on June 06, 2015, 06:34:45 AM
Windows 10 Home users will not be able to turn off automatic updates, though there's no information yet on the reboot part.  Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise users will have the same control over updates as we do now.  Nothing will change on that regard.
ugh, not sure if i trust microsoft enough to have automatic updates, as my current computer is the first i've ever had where i've yet to have an update cause an unexplained slowdown or break something, and that could be  because i've only had it a few months.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 06, 2015, 06:42:24 AM
ugh, not sure if i trust microsoft enough to have automatic updates, as my current computer is the first i've ever had where i've yet to have an update cause an unexplained slowdown or break something, and that could be  because i've only had it a few months.

So far, not enough information is available as to what form these forced updates will take. However, it IS known that the current fast/slow ring of releases will continue. Those on the fast ring in Windows 10 will get updates before those on the slow ring, and slow ring will be the default at least on Home, so there should have been sufficient testing done to updates to reduce the chance of problems.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on June 06, 2015, 07:08:55 AM
So on a side note, how does everyone feel about Darrell Hammond as the new Col Sanders in the new KFC commercials?

I am of two minds, I like Darrell a lot from his SNL days, but the new Col Sanders feels kinda disrespectful and out of character. . .

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 06, 2015, 07:12:52 AM
So on a side note, how does everyone feel about Darrell Hammond as the new Col Sanders in the new KFC commercials?

I am of two minds, I like Darrell a lot from his SNL days, but the new Col Sanders feels kinda disrespectful and out of character. . .

Never heard of him...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on June 06, 2015, 08:52:15 AM
So tell it to update at a different time than your SQL query. Problem solved without haranguing a support tech. People like your claim here get put up on notalwaysright.com.

I don't think that would qualify.  I certainly have no intention of allowing Windows 10 to reboot whenever it wants to, because I don't always know in advance what the best time to reboot is.  If MS doesn't allow optional reboot, they'll get deservedly slammed.  Probably hard enough to add the option fairly quickly.

On the other hand, yelling at an MS tech support flunky gets absolutely nowhere.  I've done it myself.  Jeez most of the time they are looking up the problem you're reporting in google, like you didn't do that yourself before calling them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on June 06, 2015, 07:46:51 PM
On the other hand, yelling at an MS tech support flunky gets absolutely nowhere.  I've done it myself.  Jeez most of the time they are looking up the problem you're reporting in google, like you didn't do that yourself before calling them.
What, they're not required to Bing their answers?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on June 06, 2015, 08:42:06 PM
Maybe they get around it by Binging Google  ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on June 06, 2015, 10:58:26 PM
So on a side note, how does everyone feel about Darrell Hammond as the new Col Sanders in the new KFC commercials?

I am of two minds, I like Darrell a lot from his SNL days, but the new Col Sanders feels kinda disrespectful and out of character. . .

All the media marketing is trying to portray the customer as an indiot. On one hand there used to be Tony the tiger, and now we have the Frontier buffalo reducing our IQ with every iteration of the mindnumbingly stupid advertisements.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on June 07, 2015, 12:00:20 AM
Media in general when it comes to entertainment seems to think the audience are dumb%^&es, from games to movies.  Heck, saw a new TV show advertised about some gal covered in nothing but tattoos.  Sigh, I bet it's another mary sue character, it's all we ever pancaking get these days.

"I am the chosen one".  Ok, we get it.  "Oh i'm a chosen one to!"  Ok.....cliche.....  "Hey, here is another chosen one!"  FOR PETES SAKE STOP IT WITH THE SAME CHOSEN ONE CRAP OVER AND OVER AGAIN NOT ALL OF US ARE BLOODY TWILIGHT FANS.

It's all we ever see, they even have to have some special power or something to make things easier for them since they suck at writing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on June 07, 2015, 12:11:33 AM
Media in general when it comes to entertainment seems to think the audience are dumb%^&es, from games to movies.  Heck, saw a new TV show advertised about some gal covered in nothing but tattoos.  Sigh, I bet it's another mary sue character, it's all we ever pancaking get these days.

"I am the chosen one".  Ok, we get it.  "Oh i'm a chosen one to!"  Ok.....cliche.....  "Hey, here is another chosen one!"  FOR PETES SAKE STOP IT WITH THE SAME CHOSEN ONE CRAP OVER AND OVER AGAIN NOT ALL OF US ARE BLOODY TWILIGHT FANS.

It's all we ever see, they even have to have some special power or something to make things easier for them since they suck at writing.

I've read some really good fiction about very powerful characters. Pretty much all of Zelazny other than his short stories, as an example. It's not a question of powerful characters or not, it's a question of whether the writer uses the character's powers as if they were what the character is, rather than a person WITH those powers... "So, what's the main character like?" / "Well, he's got this power, and that power, and he can do this" / "Yeah, but that doesn't tell me much about what he's like, it just tells me what he can do".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on June 07, 2015, 06:49:00 AM
"I am the chosen one".  Ok, we get it.  "Oh i'm a chosen one to!"  Ok.....cliche.....  "Hey, here is another chosen one!"  FOR PETES SAKE STOP IT WITH THE SAME CHOSEN ONE CRAP OVER AND OVER AGAIN NOT ALL OF US ARE BLOODY TWILIGHT FANS.

It's all we ever see, they even have to have some special power or something to make things easier for them since they suck at writing.

Yeah, that one movie about the guy with laser swords who was "destined" defeat the evil kingdom and had the "special power" to move stuff with his mind is soooo derivative.

See also: tons of stories since the dawn of time: http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-greatest-stories-in-which-one-character-is-the-Chosen-One http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheChosenOne http://screenrant.com/top-favorite-chosen-movie-heroes/

I am of two minds, I like Darrell a lot from his SNL days, but the new Col Sanders feels kinda disrespectful and out of character. . .

I haven't seen the ads, but I heard that KFC was "bringing Col. Sanders back." But I do have to ask: how would one play a Sanders that was "respectful?" Because to me, his "legacy" is creating a business that is unhealthy and could very well be contributing to significant health issues in the US.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on June 07, 2015, 08:04:14 AM
Curious since Windows 10 is debuting at the end of July (and the "Free Upgrade" icon is on my Task Bar) whether I should bother to get it or wait and see if CoX will still work/be compatible with it.... ?  :gonk:

Thanks for all the feed-back on Win 10 - made my reservation and hopefully none of my older games will be affected....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on June 07, 2015, 08:54:31 AM
Thanks for all the feed-back on Win 10 - made my reservation and hopefully none of my older games will be affected....

Looks like the free upgrade expires in 2016, so I am going tp let an upgrade download on a win 7 laptop of mine, then tinker with it and read up on how games and programs are affected.

Likely I will end up doing what I always do, build a new box, buy the OS and install and set it to how I want. Previous box becomes a secondary part of my network.

Of course then comes the question: do we really NEED to move to Windows 10? Seven and 8 as I recall do not sunset for 5 years still and even then they can still be used. My XP box still has its uses.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 07, 2015, 10:54:53 AM
Of course then comes the question: do we really NEED to move to Windows 10? Seven and 8 as I recall do not sunset for 5 years still and even then they can still be used. My XP box still has its uses.

Obviously the choice is yours, BUT, if you don't do it in the first year of W10's release, you'll have to buy it instead of getting it for free.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on June 07, 2015, 05:35:20 PM
Obviously the choice is yours, BUT, if you don't do it in the first year of W10's release, you'll have to buy it instead of getting it for free.

Granted Free is a nice thing, but as many of us know, obtaining a new OS when it first releases is NOT always a good thing.

Windows Millenium Edition had some problems, though I discovered that turning off Go Back/Sys Restore helped stablize it.

Windows Vista.....no comment.

I'll wait awhile and see how Win 10 goes on my older laptop and in general.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on June 07, 2015, 05:55:48 PM
If its any consolation, Windows releases go pretty much like Star Trek movies.  Every other one is really good!  Win98, WinXP, Win7, so we are due for another winner according to that predictor.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 07, 2015, 05:57:56 PM
Windows Vista.....no comment.

*sigh* It gets a bit old seeing things like this, especially when it's essentially nonsense.

The only people who had issues with Vista, are those who had hardware who's manufacturers didn't get their drivers done.  This was not Microsoft's fault, it was the hardware vendors. They had plenty of time to get up to speed, and didn't.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on June 07, 2015, 07:23:32 PM
*sigh* It gets a bit old seeing things like this, especially when it's essentially nonsense.

The only people who had issues with Vista, are those who had hardware who's manufacturers didn't get their drivers done.  This was not Microsoft's fault, it was the hardware vendors. They had plenty of time to get up to speed, and didn't.

That was me in part. I had a Cannon BJC 11" x 17" printer that suddenly would not work. Not under Vista or XP, but surprisingly drivers for it came back with Win 7. I guess good things come to those who wait or they would have if I had kept the printer maintained. During the long period of storage the ink dried in the head and I was never able to get it cleaned up well enough to work right again.

*Sigh*  So bored right now that I am actually re-installing STO. . .
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on June 08, 2015, 07:04:34 AM
Each day I miss CoH more than the last day, but I keep thinking "Well we're another day closer to CoH returning!" I have to think this and keep the hope alive that someday I'll be able to fly around our City & Isles once more. (But please let that day come sooner rather than later...)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on June 08, 2015, 07:16:13 AM
It'd brighten my mood significantly if city of heroes was returned, for sure.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: adarict on June 08, 2015, 02:44:55 PM
*sigh* It gets a bit old seeing things like this, especially when it's essentially nonsense.

The only people who had issues with Vista, are those who had hardware who's manufacturers didn't get their drivers done.  This was not Microsoft's fault, it was the hardware vendors. They had plenty of time to get up to speed, and didn't.

That is only partly true.  Yes, the drivers were a major part of the issues with Vista, but up until SP1, Vista had a bunch of problems that were specific to the OS.  It did not handle multitasking or memory management well, and the TCPIP stack was terrible.  Also, there were a good number of driver issues, that had nothing to do with the vendors not releasing drivers.  Microsoft left out entire classes of devices.

Vista, on release, worked fine if you had hardware that was on the list of certified devices, had at least double the minimum requirements as far as RAM and HD space, and did not do anything that required significant memory, or multi-processor support.  That actually meant that a large portion of customers should not have had too many issues, or that the issues they did have, could have been easily resolved.  That does not mean that there were not actual problems with the OS.  I worked with Microsoft for months prior to release, and continued working with them after release, to help quantify and fix some of those issues.

SP1 pretty much made it a working OS for the vast majority of users, but by that time, it had gotten such a bad reputation, that people just piled on.  I still don't believe Vista, even with subsequent service packs/patches is worth using.  Windows 7 is light years better in almost every category, but it is still viable, even for gaming.

Windows 10 has been a fantastic experience so far.  I already use it as my primary machine, and expect to upgrade all of my machines pretty much on Day 1.  Something I don't generally do with Microsoft.  Basically, if your program worked with Windows 8, it works with Windows 10.  If it works on Windows 7, there is probably a 95% or higher chance that it will work on Windows 10 with no modification.  I have been surprised how well it works, even on very old systems with obscure hardware. 

Let me put it this way, it works well enough, that I have been pushing all of my relatives to go ahead and update to Windows 10 very soon after it is released.  I don't do that often, because I end up being tech support for my whole family.  Once I have them trained to use their machines, I dislike forcing them to change.  Windows 10 is worth the upgrade.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 08, 2015, 03:20:20 PM
Vista, on release, worked fine if you had hardware that was on the list of certified devices, had at least double the minimum requirements as far as RAM and HD space, and did not do anything that required significant memory, or multi-processor support.  That actually meant that a large portion of customers should not have had too many issues, or that the issues they did have, could have been easily resolved.  That does not mean that there were not actual problems with the OS.  I worked with Microsoft for months prior to release, and continued working with them after release, to help quantify and fix some of those issues.

You're generalising.  Was it problem free? No, but there were far less issues caused by MS than people make out.  When Vista came out I was running an old Pentium 3 at 2ghz, 4gig RAM and a Radeon 8500.  It multi-tasked just fine, didn't have any problems with my home network, didn't suck up all my 500gb drive, and all my USB peripherals worked just fine.

A good 90% of all the "problems" people experienced were down to media vitriol and 3rd party driver issues.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on June 08, 2015, 04:17:18 PM
For my part, dealing with Windows 10 so far was looking up how to disable GWX.exe this weekend, which has gotten annoying as hell on every Windows 7 PC/laptop I own or work on.  Microsoft has gotten a bit too pushy with that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 08, 2015, 05:10:02 PM
For my part, dealing with Windows 10 so far was looking up how to disable GWX.exe this weekend, which has gotten annoying as hell on every Windows 7 PC/laptop I own or work on.  Microsoft has gotten a bit too pushy with that.

It's just an icon in the system tray... How can that be annoying? :P Just hide it!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on June 08, 2015, 05:18:20 PM
Of course then comes the question: do we really NEED to move to Windows 10? Seven and 8 as I recall do not sunset for 5 years still and even then they can still be used. My XP box still has its uses.

Well, in my opinion if you're running Windows 8 I see little reason not to upgrade, as 10 is a better 8.  If you're running 7, you'll have a learning curve but it will be better than with 8.0 and Windows 7 is actually about at the end of mainstream support (it goes into extended support for about five years).  Since you generally do not want to upgrade with a gun to your head, and Windows 10 does have significant improvements over 7, I'm generally recommending to people to take the free upgrade to 10 in the vast majority of cases.  The automatic update thing gives me pause, but not enough to throw away a free upgrade quite yet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on June 08, 2015, 05:53:50 PM
It's just an icon in the system tray... How can that be annoying? :P Just hide it!
Did that, then killed it in Task Manager.  As soon as you reboot, it comes right back.  It's not visible in MSCONFIG Startup, and I couldn't find it in Component Services, either.  The easiest solution I found when searching Google was to rename the two GWX subdirectories in C:\Windows to "GWX_old".  Seems to have worked so far.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on June 08, 2015, 06:36:41 PM
Did that, then killed it in Task Manager.  As soon as you reboot, it comes right back.  It's not visible in MSCONFIG Startup, and I couldn't find it in Component Services, either.  The easiest solution I found when searching Google was to rename the two GWX subdirectories in C:\Windows to "GWX_old".  Seems to have worked so far.

You'll be kicking yourself when your pre-download doesn't pre-download.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on June 08, 2015, 07:04:41 PM
Well, in my opinion if you're running Windows 8 I see little reason not to upgrade, as 10 is a better 8.  If you're running 7, you'll have a learning curve but it will be better than with 8.0 and Windows 7 is actually about at the end of mainstream support (it goes into extended support for about five years).  Since you generally do not want to upgrade with a gun to your head, and Windows 10 does have significant improvements over 7, I'm generally recommending to people to take the free upgrade to 10 in the vast majority of cases.  The automatic update thing gives me pause, but not enough to throw away a free upgrade quite yet.

Maybe this more unique to my situation but I never upgrade right away or even for the first year or so.  The software I use for school and work almost never has the drivers to a new OS that quickly.  Hell when I switched my Laptop to Windows 8 I couldn't use 2 of my 3 Audio Interfaces, Ableton 9 had trouble registering, Reason couldn't update to a new a driver which means it couldn't launch period. And 3 of my software synths from Native Instruments didn't work for the first month.  This isn't Windows fault in anyway but it is still a very large issue I run into when switching to a new OS.  In fact most of my professors or other well known sound engineer's will recommend you stay on the system you have as long as possible because "Why mess with success"

I hear good things about Windows 10 and in a couple of years I am excited to switch over.  Sadly I won't be getting that free upgrade though:(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JanessaVR on June 08, 2015, 07:44:44 PM
You'll be kicking yourself when your pre-download doesn't pre-download.
I don't want it to.  Like I said above, I'm waiting until at least Jan, 2016 before I touch Windows 10.  If that means I have to pay for it, fine, then I'll pay for it - later.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on June 08, 2015, 08:03:16 PM
Well, in my opinion if you're running Windows 8 I see little reason not to upgrade, as 10 is a better 8.  If you're running 7, you'll have a learning curve but it will be better than with 8.0 and Windows 7 is actually about at the end of mainstream support (it goes into extended support for about five years).  Since you generally do not want to upgrade with a gun to your head, and Windows 10 does have significant improvements over 7, I'm generally recommending to people to take the free upgrade to 10 in the vast majority of cases.  The automatic update thing gives me pause, but not enough to throw away a free upgrade quite yet.

Oh, Im not quite walking away from the free upgrade yet.  After all it is an offer for a year :)

Sadly I already have had 5 relatives contact me and 4 friends also that have registered and want me available for the download install.

Already gave them my fee and a list of things to do BEFORE the installation, which of course they won't do and will yell at me about anyway, hence the fee that they WILL pay before I even work on their systems.  (too many relatives have leeched support out of me)

1. Back up all documents, files, vids, music, website favorites, etc to an EXTERNAL USB device (clouds are nice, but so is USB)

2. Be sure all malware and antivirus programs are updated and a THOROUGH scan is performed and anything found is cleansed and removed.

3. After the scan, before installation remove antivirus/antimalware programs, they get reinstalled/updated after Win 10 is done.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on June 08, 2015, 08:54:50 PM
So on a side note, how does everyone feel about Darrell Hammond as the new Col Sanders in the new KFC commercials?

I am of two minds, I like Darrell a lot from his SNL days, but the new Col Sanders feels kinda disrespectful and out of character. . .

I grew up in Louisville, KY, and very much remember Col. Harlan Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken and creator of the seasonings and original gravy (not, unfortunately, the gravy you get today from KFC).  After KFC was franchised and sold to a parent company, Col. Sanders (A Kentucky Colonel, not a military one) served for a number of years as a traveling spokesperson for his "Kentucky Fried Chicken", and was quite outspoken when the parent company changed recipes to save money, producing a less tasty product.

After making his money off the KFC franchise, sale, and spokesperson work, Col. Sanders was also quite the local philanthropist, giving money to a number of local charities.

So, I have to agree that seeing an actor portraying the Colonel as a cartoonish buffoon is pretty distasteful, honestly, to anyone who remembers the actual Colonel.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on June 08, 2015, 09:30:11 PM
I grew up in Louisville, KY, and very much remember Col. Harlan Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken and creator of the seasonings and original gravy (not, unfortunately, the gravy you get today from KFC).  After KFC was franchised and sold to a parent company, Col. Sanders (A Kentucky Colonel, not a military one) served for a number of years as a traveling spokesperson for his "Kentucky Fried Chicken", and was quite outspoken when the parent company changed recipes to save money, producing a less tasty product.

After making his money off the KFC franchise, sale, and spokesperson work, Col. Sanders was also quite the local philanthropist, giving money to a number of local charities.

So, I have to agree that seeing an actor portraying the Colonel as a cartoonish buffoon is pretty distasteful, honestly, to anyone who remembers the actual Colonel.

Well on the bright side, they did not dredge up the old Col. Sanders commercials where they actually turned him into a cartoonish buffoon. This is the only one I could find from the series of ads and this one is probably the most "tame" ones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR5j7NOAlZE
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: adarict on June 08, 2015, 10:18:58 PM
You're generalising.  Was it problem free? No, but there were far less issues caused by MS than people make out.  When Vista came out I was running an old Pentium 3 at 2ghz, 4gig RAM and a Radeon 8500.  It multi-tasked just fine, didn't have any problems with my home network, didn't suck up all my 500gb drive, and all my USB peripherals worked just fine.

A good 90% of all the "problems" people experienced were down to media vitriol and 3rd party driver issues.

Actually, I am not generalizing.  I am basing it on months of testing in a legitimate lab environment for a major software vendor.  That being said, I also was not implying that it was filled with problems.  I agree 100% that the vast majority of the problems were people jumping on a bandwagon they didn't understand.  The problems that existed were REAL problems, but they only affected a small percentage of the population.  if you were part of that smaller group though, you were screwed, and ended up having to do some pretty convoluted tweaks to make the OS run at acceptable speed, and with acceptable stability.  Almost everyone else that had major issues with the initial release, it was as was said earlier, a problem caused by manufacturers not getting off their asses and releasing drivers.

Vista doesn't get a free pass, just because of third party vendors.  Microsoft was also not very forthcoming to those vendors in the beta leading up to release.  The company I work for had a print related driver that we had created, and Microsoft kept pushing us back and pushing us back.  We couldn't get our driver certified, or even get any information about how to make the driver compatible.  Intuit had similar issues.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on June 09, 2015, 05:00:11 AM
Maybe this more unique to my situation but I never upgrade right away or even for the first year or so.

You'd have to be insane to be one of the first people on Earth to push the big red button to upgrade to 10.  That doesn't mean you shouldn't get the free upgrade.

Honestly I do the same thing FFM does: run the beta in VMware, and I'll likely run Win10 in a VM for a while before upgrading my main hardware rigs (software VMs are fine because I can roll them back or restore from backup in a snap).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on June 09, 2015, 05:07:54 AM
You're generalising.  Was it problem free? No, but there were far less issues caused by MS than people make out.  When Vista came out I was running an old Pentium 3 at 2ghz, 4gig RAM and a Radeon 8500.  It multi-tasked just fine, didn't have any problems with my home network, didn't suck up all my 500gb drive, and all my USB peripherals worked just fine.

A good 90% of all the "problems" people experienced were down to media vitriol and 3rd party driver issues.

Emphasis mine

Just a point of order; adarict mentioned multiprocessor support not multitasking, and as I recall Vista did have some issues with multi-socket motherboards.  I had a Tyan that barfed on that one.

Perhaps ironically, it wasn't *old* hardware that Vista had issues with, it was intermediate hardware, like 4 year old stuff just left of mainstream.  Odd or off-brand USB peripherals, for example.  It seemed it if was old enough, Vista had drivers for it, and if it was new enough Microsoft made drivers for it, but the stuff in the middle was the real crap shoot.  Not old enough to be old hat, not new enough to be sexy enough for the work.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: P51mus on June 09, 2015, 10:38:41 PM
I'm not updating to Windows 10 until I know at minimum that gameguard gets its act together and recognizes Windows 10 as a valid operating system. (Because right now PSO2 won't run on Windows 10 because of that).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on July 06, 2015, 07:13:52 AM
Happy Birthday Downix  :D

Any good news on the horizon  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on July 06, 2015, 02:07:39 PM
Happy Birthday Downix  :D

Any good news on the horizon  ;)

How do you know his birthday?   :P

And as for the second part, no no no shush now!  This is what started the entire Facebook Scoundrel Fiasco last time.  Don't even ask.  If something definitive and positive happens, they'll announce it, and if not, then clearly we know that too by the lack of any announcements.

So look around the forums.  There's your answer.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on July 06, 2015, 02:15:02 PM
How do you know his birthday?   :P

Because at the bottom of the Forum page it has a "Upcoming Calender" which advises of members birthdays, it happens to be Downix today. If he put his correct DoB in of course.

So look around the forums.  There's your answer.

It wasn't a serious question as per wink at the end :) As I'm on the forums daily throughout the day I'll find out anything the same time as everyone else no doubt, but nothing wrong with asking the question, you never know he may even respond on this special day...  ;)  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on July 06, 2015, 03:05:22 PM
How do you know his birthday?   :P

And as for the second part, no no no shush now!  This is what started the entire Facebook Scoundrel Fiasco last time.  Don't even ask.  If something definitive and positive happens, they'll announce it, and if not, then clearly we know that too by the lack of any announcements.

So look around the forums.  There's your answer.

See, this attitude is actually getting quite annoying now.  It's been a year, we should be asking what's going on; we deserve to know.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on July 06, 2015, 03:13:17 PM
I for one don't deserve anything. Well not anything good anyway.

Happy possible birthday though, and even if it's not we can still celebrate the rezzing of this thread.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on July 06, 2015, 03:15:08 PM
See, this attitude is actually getting quite annoying now.  It's been a year, we should be asking what's going on; we deserve to know.

I may be in the minority on this subject, but personally, I don't feel I deserve to know nothing until it is done. At best the only investment I have currently is memories (emotional investment I guess you can say.) Time, money, efforts, and all the others stuff that goes into actually getting the game, I did nothing to contribute to this point, so basically I'll just wait till either a yea or nay is announced.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on July 06, 2015, 06:52:35 PM
See, this attitude is actually getting quite annoying now.  It's been a year, we should be asking what's going on; we deserve to know.

If my chronology is correct, this all started with a leak from someone not authorized to discuss, which then compelled them to respond.  Had they voluntarily announced themselves, I think its easier to make a case they put themselves in a position to respond to update requests.  But since they did not, I don't think they have that same obligation.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: nicoliy on July 06, 2015, 06:58:32 PM
I just assume there is nothing to announce at this point. If a deal was closed and they were in a position to announce I believe they would. Same if the deal fell through.

I work in an industry where deals can take years to close, all the while everything is under NDA (even the fact that a deal is in discussion). As much as I'd love to hear news, I'm not surprised all is silent right now.

At the very least we have Paragon Chat tomorrow, that is something I'm very excited for. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on July 06, 2015, 07:05:17 PM
I work in an industry where deals can take years to close, all the while everything is under NDA

I work in an industry where sometimes it takes me an hour and a half to get out of bed, all the while playing clash of clans under the covers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Photon Cannon on July 06, 2015, 07:06:53 PM
I work in an industry where sometimes it takes me an hour and a half to get out of bed, all the while playing clash of clans under the covers.

Okay, I laughed at that. Kudos.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: nicoliy on July 06, 2015, 07:09:44 PM
I work in an industry where sometimes it takes me an hour and a half to get out of bed, all the while playing clash of clans under the covers.

Ughh I wish. What I'd give if I could stay in bed an extra hour and a half (which would be 6:15 for me). On the plus side, I leave at 4 to head home to the wife and kids so it's not all bad.

Also, CoC was addicting. I played until TH 7 and stopped for some reason or another.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on July 06, 2015, 07:40:13 PM
See, this attitude is actually getting quite annoying now.  It's been a year, we should be asking what's going on; we deserve to know.

No the idea that we deserve something is getting annoying.  We don't deserve ANYTHING

We aren't paying them to do this, we didn't hire them to do this, they aren't doing this out of a debt, they aren't doing this because they have a gun to their head.

They choose to do this and we can show our thanks by minding our own business and keeping our entitlement in check.

If you want to be in the know then do something to help them and contribute to the cause and I am sure they would make you privvy to some information.  But standing on the side lines doesn't entitle you to anything, cheerleaders don't sit in on team meetings.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on July 06, 2015, 08:06:50 PM
No the idea that we deserve something is getting annoying.  We don't deserve ANYTHING

We aren't paying them to do this, we didn't hire them to do this, they aren't doing this out of a debt, they aren't doing this because they have a gun to their head.

That people are getting annoyed by the lack of information is also understandable.  That's why you do not discuss these things unless you know what the end game is.  That's why the devs tended not to pre-announce stuff too early.  That's why I said leaking this was a mistake.  It was probably an honest mistake, but let this be a lesson.  One day you'll (the general you) be in a position to know something.  You'll want to share.  You'll want the pleasure of dropping hints or making announcements.  You'll want to be recognized as someone who informed the rest of the world about something.  Its a pretty, powerful, deceptively innocent impulse.  Its also one of the most destructive ones you can have.  Never write checks you can't cash, and absolutely never write them on someone else's account.

The anxiety of being in the dark is a common, natural feeling: even I'm not immune to it.  Have mercy on the negotiating team, this wasn't their fault.  Have mercy on the people going crazy about the lack of information, this also wasn't their fault.  Even have mercy on the original leaker, because this wasn't their intent.  But remember, for the next time someone wonders why we aren't hearing about something or even for the next time you hear about something.  Is the discussion of that thing ultimately going to be good for the discussers, or not?  That should be a guiding principle for wondering why certain topics should or should not be openly discussed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on July 06, 2015, 08:39:27 PM
I'm still seriously wondering, though, why there is such a COMPLETE clamp-down on information. Certainly nobody involved wants to give out details, but it seems to me that the existence of negotiations, and that they are proceeding, is something that both sides should want. Silence just slowly devalues the property, which is not good for the current owner or the proposed future owner.

It's like a movie that is being worked on... you don't spoiler information, but you do spoil the fact that the movie is being worked on, or planned, etc. Because in entertainment, being discussed is good for almost any property. I can't see how, as long as details are not revealed, either party would be hurt by revealing officially that there are negotiations going on. If there were competitors, maybe... but as I understand, there are no other buyers competing for the property.

It could be a culture thing, but I see it as a lost opportunity for the future, letting CoH fade from gamer consciousness so that if it ever does get revived, there will be thousands of past players who have not given it much thought in the last year, and so don't pay attention to news regarding its revival.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on July 06, 2015, 09:44:48 PM
I'm still seriously wondering, though, why there is such a COMPLETE clamp-down on information. Certainly nobody involved wants to give out details, but it seems to me that the existence of negotiations, and that they are proceeding, is something that both sides should want. Silence just slowly devalues the property, which is not good for the current owner or the proposed future owner.

It's like a movie that is being worked on... you don't spoiler information, but you do spoil the fact that the movie is being worked on, or planned, etc. Because in entertainment, being discussed is good for almost any property. I can't see how, as long as details are not revealed, either party would be hurt by revealing officially that there are negotiations going on.

Since no one's talking, I presume negotiations are still going on.  There's not really any other logical conclusion.  Does knowing this make you feel better?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on July 06, 2015, 11:59:43 PM
That people are getting annoyed by the lack of information is also understandable.  That's why you do not discuss these things unless you know what the end game is.  That's why the devs tended not to pre-announce stuff too early.  That's why I said leaking this was a mistake.  It was probably an honest mistake, but let this be a lesson.  One day you'll (the general you) be in a position to know something.  You'll want to share.  You'll want the pleasure of dropping hints or making announcements.  You'll want to be recognized as someone who informed the rest of the world about something.  Its a pretty, powerful, deceptively innocent impulse.  Its also one of the most destructive ones you can have.  Never write checks you can't cash, and absolutely never write them on someone else's account.

The anxiety of being in the dark is a common, natural feeling: even I'm not immune to it.  Have mercy on the negotiating team, this wasn't their fault.  Have mercy on the people going crazy about the lack of information, this also wasn't their fault.  Even have mercy on the original leaker, because this wasn't their intent.  But remember, for the next time someone wonders why we aren't hearing about something or even for the next time you hear about something.  Is the discussion of that thing ultimately going to be good for the discussers, or not?  That should be a guiding principle for wondering why certain topics should or should not be openly discussed.

I agree with everything you said.  My comment was because while I understand we are entitled to the feeling of curiosity of wanting to know as much as we can, I don't think it makes us entitled to actually know anything.  I get being in the dark isn't easy, and I get that the team can't really talk about anything.  A bit of information may appease some people but it also makes it so the cycle starts over.  We hear something, get excited and then quickly followed by being upset when it doesn't immediately mean the game is coming back.  They have said countless time's that they will let us know if the deal falls through.  And as long as they say otherwise it is safe to assume talks are still happening, even if they are at a standstill.

But the attitude that this team owes us anything more then what they have done is insane.  They are in talks trying to get the game back, what more can we ask from them.  A daily blog about how "talks are still on going" would only make it worse.  I check on this board every day too hoping for news, but I don't get (too) upset when I don't see any news and I certainly don't feel like they owe me an explanation as to why the game isn't back yet.  Deserve is a strong word, it indicates that someone is entitled to what they are owed.  And no one on this forum is "owed" anything by Nate and Co in terms of the CoH's return.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on July 07, 2015, 12:28:59 AM
Since no one's talking, I presume negotiations are still going on.  There's not really any other logical conclusion.  Does knowing this make you feel better?

No, because that situation encompasses "Negotiations are going on and they're like Fast and Furious XVII", as well as "Well, negotiations were never officially stopped but we're exchanging an email every other month". In both situations we'd have the same information and the NDAs would still apply, but they're vastly different in their results.

To put it another way: I WOULD feel better if I knew that ACTIVE negotiations are going on. I can understand that they might take a while even if they're trying to move along. But right now I don't have enough reason to feel confident that this is going on as opposed to just negotiations being officially going on but not moving anywhere for several months.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on July 07, 2015, 12:41:09 AM
I don't think it is a matter of entitlement.  I think it is a two-fold issue that has nothing to do with entitlement.

The first issue, however inadvertently it was created, is that we were given HOPE!  After a long period of having nothing to hope for and accepting that situation, a flicker of hope was give when there was a started and quickly failed negotiation.  To the faithful, it was quite painful to honestly entertain the possibility that our beloved game could return only to have it dashed.  Then, just when we had finally accepted that hope no longer existed, word of another (and much more promising) round of negotiations, and even though we were hesitant to believe again after being so recently disappointed, we did so.  I tell you, and I don't think anyone would disagree that nothing plumbs the depths of despair more quickly than having hope, and seeing it die.  Much more so than never having had hope at all.

The second issue is that because of the lack of information, none of us can make any sense of the (pardon the pun) endgame, and we all very much want to be able to make sense of it.  Based on the few facts we did get, it makes absolutely no sense to anyone regardless of their business acumen, to withhold a property whose market value fades on a daily basis, and once enough time goes by, not only will folks stop caring about the past game, but the successor projects will start to enter beta testing, giving them something to hope for that NCSoft cannot take away!  Then, the old game will hardly seem worth it.  They just cannot reconcile these things logically, and most of us possess the ability to view things logically, even if there are strong emotions involved. 

So, between having hope given, and taken away, then given again and feeling it fade day by day - combined with the lack of understanding any of us have, due to the NDA, for why the hell anyone would sabotage their own potential profits by standing on ceremony, or whatever they are doing to prolong this deal, there is understandable frustration that grows daily.  We don't express it every day, but we all feel it. 

For the folks that complain about the complainers, please bear in mind that the very reason any of us are here at all, is that we are passionate about this game.  You cannot have that level of passion, and not have some fairly powerful emotions about things that govern whether you will ever experience it again.  Especially when, because of the lack of information, we cannot form an educated thought about why things are as they have been for so long. 

I don't think we feel entitled.  I think we have been teased with hope over periods of time, and because of our love for the game, we feel stung when we have little to no reason to maintain that hope.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on July 07, 2015, 01:39:36 AM
No, because that situation encompasses "Negotiations are going on and they're like Fast and Furious XVII", as well as "Well, negotiations were never officially stopped but we're exchanging an email every other month". In both situations we'd have the same information and the NDAs would still apply, but they're vastly different in their results.

To put it another way: I WOULD feel better if I knew that ACTIVE negotiations are going on. I can understand that they might take a while even if they're trying to move along. But right now I don't have enough reason to feel confident that this is going on as opposed to just negotiations being officially going on but not moving anywhere for several months.

There's no such thing as passive negotiations.  There's also no distinction between fast and slow negotiations that you can reasonably convey if under an NDA.  Consider that for all of my "knowledge transfer" in City of Heroes I only got in (very minor) trouble with the Powers That Be at Paragon Studios twice when it came to talking about things I wasn't supposed to be talking about (at least that I ever found out about).  One of the two was when I mentioned how long it took for a specific project to go from discussion to implementation.  I *didn't* get in trouble for actually describing, in detail (in another context) every single step in that process.  If that doesn't make sense to you, you don't have enough experience in these kinds of situations to be a good extrapolator for what is and is not sensitive discussion material.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Balince on July 07, 2015, 01:49:15 AM
To me it's pretty simple, we deserve to know because without us there efforts are pointless. They are attempting this because they know how many of us still would instantly start playing CoX. I think while we deserve the right to know and I think Nate would agree we do, it may be the case that there is simply nothing he can do if there is no wiggle room for him to talk under this mysterious NDA.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on July 07, 2015, 03:09:10 AM
The main rule about NDA - you don't get to talk about being under an NDA.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on July 07, 2015, 03:16:07 AM
Not to put too fine a point on this, but what difference would it make if you DID know at what point the negotiations are currently?

Could you do anything to move them along an inch?

Or would it simply provide more whining fuel because 'they are doing it wrong'.

Be content that the work is done as expertly and competently as may be expected.
Yes it is taking longer than any of us would like. So?

Pushing at the peeps who are doing this for us is NOT helping, and frankly borders on childishness.

Give yourself a break and the team a break by enduring the silence.
Surely you will be rewarded. And I'm certain the team will appreciate the breathing space.

I'm as excited as any here.

I've tried other MMO's and found them greatly lacking in every department.

Have faith. It will be worth the wait.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on July 07, 2015, 04:51:47 AM
I lost my internets and could not find them for a while. I was hoping that when I finally got back on we would have good news, oh well. . .
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on July 07, 2015, 05:26:00 AM
See, this attitude is actually getting quite annoying now.  It's been a year, we should be asking what's going on; we deserve to know.
You do not deserve anything, actually.

I mean, it'd be pretty nice if we got some information. It'd be awesome, actually. But no one deserves information. Why do you deserve information? Because you sat on your ass for a year and a half? lol

You're an adult. You should choose your words with more care.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on July 07, 2015, 05:43:16 AM
To me it's pretty simple, we deserve to know because without us there efforts are pointless.

I don't think I would have found that line of argument convincing on the old official forums, particularly if directed at me.  Also, it only sounds reasonable when used with improper representation.  "We deserve to know because without us things are pointless" is a truism, but no one has the right to assert it.  "I deserve to know because without me things are pointless" is the version without the claim of representing everyone, and its very obviously false, regardless of who states it.

And referring to the NDA as "mysterious" implies you don't have much experience with NDAs or negotiations.  I've never been in a negotiation where you *were* allowed to comment publicly.  Heck, I'm not even allowed to publicly comment on the price I paid vendors for equipment I negotiated the price on, like ever.  That's just the way this works.  If I kept doing that, pretty quickly no one would do business with me.  Try telling vendors that without their customers all their efforts are pointless, so you deserve to know everything they are doing.  Try telling them you deserve to know what price they offered to everyone else.  Let me know how that turns out.  I may be crazy, but I'm not that kind of crazy.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on July 07, 2015, 06:38:19 AM
You do not deserve anything, actually.

I mean, it'd be pretty nice if we got some information. It'd be awesome, actually. But no one deserves information. Why do you deserve information? Because you sat on your ass for a year and a half? lol

You're an adult. You should choose your words with more care.

Deserve might be a bit strong, but without the fans, you have no one to sell a product too. Leaving us hanging too long with -nothing- to keep the hope going is just not right.  It's torture.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on July 07, 2015, 11:25:39 AM
There's no such thing as passive negotiations.  There's also no distinction between fast and slow negotiations that you can reasonably convey if under an NDA.  Consider that for all of my "knowledge transfer" in City of Heroes I only got in (very minor) trouble with the Powers That Be at Paragon Studios twice when it came to talking about things I wasn't supposed to be talking about (at least that I ever found out about).  One of the two was when I mentioned how long it took for a specific project to go from discussion to implementation.  I *didn't* get in trouble for actually describing, in detail (in another context) every single step in that process.  If that doesn't make sense to you, you don't have enough experience in these kinds of situations to be a good extrapolator for what is and is not sensitive discussion material.

You're missing my base point... not that what they're doing (or failing to do) is morally wrong, or that we deserve more, or that there is a problem with the NDA, or with how it's being observed. I understand that none of those speak to any reason why anyone should announce any information.

My point is that there is a loss of attention, and in entertainment, you almost never want to lose attention (and never when you have a good product). And loss of attention seems like it would hurt both sides. So I do understand how negotiations could continue at a slow rate, and how the NDA can't really decide what "discussion materials" to limit. I just don't understand WHY they decided to go with negotiations that are not only private but, in effect, secret. This isn't a merger, and it's not a negotiation that will affect stock prices. Burying an entertainment product for 2-3 years while selling it is also harming it while selling it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on July 07, 2015, 11:27:41 AM
Deserve might be a bit strong, but without the fans, you have no one to sell a product too. Leaving us hanging too long with -nothing- to keep the hope going is just not right.  It's torture.

I don't think it's wrong, or torture. I just don't see how it's good business for either seller or buyer, when entertainment products benefit so much from being kept in the news.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: rebel 1812 on July 07, 2015, 12:03:47 PM
not a good way to treat prospective customers.  'You don't deserve to know anything about this product you might buy or the status of bringing it to market';  that attitude will lose customers.  They will plan their money for things they do know about.  I get the feeling even if the deal goes threw next year (based on current pace) it will be a money losing deal.  There won't be any marketing for it to get new subscribers.  Many past subscribers have already moved on to new games, or used that money elsewhere.  Those that are interested have been alienated with the attitude that you don't matter and don't need to know anything.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on July 07, 2015, 01:34:36 PM
You are not a prospective customer until a product or service is made available for consumption.

Complaining about not hearing what is happening with your non-existent product or service is crazy-talk.

Its a bit like pulling on the leprechaun's beard so it is length you think it should be. It doesn't make the gold any shinier.
 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on July 07, 2015, 01:49:26 PM
If my chronology is correct, this all started with a leak from someone not authorized to discuss, which then compelled them to respond.

Your chronology is correct, Arcana. Nate's hand was pushed forward by external forces far before I expected any sort of public announcement to be made, and likely a good while before he would have liked.
I don't believe the subject of any kind of formal announcement had even come up in any conversation between Nate and I, except of course the obligatory "Don't talk about it", and then basically overnight that changed.



Since no one's talking, I presume negotiations are still going on.
I would likely get in trouble if I confirmed or denied this. So I'll just whistle.
/em whistles
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on July 07, 2015, 02:04:00 PM
When the news leaked, and Nate made his announcement, we were all given the impression that it was "imminent".  If it really was known to be a long long ways off yet at that time, then that should have been communicated so folks didn't their hopes up so soon.

A simple "It could be a year or more away yet." would have sufficed.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on July 07, 2015, 02:23:26 PM
When the news leaked, and Nate made his announcement, we were all given the impression that it was "imminent".  If it really was known to be a long long ways off yet at that time, then that should have been communicated so folks didn't their hopes up so soon.

A simple "It could be a year or more away yet." would have sufficed.

I know at the time what I considered "Soon" and what a lot of other people considered "soon" was quite different. A couple people I talked to thought the announcement meant that the game being up and running was days away. Soon to me was more a long the lines of several months to get the deal bashed out.
That being said, things have taken a lot longer than (I) expected. Nexon going aggro on NCSoft wasn't exactly something Nate planned for, I'm sure.


Since the announcement, I believe myself and a couple others have tried to get across that these kinds of deals are glacially slow from the end user perspective.
And trust me when I say...knowing the details as they happen doesn't help in the slightest . Lol.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on July 07, 2015, 03:24:56 PM
When the news leaked, and Nate made his announcement, we were all given the impression that it was "imminent".  If it really was known to be a long long ways off yet at that time, then that should have been communicated so folks didn't their hopes up so soon.

A simple "It could be a year or more away yet." would have sufficed.

For me expectation of imminent once translated to 6 months and some change, so anytime anyone gives me that feeling I always take it with a grain of salt. It could have been imminent at the time, but the internal drama between NcSoft and Nexon  could have made the deal go underground for the time being. There is nothing Nate and his team can do if the deal maker on the other end is keeping their heads down. Lets just say if the person making the deal on NCSoft end decided out of the kindness of his heart screw Nexon and just go with it, what if that guy gets fired for his action and the only line of communication is terminated before a deal is made. This is all speculation, but I assume there are many moving parts that is going on at the moment to just have a clear cut deal.

If anything, you can look at this cat video and think, "man if this cat was the NCSoft Rep, he wouldn't give what the hire up said and just do it"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoUEQYjYgf4
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on July 07, 2015, 04:31:36 PM
I was under the impression that the negotiations were effectively on hold while the Nexon/NCSoft dance was going on, so right now, literally nothing is happening.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on July 07, 2015, 05:37:39 PM
My point is that there is a loss of attention, and in entertainment, you almost never want to lose attention (and never when you have a good product). And loss of attention seems like it would hurt both sides. So I do understand how negotiations could continue at a slow rate, and how the NDA can't really decide what "discussion materials" to limit. I just don't understand WHY they decided to go with negotiations that are not only private but, in effect, secret. This isn't a merger, and it's not a negotiation that will affect stock prices. Burying an entertainment product for 2-3 years while selling it is also harming it while selling it.
I got your point just fine, and I still reiterate that this is not atypical.  You're comparing development, where there is a stead stream of news to tap for marketing purposes, with contract negotiations for which there is almost always none.

Also, you're thinking about this in the same erroneous way most City of Heroes players did and do, as a college economics problem.  Why would NCSoft allow the property's value to degrade?  That's a weird question when asked about a company that was willing to completely destroy that property's value in the first place.  They shut down the game.  They dispersed the only people who knew how to support it.  Its gone.  NCSoft may be willing to negotiate with another party to gain control of it, and they are probably willing to play hardball in those negotiations, but the assumption that the reason why NCSoft wouldn't just hand the keys over to someone willing is because they need to recover their value from the property is fundamentally flawed.  Its dead.  It has very little material value anymore.  I'm sure they wrote the whole thing off for tax purposes already.

In fact, the complexity of this kind of transaction, particularly about a non-strategic item like City of Heroes, is something that I really think most people don't understand, and just assume is as simple as whatever they understand it as, and thus wildly speculate as to why its not happening the way they assume.  I've mentioned a few times since rumors of buyout negotiations that this could be a lot more complex than people are assuming.  For example, I was talking about this just a few months ago with a friend of mine who is an accountant, who reminded me that if any components of the IP were fully depreciated and were now being sold, there would be taxable consequences to such a transaction.  Those taxable consequences could be dodged if this transaction were coincided with another one, where NCSoft purchased analogous IP for another project.  Under those circumstances, with the sale of City of Heroes being so unimportant to NCSoft in a strategic sense, its entirely possible NCSoft could include contingency terms in the transactional agreement.  The notion that the negotiations could hinge on a continency trigger didn't occur to me until just then.

Not only would a contingency clause explain the duration of the negotiations, they would also explain why they could not be discussed, not even to mention that it exists.  Because that would then transform the CoH transaction into a signal for another, possibly more secret transaction.

I'm not saying this is what is happening.  I'm saying that if you aren't an expert at such transactions, guessing about the whys of how its happening and the whys of why we are being kept in the dark is futile.  You may simply fail to have the requisite knowledge necessary to make that speculation remotely realistic.  There are probably dozens of totally different reasons why things could be happening the way they are happening, all of them as technical or obscure as that one.  And that's separate from the fact that some people are just slow when working on non-priority tasks.  The truth is probably some combination of many reasons, as most such things are.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on July 07, 2015, 06:27:06 PM
I know at the time what I considered "Soon" and what a lot of other people considered "soon" was quite different. A couple people I talked to thought the announcement meant that the game being up and running was days away. Soon to me was more a long the lines of several months to get the deal bashed out.
That being said, things have taken a lot longer than (I) expected. Nexon going aggro on NCSoft wasn't exactly something Nate planned for, I'm sure.


Since the announcement, I believe myself and a couple others have tried to get across that these kinds of deals are glacially slow from the end user perspective.
And trust me when I say...knowing the details as they happen doesn't help in the slightest . Lol.

back in the day, when I played The Realm Online (http://www.realmserver.com/), they had a given the players a heads-up about something that they were working on and that it would be out "soon". Little did we players know that "soon" was about 3 or 4 years. So, when I hear that something will be "soon", I always think of The Realm, and decide to not hold my breath that it will actually be soon. That way, if it actually is soon, then I'm pleasantly surprised. However, if it just "soon" then I won't be all that disappointed that it wasn't out earlier.

Also, I recall when I was a wee kid, my parents would tell us (myself and my brothers) to wait in the car and they'll be out "soon". half an hour later, they're still "saying goodbye" to the people we were visiting. I learned patience at a young age.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on July 07, 2015, 07:07:47 PM
You're missing my base point... not that what they're doing (or failing to do) is morally wrong, or that we deserve more, or that there is a problem with the NDA, or with how it's being observed. I understand that none of those speak to any reason why anyone should announce any information.

My point is that there is a loss of attention, and in entertainment, you almost never want to lose attention (and never when you have a good product). And loss of attention seems like it would hurt both sides. So I do understand how negotiations could continue at a slow rate, and how the NDA can't really decide what "discussion materials" to limit. I just don't understand WHY they decided to go with negotiations that are not only private but, in effect, secret. This isn't a merger, and it's not a negotiation that will affect stock prices. Burying an entertainment product for 2-3 years while selling it is also harming it while selling it.

You are acting like this is an active property that NCSoft took the initiative to sell.  Wrong!  It was a property they thought so worthless that they closed it down forever, and slammed the doors right in the faces of multiple parties (including Paragon Studios) who tried to buy/transfer it.

What CoX *really* isn't to NCSoft is something they actively want to prevent harm from coming to, and something that they care about selling or leasing by any certain time frame.

They were approached many times before this, and now again a year and a half ago by Nate & Crew.  Nate did say even in his very first post in this thread that NCSoft may be doing nothing more than stringing them along, hoping they eventually give up and go away so there won't be another negative P.R. event.  Bringing this deal to the table had NOTHING to do with anyone on NCSoft's end wanting it, period.

Personally, although I'd love a miracle, that's exactly what it would take for this deal to go through.  Hey, miracles happen every day (just ask E.M.T.s!). but I'm not holding my breath for one considering who we're dealing with, nor am I sitting around making demands of the team trying for that miracle. 

By rights, we shouldn't even know anything about this deal-- it was some demanding jerk who caused this thread to even have to happen.  All other people becoming more like that in this or any other thread is doing is proving that the whole thing should be kept quiet no matter what this time.  After all, if no one privy to the beginnings of the deal had leaked info to Mr. Demanding over at Facebook, none of this would have happened either.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on July 07, 2015, 11:34:40 PM
You are right.  I would rather not have known, because knowledge of it leads to questions, and there no answers to the questions we have.  At least none that bring anyone any satisfaction.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on July 07, 2015, 11:59:28 PM
When the news leaked, and Nate made his announcement, we were all given the impression that it was "imminent".  If it really was known to be a long long ways off yet at that time, then that should have been communicated so folks didn't their hopes up so soon.

A simple "It could be a year or more away yet." would have sufficed.

In reality I wasnt expecting to hear anything before March 2016 at the earliest..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on July 08, 2015, 12:24:51 AM
I was under the impression that the negotiations were effectively on hold while the Nexon/NCSoft dance was going on, so right now, literally nothing is happening.
Not nothing, but definitely chilled things while they're pulled around the prom.

And thank you everyone for the birthday wishes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on July 08, 2015, 12:51:22 AM
I keep having the recurring dream of winning it big in either the lottery or the casinos, usually the lottery.

Then after I take care of things at the top of the "What to do if I win the Lottery list"  I approach NCSoft with a team of techs, and make them an offer they'd be dumb to refuse.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stealth Dart on July 08, 2015, 12:51:38 AM
Happy Birthday Nate  :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: rebel 1812 on July 08, 2015, 01:38:15 AM
You are not a prospective customer until a product or service is made available for consumption.

Complaining about not hearing what is happening with your non-existent product or service is crazy-talk.

Its a bit like pulling on the leprechaun's beard so it is length you think it should be. It doesn't make the gold any shinier.

Not really.  Studios been marketing for movies well before launch.  Same thing with video games. In fact according to you a pre-order is crazy talk.  How could you buy a product that is not released yet. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on July 08, 2015, 01:42:49 AM
There's a difference between publicizing negotiations, and publicizing an upcoming product that is the result of those negotiations. Sony and Marvel kept things quiet until they were ready to announce that they'd worked out a Spider-Man deal, for example.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on July 08, 2015, 02:11:59 AM
Schrodinger's Negotiations.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on July 08, 2015, 02:19:52 AM
Yay! A Nate sighting!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on July 08, 2015, 02:52:05 AM
Not really.  Studios been marketing for movies well before launch.  Same thing with video games. In fact according to you a pre-order is crazy talk.  How could you buy a product that is not released yet.

Actually, that might not be the best example, because many believe that the way the current marketing machine works for video games combined with the preorder system that is standard practice these days combines to make game development a nightmarish generator of poor quality, burned out developers, and failed studios.

Movie-making is a far more deterministic process, and while accidents and catastrophes do happen, most movies that are green lit are eventually made and released, and the overwhelming majority of movies that actually start production generate a completed product.  Movies have production schedules that are followed at least approximately, and for big releases they generate a steady source of distributable information.  Even then what marketing leaks to generate interest often causes collateral damage to the production and isn't always lacking in controversy.

And while marketing movies is something that is moderately risky, and advance marketing and sales of video games is actually arguably destructive, the history of contract negotiations is dozens of times longer, and public transparency has never been a component of the process.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on July 08, 2015, 03:11:04 AM
Not really.  Studios been marketing for movies well before launch.  Same thing with video games. In fact according to you a pre-order is crazy talk.  How could you buy a product that is not released yet.

Show me where I can pre-order CoX.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on July 08, 2015, 03:15:47 AM
Actually, that might not be the best example, because many believe that the way the current marketing machine works for video games combined with the preorder system that is standard practice these days combines to make game development a nightmarish generator of poor quality, burned out developers, and failed studios.

The best evidence of this happening is probably with EA, especially with the now defunct Maxis branch. However, some developers do pre-orders well like these good people:

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.product-reviews.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Ffallout-4-pipboy.jpg)

This is if you buy Fallout 4 Pipboy Edition (currently sold out) you get a model pipboy you can stick your phone in and act like a second screen. Even when revealing this at E3, Todd Howard states, "yes it's a second screen experience and usually they are stupid gimmicks, but as far as stupid gimmicks go, this is the best F#@$ one I ever seen." I agree with Todd and I gave him my money.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on July 08, 2015, 03:32:24 AM
The best evidence of this happening is probably with EA, especially with the now defunct Maxis branch. However, some developers do pre-orders well like these good people:

Well, you'll know the pre-order system didn't do noticeable damage if Fallout 4 itself releases in time without horrible bugs or gameplay issues.

I mean Aliens: Colonial Marines was released in a horrible state, but if the preorders came with functioning pulse rifles I would have just thrown the game up in the air, shot it with my pulse rifle, and called it even.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on July 08, 2015, 04:08:16 AM
I worked in cinema for 7 years. Even worked under one of the greats (you may know him from his work on MASH, Nashville, Popeye and other such hits, *not* the father, but Robert Reed Altman, the directors youngest son, great guy). And you know what? I *WISH* these negotiations were as easy as one for movies, and cinema negotiations you go in expecting to be rakes over the coals.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on July 08, 2015, 04:12:36 AM
Ouch!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on July 08, 2015, 04:15:33 AM
Well, you'll know the pre-order system didn't do noticeable damage if Fallout 4 itself releases in time without horrible bugs or gameplay issues.

It's a Bethesda game it will come with day one bugs xD. Lucky (or smart) Bethesda usually gives out the SDK (Skyrim called it the Creation Kit, Fallout calls it GECK) and the modding community will resolve most bugs (usually they come in the form of a memory leak like Fallout NV and Skyrim had within hours of the game being released.) Heck last time Skyrim came out it took someone less than 48 hours to create a 1024x1024 texture pack, new UI, and removing blocky faces. I do anticipate bugs from the get go, but I'm not too worried about it thanks to the modding community.

^Note: This may sound like Bethesda is lazy with their QA, but usually for some reason the memory leaks only happened with Radeon cards. I think Bethesda has learned over the 7 or so years of development to check that, but I'm not worried myself, Bethesda games works fine with Nvidia cards
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on July 08, 2015, 04:44:38 AM
I worked in cinema for 7 years. Even worked under one of the greats (you may know him from his work on MASH, Nashville, Popeye and other such hits, *not* the father, but Robert Reed Altman, the directors youngest son, great guy). And you know what? I *WISH* these negotiations were as easy as one for movies, and cinema negotiations you go in expecting to be rakes over the coals.

Thanks for clarifying the level of difficulty you are experiencing for those who might not be familiar with the rigors. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on July 08, 2015, 01:41:56 PM
Well, you'll know the pre-order system didn't do noticeable damage if Fallout 4 itself releases in time without horrible bugs or gameplay issues.

I mean Aliens: Colonial Marines was released in a horrible state, but if the preorders came with functioning pulse rifles I would have just thrown the game up in the air, shot it with my pulse rifle, and called it even.

Two Words:

Arkham Knight
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on July 08, 2015, 01:44:38 PM
Two Words:

Arkham Knight
I'll see your Arkham Knight and raise you an Assassins Creed Unity
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on July 08, 2015, 01:52:41 PM
I'll see your Arkham Knight and raise you an Assassins Creed Unity

I never played Unity, but I got Arkham Knight, and it's every bit as bad as reported--completely unplayable. It's like watching a Viewmaster slideshow--even with trying some of the listed community "fixes."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: downix on July 08, 2015, 02:46:31 PM
I never played Unity, but I got Arkham Knight, and it's every bit as bad as reported--completely unplayable. It's like watching a Viewmaster slideshow--even with trying some of the listed community "fixes."
If you want an idea how bad Unity was, watch Yahtzee's review of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB3DrTkVgHw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB3DrTkVgHw)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on July 08, 2015, 02:47:39 PM
If you want an idea how bad Unity was, watch Yahtzee's review of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB3DrTkVgHw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB3DrTkVgHw)

Yeah, but they didn't take Unity off the shelves, did they? They have the PC version of Arkham Knight... Now that's bad...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on July 08, 2015, 03:05:06 PM
Yeah, but they didn't take Unity off the shelves, did they? They have the PC version of Arkham Knight... Now that's bad...

Yeah, I bought it a day before they took it off Steam without knowing that there were huge problems with it. I tried playing it, and it was horrible. What I want to know is...how does this get out the door? I would have thought that a company that large would have a halfway decent QC department...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on July 08, 2015, 03:06:09 PM
Didn't they outsource the PC conversion?  Looks like someone didn't QC what came in from the outside developer...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on July 08, 2015, 03:12:55 PM
Didn't they outsource the PC conversion?  Looks like someone didn't QC what came in from the outside developer...

I actually thought it was amusing that when they did comment on it, they made sure to mention that it was an outsourced project. I'm curious about a partnership between the two of them in the future...haha!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on July 08, 2015, 03:37:33 PM
I actually thought it was amusing that when they did comment on it, they made sure to mention that it was an outsourced project. I'm curious about a partnership between the two of them in the future...haha!

I wouldn't put any money down on them staying partners... :p
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on July 08, 2015, 04:30:00 PM
The troubles with Unity and Arkham Knight highlight why pre-ordering games is a bad idea. They already have your money, as long as they ship something they'll likely get to keep it.

I recommend to people who actually give a damn what I think that they not buy day one releases or pre-orders. If more people did this maybe they would do a better job with QC.

I do understand the temptation though. I will pre-order something if I know i will love it no matter what or what day 1 problems it's likely to have. So far that's Bioshock and Borderlands. I want to support those games with my money.

This is similar to the problem with Early Access, except you are more likely to get screwed with Early Access.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: China Doll on July 08, 2015, 10:39:44 PM
Same thing can be said about Kickstarter campaigns
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on July 08, 2015, 11:53:29 PM
Same thing can be said about Kickstarter campaigns

Kickstarter is a different situation.  Although there is fraud on Kickstarter, Kickstarter is also a buyer beware situation: you're supposed to know that in fact you aren't really buying anything at all.  You are supposed to be investing in a project which may not succeed and which often have no published timelines for success.  Kickstarter projects can fail, and its not automatically fraud if they fail.  Preorders of a product from a commercial company have a completely different presumption built around them.  If anything, Kickstarter projects are more likely to be delayed to the anger of its supporters than be shoved out the door in a poor state, specifically because the expectations are different there.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: China Doll on July 09, 2015, 12:10:49 AM
True..But for me at least I would rather have something flawed in my hand that i spent money on and that will hopefully get fixed dwn the road.

Then money I donated on a KS campaign that did have a promise date of goals that came and went with nothing to show of it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: P51mus on July 09, 2015, 01:48:00 AM
Yeah, but they didn't take Unity off the shelves, did they? They have the PC version of Arkham Knight... Now that's bad...

Steam refunds didn't exist when Unity released.

Didn't they outsource the PC conversion?  Looks like someone didn't QC what came in from the outside developer...

And only gave them like....two months to work on it.  Isn't that practically setting them up for failure?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FloatingFatMan on July 09, 2015, 07:27:35 AM
Steam refunds didn't exist when Unity released.

And only gave them like....two months to work on it.  Isn't that practically setting them up for failure?

I said shelves, not Steam. Steam isn't the only method of buying the thing, you know.  Ever heard of actual retail stores and boxed games? Yeah, they're still a thing.

Also, the refund thing on Steam is completely irrelevant and has nothing to do with them delisting a product. They've done that plenty of times before.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on July 09, 2015, 07:32:14 AM
I said shelves, not Steam. Steam isn't the only method of buying the thing, you know.  Ever heard of actual retail stores and boxed games? Yeah, they're still a thing.

Also, the refund thing on Steam is completely irrelevant and has nothing to do with them delisting a product. They've done that plenty of times before.

Retail stores were my preferred method of obtaining PC Games, but sadly these days the shops are mostly taken up by console games and if I'm lucky they will have a tiny section of PC Games to browse. I'm one of the few that doesn't own a console, PC Gamer through and through.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Blackgrue on July 09, 2015, 08:11:52 AM
Nate: I don't know if you still read this thread, but I'm curious. I know you're under an NDA but has anyone in the negotiations mentioned Paragon Chat?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on July 09, 2015, 10:44:54 AM
Nate: I don't know if you still read this thread, but I'm curious. I know you're under an NDA but has anyone in the negotiations mentioned Paragon Chat?

If you dig around in those sub-forums, it's been mentioned that they're aware of its existence.  As no one has mentioned a C & D nor taken Paragon Chat offline, then clearly it isn't a big concern for them.  What are they gonna say, that it's making them lose money on their CoX that's sitting there in a crumpled heap in the corner of their basement?   ;)

I really hope the simple fact that poor Nate is here wanting his Paragon Chat fix like the rest of us isn't going to lead to him getting constantly harassed about how the CoX IP lease etc. is going all the time. 

*sighs exasperatedly*

There's a "wake me" thread pinned at the top of this very sub-forum like it's been for months now.  Sign up, and you won't miss a thing if this year and a half old Hail Mary pass ever gets caught, or if any other Really Big News Concerning NCSoft hits.  Other than that, there's nothing to say.  Ask Robert DiGregorio over at CoH Survivors what happens when people talk.  And by that I mean "blab details that should be kept quiet."   :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on July 09, 2015, 12:09:15 PM
Other than that, there's nothing to say.  Ask Robert DiGregorio over at CoH Survivors what happens when people talk.
He deletes the comments he disagrees with or that disagree with or question him?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on July 09, 2015, 02:15:15 PM
He deletes the comments he disagrees with or that disagree with or question him?

Haha, yeah, that  too it seems.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on July 10, 2015, 10:29:47 PM
He deletes the comments he disagrees with or that disagree with or question him?
Or if he sees a comment he does not like he sends them a message threatening to kick them out of the group. One such encountered when he said "If the buyers do not say something he will." I remember this because I made a comment saying it was not his place to say something like that. Similarly I had a few friends that said the same thing. Robert I think is just full of himself thinking he has any kind of power because he runs a Facebook page. I like the other groups I am in. I respect those admins, they try to keep everything even and not really biased, whereas Robert I have no respect for.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on July 11, 2015, 01:59:53 AM
Or if he sees a comment he does not like he sends them a message threatening to kick them out of the group. One such encountered when he said "If the buyers do not say something he will." I remember this because I made a comment saying it was not his place to say something like that. Similarly I had a few friends that said the same thing. Robert I think is just full of himself thinking he has any kind of power because he runs a Facebook page. I like the other groups I am in. I respect those admins, they try to keep everything even and not really biased, whereas Robert I have no respect for.
Oh yeah, i've gotten some querulous/threatening PMs from him for making fairly whimsical jokes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on July 11, 2015, 10:53:48 AM
Oh yeah, i've gotten some querulous/threatening PMs from him for making fairly whimsical jokes.

YOU WILL REGRET THIS!

(https://i.imgur.com/a5yrT4j.png)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on July 11, 2015, 03:20:06 PM
Or if he sees a comment he does not like he sends them a message threatening to kick them out of the group. One such encountered when he said "If the buyers do not say something he will." I remember this because I made a comment saying it was not his place to say something like that. Similarly I had a few friends that said the same thing. Robert I think is just full of himself thinking he has any kind of power because he runs a Facebook page. I like the other groups I am in. I respect those admins, they try to keep everything even and not really biased, whereas Robert I have no respect for.

EDIT: No Comment.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on July 11, 2015, 03:24:58 PM
YOU WILL REGRET THIS!

(https://i.imgur.com/a5yrT4j.png)

I left the minute I saw one of his "all of us or none of us" posts.  I don't care if he's delusional or somebody had him playing on a full working secret I24 server, that "all of us or none of us" concept (promoted only after he was no longer one of the "privileged"?!??) was so unequivocally repulsive that I can not imagine ever wanting any knowledge of anybody promoting it, let alone associating with them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on July 11, 2015, 05:51:14 PM
YOU WILL REGRET THIS!

(https://i.imgur.com/a5yrT4j.png)

Hearty LOLs. I might still have my Sim City 2000 disks somewhere...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on July 11, 2015, 07:17:34 PM
I left the minute I saw one of his "all of us or none of us" posts.  I don't care if he's delusional or somebody had him playing on a full working secret I24 server, that "all of us or none of us" concept (promoted only after he was no longer one of the "privileged"?!??) was so unequivocally repulsive that I can not imagine ever wanting any knowledge of anybody promoting it, let alone associating with them.

A part of me is glad I missed all that drama, because I lack the self control to not hand open containers of gasoline to clumsy pyromaniacs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Shard on July 11, 2015, 08:32:19 PM
A part of me is glad I missed all that drama, because I lack the self control to not hand open containers of gasoline to clumsy pyromaniacs.

You too?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: wiwhalo56 on July 22, 2015, 03:25:55 PM
Thank You One and All!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hells Wing on July 22, 2015, 11:57:46 PM
You too?

me three...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Hells Wing on July 23, 2015, 12:01:12 AM
Yeah, but they didn't take Unity off the shelves, did they? They have the PC version of Arkham Knight... Now that's bad...

I think the only reason they did it was because Steam now give refunds and where Ubisoft could basically sit there, listen to your complaints and go "Ha, well, we have your money now so we might do something later." and give you the middle finger, WB has found the money they were sitting on slowly disappearing down the refund hole so they've tried to patch it by saying we're important to them and that they are doing the honorable thing by taking it off steam until it's properly fixed.

Also, hi FlyingFatMan. I remember you being on the CoH forums! Though most likely never bumped into each other :p Nice to see you, especially as I now know the reference of your username as I've now seen Dune.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on August 13, 2015, 02:40:11 PM
I was wondering if like myself people have been thinking if there will be an update or post from Downix on the 1st September, a year after the first announcemnet of the attempt to purchase CoH.

I can't believe it's been nearly a year since the first announcement from Downix, how time flies, but the company on the forums has been good, the addition of PC has been amazing, so thank you to the folks who brought us this memorable addition to the exiled CoH community and the continued Titan forums.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on August 13, 2015, 04:59:30 PM
I was wondering if like myself people have been thinking if there will be an update or post from Downix on the 1st September, a year after the first announcemnet of the attempt to purchase CoH.

I can't believe it's been nearly a year since the first announcement from Downix, how time flies, but the company on the forums has been good, the addition of PC has been amazing, so thank you to the folks who brought us this memorable addition to the exiled CoH community and the continued Titan forums.  ;)
Sadly, I doubt it :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on August 13, 2015, 05:27:20 PM
Sadly, I doubt it :(

:(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on August 13, 2015, 08:29:35 PM
It's unlikely that news on the deal will coincide with any anniversary, or date.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on August 13, 2015, 10:20:44 PM
It's unlikely that news on the deal will coincide with any anniversary, or date.

I have decided I will commemorate the date by sending starfish all over the earth and attaching them to people's faces.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on August 13, 2015, 10:29:02 PM
Stay away from the hardware stores, they have lime (Deadly to starfish).

For that matter stay away from the Pacific North West, we have that dissolving starfish wasting disease thing going on here.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on August 13, 2015, 10:36:30 PM
Stay away from the hardware stores, they have lime (Deadly to starfish).

For that matter stay away from the Pacific North West, we have that dissolving starfish wasting disease thing going on here.

I will be safely in outer space... maybe orbiting....

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net%2F80450F%2Fcomicsalliance.com%2Ffiles%2F2010%2F09%2Fstarrobraveandbold.jpg)

...or maybe on summer vacation on the beach with a drink

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=cache.desktopnexus.com%2Fthumbseg%2F26%2F26894-bigthumbnail.jpg)

....world domination is just so hard....  I don't even have a skeleton.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on August 13, 2015, 10:48:44 PM
Fortunately for my face, I'm in the pacific northwest. I recommend a nice vacation on a mountain.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BloodRaevynn on August 13, 2015, 11:52:25 PM
What I want to know is...how does this get out the door? I would have thought that a company that large would have a halfway decent QC department...

As someone who has worked in that field, I would feel completely safe betting all of my money that most, if not all, of the major bugs were found and reported by QA, and then promptly resolved as "Won't Fix" by the developers, followed immediately by the deafening sounds of tearing hair and gnashing teeth from the QA department.  After which almost everyone in QA was sacked - not because of their flabbergasted complaints, but because almost everyone in QA is contract and are let go as a matter of policy about a month before the game is released.

Never blame QA; they have next no power over decisions and can potentially be fired for voicing anything that resembles an opinion.  They aren't even allowed to use the word "should" in a bug because it implies that they know how the game is supposed to work, because as far as the Devs are concerned QA is nothing but a group of monkeys with minimal training to pick bugs and they are treated as such.  They can't really fight back if a dev decides that a bug isn't worth fixing.     
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on August 14, 2015, 02:55:07 AM
Fortunately for my face, I'm in the pacific northwest. I recommend a nice vacation on a mountain.

Me too, I'm on Orcas Island!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on August 14, 2015, 03:32:06 AM
I live just north of Olympia.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on August 14, 2015, 04:15:08 AM
I started to wonder from time to time if I was the only person out here who played CoH!

(Doesn't help I played on a predominantly east coast server, I'm sure)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on August 14, 2015, 05:26:11 AM
Never blame QA; they have next no power over decisions and can potentially be fired for voicing anything that resembles an opinion.  They aren't even allowed to use the word "should" in a bug because it implies that they know how the game is supposed to work, because as far as the Devs are concerned QA is nothing but a group of monkeys with minimal training to pick bugs and they are treated as such.  They can't really fight back if a dev decides that a bug isn't worth fixing.   

I think what you mean to say is that testers are rarely to blame for buggy software because testers usually find the problems and have no real institutional power to encourage resolving them.  Which is true.  However, whether we should blame quality assurance itself for buggy software, in games or anywhere else, is a more subtly tricky question.  QA in most software companies has a manager, who reports to someone else in production, who reports to someone else.  The notion that all of *these* people are institutionally powerless to prevent buggy software can be true but is also specious.  They have a specific job to do.  Testers are hired to test: anything else including promoting fixes would be nice, but also beyond their job description.  But the guy in actual charge of quality assurance, he has a job of ensuring quality.  He can no more claim he has no institutional power to actually do his job correctly than the CFO can claim the company institutionally forced them to cook the books.  As a professional, you can demand to have the institutional latitude to do your job correctly, or you can quit.  But what you can't do legitimately is do a half-assed job and shirk all responsibility for the result because of extenuating factors.

I understand that people need jobs, and few people are actually in a position to walk away from one where they are not allowed to do it properly.  But even so, you cannot claim the system is responsible and not yourself, when you voluntarily choose to act as part of that system.  Testers don't explicitly have the responsibility to see that bugs are fixed: they have a responsibility to find bugs.  But QA as a whole *does* have that responsibility, and its generally vested in people who do have the power to fight for fixes, and have a professional obligation to win those fights.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on August 14, 2015, 05:31:06 AM
I started to wonder from time to time if I was the only person out here who played CoH!

(Doesn't help I played on a predominantly east coast server, I'm sure)

When I first started playing City (or rather, shortly afterwards, when I got my own account: I started playing on my brother's account) I picked Triumph as my home server, because it was at the top of the server list.  It wasn't until much, much later that I discovered it was a de facto "East Coast" server.  This had both good and bad aspects as a player in Hawaii.  However, there was a period of about a month when I wondered why so many pugs I landed in were populated by Australians.  For a while, I got the impression City of Heroes had an unusually large Aussie fan base.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on August 14, 2015, 05:44:00 AM
Glad to see I'm not the only person who wound up on triumph for the arbitrary top o' the list reason. From talking to folks there though i always got the impression i was in the minority as an east coaster.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on August 14, 2015, 05:48:03 AM
Glad to see I'm not the only person who wound up on triumph for the arbitrary top o' the list reason. From talking to folks there though i always got the impression i was in the minority as an east coaster.

What I know is that from about 8pm Hawaii time, the server was pretty dead until about 2 or 3am, when it was about 8ish in the morning on the East Coast (depending on daylight savings).  If you wanted to team, that was bad.  If you wanted to collect badges in RV or collect Shivans, pretty good times to operate.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on August 14, 2015, 03:16:52 PM
Glad to see I'm not the only person who wound up on triumph for the arbitrary top o' the list reason. From talking to folks there though i always got the impression i was in the minority as an east coaster.

I started there, then found out my friends played on Freedom, so my initial character was level 8 at shutdown (it was terrible due to no real numbers and bad choices).

Ended up with lots of characters on all servers but mainly on Victory with a certain irish_girl
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on August 15, 2015, 11:31:00 PM
What I know is that from about 8pm Hawaii time, the server was pretty dead until about 2 or 3am, when it was about 8ish in the morning on the East Coast (depending on daylight savings).  If you wanted to team, that was bad.  If you wanted to collect badges in RV or collect Shivans, pretty good times to operate.

You alluded to this that Triumph picked up at 8am eastern, which is 10 or 11PM in Australia. When I worked third shift, I would get home be 8am and find teams from Oz.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on August 16, 2015, 01:07:47 AM
Wait... Servers had locations?!

I just picked Infinity because it was at the top
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on August 16, 2015, 05:06:50 AM
Wait... Servers had locations?!

I just picked Infinity because it was at the top

That was my reasoning for Triumph.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on August 16, 2015, 03:59:15 PM
I was on Virtue almost exclusively.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on August 16, 2015, 04:06:10 PM
I thought I started on Freedom because there were only 4 north American servers... To this day I thought Guardian, Freedom and a couple others were started early and others came along.  Our super group had heroes on Victory and villains on Liberty but when the whole alignment changing came along it broke it so we consolidated to Victory's larger population.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Optimus Dex on August 16, 2015, 07:54:05 PM
I was on Virtue almost exclusively.



 I picked Triumph because I had a Triumph motorcycle in the early 70's.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on August 16, 2015, 09:33:07 PM
Alas, there was no Schwinn server.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on August 16, 2015, 11:20:25 PM
I played on all servers, but my main was Virtue
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on August 16, 2015, 11:55:06 PM
I started on Protector because a couple of our friends played there.  They drifted out of the game, though, and I switched over to Virtue for the RP.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on August 17, 2015, 12:14:31 AM
Did that, then killed it in Task Manager.  As soon as you reboot, it comes right back.  It's not visible in MSCONFIG Startup, and I couldn't find it in Component Services, either.  The easiest solution I found when searching Google was to rename the two GWX subdirectories in C:\Windows to "GWX_old".  Seems to have worked so far.

The 'Get Windows 10' nagger was installed by KB3035583; if you go into the 'Programs and Updates' widget from your Control Panel, you can remove that individual update from your Windows installation, and it should remove the nagger.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: srmalloy on August 17, 2015, 12:19:25 AM
That depends on if MS gives us any control in Windows 10 of when patches are applied and reboots occur.  From the posts above, I'm a little nervous about that.  As far as I'm concerned, the weekends are a great time for updates to happen - during the week, don't bother me.

In Windows 10 Home, there is no way to disable the automatic download and install of updates through the regular user interface; that's limited to Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise. However, you can find any number of websites that will walk you through making the registry changes necessary to disable either or both of those options, and give you control of your updates back. However, that's beyond what the average Windows Home user is going to be interested in doing; they just want the computer to work. And it will... barring the occasional system-bricking broken update that has led me to wait on processing updates until after I see if there are negative consequences to them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on August 17, 2015, 01:49:38 AM
In Windows 10 Home, there is no way to disable the automatic download and install of updates through the regular user interface; that's limited to Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise. However, you can find any number of websites that will walk you through making the registry changes necessary to disable either or both of those options, and give you control of your updates back. However, that's beyond what the average Windows Home user is going to be interested in doing; they just want the computer to work. And it will... barring the occasional system-bricking broken update that has led me to wait on processing updates until after I see if there are negative consequences to them.
This is... slightly wrong.

Windows 10 Home allows you to:
A) Delay download if you are on a metered connection (e.g. not unlimited data) - if you're not on a metered connection, you can't tell it to not download - but that's not really a big deal these days
B) Delay install if you turn that option on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on August 17, 2015, 08:54:09 AM
This is... slightly wrong.

Windows 10 Home allows you to:
A) Delay download if you are on a metered connection (e.g. not unlimited data) - if you're not on a metered connection, you can't tell it to not download - but that's not really a big deal these days
B) Delay install if you turn that option on.

As far as I'm aware, Pro and Education editions allow you to defer updates.  Windows 10 Home does not have that feature.  The Windows 10 troubleshooting tool can allow you to "hide" updates in Windows 10 Home edition, but that tool does not work on all updates: some updates are flagged to be mandatory even if hidden and will download and install automatically.

Although I haven't played with this much myself, I've been told the metered connection option only exists on Wifi connections.  The option isn't available for ethernet connections.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on August 17, 2015, 12:33:43 PM
As far as I'm aware, Pro and Education editions allow you to defer updates.  Windows 10 Home does not have that feature.  The Windows 10 troubleshooting tool can allow you to "hide" updates in Windows 10 Home edition, but that tool does not work on all updates: some updates are flagged to be mandatory even if hidden and will download and install automatically.

Although I haven't played with this much myself, I've been told the metered connection option only exists on Wifi connections.  The option isn't available for ethernet connections.
As I am on Windows 10 Home, I speak with experience. You can delay the installation with the option Settings > Update & security > Advanced options > Notify to schedule restart. You'll be notified to schedule a restart, which is when it'll install the updates it automatically downloaded.

Yes, you can only get a metered connection over wifi. But a larger and larger group of people are not connecting to anything via ethernet, which makes it a viable suggestion these days.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on August 17, 2015, 02:04:53 PM
For my own amusement I was thinking a delay install button that doesn't work but makes you feel in control would be golden.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on August 17, 2015, 03:45:11 PM
Although I haven't played with this much myself, I've been told the metered connection option only exists on Wifi connections.  The option isn't available for ethernet connections.

MS: "Sorry, Eastern Europe." ?

As I am on Windows 10 Home, I speak with experience. You can delay the installation with the option Settings > Update & security > Advanced options > Notify to schedule restart. You'll be notified to schedule a restart, which is when it'll install the updates it automatically downloaded.

I haven't tested it in great detail, but I think that only controls when the restart happens, not when the updates are actually installed. More than once I've gone into the updates window on a Win10 Home laptop to see that it wanted to reboot and was saying it would restart at 3:15 AM with an option to defer, but it looked like the updates it was rebooting for had already been installed.

Also, not all updates require a reboot, even in Win7 and 8.



One other thing I noticed is that Win10 Home completely removes support for connecting to a WSUS server.

My control group for that was a Win8.1 Pro desktop and a Win8.1 Home laptop, both of which were configured through Group Policy to get their updates from a WSUS server, therefore they only see updates that I have approved.

After upgrading them both to Win10 with no other changes, the Pro machine still only shows updates approved through WSUS (and it hilariously shows up as "Windows Vista" in the WSUS management console now). The Win10 Home machine no longer updates its status in WSUS and seems to be getting updates directly from Microsoft, ignoring the policy settings entirely.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Talon Blue on August 17, 2015, 05:30:21 PM
Had I known Triumph was a east coast server I would have played on it. Started on Victory, when I finally had enough of not finding teams... especially redside, I jumped to Virtue.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on August 17, 2015, 06:38:30 PM
When I first started playing City (or rather, shortly afterwards, when I got my own account: I started playing on my brother's account) I picked Triumph as my home server, because it was at the top of the server list.

This was exactly why I picked Triumph myself, it was at the top of the list.

If I knew then what I know now....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on August 17, 2015, 06:44:53 PM
For being a small server, it seems like there is alot of people on this forum from Triumph
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on August 17, 2015, 06:51:06 PM
I haven't tested it in great detail, but I think that only controls when the restart happens, not when the updates are actually installed. More than once I've gone into the updates window on a Win10 Home laptop to see that it wanted to reboot and was saying it would restart at 3:15 AM with an option to defer, but it looked like the updates it was rebooting for had already been installed.

Yep, that setting only controls reboot, not installation.

Quote
Also, not all updates require a reboot, even in Win7 and 8.

Yep yep.  This has already caused issues.


Quote
One other thing I noticed is that Win10 Home completely removes support for connecting to a WSUS server.

My control group for that was a Win8.1 Pro desktop and a Win8.1 Home laptop, both of which were configured through Group Policy to get their updates from a WSUS server, therefore they only see updates that I have approved.

After upgrading them both to Win10 with no other changes, the Pro machine still only shows updates approved through WSUS (and it hilariously shows up as "Windows Vista" in the WSUS management console now). The Win10 Home machine no longer updates its status in WSUS and seems to be getting updates directly from Microsoft, ignoring the policy settings entirely.

Apparently this was a very deliberate change.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on August 17, 2015, 09:46:42 PM
I assumed the disproportionate number of Triumphers on these forums had to do with hardcore forum types being disproportionately pantsless.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tubbius on August 17, 2015, 10:11:08 PM
For being a small server, it seems like there is alot of people on this forum from Triumph

I picked Justice.  It sounded coolest.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Balince on August 17, 2015, 10:16:49 PM
I picked Justice.  It sounded coolest.  :)
I thought Infinity had the coolest name, I would of chosen that server had my friend not already been playing on guardian. I don't regret being on guardian though, found a great SG to be apart of.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on August 18, 2015, 01:25:39 AM
I assumed the disproportionate number of Triumphers on these forums had to do with hardcore forum types being disproportionately pantsless.

Almost every server was crazy in its own unique way, but Triumph seemed to be crazy in a very peculiar way in which trying to be crazy was penalized, but just straight up being crazy was rewarded.  I don't think its a coincidence that we appeared to have a higher than average percentage of forumites.

I was once on a task force where I looked around and realized myself, Stupid_Fanboy, and Golden Girl were all on the same team.  I remember thinking to myself that everyone else on that team should have gotten a badge for that.  What's more, it was an exceptionally unchatty team.  They should have gotten a master of badge for that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on August 18, 2015, 01:45:18 AM
The really crazy part is I didn't even realize that Arcana's home server was Triumph until the Really Hard Way attempts, despite having started there and it being home to my primary SG and badge character for years.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on August 18, 2015, 01:57:50 AM
I was once on a task force where I looked around and realized myself, Stupid_Fanboy, and Golden Girl were all on the same team.  I remember thinking to myself that everyone else on that team should have gotten a badge for that.  What's more, it was an exceptionally unchatty team.

Not counting emoticons I assume.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on August 18, 2015, 10:46:23 AM
Not counting emoticons I assume.

 ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on August 18, 2015, 02:02:44 PM
When I started, I picked Triumph (Yep, another Triumphateer?  Triumphverate?  Triumphian?), I picked it, not because it was the top of the list...

I picked it because I could remember it:  Triumph, for the Insult Dog Comic.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on August 18, 2015, 02:36:58 PM
I picked Virtue, because that's what I thought I had the least of...

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on August 18, 2015, 02:38:54 PM
If you had less virtue than you had infinity that's damned impressive.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on August 18, 2015, 02:40:07 PM
Probably to my knowledge the most memorable personality on Triumph was Karl Rove Man. Also with HUB, you really didn't need a SG
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on August 18, 2015, 02:41:49 PM
When I started, I picked Triumph (Yep, another Triumphateer?  Triumphverate?  Triumphian?), I picked it, not because it was the top of the list...

I picked it because I could remember it:  Triumph, for the Insult Dog Comic.

That's a great story...

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i.qkme.me%2F3tlj5z.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dareon Kale on August 18, 2015, 04:20:16 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.tbhccs.com%2Fmother%2Fzw17.gif)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on August 18, 2015, 04:51:20 PM
That's a great story...

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i.qkme.me%2F3tlj5z.jpg)

And this made me laugh.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on August 18, 2015, 06:40:05 PM
If you had less virtue than you had infinity that's damned impressive.

Well, so far I have infinity - 47 years... so, yeah, I have less virtue than that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on August 18, 2015, 07:35:37 PM
When I started, I picked Triumph (Yep, another Triumphateer?  Triumphverate?  Triumphian?), I picked it, not because it was the top of the list...

I picked it because I could remember it:  Triumph, for the Insult Dog Comic.

One of the weird little pieces of inside ball was the fact that sometimes in public discussion people on Triumph would claim that Triumph was known as the "insult comic server" and then giggle to themselves, because that was emphatically *not* what the server was generally known as on the actual server (pantsless beat that by about thirty to one, because of an inside joke that probably no one even remembers).  We also sometimes called the server the "friendly" server, and then as now "friendly" was always in quotes.  We were in fact generally very friendly to newcomers, but often like the friend you throw in the back seat by themselves on long car rides.

Everyone is probably biased towards their own server(s), but I think I lucked out on Triumph for one simple reason: Triumph had a higher proportion of veteran players that actually wanted to be there.  Triumph was a lower population server although higher than Liberty and Protector, say, but still significantly lower than Infinity and Guardian, much less Freedom and Virtue.  Its interesting to note that when Hamidon strategies were being formulated, while Freedom was generally in the lead to take down level 50 Hamidon, Champion and Triumph were always close behind.  The lower population servers seemed to attract more relaxed players, and Triumph seemed to have a higher density of veteran skilled but lax players.  That meant all other things being equal, Triumph was more tolerant of, shall we say, unoptimized gameplay.  If you decided to start running ahead of the team and Nova blasting the next spawn, you were less likely to be admonished and more likely to start a tier 9 contest among the blasters.  As long as you didn't actually hurt the team or kill anyone, all was fair.  And in fact if you were on a team that actually knew you on at least some level, then even killing yourself or others was acceptable if it was funny enough.

Which is not to say that every server didn't have such people.  But I think its fair to say if you were on a random Pug on Freedom and decided to do something goofy, you were statistically more likely to draw ire than on Triumph.

I just wish they'd stay away from those goddamn bombs...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on August 18, 2015, 07:38:31 PM
It's interesting that everyone say's "server X was at the top of my list".

It must have been a randomly sorted thing, I played on mainly Champion, 'cause it was at the top of my list. . .
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on August 18, 2015, 08:47:50 PM
It's interesting that everyone say's "server X was at the top of my list".

It must have been a randomly sorted thing, I played on mainly Champion, 'cause it was at the top of my list. . .

My understanding is that the list was supposed to be sorted in ascending order of load, so the least loaded servers ended up on top.  That way, new players would tend to be roughly load balanced into the server pool (once you logged in for the first time, that server would be at the top by default).  Triumph was at the top for a lot of people because it was added after go-live.  Thus, after the initial burst of players signed up, Triumph was always among the most lightly loaded.  Conversely, Freedom was the most heavily loaded because of a quirk of circumstance: beta/head start players got to reserve character logins on the server that eventually became Freedom, so it had a head start on becoming the most heavily loaded server.  After that, self-selection kicked in.  Most players were distributed roughly randomly, preferentially to less lightly loaded servers.  But for those players paying attention, those who wanted a more active server would tend to self-select themselves for Freedom, which was the most active server.  The most active server became increasingly more active.  Those who wanted less heavily loaded servers tended to shift to logging into places like Champion or Pinnacle.

I don't actually know how Virtue became the "role playing server" although I do know it took some time for that to develop.  I've always suspected that Virtue became the de facto RP server by happening to be a heavily populated server that was not Freedom and was time shifted from Freedom (Virtue was a West Coast server at the beginning of time).  When the RPers were looking for a home base, they wanted a high pop server, but wanted to escape Freedom, and Virtue was the logical choice.  That's always been my theory, but as I was not an active member of the RP community back then, I don't know the internals of how the community went in that direction.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on August 18, 2015, 10:04:34 PM
Yeah...I...So don't remember why I picked Victory. -shrugs-
Whatever random reason 13 y/o me had... Likely 'Victory sounds cool.'
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: saipaman on August 18, 2015, 11:11:40 PM
I first picked 'Protector' because that's what I saw heroes as doing ... protecting people.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Battlechimp on August 19, 2015, 04:07:51 AM

*snip*
I don't actually know how Virtue became the "role playing server" although I do know it took some time for that to develop.  I've always suspected that Virtue became the de facto RP server by happening to be a heavily populated server that was not Freedom and was time shifted from Freedom (Virtue was a West Coast server at the beginning of time).  When the RPers were looking for a home base, they wanted a high pop server, but wanted to escape Freedom, and Virtue was the logical choice.  That's always been my theory, but as I was not an active member of the RP community back then, I don't know the internals of how the community went in that direction.

Virtue becoming the unofficial RP server was something that was discussed and debated on the beta board before the three day head start.  I remember there being arguments over people picking Virtue or Guardian. 

Couple of the reasons that kept being thrown out there that I do remember is that with a name like Virtue, it wasn't as dynamic of a name like Freedom or Champion or such, so it would draw less, "I'll go there because it sounds bad ass" type players.   And also when thing first started, before  things went live, servers were organized alphabetically, so some people argued that Virtue would be at the bottom and might draw less players.... that didn't last long :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on August 19, 2015, 04:12:39 AM
I started on Champion because my then-boyfriend-now-very-ex was on it. I moved to Justice because I found friends there. Eventually I graduated to "every server" because my altitis cannot be contained.

I have alts in games where you can eventually be everything (like Final Fantasy or Secret World)!! My altitis knows no limits!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on August 19, 2015, 06:07:07 AM
I started on Protector... but I don't remember why.

I also had a couple of characters on Triumph (including one of my level 50s, an Energy/Energy Brute modeled after a villainous Ms. Marvel).  If you ever did an Incarnate trial with a character named Ms. Stungun... hi again.

Most of my mains were on Protector, though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on August 19, 2015, 07:16:12 AM
I chose Defiant, had the chose of either Defiant or Union considering I couldn't speak/write in German or French  ;) Only reason I chose Defiant was due to the fact I'd just finished watching an episode of DS9 with the USS Defiant in it... :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Auroxis on August 19, 2015, 07:35:09 AM
I chose Freedom because it had the highest server load hence was likely the most populated server in my TZ. I didn't want to spend a lot of time looking for teams/teammates.

Now, there's an issue with choosing the "biggest server" which is the people within it. Oftentimes, you get more recluse people who don't care for a tight-knit society as much as they care about just playing the game. At the time I felt closer to that mentality as a player due to my social awkwardness, so Freedom felt right at home.

Later on I went into Virtue for social interaction, and found a good balance in both servers depending on my mental state. If I just wanted to jump in and play with minimal social interaction I logged onto my Freedom characters, and if I wanted a more social atmosphere I logged onto my Virtue characters.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: HEATSTROKE on August 19, 2015, 11:26:45 AM
 I chose Justice.. Justice League.. Hall of Justice.. played there for years... probably a good 5-6... Then moved to Virtue and pretty much played there till close..
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on August 19, 2015, 11:56:28 AM
My family, all ten of us who played CoX,  :-*  picked Virtue together.

In retrospect, we made the right choice.

We did have holiday overflow characters on Pinnacle, though.  In the final years when the character slot availability per server improved, I finally moved my 46 main there, Get Psyched (Illusion/Kin troller), to Virtue.  I have to admit that felt weird.  There was a certain serenity to Pinnacle that I missed in the end.  Virtue was always such a clusterfluff, lol.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on August 19, 2015, 02:32:30 PM
Arcana said: Which is not to say that every server didn't have such people.  But I think its fair to say if you were on a random Pug on Freedom and decided to do something goofy, you were statistically more likely to draw ire than on Triumph.


I personally think if you did something goofy on Freedom - most players there wouldn't even notice. I played Champion, Virtue and Freedom the most although had alts on every server. Freedom was Unique, in the Unique Dragon sense. I found it to be a blend of fun, pain and downright embarrassment - sort of like an Ashley Madison data dump.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on August 19, 2015, 03:47:47 PM
I started on Champion because my then-boyfriend-now-very-ex was on it. I moved to Justice because I found friends there. Eventually I graduated to "every server" because my altitis cannot be contained.

I have alts in games where you can eventually be everything (like Final Fantasy or Secret World)!! My altitis knows no limits!

I had alts that were exact duplicates of another toon on the same server, but with different names and costumes because... because... altitis.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on August 19, 2015, 04:33:02 PM
I had alts that were exact duplicates of another toon on the same server, but with different names and costumes because... because... altitis.

My parents probably had about 30 energy blasters each, I kid you not.

They may have been elderly, but man, when they told you that you were not doing something right when you were playing your energy blaster, you'd better listen to their advice.   :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on August 19, 2015, 06:58:05 PM
I had alts that were exact duplicates of another toon on the same server, but with different names and costumes because... because... altitis.

Actually, what I liked, and this is a mark of a great RPG-experience is that even if I had two toons with the exact same powersets, their individual backstory, costumes and interactions with Paragon City's other residents (both NPC and character controlled) turned each and every one into a fully-realized "person" all their own.  Some were goofy, some all business, some vengeful, others protective...  Aw, man, here I go... I really really miss some of those guys. 

Even re-making them, they won't be the same "person" they were before...

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Optimus Dex on August 19, 2015, 07:52:56 PM
Actually, what I liked, and this is a mark of a great RPG-experience is that even if I had two toons with the exact same powersets, their individual backstory, costumes and interactions with Paragon City's other residents (both NPC and character controlled) turned each and every one into a fully-realized "person" all their own.  Some were goofy, some all business, some vengeful, others protective...  Aw, man, here I go... I really really miss some of those guys. 

Even re-making them, they won't be the same "person" they were before...


My mins were on Triumph and then Freedom but I used Pinnacle and Protector for variations on a theme heroes. And I found even slight variations in history , costumes and powers made them different to me.. Altisis for the win.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MegaWatt on August 19, 2015, 08:24:33 PM
i dont remember where i started i just remember that i ended up on virtue.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on August 19, 2015, 08:58:23 PM
I had alts that were exact duplicates of another toon on the same server, but with different names and costumes because... because... altitis.
I had Aggelakis, Aggelakis II, and Aggelakis III on Justice. Agge is an emp/archery, 2 is emp/dark, and 3 is dark/archery. I had three of them because my Agge concept was bigger than City could encompass. lol
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on August 19, 2015, 09:04:02 PM
I started and finished on Freedom, and when that server was down I made a few characters on Justice and Virtue :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on August 19, 2015, 09:23:26 PM
I had Aggelakis, Aggelakis II, and Aggelakis III on Justice. Agge is an emp/archery, 2 is emp/dark, and 3 is dark/archery. I had three of them because my Agge concept was bigger than City could encompass. lol

Good to see someone else also just take their main's name and make alts with the name too. I didn't that on Triumph besides maybe 8 other people in the whole server. Personally I did that because I lack creativity to think of a name.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on August 19, 2015, 09:41:27 PM
I had Aggelakis, Aggelakis II, and Aggelakis III on Justice. Agge is an emp/archery, 2 is emp/dark, and 3 is dark/archery. I had three of them because my Agge concept was bigger than City could encompass. lol

The backstory for my main when I created her was that she was an experimental clone from a different timeline in which the Rikti won the Rikti war.  As a result, when it came to making alts on different servers, I had a built-in reason for reproducing my main on them with anything from minor to major changes in design.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kaos Arcanna on August 19, 2015, 10:29:52 PM
I treated each server as an alternate reality.

In a perfect world where money was no object, I would have liked for each server to have a different outcome. One could have been a Post Apocalyptic wasteland ruled by the Freakshow. Another could have been the Warwolf World. A third could have been Nemesis controlled and your heroes were fighting to end his evil reign....

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Battlechimp on August 19, 2015, 11:05:32 PM
Good to see someone else also just take their main's name and make alts with the name too. I didn't that on Triumph besides maybe 8 other people in the whole server. Personally I did that because I lack creativity to think of a name.

I had about 10 different versions of one character spread across various servers. Captain Neat-O always had either energy or radiation, blasters, defenders,  tank or brute...and all had the same neon green, yellow and red costume. 

And then I had two other characters that if I wanted to pay a particular power set but couldn't think of a character concept to go with them, I'd fall back onto these two.  One was a group that I started with friends, a power ranger spoof team, the Paragon Ringers.  So would have Red Ringer, Black Ringer, etc. Pick a color and go.  Or I had my kid genius character.  He'd make different power armor suits and go by Kid <insert noun that had something to do with his power set  > he was my generic character template if I wanted to RP with the character
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on August 20, 2015, 02:47:09 PM
I started and finished on Freedom, and when that server was down I made a few characters on Justice and Virtue :)

Freedom was home to my 'comedy' characters...

Chuckles the Barbarian
The Running-Away Man
Doctor Defeatable
Doorsitter Boy
Captain Frogtoes
Magic Gus
Captain Colostomy
Abe Vigoda

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on August 20, 2015, 04:16:13 PM
Freedom was home to my 'comedy' characters...

Chuckles the Barbarian
The Running-Away Man
Doctor Defeatable
Doorsitter Boy
Captain Frogtoes
Magic Gus
Captain Colostomy
Abe Vigoda

You remind me of the time I created "Kaptain Killsteal" on Champion. I got him up to about level 5, then any time I wanted a break from the real game I took him to the hollows, jumped into the middle of anyone fighting several levels above me. Of course I would face-plant quickly, then start asking for a rez in zone chat (despite usually being less than 100 yards from the hosp). You could tell immediately who had a brain and a sense of humour (angry tells clearly signalling a lack of both). Of course his battle cry was "MINE!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on August 20, 2015, 05:09:06 PM
The backstory for my main when I created her was that she was an experimental clone from a different timeline in which the Rikti won the Rikti war.  As a result, when it came to making alts on different servers, I had a built-in reason for reproducing my main on them with anything from minor to major changes in design.
I had a villain Brute, on Infinity, named Sasyk, who was a tad insane(due to how he was granted his abilities). I had inspiration to create a Heroic copy of him on the same server because of a mission where some group was creating clones of your character. In the mission, Sasyk saved his clone's life. That clone decided to do something constructive with his life. He had the same Power-sets, but was a Tank instead of a Brute, and also was a tad less insane.

Also, I had made a villain group on Champion that was similar to the "Goatee Universe" copy of the Hero group I had on that server. The Bouquet of Roses (Good guys) and the Roses Gone Wild (Villains). Many of the RGW characters were villain copies of the BoR characters. One of them was even a blatant copy. I mean really. Clone of Sniper Rose isn't misleading at all, is it? I didn't have a hero counter-part to Rose and Posse and Necro Rose. Both, of whom, were Masterminds. Thugs/Poison and Necro/Dark.

I had Altitis. I don't think it was a bad as some of yous guys' addiction though. I only had somewhere around 150 or so characters spread across all the American servers (except Freedom) and two accounts. I still had a lot of empty character slots I could have filled.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on August 20, 2015, 06:41:11 PM
I had Aggelakis, Aggelakis II, and Aggelakis III on Justice. Agge is an emp/archery, 2 is emp/dark, and 3 is dark/archery. I had three of them because my Agge concept was bigger than City could encompass. lol

I had a character that was similar, though I had five alts.  I eventually 'nerfed' her as I wanted to focus more on certain aspects of her abilities and felt her having to many wasn't particularly balancing;

Kin/energy defender(Eventually began obsoleting it, time manipulation showed up). My most powerful offensive support character.  I was likely to just rename the char, since I'd done so much with this one.
Mind/Kin controller: Redundant and deleted.
Fortunata: The main iteration.
Energy blast/time manipulation: The other main iteration.
Kin melee/Willpower: A melee iteration.

A reboot of the game will only have one of those and even then, I'll likely change a detail or two.  Probably make a robotics/time manipulation version of the character, as I am leaning towards in paragon chat.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on August 20, 2015, 06:41:59 PM
Freedom was home to my 'comedy' characters...

Chuckles the Barbarian
The Running-Away Man
Doctor Defeatable
Doorsitter Boy
Captain Frogtoes
Magic Gus
Captain Colostomy
Abe Vigoda

Great!  Due to the complete lack of anyone asking for this, I think I'll add a short description of each of those toons...

Chuckles the Barbarian - Think a cross between Conan and Bozo. Over-muscled clown with a huge sword!

The Running-Away Man - Didn't get invited to teams very often.  When he did, as soon as a fight started, he lived up to his name.

Doctor Defeatable - Every level I picked the absolute least usable power. 

Doorsitter Boy - Would never leave the lobby in any door mission.  He got kicked from alot of teams.

Captain Frogtoes - Big green guy with funny feet.  Well, it was funny to me.

Magic Gus - Just a play on The Who's "Magic Bus." He got his powers from psychedelic drugs, and acted like it.

Captain Colostomy - Water blaster.  Water colored bright yellow.  Any further questions?

Abe Vigoda - crotchety.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on August 20, 2015, 06:52:21 PM
I had a character that was similar, though I had five alts.  I eventually 'nerfed' her as I wanted to focus more on certain aspects of her abilities and felt her having to many wasn't particularly balancing;

Kin/energy defender(Eventually began obsoleting it, time manipulation showed up). My most powerful offensive support character.  I was likely to just rename the char, since I'd done so much with this one.
Mind/Kin controller: Redundant and deleted.
Fortunata: The main iteration.
Energy blast/time manipulation: The other main iteration.
Kin melee/Willpower: A melee iteration.

A reboot of the game will only have one of those and even then, I'll likely change a detail or two.  Probably make a robotics/time manipulation version of the character, as I am leaning towards in paragon chat.

Yes, *if* we ever get the game back, I have a few characters that will be re-made with alternate powersets... especially Scott Comet (think Adam Strange or Buck Rogers or any other "out of place" sci-fi hero)

He was an assault rifle / devices blaster, but I think his origin would fit better with a beam rifle / devices combo.

He was a mall-cop from the 25th century catapulted back through time due to a mishap with a device at Radio Shack.



Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Von Krieger on August 20, 2015, 06:56:26 PM
He was a mall-cop from the 25th century catapulted back through time due to a mishap with a device at Radio Shack.

Must have been one of those trendy hipster product revivals.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on August 20, 2015, 07:15:46 PM
Must have been one of those trendy hipster product revivals.

The whole point of using them to begin with was my utter amazement at how they were still an operational company with the decisions and changes made since the 80's.  Because of that, I thought they were "immortal" like Keith Richards and Dick Clark... oh...

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on August 20, 2015, 07:18:15 PM
I had Altitis. I don't think it was a bad as some of yous guys' addiction though. I only had somewhere around 150 or so characters spread across all the American servers

I was an altoholic and i don't even think I had 50 unless you count deleted toons. 150 is srsbsns.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on August 21, 2015, 03:45:56 AM
I had a villain Brute, on Infinity, named Sasyk, who was a tad insane(due to how he was granted his abilities). I had inspiration to create a Heroic copy of him on the same server because of a mission where some group was creating clones of your character. In the mission, Sasyk saved his clone's life. That clone decided to do something constructive with his life. He had the same Power-sets, but was a Tank instead of a Brute, and also was a tad less insane.

I did the same thing!   Thunder Glove saved his clone and let him live, so I created the clone as Thunder Mirror.  (Thunder Mirror's powers were different, though, because the cloning process didn't reproduce TG's infusion of magic, so he was Tech-based and wore power armor instead.  TG was an Elec/Invuln Brute, while TM was an Elec/Elec Tanker)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on August 21, 2015, 07:10:22 AM
I had Altitis bad too, one account had over 50 (I bought extra slots) on Champion with a few scattered on other servers like Exhalted. But I had two other paid main accounts and other freebie accounts as I needed them, well over a hundred toons, maybe as many as 130, not really sure now, it's been so long, and most of them were on Champion. I remember many of them, certainly not all of them, but with a few exceptions, they were all named  *** Remaugen. . .  ;D

I loved to team solo, I would run missions and even TFs at times with toons from each of my accounts and sometimes a friend or two. It was handy for creating my own SGs/VGs. Sometimes I would farm in Recluses Victory on a rooftop overnight, set up a couple of toons in a team on auto attack (Usually something like Footstomp) and a few others on a team with auto rez going, just let them go killing each other and self rezzing overnight, all night long. It was great for loot, usually a purple or sometimes, if I got lucky, two.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on August 21, 2015, 04:35:14 PM
Freedom was home to my 'comedy' characters...

Chuckles the Barbarian
The Running-Away Man
Doctor Defeatable
Doorsitter Boy
Captain Frogtoes
Magic Gus
Captain Colostomy
Abe Vigoda
Nice :D, I too had a few joke characters on Freedom and Justice,
Captain BunBun
A Bunny, it was funny when an npc talked about A Bunny; such as "I saw A Bunny take on Frostfire. " :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on August 21, 2015, 06:06:51 PM
Nice :D, I too had a few joke characters on Freedom and Justice,
Captain BunBun
A Bunny, it was funny when an npc talked about A Bunny; such as "I saw A Bunny take on Frostfire. " :D

Frostfire:  But thats no ordinary rabbit!  It's the most foul and cruel and bad tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on August 21, 2015, 07:15:48 PM
Nice :D, I too had a few joke characters on Freedom and Justice,
Captain BunBun
A Bunny, it was funny when an npc talked about A Bunny; such as "I saw A Bunny take on Frostfire. " :D

I made "A Man With A Gun" once, for the same joke... But deleted him because he was a goober.

I saw "An Ordinary Man" running around the city at one point... 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on August 21, 2015, 10:05:17 PM
I made "A Man With A Gun" once, for the same joke... But deleted him because he was a goober.

I saw "An Ordinary Man" running around the city at one point...

I had one once named No Body, a stalker.  Thus when he defeated opponents they could say "Nobody defeated me"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on August 22, 2015, 02:44:01 AM
I had an electric/sr stalker called 'The Klapp'. The NPC lines were just great.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on August 22, 2015, 04:38:06 AM
I liked it when two Hellions were chatting away and when I Force Bolt one of the to the next county he says, "Catch ya later".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on August 22, 2015, 04:44:34 PM
I had altitis bad. I had 95% different character names. I was proud of two mastermind names I came up with. My first villain, even in COV beta was a Bots/poison I named Symon Bar Sisyphus. One time I was running through Sharkhead, I see in broadcast "I see you Simon BarSinister!!" Another time I got a tell saying how much he enjoyed the combination of a cartoon character with his english lit class character. Oh how I pined for a flower for his lapel on his white lab coat.

The other character I congratulated myself with naming, perhaps too much, was Quiet Sprinting: Bots/Nature's Affinity. Anyone know the Bruce Dern movie reference? We had so much fun in the forest on the rooftop in Atlas Park.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Azrael on August 22, 2015, 06:56:56 PM
I guess the take over talks are still ongoing... :D

Meanwhile...

...I liked my elec/elec stalker.  Had that 'Palpatine' kill jedis in short order 'surprise' attack vibe to it.

Using energy thrust or power push on my En/En blaster with x3 slot Knock Back to Kerrr...POW a Hellion into the next zone?  Priceless.

DM/EShield brute?  Mob melter.  Eye of the tornado.  Debuff their hits.  They can't hit you...too often.

EM/Invul' Tank?  POW!  Inciting mobs to riot.  In the middle.  Energy transfer.  Whirling Hands.  Jaw breaking mob action.  Especially on those 'Vamps' that used to beat on my En/En blaster...and the knives of Arty could dish it against my blaster...but they sure couldn't take it against my tank. :P

Sure.  CoH has it's locked in time graphics and gameplay.

But seeing as it was pretty much perfect that doesn't matter.  Ultra mode looked pretty sweet to me. 

Keep going, Nate.

Meanwhile, team SCoRE are doing a fab job with Paragon Chat.  A dream come true.

Azrael.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on August 24, 2015, 09:40:34 AM
I had the weirdest dream. . .

NcSoft decided to keep control of the property, so instead of selling, they decided to hire Nate  to handle the US license & Cailyn to re-develop the US content under the new game engine. . . And *Gasp!* they hired ME to be the lead creative developer!

For some reason, one of the guys on their crew knew that my late wife (She died of cervical cancer in 2004) was Korean and for some reason or another, they liked the silly BS I had posted on the APR website. (And it really is kinda silly)

You guys are probably lucky it was just a dream!  ;D

Still though it was a very vivid, seriously ego stroking dream, one of those dreams you remember all day after waking, and then go on to think about all day. 
*sigh*  If only it could be true. . .

Heh heh heh In my dreams at least it can be!   ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on August 24, 2015, 06:26:55 PM
I had the weirdest dream. . .

NcSoft decided to keep control of the property, so instead of selling, they decided to hire Nate  to handle the US license & Cailyn to re-develop the US content under the new game engine. . . And *Gasp!* they hired ME to be the lead creative developer!

For some reason, one of the guys on their crew knew that my late wife (She died of cervical cancer in 2004) was Korean and for some reason or another, they liked the silly BS I had posted on the APR website. (And it really is kinda silly)

You guys are probably lucky it was just a dream!  ;D

Still though it was a very vivid, seriously ego stroking dream, one of those dreams you remember all day after waking, and then go on to think about all day. 
*sigh*  If only it could be true. . .

Heh heh heh In my dreams at least it can be!   ;)

I still have the dream of winning the lottery and after taking care of some life affirming and assuring wishes on the "to Do if I win" list,  I then purchase CoH and bring the game back.

Ah, to dream......
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on August 24, 2015, 08:20:58 PM
I suspect many of us have had that particular 'lottery' dream, Sinistar.  :-)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on August 24, 2015, 09:03:59 PM
I suspect many of us have had that particular 'lottery' dream, Sinistar.  :-)

Oh, I'm sure.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on August 24, 2015, 09:21:04 PM
I made "A Man With A Gun" once, for the same joke... But deleted him because he was a goober.

I saw "An Ordinary Man" running around the city at one point...

Friend of mine made a ninja mastermind called "The Obvious Distraction", wore a bright yellow costume with a target on his chest. Villains would say things like, "Alright men, keep an eye out for the Obvious Distraction!" or "I see the Obvious Distraction is here!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Beltor on August 25, 2015, 12:16:29 AM
I liked it when two Hellions were chatting away and when I Force Bolt one of the to the next county he says, "Catch ya later".
I made a Dark/Energy stalker before energy aura was changed, when it still had repel. For a while, it's repel wouldn't knockback if you were in stealth so i'd sometimes leave it on when solo. It was funny when my AS would hit so hard that the whole mob was sent flying.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: KennonGL on August 25, 2015, 02:15:30 AM
I had "Ordinary Joe", a SS/Invul tanker. 

He went around in just a regular suit, tie, and hat.

His backstory was that he was just a regular citizen of Paragon City, until one day he realized
that nearly everyone in the city was virtually invulnerable.

Regular folks were getting caught up in massive explosions, subjected to frankly lethal doses of radiation,
struck by lightning, and bathed in otherworldly energy on a regular basis...and yet nobody was the worse for it.

Oh, sure, there would occasionally be a few body bags coming out of the latest super-villain assault on an office
building or warehouse, but those were really few and far between.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on August 25, 2015, 08:15:30 PM
I've had the same lottery dream. In fact, after paying off all my debts and buying a house, the very next thing I'd attempt is buying the City of Heroes property and getting a server set up straightaway...lol
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Dareon Kale on August 26, 2015, 02:34:16 AM
I get the impression that the amount of money needed to make the wheels turn faster could be tremendously disproportionate to the value of the game. It would depend on the size of the lottery for me. If it was a giant jackpot, then sure I'd be all in. Small jackpot(relatively speaking), then I would probably inquire with the purchasing team if another investor would be beneficial to their efforts.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on August 26, 2015, 03:01:52 AM
By all accounts, money isn't enough. It's professional pride, ego, honor... And money. Google searching led me to an amount that dumbstruck me (I think 80 million). It's all secondhand rumors and news though.

Still, Nexsoft... NCson... Um... That company holds all the cards until a successor steps up.

Enjoying Warframe right now myself. I have to come here for that community feel though.

If I won the lottery my 80 mil would go as follows:
1. Taxes
2. 10 million in a bank account/mutual fund so I can live off interest the rest of my life.
3. $5k to everyone I even remotely know
4. Rebuild basketball gyms and facilities at three schools I've worked
5. Beating cancer
6. Giving the successor projects whatever the hell they need no strings attached.
7. Codewalker and crew a day to sleep in.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stitchified on August 26, 2015, 03:18:41 AM
I don't know what's worse, the fact that NCsoft shut down CoH due to them being greedy and just wanting money, or the fact that Lineage 2 has been 100% Free to Play since 2011 with additional micro transactions and yet, Lineage 2 hasn't been shut down... Am I the only one who sees how just screwed up this is?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Auroxis on August 26, 2015, 10:13:03 AM
I don't know what's worse, the fact that NCsoft shut down CoH due to them being greedy and just wanting money, or the fact that Lineage 2 has been 100% Free to Play since 2011 with additional micro transactions and yet, Lineage 2 hasn't been shut down... Am I the only one who sees how just screwed up this is?

Lineage 2 is NCSoft's baby, their signature game.

It's like choosing to hire your less talented best friend over a more talented acquaintance. Not saying it's a good choice, but that's the way NCSoft seems to handle things.

That said, just because Lineage 2 is F2P and is considered an inferior game to CoH doesn't mean it deserves to be shut down. It could still be bringing them lots of money from the korean market.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on August 26, 2015, 11:49:49 AM
Lineage 2 is NCSoft's baby, their signature game.

It's like choosing to hire your less talented best friend over a more talented acquaintance. Not saying it's a good choice, but that's the way NCSoft seems to handle things.

That said, just because Lineage 2 is F2P and is considered an inferior game to CoH doesn't mean it deserves to be shut down. It could still be bringing them lots of money from the korean market.

Shockingly, the original Lineage, which is a fixed-camera, overhead-angle, low-poly, click-on-the-ground, ancient MMO, is still one of the most-played MMOs in Asia.

Not so shockingly, most Asians do not own computers in their homes.  They play games for pennies-per-hour (with the time rolling over into the next month if left unused) with their friends in bongs, a.k.a. internet cafes with snacks.  I don't think it's going out on a limb to say that these bong owners are not replacing their PCs with bleeding edge hardware every ten minutes, or even every ten years.  This type of a game can be played on a pinecone wrapped in bail wire, so it works there.

The Lineage series never took off over in NA.  It bombed about as hard as CoX did over there.  It's just different circumstances, different culture (click on the ground every so often to run around, while snacking and chatting with friends at the local bong), and a different mindset for gaming.

Lineage 2 is actually a 3D MMO more in the style of what westerners expect, but it's PURE LONG MISERABLE GRIND from the babyland on, lol.  Again, it's that "pennies-per-hour rolling over into the next month if not used" thing happening.  They want even the simplest little thing to take eons and eons of real-life time, because they're never going to accrue enough pennies from each player if they don't.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Auroxis on August 26, 2015, 12:45:21 PM
Yep. Lineage is the most popular MMORPG in S. Korea, followed by Aion, Lineage 2 and WoW.

Though it seems the Korean MMO market isn't nearly as big as it was 5 years ago, with LoL taking over the demographic. This could be the main thing behind NCSoft's issues.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on August 26, 2015, 01:52:38 PM
The other character I congratulated myself with naming, perhaps too much, was Quiet Sprinting: Bots/Nature's Affinity. Anyone know the Bruce Dern movie reference? We had so much fun in the forest on the rooftop in Atlas Park.

I didn't know who Bruce Dern was until I googled him, but I had a suspicion it was Silent Running before that. That is a perfect power set combo.

I had one once named No Body, a stalker.  Thus when he defeated opponents they could say "Nobody defeated me"

Oh there you are Odysseus. Your family's looking for you.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on August 26, 2015, 06:19:12 PM
Fundraising idea for Nate and crew:

Allow players to pay ahead of the re-opening to reserve character names (across all servers) and global names. The alternative is (of course) to just roll a name in-game and hope nobody got it already.

At $20 each I'd probably pay for only 2.
At $10 each I'd probably pay for 5.
At $5 each I'd probably pay for 7.

So for me, $10 per name seems to be the sweet spot for the revival effort to make the most money from me ($50).

How much would the rest of you be willing to spend if the names were reserved for $20, $10 or $5 each?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stitchified on August 27, 2015, 01:08:36 AM
Fundraising idea for Nate and crew:

Allow players to pay ahead of the re-opening to reserve character names (across all servers) and global names. The alternative is (of course) to just roll a name in-game and hope nobody got it already.

At $20 each I'd probably pay for only 2.
At $10 each I'd probably pay for 5.
At $5 each I'd probably pay for 7.

So for me, $10 per name seems to be the sweet spot for the revival effort to make the most money from me ($50).

How much would the rest of you be willing to spend if the names were reserved for $20, $10 or $5 each?

Eh... Personally, I don't think that there should be a cost to Reserve Names, that'd be like making people buy the Peacebringer, Warshade, Arachnos Widow & Soldier Archetypes... Top of that, $5 for 1 Name? That alone is a bit expensive just for a character name...

Lineage 2 is NCSoft's baby, their signature game.

It's like choosing to hire your less talented best friend over a more talented acquaintance. Not saying it's a good choice, but that's the way NCSoft seems to handle things.

That said, just because Lineage 2 is F2P and is considered an inferior game to CoH doesn't mean it deserves to be shut down. It could still be bringing them lots of money from the korean market.
I'm not saying Lineage 2 should be shut down, I just don't think it makes sense that NCsoft has a game that's completely F2P still running, and yet shut down CoH when it was making them money, no matter how small, CoH was still making them money... At the very least, they should've tried to sell CoH before now instead of sitting on it, specially when the reason given for shutting down CoH was because it wasn't making them money
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on August 27, 2015, 02:52:06 AM
I'm not saying Lineage 2 should be shut down, I just don't think it makes sense that NCsoft has a game that's completely F2P still running, and yet shut down CoH when it was making them money, no matter how small, CoH was still making them money... At the very least, they should've tried to sell CoH before now instead of sitting on it, specially when the reason given for shutting down CoH was because it wasn't making them money
Lineage 2 being f2p doesn't matter when Lineage 2's money intake dwarfed City's. F2P still means micro (and not-so-micro) transactions.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stitchified on August 27, 2015, 08:26:51 PM
Lineage 2 being f2p doesn't matter when Lineage 2's money intake dwarfed City's. F2P still means micro (and not-so-micro) transactions.
Good point, I just find it hard to believe that Lineage 2 was making way more money thru only those kinds of transactions when CoH had people paying $15 every month
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MegaWatt on August 27, 2015, 09:14:16 PM
i really wish we could use a different chat server architecture similar to Cryptics current line games....i HATE the concept of having to reserve names despite the game already having freaking @Names.

UNIQUE NAMES SUCK!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on August 27, 2015, 09:14:50 PM
At the very least, they should've tried to sell CoH before now instead of sitting on it, specially when the reason given for shutting down CoH was because it wasn't making them money

To the best of my knowledge, NCSoft never officially gave a specific reason for shutting down City of Heroes.  Nor is it likely they would have.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Bloodwrath on August 27, 2015, 09:20:02 PM
To the best of my knowledge, NCSoft never officially gave a specific reason for shutting down City of Heroes.  Nor is it likely they would have.

Yeah, I don't recall an official reason either. It was just "We're shutting you down. By the way, here's an advertisement for Boobs & Soul."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on August 28, 2015, 01:41:47 AM
To the best of my knowledge, NCSoft never officially gave a specific reason for shutting down City of Heroes.  Nor is it likely they would have.

Admitting that it was an act of spite would have been bad PR.  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on August 28, 2015, 02:21:33 AM
Admitting that it was an act of spite would have been bad PR.  :P

I just cannot accept that it was an act of spite or maliciousness. There had to be a valid business reason, right or wrong, someone had to think retiring the game was a good idea and best for business at that time.

While we as players don't get it, the idea of a Korean business showing loyalty to American customers really seems to be a "foreign" concept to NcSoft. I do think they learned something from the unanticipated public backlash, while it may not significantly change their business model, it does now give them pause a for consideration. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stitchified on August 28, 2015, 04:06:55 AM
I just cannot accept that it was an act of spite or maliciousness. There had to be a valid business reason, right or wrong, someone had to think retiring the game was a good idea and best for business at that time.

While we as players don't get it, the idea of a Korean business showing loyalty to American customers really seems to be a "foreign" concept to NcSoft. I do think they learned something from the unanticipated public backlash, while it may not significantly change their business model, it does now give them pause a for consideration.
One can only hope that NCsoft learned from it, it'll suck if it turns out that they haven't learned a thing...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on August 28, 2015, 04:34:21 AM
While we as players don't get it, the idea of a Korean business showing loyalty to American customers really seems to be a "foreign" concept to NcSoft. I do think they learned something from the unanticipated public backlash, while it may not significantly change their business model, it does now give them pause a for consideration.

I'm sure the next time they buy an MMO from an American developer and attempt to operate it in the North American market with a wholly owned subsidiary composed of former employees of that developer and then decide to shut it down, they'll contemplate it for several more minutes before starting the paperwork.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on August 28, 2015, 05:06:22 AM
Good point, I just find it hard to believe that Lineage 2 was making way more money thru only those kinds of transactions when CoH had people paying $15 every month

Koreans spend beau coups on their f2p games. Like, insane amounts. They kind of have to, otherwise it's a monumental grind. It's still a grind even after spending money to boost their gameplay!

Hell, Lineage-the-original-one just about equals the rest of NCsoft's game folio (including Lineage2) combined in the second quarter of 2015. http://mmos.com/news/lineage-1-profit-exceeds-blade-and-soul-aion-lineage-2-and-gw2-combined
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on August 28, 2015, 10:48:19 AM
I just cannot accept that it was an act of spite or maliciousness. There had to be a valid business reason, right or wrong, someone had to think retiring the game was a good idea and best for business at that time.

Well I mean, Paragon Studios very nearly succeeded in purchasing the game and splitting off on its own, but conflict between NCSoft management and certain individuals at Paragon killed that.  Obviously there had to be a reason for those negotiations in the first place, but the end result was the game shutting down entirely (versus changing ownership) due to this conflict.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on August 28, 2015, 01:37:55 PM
Perspective:

When you have a game based in another country making less than 1% of what your other games make - then this game decides to try and buy its way out of your stable. It could definitely rub some people the wrong way - and it did. Then you add on top of that some personality conflicts and NCSoft decided - its not worth the aggravation.

I know to us walking away from $10 million a year seems like a lot - to them it is chicken feed. When you back away and gain perspective you see that NCSoft said - give the players a couple of months and then close it down, we have other things in the works with the Nexon mergers and don't have time for this.

Then we deluged them with emails and other things and they said make this stop and go away. Now we have an effort that has none of the personality issues and I would highly doubt if they are dealing with anyone who was in on the closure. They are talking to the dead game storage folks and the legal department. You likely have a VP of some sort thrown in - but this game to the main company is history. They find no reason to revisit a game that failed in Korea. Look at where their money comes from:
http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/9392/NCSoft-Earnings-Not-Everyones-Drinking-Champagne-in-the-Executive-Suite.html

Here they tie Wildstar who are VERY similar to CoH except they are earning less than when they shut CoH down. When you saw the statement by NCSoft about closing CoH to refocus on other locations - they meant - we can't seem to figure out what makes America and Europe tick - but we can make bucket loads in Korea.


Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on August 28, 2015, 01:43:32 PM
I'm sure the next time they buy an MMO from an American developer and attempt to operate it in the North American market with a wholly owned subsidiary composed of former employees of that developer and then decide to shut it down, they'll contemplate it for several more minutes before starting the paperwork.

Wildstar is sinking rapidly.

I think these forays into the American market that are failing is the reason Nexon is trying to step in. They merged and tied themselves to NCSoft and then watch NCSoft screw up game after game. I honestly think the Nexon executives think - we can do better - maybe they can!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on August 28, 2015, 05:44:11 PM
Wildstar is sinking rapidly.

I tried the beta for a day or two. The graphics were amazing, but absolutely everything else was just MEH. So much so that I just logged out the 3rd time, after a total of maybe 20 hours of play, and decided I had seen all there was to see.

When are MMO companies going to realize that we want CONTENT and not just better graphics?

Of course this community also wants games where the holy trinity isn't the solution to all problems. We're so spoiled.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on August 29, 2015, 05:30:42 PM
Good point, I just find it hard to believe that Lineage 2 was making way more money thru only those kinds of transactions when CoH had people paying $15 every month

Couple things to keep in mind when making this comparison. You might have one person spending a couple hundred at a time on Micro in L2, on top of the bunch of people who are buying little bits at a time.
You've also got * A LOT * more people who play L2 than ever played CoH.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on August 29, 2015, 05:46:11 PM
Couple things to keep in mind when making this comparison. You might have one person spending a couple hundred at a time on Micro in L2, on top of the bunch of people who are buying little bits at a time.
You've also got * A LOT * more people who play L2 than ever played CoH.

(https://i.imgur.com/7DJAdpZ.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on August 30, 2015, 04:08:45 AM
(https://i.imgur.com/7DJAdpZ.jpg)

A mobile gaming company admitted 50 percent of its income came from less than 1 percent of its players.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on August 30, 2015, 04:30:29 AM
A mobile gaming company admitted 50 percent of its income came from less than 1 percent of its players.

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i.kinja-img.com%2Fgawker-media%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Fb1fiu0qpdk7d0khhd1pb.gif)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: rebel 1812 on August 31, 2015, 11:33:00 AM
Perspective:

When you have a game based in another country making less than 1% of what your other games make - then this game decides to try and buy its way out of your stable. It could definitely rub some people the wrong way - and it did. Then you add on top of that some personality conflicts and NCSoft decided - its not worth the aggravation.

I know to us walking away from $10 million a year seems like a lot - to them it is chicken feed. When you back away and gain perspective you see that NCSoft said - give the players a couple of months and then close it down, we have other things in the works with the Nexon mergers and don't have time for this.

Then we deluged them with emails and other things and they said make this stop and go away. Now we have an effort that has none of the personality issues and I would highly doubt if they are dealing with anyone who was in on the closure. They are talking to the dead game storage folks and the legal department. You likely have a VP of some sort thrown in - but this game to the main company is history. They find no reason to revisit a game that failed in Korea. Look at where their money comes from:
http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/9392/NCSoft-Earnings-Not-Everyones-Drinking-Champagne-in-the-Executive-Suite.html

Here they tie Wildstar who are VERY similar to CoH except they are earning less than when they shut CoH down. When you saw the statement by NCSoft about closing CoH to refocus on other locations - they meant - we can't seem to figure out what makes America and Europe tick - but we can make bucket loads in Korea.

"deluge them with emails and other things"

I don't like how you make that sound like a bad thing.  A good business person would look at it as communication between themselves and their customers and thus a good thing.  A bad business person would think, "how dare this arrive in my ivory tower from the plebs and why don't they just send me money".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on August 31, 2015, 03:31:09 PM
They didn't like it - we didn't know it at the time.
When we got the actual Corporate email accounts of the top 3 in the company - they liked it a whole lot less.

In fact NCSoft explicitly said when the new talks started we don't want to be buried in emails.

NCSoft can do business how they like. I don't like the way they have conducted themselves either but it isn't my choice - it is theirs. They handled this poorly and as in all large companies no one is going to admit that. If they did they could get fired, so they will say everything was wonderful and move on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Auroxis on August 31, 2015, 03:41:25 PM
"deluge them with emails and other things"

I don't like how you make that sound like a bad thing.  A good business person would look at it as communication between themselves and their customers and thus a good thing.  A bad business person would think, "how dare this arrive in my ivory tower from the plebs and why don't they just send me money".

That depends on the nature of communication. If they were getting tons of "screw you guys, never playing your games again if you go through with the closure" mails with very few constructive stuff in-between then it's not surprising they wanted less mails.

After all, if you have to sift through a big pile of crap in order to find a few nice gems, you'd probably prefer it to be a smaller pile of crap. Especially if the gems aren't that valuable to begin with.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on August 31, 2015, 03:58:05 PM
That depends on the nature of communication. If they were getting tons of "screw you guys, never playing your games again if you go through with the closure" mails with very few constructive stuff in-between then it's not surprising they wanted less mails.

After all, if you have to sift through a big pile of crap in order to find a few nice gems, you'd probably prefer it to be a smaller pile of crap. Especially if the gems aren't that valuable to begin with.


No, my interpretation from reading this thread the last 18 months is this:  ncsoft does not want to hear from the COH community rank and file.  Period. Good, bad or otherwise.  If you want to blather glowingly all over their Facebook page on a current product--great.

 Ncsoft is willing to talk to the present negotiators after going through some kinda process to even get introduced.  The community:  no email, no masks, no hate mail, no nothing related to COH directly to them as it will only be a further complication.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on August 31, 2015, 05:29:25 PM
If you want to carry around the ate for NCSoft that is your affair.

I look at the company and just take note that they are clueless as to what the Western market likes. They finally came to the same conclusion. I was amazed at Wildstar as I thought surely they won't try it again - well they did and it fell flat on it's face.

I just don't believe they understand the market.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on August 31, 2015, 06:25:08 PM
Nyah, ncsoft is not going anywhere soon out of North America.  They have a warmed over Blades and Steel franchise to deliver and some sort of foray into mobile gaming with no ETA.

  I don't think I have read about any up and coming mmo projects lately, but they have plenty of legacy product cash coming in for now.

No, no hate for now.  The negotiators just don't need the community to kick into gear again or make big grand gestures again.    The effort will hurt way more than help in any intention.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on August 31, 2015, 07:10:45 PM
You see I think Nexon wants to move into our market and also wants NCSoft to head this way.

I think this is what their big fight is over.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on August 31, 2015, 07:25:06 PM
You see I think Nexon wants to move into our market and also wants NCSoft to head this way.

I think this is what their big fight is over.

Well you can build it yourself or you can buy your way in. There is no formula for success either way.  I think nexxon has a better North America and would just get rid of an Asian rival.  Anyways, good day all !
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on August 31, 2015, 08:47:18 PM
You see I think Nexon wants to move into our market and also wants NCSoft to head this way.

I think this is what their big fight is over.

Well, then it might make sense for them to revive a game that was popular and profitable in North America but not in Asia, right?

I'm betting a re-opened City of Heroes would bring in more income than Wildstar.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on August 31, 2015, 09:01:59 PM
If you want to carry around the ate for NCSoft that is your affair.

I look at the company and just take note that they are clueless as to what the Western market likes. They finally came to the same conclusion. I was amazed at Wildstar as I thought surely they won't try it again - well they did and it fell flat on it's face.

I just don't believe they understand the market.

I am not abandoning my hate for NCSoft any time soon.

In fact I avoid their games; because I do not trust them. I understand if the game financials where in the red I would have moved on gracefully; but that was not the case they where making money. That puts me in the why would you ever play another NcSoft game just because the game is making money does not mean they will keep it up and running.

If any one ask about NcSoft game that is my first question out of my mouth can you trust them (the answer is no).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on August 31, 2015, 09:06:16 PM
That depends on the nature of communication. If they were getting tons of "screw you guys, never playing your games again if you go through with the closure" mails with very few constructive stuff in-between then it's not surprising they wanted less mails.

After all, if you have to sift through a big pile of crap in order to find a few nice gems, you'd probably prefer it to be a smaller pile of crap. Especially if the gems aren't that valuable to begin with.

It doesn't matter what the content of the messages are.  Sending hundreds or thousands of emails to a personal email account has only one function: to be disruptive.  Being surprised that is perceived as anything other than extremely negatively is rather nuts.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Bloodwrath on August 31, 2015, 09:22:16 PM
I don't know about anyone else, but I was extremely polite and civil in my letter to NCsoft's CEO.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on August 31, 2015, 10:14:51 PM
I don't know about anyone else, but I was extremely polite and civil in my letter to NCsoft's CEO.

Maybe so, but any email that an executive is reading should be relevant to their business, or it's effectively spam. No matter how nice or polite it is.
And a CEO's business is NOT to get opinions or suggestions from fans of a game, much less such a minor one such as CoH. They have lower level managers who are supposed to take care of communication with players, sorting and grouping suggestions and opinions, and delivering single reports out of hundreds or thousands of emails or forum posts.

When a CEO gets an email that, even if they still cared about the game, would be the province of a manager several steps down on the job organization chart, that email is spam to them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlphaFerret on August 31, 2015, 10:25:32 PM
If NCSoft does finally return Coh to us, I will gladly purchase several of their upcoming titles.  I had previously purchase Aion, Lineage 2, and Guild Wars all due to the affiliation with Coh.  Since the closure, I have looked elsewhere.

Just give us our City back already.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Bloodwrath on September 01, 2015, 08:21:39 PM
Maybe so, but any email that an executive is reading should be relevant to their business, or it's effectively spam. No matter how nice or polite it is.
And a CEO's business is NOT to get opinions or suggestions from fans of a game, much less such a minor one such as CoH. They have lower level managers who are supposed to take care of communication with players, sorting and grouping suggestions and opinions, and delivering single reports out of hundreds or thousands of emails or forum posts.

When a CEO gets an email that, even if they still cared about the game, would be the province of a manager several steps down on the job organization chart, that email is spam to them.

My letter wasn't an email. I sent hard copy. In any case, considering that they had announced that they were cancelling CoH at the time, I'd say it was pretty relevant to their business especially if they wanted to keep all of those customers. But... apparently they didn't. *Shrug.*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 01, 2015, 09:29:49 PM
My letter wasn't an email. I sent hard copy. In any case, considering that they had announced that they were cancelling CoH at the time, I'd say it was pretty relevant to their business especially if they wanted to keep all of those customers. But... apparently they didn't. *Shrug.*

Who's "they?"  The fact that your letter was a hard copy letter actually helps your cause a bit, insofar as letters directly addressed to the CEO care of the business address were almost certainly pre-screened by assistants or secretaries, but it also means the odds the CEO actually saw it were minimal.

Getting back to the question, who's "they?"  Your specific complaint or perspective on City of Heroes is relevant to NCSoft in a general vague sense, but relevant to the CEO's work day practically not at all.  Its unfortunate, and players refused to accept it, but when the decision makers at NCSoft decided to shutter City of Heroes and Paragon Studios, they collectively did so knowing four things:

1.  Many existing City of Heroes players would not approve of the decision

2.  Some percentage of City of Heroes players would react sufficiently negatively so as to cost them those customers for all future cross-sell

3.  Some percentage of City of Heroes players would react vocally to the decision, denigrating the decision and the company in as many public channels as possible

4.  Some percentage of City of Heroes players would demand action be taken to reverse that decision.


So, my question is: what new piece of information did you attempt to communicate to the CEO of NCSoft, that he and/or his officers and employees collectively didn't already know?  At the time, I encouraged people to voice their opinions and express their conscience in whatever way they felt was appropriate.  But I also stated as a matter of fact that it was unlikely to matter (at least to NCSoft) for the simple reason that nothing any of those players did was lilkely to be new information.  Those expressions meant more to the community making them than it did to the target of them.  We were not going to engage them in an open discussion of their business practices.  Probability zero.  We were not going to be able to convince them to change their minds with a novel argument because we did not possess any new information that could change their minds.  The only thing we could maybe do is create such a disruption to them that they decided to reverse their decision in order to save the expense of dealing with the situation.  But we simply lacked the firepower necessary to accomplish that goal, and  in my opinion at no time were there enough City of Heroes players to accomplish that even if every single one of us acted in a coordinated fashion.

If I'm the CEO of NCSoft, you can't send me enough letters to change my mind, assuming I even made the decision in the first place.  You certainly can't send me enough letters to question the decision of a subbordinate officer about a business unit that's a round off error on my balance sheets.  The only thing you can do is send me enough letters and emails to disrupt my day and make it harder for me to do my job.  Which will make me all kinds of happy with you and sympathetic to your cause.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Bloodwrath on September 01, 2015, 09:48:08 PM
Oh sure, they probably knew those four things, but their flailing over the backlash seems to indicate that they underestimated the numbers and damage that they predicted. I'd say every little letter that was sent communicated that basic fact. Hell, the stock crash that hit them during that time was just frosting on the cake and makes me wonder who realized that they were holding the hot potato.

As for "they?" The execs and managers who made the "brilliant" decision to cancel, whoever they may be. I don't think any actual names were supplied that I recall.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 02, 2015, 12:34:45 AM
Oh sure, they probably knew those four things, but their flailing over the backlash seems to indicate that they underestimated the numbers and damage that they predicted.

"Flailing?"  I literally have no idea what could possibility be interpreted as anything other than the day after they announced the shutdown they moved on completely from it, and never once expressed any regret for it.  Or expressed anything about anything about it.

Quote
Hell, the stock crash that hit them during that time was just frosting on the cake and makes me wonder who realized that they were holding the hot potato.

"Holding the hot potato?"  I think your narrative of how events played out has significant inconsistencies with reality.  You seem to have this mental picture of an epic battle between a few nasty NCSoft executives and the CoH player community.  In fact, this "fight" was totally one-sided, on our side.  We bombarded them with complaints.  They basically ignored us and went about their business.  And as far as the Paragon Studios shutdown is concerned, that's the end of that story.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 02, 2015, 12:42:44 AM
In fact, this "fight" was totally one-sided, on our side.  We bombarded them with complaints.  They basically ignored us and went about their business.

They conned very VERY deep purple and 1-shotted all of us.
Rez plz?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Bloodwrath on September 02, 2015, 02:12:40 AM
"Flailing?"  I literally have no idea what could possibility be interpreted as anything other than the day after they announced the shutdown they moved on completely from it, and never once expressed any regret for it.  Or expressed anything about anything about it.

Really, so you don't remember the pleading to make the emails and letters stop because it was making "work difficult?" Because I do. If they ignored us completely as you claim, they wouldn't have even said that. It would have just been flat, outright silence.

Quote
"Holding the hot potato?"  I think your narrative of how events played out has significant inconsistencies with reality.

What else do you call that stock plummet after their announcement? It took a complete nosedive when the backlash manifested. It took a few months for it to start turning upward again; I know this because I remember watching it daily.

 
Quote
You seem to have this mental picture of an epic battle between a few nasty NCSoft executives and the CoH player community.  In fact, this "fight" was totally one-sided, on our side.  We bombarded them with complaints.  They basically ignored us and went about their business.  And as far as the Paragon Studios shutdown is concerned, that's the end of that story.

And they've been stubborn about selling the game and IP, asking for outrageous prices. So? I'm not being as full of hyperbole as you're claiming, but there was some minimal effort at damage control made whether you want to acknowledge that or not.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 02, 2015, 04:48:24 AM
asking for outrageous prices
Actually, Nate Downes said there was a price that was doable. Of course, don't let that ruin your crusade.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Bloodwrath on September 02, 2015, 04:59:50 AM
Actually, Nate Downes said there was a price that was doable. Of course, don't let that ruin your crusade.

If there was, that was never reported to me. How long ago was that, I wonder? Because back during the shutdown, I had a little birdy telling me some prices that were quite unbelievable. But go ahead, get insulting if you want.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 02, 2015, 05:13:21 AM
Really, so you don't remember the pleading to make the emails and letters stop because it was making "work difficult?" Because I do. If they ignored us completely as you claim, they wouldn't have even said that. It would have just been flat, outright silence.

"Please stop sending crap to us" is not the same thing as engaging with us.  Its the exact opposite.  And even the word "plead" has connotations that aren't true.

Quote
What else do you call that stock plummet after their announcement?

A coincidence.  Its more likely the stock dropped after NCSoft reported significant losses in the previous period.  For that matter, the stock rose significantly for about a year after the game actually shutdown.  Also a coincidence, and probably due to the fact that NCSoft's financial strengthened after the third quarter.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Bloodwrath on September 02, 2015, 05:19:21 AM
"Please stop sending crap to us" is not the same thing as engaging with us.  Its the exact opposite.  And even the word "plead" has connotations that aren't true.

A whine is a whine is a whine. I think that was the point we should have simply ramped up the pressure with the letters and capes and not passively acquiesce to their demand. It gave hint that it was having an effect.

Quote
A coincidence.  Its more likely the stock dropped after NCSoft reported significant losses in the previous period.  For that matter, the stock rose significantly for about a year after the game actually shutdown.  Also a coincidence, and probably due to the fact that NCSoft's financial strengthened after the third quarter.

Interestingly placed coincidence, right after the noise of the saber rattling was hitting the gaming news sites no less.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 02, 2015, 05:20:29 AM
If there was, that was never reported to me. How long ago was that, I wonder? Because back during the shutdown, I had a little birdy telling me some prices that were quite unbelievable. But go ahead, get insulting if you want.

At the time of the shutdown, I had multiple direct statements that said price itself was not the problem.  It was high, but doable, particularly given the revenue numbers I was given at the same time.

And none of that was "damage control" because those particular discussions happened before the shutdown announcement.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 02, 2015, 05:25:37 AM
Interestingly placed coincidence, right after the noise of the saber rattling was hitting the gaming news sites no less.

Your opinion of the CoH community's actual influence is laudable but inexplicable.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Bloodwrath on September 02, 2015, 05:27:21 AM
At the time of the shutdown, I had multiple direct statements that said price itself was not the problem.  It was high, but doable, particularly given the revenue numbers I was given at the same time.

And none of that was "damage control" because those particular discussions happened before the shutdown announcement.

I'm not talking about the period where Paragon Studios was attempting to become independent. I was talking about the purchase offers by other companies/individuals after the shutdown announcement. I had an informant, quite respectable in this community too, who'd been passing me a few tidbits about those efforts.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 02, 2015, 05:32:55 AM
If there was, that was never reported to me. How long ago was that, I wonder? Because back during the shutdown, I had a little birdy telling me some prices that were quite unbelievable. But go ahead, get insulting if you want.
I don't know, maybe in the first post in the new efforts thread???
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Bloodwrath on September 02, 2015, 05:43:10 AM
I don't know, maybe in the first post in the new efforts thread???

*Shrug.* I don't really see that anywhere in that post. I see that midway last year (which is significantly after my informant had given me details) they finally got a workable, potential proposal and negotiation going. But I don't see anything about the original prices NCsoft was asking for with this venture? Maybe I'm missing it? Could you point out the sentence in his post I might be overlooking?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: drmanbot on September 02, 2015, 12:53:44 PM
While I appreciate the lingering animosity toward NCSoft for  closing the game, it really can't be said enough:

1) This was a business decision , not some vindicitve act to ruin a beloved past time.

2) There is a HUGE cultural divide between US and Korean business practices; efforts such as emailing campaigns and other forms of protest that would influence a business here, really have little or no impact there. By way of example, look at how they terminated the Paragon Staff. On a Frdiay, no warning, and that was that. Its just not done that way here. So not only do Nate and the crew have to deal with contractual negotiations, they also have to navigate issues that would not normally be a factor in a domestic negotiation.

I want the game back as much as anyone. What I don't want to see is a potential revivial of a "Boycott this" or " make them uncomfortable  that" because it simply  will not work It will also impede whatever negotiations are out there.

Business moves at the speed of business. Please Keep Calm, and for now, Icon On.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 02, 2015, 01:04:47 PM
But I don't see anything about the original prices NCsoft was asking for with this venture?

Those numbers were never released. The only people in a position to know that were the people in the room, and none of them have talked. Believe me, I tried, and while I was able to get some interesting bits of info from people outside the room, they didn't know those kinds of details.

Unless you're talking about that stupid $80 million rumor that seems to have started as a forumgoer's estimate of something and somehow mutated into "NCSoft's insane asking price". That's an irritatingly persistent one, right up to the point as of being presented to people at Valve, et al. by their underlings as the price point -- at least until they did the research and realized it was bogus. That one really just needs to die already. It's laughably far off, as the few buyout attempts to actually get past the ncsoft desk clerks found out. It didn't help that a few prominent people in the community who should really know better repeated it without verifying what it was or where it came from.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 02, 2015, 02:19:28 PM
Yeah, $80 Million is...far off.

The numbers are exactly the kind of thing that are unlikely to be released, or very openly discussed. Especially during negotiations. I'm certainly not going to do it, and I'm sure most everyone else who does have information on it will defer to Nate's judgement.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 02, 2015, 03:46:52 PM
The $80 million myth came from a relative of someone who worked at NCSoft in Austin.

They were under the assumption some new tax changes in Texas would cause the buy out price to include other tax liabilities. This believe it or not was the myth that changed everything.

Once I ran this down and it was found to be untrue - the relative was a sister to one of the folks now making the effort to buy the game! They then contacted some of the original TFHM team and was able to get to the person at NCSoft who could actually make the decision to sell the game.

Other groups had tried to get through but did not have the name of the person and so got stopped by the wall of minions who stop progress. It is like the old saying if you have to ask someone for the name or price - they don't want to talk to you.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on September 02, 2015, 04:13:11 PM
Heh.  All this "Sure, it may have been your favorite game of all time, a game by which all other games before and since have come to be judged (and all found wanting), but to NCSoft, it was just a teeny tiny nothing, so you shouldn't be mad about it" is not having the intended effect, I think.

Hey, Chun Li, Bison doesn't even remember murdering your father.  It was just a Tuesday for him.  So lay off all the anger, okay?

(Yeah, yeah, I know that's not a perfect analogy, but that's how I feel.  The fact that what they took away from me - from all of us - was so insignificant to them does not make me feel better at all, it makes me feel worse)



Edited because, even after all this time, I saw a grammatical mistake.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: RGladden on September 02, 2015, 05:05:55 PM
Hey....NcSoft!  Please....oh, pretty PLEASE....with SUGAR on top!    :'(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: RGladden on September 02, 2015, 05:08:04 PM
I HATE to beg.  I feel so...so....dirty!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on September 02, 2015, 05:37:13 PM
By way of example, look at how they terminated the Paragon Staff. On a Frdiay, no warning, and that was that. Its just not done that way here.

I guess you can say that half a day before end of shift is "some" warning, but I have been terminated on a Friday, with half a day's notice. It sorta pissed me off. However, I can see a reason for why they did that. Still doesn't make me think it was a really good reason though.

To that the it doesn't happen here is, quite frankly, wrong. It does. Just not that often and usually for certain fields of employment, like Secuirty. Can't have a disgruntled security guard with Top Secret clearance roaming free at the facility after they've been told that they will no longer be employed at the company. Right? I mean, the guy just can't be trusted.  :roll:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 02, 2015, 05:44:10 PM
I HATE to beg.  I feel so...so....dirty!

Behind closed doors... There are no rules. Beg away.


Did I really just type that?

Also, sorry for typing that insane price myself. I just found it in the search fu. Good luck to the Legacy crew.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 02, 2015, 07:14:35 PM
Those numbers were never released. The only people in a position to know that were the people in the room, and none of them have talked. Believe me, I tried, and while I was able to get some interesting bits of info from people outside the room, they didn't know those kinds of details.

As far as I know, the exact precise details of the NCSoft proposal were never disclosed, but you could confine that number with information people were willing to discuss to a degree, combined with information most people didn't know but some people outside the room did know.  When I say a little birdy told me something, I know those birdies are probably making educated guessed, but one thing I did at the time was ask the birdies to take me through their thought process and that was informative.

The question was not what did NCSoft offer, but what deal was Paragon willing to make, combined with the fact that we know the eventual final offer was *close* to what they were willing and able to do, but with a deal breaker.  That took a lot of circumferential discussion to bracket.  For example, its helpful to know how much money City of Heroes was actually making at the time, because any deal starts and ends there.  And even this one number is contentious.  I believe it was contentious even in the room.

Also, you'd be surprised what people can sometimes leak by accident.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on September 02, 2015, 07:25:09 PM
By way of example, look at how they terminated the Paragon Staff. On a Frdiay, no warning, and that was that. Its just not done that way here.

Completely wrong, I'm afraid. I work as a computer programmer. I've been laid off twice and fired once, and both times it was "I'm going to have to let you go. Here's a box. Security will escort you to your desk to collect your personal items." If it's done any other way, there's just too much risk that you'll walk out the door with code or data, or cause some damage before walking out.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on September 02, 2015, 07:36:25 PM
Friday is a popular day for layoffs in the US. It's something they teach you when training for management jobs. Apparently letting people go on Friday is supposed reduce the likelihood of workplace violence (e.g. coming back the next day and shooting the place up). Something to do with having the weekend to think things over and cool off. Decent severage pay helps with that as well. Not that it matters as much if you're shutting down a whole office at once, but it's not an uncommon day to choose.

Very rarely do people get notice in a corporate environment. Only if it's a challenging position that needs some cross-training first. Otherwise they find out that day, and often managers will put in a call to IT asking to lock the account while they're back in HR going over the details. That way people can't send out half-cocked rant emails to a whole division at once before thinking about it (which has happened before, and is why the 'All Employees' distribution list doesn't let just anybody send to it). It's all very impersonal, but it's SOP at numerous medium to large size companies.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 02, 2015, 07:48:05 PM
I work in the Corporate environment, if someone gets canned it is Friday 4pm every time.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 02, 2015, 08:17:59 PM
Completely wrong, I'm afraid. I work as a computer programmer. I've been laid off twice and fired once, and both times it was "I'm going to have to let you go. Here's a box. Security will escort you to your desk to collect your personal items." If it's done any other way, there's just too much risk that you'll walk out the door with code or data, or cause some damage before walking out.

In fact this is so ingrained as standard practice that businesses can be held liable for damages employees inflict upon their former employers on the way out the door on the presumption that failing to immediately revoke all access to anything important is a form of incompetence, specifically for cases of involuntary termination (the presumption is that voluntary termination is not as sensitive, because anything the employee wanted to do before leaving he or she could have done before announcing his or her departure).

I've actually dinged clients under audit for failing to have involuntary termination policies that demand that terminations happen in basically this way.  Its unfortunate, but it is what it is.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 02, 2015, 08:29:27 PM
My favorite was the dual simultaneous meetings. If you were invited to one you were immediately "laid off" and an army of security marched all of you to the door. If you went to the other you were given a little speech about how this was needed for the company and then they sent you back to work.


Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Bloodwrath on September 02, 2015, 08:54:26 PM
Those numbers were never released. The only people in a position to know that were the people in the room, and none of them have talked. Believe me, I tried, and while I was able to get some interesting bits of info from people outside the room, they didn't know those kinds of details.

Unless you're talking about that stupid $80 million rumor that seems to have started as a forumgoer's estimate of something and somehow mutated into "NCSoft's insane asking price". That's an irritatingly persistent one, right up to the point as of being presented to people at Valve, et al. by their underlings as the price point -- at least until they did the research and realized it was bogus. That one really just needs to die already. It's laughably far off, as the few buyout attempts to actually get past the ncsoft desk clerks found out. It didn't help that a few prominent people in the community who should really know better repeated it without verifying what it was or where it came from.

The $80 million myth came from a relative of someone who worked at NCSoft in Austin.

They were under the assumption some new tax changes in Texas would cause the buy out price to include other tax liabilities. This believe it or not was the myth that changed everything.

Once I ran this down and it was found to be untrue - the relative was a sister to one of the folks now making the effort to buy the game! They then contacted some of the original TFHM team and was able to get to the person at NCSoft who could actually make the decision to sell the game.

Other groups had tried to get through but did not have the name of the person and so got stopped by the wall of minions who stop progress. It is like the old saying if you have to ask someone for the name or price - they don't want to talk to you.

Mmm... okay, sounds like a reasonable set of occurrences. I'll let the guy who was whispering to me these things in late 2012 and early 2013 come forward if he likes to explain his part of why he was spreading the details he was--that is, assuming he's even reading this thread; I know he's active here. But thanks for clarifying things on the price issue.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 02, 2015, 09:36:12 PM
Completely wrong, I'm afraid. I work as a computer programmer. I've been laid off twice and fired once, and both times it was "I'm going to have to let you go. Here's a box. Security will escort you to your desk to collect your personal items." If it's done any other way, there's just too much risk that you'll walk out the door with code or data, or cause some damage before walking out.

I was part of a layoff and I was a month transition that I had to stay and work for a month before I would be severed. I stayed around with my full control on the IT side no less for an extra month then again we had a merger and still had work to do and they where giving me a good 6months of salary to go away plus some extra perks with the layoff. You know that song take the money and run yea I did that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 02, 2015, 10:03:00 PM
Completely wrong, I'm afraid. I work as a computer programmer. I've been laid off twice and fired once, and both times it was "I'm going to have to let you go. Here's a box. Security will escort you to your desk to collect your personal items." If it's done any other way, there's just too much risk that you'll walk out the door with code or data, or cause some damage before walking out.

Hurray for cloud storage!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: FourSpeed on September 03, 2015, 12:02:42 AM
My favorite was the dual simultaneous meetings. If you were invited to one you were immediately "laid off" and an army of security marched all of you to the door. If you went to the other you were given a little speech about how this was needed for the company and then they sent you back to work.
Been there, done that... I don't recall the day of the week (it was a *l o n g* time ago), but it *was* first thing in the morning, because after packing our stuff, 4 or 5 of us who were in the layoff batch, went over to the local bar for an early lunch to comiserate, grouse, and have a couple (ok, several  :-X) beverages.

While I generally agree that in my field (IT programming), it is pretty common to "get walked to the door" by security,  I've also been in some companies where folks were given advance notice that they were getting RIF'd (Reduction in Force), so they could post internally for other possible positions.

Like many things in business -- "it depends".   


Regards,
4
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 03, 2015, 01:39:25 PM
Nothing like interviewing for your own job again.........
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 03, 2015, 02:33:02 PM
Heh.  All this "Sure, it may have been your favorite game of all time, a game by which all other games before and since have come to be judged (and all found wanting), but to NCSoft, it was just a teeny tiny nothing, so you shouldn't be mad about it" is not having the intended affect, I think.

Hey, Chun Li, Bison doesn't even remember murdering your father.  It was just a Tuesday for him.  So lay off all the anger, okay?

(Yeah, yeah, I know that's not a perfect analogy, but that's how I feel.  The fact that what they took away from me - from all of us - was so insignificant to them does not make me feel better at all, it makes me feel worse)

This is pretty much where I'm at.

Side note:
I had a dream that I was a Warshade last night. I don't know what that means, but it happened regardless.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on September 03, 2015, 02:49:17 PM
Hurray for cloud storage!!

I used to hoard code when I was first starting out (and first learning Java), but I no longer do that. Re-writing is a golden opportunity to fix foundational items you wish you had done differently. The one "big gun" piece of software that people hire me for I have actually re-written 5 times now, and the latest version is absolutely the most capable, cleanest and most readable of any of them, mainly because I learned to apply design patterns in a deliberate way.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 03, 2015, 06:33:15 PM
This is pretty much where I'm at.

Side note:
I had a dream that I was a Warshade last night. I don't know what that means, but it happened regardless.

It means your chest cavity will soon burst open with an alien in its second form scratching and biting its way out.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zerohour on September 03, 2015, 08:48:16 PM
So, people here are still using the "business takes as long as it takes" excuse to keep this dream going? 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on September 03, 2015, 08:56:59 PM
So, people here are still using the "business takes as long as it takes" excuse to keep this dream going?

It's not a "dream," as the negotiations are active and alive. And it's not an "excuse" either, since we are getting assurances from the team doing the negotiations that they are proceeding.

The worst that could happen is the deal falls through. Even then, we'll have Heroes and Villains, City of Titans and Valiance Online to choose from. All 3 seem to be making notable forward progress, and it seems all 3 will probably be going to beta in the next couple of years.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 03, 2015, 09:33:00 PM
So, people here are still using the "business takes as long as it takes" excuse to keep this dream going?
Aren't you the bastion of positivity. You do not seem to understand how business is or how long business takes. Iron Wolf has repeatedly said that the Nate and the team has to deal with Nc Soft, they are a Korean company, so that means they have to play their game.
You are free to think and believe anything you want, however, I think you might only have a very few people think that. I would like to think there are a lot more thinking we will get our home back. Even I have to say if this attempt fails does not mean that will be over and done.

It's not a "dream," as the negotiations are active and alive. And it's not an "excuse" either, since we are getting assurances from the team doing the negotiations that they are proceeding.

The worst that could happen is the deal falls through. Even then, we'll have Heroes and Villains, City of Titans and Valiance Online to choose from. All 3 seem to be making notable forward progress, and it seems all 3 will probably be going to beta in the next couple of years.


Exactly chuck :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on September 03, 2015, 09:54:49 PM
So, people here are still using the "business takes as long as it takes" excuse to keep this dream going?

Sorry, the regularly scheduled iteration of this conversation is supposed to be in the new efforts thread.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mistress Bloodwrath on September 03, 2015, 10:19:38 PM
So, people here are still using the "business takes as long as it takes" excuse to keep this dream going?

Considering that's pretty much exactly how business works, it's amusing that you even can call it an excuse. Let's hope you never have to deal with a government office; they're even slower.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 03, 2015, 11:47:14 PM
Considering that's pretty much exactly how business works, it's amusing that you even can call it an excuse. Let's hope you never have to deal with a government office; they're even slower.
On three occasions the company i work for ended up working directly for a government agency instead of an artist or gallery or estate. (We do sculpture fabrication and restoration.) Each time it's been a long drawn-out annoyance with many, many irrelevant requirements added to what is normally a straightforward job. Each time it's over we say we hope to never do it again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 04, 2015, 12:27:45 AM
So, people here are still using the "business takes as long as it takes" excuse to keep this dream going?

I'm picturing popping into a discussion group on general relativity and saying "still using the 'space-time can be curved' excuse to keep this dream going" only when I do it there a ",eh?" at the end.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zerohour on September 04, 2015, 12:30:19 AM
Aren't you the bastion of positivity. You do not seem to understand how business is or how long business takes. Iron Wolf has repeatedly said that the Nate and the team has to deal with Nc Soft, they are a Korean company, so that means they have to play their game.
You are free to think and believe anything you want, however, I think you might only have a very few people think that. I would like to think there are a lot more thinking we will get our home back. Even I have to say if this attempt fails does not mean that will be over and done.

What's it been, about 3 years now since this started?  Does that seem acceptable?  And while we are at it, where are these updates from the negotiation team?  The "new efforts" thread hasn't been updated in months.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 04, 2015, 12:46:06 AM
What's it been, about 3 years now since this started?  Does that seem acceptable?  And while we are at it, where are these updates from the negotiation team?  The "new efforts" thread hasn't been updated in months.
If what I understand, these new talks have only gain momentum just a little over a year. City of. was closed down 3 years ago. The original attempt failed, you might want to read Iron Wolfs posts to understand on what happened. So yes it is completely expectable.
Iron Wolf has posted as well as a few other people posted you are not due anything in other means you do not need to know what is going on behind closed doors. You need to understand what non disclosure means; and that is the people involved in something cannot talk about it.
That is where I think you have not read the thread, if you did you would have read Caitlin's post as well as few others stating that the talks are still on going.
Like I said if you want to think the effort failed that's your right, however, trying to make others believe as you do seems a bit selfish and self centered. I believe in time I will be able to play once again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on September 04, 2015, 01:11:53 AM
The last thing I read about it (from a secondary source, but a rather well-trusted one) was that NCsoft is currently just "tapping the deal" and "stringing it along" with "no intent to close", at least not until this whole thing with Nexon is settled.  As I understand it, the person doing the negotiations doesn't want to get fired if Nexon takes over, since Nexon is primarily going after NCSoft for their old titles, including CoH, so the negotiations are just circling the runway for the time being.  This was back in June.

But don't worry.  I was assured that "no intent to close the deal at this time" doesn't mean that they have no intention of closing the deal at all, it just means it might be another three or five or ten years until the NCSoft/Nexon thing is worked out, and then they can finally resume negotiating in earnest, which will surely only take another three or five or ten years to reach an agreement.  I'm sure Nate's financial backers will hold on that long.

So sit back.  Relax.  And just keep smiling.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: DanPan89 on September 04, 2015, 01:25:55 AM
I think most people that haven't gone through business negotiations before view this as, more or less, akin to buying a used car.  It's there, sitting, we've made an offer for said car.  It's essentially rusting away.  Yes or no to my offer?

That's NOT what is involved with this kind of deal. 

As Arcana, I believe, pointed out, this is, essentially, negotiation by committee.  So the salesman doesn't have to just get his manager's approval.  He has to get six people to sign off on the sale of the car.  And, oh, yeah, Joe's with another customer right now.  And Ed's on vacation.  Bill?  He was here just a minute ago.  Does anyone know where Bill is?  From this standpoint, it truly is like herding cats to get all necessary people to sign off on the deal.

Now, that said, I would assume that there are multiple deals going here.

1)  What's the business plan?  (In other words, how does NCSoft know that Nate and Co can run/manage the game?)  Note that this doesn't just include, "Show us what you got," but were I in NCSoft's shoes, I'd want to know things like projected income/expenses associated with setting up and running the game, where they'd host, how will the store work, will there be a store, justification of these decisions, etc.  And if any of those issues NCSoft didn't like?  It would be a discussion about how NCSoft thought there was a better way to do it, or pointing out perceived flaws in the plan and having to rework it. 

2)  I'd assume that Nate and Co want to see a working image of the game.  Going back to the car analogy, this would be like taking the car for a test drive.  Just because a "car" is sitting on the lot doesn't mean it can start and drive.  Again, the engineering resources NCSoft may be willing to apply to making that disk image work may be low, so it may be taking time for them to untangle the spaghetti code.  While it may be being worked on, again, I'm betting that any engineer working on this part of it is not spending a lot of his time on it, as they probably have a lot more pressing issues.  Put another way:  His/her annual review probably relates to current live games.  If they let this game slip a bit, it's probably not going to hurt their review as much as resurrecting a game image instead of fixing those bugs in Aion would. 

3)  What rights are associated with the game?  Can Nate and Co change splash screens?  Does NCSoft's logo have to be plastered all over things?  Can they hold annual events, like the ski chalet?  Do they have the tools to open the chalet?  To turn on 2xp?   Even if they do, are they allowed to?  Or is the game actually set in stone at I23's normal state?

4)  Licensing agreements?  Does NCSoft have any input on that at all?  Can the holding company license things to anyone they want without any input from NCSoft?  Does NCSoft retain any rights?  What rights do they retain?  Can NCSoft use Statesman, etc. if they so decide, once the sale goes through, without contacting the holding company?

5)  Terms.  What's the up front payment?  What are the periodic payments, if any?  What happens if the cash flow set up in part 1 isn't there?  How long will the contract be in effect?  Is this a lease or a purchase?

6)  Other things I'm not thinking of

That's a whole lot of stuff to get consensus on.  Each one of those things not only has to be agreed to by the people Nate is talking to, but I guarantee that NCSoft's corporate lawyers are involved.  And that's another layer of things dragging on the timeline.  Even if the managers, etc. say, "Sure," the lawyers could, and probably are, coming back saying, "Giving up the rights to those characters is not in the best interests of the corporation.  We've made edits to the contract." and the whole process starts over again.

There's a LOT more to this than just buying a car.  It's more like buying a NASCAR, showing the sponsors you can drive at 200 mph and have a decent pit crew, and figuring out not only who the sponsors will be but also where their logos will be placed on the car.

This isn't a sprint.  It's a marathon.  That's why no news is good news.

^
^
This

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 04, 2015, 02:03:13 AM
Am I the only one more anxious for Valiance and Titans just so I can forget this effort exists and can be surprised when real news is announced?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 04, 2015, 02:34:45 AM
Am I the only one more anxious for Valiance and Titans just so I can forget this effort exists and can be surprised when real news is announced?

Actually I'm more excited for Valiance right now because they keep churning out tangible screen shots. CoT just been building up lore base, which is fine, but it isn't as "Shock and Awe" as screen shots
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on September 04, 2015, 03:37:26 AM
Actually I'm more excited for Valiance right now because they keep churning out tangible screen shots. CoT just been building up lore base, which is fine, but it isn't as "Shock and Awe" as screen shots

Yes, but didn't Valiance online already have quiet a jump on things with their game engine, which was transitioned from an earlier (and different) game development plan?  Or I could be wrong.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 04, 2015, 03:40:28 AM
Yes, but didn't Valiance online already have quiet a jump on things with their game engine, which was transitioned from an earlier (and different) game development plan?  Or I could be wrong.

They did, but just seeing something tangible is more exciting. Don't get me wrong, when CoT is at Valiance level, that will be exciting too.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 04, 2015, 04:09:42 AM
They did, but just seeing something tangible is more exciting. Don't get me wrong, when CoT is at Valiance level, that will be exciting too.

I played some of the alpha last year and ran around attacked some mobs with fire attacks trying to feel all scrapper like
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 04, 2015, 09:09:44 AM
The evil secret of pre-alpha: it's ugly and awkward. I think it's brave of the Valiance crew to put any work product out to the public. I'm glad the server has been down while they work out things.

I.e.: all animations were SS jab.

I plan on supporting all the projects but I'm glad Valiance has that head start and that they and MMM seem to be on amicable terms
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 04, 2015, 02:38:23 PM
It means your chest cavity will soon burst open with an alien in its second form scratching and biting its way out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxDfECfLlF8
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 04, 2015, 02:53:57 PM
The evil secret of pre-alpha: it's ugly and awkward. I think it's brave of the Valiance crew to put any work product out to the public. I'm glad the server has been down while they work out things.

I.e.: all animations were SS jab.

I plan on supporting all the projects but I'm glad Valiance has that head start and that they and MMM seem to be on amicable terms

I agree, but seeing the progression from what it was to what is now is really exciting. Interesting enough,  I noticed Valiance Online went into hyperdrive shortly after getting former CoX animator Ron Friedman on the team.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on September 04, 2015, 02:54:47 PM
I plan on supporting all the projects but I'm glad Valiance has that head start and that they and MMM seem to be on amicable terms

I'd also love to walk around in some of the zones that Caylin Alaynn / Irish Girl has been creating as part of Atlas Park Revival. They look amazingly good.

It is my dream that these end up as the zones of CoH 2, if Nate can secure the IP that would allow that to be created.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 04, 2015, 05:47:32 PM
What's it been, about 3 years now since this started?  Does that seem acceptable?  And while we are at it, where are these updates from the negotiation team?  The "new efforts" thread hasn't been updated in months.
Just over 1 year.

The team approached NCSoft as a group of PLAYERS to buy the game in March of last year. Due to the launch of Wildstar and a merger with Nexon - they were asked to come back in August.

Since it was a group of people who were not a game company but a start up - NCSoft gave them some tasks to complete to prove they could manage the game (we don't know what the tasks were). Once completed to NCSoft's satisfaction they said yes to everything so far. Nate has said repeatedly in differing threads they (NCSoft) have not said No yet.

It is also common knowledge they are under an NDA - without them coming right out and saying it (because they can't). During this time Nexon tried a hostile takeover of NCSoft which they found a slight bit distracting. So far, NCSoft is working slowly but surely to close the deal.

I can tell you once you get the legal department involved it slows down and this may be the case here. It took over a year where I work for Legal to allow us to switch platforms from Blackberries to iPhones. The techs were all ready just Legal had to say yes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Talon Blue on September 04, 2015, 06:43:50 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 05, 2015, 12:43:59 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on September 05, 2015, 01:44:22 AM
bioware austin kinda beat that joke to death..it is their answer to everything...and we know more about what is in VO than we do about what is in the next swtor expansion in a month and a half.

judging from what we do know - global carbonite freezing, episodic release and required subscription, my guess would be more dumb story, 29 days of nothing, more dumb story, repeat.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 05, 2015, 02:28:49 AM
I can tell you once you get the legal department involved it slows down and this may be the case here. It took over a year where I work for Legal to allow us to switch platforms from Blackberries to iPhones. The techs were all ready just Legal had to say yes.

My own interaction with legal departments is that for people who supposedly have at least seven years of higher education, they can be incredibly idiotic about anything except playing games with words.  In fact, my favorite lawyer game is what I like to call "we have to put those words in there but don't worry we'll never actually do that: well if you won't do that you won't mind if I scratch it out then."

In fact, ask any IT consulting company what its like to work for law firms.  Assuming you can find any that do.  A few years back I was chatting with a group of IT business people and I said "I would sooner work for a kindergarten class than a law firm" and without skipping a beat the most senior person at the table said "as the janitor."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pseudo42 on September 05, 2015, 04:17:51 AM
bioware austin kinda beat that joke to death..it is their answer to everything...and we know more about what is in VO than we do about what is in the next swtor expansion in a month and a half.

To be fair, Jack Emmet used this too. It used to be City of Heroes goto slogan for... everything.  (Capes, Level 50, Villains...etc.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 05, 2015, 08:53:33 AM
Just over 1 year.

The team approached NCSoft as a group of PLAYERS to buy the game in March of last year. Due to the launch of Wildstar and a merger with Nexon - they were asked to come back in August.

Since it was a group of people who were not a game company but a start up - NCSoft gave them some tasks to complete to prove they could manage the game (we don't know what the tasks were). Once completed to NCSoft's satisfaction they said yes to everything so far. Nate has said repeatedly in differing threads they (NCSoft) have not said No yet.

It is also common knowledge they are under an NDA - without them coming right out and saying it (because they can't). During this time Nexon tried a hostile takeover of NCSoft which they found a slight bit distracting. So far, NCSoft is working slowly but surely to close the deal.

I can tell you once you get the legal department involved it slows down and this may be the case here. It took over a year where I work for Legal to allow us to switch platforms from Blackberries to iPhones. The techs were all ready just Legal had to say yes.

Reminds me of Back to the Future 2 "The justice system works quickly now that they abolished all lawyers"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 05, 2015, 12:15:44 PM
I'd also love to walk around in some of the zones that Caylin Alaynn / Irish Girl has been creating as part of Atlas Park Revival. They look amazingly good.

It is my dream that these end up as the zones of CoH 2, if Nate can secure the IP that would allow that to be created.

I hate to say this: without the CoH ip and with paragon chat/icon, Irish Girl's work feels like practice for eventual real work on a new game (unless we get those maps added to PC chat).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 05, 2015, 02:29:55 PM
PC chat
Heh. Paragon Chat chat. ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 05, 2015, 02:57:38 PM
Heh. Paragon Chat chat. ;)
Hey, i know people who say they need to use the ATM machine...  ???
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on September 05, 2015, 03:16:29 PM
Hey, i know people who say they need to use the ATM machine...  ???

Do they use their PIN number to do that?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ultimate15 on September 05, 2015, 04:09:00 PM
Heh. Paragon Chat chat. ;)

Lol. Paragon Chit-Chat.

"COME BE A HERO IN PARAGON CHIT-CHAT!!! WELCOME TO SPARTA!!!"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on September 05, 2015, 06:46:36 PM
I hate to say this: without the CoH ip and with paragon chat/icon, Irish Girl's work feels like practice for eventual real work on a new game (unless we get those maps added to PC chat).

I'm assuming we'll get the IP when I say that.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 05, 2015, 08:00:31 PM
Lol. Paragon Chit-Chat.

"COME BE A HERO IN PARAGON CHIT-CHAT!!! WELCOME TO SPARTA!!!"

Paragon Chit... Happens.

Sighs.

Valiance seemed to take off when they got that animator (did they get him or is he consulting?)

MMM/CoT seemed to take off when they purchased/got the rights to use and see the guts of an existing mmo-style game engine.

Should I read anything in to what those two groups needed to really get rolling?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: worldweary on September 05, 2015, 09:23:17 PM
I need sleep protection for my defenders,blasters and controllers in my builds.Do I need status protection or status resistance or both?Even looking at the sets I'm have no idea how stop or limit sleep attacks.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 05, 2015, 09:48:28 PM
I need sleep protection for my defenders,blasters and controllers in my builds.Do I need status protection or status resistance or both?Even looking at the sets I'm have no idea how stop or limit sleep attacks.
Resistance to status effects is usually of limited utility since it only reduces the time mezzed. Most enemies are obliging enough to break the sleep using their own attacks well before it wears off anyway. There are few powers that give sleep protection that come early enough to be useful and they're usually on really long timers. Blasters can attack while slept and most Controllers have pets to fight and draw aggro while slept. Defenders, Dark aside, not so much. Usually the best approach when solo for all three ATs to deal with enemies using sleep is to pop Break Frees or preemptively mez the enemies first.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: worldweary on September 05, 2015, 10:46:00 PM
Thank You!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on September 06, 2015, 07:28:51 AM
Resistance to status effects is usually of limited utility since it only reduces the time mezzed. Most enemies are obliging enough to break the sleep using their own attacks well before it wears off anyway. There are few powers that give sleep protection that come early enough to be useful and they're usually on really long timers. Blasters can attack while slept and most Controllers have pets to fight and draw aggro while slept. Defenders, Dark aside, not so much. Usually the best approach when solo for all three ATs to deal with enemies using sleep is to pop Break Frees or preemptively mez the enemies first.
I don't know about you, but I always seemed to get slept by the Malta LTs then ignored for the duration of the Sleep. It was really irritating when I didn't have any break-frees.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 06, 2015, 08:35:25 AM
I don't know about you, but I always seemed to get slept by the Malta LTs then ignored for the duration of the Sleep. It was really irritating when I didn't have any break-frees.
Right? Just kinda chilling there. Not killing and not dying... SO AWKWARD.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 06, 2015, 07:48:55 PM
Resistance to status effects is usually of limited utility since it only reduces the time mezzed. Most enemies are obliging enough to break the sleep using their own attacks well before it wears off anyway.

1.  Just for completeness sake, resistance to status effects generally does reduce the duration of the mez, with one pseudo-exception: KB resistance reduces the magnitude of the KB.  That's because of the peculiar nature of KB, where KB is both a status boolean *and* a separate physics engine effect.

To simplify a bit, KB magnitude determines both *if* you are thrown, and *how far* you are thrown.  KB magnitude less than or equal to zero is no KB: if the KB effect is less than your protection nothing happens.  KB magnitude greater than zero but less than one is knockdown: you fall down, but aren't thrown.  KB mag greater than one throws you a distance related to the total magnitude of the KB effect.

Weirdly, most melee KB protection had both resistance and mag protection: specifically they had 100% resistance** plus protection.  Because they had 100% resistance and KB resistance isn't capped below 100% like damage resistance, just the resistance alone made them immune to KB.  The magnitude of the protection was basically irrelevant (it would be relevant to unresistable KB, but that didn't exist commonly).

2.  Status resistance was often belittled, but I personally think it did have some value in many cases.  For example, most players didn't know that the typical NPC hold was designed specifically to be non-perma.  That way a single such critter couldn't just perma-hold a player with no protection and kill them.  But the hold could have very high persistance: Illusionist blind for example could keep you held something like 85% of the time (if it hit).  But if you faced multiples you could still be perma-held, and if you faced them above even con their holds would increase in duration with the purple patch, and you could be perma-held, and some mezzes *were* capable of perma-holding, like the Malta stun.  Having resistances to these effects, particularly but not just when solo, could be the difference between breaking the mez fast enough to survive or not.

Sleeps, as you point out, were generally the exception because sleep was a "fragile hold" - damage broke it, so the odds of being perma-slept or even slept for a long period of time were low.


** Actually, they sort of had 10,000% resistance.  This was a vestigial example of the early devs that built the game being either mathematically illiterate or not understanding the game engine or both.  The powers set KB resistance to 100, on a scale of zero to one, with one being 100%.  So "100" is 100x 100%, or 10,000%.  Because there's no real difference between having 100% resistance to KB and having any other higher number, the error was never changed (also the game effectively caps KB resistance to 100% for magnitudes because higher numbers have no meaning***).  But if you're ever wondering why City of Data lists status powers as having "+10000% Res(Knockback, Knockup)" and what that could even mean, that's why.  Its not an error - at least not an error on City of Data's part.

*** On the other hand, resistances greater than 100% *do* have meaning when you're applying resistances to durations.  A conversation I had about that subject prompted, I think, the devs to make changes to how status resistances were capped and handed out which significantly increased - albeit not as high as I think was appropriate - the level of status resistance you could get in the invention system.  *Eventually* status resistance could have been a lot more valuable than we are discussing here, because we could have been talking about potentially very high values of resistance being achievable by players - well in excess of 100 percentage points****.

**** Don't get me started about the difference between % and percentage points.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stitchified on September 06, 2015, 08:13:29 PM
During this time Nexon tried a hostile takeover of NCSoft which they found a slight bit distracting. So far, NCSoft is working slowly but surely to close the deal.
Do what? Did Nexon really try to takeover NCsoft by force?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 06, 2015, 08:18:47 PM
Do what? Did Nexon really try to takeover NCsoft by force?

They attempted a hostile takeover on the company.  Given there track record I did not want cox to fall into their hands as they are a generic "money first" South Korean mom publisher, aka lockbox prone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: worldweary on September 06, 2015, 08:20:50 PM
1.  Just for completeness sake, resistance to status effects generally does reduce the duration of the mez, with one pseudo-exception: KB resistance reduces the magnitude of the KB.  That's because of the peculiar nature of KB, where KB is both a status boolean *and* a separate physics engine effect.

To simplify a bit, KB magnitude determines both *if* you are thrown, and *how far* you are thrown.  KB magnitude less than or equal to zero is no KB: if the KB effect is less than your protection nothing happens.  KB magnitude greater than zero but less than one is knockdown: you fall down, but aren't thrown.  KB mag greater than one throws you a distance related to the total magnitude of the KB effect.

Weirdly, most melee KB protection had both resistance and mag protection: specifically they had 100% resistance** plus protection.  Because they had 100% resistance and KB resistance isn't capped below 100% like damage resistance, just the resistance alone made them immune to KB.  The magnitude of the protection was basically irrelevant (it would be relevant to unresistable KB, but that didn't exist commonly).

2.  Status resistance was often belittled, but I personally think it did have some value in many cases.  For example, most players didn't know that the typical NPC hold was designed specifically to be non-perma.  That way a single such critter couldn't just perma-hold a player with no protection and kill them.  But the hold could have very high persistance: Illusionist blind for example could keep you held something like 85% of the time (if it hit).  But if you faced multiples you could still be perma-held, and if you faced them above even con their holds would increase in duration with the purple patch, and you could be perma-held, and some mezzes *were* capable of perma-holding, like the Malta stun.  Having resistances to these effects, particularly but not just when solo, could be the difference between breaking the mez fast enough to survive or not.

Sleeps, as you point out, were generally the exception because sleep was a "fragile hold" - damage broke it, so the odds of being perma-slept or even slept for a long period of time were low.


** Actually, they sort of had 10,000% resistance.  This was a vestigial example of the early devs that built the game being either mathematically illiterate or not understanding the game engine or both.  The powers set KB resistance to 100, on a scale of zero to one, with one being 100%.  So "100" is 100x 100%, or 10,000%.  Because there's no real difference between having 100% resistance to KB and having any other higher number, the error was never changed (also the game effectively caps KB resistance to 100% for magnitudes because higher numbers have no meaning***).  But if you're ever wondering why City of Data lists status powers as having "+10000% Res(Knockback, Knockup)" and what that could even mean, that's why.  Its not an error - at least not an error on City of Data's part.

*** On the other hand, resistances greater than 100% *do* have meaning when you're applying resistances to durations.  A conversation I had about that subject prompted, I think, the devs to make changes to how status resistances were capped and handed out which significantly increased - albeit not as high as I think was appropriate - the level of status resistance you could get in the invention system.  *Eventually* status resistance could have been a lot more valuable than we are discussing here, because we could have been talking about potentially very high values of resistance being achievable by players - well in excess of 100 percentage points****.

**** Don't get me started about the difference between % and percentage points.


This is why I really try to have perma AM on my Rad.You get over 200% resistance to hold,stun,sleep and immobilize.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 07, 2015, 01:52:39 AM
Do what? Did Nexon really try to takeover NCsoft by force?

As best I understand, Nexon did in fact launch a bidding war but failed to raise enough capitol and the inside support that they needed to pull it off. Certain key stockholders that they needed to swing decided not to play along or changed course. There are a lot of hurt feelings, and it probably isn't over yet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 07, 2015, 02:00:44 AM
When I farmed Rikti for the portals on my electric brute I always made sure to have the Aegis unique.  (Thanks to Cryptic math) The first few bits of mez resistance gave a few seconds reduction In holds which kept the LTs from stacking enough shots to stop me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 07, 2015, 02:16:17 AM
I need sleep protection for my defenders,blasters and controllers in my builds.Do I need status protection or status resistance or both?Even looking at the sets I'm have no idea how stop or limit sleep attacks.

I guess it's too late to take this down the path of using /e drink for a chance at a Coffee buff.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 07, 2015, 04:12:04 AM
I guess it's too late to take this down the path of using /e drink for a chance at a Coffee buff.
Only if the buff is named Cuppajo.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 07, 2015, 04:54:43 PM
Only if the buff is named Cuppajo.

That's fantastic. Lol.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 07, 2015, 05:03:29 PM
Only if the buff is named Cuppajo.

Could always rename speed boost that, especially for the idiots that think the powerset in question is only good for that :).

Edit: There was a guy roleplaying a little robot character that loved coffee on last night, to.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 07, 2015, 06:11:00 PM
That inspires an epic visual. The (Purchasable one shot or mission reward?) power, when invoked, causes someone to blow a "Coffee Break" whistle, all action stops and the players all assemble and pause to drink a cup of coffee, then return to their former positions in time for the next whistle and action resumes. Kinda like those old Warner Brothers cartoons when the wolves and the sheep dog stop fighting long enough for a coffee break. . .

*Snort!*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stitchified on September 07, 2015, 06:16:27 PM
As best I understand, Nexon did in fact launch a bidding war but failed to raise enough capitol and the inside support that they needed to pull it off. Certain key stockholders that they needed to swing decided not to play along or changed course. There are a lot of hurt feelings, and it probably isn't over yet.
Is there any idea as to why Nexon is so keen on taking over NCsoft? I mean, what are they going to do if they were to take over NCsoft?

I have more questions than answers right now, and it's driving me nuts  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on September 07, 2015, 06:28:23 PM
Is there any idea as to why Nexon is so keen on taking over NCsoft? I mean, what are they going to do if they were to take over NCsoft?

I have more questions than answers right now, and it's driving me nuts  :P

Iron Wolf and I had an exchange on this earlier in the thread... He thinks to get into North America and I say to get rid of a home town rival in Korea.  NcSoft is slow to get to mobile gaming and all their money is from legacy games.  However, what's a couple billion won between frenemies....

http://massivelyop.com/ has a good number of articles just searching in nexon as keyword.
http://massivelyop.com/2015/03/30/ncsoft-and-nexon-meet-to-discuss-financial-issues/

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 07, 2015, 07:43:01 PM
Is there any idea as to why Nexon is so keen on taking over NCsoft? I mean, what are they going to do if they were to take over NCsoft?

I have more questions than answers right now, and it's driving me nuts  :P

Yeah, and the weirdest part is that both companies' CEOs were childhood friends who went into the gaming industry together in the 1990s.  This whole thing has reportedly put a large strain on their friendship, with NCSoft's CEO entrenching his wife and friends into positions in NC's upper echelon to shore up their business better against potential bribes and attacks.  NC also entered into a huge stock deal with Netmarble to better fend off buyouts from Nexon.

Now the real kicker here is that NC could possibly find itself having to similarly guard against Netmarble in the future because of that....

As much as I hate NCSoft (not just over CoX, but also Tabula Rasa's closing and their continued poor handling of Lineage 2 NA and Aion NA), I like Nexon even less.  Sheesh.  Someone should make a soap opera or a novel about these companies. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 07, 2015, 11:06:53 PM
<snip>. Kinda like those old Warner Brothers cartoons when the wolves and the sheep dog stop fighting long enough for a coffee break. . .

*Snort!*

Mornin' Ralph
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 07, 2015, 11:57:53 PM
Honestly, I don't really know the whole NcSoft vs Nexon story, just what I can glean from net news sources, and I doubt that very many people outside the industry really do have the whole picture. They had done a small stock exchange and had an agreement to develop a mobile gaming platform together. At some point either NcSoft backed off or Nexon accused them of not doing enough of their part, whatever cause, their agreement crumbled.

Nexon announced their displeasure and demanded a shift in the control of NcSoft, they wanted a bigger voice than their shares really deserved. When Nexon didn't get their way, they announced they would retaliate by launching a hostile takeover of NcSoft, many folks speculate that it was really just an excuse, what they may have been trying to do was increase the size of their portfolio to become the biggest fish in the pond. Whatever the reason, it failed when NcSoft invested in yet another company, Netmarble, thus increasing their own portfolio (Value doubled in a day) and financial footprint out of Nexon's reach. Some of the NcSoft money involved came from investors that Nexon had previously thought were on their side.

In a strange kind of irony, Nexon, who is the single largest stockholder in NCSoft, also gained a boost in total value with the increase in NCSoft's net worth, but controlling interest had moved even further out of their reach.

And in a kind of "Salt in the wound" irony, Netmarble, the company that NcSoft purchased, produces exactly the type of mobile gaming software that Nexon had wanted NcSoft to develop for them when this all began. And NcSoft plans to take advantage of that, they have ₩ signs (Korean currency symbol) in their eyes and could soon be the biggest dog in mobile gaming.

There is tons of butthurt involved here, beyond normal biz relations, most of the key players were personal friends and broke into the industry together, there are family and nepotism issues with public finger pointing and snide snipes in the media.

It's probably not over yet, but unless Nexon can come up with something truly brilliant, control of NcSoft will remain out of their reach.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stitchified on September 08, 2015, 02:13:38 AM
Yeah, and the weirdest part is that both companies' CEOs were childhood friends who went into the gaming industry together in the 1990s.  This whole thing has reportedly put a large strain on their friendship, with NCSoft's CEO entrenching his wife and friends into positions in NC's upper echelon to shore up their business better against potential bribes and attacks.  NC also entered into a huge stock deal with Netmarble to better fend off buyouts from Nexon.

Now the real kicker here is that NC could possibly find itself having to similarly guard against Netmarble in the future because of that....

As much as I hate NCSoft (not just over CoX, but also Tabula Rasa's closing and their continued poor handling of Lineage 2 NA and Aion NA), I like Nexon even less.  Sheesh.  Someone should make a soap opera or a novel about these companies.
The Soap Opera of two Rival Korean Companies, NCsoft and Nexon, coming to the theater near you...
*3 years later*
Random person: "Well, that Soap Opera sucked, at least it got what happened right!"  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 08, 2015, 03:47:57 AM
The Soap Opera of two Rival Korean Companies, NCsoft and Nexon, coming to the theater near you...
*3 years later*
Random person: "Well, that Soap Opera sucked, at least it got what happened right!"  :P

To be fair, what NC Soft and Nexon is going through is actually the general plot of majority of Korean Drama shows. The other plot is this:

(https://i.imgur.com/CWw7uV9.gif)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlienOne on September 08, 2015, 12:22:56 PM
Heh. Paragon Chat chat. ;)

I thought it was Paragon City Chat...  :roll:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 13, 2015, 09:21:30 AM
We need to bring it all together, with love and compassion. . .

Or not, maybe we just need to pirate the whole effing mess and make it out own!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Coulomb on September 18, 2015, 12:44:10 AM
Sleeps, as you point out, were generally the exception because sleep was a "fragile hold" - damage broke it, so the odds of being perma-slept or even slept for a long period of time were low.
This actually reminds me of the one time I got perma-slept.  I was in Crey's Folly and a Crey Protector hit me with their ice ray attack.  This was back when the mez resist inspiration was discipline so (obviously) break frees were not available - which is kind of a moot point because I didn't have a discipline anyway.

Turns out the duration of the sleep was longer than the recharge on the ice attack.  And the Protector never actually closed to melee.  He did nothing but sit at range and spam that attack, over and over again.

The worst part is that it wasn't a very damaging attack, so it took him forever to actually defeat me.

Only time anything in the game ever managed to perma-sleep me. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 18, 2015, 01:58:34 PM
CoT mages.

I was 25 levels higher and one of them slept me as I stood there chatting after running a mission. I was on a Fire/Fire blaster - that's when I started thinking of a design of my own based around range and sleeps. The Sonic/Ice/Ice blaster had the most ranged damage + number sleeps I could design.

If you keep applying sleeps they often barely move when attacked. Drop a snowstorm on them chilling embrace and Ice patch and you never get hit.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on September 18, 2015, 02:13:57 PM
Oh sure. Now you tell me. And now I can't roll one up and try that power set combination out!  >:(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on September 18, 2015, 04:31:36 PM
CoT mages.

I was 25 levels higher and one of them slept me as I stood there chatting after running a mission. I was on a Fire/Fire blaster - that's when I started thinking of a design of my own based around range and sleeps. The Sonic/Ice/Ice blaster had the most ranged damage + number sleeps I could design.

If you keep applying sleeps they often barely move when attacked. Drop a snowstorm on them chilling embrace and Ice patch and you never get hit.

That was part of the fun of rolling with an Elec. control Dom. Static Field may not have made it so you never got hit, but it did leave the mobs rather impotent for hitting back. This combined with Synaptic Overload (confuse) made for a very easy time.

I miss my Elec/Earth Dom.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 18, 2015, 06:56:59 PM
CoT mages.

I was 25 levels higher and one of them slept me as I stood there chatting after running a mission. I was on a Fire/Fire blaster - that's when I started thinking of a design of my own based around range and sleeps. The Sonic/Ice/Ice blaster had the most ranged damage + number sleeps I could design.

If you keep applying sleeps they often barely move when attacked. Drop a snowstorm on them chilling embrace and Ice patch and you never get hit.

Coming from the world of defenderdom(?) I too was a big, big fan of using slows in conjunction with other soft controls. It's not just about recharge and playing the range game with them, the NPCs have movements for activation abilities that get slowed as well. Two or 3 slow users can totally neuter big +level groups easily.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 18, 2015, 08:17:47 PM
CoT mages.

I was 25 levels higher and one of them slept me as I stood there chatting after running a mission. I was on a Fire/Fire blaster - that's when I started thinking of a design of my own based around range and sleeps. The Sonic/Ice/Ice blaster had the most ranged damage + number sleeps I could design.

If you keep applying sleeps they often barely move when attacked. Drop a snowstorm on them chilling embrace and Ice patch and you never get hit.

Sonic/Energy might have been a more powerful ranged sleeper.  Frozen Aura is a PBAoE and only mag 2.  With Sonic/Energy you could both range boost and power boost Siren's Song.  You could then have a 60' cone Sirens, powerboosted to a slotted strength of about a minute.

Also if you want ranged sleep, Munitions might be a slightly better choice than Cold Mastery.  Both have an AoE sleep on a long recharge, but Munitions' sleep has a longer duration (23.8s vs 17.9s) and longer range (80 feet vs 60 feet) although Flash Freeze does have the better AoE radius (25 feet vs 15 feet).  And for fighting at long range, you get LRM.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 18, 2015, 08:20:37 PM
Coming from the world of defenderdom(?) I too was a big, big fan of using slows in conjunction with other soft controls. It's not just about recharge and playing the range game with them, the NPCs have movements for activation abilities that get slowed as well. Two or 3 slow users can totally neuter big +level groups easily.

Two of my early CoV villains were themed Ice/Cold corruptor and Ice/Ice dominator.  I wanted to compare what all those ice debuffs would do in a corruptor setting vs a dominator setting.  Both worked well, although I think it worked better for the corruptor for a variety of reasons.  The debuffs were very noticeable compared to characters without them.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Obed on September 20, 2015, 08:22:23 AM
Alot of post... i skipped to the very last , just to asked, are we getting coh back or what?  ;D ;) Please someone give it to me straight and short. ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fanta on September 20, 2015, 09:42:06 AM
As of now you're gonna have to wait, and wait, and wait, like the rest of us. Oh, you want it short. No!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on September 20, 2015, 12:02:21 PM
Alot of post... i skipped to the very last , just to asked, are we getting coh back or what?  ;D ;) Please someone give it to me straight and short. ;D

The straight and short is "read the first post".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 20, 2015, 01:04:28 PM
Alot of post... i skipped to the very last , just to asked, are we getting coh back or what?  ;D ;) Please someone give it to me straight and short. ;D

They added Nexon negotiations have complicated matters. It has been stated that negotiations  progress, but slowly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on September 20, 2015, 07:06:00 PM
They added Nexon negotiations have complicated matters. It has been stated that negotiations  progress, but slowly.

But I want it NOWWWWWWW

*pouts*  >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( :'( :gonk:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: starrspeed on September 20, 2015, 09:06:33 PM
a little hope to be able to see atlas park once again is more than i could hope for keep up the fight!!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: momenteum on September 20, 2015, 11:43:58 PM
Indeed! Thank you this news Long may we fight!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: RGladden on September 21, 2015, 05:15:53 PM
But I want it NOWWWWWWW

*pouts*  >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( :'( :gonk:

I've already tried that Dark.  It doesn't work.... :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: RGladden on September 21, 2015, 05:42:25 PM
Maybe it's time for the direct approach:

"Awright!~Listen up you lot!  It only took God seven days to create the world!  And ya'll can't complete a game of "Let's Make a Deal" in 900?  GET WITH THE PROGRAM!  DON'T MAKE ME COME OVER THERE!"

Is that over the top?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on September 21, 2015, 06:31:49 PM
Maybe it's time for the direct approach:

"Awright!~Listen up you lot!  It only took God seven days to create the world!  And ya'll can't complete a game of "Let's Make a Deal" in 900?  GET WITH THE PROGRAM!  DON'T MAKE ME COME OVER THERE!"

Is that over the top?

I want the game up and running by the end of 2015, or the puppy gets it.

Maybe that?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: RGladden on September 21, 2015, 06:35:50 PM
I want the game up and running by the end of 2015, or the puppy gets it.

Maybe that?

Oh that's good!  GOOD!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 21, 2015, 06:52:10 PM
I want the game up and running by the end of 2015, or the puppy gets it.

Maybe that?

That reminds me the time when Australia's Minister for Agriculture and Water, Barnaby Joyce threatened to euthanize Johnny Depp dogs unless he removed them from Australia and gave them a countdown kill clock. Long story short, the last tweet Barnaby Jones was "Dogs gone."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 21, 2015, 07:09:48 PM
Maybe it's time for the direct approach:

"Awright!~Listen up you lot!  It only took God seven days to create the world!  And ya'll can't complete a game of "Let's Make a Deal" in 900?  GET WITH THE PROGRAM!  DON'T MAKE ME SEND JOSHEX OVER THERE!"

Is that over the top?

Fixed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 21, 2015, 11:03:39 PM
Fixed.
Ow. i think that just broke something inside of me.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lord Nightmare on September 22, 2015, 03:30:06 AM
I want the game up and running by the end of 2015, or the puppy gets it.

Maybe that?

It's not really evil. It's semi-evil. Quasi-evil. The margarine of evil. The Diet Coke of evil. Just one calorie, not evil enough.

Now what you CAN do is..

Quote
"For every day this isn't up, a random city gets X-Lax dumped in its water supply. Sure, it could be a small town. But it could also be a major city. Think of the backups, Mr. President.. think of the jams.."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hejtmane on September 22, 2015, 03:37:07 AM
But I want it NOWWWWWWW

*pouts*  >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( :'( :gonk:

This calls for a Veruca Salt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRTkCHE1sS4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRTkCHE1sS4)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 22, 2015, 03:17:45 PM
Fixed.

Haha!  Too funny there.   ;D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 22, 2015, 05:45:33 PM
In other news, people in the facebook pages are unhappy there has been no word for a year now and are crying for answers again *sigh*.

Edit: Of course, it has been nearly another year since the announcement of the shutdown, is there any chance for any word that wouldn't break an NDA?  People could use some hope for something.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 22, 2015, 06:08:56 PM
In other news, people in the facebook pages are unhappy there has been no word for a year now and are crying for answers again *sigh*.

Edit: Of course, it has been nearly another year since the announcement of the shutdown, is there any chance for any word that wouldn't break an NDA?  People could use some hope for something.

Probably not, I think most of NC Soft resources is getting ready for F2P Wildstar, working on F2P Guildwars 2 and the launch of Boob and Soul in Q1 2016
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 22, 2015, 06:15:05 PM
is there any chance for any word that wouldn't break an NDA?
No.

An NDA is an NDA. They can't talk about being in an NDA, they can't talk about not being in an NDA, they can't talk about anything to do with the NDA.

"Work is ongoing" is pretty much all they can say in regards to anything. Please stop asking. The answer doesn't change.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on September 22, 2015, 06:44:17 PM
No.

An NDA is an NDA. They can't talk about being in an NDA, they can't talk about not being in an NDA, they can't talk about anything to do with the NDA.

"Work is ongoing" is pretty much all they can say in regards to anything. Please stop asking. The answer doesn't change.
Fight club... oh wait.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 22, 2015, 06:47:22 PM
No.

An NDA is an NDA. They can't talk about being in an NDA, they can't talk about not being in an NDA, they can't talk about anything to do with the NDA.

"Work is ongoing" is pretty much all they can say in regards to anything. Please stop asking. The answer doesn't change.

Well what is going to be done about the face book guys then?  They are starting to spread rumors that the talks had failed and no one is saying anything.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 22, 2015, 06:54:45 PM
Well what is going to be done about the face book guys then?  They are starting to spread rumors that the talks had failed and no one is saying anything.

Point at them and laugh like Nelson? HA-HAAA!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 22, 2015, 07:22:22 PM
Well what is going to be done about the face book guys then?  They are starting to spread rumors that the talks had failed and no one is saying anything.

Honestly, does it matter?  I can't even find whatever discussion you're referencing with a cursory search.  How many dozens of people are listening to those rumors bouncing around the echo chamber?  Where is it spreading to that I would necessarily care about?

Is it actually any more significant than me starting rumors about City of Heroes negotiations in my office building?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 22, 2015, 07:24:21 PM
Well what is going to be done about the face book guys then?  They are starting to spread rumors that the talks had failed and no one is saying anything.
What can anyone say to appease the masses?

Does Downix or the hail mary team have ANY reason to delay announcing the success OR failure of the negotiations? The only thing they can't comment on is the progress of the negotiations.

It ain't over til the fat lady sings.

It ain't over til its over.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 22, 2015, 07:42:46 PM
If the talks were to fail it would be a simple thing for them to say - looks like our only hopes are now CoT.

No violation of NDA and we would know.

However Downix and Irish Girl both have been here in the last month saying - work still ongoing slow but sure.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kelltick on September 22, 2015, 07:54:28 PM
Probably not, I think most of NC Soft resources is ... working on F2P Guildwars 2 ...

Actually, not really.  ArenaNet is now Publisher of that title.

Link to MassivelyOP interview snippet (http://massivelyop.com/2015/09/01/pax-prime-2015-president-mike-obrien-addresses-rumors-about-business-model-and-the-arenanet-base-on-the-moon/?utm_content=bufferaa249&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=facebook.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer) - towards the bottom of the write-up
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 22, 2015, 08:00:37 PM
If the talks were to fail it would be a simple thing for them to say - looks like our only hopes are now CoT.

No violation of NDA and we would know.

However Downix and Irish Girl both have been here in the last month saying - work still ongoing slow but sure.

There are always two issues to consider when being a party to an NDA.  The first one is the obvious one: recognizing there are legal ramifications for violating the agreement.  But there's a second one that's usually more important: deals require trust, and someone attempting to game the NDA is instrinsicly untrustworthy: if that's how they are going to treat the NDA, how will they treat any other contract we try to have with them.  So its not just about the letter of the law, its also a form of test to see if you are worth dealing with.  People who push the envelope on the NDA may or may not face legal repercussions, but will almost certainly find themselves in a bad place when it comes to any future negotiations, assuming people don't just plain walk away from them.

This is important because its rare to find a genuinely air-tight contract; even NDAs have all sorts of loopholes.  But you attempt to exploit them at your own risk.  Knowing this, people tend to be extra careful when dealing with NDAs when a deal is still in the works.  But when it all falls apart, leaks tend to happen much more frequently because the need to preserve the trust of the situation is lower.  More people are more likely to talk about more things.  If the deal has completely collapsed with no hope of restarting or salvaging, we'd hear about it.  No matter what the NDA says, even if it says they can't talk about the negotiations even if they fail, there's always a loop hole that allows you to say at least something.  The fact that people aren't saying anything suggests that a deal is still possible.  If it were not, we'd hear something, NDA or not.  No NDA can prevent you from saying "I've decided to no longer spend any time on any project which has the goal of negotiating the rights to any part of City of Heroes with any party."  If everyone involved stated that, we'd know it was dead, even though it says nothing about any negotiations that might be happening now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 22, 2015, 08:13:23 PM
Actually, not really.  ArenaNet is now Publisher of that title.

Link to MassivelyOP interview snippet (http://massivelyop.com/2015/09/01/pax-prime-2015-president-mike-obrien-addresses-rumors-about-business-model-and-the-arenanet-base-on-the-moon/?utm_content=bufferaa249&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=facebook.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer) - towards the bottom of the write-up

Isn't AreaNet a sub of NCSoft?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 22, 2015, 08:31:01 PM
Isn't AreaNet a sub of NCSoft?

I believe that is correct.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kelltick on September 22, 2015, 08:32:29 PM
Isn't AreaNet a sub of NCSoft?

Yes, NCSoft does still own ANet,  but it appears that ANet is taking everything GW2 related in-house.  The only mention of NCSoft in the entire EULA now is in regards to European organization.  Otherwise NCSoft doesn't appear anywhere else.  Also, the NCSoft logo is nowhere to be found on the GW2 website, the launcher, promotional materials for the upcoming expansion, etc...  Further, on the NCSoft site, while there is a link to GW2's website at the bottom of the page, if you use the "Games" dropbox at the top, GW2 is not listed there (only Aion, B&S, L2, and WS).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 22, 2015, 08:39:41 PM
Yes, NCSoft does still own ANet,  but it appears that ANet is taking everything GW2 related in-house.  The only mention of NCSoft in the entire EULA now is in regards to European organization.  Otherwise NCSoft doesn't appear anywhere else.  Also, the NCSoft logo is nowhere to be found on the GW2 website, the launcher, promotional materials for the upcoming expansion, etc...  Further, on the NCSoft site, while there is a link to GW2's website at the bottom of the page, if you use the "Games" dropbox at the top, GW2 is not listed there (only Aion, B&S, L2, and WS).

That weird so is AreaNet is legally "under" NCSoft, but acts like their own company?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kelltick on September 22, 2015, 09:24:10 PM
That weird so is AreaNet is legally "under" NCSoft, but acts like their own company?

That's what it looks like to me.  Frankly I was a little surprised when this news hit that it wasn't a bigger story.  All I've ever seen on it save some forum posts @ GW2 is that MassivelyOP blurb I linked.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 22, 2015, 09:47:18 PM
That's what it looks like to me.  Frankly I was a little surprised when this news hit that it wasn't a bigger story.  All I've ever seen on it save some forum posts @ GW2 is that MassivelyOP blurb I linked.

If anything (probably just reading into way too much) this shows NC Soft willing to have some leniency with their IPs if they allow Areanet to have the amount of control I am thinking (and you are suggesting they have) This can be a positive sign in the mind set of NCSoft.

Out of curiosity (I don't follow Guild Wars so I am very ignorant of anything affiliated with that brand) did NCSoft Always started with absolute control of the IP, or was it always in the hands if AreaNet that was a sub of NCSoft and NCSoft for whatever reason just granted AreaNet more autonomy?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kelltick on September 22, 2015, 09:53:41 PM
If anything (probably just reading into way too much) this shows NC Soft willing to have some leniency with their IPs if they allow Areanet to have the amount of control I am thinking (and you are suggesting they have) This can be a positive sign in the mind set of NCSoft.

Out of curiosity (I don't follow Guild Wars so I am very ignorant of anything affiliated with that brand) did NCSoft Always started with absolute control of the IP, or was it always in the hands if AreaNet that was a sub of NCSoft and NCSoft for whatever reason just granted AreaNet more autonomy?

ANet was always its own entity, just one that is owned by NCSoft.  NCSoft handled Publishing, Customer Support, and Account Management, but this recent turn changed all that and placed it in ANet's hands.  As far as I can tell, the only thing NCSoft does now is provide financial backing/support to ANet (and based on the new EULA, some form of legal/corporate structure for the EU region), and collects their cut of the proceeds.  Everything else is ANet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 22, 2015, 10:08:30 PM
ANet was always its own entity, just one that is owned by NCSoft.  NCSoft handled Publishing, Customer Support, and Account Management, but this recent turn changed all that and placed it in ANet's hands.  As far as I can tell, the only thing NCSoft does now is provide financial backing/support to ANet (and based on the new EULA, some form of legal/corporate structure for the EU region), and collects their cut of the proceeds.  Everything else is ANet.

Good to know, I learn something new every day.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 22, 2015, 11:59:57 PM
Actually... I won the lottery 2 years ago. I've owned City of Heroes for about 20 months now. I offered 50 million and they told me the game would be mine in 3 years. I offered 100 million and got it in 3 months. I'm paying $500,000 a month to NCSoft to string the CoH fans along thinking they're going to get it any minute!

See. Rumors are fun!

Sadly, it's so cheap to type this stuff. Don't put any stock in anything besides Nate saying "It's over and we need to start another plan" or "Anyone ready for a sewer run?"

Find other stuff to play, be social with us here and maybe help the Valiance, CoT and other projects with your wallet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 23, 2015, 12:26:14 AM
Is it actually any more significant than me starting rumors about City of Heroes negotiations in my office building?

This just in: The new City of Heroes server will be located in Arcana's office building!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on September 23, 2015, 12:32:08 AM
I suspected as much.  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 23, 2015, 01:35:19 AM
Is it that time already? Dooooooommmm :).
Seriously, I am glad the team is continuing. And I can wait until the deal is signed and delivered. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 23, 2015, 04:43:59 AM
Well what is going to be done about the face book guys then?  They are starting to spread rumors that the talks had failed and no one is saying anything.
Nothing, because they are dumb?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 23, 2015, 12:10:57 PM
Well what is going to be done about the face book guys then?  They are starting to spread rumors that the talks had failed and no one is saying anything.

Is this the same group of folks with the leader who threatened to reveal the whole deal and team, backers and all, by Day X if the team didn't come forth and do it?

Clearly, trusting them with pertinent information after that is the *last* thing anyone from the Hail Mary Team would do in a million years.   So the fact that they think nothing whatsoever is happening should be seen as a *good* thing.   :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on September 23, 2015, 04:04:45 PM
Well what is going to be done about the face book guys then?  They are starting to spread rumors that the talks had failed and no one is saying anything.

Give them a short sharp kick to the head.  They clearly can't be trusted with sensitive data so they really don't need to be told anything other then to stay silent.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on September 23, 2015, 06:07:01 PM
Is this the same group of folks with the leader who threatened to reveal the whole deal and team, backers and all, by Day X if the team didn't come forth and do it?

Clearly, trusting them with pertinent information after that is the *last* thing anyone from the Hail Mary Team would do in a million years.   So the fact that they think nothing whatsoever is happening should be seen as a *good* thing.   :P

Where these not the same guys (or guy) who saw some demo-recorded video, accused somebody of having a private server, then demanded access? Clearly a mentally-troubled individual is at work there. I am perfectly okay with banning them from the game when it returns.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Victoria Victrix on September 24, 2015, 02:15:30 AM
Where these not the same guys (or guy) who saw some demo-recorded video, accused somebody of having a private server, then demanded access?

Why yes.  Yes they are.  Perhaps one should start a campaign to send them poo by mail?  http://poopsenders.com/ (http://poopsenders.com/)  That would at least give them something to do with their free tim.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 24, 2015, 02:32:23 AM
Where these not the same guys (or guy) who saw some demo-recorded video, accused somebody of having a private server, then demanded access?

Anyone have a link to that video?  I'm vaguely curious to see what someone thought was evidence of a private server.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stitchified on September 24, 2015, 03:46:02 AM
the only thing NCSoft does now is provide financial backing/support to ANet (and based on the new EULA, some form of legal/corporate structure for the EU region), and collects their cut of the proceeds.  Everything else is ANet.
Isn't this what is trying to be done for CoH? It makes me wonder why NCsoft didn't think of doing what they did with ANet with CoH, it would've saved em alot of time, grief and users...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stitchified on September 24, 2015, 03:48:46 AM
Where these not the same guys (or guy) who saw some demo-recorded video, accused somebody of having a private server, then demanded access? Clearly a mentally-troubled individual is at work there. I am perfectly okay with banning them from the game when it returns.
Anyone have a link to that video?  I'm vaguely curious to see what someone thought was evidence of a private server.
Who exactly were/are the people who accused somebody of having a private server? doesn't seem like you're talking bout NCsoft, was it just a random group of people who were mad at the possibility of someone having a private server?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on September 24, 2015, 04:11:34 AM
Who exactly were/are the people who accused somebody of having a private server? doesn't seem like you're talking bout NCsoft, was it just a random group of people who were mad at the possibility of someone having a private server?

Yes.

NCsoft would not be on Facebook if they wanted to take action against a private server; they have lawyers.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on September 24, 2015, 05:44:37 PM
Who exactly were/are the people who accused somebody of having a private server? doesn't seem like you're talking bout NCsoft, was it just a random group of people who were mad at the possibility of someone having a private server?

The group (or person?) being discussed runs a facebook page. They have nothing to do with NCSoft or the negotiations.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: BadWolf on September 24, 2015, 07:55:31 PM
Why yes.  Yes they are.  Perhaps one should start a campaign to send them poo by mail?  http://poopsenders.com/ (http://poopsenders.com/)  That would at least give them something to do with their free tim.

Thank you for linking to this. I don't plan on using the service, but I finally found my perfect garage band name. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Stitchified on September 24, 2015, 11:19:42 PM
The group (or person?) being discussed runs a facebook page. They have nothing to do with NCSoft or the negotiations.
Well, that's good (I think), thanks for clearing that up :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on September 25, 2015, 02:44:16 PM
I've found, sadly, that voice-of-reason replies to these threads get swiftly buried in trollery, like a sandcastle trying to face down an incoming tide.  So, I've about given up on even replying in those threads, which seem fueled largely by resentment and negativity.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 25, 2015, 05:02:31 PM
I've found, sadly, that voice-of-reason replies to these threads get swiftly buried in trollery, like a sandcastle trying to face down an incoming tide.  So, I've about given up on even replying in those threads, which seem fueled largely by resentment and negativity.

You can't fix stupid.

Nate and the new Overlords have money and time invested. They also are players like we are that want their home back. I think it will take NCSoft saying go away we don't want to sell - for them to give up.

That has not happened. In fact NCSoft seems to be changing their attitude somewhat and selling some of their games or changing how they are dealt with.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on September 25, 2015, 06:14:48 PM
You can't fix stupid.

Nate and the new Overlords have money and time invested. They also are players like we are that want their home back. I think it will take NCSoft saying go away we don't want to sell - for them to give up.

That has not happened. In fact NCSoft seems to be changing their attitude somewhat and selling some of their games or changing how they are dealt with.

You just reminded me of some evidence actually.  The fact that ncsoft and arena net have put some distance between one another I'd guess that's a transitional move.  It may be that selling coh is next.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ukaserex on September 25, 2015, 06:16:54 PM
Anyone have a link to that video?  I'm vaguely curious to see what someone thought was evidence of a private server.

Couldn't someone have just used a video prior to shutdown and simply claim it to be current? Or would a time-stamp reveal that type of trickery?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 25, 2015, 06:47:38 PM
Couldn't someone have just used a video prior to shutdown and simply claim it to be current? Or would a time-stamp reveal that type of trickery?

Sure that's possible, although you'd have to be very careful about certain things like claiming its a private server running build X, and accidentally using an older video for which the game behaved subtly different in ways detectable (a power working differently, say).  But I was thinking about the reverse: someone seeing a video of a demorecord or something else similar and confusing it with a live game.  I mean, demorecords don't even have visible UIs, so that seems unlikely or incredibly stupid. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 25, 2015, 07:02:42 PM
Thank you for linking to this. I don't plan on using the service, but I finally found my perfect garage band name. :)

I was just thinking Nate and the Overlords would be a good garage band name as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on September 25, 2015, 09:12:12 PM
I've found, sadly, that voice-of-reason replies to these threads get swiftly buried in trollery, like a sandcastle trying to face down an incoming tide.  So, I've about given up on even replying in those threads, which seem fueled largely by resentment and negativity.

There is not a mechanism that even Arcana could design that could respond every time someone said something dumb on Facebook.  No!Turning the Internet off is not an option.

I still hold out Nate is doing his thing and will wave the white flag when he feels it is right to call defeat.  Otherwise, time spent responding to foolishness is just foolishness.

Worst case COH will be available for a new generation of players.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 26, 2015, 12:33:26 AM
I was just thinking Nate and the Overlords would be a good garage band name as well.

Score!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on September 27, 2015, 07:59:43 AM
You can't fix stupid.

Nate and the new Overlords have money and time invested. They also are players like we are that want their home back. I think it will take NCSoft saying go away we don't want to sell - for them to give up.

That has not happened. In fact NCSoft seems to be changing their attitude somewhat and selling some of their games or changing how they are dealt with.

now thats a good name...Nate and the New Overlords, now opening for Iron Maiden!!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Doc Artz on September 27, 2015, 05:11:31 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on September 27, 2015, 07:53:41 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Victoria Victrix on September 28, 2015, 01:14:37 AM
It's Schrodinger's Cat.

The box is closed.  Until the box is open, there is no way to tell if the cat is still alive or dead.  As long as the box remains closed you are free to imagine the live kitty all you like.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tubbius on September 28, 2015, 04:08:43 AM
It's Schrodinger's Cat.

The box is closed.  Until the box is open, there is no way to tell if the cat is still alive or dead.  As long as the box remains closed you are free to imagine the live kitty all you like.

That sort of reminds me of a Thor comic from the early 90s, where Zarrko, the Tomorrow Man, is shown standing in front of a computer terminal with a fractured map of timelines behind him that strongly resembles the world's biggest sentence diagram.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on September 28, 2015, 03:25:50 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 28, 2015, 06:18:01 PM
No bad = good!

In other words: It's better than bad, it's GOOD!

Oh, great. Now I have the stupid "Log" theme song from Ren & Stimpy running through my brain.
But... But... It's great for a snack and it fits on your back!


Currently no news is both no news and slightly good news. No news means negotiations to buy the IP continue even if they haven't been concluded. At least according to all publicly available information. There are a few who claim to know otherwise, but since they refuse to say where their information comes from it could just as easily be extrapolation from them listening to a hive of bees droning in their heads and divining meaning from it. (It's still better than pigeon entrails in their heads. Well, for them.)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: DocHornet on September 28, 2015, 09:34:51 PM
...it could just as easily be extrapolation from them listening to a hive of bees droning in their heads...

Wrong game. :) Listening to bees, that's THE SECRET WORLD. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 29, 2015, 12:20:42 AM
It's Schrodinger's Cat.

The box is closed.  Until the box is open, there is no way to tell if the cat is still alive or dead.  As long as the box remains closed you are free to imagine the live kitty all you like.

At least until a Quarry uses Footstomp on the box. After that, I'm not opening the box to clean up the mess, so the kitty will then theoretically possibly live forever.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on September 29, 2015, 12:41:52 AM
It doesn't matter if it's alive or dead - if you open the box you're going to have a stinky mess to clean up.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on September 29, 2015, 12:49:57 AM
It doesn't matter if it's alive or dead - if you open the box you're going to have a stinky mess to clean up.
Irish_Girl has already started the Preemptive kitty cleaning though. So, it's good. Maybe. Possibly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on September 29, 2015, 02:23:26 AM
Oh I was talking about Schrodinger's. I'll clean up as much poop/spray/pee/corpse as you like if we get to open the CoX box, and I'm allergic to cats.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on September 29, 2015, 04:22:26 AM
It's Schrodinger's Cat.

The box is closed.  Until the box is open, there is no way to tell if the cat is still alive or dead.  As long as the box remains closed you are free to imagine the live kitty all you like.

What if I want to unleash the radioactive killer feline on the world, though?  :'(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 29, 2015, 05:29:33 AM
Wrong game. :) Listening to bees, that's THE SECRET WORLD. :)
That as well. Those Templars and Illuminati will regret choosing the wrong path.  :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 29, 2015, 03:54:18 PM
Currently no news is both no news and slightly good news. No news means negotiations to buy the IP continue even if they haven't been concluded. At least according to all publicly available information. There are a few who claim to know otherwise, but since they refuse to say where their information comes from it could just as easily be extrapolation from them listening to a hive of bees droning in their heads and divining meaning from it. (It's still better than pigeon entrails in their heads. Well, for them.)

There's really only 3 people here that anyone should listen to for news on the deal. Nate, Myself, and Ironwolf. Anything anyone else says is conjecture at best, misinformation at worst.

No, the deal isn't dead. No, NCSoft hasn't asked for some ridiculous Olympian amount of cash. (As nate said: "Doable") Yes, things are going slower than people would necessarily like.
and I hate to say it, most of the 'experience' that some of you guys have doesn't necessarily translate to this kind of deal. 

As for NCSoft 'stringing us along'. It's entirely possible, but I don't believe it to be likely. It costs time and money for every minute they're dealing with Nate, or sending someone to find out exactly what they do/don't have from Paragon. A lot more resources than just saying "no" and hanging up a phone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Pyromantic on September 29, 2015, 04:42:56 PM
Always good to get reassurance that the process continues onward.  It's hard to know what to do with the hope of the game's return when you're completely in the dark on the details.  Will it be next week?  Month?  Year?  Never?  Will some aspects of the game be unable to make a return (such as seasonal events)?  I know there's no way to answer these, but it sure would be nice to know.  Sometimes I'm content to just carry on as if there's nothing happening.  Other times (and this has been happening to me a lot recently) I find myself reminiscing about the game's past life, hoping for news each day, planning for its return, and lamenting the lack of any other game that measures up.

As always, however, the effort is greatly appreciated!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MWRuger on September 29, 2015, 04:46:14 PM
There's really only 3 people here that anyone should listen to for news on the deal. Nate, Myself, and Ironwolf. Anything anyone else says is conjecture at best, misinformation at worst.

No, the deal isn't dead. No, NCSoft hasn't asked for some ridiculous Olympian amount of cash. (As nate said: "Doable") Yes, things are going slower than people would necessarily like.
and I hate to say it, most of the 'experience' that some of you guys have doesn't necessarily translate to this kind of deal. 

As for NCSoft 'stringing us along'. It's entirely possible, but I don't believe it to be likely. It costs time and money for every minute they're dealing with Nate, or sending someone to find out exactly what they do/don't have from Paragon. A lot more resources than just saying "no" and hanging up a phone.


Thank you for posting this. I always miss the game more at this time of year. I loved trick or treating and the winter event.

I was feeling wistful about it today and it was good to see that it might still happen.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 29, 2015, 05:34:10 PM
There's really only 3 people here that anyone should listen to for news on the deal. Nate, Myself, and Ironwolf. Anything anyone else says is conjecture at best, misinformation at worst.

No, the deal isn't dead. No, NCSoft hasn't asked for some ridiculous Olympian amount of cash. (As nate said: "Doable") Yes, things are going slower than people would necessarily like.
and I hate to say it, most of the 'experience' that some of you guys have doesn't necessarily translate to this kind of deal. 

As for NCSoft 'stringing us along'. It's entirely possible, but I don't believe it to be likely. It costs time and money for every minute they're dealing with Nate, or sending someone to find out exactly what they do/don't have from Paragon. A lot more resources than just saying "no" and hanging up a phone.

I don't know anything about the existing deal or plans. I know what got us to this stage but not where it is now.

The other thing that may slow down something like this is how much money will NCSoft expend to sell this? What is the budget for this department and how many man hours do they have to sell it? I could seriously see upper management say if you can fit it in proceed but don't let other obligations slide to make this deal - to their point it isn't a lot of money (for them). They deal in the multi-billions company-wide and this while a return on an old investment - is money they had already ignored.

Think it through - if they could close the game making $10 million a year - what effort would they make to return 1/10th of that? I am not saying the price is $1 million for I don't know - I am saying they already wrote it off and so for a lesser amount than they could make what effort would they expend.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Cailyn Alaynn on September 29, 2015, 08:17:06 PM
Then I correct myself, 2 people. In some weird instance where we both have broken hands...then I'd have TonyV pass along information.

I'm pretty sure the majority of the footwork for NCSoft on the deal is that sort of non-priority work. People spending a quarter the time as they do on their other responsibilities, since it isn't a large priority.
At some point, someone hit it on the head. Everything else aside... you can buy a car in a few hours because the dealership REALLY wants to sell you that car. Their entire existence is ALL about selling you that car.
NCSoft on the other hand has no pressing need to sell us the car. It's an older model, not quite a 'classic', maybe something that was a hand-me-down from their uncle. We've got to convince them to part with it, despite not really having a need to. They're not quite really...sentimental about the car, especially since the brake pedal likes to stick. While they may not LOVE the car however, they have spent a lot of time and money on it...and really want to make sure that if they do sell it, it's to someone who's not going to get drunk and crash it.


and then their cousin bursts in and starts pouring gasoline all over their living room furniture while we're talking about the car.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Risha on September 29, 2015, 09:18:25 PM
THANKS for letting us know.  I only check the boards now a couple of times a month...

[[EDIT: removed broken quote of immediately-preceding post by Cailyn. ~Agge]]
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on September 29, 2015, 09:32:45 PM

. . . <Snip!> and then their cousin bursts in and starts pouring gasoline all over their living room furniture while we're talking about the car.

And that is one of the most frigging awesome analogies ever written!   ;D   
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on September 29, 2015, 09:35:37 PM

and then their cousin bursts in and starts pouring gasoline all over their living room furniture while we're talking about the car.

Sounds like an average Thanksgiving.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 29, 2015, 10:50:58 PM
Then I correct myself, 2 people. In some weird instance where we both have broken hands...then I'd have TonyV pass along information.

I'm pretty sure the majority of the footwork for NCSoft on the deal is that sort of non-priority work. People spending a quarter the time as they do on their other responsibilities, since it isn't a large priority.
At some point, someone hit it on the head. Everything else aside... you can buy a car in a few hours because the dealership REALLY wants to sell you that car. Their entire existence is ALL about selling you that car.
NCSoft on the other hand has no pressing need to sell us the car. It's an older model, not quite a 'classic', maybe something that was a hand-me-down from their uncle. We've got to convince them to part with it, despite not really having a need to. They're not quite really...sentimental about the car, especially since the brake pedal likes to stick. While they may not LOVE the car however, they have spent a lot of time and money on it...and really want to make sure that if they do sell it, it's to someone who's not going to get drunk and crash it.


and then their cousin bursts in and starts pouring gasoline all over their living room furniture while we're talking about the car.
This is why I believe this deal  will be successful :). While I would love to play now, I can wait I have a few mmos that I have a few things left to do. Such as in the Secret World I have the last two missions for the tower and from what I have read issue 13 will be for pvp so I am in no rush. I also play STO and restarted playing Tera, so I have more than enough to keep me busy for a long time. :)
In essence every day this deal continues and there is not a no we are taking baby steps, one day we will all fly once again I have no doubt about that :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on September 29, 2015, 10:57:51 PM
...and then their cousin bursts in and starts pouring gasoline all over their living room furniture while we're talking about the car.

That cousin will not be getting a Christmas card this year.  Or Next Year.  In fact, give back last year's Christmas Card.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 29, 2015, 11:44:43 PM
and then their cousin bursts in and starts pouring gasoline all over their living room furniture while we're talking about the car.
Thanks for the quasi-official update on how things are going (basically just confirming that things are pretty much as expected, but it's still good to have it verified), and for making me laugh.


Now if only they'd sell the car before someone lights a match... Buying a car is a lot more complicated when the paperwork and owners have gone up in flames even if the car isn't caught in the blaze.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zerohour on September 29, 2015, 11:48:46 PM
i sincerely hope for the sake of everyone on here who has been strung along these 2 years that this actually happens.  but i feel like the forward momentum we had going for a while is all but gone, and that people are losing interest.  city of titans feels like little more than a memory right now too, all they do is post lore
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on September 30, 2015, 07:07:18 AM
Removed a bunch of posts stemming from obvious flamebait.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 30, 2015, 07:26:58 AM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=31.media.tumblr.com%2Fe2169259f8f49e113493d8c6e5d6fbe9%2Ftumblr_mkl4eix3zR1s14aeuo1_500.gif)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on September 30, 2015, 10:46:46 AM
Removed a bunch of posts stemming from obvious flamebait.

It was fun while it lasted. #noregrets #noegretseither #seriouslyscrewegrets
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on September 30, 2015, 12:31:07 PM
i sincerely hope for the sake of everyone on here who has been strung along these 2 years that this actually happens.  but i feel like the forward momentum we had going for a while is all but gone, and that people are losing interest.  city of titans feels like little more than a memory right now too, all they do is post lore

Please remember that no one is being "strung along," because Team Hail Mary didn't strut around claiming to have CoX back up and running by Day X, or its IP available for leasing by Day Y.  It was actually a Facebook poster who leaked that these deals were being attempted, NOT Team Hail Mary (who was caught as unawares as all of us were).  Then the Facebook poster threatened to reveal not only the identities of the team, but of the financial backers, as well as everything he knew about the actual deal by Day X if Team Hail Mary didn't come forward and do it.

The version that we got on page 1 of this thread, posted by Hail Mary leader Nate Downes, was actually much less detailed (and rightly so!! ) than what the Facebook guy was threatening to do.  However, this is exactly why Nate made the announcement himself-- so the deal wouldn't be blown completely out of the water by the Facebook guy, with the end result being that NCSoft would walk away over private information still in flux and under NDA becoming public news.

So we shouldn't know anything if things had played out correctly.  If you're mad, go be mad at the Facebook guy, who has added a lot of constant grief and trolling to this deal forevermore, because of his lack of common sense and attention-seeking behavior.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 30, 2015, 12:44:13 PM
I am happier, sort of - that things came out.

I was getting threats from people to come to my house and kick my butt - yes, over trying to get a game. It was titanic pressure being in the middle and to have people question your honor and intent. If anyone knows of a decent SCA knight - they will know our honor is extremely important to us. We really try to live upright lives. We are human and some fail and sometimes spectacularly.

I again work for a big company and I know how budgets work and Cailyn pretty much verified what I was thinking, they don't have a lot of money to spend on the selling of games. I would even bet that for this unit making the deal - this isn't their primary job. They may be the dead storage group.

Working for a company of over 80,000 employees I know what it is like to finally get the name of the one guy at Corporate who buys our Wireless access points to get information only he has and he is on vacation for 3 weeks. All while I have a WAP not working outside of an Executive conference room..........

I would be willing to bet they are facing similar issues. It's not that they won't sell its just that they could be leveling up their Llama on Llama's Online. So in between surfing the web and gaming they occasionally actually work.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on September 30, 2015, 03:06:43 PM
If you're mad, go be mad at the Facebook guy

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=cdn2.business2community.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F05%2FFacebook-fuckup1-300x300.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on September 30, 2015, 03:20:56 PM
i sincerely hope for the sake of everyone on here who has been strung along these 2 years that this actually happens.  but i feel like the forward momentum we had going for a while is all but gone, and that people are losing interest.  city of titans feels like little more than a memory right now too, all they do is post lore

I understand how you feel. I don't agree that nothing is being done - I just think you don't know how hard it can be to work with a really large company.

NCSoft has really large pockets and they will not allow anyone to have cause to sue them or seek any kind of damages while selling an old property. So you have a group selling a game they weren't looking to sell. Nate and the New Overlords talked them into it. Now they are seeing what they have and the folks with the stuff likely aren't techs. They may just be the dead storage guys working on this when they don't have other stuff to do.

There was no momentum on NCSoft's side. The momentum was all on our side to get life back in the community. I won't stop even if this attempt fails just like the last one did. Live your life, keep your head up and one day this will all be a bad memory.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on September 30, 2015, 04:38:34 PM
Live your life, keep your head up and one day this will all be a bad memory.

QFT
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on September 30, 2015, 05:47:12 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=cdn2.business2community.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F05%2FFacebook-fuckup1-300x300.jpg)

Is it bad I want to both report and like this?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on September 30, 2015, 07:10:07 PM
Is it bad I want to both report and like this?

So.... you want to report that you like this?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on September 30, 2015, 08:14:25 PM
So.... you want to report that you like this?
In that case i'd say mission accomplished. All without cosplaying as a pilot on an aircraft carrier.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zerohour on October 01, 2015, 12:10:44 AM
Removed a bunch of posts stemming from obvious flamebait.

Did I miss something?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on October 01, 2015, 01:17:15 AM
Did I miss something?

Clearly you did, yes.   :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on October 01, 2015, 02:04:51 AM
Did I miss something?
'


you missed the victoria's secret models marching in support of COH...and a 420 piece marching band, all playing kazoos...too bad, they were great
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 01, 2015, 05:59:37 AM
Did I miss something?
Nothing of note. Poorly written simplistic trolling that was pretty typical of a certain recurring troll that reappears every so often before being banned again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MegaWatt on October 01, 2015, 07:04:54 AM
'


you missed the victoria's secret models marching in support of COH...and a 420 piece marching band, all playing kazoos...too bad, they were great

I dunno i think the voovoozela brigade was better and when the Blue Angels did that flyby with the thunder birds and Voltron while Batman and captain America brake danced ?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on October 01, 2015, 03:31:28 PM
I dunno i think the voovoozela brigade was better and when the Blue Angels did that flyby with the thunder birds and Voltron while Batman and captain America brake danced ?

Did this happen on Mulberry Street?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: RGladden on October 01, 2015, 03:42:49 PM
Did this happen on Mulberry Street?

Nope....No. 10 Downing Street, London, UK
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on October 01, 2015, 06:43:45 PM
Did I miss something?

You gained more by missing than viewing
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 01, 2015, 07:09:00 PM
You gained more by missing than viewing

I protest, I wasted a perfectly good Obi Wan Kenobi meme on those posts.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on October 01, 2015, 09:31:23 PM
I protest, I wasted a perfectly good Obi Wan Kenobi meme on those posts.

Arcana

Your worst post is far better than my best post ever.

However, let me be the forum troll so you can re-use that meme.

I will get into character.

Ahem

"Passive aggressive post ...(I got rid of the rest)."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on October 01, 2015, 09:47:36 PM
You need to call someone wretched to set up the meme properly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on October 01, 2015, 09:49:28 PM
You need to call someone wretched to set up the meme properly.

oh yeahh!  I forgot that detail.

You (non-specific person) are wretched! 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on October 01, 2015, 09:54:22 PM
Allow me to preemptively stress that calling a hive wretched does not necessarily imply that its inhabitants are wretched.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 02, 2015, 01:17:30 AM
Allow me to preemptively stress that calling a hive wretched does not necessarily imply that its inhabitants are wretched.
It has come to be considered an implication that the hive is full of scum and villainy, however.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on October 02, 2015, 03:14:05 AM
Nothing of note. Poorly written simplistic trolling that was pretty typical of a certain recurring troll that reappears every so often before being banned again.

What was quite interesting is that the account had been registered for over a year before rising.

I checked before things apparently got really bad.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 02, 2015, 05:49:17 AM
What was quite interesting is that the account had been registered for over a year before rising.

I checked before things apparently got really bad.
Interesting. As far as i can recall their post count was so low that i pretty much assumed it was a new account, but i didn't investigate it at all. i read the first few posts they made in this thread, sighed at how derivative and uninspired they were and stopped paying attention.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on October 02, 2015, 07:15:22 AM
Interesting. As far as i can recall their post count was so low that i pretty much assumed it was a new account, but i didn't investigate it at all.

I checked it, too; the account was registered last year, but the (5?) posts they made in this thread were the first posts.

So who knows? Maybe someone genuinely interested in the game, but a slow boil led to them going off. Could have been a troll account set up long ago.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on October 02, 2015, 02:31:36 PM
You can't just pop in one day and troll. The council of trolls requires one year bridge occupancy.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on October 02, 2015, 04:00:19 PM
You can't just pop in one day and troll. The council of trolls requires one year bridge occupancy.

What happens if you troll the council of trolls?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on October 02, 2015, 04:06:40 PM
What happens if you troll the council of trolls?

It's like dividing by zero, or crossing proton streams.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Lord Nightmare on October 02, 2015, 04:56:50 PM
I'd make a Star Trek joke, but it's just not Worf it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on October 02, 2015, 06:08:29 PM
It's like dividing by zero, or crossing proton streams.

Or reversing the polarity of the neutron flow.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Sinistar on October 02, 2015, 07:22:03 PM
It's like dividing by zero, or crossing proton streams.

But...crossing the streams is bad. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 02, 2015, 07:36:06 PM
But...crossing the streams is bad. :)

Is all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light bad?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fireheart on October 02, 2015, 08:04:02 PM
Mmmm, not for long.  Might be a pretty light-show for someone in another galaxy.

Be Well!
Fireheart
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on October 02, 2015, 09:31:02 PM
Is all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light bad?

Ask Keith Richards.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 02, 2015, 10:35:33 PM
Charlie Sheen approves this thread.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Minotaur on October 03, 2015, 07:46:25 AM
What happens if you troll the council of trolls?

Did I miss something, who killed the unicorns ?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on October 03, 2015, 05:04:02 PM
Did I miss something, who killed the unicorns ?

It had to be done.

They had rabies. And were behind on the alimony.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 03, 2015, 05:41:59 PM
The unicorns were secretly evil, EEEVIL.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Paragon Avenger on October 03, 2015, 06:05:48 PM
Troll = unicorns, but not anymore.
I wonder if pancake still means pancake.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on October 03, 2015, 07:14:14 PM
Troll = unicorns, but not anymore.
I wonder if pancake still means pancake.

you arent waffling on us now are you? that would be a crepey thing to do.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on October 03, 2015, 09:04:49 PM
you arent waffling on us now are you? that would be a crepey thing to do.
Now I'm in the mood for some French Toast...  :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on October 03, 2015, 09:09:02 PM
Troll = unicorns, but not anymore.
I wonder if pancake still means pancake.
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=36.media.tumblr.com%2F8793964a2acfce6a05a69bcc596933ac%2Ftumblr_nonsw1ISmk1r3abdgo1_1280.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 03, 2015, 09:09:59 PM
It had to be done.

They had rabies. And were behind on the alimony.

Most folks don't realize that unicorns are carnivorous, crappy spouses AND irresponsible parents. Rabies is a frequent condition as they often nibble on dead things they may not have hunted themselves. Their favorite meal is elf.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on October 04, 2015, 01:28:45 AM
Most folks don't realize that unicorns are carnivorous, crappy spouses AND irresponsible parents. Rabies is a frequent condition as they often nibble on dead things they may not have hunted themselves. Their favorite meal is elf.

isnt everybodies favorite meal elf?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 04, 2015, 02:28:45 AM
isnt everybodies favorite meal elf?
Not everybody, i tend to leave it on the shelf.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tubbius on October 04, 2015, 04:39:47 AM
Not everybody, i tend to leave it on the shelf.

You can't eat all the elves.  Some folks want to grow up to be dentists.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 04, 2015, 12:39:21 PM
Eat the elf dentists. Think of the bumbles.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on October 04, 2015, 05:42:34 PM
Did I miss something, who killed the unicorns ?

It was Voldemort!  Well, actually it was Professor Quirrell, who had Voldemort's withered remains merged with the back of his head, but I digress....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on October 04, 2015, 06:58:53 PM
It was Voldemort!  Well, actually it was Professor Quirrell, who had Voldemort's withered remains merged with the back of his head, but I digress....

It was Elmer Fudd..duck season and wabbit season was over
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on October 05, 2015, 02:32:02 AM
It was Elmer Fudd..duck season and wabbit season was over

It was Voldelmert Fudd.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Paragon Avenger on October 05, 2015, 03:42:51 AM
BTW: it was over a year ago that the mask came off.
And Tony Stark has yet to update us about the status of our beloved game.
That National Diary Association thingy stinks.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on October 05, 2015, 12:04:52 PM
BTW: it was over a year ago that the mask came off.
And Tony Stark has yet to update us about the status of our beloved game.
That National Diary Association thingy stinks.

BTW:  It was over a year ago that  the Facebook Blabbermouth leaked TFHM information to the great surprise and consternation of both the team and NCSoft.
And The Facebook Blabbermouth has yet to apologize for the perpetual angst on these forums that he has unleashed ever since about the status of our beloved game.
Leaking unauthorized information stinks.

 :)

Why does everyone keep complaining about lack of news like TFHM is dangling candy in front of a baby then yanking it away?  No one should know anything.  This deal may never happen.  Thank a couple of those in the know, who just couldn't keep their mouths shut a year ago, for all this added stress we've had ever since.  Even the death threats and "I'll come to your house" threats that happened in PMs never would have happened if everybody who knew something would have just kept their mouths shut instead.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: hurple on October 05, 2015, 01:34:38 PM
BTW:  It was over a year ago that  the Facebook Blabbermouth leaked TFHM information to the great surprise and consternation of both the team and NCSoft.
And The Facebook Blabbermouth has yet to apologize for the perpetual angst on these forums that he has unleashed ever since about the status of our beloved game.
Leaking unauthorized information stinks.

 :)

Why does everyone keep complaining about lack of news like TFHM is dangling candy in front of a baby then yanking it away?  No one should know anything.  This deal may never happen.  Thank a couple of those in the know, who just couldn't keep their mouths shut a year ago, for all this added stress we've had ever since.  Even the death threats and "I'll come to your house" threats that happened in PMs never would have happened if everybody who knew something would have just kept their mouths shut instead.

But, without that announcement a year ago, I would have given up and taken off long ago.  And, I bet there's a few others on here just like that.  I'm only here now waiting on news, and for the return.

I'm about to give up anyway.  This is ridiculous. 

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Solitaire on October 05, 2015, 02:32:07 PM
But, without that announcement a year ago, I would have given up and taken off long ago.  And, I bet there's a few others on here just like that.  I'm only here now waiting on news, and for the return.

I'm about to give up anyway.  This is ridiculous.

I wouldn't say it's ridiculous just slow going, if it's met to be it will be, otherwise there isn't much use in getting to upset about the time it's taking for a decision to be made.

We've been waiting this long so I'm sure we can wait some more, let's not beat each other up over the time it's taking we're all here for the same reason our love of a game that is dear to out hearts.

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on October 05, 2015, 03:29:02 PM
But, without that announcement a year ago, I would have given up and taken off long ago.  And, I bet there's a few others on here just like that.  I'm only here now waiting on news, and for the return.

I'm about to give up anyway.  This is ridiculous.

I understand the emotion, but you have to look at this objectively. Right now, CoH is dead. There is an effort in progress that might ressurect it, and other efforts to try to capture the spirit of the game (and hopefully thereby capture a similar community of players).

We suffered a blow when the game was lost, but that's water under the bridge, gone forever, done deal.

The only place we have to go from here is UP. Just remind yourself of that whenever you are feeling sour.

Or go play some other games for a while. Many have good qualities, and at least some shelf-life. If nothing else, it will help you appreciate the unique combination of what we would like to see revived or re-built.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 05, 2015, 05:16:37 PM
But, without that announcement a year ago, I would have given up and taken off long ago.  And, I bet there's a few others on here just like that.  I'm only here now waiting on news, and for the return.

I'm about to give up anyway.  This is ridiculous.
Yeah, I am sorry but this is very ridiculous now. Especially if NCsoft was worried about nexon. Raising their stock price should help them. Also, Nexon doesn't have controlling interest. There should be NO reason said NCsoft employee should  be scared by doing something when the person he fears has NO operational control rights. I don't believe post el facto firing could be legal in Korea.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on October 05, 2015, 05:33:05 PM
From my personal perspective, Paragon Chat gives me 65% of what I valued in the game.  I can create characters and bios, share them with other people in a common environment and tour the world of Paragon City.  It makes it a lot easier for me to be patient on everything else. 

Though I'd REALLY like to play through those builds, beat up bad guys and save citizens so they can make sarcastic comments about my costume.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 05, 2015, 05:40:26 PM
. . .<Snip!> beat up bad guys and save citizens so they can make sarcastic comments about my costume.

*Nostalgic Moment*
 
Ah h h, those were good times. . .
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ironwolf on October 05, 2015, 06:14:12 PM
I hope this helps for those who are in doubt.

I have spoken in the past to some of those folks who want to make this deal and they are complete fans of the game the same as we are.

In fact they are such fans of the game that when they thought it was gone - they got some friends together pooled their money and started a studio to make a game as close to CoH as they could.

When they thought they could possibly buy the IP for CoH - they were as giddy as a school girl at her first prom. When they thought the deal was killed by being forced to open up to what was happening they were in complete panic - thinking the game was gone forever.

If you think sitting on the outside getting no news is hard - try working on their side where you want it at least as much as we do - but must work at NCSoft's speed. I have nothing but respect for them for making this effort and I know they will do everything possible to make it happen. NCSoft has not said - No. So far everything is yes, just at their speed.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on October 05, 2015, 06:23:57 PM
If you want news, look what I learned from the guide on my dvr today -

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=cdn.meme.am%2Finstances2%2F500x%2F2252352.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on October 05, 2015, 06:46:40 PM
If you want news, look what I learned from the guide on my dvr today -

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=cdn.meme.am%2Finstances2%2F500x%2F2252352.jpg)
I would like to make an observation.

Their statement that Andrew Wardle is the only person in the UK to be born without a penis is false. I'm guessing that about half (give it take a few percentages) of the persons in the UK are born without penises. Now, if they meant to imply that women aren't persons, then I might be a little upset about that. But, I just think it was a poorly worded statement.

Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled...whatever.  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on October 05, 2015, 06:57:51 PM
Um, yeah that was kinda the point of posting it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on October 05, 2015, 09:08:28 PM
But, without that announcement a year ago, I would have given up and taken off long ago.  And, I bet there's a few others on here just like that.  I'm only here now waiting on news, and for the return.

I'm about to give up anyway.  This is ridiculous.
I am here because of this announcement, I was full of hate of what was done to City of. I spent the money on City of. but I spent it on an inferior game. And to that I will not leave or give up on this or any know attempts. I want to be able to go home. City of. was the game I went back when I was bored with another game. But since our home closed STO has become my temp. home when I get bored.
Who knows what is happing maybe all the team is doing with Nc Soft is sipping tea and talking about how best to get the game out again. (NOTE* I am not apart of the team).
I hope this helps for those who are in doubt.

I have spoken in the past to some of those folks who want to make this deal and they are complete fans of the game the same as we are.

In fact they are such fans of the game that when they thought it was gone - they got some friends together pooled their money and started a studio to make a game as close to CoH as they could.

When they thought they could possibly buy the IP for CoH - they were as giddy as a school girl at her first prom. When they thought the deal was killed by being forced to open up to what was happening they were in complete panic - thinking the game was gone forever.

If you think sitting on the outside getting no news is hard - try working on their side where you want it at least as much as we do - but must work at NCSoft's speed. I have nothing but respect for them for making this effort and I know they will do everything possible to make it happen. NCSoft has not said - No. So far everything is yes, just at their speed.
I like the reason. :) People just need to relax and save that energy for when the game comes back. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 05, 2015, 11:27:46 PM
I hope this helps for those who are in doubt.

I have spoken in the past to some of those folks who want to make this deal and they are complete fans of the game the same as we are.

In fact they are such fans of the game that when they thought it was gone - they got some friends together pooled their money and started a studio to make a game as close to CoH as they could.

When they thought they could possibly buy the IP for CoH - they were as giddy as a school girl at her first prom. When they thought the deal was killed by being forced to open up to what was happening they were in complete panic - thinking the game was gone forever.

If you think sitting on the outside getting no news is hard - try working on their side where you want it at least as much as we do - but must work at NCSoft's speed. I have nothing but respect for them for making this effort and I know they will do everything possible to make it happen. NCSoft has not said - No. So far everything is yes, just at their speed.
I really do appreciate the effort, don't get me wrong. I absolutely do not think it is our side that is the issue. The things that get me is what I said in my previous post. At this point I really don't think they are in good faith, never were. It couldn't hurt ANYONE at the company.  Nexon doesn't have that kind of say yet. It could only help NCsoft if they made some revenue.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on October 06, 2015, 12:23:14 AM
Yeah, I am sorry but this is very ridiculous now. Especially if NCsoft was worried about nexon. Raising their stock price should help them. Also, Nexon doesn't have controlling interest. There should be NO reason said NCsoft employee should  be scared by doing something when the person he fears has NO operational control rights. I don't believe post el facto firing could be legal in Korea.

Yes, I agree with you completely. This is totally ridiculous and apparently it always was. Clearly the team that is pretending to conduct negotiations is actually just trolling us and has been all along.
I think that the only way to win this game with them is not to play. Not to visit this forum anymore, not to post here anymore. I suggest this winning strategy to you, and I hope you take me most seriously.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on October 06, 2015, 12:23:25 AM
I'm about to give up anyway.  This is ridiculous.

If by this you mean that you've literally been sitting in front of your computer screen since the game shuttered, waiting for news so that you can immediately hop online and begin to level your way back up to 50 and all the Incarnate powers you can shake a stick at, then yes. Yes, please do give up.

Otherwise, why not just hold out. You're not losing anything for the wait, are you?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on October 06, 2015, 12:29:38 AM
Yes, I agree with you completely. This is totally ridiculous and apparently it always was. Clearly the team that is pretending to conduct negotiations is actually just trolling us and has been all along.
I think that the only way to win this game with them is not to play. Not to visit this forum anymore, not to post here anymore. I suggest this winning strategy to you, and I hope you take me most seriously.

I tried to hold my breath till they gave in, but I passed out...my wife tells me I did turn funny colors though, so it wasnt all a waste
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 06, 2015, 02:03:49 AM
Yes, I agree with you completely. This is totally ridiculous and apparently it always was. Clearly the team that is pretending to conduct negotiations is actually just trolling us and has been all along.
I think that the only way to win this game with them is not to play. Not to visit this forum anymore, not to post here anymore. I suggest this winning strategy to you, and I hope you take me most seriously.
I said the team was serious but ncsoft wasn't?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 06, 2015, 03:05:21 AM
http://m.packers.com/news/video/rodgers-r-e-l-a-x-remix-5b3c8795-d6df-439f-8d36-95aa273b4973

I have a good friend who is a Packer and CoH fan... So figured why not.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Victoria Victrix on October 06, 2015, 03:26:39 AM
From my personal perspective, Paragon Chat gives me 65% of what I valued in the game.  I can create characters and bios, share them with other people in a common environment and tour the world of Paragon City.  It makes it a lot easier for me to be patient on everything else. 

Quoted For Truth
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 06, 2015, 06:01:43 AM
Raising their stock price should help them.

It almost sounded there like you believe selling City of Heroes would increase NCSoft's stock price.  That's not even a question, just an observational incredulity.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ricodah on October 06, 2015, 12:14:10 PM
But, without that announcement a year ago, I would have given up and taken off long ago.  And, I bet there's a few others on here just like that.  I'm only here now waiting on news, and for the return.

I'm about to give up anyway.  This is ridiculous.
Yeah, I am sorry but this is very ridiculous now. Especially if NCsoft was worried about nexon. Raising their stock price should help them. Also, Nexon doesn't have controlling interest. There should be NO reason said NCsoft employee should  be scared by doing something when the person he fears has NO operational control rights. I don't believe post el facto firing could be legal in Korea.

I understand the frustration, my patience grows thin at times as well. But in the end, the community was always CoH's strongest trait. Some people spent more time in the forums than in the game. Talking builds, strategies, stories, ideas, accomplishments, future issues etc. Nowadays it's different topics but same old community. Coming to CoHTitan often just hoping for the BIG news is similar to watching water boil or paint dry.

I think there was an email signup for updates, someone will probably correct me if I'm wrong or post the signup if I'm right. Signup, take a break from the forums, play new games, get back to old hobbies/start new ones etc. Hopefully we will get the update we're all waiting for someday in the near future and we can all meet up in the Sewer Trial!

If there's no signup for updates, pm me your email address and I'll send you the ground breaking news of the return when it comes.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on October 06, 2015, 12:33:58 PM
I think there was an email signup for updates

Good news, anyone!  There is! (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10649.0.html)  It's been sitting there for the past 8 months.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on October 06, 2015, 04:23:10 PM
Ok, fine. I finally made a signature with a few quotes  to help get across the idea that hope is something that you choose, not something that just happens.

Unfortunately, I see a a lot of people choose to give up hope in favor of being miserable. To them, I say, "Pbttbtbtbtbtbtb"  :P

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on October 06, 2015, 05:54:38 PM
From my personal perspective, Paragon Chat gives me 65% of what I valued in the game.  I can create characters and bios, share them with other people in a common environment and tour the world of Paragon City.  It makes it a lot easier for me to be patient on everything else. 

Though I'd REALLY like to play through those builds, beat up bad guys and save citizens so they can make sarcastic comments about my costume.

For me it's more like 20%. I did (and do) enjoy and appreciate the community, but I mostly want to be able to play the game. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 06, 2015, 06:22:34 PM
From my personal perspective, Paragon Chat gives me 65% of what I valued in the game.  I can create characters and bios, share them with other people in a common environment and tour the world of Paragon City.  It makes it a lot easier for me to be patient on everything else. 

Though I'd REALLY like to play through those builds, beat up bad guys and save citizens so they can make sarcastic comments about my costume.

If you want, post your costume and I'll make sarcastic comments about it; I can probably get you up to at least 76%.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on October 06, 2015, 09:49:36 PM
For me it's more like 20%. I did (and do) enjoy and appreciate the community, but I mostly want to be able to play the game.

Yeah, that's about how I feel about it.  Maybe even a lower percentage.  I was a solo player who enjoyed the game as a game and rarely socialized outside of the chat channels (and that wasn't common, either).

So I'm looking forward to something I can log in and play, whether it be the return of CoH or the completion of one of the successor projects (and I wouldn't have thought that the latter would be happening more quickly than the former).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on October 07, 2015, 03:23:46 PM
If you want, post your costume and I'll make sarcastic comments about it; I can probably get you up to at least 76%.

Only if I've saved you from Circle of Thorns mystics or menacing Tsoo Red Ink guys. :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 09, 2015, 08:17:56 AM
The silence has become deafening!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on October 09, 2015, 11:59:56 AM
The silence has become deafening!

silent but deadly ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 09, 2015, 01:05:43 PM
silent but deadly ;)
Apperently Nate is a fart.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on October 09, 2015, 05:14:58 PM
Apperently Nate is a fart.

Let's hope he's "silent but successful". We can name a new kind of fart after him. What an honor. I think.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 09, 2015, 06:18:04 PM
Too funny!

And definitely a dubious honor.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 09, 2015, 07:03:14 PM
Let's hope he's "silent but successful". We can name a new kind of fart after him. What an honor. I think.

Under what set of circumstances would you ever use that nomenclature?

A:  Man, I hate it when everyone piles into the elevator and pushes all the buttons and we have to stop on every single floor.

B:  Let me try something...

A:  Wow, that was silent but successful.  Now we have the elevator all to ourselves.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on October 09, 2015, 08:18:22 PM
I remember an old episode of Dennis Miller where the South Park creators were on there talking about how they'd go to Hollywood parties and take pictures of each other farting on celebrities. The SBS seems like it'd be useful terminology in that scenario.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on October 09, 2015, 11:50:38 PM
This is what the conversation has sunk to?  Man, there better be some news soon, or who knows where this thread could dive!  :o ;) ???
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on October 10, 2015, 01:11:04 AM
Under what set of circumstances would you ever use that nomenclature?

A:  Man, I hate it when everyone piles into the elevator and pushes all the buttons and we have to stop on every single floor.

B:  Let me try something...

A:  Wow, that was silent but successful.  Now we have the elevator all to ourselves.
Maybe upon a successful use of Chocking Cloud?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on October 10, 2015, 02:01:07 AM
Maybe upon a successful use of Chocking Cloud?

The name of the debuff assigned upon being hit by Ritki Monkey Gas.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 10, 2015, 10:54:42 PM
This is what the conversation has sunk to?  Man, there better be some news soon, or who knows where this thread could dive!  :o ;) ???
I mean weve done good for being 2 years in. Just now we are starting to sound like inbred and hysterical hill billys.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wyrm on October 10, 2015, 11:39:27 PM
I mean weve done good for being 2 years in. Just now we are starting to sound like inbred and hysterical hill billys.
As someone who grew up in Arkansas and has family throughout Kentucky and West Virginia, and who teaches psychology, I would respectfully submit that the level of dialogue I've observed in this thread is not at all typical of either inbreeding or hysteria.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a sistercousinwife to scold for something or other.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on October 11, 2015, 12:26:08 AM
I take it as a symptom of what can happen in the absence of something substantive to discuss.  We have covered most things we love about the game, and things we hotly anticipate if it returns (along with the things we don't like about things standing in the way of it returning). 

All things considered, I would rather see the conversation sink below the "lowbrow" level, than to see no discussion at all.  Which given the time factor so far, it truly amazes me that we have as much discourse as we do.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 11, 2015, 01:28:57 AM
As someone who grew up in Arkansas and has family throughout Kentucky and West Virginia, and who teaches psychology, I would respectfully submit that the level of dialogue I've observed in this thread is not at all typical of either inbreeding or hysteria.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a sistercousinwife to scold for something or other.
;) we just hide it real good.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Victoria Victrix on October 11, 2015, 04:13:18 AM
;) we just hide it real good.

*Does something stupid involving beer and propane.*
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on October 11, 2015, 07:36:49 AM
*Does something stupid involving beer and propane.*

That reminds me of the time I lit a bottle rocket off in my bedroom...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: RGladden on October 11, 2015, 02:52:18 PM
As someone who grew up in Arkansas and has family throughout Kentucky and West Virginia, and who teaches psychology, I would respectfully submit that the level of dialogue I've observed in this thread is not at all typical of either inbreeding or hysteria.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a sistercousinwife to scold for something or other.

You grew up in Arkansas?  Moi aussi!  COUSIN!!!  What part did you grow up in?  What's your home town?  Where are you now?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on October 11, 2015, 04:04:32 PM
I mean weve done good for being 2 years in. Just now we are starting to sound like inbred and hysterical hill billys.


could be worse... this could be the facebook group....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 11, 2015, 04:37:06 PM

could be worse... this could be the facebook group....
Lol so true...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on October 11, 2015, 04:39:06 PM
Lol so true...

I got nuthin'.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 11, 2015, 04:46:37 PM
As someone who only joined the FB Coh page(s) once I saw the news article about CoX's possible return...

I still got nothing.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 11, 2015, 04:51:17 PM
*Does something stupid involving beer and propane.*

Are there any smart things you can do with beer and propane?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Kelltick on October 11, 2015, 05:10:17 PM
Are there any smart things you can do with beer and propane?

Backyard barbeque on a gas grill.  8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on October 11, 2015, 07:25:08 PM
Backyard barbeque on a gas grill.  8)

*Ding*  There it is!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 11, 2015, 08:57:16 PM
That reminds me of the time I lit a bottle rocket off in my bedroom...

The real dumdums light the firework mortar off their a$$. We have darwin award candidates.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 11, 2015, 10:23:14 PM
The real dumdums light the firework mortar off their a$$. We have darwin award candidates.
But did they die?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Wyrm on October 11, 2015, 10:44:49 PM
You grew up in Arkansas?  Moi aussi!  COUSIN!!!  What part did you grow up in?  What's your home town?  Where are you now?
Grew up in North Little Rock, went to UCA for undergrad, now teach in Ohio. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: rezulin on October 11, 2015, 11:54:52 PM
Darwin Award recipients need not die to receive the award.  Removing their own ability to procreate through action or inaction when they ought to really know better is enough.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 12, 2015, 01:32:39 AM
Darwin Award recipients need not die to receive the award.  Removing their own ability to procreate through action or inaction when they ought to really know better is enough.
Good point...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Victoria Victrix on October 12, 2015, 01:54:52 AM
Darwin Award recipients need not die to receive the award.  Removing their own ability to procreate through action or inaction when they ought to really know better is enough.

Like this guy--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdxyRv8IN88 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdxyRv8IN88)


Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 12, 2015, 03:11:14 AM
Like this guy--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdxyRv8IN88 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdxyRv8IN88)
A valiant attempt, but he didn't quite achieve sterilization. Full marks for effort, but he needs another go.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 12, 2015, 04:30:38 AM
But did they die?

sorry I misremembered, it wasn't his butt

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/07/05/man-dies-fireworks-head/29734471/ (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/07/05/man-dies-fireworks-head/29734471/)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: CrimsonCapacitor on October 12, 2015, 01:28:17 PM
Under what set of circumstances would you ever use that nomenclature?

A:  Man, I hate it when everyone piles into the elevator and pushes all the buttons and we have to stop on every single floor.

B:  Let me try something...

A:  Wow, that was silent but successful.  Now we have the elevator all to ourselves.

It'd be more like this:

Wow, am I bloated and gassy.  I really need to let one rip, but the wife would be mortified if I did that at this party.  Only one hope....

Clenches and hopes

Whew.  Silent but successful!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 12, 2015, 05:07:20 PM
A valiant attempt, but he didn't quite achieve sterilization. Full marks for effort, but he needs another go.
That is disappointing, he can pass along his genes :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 12, 2015, 06:40:17 PM
Backyard barbeque on a gas grill.  8)

Depending on the ratio of beer to propane, not all of those end up being intelligent activities.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 12, 2015, 07:26:24 PM
Darwin Award recipients need not die to receive the award.  Removing their own ability to procreate through action or inaction when they ought to really know better is enough.

Correct, they only need to succeed in removing themselves from the gene pool in a spectacularly stupid fashion, proving they deserved to loose the right to procreate. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 13, 2015, 02:26:33 AM
Depending on the ratio of beer to propane, not all of those end up being intelligent activities.

Sorry, Arcana... I had to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-hUV9yhqgY

Some great ideas come from really, really crass places. May this inspire the game's return... or laughter.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 13, 2015, 08:32:46 PM
All the best propane stories start with:

Quote from: Potential Darwin Award Winner
"Here, hold my beer, watch this!"

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on October 13, 2015, 08:52:59 PM
Sorry, Arcana... I had to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-hUV9yhqgY

Some great ideas come from really, really crass places. May this inspire the game's return... or laughter.

You just inspired me to watch that show on HBO Now.....
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 13, 2015, 09:18:21 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-hUV9yhqgY

Some great ideas come from really, really crass places.

If you haven't had at least one brainstorming session that looked like this, you're not a real engineer.  Technically speaking that's algorithm brainstorming not engineering, but they are extremely close cousins.  Although I suppose there's some engineering involved in determining the penis alignment limiting values for optimal jerkage.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Fireheart on October 13, 2015, 09:50:11 PM
A better solution might be to daisy-chain them and pass along the stroke, but that might be interrupted by one with a left-hand twist.

Be Well!
Fireheart
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 13, 2015, 10:05:21 PM
If you haven't had at least one brainstorming session that looked like this, you're not a real engineer.  Technically speaking that's algorithm brainstorming not engineering, but they are extremely close cousins.  Although I suppose there's some engineering involved in determining the penis alignment limiting values for optimal jerkage.

Word is they had a Stanford professor work out the process. For a dick joke. How can you not like that show?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on October 14, 2015, 04:22:09 AM
All the best Pinnacle stories start with:

Quote from: Potential TF Winner
"Here, hold my beer, watch this!"

ftfy ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 14, 2015, 10:05:07 PM
Word is they had a Stanford professor work out the process. For a dick joke. How can you not like that show?

You could be an MIT graduate?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on October 14, 2015, 11:28:36 PM
Oy!  The game had better come back soon!  There is no telling how much more degeneration of subject matter can occur before then, but so far there is no end in sight!  ;)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 15, 2015, 01:55:00 AM
Oy!  The game had better come back soon!  There is no telling how much more degeneration of subject matter can occur before then, but so far there is no end in sight!  ;)
i'm actually torn about this. On the one hand i would really like to play the game again, but on the other hand...
(https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3866/14578734044_e94b4e6183_o.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/odgPHw)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on October 15, 2015, 03:47:24 AM
i'm actually torn about this. On the one hand i would really like to play the game again, but on the other hand...
(https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3866/14578734044_e94b4e6183_o.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/odgPHw)

I understand that some people get discouraged sooner than others. However, concerning that point where we need to stop...


(https://i1383.photobucket.com/albums/ah312/zakath71/Gandalf_zpsvzplgagf.gif) (http://s1383.photobucket.com/user/zakath71/media/Gandalf_zpsvzplgagf.gif.html)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on October 15, 2015, 06:27:05 AM
"On the next episode of Gandalf: Hall Monitor..."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ankhammon on October 15, 2015, 04:40:42 PM
"On the next episode of Gandalf: Hall Monitor..."

And here I thought he was commenting about the KC Chiefs.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on October 15, 2015, 06:16:15 PM
That was in the director's cut, and the line was 'you shall not pass for more than 5 yards beyond the line of scrimmage.' can see why they cut it as it was a bit of a non-sequitor, especially as he blurted it out in the middle of the council meeting.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on October 15, 2015, 06:28:38 PM
And here I thought he was commenting about the KC Chiefs.

That's great, but who are the Chefs?

(https://i.imgur.com/NUIbrHn.jpgp)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on October 15, 2015, 06:39:33 PM
That's great, but who are the Chefs?

(https://i.imgur.com/NUIbrHn.jpgp)

One of the best commercials I've seen
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on October 15, 2015, 06:41:33 PM
One of the best commercials I've seen

Great Googley Moogley!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Goddangit on October 15, 2015, 08:38:20 PM
I thought the other Snickers football commercial was pretty good too, but the Chefs one is better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHOVwy4b6kI

And then there's Mayhem...  Hmmm...  Mayhem as a villain.  Or a super hero gone wrong...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_5IdWWRL4w

And Dumbledore looks kinda angry there.  Maybe should take his advice and just hand it off.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on October 15, 2015, 09:54:27 PM
Still the greatest one and some how got passed the FCC was this A&W Root beer Commercial

(https://evilsquirrelsnest.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/dumass.jpg)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMe3WDmxBEI
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on October 15, 2015, 10:22:23 PM
Silent, but successful?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEYInUvLalQ


PS: Dibs on "Ninja of the Nasty"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on October 16, 2015, 12:48:21 AM
Still the greatest one and some how got passed the FCC was this A&W Root beer Commercial

(https://evilsquirrelsnest.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/dumass.jpg)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMe3WDmxBEI
This commercial was the reason that I called one of my cats "Mr. Dumass".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on October 16, 2015, 04:40:44 AM
This commercial was the reason that I called one of my cats "Mr. Dumass".
i sometimes refer to some people as a "French writer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Dumas)" sometimes for similar reasons.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: duane on October 16, 2015, 08:56:57 PM
Late, retracted.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Rejolt on October 17, 2015, 09:12:46 PM
Still the greatest one and some how got passed the FCC was this A&W Root beer Commercial

(https://evilsquirrelsnest.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/dumass.jpg)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMe3WDmxBEI

If CoX comes back, my first toon will be a Mastermind who was imprisoned at Nexon, planned his revenge, broke out and got the game back with all the ill-gotten stock cash loot in tow!

And just cause:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9p9Yr1U2KA
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Remaugen on October 22, 2015, 05:05:13 PM
If CoX comes back, my first toon will be a Mastermind who was imprisoned at Nexon, planned his revenge, broke out and got the game back with all the ill-gotten stock cash loot in tow! <Snip!> . . .


That's not bad!

I want my Ninjas back, I may go for an MM first as well.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: chuckv3 on October 22, 2015, 07:52:13 PM
i sometimes refer to some people as a "French writer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Dumas)" sometimes for similar reasons.

when I was a kid my best friend kept getting scolded for calling his little brother a dum a$$, so then we just turned it from D.A. into District Attorney, and shortened it all to just "district". So my friend would look at his brother, shake his head and say "district...." I would get the message, he would not get scolded, and his little brother would be confused (as usual).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on October 22, 2015, 08:25:37 PM
when I was a kid my best friend kept getting scolded for calling his little brother a dum a$$, so then we just turned it from D.A. into District Attorney, and shortened it all to just "district". So my friend would look at his brother, shake his head and say "district...." I would get the message, he would not get scolded, and his little brother would be confused (as usual).

So, THAT's what happened when I was growing up!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Doc Artz on October 28, 2015, 12:44:30 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 28, 2015, 12:51:32 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyghtshade on October 28, 2015, 04:30:37 AM
Sounded positive to me.  :-)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on October 28, 2015, 10:54:47 PM
Hope is, generally, viewed as positive.


Unless it's the hope towards the end of the world or some such...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MaxDefense on October 29, 2015, 12:12:22 AM
What is difficult for many to accept is that the Loss of the game was much like a hostage situation.

The people that played the game for years developed a relationship with there Characters and the community.

When the game stopped it was like someone took what we had worked on for years.

Anyone that understands how the information that made up the game works knows that it could be restored.

The question is will the let the hostages free

The team that is working on the release is doing there best to get them back to us

Lets just hold in there and hope for the best

Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on October 29, 2015, 12:29:35 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tubbius on October 29, 2015, 01:44:02 AM
Games with defunct online servers. . . .

This feels MORE like, say, the Resident Evil Outbreak games than closed MMOs, especially closed MMOs based in other countries.

I've seen stuff like this already raised on here, but I can't recall what people have been saying about it thus far.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Brigadine on October 30, 2015, 01:03:57 AM
Games with defunct online servers. . . .

This feels MORE like, say, the Resident Evil Outbreak games than closed MMOs, especially closed MMOs based in other countries.

I've seen stuff like this already raised on here, but I can't recall what people have been saying about it thus far.
CoH however was only OWNED overseas, it was developed in the USA and mostly functioned in the USA. IT operated primarily in united states jurisdiction.

Battlestations Midway might get help from this :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: pinballdave on October 30, 2015, 03:20:06 AM
I cannot see how CoX is an abandoned property when it is in closed negotiation for transfer of ownership
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: blacksly on October 30, 2015, 11:47:09 AM
I cannot see how CoX is an abandoned property when it is in closed negotiation for transfer of ownership

I cannot see that argument as having much sway in a court. If it weren't for the MMORPG exemption, it certainly would fall under the court's decision of being abandoned. Otherwise a company could just start closed negotiations to sell a product upon closing it, and never complete negotiations for any period of time, in order to maintain that any game is "not abandoned".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Drauger9 on October 30, 2015, 01:14:03 PM
Games with defunct online servers. . . .

This feels MORE like, say, the Resident Evil Outbreak games than closed MMOs, especially closed MMOs based in other countries.

I've seen stuff like this already raised on here, but I can't recall what people have been saying about it thus far.

Ah... I read that wrong. :(

Well, maybe it's a step in the right direction anyways.

Quote
I cannot see how CoX is an abandoned property when it is in closed negotiation for transfer of ownership

True but say if I had read the article correctly. Then the negotiations fell threw (which I don't believe they will. I don't see something taking this long falling apart). Then maybe it would of been a good back up plan.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zombie Hustler on October 31, 2015, 12:40:32 AM
I cannot see that argument as having much sway in a court. If it weren't for the MMORPG exemption, it certainly would fall under the court's decision of being abandoned. Otherwise a company could just start closed negotiations to sell a product upon closing it, and never complete negotiations for any period of time, in order to maintain that any game is "not abandoned".

I think that if that were ever to happen, then a case could be made that they were not negotiating in good faith.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mageman on November 02, 2015, 12:35:53 AM
HEY!  Mr. Downes!

How about an update? It's been 14 months since your mask came off - how about some hard information? People are dying over here!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Zerohour on November 02, 2015, 01:52:23 AM
HEY!  Mr. Downes!

How about an update? It's been 14 months since your mask came off - how about some hard information? People are dying over here!

I don't think he's got much to do with it anymore.  As far as I know he is still developing City of Titans, and I would suspect that he doesn't have the time to try and juggle both projects.  Not to mention, CoX coming back would likely have somewhat of an adverse effect on the excitement we all have for his new game.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on November 02, 2015, 01:59:41 AM
I don't think he's got much to do with it anymore.  As far as I know he is still developing City of Titans, and I would suspect that he doesn't have the time to try and juggle both projects.  Not to mention, CoX coming back would likely have somewhat of an adverse effect on the excitement we all have for his new game.

Not really. The main reason to get IP I suspect is to use the material of the IP for all spiritual success games. This includes CoT, Valiance, etc. Having CoX to play is just a nice extra side dish, but in a general business sense and to make a true successor (not just in spirit) they want to incorporate all the characters/factions/etc in the future games.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on November 02, 2015, 03:13:00 AM
HEY!  Mr. Downes!

How about an update? It's been 14 months since your mask came off - how about some hard information? People are dying over here!

There is no nice way to say this.  But no, be patient.  You are in no position to demand anything.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: darkgob on November 02, 2015, 03:36:41 AM
HEY!  Mr. Downes!

How about an update? It's been 14 months since your mask came off - how about some hard information? People are dying over here!

Nobody is dying, hyperbole is not useful here.  Please read this thread (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10649.0.html), follow the instructions contained therein, and move on with your life.

Not really. The main reason to get IP I suspect is to use the material of the IP for all spiritual success games. This includes CoT, Valiance, etc. Having CoX to play is just a nice extra side dish, but in a general business sense and to make a true successor (not just in spirit) they want to incorporate all the characters/factions/etc in the future games.

I sure hope they told the folks working on Atlas Park Revival then...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on November 02, 2015, 02:35:45 PM
Not really. The main reason to get IP I suspect is to use the material of the IP for all spiritual success games. This includes CoT, Valiance, etc. Having CoX to play is just a nice extra side dish, but in a general business sense and to make a true successor (not just in spirit) they want to incorporate all the characters/factions/etc in the future games.

I was under the impression that CoT said they wouldn't use any CoH stuff even if the deal went through?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on November 02, 2015, 03:45:44 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on November 02, 2015, 05:49:35 PM
That says to me that APR will get a way to make an actual playable game out of the visual assets that they are creating, and that game will be CoH 1.5. It does not say that CoT is actually going to put Statesman et al. in their lore, or do anything other than drop "spiritual" from their epithet.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MM3squints on November 02, 2015, 06:00:42 PM
That says to me that APR will get a way to make an actual playable game out of the visual assets that they are creating, and that game will be CoH 1.5. It does not say that CoT is actually going to put Statesman et al. in their lore, or do anything other than drop "spiritual" from their epithet.

Not so much put in Statesman (although that can be an option,) but to make references to CoX (Wherever CoT is located, you can have several mission saying:

"We need to stop "X" from destroying the city with sound waves. I heard something similar happened back in Independence Port in Rhode Island, could they be related?"

That is a very basic and simplified exampled. If you look at some of the CoT established lore, they do have a faction parallel Paragon City Crey Industries (Then again a corporation with shadow motives pretty much standard) and they can tie in Crey Industries. Of course, Nate said if desired, they can incorporate this, but seeing that Nate is fighting to get this, more than likley CoT will have certain aspects of this
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on November 02, 2015, 08:58:54 PM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on November 02, 2015, 09:07:01 PM
I cannot see how CoX is an abandoned property when it is in closed negotiation for transfer of ownership

The term "abandoned" as it pertains to the Librarian of Congress DMCA exemption is colloquial: the specific situation being addressed is the case where a game requires technical support from the vendor to function even for otherwise local play.  Such a game is considered "abandoned" in the sense that the game requires something from the vendor to work, and the vendor no longer offers that thing, so the game no longer functions.  Such a game is considered "abandoned" in the context of the DMCA exemption, but its not "abandoned" in the sense of the owner of the game literally surrendering the rights to the game or offering them into the public domain.  In fact, the DMCA exemption explicitly does *NOT* allow someone to violate the copyrights associated with the game: the exemption ONLY eliminates the DMCA protection normally provided that would prevent someone from reverse engineering the technology in the game in order to make it function again.

To offer a loose analogy, if City of Heroes was a single player game that also offered some LAN play between players, then the DMCA exemption would make Icon legal (or more specifically, it would make Icon not in violation of the DMCA in the US).  Paragon Chat, however, would not be covered by the exemption and would technically still be in violation of the DMCA (in the US) because it enabled online play (of sorts).  But Icon would be a legitimate use case of enabling our use of local CoH play because NCSoft "abandoned" the authentication servers that would otherwise be required to make CoH work: Icon would bypass that requirement, exactly the use case that the LoC exemption envisioned.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on November 02, 2015, 09:29:33 PM
Paragon Chat, however, would not be covered by the exemption and would technically still be in violation of the DMCA (in the US) because it enabled online play (of sorts).

It's true that the new exemption doesn't help Paragon Chat. However, it's merely an exemption to the law itself -- it remains to be seen if PC actually violates the DMCA, since the piece being distributed doesn't contain any copyrighted material. The part that could possibly be invoked is claiming that it's a tool that is prohibited by the anti-circumvention provisions. That depends on successfully arguing that the network protocol is a TPM (Technical Protection Measure), which is tenuous at best, especially if expert witnesses were to testify that the protocol is difficult to implement simply due to obscurity, not a competent attempt to control access.

I'd have to check as there is a lot of literature and my day job isn't copyright law, but there may already be a separate exemption for protocol interoperability.

The exemption doesn't help at all with the possibility of a full game -- the server-only data such as mission content and XP tables is still covered by copyright. Players never had access to it and even if the exemption did apply to multiplayer games, it would not compel NCSoft to release that data. There would be no legal means to obtain it. The best we could hope for would be an exemption to protect people trying to painstakingly recreate it from scratch -- and that would be very strongly opposed by industry lobbyists.

Right now what we have is not useful at all for dead MMOs, though it is a nice middle finger to publishers that shipped single-player titles with online activation requirements. It's a foot in the door that could possibly be widened later, but don't forget that these exemptions have to be renewed regularly, so the EFF may have their hands full just keeping this one alive. The best any of us can do is to keep supporting that cause and pushing for more reforms.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on November 03, 2015, 01:36:47 AM
It's true that the new exemption doesn't help Paragon Chat. However, it's merely an exemption to the law itself -- it remains to be seen if PC actually violates the DMCA, since the piece being distributed doesn't contain any copyrighted material. The part that could possibly be invoked is claiming that it's a tool that is prohibited by the anti-circumvention provisions. That depends on successfully arguing that the network protocol is a TPM (Technical Protection Measure), which is tenuous at best, especially if expert witnesses were to testify that the protocol is difficult to implement simply due to obscurity, not a competent attempt to control access.

I believe the problem isn't the network protocol itself, but the fact that PC eliminates the need to log into an authentication server.  Reverse engineering an auth server would be a DMCA violation, but developing technology that bypasses the need to log into one is also a DMCA violation if I understand the DMCA correctly.  Although we know that City of Heroes (the client) didn't strictly speaking need to log into an auth server so you could argue that isn't a true auth server bypass, I don't think that argument is solid in the face of prior DMCA litigation.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JoshexProxy on November 03, 2015, 02:07:10 AM
I believe the problem isn't the network protocol itself, but the fact that PC eliminates the need to log into an authentication server.  Reverse engineering an auth server would be a DMCA violation, but developing technology that bypasses the need to log into one is also a DMCA violation if I understand the DMCA correctly.  Although we know that City of Heroes (the client) didn't strictly speaking need to log into an auth server so you could argue that isn't a true auth server bypass, I don't think that argument is solid in the face of prior DMCA litigation.

in other words "when you're looking through legal technicalities in rather unclear legal grounds where there is extensive corporate interest; if you have to wonder whether or not it's legal to do what you are proposing, then it's not."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on November 03, 2015, 02:44:17 AM
in other words "when you're looking through legal technicalities in rather unclear legal grounds where there is extensive corporate interest; if you have to wonder whether or not it's legal to do what you are proposing, then it's not."

In this case, it isn't a legal technicality:

Quote
No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

I believe this has been interpreted by courts as explicitly covering technology that eliminates the need to log into an authentication server to run a game.  This is why the LoC exemption was argued as necessary in the first place.

The grey area isn't a legal technicality, its the question of whether the ability to run the game client in debug mode without auth servers "means" that the auth servers "effectively" control access.  I believe the average judge would frown on attempting to leverage those words to imply that any game that has a developer back door gives all consumers license to exploit that back door to dodge DMCA provisions. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on November 03, 2015, 04:05:29 AM
Although we know that City of Heroes (the client) didn't strictly speaking need to log into an auth server so you could argue that isn't a true auth server bypass, I don't think that argument is solid in the face of prior DMCA litigation.

The grey area isn't a legal technicality, its the question of whether the ability to run the game client in debug mode without auth servers "means" that the auth servers "effectively" control access.  I believe the average judge would frown on attempting to leverage those words to imply that any game that has a developer back door gives all consumers license to exploit that back door to dodge DMCA provisions. 

I think a pretty solid argument could be made that it's not just a dodge. I'm not talking about an obscure developer backdoor. It's the default mode of operation for the client. Logging in using the authentication server is optional.

I'm serious, try running Paragon Chat in -localhost mode. Do not log in to XMPP. In another window, run this command:

cityofheroes.exe -project coh

(you can use "-project asdf" you want, it just selects which registry key to load the graphics settings from. "coh" will load the ones you have already set)

It will ask for username and password -- the latter of which is ignored -- and then give you a server list with UNNAMED. Choosing UNNAMED will try to connect to the IP address of your own computer, whichever network card it finds first. If Paragon Chat is running in -localhost mode and windows firewall isn't blocking it, it will succeed.

The only reason PC doesn't use this method by default is that it's not quite as user-friendly, and the firewall can sometimes interfere.

The only way to make the client connect to an authentication server and actually validate the password is specifically ask it to by using the -auth option.

The only possible case to make is that the launcher always stuck -auth in there, but lots of players had been bypassing the launcher for years. I'd wager we could even find documented cases of support advising players to run the game directly with -project coh if the launcher was experiencing issues on their PC.

Obviously you'd want to explain this to a judge in easy to understand non-technical terms to avoid being painted as trying to find a loophole. It's not a play on 'effective' (the legal meaning of which is often misunderstood by people looking for loopholes), it's the fact that the game is very clearly designed for it.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on November 03, 2015, 09:21:23 PM
I think a pretty solid argument could be made that it's not just a dodge. I'm not talking about an obscure developer backdoor. It's the default mode of operation for the client. Logging in using the authentication server is optional.

I'm serious, try running Paragon Chat in -localhost mode. Do not log in to XMPP. In another window, run this command:

cityofheroes.exe -project coh

(you can use "-project asdf" you want, it just selects which registry key to load the graphics settings from. "coh" will load the ones you have already set)

It will ask for username and password -- the latter of which is ignored -- and then give you a server list with UNNAMED. Choosing UNNAMED will try to connect to the IP address of your own computer, whichever network card it finds first. If Paragon Chat is running in -localhost mode and windows firewall isn't blocking it, it will succeed.

The only reason PC doesn't use this method by default is that it's not quite as user-friendly, and the firewall can sometimes interfere.

The only way to make the client connect to an authentication server and actually validate the password is specifically ask it to by using the -auth option.

The only possible case to make is that the launcher always stuck -auth in there, but lots of players had been bypassing the launcher for years. I'd wager we could even find documented cases of support advising players to run the game directly with -project coh if the launcher was experiencing issues on their PC.

Obviously you'd want to explain this to a judge in easy to understand non-technical terms to avoid being painted as trying to find a loophole. It's not a play on 'effective' (the legal meaning of which is often misunderstood by people looking for loopholes), it's the fact that the game is very clearly designed for it.

True, but all of that causes City of Heroes to run locally (for testing purposes).  If *Icon* used that trick, I think the argument would be a strong one.  Paragon Chat uses that trick to connect different clients together, which ordinarily required a real auth server in practice.  From my study of prior cases, when faced with technical arguments on both sides, judges tend to look past them to net effects and not the technical practice.  The net effect of Paragon Chat is that City of Heroes used to require an auth server to connect to the game servers, and from there to other players, and now it doesn't.  That's a net effect of bypassing the requirement to have the auth servers.  To overcome that "net effect" argument would require an extremely compelling argument in my opinion.  If it was my job to do so, I would give it my best shot.  But I'd advise my clients I'm not sure even my best argument would win in this case.

If we could find even one case where developers ran test servers internally without the auth servers at all to interconnect different devs in a test case, and I know its possible this might have happened, then this argument gains considerable strength.  We'd still have to overcome the fact that NCSoft could argue that such a mode of operation was explicitly forbidden to the customers (but I see nothing about it in the EULA) or that it required "special" technical knowledge to perform which they could reasonably presume the average customer did not possess.  But the counter argument could be that if the feature was explicitly intended to be used, its not unreasonable for players to use it when the game was orphaned.

We'd still not be home free, because NCSoft still owns the copyright to the game client and technically speaking its still illegal to distribute it.  NCSoft could step past the DMCA and argue that Paragon Chat is a tool that contributes to copyright infringement.  But that's a separate can of worms, with completely different legal rules.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on November 03, 2015, 09:55:23 PM
We'd still not be home free, because NCSoft still owns the copyright to the game client and technically speaking its still illegal to distribute it.  NCSoft could step past the DMCA and argue that Paragon Chat is a tool that contributes to copyright infringement.  But that's a separate can of worms, with completely different legal rules.

Yes, and as I'm sure you know, that's the primary reason that the official method for installing Paragon Chat requires you to have a legally obtained (at least as best as I can determine since there's no real indicator) copy of City of Heroes. There's some weight to that from SWGEmu, but that's not actual legal precedent since it could be viewed as the company just being gracious and not pursuing the matter.

That's also why I tell the moderators to not sticky the discussion of various downloader programs or recommend their use in an official capacity, but I'm not sure how well the second part is followed and stuff like that tends to end up on the wiki one way or another (usually added by well-meaning non-Titan contributors). So it might be better in the long run to divorce Paragon Chat from the community site and maintain it independently.

I suppose I could go a step further and require you to insert the physical CD for verification when you install it, though I'm not sure if that would really be worth the tradeoff.

But IMO by far the best approach is to simply be as non-threatening as possible, by making it clear what the intentions and limitations of the project are and what steps are being taken to avoid infringing. In short, to be "not worth the trouble".
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on November 03, 2015, 10:12:20 PM
But IMO by far the best approach is to simply be as non-threatening as possible, by making it clear what the intentions and limitations of the project are and what steps are being taken to avoid infringing. In short, to be "not worth the trouble".

Aka: the Star Trek exemption.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Mageman on November 04, 2015, 12:49:39 PM
Let me start off by saying I'm in no way an expert on the legal ramifications of the DCMA, I am just stating my opinions on what I've read.

I would hope that at least, we get some way of playing CoX in single player mode. I think that if this happened, it would fit into the "abandoned software" category. However, there is a lot of content in game that would have to be modified or that content would be worthless (TF/SF, Wentworths/Black Market, etc.). Also, SG/VGs also having to be modified so you could get multiple characters into them (maybe just a local editor so you could place different characters into the SG/VG). So it's a big can of worms modifying the software so you could play it all on one computer.

Now LAN mode is sort of a grey area from what I read. Yes, you are bypassing the authentication servers, but you are making it multi-player again.

Now, if you change it so you create your own servers, with everything functional, that would be in direct violation of the "DCMA".

Finally, if you say "Pay me, and I will do this for you", again you are in violation even if you just make it just single player.

With all that being said, I would be willing to "donate" money (they can't charge for their work, they'd have to release it "free" with a donate button) to someone who made single player mode work, even with a lot of functionality gone.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Codewalker on November 04, 2015, 03:37:42 PM
Single-player mode would be a clear DMCA violation. Not even DMCA, just copyright law in general. It would require duplicating and distributing content that the players never had locally -- mission scripts, any number of serverside xp or reward tables, NPC dialog, and so forth.

The single-player copyright exemption is very narrow and only applies to the anti-circumvention portion of the DMCA. It doesn't allow wholesale copying of something just because it's out of print.

The only possible form of single-player mode that might (and I stress might) be possible under the current legal system would be a clean start. No content whatsoever from the original game. We're not talking modifying the content to make it work without a team, we're talking writing completely new missions, task forces, signature characters -- a "total conversion" to use modder terminology.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on November 04, 2015, 09:04:37 PM
Single-player mode would be a clear DMCA violation. Not even DMCA, just copyright law in general. It would require duplicating and distributing content that the players never had locally -- mission scripts, any number of serverside xp or reward tables, NPC dialog, and so forth.

To amplify, the problem is that City of Heroes didn't have a single player mode, things like Icon notwithstanding.  The actual *gameplay* only existed as a conjunction of the game client and the game servers.  Without the servers, there is no real gameplay: no NPCs, no powers, no missions, no combat.  To get a "single player City of Heroes" you'd actually have to create something, not just "turn on" something: you'd have to create your own servers.  Even if those servers were designed for single player play, and only ran on a single player's computer, and didn't allow anyone else to connect to them, the act of creating them would be a copyright violation. 

If the City of Heroes game client actually contained all of that content, and had the ability to actually run missions and AI the NPCs around and execute combat and it was just turned off normally, you could maybe argue that turning it on would be a single player City.  But that doesn't exist in any form whatsoever in the game client.  Both Icon and Paragon Chat just enable the game client to do things it could always do, without adding any content the game client doesn't already have.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: ivanhedgehog on November 05, 2015, 01:12:36 AM
There is no nice way to say this.  But no, be patient.  You are in no position to demand anything.

you can demand anything you want . just dont expect the demands to be met. and people are dying. people die every day. not from the game being gone but they do die.

I am standing on the platform waiting for the despair train. havent bought a ticket at this time but I am checking the schedule. oh well, have to just ignore it and check back every few months. vo is becoming the same thing. they tooted the hype horn way too soon and then no communication for weeks or months. soon(tm) was funny the first 50 or so times it was trotted out.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: JoshexProxy on November 05, 2015, 01:53:22 AM
I think a pretty solid argument could be made that it's not just a dodge. I'm not talking about an obscure developer backdoor. It's the default mode of operation for the client. Logging in using the authentication server is optional.

I'm serious, try running Paragon Chat in -localhost mode. Do not log in to XMPP. In another window, run this command:

cityofheroes.exe -project coh

(you can use "-project asdf" you want, it just selects which registry key to load the graphics settings from. "coh" will load the ones you have already set)

It will ask for username and password -- the latter of which is ignored -- and then give you a server list with UNNAMED. Choosing UNNAMED will try to connect to the IP address of your own computer, whichever network card it finds first. If Paragon Chat is running in -localhost mode and windows firewall isn't blocking it, it will succeed.

The only reason PC doesn't use this method by default is that it's not quite as user-friendly, and the firewall can sometimes interfere.

The only way to make the client connect to an authentication server and actually validate the password is specifically ask it to by using the -auth option.

The only possible case to make is that the launcher always stuck -auth in there, but lots of players had been bypassing the launcher for years. I'd wager we could even find documented cases of support advising players to run the game directly with -project coh if the launcher was experiencing issues on their PC.

Obviously you'd want to explain this to a judge in easy to understand non-technical terms to avoid being painted as trying to find a loophole. It's not a play on 'effective' (the legal meaning of which is often misunderstood by people looking for loopholes), it's the fact that the game is very clearly designed for it.

I know it's off topic, but might you tell me how I can uncover what '-' commands can be used for another program? in specific I'm hoping I can use it to specify a location instead of the CD drive. kinda like -auth for online stuff, but this game is looking for a CD (virtual CD drives wont work, tried) so what steps are usually taken to find the dash commands?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on November 05, 2015, 02:57:42 AM
I know it's off topic, but might you tell me how I can uncover what '-' commands can be used for another program? in specific I'm hoping I can use it to specify a location instead of the CD drive. kinda like -auth for online stuff, but this game is looking for a CD (virtual CD drives wont work, tried) so what steps are usually taken to find the dash commands?

If it's not for City, then Google.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Arcana on November 05, 2015, 03:14:25 AM
I know it's off topic, but might you tell me how I can uncover what '-' commands can be used for another program? in specific I'm hoping I can use it to specify a location instead of the CD drive. kinda like -auth for online stuff, but this game is looking for a CD (virtual CD drives wont work, tried) so what steps are usually taken to find the dash commands?

Usually, opening the executables in hex readers would be the easy way to look for the string tables, loading it in a debugger would be the fancy-shmancy way of doing it.  But this is an advanced question ultimately requiring advanced skill to do in the general case, particularly when it comes to figuring out what the command line switches do, as opposed to just figuring out what they are in the first place.

Also, you're assuming such command line switches exist at all.  Most of the time, they don't.  We've known since forever that they existed for City, because we were even told explicitly to use them back in the old old days of beta testing.  It was command line switches that told the client whether it was a beta test or live client, and which file set and patches to use, and what directories to use, etc etc etc.  These kinds of things were necessary to make the client do what the devs wanted.  I don't think its safe to assume there would be a command line switch to bypass copy protection for a random game.  That would seem to be rather silly.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on November 05, 2015, 03:53:54 AM
vo is becoming the same thing. they tooted the hype horn way too soon and then no communication for weeks or months. soon(tm) was funny the first 50 or so times it was trotted out.

I suspect they saw an opportunity to gain a larger base of potential players for their game before they had to go on the market as a fantasy game (or whatever they were before). I suppose the trade off is that by grabbing CoH players early with the transition to superheroes they've announced things too early? I don't know, I haven't followed them. It does seem unusual to me that they allow people into alpha...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Paragon Avenger on November 05, 2015, 05:05:30 AM
When I read that the mask had came off, I knew that it was Tommy B. from "The Story of THeM Part 1"
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Netzahualcoyotl on March 20, 2016, 12:07:46 PM
Wow! Nothing for almost a year here.... am I missing a more pertinent thread, maybe?  :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on March 20, 2016, 04:08:25 PM
Wow! Nothing for almost a year here.... am I missing a more pertinent thread, maybe?  :)
Depends on what you mean by 'more pertinent', but new efforts is the active general chat one now.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: LaughingAlex on March 20, 2016, 04:26:42 PM
Not to mention the new efforts thread gets a lot of activity.  Know, we'll have to make sure to tell MWM and the valiance online teams to include a badge for the new efforts thread :).
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on March 22, 2016, 12:44:53 AM
Not to mention the new efforts thread gets a lot of activity.  Know, we'll have to make sure to tell MWM and the valiance online teams to include a badge for the new efforts thread :).
that would be awesome :D
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on March 23, 2016, 04:23:32 PM
Wow! Nothing for almost a year here.... am I missing a more pertinent thread, maybe?  :)

Nothing new at all has happened on the "CoH Rez" front, no. 

You'd be best off signing up for the "Wake me when there's news" thread that is pinned to the top of this sub-forum.  The last post in it is over a year old, but if anything ever does happen with rezzing CoH, you'll get an email about it. 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Paragon Avenger on March 23, 2016, 11:55:26 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net%2Fwreckitralph%2Fimages%2Fd%2Fdc%2FRalph.png)

Wait, I don't wear a mask.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tahquitz on March 28, 2016, 07:28:03 AM
Nothing new at all has happened on the "CoH Rez" front, no. 

You'd be best off signing up for the "Wake me when there's news" thread that is pinned to the top of this sub-forum.  The last post in it is over a year old, but if anything ever does happen with rezzing CoH, you'll get an email about it.

Already have.  I keep waiting for wakies to drop, but I haven't found any since 2012. :(

I still buzz on here to let someone know a fan of CoH is still alive and breathing. Not that anyone asks such things. That and to look for any "We Need Your Help" type communiques or Anniversary Meetups (Mostly CoH's anniversary/Loregasm and NCSoft's Shutdown anniversary.  Biannually the latter happens, nothing in years for the former.) 

Perhaps a voluntary mailing list or newsletter is possible in the future on Titan Network once one of the Plan Z projects moves into Beta so drumming up interest isn't as hard as it is now.  No need for it at the moment, natch.

For the most part, it's just us die-hards who say "Hi" once in a while.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Aggelakis on March 28, 2016, 08:18:55 AM
(Mostly CoH's anniversary/Loregasm and NCSoft's Shutdown anniversary.  Biannually the latter happens, nothing in years for the former.)
The shutdown anniversary happens twice a year? ???

The loregasm has happened every year since 2012. http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA Though I have a feeling it won't be happening this year unless it gets started soon.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on March 28, 2016, 04:34:32 PM
The shutdown anniversary happens twice a year? ???

The loregasm has happened every year since 2012. http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA Though I have a feeling it won't be happening this year unless it gets started soon.

Not to worry, it's a month away, and I just made a thread: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=11829

...even though I still haven't finished the sorted sub page.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on September 30, 2016, 02:00:41 AM
Wish the very best for the buyers :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Vee on September 30, 2016, 02:09:50 AM
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRI2GOHLet6BpvYZI1DBAVSBV7-_PkGRt11Os8nVRA43v27y9_whQ)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Paragon Avenger on November 04, 2016, 05:40:56 AM
(https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7428/27521908076_21540ebe43_o.png)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Voltixdark on March 04, 2017, 05:46:56 AM
So it's been almost two years. I wonder what NCSoft is thinking right now concerning the game. It might not be their priority at the moment, but I am curious what the heck is going on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Paragon Avenger on March 04, 2017, 06:30:40 AM
Well, I could make something up or just say that we all wish we knew more of what was going on.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: switch on March 04, 2017, 06:53:59 AM
imo if talks arnt still going  since we know nothing cuz of nda    ncsoft probly hasnt thought about coh  at all 
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Paragon Avenger on March 04, 2017, 07:11:51 AM
See, making stuff up is better.

Today it was annouced that NCSoft will begin talks with a group determined to purchase the shuttered MMO City of Heroes.  The group going by the name, 'The THeM', reportedly has raise over 300i in an attempt to buy the game.  NCSoft could not be reached for comment, but released a press statement calming responsivibility for the recent Iowain tornadoes.

How's that, Arcana?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: crashpositron on March 21, 2017, 03:39:40 PM
Switch, apparently they ARE thinking about it - oddly enough, Statesman just showed up in another NCSOFT game 'Master X Master'.  No, I don't get it either.
I checked the date - it's not April 1st:

http://massivelyop.com/2017/03/21/master-x-master-announces-a-closed-beta-date-and-adds-city-of-heroes-statesman-to-its-roster/
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on March 21, 2017, 09:32:32 PM
Switch, apparently they ARE thinking about it - oddly enough, Statesman just showed up in another NCSOFT game 'Master X Master'.  No, I don't get it either.
I checked the date - it's not April 1st:

http://massivelyop.com/2017/03/21/master-x-master-announces-a-closed-beta-date-and-adds-city-of-heroes-statesman-to-its-roster/

Err, NCSoft is clearly not thinking about rezzing CoH whatsoever, not that they ever seriously considered it anyway.   However, they're stupid to think they're going to draw CoH players into this thing by sticking a Statesman puppet into it, like that would ever be a viable substitute.  Good grief.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ohioknight on March 22, 2017, 01:32:41 AM
Err, NCSoft is clearly not thinking about rezzing CoH whatsoever, not that they ever seriously considered it anyway.   However, they're stupid to think they're going to draw CoH players into this thing by sticking a Statesman puppet into it, like that would ever be a viable substitute.  Good grief.

I don't believe there is any thought to CoH players whatsoever -- they just had a somewhat widely-known Super-Hero character that they owned in-house and found a use for the IP. 

From Nate Downs FB thread on this:

... Yep, which dispels rumors of a CoH buy out by anyone else.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nathaniel Downes: it was always a remote chance anyways
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on March 22, 2017, 02:23:58 AM
I don't believe there is any thought to CoH players whatsoever -- they just had a somewhat widely-known Super-Hero character that they owned in-house and found a use for the IP. 

From Nate Downs FB thread on this:

... Yep, which dispels rumors of a CoH buy out by anyone else.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nathaniel Downes: it was always a remote chance anyways


I don't have a Facebook account (and never will), so thanks for this info.  If you happen to see anything else in your travels, feel free to pass it along.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on March 22, 2017, 05:16:05 AM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=orig00.deviantart.net%2F003e%2Ff%2F2012%2F322%2Fc%2Fc%2F_savecoh__black_widow_and_loki_discuss_by_todogut-d5lg6wy.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on March 22, 2017, 05:45:32 AM
(https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/76195011/rent-is-too-damn-high-the-absence-of-city-of-heroes-has-been-to-dang-long.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on March 23, 2017, 07:54:33 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=orig00.deviantart.net%2F003e%2Ff%2F2012%2F322%2Fc%2Fc%2F_savecoh__black_widow_and_loki_discuss_by_todogut-d5lg6wy.jpg)

Doesn't Mewling Quim basically translate to "Whiney C word"

Loki has got a potty mouth on him
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Twisted Toon on March 23, 2017, 09:56:12 PM
Doesn't Mewling Quim basically translate to "Whiney C word"

Loki has got a potty mouth on him

Yes, he does. I always thought Disney Princes were more conservative in their language. He proved me wrong.  :P
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Paragon Avenger on March 24, 2017, 02:29:12 AM
Doesn't Mewling Quim basically translate to "Whiney C word"

Loki has got a potty mouth on him

When the game was still on-line, I tried naming a toon The Mighty Quim, it didn't let me. :(
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on March 24, 2017, 02:48:14 AM
Doesn't Mewling Quim basically translate to "Whiney C word"

Loki has got a potty mouth on him
Yes, it was quite something to hear in the theater. OTOH, it made it into the movie because it was esoteric and archaic enough that the vast majority of people, especially Hollywood execs, had never heard the word before, so most people in the theater had no idea why it was such a funny line to some of us.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on March 27, 2017, 12:15:59 AM
(https://cdn.meme.am/instances/65390122.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Paragon Avenger on March 29, 2017, 05:29:00 PM
(https://cdn.meme.am/instances/65390122.jpg)

Take over the world and enslave man kind, oh please!  But use foul language, and you're asking for it!
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on March 29, 2017, 08:19:29 PM
(https://acollectivemind.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/10985260_876872072372001_855532812806542832_n.jpg)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Paragon Avenger on April 06, 2017, 04:52:34 AM
Help, Help, my <elf> is mewling.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Power Gamer on April 06, 2017, 02:36:37 PM
Nope. No thank you sir.  :roll:
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: AlkarF22 on August 24, 2018, 01:55:41 AM
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tahquitz on August 24, 2018, 04:40:53 AM
Insufficiency of new or up-to-date information, combined with most of us checking in at the "New Efforts! (https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=9675.28700)" board more than here.

We're still around, though.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on August 24, 2018, 01:22:35 PM
Yup.  One thread to keep the ember glowing is all we have needed for some time now. :-)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Atlantea on August 26, 2018, 05:14:11 AM
One thread to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them...
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Paragon Avenger on August 26, 2018, 06:10:34 AM
One thread to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them...

Oh I hate it when I get binded in the darkness.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Peregrine Falcon on December 09, 2018, 06:51:06 AM
So it's been 4 years since the OP.

Is it safe to say that this isn't happening?
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: MyriVerse on December 09, 2018, 12:17:45 PM
Yeah. This deal is dead.

IMO, no deal will ever happen... but my opinion doesn't mean squat. I just don't see enough incentive for NCSoft to ever be interested in a deal.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ultimate15 on December 12, 2018, 06:44:25 PM
Is it safe to say that this isn't happening?

Nobody knows for sure b/c the people who know more aren't coming forward, for reasons no one definitively knows about.

 :-X :-X :-X
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Keldian on December 12, 2018, 07:06:29 PM
Google tells me that an NDA typically lasts from 2 to 5 years.  So, I guess we'll see what things are like in another year.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tahquitz on December 13, 2018, 02:06:39 AM
Some are as long as 10 or 15.  Depends on the agreement.  In any case, no NDA is permanent.  A court would nullify any agreement that a lawyer positions as such, but in any case, just because a NDA is finite does not mean that when it does end the parties involved necessarily are obligated to tell us anything either. 

If the deal failed and those at the table have all moved on to other things, who would be left tell us?  NCSoft wouldn't make a disclosure if there's no new business or PR advantage to saying so.  And if the prospective buyers don't care to come forward with what happened, how would we know?  (Downix might get an answer someday, but he can't force people to talk.)

Not trying to pour salt into the sugar jar, but making folks aware of the expectations.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Baaleos on January 03, 2019, 05:08:05 AM
I think our hopes now lie with SEGS
They have a partially functional issue 1 compatible emulator and the team are active on GitHub again.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Ultimate15 on January 05, 2019, 03:30:40 PM
I think our hopes now lie with SEGS
They have a partially functional issue 1 compatible emulator and the team are active on GitHub again.

I agree. I've been out of the loop w/ SEGS as of late, but I think they're all we got at this point (speaking within the context of getting COH back, I mean).

I wish they had more momentum/steam behind them... but maybe that's a blessing in disguise? Perhaps laying low and not having too many eyes on them might be for the best during these early development stages.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: triedac on August 11, 2019, 06:15:01 PM
Just to update this in case this is the only thread some peeps are monitoring. Hopefully by now reading this you know of the Homecoming server that's been up and running :) Apart from that, this is some good news on the main topic of the thread.

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/7629-an-update-from-the-homecoming-team/

Quick quote:
"Homecoming and The Titan Network are working together and are in active negotiations with NCSoft in order to turn Homecoming into a legitimate operation, and we've been making significant strides in recent weeks..."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tahquitz on August 12, 2019, 05:24:15 AM
I have a strong feeling there's more folks learning of this on the Homecoming forums than anyone reading Titan Network at all at the moment.  But in any case, stay tuned. :)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Abraxus on August 12, 2019, 01:20:05 PM
I have a strong feeling there's more folks learning of this on the Homecoming forums than anyone reading Titan Network at all at the moment.  But in any case, stay tuned. :)

I still read both.  8)
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Thunder Glove on August 13, 2019, 02:20:05 AM
TonyV made the same topic on these forums: https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=13590.0
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Felderburg on August 13, 2019, 08:24:18 PM
What does "legitimate" mean? "Formally allowed to carry on without legal issue" is very different from "directly giving money to NCsoft."
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Tahquitz on August 14, 2019, 01:28:25 AM
Details will come when we have more to share.  I know telling people to 'hold on' is a lot to ask from a group of people who have been holding on for seven years (believe me, I'm one of them, too), but that's all the official word there is at the moment.

Only thing I can offer: GM Jimmy did state Homecoming shall remain free to play.

Quote
(From the other site:)
To be clear, Homecoming will remain completely free to play.

...

-- Tony is the head of The Titan Network.  The Titan network has nothing to do with City of Titans (aka The Phoenix Project), that's being developed by Missing Worlds Media.
-- Leandro is not the owner of Homecoming.
-- Homecoming doesn't have a leader, it is a collective (although technically Cipher owns the LLC on paper right now).
-- Homecoming is in the process of becoming a non-profit, although doing this correctly is not a simple or quick process.
-- The non-profit will have multiple board members, ensuring the project is not reliant on or controlled by a single individual.
-- We will always listen to the community - long term we hope to be as transparent as we possibly can be, but obviously current circumstances require a certain level of secrecy.

Hope that answers a bit.
Title: Re: And the mask comes off.
Post by: Surelle on August 25, 2019, 04:23:56 PM
Details will come when we have more to share.  I know telling people to 'hold on' is a lot to ask from a group of people who have been holding on for seven years (believe me, I'm one of them, too), but that's all the official word there is at the moment.

Only thing I can offer: GM Jimmy did state Homecoming shall remain free to play.

Hope that answers a bit.

Great summarizing quote, Tahquitz!  Thank you!