New efforts!

[darkgob]

They plan to get both the IP and also get servers up and running.  So in other words they want to gt the game entirely.

This is not accurate, or at least misleading.  We are almost certainly not getting the game back "entirely".  Although we don't know for sure, there is frankly a very small chance that account data will be included.  Also, no source code, so it's a static version of the last version of the game that was on the live servers on Shutdown Day.

[Waffles]

Pretty sure the deal is for the I.P, Dark.

At first what you are saying was the general idea, but IIRC, Nate and IW clarified.

[Kyriani]

The moment Corruptors were available blue side I stopped making defenders..

See once defenders got their 30% damage buff while solo thing, I found that that in many cases it was hard to decide which to pick. Damage seemed relatively competitive between the two and it often came down to things like "Do I want the 1st tier attack?", "Do I want stronger buffs/debuffs"?, Do I want primary or secondary powers sooner?" and all of that varied from character to character.

[primeknight]

Oh Yeah, Storm was mighty to be true, but a power piggy bar none. I always stayed away from Storms. I made a Tri-Dark Defender build once, called her "Soul-suckin Barbie" (modeled after my kid sister  ;) and that toon was ALWAYS welcome on a team (unless I left that team stealth aura on and went AFK, always while they were trying to get a NPC to follow them to the door). And I agree with the others post about using the team rez more as a CC move and one great big -regen debuff too. That thing was mean to AVs/Monsters. Ever since I used a Dark toon to solo one of those zone monsters, I ALWAYS pick powers that have at least ONE -regen move in them. Makes killing bigguns sooo much easier.

I loved my /kin controller.  He was a mind/ so pretty much anything sub AV/monster was easy.  I thought about remaking him several times with other secondaries, but I loved Siphon Speed so much that I just wanted to keep /kin.  I mean I loved fly, I bought the game for fly, and hover+siphon speed was basically fly in attack mode. Siphon Speed also bumped him up to a speed level similar to my my /SR scrapper.  The extra speed was just so exciting and fast paced that I prefered playing my high level characters with the extra speed than the low level characters.

/Kin came with a -regen by default; very handy and then there was a similar power which was pretty unique to Kin: Transference.  A power that just gave back endurance = YES!  The Telekinesis + Repel + Transference combination was very sinergetic.  I was always tempted to add Teleport Foe into the mix for even more control, but there's only so many powers allowed.  Siphon Speed practically made Transference a must for as fast as I cycled through powers (even with end reducers). 

Of course there was the crown jewel of /kin: Fulcrum Shift: that power was such a game changer.  As a mind/kin there was no immobilize containment options but the Fulcrum Shift was a very nice substitute, especially in group play.   

I highly suggest /Kin for any team.  Seeing the combination of a kin and a rad on a team just made me feel like the group could take on anything.  I liked seeing all the defender/corruptor/controller options, but those two together and my memories of Ill/rad and Fire/Kin from years past just gave me the feeling of invincibility.  And I knew that I'd have to up my game to just keep up. 


And I do hope that whom ever is working on a playable version of the game, that it's something that will never be taken away again.  And good on you and my best wishes.  If there was a way I could help I would

[LaughingAlex]

This is not accurate, or at least misleading.  We are almost certainly not getting the game back "entirely".  Although we don't know for sure, there is frankly a very small chance that account data will be included.  Also, no source code, so it's a static version of the last version of the game that was on the live servers on Shutdown Day.

Ok, it's for the IP and issue 23 in maintenance mode.  But not account data.

[GenericHero05]

Ok, it's for the IP and issue 23 in maintenance mode.  But not account data.

God, I hope soon. I really really NEED this right now!

[Prism Almidu]

God, I hope soon. I really really NEED this right now!

I feel you. Almost 3 years, and the loss still hits me. Dreamed I was doing a BAF last night... not sure what I was doing there at level 34, but still :P

[Graydar]

I feel you. Almost 3 years, and the loss still hits me. Dreamed I was doing a BAF last night... not sure what I was doing there at level 34, but still :P

Every couple of weeks I dream that I log into a hacked version of City of Heroes that's maintained by an obscure community and ran entirely via donations. There's only one densely populated server because a good portion of the game's user base came back or something. It's cool, but there's always the sneaking suspicion that it's a husk of it's former self, somewhat similar to calling a re-animated corpse "alive". It walks and talks but it doesn't feel the same, but those concerns fade away.

It sucks when I wake up because there's a brief moment where I think, "Well, at least I have CoH back!" before you remember, no you don't.  :gonk:

[ivanhedgehog]

I feel you. Almost 3 years, and the loss still hits me. Dreamed I was doing a BAF last night... not sure what I was doing there at level 34, but still :P

ducking... a lot of ducking...and some hiding and praying

[Arcana]

Why not?

I'm sorry I've been sick the last few days and am now in catchup mode.  The reason why is pretty simple: because the devs said so.  The devs made the claim that given reasonable building (in other words, no degenerate builds like taking as few offensive powers as possible) and reasonable slotting, the typical player should be able to run the vast majority of the core content of the game.  Because that was a dev statement, I could use it to uncover balance problems in the game they couldn't trivially refute.

This was not so much a game of gotcha as it was that suggestions framed around ideas the devs themselves asserted were more likely to gain support within Paragon for obvious reasons: they were likely to be themselves consensus ideas.

[Arcana]

I tried very hard to test/trigger Scourge with the first Radiation Blast attack. While dual-boxing. Minimal damage (no overkill or missing the low health level) and fast recharge and activation meant that the power was a great test. No luck, Scourge was useless. Not saying Corruptors were bad overall, just that the Scourge mechanic wasn't that great outside of "rain" powers.

Scourge had minimal benefit against even con minions.  Its effects increased significantly for anything stronger.  The problem was that the average minion was designed to be killed by about three or four "standard" attacks.  Think Power Bolt, a scale 1.0 attack, at 1.0 damage mod.  Reasonably slotted it does a little more than 100 damage per attack, against minions with a little more than 400 health in rough numbers.  At lower levels, the ratio drops somewhat (minions are easier to kill at lower levels).  The problem is that since scourge doesn't kick in until below 50% health, anything that takes less than four shots to kill is unlikely to get any benefit at all: by the time scourge kicks in, the next shot kills the target whether it crits or not.

However, for Lts with twice the health, or bosses, or even highly resistant foes, the value of scourge increases.  Its theoretical limit was something like +20%-25% damage benefit, but you would not likely see that normally.  +10-15% was more likely.

[Arcana]

Just Incarnate trials and a few of the Praetorian zone events.

However, hypebole aside, use of attack powers or dealing damage had nothing to do with iTrial reward tables. The participation algorithm tracked any click powers at all (even self buffs like Build Up), and was fairly generous. If you were a mastermind and you were buffing your teammates, or even your pets at all you would be well past the dreaded "10 threads" threshold. Little known fact: Team buff powers (anything that targeted or affected allies basically) were weighted twice as much as attack powers in your participation score.

There were some implementation issues the first month or so of incarnate trials when they were initially released (BAF and Lambda only) that caused Masterminds to get screwed, but that was quickly fixed. Masterminds were also tweaked to have their click powers count more than other ATs, since they had fewer in their primary set.

What bit most people who ended up getting the 10 thread reward was dying a lot and spending a lot of time in the hospital waiting for the doors to unlock. If you missed an entire phase due to that, your participation tanked.

I recall someone doing empirical testing to determine the minimum participation threshold (Arcana maybe?), and they found that even putting someone on follow and occasionally brawling an enemy or using an aoe buff was more than enough to avoid the 10 thread table.

In my testing, it was extremely difficult to trigger the 10 thread table short of being dead literally all the time.  In fact, in many ways it was so easy it defeated the purpose of having a participation system.  However, I did find a couple of bugs to its implementation in some trials, which were I believe fixed soon afterwards.

The big problem with masterminds was that many masterminds had learned to play their masterminds in the standard game by just following their pets around, and hitting them with the occasional buff or heal.  In a really good team, it was possible to have so much buffs and heals flying around the pets were always fine, or occasionally one-shotted dead.  One of the few ways to fail the participation system was to do nothing but respawn pets: the pet respawn powers did not recharge fast enough to consistently provide enough participation (at least in my testing) and I do not believe they were weighted higher like buffs were.

[LaughingAlex]

God, I hope soon. I really really NEED this right now!

I'm kind of looking back now about how CoH compensated for it's graphical engine in the map design.  Every map had a defined theme in regards to any of the open world zones, and surprisingly they did pay alot of attention to detail in places.  In a back alley often you'd have debris depending on how badly treated the area was, a back alley in kings row for example might have a pipe sticking up, and a bunch of trash you could step on and walk over.  It was like things were meticulously detailed.  You'd even see a pipe that isn't sticking up, but is exposed anyway due to damaged concrete in a different alley.

In contrast, I log into CO and I don't see quite the same detail.  You'll see a generic pile of debris periodically and a dumbster, but very rarely you get to see anything small like a pipe sticking out.

Then course my other favorite zones to occasionally visit, of the city zones, Founders falls and Independence port.  Say what you want about Independence port, and granted I rarely went there, but it was just fun to speed around it with super speed.  It was a big map, but it was also fairly smooth to navigate with super speed.  Founders falls was smaller and very congested, but you could still move around it with some knowledge of the map, or even just stick to the water ways.

And both still had a solid level of attention to detail.

On the other hand, I run through MC or fly through it, and it's not really smooth in navigation so much.  Sure, you can stick to the roads with super speed or just fly over it, but the slower travel speeds can become a bother.

Watching the video fresh look: Champions Online.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjAr7_AuWRQ

And well, the guys got bored.

[Arcana]

I don't think I was ever on an Underground that failed on Triumph. The usual trial leaders knew how to keep things moving and instruct people, as well as making sure we had plenty of Clarion for the final phase.

I never saw anyone try to sabotage one, but I guess that's one of the benefits of being on a small server. If you're a jerk, you get quickly blacklisted and nobody will invite you.

UG was long, but the guaranteed Rare/Very Rare at the end made it worthwhile to run from time to time.

I demorecorded almost every iTrial I was one.  Because of that, I could theoretically go back and figure out more or less what every single player did during a trial.  There were a few cases of people deliberately trying to sabotage a trial, or at least a badge run of a trial, and we sometimes had "discussions" about whether to blacklist someone.  I was never comfortable with taking that action, and to my knowledge it only happened once.

In fact, Master of Underground is one of the few badges I didn't get, in part because in at least a couple of cases the run was sabotaged by someone deliberately (and I use that word thoughtfully) running ahead and blowing up a bomb.  In every case I knew who it was, and in every case I decided not to push for blacklisting.  Although I'm pretty sure Snowglobe would have done it if presented with proof of sabotage.  That's just not the way I wanted Triumph to roll.

We did fail early on, but our success rate at Underground rose pretty quickly: within a month of it coming out we were probably at 90% success or better.  The problem was that being a small server, the collection of characters running it were more random (build-wise) than on larger servers and you had to take what you got, and make it work.  Sometimes, a random collection of players/characters simply didn't have it in them to complete the final stage.  Particularly before enough players had the time to get more fully incarnate-powered.

[Arcana]

I agree that about the plot of TPN however. The big bad is... the chump that you've been wiping the floor with in tip missions for the last 25 levels. But somehow has Incarnate power now and takes 12-24 players to defeat? Lame.

Then again, the amount of power increase my MA/SR gained from level 25 to fully incarnate-slotted was pretty high.  The only catch is that I could never get Castle to make Dragon's Tail an insta-kill.

[LaughingAlex]

I demorecorded almost every iTrial I was one.  Because of that, I could theoretically go back and figure out more or less what every single player did during a trial.  There were a few cases of people deliberately trying to sabotage a trial, or at least a badge run of a trial, and we sometimes had "discussions" about whether to blacklist someone.  I was never comfortable with taking that action, and to my knowledge it only happened once.

In fact, Master of Underground is one of the few badges I didn't get, in part because in at least a couple of cases the run was sabotaged by someone deliberately (and I use that word thoughtfully) running ahead and blowing up a bomb.  In every case I knew who it was, and in every case I decided not to push for blacklisting.  Although I'm pretty sure Snowglobe would have done it if presented with proof of sabotage.  That's just not the way I wanted Triumph to roll.

We did fail early on, but our success rate at Underground rose pretty quickly: within a month of it coming out we were probably at 90% success or better.  The problem was that being a small server, the collection of characters running it were more random (build-wise) than on larger servers and you had to take what you got, and make it work.  Sometimes, a random collection of players/characters simply didn't have it in them to complete the final stage.  Particularly before enough players had the time to get more fully incarnate-powered.

You also have to remember is that sometimes people forget or they are ignorant and will never listen.  They'll do the same mistake over and over endlessly.  Though if it was different trials all the time and the same person I imagine that could easily have been sabotage.  Again though, I very rarely bothered to enter underground trials because of the sabotage issue and it's low success rate for me on virtue meant it not worth the effort when one could do a bunch of TPN trials in the time it'd take for a few underground attempts to yield a victory.  Practical(and thus useful or rewarding) vs impractical(thus useless and unrewarding) know?

[Thunder Glove]

I think I only did Underground once.  That was the incredibly long one that involved 90% of the team sitting around for about a half-hour doing nothing (at least, for one of the badges), right?

... yeah, I didn't like that one. :D

[Arcana]

You also have to remember is that sometimes people forget or they are ignorant and will never listen.  They'll do the same mistake over and over endlessly.

Mistakes happened all the time.  However, there are ways in which trolls give themselves away.  For example, stupid players will ignore the demands to hang back from the bombs and run up to them and blow them up while they try to destroy them.  I've seen trolls run up to the bomb and let it blow them up without firing a shot, thinking no one can see them.  Demorecord can see them.  I saw one player do that two runs in a row.  When he showed up for a third run, that was the player I recommended be dropped from the team. 

Also, some mistakes are more forgivable than others.  By in large, I'm someone that thinks that most of the time, players should be allowed to play however they want.  In casual teaming in standard content, it usually doesn't matter enough to be worthy of derision.  So it takes twelve minutes instead of ten minutes to do that ITF: that's no reason to blow a gasket.  But when its more difficult content, and there are failure conditions involved, I think players do have an obligation to follow the leader.  The whole "I paid my subscription so I get to do whatever I want" attitude is really sociopathic, in that it says the experience everyone else gets in the game is entirely irrelevant to what you do.  If you ruin their experience, its their fault for letting you do so.  I'm not someone that subscribes to that idea.  If its not perfectly clear what's going on, if the leaders are not doing their job and explaining things to players, and they shoot the wrong thing at the wrong time, that sort of thing is understandable.  But if they run out ahead of everyone else when they don't know what they are doing and then fail something, that's highly inconsiderate for someone that doesn't know what they are doing. 

If you don't know what you are doing, you shouldn't be in front.  If you think you know what you are doing and it turns out you don't, you shouldn't trust that thing in your head that believed you knew what you were doing the next time.

[Arcana]

I think I only did Underground once.  That was the incredibly long one that involved 90% of the team sitting around for about a half-hour doing nothing (at least, for one of the badges), right?

... yeah, I didn't like that one. :D

Underground was the longest iTrial by far, but there's no phase if it where the majority of the team could be sitting around doing nothing, at least not in any strategy I'm aware of.  The only iTrial where a strategy caused that to happen I can think of was Keyes, and unfortunately I'm significantly to blame.  In Keyes, at the very end of the trial there's a phase where its possible to earn the badge Avoids the Green Stuff by defeating Antimatter without anyone ever being hit by the Obliteration Beam.  We tried quite a bit on Triumph to get that badge, but the truth is that it was likely never going to happen with open teams because at least one player would always get hit.  So I decided to suggest to the raid leaders that a handful of people strong enough to take down AM fight him at the end, while everyone else sat it out in the hospital.  It was then easier to train those people to effectively avoid the Oblit beam using a basic strategy I created.  Then it became a lot easier to get the badge.  I think many other servers either copied or independently invented that strategy.

The key insight I had into avoiding Obliteration was to note that the goal was not to run away from the beam, but to always run towards a place it definitely wasn't.  Most players were caught in the beam not because they ran into it, but because they didn't know they were targeted by it.  You might think the correct thing to do is if you see the green target, run away.  Often, it materialized in a way you couldn't see, like above you or behind you.  Sometimes it was obscured by other buff effects.  So instead I advocated waiting for the timer, and then as soon as the timer struck looking for any space in front of you that was clear and running towards that.  If you were in the beam, you'd be clear.  If you were not, no harm.  This way, accidental strikes were significantly reduced.  I posted this in a guide on the forums and it apparently significantly increased success rates with the ATGS badge.

Unfortunately, I could think of no other way to get the badge with open teams, and I didn't suggest this strategy lightly.  I didn't like any tactic that idled players, but in this one instance it seemed most players were happy to get the badge this way, especially after trying dozens of times and having a single mistake fail the attempt.

[Winter Fable]

To the people working on getting the game back or if the people here that know them pass along what's said,Please add more character slots :)I'm going to be making many more characters than before and with no new content making alts will be even
more important.