And the mask comes off.

[Taliseian]

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

[Brigadine]

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?

[Cailyn Alaynn]

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...)

[Aggelakis]

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

[Stealth Dart]

 :-X

[Sinistar]

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.

[Sinistar]

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.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

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.

[Cymmetri]

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...)

Speaking of Sentinel+...  :'(

[Surelle]

Speaking of Sentinel+...  :'(

I know this (and the other New Efforts thread even more so) are quite large, but peeps, this subject has already been discussed and disallowed.  Sentinel+ is missing some key files that would bork out any character who was "revived" into CoX i23 this way.  And we don't even know if it could corrupt the i23 image backup!  It's not worth the risk for the relative few (including myself) who used it compared to the thousands who did not.  Sentinel+ was not meant for use in a commercial release and would never be allowed by anyone doing a legitimate relaunch of CoX.  Not to mention that it would definitely open up a huge can of worms with NCSoft.  "Oh, what was this going to be used for?!"  I think we should let it lie.  Things are tenuous enough already on their own.

And whomever attempts to resurrect CoX (if it winds up even being possible) is hardly going to have the funding to have a full CS team sitting around answering petition after petition about borked Sentinel+ characters that shouldn't even be in the resurrected game in the first place.

I just hope NCSoft is spending even 1/100th of the time thinking about CoX as we are-- but I seriously doubt it.  Let's hope we're not a piece of dandelion fluff going up against a huge brick wall here.

[blacksly]

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.

[Remaugen]

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.

[Scott Jackson]

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.

[Tatterdamalion]

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!

[Techbot Alpha]

I really need to have a go with Icon, heh.

Gah, stop getting me so excited damnit!

[Azrael]

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. 

I really need to have a go with Icon, heh.

A real gift to the community.  Icon is delicious.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

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.

[Power Gamer]

Fair is in the eye of the complainer.

[Waffles]

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."

[Ankhammon]

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.