And the mask comes off.

[Ironwolf]

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.

[LaughingAlex]

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.

[Arcana]

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.

[Kaos Arcanna]

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.

[Arcana]

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.

[Tubbius]

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.

[Angel Phoenix77]

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?

[Nightmarer]

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

[Angel Phoenix77]

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

[Ironwolf]

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.

[Talon Blue]

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.

[Ironwolf]

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.

[Rigo42]

Mids sounds like a really fun idea. Thanks

[Sinistar]

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.

[Sinistar]

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.

[Surelle]

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.

[Tubbius]

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.

[JanessaVR]

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.

[Taceus Jiwede]

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.

[Pherdnut]

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!!.