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October 31, 2005

Web of Arachnos

My review.

Short summary: Borrow it from someone who already owns it, and don't expect a whole lot more than a few interesting backstory tidbits.

Posted by Dave at 1:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Media

Timing is everything

So with our travels, we managed to miss almost all of the Two Day Pre-Release Soiree for CoV. We made up for it, some, by being antisocial with the in-laws and getting into CoV last evening.

• The production servers are running much better, natch, than the beta/test servers. I will be curious to see what the load is like tonight.

  Actually, no, I'm not. I'll probably do some CoH tonight (more below).

• Got Mister Ravenous built, and joined him up with the Elitists on Virtue. Didn't do much with him (yet).

• Got Mister Thorne (abruptly aware of all the "Misters" I have as alts) built. Jackie raced to get to 10, and built the CoI and invited me in then quit so I could be the boss. Yay! Immediate crowding around the entrances as folks tried to get in. Duoed with Margie's Undone. Finally got to some missions we hadn't done in beta.

• Despite previous understandings of stuff (and maybe I was just confused with the Beta Test server), global @handles remain the same. Which makes me even more glad that mine is not CoH-centric.

The biggest question on my mind at the moment is -- CoH? CoV? Champion? Virtue?

Only so many hours in the day.

My inclination is to:

1. Still focus primarily on CoH/Champion/CoJ stuff, in particular Psi-clone (and Amorpha). They're the furthest along, they're the "best" characters we have, and we have certain SG responsibilities to fulfill. Plus, they're fun.

2. Secondary focus on Mister Thorne and the CoI. Again, responsibility, but also the prospect of some good fun. Thorne and Undone have a very ... odd relationship developing, sort of the nasty side of the PC/A relationship. Duoing with Margie is always fun, regardless of the folks involved. At least sign in every couple of days to say howdy. (There would be some RP advantage to his being high in level, but, realistically speaking, that's not likely to happen. He'll just have to exercise his influence ... some other way.)

3. Tertiary focus on Mister Ravenous and the Elitists. He seems like a fun character, and they should be a fun group.

4. All other spare CoH/CoV time to our other CoH alts. Make an effort to get our FP/SK folks on every once in a while. Keep an eye open for things to do (TFs) with our other alts there, but let them lie a bit fallow for a while.

Only so many hours in the day (and night), alas.

There's obviously a huge interest in CoV from a lot of the Alliance "regulars" on CoH. Especially for folks who've gone through to 50 on CoH, I can see where the new opportunities and content in CoV would be attractive. Will Paragon City become a ghost town?

I don't think so, but I'm a lot less sure than I was a month ago. At that time, a lot of folks were kind of, "Yeah, well, I'll buy CoV for the extra four slots and maybe do a little tinkering with it, but I like being a hero and plan on sticking around here." That's not been gainsaid yet, but, again, a loit of focus this past weekend (from those of us in town) on CoV. It will be interesting to see over the next few weeks, as the novelty wears off (a bit), how folks settle out with their game play balancing.

Mine, too.

Posted by Dave at 7:04 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

October 25, 2005

Costuming

Quoth Statesman:

To be clear: the code for sharing costume pieces between City of Heroes and City of Villains is NOT yet in...heck, it isn't even written yet. BUT we'll do it after release - hopefully very soon after release. Then heroes can have access to the new options.

To be honest, this idea came specifically from this thread. Since people wanted the new costume options, I checked with Software - who said it could be done. Just wanted to let you know that yes, we do take suggestions!

It sems so obvious, I'm shocked it wasn't one of the plans already. But, still, good to know.

FYI - for those who don't like the idea because villains should look different than heroes - remember that villains already have hero options. They can create a character identical to one that exists in City of Heroes.

True. Of course, that's just a sign of their desceptive treachery ...

Posted by Dave at 4:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

October 24, 2005

Parts is parts

Since CoV and CoH all share the same codebase and resources, why wouldn't you be able to get CoV costume parts in CoH?

Answer: You probably will.

OK - here's the most likely outcome...

If you own both games, you get all options - the new CoV sets will be accessible for your heroes.

Granted, most heroes don't go around with barbed wire headbands and exposed brains and the like -- but, then, that should be a player decision. If there's no technical reason to prevent it, it shouldn't be restricted.

If nothing else, it will be cool seeing "cat girls" with the CoV Cat Face feature. Not sure about "War Wolf" heroes, but, well, heck, why not?

And, of course, this eases (or does it trivialize?) the Villain Goes Good mechanics.

Now -- when will this happen? Again, no reason (I can think of) why it wouldn't be doable from Day 1, but believe it when you actually see it.

(Dave goes off and joneses for one of those cool leather jackets for PC ...)

Posted by Dave at 6:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design

To be a villain

The "Hero Goes Bad/Villain Goes Good" concept is "in development." Which would be pretty cool.

Posted by Dave at 6:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design

October 23, 2005

Weekend review

Spent a fair amount of time in the latter end of the week, and Friday/Saturday, with Psi-clone and Amorpha. Both were in spitting distance of 38, and after the Nights of a Million-Zillion Rikti, we managed to ding there.

In the meantime, of course, we were in endless Rikti story arcs, including some outdoor mishes -- which served (esp. the untimed ones) as massive XP farms.

PC still managed to die twice.

1. When I signed on Saturday afternoon, I knew I was at the Brickstown train station. I walked away as it came up to do something ... and a bit later heard some worrisome sounds. Came back to find myself reeling about, stunned, and several orange Council folk whomping the tar out of me.

   Not sure if it was my ambush or not, but it sure took me down hard.

2. We had to go down into the Abandoned Sewers (first, we had to find the Abandoned Sewers) and hunt Rikti. No problem. Until we got stuck in one of those little zig-zag cofferdam rooms with a Hydra blocking the door, and the timer ticking. After trying to sneak past it (we were invisible) for thirty seconds or so, A. decided to just blast her way through -- which resulted in (a) many Hydra coming into the room, (b) A. getting through, but my getting stuck behind the body, and (c) my getting hit for many points of damage.

   Free of the room, finally, I ran as fast as I could -- and realized I was visible -- as I ran through more Hydra -- and they took it amiss -- and I, similarly, missed the side passage A. had gone down -- and ...

   ... a free trip to the hospital. W007!

Still managed, somehow, to ding.

Sunday, while frantically trying to get Margie's machine CoH-ready, the Consortium Meet-n-Beat started up. Eventually joined up, again in the PC/A duo. Discovering everyone was 20-21, we exited out and returned as Torchielle and Kazima. Ran some blue-and-white missions with our many friends, no prob. Hit the Hollows and discovered a mish full of purple Ruin Mages ...

... and many collective deaths.

Finally managed to bust through that, and then we (and the one remaining M&B player, Ciunas Bas, plowed through a Sky Raiders mission, complete with a few deaths of its own -- but not enough to keep Torchy from dinging 22.

Which ding was supposed to garner the Aim power, but after spending half the Hollows mish on my butt or locked in stone, I decided to go for Acrobatics instead ...

Posted by Dave at 5:58 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

October 21, 2005

Actual CoH gameplay? Inconceivable!

Managed to get on and actually play CoH last night (Amorpha and Psi-clone, with a bit of help from Zazi). Between external commitments, doing some scattered CoV testing, and just busy life, we've been woefully short of game time of late.

Beat up a lot of Crey to make up for it. As well as a few dozen Rikti monkeys.

Posted by Dave at 7:33 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

October 20, 2005

Another look at I6 (in Test)

The patch notes for the Test release:

---

Now Testing in the Training Room - 10/20/05

Issue 6: Along Came a Spider
New events in the far off Rogue Isles are beginning to have an effect on Paragon City.

[...]

PvP Zones:

The contested zones of Bloody Bay, Siren's Call, and Warburg are open for exploration by Heroes on the Training Room. There are a number of new missions available in these zones. Eventually, both Heroes and Villains will have access to these zones and be able to compete for the prizes they offer. These are PvP zones. If you enter these zones, you will be subject to attack by other players, except for small safe zones.

I find it interesting that these zones are not just for PvP, but PvE as well. I don't know if that makes it better (less Arena-like) or worse (if there's content there and there's PvP, then some folks will get their jollies gacking people trying to get to the content).

Supergroups:

* Characters in Supergroup mode can now gain Prestige and Salvage. These will be useful to players who own both City of Heroes and City of Villains in base building.
* There are new Badges that can be earned by Supergroups.
* Newly expanded Supergroup ranks and Supergroup permissions.
* Supergroup Leaders can change the colors and emblem of the Supergroup after creation.
* Players can now choose to hide their Supergroup emblem when in Supergroup mode.

These last two are critical, esp. tied to the first two. SGs can earn badges and base-buying/building stuff, but only when their members are in SG mode, which some folks hate because of the colors and insignia. Which now can be better tailored or ignored. Nice. So, for low and mid-range characters, there's no reason *not* to go into SG mode.

Graphics:

* More levels of graphical detail available.
* Character texture quality and world texture quality can be set separately now.
New refresh rate and vertical sync options.
* New graphics options to enable Depth of Field and Bloom visual effects on supported video cards.

UI

* New Options window with many newly available player options.

If this is the same as on CoV, it's a nice improvement.

* The confirmation screens for adding and deleting enhancements can be now be disabled.

Huzzah!

* New Pet window available from the Options window that displays the health of your pets, and grants the ability to unsummon specific pets.

Oh, yes, huzzah!!

* Macros can now be edited directly from the power tray.

Hot diggity dog!

* You can now give inspirations to teammates by dragging them on to the team window.

W007!

* New targeting commands: /target_custom_near, /target_custom_far, /target_custom_next and /target_custom_prev. To get a list of parameters, type the command without any parameters.

Interesting. I'll have to look these up.

* UI changes to Trade Window. You can now trade salvage and type in the amount of influence to be traded.

But it's still limited to 99,999. Which sucks.

Powers:

* Fixed a bug in the Thunder Clap power. It was Auto Hit, meaning Defense based characters had less chance of mitigating its effects than intended. This change affects Defenders and Controllers Storm Summoning sets, Banished Pantheon Witch Doctors, Circle of Thorns Air Casters, one of the Heroes Captured by the Devouring Earth and Skyfall from the Tsoo.
* Super Reflexes Auto powers now add some minor damage resistance that improves as the caster loses HP.
* Reduced the Endurance cost of Dark Melee/Siphon Life and Dark Blast/Life Drain.
* Pool powers: Stealth, Grant Invisibility, Invisibility, Combat Flight, Weave, Maneuvers, Vengeance, and Combat Jumping now Buff Defense to ALL attacks. This change was also made to all Primary and Secondary Stealth and Invisibility powers (including, but not limited to, Cloak or Shadows, Cloaking Device, Superior Indivisibility, and Group Invisibility). All Defense powers should now stack properly with each other. All powers short and long Help Text was updated to indicate this change.
* Improved Damage DeBuff of Tanker/Ice Armor/Chilling Embrace.
* Defender/Controller Empathy Resurrect Powers Endurance cost reduced.
* The Lightning Storm pet was generating Detoggle messages erroneously.
* Sonic Repulsion and Sonic Dispersion:
* * Sonic Buff/Clarity and Sonic Dispersion powers have been switched in the order in which they can be chosen. This change affects Defenders and Controllers.
* Glue Arrow should no longer fade when the target dies.
* Poison Gas Arrow should no longer fade when the target dies.
* Disruption Arrow no longer accepts Damage Resist Enhancements. They were extraneous and had no effect.
* Flash Arrow should have Debuff FX more visible throughout the duration now.
* Changed Long and Short Help of Moment of Glory to clarify which Defenses it offers.
* Martial Arts/Eagles Claw critical hit now properly does smashing instead of lethal damage.
* Fixed bad short help text in Spines/Taunt. It said it was an AoE, but it is a Single Targeted Taunt.
* Fixed Teleport animation from animating twice.
* Fixed Dark Miasma/Tar Patch cat animation from sometimes locking you into an animation loop.
* Fixed Empathy/Adrenaline Boost animation from activating before the power was recharged.
* Removed Resist Damage Enhancements from Acid Arrow.
* Some Electrical Blast, Electrical Melee and Electrical Mastery powers now have a chance to return some of the endurance they drain back to the caster.
* Force Field/Insulation Field now also buffs defense to AoE Attacks. Dispersion Bubble now also buffs defense to Melee and Ranged attacks. This will all Force Field powers to better stack with all defensive powers, even Super Reflexes, and even with multiple shields from multiple allies.
* Slightly Modified some Scrapper Martial Arts damage scales, end costs and recharge times.
* Reduced the Terrorize duration of Dark Melee/Touch of Fear.

Those of the above I recognize are all good, if not spectacular.

Stores:
Most stores and contacts that only sold 10 types of Enhancements of a given type will now sell all Enhancements of that type. (In other words, we fixed key stores that were selling just the Power 10 to sell all Enhancements of that type).

Huzzah!!!!

Debt Cap:
We have cut in half the amount of Debt you can carry at a maximum at any given time. Previously it was set at 10 defeats worth of Debt, it is now set at 5 defeats. (Defeats inside a mission map count as ½ a defeat since they generate only ½ the Debt). If your character has more Debt than the current cap when they log in, they will have their Debt lowered to that of the current cap.

Never reached this, but I think it's good.

---

Discussion of ED, prevously posted, omitted, though it's worth reading.

Posted by Dave at 10:53 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Character transfer between servers is coming soon!

Well, sort of. Transfer from US to Europe servers, or vice-versa, is coming soon.

Posted by Dave at 2:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

October 19, 2005

People who post to the CoH boards

1. "I am a dev. Here's what's going on."

2. "Nerf! Doom! Doooooooooom! DOOOOOOOOOOM!!!! I am so sad!"

3. "Nerf! Damn devs hate us. They are laughing at us! We hates them! Hates them forever!"

4. "Nerf! I quit!"

5. "You nerfed X, but didn't nerf Y! You helped Y, but didn't help X! I'm so sad. I quit!"

6. "It's not really that bad, people. Actually, some good stuff there. Thanks, devs!"

7. "You guys who thank the devs are super-gullable fools! And you're insulting those of us who know that the devs are laughing at us! You're fools! And lackeys! And evil minions! And fools! Nerfed evil lackey fools!"

8. "Hey! Cool icon!"

9. "The new issue has too much stuff I'm not interested in. Nice going, you evil nasty laughing-at-us devs! Steal more of my money, please!"

10. "The issues are coming too quickly! The devs are desparate!"

11. "It's been too long since the last issue! The devs don't care any more!"

12. "The devs promised feature X months ago. It hasn't show up! They lied! They hate us! They're lauging at us! Bait and switch! Nerf! Poit!"

13. "Here are my questions A-M and concerns N-Z ..."

14. "I am a dev. Here is the answer to your question J. Or a partial answer, at least."

15. "The answer to all your questions, even question J, is that we're doooooomed! The folly of all your concerns is that the devs hate us! And they laughs at us, they does, my Precious! Nerf! Quit! Fool! Doom!"

Sure seems that way, sometime. Jeez.

Posted by Dave at 2:55 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Media

I6 feature list

Per CuppaJo this afternoon (with my comments):

---

New Zones
As they become available to the players of City of Villains, the following PvP Zones will also open up for player of City of Heroes: Bloody Bay (This is a PvP Zone for Villains and Heroes with a minimum level to entry set at 15.), Siren’s Call (This is a PvP Zone for Villains and Heroes with a minimum level to entry set at 20.), Warburg (This is a Free-For-All Battle Zone for Villains and Heroes with a minimum level to entry set at 30).

Ho-hum. Not so much into PvP. Maybe. Probably. Okay, in a "real" setting, vs. the Arena, and as Heroes vs Villains ... maybe. At least worth trying. It will be intersting to see if CoH/CoV PvP is more popular than the Arenas are.

Arena – New Gladiator Battles! Collect all new Gladiator Badges to create a host of new pets you can battle in any of the Paragon City Arenas!

Ho-hum-squared. Not really sure what this means, but Arena = Boring.

Names: The number of characters allowed in the name will be increased to 20!

To match CoV. Still too short, but better than nothing (or the previous 15).

Super Groups: There will be all new SG Badges and an upgrade to the SG permissions system.

Um ... okay. The SG permissions are to match CoV, again (or, rather, are inherited from the CoV upgrade), and provides finer granularity of permissions. That said, ho-hum. Though I'm curious about the SG badges. Are those for time served in SG? Or for members of an SG that hits certainly milestones (membership, lifespan, whatever).

Tech Changes: City of Heroes will now support 3D Sound, have added Visual FX Upgrades and Dual CPU Performance Enhancement.

Ho-hum.

Costume Creator: Drop down menus are just a part of the UI upgrades for the costume creator.

I think this refers to the menu enhancements from the CoV costume creator, which is quite nice.

Pets: We’ve added an all new Pet Window for managing your pets.

Similar, one assumes, to the Mastermind pet windows. Hmmm. Wonder if we'll get the same functionality (attack! defend! follow!). Oh. Reading on, evidently on the CoV side it's been estalblished by the Devs that won't happen (since MMs are supposed to be inherently different than Controllers or Dominators).

Trade Window Upgrades: Trading with your teammates will be quicker and easier with the new UI in place.

That will be nice. As it stands, it's annoying. Hopefully trading Infl. will be faster.

Beyond that, there are tons of little tweaks and visual changes all around – so come check them out soon on the test server.

Unlikely, but I look forward to hearing about them.

---

That doesn't include ED, which is still confirmed will be in I6.

Overall, the biggest "bang" in I6 is the presence of CoV. I6 should be considered an incremental release (I5.5, perhaps), bringing CoH into sync with CoV. IMO.

Posted by Dave at 1:24 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Claw, claw, bites

Had a chat with Doyce on Sunday regarding claws. He mentioned he'd heard that they "looked better" in CoV than CoH, and I mentioned I thought they did, that the "pad" they extruded from in CoH was gone in CoV. He disagreed that such a "pad" existed.

Well, I was both right and wrong.

You can see the "pad" I'm talking about on the CoH claws (left/bug) . Unlike, say, Wolverine, the claws do not actually extend from the skeleton, but can be either seen as a separate external (semi-)device or as ninja-style "tiger claws." The visibility of the pad varies by character (which may be part of the confusion here). I believe claws scale (my old Selene character had very large ones), and on some characters I've played with the power the pad has been much more visible.

My initial impression of the CoV claws (right/cat) was that they extruded more cleanly from the hand, but the picture here of Very Bad Kitty belies that, Instead, they are more ... um ... spikey. They do look better -- more pointy and claw-like than the blades in CoH (note that Marvel has never been consistent with Wolvie's claws, either), but they're not internal, nor do they look like "real" claws.

Anyway, there you go. I will say that, as a Stalker, claws are a great weapon.

Posted by Dave at 8:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Quiet streets

Margie got home late and continued working right until she headed up to bed around 10. I had a vestry meeting until 9, so didn't really get onto CoH until after she'd called it a night. Bummed around briefly as Psi-clone, visited a contact, but decided not to solo anything, and the few folks who were on were either just hanging, were just about done with their final mish for the evening, or were on a TF.

Ah, well.

Ran over to CoV briefly and experimented with Mr. Thorne (a Soldier/Dark Mastermind) and with Very Bad Kitty (Claws/Regen Stalker). Getting awfully tired of those first two missions ...

Posted by Dave at 6:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
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October 18, 2005

City of More Alts

Yes, I know. I already have too many CoH characters. Way too many. Even just on Champion I have way too many. And, of course, there are the various character concepts I have over on CoV, and discussion of games going on over there.

So, naturally, I should be playing with another alt. This one's still on the "Triumph" test bed, but I expect to rebuild him on Champion once I get my extra CoV slots there. Presenting Al McGordo. He's a Rad/Rad Defender, a friendly sort of cowpoke from down New Mexico way, who just got a mite too close to some bad mutogenic radiation ...

Now, of course, he needs to keep a few feet from everyone. And that mask, well, it's not just for Western ambience. But he's right courteous to the ladies, and does his part to make the world a better place.

My intent for him is actually as an "Offender," stressing the offensive nature of his Defender powers (because, let's face it -- eye beams are kick-ass). He'll probably take a heal or two, just 'cause, but his main thing will be to blast the baddies -- a blaster with nice debuffs, vs. a healer/buffer with a bit of damage thrown in.

Most important, he just seems like he'd be fun to play. I have a story for him, a voice, and he (so far) solos pretty well, if need be.

Assuming I can timeslice some play time for him, of course.

Posted by Dave at 9:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design

More CoH news

1. Mission Complete Sharing will make its way to CoH. (Not specified if it will be in I6, though no reason why it shouldn't.) This is the feature in CoV that if two people share the mission being run, then when it's completed everyone is given the opportunity to get the mission credit and consider the mission completed. Similar to shared "hunt" missions now.

So, for example, if you have three people with FrostFire who run the mission, not only is it complete for the person who's mission it is, but the other two get to (if they want) consider it completed to, letting them move onto the next mission in their arc or from their contact.

Of course, everyone love running Frostfire multiple times, so that may not be the best example. But I can think of any number of times I'd like to have done that with various duos I was running. Nice.

2. I6 goes to Test as early as tomorrow.

Posted by Dave at 3:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Rrg

Between a hectic weekend, with essentially no blocks of evening time free (nor, really, much in the way of blocks of day time), and then server problems last night, haven't been on to CoH with any of our characters in, well, days. Rrg. Likely limited tonight, too, due to other commitments.

Did a little bit of CoV, but not worth speaking of. Playing around with Masterminds; a great concept.

Chatted with some folks about CoV and whether there's likely to be a migration, not just of the "I wanna play a bad guy and kill stuff" folks from CoH, but of decent and enjoyable players, too. I hope not -- while CoV has some fun elements, I still prefer playing a hero, and still have stuff to do in CoH before I get tired of it. :-)

That said, there's some CoV stuff I wouldn't mind doing -- Mister Ravenous is a lot of fun, and ... some other plotty bits that would be enjoyable to dabble in. But I don't see CoV as my main platform at this point.

Posted by Dave at 7:03 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

October 17, 2005

Bases? We don' need no steekin' bases!

At the moment, it appears that bases are only for CoV owners.

Quoth Statesman:

You cannot enter or build bases without CoV. You cannot participate in Base raids without CoV. CoH players will gain prestige and Salvage (I think) that they can contribute to the Super Group...

I think this will be a mistake. The base stuff sounds pretty keen, and restricting not only construction to CoV folks but use of bases (even once it's all available in CoH) is a sales mistake.

Fortunately, we have CoV ... :-)

Or perhaps this is just tied to the I6 pre-announcement:

Bases are NOT in I6. Bases are a CoV feature... We'll be posting the features list for I6 "soon."

Posted by Dave at 7:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

October 14, 2005

ED schedule and testing

Per Statesman (et al.), ED is scheduled to go onto Test next week sometime. It's not thought to be likely that it will be ready to go Live in time for the CoV roll-out on 31 October, but ...

Several people have noted that ED will "inevitably" cause a slowdown in leveling. That's why we're putting this up on test; internally, we didn't notice a change. There's a variety of reasons for this (less Endurance cost, slotting of different powers that reduced downtime, etc.), but I wanted to see the effect on the Training Room. I'm more than happy to increase XP should ED slow stuff down too much...

Okay. If, indeed, the intent is that levelling will continue at the same rate, I reserve more commentary until I see better how it works. Though the implementation in CoV isn't nearly as informative as I'd hope for.

Posted by Dave at 11:59 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Bring on the Bad Guys

Margie and I are both in agreement that, well, we just both enjoy playing Heroes more than Villains. The CoV material is nice, certainly there are some decent tech advantages, and costume bits to die for -- but I certainly feel better about myself and my characters when they're protecting Paragon and its citizenry rather than when they're tearing up Mercy Island and terrifying the annoying populace.

Still, there's plenty of opportunity to do some fun bits. Such as The Gifted Kid, right. You know him -- the one who always knew the answers in class, who always scored well on tests, who was better than everyone else and knew it ... and who got beat up every day on the way home?

Well, if he couldn't make any friends, he decided to ... make some friends. (Mastermind Drones/Tech). He's fun.

And then there's these guys. On the right is Dr. Lotte Lenya, of the Rosa Klebb Institute. She enjoys ... needles. On the left is ...

... hey, haven't we seen him before? Well, anyway, goes by the name Psy-clone (Dominator Mind/Psy). Looks kind of untrustworthy.

Lots of great villain names out there -- indeed, half the fun of CoV right now is seeing what other people have come up with. Now if only some of those costume bits can be brought over to CoH ...

UPDATE: Some great Alliance commentary, with many Secret Base screen shots, here.

Posted by Dave at 6:22 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design

October 13, 2005

Mister Ravenous

Since the CoV NDA is now lifted, I present you with ... Mr. Ravenous.

A sophisticated soul is he, cultured, refined, an enjoyer of the better things in life. The only time he actually finds himself getting put out -- even to the point of getting a bit hot under the collar and leading him to become exercised and even, dare we say, hostile -- is when someone interferes with his hobbies and predilections. Such as, for example, the consumption of human flesh. It's not easy, gentle reader, being a connoisseur in a world of barbarians and puritans ...

Brute, Inv/SS. Fun stuff. Love watching the "brute" bar go up as he hits/gets hit. He'll get all reset once the test gets finished, but he'll be my first CoV character out the chute, should I choose to actually do that.

Posted by Dave at 5:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design

October 12, 2005

The Famous Mr. ED

Stateman posts -- repeatedly -- on the subject of Enhancement Diversity (ED):

Some reasons:

3.1) Players focused on just a few types of Enhancements alone; the usefulness of secondary effects was overlooked.

3.2) We wanted to be able to vary the % of Enhancements moving into the future. With ED, we now can have a single Enhancement that boosts Damage by 50%. Players can't horde many, many copies of said Enhancement, because there is still an ultimate cap.

3.3) We wanted to curtail the constant [internal] powers analysis more; we wanted to set a balance standard and move towards it.

On the announcement itself:

As I've already said, there's little use calculating ED into ANYTHING until it goes to the Training Room. It could have easily ended up on the scrap heap (see Skills). Until something is on the Training Room, I don't like avoiding it (Skills being the classic example).

... and ...

I apologize if people thought I was misleading them by saying "no more big power changes." In my mind, powers and Enhancements are two different systems (they really are in terms of data). It certainly wasn't my intent.

Secondly, we didn't put out info about Enhancement Diversification out earlier because 1) we hadn't nailed down the exact system and 2) we didn't want to announce changes until they were on the Training Room. Until something can be tested, it isn't "real" yet - I'd hate to say something is coming when it isn't. Skills is a good example of this; we designed it. It seemed ready, but it ended up not being ready.

Thirdly, I CAN say unequivocally that we have NO other major changes planned. A few posts have asked that specifically.

... and ...

As I said, we did do internal testing with simulated ED results - but we didn't have the UI and final numbers. I learned after Skills never, never, never mention a system until it's really "in" the pipeline. We hope to get ED up on Training Room later this week.

And to those who think I'm couching my apologies a little too much - I'll be straightforward. I'm sorry. I should have tried to understand how things would be perceived. That's an oversight/error on my part. I thought Enhancements and Powers were two different things, but many players don't see it as such. While I may have been *technically* correct, clearly players thought I was expressing a different spirit: no more nerfs. I should have known that.

In other news, SR scrappers will get a "Defiance"-like DR boost as they drop in HP.

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City of LAAAAAGGGGGGG

Fired up City of Villains (Beta - Training Room) this evening.

Along with every other beta tester in the world. The words that best describe the experience? "LOST CONNECTION TO MAPSERVER."

No, really, Margie and I were singing, "I'll be laggin' my way back to you, babe!"

To be fair, it's the test server. And the game really is much fun. Lots of imaginative character names, some fun-looking characters, and much villainy afoot.

I would post a fun picture of my character, Mister Ravenous -- but that would violate the NDA. No screenshots.

That said, damn, there's a ton of costume accessories that are perfect for CoH, too. I hope they are brought over.

'Nuff said.

Posted by Dave at 7:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
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It's not just a server, it's an eeeevil server

Margie wanted me to post a couple of ideas:

1. At such time as CoV goes live, given the, um, large number of alts we have on Champion, and the shared-server nature of same (after all, I've only pre-ordered CoV so I can get four more Champion slots for hero alts, right?), would our local audience here be interested in focusing villains on a different server?

   Biggest dis-ad to that, of course, is that it limits any same-server PvP action against Alliance heroes.

   Not, of course, that I'm that interested in PvP. Or CoV. Really.

2. Consortium of Injustice, anyone?

3. In the interest of cross-communication during the testing period, any of the readers who want to post their CoV global handles in the comments, feel free to do so.

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Clothes horse

For all that CoH has a (deserved) reputation for character design/costuming, I remain amazed by the things one cannot do.

So, for example, Torchielle went in last night to get her lvl 20 costume from Serge at Icon. What I wanted was jeans and a t-shirt. Basic, simple mufti.

Nuh-uh.

The jeans part is no problem. But for the top, I can

(a) get a form-fitting "top with skin" t-shirt form that looks like I'm in a wet t-shirt competition. Not very Torchy.
(b) get a loose sweat-shirty kind of thing that's the same "baggy" as her uniform. Not very distinctive.
(c) get an actual "shirt" that has a cropped midriff (of various styles). I went with that ... but, again, it's not the best fit for Torchy.

A t-shirt. Simple, one would think.

Ah, well.

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Filed under: Gameplay

October 11, 2005

Villainous

So Margie downloaded all the CoV beta stuff, and created a Brute named "Brimstone Released," doing the basic Breakout bits (once the test server was workikng properly). Her screen name on the forums is "Slightly_Evil."

I didn't get a chance to get everything downloaded before the daily beta period (5-8 MDT) was over (I'll be firing all that off tonight), but I already have a character concept in mind. My forum name (and, likely, first character name, sans underscore) is "Mister_Ravenous."

More as I can NDA-tell you.

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Filed under: Gameplay

To smile, and smile, and be a villain ...

Margie and I both got beta invites to CoV today, as "long-term subscribers" (defined as "6 months or more").

Oh, the temptation.

Not like I don't have enough heroes to play with. But ... damn. Tempting ...

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Reserve names

This is probably a Good Thing, but I'm sure some folks aren't in a mood for anything that smacks of further "restrictions."

Starting 10/24/2005 the City of Heroes and City of Villains character name policy will change. Names for characters under level 35 on game accounts that have been inactive for over 90 days will be changed to unreserved status. This means that those names will become available for new character names if picked by an active player. This policy is being enacted in order to free up character names based on player feedback.

That actually seems pretty reasonable -- more than reasonable, in fact. If your game account is inactive for over three months, your character's name might get recycled (if someone chooses to try to take it). And if the character is level 35 or higher, the name is still safe. I have no idea how many names this affects, but it seems pretty straightforward to me. At worst, it's not like your character is being deleted (which is pretty remarkable), but that you might have to rename Miss Mystery to Lady Mystery or something like that.

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Filed under: Resources & Rules

October 10, 2005

Late Knights

Due to an endless series of phonecons today (the last one letting out around 6:30p), we were beyond late for the Storm Knights Meet-n-Beat with Fazenda and Araware. Rats.

On the other hand, we dinged to 15 with little trouble, handing missions of mostly-oranges with little trouble. So, no worries.

For the ED Record, Fazenda was planned to be 6-slotted in Hover (Fly), Recovery Aura (Recharge), Stamina (Recovery), Adrenaline Boost (Recharge), and Power Buildup (Recharge) -- which means I probably would have set up with Hasten instead. She was 4+-slotted in Healing Aura (Heal), Heal Other (Heal), and Nova (Damage). Oh, well.

Posted by Dave at 11:13 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Edit
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Enhancement Diversification

Hrm.

Okay, I support the goals of (a) diversitying what paths folks take in developing their powers, and (b) how different folks tune up their powers to do different things. So I've long been vaguely sorry that too many builds end up looking very similar, and that though many powers are open to a variety of enhancements, the enhancements actually taken by most folks tend to be fairly limited.

The answer to this would seem to be to increase the number of powers and increase what different, less-used enhancements do in order to make them more valuable.

The Devs, it seems, have a different idea: Enhancement Diversification. Which sounds like the right name, but is more of an "affirmative action" than a reduction of barriers to taking a variety of enhancements.

This is a new system being implemented into City of Villains and City of Heroes (when City of Villains launches) to promote the use of more different types of Enhancements in powers. Using a system of diminishing returns, when slotting the same type of Enhancement into a power, you will begin to see less effect of that Enhancement when the bonus reaches a certain threshold. The effectiveness of Enhancements you are slotting in can now be seen in the Enhancement Slotting screen.

What does this mean? Simply, if you are slotting Enhancements and your bonus to a single attribute reaches 70% through Enhancements, you will begin to see a drop in the amount each Enhancement should be giving you. If you exceed 100% bonus, then the drop will be more severe. We have added to the Enhancement Slotting screen a display of how much bonus you are getting from your Enhancements. When you are adding in Enhancements that will be reduced in effectiveness you will be able to tell.

Note that this only affects Enhancements of the same bonus. So you can have a Damage bonus of 66.66%, and an Accuracy bonus of 66.66% (from 2 SO Damage and 2 SO Accuracy Enhancements) and you will not be affected in any way. Adding in another SO Damage Enhancement will not give you a 99% bonus, but a 94% bonus, because the damage bonus now exceeds 70%.

A good rule of thumb is “2 Single Origins Enhancements = No Reduction. 3 SO’s = Slight Reduction. 4 SO’s = Moderate Reduction. 5 or 6 SO’s = Major Reduction”

Maxing DOs will give you 95% increase (rather than 100%) for 6 DOs.

So an initial read of this makes it sound like the "Perma-Hasten" of 6 SOs to Hasten ... will no longer be possible? Or "Perma-DullPain"? And, of couse, it's nice that I'll be encouraged to use those extra slots on Stamina to improve my other powers, but it's a shame that I'll run short of breath sooner.

Unless, of course, base effectiveness of all these powers is increased. Of which there's no word, but that would certainly make this feel better (i.e., less room for improvement, but a higher foundation to build on).

Apparently all internal QA and playtesting has been using this system since 3/2005, so they're pretty convinced that this is nothing "new." Which may explain why some of the complained-of I4/I5 changes were not seen the same way by them as by "us."

Will a new free respec be given for this? Given that it may encourage folks to seriously want to redo either their powers or, more likely, their slotting ...

There will be a modification to the Enhancement screen that shows the percentage effectiveness being attained at any given level, so folks will get a better feel for this. (Note that this seems to be an exception, albeit a critical one, to the Devs resistance of making this "City of Numbers."). And, to that end:

Schedule A Enhancements (33.33%, 16.66%, 8.35%) are:
Accuracy, Confuse, Damage, Defense DeBuff, Drain Endurance, Endurance Discount, Fear, Fly, Heal, Hold, Immobilize, Intangible, Jump, Recharge, Recovery, Run, Sleep, Snare, Stun, Taunt, To Hit Debuff
These bonus types start to see reduction when the bonus is 70% or more, and a severe reduction at 100% bonus or greater.

Schedule B Enhancements (20%, 10%, 5%) are:
Range, Defense Buff, Resist Damage, To Hit Buff
These bonus types start to see reduction when the bonus is 40% or more, and a severe reduction at 60% bonus or greater.

Schedule C Enhancements (40%, 20%, 10%) are:
Interrupt
This bonus type starts to see reduction when the bonus is 80% or more, and a severe reduction at 120% bonus or greater.

Schedule D Enhancements (60%, 30%, 15%) are:
Knockback
This bonus type starts to see reduction when the bonus is 120% or more, and a severe reduction at 180% bonus or greater

I don't necessarily think this is a bad idea per se -- the goal (more diverse heroes) is a good one. But the means -- restricting (effectively) what you can do with your hero, as well as reducing the overall value of enhancements ("nerfing") -- strikes me as ... not productive. As someone noted, this sort of diversity is possible today, it's just not incented. So what you should be doing is incenting this, as opposed to disincenting the opposite. The ends may work out the same, but the feel turns out very different, nefty badness aside.

Posted by Dave at 11:03 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack | Edit
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Running silent

Sunday was kind of quiet for us. We cleared up some old business with Psi-clone and Amorpha -- duoed saving the War Walls (no problem), cleared out some old mishes, tried to figure out how to get into some story arcs we want to get involved in, etc.

Accelerated our Rikti Monkey hunting.

Then over to the Azures, who we played with most of the afternoon. Uncharacteristically, we were quiet on the comms. I wasn't feeling particularly sociable, at any rate. We did punch through some very nasty missions, including a sewer-full of orange abominations. The Mrs. died twice, I managed to just squeak away without debt, which is odd given that I'm the scrapper. That aside, I was still pleased by Mr. A's performance -- he seemed very effective at kicking the snot out of pretty much anything we ran up against, even without always my full attention (Kitten was watching our Superman animated DVD, and there was at least one ep I hadn't seen before).

In the evening -- I decided to watch a movie instead. So there.

Posted by Dave at 8:48 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

October 9, 2005

Prelude

All I want to know is why we spent all that time Friday night hunting down Paragon Protectors in Crey's Folly, in order to get the Infiltrator badge (thus the Conspiracy Theorist accolade) when ...

... well, last night, we ended up slogging against endless PPs on various missions against the Crey. Except these were all purples. Psi-clone and Amorpha, joined by Dubh Bas and Toy Maker. We did pretty well -- no TPKs, but close, and everyone died at least once (DB and A managed multiple times) -- and still everyone managed to level, a tribute both to the huge amount of XP we were getting plus the new "half debt in mission" rules.

So PC/A both hit 37. Hurrah! Now to figure out how to deal with all those yellow SOs without outright replacing all them with 40s. (Yes, I know how to do it, it's just annoying.)

Posted by Dave at 8:37 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

October 7, 2005

Accoladia

Ran around last night trying to finish up the Conspiracy Theorist accolade for Psi-clone and Amorpha -- ran the mission (The Doctor's Ally badge) and took about two hours to get our Infiltrator badges (take down 100 Paragon Protectors -- not Crey Protectors, mind you, but Paragon Protectors).

Only nearly died twice, both times because the Invis dropped before we were ready for alpha strike.

The rest is just a bunch of search badges, most of which we have. Crey Pistol, here we come ...

UPDATE: Wrapped it up for both of us this afternoon. Not something to frequently use, to be sure, but against Bosses, etc., it should come in handy.

Posted by Dave at 11:39 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
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PUG-not-so-ugly

Rather than any number of useful errands I could have been running, I played with Amethyst Crown. Now that she has Parry, she has a pretty decent attack chain without Brawl (Parry - Hack - Parry - Slash ...).

So I ran a mish on my own, which was okay, then decided to head over to the Hollows. Level 8 should be just right, right? And I was confident enough of her survivability to be willing to risk a bad PUG.

Well, it actually worked out okay -- I was at 8 and a large group of mostly lvl 10 or so pulled me in for what turned into two consecutive Frostfire mishes. During which time I dinged up three times, ending up at 11. Yay. Only died once (after I hit 10, of course), and felt pretty good about her performance.

Good times.

Have decided against Hasten at this point (since there's not a lot I'm dropping recharges into, and, as I said, she has an attack chain that's good and will only get better). That freed me up to take Swift as her one power on the even level, which, with Sprint, is almost as good as a travel power until 14.

Posted by Dave at 6:26 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

The Great Leap Forward

Huzzah and hey-nonny-nonny -- Fazenda and Araware both dinged up to 14, which means ...

Travel Power!

There's something fabulously liberating about a Travel Power. The worst part of the early levels is, frankly, trotting from one end of one zone to another. Even if you avoid awfuls like the Hollows, just jogging around Kings Row gets to be a boring PitA -- and maneuvering around new zones like Steel and Skyway become seriously risky.

Travel Powers suddenly let you treat zones much more point-to-point, with minimal time going from A to B. Nice.

For Aware it was Super Jump, a very fine power that I use on most of my characters (PC being the obvious exception). For Fazenda, though, it's something different -- Teleport. C'mon, she's a stage magician -- what else would she take?

Already seeing/experiencing the various problems -- high endurance cost, vulnerability where you arrive, etc. I need to do some fancy macro work to make the whole process easier (and add a "tag line" to the effort).

I dunno. SJ is probably my favorite so far, just for general utility. Fly is great for PC because he can chat while he does so. TP is going to be good "color" -- let's see how effective it actually is.

Still working on her voice -- doing the Irish thing without either overdoing it or crossing over into Scottish -- and on her "busines" -- card tricks, coin tricks, pulling a lit cigarette out of places, etc.

Interestingly, even as Fazenda works on her voice, Araware is turning out to be quite the chatterbox on the comms, relatively speaking. Margie tends to play quieter characters, so hearing Araware waxing lyrical on metaphysics is pretty fun.

Ran last night with another Storm Knight for an adventure, which gave a little variation. He complemented us on how good of a team we were, which we are (all of our current duos are pretty kick-ass, with the possible exception of Velvet/P-Siren, who are good but not great, at least in terms of DPS).

In between mishes, we managed to get hooked up with a Troll Rave in Skyway, a good first test of our travel powers. Which was fine, except (a) we got teamed up with Sword of Asgard, (b) we didn't SK, so (c) we were both very squishy (and both died at least once) and got hardly any XP. Still, worth it for the exposure. Fazenda's definitely about the publicity.

We have a Storm Knights Meet-n-Beat on Monday, so we'll see how the characters stack up at that point. At the very least, we'll see if I can avoid addressing them as "Consortium" like I did on the SG comms last night.

Posted by Dave at 6:17 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design , Gameplay

October 6, 2005

Doing the social thang

Went out with Velvet and P-Siren to Capt. Atomyc's weekly Freedom Phalanx exercise meeting. Took for-evah to actually get going, between PS being delayed in joining and then uncertainty as to where we were going and then (most especially) delays in how to actually make a team of 9 work.

In the end, had a group of 7 up against Infernal. Velvet was the point person, natch, as the only tank on the team. Mostly consisted of going through portals, finding a group of a dozen or so demons, standing in the middle and taunting them, then letting the controllers lock them down and the blasters take them down. I was SKed to the highest person in the group, I think, so between that and bubbles (Margie's mostly, though Puck was tossing them off, too), I was immune to pretty much anything thrown at me.

In the final battle -- no prob. I locked down Infernal, the others took out the portal and the peripherals, and then we took him down proper. One death only (and I don't think that was from Infernal). A kinetic on the team kept my endurance up, and it was just a matter of hitting him enough times.

Got some decent XP for Infernal and the mish, but my high SK kept the overall XP-per-demon pretty low. A fair trade-off for immunity, I suppose.

(As a complete side note -- Margie has sometimes joked about replacing the FF on P-Siren with Sonics -- and it just occured to me that, with a name like that, Sonics would make a lot more sense now. Not that I'm suggesting she reroll a level 29 character!)

After that, we switched over to Fazenda and Araware. We have a Storm Knights meet-n-beat on Monday we want to attend, and it would be nice if we had our travel powers by then. We're 13, so it's just, oh, several pips away. Should be more than doable.

One thing I've noticed the last few times out is that the SG channels on other groups tend to be a lot more chattery than the CoJ. Sometimes there's more SG chat going on than CC (and, to be honest, I tend to swing that way when on those channels, too). F/A had a nice, lengthy, IC/RP chat with someone last night, all on SG. Earlier in the evening, we were using the FP channel for all our organizational discussion around the mission.

As to the difference from the CoJ? Well, four of the several regular players in the group are in duos (Margie/me in our various CoJ instances, mostly PC and A; and, of course, Hype and Syn). Duos tend to talk mostly to each other. There are other individuals in the CoJ, certainly, and they do pipe up, but it tends to mostly be in CC.

Interesting. Question is, is that a problem?

Posted by Dave at 7:52 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Consortium of Justice , Gameplay

Heroes and Villains

New NCSoft licensing stuff re CoH and CoV:

First off, there will be just a single $15/mo. subscription fee. Whether you buy CoH, CoV, or both, the ongoing subscription cost will be the same.

More interestingly (bolding mine):

Along with the value of being able to play the two games for $14.99, players will receive four additional character slots per game server, and access to crossover areas from both games such as player-versus-player zones in City of Villains. Additionally, City of Heroes' players who subscribe to both games will have access to the base building and base raids featured in City of Villains.

Okay, would I pay the whatever-X dollars to buy the CoV discs and install them, just so that I could have four additional character slots on Champion?

Little ol' alt-o-holic me?

Hell, yeah.

PvP zones? Not so much interested (any more than I've ever entered an arena match). What the "access to the base building" means is a bit more intriguing. Does this mean hero bases will be available? Or that raids on villain bases will be allowed? Stay tuned.

(via Mal)

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Filed under: Resources & Rules

October 5, 2005

Getting Defensive

What powers give what sorts of Defenses (type and circumstance)?

Now you know. Except for, maybe, some mistakes people have highlighted below that post.

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Filed under: Resources & Rules

October 4, 2005

It's amazing ...

... how much gameplay you can get in starting at 7:30 p.m. rather than 9:30 p.m.

Posted by Dave at 5:47 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

October 3, 2005

Monster Island

Just to clarify something that I've heard different tales about:

If you do (or are on a team that does) 25% or more of the Giant Monster's HP in damage, then you (your team) will receive the badge for defeating the Giant Monster.

So says Positron.

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October 2, 2005

Ask War Witch

As one of the devs, War Witch seems positively a chatterbox, answering any number of questions as to design decisions made in CoH/CoV, especially having to do with zone design. Good stuff. Read the thread.

Posted by Dave at 11:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules