Category: Resources & Rules

I mentioned this article to a few people over the last couple of weeks, so I should probably link to it. The gist can be summed up in the following:

CoV is definitely the weaker cousin to CoH. It has some better features – the majority of missions being in the same zone as the contact who gives them is a big one – but it has a lot less content and seemingly fewer players. Sure, CoV is a newer title than CoH and it did get one issue since that was a big content update, but it still lags behind. I’ve noticed that the majority of dev focus seems to be on CoH […]

Part of the problem is that CoV is tied to a storyline that makes perfect sense (well, close enough if you pay any attention to the schemes of supervillains – “find the Destined One who will eventually kill you” is par for the course) for the Rogue Isles setting where villains are based, but at the same time hamstrings much further development. There isn’t a lot of leeway in the Destined One metaplot to do something different or to spin things another way while still keeping it part of the narrative. CoH doesn’t
suffer that fate – because its lacks one overarching story that holds everything together, new storylines can be patched in without disrupting anything. As an example, Striga Isle and Croatoa both are additions to CoH that don’t require a lot of explanation. They are just there for heroes to enter and get drawn into the in-zone story arc.

Villains don’t get that kind of freedom. Everything tha that happens in the Rogue Isles happens under the purview of Lord Recluse and (at least in part) according to the Destined One prophecy. While a zone could be added that provided additional insight to that prophecy, that particular storyline has a fixed beginning and end while the middle is pretty well defined. More zones could be added to the middle act of the metaplot, sure, but it would mostly likely appear shoehorned in and / or not contribute much to
the overall narrative.

There’s something to be said for that. Part of it is part-and-parcel trying to justify a “City of Villains” — well, in the Rogue Isles you have have a meta-villain organization running the shots and keeping things (conspiracies notwithstanding) from completely melting down. The “Destined One” bit provides some focus and potential conflict within that structure.

In contrast, nobody needs to justify a “City of Heroes” — you don’t have to have all super-heroes working for the government more-or-less (“Civil War” notwithstanding). There’s much more literary basis behind CoH; CoV had to be bound by a storyline to give an excuse for a realm of super-powered criminals and evil-doers. (In fact, that’s something of a justification right there — CoV is really a sop, and properly a second-hand one, for those folks who have to play super-villains, an unsupported
aberration in the genre that the CoX franchise is dereived from.)

On the other hand, one reason why there’s been so much focus on CoH in the last issue or two is … well, it was more broken, or further behind the times. Faultline was a badly-needed boost to the 15-20 range, which was otherwise stuck in the most primitive (RP- and art-wise) zones in the game. Adding some new, broad plots (the Fifth Column, the Return of the Rikti) would help freshen up CoH material that’s been around for three years, rather than a year or so for CoV. And some of the potentially
most profound changes — the whole (bleah) crafting/inventions system — will be for both sides of the CoX house.

Whatever. I’m still having fun.

No, really. In summary:

1. Current content focus is Hero level 35-40, and Hero/Villain 40-50.
2. Don’t expect the Patron Power setup to change.
3. Epic Archetypes are a lot of work; none are currently scheduled, as they keep getting bumped for higher priority things.
4. I9 brings new datamining tools to help the devs figure out where folks are “grinding.”
5. More base stuff a-coming …
6. Customized colors on powers would be really keen, but have determined to be impractical. Rats.
7. Don’t expect any specfic revamping of any given ATs to make them more soloable.
8. Server transfer will happen. Sometime.

And then there was this interesting response on new power sets:

When it comes to Powersets, there are no shortages of great ideas. Unfortunately, like Epic Archetypes that I talked about earlier, they are not easily implemented and are always competing with other features for the next Issue. If I could wave my magic wand and instantly create 10 new powersets, these would be the ones I’d like to see: (in NO particular order):

Electric Hammer
Shield Defence
Shield Melee
Magnetism
Magnetic Blast
Force Control
Psionic Weaponry
Street Fighting
Akimbo Pistols
Demon Summoning

Obviously some powersets are more suited to some ATs than others. Demon Summoning for example, would be a Mastermind Pet set. Of course, if these make it into the game the names would probably change as well, and this entire list could change if the wind blows just right. And as a bonus I’ll pre-answer the obvious follow-up questions:

No, I don’t know when these will appear in the game.

No, they will not all appear at once in one update. When we introduce new power sets we’re more likely to do a couple at a time.

Akimbo Pistols is planned as a Corruptor set at first, and it is NOT, and never will be, a Scrapper or Stalker set.

When every month has a special event, does that mean no event is special?

In this case, hot off the heels of the Winter Event, we have … the Valentine Event, going into Test this weekend.

Hmmm … I don’t recall downloading a patch tonight. Oh, wait — it’s on Test. Anyway …

---

 

COMBINED NOTES

Powers

• Burn: Normalized all versions of ‘Burn’ to now have a recharge time of 25 seconds. This is a reduction for Tankers, and an increase for Brutes and Blasters.

Made changes to the following graphics effects for performance improvements:

• Psychic Shockwave

• Drain Psyche

• Oppressive Gloom

• Death Shroud

• Whirling Hands

• Foot Stomp

• Stalagmite

• Circle of Thorn Crystals

• Devouring Earth Eminators

• Poison Gas Arrow.

• Brute and Scrapper versions of Invincibility taunt effect should now work properly.

• Animate Stone’s attack powers now use knock down, not knock back. Really. We mean it this time!

• Power Thrust: Corrected an issue with PvP Knockback suppression.

• Assault Rifle Sniper Rifle animation: Fixed the ‘hitch’ in the that happened if used in conjunction with Targeting Drone.

• Assault Rifle will no longer root the player while being drawn.

• Assault Rifle/Sniper Rifle power animation will no longer interrupt itself, which will prevent the power from appearing to be interrupted when it’s really not. This was specifically reported as happening with Targeting Drone active.

• Will Domination and Dominate rooting time while flying is now the same as standing.

• Drain Psyche’s rooting time has been reduced and changed to work more consistently.

• Added priority values to help correct Mastermind Thug pets from wearing the incorrect costumes and Kheldian from slipping back into “human” mode.

UI

• Base Salvage is now all categorized under “Base”. This is done to clean up the lists for when Invention Salvage is added.

Game

• The storm that had blown over Founders Falls and Croatoa has moved on and the more appropriate sky should now be seen there.

• Improved Game Stability, including correcting an issue with capes that could lead to a client crash.

The devs have been trying to standardize what powers root you — cause you to stop, stand in place, animate, and generally not keep traveling and/or fighting — and what powers don’t. Eventually, it will all make sense, but at the moment it’s still (as it has been) a scosh higgledy-piggledy.

Latest installment:

Hey everyone. The changes to toggle power animations and the standardization of what does and doesn’t root you should now be up on live. I just wanted to clear up any confusion about some other changes to click powers that also happened at this time. The only intended changes to rooting were supposed to be for toggle powers at this time. We’re in the process of standardizing click powers to follow their own set of rules, but they’re not going to be slightly different than the rules for toggles.

Right now, our intent is to use these rules for click powers:
1. AOE Heals will not root
2. Self Buffs will not root
3. Self Heals will not root
4. Everything else will.

You may have noticed some click powers that used to root you and now don’t. These powers snuck their way into the wrong build (see what happens when we don’t root them), and most of these will change back in the next build that makes it to live. Consider this an official head’s up.

Again, sorry for the confusion this has caused. We’ll get it all sorted out shortly and we thank you for your patience and understanding.

… and the holidays taketh away.

Folks are all a-twitter that the temp powers from the Holiday Event (in particular the Rez and the Five Gold Rings), which were evidently always intended to be real-time duration, but were rolled out as game-time duration, have been changed to real-time (and poof!).

Ah, well. Having the (very short) hold was kinda handy, and the rez was okay, but, jeez, to read some posts, you’d think the Devs had pissed in their corn flakes.

There is, to be sure, some minor justification for all those folks who ground their dozen alts through all the Holiday mishes to get the powers, but, as someone noted, “12 days of game time” is 288 hours, which is enough for some folks to get to 50. Which is hardly a “temp” power.

This one (since I declined to invest all that time) get a big “Meh!” from me.

Test stuff as of 22 Jan:

---

 

COMBINED NOTES

Powers

• Consignment House Teleporter power will no longer be issued to players upon login

• Stone Armor/Earth’s Embrace will no longer root the player while activating

• Super Reflexes/Practiced Brawler will no longer root the player while activating

• Regeneration/Instant Healing will no longer root the player while activating

• Radiation Emission/Accelerate Metabolism will no longer root the player while activating

Game

• Players will no longer be notified of Enhancement drops received by teammates.

Incorrect animations

• Some animations were flawed in the last version that went to the Training Room on 1/12/07. They have been repaired.

• Jumping straight up should play the correct animation again.

• Super Reflex/Practiced Brawler should play the correct animation again.

• Invulnerability/Unstoppable should only play the soundFX one time

• The animation for Tough should play again

• The animation for Integration should play again

• Various powers had an additional ‘hop’ animation that played afterwards. This has been fixed. (please continue to report specific powers if you still see this occurring)

CITY OF HEROES

Powers

• Chilling Embrace animation changed to better suit the power

• Ice Armor/Energy Absorption will now briefly root the player while activating

• Scrapper/Dark Armor/Cloak of Darkness will no longer root the player while activating

• Temporary Power/Wedding Band will no longer root the player while activating

CITY OF VILLAINS

Powers

• Ninjitsu/Kuji-In Rin will no longer root the player while activating

• Cold Domination/Arctic Fog will no longer root the player while activating

Via Warcry:

Scheduled for release sometime during Spring 2007, Issue 9 “Breakthough” will introduce new depth and gameplay to the City of game setting. Players will be able to acquire and invent new toys through use of the Invention System in form of Salavage and Invention Recipes. Resulting items may be enhancements, costume pieces, powers, gadgets, and much more.

Unless this is really interesting in-and-of itself, I don’t expect to do much with it. If it turns out to be a sine qua non for real advancement (which the Devs have promised it won’t be, though they said that PvP wouldn’t affect PvE, either), then it would be a serious blow to my interest.

In addition, Wentworth’s Fine Consignments will open up in Paragon City. Serving as auction houses, players will be able to buy and sell all manner of items. In the Rogue Isles, the placement of black market trucks will serve the same purpose, allowing villains to fence and buy their ill gotten goods.

Whatever.

Heroes will receive a new Task Force titled Statesman’s Task Force. A high level mission set, this charges up to eight heroes to face and defeat some of Paragon’s greatest foes. The reward will be some of the games greatest in return for this monumental achievement.

Well, that might encourage me to break Psi-clone out for a run.

Both villain and hero alike will also find that the Hamidon has grown ever more powerful. Villains will find a new raid encounter against the gigantic leader of the Devouring Earth while heroes will see the need to change how they have kept the menace in check.

Heh. While I’m sure the Hami Raiders will soon figure out the new play book, I’m pleased that things on that end of the world will be disrupted a bit. Ideal for me, with Hami, would be something that required both strategy and tactics. There have been hints that the Hami raid might become a cooperative zone effort (i.e., something that allows and requires both Heroes and Villains). That would be nice.

As with all Issue expansions, Issue 9 will be free to all subscribers.

As always, nice.

Official word here.

Which is keen and fine and looking forward to it and all — but Doyce writes of something that they do double-XP-wise on that other game which sounds pretty keen, too.

Someone noticed a change in the training room patch:

• Added team member info messages for enhancement drops.

Which, it turns out, means you’ll get to see what drops other folks on the team get. The idea being, apparently, that with the Invention System people will want to know about these things and trade them with their friends.

Um …

1. Who really wants more info scrolling down their chat windows?
2. Who expects a bunch of in-mission trading. “Hey, I see you got a magic range SO — wanna trade for my nat endred SO?”
3. Who thinks this is a realistic simulation of heroic (or even villainous) behavior?
4. Who really has memorized all the screwball names of the TO, or even SO enhancements in various origin flavors, so that the freaking thing is actually meaningful. “Hey, I see you got a magic SO Nectanebo’s Carbuncle Polish … um, what the heck does that do?”

At present (though that’s not set in stone), there’s no option to turn it off (separate from all the Rewards text). Hopefully Lighthouse (who commented in the thread) can do something about that, as it sounds wildly annoying.

I think I understand what they’re driving at with the Invention System, but, like PvP, I’m afraid we’re all going to go through a lot of gyrations for a limited number of folks who want to take advantage of it.

Spiffy post (even Castle thinks so) on how Defiance (the Blaster Damage boost when HP drop low) works — hard numbers and (proven) equations from the devs.

An interesting table the writer generates:

Current   Damage
Health:   Bonus:   Notes:
100.00%    0.55%   Full health
57.00%   10.88%   Assault (10.5%)
45.00%   25.00%   Small rage
42.00%   30.78%   Circa one-shot death from average boss
41.00%   32.99%   Fortitude (31.25%)
35.00%   50.00%   Large Rage (50%)
31.00%   65.98%   Aim (62.5%)
28.00%   81.23%   Perma Rage (80%)
25.00%  100.00%   Build Up (100%)
15.00%  200.00%   Circa one-shot death from average LT
9.00%  303.14%   Damage Cap (assuming 3-slot damage)
8.00%  324.90%   Circa one-shot death from average minion

The notes show either equivalents (at 35% health it’s the same as having a Large Rage) as well as some danger points (yeah, you get a 200% bonus when you’re at 15% — but average LTs at that level can one-shot you … numbers based on Level 50s).

And I thought this was interesting, too:

The interesting stuff, as you might expect, happens at or below half health. But you don’t need to be at a sliver of health to get a significant benefit. Also, in spite of conjecture to the contrary, my own testing indicates that the defiance bar lags, but defiance itself doesn’t: if you have X% health when you fire a shot, you’ll get that much defiance boost, period. If you are there when you hit the activation button, you’ll get the boost (at least as far as my testing so far indicates).

I’ve never had a good sense of Defiance on the blasters I run — if I’m around 25% health I’m a bit too busy to see what sort of damage I’m doing or where the Defiance bar is, I’m just either fleeing, popping greens, or trying to Blast Him Before He Blasts Me.

Defiance also adds a (tiny) TH bonus, but nothing to write home about.

Woot! Double Experience weekend is coming up soon(ish).

We will be testing the double experience event on the Training Room this weekend, January 13th and 14th. And yes, if everything goes well with this test then you will be seeing a Double Experience event weekend again soon on the Live servers! Of course, we want to be sure our test of the event is good before announcing the Live event times, but you know it is coming!

No doubt it will happen during the World’s Worst Weekend for it, but still looking forward to it. Now, to consider who to run through it. My first thought is our higher characters (Hildy/Torchy), just because of the XP needs at higher levels.

Got Rita to a level a few days ago that she actually had a legit travel power …

… but, to be honest, she’d been swooping around just fine prior to that for the past week with a Jingle Jet. And she had a Raptor Pack in reserve before that for special trips across hostile terrain. Both of which had made Skyway (and the Hollows before that) a lot less menacing.

And, of course, with GvE, and Superjump (said travel power), she’s got uber-jumping ability for 30 seconds at a time (good enough to cross most zones).

I find it interesting that temp travel powers (in which I’d include Pocket D (and the GvE VIP pass) and SG bases and coalition SG bases) have so significantly changed the game, albeit in an odd, incremental fashion. Back in the day, we were foot-bound until 14, and even after that were at the mercy of the Paragon Transit System. Now there are generally two or three ways to get fairly quickly from A to B. Is that a good thing? I think so — which makes me wonder whether the whole travel
power thing ought to be just recognized in some fashion outside of temp powers and SG stuff.

It’s nice that QA responded so quickly to the bug report I filed, but should I worry that the response had headings … in French?

Réponse suggérée
Thread de discussion

Unless NCSoft QA is located in Montreal, or something.

New backgrounder on the Sky Raiders is up on the official site.

I like these backgrounders, and the take the CoX setting beyond what little glimpses one gets in the game (where one tends to focus as much on combat tactics as backstory) — but I wish there was even more integration between the info in them and the dialog, actions, and missions concerning these groups.

After a long thread on the boards titled, “Why does Positron’s TF suck SO badly?”, Positron writes:

Yes, you have entirely -me- to blame for that Task Force.

Here’s some (not so) interesting background tidbits:

* Task Forces were originally supposed to be “supergroup missions” where then entire SG could partake at once. We couldn’t get the tech working in time, so we came up with the idea of a “mini-raid”, where a couple people could spend an entire day doing missions together for cool rewards. This is why Task Forces allow you to go offline and return and still be in the TF. It allows players to say “let’s meet up every night from 8 to 10pm and work on the TF”, without having to start over.

* Positron’s TF was the very first TF ever made. It was supposed to be the precursor to the (cut) Faultline Trial.

* Positron’s TF was originally written as TWO Task Forces, but we didn’t have the tech to have a single contact give out Task Force A and B, and only give out B if everyone completed A, so it was merged into a Single Ginormous Task Force.

* Positron’s TF never got full benefit from cool stuff like custom mission maps, because it was done so early in development.

* I am still trying to get a rewrite of Positron’s TF onto the schedule… but I want to know how you guys would feel about an “easier” or “shorter” TF? It would obviously give out the same badge as previous (or the badge hunters would have my head), but would that cheapen the badge for those that had it already?

The Winter Event has started.

More official details here. I mentioned some (the automatic bennies) a couple of days ago, but here’s the rest:

 

Sounds of holiday cheer not only lighten the hearts of heroes and deepen Recluse’s frown – they also seem to lure old foes back from distant defeats to the present time …

And time is what it’s all about! Also beginning on the 14th (through January 2nd), a new contact will be found in Pocket D – Old Father Time. The keeper of the new year has a crisis on his hands, one that can prevent time from moving forward, and thus bringing an end to the universe. Heroes and Villains can band together to tackle this task, a task that sees an old foe Snaptooth make a vengeful return.

Snaptooth is back for the renewal of the year, and with a cunning plot to grind time to a halt. Snaptooth has kidnapped Baby New Year in order to keep Old Father Time from passing on the chronological mantle. If he keeps Baby New Year locked away forever, guarded by the Red Caps and allies among the Tuatha, winter will never give way to spring, and the universe as we know it may come to an end.

Old Father Time can be found through a doorway in Pocket D that leads to a ski chalet built on a piece of the Shadow Shard. If you help him out, he’ll give out a choice of one of several fabulous holiday presents.

On top of everything else, the Gamester is loading the streets and rooftops with gifts once more. His presents might hold an Inspiration or Temporary Power, or they might reveal less favorable items like a Lump of Coal (though some find this a good thing), a Snowbeast, or maybe even the Winter Lord!

The Gamester’s presents will be found throughout the Cities from December 18th until January 2nd.

Let the holiday fun begin!

They’re starting to put some Tips and Tricks on the Updater splash screen, and Lighthouse is soliciting suggestions. Fact is, the list being generated is just a fine list of things that any new CoX player (and a few vets) should know, though a couple of the items are more personal/stylistic suggestions. Worth reading.