Category: Resources & Rules

Is that a veteran reward in your hand, or are you just happy to see me?

The 33-Month Veteran Reward gives you a choice between a permanent Nemmy Staff and Blackwand.

What’s the dif?

Someone on the boards wrote:

The Blackwand will deal extra damage for users of Magic Origins. Assuming both these items are on par with Sands of Mu, the Blackwand in the hands of a Magic user might be dealing some tremendous damage.

Granted, this power won’t probably be very good in the late game, but it would definitely rock in the early game.

To which Castle replied:

Since this is going to come up a lot, here’s my thoughts on the trade off:

If you are Magic Origin, it’s a tough choice. Blackwand will do more damage than the Nemesis Staff, and it’s Negative Energy damage, rather than Smashing. On the other hand, the Nemesis Staff has a pretty good Disorient and Knockback, so offers better control.

If you are not magic origin, Blackwand does exactly the same damage as the Nemesis Staff, but has no secodary effect. Additionally, the Nemesis Staff has a 25% greater range, but costs more endurance per use.

And, of course, Blackwand is a Great Weap– oh, wait, already told that joke.

Now, evidently there’s all sorts of other debate about Sands of Mu and the Undead Axe, but I haven’t seen any red name comments.

More Wings!

BD posts a link to a YouTube video of various wing styles — including Angel, Demon, Bat, Insect, Fairy, Burned, Cherub, and Dragon.

Yow!

There’s a a YouTube video of various wing styles here about the video. Very hush-hush. No words on when (I9?) or in what fashion the added styles will be created (part of the Invention system?). Cool stuff, though.

One thing that the pics in the previous post don’t show is how nice the animation on these things are. It varies depending on one’s motion (still, up, down, landing, forward, back, etc.). Really nice.

(Ah … reference here from Positron: “Wings are actually part of a system that is due in Issue 9, but we decided to “tease” them in Issue 8 by giving out Feather and Demon-style wings as part of the Veteran Reward system.”)

Veteranaria

Veteran Rewards are up on Test.

And …

Adding the supporting systems to PlayNC.com and Veteran Rewards to the Training Room is the last major step toward finalizing Issue 8 to move to the Live servers. Barring any major issues that come up from play testing, we plan to bring Issue 8 to the live servers with enough lead time so that we will be in a good position to make any adjustments to it prior to the US Thanksgiving holiday (Nov. 23rd). After all, more than a few of us are looking forward to playing Issue 8: To Protect and Serve
over the holiday!

Statesman Speaks

Interview here with Jack Emmert on MMO design. A couple of interesting article quotes:

What might surprise new entrants of the game development industry is that these failures and successes rely in some part on trial and error. “Research, to be honest— we don’t use it in the commercial industry. I wouldn’t even know where to look for it,” says Emmert. But he does know that “ownership is key. Make players own stuff. That way, they’re not going to own you.”

Another way to improve the chances of creating a successful massively multiplayer titles is to use groups. “Grouping is absolutely vital in an MMP,” Emmert says. “If people are playing online and they meet friends, then they are going to play. I have no other evidence of this other than the exit surveys in City of Heroes. “We want to keep people playing. What are the mechanisms MMPs have used to keep people playing?” Some of these mechanisms, from Emmert’s point of view, are not only grouping, but also
classifying player types, such as fighter, mage, thief, and cleric. The designers then need to find a purpose for those player types, which gives them reason to rely on other player types for other purposes.

“You cannot play Everquest alone,” says Emmert of one example. “You have to find other people online. The [enemies] are so tough that no one person can do it. And in fact, you have to get just the right players” to move forward. And while some may questions the true strength of player grouping in games, enough MMOs have succeeded due to the very nature of their grouping that the trend cannot be ignored.

Lots of other good stuff on grouping, too.

Emmert realized, in developing City of Heroes that there is a deeply rooted fear in most people of, essentially, grouping with strangers. He asks by example do you know your neighbors well enough to have them over to dinner? Do you know and trust your neighbors well enough to let them take care of your children. These rhetorical questions beg yet another question about irrational fears, namely, if the odds are absurdly low that we should be wary of our neighbors, why do many people still not know
or trust them?

“We need to develop mechanisms that circumvent this fear that we have. In City of Heroes, we used a few classic mechanisms,” the primary one being “sidekicks,” Emmert says. Using sidekicks, partners in the game play alongside each other and advance to new levels together, so friends playing together can stay together. Emmert notes how the use of sidekicks helped Cryptic Studios maintain a 90 percent conversion rate when their players’ free trials expired. This design choice, he says, was intentional, and
is one that serious game makers can learn from.

“The other thing we did was create super groups,” says Emmert, “large amounts of people willing to cooperate,” otherwise known as guilds in other MMO games. “Super groups are purely a social mechanism that allow people to have a chat chain and that’s about it.”

But the grouping can’t be forced. And a lot of the individual stuff is even more important.

Emmert highlights other facets of the game that players appreciate, such as costume creation and player creation. He also notes that groups often used their costumes to show group identity rather than individuality, illustrating that some of the best team-building, again, originates from the players themselves.

But not all the game design put in place in City of Heroes and City of Villains worked out for the best. For example, “Players don’t ever want to be in a situation when they’re forced to group,” Emmert says. Another example is a facet created by the game designers, that, according to Emmert, were “probably the best designed game element ever.

“We spent more time developing [bases] than any other feature in City of Heroes or City of Villains,” he says. Although bases are built by a team, Emmert and his team viewed them as being “incredibly, incredibly individual” because each piece of the base is designed and added by individuals.

“What happened was players hated it. It’s the most underused facet of the game. It received almost no coverage in the press. And there’s nothing like it in any other MMP.” Emmert’s hypothesis is that “people don’t like contributing money to a group to express individuality. … At its heart, these MMPs are individual game experiences in front of a computer terminal.”

That led to a bunch of discussion on the boards, prompting States to actually comment on it.

Let’s take a look at costume creation. It’s been embraced beyond belief by players…we have in game costume contests and events organized by you the players…Some say it’s the best part of the game. The single most requested item in CoH is to make the costume creator standalone…

Intestingly, costumes have no gameplay value. They don’t boost damage. They don’t boost resistance. They don’t boost defense. They’re only for show.

Now, let’s take a look at bases. Take away the teleporters, take away anything game related.

As just a resource for expressing something unique, base creation is on par tech wise with costume creation. Admittedly, there’s not quite the same amount of textures, colors, etc., but there’s still a lot of versatility. And the layout possibilities are endless.

But what’s clear from this thread – and from many, many posts – is that bases are “too expensive”. To me, that’s interesting (as it is to the Serious Games crowd). Costume changes come with a minimal cost that no one really complains about, but we complain about the costs of bases. Evidently, the costs exceed the perceived value of creating one’s own HQ (btw, I confess that many other games have the notion of personal property, but aside from Second Life, I don’t think they offer as much customizability as our
bases).

Let’s turn to the idea of an architect. We foresaw that some people would feel alienated if they weren’t the architect. That’s why some things (Personal Items) can be “crafted” by individuals and placed in the base. But even if there’s an architect: many super groups have a member who designed a single costume which all then use. In other words, they’re more than willing to accept someone else’s opinion in the group identity for their avatar appearance. Again, the primary difference is cost (I think).

That’s what the point of the talk was. I completely agree with many of the suggestions raised in the Base Construction forum, as well as one’s mentioned here, would improve Bases to some degree or another. Posi and I go through them at length; really, it’s just a question of time & resources. Some things would take astronomically long to do – or perhaps there’s something else even more requested or popular.

Interesting stuff. Honestly, the whole base thing has never been nearly as interesting to me as I suspect the devs intended — if base entry simply changed into a “where do you want to teleport to?” I would have very few regrets.

But costumes? Yeah, they rock.

Anniversary Time

It’s the first anniversary of CoV (who’da thunk?). Some interesting notes from the new community rep, Lighthouse:

I know there has been some confusion regarding the 1 year anniversary badge for City of Villains. This badge will be given out to everyone logging into the game from November 2nd, when the Trick or Treating Halloween event ends, through the end of November. I understand there was a brief time this morning (Nov. 1) when the badge was turned on, but given that handing out the badge can’t be on with the Trick or Treating on, and we wanted to give the full time we had posted for Trick
or Treaters to get their last minute turn-ins and badges through the end of November 1st, we had to turn the badge off. To reiterate, everyone logging in from the end of Trick or Treating through the end of November will be receiving the City of Villains Anniversary badge.

Also, to clarify further, both Heroes and Villains will receive the 1 year anniversary CoV badge when they log in under the above mentioned time period.

Interresting that heroes are getting it, too.

And someone caught something interesting in the above:

Wait. What? I thought the contacts for turning these in were supposed to remain up after the event? Are Anna and Granny going to disappear tonight as well?

It is my understanding that the contacts will be going away when the event is turned off. However, they will be back full time when issue 8 goes to the live servers.

So in case you haven’t turned in that salvage yet …

 

Positron Speaks!

Transcripty sort of thing from an interview with Matt Miller (Positron) — or, at least, a few key items (to me) from that.

Think fast paced combat makes game unique, prided themselves on making game where you didn’t fight one thing at once all the time. Happy that could make 3 minions challenge 1 hero.

Wanted to make travel as easy as possible…

Favorite villain group: “…huh. Probably…oh man. Blanking out. … I can’t even think of one right now.”

Least favorite villain group would be Malta “for the same reason everybody else hates them–the sappers. Everyone can blame me for the Sappers.”

Felt that since End was a non-issue after L35, he wanted End to become an issue again.

Least favorite and most favorite, since do offer different playstyle in combat, you actually have to think about them when you’re fighting them.

Another reworked zone on the schedule, not at liberty to say what it is yet, but it’s going to be a cooperative hero/villain zone.

Forum poll a few months back asking where players wanted next new setting; we have the results, and we have on the schedule a new zone that basically is the result of that poll, which we’re not at liberty to say what that is yet, but we are definitely laying hints toward it.

“Do you see CoH going beyond L50?” Not anytime soon, if we raise it again, we just get asked when it’s going to be raised again after that. Wants to add endgame content, stuff that makes you a “better” level 50. Invention system is what’s going to be doing for that. Lots of enh that will make you “better level 50s”. More variety, more diverse sets of enhancements so characters are different.

No plans for new signature character contests, would love to have player-created contest prizes to make it in. Player-created badges, for instance. Still working on logistics of that. Would like to see that be prize for upcoming contest.

Villain Kheldians? Not in Issue 8. Haven’t decided what issue they’ll be in yet, still trying to figure out how much work it will be to make them work on villain side. Just had discussion about it on Thurs again to figure out what it will take.

Ballista acts like Bubble energy tank. Any plans on getting something like that for Tanks or Brutes? We have plans on moving a lot of power sets around, getting them to classes that don’t have them, probably in mid-2007.

5th Column coming back? Do have plans for 5thC returning, want to make sure their re-emergence is a spectacular one, don’t want to have them just “show up.”

Flight animations on hold

The devs are pulling back the new flight animations from I8 until they get a few things cleaned up.

Based on everyone’s feedback about the changes to travel animations (in particular the alternate flight poses and strafing/banking) we’ve decided to push back introducing flight poses for now. We really like them, as did many of you, and we were hoping to get them into the game in conjunction with wings. Unfortunately, we just ran out of time to get everything working the way we really want it to work. So rather than getting it in now as is, making some of you happy and some of you unhappy, we’re going to push
this feature back a bit so we’ll have the time to fully implement what we really want to do. Here’s a rough overview of the things we want to fix before re-introducing these:

1) Flight poses should be selectable. That’s our biggest thing to get working before implementing these on live. It’s very obvious from feedback that you guys have very strong feelings about which poses you like/dislike for your characters. Once the animations are selectable (and not randomly or sequentially chosen) we’ll be able to do much nicer transitions from stationary to forward flight.

Interestingly, when this first came up, Positron indicated that making them selectable would be a lot more difficult. I really wouldn’t have minded, to be honest — I can imagine some builds would want to be “standard,” but most flying heroes use a variety of poses.

2) Hover should not use the alternate flight animations. We have a hover forward animation that has never played (it’s the upright position like the current strafe and backward animation that many of you have suggested). There’s a code issue that’s preventing hover from getting the right triggers to play its animation. Instead it uses the flight animations, which in turn causes it to use the alternate flight animations. We agree that it looks silly in most cases. We assure you it wasn’t done
intentionally.

3) We need to fix the camera/orientation bug that’s caused by the alternate strafe mode. This currently effects the Kheldian Dwarf and Nova forms on live. Oddly enough, I have a level 50 Peacebringer on live and never noticed it before you guys pointed it out. Now it’s glaringly obvious. Good catch.

4) Along those lines, we want to make a lot of little tweaks to the behavior of the alternate strafing mode. It solves a lot of the animation blending issues with strafing while running, jumping, or flying…but it’s not quite where we’d like for it to be. It’s a lot of little minor things such as adjusting turn speeds, using the strafing animations under the right conditions, adding a bit of roll/banking to the transitions between flying and strafing, etc.

Not quite sure what’s being referenced here, but it sounds like the testing process worked as intended.

Veteran Rewards – Set 3

Now announced:

  • 27 Months: Dedicated – Anime-style tech armor. Free Costume Token per toon.
  • 30 Months: Committed – Signature Group Chest Emblem (Freedom Phalanx, Vindicators, Vanguard, Arachnos, PPD, Cage Consortium, CoT, Council). Free Costume Token per toon. Cool trophies (from signature heroes/villains) for bases.
  • 33 Months: Unswerving – Permanent Nemmy Staff or Permanent Blackwand. Free respec for each toon in the account.
  • 36 Months: Addicted – Power (Choice): Demon Pet, Clockwork Pet, Red Cap Pet, Rikti Monkey Pet, Robot Pet [no combat effect, just fun]. Base item: Arachnos Flyer (Villains), Longbow Chaser (Heroes) [Again, no combat effect, but cool.]

For the record, Saturday I will have hit the 22 month mark (check yours out via the Account menu at the site). That will get me the Steadfast Reward (great title for Torchy, who is just about that old).

I8 Test Release Notes

From the Test Server (with a few comments):

 

NOTE: Veteran Reward will be announced for test at a later date.

Now Testing in the Training Room – 10/23/06 2pm CST

Known Issues on the Test Server

• Clicking on a worktable with salvage can cause a client crash. This is a client crash only and does not affect other users.

COMBINED NOTES

Powers

• Added a control to Moment of Glory to insure that the -Regen portion goes away at the end of the duration of the power. This fixes a bug that was introduced with the recent change to correct the Icon blinking.

• Added -Fly to the Oni’s Ring of Fire Power.

• Added -Fly to Gravity Control Gravity Distortion power.

• Jump Kick from the Leaping pool set now does Knock Up instead of Knockback. The chance of Knock Up occurring has increased to 20% (from 15%.) Not sure that makes sense, given the (annoying) graphic, but what the heck.

• Removed hesitation from the Mental Blast animation. There was a pause that prevented the character from acting, even after the power had finished animating.

• Fixed missing animation for Ice Sword when used with Fly.

• Fixed bug with Build Up that caused some weapon powersets (War Mace, Battle Ax, Broadsword) to redraw weapons. I can think of a few BS users who will welcome that.

Universities

• Paragon City University and Aeon University are now on semester break. The campus buildings will be closed until the next semester starts. Heh. I.e., all those folk who found a way to sneak in and see the insides of the buildings need to wait now for I9 and the invention stuff.

Tasks

• Set all PvP zone mission rewards down to the normal mission completion levels. This is getting a fair amount of bitching on the boards, but evidently a few folks had figured out an exploit. *shrug*

Titles

• Fixed bug that prevented players from being able to reset their second title to “none”.

Game

• Banking animation for flight/strafe combinations have been changed. This change also improves combinations of running, jumping, and strafing. Cool.

• New Flight animations were tweaked a bit. Old flight animation appears again. Other players now see the same flight animation that you do. Very cool. flight animations rock.

• Female players will now choose a random food item when using the eat emote (instead of always eating a donut.) Because only PPD eats donuts all the time.

• Some emotes, such as eat, weren’t being properly interrupted by flight. They should be now.

List of new/updated emotes

Emote Invent

Emote Dance1

Emote Dance2

Emote Dance3

Emote Dance4

Emote Dance5

Emote Dance6

Emote EatDonut

Emote Donut

Emote EatFood

Emote Eat

Emote Food

Emote ListenPoliceBand (Heroes only)

Emote SitChair1

Emote SitChair2

Emote SitChair3

Emote SitBench1

Emote SitBench2

Emote SitBench3

Emote SitBench4

Emote SitExecutiveChair

Emote SitStool

Emote SitTable1

Emote SitTable2

Emote Teabag

Tailor

• Thin stripes 1 & 2 added. Thin anything is usually good.

• Excess patterns revamped.

• Assassin pattern added to gloves and boots.

Pocket D

• Fixed bug with the Arena terminals that allowed players to become PvP flagged while inside Pocket D.

CITY OF HEROES

Powers

• Changed the display name of the Mayhem Mission reward Jump Pack to Zero-G Pack to avoid confusion between it and the new Good vs Evil edition Jump Pack.

Tasks

Safeguard Mission adjustments:

• Bank robber spawns (the lobby robbers and robbery boss) will attack players when they are spotted, instead of running straight for the exit. If the robbers do not see any players, they will run for the exit as usual. Oh, huzzah. Margie was complaining about this earlier.

• Side mission rewards fixed and give the proper rewards.

• Safeguard Mission objects should be less fragile now. Level based combat modifiers have been removed.

• Fixed Moneybag power in Safeguard Missions. Escaping thieves should now have the Moneybag displayed even after moving through a door way.

• The final mission of Agent G’s story arc has been modified. If players can defeat all 3 AVs without letting them defeat each other first, the players will receive 4 SOs for their efforts. Players MUST receive Kill Credit on the Archvillains, and have sufficient inventory space to receive the rewards.

Game

• Emotes for Eating, sitting, and selected dances are now available for the Kheldian Dwarf forms.

CITY OF VILLAINS

Powers

• Corrected the Level Range on the Freakshow Elite Boss Metal Shift. He should no longer show up green to players at higher levels of the mission.

Tasks

• Heroes in the Lord Recluse Strike Force have been slightly reduced in level. Vindicators are now level 51 and the Freedom Phalanx are level 53.

City Zones

• Corrected Scorpion Shield text on the Patron Powers plaques in Grandville.

Game

• The PPD has confiscated all of the Police Ban Scanners that had fallen into Villain hands.

I8 … kinda-sorta

Quoth Cricket:

Starting at approximately 5PM today (Wednesday 10/18) the Training Room will be brought down to implement the Issue 8 pre-download system.

We need to make sure that the pre-download feature works properly before it ever goes live. In order to do this we have to bring back the last build – the one that was on test before Issue 8 ever arrived.

For those of you who have played on Issue 8 already: your characters will still be there (today and tomorrow.) However, the character you are currently playing has developed some, and some of that content may not display properly while you are back under Issue 7. The good news: Issue 8 should be back on test tomorrow (10/19). The specific time has not yet been announced.

Why are we doing this? The pre-download system was not ready to go on test before Issue 8 was ready. At the same time, it was very important for us to get the maximum amount of Issue 8 testing on Training Room. If we had waited for the pre-download before launching Issue 8 on test this ultimately would have caused delays on Issue 8’s arrival on the live servers.

When Issue 7 is brought back to test: when you log out the pre-download patch for Issue 8 will begin. You can leave this running. And when we bring Issue 8 back up on test, you’ll be ready to go!

Glee!

Tank Busters

So this particular thread caught my eye on the LJ COH site, claiming that it was confirmed that Tanks no longer had inherent taunt/Gauntlet/punchvoke powers against AVs and GMs, nor did taunt auras (e.g., Invincibility) seem to have any effect..

Hmmmm.

So that points to this board thread, which has a number of people making that claim, backed up by someone claiming that an anonymous dev told him that “Gauntlet power effects (including taunt auras) have no effect on ArchVillains, Giant Monsters, Mitos, and Hamidon. This is by design.” Supposedly (based on this secret source) this went in at I7 because the Devs didn’t
like how tanks could lock down AVs/GMs with their Gauntlet stuff, and so they should have to use Taunt on AVs.

This “revelation” was then followed by wailing and gnashing of teeth and “DOOOOOOOM” and “NERF!” and “They want to turn all Tanks into Taunt-bots!” To which the only red name, Castle, says, “No comments on the gauntlet issue at the moment — but I am reading the threads and taking notes.”

And that, in turn, not being a flat denial, is turned around to be proof that it’s all true.

I have no idea, to be honest, though I do have a passing interesting in the issue (currently duoing with a tank as I am, and running into scenarios that may end up with AVs in them if we forget to ratchet down). My inclination is to wait and see what sort of follow-up the Devs have, though, rather than going for the sackcloth and ashes routine like so many of the board folk seem wont to do. That said, if true, I’d have like to have seen it in the patch notes — but I’m also “old school” re
tanks and think they should have Taunt.

So there.

Boo!

Per Cricket, the Halloween Event should start today after server maintenance is over (about 9 a.m. MDT). The event runs until 10 p.m. on Wednesday, 1 Nov.

Feeling slightly torn — we’re on a roll with H&T, and the whole Halloween Event doesn’t sound all that interesting. We’ll probably do a bit of beating folks up for a while until it palls or we get the 5th costume slot or whatever, then get back to serious business.

The answer to Life, the Universe, and What Level We’re At

Double-dinged 42 with Torchy and Hildy last night. Nothing terribly exciting involved — some nice Rikti farming, a bit of Malta clean-up, etc. The latter got a bit frantic for us at times — we don’t yet have an SOP quite figured out — but nothing unmanageable. Not even noteworthy except for the levelling — most of which went into Accs and Holds for both of our hold powers.

Emotes in I8

Via COH LJ:

dance1
dance2
dance3
dance4
dance5
dance6

(These are the old dances, but you can now select them)

donut

eat
food
(same emote, different names)

invent

listenpoliceband

(villains can use this emote, too)

sitbench1
sitbench2
sitchair1

sitchair2
sitchair3
sitexecutivechair

sitstool
sittable1
sittable2
(Lots of new ways to sit)

teabag

Nice to see some new sitting emotes. Down in the comments, it appears that there’s a difference in the sit emotes between males and females, which is interesting.

I8 in Test

And … the patch notes [With commentary]

Issue 8: To Protect and Serve

Pocket D Changes

• Arena Kiosks: These Kiosks will allow Heroes and Villains to fight against each other more easily if they want to settle personal issues. [Ho-hum]

• In front of the bars are two arena officials, an “Arena Information Operator”, who will provide information on how to use the kiosks; and a “Games Information Operator”, who will provide detailed information on each of the game types of the arena.

• Rikti Monkey Fight Club: Due to a combination of the Family cutting in to the RMFC profits in Sharkhead, and an offer from DJ Zero to expand their enterprise, Joe Young and Cornelius have moved their “entertainment concern” on up to the Pocket D. They have set up a new “Lounge” on the hero side of the club. “It’s a lot classier than the old place”, says Joe Young.

• It’s loud in Pocket D! Local chat in Pocket D will only be heard by players within 50ft of each other now. [Heh.]

Powers

• Many objects in the game which were meant to be immune to Teleportation have been made so. This affects several powers in the Traps Secondary and Gadgets secondary for players.

• Various ‘Build Up’ and ‘Aim’ powers now have a new look. [Interesting.]

• Alternate flying poses. Fly and Hover (and temporary powers that duplicate their effects) have new poses. Your character will transition into an alternate pose after flying forward for a few seconds. Also implemented a banking animation for flying forward while strafing left or right. [Sweet.]

• Increased the base flight speed of Hover by 10%. [A trivial change, IMO, but what the hell.]

• Added a slight delay to the usage of Team Teleport. This should alleviate the issue of Teammates randomly being left behind after a Teleport.

• Soul Storm is now escapable. There is still a bit of delay after you escape before you can move or attack again, but it’s much less of an ‘I win’ power.

• Rikti ambushers will once again show teleportation FX.

• The Helmet enhancement (Mutation/Magic Range) was giving twice the bonus of other Range DOs. It has been reduced to match.

• Rebalanced some of the high end Longbow critters to make them less frustrating.

• Fixed some animation issues with the Jump Jet Pack power granted from the Good vs. Evil Edition.

Titles

• Players may now change their title at levels 15, 25, 35, and 45. These title changes do not stack (if you do not use the one you get at level 25 when you reach level 35, you only have the level 35 change, and lose the level 25 one). At 50, players may change their title without restriction. Talk to any trainer to change your title in this manner. [This makes so much sense. Now … when can we change names?]

Tailor

• New costume pieces are available at the Tailor and at Character Generation:

• Male/Huge/Female

(Head – Detail 1)

Galactic Glasses

Government Glasses

Blast Goggles up

(Head – Ears) [Oh … my …]

Floppy

Bunny

Cat

Rat

Teddy

Wildcat

• Female

(Upper Body – Chest – Tops with Skin)
Angelic

Assassin

Excess

Savage

Tanker

(Lower body – Legs – Bottoms with Skin)

Angelic

Assassin

Excess

Savage

CITY OF HEROES

Faultline Redux

Faultline officials recently provided funding for reconstruction and work was underway in the first neighborhood, when major disaster struck. Due to strange seismic activity on the moon, tidal anomalies caused the Overbrook Dam to rupture flooding the zone. Additional crews have been called in to assess the Dam and shore up the rest of the zone, however, they are continually thwarted by the recent arrival of new villain groups to the area and one group, in particular, that no one expected: Arachnos. It appears
Arachnos has been poking around supergroup base wreckage in Faultline for some time, searching for technology that will further Lord Recluse’s nefarious plans. Paragon Officials have called in small detachments of the Paragon Police Department and Freedom Corps, but are also asking heroes to come forward and protect the new city. [Nice. And I just toured the area for the first time tonight, so my timing is perfect. I do wonder if the plaques and stuff down-below will be raised up.]

Features of the “new” Faultline:

• Transition from Trial Zone to a City Zone (with Overbrook Dam as a Hazard area)

• Level range has been adjusted to 15 – 25 [I believe was 11-20 or something.]

• Missions have been added (see Jim Temblor in New Overbrook at the Memorial statue in the park as your initial contact)

• New Villain groups added: Arachnos, Freakshow, The Lost, Sky Raiders…and something lurking in the water.

• More plaques and badges

• Entrance to Pocket D [Thus saving you the looooooong trip across Skyway.]

• Stores, Trainer (Mirror Spirit), and a hospital have been added to Faultline

Police Band Missions

• PPD Contacts have been added to all City Zones except for Atlas Park and Galaxy City. They will be added to a Hero’s contact list as soon as they enter a zone. These contacts will direct characters to missions aiding the PPD in fighting crime in Paragon City.

• Once you talk to a PPD Contact, your contact list will have a “Police Band Tuner” added to the top of the list. Clicking this will bring up an assortment of crimes-in-progress.

• You will fight level-appropriate Villain Groups in random maps and random mission objectives. Once you have outlevelled a zone, however, you will no longer be able to get Police Band missions in that zone.

• In addition to normal missions, the PPD will give out Safeguard Missions. You get Safeguard missions after performing three to five Police Band missions. [Nice. The equivalent of Newspaper mishes.]

Safeguard Missions

• Safeguard missions allow the Hero player to enter a large outdoor mission map and defend the city from invading villains. The goal is to defeat the Villain behind the attack, preventing a bank robbery, but there are lots of other things going on, too. Safeguard missions are set up for single players and teams.

• When you enter the instance, the bank is immediately being robbed. Don’t delay in getting to the bank, or the crooks could get away with the cash, failing the mission.

• A 15 minute timer starts once the bank heist has been stopped and the mission is completed. At this point you can use the given time to secure the map, and explore and fight for additional badges and rewards. This allows the players to end the mission quickly, or hunt for additional XP and rewards if they choose.

• There are several goals and multiple side missions that can be unlocked and played once the bank robbery has been thwarted. Completing any section of goals or each side mission rewards the players with a special bonus (such as extra XP, temp powers, or unique salvage) and will add some time back to the counter. The more they complete the longer they have to try and complete more goals, so the better they do the higher their rewards. [These sound really nice.]

[So … with the addition of Newspaper and Mayhem missions … when do we get shared mission credit?!]

Giant Monster Spawns Increased

• The following Giant Monster Spawns have had their frequency increased; [Ho-hum]

o Kraken – Perez Park

o Babbage – Boomtown

o Jack in Irons (non-scripted, individual) – Croatoa

o Eochai (non-scripted, individual) – Croatoa

o Adamastor – Dark Astoria [Margie insists she sees this guy all the time.]

o Jurassik – Crey’s Folly

Powers

• Controllers Fossilize power will now properly have ‘critical hold’ effects versus critters. This is a bug fix — this aspect of the power already existed, but was set to always fail.

• Fixed the Short Help text on Stone Cages to properly reflect the powers usage.

Game

• Trains will now stay at station longer, there will be shorter times between trains and the doors of the trains will be clickable while the train is in the station. [Hu-freakin-zzah! Best fix in the whole frelling issue!!!]

CITY OF VILLAINS

Powers

• Many Darkness powers have a new look attached.

• Removed Double Stacked ‘Super Jump’ from Ninja Mastermind Pets.

• Added slightly increased running speed to all Mastermind pets.

• Updated the power description on Thermal Radiation.

• Arachnos Night Widow Bosses have had their Defense values slightly reduced.

• The Arachnos Arch Villain Nocturne has been rebalanced.

• Dominators will now build Domination faster depending on the size of the Team they are grouped with. Each member of the team (aside from the Dominator himself) increases the speed of Domination gain by approximately 16%. Note that this bonus does NOT apply to the existing bonus Assault powers gain in PvP. The maximum bonus to Domination will happen in a full 8 person group.

• Base Domination gain increased by 50% (to 3 points per attack up from 2 points per attack.)

Another War Witch interview

Here. Or, rather, Over There, since it was in Europe …

Lots of Faultline stuff.

What has been your proudest achievement that you were involved in with City of Heroes/Villians pre-issue 8 and with issue 8 as a designer?

Well lets see pre-issue 8 it had to be Striga, Striga is my favourite zone and I populate a lot of the city of heroes zones so I’m proud of all of that but Striga was the zone when Archon Vos came on board Thomas Vos, we just started a whole different way of building a zone. We said you know what missions by neighbourhood so you’re not being sent to the other end of the zone; we got patrol technology so you have the council patrolling on the ground you had the sky raiders flying in the air. I got a lot of new
animations for spawns so I have a lot of creativity in that zone that I really didn’t have the time for in the previous zones we really had a lot of time for that one so that’s one of my favourite zones mostly because of just the standard that set with that one. And then anything going forward it was just a whole different way of putting it together.

In Issue 8 obviously I’m very happy with Faultline, Faultline was a beautiful zone but it was very difficult to play in, you know the deep crevices and you started in that zone at level 11 at best if you were a flyer you had hover so we actually bumped the level of that to 15 to 25 so we could get people with better travel powers. We basically, (I could go on and on about this) tried to make it a lot more travel friendly obviously it’s a very vertical and creviced zone but we actually filled in a lot of those
crevices the zone was flooded there’s a story line with the flooding of fault line and we put in elevators like in Grandville except there construction elevators. I think there are 12 of them in the zone plus a lot of cat walks to get over those crevices so its a lot more travel friendly than it used to be and we added villain groups to it we put in missions we switched it from a trial zone which is just large groups of villains to a city zone so now you’ve got an underpass to get there, there’s a hospital there
now, stores, missions there obviously and even an entrance to pocket D.

What we also did was we opened up the dam, you could never get to the dam you’d go I can see the dam but you could never get in there. So we have opened it up and made it a hazard area so it’s a little tougher than the rest of the zone but it’s really cool. We also brought in a whole bunch of new villains you’ll see Arachnos in there you find out Arachnos has been there for a little while and they have been sifting through the wreckage underneath fault line looking for technology that lord
recluse can use.

So we also brought in the PPD, so if your going to bring in the PPD you have to have a donut shop so there is a donut shop with a big donut on top of it and longbow are there too, they have a small presence there but basically your trying to have the heroes patrol the area, I wanted to keep their presence small but enough to add a lot atmosphere to the zone.

Freakshow are there now, the Lost have made their way in and their presence is very significant, we still have the clock work and Vazihlok are still there but I think that you’ll find that it’s a lot more dynamic. I got to write a dialogue for it so you’ll see my signature dialogue in there. So there’s a lot more variety going you don’t just have a big clump of guys standing there waiting to beat the snot out of you so solo’ers can play solo’ers and small groups.

And “newspaper mishes” …

Is there anything on the design side being developed or in issue 8 which you feel would attract more subscribers?

Lets see, Issue 8 we have the police band missions, which are kind of like the hero version of the newspaper missions the broker missions and obviously fault line. We have the safeguard missions which are I don’t want to say hero equivalent of mayhem missions which were all about destruction and evil whereas the safe guard missions are all about oh stop the villains from destroying paragon city property or stop them from robbing a bank. So it’s a very kind of a OOO tense way to keep the villains from getting
away with what they want to get away with, to stop them from knocking over the bank or whatever. I think those will be interesting too those should be fun and of course they span the level ranges so right from the beginning you can play them and I think that will be pretty cool.

Coolness. Even though I think actual Mayhem Mishes would be better.

Faultline news

Bits and pieces from an interview with War Witch, who oversaw the design of the “upgraded” Faultline zone.

The new Faultline was War Witch’s baby (yay! go WW!)

The dam area has been opened up. No surprises there…

The dam’s been built up and made into a kind of a hazard area. The rest of the zone is city sized spawns. A bunch of new villain groups have been added into it – the Circle of Thorns have said ‘bye bye!’ and moved on! Vazhilok are still there. Level range is bumped up to 15.

It’s been levelled a bit for the superspeeders’ sake.

Storyline: seismic anomalies on the moon are causing problems with the tides, and Faultline ends up flooding! The water level of Faultline has been raised. Construction crews have come in and started shoring it up – there are construction elevators all over the place, so you can get from the lower areas to the higher. Catwalks too.

The zone now has missions, a hospital, a trainer and stores, and even a (‘unique’!) entrance to Pocket D. There are more plaques and badges – and a special badge that War Witch snuck in, and good luck to you if you try to find it!

Arachnos has been sifting through the old Supergroup bases, looking for technology. They’ve been there for a while (nobody knew they were down there) and have made themselves quite comfortable.

The PPD are in Faultline, complete with DOUGHNUT SHOP and GIGANTIC DOUGHNUT. And there are some new animations (can’t have doughnuts without a doughnut eating animation).

Hints dropped that something is going on with villain players in Pocket D, but nothing specific!

Interesting. And interesting about Pocket D, which makes having to have a base portal to Faultline less urgent.

Another person’s parallel summary (this was all from an audio interview):

It’s now a City Zone instead of Hazard Zone (entered via and underpass instead of Secure Gate)

Added new villain groups. CoT are gone, Vahz are still there. Smaller villain spawns, higher levels ~lvl 15.

The Dam area has been opened, and will be a bit harder than the rest of the zone (presumably the red part of the map) a “hazard kind of area” per War Witch.

Tried to make things more level by raising the water level (due to seismic activity) with catwalks and construction, making foot-travel easier. Cut a section of the zone out to make things fit together. (?)

There will be contacts and missions, stores, “unique” entrance to Pocket D. New plaques and badges.

Arachnos is there now, tunnelling for old deserted SG bases (apparently have been there for a while). PPD is there (and a donut shop with a giant donut on top)