Category: Resources & Rules

Woot! As of I8, Titles on characters (“The Valiant Victorious Torchielle”) will be much more malleable.

You can change your title at any of the following levels:

15, 25, 35, and 45

At 50 you can change your title at any time.

You need to visit a trainer still to change your title and they “don’t stack” (in other words, if you don’t use your level 35 change, you don’t have two changes when you hit level 45).

There is no Influence or Infamy cost associated with this.

Joined with the previously mentioned expanded title list, this is fine news, and makes great sense (though I would have accepted a bit of Influence/Infamy as a reasonable cost for this, if you think about it).

Now … when will they let heroes/villains start to self-service change their names?

Next levels announced:

15 Months: Zealous: Angelic and demonic wings. Woot! Plus a costume token for each character. The angel wings look great — the demon ones, kinda dorky. Still, nice.

18 Months: Unwavering: Samurai armor! Coolness! Various pieces. Spiffy! And a costume token for each character.

21 Months: Steadfast: Shoulder cape! Costume token! Respec!

24 Months: Devoted: Emergency base teleporter (long recharge time, interruptible) — head back to base any time you want. Plus CoH comic book covers available as posters in your base. And … more titles available (for the Level 15 characters).

Nice stuff.

Though there are new flight post/animation with I8. they’re randomized each time you take off. Well, actually each time you start moving (if you stop in mid-air and start again, it randomizes). Not ideal, but it makes it doable
in I8 (vs. I9).

Speaking of I9, quoth Posi:

Hey guys, a quick clarification:

The Invention System and the “Legends” System are “one in the same”…

Basically the Legends system, as it was designed, was not implemented, but out of it grew what will be known as the Invention System. The Invention System does what we wanted the Legends System to do, and a whole lot more, and lays the ground work for limitless expandability that the Legend System just didn’t have.

Sounds … interesting.

So the first year’s worth of Veteran Rewards are up.

• 3 Months: Trustworthy – Trenchcoats! (Look okay, but not great. Available in sleeved and sleeveless. The backs flare out like capes, so no real “closed” trenchcoats. Still, better than nothing. Comes with one costume token for each character.)
• 6 Months: Faithful – Greeks! (I.e., Greek letters become available for costumes. Hmmm … Psi-clone could use that … Comes with one costume token for each character.)
• 9 Months: Dependable – Kilts! (Male and Huge get kilts. Females get belly shirts — big whoop, as a lot of female characters have already bare midriffs, yes? Comes with one costume token for each character and … a Respec!)
• 12 Months: Loyal – Weapons! Sprints! (Choice between permanent Undead “Slayer” Axe or Sands of Mu. Cool. Plus Base equipment to show off various “captured” villain weapons. Finally, the old “pre-purchase” Rush, Dash, Quick, Surge sprint powers become available.)

Each of these also come with badges (named as shown).

Overall, pretty cool. Not huge — nobody’s going to be at a real disadvantage by not having these things (well, having Sands of Mu or, resumably, the Axe, is an advantage — Lynn enjoyed the semi-permanent SoM when temp items were broken), but they add a bit of fun-ness.

More stuff to be announced anon — including, presumably, the wings …

Today (26 September) is the fifth anniversary of the initial announcement and press info on City of Heroes being under development.

Warcry has coverage of those Good Old Days — plus the 2002 E3 presentation that gave a first look at what the game would be like (and is noteworthy for what was different as much as for what is the same).

You’ll notice lots of little differences in the video to how CoH eventually turned out. The icons on the top right of the screen were for targeting individual body locations, the attack system required Dakan to use the mouse to target enemies via the cursor, there’s no contact system – missions were given out at computers, there are actually screens that allow you to tweak your hero’s stats and powers, and a whole host besides. However, for 2002 things do look pretty good and the bones of what the game became
are definitely there.

Cool.

They’re running a Halloween Event on Test (presumably to go Live in a month). Click on a door — any door — and fight mobs and get a “treat” (an inspiration — or maybe a fifth costume slot), or a “rock” (or maybe
the “rock” is the fight). Very similar to the Christmas event last December.

At last — a reason for 80% of the doors out there, otherwise unused, to exist.

Guess this is live as of … today! Main thing is the Mission Drop feature, but there are a few other details, too.

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Mission Dropping Feature

• You will now be able to drop missions that you receive from Contacts. Dropping a mission will carry with it everything that completing the mission successfully does. It will advance story arcs, improve Contact XP, grant special powers, give Mission Complete XP, etc. You will not be able to “replay” the mission you dropped. This is done this way so that you are not stuck on a Story Arc, or are missing a vital Temp Power needed later on in the mission chain, etc.
• In order to drop a mission, you must be the mission owner, and you can talk to the Contact that gave you the mission. If the mission is droppable, an option to drop it will appear.

There are a few caveats to the Mission Dropping Feature:

• You can only drop one mission every 7 days with this feature. If you need to clear a mission, but have already used this feature in the past 7 days, you will need to contact Customer Support as normal.

  *You can not drop timed missions.
  
  *You can not drop missions that are part of a Task or Strike Force.
  
  *You can not drop missions that give badges as Mission Completion rewards.
  
  *Some other missions are marked as “undroppable”. These are missions that have rewards that are well above average.
  

• You will not be given the choice at all to drop missions that are undroppable. You will need to contact Customer Support in order to clear these missions.
• If you are on a team with someone who drops a mission, you will receive no rewards for the mission.
• Missions that are dropped are logged so we can more easily debug bugged missions.

Powers

• Fixed an issue with Moment of Glory which caused the Icon to blink after the power’s Buff period had ended.
• The Gladiator version of the Malta Hercules Titan will no longer combine into a Zeus Titan if two are present.
• Ring of Fire and Fire Cages both have had a -Fly component added.
• The Teleport reticle now displays properly on Teleport powers with range enhancements.
• Pets made up entirely of f/x (like Tornado or Voltaic Sentinel) now display properly.

Tasks

• Lieutenants will now appear in missions for solo players.
• Fixed a bug that allowed some destructible objects in missions to get into a state where they could not be targeted.

City Zones

• Recluse’s Victory: Attempting to dismiss a Turret no longer causes it to become inactive.

Game

• Fixed a bug that can make enemies and/or other players invisible to you.
• XP debt in PvP has been adjusted: If a player is defeated by another player, no debt is given. If a player is damaged by another player and then defeated by NPCs, debt is given proportional to the amount of damage inflicted by NPCs.

Bases

• Moving stacks of stored items by double clicking no longer causes items to be dropped from stacks and lost.
  

CITY OF HEROES

Powers

• Kheldian Energy Flight’s Endurance cost reduced to match the changes to the Flight power.
• The Tranquilizer Darts temporary power no longer slows the user when activated and properly slows the Devouring Earth.

CITY OF VILLAINS

Powers

• Back Alley Brawler should no longer give debt when defeating players in Recluse’s Victory.
• Freedom Corps Nullifiers Sonic Grenades will now properly display a debuff icon when you are affected by them.
• Lowered the sound volume of the Elder Cobra’s Poison Beam attack.

Tasks

• Future of Freedom Strike Force: Freedom Phalanx members on Lord Recluse strike force will once again drop Enhancements, Inspirations, and Salvage.
• Future of Freedom Strike Force: At completion of the Strike Force, you are now given a choice table to pick your reward. You can pick a random Synthetic Hamidon Enhancement or a specific Single Origin Enhancement.

Positron speaks on the new Mission Dropping feature, upcoming:

There’s probably nothing more frustrating to have just about cleared out an entire map, only to realize that there’s a mob somewhere about still. You scour each room, but still nothing. Turns out the mob is spawned outside the map. You petition and…wait.
That’s one of the first things we wanted to solve with this feature.
In this scenario, we’d of course want to give the person their reward…after all, they’d done just about all the work!
Naturally, mission dropping is also useful for those missions that are either too easy or too hard…in those cases, it’s not necessarily good to give players the reward. And yet the way we have tech set up right now, a player NEEDS the reward. Case in point: the Vahzilok Wasting Disease. If a player dropped that mission, but didn’t get the reward, they’d have the Disease forever.
It’s extremely difficult to determine programmatically whether a mission is being dropped for fun factor or bugs. It’s better to err on the side of “bugs” so we decided to keep the reward. But in order to prevent people from gobbling missions like candy and getting free XP, Enhancements, etc., we placed a limit on how often.
I freely admit that it’s not a perfect system; I know Posi and I are reading the boards to find ways to improve the mission dropping…so post away!

I think this makes tremendous sense. Though, honestly speaking, I think only once have I ever been in a mish where the “last missing mob” was actually unfindable or some sort of bug. Usually, with diligence (and/or help from one’s friends), it can be found lurking behind a crate or up in the ceiling or something.
I think if the frequency on this got increased to every couple of days, it would not hurt the “experience” (nobody’s going to farm by skipping missions every couple of days) while being quite useful.

The “Good vs. Evil” edition is announced — but if you want, you can actually buy all the “goody” premiums:
* Jump Jet Prestige Power
* “Pocket D” VIP Card Teleport Power
* Exclusive Hero and Villain Costumes
No prices listed as yet. Not seeing anything here that I’m just obsessed about getting, unless the price is very low.

Bits and pieces from the Dev list:

1. A new patch was briefly up on Test today, before being backed off. Among the features was, evidently, the ability once a week, to drop a mission. It’s primarily intended as a way to finish missions that are buggy and can’t be completed, but you could use it just to avoid something Really Irritating. Once a week, anyway.
2. “Monsters, John! Monsters from the Id NCSoft!”
3. Will there be a freespec with I8? Possibly. Though by no means certainly (nor even probably).

Quoth Positron:

Teleport fix should be in the next patch as well, as well as some code for memory leaks and other nastiness.

A fix for Group Teleport will be coming in I8.

Patron Respec issue should be fully solved in the next patch as well.

Dominators are getting a buff that should make them more desireable on LRSF in I8 as well.

Lt.s should be spawning in missions again (I don’t know if this is fixed in the patch, or was fixed in I8).

We are constantly datamining PvP, seeing which side is winning more. The results are not what you expect. One side wins, then the other side, then the balance shifts back, and then back again.

I had 2 PM’s in my box, back to back. The first was “Stalkers are useless in PvP” and the next was “Stalkers are overpowered in PvP”. The grass is always greener they say…

Our lead programmer has been doing nothing but fixing bugs since I7 was released. He mentioned to me the other day that he hadn’t written one line of code that was only in I8. We -are- trying to get the major issues fixed, but eventually the new issue has to come out, and that gobbles up the Training Room server, and we have to button down new fixes until that Issue goes to Live.

The next patch for I7 is not in NC Soft’s hands yet, but will be shortly. You can expect it on the Training Room once it has passed their internal QA process.

And yes, all of this bug fixing has pushed out I8 beyond the original “September” estimate I gave back in May.

Oh, and there’s a Hero version of Lord Recluse’s Strike Force a-coming … in I9.

Per Positron …

* “Looping Sound Crash” – We think we MAY have this finally fixed.

* “Invisible Players/Enemies on Map” – Again, we think we may have this fixed.

* Choice table for Lord Recluse’s Strike Force. – Upon completion of the mission, you will get a choice table, instead of the Enhancements simply being put into your tray (and if your tray is full, put into oblivion). You will NOT be able to pick the specific Synthetic Hami-O, but you will be able to choose a +3 level SO instead of the random SHOE if you want.

Yes this means that the Freedom Phalanx will drop SO’s again.

I don’t know when these will be hitting Training Room, but these will probably be the last big fixes in I7… onward to Issue 8!!!

The Devs have been pretty quiet of late … hunkering down for the push to I8. Looking forward to it.

And all that said — I’d be frelling happy if the damn trains got debugged! How long has that been going on now?

Straight from the Site.

Safeguard Missions (Heroes only)

Vandals are creating mayhem and destroying Paragon City while high profile villains are attempting major bank heists! Emergency broadcasts from the new Police Band scanners (see below) call Heroes to action, resulting in a frantic new twist on Mayhem Missions. Heroes must stop the mayhem (in massively destructive versions of Paragon City zones) and prevent the heists from occurring.

I still hope these are less annoying than the “protect the glowy” missions. Taking down villains (who are willing to fight you) before they can do something would be fun, but balance is going to be critical here.

Police Band (Heroes only)

Offering similar functionality to the Newspaper Missions in City of Villains®, new Police contacts throughout various Hero zones grant Heroes Police Band access, opening a plethora of new missions and rewards.

Good stuff. Will help people get “fresh” material.

One of the items that was tied to this, conceptually, was the idea of folks levelling past content. I’d think this would have to be tied to the (previously mentioned) skip-a-mission technology. Also, this was tied to people exhausting story content too quickly — so maybe this means that Shared Mission Credit will come to CoH. Huzzah!

Pocket D Arenas (Heroes and Villains)

For the first time, Heroes and Villains can officially battle each other using Arena kiosks set within the neutral ground of the Pocket D nightclub.

As Abe Lincoln said, “Those who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.”

Hmmmm … Abe Lincoln as a tall, thin, bearded, top-hatted Axe tank. Hmmmm …

Faultline Reborn (Heroes only)

Faultline transforms from a hazard zone to a city zone! Paragon City’s Measure X has passed, reconstruction of Faultline has begun, and the effort has revealed some major surprises.

Excellent. We should get our teleport beacons set up for this now.

Which reminds me — what’s the explanation again why I can enter a base from any zone with a Base Portal in it, but can only exit out into the same zone? Weird.

Veteran Rewards Program (Heroes and Villains)

Launching together with Issue 8, the Veteran Rewards Program retroactively* rewards City of Heroes and City of Villains players for their past active playing time. Specifically, for each increment of three months played, players will unlock special costumes, powers, badges, and more! The program is retroactive by player account and rewards will be applicable to all characters within each respective account.

*This means time that players have already played counts towards their rewards!

Very, very cool (and in keeping with the “Keep the Installed Base Happy” rule they’re now following). And I hear trenchcoats are Item #1 …

Interview with Matthew Miller. Items of note:

Well, first off, we did a major overhaul to the City of Heroes zone Faultline. It includes new contacts and missions, as well as a better street-hunting experience. We also have brought the randomly generated missions that we had in City of Villains (which villain characters got from the newspapers and brokers) to hero characters. The City of Heroes version is called “police band missions,” and these can lead players into safeguard missions where they must protect Paragon City
from vandals and stop major crimes in progress.

Next, we have the “veteran rewards” program, which gives perks and thank-you gifts to players for their characters based on how long they’ve been playing the game. There is a new set of rewards every three months. Finally, we added arena kiosks to the Pocket D area, so heroes and villains can more easily challenge one another in the arenas.

All sounds good, aside from the (ho-hum) arena kiosks. Though, frankly, I “defend” missions sound a lot less fun than “kick the snot out of everything” mayhem missions. And you could make them heroic (“Raid this Arachnos base! Destroy as much of their invasion fleet as you can!”). Evidently that doesn’t sway the Devs:

Safeguard missions are not mayhem missions, and we never tried to make them that. Heroes don’t go around destroying property, but rather, their job is to protect it and to stop crime. Villains are proactive, and Heroes are reactive. In the end, they both have something similar to do (accomplish an objective while on a very tight clock), but the games play differently, which we like.

As for Faultline:

For one, the construction in the zone has uncovered a lot of the old hero bases from before the Rikti War. These bases were home to the supergroups of old, and it’s where they housed dangerous technology. After the Rikti war, these bases were simply forgotten about, but Lord Recluse has sent Arachnos troops into Paragon City to scavenge these bases for hidden treasures. The rebuilding of Faultline has kind of kicked over the anthill…there have been Arachnos forces in Paragon City for a while now, but only now
can the Heroes do something about them.

Coolness.

Global Rename tokens are now on Test … to come to Live by and by.

So, if you now regret your global handle — here’s your chance to change it (again). They don’t stack, though, so if you never used your original rename (your initial handle is, as I recall, your first character name), you won’t get anything extra.

This was driven by a glitch that messed up some people’s global handles a while back.

Statesman speaks:

1. Power customizations are still on the table, but low in priority, due to the difficulty/coding that would need to be done. Since most customizations people talk about are color-based, I assume the issue is that the colors are extensively hardcoded, that the server drain to render colors in a variable setting needs to be looked at, and that there’s concern that people
   will demand more than just color variations (“I want a different gun!” “I want a different explosion!”).
2. Statesman wants MM clown pets, even though Positron doesn’t. Fight!
3. An issue, but not the deciding issue, in hero/villain transfer is that … well, you’d have skipped all that earlier content at your destination. Huh?

From today’s patch. I’ve highlighted a few items I’m pleased about.

COMBINED NOTES

Powers

• Extended Duration of Empowerment Station Buffs to 60 minutes.
• Increased the ‘lifetime’ of the attackable portion of Trick Arrow Oil Slick. This should fix the failure to ignite issue.
• Swift, Quickness and Lightning Reflexes now grant a bonus to Flight Speed, in addition to their existing Resistance to Flight Speed debuffs.
• Teleporting is no longer allowed in Pocket-D.
• Reduced Endurance Cost for Power Pool Flight.

Rewards

• Prestige rewards (while playing in Supergroup mode) increased approximately 25%.

Bases

• You can no longer place more than one Combo Energy/Control generator in a base if you have more than one Oversight Center.

New rooms available:

• The Oversight Center (Found in the Control Rooms tab). This is a 3×3 room that costs 50,000 Prestige. It can hold 1 Control item, 1 Storage item, and 1 Workshop item (as well as unlimited decorative items, but no Aux items).
• Med Bay: This is a 2×2 Medical room that costs 50,000 Prestige. It has the restriction of only allowing 1 Medical item in it (no Anchors, no Aux items).
• Teleport Bay: This is a 1×2 Teleport room that costs 50,000 Prestige. It has the restriction of no Dimensional Anchors and only allowing 1 Teleporter and 1 Teleport Aux Item (so your Teleporter is restricted to going to only one zone).
• Workshop: A new 1×2 Workshop is available costing 50,000 Prestige. It, too, can not have any Dimensional Anchors in it, and it is limited to 1 Worktable and 1 Storage object, as well as 1 Empowerment Station.
• New Base Item: Combo Energy/Control generator. This is a new Control item, a small, 25,000 prestige, generator that outputs Control and Energy to a level that is “just enough” to get the minimal functionality of the base online (that being a single Teleporter, Reclaimator, and Worktable). It comes in both Arcane and Tech versions, and you can fit 1 per Oversight Room and 1 per Plot (multiple Oversight rooms do not give you multiple Combo Items).
• Unsecure Base Plots are now limited to 1 Item of Power. Secure Base Plots are unchanged (there is no artificial limit to the amount of Items of Power a Secure plot can contain).

Chat

• Fixed rare crash related to certain global chat channels.

Game

• Fixed the AI for inanimate objects (such as the Mole Machines) which were moving under certain conditions.
• Fixed rare bug that could cause character data (powers, badges, costume) to be corrupted.

Tailor

• Fixed bug that sometimes made characters invisible in the Tailor window.

Badges

• All boss-level Rularru Overseers (Eyeballs) now count towards the Visionary badge.

CITY OF HEROES

Badges

• All Portal-generated Banished Pantheon Spirits now count for the Banished badge.

Bases

• Teleport Beacons (Tech and Arcane) added to City of Heroes. All Paragon City zones are now accessible through the Base Teleporter. To get a zone’s beacon for your base, simply hit all of that zone’s “explore” badge locations while in Supergroup mode (it doesn’t matter if you personally have that exploration badge already or not). The zones added are: Croatoa, Eden, Terra Volta, Kings Row, Founders Falls, Peregrine Island, Galaxy City, Brickstown, Rikti Crash Site, Independence Port,
  Talos Island, Steel Canyon, Skyway City, and Atlas Park .

Tasks

• Altered Dr. Vahzilok mission to complete when the Dr. is defeated.

City Zones

• The Hive: Fixed bug in the Hamidon encounter that caused some players to drop off the damage done list and therefore get no reward when the Hamidon was defeated.

CITY OF VILLAINS

Powers

• Scirroco’s Patron powers should now allow proper enhancement slotting.

Badges

• All Legacy of Chain minions now count toward the Ember Legacy of Flame gladiator.
• All Legacy of Chain lieutenants now count toward the Lucent Legacy of Light gladiator.
• Gladiator: Crab Spider Longfang now awarded for completing a Patron Arc.
• Coralax Gladiator badge should now be obtainable.
• Lowered requirements for Pirate badge.

City Zones

• Grandville:Fixed Arachnos Flier so that it will respawn properly (should appear much more frequently).
• St. Martial: Fixed inaccessible/missing mission door.
  

Tasks

• Fixed bug in King’s Row Mayhem Mission where rescued Villains would not follow players.
• Fixed several Arachnos mission maps where defeated players would resurrect at the location they were defeated when they tried to go to the Hospital.
• The Freedom Phalanx members in the Recluse Strike Force will no longer Drop enhancements. This should help alleviate the issue of players’ trays being full when the Synthetic Hamidon Enhancement is awarded.