Category: Resources & Rules

Big new patch going out today.  Comments in italics.

Combined

Tasks

• Fixed a bug with CoT Portals that required players to destroy the Portals to complete “Defeat All” missions.
• Fixed bug in ‘Running Boss’ missions that caused any knockback or immobilization on the Boss to count as an immediate escape.

Powers

• Trip Mines from all player sets have had their Detoggle ability set to 10%.
• Giant Monster, Arch Villain and Hero class entities’ regeneration levels reduced considerably. Huzzah!

Graphics

• Fixed issue with building lights not fading correctly if you have your world texture detail settings lowered.

Game

• Improved server stability  Always a good thing.
• All commands to make pets speak (/petsay, /petsayall, /petsayname, /petsaypow) are working again.

City Zones

• Recluse’s Victory: Signature Heroes and Villains will no longer give experience or debt. They will continue to give badges. Temporal points for defeating them increased.  This was a controversial item.  Probably the best solution.
• Recluse’s Victory: Fixed bug that caused player controlled heavies to persist after the player controlling them logged off or zoned.

Badges

• Added female-style names to many male-oriented Badge Titles. Not sure what this means, but sounds good.
• Added meters and hints to many badges that did not have them previously.  Huzzah!
• Renamed ‘Media Junkie’ badge to ‘Couch Potato’. ‘Media Junky’ badge remains unchanged.

UI

• Players can now set themselves to automatically decline super group and trade invites. Under the Options/General/Chat, there are now two additional options to turn this functionality on or off. By default it is set to off, which will prompt players whenever they receive a super group or trade invite.  Hmmm.  Probably good.
• If a player is currently hidden from his global friends using the /ghide command, all global friend invites and global chat channel invites will automatically be declined.

Tailor

• Female, Male and Huge costume creator clean up.  Good.
• Unified naming conventions.  Yay.
• Gloves and boots reordered for less confusion.  Good.
• More Chest textures in every available category.  Very good!
• Hip and Chest textures alphabetized.
• Reptilian texture revamped.
• Armored Pads added to chests and hips.  Nice.
• Crey Tech added to chests, hips, boots, and gloves. 
• Rough Leather added to hips.
• “Chaos leather” revamped.
• Shorts legs geometry fixed.
• V belt revamped.  Good.
• Skirts and Shorts revamped to fit tighter and prevent clipping with belts.
• Some belts revamped to better fit revamped skirts.
• “Plain long skirt” added.  HUZZAH!  Not everyone wears a mini-skirt.
• Long skirts revamped so geometry doesn’t clip with V and lone skull belt
• Matte boot texture added  Good.

City of Villains

Tasks

• Hive Spires no longer give Bonus XP.
• The high level Respec Trial now has level appropriate enemies.
• Fixed mission in Black Scorpion story arc “Thwart Black Scorpion’s plans – timed”. The mission was not completing properly
• Fixed graphics bugs in several Arachnoid Cave maps.

Powers

• Dominator Icy Assault Ice Sword Circle has had the long pause after casting removed.
• Corruptor Kinetics Transfusion was inadvertantly increasing a target’s regeneration rate in PvP, instead of decreasing it. This has been corrected.
• Fixed typos in Thugs powerset description
• Fixed a typo in the Mastermind Mercenaries Spec-Ops description.
• Electric Armor Grounded will now have its protection from Knockback and Knockup scale per level at the same rate that Knockback powers scale by level. This should result in consistent protection throughout a characters lifetime.
• Longbow Spec-Ops EMP Grenade power has had the amount of Endurance Drained per use reduced.
• The Psionic Activator Temporary Power should work correctly now.

Tasks

• Fixed issue that prevented brokers and newspapers from assigning Malta and Carnival missions.
• Fixed some text errors in Beast of the Mountain strike force.
• Fixed an uncompletable mission on Black Scorpion’s Patron arc. (“Thwart plan of Black Scorpion”)
• Added badge reward to Mission 3 of the Future of Freedom Strike Force.

City Zones

• Grandville: The plaques describing Patron Powers have been updated to give much more detailed information.

City of Heroes

Tasks

• Eden Trial: Rock Beast Lts. should properly spawn Cairns again. 

Overall, sounds good.  Nothing earth-shattering, but who wants earth-shattering right at the moment.

Haven’t heard anyone complaining about this — or, at least, haven’t seen any Dev comments on it (which is what I monitor in the forums), but the temp power timers are … well … not.
Temp powers with uses are working fine. You can see this by the new patch that lets you go to the Info on the power and see how many uses remain. So, last night, Torchy’s Holy Shotgun Shells got almost down to zero.
Temp powers with durations, though — “this will last X days until you have to send it back to Azuria” — are … well … showing things like “512345689 days left” under info. I have Sands of Mu, and Runes of Warding, and other goodies like that, and no sign of their going away (yay, another cone punch-out power for Lynn, even if I can’t slot it).
Ssssshhhhhh …

Re future expannsion set stuff, Tal_N posts:

Curently confirmed facts
A new powerset for each AT (not confirmed if some will be shared)
A new AT
A new zone
A system intended for endless end-game content which extends what will be added in i8.
The rumors and conjecture
(based upon previous comments from devs and conclusions)
The new powersets will include Shields which will be both an offensive set and a seperate defensive set for the Melee ATs, A tech theme defence set for Melee ATs, street fighting offensive set for scrappers. Circus Mastermind set. Weapon themed Brute set.
The new AT will be the Incarnate. At the moment only two of this AT exist, Lord Recluse and Statesman. It has been previously stated that the Incarnate’s will be themed around ‘combos’ however it is unclear what this cryptic clue refers to specifically. It is expected that existing characters are transformed into Incarnates much like Recluse is a Mastermind Incarnate and Statesman is a Tanker Incarnate.
From the recent poll the devs took the zones players requested the most were the Rikti Homeworld, Underwater zone and Arctic zone. One of these will most likey be the new zone added. My bet is on the Rikti Homeworld considering Positron’s interest in advancing the storyline.
The new system is an updated and revised version of what was going to be added to CoH at its launch. It used to be called The Fame system and was essentially a leaderboard for players where their success and failure as a hero effected their rankings. Top runners on the rankings will find statues raised within the city in their honor, have their character appear on billboards as they get approached to promote retail goods and you find villain groups targetting you for extermination. Rank also unlocks special content, rewards and various other perks. Time spent offline causes your fame rating to slowly degrade which means in order to stay at number 1 you have to play regularly although it may not be purely based upon how much time you spend online completing missions.

To which Positron replies:

The new powersets will include Shields which will be both an offensive set and a seperate defensive set for the Melee ATs, A tech theme defence set for Melee ATs, street fighting offensive set for scrappers. Circus Mastermind set. Weapon themed Brute set.

None of that is true, or true anymore.

Which raises the question: is it that none of the original post is true, or just the quoted paragraph … which latter would imply that the other stuff is true …

The lead costume/avatar guy speaks:

Howdy I’m Jay. I’m the guy that now makes costume pieces, and characters for the game. I have also read every post in this thread and tried to address all the bugs that needed fixing. So if you love/hate anything you can praise/cruse me.
The ears where moved into a separate category just for you. That’s right, you. You asked for it and you got it. I also made the demon and vampire ears at the last minute to address the concerns that the ears didn’t look enough like the “pointy ear.” I tried my best to make the Demon ear look like the original “pointy ear,” only better. The original “pointy ear” now looks really bad when compared to the new ones. The new horns were dual colored because of a request from this thread along with a ton of other little tweaks that you may or may have not noticed. I even went so far as moving a single dread on the female hair “dreadlock” so that one could recreate a character with the new ears. See how much I love you.
All this week I have painfully recategorized and alphabetized all costume pieces. So now when you go to the female/upper body/chest/ all of the texture options are there and they all use the mask texture correctly. Holy crap was it in disarray, now it’s all pretty and things are named right and easy to find.
Look at the female skirts too. They are exactly like the original skirts now. I know because I have the original files. A lot of you where mighty upset about the skirts not looking enough like the original. When I compared the two; you guys where right, the new skirts were noticably different. Not any more. Oh and I redid the V belt just for you. You said it sucked now it unsucks.
I also made a change this week to the Male/lower body/Tight/pants/Tights. The legs have a new and improved tight texture. I hated the old one so I made it better.
There where a few comments that female shorts where too long. Yeah I screwed that one up, Oops. It should be fixed now. And to make up for my mistake I added a new bikini bottom.
OK I’m done with bug fixing for issue 7. The updated stuff should be in next week; Today is 6/13/06. So if you have any bugs that you want me to address go ahead and post them. I’ll read them; I may not reply but know that I do read them. I’m off to Issue 8 make some bad guys and some costume pieces. I hope you find a little more happiness now Djeannie.

The whole Hamidon Raid phenominon is just plain old bizarre to me the more I think about it. It’s not a challenge, really — set, arcane, ritualistic behavior has been codified and passed down from hero to hero across the servers, making the biggest challenge to success in Hamidon whether your connection/graphics card will handle it.
Which is why the current rants about the changes to Hamidon are so amusing in the vitriol they’re eliciting. The changes:

Added to the patch notes:
The Hamidon has been increased in difficulty. It is now capable of using one of its attack powers even when Held, Slept, or Stunned.
Evidently Hammy got a laser beam on it’s head a long time ago but just now figured out how to use it.
The Mitos are AVs and are acting according to this patch note:
AVs/Heroes and Giant Monsters now ignore threat level damage multipliers for different Archetypes. They are still affected by Taunt as before.

The latter meaning that they don’t care whether you’re a Tank or a Defender — if you do the most damage, you draw the most aggro.
There’s some justifiable irk over the missing patch note (a real problem from the CoX team). But people are even more up in arms over the idea that they can’t magically know if Hammy has been Held by its being unable to attack. The horror! The confusion! The old magic no longer works! Blasphemy!
Frankly, I think Hamidon ought to adapt over time. Make it, perhaps, less God-like in power but a tad more unpredictable. Break the old elaborate dance. Let people know that, about once a month (or two, if we’re generous), Hammy will change his tactics — evolve.
50-100 heroes ought still be able to take it down, and the rewards should be worth it. But it should be something a bit more than a magical sequence of teams and tactics that are more or less guaranteed to succeed (assuming your machine doesn’t crash or someone doesn’t summon the Kronos Titan).

Here. Updates for I7, among a few other bits.

It appears that Inspirations (combat-related) are a lot weaker than either the text descriptions provided or the Devs thought they were:
DEF (Luck)
S – 12.5%
M – 25%
L – 33%
ACC (Insight)
S – 7.5%
M – 18.75%
L – 37.5%
RES
S – 10%
M – 15%
L – 20%
DMG
S -25%
M – 33%
L – 50%
The Resist and Damage inspirations are working as advertised, but Defense and Accuracy are, clearly, not.
Castle has added it to the bug list.
Cue endless discussion of whether this was always a problem (“The Devs are incompetent dolts!”) or was a stealth nerf (“The Devs are evil manipulators!”), which sound oddly like discussions of Washington politics …
(via Doyce)

Massive set of release notes this time, not surprisingly. My commentary (on highly abridged notes):

---

Combined (CoH and CoV)
Known Issues
2. Recluse’s Victory signature heroes and villains give debt when they defeat characters. This has been acting to discourage characters under level 50 from fighting them. The debt will be removed in a future patch, and the Temporal Point reward for defeating them will be increased. Good to know.
4. Mastermind pets are not keeping names when defeated and re-summoned. Eek!
New PvP Zone – Recluse’s Victory
* A new high level PvP zone set in an alternate version of Atlas Park and open to players of Level 40+. I do have an interest in this, actually. We’ll have to see.
* Alternative ‘sally port’ exits are available in both Hero and Villain bases, to help alleviate front door camping. Each base has two doors near the temporal portal on the ground floor – in the Hero base they appear as manholes, in the Villain base they appear as sewer entrances. These are connected to 5 doors inside the zone, which will be randomly chosen each time a door is used. The outside doors are not guarded, so players use them their own risk. Clever idea. We’ll see how well it works.
PvP Zones
* In PvP zones, if a character is revived at the Hospital, they will respawn with 1 hit point and 1 endurance. This is to enforce a short delay on all characters before they can get back into battle. Not much of an issue to me, but … well, it seems annoying.
Powers – Players
* Modified PvE critter accuracy. Defense powers will now work equally well against critters, regardless if they have higher accuracy. For instance, your defense powers will work equally well against a Boss or any critter up to 5 levels higher than you, as it does for an equal level minion. Previously, a more accurate critter could circumvent much of your defense, but this will no longer happen. Yay! SR/FF characters of the world, rejoice! Heck, even tanks will welcome this.
o More accurate critters may have a greater chance at the extreme low end of the To Hit scale than previously due to this change. For instance, an Archvillain’s To Hit could previously be reduced (with enough Debuffs) to 5%, but will now have a 7.5% minimum. Interesting, though not that much a biggie.
* If a character is at 100% health, they cannot be reduced to 0 HP by a single application of damage. (For example, if an uninjured character with 1000 Hit Points was hit by a Blazing Bolt for 1500 Damage, the character would be dropped to 1 HP. As soon as the DoT portion of the Blazing Bolt ticked (a second later), the character would drop to 0 and be defeated. If the character was down even 1 Hit Point below maximum when the Blazing Bolt hit them, they would immediately be dropped to 0 and be defeated.) I understand the point of this, but, as the examples note, the actual application of it doesn’t seem to help that much. We’ll see.
* All powers which have an Endurance Drain component will now drain a percentage of a PvE target’s Endurance, rather than a set number of Endurance Points. This fixes the issues created when enemies’ Endurance Pools were increased. Yay.
* Origin Specific powers will no longer be lost after level 10. Characters who already lost these powers (or who never had these powers) will be granted these powers. People without ranged attacks will be happy about this.
* All Temporary Powers will now show duration or charges in their info. Ah! Great Quality-of-Life thing.
* Powers that put you into a self-contained state (Rest, Phase Shift, PFF, Invisibility, etc) now display “Only Affecting Self” in the mez state text below the buff bar. Nice.
* Stealth and Phase Shift Powers will suppress (for self buffs or toggles) or cancel (for external buffs) when a player interacts with Interactive Objects, such as Plaques or Mission Objective Objects. Suppression of this type has a duration of 10 seconds. This makes a great deal of sense, even if it makes stealthing missions a lot harder.
* The Claws Power sets for both Scrappers and Stalkers have new animations for the powers Swipe and Strike. The animation for Slash has been replaced with the old Strike animation in order to better match the activation, recharge and damage values. Yay!
* Reduced End costs on Claws high level powers. Yay! I might have to rebuild ol’ Selene again.
* Fiery Aura/Healing Flames activation time reduced. Yay!
* Energy and Ranged Defense will now apply to Pool/Teleportation/Teleport Foe.
* Negative Energy and Ranged Defense will now apply to Warshade/Starless Step.
* Resistance Inspirations (the Sturdy Line) now offer 100% resistance to Teleport. This will not prevent a player from teleporting themselves, it only applies to Teleport Foe, Wormhole and related powers. These are evidently all PvP-driven. Yay.
* Confuse has had the delay after animation removed. Yay!
* Modified sprint fx to only play while running. Not Flying. Not swimming. Not jumping. Just running on the ground. Big yay!
Powers – Critters
* Arch Villains/Heroes and Giant Monsters have been significantly boosted. They should now require more people in order for them to be defeated, especially at higher levels. That should be … interesting.
* AVs/Heroes and Giant Monsters now ignore threat level damage multipliers for different Archetypes. They are still affected by Taunt as before. Not sure I follow this, but, okay.
Bases
* Several new Storage items are available that allow you to store various items in your base:
o Inspiration Receptacle: This item allows all members of the Supergroup to store Inspirations that they may not be using, but other members can use to greater benefit. A permission set in the SG Permissions allows a character to withdraw Inspirations from the Receptacle.
o Enhancement Container: This item allows all members of the Supergroup to store Enhancements in the Supergroup’s base. Members with the proper SG Permission will be able to withdraw Enhancements from the Container.
o Salvage Bin: This item allows all members of the Supergroup to store salvage in the Supergroup’s base. Members with the proper SG Permission will be able to withdraw Salvage (and just ‘see’ it from the base’s worktables as well).
We’ll have to see about this. I’m not sure it’s going to be all that useful, except for the Salvage Bin. Well, I can see dropping off Enhancements while back at the base after dying mid-mission.
* SG Logo Items: Numerous items can now be placed in your base that will display your Super Group’s logo, including banners, stands, floor plates and more. Oooooh.
Tasks
* Changed the parameters for when an AV/Hero will spawn in a mission:
Reputation/Notoriety Level 1: AV/Hero will spawn at team size 6 or greater.
Reputation/Notoriety Level 2: AV/Hero will spawn at team size 5 or greater.
Reputation/Notoriety Level 3: AV/Hero will spawn at team size 4 or greater.
Reputation/Notoriety Level 4: AV/Hero will spawn at team size 3 or greater.
Reputation/Notoriety Level 5: AV/Hero will spawn at team size 1 or greater.
* AV/Heroes will spawn at Elite Boss level if it is below the threshold needed to spawn them.
Good to know, and, especially with the new, nastier AVs, good to be able to go for.
Tailor
* Players with combined City of Heroes and City of Villains accounts now have access to all costume pieces (Hero and Villain) for their characters. YAY!
* New costume pieces added.
* Several costume pieces revamped and updated.
* Fixed many geometry and clipping issues with various costume pieces And, again, all with the YAY!
Badges
* Added many new badges to the game, Villains now have access to their very own Accolade badges as well, with equivalent powers to the Hero Accolades.
* Defeat Badges now require that you or your team do 10% or more damage to the entity to receive credit for the badge. (The former system required that you deal 25% or more damage to get credit). This is good, especially with the nastier AVs.
* All exploration badges now give a small amount of XP when you find them (based on your level). Excellent!
* Troll Task Force badge is now given out for spending time in The Hollows. Yay!
Graphics
* Changed the way the texture quality slider is interpreted:
o Very High: all textures at full resolution.
o High: texture dimensions capped at 256×256.
o Medium: texture dimensions capped at 128×128, all textures reduced by one mip level.
o Low: texture dimensions capped at 128×128, all textures reduced by two mip levels.
o Texture quality is now treated the same in CoH and CoV.
* Added new lower Shader Detail options to disable bumpmaps.
* Added new “recommended low-end” or “performance” option on the Graphics Quality slider that should set graphics detail levels to approximately CoH-launch values. All sounds good, especially that you can ratchet things back down if the newer graphics give you fits.
* The camera has been changed to be smoother and avoid ‘popping’ for small items – for example, a light pole between yourself and the camera should not jerk the camera forward now. Yay.
Quality of Life
* Several new options have been added to the display of Buff/Debuff icons in the Status Window (beneath the HP/END/XP bars), the Group Window and the Pet Window. The options for the different windows can be accessed either by right-clicking on an icon in the appropriate window, or from the ‘General’ tab of the in-game Options:
o Hide Auto Powers: The icons for ‘automatic’ powers (those that are always on) can be set to be displayed as usual or hidden.
o Disable Blinking: Set whether the icons for powers that are near the end of their duration should start blinking or not.
o Icon Stacking: Icons for multiple versions of the same power can be set to stack on top of other, to display a single icon with a number showing how many versions of the power are affecting you, or not to stack. All sound good. I think I saw the Icon Stacking working last night.
* In combat, attacks avoided due to Defense powers will now show text messages such as “Avoid!” or “Eluded!” instead of simple “Miss!” This sounds like it could be distracting, but I think it’s a good thing. But shouldn’t be in the same tense?
* A ‘Do Not Allow Invites’ option has been added to the Looking For Group flags. YAY!
* There is a new window that allows the searching of Global Chat channels. To access this window, right click the chat window and select “Channel Search”. You can search for channels with a certain name, the most active channels, or all channels you are a member of. From this window you can also set the channel description and MOTD. Not thrilling, but decent.
* Several new emotes have been added to the game. And they look like a hoot.
* If you receive a tell while AFK, an automatic reply will be sent to the tell sender with your AFK message. Excellent!
City of Heroes
Powers – Players
* Illusion Control/Deceive has had the long pause after cast removed. YAAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!
City Zones
* Spawns updated and adjusted in several city zones. Street encounters in lower level zones have more variety. Spiffy!
* Fixed delay when you click on helicopter pilot to zone from Kings Row to Warburg and back or Bloody Bay to Skyway and back. This seemed to already be working last night — much faster to zone (and a nice “please, feel free to board now” gesture from the pilot, too).
Badges
* The Task Force Commander badge is a new Accolade added for Heroes. For … leading TFs, I assume. Good. Not my cuppa, but a nice recognition for leadership. Heck, I wouldn’t mind seeing some sort of similar badge for time spent as team leader (boosted for team sizes).
Graphics
* Updated and improved many textures and visual effects throughout the game. I look forward to, ah, seeing it. Though I’m glad I’ll be able to ratchet stuff down again.
City of Villains
Mayhem Missions
* Mayhem missions allow villains to enter a large instanced outdoor mission map and create chaos. The eventual goal is to rob a bank – but there are lots of other things going on, too. Mayhem missions are set up for single players and teams. Extra mission time is awarded for destroying property and defeating police. Side missions that appear within the mission map award more extra time and other rewards. Nice.
* The old Heists (Bank and Casino) are now available as normal Newspaper missions. So are they not Heists any more?
Powers – Players
* Mastermind Bodyguards: You can set any Mastermind pet to Bodyguard by selecting the Defensive Stance and the Follow Orders. Your pets must be within Supremacy range for this function to work.
* Bodyguard Damage Mitigation: When set to Bodyguard mode, the Mastermind and his pets share damage from any attack that the Mastermind takes damage from. Each pet takes one ‘share’ of the damage, and the Mastermind himself takes two ‘shares’. This is in addition to any damage that the pets themselves might incur from Area attacks. Coolness.
* Decreased the recharge time for Mastermind Minion Henchmen summon powers.
* Increased the recharge time for Mastermind Boss Henchmen summon powers.
* Dramatically decreased the recharge time for Mastermind Second Tier Upgrade powers. All sounds good. The current delays had been madenning.
* Visual f/x for Brute Invulnerability powers changed. They are now darker and more villainous. Heh. That makes sense. Look forward to seeing how that works with Mr. Ravenous.
Overall, esp. on the CoH side, nothing dramatic, but lots of nice polishing. Spiffy!

Nuff said.

Yes, it’s true – Issue 7 is being patched to live servers!
Everyone should get a free tailor token as the servers come back up for all your tailoring needs.
Free Respecs will be handed out this Thursday morning 6/8/06, during normal maintenance time. Free respecs do NOT stack, so if you have an old one use it or lose it!

Huzzah!

… because, damn, you’re already getting it cheap.
I7 will not roll before the end of the month.
And that’s the right answer, folks, because I’d rather it go live with the bugs shaken out, rather than deal with problems, frustrations, gnashing of teeth, and emergency patches.
And I’m not saying that just because I’m going to be on vacation. Really.

Mark Miller has been announced as the new lead developer for CoX. Here’s a nice interview with him. A few excerpts:

In the next update, Issue 8, we will have a new system that gives us the ability to make your level 50 characters better. That means we’ve abandoned the idea of raising the level cap to 60 for now and instead will give you the option to make your level 50s better, then better again and then even better. That process will last a lot longer than additional 10 levels, which just create a new problem: What to do after hitting level 60?

Nice. It keeps the “Hero of the City” title from being devalued, but actually gives you some non-exemplar, non-cleanup stuff to do with your 50s.

Why are you raising the difficulty of archvillains and monsters?
Well, monsters were supposed to get an entire zone buzzing. Instead they are currently treated like secrets. If a group spots a monster, they take it down themselves before someone else notices it. Archvillains were not enough of a challenge, but we are still looking very closely at them on our test server to make sure they don’t get too tough.

Hmmm. So what they really want is “Oh my God, Lusca!” and get everyone in the zone coming that direction. It might be interesting if they could sort of dynamically scale it (above a certain level) based on the availability of heroes in zone. I know they’re spreading the wealth re monster rewards, but it needs to be spread even further — if you participate (and run a risk), you should get something for it.

We’ll have veteran rewards, which you’ll get every three months of payment and I’d like to stress here that the three months don’t have to be continuous. There’ll be lots of fan requested items and I can tell you that a trench coats costume option will be the first reward that we’ll hand out. The rewards are account based, thus players won’t have to decide which character they want to use them on. Some of the other ideas we’re toying with are base items, free respecs and temporal powers. There’s even a chance we’ll see the beloved Christmas jet pack again. An expanded version of the Halloween event will also open this year giving newer players are chance of getting those cool badges.

Again, nice. You want something that people will value, and that can be achieved, but not something that dramatically affects gameplay.
Trench coats …

The [planned retail] expansion will let heroes and villains team up against a common foe. It can be run from any of the games and there will be no extra subscription fee. It’s also build into the system of making better level 50 characters, however there is going to be content for all level ranges. There will also be a new power set for each of the existing archetypes including tanks and scrappers.

Again, thsi sounds good.

Issue 9 will include a rebuild of a couple of City of Heroes zones of which one is getting a major face lift. I can give you a hint though – it’s the one “we never play” (Faultline, -ed). We’ll also open a City of Heroes zone for villains.

Excellent.

What is the status of the option of transferring characters between servers?
That’s a thing we plan for Issue 8 or around that time. There will be a charge for the service, though – some kind of micro transaction. I don’t know the details but it’s because such a transfer is very taxing on the database servers, there’s certainly much more to a server transfer than you’d think.

Hu-freakin-zzah! Dearly love to be able to do that. And the micro-payment system makes sense — not so much because of the database transfer, I suspect, but because otherwise folks would do it a lot.
A few things confirmed not happening (or not happening soon): the archenemy system, and switching betwen hero-villain, and personal apartments. Which, frankly, is mostly okay (though the archenemy system, conceptually, is cool). I8 is scheduled for 3-4 months after I7 (since it’s not a technology change), so we’re talking September — I7 being predicted “before the end of May.”
(Hrm. Bad timing for us, vacation-wise.)
Lots more in the interview (as much as I quote). Good stuff.
(via Doyce)

For future reference a fine Kheldian FAQ, notable for its macro/keybind info.

Long LJ entry on how they do the Hamidon Raid on Virtue.
I don’t expect to do another Hami Raid any time soon, but it was sort of interesting to read, and I’ll be sure to review if I ever have a few hours to kill.

War Witch (the Dev) was notably absent for a while from the boards. She explains where she’s been:

Yes, I was busy adding flavor spawns to Atlas Park, Kings Row, and Galaxy City.
I’ve seen some posts on the changes and additions and dialogue so thanks for the great feedback.
It was kind of interesting going back with the new animations and having some fun. Kings Row wasn’t my zone, but Atlas Park and Galaxy City were so it was pretty weird going back to them again after a long absence. But a good weird.
I did not have the opportunity to go into The Hollows and Perez Park like I would have liked, but I did manage to get some time in to at least pull spawns out front of mission doors and remove some of the nastier mission doors in the HEART of the Perez Park maze. (not sure if anyone noticed that change)
The Hollows, just a few spawns removed around contacts or mission doors and extra mission doors added for variety, if applicable.
That was all I had time for, unfortunately, but I’m glad you guys like what you see.

There’d been talk about rejiggering some of the earlier zones, but I hadn’t realized it was coming out soon (presumably with I7). Yay!

All emotes. Including those coming in I7. Animated. Oh, my.
(via Doyce)

Screw epic powers. To hell with new content. I would gladly pay for an expansion pack that simply fixed the whole trading/vending interface.

1. Why, in God’s name, is there a limit (an expanded limit!) on Influence traded? Why? Why?
2. Praseodymium Infusion? Nektonebo’s Left Collarbone? Enhancements can have all the color text they want, but they damned oughta also have the actual functionality clearly spelled out in the purchase screen. It’s enough to frelling influence what Origin I pick, which is a sign that it’s a bad thing.
3. Why would you offer me Red enhancements at the store? Especially red-below-me? To buy for someone else? The interface can be so cleaned up by just eliminating the stuff that’s not needed (with an option to pull it up).
4. Ditto for origin compatability. Why would I be interested in seeing any Enhancements that I cannot use? Yes, on the off chance I’m buying for someone else, maybe that’s an option, but normally I should just see the things that apply to me.
5. Explain to me again why contact stores don’t show on the map what their specialty is? Yeah, they’ll buy anything, but if it’s not in their normal line, the prices are craptastic. Been doing a lot of running around between store contacts in Croatoa of late.

Talk about a Quality of Life thing. There have been some small improvements, but the system is still a lot more irritating than it needs to be.

… than that he remember to download the I7 upgrade files for his wife’s machine while she’s off on a business trip. (Note to self: do same on the spare notebook tonight.)
So, yes, 350Mb of I7 goodness, just waiting to be patched and activated. Glee …

The latest bits … or those that caught my eye …

* Increased level of Neutral turrets in Recluse’s Victory
* Strengthened Signature Heroes/Villains in Recluse’s Victory.

Interesting. Sounds like RV was too easy …

* Modified sprint fx to only play while running. Not Flying. Not swimming. Not jumping. Just running on the ground

Yay! That little Pig Pen-style cloud of dust was annoying.

* Fixed delay when you click on helicopter pilot to zone from Kings Row to Warburg and back or Bloody Bay to Skyway and back

Yes! ‘Twas quite annoying.

A nicely crafted history of CoH, issue by issue — what went right, and what didn’t.
Part of what seems clear is that the intro of PvP had significantly negative consequences — that were inevitable, because PvP (be it the Arena duds or the power nerfs) was critical to City of Villains being launched. Indeed, if you see Issues 4 and 5 (and ED) as laying the groundwork for supporting CoV PvP (EIEIO), it all begins to make sense.
The question then becomes — how do Cryptic/NCSoft manage to move forward? The answer, from what we’ve heard tell for I8, is more content and some added power sets (and EPPs), even if some of that is pay-for-it rather than free. That’s the right answer, I supsect. The question will be how soon they can bring it on. I7 will keep people in CoV, and provide some bones for the CoH players, but it may be a long wait until it all pays off. And, in the meantime, there are plenty of other games out there …
(Though not for me, he said confidently.)
(via Doyce)

You’ll now be able to control display of buff icons for yourself, team members, and/or pets. It looks as though you’ll be able to show all of them, show just applied one (vs. auto-powers) or show none of them. That’s a nice, if not earth-shattering, quality of life thang.
Actually, it goes further than that:

– You can now hide all inherent/accolade buff icons via right-click.
– Click buffs now flash/fade on and off a few seconds before they expire.
– Stackable buffs (e.g. Siphon Speed) can now be displayed differently – as normal, slightly overlayed (as in the above image), or a single buff icon with a number in the middle. No change for powers such as Soul Drain.
– Enemy debuffs are also slightly duller that your own buff icons.

and

– There’s a global channel search function
– It’s now possible to set your team seek options to automatically reject all team invites.
– Dodging an attack from defense buffs (?) now puts Avoided! or Deflected! over your head.
– Powers that put you into a self-contained state (tested Rest and Phase Shift, presumably PFF, Invisibility, etc) now display Only Affecting Self in the mez state text below the buff bar.

The third bullet there is kind of interesting — assuming the screen doesn’t get inutterably cluttered (esp. during a major lagfest melee), it will be good to know when defensive powers are doing their thing. As a Dev describes it in a bit more detail:

Any time we determine the miss was due to a defensive power, it gets a new message. What message it gets is based on the power, so as people have said, if your target is a Stone tank you may see “Deflected!” messages, but a SR in Elude might result in “Eluded!”.

There’s also mention in the thread that timed temp powers now have an actual timer on them. Nice, esp. now that PvP zones have brought so many temp powers into the game (I’m assuming that on/off temp powers, like the Wedding Ring, have similar timers?). Usage “timers” are also displayed (“x users remaining”).
Coolness. Sometimes I think UI changes can be the most profoundly satisfying ones of all, even if they are all in the “background.”

---

And an odd policy change on character renaming:

Previously, names for characters under level 35 on game accounts that were inactive for over 90 days were changed to unreserved status. Data mining has determined that this policy is not needed on an ongoing basis and the program has been suspended. If we need to reenact this policy in the future to free up names then we will give all players 30 days notice before enacting the policy again. We thank all players for their continued support.

Which makes me think that (a) it was a PitA to run the report and/or make the name changes, and/or (b) after the first sweep on this (some months back) they’ve gotten very few names back out of it.