Category: Resources & Rules

Are damnably annoying. Since I6, various toggles drop at random when zoning between neighborhoods or into/out of missions. The latter is particularly annoying/dangerous, as if there are bad’uns just inside the door (or just outside of it), you may find yourself defenseless. Yikes.
I do hope this gets solved Really Soon Now.

I’ve managed to bypass the I6/CoV-era ATIOGLGL.DLL lock/crash problems on my notebook (ATI Mobility Fire GL T2 card) by adding the switch -useTexEnvCombine to the shortcut that invokes COHUPDATER.EXE. That makes for less complex graphics (I now watch Margie’s screen with envy), but it works, and it doesn’t look all that bad.
The cost is worth not having the machine crash three or four times on load …
CuppaJo comments on graphics.

Alongside the new Vidiotmaps, I’m pleased to note the new version of HeroStats is out. Features support for I6 and CoV. Yay!

Upgraded VidiotMaps material, including CoV zones! Huzzah!
Now if only CoH would make the little store icons transparent so that I could click on them (for guidance) but still see the underlying store type.
(via Doyce)

Brutes
Corruptors
Dominators
Masterminds
Stalkers
Some good stuff out there already.

Since the arrival of I6 graphics (first detected during the CoV Beta period), I’m having a problem where the game hangs for the first 2-4 times I try to load it, or when I first zone in from selecting a character. After that I’m fine, but it’s sort of frustrating.
Reading the boards for advice. The error points to a DLL associated with my ATI Mobility Fire GL T2 card on the notebook, though I can’t find that DLL mentioned on the boards. I’ve updated to the latest version of the driver that IBM/Lenovo admits to knowing about, but CoH continues to chide me for having an “old” driver. I’m reluctant to download the latest-greatest beyond what my manufacturer is supporting, but may give it a try nonetheless at some point.

Various bits from the boards that I’ve missed over the past days:

1. A mini-FAQ on Prestige and Bases. The various Alliance groups were quite busy building and chatting about them yesterday, so I suppose the CoJ needs to gets its act online. That said — paying monthly rent? In person? Yeesh. The more I look at this, the more annoying bases (even if you don’t make them raidable) become.
   Various red-name responses follow further down. Individual/personal bases (apartments) are coming, evidently. And the claim from poz is that Infamy (Influence) tapers down in favor of Prestige when in SG mode until you hit 35 or so when it goes to 0 — but that doesn’t fit what I saw with Psi-clone last night. Hrm.

2. Statesman on ED and how it tested out. Yes, things are supposed to be more difficult and require more teaming (for AVs, at least) and active participation, at least in the (affected) 25+ world (States says it only really affects SOs), and to ensure that Controller/Defender buffs are always valuable. Numerous follow-on messages. “There’s a problem if folks are making large teams and then abandoning them after entering missions just to increase spawn size.” Also coming up — a way to abandon missions (once “newspaper” technology gets introduced to CoH).
3. AI limits on herding. The magic number is 17, period.
4. You can cash in Influence for Prestige, at a rate of 500:1.
5. Suggestions on soloing with Brutes. Scroll to the top. Accuracy and Rest are your friends, evidently — though Rest and Smash seem incompatible.
6. A new Brute power, as previewed in the “trailer” movie for CoV …

Quoth Statesman:

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

To be honest, this idea came specifically from this thread. Since people wanted the new costume options, I checked with Software – who said it could be done. Just wanted to let you know that yes, we do take suggestions!
It sems so obvious, I’m shocked it wasn’t one of the plans already. But, still, good to know.

FYI – for those who don’t like the idea because villains should look different than heroes – remember that villains already have hero options. They can create a character identical to one that exists in City of Heroes.
True. Of course, that’s just a sign of their desceptive treachery …

The patch notes for the Test release:

---

Now Testing in the Training Room – 10/20/05
Issue 6: Along Came a Spider
New events in the far off Rogue Isles are beginning to have an effect on Paragon City.
[…]
PvP Zones:
The contested zones of Bloody Bay, Siren’s Call, and Warburg are open for exploration by Heroes on the Training Room. There are a number of new missions available in these zones. Eventually, both Heroes and Villains will have access to these zones and be able to compete for the prizes they offer. These are PvP zones. If you enter these zones, you will be subject to attack by other players, except for small safe zones.
I find it interesting that these zones are not just for PvP, but PvE as well. I don’t know if that makes it better (less Arena-like) or worse (if there’s content there and there’s PvP, then some folks will get their jollies gacking people trying to get to the content).
Supergroups:
* Characters in Supergroup mode can now gain Prestige and Salvage. These will be useful to players who own both City of Heroes and City of Villains in base building.
* There are new Badges that can be earned by Supergroups.
* Newly expanded Supergroup ranks and Supergroup permissions.
* Supergroup Leaders can change the colors and emblem of the Supergroup after creation.
* Players can now choose to hide their Supergroup emblem when in Supergroup mode.
These last two are critical, esp. tied to the first two. SGs can earn badges and base-buying/building stuff, but only when their members are in SG mode, which some folks hate because of the colors and insignia. Which now can be better tailored or ignored. Nice. So, for low and mid-range characters, there’s no reason *not* to go into SG mode.
Graphics:
* More levels of graphical detail available.
* Character texture quality and world texture quality can be set separately now.
New refresh rate and vertical sync options.
* New graphics options to enable Depth of Field and Bloom visual effects on supported video cards.
UI
* New Options window with many newly available player options.
If this is the same as on CoV, it’s a nice improvement.
* The confirmation screens for adding and deleting enhancements can be now be disabled.
Huzzah!
* New Pet window available from the Options window that displays the health of your pets, and grants the ability to unsummon specific pets.
Oh, yes, huzzah!!
* Macros can now be edited directly from the power tray.
Hot diggity dog!
* You can now give inspirations to teammates by dragging them on to the team window.
W007!
* New targeting commands: /target_custom_near, /target_custom_far, /target_custom_next and /target_custom_prev. To get a list of parameters, type the command without any parameters.
Interesting. I’ll have to look these up.
* UI changes to Trade Window. You can now trade salvage and type in the amount of influence to be traded.
But it’s still limited to 99,999. Which sucks.
Powers:
* Fixed a bug in the Thunder Clap power. It was Auto Hit, meaning Defense based characters had less chance of mitigating its effects than intended. This change affects Defenders and Controllers Storm Summoning sets, Banished Pantheon Witch Doctors, Circle of Thorns Air Casters, one of the Heroes Captured by the Devouring Earth and Skyfall from the Tsoo.
* Super Reflexes Auto powers now add some minor damage resistance that improves as the caster loses HP.
* Reduced the Endurance cost of Dark Melee/Siphon Life and Dark Blast/Life Drain.
* Pool powers: Stealth, Grant Invisibility, Invisibility, Combat Flight, Weave, Maneuvers, Vengeance, and Combat Jumping now Buff Defense to ALL attacks. This change was also made to all Primary and Secondary Stealth and Invisibility powers (including, but not limited to, Cloak or Shadows, Cloaking Device, Superior Indivisibility, and Group Invisibility). All Defense powers should now stack properly with each other. All powers short and long Help Text was updated to indicate this change.
* Improved Damage DeBuff of Tanker/Ice Armor/Chilling Embrace.
* Defender/Controller Empathy Resurrect Powers Endurance cost reduced.
* The Lightning Storm pet was generating Detoggle messages erroneously.
* Sonic Repulsion and Sonic Dispersion:
* * Sonic Buff/Clarity and Sonic Dispersion powers have been switched in the order in which they can be chosen. This change affects Defenders and Controllers.
* Glue Arrow should no longer fade when the target dies.
* Poison Gas Arrow should no longer fade when the target dies.
* Disruption Arrow no longer accepts Damage Resist Enhancements. They were extraneous and had no effect.
* Flash Arrow should have Debuff FX more visible throughout the duration now.
* Changed Long and Short Help of Moment of Glory to clarify which Defenses it offers.
* Martial Arts/Eagles Claw critical hit now properly does smashing instead of lethal damage.
* Fixed bad short help text in Spines/Taunt. It said it was an AoE, but it is a Single Targeted Taunt.
* Fixed Teleport animation from animating twice.
* Fixed Dark Miasma/Tar Patch cat animation from sometimes locking you into an animation loop.
* Fixed Empathy/Adrenaline Boost animation from activating before the power was recharged.
* Removed Resist Damage Enhancements from Acid Arrow.
* Some Electrical Blast, Electrical Melee and Electrical Mastery powers now have a chance to return some of the endurance they drain back to the caster.
* Force Field/Insulation Field now also buffs defense to AoE Attacks. Dispersion Bubble now also buffs defense to Melee and Ranged attacks. This will all Force Field powers to better stack with all defensive powers, even Super Reflexes, and even with multiple shields from multiple allies.
* Slightly Modified some Scrapper Martial Arts damage scales, end costs and recharge times.
* Reduced the Terrorize duration of Dark Melee/Touch of Fear.
Those of the above I recognize are all good, if not spectacular.
Stores:
Most stores and contacts that only sold 10 types of Enhancements of a given type will now sell all Enhancements of that type. (In other words, we fixed key stores that were selling just the Power 10 to sell all Enhancements of that type).
Huzzah!!!!
Debt Cap:
We have cut in half the amount of Debt you can carry at a maximum at any given time. Previously it was set at 10 defeats worth of Debt, it is now set at 5 defeats. (Defeats inside a mission map count as ½ a defeat since they generate only ½ the Debt). If your character has more Debt than the current cap when they log in, they will have their Debt lowered to that of the current cap.
Never reached this, but I think it’s good.

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

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

Per CuppaJo this afternoon (with my comments):

---

New Zones
As they become available to the players of City of Villains, the following PvP Zones will also open up for player of City of Heroes: Bloody Bay (This is a PvP Zone for Villains and Heroes with a minimum level to entry set at 15.), Siren’s Call (This is a PvP Zone for Villains and Heroes with a minimum level to entry set at 20.), Warburg (This is a Free-For-All Battle Zone for Villains and Heroes with a minimum level to entry set at 30).
Ho-hum. Not so much into PvP. Maybe. Probably. Okay, in a “real” setting, vs. the Arena, and as Heroes vs Villains … maybe. At least worth trying. It will be intersting to see if CoH/CoV PvP is more popular than the Arenas are.
Arena – New Gladiator Battles! Collect all new Gladiator Badges to create a host of new pets you can battle in any of the Paragon City Arenas!
Ho-hum-squared. Not really sure what this means, but Arena = Boring.
Names: The number of characters allowed in the name will be increased to 20!
To match CoV. Still too short, but better than nothing (or the previous 15).
Super Groups: There will be all new SG Badges and an upgrade to the SG permissions system.
Um … okay. The SG permissions are to match CoV, again (or, rather, are inherited from the CoV upgrade), and provides finer granularity of permissions. That said, ho-hum. Though I’m curious about the SG badges. Are those for time served in SG? Or for members of an SG that hits certainly milestones (membership, lifespan, whatever).
Tech Changes: City of Heroes will now support 3D Sound, have added Visual FX Upgrades and Dual CPU Performance Enhancement.
Ho-hum.
Costume Creator: Drop down menus are just a part of the UI upgrades for the costume creator.
I think this refers to the menu enhancements from the CoV costume creator, which is quite nice.
Pets: We’ve added an all new Pet Window for managing your pets.
Similar, one assumes, to the Mastermind pet windows. Hmmm. Wonder if we’ll get the same functionality (attack! defend! follow!). Oh. Reading on, evidently on the CoV side it’s been estalblished by the Devs that won’t happen (since MMs are supposed to be inherently different than Controllers or Dominators).
Trade Window Upgrades: Trading with your teammates will be quicker and easier with the new UI in place.
That will be nice. As it stands, it’s annoying. Hopefully trading Infl. will be faster.
Beyond that, there are tons of little tweaks and visual changes all around – so come check them out soon on the test server.
Unlikely, but I look forward to hearing about them.

---

That doesn’t include ED, which is still confirmed will be in I6.
Overall, the biggest “bang” in I6 is the presence of CoV. I6 should be considered an incremental release (I5.5, perhaps), bringing CoH into sync with CoV. IMO.

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

You can see the “pad” I’m talking about on the CoH claws (left/bug) . Unlike, say, Wolverine, the claws do not actually extend from the skeleton, but can be either seen as a separate external (semi-)device or as ninja-style “tiger claws.” The visibility of the pad varies by character (which may be part of the confusion here). I believe claws scale (my old Selene character had very large ones), and on some characters I’ve played with the power the pad has been much more visible.
My initial impression of the CoV claws (right/cat) was that they extruded more cleanly from the hand, but the picture here of Very Bad Kitty belies that, Instead, they are more … um … spikey. They do look better — more pointy and claw-like than the blades in CoH (note that Marvel has never been consistent with Wolvie’s claws, either), but they’re not internal, nor do they look like “real” claws.
Anyway, there you go. I will say that, as a Stalker, claws are a great weapon.

1. Mission Complete Sharing will make its way to CoH. (Not specified if it will be in I6, though no reason why it shouldn’t.) This is the feature in CoV that if two people share the mission being run, then when it’s completed everyone is given the opportunity to get the mission credit and consider the mission completed. Similar to shared “hunt” missions now.
So, for example, if you have three people with FrostFire who run the mission, not only is it complete for the person who’s mission it is, but the other two get to (if they want) consider it completed to, letting them move onto the next mission in their arc or from their contact.
Of course, everyone love running Frostfire multiple times, so that may not be the best example. But I can think of any number of times I’d like to have done that with various duos I was running. Nice.
2. I6 goes to Test as early as tomorrow.

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

You cannot enter or build bases without CoV. You cannot participate in Base raids without CoV. CoH players will gain prestige and Salvage (I think) that they can contribute to the Super Group…
I think this will be a mistake. The base stuff sounds pretty keen, and restricting not only construction to CoV folks but use of bases (even once it’s all available in CoH) is a sales mistake.
Fortunately, we have CoV … 🙂
Or perhaps this is just tied to the I6 pre-announcement:

Bases are NOT in I6. Bases are a CoV feature… We’ll be posting the features list for I6 “soon.”

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

Several people have noted that ED will “inevitably” cause a slowdown in leveling. That’s why we’re putting this up on test; internally, we didn’t notice a change. There’s a variety of reasons for this (less Endurance cost, slotting of different powers that reduced downtime, etc.), but I wanted to see the effect on the Training Room. I’m more than happy to increase XP should ED slow stuff down too much…
Okay. If, indeed, the intent is that levelling will continue at the same rate, I reserve more commentary until I see better how it works. Though the implementation in CoV isn’t nearly as informative as I’d hope for.

Stateman posts — repeatedly — on the subject of Enhancement Diversity (ED):
Some reasons:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And to those who think I’m couching my apologies a little too much – I’ll be straightforward. I’m sorry. I should have tried to understand how things would be perceived. That’s an oversight/error on my part. I thought Enhancements and Powers were two different things, but many players don’t see it as such. While I may have been *technically* correct, clearly players thought I was expressing a different spirit: no more nerfs. I should have known that.
In other news, SR scrappers will get a “Defiance”-like DR boost as they drop in HP.

Margie wanted me to post a couple of ideas:

1. At such time as CoV goes live, given the, um, large number of alts we have on Champion, and the shared-server nature of same (after all, I’ve only pre-ordered CoV so I can get four more Champion slots for hero alts, right?), would our local audience here be interested in focusing villains on a different server?
   Biggest dis-ad to that, of course, is that it limits any same-server PvP action against Alliance heroes.
   Not, of course, that I’m that interested in PvP. Or CoV. Really.

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

Margie and I both got beta invites to CoV today, as “long-term subscribers” (defined as “6 months or more”).
Oh, the temptation.
Not like I don’t have enough heroes to play with. But … damn. Tempting …

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

Starting 10/24/2005 the City of Heroes and City of Villains character name policy will change. Names for characters under level 35 on game accounts that have been inactive for over 90 days will be changed to unreserved status. This means that those names will become available for new character names if picked by an active player. This policy is being enacted in order to free up character names based on player feedback.
That actually seems pretty reasonable — more than reasonable, in fact. If your game account is inactive for over three months, your character’s name might get recycled (if someone chooses to try to take it). And if the character is level 35 or higher, the name is still safe. I have no idea how many names this affects, but it seems pretty straightforward to me. At worst, it’s not like your character is being deleted (which is pretty remarkable), but that you might have to rename Miss Mystery to Lady Mystery or something like that.

Hrm.
Okay, I support the goals of (a) diversitying what paths folks take in developing their powers, and (b) how different folks tune up their powers to do different things. So I’ve long been vaguely sorry that too many builds end up looking very similar, and that though many powers are open to a variety of enhancements, the enhancements actually taken by most folks tend to be fairly limited.
The answer to this would seem to be to increase the number of powers and increase what different, less-used enhancements do in order to make them more valuable.
The Devs, it seems, have a different idea: Enhancement Diversification. Which sounds like the right name, but is more of an “affirmative action” than a reduction of barriers to taking a variety of enhancements.

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

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

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

A good rule of thumb is “2 Single Origins Enhancements = No Reduction. 3 SO’s = Slight Reduction. 4 SO’s = Moderate Reduction. 5 or 6 SO’s = Major Reduction”
Maxing DOs will give you 95% increase (rather than 100%) for 6 DOs.
So an initial read of this makes it sound like the “Perma-Hasten” of 6 SOs to Hasten … will no longer be possible? Or “Perma-DullPain”? And, of couse, it’s nice that I’ll be encouraged to use those extra slots on Stamina to improve my other powers, but it’s a shame that I’ll run short of breath sooner.
Unless, of course, base effectiveness of all these powers is increased. Of which there’s no word, but that would certainly make this feel better (i.e., less room for improvement, but a higher foundation to build on).
Apparently all internal QA and playtesting has been using this system since 3/2005, so they’re pretty convinced that this is nothing “new.” Which may explain why some of the complained-of I4/I5 changes were not seen the same way by them as by “us.”
Will a new free respec be given for this? Given that it may encourage folks to seriously want to redo either their powers or, more likely, their slotting …
There will be a modification to the Enhancement screen that shows the percentage effectiveness being attained at any given level, so folks will get a better feel for this. (Note that this seems to be an exception, albeit a critical one, to the Devs resistance of making this “City of Numbers.”). And, to that end:

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

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

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

Schedule D Enhancements (60%, 30%, 15%) are:
Knockback
This bonus type starts to see reduction when the bonus is 120% or more, and a severe reduction at 180% bonus or greater
I don’t necessarily think this is a bad idea per se — the goal (more diverse heroes) is a good one. But the means — restricting (effectively) what you can do with your hero, as well as reducing the overall value of enhancements (“nerfing”) — strikes me as … not productive. As someone noted, this sort of diversity is possible today, it’s just not incented. So what you should be doing is incenting this, as opposed to disincenting the opposite. The ends may work out the same, but the feel turns out very different, nefty badness aside.