Category: Resources & Rules

Cryptic has reinstated the “Ask Cryptic” as part of the firestorm of “Communicate, dammit!” messages Jack Emmert got when he published an open forum note asking how Cryptic could do better. This week’s installment:

Halorin: Where does Champions Online fit into Cryptic’s plans a year from now? Two years? Three? And what resources are Cryptic willing to invest in the game see those plans to fruition?

Jackalope: We’ve just started working on the next step of widening the Champions Universe and we’ve nailed down our ongoing content plans. In short, you can expect to see new adventures every other month (roughly). The content will be far more story based and focused on the background of the game. Meanwhile, we’ve got some other things afoot (and some of you might be able to deduce what that is) and we’ll talk about it more soon.

A dedication to new content, background-focused, is probably just what the game needs right now.  The questions on everyone’s mind, is (a) what levels, (b) will it be pay-for-play, and (c) will it be persistent content or one-off (or even repeating) event stuff.

Darth-Log: How confident are you that Champions Online can succeed considering its current lackluster performance and in lieu of upcoming competition? What have you learned, what are your short term considerations and long term goals?

Chronomancer: We remain dedicated to the Champions Universe, and we have plans to continue to grow it. While our numbers of players is less than we would like, it is also more than several other MMOs that continue to service their communities.

The question is, how much service can you provide if the money model isn’t there?

The upcoming expansion is an excellent example of our plan to make the game bigger and better while also addressing the desires of our players.

And make more money.

We learned a great many lessons from Champions, and I think you can see some of that knowledge expressed in how we ran our beta testing and approached content creation in Star Trek Online.

STO has been a much more pleasant (not flawless, but improved) experience.  Though the nature of the different and its pervasiveness makes it hard to believe that’s all due to lessons learned from the CO beta/roll-out.

Game development is continued learning, iteration, and alteration to fit the needs of an ever-changing market. A game that was a huge hit five or ten years ago probably wouldn’t do anywhere near as well today. The interests and demands of gamers have changed. So we have to learn from our mistakes as well as our successes and move forward.

(Mumbles, waves hands, what’s so special about CoX anyway, nothing to see here, move along.)

In that regard, we’re going to be focusing more on creating content to provide multiple paths of advancement within Champions Online. The plan is to create more of what you want in smaller bites so we can do them on shorter timelines.

Creating more parallel material is definitely a Good Thing.  Doing it in small bits is also a good idea.  Think of each of the “zones” in the desert — rather than recreate a whole desert, you could easy crank out one or two more zones of that sort in the course of a couple of months (if you had good writing).

We also want to provide more ways and reasons for players to group, which is what much of the Flashback and Difficulty Slider work has been focused on.

The difficulty aspect suffers not from a “slider” but from uneven mob strengths and missions.  Making it easier for people to group or PUG would be useful — and since the server scales groups, even if the population is down it shouldn’t be difficult to do.

In the long term, we’re working on creating new stories, game play mechanics, and locales for the Champions universe. We’re increasing our presence in the community and being more open and communicative with you so you know what we’re thinking and working on. And perhaps most importantly, we’re continuing to look for ways that we can make Champions a better game.

All of which is (a) unquestionably a good thing, and (b) very unspecific.

FongSolo: What is Cryptic doing, or even planning behind the scenes to rebuild good faith in the company and this product that many of us paid the lifetime subs for?

Arkayne: Aside from a ton of things that we just can’t talk about right now, but will be very soon, we’re actively making a couple of changes around here: We’re stepping up the communication. We’re going to do more Ask Cryptics, more Dev Chats, we’re going to be in-game, playing with you more, Our GMs are going to start letting you know the status on the current bugs, and the entire development team is going to start being more active on the forums. On top of that, we also moved Stormshade back to Champions. We know you don’t know him well yet, but believe us when we say, he gets really loud when you guys aren’t happy. Oh, and that “soon” we’re talking about up there, that’s not a “soon(tm)” that’s a soon, as in as soon as humanly possible soon.

Communication is definitely an area where Cryptic has fallen down.  It will be interesting to see how this new resolve works (and how long it will last).

Derangement: Are there any plans to eventually include more non-seasonal content as part of a free update, or will you be focusing the revenues from monthly subscriptions on bug fixes and otherwise upgrading the game’s core, while relying on microtransactions for added content?

Stormshade: We have plans to add more free content to the game very soon, not seasonal stuff, and we’ll be talking about that shortly. (Sorry gang, you’re not getting a Valentine’s Day Event, but we do still love you.)

Frankly, I’d rather see fewer events and more persistent content, so this is a good thing.

Heathenish: I’d like to know what the relationship between STO code and CO code is. Because this past patch seems like you guys just dropped the “improved” STO engine right back into CO. Seems like a crazy thing to do, but for instance the direction-reversing and crazy camera bugs seem to have come straight from STO beta. Also, are both games sharing the same server? It doesn’t seem fair to have login problems because some other game is flooded.

Poz: Champs and STO share Cryptic’s global services: the chat and mail server, the account server, and proxy servers. The games themselves do not share any servers. As you noted, the account server is what we’ve had some problems with due to Star Trek. Unfortunately, we couldn’t safely change how our system works and split the two games apart there. Many of the load issues are fixed already, and we have programmers whose highest priority is keeping the account server working smoothly.

It makes sense as a model, and is probably the right thing to do — if it’s done well.

IchbinVol: Will there be any reason to have a theme based character in the future? Perhaps a synergy bonus for having a certain set of skills?

BigOtter: That’s actually one of the goals of our Tier 4 powers being introduced in our upcoming expansion – to provide high-end thematic meta-powers for each of the power groups.

Hmmmm.  An interesting idea.  I love CO’s mix-and-match concept, but super-heroes are all about theme.  If I were starting a supers game from scratch, I’d see how I could divorce powers from FX.  I.e., there’s no reason most of the various powers (maybe splitting melee vs ranged) wouldn’t work if you could do them each with any number of visual cues.

Btw, I find it fascinating that we’re getting so many different Dev names showing up in this.  That’s probably a good thing.

DawningDestiny: When is the melee rebalancing coming? You’ve talked a lot about it, but I’ve seen nothing that wasn’t a nerfy baseball bat to the face when it comes to melee. It’s by far the most underwhelming, underpowered set in the game. So yeah, what’s your timetable for that fix?

Akinos: Our melee review is currently underway. It is a massive review that involves 5 full framework reviews as well as an overall look at melee as a whole. It’s too early to give an ETA but rest assured is it being worked on.

Good to hear. It seems to me that there are problems both with melee overall in CO and with some power sets beyond that.  I’d rather they take time to do it arguably right, than rush out ill-considered bumps and nerfs.  At least … take some time.

Overall:  a lot of generic filler (“We love you! We will continue to love you in new and exciting and surprising ways! Please love us!”) with some promising nuggets of possible truth.  The right message, at a minimum.

Whew. You turn your back on the game for a few months, and everything goes all crazy!

After having been away (Real Life Sucks) from CO and CoX for a while, I have a few things to say, separately, about coming back. But, in the meantime, some thoughts on the CO news.

I won’t go into a lot of details on the Kitchen Sink patch (except to note the patches to deal with the patch that immediately followed). I think it’s cool that they’re trying to incorporate as many concerns and problems as they can.

That all said … looking at the “coming attractions” ….

“New Costume Sets in the C-Store” – Oh, boy. As in, so seriously not interested. I’m actually pretty happy with the costumes I have on the toons I have, and since I have no more slots available (mutter), there’s no big driver for me to change costumes. (Which, honestly speaking, I don’t do in CoX that much any more, either; I now have a Vet Award that gives me 50% off all Tailor Sessions, and most of my toons have free Tailor Tokens in the double digits.)

“I See a Blood Moon a Risin’” – Well, if we can have Rikti Invasions at random intervals, I guess we can have Werewolf Invasions every lunar month. Meh.

“This One Goes to Eleven” – Okay, this one looks good.

We’ll be introducing difficulty levels that players can set both for individual heroes and for their team. With 1 lower and 2 higher levels of difficulty to select from, players can create a challenge that fits their play style and ability.

Excellent. Soloists will be able to dial back difficulty levels. That will make life a lot easier.

“Flashing Back” – I don’t have any characters so far along that I feel the need to flash back with them.  It does make me worry that so many people do that this feature is considered worthwhile.

“Vibora Bay Watch” – Hmmmm. Okay, on the plus side, more content.  On the minus side, is the game so unbalanced that we need to focus on Lvl 37-40 content already?

Evidently there are indications in some references to this expansion pack that it’s going to be a paid content item, which has some portion of the CO community up in arms.  It’s certainly a different model than CoX (which has had one paid upgrade pack, with another coming soon, both of which were not just new zones), but we knew CO was designed differently from the start.  It will be interesting to see this play out.  I certainly don’t feel any compelling need to acquire it any time soon.

Especially for level 37-40.  Yeesh.  Give me a 12-20 zone, or a 20-30 zone, and I think you’d hit a lot more customers.  Self included.

The Cryptic Store finally shows what sorts of things you’re going to be able to buy, with new items going on sale Midnight tonight Tuesday (i.e., now).

• Costumes appear to be going for 240 points a pop (and there are some nice ones there, if you just Have to Have them).
• Emblem packs are 80 points each.
• Action Figures are 80 each.

Those are the old news. Now for the new:

• Character slots: 1200 for a set of 4 (beyond the initial 8).
• Costume slots: 400 for two additional (you get up to three plus one SG slot by lvl 40).
• Full respec: 1000 per hero for one respec/retcon.
• Rename: 800 for a single hero.

All are the above are for Cryptic Points. In addition to any you may have picked up elsewhere (I have 400), they can be bought for cash for USD $6.25 per 500 (under My Account). So those four character slots will set you back $15, if I’m doing my math (though it may be more, since you can only buy them in 500 CP increments).

Welcome to the world of microtransactions.

Are the prices reasonable? Hmmm. I suppose they’re not outrageous. It’s enough to make me think twice about doing them, though, which makes it problematic. Is it worth a month playtime (equivalent) to respec my hero? I dunno.

A pretty big patch (and one with a few troubles sticking, it seems).

A few highlights (RTWT):

General

• Early improvements to the Market. It’s now possible to search beyond the initial results, when there are potentially more items.

Anything that makes the Market a bit more interesting and better organized is a good thing.

User Interface and Chat

• Non-shareable missions can now be set to the Primary Mission.

Yes!

• When a Primary Mission is set, teammates who don’t have the mission will see the objectives in their mission tracker and will see the waypoints for that mission.
• When a Primary Mission is set, all teammates will only see the waypoints of the furthest-behind team member for that mission.
• You can now see the mission progress of your teammates next to their portraits. If a primary mission is set, this shows the primary mission. Otherwise, it shows the last mission that made progress on.
• Added arrows to expand/collapse team mission.

Some badly needed team interface improvements here.

• Clicking empty power slots opens the powers UI now ONLY when you are out of combat.

I didn’t know it did that before. I can see where that might have been, um alarming.

• Added special type-specific background icons for empty slots for all power and item types in main trays and builds UI to clarify what goes where.
• Added lightning bolt UI indicator for when you have points to spend at a Power House.
• Added target-of-target indicator to UI.

All good things.

• Chat – Long lines with multi-byte characters (such as ‘?’) will now wrap properly.
• Chat auto-complete now properly completes & replaces multi-word character names.
• Chat auto-complete for /tell now includes a list of recent /tell correspondents.
• Chat auto-complete is now annotated by color to indicate where player suggestions came from (e.g. team, friend, guild, local, chat, etc.). A textual annotation can also be turned on by going to Chat Settings – Options and checking on “Annotate Auto-Complete”.
• Using the same emote repeatedly will no longer spam chat text.
• Chat text will now replace $player with your name and $target with your target’s name. So you can e.g. ‘/bind y “emote point $$ local Attack $target!”‘.

Haven’t used Chat a lot, but, again, all good-sounding improvements.

Powers

• Martial Arts powers: Inexorable Tides: These power now gain bonus damage from the player’s Strength (up to +20%), the same as all other melee powers. As a reminder, this bonus is cumulative and not related to the bonus from your Characteristic Focuses.

Yay.

• A number of changes to pets have been made. All pets attempt to follow with 8’ of their owner. Read on for more changes.
• Combat Pets: Attack Mode: Critters attack the player’s target and will continue to do so until the target is dead. Then they will immediately target the player’s current target and use it as their own target and so on. If the player has no attack target the critter returns to the player. Players can cause the pets to switch targets at any time by pressing the attack button again. Targets for critters can only be set out to 150’ from the owner.
• Combat Pets: Assist Mode: If the player initiates combat, critters set their attack target to be the player’s target and attack. If the player (or critters) are attacked first, the critters use default aggro rules. Critters return to the player after combat has ended.
• Combat Pets: Passive Mode: Pets follow the player and never enter combat.
• Combat Pets: Stay Mode: Critters stop following the player and do not enter combat if the player does. If the critter takes damage it will enter combat. If this causes the critter to move more than 100’ from the spot it was told to stay, it will return to the spot after combat. Critters despawn if the player moves more than 200’ from the critter.
• Follow response time improved for pets. Pets also have collision with their owners.
• Fixed bug with Frenzy command for wolf pets that would cause them to not respond if one wolf dies.
• Fixed a case where a long range target could causes turrets in Assist mode to not fire.
• Healing Drones: Attack Mode: If player is targeting a friendly, that friendly will be used as the critter’s target. If targeting an enemy, the critter will use the enemy’s target as its own target. Drones will heal this target until they are over 90% health and then will return to the owner. Drones will not interrupt their healing to aid the player if their owner is damaged. Drones also do not switch targets if the enemy’s target changes. Pressing Attack again will update the target.
• Healing Drones: Assist Mode: Drones will heal the owner if below 90% health. If above 90%, drones will attempt to heal any allies within 50’ of the owner. If the owner moves outside of 50’, the drones will break off of their healing and follow the owner. If the owner drops below 90% health while healing an ally, the drones will switch to target their owner.
• Healing Drones: Passive Mode: Drones follow the player and do not heal.
• Healing Drones: Stay Mode: Critters remain stationary and attempt to heal any allies below 90% health within 12’ (the range of the healing beam), giving preference to their owner. Drones despawn if the owner moves over 200’ away from them.

Since Pet AI (esp. in Gadgets) has been a huge set of complaints, these should all help a lot.

Archery

• Quarry: Updated Quarry’s description to indicate that it does have ranks and what ranking it up does: “Increasing the rank of Quarry increases the amount that the Quarry buff reduces the energy cost of all of your powers by.”

Quarry’s a pretty cool power, and frequently used cross-framework.

Might

• Clobber: Sucker Punch: Can no longer interrupt Super Villains, Legendary Villains, or Cosmic Villains.
• Defensive Combo: The way this power applies the Defiance buff has been changed. It will no longer stack the Defiance buff, instead, it will apply 1 stack of Defiance if no stack currently exists, or refresh any number of existing applications of Defiance.
• Defensive Combo: Surge of Strength has been changed to function the same way, and now guarantees an application or refresh of Defiant on every swing.

I’ll leave Margie to tell me if this helps make Might more viable.

Unarmed

• Lightning Reflexes – Aura for Lightning Reflexes power can now have its color customized.

Excellent.

Missions/Environments

• Most mission rewards should now be equippable regardless of level so that if you can complete the mission you can equip the reward.

Excellent. I hate getting a whole bunch of mission awards … and find I can’t frelling use them. Rrg.

• Patrol Missions now drop items as loot rather than inserting them directly into your inventory.

Ugh. Anything that doesn’t directly add to inventory is a bad thing.

Millennium City

• “Jailbreak” – changed the ringleaders to run to a point when they spawn so that they are separated from one another. Also made the critters around the reward bag despawn when the mission is completed.

All good ideas.

There’s lots more. The CO Devs have been busy little beavers, which is a good thing.

Bill Roper chats on the current questions of balance.

We’re really working hard right now to dial the difficulty in from both ends of the spectrum. Some builds are very challenging to play, while others are still far too easy. The powers that are dramatically out of balance on either end of the spectrum are the easiest to identify and fix. As we’re finishing this first pass, we’re starting a more refined, surgical look at the powers so we can continue to make as many different combinations of powers fun to play.

I can’t say that I’ve found any combos that are overly easy to play.

What changes are being made to the threat system, particularly on the matter of zone mobs chain-pulling on players in groups?

What players are seeing is something in our reinforcement system at work. Champions Online isn’t a “pull one monster and everyone beat on it” style of game like most MMOs. When you solo through an area, encounter groups (usually 2-3 enemies) interact with you on a group-to-hero basis. When multiple heroes – whether on a team or not – attack these encounter groups, they’ll run and get help because they’re outgunned. A particular enemy from the encounter group gives off a “tell” that they’re running to get reinforcements, usually in the form of a chat bubble. Then they run off to get help. Players can use tactics to stop that enemy from getting reinforcements. This system allows us to scale for to multiple heroes clearing out an area, especially outdoors where people tend to get into the formal structure of a team less often than in instances. To be very clear – there isn’t random “chain-pulling” of enemies onto a player. This is a designed system that takes effect when numerous heroes fight encounter groups.

This doesn’t actually bug me all that much. Indeed, I actually think it’s a good thing.

We have a list of things that just missed the cut that we’re working on now. This includes being able to skip the tutorial after having completed it once with a hero, improving the functionality of the teaming system, doing some refurbishing to the very popular Powerhouse, and a few other things that we just haven’t prioritized yet.

Good to hear, on all accounts.

Chronomancer talks about CO’s economy. Folks have been griping about too few drops, too expensive retcons, etc.

Actually, at the risk of alienating people early days, I agree with the caution they’ve shown. Balancing always needs to be handled carefully. Make things too stingy, yes, and people grumble about it not being fun. Make things too easy, and people have the same grumbles. But loosening up always makes people cheer, while tightening down makes folks fume. Better to make few changes, and make things more fun, than to thrash back and forth frequently and “take things away.”

The bottom line of the analysis since they’ve gone live is that … well, yes, the economy was too tight. So there’s changes a-coming, starting on Test this weekend:

We’re increasing the number of white upgrade drops in the world by a substantial amount – close to double of what you’re seeing now.

Yay! Granted, that puts pressure on people’s inventory while in game, so expect some frustration if stores aren’t easier to find.

We’re also flattening out the curve on resources gained for selling upgrades to stores, meaning that you’ll get a lot more for white primaries, a little less at the highest end (blues and purples). This equates to distributing about the same overall potential resources while skewing gains to the lower end. We had originally considered just simply increasing the amount of resources you earned from selling all items to “fix” the economy. However, this would have broken crafting – hence the shifting of primary and secondary upgrade values that maintain a net balance of total resources you have coming in from selling upgrades.

Not breaking crafting is, I guess, good. At any rate, this shows a reassuring level of nuance (assuming they are correct). Ratcheting up the costing slider or the drop slider would be easy, but probably too crude.

We’re also increasing the amount of resources you get for defeating all enemies. This means not only will you naturally get more for doing missions, but you’ll also get more by helping others on their missions or by sweeping the streets. We’re also increasing the resources you get for mission rewards specifically.

More money is probably good.

The retcon pricing curve is going to be much gentler so that players can undo more decisions at any time. It’s important to note that although we’re tuning the overall costing model of retcon during this phase, a substantial retcon will still have a high price. The heroic, thematic nature of the game doesn’t support letting players constantly change their fundamental character concept. But at the same time we want to make it possible for them to completely retcon their character if it’s their goal.

I’m glad they’re easing the curve on this. Honestly, though, I don’t see the problems with letting folks easy re-roll their characters, esp. since I don’t anticipate it’s something that most folks will do.

Finally, we’ll be issuing a free retcon for all heroes when the economy changes go Live since it will take a little time for the effects of the new economy to allow players to build up a retcon bankroll.

I’ve inferred elsewhere that, like CoX, you can only have one “freespec” in your bag. The result here being, if you still have early-days characters that have a freespec, you should probably go ahead and use it before this goes live, since 1 + 1 will still equal 1.

Note that this is all giving us some data points, too — how frequently freespecs are given is always useful info as to how much they should be hoarded or spent.

Anyway, it’s good to see that, yes, they have been paying attention to player unhappiness on this, and that the direction is to loosen up on the money supply a bit. Good times should ensue.

Chronomancer chats on what’s going on. In summary …

• New repeatable mission chains for Monster Island are on their way to Test next week
• Enhancements to the team system to let everyone see more about team missions and team member missions.
• Some graphics improvements have gone live, but you may need to re-tune your sliders down if they were ratcheted all the way up (for high-end players).
• No ETA yet on not being able to send resources to other heroes. It’s on the list, but requires “a tech solution.”
• Balancing continues on powers, and on trying to get more resources into the economy.
• Getting black and white tinting into the powers is turning out to require some major work on the graphics engine. But … CoX did it!
• Celestial Powers are coming (yes, we know).
• They’re working on how to let players skip the Qularr Invasion tutorial if they’ve already done it once. “It’s next up on the list for our content lead, and we’re hoping to have this onto the Public Test Shard as soon as next week.”
• The plan is to make Club Caprice and the Powerhouse duel-free zones (thank you!) ASAP.
• The Powerhouse is also going to get a “Danger Room” to let you try out powers against automated enemies. Excellent.

All in all, sounds good.

Details on the patch that went in last night:

General
• Perks: Perk Cape Symbol Rewards: Fixed these rewards such that players cannot deconstruct them for parts or sell them to vendors once they have the unlocked symbol.
• Power Replace items sold by the Perk Vendor are now level 40. These items require the purchaser to be level 40 as well.
• Added some performance fixes to counteract some of the changes from last night’s patch.
• Fix for one of the major stalls while moving around.
• Fixed a crash some users were experiencing loading into the game with ATI graphics cards.
• We’ve added a number of performance improvements to Supergroups. Supergroup commands should be much more responsive now.

User Interface and Chat
• Large powers and advantages UIs are now movable.
• Fixed-position UIs and large window UIs no longer close each other (large window UIs DO still close other large window UIs).

I believe that means that you can have your character’s attribute list or power list open and still open the Powerhouse Trainer window. If so, excellent.

• Added search button to social UI.
• Map itself now takes up larger portion of the large map UI.

Good.

• Main map UI now can be shrunk a bit more.
• Integrated overflow bag into inventory and experiment UIs.

I’m not sure what that is, but it sounds promising.

• Many user-facing messages (in chat, etc.) have been reviewed/improved for grammar/consistency/brevity/clarity.
• Fixed a bug that prevented players with an @ in the account name from logging in from the game login screen.
• Changed the label on the remember account name check box to show Account Name instead of Username.
• Added “report spam” button to mail UI.

*sigh*

• Emanation points dropdowns now take up less space unless hovered.
• Builds UI now has powers in the same order as the main power tray.

Thank you. That’s caused some confusion (and inadvertent purchases) in the past.

• Guild UI now obeys guild offline check when first opened.
• Minimap locations dropdown now shows your crafting school type (or doesn’t show that option if you have none); also sized to fit correctly in all languages.

YES! WOOT! EXCELLENT! (It’s about time.)

Wait, does that mean you can see what your crafting school is? Or that you can filter out crafters that aren’t of that type? Hopefully both.

Powers
• Toned down the loud jetboots audio.

Good. I respecced an early character because of that.

• Ice: Ice Cage (and all Ice powers that apply Ice Cage): Fixed a bug that allowed the root to be stacked many times on a single target. The root should now only be able to be placed once on a target at any given time.
• Ice: Wall of Ice: Frozen Footsteps advantage: Fixed 2 separate bugs: Players now actually have to move (as the description says) for the path to be formed. Also made it so individual critters can only be affected by the path once, so you can’t get 4 or 5 Ice Explosions on a single target.
• Telepathy: Mindful Reinforcement: Revitalizing Boost should now actually give energy when it is triggered, instead of giving zero energy.
• Telepathy: Mindful Reinforcement: Ranks 2 and 3 should properly absorb damage now.

Missions/Environments
• Critter: Gadroon: Instant “thunderclap” PBAoE used by Adjudicator and Slavemaster can no longer hold players.
• Critter: Gadroon: Adjudicator now uses Melee AI.
• Critter: Gadroon: Gravatic Shaper and Invasion Leader now have a basic attack to use while their schtick attacks are on cooldown.
• Critter: Gadroon: Gravatic Shaper’s Containment Field now has a overhead schtick tell.
• Critter: Gadroon: Lancer and Terrafromer’s Gravatic Rift now snares instead of pulls.
• Critter: Gadroon: Lancer and Terraformer’s Gravatic Rift now does less damage.
• Critter: Gadroon: Lancer and Terraformer’s Gravatic Lance (basic attack) now correctly displays FX.
• Critter: Gadroon: Lancer and Terraformer’s Gravatic Lance (basic attack) no longer penetrates defenses.
• Critter: Gadroon: Fixed art timing on Gravatic Bolt (basic attack) used by many Gadroon.
• Critter: Gadroon: Gravatic Initiate now less likely to use its charge up hold power.
• Critter: Gadroon: Gravatic Initiate’s hold now correctly displays FX.
• Gadroon: Terraforming Spire’s Toxic Gas now properly snares instead of holds, and does 90% less damage.

Desert
• Nadir of the Invaders: Increased timer for open mission to 10 minutes to prevent exploit.
• Asciing for Trouble: Increased timer for open mission to 10 minutes to prevent exploit.
• Hang ‘Em High: Increased timer for open mission to 10 minutes to prevent exploit.
Canadian Wilderness

On the plus side, huzzah for no exploit. On the minus side, if you miss it, you have to hang around (or find something else to do) for 10 minutes. Yawn.

• Undead on Arrival: Increased timer for open mission to 10 minutes to prevent exploit.
• Reign of Frogs: Increased timer for open mission to 10 minutes to prevent exploit.
• Hunters Hunting: Fixed issue where Hunter-Patriot Lts. were unkillable if players were not on the mission to interrogate them.
• Hyperborean Woodland Warding: Fixed issue where Maj. Hendges would not interact with players. Maj. Hendges now gives the patrol mission “Hyperborean Woodland Warding” which takes the place of the mission which existed there previously: Echo Escort.

Millennium City
• A Bullet Bound For Biselle: Increased timer for open mission to 10 minutes to prevent exploit.
• A Bullet Bound For Biselle: Found and fixed the issue where the mayor could miss an FSM trasition causing him to not run away and despawn when a mission fails. This should allow the mission to properly reset after the mission failed.
• Jail Break: Increased timer for open mission to 10 minutes to prevent exploit.
• Repaired a badly offset patrol mission door that was not allowing people to access it.
• My Lost Foot: Fixed a bug that could cause Xiress to despawn, causing players to be unable to find her.
• Destroids Rise Again: Fixed a bug that could cause the Mega-Destroid not to despawn when the mission ends if it is in combat.
• Destroids Rise Again: Increased the number of rescues required for the first stage of the open mission (to give more players a chance to show up). Increased the cooldown of the mission to 90 minutes.
• Destroids Rise Again: Fixed a bug that caused Destroids guarding the Retribution Devices not to attack.
• Waterfront Watcher: Fixed a bug that could cause James Harmon to freeze and prevent players from interacting with him.

Monster Island
• Great Barrier Grief: Increased timer for open mission to 10 minutes to prevent exploit.
• Crisis on Monster Island: Removed a level restriction on the Monster Island Crisis queue. This should have no game effect, since the level restriction on the mission and the level restriction on the queue were the same.

Lemuria
• Plunder the Sea: Increased timer for open mission to 10 minutes to prevent exploit.
• Ship of Fouls: Increased timer for open mission to 10 minutes to prevent exploit.
• Crisis in Lemuria: Fixed a bug that could prevent level 31 players with the Crisis missions from not being able to join the queue even if they had the correct mission.

Nemesis
• Added VO to The Drifter in the Nemesis Gold Mine mini.

Crafting
• Crafting UI now sorts by level as the default (instead of by slot).

Not sure where that applies, but it sounds useful.

Costume Creator/Tailor
• The Tailor now uses the correct texture to indicate an inconsistent randomize lock state.
• Fixed a bug where unlocking a new Pattern would show the material name, instead of the pattern name.
• Fixed a bug where the list of unlocked costume parts would only indicate that it was available for one side, when it was available for both.

Hero Games
• Changed the Stronghold HUD and final scoreboards to display NPC heroes/villains defeated rather than total opponents defeated. Previously, the HUD had been tracking total kills, and it counted destroyed objects as kills. Now it doesn’t care about objects or henchmen NPCs.
• Hero Games Store: Fixed a bug where purchasing the basic Luchador Costume in the Hero Games store would only unlock one mask. It will now unlock all four Luchador masks.
• Hero Games: Volatile perk: Fixed a bug that caused players not to receive credit for the Volatile perk on the High-Tech arena map.

So no biggies (per current complaints) clearly they’re working on stuff.

The full DevChat transcript from today is here. A few items that caught my eye (there are a number I do not quote below — read the whole thing, if you’ve an interest):

[18:40] <@cryptic_chronomancer> The goal is to have you feel challenged enough that being a hero means something without being frustrated or feeling overwhelmed. As you can expect, it isn’t easy, and no MMO comes out perfectly balanced. But we’re dedicated to getting there. PVE is the main focus of the game, but we’ve found that our PVP system is fun and popular.
[18:40] <@cryptic_chronomancer> As for a focus on balance, the game should be fun for both styles of play. We’ll continue to create new content for both PVE and PVP. As for support, there are powersets already that are more geared towards this. Sorcery is a good example. The upcoming Celestial set is going to be great for players that want to focus on support powers, as well.
[18:41] <@cryptic_chronomancer> As for balancing, our goal is to only decrease the effectiveness of powers if they are honestly broken (doing multiples of expected damage, for example). It’s better for us focus on fixing broken powers that aren’t effective enough before we lower the effectiveness of powers.
[18:41] <@cryptic_chronomancer> Basically, we’re thinking more surgically moving forward in regards to how we address balance as opposed to dropping huge bombs.

Which all sounds good (esp. the focus on PVE and the ability for “support” characters to shine).

[18:43] <@Cryptic_AntiProton> Two villains is meant to be a challenging normal pull. You’ll definitely want to be blocking, or using LOS, or using a hold power, or all of those tricks at once. Using a consumable device, either one of the healing things crafters make, the ones the stores sell, or one of the rare critter drops would also help.

I’m always forgetting to use heal devices. Or else I feel I need to horde them, since they’re a pain to build or acquire.

[18:50] <@Cryptic_Ignoble> We are still working on the pricing of the retcon system and will make changes as needed. We are actively working on additional functionality for the retcon system, as well. Some of the changes that have been requested are more complicated than others and so they’ll require time from the technology team.
[18:51] <@Cryptic_Ignoble> Our goal with the retcon system is to provide targeted retcons for characters that are specifically affected by changes. For example, if we made a significant change to a powerset – or even a single power – we could issue a retcon to just the heroes affected by that change.

Targeted respecs is an interesting idea. But, honestly, it’s not that big a deal for folks to have respecs, whether or not a power that’s changed is one that they currently have. I think they’re over-thinking this.

[18:52] <~COquestionbot> <Revik> Q: Why do meleer’s get the weakest roots when we need it the most due to Charge skills being rendered useless if they just back away.
[18:52] <@Cryptic_Balseraph> Roots and melee: yes, if your target backs away from your charge, well, there will be a bit of distance between you. However, the root that’s built into Mighty Leap should affect them regardless. If it isn’t, that’s a bug, and we’ll fix it. In practical terms, I melee roots should fee powerful, because they can be applied very quickly. That being said
[18:52] <@Cryptic_Balseraph> if you really want to be a melee character that can take on ranged people, you need to either have a charge or a “yoink” (our name for Shuriken advantage “Chained Kunai” or Iron Lariat)

I’ve avoided Shuriken on all the characters that could use it … so far. Knowing that I can use an advantage on it to pull people to me may change my mind.

[18:53] <@Cryptic_Balseraph> Melee powers, based on how you’re stated, do between 30% more damage than ranged powers over the same period of time, for the same cost. Some players have the impression that melee attacks are weaker than some ranged powers, because some fully charged melee attacks don’t do as much damage as some fully charged ranged attacks. Well, that’s true, until you look
[18:53] <@Cryptic_Balseraph> at the time it took to make the attack. Most melee attacks get fully charged in just 1 second or less, compared to a 2.5 to 3 seconds for some ranged attacks.
[18:54] <@Cryptic_Balseraph> Melee attacks can get up to an additional 20% bonus to their damage from your strength score. This bonus is completely separate and distinct from you Characteristic Focus bonus; it’s in addition to that. We just put a change in where you need much less strength to get to that 20% bonus. The intent of this change was to allow melee builds that didn’t focus on
[18:54] <@Cryptic_Balseraph> strength to be more viable. You still need to pay attention to it with your gear, but its no longer required that it be your Characteristic Focus (i.e. Super Strength) to get the full benefit.

This is a shining example of information that’s really important for players to know, but which is not at all explained by the game. It’s good to know — but it shouldn’t require following the forums or a particular DevChat to know it.

[18:54] <~COquestionbot> <NeoWolf> Question: will we EVER be able to see weapons in the costume creator/tailor screen before we have to pay to add or recolor them?
[18:55] <@Cryptic_AntiProton> We totally want to get that working eventually, yes. What just got in with being able to select them in character creator (though not see them) was ahead of schedule, which is awesome. The artist that did the setup work for the weapon geos to even be able to be swapable and I both really want to see it fully working in both the tailor and the character creator
[18:56] <@Cryptic_AntiProton> like a lot of features we had to put it on hold for launch, but now that we are released it is on the list of things to get done.

Yeah, this is something that needs work.

[18:57] <~Cryptic_Daeke> <Antis3al> What are your plans to fix the leveling gaps? A player can still level if they dig for every single quest out there, but currently they don’t connect in any logical way; and the content is still spread thin, sometimes requiring a player to do quests several levels above their own. Is there a coming solution or even awareness of the problem?
[18:57] <@Cryptic_Ignoble> We are currently working to add a number of additional missions and instanced content to help fill several content gaps we have identified. These will begin making their way out to the server over the next few weeks and will hopefully integrate seamlessly with the content that already exists.

I hope one of the areas is early Millennium City content, around Lvl 12-13. Right now it’s all pretty much 14+, but it’s easy to wrap up some major threads in Canada/Desert and figure it’s time to hit the city. Frustration ensues.

19:00] <~COquestionbot> <ian33w> Is it possible to increase the range of Sorcery’s Auras as most powers are 50 to 100 feet?
[19:00] <@Cryptic_Balseraph> Sorcery: Sorcery is, right now, getting a major “quality of life” overhaul. some bits (like the sigils) are being made stronger. Other parts are just being made less difficult to use. One big thing, Circles of Summoning are now being flagged as “Rituals of Summoning”. They look exactly the same, and work exactly the same, but now are cumulative (stack with) C
[19:01] <@Cryptic_Balseraph> Circles of Power. Additionally, we’re elminating the property where they eat ALL your energy, so you can get back into the fight more quickly with them. And, yes, we’ll be increasing the range of the auras. =)

Good to know.

[19:02] <~COquestionbot> <Vahn> Q: in single blade powerset, why theres no love for two handed weapons?
[19:02] <@Cryptic_Balseraph> Single Blade: We’re going to give BIG GIANT two handed weapons so much love, they’re going to get their own set. Eventually. =)

That will make many people happy.

[19:10] <~COquestionbot> <WebGuest69> What are the end game plans for champions online? What reasons are there to continue to keep playing a character after you hit the level cap?
[19:10] <@cryptic_chronomancer> We have end game content in several areas of the game: PVP, Crafting, Missions, Perks, and Nemesis. All of these systems have content that you can only accomplish after reaching level 40.
[19:10] <@cryptic_chronomancer> The Stronghold Apocalypse opens in PVP. There are crafting components that can only be gained in level 40+ maps and the blueprints to use those are going in soon.
[19:10] <@cryptic_chronomancer> The daily UNITY hot-spots and repeatable high-end lairs are in for mission-fiends There are very long-term perks that will require lots of play to accomplish.
[19:10] <@cryptic_chronomancer> And you can build and defeat up to 18 different Nemesis. The best part is we’re going to build on all of these systems moving forward as well as creating new end-game things for heroes to do.

Which will be interesting. It seems to me, though, from my (limited) experience is that the big problem with Level Cap toons is that, except for incremental wealth improvements, they don’t really advance after they cap out. Regardless of content, that isn’t going to change.

[19:18] <~Cryptic_Daeke> <Kahleek> Will we ever be able to cherry pick which powers to retcon?
[19:18] <@cryptic_chronomancer> While this seems like it would be simple, it actually isn’t. With all of the associated characteristics, talents, advantages, tier requirements and so on, it is difficult to just pull out a power in the middle of the stack, as it were.
[19:18] <@cryptic_chronomancer> Making a change like this will require a lot of work on the technology side, so unfortunately while we’re looking into it, it won’t be any time soon.

I take their word for it, but it’s unfortunate. It would be great to be able to simply say, “Y’know, that power 8 lvls down was a mistake …”

[19:19] <~COquestionbot> <Per_Ignim> Question: Is it intended that a full retcon cost more than 50 times as much as it is reasonable to expect a character to have at any given level?
[19:19] <@Cryptic_Balseraph> Retconning and the Economy: First, there isn’t enough money flowing into the game right now. This is a completely known issue, and we have several different options that we’re testing. Basically, yes, we knowingly erred on the side of a too restrictive money supply to see what trends happened, and be able to catch issues (like dupe bugs) very quickly. Now
[19:19] <@Cryptic_Balseraph> we’re getting ready to make some significant changes to drop rates of items and resources from critters… and all of them are basically going to be “more”. =) The question, of course, is how much more; since neither we nor you wants the economy to be something that changes several times. For retcons in specific, I think that the cost scaling when you go deep
[19:20] <@Cryptic_Balseraph> might be found to be too high even after we’ve inflated the economy to where we want it to be. If so, well, we’ll change it. Easy. The current balance goal is that all of the money you earn in a SINGLE level should allow you to retcon back FIVE steps.

Drops are definitely broken — but, really, that still seems like too expensive a proposition. Maybe I’m spoiled by the steady stream of freespecs on CoX.

[19:24] <~COquestionbot> <draulfox> Question: How often do you guys visit the suggestion forums ? When you do, do you go back many pages and read every thread? How do you select what you read?
[19:25] <~Cryptic_Daeke> Every day. A ton of the higher-ups here are always asking us what players want to see most in the game (aside from the constant balancing and fixes that may be needed). I go through and collect a bunch of the most popular ideas and pass them on.
[19:25] <~Cryptic_Daeke> We also grab ones that we happen to think are really cool ideas as well.
[19:25] <~Cryptic_Daeke> In fact, earlier in the chat we took a question about adding a “Danger Room” to the Power House, and I definitely remember seeing that in the Suggestions forum.
[19:26] <~Cryptic_Daeke> So, even though we don’t respond to the Suggestions forum very often, we’re definitely following it very closely.

Also good to hear.

[19:30] <~COquestionbot> <Shiroi98> question: when will claw powers be revisited? right now its damage is really horrible compared to the other martial arts
[19:31] <@Cryptic_Balseraph> Claws powers: Claws powers are intended to inflict excellent damage over time for their energy cost. If it isn’t, we’ll look at it. Additionally, the “Shredded” debuff that they can inflict raises not only your own dps, but that of every team mate with you. That being said, Claws is a crit – happy set, and you should really spec for a high crit rate to get th
[19:31] <@Cryptic_Balseraph> to get the most out of it.

Margie’s very much enjoying a claws solo toon right now (even as I type).

[19:31] <~COquestionbot> <Feigr> Question: Are there any plans to add a gray scale the palette for powers?
[19:32] <@cryptic_chronomancer> We’re looking into the potential technical issue behind this (hues vs tints) but we have heard your desires and are working to make it happen! I know I’d use it to make a noir munitions character.

Huzzah!

This has been on Test a few days, and it goes live tonight. There’s a lot there, but here are a few highlights that caught my eye.

• A full Retcon is available for any character created before 2009-09-10 08:30 UTC. To use it, visit the Powers Trainer, choose “Retcon,” and click on “Use Free Reset.” 
• This patch provides a number of changes to various power sets. Please check the detailed patch notes before making any decisions regarding power purchasing (or before redeeming your free Retcon).

Both very important notes. First off, they’ve decided not to finesse the respec to just characters that were created during the Early Start. Either that was more difficult than believed, or they figured they’d just do the right thing and give everyone a respec (which, given it’s a new game, and they’re doing some further power changes this time, makes sense).

So RTFM!

General

• […] Changed the way Strength adds to physical melee damage powers. Damage bonus is still capped at 20%, but this cap is now much easier to reach, and can be reached just through some modest effort at collecting gear, without a Characteristic Focus in Strength. This change has NO EFFECT on damage added from taking Strength as a Characteristic Focus. This is a distinct and separate bonus.

I don’t particularly understand this one, but I don’t understand the normal Strength bonus for melee vs. what it sounds like comes when you take Strength as a Characteristic Focus.

• The help UI now includes an internal game manual.

The more in-game help, the better.

• Reduced quantity of posts to Twitter and Facebook.

Well, that doesn’t explain much, does it? I’ll have to look and see. I wonder if that will address the 408 error that was being generated by Twitter.

User Interface and Chat

• The in-game mouse cursor has all-new appearances based on whether you’re pointing at a friend, an enemy, etc.

Good.

• The minimap now has a settings button on the right side (indicated by a gear). Under settings you can toggle what kind of icons you want the minimap to display.

Useful.

• Added a new social button to the minimap which will open the social window.

Better than using the menu system,

• There is now a sell confirmation for double-clicking an item in the store, and by right-clicking an item in your inventory while the store is open. There will not be any confirmation if you click the sell button at the bottom of the store window.

Yes! I’ve sold several things inadvertently that way. “Hmmm, do I want to sell this? No, let’s put it in my … wait, where did it go?

• Added /itunes and /winamp to set the active music player and open it.

Um … okay.

• Added search button to social UI.

That sounds helpful.

• Large windows no longer auto-close fixed-position windows when opened (they still close other large windows, though).

Powers

Margie observes that “now functions properly” usually means a nerf (if not further explained).

Many Power tweaks. Worth reading in detail.

Crafting

• Added Competent, Skilled, Very Skilled, Highly Skilled to all component descriptions to clarify what band of skill levels they are used in Blueprints.
• If you have no crafting blueprints, you now get basic instructions in the crafting UI when you open it.

Anything they can do to make this more transparent and easier to understand is well worth it.

By the way, is there a way to tell what school and subspecialty in crafting you’ve taken with a character?

Anyway, as noted, there’s a ton more. Not surprising at this stage of the game, and good that they’re responding as quickly as they are to problems.

I love the Acrobatics travel power. It’s coolness in the extreme — the leaping, the tumbling, all that. It’s even better in a bestial stance, but even for normals it’s extremely keen.

I’ll never take it agan. Nor Super-Speed. Possibly not Super-Jump (on the principle that what goes up must come down), though I remain open on that; Teleport might be similarly of concern.

Here’s my problem. Aggro. As in, “there are angry mobs everywhere, you can’t avoid them, and as soon as they aggro you as you run / caper past, you slow down, and they shoot you from afar and follow you to the ends of the Earth.”

I was running Kitsune in Canada (Phase II) yesterday. We had fishy business up by the river, and it was a freaking epic quest for me to get from Steelhead to mission sites, time and again. I felt like I was infiltrating behind enemy lines. Meanwhile, Margie’s Surprise waggled her little fairy wings and flitted above the fray. “Do you need me to watch over for you?”

Feh.

If Travel Powers didn’t suddenly slow down when you aggro or when you’re aggroed, but only when you actually attack someone, it wouldn’t be a problem. As it stands, though, it’s a serious pain, and one that I can easily avoid by simply not taking some delightful powers.

Related to that — is it too much to ask for radio messaging with contacts? Even CoX realized a long time back that having to trot back to the contact every time is a real Quality of LIfe annoyance, and given the above concerns, it can be hazardous to one’s health, too.

Sure, the desert is subject to radiation interference, and the auroras in the tundra are something fierce … but surely we can get a secure radio contact with Dr. Fred or Lt. Joe-Bob after we run a mish or two for them. Not to mention Justiciar …

Well, this looks like it could be fun …

There is a chill wind blowing through Millennium City. It’s late October and the moon has taken on a sinister aspect, staining the sky a bloody red. The superhero Witchcraft, of the Champions, warns that this is a dire portent of an approaching mystical threat. There have been sightings of strange creatures emerging across the world, those of savage werewolves and flesh-craving zombies. Even worse, they bear with them the tidings of a great evil returning to the world… Takofanes, the Undying Lord!

Eek!

When Takofanes last strode across North America he killed all who crossed him to swell the ranks of his undead army. The first attempt America’s superheroes made to stop him resulted in the death of half a dozen of them. A second more concentrated attempt managed to drive Takofanes from the battlefield, but he could not be defeated. Now Takofanes has returned once again with hordes of his minions, citing prophecies of doom and proclaiming his coming reign over humanity!

Gasp!

   * Explore the new Celestial Powerset. Use the power of the Seraphim to heal and strengthen your allies, or release the fury of the Nephilim in a battle against evil.
   * Beware the Zombie Apocalypse rising in Canada! Battle against zombies in PVP, but no matter what, do not fall there. Should you die, you shall return as one of the undead horde, bound to fight in Takofanes’ name.
   * Fight off ravenous werewolf packs, but be careful lest you get bitten and infected with their dark magic.
   * Stand against undead heroes who once fought in the Battle of Detroit, and do your best to free their souls from Takofanes’ necromancy.
   * Challenge Takofanes to drive him from our land, but beware – you must fight the dark sorcerers who serve him before you have any chance of facing the Undying Lord.

So it sounds like there are some lycanthropy/zombification aspects where you can be “turned” into something wicked this way coming. That could be very fun indeed, if (true to the comics genre) all is set right in the end.