Category: Character Design

Discussion on the boards about … Holy Mother of Pearl … could it be?  Yes!

Server Transfer and Renaming features being tested.

It’s … about … time.

Quoth Lighthouse:

Starting on Tuesday, July 17th, the Training Room Test Server will have two new game features enabled for testing: Character Transfer and Character Rename.
Character Transfer will allow customers to move characters from one server to another.
Character Rename will allow customers to rename a selected character.

Both of these features are not part of Issue 10: Invasion. Although we are beginning to test them now, we anticipate that they will not be enabled on the live service until after the launch of Issue 10.

We estimate that both features, Character Transfer and Character Rename, will carry a transaction fee of $9.99 each per use (there will be no fee for transfers to or renames on the Training Room). Should a Character Transfer have a name conflict on the destination server, a free Character Rename will be made available to resolve the conflict and rename the moving character.

So, at $10, not something people will do casually.  But it would be very nice to be able to do it — and, honestly, to the extent that I do any teaming, I would be willing to shift most characters someplace else for some sort of group TF/SF activity.

We feel the price of these features is enough to prevent potential abuse, but also reasonable enough to not be prohibitive for those who want to improve their gaming experience by moving servers or changing a character name.

I’m sure people have detailed it somewhere on the boards, but lacking the motivation to ferret it out … what sort of “potential abuse” is there in server transfer?  (Or, really, in renaming?)

Will “GenericHero003497” be able to rename him/herself, I wonder?

Interesting bit here:

IMPORTANT! Customers who are interested in taking advantage of the Character Transfer service should know that it is possible in the future that we may make changes to the game that would remove the need to Transfer servers. One example of such a change would be a “server-less” game configuration where all players can group with anyone, without the restriction of which server they play on. We are not committing to this “server-less” configuration, and in fact there are no plans to implement a “server-less” environment this calendar year, but because we are charging a fee for these services, it is important that our players understand that the possibility exists. We want to be very clear in this regard so that those who do decide to make use of a Server Transfer, when it becomes available, understand that they may not need it in the future.

I have no idea how something like this would work (various DC “Crisis” comics would indicate the answer is “badly”), but … well, good on them for giving a warning.

Some official ramificaitions:

All purchases are final and non-refundable.

Any disputed credit card charge can lead to a permanent account closure. Please ensure that the card on file that you are using is the correct one you wish to make the charge to!

Keep in mind that after the character is moved, your Friend’s list of players on that server will no longer be valid and you will be removed from any Supergroup that character was included in.

Taskforces or Strikeforces in progress will be abandonded.

Kiosk stats will be preserved, but rating positions will likely change.

We cannot guarantee that your character’s name will be available on the destination server you move to.  Should there be a name conflict, your character will be issued a free character rename to change the name.

Some other Red Name (mostly Lighthouse) observations on this:

• It could be, in the future, be a Vet Reward.
• It’s cheaper than other MMORPGs … though I still don’t understand the pricing.
• Is it time for another inactive name purge?  Maybe.
• No copies, just transfers.  Hmmmm.  Not sure why not, though.
• Once you move, your name is freed up on your old server.  Some interesting RP possibilities there (“I want to keep Lvl 50 Psi-clone, but start off a new Lvl 1 Psi-clone, too.”)
• Friends lists won’t be updated (in the case of renames) until you zone or log.
• Worried that “Psi-clone” is already taken on Virtue, and you’re afraid if you move him you’ll have to rename him to something else?  Try creating a character there by that name first and see if the name is taken.

I have no idea how much advantage I’m liable to take of this feature at the moment.  $10 is enough to make it not something I’d do casually, but if I really wanted to move some folks onto Champs, I have some other character (which I don’t want to delete) that I could move elsewhere (which would cost me $20, which is steep, but not utterly, completely out of the question).

Anyhow … it’s definitely something that’s been asked for, and I’m glad it’s here.

Cool Q&A with Jay Doherty, lead costume designer for CoX.  Here’s an interesting one:

Community Qestion (Belga): Can we be given access to the NPC costume pieces? Many players would love to use the Carnival of Shadows pieces, for example, and I’d really like to have access to the Mu Mystics costumes.

Jay Doherty: When NPCs where first made there was no intention to give players those costume pieces, mostly because they would not work with other costume pieces (ex: clipping, overlapping) When the PPD exobot guys were first put into the game, players really wanted those pieces for themselves. Unfortunately all those pieces where made to work with each other not as separate pieces, and they look really silly if you don’t have all the pieces on. So to address this we have come up with a few solutions. First, while not completely copying the carnival of shadows I have built a completely new costume set with the flavour of the carnival. Second, there will be a new NPC group that was built with the player in mind, all costume pieces from this NPC group will be something players will be able to wear. Now depending on how the players respond to this is how we’ll handle more things in the future. Please don’t think that every NPC costume group from this point on will be given to the players, but I will put forth the effort to do as many as possible.

Rumor has it that some of this shows up in I10.

Other topics include scabbards and quivers (not soon), new body types (nope, would have to port over all the costumes), long skirts (nope, too much clipping), I10 stuff (4 new costume sets done so far, 3 of them player-requested), and what he’d most like to put in (A chef costume set, an evil clown costume set, 1930’s robot costume set).

Costume items, to date, have been to date of six sorts:

1. Stuff that’s there in the costume builder from the get-go.
2. Stuff that requires a specific, mission (e.g., the cape mission) to unlock.  (Arguably, this applies to recostumiing missions for Icon et al.) 
3. As #2, but event-related (Winter and Valentires costume pieces).
4. Feature items with box sets (e.g., helmets via buying the CoV box set).
5. Vet Rewards.

One of CoX’s greatest strengths has been its character creator and costuming.  It’s constantly under expansion, and many folks are drawn to the game just for it.  Requests for a stand-alone costumer are regularly received by the devs, and a lot of people roll up alts just to try out a new visual concept.

Note that most of the above items are available to anyone in the game, at least after a certain period of play. Options 3-4 aren’t, but the number of pieces involved, and their “hotness,” is pretty liimited.  Having the toga is nice if you want a togaed character, but I haven’t heard too much wailing over that.

I9 introduces a new class of costume item:

6.  Costume inventions.

Now, we’ll leave alone the idea of “inventions” for developing costume pieces.  (“You mean I can get all this spiffy power armor stuff just for free, but if I want fairy wings vs bat wings I need to ‘invent’ something?”)  The changed dynamic here is that in order to get the stuff, you need …

a.  To find an invention recipe.
b.  To buy an invention recipe.
c.  To find or buy the underlying ingredients for the recipe.

Simply playing the game isn’t enough.  Especially when these costume pieces — and I’m talking wing types here — are considered premium bits, by design.  Quoth Positron:

I looked at the dataminer today at the costume drop rate and it IS lower than we anticipated.

We are looking into making some changes, but do not expect anything radical or quick.

We DO want costume recipes to be “commodities” that players actively seek and pay top inf. for, but we do not want them to be so rare that players can’t get them, ever, in the course of their play.

If you don’t have “top influence” or aren’t a high enough level to get it, you are SOL.  If you don’t want to be a day-trader at Wentworths (“Where CoX meets eBay with 1985-style computer interfaces!”), you are SOL.  If you want to play a fairy character or a draconic character or a winged robot or whatever, and you’re not a “playah,” you’re SOL.

That just strikes me as a horrible strategic decision on the devs’ part.  If costuming is such a big part of the game, then leveraging that to taunt folks into the invention system is manipulative at best, and for those who don’t want to dive into its clutches, a shut-out at worst.  It’s like going to Disneyland, getting your entrance pass, but being told that some rides can only be ridden if you pay a lot extra, or find a random FastPass ticket for them.  It stops being about fun and starts being about commerce.

Bad idea.

New respec a-coming with the 3rd Anniversary of CoH.

We wanted to let players know that, as part of our celebration of the 3rd year anniversary of City of Heroes, we will be applying a free respec to all characters. So, if you have been wanting to change your powers around a little bit, switch up your power slotting or make other changes, this will be a good time to do it!

[…] The actual timing of when the respec is applied is likely to be shortly after the actual Anniversary on April 28th. We will post here with specific dates when they are available.

To be honest, I’ve been at it long enough that I have so many Vet Award respecs that … well … not terribly meaningful.

But it beats the heck out of not having a respec when desired.