CO: Patch Notes

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.

TWITTER IS TEH EEEEVIL!!!!

Perhaps I have drunk too deeply of the Kool-Aid, but I find myself ever-more bemused by the rabid hatred that some folks have for Twitter. The micro-blogging social media tool is either (a) stupid, (b) idiotic, (c) a waste of time and bandwidth, (d) an active force for evil in this world, or (e) all of the above.

There’s a new article at Ars Technica about the use of Twitter in online games, specifically auto-Tweeting from the games. The case study is about Uncharted 2.

Uncharted 2 was created with a feature Naughty Dog seemed rather excited about: the game would tweet your progress in the game automatically. That meant that your friends would know what you were playing, and how far along you were. It seemed like a good idea, until review copies were sent to the gaming press.

Soon, if you followed the industry, the entirety of some Twitter feeds consisted of messages about their progress in the game. This created something of a backlash, as other gaming writers—which may have included this one—took to tweeting about their progress in random boardgames. A consensus seemed to be reached that allowing a game to take over your Twitter account was a bad thing. Naughty Dog noticed the negative publicity, and very quickly pulled the plug on the feature.

The rest of the article is all about how gaming companies are trying to figure out the right use of Twitter, but that auto-Tweeting is definitely Not It.

The comments are just as bad, if not worse. Not only is some of the anti-Twitter rhetoric even more pointed (“The root of Twiitter is ‘twit'” and “I just don’t get it” (as if that answered everything)), but even the Tweeters make the point that auto-Tweeting is always, categorically, summarily a Bad Thing. (Oh, and a “waste of bandwidth,” as if all the Tweets in a 24-hour period came close to one downloaded movie in bandwidth usage.)

I beg to differ.

Interestingly, Champs Online, as a brand new game with Twittering (and Facebook and something else, too) capability doesn’t get a mention. But it’s story arc parallels that of Uncharted 2. The Twitter feature went live with go-live, and it was immediately clear that it was waaaay overkill. Not only did the updates overwhelm Twitter, but people simply weren’t expecting them to be as frequent as they were (thanks to the standard CO dearth of documentation). A patch later, and things got throttled way back. 

And now?

Well, I make use of it, but I’ve also been careful to create a separate Twitter account to do so. But within those bounds, it works pretty well as a way to track the progress of characters in the game. If nothing else, it makes for some nice fodder when posting here is light on the ground. I’ll be able to look back at some point and say, “Hey, I remember that character” or “Who was I was running who defeated Foxbat?”

It’s not perfect (as if anything in CO) is, but it has potential (just as so much in CO does). I’d like to see some serious control in the Tweeting interface beyond just simple checks on/off. E.g., rather than every 5 levels announcing it, allow someone to make it a number higher than 5. Allow the level of Perks or whatever to be eased back as well.

Offering some guidance, too, would be helpful for users. As would letting the social media settings be set globally for all characters or just for individual ones. And, honestly, there should be some sort of identifying text or hashtag in the Tweets that are made, so that it’s clear what they’re for/from. Even better, as suggested, if a Tweet is going to go out, allow for a prmopt to come up about it to confirm (if not even edit) it.

But the big thing to remember is that this is all voluntary. Everything about Twitter and the reading of same is. Not interested in hearing someone Tweeting about their gameplay? You don’t have to follow them. Wow. What a concept. You never actually see stuff on Twitter unless you explicitly follow someone. And you can easily stop at any time.

Let me repeat that. If someone is Tweeting about their game, and you don’t like it, unfollow them. Better yet, if you’re really interested in what they were saying earlier, but you think the game Tweets are drowning that out, let them know that. 

Yes, I know it’s much more self-amusing to make snide comments about how stupid Twitter is and Twitterers are, or how sophomoric it is to auto-Tweet your game achievements, and to make broad generalizations about What Should or Should Not Ever Be on the Web, like an Internet Mister Blackwell. On the other hand, it’s very difficult to take responsibility for your own reactions to things, to not turn them into universal verities, and to tune your Internet access to just see what you want, rather than demand that everyone follow your particular bliss. 

But, y’know, it might be worth giving it a try.

Return to Yesterday – playing CoX again

Went to play CO tonight … and the server was down. So, back to CoX!

We pulled up a pair of villains we had at 18 (and managed to ding 20 by the end of the evening), but of more interest (to me) was the areas of difference between the two games (and the one I prefer).

  1. The graphics/animation are the most obvious. While CO goes for a cartoony look, Cox goes for semi-realism, full of shades and textures. Unlike some who consider one (or the other) an abomination, I can accept both approaches. I prefer CO, but not to the point where it makes me refuse to play CoX. CO
  2. The default perspective on CoX seems to be much closer and “over the shoulder” of the toon than in CO (which tends to have the character smaller mid-screen). It’s a bit weird, and I’m not sure that it’s not just my perception. CoX
  3. I kept hitting [T] to activate my Travel power (rather than my standard [\]). I might have to change my default mapping (who actually wants to turn off the targeting window, anyway?). Having a universal travel power key is a great idea. CO
  4. Level Pact! I love Level Pact! Level Pact rocks! CoX
  5. We have the Tarot deck from the Magic expansion, which we use faithfully even though it’s non-immersive because neither of our characters is magic-based. Nice mini-buffs, bad gameplay. CO
  6. Distinctly shorter aggro range in CoX. I give the nod to CO for realism, CoX for ease of play. Tie
  7. Where are the drops? I was told there would be drops. It’s odd having Enhancements and Inspirations just magically appear in your tray. Odd, but nice. I prefer CoX’s approach here (especially since I spent an annoying 5 minutes trying to grab some bangs (“!”) that had been dropped by some guys I zapped in CO, but being constantly interrupted by other guys attacking me). CoX
  8. The mish is done! And the EXIT button is there! Huzzah! CoX for the win! CoX
  9. The new email “only accept email from friends and SG mates, not from strangers and spammer” option rocks. CoX
  10. The Level Number! Okay, that’s there in CO, too, but it was so nice seeing it in CoX. Tie
  11. The new difficulty level stuff is … weird. “Level: +- (x0 players) No AV” Okay. I guess that’s more informative and granular than “Tough” or “Daunting” or “Ball-Busting” or whatever the old “reputation” descriptions were, but it’s a bit less game-immersive. On the other hand, it’s nice to be able to adjust mission difficulty. CoX
  12. It was odd that one or the other of our duo was indented on the Team window based (I think) on whose mish it was. Not wrong, just unusual.
  13. Man, I love reticles to team mates and mission doors. I seriously like how CoX does that. CoX
  14. Margie notes that, unlike COs’ (and LotRO’s, and WoW (I guess) “follow the idiot as they wander back to the base / door / safety” mishes, CoX’s “you’ve rescued the idiot, and now they will follow you out” style mish is at least as realistic and not nearly as frustrating. Esp. with the new little arrows on the map for them. CoX
  15. I like that in CoX I drift a bit when I stop flying forward (etc.). CO feels a bit too controlled. CoX
  16. I have to confess it was kind of nice running around knowing the environment, the rules, and how things would be, more or less, laid out. CoX

(I also need to note, purely as a side comment, Margie’s definition of “disgustingly rich” in CoX: if your influence is over 2 million x your level. Yeah, she does that pretty regularly. Maybe I should let her handle our investments.)

So, net-net, which do I prefer?

Well, really neither. The differences above are just on reflection, and aren’t a real comparison. I’m doing a lot more in CO these days because it’s new, but CoX still has a lot to offer — not just in content, but in some very nice, polished Quality-of-Life features. CO has some advantage, to be sure, but neither game blows the other out of the water. I’d recommend either for a new player, really.

And it’s nice to know that when I get tired of the novelty of CO, I’ll have CoX to still fall back on and enjoy. And vice-versa, too.

Adventures in Name-Dropping

As I was heading off to change zones with my character CPO Sharon, I saw this tell show up in the Zone listing.

[20:05] [Zone] Egypt@redacted: SHAAAARON

Now, I didn’t think I knew this person, but … well …

[20:06] [Zone] C.P.O. Sharon@Three_Star_Dave: Yes?

Pause.

[20:06] [Zone] Egypt@redacted: OMG
[20:06] [Zone] Egypt@redacted: I so didnt expect that

I think he meant to be shouting “Stella!” but it was still pretty funny.

CoX: New little QoL bits

With I16 came some new items that either weren’t in the patch notes, or that people didn’t notice. But this forum thread did.

  1. Status icons show up when “chance of” enhancements fire off.
  2. Broken fire hydrants make noise.
  3. Your level shows up in the HP bar.
  4. “More freedom of movement of the ragdoll physics on the human skeleton’s arms and legs.”
  5. “Some hostages now animate differently while captured, Vahz zombies now do the Frankenstein shuffle and mobs carrying orange body bags now toss them on the floor [more consistently] before attacking.”
  6. No influence cost for difficulty changes (yay!)
  7. Midnighter doors now have the map name above them. [This has been around for a bit, but it’s still nice.]
  8. “When you enter the main building in Grandville, the statues of the four patrons now have their symbols on them (the ones that appear when you use their patron powers).”
  9. Improved NPC street dialog.
  10. “If you choose to have your Stacked Buffs display Numerically (like I do), the number now uses a larger, easier to see, easier to read font.”
  11. “Spectral Knights now disappear on defeat, like Spectral Demons, rather than having the suit of armor hanging in space with their arms up in a screaming action.”
  12. Corrected teleport animations.
  13. Whatever costume slot you are in when you logout, that’s what shows up on the character selection screen next time. [Previously noted here.]
  14. “Arctic Air (controller/dominator) now shows the purple dot effect on confused enemies. Very nice to know who’s on your side and who isn’t.”
  15. “The Taunt for Dark Melee on Tanks now makes a Taunt sound. Also noticed while playing my Shield/Axe Tank that the Taunt sound is different and if you are holding both your shield and axe when taunting they make a metal on metal clanging sound.” “Mace and shield does the same thing, the character points their mace at the enemy then bangs it upon their shield.”

And a prospective change:

A user posted that two devs they chatted with at PAX a couple of weeks ago confirmed that there will be an enhancement that when you’re down to 10% of enemies left in a map, or 10% of required glowies are left, they’ll show up on your map. That will be SO good for kill-all missions, and those redside “plant the bomb” missions. The devs didn’t say when that will go live, only that it’s in the works.

Woot!

CO: More notes on balance, reinforcements, and coming attractions

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.

CO: It’s the Economy, Stupid!

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.

CO: New State of the Game

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.