Blog of Heroes

But not much. Instead, we get a short FAQ, in which we learn:

1. This will all happen post-I15, “later this year.”
2. You don’t have to change sides to play CoR, and if you do change sides you can change back.
3. That seems to be all they are saying right now.

#2 makes sense — but I have the aesthetic feeling that there should be some sort of cost in changing — and even moreso in changing back. It shouldn’t be purely mechanical. There ought to be “a price to pay.”

We’ll see.

Oops.

For some CoX subscribers who were watching their emails last night, a little something came through …

Paragon Studios™ is proud to officially announce the next City of Heroes® expansion, City of Heroes Going Rogue™! This will be the first major expansion for the City of Heroes franchise since the launch of City of Villains® in 2005.

Praetoria, a utopian mirror to our own world, hides a dark secret. Exploring this mysterious alternate earth, the heroes and villains of this world feel an uneasiness of doubt creep over them. Loyalties are questioned. Choices are made. Lines are drawn. As they search for the truth behind Emperor Cole and his Praetorian guard, brutal foes and fierce allies emerge, turning this once blissful paradise into a battle ground.

City of Heroes Going Rogue officially opens the “mirror universe” of Praetoria and an all-new alignment system that explores the shades of gray that lie between Heroes and Villains. For the first time, Hero characters can become Villains and vice versa, enabling Heroes to cross over to the Rogue Isles™ and Villains to experience Paragon City™.

For more information, read the official press release and check out our new Going Rogue website to view the announcement trailer and register for the latest news and updates for City of Heroes Going Rogue.

The web page link is still up, but the announcement was dubbed premature and the press release is MIA. Speculation and thought run rampant on the subject however. My initial reactions?

Well, first, people have been clamoring for being able to run both Blue and Red power sets together for a long time. Earlier speculation had some sort of a conversion process — where a hero would turn villainous (and move to CoV setting), or a villain heroic (move to CoH), perhaps around some sort of particular mission arc.

Instead, it sounds like they are creating a whole new setting — Praetoria — to house both moral ambiguity and, presumably, both Blue and Red side powers. That’s a little odd — do we really need to be pulling people away from the Paragon and Rogue Isles maps? Does having a new setting invalidate the legitimate (and time-honored) storyline of heroes fallen or villains redeemed?

We don’t know much about the metastory or how folks get there. Will this be someplace you can go some time during your career, or do you start characters there? If the former, what’s the mechanism for transfer, and is it reversible? In other words, is Praetoria a third new game locale to split up the CoX population, or a new meta-zone that people can enter and leave? The email leaves open the possibility of the former, but doesn’t make it certain.

Further, the trailer at the website makes this sound more like an event than a simple new location — is Praetoria going to invade? And how will that be part of the “moral ambiguity” story arc over time?

New maps and new story are good. I look forward to hearing more.

Regardless of what happens going forward with the AE system, I’m pleased I got a couple of characters (Al McGordo and Tyger-Tyger) over the hump into their 20s, making for a bit more fun play.

I’ve been trying to think of a good way that the Devs could create some sort of shortcut to let folks start at higher levels. Actually, it’s the 10-13, or even 10-19 range that’s the most problematic, I think. A way to demonstrate that you know what you’re doing, and therefore should be allowed to start play at a higher level would be a good way to start — but then that runs into meta-game issues of reducing the veteran pool among low-level players, which hurts the game long-run.

In keeping with other MA/AE tweaks:

• The maximum number of tickets awarded per player per mission has been reduced to 1,500 tickets. Because you cannot get a partial reward for defeating an enemy, you may end up with slightly less.

Expedient, but I suspect this limitation will turn out to have some unexpected effects downstream.

• It is no longer possible to unpublish an arc that has been banned, though it may be resubmitted.
• You may now either unpublish, or resubmit an invalidated arc.
• If your character is not eligible for any xp/influence/debt reduction rewards in a Mission Architect mission, you will no longer be awarded any tickets for that mission.

Now that’s interesting. If I understand the system, that essentially means exemplared characters don’t get any tix for a mission.

• It is no longer possible to have the Mission Completion ticket reward be greater than the total number of tickets gained before mission completion.

Which makes sense.

• The ‘chicken tug’ animation is no longer selectable for critters through the Mission Architect UI

Wha–?

Posi responds to the responses to his previous announcements on Mission Architect abuse, FAQ-style.

Q) “If I powerlevelled a character, am I going to lose them?”
A) Probably not. Only the worst of the worst, exploitive, powerlevelled characters will be removed from the game. We don’t take retroactive punishments lightly, but some offenses are so egregious that no one would question their intent and those ill-gotten gains should be dealt with. I just want to emphasize that no one is looking to ‘punish’ anyone here, but rather remove the rewards of exploitive behavior.

Though what defines “worst of the worst” remains undefined. As a listserv admin, I can appreciate the need for flexibility, but it’s going to still make some people nervous (arguably the ones who probably could be).

Q) “Are you going to give us an absolute definition of what abuse is?”
A) I know a lot of you want to know an exact definition to see if you were actually abusing the system, or just playing the game, but I don’t want to be set up in a situation where our definition of abuse is abused. For example, if we say that the definition is “you gained 4 levels in under 30 minutes”, then someone will make sure that they gain 4 levels in 31 minutes, so they can claim they were within the allowed limits and not abusing. Someone said it best that the “definition” of reckless driving is purposely ambiguous, being “Disregard for safety”. With this example, I would say that a good interpretation of abuse is “Disregard for the risk and/or time to reward ratio”.

On the other hand, “reckless driving” (and “disturbing the peace,” etc.), while allowing some ambiguity, also allow for abuse. The question then becomes whether one trusts the enforcers of the peace to act justly and be worthy of trust (and have the resources to make good decisions on the number of bad cases).

I do still think this lack of definition is kind of lame. Yes, folks are going to rules lawyer it. So set the threshold down further, offer some exceptions (as people point out legitimate ways to gain that goal), and note that this isn’t going to create automatic consequences, just raise red flags for further investigation.

Treating abuse like obscenity (“I know it when I see it”) is sketchy jurisprudence and not a good way to communicate expectations (which is also an important part of this process).

Q) “Why are you removing badges we worked so hard to get?”
A) I apologize in advance if we remove a badge that someone got legitimately through normal gameplay. We didn’t want MA to become a badge farm (hence why kill-count badges don’t work in MA). Unfortunately the number of “count” badges we put into the system promoted some pretty aberrant gameplay. People forming voting cartels to get Hall of Fame badges, missions whose sole purpose was to tick a badge count clogged up the searches, etc., made finding the honest-to-god story arcs harder than it needed to be. We hope that by removing these problem badges (and adding some new, non-problem, ones in the process) we can see a better play experience throughout the entire MA system. These changes won’t happen until I15, but we’ll get a list of the alterations to you guys early next week.

Any time you build a system that allows rerunning of missions, sharing of mission construction, and badge acquisition through basic activities, you’re going to see this sort of thing. It was highly predictable.

Q) “Am I going to get banned for farming for badges?”
A) Absolutely not.

Good to know (esp. since badges don’t affect gameplay).

Q) “What if people who have a grudge against me complain about my arc and get it banned? Why should I permanently lose a slot over that?”
A) The first time your arc is pulled because of complaints, you do NOT lose the slot. If you get an arc banned and you do lose the slot, your only option at that point is to contact Customer Support. They are the gatekeepers to the slots, and can give you your slot back if it was banned in error.

I shouldn’t expect this would happen to often, though I’ve had enough past experiences to realize it might. It is good that there’s an opportunity for “appeals.”

Q) “You say not to use the word “Farm” in the mission or description. Is that how you are blanket banning things?”
A) We do not do blanket banning based on keywords or phrases. When customer service bans an arc, they are looking at the arc in question when they do it. I ask you not to use certain words in your title or description because players can still complaint-ban your arc, and then there is the fact that we are only human, and even if your “farm” arc is a complete joke/parody ABOUT farm arcs, someone might mistake it for a real farm and ban it, causing both you and us a headache in getting the arc unbanned.

Don’t joke about bombs while in line at the airport — even if you’re not jailed you will likely be detained. Got it.

Q) “What about all the farming and abusing that goes on in the normal game? How come you guys don’t put a stop to that?”
A) We address rewards abuse all the time. We put timers on missions that could get reset for rewards. We take rewards off of critters that are considered exploitively farmable. Or we just change the mission. Merit rewards are another way we have handled the situation. You can’t run really fast stuff over and over and get a reward every time. Again, we are looking out for “Disregard for the risk and/or time to reward ratio”, and we take action.

And, let’s face it, if those other farming/PLing methods were nearly as effective as Meow missions, AE would have been standing empty.

Q) “Why did you guys wait until after the reactivation weekend to do this?”
A) We had a publishing blackout during the reactivation that prevented us from putting new code up onto the live servers.

I’d say that the abuse was visible within a few days of I14 coming out (if not already happening during Beta), The decision may well have been to not stomp on things during Reactivation / Anniversary Weekend, but I think it was a bad decision. Even if I did get a few levels out of it.

Overall, a better explanation for the thunderbolts flung the other day, and a good sign that this is being followed up now with some attention to player concerns.
 

I’m not quote sure why Rikti Comm Officer AE Farm missions were dubbed “Meow” missions (I was hoping for Cat Girls, to be honest, go fig), but Positron has decided it’s time to put his foot down on Meows and other extreme farming. Hope you already PLed your toons to 20 …

When we created Mission Architect, the goal was to have an outlet for players to craft cool stories, using our assets, that other players could play and participate in. Other players could rate those stories and the best-of-the best would rise to the top.

While we have accomplished some of those goals with the initial launch of Mission Architect, some have found ways to abuse the system we put in place.

Not surprising in the least, of course.

We are not blind to this happening, nor did we not expect it. However, it is time to take action regarding it, so please be aware that we are about to implement a zero-tolerance stance on the extreme abuse we are seeing in the system.

It would have been nice to have heard a bit of this righteous anger before now.

One thing was made clear to me when I interacted with the players on our Anniversary. It was that you guys really don’t like the powerlevelling that is going on with MA. The constant spam of MA PL teams forming, requests for “Meow” missions, 5 star badge cartels, and the inability to find quality content in the Mission Architect listing are all things I heard complaints about over and over while I was logged in on Tuesday.

And that’s a good point. The crowds of farmers make it difficult to find any mishes to play (except for Dev Choice ones), difficult to find folks to play them with — and, at times, difficult to hang out at AE without mapserving. Comments follow.

So here is a list of things that are going to happen:

• Players that have abused the reward system egregiously may lose benefits they have gained – leading up to and perhaps including losing access to the characters power-leveled in this fashion. Hmmmm. Harsh to punish actions after the fact. “That which is not forbidden is permitted.” Set the rules and limit things going forward, fine. Data mine to figure out who’s abused this? Not so much. (And I don’t say this as someone who has much to lose).
  
• Currently, some badges are being modified, and some may be removed from the game entirely. The list of changes being made to the MA badge system is not final yet, but you will be made aware when we have a concrete plan. Expect the ticket badges to require a lot more tickets to win.
  
• Players who knowingly use an exploit when creating an arc, run the risk of having access to MA suspended, or worse- depending on the severity of the action, their account banned. That’s fine — if the list of known exploits is given, or at least described in sufficient detail to make it clear what to not do.
  
• Players who have a story arc banned for any reason, will have it continue to use up one of their publishing slots. Players will NOT be able to unpublish this slot without Customer Service’s help. This sets up a “three strikes and you’re out” policy. If an individual gets three story arcs banned, they will no longer be able to publish since their slots will all be used up with banned arcs.This lock will not take place on the first level of “complaint banning”, where an arc has received a larger number of complaints. Players will still have a chance to fix the arc. A good punishment here, and easy to implement. And now I know, I guess, that the Report button isn’t just for dirty words or something.
  • If Customer Service looks at an arc and determines it was banned in error, they will mark it as “unbannable”. At that point the arc can not be banned for any reason. The unbannable flag will reset if the player makes any changes to the arc at that point, and the arc can be banned again. Thus avoiding “griefing.”
  • Remember, publishing slots are account wide, so players will not be able to log in another character on their account and use their slots instead.
  • Players are urged to avoid using common farming terms in their story title and/or descriptions. Even if it’s a joke, DO NOT run the risk of having an arc banned and requiring Customer Support to grant you your publishing slot back. But if I want to make a Cat Girl arc, can I include “Meow”? in the title?

So, overall, a decent approach to punishment … but I remain concerned about ex post facto punishment.

Some of you have taken the stance of “how does powerlevelling hurt the game?” and “shouldn’t I be able to play the game the way that I want?” What we want to make clear is in order to keep the game fair, balanced, and challenging, we have to maintain a risk:reward ratio. This is a ratio we’ve spent years attempting to achieve. Mission Architect is not immune to this, and we are taking swift action to see that the problems players are seeing and are being exposed to are remedied.

Fair enough. It should be indicative (reviewing some of the boards on the subject) of what some folks are looking for from the game, but PLing does have impacts both on team availability, team quality, and PvP competition. It also rankles enough non-PLers to make the game overall less attractive. So I don’t mind seeing this come in. I just wish it had been swifter and more vocal earlier since I14’s release.

Some cool bits only recently brought to my attention (i.e., catching up on back reading).

Black Market / Wentworth’s Consignment House

• Characters (on active accounts) who have inventories, bids or items for sale in the Black Market or in Wentworth’s Consignment House will no longer have to log into the game within 60 days to avoid item or influence/infamy expiration.
• In-game Black Market and Wentworth employees will still give their friendly reminder, however if your account is “active”, they won’t take your “stuff”.

Yes! Though, to be honest, it was an excellent way to stay on top of my less-used characters, I am glad that I don’t have to worry about this any more.

Flight: Made adjustments to Hover and Flight powers. The minimum speed for these powers is now higher. This includes Kheldian Flight powers.

Faster Flying = Goodness.