Lord Recluse speaks!

Interview with “Producer” Serdar Copur.  Some fun stuff.

arthurh3535: What is the hardest ‘programming’ thing that you want to eventually add to the game?
Serdar Copur: Blue-sky questions are so much fun. The most difficult thing to develop that I would like to add to our game is a completely new database architecture which allows every single player who plays CoH & CoV to be able to play on the same game server. This means no more server selection screens, no more re-rolling because your real life friends are not on the same server as you, and no more trouble finding a group at 3:00 AM because everyone else is sleeping. It’s not an impossible endeavor but my programming team assures me that there is nothing more time consuming and complicated that we could develop for our game at this point. I guess we can always dream.

That would be kind of cool.  On a related note:

LadyMage: Positron mentioned back in an interview last year about looking into changing SG membership from 75 characters to 75 accounts. Could we get an update on that? Is it feasible, is it coming, is it backburnered or scrapped, and why? It’s a feature I know a lot of SGs, preticularily larger ones are looking forward to.

Serdar Copur: Something along the lines of this is definitely coming. In fact, I will go so far as to say that both Supergroups and Bases will be getting some much needed love over the next few updates. We are fully aware that MMOG’s are all about the social element and we want to support that as much as possible.

Not as big a concern of mine any more, but still a good thing.  And:

Cronic-X: On the last ask a dev they hinted that issue 10 was going to add a lot more to the story line of the game. is there a possibility that new AT’s for villains and or heroes could be on the way seeing as adding a new AT or villain group would be a big addition to the games story line.

Serdar Copur: Issue 10 is going to be fantastic. It’s true that it will be advancing the story-line. You will probably not see any new archetypes in Issue 10; however there will be a great deal of other fun content to enjoy. I really shouldn’t tell you anything right now because it’s just way too early. Then again….a small hint can’t hurt. Right?
So here it is:

“Issue 10 will focus on a level range that you guys have been clamoring about for a while.”

Let the speculation begin!

I assume it’s for post-50 bits. 

Distant catch-up

Between the trip and other stuff, my CoX play (and CoX board reading) has been pretty limited.  Rectified both today.

First off, it appears the wraps are off on I9 in Test.  Which means I can reveal that Margie was (huzzah!) one of the closed beta testers.   She seemed to enjoy it.  Yay.

Two QoL enhancements, one she showed me and one that I just read on the boards:  To wit, a store in Kings Row and a trainer in PI.  Nice.  Never made any sense not to have them there.

No more ice-skating hunchback roving patrols!  Now they (presumably) just run along like normal.  People are already complaining as bitterly as they did when the bug appeared Way Back When.

Because there’s a new Stealth IO, escort hostages will now follow you while you are Stealthed (yay).  The presence of a hostage will debuff the Stealth however (boo).

Lots of stuff about Salvage and Drops and Inventions (Oh My!).  I am possessed by terrific yawning.Note: The purpose of this change is to allow players to not be penalized by new Stealth Invented Enhancement.

  • The perception bonus has been affected, however any defense buff associated with a stealth power is still maintained.
  • You can now pick up escort hostages while stealthed or when you have a Stealth Invention Origin Enhancement slotted.  Everyone around the hostage will receive a stealth debuff when it is acquired. The debuff to stealth powers will remove when you exit the mission map.
    • Note: The purpose of this change is to allow players to not be penalized by new Stealth Invented Enhancement.
    • The perception bonus has been affected, however any defense buff associated with a stealth power is still maintained.

Redesigning Hamidon

Lengthy developer post on the design decisions behind the revamped I9 Hamidon raid.

Most of the players we talked with in game generally said the same things about Hamidon raids. We used those common gripes about Hamidon to compile a list of top issues we wanted to address.

  • Hamidon raids are repetitive and tedious
  • Hamidon raids are laggy and very taxing on systems (low FPS)
  • Hamidon and Mitos often disappear during the end phase of a raid
  • Hamidon raids are a hotspot for griefing
  • Hamidon raids reward Leeching
  • Certain AT/Powerset combinations were viewed as critical while others felt they had no real purpose
  • Hamidon raids take too long and the reward is often viewed as not being worth the time/effort
  • There’s no ability to choose reward
  • There’s no way to recover from a mito spawn (if it happens, it’s game over!)
  • Hamidon raids are only available to heroes

The basic solutions (read the article for full details):

  1. Hammy can’t be held to the point of powerlessness.
  2. Mito spawns have been changed so that they’re not the disaster they have been.
  3. Villains have a special zone (the Abyss) to find Hammy in.
  4. The three Mito types have been redesigned both to synergize and to have special vulnerabilities to certain ATs, so that everyone has a role to lay.
  5. Have to defeat the various DE in the zone around Hammy — but that’s the only limit, so Hammy can respawn any time (freeing up schedules).
  6. New “Essense of Earth” inspirations will provide some special protection.
  7. Capped the number fo folks in the Hive and Abyss to 50 — which will help with lag and which will spawn extra instances as need be.
  8. HO reward table at the end — it’s not just a random pick.  Plus a rare Recipe.  Only one of each can be gotten in a 24 hour period.

Sounds possibly interesting enough to try out …

Meaningless, yet annoying

Both Honor the Flag and Lady Zebra, solo toons, are in SGs. No great devotion to said SGs, just invites that were responded to, Prestige earned, and ranks granted.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I was on with either of them, so I took advantage of an opportunity this afternoon and did so.

Honor had been kicked.

It was … very strange. It’s not like I was bound body and soul to the SG. My time with them was sort of peripheral — earning Prestige, getting a promotion, chatting with a few members and a few CC members. I’m not 100% certain I even recall the SG name. Yet, I felt strangely bereft in finding myself kicked. No message in Mail. No warning. Just … pffft.

In retrospect, I realize that the SG itself may have gone bottoms up — its activity level was not all that great. But, still, it was a very odd sensation, like, for some unknown reason, someone had drawn a big line through my name, and I was Out.

Signed onto Lady Zebra and was (a) happy to find I was still in my SG, and (b) quick to run out, kick some bad guys, level, and get into a PUG.

Odd.

Henge vs Henge

Wrapped up the second Croatoa arc last night (dinging Rita to 31 in doing so) with the “free the enchanters, protect the henge” mish. While similar in structure to the “stop the Fir Bolg from escaping” trial mish in the first arc, it has some substantial differences that make it … well … actually enjoyable.

  1. The bad guys are not monomaniacally sprinting for the henge. They will, in fact, engage you in combat if you hit them, or come within their aggro range. Granted, Red Caps are a bit more clever than Pumpkin Heads, but, really, the way the FB trot past at high speed unless you actually manage to hit each and every one with something (and, even then, they’re only temporarily distracted) is one of the most maddening things about the first henge mish.
  2. There’s a mission timer. Once the last enchanter is in place, a 15 minute clock pops up. While that’s quite a while to stand there and deal with wave after wave, it avoids the other most maddening aspect of the first henge mission, wondering how much longer / how many more waves there are to go.

There are other things about the first henge mish that are difficult — the haziness of the atmosphere making it difficult to see the FB under the trees; the long pauses between waves — but those are just challenging, not “Can we just let the next wave through and be done with it?” frustrating. If the above two items were incorporated into the FB mish, it would be ever so much more enjoyable.

FX Suppression

Interesting post by poz in response to complaints that the “Suppress Extra Player FX” is currently broken:

The intention of “Suppress Extra Player FX” was to reduce the number of “unimportant” FX displayed. This was targeting city zones, mainly near trainers.

With the Suppress FX options turned on, here are the heuristics used to determine if a continuing FX will be shown.
1. If it’s not a continuing FX then show it.
2. If it’s on you show it.
3. If it’s on a critter show it.
4. If it’s from a villain and you’re a hero (or vice versa) show it.
5. If it’s from you or to you, show it. (So you see all bubbles you cast.)
6. If the target or source is on you team show it.

[…] We decided that anything that happened to a teammate or that you triggered was important. This feature was never meant to help on mission maps; it was meant to help spammed group heals at Ms. Liberty and sundry running around town.

Which makes sense, though it may still mean (on some highly-buffy teams or vs. certain opponents) that things get kind of super-saturated.

Poz thinks the thought it’s broken is due to a year-old fix that got rid of teammate’s buff visuals being suppressed if they were debuffed by opponents. But I thought it was an interesting list.

Bad news for fliers

Everyone thought the prospect of individual flight animations was the bee’s knees (or wings). It was tested for a bit, and everyone bitched about not being able to choose an alternative — at which point it was pulled …

… and may not be back. Castle quotes the Animators:

HereÂ’s the deal. Originally we wanted to put alternate flight poses in purely as additional flavor. Nothing more really than the alternate idle cycles that are already in game, like crossing your arms, putting your hands on your hips, etc. This is why there were random to begin with. When we put them up on the training room, it became clear very quickly that you guys saw them as more than just random variations. For a lot of you, these poses defined your character’s attitude and style in a way that was outside
of your control. In reaction to that we tried to make them selectable in the only method that we had, which was to make them sequential rather than random. We weren’t really happy with that solution, and a lot of you guys weren’t either. So we took a step back and re-examined it from a broader perspective.

Here was the opportunity to give another layer of character customization to everyone. Rather than implement the quick and easy solution, we wanted to hold off on it until we could implement the right solution. It wasn’t because of people whining about them on the forums, those people had legitimate concerns. There were issues that we couldn’t resolve in time before Issue 8 was going live. Instead of holding back Issue 8 to resolve them or just leaving them in the state they were in and impacting a good number
of players in a very negative way, we pulled them out of Issue 8. We haven’t completely shelved the idea of a custom animation system, but in lieu of the Inventions system, Task Forces, and other things that we’ve been working on for Issue 9 and Issue 10, a custom animation system has a much smaller impact on the game as a whole. Because of this, it’s gotten pushed back in the list of priorities. I can’t say when we’ll do it at this point. I can’t even say that it’s something even possible or feasible to do at
this point. I can pretty comfortably say that there are things coming in Issue 9, 10, and beyond that are much more exciting and will impact everyone who plays the game.

Or maybe they will …

However, there is some good news here. We didn’t think it would be possible to create these alternate flight animations as an emote. Emote animations have to be limited in what they can interrupt as well as be interruptible by core animations, such as movement or attack powers. I had a flash of insight the other day about this though, and I believe I have figured out a way to set these up so they can be triggered via an emote but still function in the way they need to. I’ve tested this internally
and it seems to work fine, but I can’t test all of the permutations. We’re treading into somewhat risky waters by allowing an animation to trump a core movement animation. The way this will work is if you turn on flight and start flying forward (using autorun works best in this case), you can enter the emote name and your character will transition in the alternate fly forward animation. I think this resolves all of the issues we had with it originally. It won’t interrupt hover, what you see on your system is
what everyone will see on their system, and it’s completely optional and selectable by the player. You will be able to use the one you like or not use it at all.

We won’t be re-adding the banking animations which were basically an attempt to do a flying strafe. We also won’t be introducing the no-strafe movement on player characters. This is only the alternate fly forward animations.

Which would still be cool …

Hack and Smash

Rita and Runt continue rolling through the opposition (with a couple of caveats). We finished up 28 and most of 29 — picked up the Wolf Whistle, and concluded the whole first half of the Croatoa arc.

Including, of course, the dreaded “Stop the 30 Fir Bolg from Trotting Past You at High, Nearly-Unaggroable Speed to Get At the Door, Which Looks More Like Stonehenge” mish. Not the easiest of things to do with a pair of scrappers. We did last a while, though, taking them as they came, usually with at least one or two slpping through each wave.

I do so wish there was some sort of “progress bar” or timer on the mission. When that 30th pumpkin flees, it’s almost a blessing.

We each had the mission, but for some reason I didn’t get credit for it. So instead, I “Cancelled for Credit,” which netted me the same XP as about 7 waves and no SO drops, but took a lot less time and a lot less aggravation.

After that, we wrapped up the rest of the sub-30 content in Croatoa. The final “Stop the Eternal Battle” mish got a bit bloody — one death for me, about three for Margie, mostly alpha strike issues, which are the greatest vulnerabilities for regen scrappers. The Mooses are fairly flimsy, but in aggregate they hit pretty hard …

UPDATE: I note with amazement that R&R have become our third fourth highest pair (after PC/A, Hildy/Torchy, and Velvet/P-siren). Wow.

Statesman Speaks!

Jack Emmert fields questions from the studio audience. Not a lot of them, mind you, but a good number. A few highlights:

  1. The Invention system is Really Keen, especially the non-aging enhancements.
  2. Biggest regret in CoX is how Hamidon turned out — the “new” Hamidon encounter should fix some of that.
  3. After the major mechanic introduction in I9, I10 is going to be a significant story-based release.

Plus some interesting insights into the original “prestige class” ideas for post-50 heroes. Power suits?

Cool stuff.

Scrapping our way through Paragon

Rita and Runt continue to forge their way toward 28 — in Margie’s words, “I can’t believe we’re almost ready for Bricks and Founders.” Did one of the two Talos “Stop the IP Bank Robbery” mishes and got the requisite gobs of XP … wrapped things up after clearing the map, making sure it was clear, and still having 9 minutes on the clock.

(A nice Quality of LIfe feature would be an”Okay, you’ve finished the mission and cleared the map, down to the last little cowardly minion, so no more XP are left to grab — exit the damn mish already!” flag.)

Current task is finishing our Striga material sufficient to get Wolf Whistles — it always being nice to be able to summon a few extra <s>targets</s> friends during tough battles.

Doing the regen scrapper pair is, if I may sound fanboyish, freaking awesome. We just do a crapload of damage (the best defense being a good offense), our health bars tend to go up during battle as often as down, and besides the healing powers I almost always have half a tray of greens to chew on. It is, in fact, possible for us to go down, but usually we were just running from encounter to encounter, mowing down oranges, pausing to polish off the red lieut, then onward. Easy-peasy.

More inventiony goodness

Big MMORPG.com interview with Positron.

From the outset of creating the Invention System we wanted to make sure that players desired these new, craftable items. If they didn’t actually make your character better then the players wouldn’t be motivated to use the system. We tried to think of new, exciting things that Enhancements could bring to the game. We determined that adding mini-powers to your existing ones had a lot of potential, as the sky would nearly be the limit on what we could accomplish with these new Enhancements. In addition we wanted
Enhancements that never expired, because nothing was worse than leveling up in a mission to a point where the majority of your Enhancements turned red (useless), and instead of that level-up making you more powerful, it actually made you less.

Interestingly, they are going to a closed Beta test of the system prior to opening it to everyone on the Test server, including NDAs and the whole ball of wax.

Whazzup?

Our gameplay has been a bit constricted of late — too many projects and activities and the like.

I did get on a nice PUG last night with Honor and got her dinged up to 18.5 (like all tanks, I long for Stamina). We did a bit of running about over the weekend with Torchy/Hildy, earning about a pip (not bad for lvl 48), and did a bit as well with Rita & Runt. But, overall, not much …

Statesman’s Taskforce

New info on the upcoming Statesman’s Taskforce. I am definitely looking forward to cracking out Psi-clone for this.

Positron says:

The Lord Recluse Strike Force, which made it into Issue 7, was our way of getting Hamidon-level Enhancements into the hands of the Villains for City of Villains. We needed something that was difficult, and Hamidon-level difficult, but we didn’t want to just regurgitate Hamidon…we wanted something cool. We wanted something where you fought the signature Heroes of the City of Heroes franchise.

I can’t say I like the imagery that “regurgitating Hamidon” provides.

We accomplished that goal, but in the end some of the Archetypes felt left out, since they didn’t have the build to contribute to the huge Archvillain fights that the Lord Recluse Strike Force was built around (we took our learnings forward from this).

I’m glad they’re not just, um, “regurgitating” LASF.

Fighting the signature characters was cool, but it was also something that was exclusively in the hands of the Villains. We really wanted something where the Heroes could have a chance at taking down the signature characters from the Rogue Isles. We wanted Heroes to see some of the cool things we did for the Villains since not every player is into playing ‘the dark side’.

Yay!

[…] The mission starts out with Statesman telling you that Arachnos is up to something, something big. They are building something in Grandville of unknown power and use, but it is obvious that it’s more than a simple broadcast antenna that Lord Recluse claims it to be. Your orders are simple. Get to the factory near Grandville and shut it down.

Here we had a chance to have some ‘mayhem mission’ type action, with your team of Heroes causing havoc in the WebFac, destroying vital pieces to the array in Grandville. This was something that players asked for when we introduced Safeguard missions. They wanted to go to the Rogue Isle and bust stuff up. Now they get to bust stuff up, but with a purpose.

Oh, joy! Mayhem for heroes! Next up — Safeguard for villains! (Yes, you could rationalize it.)

I don’t want to spoil too many of the surprises, suffice it to say that players will be encountering, and engaging, many of the more powerful NPCs that Arachnos has to offer. Dr. Aeon plays a key role (several, actually), as does the Arachnos Flier. We also chose some prime locations for the mission maps, a lot of stuff that your average City of Heroes player wouldn’t normally get to see.

Also nice. Not only does that give a bit of advert space for CoV, it makes it all the more fresh for CoHers.

Oh, and the final battle isn’t simply ‘smash your most powerful attacks until Lord Recluse goes down’. We wanted there to be a reason to have Archetypes other than Blasters and Defenders on your team. Controllers will find themselves greatly desired in the final battle if the team wants to have any chance of winning. Our goal was to make sure that all the Archetypes had something to do that could mean the difference between success and defeat.

And that sounds truly kick-ass (speaking as a Controller likely to be involved …)

‘Being a Hero’ is the driving force behind Statesman’s Task Force. Every mission leads up to the ultimate confrontation where, upon success, players will be able to stand in Atlas Park and proudly display to all onlookers that they have Saved the World. Isn’t that what being a hero is all about?

I am quite jazzed over this.

Tweaking rezzes

There’s some changes in the “rooting” effects of some of the rezzes listed in the patch notes below (that’s for the Test instance, mind you), and immobilize effects have been put in. Castle explains …

When we use the term rooting, it refers to a flag set in the actual animation sequence that prevents any player action. This includes moving and using any powers or inspirations, even breakfrees. Rooting is always something that’s set in an animation, not the power itself and since a lot of powers share animations, this has led to a bit of flip flopping between powers rooting or not rooting.

While we were looking at click powers for normalizing which ones should root or not we came across self-rez powers, most of which are sharing two animations. The first is the spiraling up and then floating back down to the ground that Rise of the Phoenix, Restore Essence, and a few other powers use. The other is the basic ‘get up from belly’ animation that Revive and most inspirations use. The first was not rooted, so you could start acting as soon as the power fired off. Unfortunately, this animation is on a
higher priority than every other possible animation. This allows you to move and/or attack and avoid being rooted while the self-rez animation continues to play. The second animation was rooted for the entire 4 second animation. This meant if you used an awaken in combat there was 4 seconds when you were pretty much a sitting duck. You couldn’t even use a breakfree to recover from the disorient of an awaken until the animation was completely finished.

Neither one of these was really where we wanted self rez powers to be. So instead of rooting all self-rez power animations, Castle added an immbolize effect to the powers themselves and the root was removed from both animations. This solved the issues with both animations. There will still be a period of time after rezing yourself where you won’t be able to move, but you will be able to use inspirations, turn on toggles, etc. The first animation was also shortened a bit to make the immobilization period consistent
between both animations.

Makes sense. Not that I rez all that often …

On a related, broader note about actions and rooting …

We’re looking into these inconsistencies in powers rooting and not rooting. This whole process has been a jumble because so many power share animations and “rooting” is something that’s set in the animation itself, not the power definition. So I’m often undoing things I’ve fixed before by fixing things further down the road, not realizing they’re both using the same animation … and then later unfixing the original fix by re-fixing the unfixed fix.

This is why some click powers that should have been rooted were briefly un-rooted as they were sharing animations with toggle powers that were un-rooted. This is also why some toggle powers that should be un-rooted are once again rooting. Your incredible diligence in testing these changes and reporting them here on the forums has been an immeasurable help in getting everything working the way it should be. We can’t thank you enough for that. Please continue to report powers that don’t follow the rules for rooting.

Toggle Powers:

  • Any toggle that damages or debuffs an enemy in any way is considered an attack and will root the player while activating.
  • Any toggle that affects yourself and/or allies will not root you while activating.
  • Any toggle that only affects yourself will not cause you to be rooted while activating.

Click Powers:[list]

  • Any click power that damages or debuffs an enemy in any way is considered an attack and will root the player while activating.
  • Any click power that is a PBAOE ally buff, single target ally buff, or single target ally heal will root the player while activating.
  • Any click power that is an PBAOE ally heal will not root.
  • Any click power that is a self only buff or self only heal will not root.
  • Any click power that is a ‘tier 9’ power (Unstoppable, Moment of Glory, Elude, etc) will root the player while activating.

There can be exceptions to any of the above rules as deemed necessary.

Attacks have priority over any of the other rules. So if a power is a PBAOE ally heal and debuffs an enemy’s to-hit for example, it’s going to root.

We tried to come up with a set that made sense to us and generally followed how things already worked in game, so only a few things needed to be changed. There were actually a lot fewer click power animations that changed because of these rules than toggle animations. Also, toggle animations that root will do so for 1.5 seconds after which point the animation is interruptible by other animations or player actions. Click power rooting durations are not consistent and probably never will be, however we are willing
to more closely examine any powers that you feel root for too long of a duration.

And a note on Inertial Reduction for all you kineticists out there:

We’re also hearing your concerns about some AOE click buffs, like Inertial Reduction, being left as rooted animations. In that particular case we contend that Inertial Reduction is not a travel power. It’s literally an Ally buff and thus should follow the same rules as all PBAOE Ally buffs. However we understand that this is often used as a replacement for travel power and we’re looking into ways to make it less cumbersome to use in that method. No promises that it will change, just that we’re looking at it.