Blog of Heroes

Transcripty sort of thing from an interview with Matt Miller (Positron) — or, at least, a few key items (to me) from that.

Think fast paced combat makes game unique, prided themselves on making game where you didn’t fight one thing at once all the time. Happy that could make 3 minions challenge 1 hero.

Wanted to make travel as easy as possible…

Favorite villain group: “…huh. Probably…oh man. Blanking out. … I can’t even think of one right now.”

Least favorite villain group would be Malta “for the same reason everybody else hates them–the sappers. Everyone can blame me for the Sappers.”

Felt that since End was a non-issue after L35, he wanted End to become an issue again.

Least favorite and most favorite, since do offer different playstyle in combat, you actually have to think about them when you’re fighting them.

Another reworked zone on the schedule, not at liberty to say what it is yet, but it’s going to be a cooperative hero/villain zone.

Forum poll a few months back asking where players wanted next new setting; we have the results, and we have on the schedule a new zone that basically is the result of that poll, which we’re not at liberty to say what that is yet, but we are definitely laying hints toward it.

“Do you see CoH going beyond L50?” Not anytime soon, if we raise it again, we just get asked when it’s going to be raised again after that. Wants to add endgame content, stuff that makes you a “better” level 50. Invention system is what’s going to be doing for that. Lots of enh that will make you “better level 50s”. More variety, more diverse sets of enhancements so characters are different.

No plans for new signature character contests, would love to have player-created contest prizes to make it in. Player-created badges, for instance. Still working on logistics of that. Would like to see that be prize for upcoming contest.

Villain Kheldians? Not in Issue 8. Haven’t decided what issue they’ll be in yet, still trying to figure out how much work it will be to make them work on villain side. Just had discussion about it on Thurs again to figure out what it will take.

Ballista acts like Bubble energy tank. Any plans on getting something like that for Tanks or Brutes? We have plans on moving a lot of power sets around, getting them to classes that don’t have them, probably in mid-2007.

5th Column coming back? Do have plans for 5thC returning, want to make sure their re-emergence is a spectacular one, don’t want to have them just “show up.”

The devs are pulling back the new flight animations from I8 until they get a few things cleaned up.

Based on everyone’s feedback about the changes to travel animations (in particular the alternate flight poses and strafing/banking) we’ve decided to push back introducing flight poses for now. We really like them, as did many of you, and we were hoping to get them into the game in conjunction with wings. Unfortunately, we just ran out of time to get everything working the way we really want it to work. So rather than getting it in now as is, making some of you happy and some of you unhappy, we’re going to push
this feature back a bit so we’ll have the time to fully implement what we really want to do. Here’s a rough overview of the things we want to fix before re-introducing these:

1) Flight poses should be selectable. That’s our biggest thing to get working before implementing these on live. It’s very obvious from feedback that you guys have very strong feelings about which poses you like/dislike for your characters. Once the animations are selectable (and not randomly or sequentially chosen) we’ll be able to do much nicer transitions from stationary to forward flight.

Interestingly, when this first came up, Positron indicated that making them selectable would be a lot more difficult. I really wouldn’t have minded, to be honest — I can imagine some builds would want to be “standard,” but most flying heroes use a variety of poses.

2) Hover should not use the alternate flight animations. We have a hover forward animation that has never played (it’s the upright position like the current strafe and backward animation that many of you have suggested). There’s a code issue that’s preventing hover from getting the right triggers to play its animation. Instead it uses the flight animations, which in turn causes it to use the alternate flight animations. We agree that it looks silly in most cases. We assure you it wasn’t done
intentionally.

3) We need to fix the camera/orientation bug that’s caused by the alternate strafe mode. This currently effects the Kheldian Dwarf and Nova forms on live. Oddly enough, I have a level 50 Peacebringer on live and never noticed it before you guys pointed it out. Now it’s glaringly obvious. Good catch.

4) Along those lines, we want to make a lot of little tweaks to the behavior of the alternate strafing mode. It solves a lot of the animation blending issues with strafing while running, jumping, or flying…but it’s not quite where we’d like for it to be. It’s a lot of little minor things such as adjusting turn speeds, using the strafing animations under the right conditions, adding a bit of roll/banking to the transitions between flying and strafing, etc.

Not quite sure what’s being referenced here, but it sounds like the testing process worked as intended.

Aren’t happening! Per Cricket:

There has been some confusion on this. To set the record straight: server transfers are not a part of Issue 8.

I don’t have an ETA but it is safe to say that we still have some ways to go.

Now announced:

• 27 Months: Dedicated – Anime-style tech armor. Free Costume Token per toon.
• 30 Months: Committed – Signature Group Chest Emblem (Freedom Phalanx, Vindicators, Vanguard, Arachnos, PPD, Cage Consortium, CoT, Council). Free Costume Token per toon. Cool trophies (from signature heroes/villains) for bases.
• 33 Months: Unswerving – Permanent Nemmy Staff or Permanent Blackwand. Free respec for each toon in the account.
• 36 Months: Addicted – Power (Choice): Demon Pet, Clockwork Pet, Red Cap Pet, Rikti Monkey Pet, Robot Pet [no combat effect, just fun]. Base item: Arachnos Flyer (Villains), Longbow Chaser (Heroes) [Again, no combat effect, but cool.]

For the record, Saturday I will have hit the 22 month mark (check yours out via the Account menu at the site). That will get me the Steadfast Reward (great title for Torchy, who is just about that old).

From the Test Server (with a few comments):

NOTE: Veteran Reward will be announced for test at a later date.

Now Testing in the Training Room – 10/23/06 2pm CST

Known Issues on the Test Server

• Clicking on a worktable with salvage can cause a client crash. This is a client crash only and does not affect other users.

COMBINED NOTES

Powers

• Added a control to Moment of Glory to insure that the -Regen portion goes away at the end of the duration of the power. This fixes a bug that was introduced with the recent change to correct the Icon blinking.

• Added -Fly to the Oni’s Ring of Fire Power.

• Added -Fly to Gravity Control Gravity Distortion power.

• Jump Kick from the Leaping pool set now does Knock Up instead of Knockback. The chance of Knock Up occurring has increased to 20% (from 15%.) Not sure that makes sense, given the (annoying) graphic, but what the heck.

• Removed hesitation from the Mental Blast animation. There was a pause that prevented the character from acting, even after the power had finished animating.

• Fixed missing animation for Ice Sword when used with Fly.

• Fixed bug with Build Up that caused some weapon powersets (War Mace, Battle Ax, Broadsword) to redraw weapons. I can think of a few BS users who will welcome that.

Universities

• Paragon City University and Aeon University are now on semester break. The campus buildings will be closed until the next semester starts. Heh. I.e., all those folk who found a way to sneak in and see the insides of the buildings need to wait now for I9 and the invention stuff.

Tasks

• Set all PvP zone mission rewards down to the normal mission completion levels. This is getting a fair amount of bitching on the boards, but evidently a few folks had figured out an exploit. *shrug*

Titles

• Fixed bug that prevented players from being able to reset their second title to “none”.

Game

• Banking animation for flight/strafe combinations have been changed. This change also improves combinations of running, jumping, and strafing. Cool.

• New Flight animations were tweaked a bit. Old flight animation appears again. Other players now see the same flight animation that you do. Very cool. flight animations rock.

• Female players will now choose a random food item when using the eat emote (instead of always eating a donut.) Because only PPD eats donuts all the time.

• Some emotes, such as eat, weren’t being properly interrupted by flight. They should be now.

List of new/updated emotes

Emote Invent

Emote Dance1

Emote Dance2

Emote Dance3

Emote Dance4

Emote Dance5

Emote Dance6

Emote EatDonut

Emote Donut

Emote EatFood

Emote Eat

Emote Food

Emote ListenPoliceBand (Heroes only)

Emote SitChair1

Emote SitChair2

Emote SitChair3

Emote SitBench1

Emote SitBench2

Emote SitBench3

Emote SitBench4

Emote SitExecutiveChair

Emote SitStool

Emote SitTable1

Emote SitTable2

Emote Teabag

Tailor

• Thin stripes 1 & 2 added. Thin anything is usually good.

• Excess patterns revamped.

• Assassin pattern added to gloves and boots.

Pocket D

• Fixed bug with the Arena terminals that allowed players to become PvP flagged while inside Pocket D.

CITY OF HEROES

Powers

• Changed the display name of the Mayhem Mission reward Jump Pack to Zero-G Pack to avoid confusion between it and the new Good vs Evil edition Jump Pack.

Tasks

Safeguard Mission adjustments:

• Bank robber spawns (the lobby robbers and robbery boss) will attack players when they are spotted, instead of running straight for the exit. If the robbers do not see any players, they will run for the exit as usual. Oh, huzzah. Margie was complaining about this earlier.

• Side mission rewards fixed and give the proper rewards.

• Safeguard Mission objects should be less fragile now. Level based combat modifiers have been removed.

• Fixed Moneybag power in Safeguard Missions. Escaping thieves should now have the Moneybag displayed even after moving through a door way.

• The final mission of Agent G’s story arc has been modified. If players can defeat all 3 AVs without letting them defeat each other first, the players will receive 4 SOs for their efforts. Players MUST receive Kill Credit on the Archvillains, and have sufficient inventory space to receive the rewards.

Game

• Emotes for Eating, sitting, and selected dances are now available for the Kheldian Dwarf forms.

CITY OF VILLAINS

Powers

• Corrected the Level Range on the Freakshow Elite Boss Metal Shift. He should no longer show up green to players at higher levels of the mission.

Tasks

• Heroes in the Lord Recluse Strike Force have been slightly reduced in level. Vindicators are now level 51 and the Freedom Phalanx are level 53.

City Zones

• Corrected Scorpion Shield text on the Patron Powers plaques in Grandville.

Game

• The PPD has confiscated all of the Police Ban Scanners that had fallen into Villain hands.

Quoth Cricket:

Starting at approximately 5PM today (Wednesday 10/18) the Training Room will be brought down to implement the Issue 8 pre-download system.

We need to make sure that the pre-download feature works properly before it ever goes live. In order to do this we have to bring back the last build – the one that was on test before Issue 8 ever arrived.

For those of you who have played on Issue 8 already: your characters will still be there (today and tomorrow.) However, the character you are currently playing has developed some, and some of that content may not display properly while you are back under Issue 7. The good news: Issue 8 should be back on test tomorrow (10/19). The specific time has not yet been announced.

Why are we doing this? The pre-download system was not ready to go on test before Issue 8 was ready. At the same time, it was very important for us to get the maximum amount of Issue 8 testing on Training Room. If we had waited for the pre-download before launching Issue 8 on test this ultimately would have caused delays on Issue 8’s arrival on the live servers.

When Issue 7 is brought back to test: when you log out the pre-download patch for Issue 8 will begin. You can leave this running. And when we bring Issue 8 back up on test, you’ll be ready to go!

Glee!

Per Cricket, the Halloween Event should start today after server maintenance is over (about 9 a.m. MDT). The event runs until 10 p.m. on Wednesday, 1 Nov.

Feeling slightly torn — we’re on a roll with H&T, and the whole Halloween Event doesn’t sound all that interesting. We’ll probably do a bit of beating folks up for a while until it palls or we get the 5th costume slot or whatever, then get back to serious business.

Via COH LJ:

dance1
dance2
dance3
dance4
dance5
dance6

(These are the old dances, but you can now select them)

donut

eat
food
(same emote, different names)

invent

listenpoliceband

(villains can use this emote, too)

sitbench1
sitbench2
sitchair1

sitchair2
sitchair3
sitexecutivechair

sitstool
sittable1
sittable2
(Lots of new ways to sit)

teabag

Nice to see some new sitting emotes. Down in the comments, it appears that there’s a difference in the sit emotes between males and females, which is interesting.

Some folks have spent a fair amount of time gathering up screen caps of the new police contacts around Paragon (I8 Test).

I spotted Det. Croquette last night while Margie was playing. Nice pink shirt …

There are evidently some prototype bits of the Invention system showing up in the I8 test. See the thread here, pictures here and here, and the sad
news that this will here.

Some gorgeous university interiors, there, aside from the keenosity of building your own Enhancements …

And … the patch notes [With commentary]

Issue 8: To Protect and Serve

• Arena Kiosks: These Kiosks will allow Heroes and Villains to fight against each other more easily if they want to settle personal issues. [Ho-hum]

• In front of the bars are two arena officials, an “Arena Information Operator”, who will provide information on how to use the kiosks; and a “Games Information Operator”, who will provide detailed information on each of the game types of the arena.

• Rikti Monkey Fight Club: Due to a combination of the Family cutting in to the RMFC profits in Sharkhead, and an offer from DJ Zero to expand their enterprise, Joe Young and Cornelius have moved their “entertainment concern” on up to the Pocket D. They have set up a new “Lounge” on the hero side of the club. “It’s a lot classier than the old place”, says Joe Young.

• It’s loud in Pocket D! Local chat in Pocket D will only be heard by players within 50ft of each other now. [Heh.]

Powers

• Many objects in the game which were meant to be immune to Teleportation have been made so. This affects several powers in the Traps Secondary and Gadgets secondary for players.

• Various ‘Build Up’ and ‘Aim’ powers now have a new look. [Interesting.]

• Alternate flying poses. Fly and Hover (and temporary powers that duplicate their effects) have new poses. Your character will transition into an alternate pose after flying forward for a few seconds. Also implemented a banking animation for flying forward while strafing left or right. [Sweet.]

• Increased the base flight speed of Hover by 10%. [A trivial change, IMO, but what the hell.]

• Added a slight delay to the usage of Team Teleport. This should alleviate the issue of Teammates randomly being left behind after a Teleport.

• Soul Storm is now escapable. There is still a bit of delay after you escape before you can move or attack again, but it’s much less of an ‘I win’ power.

• Rikti ambushers will once again show teleportation FX.

• The Helmet enhancement (Mutation/Magic Range) was giving twice the bonus of other Range DOs. It has been reduced to match.

• Rebalanced some of the high end Longbow critters to make them less frustrating.

• Fixed some animation issues with the Jump Jet Pack power granted from the Good vs. Evil Edition.

Titles

• Players may now change their title at levels 15, 25, 35, and 45. These title changes do not stack (if you do not use the one you get at level 25 when you reach level 35, you only have the level 35 change, and lose the level 25 one). At 50, players may change their title without restriction. Talk to any trainer to change your title in this manner. [This makes so much sense. Now … when can we change names?]

Tailor

• New costume pieces are available at the Tailor and at Character Generation:

• Male/Huge/Female

(Head – Detail 1)

Galactic Glasses

Government Glasses

Blast Goggles up

(Head – Ears) [Oh … my …]

Floppy

Bunny

Cat

Rat

Teddy

Wildcat

• Female

(Upper Body – Chest – Tops with Skin)
Angelic

Assassin

Excess

Savage

Tanker

(Lower body – Legs – Bottoms with Skin)

Angelic

Assassin

Excess

Savage

CITY OF HEROES

Faultline Redux

Faultline officials recently provided funding for reconstruction and work was underway in the first neighborhood, when major disaster struck. Due to strange seismic activity on the moon, tidal anomalies caused the Overbrook Dam to rupture flooding the zone. Additional crews have been called in to assess the Dam and shore up the rest of the zone, however, they are continually thwarted by the recent arrival of new villain groups to the area and one group, in particular, that no one expected: Arachnos. It appears
Arachnos has been poking around supergroup base wreckage in Faultline for some time, searching for technology that will further Lord Recluse’s nefarious plans. Paragon Officials have called in small detachments of the Paragon Police Department and Freedom Corps, but are also asking heroes to come forward and protect the new city. [Nice. And I just toured the area for the first time tonight, so my timing is perfect. I do wonder if the plaques and stuff down-below will be raised up.]

Features of the “new” Faultline:

• Transition from Trial Zone to a City Zone (with Overbrook Dam as a Hazard area)

• Level range has been adjusted to 15 – 25 [I believe was 11-20 or something.]

• Missions have been added (see Jim Temblor in New Overbrook at the Memorial statue in the park as your initial contact)

• New Villain groups added: Arachnos, Freakshow, The Lost, Sky Raiders…and something lurking in the water.

• More plaques and badges

• Entrance to Pocket D [Thus saving you the looooooong trip across Skyway.]

• Stores, Trainer (Mirror Spirit), and a hospital have been added to Faultline

Police Band Missions

• PPD Contacts have been added to all City Zones except for Atlas Park and Galaxy City. They will be added to a Hero’s contact list as soon as they enter a zone. These contacts will direct characters to missions aiding the PPD in fighting crime in Paragon City.

• Once you talk to a PPD Contact, your contact list will have a “Police Band Tuner” added to the top of the list. Clicking this will bring up an assortment of crimes-in-progress.

• You will fight level-appropriate Villain Groups in random maps and random mission objectives. Once you have outlevelled a zone, however, you will no longer be able to get Police Band missions in that zone.

• In addition to normal missions, the PPD will give out Safeguard Missions. You get Safeguard missions after performing three to five Police Band missions. [Nice. The equivalent of Newspaper mishes.]

Safeguard Missions

• Safeguard missions allow the Hero player to enter a large outdoor mission map and defend the city from invading villains. The goal is to defeat the Villain behind the attack, preventing a bank robbery, but there are lots of other things going on, too. Safeguard missions are set up for single players and teams.

• When you enter the instance, the bank is immediately being robbed. Don’t delay in getting to the bank, or the crooks could get away with the cash, failing the mission.

• A 15 minute timer starts once the bank heist has been stopped and the mission is completed. At this point you can use the given time to secure the map, and explore and fight for additional badges and rewards. This allows the players to end the mission quickly, or hunt for additional XP and rewards if they choose.

• There are several goals and multiple side missions that can be unlocked and played once the bank robbery has been thwarted. Completing any section of goals or each side mission rewards the players with a special bonus (such as extra XP, temp powers, or unique salvage) and will add some time back to the counter. The more they complete the longer they have to try and complete more goals, so the better they do the higher their rewards. [These sound really nice.]

[So … with the addition of Newspaper and Mayhem missions … when do we get shared mission credit?!]

Giant Monster Spawns Increased

• The following Giant Monster Spawns have had their frequency increased; [Ho-hum]

o Kraken – Perez Park

o Babbage – Boomtown

o Jack in Irons (non-scripted, individual) – Croatoa

o Eochai (non-scripted, individual) – Croatoa

o Adamastor – Dark Astoria [Margie insists she sees this guy all the time.]

o Jurassik – Crey’s Folly

Powers

• Controllers Fossilize power will now properly have ‘critical hold’ effects versus critters. This is a bug fix — this aspect of the power already existed, but was set to always fail.

• Fixed the Short Help text on Stone Cages to properly reflect the powers usage.

Game

• Trains will now stay at station longer, there will be shorter times between trains and the doors of the trains will be clickable while the train is in the station. [Hu-freakin-zzah! Best fix in the whole frelling issue!!!]

CITY OF VILLAINS

Powers

• Many Darkness powers have a new look attached.

• Removed Double Stacked ‘Super Jump’ from Ninja Mastermind Pets.

• Added slightly increased running speed to all Mastermind pets.

• Updated the power description on Thermal Radiation.

• Arachnos Night Widow Bosses have had their Defense values slightly reduced.

• The Arachnos Arch Villain Nocturne has been rebalanced.

• Dominators will now build Domination faster depending on the size of the Team they are grouped with. Each member of the team (aside from the Dominator himself) increases the speed of Domination gain by approximately 16%. Note that this bonus does NOT apply to the existing bonus Assault powers gain in PvP. The maximum bonus to Domination will happen in a full 8 person group.

• Base Domination gain increased by 50% (to 3 points per attack up from 2 points per attack.)

Here. Or, rather, Over There, since it was in Europe …

Lots of Faultline stuff.

And “newspaper mishes” …

Is there anything on the design side being developed or in issue 8 which you feel would attract more subscribers?

Lets see, Issue 8 we have the police band missions, which are kind of like the hero version of the newspaper missions the broker missions and obviously fault line. We have the safeguard missions which are I don’t want to say hero equivalent of mayhem missions which were all about destruction and evil whereas the safe guard missions are all about oh stop the villains from destroying paragon city property or stop them from robbing a bank. So it’s a very kind of a OOO tense way to keep the villains from getting
away with what they want to get away with, to stop them from knocking over the bank or whatever. I think those will be interesting too those should be fun and of course they span the level ranges so right from the beginning you can play them and I think that will be pretty cool.