We have Issues

A nicely crafted history of CoH, issue by issue — what went right, and what didn’t.
Part of what seems clear is that the intro of PvP had significantly negative consequences — that were inevitable, because PvP (be it the Arena duds or the power nerfs) was critical to City of Villains being launched. Indeed, if you see Issues 4 and 5 (and ED) as laying the groundwork for supporting CoV PvP (EIEIO), it all begins to make sense.
The question then becomes — how do Cryptic/NCSoft manage to move forward? The answer, from what we’ve heard tell for I8, is more content and some added power sets (and EPPs), even if some of that is pay-for-it rather than free. That’s the right answer, I supsect. The question will be how soon they can bring it on. I7 will keep people in CoV, and provide some bones for the CoH players, but it may be a long wait until it all pays off. And, in the meantime, there are plenty of other games out there …
(Though not for me, he said confidently.)
(via Doyce)

I7 UI changes

You’ll now be able to control display of buff icons for yourself, team members, and/or pets. It looks as though you’ll be able to show all of them, show just applied one (vs. auto-powers) or show none of them. That’s a nice, if not earth-shattering, quality of life thang.
Actually, it goes further than that:

– You can now hide all inherent/accolade buff icons via right-click.
– Click buffs now flash/fade on and off a few seconds before they expire.
– Stackable buffs (e.g. Siphon Speed) can now be displayed differently – as normal, slightly overlayed (as in the above image), or a single buff icon with a number in the middle. No change for powers such as Soul Drain.
– Enemy debuffs are also slightly duller that your own buff icons.

and

– There’s a global channel search function
– It’s now possible to set your team seek options to automatically reject all team invites.
– Dodging an attack from defense buffs (?) now puts Avoided! or Deflected! over your head.
– Powers that put you into a self-contained state (tested Rest and Phase Shift, presumably PFF, Invisibility, etc) now display Only Affecting Self in the mez state text below the buff bar.

The third bullet there is kind of interesting — assuming the screen doesn’t get inutterably cluttered (esp. during a major lagfest melee), it will be good to know when defensive powers are doing their thing. As a Dev describes it in a bit more detail:

Any time we determine the miss was due to a defensive power, it gets a new message. What message it gets is based on the power, so as people have said, if your target is a Stone tank you may see “Deflected!” messages, but a SR in Elude might result in “Eluded!”.

There’s also mention in the thread that timed temp powers now have an actual timer on them. Nice, esp. now that PvP zones have brought so many temp powers into the game (I’m assuming that on/off temp powers, like the Wedding Ring, have similar timers?). Usage “timers” are also displayed (“x users remaining”).
Coolness. Sometimes I think UI changes can be the most profoundly satisfying ones of all, even if they are all in the “background.”

And an odd policy change on character renaming:

Previously, names for characters under level 35 on game accounts that were inactive for over 90 days were changed to unreserved status. Data mining has determined that this policy is not needed on an ongoing basis and the program has been suspended. If we need to reenact this policy in the future to free up names then we will give all players 30 days notice before enacting the policy again. We thank all players for their continued support.

Which makes me think that (a) it was a PitA to run the report and/or make the name changes, and/or (b) after the first sweep on this (some months back) they’ve gotten very few names back out of it.

Lynn activities

Last night was going to sort of be the kickoff to the Boomtown Saints team activities (I do not envy Doyce trying to figure out how to get a 41, a 33, two 28s, a 14 and a 13 all doing something productive, until we get a few more at each of those levels), so I signed on with Lynn, who’s joined the group.
(While Lynn is definitely not saintly, she does find the whole thing very gothic, what with the titles and all that, plus she actually digs the street-level bits, so there’s potentially a good fit there.)
Official proceedings were delayed, so I ran her through some more Croatoa missions, until she got an invite for a PUG in Croatoa. She was the lowest of the team, which ran from 27 to 32, but, hey, good XP, right?
Hrm.
It was the “save the 4 hostages from a huge outdoors hillside platforms Faerie map full of Redcaps” missoin, and we suffered both attrition in deaths (largely avoidable — lots of “I’ll go scout over here, hey, aggro, oh, Quantum, crap ..” kinds of things) and, ultimate, players, which then led back to the first kind of death.
Throw in a bubbler who wouldn’t advanced with the big combat bubble, a blaster who kept knocking away all my opponents, and folks who … well, let’s just say it’s a whole sainthood-earning string of miracles that we managed to both complete the mission and I only died once.
After that, Epitaph was on, so I ran with him a bit, kind of getting some beginning RP into the relationship (Lynn is both fascinated and freaked out by the Kheldians, and is freaked out by her being freaked out by it). Wrapped up a Council mission, then off to fight Crey — which, unexpectedly, led to Paragon Protectors, which Lynn, amazingly, did not die in front of (and, hopefully, contriibuted toward the defeat of).
It was fun doing more actual RP with her, as well as doing the very scrappery duo. I look forward to the next (coughGAMECALENDARcough) time.

Proto-squids

Rolled up two Kheldians last night. I built Nova Testament, a Peacebringer, and Margie built Cetus, a Warshade. Ran around Galaxy and Atlas, interrupted by FedEx sagas and Internet outages.
Initial impressions are favorable — we were able to carve up pretty much everything we saw, and got to 5 pretty quickly. Interestingly, as squids you have both the convenience of flying/teleporting and the tacit penalty of not getting XP to/from missions the way other 2nd level heroes do.
I don’t want to do too much more in “test,” if only because I expect that these characters (on Infinity) will, in fact, be going away, and there’s no real point in spending too much time on them. Maybe just enough to get the Nova form and see how that whole dynamic works.
Main question will be whether we are a squid-squid team, or whether we pair these guys up with another lowbie pair we have in our stables (thus getting the Kheldian+Hero bonuses, not to mention someone who doesn’t get vapors at the sight of a Quantum). That will also help determine some sort of storyline behind them, about which I am feeling fairly vague.

Toggle Drops

This subject came up in conversation the other day, discussing PvP. Here, via Castle, are the official numbers on Toggle Drop powers under I7 (which reduces them some):

Inherent: Brawl: 5% for 1 Toggle
Blaster: Devices: Trip Mine: 5% for 1 Toggle
Blaster: Devices: Time Bomb: 19% for 1 Toggle
Blaster: Electrical Manipulation: Charged Brawl: 5% for 1 Toggle
Blaster: Electrical Manipulation: Havok Punch: 22% for 1 Toggle
Blaster: Energy Manipulation: Bone Smasher: 22% for 1 Toggle
Blaster: Energy Manipulation: Energy Punch: 5% for 1 Toggle
Blaster: Fire Manipulation: Fire Sword: 5% for 1 Toggle
Blaster: Fire Manipulation: Fire Sword Circle: 22% for 1 Toggle
Blaster: Ice Manipulation: Frozen Fists: 5% for 1 Toggle
Blaster: Ice Manipulation: Ice Sword: 22% for 1 Toggle
Defender Force Field: Force Bolt: 8% and 2% for 1 Toggle; 0.16% chance of 2 Toggles
Controller Force Field: Force Bolt: 5% for 1 Toggle
Mastermind Force Field: Force Bolt: 5% for 1 Toggle
Defender Force Field: Repulsion Bomb: 27% and 5% for 1 Toggle; 1.35% chance of 2 Toggles
Controller Force Field: Repulsion Bomb: 19% for 1 Toggle
Mastermind Force Field: Repulsion Bomb:19% for 1 Toggle
Defender Force Field: Repulsion Field: 5% and 2% chance for 1 Toggle per 1/2 second; 0.1% chance for 2 Toggles per 1/2 second
Controller Force Field: Repulsion Field: 3% for 1 Toggle per 1/2 second
Mastermind Force Field: Repulsion Field: 3% for 1 Toggle per 1/2 second
Defender: Kinetics: Repel: 5% and 2% chance for 1 Toggle per 1/2 second; 0.1% chance for 2 Toggles per 1/2 second
Controller: Kinetics: Repel: 3% for 1 Toggle per 1/2 second
Corruptor: Kinetics: Repel: 3% for 1 Toggle per 1/2 second
Peacebringer: White Dwarf Strike: 5% for 1 Toggle Defender
Storm Summoning: Lightning Storm: 20% and 4% for 1 Toggle; 0.8% chance of 2 Toggles
Controller Storm Summoning: Lightning Storm: 17% for 1 Toggle
Defender Storm Summoning: Thunder Clap: 12% and 2% for 1 Toggle; 0.4% chance of 2 Toggles
Controller Storm Summoning: Thunder Clap: 8% for 1 Toggle
Warshade: Black Dwarf Strike: 5% for 1 Toggle
Stalker: Assassin’s Claw: 22% and 4% for 1 Toggle; 0.88% chance for 2 Toggles
Stalker: Assassin’s Strike: 22% and 4% for 1 Toggle; 0.88% chance for 2 Toggles
Stalker: Assassin’s Blow: 22% and 4% for 1 Toggle; 0.88% chance for 2 Toggles
Stalker: Assassin’s Blade: 22% and 4% for 1 Toggle; 0.88% chance for 2 Toggles
Stalker: Assassin’s Impaler: 22% and 4% for 1 Toggle; 0.88% chance for 2 Toggles
Stalker: Assassin’s Eclipse: 22% and 4% for 1 Toggle; 0.88% chance for 2 Toggles
Dominator: Bone Smasher: 5% for 1 Toggle
Dominator: Total Focus: 64% for 1 Toggle
Dominator: Incinerate: 5% for 1 Toggle
Dominator: Blaze: 64% for 1 Toggle
Dominator: Ice Sword: 5% for 1 Toggle
Dominator: Greater Ice Sword: 64% for 1 Toggle
Dominator: Mind Probe: 5% for 1 Toggle
Dominator: Psychic Shockwave: 64% for 1 Toggle
Dominator: Skewer: 5% for 1 Toggle
Dominator: Ripper: 64% for 1 Toggle
Mastermind: Assault Bot Smash: 5% for 1 Toggle
Corruptor: Traps: Time Bomb: 19% for 1 Toggle
Corruptor: Traps: Trip Mine: 75% and 37% for 1 Toggle; 27.75% chance for 2 Toggles
Mastermind: Traps: Trip Mine: 75% and 37% for 1 Toggle; 27.75% chance for 2 Toggles

And now you know.

Mayhem for Heroes

Mayhem missions are a new I7 bit that lets villains run around destroying the scenery (with possible side missions). But for heroes?
Quoth Statesman in the “Devs! Please Confirm Hero Mayhem Coming!” thread:

Yes. It’s coming. Safeguard missions. Being worked on right now (outside my office, in fact).

Cool. Though “Safeguard” sounds way to much like “Protect the Artifact” kind of stuff. Would be nice to have a “Your mission is to destroy as many of these evil CoT talismens / Crey computers / Council war machines as you can …” kind of thing, so that we can pound on crap.

More I7 bits – TF Accolade and Invite Control

From the CoH LJ:

I got the Task Force Commander accolade presumably for having been on the default 6 TFs. It gives +5% to HP and access to Shoulder Epaulets, which I couldn’t find at Icon. I couldn’t really find much else new (I was really looking forward to some of the futuristic stuff I saw in screenshots) aside from some Plant and Robot stuff.

Not so much into the Epaulets, but, damn, nice to get another accodade (and another 5% HP boost).

There’s a “not accepting invites” option under the team-seeking window.

Praise Allah.
Actually, that needs a bit of refinement. Like, “Not accepting invites outside of SG” or “Not accepting invites outside of Coaltion” or “Not accepting invites outside of Friends” or something. That’s assuming that this is an actual control (blocking invites) vs. just another flag (that people ignore).
No, really — I was in the rare position the other day of running a PUG. I looked in the Hollows for potential members (since that’s where I was) and every single person except one was running with “Not seeking a Team” — even though there was one person, right there, broadcasting “Lvl 9 Tanker LFT!” It’s no wonder people ignore those little flags. (And, let’s face it — do even users of those flags make use of the fine tuning, i.e., “Seeking Patrol” vs “Seeking Task Force” etc.?).
I’d love to be able to easily limit the folks who could send me invites. If nothing else though, if this is an actual control not just a flag, it will encourage pre-invite tells.

Toons on Parade!

So, now that I have Psi-clone at 50 … what now?

  • 50 – Psi-clone: I expect, inevitably, that playtime with him will drop down some. I do still have some “story” to tell about him, but no realistic reason to think it will happen any more coherently than it has pre-50.
    Did a bunch of scrambling to respec him a couple of times over the weekend. I was singularly unimpressed by the Flash+Psychic Tornado combo — but, then, we were going against Praetorian Robots, and so any sort of psychic power is of dubious use. We’ll see.

  • 31 – Velvet Jones: Still regularly appearing during Phalanx Prestige Days. With the new I7 Defense bits, it may be that P-siren is more viable as a bubbler, in which case she might get more play. Otherwise, she’s still around as my “low 30s” toon.
  • 27 – Lynn Calodo: Just transferred her over into the Boomtown Saints, which should be interesting. Haven’t been giving her a lot of play lately; I should change that.
  • 27 – Torchielle: Current high-rotation toon. Was surprised to discover the other day that fire blasters are, any more, rare birds. I like the power set a lot. Awaiting I7 for a freespec to change to Fly. Though I suppose she could now join into the TV respec. Might be fun.
    She’s currently in an online story — which I’m not handling well, it seeming to drop off the bottom of my priority list way too often.

  • 21 – Fazenda: Pulled her out for the first time the other day, and had a lot of fun. Need to play her more.
  • 20 – Ho Ho: Stamina! Oh, blessed art thou among powers! Getting regular Monday play, and enjoying every bit of it. Still feels “slow” given the low attack rates on Axe, but playing quite solid beyond that. Made a fun Golden Age “mannish” costume for her for the 2nd Anniversary.
  • 16 – Mr. Azure: Needs more playtime. He and the Mrs. are in sort of a slump at the moment.
  • 14 – Amethyst Crown: Top candidate for dropping in favor of a new Squid. A solid contender, but Margie’s stolen her AT thunder with Blue Point, and I have plenty of other solo toons.
  • 14 – Honor the Flag: Just dinged 14, so she has (ta-daaah!) a travel power, Fly. Huzzah. Still sucking wind from endurance, but a good “let’s just run out to the Hollows and have fun” character. Still gets complements on the uniform.
  • 10 – Big Lungs: Second in line to be dropped, though I like her appearance.
  • 09 – Lady Zebra: Getting a fair amount of playtime. Still low enough that she’s a bit of a struggle. Like the powers, like the look, not impressed by the SG she’s gotten hooked up with.
  • 09 – Al McGordo: I really like him. Never play him. Rats.
  • 08 – Fr. Frank: Third on the list of drop candidates. No particular reason, just not playing him.
  • 17 – Mister Thorne: Lost his leadership role due to lack of playtime. Got it back. Just need to put his appearance on a schedule. Still not happy with the powers. Re-roll?
  • 16 – Mister Ravenous: Gotten some playtime in the last few weeks. Enjoy brutes. Maybe will do more now in my copious free time.
  • 11 – Eliza Dee: Sadly neglected. A pity, because I like her.

So, beyond the above status, what’s next? Kheldians, of course. I need to do some reading/ research, and there’s still the question of whether we want to run a two-squid team or not; yes, because that would make it easier for us both to start from scratch; no, because we could then hook them up with one of our at-loose-ends tunes (e.g., Al McGordo). Also need to ponder doing “experimental” squids first, to get the hang of the AT. To be pondered.

Just in time with the AV stuff last night

I7 stuff is now in Test, and among the changes:

Arch Villains/Heroes and Giant Monsters have been significantly boosted. They should now require more people in order for them to be defeated, especially at higher levels.

Given how quickly most AVs go down against a decent-sized team, that’s probably not too bad a thing — though it makes taking on some of the tougher ones (Infernal, Lusca) … daunting.
At least some testers say that the boost is in damage done (+10%)
Despite some initial notes on the subject, Elite Bosses (the “Two-person-team-capable” AVs) are not being changed.
Aside from that, the I7 Test Release notes are here. Specific items of note:

4. Issue 7 is not fully optimized yet. Players with low end systems may have serious performance issues.

One of my biggest worries is that bringing CoV graphics to CoH is going to cause major graphics issues. Glad they’re watching this.

7. Although characters now keep their Origin-based attack power past level 10, characters who have already lost the power by leveling up are not being given the power back. This is a bug and will be addressed in a later patch.

Shrug. This sounds nice, but the Origin powers are so trivial in damage (Brawl or below), and not enhanceable, it’s not something I would imagine keeping in my tray anyway.

BASE ITEMS
• Inspiration Receptacle: This item allows all members of the Supergroup to store Inspirations that they may not be using, but other members can use to greater benefit. A permission set in the SG Permissions allows a character to withdraw Inspirations from the Receptacle.
• Enhancement Container: This item allows all members of the Supergroup to store Enhancements in the Supergroup’s base. Members with the proper SG Permission will be able to withdraw Enhancements from the Container.
• Salvage Bin: This item allows all members of the Supergroup to store salvage in the Supergroup’s base. Members with the proper SG Permission will be able to withdraw Salvage (and just “see it” from the base’s worktables as well).

Yay. Oh, yay. Nice to be able to save stuff, both usable by others and salvage cluttering up one’s pockets.

• Modified PvE critter accuracy. Defense powers will now work equally well against critters, regardless if they have higher accuracy. For instance, your defense powers will work equally well against a Boss or any critter up to 5 levels higher than you, as it does for an equal level minion. Previously, a more accurate critter could circumvent much of your defense, but this will no longer happen. This change is designed to alleviate the disparity between Defense and Damage resistance powers (for instance, a player with super reflexes will now be more effective against a high level critter, boss or Arch villain). This change has no effect on a player who does not have any Defense. This change does not affect PvP.

Thus abruptly increasing the utility of both Super Reflexes and Force Fields. Huzzah. And, with that:

• Reduced the effectiveness of Super Reflexes defense to AoE attacks (stalker and scrapper). With I6, Super Reflexes was given a very high bonus to AoE attacks in order to make it more effective against bosses and Arch Villains, since they typically use AoE powers, but with the new To Hit calculations, this is no longer necessary.
• Super Reflexes Passive Defense abilities have been increased in effectiveness by 1/3rd.

Devs giveth, devs taketh away, devs shuffle the deck chairs …

• Reduced End costs on Claws high end powers.
• The Claws Power sets for both Scrappers and Stalkers have new animations for the powers Swipe and Strike. The animation for Slash has been replaced with the old Strike animation in order to better match the cast, recharge and damage values.

If I weren’t going to be busy with a new squid, I might roll up another claws character.

• All powers which have an Endurance Drain component will now drain a percentage of a PvE target’s Endurance, rather than a set number of Endurance Points. This fixes the issues created when enemies’ Endurance Pools were increased.

Interesting. This is mostly electrical, though I think there’s a Dark Melee power that does this, too.

• Defeat Badges now require that you or your team do 10% or more damage to the entity to receive credit for the badge. (The former system required that you deal 25% or more damage to get credit).

Balances the Giant Monster issue above, mostly.

• Troll Task Force badge is now given out for spending time in The Hollows.

Fun. And, I suspect, something most of my toons will auto-get.

City Zones
• Spawns updated and adjusted in several city zones. Street encounters in lower level zones have more variety.

Cool. I’ll be interested to see what that variety works out to be. In numbers? Levels? Mob types?

[Heroes] • For players with both City of Heroes and City of Villains access, Hero characters have access to all formerly Villain-only costume pieces.
[Villains] • Many new costume pieces are available.

YEAH, BABY! YEAH! There’s a reason I went through all that effort with costume tokens last weekend.
Though the question is, are the new pieces on the CoV side also available on the CoH side? (I presume so, or there will be hell to pay.)
Lots of other stuff. Lots of fixes to archery. Lots of bits on the new Patron powers, the new CoV powers, etc. RTWT.

Fifty

After all the setup, it was almost anticlimactic, save for …
Well, we started gathering up around 6:15p, trying to figure out a nice AV mish. Ended up with Neuron, which was okay, but, given the preponderence of robots, not terribly psi-power friendly (which made debuting the Flash+Psychic Tornado respec combo less than impressive).
Still, everyone was … really supportive. Wanting to be there. Wanting to see it. It felt … well, heartwarning, in as gooey a fashion as you want to make it out to be.
When the double-ding actually happend for Psi-clone and Amorpha, I almost missed it. I had a fair amount of lag, so the animation almost slipped past, though the “EPIC ARCHETYPE UNLOCKED” message didn’t.
Too. Cool. And it wouldn’t have been nearly as cool without so many of our friends and comrades-in-arms being there.
Hyperthermian, Sword of Asgard, Avocet, Noelle Frost, Kessa, Puck Bunny Shock.Therapy, MacroLass …
And pre/post-ding congrats from Lady Photon, Captain Atomyc and Mia, Pearl Thunder, and Malcalypse.
It seems weird getting all virtually chocked-up over a bunch of super-hero avatars, but it was really nice, and affirming of the community we’ve been in and contributed to that so many folks (players) were either there, or were interested in being there, or wished they’d been there, or just said “grats.”
What next? Well, editing some photos and a movie that Avo shot and all that, and getting pics posted up here. And then …
… well, we certainly aren’t short of alts to play, and, of course, we can now roll up some Squiddies.
Looking forward to the next 50 ding.
Thanks, people. I mean it.
See you in the comics …

And, beyond all that …
Thanks to Doyce for getting me hooked on this crazy thing.
And thanks to Margie for making it all possible.

R-E-S-P-E-C, see?

With the Psi-clone Dings 50 party hurtling towards us (i.e., tonight), I’ve been thinking about his build, and actually went so far on Friday as to respec him with my last respec (no freespecs left — had to travel to Galaxy to make it happen, how quaint). I’ve been seriously unhappy with Mental Blast at 50 (slow, low damage), so I took that out. I was toying whether to go with Flash (which is, what, a 3rd Level Illusionist Power?) or Regeneration Aura (favorite of teams, which PC does less of than most).
In the end, I decided to go with the supportive RA rather than the aggro-drawing Flash, esp. with recollections of the Group Hold nerfs an issue or two back.
During Saturday’s Firefly game, though, Doyce critiqued my not having taken Psionic Tornado. I’d felt that was far too aggressive/TK a power for Psi-clone’s character concept (essentially a really powerful Empath), and he noted, quite rightly, that the man’s name is Psi-clone (“cyclone”) and to not have the power was (not his words) goofy.
Whcih had a certain merit to it, especially since if PT is unleashed after Flash has held most of the group, I get “sick” containment bonus damage, too.
So, what the heck, fine, I’ll give it a try. Except, of course, no respecs, having just burned my last. But it would be great to debut as part of the Ding Party.
*sigh*
So, with Margie’s help, we cobbled together a Respec mish, pulling in some 20s-level characters and doing the Sky Raiders respec (for “free” for most of us). It was … just burning time, really — I can remember being so worried about the mission the first time I ran it, but this time it was mostly grays-blues, with an occasional white or even yellow sky skiff, and a bunch of Really Good People, so it just went by with no problems.
Of course, now I have to decide what to give up for (1) Flash and (2) Psionic Tornado. Actually thinking of not only dropping Regen Aura but Recovery Aura as well — get out of the “gather up” business except for Invis and leave it at that. Esp. to the extent that I run PC mainly with Amorpha (will that still be the case?) neither power is critical.
Other issue is still the pragmatic one — will this gather more aggro (after it wears off) than Amorpha can handle (or, more directly, than I can handle beyond what Amorpha grabs?). We shall see. At any rate, if all goes well, it should be ready for its debut tonight.

More on Alt management stuff in the future

In the I8-and-beyond forum threads, Bluewrecker noted:

Would it be possible to get a comment on two things that could play into this with all the talk today of upcoming plans? I’m sure many, many players would love to know where these two things stand:
1. Being able to get additional slots on a server for more characters (beyond the current 12).
2. Being able to transfer characters from one server to another.

Statesman answered most interestingly:

BlueWrecker, we really want to add these features…we really do. Some things just came up that have prevented us from implementing them sooner. But we are working on them.

Coolness.

Name Tricks

Did see one interesting thing at the PocketD anniversary party.
Okay, so the ordinary reticled name is blue, and consists of title (small type), name (large type), badge (small type), SG (small white type). I spotted a couple of characters that had a glowing yellow title above their titles (one was “Smooth Operator”). I’ve never seen that before, and have no idea how it’s done, and the person zoned before I could ask them.
Pretty sure it wasn’t a Dev. But I have no idea how they did that.
Did spot another neat trick at the Icon visit earlier in the evening: three identical blue women — spot-on identical — all named the same thing: Glacial Havok.
Huh? How dey do dat?
Margie was actually able to ask. And it was nicely done. Due to the typography used on-screeen, they were able to use:
Glacial Havok
GlaciaI Havok
GIacial Havok
Which, if it’s not clear in this font, is using a capital I for one or the other lower-case Ls in the name “Glacial.” In theory, that would allow yet one more (GIaciaI), too.
Nice. Must remember that. Makes it a bit more difficult for folks to send you tells, but …
Maybe twin squiddies …
UPDATE: The golden titles were evidently being handed out by the devs at the party for good costumes. They’re time-limited, so will vanish in a day or less. Whatever.

Costume Party

Spent the first half of last evening signing in all my active and semi-active and proto-active toons on to get the 4/28 costume tokens. Will probably do the same today to get the 4/29 (re)costume tokens.
Didn’t do much, costuming-wise. I already had a fine Golden Age costume for Psi-clone (and a rather less lovely Silver Age one), and the only other one I had to do was Ho Ho, for Monday. Alas, women’s top styles don’t have much in the way of “normal” clothes, so I went for the mannish look — man’s dress shirt and tie, black jodhpurs tucked into stiletto black boots. Actually looks pretty nice. Unkinked her hair, of course, into a Josephine Baker-style bob.
It’s hard creating a stereotype from a stereotype, but at least it was something.
Flew over to the Pocket D party — main — to see what was happening. What was happening was, evidently, a lot of people who hadn’t done anything to their costumes standing around and bitching that the Devs weren’t there, hadn’t been there, had been there and gone, and dude, where was their costume piece / new mishes / jetpacks / rebate check?
Feh.
Eventually ran off and did some Fazenda/Araware gameplay. Ironic, since Fazenda’s already close to being Golden/Silver Age in her costuming (female stage magician in top had … a visual that hasn’t changed much over the decades). Actually, it worked pretty well — there are some distinct similarities to the Hildy/Torchy combo — PBAoE combat grinder gathering up mooks while the blaster blasts them — except that (a) Araware’s an empathy-backed scrapper, not a tanker, and (b) Fazenda’s blasts are single-target, not AoE.
Fun times. May do them some more.

I8 and beyond

From the Second Anniversary Address by Statesman and Positron:

With Issue 7 mostly “in the can” as it were (bugs aside), the leads here have been focusing on the future of the franchise. There is a major effort underway on “end-game” content for max-level characters, the first part of which you will see in Issue 8, which is due out later this year.
Issue 8 will also bring with it the Veterans’ Reward system. This will allow us to give out special thank-you gifts to our players based on the number of months they have been subscribed. These gifts will range from costume pieces to powers to base items and beyond. You don’t even have to do anything to get them, other than keeping an active account.
Beyond that, we are looking to release another Issue building up the story towards our next retail box, due in 2007. This will include going back and revamping some of the zones from City of Heroes, using everything we’ve learned from making City of Villains and Issue 7, plus a bunch of other cool stuff including new powersets and an epic archetype. Of course for the retail box we will be creating all-new zones and content based on the results of the forum poll we posted last month. The retail box will be an expansion to both City of Heroes and City of Villains.

Glee!

CoX and Customization

Stateman speaks on why higher-level CoV characters are “forced” into particular Patron Pools, and how protests over same indicate the degree to which CoX is unusually customizable (such that folks find this sort of restriction worthy of protest).

What fascinates me is how new this discussion is to the MMP world. I’ve played lots of games over the years, and usually customization wasn’t that big of an issue. I won’t use any particular game as an example, but rather I’ll take D&D 1st edition to demonstrate a difference. Magic Users then couldn’t use swords. Just couldn’t. They couldn’t really wear armor, either. The major reason for this was balance: a sword wielding, armor wearing mage rendered any regular ole fighter pretty darn useless. There was certainly some grumbling – after all, didn’t Gandalf wield a sword? – but pretty much it’s been accepted. In fantasy games today (online and other), the same limitations continue to apply…When designing City of Heroes, I remember a lot of people telling me that it was just plain wrong to give people so many costume choices in the beginning. People wanted to earn individuality over time, not receive it. Yet, to this day, I think character creation is the single most praised element of the City.
If I were to wax philosophical for a moment – I wonder whether it’s the genre (super heroes), the medium (City of Heroes) or the nature of the internet which has led to a greater demand for individuality.

Golden/Silver Age Hero Stuff

I hadn’t really given much thought to joining in the Silver and Golden Age revelry on Friday night. On the other hand, it might be kinda fun. Doyce links to a fine guide to Silver and Golden Age costuming (and naming) standards. Pretty good stuff. The basics (tweaked by me a bit):

  1. Primary colors — Red, Blue, Yellow — are big. Secondary colors — Purple, Orange, Green — also work, too. Three different (and clashing) colors is pretty common in the Golden Age. Silver Age is more often just one or two of these, with Black and White filling in sometimes, but it’s still bright and “four-color.”
  2. Golden Age costumes are bulky, normal clothing pieces and swashbuckling bits. Silver Age costumes go with the smooth spandex look. It’s only in the 80s and 90s that street clothes and overcoats and buckles and bits become standard.
  3. Golden Age heroes have Hoods, Cowls, and Domino Masks. Silver Agers began to go without masks for the first time, but did more with helmets, full-face masks, etc.

So I’m thinking of a Golden Age Psi-clone (who would probably become Mister Psi-clone in the Golden Age) — likely his standard business suit … with a cape (green, with orange lining) … and a domino mask. Silver Age Psi-clone would probably look a lot like his awful spandex costume, only in brown and green.
Hmmm. Might be fun. Even if it chews up some costume tokens.

Ding party

I’ve posted something on the Alliance boards, and created a Google Calendar notice, and changed the MOTD for the CoJ, and bugged folks about it on Alliance OOC, but just in case anyone has missed it and reads here …
Planning the 50-ding for Psi-clone and Amorpha on Monday at 6:30p MDT. Figure it will be a quick single-mission, take some pix, kinda affair. Anyway, it should be a short enough soiree to not interfere overly much with Monday Munchies.
I’m tempted to make some major announcement re Psi-clone and the CoJ while everyone’s gathered, just for dramatic effect, but can’t think of one I actually would want to follow through with. Certainly the norm for these sorts of things (“Psi-clone and Amorpha are getting married!”) wouldn’t work, character-wise. 🙂