I’ve never been so anticipatorially hung up on a game that I really felt the yen for a lifetime sub (which would have SO paid off with CoX, and been SUCH a waste with CO, so I guess it’s a wash).
STO just announced (or re-announced, or firmly established) the perks for lifetime members. It’s worth a comment or two on what works and what doesn’t. Of course, this is just for me — your ego-boo mileage will certainly vary.
Greetings Lifetime Members!
We just wanted to thank you again for purchasing a Lifetime Subscription from us. As you already know, this entitles you to play the game without paying a monthly fee. But, that’s not where it ends. Later this month, we’ll be releasing special perks for you, just to show our appreciation. Here’s some of what we’re working on, exclusive to Lifetime Subscribers:
Exclusive In-Game Chat Channel:
Talk shop with other Lifetime Subscribers. Share thoughts and ideas about the game, or anything else.
Okay, this is pretty easy and straightforward to do — but are any folks (or any significant number) really going to take advantage of this? Is it worth all that and a bag of chips? The chance to chat with, well, other folks so obsessed about Star Trek and so willing to drop a chunk of money?
Folks who like chat will find this the sort of perk they like.
Front-of-Queue Support
Waiting isn’t fun, and we don’t think you should have to do it. Any time the server is queued, you’ll go to the front of it.
Now this is a very, very cool perk. It’s not life-changing, but it’s very appropriate for a lifetime sub.
In-Game Title
Visibly show off your support.
Some people will think this cool. Other people will find it abhorrent.
In-Game VIP Lounge
Spend time in an exclusive area inside the game. This social area is limited to Lifetime Subscribers only.
From what I was reading (and Tweeting) yesterday, this is the Captain’s Table (as in the ST book series). The question is, just like the chat channel, how many people will actually make use of this?
A Unique Costume Piece
Show off that fancy new title in style.
Without knowing what this is, it’s hard to say, but a very cool costume piece is an appropriate thing to have in this game.
So, some stuff that is pretty nice, some stuff mixed, some social stuff that I really don’t see being used all that much (social interaction is most likely to be based on common interests; the intersection of “social players” and “lifetime subscribers” and “folks who are going to want to socialize with other lifetime subscribers” is, I suspect, fairly small.
Queue-jumping is pretty damned cool, though. Getting high priority on support requests / bug reports would also be along those same lines.
I’m not a lifetime subscriber to STO, and am not likely to be, but I think those who are should get some measure of reward to make their lives easier or nicer without giving them an unfair advantage in the game. Most of these things provide just that. Nicely done, Cryptic.
The STO Season One “Common Ground” update, sometime real soon now (“Mid-March”). Features:
PVP Updates
Wargames – Federation players can now participate in PvP against one another to better prepare for the dangers of the battlefield.
Um … PvP meh. But new PvP map will likely mean a new PvE map to use, so that’s good.
Customization
Off-Duty Uniforms – Experience DS9 in style! Starfleet officers will have the option to change into off-duty outfits to enjoy more casual attire.
On the presumption this will cost extra, meh. I can imagine that if I were doing more RPGing, this would be of value.
New Stances and Hairstyles – Further customize your Captain by changing his or her hairstyle, or adopting two brand new stances: Stern and Relaxed.
New stances always good. Actually, the ability to dynamically change your stance would be welcome.
The Captain’s Log – A web-based application to check in on you and your friends’ Captains and ships.
You mean, a website portal to our characters and their ships? Excellent!
Ships
A New Klingon Battle Cruiser – The K’Tanco Battle Cruiser has been made available to Klingon Lieutenant Commanders.
Klingon Ship Customization – Use the ship tailor to customize your Bird of Prey, Carrier or Raptor.
Fine, fine. When I finally roll up a Klingon, I’m sure I’ll find this cool.
Missions
New Fleet Actions Everywhere!
The Big Dig – Available in Romulan space.
DS9 Under Siege – The True Way has attacked and boarded DS9. Repel the invasion to save the day.
Klingons Can Play, Too – Klingon Captains may now access the Crystalline Entity, Big Dig and Breaking the Planet Fleet Actions
Skills
Respec Is Here – Unhappy with your Captain’s skill point allocation? Use the respec tool to change things up. (Available both in-game and as a C-store item.)
Don’t see a personal need for this, but some folks do. Hopefully Cryptic will have learned some costing lessons here from CO.
New Skill: Starship Attack Vectors – Improve your ship’s accuracy and critical hit chance.
New Skill: Combat Maneuvers – Improve your ship’s evasion and turn rate.
New Skill: Starship Battle Strategy – Improve your ship’s critical hit severity and damage resistance.
All good-sounding stuff, though I’m not sure we need more skills to split our skill points out onto.
In The C-Store
New Bridge Variants – All new ways to update your Bridges’ look, available for a low price in the C-Store for both Federation and Klingon ships.
Federation Ship Variants – New takes on your old favorites, available for a low price in the C-Store.
Respec – Unhappy with your Captain’s skill point allocation? Use the respec tool to change things up.
Character Slot – Purchase an additional character slot if you’d like to have more than three characters on your account.
Rename – Changed your mind about the cool name you chose? Get it legally changed! Recognized across the Alpha Quadrant.
New Federation Playable Species – Become a Tellarite, Pakled or Rigelian.
Well, no big surprises here, though it’s good to see some new stuff finally showing up in the C-Store. Holding out for the Caitian playable species, though …
This is only a bit of the changes, fixes and updates coming to Star Trek Online in March. Season One: Common Ground will be available in mid-March. For a full list of what will be available in Season One, please visit the Engineering Reports forum. Interested in checking things out early? Visit the Tribble test server forums for early release notes.
I dinged from Lieutenant to Lieutenant Commander in STO yesterday with Bierzein, my Trill Science Officer. That’s my first LC — huzzah!
Since I haven’t talked about the leveling process in STO (and the rank promotion isn’t clearly laid out either) … let’s discuss it. If nothing else, it will give me some notes for when I do it with the next toon.
Leveling within a Rank
STO is kind of weird with the leveling bits. Each rank has 10 grades within it (tracked very efficiently across the top). But the grades (at least on the Lt level) don’t make that much difference — there are a couple of skills that come available mid-rank, but there’s no huge power ding.
(Actually, there is a “ding” — a visual effect, and a hearty “Well done, Lieutenant” from Leonard Nimoy. But it’s not a sudden massive and obvious empowering.)
Advancement in STO during a rank is through skills and skill points. The grades, in many ways, serve more to give a short-hand as to where you are. As it stands, every mission you get additional skill points for yourself and for your bridge officers (the latter share a pool). They can be applied at any time, but when they hit some sort of threshold a “Skill up!” small flasher appears in the upper left corner. Click on it and apply the skill points for yourself and for your bridge officers (one or more of them) and you’re done. (Be sure and click Apply!)
It’s very subtle in effect, but it’s a constant advancement, which is kind of nice. While the gaps between levels in CoX can drive one to despair sometimes, the constant application of skill points in STO gives you something regularly to do, even if you’re seeing more obvious changes from kits and drops and other externals.
Leveling between Ranks
It took me a bit of time to figure out what to do with leveling Bierzein between Lt and LC. It’s possible there are difference at other ranks, and, of course, Klingon (native) players will deal with something in parallel but with all the details different.
Actually Getting the Promotion: First off, I was on a mission chain when I got the big glowy-congrats. I decided to finish it up, just becauise of transit time. So I finished those missions as “Lt 11.” Right, until I actually get the promotion, I’m still a Lieutenant.
I knew I had to go back to Earth Spacedock for promotion (and picking up my New Ship!), so I transwarped back there.
No announcement.
I docked and went aboard.
Nada.
I trotted over to Admiral Quinn (putting away my phaser rifle into katana-space first, to be polite).
His tone of voice made it clear that he had no new missions for me and, in fact, was a bit peeved I hadn’t finished the ones still in progress.
I ran around a bit on Spacedock trying to figure out who I had to talk to. Despite the signs on the wall, the place is not as well organized as it might be (it would be handy if the map showed the various areas).
Finally I realized, “Hey, I never applied those last skill points I acquired. I wonder …”
Applied them to Bierzein, and, “Hey!” Admiral Quinn was suddenly hailing me, congratulating me, and summoning me “back to Stardock” (bugged) where I should meet with him personally and give me stuff.
Admiral Quinn has a short memory.
So I ran back to Quinn. Saluted. He congratulated me, and then handed me a plaque to turn in for One (1) Free Starship.
My New Ship: The gal I needed to do that with, Lt Laurel, was upstairs (up the ramp, up the turbolift) from the Shipyard section of Spacedock. I went up to her, got the lecture the different types of ships I could choose from …
… to makea long story short, Escorts are scrapper/blasters, high on lethality and speed and maneuverability, but glass cannons (to hear some) in prolonged combat. Cruisers are tanks/defenders, very tough, able to assist other ships, and pretty unmaneuverable. Science Vessels (Support Ships, some call them) have high shields, specialize in debuffing the bad guys, and are the controllers of the STO universe.
Any type of captain (tactical, science, engineering) can operate any type of vessel (indeed, if you strike it rich, you can actually buy additional ships to swap between, or so they say). The differentiator is less with the captain (who lends some skills to whatever ship they are on) than on intrinsic powers of the vessel class plus the bridge crew (different ships allow added bridge officers off the appropriate type).
Since Bierzein was going to be soloing, I decided to play it safe with a cruiser. (Margie and I have a couple of duos we’re running, and will likely be doing more mixed mini-fleets.)
All that Laurel gave me was a requisition slip for the ship of my choice. The rest of the room is full of educational displays about the ship types, plus guys who could sell me all sorts of ship goodies, but only if you had Yet Another Specialty Currency (one of my minor peeves with STO), or maybe vastly more of a currency I actually had.
From there I had to run downstairs and find the guy who does ship requisitions, Ensign Obin. There I actually received the new ship of my dreams …
… which I immediately renamed (both ship name and registration number) — once, for free. I’d now be commanding the USS Ad Astra, successor to the USS Per Aspera. (The renaming button comes up in the normal window that shows you and your bridge crew.)
I then turned around and talk to the guys (Golos Vell and Dirz Raxx) who let me design what my ship looks like. I love this particular STO feature.
Finally, I went over to Ensign Shalah to buy stuff for my ship. Her selection wasn’t very good, so I took the opportunity to run over to the Auction HouseExchange to buy (or sell) some swag. I decided, though, before screwing around with changing the default weapons config on my cruiser (phaser array and photon torpedoes fore and aft), I’d see how she flew.
My New Bridge Officers: My new ship came with some new bridge officer slots. You can requisition officers with Elsa Morel over in Personnel, or check to see if you have some still pending to fill in. With my cruiser, I got an additional engineering station for a lieutenant, so I promoted my existing Engineering officer to LT, and brought in a new ensign who’d been made available to me in the past.
My New Dress Whites: I also get a free costume token when I got promoted. That’s nice, too. I could get the new costume from Ghemik Telur (a simple tailor) in Requisitions, but decided to stick with what I had. Bierzein is not much of a clothes horse.
The Ceremony: After all the above (though you can do it at any time after the promotion, if you want), I ran over the Stateroom (auditorium) and talked to Commander Menn Hilo, the guy at the podium who’s usually droning on and on about astrophysics. He offered me formal congratulations and give a nice salute, as did other folks in the room. Pictureworthy (hence the picture at the top of the post).
And that’s it! I was now a Lieutenant Commander, and when I next beamed up to my ship — it was my new ship, but with all the familiar faces (and one more) around me. Ready for the next adventure! Huzzah!
Now that the game is out and in your loving hands, we’re taking long, hard looks at everything each and every one of you is interested in seeing changed. Cruiser turn rates? Death penalties? More open auto-fire? All those topics and more are being scrutinized by the all-seeing eye of… um, us!Some of the few things on the way:
Respec
Death Penalty
Difficulty Slider
More open auto-fire
Replayable missions
Improving Memory Alpha
Some good stuff there, though, honestly, not enthused about the whole Death Penalty thing …
We’re in the final stages of testing the first STF (the five-man raids we internally referred to as “Raidisodes”). STF: Infected is just about ready to release.You know, I might actually record one of our internal play sessions. The excited cries for more shielding and healing get the blood pumping. Although, once our testers reach the end room and the action really heats up… Well, it’s not exactly “family friendly” in there. Definitely going to be an exciting, thrilling mission for our players, though.
After Infected, we’ll roll out more STFs. “The Cure”, “The Khitomer Accord” and “Into the Hive” are all coming along nicely. We look forward to regularly releasing these and seeing what everyone thinks.
Given that I’m pretty much content in my duo-ness, this part isn’t nearly as exciting … though, y’know, y’never know …
We haven’t set the future of STO’s content into stone because so much of it will be determined by you, but we’re laying out what we’d like to focus on for the next 6 to 12 months.
Who are the Undine and what drives them?
How can we better exploit the Genesis System to create even more compelling content?
Where can we boldly go next? Where shall we take exploratory missions, as there’s so much potential there?
Which faction should be playable next? Romulan? Cardassian? Pakled? Dominion? Horta? Okay, not so much the Pakleds.
And that’s not even the start of it! Ship interiors, more bridges, crew quarters, First Officers, Fleet advancement… You have subscribed to a service that delivers a universe unending, and we shall see that universe populated with compelling content or, by the Prophets, we will die trying.
Some people get that. Some people don’t. We’re here for those that do.
Interesting idea, that future development might be (at least partially) focused on more playable factions. That might provide some frontiers in playability over time.
Flagging this forum thread as having a good explanation (as it’s not tool-tipped) of the various looting modes.
Everyone can, in their Social options, set up their preferred Loot Mode, which controls how drops (candy, globes, chicklets) get handled during combat. The actual control for what happens on the team, though, is with the team leader.
The options:
Here are the basics:
Round Robin – Everyone gets a turn at looting, whatever drops on their turn is what they get, then it’s the next person’s turn. [This is what Margie and I run on.]
Free for All – Everyone can loot everything, first come first serve.
Need or Greed – When an item is looted you decide whether you “need” the item, meaning you’re actually going to equip it and have a use for it, or “greed” the item, saying that you don’t need it but you’ll take it to sell if nobody else wants it. After everyone on the team has picked need or greed the following happens:
If one or more people have picked Need, they all roll random numbers and the highest roll gets the item.
If, and only if, nobody picks Need, all the Greed team members roll in the same manner to determine who gets it.
Rolling Need on an item you’re not planning on using is generally frowned upon.
Master Looter – The team leader loots everything and (in theory) distributes loot as he sees fit among the team.
The Loot Threshold is what level of item should have the above done to it. I.e., if “Common” then every drop will be subject to the above. If “Rare” then only rare items and above will be; all else will be Free for All.
Honestly, I’d love to see some added options/features:
Autograb. Breaking attention in battle to grab candy is irksome. Circling back after combat is also a pain. If it’s mine, it should just go in my inventory, and I’ll look at it later.
Lion’s Share. Give the drop to the person who did the greater percentage of the damage, or tilt the die rolls above to that person. It’s irksome as well when you’ve tackled a ship all on your own and the drop goes to someone else on the team (who, to be fair, was tackling something else without your help). This would also impact folks who don’t engage in combat quite as vigorously.
Smart Need-Greed. Allow users to set options (I really am not interested in X) and/or do some smart examination of what the (for space combat) ships already have — if someone is missing a component (a Tac console), or only has something of a lower value or rarity, then they should get priority for the drop of that item.
If the Loot Threshold actually defaults to Free for All, I’d rather have that smartened, too — e.g., be able to choose Need/Greed, with stuff below the threshold going to Round Robin (it’s worth credits, even if not all that interesting).
Not surprisingly, this setup is much like CO’s (and many other games). I still prefer CoX’s mechanic, where it’s personal and automatic. Looting ships/debris is ghoulish, in some ways, not to mention time-wasteful. But at least now having read the options, it gives me a better idea of what’s going on.
Why isn’t there much of a death penalty? There are a few suggestions around that could be introduced to stop players from carelessly throwing their ships into battles; Your Bridge Officers could be incapacitated for a minute or two after a defeat while they’re healed in sick bay or, after a number of deaths, you may have to return to a star base to get repaired before certain modules stop working.
We currently have a death penalty in-game. When you die, your crew comes back depleted and has to slowly build back up. This means your hull and other systems don’t repair as quickly as if they were at full capacity. And on the ground, you’re forced to retreat to a respawn point behind where you expired.
In terms of traditional death penalties, think about what a death penalty really is: It’s a time penalty. You died; therefore we’re putting you in time out for X amount of time. Or, you died, therefore we’re forcing you to spend X amount of money, which takes Y amount of time to earn. Why would you force people to stop having fun, and sacrifice their free time, just to disincentivize behavior in a videogame? I get that people want to feel a sense of risk when they’re fighting in battles, but if the only emotion you feel when you’re playing a game is fear that you’re going to lose some time due to an arbitrary gameplay mechanic, we’re probably not doing something right. It’s like asking why single-player games have quicksave options. But that said, we are looking into finding a meaningful way to give players a deeper sense of loss when something bad happens. But we want it to feel right, rather than just like an arbitrary penalty.
Wanted to comment more fully on the new CoX I17 stuff coming out Real Soon Now (based on the overview page).
Features
Ultra Mode
Ultra Mode includes a superior graphics rendering process for players who have higher-end graphic cards. Each feature can be enabled or disabled in the graphics menu options and will be scalable. Ultra Mode works on both Macs and PCs. In specific, it offers dynamic shadows, screen-space ambient occlusion, and dynamic environment reflections (including planar reflections and environment mapping of reflective surfaces).
I’ll be very curious to see how much of this will run on my and Margie’s newer machines.
Epic Archetypes Unlocked at Level 20
Previously, you had to have at least one character at level 50 to make an epic archetype character. No more! Now you can create an epic archetype character as long as you have any one character at level 20 or higher.
A sign of the aging game, perhaps, but also worthwhile. I guess now I can make a VEAT (since I already had access to Kheldians).
Animated Tails
No more tails lying about like dead weight! You will now be able to select tail body parts that will react to your movement and have a swaying or swishing idle animation mode. You will need to go to a tailor to upgrade to the animated version.
Yes! Excellent! (And will they be free upgrades? No matter — I’m swimming in Tailor Tokens.)
Content
New Story Arcs: Issue 17: Dark Mirror features two new Hero and two new Villain story arcs for levels 20-30. Each of these story arcs has four missions, and the story arcs highlight the Dark Mirror’s sinister new enemy. Acquire the first Hero story arc in Talos Island, and the first Villain arc in Sharkhead Isle.
A good “sweet spot” area for some new content.
Silver Mantis Strike Force Update: The Silver Mantis Strike Force will now be available to all Villains, not just supergroups. You now can access the Silver Mantis Strike Force via Silver Mantis, located in Sharkhead Isle. You can also run this Task Force from your supergroup computer.
Interesting. And, it makes me think, a sign of the slow social decay of CoX. How many people are active in SGs any more?
Positron Task Force Update: This Task Force has been split into two halves and dramatically upgraded and updated to ramp up the fun. The final battle of the Task Force takes place in the Faultline Dam and incorporates the new Dark Mirror enemy.
New Badges: Along with adding badges for 500 Badges Earned, 750 Badges Earned, and 1,000 Badges Earned, we are adding new exploration badges to city zones, almost doubling the number of exploration badges. You can learn new Accolades for finding all of the exploration badges in each city zone.
Um … okay. Those who like those sorts of things will find them the sorts of things they like.
New Player Emotes: We’ll let you know more about the new emotes soon.
Ditto.
Quality of Life Improvements
Craftable Temporary Powers: You will now have a much cleaner and more consistent way of finding and crafting temporary powers.
Never found much use for craftable temp powers.
Increased Mission Count: You can now have seven active missions (previously three).
Now that’s pretty interesting. Honestly, I’ve never felt much need for more than three, especially these days, and even with 3 it’s easy to end up with stale mishes. Expanding to seven feels more like a copy-cat move than something all that worthwhile.
Show Last Objective: This UI improvement lets you find your last objective on a mission map, making it easier to find something you’ve missed.
THANK YOU, LORD! Best QoL Improvement EVAH.
Auction House: The UI gives you new options for sorting search results, your Auction House inventory is now separated by clearly marked tabs based on the item’s status, the Auction House text entry box now autocompletes, and a single click on a recipe displays all salvage needed for that recipe.
I’ll have to play with it, but any improvement to the auction system is a good idea.
In-Game E-mail: You can now use in-game e-mails to send Influence/Infamy to your own characters or to other players’ characters via in-game e-mails. (You still cannot send Influence, Infamy, or items from a Hero to a Villain or vice versa.)
About time.
Mission Architect Improvements
Experience: You can now handpick the powers for custom enemies and still receive experience for them (within game balance limits).
New Maps: We have added approximately 20 new unique maps.
Giant Monsters: You can now add giant monsters to some outdoor maps.
Exit Mission on Complete: You can now specify that players have to leave the mission manually on completion.
Escort Missions: “Lead to place” technology allows you more control over escort objectives.
All sound useful for those who do MA content. Though the idea of adding Giant Monsters … (Can we create the Good Old Days at Portal Corp …?)
Overall, sounds like quite a nice issue, especially with the Going Rogue around the corner.
In a recent interview, Star Trek Online’s exec producer Craig Zinkievich indicated that STO might need a more significant “death penalty” than just going back to the nearest respawn point. Or at least, that’s what some players are clamoring for.
Zinkievich explained Cryptic’s feelings on death penalties, saying that they are usually just a time penalty, preventing players from getting straight back into the game and having fun.
“I get that people want to feel a sense of risk when they’re fighting in battles, but if the only emotion you feel when you’re playing a game is fear that you’re going to lose some time due to an arbitrary gameplay mechanic, we’re probably not doing something right, ” he said.
However, the game’s developers aren’t against the principle entirely; “we are looking into finding a meaningful way to give players a deeper sense of loss when something bad happens. But we want it to feel right, rather than just like an arbitrary penalty.”
I’m of two minds here, of course. I don’t know about anyone else, but seeing my beloved ship blow up and suffering for 30 seconds of cooldown before getting back into action does feel meaningful.
And what are the alternatives? Thinking of CoX and CO and (I believe) WoW …
Loss of experience or slowdown of experience gain (CoX): You could justify this as saying that Star Fleet looks askance on ships being driven to (“near”) destruction, and so your meteoric rise to the admiralty is slowed for a bit. I find this irksome, but not horrifically bad. (By the way, when is STO getting a “Level Pact” feature?)
Loss of capability (CO): As you succeed in CO missions, you get stars, up to five, which provide a buff. As you get killed, you lose the stars. This has the paradoxical effect of making you less effective against the things you have to go up against again. I don’t like it.
Loss of swag (WoW): I’m thinking here of the mechanic of having your body looted, etc. This is perhaps the most realistic — a finite chance of some system or feature on your ship getting wiped out, or inventory lost — even (perhaps with successive failures) the death of a Bridge Officer. Eek. Most realistic, but I’d be seriously hating it. It suffers from the disadvantage of #2 (making you less effective against a foe you’ve already established is dangerous), unless you delay it until after the battle/mission is over (you survived, but those great twin disruptor cannons that your engineer kept together with spit and baling wire have finally given up the ghost — time to return to Star Fleet for a refit). Losing a BO, though — yeah, I can see it game-wise, but I’d hate it play-wise.
So the variation on #3 perhaps makes most sense if you have to do something about deaths. And, yes, it adds some “realism.” I’m still not convinced it’s necessary, or that folks who take untoward risks now will be all that much less likely to do so even with penalties.
Have a friend interested in Star Trek Online? Maybe he or she saw you vanquishing a Borg cube and was interested in more? Now, with the Star Trek Online Buddy Key, you can invite them along on your adventures, unrestricted, for five whole days.
You’ll be redirected to your account page. In the upper-right corner, you’ll see a section labeled “Unused Keys.” Your Buddy Key will appear there!
Send your friend the Buddy Key, as well as a link to the Star Trek Online key registration page. (To claim the Key, your friend will need to create a Cryptic account if he or she hasn’t yet.)
Your friend is ready to enjoy Star Trek Online. He or she can download the client at our download page.
After five days, your buddy will need to purchase a retail copy of Star Trek Online (and apply a retail key to his or her account) to continue playing.
Thanks again for your continued support, and we can’t wait to see you and your buddy in game!
– The Star Trek Online Team
Fiendishly clever.
So if anyone out there is interested in giving STO a spin for five days for free, let me know. (Amanda, I’ll hold onto one of those for you. 🙂 )
This CoX post shows what the new “Ultra Mode” graphicswilllooklike. And it is damned beautiful. I have no idea whether my machine will support it but, damn — that’s pretty.
Other I17 (“Dark Mirror”) announcements:
• New badges, new missions and new player emotes
• Epic Archetypes now available at level 20
• Improvements and additions to Mission Architect
• Enhancements to UI and game systems
All of which sounds nice (if non-specific) — though some folks are apparently having conniptions about EATs being available at 20. “I fought my way to 50! Now you’re cheapening that effort by making the available at 20!” (I assume that’s what it means — I haven’t seen a Redname confirming what all that means). I guess it’s an acknowledgment that a lot of the CoX population is veteran, not newbies, so enough people have a lvl 50 that it’s not worth holding that out as a carrot any more.
I don’t see it as a cheapening of lvl 50. I’m kinda glad I’ll be able to access the VEATs (having not 50ed any Villains), but I don’t feel like anyone has “stolen” Kheldians from me for my various lvl 50 Heroes (I’ve yet to really get the swing of Squids, anyway).
On the other hand, it sounds like there’s not a lot of content to I17 (which makes sense, if the content folks are all hammering out Going Rogue, but is still a little disappointing).
Remember Going Rogue? That’s right, how could you forget? Well, you have the opportunity to get access to the Dual Pistols and Demon Summoning power sets in March and April, if you pre purchase City of Heroes Going Rogue (MSRP $29.99 USD)!
Ooooh. Well, that sounds pretty keen. Dual Pistols for the win!
You will also be able to get your hands on an exclusive item pack if you get the City of Heroes Going Rogue: Complete Collection (MSRP $39.99 USD), that will be available when Going Rogue releases in July! What’s in that item pack, you ask? Well, a few nifty things like:
• Alpha- and Omega-themed auras
• Alpha and Omega themed costumed sets
• Four stance emotes
• The Shadowy Presence invisibility power
Hmmm. Not sure any of those are worth the extra $10.
Cryptic has reinstated the “Ask Cryptic” as part of the firestorm of “Communicate, dammit!” messages Jack Emmert got when he published an open forum note asking how Cryptic could do better. This week’s installment:
Halorin: Where does Champions Online fit into Cryptic’s plans a year from now? Two years? Three? And what resources are Cryptic willing to invest in the game see those plans to fruition?
Jackalope: We’ve just started working on the next step of widening the Champions Universe and we’ve nailed down our ongoing content plans. In short, you can expect to see new adventures every other month (roughly). The content will be far more story based and focused on the background of the game. Meanwhile, we’ve got some other things afoot (and some of you might be able to deduce what that is) and we’ll talk about it more soon.
A dedication to new content, background-focused, is probably just what the game needs right now. The questions on everyone’s mind, is (a) what levels, (b) will it be pay-for-play, and (c) will it be persistent content or one-off (or even repeating) event stuff.
Darth-Log: How confident are you that Champions Online can succeed considering its current lackluster performance and in lieu of upcoming competition? What have you learned, what are your short term considerations and long term goals?
Chronomancer: We remain dedicated to the Champions Universe, and we have plans to continue to grow it. While our numbers of players is less than we would like, it is also more than several other MMOs that continue to service their communities.
The question is, how much service can you provide if the money model isn’t there?
The upcoming expansion is an excellent example of our plan to make the game bigger and better while also addressing the desires of our players.
And make more money.
We learned a great many lessons from Champions, and I think you can see some of that knowledge expressed in how we ran our beta testing and approached content creation in Star Trek Online.
STO has been a much more pleasant (not flawless, but improved) experience. Though the nature of the different and its pervasiveness makes it hard to believe that’s all due to lessons learned from the CO beta/roll-out.
Game development is continued learning, iteration, and alteration to fit the needs of an ever-changing market. A game that was a huge hit five or ten years ago probably wouldn’t do anywhere near as well today. The interests and demands of gamers have changed. So we have to learn from our mistakes as well as our successes and move forward.
(Mumbles, waves hands, what’s so special about CoX anyway, nothing to see here, move along.)
In that regard, we’re going to be focusing more on creating content to provide multiple paths of advancement within Champions Online. The plan is to create more of what you want in smaller bites so we can do them on shorter timelines.
Creating more parallel material is definitely a Good Thing. Doing it in small bits is also a good idea. Think of each of the “zones” in the desert — rather than recreate a whole desert, you could easy crank out one or two more zones of that sort in the course of a couple of months (if you had good writing).
We also want to provide more ways and reasons for players to group, which is what much of the Flashback and Difficulty Slider work has been focused on.
The difficulty aspect suffers not from a “slider” but from uneven mob strengths and missions. Making it easier for people to group or PUG would be useful — and since the server scales groups, even if the population is down it shouldn’t be difficult to do.
In the long term, we’re working on creating new stories, game play mechanics, and locales for the Champions universe. We’re increasing our presence in the community and being more open and communicative with you so you know what we’re thinking and working on. And perhaps most importantly, we’re continuing to look for ways that we can make Champions a better game.
All of which is (a) unquestionably a good thing, and (b) very unspecific.
FongSolo: What is Cryptic doing, or even planning behind the scenes to rebuild good faith in the company and this product that many of us paid the lifetime subs for?
Arkayne: Aside from a ton of things that we just can’t talk about right now, but will be very soon, we’re actively making a couple of changes around here: We’re stepping up the communication. We’re going to do more Ask Cryptics, more Dev Chats, we’re going to be in-game, playing with you more, Our GMs are going to start letting you know the status on the current bugs, and the entire development team is going to start being more active on the forums. On top of that, we also moved Stormshade back to Champions. We know you don’t know him well yet, but believe us when we say, he gets really loud when you guys aren’t happy. Oh, and that “soon” we’re talking about up there, that’s not a “soon(tm)” that’s a soon, as in as soon as humanly possible soon.
Communication is definitely an area where Cryptic has fallen down. It will be interesting to see how this new resolve works (and how long it will last).
Derangement: Are there any plans to eventually include more non-seasonal content as part of a free update, or will you be focusing the revenues from monthly subscriptions on bug fixes and otherwise upgrading the game’s core, while relying on microtransactions for added content?
Stormshade: We have plans to add more free content to the game very soon, not seasonal stuff, and we’ll be talking about that shortly. (Sorry gang, you’re not getting a Valentine’s Day Event, but we do still love you.)
Frankly, I’d rather see fewer events and more persistent content, so this is a good thing.
Heathenish: I’d like to know what the relationship between STO code and CO code is. Because this past patch seems like you guys just dropped the “improved” STO engine right back into CO. Seems like a crazy thing to do, but for instance the direction-reversing and crazy camera bugs seem to have come straight from STO beta. Also, are both games sharing the same server? It doesn’t seem fair to have login problems because some other game is flooded.
Poz: Champs and STO share Cryptic’s global services: the chat and mail server, the account server, and proxy servers. The games themselves do not share any servers. As you noted, the account server is what we’ve had some problems with due to Star Trek. Unfortunately, we couldn’t safely change how our system works and split the two games apart there. Many of the load issues are fixed already, and we have programmers whose highest priority is keeping the account server working smoothly.
It makes sense as a model, and is probably the right thing to do — if it’s done well.
IchbinVol: Will there be any reason to have a theme based character in the future? Perhaps a synergy bonus for having a certain set of skills?
BigOtter: That’s actually one of the goals of our Tier 4 powers being introduced in our upcoming expansion – to provide high-end thematic meta-powers for each of the power groups.
Hmmmm. An interesting idea. I love CO’s mix-and-match concept, but super-heroes are all about theme. If I were starting a supers game from scratch, I’d see how I could divorce powers from FX. I.e., there’s no reason most of the various powers (maybe splitting melee vs ranged) wouldn’t work if you could do them each with any number of visual cues.
Btw, I find it fascinating that we’re getting so many different Dev names showing up in this. That’s probably a good thing.
DawningDestiny: When is the melee rebalancing coming? You’ve talked a lot about it, but I’ve seen nothing that wasn’t a nerfy baseball bat to the face when it comes to melee. It’s by far the most underwhelming, underpowered set in the game. So yeah, what’s your timetable for that fix?
Akinos: Our melee review is currently underway. It is a massive review that involves 5 full framework reviews as well as an overall look at melee as a whole. It’s too early to give an ETA but rest assured is it being worked on.
Good to hear. It seems to me that there are problems both with melee overall in CO and with some power sets beyond that. I’d rather they take time to do it arguably right, than rush out ill-considered bumps and nerfs. At least … take some time.
Overall: a lot of generic filler (“We love you! We will continue to love you in new and exciting and surprising ways! Please love us!”) with some promising nuggets of possible truth. The right message, at a minimum.
Star Trek Online goes live in production … tomorrow?! Yeesh, how the months have sped.
I haven’t been on STO since the closed beta, for a variety of reasons. Even there, we didn’t devote endless hours — I really didn’t want to invest a lot of hours creating characters I wouldn’t be able carry on later.
Here are some thoughts on the game, and where we (Margie and I) are headed on it.
The game is nicely immersive. It feels like you are in the world of Star Trek (despite the efforts of some players). The writing is pretty solid.
A nice mixture of “Away Team,” admin/base busy-work, and ship-to-ship combat activity, each of which provides a different flavor.
Ship combat is … fun. Felt very war-gamy.
Away Team activities are more complex, but managing an actual away team is a nice feature.
The idea of growing yourself, your crew, and your ship adds complexity to the gameplay — but is also pretty cool.
It’s less “role-playing” in some ways — yes, you have a race, and a history, and so forth — but, essentially, it remains a tactical game that is not focused just on your toon but on your team.
It’s nice that not everything is about combat — but that will be an ongoing challenge (war in the Alpha Quadrant or not). Star Trek is not, basically, Star Wars, DS9 notwithstanding.
Overall, it feels well-balanced, well written, and potentially a lot of fun. I think (formal discussion pending) we’re going to subscribe, and stick with it for some period of time.
That would make three MMOs we’re subscribed to, which may be too many. More on that to come …
I’d read they were doing this, but hadn’t been on with my MM in so long I’d forgotten. Mastermind pets now zone into missions with you, so you don’t have to spend the first five minutes of each mission summoning and buffing your crew.
It’s a small thing, but a big thing at the same time. Makes playing a MM a lot more fun.
I did notice that pet ownership seemed a bit buggy last night — in a couple of chases in one mission, pets didn’t handle elevators well, or suddenly stopped responding. I had one case where my pets followed me across a zone, but stopped being “mine” — I saw just generic names, they didn’t indicate as belonging to me, and I couldn’t command them (“You have no pets”). But they kept following me, and at the next zone, all the ownership was restored.
Weird — but worth it, just to have them zone in painlessly.
Gameplay with our MM duo — Gifted Kid (FF/Robots) and Special Educator (Dark/Gang) — remains a hell of a lot of fun. And now we can get into the fun even faster.
Whew. You turn your back on the game for a few months, and everything goes all crazy!
After having been away (Real Life Sucks) from CO and CoX for a while, I have a few things to say, separately, about coming back. But, in the meantime, some thoughts on the CO news.
I won’t go into a lot of details on the Kitchen Sink patch (except to note the patches to deal with the patch that immediately followed). I think it’s cool that they’re trying to incorporate as many concerns and problems as they can.
That all said … looking at the “coming attractions” ….
“New Costume Sets in the C-Store” – Oh, boy. As in, so seriously not interested. I’m actually pretty happy with the costumes I have on the toons I have, and since I have no more slots available (mutter), there’s no big driver for me to change costumes. (Which, honestly speaking, I don’t do in CoX that much any more, either; I now have a Vet Award that gives me 50% off all Tailor Sessions, and most of my toons have free Tailor Tokens in the double digits.)
“I See a Blood Moon a Risin’” – Well, if we can have Rikti Invasions at random intervals, I guess we can have Werewolf Invasions every lunar month. Meh.
“This One Goes to Eleven” – Okay, this one looks good.
We’ll be introducing difficulty levels that players can set both for individual heroes and for their team. With 1 lower and 2 higher levels of difficulty to select from, players can create a challenge that fits their play style and ability.
Excellent. Soloists will be able to dial back difficulty levels. That will make life a lot easier.
“Flashing Back” – I don’t have any characters so far along that I feel the need to flash back with them. It does make me worry that so many people do that this feature is considered worthwhile.
“Vibora Bay Watch” – Hmmmm. Okay, on the plus side, more content. On the minus side, is the game so unbalanced that we need to focus on Lvl 37-40 content already?
Evidently there are indications in some references to this expansion pack that it’s going to be a paid content item, which has some portion of the CO community up in arms. It’s certainly a different model than CoX (which has had one paid upgrade pack, with another coming soon, both of which were not just new zones), but we knew CO was designed differently from the start. It will be interesting to see this play out. I certainly don’t feel any compelling need to acquire it any time soon.
Especially for level 37-40. Yeesh. Give me a 12-20 zone, or a 20-30 zone, and I think you’d hit a lot more customers. Self included.
City of Heroes® is proud to announce that starting today character transfers between servers (within North American OR European server lists) will become free to all players and remain that way through the end of January 2010.
Now you will have more freedom to fully enjoy the game and each other…but don’t go haphazardly jumping servers without knowing the Character Transfer limit and all the other facts. Visit our Knowledge Base to learn all the specifics so that you can make educated transfer decisions. Amongst other things to bear in mind:
Transfers are not available between North American and European servers.
You will be able to complete up to 6 transfers a week (7-day period) per account.
Not all possessions will transfer over with your character so be sure to read the corresponding Knowledge Base article before you decide to transfer a character.
Super-group affiliation, Prestige and access to your Supergroup base items will be lost.
You may lose your character’s name when transferring from a server.
Then all you have to do is transfer away and enjoy the holiday server ride!
So I wonder what’s going on here? Are paid transfers simply not being done? Is this a prelude to server consolidation?
Some clarifications from the KB article:
Between December 15th, 2009 and January 31st, 2010, you will be able to complete up to 6 transfers a week per account. For example:
You can transfer 1 of your characters to five different servers then back to his/her original server in the span of a week.
You can choose to transfer 6 unique characters to a different server, or
You can transfer 3 characters to a different server and back, etc.
[…]
With Character Transfers, when someone does use it, do they receive a warning that their name is already taken prior to the move?
No, there is no warning. However, there is now a Name Check feature included in the game. By using this feature, found at the character select screen when logging into a specific server, you can check if a name is available on the server you are currently logged on to prior to purchasing a rename token. Be sure you are logged into the correct server when you are checking names.
Please keep in mind that while a name check may come through as showing a name available, there is still no guarantee that someone might not choose that name just before you use your rename to obtain it. Therefore, there are no guarantees that any name will be available.
If you do go through with a Character Transfer and there is a name conflict on the destination server, the character’s name will be appended to have a numeral at the end and be issued a free rename token. When you next log that character in, you will be able to use the rename feature to obtain a new name. […]
Do all your possessions move with you when you do a character transfer?
Yes, including your auctions on the Consignment Market. Here is a list of things that do not move:
Your non-global Friends list of players will no longer be valid.
You will be removed from any Supergroup that character was in, and will lose access to any SG storage.
You will also lose all Prestige accumulated within your Supergroup since you will be effectively leaving it (even if you are going to be re-creating the same Supergroup on your new destination server).
Taskforces or Strikeforces that may be in progress will be abandoned.
Kiosk stats will be preserved, but rating positions will likely change.
We cannot guarantee that your character’s name will be available on the destination server you move to. Should there be a name conflict, your character will be issued a free character rename to change the name.
Still … can’t stop wondering what the metameaning behind all this is … The (non-conspiratorial) speculation is that it’s giving folks a chance to clear the decks for the “Going Rogue” expansion. But it still has that server-consolidation feel that some folks are so terrified about.
Costumes appear to be going for 240 points a pop (and there are some nice ones there, if you just Have to Have them).
Emblem packs are 80 points each.
Action Figures are 80 each.
Those are the old news. Now for the new:
Character slots: 1200 for a set of 4 (beyond the initial 8).
Costume slots: 400 for two additional (you get up to three plus one SG slot by lvl 40).
Full respec: 1000 per hero for one respec/retcon.
Rename: 800 for a single hero.
All are the above are for Cryptic Points. In addition to any you may have picked up elsewhere (I have 400), they can be bought for cash for USD $6.25 per 500 (under My Account). So those four character slots will set you back $15, if I’m doing my math (though it may be more, since you can only buy them in 500 CP increments).
Welcome to the world of microtransactions.
Are the prices reasonable? Hmmm. I suppose they’re not outrageous. It’s enough to make me think twice about doing them, though, which makes it problematic. Is it worth a month playtime (equivalent) to respec my hero? I dunno.
Early improvements to the Market. It’s now possible to search beyond the initial results, when there are potentially more items.
Anything that makes the Market a bit more interesting and better organized is a good thing.
User Interface and Chat
Non-shareable missions can now be set to the Primary Mission.
Yes!
When a Primary Mission is set, teammates who don’t have the mission will see the objectives in their mission tracker and will see the waypoints for that mission.
When a Primary Mission is set, all teammates will only see the waypoints of the furthest-behind team member for that mission.
You can now see the mission progress of your teammates next to their portraits. If a primary mission is set, this shows the primary mission. Otherwise, it shows the last mission that made progress on.
Added arrows to expand/collapse team mission.
Some badly needed team interface improvements here.
Clicking empty power slots opens the powers UI now ONLY when you are out of combat.
I didn’t know it did that before. I can see where that might have been, um alarming.
Added special type-specific background icons for empty slots for all power and item types in main trays and builds UI to clarify what goes where.
Added lightning bolt UI indicator for when you have points to spend at a Power House.
Added target-of-target indicator to UI.
All good things.
Chat – Long lines with multi-byte characters (such as ‘?’) will now wrap properly.
Chat auto-complete now properly completes & replaces multi-word character names.
Chat auto-complete for /tell now includes a list of recent /tell correspondents.
Chat auto-complete is now annotated by color to indicate where player suggestions came from (e.g. team, friend, guild, local, chat, etc.). A textual annotation can also be turned on by going to Chat Settings – Options and checking on “Annotate Auto-Complete”.
Using the same emote repeatedly will no longer spam chat text.
Chat text will now replace $player with your name and $target with your target’s name. So you can e.g. ‘/bind y “emote point $$ local Attack $target!”‘.
Haven’t used Chat a lot, but, again, all good-sounding improvements.
Powers
Martial Arts powers: Inexorable Tides: These power now gain bonus damage from the player’s Strength (up to +20%), the same as all other melee powers. As a reminder, this bonus is cumulative and not related to the bonus from your Characteristic Focuses.
Yay.
A number of changes to pets have been made. All pets attempt to follow with 8’ of their owner. Read on for more changes.
Combat Pets: Attack Mode: Critters attack the player’s target and will continue to do so until the target is dead. Then they will immediately target the player’s current target and use it as their own target and so on. If the player has no attack target the critter returns to the player. Players can cause the pets to switch targets at any time by pressing the attack button again. Targets for critters can only be set out to 150’ from the owner.
Combat Pets: Assist Mode: If the player initiates combat, critters set their attack target to be the player’s target and attack. If the player (or critters) are attacked first, the critters use default aggro rules. Critters return to the player after combat has ended.
Combat Pets: Passive Mode: Pets follow the player and never enter combat.
Combat Pets: Stay Mode: Critters stop following the player and do not enter combat if the player does. If the critter takes damage it will enter combat. If this causes the critter to move more than 100’ from the spot it was told to stay, it will return to the spot after combat. Critters despawn if the player moves more than 200’ from the critter.
Follow response time improved for pets. Pets also have collision with their owners.
Fixed bug with Frenzy command for wolf pets that would cause them to not respond if one wolf dies.
Fixed a case where a long range target could causes turrets in Assist mode to not fire.
Healing Drones: Attack Mode: If player is targeting a friendly, that friendly will be used as the critter’s target. If targeting an enemy, the critter will use the enemy’s target as its own target. Drones will heal this target until they are over 90% health and then will return to the owner. Drones will not interrupt their healing to aid the player if their owner is damaged. Drones also do not switch targets if the enemy’s target changes. Pressing Attack again will update the target.
Healing Drones: Assist Mode: Drones will heal the owner if below 90% health. If above 90%, drones will attempt to heal any allies within 50’ of the owner. If the owner moves outside of 50’, the drones will break off of their healing and follow the owner. If the owner drops below 90% health while healing an ally, the drones will switch to target their owner.
Healing Drones: Passive Mode: Drones follow the player and do not heal.
Healing Drones: Stay Mode: Critters remain stationary and attempt to heal any allies below 90% health within 12’ (the range of the healing beam), giving preference to their owner. Drones despawn if the owner moves over 200’ away from them.
Since Pet AI (esp. in Gadgets) has been a huge set of complaints, these should all help a lot.
Archery
Quarry: Updated Quarry’s description to indicate that it does have ranks and what ranking it up does: “Increasing the rank of Quarry increases the amount that the Quarry buff reduces the energy cost of all of your powers by.”
Quarry’s a pretty cool power, and frequently used cross-framework.
Might
Clobber: Sucker Punch: Can no longer interrupt Super Villains, Legendary Villains, or Cosmic Villains.
Defensive Combo: The way this power applies the Defiance buff has been changed. It will no longer stack the Defiance buff, instead, it will apply 1 stack of Defiance if no stack currently exists, or refresh any number of existing applications of Defiance.
Defensive Combo: Surge of Strength has been changed to function the same way, and now guarantees an application or refresh of Defiant on every swing.
I’ll leave Margie to tell me if this helps make Might more viable.
Unarmed
Lightning Reflexes – Aura for Lightning Reflexes power can now have its color customized.
Excellent.
Missions/Environments
Most mission rewards should now be equippable regardless of level so that if you can complete the mission you can equip the reward.
Excellent. I hate getting a whole bunch of mission awards … and find I can’t frelling use them. Rrg.
Patrol Missions now drop items as loot rather than inserting them directly into your inventory.
Ugh. Anything that doesn’t directly add to inventory is a bad thing.
Millennium City
“Jailbreak” – changed the ringleaders to run to a point when they spawn so that they are separated from one another. Also made the critters around the reward bag despawn when the mission is completed.
All good ideas.
There’s lots more. The CO Devs have been busy little beavers, which is a good thing.
With I16 came some new items that either weren’t in the patch notes, or that people didn’t notice. But this forum thread did.
Status icons show up when “chance of” enhancements fire off.
Broken fire hydrants make noise.
Your level shows up in the HP bar.
“More freedom of movement of the ragdoll physics on the human skeleton’s arms and legs.”
“Some hostages now animate differently while captured, Vahz zombies now do the Frankenstein shuffle and mobs carrying orange body bags now toss them on the floor [more consistently] before attacking.”
No influence cost for difficulty changes (yay!)
Midnighter doors now have the map name above them. [This has been around for a bit, but it’s still nice.]
“When you enter the main building in Grandville, the statues of the four patrons now have their symbols on them (the ones that appear when you use their patron powers).”
Improved NPC street dialog.
“If you choose to have your Stacked Buffs display Numerically (like I do), the number now uses a larger, easier to see, easier to read font.”
“Spectral Knights now disappear on defeat, like Spectral Demons, rather than having the suit of armor hanging in space with their arms up in a screaming action.”
Corrected teleport animations.
Whatever costume slot you are in when you logout, that’s what shows up on the character selection screen next time. [Previously noted here.]
“Arctic Air (controller/dominator) now shows the purple dot effect on confused enemies. Very nice to know who’s on your side and who isn’t.”
“The Taunt for Dark Melee on Tanks now makes a Taunt sound. Also noticed while playing my Shield/Axe Tank that the Taunt sound is different and if you are holding both your shield and axe when taunting they make a metal on metal clanging sound.” “Mace and shield does the same thing, the character points their mace at the enemy then bangs it upon their shield.”
And a prospective change:
A user posted that two devs they chatted with at PAX a couple of weeks ago confirmed that there will be an enhancement that when you’re down to 10% of enemies left in a map, or 10% of required glowies are left, they’ll show up on your map. That will be SO good for kill-all missions, and those redside “plant the bomb” missions. The devs didn’t say when that will go live, only that it’s in the works.
We’re really working hard right now to dial the difficulty in from both ends of the spectrum. Some builds are very challenging to play, while others are still far too easy. The powers that are dramatically out of balance on either end of the spectrum are the easiest to identify and fix. As we’re finishing this first pass, we’re starting a more refined, surgical look at the powers so we can continue to make as many different combinations of powers fun to play.
I can’t say that I’ve found any combos that are overly easy to play.
What changes are being made to the threat system, particularly on the matter of zone mobs chain-pulling on players in groups?
What players are seeing is something in our reinforcement system at work. Champions Online isn’t a “pull one monster and everyone beat on it” style of game like most MMOs. When you solo through an area, encounter groups (usually 2-3 enemies) interact with you on a group-to-hero basis. When multiple heroes – whether on a team or not – attack these encounter groups, they’ll run and get help because they’re outgunned. A particular enemy from the encounter group gives off a “tell” that they’re running to get reinforcements, usually in the form of a chat bubble. Then they run off to get help. Players can use tactics to stop that enemy from getting reinforcements. This system allows us to scale for to multiple heroes clearing out an area, especially outdoors where people tend to get into the formal structure of a team less often than in instances. To be very clear – there isn’t random “chain-pulling” of enemies onto a player. This is a designed system that takes effect when numerous heroes fight encounter groups.
This doesn’t actually bug me all that much. Indeed, I actually think it’s a good thing.
We have a list of things that just missed the cut that we’re working on now. This includes being able to skip the tutorial after having completed it once with a hero, improving the functionality of the teaming system, doing some refurbishing to the very popular Powerhouse, and a few other things that we just haven’t prioritized yet.
Actually, at the risk of alienating people early days, I agree with the caution they’ve shown. Balancing always needs to be handled carefully. Make things too stingy, yes, and people grumble about it not being fun. Make things too easy, and people have the same grumbles. But loosening up always makes people cheer, while tightening down makes folks fume. Better to make few changes, and make things more fun, than to thrash back and forth frequently and “take things away.”
The bottom line of the analysis since they’ve gone live is that … well, yes, the economy was too tight. So there’s changes a-coming, starting on Test this weekend:
We’re increasing the number of white upgrade drops in the world by a substantial amount – close to double of what you’re seeing now.
Yay! Granted, that puts pressure on people’s inventory while in game, so expect some frustration if stores aren’t easier to find.
We’re also flattening out the curve on resources gained for selling upgrades to stores, meaning that you’ll get a lot more for white primaries, a little less at the highest end (blues and purples). This equates to distributing about the same overall potential resources while skewing gains to the lower end. We had originally considered just simply increasing the amount of resources you earned from selling all items to “fix” the economy. However, this would have broken crafting – hence the shifting of primary and secondary upgrade values that maintain a net balance of total resources you have coming in from selling upgrades.
Not breaking crafting is, I guess, good. At any rate, this shows a reassuring level of nuance (assuming they are correct). Ratcheting up the costing slider or the drop slider would be easy, but probably too crude.
We’re also increasing the amount of resources you get for defeating all enemies. This means not only will you naturally get more for doing missions, but you’ll also get more by helping others on their missions or by sweeping the streets. We’re also increasing the resources you get for mission rewards specifically.
More money is probably good.
The retcon pricing curve is going to be much gentler so that players can undo more decisions at any time. It’s important to note that although we’re tuning the overall costing model of retcon during this phase, a substantial retcon will still have a high price. The heroic, thematic nature of the game doesn’t support letting players constantly change their fundamental character concept. But at the same time we want to make it possible for them to completely retcon their character if it’s their goal.
I’m glad they’re easing the curve on this. Honestly, though, I don’t see the problems with letting folks easy re-roll their characters, esp. since I don’t anticipate it’s something that most folks will do.
Finally, we’ll be issuing a free retcon for all heroes when the economy changes go Live since it will take a little time for the effects of the new economy to allow players to build up a retcon bankroll.
I’ve inferred elsewhere that, like CoX, you can only have one “freespec” in your bag. The result here being, if you still have early-days characters that have a freespec, you should probably go ahead and use it before this goes live, since 1 + 1 will still equal 1.
Note that this is all giving us some data points, too — how frequently freespecs are given is always useful info as to how much they should be hoarded or spent.
Anyway, it’s good to see that, yes, they have been paying attention to player unhappiness on this, and that the direction is to loosen up on the money supply a bit. Good times should ensue.
I’ve never been so anticipatorially hung up on a game that I really felt the yen for a lifetime sub (which would have SO paid off with CoX, and been SUCH a waste with CO, so I guess it’s a wash).
Wanted to comment more fully on the new CoX I17 stuff coming out Real Soon Now (based on the 
Cryptic has reinstated the “Ask Cryptic” as part of the firestorm of “Communicate, dammit!” messages Jack Emmert got when he published an open forum note asking how Cryptic could do better. 
“
