Avernal_EU

Could always be added into the design too it was just my thinking that the older ads, and pretty much other MMORPG's focus too heavily on filling the page with screenshots, and too little on telling you what the game is about; selling the game by it's graphics alone effectively. Granted there's probably logical reasoning behind their doing that (market studies... blah blah blah), but I just didn't think it was the way to go. CoX is pretty unique and needs to get that message across I feel.

Thanks for the kind words everyone, let's see some more entries posted.

Ahh, wasn't an issue for me since I teamed with several other badge hunters during the event itself. In that case they need three.

Teamed with a villain lastnight who only joined in March last year so missed this and hadn't seen it, turns out I had two Snaptooth missions left so one short of their getting the badge, if anyone still has this left I'm sure they'd appreciate it if you dropped them a line; they only need to do it once more for credit.

Their global handle is @Danyboy, and the character they were playing on that has the mission twice is Dalron Burner, a level 50 Dom.

If there's still room free @Chrome Lore could do with the third too, as he was present for two with myself and Dalron.

Cheers.

Design notes (in segments as I've removed stuff like where the files are located on the disc which aren't really relevant to anyone but NCSoft):

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I found the usage of stylised icons on the website, which are strongly reminiscent of those found in the game, to be very effective and carry strong brand emphasis. In fact, the European "City of" website designs are, in my opinion a lot more effective and engaging than the US equivalents. The designer responsible achieved the desired effect most efficiently. As such, I took some inspiration from those designs for my idea, please note that the imagery used in my design is all my own work and created from scratch; the closest similarity you will find to the "power icons" used on your site is the green question mark symbol which I used as a reference image to create my vector based equivalent. You should also note that the original design inspiration has been improved upon slightly.

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I felt that earlier "City of" adverts didn't really convey enough information about the game, and instead focused too heavily on showing in-game screen captures, which I don't believe is a particularly strong approach. The game's strengths are more it's unique theme and numerous systems/content along with it's devoted community rather than strictly it's visual detail, although it is certainly not lacking there either. As such I intended to get as much descriptive content and depth into my design as possible whilst keeping it engaging and eye catching, and without going too far as to lose the reader's interest. I chose to create a dynamic background image that would immediately grab the reader's attention on reaching the page, and featured the two most prominent signature characters of the game(s) to add strength to the branding along with the city horizon imagery normally seen behind the City of Heroes/City of Villains logos. In this case I used the City of Villains design as I felt it was visually stronger and complimented the visual impact of my design concept nicely. I created a “starburst” effect and blended it with the imagery of the signature characters and horizon as a Hard Mix which would accentuate the contrast of the underlying designs, and chose to keep the signature characters in full colour but in a desaturated capacity so as not to distract the reader too much from the content contained within the advert. It was important that they blended evenly with the rest of the background composition and their own colours were not too vibrant or distracting. At the same time, however, I thought it would be nice to include their colours rather than simply adding them to the document as a Luminosity layer and thus greyscale against whatever colours were used above or beneath.

The central point of focus is the product title, a retail box shot, the logos of both games and two subtitles conveying the message that both titles have received awards from MMORPG.com and that the product is available in stores now. I felt that keeping the focus simple and informative rather than going overboard with fancy background shapes/imagery and visual designs that popped out or were too “loud” was the way to go. I would then focus on keeping the reader's attention and drawing them into reading more about the product the actual details of the game(s), making those elements visually interesting/inviting and broken down into "bite sized" caption boxes. I included as much marketing spiel as I could dream up without entering too much text as for the reader to lose interest.

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At the base of the design is a "free trial" URL inviting readers to visit a specific webpage address and take a free seven day trial of the game(s), allowing them to experience it first hand, note that I chose seven days as opposed to the fourteen you would normally receive during promotions, or included in the retail packages. This is because I believe that two weeks is an entirely too generous amount of time to give in a trial which is intended to be widely available rather than a limited promotion as with prior promotions, and that seven days would be an entirely adequate duration to whet the redeemer's appetite and give them time to fully appreciate the product. I feel that if the trial was for seven days rather than fourteen it would actually encourage more people to buy the product, rather than the frequent practice of suffering "altitis"/"altoholism" as it has been dubbed by community members and essentially getting burned out on numerous low level characters across the two week duration instead of experiencing more in a shorter time frame.

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Since the closing date was today at 6PM I think it's ok to start posting entries here now, this is what I came up with (note - resized for forum posting, but kept at a reasonable size for readability):

http://img294.imageshack.us/my.php?i...rtforumag6.jpg

I don't get the resource issue, but that invisible changes bit once you're out of the editor affects me too, I think it's a universal thing though; just hasn't been fixed. It's been around since the beta along with the kick bug etc.

It's still bloody irritating when you're in the middle of base edit mode and it happens, wipes all your changes. It's why I still make a habit of exiting and going back into edit every few changes I make, just don't want to risk making a huge alteration and then having my time wasted by getting kicked out.

Ahh, I see. Well that explains that little hiccup, had it a few times and was wondering about it.

Yeah that's why I was wondering if it was perhaps the same situation but reversed, I recall there being a bunch of non-functional arcane aux items originally which people weren't too happy about.

The forums don't seem to like replying to you btw Hammerfall, click reply and by the time you hit submit it tells you the form is no longer valid.

Thats the arcane equivalent of the advanced database. Could you copy that character over to test, start a dummy base (assuming you haven't already made one) and see if you can place it (with it successfully attaching to your main control item)? Wondering whether the issue I've been getting with certain aux items lately is similar to the arcane one shortly after the CoV beta.

Congratulations, Magus.

Congrats on hitting 50, again.

I'm always in the market for trading arcane for tech, but at present I don't think we have a great deal of arcane left, just traded to BlackDragon you see. It'll fill up over time again though.

Yep, using the 4x1 and 2x2 control and power rooms as is, it allows for 2x 2x2 workshops, a 2x2 med bay, and then 2x 2x2 teleport rooms - it does actually allow for the larger teleport chamber which is priced the same but that offers you no extra pad placement than the smaller rooms annoyingly. I can place 2 more telepads if I remove 1-2 med bay transporters, but after that we're at capacity for a long time.

Currently it's 4 med bay transporters, two telepads, two workshops housing every worktable and storage item plus both a tech and arcane empowerment station, a maxed out power room (1x gen 2x circuit breaker) and the control corridor with a mainframe and I believe 6-7 databases. All crammed into a "tiny hidden spot" sized plot.

No problem, let me know if you need a hand.

Fly is pretty handy for the shadow shards but you don't need it, even without something like superjump you can still use the gravity geysers to get from A to B.

My 50 defender doesn't really need a respec but still hasn't done the third trial, so if you need team numbers to do the trial I could always bring him, depending on the time and date obviously.

WYLD STALYNS!!

Nicely caught screenshot there.

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Current 25% increase in prestige-earning has not made much of a dent.. Its ok in the sense that at least I'm not worrying about paying rent atm.. but Im not dreaming about secure rooms either..

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One of the big issues is that if you're after a "functional" base and are a small/medium sized SG you eventually hit a wall where you're going nowhere for a very long time, that wall being the absolute maximum amount of power and control items you're able to place on the first plot. Once you've hit that, the only way you can improve it any further is to place a bigger power generator (turbine) or control generation item (advanced database), which you'll be able to craft relatively quickly from salvage but won't be able to afford for a long time. The rent can be a bit of a pain but it's not as huge an issue as the lack of middleground items in my opinion.

Telepads can at present only hold two zone beacons, there aren't any higher capacity ones, so in order to have more than two zones you need to place a second. Then you soon end up hitting the limit for teleport pads in a room since you can't afford the portal chamber and the only decently priced medium sized room is limited to 2 pads in it like the one below, the extra tiles are for decorative purposes only. Which means you end up building more small rooms that hold 2 pads each, taking up more plot space, and eventually you've crammed all you're able to into the hidden location. Then the goal post of 1.5mill prestige to afford one of two items you need to progress, and the even larger sum required for the bigger plot you'll need to place them, start becoming too big of an expectation when you've also got the base rent to keep up with. You can choose to stop paying it until you've saved up that enourmous amount of prestige, but that effectively means you'll be spending a very long time without base access, and you're right back at square one.

So I don't think a boost to the rate that prestige is earned is as effective as they believed it would be, I think they either need to reduce the cost of base items and rooms across the board completely (along with devising a better rent system), or they need to start adding more intermediary items so there isn't as huge of a step once you do hit that point of no return with the first plot.

...yep, a good four months of correspondance there I've not read yet, and a request for some video game icon work (fortunately that one was only from Oct 10th so I'm not too late in replying there). I really should pay more attention to the site.

Didn't realise they'd updated DeviantART's design, really should check on the site more often but I have this habit of wanting to be more active on it and uploading a few new pieces, and then getting sidetracked and not adding any more for a few months. Then the whole process repeats itself.

Unfortunately some blaster fool dropped the ball and aggroed Jack earlier while the rest of us were waiting for others to switch to alts and arrive from other zones, as Yohan pointed out some tank could've taunted him away and then lost aggro, but as I pointed out I didn't see anyone jumping to coordinate the twenty something groups there or any tank taking the initiative to do that. So gradually group by group took the blaster's stupidity as a cue to start attacking.

Damn right, a lot of people overlook the functionality of the various design packages. I know a lot of Illustrator users are completely oblivious to the fact that Photoshop can produce vector work too, not just raster. Granted one program is made specifically for vector work, but thats not to say the other is useless for it. It just covers a wider array of application than the specialised package.

Amusingly he was spotted by Special K in Talos right as I was heading to DA to meet up with you all, talk about convenient timing eh?

Last badge I need on Ave for the event so I'll probably take a breather from my AR/Dev blaster and join you to grab it. Apparently you just need to camp one spawn point through 3 Eochai spawns to have a chance of Jack appearing there. Initially it was believed to be a 5% chance although I've been informed since that Posi' apparently stated it was 10% on the US forums. Oh well, we shouldn't have to kill Eochai more than 30 times to get Jack...