BurningFist_EU

Some really nice costumes there, I especially like Lady_Arete's ones.

Anyway, here's a few of mine.

Man-skirts.

The Pacific Ocean, 1823.
The whaling ship Nantucket Venturer had been caught in a storm and sank with the loss of all hands bar two. The two surviving sailors clung to a piece of broken mast for 6 days, with the brutal sun beating down upon them. On the seventh day they drifted around a small island and were eventually washed up on a short, rocky beach.

The two men foraged for food for three days barely gathering enough to keep them alive, until one of them, half mad with sunstroke and starvation decides to head off on his own.
"It's no good," says he, "we will be dead within a week. I am going to walk to the other side of the island in search of food."
"There'll be no more food there than there is here. We'd be best to stay together," his ragged companion tells him.
"No, when we were drifting upon this rock I am sure I saw a bacon-tree on the other side. I'll head out and return with as many rashers as I can carry."
"A bacon-tree?! The sun has taken your senses man, there is no such thing in all of creation!"
"I am certain I saw it, you must believe me."
His friend shook his head, but recognised the determined gleam in his eye, "Go if you must but I assure you that no such tree exists, not on this island nor any other."
And so the sailor set off across the island in search of his fabled bacon-tree.

Several days later he returns, beaten black and blue with feathered arrows and a primitive native's knife sticking out of him. He crawls across the beach, with barely a breath remaining in him.
"My god! What happened?" His companion asked, aghast at his shipmate's wounded condition.
"My friend, I was a fool. You were right, there was no bacon-tree. I fought them off as well as I could but I fear I am mortally pierced. It was a ham-bush."

I daresay there'll be loads of level 50 stuff once the mission architect thingy comes out.

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Also final comments to whoever thinks there wont be no overpowering sets after these changes go through... after 5 mins testing the changes i knew what to make in Issue 13 that would make current generation Fire/EM's look weak, so did many others.

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This is why, in my opinion, PvP in CoX will never work as a mainstream activity. We've got so many build options that it's realitively easy for those who are inclined to use those options to make impregnably powerful PvP characters.

Most, if not all, the best PvP games balance PvP by keeping a fairly tight leash on build options. CoX's biggest strength in its PvE game is the variety of options you have to make characters that play differently, but this variety can't and doesn't translate well into a balanceable PvP game. And this will be true no matter how much tweaking they do to it.

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They'd be dead before the time bomb could go off the way I play.

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I'd be dead before the time bomb goes off the way I play.

It's a rubbish power and I'd love to see it changed for something useful such as, I dunno, Airstrike or something.

All the powers you need in a Dual Pistols powerset are contained in Hard Boiled, the Killer and the Better Tomorrow series, IMO.

Good luck everyone!

I'd love to give this another go, I got to 46k words a couple of years ago but my lack of planning (I only decided to do it at about 5pm on November 1st) failed me as the month went on. This year I know I've not got enough time to get anywhere so I'm staying out of it.

Maybe next year...

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I do have to ask though, if you can't manually go out and search and find the team members you want, how is this going to make filling out a team easier? I mean, if they aren't there, they aren't there.

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If they're not there then there are bigger problems than this system would be able to address, but if they are there then it would ease the somewhat tedious process of firing tells off to prosepective teams and team members which can really eat into your (and your team-mates' if you're leading a team) play time.

Of course you'd still be able to do that, but being able to set your team as open and being able to search for open teams when you're LFT would provide another way to build or join teams. It's an elegent solution to the problem of people looking for each other in a sea of other players who aren't.

Let's be honest, searching for a team can be a huge ballache. Also, recruiting for team-members can a huge ballache, and yet almost everyone likes being in teams.

So how about implementing an open team system whereby the team leader can set his team status to open thus letting other players search for and join his team without spamming invites, and without prospective team members spamming LFT tells?

The team leader could set various level and AT preferences if he so chose and maybe even write a bit of a description of what the team is doing (missions, farming, PvP etc).

Not only would this be a giant QOL improvement, it might also help alleviate the perceived issues with the perceived population levels.

There's been loads of improvements since I got here, most of them good some of them less so, but the single greatest addition to CoX has been ragdoll physics. It simply never gets old.

I've always thought that AR should do untyped damage to represent the fact that you could switch ammo types to do the most damage to your target.

Anyway, YES! Dual Pistols please, I've got a concept waiting for it already.

Rainn slipped out of the cemetary and back onto Fulci Boulevard. He touched the headset control built into the side of his mask.
"This is Rainn. I'm on my way back. Ran into some Tiki guys back there. Damn place is crawling with 'em."
Only the hiss of static replied.
"McQuaid? You there?"
Still no reply.
"Damn redneck," Rainn thought to himself, "probably gone to get himself another beer." He left the channel open and set off across the cemetary in the direction of the silent road.

Rainn hated Astoria. Anywhere else in the city you could stick to the shadows and get just about anywhere without drawing attention to yourself. Here, the worst things were already in the shadows. He crept along the middle of the road, keeping all his senses trained into the fog around him. Slowly and cautiously he made his way along Fulci Boulevard toward the Talos Island Gate. As he moved, that niggling, creepy feeling returned. He'd been here enough times to recognise the Astoria vibe but this was different. That damn shaman just wouldn't get off his mind...

There was a burst of louder static on Rainn's headset, then a warbling, distorted voice emerged.
"This is Oak Tree callin' Yeller Ribbon, you got yer ears on good buddy?" McQuaid's familiar Alabama drawl cut through the static.
"This is Yellow Ribbon, I'm reading you loud and clear. About time you-"
"Shut up and listen, I ain't got long. I picked up your signal on the tera-band scanner, you ain't coming through on the standard channels at all. Seems there's a jamming signal originatin' out your way, a real doozy too, some kinda dynamic-stepped array broadcast. I patched a multi-band tracking algorithm together and I'm running comms through her, but she ain't that good. Won't be long before the jammer catches up with me."
"I love it when you talk technical."
"I ain't foolin' around, Rainn, there's someone out there who doesn't want you talkin' back to base."
"OK, any idea who it is? Or where they are?"
"Negatory, buddy. There was some Arachnos traffic over there a few hours ago but they bugged out pretty quick. Best I got."
"Alright, I'll keep my eyes open."
"Hey, wait a second, I'm getting some-" McQuaid's uncharacteristically urgent voice fizzled into static.
"McQuaid? You still there?"
Nothing. The jammer had defeated McQuaid's algorithm. Once again the unearthly silence of Dark Astoria was deafening, and once again Rainn got the feeling that something was very, very wrong.

As it happens, I've got a bit that's ready to go, so I'll post it now.

I've been out of the writing frame of mind since everything got mental at work and WAR's RvR hasn't helped either
I still need to get part 3 of my Nucleopatra story done too.

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There's good cliche and there's bad cliche, and "CoH does Jurassic Park" is bad cliche. So there.

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Yes, it is, but "CoH does The Valley of Gwangi" is a cool cliche

On behalf of No Such Agency, S.I.N.I.S.T.E.R. and Network members past and present I'd like to offer a sad farewell and best wishes for the future o>

Really sorry to hear this news, Rockjaw

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Everything the devs have said suggests that incomplete missions are stored locally.

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That seems rather risky in terms of people opening them in their own text / hex editors and fiddling with them. Bit of a can of worms.

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Presumably that's only for the work-in-progress stuff that you haven't published yet. I'm guessing the published missions are stored centrally.

If we could post as many missions and arcs as we wanted there'd be even more of them to not get rated. Not to mention the number of broken, incomplete ("This is the first part of my arc-in-progress, please rate!") and trivial missions that would clog the system up.

Sure, I'd like to have more mission slots but I can see why there's a limit. We'll just have to manage the slots we do have and learn to be brutal about it.

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Everybody seems hyped about something I dont think will be very good, so yes I beleive the shine will wear off quickly when you cant make particularly interesting missions. So an entire (or so it seems) issue devoted to this will be a fail IMO.

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The tools already announced include 1000 maps (including the unique ones), AVs and Heroes as enemies and allies, multi-objective missions and over 100 modifyable features. That'll be plenty to get some interesting missions out there, especially with having so many creative players in CoX.

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i for one would like it so that the mission creator and the base editor had the ability to have a 'universal' tab float over, so you dont miss chat or have to exit the editor to respond

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You can do that already in the base editor if you press Enter and then click in the chat window.

Let me save you some mouse-wheel mileage...

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Some more info on theUS boards:

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Since Hero 1 is on a well deserved holiday today, and D&D Tiny Adventures on Facebook is acting up again, I think I will take this opportunity to address several of the issues that came up from the PAX information.

First off the fact that you are building "newspaper missions" is patently NOT TRUE. Newspaper missions are randomized text with a random mission map with a single objective needed to complete it.

Mission Architect is whatever text you enter, on the specific map you call (and we have over 1000 different maps in the game), with AT LEAST one objective, but more likely more, with the ability to have allied NPCs (you want to rescue Statesman in the beginning of the map and have him fight WITH you the rest of the way? Done). There are even some objective types going into mission maker that we didn't even have access to AS DEVELOPERS until Issue 12. There are over 100 different things you can customize in the story arc, and most of those have multiple choices to pick from.

Yes, you will not be able to custom build a character and have them appear. Primarily this is because of the way the AI handles powers. Some powers simply don't work when in the hands of the AI (Mastermind summoning is one example). One of our goals is to put the ability to take an existing Enemy Boss, and change their costume to one you design. Since those powers and AI have all been pre-programmed this can be done without involving ringing Castle up at 2am to debug the AI on the guy in your custom mission. While this is a stretch goal for launch, we want to get this ability into your hands as soon as possible.

You WILL get XP and Inf. during Mission Architect missions. I don't believe we ever said you wouldn't. We only said that you won't get it at the same rate as normal-developer-designed content. Why? Well we have all sorts of COOL stuff coming for you in upcoming issues that doesn't involve Mission Architect and we'd like you to try that out too (rewarding you for doing so).

You get to choose what contact gives out your Story Arc, picking from a list of all the available contacts in the game. Eventually you'll have the same "customization" options as the custom bosses.

As for your limited number of Story Arcs. You will have a limited number of PUBLISHED Arcs, you can have TONS of unpublished arcs you are working on, that are not ready for prime-time. If one of your arcs gets enough positive feedback to get into the Hall of Fame, it "graduates" from being one of your published arcs, freeing up that slot for you to put something else in.

We are WELL AWARE of the customer service issues involved in the content of the missions. We have all seen the Spore Creature Creator, and we know the TTD ratio on player created content in measured in nanoseconds. We have thought of a LOT of the angles already. Publishing a mission, getting a high rating, then pulling it down and changing the text to something inappropriate is something we take VERY seriously.

All of the above information is what could have been gotten by people attending PAX, and I am putting it here so you all have a better understanding of the system and our intentions with it.



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Thanks for the clarifications!

A followup question though. Can we unpublish an arc that isn't getting as much positive feedback as we might hope so as to free up a slot for one that might be better? And you specified that limit is for Story Arcs, does that include individual missions or are individual missions not tracked by the limit?


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You can absolutely unpublish an arc you published.

A single mission is simply a story arc with one mission in it, so the one-off's DO count against your arc limit.


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This may be a "duh" moment... but if we can change the model of a specific mob (assuming we can, since it's not guaranteed, just one of their goals), and also assuming we can change their name (a pretty safe bet)... can we also change their bio? Its not something people would immediately think about, but if I DO make a "custom boss" by completely changing their appearance and name, I don't want their info pane to still say the mob is really just Statesman, or something.


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Changing the display name is one of those "so obvious I forgot to mention it" things. Yes you can. Even right out the gate. You can put a Skulls Boss into a mission and name him Marrowdrinker if you want. The devs have had this ability since before Alpha on CoH, so it's a no brainer to give it to you as well.


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-Positron

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Personally I dont like the mission creator, I think its the biggest waste of dev time to date. The main reason it sucks is because it adds nothing new. The only missions that are still good on this game are the ones that are on none generic maps with none generic objectives. As all we will get is generic maps with generic objectives, they have basically added a police band radio mission creator. Thanks, like they didnt suck enough already.

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Read back a few posts and read PRAF's quotes from Positron on the US forums.

EDIT: OK, a lot of posts.

It's all yours, Finch.

Heh, I just did the same thing. I moved the story with Rainn on a bit and threw in a sinister revelation.

I deleted it for now though, seems I was jumping the queue

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Nice to see so many people padding their post count.

How many of you actually spend time in game leveling toon?

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Post count, levelling all the time, a veteran craves not these things.