Chase_Arcanum

Seconded.

If you focus a few of these in smaller communities with a high concentration of your target demographic, like college towns. I work near Penn State.... and while Centre County's Transit Authority doesn't have the market access of a major metropolitan area, we have over 40,000 students, and the busses are cram-packed with them all the time.

Combine this with what you've set is one of our greatest assets- the community. A metro ad will get better results when word-of-mouth accompanies it. Survey to find concentrations of willing involvement & help them plan something. Maybe a City of Heroes fan gathering centered on a local convention, even if there's no direct dev involvement. ENCOURAGE them to get together and be VISIBLE about their association.



Sadly, "be a hero" is already taken. It would be a good line for CoH to use in these kinds of campaigns. It does make a good, solid pairing. We'd have to make sure that we, as a community, DO help make those promotions successful, but it's got my full backing.

Then you're in luck.

If you check them out, most of Samuraiko's videos open with her logo prominently appearing on a black background.

It's sometimes hard to see thanks to video compression, but through that entire sequence, your rednamesake- a black pebble- is RIGHT THERE. In fact, the Black Pebble is there before Samuraiko's own logo... and stays there after hers fades out.

... I think Black Pebble even appears through the credits.

Interesting. I was going to use the CCG as an example of a way to use the tech in an CoH-related side-product. I thought that existing cards would be too complex for easy recognization, though... granted, they're only demo'ing with a few examples.

Note also that it would also be possible to make much more complex interactions. You can make icons interact with one another like the demo, or have one icon specify the model and another icon specify the action or "state' of that card. It's moving us toward some very interesting augmented-reality possibilities in the very near future.

But... maybe all this is best for another thread, rather than the unrelated April Fools announcement.

In an attempt to un-derail this thread (as I was a derailer)...

Y'know, you really could make a good comical "sidekick" defender powerset... a bunch of buffs and debuffs that fit the flavor of that April Fools announcement. I'd imagine it would be something like this:

1 Morale Boost PBAOE minor +regen, + recovery
For some insane reason, everyone seems to just feel better in your presence. They recover a little better, they have a bit more spring in their step... They like you. even if all their fans hate you. The fans are just jealous. Keep telling yourself that.

2 Battlecry Ranged cone, Target -Speed, -Resistance, -Fly, (akin to tar patch). Your targets thought they were real threats- villains to be reckoned with.... people to be feared... but THIS is who's sent against them? A SIDEKICK? Come on! this is just... just... embarrassing. Their adrenaline just drains away as they lose all enthusiasm for this fight.

3 Unceasing Protector Ally Rez, special.
When you're in trouble, your fallen teammates find that surge of energy necessary to come to your defense. The strength of the heal this rez brings is variable, based on the danger the caster is in (calculated by weighing the remaining health of the caster and the number of foes in melee range).

4 Headlong Charge. minor damage -DMG, -toHit, chance to stun, chance to confuse ally.
This is based off of Shield Defense's "Shield Charge..." damage replaced with debuffs. Some of your foes will be too stunned... or laughing too hard... to fight back. There's also a slim chance of causing a pbaoe confuse on teammates. Maybe the confusing fight was just that intense... or maybe they just decided you deserved a good slapping.

5 Babysitting Duty Ally Resist Disorientation, Hold, Sleep, Immobilization, Fear, Confusion, +Perception.
(Yes, this is Empathy's "Clear Mind.") Now that you've been saddled with the responsibility of protecting this annoying hapless twerp, you're more attentive and have a sharper level of mental acuity. The bumbling brat keeps you on your toes.

6 Hero Worship Ally +Defense (All), +Damage.
This is much like Empathy's fortitude- a little stronger, but minus the +ACC. The ally fights better and more effectively knowing they're held in such high regard. They don't get the accuracy bonus because their attention's somewhat split-- what IS that sidekick getting into now?

7 NOTINTHEFACE! PBAOE Taunt, -DEF, -RES, -ToHit, self fear.
The level of debuff varies based on the number of foes affected, akin to Invincibility. This is a powerful debuff, balanced against the risk of a pbaoe taunt on an archetype with no defense and low hit points. Teammates must scramble to pull the foes back off of the defender before the defender dies, but they'll have a much easier time with the foes so distracted.

8 Lucky Shot Ranged, High Foe Stun, chance of buildup on target
Everyone gets lucky once in a while. Sure, you didn't take the foe down, but you brained him pretty good. You better hope your teammates take him down before he wakes, though, kid.... he's gonna be pissed.... (needs a bararang animation)

9 Cries of Pain. A variable-strength version of the empath's "adrenaline boost."
The strength of this buff is based on the remaining hit-points of the caster: weaker than the empath's version when the sidekick is in pretty good health, more powerful when the sidekick is near-death. If cast needlessly- when the sidekick is at FULL health, it actually applies a minor debuff due to the annoying twerp's distraction. If the caster is at death's door, this becomes a full team buff.

eh, fine with the neg rep. sorry you took it so badly.

I thought 'save the drama' at MOST balanced the casually condescending attitude of the original post, but looking back, I can see how putting the wrong tone to it would make it rather nasty. Unintended, but my bad.

I'd hoped that the rest of my (explanatory) post would have clarified the tone I sought:

Without demeaning the work someone probably put into that little feature, I'll try again. This is a new trick that someone else developed... used for toy and product promotion... that, now that it's done, is essentially "plug a model you want displayed in one field", plug a simple, easily recognizable icon for it in another" , and bam... the code will display model on the video overlay based on the visible shape and facing of that icon. EDIT: not 100% that easy... you can build it from separate components instead of the canned product, but you get the idea.

You REALLY can't get very much content-related done in the time it took to test that out...

...hence, when you said "I wish the Devs had spent the time wasted on this to update the websites with info instead" I explained that they really couldn't have done very much with that time.

Could the site use updates? Yes.
Was this a good vehicle to attach the complaint to? NO.
Hence, save the drama for something that DOES appear to be a waste of resources.

Sorry that my bad wording just led to an even greater expenditure of drama on the issue.

eh, save the drama.

It's a new tech that's being demo'ed like crazy in industry circles so it's likely relatively little time or effort on the dev part... Mostly I've seen it with Avatar promotions. All their toys used the tech, as did specially marked coke cans, etc. The fundamentals would've been completed just in a routine tech eval, then cleaned up to have a unique and notable trick for the convention. It didn't cost you a single iota of info.

How is logmein on the iphone working overall?

I've got a free RDP client for android that lets me do pretty much the same thing, but we use LogMeIn at work to access some clients' servers, so I'm tempted to pony up for the android version of ignition once it exits beta.

wait, what?

Dammit, now I gotta go make an alt supergroup:

The Copycats an all-catgirl supergroup with costumes and names themed to mimic the signature heroes. Yeah, it's probably already been- but copying the copy is still totally worth it.

Would that lesson be: "Don't even TRY to guess what women like, but men are simpler- Sister Psyche bathtub scenes never get old."

I dunno... let's do a more thorough comparison.

:Studies the one GG provided.
:Studies some more.
:Looks for the comics David referred to.
:Gets sidetracked, finding instead the comic with the shot GG snipped.
:Comes back to this thread, not quite remembering what he was supposed to be doing.
:Eventually remembers, but decides the one GG provided needs a fresh perspective...

Ok, this may take a bit longer than expected....

There are conflicting rumors as to whether the speedo is an in-game item or a real "city of sidekicks" swag for this year's HeroCon.

No. Australia gets the boxed set this time.

Europe still has the multilingual packaging issue- that's a tough cost barrier to overcome.


Australia's so much easier since we just need to turn the boxes upside-down.

As previously mentioned, when some say "sg only" they usually are including in any of the alts of a person that's in their supergroup. That alt won't have access to the supergroup roster. That alt will be building a team using the LFT tool.

If you had "sg only," then I, the sg-mate on an alt, would know that you still may be open to the team I'm forming.
If you don't have that- if you're declining all invites, I'd assume you wanted to be left alone.

Seems rather asinine to be judging people without fully considering when such notes are justified.

I wasn't really addressing whether or not this service would be a good or bad thing, but only whether it puts the game in a legal gray area unnecessarily.

Well, it isn't that the SL people aren't getting into trouble, it's that the US Tax office hasn't taken notice yet. So far, the only analysis has been by first-tier tax assistants that responded on inquiry, and they suggested that barter laws would seem to apply to a Linden-style economy... but for an official ruling, you'd have to wait till the tax office take notice or petition requesting one. Petitioning costs $300.

Paying $300 to get a ruling that you owe more money seems a bit off.

Even if the IRS were to take notice, and even if they WANTED TO, it is likely that they wouldn't start an audit campaign on average users, anyway. Pursuing tax evaders can cost thousands to tens of thousands. Doing it to get a few hundred bucks back per audit isn't in the country's best interest.

This is one tax law that people break- similar to how (in many states) if you ordered from an out-of-state catalog and the mail-order company didn't collect sales tax, then you, the consumer, were expected to track, report, and pay the state what you owe. (The same applies for online sales in most states, BTW.) Practically nobody does it. Practically nobody enforces it... but it's something they COULD gig ya for if they ever had reason to scrutinize ya.

That's my only edit.

I've got few no-travel-power builds--- some of them insanely fast (like my MA/SR scrapper with every speed boost I can find, including several "gift of ancients" speed boosts) and some less so.

They usually solo / team with friends. In the rare case where I accept a PUG invite, I give plenty of forewarning. I'd do the same for any gag characters (like the very-little-empathy empath defender "Major HMO" I mentioned in another post). If the team leader still wants me to join, fine.

In a "regular" PUG, I'd say this isn't a problem. Part of the fun in setting up a team is figuring out what does and doesn't work for that particular team composition.

In a "Task Force" though... where (I'm told) team composition can make or break things, then I'd suggest the person had an obligation to inform the team leader that his/her build was different. It's up to the team leader to decide whether this was a deal-breaker. She may have done that, in which case, she's fine.

Part-Troll has already said he wasn't the team leader so he might not have been privy to that information.

Awesome.

I'm gonna have to use the TF one, I think.

<----- over 5 1/2 years in the game, and still a TF virgin.

Actually it IS true. It's your analysis that's wrong.

First, Linden Labs does get taxed on the revenue they realize- and that revenue includes its earnings from the sale of Linden Dollars. They're not taxed on the SALES TAX, just as many other "services" aren't taxed online.

There are two areas to look at here. The first is point-of-monetary-transfer (where you exchange L$ for real $)

Linden Labs DOES have to report their own L$ sales as revenue.

Individuals that buy and sell L$ ALSO have to report this as income to the IRS. Most don't, but they should- and if audited, they could face tax evasion charges for not reporting that income if they exceeded the threshold amount (it's considered self-employment).

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Next: the "Virtual Exchange" (exchange L$ for L$, no real money exchanging hands):

Where things get VERY wonky is when you run into the US Federal Tax's "Barter Laws." These were designed to address an emerging issue back in the 80's. Groups started printing catalogues of services they'd offer in exchange for 'points' that could be exchanged for other services. (X prepares Y's legal docs for 8 points each, then pays Z 8 points to do his accounting for him). In the mid-80's such exchanges had catalogs the size of phone books detailing services and goods available. Since no money exchanged hands, there was no "income" and therefore, the idea went, no INCOME TAX!

So, the federal government changed the law. Now ANY exchanged service or good that has real monetary value (i.e. that other people would normally and legally pay for), should be reported and taxed as if that real monetary value exchanged hands-- regardless if there was any real money involved! (there's some latitude for "favors" like mowing your elderly neighbor's lawn for free, but really not too much).

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If you apply that to video games, the theory goes... it's practically all there. We exchange points (influence) for goods and services. If these goods and services were legitimately available for real money too, then the law's wording suggests that we'd ALL have to track and report all our non-money in-game transactions too.

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Do we do that? Hell no. The law would appear to COVER that as it was written, but most doubt that it'd ever be APPLIED that way.

Instead, we treat online games more like we handle "Poker winnings." When you think of it, buyable influence or L$ is like giving cash for a poker chip. You might lose that chip before the night's out... or you might gain a hundred more... heck, you could gain a hundred more then lose it all before you're done. You're not assessed on every "transaction" when that chip (which has monetary value) exchanges hands. You're just taxed on your overall winnings.

In L$ terms: we don't report taxes on anything we (the players) earn in L$ until we exchange it out for real $. Then we report it as earnings.

The screwy part- all the laws governing reporting gambling revenue are so narrowly defined that they REALLY can't be applied to MMO's, but we tend to follow their prescribed behavior because they make more sense than the more broad -and more applicable- laws that govern barter networks that would bring online gaming to a grinding halt.

Really?

REALLY?

Well, let's define it a little better. For a long time, we had a spawning issue where the game didn't seem to be spawning the right number of LT's for a mob. We also saw issues where the AI's weren't optimally using their powers. Both of these situations have been improved.

But I can't find an AT that can't really solo with just storebought enhancements. Defenders might need some solo love, but that's part of the problem they have as a force multiplier. Hopefully some dev love for that in the future. Other than that....

What's changed with these tweaks are our EXPECTATIONS. I've gotten too used to smooth sailing on my characters- even with difficulty settings upgraded. These balance improvements have made things more normal- and more sane. The BASE difficulty is still very balanced against storeboughts, but combined with the increased difficulty, things are a tad more interesting.


Please talk about them. Honestly. Please. I'm curious.

I almost exclusively duo-or-trio... so I'm less informed about large team performance... but I also have the benefit of voice capability with my teammates, so I may be spoiled by play enhanced by better communication. What problems are you seeing?

Reasonable:
As others have mentioned, losing powers with exemplaring is still a big thing- particularly for people who just recently got something like Stamina and re-slotted their enhancements with that expectation.

Others put that in as an "anti powerleveler" message. - No, I'm not interested in helping a total stranger race to level, TYVM. Search notes are most often for strangers. Friends I KNOW can always send me a tell and ask for favors.

Reasonable:
Again, as others have pointed out, the search status changes often, but the message doesn't. Putting a message in there is a good way to catch those moments. *I* shouldn't be inconvenienced with constantly checking my search status when I really want to be left alone, and *you* shouldn't be inconvenienced by sending invites to people that are entirely uninterested in teaming with you. Why NOT do this?


Reasonable:

I'd assume most people don't mean "SG characters" but supergroup players. If you're on an alt, but in my supergroup with another character, an "sg only" status flagger is probably OK with that. Many PUG experiences are... well... crap. If you have screening criteria for your supergroup, then knowing that the person is a SG-mate means less unexpected crappiness.

Assuming you actually play your 50.

Many of us have fun with alts- get a few characters to 50, park em, spend what they have on one last build, then go back to a new character. Farming out influence on a character that has hit the XP cap has no interest for us.



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Don't take this to mean that I agree with the OP's claims one bit though.



The market is good... and while influence & infamy inflation is way out of control, it doesn't bug me one bit. I do just fine avoiding the "essential" crap that goes for hundreds of millions- even selling the few I get to bankroll a broader set of recipes.

Heck, I regularly have my lower-level characters market just enough to secure tens of millions before level 30- more than enough to establish a sustainable build, and probably little more than 2-3 hours of my total playtime.


New players DO have a lot to learn, but they have access to all the TO's, DO's, and SO's that we did back then. Generic (non-set) IO's offer a comfortable step up at a reasonable price/investment effort and set IO's will come with time. Heck, the devs did very well in making the actual benefits of the really- REALLY - expensive stuff come in very marginal increments--

They're like luxury goods that cost considerably more but offer rather intangible benefit over their cheaper cousins. If you have the inclination and the disposable income, they're nice perks. If you don't- you'll get along just fine with the next step down.