Chase_Arcanum

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although i hear alot of talkin about the coming years...id really like to know about this year or even soon

id really like some kind of word about the vault and bases not about an exspansion maybe in a few years

i find it funny how open ncsoft is but only to stuff that will happen " later"

and as much fun it is to hear..its getting annoying to not actually feel like we got anything/or getting anything

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To be fair, they're seriously trying to manage expectations for the immediate future. Players have a tendency to hear something like "major cash investment" and expect to see HUGE results in just a few months. "Just a few months" will just about get the positions filled.

Issue 12 and (to a lesser extent) 13 were probably in planning and resource allocation long before the acquisition announcement. They'll be at least as solid as previous issues, but the devs would be hard pressed to really show a return on that investment for either of them.

I'm encouraged to see that they're planning ahead, but I will share one sentiment: can't wait for the I12 teasers.

Figured I share a little bit of what DIDN'T make it or is tough to see:

First, in case you can't figure out all the headlines:
<ul type="square">[*]City Hall replaced by Automatons. Efficiency Up 30%[*]Wentworths: Hero proposals drive Diamond &amp; Platnum up. Discriminating brides choose Enchanted Impervium.[*]Your Taxes at Work: After 3 Years MAGI Vault Door Still Broken[*]Hollow Point Arrested during Brickstown Bank Heist... Again.[*]Report:Investigative. Rikti:Undercover. [*]Mass Fir Bolg Exodus: Who's Guarding the Henge?[*]101 Uses for Hamidon Goo.[/list]
Then I needed more, I asked Rian_Frostdrake for ideas without telling him what it was for. Many of his were too long to work, so I'll share them here now:

<ul type="square">[*] Behemoth PAC blocks new ag. bill. when asked for
comment, simply stated "no more farming"[*] goldbricker union standoff enters third week:
demands for better dental coverage a sticking point.[*] council protests new leash law for warwolves,[*] warwolves REALLY protest new spay and neuter policy.[*] Entertainment report: dr. Vahzilok, plastic surgeon
to the stars.[*] Lord recluse offers large reward for anyone who
can find president marchand's power armor..the sooner
the better[*] becky the tarantula mistress, the hot new singing
and dancing sensation releases her long awated CD
today.[*] Nemesis victim of nemisis plot, flusteredly
claims "its all part of my plan" then mutters "ok this
$%^# is getting confusing, even for me"[*] coralax: the other white meat?[*] Tsoo discover powerful "greetings feline" tatto,
cute and deadly. some complain about effects on their
masculinity.[*] cabal enthusiastic about new computer dating site
"Its been a LOOOONG dry spell" says storm maven.[*] (and after he saw the "zombies chasing Positron" part of the comic, he added ) Matt Miller today announced "dramatic" changes coming soon for zombie masterminds.[/list]
Next, I'll say that the emote Positron is doing during "payback" wasn't my initial choice... I'd toyed with an emote with special meaning to the PvP community, but it really wasn't right for a signature hero to do (except maybe Synapse... he'll do anything.)

Any thoughts to which one?

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Excellent! The Commander and Countess made their way into the comic. hehe, thanks :P

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I have some very nice shots of you two together somewhere in this HUGE library of images I archived for this...

QR

Great work Dark Respite!
I'm a HUGE fan

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It was just awesome. I loved the constant "loving attention" being given (poor guy being rejected so often) and the ticker was great!

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Marcian_Tobay was kind enough to stand in as the hopeless romantic.

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Find the marketing guy who forced the ad for the wedding pack into the comic and toss him from the roof. Other than that not a hafl bad comic.

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To be fair, the devs didn't give me any pressure to stick any product placement in there.

I tried to cover as much of the "features" tied to the event as I could, regardless of whether its' a paid pack or not (like the I10 guide). Since emotes are... well... moving... I figured I'd need multiple panels to catch them at enough stages to really communicate what they looked like in a static picture. I opted for the fashion show because I didn't see many appropriate places during the actual event to direct focus away from the bride &amp; groom.

All that had to be laid out long before I actually got to see or shoot anything, so I overcompensated with more space rather than less. By the time I realized that I could have used less space to cover that... well... it was a VERY tight schedule...

(QR) Stepped out of the live event to leave room for others, but I'm a little disappointed in the community expectations on this one.

LIVE EVENTS are always a challenge on MMO's. You rarely, if ever, can afford to make it reach even a fraction of the community. Many games make their start/end totally random events (so the crowds don't compete for lines) and are very short-term (so by the time the message gets out that it's going on and the crowds get too big, it's all over). They even use lower wage actors... not the actual developers... to minimize costs.

Those events reach even fewer people. They give an "allure" to the game- the chance that you MIGHT encounter one, but few ever have... yet people love them.


This one:
<ul type="square">[*]...was announced specifically to maximize availability.[*] ...included extra activities to try to make other fun options for those that couldn't get in. [*] ...included the actual game developers in their signature roles. Heck, some of the vows came right from Manticore's real wedding.[/list]
It might not have been perfect, folks, but it's a whole lot more than most MMO live events.

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Absolutely -incredible,- Doug. I only wish I was capable of creating art that amazing. I've played around a lot with Poser, but I'm not quite sure how I would even -begin- to transition from Poser to what you've got going.

*grin* Do you teach?

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ditto

Ok, this thought came to me while browsing the VOIP topic and Castle's response
(here)

but I figured this forum would be a better place to get a response.


I'm curious:
Roleplayers, do you use Voice Chat systems?
If so, do you Roleplay over them?

While I agree with Castle's rationale ("immersion damaging") Lady_Athyna's post that "I just think of the voice as the player behind the keyboard and the typing as the character if there's a need to differentiate" had me thinking of my own experience:

I rarely talk AS my character in voice chat, but often talk ABOUT my character. RP happens in chat, and while that's going on, VOIP is used to chat OOC about what's going on... often laughing at ourselves or our gaffes. It's more of a "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" experience.

What's your experience?

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Finding out my gamertag is not impossible without me posting in the Gamertag Exchange. I know one CoH player who already found it and added me to his friends list.

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. o O (Perhaps... Positron? Naaah, too easy...)

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Positron's gamertag is easily visible on his blog.

(To all those who go, "WAAAA??? Positron has a blog!", it's a very occasionally updated blog. No, I won't tell you how to find it. Finding the blog can be the millstone around your neck if you really have to know.)

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Yeah, I need to post something... maybe you guys can give me ideas for topics of discussion.

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Keep an eye on Brian Psychochild Green's "Weekend Design Challenges" - even if you're not going directly responding to it, the developers, aspiring developers, and hobbyists that respond invariably have something worth commenting on.

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You guys have crappy keyboards I see. You should upgrade.

Good luck with the move!

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While certainly not as nice as, say, a G15, those little Dell USB keyboards are actually pretty nice.

They're tiny since the bezel conforms to the shape of the keyboard, yet the keyboard itself is still full-sized. They're also very easy to clean. The keys have a nice range of movement and are nicely weighted so if you touch type, you almost never make accidental 'landing' strikes.

While they come standard with most 'business-class' Dell workstation PCs these days. I wouldn't mind buying one separate to use as a 'lug-around' keyboard for configuring headless machines.

Now the Dell machines themselves tend to have some crappy hardware. The on-board audio for the Optiplex line is notoriously flaky.

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My keyboard
Simple, elegant, small, quiet, and $10. Never had any problems.

Dell on the other hand, [censored] them for taking over Alienware. Alienware used to rock.

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Not to dwell too off-topic, but when I win the lotteryone of these keyboards will be mine.... right after I get the "new" laptop.

To bring this back on-topic, maybe one of the dev cubicles should be equipped with a real hardcore rig

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Do you have enough Prestige to set up the new Base correctly??? If not give me a shout!!!

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The true reason for the "Double Prestige Reward" glitch. They needed it to spice up thier own headquarters.

As I already said, I think the "friends" thing will get a serious re-examination.

I'd wager that the original intent was to provide a social-network-like structure, where "friends" are akin to myspace friends, linking to character pages (if you didn't have your character appearing, the friends links to your page wouldn't appear).

Unfortunately, that idea ignores the many uses of "friends" tech in-game that have nothing to do with the actual "friendliness" of the relationship.... or the fact that if someone's a global friend - a much more likely "true" friend- I don't need to waste time using /friend on all the sub-pages.

If that is the case, they'll probably dump the in-game friend data pull and give the web-page-user the ability to build his own social network through the web interface, not using the flawed in-game data.

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Is all of this concerning those web sites that you can log your badges onto and stuff? And things like Herostats? I just don't see what the big deal is. Why do I care if someone sees my power choices or Friends list? Are people really THAT worried? And what I want more to know is why are people looking at my information anywhere but in game? They must be very bored.

I can understand the PvP side of it, but as a whole... pffft and meh.

-Sam

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Here's the mindset behind it.

We're only in-game for a finite time, but,

1) as these forums suggest, there are times when we're NOT online, but part of the community. The more resources you give to the community, the more robust it can be.

2) the greatest selling point of the game is the MASSIVE character customization and variety of options. That's tough to see before you download and login. These pages could serve as a great selling point to others.

3) "friend referrals" are some of the most effective ways for games to be adopted. Many gaming mags are seen as untrustworthy and gaming shops are largely "meh" on information. Friends work.

Now, you have a myspae page. You link to feeds of your characters- a bit more interesting to browse through than a text description or a link that says "I play ___."

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I was playing WoW when the Armory launched. For those that don't know, it's a site that displays all the character information for active WoW characters. This includes all your gear, your faction reputation, your trade skills, and your complete character build. It was like instantly making every WoW character naked to the world, and there was no way to opt out.

I have to admit I felt a little sensitive about it at first. I remember my husband and I talking about it the day it launched and one of us said "this would never fly in CoH, people would go insane about their privacy." I'm guessing the devs knew this would be the case and came up with an opt out option from the get-go.

For the record, our WoW experience wasn't really any worse off because of the Armory. I didn't get any more spam than I was before. I didn't get criticisms of my build, and I never saw anyone kicked from a team because of their build. I did use it to look up the opposing faction at times, but usually after I'd killed them: "Oh that's why I pwned his butt so easily." I found I actually enjoyed using the Armory to show off my character, and to look up my friends' characters.

I'd welcome something like this in CoH: especially if it shows costumes and character bios. I honestly love reading people's bios and admiring a good concept.

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I have never played WOW. Truthfully, I never had any interest in MMO's until hearing about COH even before it was in beta. Once I was in COH beta it was all over and I was/am hooked. COH has brought me in to the fold of MMO's.

After reading your post, Anachrodragon. I checked out the Armory site and was blown away. Something like that for COX would be incredible, very impressive use of ingame information to enrich community immersion. I could see the Titan Network or some other fansites growing into that and more.

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The EQ2players site predates the Armory with many similar features- character data, profiles, even guild portals with an (oft-broken) java chat applet that went straight to the in-game guild chat channel.

As is common, WoW took the idea and polished it considerably.

From what I heard, LOTRO was supposed to have something similar, with some sort of built in "journal" blog-ish thing, but I can't find it.

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Personally, I am glad they are giving us the option to display or not to display. It would be more convenient for the default to set to hidden but I am not going to make a big deal about it. It takes me about 30 minutes to log on 2 servers worth of chars. I like most of the features discussed but I don't like the idea of my friends list being public.

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I agree.

The fact that it IS being used makes me think this could be something of a "herospace" account, with the friends listing as a 'social networking' mechanic, like those sites. You could, for example, look at your friends' friends lists as a kind of positive referral page to meet new people that might share common interests with you.

The problem is that the "friends" list is also useful for other things in-game that don't directly reflect a positive relationship like a mySpace friend would. Heck, I often put spammers/trolls on "friends" just so I can see them pop offline when their /report gets processed...

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... but I would indeed like my characters' privacy to remain intact.


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If you do not wish to have your character information available in the future, please make use of the above described settings. This is why we are giving advance notification.

Please keep in mind that these settings are on a per-character basis. Also, know that characters who haven't logged in for over 90 days, such as an alt you haven't played in a while, will not be included.

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Will this be just a list of everyone's characters in no particular order or will they be clumped by something like a global account name?

If they are tied together by account I'll probably just have to go ahead and hide half of them like I'm forced to half the time on global now. I have different groups of characters on different servers and I like to keep their "lives" seperate.

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Odds are they're not globally conntected, but as LH has said, he doesn't have any information on specific implementation at this time A good example of this can be seen at the eq2players site, where each character has a profile.

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I would prefer, if you were to go ahead with this type of option, to have it automatically set so that the information is NOT published on the WWW. Having such a setting set to grant access, as it appears, is a false agreement between NCSoft and myself. I would consider that type of publishing data, without prior consent, an invasion of privacy.

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I understand your attitude, but I don't want to dilute the value of the phrase "invasion of privacy."

I think all the data they're displaying is already available to others in-game, which is not a "private place." Information placed in public that's already available to the public isn't really much of an "invasion."

Perhaps I just hold that term to a higher regard, though.

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if this is going to be something that reflects our stats on the website, I am against something like this as it just gives the RMT spammers something to work with especially if it is a friends list. I would feel horrible to subject friends to that spamming because I didnt click an option. If it strictly an in game thing then make the friends list non-viewable by default.

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We don't believe this will make it any easier for spammers to reach you.

Additionally, we are aware of the situation with in-game email spam and working to address the problem in a future version of the game.

[/ QUOTE ]Can you elaborate on this some because putting a giant list of all the names they could possibly spam all in one space seems like it will make it easier for them to spam us to me. If you can go into details as to what is going to be done in the future version of the game on that aspect I would feel more confortable about it, until then I am very skeptical because /ignore_spammer has not done jack for me as i am getting the same emails daily, RMT tells and it is even on toons I have not logged in for weeks at a time.

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If I can:

1) Spammers already use dataminers in-game to collect user data. These use both the /find tools- which don't locate "hidden" characters and data-skimmers that hang out at choke points (ferries on CoV) that do catch hidden players. In short, they already have a rather comprehensive list, and it's populated rather quickly through in-game means.

2) It would be much easier to identify and block a spammerbot regularly spidering through an HTML-based character site picking up new names. Web server log analyzers are out there with features that detect this for similar things- like a competitor botting through your product list to automarkdown his own.

3) Our "mail" service is largely an in-game custom tool. I'm not suggesting this is in the works but a "next-gen" game mail could be based on real e-mail engines, and thus be compatible with spam protection software available to most ISP's. Heck, it could even offer a webmail portal to let you check your mail out-of-game.

4) Spammers and Antispammers are in a continuing arms race- and one that's tough on the antispammers because blocking ONE legitimate mail is bad. It will likely be a continuous measure/countermeasure game until the cost of doing business is too high for the profits they get from it. It'd be quite a bit easier to reach that threshold if players stopped buying the crap.

You've got the artist's equivalent of writer's block. From the sound of it, you've got the type that's largely unresponsive to the "schedule time and force yourself to..." kind of block-counter. It may feel like a lack of inspiration, but finding inspiration isn't always the cure.

Illness can play a role in "the block"- my sleep issues can leave me too mentally fatigued to write, for example. To be honest, though, when my illness is involved, it's usually one of two ways: 1) it's my excuse- it serves as a "justifiable" distraction for not committing to writing or 2) I'm avoiding it- there's something that I *should be* doing... something that *should be* given priority, but I'm putting it off. Deep down I KNOW what I need to be doing, so my subconscious is undermining my other efforts until I get my act in gear.

It doesn't have to be illness- any avoided task can serve as a great creative barrier.

Forget about drawing for a moment. Give yourself a hard, honest look. are there any issues you're putting off dealing with? Anything nagging at you? Anything gnawing at the fringes of your mind? Any backlog of things that you're just not getting done?

Focus there.

And doodle while you do it.

One thing I got a kick out of was seeing how someone else "saw" shandora.

She's made an appearance in all four of my screenshot comics- been the focus of three of them. There's a personality I "see" there but everyone's going to have his or her own interpretation.

Vinson honed in on the "cheerleader" from my I11 teaser. Another guy at the comic shop (not an artist) suggested an "annoyed pin-up girl" of her in the I10 guide's "bunny suit."

It's made me curious as to how others would portray her, given no guidance from me save the comic stories as reference... a project for a later day, perhaps.

Well, was talking to a local artist about CoH and thoughts on a "pittsburgh" fan get-together and he came up with an idea that combined City of Heroes (well, Shandora Ward, my spokesheroine for the Comic guide(s)) and Pittsburgh. He sketched it out and it became my first piece ever to commission...

The original was too (*&amp;()*&amp; large for any scanner I had. I spliced it together, but you can see the shadowing caused by it all. Hopefully, I can clean it up more in the future.

web friendly
scan

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Is there an art bounty for all the Villains? How many drawings to get Mako?

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If you put Mako in one of those schoolgirl outfits, I think YOU would be the one with the bounty.

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Third WIP...painting in the face...

http://jtran218.deviantart.com/art/H...-Rasa-68490721

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Coming along nicely

Ok, my odd "catgirl."

Russian Blue