Chase_Arcanum

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I wanna see'm, all of'm.

Every week, put up like 10 that you have weeded out.

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I've been making my way through many of them myself. Most of the submissions are available for anyone to review over at hypercomics.com

I'd also suggest that you get Tropic to make the update lists to CoH Writers' Guild into a weekly article. It would be an easy way to raise visibility to all the creative storytellers we have here.

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I think its a great idea especially with oversight. I like the badge idea - maybe even a special ostume option (feather in ones cap so to speak)

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Just as a warning, the devs have to be somewhat careful about rewards. Many "volunteer" programs got shut down a few years ago when the IRS started monetizing the "rewards" given to the volunteers. You have to be very careful on what you give back or how you recognize contributors.

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I'm all for community created things but without a tremendous ammount of oversight the likes of which you would be totally unable to do you would just be asking for trouble.

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That's basically what he's describing. Players generating animations and submitting it for conversion to something they'd use in the future. If we can't do power customization then there'd be no way we could have some kind of open system like you seem to think he's suggesting.

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Will someone review each individual animation or will it be automated? I understood what he was saying just not the level of oversight and control that would be implemented.

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He said IF they saw cool things they COULD include them in-game as emotes. That's selective review, no matter how you look at it.

Other MMO's have learned from the SL-related content/continuity issues as well. Pirates of the Burning Sea (still in beta) has a process for submitting flags, sails, ships (and I believe, in a while, to include hilts & jewelry). Everything submitted is voted on by the community. Only those items with a sufficient score and sufficient votes are reviewed by the devs. They retain final veto power.

So, I'd say they're not planning such an open inclusion system at all, compared to SL... but the potential is still incredible

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Reasons why devs might be silent on an issue:

1) We didn't see the issue. There are a lot of threads out there.
2) We are in the middle of looking at an issue, and saying anything at the time might be invalidated. Even something like "we are looking into it" can be read as "we are going to change it" if we look at it and find it to be fine, we would get blasted for not changing it when we said we would.
3) The answer is already being given by a lot of players already
4) The answer is obvious (and thus will eventually be given out by a lot of players, see #3).
5) It involves talking about stuff we can't/shouldn't be talking about.
6) The question is a "when" question. We rarely answer these, because even when we put disclaimers on it, our answer becomes taken as gospel, and if we fail to deliver, we look bad.

There's a secret 7th reason that I am not going to give you because of reason #7.

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Regardless of your reasons I think that you should've told the player base before I9 hit that the dev team intended for costume recipes to be commodities that they would seek and pay top inf for. If you did then the player base would not have thought that they would've been able to get those new pieces easily for both their new toons as well as their older toons. It would not have caused sour grapes (so to speak) or bad blood. Players can take it better when they are told up front than when it is hidden from them.

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Well, let's see: The public and historical timelines suggest that we have 3-4 months between issues. We have a feature added in that issue that includes random costume drop rewards.

Now, since that's a feature that is expected to continue to be in use through the next issue, it makes sense that the random costume drops would be paced to remain desirable through that time period. That means they should remain somewhat in demand, which in turn means that they'll have value. Naturally, early adopters- those willing to pay more- will be satisfied first.

It's beyond common sense- it's downright BASIC that it would be ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS to have a system that satisfied demand in the first 2 weeks... only to have months of unsellable, no-demand rewards dropping. Heck, might as well make them basic costume options then.

Even if you missed that train of thought from the interviews (which did identify these costumes as rather rare rewarss) you could note the same thing on the test server or all the player forum posts on the subject preceding launch.

I don't think the devs were wrong in assuming that most rational people would understand that these would be infrequent drops that will remain in demand for AT LEAST the first month.

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Uh ... For those of you who are struggling about the intent of the OP ...

DUH !!!

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But... but... but you're Spud_Lover! We've come to expect irrational, extremist, and utterly absurd rants of impending doom. How are we to tell the difference?



(Kidding, of course- your posts are actually very rational, centrist, and only mildly absurd rants of impending "meh". )




Do smilies really help convey that this was a friendly jab and absolutely not serious in any way?







How about now?

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Geek friends of mine used to have fun going to late-night restaurants and engaging in absolutely meaningless, but very animated gibberish conversations as they ate, just to watch the faces of the people who were listening in. It became a little game (they were actors) to keep the voice and tone totally serious while stringing together absolutely meaningless phrases- and responding appropriately.

Now they just post on gaming forums.

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Couple of my friends and I used to do that except not about games... about sex... with made up gibberish words.



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Oh... I can recall two of our more flagrant attention-magnets getting a table together and started playing the "young and in love" act so well. If you just heard their tone and saw their conduct, you'd assume they were talking about something totally romantic and potentially scandalous. I think one night might have had an "automotive parts and pond critters," theme because years later one of the lasses was still known for her masterful ability to make "toad the axlegrease" sound totally x-rated).

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Reasons why devs might be silent on an issue:

1) We didn't see the issue. There are a lot of threads out there.
2) We are in the middle of looking at an issue, and saying anything at the time might be invalidated. Even something like "we are looking into it" can be read as "we are going to change it" if we look at it and find it to be fine, we would get blasted for not changing it when we said we would.
3) The answer is already being given by a lot of players already
4) The answer is obvious (and thus will eventually be given out by a lot of players, see #3).
5) It involves talking about stuff we can't/shouldn't be talking about.
6) The question is a "when" question. We rarely answer these, because even when we put disclaimers on it, our answer becomes taken as gospel, and if we fail to deliver, we look bad.

There's a secret 7th reason that I am not going to give you because of reason #7.

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Umm... now that the devs have broken silence on the dev silence regarding their silence... where does that leave us?

Geek friends of mine used to have fun going to late-night restaurants and engaging in absolutely meaningless, but very animated gibberish conversations as they ate, just to watch the faces of the people who were listening in. It became a little game (they were actors) to keep the voice and tone totally serious while stringing together absolutely meaningless phrases- and responding appropriately.

Now they just post on gaming forums.

I'll Play Devil's advocate here. I think the extremes (95%/5%) that most people post for their highs and lows lead to too many one-sided events. If you find a foe you're poorly matched against, you might as well just sit there.

I'd rather see a better chance for luck playing a role.

Like others, I'd see 50/50 as the "averge" baseline for "none/none" and "max/max"

I, though, think in PvP, making the max certainty to hit/miss closer to a whopping 80%/20% or 85%/15% would lead to more 'lucky shots' that might make the one-sided fights feel a little less biased. The outcome of such a battle may still be rather predetermined, but not to the point where your adversary figures "what's the point" and just steps away from the keyboard.

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Uh... I just downloaded that link lighthouse gave and installed the funpack... it's the same one that came with CBC, which I already had...

Isn't there supposed to be some city of stuff related images? I don't see anything other than the extremely dissapointing selection of clipart that came with the program in the first place.

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I edited some of the material from the coh/v fansite kits to work as "clipart" in CBC. I'll see if I can't find em and post em somewhere.

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Hi ChaseArcanum,

I think your webcomic looks awesome!! I think that yours would be permissible because it is screenshots and You can visually alter the screenshot with image editing filters so long as the image is recognizable as a screenshot. You comic definitely fits the requirements.

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Awesome. Thanks for the praise... now I just have to decide on retelling a tale in a truncated format, or coming up with something new that fit that requirement. I'd planned to revisit that story once I'd become more proficient, and I could certainly put more panels per page, but I think that story's best served in long format.

Sadly, my currently-planned tales were a 3-part multifaceted story that would be even longer.

Lighthouse,

I understand that screenshots will better represent the game, but are altered screenshots allowed... like a high contrast B&W style that I've been experimenting with?

Points down to the link in the sig...

:looks at the 4-8 page requirement
:looks at the 36 page "battlefields" comic
:looks at the three planned 36-page comics.
:looks back at the 4-8 page requirements
:wonders how many panels he can squeeze on one page.
:suddenly understands how a director feels cutting a 4-hour reel into a 90-minute feature.
:sighs

Ugh. I really hate this, but things took another turn for the worst at work. Unless things change, I'll be putting in too many 80-hour weeks to get started.

Guess I was premature on the casting call.

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Official site for official news. Or should we just give up and hit google for Co* news?



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I'm thinking that both of those articles were expected to be released this week. So they probably have the web page info set to go up today on it. It looks like someone on the UK site spotted the article they linked to and put a link into it fast. Not sure if they were working on a weekend or just jumped in anyway.

It probably wasn't an unreasonable expectation that the articles wouldn't go out until this week.

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Granted, I might be a bit grumpy right now, the kidlets aren't cooporating on the whole 'nap' issue. But it seems like we get most of our news from other places. I check the main page. A lot. And it's sometimes saveral days behind what we know on the forums.

Seriously, if I want news, I'll ask Lady Sadako before I ask a redname. And that just doesn't seem right, yanno? It's like that old joke about trusting the government. Is that what our main page is now, an old joke? Maybe it's the timing of it all too. Everytime I see something suggesting some love for our main page, for us, a short time later I see some attention given elsewhere. It's a little saddening that what made us a niche is slowly going away in the name of advertising...

Then again, I could be reading way more into it.

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I understand how the "exclusives" help get the game some coverage on sites that are frequented by other non-CoH'ers, but I think we need to strike a balance here. Something like an rss-powered announcement page- one that could accept and display approved 3rd party headlines as soon as they're made available- would use rather well-established technologies, allow for "exclusives" while insuring that CoH'ers can find said exclusive almost instantaneously.

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I think he's gonna do the demorecord while following you around and you're stomping greys in the low level city zones.

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Right. I figured that's about the easiest way.

/demorecord is a really neat way to capture what's essentially an editable video of something. What's neat is it's purely text-based, describing the character's appearance, animations, etc. I can thus edit the demo to have the characters run animations they normally wouldn't... or change my camera position to get closer to that shot I wanted (or so I hope).

I could literally just capture your look and do anything with it, but I'm still new to demorecord, and I'd prefer to have you doing the right powers in the shot, so I'd take a 2-3 minute clip of you in action to edit later. (I hope).


I may have been early on the casting call- my employer just notified me that I may be working late next week on a project that's suddenly "mission critical" to the client... after they delayed it and failed to let us move on it for four freakin months.

Thanks for the response! I'll be organizing things very soon... have a few fire drills appear at work suddenly thats taking up my game time.

Your storyline doesn't have to tie in completely, if you don't want it- if you'd just like a costumed hero in the background that just looks like one of your own, that's great too.

Well, after a long delay, I'm planning my second, third, and fourth screenshot comic books. The next "trilogy" will likely have a common thread shared by the central characters- the evacuation of Paragon City University during the Rikti invasion.

While I'll be focusing on the interrelated stories of three characters, I really could take advantage of a quite a few extras for the major battlefield scene.

The scene's pretty basic: The rikti invasion forces PCU into an evacuation. As crowds gather at the Red line, heroes struggle to organizing a defense- some are students/faculty using their powers in battle for the first time, some are veteran heroes doing whatever they can in the turmoil. Some (not your characters) will fall in the fight.

The art style will be similar to the "Battlefields" predecessor, but I'm experimenting with a few filters to add to the illustrated look & feel.

If you're interested in adding your hero or villain to the evacuation of PCU storyline, I'll give credit to anyone that wants to participate.

Post a reply here.

How this will work
I'll be editing everyone in to the same scene, so I'll likely need no more than 15 minutes of your time in one of the "newb zones" (in case I need to roll an alt on your server) to take screenshots of you attacking various greys and take a /demorecord.

I can't promise much screen time, but I figured it'd be fun to add other community members to the story. You'll be credited by name (with references to the panels you appear in) and I might even be able to slip in a few battlecries.

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But that would still benefit the team.. Being able to bring fortitude back faster allows it to be cast again sooner. It may not extend the actual power on the buffed teammate, but you can hit them again faster with a recharge... or am I getting that wrong?

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Well, yes, technically *any* self buff is a team buff, because the whole team benefits from your increased performance. And, by the same token, ally-only buffs are also self buffs, so long as you have teammates to use them on. However, that's entirely separate from the notion that by slotting a mini-hasten IO in Fortitude you can use the power to buff your *teammate's* recharge rates, which is what some people theorize you can do.


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I think that's a good thing- I like the fact that a power can work differently and still be of benefit. If people don't take time to adapt to their specific group dynamics, they're failing at one important part of team play.

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However, since people take issue with the example of Fortitude, let's look at Hover. This is a power that many people take and three-slot to gain unrstricted flight in combat. Instead, those three slots could be used to make hover into a power that grants stealth, +recharge and +tohit--aspects that are undeinably awesome both on their own and together. However, if you put those IOs Hover, you no longer have a power that grants unrestricted flight in combat. You have to either forfeit that aspect of Hover or remove slots from some other power, making it less effective in turn.


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Many people aslo DON'T slot this way, but already slot for +defense and use it as a less mobile defensive edge... or tied it to a macro that auto-toggled between flight and hover so you could get around. Hover's now faster- fast enough for most indoor battle areas, so it can be argued that the 3-slotting speed at all is a waste.

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That's what gets overlooked when peole get all shook up over some of the bonuses you can get from IOs: there is an opportunity cost associated with them. And in the case of slotting Empathy will full IO sets (yes, the thread's gotten so far off topic that it's back on topic again), that opportunity cost is much lower than it is for many other Defender primaries, even though those other sets may offer a greater number of properties to be enhanced.

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Don't know if it's intended, but it comes across like you're pretty confident in what is the already-optimal slotting and purpose for the powersets- what people should slot and what you should expect from a slotter. IO's are specifically intended to shake those notions up.

Very few people are blind to the downsides (but they are there, and you may have intended the post to speak to them). Slotting defenses in hover, like you suggested, makes hover act differently, not worse or better, and it could let me cater to a style of play that before wasn't very well supported.

Yes, that means that you might not get what you intended from a teammate. A power might be less powerful or be available less often. Players will have to learn to deal with it and play to the strengths of that team. Maybe the defender's hover isn't as fast now, but his accuracy and defensive abilities now mean that he's more survivable in other ways.

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Sting of the Manticore, for example, only works in Snipe or Assassin Strike powers (which I believe makes Stalkers the only AT that can slot it TWICE ).

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I hate to disappoint Stalkers out there, but Sting of the Manticore can only be slotted into Sniper powers, not Assassin Strikes. I don't know where that rumor started.

Assassin Strikes can slot in sets that are made for Single Target Melee powers.

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Shouldn't there be an IO set for AS? People are slotting it fairly similar to snipes (when they get ho's and open up slots). Using mele IO's for AS ignores the need for interrupt redux in this interruptable power (i believe).

AS is pretty much a mele snipe (good oxymoron?).

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Looks like most melee attack sets aren't 6-slots in length, so you can always put a separate IO into them...

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I don't mind that he can solo trials and TFs. I don't mind that he likes to brag about it. I mind when he comes around and tries to get the drop rate for the rest of us nerfed because if everyone has access to rare recipes it'll make him feel less 'special'.

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I could understand your resentment if inventions were live but they aren't. The developers have stated the drop rates will get tweaked and I am trying to point out an early flaw.

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Yes, and it might very well be a flaw. I still think that the measurement for soloing is rather silly, but I'll let it stand.

See, we don't know if availability will be an issue. We don't even know if these rares will be "worth farming." The auction house mechanics appear to work against the whole "trading" system that we see in other games, inf* is too easily available, recipes too flexible.

These could very well lead to a situation of, "Sure, I can solo TF's in X minutes, but why bother?" That would make any solution moot

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Bear in mind that some of these issues will be addressed during the testing period. Perhaps not the exact issues you mention above, and perhaps the extent of changes may not be what you hope for, but there will be changes before any of this goes to a live server.

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Happy dance!

Also, ya'll are listening... *happy dance more*

Thanks for posting about that. Yeah, sometimes we get a little frothy but we don't have as much info as you guys do. So, we speculate.

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Also of note, it may just be a gameplay decision. I usually slot recharge reduction, but I've experimented with a few builds that didn't. The holds weren't available for every mob encountered, but the few that were used were much more effective. Some people seem to think that you need your whole arsenal available for every encounter, but maybe having three heavier hitters to rotate for every third encounter will work too.

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They will not know till they are working in a gaming company... its never easy pleasing players who thinks that just because they are paying money means they (developers & publishers) have to listen to them. ..

Give them a break, im sure they are trying their best to work things out for us.. I'm not saying when there is a probelm dont complain and shut up about it, but more oftenly explain and properly describe the problem before exploding in front of them...

Like you they are humans, errors occur but dont let those tiny mistakes brand them in anyway negative...I for one think they are doing a good job and should continue with their progress in maintaining and expanding the game..

Kudos to them..

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Agreed

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Akimbo Pistols is planned as a Corruptor set at first, and it is NOT, and never will be, a Scrapper or Stalker set.

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Well, that answers that!

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Thank GOD I stopped leveling my petless pistols mastermind :P