Creole Ned

Heh, I was wondering how long it would be before someone showed up to complain about it.

Here's what you can do:

a) Not play that weekend
b) Play lowbie characters or others that aren't in danger of outleveling arcs
c) Hit the debt cap to slow your leveling speed down
d) Exemplar to halt XP gain completely

The MMORPG.com new story can be found here. Here's the full quote they give:

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NCsoft gives heroes and villains a boost with double XP weekend for City of Heroes and City of Villains July 21-23

NCsoft is giving City of Heroes and City of Villains players a boost to their characters with a “Double XP Weekend” where players will earn twice the usual experience points for all activities that result in an XP reward.

The double XP weekend will start at 9 a.m. Pacific Time on Friday, July 21 and ends on Sunday, July 23 at 9 p.m. Pacific Time.

The “Double XP Weekend” will give players the opportunity to level up their characters and gain access to many of the new features available in both City of Heroes and City of Villains.

The “City of” games have recently been updated with Issue 7: Destiny Manifest which introduced the action-packed mayhem missions to City of Villains and added the PvP zone, Recluse’s Victory, where heroes and villains fight for control over a future version of Atlas Park.

For more information on the “Double XP Weekend” go to www.cityofheroes.com or www.cityofvillains.com.


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Is it supposed to be post-50 content? According to whom?

UberGuy said:
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Oh, trust me, I'm not worried about being able to get it. My complaint is that I have to resort to meta-game boring mindless BS I can literally be AFK for.

There shouldn't be things like that which provide reward.

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I'd like to see a dev address this. Getting ANY badge by being AFK is pretty silly. Damage badges should be achievable by any AT and unless they are tied to accolades specifically designed for post-50 play, you should have a reasonable shot at getting them before level 50 through regular play, not by setting up meta-game conditions to "game the game".

If all ATs can reasonably absorb 10 million points of damage during regular gameplay and well before hitting level 50, consider my comments withdrawn.

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though I8 may be slanted somewhat towards the heroic side.

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Granted, I only play villain side now, but I have to say that doing the same handful of villain missions over and over is really getting old. Hero side has 3 times as many zones. I think they're done. Villains need way, way more stuff to do.

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And so it begins.

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Most of the badge requirements for villain accolades need to be rethought, unless it is on purpose that villains are seemingly being made more difficult for EVERYTHING in comparision to heroes.

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I actually think this is exactly it. The devs are using City of Villains to remake CoH the way they wished they had to begin with. They want everything to be tough, nothing to be easy and CoV has been designed with this in mind.

You also see it in CoH when they revisit things that affect both games, like archvillains and giant monsters.

Inevitably, there are some rollbacks and adjustments. They seem to have two problems: one, they usually don't get things quite right the first time, necessitating tweaks and changes. Two, they seem to be steering current design of the game on the mantra of hard = fun.

On the first point, it's understandable that tweaking will be necessary, as thousands of players knocking stuff around may turn up things the devs wouldn't anticipate.

On the second, it is more of a philisophical debate and the devs may not be moved by player complaints if they believe the course they've chosen is the correct one for the game.

I will offer this, though, from my own perspective. If I am given a game that is too easy vs. one that is too difficult, I'm more likely to give up on the latter. Being frustrated is not fun. The devs seem to have gotten a knack for putting things into the game(s) that present a challenge that goes beyond what many would consider enjoyable. It is a worrying trend, although there's no need for DOOM™ quite yet.

Positron mentioned that they lost a writer during the development of Issue 7. Maybe it was Manticore. Last post was February 15th.

Then again, the, er, "fan support" may creep him out enough to keep him from posting.

The devs seem to have a lot of difficulty in boosting the challenge of the game (leaving aside the debate over whether more "challenge" is needed at all) without grossly overdoing it or simply equating challenge with tedium and grind. I honestly can't say why this is, but every time I hear talk of them making something more of a "challenge", I wince at what is to come, because it is almost always something that detracts from the play experience rather than enhancing it.

Congrats to all.

I can only speak for myself but this change will not encourage me to enter PvP zones.

I like having PvP split off from the regular game - it allows people to choose their preference and enjoy it without the other playstyle (be it PvE or PvP) affecting it. But the devs have created a rather odd mix of PvP and PvE in the "free fire" zones and I'm unconvinced that this change will improve matters. It may just isolate PvP even more.

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Then again, maybe I am paranoid....

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I believe you have assessed the situation correctly.

The missing patch notes is sort of a running gag now. It actually doesn't really bother me much - mistakes happen. I'd rather they slip up on the notes than the actual game (except when it comes to known issues that players need to be warned about).

In terms of the change, though, will this actually alter the way the Hamidon raids take place? If all it does is elevate risk with no way to counter it and raids otherwise continue to use existing strategies, I'd question the point of the change.

It's not an official Issue release until a missing patch note has been confirmed.

Also, trying to add challenge by breaking the rules of the game (attacking while held) is not a good path to walk down.

My outlook on the game's future is a bit more reserved now.

A nice guide and worth bumping to note that Issue 7 *does* finally allow accuracy enhancements in Drain Psyche, which according to the notes it should have always had (only seven months for that fix :P).

Completely agreed on Mental Blast. Fixing the animation time on it is apparently a real low priority and without a fix, it's one of the worst blast powers in CoV/CoH.

I've earned a respec and am mulling over what to change. I was originally going to get stamina but find that between Catch a Breaths and Drain Psyche, I've managed decently so far (I only took Swift then focused on powers outside the Fitness pool). I picked up Total Domination but the recharge time and hold duration make it pretty much useless, in my opinion.

I also use Telekinetic Thrust as a guilty pleasure. It's just so fun to fling enemies around with it. It has practical application for positioning, too.

Again, good guide. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

I don't think balance issues are making crossover lower in priority, Cryptic may just have a honking big list of things they want to put in the game and allowing players to switch sides simply isn't as important to them as a lot of the other items on that list.

But giving it low priority does allow them to implement more co-op missions/events and observe possible balance issues there.

My take, anyway.

EDIT: some great info in this thread. Big thanks to Obsidius, Terminotaur and the others for their contributions.

I recall that the invention system was going to be housed in the universities.

Good information from all who attended the event. Kudos.

I endorse and support Big Red Ball.

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The attacks are missing some sounds. Charged Brawl and Havoc Punch have the electrical sounds, but lack a actually punch sound when you hit your foe. It just doesn't sound right.

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I noticed this on Charged Brawl, as well. A punch with no punch sound is...wrong. I'm thinking this must be a bug (and I'll /bug it next time I'm on test).

Happy second anniversary to City of Heroes and best wishes to the nutballs at Cryptic and NCsoft.

I never would have guessed I'd be here two years later - or even at all, having never played an MMO before, but here I am.

Welcome, Cricket!

Many rocks, trees and power poles still defy gravity in Paragon City even today. Perhaps the fair town itself possesses super powers.

Here are the floating barrels. Most of my screenshots are weird things like this.


(This thread is safe, BTW - a dev posted to it.)

I must have missed Alexa's updates. Awry's, on the other hand...

This is not a bad idea and it worked fairly well for badges. Couldn't hurt, wot?

I agree with what UberGuy said.

Too often people think of pool powers only in relation to specific ATs (or even subsets of ATs) rather than all ATs.

Aid Self is not overpowered on my fire blaster that has it. It's a tool that helps him survive and must be used within the limits described above. He has nothing else to fall back on when solo, save for respites, unlike many (but not all) melee characters who may already have a self-heal.

On the other hand, my ice blaster does not use Aid Self because he uses his holds to help mitigate damage in a way that the fire blaster can't.

The system works. Let's leave it as is, please.

To be honest, I can't find a way to better explain what I meant. My post wasn't meant to imply anyone here believes Cryptic makes changes just for the sake of changing things, just to note that I don't think any sensible MMO developers would indulge in such a thing.

Nothing more than that, really. As a debating point, it's a bit of a non-starter.

I can't think of any "change for change's sake" things the devs have done, so I don't really agree that change in and of itself is needed to maintain a player's interest.

Changing things in MMOs always has a guiding purpose to it. Sometimes a power is too strong or too weak and adjusted accordingly. Sometimes new content is added, like powersets, zones, missions and TFs, to give players new things to experience.

The effect of these changes might be to hold a player's interest longer ("I can't wait to make an electric brute!"), especially in the case of content or buffing powers. That's normal and to be expected.

But as I said, I can't think of anything the devs have done with the mentality of "Well, we don't need to change this, but let's do it, anyway, just to spice things up." And I don't think that approach would be successful, either. It would probably be annoying, actually.

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Static games do not maintain player bases.

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Can you cite anything to back up this claim? Genuinely curious. If it's just your opinion, that's fine, no need to explain further.