Dr_Darkspeed
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Quote:Originally Posted by Black Pebble
Today, we announced a new promotion with GameStop and Razer. For those of you who may not have seen this information, customers who place an early reserve for the City of Heroes Going Rogue: Complete Collection at GameStop will receive a Razer Sphex gaming desktop skin with a Going Rogue design, five unique enhancements and a $5 off coupon for use at the Razer store. These benefits are in limited quantities.
I would like to take this time to provide some insight as to how this initiative came about.
What is the Goal of this Promotion?
As many of you have picked up on, City of Heroes Going Rogue: Complete Collection is really designed to attract new players to the game. One of the greatest challenges new MMO players face is learning how the game works. The enhancements are designed to make the starting experience even more convenient for these new players, but we didnt want them to be game-breaking, or make our veteran players feel like they had to have them as well.
This is why these are only provided to new characters and cannot be sold/traded/stacked. First, you cant have enough of them to 6-slot out any power. Secondly, for a L1 character, that 16% damage/recharge boost is nice, but once you hit L20+, IOs start getting a lot more competitive. The proc rate is low to begin with, and at L21 they wont even kick in anymore. A L50 character could use these enhancements if they chose to, of course.
We believe this would benefit the new players much more, as our veteran players have a better understanding of the options available to them.
Why Now?
When we launched the prepurchase program, we did not plan on offering incentives for preordering the Complete Collection. A preorder program is different from a prepurchase, and we did not see a value in offering competing programs.
Since we launched our prepurchase program, we have been having discussions with GameStop, Razer and some of our other partners about new ways to promote the launch of Going Rogue. As some of you have mentioned, as a new expansion for a major MMO, Going Rogue deserves a lot of attention. We agree with you, and so did our partners. But evaluating ideas and nailing down the details took a good amount of time, which is why you havent heard about it until now.
Why Are We Doing This?
As you probably know, GameStop is the top gaming-focused retailer in the US. When they expressed interest in putting together this new program, it felt like a great way to get the word out on Going Rogue and to make sure every GameStop store in the country was promoting our launch.
Fine, but what about people who dont have a GameStop nearby, or dont shop there? Thats where Razer comes in. As part of the GR launch, Razer will be launching their own GR site, promoting CoH in all of their forums, newsletters, providing a coupon for GR customers and even designing a brand new mouse pad with our help.
So we decided to pool our resources to create one powerful marketing campaign, designed to create an opportunity that seemed so interesting that someone who doesnt yet play CoH would be interested enough to try this game.
Our goal is not to force anyones hand, or cause you to feel regrets. This was an amazing opportunity to have two of the strongest names in the gaming industry support the launch of Going Rogue, and we feel confident that it will provide some of the visibility and buzz you have been asking for. One of the biggest features in Going Rogue is that we are redefining the new player experience. Our partners are helping us make that experience even more attractive.
Will There be Any Other Preorder Programs?
We have no plans at this time to have any other preorder program.
What About Prepurchasers?
We do understand that some of our prepurchase customers may have decided differently had they known upfront that this preorder program was coming. This is why we tried to make the in-game goodies something that would have a stronger value for new players than for existing veterans. We do hope youve enjoyed these past few months with early access to Dual Pistols and Demon Summoning. Prepurchasing Going Rogue is still the only way to get early access to these two awesome new power sets.
If you have any other questions or concerns that were not addressed by me, or in the information released by GameStop or Razer, please let me know in this thread. I want to make sure that you have all of the information available to you, and that details of this promotion are as transparent as possible.
So, you are going to add these pre-order bonuses to people who already pre-purchased, right? Since thats not infringing on anyone who would pre-order from Gamestop (since they have already boughtit) and would make it so you didn't explictly lie to to people about there not being any pre-order bonuses.
Right? -
But... (taking MiB to be jacobs brother up til the point he died and Smokey to be everything after the smoke monster appears)
We saw MiB die, his body is in the cave. So, Smokey isn't MiB in a physical sense. He has the motivations of MiB (or what jacob remembers MiBs motivations to be?)... but, seemingly unchanging. And he also ends up following a bunch of rules that seem to make no real sense. And who controls the rules? We learn Jacob does.
All we really know is that Jacob thinks Smokey is MiB and Smokey thinks he is MiB, But we are also shown that neither one really knows what everyone assumes they actually do know and neither one seems to have turned out to be right...
I think that sort of view of things actually has something to say about the idea of faith (like the hatch, button thing). Its entirely possible that Jacob (who people essentially worshiped, who ben killed loads of people for and who seemed all powerful and all knowing i.e. god) was just a crazy man with lots of power. Or, maybe he was a chosen one eternally defending the world from the evil that lurks in the heart of man. We never get told which.
So, I tell you that if the light goes out, the world ends. Of course, I could be lying or wrong or a crazy woman who murdered your mother. Do you keep pressing the button?
It was a very cool show
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Oh, and do love the TARDIS idea. -
Quote:I'm not so sure. We were shown that Jacob/his brother really didn't know much about the Island, we were told that at least some of the properties of the Island were down to how Jacob ran things, we were shown that switching the light off only seemed to destroy the Island and turn smokey human (so, if Smokey had to turn the light off to leave the island, and thus would be human, how much of a threat to the world could he be? but it was an absolute threat to Jacobs world, since the island was all he had)Originally Posted by Zikar
Eh, nah. Doesn't seem likely. Such a thing wasn't even hinted at.
So, given that we aren't given any other explinations, its entirely possible that the magic of the Island allowed Jacob to control reality on the Island (and have some influence outside it too), and that the whole thing with the MiB was just his psyche fighting itself and that everyone brought to the Island were just people pulled into his own little fantasy world. That, I believe, explains everything we saw and were told. Might not be the right answer, but its an answer
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Quote:Thats actually kind of explained if we assume that all/most of the rules on the Island were actually created and applied by Jacob. In fact, maybe the smoke monster was created by jacobs guilt of killing his brother. Smokey is what he imagined.Originally Posted by Zikar
The other problem is that they both had the same goal, the leave the island. He was also bound by the same rules, like not hurting Jacob.
Not to mention all the other consistent things. -
Quote:I agree, I think Jacob may well have been a bad guy all along. In fact... I wonder if the light was actually important to anything off Island at all? Maybe it didn't matter if MiB turned it off (apart from destroying the Island), maybe the Island was just a big version of the hatch, with The Light as The Button.Originally Posted by MentalMaden
More random thoughts:
I contended once they were introduced that the good/evil of Jacob/MiB wasn't as clear cut as it seems. It did, though, turn out that it was pretty much true in the end. But as Ben pointed out to Hurley, Jacobs methods were crap and maybe there is a better way to do things. Does anyone else think that Jacobs way of dealing with the island and his "rules" were a direct reflection of the way he was raised....essentially alone with no knowledge of the outside world or how people interact.
I wonder if Jacob had people crash into the island over the years out of a sense of loneliness? Given that Ben implied Hurley could make it where people didn't have a hard time leaving, does anyone else think Jacob made it hard to leave so he could have those people around him by convenience? Was the game that Jacob/MiB played as children transformed into a more grown up "game" of watching people come to the island and seeing what their interactions (or lack thereof) would do to them, as implied in an early discussion of theirs.
And is it the fact that Hurley had a much different upbringing and understood and truely cared for other people the reason he turned out to be "a great number one"?
Just a few thoughts. -
Quote:So does that mean they didn't actually have any planned reasons for how things on the island worked? or that they did have them, but the reasons they had were weak?Originally Posted by BafflingBeerMan
Damon Lindelof, co-creator of Lost, is a big Star Wars fan. He has said that he wanted to avoid a "Midichlorian" answer for some of the mysteries, fearing that a weak answer is worse than no answer at all. -
Quote:Just rewatchied the scene, and he does say "I'll be seeing you" as he walks off!Originally Posted by BafflingBeerMan
I don't think so, though my memory is also shoddy. I think he just says they are no longer candidates, elbows Ben, and gets out of there.
I do love it when he says "I heard Desmond is down a well. I'm here to save him. Looks like someone beat us to him. Oh, well."
Maybe an unintentional pun, but I dig
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Since, you just rewatched it, did Sawyer say "I'll be seeing you" at the well, or did I optimistically misremember that?
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Oh, and I might be misremembering due to watching it at 5am, but did anyone else catch a few references to 'The Prisoner'?
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Thinking about it... since we were told that the whispers were souls that were trapped because they couldn't move on, then doesn't that make The Island purgatory as well? or at least, somehow the physical location of purgatory, and so the flash-sideways stuff was happening on The Island, in a metaphorical sense.
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I thought it was... ok. Some very touching stuff, but overall I found it unsatisfying. Though I never liked the 1st series of Lost, because all the flashbacks about these dull peoples lives, I wanted to to know what was happening on the cool Island, so maybe the ending wasn't meant for me.
We didn't really learn anything about the Island except maybe never leave a magic island in the charge of two jerkface brothers with a crazy, psychopathic Mum. Looking back on it, I don't think either Jacob or MiB really knew much about the Island, and it seems like a lot of the problems people had were just because Jacob decided things should work like that.
I do like the idea of Hurley and Ben running things, I'm hoping they go for a fantasy Island type setup, bringing people to the Island for a fun, enlightening adventure before sending them off home. -
I am a renlentless horder too. I guess it come from old Square games, where I always ended up with loads of Mega-elixers in the final boss battles. My main from the early days has a massive list of temp powers now.
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I was looking forward to coming to Hero-con again this year, the last one was amazingly fun.
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There was a message about there being a patch last night, but seems to have been deleated.
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Quote:I believe Marcian got the wrong end of a stick and took your post as a "DOOOOOOOOM, people think this game sux cos it doz" post, rather than as intended as "Looking at the things people say put them off the game, it seems like a lot of it has to do with the older content. This helps provide evidence for my continued requests for the Devs to spend some time revamping old content rather than just adding the new shineys to the new content", which is how I took your post.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
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What?
Sorry but...what hell brought that on?
Im sorry if im reading this wrong, but that reads like an attack...maybe it's just early and im still confused as to why my comment didnt show up over there either, but... -
The Hero Arcs are great, but in my opinion the Villain arcs blow them out of the water. They are, by far, my favourite content in the game, ever.
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I wonder if they are going to play up the end drain effects of electric as a form of soft control. Like, maybe powers that reduce the max end of targets or increase the amount of end it costs for enemies to use powers.
Or maybe something like chain lightning, but with a hold that jumps from enemy to enemy. -
Quote:I do like the idea of having a set with BIG debuff resistances, and that would fit well here. A Beserker might not get much defence or resistance, but they also can not be slowed down, distracted or weakened either. That sounds pretty cool.Originally Posted by Arctic_Princess
I'm not sure this would be first on my list for a defensive set.
That aside, I would like to see some debuff resistance added: for instance Quick Recovery (possibly change it to Adrenaline?) could have an endurance recovery debuff resist, and Quickness could have a recharge debuff resist. -
Ok, thanks
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Quote:Hey Castle, i just tried it out and noticed that the bonus doesn't apply to The status protection/resistance from Break frees.Originally Posted by Castle
Dumpleberry's example was correct.
I tried an Escape, but it still gave +20 protection instead of 20 * 1.05 = +21 like I would have expected. Is that working as intended? -
Nope, rage is now 25 * 1.05 = 26.5%
insights are 7..5* 1.05 = 7.875%
etc... -
Quote:Is that 'look into expanding levelling pacts'?Originally Posted by Dr_Mechano
they will look into expanding level packs. -
Mine is now listing that I get my next vet reward today!
I hope thats true, because I've always had a two week delay in getting them, caused by having to wait for the box to ship to the UK. But now, I'm listed as getting everything as early as possible
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Yay, it is true, i got my vet reward today! -
Quote:I am pretty sure the Devs know roughly what % of characters/accounts engage in PvP (regularly or at all) or have base building rights or have more than x badges or make/play AE arcs, just like they know what % of characters are Blasters, or take Stamina.Originally Posted by Bionic_Flea
I think Xanatos is making a good point though. The devs are dedicating a lot of resources at the AE and are about to double the number of badges. Are those areas that players think should be getting that attention?
There are lots of little subcommunities in this game. I think that is one of it's strong points. All of the subcommunities would like bug fixes, changes, improvements, etc. I think most people understand that they can't cater to all of these subcommunities every issue. But some communities get attention every issue and others are simply told about vague plans on the horizon.
In particular, the PvP and the Base subcommunities have been left hanging for a long time.
Personally for me it'll have to be
badges (since you can't avoid using badges, and I kind of like getting them) > AE (should really get round to publish a few arcs i have ideas for, and love the Guest Author arcs) >>>> PvP (can't even remeber the last time i entered a PvP zone) -
Bah, oh well, nevermind then