Dysmal

Posi my man, I really don't think this was ready for Open Beta. You guys really didn't do much to take advantage of the closed beta either in terms of providing focused testing goals, so are you just looking for data mining here or what?

I don't know, but this release today just smells of the developers being forced to dance to someone else's schedule, whether its marketing, NC Soft corporate offices, or whoever else.

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Please use this thread to discuss the below announcement

# Mission Teleporter Power - Players can save time and get right into the action by teleporting directly to their active mission.

# Exclusive Valkyrie Costume set - Costume pieces include two varieties of wings, a cape, a skirt/kilt, pants, boots, shoulders, chest, gloves, belts, and helmet with multiple details.

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Exclusive costume sets based on what variety of computer you happen to own? That is incredibly freaking lame. Oh, but you can buy them if you don't have a Mac. Meh.

You know, I'm all for opening up the game to more platforms, but locking people out of game content based on what hardware they've chosen to spend upwards of $1000 dollars on for the most part is infuriating. Or are you going to be providing exclusive items to PC users free of charge that Mac users can chose to buy?

I'm having a hard time coming up with civil language for how obnoxious this decision is.

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Please use this thread to discuss the below announcement

# Mission Teleporter Power - Players can save time and get right into the action by teleporting directly to their active mission.

# Exclusive Valkyrie Costume set - Costume pieces include two varieties of wings, a cape, a skirt/kilt, pants, boots, shoulders, chest, gloves, belts, and helmet with multiple details.

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Exclusive costume sets based on what variety of computer you happen to own? That is incredibly freaking lame. Oh, but you can buy them if you don't have a Mac. Meh.

You know, I'm all for opening up the game to more platforms, but locking people out of game content based on what hardware they've chosen to spend upwards of $1000 dollars on for the most part is infuriating. Or are you going to be providing exclusive items to PC users free of charge that Mac users can chose to buy?

I'm having a hard time coming up with civil language for how obnoxious this decision is.

Edit: Maybe this should be in the other mac thread. I'm just going to copy and paste it over there.

I can't seem to find any Zombie Apocalypse events tonight on Virtue. Which is odd because it seemed to be working fine a few days ago.

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Well, to be fair, there was that whole Sister Psyche, Aurora Borealis, Malaise storyline that did change some of the task forces that were available. Yjay's about as close as I can get to a ture evolving story, but its something.

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Unfortunately, that Calvin Scott TF example was simply a one off instead of a trend. Though I understand that investing time and effort in creating content that doesn't stick around for ever is probably hard to justifty on a cost/reward basis.

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Hero and Villain Archetype pages both have no reference to their respective Epic ATs. This should be corrected.

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Needs some of the features from the European site.

Namely (no particular order):
"Tip of the Day"
"City Sights"
"Hall of Fame"

What does things better:
UK's Game Guide

While the new US website is a bit more graphically appealing, the UK's site is just more informative...

Edit:
I [u]do love[u] the US's new Patch notes/Issues pages though.

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I heartily agree with this. This new website *looks* nice, but what is NCNC going to *do* differently with their new, different, site? If nothing, then I'll continue to simply bookmark the forums (and RedTomax's dev digest feeds) and rarely, if, ever, look at the frontpage.

Are you going to involve the community more with the site as the UK site has done for quite some time via the user submitted screenshots and tips?

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Just a quick follow up:

We have no plans of getting rid of freespecs. Each Issue that brings with it major power changes (which is pretty much every single one, eh?) will bring a freespec with it.

We have no plans of getting rid of the respec trials.

We have no plans of getting rid of the dropped Respec Recipes.

We have no plans of getting rid of the Veteran Respecs that your account earns.

This is simply another way to get a Respec onto your character.

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Good to know. This info probably should have been included in the original announcement though. I'd suggest Lighthouse edit it to add this in.

Given that any character I start comes with about four vet respecs, its not personally useful for me, and charging $10 seems a bit steep for something you can earn for free in the game three times per character, get awarded for free, or buy on the market.

Worst Case Scenario: No more free respecs when wide-sweeping game changes are made.

I kind of doubt they'd do something that lame, but I suppose its an issue that should be raised.

Well, anything that potentially generates more revenue is a good thing.

One thing I'd point out is, in Canada two of those three retailers do not exist. Best Buy is up here, the other two are not. You may want to think about getting these into Future Shop, which shouldn't be too hard since Best Buy owns them. I also hope you have some agreement about making sure that there is a supply of Game Time Cards to go with the Game Cards. A major advantage of these new cards is not needing a credit card to get started, which should make it more attractive to kids who don't have a credit card. In order for those folks to keep playing, they're going to need access to the game time cards.

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If the new projects they are alludeing to is a boxed expansion I will be happy.

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IIRC after the buyout by NCSoft, it was re-stated that boxed expansions would not happen, but smaller content items (like the wedding pack) would be for sale. I'm pretty sure Positron said that they would continue releasing content via free "issues".

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I think you're confusing two things. Free issues will certainly continue, but they've never said they won't do a boxed expansion in addition to the updates.

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Will those of us who purchased City of Villains and the additional content actually receive some sort of "game" compensation for what have essentially become redundant purchases?

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I'm shocked people are even considering such things.

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I'm not. People will complain about anything. Somewhere, theres probably someone who wants a refund for a slurpee they paid for because 7-11 gave some away for free recently. Fortunately, as you say, sane business people just laugh off these nutbars.

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can i have my money back that i paid for cov then?? cause this is kinda a slap in the face for those of us that bought cov.

and this is pretty much the same ol promises that we've been hearing. how about doing something to prove them, how about getting these supposed 3 issues a year out for once. we've had 1 in a years time and its getting quite boring.

sorry if i seem doubtful that this announcement means anything, but so far its the same announcement that was made before. talk is cheap in this world .

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Sure. Just figure out a way suck out of your memory all the experiences and fun you may have had playing CoV since it launched. You'll probably also need to delete all your villains. Oh, and delete anything you have in base storage too.

Good luck with that.

Good news. Having the grant be one time only was kind of silly, making it permanent is a good move, and we can finally at least have recourse to an official "this is all one game" response to some of the complaints about X or Y side being neglected.

I'm guessing Future projects = Expansion Box.

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wow..totally not interested anymore now that its not the city vault

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QFT.

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If this was the City Vault, the announcement would have been in General, as Ex said.

I'm guessing this is a robust user-friendly demo editor or a new stand alone costume editor. Either that or a contest with some nice prizes.

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*sigh* Why do people do this?

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You know...I'm kinda bored, so I suppose I'll actually answer a rhetorical question in all seriousness. Some of us have a rather weird sense of humor, and actually find it funny. Now, if I thought it was actually something that I thought was a true nuisance (such as Rick-rolling), then I wouldn't do it. On other occasions, I do it because there really has been an issue that has reappeared, and rather than start a new thread and listen to the "use your search engine, n00b" comments, I'll drag something up from the crypts. Admittedly, this is rarely the case, but it does happen, and I don't want the entirety of the community to mistakenly think that EVERYTHING I do is for pure silliness sake. I do have a brain.

All that being said, in order for a thread to be revived from the dead, it requires feedback...I am not the sole motivating factor in the equation. So, if you honestly feel what I have done is stupid, or wasteful in some way, please, feel free to abstain from replying, or even go so far as to PM me. I'll probably actually apologize for stepping on your sensibilities, because I'm honestly a nice guy who's just trying to have a little fun

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What a sad life yours must be if paging to the end of a forum and getting an old thread revived passes for fun.

Greek and Roman inspired culture in a super hero game? No reason why it can't appear, its big in the genre at large, so in a super hero video game is fine. Hercules and Ares are prominent characters for Marvel right now. Thor, from another mythological-historical society has been big for as long as I can remember. Gilgamesh was an Avenger I think. I certainly think theres a place for stories and characters inspired by these ares of mythology in a super hero game. The ancient gods and demi-gods were basically super-heroes of the ancient world.

In terms of where to go next, I would like to see Cimerora fleshed out with more non-TF content before we add another mytho-historical zone. I would love a norse-inspired arctic zone though.

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Soldiers of Arachnos
We need groups of Soldiers of Arachnos (6-8 characters) shown together. We'd like to highlight the wide variety of appearance customization options available under just the basic SoA costume sets. The focus is on a diverse selection while still being aesthetically unique. There are lots of opportunities to be seen as a team or even as an individual leader in upcoming productions.

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I'm assuming this means both Blood Widows and Wolf Spiders. Right?

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I believe Solidiers of Arachnos is the catch all term for the VEATs, just as Kheldian is for Warshade and Peacebringer.

Good idea. The built in search function on this board software is among the worst I've used.

Player generated missions? This sounds awesome, but I am fearful of a repeat of the CityVault situation where tech problems cause an ongoing, indeterminate delay.

Still, more details would be awesome. Such as if we can customize spawns, have multiple villain groups, helper NPCs, etc.

Posi and company, I think this has been handled excellently. I think the pricing is reasonable and the fact that you're giving us some for free as well is great.

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Now, I believe we have been told that these cuts to the developer team were after Issue Eight came out right?

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I actually believe that the cuts to the dev team happened much earlier in 2006. It was announced that Positron became lead dev on April 28 2006, which puts the change between Issue 6 and Issue 7, not Issue 8. I'm sure there was a phased reduction in the team, but it is likely Issue 7 (launch: June 6, 2006) was the last time the larger team pulled something together. I'm pretty sure that Zeb Cook also left in April 2006 (or at least stopped posting).

As for when MUO came into the picture, I can't say. But it seems possible that a fantastic CoV launch would have seen Cryptic fully committed to their own projects, not looking to outside offers.

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We've had several references to Issue Eight, such as BaB mentioning that he was the sole animator/FX artist since Issue Eight earlier in this thread, which sort of implies that there were more people doing the work up until that point , and references to people from the other Cryptic teams pitching in a bit with Issue Nine, though the exact chronology as to when they moved off is unclear.

Personally, I just take issue with your use of the phrase "Correcting misconceptions" You're in no position to do so, not being an employee of Cryptic or NCSoft, and if you were, you'd be bound by an NDA anyways.

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The other area I though should be addressed is the idea that MUO was responsible for any change to CoH/V. My perception of what happened is the other way around: CoH / V was 'pared' (to use Positron's phrasing) and suddenly Cryptic had 45 staff to find projects for. Then along came MUO, with it's long stride and cocksure grin...

I could be completely wrong - only the people who were there know for sure. But I think it's stupidly simplistic (although probably fun) to think that MUO / Emmert were responsible for everything that happened.

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Now, I believe we have been told that these cuts to the developer team were after Issue Eight came out right?

Some basic facts that don't seem to support your opinion, and which a quick google search brings up relatively easily:

September 27th, 2006: MUO Announced in Barcelona.
November 28, 2006 Issue Eight launched. Development team cut after this point.

MUO was officially announced before Issue Eight even launched. You seem to be basing your opinion on the supposition that MUO came along after the decision to cut was made, but the chronology is far less certain than you make it out to be. MUO will have been a known fact within Cryptic long before it was officially announced. The cuts may have been as well I guess, but without any knowledge of who was responsible for the funding of the CoH dev team, its hard to know.

They've done a good job with limited resources. I always wonder however, how much Cryptic's decision to make a competing product with a former legal adversary may have led to that resource cut on NCSofts part. We'll never know the details I guess, and I'm not sure anything good would come of knowing them.

A ranged cone attack in a Blaster secondary?

Well, thats a first.