-
Posts
1816 -
Joined
-
-
Quote:None, and for good reason. Speed Buff and Speed Debuff are the same enhancement, just like Damage and Damage Resistance are the same enhancement. Try this: slot a Centriole (Damage/Range) in Thermal's Fire Shield (which is +RES). You'll see the Damage Resistance for the power go up 33%, when the regular Damage Resistance enhancements only give 20%. Similarly, slotting a Slow Movement ("Speed Debuff") enhancement in Siphon Speed also increases your running speed, and in fact, Siphon Speed doesn't take Run Speed enhancements ("Speed Buff"):For instance, how many powers can use both speed buff AND speed debuff enhancing? Outside of Syphon speed, I'm not aware of any, but even if there are, they are few. How many different sets have that?
(Negative numbers are the debuff on the target, positive numbers are the buffs on you).
Buffs and debuffs are the same when it comes to enhancing. They do the same thing, only one applies a positive change and the other a negative change. But it's the same attribute being changed.
The "problem" enhancements would be Damage/Resistance and Defense Buff/DeBuff. This is because Damage and Defense DeBuff are Schedule A (33% in SO values) and Damage Resistance and Defense Buff are Schedule B (20% in SO values). Right now this can be exploited through HOs to get 66% enhancement (pre-ED) out of 2 slots, when the intended enhancement is 60% (pre-ED) with 3 slots. Invention enhancements use the "Set" system precisely to work around that; sets that include Schedule A Damage enhancement are only allowed in powers that do damage, and sets that include Schedule B Damage enhancement are only allowed in powers that resist damage. Remove the set limitations, and you have a problem. -
Well, we got free server transfers once. We might get them again. In which case, it's a "buy it now" badge if you want to pay for a transfer, or a "wait for the event" badge if you want to wait until the next batch of free server transfers.
-
Well, I got it to work using the Selective Tweets app and editing the HeroStats Unstable configuration XML a little bit. I set up a new Twitter account specifically for it, and I publish only those Tweets in Facebook. Seems to work fine!
Note, however: HeroStats posts the badges during the verification cycle, not just when you earn them. I clicked on a couple of badges and they were posted on Twitter as if I'd just earned them. So when you're switching badges around, you'll want to stop HeroStats. -
Look at what I just logged in to!
Now I have to get this character more badges... he's only at 462. My main (the one in my avatar) has had it for a while now, but he has no more badges left to earn!
-
Samuel, something for you to consider: there are plenty of really cheap sets that you can slot without caring whether you get bonuses or not. Making a whole bunch of new inventions seems quite pointless, when Frankenslotting works so well already.
On new chracters, this is the setup I use instead of buying SOs at level 22:
- Acc/Dam
- Dam/End
- 2x Dam/Rech
- Acc/End/Rech
- Acc/Dam/Rech
That gives me 92.2% damage, 52% accuracy, 71.8% recharge, 36% endurance cost (note that I prioritize recharge over endredux). That's with level 25 IOs - higher levels would make the numbers much better. But I consider that slotting to be good enough at level 22 -- and it usually lasts me all the way to 50, when I decide to start slotting "for real".
For melee, use the sets Smashing Haymaker, Strike and Pulverizing Fisticuffs; those are dirt cheap. For ranged, I use Ruin, Tempest and Decimation (for the Acc/Dam, which is cheap at level 25). You can easily find combinations that work well for pretty much any power, without having to spend much influence at all. -
I can't get the darn Twitter app to work. I gave it my username and password a bazillion times and it keeps saying, "Oops! Something went wrong: Invalid credentials Invalid user name or password". I even reset my password to make sure it was correct; no worky.
-
I visited my Facebook today, and this is in my "wall" page:
Now, as a productive being of society, my brain is screaming "what a freakin' waste of time; yet another way for Facebook to be completely annoying".
But at the same time, my inner badge ***** is going: "gimme! gimme! gimme! I want to spam everybody every time I get a badge too!"
It's entirely possible to add such functionality to HeroStats, or even exporting a feed from City Info Terminal. But... should we have that functionality? What do you fellow players think?
Personally, I'd like the functionality as long as I can control what badges get posted on Facebook. I get about 30 badges every time I create a new character; I don't want to flood my page with all those. And exploration badges are too easy, I wouldn't care about posting those so much. But things like Master of X TF I would really like to show off.
And hey, it'd be good promotion for the game. -
In addition to that, there are "upvote/downvote" buttons for each event. The ones with most "upvotes" will appear even in the collapsed view. You have to create an account in the site in order to vote, though, which sucks.
-
Something I just found on Google News:
City of Heroes: Through the Years
Part I: From Heroes to Villains
It was something of an aberration among MMOs. Until City of Heroes was released on April 28th, 2004, most MMOs and nearly every one that could be considered at all "successful" had been based in a more or less traditional fantasy genre (EVE Online is a rare exception to this). Why it was this way is a matter of some debate, but despite more and more non-fantasy MMOs in recent years, developers of new MMOs still tend to favor fantasy settings. The majority of the "big" MMOs since the release of City of Heroes have been fantasy games Guild Wars, Lineage II, Aion, The Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, and, of course, the most popular MMO of all time, World of Warcraft.
Developed by Cryptic Studios, which had been formed to bring to life Rick Dakan's vision of a superhero MMO, and published by NCSoft, a South Korean company that had seen a lot of success with its Lineage fantasy MMO, City of Heroes broke new ground, both in terms of its genre and its insane level of character customization. Although never approaching the massive subscriber base of World of Warcraft (or even the aging Everquest), City of Heroes was a moderate success when compared to most MMOs, peaking at about 200,000 subscriptions shortly after the release of its "standalone expansion" City of Villains in 2005.
Just like most MMOs, City of Heroes has been under constant development, with most of its additional content being provided to subscribers at no additional charge. Some things are such a big aspect of the current game that it's hard to remember what the game was like without them, or hard to believe they weren't there all along. In this article, and in the next couple, we'll take a stroll down memory lane and look at the changes that City of Heroes has gone through over the years, as the game approaches its sixth anniversary. It should be stated that I am a big fan of the City of Heroes franchise, and my feelings for the game may come through in these articles. Those looking for an unbiased account of the game's history may wish to look elsewhere.
2004
Released five months before World of Warcraft, which would go on to redefine the meaning of "successful MMO," City of Heroes wowed players and the gaming media with its innovations. Winning several 2004 "Game of the Year"-type awards from various gaming magazines and websites, the game attracted comments such as this one from Computer Gaming World: "City of Heroes blows a super powered gust of fresh air into an increasingly stale sword-and-sorcery MMO world." The game launched with the most detailed character creator ever seen in an MMORPG, as well as game mechanics rarely (or never) seen before. Sidekicking allowed characters of various levels to play together, and instanced missions negated much of the traditional spawn camping seen in other games.
Before 2004 was over, the game would see several major updates, both to content and to game balance. The infamous "Purple Patch" made it so fighting enemies several levels higher than your character was much more difficult. Issue 1: Through the Looking Glass was released just over two months after initial release, and raised the level cap from 40 to 50. Issue 1 also introduced the Peregrine Island zone, the ability to have multiple costumes, and new mission mechanics (5th Column and Circle of Thorn prisons, outdoor mission maps). Issue 2: A Shadow of the Past came out in September, and introduced many important game mechanics such as badges, capes, respecification, and exemplaring ("reverse sidekicking"). Issue 2 also featured the first appearance of the Hollows and Shadow Shard zones.
In October, the first Halloween Event took place, featuring trick or treating, new (mostly re-skinned) enemy groups, and special event badges. The Halloween Event has returned every year since, except for 2005, and was the beginning of the City of Heroes holiday-themed events.
Subscription numbers within the first few months of game release were around 170,000, but dropped to just under 125,000 by the end of the first year. An initial drop off of subscribers can be expected with any MMO, and the release of World of Warcraft in November probably didn't help that number any. The game would rebound in a big way during its second year, however.
2005
2005 was one of the biggest years for the franchise, with many ups and downs. A whopping four free content updates were released in 2005, along with the game's first (and so far only) "expansion." In addition to all of the undeniably good things that entered the game during this year, there were two very significant groups of balance adjustments that caused a lot of controversy at the time.
The year started out with a bang, with the release of Issue 3: A Council of War in January. In addition to introducing epic archetypes (Peacebringers and Warshades, available only to players who had already leveled at least one hero to max level), the Striga Isle zone, and the ability to increase the difficulty of missions, Issue 3 also saw the removal of the 5th Column enemy group, replacing them with a new group called the Council. Many people speculated (and continued to speculate, until fairly recently) that the 5th Column were removed from the game because of their ties to the Nazis. The game was about to be released to the European market, and some reasoned that the 5th Column had to be removed because of German laws prohibiting the depiction of Nazi propaganda. These charges were unfounded (especially since the 5th Column character models and mission maps didn't actually use any Nazi symbols or images) and were repeatedly denied by the developers, who stated that the Council takeover of the 5th Column was purely story-driven. Now that the 5th Column have returned to the game world (starting with Issue 11, and continuing with several of the next few issues), it is obvious that their removal had nothing to do with German laws.
Issue 3 also introduced Global Chat to the game, another of City of Heroes' hallmark innovations. With Global Chat, players can communicate with each other no matter which characters they're playing or even which server on which they're playing. Global Chat also allows players to create custom chat channels, for conversation purposes and also to announce events of various types.
The game's first Winter Event took place in January of this year as well, introducing players to the Winter Lord and his Winter Horde. Later incarnations of the Winter Event would include present opening and a mission to save Baby New Year.
Issue 4: Colosseum, released in May, brought player versus player (PvP) combat to the game in the form of arena matches. It also featured a lot of new costume options, the ability to further customize character bodies with scales, and the introduction of supergroup coalitions (basically, alliances of different supergroups). PvP was, and continues to be, a controversial element of the City of Heroes game, and the development team has spent a considerable amount of time and effort in trying to achieve optimal balance between opponents.
Issue 5: Forest of Dread came out in August, introducing the zone of Croatoa (featuring enemies similar to those seen first in the Halloween Event). It also featured several new powersets (Archery, Trick Arrow, Sonic Attack and Sonic Resonance), as well as new zone events (Hellion Arson and Troll Rave) and new mission types (hostage/escort and villain ambushes).
Issue 5 also introduced the first of two major balance changes of the year. The Global Defense Reduction (sometimes called Global Defense Nerf or Global Defense Decrease) reduced every character's base damage resistance and defense, and also lowered defense and resistance values for nearly every applicable power in the game. Nearly every character was affected in some way by these changes, and the GDR was understandably met with much resistance in the community. Trying to make the community feel better about the changes, lead designer Jack Emmert said that "We've finished making large changes to the power sets."
While this statement was technically true, something was about to happen which would no doubt make Emmert wish he had never made it.
Issue 6: Along Came a Spider was released in conjunction with City of Villains, the game's first expansion, in late October. Introducing player character villains and their base of operations, the Rogue Isles, to the game, City of Villains also breathed new life into the game, in terms of new technology, better designed missions/contacts, and increased subscription numbers. Supergroup bases were available for the first time, and "salvage" was introduced as a new type of reward drop. PvP, which had previously been limited to the arenas, was now available in three new zones, each featuring its own "mini-game." Mission and storyarc design was hailed as a vast improvement over that found in the original City of Heroes game.
But with all the good also came more bad. Late in the closed beta testing of City of Villains, the developers added Enhancement Diversification to the featureset of the expansion and accompanying issue. Enhancement Diversification (which came to be known as "ED," and the sharing of the initials with "erectile dysfunction" was an irony not lost on many players) is a system of diminishing returns when powers are slotted with several of the same enhancements. This had a dramatic effect on how most people played their characters, and didn't sit well with many in the community, especially after Emmert's statement a mere month before. Emmert's excuse was that when he made that statement he was talking in particular about changes to power sets, which to him was a completely different thing than enhancements. Many players saw that explanation as weak and misleading. At least one player felt so strongly about ED that they broke their closed beta nondisclosure agreement to post about the change on the official forums, forcing the developers to go public with the news shortly before they'd originally intended.
The controversy didn't ultimately hurt the game's subscription numbers. Subscriptions had started to bounce back from their post-World of Warcraft low and had risen steadily throughout 2005. City of Villain's release brought in many new players, increasing the overall subscriber base to a new high of almost 195,000 accounts by the end of 2005. The City of Heroes/City of Villain franchise was an unequivocal success, but there were trying times ahead.
Next time: staff reductions, more updates, and Cryptic says good-bye. -
Unix time starts in January 1st 1970. Since the smallest value in a 32-bit integer is -2147483648, that means December 13th, 1901 is the earliest date it could handle. I'm assuming the server stores the dates in Unix time.
-
Quote:Seeing that the in-game timeline starts at about 100 million years BC, it's a little beyond the ability of Dipty to handle.This is excellent stuff Leandro, do you know if there's a similar type of thing with the in-game lore? Or is that your next project for a rainy day?
-
I was bored, so I took the timeline from ParagonWiki and put it on Dipty:
Have a fun trip down the nostalgia road. -
Teeheehee... I'm in that picture! Far right, blue dude hovering with rocket boots. -
I know I'm late to this particular discussion, but,
Quote:This is not the fault of the reward (Mo badge) itself. I run every single STF/ITF/KTF with the parameters set to Mo badge, and I say from the beginning to everybody, "I set it that way in case we actually do get the reward; if we don't, no big deal". A lot of times we get the badge on teams that are not "ideal" by any means; but usually, if there's a bubbler/sonic/cold in the team, the chances of success are quite high.A few days ago I had two people in the closed beta thread tell me that the Mo badges build community.
From my point of view, they promote:
- IO snobbery. If you don't have a pile of set bonuses, you are deemed somehow less of a player and are less likely to find a Mo team.
- Sub-category is lack of Purple or PVPIO slotting.
- Blaming people on the team for the least little mistakes.
- Hurt feelings from those that are either blamed or who doesn't have a right build.
- AT snobs (I've heard "we don't want any blasters on this attempt" and that is just one AT that suffers from shunning.)
- An "Us vs Them" mentality when it comes to badges. <-This is NOT good for the community as a whole.
I suspect that when the Incarnates system comes in that you'll be less likely to be admitted to a Mo team if you are not an Incarnate.
Then there is the problem of creating a team. Most people are interested in quick merits. This means speed runs of ITFs, LGTF (the irony here is thick), even speed Positrons (the flashback version is going to get its merit rewards nerfed to nothingness, as I know people are already saying that they'll do them under 90 minutes), and others.
As team leader, I tell people in advance several things when going for a specifically Mo attempt:
1) We're not restarting if someone dies. Particularly in the STF, if someone dies in the early missions, they'll die anyway in the last mission, so restarting with the same team makeup just leads to more failure. Anyone who wants to retry the badge can join me again with a different team; I run those TFs a lot.
2) If someone dies, no matter the reason (be it an accident or because they did something stupid), everybody is allowed to say "$name, you suck" once. After that, carry on as usual and complete the TF. No arguing; it's just a game, not the end of the world.
3) Don't tell other people how to play their characters. I have booted people that are on a blaster but keep yelling at the tank what he should do (this is common in the STF). Play your character, do a great job at it; everybody else knows their characters better than you do.
4) For the love of all the cake in the universe, don't split from the team. Stay together; work together.
With those four "rules" in place, nearly all my Mo attempts have been fun and non-stressful. They have also been quite successful. I don't look at IOs or purples when forming a team; I know that if I get two of bubbler/sonic/cold, our defense will be so high that few things can touch us; add a good debuffer to the mix, and the chances of failure drop a lot.
The idea that only characters that are full of IOs or purples succeed in Mo runs is incorrect. The Mo badges do not promote any of the things you posted; it's all up to the team to engage in those, and especially the team leader, who, in my view, is in charge of making sure not just that the TF is a success, but that playing through it is fun, and not a frustrating chore.
Quote:I know of one person that hasn't got the MoSTF yet, but almost no one is willing to help her get it. She is trying her best, but people rather farm merits through speed runs than to try a Master badge run on Triumph. - IO snobbery. If you don't have a pile of set bonuses, you are deemed somehow less of a player and are less likely to find a Mo team.
-
Quote:Nah, I pick an screenshot and update it whenever I feel like, so it tends to desync from my actual badge count. Right now I have 692 badges, but I'm not going to bother updating the avatar when I know that one week from now it'll shot up to 750+.And I always thought you had one of those automatically-generated avatars.
-
Woo! I am one lucky Illusion controller*
(*) Rumours that I used Deceive to make the devs set the release date to the one I picked are... not commented upon. -
There's no limit that I'm aware of. Make sure everybody who was getting safeguards had the difficulty settings configured to allow AVs, and that your team was big enough for one to spawn.
-
Quote:We know what Positron is working on, so going by the length of the message:
But what happens when we need him to work on XXX XXXXXXX XXXXXX, especially *** *********** that we haven't even announced
XXX XXXXXXX XXXXXX
the endgame system
Anyone wants to guess what the second part is?
*** *********** -
Quote:I didn't include an updated login screen in this pack because that's something that can be done with Splasher, so it felt a bit redundant. I could include the one I use though, which is this:DEVS, you are telling us how much the game is changing, the graphics are being refreshed, and a new chapter of CoH is happening.. it's been 6 years, update the loading screens.. Even the starter one.. Statesman still isn't wearing a cape.
Quote:Also, how much is Serge paying you..I'll double it if you take Icon out of the picture.. that hack could design his way out of a tutu!
Quote:Put Coyote in the Outbreak one, it would be a nice gesture to our passed friend.
Also, for those expecting new screens: I won't be doing any until the weekend. RL is kicking my **** lately. -
Quote:Serge paid me good money for the Icon product placement >.>Most of your new loading screens are major improvements over the existing ones, but I disagree on your choice of views for the Steel Canyon one. The defining element of Steel Canyon is the skyscrapers, and you've almost completely omitted them from the loading screen.
(I actually asked on Beta Testers "what three landmarks do you think of when you think of Steel Canyon?" and nobody mentioned the skyscrappers. The university, Icon and the hero statues were the most mentioned, so I went with that.) -
Quote:No, if you install over the previous version, it'll just replace these 8 screens with the new versions and leave the corrected versions from the previous post alone.Do we need to uninstall your other version before installing this version, if we're using your Non-Ultra version already?
Also: the installer puts an uninstaller called remove_loading_screens.exe in the COH folder, which is common to all versions -- running that uninstaller will remove the loading screens of any of these 4 packs, or the previous corrected pack. -
And more example screens (couldn't put them all in a single post):
Faultline has the zone text because the game adds it automatically, unlike the ones zones.
Quick clone-tool job to fix the Pocket D screen.
-
This is a little project I started recently: new loading screens for each zone, with Ultra mode graphics, available in the standard aspect ratios so they don't appear stretched anymore. So far, I've done eight of those; I did not add the zone's name yet because I want to get them done before I spend a ton of hours hunting down fonts. I'll be slowly adding more as time allows. Big "WIP" label attached to this whole thing, but I wanted to share now that Ultra mode is out of closed beta.
August 3, 2010: I just checked the links and they're down. If anyone is interested in these packs I can upload them again, but with this contest around the corner I don't really see the point.
Example images follow:
-
If you know what you're doing, the trial is over in 30-40 minutes. I don't run this trial often; maybe four times in the last six months. But each time, I make sure to bring a bubbler or a sonic (or both!) and that makes the whole thing a cakewalk. As with any other difficult mission in the game, buffs and debuffs are everything.