Leif_Roar

I think that can work very well (I'm thinking something in the vein of "Princess Bride" would suit it well), but it's going to depend a lot on the quality of the writing.

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The hardest part is indeed finding arcs interesting enough to play and soloable. For that reason I started the threat good arcs to level up from 1 to 50 (I need level 17+ arcs now please).

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*cough* Fighting off the Blackguards, ID: 96201 (Heroes, lvl. 15-20) *cough* Soloable, without an EB in sight.

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In the US the censored meaning's much more prevalent, and the secret agent one much less so - and, indeed, the TV show had to find another name over there.

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It can't be that prevalent: Merriam-Webster has the "secret agent" meaning, but nothing on the offensive one.

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Move it to DA and Boomtown - they need visitors

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On a related note, do anyone else use the AE in Brickstown for the more quiet work environment?

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I'd love to hear other people's impressions of how well (or badly) the Mission architect caters for solo players...

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I think the MA is fine. It's just people going a little overboard with their shiny new toy now in the beginning. I expect we'll see less EB and AV spawns and more soloable arches once the "interest of the new" has waned a bit.

The problem with a map editor is that it's a massive undertaking: about the size of the base editor or the mission architect itself. So, while I'd like to see one, I don't think it's something we can realistically expect to see anytime soon.

I'm not going to make any suggestion about the mission browser or the rating / feedback mechanism, as I don't think the current system is really salvageable.

Test Tools: I'd like to be able to drop any mission in the arc when testing, and I'd like amandatory set of test powers available while in a test mission: Invisibility, Top Up (100% health and energy), Kill Target and Self Rez, so that I don't have to play through the entire mission just to test the final boss encounter. (And if that messes up any badges, well too bad: testing is testing, not badgeing.)

Conditional Text: I'd like to see conditional text, with conditions such as character sex, archetype, hero/villain and origin. I'd probably opt for a notation on a {conditions:text} pattern:

"So you're $name. {vil:We don't like your type here in Strangeville, villain, so you better behave.}{her:A real, genuine here here in Strangeville! Oh, I can't wait to tell the missus.} I guess you're here about the Rikti saucer, right?"

Okay, having spent a weekend playing around with the MA, here's my slight more informed feedback:

The Architect itself: Absolutely love it to bits. Yes it has its rough spots and yes there are quite a few bugs and yes there is a lot of functionality we want to see added, but in the end none of that really matters because when you get down to it the architect works and it works well. The tool just feels right: it feels like you're working on your story and not fighting with the tool.

The AE building: Looks rather drab and boring on the outside (although the upper story entrances were a nice and practical touch), but the inside is well laid out and works splendidly. I still don't the "never leave the building" idiom that the AE missions are forced into, but at least the AE building makes the idiom work with a minimum of fuss. The audio designer who came up with the sample for the AE core needs to be taken out behind the barn and shot, though. (Oh, and on that subject: when a loading screen pops up while a looping sample is playing? Fade the cursed thing out!) At least you can escape the sample if you use the outer rings of terminals.

Mission browser, searching, grading and feedback: Absolutely inexcusable. The current system is naive, simplistic and entirely unsuited for its task. It is essentially useless and does all the fundamentals wrong. Considering you postponed the AE and spent an additional whole issue's worth of work before launching, the utter primitiveness of the supporting infrastructure is embarassing: if you're not ashamed by it, you should be.

AE Tickets Another reward system? What's the point? There wouldn't be any practical difference if AE missions just gave ordinary merits.

AE Reward levels Are you absolutely out of your collective minds! [u]Full[u] rewards for AE missions? When AE missions are easier, quicker (as there is no travel of any kind), more convenient and more controllable than regular missions? If you'd started with half rewards you could always have boosted them later on without the forums erupting in doomageddon (again). More importantly, you could have encouraged the players to use the AE system for stories.

AE Badges: Holy badge overload, Batman! And I thought the Invention system had too many similar badges. You've also lowered the bar for the first tier badges far too low. A badge for defeating 10 enemies in test mode? For rescuing 1 kidnap victim? For earning 100 tickets? That's just pointless.

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If feedback was mandatory, it would stop things like this a lot easier!

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One word: "kjsklwqr"

Enforced feedback doesn't work on the Internet.

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Spook

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Huh. I have never, ever heard the word used in that sense. That has to be a very narrow use.

"Spook" is on the forbidden words list? "Spook"?! I mean, seriously?

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And guess who gets hurt by that?

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Agriculturally themed super-villains?

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With interviews like this revealing content which CoH doesn't have a prayer of matching

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Daikatana. And that's all I have to say about that.

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I think it aint for RPers or farmers, evident by how many people who use it don't belong to either group.

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Personally, I'm an 8th level Lawful-Evil Farmer with a Hoe +3 against Legumes.

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But until then, I'll stay away from the forums full of moaning and whining from the people who should take the hint already.

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I don't really think there's much more moaning going on in the forums than there's always been, there's just less enthusiasm than's been usual. Perhaps because much of the enthusiasm for the MA played itself out in the two betas.

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PS: The Champions graphics are not so much better then what CoH allready has, they use the same engine for [censored] sake, an engine originaly created back in 2000.

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I don't think the problem with CoH graphics is the engine as much as it's a lot of rather dull and same-y graphics that needs to be reworked.

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Interesting. I take it there's a Defeat All Corporate Lawyer arc after that one?

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Actually, considering Lobo's history of crossovers, I wouldn't be too surprised to see him show up in CoH as part of a April 1st event or something of that sort (probably beating Statesman up with Recluse or something.)

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They could start off with the go attack the Rikti thing and when we get up there, we find they've all be slaughtered...

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... by Lobo.

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User Client (Mac, PC, Linux):

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*Blinks* There's a Linux client?

Whatever happened to story in CoH?

Okay, one thing is that Issue 14 didn't come with any new story content at all. It was always meant as a one-item issue adding a new gameplay mechanism, after all. (Still, not even a short example mission arch to show off the MA? Surely you could have squeezed in that.) But looking back at the other recent issues and the pickings are still slim. The last story-heavy issue was Issue 8 -- two and a half years ago.

Since then we've gotten the invention system, the Rikti Warzone, not one but two distinct time-travelling mechanisms, customiseable weapons, costume booster packs, epic ATs for villains, tons of grindable badges, several new powersets and the whole power proliferation and a ... uh, contentious PvP revamp. In short, a lot of new game mechanisms (how many different reward mechanisms do we have by now? Badges, XP, inf, salvage and receipe drops, Vanguard tokens, merits, MA tickets -- have I left anything out? At least they got rid of base salvage) There's been a bare minimum of story hanging on all this new scaffolding, though -- perhaps even rather less than the bare minimum.

The Oroborous storyline, such as it is, has been left hanging. There's no aftermath or even effect of the Rikti invasion. The Midnight Squad has been left as a cumbersome train-station into a single-story zone.

Where are the new stories? The trickle of new newspaper or police band missions, the fresh new Freakshow archs, the new dimensions discovered at Portal Corp, the new, high-level enemy groups to fight? Where, oh lord where are new low-level villain missions? Not involving snakes.

Yes, the Mission Architect holds a lot of potential for new story content in the next issues, but potential isn't enough. Now that potential has to be fullfilled.

(And, no, player-made content isn't the same. Fan-fic is nice and fun and all that, but it's still just fan-fic.)

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You can see chat if you shrink the MA window down.

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Huh. Didn't realise it was shrinkable. I'll withdraw that complaint then.

The costume parts look really good. Considering how long and how often people have suggested costume change emotes, though, I'm a little annoyed that they couldn't put a couple into the game proper before starting to sell them in the booster packs.

First impression, from fooling around with it yesterday and today, is that the Mission Architect itself is very good. You have a lot of creative freedom in making missions and story archs and it's fairly intuitive and easy to figure out how it all works.

The interface is another story. It looks nice and gives good feedback, but the text-entry widgets are clumsy and awkward. Forgiveable for the character description screen, perhaps, but not for something as text-centric as mission creation. And again you've managed to prevent access to the chat window. MMOs are supposed to be social, and considering how long you can spend in the MA screen, it's absolutely unforgiveable to not let it coexist with the chat screen -- or at the very least give a quick way to toggle back and forth between chat and MA. (The same goes for the costume creator, by the way.)

The surrounding infrastructure: search, comments, grades etc. is absolutely dire. Practically useless, and obviously so. There's no excuse for such a poor showing. Did they even do a reqiurement analysis of it?

I'm not enthused with the "everything happens inside the AE building" idiom you've decided on. Paragon and the Rogue Isles are two of the most important "characters" in the game, and to completely separate the MA missions from them was a mistake. Location of mission doors and even the travel between missions is important. The game system already caters for missions that are not "really happening" but are still set in the cityscape through the Oroborous system, so I don't see any practical problems. (Okay, there is the issue of the custom-made contacts, but nothing that a few outdoors AE holographic platforms dotted around the city zones couldn't have solved.) Hopefully, we'll get to see free-roaming MA missions in the future.

I'm a little disappointed that we can't make new custom enemies based on existing, non-human models (such as jumpbots, Council drones and auto-turrets) but I can see the practical problems with trying to get that to work well.

The main thing I would like to see from CoX 2 would be to get a three- or more sided foundation, rather than today's two-sided foundation of villains or heroes. Bring a City of Spies or City of Monsters or some other new cityscape into the balance and tie the three (or more) cities and gameworlds tighter together than is the case today with City of Heroes and City of Villains.

The Cities don't have to be geographically separate cities as such, either. "City of Monsters" could well exist as catacombs, sewers and sub-marine cavesystems under Paragon and the Rogue Isles.

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One problem; Worlds.com ain't exactly big either.

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That doesn't matter if you don't have to fight a legal process, and while NCSoft migh hope Worlds run out of money and won't be able to raise any more on the strengths (or whatever) of their claims, they can't presume that'll be the case.

What Worlds wants to do is to make it more enticing for NCSoft to accept an out-of-court settlement than to spend money on the court case. Unfortunately, it rarely makes good business sense to reject an out-of-court settlement under the US legal system, even though you are in the right.

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What they want is to stack the deck far enough in their favour to get a court to uphold their supposed 'patent', and then start the real bullying, because after that point Blizzard or the like have to pay out their pocket to drag an appeal to that decision through a higher court while Worlds.com just watch.

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No, patent law doesn't work that way. A successful patent claim against NCSoft has no direct bearing on any future claims for the same patent towards any other defendants. If they intend to sue Blizzard eventually, it makes no sense not to sue them today.