Lighthouse_NA

Please use this thread to discuss the below announcement

In a recent article, City of Heroes Lead Designer Matt "Positron" Miller, along with Senior Designer Floyd Grubb, talk with Gamezone.com about features of the coming free expansion, Issue 13: Power and Responsibility. Here's an excerpt:

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What other little goodies are you packing into Issue 13 that maybe you have not talked about yet?

We’ve done a lot of quality of life features, like revamping the Badge UI, or tweaking the locations of some NPCs. A good chunk of time was spent setting up this year’s Halloween event, and that is taking place on the Live servers right now! This year’s Holiday event features some new “ski runs” for players to try out in Pocket D.

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Click here to read the full article on Gamezone.com.

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From the Ten Ton Hammer interview:

"Like writing a novel, mission arcs in CoX constantly evolve and spawn even more arcs."

What??? Since when? Please name one mission arc that's ever changed, ever. The above quote from the Ten Ton Hammer page is quite simply an untrue statement. The mission arcs in CoH/V have never evolved.

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Peregrine_Falcon,

I consider that the article is written Bruce Harlick's perspective and from the flow of mission writing that goes from Issue 12 to Issue 13 - which is what Bruce has been involved with.

While the statement may not be characteristic of the entirety of CoH/CoV development, it's accurate from the perspective of a mission developer who recently joined the team: Bruce.

Gaming website Ten Ton Hammer.com presents an exclusive first look at a Development Diary from City of Heroes Senior Game Designer Bruce Harlick, "Designing the New Missions in Issue 13: Power and Responsibility". In the article, readers get a behind-the-scenes look at how the new missions included in the coming free expansion, Issue 13, were designed. Here's an excerpt:

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Since Daedalus is the Cimeroran version of Positron and the greatest craftsman of his age, I wanted his second arc to feature some sort of crafting or item creation. So the first act has the hero investigating a threat, the second act sends the hero to create a device to help protect Cimerora from the threat, and the final act lets the hero protect Cimerora while Daedalus employs the device to prevent the threat from reoccurring. In the second mission, the “crafting mission,” I delved deeper into our dialog tree system and had a lot of fun writing the Crey Energy Fabricator Mk I. Although it is only a machine, I could hear its voice and get a sense for its personality as I wrote its dialog. I think the sequence there works better than a “get the salvage and go to an invention table” type of crafting mission.

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Click here to read the full article on Ten Ton Hammer.com!

If you are interested to know more about the man behind the missions, be sure to read Bruce Harlick's Ask a Dev article.

To discuss this announcement, please join us here.

Please use this thread to discuss the below announcement

Gaming website Ten Ton Hammer.com presents an exclusive first look at a Development Diary from City of Heroes Senior Game Designer Bruce Harlick, "Designing the New Missions in Issue 13: Power and Responsibility". In the article, readers get a behind-the-scenes look at how the new missions included in the coming free expansion, Issue 13, were designed. Here's an excerpt:

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Since Daedalus is the Cimeroran version of Positron and the greatest craftsman of his age, I wanted his second arc to feature some sort of crafting or item creation. So the first act has the hero investigating a threat, the second act sends the hero to create a device to help protect Cimerora from the threat, and the final act lets the hero protect Cimerora while Daedalus employs the device to prevent the threat from reoccurring. In the second mission, the “crafting mission,” I delved deeper into our dialog tree system and had a lot of fun writing the Crey Energy Fabricator Mk I. Although it is only a machine, I could hear its voice and get a sense for its personality as I wrote its dialog. I think the sequence there works better than a “get the salvage and go to an invention table” type of crafting mission.

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Click here to read the full article on Ten Ton Hammer.com!


If you are interested to know more about the man behind the missions, be sure to read Bruce Harlick's Ask a Dev article.

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Heheh, I guess they do read this thread. The errors I pointed out previously have been fixed!


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Yes, we do Thanks to you and others for your valuable feedback!

Thanks for everyone's kind words and constructive feedback! The Community Team has collected your words and criticism for our Web and Marketing Team to consider.

We'll be watching this thread for additional input, so please let us know what you like with the site over the coming days.

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Locking up IE for me as well...

Version: 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254

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Our apologies for the continuing issues with browsing the new website under Internet Explorer version 6. We're working to resolve the issue. If you want to see the site now, you may consider upgrading IE to version 7 or downloading FireFox, Chrome or any other popular web browsing software.

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Wow! I love the new website. It's so cool.

A question though: the www.cityofvillains.com/ site currently redirects to the main CoH site, will there eventually be a CoV site again?

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The main website covers both aspects of the game. We've given anyone who ever had access to both sides, so they are both sides to the same coin that is the City of Heroes franchise.

[/ QUOTE ]but how will we get to the redside forums?

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You can still get to the villain forums by browsing directly to:

http://boards.cityofvillains.com/

If you like the red look, I'd suggest you bookmark it.

Currently, the two forums

http://boards.cityofvillains.com/
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/

Are two different databases with a mirror operation going on. This will change when we migrate to vBulletin. The vBulletin forums will have a unified look and we're very aware that users enjoy having a choice in looks when accessing our message forums. Look for more information about the beta testing of our new vBulletin platform in the near future.

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My work comp doesn't seem to like the new website. It freezes up IE.

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Can you open IE and go to the Help menu item and then to the "About Internet Explorer" item from that drop down menu and list for us which version of IE you are browsing the website with?

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Wow! I love the new website. It's so cool.

A question though: the www.cityofvillains.com/ site currently redirects to the main CoH site, will there eventually be a CoV site again?

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The main website covers both aspects of the game. We've given anyone who ever had access to both sides, so they are both sides to the same coin that is the City of Heroes franchise.

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One of the consequences tho, is my RSS reader just alerted me to new announcements, dating back to 22 September 2008.

The server status page, anyway of making the graphics smaller so the servers show up quicker?

Is the server status page using the same code as previous, so those of us that have it on our fansites aren't going to get broken Java?

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We are collecting feedback on the new site, so if you see a functionality issue or problem with the re-designed CityofHeroes.com please post it here, thanks!

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But I'm still having a problem with the updater looking for cityofheroes/beta/eula.html and apparently not finding it.

Any fixes?

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Thanks for the head's up on that issue, it should be resolved very shortly.

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The problem with the EULA not displaying properly when logging in has been corrected. Thank's for the head's up on that!

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I'm more upset that this didn't include new forums.

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The forum migration will have a few more steps involved in it. Very soon we will have the new forums available as a beta test for people to get comfortable with vBulletin as well as uncover any problems with the forum software and allow time to make corrections to address them. As you may be aware, we've been using vBulletin for the Closed Beta Test forums for Issue 13 and have done a good bit of troubleshooting there.

This migration plan is to ensure a smooth transition for everyone involved. Thanks for your interest and continued support!

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No City Vault?

/sadpanda

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Hi Shelly,

We hear you about your interest with the City Vault. Rest assured it's important to us too. It's still in the works.

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But I'm still having a problem with the updater looking for cityofheroes/beta/eula.html and apparently not finding it.

Any fixes?

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Thanks for the head's up on that issue, it should be resolved very shortly.

And the new site is now live! If you haven't seen it already, please head over to CityofHeroes.com and take a look!

Bookmarks
As a reminder - please keep in mind that if you have bookmarks to items deep in the CityofHeroes.com website, they will change. So, please visit the new site and update your bookmarks!

We wanted to update those interested in the AMD "Create a Character" Costume Contest with a status report. A couple things conspired to delay the voting of the 11 winners: The Website redesign along with an overwhelming response to the contest!

We're still in the process of internally judging the many many entries to the contest. We do plan to have that wrapped up and have the 11 finalists up for voting by the public this week!

Thanks very much for your interest and our apologies for the delay!

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Was this the hint you gave last week?

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QFC (Quoted For Curiosity).

Last week LH said there would be a big announcement last week. Is this it?

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Yes, the re-designed website is our main news for today and what I was hinting at last week

The rest of the site (with links and content and everything) will be up later today. Thanks in advance for your patience!

New Website!
The City of Heroes website has an all new look! If you haven't seen it already, please head over to CityofHeroes.com and take a look!

Bookmarks
Please keep in mind that if you have bookmarks to items deep in the CityofHeroes.com website, they will change. So, please visit the new site and update your bookmarks!

To discuss this announcement, please join us here

Please use this thread to discuss the below announcement

New Website!
The City of Heroes website has an all new look! If you haven't seen it already, please head over to CityofHeroes.com and take a look!

Bookmarks
Please keep in mind that if you have bookmarks to items deep in the CityofHeroes.com website, they will change. So, please visit the new site and update your bookmarks!

I've also had some questions about the Rikti Invasions spawned from the Lady Grey Task Force and the Zombie Apocalypses. They won't happen in the same zone at the same time, but they can still happen on the same server at the same time.

Have fun!

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How do you receive "treats at a faster rate?" It might just be my own experience, but I rarely get treats this year... it's easily 80% trick, 20% treat, but maybe that's just my luck. It's not uncommon for me to knock 5 times in a row and have all 5 be tricks.

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I believe Lighthouse is referring to the fact that you can now knock on a door every 10 seconds this year, instead of every 60 seconds, and a door is no longer unusable for 30 seconds after somebody else has clicked on it. The chances to get a trick or a treat are the same, but the frequency in which you can click on doors is drastically increased.

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Yes, that's what I meant. Thanks for clarifying that point, Dixileta.

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At the risk of sounding ungrateful...

Is there really nothing that can be done about the spirit spawn rate before the end of the event? It will be a full year before we've got the chance to get the badge associated with them again, so being told that it won't be fixed in time to apply to this event is more than just a little disheartening for badge collectors.

Don't get me wrong, I love this event! I just love badges too, and having a "collect them all" mindset being confronted with not being realistically able to is disappointing.

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Hi JChaos,

We completely agree that it would be great to fix the issue with the Spirits. A number of people here are upset as well about the badge for their own characters (yes, we play too!). However, getting such a fix out there would impact the schedule for Issue 13. We'd totally do that for an exploit fix, but for this issue we felt, that while painful for those interested in it, is something we'll have to leave as is.

Thanks in advance for your understanding.

We wanted to comment on a couple of common questions with the Halloween Event and make you aware of an issue with the Zombie Apocalypse.

Zombie Apocalypse
Since the Halloween event started on Saturday, we've identified an ongoing issue with the Zombie Apocalypse that leads to it not triggering as often as it should. If you have been playing and looking for this event to happen and not noticed it being very frequent, that's why. We've put a system in place to correct the problem. If you are playing and feel the Zombies are being excessively infrequent (not showing up in a couple of hours) then please make use of the in game /petition command to let us know your input.

Halloween Questions

[*] Low Spirit Spawn: In reading through feedback and playing the event we've seen comments about the relatively low spawn rate of Spirit NPCs during Trick or Treating. In investigating this, it looks to be a bug with how those NPCs are being spawned. Unfortunately, we won't be able to correct the issue before the event is over, so at this time we can only make you aware of the issue and apologize for any inconvenience caused.
[*] Lack of Tier 3 Inspirations as Treats: We've also seen feedback that some players miss receiving Tier 3 inspirations as Treats. This change is intentional. In making changes to Trick or Treating from last year, it's possible to open doors and receive Treats at a faster rate. In order to keep Tier 3 inspirations something of value, we removed them from rewards to Treats.[/list]
To discuss this announcement, please join us in the Technical Issues forum.