Lighthouse_NA
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Please use the below thread to discuss this announcement.
Matt "Positron" Miller, Sr. Lead Designer for City of Heroes at NCsoft NorCal, discusses whats happened since NCsoft fully acquired the franchise, and looks ahead to Issue 12: Midnight Hour and beyond.
Click here to read the full article. -
Please use this thread to discuss the below announcement.
Issue 12: Midnight Hour, the twelfth upcoming free expansion since the launch of City of Heroes® will introduce a host of new content, challenges and features!
For all the details, click here.
We have discussion threads about the different aspects of Issue 12 available. Please use them to discuss the features of Issue 12:
Midnight Squad Content
Roman Style Maps and Costumes
Villain Epic Archetypes
Powerset Proliferation
Hollows Zone Makeover
Major Gameplay Improvements -
Issue 12: Midnight Hour, the twelfth upcoming free expansion since the launch of City of Heroes® will introduce a host of new content, challenges and features!
For all the details, click here.
To discuss this announcement, join us here.
We also have discussion threads about the different aspects of Issue 12 available. Please use them to discuss the features of Issue 12:
Midnight Squad Content
Roman Style Maps and Costumes
Villain Epic Archetypes
Powerset Proliferation
Hollows Zone Makeover
Major Gameplay Improvements -
Matt "Positron" Miller, Sr. Lead Designer for City of Heroes at NCsoft NorCal, discusses whats happened since NCsoft fully acquired the franchise, and looks ahead to Issue 12: Midnight Hour and beyond.
Click here to read the full article.
To discuss this article, join us here. -
During the maintenance period on the morning of Friday, March 14th we will be conducting additional server maintenance to remove the remaining Items of Power on the Live US servers. The fact that a few Items of Power have remained has been a bug that we are now rectifying. Thanks in advance for your understanding.
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I do have to say, the base highlighted in this edition of the Scoop, "A Faction of Dark Tomorrow" is pretty sweet!
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shouldn't these raids have started by now?
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They have. Make sure you have the "System" channel assigned to one of your chat channels so you can see which zones are under attack. Their can be times of up to a couple of hours with no raids (it's random, with a streakbreaker to keep the time from going over 3 hours I believe, but that would be pretty rare to happen). -
Please use this thread to discuss the below announcement.
Our friends and cohorts across the Atlantic, NCsoft Europe, present their first Podcast! It covers a number of subjects, but features a great City of Heroes / Villains interview with Matt 'Positron' Miller, Sean Dornan-Fish and Jen Dornan-Fish.
Click here to download the Audio and/or Transcript. -
Our friends and cohorts across the Atlantic, NCsoft Europe, present their first Podcast! It covers a number of subjects, but features a great City of Heroes / Villains interview with Matt 'Positron' Miller, Sean Dornan-Fish and Jen Dornan-Fish.
Click here to download the Audio and/or Transcript.
Click here to discuss this announcement. -
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Any word on when its suppose to start? 6am or 12am the pacific?
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The event should start shortly after the servers come up from Maintenance (which should end around 8 AM Pacific / 11 AM Eastern). -
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Yo, Marcian. Self plug here also
KK-Comics - A collection of comic books created about my various toons
TechSpider/Kinetic Kitten
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Wow, nice bunch of comics there!
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Please use this thread to discuss the below announcement.
The looming threat of the Rikti Invasion Force still hangs like a dark pall over Earth. Despite the best efforts of humanity, aggressive Rikti incursions still plague the planet. Advance warning systems indicate the Rikti are massing for attacks on the following dates throughout the year:
March 7th through the 13th
April 18th through April 24th
June 13th through June 19th
August 1st through August 7th
Sept 26th through Oct 2nd
November 14th through November 20th
Prepare for a desperate battle to save Earth from the Rikti Invasion Force! Aggressive Rikti forces will attack Paragon City and Rogue Isle with increased frequency at any time during the above dates! Some important items to remember about Rikti Invasions:<ul type="square">[*] When Zones within the cities are under attack, a world-wide alert will be issued by Vanguard. This alert will show up in your Chat window on the System channel, warning you in which zone attack is imminent.
[*] While the invasion is occurring, players do not receive debt while outdoors in an invaded zone.
[*] Those in that zone that do not wish to be at risk of Rikti attack are asked to take shelter immediately. They can do so by leaving the zone, or moving inside buildings or under cover (overpasses, parking garages, etc.).
[*] The combative inhabitants in a zone will move off the streets and to safer locations when a Rikti Invasion takes place.
[*] Rikti bombs appear to be unstable and not 100% reliable. Some do not explode on impact and only embed themselves in the ground. These bombs have been noted to detonate after a time, so take caution when you see these. They can be disarmed or delayed by inflicting damage upon them.[/list]To assist organization of defense forces, Vanguard encourages all interested parties to coordinate activities via discussion threads on the Official Server Forums.
Champion Server
Freedom Server
Guardian Server
Infinity Server
Justice Server
Liberty Server
Pinnacle Server
Protector Server
Triumph Server
Victory Server
Virtue Server
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The looming threat of the Rikti Invasion Force still hangs like a dark pall over Earth. Despite the best efforts of humanity, aggressive Rikti incursions still plague the planet. Advance warning systems indicate the Rikti are massing for attacks on the following dates throughout the year:
March 7th through the 13th
April 18th through April 24th (Edited to new dates)
June 13th through June 19th
August 1st through August 7th
Sept 26th through Oct 2nd
November 14th through November 20th
Prepare for a desperate battle to save Earth from the Rikti Invasion Force! Aggressive Rikti forces will attack Paragon City and Rogue Isle with increased frequency at any time during the above dates! Some important items to remember about Rikti Invasions:- [*] When Zones within the cities are under attack, a world-wide alert will be issued by Vanguard. This alert will show up in your Chat window on the System channel, warning you in which zone attack is imminent.
[*] While the invasion is occurring, players do not receive debt while outdoors in an invaded zone.
[*] Those in that zone that do not wish to be at risk of Rikti attack are asked to take shelter immediately. They can do so by leaving the zone, or moving inside buildings or under cover (overpasses, parking garages, etc.).
[*] The combative inhabitants in a zone will move off the streets and to safer locations when a Rikti Invasion takes place.
[*] Rikti bombs appear to be unstable and not 100% reliable. Some do not explode on impact and only embed themselves in the ground. These bombs have been noted to detonate after a time, so take caution when you see these. They can be disarmed or delayed by inflicting damage upon them.[/list]To assist organization of defense forces, Vanguard encourages all interested parties to coordinate activities via discussion threads on the Official Server Forums.
Champion Server
Freedom Server
Guardian Server
Infinity Server
Justice Server
Liberty Server
Pinnacle Server
Protector Server
Triumph Server
Victory Server
Virtue Server
Click here to discuss this announcement. -
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To additionally assist us in swiftly resolving the issue, we appreciate it if you then make use of the in-game /petition command to further alert our Customer Support Team of the activity.
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Ever considering doing what LoTRO does? In game you can right-click on the spammer's name in the chat window and get a context menu that let's you automatically report the spammer. No fuss, no typing, instant notification to a GM.
That's a nice system if you can do it, expecially if we could simply right-click on the names in the email window, too.
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We are always looking at ways we can make things in game better and easier for our customers. -
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Ok, so here is the problem with this change.
Synapse. 8 people. I know all of them and love them, 1 of them is my husband, 1 of them me.
About 30 minutes in, hubby and I start mapserving occasionally. Nothing big, haven't dropped, but we're getting a little annoyed.
2 hours in. We both drop - cable's out.
Now there's a team of 6 (Synapse requires 4). Because we went link-dead, we're still on the team. But the cable's out - who knows when it'll get back on, and hell, maybe we're so annoyed with the mapserving we say screw it, and rent a movie.
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If you understand it is your connection when you start dropping (like say resetting the cable modem fixes it), then realize you may hard drop and tell your friends you'll bow out rather than risk it (or at least discuss it with them to see what they want to do, maybe they think, given the team make up, they could brute force it even if you two do drop).
At least this way, their is your ability to control it. For an example, what if the Task Force was one with a 6 person minimum and you started it with 6. Under what's currently on live, you'd have no recourse and the team would be doing the mission with 4 people with spawns of 6. With the change, you can at least realize what is going on and preemptively quit and allow the spawn size to scale.
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What?!?
How could they know it was their cable until it actually dropped? It's not like they were pulling up the command prompt and running tracerts the whole time. Average player won't realize it's their connection until the game drops them and then they can't get anything up with IE/FF/Whatever.
So assuming someone goes "gee, it's kind of laggy tonight, stupid mapservs". And then they disconnect for whatever reason, you give the team no way to control if they player stays in the TF while offline, or can be kicked.
But you can't tell me you honestly believe that someone would know it's their connection and not the server (cause it's never the server, right?) until it's already too late.
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I understand your argument. I play a lot of online games and sometimes when my team mates have a poor connection, we won't run stuff because we don't want to deal with them dropping.
If someone's not that savvy to realize what's going on, ok, sure I can see that. As I said above, we acknowledge that there is more we can do. However, for those people who do understand how their connectivity works and what's going on when they have a poor connection can deal with that by quitting.
Additionally, a team leader can take the step to tell the person who's dc'ing a lot that they are just going to kick them rather than dealing with the disconnecting player. Hopefully they do it in such a manner that doesn't bend feelings and they can group again another day. I myself have been in similar situations and done just that. The joys of running PUGs. -
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Ok, so here is the problem with this change.
Synapse. 8 people. I know all of them and love them, 1 of them is my husband, 1 of them me.
About 30 minutes in, hubby and I start mapserving occasionally. Nothing big, haven't dropped, but we're getting a little annoyed.
2 hours in. We both drop - cable's out.
Now there's a team of 6 (Synapse requires 4). Because we went link-dead, we're still on the team. But the cable's out - who knows when it'll get back on, and hell, maybe we're so annoyed with the mapserving we say screw it, and rent a movie.
...
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If you understand it is your connection when you start dropping (like say resetting the cable modem fixes it), then realize you may hard drop and tell your friends you'll bow out rather than risk it (or at least discuss it with them to see what they want to do, maybe they think, given the team make up, they could brute force it even if you two do drop).
At least this way, their is your ability to control it. For an example, what if the Task Force was one with a 6 person minimum and you started it with 6. Under what's currently on live, you'd have no recourse and the team would be doing the mission with 4 people with spawns of 6. With the change, you can at least realize what is going on and preemptively quit and allow the spawn size to scale. -
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Lighthouse,
Do you know if the option of adding an ability to kick offline teammates was looked at? It's something many people are requesting to deal with quits-by-logging and perma-disconnects. Is this a case of the tech not being there for a quick change, or is something the design team decided against? If it was just not having the tech around when you wanted to rush the fix, is there any chance you'd look at it in the future?
I really like this change and do think it actually will successfully cut down the exploiting, but I think adding an option to kick offline players would cut down on this change's effect on regular teams.
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I commented on this above. We looked at a number of different changes and in the end this was the most easily implemented given our other priorities. -
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Given the choice between what's on live and what's on test now, I choose what's on live. For a fast partial fix, I'd much rather see minimums reduced on task forces. But any of them, what's on live now, what's on test, or a minor fix like reducing minimums, would be a lot easier to live with if I had any reason to believe the devs see any problem with task/strike forces other than closing an exploit and would be doing anything about them in the future.
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If you believe we are blind to concerns or input about current TF/SF/Trial content I can assure you we are not. However, I would pose the argument of opportunity cost. In some cases, depending on the scope, you could get a whole new TF out of revamping an old one. So, would you rather have the Lady Gray TF or a revamped Positron?
As we continue to ramp things up, we will better be in the position where we can just do both. We appreciate your continued support and patronage to get us there. -
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My two cents:
Obviously this is a middle ground between "how it used to be" and "how it is now on Live." Despite a substantial amount of rational arguments in favor of scrapping the change altogether and reverting back to the old system, the rednames seem adamant on shaking things up for god knows what reason...
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To reiterate my original statement about farming Task / Strike Force and Trial statements for RMT purposes and to echo Positron's follow up statement; the reason for the change to these missions is to curb the following behavior:
8 people start a Task Force.
7 people log off and allow the 1 character that's a strong solo build to solo to the end.
The 7 other people log on just before the finish.
Complete the mission and 8 people obtain Pool C rewards for the work of 1 person.
The above behavior is something that we are not allowing to continue.
We understand that there is more work that can be done on these missions. We appreciate and value your feedback on that front.
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Than give Villains the equivalent of Katie. We have said this multiple times, the ONLY thing that was keeping Villains pool C market alive was the Quick Caps.
You just effectively ruined the Villains pool C market.
Way to go.
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Perhaps it is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but the change is one that we view as necessary. 7 people benefiting from one person's actions is just wrong in our eyes.
We understand there are concerns with the impact of the market and more we can do on that front. We are listening, watching and playing ourselves. -
Reminder about Ignore_Spammer Command
In the course of game play, you may receive an unsolicited tell from another player that is advertising real money trade or power leveling services.
Should you receive such a tell please use the /ignore_spammer command to ignore that user globally and locally and to notify us of the issue. To additionally assist us in swiftly resolving the issue, we appreciate it if you then make use of the in-game /petition command to further alert our Customer Support Team of the activity.
The easiest way to use the /ignore_spammer command is to reply to the tell and then arrow over to replace /tell with /ignore_spammer.
We are working on further methods to curb this annoying behavior and appreciate your assistance by using /ignore_spammer when you encounter the problem.
NCsoft Will Never Ask For Your Password
We also want to re-iterate that NCsoft will never ask for your game accounts password. If you do receive a solicitation for your account information, do not give it out and also please forward the solicitation to our Customer Support. Additionally, do not make use of any claimed bot programs as they could contain key-loggers or viruses designed to gain access to your account and computer. Thank you!
Click here to discuss this announcement. -
Please use this thread to discuss the below announcement:
Reminder about Ignore_Spammer Command
In the course of game play, you may receive an unsolicited tell from another player that is advertising real money trade or power leveling services.
Should you receive such a tell please use the /ignore_spammer command to ignore that user globally and locally and to notify us of the issue. To additionally assist us in swiftly resolving the issue, we appreciate it if you then make use of the in-game /petition command to further alert our Customer Support Team of the activity.
The easiest way to use the /ignore_spammer command is to reply to the tell and then arrow over to replace /tell with /ignore_spammer.
We are working on further methods to curb this annoying behavior and appreciate your assistance by using /ignore_spammer when you encounter the problem.
NCsoft Will Never Ask For Your Password
We also want to re-iterate that NCsoft will never ask for your game accounts password. If you do receive a solicitation for your account information, do not give it out and also please forward the solicitation to our Customer Support. Additionally, do not make use of any claimed bot programs as they could contain key-loggers or viruses designed to gain access to your account and computer. Thank you! -
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My two cents:
Obviously this is a middle ground between "how it used to be" and "how it is now on Live." Despite a substantial amount of rational arguments in favor of scrapping the change altogether and reverting back to the old system, the rednames seem adamant on shaking things up for god knows what reason...
[/ QUOTE ]
To reiterate my original statement about farming Task / Strike Force and Trial statements for RMT purposes and to echo Positron's follow up statement; the reason for the change to these missions is to curb the following behavior:
8 people start a Task Force.
7 people log off and allow the 1 character that's a strong solo build to solo to the end.
The 7 other people log on just before the finish.
Complete the mission and 8 people obtain Pool C rewards for the work of 1 person.
The above behavior is something that we are not allowing to continue.
We understand that there is more work that can be done on these missions. We appreciate and value your feedback on that front.
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Why don't you make it so that those 7 people don't get the reward because they have not been on the tf/sf long enough? You have that coding in for people who join teams in the middle of a mission, why not employ it for TFs? If a person is not logged in for 6 of the 10 missions (or whatever ratio you want to use) have it not reward them with anything. If someone is forced to log out because of power outages or husband/wife aggro, then they have more to be worrying about than getting a reward for a tf/sf.
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We considered that option along with others, but given our timeline for Issue 12 we didn't go that route. It involved a lot of risky coding in our current development cycle where we are trying to close this live branch and shift to Issue 12. We felt this was a good compromise to address immediate concerns. -
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My two cents:
Obviously this is a middle ground between "how it used to be" and "how it is now on Live." Despite a substantial amount of rational arguments in favor of scrapping the change altogether and reverting back to the old system, the rednames seem adamant on shaking things up for god knows what reason...
[/ QUOTE ]
To reiterate my original statement about farming Task / Strike Force and Trial statements for RMT purposes and to echo Positron's follow up statement; the reason for the change to these missions is to curb the following behavior:
8 people start a Task Force.
7 people log off and allow the 1 character that's a strong solo build to solo to the end.
The 7 other people log on just before the finish.
Complete the mission and 8 people obtain Pool C rewards for the work of 1 person.
The above behavior is something that we are not allowing to continue.
We understand that there is more work that can be done on these missions. We appreciate and value your feedback on that front. -
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This probably doesn't need to be asked but might as well be through,
LH, do these TF changes also apply to the Oroborous Taskforces and the Flashback Taskforces themselves? I hope so.
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Yes they do. Flashback missions use the same code as Task / Strike Force Missions. -