Liquid

Here's a repost of my missions, with their live mission IDs:

Arc Name: Death for Dollars!
Arc ID: 1050
Faction: Custom
Difficulty Level: Low-Medium

Synopsis: The makers of arcade classics 'Destruction Cinema' and 'Absolute Mayhem' bring you the action-packed, gore-filled Virtual Reality show, 'Death for Dollars'!

Estimated Time to Play: 20-30 minutes (3 medium sized missions)

And its team oriented version, which has an identical story, but differs in the following ways:

Arc Name: Death for Dollars Extreme!
Arc ID: 1100
Difficulty Level: Very High (intended for teaming, play the other one if you want to solo it)
Estimated Time to Play: 45-60 minutes on a decent team

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Arc Name: Dr. Duplicate's Dastardly Dare
Arc ID: 1218
Faction: Custom
Difficulty Level: Medium ("standard" custom critters, with a "Hard" Elite Boss at the end-- play on heroic if you want him to be toned down to a Boss)

Synopsis: Dr. Duplicate, a villain with a notoriously large ego, has taken over the Paragon Dance Party (people still go there?), and dared you to take it from him!

Estimated Time to Play: 10 minutes-- 1 mission.

----------------------------------------------------

Arc Name: Win the Past, Own the Future
Arc ID: 1429
Faction: Multiple
Difficulty Level: High (several AV/EBs, ending with custom ones in the last mission. This is meant for a team.)

Synopsis: In the midst of a riot, someone has escaped from Ziggursky Penitentiary. Discover who it is, what his plans are, and find an unlikely ally in your quest to stop a plan that will otherwise leave the world in a terrifying state.

Estimated Time to Play: 30-45 minutes-- 3 Missions in total.

[ QUOTE ]

The Thug drops a Pistol, a Holster, a Wallet, and a Drugs.

>Look

You are inside the Atlas Clinic.
On the ground is a Pistol, a Pistol, a Pistol, a Holster, a Holster, a Holster, a Wallet, a
Wallet, a Wallet, a Drugs, a Drugs, and a Drugs.


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Ah, those were the days.

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Yeah, there's nothing illegal about the use of the word in Germany.

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Is it possible to get links referencing this, please? Not that *I* doubt this (and, in fact, have been arguing this), it's that I happen to be having this argument with someone else, and my search fu is very weak.

I found links indicating that it's still illegal to sell paraphernalia with Nazi symbolism on it in Germany, but that's not quite the same thing.

Thank you.

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Well, here's the Wikipedia article on it for a starter. It's about imagery, not the word itself. I know you can find the exact German wording of the law on the internet if you search for it.

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I feel like someone should have put out a press release way back then saying:

"Oh, we just HAPPENED to remove the 5th Column at the exact same time that we released the game in Europe. Yeah- that's the ticket. Oh, and any future references to them will be retroactively changed to 'Council' instead of '5th Column'. Oh, and if the 5th Column ever DO come back, we're just going to call them Italians. But hey- it's all coincidence. Did we mention that Nazi is a bad word? No? Well it is."

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Because if the conspiracy theory *was* true and they *had* changed it because of the European launch, they couldn't just come out and say "yeah, we're releasing the game in Europe, and our lawyers/marketers told us that a game with Nazis wouldn't be very well received there, so we're changing some stuff". Because... well, why say the truth when you can construct a web of lies and deception that you'll have to keep up for years afterwards?

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What web? They'd only need to say "it was done for story reasons". No web needed. It would even be true, because they'd have constructed a story reason for it after deciding that they needed to remove Nazis from the game. It would be much like how management at my last two jobs insisted that I claim we were "multi-homed" to customers, which implied redundant upstream connections with failover, when we didn't actually have any failover whatsoever, but was still technically true. That kind of stuff happens all the time in business. It's like when CoH had a crisis of sorts in 2003 resulting in Rick Dakan (the guy who came up with the idea for CoH in the first place and founded the company with Michael Lewis) being fired as Lead Designer and rehired on a contract basis as a writer, Jack was given Rick's old job as Lead Designer, and Michael Lewis stepped in as CEO to try to straighten everything out. These events are publicly known and documented on forbes.com and gamasutra, and though everything worked out for Cryptic, CoH, and us in the end, they are not events filled with hugs and cookies, they are events filled with resignations, firings, and the initial investor forced to drop out of UCLA to straighten the company out. But look at Jack's happy fuzzy version.

This is all hypothetical (I mean the conspiracy, not the 2003 events at Cryptic), of course. But I had to respond because I'm thrilled to see the more plausible "lawyers/marketers" version being argued against instead of the typical "it wuz illegals in germany" strawman.

Don't take this as an agreement with his post. Requiem was Italian and was associated with Il Duce at release, and the 5th still have their German names, so no, they aren't being "called Italians", and that's ridiculous.

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I believe that the 'Nazi' issue has something to do with Germany and the rules that Germany has towards the use of the word. Someone from Germany can probably shead some light on this.

-Reddof

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Urban myth. Been debunked on the boards a dozen times or more.

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Yeah, there's nothing illegal about the use of the word in Germany.

Strangely, however, the word "Nazi" is used in the Paragon history on the US, UK, and French sites, but on the German site, the word "Faschisten" (which just means "fascist") is used instead. (On a side note, why is the Introduction page not on any of the foreign sites, including the UK one which it doesn't even need to be translated for?)

Of course, what the hell does any of that have to do with the English language filter when Germany has its own German-language server? No, it's not about Germany. It's about the language filter being filled with dumb stuff that's not offensive in the vast majority of uses.

I've got 4 (well, three with a "team" version of one of the others) arcs posted on the test server right now. In order from newest to oldest:

Arc Name: Death for Dollars!
Arc ID: 18663
Faction: Custom
Difficulty Level: Low-Medium

Synopsis: The makers of arcade classics 'Destruction Cinema' and 'Absolute Mayhem' bring you the action-packed, gore-filled Virtual Reality show, 'Death for Dollars'!

Estimated Time to Play: 20-30 minutes (3 medium sized missions)

And its team oriented version, which has an identical story, but differs in the following ways:

Arc Name: Death for Dollars Extreme!
Arc ID: 19354
Difficulty Level: Very High (intended for teaming, play the other one if you want to solo it)
Estimated Time to Play: 45-60 minutes on a decent team

----------------------------------------------------

Arc Name: Dr. Duplicate's Dastardly Dare
Arc ID: 713
Faction: Custom
Difficulty Level: Medium ("standard" custom critters, with a "Hard" Elite Boss at the end-- play on heroic if you want him to be toned down to a Boss)

Synopsis: Dr. Duplicate, a villain with a notoriously large ego, has taken over the Paragon Dance Party (people still go there?), and dared you to take it from him!

Estimated Time to Play: 10 minutes-- 1 mission.

----------------------------------------------------

Arc Name: Win the Past, Own the Future
Dev's Choice!
Arc ID: 165
Faction: Multiple
Difficulty Level: High (several AV/EBs, ending with custom ones in the last mission. This is meant for a team.)

Synopsis: In the midst of a riot, someone has escaped from Ziggursky Penitentiary. Discover who it is, what his plans are, and find an unlikely ally in your quest to stop a plan that will otherwise leave the world in a terrifying state.

Estimated Time to Play: 30-45 minutes-- 3 Missions in total.

[ QUOTE ]
Arc Name: Death for Dollars!
Arc ID: 18663
Faction: Custom
Difficulty Level: Low-Medium
Synopsis: The makers of arcade classics 'Destruction Cinema' and 'Absolute Mayhem' bring you the action-packed, gore-filled Virtual Reality show, 'Death for Dollars'!
Estimated Time to Play: 20-30 minutes (3 medium sized missions)
Link to More Details or Feedback: Feedback Thread

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I've made a second, team oriented version of this arc. The story is exactly the same, only the foes are far more challenging (and better fit the theme of the story). Here is the relevant information for the second version that is different:

Arc Name: Death for Dollars Extreme!
Arc ID: 19354
Difficulty Level: Very High (intended for teaming, play the other one if you want to solo it)
Estimated Time to Play: 45-60 minutes on a decent team

The feedback thread is the same as quoted above!

I figure that when we go live I'll see which one is liked more by the community and delete the other one to make room for a new story.

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I was making a story with humans that are converted to robots using nanobot technology... well I described them as having oddly human facial ticks.

Turns out "facial" is banned... looks like women/men can't go to a salon or get a Mary Kay facial.

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It actually turned an innocuous sentence into a profane one, for me. I was telling a motherly friend of mine about someone's "facial structure", and it sounded like I was talking about the structure of their privates.

Imagine calling a woman a real "thunder cracker" to describe her strong and bold personality. Suddenly a compliment is interpreted as the worst possible thing you can call a woman.

Censoring words that are harmless 95% of the time ensures that they appear profane far more than they actually are.

Arc Name: Death for Dollars!
Arc ID: 18663
Faction: Custom
Difficulty Level: Low-Medium
Synopsis: The makers of arcade classics 'Destruction Cinema' and 'Absolute Mayhem' bring you the action-packed, gore-filled Virtual Reality show, 'Death for Dollars'!
Estimated Time to Play: 20-30 minutes (3 medium sized missions)
Link to More Details or Feedback: Feedback Thread

Arc Name: Dr. Duplicate's Dastardly Dare
Arc ID: 713
Faction: Custom
Difficulty Level: Medium ("standard" custom critters, with a "Hard" Elite Boss at the end-- play on heroic if you want him to be toned down to an LT)

Synopsis: Dr. Duplicate, a villain with a notoriously large ego, has taken over the Paragon Dance Party (people still go there?), and dared you to take it from him!

Estimated Time to Play: 10 minutes-- 1 mission.

Bah, I didn't notice this thread.

Right now I have two arcs completed, with a third in the works, though I only have the write-up for one available at the moment:

Arc Name: Win the Past, Own the Future
Dev's Choice!
Arc ID: 165
Faction: Multiple
Difficulty Level: High (several AV/EBs, ending with custom ones in the last mission. This is meant for a team.)

Synopsis: In the midst of a riot, someone has escaped from Ziggursky Penitentiary. Discover who it is, what his plans are, and find an unlikely ally in your quest to stop a plan that will otherwise leave the world in a terrifying state.

Estimated Time to Play: 30-45 minutes-- 3 Missions in total.

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The Mission Architect appears to be limited to some kind of virtual reality propagated by Architect Entertainment. What is the "reality" impact of this? Does that mean that all missions we create are all locked within the AE building and essentially "not real?" Does that mean we can't pretend that the storyline we made is actually real, rather than just a work of fiction within fiction?


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I was hoping it would be tied to Portal Corporation, and that mission creation would be explained in-game as "researching other dimensions".

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1. The Hall of Fame is where the best player rated content goes. To get to this rank you need to have over a 1000 votes with an average of 5 stars (we round up). Getting into the Hall of Fame changes your standing in the mission browser, moving it further up the cue.

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I have three questions:

1) How far do you round up? Is it 4.5 or higher = 5 stars?

2) Are you going to be correcting for weird human behavior like people who only give the minimum or maximum value, never give ratings above or below the midpoint, or rate every single arc the exact same value? There will likely be people that 1 star every arc they play because they want to do whatever they can to ensure that their own are ranked as highly as possible relative to everyone else's. There will be other people who 5 star everything just because they're nice people, or because they hope others will do the same. Hotornot.com at one time had a part in their faq about their rating system that described these kinds of issues (and that they were more common than you'd think), and claimed that they corrected for them.

3) Are you guys seriously psyched about this? Because you should be really, really proud of the fact that you're providing such an incredible feature that no other (currently operating) MMO has. (edit: bah. I'm wrong, Saga of Ryzom is apparently operating again. Still, it's an awesome feature that only ONE other MMO has!)

Thanks for reconsidering this, Positron. As someone who already had the badge, I considered two options to be fair: leave it as-is (allowing heroes to get it), or remove it entirely, including from those who already got it. I considered the previous "let people keep it but don't let new people get it" decision to be sub-optimal, as I only had the badge purely by virtue of working on it during a specific date range. Since badge hunting can be a semi-competitive thing where people compare themselves to other people in the game, I'd rather new players could have the opportunity to get all of the badges that old players have been able to get.

I know this may seem irrational to many, but I'd hate to have collector types that are new to the game feel "shut out" of the friendly competition aspect of badge collecting, simply because they joined the game later. I know other badges still contribute to this (Vet badges, anniversary badges), and I wouldn't expect those to change, but the less "exclusive to old timer" badges we have, the better, in my opinion.

Anyway, thanks again.

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Here’s a bit of a teaser: We have big plans for these (and other) badges, and we really want them to mean something to your character. If you are in a dialog tree that involves creating something, we have the ability to look at your badges and see if you have taken the effort to prove yourself as a crafter. This effort would be rewarded with special options in the dialog tree that earn you better results, enable you to skip steps, etc. For this system to work, we’ll need them to be a reasonable indicator of the amount of work a crafter has put into crafting. And it’s not just dialog trees that are going to look at badges, and it’s not just crafting badges that will be looked at, so you guys can speculate away!

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This has the potential to be very cool, enabling non combat activities to have an impact on how a character goes through the content.

It also has the potential to crank up my inner powergamer and make me feel like a bunch of new badges besides accolades are now "required" for all of my characters, making the game feel more like work than fun (it's been moving in that direction after Inventions and Day Jobs were added, though I know that's substantially my own fault for having this obsessive tendency).

I promise you that I will try my hardest to view it in the former way, if you try to implement it so that having a badge changes the player's experience as opposed to just giving them an advantage.

It's really cool that you're working on this idea, regardless of how it turns out for me, personally.

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I don't think I'll wind up using the 57 month often. Still plenty of free tokens. But that said, I don't mind it as a reward and don't think it's a bad one.

I've never used any vet respec either, but I'm certainly glad they are there. I think the criticism of the 57 month reward is misplaced.

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I also have that "I'm glad they are there" feeling. I may not use them, but I always know I can if I need to, and that brings me peace of mind.

I'm a hoarder by nature. For example, aside from 2 respecs (1 each on a different character) from Trials that I used to fix some mistakes shortly after the Terra Volta trial was added, I've only ever used freespecs, because I know they will keep coming, and are use-it-or-lose-it. I've only redeemed vetspecs when I was about to delete a character, and wanted to get inf or enhancements off of them (I've restarted one character from level 30ish twice, once to change secondaries, once to move it to my main account).

I hoard costume tokens too, and knowing that I'll get a 50% discount means I'll be more likely to hoard them! I generally only use a token if the costume costs are over 1 million.

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Definitely a creative twist, well done.

As for balancing issues with pre-requisites, I honestly don't think it would be much cause for concern. People are talking about massively build altering changes, but when you think about it...

Speed: Hasten's always useful.
Super Leaping: Combat jumping's always taken luck of the gambler's quite well and had it's mobility uses.
Flight: Hover and air superiority definitely have their offensive/defensive uses.
Teleportation: Teleport friend is useful, although some consider it a waste. Teleport foe could also be put in a similiar position.


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I've been thinking about this, and you're right. I probably won't drop the prereqs on many (if any at all) of my characters. However, I will take them later. It will make exemplaring much more fun if I get one more primary or secondary power below level 20, and a travel power even in the lowest level ouroboros arcs.

Combat Jumping, Hasten, Recall Friend, Hover, and Air Superiority-- when I've taken them, I've wanted them in almost every single case.

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[u]60 Months [u]

City Traveler Badge: Hit the ground running… this badge unlocks access to the following Power Pools at level 6, so players can access Tier 1, 2, or 3 powers early on.
<ul type="square">[*] Flight
[*] Superspeed
[*] Teleport
[*] Superleap [/list]

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Holy crap! I never, ever expected something like this! Thank you.

Wow, that ad is very well done. Nice job on the animated mouths, and it's great that you used actual animations from the game for the body movement.

Bug(?): The Mission Transporter uses the Jetpack Icon.

Oh my god, the wings are *awesome*. Do you know how long I've wanted wings with metal feathers? Like, 2 years. That screenshot does not do them justice.

And Valkyrie capes! You didn't tell us about Valkyrie capes! Or at least I wasn't paying attention!

This is, hands down, the best costume set you've released. (Though I'd like a version of Valkyrie Wings 2 with a headband like in Headband Wings, for non-helmeted use, but you can't have everything)

Quality job, Jay. Really great work.

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What was your favorite feature of 2008?

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Powerset Proliferation. Not specifically due to the sets that were proliferated, but due to the philosophy change that will allow players a greater range of character creation options as proliferation continues.

There were many other great changes, including UI changes and content additions, but if I have to pick my single favorite, it is that.

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Synapse - Is the weighting of Pool C recipes ever going to be looked at to put into balance the count disperancy of high utility IO sets (Melee, AOE, PBAOE, Ranged, Defense) versus low utility IO sets (Snipe, Sleep, Confuse, Stun, Immobilize, Debuffing)? Right now in Pool C these are all weighted evenly with a much greater number of Low Utility sets than High Utility Sets in the pool. Power Counts below:
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre> Power Type Hero Villain Total 45-50 45-50 Power
Powers Powers Powers Pool C % No. %
AOE 41 39 80 2 4.5% 8.9%
PBAOE 42 38 80 2 4.5% 8.9%
Melee 63 59 122 2 4.5% 13.5%
Ranged 43 56 99 2 4.5% 11.0%
Defense 38 41 79 2 4.5% 8.8%
Resist 39 38 77 2 4.5% 8.5%
Heal 36 33 69 2 4.5% 7.7%
Hold 40 25 65 2 4.5% 7.2%
Slow 27 19 46 2 4.5% 5.1%
Immob 21 17 38 2 4.5% 4.2%
Stun 19 16 35 2 4.5% 3.9%
Pet 9 26 35 2 4.5% 3.9%
Sleep 13 8 21 2 4.5% 2.3%
Snipe 11 8 19 4 9.1% 2.1%
Travel 7 7 14 4 9.1% 1.6%
Fear 7 7 14 2 4.5% 1.6%
Confuse 4 4 8 2 4.5% 0.9%
Total Powers 460 441 901 44 </pre><hr />

&lt;snip Positron's Pool Weighting post&gt;

By weighting the pool appropriately you can have people more satisfied with the random roll option.

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Yes, this would do a lot for making the Random Pool C option more desirable. I'd prefer condensing the power types like HOs do, but it's way too late for that now-- that was probably only a reasonable option in Issue 9 beta.

One could argue that those numbers aren't accurate, as while Snipes may make up 2.1% of the power choices, far less characters likely actually take them than have access to them, while the vast majority of characters take a Travel Power, but at least it's a starting point.

If datamining TF completion times can affect TF rewards, then maybe it's now arguable that it would be reasonable to have drop frequency affected by datamining recipe usage within the same drop pool and rarity.

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Or give more merits based on % of critters killed. 99% or more doubles the bonus. 8-p

Ok, that'd be a nightmare, so It'd take more research than that, but I do think it's a good idea. This system is rewarding only the farmers and speed runners, not the average player that tends to take twice as long per TF as the professionals.

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If it's possible to track kills, this is a brilliant idea, though I wouldn't just double the reward based on kills.

You could assign ranges to the percentages and base the rewards for completing a TF within the range on datamined time for people who completed it within that range. That way, people who clear the entire TF aren't getting the same rewards as people who only kill exactly what is necessary to complete it.

People who beat Eden in 10 minutes because they only kill the bare minimum of foes would get 2 merits.

People who beat Eden in 60 minutes because they 70-80% of the foes in the TF would get 12 merits.

People who beat Eden in 60 minutes because they kill the bare minimum but stand around for 50 minutes would still only get 2 merits!

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Poster: EvilGeko
Q: What about the market? Do you care about the players who enjoy that aspect of the game? Do you have any plans for how to address the supply issues in the market that this system will cause for Pool C and D drops?

A: We feel that players will take that chance on the random roll tables for that chance at the reward they want. There will always be that temptation to roll on the Pool C rewards 12 times instead of buying that one shiny IO. If a player doesn't get what they want, they can post these items on the markets. Also consider that before only players running Task Forces and Strike Forces were contributing Pool C and D items to the market, now even solo/casual players will be able to do so.



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I agree with Pool D. That's a rational decision. Pool C is a fool's errand and that will become clear to people soon.

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Yep. Pool C is loaded with junk. If you're looking for something specific, you've got a 1 in 78 chance of getting what you want (based on the live pools as listed on Paragonwiki, in I13 it will be an even lower chance due to the new sets).

Pool D, on the other hand, has a 1 in 9 chance (again, according to Paragonwiki, which may be slightly off, given that some recipes haven't been listed in a pool) of getting what you want.

There is such a high chance for junk (meaning recipes for powers that are, individually, not common compared to other powers like melee, ranged, PBAoE, TAoE, def, res, and heal powers, therefore of much lower value due to a much lower demand) in Pool C-- Snipes, Immobilizes, Fears, Sleeps, Confuses, Stuns, Slows, Def Debuffs, ToHit Debuffs, ToHitBuffs, and Heroside Pet Damage-- that it's just not worth the randomness. This wouldn't be the case if you killed Snipe recipes and made Snipes accept Range sets, and killed all the individual status and debuff recipes and instead had just "status" and "buff/debuff" recipes like HOs have.

Meanwhile, Pool D only has 2 out of the 9 recipes that are only used by a small portion of the population (Sovereign Right: Accuracy/Damage/Endurance and Sting of the Manticore: Damage/Interrupt/Recharge).

As time goes on and you add more recipes to these pools, the odds of getting something you want from a random drop will just get worse, making the set costs that much more desirable.