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Welcome to the forums, Synapse!

Base Repricing
1) How will the repricing of bases affect you personally?

Our base is going to be able to be a lot bigger due to the reduced prices and rent, and my two personal bases that I use for storage will now have rent. This wouldn't be that big of a deal, except I never play those alts, because I'd rather be contributing prestige to my actual SGs instead of just my storage bases. I haven't had time to duplicate their bases on test, but it looks like I'll have to do the equivalent of about 3 missions every 2 weeks with them to maintain them. That's not a huge deal for me, but it might be for people with less time.

2) Will you dismantle your base to gain the additional prestige from the repricing?

Eventually. Perhaps not until I14, if more base changes/additions are coming, because we'd rather not do it twice.

3) How long would this process take you if you were to engage in this practice?

About 10 hours to recreate what we have.

4) What are the positive and negative concerns regarding repricing?

The only negative about the new item costs is that we will have to recreate the base to take advantage of it. The positives are that we will be able to expand the base, both in size and function (more storage), and not worry about rent.

The negative about the new rent costs are that small storage bases now cost rent when they didn't, and the positive is that huge bases cost WAY less rent.

5) How will this feature affect you long term and short term?

Short term it will be a headache recreating the base. Long term it will be great, allowing us to have a larger, even more functional base.

For storage bases, the effect is the same short and long term-- I have to play those two alts far more than I'd like to.

Base Salvage Exchange to Invention Salvage
1) What is the negative effect on your base for this feature implementation?

We've got enough base salvage stored up to randomly convert to the invention salvage we need to make the new versions of the items, so that won't be a problem.

The relative costs of some empowerment station buffs should go up over the long run, though, and the 30 item storage limit is shockingly small. We'll end up needing to devote two more workshops just to storage to have a reasonable amount of storage.

2) What is the positive effect on your base for this feature implementation?

Empowerment station buffs will be simpler, since we won't have to find the pieces to craft the intermediate components.

3) How long will it take you to adjust to learning this new system?

I've already learned it, so I'm ready.

4) What side effects to this system do you currently see from transitioning the old to new system?

I think that with the ability to convert massive amounts of stored up base salvage into rare invention salvage, prices on the market should plummet for a while.

5) What security concerns do you have regarding this change?

Since we can't assign permissions to specific containers, we have to either have all bins be free-for-all, or only allow officers to have access to them. We also are forced to have the same permissions on inspiration and enhancement bins, leaving us with no choice but to make everything be free-for-all, which results in enhancement bins being filled up with junk, and I'm sure the salvage bins will be filled with Ceramic plates and Hydraulic Pistons as well.

I don't think that's exactly what you mean by "security", but those are the issues most closely related with storage permissions for my SG. We don't get people "stealing" stuff, just people who don't read our personal forums enough to know what belongs to whom. I know this situation is no different than before, but the change means that we now have one more thing that we have storage for, but said storage doesn't work in a way that's useful for people who would like to store valuable things for themselves or specific other people who need it.

Thanks for your work for the CoH community that we all love, and I hope your next job is as fulfilling as possible.

My boss, who does not play or even really like games but loves Macs, and whom I have been annoying for over 4 years with my frequent talk about CoH, actually knew this before I did, and was the one who informed me of it this morning.

That was a really strange experience.

This is great news guys, and totally unexpected!

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All joking aside - it was said elsewhere that Power Balancing changes wouldn't affect PvE at all.

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I think either what you read was incorrect or you misunderstood. I'm quite certain the PVE specific changes that were made for I13 will affect PVE, while 95% of the PVP changes have no effect on PVE (I say 95% to hedge my bets, actually.)

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I am becoming psychic. Although I did not expect widespread changes to APP/PPPs. You're dumping the PPP pets aren't you?


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I appear to be out of the loop on PPP pets. I thought everyone liked them (as a power, if not in theme). It seemed to me like most of the level 50 villains I've played with have them.

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The basic tack we took was "if the power is not being taken by the players, replace it with something that is." So, a number of formerly heroside only powers are now available on villainside, and a number of powers have been replaced by something we feel will be more useful in general.


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Wait.

Are you saying powers are being REMOVED from APPs/PPPs? D:

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I wonder if this will be the end of Power Build Up? I believe Castle has mentioned in the past that he didn't like the way that power impacted balancing a lot of others.

<Shoots PBU with a DOOOM Arrow just in case>

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My interpretation of this quote is not that PBU will be going away, but that villains will be getting it as well. The statement talks about replacing powers people don't take, with ones they will, not the reverse.

So, if I'm understanding his statement, here are some obvious powers you shouldn't see going away because tons of people take them:

Power Build Up
Focused Accuracy
Conserve Power
Force of Nature
Res and Def powers
Single target holds
Single target blasts
AoE blasts
PPP pets

From the PvP interview:

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We are making it so that when you are in a PvP zone, your powers will work differently (for certain powers). They may not behave exactly as they behave in PvE, but hopefully they're going to bring a much more balanced and engaging PvP gameplay to our game.

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I'm very glad to hear this.

Though I doubt it will happen, because they've claimed there were PvE reasons for it (reasons I'm not clear on, because the ones I've heard involve what I believe to be fair tradeoffs like dramatically reduced DPS for increased safety), I'd love to hear that Travel Suppression will be relegated to PvP zones only.

Phase Shift and the Kheldian versions' full toggle duration is also something I'd like to see restored outside of PvP zones, since the claimed PvE reason for those was clicking glowies with no risk (an issue that is irrelevant now, since you can't click glowies while phased). If not, I'd like to hear whatever other reasons there are for not restoring it.

Hibernate is a big one for me (I don't have the power, this is purely a concern I have on principle). Since you can't move with it on, and you can't generate new aggro while in it, I never saw any PvE reason for it to have a limited duration, so unless there's some PvE exploit I missed, I'd like to see it restored to full toggle status.

Argh! I totally forgot about the 1-purchase-per-day rule, and bought the jetpack first. Woe is me, I have to wait 24 hours to buy the cyborg stuff!

I'm setting a repeating reminder for myself so that I remember to buy it for both of my accounts.

I don't have any questions, but welcome to CoX! It's great to see you added to the Dev team, and I look forward to your contributions to the game!

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No, you've missed the point entirely.

It's often said that MMO's have pen-n-paper games as their ancestor. There's one playstyle of those old p-n-p games that has never really been supported well in MMO's- the GM. In any pnp game group, there's at least one. Depending on your group size, that might be 1 in 4 or 1 in 10, but that's still a large market to tap into.

1) A market that LIKES telling stories, creating things, and sharing them. Something they can only find in limited ways in other places, meaning CoH can carve out an appealing little niche for them.

2) Almost every pnp GM I knew was also leader/organizer of the community. You often played what he wanted around his schedule. He's also the type to gravitate into organizer/leader positions in online games. If HE wants to check out this game to experiment on this, he's more likely to influence others to do so also.



And... despite there being plenty of pnp GM's out there making their own content, those game developers kept cranking out modules for people that wanted something professionally done....

If this is done right, this won't mean the develo

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Someone call 911, something happened to Chase in mid-sentence!

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I love in Posi's letter how he talks about 'rewards' for the missions created by the users. How it was bantered back and forth in the office with raised voices. I have a nagging suspicion this means no xp/influence/etc for these missions in which case. Crappy system and count me out. Not gonna bust my butt to create tons of missions that grant absolutely no reward.

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Then you missed the entire point of the mission creator.

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Oh I got the point. I got it a long time ago. This is a great way for the devs to have the players create content for them so that they don't have to. We already provide free Q&A services when we Beta test the issues. Now they want us to be quasi-content creators. Then if were lucky enough to be sprinkled with the blessings of 'Devs Choice' then our mission will give rewards. Great.

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One of the biggest problems with retaining customers in MMOs is that players consume content far, far faster than developers can create it. The standard MMO method of alleviating this problem is through grind-- slow leveling curves, low chance of good random loot drops, and other time sinks.

Player created content is the Holy Grail of the MMO industry, as it would significantly reduce the need for time sinks because people would have so much more to do. While most people have been trying to make PvP fit that bill, and generally failing because PvPers are such a small subset of the MMO audience, I think CoH has a shot at actually have reaching it with the mission creator. It's too bad the game didn't launch with it.

I know your post is more about rewards, but we haven't even seen what they are planning for that yet.

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Yeah that's all I ever do with my recipies is sell them. I tried to use them at one point but I discovered a couple flaws in the design.

1. IOs never exspire. This looked great on paper but that's because I thought that ment they were going to level up with you. I discovered it only means you'll get the same benifit the entire time you have them so you still end up haveing to replace them even though they don't exspire.

The only thing that makes enhancements that don't exspire any good is the idea that you never have to worry about them. Stick them in and forget about them but considering you'd be severly hindering yourself if you were useing a level 15 IO at level 50 this is not actully the case.

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So, here's the deal with IOs. Level 15 common IOs are better than DOs of any level. A +3 damage DO gives 19.16% enhancement, a level 15 IO gives 19.2%. That's only slightly better, but that DO will decay to 16.66% at even level, and lower when yellow. So, if you were going to slot a DO, slot a level 15 IO instead and not only will it be better, but it will never go yellow or red. This also saves you money because you don't have to buy new enhancements at level 17.

Once you hit level 22, replace these enhancements with SOs as usual, because you can't get common IOs that have more benefit (level 25 Common IOs are equal to -1 SOs, so you might as well slot SOs instead).

At level 27, you can slot level 30 IOs. Level 30 IOs are equivalent to +1 SOs, and they never expire. If you were going to slot SOs, slot level 30 IOs instead and you get the benefit of +1 SOs all the way to 50 without ever having to replace them.

It's true that 35, 40, 45, and 50 IOs are better than level 30 IOs, but if you were going to slot SOs anyway, at least save the money and hassle of replacing them every 5 levels.

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2. The other problem I've found is the Bonuses that haveing multiple powers from the same set gives. The problem I have with this is if you want the bonus you have to have 1 of each enhancement from the same set in the same power. I had multiple of the same enhancement from a set and got no bonus from them, and I had multiple enhancements from the same set in two different powers and got no bonus from them.

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Yeah, this is intentional. You have to slot the sets in the same power. If you didn't, you wouldn't be able to have more than one copy of the same set, which is one of the ways to get the most out of IO sets. For example, 5 sets of Crushing Impact will give you a 35% accuracy bonus and a 25% recharge bonus on all of your powers, not just the attacks you slotted them in, along with a couple of other lesser bonuses.

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3. Alot of people seem to be under the impression that IOs are stronger than HOs but they actully seem to be weaker than SOs. I was looking at one of percentages as I replaced an SO of the same type and level with an IO and the number actully went down about 10%.

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Level 35+ IOs are universally better than SOs, you cannot get higher enhancement values from SOs than from level 35+ IOs. Level 30 IOs are equal to +1 SOs.

The multi-value enhancements do have lower values, but they give more of a bonus spread among the attributes they enhance. For example, a level 50 Acc/Dam/Rech enhancement gives a 21.2% bonus to each attribute. That's lower than an SO, yes, but with one enhancement, you are enhancing three attributes for a net bonus of 63.6%. To use Crushing Impact as an example again, a level 50 set gives you a total of:

Accuracy: 68.9%
Damage: 101.5% (143.1% before ED)
Endurance: 68.9%
Recharge: 68.9%

You absolutely cannot get bonuses like this from SOs. You can't even approach them. You can get them from HOs, but you will be trading about 33% from either endurance or recharge and getting extra in accuracy (which I feel is less useful, but others will disagree) because there are no HOs that combine any two of damage, endurance, and recharge-- you've only got Acc/Dams for attack slotting benefits. Meanwhile, the Crushing Impact set also gives you global set bonuses that the HOs will not, resulting in a set IO build being stronger than an HO build.

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For all these reasons I've found it easier to just ignore them. I'm sure the set bonuses would make up for the loss in the percentage but the set bonuses aren't even worth it for me if I can only access them by placeing the entire set into a single power.

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In the majority of cases, there's no loss in percentage to make up for, it's pretty much a flat out gain.

But regardless, it probably is easier for you to ignore set IOs. I highly recommend, however, following my answer to your first issue-- level 15 common IOs at level 12, SOs at 22, and level 30 common IOs at level 27. You will save millions, and the hassle of upgrading more than 3 times in a character's lifetime.

If you want, at 50 you can slot level 50 common IOs for a decent boost beyond SO level, but if you're happy with SOs, I don't see much reason to suggest that you do so (it will be expensive, for not that much gain).

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This is probably more important now that they'll be adding even more IO recipes to the game, diluting Pool C even more.

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This is something I've been concerned about ever since they added the last new bunch of IO sets. It reminded me of when the Diablo 2 expansion came out, and they added so many new prefixes and suffixes to rare items that the odds of getting anything useful were terrible.

The Merit System, as long as costs are not ridiculous, and remain constant as new sets are added, will ensure that dilution will not be a problem.

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First veats now empathy for vills......sigh....I sure hope u got something big for heroes coming.

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But...but... I thought the Dev Team hated Villains?

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The Dev team hates Heroes. The Dev team has always hated Heroes. Except when the Dev team hated Villains, and then it had always hated Villains.

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But honestly, things like this are a slap in the face to casual gamers who don't have time to go doing TF's and whatnot every night.

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This is AS WELL AS the current system, not INSTEAD OF.

Don't give me that 'slap in the face' rubbish, please.

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The devs SLAPPED me in the FACE with a palm full of AWESOME.

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Brass Monday was Nemesis' first 'large-scale' act of supervillainy; you can find some details on it here, although the plot (this being Nemesis) was a bit more involved than the stub article suggests.


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After reading Web of Arachnos, I don't remember the plot being more involved at all. Nemesis was little more than a mob boss extorting money from people in the book, which really didn't feel like him.

If they do Brass Monday, I hope they make his motivations and methods a little more interesting in the in-game version.

World War II and the attack of the 5th Column in IP, complete with Atlas fighting them off, is my number one desire for a new Ouroboros arc.

This is a great thing to have for people who have extra cash in real life, but not the time to build up the (last I checked) ~15 million inf for a respec recipe on the market.

I probably won't use it myself, but I still think it's a good idea to have the option.

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I just wish we can travel to a WW2 era zone.

It would be cool to fight actual Nazis instead of Facists.

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Yes, WWII is such an influential period in comics. It would be fantastic to be able to visit it and participate in it.

What would be really awesome is if the zone was a sort of "PvP via PvE" zone, where heroes would assist the allies by fighting the Axis, and Villains would assist the Axis by fighting the Allies, but in their own copy of the zone. Missions completed by either side could have some effect on the opposite side, like unleashing a giant wave of tanks, or Sky Captain-style giant robots. If you wanted, you could also have a PvP version of the zone where actual full-on PvP could take place, but I'd love to see a zone that had the Hero vs. Villain struggle in it without the very different style of actual zone PvP (e.g. superjumping hit-and-run stalkers, TP Foe + mines and caltrops, 8 on one ganking, long periods of unbalanced population where you have nobody to fight, or you're the only one on your side-- all things I don't find particularly "epic" or "challenging").

Regarding the question about what belongs in the superhero genre: just about everything, in moderation. The more variety, the better. The superhero/villain genre's core is modern-day, stopping/causing disasters or halting/executing the supervillain's nefarious plans for revenge, world domination, or sheer chaos. However, alternate dimensions, space travel, other planes of existence (including that inhabited by deities), and time travel are all common concepts that are explored for the sake of an interesting story. We've got a ton of the genre's core in CoX's core content, currently, so I see no reason why new issues shouldn't branch out as long as they don't look too biased towards a certain genre (hint hint) that is dominating the market.

After Issue 10 with the Rikti invasion, and Issue 11 with Ouroboros (a very sci-fi thing), a historical or magic based zone is a great idea. This particular timeframe-- Roman times-- is very much a part of CoH lore, and it only made sense to go back there.

As long as you don't find a large percentage of your content devoted to elves, orcs, medieval weaponry, and wizards, when the MMO market is utterly saturated with that sort of content, then I don't think that you need to worry about being out of genre.

Back in Issue 5, I was pretty annoyed with Croatoa, and that annoyance grew until Issue 8, when Heroes finally got their first new zone that wasn't fantasy oriented since Issue 3. Issue 10 and 11 had great modern and sci-fi content that utterly crushed any lingering issues I had with disproportionate fantasy representation, so I'm not particularly concerned about it at this point (though I do hope we get a Batman/Daredevil style punching set for Scrappers before we get more medieval weapon sets, after Dual Blades).

Having tested the new content in Issue 12, I think the ideas and execution were great, and I'm glad you made the decisions you made for it in terms of content.

I'm really excited about what the contextual dialogue will bring to this game, and the story is sounding very interesting, thanks Hero 1!

Player created missions is awesome. AWESOME. I never thought it would happen. I know I'll be contributing.

I hope we might be able to make custom bosses using the character creator, I'd like to see some more costumed villains/heroes as NPC foes in CoX.

Everyone I know will be very happy with this, the combination of free and paid slots is a great idea. Thank you so much.

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What was the reason for the reduction if that wasn't it?

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That answer is probably covered by either a Cryptic or NCsoft NDA. It should be left at that.

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Oh. Okay that makes sense, sorry.