Ravenswing

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Mind you, I'd love to see that giant Council Mech set loose on Striga.

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Or a Council Mech vs Kronos Titan destroying downtown Founders...

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But then we would have to have a giant Nemesis steampunk bot joing in the battle...

Mind you, I'd love to see that giant Council Mech set loose on Striga.

Patient Dies in Hospital Fire Bombing

A patient was killed and two nurses severly burned yesterday night when a fire bomb was detonated in the patient's room. Malcom Johnovich, a computer programmer from Galaxy City, was hospitalized yesterday evening after being brought to the Cygnus Medical Center by the noted hero Volt Master after attacking several other heroes near the Galaxy Girl statue. He was apparently being treated for delusional behaviour.

At this time, police have no statement to make regarding the death. The two nurses are being treated for second degree burns at the medical center.



(( If anyone wants to investigate or otherwise look into this, PM me. ))

It would probably be funnier if it were self-consitent and the people writing it actually knew more about the game. Some gems, but real parody tends to require you to have a brain when writing it.

And, yeah, compared to the article on WoW, CoH comes over as really great. CoH winds by being made of less fail.

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Things we know are on the cards are changes to SG Bases, Villain Patron Respecs, Shields Powerset and Player Created Missions. This isn't enough to require all that development time, surely.

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I find myself agreeing with Alphane here, which is rare. let's look at just a couple of those, shall we?

Player Created Missions: new artwork and modelwork, a completely new, multi-level UI, new database tables to design and implement, new game systems.

Shield Powerset: New animations, new artwork, new models (probably several due to customisation), tweaks to the costume editor, integration into the existing power selector (it's been pointed out that shields doesn't work with all combinations of powersets, so you actually need a new game system which locks you out of some power selections based on what you have already picked).

Villain Patron Respecs: not sure, but new missions, new NPCs, new UI.

Now, all of that has to be designed, coded/drawn/produced, and then it goes through unit testing, and then integration testing. It then goes into closed testing to ensure it plays as expected and may need to go back to have things revamped or tweaked (the new powerset in particular). It then goes into open beta and the players wreck it and it has to go back to be changed again because no design ever survives contact with the enemy... err, the customers. And the more changes you add to a single release, the more likely it is that something will be wrong with it.

And don't forget that players want everything perfect and now. Let them take their time and get it right.

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this whole issue was beaten to death last month or maybe the month before that it go's something like this

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A month ago?!!!1!

This argument was beaten to death, ground into dust, burned, burried, dug up, put in a trunk and dropped in the ocean, fished out and recycled as road grit 2 years ago.

And now Alphane is recycling all the Bic jokes from back then as well.

As I recall, the old Offline Costume Editor was never officially released in the West. It was put on a web site in Korea to help advertise the Eastern release of the game and people worked out how to registry hack it into working in English. It isn't like it was withdrawn from use after the Marvel legal settlement, it was never actually available. NCSoft only used it when they were at a show with no Internet access. They prefered having the game available for demos.

And while the exact terms of the settlement were never made public, it was stated at the time that this was the reason why the West could not have the offline demo software, but the East could.


Tell you what I'd prefer: an offline respec generator. Something that I could sit there with and work out a respec beforehand, and then upload a file which auto-respecs the character the way I've specified.

No, the market won't fail. The market has way more in it than respec recipies, last I looked.

Did I say the market would fail? No.

*sigh*

If you want to be a sitting duck while you do it, yes.

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I have 4 vet specs i can use... Does that mean i'm using my lobgevity to save me 80 mil inf per char?

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Well, I'm in a similar situation and I'll likely never have to pay 5.99 for a respec, so I guess the answer is, yes. However it isn't an additional payment made on top of your normal subs.

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Secondly, don't forget that the rare recepies you get from trials aren't from the same pool as from a TF, they won't be as good. And i'm sure the person who decided to buy respec and picked the recepie, is very satisified with his PAcing of the Turtle Recepie while the other guy got a free respec. Cause here's a hint for you, recepie rewards are random, he can get one worth 10 inf and can get one worth 10mil inf.

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I have no idea what the above has to do with anything, but 'here's a hint', I've been playing this long enough to know that drops are random.

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Now if the person wants to decide if 5.99 is worth the time of a trial for chance of a good recepie or a guaranteed respec, it's up to them.

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Yes, it is their choice. I am not denying this, nor am I saying that it's a bad thing. It is also a choice to spend time in game, making Inf or doing a respec trial, or to spend time out of game making real money.

The mistake you seem to be making is to associate personal choice over whether someone buys a respec with money or Inf, and economic effect. Anything which changes the way or amount of Inf spent in the game affects the in-game economy. In this case, instead of spending Inf on a respec recipe, that Inf can be spent on enhancements. You don't have to be able to sell the respec (and so change real money into Inf), you have extra Inf because you did not spend a rather large bucket of Inf on a respec recipe.

Does it affect the economy in a significant way? In my opinion, no. Presumably that's also NCSoft's opinion.

Yes, the Kronos fills this role nicely, and anyway, Marvel would rip them a new one if they created a Sentinel clone.

He is, basically, correct though. It allows you to purchase an in-game effect that costs several million Inf for real world cash.

The issue is more whether that is a significant effect and whether it indicates a trend. It's only worrying if that's the case and there's no evidence that it is.

I always thought the term 'epic' was a bad choice. About the only 'epic' aspect of Kheldians is the innate trvael powers, which is kind of negated when you can get a Raptor Pack within 5 minutes of entering King's Row.

Kheldians are an 'advanced' AT. They aren't as easy to play as the normal hero ATs. They are designed to provide a challenge. I guess the VEATs indicate that CoV players (and presumably a fair number of CoH players) don't want a challenge.

Thought that was fixed ages ago. Could have sworn it was in some notes before I left.

Well, it's sort of started. Things really kick off Sunday, however. If you weren't there, you can catch up in the GG thread.

There will also be alternative methods of access to this than GG, by the way.

The only character I've taken the axe on is my DM Scrapper. Two versions of the same power seemed a waste.

Assuming my headache stays under control, there will be some, um, pre-cursor happenings for this plot at GG tonight. Nothing that's required viewing if you don't do GG or just miss it, and I'll likely report it in the GG thread for those who do miss it.

True... but how long before the patch goes live do you think they'll do it?

Actually, rechecking the timescale, yes, this weekend looks good.

Must admit, I'm a little confused by this. How is the game going to decide which power you want that IO slotted in so it can delete the others?

Ah, point. There could be a surplus before the change as people sell off 'spares'.

Of course, I'd wait until the patch actually goes live, so I think my point stands.

Surely, after this their usefulness will go down, so they will drop in value. So now would not be a good time to buy.

Am I missing something there?

I think, yes, it's your team at the time of the shot. I'm not totally sure because I have some shots with multiple names where I wouldn't have been teaming (normally anyway, maybe I was for some reason).

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Dual pistols, is somthing that is, allegedly, on the books

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So we can all make Gun Kata characters...

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It will only be same as everyone trying out duel blades/willpower, its fun for like 5 mins then they get bored and move on, been after this from day one though so im looking forward to it.

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Well, yes, made worse by the fact that your typical gun kata would be Pistol/SR and people tend to give up on /SR fairly early.

I made a DB/WP because they were two sets I hadn't tried before. It plays very well and I may even keep playing that one. I think Pistols/SR would be even more 'flavour of the month'.

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Dual pistols, is somthing that is, allegedly, on the books

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So we can all make Gun Kata characters...

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I'm pretty sure the game didn't add metadata to screenies in the old days though. Can't remember when the feature was added, but it was after I started playing.

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It didn't. My oldest screenshot is from January 2005 and it contains more or less no metadata. They seem to have started adding it in August or September of that year. The last file I have without it is dated 25/8, the first one with it is 12/9.

It's pretty cool data, actually. The Caption field actually contains all the character names who appear in the shot.

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Still, i have around 90% defense with toggles and elude on, 45% with just the toggles and a small def insp. That should still be enough for pretty much everything, but still i got hit by at least those demons pretty much 100%. I simply couldn't get past Infernal.

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As I was saying, this is odd. I did Infernal recently and he was, well not exactly a pushover, but he barely hit me. And that was just using Divine Avalanch. That was also the EB, not the AV (I was solo), but I don't think the ToHit difference is that extreme.

Logically, you must have had some bad luck with Alphas. SR and Regen both suffer from not liking Alphas, though SR has the theoretical advantage there since the Alpha might not hit.

I did notice that I have to run FA to get a good hit rate on Demons. I can have it turned off for most things, but my hit rate was poor without it against Demons.

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I get a sneaking suspicion it will probably mean a slight dumbing-down of the meticulous craft that is planning your build just right because you had to get it right if you only had the one respec.


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Nah. The people who like spending hours planning respecs on Build Tools (like me) will still do that because having the most efficient, tweaked-so-hard-it-squeeks build is just what's done. People who used the Test Server to trial their builds will probably keep doing it because that's what they've always done and why waste money.

It may save people who do a respec, realise they messed it up, and then get told about the Test Server, or modelling tools. They can fork out the cash and try again properly this time.

I have enough free respecs to keep me going for a while yet, but I don't see this as a bad thing unless it marks a trend and there's no real evidence of that at this time.