Ravenswing

6am Peregrine Island

Seven marched into the Section 19 Novel Chemistry Lab and dumped a large crate of... something onto the floor. "I need this analysed and a counteragent produced, if possible."

Darren McCreedy, lab chief and all round genius chemist yawned copiously and looked up from his morning newspaper. "Hey, Seven, what ya got there?"

"According to Doctor Edward Johnson, it is the secret of immortality. However, based upon the fact that it was developed from his previous efforts, I feel it likely there will be some serious side effects."

McCreedy sucked his teeth and put his paper down. "Johnson, eh? Okay, let's take a look at this..." He strolled forward and tried to lift the crate up onto a trolley. After a second, he turned and looked at Seven. "Um, Seven, would you..?"

Seven looked at him for a second, and then reached out, lifting the crate onto the trolley with no discernable effort. "Would it be possible to 'put a rush on that,' Doctory McCreedy?" she asked. "It would seem likely that the promise of eternal youth will cause this to spread quickly."

The distribution is random, you should only get raids on those zones simultaneously infrequently. Theoretically anyway.

Might be nice if they make the raids exclusive of zones in the same level range, I guess.

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Here's hoping there'll be more pool synergy options for other power sets, such as Fire Mastery for Scrappers, Psi Mastery for Blasters, so on and so forth.

[/ QUOTE ]What about us Villains?

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You got a problem there, owing to the thematic construction.

APPs are designed to fill in holes in the primary and secondary sets.

PPPs are supposed to fit in with the thematic construct of a patron. Doesn't make it easy to produce synergy unless they add more patrons.

People would be happy... they'd need to add a cowboy set...

(( Hmmm... ))

Seven hung in her rack, her brain buzzing with information. Television channels, police reports, arrest records, statistics, web sites. When Johnson's broadcast cut in on all channels, she brought one window to centre position in her field of view and watched it through. Image search routines analysed the background. Voice analysis ran over the speech.

She frowned, and disengaged the maglocks on the rack, dropping as lightly as her impervium chassis allowed to the floor. This required attention.

Dressing quickly, she engaged her optical chamouflage and headed out onto the streets of King's Row. The symbol of Omega, he had said. Very well, she would search.

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4. Jason is capable of world domination.


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Jason is, currently, a hero. He's the most likely character I have to ever use the Going Rogue mechanic, were to ever see light of day.

If he could be 'turned' temporarily (and I could make a red-side alt of him for RP purposes) he would likely go for it, but I wouldn't consider hima primary 'target.' It would be a significant shift in his current behaviour as it stands now.

Aside from that: go for it.

Peacebringers. My Peacebringers tend to wear spandex. Somehow I seem tham as more spandexy than other heroes. (I'm talking the full bodysuit here.)

Got others that wear skintight clothes, but it's the Peacebringers that get the full Superman treatment.

In case no one's noticed, they are changing the icon shortly. Currently the icon is for a ranged weapon, single target power, and Self-destruct isn't either of those.

Don't think it's getting a skull and cross-bones, however.

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Reading through Ravens posts I used to think all his ramblings on programming issues regarding sugeestions were doomsaying

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Being fair to myself and others... sometimes I'm probably just doomsaying, but mostly I'm trying to inject some element of realism when someone comes out with the immortal "I can't see why it would be hard to..." phrase.

In this case, while I have more than enough slots on most of my male characters, the female ones could probably do with a few more. More specifically, more earlier, so I can't say 'no, it's too much work' to this. I just think if they were going to do it, it would be a good idea to overhaul the costume selection system at the same time.

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I have seen it with the amount of people who either havent logged on for ages in SG or Global, or by people who played all hours logging off at 10pm or earlier due to boredom.

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And I came back to the game around the time that AoC came out, and since then I have seen a positive flurry of others returning to the game after varying degrees of absence.

Additional to that, if I go look at people's badges, I am as likely to discover that they have no Vet badges as I am to discover they have a few or a lot. In fact, standing in Steel Canyon CH a couple of weeks ago, I found no one with any Vet badges. That indicates a reasonable influx of new players.

Now, two points:

Over on WoW, my guild has been shrinking over the last few months, and a lot of players are muttering about being bored and going to AoC (not for long) and WAR. They'll be back for Wrath, it's summer holiday MMO blues.

Point Two: Have you considered that maybe it's your SG and friends who are going, getting bored of the same game for a long time. I did that almost two years ago and here I am, back again. I also left because a lot of old faces had packed in and gone off elsewhere. Several of them have returned since, or just keep coming back. (Some never leave, I think NC has them blackmailed, or they can't figure out how to log off.)

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but I do wish it could have something to inject new life into it

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It has had new life injected, otherwise I would never have bothered. I've spent a month doing practically all new content and there's more to come when they finish Cimerora.

And I realise you don't think much of the Mission Architect (without seeing it), but it will be a source of new and interesting content (if not in bulk).

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Personally I dont think the mission creator will, because at the end of the day its the same old maps and enemies.

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Neverwinter Nights sold on its module creation system. And it was a tile-based editor, always the same maps, in effect, and you only had the monsters the game came with, you couldn't just create them from whole cloth.

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For your information I am perfectly "grown up" and you think people need to grow up just because they dont share your opinion, then personally I feel you are the childish one.

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Perhaps. However, I'm not basing my opinions on my own jadedness with the game. When I got bored of it, I left and went off to find something that was more entertaining, I didn't post "this game is boring" posts on the forums.

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WAR succceeds.

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In your opinion, of course. WAR offers nothing new to me. I have a subscription to WoW. The idea that WAR offers anything new is... funny, in my view (of course).

CO is a potential replacement for CoX, as such it is much more serious competition than WAR or WoW. I doubt I'd drop my CoX subscription again for either WAR or WoW, but I might drop it for CO since if it is a better game (big if), I'm not going to pay for two superhero MMOs long term.

Fair, but the subscription levels are what the accountants look at, and the marketting department, and the gaming magazines...

Humbly, I think that's going to look dreadful and they'd be better off redesigning the thing. You've already put a huge amount of work into this adding stuff to the character selection screen. Might as well do it properly.


Hmmm.... or why not just add 'Recipe: Costume Slot'...

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based on the popularity of the WAR thread

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Hmm, yeah, popularity of the WAR thread. So that would be people who either are interested in WAR, but haven't bought it, or have subscriptions to both games, yes? Can't post here without a subscription...

My point is that a lot of people can afford to run a couple of subscriptions at once and CoX is a fairly casual game to play. Hell, I can't afford it and I haven't killed my WoW subscription to come back here. (I'd possibly have gone with WAR myself if I'd never played the RPG. I think I'll be badly dissapointed if I go try the online version.)

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There are plenty of CoX players who are or used to be WoW, LOTR or WAR players too.

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Mmhmm, but you aren't actually stating anything that puts them in competition. I went to LotRO from CoX, but I closed down my CoX account not because I was playing LotRO, but because I was not playing CoX.

Well, until I can take War Crow over to The Abyss and do battle with dinosaurs (preferrably a raptor pack) I still say that it's irrelevent. So there.

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I wouldnt mind betting that it comes out around the second week in November, funnily enough, thats coincides with Wrath of the Lich King, the WoW expansion.

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First off, no matter how much people like to think it, or compare them, WoW and CoX are not in any form of competition. They are massively different, in different genres, of different play styles, and if NC are sheduling thier releases based on WoW (and WAR for that matter) then they are being very thick. And, frankly, I don't think they are.

The competition CoX has is yet to come out. It's CO and DCUO, and rumour has it that I14 and CO's release may be rather close together, which is far more likely a happenstance.

Secondly, if you go look at WoW Insider, you'll see a report wondering how Blizzard are going to get even vaguely close to that release date. Burning Crusade was several weeks late, as I recall. Planning your release schedules around when Blizzard say something is coming out is kind of like aiming at a moving target while standing on a teeter-board.

PS. I posted on Creative yesterday, and looked in on it today. I go there at least once a day. Grow up?

Disclaimer: It would be nice to be able to get more costume slots, especially before level 20. I'd like to be able to do this, but my programmer urges are itching and I have to point out a few things...

Well... that's a lot of programming in a load of areas to get it working.

To simplify things, might I suggest that some form of account-wide "character slot token" be bought, ratehr than selecting where the slots go on the selection screen. You would add a slot to a character by redeeming one of these tokens while logged in. Perhaps through Icon.

You are looking at totally redesigning the costume selection interface. It's horribly clumsy with 5 costume slots (or even 4). Give a maximum of 20 and it is simply going to be crazy.

I'm thinking you would need to do it as a large image box showing a big view of the costume, with a list of available costume slots beside it with thumbnails. They would need to add a facility to tag each slot with a note, because it's bad enough trying to spot the right costume with the current interface, thumnails would drive you crazy. Plus, of course, they would need to switch costumes on a button press, not when the list item was selected. Selection would just display the costume in the big image box.

Personally, I'd vote yes to this just because they'd have to redesign that horrible costume selection interface.

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There's good cliche and there's bad cliche, and "CoH does Jurassic Park" is bad cliche. So there.

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Ahem.

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You get a no-badge. For not reading carefully... I said CoH.

Plus, no dinosaurs.

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but that has nothing to do with the switch at all, and i never said the idle was easy

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Since you replied to Xem's saying [ QUOTE ]
a lot of work?...o please.

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Yes, you did say that the idle was easy. Xem was not talking just about the mechanism for activating it.

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try to watch the forum more often next time ok

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Perhaps you should take your own advice and read the thread you are posting to.

Signing out of this one, too many people posting uninformed responses.

How the hell did this get so long so fast?

(Thinks about that... shrugs.)

Announcement's up on the main web site.

Thursday, September 26th, 00:40, Galaxy City

Nitoichi glanced quickly around the rooftop she was perched on, and then out over Gemini Park. It was quiet. Even the Hellions in the park had given up for the night, though she did think she could see the leg of some fallen Vahzilok zombie twitching under a bush across the street. She padded softly to the back of the building, keeping low, and looked down into the alley. No one. No drug deals, no robberies, not even a couple kissing. Smiling, she slipped down onto the fire escape, cracked open the window using a magnetic key she had wired in herself, and slipped inside. The timer button for the landing light was near her apartment door and she did not bother to turn it on, she knew where the lock was by instinct and touch. She slipped inside, closed the door and locked it.

It had been a crazy evening. Some weirdo out in the woods north of Salamanca name of Buck had sent her down something out of Alice in Wonderland into what she was apparently supposed to believe was 'The Spirit World.' There she had fought a lot of things she refused to believe existed, called Red Caps, and they had been real tough little... Well, they had been hard to take down. Then she had gone over to Galaxy Girl's statue, where she could at least be guaranteed some relaxing conversation, only to find herself talking gibberish. She shook her head, grinning, and unclipped her swords from her back, then cracked the Velcro on her collar and unzipped her suit. Nitoichi turned back into Annette as the leotard was peeled off her legs. The transformation became complete with the removal of her gloves and boots. Except...

Annette dropped Ni's gear off in the practice room and then padded through the flat to the bathroom. She turned on the hot tap and let it run, allowing the water to run through her fingers, checking it was warming up. Sometimes the boiler didn't kick in. She felt... a bit too much like Nitoichi. Normally there was a clear distinction. In costume, she was Ni, out of it she was Annette. It was a choice she had made, and a necessity. Annette had grown up in the 'shadow' of her brother, a mutant hero. She had never felt ready to go out and be a hero, and she had never felt ready to wear a skin-tight costume either. So, Annette had purposefully created Nitoichi almost as a separate personality she could switch into when she needed to go out and do what she felt she needed to do. Now they were bleeding into each other.

The water heated up and she removed her hand, allowing hot water to start filling the bath before she mixed in some cold. The mistake had been to allow both girls to make the same friends. Annette had always loved heroes, perhaps because of her brother. He had taken her places, she had met famous heroes, and had collected their autographs since she was just a kid. The meetings at Galaxy Girl were great for her, but she should have stuck to just getting autographs. Instead, she had got involved, especially with Richard. She had stuck around and talked, like she was one of them, and that was the point, Annette was a normal girl, not a hero.

She stood, opened a small cabinet, and took out a white, cloth bag. Opening the drawstrings, she took out a small handful of dust and sprinkled it into the water under the taps. The dust, a mix of various herbs and at least one mineral, swirled into the water, colouring it slightly red. Annette watched the swirls for a few seconds, letting the stuff mix in before she turned the taps off. She had two choices, and she was pretty sure that the second one was now the only one she really had. She either stopped going near the statue as Annette, or she just gave up the whole, stupid secret identity thing, at least among the heroes. Libby had already figured it out, and if Dinah didn't know then Nitoichi needed to work on her people-reading skills. She was pretty sure Richard knew as well, but not positive. She checked the water temperature, swirling her hands through the dusky red liquid one last time, turned the taps off, and swung her legs over the side of the bath into the water.

The water was hot, almost too hot, just the way she liked it. She sat for a minute with her feet in the bath. Hey, yeah, and what the hell was Ni up to with Libby! Annette didn't look at girls like that. Like what? Like... that, stop kidding yourself, you know exactly what I mean. You realise you're actually thinking to yourself in two voices, maybe you are going crazy. Annette giggled despite herself. If she was going nuts, might as well do it in a lovely herbal bath. There were two candles at the tap end and a box of matches on a stool, and she lit the candles now, waiting until they had really caught before reaching out and turning off the bathroom light. The room fell into semi-darkness and Annette began to sink her lithe body into the water. Various cuts and abrasions stung, and then eased into dullness as the herbs started doing their work. With a sigh, Annette relaxed and settled down for a long soak.

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Annette awoke suddenly, splashing water over the side of the bath as she jerked herself upright. Damn! She had drifted off. The water was still vaguely warm, and the candles had not burned down too much, so she had not slept for long, but it was stupid to fall asleep in the bath. She ran her hands over her face and hair, squeezing the water out. Best get dried and get to bed, she had work in the morning. She stood, pulling the plug and reaching for a towel. She paused, dripping on the linoleum, her hand on the towel rail. Something was... not quite right. What had woken her? She listened, closing her eyes and concentrating hard. There was nothing. She picked up the towel and began to dry herself. Mostly dry, she wrapped her hair in the towel and opened the bathroom door before turning to blow out the candles.

A torch beam hit her straight in the face and she reflexively raised an arm to cover her eyes. “Looks like we hit the jackpot,” said a voice.

“Oh yeah!” another voice, slightly to her left. She dropped her arm and covered herself as best she could, trying to make out the owners of the voices. She felt panic rising in the pit of her stomach. Who were they, what did they want? You would have spotted them easily if you had been Ni, you know.

“You just cooperate and we'll take you with us when we leave,” said the first voice. “If not, we leave you tied up to burn with the building.” Well, that answered the who, Hellions on a fire-setting spree. Next was the what. Cooperation could imply just not screaming her lungs out, but... “Jakey, you wan' first go at her?” No... the other kind of cooperate. Figures, pick on the weakling. The panic grew.

“Nah... you can have her. Prissy would kill me if I cheated on her.” This was crazy, she was a hero for Heaven's sake! These guys were nothing more than a grease stain on the pavement to Nitoichi. But you're not Nitoichi, you're Annette, you're nobody.

“Are you crazy, Jakey? Look at her.” The torch beam flicked over her body and she got a brief look at the man on her left, Jakey, who had the girlfriend he did not want to lose. Definitely a Hellion. One of the lower ranks, a Blood Brother. “You gotta have some of that. What are you, some kind of Outcast wimp?” The torch had been bobbling, moving closer, and now a hand reached out to grab her shoulder, turn her toward Jakey. Annette whimpered. “See, she's scared. You can smell her fear. C'mon, man, you'll never hear the end of it if y'don't...”

The light was no longer in her eyes, at least not both of them, and Annette narrowed one eye, looking at Jakey. He was a kid, probably younger than she was, being pushed into something he did not really want to do by an older gang member. Some abstract part of her brain wondered how many of those kids she saw in the park where there because they had been bullied into it by friends. At Jakey's level, the demon-worship probably had not started, no fire tossing for him. Nitoichi was wondering whether the older boy had made it to Fallen rank yet, though Annette was just too busy trying not to cry.

So, what's the problem? You take them out and call the cops. But Annette's not a hero, I can't just take them out. Are you kidding? You could knock this kid over with a wet paper towel. It's not like you always wear the costume for practice. I just... can't? It's that or they probably pass you around the gang once they get you out of here. And this place gets torched as well, you know that's why they came. But... But what?

Something shifted in Annette's brain. Nitoichi was right. People knew who she was anyway. She had created her alter ego a little too thoroughly, believed in it too strongly herself, used it as a way to get over her own shyness and lack of confidence, and now that was going to get her killed if she did not let it go. She reached up and unwound the towel from her hair, dropping it behind her and then lowering her arms to her sides. She was relaxed, calm in a way she had not felt even as her costumed self. She smiled at Jakey.

The older Hellion stepped back slightly, just as she had hoped. “That's more like...” She moved as he spoke and his sentence broke off as she stepped foward. Her hands came up and pushed out, fingers locked into two daggers as they struck the boy in the chest. She felt something give, a rib cracking. He was lucky, she normally had a pair of swords in her hands when she did that. Jakey fell backwards, stunned and hurt. He coughed and there was blood on his lips, but Annette was too busy to worry.

She turned, her right hand lashing out. It struck the other boy at waist height and arced up over his ribs, digging deeply, causing pain. Her left hand followed through in a stabbing blow to the stomach which drove every last gasp of air from the thug's lungs and doubled him over. Knee strikes were not in her usual range of attacks, but it seemed obvious to follow it through that way and the Hellion was tossed backwards across the room by the blow. His head hit the wall and he fell, lying still.

Annette turned back to Jakey, arms tensed, ready to attack, but he was just sitting on the floor, clutching his ribs. As she turned, he looked into her eyes, fear, no, terror showing, and shook his head. Annette nodded, relaxed, and wandered over to the telephone on its little table with the letter rack. She picked up the receiver.

Jakey gurgled something just as Annette became aware that the older boy was moving again. She turned her head, still side-on to the fallen leader and saw him bringing the pistol around to point at her. He was on his feet already, taking aim. Jakey had tried to warn her, some detached part of her brain decided. She dropped the telephone handset and picked the letter opener out of the rack as the gun went off. Twisting, she shifted out of the path of the bullet, unwinding her right arm as she went. She had always carried throwing knives, though she barely ever used them any more. The letter opener was not really heavy enough, and unbalanced, but she put all her will behind it as she let go.

She blinked. There was a thud as the pistol landed on the floor under the Hellion. He was still gurgling, but the rapidly growing pool of blood on the carpet under him was evidence that there was nothing much to be done. The boy was pinned to the wall beside the door, the letter opener driven through his neck.

Annette picked up the handset again and dialled 911.

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Easy: "Giant Dinosaur Eats Giant Jelly Monster."

And frankly if that doesn't sell you on a server event get the hell off my planet.

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Okay, I'll give you that one.

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*pulls head out of various web updates he's been mired in working on today*

(deleted unimportant comment for discussion, re: server merges.)

Besides, you'll shortly have something much more worth discussing .

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I put forward this post as evidence that GR is EVIL. He keeps doing this. Dropping hints and never letting us in on the secret.

It's EVIL I tell you!

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I believe that WoW is still the largest MMO currently?

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That was the entire point of using it as an example.

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there are as many people who would welcome the extra room for alts and the extra player numbers…

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A server merge would result in less room for alts. You can have 32 alts per server. That won't change if the servers merge.

If the servers were to merge, the 'increased population' would not, of necessity, improve teaming probability, that was the whole point of the post.

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Facts are like busses there is one along every 5 minutes and they may or may not go where you want them too.

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Fact: try reading what you're rplying to and understanding it before replying. Hope Warhammer remains untarnished for a long time.

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I'm expecting more big news on the horizon.

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I'm not. No point. I'm expecting news over the horizon and somewhat out of sight over the hill.

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I just think some of us get anxious because we don't know what it is.

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And the actual result of this insecurity is that people post a bunch of threads claiming that the game is over, doomed, defunct. If that doesn't make new folks go "why did I bother buying this game" I can't think what will.

So, rather than revealing all their plans to the opposition when the opposition has more flexibility to copy them bigger and better, and wasting their advertising budget trying to beat something (a) isn't competition and (b) can't be beaten, NCW are busy setting themselves up for future efforts.

And we would be well served to shut up with the screams of doom and let them.