Sardan

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*Also; No, the females won't get the "Wizard Beard"

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Swell, there goes my idea for the former East European gymnast-turned-magician. Thanks for NOTHING Jay.

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I still want a booster pack with all thiry-three Halloween Trick or Treat Costumes IN ONE PACK! :P

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Oh man, I'd pay $4.99 just to get the PPD Hardshell.

SOOOOOOLD!

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You know, the first thing I thought of when I ran into that one-click buff was, "This needs to happen to speed boost, force fields, sonic..."

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This is brought up pretty regularly, and it usually is shot down due to the fear that if the devs made any of those powers AoE, they'd nerf the strength of the powers to compensate.

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Realistically, any player who starts playing now, will actually probably never get the 60 month vet power ever, no matter what he or she does, given the average lifespan of most MMOs.

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LOLOLOLOLOL

COH isn't an 'average' MMO. I think the mission architect will bear that out.

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While I enthusiastically hope CoH is around in another 5 years, I wouldn't be hugely surprised if it isn't. I mean it's not inconceivable: Everquest is still chugging along 10 years after it went live. But certainly most games don't have a 10 year life, so the odds are that COH won't last that long.

Certainly if the devs can keep pulling off enhancements like the MA, it bodes well for the future of the game!

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It's a book called basic business practice with not so basic results, written by two of the wealthiest business men in the world i picked up during my time in Afghanistan. And you'll never guess what the first page says "The customer is always right"

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In general of course it's a good idea to listen to customers. But the one problem with sticking slavishly to that is that you'll never get really disruptive change. Steve Jobs said "It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." What he means is if you look at a lot of the big innovations like the iPod, people weren't asking for that. No focus group would ever have come up with that. So Apple took a big chance on a radically new product and it was huge.

Of course, people forget that Apple has swung for the fences before and missed. Remember the Newton? That's the risk you take when you decide to go for the big disruptive change instead of the incremental focus group type of change.

Now, maybe the devs should have listened to the players and just tweaked and tuned PvP. But they swung for the fences, trying something really new to try to open up PvP to more folks. Has it worked yet? Nope, everyone would admit that. But it seems like they're going to keep working on it. Obviously this is no comfort to the folks who thought i12 PvP was awesome and could be better with just a few tweaks. The problem now is that PvP is in a valley, having lost the old hard core contingent that loved PvP but not really having gained an equivalent new set of players.

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One need look no further than MA. A great idea, huge opportunity to gain first mover advantage, but they only went half way with it. In terms of a modding tool it is a C or C-. Sure they will likely keep improving it, but if they weren't spread so thin trying to do so many things it would have been launched with map editing abilities, custom spawn points, and much more indepth critter customization to name a few. And then from there it would be improved.

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Ever hear the saying "the perfect is the enemy of the good"? In software development you have to balance the desire to create something with an enormous feature set with the need to actually deliver something to customers. They already delayed the MA several months because what they were originally going to offer wasn't feature rich enough. And if you check out Hero 1's interview on Massively.com today, you'll note that MA already took 8 months, and that was seriously blazingly fast for the size project it was.

And as far as being "spread thin", the devs can't work on only one thing at a time. They have to have parts of the team working on different overlapping projects so they can deliver several updates a year. Do you honestly think players would prefer one big expansion per year instead of a few smaller ones?

PLUS, what if the devs did throw the entire team at MA and took many more months to deliver the ultimate version and it flopped? Then people would be flaming them mercilessly. By delivering it incrementally the other big benefit is that the devs get to see it actually used by the players, and they can take their 25 PAGES worth of enhancement ideas and prioritize them accordingly.

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It's POSSIBLE, that doesn't mean it's PRACTICAL.

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A point too often ignored in the forums.

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when Faultline is in his rock form after fighting to free Fusionette, he cannot jump up on the wall to continue mish until his rock form wears off.

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Has this changed? I did the Faultline arcs when the zone was first revamped and I distinctly remember Faultline being able to jump even in Granite. I recall commenting on it to my in-game friends because I was so surprised that he could do it.

It's an interesting idea. I'd like to see insps like this as a special new type of insp that had a chance of dropping in a particular zone, or from a particular TF. That way they'd stay uncommon, interesting, and highly desirable. I.e. I'm not in favor of simply buffing all existing insps, but I like the idea of new insps for flavor, and giving us a new tool that we could stock up on for hard content.

I dislike the idea, and as has already been pointed out, you should Just Say No to thread bumping.

I'm not against any creative new zone, so it's not like I'd boycott an underwater zone, but if I was voting on this it would be near the bottom of my list. I'd much rather have an Asian-themed city zone (with appropriate new enemy groups and really distinctive architecture), or a space zone, or a revamped Shadow Shard, or.... well, just about anything else.

I guess part of this is my total non-curiosity about the Coralax. I don't find them compelling or even interesting. A zone full of them? No thanks. A zone full of mythical creatures and criminals from India's or China's or Japan's folklore? Yes, please.

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I'm going to have to say I wouldn't go for it, purely for security.

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Bill, I normally agree with you but I have to say that that's a super-contrived example. Possible? Sure. Likely? I can't speak to other players, but for me it just couldn't happen.

Here's a safe way this could work: you keep the default logout behavior for new accounts. That keeps new users safe. Add an option that allows logout (which would keep its 30 second timer) to go to the character selection screen. To turn that option on, you'd have to enter your password. That keeps folks who are temporarily accessing your character from defeating the security.

I have a very long password. I wouldn't feel comfortable with a very short, easier to type password. So for me, this would be a nifty QoL enhancement, and it could be done in such a way that it doesn't enable exploits and doesn't compromise security for folks who find themselves in the same home as a sociopath.

As with most QoL enhancement ideas, it's not a big deal if it's never implemented but it would be nice.

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Do not assume that a female character in a bikini with a katana and double D's is a woman in real life. She's not.


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Don't assume that a character isn't a woman in real life because they are playing a character that you don't think a real woman would play. Seriously, I play a wide variety of characters, all female as I am myself. Women have as varied personalities and like as men. We don't all roll up the same sort of toon.

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Although there is a fairly reliable axiom that says the larger a female character's chest slider is, the less likely it's being played by a real woman.

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The issue with more slots is the devs seem to think we are strong enough.

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This. And didn't the Devs recently mention something about adding some sort of Universal Enhancement Slots to toons? Thought that I heard something...

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It was from a player survey that was sent out to some players back in August. Here's the relevant text:
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Accomplishments will lead to rewards that will significantly distinguish level 50 characters from one another.One such reward is the Universal Enhancement Slots. Ten Universal Enhancement Slots are available to be earned in the expansion, and each one has the potential of adding significant power to the character, essentially bringing them to a hypothetical "Level 60" once they have earned all ten slots.

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Keep in mind that it was a survey trying to assess player demand for LOTS of different major enhancements to the game, so there's no guarantee that we'll ever see Universal Enhancement slots. But I think that's perhaps what Castle was alluding to the other day when he said that they don't plan on increasing the level cap but "We do have some tricks up our sleeves, but they don't involve changing the level cap."

Note that in that same post he explicitly said that they will not allow "more slots to allocate". That could be interpreted that they've now changed their minds on Universal Enhancement Slots or instead (as I interpret it) that they see UES's as a new aspect, distinct from slots you allocate.

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Tier 3s are really powerful, and even Tier 2s can really make a big difference. I dont think we want to make them an unlimited easy to obtain resource. Im happy enough with the 3 into 1 different.

/unsigned

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Agreed. As gleeful as I am to get tier 3's, they're just too powerful to make so commonplace. It'd massively mess up game balance with very little effort on a player's part.

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How much is a medium or large inspiration worth ^_^.

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'bout 90 seconds, if you have an SG with a friend and an open character slot.

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LOL, it took me a few seconds to get this.

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The developers have essentially nixed the idea of logging out to character select or otherwise logging out to immediately log in to another character for security reasons.

And yes, I know what you're thinking: "Security reasons? That's absurd!"

... But it's true. It's to keep someone you're showing the game to from having complete access to all your characters; or to keep your little brother or sister (or parent or roommate or spouse) who doesn't know your password but snuck on while you were using the bathroom from deleting all of your characters or renaming them all, etc, etc.

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It has been suggested many times that they could put in a new switch in Options that turned on the behavior of allowing log out to go to server selection instead of the log in screen. That way by default new accounts get the more secure way of logging out, but a player could choose to have the faster character switching if desired.

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Thats a 100% stupid idea.

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Under what logic??


[/ QUOTE ] Some people use the email system. Optional filters would be a much better way to handle the problem. People could choose who to receive emails from.

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To elaborate, our spam problems would be solved if email was changed to only allow messages from friends and SG/coalition members.

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Oh I agree. But I am only checking if ANY one does it. If anyone does it, then it is wrong to say that "it won't hurt the market" at all. The only question is will it hurt the market "enough" to be impactful, or not. That is why I mention the complaints about the BM already being slow, since that suggests any slow down would be problematic.

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Well, I think it's helpful to define an "impactful scenario" as one that is actually significant. If there's an impact that proves insignficant, then it's safe to round down to "no impact". An old teacher of mine used to call that "a distinction without a difference".

For example, if this change went live and it was found that 1% of the players started banking all or most of their goods with alts instead of putting them on the market, I'd say it was worth it and the 1% counts as insignificant impact. If that number was 25%, that'd be significant, and would have an obvious impact on the markets.

Maybe that's the problem with this debate. It really revolves around presumed future behavior. It's obvious to some folks that it'll have a negative impact on availability of goods at WWs, and just as obvious to other folks that it won't!

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If you can trade items between characters, is there ANY character on ANY account that would have inherited ANY item rather then put that item onto the market. Some people seem to claim this isn't the case, but I know for a fact that it is because I have. I fully believe many players have done so.

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This doesn't seem like clearing the hurdle required for a proof. Asserting that because you have traded items to alts and even that "many players have" proves that an email system would make this the default scenario thus destroying the market is a huge leap.

I have 3 accounts, with multiple alts parked at WWs. It's trivially easy for me to move items between characters. But my normal practice is to convert items to Inf by selling them. Later, if an alt needs an IO, I buy it. But my practices don't prove a norm, any more than yours do.

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/unsigned for all the reasons given.

There would be little point to selling IOs,salvage, recipes, etc. you can't use if you can just easily mail them to an alt.

That WOULD have a more negative impact on the market. That's enough to /unsign it right there.

If we had a game pop like WoW's where there are enough sellers to offset it, then that's a different story. Unfortunately we don't. Our population of market users is so small that any things done that take extra supply off the market has an effect (see merits).

Again, /unsigned.

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I see the "it'll hurt the market" as the only substantive objection ever given to this idea. And (I wish I'd bookmarked it) I've seen posts in previous threads where it was pointed out that several MMOs include the ability to send items to one's alts and it hasn't caused the market apocalypse that is proclaimed will happen. Can someone chime in with some actual examples of how the ability to send items to alts has killed/not killed markets in other MMOs? EDIT: to clarify, I've seen the claim in the past that "most other MMOs already offer the ability to send items to alts." If that's true, this is a totally baseless objection.

By the way, I don't understand your example of citing WoW's user population as being significant. What does it matter if 100K or 10M people use a market in this scenario? In other scenarios it matters (i.e. arbitrage of slow-moving goods is easier in a low population market), but I don't see it relevant here.

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give us a plane map for MA

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so I can create a "Defeat all Snakes on Plane" Mission

[/ QUOTE ]Would that be the physical plane, astral plane, causal plane, akashic plane, mental plane, messianic plane, or the buddhaic plane?

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None of those. Just a plain plane.

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With those new games coming out, there isn't even a guarantee that this game will be alive in a year. It's currently still a cash cow for NCSoft. I believe it's the second biggest source of revenue behind GuildWars. But the upcoming competiton will surely change that.

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Definitely. I don't think playing dress up with our toons and now enemy toons is enough to maintain any kind of sustainable competitive advantage.

MA seems like it could be a golden ticket, but the current edition of it is pretty weak. I don't think they have years to improve it either.

Every 'feature' in this game is only half complete whether it be pvp, base building, modding, raiding, loot, market etc. Not every game offers everything that cox does, but cox doesn't do a good job on anything it does offer, so unless you take advantage of a ton of their packages we will likely find better games elsewhere.

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I think you're dramatically underestimating the advantage a game has when it has been out for 5 years. It's true that newer games will have new graphics engines and are designed for things like power customization that will require tremendous effort to achieve in this engine. But any 1.0 version of an MMO is going to have tons of shortcomings and balance issues and a fairly shallow pool of content compared to when that same game has been out for a couple of years. And if you think CO and DCUO won't have devs equipped with nerf bats, you're an amazingly optimistic person.

WRT to the MA, what we have now is just a 1.0 release. What's there already is good, and it'll get better.

The most important game-changer is the additional staff that they hired on. And they are still hiring. I manage a software team for a living and I can tell you the difference you can make when you grow a team the way they've grown theirs is HUGE. The product I manage has more than a million lines of code. It takes a smart programmer typically about 6 months before they can make meaningful contributions. I expect it's about the same with COH. A lot of the hiring was done in the last half of last year so I'd expect the payoff to come in the second half of this year. Time will tell.

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I think it stands for y'all should bite me.

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