SlickRiptide

Speaking of the flag - This is fresh in my mind from having brought it up in another thread today:

Did you know... Lighting the flag

During beta and post-launch, the flag atop city hall was not lighted at night. A patriotic hero named Stateswoman noticed this and started a thread on the forums, noting that there are rules for proper display of the American flag. One of these rules is that a flag that is left flying at night must be lighted for all to see.

The thread ran for about a month, with most posters supporting the notion due primarily to it seeming to be a minor thing to "fix". (There was also a fair share of the "dude, relax, it's a game" folks replying.)

The devs never replied to any postings in the thread and never made any fanfare about it, but when Issue Two arrived, voila! The flag had acquired a set of spotlights that turn on at dusk and turn off at dawn. Just one more of those little quality of life things that the devs like to sneak in after we talk about them here.

A throwback to the first entry in the thread here - Thanks to alert forum poster "Nobody", we now have Numina's original concept art.

Did you know... The Rikti Invasion

Beta test for City of Heroes ended roughly one week before early launch at the end of April 2004. In the final few days of beta a frightening sight began to make regular appearances in Atlas Park and other zones: A Rikti mother ship! It seemed that the Rikti might be content to merely scan the city, but in the last couple of hours of beta the invaders struck!

For those of us who had spent beta tooling around in the lower echelons of herodom, our first sight of an actual Rikti was a pretty groovy event, let alone getting off of the train in Atlas Park or King's Row and finding waves of fifty or more atttacking everything that moved!

The heroes fought hard and held off the attacking hordes, yet each time we conquered, they attacked with renewed vigor. It was an awesome sight, with my poor MX440 card going into slideshow mode at times due to all of the power effects firing simultaneously. (Nowadays you can disable a lot of those lag-inducing special effects.)

As I recall, Positron took control of one of the Rikti commanders and was actively trying to kill as many heroes as he could!

I missed the final few moments. I can say, though, that it was the most fun I'd had in an MMO in a long time, even if The Artitste got extremely familiar with the flavor of pavement on that day.

Did you know... Paragon Dance Party

Issue Three, _A Council of War_, contained a huge amount of new content. However, a bonus was snuck into the issue: A secret project instigated by NCSoft's Geko, aided and abetted by a Cryptic developer (Ravenstorm?). Even Jack Emmert, The Statesman himself, didn't know about it.

The first hints that something was up was the appearance of fliers advertising Paragon Dance Party in three city zones. Inquisitive folk soon discovered that the doors near the fliers opened into a secret, inter-dimensional rave club!

The official announcement brought out tons of activity and PDP on the Test Server was crowded with partying heroes nearly every night. "Pocket D" looked like a hit.

Due to it's nature as a "secret bonus" that was snuck in on a lark, Paragon Dance Party had no draw other than roleplay. Once Issue Three went live, the nightclub was popular for a couple of months, but the novelty eventually faded and it became primarily a shortcut for traveling between the "door zones".

In February 2006, Pocket D was re-invented. The warehouse rave was replaced with a real danceclub, floating in a Shadow-Shard-like alternate dimension. Best of all, both villains and heroes can visit and even team up for missions while in the dance club. The new Pocket D is an official part of the game and looks to add a whole new depth to the interactions between the hero and villain factions.

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(Correct me if I am wrong my memory is kinda foggy on this one) Did you know if you saved a citizen from a mob that they used to give you influence?

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This is still true, up into the late twenties/early thirties someplace. By that time you're making so much influence from missions that you'd never notice the small bits from the grateful citizens anyway.

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And it wasn't the Pantheon, it was CoT. I remember.

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There were multiple villain groups competing over the Malleus Mundi. The Fifth Column figured heavily into things as well.
We mostly got fragments of that story as opposed to a single storyline. I'm not sure I ever saw a single authoritative summary of exactly what happened.

Interesting stuff. Several things that I didn't know about and I've been around since beta 3.

Did you know... More Real-Life Influences on Zone Names

King's Row is a real-life street located roughly 1/4 mile from the offices of Cryptic Studios. The nearest cross street to Cryptic's street address is East Gish Road. You might not realize it if you grew up mainly in The Hollows, but The Gish is one of the neighborhoods in central King's Row in City of Heroes.

Did you know... One of the hazard zones was named by a forum reader?

On September 19, 2003, Cryptic announced a new contest. This contest involved forum readers submitting names for one of the hazard zones that were being designed for City of Heroes. As it turned out, there were four winners who submitted substantially the same name as that picked by the judges. Crey's Folley acquired its name as a result of this contest.

Anyone have any listings of some of the non-winning entries?

Did you know... One of the Surviving Eight is a player-created Hero!

In the pre-beta days, when City of Heroes was still not-quite-vaporware, Cryptic and NCSoft hosted a contest in which forum members were invited to submit one of the Surviving Eight members of the Freedom Phalanx. The winner was revealed on July 24, 2003. On that date, Numina joined the ranks of the elite of Paragon City's heroes. Her current description differs from that of the original contest entry in only minor details. Her physical description is different than her in-game appearance to the extent that she has a body in the game (and now, the comic) whereas she was originally described as an astral presence that had lost its original body.

Alas, the Wayback Machine has lost track of Numina's original concept art. If anyone has access to it, please PM me and I'll add a link to it.

In scanning through the web for various bits of info recently, I've become aware of many things that I didn't know, and of the apparent erosion of data referring to many things I did know.

Thanks to website reform, forum pruning, and the general come and go of players and developers, a lot of history that we old-timers take for granted is slipping away unnoticed.

My proposal for this thread is that we try to document as well as we can the memorable events in the history of CoH, both in-game and out. There's no limit on what information you might deem worthy of preservation Simply ask yourself "Is this information I'm posting something that would interest a player reading it five years from now?"

We don't have to limit ourselves to just the MMO. Background on developers or notable players is welcome, as long as it is factual. The forums and website (pre-beta, beta, post-Live) are as much a part of the game experience as the game itself.

The important thing is that you can cite a reference if you make particular claims about an event or a rumor. If you write a paragraph about how "Statesman once said X" then be prepared to cite the source of the statement.

So, help preserve the history of CoX. If you were at the Rikti Invasion at the end of Beta, write a paragraph or two about it. If something particularly noteworthy happened on your server that people still talk about, make a record of it. If you remember a bit of info that it seems like nobody else remembers any more, research it and record it so that it isn't forgotten for good. It doesn't have to be the "mists of time". Something significant that happened yesterday will be ancient history when it's read by someone playing Galaxy of Heroes five years from now.

What server? Does the level matter or should it be a level 40?

Peritus;

I'd like to ask you a favor. You may have noticed (or not) a discussion in the powers forum about Superior Inviz. What I'm trying to establish is whether Superior Inviz and/or Group Inviz actually have a higher -per value than the non-stalker cap.

There doesn't seem to be any way to measure this for Superior Invisibility. However, I think it could be measured for group invisibility via the Pocket D missions. An illusion controller could put group inviz onto a teamed up stalker, and that stalker could then be measured in the same way that I assume you measured pool power invisibility.

Superior Inviz has historically been better than Group Inviz and pool power Inviz. If Group Inviz, as measured by the stalker, came out at something higher than the non-stalker cap then it would be safe to assume that Superior Inviz would at least match it.

What I'd like to determine, obviously, is whether SI and possibly GI are being hard-capped at lower values than they were intended to be due to being used by a controller. If that's the case then I'd like to ask the devs to take a look and determine whether the current behavior is the intended behavior or whether illusion controllers ought to be an exception to the caps when using their own powers.

My illusion controller is only 34 and doesn't have group inviz, so I can't offer to help, unfortunately. If you care to investigate, though, I'll be in your debt.

Thanks.

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In a bigger event it would also be nice to see things like events. Costume contests, talent show, kareoke, open bar, you name it... it would be fun. Of course I'm probably thinking bigger than they are, but it would be a blast.


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I bet they're thinking bigger than you think, at least in theory. Look at the SoE fanfests for a sample of what they might be considering.

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That's what I said. Statesman has every right to kick Manticore off the team. But he doesn't have any political standing, and he can't revoke Manticore's hero license.

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Okay, but Statesman didn't suspend Manticore's hero license. He suspended Manticore from duty along with an explicit order, as a team captain to a team member. Manticore was perfectly free to go off on his own and continue being a legally deputized and licensed hero, as long as he was willing to accept the consequences that would have with his "captain".

Breaking his bow was a bit over the top but Statesman is certainly aware of the fact that Justin keeps dozens of bows around the mansion. The act was primarily symbolic.

When you're the captain of a team, you've got the authority to punish team members for violations.

If Manticore accepts the punishment, it's because the alternative is to quit the team. When you're a member of THE elite superhero team of the world, are you going to quit just because your leader got mad and sidelined you for awhile?

Of course, now it looks like Manticore may be doing that very thing... Until next month, anyway...

Or you can get the bow and arrow temp power and make your existing hero into Cupid.

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So I'm wondering, to get a Beacon badge, would you have to avoid getting Explore badges until you are a part of an SG with an active base to earn those badges (or find some new guy or gal to join up with the SG and drag them around to the different Explore badge sites)?


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Yep, that's how it works. You have to be in supergroup mode when you are awarded the badges.

On another note, beacon badges are only available for hazard/trial zones.

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When I did it, it was simple enough. 5 contiguous (look up the difference between contiguous and continuous if you need to) hours in the zone for a given toon. No travel, no door missions. I logged out for real life or to switch toons with no problems. I was not disconnected by the game accidentally. I DID need to logout then come back to get the "Badge Earned" messages.

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I got WebMaster (the five hour Warburg badge) out of the blue. I had certainly spent much time in Warburg but I hadn't made them all "contiguous" blocks of time. I'd gone to other zones, done non-PvP missions, etc... I was just fighting in the WEB and the badge got awarded.

From my experience, if you spend five hours, you get it. It doesn't matter how the blocks of time are broken up. Granted, though, that running missions in a PvP zone probably doesn't count. I'd say that you need to spend the five hours in the outdoor portion of the zone.

Two things, Positron -

First - The hero PvP badges have text that's written from the point of view of the villains. When are we going to get hero versions of the shared badges?

Second - My hero got Agent-Provacateur after doing one mission in Warburg. This happened AFTER the latest patch. According to the badge text, this is a 50-mission badge.

It might be significant that the hero in question had accepted only one mission in Warburg before this, exited the mission unfinished, and logged out in another zone instead of completing it. In both cases (the incomplete mission and the mission that awarded the badge), the missions were Hero-side "Defend the Supply Depot" missions.

The most missions this hero had run in other PvP zones was two. Nothing like fifty.

On the one hand, the story was well-written, gave a lot of info, and Arctic-Sun owned up to the inconsistencies and is fixing them promptly.

On the other hand, this story inconsistency is becoming a recurring problem. (Prime example: the "accidental" [overzealous writer] ret-conning of the death of Atlas.) It gives the appearance that the story people aren't beholden to anyone and are just publishing whatever they feel like writing.

It's indicative of a possible managerial problem at Cryptic. Someone should be in charge of the storyline there, and that someone should be reviewing background material before it goes live; regardless of whether it's on the web or in the game proper.


This is worth pointing out to Cryptic. It doesn't mean we hate the writers. It means that we enjoy it enough to want a consistent background.

Apathy would be a much harsher response than asking the writing staff to please double-check their facts before publication.

Considering how important Galaxy Girl is to Galaxy City in particular and Paragon City in general, I've always felt she got short shrift with that matchbook-cover-sized origin story on the plaque mounted near her statue. Great to finally learn the whole story about Galaxy Girl. Good work.

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I'm not going to always write the best responses, but you'll at least have truthful ones.

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And, honestly, this is one of the reasons I'm still a subscriber to the game. Game operators don't always understand how much difference it makes to have open communication lines, even if we the players don't always agree with the devs.

Thanks for bucking the trend.

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I agree with you why isn't the Brawler with the team??? But at the same time I ask where is Numina, and Ms. Liberty, and the Woodsman, some of the other characters that we have know and loved?

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None of those characters are members of the Freedom Phalanx. The Back Alley Brawler, for example, is the leader of The Regulators, most of whom were killed during the Rikti War. He and the other trainers are sort of "associate members" of the Phalanx but are not actually on the team. The Phalanx members you meet in-game are primarily task force contacts. The trainers are famous but not neccesarily relevant to the activities of the Freedom Phalanx.

I didn't particularly like Top Cow #1 because of the way it jerked the setting around. Everyone goes placidly about their lives and are even happy that the heroes are gone? Doesn't sound like the Paragon City I know and love...

I was prepared to dislike Issue #2 but in the end I grudgingly admitted to myself that is pretty good. Once I accepted the back-story, the story of Issue #2 fell right into place for me. Mark Waid's take on the Freedom Phalanx may not mirror the Freedom Phalanx in my imagination, but accepted on their own terms they make for an interesting read.

I can easily picture Statesman being the "carry the whole load on my shoulders" type. He's arguably the most powerful hero in Paragon City. He's got more experience than anyone after some 70 years. Everyone admires him, even his enemies. He'd take his leadership role so much for granted that it would never occur to him that some people might see him as arrogant and bossy.

Likewise, while Manticore is a bit grim for my tastes, I think his sub-text is interesting as the guy with natural leadership qualities that are overshadowed by everyone's hero-worship of Statesman. There are likely a lot of natural origin heroes who are coming to the realization that they have a chance to be "first stringers" as the Warriors guy puts it. Manticore has to face that tempation several times overtly and has assuredly considered this very thing over the six weeks preceding his re-assemblage of the Phalanx. His decision to fight the good fight for his fellow heroes does him credit no matter that his personality may not make him the most likable guy on the team.

As for the last page,I suspect that Manticore knows his mythology and is gambling that "Torchy" subjected "Zeus" to the "whole nine yards" rather than just a symbolic punishment. We'll see what happens when dawn shines down on that rock Statesman is bound to. If not, well, Statesman would certainly sacrifice his own life if it meant that impending world-wide doom could be prevented. (Never mind that it may have given Manticore a certain amount of satisfaction to put an arrow in a spot he's thought about more than once when he was feeling annoyed with his Fearless Leader. *heh*)