Tal_N

Just a small heads up, since I have some time-off due over the holiday season I'm planning on an update for this guide. It'll have the corrections about how SI and GI function, showing that SI doesn't supress much like GI doesn't either in PvE as well as having a new chapter on IO sets and bonuses.

The powers section will also be updated to include what IO sets each power accepts. I should have it ready in time for the new year.

I guess this means that you guys won't get getting much time off this winter season like normal eh? The new year arrives with a bunch of newbies to train and headaches to live through.

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Considering it's pretty much the same people running the show I don't see there being too many negative changes.

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My concern is that it'll turn into SWG all over again. Publishers, so far, in my experience are more interested in getting bullet point features onto their marketting promotions and on packaging as possible rather than actually adding features that are of use and are of a high quality. Take a look at SWG and its development history, it has alot of 'features' but their half broken and the publishers didn't care because in the end it looks good from a marketting angle.

Cryptic have proven themselves to have the attitude that if something is to be done, then it HAS to be done well. That kind of attitude is why I'd give any game they made a decent look because thats how games should be made. However NCSoft is a complete unknown except for Tabula Rasa which I have seen first hand and it smells of the same kind of attitude which dragged SWG into the gutter. Lots of features, not polished and features added which don't actually improve the experience for the player.

While the development control is with the devs still the choices in where the budget is spent and where deadlines are made is more firmly in the hands of the publisher now, not the dev team.

Frankly I feel unsettled that development control being taken away from Cryptic and given to NCSoft. I have yet to see a game where executives sitting in offices have understood what is best for the game compared to the developers who are working with it directly and have experience from their successes and mistakes.

This might be what finally makes me leave the CoX community should the devs/corperation goons not keep to the original vision that Cryptic has laid out for them.

Ok, question. Does this mean that Cryptic is no longer going to be developing CoX and that we'll have an all new development team? Or is the new office simply adding extra manpower to the existing development team?

Someone at marketting knows something that we don't. They must see a long term interest in CoX so perhaps that deal for a CoX TV series is actually looking more realistic.

All the villains need now is as many new zones as the heroes do rather than simply sharing zones with them.

The heroes have the Shadow Shard, Striga, Faultline, Croatoa and The Hollows. But the villains have had no 'side zones' for 2 years, within 2 years of CoH they were getting around 1 new zone every 12 months. I would say PI is also a side zone but to be fair it's the equivilent of Grandeville so it doesn't count.

You don't know who I am. That's a nice thing.
Oh and you have a nice avatar.

Flight, Concealment and Speed. While concealment might seem like a waste I have found Phase Shift to be ideal considering it gives me the ability to fight while risk free, my temp Phase Shift powers are running out so PS is gonna be one of the final powers I take. Also Invis Other comes in handy for more regularly available stealthing of others like the Phantasm.

Under the tactics section of this guide there is mention of what I call 'the DoT of Doom'. This can be somewhat hard to explain and equally hard to master. So here is a video which shows the DoT of Doom is performed. In this case it's being used on two +2 Rikti Bosses at the same time. The larger the crowd the harder it is to pull off remember.

Put my guide in the guide to guides please. Link's in my sig.

Smoke and Mirrors. It's a term used to describe how stage magicians perform their tricks and illusions. Who would I need to contact to get it added to the controllers guide listings?

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The veteran scheme doesn't offer rewards, it offers awards once you get far enough into it.

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Semantic gibberish.

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Heroes of army conflicts are awarded medals of bravery and accomplishment. The medals themselves are not especially valuable but they have meaning. If someone goes missing or if someone has property stolen then they may offer a reward for it's return, the reward is often monetary or something of high monetary value. Something someone will want because it's valuable.

If you were to return a lost dog to someone and they gave you a slip of paper which marked the occasion but was essentially an A4 sheet with fancy writing on it you may feel that it wasn't worth the effort to return the dog.

That is the difference between a reward and an award. I'm peeved that the devs started off the system giving us valuable things, temp powers, costume peices which are generic enough to use on many types of characters and rare in themselves. But as time moves on we have veteran pets, a novelty at best and Kilts and Boxing gloves. They say it's so newbies don't feel that the system means they miss out on things.

Fine, very noble of them to think of the kiddies in the community who don't have patience. I can accept that. But don't turn around and say you're rewarding me for 'loyalty' when infact it's just something to mark yet another milestone of subscription. A peice of paper with fancy writing on it. Yes, it's all in the wording. But the one thing I hate is hypocracy above all else and that is what the veteran 'reward' system represents.

What I mean is that the devs need to get a grip and realise you cannot meet both demands. The veterans want rewards worthy of the time they have spent playing the game if the developers are willing to reward their loyalty, however people who are newer and won't see those veteran rewards for several years will, in some cases, complain because they feel its too long for them to wait for something so cool. These are opposing viewpoints and you cannot cater to both.

People have some obscure concept that costume peices are too essentially to be veteran rewards. I find that remarkable since they are purely aesthetic in nature and have utterly no bearing on the success of a player in-game compared to temporary powers.

If the devs want to make even a partial effort to be genuine to the spirit of what the veteran reward system is intended to be there for they need to bite the bullet and side with the veterans. Offering better bonuses to loyal customers or people who have paid more is a well established business habit, no different than the idea of buying in bulk (more money up front = deductions on cost) or offering reduced service charges to customers who have been with the company for a long time (vouchers from pizza delivery companys you regularly use).

I have a million and one ideas on what they can use next from remote shop access to avoid wandering around selling enhancements and salvage to a temporary power which can be used once a week and gives you 3 hours of double exp. Even something as simple as allowing auras and capes from level 1 rather than their normally unlocked levels would be a really good reward. Or starting new characters from level 20 rather than level 1 to remove the tedium of taking more alts through the lower levels.

Can you please stop claiming that the veteran reward system is a 'program which rewards loyal players' because as we all know it doesn't work like that.

Someone who has been playing for 3 months has more useful and more rewarding bonuses than someone who has been playing for 3 years. A reward is when you give someone something of value to them, an award is something to just mark an occasion.

The veteran scheme doesn't offer rewards, it offers awards once you get far enough into it. It's only rewarding for the first couple years when you get universally valuable things like trenchcoats, wings, temp powers and respecs. Once you get into the 2-3 year mark you have more respecs than you could ever need thus making them devalued and you're not getting costume peices which can be used on a wide range of characters, instead you get very very specific costume peices which are restrictive and not even suitable for super humans half the time.

It's been said time and time again, you cannot claim it offers rewards for loyalty when you insist on ensuring that people who haven't subscribed as long don't feel 'left out'. A reward is valuable because people want it, soon as it stops being desirable it's not a reward anymore.

I said over a year ago that 2007 was going to be a great year and I was right. But looking at how things are warming up a bit later in the year than I expected I'd say 2008 will be a whole lot more interesting again.

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Hey BAB, has there been any news lately on the development of that Psionic Weaponry set? I'd love to know if my hopes for it are at least remotely founded.

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Castle makes a strange noise whenever it's mentioned.

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He should see someone about that.

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Castle just has a thing for Psylocke and gets all tingly when someone mentions a powerset which is an almost direct rip of her abilities

She's over at the TR beta forum attempting to contain the riot from unhappy beta testers.

Castle escaped for like 10 minutes earlier, then Matt got Lighthouse and co to chain him back down to his chair.

Yeah, as you said even with these guides there is very fundamental things which might seem obvious to someone but in reality what is needed is a guide for people who can't figure this stuff out themselves.

I've only been studying this casually for a week and after reading alot of guides there are many things which weren't covered which are in my opinion essential. Like that 0, 0, 0 for a camera is north facing but 0, 0, 0 is south facing, I realise it's mentioned in passing in MasterMarbles guide but not only bogged down in jargon but it's also something which needs to be explained in full and not skimmed over because people will get confused very easily if they're trying to make the player and the camera turn to the east and then wonder why the player is actually looking west.

Also it wouldn't hurt to provide example demo files which people can play and then read, something stripped down to just the essentials like what I now have. But only after spending an evening figuring out the demo editor and then working out what was needed as a minimum for a demo to function. Dummies do exist and they need to be catered for.

Since alot of folks liked my Illus/Storm guide I figured I'd try my hand at something a little more technical. I have seen alot of demo editing and video making guides however alot of them don't start with the absolute basics and build up. They appear to tell you what everything does but doesn't explain how to use that knowledge to edit a demo.

This is however going from a weeks worth of researching so I need to ask for some help. Do any of you know if their exists are good dummies guide to demo editing?

Starting with something as basic as pointing out that in the PYR command the yaw isn't a degree at all but a point based system. The guides I saw didn't say that for the camera 0 0 0 is a north facing camera but to get a north facing player you need 0 3.2 0. Which seems like something quite basic.

While I did see alot of suggestions that people copy and paste in an attempt to splice together demo files the fact is that fine control over the demo itself is better than having half understanding of what you're doing. It also leads to better creativity as ideas stem from understanding.

So then, thoughts? Is a Dummes Guide to Demo Editing needed?

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The BIG misconception about this power is that it takes away a Tankers aggro keeping power. NOT TRUE. As a matter of fact if you Invis an Invuln Tank with this and he has all his toggles running the inherent Taunt will get them the aggro just like normal. The added Defense is a nice bonus too.

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A misconception about a percieved misconception. (try saying that 3 times fast)

Ok, how does the AI choose a target from a crowd of enemies? Ever wondered why the blasters take aggro from across the room. Why that tanker is keeping enemies so close to them? There are a number of factors which define who the AI chooses to target over another, they are:

Distance to target.
Threat multiplier of target. (AT specific)
Damage target is causing to 'me'.
Visibility of target.
Taunt value.

Now if you have two targets standing next to each other and the AI just aggro'd to them both it'll weigh up these values. A tanker standing next to a defender has a much higher chance of being chosen since it has a higher 'threat value' than the defender. If the tanker however is further away and invisible then the AI will choose to attack the defender.

Thus any kind of change to the stealth value of a npc or player means they are less likely to be attacked compared to a nearer or more visible target. Tankers maintain close range aggro due to gauntlet and their taunt auras, however targets outside of that area will quite happily choose a more visible target. So you can see, GI works against the tankers ability to hold and attract aggro.

Guy who did the voice over needs to be fired, or at least hire a professional voice actor to handle it please because some parts of his voice over were very hammy. Some nice camera angles though but there needed to be alot more action scenes and less 'one on one' scenes with a lone rikti shooting some heroes in PI with a mid-range camera shot.

I know it's low budget but come on now, I've seen some of the fans here construct more gripping vids. What happened to the CGI stuff as well? While I realise that these take months to prepare it wouldn't hurt to see one maybe once a year rather than occasionally for things like E3.

A good issue but not a 5 star one. I prefer something with more storyline, new costumes and definently more powers. Those would be 5 star, 4 star alone for new powers. 3 for a new feature which is sorta beneficial to me.

2nd Rikti War
New super villain
Finally the appearence of the vanguard
storyingline FINALLY moving forwards after a 3yr long stall

yes... I
Am
Pleased.