DR_Mechano

This one has a shockingly simple but rather surprising answer. It's the way Korean companies handle things. You see admitting failure is a massive loss of face so they never do it, they'll just quietly shutter games instead. At the time NCsoft were worried that someone, whether it was the devs themselves (who offered to buyout the IP for probably more than it was actually worth to NCsoft, even at the time, rumous float around that they offered anywhere from 1-3 million dollars) or another company entirely will turn that failure into their success. The worst kind of loss of face is seen if you're company sold off the product to another company since it wasn't working for you and then that other company having a massive success with it. It is basically admitting that you failed and the failure was ALL you because clearly this other company knows how to make it work. Because of this fear Korean companies will cling to IPs like their life depended on it, even if it's not making them any money and they have no future plans for it to make any money. I suspect the reason NCsoft are willing to talk now is because A) They'd still technically be in charge of the IP but the work would be done by someone else so it doesn't actually cost them anything whilst offering a return on cost because said cost to them is basically zero, which is a win/win to them and B) The code is out in the wild, if they can have at least one legitimate server it means they can try to go after others. This was the other reason for the WoW classic server, it meant that Blizzard could not only service a clearly very large playerbase that was out there with an official product but it meant that any private server who go too big for their boots could be easily shutdown if they were within the US or Europe (again, apart from Russia, Russia is a very different beast to the rest of Europe and is quite proud of its private server culture running on home soil). CoH is beyond dead as an IP for them in Korea, it was never alive to begin with so it's not threatening any of that market and considering it's totally alien to Guild Wars 2 it's not going to be threatening that market either since that's pretty much their only game in the west with any major presence and, as said, the cost to them to OK a single legitimate server cluster since its upkeep is paid for by the fans and our numbers aren't even pocket change to NCsoft, they're lint I imagine it should do them no harm. The other thing is that the MMO genre as a whole is nowhere near the juggernaut it use to be. WoWs sub numbers on retail were in a spiraling decline with the disastrous release of Battle for Azeroth (speculation and some insider knowledge put the sub numbers at 1.5 million after just three months of the expansion and continuing to fall) which was buoyed up by the release of WoW Classic which caused a million people to sub back up again at launch BUT we don't know how many are still playing it and whether the dreaded six month curse struck hard (the usual sub loss of about 50-70% once the new and shiny has worn off) . Guild Wars 2 keeps ticking along because it's free and if you bought the boxed game at launch all you have to pay for is the expansions once a year, nobody knows its player numbers but it is seen as the last remaining 'big three' with WoW and the next MMO mentioned. Now the real surprise success story is Final Fantasy. At launch a terrible MMO which bombed hard, taken out back and actually given the treatment it needed to survive instead of getting shot (there is an excellent documentary about it on youtube with the horrendous crunch the devs inflicted on themselves, through their own choice, to get the MMO good again, at the time SE were willing to just ditch the whole thing and write it off but the dev team worked their asses off). Now, with the failure of Battle for Azeroth quite a large chunk of the playerbase migrated to FF to the point it's now second of the big three and capable of even challenging WoW for the top spot these days.

As is often pointed out WoW private servers are STILL up and running after all these years and ActiBlizzard is notorious for going after private servers. For example there was a private vanilla server that got huge numbers and was, partially, the reason why they went back on their "you think you do, but you don't" thing with regards WoW classic. At its peak this server was kicking out around 800k players. It was big enough that, at least in the spaces I was in, people were just ditching their WoW sub to go and play on this server. Not only that but it was being covered by major news outlets (and I do mean major, ALL of the gaming spaces were filled with news about it because it was people basically pointing to it going "See, you're wrong Blizzard") It was only when it got big enough to actually hurt their bottom line (especially considering rumours put then current WoW retail sub count at around 2.5 million or less, so it was really doing a number on their bottom line) that they send a C&D letter since most other private servers never get one. So yeah Nostralrius was HUGE, probably the biggest private server for an MMO we've ever seen and, even after they got shut down, the devs just put the sourcecode for their server out on a Russian website which caused it to spread like wildfire and, to this day, there are still free to play Classic WoW servers out there in the wild. The thing is it would cost more for Blizzard to go after them and have to constantly try to shut down every single private server, especially now that they're offering a directly supported product with WoW classic. I mean just look at it: https://www.dkpminus.com/wow/private-servers/ Still quite a few up and kicking as well as some quite fairly well known ones like the Ascension Classless private server that got a fair bit of coverage and RetroWoW which has been up and running for 5 years. Now lets take at look at NCsoft. Currently they have virtually no presence in the western sphere outside of Guild Wars 2. From what we can tell NCsoft really couldn't care less about their games succeeding in the west anymore, they're focused very heavily on their Korean market. They tried time and time again to port over their successful Korean MMOs to the west. Aion required a MASSIVE rework because western MMO players and Korean MMO players are two very different beasts and even then it actually bombed fairly hard for them. Ever since then they've made token gestures at best towards the western market if they bother at all. City of Heroes is an IP which is pretty much dead to them, they can't use it in their own home country because unlike say Lineage it has zero brand recognition. It is a niche MMO even within the western sphere and has been out of the gaming loop for so long that its got no major brand recognition of its own. The money it would cost to try and constantly stamp out private servers even if they COULD stamp out private servers (most will get hosted in Russia which has notoriously lax laws about this and any company trying to sue which isn't Russian usually just gets ignored or told to get lost) means the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Sure they CAN do it but why would they? Protecting their IP is basically a lost cause now that the sourcecode is out in the wild. This was probably one of the big mistakes the Tabula Rasa server team did, they kept everything to themselves but if all this had been released into the wild you'd probably find at least one private server kicking around still to this day. I mean just look at this, a WoW private server is EVEN giving cash money for tournament prizes.. https://www.dkpminus.com/wow/news/warmane-announces-a-5000-3v3-tournament/ If they can continue to survive, I think CoH can.

Yes FFG was turned on when I looked at the build, it only gets to about 30% ish defense, with the protector bot bubble thats 37% ish, still not near softcap. Now with the -tohit buffs from seekers that might be enough however my thought process was that the lower the defense the more likely any debuffs with hit checks are to sneak through. To be fair Bots/Traps is going to suffer from cascading defense failure due to it not having any defense debuff resistances so in those situations your higher energy/neg resistance might be more useful. Also your build is a tankermind build whereas mine is designed so that the pets are the one tanking (usually the assault bot). Basically the builds are designed for two very different approaches so there is now way of saying which is best. The build you enjoy playing is the best build, so keep at it.

Few minor problems. 1) In order to test stuff I'd need to get my own server started, unfortunately the downloadable option for Issue 25 is sans any and all updates for it so I'd be working with an old version which may cause compatibility issues with the live one. 2) I have the artistic talent of a Pear, I'd need to outsource for any major reworkings, especially things like 3D model work (like say cropping parts off of NPCs, adding the four different layers needed so that they can be used for player customization in that they would be color customizable, rigging them to the right points on said player model, making sure they're in the right categories...seriously the amount of work needed for new costume items, let alone the ones currently ingame, is astounding). The lacking in artistic talent is probably the major problem here.

Hmm interesting. You mentioned being worried about defenses in my build but yours fails to softcap defenses even with the Protector Bot bubble. If you're constantly teaming with someone who can provide +def that's fine. I suppose my build is built for soloing since it doesn't rely on outside buffs. The only reason I took field medic was because the simple act of taking it makes Aid Other not have an interrupt chance, there was always that moment, a slim one but it did happen, I'd be using Aid Other and something would sneak through the defenses causing an interupt. Still if the build is working for you, keep at it!

That was because I already had the Winter IO set in the build for Targetted AoE so taking Fire Blast means I could slot the Ranged Winter IO set, thus providing more defense, meaning I could be softcapped. However, having made a miscalculation, I agree dropping Fire Blast for Fire Ball would make more sense. So you are correct. As I said I hadn't factored in the Protector Bots shield. A rejigged build would look something like this, It's not much cheaper but I switched out one of Gravitational Anchor for Basilisks gaze since it provides extra defense and only loses 2.5% recharge. This puts me at 40% def to all without the protector bots bubble which would put me at softcap with and, making the changes you suggested of putting in Fire Ball for extra AoE. Also the chance for knockdown in Caltrops would stack with the knockdown effect from Bonfire turning it into knockback and one of the procs has inherent recharge in it, which actually lowers the proc chance so switched that out for a a basic Acc/Dam IO and a Dam/End IO, which set doesn't really matter but it's there. You could strip those slots out and put them elsewhere, not sure where but it's basically 2 free floating slots. If we were allowed a 5th Pool, naturally I would have taken Hasten but unfortunately isn't the case.

BOO! GET OFF THE STAGE! *throws fruit* But Trickshooter has a point though, not going to deny that.

Thank you, yes that is what I meant. It means you'd have more people working on more things, not more people working on one thing. That way if there is a breakthrough in...I don't know...they way costumes work and suddenly we can have asymmetrical costumes. The people working on that aren't causing a hold up with any power balancing changes because that is their little project and as such you don't have to first wait for everyone to finish doing 1 thing to move to the next. It means the team can focus on things like costumes, bug fixes, new powersets, UI updates etc. all at the same time without having to laser focus on one thing because they simply don't have the people to not get that one thing done first then move on to something else.

When making the build I actually forgot to take into account the bubble by the protector bots. Having tested it today, when the bots bubble me the build is actually just slightly over softcap where I have Melee, ranged and AoE at 46% defense as long as I'm within Forcefield generator. As for resistances I've got a decent amount, enough that bodyguard splits the damage with the bots meaning I don't get obliterated. 45% is considered enough for all but Incarnate trials content and since there are more likely several people running Barrier or other defensive buffs on your team during those trials, you're usually covered and pushing into the 50-60% defense realm is considered overkill. As for Barrier once you get to tier 4 (the very rare stage) of Destiny it lasts 120 seconds and recharges in 120 seconds, this is the case for all of them. It's why builds like TW/Bio can effectively skip major investment into endurance modification powers once they get ageless tier 4 since the recovery buff is more than enough to keep their blue bar full even at its lowest form. This Effectively makes the +5% def and +5% resistances a permanent bonus which you can't factor in on mids since it only shows the initial huge buff. This would actually put the build into overkill on defenses territory with my own defenses being at 51%. Bonfire turms from a high damage patch with a knockback effect into a high damage knockdown effect with the sudden acceleration KB>KD IO in it, meaning you keep mobs flopping around, throw Caltrops onto that stacked out with procs and you have yourself a major damage patch that mobs just can't seem to get out of. As for testing, I normally use 2 benchmarks of testing the build (and this was pre-complete build and pre any incarnate powers), one is the Marauder AV in the missions 'Marauder's cell' and the other is either Kraken or Eochai to test how the build does against large single targets and the build preformed just fine on both, especially once it got going and I was stacking multiple acid mortars and Triage Beacons.

Whichever you would prefer to be honest both fit the concept of the character and neither are out of place. As for me I tend to go for raw power over RP value on powers. Most of the stuff is explained anyway but there's a reason I don't RP certain characters, mainly because their theme doesn't fit well to RP. A person who is normal by day but a nigh unstoppable horror movie villain style hero (Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers sort of deal, big weapon, teleports behind people etc.) seeking vengeance on are above the law by night...eh the normal part would be fun but unless someone wants to be on the receiving end of a giant Chainsaw through the guts IC, the other part not so much.

I wouldn't object to this, making it 30 second baseline cooldown as a 50% AoE heal even without the resistance buff. This allows Bots/Traps to spec out of the medicine pool AND like you said, if it accepts pet sets suddenly it becomes way more useful, heck even desirable to be taken. Currently it's a power almost everyone skips because it's just bad...

Yeah repair is utter garbage and one of the reasons why Bots/Traps has to spec into Aid Other since it's secondary lacks any proper insta-healing effects...that and Aid Other is far more effective IMO than repair.

Well what do you know, he's right! So we can move that from the 'can't use' into the 'can use' pile. I mean if the Live devs were more than willing to use it without the belt, then players should be able to. Nice catch Sakura.

Actually those pieces aren't the Sybil outfits, they're exclusive to the Talons faction and they too have surprisingly wonky issues. If you want I can show you what the Sybil chest piece looks like without the belt. And here is the example without and with belt. Notice the large empty space where the belt should go.

Sadly it's also the case that 90% of the stuff on the Issue 24 servers takes a LOT of work to transfer over to the Issue 25 servers, even if they can do it. I'm not sure why but I'm assuming a lot of stuff was rejigged and changed during the SCORE years. There's also the fact that the two server groups HATE each other (I mean the HC devs may say they don't but lets be honest here, there is a lot of beef between the two server dev teams) so any progress one makes is often kept well within the confines of that server group with the other having to essentially reverse engineer the process (I believe Homecoming is the first to offer the 'mirror' for Phantom Army as an option).

Ok fair enough, that I understand. I get clearing up technical debt because we don't want the same situation CoH was in when it was live aka the "the person who knew how this worked has since left and nobody has any idea how it works any more so what we trained you on is completely pointless!" Thank you for your honesty Jimmy.

Bubblewrap was actually successful in getting the freakshow parts over to players, we have no idea how he did it (i imagine the people at Ourodev do) but they basically couldn't be recoloured, you got three options from claws, hook and hammer. He also transferred over the Freakshow Tank parts, again these couldn't be recoloured. I imagine the 'couldn't be recoloured' is what is keeping our devs from doing it because they want to get it done fully and be available to both genders since it was male only at the time of this post.

Ok, random question related to Bots/Traps. Why more defense? You can cover that with Barrier quite easily and giving your protector bots time to double bubble everyone which sits them at 37% def to all but AoE, which is softcapped (because I have the +def to AoE unique in there). The thing that I personally feel the bots need more of is resistance. This is why Barrier may seem like overkill but it offers a boost to +res as well as +def. This is my currently planned build and you'll notice that with just a bubble from the protector bots I don't sacrifice my own survivability so that I can have softcapped defenses (if Pets die, they die, it's a PITA to resummon them but if I die EVERYBODY dies). I also ditched Seekers since they're...kind of pants to be honest but that's just my opinion. I switched into Bonfire with the KB>KD IO because that turns it into a hilarious damage patch all of my own (that I can then combined with a proc-filled Caltrops). I also feel the Battledrones don't do as much KB as the Assault bot and you could get away with not sloting the KB>KD IO in there. To be fair this build was designed to go after big hard targets like AVs and GMs which Traps does so well against AND have some nice group AoE in the mix with Caltrops+Bonfire.

Actually, sadly there IS a reason for it. Hide for Stalkers, for example is required for the AT to even function, if you get the option to skip it, it kind of gimps the AT. I do believe this was tried before but, rather unfortunately, led to major problems and apparently made the game go kind of wonky because it's kind of hard coded into the game (kind of in that the game starts to go funny if you change it, not in the sense that it is unchangeable).

Actually, you know what, does anyone have any guides on where the hell to get started on actually working on these things? They say 'be the change you want to see' so to hell with it. I have ZERO knowledge on how things are going to work so a lot of it would be learning as I go. The only documentation I can find is for the Issue 24 servers and just changing skin textures looks like it needs 4 different 'maps'. Sadly I have the artistic talent of a pear so I might have to outsource the actual art editing. Failing that I can at least do work on transferring those pieces I've bought up over from dev only to player and see what happens, just for my own curious nature and hell...even I have any sort of success it may speed up the process. I'd also have to set up my own server...oof that's gonna be fun... ...I mean you guys will probably get to it long before I do so...yeah...still, anyone have any helpful pointers on where to start?

Yes that's why we want to know whats going on, obvious to pick things apart...or maybe perhaps we want to know whats going on so we know where the server is heading in the future and we're curious about the development process? Or you know you could make a post like that to score some easy points and make yourself look smart but whatever... As for what Jimmy has said. I get you, right now your focus is heavily on backend work and that's fine but as VileTerror mentions, you've got people out there that could help you on numerous things. It doesn't just HAVE to be your small dev team anymore. I understand a lot of you guys are probably from the SCORE days and are a very tight knit community using only people you know you can trust. I also understand that, with competition in the wings (as much as it is...seriously if those servers weren't run by 4chan people I think they'd probably provide a more competitive option than they are right now especially if they were running on Issue 25/26 code and not issue 24...but hey...they're still competition) that keeping things close to your chest is also another good reason. The points you made about not wanting to disappoint people and the fact people got restless over the Tanker changes taking almost half a year to get put through and what it wouldn't be pretty if something as high as a powerset got cancelled I understand. You guys cancelled the much awaited Rage changes because they didn't work and the community didn't suddenly explode in a fit of rage, we understood that all the explored options weren't satisfactory but then that was with a set that worked. Still I know if I keep pushing this all I'm going to do is upset people more than I already have so perhaps it's time I just backed down, kept these things to myself since it seems it'll turn me into the social Pariah on these boards.

That was me essentially confirming that this wasn't a case of 'mass unlock everything'. There is honestly a surprising amount of stuff in the wrong section or designed to work only with a very specific other costume piece. I'll run down a list of all the stuff that DOESN'T work to, unfortunately, crush peoples hopes and dreams right here. Female: The sybil stuff people are so hungry for REALLY doesn't work unless it has the belt we have because it doesn't actually connect to anything, it looks terrible with anything but that piece. The Sashes people want are, as well, designed to only work with a very specific chest piece. They can be made to work but...yeah...that's a level of quality I can very much understand WHY you're not willing to go through with it. The Peneople Yin stuff is basically the model itself cut into chunks. The chest isn't an overlay or chest detail, it's literally the entire chest model including skin and it's the same with her head gear, her legs AND her boots. The only part that is semi-feasible is the gloves and even then you've got some chunky clipping going on which would require a major rework. This is the case for ALL the Mother Mayhem pieces apart from the Jacket (yes that includes the kickass boots, they clip with everything not specifically made for Mother Mayhem). Diabolique is equally in a mess, with one of her gloves being head detail 2, the chest itself missing the hand that's in said category and most of its other arm since that is made up of the part that's in the gloves section. Her legs are literally just skin colour and her boots ONLY function with those legs. The only parts that, even if we were to transfer them, that would remotely work are the head piece, the chest detail and the belt. Desdemona is also in a Penelope Yin situation where it's just her model in separate chunks, so those boots people would love to have would require major 3D remodeling in order to remotely function. The Robo-Victoria stuff, apart from the arms, is all a signature NPC so even if it did work and didn't have the major problems of massive gaps unless you use those pieces it couldn't be ported over anyway. The Widow Collar and Tights pattern. The Collar clips with a LOT of things and the tights pattern, whilst it is functional it only really looks good if you're using both the chest and bottoms section of it so....eh it's borderline. Male and Huge: As mentioned the PPD Hardshell stuff is all there and it's all semi-functional or functional but there are things like the chest piece being made up of TWO pieces, one in head detail 2 and the other the regular chest piece, those would need to be meshed together which isn't a fun task for a 3D modeller, easy? Maybe? Tedious? Very much so. The Gloves being in head detail 1 for example is another thing that would require moving their category. The Warwork stuff LOOKS functional...at first...then you notice that the chest option actually has a gap in it, so unless you're using it with the Warwork belt and legs it actually doesn't match up with the legs since it's actually wider than the standard model and actually hovers slightly off the waist area. Apart from that most of the other stuff is signature characters, so things like Statesman's suit, Reichmans outfit (which is actually 2 separate pieces and the jacket does NOT work without the chest detail piece) all that Jazz. The Wyvern Stuff...unfortunately whilst pieces of it do work, it encounters the problem of one piece doing too many things at once. The Shoulders are ALSO a back piece, the Chest piece is ALSO the belt. As such...yeah...major reworking needing to be done. the Legacy of Steel shoulders, just like the Wyvern stuff are one piece realistic being two pieces. It'd need to be split into shoulders and chest detail. Ok now we'll move on to the stuff that DOES work. Female: So...yeah...it's the pieces I've already listed and a few others. The Athletic Tights options, the Lady Robo head, chest gloves and legs (I swear there are boots in there somewhere but they're in an entirely other category and I would have to really go digging for them but a lot of parts don't also have a boots option), the Tiellekku crown, the Veil Crown, the Lamashtu chest detail and belt and the Widow gloves, boots and chest detail. The Seer blindfold also works without issue. Out of a LOT of pieces those are the only ones that don't require major work in some way and that's not exactly a large selection. Male and Huge: So, the IDF stuff, as mentioned previously in the thread works apart from the belt we currently don't have which causes clipping issues with everything but tights. The Minotaur belt works without issue as well. There are a variety of hats that work, they're all the Official Hat we currently but with various logos on them, you've got Security Guard, RIPD, PPD and Cage Consortium, these could probably be rolled into options for the Official hat. There's also the Legacy hats, they work ok...and that's your lot. Conclusion: As you can see guys there is a metric butt-ton of stuff that doesn't work for a variety of reasons so yeah some of the most in-demand pieces would require major 3D modelling reworks to even remotely look 'not crappy' which is probably going to take a lot of time. Edit: Bonus section! Stuff I can't even find! One of the major things that miffed me off was that the IDF missile launching backpack (which would be awesome for cyborg style heroes) is completely missing from the costume editor, it's just not there. That makes me think that its linked to model the same way that literally EVERYTHING pre-going rogue was done. Notice how there are no Freakshow arms, no Snake heads, none of the regular Carnie pieces and so on. This is because all these aren't costume pieces, they're all part of one model, everything. This means if we want anything from the pre-Going Rogue factions you'd have to completely hack apart the models, make it so they could be recoloured (which isn't an easy task) which could probably require retexture them. Make sure they don't break anything when you enable them, putting them in the right place so that they can't clip with anything (the snake heads would have to go in monstrous since they can't use hair and they would have to disable all other details, even the ears, heck they may even have to go into their own category). That is a huge undertaking. Ourodev did managed to make the Freakshow arms available along with the PDP Hardsuit stuff but that, as mentioned, those are on Issue 24 servers and apparently stuff on Issue 24 servers isn't very easy to translate to Issue 25 servers (whether this is by design or an unhappy accident I don't know). Those Freakshow arms cannot also be coloured, they're just bits of the NPC hacked off essentially. Now the Hardsuit stuff is probably someone going through and manually making the thing unwonky but that is a lot of work. Like I said it involves moving things to the correct category, meshing things up with other things so they become one piece and generally a lot of tinkering that currently our dev team, who are working on back-end stuff, simply haven't got the time to do.

Lets not get hung up on the roadmap idea. As I said in the original post a monthly post with a list of things they're tinkering with with HUGE IN BOLD DISCLAIMERS that these things are not set in stone, that way if people get uppity you can point them to the disclaimer at the very top of the thread. It being monthly would also allow them to change things if some things don't work out and moved to the "on the backburner" section. Like I said just three separate sections with "Actively in internal testing" "tinkering with" and "on the backburner" I feel would suffice. Heck even throw in a section with "tested but proved too problematic" and a reason as to WHY said thing turned out not to be viable at all. Really just have an opportunity to hash everything out like Vile Terror says.

Done old Dr Q...but never done the other Shadow Shard taskforce that has you go up against Ruladakk the Strong, I think that might be the Faathim the Kind Taskforce.

If that's the case then I would love to be informed of this. However the Mastermind changes had to come from somewhere, someone had to be working on them prior to them being put up to Beta. We know that a user named William_Valance was looking into the MM pet AI and actually got very deep into it before he suddenly went radio silent and then, a few months later we get the pet changes. Did his work help them out in this regard for example? Was it something they were looking at independently and it just so happened to coincide with what William was doing. Was he bought in to the Dev team which meant he could no longer talk about it (that last one is kind of crazy I know)?