gameboy1234

With the Name Release going active soon, I wonder if we'd all like to try something. I've got a level 1 hero I made when the name release feature was first announced. Free to a good home. Of course, if you leave your new hero at level 5 or less, someone else can just grab it too. And if you mention it here we could all see the long progression of that hero as different archetypes and powers. The hero's name is: Captain Hotdog Yeah, so, pretty sure not a great name. The idea is just to pass the name around and see what folks come up with. The original Captain Hotdog was a level 1 Warshade.

I got "Breakwater" on Everlasting after Marine came out, I was pretty pleased with that. I tried a few names before that, and ending up releasing "Sea Worthy" on the Everlasting "Drop a name, pick up a name" thread. I was happy to see someone decide to use it just recently.

This is a great thread. I think I'd agree that Tsoo, CoT and Vahzilok are the big bugbears of early fights. Tsoo and CoT because they tend to just run away, delaying the inevitable and leading to player frustration, without adding any interesting game play mechanic. Vahzilok because their damage types are poorly resisted by low level players so they just lead to deaths and team wipes, with no real recourse other than "eat a tray of inspirations." Back in the old days, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and EverQuest was new, mobs running away would summon new mobs if they got close to a mob that wasn't aggro yet. It lead to trains and getting "mobbed" and it was important to stop runners for this reason. That's a mechanic. Bad things happen, but players have a way to stop it (hold or kill the runner). Mobs that were low on health also moved more slowly (like the GURPS table top game), so they were easier to catch. It was a decent mechanic for players. In CoX, runners are just an annoying delay, there's no special mechanic other than wait around for it to come back. Personally I like fighting Hellions and Skulls. It's a real "hero's journey" of slowly building up skill and power, starting with fighting street games in the early levels of your hero career. It's a nice start for a game (better than starting by fighting snakes and bunnies) and also it's part of the comic source literature. I actually think there should be a little more emphasis on being a "street level hero" in the early levels before becoming a fully powered hero in middle levels, eventually leading to basically being part of The Avengers in later levels and Incarnates. And yeah the early maps are a pain and need to just go away, but I realize that's a ton of work for the current devs with very limited pay off.

You know... taking this seriously, it wouldn't quite work, because there's more blue side players than red. Even selecting random costumes wouldn't quite work, because I personally usually keep a couple of "civies" on every character, and the randomizer probably wouldn't want those. What would be fun is to add a mission to Nerva to allow players to "donate" one costume to the randomizer. That way players get to add their actual villain costumes to the randomizer. It would be fun for players, I think, to know their own costumes were going to be used as part of the game. So the mission should tell the player explicitly what's going on -- "We're going to use the costume you are wearing for this random character generator. Please select your best costume slot, then enter this mission." The mission text should be something like the villain finding a "patsy" to be captured by Longbow, and setting them up with "their" costume so they'll be mistaken for the player. This could be used to generate both random heroes (just make the same thing for blue side) and villains, with less work by the devs.

You know, I saw that fight. I didn't understand what was going on though. I just saw some Longbow fighting their own turret and thought "that's a weird bug." Maybe there should be some Arachnos waiting there, and if you talk to them, they'll kick of that hacking sequence. Give players who are about even with the Longbow an edge if they need to defeat some of them. There could be more sets of Arachnos around the island too, give the players more chances to notice them, and also each Arachnos operative should direct the player to look for more Arachnos to help them. Some Nemesis automations in states of disassembly would be a great addition.

I'm a bit disappointed. There's only DE in the Longbow cell blocks in Nerva. I was hoping for something more sinister.. What other things could we stick in those cell blocks? Some randomly appearing spawn would be neat, so there's new things to see each time you wander by. My first thought was some pirate ghosts, with the "struggle" emote bound up by some sort of energy. Bonus points if they're inside one of those spirit traps from Port Oaks. Circle of Thorns mages also come to mind. Bonus points if they react to a nearby player, promising "untold power" or something if they are released. Super villains is another obvious one. Looking dejected and sitting on the cell floor, or even just lying down. Any other ideas?

Welcome Home!

Could you fix this for players too? Seriously I always get lost in those darn non-euclidean office buildings, I figured the AI was just being "realistic."

I don't really have any puns, per se. I do have some jokey character names but they're not really puns. Closest I have are: Ann Droid -- Bots/Elec with a robot body Chroma Arrow -- more like a joke name, all the good arrow names were taken (Red Arrow, Blue Arrow, Black Arrow, Light Fuchsia Arrow, etc.) so I got this one. Blue Three Shinobi -- a ninja, the name is a joke from Azumanga Diaoh, where the girls try to pronounce "Bruce Lee" but get it wrong. Lord Volemort -- my rodentia necromancer Ninja Beam -- my Beam Weapon/Ninjitsu sentinel, another anime joke Sparkly Vampire -- what it says on the tin, he's undead and very angsty Spectacled FlyingFox -- a caped crusader who dresses a bit like a bat

To be fair, I was just on a pug today and we were a bit short on support. I was trying to time my spawn rushes with the tank, soaking a bit of aggro and help to keep his health from getting too low. I'm sure the folks behind me were likewise strategizing how best to tackle the spawn and keep folks alive. The game isn't hard and doesn't require perfect play. Nor does it require strict adherence to some sort of script. But I think I've never not cared, I'm always at least trying to do something good to support the team.

When you arrive at a new zone, you're often given a detective to talk to. This can be a pain because it erases your old mission in your Nav bar. I wonder if it's possible to "remember" the previous mission, then reinstate it after the detective is finished. I'm thinking mostly of new players here, and especially the first time they are sent to King's Row. Their mission to talk to Blue Steel will be replaced by one to talk to a detective, and then the Nav bar goes blank and they don't have anything to do. This would be a lot more convenient for them, and also players in general, if they could just have their old mission pop back up on their Nav bar.

I didn't notice until recently that there's a chat message when you find the monorail during Twinshot's arc. This is during the part where she tells you to talk to Ms. Libery and are then sent to King's Row. For new players, this message might be a bit more visible. Perhaps also make the message appear over the players head in one of those shiny messages. I think a short "Monorail Station" message would be enough.

This happens to me as well with NO external editor involved. Sometimes the game just wants to pretend there's a NPSP. The only way is to re-edit the macro and delete and re-type all the spaces. P. S. If you type   into chat to explain this to someone, you get a non-breaking space, not the string " " The HTML parser this game uses is bat-shit.

Just really a mental note to myself, since it might be a long time before anyone can think of mastermind pet customization. But Micro-Man below had a cool concept. They're a smol maker of robotic machines. Any MM pet customization should include the ability to make your pets -- any pets, not just costume creator ones -- smaller.

The basic idea is quite nice. Getting some new MM classes would be cool, esp. since customization does not appear to be on the horizon. Personally though I dislike many of the older models, like Jack Frost and the Snowmen too. A little more effort on the graphics would help a lot imo. Does the Guardian (crystal-like Devouring Earth) have an ice version? I thought for some reason that model had gotten reused and put in a different mission to represent an "ice" creature. If nothing else it might be able to be turned blue and have a strong SFX applied to it, and used in place of the Jack Frost, I think something like that would look a bit better. For other elemental effects don't forget about the Spells in First Ward (? Night Ward?). They could be used too, a Fireball pet would be kinda keen. A new texture on some of the old Magmite models would help a lot, those old models appear less "molten" and more just colored a bit. A quick search on the web for "molten magma creature" yields some nice ideas. One thing I notice is that artists' concepts often have the creature standing in lava. Giving the molten Henchmen a damage aura like "Hot Feet" and a strong firey or lava SFX on the ground around them could be cool. An Air elemental could use an air based (flying). The Light Fairy Pet model could be repurposed to a Slyph, or a player model could be used. A heavy SFX could be applied to make the model look more "elemental."

Doc Buzzsaw in Sharkhead has a typo. Doc is female, so the pronouns are wrong. The mission is quoted above, the one right after it is "Heavy Metal Doctoring." Oh, and I think the mission text was under Clues. Yeah actually it's still there: Heavy Metal Doctoring With his plans to build a SuperFreak behind him, Doc Buzzsaw decided to start building regular Tank Freaks locally, instead of bringing them over from Paragon City as the Freakshow had been doing. In order to build his first batch to prove it could be done, he needed certain supplies, which is where you came in. Doc Buzzsaw asked you to steal medical supplies from the Family for him, so he could begin.

Thanks! And I should have just looked at the wiki I guess. I'll add it to the list of typos under bug reports.

" With his plans to build a SuperFreak behind him, Doc Buzzsaw decided to start ..." I always assumed that Doc. B was female. Probably just the small build on the character. But I'm curious if the text above is correct or mish typo. It's from the "Steal Parts For Doc Buzzsaw" mission, after the "Die By the Freak" arc. (This one I'm on a ship stealing parts from The Council.)

That was my impression also. There was a lot of Francophone and Caribbean influence in a lot of the stories and background. Which is why I think we should just give up and retcon it and say it was always in the Caribbean, nope islands don't just move around, why do you ask, Dr Aeon is too busy to talk about it.

I got curious and took a look for Bermuda. It's way the heck out there in the Atlantic, and much further from the Caribbean than I thought. There's also jack all out there, and Bermuda itself is super small and basically just one island, there's no natural island chain or anything. Not a big deal, I was just surprised by it's actual location and geography. Here's Bermuda's location on a map if you want to see yourself. If it were me I'd probably move RI to the Caribbean, more fun and interesting stuff there imo.

I always felt that Lord Recluse was channeling Dr. Doom as a ruler of his own country. The "not be nuked" part is limited by similar real world concerns. Civilian population, fallout on neighbors, a "no first strike" policy most countries adopt. Longbow has "invaded" the Rogues Isles, that's a pretty real world response. They're pretty prominent now in both Mercy and also they have a permanent base in the Nerva islands. In the real-real world that would be the Marine Corps, in a comic book world it's super-people, but it's all basically the same idea. The US/UN has responded to Lord Recluse and Arachnos, and they're attempting a proportionate response. What I think the Rogues Isles really needs is more superheroes. Folks should be sent there for missions. There would be more population as a result, and content would be available to more folks. Some folks want to stay super heroes, not vigilantes or rogues, and they should be allowed to still go there without having to switch sides. That's my 2 cents. Any sort of thing could be done, even adding new islands that aren't controlled by Arachnos for super heroes to use as a base, if they don't want to stay in RI proper, and maybe for roleplay reasons, like trainers and vendors.

I'm releasing Surge Tsunami and Sea Worthy.

New enemy group: Dr. Aeon decides to combine his cloning machine with a device that distills his evil genius down to its most concentrated essence (i.e., "genius" = not much). This does not go wrong at all, and does not produce about a zillion three foot high big headed jerks who seem to delight in nothing more than purposely making everyone's life miserable. Said jerks like dressing in flamboyant colors and adopt a clown and candy theme for their costumes, attacks and weaponry.

I'm not sure *what* CoH maps are missing, but it's definitely something. Many maps seem low contrast, either too dark or too mid-level grey. (Lot's of design videos on YT talk about how to design computer game maps and make sure the Values work -- as in Hue, Saturation, Value. It's an art thing.) Possibly the current devs could do something about it but I think it could also soak up a lot of resources for little gain. Art, esp. good art, takes a ton of time and resources. Anyway I'd support someone taking a look at changing stuff like draw distance, lighting and texture values but I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope that something useful could be done. At best I think a few incremental changes could be made. (P.S. a lot of point light sources in game are *insane* and need to be looked at too. Vanguard Base and Icon stores are guilty of this. They are much too strong when you're close and seem to also blow out any nearby textures.) CoH in general lacks "hubs," central places where playesr can hang out. Atlas Park works because it's largely a big open space with no enemies, and the big Atlas statue acts as a Point of Interest that players can easily see, orient on, and move back to. Villain side lacks any such hub area. Aeon City almost works, but it's too high level, the central area is physically isolated by the high ground it sits on and the lack of travel options directly to the central area. The area itself has too much vertical and the high walls in the center around the globe break the space up too much so players can't really use it. Again it would be kind of a PITA and a fair amount of work to try to change that. And I think any other zone would require at least as much work, if not more. The only thing I can think of would be something like remove all or most of the enemies from Aeon City, add a bunch of services and vendors to hang out there, add a base portal too, then add a direct portal to Aeon City from Mercy and a new low level quest to send new players there and have them talk to all the new vendors so they know where to go and hang out. Also move the "hospital" (the respawn location, the building can stay where it is) so that if anyone gets lost and dies they don't respawn in an area that they're too low level to deal with.

This is a nice fix, good job finding it. I hope it fixes some of the frame rate issues I've been seeing.