CraterLabs

To the design team: It feels like the Rogue Isles has a specific design where each major island has an Arachnos Marshall there to keep an eye on things, and then a Governor to run things, and the Governor always feels like they fit into a certain "villain archetype" that superheroes might fight without being a straightforward supervillain. Mob boss(es) in Port Oakes, a mad scientist in Cap au Diable, a human rights violating businessman in Sharkhead, and a Spymaster in Grandville are the easy to spot options. Was this intentional, or did it just happen this way? Is Marshall Blitz supposed to be an intentional subversion since he murdered the governor making him both the Arachnos agent and also the villain archetype (paranoid warmongering ruler of an island that has nukes)? And is there a full list of who the governors and marshals are, because you've really gotta go digging to find references to 'em; I think the Marshall of Sharkhead is mentioned maaaaaybe once in one of Operative Vargas' missions? And who was the governor of Mercy Island, I've heard some people swear that it was supposed to be the head of the R.I.P. and others swear that it's supposed to actually be Ghost Widow herself, but I've not found any documentation to support those either way. To Castle, Black Scorpion, and Synapse (and any other "Powers" people): For people interested in game design, a lot of people point out that you don't actually want a perfectly balanced game, because perfect balance stops being fun. But we also kind of intuitively know that you still want to shoot for a "balanced level of imbalance". So for designing powers in City of Heroes (or maybe even other games) is there a certain benchmark you use as a general guide for "the right level of overpowered" when working on a power conceptually before you push it to beta testing? (And on that note: to what degree should a power be built around the "fantasy" (this is the Grenade power set), and to what degree should it be built around the "mechanics" (this is the Knockbacks And Fire Damage set)?

For Black Pebble: when it came to pushing City of Heroes as a "brand", what aspects of the franchise were being leveraged the most? Statesman was definitely the "face" of the game even after the Who Will Die? arc made it a little weird for him to be around, but were there other elements being considered for pushing as the vibe of the game? Would we have gotten a Clockwork Plushy before a Hamidon Plushie?

For the developers and designers: What was the original distinction between Hazard Zones and Trial Zones meant to be? The in-game explanations of the difference between those zones is a little vague. I got the impression that one is meant to focus more on "larger crowds of enemies" and another on "more dangerous enemies" from a mechanical standpoint, and that story-wise one is just "generally dangerous area" while the other is "defining story moment area", but comparing the zones to those definitions doesn't always make it clear. So, is this a thing where the definitions changed over time in response to how the players interacted with it? Was there an endpoint that the zones were going to transition to, or did the definitions stay basically the same, but the distinction between what they meant mechanically was more of a background detail? For the writers and story team: Was Praetoria done for keeps? There's a lot of talk in Number Six's story arc about it being "hopeless", but that talk is also what you'd hear in a lot of other third-act "the supervillain is winning for real now" stories (generally right before heroes turn the tables and pull victory from the jaws of defeat), and I kinda like the idea that maybe the Devouring Earth and nuclear blasts haven't completely wiped it out over there... but I also know that the game was starting to move on, so I'm not sure how final that finality was meant to be.

Some Clockwork questions for the writers: How good of an engineer was the Clockwork King outside of his psychic abilities? Some Clockwork descriptions imply that they actually have functional computer brains and personalities (and some of them even get tossed into the Zig according to the mad-libs-y police scanner missions, which I absolutely take as canon), and he seemed to know enough about robotics to at least get his foot in the door for meetings and interviews, but the nature of his ability makes it tricky to know if that's genuine mad science skill, him creating sub-personalities for the more advanced Clockwork that he starts vicariously living through, or a bit of both depending on the situation. The ability of Bat'Zul to take over the Clockwork in the Rogue Isles combined with the description of the "psionically charged brass" and "clockwork gear" salvage pieces sort of suggest that there's at least a *little* autonomy or self-sustainability for them, but it'd be nice to know for sure, heh. (Oh, and on that note, with the Clockwork getting their higher-level psionic counterparts and the various villain groups slowly getting their own redesigns, would we have eventually seen Clockworks proliferating to the different city zones, with different regional variants? Or were they good as they were?)

Here's three (and a half) questions for the writers and designers, but I could see them touching on the Powers Team too: 1) It's been said in previous Lore Q&As that the Incarnate powers were eventually going to be "trivialized and replaced" with a different set of endgame abilities (something about mystical weapons, like with Excalibur), either as a new "type" of power or as a second wave of Incarnate abilities. Was there a set number of those planned out, or was it going to be developed on an as-needed basis, and would they all be tailored to particular story arcs the way that the Incarnate powers were designed to counter the Praetorian threat? If so, how many story loops would've happened until we swapped our mega endgame powers for mafia-themed abilities to take on Sebastian Frost? 1.5) On the subject of Sebastian Frost, while it's generally assumed that most "street grade" Superadine just grants super strength and durability, some of the lore implies it can kick-start powers. Were there customize Superadine batches that could tailor special powers the don's most trusted lieutenants? Would we have gotten to see Sebastian Frost's personal stash turning him into a giant monster made of ice? Or was its use for other superpowers meant to always be more of a "kickstarting the latent abilities" variety? 2) There's some occasional disagreement about the nature of what constitutes a "Mutant" among fans. Some people think it has to refer to people born into having a special genetic difference (as in the X-Men), other people suggest that it can also apply to creatures who have some sort of mutagenic process applied to them (as in the Ninja Turtles). The game has some in-universe instances of people describing what makes a science power or a mutant power, and the general philosophy seems to be that science is "people who are changed" and mutant is "people who are something new or different". The grey area of "people who are (1) changed into (2) something new or different" seems to be where the disagreement pops up, and this is muddied by characters in-universe mentioning that they're not sure if they've actually been classified properly. Meanwhile, the FBSA secretary at City Hall is probably just shrugging her shoulders and handing the paperwork over to whichever department feels like the best fit to her whenever a new person registers as a hero. Is there a clear-cut answer? Is the overlap intentional? 3) You occasionally find missions that bury references to a tree with multiple branches or roots, or a river with multiple tributaries or streams, usually five or so, or once an image on an urn of five men bowing before a tree with sunlight shining through the branches onto them, with the implication that this was "power" or "the source of origins" or something like that. Was this something specific (possibly tied to the history of the Corax and their ancient war or whatever) that was being built to, or was there just a general encouragement to stick in references to "a source with five things coming out of it" to represent the game's origins? It's cool either way, but it always felt really significant in the moment. Thank you all for all the work you did making such a great world to poke around in, sorry for getting so invested in it. 🙂

Should we register for this in some way that a quick browse of the forums isn't revealing, or is it just a "show up and set up shop somewhere" thing?

This happened to me too! That tiny rectangle should be your chat window, try moving your mouse around it and you should be able to click and drag the individual panels of it. It doesn't seem to resize it in the actual image that you're seeing, though, which is weird. Still no idea what's happening with it. Wish I could play. 😕

This is a new one for me. Clicking in the darkness on the lower right-hand quadrant will allow me to interact with the power tray. I just... can't see anything clearly enough. Because it's so small. If it helps, yesterday I tried messing with some NVidia settings to see if I could fix something in OBS related to the V-sync. It didn't change anything in OBS, and reverting those changes now doesn't seem to fix things, but that's the only visual setting thingie I've touched recently. It's also worth noting that I've *always* had resolution issues with this game on this laptop because of my screen size. I can basically only play by being willing to make the progress bar on glowies be incredibly thin with unreadably small font. Dunno if this is related to that but, uh... yeah.

I think there's a lot of insight in what you're saying (honestly, the whole post is great but quoting the whole thing made it hard for me to read on the screen, heh) and I think this is something that Live was starting to address near the end of its run. Some of the devs back then were creating "opportunities to be heroic" or "opportunities to be villainous" that were optional, but even classic redside had a few moments of this as well (choosing to intentionally fail Marshall Brass' mission that one time by just waiting it out, for instance). Unfortunately, there *are* players who seem to genuinely enjoy the puppy kickers out there like Themari and Phipps. Would there be any realistic way to include a kind of "Lines and Veils" thing for redside, like what some TTRPG games do for their tables? I'm not sure how that would work, but maybe some kind of customizable pop-up warning?

This might be dumb, but could redside get a Freakshow Giant Monster? Just... an absolutely *massive* Tank Freak (or other kind of robot body) with a perfectly normal human head built into it somewhere. I'd love to fight that thing sometimes. Or, on a similar note: what about a Family-themed Giant Monster who's an Ice Giant, because he or she or they've been granted a dose of "Sebastien Frost's personal Dine stash"?

I've bound the following commands with it: F - Teleport to target Shift+w - Teleport forward a bit Shift+s - Teleport backward a bit Shift+a - Teleport left a bit Shift+d - Teleport right a bit I forget the exact values I used for how far I teleport, but that's probably a "season to taste" thing anyway. I also have double clicking bound to make me teleport to wherever I'm pointing my cursor, but that's technically a Teleport bind instead of a Combat Teleport bind. I recommend giving yourself a chance to parkour around town with some combat teleport binds once you get 'em. It's a *really* fun power. (There are some situations where you can use it to teleport through walls in missions if you've gotten separated from the rest of your team and the halls are suitably serpentine.)

The Hoorbening: Dillo's People invade... a small restaurant in Founder's Falls, and you have to be the waiter!

He is written well, yeah, and I was on the fence about if I should even mention anything. And there's certainly value in writing that reminds you that bad guys are, well, bad (one might even make the case that City of Heroes doesn't do enough to remind us how racist Lord Nemesis is). I think the reason it stood out to me here was that it was included as part of a mission being given to the player. The phrases that give me trouble are, when he's talking about The Warriors, saying "The Warriors are suspiciously Greek and not even fit to recruit", which threw me off balance a little. Then about the Family, he says their "Italian origin makes them susceptible to Council propaganda" (I coulda sworn it said blood instead of origin last night, but that's what I get for playing CoH after 5 in the morning I guess, heh) and that no matter how much they claim to love freedom, the Center's rhetoric will always "tug at the heartstrings of the Italian gangster." This sort of colors his send-off text where he calls them "degenerate drug dealers, and worse" which on its own probably isn't bad, but in the context of the previous comments makes it feel a bit like the kinds of othering comments that people use about groups they don't like these days (though City of Heroes certainly has a number of fine, upstanding mission contacts who say similar things about the Skulls and Trolls, so it feels unfair to call this line out on its own.) Ultimately, it's not a lot, it certainly could've been worse. But I feel like pairing those comments with jobs being given to my character is an invitation from the game to participate in his opinions, which I don't wanna do. Kinda why I don't play missions from folks like Phipps. And player agency in dealing with their contacts is something that City of Heroes is usually pretty good at. From voluntarily choosing to fail a mission from Marshall Brass as a villain, to being a hero who foolishly takes on way too many bosses at once in Dark Astoria to try to save somebody, this is a game that's good about giving you the opportunity to play the character if you mind be of a mind to disagree with how your contact wants things handled. Anyway, maybe I'm overreacting. Just wanted to mention that it made me uncomfortable. I wanna see what his actual story arc is like soon, but I don't think I want any of my current villains in his level range wanna play ball with this particular bad guy, heh.

So I've not had the pleasure of playing through his actual story arc yet, I only had one villain in the range of the new Striga Isle content, and I think she's too high in level for his normal story, but I *can* get his repeatable missions, and honestly I kinda like having repeatable mission pool options in zones even if I don't use 'em much. His tone when he sends you out to fight The Warriors or The Family makes me a little uncomfortable, though. And honestly, I'm kinda glad that it is, I suspect this was an intentional artistic choice to help remind the player that fascists are evil (like, *real* evil, not fun Saturday morning supervillain evil) and there's a genuine temptation to gloss over how evil a Nazi might be by focusing on the bombast and megalomania, so in that regard I'm kind of happy that the game isn't letting the player off the hook for the company they keep. In that regard he's kinda like Mr. Bocor or Westin Phipps, one of those "uncomfortable" villain contacts. Buuuuut I think he's going a little too far in that direction. The send off for the mission to fight the Warriors made me uncomfortable, and the send off for the mission to fight the Family made me even more-so (even paused for a second to wonder if I was doing a hate crime for money, which was a bit more gritty realism than I wanted from my Ninja Scientist who opens Portals To The Ninja Dimension to Summon Ninjas). My initial hesitation about working with a 5th Columnist was set on hold with his introductory text basically saying "don't worry, you're not having any allegiances with me, this is strictly about doing business that I pay you for" but his dialogue got rid of that, heh. At least for me. So, uh, yeah. I can't speak to whatever his "main" content is yet, but the repeatable missions make me uncomfortable. Maybe the Warriors could be messing up supply lines and the Family could be demanding tariffs or tribute or something (and they already know the best ways to smuggle into and out of Port Noble, so it's harder to get around them than the Council? I dunno.) Anyway, thanks again for all your hard work, dev team, you guys rock, even if these two killtask missions didn't land for me. You're awesome.

I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, I truly enjoy some of the older ways things work On the other hand, part of the ongoing changes to powersets is making sure that they mesh with the changing state of other players and enemies. Having said that: for years I've wanted to get an enhancement that could turn sniper powers into the way they used to work so that I could relive my Energy Blast Corruptor that I made around Issue 10 or 11. I'm sure I've just got rose colored glasses on, but hey, I look good in rose.

I kinda like that we're still doing pages. So far the "second chances" thing feels like theme enough (demonstrating everything Homecoming has done since coming into the spotlight and starting talks with NCsoft.) A new Issue soon would be nice, though.

I think redside is better because the game devs had a better idea of what the players of CoH wanted when they were making the Rogue Isles content. As for why more players don't go there: honestly, I think the slum-like environment can be a bit of a bummer sometimes. Beyond that, as much as I absolutely love Redside, sometimes it's no fun to fight Longbow one out of every three missions (but at least they're more fun than fighting the Legacy Chain.) I think if the various redside zones made it more common to come across enemy groups who were flashier or brought more variety, people might get more invested. Also, let the Mooks finally win the gang war in Port Oakes, they deserve it. Viva Verandi!

Yeah, a trainer feels more appropriate. I care more about in-universe story than I probably should, and I kinda like the idea of amenities like that not being always accessible from anywhere. The fact that an Architect Entertainment building keeps its lights on in the Rikti War Zone is already a bit of a stretch, heh. Alternatively, if there was an Icon representative desperately cowering in the wreckage of a destroyed Icon building and just trying to hold out until heroes came to help rescue them, that might be a way to get some costume services. And then don't save them. Leave them there for next time.

This is the tiniest of nitpicks and probably the least important suggestion I've ever made, but: for Kristoff Jaeger's mission where you steal Longbow's personnel files, you have a mission objective where you have to find the right filing cabinet, but the mission doesn't end when you find it if you haven't also found every other filing cabinet. I think it'd be better if this mission either ended right when you found the "correct" one, or if the mission clickables were retooled so that the final one in the sequence always happened to be the correct one. I hesitate to call this a "bug", but as it's designed right now it almost feels like one. Honestly, "Find the correct objective, but also find all of the decoy objectives" is an interesting mission goal that has some potential, but in this particular mission it just feels... off. Anyway, if there's time to look into that in the next five or six years of more important things, might be worth considering.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is one of those things that NCsoft would very much prefer us to do. City of Heroes is a brand and a piece of intellectual property as far as they're concerned, so Homecoming basically has a license to use this brand and IP, but NCsoft wants to ensure that the trademark is protected and that it stays *theirs*. While they're almost certainly never going to want to do anything with it on their own, the brand identity is safer if the Homecoming servers names the project something other than just City Of Heroes. This is sorta like how comic book companies other than DC will sometimes get to use Batman. IDW Comics in particular has a knack for this kind of thing, where they temporarily pick up the rights to some other brand, and they tell their own story with it. They get to tell a story with a fun and recognizable character, fans of the character get more stories out of it, DC Comics gets a big paycheck, everybody wins! But DC has rules about what you can and can't do with Batman when you rent him for a project like that, which is why you still get the IDW logo on the cover instead of something to make you think that what you're reading is the "real" Batman, even if at the end of the day most people probably wouldn't mind it being a real Batman story.

I don't know if this is a known issue or not, but on a lark I took a new character to Atlas Park and was delighted to see I could have Prince Kiros Nandelu as my contact again! But then something felt... off... This isn't one of Prince Kiros Nandelu's missions. This is Antonio Nash's mission. Prince Kiros Nandelu likely wouldn't have been in a gang, given his background. This is probably only important to a percent of a percent of players, and I appreciate that there are some difficulties with porting Galaxy City-specific mission content to Atlas Park, which likely doesn't have all the same in-zone contacts and stuff for the mission parameters that don't involve instanced missions. But I still wanted to call this out as a potential oddity with using him. Having said that! I'd personally rather have access to Prince Kiros Nandelu as a contact with missions that can't apply to him than not have him at all, so this is definitely better than when I couldn't access his missions way back. Just thought I'd mention it as a place where some polish might be warranted (even if there probably isn't a clean or easy solution at this time.)

Oh, thanks! Yeah, I'll try to get those fixed up soon. (Sorry for not seeing this until, like, three weeks later, I've been offline most of that time, heh)

Hey, thanks! Glad you liked it. 🙂

Hey kids, it's The Heistmeister! Remember all the commercials from Heist Soda featuring The Heistmeister as he tried to steal Heister Fizz, Heist Cola, and the universally beloved Orange Heist from all the cool kids? Remember his felonious friends The Six Pack, featuring such beloved characters as the diminutive Diet Heistmeister, the totally tubular Tropical Blueberry Heistmeister, and the brilliant inventions of Dr. Heist? Of course you do. The Heistmeister was everywhere! More staying power than The Noid, better hair than The Slim Jim Guy, and better at stealing soda from cool kids than most cereal mascots are at stealing cereal! Probably because only Heist Soda had the vision to make all of these actors playing criminals register with the FBSA as heroes who fought crime with water pumps refitted to splash torrential waves of ice cold soda! Was it confusing that these bad guys were pretending to be heroes, while still dressed as high-tech cat burglars? Nope! It's not confusing! YOU'RE confusing! "Heist Soda: Get away with it!" But, uh, that was, like, two or three decades ago. Heist Soda and Heister Fizz are still just as popular as ever, but the commercials, well... nineties stuff is either retro or cringe, and the jury's still out on the Heistmeister. But go ten years down the line, and Heist Soda featured a contest... find the Winning Soda Can, walk away with $100,000!!! That's a lotta green! Sounds great, except, uh... that winning soda can was never located... ...but the contest accidentally didn't have any expiration date... ...and The Heistmeister thinks he knows where the Winning Soda Can might've gone missing after all these years! But when he goes to retrieve them, Deadly Ninjas attack and break his Soda Spray Nozzles, leaving him unable to fight them off and retrieve the Winning Soda Can for the good of the Museum of Soda History! That's where YOU come in! So grab your favorite flavor of Heist Soda, tune up your Super Sweet Keytar, put a Ring Pop on one hand and a Sock-Em-Bopper on the other as you prepare for this blast from the Nineties in the Architect Entertainment adventure that features The aforementioned Deadly Ninjas! The son of a Tsoo enforcer who just wants to dance, dad! Worrying implications that the old recipe of Heist Soda might've actually been part of a Potent Superfuel that could be deadly in the wrong hands! Absolutely ZERO CLOCKWORK of the sort that you might find in Atlas Park! The semi-controversial return of the exceedingly uncomfortable Crushed Melon Heistmeister! Not one but TWO warehouses! ...and the shocking revelation behind the true reason that the Heist Soda contest never had a winner two decades ago! All this and more awaits you, brave heroes, in... THE HEIST HEIST!!! Now playing at an Architect Entertainment venue near you! Arc ID: 57172

Could we have some more crown options? We have the tin crown, and there's a few crown-like things (ascension, bio-stuff, etc.) and there's some nice tiaras but I wouldn't mind like a big, classic crown look.