Sins of the Devs are visited upon the players

[Bionic_Flea]

12 minutes ago, Ukase said:

Flea - you do realize that's in a pvp thread, right? Guess who doesn't pvp since they put in travel suppression? This guy. I'd never see anything in there. 

That's why I brought the mountain to Muhammad.

[Faultline]

We are aiming for Page 5 to be a lot smaller; there's only a few line items that are considered essential for release, and anything that doesn't make it in time will just get dropped. Feature creep is something that we are painfully aware that we are prone to, and are trying to avoid going forward.

 

That does mean that some things that were talked about "for the next page" may not be in Page 5 at all. They are being worked on, but if waiting for them to be ready risks delaying the page, we'll drop them and deal with the fallout.

[The_Warpact]

4 hours ago, Black Zot said:

 

What is that, an organized competition to see who loves foam footballs the most?

It's part of the Nerf League...

[The_Warpact]

2 minutes ago, Faultline said:

We are aiming for Page 5 to be a lot smaller; there's only a few line items that are considered essential for release, and anything that doesn't make it in time will just get dropped. Feature creep is something that we are painfully aware that we are prone to, and are trying to avoid going forward.

 

That does mean that some things that were talked about "for the next page" may not be in Page 5 at all. They are being worked on, but if waiting for them to be ready risks delaying the page, we'll drop them and deal with the fallout.

Try to give some love to MMs at least. 

[BurtHutt]

47 minutes ago, Faultline said:

We are aiming for Page 5 to be a lot smaller; there's only a few line items that are considered essential for release, and anything that doesn't make it in time will just get dropped. Feature creep is something that we are painfully aware that we are prone to, and are trying to avoid going forward.

 

That does mean that some things that were talked about "for the next page" may not be in Page 5 at all. They are being worked on, but if waiting for them to be ready risks delaying the page, we'll drop them and deal with the fallout.

I appreciate this. However, are you able to tell us if you're going to do balancing? New power? QoL? 

 

I just wonder because the recent pages haven't been for me so I am debating checking out other servers. Sadly, it sounds like the other servers aren't as well run and far less populated.

[Luminara]

3 hours ago, Number Six said:

ongoing AI improvements to make the game feel more dynamic

 

I'm loving the adjustments that have culminated in everything running as soon as you looked at them funny, and especially fix that makes critters respond to Taunts by running even faster and farther.  I can do so much more with my life now!  While I'm waiting for the bad guys to remember where they spawned and stroll back, I can do other things, like dig the hole for my outhouse, write the great American novel, cook a banquet, bury the bodies, build a new cabin, walk all the way around the world, study to become a neuro-surgeon... productivity is finally mine!

[TygerDarkstorm]

35 minutes ago, BurtHutt said:

I appreciate this. However, are you able to tell us if you're going to do balancing? New power? QoL? 

 

I just wonder because the recent pages haven't been for me so I am debating checking out other servers. Sadly, it sounds like the other servers aren't as well run and far less populated.

From what I've seen of them on Reddit, Rebirth has a dev team that feels a lot like HC's team (e.g., really care about making the right kinds of changes, wanting to make sure additions are tested well before being released, building a solid experience, etc.); if I wanted to test out other servers, it would probably be them. Imo, their biggest issue is that HC has the vast majority of the CoH population.

[Faultline]

39 minutes ago, BurtHutt said:

I appreciate this. However, are you able to tell us if you're going to do balancing? New power? QoL?

 

New/proliferated/revamped sets and new story arcs are always the base line for a new page.

 

Page 1 was the Vahz getting taken over into the Freaklok.

Page 2 was the Tour Guide missions.

Page 3 was the Aeon Strike Force.

Page 4 was Sister Valeria and Hard Mode ITF.

 

I can't comment on balance decisions since I'm not a powers dev, but I don't think there has been a single page without power chances in the name of balance, so that seems a given; I just don't know what form those changes will take because it's not my area.

 

QOL is a weird thing to ask about since it can mean anything that makes things "better", so while once a change is made we can clearly say "this is a QOL change", asking if we're going to "do QOL" is such a broad question as to be meaningless. Improved gamepad support was QOL, walk customization was QOL, characters that start at 50 just for PVP was QOL.

 

You say that the previous pages haven't been for you, but you haven't said what would be for you. So I can't respond whether our plans will meet your expectations.

[TygerDarkstorm]

20 minutes ago, Krimson said:

It makes sense when you see population as not only a game feature but THE game feature. At this particular moment, Rebirth has 37 people online and for comparison, Indomitable has 60. That is some garbage numbers. They have 3691 people on the Discord. That's 1% of their Discord population that is playing the game. 

Agreed. Not only do I like HC, admittedly the population here is a huge draw. Knowing I can pop onto Everlasting and get on a team within minutes is really nice. I also appreciate that HC has drastically reduced the "grind" to get to 50. My play time is extremely limited and I'm pretty much an uber casual, so I like what's offered here. Sorry, yes, population is a huge draw, and definitely probably THE game feature, as you mention; I know it plays a strong contender for me.

[BurtHutt]

31 minutes ago, Faultline said:

 

New/proliferated/revamped sets and new story arcs are always the base line for a new page.

 

Page 1 was the Vahz getting taken over into the Freaklok.

Page 2 was the Tour Guide missions.

Page 3 was the Aeon Strike Force.

Page 4 was Sister Valeria and Hard Mode ITF.

 

I can't comment on balance decisions since I'm not a powers dev, but I don't think there has been a single page without power chances in the name of balance, so that seems a given; I just don't know what form those changes will take because it's not my area.

 

QOL is a weird thing to ask about since it can mean anything that makes things "better", so while once a change is made we can clearly say "this is a QOL change", asking if we're going to "do QOL" is such a broad question as to be meaningless. Improved gamepad support was QOL, walk customization was QOL, characters that start at 50 just for PVP was QOL.

 

You say that the previous pages haven't been for you, but you haven't said what would be for you. So I can't respond whether our plans will meet your expectations.

I appreciate the response! This is great. 

 

So, yes, QoL is VERY broad and I meant it to be broad. Literally all of the QoL changes you mentioned in your post, I am fine without. 

 

Page 1 Fraklok arc wasn't for me. It took way too long and there is way, way too much text and info dumped on players. You don't get to read it all and its tough to get a lot of the info if you're not the team leader.

Page 2 tours. Again, not really for me but that's just me.

Page 3 ASF. Great effort but too much dumped at you. Again, too much text to read and I never really got what was going on or why and so on. I read up on it and that isn't how I want to enjoy a TF etc. Lots of cool elements but some of the parts were far better than the sum of the parts.

Page 4 TBD

 

So, what I'd like? This stuff is fine and I think the HC team for all of it. I really do. A lot of it wasn't for me. I've offered to volunteer and help and so on. I work with large teams and work with people a lot so it is a skillset I have.

 

Anyway, my preferences would be:

 

1) Implement my AE idea that allows players to help make radio/paper/tips level content to the game. This would allow content to roll out while the HC team took time to put together the following items. There would be less of a break between updates because new missions could be added monthly and then an Issue (with some/all of the following) could come out 3-4 times a year. 

2) Some of the most popular things to do are things like DFB and the ITF. Maybe some future content should follow those templates. Also, try and make the content new and original. We keep seeing the old factions and groups that've been in game for 10+ years. Be original. Be creative. There have been so many good ideas in the forums.

3) Costume pieces. I'm not sure if this is possible but I'd prefer this over sheathed weapons and the new Page 4 costume locks. The Celestial set, the Valkyrie set etc were all awesome. Does the current Dev team have the ability to do something like that now?

4) New power sets

5) New events. I like the new zone invasion. What about a new GM or GM event and so on.

 

These are the main things I'd like to see. I would be fine if the HC team devoted all their time to this and didn't touch anything like new rewards systems, any QoL adds, re-balancing and so on. This is my wishlist. I am sure many would disagree but who knows. Having said all that, I would be fine if the team did change the look of a few characters like the Kraken (what an awful look for such a historic character).

 

Thanks for listening and reading! 

Edited September 1, 2022 by BurtHutt

[Astralock]

25 minutes ago, Krimson said:

It makes sense when you see population as not only a game feature but THE game feature. At this particular moment, Rebirth has 37 people online and for comparison, Indomitable has 60. That is some garbage numbers. They have 3691 people on the Discord. That's 1% of their Discord population that is playing the game. 

 

Homecoming has 38,053 people in their Discord server, and only 1,306 in game.  That's about 3.4%.  That's really no statistic to go by.

[Bionic_Flea]

10 minutes ago, BurtHutt said:

New events. I like the new zone invasion. What about a new GM or GM event and so on.

Now that we have some templates to draw from in the hardmode ITF, I would LOVE to have the giant mekman come out of the Volcano in Striga as a periodic Zone Event!

 

I would also like a level 35-50 Preatorian TF or Trial that has you fight all the different members of the Hamidon family: The Seed, The Avatar, and Praetorian Hamidon himself!

Edited September 1, 2022 by Bionic_Flea

[Mezmera]

22 minutes ago, BurtHutt said:

1) Implement my AE idea that allows players to help make radio/paper/tips level content to the game. This would allow content to roll out while the HC team took time to put together the following items. There would be less of a break between updates because new missions could be added monthly and then an Issue (with some/all of the following) could come out 3-4 times a year. 

 

I can't see this will be an easy task for the HC team to code something as complex as this to allow for people to be able to craft in-game content that wouldn't be somehow game breaking.  You're just taking it from the AE building and putting it on the streets. 

 

The big drawback to AE is that it comes off as a creation intended to allow what was the live team to draw down their actual content creation in hopes that user generated fanfics would suffice.  It's a lazy approach to content creation which can and has gone all kinds of sideways inside those AE buildings which I'm sure created more headaches for the live team than focusing on releasing their own manicured content.  

 

This one seems far-fetched sorry.

 

22 minutes ago, BurtHutt said:

2) Some of the most popular things to do are things like DFB and the ITF. Maybe some future content should follow those templates. Also, try and make the content new and original. We keep seeing the old factions and groups that've been in game for 10+ years. Be original. Be creative. There have been so many good ideas in the forums.

 

There's factions in game already that could be made better use of, which it looks to me like that's HC's direction.  Less development time on creating new factions when we already have so many to choose from and just give them some new abilities means more time crafting things we've seen from Aeon and ITF.  

 

Aside from creating their very own enemy group this is something HC is doing if you're not picking up on that.  

 

22 minutes ago, BurtHutt said:

3) Costume pieces. I'm not sure if this is possible but I'd prefer this over sheathed weapons and the new Page 4 costume locks. The Celestial set, the Valkyrie set etc were all awesome. Does the current Dev team have the ability to do something like that now?

 

Yes I'd like more actual costume pieces instead of overlays but that may just be the intent of getting out this new currency before they go ham on giving us tons of costumes.  You'll just have to play the game a little bit to get them, not a big deal.  I can't imagine its easy to break off some of those textures so if they want to reward you for taking part in various activities to get them I say great, we used to have to pay for that kind of thing.  

 

22 minutes ago, BurtHutt said:

4) New power sets

 

There's already oodles of combinations.  Sure I'd like more Dominator stuff but what fun will it be when I'm just running these new shinies through the same old stuff.  I'd like a few new powers here and there as all of us would but we don't need a deluge of powers created as I think this takes a considerable amount of time to craft brand new stuff.  

 

22 minutes ago, BurtHutt said:

5) New events. I like the new zone invasion. What about a new GM or GM event and so on.

 

Okay.  

[Ukase]

1 hour ago, Krimson said:

It makes sense when you see population as not only a game feature but THE game feature. At this particular moment, Rebirth has 37 people online and for comparison, Indomitable has 60. That is some garbage numbers. They have 3691 people on the Discord. That's 1% of their Discord population that is playing the game. 

No argument about the numbers - and I could be wrong, but I suspect a lot of us on HC joined the Rebirth Discord when it opened because we really couldn't be sure how long HC would last - at least, that's my position. I pretty much try to remember to log in there once a week for the tier rewards. Last Summer, I played over there to set up shop. The players there are quite competent, and as friendly as you'd expect from a CoH community. 

Interestingly enough, speed runners are given a nice gift of...I think it's 2000 AE tickets if you get the fastest time of their weekly tf. I won it once, and it came as a surprise. 

I do know on weekends, you can potentially see 100 players, roughly. 

 

[Grouchybeast]

56 minutes ago, BurtHutt said:

1) Implement my AE idea that allows players to help make radio/paper/tips level content to the game. This would allow content to roll out while the HC team took time to put together the following items. There would be less of a break between updates because new missions could be added monthly and then an Issue (with some/all of the following) could come out 3-4 times a year. 

 

That's what Dev's Choice AE arcs are, essentially.

 

My understanding is that AE and normal missions don't use the same back-end format at all.  I might be wrong about that, but assuming it's true then there'd still be a large amount of work needed to move an AE arc out into the game world.  The only concrete difference as a result of all that effort would be that the mission stated from a different contact, so I'm not sure it's a productive use of dev time.

[BurtHutt]

24 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

 

I can't see this will be an easy task for the HC team to code something as complex as this to allow for people to be able to craft in-game content that wouldn't be somehow game breaking.  You're just taking it from the AE building and putting it on the streets. 

 

The big drawback to AE is that it comes off as a creation intended to allow what was the live team to draw down their actual content creation in hopes that user generated fanfics would suffice.  It's a lazy approach to content creation which can and has gone all kinds of sideways inside those AE buildings which I'm sure created more headaches for the live team than focusing on releasing their own manicured content.  

 

This one seems far-fetched sorry.

 

 

There's factions in game already that could be made better use of, which it looks to me like that's HC's direction.  Less development time on creating new factions when we already have so many to choose from and just give them some new abilities means more time crafting things we've seen from Aeon and ITF.  

 

Aside from creating their very own enemy group this is something HC is doing if you're not picking up on that.  

 

 

Yes I'd like more actual costume pieces instead of overlays but that may just be the intent of getting out this new currency before they go ham on giving us tons of costumes.  You'll just have to play the game a little bit to get them, not a big deal.  I can't imagine its easy to break off some of those textures so if they want to reward you for taking part in various activities to get them I say great, we used to have to pay for that kind of thing.  

 

 

There's already oodles of combinations.  Sure I'd like more Dominator stuff but what fun will it be when I'm just running these new shinies through the same old stuff.  I'd like a few new powers here and there as all of us would but we don't need a deluge of powers created as I think this takes a considerable amount of time to craft brand new stuff.  

 

 

Okay.  

Interesting response. Do you know that it would be actually labor intensive to implement my AE idea or are you just guessing.

 

To me it seems easy to create new contacts outside of AE but are actually part of the AE system. Then HC team having say in which missions get placed in those specific contacts. Would that be a ton of work? I am sure it would be work but I don't know how much it would be.

[BurtHutt]

2 minutes ago, Grouchybeast said:

 

That's what Dev's Choice AE arcs are, essentially.

 

My understanding is that AE and normal missions don't use the same back-end format at all.  I might be wrong about that, but assuming it's true then there'd still be a large amount of work needed to move an AE arc out into the game world.  The only concrete difference as a result of all that effort would be that the mission stated from a different contact, so I'm not sure it's a productive use of dev time.

I will try and link you to the discussion I had explaining this in detail. I don't rem where it is and I think I first put it out there in 2020.

[Mezmera]

1 minute ago, BurtHutt said:

Do you know that it would be actually labor intensive to implement my AE idea or are you just guessing.

 

I'm hazarding a guess based on how much of a development time sink this became for the live team and continues on.  I'd think if it were so easy to implement what you'd want without any major QC oversight it would have been done instead of them having their AE featured story content they highlight.  

[BurtHutt]

1 minute ago, Mezmera said:

 

I'm hazarding a guess based on how much of a development time sink this became for the live team and continues on.  I'd think if it were so easy to implement what you'd want without any major QC oversight it would have been done instead of them having their AE featured story content they highlight.  

My idea is to add a few volunteers that would test the arcs and see if they all work and the material is appropriate and so on. Then if that checks out, placing that mission into the appropriate contact. 

 

Getting coders is tough, I'm sure. Having some hardcore players becoming part of the quality assurance team would be much easier. And I am assuming it would not be too difficult to add these to outside AE contacts (that would be disguised not to be AE looking etc). These missions would also be canon and all that.

 

I can see teams of players putting together some pretty high quality missions and could maybe even have artists contribute original art for the mish as it's load screen and so on. I think a lot of the CoX community would be all over this.

[Faultline]

10 minutes ago, BurtHutt said:

To me it seems easy to create new contacts outside of AE but are actually part of the AE system. Then HC team having say in which missions get placed in those specific contacts. Would that be a ton of work? I am sure it would be work but I don't know how much it would be.

 

The AE story arcs exist in their own "database" which uses a format that is incompatible with normal story arcs. They can't be put on a regular contact as-is. We did add a command very early on to convert AE story arcs to the internal format, but none of our story developers use it because the converted arc is not very readable and it's just more effort to clean it up than make a new one from scratch. Even easier ideas such as allowing players to select a door for their mission other than the AE pillar ran into implementation problems, because the AE is a collection of hacks held together with bubblegum.

[Ukase]

11 minutes ago, Faultline said:

 

The AE story arcs exist in their own "database" which uses a format that is incompatible with normal story arcs. They can't be put on a regular contact as-is. We did add a command very early on to convert AE story arcs to the internal format, but none of our story developers use it because the converted arc is not very readable and it's just more effort to clean it up than make a new one from scratch. Even easier ideas such as allowing players to select a door for their mission other than the AE pillar ran into implementation problems, because the AE is a collection of hacks held together with bubblegum.

My thought was, if it's overly difficult/time consuming, maybe just "re-make" it, as the story is already written. Seems like it would be tedious, certainly. But, and I'm no expert, I would think the creation of the story itself would be the hardest thing to come up with. I've no idea how complex it is to make an arc outside of AE, but if the story is written already, would the rest be overly challenging? 

[lepidopter]

2 hours ago, TygerDarkstorm said:

From what I've seen of them on Reddit, Rebirth has a dev team that feels a lot like HC's team (e.g., really care about making the right kinds of changes, wanting to make sure additions are tested well before being released, building a solid experience, etc.); if I wanted to test out other servers, it would probably be them. Imo, their biggest issue is that HC has the vast majority of the CoH population.

They're the ones I wish would do some type of classic-ruleset server.  Think it'd help their population, too.

 

I got no problem with slow leveling where progress feels a bit more earned (yeah pixels, but you know what I mean).  My first two weeks here, I didn't take a P2W run or any travel powers, didn't slot enhancements unless I'd looted them, didn't read any outside info, just did what the game showed me.  Didn't know what Lost were when I was asked to arrest 10, couldn't find any, wound up trying to attack homeless people (just hero things).

 

I can't really see taking the slow boat and still winding up with lore pets and judgements and speedruns etc, tho.

[Black Zot]

1 hour ago, Faultline said:

because the AE is a collection of hacks held together with bubblegum.

 

Sooooo ... just like the rest of the game? 😉

[Luminara]

22 minutes ago, Black Zot said:

 

Sooooo ... just like the rest of the game? 😉

 

No.  The rest of the game is the Shed of Doom.

 

 

Google it.

 

You're welcome.

[Sakura Tenshi]

2 hours ago, Faultline said:

 

The AE story arcs exist in their own "database" which uses a format that is incompatible with normal story arcs.

Question: does AE character creation/costume data also in a separate sort of database meaning one could theoretically add costume pieces to one without it being added to player costumes?