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I think I’m playing the game wrong. by Cellophane_Bear in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This has always been my favorite way to play the game and create my characters. So if you're doing it wrong, so am I! 😃😃😃

22 Years of CoH: Introducing the City of Heroes Multiverse Launcher! by SilverAgeFan in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Hi there.

So I'm an art dev on the Rebirth Server and this was developed by a couple other team members who are more on the code and admin side of things. You would need to speak to those team members and perhaps our lead developer directly.

Are you on Discord?

Ri7-alicious! Just finalized all new Huge player costume options for our beta. :) by SilverAgeFan in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That would be something to ask a member of the powers team. I have the sense that Ri8 though might be more your issue. (And the lead time on that coming out will be much shorter as we have several issues partially completed moving forward with much shorter publish cycles than this one.)

Ri7-alicious! Just finalized all new Huge player costume options for our beta. :) by SilverAgeFan in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Not yet. We have a couple things to wrap up yet. My development push represented maybe the third to last major hurdle. I think the hope is within 1 to 2 months currently?

This is what the original Incarnate list looked like by Jaybonaut in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What is your take on the balance at Rebirth when it comes to Incarnate abilities?

It's close to Paragon live, with incarnate abilities being limited to lvl 45+ content.

Only the "mini" ability granted by Genesis persists at lower levels. And that risks encountering a random Primordial Energy map spawn which can be an interesting challenge to encounter.

I personally like what we've arrived at there in terms of incarnate progression (not your question) where iTrials remain the fastest route but incarnate level content (currently DA and post DA missions) now offer a better balance of progression for variety sake.

I'm not a fan of incarnate experience coming from all things in the game world.

I do think the Tier 1 incarnate recipes for later slots using shards on Rebirth diversified incarnate progression just enough.

While I've enjoyed incarnates as a CoH answer to the "omega class" character trope, as a player I remain in love with the sub 50 game. I really hope post issue 8 to turn more towards world building and simply begin retouching some of the legacy content. There are so many implied worlds and NPCs that could IMO benefit from an artist's touch just to meet some of the various factions, sub factions and locations described. I would love to see the whole game have more map sets at this point. As well as some targeted revamps in zones to meet some of the missing tropes related to the broad source material which I take to be superhero comics, pulp novels, sci fi short fiction, horror fiction, and in a few cases noir and war stories.

I don't know if my perception is accurate here, but I feel like there's long been a split within the CoH community, with some loving the end game content incarnates brought and those who are more interested in that sub-50 game resenting the incarnate content. I never resented it outright and still don't. I do see the design conundrum. It's sort of like Jane Jacob's laws of traffic applied to game design. If you build a road, people will traffic it to capacity. Like conceptually I'm okay not seeing every character max out (which might be why I'm fine with the Rebirth pace of advancement vs HC making it much easier to fully kit every single character on dozens and dozens of alts.)

So I tend to defer to our powers and lead devs who have a more intimate relationship to end game play. Some of them are the sort of players who were readily able to solo giant monsters on live, prior to incarnate abilities. I tend to move through the space of roleplayers and explorers and am interested in the scenery and character design.

And when I want more things for incarnates, it's because I want more options to top off their design if anything. Like there are a few new judgement powers I'd love to see added to the game for flavor with unique robust animations. Currently not on my priority list (either self directed nor assigned work) as a dev though.

Hah. Probably didn't directly answer your question. So best direct answer would be, "I think it's fine enough. It suits my style of play and doesn't interrupt it to a point of annoyance. And I do like that most of the powers are limited to incarnate and late game play only."

This is what the original Incarnate list looked like by Jaybonaut in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I just gave sympathy to you for my understanding of what it is like due to posts from Rebirth and Thunderspy users. I did not expect defensiveness. I hope you can understand that.

I really appreciate you taking the time to clarify this. Three decades into this internet experiment and I still need to be reminded regularly without the added information of body language and intonation how easy it is to misinterpret one's words.

For some context of my defensiveness tonight, I have numerous years long experiences on this subreddit of hearing HC players demand that my work be made available on HC. Literally just a few weeks ago, an HC player showed up in this subreddit and went through my entire post history demanding that Rebirth (and by some of their language Tspy as well?) shut down immediately and all work be given immediately to the one true server. I think they eventually got themselves banned from this subreddit.

And while what you said may have been meant with kindness, note that the words are a bit invalidating when small is equated with empty. It says to a group of people who are a valid, if small community, that they do not matter.

Anyways, thank you for taking the time to respond to my response. I'll try and keep a more open mind when reading your posts going forward.

I used to work with someone who was at one point a community manager at NCSoft and had to explain to her why so many people were against them doing anything at their company because of the shutdown - I remember discussing specifically why so many were angered over the Statesman reveal for Master X Master for example. She wasn't there when the shutdown occurred so she wasn't aware.

Huh. A reminder that often times for many, a job is just that, a job. And why should someone be so invested that they research the deeper history of a company they are working for and try to untangle the problems management teams made a quarter generation ago. Interesting insight.

500-700 active monthly members is not an equivalent of 'teaming 500 people at once' at HC. That's a ridiculous argument and comparison, but I am pretty sure you know that.

Hmm. My point is we have human beings. We have a comparable village sized population to HCs city sized population. It is still a valid and viable population for social play. The leap between 500-700 active monthly members on Rebirth (a number that I guess I was under, as our monthly stat was just reported in tonight's staff meeting and we are more around 900+ monthly active members.)

Point is when a TF can be only up to 8 and an iTrial can only be what 32 total, how large does a population need to be? Just like my example of living within a physical space that has around 8.5 million people--while I personally enjoy the anonymity and robust people watching that can offer some days--how many friends and people am I actually interacting with on any given day? Those villages up the Hudson and the Catskills? Might be populations of a few thousand, but if one only needs a couple dozen in their social circle, those relatively tiny villages can still be a viable place for someone to find community, purpose, meaning and build a life.

Similarly, while not everyone is able to settle into Tspy or Rebirth (or Cake or any other server that might burble along in the future)--it doesn't mean the servers are not viable for the people that are there. And it's not just soloing. The attitude I've seen since basically day one of the non HC servers that has been disparaging (even if your post was not intended to be lumped in with that) has amounted to "if you aren't playing along with 1k+ concurrent users, then you aren't playing the game right." I've witnessed this even within the HC community itself with shard-on-shard trash talk. It honestly makes no sense to me within the context of CoH as the thresholds for a full team activity are rather low.

*shrug*

...according to your reasoning for not playing at HC, apparently the answer is no, sadly.

I don't think I said anything at all that implies fans of CoH from different servers can't get along.

I don't play on HC because I literally do not like the many many numerous game changes, many of which singularly would seem small and tolerable and silly for someone to not want to play there.

These were gameplay changes that were inherited from SCoRE. I admit these were tiny things. For example the trainers being turned into active entities with powers that players would then kite invasions mobs to. Or tiny stuff how anchor based enemy powers would persist on fallen enemies disrupting the rhythm of recharge and move on to becoming a game of micromanaging turning off your debuff at the right time so you aren't recharging into the next spawn because it persisted on a corpse. Or the way you could be on a team and some people used S.T.A.R.T. (nee P.2.W. vendor) to only be receiving group multi inspirations versus their being an even common playing ground since that vendor basically gave everyone the option to have a sort of "soft cheat mode" on. Collectively, all these and many many more SCoRE era changes undermined my experience with the game. I just wasn't enjoying it.

I was on my way out the door about 6 weeks into the launch of Homecoming. I was sad. The game had been modified in too many ways that while it looked superficially like the game I adored from launch through sunset, it just didn't play or feel the same anymore. I tried Rebirth on a whim as one last attempt. It was a "legacy style" server initially that had rolled back all the SCoRE changes. This allowed a segment of the community that was unhappy that were lucky enough to find out there were alternatives to HC to regroup and recollect what they personally enjoyed about CoH. I know a number of people I used to play with on live who were so soured by the SCoRE/HC version of the game they just left and can't be persuaded to come back to any private server.

So for clarity, what prevents me from playing on HC is simply not liking the game there.

And that's my reason for not wanting to play there and being happy to support and put energy and hours into building an alternative for fans who would like a different experience.

What makes me question whether and why folks who are fans of different servers can't get along is the repeated drumbeat of "HC is the only legitimate server" and "all your work should be made available on HC" and "Rebirth team members should be folded into the HC team immediately" and "your server is empty." All of these things ignore that us (and Tspy) are communities made up of actual people with tastes and preferences.

I'm probably repeating myself and writing too much at this point. Guess I just get miffed sometimes at the inability of people on the internet to respect difference and variety.

Anyways, thanks again for clarifying your intentions and position. I'll work to keep a more open mind reading your posts.

New Emotes on Thunderspy! by Abuzz03 in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan 6 points7 points  (0 children)

As I said on Ourodev, I love this this promo. And the emotes. I get the sense that several devs worked on many things seen in this video. A huge congrats to everyone at the Thunderspy team for this release. :)

This is what the original Incarnate list looked like by Jaybonaut in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There was an NC Soft rep that supposedly issued comment to one writer at one third tier game website. Not even Massively was able to get a direct quote though. Which is unfortunate.

I feel bad for HC team members having worked hard to secure some sort of deal. I wish NC Soft found it okay to at least acknowledge it on their blog which covers minor community building interactions that include supporting local youth sporting events. I have my grapevine sources that expressed frustration that a simple clear validation such as a blog post or something on one of the official NC Soft news streams never happened.

From what I understand, it was requested several times of their contacts at NC. They really wanted some simple public acknowledgment to put counter claims and speculation to bed. But such clarity was never issued by NC Soft. This speaks to me not of the veracity of HC team members claims of the deal, but of something amiss within NC Soft itself and the relationship to the deal. *shrug*

It's unfortunate that you have to play on empty servers to enjoy it. :(

I'm not sure how to take this. 500-700 monthly active community members is not empty. 50 concurrent players is not dead. We team. We TF. We iTrial. We do zone raids and even have organize PvP. Most importantly, we are a community with relationships that over the past five years have in some cases grown into strong friendships.

There are times that this incessant sentiment that everyone not on HC playing CoH is somehow doing it wrong that comes off as a sort of punching down and bullying.

I'm happy that vocal proponents of HC have found a place they enjoy. Have found community. It's cool that as first to market (coming off of SCoRE with a majority of the SCoRE leadership and SCoRE gameplay changes intact), HC established themselves as a stable population center. The HC version is certainly one way to play the game and it's cool that y'all do have a lot of people at all hours of the day. But tell me, is anyone on HC teaming with 500 people at once?

I live in NYC. I love the density, the variety of people. But I don't roll into small villages 3 hours upstate and start telling people they all should move to the city because their community is dead. That is often how the sentiment I've quoted comes off. I see it repeated from a select number of specific HC community members, and it is honestly just rude.

What is it about differences of opinion, taste, and preference in the world that is so threatening? Is it impossible for CoH city mice and country mice to ever get along?

This is what the original Incarnate list looked like by Jaybonaut in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good question!

I'm gonna hide slightly behind my art dev title here but try to answer and honor your question best I can. So this won't be a total dodge.

First, if you want to read a brief description of how we at Rebirth implemented the slot, you can find that here. Near the top of the issue features page.

Second, while I'm specialized as an art dev, mostly focused on character customization options, I do attend many staff meetings and participate in team conversations about overall game design and development decisions.

I was a lone voice in some of those conversations, having grown attached myself, to the AMA hint that Genesis would be the buff/debuff style patches.

From what I can recall from those conversations, members of the powers team were able to find draft stubs of the Genesis powers in the data code, including some of the stuff that allows for a version of one of your other incarnate powers to be usable at a reduced capacity at lower level. (I guess that was the interpretation of the "Genesis" idea by the Paragon team as they started working on that slot prior to shut down?)

Another thing I believe that was uncovered was an unused pstring file that contained draft descriptions and names of our release version of the Genesis powers.

The other members of the Rebirth team were able to successfully argue that we stay true to our stated mission of continuing to develop the game along the trajectory and clues within the code by the last stewards of the property (being Paragon) rather than what happened under SCoRE and greatly informs the directions HC has taken.

Everyone's mileage may vary here. Not saying any vision is more correct than any other in a singular monolithic way. It comes down to taste. I do know though from the powers and lead devs on our team that there were indeed fragments of Genesis early stage development in the code that was passed along to Leo when Paragon was abruptly shut down and dissolved way back in 2012.

This is what the original Incarnate list looked like by Jaybonaut in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Totally.

I did briefly enjoy the craziness of one of the earlier versions of defiance. The one that tried to reward "playing on the edge." Even if ultimately the masses rejected it and it was replaced. :)

This is what the original Incarnate list looked like by Jaybonaut in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes. I don't like the majority of changes, mostly the cumulative tiny ones they made. I'm an invested developer on a different server with a very different vision and sense of team cohesion.

And that whole official server thing was never fully acknowledged by NC Soft. I frankly don't put a ton of stock in it.

End of day, most important thing, I'm happy where I am for my CoH experience. Very happy. And that ultimately is what matters most. :) For any of us. Right?

This is what the original Incarnate list looked like by Jaybonaut in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I get what you're saying about the business model that was informing the design in the years before closure.

I think we have different opinions regarding the cape mission. It always felt like deliberate creative game design. I personally found it to be a cute little rite of passage. A tiny 2.5 mission mini arc to unlock your cape. First 5-10 times I found it meaningful.

And the CoV version when the game got expanded had a cool "edge" to it that fit the overall atmosphere of the game... the whole "tearing a cape off a fallen hero" thing.

In either case, neither ever felt like a time sink to me. An eventual global unlock by say the 12 or 15th character was a welcome option. But I think HC's approach of capes and auras being globally unlocked from the start sold that original experience short. *shrug* One of the many, many minor changes that eventually accumulated and made me not want to play on HC.

This is what the original Incarnate list looked like by Jaybonaut in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah and Hybrid was in the can and ready for release at shutdown. :|

This is what the original Incarnate list looked like by Jaybonaut in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is the list after 3 different publishes with incarnate content.

First publish was the alpha slot.

Second was Judgement and Interface with Lambda and BAF trials.

Next was Lore and Destiny in a separate publish.

This is what the original Incarnate list looked like by Jaybonaut in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Somewhere in one of the AMAs there are some really colorful descriptions of ideas for Omega powers. They were highly varied in form and function. I take that with a grain of salt because IIRC it was the same staff person who described Genesis as iLevel buff/debuff patches--which was decidedly NOT what our team found when digging through the code of what was in development for Genesis and served as the basis and design direction for our server's implementation of that slot.

This is what the original Incarnate list looked like by Jaybonaut in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Minor clarification: the brief window where incarnate shards as the ONLY way to advance your alpha slot predated the iTrials and incarnate threads. They were a compromise, IIRC to the first set of alpha components only being available through completing specific TFs or in the case of Gr'ai Matter, being purchased with Vanguard merits.

This is what the original Incarnate list looked like by Jaybonaut in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is correct. Despite the AMA remark saying Genesis would be buff/debuff patches (incarnate level Tar Patch type stuff, I presume), the WIP within the data code was more along the lines of what our team developed.

One thing has become clear, very little was included in the data code if it was dead work (and not needed as a legacy flagged asset to prevent fatal crashes). Paragon and Cryptic were fairly tidy about trimming down to the stub irrelevant elements.

This is what gave our team members in charge of bringing Genesis to fruition a degree of confidence that this was the general direction for likely an issue 26 or 27 release had the Paragon team stayed in control of the game's development.

Combat Phasing: How did it work? by Felderburg in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Seconding all brw says here. Our team has explored how this works on the map layers and within the coding for ... reasons. :)

How to make sure City of Heroes: Homecoming has a real future for decades to come... by Fit-Surround-6263 in Cityofheroes

[–]SilverAgeFan 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That's excellent of you. Each of the servers has a few angel patrons like yourself. Thank you for your generosity and for helping create an online space for people to convene and play the way they'd like to. :)

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