f13.net

I hope this is like the end of beta event. (http://www.cityofheroes.com/game_update10.html)  It was a lot of fun, despite the lag.

Oh, and it's already on the Test server (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=info&Number=8474839&bodyprev=#Post8474839) for closed beta testing.  That's certainly a fast turnaround from I9 to I10.

Reading up on it, this looks like it's gonna be a blast. I hope the World Event part of it is done well.

Ok, that's worth a resub. Yea.

Yep, looks like a good issue.

Other things mentioned in the revised Rikti information included a space station and a moon base - a moon base zone has been rumoured for a while.

It looks like the lvl 35 - 50 content gap is going to be getting a lot of new materials for people to play with.

Which is good because 35 is about where I stop playing my characters.  That's when the grind kind of hits me and I run off and make an alt. 

I'd been thinking recently of killing my WoW sup to play CoH again... this might make it worth while...

--
Alkiera

With everyone screaming to lessen the grind, I'm shocked they aren't increasing experience gain. I'm about to quit again after hitting the mid 30s wall.

Heh, well.  Nice of them to have the double-exp weekend before this; my warshade needs the boost to have a prayer of hitting 35 before this arrives.

Oh hells yes. If it's anything like the end of beta for CoH it's gonna be a blast. That was the most insane thing I've ever seen. And the neat thing was that the event started in the outer higher level zones and eventually reached Galaxy and Atlas. I think I have one toon at 34. Got to get her level up. Villain no less. Maybe I can team up with the Rikti  :-D

Traitor.  They want us all dead and don't care about our earthly allegiences.

I have been, too. 

People only scream about the grind on this board, actual CoX subscribers don't complain about it much on the offcial boards. They just roll another alt.

Though given the massive increases in people playing during double exp weekends their actions speak louder than words.

I'm not going to scream, I'm just going to cancel. Again. <shrug>

They don't complain about grind in vanguard much on the vanguard boards either.  Eerie coincidence. 

i don't scream. i just don't see the point of sticking around past 20 which is what 10 day trial got me to, without the double exp weekend.
The carrot and stick is just not right, and the repetition pattern is too frequent. Same tiles, same mob setups, just different mob abilities = dull too fast.
The people who rolled alts probably have their SG friends power levelling their alts, so they just enter a mission door, sit there and get their powers, have fun, bored and repeat. I hit 50 once, from 45-50 I got PUG group that wanted me to just sit at the mish lobby and do nothing, even if I wanted to do something I couldn't I'd just get ripped to shreds with all that massive mob clutter that Fire/Kintrollers just raped over and over. 

the power growth curve is also confusing, early game, you have so much to pick from 1-20 and the game paces itself great, but when you hit 4 attack powers and forced to pick passives at 20+ just to keep up with the endurance, I don't see the point. I run in close to my opponent, cycle through my 4-5 attack powers, pop a blue and that's that. It's not worth playing for a month. I rather just roll up Marvel Ultimate Alliance for my superhero fix.

This is extremely rare on both of the servers on which I played.  People did it with Kheldians when they were new, otherwise you really don't see it.

Eh, I'm a Necro MM so I'll be in good company.

Carry on then.

Beta was opened to the public today.

Oh good.  Hopefully there will be enough people now for me to hide behind!

Wow that Rikti Invasion thing is just crazy. There's a big battle going on right now on Talos Island by the train station for those that are around right now.

Interview with Matt Miller aka Positron (http://www.gamedaily.com/interviews/_a/designer-interview-city-of-heroes-and/20070627143109990001)

With more info releases - I10 seems like a very good issue, with some good additions to end game content.

You can download the I10 content now.

Long time CoH subscribers have a friends network large enough to put power level groups together for their alts that can speed up exp gain insanely. I played bridge in a couple of obviously friends only groups while my char was 45-48. Unfortunately the demand drops off when you hit 49 or so. I was actually enjoying the loot and exp gain while sitting watching a movie.

Basically you just need a fire controller or 2 and a blaster, defender and tank and everyone else is along for the ride. I've seen good groups clear a zone of L51 mobs with only 4 ppl actually fighting.

Dosen't that tell you that the game dosen't scale well for a balanced exerpience through the entire game?

Should it make you happy that something like that can happen with 4 players taking on entire zone of L51mobs.

Or should you simply sit there and say its fine everything is normal no one raise a red flag.

At what point do you get disappointed in "is this all their is to this game" attitude.

Yep


Are you trying to say that you're unhappy? Why are you unhappy? Does it displease you that people can abuse the game mechanics?
I believe (and this is only my opinion) that CoH players only pull stunts like this once they've been playing for a while (like, years), have explored as many of the character archetypes as they care to, and have learned that yes, there are certain combinations of powersets that combine into highly efficient mob-clearing machines.

That, combined with the sidekicking mechanism, lets people level up new toons much faster than they would by "normal" leveling.


On this particular topic, the red flag has been raised. It's been whipping in the wind so long, it's starting to tatter. Welcome to two years ago.


And now, welcome to F13. I think that if you peruse the City of Heroes forum, you'll find that your complaints, if that's what they are, are not new.

Seems to be up.  I have a nice leather skirt with camo cargo trousers under.  I look tough.

Yep - I10 is up. The first zone raids by the Rikti have already happened. The Rikti War Zone is lagging very badly at this point. Not d/c badly, just swimming through molasses badly.

Three instances of the War Zone were up and all were pretty lagarific. Was nice to appear as a villain here and tease the heroes standing about near Lady Grey.

Electric armor brutes own neo-Rikti hardcore. That is all.

And, lastly, the servers were brought down a couple of minutes ago. Not sure why yet, but there it is.

All servers are currently down.

Edit: and they are back up

Played for a couple of hours and didn't get any Invasion messages so now I'm wondering if they temporarily turned that off.


Edit: nope, not turned off

They're starting to hit two zones at once per side now. It's pretty cool - the sky goes dark, the War Walls blink out (where applicable) and a convoy shoots through the air, blasting anything foolish enough to be on the rooftops with lasers and dropping bombs. Some land without going boom and you have to break through the casing while Giant Monster Code Rikti beam down and stop you, occasionally with the new assault craft.

The Rikti aren't actually giant monsters except for one special boss in the War Zone - when they invade a city zone they just con even with whatever hero is hitting them, and deal and take damage appropriately.

The new Rikti bunkers are frickin' sweet, and all the Rikti have had comprehensive armor redesigns.

The task force is pretty short, maybe two hours with a good group, and while most of the maps follow the same theme that theme is "office building/lab/sewer turns into tunnel turns into Rikti bunker", which doesn't exactly get old quick.

In case you were wondering, there's a +psi defense accolade you can get -- separate badges for 25 bombs, 10 of those elite boss floating war thingies, and 100 rikti. It shouldn't take more than 2-3 zone defenses to get them all. They come in bombing, follow the transports and hunt and destroy unexploded bombs that drop. Then, once the transports leave, they teleport down units on top of players in the zone for about 10m, the more players around the stronger the units. Generally there's a large defense battle near the trams with 20-30 heroes. The hardest part, if you can call it that, is finding and killing the unexploded bombs.

How much Psi defence?  Any is nice, since I absolutely hate Psi on my Tank, but I'm curious.

Sounds like quite a bit:

but I haven't seen the actual numbers yet.

Ah, it's a click not a passive.  Still nice when dealing with Master Illusionists.

Never had an accolade so far, are those things level restricted ?

That one isn't.

Heading back in, as the servers are back up now.

Accolades are generally only level restricted by the tasks required to get them. A lvl 5 character could get the Archmage badge (I think... don't know if it has an exploration badge requirement in a lvl-restricted zone) if only they could find someone to powerlvl them the required and specific mob defeat numbers.

In many cases the earlier you get an accolade, the better, since I think exemplaring can remove accolade benefits if it drops you below the lvl you got it.

I looked around a bit last night and it wasn't immediately apparent what we're supposed to do when the Rikti invade a zone?  I got a message saying skyway was being invade and ran over for a look.  The dropships were flying around zapping people and dropping bombs you could attack but otherwise it seemed pretty uneventful.

There are two parts.

The first is where the drop ships fly overhead dropping bombs. Originally the bombs did damage but now they just drain Endurance which is a little boring. During the second half of the bombing run some of the bombs will land but not detonate. Those bombs (aka UXEs) you can destroy to earn a medal. They start with their health bar low and they slowly fill up unless you do damage to them and then they'll go back down until they are destroyed.

During the second part Rikti will teleport down and land near players assuming there is a clear path to the sky overhead -- e.g. if you are under a bridge or inside an "open" building like WW they won't land near you. Killing enough of these drop Ritki will earn you another medal. They will spawn next to you even if you are solo (usually) if you are mostly stationary so you need to be prepared when you hear the teleport sound nearby.

If you are in a team with 7 or 8 members, Elite Boss Assault Suits will teleport down as well. There's a third medal you can earn if you kill enough of those. Because the suits only spawn if groups are big enough people tend to congregate at a single spot to make it easier to form groups and so you can "share" the suits among more than just the team that spawned them.

The drop ships in theory are destroyable though I haven't seen it done myself and they kept nerfing various tactics during testing (like slowing the ships down) so I'm not sure if it's still possible now. There's no medal or anything for destroying them since people without Fly/Hover have a really hard time contributing to those battles.

If you get all three Invasion medals you get the Accolade mentioned above.

I lolled.

Yeah, yeah. People were punching through to the mothership and bombing the crap out of it in half an hour, regular, so there's that too.

It's a sustained five-mission chain which runs you all through the parts of a Rikti base, taking out two Rikti archvillains, Penny Yin's big windup friend, the riders of the apocalypse, THE FREAKING HAMIDON, and a special bonus guest star from another dimension. And like all task forces, if you have friends of similar intent you can stop at any time you like and pick up later, though with a hero/villain team you can't go outside the warzone.