Drunkard's Walk Forums

This is big. Here's Positron's letter on the subject.

Here's the full text for those who can't go to the site (Bob's Nazi work computers being the main culprit)

Issue 13: So big it can't be contained in a single update!

Good morning! When we announced Issue 13: Architect a couple weeks back, we were overwhelmed by the positive response. Much of the
feedback was centred around the Mission Architect system which allows players to create their own missions and story arcs. We have been actively following
forum threads and private messages about the feature, and have even discussed it with players in person at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle.

It became apparent that you guys really want this feature, but in order to fully realize your dreams of writing your own missions you need creative
control in one more key area: The ability to create "customized" characters to fight with or against in your missions. Adding custom characters has
always been on our Mission Architect feature list, but we had considered it a "stretch goal." That is, we could launch the system without this
feature because our confidence was high that the rest of the system was incredibly robust.

But after listening to you guys, we realize that this feature simply must be in at launch. You have convinced us that it is an integral part of the
Mission Architect, and we have reworked schedules and timelines to accomplish this. Rather than push the launch of Issue 13 out completely for one
(albeit really cool and very complex) feature, the Mission Architect is going to see a slight delay. What is not going to be delayed
is the rest of Issue 13. To that end, the previously announced feature set for Issue 13, together with new features that we are announcing
today, will become Issue 13 and Issue 14.

Issue 14 will take on the name "Architect" and contain the Mission Architect feature along with other features we'll announce at a
later date. We are planning Issue 14: Architect to be released Q1 2009. Issue 13 is now called "Issue 13: Power and
Responsibility" and will be launched this autumn.

Issue 13: Power and Responsibility

Issue 13: Power and Responsibility will contain the bulk of features we've announced previously, including:

• Shield and Pain Domination powersets
  
• Merit Reward system
  
• Day Jobs (that include a suite of new costume pieces)
  
• Additional Cimerora and Midnight Squad mission arcs
  

In addition, we have some other new exciting features to reveal that will be included in Issue 13: Power and Responsibility. These include:

• Levelling Pact
  
• Multi-Builds
  
• PvE & PvP Powers rebalancing
  
• Villain Patron Power Respec
  
• Supergroup Base Repricing
  

Over the coming weeks we'll be providing more details about the above points, but let me give you an overview of some of them now.

The Levelling Pact: A new innovation to MMOs, this groundbreaking system allows you and a buddy to create new characters and have your XP be
permanently in sync, whether both characters are online or not. You will always be the same level, even if your buddy plays ten times more often than you do!
It's sort of like "Extreme Sidekicking."

Multi-Builds: Another innovation to City of Heroes, we are delivering the ability to have two different build-outs of each character, including
which powers are selected and which Enhancements are slotted. This will now be possible for characters who want to take advantage of it. By visiting any
Trainer you can switch the entire build of your character to an alternate one. You can use this separate build for whatever you like. If you wish to use
different power selections for soloing and groups, you can do that. This even makes it possible to have different IO sets slotted for PVP and PVE. It's up
to you.

PvE and PvP Powers Rebalancing: Floyd "Castle" Grubb and the powers designers have been hard at work in finding ways to strike a better
balance between the many powers in the game. The scope of what they are doing is too broad to go into details here, but we're very excited and we'll
share more information soon. Suffice to say we know that you don't want your PvE powers adjusted because of how they play in PvP, so we're taking a new
tact in power balancing with Issue 13.

Summary

Issue 13 was so big we had to turn it into two releases, Issue 13: Power and Responsibility and Issue 14: Architect. Issue
13 will be going into beta soon and launching this autumn. It will include most of the previously announced features of Issue 13, and then some.
Issue 14: Architect will include the full-featured Mission Architect and is scheduled to launch to the live servers in Q1, 2009. I am really
looking forward to getting Issue 13 into your hands as soon as possible, and starting off a kick-ass 2009 with the release of Mission
Architect.

Here's some more of the official info release:

Issue 13: Power and Responsibility

Day Jobs (Offline Character Progression)

Scholar? Caregiver? City Official? Now when players log out of City of Heroes / Villains they're just getting started! A character's day job is
determined by the actual in-game location from which he or she logs out. If players log out from a University their day job is considered to be a Scholar. If
they log out from City Hall they're a City Official. The benefits are thematically appropriate to the location. For example, a City Official earns extra
Influence, a Scholar is granted Salvage, a Caregiver is granted Health Regeneration Buffs, etc.

Once characters have accumulated the required amount of time for each Day Job, they are rewarded with the appropriate Day Job Badge and Title, increasing
their "earnings" for that job. Multiple Badges can be combined to unlock Accolades and the ability to accumulate additional new rewards. Almost every
location within Paragon City™ and the Rogue Isles™ has an associated Day Job, resulting in a wide selection of jobs and rewards!

Multiple Builds

Another character customisation option and City of Heroes innovation, Issue 13 delivers the ability to have two different build-outs for each character,
including which powers are selected and which Enhancements are slotted. With this feature it will now be possible for all characters to diversify their game
experience by visiting any Trainer and switching the entire build of their character to an alternate one. You can use this separate build for whatever you
like: if you wish to use different power selections for soloing and groups, you can do that. This even makes it possible to have different sets slotted for PVP
and PVE. This new system gives characters the added depth and flexibility to tackle any challenge!

New Powersets

• Shields - Heft a Shield for Heroic or Villainous Ends! This new powerset brings a classic power to City of Heroes: Shields! Now, you can arm Tankers,
  Scrappers, and Brutes with a powerful shield to protect both themselves and their allies.
  
  
• Pain Domination - Villains can now bend the power of pain to serve their own ends! Those playing a Corruptor or Mastermind have access to this new
  powerset. The antithesis of the Hero healing powerset "Empathy," Pain Domination brings parity between Heroes and Villains with a distinctively
  evil flair.
  

Levelling Pact

A new innovation to MMOs, this system allows you and a friend to create new characters and have your XP permanently in sync, whether both characters are online
or not. You will always be the same level, even if your friend plays ten times more often than you do! It's sort of like "Extreme
Sidekicking."

The Merit Rewards System

A new game system that allows players to earn tokens by completing Trials, Task Forces, Strike Forces, Raids, etc. The most challenging and time consuming
tasks grant the most reward tokens, which can be redeemed throughout Hero and Villain zones for recipes, enhancements, salvage, costume pieces, badges,
inspirations and other game items.

Villain Patron Power Respec

Villains level 40 and above can respec (re-select) their Patron Powers, offering the same flexibility that heroes are afforded with Ancillary Powers.

Supergroup Base Repricing

Base Salvage is being replaced with Invention Salvage and all Base room and item prices are being adjusted to more accessible levels. Remaining base salvage
can be traded in for invention salvage, or can continue to be stored in base and personal storage.

PvE and PvP Powers Rebalancing

More details to come shortly, directly from Powers Designer Floyd "Castle" Grubb.

New Cimerora Missions

New Hero and Villain story arcs expand upon the history and lore, and delve into the players and politics of Cimerora.

Other features include new Invention Origin Sets, new Costume Sets, Zone Refinements, and more!

Just so's you know, that info is from the European CoH site (eu.cityofheroes.com) and not the main US Site(www.cityofheroes.com). Info is the same, though
far as I can tell.

Edit:

I forgot just one thing. SQUEEEEE!
---

The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself."

>Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI

Levelling Pact? Multi-Builds?

*dies from overload of awesome*

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

Multi build is interesting, the levelling pact also got my attention. But for me, I'm interested in the news that base Salvage is being phased out and
replaced by just invention salvage. Does this mean we'll finally have an SG level invention storage?!

Also, from an interview with Matt Miller:

Quote:Massively: For Day Jobs, what kind of costumes are we going to be seeing when that system goes into the game with Issue 13?

Matt Miller: So we've had Jay working on a lot of civilian clothing for this feature. He's done a myriad of different suits, from single-breasted, double-breasted, two, three and four-button, bolo ties, normal ties, bow ties, pinstripe – you know, striped suits, like many different varieties of that... sweaters, sweater vests, and then the police uniforms. We've got a ton of different police uniforms. We're even including a really cool police belt, with all the accoutrements on that. I can see a lot of players just grabbing that and putting it on their tech characters and gadget characters, just because it looks so cool.

Oh, SO MUCH FREAKING WIN.

More civilian clothing options? Oh that is so cool. I've never been satisfied with the array of street clothes for male characters - females are a little better in that regard. Excellent, excellent...
The multi-build stuff is just hot, too...that alone is brilliant. Now I can build for both PvE farming AND PvP in one single twinktastic package!
I'm rather disappointed that the actual Mission Architect feature is being pushed back, but I'm glad at least they were HONEST and upfront about it, rather than delaying I13...or releasing a partial Mission Architect with only halfassed features. Hopefully when it DOES launch it'll be slicker.

(Also: Am I the only one excited for what the levelling pact thing could mean for.../RP reasons/? It'd make it a hell of a lot easier for us to do paired characters or even larger themed groups.)  
-- Acyl

I'm gonna love multi build... especially for my kheldians/VEATs. And also for a lot of my other characters who can have different builds that play
completely different ways (I've got QS Nano in the front of my mind for this one, hopefully this will really be able to spice her up for me). I just hope
that getting respecs will be easier after this... perhaps being able to trade in those merits you earn for a respec recipe, or more common drops (I've
never, ever had a respec recipe drop).

Day Jobs are gonna be fun. And new civilian outfits, YES!

The pact will be interesting, if it seems a bit... loose. I dunno. Having a character level when not online is odd to me, but it could be useful if someone
else is willing to put that much work into it.

Also, whoo! Shield Tanker and Pain Corrupter, here I come!

Quote: Acyl wrote:

---

(Also: Am I the only one excited for what the levelling pact thing could mean for.../RP reasons/? It'd make it a hell of a lot easier for us to do paired
characters or even larger themed groups.)

You're not, especially since it was noted that if the 2 man pact works, they may well expand...

Quote:The Levelling Pact:

I just died from awesome.

[quote[Multi-Builds:[/quote]

MY CORPSE IS ON FIRE FROM FLAMES OF AWESOME.

Quote:PvE and PvP Powers Rebalancing

I CANNOT HEAR YOU, I AM TOO BUSY BEING DEAD OF AWESOME.

aahahahahahahhaha

AWESOME

I am freaking wiggling for PURE JOY in my chair.

I wonder what happens or if you can Pact a 50 and a 1.. Pact someone to Pooky, come back two weeks later, presto, it's a 50!
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

You and me both Wire, but re: the pact-to-50 thing, i suspect not. The letter states "allows you and a buddy to CREATE new characters " (emphasis
mine). I think you'll find that to be key, to prevent abuse if nothing else.

Also, I suspect that there's a few gotchas. STill cool, but even so... for example, one way it could be capped is if the XP is split. So, unless your
'level buddy' is plays as well, you're doing twice the work yourself. I think that's fair, mind, but that's just an example.

Another could be that, sure, you're guaranteed to always be at the same level. Does that mean that your level buddy has to log in and level up so you can?
(I think this is less likely, but still)

But for RP purposes alone... Ankh? I'm thinking we may need to re-roll Light and Night, if it does require a fresh start *grin*.

(Edit to fix quote -- too excited, hit Post instead of Preview, aaaah!)

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

Wiregeek, I point you to this bit:

this groundbreaking system allows you and a buddy to create new characters and have your XP be permanently in sync, whether both characters are online or not.

especially the bit that says 'new characters' 8P
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

The Scoop on the Leveling pact is essentially XP is put through all the calculations modifiers and what not, and then it is cut in half, and distributed to the other partner. So if you are both on the same team, you'll both get half of the other's XP and therefore get normal rates. I'm pretty sure that this only applies to newly created characters as well. Probably put in the name of your leveling pact partner at Char Gen.
See:

Quote:[table]MMORPG.com:
In
terms of the Leveling Pact, does this mean that if I'm playing and my
friend isn't, that his character will level up with mine?
Matt Miller:
Levelling
Pacts are the next major evolution in side-kicking within City of
Heroes. Essentially, every point of XP is equally shared between
participants regardless of online status. This enables online friends
to keep their XP in synch no matter their gaming schedules.
[/table]

And:

Quote:Massively: Brian, you talked about how day jobs are
part of NC Norcal's idea of involving players in the game even when
they're not necessarily playing, and it seems like the Leveling Pact is
obviously a tie-in to that. Can you talk a little bit about that, from
a philosophical perspective?

Brian Clayton:
I'll talk about it from a philosophical perspective and then let Matt
follow up with the nuts and bolts of it. The one thing that we continue
to strive for with City of Heroes is to pick areas where the
MMO genre could use some innovation. We certainly have the best
character creation system, and I would argue that sidekicking was very
innovative, at the time when that was released. Even the further
iterations, like our base creation system, were still very innovative.
So
we looked at another area of innovation with the Mission Architect
system, and now the Leveling Pact. These are things that had been
begging to be done in the MMO space for so long. Again, while
sidekicking and exemplaring accommodate a number of player types, we
feel that the leveling pact now accomodates another type of player.
These things not only benefit City of Heroes, they push the genre forward.

Matt Miller:
It's definitely one of those features that came to us based on a lot of
feedback we had from our players, and especially our friends who are
playing the game. They came to us and said 'You know, I like playing
the game, and I like the sidekicking system, but I'm getting to a point
where my friends are so far outleveling me that they don't want to
exemplar down and do my stuff because they've already done it before.
Is there any way that we can stay more in synch?' So we had this idea for the Leveling Pact: essentially splitting each
character's XP gain directly in half and just distributing it across
two characters whether they're offline or online. And we said: 'You
know what? There's a system here. This is a workable system. This is
really innovative, and this is taking a new step in sidekicking, making
sure that you and your friend are always able to play the game
together, and will always be the same level.'
Massively: So basically the main character's XP gain is halved, and the other part is given to the buddy?
Matt Miller:
Yeah, basically both characters when they earn XP, they go through all
the calculations for earning XP – how much they're supposed to get,
based on their team size, what they defeated – every calculation
possible in the game, and at the very end it's divided in two and each
person in the pact gets their share.

---

The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself."

>Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI

Multibuilds. Civilian costumes. Day jobs. Levelling pacts.

Woot.

How many people can be in a levelling pact, I wonder, my ninja friends?
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

Leveling Pacts can be created between 2 characters level 5 or below. The higher level character will be reduced to the XP count of the lower - so a level 5
and level 1 Pacting both will become level 1. The pact is 2 character only for now, with possible expansion up to a full team in future if things work as
planned. The pact can be broken at any time, but if characters are above level 5, it cannot be re-established.