I've heard requested a few times a mechanism to sort and/or filter the order in which our characters appear at the character selection screen and also the order in which servers are listed in the server selection screen.

Considering the numerous examples of good sorting systems in-game such as Inventions, Supergroup and the Team Search function, is adding such a mechanism technically feasible? If so, when? :)

Vince,

Regarding Pet and NPC AI how involved are you with the algorithms? For example the AI in Siren's Call seems pretty good in the hot spots. However, infamous problems like the villain in Mayhems having staring contests with parking meters, and MM pets not selecting their attack chains so they make sense in regards to range and melee. I realize these are difficult problems to fix, but what work is being done on them? Also, any online resources to learn more about game AI that would be relevant to CoX?

Poison Pill

hey there vince! thanks for talking to us. i've got a few questions if i can sneak em in:

1) what's your board name? i think i know, but i'm not sure...and even if my guess is right i'm curious what the story is behind it.

2) now that the game is as matured as it is, do you get to extend outside of your role these days at all? for example, does the design team invite your input in design discussions (as opposed to just asking you if something is technically possible)? do you get to discuss creative ideas with the art team at all? do you get any tangible input these days into what features make it into the game? the reasons i ask--for one, the coh dev team has always seemed to be really laid back and open to ideas. it's always won my respect. a bigger reason for me though, since i went into the industry for what sounds like similar reasons to yours (the desire to make my own games at a young age): back then we could satisfy all aspects of our creativity from code to design to art content. things seem to be a lot different for people in the first years of their career though (and sometimes a lot more)--there always seemed to be a natural pigeon-holing that can stifle growth. it's nice to see people getting to expand their role after putting in so many years in the industry and w/a single developer, but it sounds like not all developers promote this kind of growth.

3) related to question 2...what's the first feeling you get when someone tells you to "get back in the box"? anytime you guys post to the boards it seems like someone comes out and says it. and sometimes i wonder if the irony is lost on some people.

one last thing--i gotta say thanks for pouring so much into my favorite online game.

mr3

Hey, got some MM related questions, especially about pet AI!

1. Why do pets like the ninjas, medic etc. range when they should be in melee and melee when they should range? After all, ninjas do have a tendency to be better slicing stuff up with swords and giving kicks to the groin then they are at throwing shurikens and shooting poison darts and the mercenary medic seems to like to run in close, when he should be hanging out back. So are there any plans to work on the AI? Maybe add a third command type that allows you to choose Melee, Range, or Either, similar to the Passive, Defencive, Agrresive choice.

2. I'm not sure if you could answer this, but how are the epic classes going for CoV? Are they going to be like the rest of the villain classes with a tendency torwards soloing or are they going to bring in some of the group love from heroes?

3. Are there any plans to combine the hero and villain markets?

4. Are there any plans for a pet customization, so that rather then getting a pet with random traits everytime he/she is summoned, we could decide how they'll look and keep it that way? Are there plans for more Female minions for MM's? Ninjas, Thugs, and Mercs are pretty much all male right now.

5. For the weapon customization, will that effect all classes that choose a powerset that has a weapon in it (MM's, Fire Sword for Controllers), powersets that have weapon like effects, but not actual weapons (energy melee comes to mind) or just power sets that focus on the weapon (assault rifle, Archery, Claws etc.)

6. Any plans for SG bases and the current conflict between Infamy/Influence and Prestige?

7. Any hints for I12, I13 and whats being planned or already being worked on?

8. When escorting an NPC you gain a -stealth effect, but it doesn't fade after the NPC dies or stops following you and it lasts through the whole mission? Is this on purpose? Could this be fixed?

I wasn't exactly sure on what you could answer, so no doubt some of those questions are silly, but hopefully at least 2 or 3 of them are good and will be answered *crosses fingers*

-Tempestas Proeliator, Kage of Clan Tempest Dragon

Hi! I am new to the game and from reading the official boards I get the impression that most people who play PvP feel that it is unfairly balanced in favor of hero teams. Is this true in your opinion and, if so, are there any plans to fix it? What about one of the main complaints that clear mind and other similar powers are self stacking buffs against holds, sleeps, ect. which make it possible to completely negate the usefulness of dominators and controllers with a single power? Also, is it correct that these kind of buffs have been made self stacking as a hack for a problem in the code rather than by original game developer intent? Thanks.

Various intricacies of Super Groups have been plaguing players for a long time. Is it possible to allow group leaders to promote/demote members who are offline? Is it possible to let players use the in-base portal to access coalition or team leader bases directly without first returning to the zone they were last in?

Additionally, is there any way the arena functionality could be upgraded? Players have been asking for custom rules and the ability to select maps for quite a while. I know that there were many bug fixes in the arena recently, for which I am grateful, but there is still a demand for new arena functionality.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Vince,

One of the more interesting zones in CoX are the PvP zones - particularly Siren's Call. These zones, however, suffer from sparse population even on the largest servers.

I'd love to see the PvP zones and the Arena become cross-server, to help boost population in those zones and to give PvP a boost. Is this a possibility? If so, any chance of it appearing on a "to-do" list in the next year or two?

Thanks!
-- Ravensfire

My question is this, coh and cov level 50 pop i like all but blunt we need high level like 60 or 70 or 90 and more campagins and heros go Villains viceversa Villains go heros. little work on pvps all zones for example more mission for coh and cov and make big zones and make AI bots in pvp zone smarter. p.s you cool

p.s p.s Thanks.

Hello.

Would there be any chance of part of the code being made available 'open source' so we could design our own map and mission instances?

With all the new material that is coming out for the city of heroes game and all the plans to introduce even more game content are their any thoughts and plans to improve the servers to reduce the amount of lag that is experienced, I more than meet the system requirements I exceed them but I play on Virtue and I am always getting bogged down by the server load... any plans for hardware upgrades?

Hi I have been playing in the city of universe since it's release. I would like to ask two questions if I may.

Is Cathedral of Pain gone for good, and if not when can we expect to see it put back into the game?

When is the much touted in it's day base raids gonna make it's appearance?

Thanks, Grey Iron

Ooh! Ooh! So, what can you tell us about the Fifth Column Mekman hostages, or Gauntlet sometimes making more than the taunt AoE, or Placate and queued attacks, or Disorient and queued critter movement, or how closely the server thinks about the position of players and critters, or knockback and latency and prediction, or...

Crystal ball gazing! Can the new staff squeeze, say, more 'automated' team forming (looking for members) onto the schedule? (Someone said something about a glass ceiling for features...)

How does implementing new tech go? There's the schedule thing again. How do you decide to implement, say, IO Procs and not something else?

How much does your department's job extend to the servers? How big is the player database? How much bandwidth does it use? Who writes whole-playerbase scripts like the Prestige bump?

Good luck with composing your reply. =)

I am a advocate of what I have dubbed "Dynamic Content"

"Unlike the current way of getting missions (which would still be available), new content mission spawn from a random event at one of the various shops and offices. My favorite example is the bank robbery. Unlike "Bank Missions" where you face a supervillain in an instanced environment, this mission happens in the open zone. A passing hero will notice the PPD surrounding the bank and investigate. Clicking the PPD seargent will allow you to go in and try to defeat the robbers. At this point, if you are successful, there is no difference than any bank mission except there is no supervillain, but if you can't stop the escape, there is still a chance to stop them as they will exit the bank and take off in a (now targetable) getaway car. The getaway car will traverse the zone to get to an awaiting warehouse and can be stopped by any available hero, but majority credit will go to the hero or team that spawned the getaway (similar to open-air ambushes) and if the getaway car gets to the warehouse, the mission is failed.

This type of mission can be modified for hostage stand-offs as well.

Shops could have custom missions that require you to be observant of the environment such as the Protection Racket. In this case, a hero notices several gang members coming out of the El-Mexicano (or whatever it's called). The hero can go inside and find that the owner is being extorted for protection money. From this point you get a mission requiring you to go to several other shops in the zone and defeat the gang members you find there, teaching the gang that such activity will not be tolerated.

These along with an expansion of the "Arson" missions and gang wars at the borders of two gang territories, would give players an alternative to defeating mobs posturing in "suggested" criminal activity."

Is something along these lines possible from a programming standpoint?

As a player who HATES fighting Arachnos Mu Sorcerors ONLY because they get SOM MANY powers that we don't, will we be expecting any consolidation sets in the future? Such as: Electicity Control, Pistols for Blasters and Corruptors, Energy Aura for Tankers, ETC.?

Also, is there anything else coming in the form of End-game content? I've already sort of lost interest in what's there and have been looking for other things to deviate my attention (ALTs)and I've been hoping for a new zone to hunt in or something like that. Maybe a new PvP zone for Exclusively 50's, or something?

And can we be expecting any Server consolidations (As in combining a few of them) like I've heard so much about?

Thank you!

Since the tanks defense capability and agro capability has been scaled back, can the mob size be increased and frequency again in various areas such as talos, bricks, Perigrine and so on. Something like the cherry hills area in the hollows as an example would be nice. There are plenty of mobs there

Right now many of the mobs are from 3-5 instead 10 - 15. there are times where you may find a larger group but they are far and few in between. as a rule any of My tanks can only take damage from 2each, 8 man mission size mobs. I understand that for what ever reason folks got upset that tanks could herd 200 bad guys at a time.

I mean look there is actually a choice when your looking for a team "hunt" but no one does any more because there was what i consider an over kill between aggro caps, defense limitations, and serious mob reductions.

Can we at least bring the mobs back?

Cappy

A different sort of question for ya. I'm always curious as to the process you and your team go through to bring an idea to the game. What do you have control of and what are the steps you go through to make it work?

And if you were allowed to add one thing to the game what would it be? Any pet projects you have been wanting to add in that just aren't possible or allowed?

if make new mm pet a demons wolf or half demons half humans or wolf pet Thanks.

When i11 hits we will get a SG membership bump to 150. Was the account based membership idea abandoned? if so what were the hurdles that you just were not able to overcome? If not why is it takeing so long to bring this feature to the game.

Thanks for working on this great game.

~MR

Hello Vince!

I would love to see three upgrades to the game, so I hope I am on the right track in asking you about this....

First of all, would it be possible to code groups looking for members? If this is possible, can it show who wishes to join, their archtype, and their level? Would it also be possible to show the name, level and archtype of the current members of the group to those wishing to join?

Second of all, is it possible to set up the email feature currently in game to email alts (your own characters on the same server) or other people not online (otherwise you could just give it to them) enhancments, recipes, and even influence?

Third and finially, how feasible would it be to set up voice chat in the game?

Hi Vince, and thanks for taking the time to interact with us. I do have a few questions, if you can answer them.

1) Is it at all possible to provide a Sort Filter for Ghost Falcon's SO list? since he sells everything, that list is obnoxiously long and it would be a HUGE boost.

2) While we're providing sort filters on that, how about sort filters on some of those badges: Achievement has several types: Special Event, Kill #, Monster Kills, Milestones (debt, #badges, influence, damage heals, etc), PVP, and so on. How about making lists like that easier to navigate so I can tell which ones I have and are missing?

3) Can I PLEASE have the ability to control my controller pet to a degree? I can teach my dog to heel, sit, and sic em (attack my target).

4) Whats the word on Defiance?

5) Are there any plans to make fly faster? It still needs the most slotting to hit the cap and despite that is still the slowest way to travel.

6) I like my full human Peacebringer, but his damage output is pathetic in comparison to a full-human warshade. Are there any plans to buff the human form? Maybe tweak photon seekers or give em a way to improve their damage to make them more pvp friendly?

Thanks for giving us what is still one of the most unique MMO's out there.

Hello Vince thank your for taking the time to interact with the players of the game it is so wonderful to see Dev's who actually listen.
My questions are is there any plans to give a travel power that fits more in line with the natural or tech origins? Already in the game are temp powers such as the jump pack and a few other jet pack like ways to get around which make more since for someone playing with an origin that doesn't make since for a player who should depend on natural skills and technology to get around. I would love to see some kind of glider such as the one that the Green Goblin uses or something of that nature implemented to fit with the natural and tech origins better.
Also is there any plans to ever blend the worlds of CoH and CoV so that they feel more connected. I have talked to a number of other players who like me feel that there should be a ranking system on both sides to out line what type of Hero or Villain you are. We see this all the time in comics you have your True Blue types such as Superman and your bend the rules but don't break them types like Batman and on the other side you have your truly malevolent rule the world types and the more strategic who will actually do whats right if it suits there interests. We feel that the best way to show case this would be to grant a temp power that changes depending on what class of hero/villain you are. Your class would be based on choices made in missions and in interacting with npc's such as if you save someone on the street they may offer you a small token in the form of influence since Statesman for example would never take money if you turn it down your rating goes up but if you accept then you lose a few points and over time your choices would change your class of hero/ villain. The only thing that could make that better is if we could see your hero or villain have a complete change of heart and end up toeing the line and level get so low that they change sides and are transferred to either PC or RI. this would open up a whole lot of new missions for a character that a player may have gotten tired of playing safe guards or the like but instead of deleting the character and starting a new villain to play the other side you can find new life with your old ones in a different place. We have seen this illustrated to us in story lines on CoV where a hero has gone rogue so I figure why not make it a real option in the game?

I would like your thoughts on these ideas as well as your comments on if we will ever get a working base raid system?

Thank you and all of the Dev's so much for the hard work you do to make this the best MMO ever!

Thank you for availing yourself to questions.

I run a Super Group on Justice Server and am really enjoying the game.

A few things that have come to mind are the following:

1. Blasters are squishy, it's accepted. My 50 is a blaster and I love the toon, force mastery has made him less squishy thankfully. The biggest problem I have is that there is no effecitive way to defend yourself against holds or psionics (I have the Vanguard Accolade). God forbid you take a toggle as a Blaster, you become a somnambulist (In respec I got rid of all my toggles and only use power ups now ... I hardly ever get slept ... funny thing). But as a levelling Blaster, it felt like every enemy had a way to sleep you or hold you (Which is a little excessive imho). Are you discussing ways to make Blasters somewhat more survivable? In PVP, Blasters are seriously underpowered despite their massive damage capability (I found that all it took for an opponnent to kill me (at level 50) was a web grenade two punches) and with Issue 11 and the new willpower attribute, Blasters won't stand a chance at all. Will anything be done to equalize? Just wondering.

2. Why are Circle of Thorns mages so indestructable? As a person who grew up playing D&D or any game that involved magic users, we understood that the least physically powerful characters were the mages. Yet, these CoT guys are damn near impossible to kill. Ruins, Death mages are a little too tough. This makes the CoT very unpleasant to fight and I avoid those missions as they quickly become debt factories. It makes sense that Demons, Balrogs and Spectral followers are strong as they are summoned minions ... and I feel that the magic of the CoT should be strong too ... but making the actual spellcasters so physically stout seems ... absurd. So, I guess my question is ... is there a reason for this?

3. Random things I would love to see: A new zone ... RWZ is one of my favorites and I would love to see more places to go. More (affordable) SG base additions ... SG leaders (And those who hold the Uppoer tier ranks should be able to teleport to their bases. I know there is a Vet Reward like this, but as an SG Leader myself, I see this as a lacking feature for those who take the time to design and run SG's ... Just sayin'). To prevent abuse, perhaps allow only so many Prime Leader positions to an SG. That way a group doesn't make everyone a leader to grant them all TP ability. Better yet, put a prestige cost on it and the abuse will probably be minimal.
Anyway ... More costume options. More power sets: eg. Perhaps water based heroes (even an underwater level), Animal power sets (Heightened senses, Shapeshift, Tracking, perception, hearing, dark vision, sonar, radar, etc).

Lastly, how about more outdoor missions for PB's and WS's? I was very frustrated to have these epic toons and be consigned to cave missions for 80% of my career.

An idea I had for a mission was one where lower level toons had to save civilians from marauders (of any origin) but the idea was to not hurt the civilians yourself. AOE's and melee's put civilians in harms way. Currently, civilians run about like idiots in missions right through firefights. Shouldn't we, as heroes, be concerned about getting them out of harms way? SG's could possibly get prestige bonuses for saving the lives of civilians.

My favorite zones are easily Croatoa and the Rikti War Zone. I really enjoy the invention and enhancement system. Thanks for all of your efforts as the game is wholly enjoyable and my critiques or opinions are merely ... well, critiques and opinions. I appreciate the ability to voice them.

1.) I'd like to see a revamp of our in game e-mail system. We can dress up our e-mails with little emotes as well as stop spam from coming in.

2.) Base building needs a serious revamp from the ground up. Make things interactive. It shouldn't be such a pain when u want to move one room to another..

3.)This is one thing i'd like to see happen, i can feel myself getting really excited about this: We can make our own mission maps. We can create them with an editor and upload them online in a certain area and have fun.

4.) Will u expand game play in missions and make "super" missions for example: There are 2 teams of 8 that need to clear out a massive gathering of AV's/heroes.

5.) PVP, maybe mayhem or safeguard pvp timed missions? that would be interesting... or a server where it's all pvp. and yes i mean villains roaming atlas and heroes in mercy. I know it may not be balanced but lifes not fair and thats would make it VERY exciting for long time players to do something very challenging. This would be the ultimate battle of good vs evil.

6.)I'd like to see the actual heroes(stetesman, back alley brawler etc) or villains (Ghost widow, Mako) actually roam the city and if they are attacked by any enemy they will fight back. I was thinking of this during the rikti invasion, kinda silly having ms liberty stand there and do nothing. This would add another dimension to the game, make it "more real" for players.

7.) When are the new villain epic archtypes coming?

Hi Vince I know I have already posted once but I just had a quick question. The thing is I have noticed on a number of missions I will enter a door of a building and end up in a cave or the sewer and at times I will go to what would appear to be a cave or such and end up in a base or some sort. Is there a reason for this? I would kind of like to see the outside of the mission match the inside if for no more then just to make it more realistic. I was also wondering if there was any way where you could make the costumes have any kind of effect on the play of the toon instead of just being window dressing?

Here are a few questions for you:

1) How difficult would it be to implement an in-game audio chat feature? I'm thinking of something like Ventrillo or TeamSpeak, so that we don't have to download and configure a 3rd party product and run it alongside COx. Theoretically, you could have Audio Chat Channels, and just choose your channel. Not sure how much it's requested, how hard that would be to do, or how it would impact lag on the servers. Thoughts?

2) Why don't the transparency settings apply to the map window? Is this something thta could be fixed?

3) Could someone give us a really good explanation of why the game engine can't handle skeletons with more than 2 arms and 2 legs? (In other words, why are all the characters humanoids or floating orbs/squids with tentacles?) That one really puzzles me as a software developer, and the answer would just satisfy the geek in me. :)

4) How difficult would it be to turn the blue-side phone booths into something like the red-side radio? (Or to create something similar, so that when you run out of contact missions, you can turn to the phone-booth/radio for additional missions?)

Thanks!

Given in the up and coming I11 there going to be a Respec Recipe I been wondering would it be posible for there to be an Enhancement slot Recipe? I have one level 50 scrapper and would like to get the Epic Powers 6 slotted but to do that now I would have to remove slots from the other powers. This is more of a Could it be done question then an Is it going to be done.

Question two now someone said this before but I'm still saying now there weapon customization in Issue 11 I been thinking the same system for that could be used to Customize the Master Mind Minions. I noticed now the computer seems to Randomly select Fetures. So could Mastermind Minion Customization be Posible I would love to have my own army of Vahzilok instead of the standard Zombies or for Robots the Hovor Drones Like Arachnos and Rikti have instead of the Ape looking ones.

Now I been thinking of Zones the City of Heroes have a wide range of areas to run around in but in Villians it's more of a go from one island to another and less of a choose your own path. One Zone I thought I would like to see is a WINTER zone due to some Villan creating a Weather device it's locked into winter perhaps by mistake. Another would be an Island that Vocanic the missions there could be to stop the island from blowing up. So any talk for more Villian Zones?

What are the talks about E-mails being able to trade items and funds with Friends and your own ALTS would be easier if we can send them via package E-mail. Given we can now send Spam ignore I'm seeing an incress in E-mail spam.

Oh one last thing for a Villian more then once I wondered why can't we attack civilians?! you know strike Fear in the hearts of the weak this wouldn't give out much if nothing at all but always wondered why Game Foes can rough house them and Player foes can't.

Is there any talk about Hideouts. This be similure to Bases but for one player alone a comic book example would be Batman's Batcave even thought he's in the JLA as well.

I often tryed to Mimic In game Costumes. For example making a Longbow Outfit, and play a Foe turned Hero/or Longbow turned Villian, or even copying Statesman's look. Alot of the costume parts for the Game AI's arn't included for us players. So is it posible to Open up some of these items (So I could have my Good Freakshow Electric blaster!). I think everyone enjoyed going T&Ting during Halloween in the outfits. This got me wondering if you are testing the idea of alowing us players to those looks?

Now for Ego Stroking. GREAT GAME! Befor I became played CoH I wasn't interested in MMORPGs I was more a Platform player (God of war nut here). So the whole Online Gaming wasn't my thing then my Friends talked me into it. So soon after Who Wants to be a Superhero one ended I gave City of Heroes a try. Now here I am over a year later and I'm still Hooked.

Hi! Thanks for working on such a great game for so long. You and others have made some great memories for me! :)

- Is it possible to get a 'programming pipeline- maintained on the website somewhere? Just a list of current projects in priority order? Perhaps with labels, like: planned for an upcoming issue, to be implemented ASAP, highly desired but problematic, etc...it would be nice to be able to glance at a list and say, "EATs are still a priority, but are being pushed back, new costumes are still forthcoming, looks like bases just took a leap forward..."

- How about occaisional articles/posts on what the design/thought process of a particular power? Why were powers ordered in Super Strength the way they were? How did that evolve? What hurdles did you hurdle, and which diverted you? How was the original Unyielding Stance intended to be used? Things like that. I just love hearing the thought process of the design of individual powers.

- How successful and useful were the polls for what the players wanted added to the game? Will there be more?

- What is the one part of the engine you are itching to rewrite?

A few questions to (I hope) one of those In The Know:

1) At what point does it become difficult to balance enemies against the player's characters? I mean for the first 10-15 levels making mobs tougher is easy...give them more Hit Points and heftier attacks. But eventually the characters begin getting more effective attacks and, obviously, so do the bad guys. But where does the balance begin to get delicate?

2) How difficult would it be to add 'attack Melee/attack Ranged' to MM Pet commands? Some of the pets seem to work great (Bots) while some are terrible (Ninjas) because they never seem to want to do what you want. The Thug Brute, for example, will stand around waiting for his ranged attacks to recharge and ignore Melee going on right in front of him. Any chance of this changing soon?

3) Any idea if the Prestige/Influence debate will be addressed any time soon? The Dec 10th Prestige boost will be great but it seems like a bone thrown to appease the masses.

4) Merging the Markets between CoH and CoV...will it happen? If not are there any other plans to revive the sluggish Market Red-Side?

5) Castle recently said that new datamining tools had enabled him to spot problems with Blasters. Now Blasters are looking at a long-needed fix and other ATs are howling for the same. Will these datamining tools be used to look at ALL of the ATs and Powersets eventually for balance reasons?

6) Lots of new staff coming on-line over the next few months. Will any of them be working on things previously thought to be outside the realm of do-able like Power Customization, new physics like Wall-Crawling or running across the water? Are there a lot of these types of things that you guys want as much as we do but just can't manage to shoe-horn them in?

7) The Base Editor. A very popular but oft-neglected portion of the game with lots of fans asking for some love. How difficult would it be to make little changes like new decorations and such? How difficult would it be to make a major overhaul like putting doors where we want, having rooms next to each other instead of one square apart and bases rated as 'Raidable' and 'non-Raidable' for those of us that never plan to PvP?

8) Are there any plans to incorporate the Combo System from Dual Blades into existing or future Powersets if it works well? It sounds very cool but would it be tough to alter say Martial Arts to add it in?

9) Female Pets for MMs. Lots of wild rumors flying about this one. Have they been left out due to coding time constraints, naming conflicts or to simply avoid potential abuse by hormonal young players?

10) We hear a lot about how some parts of Powers are 'baked into' the code...colors for example. Will it be possible to make future Powers different so they might be easier to customize later or are you guys bound by the existing code to make everything the same from here on out?

11) Switching sides from Heroes to Villains. Lots of desire for this but no clear ideas as to how. Is this even possible? Even if the fans clamor for it would this be just impossible to do?

12) QoL Issues. Some of these get suggested a lot like a better Team Search feature, better SG e-mail system and so on. Since these might benefit every player (or close to it) are they higher on the priority list at all if they're within the ream of the possible? What sort of QoL issue do you guys really want to address but are just finding it too tough/time consuming to crack?

Thanks in advance for all the fine work.

Hi Vince,

Now that CoX has been acquired by a company with the money and desire to see it grow, will we finally see a fix to the long-standing bugs/imbalances that have plagued this game? Specifically I am referring to:
1) Cathedral of Pain
2) Brute Fury bug
3) Base bugs (both general and raid-related)
4) PvP imbalance

These things (and others not listed here) greatly hamper post level-50 game-play for enough people that there is a serious call for 1 issue to just be bug/imbalance fixes.

Thank you for taking the time to field these questions and I look forward to learning more about the future of CoX!

Hey Mr. Vance De'Vo..

So a question for you would simply be this. When is Dark Astoria and some of the other zones going to be righted? DA is the origin of my first character that I started some 44 months ago during Beta. Boomtown is in construction, but none of the others that I could tell. I really thought there was going to be a new one after this last Rikti attack. I have a heart for DA since it was my first Character and the first one to 50.

I see all the posts and realize you won't be able to do everything. You rock and I know yall are bustin your butts there. Thanks.

After previous discussions I've had with Positron and Castle I wanted to ask yourself about what the game is capable of handling in terms of huge NPCs. The fiction has gigantic building and even island sized characters ranging from Talos and the famous Atlas to ancient creatures such as the Leviathan (imprisioned under Sharkhead isle). Given the kinds of issues with collision detection and even AI navigation around environments with models that large are we ever going to be able to see skyscraper sized enemies to battle with in-game? Or is the engine simply not advanced enough to manage it? I ask because it seems that all NPCs of that kind of size are immobile such as the Lusca and Hamidon. Are the devs ever planning on bringing the Leviathan or Atlas back into the game in some form in the future?

- Chris 'Tal-N' Blane

Hello Vince,

Some code specific questions:

How many lines of code is CoH/CoV (not including 3rd party SDKs)?

When a designer asks for a feature that the current pipelines don't support, what is the ratio between saying 'No.' and refactoring/rewriting the pipeline? (How often is an idea rejected because it can't work with the current game systems?)

From a programming point of view, is it possible to have fake players on your team?
Like say I want to solo with my level 50 scrapper but would like the mob-count of a 6 player invincible team. It's possible now to up the difficulty slider by setting it to invincible, but a secondary slider would be nice (pretend you're a 6 player team). It's very annoying right now to find players who want to just be on your team vut not enter the mission.

Greetings,
A fellow lead game programmer,
Greever