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Kill Ten Rats
Kill Ten Rats (www.killtenrats.com) has great City of Heroes news, photos, videos and more
Yesterday
Selling Powers
Returning to last week’s big theme of item shops, City of Heroes shipped Super Booster IV: Martial Arts last week (discussion thread). In addition to emotes and costume pieces, it includes a power (like the other Boosters): Ninja Run power: Dash through the city with the agility of a ninja...
Wednesday, Nov 18
How to Write Patch Notes
While we are talking about doing things right, I may have attacked the City of Heroes patch notes before, but one thing they do well is pointing to themes. Some of that is the advertising copy for, “Come try our new stuff! It’s awesome!” but the valuable part is expressing the developer inten...
Monday, Nov 16
Champions Zone-Servers
Most MMOs make it difficult to play with your friends. Levels are a common culprit, as are character- (not account-) specific friends lists, but servers are today’s topic (and City of Heroes solved both those problems anyway). My friends play World of Warcraft on however many servers, and...
Saturday, Nov 7
Towards a Perpetual Stream of Events
City of Heroes has a slightly different take on this. Instead of adding new holidays each year, they add new events to existing holidays. The previous content still exists, but each year makes it bigger. Halloween features trick or treating and the great pumpkin and costumes and a haunted gi...
Wednesday, Nov 4
Custom Design
I’ve been thinking lately of a trend of sorts in the MMO developing community…player designed content. I’m not talking about sandbox MMOs…those are really a topic for another time and place. I’m talking about when developers release a set of tools in a theme park style MMO that allows playe...
Wednesday, Oct 28
STO vs TOR
Star Trek Online’s character creation engine promises to be one of it’s strongest points. The engine is so robust that you can create your own race if you like. And what would you expect from a company that can boast their current MMOs have the best character creation process out there? On the...
Thursday, Oct 15
Improving Achievements
Zubon Unheralded in City of Heroes Issue 16, some of the more insane badge grinds were toned down. Some were cut in half, some had a 0 lopped off the end, and a couple added more enemies that count towards earning them. This is a good thing: do not encourage your players to leave [...]
Tuesday, Sep 22
The Tyranny Of Levels
Let’s linger there a moment. Long long ago, City of Heroes had its “purple patch,” which imposed level modifiers. Your 50 damage attack against the 200,000hp enemy would only do 20 damage, and that was before applying the enemy’s defenses. Even if you could take down higher level enemies, it...
Friday, Sep 18
Further Frontiers in Quality of Life
Why it’s City of Heroes, of course, Issue 16. Super-sidekicking: “Each player in the group’s level is set to the level of the owner of the active team task. If no team task is selected, everyone in the group’s level will be set to the level of the team leader.” You earn xp while exemplared, [...]
Tuesday, Feb 17
Seven Favorites: City of Heroes
Favorite Zone: For rockin’ times, I must go with Perez Park. It was a horror when you got the “Defeat 10 Circle of Thorns in Perez Park” back in the day, but the Park is a great place for low-level group fun. Get four to eight friends together and rampage, hitting Blood Brothers and Skulls in the s...
Monday, Nov 3
Opinion: Ten Arguments Against Evil
Zubon I always characterize City of Villains as what City of Heroes would have been with another year to work on it. But we aren’t playing it as much at City of Heroes, or at least we don’t seem to be. Why is that? There is less content. It is good content, but once [...]
Thursday, Dec 13
Recent Searches
Istvaan Shogaatsu and the Guiding Hand Social Club are returning champions. Tabula Rasa and City of Heroes Issue 11 were popular on-topic searches. Greetings to my fellow badge whores! Is there something we all should know about two heads’ being better than one in Tabula Rasa?
Friday, Nov 2
Character Contemplations 3: Assimilation (Kinetics/Psychic Blast Defender)
Hey, this is about my character, why is it in the second person? Because you need to try this playstyle. If you want to see why City of Heroes is a different game from other MMOs, nothing will show you better than Kinetics. If you decide it is not your style, you will still want someone else on your...
Tuesday, Oct 23
Character Contemplations 2: Zubon (Empathy/Electricity Blast Defender)
Before Enhancement Diversification, you could fully slot Fortitude with Hami-Os and keep it on every team member constantly, with maximum accuracy and defense. You could not do much else, since you would cast it every 8 seconds, but that would take care of most of your problems. Post-ED, i...
Thursday, Oct 11
Character Contemplations 1: Frosta (Ice Blast/Devices Blaster)
Trip Mines were another victim of Enhancement Diversification. You usually get only one shot with a mine (surprise surprise), so if you do not kill the target, you have not gained much by spending the long activation time. I can still two-shot minions with Trip Mine and Frost Breath, so that...
