Ask Cryptic: General Q&A

[StormShade]

Hello everyone, and welcome once again to another round of Ask Cryptic! That wonderful time of the month where we look to our community for questions, and then answer as many as we can!

With the Serpent Lantern just released, and oh so much more to come, we thought now would be a great time to let you ask those burning questions straight to the dev team! So please post your questions below, and we'll do our best to answer as many as possible in an upcoming web feature!

[Silverspar]

Here's my questions in no set order;

1a: When the SG update comes in with the next update, will the rank roster be expanded to 7 like it is over in Star Trek Online?

1b: Will the SG menu be a completely different menu from the social box like it is in Star Trek Online as well?

1c: Will we be able to designate a guild uniform like you can in Star Trek Online for male and female characters and possibly ranks?

2: How will the the SG Calendar and Events schedule work? Will we be able to plan out months in advance, will it only be for that month? Will the SG calendars automatically have listings for planned Cryptic events, like every full moon the Blood Moon rising?

3: Can we get a specific social beach type zone like they have for Risa in Star Trek Online?

4: Aspect of the Bestial is greatly complained about concerning it's graphic? Will it be getting removed?

5: Will we be getting a Halloween or Christmas events this year?

6: We know we are getting more emotes, what about stances for characters, like the ever heroic wings (hands on the hips leg spread), or a Morpheous type stance, and for those undead types, a zombie stance and so forth?

7: For those with concepts or those that want to seperate their PvE from their PvP, will be getting the option for dual builds to make full use of the build system in Champions?

8: Any plans to convert power replacers into cosmetic items we wear by just equipping them in a tenth slot, with a mild effect possible (such as a small fire DoT for fire effect)?

9: What's the state of the Flashback system? Is it still coming? Will we able to flashback to the tutorial or even the earlier crises to do missions and get badges/perks we missed?

10: What's the state of UGC? How would it be implemented?

11: Will Nemesis get any updates, like missing power sets, more henchmen types, more power sets for henchmen, and more personalities for the Nemeses, as well as newer missions to break up the tedium, especially an ending mission since everyones probably done Deathray Demolition several dozen times now.

12: What's the next planned powerset(s) to come out? A lot of hope for Earth and Two Handed Weapons, but also Sonic and Radiation for Energy Projection, to say the least.

13: Will we see anymore end game lairs added in the near future?

14: Will we ever see set piece upgrades?

15: Will we see any other type of PvP maps like Capture the Flag or any massive big outdoor type PvP maps (Alterac Valley style or even perhaps like Bloody Bay in CoH?)

16: Will we get a zone dedicated to a large team concerted effort to taking down a big bad, similar to the Hamidon, in Champions?

17: Will we ever get the option to form two or more groups together in a raid/strike force type deal for world encounters. For isntance, it's really unfair to large group of people that only one team is ever given a shot at the reward for world bosses like Kigatilik, Telieosaurus, and Qwyjibo.

[Empyreal10]

1) What's the deal with all the nerfs that snuck into the Serpent Lantern patch? Specifically:

• On-Next-Hit effects have a shared cooldown, when the patch notes state this was reverted
• Sniper Rifle has a 100' range, when the patch notes state this was reverted

There's a slew of other items that snuck into the patch that were either reverted or not supposed to be there, which makes me assume the wrong build got pushed to live, and we have had NO Dev comment regarding this, despite several threads by the community about this issue.

2) What happened to the dev communication lines? The dev tracker has been filled with technical issues and Tumerboy's usual shenanigans, but nothing out of you (StormShade) or Terramak (or at least very little) since Serpent's Lantern went live, despite several glaring issues that have popped up (see point 1), and we have not had any response about them. If they get forwarded to the proper channels, that's fine, but this little activity is reminiscent of the days when communication was terrible and the community became very jaded. I don't think you want to revert to that state of community cynicism, as that was also a point in community decline.

3) It seems like there have been an influx of new players (at least judging by the amount of "help me I'm a newb" posts over in the combat and builds forums. Can you confirm or deny this? It's good to see the community expand positively.

4) When are you (StormShade) bringing me on a NemCon run with me as your Nemesis? You only have until the middle of August before I start my first term at Guildhall, and will summarily be unavailable indefinitely. No pressure.

[Scarlyng]

Hello, devs. Nice job lately. And without further ado:

1) Are there any plans to respond to the player posts about the ubiquity of travel power removers used by mobs in PvE, and if so, what can you share with us?

2) (If this is already available, apologies) What power balance(s) will be in the pipe following Force?

3) Have you considered a modification to the difficulty slider for open world play that would simply perform a mathematical operation to increase mob damage by various percentages if players select Hard or Very Hard?

4) Players have noted that bleeds are considerably more robust in areas such as Canada Crisis after the Serpent Lantern patch. Is this a byproduct of buffing Viper bleeds, and will non-Viper bleeds be rolled back?

[Dardove]

When will we see more costumes pieces for Bows and claws since both are severely lacking in the number of unlocks?

With the recent perk fixes and changes to perk stores, what are the future plans for perks? Can we look forward to any new types of perks (like crafting based ones for example), new types of rewards, or more perk fixes? Also are you going to making it possible to repick up perk rewards if we lose them (like the heroic resonance for example)?

Anything interesting coming up for items or crafting?

When will Hero games gets it's new rewards in the stores and a replacing of the prices of it's top tier items?

[Saikyo-RyuHatman]

Wireless problems with CO for many players since Launch. Any fixes?

[Roxstar]

Will it ever be possible to do polearms such as Quarterstaffs? Or at least blunt objects? If no please explain why it's so difficult.

Thanx!
-Rox

[Tumerboy]

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

[Heathen666]

1) Crafted Travel Powers; any plans to review? At the moment it takes a massive concerted grind to be abale to even get into a poistion to even craft one let alone ranking it up. While goals within a MMO are all well and good... this is somewhat beyond that.

2) Joining NPC organisations... Any thoughts?

3) When are we likely to have an expansion/update to the Nemesis system? Currently I have a magic based Nemesis who's trying to build a deathray... really immersion breaking.

[blakerefuge]

Originally Posted by Heathen666

3) When are we likely to have an expansion/update to the Nemesis system? Currently I have a magic based Nemesis who's trying to build a deathray... really immersion breaking.

Seconded to the highest degree. We want Nemesis updates!