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Community => Task Force Hail Mary => Topic started by: Super Atom on April 16, 2019, 04:19:43 AM

Title: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 16, 2019, 04:19:43 AM
Edit since first

An article for those looking for some info.

https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/18/the-city-of-heroes-private-server-team-has-released-its-code-to-the-world-but-not-the-characters/

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: SilverAgeFan on April 16, 2019, 04:40:44 AM
I feel so betrayed. I don't know which website or who on it can even be trusted anymore.

It's funny. Coming here after reading about the SCORE thing on Massively. I too feel sad and betrayed (in relative proportion considering that Notre Dame was almost/arguably fully lost today).

For years, CoH was my one game, my only game. I miss it dearly. It helped me survive a really nasty multiyear battle with illness. I've had friends I met in game pass away since the game was closed, all of us awaiting a dream of its return. I think about the game and miss it still, probably at least once a month. And man, that tease about original character and account data still existing...

I still miss my stable of several dozen, never-PL'd concept characters, dating back to the first month the game went live. I've been quietly watching the various spiritual successors and public retrofits for the game, and biting my tongue, as none of them seemed to be progressing at a rate that, in my estimation, would bring a playable game into my life prior to 2030.

So tonight, upon catching wind of this story, I'm just really sad. It's not about not being included. (I participated in a lot of end game content on Triumph back in the day, but just the same, I was never quite in the clique. Got a lot of "who dis" when joining incarnate raids, even though I actually lead them on many occasions.) It's a reopening of the sense of loss I felt over the game going away. Nothing has ever come close to what I enjoyed about CoH for the years it was up.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 16, 2019, 04:46:38 AM
I feel so betrayed. I don't know which website or who on it can even be trusted anymore. To be honest, i now no longer trust anyone involved in anything. These people that never truly lost CoH could have been here lying to everyone the entire time while gleefully playing the game like nothing ever happen. Sickening.

Yeah well maybe access to this hidden server will appear soon. I always suspected something like this existed and that paragon chat was mostly to keep us busy until the real thing was available. That said I just wanna play again before I die so I really don't care as long as that happens...

You know I feel sorry for the mods here because I'm sure lots of angry posts and threads are going to be deleted/moderated over the coming days.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Surelle on April 16, 2019, 04:52:21 AM
For seven years this issue 24.5 CoX private server has been running now. No one is going to be inviting anyone else, or letting in anyone else, and any implications that the leakers (whom I do not know whatsoever-- I'm just reading about this on FB, Reddit and MassivelyOP like everybody else not involved is) somehow jeopardized our getting in is total bunk.

Seven years.

 The dev or devs behind this didn't hand Leandro and SCORE all the code, a compiler and a distributor years after the shutdown; they all lost their jobs with the shuttering.  They handed this off before the game shut down.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 16, 2019, 04:53:56 AM
I don't want to point fingers at anyone. At this point I'm just sad and anyone innocent doesn't deserve to be accused of anything like this.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MegaWatt on April 16, 2019, 05:23:44 AM
its not that it was a secret that is a problem, if its nota hoax then keeping it under ground while NCSoft still has its greedy hands looking to slap down any of us having fun with somthing they killed because they couldnt make a profit or what ever is a -good- idea as it means it may still exist when Saurons eye in Pangyo turns to look at some other community they've shattered.

am i hurt that i dont get to paly it ? yep.....a lot but you know what ? i'd rather have the hope of playing it in the future then palying it for two weeks and then losing it to a Cease and Desist having fun because we want all your money and cant understand why you wont try one of our dozens of identical grind fests! orders.


but on the third hand i'm so conflicted - i dont know who to be mad at (other then NCSoft).......i want CoX back so much.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 16, 2019, 05:30:41 AM
Got to be careful with what words are used, posts are being removed. What i will say is, I don't believe there is a future in what was shown. This was kept secret so there is no legal fallout and the chances of that ever changing would be NCsoft losing its copyright or selling its copyright. So basically, never.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MegaWatt on April 16, 2019, 05:36:35 AM
A distant hope is better then no hope i guess......what a roller coaster i've been on in the last 20 minutes.....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 16, 2019, 05:40:11 AM
Got to be careful with what words are used, posts are being removed. What i will say is, I don't believe there is a future in what was shown. This was kept secret so there is no legal fallout and the chances of that ever changing would be NCsoft losing its copyright or selling its copyright. So basically, never.

Relax Atom.  And yes, we do read the news. (https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/15/score-city-of-heroes-emulator-leak/)

Keep it civil like you all have so far, and everything should be fine.  But I will stand fast on anything concerning any private server talk specifically: invites, ultimatums for us or others, or links to private server content in any form will be deleted on sight.  Leandro said it straight, and none of it is here, period.  Our position has not changed. (https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=10951.0)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 16, 2019, 05:48:54 AM
Would it be out of line to ask a question everyone really wants to know? I.E Have the Titan people had access to this? If not, why wouldn't you have been if Leo is directly friends with the people here.

(I mean, remove if its out of line, I'm not trying to defame or attack anyone, I just think everyone wants an answer)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: TonyV on April 16, 2019, 05:49:42 AM
^^^^^ What Tahquitz said.

I get that people are probably reeling a bit, but I ask you to read what Leo said about why the server has been secret, and try to put yourself in his shoes. He's contributed a LOT to this community, from being an integral part of developing Paragon Chat, to providing various demorecord utilities and videos, to hosting the client files in a way that we just plain can't. This isn't someone who is out to screw over the community or keep to a small clique of friends something that he knows that thousands of people desperately want. I choose to believe that there was, and likely still is, a plan in the works to get this out there for the public. Too many people are instead dwelling in jealousy and misery, jumping to the worst possible conclusions about his motives.

We'll tolerate civil conversation about this issue, though to be honest, it's against my better judgment. But don't let it get out of hand, which includes posting any abusive posts or baseless accusations. Such will be met with expedient nukage with prejudice of the extreme variety.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: TonyV on April 16, 2019, 05:57:58 AM
Would it be out of line to ask a question everyone really wants to know? I.E Have the Titan people had access to this? If not, why wouldn't you have been if Leo is directly friends with the people here.

(I mean, remove if its out of line, I'm not trying to defame or attack anyone, I just think everyone wants an answer)
It's a fair question, and one I've answered.

I can only speak for myself, and the answer is no, I'm not on the private server.

Having said that, I've repeatedly said that many times, and each time, there's a contingent of people who refuse to accept that answer, people who use my denial as "proof" that I must be "in on it," which is why honestly, I encourage others not to bother answering. People are going to think what they want to think regardless of the answer, so it's kinda useless to actually answer.

As for why, I dunno. It's not like Leo and I are best buds. We chat about once every month or two, and most of the time it's not even about City of Heroes-related stuff at all. In any event, I'm taking him at his word in his statement to Massively that he knows that I avoid conflicts of interests with Titan. It's one of the reason he hosts the Paragon Chat client files instead of us here, to avoid possible unwelcome legal entanglements, since the Titan Network is hosted in the United States where we're extremely vulnerable to takedowns if we step out of line. Given that, maybe he just assumed that I wouldn't want to be a part of it. He's not incorrect in that assessment, in that if I were directly involved in such a thing, I'd probably 1) be constantly bugging him to release the binaries and, if he possesses it, the source code to the server, and 2) it would post a pretty massive conflict of interest to me personally, weighing what's good for the community versus what's good for the existence and development of his private server.

So I dunno, all I can do is speculate. At any rate, it doesn't bother me. Yesterday I didn't have access to a private server, and it didn't bother me one bit. I'm not about to get mad and worked up about it now just because I know one exists. Just like I had to keep some secrets during the shutdown that could have literally jeopardized some people's livelihoods, I trust Leo to have good reasons for what he's doing. He has a proven track record of working in the community's interest, certainly more than enough credibility with me to give him the benefit of a doubt on this.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Victoria Victrix on April 16, 2019, 06:10:57 AM
I understand my name and that of 435 who co-founded RPCongress with Red Djinni and Red Saviour has been linked to this "secret server."

Let me just say two things.

One, as anyone can see from my website I write between four and six books a year.  Spare time?  What's that?

Two, 435 has not been heard from by me (or AFAIK anyone else) for several years--we kept in touch for about a year after the shutdown and then nothing.  He let the RPCongress site lapse after about two years, which is why it's gone.  He was the one paying for the hosting and URL and I'm assuming he couldn't budget that anymore.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Twi on April 16, 2019, 06:51:03 AM
It's pretty frustrating, given that historically, private servers are only not squashed out by popping up so much that the IP owner just throws up their hands. This isn't keeping all the eggs in one basket, it's keeping a single egg balanced on a pen.

Also, the "We were planning public events but you won't get them now" is just... so eye-roll inspiring.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 16, 2019, 06:52:03 AM
It's a fair question, and one I've answered.

I can only speak for myself, and the answer is no, I'm not on the private server.

Having said that, I've repeatedly said that many times, and each time, there's a contingent of people who refuse to accept that answer, people who use my denial as "proof" that I must be "in on it," which is why honestly, I encourage others not to bother answering. People are going to think what they want to think regardless of the answer, so it's kinda useless to actually answer.

As for why, I dunno. It's not like Leo and I are best buds. We chat about once every month or two, and most of the time it's not even about City of Heroes-related stuff at all. In any event, I'm taking him at his word in his statement to Massively that he knows that I avoid conflicts of interests with Titan. It's one of the reason he hosts the Paragon Chat client files instead of us here, to avoid possible unwelcome legal entanglements, since the Titan Network is hosted in the United States where we're extremely vulnerable to takedowns if we step out of line. Given that, maybe he just assumed that I wouldn't want to be a part of it. He's not incorrect in that assessment, in that if I were directly involved in such a thing, I'd probably 1) be constantly bugging him to release the binaries and, if he possesses it, the source code to the server, and 2) it would post a pretty massive conflict of interest to me personally, weighing what's good for the community versus what's good for the existence and development of his private server.

So I dunno, all I can do is speculate. At any rate, it doesn't bother me. Yesterday I didn't have access to a private server, and it didn't bother me one bit. I'm not about to get mad and worked up about it now just because I know one exists. Just like I had to keep some secrets during the shutdown that could have literally jeopardized some people's livelihoods, I trust Leo to have good reasons for what he's doing. He has a proven track record of working in the community's interest, certainly more than enough credibility with me to give him the benefit of a doubt on this.

The thing that confuses me is why the server or source, whatever...  was given to anyone but the titan network. Especially after that grand speech you made before the game shutdown. During the announcement that it would sunset and how you were not going to just stand around and would fight etc to save the game. It seems to me if anyone would be given this it would be you. Or was it given to you and you gave it to them? You said you were not on it but if you wanted no part of it at all then it would make sense for you to give it to someone else. You don't really have to answer or respond; I'm annoyed by all this and the attitude that has been given to people here as far as private servers go. That and how people pretended all this time it didn't exist or talked to people like shit when they inquired about one in the works.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: P51mus on April 16, 2019, 07:06:25 AM
The weird thing about hearing about an exclusive CoH private server is that it's CoH without the community.  Which makes it more of a weird video game graveyard to wander around.

I find it a bit baffling.

edit: To expand on this a bit: The City of Heroes I remember was an open and welcoming community.  Teaming with newer players and telling them about the game was part of that.  You don't get that with some weird exclusive private server club.  It's pretty much the opposite of what the community was.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: spindisc on April 16, 2019, 07:37:37 AM
I just hope, now that SCORE is out in the public, they will heed to the open letter on reddit to actually make it spread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cityofheroes/comments/bdqf1w/open_letter_to_the_score_team_re_game_preservation/
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: jessejame on April 16, 2019, 08:46:44 AM
Honestly, the people in my circle have long since moved on and basically all contact with those I cared about were lost when the game shut down. Even when some day comes, the hard part won't be getting back the progress that was lost but rather the friends that were made. In light of all of this I buried the game when I lost all of my teammates that I had for years. I can understand where this bothers many of you, but I feel like it'd never be the same. i apologize to the moderators for posting the initial link I didn't realize that it was this big of an issue nor was it my intent to cause trouble. I sympathize with those who knew people who wanted to play again before they passed. My condolences to all of those.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Brigadine on April 16, 2019, 08:48:17 AM
Honestly, the people in my circle have long since moved on and basically all contact with those I cared about were lost when the game shut down. Even when some day comes, the hard part won't be getting back the progress that was lost but rather the friends that were made. In light of all of this I buried the game when I lost all of my teammates that I had for years. I can understand where this bothers many of you, but I feel like it'd never be the same. i apologize to the moderators for posting the initial link I didn't realize that it was this big of an issue nor was it my intent to cause trouble. I sympathize with those who knew people who wanted to play again before they passed. My condolences to all of those.
If you didn't somebody was going to. You definitely shouldn't be sorry for that.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Brigadine on April 16, 2019, 08:51:47 AM
I just hope, now that SCORE is out in the public, they will heed to the open letter on reddit to actually make it spread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cityofheroes/comments/bdqf1w/open_letter_to_the_score_team_re_game_preservation/
That open letter is awesome and true. What better example than Notre Dame burning down today. This game is an artifact just like that structure and the things in it. Once it is lost it is gone.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Thunder Glove on April 16, 2019, 08:55:41 AM
Just going to quote some of my old posts, because they're relevant now:

There was some talk about a server simulator a few years ago (i.e., not the original CoH code, but something which the client would recognize as CoH code), but I don't know if anything ever developed on that front.
I don't mean Segs, I mean another one.  The SCoRE project.

And to go back even further

Quote from: Thunder Glove link=topic=6654.msg135393#msg135393
In the meantime, keep holding a torch for for CoT, VO, SCoRE, and even HaV.

I'm just thrilled that news of SCoRE has finally surfaced again.  I can't be too mad that the Secret Cabal of Reverse Engineers was, you know, secret.  A little sad, maybe (even after all these years, I have SO MANY character ideas in addition to all the old characters I'd love to play again) but knowing that there are at least two emulators (or simulators?) out there being worked on instead of one doubles my hope for playing it again someday.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Twi on April 16, 2019, 09:10:23 AM
I had heard of SCORE closer to the shutdown date, but, it's been so long, I completely forgot about it.

Really, I'm not even upset that they're choosing to have a private, invite-only server. You're paying for it, do with it what you will. But withholding the ability for anyone else with the resources to do similar, that's got me irritated.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: summers on April 16, 2019, 09:23:21 AM
I've pined for City of Heroes for years, so to hear there might be a private server brings on so many mixed feelings. I think a lot will feel hurt - that they have wanted something so much and it was kept concealed from them. I also feel hope - that it might be available to us, but also quite deflated - that there's only rumours and we are no closer to anything.

I just wish I could play the game again.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Phocks on April 16, 2019, 10:13:59 AM
Man, this is real depressing. I've seen a lot of real terrible attacks on the people involved, and a lot of defending what I can't really wrap my head around as good decision making.


I think my biggest hang-up remains just how antithetical to the community's spirit this feels. I've seen a lot of posts claiming that an attitude like that is "jealous" or "entitled" or something, but it just feels like a colossal let-down to know something like this has just been bubbling in the background and being sat on for... what? 5 years, give or take? Honestly, I want to believe it was something that was entirely necessary, but when there's content being patched in and the game being furthered, all for an audience that's basically just a clique with a real cool clubhouse? That sucks. A whole lot. I don't really understand the claims of public events (that are now nixed?) since it seems like it's never really gonna be entirely safe to have the server be open.


The fact that the code could've been given out anonymously rather than hoarded really feels like the icing, here. If you wanna have your exclusive clubhouse and updates, terrific. But why not let others take their own crack at it?


It's been long enough where I can't really feel angry about the whole situation, it's just all immensely disappointing how it's been handled here. As much as I'd love to be able to play the game again, seeing it in hands making these calls just sours the prospect a whole lot.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Auroxis on April 16, 2019, 12:39:31 PM
Just watching videos from the private server has me hyped. Please, whoever is in charge, do the right thing for the community.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MyriVerse on April 16, 2019, 01:05:27 PM
Frankly, I don't get all the butthurt. The best thing to do with things like this is to keep them as secret as possible. I actually hope the people running this server can maintain their secrecy after this.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: TonyV on April 16, 2019, 02:56:32 PM
The thing that confuses me is why the server or source, whatever...  was given to anyone but the titan network.

Believe me, that question has crossed my mind more than once, especially since I know several of the devs and have a good rapport with the ones I know.

I'm not going to speculate on who released what to Leo. I honestly have no idea, and in fact, as I type this, I'm not 100% sure that anyone did. (Has that actually been definitively established?) No one has confessed to me, and really, it's probably something I'd rather not know because I'd be lying if I said that I'm totally on board with swiping code from one's employer, even in the cause of some more noble principle. (Though to be clear, I'm not saying I'm against it. Frankly, I'm torn on the issue.) Maybe that's why; whoever did it knows that Leo had more time, effort, and ability to see this to fruition than I did, with fewer qualms about setting it through to its logical end.

It really, really doesn't matter to me. I'm just glad something was released to somebody. It means it's out there, it wasn't totally destroyed, so our chances of having something tangible at some point are dramatically higher than they were before.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 16, 2019, 03:03:05 PM
The post they made doesn't sound like we'll ever get it, if anything it sounds like "we're sorry we got caught, but not sorry for lying, and since we got caught NO ONE ELSE WILL EVER be able to play it"

Parading around like they were going to let the community in ever, I don't believe them, if they've been lying this long, I cannot trust them.

They're wolves in sheep clothing, sitting here "mourning the game" like the rest of us, while instead they've been playing it for years.

The only right thing for them to do is leak the source files, keep their server private, we don't want to be part of score, we want the files out.


Self-Interest does not equal right.

The code is still NCsoft's.  It was not reverse engineered. It is not a generic server code filled with fanfiction, but a duplicate of the intellectual property of NCsoft.  It should not be shared with the spiritual successors, that's NCsoft's choice and would likely guarantee the demise of those efforts if they built on it.   Likewise releasing it creates a situation where any number of parties would benefit unfairly from Ncsoft's investment.

I'm not an ncsoft defender or an apologist, that's just cold, hard truth.   And, Yes,  those are unpopular statements.  The next few are too.

The level of entitlement that appears to be ignored by or blinding the people demanding the release of the code is staggering. Many people may feel hurt,  but no one in this community has been wronged because the secret server existed (only ncsoft).  The public does not get to have the code just because it was stolen by someone lacking good moral judgement.  People made mistakes and bad decisions,  but that doesn't entitle the remainder of the community to a hand out of the code.   It's not ethical and it's just not ours.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 16, 2019, 03:06:36 PM
I have a number of thoughts, and my emotions have been a bit jumbled through all of this. I'm trying to keep it as much within the guidelines that Tahquitz posted earlier, so hopefully this comes across in the manner I want.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nightmarer on April 16, 2019, 03:10:36 PM
To be honest it feels like the game closure over again but I have nothing to say against the people who kept it secret except that it feels naive since, sooner or later the info was going to be leaked, either on purpose or by accident.
 
Some people said that the problem is that the people not invited are just jealous, I can't speak for other but in my case, yes, I am jealous and hurt and sad but I am also perfectly aware that, had I been playing in the infamous server, now I'd be mad at the leaker for causing a the server to (temporally) close and putting in at risk of a C&D from NCSoft. To each their own, I would be eternally grateful if invited but there's nothing I can do for things beyond my control.

Maybe (or even probably), had the code been passed on to other people, there would be a ton of shitty servers (whoever tried certain WoW private servers knows exactly what am I talking about) and we would be complaining anyway for not finding a decent server to play, who knows.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: etnies445 on April 16, 2019, 03:55:50 PM

Self-Interest does not equal right.

The code is still NCsoft's.  It was not reverse engineered. It is not a generic server code filled with fanfiction, but a duplicate of the intellectual property of NCsoft.  It should not be shared with the spiritual successors, that's NCsoft's choice and would likely guarantee the demise of those efforts if they built on it.   Likewise releasing it creates a situation where any number of parties would benefit unfairly from Ncsoft's investment.

I'm not an ncsoft defender or an apologist, that's just cold, hard truth.   And, Yes,  those are unpopular statements.  The next few are too.

The level of entitlement that appears to be ignored by or blinding the people demanding the release of the code is staggering. Many people may feel hurt,  but no one in this community has been wronged because the secret server existed (only ncsoft).  The public does not get to have the code just because it was stolen by someone lacking good moral judgement.  People made mistakes and bad decisions,  but that doesn't entitle the remainder of the community to a hand out of the code.   It's not ethical and it's just not ours.

Was it NCsofts choice to run a private server for 6 years? Didn't SCoRE benefit unfairly from Ncsoft's investments?

These are all things score and those playing it are guilty of, but releasing it to other people - that somehow is bad for NCSoft, but having a p server up for how many years was...good?

I'm sorry, you aren't making much sense, very contradictory, releasing it does nothing they already haven't done in regards to NCsoft, so it's really difficult for score to play the "We're not releasing it because NCsoft wouldn't want it released!" card, without just seeming like hypocrites.


And to your point, self interest doesn't equal right, they've been running a p server for self interest for years, so no it doesn't. They are completely guilty in the eyes of NCSoft and the community, and there is only one side they can try to earn good faith with at this point, and it ain't NCsoft.


Edit: I will add, for the most part I personally had moved on, but learning about this p server has just reopened so many wounds. Until today I barely thought about CoH, and honestly I'm not sure I even would want the game back - even with their "updates" to it. The game is now 6+ years past the last update, the graphics honestly were fine for its time but are really lacking now, and I don't think even if I had the chance id play CoH on a small server without the community. The game is dead for me, NCSoft won't re-release it, I personally gave up, I moved on.

Seeing videos of people playing makes me realize a coh server with no updates would only keep me interested for so long, hell even when CoH was live I often quit inbetween issues and took time off the game, I couldn't imagine how quick id lose interest in a 15 year old game that hasn't seen a real update for 6 years.

CoH will always have a nice spot in my memories as my first MMO of many i'd play, but I honestly just wish this secret was never exposed. As they say, ignorance is bliss.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: SilverAgeFan on April 16, 2019, 04:21:09 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 16, 2019, 04:23:16 PM
Was it NCsofts choice to run a private server for 6 years? Didn't SCoRE benefit unfairly from Ncsoft's investments?

These are all things score and those playing it are guilty of, but releasing it to other people - that somehow is bad for NCSoft, but having a p server up for how many years was...good?

I'm sorry, you aren't making much sense, very contradictory, releasing it does nothing they already haven't done in regards to NCsoft, so it's really difficult for score to play the "We're not releasing it because NCsoft wouldn't want it released!" card, without just seeming like hypocrites.


And to your point, self interest doesn't equal right, they've been running a p server for self interest for years, so no it doesn't. They are completely guilty in the eyes of NCSoft and the community, and there is only one side they can try to earn good faith with at this point, and it ain't NCsoft.


Edit: I will add, for the most part I personally had moved on, but learning about this p server has just reopened so many wounds. Until today I barely thought about CoH, and honestly I'm not sure I even would want the game back - even with their "updates" to it. The game is now 6+ years past the last update, the graphics honestly were fine for its time but are really lacking now, and I don't think even if I had the chance id play CoH on a small server without the community. The game is dead for me, NCSoft won't re-release it, I personally gave up, I moved on.

Seeing videos of people playing makes me realize a coh server with no updates would only keep me interested for so long, hell even when CoH was live I often quit inbetween issues and took time off the game, I couldn't imagine how quick id lose interest in a 15 year old game that hasn't seen a real update for 6 years.

CoH will always have a nice spot in my memories as my first MMO of many i'd play, but I honestly just wish this secret was never exposed. As they say, ignorance is bliss.


It's not contradictory,  because I didn't address SCoRE's benefit or guilt,  because that is implied in statements about it being NCsofts property,  benefiting at ncsofts expense and labeling it as stolen..... all are not good.   But what was done is the past.


The point is what will happen going forward,  and although you conveniently skipped the second half of my post,  you so eloquently demonstrated that mentality of entitlement when you wrote that "they are completely guilty in the eyes of the community" and the only way to earn "good faith" back is to release the code.   


Two wrongs do not make a right.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Radionuclide on April 16, 2019, 04:27:30 PM
  • My above point only stands if the code really is stolen, which still hasn't been confirmed or denied. There's way too much speculation on that point. If it was, that's a big set of issues; if it wasn't, my second point about feeling betrayed by SCoRE not releasing a working reverse engineered game is where I'll end up.

There is no way it is not stolen. It would be impossible for them to provide players with their old characters without that being the case.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 16, 2019, 04:50:25 PM
I'm going to take it on faith that among the private server members there is a strong pantsless contingent. Assured of that, I have no complaints.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 16, 2019, 05:14:10 PM
The good news is that NCSOFT now has something to sell or run themselves if they can reclaim their property.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 16, 2019, 05:17:50 PM
It feels really dishonest. Everything just feels dishonest. I get why it should have been kept under wraps, i truly do...but these people have a functioning version of the game now and the choice is actively being made to hide it. Thats the worst part, there is 0 supporting evidence that it was ever going to be public and now that everyone knows and the secrets out, we just have to sit here from here on out knowing that City of Heroes was saved but for some reason, only for a handful of people and their friends.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 16, 2019, 05:22:45 PM
A lot of posters are missing the lead here. The release 24 server exists and is functional.  SCORE has a working version to use!

Until this news there was serious question as to whether the code needed to run COH even still existed or could be made functional.

SCORE stands for "The Secret Cabal of REVERSE ENGINEERS.  And at least one of their hypothesized projects is a reverse-engineered COH 24 server that can be run on a single machine released into the wild for anybody to run.  If you're focusing on the fact that they have a server running (like that idiot behind the "all of us or none of us" crap a few years back) you're missing the fact that this is the best news about getting the game back in the last 5 years.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nightmarer on April 16, 2019, 05:27:13 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 16, 2019, 05:29:58 PM
A lot of posters are missing the lead here. The release 24 server exists and is functional.  SCORE has a working version to use!

Until this news there was serious question as to whether the code needed to run COH even still existed or could be made functional.

SCORE stands for "The Secret Cabal of REVERSE ENGINEERS.  And at least one of their hypothesized projects is a reverse-engineered COH 24 server that can be run on a single machine released into the wild for anybody to run.  If you're focusing on the fact that they have a server running (like that idiot behind the "all of us or none of us" crap a few years back) you're missing the fact that this is the best news about getting the game back in the last 5 years.


Running stolen code with stolen data and copyrighted  content on a server is not the same as reverse engineering the server and playing it with new and original,  uncopyrighted fan fiction....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 16, 2019, 05:31:08 PM
Quote
A lot of posters are missing the lead here. The release 24 server exists and is functional.  SCORE has a working version to use!

Until this news there was serious question as to whether the code needed to run COH even still existed or could be made functional.

SCORE stands for "The Secret Cabal of REVERSE ENGINEERS.  And at least one of their hypothesized projects is a reverse-engineered COH 24 server that can be run on a single machine released into the wild for anybody to run.  If you're focusing on the fact that they have a server running (like that idiot behind the "all of us or none of us" crap a few years back) you're missing the fact that this is the best news about getting the game back in the last 5 years.


Looking at the only stuff with any weight to it, you know /those/ videos, If the code was ever going to be released it would have been by now. The threat of a C&D only works if the project was a WIP, not in a completed state. The only thing we have to go on is the word of one guy since the other side was vague and told us to support a project thats issue 0 and doesn't have functioning anything really while they're doing incarnate trials and playing the whole game. (No hate twords SEGS, beautiful honest people) Until the other side defends itself and actually has proof of what they're doing and their intentions everyone only has one side to the story and that side hurts.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Twi on April 16, 2019, 05:31:48 PM
A lot of posters are missing the lead here. The release 24 server exists and is functional.  SCORE has a working version to use!

Until this news there was serious question as to whether the code needed to run COH even still existed or could be made functional.

SCORE stands for "The Secret Cabal of REVERSE ENGINEERS.  And at least one of their hypothesized projects is a reverse-engineered COH 24 server that can be run on a single machine released into the wild for anybody to run.  If you're focusing on the fact that they have a server running (like that idiot behind the "all of us or none of us" crap a few years back) you're missing the fact that this is the best news about getting the game back in the last 5 years.

Something having the ability to happen is not the same as it actually happening, and it seems they have no intention of allowing how they managed this to spread. Which isn't going to help anyone else aside from the people who get private invites.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 16, 2019, 05:49:42 PM
I wake up every day and can look in the mirror and say - I am a good man - not a great man, I wasn't born rich or able to hit 700 home runs. I raised 2 girls to be adults. I am helping raise 6 grand kids and I don't desire anything I have not earned.

I see a lot of the posts here saying why not me? Why was I left out - I never knew about the server and still I don't envy those who played. They knew what they were doing was wrong, they knew they couldn't share it with anyone and they now face the loss of respect by the other players. The game belongs to NCSoft unless someone gets permission or changes it enough not to violate TOS.

I can look in the mirror and still say - I am a good man, I don't want the game back unless I can take you all with me.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 16, 2019, 05:54:13 PM
If anyone knows the people involved personally, suggest to them that they contact archive.org.   If nothing else, archive.org might be willing to preserve the code even if they won't distribute it.  Laws change and what's illegal today could be legal tomorrow.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 16, 2019, 06:03:00 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 16, 2019, 06:28:17 PM
Well, It's on VICE now who reached out to NCsoft for comment. So...secrets completely out now?

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mb8jd8/a-secret-server-for-the-dead-mmo-city-of-heroes-has-players-in-an-uproar
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 16, 2019, 06:28:54 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 16, 2019, 06:32:26 PM
If the people involved want to save face, they should spread the information as far and wide as they can so that it cant be traced back to just them, and so we can have our game back.

I don't care what rationalization there is. I want to play my game again, and I think all of us do. They know that.

But no, now we hear about the special select few who got invites over and over again.

I played hours and hours of that game. I was incredibly active, just not the right kind of active, likely the forums, likely here, likely who knows what.

Private servers are at best legally gray.

Release the servers.

Invite us all.

Don't keep it to yourself. NCSoft is not going to give us back our game. You can. Do it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 16, 2019, 06:33:53 PM
Well, It's on VICE now who reached out to NCsoft for comment. So...secrets completely out now?

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mb8jd8/a-secret-server-for-the-dead-mmo-city-of-heroes-has-players-in-an-uproar

Well, now we know NCSOFT knows ... or at least should know.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: blue storm on April 16, 2019, 06:37:22 PM
I, for one, am happy that there is an ISSUE 24 server somewhere....  Sure I did move on and played other games since then : but would I go back to CoH : YES, in an instant.

So I'm just hoping that someone will put an anonymous torrent somewhere with that server code, for everyone to grab.

Paragon should seed and endure.

Paragon Lives !
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: PerfectWeapon on April 16, 2019, 06:43:12 PM
I have not posted in a few years, but it does feel like a slap in the face.  Also, the thought of someone else having access and possibly playing my characters makes me feel dirty lol.  Iron Wolf you are the man, thanks for what you do.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 16, 2019, 06:47:17 PM
Believe me, that question has crossed my mind more than once, especially since I know several of the devs and have a good rapport with the ones I know.

I'm not going to speculate on who released what to Leo. I honestly have no idea, and in fact, as I type this, I'm not 100% sure that anyone did. (Has that actually been definitively established?) No one has confessed to me, and really, it's probably something I'd rather not know because I'd be lying if I said that I'm totally on board with swiping code from one's employer, even in the cause of some more noble principle. (Though to be clear, I'm not saying I'm against it. Frankly, I'm torn on the issue.) Maybe that's why; whoever did it knows that Leo had more time, effort, and ability to see this to fruition than I did, with fewer qualms about setting it through to its logical end.

It really, really doesn't matter to me. I'm just glad something was released to somebody. It means it's out there, it wasn't totally destroyed, so our chances of having something tangible at some point are dramatically higher than they were before.

It means the CoH legacy is in safe hands.  This will be a day long remembered despite the unfortunate manner of the 'leak.'

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 16, 2019, 06:50:16 PM
If anyone knows the people involved personally, suggest to them that they contact archive.org.   If nothing else, archive.org might be willing to preserve the code even if they won't distribute it.  Laws change and what's illegal today could be legal tomorrow.

Hmm.  That's an intriguing suggestion.

'Law' (currently stacked in favour of the corporations who 'made' them...) is subject to change.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 16, 2019, 06:53:47 PM
I don't know if safe hands is a good word to be used considering they're being accused of hoarding it for themselves. Nobody has ever had the right to select who can and cannot play City of Heroes. Wasn't right when NCsoft tried, isn't right now.

Again though, until both sides come out it's speculation and accusations.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 16, 2019, 07:09:35 PM
I, for one, am happy that there is an ISSUE 24 server somewhere....  Sure I did move on and played other games since then : but would I go back to CoH : YES, in an instant.

So I'm just hoping that someone will put an anonymous torrent somewhere with that server code, for everyone to grab.

Paragon should seed and endure.

Paragon Lives !

'It's alive.'

Somewhere.

That's an upgrade on 'doesn't exist anymore because NC Soft wiped the servers, the back up, the development team and the players.' out of existence.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: mrultimate on April 16, 2019, 07:10:30 PM
I wake up every day and can look in the mirror and say - I am a good man - not a great man, I wasn't born rich or able to hit 700 home runs. I raised 2 girls to be adults. I am helping raise 6 grand kids and I don't desire anything I have not earned.

I see a lot of the posts here saying why not me? Why was I left out - I never knew about the server and still I don't envy those who played. They knew what they were doing was wrong, they knew they couldn't share it with anyone and they now face the loss of respect by the other players. The game belongs to NCSoft unless someone gets permission or changes it enough not to violate TOS.

I can look in the mirror and still say - I am a good man, I don't want the game back unless I can take you all with me.

Well said Ironwolf.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 16, 2019, 07:17:23 PM
It makes complete sense that SCORE did what they did.

In light of the demolition job that 'C&D' bulldozed the Tab Ras emu team.

Prudence and discretion are the order of the day.  Until the end of time?  Until the right time.

Corporations like the odds stacked in their favour.

However, when you treat people like c**p the scales of 'justice' eventually re-balance.  Ergo: the 'leak' of code(?) from PC to the 'secret community.'  NC Soft didn't drape themselves in glory over the CoH shut down.  It was personal.  It's an old game.  Just give it back to the community and get some GOOD p.r, NC.  But no, you'll pry it from their dead, dying hands.  We don't want to own the IP rights.  Just a creaky old server to play a creaky old game that was and still is unique.

And 'natural justice' and 'the law' don't always weigh evenly.

So.  Things like this happen.  Call it moral outrage.  But they channeled it internally.  'Secret Heroes.'  Sure, it would be nice if we'd all got an invite.  But the 'open secret' would have led to being sued into oblivion.

So?

That's fine by me.  'The team' will know if and when the time is right.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 16, 2019, 07:21:06 PM
Well said Ironwolf.

It is 'well said.'

However, we'll be waiting a long time for a corporation like NC Soft (and their 'honour code') to bend.

Perhaps our best hope is legal access to MMOs (we paid a lot of rental money for...and still own the goddamn boxes but can't access the game...even as solo or local LAN...) granted by a 'vote of fairness' from those great guys and gals in congress.

Or SEGs.  They're making sound progress.   Or...   or..

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 16, 2019, 07:24:09 PM
PS.  Kick-ass statement from Leandro.

An elegant nail-gun which addresses the matter in its entirety.

That's fine by me, Leandro.

Your (and the team's) heart is in the right place.

'Never the end.'

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 16, 2019, 07:33:39 PM
NCsoft was being sued over Tabula. It makes sense to squish it out of fear. Lineage 2, wildstar, lineage, and guildwars have very public private servers and some of those games have for years. So that doesn't actually work. Furthering, the C&D fear doesn't make sense to be the only ones with it. A public anon release to make sure it never fades makes more sense in that situation. The statement was full of holes and to think otherwise is weird. I'm not going to attack anyone but i'm not going to just pretend everything is fine either.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Twi on April 16, 2019, 07:34:15 PM
Your (and the team's) heart is in the right place.

I mean, is it, though?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 16, 2019, 07:59:05 PM
That is the problem isn't it.

When you have the chance to do something selfless or to keep it for yourself - what would you do? I think i would get a few people in the world of computing and have them make a launcher that could be hosted on a standard gaming server (www.serversaustralia.com.au/resources/blog/beginners-guide-to-setting-up-a-private-wow-server/) where you can normally rent them for about 1 American dollar per slot a month. If you wanted an entire server you might be able to work a discount.

Now what happens?

That is going to be up to NCSoft and the owners of the private server. If they want to contact me - I retire in August and would be happy to try hosting a wide open server that could test the limits of NCSofts patience and I would in fact have wide open books so they could see I make zero profit - but have a donation page that will give all extra funds beyond running expenses to them in a monthly check. This MIGHT allow some leeway on our behalf.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 16, 2019, 08:18:03 PM
That is the problem isn't it.

When you have the chance to do something selfless or to keep it for yourself - what would you do? I think i would get a few people in the world of computing and have them make a launcher that could be hosted on a standard gaming server (www.serversaustralia.com.au/resources/blog/beginners-guide-to-setting-up-a-private-wow-server/) where you can normally rent them for about 1 American dollar per slot a month. If you wanted an entire server you might be able to work a discount.

Now what happens?

That is going to be up to NCSoft and the owners of the private server. If they want to contact me - I retire in August and would be happy to try hosting a wide open server that could test the limits of NCSofts patience and I would in fact have wide open books so they could see I make zero profit - but have a donation page that will give all extra funds beyond running expenses to them in a monthly check. This MIGHT allow some leeway on our behalf.


This is what safe hands looks like.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Rumahu on April 16, 2019, 08:19:15 PM
That is the problem isn't it.

When you have the chance to do something selfless or to keep it for yourself - what would you do? I think i would get a few people in the world of computing and have them make a launcher that could be hosted on a standard gaming server (www.serversaustralia.com.au/resources/blog/beginners-guide-to-setting-up-a-private-wow-server/) where you can normally rent them for about 1 American dollar per slot a month. If you wanted an entire server you might be able to work a discount.

Now what happens?

That is going to be up to NCSoft and the owners of the private server. If they want to contact me - I retire in August and would be happy to try hosting a wide open server that could test the limits of NCSofts patience and I would in fact have wide open books so they could see I make zero profit - but have a donation page that will give all extra funds beyond running expenses to them in a monthly check. This MIGHT allow some leeway on our behalf.

I will help back the server, and I'm sure many others will as well. Use a patreon page or something of the sort to help with server costs and make it on a donation basis and we'll be right back into another grey area with NCSoft and we might be able to keep it up since it's not making a "profit" and is free to use.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 16, 2019, 08:25:35 PM
Look at how many people come out of the woodwork, wanting to help, wanting to be a part of it.

Here's the thing: if it is completely done, there is no reason to keep it secret.

They even have content WE NEVER HAD.

The only reason to keep it to themselves, is to be the ones in control of CoX.

Spread it. Share it. Give it back to the community.

Lording over us like this does nothing besides make it so not only did ncsoft backstab us, but you did, too.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nightmarer on April 16, 2019, 08:27:36 PM
That is the problem isn't it.

When you have the chance to do something selfless or to keep it for yourself - what would you do? I think i would get a few people in the world of computing and have them make a launcher that could be hosted on a standard gaming server (www.serversaustralia.com.au/resources/blog/beginners-guide-to-setting-up-a-private-wow-server/) where you can normally rent them for about 1 American dollar per slot a month. If you wanted an entire server you might be able to work a discount.

Now what happens?

That is going to be up to NCSoft and the owners of the private server. If they want to contact me - I retire in August and would be happy to try hosting a wide open server that could test the limits of NCSofts patience and I would in fact have wide open books so they could see I make zero profit - but have a donation page that will give all extra funds beyond running expenses to them in a monthly check. This MIGHT allow some leeway on our behalf.

I would absolutely love if taht would happen. I have been unable to be interested in any MMO for more than a few weeks so I have been playing on and off LOTRO, SWTOR. Age of Conan, Rift, WoW, heck I even tried Elder Scrolls Online. I was currently playing Rift and, to my own surprise, I realized that I was unable to play knowing as I know now that there is a CoH server, I know it is irrational but I am afraid I can't help it therefore, what you suggest here feels amazing and I really wish that you had a totally unplanned circumstance that by sheer chance made a copy the code available for you.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: SilverAgeFan on April 16, 2019, 08:28:10 PM
In an attempt at some levity, found a few screenshots buried on an old drive while looking for some work stuff this afternoon.

The first is a bee themed hero made within the last year or so of live servers.

The rest are costumes I was playing with after all the hubbub around the gunslinger pack being pretty useless for most costumes. I got a lot of generalized use out of those bits.  :)

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://i.postimg.cc/LY0DTwQ2/bee-costume.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/LY0DTwQ2)

(https://i.postimg.cc/qhYcnng7/gslinger-greywolf.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/qhYcnng7)

(https://i.postimg.cc/B8729DTC/gslinger-avarice.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/B8729DTC)

(https://i.postimg.cc/DJWL2Z53/gslinger-midnight.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/DJWL2Z53)

(https://i.postimg.cc/G4qyGY51/gslinger-turbolass.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/G4qyGY51)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 16, 2019, 08:44:42 PM
That is the problem isn't it.

When you have the chance to do something selfless or to keep it for yourself - what would you do? I think i would get a few people in the world of computing and have them make a launcher that could be hosted on a standard gaming server (www.serversaustralia.com.au/resources/blog/beginners-guide-to-setting-up-a-private-wow-server/) where you can normally rent them for about 1 American dollar per slot a month. If you wanted an entire server you might be able to work a discount.

Now what happens?

That is going to be up to NCSoft and the owners of the private server. If they want to contact me - I retire in August and would be happy to try hosting a wide open server that could test the limits of NCSofts patience and I would in fact have wide open books so they could see I make zero profit - but have a donation page that will give all extra funds beyond running expenses to them in a monthly check. This MIGHT allow some leeway on our behalf.

Intriguing idea. 

I guess the more people that had it, legal 'whack a mole' would be hard to chase CoH private servers breeding like rabbits...  (Though, of course, I'm not suggesting they drop a hydrogen bomb by releasing private servers in Argentina..., Ecuador...and...)

It is interesting that Nostralius (by sheer volume of numbers, 1 million peak?) brought Blizzard to the negotiating table with their private server.  Such was the demand for 'Vanilla' WoW.  (For me the equivalent would be pre: issue 4 even though, of course SCORE are settled on issue 24 and who would say 'no' to insta-snipe, eh?)

I still can't fathom that CoH never had a million players.  It's better than WoW.  I've played WoW a lot in CoH's absence in the last couple of years.  Kudos to them for pushing the envelope on it.  But I never found the combat or community or mobbing a patch on CoH.

Still, the mere idea that CoH has been living a secret life, sipping a margarita and wearing a straw hat on some exotic sandy shore somewhere on the dark web...

...a day of celebration.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 16, 2019, 08:46:16 PM
In an attempt at some levity, found a few screenshots buried on an old drive while looking for some work stuff this afternoon.

The first is a bee themed hero made within the last year or so of live servers.

The rest are costumes I was playing with after all the hubbub around the gunslinger pack being pretty useless for most costumes. I got a lot of generalized use out of those bits.  :)

Spoiler for Hidden:
(https://i.postimg.cc/LY0DTwQ2/bee-costume.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/LY0DTwQ2)

(https://i.postimg.cc/qhYcnng7/gslinger-greywolf.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/qhYcnng7)

(https://i.postimg.cc/B8729DTC/gslinger-avarice.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/B8729DTC)

(https://i.postimg.cc/DJWL2Z53/gslinger-midnight.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/DJWL2Z53)

(https://i.postimg.cc/G4qyGY51/gslinger-turbolass.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/G4qyGY51)

Some good costumes there.

Just when you think there aren't anymore costume combinations...

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 16, 2019, 08:47:21 PM
If, you make all funds above monthly costs refunded to NCSoft - you might - get some slack. Then again it belongs to them and they paid millions for it.

Other people have the knowledge to do this as well and several of them are running the game NOW. They know the cost and they have the code. I would suggest setting one up and do so openly - no need to even broach the subject of who, what, when, where the code came from. Follow the idea to give all extra funds to NCSoft.

Carry the torch, pass it on.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 16, 2019, 08:54:55 PM
If, you make all funds above monthly costs refunded to NCSoft - you might - get some slack. Then again it belongs to them and they paid millions for it.

Other people have the knowledge to do this as well and several of them are running the game NOW. They know the cost and they have the code. I would suggest setting one up and do so openly - no need to even broach the subject of who, what, when, where the code came from. Follow the idea to give all extra funds to NCSoft.

Carry the torch, pass it on.

An interesting idea, Ironwolf.  I'm not sure NC Soft have the same courage or honour code you have.  But many will say you don't know until you try.

Some have said they don't sue with private servers for their other properties?  Is there the suggestion with CoH that it is somehow 'personal'?  (People can speculate as to what I mean by that.)  But again, if a server went up?  It would be a first significant test.

The laws of 'legacy' games are starting to soften in terms of recent legislation.  Even 'fair use' in terms of preserving MMOs is being brought under scrutiny.  Perhaps the team are waiting until it's 'black and white' before breaking cover...

...

Didn't Starwars Galaxies (was it?) that had a 'leak' of code from Sony themselves?  And they left the 'Starwars' community to 'get on with it?'

Azrael.

PS.  Iron wolf.  Great to have you back posting on these boards again.  Your voice of reason and creativity have been much missed. 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: TinFoil on April 16, 2019, 09:31:57 PM
You know, it doesn't bother me that someone had a ball and wouldn't let me play with it... but when we all are sitting around talking about how much we miss playing ball and then someone in the group goes home and plays with their ball, that kinda gets me.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 16, 2019, 09:45:46 PM
Didn't Starwars Galaxies (was it?) that had a 'leak' of code from Sony themselves?  And they left the 'Starwars' community to 'get on with it?'

Yes I am playing on three of those servers. Swglegends is celebrating its 3rd year anniversary now.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MWRuger on April 16, 2019, 09:54:41 PM

As I have said many, many times, I just want to play COH before I die. I honestly don't care how this happens, just so it does.

This news changes nothing except now we know there is code out there when we all thought there wasn't.

Am I jealous? No, at least someone is getting to play and maybe someday it will be me.

Do I feel betrayed? Yes by NCSoft, not SCORE.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 16, 2019, 10:15:52 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 16, 2019, 10:16:55 PM
I guess my thoughts are that we can condemn those with the code or try to persuade them.

I ask for total amnesty - the cat is out of the bag - time to let the past stay there and try for a good future.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: nicoliy on April 16, 2019, 10:18:45 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 16, 2019, 10:31:52 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Aurora on April 16, 2019, 10:51:57 PM
Reread the pcgamer article. Leandro updated it. https://www.pcgamer.com/a-fully-functioning-city-of-heroes-private-server-has-somehow-been-kept-secret-for-six-years/
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 16, 2019, 10:59:07 PM
I completely feel bad that anyone would ever send anyone a death threat...

But they're really not doing us any good by not sharing the data. Just anonymously post it up on a torrent site or something. Spread the data around.

It currently has things that weren't even originally in the game on the public servers... there is no excuse now, and claiming they were going to do it in just a few weeks if no one said anything?

Put your damn money where your mouth is.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 16, 2019, 11:08:06 PM
Death threats are inexcusable but claiming it was going to be released in a couple weeks but now isn't going to be isn't very believable. If anything, its more of a reason to do it sooner.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 16, 2019, 11:12:09 PM
A part of me snickered and got a thought of "hey, how about we hail mary them by emailing them a bunch of pictures of capes to hope they actually follow through" but there's no way that wouldn't just be abuse, and just like death threats, I won't condone outright harassment.

That really cant be overstated. These people don't need to be hounded, or threatened.

We just also don't need to believe them when they say nice things like this.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 16, 2019, 11:16:23 PM
Reread the pcgamer article. Leandro updated it. https://www.pcgamer.com/a-fully-functioning-city-of-heroes-private-server-has-somehow-been-kept-secret-for-six-years/

The best part of that article -- NCSoft neglected to comment on this story.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 16, 2019, 11:34:25 PM
[Edit: Removed quoted message]

It's not even any of our faults.

I

1) Never sent threats
2) Heard about a private server as a rumor but never sought it out
3) Only ever wanted to play CoX again

It's the "fault" of someone none of us were even involved with in the decision being made to go public... but hey, prove me wrong SCORE, release it.

Even if we only get what you have, it seems to have MORE FEATURES than i24 had...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 16, 2019, 11:35:44 PM
I was being sarcastic :p but i think you know that, just need to clarify in case!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 16, 2019, 11:37:56 PM
Reread the pcgamer article. Leandro updated it. https://www.pcgamer.com/a-fully-functioning-city-of-heroes-private-server-has-somehow-been-kept-secret-for-six-years/

I am angry and saddened by the news that I might not be able to play my characters. With that said, to make threats to someone is inexcusable. Yes it sucks, yes people can be mad, but to threaten someone. No. :(
The only chance I have now to play, is slim to none (I am still hoping for some kind of deal for the buyers.). We are heroes and villains we need to do better. (I know villains dont normally do better. There have been instances where they did.) :)

@Golden "The best part of that article -- NCSoft neglected to comment on this story." Yea I read that too. Which means there are two things that come to mind. One they dont care. Or two they cant comment on due to legal reasons.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Brigadine on April 16, 2019, 11:41:41 PM
The best part of that article -- NCSoft neglected to comment on this story.
I hope that means something. Say they might actually sell to someone. They didn't announce legal action and I find that interesting.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 16, 2019, 11:50:59 PM
Man, these "We were gonna do X but not now because you all ruined it" is just so reminiscent of aspects of domestic abuse it's amazing.

It seems awfully conveniently that Willa Wonka was just in discussions to let the villagers into the Chocolate Factory after years of a select few getting to play it, but I can understand how many the significance of the date was an impetus for the plans.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 16, 2019, 11:51:04 PM
There is also a considerable time difference between here (the USA) and their headquarters.   You may wake up to learn NCSOFT is going for the nuclear option.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Dev7on on April 16, 2019, 11:54:46 PM
I don't know what to say right now.... I'm speechless.......
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 16, 2019, 11:54:55 PM
I am angry and saddened by the news that I might not be able to play my characters. With that said, to make threats to someone is inexcusable. Yes it sucks, yes people can be mad, but to threaten someone. No. :(

There's no point in even trying to explain rationally how death threats are bad. The people who do it are not intelligent or rational. Over the past decade, how much press has been directed at death threats, how many stories about it have been used to paint entire communities in a poor light over the actions of a handful of people.

Any rational person knows death threats do nothing, absolutely nothing, but hurt their own cause that motivated them in the first place. This has been well established over years and years of the internet and yet idiots still do it. If countless news articles and media coverage and just the results based evidence can't convince them that it's wrong, no one from any community is going to be able to convince them that it's wrong.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: powerfuse on April 17, 2019, 12:01:19 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: beak on April 17, 2019, 12:07:31 AM
I got a DM last night that will blow this whole thing wide open.   





this what happened in the last game i played hackers ruined it for everyone dupin rares and gold and just anything to cheat there no extened maintenance there trying to catch the hacker  and we pay for it so unless people don't let GM'S know of wrong doing's in the game it we ruin it and there we not be a COH IT WELL BE GONE TO THE AMERICANS!!!!!!!





This is how it start's jerk hacking (dupin)?
 

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Voltixdark on April 17, 2019, 12:16:52 AM
Hey Guys!

I know everyone is angry and can understand your pain, but we as a community need to stand up. Be happy that not only do we finally have a confirmed fully fledged working game, but our old account data with our characters are safe and alive!!! I don't know how the rest of you feel about that, but for me I am pretty damn stoked. There is finally a chance for all of us to play again. I honestly can't wait to be either invited or for a public release. Thank you Leandro!

I also want to mention that Leandro has updated the article on PCgamer and it looks like something is on the way with the upcoming 15th anniversary public event just next week. Sounds like something good is coming out of that!

One last thing.. Please guys do not act stupid and start threatening peoples lives with ultimatums and death threats. It is not that serious for someone to lose their life over something virtual. This game cannot sustain you in the real world. It does not pay your bills, put food on the table, or even put breath in your mouth. Personally I thank the one above for that. All in all please let us all come down to a level where we can start to work together even though we may not be devs or anything of the sort lets keep it positive!

Something is on the way. Keep your heads up!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 12:24:58 AM
Hey Guys!

I know everyone is angry and can understand your pain, but we as a community need to stand up. Be happy that not only do we finally have a confirmed fully fledged working game, but our old account data with our characters are safe and alive!!! I don't know how the rest of you feel about that, but for me I am pretty damn stoked. There is finally a chance for all of us to play again. I honestly can't wait to be either invited or for a public release. Thank you Leandro!

I also want to mention that Leandro has updated the article on PCgamer and it looks like something is on the way with the upcoming 15th anniversary public event just next week. Sounds like something good is coming out of that!

One last thing.. Please guys do not act stupid and start threatening peoples lives with ultimatums and death threats. It is not that serious for someone to lose their life over something virtual. This game cannot sustain you in the real world. It does not pay your bills, put food on the table, or even put breath in your mouth. Personally I thank the one above for that. All in all please let us all come down to a level where we can start to work together even though we may not be devs or anything of the sort lets keep it positive!

Something is on the way. Keep your heads up!

He stated in quotes for other articles that these plans have been scrapped and any potential plans for anyone else touching the game have been pushed back significantly because of recent events.

So now not only are we aware that we could be playing a game we've had no access to for years, but it's also now our faults that we won't be accessing it anytime soon. :|

All of which is basically just insult to injury. I personally do not think we will ever touch this game, the longer it gets hoarded beyond this point where it is public knowledge and multiple press outlets have contact NCSoft putting it further on their radar, the less likely it is that we will get our hands on it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 17, 2019, 12:34:10 AM
On a slightly different note. Any chance of shooting the Sentinel stats to the Mids team now that the cat's out of the bag? :D
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Voltixdark on April 17, 2019, 12:34:36 AM
He stated in quotes for other articles that these plans have been scrapped and any potential plans for anyone else touching the game have been pushed back significantly because of recent events.

So now not only are we aware that we could be playing a game we've had no access to for years, but it's also now our faults that we won't be accessing it anytime soon. :|

All of which is basically just insult to injury. I personally do not think we will ever touch this game, the longer it gets hoarded beyond this point where it is public knowledge and multiple press outlets have contact NCSoft putting it further on their radar, the less likely it is that we will get our hands on it.

I think you need to go back and read the article. Here is what Leandro said in the 6th paragragh

"Leandro clarified that while the SCORE server wouldn't be made public, eventually the source code behind it would be. Because of the legal risk once the project was made public, Leandro says the team has pushed back a release in order to get it as feature-complete as possible."

And was stated in the article in quotes

"The last discussion on an open event leading to a public release was for the game's 15th Anniversary, which is coming in just a couple of weeks."

To me something is coming. Don't throw all your hope out. There is still light!

Thanks
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 12:36:33 AM
I think you need to go back and read the article. Here is what Leandro said in the 6th paragragh

"Leandro clarified that while the SCORE server wouldn't be made public, eventually the source code behind it would be. Because of the legal risk once the project was made public, Leandro says the team has pushed back a release in order to get it as feature-complete as possible."

And was stated in the article in quotes

"The last discussion on an open event leading to a public release was for the game's 15th Anniversary, which is coming in just a couple of weeks."

To me something is coming. Don't throw all your hope out. There is still light!

Thanks

Feature complete, you mean like the sentinel archtype and other stuff that was never in the game? Flimsy excuse.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Exercitus on April 17, 2019, 12:40:39 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 17, 2019, 12:50:25 AM
We all know CoX could never be feature complete.  We'd always want more.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 17, 2019, 01:08:32 AM
I understand your rage, but everyone deserves a chance to defend themselves. We've already seen Victoria do so and then she was accused of lying by the leaker. The others have yet to respond. I never posted here a lot, honestly talking about the game outside of my min/max circle was frustrating more than it wasn't lol, but it was the go-to this entire time.

For obvious reasons, don't expect to hear from Leandro anytime soon on here.  Even if he wanted to, we're not interested in harboring a discussion that will be akin to public execution, regardless who it is.  TonyV made as official a statement as we're going to make several posts back.  That's all we have to say at the moment from Titan Network.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 17, 2019, 01:11:04 AM
You know as I ponder this - I am curious how much was charged to the select few?

With as they say roughly 2,000 players in the know - what was the fee? I am just doing the math and at $10 a pop that's $20k a month.........

There was a screenshot of the private server's forums with money info... there was $8k in the coffers for a few months worth (or near that, as I recall, the screenshot is on the SEGS discord). So yeah, there was money involved, but the screenshot made it seem to me like the $ was actually being used exclusively for server fees, and not to line pockets.

Edit: Due to the migration of posts from "New Efforts" to this thread, the quote above no longer links properly. But it is unmodified, and the original can be found in this thread (I don't want to put the effort in right now).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Aurora on April 17, 2019, 01:12:51 AM
All I have to say is I hope Leandro does the ethical thing and is well. I saw the death threat email screenshot.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: bugzee on April 17, 2019, 01:29:02 AM
Well, now that NCSoft has been asked for comment, they are fully aware... And with Leandro's name out there, it would be a very bad move for him to make any of the code public at this time. He could have released it into the public domain in the beginning, but chose to keep it for himself and his friends instead. I think it is too late for it to be given out. If he were to do that now, you can bet he would be in some serious legal hot water. I don't know what NCSoft will do now, but I am sure of one thing: Leandro never intended to give the code to anyone else, and now its simply too late to do so. In my opinion, we are no better off than we were before the news broke. We weren't going to be able to play then, and most certainly we will not be allowed to play now.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 01:31:30 AM
Well, now that NCSoft has been asked for comment, they are fully aware... And with Leandro's name out there, it would be a very bad move for him to make any of the code public at this time. He could have released it into the public domain in the beginning, but chose to keep it for himself and his friends instead. I think it is too late for it to be given out. If he were to do that now, you can bet he would be in some serious legal hot water. I don't know what NCSoft will do now, but I am sure of one thing: Leandro never intended to give the code to anyone else, and now its simply too late to do so. In my opinion, we are no better off than we were before the news broke. We weren't going to be able to play then, and most certainly we will not be allowed to play now.

The only thing this did was cause pain and distrust. I don't think its too late to release code though. They haven't been told anything (yet). Theres also no way to prove anything through VPN's and anon torrents.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 17, 2019, 01:35:51 AM
Quote
[Edit: Post removed]

And there's the thread, made back in 2013, of someone inparticular outright saying why we wouldn't have server emulation.

There's a lot of lying going on here.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 17, 2019, 02:00:41 AM
There was a screenshot of the private server's forums with money info... there was $8k in the coffers for a few months worth (or near that, as I recall, the screenshot is on the SEGS discord). So yeah, there was money involved, but the screenshot made it seem to me like the $ was actually being used exclusively for server fees, and not to line pockets.

Also in that screen shot was a reference to people extending invitations to their entire supergroups who then never signed on or only played a little bit -- which was Leandro complaining that what he needed were quality players... in other words the kinds of complaints a DEVELOPER is making when doing TESTING. 

Long ago I jokingly said in a SCoRE discussion that as soon as they let anybody know they're making progress their reward will be a flood of abuse about how they aren't moving fast enough or developing what THEY want. 

Leandro and others have been running a server that they've been modifying, completing, and (HOPEFULLY) is in a form where you don't need to stitch 5 different servers together with mod authority and deep code knowledge to get it to run. (HOPEFULLY??? since by all accounts damn few experts could get a CoX server system to work).

In that process they've been running a few hundred (a few thousand?) users ... hundreds concurrently while SCoRE did exactly what they've always said they were doing.  They haven't shared earlier versions of their code publicly (we have no idea how many people or institutions are sitting on copies)

Just as I've thanked Codewalker for all his contributions to the community, thank you to Leandro for this MASSIVE gift to the community and thank you to all the SCoRE participants.

An additional thanks to Leandro for being willing to take the heat and unimaginable undeserved abuse on this.  I very much look forward to seeing what you folks have done and will do.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RGladden on April 17, 2019, 02:01:08 AM
Once I get started I may not be able to stop.  To say that I have conflicted emotions about this would be an understatement.

Rumors about a rogue server have been floating around for years.  Some, who have indicated that they knew what they were talking about, derided the idea.  Frankly, I always believed that where there was smoke there was fire.

So, finally, six years after the fact, we learn that a copy of the server code was offered to a gamer/administrator or whatever the heck he was.  And he took it.  Set up his own server, and secretly began inviting friends and family members to play on it.

Now, while I can understand why they kept it quiet, namely to keep NCSofts' lawyers off of their backs, I cannot understand their justification of keeping the game all to themselves.

So, the players who signed onto it also agreed to an NDA.  This worked pretty well, until one of the players, Destroyer Stroyer, disturbed by the setup, decided to do the right thing, and blew the whistle.  God Bless Him.

Now, as to Leandro, haven't I seen that name on this forum, and in this thread?  My memory may be playing tricks on me, but if that is the case, that really ticks me off.  A non-sequitur maybe.  His statement that they were set to release the code in two weeks has a distinct odor about it.  For instance, I've watched Destroyer's videos where he was playing the game, and a few things seen in them belies Leandro's claim:  First, there is visual confirmation that the code has already been modified and "upgraded";  Secondly, the people in that video were having a blast;  Thirdly, if he were serious about releasing the code to the community and the public he could have done so years ago.  Way to "hold the torch" fella.

Having said all that, I really can't see how this helps the COH community at large.  Maybe Leandro will release the code.  Once it's out there in the virtual world NCSoft will not ever get control of it back.  If he doesn't we're back to square one.



Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 02:03:02 AM
Also in that screen shot was a reference to people extending invitations to their entire supergroups who then never signed on or only played a little bit -- which was Leandro complaining that what he needed were quality players... in other words the kinds of complaints a DEVELOPER is making when doing TESTING. 

Long ago I jokingly said in a SCoRE discussion that as soon as they let anybody know they're making progress their reward will be a flood of abuse about how they aren't moving fast enough or developing what THEY want. 

Leandro and others have been running a server that they've been modifying, completing, and (HOPEFULLY) is in a form where you don't need to stitch 5 different servers together with mod authority and deep code knowledge to get it to run. (HOPEFULLY??? since by all accounts damn few experts could get a CoX server system to work).

In that process they've been running a few hundred (a few thousand?) users ... hundreds concurrently while SCoRE did exactly what they've always said they were doing.  They haven't shared earlier versions of their code publicly (we have no idea how many people or institutions are sitting on copies)

Just as I've thanked Codewalker for all his contributions to the community, thank you to Leandro for this MASSIVE gift to the community and thank you to all the SCoRE participants.

An additional thanks to Leandro for being willing to take the heat and unimaginable undeserved abuse on this.  I very much look forward to seeing what you folks have done and will do.

^ is this post going to be the new copypasta so we can all hopefully get pity invites from the first class citizens who've been enjoying CoX for the last 6 years?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: DoctorRoboto on April 17, 2019, 02:05:29 AM
*sigh*

The plot, as it seems, is almost nefarious enough to be one of mine!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RGladden on April 17, 2019, 02:08:17 AM
The ultimate Nemesis Plot.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 02:09:43 AM
Also in that screen shot was a reference to people extending invitations to their entire supergroups who then never signed on or only played a little bit -- which was Leandro complaining that what he needed were quality players... in other words the kinds of complaints a DEVELOPER is making when doing TESTING. 

Long ago I jokingly said in a SCoRE discussion that as soon as they let anybody know they're making progress their reward will be a flood of abuse about how they aren't moving fast enough or developing what THEY want. 

Leandro and others have been running a server that they've been modifying, completing, and (HOPEFULLY) is in a form where you don't need to stitch 5 different servers together with mod authority and deep code knowledge to get it to run. (HOPEFULLY??? since by all accounts damn few experts could get a CoX server system to work).

In that process they've been running a few hundred (a few thousand?) users ... hundreds concurrently while SCoRE did exactly what they've always said they were doing.  They haven't shared earlier versions of their code publicly (we have no idea how many people or institutions are sitting on copies)

Just as I've thanked Codewalker for all his contributions to the community, thank you to Leandro for this MASSIVE gift to the community and thank you to all the SCoRE participants.

An additional thanks to Leandro for being willing to take the heat and unimaginable undeserved abuse on this.  I very much look forward to seeing what you folks have done and will do.

This post seems very misleading or at the very least misinformed. I'll try and break it down.

Quote
DEVELOPER is making when doing TESTING. 

When you're still in testing phases to make servers work, you don't create and insert brand new archetypes and zones, abilities, or cash shops. To say that this project is still in development o the point of the servers being "stitched together" would be silly and expecting people to believe it even more so.

Quote
Leandro and others have been running a server that they've been modifying, completing, and (HOPEFULLY) is in a form where you don't need to stitch 5 different servers together with mod authority and deep code knowledge to get it to run. (HOPEFULLY??? since by all accounts damn few experts could get a CoX server system to work).
  This is a bold claim. A very bold claim that someone who isn't in the forums and on the server couldn't possibly make. From other accounts, leaks etc the server is not stitched together and works perfectly. I'm unsure how or why you've made this claim but again, if you aren't on the team this seems like a very misleading assumption.

Quote
An additional thanks to Leandro for being willing to take the heat and unimaginable undeserved abuse on this.  I very much look forward to seeing what you folks have done and will do.

He's getting a lot of unwarranted stuff, death threats and doxing being the worst of it. However from the information provided to us, the lies and misleading campaigns to derail progress have earned him heat. His continued dishonesty and deflecting the blame onto the community as a whole didn't help. I'm not willing to personally attack anybody but I think your post is very misguided.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 17, 2019, 02:17:18 AM

... I retire in August and would be happy to try hosting a wide open server that could test the limits of NCSofts patience
 

Really.  You're going to run a wide open server.  And you'll let everybody on.  10,000 users... 50,000 users... nobody turned away?  And you know the servers will handle that?  You're going to set up the servers and keep them running?  You're going to handle support and maintenance? If it can't handle the load you're going to decide when and how to turn people away?

Leandro is an expert who has lived this stuff, and his development system was running a few hundred accounts concurrently (which is DAMN impressive).  How easy do you think it is to run CoX?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 02:20:20 AM
Really.  You're going to run a wide open server.  And you'll let everybody on.  10,000 users... 50,000 users... nobody turned away?  And you know the servers will handle that?  You're going to set up the servers and keep them running?  You're going to handle support and maintenance? If it can't handle the load you're going to decide when and how to turn people away?

Leandro is an expert who has lived this stuff, and his development system was running a few hundred accounts concurrently (which is DAMN impressive).  How easy do you think it is to run CoX?


Very easy. Do you not know about private servers? Also, in what world would 50k people play on a private server. WoW private servers don't even reach that. People can run private servers from their home PC's, but thats not whats being done here. He's renting server space and running it on that, which most would probably do. Please my man, don't post such misleading stuff.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Voltixdark on April 17, 2019, 02:22:04 AM
Also in that screen shot was a reference to people extending invitations to their entire supergroups who then never signed on or only played a little bit -- which was Leandro complaining that what he needed were quality players... in other words the kinds of complaints a DEVELOPER is making when doing TESTING. 

Long ago I jokingly said in a SCoRE discussion that as soon as they let anybody know they're making progress their reward will be a flood of abuse about how they aren't moving fast enough or developing what THEY want. 

Leandro and others have been running a server that they've been modifying, completing, and (HOPEFULLY) is in a form where you don't need to stitch 5 different servers together with mod authority and deep code knowledge to get it to run. (HOPEFULLY??? since by all accounts damn few experts could get a CoX server system to work).

In that process they've been running a few hundred (a few thousand?) users ... hundreds concurrently while SCoRE did exactly what they've always said they were doing.  They haven't shared earlier versions of their code publicly (we have no idea how many people or institutions are sitting on copies)

Just as I've thanked Codewalker for all his contributions to the community, thank you to Leandro for this MASSIVE gift to the community and thank you to all the SCoRE participants.

An additional thanks to Leandro for being willing to take the heat and unimaginable undeserved abuse on this.  I very much look forward to seeing what you folks have done and will do.

I agree, and I also look forward to the progress made.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 17, 2019, 02:22:23 AM
Who's going to upgrade the Paragon Wiki to cover all these unofficial modifications to the game?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 17, 2019, 02:23:18 AM
Quote
[Edit: Post removed]

I take it you don't use Tequila
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 17, 2019, 02:23:34 AM
O hai! What's new?

Read the news today. What a disaster. Prayers and thoughts go to the people of France! No wait, the disaster was reddit/cityofheroes. Wow. Take the angriest post here so far in this thread and multiply it by a thousand and you get the average anger level there.

But what really bothers me about this is Leo never invited me!!

Just kidding. What really bothers me is all the anniversary badges I missed.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 02:25:27 AM
Theres a whole slew of people using terms like "You don't understand" or "You're just trolls" very suddenly. Everyone has the right to their opinion on this matter as long as its kept civil and i think everyone here (except that one guy who said ban him) has done so. This is all starting to feel a lot like another effort to discredit.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 17, 2019, 02:25:49 AM
Who's going to upgrade the Paragon Wiki to cover all these unofficial modifications to the game?

I volunteer to edit that person's grammar!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 17, 2019, 02:26:33 AM
And there's the thread, made back in 2013, of someone inparticular outright saying why we wouldn't have server emulation.

There's a lot of lying going on here.

Need to reread that thread, as it explains that emulation isn't even something we should want. The private server's not an emulation, the hopefully soon-to-be-public code isn't an emulation. Knowing what we know now and looking back at that thread it seems to me Leandro was being quite careful not to mislead.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 17, 2019, 02:27:27 AM
What really bothers me is all the anniversary badges I missed.

What bother's me is that we almost certainly helped name them.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 02:27:44 AM
Need to reread that thread, as it explains that emulation isn't even something we should want. The private server's not an emulation, the hopefully soon-to-be-public code isn't an emulation. Knowing what we know now and looking back at that thread it seems to me Leandro was being quite careful not to mislead.

TOO CAREFUL! jk but yeah no emulation isn't what would be right for a CoH server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Voltixdark on April 17, 2019, 02:27:50 AM
O hai! What's new?

Read the news today. What a disaster. Prayers and thoughts go to the people of France! No wait, the disaster was reddit/cityofheroes. Wow. Take the angriest post here so far in this thread and multiply it by a thousand and you get the average anger level there.

But what really bothers me about this is Leo never invited me!!

Just kidding. What really bothers me is all the anniversary badges I missed.

You know I do wonder if anniversary badges would have continued to be earned for being active and such.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 17, 2019, 02:27:53 AM
Another example is Kistulot mocking the thread from 2013 by Leandro regarding why the community wouldn't want a server *emulator*.   If one were to re-read it with a cooler,  rational mind, it would be very clear to see it wan't gaslighting, but a very articulate vision statement.

When that's all he said on the subject, and then has had this for six years, I don't care if it was accurate, it's him being just great to all of us.

But thanks for calling me a troll who has no investment.

Theres a whole slew of people using terms like "You don't understand" or "You're just trolls" very suddenly. Everyone has the right to their opinion on this matter as long as its kept civil and i think everyone here (except that one guy who said ban him) has done so. This is all starting to feel a lot like another effort to discredit.

This this this.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 17, 2019, 02:27:59 AM
I volunteer to edit that person's grammar!

Educate me!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 17, 2019, 02:29:16 AM
The other big news today was the Avengers data dump.   
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 17, 2019, 02:30:14 AM

 From other accounts, leaks etc the server is not stitched together and works perfectly. I'm unsure how or why you've made this claim but again, if you aren't on the team this seems like a very misleading assumption.


Well if the server is not stitched together and works perfectly... THEN IT'S NOT THE SYSTEM PARAGON STUDIOS WAS RUNNING.  We know from the extensive discussions from people who worked on those systems that they were multiple systems tied into each other with weird patches to make different features work.  If Leandro has a simple server that runs the game then it really IS completely reverse engineered and not something he got leaked by somebody who worked for NCSoft.   
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 17, 2019, 02:32:12 AM


When you're still in testing phases to make servers work, you don't create and insert brand new archetypes and zones, abilities, or cash shops. To say that this project is still in development o the point of the servers being "stitched together" would be silly and expecting people to believe it even more so.


I'm not a programmer but I'd imagine if you're working to create a better server client that would allow for new things to be added you'd first want to figure out how the original client dealt with new things.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 02:32:53 AM
Well if the server is not stitched together and works perfectly... THEN IT'S NOT THE SYSTEM PARAGON STUDIOS WAS RUNNING.  We know from the extensive discussions from people who worked on those systems that they were multiple systems tied into each other with weird patches to make different features work.  If Leandro has a simple server that runs the game then it really IS completely reverse engineered and not something he got leaked by somebody who worked for NCSoft.

I'm unsure if anyone has made the claim he's done nothing. Of course he reverse engineered the code. Of course he's probably put a lot of time and effort into making it operational. The problem people have is they want him to release his code so everyone else can play too.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 02:35:56 AM
I'm not a programmer but I'd imagine if you're working to create a better server client that would allow for new things to be added you'd first want to figure out how the original client dealt with new things.

Maybe. Guess we won't know for sure because its a closed development for the last 6 years. We only have information provided by a leak and in that information it sure didn't look like it was still a WIP.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 17, 2019, 02:39:56 AM
Maybe. Guess we won't know for sure because its a closed development for the last 6 years. We only have information provided by a leak and in that information it sure didn't look like it was still a WIP.

People I've talked to said it was fully functional, they just got bored of not having their friends on the server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: P51mus on April 17, 2019, 02:42:46 AM
Really.  You're going to run a wide open server.  And you'll let everybody on.  10,000 users... 50,000 users... nobody turned away?  And you know the servers will handle that?  You're going to set up the servers and keep them running?  You're going to handle support and maintenance? If it can't handle the load you're going to decide when and how to turn people away?

Leandro is an expert who has lived this stuff, and his development system was running a few hundred accounts concurrently (which is DAMN impressive).  How easy do you think it is to run CoX?

See, thing is, if the code were more openly available there'd be a bunch of private servers running.  Some of them would be open, some of them would be more private.  It wouldn't just be one person running a server.  That's how most private servers for MMOs are.

And if it was anything like what I know about the Ragnarok Online private server community (my info on this is way out of date), then they'd be sharing tweaks they've made among the private servers so that any fixes one person made could be used by others.  (At the time there were actually two different types of private servers for RO, one that was an emulated server and another that was based off of leaked/hacked official server code)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 02:43:42 AM

See,  this is the kind of cynical comment from several people in the last few pages of this thread that have convinced me there are some here actively trolling the community, or have become "useful idiots" to those trolls.   


Another example is Kistulot mocking the thread from 2013 by Leandro regarding why the community wouldn't want a server *emulator*.   If one were to re-read it with a cooler,  rational mind, it would be very clear to see it wan't gaslighting, but a very articulate vision statement.


Unfortunately,  I think some are preying on the pain of the CoH community for fun,  fanning the flames of discontent and conspiracy in a 4chan-esque manner.  I appreciate the goals of the moderation team and don't envy their task,  but I think a lot more of these posts should be deleted.

Making a joke is not fanning the flames, it's making a joke.

I apologize for being cynical, but it's about all I can be because the entire situation is extremely cynical. It feels as though the overall CoX community has had a pretty clear caste system in play with what is more or less, a first class citizen group who invited who they deemed worth from the unwashed masses. It's frustrating to say the least.

There are aspects that I completely understand, and there are aspects of it that were extremely cynical on the part of those involved, such as people who are in the know about an actively working private server enforcing "no private server discussion" on forums and subreddits, people actively involved in running SCoRE being involved in other efforts that have existed as little more than a placating romparoom for the members of this community not deemed worthy of access to the actual game...

the entire thing is very cynical, from top to bottom, and I simply do not have access to the sort of medication that can help me see it differently, and let me make it clear, I don't think I've ever done anything worthy of being invited, I stopped participating in the community as a whole when the game died and only occasionally pop in to places like this and the subreddit to see if any of the emulation efforts have made any kind of encouraging progress and I'm almost routinely disappointed when I do. What bums me out is seeing people who have clearly been more active right on these very forums who didn't get the nod, that breaks my heart knowing that even if I was active still I likely couldn't have sat at the cool kids table for a MMO that I loved for many years and have spent nearly as many years missing it.

The most cynical aspect is the stuff where they've said "We were going to run a public event but you all ruined it by learning about us". That is... unbelievable in lieu of this entire meltdown.

So honestly my bad, but straight up, it's hard to respond to this with anything other than cynicism especially when you see people posting "Wow even though I can't play and I might not ever be able to play, at least SOMEONE was getting to enjoy the game!" comments, it just seems like pretty blatant brown nosing, and I can barely even blame them because it seems to be about the only realistic hope the majority of the displaced CoX fanbase may have of every playing again.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 17, 2019, 02:47:50 AM
That is the problem isn't it.

When you have the chance to do something selfless or to keep it for yourself - what would you do? I think i would get a few people in the world of computing and have them make a launcher that could be hosted on a standard gaming server (www.serversaustralia.com.au/resources/blog/beginners-guide-to-setting-up-a-private-wow-server/) where you can normally rent them for about 1 American dollar per slot a month. If you wanted an entire server you might be able to work a discount.

Now what happens?

That is going to be up to NCSoft and the owners of the private server. If they want to contact me - I retire in August and would be happy to try hosting a wide open server that could test the limits of NCSofts patience and I would in fact have wide open books so they could see I make zero profit - but have a donation page that will give all extra funds beyond running expenses to them in a monthly check. This MIGHT allow some leeway on our behalf.

That would be awesome, one suggestion. If you do manage to host, please dont use Tequila as a way to distribute the launcher. I would suggest GitHub. Just an idea. Also good luck with retiring you earned it :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 17, 2019, 02:48:17 AM
Cynicism is what sets us apart from the other animals, except for cats, I think cynicism drives their every action.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Twi on April 17, 2019, 03:01:11 AM
How easy do you think it is to run CoX?

Dunno. Maybe if they spread the code I'll let you know once I see it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 17, 2019, 03:07:10 AM
Dunno. Maybe if they spread the code I'll let you know once I see it.

THIS, because you know who would try to figure it out?

All of us, even without any base knowledge.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 17, 2019, 03:10:13 AM
Hi. You probably don't know me. I'm a loudmouth.

The only bitterness this news has brought up is renewed bitterness at NCSoft for their petty refusal to sell an IP they had deemed not worth using to a team who very much saw it as worthwhile. CoX was turning a profit - it's why Paragon Studios wanted to keep it running so badly - and we're still not really sure why they shut down the game. Maybe they thought the profit wouldn't last long enough. Maybe Positron insulted their CEO. Maybe they wanted to use the server infrastructure for Guild Wars 2. We still don't know.

But refusing to sell a product you have deemed valueless to someone else that wants it is just petty.

Copyright law is a mess, and everyone going around saying NCSoft "owns" this and that is playing into corporate hands. Copyright was never meant to exist in the state it currently does, and it does a disservice to humanity as a whole when faceless entities can keep people from creating things they love, especially when they do it for no rational reason. If you don't want it, you should release it, not lock it away forever.

Let's direct our ire where it belongs: at NCSoft, who put us all in the position we're in in the first place.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 03:11:27 AM
Hi. You probably don't know me. I'm a loudmouth.

The only bitterness this news has brought up is renewed bitterness at NCSoft for their petty refusal to sell an IP they had deemed not worth using to a team who very much saw it as worthwhile. CoX was turning a profit - it's why Paragon Studios wanted to keep it running so badly - and we're still not really sure why they shut down the game. Maybe they thought the profit wouldn't last long enough. Maybe Positron insulted their CEO. Maybe they wanted to use the server infrastructure for Guild Wars 2. We still don't know.

But refusing to sell a product you have deemed valueless to someone else that wants it is just petty.

Copyright law is a mess, and everyone going around saying NCSoft "owns" this and that is playing into corporate hands. Copyright was never meant to exist in the state it currently does, and it does a disservice to humanity as a whole when faceless entities can keep people from creating things they love, especially when they do it for no rational reason. If you don't want it, you should release it, not lock it away forever.

Let's direct our ire where it belongs: at NCSoft, who put us all in the position we're in in the first place.

Everything that can be said about NCsoft has been said. It's a moot point and not worth the time. We have new problems, new people, and new pain.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Aurora on April 17, 2019, 03:16:44 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Twi on April 17, 2019, 03:20:40 AM
That's also totally erroneous. The kind of community discussion concerning the private server he wanted to see was 0, as has been well documented.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 17, 2019, 03:24:22 AM
Everything that can be said about NCsoft has been said. It's a moot point and not worth the time. We have new problems, new people, and new pain.
Maybe for those that have dwelt here continuously for the past seven years. Not so much for those this news may bring back.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 17, 2019, 03:25:21 AM
People I've talked to said it was fully functional, they just got bored of not having their friends on the server.

Awesome!!!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 03:26:47 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 03:29:44 AM
Quote
Is the disconnect between the SCoRE insiders and the CoX refugees really that wide?


Walling off and being a few years seperated from being sad about coh being gone is a gigantic gap. So yeah, its pretty wide.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MM3squints on April 17, 2019, 03:34:24 AM
Honestly I'm impressed that it was kept secret for so long. Looking at the reddit and seeing all of the action steps and the amount of compartmentalization that was setup to keep this running is on another Machiavellian level. Reminds me of the steps an inteligence service will use to establish a presences before toppling over a sovereign nation.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 17, 2019, 03:35:37 AM
Going by the laborious video of the guy who just outed SCoRE, it seems there wasn't much actual playing. He presented the secret server as a bit of a ghost town, like those CoH servers of old where people complained they couldn't get a team or task force going. That's partly why he quit.

So... it sounds like the secret server was more like a Beta Server.

Remember how some players would rush to the Beta Server and then bitterly complain that the new content was unplayable because of bugs? They missed the point of the Beta Server... it wasn't to play new content but to *test* it.

I wonder if the secret server was more like that. And that if it had been released, whoever was hosting it would be inundated with complaints about the bits that weren't fully operational.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 17, 2019, 03:39:43 AM
You see it now appears that some of our players actually managed to kill the game.

NCSoft closed the game and then when a chance was presented for a few players to work on a way to preserve the game for others - they kept it secret for 6 years. I am not surprised some people refused to play the game if others couldn't - I would have been in that camp.

I would indeed try to run an "open" server where players just pay for the cost of operation. It might be fun to see if the group who were redoing the artwork could be given the code and make a COH/V 1.5 version. I guess I think of what could have been done in 6 years by a shared community and it seems quite wasted now.

You lost the rest of the team SCORE. We once were all in it together - now we sound like people I am not sure I want to share a server with.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RGladden on April 17, 2019, 04:08:44 AM
The anger will pass.  But trust may never be restored.  That will depend on the actions taken by Leandro and SCoRE.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 04:09:51 AM
Truth. To qoute a friend of mine on this situation. They gave us a photograph of steak while they had the actual meal

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: WolfSoul on April 17, 2019, 04:23:13 AM
The anger will pass.  But trust may never be restored.  That will depend on the actions taken by Leandro and SCoRE.

Yes. This.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: TonyV on April 17, 2019, 04:39:29 AM
Very easy. Do you not know about private servers? Also, in what world would 50k people play on a private server. WoW private servers don't even reach that. People can run private servers from their home PC's, but thats not whats being done here. He's renting server space and running it on that, which most would probably do. Please my man, don't post such misleading stuff.

He's not misleading, and this is a pet peeve of mine; the rampant assumption that anyone could just snag a copy of the code and be off and running. I know several of the Paragon Studio devs, and because I'm geeky like this and at the time worked in a datacenter, I took every opportunity I could to grill them on the game's infrastructure while it was up and running. The computing muscle required to run City of Heroes was significant.

First of all, a lot of the code was spaghetti-ish, prone to breaking if you didn't have it tweaked just right. Just getting the thing running on ANY servers was, according to people who were professionally paid to do so, not easy.

Second of all, it's not like you just plopped coh.exe on a server and double-clicked the icon and voila, you can now log in. City of Heroes wasn't a server. Even a City of Heroes "server" (e.g. Infinity) wasn't a server. It was at least, to the best of my recollection:

All of this stuff required specific versions of software and libraries to run correctly, so you couldn't just click OK when Windows prompted you to update or upgrade. And all of this was spread across multiple physical high-end enterprise-scale boxes that had to have hardly-ever-looked-at configuration parameters and registry settings tweaked just-so to run.

Now, I get that the traffic on a private server may not be as heavy as on the live game servers, but it's not like just because it's a private server, now you don't need a market server, or you can do without a chat server, or that you don't have to have the exactly correct version of some database library installed. Even a base-level config for a single shard required a LOT of resources.

Having said all of that, I have no idea what progress SCoRE has made in simplifying this setup, or even if they've managed to make any progress towards it. Maybe one of the reasons they've kept it secret so long is so that when it is released, people can actually use it. Keep in mind that everything I described above is just to run the executables. If you actually want to tweak the code base, you get into a whole 'nother level of configuration hell in getting Visual Studio set up just right to be able to actually compile the thing.

At any rate, please don't propagate the misconception that the thing isn't a pain in the ass to run. Barring some next-level miraculous re-coding of how all of these tiny puzzle pieces without pictures or edges to guide them to give clues fit together, this thing was--and probably still is--a very, VERY demanding beast.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: P51mus on April 17, 2019, 04:48:38 AM
There's also been a lot of advances in server technology and how they run in the years since the game shut down. 

I dunno, from my mostly outsider view it looks like you might have had more trust in someone than he actually deserved.  We'll see I guess.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 04:48:46 AM
I'd like to call attention to other posts made on this topic, you qouted the first part of the convo but none of the follow up.

Quote
Of course he's probably put a lot of time and effort into making it operational. The problem people have is they want him to release his code so everyone else can play too.

Another post further down by p51

Quote
See, thing is, if the code were more openly available there'd be a bunch of private servers running.  Some of them would be open, some of them would be more private.  It wouldn't just be one person running a server.  That's how most private servers for MMOs are.

And if it was anything like what I know about the Ragnarok Online private server community (my info on this is way out of date), then they'd be sharing tweaks they've made among the private servers so that any fixes one person made could be used by others.  (At the time there were actually two different types of private servers for RO, one that was an emulated server and another that was based off of leaked/hacked official server code)


a follow up post by  TWI 
Quote
Dunno. Maybe if they spread the code I'll let you know once I see it.

Quick edit; you put a lot of no-brainers like "plopping the coh.exe down" that nobody claimed was the case. Dunno why you did this, but it wasn't a health way to explain anything. It's putting words in peoples mouths.

edit2: realized i sounded slightly hostile, wanted to fix

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 04:56:38 AM
Having said all of that, I have no idea what progress SCoRE has made in simplifying this setup, or even if they've managed to make any progress towards it. Maybe one of the reasons they've kept it secret so long is so that when it is released, people can actually use it. Keep in mind that everything I described above is just to run the executables. If you actually want to tweak the code base, you get into a whole 'nother level of configuration hell in getting Visual Studio set up just right to be able to actually compile the thing.

At any rate, please don't propagate the misconception that the thing isn't a pain in the ass to run. Barring some next-level miraculous re-coding of how all of these tiny puzzle pieces without pictures or edges to guide them to give clues fit together, this thing was--and probably still is--a very, VERY demanding beast.

I don't get it though, was it kept a tight lipped secret because they're afraid of NCSoft's legal eagles or was it kept a tight lipped secret because it's this painstaking WIP?

Even if they get it 110% playable, if they run the server population with an iron fist and live in constant fear of NCSoft's lawyers, what would it being playable change anything?

Would it being more playable somehow protect them from getting the business end of NCSoft's legal department?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 17, 2019, 05:08:43 AM
At any rate, please don't propagate the misconception that the thing isn't a pain in the ass to run. Barring some next-level miraculous re-coding of how all of these tiny puzzle pieces without pictures or edges to guide them to give clues fit together, this thing was--and probably still is--a very, VERY demanding beast.

I'm not protesting the miracle.  I'm protesting what came after the miracle.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kyriani on April 17, 2019, 05:18:05 AM
I don't get it though, was it kept a tight lipped secret because they're afraid of NCSoft's legal eagles or was it kept a tight lipped secret because it's this painstaking WIP?

Even if they get it 110% playable, if they run the server population with an iron fist and live in constant fear of NCSoft's lawyers, what would it being playable change anything?

Would it being more playable somehow protect them from getting the business end of NCSoft's legal department?

I think what Tony is trying to say is that running a CoH server is not the same as running a WoW emulator repack that you just click a couple executables, change a file in your client to point to your server and bam it plays. So if Leandro is indeed running the actual CoH source and not an emulator of some sort, and just gave it out for anyone to use, most people aren't going to be able to do anything with it... at least not without a ton of time and effort blindly figuring things out... assuming they have enough technical expertise in the first place.

I know I don't have that level of expertise. Heck I can barely get a wow repack to work just to mess around in a sandbox and take cool screenshots.

This whole situation bothers me. I see all these people upset over this, heck I'm one of them, but I'm also rational enough not to just go for the pitchfork and torches without having all the information. We're only seeing half a story here and I'm not one to make judgements without all the facts. It also pains me to see people not only making death threats, but members of this community actively laughing about it and saying he deserves the threats. That's not the community I remember. That's not a community I want to even be a part of. So I hope that most of us remain rational. We can feel angry, we can feel hurt, we can feel betrayed, but we have to remember that we are all human beings, and also... we're supposed to be heroes here.

Heroes don't make, condone, or worse, celebrate, death threats against anyone no matter how bad they might be.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Twi on April 17, 2019, 05:18:43 AM
snipping a big post

Yeah, I recall every ounce of what they said about the server infrastructure. I recall the lamenting of Aeon's concerning trying to get everything working just right to enable new scripting, I recall the complaints about spreadsheet hell, I recall them saying that it was all spaghetti code at best.

Seems to be working for someone right now though, don't it? Infact, it seems to have been working for them for quite a while! And who knows what more eyes on could've accomplished, it's not as if the MMO gaming world is exactly short on server infrastructure engineers or intrusion detection specialists.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: P51mus on April 17, 2019, 05:32:11 AM
I think what Tony is trying to say is that running a CoH server is not the same as running a WoW emulator repack that you just click a couple executables, change a file in your client to point to your server and bam it plays. So if Leandro is indeed running the actual CoH source and not an emulator of some sort, and just gave it out for anyone to use, most people aren't going to be able to do anything with it... at least not without a ton of time and effort blindly figuring things out... assuming they have enough technical expertise in the first place.

I know I don't have that level of expertise. Heck I can barely get a wow repack to work just to mess around in a sandbox and take cool screenshots.

There's people who will mess with this kind of thing for fun.  The person I knew who ran the RO private server I spent a small amount of time on was one of them.

You get enough of those kinds of people trying to get it running and sharing what they did with each other and suddenly you have solutions, and ways to get it working so that more people can try it.

Heck, I even corrected the hp/sp tables for the newer classes for him, and he probably shared that with the other people running RO private servers.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kyriani on April 17, 2019, 05:39:27 AM
There's people who will mess with this kind of thing for fun.  The person I knew who ran the RO private server I spent a small amount of time on was one of them.

You get enough of those kinds of people trying to get it running and sharing what they did with each other and suddenly you have solutions, and ways to get it working so that more people can try it.

Heck, I even corrected the hp/sp tables for the newer classes for him, and he probably shared that with the other people running RO private servers.

Like I said before, we've only got half a story here. I need more info before I dust off my pitchfork and light my torch. There's details we don't yet have. Maybe there's a reason the code wasn't just tossed out there for any and every coder to poke a stick at. I don't know. None of us do yet. Maybe all this attention will incentivize the SCORE team to provide some answers. This whole mess is in sore need of context.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Aurora on April 17, 2019, 05:42:54 AM
I don't think the average person wants Leandro to die or suffer harm. In any group ( Literally. Pick ANY group. ) there will be extremists who should NOT be counted as the voice of the community. The average person is pissed off and grieving anew. That's normal. That's natural. Would you consider JOSHEX the voice of this community? I think not.

Much the same as the person threatening to kill Leandro should not be considered the voice of this community. People are upset over the hubris and way this came out over the years.
The real question though is where do we go from here.

Was this it? The straw that broke our backs after God knows how many years of silence after failed negotiations? Is SEGS the only hope? The server exists. The data exists.
We don't know Leandro's intentions. This is on Tony as he was the contact with Leandro. He was supposed to be the voice here. This is his time to shine. Our game exists, more or less complete.

For the horrible things said about you, Tony, I'm sorry you had to read them. This is a very emotional and important moment for all of us. I wish you luck.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kyriani on April 17, 2019, 05:47:18 AM
I guess I will just wait and hope that cooler heads prevail. And... in my deepest, most secret heart of hope... pray that somehow this whole mess turns into all of us being able to play CoH again. I won't even care if I can't get my characters back. I can always start anew.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: P51mus on April 17, 2019, 05:52:04 AM
In some of the other discussion areas there's some weird people who think that literally every successor project and game recovery effort was some kind of smokescreen for this weird private server club. 

The only one we know for sure is connected is Paragon Chat, because Leandro worked on it. I dunno how much was meant as a smokescreen.

And I guess all the ACTUAL lieing that was done around this whole thing really gets the imaginations of the tinfoil hat crowd going.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 17, 2019, 05:53:05 AM
I guess I will just wait and hope that cooler heads prevail. And... in my deepest, most secret heart of hope... pray that somehow this whole mess turns into all of us being able to play CoH again. I won't even care if I can't get my characters back. I can always start anew.
Yeah I don't think anyone ever really cared about getting our characters back. That would simply be a bonus... but it appears that dev that was nice enough to hook them up with the server did want us to have everything back. That person deserves a life time supply of beer and back massages.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: hamstrdam on April 17, 2019, 05:58:25 AM
I guess I will just wait and hope that cooler heads prevail. And... in my deepest, most secret heart of hope... pray that somehow this whole mess turns into all of us being able to play CoH again. I won't even care if I can't get my characters back. I can always start anew.

Same here.  I don't have the time or energy to be pissed that someone has played for the last 6 years while I didn't, just would love the chance to play again.  (Although I do wonder how long it would take some of the people screaming for the game to be thrown open to start crying about how outdated the graphics seem?) Anyway, more power to the ones that are on the secret server.  I never sat at the cool kids table and still don't.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 17, 2019, 05:59:41 AM
In some of the other discussion areas there's some weird people who think that literally every successor project and game recovery effort was some kind of smokescreen for this weird private server club. 

The only one we know for sure is connected is Paragon Chat, because Leandro worked on it. I dunno how much was meant as a smokescreen.

And I guess all the ACTUAL lieing that was done around this whole thing really gets the imaginations of the tinfoil hat crowd going.
I don't think anyone is actually stupid enough to believe city of titans which is being funded out in the open on kickstarter was ever going to be used for anything but developing that game. Same goes for Valiance and the others.

Paragon chat I don't think i'd call it a "smoke screen" more like something to hold you over or to please those types that like to stand around all day under atlas and talk. I've personally found alot of use for icon and paragon chat for my story board recordings. Only remaining wish for paragon chat was a version of it that lets you use icons debug camera and load costume commands. Basically the icon exclusive stuff so I can stop using icon all together haha. I like the fact doors, walk and travel powers work and that I can login multiple characters to paragon chat so it opened up a few other opportunities for me
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 17, 2019, 06:39:24 AM
Quick edit; you put a lot of no-brainers like "plopping the coh.exe down" that nobody claimed was the case. Dunno why you did this, but it wasn't a health way to explain anything. It's putting words in peoples mouths.

I suspect it's rhetoric like what I've been saying: that SCoRE was supposed to release a playable version of the game when they had one, not keep it to themselves. It does grossly over-simplify things... but given that I do believe the game is playable, certainly playable enough to be released, it doesn't matter how easy or hard it would be for someone to make a server. It'll happen. And there's no reason not to drop what they have on an anonymous torrent, and let the whole world work on getting the kinks out.

It also pains me to see people not only making death threats, but members of this community actively laughing about it and saying he deserves the threats. That's not the community I remember. That's not a community I want to even be a part of. So I hope that most of us remain rational. We can feel angry, we can feel hurt, we can feel betrayed, but we have to remember that we are all human beings, and also... we're supposed to be heroes here.

Heroes don't make, condone, or worse, celebrate, death threats against anyone no matter how bad they might be.

Some of the leakers are people who have been banned from various internet forums, including CoH's official boards. Although they obviously blew the lid off this secret server, I think some of them are using that credibility to call out people they have vendettas against.

Edit: Due to the migration of posts from "New Efforts" to this thread, the quotes above no longer link properly. But they are unmodified, and the originals can be found in this thread (I don't want to put the effort in right now).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 17, 2019, 06:40:28 AM
Maybe there's a reason the code wasn't just tossed out there for any and every coder to poke a stick at. I don't know. None of us do yet. Maybe all this attention will incentivize the SCORE team to provide some answers. This whole mess is in sore need of context.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but isn't it kind of obvious? SCoRE has (as I understand it) illegally-obtained NCSoft property. If it had been publicized earlier, and if NCSoft had learned that they had this, which they more-likely-than-not would have, they would almost certainly drop a C&D on them, and that would be the death of the City. (SEGS aside - but the odds of SEGS getting to I24 in my lifetime are slim, at best, and I'm pretty young among those who played CoX.) It's the first rule of fan projects (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqwP6uuYOWo): don't talk about it until it's done! Once it's done and you release it, they can C&D you all they want, but getting it off the internet will be like playing Whack-a-Mole.

I think the death threats against Leandro are disgusting, as would any sane person, but I think the incredible amount of bad faith being directed towards him is similarly uncalled for. I understand people feel betrayed and resentful, but some of the conclusions being jumped to herein and elsewhere (hereout? hereout should totally be a word...) seem a little far-fetched. We have no idea what he wanted to do with the code or the server, we have no idea if he was actually planning to open it up for the 15th anniversary, and my analysis may well be terribly off-base, but with all he has done for the community, I think he's earned a little faith. All we've got his word versus the word of some random dude - I don't know about you, but I'm choosing to believe Leandro, most of all because it is the only shot, as far as I see, of getting the City back any time soon.

(And before anyone accuses me of brown-nosing or somesuch, I'd like to note that I, being a chronic introvert, yea, even on the internet, am not party to this private server or any other, I would not accept an invitation if Leandro did descend from the heavens and present one to me, and, because of the whole aforementioned C&D thing, which one imagines NCSoft's legal team is drafting as I type, I do think SCoRE should release what they've got, if anything, posthaste.)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 17, 2019, 06:44:00 AM
Yes.  Yes there are people that stupid.

I think there were some kickstarter scams, but for the most part when one fails it's just because a dev got in over their head.  I think a lot of people just don't understand how hard game dev is, especially since usually when a failure happens in traditional game dev you just don't hear about it.  The project is scrapped before it's even been announced.

It's worth noting that the close relationship between Paragon Chat and the private server quite naturally leads to speculation that any money that was donated to Titan Network for PChat development might have gone towards this private server. I suspect that any and all money is accounted for, but given the fact that people worked on both projects at the same time, it is reasonable for people to wonder about that particular money trail.

Edit: Due to the migration of posts from "New Efforts" to this thread, the quote above no longer links properly. But it is unmodified, and the original can be found in this thread (I don't want to put the effort in right now).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 07:27:43 AM
I still have a lot of questions. Has SCoRE been used to help development of any of the other, more public facing projects at all? Giving them reference or access to the existing code that would be otherwise inaccessible?

Is there any sort of even internal documentation supporting some of the more optimistic claims that this was just a deep alpha test with a definitive plan to release it to a much wider audience?

How playable is the current state of SCoRE because I've seen conflicting accounts...

How does a player access their existing character information if the data is not bundled with any account information from the live service?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: olivar on April 17, 2019, 07:35:07 AM
I still have a lot of questions. Has SCoRE been used to help development of any of the other, more public facing projects at all? Giving them reference or access to the existing code that would be otherwise inaccessible?

Is there any sort of even internal documentation supporting some of the more optimistic claims that this was just a deep alpha test with a definitive plan to release it to a much wider audience?

How playable is the current state of SCoRE because I've seen conflicting accounts...

How does a player access their existing character information if the data is not bundled with any account information from the live service?

Until the people from ScoRE actually come forward with information, we'll just be angrily speculating about what-ifs and what-nots.
I personally would love to see their server be made open for everyone and be able to play again with my characters.
But it all depends on them now, on how they're going to deal with this backlash....if at all...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 17, 2019, 07:35:25 AM
. From other accounts, leaks etc the server is not stitched together and works perfectly.

So, here's what you're not understanding. The original stock NCSoft server IS a stitched together mess.

The easiest way to explain it is to look at how Windows is setup on your computer. "Windows" is not a single monithic program, it's a collection of services that all have to run and interact in order to operate successfully. If you go into settings on Windows 10 and look under Services, you'll find a whole list of these pieces that all interoperate to make "Windows".

The CoX "server" wasn't a single program. It was a bunch of servers. An authentication sever. A character server. A map server that managed zones that had players in them. A chat server. The Architect manager. The auction house database. The store, which was a whole other system located on a separate sever run by an ecommerce company that doesn't even exist any more.

If the server being run by Leandro and friends is operational and is not "stitched togethet" then it means that they've been doing what they claimed -- reverse engineering the original funtionality and creating new, better versions that are NOT stitched together multiple spaghetti code processes.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 07:50:01 AM
So, here's what you're not understanding. The original stock NCSoft server IS a stitched together mess.

I wonder if this was a more common thing with the games around that era, I remember being frustrated with Tabula Rasa and Auto Assaults server performance.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: olivar on April 17, 2019, 08:20:12 AM
I wonder if this was a more common thing with the games around that era, I remember being frustrated with Tabula Rasa and Auto Assaults server performance.
It's more that this is a software paradaigm than a "common thing with games".

Single Responsibility is a doctrine in programming, not to mention that you can scale up these separate servers depending on the load.
It's far easier to upscale your login server for example to handle a surge of signups than having to scale up the entire infrastructure and database just because a few more people are logging in.

source : 7y of game dev
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: jessejame on April 17, 2019, 09:07:16 AM
Suppose we get what we want whether it's an open server or the code. Then what? The last time i saw the people I cared about and played with for years was on those stairs right up to the last second. Is there a way of putting the word out to all former players who may not keep tabs on any of this that the game is back? I find it hard to believe that personal information was not transferred but characters were. Couldnt a mass email be sent out?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RheaGhe on April 17, 2019, 09:25:28 AM
Hey there.

Not a former CoH player to much of any degree. I think I want to post a very generic view though, just in hopes of saying some stuff because watching this unfurl over the past twelve-eighteen hours was a blast. Straight out of a comic book I swear.

First things first, Victoria, this is depending on jurisdiction(My knowledge of EU libel laws is that they are typically draconian but not enforceable outside the EU.) In general though, what he said(To you,) cannot be classified in anyway as libel, or anything really legally actionable, he's not calling for harassment directly or explicitly, he's not inciting violence intentionally, he's not criminally harassing you directly... In fact what he's doing might even be protected under the same laws that exist to protect journalists from retribution.

What is potentially legally actionable is the breaking of his NDA, but then you'd need to substantiate damages. And further substantiate how those damages differed from profit seeking. As for private servers that should definitively operate in a profit neutral territory, seeking profit is generally a no no, which makes damages a hard thing to prove. And I'm getting a bit far from myself. Some advice in general, words are a powerful thing, you and I both know that. And going off half cocked, saying things without fully thinking them through is only going to make you look bad, while the chucklehead laughs at your frustration. What incites you feeds him. Don't play the game with them, break the narrative. Best piece of advice a lawyer ever gave me. Don't ever say you're getting a lawyer, talking to legal, etc. It's a gamble every time you do. And only serves to make it look like you're playing hardball in the situation. Which depending on the situation could make you come off as someone who is being overly forceful for next to no reason. Don't tell them you're getting a lawyer until the moment you've retained council and are filing something with a court.

To others, both in communities abroad looking in, and within these forums, looking around and wondering. There is no way to prove someone has played upon the server, or hasn't. Histrionically forming witch-hunts about and around certain people who may or may not have played on the server accomplishes nothing. Strays from the point of the anger. And serves only to exhaust everyone involved.

Next point.

This really has resembled a giant giant train wreck. And I can appreciate it as a dramallama who likes watching trainwrecks I'm mostly unaffiliated with. However CoH is a game I've been fascinated by and with good reason. The culture that surrounds it is quite broad and diverse, and there really hasn't been a game to capture the same base as it did. Not even Champions which had in my opinion the best shot of it to date.

Certainly, and speaking of the drama though, I find a lot of things start to make a large amount of sense in the community as I've observed. As I've been looking in on it maybe every year for the last 4 years and every 6 months since SEGS started to be a realized thing with 0.3? I think... There was always a slight sort of lethargy about the community, and an almost lack of eagerness in it's movers and shakers, at least that I saw on places like this and the subreddit, whenever the possibility of emulation and server recovery were mentioned. A kind of short period of "Oh well that's nice, carry on." Whenever SEGS had something new built. This along with the Paragon Chat client being the "best" implementation so far of a server recreation. When a game like SWGEmu had a massive fan support structure spring up almost immediately, with dedicated Devs working whenever they could. SEGS didn't, that I could see have that base. And it always struck me as odd. I used to recall to a friend of mine, when we bemoan the lack of a good Supers MMO. That this type of thing not happening made no sense. Even discounting SWGEmu, which is building SWG server code from scratch essentially. You had the fortuitousness of SWLegends, which was built from a lucky find of source code, kind of like Leandro has described happening in the PCGamer article. It made no sense to me, personally, that something like either of those two projects wouldn't have happened. Especially given how sudden the shut down was. Especially given the amount of successor projects. Especially given how CoH was more modern of an MMO than classic pre-NGE SWG was.

Finally, I'd like to say, that the community as I see it is a vibrant and wonderful place, and I'm sorry for this trainwreck having occured. Here's hoping when the dust settles, you all will have a relatively easy time settling down and not stare at each other with distrust. Wondering who might have a score to settle.

Just my Two Cents.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Aurora on April 17, 2019, 09:28:57 AM
Also Victoria, could you clarify what you meant by this post: https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=10951.msg184432#msg184432

You wrote: "Having had the fortune to be on some of that testing....yeah.  Seriously, folks, there are still plenty of people in the US that believe:

In fairies.
In a flat-earth.
That the moon-landings were a hoax.
That the Royal Family of Great Britain is composed of shape-shifting lizard people. 

So out of all the thousands of people that were passionate about City, there were bound to be a handful who'd believe in private servers that some mysterious "elite" were keeping them out of."

I'm not starting a witch hunt. I'm merely curious. Being as that post came right after Leandro's on the subject, you either were extremely unfortunate in timing and phrasing with testing, or your definition of testing includes playing on those private servers which surely don't exist. I hope it was just unfortunate timing and phrasing and you were testing paragon chat or something.

Edit: If the context was about paragon chat, I apologize in advance.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: P51mus on April 17, 2019, 09:42:41 AM
What is potentially legally actionable is the breaking of his NDA,

I'm pretty sure contracts that involve crimes are unenforceable, and a contract to hide the existence of a private server like this would fall under that?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 09:48:53 AM
I'm pretty sure contracts that involve crimes are unenforceable, and a contract to hide the existence of a private server like this would fall under that?

Imagine if your weed man made you sign an NDA.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RheaGhe on April 17, 2019, 09:52:00 AM
I'm pretty sure contracts that involve crimes are unenforceable, and a contract to hide the existence of a private server like this would fall under that?

Abandonware is a gray area legally.

Private servers are relatively gray as well.

Basically it's only illegal if the IP holder, or presumable person taking legal action declares it's right or otherwise enforces it's ownership. And then a court calls it illegal. More than that, your contract has to be specifically called out by a judge or jury as being illegal to be nullified.  And again, private servers are a nebulous area. And no private server owner or staff member wants to be the person taken to court over running one, and ruin it for literally everyone else running or playing them.

So as an example, when I was 16, I signed and my parents agreed upon my first NDA(I was under the age of 18 so I could not sign a contract of my own volition in my jurisdiction). For a film project, that project was later found to be infringing upon someones trademark or possibly lost the rights to it. The project was cancelled in effect. And I was not released from that NDA till I was 22, and my five year term on my NDA had passed.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Victoria Victrix on April 17, 2019, 10:06:29 AM
Also Victoria, could you clarify what you meant by this post: https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=10951.msg184432#msg184432

You wrote: "Having had the fortune to be on some of that testing....yeah.  Seriously, folks, there are still plenty of people in the US that believe:



It was, very very clearly, about Paragon Chat.  Leo was helping me learn to demoedit, and decided I would make a good Paragon Chat beta tester.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: summers on April 17, 2019, 10:20:21 AM
I just have to get this rambling thing off my chest, this has eaten me up all day now.

I understand why some decisions were made. There was a real fear that who knows what kind of legal action could happen. That doesn't mean that I agree with these decisions though...

I wish a different decision was made. I think it's becoming clear that a lot of people feel very betrayed, that there was gaslighting going on at an incredible and organised scale, that people from many places used authority to conspire and ban others who loved the same thing they did, that denied others the same joy they they were keeping from them.

I wish Leandro and others a safe time through this. The internet is a crazy dumping ground and, while I think they have done a terrible thing, the very thought that people could threaten them or their family is appalling.

I don't know how everything is working with the financial side of things; be it donations made that might have gone elsewhere, or for the many people developing other projects who have put their heart and soul into it and it appears their work may be for naught. For those developing similar endeavors it must be utterly heartbreaking.

Personally I feel very hurt, I have lurked for years, I have always been saddened by the loss of a game I have loved so much, and I have done my very best to put it behind me (and fail to do so) - and to know that I was actively lied to and for perhaps years people were playing the game I cared so much for... it doesn't feel good.

Whatever happens next, this will only build pressure until it is addressed. I hope that Leandro and others can make a public statement, that they can put it out in the open and release the code that lets everyone enjoy the game. I hope that they are also left in peace and, letting bygones be bygones, are credited for keeping COX alive despite what I think have been missteps on their behalf.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 17, 2019, 10:33:15 AM
I dunno, I find it hard to believe this would have benefited any of us that aren't involved with the secret server already.  Yes, its good news that the code still exists.  But it sounds like it has existed for 6 years and hasn't helped any of us who miss the game, even through the new efforts.  If they weren't exposed I don't know how many more years this server would remain a secret, it may have never come out.

I like to believe this was all for the good of the community, but how many more years was this going to be a secret for? 5? 10?  What's even the point after 17 years of the game being shut down.  I get why they kept it a secret.  Because they wanted to keep playing and not have it taken away from them.  But I don't believe at all that keeping it a secret was for the good of the community, I think it was for the good of themselves.  I'll happily be proven wrong if this somehow leads to me being able to play the game again.  But currently, it feels like NCSoft and SCORE are both not allowing me to play a game I love.

I honestly don't know any of the people involved with SCORE.  And I am sure they are nice people and this wasn't intended to be malicious.  But it doesn't make me feel any better knowing this game we all love has been around for years in secret.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: FlyingCarcass on April 17, 2019, 10:37:35 AM
So much for checking out this site every couple of days for the past few years in the vain hope of news regarding a playable version of CoH.  :-\
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Gun-Nut on April 17, 2019, 11:02:18 AM
So much for checking out this site every couple of days for the past few years in the vain hope of news regarding a playable version of CoH.  :-\

Indeed, at least up until yesterday if you had heard of SCORE like myself you could sit around thinking a team is still putting in work behind the scenes to make an emulator but instead we find out a fully playable server exists and is super secret.

Lots of mixed feelings, been part of this "Titan Network" (hell I'm user #38) community before it was even Titan, if I recall correctly CIT had its own boards that I use to frequent at the time, or maybe it was MIDs? either way there was something before this... I don't know where I was going with that...

I guess it hurts coming to the place SCoRE used as its home at one point that nothing was even stated that the effort to make an emulator had been stopped or maybe it never was and work has been going on to get it in a state that its easy to run, since as other posts have stated and from what I recall the devs did state the server stuff was quite a nightmare.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 17, 2019, 12:17:15 PM
First off - thanks to the Titan Forum devs for opening up this topic and allowing for the users to openly discuss it. I know that the forum policy regarding that had to be changed in order to allow this, and I think it was a smart move. So, thank you.

Much like the rest of the community, I'm pretty conflicted. I think my most surface-level thoughts/reactions to it have been mostly frustration? These people had a fully-functioning private server running right under our noses for 6 years, and kept it alllllll to themselves. While they knew that such a large portion of the community was still hurting, they choose to take the route of "Yeah, so that sucks that you guys can't play the game anymore... but we can, and we will, and we can't let you play it too because then we might not be able to play it. So, sorry."

I'm not entirely sure I believe Leandro when he says he had intentions of going live with it, or converting it to a more 'public' status server sometime in the future. I also think he was kiiiiiinda using the "Well everyone knew about SCORE!" as his scapegoat, and I don't think most people are buying that (or, rather, allowing him to get away with this on those grounds). I don't know who he is, and I'm not sure what I believe.

....But on the other hand. I dunno - if someone offered me the 'golden ticket', I would be hella tempted. So, factoring that in, I can only be so mad at the private server players. Ultimately, I know I would not have played on it (please note: I was never a private server player, was never offered - I don't even use Reddit haha) but I understand the allure for sure. And if I were to of said yes, I would have ABSOLUTELY felt super gross about it? I think one of the two former private server players who came out publicly - the player's account name on Facebook was Destiny something - shared that same sentiment. They knew that they were doing something that was 'unfair', like being in a village that's been without water for yeeeeeears but a few houses had managed to find a hidden pipe that had a lifetime supply of Evian running through it, and instead of sharing it with everyone and dealing with whatever ramifications that came with... they opted to not tell anyone, and reap the benefits quietly amongst themselves.

Speaking of ramifications, I think that's one piece to this that I'm honestly clueless about - will NCSoft take legal action? Will they not? I have zero idea. Based off of how they handled the COH shutdown, all I really know of them (as a company) is that they SEEM petty AF and really prideful/stubborn in how they carry out their business. So, with that in mind, I'm inclined to think that they might. But on the other hand... you've GOTTA ask if this would even be worth it to pursue legally? Taking legal action WOULD cost them money, and whose to know if they could even financially benefit (in the LONG RUN) from taking legal action against Leandro et al.

I think the one fairly laaaaarge silver lining that I have with all of this is just simply knowing that the server, disc image, and data is ALIVE. That NCSoft didn't bury that into the ground and throw away the key post-shut down like they tried to convince us they did. Someone on Paragon Chat pointed out to me the other day that when a private server is created after a deceased game, it's like posting a picture on the Internet - once it's out there, it's pretty much out there. It's going to be VERY difficult for NCSoft to put a lid on something like this. I would bet my left AND right leg(s) that sooooomeone has already gotten off with any/all info they would need to re-create another private server should NCSoft get this current one shut down. They have to know that they can't stop this train from moving now.

I don't think Leandro and the private server group 'owed it' to the community to open it up to everyone, and then deal with whatever legal repercussions came with that - but, that doesn't mean that it wouldn't have been the right thing to do.

Personally speaking, I think this is the best news we've had in a WHILE in regards to playing COH again, or getting the game back. People seem to think that this is only going to further diminish our chances, and I absolutely think the opposite. With all the press and attention this is getting, the pressure is ON. The community is on fire, and they /will/ be heard. Something is going to give here. I can feel it.

...And I feel like it will be for the better.  ;)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 17, 2019, 12:19:58 PM

Maybe Tony can pull a rabbit out of his hat or something.


 You leave me OUT of this!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 12:46:50 PM
The rhetoric that "oh the code was a mess" is getting really old. To honestly believe SCORE or Leo are the only people on this planet capable of sorting and running a private server is a complete farce. I get why they chose to keep it in secret while working on it. NCsoft is a corporation that will keep its own interests in mind ahead of anything else. Nobody should be questioning that and if they are they're foolish. The problem front and center is proof was provided of a fully functioning city of heroes private server and the only answer we've been given is "It's a secret and will remain that way". Furthering, the leaker be it untrustworthy or not has made claims on people openly who have chosen either to stay silent about those claims or deny them turning the entire situation into he said she said. Nobody can figure out who to trust anymore and when people give flimsy excuses like "the code is a mess" it only makes it look worse.

The facts.

- Functioning private server has existed for some time now.

- People were chosen to join it while others were purposely mislead

- Leo has gone on record to claim it was going to be released in only a couple weeks for everyone to enjoy but now is not (His statement about it being ready in only a couple weeks completely shatters any argument about it being unfinished.)

These are undisputed truths that have come out and honestly the only things worth discussion at this point. Hear say about who was where is becoming tiring and so is the idea that the server would be impossible for others to run.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 17, 2019, 12:51:04 PM
Good morning from the Pacific.

A brief reminder - I've done some pruning this morning.  Discussion about the private server itself specifically will be removed.  This includes, but is not limited to: invites, queries or accusations of who is in it (no witch hunts, please), or any links to content that supposedly comes from it. 

Discuss the news, sure.  Ask questions, but understand not all of them will get answers or may get speculative replies from people who know nothing (count me in that camp.) But our policies have not changed.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Fixxer on April 17, 2019, 01:07:28 PM
It's interesting that some people are allowed to discuss the private server... while others get mod smacked.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 17, 2019, 01:12:42 PM
It's worth noting that the close relationship between Paragon Chat and the private server quite naturally leads to speculation that any money that was donated to Titan Network for PChat development might have gone towards this private server. I suspect that any and all money is accounted for, but given the fact that people worked on both projects at the same time, it is reasonable for people to wonder about that particular money trail.

Money that was donated to Titan Network for PC Chat development?  What?

Did you give money to Titan Network thinking they were involved in PC Chat development?  I thought it was made clear many multiple times that there was no direct connection between Titan Network and PC Chat.  Who did you give money to?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 17, 2019, 01:14:15 PM
The rhetoric that "oh the code was a mess" is getting really old. To honestly believe SCORE or Leo are the only people on this planet capable of sorting and running a private server is a complete farce. I get why they chose to keep it in secret while working on it. NCsoft is a corporation that will keep its own interests in mind ahead of anything else. Nobody should be questioning that and if they are they're foolish. The problem front and center is proof was provided of a fully functioning city of heroes private server and the only answer we've been given is "It's a secret and will remain that way". Furthering, the leaker be it untrustworthy or not has made claims on people openly who have chosen either to stay silent about those claims or deny them turning the entire situation into he said she said. Nobody can figure out who to trust anymore and when people give flimsy excuses like "the code is a mess" it only makes it look worse.

The facts.

- Functioning private server has existed for some time now.

- People were chosen to join it while others were purposely mislead

- Leo has gone on record to claim it was going to be released in only a couple weeks for everyone to enjoy but now is not (His statement about it being ready in only a couple weeks completely shatters any argument about it being unfinished.)

These are undisputed truths that have come out and honestly the only things worth discussion at this point. Hear say about who was where is becoming tiring and so is the idea that the server would be impossible for others to run.


While I am dead set against releasing any code that may be NCsofts, it would be sweet justice if Leandro turned around ans said,  "Okay, here's the original code,  but you get nothing the SCORE team has developed since,  because you've been, irrational, petulant,  overly entitled,  self-righteous, and outright threatening. " 


Then we can watch all of these experts coming out of the wood work claiming if the code is free they can launch a bunch of servers. Let's see just how long it takes them to get a reusable, packaged server up and running.    I mean,  the skillsets of people like Codewalker, Leandro, et al. are pretty minimum wage,  amiright? Maybe Super Atom can team up with Joshex to double their productivity level?


But seriously,  folks need to calm down because mitch if the reaction is hysterical and embarrassing.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: TonyV on April 17, 2019, 01:17:02 PM
Folks, I've been removing posts I deem abusive or destructive last night and today. I want to remind everyone to be civil. If you want to talk about how you feel about the situation, fine. But if you want to post rants personally attacking Leandro, SCoRE, or anyone else, or try to propagate baseless speculation, your post is going to be nuked.

I apologize for being cynical, but it's about all I can be because the entire situation is extremely cynical. It feels as though the overall CoX community has had a pretty clear caste system in play with what is more or less, a first class citizen group who invited who they deemed worth from the unwashed masses. It's frustrating to say the least.

...And this is why.

The CoX community DOES NOT have a "caste system." Re-read my On "private servers" (https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=10951.0) post again:

In reality, if you're here, as far as I'm concerned, you're part of the "in" crowd, period, end of story.

Now, having said all of that, I have consistently said that there is a possibility that one of the devs might have managed to get their hands on the code before the shutdown.  I'll even concede that there might be a private server out there.  If so, then more power to them, and I hope that eventually whoever has access to the code will see fit to release it.  I have also repeatedly acknowledged that there is a team out there I've been referring to SCoRE who has been working on reverse engineering a server, and while I know that it's been a long time and some folks have lost faith that they're making any progress, they ARE still working on it, and they ARE still making progress to the point where I've seen some simple interactions happening.  If you're wondering why they won't release their work, it's mainly because it is at a VERY early stage, it's VERY difficult to get it configured correctly, and they would much rather spend their time working on coding than having to worry about releasing stuff, supporting it, getting an inevitable flood of questions about "how do I set this up?" (only to be disappointed to find out that it takes expensive development software), and getting an inevitable flood of complaints that it's not working right and how much their progress sucks so far.  (Which was yet another thread posted a few days ago that we deleted, but I digress...)  And not to put too fine a point on it, the reason that team is highly encouraged to maintain radio silence on their efforts is precisely because of what is going on over on Facebook right now, baseless rumors and allegations that are completely unconstructive based on what some people think (but who don't actually know) what is going on.

So in short, is there a private server?  Not that I know of, although it is still being worked on.  Even if there is, it is totally irrelevant, because whoever is running it obviously doesn't want it released to the community-at-large for what is hopefully a really damn good obvious reason.  I know that if I were running such a server, seeing the noise that is being made over these allegations, along with the threats that are being made and the unbridled sense of entitlement that is being conveyed, along with the legal threat of what would happen if it got out into the wild, would certainly turn me off of the prospect of releasing the software.  In short, if there is such a thing, what's going on over on Facebook is likely driving those people deeper underground, not encouraging them to release it to the community.

To the folks who are spreading this crap around on Facebook, if you want something constructive to do instead, support the community instead of trying to tear it apart.  Express support for SCoRE, or participate in one of the successor projects, or even snag a copy of Icon and make some videos to entertain the community without the pretense of there being a private server.

This holds true today just as much as it did then. The only difference is that now we know there's a private server. Well, bully for them. I'm not jealous of the people who have been playing on it, because I personally am no worse off than I was this time last week. When Leandro says that he intended--and still intends--to release the code, given his reputation for actually producing stuff for the community and contributing to projects like Paragon Chat, I don't get all pissed off scorched-earth at him, I take him at his word. In my humble opinion, he's earned that over the years, and it disappoints me greatly that too many people can't see past their own anger to realize it.

At any rate, this...

There are aspects that I completely understand, and there are aspects of it that were extremely cynical on the part of those involved, such as people who are in the know about an actively working private server enforcing "no private server discussion" on forums and subreddits, people actively involved in running SCoRE being involved in other efforts that have existed as little more than a placating romparoom for the members of this community not deemed worthy of access to the actual game...

...was the main reason I'm replying this morning.

I can't speak for subreddits, but the Titan Network, and I in particular, have not been enforcing a "no private server discussion" policy because we're "in on" a private server. If you want to know why we've enforced that policy, it is PRECISELY because of what's going on right here, right now. Forget the totally bogus allegations I've seen over the years. Even around this event, in which there has proven to be a core of truth, the amount of lies and misinformation about us (the Titan Network), SEGS, City of Titans, and numerous other community members and leaders has been flabbergasting. I got accused of being "in hiding" yesterday, and I'm like, wait, what? I have been posting and replying in various social media platforms and responding to people on Discord almost constantly since Sunday afternoon.

I have screenshots of people in Discord saying that CoT was just a front to funnel money to the private server project. Even the guy who posted the video that started this whole brouhaha initially said that SEGS was behind the private server project, throwing a crapton of flak their way. As I type this, Leandro is being doxxed and receiving death threats.

As for the "placating romparoom" you referred to, I take STRONG exception to that, and frankly, it pisses me off and it pisses on the enormous amount of time, effort, and energy that people who have NOTHING to do with the private server have put into building, testing, and deploying Paragon Chat. I personally pay for the server on which the XMPP service is hosted out of my OWN pocket every month, and just for the record, I am NOT a member of SCoRE, I don't play on any private servers out there, and I am in NO WAY motivated to keep it up and going as any kind of "front" or "distraction" for anyone else.

But while a small group of people who have been posting conspiracy crap for years are taking a victory lap feeling all vindicated that, like a blind hog, they managed to find one acorn, those are the kinds of baseless allegations and lies--again even around a nugget of truth--that we're having to put up with.

I get that you're upset. I get that you're mad. But other people are getting hurt, people who have nothing to do with any private server, people who have busted their butts trying to provide a community where EVERYONE feels welcome.

So while we've allowed more leeway in this thread lately due to getting how people are feeling, this forum is not a free-for-all where people can feel free to come in and treat Leandro, or anyone else, like scum. We are not going to continue allowing people to ascribe unfounded malicious motives to those who have been working on ANY community-related project, INCLUDING SCoRE or any other private server-related mess.

You want to wonder why they haven't released code? Fine. But you want to come in here and accuse them of not doing so because they're elitist pricks who for some insane reason have secretly been working to set up a gated community of "haves"? Take it somewhere else. There are plenty of other forums and Facebook pages where the moderators have decided to let anything go, places that have devolved into cesspools of hate and vitriol.

I get your cynicism, I really, really do. But this isn't a place to take that cynicism and project it as far and wide as possible, hoping it takes hold and infects everyone else. If that were the case, we never would have survived the shutdown because believe you me, there was a LOT of cynicism back then, too. This a place where we come together to get over our cynicism, where we pull together--and yes, that means even the people who have been on the private server--as a community. Hell, we're talking about THREE THOUSAND people, undoubtedly many of whom have been on here frequently continuing to prop up the community as SCoRE has been working on a working server, carrying everyone through some bad times until hopefully we can all enjoy the fruits of their labors. (And no, I'm not going to entertain this notion that "they never intended to release the game," that's ludicrous.)

They could have simply gone away to live in their "gated community" and chose not to. Why? Because as I said in my "On 'private servers'" thread above, there IS NO gated community here. There is no caste system. There are no "haves" and "have-nots," there's just us. ALL of us.

If anyone can't abide by that, then they're choosing to isolate themselves from the community, not us. And I think that's a shame, but again, we're not going to allow anyone to use these forums to try to make this whole "caste system" foolishness a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Burnt Toast on April 17, 2019, 01:29:32 PM
I actually think people have a very valid reason for being upset. A private server has been up and running for 6+ years. Many forumites have been enjoying the ability to play on said server while many more have not. While I would never condone actual threats of violence - I still think everyone who was/is a fan of CoH has an absolute right to feel betrayed...furious...and utterly pissed off at those who have been lying to them for years. There is no sugar coating that many on these forums have been duped by people they thought were friends. Most people on these forums would have jumped at the ability to play on the private server and would have paid good money to do so.


I'm not saying I was aware of the server, but if I were and if I knew I had to keep it a secret... I would not have played. I am just not that selfish. I am not that hypocritical that I would come on here and deny the existence of something like that while actually playing on it. I find that those who did are completely disgusting and that such behavior is the antithesis of what the CoH community was supposed to have been about.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: jessejame on April 17, 2019, 01:33:30 PM
Tony brings up a good point. I haven't kept up with the community but if Leo really didnt care then why would he have contributed to the community at all?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 17, 2019, 02:03:41 PM
I wonder if this was a more common thing with the games around that era, I remember being frustrated with Tabula Rasa and Auto Assaults server performance.

Just to punctuate what @Olivar noted - The point was not that it was bad for the original server to be designed as a bunch of services, or that a current server would not be designed that way; it was that there was a whole bunch of moving wheels and any one of them failing to move correctly could stop the whole vehicle.

Take the store as an example. The store was not a part of the server at all. It was an outside e-commerce site that the client and server communicated with to learn what premium/loyalty-rewards content the player was entitled to use. All of that vaporized the day the servers closed. Even if you had an otherwise working client/server for the game, you would NOT have any of the code related to the store aside from possibly the communication protocols used to send queries and purchases requests to it.

That's just one of the most obvious problems with trying to take a snapshot of the server and get it running.

Whatever Leandro has/had, if he had "just released it", most people would not have been in a position to do anything useful with it.

As for what he has - There's precious little hard evidence about what exactly that is. Despite what so many people are assuming, we don't know that he has source code. From what we've been told, NCSoft themselves were unable to come up with source code for the server. Leandro might well be in the same boat as NCSoft, in that someone gave him a working executable server installation, copied from an actual server (as opposed to a development machine with source files) but no actual source code. The only way to create an emulator would be to run the original server and duplicate its functionality.

If he does have source code, we don't know which version of the server it is. Cryptic themselves once accidentally published the source code of the game. The story is that they discovered the error and got rid of all but one copy and they bribed that person who got it to delete it by giving him a lifetime sub or some such. If THAT source code was in someone's hands, it would help that person understand generally how the server worked, but it would not allow him to compile an I-24 server or even contain any newer content at all.

In short - there are still too many questions to pull out the pitchforks. If its true that they were going to announce their emulator in just a couple of weeks, then it's REALLY unfortunate that Mr. Destroyer Stroyer decided that now was the time to become a freedom fighter seeking to free /r/CityofHeroes from its tyrannical oppressors.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 17, 2019, 02:16:10 PM

 When Leandro says that he intended--and still intends--to release the code, given his reputation for actually producing stuff for the community and contributing to projects like Paragon Chat, I don't get all pissed off scorched-earth at him, I take him at his word. In my humble opinion, he's earned that over the years, and it disappoints me greatly that too many people can't see past their own anger to realize it.


Thank you for that, Tony, I completely agree.  I've been feeling bursts of rage on this subject but not for people involved in the SCoRE work... for the people who are gibbering insanely with rage for not being told about the Secret work. 

I haven't dived into this "up and running for 6 years!" stuff, so I'm not sure what has been running, or in what condition, or with what capacity.  I feel absolutely certain that nobody "in the community" has any "right" to anything from anybody -- especially from people who have put work into learning, running, and improving the software involved with CoH -- if you've sat down and worked and taught yourself enough about the client to add rooms to Pargon chat maps -- for example, IMHO you've got some basis to weigh in on development efforts.  And if not, you're waiting for somebody to give you something.

Years ago I jokingly warned somebody in a recovery effort that the reward for anybody learning that they were making progress would be piles of abuse for them not doing enough or not going faster or not doing whatever the specific person wanted them to do.  Yeah.

I'm thrilled that anybody has been able to play the game, more thrilled that the game exists in a form that can be played, even more thrilled that all those people who said "If I can't have my characters with my stuff then I don't ever want to play again" actually have at least a possibility of getting that (personally I'd just rebuild).

It seems perfectly reasonable to me that Leandro (and Xs) have needed a playing population on their server in order to develop and test.  I sincerely hope that they've distributed copies to multiple people and sources to protect against loss, but I don't believe that anybody has any right to tell them how to deal with this.  And the idea that they've somehow been villainous in this strikes me as flat-out nuts.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: TonyV on April 17, 2019, 02:19:57 PM
I actually think people have a very valid reason for being upset...

That's fine. We disagree on how upset people should be about it, and we probably disagree on the level of egregiousness of various people's sins. And I've always said, in this context and in others, that no one gets to tell you his you must feel about any given situation. You have the absolute right to feel however you feel.

But there is a huge difference between feeling angry and taking actions to make everyone else feel angry. There's a huge difference between feeling betrayed and trying to incite others to act on your feeling of betrayal.

One, we allow leeway in discussing here on the Titan forums. The latter, the part where people get destructive to the community, we don't.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 02:25:18 PM
That's fine. We disagree on how upset people should be about it, and we probably disagree on the level of egregiousness of various people's sins. And I've always said, in this context and in others, that no one gets to tell you his you must feel about any given situation. You have the absolute right to feel however you feel.

But there is a huge difference between feeling angry and taking actions to make everyone else feel angry. There's a huge difference between feeling betrayed and trying to incite others to act on your feeling of betrayal.

One, we allow leeway in discussing here on the Titan forums. The latter, the part where people get destructive to the community, we don't.


As long as this works both ways. Theres been a lot of attacking of people just expressing frustration. I don't think its particularly healthy to condem anyone, including the leaker. If its not done both ways, it begins to look like misdirection and censorship. I haven't seen the mods censor anyone who hasn't deserved it, so this appears to be the case so far.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Weatherwoman on April 17, 2019, 02:58:58 PM
My only comment on this whole situation is.... yikes
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 17, 2019, 03:22:12 PM
Ultimately, this brings us back around full circle.  We're back to waiting to see what NCSoft will do.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 17, 2019, 03:37:25 PM
Ultimately, this brings us back around full circle.  We're back to waiting to see what NCSoft will do.

I think this situation is slightly different. Now, they know that they're not the only ones who have the capability of bringing the game back both from a legal AND logistical standpoint. Now, logistically speaking, they are faced with knowing that they're not the only ones who have that capability.

And, frankly, I'm perfectly tickled by that fact :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Fringe Element on April 17, 2019, 03:41:09 PM
lol at the post following mine - it's the same as mine minus all tact  :P

whoops, it was rightfully taken down
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 17, 2019, 03:42:11 PM
And let that be a lesson.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 17, 2019, 03:46:42 PM
I think this situation is slightly different. Now, they know that they're not the only ones who have the capability of bringing the game back both from a legal AND logistical standpoint. Now, logistically speaking, they are faced with knowing that they're not the only ones who have that capability.

And, frankly, I'm perfectly tickled by that fact :)


Who else besides NCsoft has a legal right to bring the game back...?  Nothing has changed... / ' :
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 17, 2019, 03:53:39 PM
Certainly, and speaking of the drama though, I find a lot of things start to make a large amount of sense in the community as I've observed. As I've been looking in on it maybe every year for the last 4 years and every 6 months since SEGS started to be a realized thing with 0.3? I think... There was always a slight sort of lethargy about the community, and an almost lack of eagerness in it's movers and shakers, at least that I saw on places like this and the subreddit, whenever the possibility of emulation and server recovery were mentioned. A kind of short period of "Oh well that's nice, carry on."

For me, I never got enthusiastic about SEGS for 2 reasons: 1. I was of the understanding it was an issue 1 (ish) code, and even when I started playing in issue 4-5, going back to what I heard issue 1 was like is not something I wanted. Better than nothing, sure, but I didn't care much about an effort to get issue 1 working. I would have been happy when it was finished, and played it, but it didn't capture my interest; 2. SEGS has been around for *years* and nothing came of it, and until its recent activity in the last half year or so, my impression of it was always "it's that emulator that one person tried to do solo while the game was running."

Obviously I've been more positive about it in the last half year, even joining their discord last November. But that's only a recent development.

I also think that because there were efforts to literally buy the game from NCsoft, people put their hopes on that, instead of an emulator... especially given that the only emulator CoH had was, as noted above, not much of anything. And then SCoRE happened, and it was assumed they'd work for years and years and years and give us something - the idea that a effectively functioning private server existed was even *possible* before maybe at least a decade of work was deemed extremely unlikely.

I like to believe this was all for the good of the community, but how many more years was this going to be a secret for? 5? 10?  What's even the point after 17 years of the game being shut down.  I get why they kept it a secret.  Because they wanted to keep playing and not have it taken away from them.  But I don't believe at all that keeping it a secret was for the good of the community, I think it was for the good of themselves.  I'll happily be proven wrong if this somehow leads to me being able to play the game again.  But currently, it feels like NCSoft and SCORE are both not allowing me to play a game I love.

I honestly don't know any of the people involved with SCORE.  And I am sure they are nice people and this wasn't intended to be malicious.  But it doesn't make me feel any better knowing this game we all love has been around for years in secret.

Indeed, at least up until yesterday if you had heard of SCORE like myself you could sit around thinking a team is still putting in work behind the scenes to make an emulator but instead we find out a fully playable server exists and is super secret.

I'm not entirely sure I believe Leandro when he says he had intentions of going live with it, or converting it to a more 'public' status server sometime in the future. I also think he was kiiiiiinda using the "Well everyone knew about SCORE!" as his scapegoat, and I don't think most people are buying that (or, rather, allowing him to get away with this on those grounds). I don't know who he is, and I'm not sure what I believe.

This is kind of how I feel. And the statements that "oh it was going to be released for the 15th anniversary, but now we're not so we can make the code "better"" seems disingenuous to me. The cat's out of the bag, there's no harm in going through with the initial release schedule. But I honestly (and I would be happy to be proven wrong) don't believe that there was any set timeframe, in SCoRE's internal conversations, for a release.

Yeah, everyone on Titan Network had heard of SCoRE, but I was under the impression that they were working in secret to build something *to release* - and right now, I tend to lean towards believing that what they had was releasable, which is where the betrayal comes in. Again, if I see some sort of internal documentation from SCoRE that they actually had some release plan or schedule, I will be happy to know that I was not betrayed, but I'm currently skeptical.

Lots of mixed feelings, been part of this "Titan Network" (hell I'm user #38) community before it was even Titan, if I recall correctly CIT had its own boards that I use to frequent at the time, or maybe it was MIDs? either way there was something before this... I don't know where I was going with that...

Check my sig - CIT *did* have its own forums! (I was super disappointed the post counts didn't migrate, because somehow I was one of the top posters there when it did :p )

I think the one fairly laaaaarge silver lining that I have with all of this is just simply knowing that the server, disc image, and data is ALIVE.

I don't think we know that - the only thing that appears to be actually true is that SCoRE was anonymously given character data. The 2013 post from Leandro indicates that they may have actually been reverse engineering or trying to build something that didn't rely on original code.

(That post is also really sad to see, because shows all the initial hope and promise for the project, which somehow got turned into something where secrecy and trying to make the code "perfect" was more important than releasing it.)

Whatever Leandro has/had, if he had "just released it", most people would not have been in a position to do anything useful with it.

The same is true of the original code from the real servers. But releasing the code allows two things to happen: 1. It prevents NCsoft from actually managing to finally destroy the game, because it should be patently obvious that having multiple copies of digital information you want to preserve is the only way to ensure it doesn't get deleted, either maliciously or through something happening to the single physical databse; 2. It allows the people who don't fall under your "most people" umbrella, the ones who have the sort of knowledge to make things work, to try their own hand at working on CoH code. And that's a good thing. Regardless of anything else, I do believe that SCoRE has some really great programmers, but that doesn't mean they'll necessarily see the best way to do x y or z. Outside eyes might be able to help get the code into a better state faster than a few people working in secret. Crowdsourcing is a tried-and-true way to solve problems.

Money that was donated to Titan Network for PC Chat development?  What?

Did you give money to Titan Network thinking they were involved in PC Chat development?  I thought it was made clear many multiple times that there was no direct connection between Titan Network and PC Chat.  Who did you give money to?

Bold of you to assume I've had enough money to donate to anything in the timeframe since Paragon Chat was released  ;D . I was just trying to note that, while claims of the successors being money fronts *is* ridiculous, Titan Network does have a donation button (I don't know about Paragon Chat), and it is *understandable* that people will now be suspicious about where that money goes, given the close nature of Titan Network and Paragon Chat.

I get your cynicism, I really, really do. But this isn't a place to take that cynicism and project it as far and wide as possible, hoping it takes hold and infects everyone else. If that were the case, we never would have survived the shutdown because believe you me, there was a LOT of cynicism back then, too. This a place where we come together to get over our cynicism, where we pull together--and yes, that means even the people who have been on the private server--as a community. Hell, we're talking about THREE THOUSAND people, undoubtedly many of whom have been on here frequently continuing to prop up the community as SCoRE has been working on a working server, carrying everyone through some bad times until hopefully we can all enjoy the fruits of their labors.

.....

They could have simply gone away to live in their "gated community" and chose not to. Why? Because as I said in my "On 'private servers'" thread above, there IS NO gated community here. There is no caste system. There are no "haves" and "have-nots," there's just us. ALL of us.

If anyone can't abide by that, then they're choosing to isolate themselves from the community, not us. And I think that's a shame, but again, we're not going to allow anyone to use these forums to try to make this whole "caste system" foolishness a self-fulfilling prophesy.

That's fine. We disagree on how upset people should be about it, and we probably disagree on the level of egregiousness of various people's sins. And I've always said, in this context and in others, that no one gets to tell you his you must feel about any given situation. You have the absolute right to feel however you feel.

But there is a huge difference between feeling angry and taking actions to make everyone else feel angry. There's a huge difference between feeling betrayed and trying to incite others to act on your feeling of betrayal.

One, we allow leeway in discussing here on the Titan forums. The latter, the part where people get destructive to the community, we don't.

TonyV, you've been a staunch pillar of the CoH community for a long time, and you built the Titan Network into the best CoH community there is. I do believe that you didn't know about the server, and that the reasons for censoring private server talk were to prevent these forums from devolving into what other places have become the last few days.

But I honestly think that many of your comments, especially on the MassivelyOP article, come across as tone deaf.

I get that you're upset. I get that you're mad. But other people are getting hurt, people who have nothing to do with any private server, people who have busted their butts trying to provide a community where EVERYONE feels welcome.

I don't think you truly grok why people are feeling hurt, and betrayed. You say yourself that you're relatively sanguine about the revelation:

This holds true today just as much as it did then. The only difference is that now we know there's a private server. Well, bully for them. I'm not jealous of the people who have been playing on it, because I personally am no worse off than I was this time last week.

On these very forums, you can search for SCoRE or Secret Cabal of Reverse Engineers, and see posts of people who put their faith in SCoRE to provide a working game to the community. As of right now, the evidence points to SCoRE *having the game that they promised to deliver* .... and not doing so. Yes, maybe the code wasn't "good enough" for SCoRE's standards... but surely you can understand why people who see video of a working game, that was built by people they trusted to release said game, are upset that it was kept secret?

Edit: Due to the migration of posts from "New Efforts" to this thread, the quotes above no longer link properly. But they are unmodified, and the originals can be found in this thread (I don't want to put the effort in right now).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 17, 2019, 03:55:44 PM

Who else besides NCsoft has a legal right to bring the game back...?  Nothing has changed... / ' :

That's what I'm saying. They're the only ones who can legally bring it back, but now that it's been uncovered that a private server/emulator has been running for 6 years, they now KNOW that they're not the only ones who have the logistical capability to bring it back - should whomever has a copy of the game a.) want to, and b.) deem any/all potential ramifications of bringing said game back to be 'worth it', they have the ability (technically speaking) to do so. Now, NCSoft could just go on a suing spree and go after any/all parties whom might continually revive it over and over again... but c'mon.

Before, they had both the 'legal' and 'logistical' elements on their side. But the chess game just got a whole lot more 'level' with the public knowledge of the existence of this private server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 03:57:06 PM
Quote
Thank you for that, Tony, I completely agree.  I've been feeling bursts of rage on this subject but not for people involved in the SCoRE work... for the people who are gibbering insanely with rage for not being told about the Secret work. 

At the very least you should understand where the rage is coming from. I'll use my own experience as it's the best i've got to explain.

I was staring at the clock waiting patiently for the new Anno game to release in hopes of it filling some of the void City of Heroes left when only an hour was left, someone linked me to the article. For years I was told by a lot of people i trusted to be the ones to keep everyone updated that Paragon Chat was the best we were gonna get outside of SEGS, and while i love SEGS and the people who work hard on it, It was extremely far off from being the City of Heroes i desired. This article not only showed that to be incorrect it accused people I put complete faith into of lying. Not everything in the article was concrete but at this point, i was very hurt on a personal level.

For years my supergroup and i have played around in mids, paragon chat, and discussed daily general CoH stuff. We've tried moving on and have tried many times to not let it get us down. We all grew up together, most of us only 13 when CoH released, some of us even dated and moved in together. City of Heroes was a lot of things to us more than "A game about super heroes" which is why Champions, DC, or the successors didn't bring any comfort knowing that mechanically it wouldn't be the same game. Now you have this new information that at face value told us City of Heroes never left for some people, those people decided we weren't good enough to play the game and were actively lying and toying with us by giving us things like Paragon Chat. Was this true? I can't tell you that, i can take Titan Network at their word it isn't but not everyone else will. Some people feel too betrayed to even consider the idea and the to be honest with you it's hard to fault for them.

I see no concrete evidence to suggest any of it is true but i see a lot of concrete evidence that makes me want to ask questions that just can't be answered due to trying to protect what was worked on from being ruined. Not everyone is going to just be okay with trying to have faith, for a lot of people they did their best to have faith and feel betrayed. Only time will correct this by actions proving the claims to be false. If the day comes when we all have City of Heores back, even the most hurt of people will forgive and apologize but that time isn't right now. I'm not asking anyone to just let people be attacked or allow false information to be spread. All I'm asking is for some understanding, and i feel a lot of people here have done so already.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 17, 2019, 04:08:00 PM
Where's the apology, TonyV?

You quoted your "on private servers" post earlier, but that post is full of, at best, misinformation.  The fact that you were apparently misled as to the truth doesn't excuse the fact that you put a very public face on those lies.  You called people who knew the truth "trolls".  You told everyone that SCORE was at a "very early stage".

You were wrong.  You were lied to.  If you don't want to be angry about that, that's fine.  Being chill is not a bad thing.

But you used your clout here at CoHTitan to mislead everyone away from the truth.

I think that now that it's clear that has happened, you should own up to your mistake.


A.  I'm sure Tony will respond.
B.  Are you really feeling so paranoid that you had to create a new account (if so,  I hope you're using a VPN...)
C.  I feel like at times only a few people (mis-)read some source material,  then make these wild leaps of logic that then others who haven't read the material simply react to and echo.   
 D.  I'm having a very hard time finding where in Tony's message you could attribute to him being a liar.  He has disclaimers galore (no one told him, "proof" was not substantial then, he addresses the possibility of a private server and what building it would entail,  and again declaring he doesn't know if it exists but if course there it's active work on one )
E. His "troll" comment was specifically directed at those bringing nothing constructive to the conversation,  directing them to other forums like Facebook.
F. Was Tony wrong?  I doubt think he was wrong in how he wrote that message.
G.  Was Tony lied to?  First of all, who cares and second,  if he wasnt told,  he wasn't lied to.


I think a lot of this inflated angst is self- created and unnecessarily perpetuated,  in large part reading into official statements these nefarious ideas,  or else justifying continuing to be angsty by doing such.

Edit: how is this post not intended to incite a reaction from Tony, which was Tony's entire point about trolls being unconstructive...?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 17, 2019, 04:28:46 PM
Thank you for that, Tony, I completely agree.  I've been feeling bursts of rage on this subject but not for people involved in the SCoRE work... for the people who are gibbering insanely with rage for not being told about the Secret work. 

I haven't dived into this "up and running for 6 years!" stuff, so I'm not sure what has been running, or in what condition, or with what capacity.  I feel absolutely certain that nobody "in the community" has any "right" to anything from anybody -- especially from people who have put work into learning, running, and improving the software involved with CoH -- if you've sat down and worked and taught yourself enough about the client to add rooms to Pargon chat maps -- for example, IMHO you've got some basis to weigh in on development efforts.  And if not, you're waiting for somebody to give you something.

Years ago I jokingly warned somebody in a recovery effort that the reward for anybody learning that they were making progress would be piles of abuse for them not doing enough or not going faster or not doing whatever the specific person wanted them to do.  Yeah.

I'm thrilled that anybody has been able to play the game, more thrilled that the game exists in a form that can be played, even more thrilled that all those people who said "If I can't have my characters with my stuff then I don't ever want to play again" actually have at least a possibility of getting that (personally I'd just rebuild).

It seems perfectly reasonable to me that Leandro (and Xs) have needed a playing population on their server in order to develop and test.  I sincerely hope that they've distributed copies to multiple people and sources to protect against loss, but I don't believe that anybody has any right to tell them how to deal with this.  And the idea that they've somehow been villainous in this strikes me as flat-out nuts.

Word for word?

Rational and sound.

Well said, Ohioknight.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 17, 2019, 04:45:28 PM
I made a new account because I have never needed to post anything here before?  But great start at conversation by painting me as paranoid!

As for points C-F, Tony took a stance and posted about the rumors of private servers and the progress of SCORE 4 years ago.  He quoted that post in this thread.  Tony's assertions in that post turned out to be wrong.  It's okay to be wrong, but you can't just bring up your own history with this particular rumor and not acknowledge that you were wrong.  Of course you say you don't think he was wrong in "how he wrote that message", which is a very vague way to put that, but suffice to say I disagree.

As far as who cares about Tony being lied to -  I would hope Tony would care.  I know I care, because Tony came here and spread those lies.  And if Tony wasn't lied to by virtue of never being told... then why is he making posts about things he apparently knew nothing about?  Note that Tony didn't advance that argument, that was just you, so there's nothing really but speculation.

And for "inflated angst", both "self-created" and "unnecessarily perpetuated"

1) You don't get to judge my amount of angst here.  You don't know my story or why this matters to me.  You can kindly back off
 
2) Angst is sure a fun word to use when invalidating others' feelings.  Labeling it self-created and unnecessary is a great tri-fecta of being an absolute jerk here.  Why does it matter to you if other people are feeling feelings you aren't?  Do you often deride others for not seeing things your way?

3) Perpetuated?  It's been two days.  If you can't handle two days of people asking questions, buddy maybe you're experiencing some self-created and unnecessarily inflated angst


All feelings are valid,  even my angst.   The problem is when people allow their feelings to color over and misrepresent other people's statements and use those feelings to make unfounded accusations.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 17, 2019, 04:48:21 PM
Just to punctuate what @Olivar noted - The point was not that it was bad for the original server to be designed as a bunch of services, or that a current server would not be designed that way; it was that there was a whole bunch of moving wheels and any one of them failing to move correctly could stop the whole vehicle.

Take the store as an example. The store was not a part of the server at all. It was an outside e-commerce site that the client and server communicated with to learn what premium/loyalty-rewards content the player was entitled to use. All of that vaporized the day the servers closed. Even if you had an otherwise working client/server for the game, you would NOT have any of the code related to the store aside from possibly the communication protocols used to send queries and purchases requests to it.

That's just one of the most obvious problems with trying to take a snapshot of the server and get it running.

Whatever Leandro has/had, if he had "just released it", most people would not have been in a position to do anything useful with it.

As for what he has - There's precious little hard evidence about what exactly that is. Despite what so many people are assuming, we don't know that he has source code. From what we've been told, NCSoft themselves were unable to come up with source code for the server. Leandro might well be in the same boat as NCSoft, in that someone gave him a working executable server installation, copied from an actual server (as opposed to a development machine with source files) but no actual source code. The only way to create an emulator would be to run the original server and duplicate its functionality.

If he does have source code, we don't know which version of the server it is. Cryptic themselves once accidentally published the source code of the game. The story is that they discovered the error and got rid of all but one copy and they bribed that person who got it to delete it by giving him a lifetime sub or some such. If THAT source code was in someone's hands, it would help that person understand generally how the server worked, but it would not allow him to compile an I-24 server or even contain any newer content at all.

In short - there are still too many questions to pull out the pitchforks. If its true that they were going to announce their emulator in just a couple of weeks, then it's REALLY unfortunate that Mr. Destroyer Stroyer decided that now was the time to become a freedom fighter seeking to free /r/CityofHeroes from its tyrannical oppressors.

Thank you for adding some technical colour to the debate.  Appreciated.

Yes.  The 'irony' of the 'Destroyer Stroyer' opening his trap and 'stroying' the possible chances of an 'emulator' mere weeks from launch.

The controversy alone would seem to cool any such plans.

But we'll have to wait and see.

I think Leandro, Codewalker, Score et al have their philosophy.

Given the 'nuke' that NC Soft legaled the Tab Rasa efforts with.  A lesson to be drawn there.

We know Score was working on reverse engineering.  It came out a few years ago that they'd reverse engineered the server protocol.

We've seen the 'derived' fruits of those efforts in the innovative Paragon Chat.

But it's clear to anyone that the real work was going on an ACTUAL emulated server between the pauses of Paragon Chat updates (welcome they are.)

They may well have 'leaked code' but it isn't 'legal code.'  Paragon Chat points to the philosophy that they want to reverse engineer this 'working leaked code' to side-step a legal nuke.

That's going to take time.  Maybe for legislation to catch up and help us renting MMOs only to find them, our time and our investment 'yanked' or to 'get the code right.'

I think it's fair to say, from watching Leandro's very entertaining videos on the 're-engineered' maps of Rikti Warzone, Wharf (good job on that...beautiful...) and such forth that he would probably 'get it out there' in a a less polished state whilst the likes of Codewalker is more the code perfectionist (and you can see this in Paragon Chat.) where what he does is done well and done in the spirit of the game where the 'casual' can 'just pick up and play.'  I err on the latter approach.

That's probably what is taking the time before they drop the 'hydrogen bomb' of a private server.  Perhaps they're trying to find a way to make it 'distributed' like Paragon Chat.  It would make sense in that anyone could run a private server, peer to peer, LAN or reasonably populated server with tools to make maps and a mission creator.  To prevent a 'take down' possible.  Because people could just run it in private.  P2P.

These are not modest ambitions.  But you can see with the SG bases implantation, that Codewalker is a perfectionist.  A top job done on that.

A labour of love.

It's personal.

I'm confident, as I have been all along....that they will do what is right for the community.

Throwing out a half-assed server with 'stolen code' would suffer predictable results.  Legal stomp which could jeopardise the reverse engineering works.

And their philosophy was well versed in their interview with Massively re: the launch of Paragon Chat.

They want to take the legality out of it. 

That may leave some feeling 'betrayed' but  I don't feel that way.  I can understand the need for secrecy.  And that was never that secret.  The possibility of a 'leak' was always possible in my mind.  More over, likely.  Given the nature of the last few months of Paragon Chat.  It must have left many of the employees very frustrated as much as we were in the community.

It probably got personal (wasn't it?) for the developers, for the community and the publishers.  Ergo?  'The leak.'

They were working to get a server up.  They don't want to get sued.  So they're reverse engineering it.

I thought that a.  Secrecy and b.  Reverse engineering they'd been pretty clear about for years and years.

As for having a 'leaked' copy.  Well.  That falls under NDA or 'classified' need to know status.  The ball is in their hands.  I'd trust them more than NC Soft.  What have NC given us in the last 'x' years since shut down?  Score have given us Icon and Paragon Chat and I have no doubt that the '3rd column' was being prioritised for launch.  Not if.  But when.

If that is the price for 'freedom' then I'm ok to pay that price.

It's an unholy war between Consumer and the Corporation. 

Put me on the side of the Rebel Alliance.

Clearly, the original leaker trusted them to do the right thing. 

I feel they have.  Not that they need my approval.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 17, 2019, 04:48:39 PM

All feelings are valid,  even my angst.   The problem is when people allow their feelings to color over and misrepresent other people's statements and use those feelings to make unfounded accusations.


Edit:  it takes time to build things and only moments to destroy.
Notre Dame took 200 years to build and burned in minutes.
This community was built over the past decade+  and the conduct these past few days had been terribly damaging.
 
Everyone should re- holster their fingers and let the keyboards cool.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 17, 2019, 04:53:35 PM
Everyone should re- holster their fingers and let the keyboards cool.

I agree. 

Some don't.  For some people, this is where they get off the Merry-Go-Round. 

Eliot LeFebvre posted a opinion piece earlier. (https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/17/into-the-super-verse-the-death-of-the-city-of-heroes-community/)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Fringe Element on April 17, 2019, 04:54:04 PM

All feelings are valid,  even my angst.   The problem is when people allow their feelings to color over and misrepresent other people's statements and use those feelings to make unfounded accusations.

Well gee, if I had just called a person I've never interacted with paranoid (unfounded accusation) and asked them why they claim Tony is a liar (misrepresentation - I asked for an apology) my face would sure be red!

Anyway, I answered your points to the best of my ability and don't have much to say beyond that, except that you could use some chill of your own.

If TonyV decides to respond to my post - great!  It was directed at him, not at anyone else.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 17, 2019, 05:00:02 PM
There is no caste system. There are no "haves" and "have-nots," there's just us. ALL of us.
Then why do you get to delete people's posts and ban them from the forums and I do not?

Of course there's a hierarchy. The only system without a hierarchy is anarchy, and it's clear you're not running an anarchy here (no one runs an anarchy.)

It's all well and nice to pretend we're all alike but that's not so. I'm no more equal to Arcane than I am to Tiger Woods. And there were some people who got to play a private server while others did not. It's likely we'll never know who was included in that list, and it's not really worth the effort to find out, but the fact nevertheless remains so: there were "haves", and thus "have-nots".

Whether that includes any member of this forum community is unknown, and according to the rules of these forums, unknowable.

But you urged people to put their faith in SCoRE, and it turns out that faith was misguided. If SCoRE was our best chance to get our game back, the news this week has buried that hope.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 17, 2019, 05:00:45 PM

Clearly, the original leaker trusted them to do the right thing. 

I feel they have.  Not that they need my approval.

Azrael.

Thank you in turn, Azrael.  It is very nice to hear a sensible perspective in a sea of ... well, all this.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Fringe Element on April 17, 2019, 05:06:02 PM
Different thoughts:  This question pulling from Ohioknight and Azrael's discussion

"It seems perfectly reasonable to me that Leandro (and Xs) have needed a playing population on their server in order to develop and test.  I sincerely hope that they've distributed copies to multiple people and sources to protect against loss, but I don't believe that anybody has any right to tell them how to deal with this.  And the idea that they've somehow been villainous in this strikes me as flat-out nuts."

If the SCORE server population really has been play-testing and working towards a better future for the entire City of Heroes community... where are they?  Why the silence?

Why is no one coming forward as a SCORE playtester or dev and backing up Leandro's statement?  (to be fair, it's only been two days)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nebularian on April 17, 2019, 05:11:47 PM
It has been a LONG time since I posted in here...and I am a bit ashamed that it took something like this to bring me back!

Okay.....I can understand how people could get upset when they first learned of this....mess...is the only word I have right now.  The fecal matter hit the rotary blades and it splattered far and wide!   

What I DO not understand is how ANYONE could think it is okay to issue threats of any kind to the people involved.

I understand that trust is strained a bit...but let's be realistic.   Were some bad decisions made?  In MY opinion....yeah.  But I do not for the life of me believe any of those decisions were made in malice.

In other places....people calling for calmness are being told "You have to let people vent!"   No...really we don't.   Not when that "venting" just turns into an endless cycle of butt hurt whining.

Now it is just a case of "let's see what happens now!"   The cat is out of the bag and I don't think anyone is going to let it be put back in the bag!

Something good may come of this or it may not.   But right now....with all this uproar....who is it helping?  <crickets>   or on the other side...who could it hurt?   That question can be answered easily: SEGS, City of Titans, Heroes and Villains, Ship of Heroes, etc etc etc.

So let's take a deep breath, keep our eyes open, and see what comes of it!

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: etnies445 on April 17, 2019, 05:21:45 PM

It's not contradictory,  because I didn't address SCoRE's benefit or guilt,  because that is implied in statements about it being NCsofts property,  benefiting at ncsofts expense and labeling it as stolen..... all are not good.   But what was done is the past.


The point is what will happen going forward,  and although you conveniently skipped the second half of my post,  you so eloquently demonstrated that mentality of entitlement when you wrote that "they are completely guilty in the eyes of the community" and the only way to earn "good faith" back is to release the code.   


Two wrongs do not make a right.

So you feel that despite all the wrong in the past 5-6 years, suddenly they should care about NCSofts interest? Suddenly they can take the high ground? If thats the case, they'd need to shut down the server completely and immediately, and that wouldn't even be high ground, that'd be "oops we got caught ground". They cannot take the high ground, the damage is already done, two wrongs don't make a right, but they committed way more than two wrongs.

At this point, add one more to the list, because if they were willing to have this up and running and hidden for all those years I think they can go ahead and release it for the community that still actually mourns.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 17, 2019, 05:25:00 PM

I also think that because there were efforts to literally buy the game from NCsoft, people put their hopes on that, instead of an emulator... 

Yeah, everyone on Titan Network had heard of SCoRE, but I was under the impression that they were working in secret to build something *to release* - and right now, I tend to lean towards believing that what they had was releasable, which is where the betrayal comes in.


So do you REMEMBER the "don't do anything to upset the negotiations" that went on for years and never did get finally resolved?  At what point during that should SCoRE have effectively announced "HEY, Look at this, there's already a private server up and running!".   

You write that at this point you "lean towards believing..." .  You don't KNOW.  You don't know anything at all about the private server except that it exists, has run, apparently with considerable success, for years, and has supported a population of approximately 3000 users with several hundred active at once.  You don't know it's stability.  You don't know it's configuration or what it takes to run.  You don't know it's origin, whether completely reverse-engineered or a modified copy of the beta code that they got to run on some insane combination of obsolete software versions and virtual machines.  You don't know if it's release could implicate someone.  You don't know anything except that it wasn't made openly available to anybody who wanted to use it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 17, 2019, 05:28:25 PM
If the SCORE server population really has been play-testing and working towards a better future for the entire City of Heroes community... where are they?  Why the silence?

Why is no one coming forward as a SCORE playtester or dev and backing up Leandro's statement?  (to be fair, it's only been two days)

Well, like many things in this matter, nobody can say for certain, but leaving aside the NDA for a moment, do you honestly think anybody wants to open themselves up to that kind of abuse?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 17, 2019, 05:33:16 PM
Well, like many things in this matter, nobody can say for certain, but leaving aside the NDA for a moment, do you honestly think anybody wants to open themselves up to that kind of abuse?

Very good point.  This is insane.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Fringe Element on April 17, 2019, 05:33:49 PM
Well, like many things in this matter, nobody can say for certain, but leaving aside the NDA for a moment, do you honestly think anybody wants to open themselves up to that kind of abuse?

That's fair

I don't like it, because I believe the SCORE participants set themselves up for these kinds of recriminations what with all the gaslighting being done at reddit, but I agree that not wanting to face the kind of abuse that's aimed at Leandro and the /r/Cityofheroes mods is understandable
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 17, 2019, 05:38:37 PM
So you feel that despite all the wrong in the past 5-6 years, suddenly they should care about NCSofts interest? Suddenly they can take the high ground? If thats the case, they'd need to shut down the server completely and immediately, and that wouldn't even be high ground, that'd be "oops we got caught ground". They cannot take the high ground, the damage is already done, two wrongs don't make a right, but they committed way more than two wrongs.

At this point, add one more to the list, because if they were willing to have this up and running and hidden for all those years I think they can go ahead and release it for the community that still actually mourns.


Actually,  this is the absolute point of turning back if there ever was one,  simply because the code (assuming it is ncsofts) isn't in the wild.  It's quite easy to encourage someone to commit (another) wrong when you'll be a beneficiary.  As painful as missing out on the possibility of playing on the server these past 6 years maybe, it doesn't hold a candle to the kind of fallout that could occur if ncsoft proprietary code is released-- its not just another for the pile.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 17, 2019, 05:54:34 PM
I tend to give Tony and Leo the benefit of the doubt. If Tony says he wasn't involved with a secret server, then he wasn't. If Leo was afraid of NCSoft (with good reason, those jerks), then he was afraid.

Why wouldn't one give them the benefit of the doubt? Emotion. And personalization.

But emotion isn't proof or evidence. It's not an appropriate rationale on which to make accusations. Residual anger and feelings of being left out are coloring people's judgement to assume the worst of people. People jump to the conclusion that someone somewhere acted in bad faith and they're going to sleuth around to try to prove it. That's not how reason and logic work, and it's not a path to knowledge.

This is called "personalization." First, something bad happens. In this case, it's the presumption [which could be false] that for all this time there was a fully functional server that had no issues whatsoever that they missed out on. Then, it is perceived as a personal affront, a slap in the face, and targeting of one's self. They're crying out to the powers that be, "Why me!? Why was I left out?!"

Maybe what has transpired has nothing to do with you. And your perceived sleight is just that, your perception, like Jonah angry at the broom tree.

And so, in order to justify their feelings, they twist and turn every possible thing that anyone said or did to give it the worst possible interpretation. And the best possible interpretation isn't considered... why? Emotion.

Is it possible someone acted in bad faith? Sure. But lacking real evidence and not just emotions, I'm discounting that.



Eliot LeFebvre posted a opinion piece earlier. (https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/17/into-the-super-verse-the-death-of-the-city-of-heroes-community/)

Well, there's a lengthy diatribe based on emotion. Someone did the community harm and everybody's feelings are hurt.

Well, mine ain't. And when I played CoH I was an extremely active player and member of the "community." I was in almost all the closed betas. I was invited to California for the Ultra feedback group. I edited the wiki. But it wasn't really a community, not for me. Sure, some people forged strong friendships, but I had my own personal life and family and friends. I didn't look to people on my Task Force or CoH Bulletin Board as "my community." I tried to help a spiritual successor with time and money, and when I saw it wasn't going anywhere fast, I gave up on it. I didn't take a vow to join a monastic community of CoH for the rest of my life. Furthermore, how are people forgetting all the strife that existed between various player 'communities'?

"Somebody destroyed the community" is just another emotional personalization of this whole affair.

If a working active server of CoH becomes available, I'm right there and playing it day one. If it never happens, I'm OK.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 17, 2019, 06:11:34 PM
Personally, I REALLY miss the game -- it's absence is a hole in my life.  Paragon Chat goes furthest to help that, but I REALLY miss the game.

I think the work done by SCoRE is by far the best chance anybody will ever get to play it again.  To the degree that some people have gotten that chance... man that is so incredibly awesome.  I can't deal with "if I can't have it then other people shouldn't".  I don't know how people do that.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 06:12:59 PM
Pruned the post for the sake of thread flow

This is the second time now that I've been accused of trying to troll up some kind of massive insurrection. You say that you understand my cynicism, if you truly do, that means you're willing to step outside of your insider position within the community, your personal context with different parties involved, and see how it looks from the outside.

You made multiple references throughout your post to things like haves and have nots, and conspiracies over the years, also about how people have been conflating Paragon Chat and discussion with Paragon Chat with private servers, at best, these points are being made disingenuously given the context that we know now in the wake of the leaks.

There are, quite literally, haves and have nots. This is not up for debate any more it is simply a matter of fact. The question is, was that being done deliberately, or with some sort of elitist glee, I'm 100% willing to learn that it was not. The idea that this has just been a completely secret project that Leandro wanted to make as perfect as possible before bundling it up and releasing it into the world to become it's own unstoppable monster, popping up and forcing NCSoft's legal team into a constant wack-a-mole game of trying to shut down random private servers, that's entirely plausible. It just doesn't look that way in some ways in retrospect, largely on account of the manner in which people have guarded this secret over the years.

You have to be willing to understand here, that we have 100% full knowledge now that Leandro was running the server, that is out in the open and confirmed on multiple major news websites. This is going to naturally create a lot of guilt by association, though that may be completely unfairly, and I can understand your position here, if I was accused of being involved of something without actually reaping the benefits of having access to it I would be pissed too. It's not fair, but given the circumstances I also don't think it's fair to react to the feelings of guilt by association incredulously.

You mentioned that the conspiracy theorists over the years doing a victory lap, I've never understood this position socially, that anyone who has ever posited a conspiracy theory is forever marred as incorrect, even when their theories were confirmed over time. I can understand that there are some theories out there that was completely outlandish or unfounded, but some of them were spot on and likely directly informed by earlier, smaller scale leaks. I don't quite understand the disdain for those people who were on the money with their theories of a server existing that we all now know to be a fact. As a third party, one who was not banging on the conspiracy wardrums over the years and one who is not a community insider or, more so, a member of the NDA party, it looks like people being upset over getting caught with their hand in the cookie jar. That's just how it comes across. I don't mean it as an accusation I'm just asking that you understand that the optics look bad on it.

I apologize for pushing the concept of a caste system, and ultimately that is unfair. My personal background was working in the esports industry, I know that at the time CSGO was being developed, a number of pro players from previous CS iterations were invited to playtest and provide feedback and I completely understand the importance and the value in that. I can see how that may have been the case for this server, where they needed people they knew were active, knowledgeable players and I can understand that people were being extremely selective because it needed to be people who could guard the secret long enough for it to reach fruition. I just don't think the outright vitriol and condescension towards people who have caught wind of this project over the years and felt it was sinister is fair at all.

People involved with the project can follow the NDA and protect the secret without being jerks about it, and in retrospect going back and seeing posts where people are quite literally outlining some of the aspects of it that we now know to be true, while scoffing at it and mocking the idea of it, it's a MAJOR contributor to why people feel there was overt elitism and gaslighting involved and I truly hope you and others are willing to understand that.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 17, 2019, 06:13:28 PM
[Edit: Deleted... stuff. --TonyV]

I might not have posted in the forums, but I stayed up late at night, running people through iTrials, teaching them the mechanics, and carrying them through badge runs of content.

I was one of those people tossing inf at newbies to encourage the game to grow.

I was one of those people who invited her friends and family to play alongside her.

I'm not a troll. I'm not here just to make problems. My concerns are not inherently invalid and do not need to be silenced because there is a chance that everything "will work out in the end and that's all that matters."

[Edit: I don't believe you're a troll, which is why I'm not nuking this post entirely. But that stuff you said at the beginning... I have NO idea where that came from, and honestly, I don't want to know. Needless to say, it's baseless, and we really aren't going to let stuff like that just hang out there. Again, you don't have to be unicorn and rainbows happy, but we're not going to allow angry lashings-out, either. --TonyV]
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 17, 2019, 06:21:16 PM
So do you REMEMBER the "don't do anything to upset the negotiations" that went on for years and never did get finally resolved?  At what point during that should SCoRE have effectively announced "HEY, Look at this, there's already a private server up and running!".

I do remember. I also remember the gradual death of anything concerning negotiations, and what I perceived to be the general assumption that negotiations were over. Sure, it was good to not open up about a server while the negotiations were going on, but I personally lost hope completely in NCsoft negotiations. Maybe SCoRE didn't, but then they should have said "we were secret because of potentially ongoing negotiations," which has not been mentioned at all in this drama.

You don't KNOW.  You don't know anything at all about the private server except that it exists, has run, apparently with considerable success, for years, and has supported a population of approximately 3000 users with several hundred active at once.  You don't know it's stability.  You don't know it's configuration or what it takes to run.  You don't know it's origin, whether completely reverse-engineered or a modified copy of the beta code that they got to run on some insane combination of obsolete software versions and virtual machines.  You don't know if it's release could implicate someone.  You don't know anything except that it wasn't made openly available to anybody who wanted to use it.

Based on two things you've said, I'll clarify my position. If the release of code would implicate a dev who stole code from NCsoft, that is the only *current* reason that not releasing would be acceptable to me (I'm not sure they actually have dev-stolen code; the only thing confirmed is a character database, which is not quite the same (although just as legally questionable)).

I highlight "current" because of what you say we know: the private server "has run, apparently with considerable success, for years, and has supported a population of approximately 3000 users with several hundred active at once." If the code was still being worked on, I would understand delaying release until it was "good enough." But it seem like we're in agreement that it was completely viable, usable, and that it *works*1. And it was my understanding, and I think the understanding of a lot of other people, that SCoRE was *supposed to release what they appear to currently have*. I do have serious doubts about the credibility of the leakers, especially when they start calling people out individually. But based on what I've seen, it doesn't seem, to me, like there was actually any short-term internal SCoRE plan to release the code.

I'm still willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but none of the statements released by SCoRE so far have given me any indication that they have not betrayed what I believe was their original purpose: to create, *and release*, a working CoH server. Maybe they *were* going to release for the 15th anniversary... but if that's the case, there's absolutely no reason to push that back, now that everything is public.

1You do mention that we don't know its stability, but that's right after acknowledging it's stable enough to have hundreds of concurrent users (although I admit there may be semantics between "concurrent user" stability vs. "long term server stability and how long it goes before crashing" that we may differ on, and I probably use "stability" in a more colloquial sense than a specific programmer sense).

Personally, I REALLY miss the game -- it's absence is a hole in my life.  Paragon Chat goes furthest to help that, but I REALLY miss the game.

I think the work done by SCoRE is by far the best chance anybody will ever get to play it again.  To the degree that some people have gotten that chance... man that is so incredibly awesome.  I can't deal with "if I can't have it then other people shouldn't".  I don't know how people do that.

Since I'm replying to you, I may as well reply to you again :p I also disagree with "if I can't have it then other people shouldn't". My stance is more like "if other people have it, everyone should have it" ("it" being an actually working CoH server, not just one that was in development).

Edit: Due to the migration of posts from "New Efforts" to this thread, the quotes above no longer link properly. But they are unmodified, and the originals can be found in this thread (I don't want to put the effort in right now).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kheprera on April 17, 2019, 06:25:53 PM
*sigh*

I am not angry at the SCoRE team. I am thankful. We believed the game dead. It's not. There is hope.

But so many assumptions is slowly killing that newfound hope. Anger. Passion. Belief of being personally victimized. I do understand those feelings. As said before, being left out, of not being one of the "Chosen" can be a bitter pill.

Assumptions that the private server has been useable for all these 6 years is just that, an assumption. Leandro has dedicated a great deal to support this community, Paragon Chat, the successors, and SCoRE. I don't know him except from his posts here and his videos. I sincerely doubt he has any more idea of who I am than any of you do.

We now know the game isn't dead. It has been in hiding, healing from the blow dealt by NCSoft. We know that part of the reason NCSoft would not sell is because some of the code used in CoX was used in some of their other games that were (are?) still running. I can visualize that SCoRE's mission would be to clean up the Spaghetti Code, re-engineer it, maybe to the point that it is entirely new code that would keep NCSoft off their back. Such an effort would take years of work and enough playtesters to check for bugs and issues.

I'm a technical training writer for the US Government. My coding abilities are limited to HTML, Javascript, and a bit of CSS. I can code a very pretty webpage and that's about it. Keeping some of the stuff I write secret is a requirement of my job. I've been doing it for 20 years, and it really isn't easy to always stay quiet. When the massive changes to the Form 1040 hit last year, I wanted to scream about it to everyone because of my frustrations, but I had to keep quiet.

It could not be easy for people on the Private Server to stay quiet. I can imagine the desire to scream, "LOOK! OUR CITY ISN'T DEAD! STAY STRONG!" But in order to make sure the debugging, coding, and testing went as smooth as possible without a lot of extra chefs in the kitchen making scrambled eggs out of tomato soup, silence was required.

I hope the community's anger passes, and that forgiveness can be found. I hope that, in the end, we'll be able to fly side by side through Paragon to defeat the invading Rikti once again.

Kheprera: Paragon Gris Gris, Fennec Enterprises, and The Dawn Academy
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: SilverAgeFan on April 17, 2019, 06:29:10 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 17, 2019, 06:42:04 PM
1You do mention that we don't know its stability, but that's right after acknowledging it's stable enough to have hundreds of concurrent users (although I admit there may be semantics between "concurrent user" stability vs. "long term server stability and how long it goes before crashing" that we may differ on, and I probably use "stability" in a more colloquial sense than a specific programmer sense).

It's worth noting that in his video, People's Hero Mr. Destroyer Stroyer specifically called out how:

That is a description of a server with a handful of active users that is still in need of further work; not a server with hundreds of active users and smooth as silk performance.

"3000 users", wherever that number came from, is a number spread over six years or more. If we take Mr. Destroyer Stroyer at his word, via his statements on his video, most of the people invited to the server either declined the invitations entirely or only came in for a short while before losing interest. He is not describing a thriving server full of supergroups and a vibrant community. He's describing the same sort of user base that uses Paragon Chat. Putting his "Liberator of /r/CityofHeroes" act aside, I suspect that what Mr. Destroyer Stroyer really hoped would happen is that the the server admins would be "forced" to open the server up to the public and Mr. Destroyer Stroyer would get the server-wide community in-game that he felt was missing and was therefore responsible for his feeling of it being non-fun to be a member of the server. (Yes, I'm aware he was banned. I don't think that changes his motivations, particularly, but only he really knows why he took the actions he took.)

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 06:48:19 PM

"3000 users", wherever that number came from, is a number spread over six years or more. If we take Mr. Destroyer Stroyer at his word, via his statements on his video, most of the people invited to the server either declined the invitations entirely or only came in for a short while before losing interest.

Very valuable point that a lot of people conflate in the discussion of this. The amount of users the leaker had seen signed up on the forums is in no way indicative of the server's capacity or capabilities, especially given other leaks that show that a number of the invited players never even signed in or signed in once and did not play.

Overlooked statements like the zone running like crap definitely lends a lot of credibility to the point that this was not some glorious, perfect time capsule but a work in progress that is not ready for the sort of traffic that a full public release would garner and the attempts to pressure them into releasing it AS IS RIGHT THIS SECOND is likely a "Watch what you wish for" lesson in the making.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 17, 2019, 06:49:44 PM
Overlooked statements like the zone running like crap definitely lends a lot of credibility to the point that this was not some glorious, perfect time capsule but a work in progress that is not ready for the sort of traffic that a full public release would garner and the attempts to pressure them into releasing it AS IS RIGHT THIS SECOND is likely a "Watch what you wish for" lesson in the making.

I think most of us would prefer to be a part of that development, and don't particularly care about how crap it runs when they have our characters, and supergroup bases.

Some have even seen screenshots of the characters, names and all, of friends' toons, friends who have been dead for years since the end of CoX.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 06:53:00 PM
Everyone keeps trying to say the server wasn't ready, except the guy who made it.

Direct qoute

Leandro writes. "The last discussion on an open event leading to a public release was for the game's 15th Anniversary, which is coming in just a couple of weeks. Nobody who wasn't part of SCORE will believe that, but sometimes timing is just that bad."

Clearly it was ready for public testing. Please stop saying it isn't.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 17, 2019, 07:02:03 PM
I remember you from the original forums and it's good to see your level headed post here, ZM.

And I, you! **hugs**

"3000 users", wherever that number came from, is a number spread over six years or more. If we take Mr. Destroyer Stroyer at his word, via his statements on his video, most of the people invited to the server either declined the invitations entirely or only came in for a short while before losing interest. He is not describing a thriving server full of supergroups and a vibrant community. He's describing the same sort of user base that uses Paragon Chat.

Back in the days, if any player server got down to those numbers, we'd be declaring the server 'dead' and demanding the Devs to let everyone transfer to a live server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 07:05:13 PM
Everyone keeps trying to say the server wasn't ready, except the guy who made it.

Direct qoute

Leandro writes. "The last discussion on an open event leading to a public release was for the game's 15th Anniversary, which is coming in just a couple of weeks. Nobody who wasn't part of SCORE will believe that, but sometimes timing is just that bad."

Clearly it was ready for public testing. Please stop saying it isn't.

The initial comments I saw about that anniversary event seemed more like a short term shindig for the public and not just them opening the floodgates to everyone for sustained gameplay.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 17, 2019, 07:05:37 PM

And it was my understanding, and I think the understanding of a lot of other people, that SCoRE was *supposed to release what they appear to currently have*.


I'm not quite certain where you got the idea that SCoRE was "supposed" to do anything at all aside from the personal statements of people that such a loosely affiliated effort existed and that it would eventually "return the game to the community" as a "promise to the community" and that a "server would exist" and the community "would have it" at some undefined point in the future.   I don't recall anything at all regarding timeline, form, obligations or really anything at all since all references prior to Leandro's public statement were couched in deniability. 

People may have made assumptions on that, like they won't run a server for several years with only invitees, or "as soon as they have a functioning server they'll release the code publicly" but there was never any such commitment that I recall and I obsessively poured over every remotest hint on what SCoRE was up to.

Furthermore, SCoRE has never, to my knowledge, taken anything from the community (I gather they took donations from players to help fund the servers per a screenshot of a forum I saw) but they've given the community Paragon Chat with Leandro being the host/supporter of the Tequila loader software.  And that means I have derived great personal value from them with no cost or commitment from myself which would make me pretty ungrateful to complain that they haven't given me more.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 17, 2019, 07:12:04 PM

 Leandro has dedicated a great deal to support this community, Paragon Chat, the successors, and SCoRE. I don't know him except from his posts here and his videos.


I know him from Facebook, I like his pup and I admire his running.  I'm sorry he's deleted his account but I can hardly imagine not doing so in the face of this dangerously insane reaction.



Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 17, 2019, 07:14:27 PM
I'm not quite certain where you got the idea that SCoRE was "supposed" to do anything at all... snipped by Kistulot

If they got data from someone containing all of our characters, all of our supergroup bases, all of our content, and they dont want to find a way to give it back to us, if they aren't "supposed" to do that, then I don't even know what you want me to expect people to do.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MyriVerse on April 17, 2019, 07:22:34 PM
Character and supergroup data should not be part of any server code. Those things are completely different animals.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 17, 2019, 07:26:31 PM
Clearly it was ready for public testing. Please stop saying it isn't.

Can you quote where anybody said those words, above?

What I at least am saying is that whatever state it's in, what Destroyer Stroyer described is NOT some wonderful perfect copy of the original NCSoft server that Leandro has been sitting on and refusing to share.

Likewise, if they were considering an "event leading to a release" then the current level of scrutiny has convinced them that the current level of completeness is NOT ready for prime time.

Quote
PC Gamer:
Update, 3 pm PDT: In an email, Leandro clarified that while the SCORE server wouldn't be made public, eventually the source code behind it would be. Because of the legal risk once the project was made public, Leandro says the team has pushed back a release in order to get it as feature-complete as possible. "So the deadline of 'when it's done' was probably pushed way farther that it needed to be, in retrospect," Leandro writes. "The last discussion on an open event leading to a public release was for the game's 15th Anniversary, which is coming in just a couple of weeks. Nobody who wasn't part of SCORE will believe that, but sometimes timing is just that bad."

I mean, you can't have it both ways. If you want to quote Leandro about the projected release and say, "He was going to release it sometime soon; it must be ready", you can't then ignore that it was also Leandro who decided that the current state of the server was NOT conducive to a release that will be scrutinized to the level that such a release will now be scrutinized. Likewise, if we take PC Gamer and/or Massively at face value regarding their emailed conversations with Leandro, then it appears that the issue is (and I freely admit that I'm speculating now) that he expects action from NCSoft as soon as the server is released, so he now wants to have it be not just "ready for testing" but "finished" to the point where no more work is required and it can be disseminated widely enough that action by NCSoft will be futile.

It doesn't really matter if you or I would say, "Frag the deficiencies! Give us the server!" Leandro's got the server and it's his yardstick that measures how close it is to ready; not ours.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 17, 2019, 07:28:04 PM
I mean, you can't have it both ways. If you want to quote Leandro about the projected release and say, "He was going to release it sometime soon; it must be ready", you can't then ignore that it was also Leandro who decided that the current state of the server was NOT conducive to a release that will be scrutinized to the level that such a release will now be scrutinized.

Hears the thing

We argue that Leandro's decision on when it's ready is irrelevant, and false, because the elements we care about are there.

Hell, a buggy, slow, miserable +4x8 council mission being runnable, able to go to my SG base I dont have a backup for.

I want it for that alone, and even if just the last part is doable, why should he be the one to decide I don't get to have it?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 07:31:52 PM
Can you quote where anybody said those words, above?

What I at least am saying is that whatever state it's in, what Destroyer Stroyer described is NOT some wonderful perfect copy of the original NCSoft server that Leandro has been sitting on and refusing to share.

Likewise, if they were considering an "event leading to a release" then the current level of scrutiny has convinced them that the current level of completeness is NOT ready for prime time.

I mean, you can't have it both ways. If you want to quote Leandro about the projected release and say, "He was going to release it sometime soon; it must be ready", you can't then ignore that it was also Leandro who decided that the current state of the server was NOT conducive to a release that will be scrutinized to the level that such a release will now be scrutinized. Likewise, if we take PC Gamer and/or Massively at face value regarding their emailed conversations with Leandro, then it appears that the issue is (and I freely admit that I'm speculating now) that he expects action from NCSoft as soon as the server is released, so he now wants to have it be not just "ready for testing" but "finished" to the point where no more work is required and it can be disseminated widely enough that action by NCSoft will be futile.

It doesn't really matter if you or I would say, "Frag the deficiencies! Give us the server!" Leandro's got the server and it's his yardstick that measures how close it is to ready; not ours.

Did you literally ignore everything i said past that? I said specificly and let me bold and make it bigger for you,  PUBLIC TESTING . One could assume from "Public event that would lead to a release" Means they were ready to extend the scope of the server testing to a more strainful setting. Don't try and bash me because you can't read. Also, exactly what are you to Score that you can make claims without citation? All I've done is cite his claim of a pending public test and its closing in on a release. None of what i said is incorrect information based on his own words. My statement was purely in contention of people saying the server isn't ready while the guy working on it seems to being saying otherwise.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 17, 2019, 07:49:08 PM
If they got data from someone containing all of our characters, all of our supergroup bases, all of our content, and they dont want to find a way to give it back to us.

So he apparently got a dump of all character/base content from an anonymous source... what would you want him to do with that?  Publish the file to an anonymous server so everybody in the world can have your (and everybody else's) character/base data to use however they want (apparently the plan)?  Delete the files?  Delete YOUR data specifically (based on his best guess as to what data that is)?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: primeknight on April 17, 2019, 07:52:02 PM
I thought I'd write a comment: I haven't posted in years.

I'd like to play the game again.  It's just that simple.  So the question this: How can we make this happen or how can Leo help, how can we help Leo?

Years ago he gave me the files for the Costume Creator so I figure he's a decent and helpful guy.  And he's probably pretty smart too.  And, it's all a matter of trust and legality.  I'd like to read what Leo said so if someone could link that or PM me that'd be great.

Maybe if people reached out to him and was kind and helpful he'd be willing to let others in or at the very least give other trusted people backups.  This game is bigger than him.  What happens if he gets sick or something.  It'd be wise to help make this thing more distributed.  And It's good to know that it exists at all and hopefully there's a way to open it up to others.  Before today I thought it was gone forever. 

I haven't been around much: I have a kid and he's my life away from work.  I found a few other hobbies and there's other things in my life.  I've grown and changed and there's more to me than a wonderful game and community.  That being said: I revisit my favorite things from time to time and this game was/is up there.  Maybe everyone needs to put things in perspective:  let yourself be inspired and be kind.

Regardless to my point: CoH ranks in my top 10 of games I've ever played and I'd like to show it off to my kids someday.  The entire game was brilliant and weird and eclectic and if there was a video game museum it deserves to be there:  There should be a copy in the Library of Congress: even if ownership based to different hands it was still created on the soil of the USA. 

So here's my offer:
If anyone wants or needs another set of eyes or needs someone to talk to about this great. PM me.  If someone wants to give me access to something more than icon or ParagonChat then awesome.  If someone wants me to help them figure out a way to distribute information or whatever.  I'd like to help in someway.  PM me if you read this and there's anything I can do.

My real name is William, I live in Oregon in the US and I'm a controls engineer that runs projects and is buried in code all day.  I love the game and the closest thing I can give showing my love of and dedication to the game is this forum post and this article that got published years ago:
https://www.engadget.com/2012/11/03/the-game-archaeologist-a-city-of-heroes-memorial-part-2/
An except from what I wrote is in the above article
Quote
William: Prime Knight (right)

My small addition to the City of Heroes is Prime Knight. He's the second character I ever created, and he's one of the two characters I bought the game for. He also fulfilled my gaming desire to fly in a three-dimensional environment. Prime Knight is a Mind/Kinetics controller who has all the powers I've ever wanted to have myself: telekinesis, telepathy, precog, flight, teleportation, electrokenesis, pyrokinesis -- and he even has a faithful dog.

He's saved the city numerous times from numerous vile and power-hungry foes. And I'm saddened by the fact I'll never get the opportunity to fly into a group of bad guys with reckless abandon, generating mass confusion, lighting things on fire with my mind, electrocuting everything in sight, siphoning speed, or just repelling/telekinesis-ing foes off the tops of buildings.

That's all I've got for now.  Good luck out there and keep "flying"
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 17, 2019, 07:52:54 PM
So he apparently got a dump of all character/base content from an anonymous source... what would you want him to do with that?  Publish the file to an anonymous server so everybody in the world can have your (and everybody else's) character/base data to use however they want (apparently the plan)?  Delete the files?  Delete YOUR data specifically (based on his best guess as to what data that is)?

Here's the thing, mate:

He's gotten to make that choice for me. He already does publish it on his server, have access to it, and use it for whatever he wants.

I'd rather he put it all out there for everyone, but as it is, it's just his. He owns it. I never even knew it was out there.

And I get to wait for his merciful judgement to declare I get to have it, and who knows, maybe I never do if someone leaking it--read, NOT ME--means we now don't get it for the 15th anniversary, or who knows when we do.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: SilverAgeFan on April 17, 2019, 07:54:36 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kheprera on April 17, 2019, 08:06:45 PM
*snip*
The entire game was brilliant and weird and eclectic and if there was a video game museum it deserves to be there:  There should be a copy in the Library of Congress: even if ownership based to different hands it was still created on the soil of the USA. 
*snip*

There is. The National Videogame Museum. It's in Frisco, Texas. I was there last summer.

http://www.nvmusa.org/ (http://www.nvmusa.org/)

I'd love to be able to run some of the missions I never got to as I was always distracted by SG shenanigans. What I want back... full character sheets and listing of badges, bases that I worked on but didn't save (because I believed the SG Leader had nabbed them and we'd be back soon). Those things I'd like back. Petty, selfish things.

My group? Still going. Still playing. Still up to shenanigans and expanding beyond Paragon. We've stuck it through, recruited new members, and persevered. If CoX comes back, great, but we've grown beyond and keep looking to the stars.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Radionuclide on April 17, 2019, 08:08:03 PM
This holds true today just as much as it did then. The only difference is that now we know there's a private server. Well, bully for them. I'm not jealous of the people who have been playing on it, because I personally am no worse off than I was this time last week. When Leandro says that he intended--and still intends--to release the code, given his reputation for actually producing stuff for the community and contributing to projects like Paragon Chat, I don't get all pissed off scorched-earth at him, I take him at his word. In my humble opinion, he's earned that over the years, and it disappoints me greatly that too many people can't see past their own anger to realize it.

Tony, I agreed with almost everything else you posted here except this. It is great that you take him at his word. Perhaps that is because you interact with him more than others, perhaps it is something else. I don't know and it is not really important. You still trust him and that is fine. But, step back and think about being someone not in that situation. We have been lied to (by SCORE) for 6 years and we are supposed to take him (as the face of SCORE) at his word now? There really is no way around this. Yes, those lies were done in the interest of keeping the secret but, lies none the less. Active attempts to gaslight previously leakers (calling the crazy, etc). Active attempts to remove references to a private server by becoming a Mod on the subreddit for the community and establishing rules in the Auto-mod to remove them. Grousing with us about not being able to play and doing so all that time. I'm not even saying he/himself did all these things (though some he did). I'm saying he is the face of SCORE who did these things.

Trust is built, as you hinted at over time. But, it is so fragile that it can be destroyed in seconds. I won't speak for others. It's not that I can't see past by anger. It's that I cannot see past my hurt of being lied to. That trust will have to be rebuilt.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 17, 2019, 08:11:42 PM
Active attempts to gaslight previously leakers (calling the crazy, etc).

Things like this need to be addressed.

The fact that outside of any legalities, long term plans, etc, people were hurt by this, people were treated unfairly, needs to be treated as more than "well they shouldn't have leaked the game! :D"
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 17, 2019, 08:14:13 PM
If they got data from someone containing all of our characters, all of our supergroup bases, all of our content, and they dont want to find a way to give it back to us, if they aren't "supposed" to do that, then I don't even know what you want me to expect people to do.


I'm just quoting you because it is a nice snippet.... these references to "our" characters.... we have no ownership of them beyond the sentimental.  They're glorified configuration files that may be nicer to have access to,  but there's no obligation to release such things if they are even accessible.    Plus, if you used Codewalker's character tool to download config info,  a long hash code was generated  for your characters if they were to ever be re-integrated into a server with a validation function to ensure they were legitimate.....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 08:20:54 PM
This might be a bit off topic but weren't there websites where we could list our characters and builds, things like that? I'm trying to remember some of my CoX characters but I'm realizing a lot of characters from CO and DCUO are blurring together in my brain and I'm wondering if any of those old CoX based sites are still active.

Even if we did have access to our old characters I don't know that I'd be able to even claim them if they're not somehow hooked to our old account names as that's the only thing I can find reliably through digging through old emails.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 17, 2019, 08:21:04 PM

I'm just quoting you because it is a nice snippet.... these references to "our" characters.... we have no ownership of them beyond the sentimental.  They're glorified configuration files that may be nicer to have access to,  but there's no obligation to release such things if they are even accessible.    Plus, if you used Codewalker's character tool to download config info,  a long hash code was generated  for your characters if they were to ever be re-integrated into a server with a validation function to ensure they were legitimate.....

By all means, quote me, go ahead.

If they aren't our characters, if they weren't made by us, leveled by us, used by us, if you're going to take issue with the fact that they were ours, then there's no point in talking then, is there? Because you don't respect the emotional attachment many of us have to the game.

And hey, you know, I sure can use that character tool to play in Co--oh right, I can't, because even if I had access to all of my character data (and I do, because hey, I was around here near the end like everyone else who was!) the best ~I~ have access to is paragon chat, which only really cares about costumes anyway.

If you aren't even going to respect people's basic feelings as to why they're feeling how they are, then your arguments inherently come from a negative place.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 08:23:44 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 17, 2019, 08:27:20 PM
I think most of us would prefer to be a part of that development, and don't particularly care about how crap it runs when they have our characters, and supergroup bases.

I don't doubt that, but there would be at least some challenges there like..
1. Most people don't really know how to test software
2. Contending with complaints and scope creep
3. The pressure of publicity resulting on a c&d means the won't be a beta testing period. -- it's basically going from alpha testing (usually with friends and family) straight to Gold (sound familiar?)

Some have even seen screenshots of the characters, names and all, of friends' toons, friends who have been dead for years since the end of CoX.
Yes, and we've lost many.   I used to run with the Monday night Freedom Horde TFs, and was sad to discover that one of the leaders, a very nice woman whom was the last I said farewell to on shutdown morning,  passed.  It sucks and we won't ever get those experiences back. ) ' :

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 17, 2019, 08:31:37 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 17, 2019, 08:35:39 PM
This might be a bit off topic but weren't there websites where we could list our characters and builds, things like that? I'm trying to remember some of my CoX characters but I'm realizing a lot of characters from CO and DCUO are blurring together in my brain and I'm wondering if any of those old CoX based sites are still active.

Even if we did have access to our old characters I don't know that I'd be able to even claim them if they're not somehow hooked to our old account names as that's the only thing I can find reliably through digging through old emails.

Do you mean this one?

https://cit.cohtitan.com/

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 17, 2019, 08:40:28 PM
This might be a bit off topic but weren't there websites where we could list our characters and builds, things like that? I'm trying to remember some of my CoX characters but I'm realizing a lot of characters from CO and DCUO are blurring together in my brain and I'm wondering if any of those old CoX based sites are still active.

Even if we did have access to our old characters I don't know that I'd be able to even claim them if they're not somehow hooked to our old account names as that's the only thing I can find reliably through digging through old emails.
Do you mean this one?

https://cit.cohtitan.com/

Edit: Due to the migration of posts from "New Efforts" to this thread, the quotes above no longer link properly. But they are unmodified, and the originals can be found in this thread (I don't want to put the effort in right now).

I assume that's what Weenus was going for, but it's worth noting that Mids also had a way to export / import builds.

Edit: Hmm, my characters aren't showing up on CIT. That's odd.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 17, 2019, 08:42:09 PM
Those of us that exported our characters with Sentinel+ would have a better shot at proving any given character belonged to a particular account.  Unless the City Tracker goes away, it too demonstrates the association between characters and accounts.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 17, 2019, 08:44:31 PM
By all means, quote me, go ahead.

If they aren't our characters, if they weren't made by us, leveled by us, used by us, if you're going to take issue with the fact that they were ours, then there's no point in talking then, is there? Because you don't respect the emotional attachment many of us have to the game.

And hey, you know, I sure can use that character tool to play in Co--oh right, I can't, because even if I had access to all of my character data (and I do, because hey, I was around here near the end like everyone else who was!) the best ~I~ have access to is paragon chat, which only really cares about costumes anyway.

If you aren't even going to respect people's basic feelings as to why they're feeling how they are, then your arguments inherently come from a negative place.



But you just read what I said and didn't actually listen, respond to it, etc. People's data is already being used. Data from people who are dead is being used for joyrides in other people's characters. That's a thing that I take issue with.


The points are that the characters aren't proprietary, could theoretically be recovered if you used the enhanced character tool CodeWalker wrote and the server had validation.  Finally, I certainly doubt anyone is taking them on a joyride as you wrote, especially given what the leaker said about confirming account and character names and character copy tool.  You must have been burning up if someone duped a character in Live too...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 08:45:15 PM
I'm going to be done addressing you directly. Sorry. It's not productive.

Weenus uses LEVITY.

It's not very effective . . .

Do you mean this one?

https://cit.cohtitan.com/

This is exactly what I was thinking of, I wasn't looking far enough down on the TitanNetwork home page, thank you!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 17, 2019, 08:49:12 PM
Data from people who are dead is being used for joyrides in other people's characters. That's a thing that I take issue with.

Wait are people elsewhere alleging that or did you just come up with it? Pretty sure even those of us who aren't angry would take exception if we thought anyone was using other people's characters. But it never even crossed my mind that anyone would want to, much less that it'd be allowed even if the private server were as moustache twisting as some believe.

Personally I'd probably still not be angry, not sure I have the capacity for such feels. And the anger would be outweighed by the theoretical schadenfreude at the idea of someone else faceplanting my ta or khelds.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 17, 2019, 08:50:34 PM

I have heard from people on that server. 1 is garbage because no one had qualifications with beta testing to get in, 2 we just want the damned game, 3 then release it and let the community sort it out because I've never heard of software updating after launch faster because MORE people can look at it. If anything, your arguments show why it should have been shared with more people sooner. Also enough people with it means you can't C&D SCORE and kill cox. Done.

Truly written like a gamer and not a software developer.... thank you for proving my point.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 08:51:00 PM
Wait are people elsewhere alleging that or did you just come up with it? Pretty sure even those of us who aren't angry would take exception of we thought anyone was using other people's characters. But it never even crossed my mind that anyone would want to, much less that it'd be allowed even if the private server were as moustache twisting as some believe.

Personally I'd probably still not be angry, not sure I have the capacity for such feels. And the anger would be outweighed by the theoretical schadenfreude at the idea of someone else faceplanting my ta or khelds.

It was a reddit thread, someone stated he noticed a character name/costume in the video belonging to a dead friend of his. You're welcome to search for it on the subreddit if you'd like. I'm not gonna sort through them for it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 17, 2019, 08:52:06 PM
Wait are people elsewhere alleging that or did you just come up with it? Pretty sure even those of us who aren't angry would take exception of we thought anyone was using other people's characters. But it never even crossed my mind that anyone would want to, much less that it'd be allowed even if the private server were as moustache twisting as some believe.

Personally I'd probably still not be angry, not sure I have the capacity for such feels. And the anger would be outweighed by the theoretical schadenfreude at the idea of someone else faceplanting my ta or khelds.

My data could be false, and I'd be the first to swallow it and apologize, but I have heard from multiple sources that unclaimed characters were occasionally being used, if not the most commonly.

That said, I fell asleep leveling my peacebringer and revived them almidst waking back up, so they wouldn't have too bad a time with mine  ;)

And yeah, it's all just data, and yeah, I honestly don't care if someone else downloads Argent Girl after the data drops if it does and uses her... I just want to be able to, and someone made that choice without us involved, and I'm callin schenanigans.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 17, 2019, 08:53:14 PM
Are your characters in the tracker?  Mine are and it hurts again to see how long it's been since they were last seen.

As for characters and accounts, I also have almost a terabyte of screenshots and FRAPS videos.  Including the character selection screens after login.  Those are best because they show blocks of characters associated with my account.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 17, 2019, 08:57:21 PM
Weenus uses LEVITY.

It's not very effective . . .

I LOL'D irl, First time I did that reading this thread in what feels like ages.  ( ' :
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 17, 2019, 09:05:31 PM

 Plus, if you used Codewalker's character tool to download config info,  a long hash code was generated  for your characters if they were to ever be re-integrated into a server with a validation function to ensure they were legitimate.....

I only watched little bits of the destroyer video but wasn't this tool how they were loading the character data back?  I kindof got the impression that what he got was a full Codewalker file format download for every character on the system (I could be completely mistaken on that).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 17, 2019, 09:06:40 PM
It was a reddit thread, someone stated he noticed a character name/costume in the video belonging to a dead friend of his. You're welcome to search for it on the subreddit if you'd like. I'm not gonna sort through them for it.

I'll take your word for it. I'm all set for mounds of unexpected reading just here. But afterlife login seems like a pretty sweet new feature.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ChaosMatrix on April 17, 2019, 09:07:34 PM
This whole situation is shameful, and those involved should feel shame, rather than attempt to defend the undefendable.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 17, 2019, 09:07:45 PM
It honestly boils my blood quite a bit still.  Think of the people who died waiting to play this game again.  Think of all those stories we heard from the start of peoples kid finally finding a place they could fit in or overcame mental handicaps because of this game.  For the first few weeks after the game shut down, this forum was full of heartbreaking stories of people who would do ANYTHING to play the game again.

Then we find out it's actually been around this whole time, and even worse we get the excuse that "Well it was going to be made public soon anyway" well that is awfully convenient.  One could be forgiven for thinking that was a lie to save face, after all, what are the chances the private server was going to be made public just after it happened to be exposed? I mean come on, its been a secret for 6 years and just as it's exposed it comes out "Oh I was planning on releasing it in a few weeks" BS

No, unless proven wrong I believe this server would have never been released.  I think the intent of Leo and everyone involved was to keep it quiet and then slowly reverse engineer parts from it (Paragon Chat ETC) and slowly release chunks of the game.  Fine and dandy, and I appreciate he made Paragon Chat, but it certainly seems like a consolation prize.  This may sound mean, but currently from where I stand SCoRE is worse than NCSoft. At least NCSoft stopped everyone equally from playing it.  SCoRE just happily ignored those "I will never play CoH before I die again" comments
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MyriVerse on April 17, 2019, 09:14:30 PM
My data could be false, and I'd be the first to swallow it and apologize, but I have heard from multiple sources that unclaimed characters were occasionally being used, if not the most commonly.
I just don't understand why someone would use the characters when there's nothing to be gained from it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kyriani on April 17, 2019, 09:16:14 PM
My data could be false, and I'd be the first to swallow it and apologize, but I have heard from multiple sources that unclaimed characters were occasionally being used, if not the most commonly.

That said, I fell asleep leveling my peacebringer and revived them almidst waking back up, so they wouldn't have too bad a time with mine  ;)

And yeah, it's all just data, and yeah, I honestly don't care if someone else downloads Argent Girl after the data drops if it does and uses her... I just want to be able to, and someone made that choice without us involved, and I'm callin schenanigans.

Getting fired up over hearsay that could very well be false isn't productive or healthy. There's a ton of information we don't have and just taking the words of people vying for 15 minutes of internet fame doesn't seem like a smart idea.

If someone has a copy of our characters... so what? It's irrelevant. Nothing changes for us. We still have all our good memories of playing those characters, telling stories about them, and keeping them in our hearts. A bunch of ones and zeroes aren't important.

If we finally get to play again and I have remake all my characters, that's ok. Someone having a copy of my character somewhere isn't important and you sound like you're getting far too upset over something that isn't important and allowing people to manipulate you with sensational drivel.

Take whatever you hear on either side with a grain of salt. I am. Because I know what its like to get caught up in BS like this and letting "he said, she said" nonsense get me all bent out of shape. I am not willing to let anyone do that to me again and you shouldn't either.

The only thing we know for sure is we don't have all the facts and half of what we do know isn't exactly substantiated. Letting people rile you up with what could be outright lies, is doing nothing but letting someone else have a laugh at your expense and allowing them to use you as a weapon against someone they have a grudge against. So chill out. Take a breath. And THINK LOGICALLY, not emotionally. I know that isn't easy given the circumstances but its what needs to be done.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 17, 2019, 09:19:32 PM
Picture this.   Sicily, 194-


No, no, just consider this hypothetical:


Rewind to 3 days ago,  before all this hit.   Leandro makes an announcement that SCoRE has a very special treat for the 15th anniversary so you better have your issue 24 beta clients ready.


Fast forward,  2 weeks, the first announcement is made within paragon chat that you can direct your i24 client to this address and connect.  Later that night, server code gets torrented/box'd and the first server's ip address is announced to the world.


Days later people ask about the story.   "Yeah, we've been working on this for 6 years nonstop.   We've been so excited, it killed us not to tell you all the first time we bootd up and successfully logged in. "




Now,  would any one be screaming body murder about not being in the server?  No.  It's perspective.   And no, it didn't go this way,  but we're 11 days from the 15 th anniversary.   If you're hot under the collar, you may want to consider taking a break.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Twi on April 17, 2019, 09:21:43 PM
Hypothetically, what if it was laser beamed directly into our computers so we all had the code! That'd be amazing. Hypothetically.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 17, 2019, 09:25:48 PM
It's worth noting that in his video, People's Hero Mr. Destroyer Stroyer specifically called out how:
  • Hardly anyone was on the server at any given time; sounding pretty much like Paragon Chat on a non-event day.
  • When he hosted an event in Rikti War Zone, "RZW ran like crap" with more than a handful of people in the zone

That is a description of a server with a handful of active users that is still in need of further work; not a server with hundreds of active users and smooth as silk performance.

"3000 users", wherever that number came from, is a number spread over six years or more. If we take Mr. Destroyer Stroyer at his word, via his statements on his video, most of the people invited to the server either declined the invitations entirely or only came in for a short while before losing interest. He is not describing a thriving server full of supergroups and a vibrant community. He's describing the same sort of user base that uses Paragon Chat. Putting his "Liberator of /r/CityofHeroes" act aside, I suspect that what Mr. Destroyer Stroyer really hoped would happen is that the the server admins would be "forced" to open the server up to the public and Mr. Destroyer Stroyer would get the server-wide community in-game that he felt was missing and was therefore responsible for his feeling of it being non-fun to be a member of the server. (Yes, I'm aware he was banned. I don't think that changes his motivations, particularly, but only he really knows why he took the actions he took.)

However - we know nothing of the server. It might be running on someone's PC on a cable connection.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ChaosMatrix on April 17, 2019, 09:26:05 PM
Picture this.   Sicily, 194-


No, no, just consider this hypothetical:


Rewind to 3 days ago,  before all this hit.   Leandro makes an announcement that SCoRE has a very special treat for the 15th anniversary so you better have your issue 24 beta clients ready.


Fast forward,  2 weeks, the first announcement is made within paragon chat that you can direct your i24 client to this address and connect.  Later that night, server code gets torrented/box'd and the first server's ip address is announced to the world.


Days later people ask about the story.   "Yeah, we've been working on this for 6 years nonstop.   We've been so excited, it killed us not to tell you all the first time we bootd up and successfully logged in. "




Now,  would any one be screaming body murder about not being in the server?  No.  It's perspective.   And no, it didn't go this way,  but we're 11 days from the 15 th anniversary.   If you're hot under the collar, you may want to consider taking a break.


Consider if aliens dropped by tomorrow and told us that this life has been but a test and that we all get to evolve into the next space faring race.

At this point conjecture on what could had happened is pointless. Only what is and what has happened.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 17, 2019, 09:27:40 PM
One could be forgiven for thinking that was a lie to save face, after all, what are the chances the private server was going to be made public just after it happened to be exposed? I mean come on, its been a secret for 6 years and just as it's exposed it comes out "Oh I was planning on releasing it in a few weeks" BS

Yes... you could also turn the question around. What are the chances that someone who was banned from the server back in November would decide to release a bunch of youtube videos about it in mid-April, right before the devs on the server were discussing a possible public reveal of it?

Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe Mr. Destroyer Stroyer had some reasons for choosing this as his time to blow the cover of the server operators. I don't know the answer. If he says it was a coincidence, and I'm forced to choose to believe that one statement is a lie and the other is not, Leandro has "cred" here that Mr. Destroyer Stroyer does not have.

As it stands, it doesn't change anything at this point, so it's moot. I only mention it to point out that there are multiple angles to view a story from and choosing the one that plays best with your personal feelings doesn't mean that you've chosen the best or most accurate angle.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 17, 2019, 09:29:15 PM
Picture this.   Sicily, 194-


No, no, just consider this hypothetical:


Rewind to 3 days ago,  before all this hit.   Leandro makes an announcement that SCoRE has a very special treat for the 15th anniversary so you better have your issue 24 beta clients ready.


Fast forward,  2 weeks, the first announcement is made within paragon chat that you can direct your i24 client to this address and connect.  Later that night, server code gets torrented/box'd and the first server's ip address is announced to the world.


Days later people ask about the story.   "Yeah, we've been working on this for 6 years nonstop.   We've been so excited, it killed us not to tell you all the first time we bootd up and successfully logged in. "




Now,  would any one be screaming body murder about not being in the server?  No.  It's perspective.   And no, it didn't go this way,  but we're 11 days from the 15 th anniversary.   If you're hot under the collar, you may want to consider taking a break.

Yes, if that is true that would have been nice. And I am sure we all would be acting differently.  But it didn't happen that way, and we don't know if it ever would have.  All we know is it has been around for 6 years, it was a well-kept secret, and that it would have remained a secret for an undisclosed amount of time - possibly indefinitely.

Quote
Yes... you could also turn the question around. What are the chances that someone who was banned from the server back in November would decide to release a bunch of youtube videos about it in mid-April, right before the devs on the server were discussing a possible public reveal of it?

Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe Mr. Destroyer Stroyer had some reasons for choosing this as his time to blow the cover of the server operators. I don't know the answer. If he says it was a coincidence, and I'm forced to choose to believe that one statement is a lie and the other is not, Leandro has "cred" here that Mr. Destroyer Stroyer does not have.

As it stands, it doesn't change anything at this point, so it's moot. I only mention it to point out that there are multiple angles to view a story from and choosing the one that plays best with your personal feelings doesn't mean that you've chosen the best or most accurate angle.

That's true there are multiple angles to this story.  And just to clarify I don't hate Leo or think he is a bad person.  I just don't buy we were "this close" to an actual release of the code.  I think like most secrets it probably started out with the right intent, and slowly became something that was never going to see the light of day.  I would happily be proven wrong though, not that I think Leo owes me any kind of proof or anything, dude doesn't even know me.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ChaosMatrix on April 17, 2019, 09:29:35 PM
However - we know nothing of the server. It might be running on someone's PC on a cable connection.

Actually not true, there is a lot of information out, specially in the reddit. This was also confirmed by Leandros on a reply to the article and TonyV on the article's comments.

The flood gates are open and a lot of information is coming out through different sites.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 09:30:12 PM

Now,  would any one be screaming body murder about not being in the server?  No.  It's perspective.   And no, it didn't go this way,  but we're 11 days from the 15 th anniversary.   If you're hot under the collar, you may want to consider taking a break.

It's video games and the internet, someone would definitely be screaming bloody murder about it but you're right it definitely would have been a very different response from the community as a whole. I imagine we'd see a lot more sentiment along the lines of the people who are genuinely grateful at the efforts and maybe even trying to sympathize with the task of trying to hold this under wraps all these years.

It all comes down to how things are presented and that's why narrative control is so important, when you can dictate the tone and the manner in which the news is presented, you can tailor it to hit the points you need to make, since the news leaked, even without the more sensational aspects of it, it was going to earn a negative response because ultimately people don't like being excluded.

In retrospect as others have said, it does more or less confirm the importance of being so selective with the invites, because even at the level they were being selective, they still got burned by invitees.

I'd like to say that the community at a larger scale could have been trusted with a bit more disclosure but, I've been around the block with alpha tests, beta tests, early access, all of that, and I know how impatient gamers can be, myself included. People would have rioted after 2 years of waiting, let alone 6.

We demand it gets released NOW NOW NOW, and then after we rush people to release something, we want to make heads roll over the fact that the product was rushed and runs and plays like crap.  :roll:
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 17, 2019, 09:31:51 PM
I only watched little bits of the destroyer video but wasn't this tool how they were loading the character data back?  I kindof got the impression that what he got was a full Codewalker file format download for every character on the system (I could be completely mistaken on that).

https://www.pcgamer.com/a-fully-functioning-city-of-heroes-private-server-has-somehow-been-kept-secret-for-six-years/ He was anonymously given the character data from the CoH servers.

The person running the Woofers effort was quoted on reddit as having been given that data as well, but losing it in a hard drive crash.

Edit: Due to the migration of posts from "New Efforts" to this thread, the quote above no longer links properly. But it is unmodified, and the original can be found in this thread (I don't want to put the effort in right now).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ChaosMatrix on April 17, 2019, 09:32:18 PM
Yes... you could also turn the question around. What are the chances that someone who was banned from the server back in November would decide to release a bunch of youtube videos about it in mid-April, right before the devs on the server were discussing a possible public reveal of it?

Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe Mr. Destroyer Stroyer had some reasons for choosing this as his time to blow the cover of the server operators. I don't know the answer. If he says it was a coincidence, and I'm forced to choose to believe that one statement is a lie and the other is not, Leandro has "cred" here that Mr. Destroyer Stroyer does not have.

As it stands, it doesn't change anything at this point, so it's moot. I only mention it to point out that there are multiple angles to view a story from and choosing the one that plays best with your personal feelings doesn't mean that you've chosen the best or most accurate angle.

Or you can do a little research, there is a lot of information being posted online, including screenshots of emails and conversations that appear very damming. In any case, there is evidence of foul play, in that case is no longer a matter of opinion, but of fact.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ChaosMatrix on April 17, 2019, 09:35:54 PM
https://www.pcgamer.com/a-fully-functioning-city-of-heroes-private-server-has-somehow-been-kept-secret-for-six-years/ He was anonymously given the character data from the CoH servers.

The person running the Woofers effort was quoted on reddit as having been given that data as well, but losing it in a hard drive crash.

Aye I saw it, supposedly he responded to a request for people to join the team and was asked about his character, after which he was provided screenshots of his character, when he posted it on the reddit while the previous mods who were accused of being part of Leandro's circle were mods, the post was deleted and afterwards the contact at Woofers claimed to no longer have access to the data.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 17, 2019, 09:39:12 PM
Quote
I'd like to say that the community at a larger scale could have been trusted with a bit more disclosure but, I've been around the block with alpha tests, beta tests, early access, all of that, and I know how impatient gamers can be, myself included. People would have rioted after 2 years of waiting, let alone 6.

So in this regard I am rather impressed with everyone involved with the private server.  6 years is a long time to keep a secret successfully especially across so many people.  I am not mad at the players who kept this a secret at all, in fact, I am rather impressed how long it was kept a secret.  The ol saying "Only 2 people can keep a secret if one of them is dead" was put to the test here.  That was a lot of people keeping a secret.  As far as secrets go the more people who know it, the more likely it is to be revealed.  So bravo in that regard.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 09:39:21 PM
Thats not entirely true, the leak had a picture of the 2013 server specs. (thats right, 2013) The machine was less powerful than what they play minecraft on nowadays and for some reason, 5x the cost.

Maybe the cost is largely bandwidth based?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 09:40:34 PM
Maybe the cost is largely bandwidth based?

Absolutely not. Go look at renting any dedicated server to see that for yourself.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ChaosMatrix on April 17, 2019, 09:48:14 PM
So in this regard I am rather impressed with everyone involved with the private server.  6 years is a long time to keep a secret successfully especially across so many people.  I am not mad at the players who kept this a secret at all, in fact, I am rather impressed how long it was kept a secret.  The ol saying "Only 2 people can keep a secret if one of them is dead" was put to the test here.  That was a lot of people keeping a secret.  As far as secrets go the more people who know it, the more likely it is to be revealed.  So bravo in that regard.

Thats because there were threats involved. Leandros kept charts and tabs of everyone who was in the server, who invited them, who they played with, who they invited. If you so much as leaked, not only would they ban you, but everyone in your circle, including whoever originally invited you and whoever you invited. He also had people spying in groups that checked if you were trustworthy or not, kind of like with the communist scare in the US

Meanwhile they ran the reddit and they ran here as well, any posts were removed and the person banned. There are random leaks in 4chan and, strangely enough, in the wildstar reddit, talking about the server existing.

And before everyone claims Im exaggerating, there are screenshots of Leandros posts and emails about this.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 17, 2019, 09:48:21 PM
Yes... you could also turn the question around. What are the chances that someone who was banned from the server back in November would decide to release a bunch of youtube videos about it in mid-April, right before the devs on the server were discussing a possible public reveal of it?

Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe Mr. Destroyer Stroyer had some reasons for choosing this as his time to blow the cover of the server operators. I don't know the answer. If he says it was a coincidence, and I'm forced to choose to believe that one statement is a lie and the other is not, Leandro has "cred" here that Mr. Destroyer Stroyer does not have.

As it stands, it doesn't change anything at this point, so it's moot. I only mention it to point out that there are multiple angles to view a story from and choosing the one that plays best with your personal feelings doesn't mean that you've chosen the best or most accurate angle.

Destroyer Stroyer's original YouTube video was posted in November last year (in fact, it's the reason he was banned) but, and this is a big but, it was flagged by YouTube's algorithm and deleted as fast as it was put up (likely flagged by the score people in mass to squash the leak as fast as they could)

Similarly, the coh subreddit page had an auto-moderation bot that flagged and deleted any mention of private servers, including a post by destroyer stroyer and others who had been a part of the private server and tried to reveal it's existence.

So no, this isn't someone just /now/ leaking it's existence to ruin a public revealing. The existence of the score private server has been leaked and attempted to have been leaked several times over the years it's been fully operational and functioning.

What has specifically changed now? Articles and publications giving people like destroyer stroyer an irrefutable voice that can't be deleted, erased, or gaslighted away. Specifically, these articles and the mounting pressure forced every coh subreddit mod to leave and hide, letting a new group take over, delete the auto-ban bot, and allowing the discussion of private servers to continue for the first time in years.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 17, 2019, 09:50:37 PM
Absolutely not. Go look at renting any dedicated server to see that for yourself.

What sort of game can you rent a dedi for that would be comperable to a persistent online MMO world equivalent to the size of CoX?

Typically dedi server pricing is tiered based on the amount of slots it fits with the service being significantly more expensive with more slots, wouldn't an MMO server be at the top of that curve?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kyriani on April 17, 2019, 09:53:11 PM
Or you can do a little research, there is a lot of information being posted online, including screenshots of emails and conversations that appear very damming. In any case, there is evidence of foul play, in that case is no longer a matter of opinion, but of fact.

No "evidence" we've seen so far are "facts" yet. Screenshots can be fabricated, Emails altered. And even stuff that isn't altered or fabricated needs context. Context we don't have yet.
No matter what you think you've seen with "a little research", we don't have the actual facts yet... as if it would be so easy for anyone with google to know everything that's been hidden from us for 6 years or why. The hubris is astounding.

I won't claim I know the truth until I actually do. I will not be manipulated by anyone's narrative. You shouldn't let anyone manipulate you either.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 17, 2019, 09:55:06 PM
Yes, if that is true that would have been nice. And I am sure we all would be acting differently.  But it didn't happen that way, and we don't know if it ever would have.  All we know is it has been around for 6 years,
Yes.




it was a well-kept secret,
Yes.




and that it would have remained a secret for an undisclosed amount of time - possibly indefinitely.
No,  we don't know that.


And many people have jumped to the negative conclusion just because,  instead of a positive conclusion when we mostly all knew that server project had been in the works.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ChaosMatrix on April 17, 2019, 09:57:38 PM
Yes.



Yes.



No,  we don't know that.


And many people have jumped to the negative conclusion just because,  instead of a positive conclusion when we mostly all knew that server project had been in the works.

6 years my dude, its hard to think otherwise.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 17, 2019, 09:59:49 PM
So in this regard I am rather impressed with everyone involved with the private server.  6 years is a long time to keep a secret successfully especially across so many people.  I am not mad at the players who kept this a secret at all, in fact, I am rather impressed how long it was kept a secret.  The ol saying "Only 2 people can keep a secret if one of them is dead" was put to the test here.  That was a lot of people keeping a secret.  As far as secrets go the more people who know it, the more likely it is to be revealed.  So bravo in that regard.
You've clearly never worked with government secrets. I have. It's pretty easy to keep secrets when the reasons for keeping them are clear to all involved and the consequences of revealing them are dire enough. This group was small enough, vetted enough, and controlled enough to keep the secret damped down quite handily. (Scrubbing and plugging leaks is part of the process.)

The biggest issue here is that I think the reasons for keeping the secret were overblown; we'll see in the next few months whether NCSoft actually takes legal action.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 10:00:07 PM
What sort of game can you rent a dedi for that would be comperable to a persistent online MMO world equivalent to the size of CoX?

Typically dedi server pricing is tiered based on the amount of slots it fits with the service being significantly more expensive with more slots, wouldn't an MMO server be at the top of that curve?

What they're using isn't something you rent from a company that is preset with slots. They aren't buying a CoD server, they're running their own stuff so they rented server space not a pre-set.For example, a 50 slot minecraft server is 100's of dollars, for 30 bucks you could host your own on a sever box and have 500 slots. The screenshot we have to go off of shows the rental being

10000MHz CPU
20480 MB
200GB Disk
80gb SSD
200GB xfer rate

as a singular box(and it was 1 server, though this again was 2013). This is really inexpensive, My minecraft server is heavier than that. If they upgraded past that, Unsure but the initial server setup is extremely low. It's not magic, nor is it that complicated. What their current needs to run a CoH server is, is not known to anyone but them. However going off on other old spaghetti MMOs, see guildwars/lineage/everqust so on so forth, It's probably not much different. I'm not going to take it at face value that it is because they're not offering any proof to back up the claim.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 17, 2019, 10:03:32 PM
However - we know nothing of the server. It might be running on someone's PC on a cable connection.

Well we know they were paying about 1000 / month on a Canadian server -- based on forum screenshots on Facebook
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 17, 2019, 10:04:13 PM
Do you really, honestly, believe it ever would have gone that way?


Considering how these people have been helpful in so many ways to support the community above and beyond any obligation,  yes.
Leandro was seeding animations for demorecords.
Codewalker pushed out iCon
P-chat ewas pushed out.


Additional technical information had been shared as situations/inquiries arose.


So, yes,  given a choice of whether or not to give then the benefit of the doubt,  they have credibility because they have delivered and the conspiracy theories just don't hold water.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ChaosMatrix on April 17, 2019, 10:05:42 PM
Which is a complete lie. They don't cost that much, you can look for yourself extremely easily.


They dont cost that much NOW, the screen was from several years ago.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 10:07:12 PM

They dont cost that much NOW, the screen was from several years ago.


That server wouldn't cost that much then. It wouldn't be as cheap as now but still not that much my man. Source; Purchased and hosted things on servers more powerful. If they paid that much, they got scammed.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 10:11:11 PM

Considering how these people have been helpful in so many ways to support the community above and beyond any obligation,  yes.
Leandro was seeding animations for demorecords.
Codewalker pushed out iCon
P-chat ewas pushed out.


Additional technical information had been shared as situations/inquiries arose.


So, yes,  given a choice of whether or not to give then the benefit of the doubt,  they have credibility because they have delivered and the conspiracy theories just don't hold water.

So because they gave us a picture of the game, while they played the real thing we should trust them?????
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ChaosMatrix on April 17, 2019, 10:12:19 PM
So because they gave us a picture of the game, while they played the real thing we should trust them?????

We were starving, so they gave us a few breadcrumbs while they ate steak everyday, telling us that steak was impossible.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 17, 2019, 10:12:23 PM
Yes... you could also turn the question around. What are the chances that someone who was banned from the server back in November would decide to release a bunch of youtube videos about it in mid-April, right before the devs on the server were discussing a possible public reveal of it?

Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe Mr. Destroyer Stroyer had some reasons for choosing this as his time to blow the cover of the server operators. I don't know the answer. If he says it was a coincidence, and I'm forced to choose to believe that one statement is a lie and the other is not, Leandro has "cred" here that Mr. Destroyer Stroyer does not have.



In the original video someone asked why he did this, and his response was "I was going to get banned away." To me this feels more of a "I will show them a what for." I have no doubt that if wasn't going to get banned all we would have are accounts that cannot be confirmed or denied.

Theni in his next video he tried to throw shade on other people. Such Victoria. I believe her when she said she didnt know and wasn't involved same with Tony. I interacted with these sometimes and they seemed sincere. And that is good enough for me.

Like I have said before, it just as though one person wanted to light a fire ad laugh at those that have tried to move on. I dont know Leo or his motivations, and I have posted what I think on several different places.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 17, 2019, 10:13:02 PM
No,  we don't know that.
And many people have jumped to the negative conclusion just because,  instead of a positive conclusion when we mostly all knew that server project had been in the works.

You are right, we don't know that.  Because we didn't know anything until it was leaked.  I feel it's safe to assume that business would have continued as usual, for as long as possible.  And business, as usual, was keeping it under wraps with extreme prejudice (According to some of the rumors)

I don't need to know Leo to know people.  They had no reason to reveal it, no pressure to reveal it, and certainly no benefit to revealing it.  So why would they?  Some people say the plan was to wait long enough until NCSoft might not care anymore.  I would wager that is at least 10 years from shut down point.  In 3 years maybe we would have seen something.  But at that point, its been 10 years.  Leo and the admins of this server have been playing with their friends the entire time.  The people they invited are also playing with the majority of their friends.  Again, what benefit do more players and more risk add?  They already had what they wanted and, while I don't believe they are inherently selfish or bad people, they were comfortable in the position they were in.  In my experience, most people don't willingly slam full force into the barriers of their comfort zone.  Especially when the consequences of revealing it are potentially some kind of legal repercussions.

In much shorter words, I don't expect people to stop doing what they are already doing and have been doing for years.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 17, 2019, 10:13:34 PM
6 years my dude, its hard to think otherwise.
SEGS .1.5 was checked into sourceforge on 11/11/2009, 9.5 years ago, and look where it is now dude.


Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 17, 2019, 10:15:58 PM
You've clearly never worked with government secrets. I have. It's pretty easy to keep secrets when the reasons for keeping them are clear to all involved and the consequences of revealing them are dire enough. This group was small enough, vetted enough, and controlled enough to keep the secret damped down quite handily. (Scrubbing and plugging leaks is part of the process.)

The biggest issue here is that I think the reasons for keeping the secret were overblown; we'll see in the next few months whether NCSoft actually takes legal action.

Well, that's true I haven't worked with government secrets.  But there are also government leaks constantly - and fear of imprisonment is a little more powerful then the fear of being banned I would say.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 10:18:12 PM
SEGS .1.5 was checked into sourceforge on 11/11/2009, 9.5 years ago, and look where it is now dude.

abandoned and restarted a lot of times, and only recently picked back up has been being worked on heavily now, pushing twords a bare bones issue 0? (Not to down their effort, SEGS is love)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Lazarillo on April 17, 2019, 10:19:46 PM
We were starving, so they gave us a few breadcrumbs while they ate steak everyday, telling us that steak was impossible.
It wasn't impossible, though, guys, they were totally going to give us a full course meal in just a week's time!  But then someone had to go and tell us they were in the kitchen and now the food that they already prepared and were about to send out, no, really, they were, is something they can't share, just like they couldn't share it before.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 17, 2019, 10:20:42 PM
I really do think something good is going to come of all of this.

I don't want to jinx anything, but I'm feeling shockingly optimistic? Which is a pretty new sensation for me. I'm, like... excited? Everyone is so busy fighting, and I'm over here just doing a happy dance that the game is still alive somewhere, somehow.

*knocks on wood*
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 10:24:11 PM
It could easily be proven that this eventual public event was going to take place, surely if it was that soon there would be plenty of proof to back it up? Without revealing too much or exposing people, they could easily show screenshots of discussions of it or anything right? A claim was made, it was called fake and they have the easiest way to prove it wasn't.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ChaosMatrix on April 17, 2019, 10:24:27 PM
It wasn't impossible, though, guys, they were totally going to give us a full course meal in just a week's time!  But then someone had to go and tell us they were in the kitchen and now the food that they already prepared and were about to send out, no, really, they were, is something they can't share, just like they couldn't share it before.

Sure, they havent shared anything for 6 years, but they super promise that its because they were about to share it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: nicoliy on April 17, 2019, 10:24:52 PM
I really do think something good is going to come of all of this.

I don't want to jinx anything, but I'm feeling shockingly optimistic? Which is a pretty new sensation for me. I'm, like... excited? Everyone is so busy fighting, and I'm over here just doing a happy dance that the game is still alive somewhere, somehow.

*knocks on wood*

Now that it's out there, I have hope that it's just a matter of time.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 17, 2019, 10:25:40 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 17, 2019, 10:25:48 PM
Folks a flowchart was kept on who invited who and a leak would get you and all those in your cells - banned.

This was not an Alpha testing environment - it was a secret server. It has even been modified to have new power sets. You say testing for stability - for 6 years? I am not holding them up as heroes - just humans. Instead of coming to the community - they cowered in fear. They lived for 6 years in fear - the brave dies but once and the coward every day. I probaby let too much info out when I was trying and these folks let too little out.

I can't help but wonder - did the game purchase die because someone gave them the code? The way it completely went silent - I have to wonder did these folks get the software and say - well why buy the cow we can get the milk for free?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ChaosMatrix on April 17, 2019, 10:26:14 PM
It could easily be proven that this eventual public event was going to take place, surely if it was that soon there would be plenty of proof to back it up? Without revealing too much or exposing people, they could easily show screenshots of discussions of it or anything right? A claim was made, it was called fake and they have the easiest way to prove it wasn't.

Yes they could, it would be the easiest thing in the world, but first everyone denied it, and then evidence came out, then they claimed that there was a plan to release all along, granted by now no one believe then, but they also dont post any evidence on that.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 17, 2019, 10:26:20 PM
I really do think something good is going to come of all of this.

I don't want to jinx anything, but I'm feeling shockingly optimistic? Which is a pretty new sensation for me. I'm, like... excited? Everyone is so busy fighting, and I'm over here just doing a happy dance that the game is still alive somewhere, somehow.

*knocks on wood*

I hope so too :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ChaosMatrix on April 17, 2019, 10:28:51 PM
Okay, have all of you who keep bringing that thread up actually read it, or are you just having kneejerk reactions to the title? Because what he said is this:

That doesn't sound like "nope, never gonna happen, sorry lol gottem". Could SCoRE have turned to evil over time? I suppose it's possible, though I don't really believe it myself. But to suggest it began with evil intent as far back as a month after the closing is disingenuous.

I agree that it may well prove that the secrecy was unnecessary, but NCSoft has a bad record in this area, at best, and I somehow doubt they're very happy that someone else has account data. Had you been in the room, would you not have taken all possible measures to ensure that NCSoft never laid a hand on this data?

Yes that and many like it, as well as reactions on the reddit, its been a long history.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 10:30:26 PM
Okay, have all of you who keep bringing that thread up actually read it, or are you just having kneejerk reactions to the title? Because what he said is this:

That doesn't sound like "nope, never gonna happen, sorry lol gottem". Could SCoRE have turned to evil over time? I suppose it's possible, though I don't really believe it myself. But to suggest it began with evil intent as far back as a month after the closing is disingenuous.

I agree that it may well prove that the secrecy was unnecessary, but NCSoft has a bad record in this area, at best, and I somehow doubt they're very happy that someone else has account data. Had you been in the room, would you not have taken all possible measures to ensure that NCSoft never laid a hand on this data?

They do not have a bad record in this area. Search for any lineage 2, wildstar (in dev openly i might add) Guild wars 1/2, or even Aion private servers. Most have been up for a long time and have not received a C&D. Before you qoute Tabula Rasa at me, know that they were in a very bitter very high stakes lawsuit with Richard over Tabula Rasa. Of course they smited it down. I'm not telling you it won't happen. I'm telling you the "Record" isn't there.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ChaosMatrix on April 17, 2019, 10:30:31 PM
Folks a flowchart was kept on who invited who and a leak would get you and all those in your cells - banned.

This was not an Alpha testing environment - it was a secret server. It has even been modified to have new power sets. You say testing for stability - for 6 years? I am not holding them up as heroes - just humans. Instead of coming to the community - they cowered in fear. They lived for 6 years in fear - the brave dies but once and the coward every day. I probaby let too much info out when I was trying and these folks let too little out.

I can't help but wonder - did the game purchase die because someone gave them the code? The way it completely went silent - I have to wonder did these folks get the software and say - well why buy the cow we can get the milk for free?

It is my understanding that Leandros received everything he needed to get the server working up to the point it was before it closed. If anything any bug fixes and added content was just over what already existed in the game prior to its demise. I find it hard to believe that it took them 6 years to have it "in working order" for the public.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: TheBeatnik on April 17, 2019, 10:34:38 PM
This may be a worthless post, as there is really nothing of substance that I can add to the conversation. I'm as stunned as everyone by the recent news, and, probably like everyone else,
am still processing my feelings as I race to catch up on the story and the conversation.

What I do feel, right now, is sadness.
It hit me as I reread my previous activity on this forum, just 22 posts, all within a year or so of shutdown.
I was *so* hopeful back then. Even now, rereading the plans we made, I get a tangible sense that we felt
the possibility of doing something amazing, something ridiculously against all odds.

And I think that's what hurts now. Seven years ago, we were, all of us, heroes together.
And today, seven years seems an eternity away.

What pushes me past the sadness is the faith, foolish or not, that the community of CoH players is not yet over. We may be scattered,
in the wilderness, divided, but better days are ahead. Ship of Heroes has announced an end of the year beta, City of Titans continues to progress,
and Paragon Chat continues to be available when I absolutely have to go home.
Until then, I think I'll go back to lurking, and to appreciating a community that is, quite a lot of the time, far more knowledgeable and
eloquent than I could ever hope to be.

Regards,
The Beatnik
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 17, 2019, 10:36:45 PM
I really do think something good is going to come of all of this.

I don't want to jinx anything, but I'm feeling shockingly optimistic? Which is a pretty new sensation for me. I'm, like... excited? Everyone is so busy fighting, and I'm over here just doing a happy dance that the game is still alive somewhere, somehow.

*knocks on wood*

Well I am happy that you are happy :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 17, 2019, 10:39:09 PM
I agree that it may well prove that the secrecy was unnecessary, but NCSoft has a bad record in this area, at best, and I somehow doubt they're very happy that someone else has account data. Had you been in the room, would you not have taken all possible measures to ensure that NCSoft never laid a hand on this data?
Character data isn't account data. And NCSoft already has its hands on account data, so your question doesn't even make sense.

NCSoft are petty bastards, but your assessment of their litigiousness requires evidence. Tabula Rasa does not a rule make.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: TonyV on April 17, 2019, 10:47:05 PM
I can't help but wonder - did the game purchase die because someone gave them the code?

No. The two teams working on these two efforts were completely separate. As far as I know, there were no members in common between the two, except possibly short, technical advisory conversations.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 17, 2019, 10:51:53 PM
I would have to imagine even if Downix knew about the Private Server he probably knew how bad it would look for City of Titans and the purchase attempt if he was found anywhere near it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 17, 2019, 10:53:51 PM
No. The two teams working on these two efforts were completely separate. As far as I know, there were no members in common between the two, except possibly short, technical advisory conversations.

So, then the logical question follows - did the SCoRE team approach the potential buyers and say - hey we got the code - just try and buy the rights - never mind the software? You see once they had purchased the rights to the game - if they got a running copy of it - how they did it would be moot. This is just so shady at this point with people saying - nope I never knew - then saying - well I did know but didn't play. Others saying well I played but felt bad and quit and so on trying to deflect.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 17, 2019, 10:58:17 PM
I would have to imagine even if Downix knew about the Private Server he probably knew how bad it would look for City of Titans and the purchase attempt if he was found anywhere near it.

Well Downix did bail on it and distance himself from it. He was working on Titan and only worked the first part to introduce people to the NCSoft folks. On the second purchase attempt.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ABagOfCandy on April 17, 2019, 10:58:53 PM
I've been lurking on this forum for years hoping the game would come back and I find out this morning it was around all along!? Not gonna lie, I'm bummed more that my lack of activity on forums about this could have been the main reason I haven't been able to play it. Not saying I'm thrilled that it was super exclusive, but I get it. Fingers crossed something more than a total shutdown comes out of this. I want nothing more than to play that freakin game again XD I haven't been able to find a game I WANT to play recently and my hopes are crushed by games I was excited for.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Crimsanotic on April 17, 2019, 11:00:24 PM
That doesn't sound like "nope, never gonna happen, sorry lol gottem". Could SCoRE have turned to evil over time? I suppose it's possible, though I don't really believe it myself. But to suggest it began with evil intent as far back as a month after the closing is disingenuous.

You're also taking the word of people who lied to you as if it were truth.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 17, 2019, 11:02:05 PM
Well Downix did bail on it and distance himself from it. He was working on Titan and only worked the first part to introduce people to the NCSoft folks. On the second purchase attempt.

Oh right.  Good point, the details have become a little hazy with time and I forgot he passed it off entirely to the "purchase team" and they are (as far as I know) completely anonymous to most of us.

Quote
I've been lurking on this forum for years hoping the game would come back and I find out this morning it was around all along!? Not gonna lie, I'm bummed more that my lack of activity on forums about this could have been the main reason I haven't been able to play it. Not saying I'm thrilled that it was super exclusive, but I get it. Fingers crossed something more than a total shutdown comes out of this. I want nothing more than to play that freakin game again XD I haven't been able to find a game I WANT to play recently and my hopes are crushed by games I was excited for.
 

I don't think Titan forums really were the secret breeding ground for this server.  I was pretty active here in the first few years after the shutdown and as the activity of the forum died down so did my visits.  I obviously didn't know any of the right people involved but I don't think they met through these forums(maybe one or two).  I would wager the people who visit this forum and also played, were already friends with someone in the "know" from pretty early on.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 17, 2019, 11:06:52 PM
Character data isn't account data. And NCSoft already has its hands on account data, so your question doesn't even make sense.

NCSoft are petty bastards, but your assessment of their litigiousness requires evidence. Tabula Rasa does not a rule make.


https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/173882/general-ncsoft-tackles-illegal-servers (https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/173882/general-ncsoft-tackles-illegal-servers)

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2006/11/8258/ (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2006/11/8258/)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 11:09:32 PM
Why does my post explaining to Tony V why this block of text

Quote
An account/authentication server
Multiple chat server executables
A market server
A Paragon Store (microtransaction) server
A crapton of mapservers
Multiple DB servers

Is just tech fluff and not complicated or expensive keep disappearing? It's not insulting or attacking anyone. I'll simplify in hopes its not removed.

The only real costing item in that list is Mapservers. The rest is very basic and simple stuff, The idea that each one is an individual server is incorrect and misleading. Account server for example. is a thing that when you click login, it's a web server that takes that request that you've sent and goes is this person legit. It's like logging into a forum thats all an account server is. Even mapserver isn't that complicated to operate. You have to remember, most of this was targeted at 2003/4 hardware. We're lightyears ahead in terms of equipment and costs. Fitting thousands of people in one spot is extra work certainly, but we're talking about individual private servers here, that would probably not feature 1000+ people at a time.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 11:10:34 PM

https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/173882/general-ncsoft-tackles-illegal-servers (https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/173882/general-ncsoft-tackles-illegal-servers)

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2006/11/8258/ (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2006/11/8258/)


Did you seriously just cite 2006/2008?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 17, 2019, 11:12:13 PM
Did you seriously just cite 2006/2008?
They also cited shutting down private servers of currently-running, legally available products.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ABagOfCandy on April 17, 2019, 11:13:18 PM
Quote
I don't think Titan forums really were the secret breeding ground for this server.  I was pretty active here in the first few years after the shutdown and as the activity of the forum died down so did my visits.  I obviously didn't know any of the right people involved but I don't think they met through these forums(maybe one or two).  I would wager the people who visit this forum and also played, were already friends with someone in the "know" from pretty early on.

Fair point, it was just such a shock my mind sorta just went straight to the "what if I..." mindset. So since the cat is out of the bag, I'm gonna finally be active for any sort of push that might come out of this :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 17, 2019, 11:13:29 PM
They also cited shutting down private servers of currently-running, legally available products.

Which again, lineage 2 (Still operational) Private servers that have openly ran without closure attempts for 3-4 years.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 17, 2019, 11:19:23 PM
Could SCoRE have turned to evil over time? I suppose it's possible, though I don't really believe it myself. But to suggest it began with evil intent as far back as a month after the closing is disingenuous.

I think to say SCoRE is even evil now is totally unfair.  I am sure they would have released some kind of public version at some point.  Were they going to do it all at once or in small chunks?  IE: Paragon Chat and the small updates to it.  I also believe they would have, eventually, had the full game released in a way (as they claim) is not just an emulator server.  The part I find disingenuous is the "Oh it was just around the corner"

I believe ideally (for those involved)  this server would have never been let out.  Not because they didn't want people to be able to play, but because they didn't want them to know they have in fact been playing for several years.  It would have been far easier to (eventually) release something to us and say "Oh now we can all play on it" without ever revealing that they had a secret server for years.

I also believe what started out as Alpha-style testing for their work on the reverse engineering side of things, where they brought in a few friends at a time, slowly shifted to a full-blown, official secret server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 17, 2019, 11:23:44 PM
I don't believe it would have ever been released a quote from the Reddit Mole:

The policy was in place from at least 2013. Please be careful about assigning malice to these policies. We are talking about people willing to risk their personal freedom to keep the world alive and maintaining strict secrecy with harsh consequences was just how it had to be done in their minds. I hope these answers satisfy for now.

They were justifying themselves for 6 years that it was the only way to keep "their" home - not OUR home.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 17, 2019, 11:44:09 PM
Here's a conspiracy theory for you.

There never was an unauthorized leak by an NCSOFT employee.  It was a sanctioned act with the intent to manipulate the SCORE team into rebuilding the game into something that could be legitimately released back onto the market.    No one inside SCORE need know that they were played.   No one need know if, or how many, of their fellow players were actually working for NCSOFT.

It would be a fantastic outcome.

Remember, you heard about it here first.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 17, 2019, 11:49:56 PM
Here's a conspiracy theory for you.

There never was an unauthorized leak by an NCSOFT employee.  It was a sanctioned act with the intent to manipulate the SCORE team into rebuilding the game into something that could be legitimately released back onto the market.    No one inside SCORE need know that they were played.   No one need know if, or how many, of their fellow players were actually working for NCSOFT.

It would be a fantastic outcome.

Remember, you heard about it here first.

I have already reposted it all over the social media claiming it as inarguable fact.  Gotta give it some traction ;)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 17, 2019, 11:52:29 PM
I also believe what started out as Alpha-style testing for their work on the reverse engineering side of things, where they brought in a few friends at a time, slowly shifted to a full-blown, official secret server.
According to leaks, the server is a fully functional server, not a testing environment.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ABagOfCandy on April 18, 2019, 12:14:29 AM
Quote
Here's a conspiracy theory for you.

There never was an unauthorized leak by an NCSOFT employee.  It was a sanctioned act with the intent to manipulate the SCORE team into rebuilding the game into something that could be legitimately released back onto the market.    No one inside SCORE need know that they were played.   No one need know if, or how many, of their fellow players were actually working for NCSOFT.

It would be a fantastic outcome.

Remember, you heard about it here first.

This theory has hope, speculation, and a dash of possibility. MY FAVORITE KIND OF CONSPIRACY! I'll admit, that actually made me feel better.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 18, 2019, 12:16:43 AM
According to leaks, the server is a fully functional server, not a testing environment.

I'm involved in closed alpha tests right now that could be released to public market in their current state by industry standards, the server functioning doesn't really mean they're not still working on it, improving it or optimizing it for larger population. I've also seen plenty of game servers that work fine with a certain number of players and take a total nose dive the moment you go above a certain line, there's a lot of things that could be holding it in testing status even if leakers didn't see them outright.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 18, 2019, 12:20:42 AM
I'm involved in closed alpha tests right now that could be released to public market in their current state by industry standards, the server functioning doesn't really mean they're not still working on it, improving it or optimizing it for larger population. I've also seen plenty of game servers that work fine with a certain number of players and take a total nose dive the moment you go above a certain line, there's a lot of things that could be holding it in testing status even if leakers didn't see them outright.

You have no proof of anything you've said. This is someone who was on the server saying it isn't in dev. It's time for proof, plenty of ways to do so without risking anything. Show dev discussion with forum timestamp. Show video of working on code. Show anything that will prove anything. Otherwise it just looks like were being lied to.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 18, 2019, 12:27:43 AM
You have no proof of anything you've said. This is someone who was on the server saying it isn't in dev. It's time for proof, plenty of ways to do so without risking anything. Show dev discussion with forum timestamp. Show video of working on code. Show anything that will prove anything. Otherwise it just looks like were being lied to.

Please unclamp your jaws from my head, thank you.

I'm not saying anything definitive, I don't require "proof", I'm sure anyone in here who has been playing MMO's as far back as CoH's launch has been in plenty of alpha and beta tests over the years and can recall games that were even more fun during beta. Off the top of my head I can think of Age of Conan and the original Planetside, they ran, they functioned, the devs were still working on them. It's just food for thought, I'm not trying to disprove anything anyone said, I'm not disputing a claim, I'm just offering the point that a server running well does not always mean development has ended, or it's at a state that a developer is happy with.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 18, 2019, 12:33:19 AM
Please unclamp your jaws from my head, thank you.

I'm not saying anything definitive, I don't require "proof", I'm sure anyone in here who has been playing MMO's as far back as CoH's launch has been in plenty of alpha and beta tests over the years and can recall games that were even more fun during beta. Off the top of my head I can think of Age of Conan and the original Planetside, they ran, they functioned, the devs were still working on them. It's just food for thought, I'm not trying to disprove anything anyone said, I'm not disputing a claim, I'm just offering the point that a server running well does not always mean development has ended, or it's at a state that a developer is happy with.

I'm not clamping anything, I'm telling you that the people have stated they are not developing it any further and have asked for some proof to prove they are so we can know who we can trust.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: primeknight on April 18, 2019, 12:35:57 AM
I don't believe it would have ever been released a quote from the Reddit Mole:

The policy was in place from at least 2013. Please be careful about assigning malice to these policies. We are talking about people willing to risk their personal freedom to keep the world alive and maintaining strict secrecy with harsh consequences was just how it had to be done in their minds. I hope these answers satisfy for now.

They were justifying themselves for 6 years that it was the only way to keep "their" home - not OUR home.

Ironwolf, you're got a lot of clout and grit.

Let's stay positive. A playable version of CoH still exists.  Just let that sink in. 

This is to anyone that'll listen:
Let go of your anger, or use is for some good.  Step back and take some breaths, do some yoga or punch something.  Cry your eyes out.  Yell at the sky.  Do what you need to do.  Take a beat.

Now,
What can be done so everyone can play and enjoy the game?  Let's solve that problem. Who can help Leo (or whomever has the code).  Remember, there was a source behind this: Leo got it from somewhere. 

As a community we need to back the people that need help.  All this anger let's direct it someplace positive.  Let's get the game going again.  Leo has that seed and has been care-taking it.  That seed has grown a little under his care.  For lack of better words, it's alive and there's hope.  Now it's time to show him that it's safe to release what's grown and recreate the forest that was once City of Heroes and in a way that no company can every take that away again.   

If you are angry, yes you I'm talking directly to you behind the monitor: direct it to NCSoft. 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 18, 2019, 12:37:22 AM
Ironwolf, you're got a lot of clout and grit.

Let's stay positive. A playable version of CoH still exists.  Just let that sink in. 

This is to anyone that'll listen:
Let go of your anger, or use is for some good.  Step back and take some breaths, do some yoga or punch something.  Cry your eyes out.  Yell at the sky.  Do what you need to do.  Take a beat.

Now,
What can be done so everyone can play and enjoy the game?  Let's solve that problem. Who can help Leo (or whomever has the code).  Remember, there was a source behind this: Leo got it from somewhere. 

As a community we need to back the people that need help.  All this anger let's direct it someplace positive.  Let's get the game going again.  Leo has that seed and has been care-taking it.  That seed has grown a little under his care.  For lack of better words, it's alive and there's hope.  Now it's time to show him that it's safe to release what's grown and recreate the forest that was once City of Heroes and in a way that no company can every take that away again.   

If you are angry, yes you I'm talking directly to you behind the monitor: direct it to NCSoft.

NCsoft isn't the current problem. The problem is this apparently has been around for years. We've been mislead and now we're told its unlikely we'll ever see the game again because one person decided so.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 18, 2019, 12:44:27 AM
Ironwolf, you're got a lot of clout and grit.

Let's stay positive. A playable version of CoH still exists.  Just let that sink in. 

This is to anyone that'll listen:
Let go of your anger, or use is for some good.  Step back and take some breaths, do some yoga or punch something.  Cry your eyes out.  Yell at the sky.  Do what you need to do.  Take a beat.

Now,
What can be done so everyone can play and enjoy the game?  Let's solve that problem. Who can help Leo (or whomever has the code).  Remember, there was a source behind this: Leo got it from somewhere. 

As a community we need to back the people that need help.  All this anger let's direct it someplace positive.  Let's get the game going again.  Leo has that seed and has been care-taking it.  That seed has grown a little under his care.  For lack of better words, it's alive and there's hope.  Now it's time to show him that it's safe to release what's grown and recreate the forest that was once City of Heroes and in a way that no company can every take that away again.   

If you are angry, yes you I'm talking directly to you behind the monitor: direct it to NCSoft.

I think people have a little bit of a right to be hurt and untrustworthy of the intent of the secret server at this point.  The fact a playable version of the game has existed for 6 years but in total secret is a little disheartening.  Most of us came here just to get a little memory of it while there were people who have been playing the actual game for years and years now.  The code is already in the hands of the people who can help us.  The problem is we don't know if they are actually doing anything to help us anymore.  We know they are doing plenty to help the server, and maintain its secrecy and they are just asking to us to trust it was for the good of the community after they were just caught lying about its existence for 6 years.

NCSoft took the game away from everyone, we all accepted that and got angry at them.  And now we are being told the game is actually still around, in a fully playable state, and has been for years but is being kept secret for the majority of the community that said they would do anything to play the game again.  NCSoft didn't rebuild the server and keep it a secret.  I already distrusted NCSoft, now I am not sure if I should distrust SCoRE or not.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: TonyV on April 18, 2019, 12:45:33 AM
Why does my post explaining to Tony V why this block of text

I don't know, I don't memorize all of the posts I delete. Probably because of other stuff in it?

Is just tech fluff and not complicated or expensive keep disappearing? It's not insulting or attacking anyone. I'll simplify in hopes its not removed.

The only real costing item in that list is Mapservers. The rest is very basic and simple stuff, The idea that each one is an individual server is incorrect and misleading.

By "server," I mean it in the sense of client-server computing. A "server" in this sense is a distinct, running process that responds to client requests. I never intended it to mean a physical box. Although make no mistake: There WERE a bunch of high-end enterprise-level boxes running all of this software.

Account server for example. is a thing that when you click login, it's a web server that takes that request that you've sent and goes is this person legit. It's like logging into a forum thats all an account server is.

That's not all an account server is in this case. There were also ties into what level of privileges you have, ties into the store to figure out what stuff you owned, a crapton of anti-intrusion measures, since this was the gateway into the game and back-end processes, yadda yadda yadda. And while I don't know the precise architecture, I suspect that the account server probably had things like clustering and/or load balancing baked into the executable so that during peak hours it could process large numbers of logins simultaneously without dying.

Point is, you're almost certainly grossly underestimating how much computing power a simple "account server" required, and you're completely ignoring how complicated the configuration and actual execution of it is.

Even mapserver isn't that complicated to operate. You have to remember, most of this was targeted at 2003/4 hardware. We're lightyears ahead in terms of equipment and costs. Fitting thousands of people in one spot is extra work certainly, but we're talking about individual private servers here, that would probably not feature 1000+ people at a time.

Yes, it was. This was the software that kept track of every entity in a zone or instance--players, NPCs, environmental entities (cars, trains, meteors, burning oil patches, etc.) Whether you have one person in an instance or 1000, all of that stuff still has to be tracked. I don't think I'm going out on a limb in saying that player characters are actually just a percent or two, if that much, of all the stuff that a map server tracks.

I'm not going to continue arguing about this, my impressions are from the people who actually worked on the stuff told me over the years. If you want further (or more definitive) clarification, go bug the former devs. (Or Leo, apparently he knows too...) Towards the end of the game's life, there were efforts to try to clean up the code and make it less complicated to configure and run, and as I recall they were beginning efforts to consolidate some of these server processes on fewer, BIG honkin' boxes, but they never really got much time to work on those kinds of efforts because they were constantly scrambling to get the next issue out the door.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 18, 2019, 12:48:20 AM
I don't know, I don't memorize all of the posts I delete. Probably because of other stuff in it?

By "server," I mean it in the sense of client-server computing. A "server" in this sense is a distinct, running process that responds to client requests. I never intended it to mean a physical box. Although make no mistake: There WERE a bunch of high-end enterprise-level boxes running all of this software.

That's not all an account server is in this case. There were also ties into what level of privileges you have, ties into the store to figure out what stuff you owned, a crapton of anti-intrusion measures, since this was the gateway into the game and back-end processes, yadda yadda yadda. And while I don't know the precise architecture, I suspect that the account server probably had things like clustering and/or load balancing baked into the executable so that during peak hours it could process large numbers of logins simultaneously without dying.

Point is, you're almost certainly grossly underestimating how much computing power a simple "account server" required, and you're completely ignoring how complicated the configuration and actual execution of it is.

Yes, it was. This was the software that kept track of every entity in a zone or instance--players, NPCs, environmental entities (cars, trains, meteors, burning oil patches, etc.) Whether you have one person in an instance or 1000, all of that stuff still has to be tracked. I don't think I'm going out on a limb in saying that player characters are actually just a percent or two, if that much, of all the stuff that a map server tracks.

I'm not going to continue arguing about this, my impressions are from the people who actually worked on the stuff told me over the years. If you want further clarification, go bug Matt Miller or some of the other former devs. Towards the end of the game's life, there were efforts to try to clean up the code and make it less complicated to configure and run, and as I recall they were beginning efforts to consolidate some of these server processes on fewer, BIG honkin' boxes, but they never really got much time to work on those kinds of efforts because they were constantly scrambling to get the next issue out the door.

I appreciate your clarifications Tony. As i said before, My info on these things is mostly from other MMOs, if CoH was truly this spaghetti then i feel for the CoH devs. However, as none of us have seen the code we do not know this to be the truth, even if its not the truth any longer. You nor i know if anyone else could be up to task and until the code is out, we never will. Kind of a moot point, but at least i got to respond and see your responce without deletion. The other stuff was not hostile, just further tech mumbojumbo.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 18, 2019, 12:57:29 AM
I appreciate your clarifications Tony. As i said before, My info on these things is mostly from other MMOs, if CoH was truly this spaghetti then i feel for the CoH devs. However, as none of us have seen the code we do not know this to be the truth, even if its not the truth any longer. You nor i know if anyone else could be up to task and until the code is out, we never will. Kind of a moot point, but at least i got to respond and see your responce without deletion. The other stuff was not hostile, just further tech mumbojumbo.

Well I am sure it is possible someone else could do it, I do believe it is rather complicated.  I don't really know anything about the tech side of all of this, but I do feel I can believe the multiple people (Devs included) who said it was a mess to work with.  But Leo certainly is not the only human on the entire planet who can do it, he just may be the only one with the code that is able to do it.  Whether it be coding or any other walk of life - someone else, somewhere else, is just as good.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 18, 2019, 01:01:12 AM
Please unclamp your jaws from my head, thank you.

Congrats!   You made me laugh!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: eabrace on April 18, 2019, 01:01:55 AM
Just for the record, if you guys keep giving Codewalker credit for Sentinel+, you're going to summon GuyPerfect.   For the sake of my own sanity, please don't.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 18, 2019, 01:05:52 AM
Just for the record, if you guys keep giving Codewalker credit for Sentinel+, you're going to summon GuyPerfect.   For the sake of my own sanity, please don't.

He always entertained me.   There is no higher praise.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 18, 2019, 01:07:03 AM
Just for the record, if you guys keep giving Codewalker credit for Sentinel+, you're going to summon GuyPerfect.   For the sake of my own sanity, please don't.
Oh woops....I already started the ritual to summon him :( In true CoH style I was doing a CoT ritual so it may end up with a few demons on the loose as well.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: P51mus on April 18, 2019, 01:18:32 AM
It's worth noting that in his video, People's Hero Mr. Destroyer Stroyer specifically called out how:
  • When he hosted an event in Rikti War Zone, "RZW ran like crap" with more than a handful of people in the zone

Since no one has really refuted this since it's been posted, I'd just like to say that I ran in some RWZ raids when the game was still running on official servers, and they always ran like crap on the official servers.

RWZ raids not running well is not any kind of evidence of it not being ready to release.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 18, 2019, 01:32:54 AM
If by RWZ raids, you mean mother ship raids.   I agree with you. 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 01:38:23 AM
Ironwolf, you're got a lot of clout and grit.

Let's stay positive. A playable version of CoH still exists.  Just let that sink in. 

This is to anyone that'll listen:
Let go of your anger, or use is for some good.  Step back and take some breaths, do some yoga or punch something.  Cry your eyes out.  Yell at the sky.  Do what you need to do.  Take a beat.

Now,
What can be done so everyone can play and enjoy the game?  Let's solve that problem. Who can help Leo (or whomever has the code).  Remember, there was a source behind this: Leo got it from somewhere. 

As a community we need to back the people that need help.  All this anger let's direct it someplace positive.  Let's get the game going again.  Leo has that seed and has been care-taking it.  That seed has grown a little under his care.  For lack of better words, it's alive and there's hope.  Now it's time to show him that it's safe to release what's grown and recreate the forest that was once City of Heroes and in a way that no company can every take that away again.   

If you are angry, yes you I'm talking directly to you behind the monitor: direct it to NCSoft.

I am not really angry - more disappointed that some people lost sight of the goal.

They found Van Gogh's Starry Night left in the attic of a house and instead of sharing it with the world - or even attempt to - they had it locked in a safe and showed it to their friends only. Many people spent thousands of hours enjoying the world in our own painting. When we thought it was gone, destroyed in a moment as the game literally stopped in our arms - we found out someone had it all along.

Can you imagine a world without Van Gogh? Isaac Asimov? Harry Freaking Dresden? To some of us this was art and joy as we sat and watched the sun set on Talos.

It disappoints me that so many unknowns exist - could those purchasing the game have had access to this code? Would it have been simpler for them to negotiate for the rights of the game if they didn't need NCSoft to help? I just see wasted time and the final cart being pushed down the road as they yell bring out your dead. I fear this killed the game - not the leaks but the fear and honestly from my point of view insanity of a few.

If they said - we will kept one secret as a back up and open one and see what happens - I would completely understand never showing the secret one if the open one was C&D'd. It wasn't what they did - they did hide, lie and deflect for YEARS. I am stubborn, but very disappointed.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 18, 2019, 01:41:54 AM
Congrats!   You made me laugh!

Consider that payback for helping me locate the CIT where I cringed while reading a roleplay character profile I wrote a decade ago.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 01:42:57 AM
If by RWZ raids, you mean mother ship raids.   I agree with you.

It would be easier listing raids that werent laggy tbh
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 18, 2019, 01:47:12 AM
Consider that payback for helping me locate the CIT where I cringed while reading a roleplay character profile I wrote a decade ago.

Be thankful it was there for you to read.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 18, 2019, 01:47:41 AM
I am not really angry - more disappointed that some people lost sight of the goal.

They found Van Gogh's Starry Night left in the attic of a house and instead of sharing it with the world - or even attempt to - they had it locked in a safe and showed it to their friends only. Many people spent thousands of hours enjoying the world in our own painting. When we thought it was gone, destroyed in a moment as the game literally stopped in our arms - we found out someone had it all along.

Can you imagine a world without Van Gogh? Isaac Asimov? Harry Freaking Dresden? To some of us this was art and joy as we sat and watched the sun set on Talos.

It disappoints me that so many unknowns exist - could those purchasing the game have had access to this code? Would it have been simpler for them to negotiate for the rights of the game if they didn't need NCSoft to help? I just see wasted time and the final cart being pushed down the road as they yell bring out your dead. I fear this killed the game - not the leaks but the fear and honestly from my point of view insanity of a few.

If they said - we will kept one secret as a back up and open one and see what happens - I would completely understand never showing the secret one if the open one was C&D'd. It wasn't what they did - they did hide, lie and deflect for YEARS. I am stubborn, but very disappointed.

Basically where I am at, just really disappointed.  And to make it worse, judging by what I have seen from various leaks - there was no intent to make this public.  I will say it makes me a little angry when I see "This was for the good of the community and now it's ruined" because its insulting to be asked to trust someone who just lied to you for 6 years.  My chances of playing CoH were already at 0% I don't know why I should believe this whole leak has somehow made it even more unlikely for me to ever play.  The only thing SCoRE could do in retaliation is...create a private server and not invite most people.  If the code is taken away from them by NCSoft, or they decide to get rid of it.  The vast majority of the community is exactly in the same place we have been in for 7 years.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 18, 2019, 01:48:58 AM
It would be easier listing raids that werent laggy tbh

"Ground to a halt" might be a better description.  It was still fun and I'd do it again.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Dale-Man on April 18, 2019, 01:53:00 AM
When I found out about this server, honestly, I was thrilled! The fact that there is a working server is good news.  If you asked me last week, I would have thought I most likely would never play this game again. Now, I am 99% sure that I will.

It seems there is a whole team of people working on this server. I doubt they're getting paid; this would be a labor of love. I am confident they will release the code if for no other reason than because I have a hard time believing their end goal is to have a low population server all to themselves.

Instead of assuming the worst, let's hope for the best. That is all we can do.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 18, 2019, 01:57:04 AM
When I found out about this server, honestly, I was thrilled! The fact that there is a working server is good news. I was hopeful that there was a secret  If you asked me last week, I would have thought I most likely would never play this game again. Now, I am 99% sure that I will.

It seems there is a whole team of people working on this server. I doubt they're getting paid; this would be a labor of love. I am confident they will release the code if for no other reason than because I have a hard time believing their end goal is to have a low population server all to themselves.

Instead of assuming the worst, let's hope for the best. That is all we can do.

I appreciate the optimism and I hope it does mean we can all play again.  Perhaps I've read too much bias from one side.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 01:58:06 AM
When I found out about this server, honestly, I was thrilled! The fact that there is a working server is good news.  If you asked me last week, I would have thought I most likely would never play this game again. Now, I am 99% sure that I will.

It seems there is a whole team of people working on this server. I doubt they're getting paid; this would be a labor of love. I am confident they will release the code if for no other reason than because I have a hard time believing their end goal is to have a low population server all to themselves.

Instead of assuming the worst, let's hope for the best. That is all we can do.

They have had the server working for at least 6 years. The original game ran for 8 years. They have nearly had the Elitist server open for nearly as long as the game ran legally, let that sink in and tell me again how they ever planned to share the game.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 18, 2019, 02:02:46 AM
They have had the server working for at least 6 years. The original game ran for 8 years. They have nearly had the Elitist server open for nearly as long as the game ran legally, let that sink in and tell me again how they ever planned to share the game.

This is pretty much how i feel about this.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 18, 2019, 02:05:37 AM
If we ever do get to play again, a supergroup comprised of the participants in this thread over the last 3 days would be so outrageously dysfunctional we could basically make it a youtube reality show.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 02:07:26 AM
This is pretty much how i feel about this.

I just remember the hope we had in a buyer and all the while these guys had the server. I want people to stop peeing on my head and telling me its raining.

I really am a boy scout, a veteran and believe in honor, duty and kindness and this whole thing stinks to high heaven.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 18, 2019, 02:08:34 AM
And my post complaining about how the censorship of this site is restricting it all to an unrelated thread years old got censored.

No message of course.

No response about why this thread is the most suitable.

If I were to guess its because this is the most likely place people on this forum will know to look.  This post eventually became "official unofficial general discussion channel"  I imagine to prevent multiple threads from popping up, it was easiest to direct even who to the most popular, and commonly read the thread.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 18, 2019, 02:09:56 AM
I just remember the hope we had in a buyer and all the while these guys had the server. I want people to stop peeing on my head and telling me its raining.

I really am a boy scout, a veteran and believe in honor, duty and kindness and this whole thing stinks to high heaven.

I remember seeing your posts and it just gave me the most hope(this thread technically?). Then it just went silent...at least we know the truths now. It's better than just sitting here and hoping. Attending events and being told by the people in control to keep hope while they got to log in to the game and play behind our backs.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 18, 2019, 02:12:21 AM
Gonna echo the hope thing.  I remember how excited I was when I read all that.  I mean even now we are still using that same forum post years later.  I probably annoyed the hell out of everyone I know because I wouldn't shut up about the "superhero MMO I use to play might come back!"

Now I am just annoying them by complaining about how bummed I am there has been a secret server for years.  Bummed about the secretive, deceptive part.  Glad the game code still exists.

EDIT: I even remember where I was when I read the forum post like it was yesterday (This coming from a guy who forgets where his keys are on a daily basis).  That was the most excited and hopeful I have been about probably any game, ever.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 18, 2019, 02:16:08 AM
Dysfunctional because...?They got lied to and got hurt and are passionate about the game they loved? You're being more aggressive and uncivil than most of the people you claim are dysfunctional.

There we go with the knee jerk biting off of the head again.

It was a joke. I'm more talking about the fact that so many people in here are going back and forth and there is no general consensus over anything, you have people on all levels of the spectrum of responses to the news in this thread. That's why putting us all in one group would be dysfunctional, it's The Odd Couple aspect of it, I wasn't calling anyone in here dysfunctional people. Points for the triple axel over the gun though.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 02:18:15 AM
There we go with the knee jerk biting off of the head again.

It was a joke. I'm more talking about the fact that so many people in here are going back and forth and there is no general consensus over anything, you have people on all levels of the spectrum of responses to the news in this thread. That's why putting us all in one group would be dysfunctional, it's The Odd Couple aspect of it, I wasn't calling anyone in here dysfunctional people. Points for the triple axel over the gun though.
Lol, sounds like most pug TF's I got in - was there some reason we just aggro'd that 6th group?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 02:24:34 AM
> If you are angry, yes you I'm talking directly to you behind the monitor: direct it to NCSoft.

And direct it to the people who gaslight and lied about the private cool kids server.

I'm going to be as gentle as I can with this, but I just wanted to second the notion that I think we need to acknowledge and get some sort of comment on some of the nasty behavior that's went on before the reveal. Stuff like the aforementioned gaslighting and lying. Not to mention the numerous people driven out of various coh communities, some here, the subreddit, the Facebook etc when people started getting close to finding out about score and what they were doing.

People were laughed out. Pushed out. Treated like flat earther big foot believer Alex Jones conspiracy nuts for believing in something that ended up being completely true. Regardless of whether anyone thinks that hiding the truth was required or not, I think there needs to be some apologies given to the people that were excluded and ruined for getting close to the truth.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ice Trix on April 18, 2019, 02:24:54 AM
I just remember the hope we had in a buyer and all the while these guys had the server. I want people to stop peeing on my head and telling me its raining.

I really am a boy scout, a veteran and believe in honor, duty and kindness and this whole thing stinks to high heaven.

 I really used to have had high opinions about the importance of community to many of the people now claiming it's raining. These were people whose word I trusted.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kheprera on April 18, 2019, 02:27:21 AM
Lol, sounds like most pug TF's I got in - was there some reason we just aggro'd that 6th group?

Sorry, that was me. Accidentally turned on Superspeed after being hit with Speed Boost, lost control, got lost in the office map, and ended up smack dab in the middle of the room with the boss. Just use my corpse for Fallout.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Doc Boy on April 18, 2019, 02:30:06 AM
I found my original Titan Network account, woo!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 18, 2019, 02:45:26 AM
I'm going to be as gentle as I can with this, but I just wanted to second the notion that I think we need to acknowledge and get some sort of comment on some of the nasty behavior that's went on before the reveal. Stuff like the aforementioned gaslighting and lying. Not to mention the numerous people driven out of various coh communities, some here, the subreddit, the Facebook etc when people started getting close to finding out about score and what they were doing.

People were laughed out. Pushed out. Treated like flat earther big foot believer Alex Jones conspiracy nuts for believing in something that ended up being completely true. Regardless of whether anyone thinks that hiding the truth was required or not, I think there needs to be some apologies given to the people that were excluded and ruined for getting close to the truth.

This is one reason I feel so dumb.  I was one of those "no way just a crazy theory you whacko" people because I was being told it was impossible. Turns out it was very much so possible but I was being told otherwise by some members of the community that were saying they had the best interest of CoH at heart, and the knowledge to back it up.  There are a lot of very active, and popular, members of this community who I am now wondering "Were they in the know?" They had the knowledge, the connections, and the discretion to get an invite.  I am not accusing anyone or interested in naming anyone because I wouldn't even know where to begin and it doesn't really matter anyway. I don't blame them for keeping their lips sealed.

 I just have a lot of questions that I don't think will be answered.  Discretion is the smartest option for anyone in the know and involved right now, and the rest of us can only speculate.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 18, 2019, 02:54:40 AM
Massively OP's special edition podcast on our topic of the day:

https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/17/massively-op-podcast-episode-217-city-of-heroes-after-dark/

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ice Trix on April 18, 2019, 03:02:42 AM
If I were to guess its because this is the most likely place people on this forum will know to look.  This post eventually became "official unofficial general discussion channel"  I imagine to prevent multiple threads from popping up, it was easiest to direct even who to the most popular, and commonly read the thread.

Well, you have to guess, as the mods keep deleting it. Almost like they don't want people pointing out that a five year thread with 1000+ pages of unrelated content is about the least visible place.

Anyone doubting censorship isn't paying attention.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 18, 2019, 03:09:27 AM
Well, you have to guess, as the mods keep deleting it. Almost like they don't want people pointing out that a five year thread with 1000+ pages of unrelated content is about the least visible place.

Anyone doubting censorship isn't paying attention.

It's not really the mods fault that the discussion landed here in the first place, that comes down to the first few posters who brought it into this thread and kick the discussion off in here.

Quarantining a large topic like this is fairly common, or else you just let it turn into complete unmitigated anarchy, similar to the subreddit currently. They let it stay on this topic because this one had the most activity on the discussion at that time. I suppose they could all move it to one super thread or something but that would be a lot of tedious work to migrate 3 days of discussion onto a new thread, I'd think.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ice Trix on April 18, 2019, 03:20:47 AM
It's not really the mods fault that the discussion landed here in the first place, that comes down to the first few posters who brought it into this thread and kick the discussion off in here.

Quarantining a large topic like this is fairly common, or else you just let it turn into complete unmitigated anarchy, similar to the subreddit currently. They let it stay on this topic because this one had the most activity on the discussion at that time. I suppose they could all move it to one super thread or something but that would be a lot of tedious work to migrate 3 days of discussion onto a new thread, I'd think.

It really wouldnt have been difficult to close this discussion rather than the "https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=13277.0" which was started within minutes of this thread taking off with the issue.

Even if it hadn't, it's standard forum stuff to make a mega thread if needed. Without need to move threads/posts. Or without the need to delete posts of why it should be elsewhere.

This is biggest news in City of Heroes fandom for years, and cohtitan relegates it to a back water thread.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Crimsanotic on April 18, 2019, 03:33:19 AM
It's not really the mods fault that the discussion landed here in the first place, that comes down to the first few posters who brought it into this thread and kick the discussion off in here.

Yes it is. They told people to post in this thread lmao
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 18, 2019, 03:47:40 AM
Yes it is. They told people to post in this thread lmao

The post on this thread about the subject predates the mods directing people here,though, only by about 20 minutes to be fair.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 18, 2019, 03:50:15 AM
Massively OP's special edition podcast on our topic of the day:

https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/17/massively-op-podcast-episode-217-city-of-heroes-after-dark/

That was entertaining but  I disagree with the show's opinion that there is no path to redemption for the SCORE team within the CoX community.  Just hearing that statement makes me feel ashamed for all of us.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 18, 2019, 03:55:28 AM
They have had the server working for at least 6 years.

This is necessarily at you per se, Ironwolf, just you're the most recent to use the 6 year term. I'm not confident that they had it running in the state it's in for 6 years... Several, to be sure, but what I'm seeing is that it was *started* 6 years ago, and did take at least a little bit of time to be playable.

Can you imagine a world without Van Gogh? Isaac Asimov? Harry Freaking Dresden?

 ??? You just included Harry Dresden on a list to be equal with Van Gogh and Asimov... I now have some serious concerns about your state of mind.

Edit: Due to the migration of posts from "New Efforts" to this thread, the quotes above no longer link properly. But they are unmodified, and the originals can be found in this thread (I don't want to put the effort in right now).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on April 18, 2019, 04:05:31 AM
It would be easier listing raids that werent laggy tbh
i did at least three dozen Mothership Raids on two servers and so far i'm up to approximately...
Let's see, carry the one and add three...
zero.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 04:05:49 AM
That was entertaining but  I disagree with the show's opinion that there is no path to redemption for the SCORE team within the CoX community.  Just hearing that statement makes me feel ashamed for all of us.

Why? They lied, shamed and gas lighted us for up to 6 years. I don't think it's a stretch to claim the score users have an uphill climb ahead of them to regain everyone's trust. Trust that we can at least agree they've broken.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 18, 2019, 04:06:18 AM
That was entertaining but  I disagree with the show's opinion that there is no path to redemption for the SCORE team within the CoX community.  Just hearing that statement makes me feel ashamed for all of us.

It certainly will take some time to get over, and trust will likely never be there again.  I mean I can't help but be a little upset when I think of all the times I missed CoH and it was actually playable somewhere in secret.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 04:07:43 AM
This is necessarily at you per se, Ironwolf, just you're the most recent to use the 6 year term. I'm not confident that they had it running in the state it's in for 6 years... Several, to be sure, but what I'm seeing is that it was *started* 6 years ago, and did take at least a little bit of time to be playable.

 ??? You just included Harry Dresden on a list to be equal with Van Gogh and Asimov... I now have some serious concerns about your state of mind.

If you read the comments after the podcast Bree logged into the server in 2013. She never played on it but Leondro showed her what they were doing. I can easily guess who was doing what on the development side, I am sure all of you can as well.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 18, 2019, 04:13:22 AM
If you read the comments after the podcast Bree logged into the server in 2013. She never played on it but Leondro showed her what they were doing. I can easily guess who was doing what on the development side, I am sure all of you can as well.

Yeah, I read that after my comment. Fortunately I dodged the incoming egg, but now I've gotta clean up my wall.

Edit: Due to the migration of posts from "New Efforts" to this thread, the quote above no longer links properly. But it is unmodified, and the original can be found in this thread (I don't want to put the effort in right now).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on April 18, 2019, 04:29:49 AM
It really wouldnt have been difficult to close this discussion rather than the "https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=13277.0 (https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=13277.0)" which was started within minutes of this thread taking off with the issue.

Even if it hadn't, it's standard forum stuff to make a mega thread if needed. Without need to move threads/posts. Or without the need to delete posts of why it should be elsewhere.

This is biggest news in City of Heroes fandom for years, and cohtitan relegates it to a back water thread.
This has been the primary thread for discussing matters related to playing CoH again since the official servers were shut down. When i check into the forums to look for news it's the first thread i look at. In my opinion your definition of backwater needs work since this thread is no more of a backwater than the rest of the Titan Network. Which it is to a certain extent since its focus is on an MMO that was shut down years ago, and until recently with no known private/emulated servers.


i'd certainly like to see the server code made more widely available, and while i will concede that some of Leandro's "explanation" (basically "oh we were planning to let more people know about it any week now, yup any week, but you all had to go and ruin it") is at the least extremely reminiscent of gaslighting behavior i'm still hoping that *someone* will release it somewhere accessible. At this point i've sort of given up on CoH being purchased from NCsoft since i'm guessing it helps to pad out their soft manger full of mothballed games, and many other *running* MMOs (such as WoW, and including a fair number of Korean MMOs) have unofficial private servers running. i've watched a variety of MMO recommendation videos on Youtube that actually specifically direct people on how to locate these game servers to play them, but i guess most other publishers are less aggressively, vindictively litigious than NCsoft. Even Blizzard is more tolerant.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tubbius on April 18, 2019, 04:30:31 AM
To know that folks might have been playing as my Tubbius or Waddle the Penguin or been having occasional fun with some of my Architect PENGUIN levels. . . Sigh. :-\

At least someone could have been enjoying my hard work, I guess.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on April 18, 2019, 04:39:55 AM

until recently with no known private/emulated servers.
Oh, and i'm not trying to disparage the work of the SEGS people, they've made impressive progress, especially recently, but they're still a ways from having a working server with all the basic functionality needed to be a superhero MMO.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 18, 2019, 04:40:00 AM
I don't believe it would have ever been released a quote from the Reddit Mole:

The policy was in place from at least 2013. Please be careful about assigning malice to these policies. We are talking about people willing to risk their personal freedom to keep the world alive and maintaining strict secrecy with harsh consequences was just how it had to be done in their minds. I hope these answers satisfy for now.

They were justifying themselves for 6 years that it was the only way to keep "their" home - not OUR home.

Uhh.... What you're quoting from "the mole" as an indictment of Leo is actually exonerating. Here is someone who stopped being involved with this project because they objected to the secrecy and to Leo's policy say this:

"Please be careful about assigning malice to these policies."

He disagreed with that policy and yet, doesn't think it came from bad intentions.

But this goes to my earlier point with people taking "evidence" in the worst possible reading rather than any benefit of the doubt.

People kept a secret and it gets called "gaslighting." Yeah, people keeping a secret will lie about it. It's called keeping a secret. "Gaslighting" is intentionally fooling someone to drive them crazy. Calling what SCoRE did 'gaslighting' is despicable in imputing such malign intentions.

In a leaked letter, we see Leo getting angry at someone for posting about the secret project and chews their head off... like any of us would do if someone publicized our secret project which they had agreed to keep secret. And yet, the very letter they post (on reddit) shows Leo offering that person another chance! But that gets ignored and they just focus on the angry part and accuse Leo of bullying people ignoring the person who broke their promise to keep it secret.

Seriously, every bit of "evidence" people have shown has utterly failed to convince me in the slightest that their accusations of bad intent have any merit.

If they want to be angry that they weren't involved or that the project was secret, fine. Totally understandable. But assigning malice? Despicable.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on April 18, 2019, 04:46:59 AM
People kept a secret and it gets called "gaslighting." Yeah, people keeping a secret will lie about it. It's called keeping a secret. "Gaslighting" is intentionally fooling someone to drive them crazy. Calling what SCoRE did 'gaslighting' is despicable in imputing such malign intentions.
To me the specific bit about how they were planning to release the server in the very near future until the leaker ruined it seems rather suspiciously like a gaslighting tactic, and gaslighting isn't simply about driving people crazy, it's a way of trying to manipulate people, frequently by trying to convince them that everything bad that is done is their own fault, not the other person's. It's simply that i don't find it credible that after six years of work SCoRE was at most weeks away from giving more access until the leaker suddenly ruined everything.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 04:54:51 AM
Gas lighting is simply put: convincing someone their sanity is suspect to conceal a lie.

There have been numerous times both in the subreddit, and this forum that people bringing up the existence of a secret server have been met with labels of stupidity and "crackpot conspiracy theories". Even going as far to link believing in a secret server to believing in bigfoot, ufos, and that the earth is flat.

That is the definition of gas lighting.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ulysses Dare on April 18, 2019, 05:00:15 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 18, 2019, 05:14:34 AM
To know that folks might have been playing as my Tubbius or Waddle the Penguin or been having occasional fun with some of my Architect PENGUIN levels. . . Sigh. :-\

At least someone could have been enjoying my hard work, I guess.
Uhm, didn't they say that characters and account info were not given with the code as such data was not needed to run the server and would be a massive privacy breach?

Anyway,  I am glad there is a secret server somewhere out there.  I am bummed that I am not on it being able to recreate some of my characters and having some fun again.

I've been playing a lot of classic games since the shut down but have not yet found an MMO that I like. Star Wars to be was a dud, never liked WoW, DC disappointed, Marvel stinks, Champions is one big nerf sponge, etc.

Hoping for Titans, SoH or Valiance to get up and running, and  of course the occasional visit to Paragon Chat for nostalgia.

But seriously if they can find a country where Korea and the US cannot shut down the servers, then set them up there, launch a few servers and let us get into them and play again. That way the CoH community can turn to NCSoft, the ones who shut it all down and refuse to sell it, and express our true feelings to them.  8)   

I'm thinking a giant middle finger to NCSoft would suffice....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 18, 2019, 05:15:48 AM
I can't speak for why someone would call it crackpot when, as people have already quoted often in this thread, Tony had posted about the SCoRE project back in its infancy. Did Leo call it crackpot?

If posts were removed, I can understand why the mods wouldn't want such a discussion about potentially illegal activity discussed on the boards.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Doc Boy on April 18, 2019, 05:17:39 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 18, 2019, 05:23:46 AM
I can't speak for why someone would call it crackpot when, as people have already quoted often in this thread, Tony had posted about the SCoRE project back in its infancy. Did Leo call it crackpot?

If posts were removed, I can understand why the mods wouldn't want such a discussion about potentially illegal activity discussed on the boards.

It wasn't that SCoRE was working on a server that people considered crackpot.  It was that there was a secret fully functional server in existence that was invitation only, that people considered to be a crackpot conspiracy theory.  Turns out it was true.

On this very forum, it was compared to flat earth conspiracies, the fake moon landing, and reptile overlords.  Now I don't think all, if any, of the people who made these comparisons knew about the server and was saying this to throw the scent off.  I know I thought it was a crazy conspiracy theory.  But this is because I, and many others, were being told it was impossible by the very people hosting a secret server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Leandro on April 18, 2019, 06:00:37 AM
*
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 18, 2019, 06:04:19 AM
Leandro, if you're here and posting, please, please, tell us you plan to release the code, that you plan to let more people play.

Please give us something more than this post.

It would mean a lot to a lot of us.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 18, 2019, 06:08:41 AM
Snipped

Thank you for your reply.  I still have questions as well, but it does actually please me to know that at least some players got to play again before they passed away.  I will say as someone who isn't part of that 3539 it does hurt to know a game I missed so much has been around for quite some time, but I hope this does lead to a way all of us can play again.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Reiraku on April 18, 2019, 06:11:35 AM
I don't know why, but there's a bit of comfort for me knowing Tre got to play a bit before he passed. I'm glad he got to be in the city he loved one last time.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 06:17:33 AM
If you are truly working on getting the server up and running for public release, now is the time to create a public roadmap of your progress/destination and post it somewhere so that everyone can see it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Castegyre on April 18, 2019, 06:21:23 AM
Interesting and touching. The thing I always miss the most from these games is also the thing that genuinely makes them engaging, the people I've played alongside. They're worth remembering.

My cynicism is rearing it's ugly head, though, so I'll shut up before I say something stupid... er.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 18, 2019, 07:22:11 AM
I appreciate seeing a declaration of progress and public release, even if it's just a long overdue renewed declaration, it's a definite step in the right direction at this point.

That's a couple of the more common questions asked too, in the very least, and a thoughtful naming system.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 18, 2019, 07:41:08 AM
Since no one has really refuted this since it's been posted, I'd just like to say that I ran in some RWZ raids when the game was still running on official servers, and they always ran like crap on the official servers.

RWZ raids not running well is not any kind of evidence of it not being ready to release.

The paragon devs fixed the server side issues for large scale events like the msr quite some time ago. We had a server stress test event in peregrine island where they spawned thousands of praetorian idf soldiers. Large leagues, msrs, hami, and the rikti/zombie apocalypse were 100% fixed by the patch they applied. Only those with potatoe computers and and god awful internet still had problems.
Now Whatever that fix was probably hasnt been applied to this private server or the server hardware itself is lacking.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 07:54:20 AM
I appreciate seeing a declaration of progress and public release,

I hate to be "that person", but nothing in his post mentioned a public release. Just that he wasn't getting things 'ready' fast enough and was taking too long. I know it feels like absolute semantics to point out a simple lack of the word public in his release plans...but he also claimed in his original interview with MassivelyOP that it was his fear of C&D from NCsoft what was keeping him from going public, and that he and the SCoRE team would never go public until they were sure they would not be under threat from NCSoft. Not a lack of development like now.

So yes, it's sad that he had a series of personal tragedies and setbacks that kept him from finishing the server for four years past his initial plans, he's already admitted the servers are never going public until NCSoft themselves say it's okay. Which...I mean I don't need to finish that sentence.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 18, 2019, 07:58:20 AM
To be clear. I've been a strong opponent of the actions they took. However, he just spent hours being open and honest with people on the SEGS discord. This is exactly the action I've mentioned before would help restore faith and mend wounds. I appreciate that he did that, and so did the many many people there for it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 18, 2019, 08:04:35 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 18, 2019, 08:16:27 AM
I don't hate to be "That person" I've had my hand in running private servers (Not COH related) So I know a thing or two about setbacks.

So I'm going to say what nobody wants to hear but needs to be said.

Instead of coming out with all the pitchforks and torches, because THAT is EASY...

We should do what is NOT Easy.

Instead... we should put on our capes and be heroes.

Heal your wounds.

Come back together as the community we are supposed to be and if at all possible...

Dear God if at all possible...please, support Leo.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 08:27:07 AM
Come back together as the community we are supposed to be

"The community" has been told we were stupid crackpots for thinking that there was a private server in the first place.

Why should the community now support the person who sought to divide the community to hide the existence of his secrets?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 18, 2019, 08:29:06 AM
HEAL.

YOUR.

WOUNDS.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 08:31:08 AM
HEAL.

YOUR.

WOUNDS.

You can't heal wounds you don't acknowledge first
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 18, 2019, 08:35:39 AM
You can't heal wounds you don't acknowledge first

Chill my dude, a lot of stuff went down and honestly i can say i feel Leo is not the enemy or a bad person. What happened is unfortunate but He does love CoH and is working for us not against us.

IF you don't believe me, check my earlier posts. I was right where you were.

I'm not trying to be vague, the stuff will come out through recordings from the segs discord and stuff soon no doubt. I don't personally have them or i'd show myself.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 18, 2019, 08:36:11 AM
Is that where you want to be?

Do you want to stay wounded?   Forever?
 
Is that your comfort zone?

Because I see the rift as Thanos.

We either Heal up, Patch up, or... *Snap*

I've made my choice.

I'll Heal.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 08:41:48 AM
Unfortunately my opinions and experiences from the last several years can't be changed in an afternoon of Soontm so quickly.

But I will be watching what happens over the next several days and I hope to be proven wrong.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 18, 2019, 08:42:48 AM
Approach with caution certainly. I'm satisfied with the transparency and honesty and am willing to give it a chance.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: summers on April 18, 2019, 08:52:54 AM
I just wanted to say thank you for talking to us, Leandro.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Voltixdark on April 18, 2019, 08:55:12 AM
Thank you Leo! I understand your hardship with real life things. We are not robots that never weary, but human. There are more important things in the real world then to strain yourself over something that is virtual. So I do hope you're in better health!

We appreciate your progress and forthcomingness. I can't speak for everyone, but I really do want to apologize for all the unwarranted hate/death threats you have received without even knowing the full story.

Anyways.. keep your head up I know we the people can be better than what was displayed these past few days.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Auroxis on April 18, 2019, 09:16:31 AM
Thanks for participating Leandro. I'm not 100% buying your side of the story about having limited time due to real life issues, considering how you spent your time hiding the existence of the server with relationship flowcharts, developing new content for the server, managing paragon chat, and silencing people.

That being said I have no problem with giving you the time you need. That time is not mine to give of course with NCSoft and insane people threatening you, but I hope that despite that you manage to pull through with the plans you set forward in your post.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Phocks on April 18, 2019, 09:20:15 AM
I am the asshole who didn't release things fast enough. That is a valid complaint. But that was not a decision that was done to harm the community because "f*** you, got mine" like so many people are saying.

I will say the whole body of the post is very unfortunate, especially hearing about the community passings and personal struggles. Sorry to hear you've had to deal with those though, and especially the negative overreactions and harassment following the announcement.

But I will say, the quoted portion there is something I (at least personally) sort of take exception with. It's not the timing alone that really makes or breaks it, it's sort of every decision around it. If it had taken this long with a team of 5 trying to get something ready, you wouldn't see this sort of reaction. But it's playing gatekeeper for a community of 3539 that's seen the game progress past where it was. It's getting something that everyone wanted that really wasn't yours to keep, and rather than paying it forward, you just kept it for that group anyway. The policies and practices and everything surrounding it that may have ostracized people is at least some part of that, too.

Nobody's gonna blame you for time passing or being human. People here were always willing to wait, but I don't think anyone wanted to be misled, lied to, and excluded.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: P51mus on April 18, 2019, 09:27:52 AM
There's a game I've kickstarted that's been in development for about as long as this private server has been up.  They had to toss a bunch of work because the original way they were doing it wasn't working out well, and had to take a bunch of side gigs to survive.  But it's still ongoing.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: DavidMadly on April 18, 2019, 09:55:05 AM
I don't hate to be "That person" I've had my hand in running private servers (Not COH related) So I know a thing or two about setbacks.

So I'm going to say what nobody wants to hear but needs to be said.

Instead of coming out with all the pitchforks and torches, because THAT is EASY...

We should do what is NOT Easy.

Instead... we should put on our capes and be heroes.

Heal your wounds.

Come back together as the community we are supposed to be and if at all possible...

Dear God if at all possible...please, support Leo.

All of this. I am far too full of renewed hope to have room for negative feelings.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Twi on April 18, 2019, 10:00:58 AM
HEAL.

YOUR.

WOUNDS.

Can't, I'm Trick Arrow/Archery!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Evilopoly90 on April 18, 2019, 10:23:23 AM
I really want this to work out. Despite all the hassle and the lies I just want the game back. However that gets into my hands is irrelevant. I'll forgive everyone involved if the game just comes out. That's all the community wants.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 10:26:29 AM
At this point - I will say one thing - be patient for a bit and stand by, I am not retired until August and have to ask about conflicts of interest issues.

I also get a sizable severance when I leave that I/we don't want to endanger for a couple of months waiting. I cannot do business during work hours and so that becomes an obvious issue.

I am going to be as honest and above board as possible, please be patient for a little longer.

Understand, I am a system admin on call normally 24/7 until August 31st.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Doc Boy on April 18, 2019, 11:23:56 AM
Its being posted everywhere, this happened in the wee hours of the night on discord there was over 100 people in voice chat during this period.

https://puu.sh/Dgpzj/32ed08128a.mp3
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 18, 2019, 11:42:46 AM
Okay so for years people that thought there was a secret server were called crazy, etc......

However during those early years, if NCSoft and the rest of us learned there was indeed a secret server, how fast would NCSoft have moved to kill that server?

Now after 7 years of shut down, despite refusal to sell the game....it is possible NCSoft won't care. Or not.

Frankly I hope this works out and we can all play again and give a giant middle finger to NCSoft.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Styrj on April 18, 2019, 12:28:28 PM
My sentiments exactly!  At this point, I hope for the best (to be able to frolic in the city again and expect the worst (as it is now - no CoH/V)).

The least NC could have done was to have put CoH/V in maintenance mode at I24.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Garble on April 18, 2019, 12:29:06 PM
This is so surreal. Over on Reddit yesterday there was a discussion of former gamers and what made them stop. This was the only big game I really ever got into. Then on facebook there was a post about some of this and was blown away. Immediately I came to CohTitan to read about it and found no specific threads.

This really needs a stickied thread. I rarely visit this thread because it's honestly just too big and too much. It's basically just a big chat room at this point.


Anyway, I can't be anything but grateful for Icon and Paragon Chat. I'm trying to be hopeful for the best possible outcome, whatever that is.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: bugzee on April 18, 2019, 01:03:47 PM
Well, I want to be positive about this. But looking forward, we still have the potential for another shutdown once NCSoft releases their legal hounds (if they haven't already). I also do not wish Leandro or anyone else to suffer legal consequences. Releasing the code 6 years ago would have at least ensured that the game will in some way always exist. Sure it may have meant a thousand private servers, but still, it would have ensured its continual existence. So now, we will always be faced with uncertainty with the game because its under control of only one person, or perhaps just a handful of individuals. I suppose the game will always have that proverbial sword hanging over its head.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 01:04:12 PM
More information will be coming - looks like my retirement will be really short.

Soon as possible more information and requests for help will be given.

To be crystal clear - I have no connection to a private server - I have never been on it and want no information about it. Detailed information about what is happening will be available as soon as possible. This will take a little time and planning to do.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 01:09:34 PM
If you are truly working on getting the server up and running for public release, now is the time to create a public roadmap of your progress/destination and post it somewhere so that everyone can see it.

No, now is the time for him to step back into the quiet.

We need others to pick up the torch, he carried it a long time and got burned a little.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Castegyre on April 18, 2019, 01:38:34 PM
Good luck with the things and stuff.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: summers on April 18, 2019, 01:40:09 PM
No, now is the time for him to step back into the quiet.

We need others to pick up the torch, he carried it a long time and got burned a little.

No, it's really not. We don't know what is happening - maybe you do, but those kinds of secrets are exactly what got us to the point we are at now.

People need to know what is happening.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on April 18, 2019, 01:45:40 PM
Here is hoping the code gets free and I can set up my own server and play solo :)
Wonder how many gigs the game is?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 18, 2019, 01:54:37 PM
No, it's really not. We don't know what is happening - maybe you do, but those kinds of secrets are exactly what got us to the point we are at now.

People need to know what is happening.

Leandro and some others are discussing what'll happen to the code over voice in the SEGS discord. I imagine things will filter out from there to here and reddit and so on.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kheprera on April 18, 2019, 01:58:33 PM
Leandro and some others are discussing what'll happen to the code over voice in the SEGS discord. I imagine things will filter out from there to here and reddit and so on.

They need to ensure the code is scrubbed. Listening to them as I work. I wish I could help, but my skills are weak in this kind of work.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Primus1 on April 18, 2019, 02:03:20 PM
Its being posted everywhere, this happened in the wee hours of the night on discord there was over 100 people in voice chat during this period.

https://puu.sh/Dgpzj/32ed08128a.mp3

What bugs me is Leandro said here that he needs to make sure if he releases the code, he doesn't want any paths to lead to the original person that leaked gets in trouble but they had 6-7 years to do this with a running game and chose to just play it instead for 6-7 years.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 02:04:00 PM
Can you quote where anybody said those words, above?

What I at least am saying is that whatever state it's in, what Destroyer Stroyer described is NOT some wonderful perfect copy of the original NCSoft server that Leandro has been sitting on and refusing to share.

Likewise, if they were considering an "event leading to a release" then the current level of scrutiny has convinced them that the current level of completeness is NOT ready for prime time.

I mean, you can't have it both ways. If you want to quote Leandro about the projected release and say, "He was going to release it sometime soon; it must be ready", you can't then ignore that it was also Leandro who decided that the current state of the server was NOT conducive to a release that will be scrutinized to the level that such a release will now be scrutinized. Likewise, if we take PC Gamer and/or Massively at face value regarding their emailed conversations with Leandro, then it appears that the issue is (and I freely admit that I'm speculating now) that he expects action from NCSoft as soon as the server is released, so he now wants to have it be not just "ready for testing" but "finished" to the point where no more work is required and it can be disseminated widely enough that action by NCSoft will be futile.

It doesn't really matter if you or I would say, "Frag the deficiencies! Give us the server!" Leandro's got the server and it's his yardstick that measures how close it is to ready; not ours.

The Sword of Damocles.

A fine post.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 02:11:08 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 18, 2019, 02:11:54 PM
No, now is the time for him to step back into the quiet.

We need others to pick up the torch, he carried it a long time and got burned a little.

No now is the time to not only live up to the lie but to release what they have. Especially witn idiotic
Change.org petitions and articles reaching out to ncsoft for comment.

If morons like that keep reminding ncsoft about this they will be more inclined to investigate.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Primus1 on April 18, 2019, 02:21:11 PM
No now is the time to not only live up to the lie but to release what they have. Especially witn idiotic
Change.org petitions and articles reaching out to ncsoft for comment.

If morons like that keep reminding ncsoft about this they will be more inclined to investigate.

Those news pages reaching out to NcSoft was the most idiotic thing they could've done.
They often write about COH whenever there is news as if they care but they would love for a huge "big drama show."
to write more about and get more views on their sites. Just dirty. 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Dev7on on April 18, 2019, 02:23:02 PM
Since the private City of Heroes server has been leaked are the people are going to continue with the spiritual successors such City of Titans, Ship of Heroes ect?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 18, 2019, 02:26:47 PM
Since the private City of Heroes server has been leaked are the people are going to continue with the spiritual successors such City of Titans, Ship of Heroes ect?

It's been said repeatedly by Missing Worlds Media and Heroic Games, if City of Heroes comes back, they'll keep going regardless.  I do not know for any other titles, but City of Titans and Ship of Heroes is full speed ahead.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: rookery. on April 18, 2019, 02:40:00 PM
Yep. Still looking forward to COT, SOH and the others.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: SilverAgeFan on April 18, 2019, 02:53:20 PM
<snip>

This is 16 servers that were bought over a period of 6 years to expand the population as fast as we could, because every single one of them was a remind of what happens when we take too long. We lose a friend. Then another. Then another.

Red Dragon, Lady Judgement, Janlee, Staff Kain, Raine Heartfall, Gloryhound, Mrs. PosiChimp, Reikun. So many more. They are not servers yet because we have not had the resources to remember them that way. Every single server is a reminder, and every single time I hear about the passing of a COH player, I am reminded that I'm not doing enough and I'm not doing things fast enough.

<snip>

I know the community is hurt and it's my fault. I am moving as fast as I can to try to make things better, but I can't make instantly get everything ready. I have not slept since my phone was published on Monday at 2am and notifications haven't stopped ringing since then.

Please. Have patience. I am only human. And I am trying really hard to keep almost 3539 people from being harrassed and threatened as I have been for the last 4 days.

Yes, almost 3539 people. Because many of them are not around anymore. And every single one of them is a reminder of my failure to make this work.

Leandro, thank you for coming in here and humanizing your side of this story, your efforts, and the losses you too have shared. Also thank you for giving some clarity to the Herculean nature of the work involved. The last 48 hours must have been traumatic and thankless for you.

I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but you have cemented my respect for you and regained a level of trust.

If there was a way to donate to a server purchase effort that would further accelerate your attempts, I'm interested. And I'm not trying to buy my way into a secret server. This is with the larger goal of them being more openly available to what remains of the game's community. Please find a way, despite the last 48 hours, to trust some members of the larger community to help in ways we can.

My one selfish request in this as it all goes forward, please please please preserve the username and character database. And even if this moves towards multiple pservers distributed amongst the community, please consider advancing some means for those that desire it, to somehow restore their original account data, regardless of what server they end up on.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: nicoliy on April 18, 2019, 02:54:30 PM
What a crazy 48 hours. I have no idea how I could help, I'm no programmer, but when hands are needed I don't mind doing whatever grunt work helps (scrubbing files, writing docs etc.).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 18, 2019, 03:03:13 PM
As I understand it, the source (original i24 flavor, I think) has been passed on for scrubbing, with release of some nature expected in the not-too-distant future. Things are still up in the air, but Leandro has handed over the torch.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: nicoliy on April 18, 2019, 03:10:52 PM
As I understand it, the source (original i24 flavor, I think) has been passed on for scrubbing, with release of some nature expected in the not-too-distant future. Things are still up in the air, but Leandro has handed over the torch.

Where did you see that? I listened to the discord recording, but what he and the other guy talked about in private was all hush hush.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 18, 2019, 03:13:24 PM
Where did you see that? I listened to the discord recording, but what he and the other guy talked about in private was all hush hush.

It just happened in the SEGS Discord over the course of an hour, ending ~20 minutes ago; I don't know what was going on with the other guy.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 18, 2019, 03:18:28 PM
So, no surprise, Leandro is, after all, one of the guys who's most been helping and supporting CoH players and community for years both before and after the shutdown. 

What we know now. 

This IS the original I24 Beta server code leaked anonymously over a period of several days before the shutdown.  The code as he received it is full of timestamps that would allow ID-ing the person who leaked who specifically requested he not publish without scrubbing.  He has been trying to scrub/rewrite but it's very slow going. The player character database was separately sent him anonymously but also contains time information that would allow id-ing the source. 

The game is every bit as much a mess as we've always heard. The "server" is a set of custom boxes running old software versions and talking to each other in specific timing sequences.  The ExCel spreadsheets that the Devs used have been reworked into something more usable.  He has a loose team of roughly 5 who have been able to get the thing running and keep it functional while they work to improve it. The last time anybody but him saved a change was 10 months ago.

At least one other person has a DIFFERENT copy of the source code, not from the same leak.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 18, 2019, 03:27:53 PM
More information will be coming - looks like my retirement will be really short.

Soon as possible more information and requests for help will be given.

To be crystal clear - I have no connection to a private server - I have never been on it and want no information about it. Detailed information about what is happening will be available as soon as possible. This will take a little time and planning to do.

Thank-you!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 03:35:19 PM
Yes, please let Leandro go about his business in peace.

He is taking steps to clean things up and pass them on so an open server can be attempted. Once it is out to the public NCSoft - may - take steps to stop it. This won't be easy and it won't be fast - better to be right the first time than a complete mess.

You have seen first hand how understanding a customer can be about lag or crashes in the video from the leaker. He was playing in secret, for free  and still complained.........
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 18, 2019, 03:35:49 PM
So, no surprise, Leandro is, after all, one of the guys who's most been helping and supporting CoH players and community for years both before and after the shutdown. 

What we know now. 

This IS the original I24 Beta server code leaked anonymously over a period of several days before the shutdown.  The code as he received it is full of timestamps that would allow ID-ing the person who leaked who specifically requested he not publish without scrubbing.  He has been trying to scrub/rewrite but it's very slow going. The player character database was separately sent him anonymously but also contains time information that would allow id-ing the source.  The last time anybody but him saved a change was 10 months ago.

The game is every bit as much a mess as we've always heard. The "server" is a set of custom boxes running old software versions and talking to each other in specific timing sequences.  The ExCel spreadsheets that the Devs used have been reworked into something more usable.  He has a loose team of roughly 5 who have been able to get the thing running and keep it functional while they work to improve it.

At least one other person has a DIFFERENT copy of the source code, not from the same leak.

Thanks!

But yeah, the server code is spaghetti. All the CoH devs are agreed on that. So spaghetti, that for a while, no dev there knew how Taunt and aggro determination really worked!

Having the mission scripts written in Excel was crazy. And they built a mission designer overlay just to automate that process. And there are overlays on overlays: sidekicking, alignment changes, world events, etc...

It was understandable they wanted to do a CoH2 just to start fresh with clean code.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 18, 2019, 03:40:25 PM
To everyone working behind the scenes, Thank you!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: nicoliy on April 18, 2019, 03:42:25 PM
Anyone else kind of want a notice from the "wake me up when there is news" thread lol?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 18, 2019, 03:57:03 PM
Yes, please let Leandro go.........

Other than the most crazy people that sent death threats and exposed his personal information, I think most people will completely forget about the lie and this entire ordeal once we are playing again.

When you get down to it people just wanna play again.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taliseian on April 18, 2019, 03:58:13 PM
Been a *long* time lurker here, reading and following along hoping for news about CoH.

Haven't thought for a long time that the City would see the light of day.  Been glad about Paragon Chat and SEGS and I've been online a few times, but never really expecting the real City to come back.  Always hoping for success, but never expecting it.  While PC and SEGS have made me feel good, there was always a bit part missing that made it hurt.  It's like I was in a dream - partially where I wanted to be, but everything was just out of reach.  It was always bittersweet and hurt a little.

When I started hearing and reading about Leandro and the saga of the Private Server I was upset - all I wanted to do was play a game I enjoyed and fight alongside a community I was a part of again and I felt that I was betrayed by those in whom I had not really a "trust" of, but at least people who I thought were working toward the same things I wanted. 

I haven't heard the Discord MP3 that was just posted, but I've been following the posts here, on FB, and in the Reddit groups with much more interest in the past few days.  Right now, I'm conflicted as to how to feel.  This could mean I can play a game that I've missed and be part of a community again that I've wanted for years, but there is a level of deceit that must be worked through. 

I agree 100% with with IronWolf posted -- this is not the moment to be "/em pitchfork".  That time, if necessary, will be a little further down the road.  Right now, Leandro seems to be willing to come clean and release the server code which can mean that there may be a time in the not too distant future that I can play and be a part of the community again.

**IF** this is true (and until it happens I will say IF) I have two plans...

One, I will download and attempt to setup my own server with a maximum number of accounts set to one - me.  This way, I can always play.  I can go get lost deep within Perez Park...I can always "Go Hunt. Kill Skuls."...I can always fly to the top of the statue in Atlas Park and protect MY city.  Yes, I can do those right now in PC and SEGS, but as I said it feels hollow...just doesn't feel the same.

Then, once other servers hopefully form and shake out the bugs, I'll be there fighting along side of other heroes...sweeping the sewers...Task Forces...RWZ Raids...and yes, Costume Contests, Pocket D danceoffs, and hanging around the Ski Chalet.

I've wanted to go home for years....I just want to go home...


T
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Garble on April 18, 2019, 03:58:32 PM
God speed to anyone that can bring the game back to as many people ad possible.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: nicoliy on April 18, 2019, 04:03:05 PM

**IF** this is true (and until it happens I will say IF) I have two plans...

One, I will download and attempt to setup my own server with a maximum number of accounts set to one - me.  This way, I can always play.  I can go get lost deep within Perez Park...I can always "Go Hunt. Kill Skuls."...I can always fly to the top of the statue in Atlas Park and protect MY city.  Yes, I can do those right now in PC and SEGS, but as I said it feels hollow...just doesn't feel the same.

Then, once other servers hopefully form and shake out the bugs, I'll be there fighting along side of other heroes...sweeping the sewers...Task Forces...RWZ Raids...and yes, Costume Contests, Pocket D danceoffs, and hanging around the Ski Chalet.

I've wanted to go home for years....I just want to go home...


T

I have always wanted to have a home single player version or small version to share with my brother across town, with some form of dev control to be able to do things like set myself to god mode and play all taskforce missions etc. That said, it sounds like setting it up is like that is not so easy.

I'd likely play 99% on whatever server is out there, but knowing I would always have it would be amazing.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Radionuclide on April 18, 2019, 04:07:44 PM
People kept a secret and it gets called "gaslighting." Yeah, people keeping a secret will lie about it. It's called keeping a secret. "Gaslighting" is intentionally fooling someone to drive them crazy. Calling what SCoRE did 'gaslighting' is despicable in imputing such malign intentions.

The gaslighting was not keeping the secret. It was calling previous leakers crazy, making fun of them and and other such actions which I saw at least on Reddit. Their intent may not have been malicious but, malicious means were used to keep the secret.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Thunder Glove on April 18, 2019, 04:08:12 PM
I'm more excited than I have been in years.  I don't care about my characters (well, I do, but I still have all my costume files - and more, thanks to Icon - so I can recreate them) as much as I just want to play again.  And possibly being able to play I24, with all the improvements that was going to bring to the table (I'm STILL excited about Sorcery) is just the cherry on top.

I don't want to get my hopes up too much, but it's starting to sound like the "someday" in my last post may be closer than I could have dreamed.

(Oh, and I just realized - this computer is new.  Well, not new-new, but I got it a couple of years after the game closed down. If this all works out I can finally play the game in Ultra mode!  ... oh my god, I am getting my hopes up too much.  Calm.  Caaaaaaaaalm)

I'm babbling in my excitement.

My biggest fear is that I've built the game up too much in my head and actually playing it again (after playing more recent MMOs) will be a disappointment, but that's a chance I'm willing to take :D

Of course all this goes down when I'm about to go on a trip for two weeks and be mostly cut off from the Internet.  Time to e-mail myself a link to this topic. :D

Thank you, so much, everyone who's working on this.  I honestly think I'm actually going to cry.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: nicoliy on April 18, 2019, 04:11:02 PM
I'm excited too, Thunder Glove, but I'm being realistic and thinking it's 6 months to a year before a new private server is up and ready (which I'm fine with). I don't think you will miss anything in two weeks lol.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 04:11:22 PM
The news:

A search for rental servers and the best data center to choose is about to begin (think Denver/Dallas).
Rental servers will be initially used because if we get a C&D letter getting stuck with selling $30k of servers would suck.

If you work in such an environment and would like us to consider you - let me know. I will be the fall guy for now and I am also looking for website hosting and development. Once that happens we can take the work away from TonyV's site and let him also be in peace. He has been of incredible value to us and our hopes still exist because of him.

This won't be a 1 day or 2 day fix - my goal is to try and have beta testing by 1 September 2019. It is the goal, but a lot of work needs to be done.


What do I aspire to? I would love to find a partner to hand all this over to and purchase rights to the game along with having the folks who worked on the updated graphics to see if they can merge that with the existing game. I hope if we can have the world ready an investor will make the effort to buy it from NCSoft.

I have no intention of making a profit from this and will post all banking details weekly or as expenses are occurred. Obviously at first I will be paying for it - I opened my mouth - I take the risk. Once it is running the costs will be known and can be budgeted for.

This is not a joke and is completely serious.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 18, 2019, 04:18:29 PM
The news:

A search for rental servers and the best data center to choose is about to begin (think Denver/Dallas).
Rental servers will be initially used because if we get a C&D letter getting stuck with selling $30k of servers would suck.

If you work in such an environment and would like us to consider you - let me know. I will be the fall guy for now and I am also looking for website hosting and development. Once that happens we can take the work away from TonyV's site and let him also be in peace. He has been of incredible value to us and our hopes still exist because of him.

This won't be a 1 day or 2 day fix - my goal is to try and have beta testing by 1 September 2019. It is the goal, but a lot of work needs to be done.


What do I aspire to? I would love to find a partner to hand all this over to and purchase rights to the game along with having the folks who worked on the updated graphics to see if they can merge that with the existing game. I hope if we can have the world ready an investor will make the effort to buy it from NCSoft.

I have no intention of making a profit from this and will post all banking details weekly or as expenses are occurred. Obviously at first I will be paying for it - I opened my mouth - I take the risk. Once it is running the costs will be known and can be budgeted for.

This is not a joke and is completely serious.

Again, thank-you!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: hamstrdam on April 18, 2019, 04:20:52 PM

This is not a joke and is completely serious.


Thank you.  Thanks to ALL of you.  I could cry with happiness.  Now back to lurking quietly in the corner, reading the chat and looking forward to the day I can when I can proudly wear my cape again.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 04:25:03 PM
All in all this is a time for absolute transparency going forward.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Radionuclide on April 18, 2019, 04:30:21 PM
I know the community is hurt and it's my fault. I am moving as fast as I can to try to make things better, but I can't make instantly get everything ready. I have not slept since my phone was published on Monday at 2am and notifications haven't stopped ringing since then.

First and foremost, I am truly sorry you are being harassed. This community should be better than this. I expected better of this group of lovable assholes (yeah the lot of you). This is not ever acceptable. I am more pissed at those that have done that to you than anything else about this days.

Quote from: Leandro
Please. Have patience. I am only human. And I am trying really hard to keep almost 3539 people from being harrassed and threatened as I have been for the last 4 days.

Yes, almost 3539 people. Because many of them are not around anymore. And every single one of them is a reminder of my failure to make this work.

I can't say that I'm not hurt to not have been among that number. I am. Though truth I can't say I would have played once I found out that old characters were available. It would be professionally unethical for me to have done so.

I really only have one question. Why did you (SCORE) not anonymously release the code years ago? I understand wanting to deliver for the community as a whole but, that could still have happened with such a release.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 18, 2019, 04:31:02 PM
Anyone else kind of want a notice from the "wake me up when there is news" thread lol?

I'll talk to management because that's their baby, and NOBODY wants that to go off with a 'false alarm, sorry'.  But I think that might be equivalent in purpose.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 04:34:36 PM
All in all this is a time for absolute transparency going forward.

I agree - within reason - I won't debate data center choices for 7 pages or what the header page on the website will be at first. Some things have to be done at first just to get it moving. We can make changes later.

I hope it makes sense - get a server up - load test it and see where we are.

Get a website up so we can start to unwind character data with as much of an eye to privacy as we can.

Understand no one has account payment data - is was not needed to run the game - so start remembering some of the names of your characters because that may be how we can return them to you.

This is without a doubt the largest challenge of my life outside of raising kids. I cannot and will not be doing it alone. I will need help and so many things I am too ignorant to even ask the questions about let alone have the answers for.

It will be as above board as possible without risking people who don't want to be identified as having helped.

Oh yes, one more thing - all work will be done in such a way as to protect NCSoft's investment - it is THEIR GAME. Currently they don't have a working server they could sell. If this is done correctly we will be their willing steward to protect THEM. If this hurts your feelings towards NCSoft - I am sorry but this is non-negotiable.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: bugzee on April 18, 2019, 04:39:17 PM
There is still the legal question. I wouldn't be even thinking of setting up a public facing server at this time. If its true that the source was illegally handed off, that is a very serious problem. Its something I would want to distance myself from. Stolen IP is not something we really want to touch. I want to play the game, but I'm not willing to be fined or jailed over it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 18, 2019, 04:45:21 PM
Anyone else kind of want a notice from the "wake me up when there is news" thread lol?
It really should be if anything. To notify everyone with an account here and clear up everything. To let people know the code is now being scrubbed and to wait for that proof or whatever they plan to do. Maybe link a short part of that recording where it is being handed off for Scrubbing.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 18, 2019, 04:47:41 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 04:48:47 PM
There is still the legal question. I wouldn't be even thinking of setting up a public facing server at this time. If its true that the source was illegally handed off, that is a very serious problem. Its something I would want to distance myself from. Stolen IP is not something we really want to touch. I want to play the game, but I'm not willing to be fined or jailed over it.

I did not steal it and in fact have zero idea where the code I may receive is from other than hearsay. I can say the code is modified as powersets and development has occurred from the videos I have seen.

I have seen so many various rumors of what, how, where, when the code was released or came into being. I know many other private servers for other games have been setup - where did they get the code? If I act as a responsible steward for their game - not allowing a profit to be made and actively seek to get a buyer to purchase it from NCSoft and step away from it - other than a C&D letter - which I would comply to immediately, I can't see what risk - I am taking? I am not damaging the financial future of the product - it is closed. I am not seeking to make a profit or to harm NCSoft - in fact I want the opposite - to give them a fully functioning product they no longer have.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: starmage21 on April 18, 2019, 04:50:58 PM
The news:

A search for rental servers and the best data center to choose is about to begin (think Denver/Dallas).
Rental servers will be initially used because if we get a C&D letter getting stuck with selling $30k of servers would suck.

If you work in such an environment and would like us to consider you - let me know. I will be the fall guy for now and I am also looking for website hosting and development. Once that happens we can take the work away from TonyV's site and let him also be in peace. He has been of incredible value to us and our hopes still exist because of him.

This won't be a 1 day or 2 day fix - my goal is to try and have beta testing by 1 September 2019. It is the goal, but a lot of work needs to be done.


What do I aspire to? I would love to find a partner to hand all this over to and purchase rights to the game along with having the folks who worked on the updated graphics to see if they can merge that with the existing game. I hope if we can have the world ready an investor will make the effort to buy it from NCSoft.

I have no intention of making a profit from this and will post all banking details weekly or as expenses are occurred. Obviously at first I will be paying for it - I opened my mouth - I take the risk. Once it is running the costs will be known and can be budgeted for.

This is not a joke and is completely serious.

This post seems to carry the intention that you will start and help manage a server, and getting that up and running will take several months. It implies you have either received or know that you will receive a copy of the code and/or executable files. Have you?

We have been made aware that some scrubbing needs to happen to protect the original NCSoft Dev who leaked it, but otherwise the code should be hosted in a public place LONG before this couple of months it will take to host a functional private server. Are you aware of the status of that effort?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 04:52:02 PM
I did not steal it and in fact have zero idea where the code I may receive is from other than hearsay. I can say the code is modified as powersets and development has occurred from the videos I have seen.

I have seen so many various rumors of what, how, where, when the code was released or came into being. I know many other private servers for other games have been setup - where did they get the code? If I act as a responsible steward for their game - not allowing a profit to be made and actively seek to get a buyer to purchase it from NCSoft and step away from it - other than a C&D letter - which I would comply to immediately, I can't see what risk - I am taking? I am not damaging the financial future of the product - it is closed. I am not seeking to make a profit or to harm NCSoft - in fact I want the opposite - to give them a fully functioning product they no longer have.

:)

Can't you just tell Iron Wolf is 'back' in town?

*Xen Fulcrum-shift.

*smiles serenely.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 18, 2019, 04:54:37 PM
I did not steal it and in fact have zero idea where the code I may receive is from other than hearsay. I can say the code is modified as powersets and development has occurred from the videos I have seen.

I have seen so many various rumors of what, how, where, when the code was released or came into being. I know many other private servers for other games have been setup - where did they get the code? If I act as a responsible steward for their game - not allowing a profit to be made and actively seek to get a buyer to purchase it from NCSoft and step away from it - other than a C&D letter - which I would comply to immediately, I can't see what risk - I am taking? I am not damaging the financial future of the product - it is closed. I am not seeking to make a profit or to harm NCSoft - in fact I want the opposite - to give them a fully functioning product they no longer have.

You being involved is extremely relieving, I know a lot of people don't have much trust left but Iron Wolf is certainly deserving of trust. I hope everyone can see that and don't give you a hard time. Thanks for following through my man.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on April 18, 2019, 04:56:11 PM
The news:

A search for rental servers and the best data center to choose is about to begin (think Denver/Dallas).
Rental servers will be initially used because if we get a C&D letter getting stuck with selling $30k of servers would suck.

If you work in such an environment and would like us to consider you - let me know. I will be the fall guy for now and I am also looking for website hosting and development. Once that happens we can take the work away from TonyV's site and let him also be in peace. He has been of incredible value to us and our hopes still exist because of him.

This won't be a 1 day or 2 day fix - my goal is to try and have beta testing by 1 September 2019. It is the goal, but a lot of work needs to be done.


What do I aspire to? I would love to find a partner to hand all this over to and purchase rights to the game along with having the folks who worked on the updated graphics to see if they can merge that with the existing game. I hope if we can have the world ready an investor will make the effort to buy it from NCSoft.

I have no intention of making a profit from this and will post all banking details weekly or as expenses are occurred. Obviously at first I will be paying for it - I opened my mouth - I take the risk. Once it is running the costs will be known and can be budgeted for.

This is not a joke and is completely serious.

Dont forget to get connections in Europe for a server there also ;)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: nicoliy on April 18, 2019, 04:56:44 PM
I trust Ironwolf no questions asked. I also trust TonyV and Titan Network.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 04:57:09 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 04:58:07 PM
I trust Ironwolf no questions asked. I also trust TonyV and Titan Network.

Amen.

Well said, Nicoliy.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MegaWatt on April 18, 2019, 05:00:26 PM
*sits quietly and makes a list of characters* if can get them backi would be so happy.....but by the same token there are so many NEW ones i want to make!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: nicoliy on April 18, 2019, 05:01:57 PM
*sits quietly and makes a list of characters* if can get them backi would be so happy.....but by the same token there are so many NEW ones i want to make!

I'd love for my old ones to come home, but for playing I'd be rolling new toons.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 05:02:51 PM
This post seems to carry the intention that you will start and help manage a server, and getting that up and running will take several months. It implies you have either received or know that you will receive a copy of the code and/or executable files. Have you?

We have been made aware that some scrubbing needs to happen to protect the original NCSoft Dev who leaked it, but otherwise the code should be hosted in a public place LONG before this couple of months it will take to host a functional private server. Are you aware of the status of that effort?

I am researching the best place and type of servers to use, yes. The transfer of code won't be discussed by me. I have zero reliable sources for how the code was obtained. I have had limited conversation with Leandro since 6 am this morning and not before.

I can say on a stack of bible's that prior to this week I was unaware of a private server and would not have joined if I knew. I say a couple months - because I work a full time job and it would be a conflict of interest for me to try and handle something like this while working. I retire 30th August 2019. I hope then that by September 1st we can have something to open with as a load test. I have no idea what day one will look like other than total chaos. It would not be fair to my current employer or the game to do both things.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 05:03:42 PM
I agree - within reason - I won't debate data center choices for 7 pages or what the header page on the website will be at first. Some things have to be done at first just to get it moving. We can make changes later.

I hope it makes sense - get a server up - load test it and see where we are.

Get a website up so we can start to unwind character data with as much of an eye to privacy as we can.

Understand no one has account payment data - is was not needed to run the game - so start remembering some of the names of your characters because that may be how we can return them to you.

This is without a doubt the largest challenge of my life outside of raising kids. I cannot and will not be doing it alone. I will need help and so many things I am too ignorant to even ask the questions about let alone have the answers for.

It will be as above board as possible without risking people who don't want to be identified as having helped.

Oh yes, one more thing - all work will be done in such a way as to protect NCSoft's investment - it is THEIR GAME. Currently they don't have a working server they could sell. If this is done correctly we will be their willing steward to protect THEM. If this hurts your feelings towards NCSoft - I am sorry but this is non-negotiable.

That sounds like a reasonable plan to me.  Recognising the challenges ahead.

Inclusive.  Discrete.  Ample opportunity for people to get their characters back if they can remember their names (more than many could have wished for...)

And your last paragraph is noteworthy.  Fair's fair.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 18, 2019, 05:12:07 PM
The news:

A search for rental servers and the best data center to choose is about to begin (think Denver/Dallas).
Rental servers will be initially used because if we get a C&D letter getting stuck with selling $30k of servers would suck.

If you work in such an environment and would like us to consider you - let me know. I will be the fall guy for now and I am also looking for website hosting and development. Once that happens we can take the work away from TonyV's site and let him also be in peace. He has been of incredible value to us and our hopes still exist because of him.

This won't be a 1 day or 2 day fix - my goal is to try and have beta testing by 1 September 2019. It is the goal, but a lot of work needs to be done.


What do I aspire to? I would love to find a partner to hand all this over to and purchase rights to the game along with having the folks who worked on the updated graphics to see if they can merge that with the existing game. I hope if we can have the world ready an investor will make the effort to buy it from NCSoft.

I have no intention of making a profit from this and will post all banking details weekly or as expenses are occurred. Obviously at first I will be paying for it - I opened my mouth - I take the risk. Once it is running the costs will be known and can be budgeted for.

This is not a joke and is completely serious.

It's super awesome that you're thinking about running a private server and all... do you have anybody lined up with remotely the technical chops to put this thing together and make it work if you get the code and data from a public dump?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: lobster on April 18, 2019, 05:13:53 PM
I have been following these forums (and everywhere else I could) for years...but this is the first time in ages I've felt like posting.  But I've been feeling a lot of things lately.

But it looks like the code is getting out...and once that threshold is crossed, and multiple copies exist...crazy. 

Anyway, if you need any help that a sysadmin/IT type could provide, let me know Ironwolf.  I've got a full time job and family too, but if anything is worth finding some time for, it's CoH/X.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kyriani on April 18, 2019, 05:14:46 PM
I'm almost afraid to even hope to play again but... this turn of events actually seems promising! I'll be watching with great interest!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 18, 2019, 05:21:52 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 05:26:24 PM
I am also a system admin and so some of the stuff I can do - some of it not so much.

This is not going to happen overnight. I literally don't have enough time - but I can get it started. No, I don't want ANY money. This is NOT a cash grab. I will fund the start up - if any lawsuit or letter is filed if not profit has occurred I would be unlikely to faced a criminal proceeding or a civil one since no damages were done - in fact the opposite as NCSoft does not have a currently working COH server.

I also would be happy to freely give them the work done to maintain it or develop it for them.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: bugzee on April 18, 2019, 05:31:36 PM
Potential legal issues aside, I would hope that if the code is released, it will not just be to one other person, but to the public domain instead. Let it out for the world to have so that it can never be shut down again. At least let people have a go at running their own if they so desire.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 05:35:29 PM

Sorry Tony, I know I promised I'd never bring this back to this forum, and please stop throwing yourself in front of buses to defend me.

*****

Then I was diagnosed with severe thyroid issues that left me unable to concentrate on anything for months. Life gets in the way.

Then suddenly, six years had passed.

I know the community is hurt and it's my fault. I am moving as fast as I can to try to make things better, but I can't make instantly get everything ready. I have not slept since my phone was published on Monday at 2am and notifications haven't stopped ringing since then.

Please. Have patience. I am only human. And I am trying really hard to keep almost 3539 people from being harrassed and threatened as I have been for the last 4 days.

Yes, almost 3539 people. Because many of them are not around anymore. And every single one of them is a reminder of my failure to make this work.

Leandro.  Your health and people are more important than 'a game.'  And the loss of people over the last 6 years...

Put the loss of CoH into perspective and the gargantuan strains to bring it back in a way that is worthy of the community and beyond the frustrations of the developer's spaghetti code.  (See Codewalker's stunning work on the PC Super bases.)

Most rational people will know that you, Codewalker, the team of Score and Tony V have tried to act honourably.

We have Icon, Paragon Chat and the extensive 'done for free' work done on 'The Third Project' to thank for their safe guarding and due diligence.  Without it?

All would be lost.  So in that sense, I'll offer my own debt of gratitude to Leandro, Codewalker and Tony.  For?  Keeping the dream alive and a place to call home meantime.

I'm happy that 'the team' were working towards a reverse emulated server (or rather 'equivalent' that worked better knowing the perfectionist Codewalker...).  The game is alive.  It's been preserved for eventual release.

Personally, I never doubted your or Codewalker's efforts.  It was plain to see.  I have enjoyed your extensive public relations work, especially the stunning work on 'The Wharf' with added Statesman.  A piece of work worthy of the original developers themselves.

Regardless of 'this leak' I trusted your judgement.  Nothing has changed for me, except that I have the sheer joy of the impossible is now possible.

Many things in life don't happen as fast as we'd like.  And time passes.  (I understand that as well as anyone.)  And yes, we lose people along the way who we wish could share in our celebrations as we move forward.

It's not like we never had the game.  I played it.  I enjoyed it like no other.

CoH's legacy is in safe hands.  If Score/Leandro/Codewalker (or whoever serves as intermediary...) chooses to pass 'a torch' (eg. A part of what they're working on...) to Iron Wolf?  So be it.  It's there call.  But I don't want Leandro or anyone else going to jail for 'good intentions.'  It's 'okay for someone like me to cheer leader' from the sides without copping the fall out in legal terms, criminal prosecution or jail time.  Words are easy.  Actions are harder.

The leak, unfortunate as it was, it a cause for celebration.  'It's alive.'

Instead of being 'ungrateful' because I wasn't invited to the secret server, I take a different point of view.  If we value what we fight for.  If the cause is 'just.'  I won't grudge people who didn't have long to live to enjoy it with their friends or lambast a sick guy who cares for his dogs. 

My glass is definitely 'very full' right now.

We should rally with messages of support and any help we can offer.  This is the chance we've been waiting for to step as a community.  The chance we didn't really have when the rug was pulled from under us.

Take care, Leandro. 

Your health is more important than 'an old game' (much loved though it is.)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 05:39:32 PM
Potential legal issues aside, I would hope that if the code is released, it will not just be to one other person, but to the public domain instead. Let it out for the world to have so that it can never be shut down again. At least let people have a go at running their own if they so desire.

 8)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 05:41:50 PM
Potential legal issues aside, I would hope that if the code is released, it will not just be to one other person, but to the public domain instead. Let it out for the world to have so that it can never be shut down again. At least let people have a go at running their own if they so desire.

I won't allow myself to be the only person who carries the future. I hope however to be one with the "official" version that will abide by the law and will seek not to make money but to find a buyer.

I can't stress it enough - I want to protect NCSoft's investment and to find a buyer who will respect the property and develop it. If I win the lottery - I will do it - but I am just a simple guy getting ready to retire. Hell, my vehicles are a 2012 Lincoln MKX and a 1993 Chevy Silverado for hauling wood and working on the farm.

I have a pension and in 18 months social security - I want to move the ball - that's it. This is my play I hope another receiver gets called and runs with it later.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: SilverAgeFan on April 18, 2019, 05:42:20 PM
I am also a system admin and so some of the stuff I can do - some of it not so much.

This is not going to happen overnight. I literally don't have enough time - but I can get it started. No, I don't want ANY money. This is NOT a cash grab. I will fund the start up - if any lawsuit or letter is filed if not profit has occurred I would be unlikely to faced a criminal proceeding or a civil one since no damages were done - in fact the opposite as NCSoft does not have a currently working COH server.

I also would be happy to freely give them the work done to maintain it or develop it for them.

A general word of advice that a colleague passed along to me...

"When you start organizing something new that you believe in, from day one, you should also be preparing for your exit and how to pass along management of what you've created."

This was in relation to real world systems organizing within the arts, public institutions, activist ventures, etc. But it is true here, too. Time comes for all things.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nightmarer on April 18, 2019, 05:43:27 PM
Ooooh, I have the perfect name for a pantsless character... I'm hoping there will be a pantsless SG, right?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 05:44:12 PM
I am also a system admin and so some of the stuff I can do - some of it not so much.

This is not going to happen overnight. I literally don't have enough time - but I can get it started. No, I don't want ANY money. This is NOT a cash grab. I will fund the start up - if any lawsuit or letter is filed if not profit has occurred I would be unlikely to faced a criminal proceeding or a civil one since no damages were done - in fact the opposite as NCSoft does not have a currently working COH server.

I also would be happy to freely give them the work done to maintain it or develop it for them.

I trust you, Iron Wolf.  ;)

Be nice if NC could understand where the community is coming from.  It's an old game.  We DON"T want to profit from it.  We just want to play a game EVEN they don't have a working server for (I'm shocked if that is the case...)

Ironic.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 05:45:44 PM
Private Server Meets World?

The 'Hydrogen' release...?

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 05:46:36 PM
I trust you, Iron Wolf.  ;)

Be nice if NC could understand where the community is coming from.  It's an old game.  We DON"T want to profit from it.  We just want to play a game EVEN they don't have a working server for (I'm shocked if that is the case...)

Ironic.

Azrael.

During the sale talks earlier NCSoft did not know if they had the code for the game. It was mothballed on closure. I wasn't told if they found more but they don't have a server running right now.
Well, I want someone to profit from the game so they can keep it rolling - just not me :)

I am picking this up to start it I hope someone else finds the desire to finish it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 18, 2019, 05:47:21 PM
I'm almost afraid to even hope to play again but... this turn of events actually seems promising! I'll be watching with great interest!

I'm feeling the same feels. But, I do think we've got some things working in our favor this time around.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 05:49:08 PM
So, no surprise, Leandro is, after all, one of the guys who's most been helping and supporting CoH players and community for years both before and after the shutdown. 

What we know now. 

This IS the original I24 Beta server code leaked anonymously over a period of several days before the shutdown.  The code as he received it is full of timestamps that would allow ID-ing the person who leaked who specifically requested he not publish without scrubbing.  He has been trying to scrub/rewrite but it's very slow going. The player character database was separately sent him anonymously but also contains time information that would allow id-ing the source. 

The game is every bit as much a mess as we've always heard. The "server" is a set of custom boxes running old software versions and talking to each other in specific timing sequences.  The ExCel spreadsheets that the Devs used have been reworked into something more usable.  He has a loose team of roughly 5 who have been able to get the thing running and keep it functional while they work to improve it. The last time anybody but him saved a change was 10 months ago.

At least one other person has a DIFFERENT copy of the source code, not from the same leak.

Interesting.  More than one leak.  Not surprising.  Clearly the developers cared so much, the community cared and SCORE cared to not let this unique community game go gently into the dark.

A good overview, OhioKnight.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 05:51:28 PM
Interesting.  More than one leak.  Not surprising.  Clearly the developers cared so much, the community cared and SCORE cared to not let this unique community game go gently into the dark.

A good overview, OhioKnight.

Azrael.

That's why I can honestly say other than hearsay, I don't know the source of the code they have - it seems as much of a jumble as the code itself.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 05:53:59 PM
The news:

A search for rental servers and the best data center to choose is about to begin (think Denver/Dallas).
Rental servers will be initially used because if we get a C&D letter getting stuck with selling $30k of servers would suck.

If you work in such an environment and would like us to consider you - let me know. I will be the fall guy for now and I am also looking for website hosting and development. Once that happens we can take the work away from TonyV's site and let him also be in peace. He has been of incredible value to us and our hopes still exist because of him.

This won't be a 1 day or 2 day fix - my goal is to try and have beta testing by 1 September 2019. It is the goal, but a lot of work needs to be done.


What do I aspire to? I would love to find a partner to hand all this over to and purchase rights to the game along with having the folks who worked on the updated graphics to see if they can merge that with the existing game. I hope if we can have the world ready an investor will make the effort to buy it from NCSoft.

I have no intention of making a profit from this and will post all banking details weekly or as expenses are occurred. Obviously at first I will be paying for it - I opened my mouth - I take the risk. Once it is running the costs will be known and can be budgeted for.

This is not a joke and is completely serious.

Thank you for stepping up, Iron Wolf.

This is what the Coh Community can do.  We can each carry a torch of support and help in what way we can.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 18, 2019, 06:05:26 PM
Thank you for stepping up, Iron Wolf.

This is what the Coh Community can do.  We can each carry a torch of support and help in what way we can.

Azrael.

Well said. 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 18, 2019, 06:09:01 PM
If you work in such an environment and would like us to consider you - let me know. I will be the fall guy for now and I am also looking for website hosting and development. Once that happens we can take the work away from TonyV's site and let him also be in peace. He has been of incredible value to us and our hopes still exist because of him.

This won't be a 1 day or 2 day fix - my goal is to try and have beta testing by 1 September 2019. It is the goal, but a lot of work needs to be done.

If there's any help you need at all, please let me know.

I would be willing to give personal information as security to be a part of helping if there's any slots open on this. I'm self employed at the moment, so I have a lot of free time myself, and this community matters to me :)

I don't want the original dev who may or may not have leaked it to suffer, and I just want us all to be able to play.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 06:19:56 PM
If there's any help you need at all, please let me know.

I would be willing to give personal information as security to be a part of helping if there's any slots open on this. I'm self employed at the moment, so I have a lot of free time myself, and this community matters to me :)

I don't want the original dev who may or may not have leaked it to suffer, and I just want us all to be able to play.

I won't be doing this secretly - unless people don't want information shared. This will be above board as possible. The initial decisions - yes. Once it's online by then we will have a website and forums set up. The details will be on that site once built.

I just got the word at 6am today, time to plan and research - then get started.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 18, 2019, 06:23:57 PM
Do we have any firm idea of how much NCSoft wanted for the rights in the previous negotiations?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 18, 2019, 06:28:48 PM
I won't be doing this secretly - unless people don't want information shared. This will be above board as possible. The initial decisions - yes. Once it's online by then we will have a website and forums set up. The details will be on that site once built.

I just got the word at 6am today, time to plan and research - then get started.

Do you intend to share the code around? Because a lot of us are kindof anxious about few points of failure. I've been watching you for awhile and you seem pretty above board, there's just a lot of concerns about another person getting defacto power :)

Again, anything you need done, someone to do the legwork contacting people with specific details, let me know. I'm happy to be a part of things if I can help get the game back to a playable state for all of us, and not just a special select few.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Artillerie on April 18, 2019, 06:34:15 PM
What a lot of ups and downs over the last handful of days, it's all quite an experience by itself.

Hoping for the best here and good luck to all involved in whatever it is that's happening at the moment. Just don't forget we Europeans please :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 06:35:43 PM
Do you intend to share the code around? Because a lot of us are kindof anxious about few points of failure. I've been watching you for awhile and you seem pretty above board, there's just a lot of concerns about another person getting defacto power :)

Again, anything you need done, someone to do the legwork contacting people with specific details, let me know. I'm happy to be a part of things if I can help get the game back to a playable state for all of us, and not just a special select few.

I am not distributing the code. That isn't my place. I want a single thing - to make the server that encourages a developer to buy the game and make money for them and therefore keeping the game alive by getting NCSoft to sell it.

Simple mission statement right there.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 06:38:16 PM
Do we have any firm idea of how much NCSoft wanted for the rights in the previous negotiations?

That would be an interesting question to answer.

Aka.  If the community could kickstarter the amount needed to secure the IP to be open license held by the community?

Leandro.  Codewalker.  (Other members of SCORE) Tony V.  Ironwolf. 

They're torch bearers. 

In the above scenario, though we can't code, we could offer 'our' help to bring the IP to the community and take the 'risk' out of it.  We could all be 'torch bearers' and help bring the IP legitimately to the coh community.  We'd ALL 'own' it.

Again.  Depends on 'if' can 'reason' with corporations. 

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 18, 2019, 06:41:59 PM
This only feels marginally better than where we were before :(

I appreciate that being a goal, but I can't be the only one who doesn't want there to only be two people holding the code. This game should belong to the community at this point, not a company.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 06:45:42 PM
We need more than two people with the keys to the kingdom so we don't face /another/ situation of someone "getting it ready" for six years (expect for their friends)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 06:47:16 PM
I am not distributing the code. That isn't my place. I want a single thing - to make the server that encourages a developer to buy the game and make money for them and therefore keeping the game alive by getting NCSoft to sell it.

Simple mission statement right there.

Hopefully in such a scenario, that a 'developer' acts in the way that Linux distros do that allow you to run your own version of the server OS. 

Ie.  I could run a 'private' server ergo play solo, P2P, LAN or a more significant population server.

What we don't want is the 'same scenario' as the NC one where by if it's not going to make a lot of money (and I don't think it will...) or isn't pleasing shareholders or if it gets 'personal' it gets shut down, again.

Either way, a brave first step taken by you, Ironwolf.

And from creativity and constructive and balanced action many opportunities for the CoH community can arise.  Even, for example, Atlas Park Revival, patching it with 'improved' graphics or map creators or power mods or mission creators. 

While this is all very exciting, it still doesn't exclude the possibility, of the 'reverse' emulation (or 'equivalent' server work) continuing in addition.  It doesn't mean that SCORE's work stops.  I don't see such a scenario.  I've been fully expecting a playing server from Argentina ;)  for years now.  There's no way all that reverse engineering work goes in the bin.  They've clearly made plenty of progress.  This 'leak' doesn't invalidate anything or any successor projects progress.  I hope to see what Leandro, Codewalker (and SCORE) have been working on.  eg. Map creators and mission creators tease the imagination and take the game beyond what we know and allow the community (who was partly bored with the original...) to create their own content and push the game onwards.  They haven't explicitly said that(?) but from bits and pieces said, and the sheer vigilance on the SG bases of Paragon Chat we can dare to imagine a CoH +1.

That may take a bit longer but I still look forward to seeing it.  'The leak' may take a bit of the pressure off them and the CoH community demanding they are the 'ones' that deliver it.

But they have preserved teh legacy for us to enjoy.  We must remember that.  Without that leak to them.  Without their work?  No Icon.  No Paragon Chat.  No 'Secret Server' to push the reverse emulation effort forwards.  No 'server' to enjoy at all.  It took a lot of risk to do all that.  It wasn't risk free.  It took guts to do Icon, to do Paragon Chat and wait for the NC nerf bat.

This 'server' passing of the torch.  Is the first real challenge for the CoH community since shut down.  We may well be careful of the phrase, 'Be careful for what you wish for...'

In fact, it's a challenge to the whole community to press forwards.  The CoH community will have choices. 

There's still SEGS, Ship of Heroes, Heroes and Villains, Titans etc.

That's the beauty.

This can be touch point that really gets things going.  This thread hasn't been this busy or alive for a while.  And whilst the manner of the leak may be upsetting to some.

It's an opportunity for all.  It can release the burden for some.  Other's can help share the burden.

At the very least.  It should be an interesting game of whack a mole.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 06:47:56 PM
I won't beat around the bush - when you have one cow and the village owns it - everyone wants the milk but no one wants to feed the cow and it dies.

I want an owner to run the game - take responsibility for developing it and perhaps start a CoH2 in the future. I don't want wild servers everywhere with a 10 player population and watch it starve to death with no marketing or publicity.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Aurora on April 18, 2019, 06:52:49 PM
This approach makes a c&d super effective. Ncsoft applauds your efforts!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kistulot on April 18, 2019, 06:54:41 PM
I won't beat around the bush - when you have one cow and the village owns it - everyone wants the milk but no one wants to feed the cow and it dies.

I want an owner to run the game - take responsibility for developing it and perhaps start a CoH2 in the future. I don't want wild servers everywhere with a 10 player population and watch it starve to death with no marketing or publicity.

You have never lived in a village with a cow.

Look at Leandro's server. It was funded by a small group of people. Like, look at the evidence that we have?

I'm sorry, clearly you can do what you want and I can't stop you, but your cynicism and your desire to do things "the right way" put us all but right back where we started, and you're even wanting to paint a red bullseye on your back.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 06:56:58 PM
C&D aside, the more people that have it the better for trust and transparency. Something that has been severely lacking in the half a decade Leo has been the sole holder of it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 07:02:56 PM
This approach makes a c&d super effective. Ncsoft applauds your efforts!

I can only give the facts and purposes of any server I create.

I am not going to lie to anyone. I am blunt and to the point. If you want secrecy go talk to SCoRE and i don't mean that as a knock - it is what they did for 6 years. I am being as open as humanly possible from day 1.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 07:03:48 PM
You have never lived in a village with a cow.

Look at Leandro's server. It was funded by a small group of people. Like, look at the evidence that we have?

I'm sorry, clearly you can do what you want and I can't stop you, but your cynicism and your desire to do things "the right way" put us all but right back where we started, and you're even wanting to paint a red bullseye on your back.

At some point.  Somebody has a bullseye on their back.

The 'leaker?'  SCORE for receiving the leak.  SCORE for putting out Icon or Paragon Chat.  And working on reverse engineering to make it 'more' legal.

Or Iron Wolf?

He's got the guts to give it a go. 

I have complete faith in his intentions.  Let's get this this up and running. 

And we'll have our answer from NC soon enough.  Silence?  Or Legal rebuttal.

As I have in SCORE.  I commend their work in getting us THIS far and for the work they're probably still going to continue.

Along with the successor parties.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 07:06:47 PM
You have never lived in a village with a cow.

Look at Leandro's server. It was funded by a small group of people. Like, look at the evidence that we have?

I'm sorry, clearly you can do what you want and I can't stop you, but your cynicism and your desire to do things "the right way" put us all but right back where we started, and you're even wanting to paint a red bullseye on your back.

I don't understand why I am cynical? A small hobby server for you and your friends will likely be possible in the near future. I want more than that and trying to find a legal owner and to treat NCSoft's product with care is cynical? I really don't understand what you mean. It's ok - I clearly laid out my goals and intents. This is what I meant by some things won't be secret but also not up for debate.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 18, 2019, 07:12:22 PM
I don't understand why I am cynical? A small hobby server for you and your friends will likely be possible in the near future. I want more than that and trying to find a legal owner and to treat NCSoft's product with care is cynical? I really don't understand what you mean. It's ok - I clearly laid out my goals and intents. This is what I meant by some things won't be secret but also not up for debate.

Ironwolf I have always respected you and I hope you do get something going and yes I do hope that someone can then step in and buy the game from NCSoft.

However NCsoft hasn't wanted to sell the game before, but we shall see.

That being said though.......I would want the code to be scrubbed to keep the leaker's ID secret....but THEN I would want the code distributed to file download sites and CoH fans can download it, and even if they can't get a private server of their own running, they still HAVE the code, can keep it safe in external back up drives and cloud storage so that if NCSoft goes on a legal rampage and shuts servers down, the code is still out there....

Just like how the seed was distributed at the end of the first Sword Art Online anime and thus games popped up everywhere, or as they said in Serenity "Can't stop the signal"

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 07:12:56 PM
I won't beat around the bush - when you have one cow and the village owns it - everyone wants the milk but no one wants to feed the cow and it dies.


I remember your original posts about making this a community game.  There is the possibility that the 'community' mods it.

eg.  The work of SEGs.

Ergo, you get a lot of cows. 

Modding is now a key element of the more advanced communities using 3D engines.  That use a core 3d engine and the community mods the graphics or the whole game.

As you can probably tell, I don't have a lot of faith in corporations who gave us little room for reply before shutting down.

However, it's still their (NC's) IP and they will get their chance.  We'll see if they really want to 'crack the American market' or punish the rump of what's left of the CoH community.

That won't stop SCORE's unholy war to preserve the game.

Leandro's copped a bit of heat.  I don't see why.  It's a legacy preserved.  And if he's passed it on? 

It's given us this opportunity. 

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RGladden on April 18, 2019, 07:13:45 PM
To Ironwolf, et al, I say...Bonne Chance. 

To other CoH fans, we may be closer to getting the game back than we've ever been...even excluding the news about the secret emulator.

I have here a film released by SEGs just a week ago.  It shows a character flying about through their world...and reveals mobs spawning on all of their maps.  In my opinion, they are just an eyelash away from having a functioning street-sweeping game.  All that is needed is functioning AI and combat system.

In addition, it would not surprise me if the admin who gave the server code to Leando also gave it to others. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlFCcANj6u4
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 18, 2019, 07:13:59 PM
That link is to a file that is only about 470MB to download and I am not downloading it.

That's how you get your computer sick.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 18, 2019, 07:14:57 PM
Here's a question: if this is the i-24 beta prior to shut down code,    what about the player database?  Was it the beta-test server player character database or is it the live server?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 18, 2019, 07:16:53 PM
To Ironwolf, et al, I say...Bonne Chance. 

To other CoH fans, we may be closer to getting the game back than we've ever been...even excluding the news about the secret emulator.

I have here a film released by SEGs just a week ago.  It shows a character flying about through their world...and reveals mobs spawning on all of their maps.  In my opinion, they are just an eyelash away from having a functioning street-sweeping game.  All that is needed is functioning AI and combat system.

In addition, it would not surprise me if the admin who gave the server code to Leando also gave it to others. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlFCcANj6u4

Indeed, this code leak could be a boon for SEGS.

While they cannot plagiarize the CoH code, they could still study the code and say "So THAT's how they did that! okay team, how can we recode this from scratch using their code as a blueprint without directly copying it?"

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 18, 2019, 07:17:32 PM
That link is to a file that is only about 470MB to download and I am not downloading it.
I've never worked on a code project of this scale before and I have not unpacked anything from the archive, but what I'm looking at in 7zip does look plausibly like source code for many game server parts. (There are C-language code files and .h files among other things.)

There us a txt in the root that references the poll that Bree Royce posted on MassivelyOP to confirm it is current.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 18, 2019, 07:17:58 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 18, 2019, 07:24:29 PM
Massively's latest

https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/18/whats-going-on-with-city-of-heroes-now-this-game-is-a-unicorn/
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RGladden on April 18, 2019, 07:25:53 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 18, 2019, 07:27:45 PM
I did not steal it and in fact have zero idea where the code I may receive is from other than hearsay. I can say the code is modified as powersets and development has occurred from the videos I have seen.

I have seen so many various rumors of what, how, where, when the code was released or came into being. I know many other private servers for other games have been setup - where did they get the code? If I act as a responsible steward for their game - not allowing a profit to be made and actively seek to get a buyer to purchase it from NCSoft and step away from it - other than a C&D letter - which I would comply to immediately, I can't see what risk - I am taking? I am not damaging the financial future of the product - it is closed. I am not seeking to make a profit or to harm NCSoft - in fact I want the opposite - to give them a fully functioning product they no longer have.

I am no lawyer, with that said, I think as long as its donations and not subs. Should be fine. This is going by board games such as Kickstarter. Ip owners shouldn't care as long as its not making money.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 07:29:48 PM
To Ironwolf, et al, I say...Bonne Chance. 

To other CoH fans, we may be closer to getting the game back than we've ever been...even excluding the news about the secret emulator.

I have here a film released by SEGs just a week ago.  It shows a character flying about through their world...and reveals mobs spawning on all of their maps.  In my opinion, they are just an eyelash away from having a functioning street-sweeping game.  All that is needed is functioning AI and combat system.

In addition, it would not surprise me if the admin who gave the server code to Leando also gave it to others. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlFCcANj6u4

Yes.  Saw that video.  Tantalising.

Good to see the 'actors' in place. ;)

It's now a case of 'when' the game comes back.

Not if.

That burden no longer falls on one person, one group...

...and THAT is good news.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 07:31:00 PM
Maybe....but maybe not.  NC may think "Aw chit...the cat is out of the bag, and the code is being destributed endlessly across the internet.  Fighting this isn't worth the trouble anymore."  Maybe.  The whole thing is balanced on the edge of a knife...

Yes.  We'll have to see.

But if NC Soft are going to 'take down' Iron Wolf. 

Let them try.

I don't fancy their chances.  ;)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 18, 2019, 07:32:38 PM
I am no lawyer, with that said, I think as long as its donations and not subs. Should be fine. This is going by board games such as Kickstarter. Ip owners shouldn't care as long as its not making money.

I think that's the bit that got Nostralious for Private WoW.

They were doing fine (only 1 million players at peak...) who were playing Vanilla.

But then, not entirely sure, money started exchanging hands for 'some things' and THEN Blizzard went after them...

But.  It brought Blizzard to the table...  And Vanilla wow is now 'a thing.'

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on April 18, 2019, 07:39:22 PM
The code is apparently out. Red on reddit that npc and mission data could be out tomorrow if i understood correctly.
Now someone had to write a guide how to start the game for solo play :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 18, 2019, 07:40:19 PM
I know what I am doing tonight............
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 18, 2019, 07:44:00 PM
And Red Light!

Green light.  Titan Network will not host or hold links to downloads like this.  Ever. 

Carry on.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nightmarer on April 18, 2019, 08:08:17 PM
Whoah, seems everybody is downloading the code and setting up a solo server right now   8)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: nicoliy on April 18, 2019, 08:11:17 PM
Whoah, seems everybody is downloading the code and setting up a solo server right now   8)

if only it was that easy. From everything I've read/heard you can't even do that on a general windows home pc. Maybe there's ways to do it single player or lan based, but that's way above anything I'd know. I'd have to be given crystal clear instructions to figure that out.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kyriani on April 18, 2019, 08:14:08 PM
Whoah, seems everybody is downloading the code and setting up a solo server right now   8)

I took a look at the files. I have a feeling its going to be at least a few months before we're actually playing anything.

I keep seeing people saying the hardware Leandro mentioned isn't necessary or that the costs shouldn't be as high as he said they were, but at the end of the day he seems to be the person with actual hands on experience with it. I hope the people claiming they can get a server up and running for us can actually do it as quickly and affordably as they claim, but its hard to get my hopes up that it will really happen any time soon.

I plan on keeping my expectations low so that I can be pleasantly surprised if someone really does pull it off quickly.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 18, 2019, 08:14:52 PM
https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/18/the-city-of-heroes-private-server-team-has-released-its-code-to-the-world-but-not-the-characters/

They released the server code, minus all missions and content.  Even if you get it running, it's as blank as Paragon Chat.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RGladden on April 18, 2019, 08:16:33 PM
Man...events are moving fast.   :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 18, 2019, 08:18:37 PM
Massively's latest

https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/18/whats-going-on-with-city-of-heroes-now-this-game-is-a-unicorn/ (https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/18/whats-going-on-with-city-of-heroes-now-this-game-is-a-unicorn/)


If folks haven't figured it out by now,  City of Heroes is to massively what Princess Diana on the cover page is to Time magazine. Gotta milk that cow....


Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tubbius on April 18, 2019, 08:18:50 PM
Logging in to Paragon Chat for five minutes to get a final screen shot of Waddle the Penguin holding a torch left me emotionally gutted.

If this does indeed go live again at some point. . . Whoa.  :-)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RGladden on April 18, 2019, 08:19:02 PM
https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/18/the-city-of-heroes-private-server-team-has-released-its-code-to-the-world-but-not-the-characters/

They released the server code, minus all missions and content.  Even if you get it running, it's as blank as Paragon Chat.

Undoubtedly....but I'd bet it won't be blank for long.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 18, 2019, 08:19:59 PM
https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/18/the-city-of-heroes-private-server-team-has-released-its-code-to-the-world-but-not-the-characters/ (https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/18/the-city-of-heroes-private-server-team-has-released-its-code-to-the-world-but-not-the-characters/)

They released the server code, minus all missions and content.  Even if you get it running, it's as blank as Paragon Chat.




Because that stuff belongs to ncsoft....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RGladden on April 18, 2019, 08:22:52 PM
I'd also bet that missions and content will be released shortly.... :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 18, 2019, 08:27:49 PM
I've already mentioned it. 

Has something to do with healing your wounds.

It's a brighter future than we've had, I recommend embracing it.

Because that rift? You embrace that? Thanos.
Amen.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 18, 2019, 08:31:08 PM
I can't believe all of this is happening.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RGladden on April 18, 2019, 08:34:16 PM
I can't believe all of this is happening.

I know what you mean.  For six years nothing....and then...all of a sudden...BOOM!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 18, 2019, 08:34:42 PM
I truly did not believe we could go from the lows that we were seeing on Monday to the collaborative effort that we're seeing now, and the positivity. I do owe an apology to the people who called out my cynicism in the last couple of days, I didn't give this community the credit for being capable of the progress that I've seen so many other community fail on over the years of online gaming. I look forward to seeing where everything goes in the coming months.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Voltixdark on April 18, 2019, 08:35:36 PM
So I am curious.. Though everyone or some people will setup their own servers. Who will host the main server for the community. Like we have Paragon Chat for the whole community to join so I assume that the main host server and all will be hosted by Leandro? I am completely fine with that.

I am kind of asking that question because with the spread of the servers, I am not sure where I would land and stay to call home. From the info the leaker leaked, when they played everything character wise, enhancements, etc was exactly where it was before the game closed in 2012. So I am hoping that those things could still remain intact for others like me who still want access to their old account data and to continue where we left off.

Another thing though is that with the character database spread, Leandro mentioned that clean up or hashing of the character database would be required so other accounts would not be compromised. How would that work exactly? Say you have 100 people who want to get their old account data back how would that process go?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 08:36:51 PM
I've already mentioned it. 

Has something to do with healing your wounds.

It's a brighter future than we've had, I recommend embracing it.

Because that rift? You embrace that? Thanos.

Thanos didn't lose anyone. He was obsessed with balance. You're thinking of the MCU Zemo. Who broke up the avengers because his family was killed by Ultron.

If you're going to accuse everyone you don't like of being a murderous villain, get it right.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 18, 2019, 08:39:36 PM
I know what you mean.  For six years nothing....and then...all of a sudden...BOOM!

I know! Like, I'm super happy, don't get me wrong... but I'm almost too shocked to feel any second-tier emotions. Just pure, unequivocal shock is controlling my systems right now lol.

Also, is anyone else suddenly thinking of buying a new computer? Haha.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 18, 2019, 08:41:23 PM
Thanos didn't lose anyone. He was obsessed with balance. You're thinking of the MCU Zemo. Who broke up the avengers because his family was killed by Ultron.

If you're going to accuse everyone you don't like of being a murderous villain, get it right.

Friendly advice:  Stop embracing the rift.

Also: People I don't like?  I like everyone, at least, I try to. 

My message... My wish... is that moving forward, we still have highs and lows to encounter.

Keep your capes ON. Do NOT attack each other.

Resist the rift. At all costs resist. It IS Thanos.  The comic book version. 

You should be able to understand my message.

Hugs.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: nicoliy on April 18, 2019, 08:41:35 PM
I know! Like, I'm super happy, don't get me wrong... but I'm almost too shocked to feel any second-tier emotions. Just pure, unequivocal shock is controlling my systems right now lol.

Also, is anyone else suddenly thinking of buying a new computer? Haha.

Already building one, timing is nice. I'm watching the coders chat on discord while I work, interesting how fast they move.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RGladden on April 18, 2019, 08:43:04 PM
Already building one, timing is nice. I'm watching the coders chat on discord while I work, interesting how fast they move.

Time is of the essence.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 18, 2019, 08:44:43 PM
So I am curious.. Though everyone or some people will setup their own servers. Who will host the main server for the community. Like we have Paragon Chat for the whole community to join so I assume that the main host server and all will be hosted by Leandro? I am completely fine with that.

I am kind of asking that question because with the spread of the servers, I am not sure where I would land and stay to call home. From the info the leaker leaked, when they played everything character wise, enhancements, etc was exactly where it was before the game closed in 2012. So I am hoping that those things could still remain intact for others like me who still want access to their old account data and to continue where we left off.

Another thing though is that with the character database spread, Leandro mentioned that clean up or hashing of the character database would be required so other accounts would not be compromised. How would that work exactly? Say you have 100 people who want to get their old account data back how would that process go?


It will probably self-organize, much like swgemu, with some  different flavors.   Expect to potentially hop around as new servers pop up, but likely the first technically savvy group to organize and implement a stable game will win the race to collecting dollars... kind of like city of titans snagging kick starter dollars.  If server maintenance is pricey,  it will be hard to support too many across the population of interested,  committed players.


Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 08:48:02 PM
Friendly advice:  Stop embracing the rift.

Also: People I don't like?  I like everyone, at least, I try to. 

My message... My wish... is that moving forward, we still have highs and lows to encounter.

Keep your capes ON. Do NOT attack each other.

Resist the rift. At all costs resist. It IS Thanos.  The comic book version. 

You should be able to understand my message.

Hugs.

Comic book thanos was romantically interested in the concept/avatar of death, and sought out the infinity gauntlet to kill half the universe for her and her love.

You're still thinking of Zemo. Like the exchange between Zemo and black panther is great. We shouldn't ignore it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 18, 2019, 08:50:28 PM
Comic book thanos was romantically interested in the concept/avatar of death, and sought out the infinity gauntlet to kill half the universe for her and her love.

You're still thinking of Zemo. Like the exchange between Zemo and black panther is great. We shouldn't ignore it.

I changed my mind.

The rift shall now be known as my English 101 teacher.

A cold and callous creature with evil bane for skin and bitter malice for bones and organs.

Every day she would find herself yet again in that horrible state of being awake and thus believed the world should suffer for it.

Cracks left in the floor by her stilettos out of sheer spite.

And that red pen.  Damn that devil red pen. Concentrated hate.  Like a nightmare version of that Bill Cosby marker.

It made Freddy glove noises as she brutally assaulted her students papers.

Yeah. That fits.  That's the rift.  Run from the rift.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 18, 2019, 08:56:38 PM
Quote
I've already mentioned it. 

Has something to do with healing your wounds.

It's a brighter future than we've had, I recommend embracing it.

Because that rift? You embrace that? Thanos.

Being told to stop being upset has never made anyone stop being upset in the history of mankind.   I agree now that Leo has spoken people can start healing.  But you need to let people heal their wounds on their own time.  It isn't just a snap of the fingers for some people. (Shit now im bringing up Thanos)

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tubbius on April 18, 2019, 08:58:16 PM
I changed my mind.

The rift shall now be known as my English 101 teacher.

You do know that I teach that course, yes? :-)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 18, 2019, 09:02:59 PM
You do know that I teach that course, yes? :-)

I also know that Santa and Satan have the same letters in their names, they both wear red and black, they both only appear at night, and they are never seen together....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 18, 2019, 09:04:27 PM
...I will say, I still have one cautious eye on NCSoft. I think they're definitely aware of what's going on.

Is anyone else waiting on a move from them? Or am I the only one?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 18, 2019, 09:05:28 PM
...I will say, I still have one cautious eye on NCSoft. I think they're definitely aware of what's going on.

Is anyone else waiting on a move from them? Or am I the only one?

I'm waiting.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: nicoliy on April 18, 2019, 09:06:27 PM
I'm sure NCSoft will at least issue a statement. How far down an actual path of going after Leo or new servers is anyone's guess I think.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 18, 2019, 09:08:11 PM
I'm sure NCSoft will at least issue a statement. How far down an actual path of going after Leo or new servers is anyone's guess I think.

Agreed.

It's making me anxious AF.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MM3squints on April 18, 2019, 09:14:52 PM
One thing that will make me wonder no just from NC Soft stand point, but also what happens when people start making Marvel and DC characters on these servers. I assume there won't be a ToS (because technically hold the code and running it is sketch enough) so would the house of mouse and WB come after these server too? On a lighter note, since there is going to be multiple servers, will Titans have a post listing the servers with population count and the quirks of the server?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 18, 2019, 09:19:18 PM
Being told to stop being upset has never made anyone stop being upset in the history of mankind.   I agree now that Leo has spoken people can start healing.  But you need to let people heal their wounds on their own time.  It isn't just a snap of the fingers for some people. (Shit now im bringing up Thanos)

Being real? I never said stop being upset. I don't expect people to "get over it"

I've been attacked, thwarted, disowned, and excommunicated by my blood relative family.

I know first hand that there is no such thing as "just get over it" because nobody ever just "gets over it". I'd never discredit someone's pain.

Healing takes time, so yeah, lets do whatever it takes to heal ourselves.

Heroes can be upset, heartbroken, in pain and still put on that cape and be heroes.

That's really what we all need to do, no matter how much it hurts now, or in the future.

We must steel ourselves for this incoming bumpy ride.

Breaking out the pitchforks and tearing into each other? That's easy.

Putting on the cape? Behaving like the community we SHOULD be? That's hard.

But it's what we should do.

That's why I say avoid the rift. She's a bitch.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 18, 2019, 09:23:41 PM
One thing that will make me wonder no just from NC Soft stand point, but also what happens when people start making Marvel and DC characters on these servers. I assume there won't be a ToS (because technically hold the code and running it is sketch enough) so would the house of mouse and WB come after these server too? On a lighter note, since there is going to be multiple servers, will Titans have a post listing the servers with population count and the quirks of the server?

Couldn't server owners just moderate that the same way that CoX, CO and DCUO have over the years? Name filters and the occasional deletion if the likeness is too close.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 18, 2019, 09:25:16 PM
Here's a question: if this is the i-24 beta prior to shut down code,    what about the player database?  Was it the beta-test server player character database or is it the live server?

There was an interview where Leandro described what it was, but there's so many articles now I don't want to put in the effort to find which one it was. Basically, the source downloaded all the character data, one live server at a time. It was noted that a lot of people were switching servers near shutdown time, so someone who switched servers at a poor time might not be on the downloaded data.

Edit: Due to the migration of posts from "New Efforts" to this thread, the quote above no longer links properly. But it is unmodified, and the original can be found in this thread (I don't want to put the effort in right now).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 18, 2019, 09:35:38 PM
Its a race to get something that works at this point. Once that os established we should vote on a top 3 list and make one our home server. Can use fakebook or something to do that poll. I know anything related to it will simply get deleted here.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 18, 2019, 09:41:09 PM
Its a race to get something that works at this point. Once that os established we should vote on a top 3 list and make one our home server. Can use fakebook or something to do that poll. I know anything related to it will simply get deleted here.

Agreed about the home server. Obviously beggers can't be choosers, but I dunno how I'd feel about there being, like, a million small servers out there ya'know? I'd rather us all be playing together in one big / centralized world.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kyriani on April 18, 2019, 09:45:26 PM
Just from the hardware and financial requirements I've seen bandied about, a bunch of smaller servers seems more realistic than only a few giant servers. A bunch of smaller servers is also "safer" too. The bigger a server is, the bigger a target it has on its back for NCSoft to shut it down.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 18, 2019, 09:46:35 PM
You think I have a condescending tone?

I think what you need to start doing is reading my posts in papa smurf's voice.
Papa Smurf was condescending as heck.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 09:46:49 PM
Agreed about the home server. Obviously beggers can't be choosers, but I dunno how I'd feel about there being, like, a million small servers out there ya'know? I'd rather us all be playing together in one big / centralized world.

Oh absolutely. People are going to congregate to the server that can hold the most people. So really, it's whoever can get a stable highpop server up first. And with the code now free to use It's a better shot of someone with the right hardware and knowhow than ever.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 18, 2019, 09:50:59 PM
The server code is, from what I understand, entirely NCSoft's, I24 edition - to the point that it contains literal instructions for the authserver to phone home to an NCSoft email if something goes wrong. SCoRE's server, as I understand it, is modified, but still relies upon NCSoft proprietary code. So if that's a problem for you, wait for SEGS/hypothetical other complete rewrite to finish, I guess.

It's possible you could see something soon, but I wouldn't bet on it - there's progress, but the code is still spaghetti. Leandro's said he'll set up a server if anyone has a spare physical machine lying around tonight, but that's modestly unlikely, and I suspect many of you would refuse to play on it. (Also, fwiw, launch day on any server is going to be like landing on Omaha Beach, except there's only one boat, and it's carrying 15-20k when it's meant to carry maybe 150-200. It's not going to be pretty at all.)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 10:04:23 PM
There's a large mountain to climb but we are infinitely closer than we were 4 days ago.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 18, 2019, 10:13:10 PM
Just from the hardware and financial requirements I've seen bandied about, a bunch of smaller servers seems more realistic than only a few giant servers. A bunch of smaller servers is also "safer" too. The bigger a server is, the bigger a target it has on its back for NCSoft to shut it down.

I suspect it will be some mid sized servers and many private secret servers
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Phocks on April 18, 2019, 10:14:46 PM
There's a large mountain to climb but we are infinitely closer than we were 4 days ago.


It's pretty amazing how sharing and being transparent has done more for the community in under a week than paranoia and gatekeeping has done in 5 years.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 18, 2019, 10:22:03 PM
Each server should have a silly and ridiculous theme to it lmao. And everyone should be, like, irrationally strict about it.

This is the BATHING SUITS ONLY server, this is the CAT CREATURES ONLY server, this is the ROBOT PEOPLE EVERYWHERE server...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: WolfSoul on April 18, 2019, 10:23:40 PM
And this is only going to happen because they got caught. Not out of the goodness of their hearts or because it's the right thing to do. They got caught. I'd like it to happen, but I'll believe it when I see it. And it will take a lot of time before they have my trust or forgiveness.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 18, 2019, 10:24:36 PM
Being real? I never said stop being upset. I don't expect people to "get over it"

I've been attacked, thwarted, disowned, and excommunicated by my blood relative family.

I know first hand that there is no such thing as "just get over it" because nobody ever just "gets over it". I'd never discredit someone's pain.

Healing takes time, so yeah, lets do whatever it takes to heal ourselves.

Heroes can be upset, heartbroken, in pain and still put on that cape and be heroes.

That's really what we all need to do, no matter how much it hurts now, or in the future.

We must steel ourselves for this incoming bumpy ride.

Breaking out the pitchforks and tearing into each other? That's easy.

Putting on the cape? Behaving like the community we SHOULD be? That's hard.

But it's what we should do.

That's why I say avoid the rift. She's a bitch.

Sorry, perhaps that came off more blunt or rude than intended.  I simply meant people have different processes of healing their wounds, for many the first stage is the "pitchfork" stage until they are able to calm down and begin healing their wounds.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 18, 2019, 10:25:33 PM
Papa Smurf was condescending as heck.

Searching for "Papa Smurf is condescending" reveals: https://tcrf.net/The_Teletransport_Smurf

Edit: Due to the migration of posts from "New Efforts" to this thread, the quote above no longer links properly. But it is unmodified, and the original can be found in this thread (I don't want to put the effort in right now).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 18, 2019, 10:27:56 PM
Maybe we should name that anniversary badge "Sunrise" given the circumstances?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RGladden on April 18, 2019, 10:30:49 PM
Maybe we should name that anniversary badge "Sunrise" given the circumstances?

Or "Cabal".
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tivomaniac on April 18, 2019, 10:34:04 PM
Or "Cabal".

Phoenix
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Leandro on April 18, 2019, 10:45:23 PM
*
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 18, 2019, 10:50:03 PM

It's pretty amazing how sharing and being transparent has done more for the community in under a week than paranoia and gatekeeping has done in 5 years.

Man, Imagine if the original leak back in November hadn't been squashed by score. Thats like 6 months of progress the true community could have had.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RGladden on April 18, 2019, 10:56:39 PM
Wow.  The ability to play CoH just went from being a possibility to a probability. 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Jordan_Lee on April 18, 2019, 11:11:04 PM
Important, because a lot of people are taking out of their arse.

The source code release is all the source code that I was given access to. I am pretty sure it's all the source code that has ever existed; you can build the game client and all servers, with not a lot of effort if you know what you're doing in Visual Studio 2005.

Things like NPCs, missions and so on are not source code. That's data. The binaries created with the source code load the data from pigg files and/or a data folder, just like the game client. In fact, a lot of the client pigg files are used as-is by the server components, and others are modified variants.

Creating all the server-side data files from scratch could take months even with help. That's why I am out there asking for servers to load working binaries on, so everybody who just wants to play can do it right away, and everybody who has actual interest in development can take a deep breath and start figuring out what to do.

Whatever servers I set up will use the latest binaries and data that SCORE itself was using, internally referred to as "Issue 25: Unbroken Spirit". This is simply because it will be the fastest to deploy, since it already has tools for account creation, all the microtransaction garbage like the Paragon Rewards tree removed, and many other optimizations. I am sure there will be a lot of complaints about it not being a "pure" release that will want a lot of changes stripped. Have some patience. It will take much longer to get a server set up if I have to roll back my repositories to early 2013 and hunt down a version of the data files that would play nice with it and does not have massive gaps in content. I don't even think such a version exists. This was a massive reverse engineering operation that took months to get something usable.

The Issue 25 data files, while they will work to set up as many servers as you want based on Issue 25, cannot be directly used with binaries built from the source code. You could mount an entire operation to decompile those files to get something editable back, or you can just have some patience and wait until I can put together a release. I am moving as fast as I can to get this thing out there because I believe that once a few running servers are out there being managed by different people with no connections to me, people will back off and give me the time I need to make sure that anything else that is released does not put anyone at risk; neither former Paragon Studios developers nor former SCORE members.

On that note, former SCORE members that have access to the data repository: please don't take it upon yourself to release anything. You would be putting others at risk. Have some patience.

Thank you. I don't understand any of that, at all. I just wanted to say thank you. We do appreciate this.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 18, 2019, 11:12:51 PM
Important, because a lot of people are taking out of their arse.

The source code release is all the source code that I was given access to. I am pretty sure it's all the source code that has ever existed; you can build the game client and all servers, with not a lot of effort if you know what you're doing in Visual Studio 2005. *snipped*

I'm gonna be honest, I don't know what most of that means.  But I trust this is being handled by people that do, I also trust any changes to the code were necessary.  So I will just continue sitting here patiently because this is the first time in many years I have felt hope for CoH, and even that just feels good.  Do what you gotta do, don't go crazy, and stay safe.

I wish I could help with the project but I don't know anything about anything when it comes to this stuff.  All I could do is compose you some soothing thinkin' music.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ivanhedgehog on April 18, 2019, 11:21:12 PM
Im perfectly happy to wait. I25 looks very good to me
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Deyaniera on April 18, 2019, 11:23:17 PM
Thank you so much. I have hope again and that helps.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RGladden on April 18, 2019, 11:26:01 PM
 :'(

I'm 65 years old....and that is how I feel.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: villainpower on April 18, 2019, 11:30:00 PM
Important, because a lot of people are taking out of their arse.

The source code release is all the source code that I was given access to. I am pretty sure it's all the source code that has ever existed; you can build the game client and all servers, with not a lot of effort if you know what you're doing in Visual Studio 2005.

Things like NPCs, missions and so on are not source code. That's data. The binaries created with the source code load the data from pigg files and/or a data folder, just like the game client. In fact, a lot of the client pigg files are used as-is by the server components, and others are modified variants.

Creating all the server-side data files from scratch could take months even with help. That's why I am out there asking for servers to load working binaries on, so everybody who just wants to play can do it right away, and everybody who has actual interest in development can take a deep breath and start figuring out what to do.

Whatever servers I set up will use the latest binaries and data that SCORE itself was using, internally referred to as "Issue 25: Unbroken Spirit". This is simply because it will be the fastest to deploy, since it already has tools for account creation, all the microtransaction garbage like the Paragon Rewards tree removed, and many other optimizations. I am sure there will be a lot of complaints about it not being a "pure" release that will want a lot of changes stripped. Have some patience. It will take much longer to get a server set up if I have to roll back my repositories to early 2013 and hunt down a version of the data files that would play nice with it and does not have massive gaps in content. I don't even think such a version exists. This was a massive reverse engineering operation that took months to get something usable.

The Issue 25 data files, while they will work to set up as many servers as you want based on Issue 25, cannot be directly used with binaries built from the source code. You could mount an entire operation to decompile those files to get something editable back, or you can just have some patience and wait until I can put together a release. I am moving as fast as I can to get this thing out there because I believe that once a few running servers are out there being managed by different people with no connections to me, people will back off and give me the time I need to make sure that anything else that is released does not put anyone at risk; neither former Paragon Studios developers nor former SCORE members.

On that note, former SCORE members that have access to the data repository: please don't take it upon yourself to release anything. You would be putting others at risk. Have some patience.

I've been lurking this site for a really long time now, haven't really had much of a reason to post. 

However, in the past few days, we've all been on a rollercoaster of emotions here.  I don't want to speak for anyone here, but I do want to say that I've seen and heard all I need to hear, and all initial backlash/hate/immaturity aside, thank you for doing this.  I think it's safe to say that we are all here to enjoy this game once again, and you literally have an army of resources that you can use to help us all get there faster, please utilize us as best you see fit. 

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 18, 2019, 11:34:37 PM
First - Leandro, thanks. Your cred is still good as far as I'm concerned.

Second - There are some things of interest in the code dump besides just the server. There's code for the Cryptic 3DSMax plugins, for instance. I haven't tried to compile or use it yet; who knows if a plugin that old will still work with modern Max installations but if it does then there's a path for modding and expanding on the existing models and animations.

Even if it doesn't, there's some sort of exporter that puts out plain-text versions of the Max data that theoretically could be massaged into some other form by someone who knew things about modelling and Max. (That person is not me, sadly.)


Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 18, 2019, 11:37:11 PM
Important, because a lot of people are taking out of their arse.

The source code release is all the source code that I was given access to. I am pretty sure it's all the source code that has ever existed; you can build the game client and all servers, with not a lot of effort if you know what you're doing in Visual Studio 2005.

Things like NPCs, missions and so on are not source code. That's data. The binaries created with the source code load the data from pigg files and/or a data folder, just like the game client. In fact, a lot of the client pigg files are used as-is by the server components, and others are modified variants.

Creating all the server-side data files from scratch could take months even with help. That's why I am out there asking for servers to load working binaries on, so everybody who just wants to play can do it right away, and everybody who has actual interest in development can take a deep breath and start figuring out what to do.

Whatever servers I set up will use the latest binaries and data that SCORE itself was using, internally referred to as "Issue 25: Unbroken Spirit". This is simply because it will be the fastest to deploy, since it already has tools for account creation, all the microtransaction garbage like the Paragon Rewards tree removed, and many other optimizations. I am sure there will be a lot of complaints about it not being a "pure" release that will want a lot of changes stripped. Have some patience. It will take much longer to get a server set up if I have to roll back my repositories to early 2013 and hunt down a version of the data files that would play nice with it and does not have massive gaps in content. I don't even think such a version exists. This was a massive reverse engineering operation that took months to get something usable.

The Issue 25 data files, while they will work to set up as many servers as you want based on Issue 25, cannot be directly used with binaries built from the source code. You could mount an entire operation to decompile those files to get something editable back, or you can just have some patience and wait until I can put together a release. I am moving as fast as I can to get this thing out there because I believe that once a few running servers are out there being managed by different people with no connections to me, people will back off and give me the time I need to make sure that anything else that is released does not put anyone at risk; neither former Paragon Studios developers nor former SCORE members.

On that note, former SCORE members that have access to the data repository: please don't take it upon yourself to release anything. You would be putting others at risk. Have some patience.

I will admit, I was angry and saddened a few days ago. When this broke, well I felt human in my feelings. Now that you have come forward and shared everything, while I dont understand the 5-6 years thing and probably never will. I will wait for you or Ironwolf to set one up. Even with the leaks you have shown what can happen.
I also want to say how sorry I am for what you went through, I never understood the type of hate you received. I have always thought and held the City of Heroes as the toppy-top of what a community is. And in most aspects I still do. I just have never seen this happen here, in other communities yes. Just not here.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 18, 2019, 11:46:33 PM
This is a start on the road to redemption.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: summers on April 18, 2019, 11:47:53 PM
It's really happening!!!!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Styrj on April 18, 2019, 11:48:06 PM
Except for the angry part (I'm sure you had your reasons) I completely agree with Angel Phoenix77's statements.  Carry on Leo!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Dale-Man on April 18, 2019, 11:59:56 PM
Thanks Leandro!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 19, 2019, 12:23:24 AM
Im trying to remember everything we did when swglegends started so hopefully this will help someone.

Server hardware suggestions

When people start looking for hardware a good server host we still use is OVH for swglegends. https://www.ovh.com/world/dedicated-servers/infra/1801eg05.xml

It has locations in Canada and Europe but if you want extra security against take downs you might look elsewhere but we've been fine for 3 years.

We've had as many as 2200 users online since our last upgrade but the site numbers reset at some point and displays 1500ish. I recall OVH being very good with upgrades so start out with what you think we will need and then upgrade accordingly.

Funding the community server

*To fund use paypal donation program plainly posted on the website. See our setup here at the legends forum: https://swglegends.com/forums/forum.php

*Displaying a goal for each month in the donation window and what you actually obtain is best.

*A financial update is posted at the end of each month displaying how much we earned in donations, how much is spent and how much is left over from the previous months. You must save your left over money for any bad months in the future where donations could be short. Your paying for a family of like minded gamers after all.

*Also please make sure more than one trustworthy person has access to this donation account and use 2 step verification. A projects bank can be compromised at anytime

Server mods / Administrators  / GMs, whatever

*Logs, logs and logs - You really need these to prevent gms abusing power....

*Whenever a gm grants or restores items to players, punishes players, etc this all needs to be noted for each occurrence. We ran into a problem with gms giving themselves and guild mates lots of credits and items.

*When you catch people abusing this the items and money need to be completely removed / destroyed.

* GM access should be also given to a backup person should someone attempt to take over the project. We have this happen a couple times in the early days of swgreborn / swglegends

Database backups

*Do plenty of these and maybe even do a test server before making everything official. We had to do database wipes to fix server instability. It's better to start over early than do it months later after everyone has gotten re-established.

Feel free to add, I know I Forgot something.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 19, 2019, 12:57:49 AM
Papa Smurf was condescending as heck.


Well.... I guess I'm stuck with it then...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Victoria Victrix on April 19, 2019, 01:16:56 AM
Lullaby For The Cat by Elizabeth Bishop

Minnow, go to sleep and dream,
Close your great big eyes;
Round your bed Events prepare
The pleasantest surprise.

Darling Minnow, drop that frown,
Just cooperate,
Not a kitten shall be drowned
In the Marxist State.

Joy and Love will both be yours,
Minnow, don't be glum.
Happy days are coming soon--
Sleep, and let them come...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 01:35:07 AM
I have been hanging out in the coding discord for City of heroes and they have a server up and are working on fixing many of the issues Leandro had.

It is estimated a server will be fully working by this weekend and a possible home Lan build in a few months. The normal home desktop is faster than the servers in 2012.

Soon is almost now. I wouldn't bother trying to upload the current files as they are being reworked to run faster and more stable. The new code will enable a normal $50 a month server to host around 150 to 200 players.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 19, 2019, 01:37:58 AM
I have been hanging out in the coding discord for City of heroes and they have a server up and are working on fixing many of the issues Leandro had.

It is estimated a server will be fully working by this weekend and a possible home Lan build in a few months. The normal home desktop is faster than the servers in 2012.

Soon is almost now. I wouldn't bother trying to upload the current files as they are being reworked to run faster and more stable.

I could kiss you. I won't, because boundaries and consent and yadda yadda... BUT I COULD KISS YOU.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: summers on April 19, 2019, 01:40:49 AM
...I have two weeks of annual leave, can I play? :D
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 01:42:14 AM
The next step is reworking the entire game and folks are planning to do that once they have stable server code up. These folks are incredible with the speed they work. It is quite amazing.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Rejolt on April 19, 2019, 01:51:30 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 02:01:59 AM
I think in the next month you are going to be seeing a LOT of servers.

I know 1 server was up and another one was being worked to add the fixes they were doing from the first one, live - as I said it is amazing to see these folks work. I won't be needing to host a special server - they are going to be simple to host - they are working on making the install idiot proof.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: summers on April 19, 2019, 02:04:04 AM
I think in the next month you are going to be seeing a LOT of servers.

I know 1 server was up and another one was being worked to add the fixes they were doing from the first one, live - as I said it is amazing to see these folks work. I won't be needing to host a special server - they are going to be simple to host - they are working on making the install idiot proof.

Thank you for your amazing work, and to those who are working behind the scenes right now!!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 19, 2019, 02:09:07 AM
So all we need is content for the servers now right? That's sort of the vibe I'm getting from all the news.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: WolfSoul on April 19, 2019, 02:11:16 AM
So even if servers get up by the weekend, you can't log in , make a character and run missions?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Dev7on on April 19, 2019, 02:12:19 AM
Ok once the source code gets released and the community is worried about NCsoft trying to shut it down can we let the M.A.D.E protect us from copyright issues so we won't have to worry about all of this going on? They did made on offer after they won the DMCA rule.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 02:15:21 AM
I think in the next month you are going to be seeing a LOT of servers.

I know 1 server was up and another one was being worked to add the fixes they were doing from the first one, live - as I said it is amazing to see these folks work. I won't be needing to host a special server - they are going to be simple to host - they are working on making the install idiot proof.

Heart racing....pulse pounding......HULKING OUT WITH DELIGHT! :)

Okay seriously though,  these people have the content and player database already?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Desmartica on April 19, 2019, 02:23:44 AM
I'm still here. 

And...it sounds like our wait is nearly over.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 02:25:53 AM
They are waiting to get the player base and missions tomorrow - realize for code junkies they have heard about this code for over a decade and they are going crazy fixing it and understanding it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 19, 2019, 02:27:16 AM
So even if servers get up by the weekend, you can't log in , make a character and run missions?

We've got a couple different things going on here.

As I type, Leandro is seeking out hosts for an i25 server. If they get up this weekend, which isn't guaranteed, all the content would be there. However, it would also likely be unstable as hell. So you can certainly try to do all those things, and I certainly hope we can do all those things, but it may not happen. Apparently, people want to play City of Heroes - who knew?

Ironwolf is talking about creating servers around the i24 source code that was published today. Work is proceeding pretty darn quickly, but they only have the source code - the content database still has to be scrubbed, and the character database is still a very large question mark. When it comes out, one hopes you will be able to log in, make characters, and run missions, but it will likely be worse on the stability front. In the long run, though, it's the best plan short of SEGS.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 02:30:02 AM
Long term - 6 months or so - you will see a better City of Heroes likely than the original.

Now make the call to the Atlas Revival people.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 02:31:21 AM
They are waiting to get the player base and missions tomorrow - realize for code junkies they have heard about this code for over a decade and they are going crazy fixing it and understanding it.

Sounds good, after all this time I can wait a bit longer.

Also the faster they can convert this into a software package that is idiot proof (or as close as possible to that) for anyone to set up public or private servers and client software,  is the faster it can be distributed to the fan base for archiving as well as playing.....

...and is also the faster we can give a giant middle finger to NCSoft.

They lost my money and respect when they shut the game down, I have never played any of their other games, and if they did revive CoH I would STILL be loathe to give them any money.

Note to self, create Stan Lee tribute/easter egg on private server....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mew Mew Supercat on April 19, 2019, 02:32:20 AM
Long term - 6 months or so - you will see a better City of Heroes likely than the original.

Now make the call to the Atlas Revival people.
Will we have to pay a sub?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 19, 2019, 02:34:52 AM
I wonder if we'd be able to just create one account for all the different servers. But that's impossible, right?

Orrrrr I wonder if there'd be a capability somehow to just continue to use your Paragon Chat (Titan Network) account, and port all that stuff to your 'private server' account?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 19, 2019, 02:36:37 AM
They are waiting to get the player base and missions tomorrow - realize for code junkies they have heard about this code for over a decade and they are going crazy fixing it and understanding it.

That's alright. They were already crazy for believing it existed before Monday right? ;D they sound like the perfect people for the job
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 02:37:18 AM
Will we have to pay a sub?

These special servers would have to take donations from people that OPT to pay donations and that would be solely for server cost/maintenance/bandwidth.  If any charge for special bonuses/features for players that invites a visit from NCSoft's friends Cease and Desist.

Still it is nice to see that the dark tunnel the fans were cast into with the shutdown now has a light at the end of it, and it is NOT the lamp of an onrushing train.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 19, 2019, 02:39:04 AM
All of this is very exciting.  So it sounds like if a server is up by this weekend, it won't really be for jumping in and playing again, but more so just a starting place to get the ball rolling?  Either way, this is all happening so fast and taking my breath away!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Jordan_Lee on April 19, 2019, 02:40:16 AM
I wonder if we'd be able to just create one account for all the different servers. But that's impossible, right?

Orrrrr I wonder if there'd be a capability somehow to just continue to use your Paragon Chat (Titan Network) account, and port all that stuff to your 'private server' account?

I was hoping our character data can be given to us in a file so we can take it with us to different servers. That way if a server crashes, closes, or shuts down we can move to the next.

I think this is fantasy, but it is my fantasy.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mew Mew Supercat on April 19, 2019, 02:40:41 AM
These special servers would have to take donations from people that OPT to pay donations and that would be solely for server cost/maintenance/bandwidth.  If any charge for special bonuses/features for players that invites a visit from NCSoft's friends Cease and Desist.

Still it is nice to see that the dark tunnel the fans were cast into with the shutdown now has a light at the end of it, and it is NOT the lamp of an onrushing train.
Thanks for the headsup :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: CG on April 19, 2019, 02:41:34 AM
It's hard not to be bitter that this could have all been happening years ago.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mantic on April 19, 2019, 02:46:41 AM
I was hoping our character data can be given to us in a file so we can take it with us to different servers. That way if a server crashes, closes, or shuts down we can move to the next.

I think this is fantasy, but it is my fantasy.

The SentinelPlus exporter from sunset could make portable exports for that sort of thing. One character at a time.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 19, 2019, 02:49:12 AM
I just have so many great toons via Paragon Chat that I'd love to re-purpose in an emulator. But, I'd understand if that just wasn't in the bag.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 19, 2019, 02:49:56 AM
It's hard not to be bitter that this could have all been happening years ago.

Right.

I said it wouldn't be easy.

It's not.

In the end?  Being bitter is a waste of your time and you are above that.

We all are.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 19, 2019, 02:57:25 AM
It's hard not to be bitter that this could have all been happening years ago.
Just think

We could have been on issue 30 now
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mantic on April 19, 2019, 03:00:27 AM
These special servers would have to take donations from people that OPT to pay donations and that would be solely for server cost/maintenance/bandwidth.  If any charge for special bonuses/features for players that invites a visit from NCSoft's friends Cease and Desist.

Profit or no, NCSoft's lawyers will be coming. Expect that. There are no rules of fair play that make IP infringement legal, so if you're going to run an unlicensed game server accept that it is a criminal venture and prepare accordingly.

If you want to incentivize contributions do it however you see fit. More likely you'll offend some potential players. Then again, the few you don't offend may be all you need.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 03:03:13 AM
Folks please give all credit to the coders and server people - they are working the magic!

Stop and think that what is being done now would not have been so easy in 2012 or 2013.

Leandro is also working hard to help and so are some of the SCoRE people.
Give credit where due. I would have stepped up if needed but these folks hit the ground at a dead run and are doing the work.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 03:04:29 AM
Profit or no, NCSoft's lawyers will be coming. Expect that. There are no rules of fair play that make IP infringement legal, so if you're going to run an unlicensed game server accept that it is a criminal venture and prepare accordingly.

If you want to incentivize contributions do it however you see fit. More likely you'll offend some potential players. Then again, the few you don't offend may be all you need.

If this will run as it appears right now you can host for 100+ of your friends for $50 a month.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 19, 2019, 03:07:53 AM
Question for the mods here. Can we have  a thread to the new servers. This way it beats trying to locate them going here or there to find one.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 19, 2019, 03:09:48 AM
Ok once the source code gets released and the community is worried about NCsoft trying to shut it down can we let the M.A.D.E protect us from copyright issues so we won't have to worry about all of this going on? They did made on offer after they won the DMCA rule.

MADE is too limited.  The server would be in a museum where NO ONE can access the game outside it's walls for demonstration only, or in a single player mode that won't allow for multiplayer use.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: TonyV on April 19, 2019, 03:10:32 AM
Question for the mods here. Can we have  a thread to the new servers. This way it beats trying to locate them going here or there to find one.

We're going to have to talk about that. Right now, there aren't any yet. I don't know the implications of us hosting that info yet. We'll try to figure something out.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 03:16:58 AM
Well a couple i24 servers are up but without character data or missions.

The i25 code will be out tomorrow and it is complete. The coders and server folks expect to have something up this weekend but a stable idiot proof product in a month or 2. One of the guys is going to work on a local lan client to run a small home server and he said likely 6 months for that.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 19, 2019, 03:18:42 AM
We're going to have to talk about that. Right now, there aren't any yet. I don't know the implications of us hosting that info yet. We'll try to figure something out.

Thank you for answering my question :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RGladden on April 19, 2019, 03:22:14 AM
You know, I'm not going to mind one bit having to start from scratch.  Not one bit.   ;)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 19, 2019, 03:24:38 AM
We're going to have to talk about that. Right now, there aren't any yet. I don't know the implications of us hosting that info yet. We'll try to figure something out.

I know that nobody has asked for a "vote" on this, but I would still vote "no" to such a thing.

Despite the whole Inifinite Rasa debacle, it's been pointed out a few times here and there that there are Legacy and Aion and other such emus of NCSoft games that have been in operation without ever seeing a Cease & Desist order.

If we want City of Heroes to likewise manage to fly under the radar then we need to give NCSoft a shred of plausible deniability when it comes to  turning a blind eye to something that everyone actually knows about, by NOT advertising the private servers on the most public face that CoH has these days.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 19, 2019, 03:28:44 AM
If this will run as it appears right now you can host for 100+ of your friends for $50 a month.

How much would it cost to buy a hundred friends?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on April 19, 2019, 03:29:26 AM
I have been hanging out in the coding discord for City of heroes and they have a server up and are working on fixing many of the issues Leandro had.

It is estimated a server will be fully working by this weekend and a possible home Lan build in a few months. The normal home desktop is faster than the servers in 2012.

Soon is almost now. I wouldn't bother trying to upload the current files as they are being reworked to run faster and more stable. The new code will enable a normal $50 a month server to host around 150 to 200 players.
i take back my rather negative suspicions about some of Leandro's initial comments when the truth about the existence of functional CoH servers was leaked. While i still think the whole private server approach could've been handled better in general i really do appreciate the work that went into making it and it finally being released. Still not happy about NCsoft shutting the game down in the first place and it's hard for me to fully believe that the server code would've been released any time soon if someone hadn't spilled the beans, but that's water under the bridge at this point and i'm simply hoping to play City of Heroes again sometime in the near future.


Also i'd like to finally get my hands on City of Titans's first release since it still looks like it's shaping up to be a worthy successor to CoH, but that's all secondary to this news.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 19, 2019, 03:30:54 AM
Sentinel+ was created expressly for this purpose. Will eventually an easy Sentinel+ uploader be added to the general "private server package"?

Despite the whole Inifinite Rasa debacle, it's been pointed out a few times here and there that there are Legacy and Aion and other such emus of NCSoft games that have been in operation without ever seeing a Cease & Desist order.

Don't forget Auto Assault... and we don't know that these emulators *haven't* gotten a C&D.


Edit: Due to the migration of posts from "New Efforts" to this thread, the quote above no longer links properly. But it is unmodified, and the original can be found in this thread (I don't want to put the effort in right now).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 03:31:31 AM
It's hard not to be bitter that this could have all been happening years ago.

But if this did happen years ago, the odds of NCSoft cracking down would have been greater then they are now.

plus with all the software changes that have occurred in that time,  recoding the game for the "idiot proof" installation that has been mentioned by Ironwolf should be easier now then it was then.  Also hardware has improved and a server now should be easier than  then to run the game.  Also with file distribution sites being what they are now compared to then, disseminating the final result for anyone and their brother or sister to rev up a server and play the game is also even better and with such wide dispersal, good luck to NCsoft if they try to crack down now.

However that all being said, if there were a way to have done all this back then it would have been great.  However I am not being bitter nor will I judge ScoRe and anyone that was on the secret server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Adam Infinity on April 19, 2019, 03:32:41 AM
I understand the need for discretion. But simple folk like myself would like to be informed in a simple and clear manner of where to go to play a quality version of the game. I don't want to be left hanging, because I'm not cool or savvy enough to figure it out myself. Please point me (us) in the right direction when people are playing. Thank you
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Fellstrike on April 19, 2019, 03:33:19 AM
I'm glad to hear how quickly progress is being made.

Be sure all of you working on all this take care of yourselves too though!

Also Adam, I'm sure between Paragon Chat, Reddit, and here lots of messages will be around once things are in a playable state. Just keep an ear to the ground.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 03:33:55 AM
If this will run as it appears right now you can host for 100+ of your friends for $50 a month.

That sounds wonderful
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MWRuger on April 19, 2019, 03:34:48 AM
FINALLY!

It looks like if I can last till October I can play City of Heroes again!

Ignoring all the drama, this is all I ever wanted. I do feel for the people who passed before this could happen and who knows? I'm not back in the game yet, but I am totally jazzed and more excited than I have been since "New Efforts" was born many, many posts ago.

I have a buddy who wants to toss a couple of thousand to create a private server for us and I ain't mad at no one!

See you all in Atlas Park on the 1st Double XP Weekend!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on April 19, 2019, 03:35:03 AM
We're going to have to talk about that. Right now, there aren't any yet. I don't know the implications of us hosting that info yet. We'll try to figure something out.
i think it's probably better to leave that to other venues, such as the discord server and other sources. At most i'd suggest just offering suggestions about where someone could look for the info without directly hosting it. i would suggest updating things like the powers database to include the i25 build and the like, but not directly hosting server info. IMO, YMMV, CYA
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 03:35:54 AM
I know that nobody has asked for a "vote" on this, but I would still vote "no" to such a thing.

Despite the whole Inifinite Rasa debacle, it's been pointed out a few times here and there that there are Legacy and Aion and other such emus of NCSoft games that have been in operation without ever seeing a Cease & Desist order.

If we want City of Heroes to likewise manage to fly under the radar then we need to give NCSoft a shred of plausible deniability when it comes to  turning a blind eye to something that everyone actually knows about, by NOT advertising the private servers on the most public face that CoH has these days.

Do any of these emus give the option to donate money to offset server/bandwidth and can they prove that no profit is being made? If so, more power to them :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kyriani on April 19, 2019, 03:36:01 AM
I'm curious. How is it going to be so much cheaper for these new servers than it was for the secret server?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 03:38:44 AM
You know, I'm not going to mind one bit having to start from scratch.  Not one bit.   ;)

Well if it is your own server, then rebuilding your characters from scratch with admin abilities to restore your influence,  base prestige for base rebuilding and spawn IO's to store in base as characters level up will definitely speed up the process :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 19, 2019, 03:39:16 AM
I'm curious. How is it going to be so much cheaper for these new servers than it was for the secret server?

I would guess a combination of newer technology and more people involved working on the code.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Stonehead on April 19, 2019, 03:40:11 AM
Very exciting news - thanks to all those making this happen!


D
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 03:46:12 AM
I am also hoping for a good admin interface to toggle things like anniversary badges and events, but also to be able to make some "tune ups and adjustments" to certain powers and/or archetypes that I felt should have been done.

Looking at Energy Melee, Peacebringer and Warshades.....

I think if I were to run a private server I'd start with the first two months of DXP and make sure all anniversary badges are enabled as well as make sure new ones are in place to compensate for the shut down era and the new year....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 19, 2019, 03:51:11 AM
I'm curious. How is it going to be so much cheaper for these new servers than it was for the secret server?
The $1000 price tag quoted was from 2013. Your desktop now is probably about as powerful as a server back then.

Well, not quite, given the specs of the server posted, but it was a VERY powerful server. Even today a comparable server costs hundreds to rent.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kyriani on April 19, 2019, 03:52:14 AM
The $1000 price tag quoted was from 2013. Your desktop now is probably about as powerful as a server back then.

Well, not quite, given the specs of the server posted, but it was a VERY powerful server. Even today a comparable server costs hundreds to rent.

That's comforting to hear.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 03:54:34 AM
The $1000 price tag quoted was from 2013. Your desktop now is probably about as powerful as a server back then.

Well, not quite, given the specs of the server posted, but it was a VERY powerful server. Even today a comparable server costs hundreds to rent.

or imagine how cheap you might be able to get a server from that era with the specs to run CoH?
Granted sometimes parts for legacy hardware isn't always easy to get but still...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 03:58:27 AM
So here is a question about energy melee, that be simply answered yes or no but if you want to expand your answer a bit that is of course, fine.

I'm thinking that for my own server, I would like to restore Energy Melee's  ENERGY TRANSFER power to its original pre issue 13 state and have it where in power customization a player can choose which version they want.

After all, that change was NOT that well received and while my energy melee characters builds were modified and the change accommodated for, it was not a change that I enjoyed overly much. But this way fans of the change can still have the altered version if they wish.

Good idea? yes or no?

Also Peacebringers and Warshades modified so that when created or respec'd they can CHOOSE to have flight or teleport as travel power, thus we can have teleporting Peacebringers and Warshades that can fly in human form without jetpacks and rocket boards or using squid mode.

Good idea? yes or no?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RruinerR on April 19, 2019, 04:00:49 AM
So, one thing I am curious of, which I haven't seen mentioned, is, does this include City of Villians work? 
I saw that this was cut from just before the shut down, so I have hopes, but nothing specific ever detailed. 

Trying to figure out HOW excited I should be.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 19, 2019, 04:06:18 AM
City of Villains has been 'merged' into City of Heroes as the same product just before City of Heroes Freedom.  City of Villains and Going Rogue content would be included just like in Issue 23.  No changes needed.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kyriani on April 19, 2019, 04:07:02 AM
So, one thing I am curious of, which I haven't seen mentioned, is, does this include City of Villians work? 
I saw that this was cut from just before the shut down, so I have hopes, but nothing specific ever detailed. 

Trying to figure out HOW excited I should be.

Wut? City of Villains is not something separate from CoH. It was never "cut" before shut down. Not sure where you got that idea.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 19, 2019, 04:10:23 AM
Will we have to pay a sub?

Private servers, emulators etc are free. Once people start charging it is guaranteed to get shut down so if you run into someone charging to play don't bother playing. You should instead find a server and do the donation option.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 19, 2019, 04:19:41 AM
We're going to have to talk about that. Right now, there aren't any yet. I don't know the implications of us hosting that info yet. We'll try to figure something out.

With all the stupid press this is getting from the change.org petition and blogs you definitely should not. For now people should use the facebook groups, and discord servers as a means of finding it. Until a website is started.

I mean if you really want to avoid that attention here I wold instead make a single post in the wake me up when there's news thread pointing to a discussion area (Everyone gets notifed) and then delete that post at a later time.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RruinerR on April 19, 2019, 04:26:46 AM
The "cut" I was referring to was the state of the source code/playerDB that SCORE acquired.  I just wanted to confirm the CoV portion is included is all.  My wife and I stopped playing before it went free to play and due to life (kids) couldn't get back to playing before it shut down.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Dev7on on April 19, 2019, 04:34:49 AM
FINALLY!

It looks like if I can last till October I can play City of Heroes again!

Ignoring all the drama, this is all I ever wanted. I do feel for the people who passed before this could happen and who knows? I'm not back in the game yet, but I am totally jazzed and more excited than I have been since "New Efforts" was born many, many posts ago.

I have a buddy who wants to toss a couple of thousand to create a private server for us and I ain't mad at no one!

See you all in Atlas Park on the 1st Double XP Weekend!

I was waiting for you to finally respond about the news.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 19, 2019, 04:37:22 AM
https://discord.gg/QZFg3UK <--- This is an invite link to a City of Heroes discord server. It includes a variety of channels, including one for each server to help people reconnect with old server pals, and various ones for reminiscing and sharing CoH art and such.

I'm curious. How is it going to be so much cheaper for these new servers than it was for the secret server?

I posted on reddit, the wayback machine archive of the server company the secret server was using has a working cost calculator. For the same month that the server requirements were posted (in a leaked screenshot) the costs are expensive (and about in line with what was posted). That's just the pace of technology... and it's possible that the server was just pricey, because it was chosen based more on location rather than price only.

Edit: Due to the migration of posts from "New Efforts" to this thread, the quote above no longer links properly. But it is unmodified, and the original can be found in this thread (I don't want to put the effort in right now).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Stupid Fanboy on April 19, 2019, 04:40:04 AM
I have been hanging out in the coding discord for City of heroes and they have a server up and are working on fixing many of the issues Leandro had.

It is estimated a server will be fully working by this weekend and a possible home Lan build in a few months. The normal home desktop is faster than the servers in 2012.

Soon is almost now. I wouldn't bother trying to upload the current files as they are being reworked to run faster and more stable. The new code will enable a normal $50 a month server to host around 150 to 200 players.

This is so surreal. I can't believe we're talking about playing again in this matter of fact tone.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on April 19, 2019, 05:01:42 AM
This is so surreal. I can't believe we're talking about playing again in this matter of fact tone.
i can, and it's wonderful.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Noyjitat on April 19, 2019, 05:25:35 AM
My boss offered me time off if I thought i'd get to play this again soon before I learned the source was going to be released. I have paid vacation and im traveling out of the country this summer with the paid time, but I may just take 1 day off anyway if coh shows up before then.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 05:33:45 AM
My boss offered me time off if I thought i'd get to play this again soon before I learned the source was going to be released. I have paid vacation and im traveling out of the country this summer with the paid time, but I may just take 1 day off anyway if coh shows up before then.

I'm thinking of coming down with a bad case of 3 day flu when this comes out....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 19, 2019, 05:38:53 AM
And if you're worried that Leandro was holding back the database, you can rest easy knowing that it, in all it's 47.4 megabyte glory, is now publicly available at a Discord near you.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Wyrm on April 19, 2019, 05:42:33 AM
I managed to remain blissfully unaware of any of this until today. Wow. =)

This is all incredibly heartening. Thank you to everyone involved in keeping CoH alive. I look forward to finding my way onto some of these servers in the near future, and tanking my heart out.

Or, you know - speed boosting everyone.

The main thing that surprises me about the last few hundred messages in this thread is that apparently, not everyone has their old builds, Sentinel+ files, and screenshot folders archived on multiple computers. I may have had a hard time letting go...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Victoria Victrix on April 19, 2019, 05:54:39 AM
When you are calculating costs, don't forget bandwidth.

We use a lot of it here--Larry uploads his ready-for-print cover paintings, the guys host a twitch stream for car rebuilds and Doom, ,<can't remember the space game>, Quake streams, and Larry participates in tabletop twitch streams.

And that kind of bandwidth, which is insignificant compared to a game server, is $500/month.

Plus, if you try to host as few as 4 people outside your property on the server you've got in your basement, I guaran-damn-tee you that unless you are paying as much as we are a month, you will be throttled down to nothing by your ISP.  And probably reported for "suspicious activity."
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 06:25:45 AM
Folks please give all credit to the coders and server people - they are working the magic!

Stop and think that what is being done now would not have been so easy in 2012 or 2013.

Leandro is also working hard to help and so are some of the SCoRE people.
Give credit where due. I would have stepped up if needed but these folks hit the ground at a dead run and are doing the work.

It would have been a lot harder in 2012/2013 and chances NC Soft would have been more vigilant.  Will they be now?  That's a test.  But I expect the community to pass it.

Here is now.  That's the most important thing.  A time of celebration.

Great to hear Leandro is working hard to help along with some of the SCoRE people.

That 15th anniversary seems to be going accordingly to some cosmic plan...

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 06:43:37 AM
I think in the next month you are going to be seeing a LOT of servers.

I know 1 server was up and another one was being worked to add the fixes they were doing from the first one, live - as I said it is amazing to see these folks work. I won't be needing to host a special server - they are going to be simple to host - they are working on making the install idiot proof.

Thank you for the updates, Ironwolf.  Most welcome!

I think the best thing is to make 'this thing' idiot proof for the likes of the non-tech' heads out there.  (I count myself amongst that group.)

I'd also hope that the community programmers get a LAN, 'solo' capacity 'doomsday' switch capability built into the game.  So, it can be run privately 'solo', P2P, LAN, 'modest' local server capability to serve as a 'doomsday' fall back position in the case of litigation or whoever has the 'server code' gets hit by a bus.

The one thing that I always admired about Unreal Tournament.  You could run the game solo, LAN, run your own server, play over the internet on somebody else's served game.

That, really, should be the aim.  Then?

It's about the community.  Some will modify.  Some will refine.  Some will want to play the 'Legacy' as is.  Some will play on Ironwolf's server.  Some will wait for Leandro's/SCORE's 'Unbroken' server.  Some will get a variant of that given to the community whilst they continue their work.  Some will get new content.  Some may finally get a map/mission creator. 

All roads are now possible.  That this game gets handed over to the community.  'It' can be the custodian of CoH 'Legacy' (The 'Unbroken.')

The speed of events and the rallying around of the CoH/programming community is heart warming.

Well met, Leandro, Iron Wolf, SCORE and the 'scores' of others helping get this 'real.'

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tubbius on April 19, 2019, 06:47:16 AM
And the real kicker is this:

It could have been NCSoft getting the glory, praise, AND money through subscriptions or purchases had they merely stayed the course years ago.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 06:47:25 AM
Well a couple i24 servers are up but without character data or missions.

The i25 code will be out tomorrow and it is complete. The coders and server folks expect to have something up this weekend but a stable idiot proof product in a month or 2. One of the guys is going to work on a local lan client to run a small home server and he said likely 6 months for that.

Excellent news!  Stable.  Idiot proof in 2 months.  Home LAN in 6.  By the GODS!

A 'small home server' to run a local client?

Now, THAT is the HOLY GRAIL!

September is looking good.  8) ;D

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 06:49:43 AM
The i25 code will be out tomorrow and it is complete.

Complete.

Finally.

The day has come. 

A day that will be long remembered.

I always knew the game would come back.

Always believed.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 06:51:19 AM
How much would it cost to buy a hundred friends?

More than that. ;)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 06:59:43 AM
They are waiting to get the player base and missions tomorrow - realize for code junkies they have heard about this code for over a decade and they are going crazy fixing it and understanding it.

They must be very excited to finally 'see' the 'legend' of the code. 

It's a Neo and Morpheus moment.  It finally exists.  It's...'real.'

The 'matrix.'  It's 'just code.'

As for the player base, don't know if it includes the European servers (where the American and Euro ones amalgamated in the last year?) and access to your characters.  That would be nice.  I have my email that I used for them so I can verify my characters.  But if I had to start from scratch?

Who cares?

"Long term - 6 months or so - you will see a better City of Heroes likely than the original."

No doubt.  Can't wait.  It's going to be beautiful.  A 'smoother' pieces of software running on modern, powerful home PCs.  This is the CoH's community's chance.  And who knows, it bring in 'SCORES' of other programmers, players who didn't get the chance to play it 'back when.'

"Now make the call to the Atlas Revival people."

Indeed.  They'll have the 'real thing' to work with!  And a poster mentioned about the original Studio Max plug in to work with...

...here we go.  This is just the beginning.


Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 19, 2019, 07:17:12 AM
So forgive me if this is jumping the gun here, but if the DB has been released does that mean we will be able to retrieve our characters at some point in the future?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Harq76 on April 19, 2019, 07:23:53 AM
I check this website every few days.  April 16th is my birthday and before I went to bed I decided to check it out. All I can say is wow.  Just wow about everything.  I was tempted to say my two bits since then and decided to just be patient and read up on everything carefully before saying something that would be misinformed and unfair.

I'm very glad I did. because now I really just want to say this to everyone that is making this happen again. 

Thank you.

Not many people understand what this game meant to me and others like me.  I have very fond memories of this game.  My daughter (3 at the time) sat on my lap watching me take down mobs.  Now her and my son may have an opportunity to make their own as well (providing I even let them have a turn haha).

Thing is, I was just hoping.  That's all. Its becoming a reality and soon as well. I appreciate everything that is being done. I don't care about the player database.  Playing from scratch is what I plan to do anyway. I love earning my street cred hehe. 

Anyway, I'm rambling and I'm not really saying anything that hasn't been said already by others in the past.  Just wanted to share this.

Again.  Thank you.  Thank you everyone.

See you on the other side!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 07:25:48 AM

The source code release is all the source code that I was given access to. I am pretty sure it's all the source code that has ever existed; you can build the game client and all servers, with not a lot of effort if you know what you're doing in Visual Studio 2005.

Things like NPCs, missions and so on are not source code. That's data. The binaries created with the source code load the data from pigg files and/or a data folder, just like the game client. In fact, a lot of the client pigg files are used as-is by the server components, and others are modified variants.

Creating all the server-side data files from scratch could take months even with help. That's why I am out there asking for servers to load working binaries on, so everybody who just wants to play can do it right away, and everybody who has actual interest in development can take a deep breath and start figuring out what to do.

Whatever servers I set up will use the latest binaries and data that SCORE itself was using, internally referred to as "Issue 25: Unbroken Spirit". This is simply because it will be the fastest to deploy, since it already has tools for account creation, all the microtransaction garbage like the Paragon Rewards tree removed, and many other optimizations. I am sure there will be a lot of complaints about it not being a "pure" release that will want a lot of changes stripped. Have some patience. It will take much longer to get a server set up if I have to roll back my repositories to early 2013 and hunt down a version of the data files that would play nice with it and does not have massive gaps in content. I don't even think such a version exists. This was a massive reverse engineering operation that took months to get something usable.

The Issue 25 data files, while they will work to set up as many servers as you want based on Issue 25, cannot be directly used with binaries built from the source code. You could mount an entire operation to decompile those files to get something editable back, or you can just have some patience and wait until I can put together a release. I am moving as fast as I can to get this thing out there because I believe that once a few running servers are out there being managed by different people with no connections to me, people will back off and give me the time I need to make sure that anything else that is released does not put anyone at risk; neither former Paragon Studios developers nor former SCORE members.

On that note, former SCORE members that have access to the data repository: please don't take it upon yourself to release anything. You would be putting others at risk. Have some patience.

Leandro,  thank you for the comprehensive post and the leadership.  It's good to see you come out swinging with common sense, constructive action and yes, we need patience and discipline.

We've waited this long.  A few days or a week or so for a stable i25 release sounds like a dream.  A home server in '6 months' sounds like the holy grail.

We don't want to put you, SCORE or any Paragon Developers in jeopardy.  No one wants that.  I don't want the game at any price.  Not at that price. 

Again, I say.  I hope you're ok.  DO look after your health.  We don't want any more casualties of 'war.'  I always found you to be a positive force in the CoH community and P.R wing of the SCORE that gave me the confidence that the game would come back and this day would arrive.  That you and the SCORE team were custodians of the game is fine by me.  You've preserved it.  Improved it.  Refined it.  And players or rather, 'Heroes' who have 'Fallen' got to play it...that's more than fine by me.

Star Wars galaxies took years and it had legions of programmers on it and a source leak from Sony themselves.  (Correct me, if I'm wrong on that...folks.)

I was always prepared for this to take about ten years as a comparative timeline.  So the fact that it's happening sooner(TM) is a bonus to me.

That you're passing over 'source code' to get others involved, help develop or to just play is good news.  The time seems about right. 

This allows developers to ponder the next moves for the game.  Whilst people can enjoy SCORE'S work on issue 25 'Unbroken Spirit.'  A worthy release and a worthy title for the CoH Community.

Having something that includes i24's content is exciting enough.  But to have  SCORE's hard work on issue 25 with revisions (I'll more than trust you guys, we have ICON and the Paragon Chat and the excellent work on SG bases as reminders of what sound work you've done) for stability and other 'Easter Eggs...' will be the 'worthy' release that we'd all hoped for before it was cruelly shot down.

As Ironwolf has mentioned.  Some servers are or will be 'Idiot Proof' real soon and talking home server/LAN within 6 months.  I consider this crucial.  So the 'mortals' can play it privately.  P2P with people we knew.  And that way we can 'solo' our way and enjoy the game.  Others may want to run a server with 50 friends.  Others may want a thriving community of 1000 or more.  I think allowing the community to embrace it on many levels allows the CoH community to elevate existentially to the higher level is deserves.  It won't be held hostage to fortune anymore by any corporation.

Working together, Leandro, SCORE, Ironwolf and the 'transfixed by legend' programmers getting their hands on the 'code' for the first time is more than we could have hoped for mere days ago.

Regards,

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 19, 2019, 07:35:14 AM
So forgive me if this is jumping the gun here, but if the DB has been released does that mean we will be able to retrieve our characters at some point in the future?

No, the database being referenced is the content database; the missions and scripts and such. The player character database is a different kettle of fish.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MWRuger on April 19, 2019, 07:46:33 AM
I was waiting for you to finally respond about the news.

I may be slow, but I'm sure!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: BitLoadR on April 19, 2019, 08:47:00 AM
... Some servers are or will be 'Idiot Proof' real soon and talking home server/LAN within 6 months.  I consider this crucial.  So the 'mortals' can play it privately.  P2P with people we knew.  And that way we can 'solo' our way and enjoy the game ....

This is what I got most exited about while trying to catch up on all the news. Paragon Chat is great for exploring and chatting. And I loved playing together with others when the game was up.
But my life has changed a lot ever since the game was shutdown, not because of the game being pulled btw, but I had to make choices and redirect my attention to other parts of my life that makes it difficult for me to be online in an MMO environment. I've tried, by use of Champions Online, but even then I don't team up much and just try to complete missions by myself.

So getting back into CoH and being able to 'solo' missions using a private server that I'm running at home, that would be awesome.
Sure, it would be more fun to team up with other players and have a good team to run trails with, but I no longer have the privilege to spent 3 consecutive hours doing a Statesman Trial on the weekend. Or spent half a day taking down Hamidon. My life has changed so much over the past 10 years that my gaming-time mostly consists of playing Assassins Creed, Watch Dogs or Kerbal Space Program for 30 to 60 minutes during the evenings, just before bed.

....

But if anyone has success running a private server online with i24/i25 code I would gladly try to join others for some missions. :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 09:43:08 AM
This is what I got most exited about while trying to catch up on all the news. Paragon Chat is great for exploring and chatting. And I loved playing together with others when the game was up.
But my life has changed a lot ever since the game was shutdown, not because of the game being pulled btw, but I had to make choices and redirect my attention to other parts of my life that makes it difficult for me to be online in an MMO environment. I've tried, by use of Champions Online, but even then I don't team up much and just try to complete missions by myself.

So getting back into CoH and being able to 'solo' missions using a private server that I'm running at home, that would be awesome.
Sure, it would be more fun to team up with other players and have a good team to run trails with, but I no longer have the privilege to spent 3 consecutive hours doing a Statesman Trial on the weekend. Or spent half a day taking down Hamidon. My life has changed so much over the past 10 years that my gaming-time mostly consists of playing Assassins Creed, Watch Dogs or Kerbal Space Program for 30 to 60 minutes during the evenings, just before bed.

....

But if anyone has success running a private server online with i24/i25 code I would gladly try to join others for some missions. :)

I nodded my way through this post.

Though I'm thrilled about what is to come.  I won't be able to afford it the time I once did. 

Being able to solo and enjoy the nostalgia on my own terms without committing to a 3 hour TF.

Having 'solutions' to honour the spirit of 'pick up and play' of the original game is the way to go.

Those who want to go 'hardcore' TF, perfect their IO builds, grind ten alts in the 1st few weeks?  Have at it.

For me?  To causally fly in wonder and let loose an energy torrent to an errant mob as a 'rookie' hero once more...will be something I will slowly savour.  It's been so long a wait.  What time I give to it will be savoured.

Having THAT option care of a Solo server, LAN, 'small' server capacity or 'me and my thousand' strong community gives the community the flexibility.

Times have changed.  People have changed.  The time we can give to it may have changed.

But it will be fantastic to enjoy the game once more on our own terms rather than those imposed by the pressure of utilising our subs.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: CG on April 19, 2019, 09:58:53 AM
Right.

I said it wouldn't be easy.

It's not.

In the end?  Being bitter is a waste of your time and you are above that.

We all are.

Thanks, I'm cured.

There was a point between getting the code from anonymous devs 6 years ago and last week when there was a conspiracy to keep the private server secret with enough time to make new ATs where scrubbing the code and re-publishing it anonymously was the right thing to do.  There was a point where the well-meaning people of SCoRE lost their way and kept this golden gift to themselves instead of sharing.

My bitterness will go away when I can play again.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 10:03:51 AM
or imagine how cheap you might be able to get a server from that era with the specs to run CoH?
Granted sometimes parts for legacy hardware isn't always easy to get but still...

You can get the exact servers that CoH was running on in 2012 for $700 for the frame and $60 for each blade.

The changes they are making will render this not necessary. When an instance was built the entire map and mission were held in memory, with modern processors and memory speeds this is unnecessary and so they are changing it. Once built you should be able to run this on 2 systems with i5 processors and 16gb of ram along with a 125gb SSD in each system and a second drive for a mirror if you want it. Something like this:

Cost $150 each
HP Desktop Computer 6300 Pro Intel Core i5 3rd Gen 3470 (3.20 GHz) 8 GB DDR3 128 GB SSD Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit

+
$140 per stick - Crucial CT16G3ERSDD4186D 16GB 240-Pin DDR3 1866 SDRAM ECC Registered Server Memory

A setup like this would run 100 players likely quite easily. For a home setup for just you a few friends 2 of the base systems would do it. So you could run a home server of CoH for about a one time purchase of $300 - $400 and be just fine.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 10:26:35 AM
So where are we now?

Quoted from Discord:
 I'll have those servers for public for you sometime soon, literally installing windows on them now

Current build is based on the i24 code NOT the i25 coming today:

Quoted from Discord:
 That's scores source though, not what we well have when all this is done... Got to understand there is 2 sets of things being given, the source code, and a built distro. The distro we will get to hold us over while the code for I'm modified i24 gets completely scrubbed.   Once we get that, our version will drop to i24 and we'll lose the 6 extra years of dev.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on April 19, 2019, 10:32:16 AM
I guess lots of people ask the same q. Days weeks or months from a first playable version? I look forward to installing the whole thing on my pc to play solo. Hopefully there will be a guide up. Got two stationay powerfull pc's so it should be ok. If not i'll upgrade them :)

Why was i25 leaked and not i24. What is the difference?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 10:41:11 AM
They are putting out a playable version today - but it won't be stable.

What is happening is that the coders have the source code from multiple people. They have the game as it was at shutdown but no data for the game - no missions or characters. Then they have the i25 code from Leandro that will be out this afternoon - we told him to go to work and relax - I said I will take the blame for the delay.

The i25 SCoRE code has missions and character data + modified new code for different power sets.


They have the i24 source code and are working the bugs out of it so the server folks can run it faster and more stable than the original. A lot of the tools now are far more powerful than they had in 2012 - also the Atlas Park Revival maps according to the coders should be easy to install at some point as they are static. Also for the costume crowd - using the 2012 version of 3D max - some are already working on new costumes for the game.

So in a nutshell:

The servers will be i25 modded code and development will begin on the i24 source original to fix the spaghetti, update how it works and to enable modern tools for faster changes and better network code. It is quite fun to watch what is happening if you are a nerd like me lol.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Thunder Glove on April 19, 2019, 10:50:31 AM
.... okay, I'm really going to cry now.  Because (a) dreams really do come true, and (b) YOU ALL LIED TO ME WHEN YOU SAID YOU WOULDN'T HAVE A SERVER READY BEFORE I WENT AWAY FOR TWO WEEKS!  NOW I'M GOING TO BE STUCK IN DUMB OL' PARIS AND MY FAMILY WILL BE GOING "LOOK AT THIS ARTWORK, IT'S REALLY OLD" AND I'LL BE GOING "WHY AREN'T I A SUPERHERO RIGHT NOW?"

;)

Seriously, this is the best possible news.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Castegyre on April 19, 2019, 11:05:38 AM
I've gone from being very disappointed to almost proud. I've said for years to anyone who would listen that CoH has had the best MMO community I've experienced since I started playing them in EQ beta. I like being proven right.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 11:09:12 AM
I think people just lost sight of the original goal.

Now that focus is back and the world is returning.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Belenus on April 19, 2019, 11:14:23 AM
They are putting out a playable version today - but it won't be stable.

What is happening is that the coders have the source code from multiple people. They have the game as it was at shutdown but no data for the game - no missions or characters. Then they have the i25 code from Leandro that will be out this afternoon - we told him to go to work and relax - I said I will take the blame for the delay.

The i25 SCoRE code has missions and character data + modified new code for different power sets.


They have the i24 source code and are working the bugs out of it so the server folks can run it faster and more stable than the original. A lot of the tools now are far more powerful than they had in 2012 - also the Atlas Park Revival maps according to the coders should be easy to install at some point as they are static. Also for the costume crowd - using the 2012 version of 3D max - some are already working on new costumes for the game.

So in a nutshell:

The servers will be i25 modded code and development will begin on the i24 source original to fix the spaghetti, update how it works and to enable modern tools for faster changes and better network code. It is quite fun to watch what is happening if you are a nerd like me lol.

This is what the community was for helping accomplish a common goal :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 19, 2019, 11:22:14 AM
...Welp. Looks like I'm buying a new computer this weekend! This is almost too exciting.

Do we know anything about how log-in's work will work yet? Or is that still up in the air? I'm pretty sure my login for Paragon Chat is the same as my login was for City of Heroes... but I could be wrong?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: summers on April 19, 2019, 11:25:37 AM
I don't know how this went from "COH is never coming back   :'( " to "OMG COH is almost here  ;D " in just a few days.

What a roller coaster...!!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 11:26:21 AM
For simplicity they are going to use the Paragon Chat launcher at first since it can already work.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 19, 2019, 11:31:45 AM
For simplicity they are going to use the Paragon Chat launcher at first since it can already work.

Makes sense!

Does that mean all of our Paragon Chat toons will transfer over? Again, if not and/or if you don't know, I totally understand.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: BitLoadR on April 19, 2019, 11:47:53 AM
Does that mean all of our Paragon Chat toons will transfer over? Again, if not and/or if you don't know, I totally understand.

I'm just wondering how many people would actually be disappointed if they found out all their progress, all their toons, just everything from "back then" would not be available on the new servers. And they would need to start from scratch.
I for one wouldn't mind rebuilding my toons from scratch.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: JadeWarrior on April 19, 2019, 12:02:45 PM
They are putting out a playable version today - but it won't be stable.

Was it ever? - KIDDING!

The power of people in general, and this community has never made me feel more proud. We've gone from the darkness and there's light. What seems like a army of really smart people are out there now working away.

amazing.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Styrj on April 19, 2019, 12:04:13 PM
Amazing it is.  I'll willingly take whatever is given, even if it means my PChat toons don't transfer over.  If that is the case, we will be making toons for real!!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 19, 2019, 12:07:46 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Crimson-Oriole on April 19, 2019, 12:12:02 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Primus1 on April 19, 2019, 12:34:41 PM
I'm just wondering how many people would actually be disappointed if they found out all their progress, all their toons, just everything from "back then" would not be available on the new servers. And they would need to start from scratch.
I for one wouldn't mind rebuilding my toons from scratch.

If I want to salvage anything, it would be the names of those toons because if the database was reloaded, I'm sure my account would be in limbo and I wouldn't be able to acquire the names.
I have 3 accounts and many level 50 toons.
I don't mind starting over at all.  To me this is a rebirth, I don't need my old toons all levelled up. I want them at LEVEL 1.
Time to play the game again for the first time. I want that feeling again.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Garble on April 19, 2019, 12:40:55 PM
Before all this it had never even occurred to me that it would be possible to restore my old toons.

While I would love them, they aren't necessary, and I would likely spend all my time making new toons anyway (much like I did back in the day).
(that said, I did invest a lot of time crafting enhancements on some of my core toons)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 12:41:36 PM
I want to roam Atlas and whack clocks. Then move to Perez Park and street sweep. Once I hit 12 or so head to Steel and run the TF. Once that's over off the Skyway for that TF.

Get to Talos and level up so I can street sweep in DA.

I could grind Sewer TF's and zip through but the 1st one back I want to savour the game - like sipping a fine whiskey, wet the lips, let it warm the tongue and then take a sip. Let it feel warm all the way down - not toss back a cheap shot of Jack Daniels.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nightmarer on April 19, 2019, 12:50:49 PM
I feel sorry for the Hellions, all this time in Atlas Park without being abused by every superhero wannabe and in a few days, back to being mercilessly beaten up. Very interesting news abiut the MAX thingie, I'm sure we will see amazing costumes given the level of imagination and creativity shown by the community in general.

Also, from now on I will refer to Leandro as "Messi", anyone who enjoys football (I mean proper football, that sport you americans call "soccer" for some reason) will understand  ;D
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Styrj on April 19, 2019, 12:53:46 PM
Ironwolf, I'm with you on that score, although, I will toss down a shot of Jack Daniels Honey Whiskey (good stuff!).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 12:54:03 PM
I want to roam Atlas and whack clocks. Then move to Perez Park and street sweep. Once I hit 12 or so head to Steel and run the TF. Once that's over off the Skyway for that TF.

Get to Talos and level up so I can street sweep in DA.

I could grind Sewer TF's and zip through but the 1st one back I want to savour the game - like sipping a fine whiskey, wet the lips, let it warm the tongue and then take a sip. Let it feel warm all the way down - not toss back a cheap shot of Jack Daniels.

Pretty much my approach.  Though I'll confess loving Striga Isle 'stress test' missions with the Council in those Warehouse/ship missions.  (Along the way...)

Atlas.  Perez.  Steel.  Street sweeping.  And a juicy TF.

Talos.  Sweeping.  M' yes.   (Those pairs of sorcs and bashing Warriors...)

As for whiskey?

https://bunnahabhain.com

That's my favourite chest warmer.  Good to share with 'a companion.'  ;)

Though after 5 whiskeys...I recall being somewhat flushed...and syllables more difficult to wrestle with...

Though the beading, amber colour, smell (helps your mind onto that 'other' dimension...where gravity doesn't count...unless you try to walk) and tongue warming?  Compelling.  Intoxicating stuff.  Any how...lol.

The Edinburgh Whiskey 'tour/experience' is worth doing if you ever make it to Scotland.

Like you say, the game will be something to savour.  :)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 12:55:15 PM
I feel sorry for the Hellions, all this time in Atlas Park without being abused by every superhero wannabe and in a few days, back to being mercilessly beaten up. Very interesting news abiut the MAX thingie, I'm sure we will see amazing costumes given the level of imagination and creativity shown by the community in general.

Also, from now on I will refer to Leandro as "Messi", anyone who enjoys football (I mean proper football, that sport you americans call "soccer" for some reason) will understand  ;D

Yes.  'Football.' 

Aye.  Leandro could be 'Messi.' ;)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 19, 2019, 12:55:40 PM
Makes sense!

Does that mean all of our Paragon Chat toons will transfer over? Again, if not and/or if you don't know, I totally understand.

No. From the point of view of a real server, a PChat character is not much more than a costume and a badge list. You could export your costumes to .costume files, but any costumes that couldn't be supported by the standard costume creator would not work on a real server. Badges and such would have to be earned from scratch on each individual server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 19, 2019, 01:05:15 PM
I'm very interested in the fact that there are TWO apparently unrelated sources of the source code and apparently that has made distribution possible at this time.  I don't need the backstory, and in fact it's probably better that I never know, but intriguing.  I have my own personal guesses on why Leandro is the face on this... which I suspect has to do with physical location.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 01:06:02 PM
It hasn't been worked out yet what build is going to be the most stable.

They are patching the i24 one because that is the source everyone downloaded yesterday. From what I saw in Discord the next step will be to setup the i25 build - this afternoon/evening - blame me for nagging Leandro to go to work. Then see what changes were made and how stable it is. Why not jump into i25 right away?

Well i24 was running for thousands of players quite well - so take the base and then slowly add in the changes making it more stable and problem free. Once you have that done - development can begin and server code passed along with the bundled launcher.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 01:10:31 PM
I'm very interested in the fact that there are TWO apparently unrelated sources of the source code and apparently that has made distribution possible at this time.  I don't need the backstory, and in fact it's probably better that I never know, but intriguing.  I have my own personal guesses on why Leandro is the face on this... which I suspect has to do with physical location.
At least 2.

That was my point yesterday - the source of the code isn't clear because at least 2 different ones were there. Also the mission and character data is separate and not on yesterdays source. The way to look at it is that the i24 code is a complete SEGS setup. No missions, no characters but a working server with powers and travel.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kheprera on April 19, 2019, 01:11:15 PM
I still even have my Mids. Pulled it up the other day to check out a build for some RP.

Yes, my SG has kept with RP all this time. Old characters retired, and new ones created as we did world hopping. But home will always be home.

Always be Prime.  ;D

And for those interested, http://www.cohplanner.com/ (http://www.cohplanner.com/) The mids site is still up.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 01:22:24 PM
Hmmm, my Paragon Chat characters were mainly just fun characters I made that were homages to pop culture icons and maybe some facsimiles of my CoH characters.

I had a lot of L50's and the thought of getting them back intact or mostly intact is great.

Plus I had a bunch of L1's I had rolled up and were standing by to start when they announced the shutdown so I never started them. Those I wouldn't mind starting up again at L1 but I'd also love to have my army back.

I want to take the L1's and start sweeping the streets of Atlas but I also want to reactivate my L50's and go stomp some giant monsters. :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Garble on April 19, 2019, 01:32:52 PM
I made a point to get a lvl 50 for each AT, then I started playing around to find combos I wanted to try. And I used my first 50 (an Eng/Eng blaster I made when I didn't understand game mechanics) to get every new 50+ content that came out. I was an altaholic then, and I'd be an altaholic in the future. But there were a few toons I really took pride in having.

One thing I've been wondering about the Character data is how recent it is. Was it grabbed before, after or during the shutdown. I 'buried' a lot of my toons by visiting a graveyard and using the self destruct power before logging out. If I got them back, there'd be a lot of zombie smell to get out.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 01:37:03 PM
It hasn't been worked out yet what build is going to be the most stable.

They are patching the i24 one because that is the source everyone downloaded yesterday. From what I saw in Discord the next step will be to setup the i25 build - this afternoon/evening - blame me for nagging Leandro to go to work. Then see what changes were made and how stable it is. Why not jump into i25 right away?

Well i24 was running for thousands of players quite well - so take the base and then slowly add in the changes making it more stable and problem free. Once you have that done - development can begin and server code passed along with the bundled launcher.

So refine the original.  Get is stable.  Improve it.  Make it more efficient and 'play nice' with modern dev' software...

...then add in the Issue 25 changes such as the 'new' power sets etc?

But we'll get SCORE's distro' as a temp' measure...as issue 24 is refined in the interim.

(This will allow the original developer tools, e.g. modelling with Max, map creation and mission creation to possibly be dev'd or 'idiot proof' tools to be created to make new content?)

Add in Atlas 1.5 improved graphics over time.  ....and the game's Legacy is...

'Unbroken.'

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 19, 2019, 01:38:23 PM
Well, look who the cat just dragged in... me.  :P

I think all the bitterness and negativity floating around is quite pointless. SCORE's existence has been hinted at years ago, the only question was whether they still existed and if so - how far did they get (further than anyone thought, it seems).
So some of you got to be part of the small group involved with the private server, some didn't... and somehow that led to part of the latter acting in ways unbefitting of heroes and below the standards of most villains. I dearly hope this isn't representative of what this community has become over the years...

Come on, folks... remember how COH went out - forming one final group for one last hurrah right before the lights went out.
(https://i.imgur.com/XLxeKdb.jpg)

Re: Starting from scratch - why not. I'm not sure I still have the Sentinel backups, but I've got the costume files to remake the actual toons.  There are new stories to be told and old stories can always be retold in one way or another.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 01:39:18 PM
And I used my first 50 (an Eng/Eng blaster I made when I didn't understand game mechanics)

That's how my 1st En/en started. 

In ignorance of the game mech'.

First it was blaster specialist.  Then a blapper.

Then a combo of the two.

Perma hasten was essential to the mix.  Then issue 4 happened.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 01:39:51 PM
Well, look who the cat just dragged in... me.  :P

I think all the bitterness and negativity floating around is quite pointless. SCORE's existence has been hinted at years ago, the only question was whether they still existed and if so - how far did they get (further than anyone thought, it seems).
So some of you got to be part of the small group involved with the private server, some didn't... and somehow that led to part of the latter acting in ways unbefitting of heroes and below the standards of most villains. I dearly hope this isn't representative of what this community has become over the years...

Come on, folks... remember how COH went out - forming one final group for one last hurrah right before the lights went out.
(https://i.imgur.com/XLxeKdb.jpg)

Re: Starting from scratch - why not. I'm not sure I still have the Sentinel backups, but I've got the costume files to remake the actual toons.

Ah.  The Fifth Horseman.

I thought you lost in time?

We can count our lucky stars SCORE got way further than anyone could possibly anticipate.  They still have plenty to contribute going forwards.

I'm confident the CoH Legacy was and still is, in safe hands.

All the more so.  It's easy to shout, be negative and 'hola' when it's not 'us' being nailed to the cross.  It's hard to be first on that cross.

I'm also intrigued by the 15th anniversary celebration by the 'Paragon Chat' developers...

Azrael.

PS.  An interesting screenshot.  I was sipping tea atop the Atlas Statue...at 'the end.'  (As the blimp hummed on by...)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 01:44:55 PM
I believe the character data is from i24 - not sure when. Since they kicked everyone out a couple months prior to shutdown - I would think new characters built after the shutdown announcement might not be there.

But not knowing the time period of when the image was made - no clue except i24.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 01:46:30 PM
I believe the character data is from i24 - not sure when. Since they kicked everyone out a couple months prior to shutdown - I would think new characters built after the shutdown announcement might not be there.

But not knowing the time period of when the image was made - no clue except i24.

If my alts are part of the data that can be retrieved.  Great.

If not.  The thrill of being a 'beginner' again is exciting.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: GenericHero05 on April 19, 2019, 01:48:53 PM
I was always one of those players who enjoyed the chase to 50.  My first was a Blaster.  Then came my Controller which I played a ton after 50 until the brainiacs nerfed my 12 fire imps and my "perma hasten".  Then came a Scrapper.  I was always wanting to try new archetypes and new powers so starting from scratch would be just fine.

I'm not going to hit the lottery and then complain about how much I have to pay in taxes.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 19, 2019, 01:52:54 PM
It hasn't been worked out yet what build is going to be the most stable.

They are patching the i24 one because that is the source everyone downloaded yesterday. From what I saw in Discord the next step will be to setup the i25 build - this afternoon/evening - blame me for nagging Leandro to go to work. Then see what changes were made and how stable it is. Why not jump into i25 right away?

Well i24 was running for thousands of players quite well - so take the base and then slowly add in the changes making it more stable and problem free. Once you have that done - development can begin and server code passed along with the bundled launcher.

Let's see if I got this understood...

1. There is The Build (the program the runs the game server [Dev] side).
2. There is The Content (all the missions)
3. There is The Playerbase Data (the server side tracking of players, their badges, content completed, level, etc...).

Now, what about the player client? Is that part of The Build? Or a separate thing?

As far as The Build goes, 'everyone' just got the i24 Build and they're fixing it to make it playable. Meanwhile Leo has and will distribute real soon his i25 Build which he already fixed to make playable and modded a few things (making it a new 'issue', i.e., i25). Also, there may be several versions of the i24 Build floating about.

As far as The Content goes... we will soon have Leo's i25 version. And that can be back-patched into a working i24 version? Is that correct? Is there an i24 version of The Content floating about?

As far as The Playberbase Data goes.  Didn't Leo say his source went through each server and grabbed all that data and sent it to him? And Leo has to scrub that before releasing it, right? And that would make The Playerbase Date i24, unless for some reason, Leo distributes his i25 version of The Playerbase Data.

Am I in the ballpark?

-Zombie Man, keeper of guides

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 19, 2019, 01:56:13 PM
I believe the character data is from i24 - not sure when. Since they kicked everyone out a couple months prior to shutdown - I would think new characters built after the shutdown announcement might not be there.

But not knowing the time period of when the image was made - no clue except i24.

Well, no, we do have a pretty good idea (or at least Leandro does, which I will now attempt to repeat). The database dumps were apparently taken on or shortly before 11/30, by someone taking a capture of each server one at a time. Because some people were hopping from server to server (?), they might not have picked up everyone if you transferred at an inconvenient time. No word on whether or not they grabbed Beta (or Training Room, but was anyone playing on Training Room during the closure?), so technically everything is i23 - but that's pragmatically irrelevant.

I think this is more-or-less what he's been saying, apologies if I'm wrong.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Stupid Fanboy on April 19, 2019, 02:02:39 PM
Quote
No word on whether or not they grabbed Beta (or Training Room, but was anyone playing on Training Room during the closure?)

*raises hand*  I had Triumph and the Training Room running during the shutdown.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 02:06:12 PM
Well, no, we do have a pretty good idea (or at least Leandro does, which I will now attempt to repeat). The database dumps were apparently taken on or shortly before 11/30, by someone taking a capture of each server one at a time. Because some people were hopping from server to server (?), they might not have picked up everyone if you transferred at an inconvenient time. No word on whether or not they grabbed Beta (or Training Room, but was anyone playing on Training Room during the closure?), so technically everything is i23 - but that's pragmatically irrelevant.

I think this is more-or-less what he's been saying, apologies if I'm wrong.

I guess we will find out and that makes it all the more fun. Once the servers are up what we need is a program to move them from server to server - however that might be an issue because it would allow for viruses and trojans to ride along as well.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 19, 2019, 02:17:21 PM
*raises hand*  I had Triumph and the Training Room running during the shutdown.

What's the protocol in that case, one pant leg on? Pants to knees?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Korbian on April 19, 2019, 02:17:33 PM
Now, what about the player client? Is that part of The Build? Or a separate thing?

The i24 build is the Issue 24 release of the player client.  They are the same.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 19, 2019, 02:23:52 PM
No. From the point of view of a real server, a PChat character is not much more than a costume and a badge list. You could export your costumes to .costume files, but any costumes that couldn't be supported by the standard costume creator would not work on a real server. Badges and such would have to be earned from scratch on each individual server.

So if I exported the costumes to .costume files, would I be able to import them onto a character creator on a live server so I wouldn't have piece the costume/look together by scratch? Or is that not how that works? Hahaha I'm such a nube, I swear.

Also, I'm pretty sure none of my current costume pieces on Paragon Chat would not be supported by the 'standard' costume creator, so I think we good on that end...

ALSO PART II (and I have no idea if this is even on the table right now, so forgive my asking) do we know if there will be issues with names on the new servers? I.e. two players can't have the same character names? Lol BASICALLY I'm trying to figure out if I have to race to a server to nab all the names I want now, or if I have some time, etc...

YAY. EXCITED. GRATEFUL. THANKS. <3
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 19, 2019, 02:34:16 PM
Ah.  The Fifth Horseman.
I thought you lost in time?
Not that easy to get rid of, although I have a habit of wandering off to keep my mind occupied - as a result of which my gaming resume now features half a decade of "giant mecha pilot".  :P

Quote
PS.  An interesting screenshot.  I was sipping tea atop the Atlas Statue...at 'the end.'  (As the blimp hummed on by...)
I've taken a lot of screens that day: https://imgur.com/a/So2qt

So if I exported the costumes to .costume files, would I be able to import them onto a character creator on a live server so I wouldn't have piece the costume/look together by scratch? Or is that not how that works?
Assuming nothing broke compatibility with them - which should not be the case - then yes.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 02:36:26 PM
The i24 build is the Issue 24 release of the player client.  They are the same.
I think he means player data.

There are multiple parts:

1. market server - they ignored it and on Leandro's server you just use influence to buy IO's
2. player data - what character you had and the AT
3. mission data - separate from the client
4. player client - the server build that lets you spawn and use powers and has the maps.

there is likely more I have missed but those are the ones we need to run the game.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 19, 2019, 02:37:36 PM

So some of you got to be part of the small group involved with the private server, some didn't... and somehow that led to part of the latter acting in ways unbefitting of heroes and below the standards of most villains. I dearly hope this isn't representative of what this community has become over the years...

Come on, folks... remember how COH went out - forming one final group for one last hurrah right before the lights went out.


Hey Fifth, how's it goin'

Yeah my point on the sources is that it wasn't LEANDRO (and company) just sitting on the Source code.  They were using it, maybe others were also, the positive about this whole brouhaha is that it got folks together who were able to move the ball on this -- at a pretty nasty price, but all's well and all that.

I'm just sorry Leandro (and others) had to put up with that crap
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 19, 2019, 02:38:14 PM
I don't like calling SCoRE's modifications "issue 25"... only because it's my impression the only did things with power sets, as opposed to adding storylines like the ones planned: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA/Sorted

So if I exported the costumes to .costume files, would I be able to import them onto a character creator on a live server so I wouldn't have piece the costume/look together by scratch? Or is that not how that works? Hahaha I'm such a nube, I swear.

Also, I'm pretty sure none of my current costume pieces on Paragon Chat would not be supported by the 'standard' costume creator, so I think we good on that end...

ALSO PART II (and I have no idea if this is even on the table right now, so forgive my asking) do we know if there will be issues with names on the new servers? I.e. two players can't have the same character names? Lol BASICALLY I'm trying to figure out if I have to race to a server to nab all the names I want now, or if I have some time, etc...

YAY. EXCITED. GRATEFUL. THANKS. <3

My understanding is that costumes should work as long as they use standard pieces... I think the problem would be if you created one that uses some sort of unlock, and your new character hasn't achieved the qualifications - the trial that unlocked epaulets, for example. Of course, I'm sure some private servers will allow anything goes for costumes.

Naming is a good question... it *would* be nice if new servers moved to the current Cryptic system of character@global, so only globalst are forced to be unique.

Also, from now on I will refer to Leandro as "Messi", anyone who enjoys football (I mean proper football, that sport you americans call "soccer" for some reason) will understand  ;D

"For some reason"? The British invented the term "soccer," not our fault they just wanted to be contrary as soon as we started using it.

Edit: Due to the migration of posts from "New Efforts" to this thread, the quotes above no longer link properly. But they are unmodified, and the originals can be found in this thread (I don't want to put the effort in right now).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Korbian on April 19, 2019, 02:39:23 PM
So if I exported the costumes to .costume files, would I be able to import them onto a character creator on a live server so I wouldn't have piece the costume/look together by scratch? Or is that not how that works? Hahaha I'm such a nube, I swear.

If it works like everything else has so far, you should be able to just move the "Costumes" folder or copy its contents to the new "Costumes" folder.  I have been moving around mine from back when servers were live for six years now.  Don't worry.  We're all noobs again, mostly.  We'll figure it all out together once we get our grubby little paws on it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Styrj on April 19, 2019, 02:45:34 PM
Will PChat or PChat (Dev) be used for distro (not the it really matters i guess)?  Just curious.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 19, 2019, 02:45:50 PM
Also for the costume crowd - using the 2012 version of 3D max - some are already working on new costumes for the game.

I would love to be a part of THAT action!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Shibboleth on April 19, 2019, 02:47:42 PM
How would characters be associated with their creators if no player personal data was kept?

Or is the idea everyone would have access to any existing character?

I suppose one could release characters to people with Sentinel backups but that would need to occur before a mass dump with those characters being excluded from a dump.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Bill Z Bubba on April 19, 2019, 02:56:30 PM
I am confused and befuddled. Yet excited and frazzled. Can I help?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 02:59:24 PM
I am confused and befuddled. Yet excited and frazzled. Can I help?
Download discord.

Type in City of Heroes
Go to the admin and ask to be added to chat if you are a coder - only approved list of people can get in there but anyone can read what they are doing. It is cool to see how quickly the work is done and the changes being made.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 19, 2019, 03:06:16 PM
Let's see if I got this understood...

I didn't see any specific responses to this post, so I'll have a go at it.

1. There is The Build (the program the runs the game server [Dev] side).
2. There is The Content (all the missions)
3. There is The Playerbase Data (the server side tracking of players, their badges, content completed, level, etc...).

That's it in a nutshell.

Now, what about the player client? Is that part of The Build? Or a separate thing?

From what Codewalker has said in the past when discussing Paragon Chat, the client and server are built from the same source tree. The Build should include the client as well. I think it likely that we'll be seeing custom clients in short order, especially when people start trying to turn on the built-in developer/admin commands.

As far as The Build goes, 'everyone' just got the i24 Build and they're fixing it to make it playable. Meanwhile Leo has and will distribute real soon his i25 Build which he already fixed to make playable and modded a few things (making it a new 'issue', i.e., i25). Also, there may be several versions of the i24 Build floating about.

There are rumors of a second leaked Build, that is a different version; how different is unknown given that it's just rumors. If anyone knows who has it and what they have, they're not spilling the beans. Regardless, with as much hacking and modding as is currently happening, there are bound to be many different variations of the "I24 Build" very soon.

As far as The Content goes... we will soon have Leo's i25 version. And that can be back-patched into a working i24 version? Is that correct? Is there an i24 version of The Content floating about?

The above is correct. The "back-patching" is what will take time. It's akin to decompiling a program and trying to generate pristine original source code form the compiled assembly language code. As far as anyone knows, there are no other version of I24 Content floating about; apparently even Leandro didn't keep the older versions of his own content.

As far as The Playberbase Data goes.  Didn't Leo say his source went through each server and grabbed all that data and sent it to him? And Leo has to scrub that before releasing it, right? And that would make The Playerbase Date i24, unless for some reason, Leo distributes his i25 version of The Playerbase Data.

All of that is correct. "Scrubbing" is relative, in this case. Part of the point of releasing that database would be to make it possible for past players to identify their data and recover it. That, necessarily, means that it contains personally identifiable information (probably not more than a person's old login name, but that's still "sensitive" info). That means he'll be more careful about how that data is handled compared to just releasing the source files.

Am I in the ballpark?

-Zombie Man, keeper of guides

Yep!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 03:18:59 PM
To clear things up a bit - a lot of the questions about what source code and so on are intentionally vague.

No one wants there to be a chance to back track and find out who did what.

Servers soon - will magically appear thanks to Nemesis plots to destroy the world being foiled. Let's stick with that plan.

Nemesis snapped his fingers - time to undo the snap.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 19, 2019, 03:23:35 PM
How would characters be associated with their creators if no player personal data was kept?
My outsider understanding is that the character database has account names, but no other information. So if you remember your login account name and/or your global handle, your characters can be found.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Girl on April 19, 2019, 03:25:04 PM
This has been an entertaining few days.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: JadeWarrior on April 19, 2019, 03:30:00 PM
This has been an entertaining few days.

Understatement.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 19, 2019, 03:31:18 PM
This has been an entertaining few days.

That's one word for it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Shibboleth on April 19, 2019, 03:32:48 PM
My outsider understanding is that the character database has account names, but no other information. So if you remember your login account name and/or your global handle, your characters can be found.

Most of my account names since CoH shut down have been the name of my favorite character, but what my CoH account names was...oh wait...I think I remember.

Ultimately it does not really matter to me if someone else is playing a dupe of one of my characters. That would really be a form of flattery, no?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Girl on April 19, 2019, 03:34:14 PM
That's one word for it.

I think that it might have caused a few whiplash injuries from the various and frequent changes of opinions.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 19, 2019, 03:41:28 PM
I think that it might have caused a few whiplash injuries from the various and frequent changes of opinions.

I'd be lying if I claimed that the past few days have not severely tested my opinions on whether the "CoH Community" is actually a "community" at all.

In other news, it appears that Pohsyb put in an appearance this morning on the Discord and offered to be available for advice.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Bill Z Bubba on April 19, 2019, 03:45:18 PM
Download discord.

Type in City of Heroes
Go to the admin and ask to be added to chat if you are a coder - only approved list of people can get in there but anyone can read what they are doing. It is cool to see how quickly the work is done and the changes being made.

On discord now and reading. I'm just a systems analyst, college dropout with no certs. Reading through the build-compile-discussion, I'm under qualified.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: undeadsuits on April 19, 2019, 03:46:16 PM
I'd be lying if I claimed that the past few days have not severely tested my opinions on whether the "CoH Community" is actually a "community" at all..

It's always been a community. But now the community finally has the tools to play the game that were previously kept from them by people outside the community for their own enjoyment.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Girl on April 19, 2019, 03:46:27 PM
I'd be lying if I claimed that the past few days have not severely tested my opinions on whether the "CoH Community" is actually a "community" at all.

In other news, it appears that Pohsyb put in an appearance this morning on the Discord and offered to be available for advice.

It's always been a diverse community, but that's also been its strength - with the amount of love that people had - and still have - for the game, this was inevitable one day.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Girl on April 19, 2019, 03:48:48 PM
On discord now and reading. I'm just a systems analyst, college dropout with no certs. Reading through the build-compile-discussion, I'm under qualified.

You'd be over-qualified for Champions Online.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 19, 2019, 04:00:22 PM
Alright, April 15th and forward is split off of New Efforts.

Carry on.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Garble on April 19, 2019, 04:07:24 PM
Bold move. But I think the right one.

Thank you.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Girl on April 19, 2019, 04:09:49 PM
Alright, April 15th and forward is split off of New Efforts.

Carry on.

The thread title should help get villain players back in the swing of things, as it totally ignores the red side :P
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 04:10:49 PM
I believe the character data is from i24 - not sure when. Since they kicked everyone out a couple months prior to shutdown - I would think new characters built after the shutdown announcement might not be there.

But not knowing the time period of when the image was made - no clue except i24.

Then that means about 98% of my alts should be intact.

Question: since alts were scattered among the servers and some people liked to have the same name on each server.... is it safe to presume that names will be unique and that we may all have some name adjustments to make? :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Girl on April 19, 2019, 04:11:10 PM
Bold move. But I think the right one.

Thank you.

The boldest of bold moves is the fact that if they have access to the complete code, then at least one of the Paragon devs did the right thing before the shutdown.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: VDG on April 19, 2019, 04:14:29 PM
Just surprised I'm seeing something more than  ;) &  :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Girl on April 19, 2019, 04:15:38 PM
Then that means about 98% of my alts should be intact.

Question: since alts were scattered among the servers and some people liked to have the same name on each server.... is it safe to presume that names will be unique and that we may all have some name adjustments to make? :)

I know that names are obviously important, but they're overshadowed by the fact that the community might be able to actually play the game again - I don't even think that too many people would be bothered if they had to level up again.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 04:22:00 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Thunder Glove on April 19, 2019, 04:25:52 PM
... all I know is that this new topic title got this song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZMmPWTwTHc) stuck in my head.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 19, 2019, 04:29:07 PM
The thread title should help get villain players back in the swing of things, as it totally ignores the red side :P

NCSoft did that when they "merged" City of Villains into the same product years back.  Don't blame me.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 19, 2019, 04:29:52 PM
To clear things up a bit - a lot of the questions about what source code and so on are intentionally vague.

No one wants there to be a chance to back track and find out who did what.

Servers soon - will magically appear thanks to Nemesis plots to destroy the world being foiled. Let's stick with that plan.

Nemesis snapped his fingers - time to undo the snap.

Hear, hear!  As always let's avoid discussing that which should not be discussed.
And be happy that it appears to be returning our city!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 19, 2019, 04:33:02 PM
My outsider understanding is that the character database has account names, but no other information. So if you remember your login account name and/or your global handle, your characters can be found.

And if you REALLY want to steal and play, say Eiko-chan's characters instead of your own on some server, you'll probably be able to with a bit of work and deception... as to why anybody would WANT to... well, you got me.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 19, 2019, 04:35:21 PM
I think he means player data.

There are multiple parts:

1. market server - they ignored it and on Leandro's server you just use influence to buy IO's
2. player data - what character you had and the AT
3. mission data - separate from the client
4. player client - the server build that lets you spawn and use powers and has the maps.

there is likely more I have missed but those are the ones we need to run the game.

Thanks for your reply and to others who've responsed, but, I'm still a bit confused about one thing: From the point of view of a player, I downloaded a client which handled a bunch of stuff, but, that client connected to a "server" which adjucated whether my stuff really happened in the game world and what effects my doings had, e.g., a Hellion died (poor homie!). So, in my mind there are two major "programs", namely, "the client" and "the server." (I realize each part had their own pile of processes that they they were taking care of: chat, market, etc...).

So, when, e.g., a cleaned up version of i24 gets released, then that includes both the player's client and the server's server (what I would consider to be the real game engine and the Dev's side of the equation). Right?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Girl on April 19, 2019, 04:37:17 PM
And if you REALLY want to steal and play, say Eiko-chan's characters instead of your own on some server, you'll probably be able to with a bit of work and deception... as to why anybody would WANT to... well, you got me.

There were always a few idiots out there - but I think if you told people that the only way that they could genuinely play CoH again was to have a number instead of a name, and start at level 1 again, most of them would still jump at the chance.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 19, 2019, 04:41:09 PM
Regarding leveling up:

Anyone running a server, and knows how to code it could easily grant level 50 status to any character, right? The devs did that on a test server once so that people could test the level 50 uber enhancements.

"See the contact NotGoku to be given enough XP to be level 50."

"See the contact ScroogeMcQuack to be given a hundred million XP"

"See the store to buy anything you want. Everything is priced at 1 inf."
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: bugzee on April 19, 2019, 04:47:36 PM
Yep, I'd have zero problem starting at level 1 again. In a sense that is kind of fun, I won't have rich alts that can help me zoom past levels... It will almost be like when I first started playing the game in 2004. I am cautiously optimistic about the legal issues however. So I am not going to get involved on the technical side until I see what the NCSoft reaction will be. Hoping for the best.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 19, 2019, 04:47:57 PM
There were always a few idiots out there - but I think if you told people that the only way that they could genuinely play CoH again was to have a number instead of a name, and start at level 1 again, most of them would still jump at the chance.

I played about 90% solo and the thing I most enjoyed was the content starting at one and mostly street sweeping going up to about 30 -- I'd usually drop playing before getting heavily into Peregrine and I had a psychotic case of alt-itis... So I fully expect to start at level 1 with entirely new characters.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 04:49:06 PM
Thanks for your reply and to others who've responsed, but, I'm still a bit confused about one thing: From the point of view of a player, I downloaded a client which handled a bunch of stuff, but, that client connected to a "server" which adjucated whether my stuff really happened in the game world and what effects my doings had, e.g., a Hellion died (poor homie!). So, in my mind there are two major "programs", namely, "the client" and "the server." (I realize each part had their own pile of processes that they they were taking care of: chat, market, etc...).

So, when, e.g., a cleaned up version of i24 gets released, then that includes both the player's client and the server's server (what I would consider to be the real game engine and the Dev's side of the equation). Right?

1. You had client side stuff that was on your own computer - basically Paragon Chat that was stored locally to speed things up.
2. you logged into an Account Server - that verified who you were and then you were passed to -
3. the game/map server that let you move around the city
4. the mission server kept track of what missions were tied to your character and how far you had gotten.
5. the character server talked to your client side and the account server so it knew what character to populate

The mission server kept track of the NPC's and how they responded to you.

You have layers of servers that spoke to each other but because of the limitations of that times hardware some of it is badly aged now and works VERY slow. Talking to one of the coders working on the new i24 server he said that the way it was setup it would store the entire instance in memory when you logged into a map. That is not needed now and they are fixing that along with a thousand other things - like adding LUA databases.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Girl on April 19, 2019, 04:52:58 PM
One adjustment I wouldn't mind seeing would be for everything from the Paragon Store to be folded into the actual game where it was suitable - like costume parts going into the costume creator, and so on - and for the rest of the store items, along with thee Paragon Rewards, to be added to a vendor or contact - someone like Ms. Liberty, for example.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 04:55:03 PM
One adjustment I wouldn't mind seeing would be for everything from the Paragon Store to be folded into the actual game where it was suitable - like costume parts going into the costume creator, and so on - and for the rest of the store items, along with thee Paragon Rewards, to be added to a vendor or contact - someone like Ms. Liberty, for example.
Leandro said the store doesn't exist as it was and all of it was converted to buy stuff with Inf.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 04:58:29 PM
Leandro said the store doesn't exist as it was and all of it was converted to buy stuff with Inf.

Excellent.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Girl on April 19, 2019, 04:58:36 PM
Leandro said the store doesn't exist as it was and all of it was converted to buy stuff with Inf.

I used to be pretty keen on the Paragon Store at the time, but since the shutdown, I've seen how badly that kind of thing can warp and corrupt the design of a game.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 19, 2019, 05:00:12 PM
Memory coming back -- somebody mentioned the blimp and I went OMG THE BLIMP... How could I forget the BLIMP!   

I'm just remembering that a few releases before close they changed low-level Atlas content so you had instantly regen-ing Hellion mobs (and others) in some parts of Atlas and if you didn't run those missions, they were eternally stealing those crates or starting fires and there was nothing you could do about it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 19, 2019, 05:03:08 PM
Sentinel should still work?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 19, 2019, 05:03:43 PM
Leandro said the store doesn't exist as it was and all of it was converted to buy stuff with Inf.

On his server, but I don't think anyone's talked about what'll happen with I24F or any other forks that come up from the source code. (Even though in most cases, that's the right call...)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 19, 2019, 05:05:04 PM
And if you REALLY want to steal and play, say Eiko-chan's characters instead of your own on some server, you'll probably be able to with a bit of work and deception... as to why anybody would WANT to...
Murderous schoolgirls with robotic legions for everyone! Why WOULDN'T you want to play the biggest baddest villain the world has ever seen?!  ;)

The thread title should help get villain players back in the swing of things, as it totally ignores the red side :P
Aww, GG, did you remember? Was that line for me? <3
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Girl on April 19, 2019, 05:11:04 PM
Aww, GG, did you remember? Was that line for me? <3

It was more of a general reference to the old forum meme that the devs ignored redside :P
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 19, 2019, 05:11:13 PM
So, when, e.g., a cleaned up version of i24 gets released, then that includes both the player's client and the server's server (what I would consider to be the real game engine and the Dev's side of the equation). Right?

Maybe... I'm being non-committal because I've seen claims that the code tree released by Leandro does not, in fact, have the client build files in it. I don't factually know if that's true or not. If it's true, then folks would continue to use the same I24 client they use for Icon and Paragon Chat.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 19, 2019, 05:16:25 PM
Maybe... I'm being non-committal because I've seen claims that the code tree released by Leandro does not, in fact, have the client build files in it. I don't factually know if that's true or not. If it's true, then folks would continue to use the same I24 client they use for Icon and Paragon Chat.
The source code released does not have client files. Largely due to the fact that ownership and distribution of the client files has never been illegal and Paragon Chat is using essentially the same client files as the live game did, somewhat modified for use.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 19, 2019, 05:19:15 PM
It was more of a general reference to the old forum meme that the devs ignored redside :P
That's okay, GG. You might not remember me, but I remember you.   :'(
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Girl on April 19, 2019, 05:21:48 PM
That's okay, GG. You might not remember me, but I remember you.   :'(

I remember you - and your perverse delusions that the Loyalists were the good guys :P
But let's just be happy that everyone - blue, red and yellow sides - now has a more than good chance of playing the game that they love again.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 19, 2019, 05:24:06 PM
And if you REALLY want to steal and play, say Eiko-chan's characters instead of your own on some server, you'll probably be able to with a bit of work and deception... as to why anybody would WANT to... well, you got me.

Probably not, but there'd be a line around the block to reroll Golden Girl as something other than MA/Regen  :P
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 19, 2019, 05:24:39 PM
Who's going to upgrade the Paragon Wiki to cover all these unofficial modifications to the game?
I volunteer to edit that person's grammar!

 ;D

Actually, Paragon Wiki may have some thinking to do...

1. *Should* private servers be covered?

I say yes: Paragon Chat and Icon already are

2. *How* should they be covered?

Unknown, until things get settled.

The first consideration is how much detail to go into, to cover Titan Network legally / internal policy wise.

Then there's the issue of what happens when people create their own, and there's a dozen different versions of CoH around. I would say some pages to describe them generally, and an overview of options out there, is probably good. Better than trying to track down every version and describe what makes it unique - individual servers can do that themselves.

Also, just make a category, and put it all under that single category. Boom, done.

Memory coming back -- somebody mentioned the blimp and I went OMG THE BLIMP... How could I forget the BLIMP!   

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Spirit_of_Freedom
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Paragon_Times/20050330

Sentinel should still work?

My biggest hope is that a Sentinel+ file extractor is built in as part of the "private server package" that will be distributed. So any person running a private server can just activate it or not as they see fit.

I have mixed feelings about the character database. I'm not sure, given the concerns about potentially ID'ing info it has, what the best way to add that to private servers is. As it is now, I could see SCoRE holding on to it, and doing individual Sentinel+ extractions for people that want them.

Probably not, but there'd be a line around the block to reroll Golden Girl as something other than MA/Regen  :P

For some reason I always envisioned Golden Girl as a blaster.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 19, 2019, 05:28:58 PM
I remember you - and your perverse delusions that the Loyalists were the good guys :P
Eeeee! I'm famous!  :D
Quote
But let's just be happy that everyone - blue, red and yellow sides - now has a more than good chance of playing the game that they love again.
If it takes letting the Hamidon burn down humanity for our game to come back, I say where's the kerosene?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 05:37:22 PM

My biggest hope is that a Sentinel+ file extractor is built in as part of the "private server package" that will be distributed. So any person running a private server can just activate it or not as they see fit.

I have mixed feelings about the character database. I'm not sure, given the concerns about potentially ID'ing info it has, what the best way to add that to private servers is. As it is now, I could see SCoRE holding on to it, and doing individual Sentinel+ extractions for people that want them.

For some reason I always envisioned Golden Girl as a blaster.
I think Leandro handled it as you would give the account name - as it wasn't tied to any personal information and maybe a character or 2 on the account and then they would use a web server tied to the login to sync you up. We didn't get far and he had to go to work - as did I.

So creating a new account on the server the first time would NOT get you your characters - the admin would then tie them together after you applied for them. Which makes sense. Your account for your characters is not tied to your real world data - it was only the login you used to get to your characters just like in Paragon Chat.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Girl on April 19, 2019, 05:37:51 PM
One inevitable question that's going to come up is the one about developing the game - some people will want the game exactly as it was on midnight November 30th 2012, while other will want to "fix" or "improve" parts of it, as well as simply add more things to it.
Ideally, everyone could be kept happy with a CoH Classic server - which would effectively freeze the game as it was at the shutdown - and a CoH Evolution server, where some of the more technical and artistic members of the community could come together to add things to the game, like new power sets, enemies, zones, missions and so on.
For example, I don't think it'd be too far of a stretch to think that with a bit of work and imagination, Khallisti Wharf could be completed - and the Mission Architect system was actually based on the developers' own mission creation tool, so that's a pretty solid foundation that could lead to the possibility of new lore-friendly content being added to the game that could advance and deepen the existing storylines.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nightmarer on April 19, 2019, 05:45:42 PM
OK, so now let's be honest... how many builds have you guys cooked in Mid's / Pine's Hero Designer since the news? WHich of said builds is the one you are most looking forward to try? I myself just finished my 32nd build and was very keen to try a Dark/Dark Domi build but then I just came up with a killer Earth/Traps controller build... ah choices choices
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 05:48:06 PM
I don't think you have to worry, I think you will get Classic, Modded and everything under the sun now.

From what I saw last night - I want to go with Allita (sp) and whatever she/he develops. They seems to be very purposeful. In fact they said we are going to do this first server setup completely the wrong way to find out the pitfalls - annotate those errors and then do it the right way so that is will be more stable.

It impressed me that they knew before they did it that it would cause issues but that those issue would highlight what needed to be done to get it right. That takes incredible knowledge and depth of understanding to troubleshoot something this complex so easily.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Girl on April 19, 2019, 05:49:11 PM
OK, so now let's be honest... how many builds have you guys cooked in Mid's / Pine's Hero Designer since the news? WHich of said builds is the one you are most looking forward to try? I myself just finished my 32nd build and was very keen to try a Dark/Dark Domi build but then I just came up with a killer Earth/Traps controller build... ah choices choices

I think I might go with an blueside MA/Regen Scrapper.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Girl on April 19, 2019, 05:54:36 PM
I don't think you have to worry, I think you will get Classic, Modded and everything under the sun now.

I was thinking from the point of view of helping to keep the community together, it'd be awesome if CoH Classic and CoH Evolution were like the hub of a network of fan-run servers, surrounded by crazily modded "elseworld" servers, so that players could help and support each others ideas and work, rather than everyone going off on their own and scattering the community into little groups.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: SilverAgeFan on April 19, 2019, 05:57:18 PM
An update for those not on Discord. This little exchange sums up nicely the best of what is happening there.

Otherwise, much of it feels like hanging out in /local or /general waiting for a CC or iTrial to begin. Which ain't bad. Just a lot of tomfoolery.

(https://i.postimg.cc/dkXXJ2Kr/01.png) (https://postimg.cc/dkXXJ2Kr)

(https://i.postimg.cc/YLWP0vpV/02.png) (https://postimg.cc/YLWP0vpV)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 19, 2019, 05:59:39 PM
OK, so now let's be honest... how many builds have you guys cooked in Mid's / Pine's Hero Designer since the news? WHich of said builds is the one you are most looking forward to try? I myself just finished my 32nd build and was very keen to try a Dark/Dark Domi build but then I just came up with a killer Earth/Traps controller build... ah choices choices

I was basically out of builds I wanted to do, which is why I was hoping the mids team would get specs on the new at. But it occurs to me I need to redo some since i24 will mean instasnipe, crashless nukes and the nerfs to the stalker io and the-kb bonfire lulz io.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Jetpack on April 19, 2019, 06:04:30 PM
Well, we went from some really bad things being done (rape and death threats are never justified) to something great.

An amazing week (understatement of the year).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Charged Mastermind on April 19, 2019, 06:05:48 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 19, 2019, 06:06:04 PM
I was thinking from the point of view of helping to keep the community together, it'd be awesome if CoH Classic and CoH Evolution were like the hub of a network of fan-run servers, surrounded by crazily modded "elseworld" servers, so that players could help and support each others ideas and work, rather than everyone going off on their own and scattering the community into little groups.

The biggest problem with a centralized hub is the fear of NCsoft. As far as I know, they still haven't released a statement. And a big part of making sure there's a ton of private servers is not only for variety of play, but also so that NCsoft can't catch them all. It's my understanding that's how other emulators, that don't have the tacit blessing from their original companies, avoid getting shut down.

I suppose having the centralized server located in a country that's more isolated from things like a C&D or other legal action is a good idea, though.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tubbius on April 19, 2019, 06:07:05 PM
As I said on Discord, if this gives me the chance to write "PENGUIN Part 5: Waddle Home," I'm happy. :-)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 19, 2019, 06:47:56 PM
As I said on Discord, if this gives me the chance to write "PENGUIN Part 5: Waddle Home," I'm happy. :-)

I want to read that.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 19, 2019, 06:55:15 PM
... all I know is that this new topic title got this song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZMmPWTwTHc) stuck in my head.
Oh please. If there's a theme song for this, I dare you to find something better fitting than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4tbJGItHag
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 19, 2019, 07:09:18 PM
Sentinel should still work?

Doubtful.  I think Sentinel is keyed in to NCSoft's former servers.  It would need to be revised.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 19, 2019, 07:12:48 PM
Actually, Paragon Wiki may have some thinking to do...

1. *Should* private servers be covered?

I say yes: Paragon Chat and Icon already are

2. *How* should they be covered?

Unknown, until things get settled.

We're discussing this internally and we'll keep you all posted; feel free to brainstorm, we are reading everything ourselves.  (Seriously, I think last night is the first full night of sleep I've had since Sunday, but I'm not complaining... some have it worse.) 

Nothing is going to change in the immediate future of course, because of #2 as you mentioned.  Waiting to see how things play out before we make plans.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: AmberOfDzu on April 19, 2019, 07:15:03 PM
I am watching these events which interest as well. Let's see how it all turns out over the next few weeks.

My primary concerns have been touched on already, and I don't see a need to add more about them except I'd like to see over the next few weeks/months if the original IP holder(s) take any notice and/or any actions.

My other concerns are about me and where I am today, which has already been touched on by other some. The game is now pretty old; the technologies, animations, general graphics, style of the zones, and so on. MMO"s have made a lot of progress. Would it still have the same draw were I to play again?

My old characters, hrm, hard to say. As I recall, leveling wasn't too hard, nor was the incarnate system for the end game. It might be fun to start afresh. Otoh, some of those characters were dear friends I don't remember enough about; if my old account were made available to me I might find that a good thing.

The community will be different, would I still fit in? I was part of the RP-crowd (more or less, I was loosely connected towards the end) on Virtue. Will the roleplayers who're still interested find the same place to play? One of the nice things about the servers on Classic CoX was their different personalities. It would be a loss, imo, for them to become fully homogenized just because a critical population turns out to be necessary for server survival.

Would the developers supporting it learn to start building new content, or would be have to be satisfied with the (tremendous) amount of content it had at shutdown. If the former, would someone, or anyone, care to coordinate the general lore among the various new server/development efforts?

Would it end up as a short nostalgia run, or could it have a longer life? I don't know.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Lycantropus on April 19, 2019, 07:33:26 PM
Oh please. If there's a theme song for this, I dare you to find something better fitting than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4tbJGItHag

I'm rather partial to this one myself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hKPWrX85U8

Well, we went from some really bad things being done (rape and death threats are never justified) to something great.

An amazing week (understatement of the year).

Yeah it's a lot to take in, and I almost just walked my big lurky butt away from this community entirely because of how ugly it all got... I'm just glad the focus is back on where it should be- getting everyone back in the City again, because THAT'S the important thing.  :)

Lyc~
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kyriani on April 19, 2019, 07:39:57 PM
This is my "CoH Is Back!"song! :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK-iHTjTTyY
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taliseian on April 19, 2019, 07:42:03 PM
Here is my Theme Song recommendation.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqdzL1ThVbM


T
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Girl on April 19, 2019, 07:44:46 PM
I am watching these events which interest as well. Let's see how it all turns out over the next few weeks.

My primary concerns have been touched on already, and I don't see a need to add more about them except I'd like to see over the next few weeks/months if the original IP holder(s) take any notice and/or any actions.

My other concerns are about me and where I am today, which has already been touched on by other some. The game is now pretty old; the technologies, animations, general graphics, style of the zones, and so on. MMO"s have made a lot of progress. Would it still have the same draw were I to play again?

My old characters, hrm, hard to say. As I recall, leveling wasn't too hard, nor was the incarnate system for the end game. It might be fun to start afresh. Otoh, some of those characters were dear friends I don't remember enough about; if my old account were made available to me I might find that a good thing.

The community will be different, would I still fit in? I was part of the RP-crowd (more or less, I was loosely connected towards the end) on Virtue. Will the roleplayers who're still interested find the same place to play? One of the nice things about the servers on Classic CoX was their different personalities. It would be a loss, imo, for them to become fully homogenized just because a critical population turns out to be necessary for server survival.

Would the developers supporting it learn to start building new content, or would be have to be satisfied with the (tremendous) amount of content it had at shutdown. If the former, would someone, or anyone, care to coordinate the general lore among the various new server/development efforts?

Would it end up as a short nostalgia run, or could it have a longer life? I don't know.

I think that the best way to approach it is to treat it as what it is - a retro classic that's a product of its time, with all the good and bad points that comes with it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 07:48:16 PM
The boldest of bold moves is the fact that if they have access to the complete code, then at least one of the Paragon devs did the right thing before the shutdown.

Amen.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 19, 2019, 07:49:13 PM
Doubtful.  I think Sentinel is keyed in to NCSoft's former servers.  It would need to be revised.

I hope it is revised.  I really enjoyed the output from the tracker.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 19, 2019, 07:52:24 PM
Hello! 

There have been developments about the first few pieces of the server project coming together.  The promise that something will happen by this weekend is getting closer to reality.

While we are working on several things concerning recent news, I do want to make one thing clear: Titan Network is NOT affiliated with the teams making something out of the SCORE Public Release.  As such, any posts of registering for bootleg/private servers, or bootleg/private server websites, and other places is NOT ALLOWED.

If you want to keep on top of progress of these teams, you can join the unofficial City of Heroes Discord to discuss specifically just that.  Posts with links to these servers or homepages to them will be deleted on sight.  That part has not changed.  This also applies to any software concerning such things, such as server-side code or assets.  We've never allowed those things to be posted here, regardless of current news or affairs.

Thanks for your time.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 07:54:14 PM
I played about 90% solo and the thing I most enjoyed was the content starting at one and mostly street sweeping going up to about 30 -- I'd usually drop playing before getting heavily into Peregrine and I had a psychotic case of alt-itis... So I fully expect to start at level 1 with entirely new characters.

I'm Azrael and I'm a 'sweep-a-colic.'

*Confession.

Juicy mobs in?  Atlas.  Hollows.  Outcast and Trolls...  Perez.  Steel(!).  Talos.  Striga Isle.  Founders (snipers...)  P.Island.  Mages and Nemesis...

Ok.  I'll stop there...no...wait.  What about the sensational juicy mobs in Brickstown?

The mob sweeping capital?

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 07:56:28 PM
One adjustment I wouldn't mind seeing would be for everything from the Paragon Store to be folded into the actual game where it was suitable - like costume parts going into the costume creator, and so on - and for the rest of the store items, along with thee Paragon Rewards, to be added to a vendor or contact - someone like Ms. Liberty, for example.

That's a good call, Golden Girl.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 19, 2019, 07:58:24 PM
I am watching these events which interest as well. Let's see how it all turns out over the next few weeks.

My primary concerns have been touched on already, and I don't see a need to add more about them except I'd like to see over the next few weeks/months if the original IP holder(s) take any notice and/or any actions.

My other concerns are about me and where I am today, which has already been touched on by other some. The game is now pretty old; the technologies, animations, general graphics, style of the zones, and so on. MMO"s have made a lot of progress. Would it still have the same draw were I to play again?

My old characters, hrm, hard to say. As I recall, leveling wasn't too hard, nor was the incarnate system for the end game. It might be fun to start afresh. Otoh, some of those characters were dear friends I don't remember enough about; if my old account were made available to me I might find that a good thing.

The community will be different, would I still fit in? I was part of the RP-crowd (more or less, I was loosely connected towards the end) on Virtue. Will the roleplayers who're still interested find the same place to play? One of the nice things about the servers on Classic CoX was their different personalities. It would be a loss, imo, for them to become fully homogenized just because a critical population turns out to be necessary for server survival.

Would the developers supporting it learn to start building new content, or would be have to be satisfied with the (tremendous) amount of content it had at shutdown. If the former, would someone, or anyone, care to coordinate the general lore among the various new server/development efforts?

Would it end up as a short nostalgia run, or could it have a longer life? I don't know.

I got hooked by the entire CoX package.  Change it too much, too fast, and it may not have the allure.

Had you told me the day I bought the game that I'd be playing it 8 and half years later, I would have laughed at you.  Or declared you to be insane.

The game changed a lot over those years but I think always for the better except for some of the almost random nerfs and the pointless destruction of Galaxy City.

One addition I would make to the game would be a TF to free Earth Axis.  That seemed like a missed opportunity.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 08:00:16 PM
Leandro said the store doesn't exist as it was and all of it was converted to buy stuff with Inf.

Fine by me. 

On the 'market thing.'  I always got slightly bristly about the premium (eg. Armageddon sets or any purple sets) IOs being tough to drop or get. 

I wished they'd just be like normal SO original.  But get them from higher premium NPCs like Atlas, Statesman i.e. the main Hero NPC in each zone who you talk to for levelling up for example.  It would give them more functionality.  And status.

I don't mind the purple assets being a premium.  But at least if I could buy them with influence, I could save up.  Most of the times they cost astronomic sums or where unavailable on the market at all.

Just having them at a set price premium at a premium hero NPC vendor should suffice?

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 08:01:58 PM
I think that the best way to approach it is to treat it as what it is - a retro classic that's a product of its time, with all the good and bad points that comes with it.

Like Vinyl.

It's making a comeback, right?

You get the big album art...lyric sleeves...

...and turn it over half way.

CoH 'Legacy.'   It's a Classic.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 08:03:46 PM
Memory coming back -- somebody mentioned the blimp and I went OMG THE BLIMP... How could I forget the BLIMP!   

I'm just remembering that a few releases before close they changed low-level Atlas content so you had instantly regen-ing Hellion mobs (and others) in some parts of Atlas and if you didn't run those missions, they were eternally stealing those crates or starting fires and there was nothing you could do about it.

Like I said to Horseman.

I was a top the Atlas Statue globe sipping a cup of tea at shutdown.

The atlas blimp was humming as it floated on by.

It seemed strangely poetic.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Styrj on April 19, 2019, 08:06:38 PM
Anyone have any thoughts about how this release will be distributed?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 08:15:40 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 08:19:36 PM
One inevitable question that's going to come up is the one about developing the game - some people will want the game exactly as it was on midnight November 30th 2012, while other will want to "fix" or "improve" parts of it, as well as simply add more things to it.
Ideally, everyone could be kept happy with a CoH Classic server - which would effectively freeze the game as it was at the shutdown - and a CoH Evolution server, where some of the more technical and artistic members of the community could come together to add things to the game, like new power sets, enemies, zones, missions and so on.
For example, I don't think it'd be too far of a stretch to think that with a bit of work and imagination, Khallisti Wharf could be completed - and the Mission Architect system was actually based on the developers' own mission creation tool, so that's a pretty solid foundation that could lead to the possibility of new lore-friendly content being added to the game that could advance and deepen the existing storylines.

I'm sure something to that effect will happen in broad strokes.

You'll have 'vanilla.'  You'll have 'Unbroken' with the improved power sets.

And you're going to have people doing mind bending things like LUA mission scripting that takes missions to new levels.  New power sets.  New costumes. New character models.

And?

A zone creator.  A map creator.  A mission creator.

All to come in time.  Once a stable i24 has been re-forged?  Tool sets will be able to modify and dev' stuff quicker.

It's nothing the 3d engine modding community hasn't been doing for a long while now.

With shattered fragments of glass preventing the take down.

Azrael.

PS.  Sure.  Who DOESN'T remember Golden Girl 'hanging' in Atlas.  I never recalled her power sets though.  I'm sure I peaked.  But I don't remember.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 19, 2019, 08:20:08 PM
Here is THE perfect song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_f_PQ1QRNs
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 08:20:17 PM
I don't think you have to worry, I think you will get Classic, Modded and everything under the sun now.

From what I saw last night - I want to go with Allita (sp) and whatever she/he develops. They seems to be very purposeful. In fact they said we are going to do this first server setup completely the wrong way to find out the pitfalls - annotate those errors and then do it the right way so that is will be more stable.

It impressed me that they knew before they did it that it would cause issues but that those issue would highlight what needed to be done to get it right. That takes incredible knowledge and depth of understanding to troubleshoot something this complex so easily.

And like that.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 08:22:24 PM
Here is the issue I can see NCSoft having:

If the pirate server is not for profit, playing a FREE TO PLAY GAME and not making any money from a closed game - what exactly does NCSoft suffer as loss?

I have been running this through my head the last few days:

1. no market to monetize
2. no monthly fees
3. no merchandise sold
4. no one paid for running the server
5. no competition with the same game running currently - I can see the ads now FREE FOREVER TO PLAY biting them in the butt

How would they show actual loss?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 08:24:04 PM
I was thinking from the point of view of helping to keep the community together, it'd be awesome if CoH Classic and CoH Evolution were like the hub of a network of fan-run servers, surrounded by crazily modded "elseworld" servers, so that players could help and support each others ideas and work, rather than everyone going off on their own and scattering the community into little groups.

It might happen that way.  We'll have to see how it 'evolves.'

Some are going to want it 'as it was.'  Some are going to be naughty and mod it.  And then the people who get bored of it as 'it was' will want to stick a toe in the water...  Basically i24.  'Legacy.'  And 'i25' 'Unbroken.' 

And yes.  All the DC style alt' Earths a, b, c, d, e, Earth 2 (where the original Golden Age heroes retired to...) 3, z, 4, GG...etc.

...and you're going to get the code junkies who are going to go nuts with it.

And shards?

More than the grains of sand on the Earth. 

Preserve.  At all costs.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 19, 2019, 08:26:28 PM
Here is the issue I can see NCSoft having:

If the pirate server is not for profit, playing a FREE TO PLAY GAME and not making any money from a closed game - what exactly does NCSoft suffer as loss?

I have been running this through my head the last few days:

1. no market to monetize
2. no monthly fees
3. no merchandise sold
4. no one paid for running the server
5. no competition with the same game running currently - I can see the ads now FREE FOREVER TO PLAY biting them in the butt

How would they show actual loss?

Would someone setting up something like say, a Patreon, where it's not a required donation but something where appreciative players could help towards costs on a regular basis, would that still be a gray area or would that stir up the legal hornet's nest?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 08:27:41 PM
Oh please. If there's a theme song for this, I dare you to find something better fitting than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4tbJGItHag

Ok.  I'm playing the link.

Encourageable, Horseman....encourageable.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 08:30:27 PM
Would someone setting up something like say, a Patreon, where it's not a required donation but something where appreciative players could help towards costs on a regular basis, would that still be a gray area or would that stir up the legal hornet's nest?
I would think you could take donations for service rendered - had to buy a new hard drive or server to expand, pay data costs and so on.

You would have to keep open and specific books. I have been thinking this through and FREE TO PLAY FOREVER is true now. Before it was marketing and how can NCSoft deny if no profit is made that it is not FREE TO PLAY.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 19, 2019, 08:31:01 PM
Here is the issue I can see NCSoft having:

If the pirate server is not for profit, playing a FREE TO PLAY GAME and not making any money from a closed game - what exactly does NCSoft suffer as loss?

I have been running this through my head the last few days:

1. no market to monetize
2. no monthly fees
3. no merchandise sold
4. no one paid for running the server
5, no competition with the same game running currently

How would they show actual loss?

Here's the thing. It's a Korean company. Run by people that don't operate the same way Westerners do.

There's moving parts to that which come into play for the reasons why they would have a problem.

Bear with me:

We don't know and probably will never know the exact reason, the straw that broke the camel's back reason why the game was originally shut down.

There's smokescreen, clout, rumors, nothing solid and from the look of things as they were left, we will never know. No one has come forward that I know of that can verify THE reason it was shut down, unless of course I missed it somewhere.

For all we know it may be an honor related thing.

They may be bound by some kind of honor related issue or personal issue that would prevent this western designed game from falling back into the hands of a western audience.

Its all speculation... But that's my take on it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 08:33:34 PM
However, they have to prove loss related to a FREE TO PLAY closed game that isn't being monetized and is running at zero cost to them.

They have to prove it in the USA.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 19, 2019, 08:36:12 PM
Correct. 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 08:40:16 PM
The community will be different, would I still fit in? I was part of the RP-crowd (more or less, I was loosely connected towards the end) on Virtue. Will the roleplayers who're still interested find the same place to play? One of the nice things about the servers on Classic CoX was their different personalities. It would be a loss, imo, for them to become fully homogenized just because a critical population turns out to be necessary for server survival.

Would the developers supporting it learn to start building new content, or would be have to be satisfied with the (tremendous) amount of content it had at shutdown. If the former, would someone, or anyone, care to coordinate the general lore among the various new server/development efforts?

Would it end up as a short nostalgia run, or could it have a longer life? I don't know.

I'm sure you'll fit in just fine.  Everything old is new again.

The thrill of being 'young' and unburdened and starting from L1 again.

There'll be different flavours of ice cream.  So, if you got bored with vanilla, you can have your rum and raisin or coffee ice cream, fudge, choc' mint...whiskey ice cream...(Hmm...)  Choose yours.  Create your own server flavour.  Create content eventually with an eventual release of tools.

This isn't a 'stasis' statue.  This has been turned over the community. 

This is just the beginning.

At least you'll get to find out.  Ask the question.  Explore the answer.

By the way.  That's a very pretty eye.  I've seen you post over the years, as I have a great many other forum members.  But that eye is distracting.

As for the dev' of the game.  It will come in many forms.  That is the beauty of it.  Want classic?  Go with that server.  Want some server that is dev' lore purist?  Expect that 'moon base' that never got developed with Battalion to happen eventually...

New power sets?  (i25 has those?)  New zone, Kalistri Wharf?  Finished.  Just needs mobs and missions.

You'll have?

Choice.  Nostalgia or evolve or party susan.

But hopefully you'll enjoy more than a nostalgia trip.  ;)

I'm looking to trying Arcana's 'High Octane' x2/3 en/en build.  I like the idea of Torrent being a '3rd' attack power with insane recharge.

And I KNOW I'm going to re-roll my en/invul tank.

And...and...I'm GOING to re-roll my elec/elec Domin'.  I miss it the most.  The possibility of combat tactics with it pickled my mind.

As for my song, 5th Horsemen?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RT3uFugS0k

I know.  I'm a disgrace to Azraels everywhere.

Sure I can rustle up some 'rock.'  Give me time...

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 08:44:42 PM
Oh, I got the song for EN/EN blasters or Electric anything:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRfRIXg2spo
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 08:46:27 PM
However, they have to prove loss related to a FREE TO PLAY closed game that isn't being monetized and is running at zero cost to them.

They have to prove it in the USA.

Fighting talk.  There's a certain Al Pacino 'Scarface' vibe to that...or is it a Dirty Harry gravely tone? *(Teases.)

Now.  This is what happens when Ironwolf kicks his 'lurker' door down.

"I'm having lemon and extra sugar on my pancakes.  Anybody got a problem with dat?"

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 08:47:48 PM
Oh, I got the song for EN/EN blasters or Electric anything:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRfRIXg2spo

That's a brave link to post, Ironwolf.

My two mainstays were En/EN and Electric anything.  (I was obsessed with those power sets across Blasters, Domi, Tank...)  I even rolled Defender with En and Elec.  (Please, no jokes.)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 19, 2019, 08:48:44 PM
The biggest problem with a centralized hub is the fear of NCsoft. As far as I know, they still haven't released a statement. And a big part of making sure there's a ton of private servers is not only for variety of play, but also so that NCsoft can't catch them all. It's my understanding that's how other emulators, that don't have the tacit blessing from their original companies, avoid getting shut down.

I suppose having the centralized server located in a country that's more isolated from things like a C&D or other legal action is a good idea, though.

That's what I was thinking too, but there's another part of me that thinks it's less about having multiple different private servers that decreases the chances of NCSoft taking legal action, but more simply knowing that the capability of creating a private server is now publicly accessible. Ergo, I think NCSoft would be less likely to sue not because we'd have a 'divide and conquer' mentality, but because they KNOW we could always just 'divide and conquer' should they take legal action.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 08:52:35 PM
Fighting talk.  There's a certain Al Pacino 'Scarface' vibe to that...or is it a Dirty Harry gravely tone? *(Teases.)

Now.  This is what happens when Ironwolf kicks his 'lurker' door down.

"I'm having lemon and extra sugar on my pancakes.  Anybody got a problem with dat?"

Azrael.
This may not surprise you - I follow the carnivore diet - I eat about 95% meat. Chicken, fish, beef, venison, sausage or anything that eats food a vegan would eat. Made me feel 30 years younger and got rid of all the arthritis!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 08:53:09 PM
Oh, I got the song for EN/EN blasters or Electric anything:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRfRIXg2spo

Ok.  That just went onto my favourites list.  I'm probably going to play that as I enter 'the streets' as a L1 Elec/elec domi'.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 19, 2019, 08:55:40 PM
Oh, I got the song for EN/EN blasters or Electric anything:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRfRIXg2spo

Unless they're from the UK, this is probably blasting in their Mini Cooper.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHrqRx7Abg :D
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 08:56:51 PM
This may not surprise you - I follow the carnivore diet - I eat about 95% meat. Chicken, fish, beef, venison, sausage or anything that eats food a vegan would eat. Made me feel 30 years younger and got rid of all the arthritis!

Carnivore diet.  95% T-Rex.  Lol.  (*Just teasing.)

That testosterone spike is coming in handy, especially this week...and going forwards.  I don't want to be the lawyer that messes with you.  'You see what that T-Rex did to that lawyer....'

Hmm.  Interesting.  Noted.  That should help me with my gym work.

Azrael.

PS.  Iron wolf.  You got me at it...here we go...here we go...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnEZzLSPNZY

...and...well...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MA0m1K2jW4

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 09:02:20 PM
Unless they're from the UK, this is probably blasting in their Mini Cooper.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHrqRx7Abg :D

Geeze, Ironwolf.  See what you did?  Even the Tahquitz is at it.  You know he doesn't need much encouragement.  (for the record, I had(!) a 'Michael Caine' union jack italian job mini cooper...new model...not the original...  Which I still had it...with it's union jack wing mirrors....union jack roof...had it back when teh CoH was still alive...)  So yeah, UK based.  Guilty as charged.  Though my heart belongs to Scotland. ;)

I do like Suede.  I hadn't heard that one before. 

As for the CoH community?  Here they come...the beautiful ones...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqovGKdgAXY

Ha.  Like the video.  The way they modulate elec.  Know if I could have that aura for my elec/elec domi'....

So Kool.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kheprera on April 19, 2019, 09:12:39 PM
I like all the ones posted so far...

But this remains my personal favorite.

https://youtu.be/292PZKiStsU (https://youtu.be/292PZKiStsU)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 09:20:32 PM
I like all the ones posted so far...

But this remains my personal favorite.

https://youtu.be/292PZKiStsU (https://youtu.be/292PZKiStsU)

Fire imps rocking out.  Some great power amps.  I think one mob got belted off screen... and another got mind-verticled.  No ice-cream for him.

Azrael.

PS.  This week seems like some kind of surreal dream.

PPS.  Just to keep 5th Horseman happy.

Here's some rocking from 'The Muse' doing it 'Queen II' style.  The death spiral battle between the consumer and the corporation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_sBOsh-vyI

...and something mind bending for the surreal events of this week.  Take it away, Joe...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoERl34Ld00
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 09:26:43 PM
I would think you could take donations for service rendered - had to buy a new hard drive or server to expand, pay data costs and so on.

You would have to keep open and specific books. I have been thinking this through and FREE TO PLAY FOREVER is true now. Before it was marketing and how can NCSoft deny if no profit is made that it is not FREE TO PLAY.

Precisely.  All donations must be voluntary, NO special perks fo donation EVER, and all donations carefully tracked andoggex to ensure they are for bandwidth and spare parts for the server.

However if costs are low enough fo hardware and bandwidth then donations will not be needed.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 19, 2019, 09:29:51 PM
Precisely.  All donations must be voluntary, NO special perks fo donation EVER, and all donations carefully tracked andoggex to ensure they are for bandwidth and spare parts for the server.

However if costs are low enough fo hardware and bandwidth then donations will not be needed.

Yeah.  Got to be careful with that and how 'ANY' money is involved.

It's what caught out Nostralius when Blizzard sued over money being involved...

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Jetpack on April 19, 2019, 10:09:29 PM
Would someone setting up something like say, a Patreon, where it's not a required donation but something where appreciative players could help towards costs on a regular basis, would that still be a gray area or would that stir up the legal hornet's nest?

Just so everyone knows, it's been noted on Discord that THERE IS NO PATREON FOR THIS AS OF NOW.  Watch out for scammers.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 19, 2019, 10:10:42 PM
Yeah.  Got to be careful with that and how 'ANY' money is involved.

It's what caught out Nostralius when Blizzard sued over money being involved...

Azrael.

Yep basically it is "no money, no foul"

Ncsoft may try on general principal to shut this down but given that the code is already disseminated like the seed was at the end of sword art online one, they just need to sit back, grit their teeth, and realize they really screwed up with the shut down.

Now...if any private servers install graphics like billboards or graffiti that say "ncsoft sux" or something like that....then they might have a minor case in terms of slander but I am skeptical of that. Still, best not to hit the beehive too much
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 19, 2019, 10:55:12 PM
I like all the ones posted so far...

But this remains my personal favorite.

https://youtu.be/292PZKiStsU (https://youtu.be/292PZKiStsU)

Lots of DC infringement in that one.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 19, 2019, 11:15:39 PM
Reminder:

Hello! 

There have been developments about the first few pieces of the server project coming together.  The promise that something will happen by this weekend is getting closer to reality.

While we are working on several things concerning recent news, I do want to make one thing clear: Titan Network is NOT affiliated with the teams making something out of the SCORE Public Release.  As such, any posts of registering for bootleg/private servers, or bootleg/private server websites, and other places is NOT ALLOWED.

If you want to keep on top of progress of these teams, you can join the unofficial City of Heroes Discord to discuss specifically just that.  Posts with links to these servers or homepages to them will be deleted on sight.  That part has not changed.  This also applies to any software concerning such things, such as server-side code or assets.  We've never allowed those things to be posted here, regardless of current news or affairs.

Thanks for your time.

Please use the Unofficial City of Heroes Discord to organize.  I still have to remove links to the private server.  Sorry.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Fellstrike on April 19, 2019, 11:17:02 PM
Sorry. I should have  checked the rules closer. Just didn't want folks to be left out.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 19, 2019, 11:25:07 PM
I understand. 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 19, 2019, 11:25:49 PM
Reminder:

Please use the Unofficial City of Heroes Discord to organize.  I still have to remove links to the private server.  Sorry.

That was a link to the private? I really had no idea. I am very sorry, I thought it was an error on my end. Thank you btw Tahqyitz for clearing this up. I will stop trying to reg. :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 19, 2019, 11:39:09 PM
I'm Azrael and I'm a 'sweep-a-colic.'

*Confession.

Juicy mobs in?  Atlas.  Hollows.  Outcast and Trolls...  Perez.  Steel(!).  Talos.  Striga Isle.  Founders (snipers...)  P.Island.  Mages and Nemesis...

Ok.  I'll stop there...no...wait.  What about the sensational juicy mobs in Brickstown?

The mob sweeping capital?

Azrael.

Using a speedster to solo/pull those huge red ink mobs in Independence  -- the ones directly across the bay from the station -- man was there anything better.

C'mon you 20 guys, you can all chase me... oh you all want to go back to harass that lone civii  -- how about you last two?  Now there's only 18. Ha Ha lets do it some more!


Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 19, 2019, 11:44:11 PM
Servers up, after an, uh, extended maintenance window, but be prepared for crashing and queuing when we all get on at once.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 19, 2019, 11:47:09 PM
Yes, people are entering the server - but it is not stable yet.

The download is slow as well. I am waiting for a while until things get smoothed out.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 19, 2019, 11:49:47 PM

PS.  Sure.  Who DOESN'T remember Golden Girl 'hanging' in Atlas.  I never recalled her power sets though.  I'm sure I peaked.  But I don't remember.


Yeah, I BET you did!  Probably right after you peeked.  ;D
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 19, 2019, 11:57:03 PM
   Just want to pop in here and say "hi" for the first time. o/

   Been lurking around the forums for many years now but recent events have encouraged me to join.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 20, 2019, 12:01:07 AM
Welcome! There was a nice meat tray but then Ironwolf resurfaced.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Atlantea on April 20, 2019, 12:10:45 AM
Guys? If you've got the classic Superspeed/Superleap combo and you want to tour the City COMPLETELY on your return, you need something classically heroic - has ups and downs that match city transitions - and long enough for you to not reach the end before you're done.

Here ya go - :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAZO7oFOg5k (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAZO7oFOg5k)

EDIT:  Alternately for a bit punchier version and shorter run, try this version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyMJNXyiilc&t=1417s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyMJNXyiilc&t=1417s)

And the third one in the set:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRQAM8F3bgc&t=148s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRQAM8F3bgc&t=148s)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 20, 2019, 12:34:44 AM
However, they have to prove loss related to a FREE TO PLAY closed game that isn't being monetized and is running at zero cost to them.

They have to prove it in the USA.

Just to be clear. They don't have to prove that there's any "loss". All they have to prove is that someone is using their software and intellectual property without an explicit license to do so. If they claimed damages, then yeah, they might have to show how much damage, but just taking the server offline doesn't require any damages at all.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 20, 2019, 12:42:48 AM
But it will be the I am Spartacus moment.

Server will just pop up even more no doubt.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 20, 2019, 12:44:41 AM
But it will be the I am Spartacus moment.

Server will just pop up even more no doubt.

Exactly, the genie is out of the bottle, it can never be sealed back in
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Victoria Victrix on April 20, 2019, 01:23:07 AM
Well I sent an official letter to Paragon Studios on Live that I will reiterate here.

Anyone has my permission to use as a character name and concept any of the literary characters I have created.  I consider that "fair use."  (IMHO any writer who gets bent over their creations being used in fanfic or fanart or games is not thinking clearly.)

Bear in mind this does not include the characters any of my collaborators may have created, such as Red Saviour.  I can't speak for them, only for myself.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 20, 2019, 01:33:49 AM
Well I sent an official letter to Paragon Studios on Live that I will reiterate here.

Anyone has my permission to use as a character name and concept any of the literary characters I have created.  I consider that "fair use."  (IMHO any writer who gets bent over their creations being used in fanfic or fanart or games is not thinking clearly.)

Bear in mind this does not include the characters any of my collaborators may have created, such as Red Saviour.  I can't speak for them, only for myself.

That is very kind of you :)  Not everyone is so giving with their IP's.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Atlantea on April 20, 2019, 01:51:17 AM
Well I sent an official letter to Paragon Studios on Live that I will reiterate here.

Anyone has my permission to use as a character name and concept any of the literary characters I have created.  I consider that "fair use."  (IMHO any writer who gets bent over their creations being used in fanfic or fanart or games is not thinking clearly.)

Bear in mind this does not include the characters any of my collaborators may have created, such as Red Saviour.  I can't speak for them, only for myself.

I did read and greatly enjoy your book series that was based (loosely) on the City of Heroes group of characters. But I for one don't intend to use any of them. Nevertheless, just for clarity, since you mentioned it, could you give a quick list of the ones that you don't mind people using versus the ones the that are NOT yours that you can't speak for? Or is that already outlined in the books or online somewhere?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: eabrace on April 20, 2019, 01:53:29 AM
Doubtful.  I think Sentinel is keyed in to NCSoft's former servers.  It would need to be revised.
Sentinel had to be recompiled with each live release.  It was designed to sniff for data in specific memory addresses in the client while it was running.  Those addresses changed every time the client was recompiled, so Sentinel had to be updated each time.

For Sentinel to work on a private server, it would have to be compiled to work specifically with the current client files compatible with that server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Atlantea on April 20, 2019, 01:58:28 AM
I'm still three pages behind, so this may have already been mentioned (and I'll come back to this and edit it when I get caught up).

Sentinel had to be recompiled with each live release.  It was designed to sniff for data in specific memory addresses in the client while it was running.  Those addresses changed every time the client was recompiled, so Sentinel had to be updated each time.

For Sentinel to work on a private server, it would have to be compiled to work specifically with the current client files compatible with that server.

I was about to wince and ask how tough that would be.

Then I remembered that we essentially have a 24-7 Coding Party fueled by incredible amounts of enthusiasm and Mountain Dew. Practically a "Million Monkeys on a Million Typewriters producing Shakespeare." :D

Toss it into the screaming furball and less than 24 hours later the finished product will come sailing out ready to go I bet. :D

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: eabrace on April 20, 2019, 01:59:45 AM
I was about to wince and ask how tough that would be.

Then I remembered that we essentially have a 24-7 Coding Party fueled by incredible amounts of enthusiasm and Mountain Dew. Practically a "Million Monkeys on a Million Typewriters producing Shakespeare." :D

Toss it into the screaming furball and less than 24 hours later the finished product will come sailing out ready to go I bet. :D
You're going to have to arm wrestle GuyPerfect for that one.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 20, 2019, 02:06:27 AM
ok wow. I wasn't expecting insane power proliferation (spine broots! fire stalker!) or the post i24 power sets. but the one that really got me was the no redraw option on weapons.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Dev7on on April 20, 2019, 02:22:38 AM
Here is THE perfect song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_f_PQ1QRNs

Oh yeah. Here's one better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyn_YuMLSNc
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tubbius on April 20, 2019, 03:30:46 AM
I want to read that.

I might need to think on the next Waddle adventure, then.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Victoria Victrix on April 20, 2019, 09:06:01 AM
I did read and greatly enjoy your book series that was based (loosely) on the City of Heroes group of characters. But I for one don't intend to use any of them. Nevertheless, just for clarity, since you mentioned it, could you give a quick list of the ones that you don't mind people using versus the ones the that are NOT yours that you can't speak for? Or is that already outlined in the books or online somewhere?

This is major characters off the top of my head that are NOT mine
Red Saviour, Untermensch, Chug, Soviet Bear, Mojiotok, Ramona Ferrarri (aka Steel Maiden), Jack, Spin Doctor, People's Blade, Handsome Devil, The Mountain, Bulwark, Red Djinni, John Murdock, Penny, Harmony, Dominic Verdigris III, Dixie Belle, Yankee Doodle, Yankee Pride, Eisenfaust, Barron, Scope, Acrobat, Panacea, Gilead, Mel, Valkyria, Mercurye, Kid Zero, Kid One, Leader of the Pack, Paperback Rider, the-other-guy-that-died-heroically-blowing-up-the-train, Alex Tesla, Marconi and Tesla the ghosts-in-the-machine, Arthur Chang, Khanjar, Soviette, Speed Freak, Rebel Yell, Bad Bowie, Ubermensch, The Black Baron, Worker's Champion, and of course, Doppelgaenger.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 20, 2019, 11:22:45 AM
Yes, people are entering the server - but it is not stable yet.

The download is slow as well. I am waiting for a while until things get smoothed out.
You can use your existing copy of i24 files / Icon / Paragon Chat. That accounts for bulk of what has to be downloaded.

However, they have to prove loss related to a FREE TO PLAY closed game that isn't being monetized and is running at zero cost to them.
They have to prove it in the USA.
NCSoft still holds one City Of Heroes trademark that hasn't lapsed, valid apparently until 2023.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 20, 2019, 12:44:22 PM
Wow!  Just Wow is all I have to say.  It has been an amazing and exciting 24 hours.  I am not sure how much we are supposed to talk about here but I suggest everyone join the Discord and see that amazing work going on!  If someone 2 weeks ago told me I would have experienced what I did tonight I would have called them a liar with extreme prejudice.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 20, 2019, 12:51:49 PM
Wow!  Just Wow is all I have to say.  It has been an amazing and exciting 24 hours.  I am not sure how much we are supposed to talk about here but I suggest everyone join the Discord and see that amazing work going on!  If someone 2 weeks ago told me I would have experienced what I did tonight I would have called them a liar with extreme prejudice.

How do we join the Discord?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Artillerie on April 20, 2019, 01:06:30 PM
And then it all went quiet again. I wonder why that could be :P
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 20, 2019, 01:24:17 PM
How do we join the Discord?


https://discord.gg/CP3tDeG (https://discord.gg/CP3tDeG)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on April 20, 2019, 02:49:51 PM
Just had a 2 hour flawless gameplay in Atlas city. Listening to the zones Music. Street sweeping.

Please dont Wake me up from this Dream :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 20, 2019, 02:55:14 PM
I got my Sonic/Ice blaster Ironwolf up to 5 and then logged to cut some brush up - living on a farm it doesn't stop until dark.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Adam Infinity on April 20, 2019, 03:14:10 PM
I'm playing as Adam Atomic if you guys see me in game (between servers restarting). Thank you to everyone making this happen and being a part of this.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on April 20, 2019, 03:35:41 PM
I got my Sonic/Ice blaster Ironwolf up to 5 and then logged to cut some brush up - living on a farm it doesn't stop until dark.

Did all this happen quicker than you could have imagined IW?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 20, 2019, 04:19:29 PM
Well yes and no - this is only test code.

A lot of work needs to be done for the future - I am getting a web host for a site and will start building a server site. Once the code is fixed and tweaked - I will rent a server according to specs and off we go.

I think right about when I retire is how long it will take, so end of August. I don't want the earliest server just the most stable one. Once that happens another server will open!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 20, 2019, 04:28:40 PM
Well yes and no - this is only test code.

A lot of work needs to be done for the future - I am getting a web host for a site and will start building a server site. Once the code is fixed and tweaked - I will rent a server according to specs and off we go.

I think right about when I retire is how long it will take, so end of August. I don't want the earliest server just the most stable one. Once that happens another server will open!

End of August.  That sounds good to me. 

Hard to believe you were leading the efforts to get the talks going all those years ago.

And now?  Mere months away from setting up an 'Ironwolf Server.'

For the cause.

The stuff of dreams.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 20, 2019, 04:32:31 PM
I got my Sonic/Ice blaster Ironwolf up to 5 and then logged to cut some brush up - living on a farm it doesn't stop until dark.

Sound!  :)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Harq76 on April 20, 2019, 05:35:29 PM
I am totally fine with getting my bearings until august for the most stable one.

Until then, I'm gonna have fun and test out alts so I can hit the ground running then.

An alting I will go,,,,
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 20, 2019, 05:40:43 PM
I am totally fine with getting my bearings until august for the most stable one.

Until then, I'm gonna have fun and test out alts so I can hit the ground running then.

An alting I will go,,,,

Aye.  It's a dizzying time, this week.

For the less tech' minded for myself...I guess it's a chance to 'have a play.'

Whilst the 'bullet proof' and 'server for dummies' versions come out.

It's a matter of 'when' not 'if' now.  Seismic week this has been in the 'lore' of the CoH community.

And we've still got the 15 year anniversary on the 28th to come.  I'm beginning to wonder if this 'leak' wasn't part of some Nemesis plot...

I know if Ironwolf has anything to do with a server it'll probably be carved out of granite. 

Trade somebody else's soul to be walking (I did say walking folks...) around Galaxy, putting the old energy and bonesmasher blap combo on some red mobs.

You know.  In the rough side of town.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Adam Infinity on April 20, 2019, 05:45:00 PM
Is it ok to ask what happened to Arcana and Codewalker?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 20, 2019, 05:54:52 PM
Is it ok to ask what happened to Arcana and Codewalker?

Haven't seen any posts from Arcana this week.

Codewalker is on Paragon Chat, I think.

Though, as an aside, there is that '15 year' anniversary announcement on April 28th.  I should imagine Codewalker will have his hands full with that.  Who knows what that 'announcement' will entail.

I'm intrigued by it.  Whether it's tied to the events of this week, we can only guess.

Though, I think Leandro's statement earlier this week suggested that the 'server' was going to be released in a couple of weeks.  That could have been tied to this '15th year' anniversary.

But I'm only speculating.  And that's all it is.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: eabrace on April 20, 2019, 05:55:45 PM
Is it ok to ask what happened to Arcana and Codewalker?
(https://i.postimg.cc/vx7Q0Bjq/agents-of-shield-tahiti-its-a-magical-place-1.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/vx7Q0Bjq)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 20, 2019, 05:57:02 PM
(https://i.postimg.cc/vx7Q0Bjq/agents-of-shield-tahiti-its-a-magical-place-1.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/vx7Q0Bjq)

Cryptic clues.

My favourite... ;)

 (I thought it said Tequila at first...)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 20, 2019, 06:04:29 PM
What the status is so far:

All i24 stuff is complete and can be packaged to distribute - except for:

 - Costume stuff is messed up
 - and apparently the maps.db file could use a scrubbing (there's a few player names in it IIRC ?)

The i25 stuff being used now will be rewritten - it isn't stable over 200 players
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 20, 2019, 06:26:02 PM
Can we please not call it "Issue 25"? It's mostly powerset modifications, it doesn't have any of the story content that would have been in a real I25!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 20, 2019, 06:34:08 PM
What the status is so far:

All i24 stuff is complete and can be packaged to distribute - except for:

 - Costume stuff is messed up
 - and apparently the maps.db file could use a scrubbing (there's a few player names in it IIRC ?)

The i25 stuff being used now will be rewritten - it isn't stable over 200 players

i24 complete and can be packaged to distribute.  That's progress.  (With some additional 'minor'? de-bugging on costumes and some map 'scrubbing' of player names.

i25.  Currently in use.  Getting a re-write.  To help boost it way over '200' players.  Pretty sure that glass ceiling will be broken real soon.

That sounds like real progress.

Thank you for the updates, Ironwolf.

You communicate frequently as progress is made.  It keeps us all in the loop.

Appreciated.

Azrael.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 20, 2019, 06:37:32 PM
(https://i.postimg.cc/vx7Q0Bjq/agents-of-shield-tahiti-its-a-magical-place-1.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/vx7Q0Bjq)

I'm not sure if that's a good thing.   :D

What the status is so far:

All i24 stuff is complete and can be packaged to distribute - except for:

 - Costume stuff is messed up
 - and apparently the maps.db file could use a scrubbing (there's a few player names in it IIRC ?)

The i25 stuff being used now will be rewritten - it isn't stable over 200 players


   Would it be possible to distribute a stable i24 to servers then update to i25 at a later date?  Or is the goal to get i25 ready for distribution first and send it out as one complete package?

Can we please not call it "Issue 25"? It's mostly powerset modifications, it doesn't have any of the story content that would have been in a real I25!

   What is the possibility of adding story content past i24?  I know it would involve more than just writing a story (scripting, etc) but I think the CoX community has some talented people.  Most emulators/private servers I've been on never add content past what the official live servers had but I think it would be interesting to see what the community could come up with.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 20, 2019, 06:41:41 PM
Can we please not call it "Issue 25"? It's mostly powerset modifications, it doesn't have any of the story content that would have been in a real I25!

Perhaps it will have.  One day.  I think it's ok to call it i25 for now (in the absence of anything else...)  After all, they preserved the game in the context that they did.  It's lucky they did what they did.  Or what wouldn't have this last 'week' as hotly debated and raw with emotions as it was.

I think it's the first 'issue' where the community has carried on the torch from the dev's.  Sounds like it's got extra powers in and other improvements.  And being called 'unbroken shard' has it's own narrative in terms of preservation of the game for the CoH community to enjoy.  I'm ok with that 'narrative.

When the 'tools' for 'story content' (eg Mission creator, LUA scripting, Map designer...) are eventually created (matter of time) then the i25 can be rounded out.

Once those tools are created...anything could happen.  There won't be anymore 'official' issues.

But that's the beauty.  The community can now create their own lore, their own issues, their own shards, their own experience of CoH...their own flavour of COH ice cream.

It won't be i24 in perpetuity.  That will be just a starting base for the CoH community of communities.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 20, 2019, 06:46:00 PM

But that's the beauty.  The community can now create their own lore, their own issues, their own shards, their own experience of CoH...their own flavour of COH ice cream.

That will be just a starting base for the CoH community of communities.

Azrael.


CoX multiverse where every server is an alternate reality with it's own story.  ;D
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Dev7on on April 20, 2019, 06:47:17 PM
I have a question. Does AE work too?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 20, 2019, 06:48:39 PM

   What is the possibility of adding story content past i24?  I know it would involve more than just writing a story (scripting, etc) but I think the CoX community has some talented people.  Most emulators/private servers I've been on never add content past what the official live servers had but I think it would be interesting to see what the community could come up with.

Well.  That's where the CoH community, I suspect, will be different.  (See my comment above.)

Not only has the game been preserved.  A narrative all of its own.  But I suspect the 'modding' tools the devs themselves used or variations of them will follow once i24 has been re-written to be more stable and more efficient to...

...use more modern dev' tools to add content and improvements.

Once there are tools for maps, missions etc.  You'll be able to create your own narrative.  Issue 25.  26.  27.  28.  Your own maps.  Your own 'batallion' story arc. 

Possibly some will quietly canvas the ear of the original developers to get the skinny on the plans the moonbase...or the batallion plans.  (I think that was the near 'final' plans they had before shut down...)  But they hadn't got that far on those...just a 'bug pass' required for the launch of i24 which never made it.

But again, the community can use their own imagination and modding tools to do this.  Eventually.

There will probably be 'large communities' on a large set of servers that may cluster to create a more 'official' line of content that alines with the dev's plans as Matt Miller outlined in his final farewell interview.

But again.  We'll see.

What we do and don't call things from this point on?  Largely semantics.

But the 'never ending story' will continue.

Fairly convinced on that....

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 20, 2019, 06:49:38 PM

CoX multiverse where every server is an alternate reality with it's own story.  ;D

Uhuh. :D

Succinctly put. ;P

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 20, 2019, 06:50:11 PM
I have a question. Does AE work too?

Now...that's a good question...  (Especially given the current discussion...)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 20, 2019, 09:23:27 PM
Can we please not call it "Issue 25"? It's mostly powerset modifications, it doesn't have any of the story content that would have been in a real I25!

As reported by Massively Op (https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/18/the-city-of-heroes-private-server-team-has-released-its-code-to-the-world-but-not-the-characters/), you can call it "Unbroken Spirit" as it's alternate name.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 20, 2019, 09:38:34 PM
I have a question. Does AE work too?

As the server reports:
Quote
Architect Entertainment's servers are currently down for maintenance. You can still edit and test local arcs or finish playing existing arcs. Note, unlocked content may appear unavailable until the server is back online.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 20, 2019, 09:53:35 PM
I can't believe we care. They could call it space herpes for all I care.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 20, 2019, 10:49:14 PM
As reported by Massively Op (https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/18/the-city-of-heroes-private-server-team-has-released-its-code-to-the-world-but-not-the-characters/), you can call it "Unbroken Spirit" as it's alternate name.

'Unbroken Spirit' is a good name.  Issue 25 for me.  Is fine.

It's the first 'independent' release with modifications since the shut down.

Cool name.

....and....

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 20, 2019, 10:49:53 PM
As the server reports:

....and....with the AE...we can create some 'story content' for unbroken spirit?

Azrael.


PS.  Discretion re: the earlier posts.  I guess 'modded.'  Whilst possibly true...we may have a care not to prod the wasp nest with a stick...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Auroxis on April 20, 2019, 11:00:38 PM
Today was a good day.


(https://i.postimg.cc/CZFtBXMd/paladin.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/CZFtBXMd)


Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 21, 2019, 12:03:04 AM
If I may. Please temper expectations. There is a chance to log in. However, it is a slim one. I suggest waiting until it is ready to handle far more people.

Storytime :). Today I tried for 3 hours and not one connect. (please note I am not blaming anyone.) Think of this as an Alpha test.

Mods I hope I haven't crossed any lines with this. Just offering a heart felt opinion :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Dev7on on April 21, 2019, 12:48:45 AM
If I may. Please temper expectations. There is a chance to log in. However, it is a slim one. I suggest waiting until it is ready to handle far more people.

Storytime :). Today I tried for 3 hours and not one connect. (please note I am not blaming anyone.) Think of this as an Alpha test.

Mods I hope I haven't crossed any lines with this. Just offering a heart felt opinion :)

That's what I'm doing. I'm going to wait until the server is able to function with 200+ players. As much as I'm happy that we'll able to go back home to Paragon City I'm not in a rush to get on the server yet. For those who are playing have fun!  ;) Also, thank you for answering my question Tahquitz.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 21, 2019, 01:30:30 AM
Today was a good day.


(https://i.postimg.cc/CZFtBXMd/paladin.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/CZFtBXMd)

Wait, what is that "Shining Star Showdown"? I don't recall anything like that.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Atlantea on April 21, 2019, 01:39:01 AM
Wait, what is that "Shining Star Showdown"? I don't recall anything like that.

Oh! I remember! That's part of the I24 package. It's one of the new missions that would've been available on live if I24 had gotten out of test. I did a bunch of stuff on the Beta server before shutdown. It's not part of the SCoRE content. It's stock I24.

EDIT:  Wait, no. It's not a mission. It's a Zone Event. Sorry about that.

BTW - if/when you get a chance - do the Kings Row mission arc that was added for I24. Played that in the Beta as well - AWESOME mission string!

There's also I24 mission content in Brickstown for former Praetorian characters. Timeline-wise it takes place AFTER the Magisterium and the defeat of Emporer Cole and deals with refugees from the largely Hamidon-ized Praetoria. I finished that with my first Praetorian on the very last day before shutdown. Took tons of screenshots.

Never thought I'd have a chance to play it again. Mind still blown.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 21, 2019, 01:43:22 AM
This is just in. Our old characters are going away. However, according to the main person on Discord, the server can continue. :) Abit of bad news and good news.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Atlantea on April 21, 2019, 02:16:17 AM
I was watching that. Just to be clear - it's not because Leandro and the SCoRe team wants to withhold that database. It apparently has more to do with the asinine new regulations in the EU that just got passed.

Copy/paste from the Discord:
Quote
As of right now, we have an issue in conflict with a greater threat than NCSoft involving the EU's GDPR when it comes to the CharacterDB. Now while there is (to my knowledge) no personal data on this database, the very fact there is a European database possibly attached to it leaves us up to severe aggressive response from NCSoft. We are trying to figure out a way forward from here.
Best case scenario? We may lose all of our heroes and villains.
Worst case scenario? Everything we have worked for so far is in jeopardy. In the meantime, I insist we keep discussion to a minimum until we can figure a direction to go in.
Thank you once again.
UPDATE:
Legal council is being advised in order to figure out how to proceed. Stand by and wait for an update on this issue. We are trying to get it resolved as swiftly and efficiently as we can.

And then later this announcement:

Quote
After coming to consultation and deliberation, we have come up with a solution that will allow us to proceed with continuing on our path to restoring the community.
However in doing so, we will have to sacrifice the heroes and villains of old in order to make sure we are intangible for the future. I understand this has taken a bit of time to deliberate, but we are finally able to press onward with full spatial awareness of the situation at hand.
Thank you for your patience, now let's keep trudging forward.
Translation: We will not be able to restore your old characters.

I feel so sorry for our European friends. The internet is going to be censored there as much or even more than China's. RIP Internet for the old continent.  :'(

Oh well. Guess everyone starts at zero. That's okay. Can still recreate old characters and costumes and level them up again.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 21, 2019, 02:26:41 AM
I just hope some servers allow people to upload Sentinel+ files.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 21, 2019, 02:32:25 AM
   I'm okay with this.  I don't think it's really as bad as it sounds.  Start from the beginning and enjoy it all over again. :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 21, 2019, 02:58:55 AM
I just hope some servers allow people to upload Sentinel+ files.

I do too - but nobody's worked out a way to do that, and IIRC even Codewalker and/or Guy Perfect said it might not work. (Still, with the raw data, I think characters could be created according to those specs, but then you run into the issue of server ops having limited time and resources to make people characters and it turns into a massive mess...)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 21, 2019, 03:47:36 AM
I just hope some servers allow people to upload Sentinel+ files.

You and me both.   Those of us that prepared for this long winter should be rewarded.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 21, 2019, 03:49:08 AM
Wow!

I finally got in.  My memory may be playing tricks on me but today seems busier than launch day.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: VileTerror on April 21, 2019, 03:54:37 AM
So, I haven't read everything here yet . . . I'm still kind of reeling from the news in general, but . . .
Yeah, I really like the idea of sort of everyone just agreeing to view their various private servers (assuming we get to that point) as just "Shards" and the stories that evolve from them are just alternate dimensions branching off from the original core lore.  Seems really appropriate for the on-going story of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles.

Hell, maybe some day we can basically implement features that give individual server operators the power to plug content in with ease.  Create a whole community of plug-and-play missions, entities, and even feature upgrades!  One can dream.

You know . . . if NCSoft doesn't nuke everything from orbit, heh.  It's been a crazy time to be a City of Heroes fan, this week.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Gun-Nut on April 21, 2019, 04:30:13 AM
I have a question. Does AE work too?

As far as I'm aware AE does work its just not been put online due to the load already on the servers without it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Atlantea on April 21, 2019, 05:29:54 AM
So I wouldn't say I'm a *full* min maxer - it was too expensive. But it is nice to see what you can do to generally improve your build, even if you're not working to push an extra .5% of damage.

I still need to know if the Sentinel AT was from before shutdown or not - if it was, it needs to go on the wiki!
.
Apparently the Sentinel AT was created by the SCoRE server Devs. That seems to be the most concrete data. I myself played the I24 beta heavily in the last week before shutdown. And I saw no such thing.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: eabrace on April 21, 2019, 05:33:55 AM
<modhat>

Folks, I know we're all excited about this week's developments, but let's try not to post links to downloads with unknown origins on sites that we can't vouch for.

</modhat>
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 21, 2019, 05:39:10 AM
My bad, thought we all knew Pine :D
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: eabrace on April 21, 2019, 05:45:34 AM
Unless I see Pine posting the link...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: blue storm on April 21, 2019, 07:18:59 AM
No sure the GDPR would or should actually prevent the use of the old char database. One could have uploaded the database for all. then allow those who are actually on the server  to claim their characters and then delete the piece that did not get claimed.... of course allow a window of idk, 15-30 days to do so)

then again, I can leave with that, and perhaps when things are stable, we can load our chars from Sentinel+ ?

but for now, I'm just happy we have a functioning city... (as much as I enjoyed paragon Chat, it was still missing a bit of life) and SEGS is progressing a lot, but not yet there !
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 21, 2019, 07:33:32 AM
This is also really just a test server.  We'll see what the future holds.

I got trapped in my first door mission.  I couldn't exit because the Atlas Park map couldn't be found.   Since it's 2:30 AM here, I just logged out.

Is it just me or is Sprint faster than it used to be?  I'm at level 2 and i don't remember moving this fast.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 21, 2019, 08:18:36 AM
Jumping seems higher to me too... but that could also be the inherent fitness.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 21, 2019, 08:35:57 AM
Jumping seems higher to me too... but that could also be the inherent fitness.

I played through the inherent fitness period.  Those would be my last memories of the game.  Plus, I took the fitness powers and slotted them out to the appropriate maximum - pre and post ED.

Maybe someone who knows more about the changes made in "I25", can settle the issue.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 21, 2019, 09:27:37 AM
This is also really just a test server.  We'll see what the future holds.

I got trapped in my first door mission.  I couldn't exit because the Atlas Park map couldn't be found.   Since it's 2:30 AM here, I just logged out.

Is it just me or is Sprint faster than it used to be?  I'm at level 2 and I don't remember moving this fast.

Sprint and jump seem faster/higher to me.  Stamina seems more noticeable as well.  One of my chars that was toggle heavy did run out of stamina sometimes.  But my Dominator never got close.  Either way, even if those few things felt different than I remembered it still so amazing to be able to DO those things again.

Jumping seems higher to me too... but that could also be the inherent fitness.
I also thought it might just be the inherent fitness.  By the time inherent fitness was introduced, I used to have a travel power all the time anyway - and almost never used sprint at that point because I believe you could just use veteran travel powers for new characters. 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 21, 2019, 10:57:09 AM
Wow.

Just like old times.

Was it a dream?

I actually....

1000 barrier broken...

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 21, 2019, 10:58:02 AM
This is also really just a test server.  We'll see what the future holds.

I got trapped in my first door mission.  I couldn't exit because the Atlas Park map couldn't be found.   Since it's 2:30 AM here, I just logged out.

Is it just me or is Sprint faster than it used to be?  I'm at level 2 and i don't remember moving this fast.

Sprint seems faster.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 21, 2019, 11:29:57 AM
Apparently the Sentinel AT was created by the SCoRE server Devs. That seems to be the most concrete data. I myself played the I24 beta heavily in the last week before shutdown. And I saw no such thing.
I saw no such thing in i24 either, but feature testing usually has at least two phases - there's an internal test before any public test server goes up with the same feature. There is a possibility that this AT might have been something that was in development before shutdown that didn't get to - or through - internal QA before Paragon staff was let go.

The i25 stuff being used now will be rewritten - it isn't stable over 200 players
It wasn't 200 players, the limiters were not working and the server had about 3 times as many players connected - and 2 times as many trying to connect.
Now it's stable and over 1K connected players. Possibly around 10K players overall.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 21, 2019, 12:07:56 PM
Thanks, I'm cured.

There was a point between getting the code from anonymous devs 6 years ago and last week when there was a conspiracy to keep the private server secret with enough time to make new ATs where scrubbing the code and re-publishing it anonymously was the right thing to do.  There was a point where the well-meaning people of SCoRE lost their way and kept this golden gift to themselves instead of sharing.

My bitterness will go away when I can play again.

So how goes it friend? 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 21, 2019, 01:22:20 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 21, 2019, 03:17:42 PM
Are we sure sprint doesn't just seem faster because we're back on a game where travel isn't specifically meant as a time sink?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 21, 2019, 04:14:27 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 21, 2019, 04:18:49 PM
Can we please not call it "Issue 25"? It's mostly powerset modifications, it doesn't have any of the story content that would have been in a real I25!

Yes more like Issue 24.1
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 21, 2019, 04:20:22 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Garble on April 21, 2019, 04:20:29 PM
While I'm a bit sad that all old characters are gone, I have to put it in perspective that until a week ago I never thought that was possible.

What I hope someone is working on is a way to save and reload character data for the future. That way we can move between servers without starting over **EVERY** time.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 21, 2019, 04:22:08 PM
I saw no such thing in i24 either, but feature testing usually has at least two phases - there's an internal test before any public test server goes up with the same feature. There is a possibility that this AT might have been something that was in development before shutdown that didn't get to - or through - internal QA before Paragon staff was let go.
It wasn't 200 players, the limiters were not working and the server had about 3 times as many players connected - and 2 times as many trying to connect.
Now it's stable and over 1K connected players. Possibly around 10K players overall.

So, 5th Horseman.  I remember your original handle talking about finding your way home 'one day.'

HAVE you found your way 'home?'

*winks.

I think I have... :o  *I'm in shock.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 21, 2019, 04:26:58 PM
While I'm a bit sad that all old characters are gone, I have to put it in perspective that until a week ago I never thought that was possible.

What I hope someone is working on is a way to save and reload character data for the future. That way we can move between servers without starting over **EVERY** time.

Hmm.  This new 'Euro' law re: copyright seems to have them mindful.  So the sooner an 'ice cream' for dummies version comes out the better allowing discreet solo/LAN and P2P play with 'a 'server of 50-200-1250..... ?

A quandry but an temporary one, perhaps?

It is a 'temp' server, currently by their own admission whilst i24 begins a 'de-spag' re-write to optimise it etc.

And that will surely allow tools for modding and a plug in for multi-server access to save progress and transfer to another server.  The dust has to settle from the 'shot that was heard across Paragon City....'

The technical 'make life easiers' will probably come around in time.  The optimisations are full steam ahead.  Half a year, perhaps wider access to allow 'dummies' like me to run their own 'alternate universes.'  With different bias and flavours.

Still, if one could 'run their own' server...your characters would be safe on your own hard drive etc.

One thing.  I don't recall it being this slow going to level.  Lol.  Even on team.  I must be getting old.  :D

Ah.  the joy of being a beginner again...  Commited some rookie errors.  (No, we don't need to go into those...)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 21, 2019, 04:36:19 PM
Are we sure sprint doesn't just seem faster because we're back on a game where travel isn't specifically meant as a time sink?

I noticed the speed difference everywhere -- from running around Outbreak and Atlas park to my two door missions.

Some of the way point markers are broken in Outbreak.   Just a warning if you're going to do it for the badge.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Garble on April 21, 2019, 04:43:24 PM
One thing.  I don't recall it being this slow going to level.  Lol.  Even on team.  I must be getting old.  :D

As I recall they were doing a lot of 2X Experience events towards the end. Also, with the Sewer Trial, you could get a toon to their teens in about an hour.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 21, 2019, 04:43:49 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Odimodus on April 21, 2019, 04:46:50 PM
Catching up on all of this, wow! This is the next best thing to NCsoft reversing their position on the IP, and they may have no choice but to give us the game back now. The cat's out of the bag.

Downloading is like watching water boil...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 21, 2019, 05:10:56 PM
Slow to level?  I've done two door missions and I'm already almost level 4.

The game may changed but the number one chat topic beyond "does it work" is "how fast can I reach 50"?

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 21, 2019, 05:11:15 PM
Catching up on all of this, wow! This is the next best thing to NCsoft reversing their position on the IP, and they may have no choice but to give us the game back now. The cat's out of the bag.

Downloading is like watching water boil...

Try chatting in Discord to pass the time.

That helped me.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 21, 2019, 05:13:35 PM
Slow to level?  I've done two door missions and I'm already almost level 4.

The game may changed but the number one chat topic beyond "does it work" is "how fast can I reach 50"?

It was semi-tongue in cheek... ;) 

Though, maybe I did get 'fat' on a L50 SS/Shield/Fire epic brute.  It was fast and devastating and defence capped.  That took absolutely ages to Level with 2 attack powers for 20 levels...

I've teamed quite a bit.  Two blasters.  One elec/elec and one en/en.

Great fun.  It still holds up as I remember.  That's how far ahead of it's time it was.

The sooner I get Dual-Origins the better.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 21, 2019, 05:23:00 PM
Catching up on all of this, wow! This is the next best thing to NCsoft reversing their position on the IP, and they may have no choice but to give us the game back now. The cat's out of the bag.

Downloading is like watching water boil...

Folks have been using Paragon Chat as a lobby and waiting room in-between shutdowns.  Come visit in Atlas Park to kill time, too! :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 21, 2019, 06:03:42 PM
Folks have been using Paragon Chat as a lobby and waiting room in-between shutdowns.  Come visit in Atlas Park to kill time, too! :)

I need some to for real life!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 21, 2019, 06:33:41 PM
So, 5th Horseman.  I remember your original handle talking about finding your way home 'one day.'
HAVE you found your way 'home?'
IT'S NOT SPARTA!
... but I like it here.  ;)
PS.  1250!  Stress test.
1700. They're upgrading again. 2000

Also, potential fly in the ointment:
(https://i.imgur.com/DUi4mNO.png)
I guess we'll find out eventually. :-\
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Odimodus on April 21, 2019, 07:10:30 PM
I don't want to lose the game again. Hell, I'm not even back in it again yet.

What can we do to prevent it from being lost to us all over again?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 21, 2019, 07:14:08 PM
I don't want to lose the game again. Hell, I'm not even back in it again yet.

What can we do to prevent it from being lost to us all over again?

First rule of fight club.......


Seriously, the only thing that would make this news better is IF Ncsoft were to announce they were going out of business
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 21, 2019, 07:28:17 PM
Leveling seems pretty fast.  I got from 1-16 in a single sitting yesterday, even made to it to and started the Positron TF.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 21, 2019, 07:41:27 PM
Sadly I was plagued with mapsrerver-itis yesterday.  But I was able today to get a PB and WS to L6.  Nice to see that that can access the flight pool at L4 which means little for  a PB but WS can now fly in human form. Also their powers can be recolored. Golden Nova for pb

Delightful
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 21, 2019, 08:10:03 PM
2500 concurrent players. ****'s on fire, yo.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Dev7on on April 21, 2019, 08:12:34 PM
I have another question. Does the Day Job system still work?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 21, 2019, 08:16:57 PM
I have another question. Does the Day Job system still work?

More or less everything that was in game at shutdown theoretically functions, though AE in particular has been going in and out.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 21, 2019, 08:36:00 PM
As a update, there's been a few posts in our Technical Support with people unable to login or reach the Public Game Server (SCORE).  We added this (https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=13306.0) as a reminder that Titan Network is not responsible for that server, as well as a container on the front page for Titan Network itself (https://www.cohtitan.com/).  This isn't any way related to the efforts themselves past ownership.  The SCORE server is ran by the community, and we have no access or rights concerning user support.

As always, we will help with BASIC problems with Tequila or Island Rum, as the support forums are here, but Titan Network staff are limited only to those programs.  If you can't use Tequila to access SCORE, or if hear questions from others, or if you run into someone with a need for tech support concerning SCORE, please ask on the unofficial COH Discord (https://discord.gg/HPrKSJ) directly.

Thanks. :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 21, 2019, 08:50:22 PM
More or less everything that was in game at shutdown theoretically functions, though AE in particular has been going in and out.


Yes AE has been cranky, but I have logged in and received prompts about being at a day job spot.
Things are stabilizing and getting better.

Now...about the old player database...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 21, 2019, 09:10:31 PM
I just hope the fear of the EU law doesn't cause them to delete the character database outright. They clearly vetted people to give them their individual data when it was secret; surely they can do the same now? Give people character files that are uploadable on other servers?

What I hope someone is working on is a way to save and reload character data for the future. That way we can move between servers without starting over **EVERY** time.

In theory, the Sentinel+ program should work for that.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 21, 2019, 09:19:45 PM
I just hope the fear of the EU law doesn't cause them to delete the character database outright. They clearly vetted people to give them their individual data when it was secret; surely they can do the same now? Give people character files that are uploadable on other servers?

In theory, the Sentinel+ program should work for that.

I figure that if someone can provide their global chat handle f om the game and the login username they used to have that should be enough verification needed to confirm the player and restore their alts.  No personal info or passwords required.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 21, 2019, 09:41:52 PM
By the way,. The Paragon wiki section for issue 24 is not complete, is there a list anywhere of all the changes that were implemented for issue 24?

So far I know of the kheldian changes, power customization for pool powers, the sorcey pool, the ability to select a contact number of TELEPORT TO, (quarter field and other TF and trials should be more efficient with that)

Psionic melee 
Rad melee
Rad armor
Bio armor

Are things I've seen so far.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 21, 2019, 09:45:14 PM
That's kind of where we'd hope folks would help.

Keep in mind, SCORE is running Leo's modded Issue 24 (yes, I'll say it: it's Issue 25 - Unbroken Spirit), so we're probably going to ask folks to hold off on editing the ParagonWiki based on what they see in SCORE at the moment until an Issue 24 server is running and available.  This is in the works, but will take a few months.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 21, 2019, 09:48:08 PM
I think the idea is its not worth even risking it for the old character data.  As much as I would love to have my old blaster back, if it even puts the server in the slightest bit of jeopardy I don't want to risk it.  That seems to be the consensus amongst the "server" handlers as well.

Honestly, after playing these last couple days and making new characters I don't even know if I will re-roll my main right away after this initial testing phase is over.  I didn't even know I enjoyed playing a Dominator until last night.  Now it may very well be my new main!  Only took a 7-year break to realize I freaking love Dominators but the chance to relevel and just relive the whole experience again from a truly fresh start is pretty exciting
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 21, 2019, 09:57:46 PM
I think the idea is its not worth even risking it for the old character data.  As much as I would love to have my old blaster back, if it even puts the server in the slightest bit of jeopardy I don't want to risk it.  That seems to be the consensus amongst the "server" handlers as well.

Honestly, after playing these last couple days and making new characters I don't even know if I will re-roll my main right away after this initial testing phase is over.  I didn't even know I enjoyed playing a Dominator until last night.  Now it may very well be my new main!  Only took a 7-year break to realize I freaking love Dominators but the chance to relevel and just relive the whole experience again from a truly fresh start is pretty exciting

Fresh start is nice and I want that too.....for new alts and power sets that were created for ish24

Ah well, for my own future server I have all my sentinel files and notes for my alts....one way or another they WILL be back
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: eabrace on April 21, 2019, 10:04:45 PM
By the way,. The Paragon wiki section for issue 24 is not complete, is there a list anywhere of all the changes that were implemented for issue 24?
To the best of my knowledge (and I say that as someone who was heavily involved in documenting upcoming changes on the wiki at the time), the wiki was current at shutdown.  There appear to be a lot of things in the files they're currently using on the SCoRE server that were not in the game at that time.  We know the server team is currently using data files that were modified post-shutdown in order to get the server up and running as fast as possible.  They have stated that they plan to replace those with the stock data files that existed at shutdown once the server is stable and they have time to go back and look at those.

So, let's hold off on documenting things that look new until the stock I24 files have been put in place on the server.  Then we can get a clear picture of what was actually in the game at the time and see if there's anything missing.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 21, 2019, 10:19:07 PM
That's fine though I do have a dusty memory that the melee/armor powers, kheld changes, and sorcery pool were indeed part of issue 24.

Now this Sentinel archetype I saw....that one I am not sure about.


Better yet did anyone ever do a complete issue 24 mida update from what was on beta server before the lights went out?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: eabrace on April 21, 2019, 10:28:17 PM
That's fine though I do have a dusty memory that the melee/armor powers, kheld changes, and sorcery pool were indeed part of issue 24.

Now this Sentinel archetype I saw....that one I am not sure about.
This (https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Issue_24) should be the full list of all the changes that were implemented for I24 before the shutdown.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nyghtshade on April 21, 2019, 10:41:42 PM
I wish at this point NCSoft would just cut their losses and sell the IP to one of our negotiating teams
.  Seems that would be a Win/Win for everyone.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 21, 2019, 10:58:59 PM
2500 concurrent players. ****'s on fire, yo.

2150 plus 500+ villains?

Crazy stuff.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 21, 2019, 11:02:24 PM

Edited.  Because my mind is scrambled.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 21, 2019, 11:20:36 PM
I wish at this point NCSoft would just cut their losses and sell the IP to one of our negotiating teams
.  Seems that would be a Win/Win for everyone.

If they did that would require

1. Code repair and reconstruction since as I recall it was in bad shape after shut down

2. Ncsoft to swallow their pride and pulls their head out of the sand
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 21, 2019, 11:32:50 PM
If they did that would require

1. Code repair and reconstruction since as I recall it was in bad shape after shut down

2. Ncsoft to swallow their pride and pulls their head out of the sand

We'll see what, if any, their response is.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 21, 2019, 11:44:55 PM
We'll see what, if any, their response is.

Azrael.

Well how many of their games exist in emulation now? Besides coh
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 22, 2019, 12:31:03 AM
How many had time to build a following large enough to inspire emulation?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 22, 2019, 12:49:05 AM
How many had time to build a following large enough to inspire emulation?

Well I have heard rumors about tabula rasa, auto assault and lineage
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 22, 2019, 01:36:00 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 22, 2019, 02:09:12 AM
They did settle on a wipe of test characters. So don't get too attached and save those costume files.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 22, 2019, 02:12:29 AM
I wish at this point NCSoft would just cut their losses and sell the IP to one of our negotiating teams
.  Seems that would be a Win/Win for everyone.

My advice to NCSoft would be to sell non-exclusive, non-commercial licenses to anyone that wants one, for a reasonable fee based on concurrent users.

Obviously, we're talking about an honor system here.  But I think a lot of people would like to get legal.  I would buy a license just to protect myself.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 22, 2019, 02:13:37 AM
I thought you guys would be interested in seeing this post by VoodooGirl on Discord:

14000+ registrations. 2800 simultaneous players. The mind boggles.

City of Heroes has one of the widest and most dedicated fandoms I've ever been a part of, and it even shows up in the most unexpected places. The other day, I was bowing out of a project I had been pushing for in regards to Magic the Gathering Arena, and I mentioned it was because I was switching my attention to the CoH server. Out of the blue, someone posts, "City of Heroes is back? That was my favorite MMORPG ever!"

I personally know of 10 or so past players I've kept loose touch with who are holding off due to the uncertainty of the past week, but who I'm sure that will eventually jump in when things are stable, if only just out of curiosity. I'm starting to think that 14000 may just be a fraction of the numbers who would eventually turn out to support a CoH server(s).

It's pretty smegging amazing.

Here's an unpopular prediction - 80% of those people will lose interest in the first 30 days.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 22, 2019, 02:36:19 AM
They did settle on a wipe of test characters. So don't get too attached and save those costume files.

Everything is going down on April 27th at an as-of-yet undisclosed time.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 22, 2019, 02:36:35 AM
A wipe of the test is inevitable.

As long as they get all systems running, like the AE, auction houses, holiday events, etc. And the code is stable with good admin interface for those that want their own servers and they can get the data out there for us to download and archive it for safe keeping we can then work on getting servers online.

As to buying licenses from ncsoft.....I am loathe to pay them one dime of my cash..but this would be an exception

I will happily leave the game in zombie mode forever unless I can easily implement some ideas I have to tune things up and customize it
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 22, 2019, 02:41:11 AM
On the loading screen, all my characters are listed as being in Atlas Park 33.

A nice tribute.  Or an interesting bug.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 22, 2019, 02:52:08 AM
Fly (but a slow fly compared to Sprint) at level 4.   That's a poor change.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 22, 2019, 03:19:49 AM
A wipe of the test is inevitable.

And confirmed.  There were people who got Level bumped to 50 as part of the testing, so a character wipe is prescribed by the lead admin to level the playing field.  As they warned, save your costumes.  The rest is being reset April 27th, 2019 at a time to be announced.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 22, 2019, 03:26:42 AM
Fly (but a slow fly compared to Sprint) at level 4.   That's a poor change.

Going off memory I think they altered the travel powers fo long time veteran players so that flight could be taken at L4....the fact that warshades can now access that power pool is great
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 22, 2019, 03:27:37 AM
On the loading screen, all my characters are listed as being in Atlas Park 33.

A nice tribute.  Or an interesting bug.

A bit of both
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 22, 2019, 03:33:50 AM
For some reason, people are begging to join super groups even knowing the server will be wiped.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 22, 2019, 03:54:59 AM
For some reason, people are begging to join super groups even knowing the server will be wiped.

It's alright.  They're testing it.  Why not?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: VileTerror on April 22, 2019, 04:16:06 AM
Super Groups are also a great way to arrange teams with players you come to rely on.

But really . . . I'm a touch confused here.  Erase the level-boosted characters?  Why are folks playing by the rules laid out back in the days of NCSoft's meddling?  Do we really feel a pressing need to adhere to design decisions implemented specifically to pad-out play time and sunk-cost fallacies?  I mean, the admin of any given server can set the rules for their server, of course, and maybe playing as close to how the game was at sunset is appealing to some people . . . but I kind of feel like we're missing the opportunity to play at our own pace.

Was this subject addressed anywhere else, perhaps?  Seems like it could be a contested concept.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 22, 2019, 04:25:43 AM
I mean, the admin of any given server can set the rules for their server, of course...

You've answered your own inquiry.  While, sure, you can discuss it here, the admin for the public game server made their decision.  If you wish to appeal it, the COH Discord is the best route.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 22, 2019, 04:27:13 AM
Super Groups are also a great way to arrange teams with players you come to rely on.

But really . . . I'm a touch confused here.  Erase the level-boosted characters?  Why are folks playing by the rules laid out back in the days of NCSoft's meddling?  Do we really feel a pressing need to adhere to design decisions implemented specifically to pad-out play time and sunk-cost fallacies?  I mean, the admin of any given server can set the rules for their server, of course, and maybe playing as close to how the game was at sunset is appealing to some people . . . but I kind of feel like we're missing the opportunity to play at our own pace.

Was this subject addressed anywhere else, perhaps?  Seems like it could be a contested concept.

There was talk in the Discord, so if you want to learn more, read through old comments there, but essentially what happened was the admins suggested that there'd be a vote on whether or not to keep the characters, and a minor firestorm erupted. People are concerned, after the events of the past week, about elitism and fairness, especially given that some people have been able to get on whenever and others have had significant difficulties in getting on. It's regrettable, but as I understand it the decision is final.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 22, 2019, 04:36:06 AM
Fly (but a slow fly compared to Sprint) at level 4.   That's a poor change.

Like someone else mentioned that wasn't a SCoRE change that was part of the game, I believe it was an I23 change.  The fly feels the same speed to me on my character that has it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 22, 2019, 04:53:42 AM
Regarding travel powers at level 4: any wiki page for a travel power (e.g. https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Flight) notes that Issue 21 added a fifth power to the sets, and made the first three powers available at level 4.

By the way,. The Paragon wiki section for issue 24 is not complete, is there a list anywhere of all the changes that were implemented for issue 24?

Note that the actual page "Issue 24" is indeed relatively bare... for example, it doesn't include the Sorcery set planned for I24. But this page here: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category:Patch_Watchlist contains a list of every page on the wiki that was being tracked as part of I24 (as well as anything else that was likely to be patched in the future).

Edit: See also: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Unimplemented
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 22, 2019, 05:12:48 AM
Everything is going down on April 27th at an as-of-yet undisclosed time.

That's barely enough time to level up a dozen 50's!!


There was talk in the Discord, so if you want to learn more, read through old comments there, but essentially what happened was the admins suggested that there'd be a vote on whether or not to keep the characters, and a minor firestorm erupted. People are concerned, after the events of the past week, about elitism and fairness, especially given that some people have been able to get on whenever and others have had significant difficulties in getting on. It's regrettable, but as I understand it the decision is final.

And this is something that I think most people are forgetting in their fervor: No more official Devs. The Devs were the ones who set the parameters of the game, attempted to keep it balanced, allowed for easy and difficult challenges.

But, when the code gets distributed so that 'anyone' can run the game and invite others to play... well players are going to find that one person has used the Dev powers to make everyone level 50, and another one won't let you make any Stalkers, and another one replaced all the Clockwork models with unicorns.

There are no more arbiters of how the game is supposed to be. Dev-ing and GM-ing and Modding will be wild and unpredictable. And assuredly in some cases, blatantly unfair.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 22, 2019, 05:31:48 AM
That's barely enough time to level up a dozen 50's!!


And this is something that I think most people are forgetting in their fervor: No more official Devs. The Devs were the ones who set the parameters of the game, attempted to keep it balanced, allowed for easy and difficult challenges.

But, when the code gets distributed so that 'anyone' can run the game and invite others to play... well players are going to find that one person has used the Dev powers to make everyone level 50, and another one won't let you make any Stalkers, and another one replaced all the Clockwork models with unicorns.

There are no more arbiters of how the game is supposed to be. Dev-ing and GM-ing and Modding will be wild and unpredictable. And assuredly in some cases, blatantly unfair.

Yeah this is correct. While I am xpecting that all servers will have the play nice and don't cheat policies along with no trademark infringing characters, enforcement will vary per server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 22, 2019, 05:48:35 AM
They stated at the beginning there was a good chance the characters would be wiped. I don't think it is that big of a deal.  We haven't even had CoH back for a week I think anything we get at this point is nothing short of a blessing.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 22, 2019, 07:04:56 AM
On the loading screen, all my characters are listed as being in Atlas Park 33.
A nice tribute.  Or an interesting bug.
I'm 99% sure it's a tribute.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Beltor on April 22, 2019, 07:59:59 AM
I've been in 12+ alpha's, beta's, and tests, and i've never 'not' seen a wipe. I expected it. It is only starting after all.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 22, 2019, 12:24:02 PM
My advice to NCSoft would be to sell non-exclusive, non-commercial licenses to anyone that wants one, for a reasonable fee based on concurrent users.

Obviously, we're talking about an honor system here.  But I think a lot of people would like to get legal.  I would buy a license just to protect myself.

Aye. 

Good idea.

But, a corporation...do something 'community' minded?

I'll believe it when I see it.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 22, 2019, 12:51:40 PM
I'm 99% sure it's a tribute.

It's something only the true faithful would understand.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 22, 2019, 12:54:44 PM
It's something only the true faithful would understand.

You would think... but the number of people who ask elsewhere "What is Atlas Park 33?" is truly astounding.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 22, 2019, 03:53:57 PM
I'm 99% sure it's a tribute.

It might be, but it was also a bug for a good bit of Saturday. People were having to reroll. Not sure if that's still the case as the newly minted, post-ap33 Mr.Vee is in Port oakes 2 at last check.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 22, 2019, 05:31:31 PM
   Does anyone know if the character wipe will allow us to create a new @global?  I didn't know the name of our first character would also be our global.  You can see where @CHARACTER NAME might cause some confusion...  :-[

   Found a solution!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Shibboleth on April 22, 2019, 05:50:24 PM
Between the server being taken down or crashing I got a Brute to 18, a Tanker to 12, and a Dominator to 8 while still having time  fulfill social/family obligations. The first 30 levels fly by, so recreating at this point is a minimal time loss.

I think my focus for the week will be deciding which characters to recreate, what new builds I want to try, and getting a little testing in on the new concepts to see if they handle properly.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 22, 2019, 05:58:50 PM

Between the server being taken down or crashing I got a Brute to 18, a Tanker to 12, and a Dominator to 8 while still having time  fulfill social/family obligations. The first 30 levels fly by, so recreating at this point is a minimal time loss.

I think my focus for the week will be deciding which characters to recreate, what new builds I want to try, and getting a little testing in on the new concepts to see if they handle properly.

You're doing quite well there.  I find the brute and domis quite compelling.  Yes.  And tanks...  Maybe those are the ones I'll focus on after 'the wipe.'

They even do a 'double xp' launch day event.  Who knows.

Yes.  Deciding which alts to recreate.  Decisions, decisions...

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: navyrayne on April 22, 2019, 06:01:37 PM
Letting go of our old heroes to make way for reasons to join loved ones, friends, and new friends, is a sacrifice I am willing to make. Two mutual friends of mine got involved over the weekend and for the first time in years, we sat down and played together again. It, was a very good feeling.

Also, voice from the past here saying "Hello Poppets" good to see you all again.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 22, 2019, 06:33:20 PM
I was testing a beam rifle / time manipulation blaster.   

I still don't care for the look of beam rifle, but it does play well at least in the early game.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 22, 2019, 07:03:48 PM
I was testing a beam rifle / time manipulation blaster.   

I still don't care for the look of beam rifle, but it does play well at least in the early game.

I feel like thats what I remember about Beam rifle the very tiny bit I tried it on i24 Beta I believe?  It felt good but I hated the look of it.

Quote
Between the server being taken down or crashing I got a Brute to 18, a Tanker to 12, and a Dominator to 8 while still having time  fulfill social/family obligations. The first 30 levels fly by, so recreating at this point is a minimal time loss.

I think my focus for the week will be deciding which characters to recreate, what new builds I want to try, and getting a little testing in on the new concepts to see if they handle properly.

Agree'd I have a level 16 and a level 11 character and I didn't even really mean to get either of them up there.  I Just started grouping and playing and next thing I know im already in Steel Canyon
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 22, 2019, 07:32:07 PM
Looks like they took a C&D, but the fight continues. The server is down, long live the server!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 22, 2019, 07:37:21 PM
Looks like they took a C&D, but the fight continues. The server is down, long live the server!

Yep.  I hope everything works out okay for the person in legal trouble.  I love COH but I don't want someone dying on a hill for it, for us.  Either way, this was such a blessing.  I am happy I had a chance to see home again, even if it was just for a little bit.  I really hope this didn't ruin someone's life just we could play a game we love again though.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 22, 2019, 07:50:18 PM
(https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/62499648/watch-your-language.jpg)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 22, 2019, 07:53:57 PM
It begins. They'll chase every new server made until they give up and just ignore it like with lineage.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 22, 2019, 08:05:35 PM
Image deleted - keep it PG-13. --Tahquitz

Yes.  Just caught that on Discord.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 22, 2019, 08:09:51 PM
It begins. They'll chase every new server made until they give up and just ignore it like with lineage.

Well.  A game of whack a mole.

But I can understand SCORE's reluctance to release it without a. reverse engineering it and b.  Giving people the option to play it discreetly p2p aka homebrew server/Solo/LAN/Server to others.

A central server is too vulnerable and this is just been proven.  You can see the 'wisdom' in Paragon Chat's approach.

The current receivers of legal action will be rattled.  Nobody likes being threatened.  Legal or otherwise. 

But this is a community that have achieved the impossible this last week.  This is not over.

I?  Am.  Not happy.  Looks like the 27th launch is going to be on ice.

I had 'fun' whilst it lasted.  But I suspect this is just the beginning.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 22, 2019, 08:11:20 PM
Then they need to work in secret and get it all coded into a package with easy setup instructions and admin interface and then disperse it like the seed in sword art online one

Thus many many servers can start to appear and as fast as ncsoft strikes them down more shall rise


Then we can quote captain Ahab or Khan
No Ncsoft you won't get away with stopping us. From hell's heart I Stan at the. For hates sake I spit my last breath at there....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 22, 2019, 08:14:30 PM
So I couldn't post this in the Discord I feel so I wanted to post it here.

I want to say thank you so much to all the devs that made this possible and also, I am so sorry you are facing consequence because of it. I see a lot of people saying what they should and could do on Discord and it upsets me a bit.  Their head is on the line and they are receiving criticism and doubt despite all their hard work.  This brings me to Leo and the Secret Score Server.  I am sorry for my frustration earlier.  You were right.  It was easy for me, us, to say we would have done differently when our head was never on the chopping block.  If COH coming back means ruining one person's life at a time I don't think I want that price to be paid.  Innocous please stay safe! 

Thank you everyone that gave me a weekend of joy I haven't felt in years, I pray it doesn't bring years of misery upon those who gave me this gift.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 22, 2019, 08:17:26 PM
So I couldn't post this in the Discord I feel so I wanted to post it here.

I want to say thank you so much to all the devs that made this possible and also, I am so sorry you are facing consequence because of it. I see a lot of people saying what they should and could do on Discord and it upsets me a bit.  Their head is on the line and they are receiving criticism and doubt despite all their hard work.  This brings me to Leo and the Secret Score Server.  I am sorry for my frustration earlier.  You were right.  It was easy for me, us, to say we would have done differently when our head was never on the chopping block.  If COH coming back means ruining one person's life at a time I don't think I want that price to be paid.  Innocous please stay safe! 

Thank you everyone that gave me a weekend of joy I haven't felt in years, I pray it doesn't bring years of misery upon those who gave me this gift.

I thank them as well....it was fun to be a hero again.

Long live the secret server....wherever it may be....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 22, 2019, 08:18:27 PM
Then they need to work in secret and get it all coded into a package with easy setup instructions and admin interface and then disperse it like the seed in sword art online one

Thus many many servers can start to appear and as fast as ncsoft strikes them down more shall rise

Aye.  SCORE were working in discretion.  And got panned for it this week by many.  But we can understand why.  Nobody wants to be legal bombed.  But a brave step by Leandro and SCORE this week was taken.

...the one thing they lacked was sheer weight of numbers of devs.  The progress they made was admirable.  And Paragon Chat points to what they were hoping their 'third' release was aiming for.  A distributed nodes approach where you just couldn't take it down.  What you going to do?  C&D a ten thousand (and counting strong community) who are running it in the privacy of their own homes P2P fashion with their mate up the street?

Need a stable home brew for dummies.

...release the kraken.

They will be no stopping it.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 22, 2019, 08:22:32 PM
So I couldn't post this in the Discord I feel so I wanted to post it here.

I want to say thank you so much to all the devs that made this possible and also, I am so sorry you are facing consequence because of it. I see a lot of people saying what they should and could do on Discord and it upsets me a bit.  Their head is on the line and they are receiving criticism and doubt despite all their hard work.  This brings me to Leo and the Secret Score Server.  I am sorry for my frustration earlier.  You were right.  It was easy for me, us, to say we would have done differently when our head was never on the chopping block.  If COH coming back means ruining one person's life at a time I don't think I want that price to be paid.  Innocous please stay safe! 

Thank you everyone that gave me a weekend of joy I haven't felt in years, I pray it doesn't bring years of misery upon those who gave me this gift.

Aye.  Good of you to post that and release SCORE'S dilemma.  To keep it quiet wasn't an easy thing.

They needed 'time' to create a solution.  We saw part of their efforts with ICON and PChat.  But...  I wouldn't bet against Leandro, Codewalker and SCORE.

The CoH community on Discord are incensed.  But they need to channel that anger into a constructive solution.

It was a pleasure to go back in time this week.  My thanks go to Leandro, SCORE, the dev community on Discord.  Thousands of CoH fans flooding back....6 years after shutdown!

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: BraveStar on April 22, 2019, 08:24:27 PM
I want to add my thanks as well.

It felt great being in our city again and the game was just as fun today as it was when I first played in. I'm regretting now that I didn't grab the source code when I could, although I'm not a programmer, but I will hold out hope that someone can create a dummy-proof version and get it out to us.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 22, 2019, 08:26:04 PM
One would also think that Ncsoft would look at th massive amount of players and realize they really need to reactivate the game

That being said though I am loathe to give them money
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 22, 2019, 08:29:22 PM
I want to add my thanks as well.

It felt great being in our city again and the game was just as fun today as it was when I first played in. I'm regretting now that I didn't grab the source code when I could, although I'm not a programmer, but I will hold out hope that someone can create a dummy-proof version and get it out to us.

Well, I just wish I could play again as the game was fo me both fun and a therapy of sorts for some....problems. I have other therapeutic outlets and hobbies but CoH was it. 

To be able to log in and pick any hero or mine or occasionally a villain, to face tough odds and win, to be able upgrade my alts again......
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 22, 2019, 08:30:20 PM
https://www.mmobomb.com/news/rogue-city-heroes-server-might-ncsofts-blessing-theres-catch/

?

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Wyrm on April 22, 2019, 08:33:52 PM
It's hard to go back to waiting, but I guess that's what I have to do.

I don't have coding skills. I wasn't a social butterfly on my home server, so I had no idea any private server even existed. (This isn't me fishing for a PS invite. I'll either find one my wife and I can join, or I won't, and in the meantime we'll keep bouncing around games with our small CoH cadre, trying to find something that feels a little like home.) I missed out on most of the weekend.

But I got a few glorious hours last night, and by the end, my hands had remembered things about how I played the game that I'd forgotten, and it all felt so natural, and I kept saying things like, "I'd forgotten how nice it was to call contacts," and "Oh, look, missions where you don't have to walk back to the door." And I found new badges, and tried a little of a new powerset, and stayed up way too late. I crafted an IO. I miss crafting IOs.

And for a little while, I was as happy as I've been in a while.

So I'll go back to waiting, and checking the forums, and when there's anything I can do (*if* there's anything I can do), I'll do it.

Thanks to everyone who made this happen, and who gave so many of us a few hours of happiness over the past weekend. It was a flavor of happiness I hadn't remembered, and didn't expect, and it's not something I'm ever going to take for granted.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: GamingGlen on April 22, 2019, 08:38:13 PM
That link site does not say anything of importance and may be lying, just to get more clicks for ad revenue.  Don't go there and give him/them any.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 22, 2019, 08:40:38 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/oVBzmGj.png)
https://www.mmobomb.com/news/rogue-city-heroes-server-might-ncsofts-blessing-theres-catch/
That was complete misinformation someone on Discord pulled out of their colon.
I was following the news closely - the character database was written off due to a combination of how certain parts of the COH community consider their toons their sole property (and would go ballistic if anyone else had access to them), impossibility of 100% foolproof ownership verification and GDPR (due to servers being hosted in Europe at some point).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: duane on April 22, 2019, 08:42:29 PM
https://www.mmobomb.com/news/rogue-city-heroes-server-might-ncsofts-blessing-theres-catch/

?

Azrael.

sorry, but he is writing from his rear unlike bree
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 22, 2019, 08:42:39 PM
https://www.mmobomb.com/news/rogue-city-heroes-server-might-ncsofts-blessing-theres-catch/

?

Azrael.

I sense it may be more then the player database.....it may be that all zones, archetypes, powers, signature game characters will have to have their names altered

Such as atlas park now called Hercules park for example.

Just speculating
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 22, 2019, 08:43:44 PM
I see.

Fair enough. ;)

Still, the genie is out the bottle.

Where does this 'rabbit hold' lead.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 22, 2019, 08:47:39 PM
We'll see.
(https://i.imgur.com/pX6znmi.png)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 22, 2019, 08:49:45 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/oVBzmGj.png)That was complete misinformation someone on Discord pulled out of their colon.
I was following the news closely - the character database was written off due to a combination of how certain parts of the COH community consider their toons their sole property (and would go ballistic if anyone else had access to them), impossibility of 100% foolproof ownership verification and GDPR (due to servers being hosted in Europe at some point).

Well ev n without the database if I ever get my own server running I can still restore my alts thanks to sentinel and a personal database I have of them
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Artillerie on April 22, 2019, 08:50:56 PM
The Massively Op forums that people made their server accounts on is no longer there - what does that mean?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 22, 2019, 08:52:13 PM
The Massively Op forums that people made their server accounts on is no longer there - what does that mean?

That wasn't part of MassivelyOP, it was part of the webserver - it went down with the rest of the server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 22, 2019, 08:53:21 PM
What about a discreet server in Argentina...

*Looks innocent.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Exxar on April 22, 2019, 08:55:18 PM
https://www.mmobomb.com/news/rogue-city-heroes-server-might-ncsofts-blessing-theres-catch/

?

Azrael.
This info is from a couple of days ago. I saw as it was discussed on discord, partially. From what I understand, someone (Leo?) apparently got contacted by a person from NCSoft and gotten the info that NC would not be pursuing this server if they don't use the database containing the player characters.

The person who wrote that article probably doesn't have any more insight into the topic than I do. And there is a good possibility I misunderstood that discussion, I presume but don't know for sure if the person in question was Leandro, so on and so forth. So even though there may be traces of truth in it, it't best to treat it as a complete rumor.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tore on April 22, 2019, 08:57:22 PM
I played since open beta. Dreamed of getting to play this game again for 6 long years, and misses the boat by two days. I knew there was a private server since the day of shut down and hated that there was a small group that I knew were playing right after the game went down. I'm guessing whatever watermark of whichever dev took this data has finally been removed. Alls I ask is if someone start another server please allow me to play. I'll do whatever verifications are needed and even be happy to help financially.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 22, 2019, 08:57:35 PM
We'll see.
Image removed - keep it PG-13.  In short, Innocuous said "things aren't as bad as it seems." --Tahquitz

Aye.

Perhaps this is the 1st round in bringing NC Soft to the negotiating table.

Nostralious did that to Blizzard.  They had a million (peak) on their 'private' vanilla WoW servers.

Just give the community a 'non-IP ownership' license to have a community server. 

Between SCORE and what I've seen of the CoH community on Discord.  There are some seriously clever and talented people out there.

Smooth as butter as recently as 'earlier' before the take down.

Really proud of the effort put in there.  And the ramping up of capacity to 3000!

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 22, 2019, 09:08:22 PM
I played since open beta. Dreamed of getting to play this game again for 6 long years, and misses the boat by two days.

Sorry you missed by two days.  :/

I had a mate who played since Beta.  I joined 4 months later.

Got to play with him last night by sheer cosmic dice roll.

The gods are playing with dice.

'Never the end.'

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: GamingGlen on April 22, 2019, 09:09:12 PM
What about a discreet server in Argentina...

*Looks innocent.

Azrael.

I'm retired and living in Florida.  It wouldn't be too difficult for me to move to some Central American or Caribbean island nation where it's safe to host such a server.  :D   
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Exxar on April 22, 2019, 09:15:04 PM
The situation is still unfolding:

https://twitter.com/leandrotlz

------------------

From the Discord:

[11:08 PM] Innocuous/Glory to Arachnos: We are drafting a general update.
Questions I can answer right now:
1.) We do not currently have the server binaries right now. We do not physically have them.
2. We are not giving up, every single one of us is looking at the outcomes and directions to go to.
3. Hope is not lost. Seriously. Coderbus, calm down. People in the community, calm down. We are working to figure out a solution as well as get some spatial awareness on what is going on.
4. The previous plan of forming an LLC may not need to be formed. So, once again, please calm down. This is a panic spiral and we are trying to collect ourselves.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 22, 2019, 09:17:52 PM
This exactly why everything needs to be released.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 22, 2019, 09:19:43 PM
Just in case people didn't have a chance to play on that test server, let me just say that I played for about 10 hours and it was as smooth as the original game. They threw enough hardware at it to handle the several thousand concurrent users and it stopped lagging, rubberbanding, and mapserving (at least, for me). And I was running it with all the Ultra graphics turned up. Zones and mission instances loaded as fast as they used to. It was wonderful.

And that's on the janky thrown-together code. Meanwhile dozens of coders were working to create a modernized code that could run on modern much faster machines.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 22, 2019, 09:21:20 PM
This exactly why everything needs to be released.

Yeah.  Personally, I wouldn't care, ultimately, if my alts were part of all the alts in a sense that a community could play them.  Look at them.  Study them.  Most people would create their own any how.

Starting from scratch isn't a problem for me either.  Life often is.  Starting from scratch.

It's too valuable to be held on 'one server' - it's vulnerable to a take down.  etc.

The Paragon Chat model suddenly makes far more sense, eh?

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 22, 2019, 09:22:22 PM
As an advisory, please don't post images from Discord on here that contain profanity or vulgarity.  As Sekoia said it best, four letter words starting with 'f' and 'c' are never allowed on this site.  This also includes pasted logs (self-editing before posting is acceptable.)

I know everyone is emotional, but we don't need 'absolute proof and evidence' of every development concerning who said what on Discord.  If you're a member of it, you can read it.  If not, you can't.

Carry on.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 22, 2019, 09:23:16 PM
So I couldn't post this in the Discord I feel so I wanted to post it here.

I want to say thank you so much to all the devs that made this possible and also, I am so sorry you are facing consequence because of it. I see a lot of people saying what they should and could do on Discord and it upsets me a bit.  Their head is on the line and they are receiving criticism and doubt despite all their hard work.  This brings me to Leo and the Secret Score Server.  I am sorry for my frustration earlier.  You were right.  It was easy for me, us, to say we would have done differently when our head was never on the chopping block.  If COH coming back means ruining one person's life at a time I don't think I want that price to be paid.  Innocous please stay safe! 

Thank you everyone that gave me a weekend of joy I haven't felt in years, I pray it doesn't bring years of misery upon those who gave me this gift.

I agree, and I want to add, thank you to the devs that let me makes some corrections to a mistake I made. As they say in sto "these are not ends, we are not ended. For we are heroes." (Took some liberties :) .)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Exxar on April 22, 2019, 09:26:18 PM
Dunno if this has already been posted, so posting it just in case. Current available information suggests that the person owning the physical server got hit by some kind of... "legal communication"* which scared them enough to bail and delete the whole server. Unfortunately nobody else from the Discord server had those server files (to my understanding) so it will take time to get anything back up. Please take this information with a grain of salt since it's just my current perception of the situation, and not thoroughly verified.

* I deliberately used this term because there is no concrete information as to the nature of the communication that happened. It could be a C&D letter, it could be something else or nothing at all actually legally valid but instead just enough to scare someone who's not a lawyer.

Please don't blame anyone for this situation, not Leandro, not the server owner, not one of the Discord admins. Shit happens, we are all human and make mistakes. The uproar currently going on in the general chat channel of the Discord makes me feel slightly ill.


Addendum: sorry if my previous post contained any profanity, I literally took a c/p without looking at it in detail since I already read it some time ago.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 22, 2019, 09:41:34 PM
Everybody just Caim down. A C&D had to be expected, or they were kidding themselves. they're writing an update now.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Castegyre on April 22, 2019, 09:44:09 PM
Crazy, but action was to be expected I would have thought.

This is the sort of thing that people should plan for the worse and hope for the best. Just be prepared for a long haul and doing a lot of supporting each other. Maybe easier said than done, but better for all in the long run.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 22, 2019, 09:47:20 PM
It's not uncommon for a company to sit on their IPs like this and sling C&D's at anyone who dares touch them even when the company seems to want to have no plans for it, but is there any knowledge behind why NCSoft is hanging onto this IP for dear life when they really seem to have no interest in continuing with it?

They're not making any money from it, and to my understanding, in 2012 and 2013 there were fairly serious attempts to buy the IP from NCSoft, is that correct?

I'm also curious if more information is known about why Marvel backed out of the MMO genre, it seems like they were interested and had Cryptic working on Marvel Universe Online before Cryptic somehow lost that IP and pivoted to turning it into Champions Online, which happened around the time Marvel kicked off the cinematic universe, not that there is anything notable about that but the timing is interesting.

Is there somewhere online that I can read more about this? Was this well documented at all or has Emmert ever talked about it on record?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 22, 2019, 09:52:21 PM
It's not uncommon for a company to sit on their IPs like this and sling C&D's at anyone who dares touch them even when the company seems to want to have no plans for it, but is there any knowledge behind why NCSoft is hanging onto this IP for dear life when they really seem to have no interest in continuing with it?

They're not making any money from it, and to my understanding, in 2012 and 2013 there were fairly serious attempts to buy the IP from NCSoft, is that correct?

I'm also curious if more information is known about why Marvel backed out of the MMO genre, it seems like they were interested and had Cryptic working on Marvel Universe Online before Cryptic somehow lost that IP and pivoted to turning it into Champions Online, which happened around the time Marvel kicked off the cinematic universe, not that there is anything notable about that but the timing is interesting.

Is there somewhere online that I can read more about this? Was this well documented at all or has Emmert ever talked about it on record?

Seriously.

This needs answering and it's long overdue.

I'm not kidding.

There's probably moving parts there that would give a better road map for a different and more successful approach.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 22, 2019, 09:53:19 PM
Sounds like some good news might becoming.

Update: Sounds like there wasn't a DMCA. They are still checking the code and getting it ready for distro. The server might be back up.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 22, 2019, 10:00:44 PM
Sounds like some good news might becoming.

Update: Sounds like there wasn't a DMCA. They are still checking the code and getting it ready for distro. The server might be back up.

'By the well of the furies...'

'We're not finished yet.'

*fingers crossed.

Need to get i24 stable and distributed.

Er...and keep a back up.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 22, 2019, 10:02:39 PM
Quote
Innocuous/Glory to ArachnosYesterday at 11:47 PM
There is going to be some positive news soon. Wait for me to write a coherent statement.
As of now, we are running on the assumption that there is no DMCA. We have a drive that we are currently verifying on if it's the server binaries. As it stands, it has everything.
There has been some ******* that lead to mass server panic, and an emergency administration and codemod meeting has been called.
We may very well be able to salvage this situation before the next  sunset. No promises. Do not hold this against me.
We have a gameplan. It depends on verifying this code right now. Once it is achieved, we are pushing to get a server back up immediately.
The original goal of the server has been to get a stable i24 for distribution and by the  Well of the Furies we will get it. This chaos was unprofessional on my part (partly from my inexperience),  and triggers were being pulled before we even had the horses at the races.
We will also be futureproofing future development to make sure this kind of *********** will never happen again.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 22, 2019, 10:03:26 PM
Even if there wasn't, surely there will be even if NCSoft is willing to license/sell. Not the end of the world.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 22, 2019, 10:07:23 PM
Dunno if this has already been posted, so posting it just in case. Current available information suggests that the person owning the physical server got hit by some kind of... "legal communication"* which scared them enough to bail and delete the whole server. Unfortunately nobody else from the Discord server had those server files (to my understanding) so it will take time to get anything back up.

Hold up. There's no WAY this is true. All the files have got to be massively distributed at this point.

And if they're not... well, this is as good evidence as any that any and all CoH code to run the game needs to be saved in as many places as possible ASAP.

Edit: After reading Leandro's twitter... I think we're good. I just hope that whatever he has that is necessary to set up a server in half a day is "in the wild" now, even if the people that have don't know how to use it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 22, 2019, 10:11:18 PM


Good catch, 5th Horseman.

I've been watching events closely on Discord.

Tensions are high, emotions are raw and nerves are on edge.  Things can get you rattled especially when you're the one taking the risks.  It was a 'heady 3 days.' 

But I suspect this won't be the last of it.

I would have thought they'd have backed up the work and had back ups on everyone of the '30 man?' team.

All the more reason to review protocols and save the work being done and get to that stable i24 releaseas a matter of expediency and find as many mole holes for it as possible.

I'd by happy calling it the holy grail release if it has Servers for Dummies with solo/LAN and server mode. 

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 22, 2019, 10:16:14 PM
If anybody needs to write a psych dissertation on mass panic they'd be well served to cut and paste the hell out of the discord server the past little while. they could have announced that the current measles strain has mutated and the vaccine is no longer effective and it'd cause less chicken littletry, if i may coin a term.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Exxar on April 22, 2019, 10:21:04 PM
Hold up. There's no WAY this is true. All the files have got to be massively distributed at this point.

And if they're not... well, this is as good evidence as any that any and all CoH code to run the game needs to be saved in as many places as possible ASAP.

Edit: After reading Leandro's twitter... I think we're good. I just hope that whatever he has that is necessary to set up a server in half a day is "in the wild" now, even if the people that have don't know how to use it.
I know you're assuaged after reading Leandro's twitter, but I'd like to clarify this a bit for others, according to my understanding.

The *I24 source code* is widely public now. That, however, is not enough to run a server or a client (btw both server and client code are packed *together*). As far as I know, several types of asset files are also needed, and those are not yet properly publicly available.

What was running on this Discord server, was a *precompiled* I25 (I24 + Leandro's and his team's modifications) server (aka binaries), joined by the I25 client supplied through Tequila. Again, as far as I know, Leandro was in the process of releasing the I25 source code but it had to be scrubbed of any privately identifying information before being made public.

Why the I24 assets, or the I25 binaries and assets aren't publicly released at this point, I do not know.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 22, 2019, 10:30:03 PM
With regard to and C&D that NCSoft may (or may not... it's unclear exactly what NCSoft has said or done so far), it all depend on how serious they are; because... some C&Ds aren't serious.

If a company doesn't make a effort to protect their copyrights, they can lose them. And so, issuing a C&D may be a perfunctory gesture that NCSoft's legal department has to make even though there is no intent to chase anyone down for private servers. This gives them legal standing to chase someone setting up a for-profit server, or, for attempting to clone active properties that haven't gone moribund yet.

But, that's a gamble, NCSoft just might be that big an A and ramp up the clamp-down. Though, they haven't done so for a few of their moribund projects.

In short: who knows?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Wyrm on April 22, 2019, 10:39:13 PM
If anybody needs to write a psych dissertation on mass panic they'd be well served to cut and paste the hell out of the discord server the past little while. they could have announced that the current measles strain has mutated and the vaccine is no longer effective and it'd cause less chicken littletry, if i may coin a term.
I lectured on this phenomenon last week, including an example of how I paid $5.50/gallon to fill up my gas tank on 9/11.

I knew I wasn't immune to mass hysteria. Apparently, that hasn't changed 18 years, or even a week, later. =)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 22, 2019, 10:44:59 PM
I know you're assuaged after reading Leandro's twitter, but I'd like to clarify this a bit for others, according to my understanding.

The *I24 source code* is widely public now. That, however, is not enough to run a server or a client (btw both server and client code are packed *together*). As far as I know, several types of asset files are also needed, and those are not yet properly publicly available.

What was running on this Discord server, was a *precompiled* I25 (I24 + Leandro's and his team's modifications) server (aka binaries), joined by the I25 client supplied through Tequila. Again, as far as I know, Leandro was in the process of releasing the I25 source code but it had to be scrubbed of any privately identifying information before being made public.

Why the I24 assets, or the I25 binaries and assets aren't publicly released at this point, I do not know.

I was assuaged in that the stuff to make a working server still exists. Whatever else today's incident illustrated, regardless of what actually happened, it clearly proves that the code NEEDS to be released to as many places it can be, even if the people that end up having it don't know how to get it running.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 22, 2019, 10:49:25 PM
I lectured on this phenomenon last week

talk about terrible timing :D
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 22, 2019, 10:49:42 PM
I was assuaged in that the stuff to make a working server still exists. Whatever else today's incident illustrated, regardless of what actually happened, it clearly proves that the code NEEDS to be released to as many places it can be, even if the people that end up having it don't know how to get it running.

AMEN.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Wyrm on April 22, 2019, 10:53:18 PM
talk about terrible timing :D
I'll lecture on that next week.  :o
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 22, 2019, 11:02:52 PM
If anybody needs to write a psych dissertation on mass panic they'd be well served to cut and paste the hell out of the discord server the past little while. they could have announced that the current measles strain has mutated and the vaccine is no longer effective and it'd cause less chicken littletry, if i may coin a term.

I think people are forgetting that us being able to play CoH over the weekend was ahead of most of the optimistic predictions last week. We just have to be patient. We're close to hitting that point where "you can't stop the signal" and NCSoft won't be able to snuff out all of the options we'll have.

I mentioned last week that the SCoRE team couldn't put the genie back in the bottle in regards to trust, but in retrospect I think NCSoft is the one who will fail to put the genie back in the bottle with CoH. The last week will either force them to turn a blind eye, take a more neutral stance, or solve the CoH demand with their own resources, but the ball is rolling now and we just have to watch over the coming weeks to see how this all plays out without flipping our collective wigs and making the situation any worse.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 22, 2019, 11:05:13 PM
The discord is making me sick.  Leo was right to keep it a secret.  So many rude and undeserving people.  They have CoH back for a week and are already calling the people "spinless and cowards" for not keeping the servor up.  It's disgusting.  No thank you, no we appreciate you trying.  I hate to say it but after reading over this Discord.  The community doesn't deserve CoH.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Wyrm on April 22, 2019, 11:08:42 PM
The discord is making me sick.  Leo was right to keep it a secret.  So many rude and undeserving people.  They have CoH back for a week and are already calling the people "spinless and cowards" for not keeping the servor up.  It's disgusting.  No thank you, no we appreciate you trying.  I hate to say it but after reading over this Discord.  The community doesn't deserve CoH.
I had to close it out. The community is better than that. Those are some purpled-out, Incarnate-slotted, trolls who have invaded. I refuse to believe that what I was seeing in that chat is a reflection of who and what our community has become.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 22, 2019, 11:13:11 PM
The discord is making me sick.  Leo was right to keep it a secret.  So many rude and undeserving people.  They have CoH back for a week and are already calling the people "spinless and cowards" for not keeping the servor up.  It's disgusting.  No thank you, no we appreciate you trying.  I hate to say it but after reading over this Discord.  The community doesn't deserve CoH.

I agree. Then there are those like me who are grateful for being allowed to say hello, maybe one last time to the game and characters. What irks me, is this, there are those that dont care and want to see things burn. No matter the cost and who hurts. Last week I voiced my opinion and feelings and made peace with them. The server team has shown they are trustworthy, it time we should reward that with our own trustworthiness. I'm not saying we should kick their feet and bow down. Just remember it is them who are taking the extreme risk and not us.

I do hope Nc Soft will come to the table to talk about it. And make a honest and fair deal. I think this could happen. :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 22, 2019, 11:13:25 PM
I'm stepping away from this for a bit.

I've got 3d printing I should be focusing on.

Don't let the asshats tear this community apart.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 22, 2019, 11:13:47 PM
I had to close it out. The community is better than that. Those are some purpled-out, Incarnate-slotted, trolls who have invaded. I refuse to believe that what I was seeing in that chat is a reflection of who and what our community has become.

You must not have been following what was happening on Facebook and Reddit this past week. Digital lynch mob pretty much sums it up, along with your friendly neighborhood online terrorists doxxing/harassing not just Leandro, but people whose only "crime" was being his knowable associates. But, hey, vigilantes are heroes; even if they come from 4chan, right? :-/

As I've said previously - If it wasn't for the CoHTitan community here, I'd be seriously challenged to continue believing that "community" was an appropriate word to describe the self-professed CoH "community" online.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 22, 2019, 11:14:26 PM
It's never really fair to judge a community by the loud people making asses of themselves though. Think back to school, where one or two kids would be a disruptive while the rest of the class was just trying to get through the day. Did the one or two students really fairly represent everyone else in that room?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 22, 2019, 11:20:20 PM
The discord is making me sick.  Leo was right to keep it a secret.

I find it to be extremely entertaining.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Wyrm on April 22, 2019, 11:23:19 PM
You must not have been following what was happening on Facebook and Reddit this past week. Digital lynch mob pretty much sums it up, along with your friendly neighborhood online terrorists doxxing/harassing not just Leandro, but people whose only "crime" was being his knowable associates. But, hey, vigilantes are heroes; even if they come from 4chan, right? :-/

As I've said previously - If it wasn't for the CoHTitan community here, I'd be seriously challenged to continue believing that "community" was an appropriate word to describe the self-professed CoH "community" online.
Oh, I'm disappointed in that mess as well. I just wasn't watching it play out in real time, after my wife left the house with tears in her eyes over the initial takedown news this afternoon.

I know what the people who love this game are capable of. I watched it, for years and years. It just happens that there are also people who enjoy tearing down things that other people love, and that's what I'm seeing.

There was (and is) a lot of anger over the shutdown and how we were treated. And you know how it goes. Anger to hate, hate to suffering, suffering to Gungans and midichlorians. None of us want that.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 22, 2019, 11:25:54 PM
Remain calm and enjoy this drama as much as possible.  I think there is movie in all this somewhere.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 22, 2019, 11:26:07 PM
Remember everyone, the discord is a reminder why we can't have nice things.

I find it to be extremely entertaining.

That is unfortunate.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: GamingGlen on April 22, 2019, 11:30:18 PM
I always thought the community hype was overrated.  When some people talked about their ignore list, sounding like it was longer than their friends list, of course the community seemed great because those people overlooked the warts.  I was never in the in-circle of groups, so I saw a lot of elitist snobbery going on.  That doesn't mean the community was bad, especially compared to other MMOs, but then that bar was set very low.  I would call the COX community good, not great.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 22, 2019, 11:36:50 PM
The discord server is also being ripped apart by the Reddit mob and the chan mob simultaneously.

Someone linked an 8chan thread where they are alternating between scoffing at the idea that they are being blamed for raiding the discord, blaming reddit for raiding the discord, and directing each other to continue raiding the discord. :|

Don't let external manipulation turn you against the community.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 22, 2019, 11:37:54 PM
Am I understanding this correctly?  Whoever is running the server did not receive anything from NCsoft but shut the server down in a panic over something?

Any possible way their ISP mistook the traffic to and from the server as torrent activity and sent them a letter?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 22, 2019, 11:42:14 PM
Am I understanding this correctly?  Whoever is running the server did not receive anything from NCsoft but shut the server down in a panic over something?

Any possible way their ISP mistook the traffic to and from the server as torrent activity and sent them a letter?

I am not sure anyone besides the people it's happening to have a full picture of everything.  Earlier they said it was big concerning legal problem than someone posted a screenshot of someone saying they deleted everything.  Not sure what the "scare" was but it sounded like it was out of reaction to the scare.  If it was the GDPR I don't blame them for being scared.  But that is just pure speculation, don't quote me as it being the GDPR.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Wyrm on April 22, 2019, 11:49:53 PM
I always thought the community hype was overrated.  When some people talked about their ignore list, sounding like it was longer than their friends list, of course the community seemed great because those people overlooked the warts.  I was never in the in-circle of groups, so I saw a lot of elitist snobbery going on.  That doesn't mean the community was bad, especially compared to other MMOs, but then that bar was set very low.  I would call the COX community good, not great.
That's your experience, and it's valid. I was talking about the community that surrounded the game; in-game, there were plenty of cliques to go around, and groups with different goals and ideas of "fun." But the game supported all of those, which I found/find fascinating.

The community surrounding the game is the one that organized charity drives, met up at cons, organized responses to the news of the shutdown, sent gifts to the devs, provided build advice, and spawned multiple "spiritual successors," mainly driven by volunteerism and a love of what we had.

So, yes. I had a lot of people on my "ignore" list, because their game play styles/values didn't match what I wanted to do or what I found fun, or because I thought they were obnoxious. The in-game community was just one aspect of the larger CoX community.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 22, 2019, 11:52:39 PM
This is just in, there wont be anymore updates tonight, for 24 hours while they reorganize their approach.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 22, 2019, 11:55:42 PM
While taking some steps back to figure out the path forward is a good idea, it's not great in the midst of the chaos, trolling, misinformation...

I'd almost consider just locking every channel on that discord until they have more info to go off of, the churn that results from this is going to be catastrophic unfortunately, and pointlessly.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 23, 2019, 12:07:38 AM
Remember everyone, the discord is a reminder why we can't have nice things.

That is unfortunate.

It's all I've got right now.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Dev7on on April 23, 2019, 12:12:20 AM
Hey guys. I've haven't been keeping up with the news lately. Does this means the private server is permanently gone?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 23, 2019, 12:15:08 AM
Hey guys. I've haven't been keeping up with the news lately. Does this means the private server is permanently gone?

The current one is gone yes, no news for 24 hrs as to the future of it reopening or another taking its place.  I think even the people involved don't have the whole picture yet.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 23, 2019, 12:24:17 AM
At this point, it's murky what the main admin received. There was mention of DMCA, which would be completely irrelevant to something hosted in the UK as I believe the private server was being hosted.

What seems to have happened is that the main guy got some kind of communication that sent him into a panic and he deleted everything without consulting any of the other admins. He did say that he had not slept in 40 hours, which no doubt contributed to a state of mind prone to bad descisions.

Calmer heads prevailed and now they're looking at how to recover the server from backups or something. Supposedly it will be back.

In the meantime, people working with the I24 code have managed to get part of a server (the db server) up and running on a local workstation. One small step  for  a man and all that.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nightraptor on April 23, 2019, 01:01:24 AM
Surely the events of the last few days shows NC$OFT that there is STILL a market out there for this game. 3000 players paying $15 a month is $45000 a month which given today's hardware prices pays for the server in the month of opening. Then add add another 11 months of subscription and there you have nearly $500,000 of revenue. Remove from that say $200,000 for the salary of 2 interns and a senior programmer to manage the server and you are still making $300,000. Every additional subscriber will only add to the revenue.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 23, 2019, 01:10:19 AM
I suggest whoever is in talks with NCSoft ask if we could pay them a yearly server license to be an "Official" server.

This would not allow you to make money - it would allow you to run the server with NCSoft's approval and they could hold you to standards depending on how many users your capacity holds. This is often how server software is run.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 23, 2019, 01:12:12 AM
https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/22/city-of-heroes-rogue-server-has-already-been-shut-down-under-threat-of-legal-action/

Read the last update regarding Yuvi.


And apparently there's more Discord drama and we now have a new discord.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 23, 2019, 01:17:59 AM
Don't panic yet, grab your towel a quietly hang on.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 23, 2019, 01:23:19 AM
Don't panic yet, grab your towel a quietly hang on.

NCsoft doesn't have to do anything at the rate this is going.

I understand people's reactions to the events of the past week and can also understand the concerns regarding today's news of the server but this is getting really far out there.

Innocuous/Glory to Arachnos is being is being accused of bigotry
He says something about Leandro
Leandro says something about him but deletes the tweet
The discord was removed from the subreddit page and replaced with a new subreddit that requires you to state your preferred pronoun to see channels?
Now people are accusing Leandro of running the new subreddit

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Dev7on on April 23, 2019, 01:26:40 AM
Now my anxiety is going through the roof.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 23, 2019, 01:32:12 AM
https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/22/city-of-heroes-rogue-server-has-already-been-shut-down-under-threat-of-legal-action/

Read the last update regarding Yuvi.


And apparently there's more Discord drama and we now have a new discord.
[/quote

So someone panicked and actually wiped the server? Hope for data backups
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 23, 2019, 01:34:57 AM
This is insane and I am so confused.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 23, 2019, 01:39:35 AM
This is insane and I am so confused.

From what I can tell...  Someone contacted the lead dev and claimed that NCsoft was sending a cease and desist and that's what prompted the server shutdown and data wipe.  The discord drama is a separate issue.

So... NCSoft has not done anything in regards to the server.  If the data can be recovered or replaced then we can all resume playing testing.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 23, 2019, 02:05:58 AM
Yep I see this as a delay of a few days or weeks, not years
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 23, 2019, 02:10:38 AM
   I think the only thing that was wiped was the character/mission/npc stuff.  Basically everything that was in the 2nd data dump.  They DID say they would wipe the characters before going official.   ;D
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: CG on April 23, 2019, 02:13:34 AM
Just some musing:

Unless there's an approval from NCSoft (tacit or explicit), there won't be a single server like we had back when the game was running.  Either costs will grow too much, someone will get bored or spooked and kill their server, or they get a letter from NCSoft telling them to C&D.

I feel like the future of CoH will be multiple private servers operating under the radar.  It might be closer to a single person game or a small group of friends.  It's possible that there will be a facility to extract your character from a server, so you can have a backup, and to allow restoration on another server.  Think of it like transhuman sleeving - download your character into a new body somewhere else.

The coding team working on understanding, simplifying and deploying new binaries based on the i24 code is probably the future of the game.  They still need the back end database data, but that's probably coming still.  Once that's released, it's only a matter of time before you can run your own private server on commodity hardware.  It might take some time.

I had a great time playing on the test server this weekend.  I got to play with my friend that introduced me to the game in the first place; we re-rolled our original toons and had a blast.  We got to show our kids and they loved it too.  My daughter made her first character in Icon and was disappointed that the test server was down, but I have hope now that the code's out.  The test server might not have worked out (it might still - the jury's still out on that) but there will be City of Heroes in the future. 

I'm happy to have some real hope going forward.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 23, 2019, 02:26:41 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 23, 2019, 02:30:00 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 23, 2019, 02:34:25 AM
He got trolled by someone on the internet - who would think it?

Let reality sink in - the code while playable needs work. The coders expected it to take 2 or 3 months to optimize it for modern servers. It was a little taste but really better code means less resources to run it.

It could easily get to where you could rent a server for under a $100 a month.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 23, 2019, 02:39:02 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 23, 2019, 02:45:17 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 23, 2019, 02:50:21 AM
You might as well ask a Magic 8 Ball as ask us.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: eabrace on April 23, 2019, 02:56:18 AM
(https://i.pinimg.com/236x/ac/ac/bd/acacbd0098d95c9f35d5c8411a800729--magic--ball-the-magic.jpg)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 23, 2019, 03:04:00 AM
At the speed they were working I have no doubt they could have had a mostly functional server by the 27th.  I don't blame the guy for getting spooked he was putting a lot of responsibility on his shoulders.

I do think this has created a problem though.  While it seems the possibility of a server isn't gone I don't think they have any of the binaries they used to set it up.  Also, Leo and the Admins of the Test server (AFAIK) aren't good terms right now.  I don't say this spread false rumors, and I hope its all good but if it's not I doubt there will be as much collaboration this time around.

Shame that one troll did all this and created a divide between the people trying to make this a possibility.

At this point though I am just waiting the 24h to see what they have to say.  All any of us can do is really speculate or like Saipman said "Ask a magic 8 ball" which will just say

 "
(https://i.pinimg.com/236x/ac/ac/bd/acacbd0098d95c9f35d5c8411a800729--magic--ball-the-magic.jpg)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 23, 2019, 03:13:23 AM
The discord is making me sick.  Leo was right to keep it a secret.  So many rude and undeserving people.  They have CoH back for a week and are already calling the people "spinless and cowards" for not keeping the servor up.  It's disgusting.  No thank you, no we appreciate you trying.  I hate to say it but after reading over this Discord.  The community doesn't deserve CoH.


Some folks are only capable of acquiring wisdom by sticking their hands in the fire.


*smh* 


Vindication for SCoRE's plan doesn't undo the damage some of the community has done,  unfortunately.


Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 23, 2019, 03:15:57 AM
On the plus side, it now appears that all the code and data is out.

At least that's some protection from NCSoft.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 23, 2019, 03:16:35 AM

I do think this has created a problem though.  While it seems the possibility of a server isn't gone I don't think they have any of the binaries they used to set it up.  Also, Leo and the Admins of the Test server (AFAIK) aren't good terms right now.  I don't say this spread false rumors, and I hope its all good but if it's not I doubt there will be as much collaboration this time around.

Shame that one troll did all this and created a divide between the people trying to make this a possibility.

At this point though I am just waiting the 24h to see what they have to say.  All any of us can do is really speculate or like Saipman said "Ask a magic 8 ball" which will just say

 "


   I think worst case it sets it back 4 or 5 days.  It may not take even that long now that the coders have the hardware and knowledge to correct any issues that might pop up again.  From the screenshots it looked like the issue was between Leandro and the Discord channel admin.  Not the test server admin.  This was a separate issue from the test server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Blue Pulsar on April 23, 2019, 03:18:35 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 23, 2019, 03:23:48 AM


Logging in was the worst, and it was only for the first 24 hours. By Saturday evening, I had no problem logging in, and suffered maybe 1 mapserve for the remainder of the time it was up. And lag wasn't too bad at all. I've certainly experienced worse back when the game was up.



   If I had to compare it to anything I'd say it was like launch day of any other MMO and I mean that as complement.  These guys are doing great work.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 23, 2019, 03:29:08 AM
Sunday was excellent.   I'm glad I tried something I'd never tried before -- beam rifle and time manipulation. 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 23, 2019, 03:32:52 AM
Sunday was excellent.   I'm glad I tried something I'd never tried before -- beam rifle and time manipulation.

Dual Pistols / Super Reflexes Sentinel.. something I've never tried before.

Whatever the outcome of this mess I'm thankful I got to play again. :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 23, 2019, 03:38:00 AM
The stuff happening between the discords, the subreddit, the mods, it's all terribly embarrassing. We were on the door step of something great, but you can always trust pettiness to derail it all.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: VileTerror on April 23, 2019, 03:45:55 AM
I realize I'm not seeing everything that's going on, but from my little narrow view . . . it almost looked like everyone was getting along for a little while when the public private server was running.  At least getting along well enough compared to before and after.  Goodness gracious!  The lines that get drawn in the sand with this.

I mean, at least it demonstrates how passionate people are about City of Heroes, right?   I'd like to believe that people don't get this emotional about something which they don't actually care about.

And NCSoft always felt out of touch to me, so I can only imagine them watching all this unfold from a distance, scratching their heads in bewildered confusion.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: summers on April 23, 2019, 03:51:24 AM
I had an absolute blast, it was just like coming home. 99% of the people just want to play the game, 1% who are loud and vocal are causing mischief. We'll get over this and in due course we'll be back :)

Thank you to everyone so far who has put in huge hours to make the dream a reality!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nightraptor on April 23, 2019, 03:53:53 AM
Something I want to ask the people that did get on :

Did the graphics still feel satisfying to see?

I bring this up because over the years detractors have said "oh the graphics are old and wont be fun to see anymore" (a view I disagree with vehemently).

My take on the graphics is it is a super hero game spawned from a comic background. I don't NEED to see eyebrows or breathing or even hair animations to be immersed in the game. The trees and grass don't need to rustle (unless of course they are Devouring Earth!).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: summers on April 23, 2019, 03:55:51 AM
Something I want to ask the people that did get on :

Did the graphics still feel satisfying to see?

I bring this up because over the years detractors have said "oh the graphics are old and wont be fun to see anymore" (a view I disagree with vehemently).

My take on the graphics is it is a super hero game spawned from a comic background. I don't NEED to see eyebrows or breathing or even hair animations to be immersed in the game. The trees and grass don't need to rustle (unless of course they are Devouring Earth!).

It felt great. The art direction never demanded ultra-high detail where every blade of grass is animated
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nightraptor on April 23, 2019, 04:02:02 AM
Brilliant! Good to know!

I am SO looking forwards to getting back ....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 23, 2019, 04:13:07 AM
I know you're assuaged after reading Leandro's twitter, but I'd like to clarify this a bit for others, according to my understanding.

The *I24 source code* is widely public now. That, however, is not enough to run a server or a client (btw both server and client code are packed *together*). As far as I know, several types of asset files are also needed, and those are not yet properly publicly available.

What was running on this Discord server, was a *precompiled* I25 (I24 + Leandro's and his team's modifications) server (aka binaries), joined by the I25 client supplied through Tequila. Again, as far as I know, Leandro was in the process of releasing the I25 source code but it had to be scrubbed of any privately identifying information before being made public.

Why the I24 assets, or the I25 binaries and assets aren't publicly released at this point, I do not know.

From my reading of the last 10 days of news and forum posts (including here): 

-- Issue 25 in binary form is ready to go now.  It's the fastest route to go live immediately, and the COH Discord team is fine with that for now, but they want Issue 24.  Before Leo can release this source code, he needs to scrub it for anything that would tip off investigators to the identities of who modified it, both NCSoft staff as well as SCORE (doesn't take a lot of guesses as to why both of those matter).  That'll take some time. 
-- Issue 25 source code will be possible, but not immediately.  This can be distributed in Source Code form, but it must be scrubbed before release. (See above)
-- Issue 24 will be possible AFTER the Issue 25 source code is scrubbed.  This is manually rolling back the changes Leo made to Issue 25 to put it back to Issue 24, then adjusting the server configuration and databases to work with the rollback.  This will take a few months and may be as late as this Fall, depending on his schedule.

Ultimately, public servers will have their choice of what resources to use, but they'll need one or the other.  The source code by itself without these resources do nothing.  If you want Issue 24, you'll need to wait.  If you want to play ASAP, Issue 25 is what's on the menu.

Hopefully that explains why Leo's Twitter posts are essential to the team: they need his binaries to get a server online as soon as possible.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 23, 2019, 04:27:54 AM
Just some musing:

Unless there's an approval from NCSoft (tacit or explicit), there won't be a single server like we had back when the game was running.  Either costs will grow too much, someone will get bored or spooked and kill their server, or they get a letter from NCSoft telling them to C&D.

I feel like the future of CoH will be multiple private servers operating under the radar.  It might be closer to a single person game or a small group of friends.  It's possible that there will be a facility to extract your character from a server, so you can have a backup, and to allow restoration on another server.  Think of it like transhuman sleeving - download your character into a new body somewhere else.

The coding team working on understanding, simplifying and deploying new binaries based on the i24 code is probably the future of the game.  They still need the back end database data, but that's probably coming still.  Once that's released, it's only a matter of time before you can run your own private server on commodity hardware.  It might take some time.

I had a great time playing on the test server this weekend.  I got to play with my friend that introduced me to the game in the first place; we re-rolled our original toons and had a blast.  We got to show our kids and they loved it too.  My daughter made her first character in Icon and was disappointed that the test server was down, but I have hope now that the code's out.  The test server might not have worked out (it might still - the jury's still out on that) but there will be City of Heroes in the future. 

I'm happy to have some real hope going forward.

I suspect that it will indeed be many private servers and that is fine. More the merrier and thus the genie remains out of the bottle and the bottle is shattered.

The main thing is to make sure no money is required to be on these servers. If donations are asked for and voluntary given and all money properly tracked then Ncsoft shouldn't be able to complain, or at least not very loudly.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 23, 2019, 04:33:07 AM
From my reading of the last 10 days of news and forum posts (including here): 

-- Issue 25 in binary form is ready to go now.  It's the fastest route to go live immediately, and the COH Discord team is fine with that for now, but they want Issue 24.  Before Leo can release this source code, he needs to scrub it for anything that would tip off investigators to the identities of who modified it, both NCSoft staff as well as SCORE (doesn't take a lot of guesses as to why both of those matter).  That'll take some time. 
-- Issue 25 source code will be possible, but not immediately.  This can be distributed in Source Code form, but it must be scrubbed before release. (See above)
-- Issue 24 will be possible AFTER the Issue 25 source code is scrubbed.  This is manually rolling back the changed Leo made to Issue 25 to put it back to Issue 24, then adjusting the server configuration and databases to work with the rollback.  This will take a few months and may be as late as this Fall, depending on his schedule.

Ultimately, public servers will have their choice of what resources to use, but they'll need one or the other.  The source code by itself without these resources do nothing.  If you want Issue 24, you'll need to wait.  If you want to play ASAP, Issue 25 is what's on the menu.

Hopefully that explains why Leo's Twitter posts are essential to the team: they need his binaries to get a server online as soon as possible.

If issue 25 is just a modified 24 and has everything from 24 in it, then why bother rolling back to just i24? Just whip up a friendly server and client setup package with nice easy instructions and the tech specs for a good server to have it on and then package it up, call it the Paragon Seed or some such and release it to the internet for all to enjoy
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arkasas on April 23, 2019, 04:47:19 AM
If issue 25 is just a modified 24 and has everything from 24 in it, then why bother rolling back to just i24? Just whip up a friendly server and client setup package with nice easy instructions and the tech specs for a good server to have it on and then package it up, call it the Paragon Seed or some such and release it to the internet for all to enjoy

Some people are purists and don't want anything Cryptic/Paragon didn't make, others just hate Leandro. There's a market for it!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 23, 2019, 04:52:35 AM
From my reading of the last 10 days of news and forum posts (including here): 

-- Issue 25 in binary form is ready to go now.  It's the fastest route to go live immediately, and the COH Discord team is fine with that for now, but they want Issue 24.  Before Leo can release this source code, he needs to scrub it for anything that would tip off investigators to the identities of who modified it, both NCSoft staff as well as SCORE (doesn't take a lot of guesses as to why both of those matter).  That'll take some time. 
-- Issue 25 source code will be possible, but not immediately.  This can be distributed in Source Code form, but it must be scrubbed before release. (See above)
-- Issue 24 will be possible AFTER the Issue 25 source code is scrubbed.  This is manually rolling back the changed Leo made to Issue 25 to put it back to Issue 24, then adjusting the server configuration and databases to work with the rollback.  This will take a few months and may be as late as this Fall, depending on his schedule.

Ultimately, public servers will have their choice of what resources to use, but they'll need one or the other.  The source code by itself without these resources do nothing.  If you want Issue 24, you'll need to wait.  If you want to play ASAP, Issue 25 is what's on the menu.

Hopefully that explains why Leo's Twitter posts are essential to the team: they need his binaries to get a server online as soon as possible.

Ok... here's my understanding:

Everything for i24 is now out there, both from Leo and some other anonymous source. But, it has to be fixed to work, which the coders now working on it could get done in a few weeks or months.

Leo's SCORE group had a 6 year jump on making i24 work, and they modified it creating an updated issue: i25. It was i25 that Leo gave to a trusted member of the Discord group to test out, which led to last week's playtesting. Why to a trusted member? Because part of the code needed to be scrubbed since it had info embedded in it that would lead to who leaked it and who was working on it. Leo was working in the meantime to scrub it while everyone was playtesting it. So, yes, Leo still has some files not widely released for that reason.

Then the fake news that NCSoft was going to issue a D&C led to the person who had the i25 files on the playtesting server to panic and to delete it all. Which takes us back to only Leo having part of those files. So, no working playtesting is available unless some other trusted individual wants to run i25 while its files are being scrubbed.

Even if Leo never releases his i25 files, what has already been released is enough for coders to create a working game just like Leo did.

But Leo is most definitely committed to getting everything eventually released. He had a fit when the Discord group was holding onto some files that were scrubbed and got them to release them to the wild.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 23, 2019, 05:02:26 AM
The stuff happening between the discords, the subreddit, the mods, it's all terribly embarrassing. We were on the door step of something great, but you can always trust pettiness to derail it all.

Don't forget 4chan.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 23, 2019, 05:04:54 AM
It felt great. The art direction never demanded ultra-high detail where every blade of grass is animated

I remember being on a task force with a guy that wanted articulated fingers.  When I asked him if that would make the game better, he said it would if he got the correct hand gesture emote.   I put him on ignore.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 23, 2019, 05:06:51 AM
If issue 25 is just a modified 24 and has everything from 24 in it, then why bother rolling back to just i24? Just whip up a friendly server and client setup package with nice easy instructions and the tech specs for a good server to have it on and then package it up, call it the Paragon Seed or some such and release it to the internet for all to enjoy

I don't like the "Pay 2 Win" vendor.  I don't want to break immersion that way.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: summers on April 23, 2019, 05:08:12 AM
I remember being on a task force with a guy that wanted articulated fingers.  When I asked him if that would make the game better, he said it would if he got the correct hand gesture emote.   I put him on ignore.

That is too funny!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 23, 2019, 05:33:09 AM
I don't like the "Pay 2 Win" vendor.  I don't want to break immersion that way.

I mean, were the Merit Vendors less immersion breaking? The P2W vendor was at least a way to get stuff that was in the *literal P2W store* that tried to put in in-universe dialog. Maybe there would have been a better way, but it's nice to have all the veteran rewards and pre-order bonuses or whatever all in one place.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 23, 2019, 06:09:54 AM
I mean, were the Merit Vendors less immersion breaking? The P2W vendor was at least a way to get stuff that was in the *literal P2W store* that tried to put in in-universe dialog. Maybe there would have been a better way, but it's nice to have all the veteran rewards and pre-order bonuses or whatever all in one place.

Yeah, it was just a kludge to get in all the meta-rewards like the special powers from buying various boxed updates or a market for when you have a developed playerbase or paying real-world money for items from the Paragon Market.

I had so many of these account-wide items, plus hundreds of millions of influence i could drop on a new character that all my newbies started out with a five-power attack chain and the ability to fly. Not to mention to be able to Teleport to mission, Pocket D, the consignment markets, etc....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on April 23, 2019, 07:10:20 AM
I was on the discord yesterday night when all the hell broke loose.
Everyone jumped and hated on NCS immediately. I made a comment that we are not sure who is behind the shutdown yet so best be civil and remain calm.
But everyone said its NCS.
As of now, we still have no genuine explanation to what happened?
I guess this is how human nature is right? But I hope that we learn at least from mistakes made in this drama.

Now when NCS has seen that there might be a business case with COH, I would think that the best solution is to approach peacefully and come to a deal? Get it organized.

Need to remain calm and respectfull and respect other people / companies. Make peace.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Castegyre on April 23, 2019, 08:06:07 AM
But I already have my pitchfork out. At least I didn't light my torch yet.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: weenus on April 23, 2019, 10:49:17 AM
Something I want to ask the people that did get on :

Did the graphics still feel satisfying to see?

I bring this up because over the years detractors have said "oh the graphics are old and wont be fun to see anymore" (a view I disagree with vehemently).

My take on the graphics is it is a super hero game spawned from a comic background. I don't NEED to see eyebrows or breathing or even hair animations to be immersed in the game. The trees and grass don't need to rustle (unless of course they are Devouring Earth!).

I was pretty surprised by how high you could scale some of the settings up, I have a 1080 and the initial "crank the settings way up" run for a 15 year old game somehow led to so so framerates and the card actually working fairly hard. I was pretty shocked by that.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 23, 2019, 11:04:10 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on April 23, 2019, 11:43:11 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 23, 2019, 11:50:17 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 23, 2019, 12:04:23 PM
I was pretty surprised by how high you could scale some of the settings up, I have a 1080 and the initial "crank the settings way up" run for a 15 year old game somehow led to so so framerates and the card actually working fairly hard. I was pretty shocked by that.

The graphics are fine.

Old rig on ultra.  4fps.

New rig on ultra.  Smooth as butter.

It IS an old game.  But it was way ahead of its time in many respects.

Some may argue the graphics need an 'unreal engine' style upgrade.  That can be worked on for a 1.5 update.

Me?  It's all in how it plays.  'She may not look like much, kid...but she's got it where it counts.'  Solo.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 23, 2019, 12:12:39 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 23, 2019, 12:22:18 PM
From my reading of the last 10 days of news and forum posts (including here): 

-- Issue 25 in binary form is ready to go now.  It's the fastest route to go live immediately, and the COH Discord team is fine with that for now, but they want Issue 24.  Before Leo can release this source code, he needs to scrub it for anything that would tip off investigators to the identities of who modified it, both NCSoft staff as well as SCORE (doesn't take a lot of guesses as to why both of those matter).  That'll take some time. 
-- Issue 25 source code will be possible, but not immediately.  This can be distributed in Source Code form, but it must be scrubbed before release. (See above)
-- Issue 24 will be possible AFTER the Issue 25 source code is scrubbed.  This is manually rolling back the changes Leo made to Issue 25 to put it back to Issue 24, then adjusting the server configuration and databases to work with the rollback.  This will take a few months and may be as late as this Fall, depending on his schedule.

Ultimately, public servers will have their choice of what resources to use, but they'll need one or the other.  The source code by itself without these resources do nothing.  If you want Issue 24, you'll need to wait.  If you want to play ASAP, Issue 25 is what's on the menu.

Hopefully that explains why Leo's Twitter posts are essential to the team: they need his binaries to get a server online as soon as possible.
]]

Thank you for the clarity.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 23, 2019, 12:33:21 PM
Some people are purists and don't want anything Cryptic/Paragon didn't make, others just hate Leandro. There's a market for it!

Yeah.  That's people.

i24.  Having that is ok.  It's just a starting point.  But if people are waiting for NC to employ Paragon Studio to give us issue 25?  They're going to be in for an even longer wait.

i25 is the story of SCORE.  Preserving the legacy and making the improvements that they did.

Leandro's a nice, decent guy who's done his best to preserve 'the gold ring' legacy but that 'burden' can be heavy on the shoulders.  And it seems fate has intervened...several times this week.

The sooner the ring is shattered and scattered to the four corners of our world?

The better.  And this recent 'storm in a tea cup' just under-SCORES that.

Discretion, yes...but be swift about the goal and share the burden to make it so.

issue 25.  Unbroken shard is a metaphor for the community.

There was 'no official' 24 if we want to be picky.  It was left unfinished (bugs et al.)  It's a 'fine' unrelease.  But even it wasn't released as in 'official.'

Ergo.  issue 25.  It belongs to the community.  This is OUR story.  The story of SCORE's fight to preserve.  The dev's battle to 'leak' or rather, PRESERVE IT from an unsympathetic corporation.  The unholy war to keep it alive.  The battle to release ICON, PARAGON CHAT and 'whatever' they had planned (a reverse engineered server?) next.

If we want issues 25-27 featuring Battalion and the Moon Base?  We're going to have to create it ourselves.

iSSue 24 which just be a stable release that hopefully we can ALL enjoy.  Into the hands of the many.  Issue 25 'Unbroken Shard' is ours to write.  SCORE started that process.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 23, 2019, 12:36:51 PM
If issue 25 is just a modified 24 and has everything from 24 in it, then why bother rolling back to just i24? Just whip up a friendly server and client setup package with nice easy instructions and the tech specs for a good server to have it on and then package it up, call it the Paragon Seed or some such and release it to the internet for all to enjoy

Yeah.  Basically what Sin' said.

ALL TO ENJOY!

Friendly server and client set up package with Azrael-proof instructions with the specs of a PC to run it and package it up, 'Paragon SEED' and release the Kraken.

The time for holding onto it in the hands of the few is coming to an end.  We need enough programmers to get it into a 'home brew' state then they need to let go...so that it's 'panic proof.'

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 23, 2019, 12:45:26 PM
Ok... here's my understanding:

Everything for i24 is now out there, both from Leo and some other anonymous source. But, it has to be fixed to work, which the coders now working on it could get done in a few weeks or months.

Spoiler for Hidden:
Leo's SCORE group had a 6 year jump on making i24 work, and they modified it creating an updated issue: i25. It was i25 that Leo gave to a trusted member of the Discord group to test out, which led to last week's playtesting. Why to a trusted member? Because part of the code needed to be scrubbed since it had info embedded in it that would lead to who leaked it and who was working on it. Leo was working in the meantime to scrub it while everyone was playtesting it. So, yes, Leo still has some files not widely released for that reason.

Then the fake news that NCSoft was going to issue a D&C led to the person who had the i25 files on the playtesting server to panic and to delete it all. Which takes us back to only Leo having part of those files. So, no working playtesting is available unless some other trusted individual wants to run i25 while its files are being scrubbed.

Even if Leo never releases his i25 files, what has already been released is enough for coders to create a working game just like Leo did.

But Leo is most definitely committed to getting everything eventually released. He had a fit when the Discord group was holding onto some files that were scrubbed and got them to release them to the wild.

Fair enough.

That gives a few extra pertinent pieces of clarity.  So issue 25 still had compromising names in the code?  Ergo: no general release.  Therefore 'trusted' person to run the server.

So there's enough from what Leandro released to preserve the game?

Yeah, it's the 'holding' onto it part where the danger is.  I can see why Leandro had a fit if the Discord group was holding onto them rather than releasing them into the wild.  Just seed it to many 'trusted' members of the CoH community UNTIL it's scrubbed beyond recognition.  I don't doubt Leandro's commitment to the cause.  His statement last week told me all I needed to know.  The next 6 months are crucial.  Get it packaged up into a home brew for the Homer's of the world and we can all share the burden.

All things are possible then.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 23, 2019, 12:49:44 PM
We need to start being fair - the guy hosting it was a truck driver.

He had the money to stand up a server and did so - he is not a lawyer and isn't a server person. There is a reason I said that I wanted to wait until September 1 to start a server up - not that I wouldn't want to beta test it earlier. The magic the community worked on the code and networking side of things is incredible.

Costs of a couple thousand a month could easily be reduced to a couple hundred a month once the code is re-written. It is being re-written, what we got is a small taste and an alpha test. In a couple of months the code could be ported to modern database programs - like LUA and moving to SQL Server 2019 and porting from 32bit to 64bit and opening up memory addressing. I know they were converting to SQL 2010 and then the port to 2019 is easier.

I don't see this as anything but an excited amateur dabbling in running a server and the community freaking out with excitement. It shows the game is still wanted and will be played. We were running in to the coders nightmare - customers and owners screaming we want it better NOW! All while they worked every waking hour.

I respect those folks so much and they are the unsung heroes. I saw multiple people who had coded for the entire weekend - not sleeping saying, I need to sleep I can't read what I typed. I want them to slow down - get it right and build us something that will last for another 10 years, not one weekend.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 23, 2019, 12:53:07 PM
Just some musing:

Unless there's an approval from NCSoft (tacit or explicit), there won't be a single server like we had back when the game was running.  Either costs will grow too much, someone will get bored or spooked and kill their server, or they get a letter from NCSoft telling them to C&D.

I feel like the future of CoH will be multiple private servers operating under the radar.  It might be closer to a single person game or a small group of friends.  It's possible that there will be a facility to extract your character from a server, so you can have a backup, and to allow restoration on another server.  Think of it like transhuman sleeving - download your character into a new body somewhere else.

The coding team working on understanding, simplifying and deploying new binaries based on the i24 code is probably the future of the game.  They still need the back end database data, but that's probably coming still.  Once that's released, it's only a matter of time before you can run your own private server on commodity hardware.  It might take some time.

I had a great time playing on the test server this weekend.  I got to play with my friend that introduced me to the game in the first place; we re-rolled our original toons and had a blast.  We got to show our kids and they loved it too.  My daughter made her first character in Icon and was disappointed that the test server was down, but I have hope now that the code's out.  The test server might not have worked out (it might still - the jury's still out on that) but there will be City of Heroes in the future. 

I'm happy to have some real hope going forward.

Aye.  The sooner that happens the better.

Your last paragraph.  Same here.  I, through fate or the the gods, bumped into my friend who introduced me to the game.  We had a lot of fun.  Like old times.

Good post.  I enjoyed that.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 23, 2019, 12:58:53 PM
We need to start being fair - the guy hosting it was a truck driver.

He had the money to stand up a server and did so - he is not a lawyer and isn't a server person. There is a reason I said that I wanted to wait until September 1 to start a server up - not that I wouldn't want to beta test it earlier. The magic the community worked on the code and networking side of things is incredible.

Costs of a couple thousand a month could easily be reduced to a couple hundred a month once the code is re-written. It is being re-written, what we got is a small taste and an alpha test. In a couple of months the code could be ported to modern database programs - like LUA and moving to SQL Server 2019 and porting from 32bit to 64bit and opening up memory addressing. I know they were converting to SQL 2010 and then the port to 2019 is easier.

I don't see this as anything but an excited amateur dabbling in running a server and the community freaking out with excitement. It shows the game is still wanted and will be played. We were running in to the coders nightmare - customers and owners screaming we want it better NOW! All while they worked every waking hour.

I respect those folks so much and they are the unsung heroes. I saw multiple people who had coded for the entire weekend - not sleeping saying, I need to sleep I can't read what I typed. I want them to slow down - get it right and build us something that will last for another 10 years, not one weekend.

It'll come.  We just have to be patient.  Hard to be.  That little taste of the pie...and it was complete blood lust.  Engorgement.  The whole works.  The memories came flooding back.

I feel calmer now, though.  Lol.

Passion.  The CoH community is alive and well.

40 hours.  Without sleep.  I'm terrible if I get 6 instead of 9 hrs sleep.  The shock of the game being alive.  The outpouring of emotion.  The sheer desperation to get it working again.  The exhilaration of playing.  (Towards the last day it seemed to be playing just as good as the original live server.  Teaming. Sweeping.  Powers.  Mobbs.  Combat.  Frostfire.  Globals...loads standing around Ms. Atlas...  It was like a surreal dream.)

Thank you for the post, Ironwolf.  It gives us 'non technical' heads some understanding and perspective.  Something many in the Discord channel aren't getting.  One whisper there and it's suddenly a bush fire.

It puts things into perspective.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: summers on April 23, 2019, 01:03:05 PM
We need to start being fair - the guy hosting it was a truck driver.

He had the money to stand up a server and did so - he is not a lawyer and isn't a server person. There is a reason I said that I wanted to wait until September 1 to start a server up - not that I wouldn't want to beta test it earlier. The magic the community worked on the code and networking side of things is incredible.

Costs of a couple thousand a month could easily be reduced to a couple hundred a month once the code is re-written. It is being re-written, what we got is a small taste and an alpha test. In a couple of months the code could be ported to modern database programs - like LUA and moving to SQL Server 2019 and porting from 32bit to 64bit and opening up memory addressing. I know they were converting to SQL 2010 and then the port to 2019 is easier.

I don't see this as anything but an excited amateur dabbling in running a server and the community freaking out with excitement. It shows the game is still wanted and will be played. We were running in to the coders nightmare - customers and owners screaming we want it better NOW! All while they worked every waking hour.

I respect those folks so much and they are the unsung heroes. I saw multiple people who had coded for the entire weekend - not sleeping saying, I need to sleep I can't read what I typed. I want them to slow down - get it right and build us something that will last for another 10 years, not one weekend.

It's super exciting times but we were always going to be in for a rocky start. There's so many people with different expectations, and different beliefs about how a server should be run, that fracturing would always happen. What I hope more than anything is that the code and binaries (is that the right term?) has wide enough distribution that no matter what may happen, we have a future.

When that is secure, I'll be very happy, and I know our community and our game will make it :)

Until then, there will be teams of people who have never worked together who don't know each other amidst a community up to their eyeballs in drama and internet weirdism
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 23, 2019, 01:07:31 PM
He got trolled by someone on the internet - who would think it?

Let reality sink in - the code while playable needs work. The coders expected it to take 2 or 3 months to optimize it for modern servers. It was a little taste but really better code means less resources to run it.

It could easily get to where you could rent a server for under a $100 a month.

So, the source code is still being optimised and the work on that will be ongoing to get it to run requiring less kit.  i24 optimised is the holy grail.  The sooner I can run it on my home pc the better.

The taste was heavenly.

I can't wait for the full banquet.  The one where the whole community can sit around as 'head of the table.'

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Dev7on on April 23, 2019, 01:18:13 PM
We need to start being fair - the guy hosting it was a truck driver.

He had the money to stand up a server and did so - he is not a lawyer and isn't a server person. There is a reason I said that I wanted to wait until September 1 to start a server up - not that I wouldn't want to beta test it earlier. The magic the community worked on the code and networking side of things is incredible.

Costs of a couple thousand a month could easily be reduced to a couple hundred a month once the code is re-written. It is being re-written, what we got is a small taste and an alpha test. In a couple of months the code could be ported to modern database programs - like LUA and moving to SQL Server 2019 and porting from 32bit to 64bit and opening up memory addressing. I know they were converting to SQL 2010 and then the port to 2019 is easier.

I don't see this as anything but an excited amateur dabbling in running a server and the community freaking out with excitement. It shows the game is still wanted and will be played. We were running in to the coders nightmare - customers and owners screaming we want it better NOW! All while they worked every waking hour.

I respect those folks so much and they are the unsung heroes. I saw multiple people who had coded for the entire weekend - not sleeping saying, I need to sleep I can't read what I typed. I want them to slow down - get it right and build us something that will last for another 10 years, not one weekend.

OMG! THIS IS A SIGN OF RELIEF! I FEEL A LITTLE BETTER NOW. Man, I was freaking out. I couldn't even go to sleep. So....to my understanding it was just a test server?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 23, 2019, 01:27:04 PM
It's super exciting times but we were always going to be in for a rocky start. There's so many people with different expectations, and different beliefs about how a server should be run, that fracturing would always happen. What I hope more than anything is that the code and binaries (is that the right term?) has wide enough distribution that no matter what may happen, we have a future.

When that is secure, I'll be very happy, and I know our community and our game will make it :)

Until then, there will be teams of people who have never worked together who don't know each other amidst a community up to their eyeballs in drama and internet weirdism

1. You have server code for the backbone of the game and its often called a map server. The map server creates the world, movement and powers.
2. You have the binaries or bins that record what you do and call to databases to dictate the map servers reaction.

The two are separate and work together to give you the game. Currently we have:
1. i24 map server code - the original
2. SCoRE server code with modified i24 code and both Bins and Map server.

Now the i24 original code is more stable and causes errors when they put the ScoRE Bins on the default code. What was run this weekend was the i25 code and as you saw it was being bandaided on the fly and went from 200 players in laggy conditions to 3,000 players pretty smooth. However the old code was for 2004 servers and the hardware we have now wasn't even a dream then. If the code is converted to run on modern hardware and database methods it will be extremely cheap to maintain.

You got a taste and you got to see for yourself it will work. Time now is our friend. The code is not gone and people are still working on it - the only thing likely lost was the bandaids applied on the first server to get it going - no villains here - just humans.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on April 23, 2019, 01:31:23 PM
The weekend has shown that a fully working version of coh is very possible.
Saturday and Sunday it performed flawlessly.

I can understand that it has been some very intensive hours for all the poeple working to get it online.
Not the least because they are as excited as us to see the game alive again.

Mistakes happen, we just need to learn from them and take it easy and be friendly to each other, even to those we disagree with.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 23, 2019, 01:31:26 PM
OMG! THIS IS A SIGN OF RELIEF! I FEEL A LITTLE BETTER NOW. Man, I was freaking out. I couldn't even go to sleep. So....to my understanding it was just a test server?

It always was. They were going to wipe everything on Thursday the 27th and implement newer code to streamline it even better. The game is being made better - let the coders and server guys do their thing and it will get sorted.

Honestly it is throwing money away to run the server as inefficient as it was. If you got in early and compared it to how it ran Sunday night - it was hugely different and that is just patching it - not a re-write.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Codewalker on April 23, 2019, 01:44:03 PM
If the code is converted to run on modern hardware and database methods it will be extremely cheap to maintain.

Tbh, I've heard that before, and 6 years later here we are.

It's worth trying but honestly I think the early estimates of reducing costs by an order of magnitude are a bit premature and overly optimisitic. Looking at the code for a big project and getting ideas is one thing, actually implementing them without breaking everything is another, especially for a loose collection of people not familiar with it.

Within a reasonable timeframe I'd expect maybe a 25-30% reduction in cost, most of it just due to better hardware. Running a small server for a handful of people on a single box is already feasible, but if you want to host hundreds or thousands, you're going to need a big setup.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 23, 2019, 02:12:29 PM
I know one person was converting to SQL 2019 directly but figured that it would take 2 months.

Others were finding going to SQL 2010 was easier and they were working on that and then were going to try moving to 2019.

However it happens I expect to see a more streamlined version but as someone above stated the future of this game is in smaller servers where you pay much less but can only host for 100 - 200 people.

I am not sure the donations will cover a $5,000 a month setup. I know once I get one going I am going to pay for the initial setup myself and once I know what the monthly costs are I can then post it on the server website the exact breakdown.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 23, 2019, 02:21:17 PM
I don't like the "Pay 2 Win" vendor.  I don't want to break immersion that way.

Hm well th y could set it where all veteren reward weapons and powers are given to you when your new alt logs in
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Abraxus on April 23, 2019, 02:22:18 PM
This is all much more encouraging than the raging turmoil going on in Reddit, and Discord. 

Thanks for that!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Artillerie on April 23, 2019, 03:49:54 PM
The Titan Network is a calm centre of reason. Such a relief to read through the opinions and information provided here than the alternatives - although i read most of them too... A great deal of thanks to those who run this and the people who add to it.

That being said, people have expressed their disappointment at the less restrained voices being heard in other forums. People giving in to frustration are not to be encouraged but i believe them to be a very small proportion of the community. Given any large group, a certain number will be prone to troublemaking. It is really not worth being upset by this as it is rather inevitable. Not all of them are driven by malice, some of them will be driven by poor impulse control, feeling of powerlessness or emotional problems.

Anyway, i had great fun playing at the weekend and catching up with some old friends. Here's to the next time.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 23, 2019, 03:59:14 PM
Running a small server for a handful of people on a single box is already feasible,

I was getting worried you'd been hit by a bus.  Good to see you post. ;)

Frankly, I only ever played with up to '8' people at a time.  I actually preferred playing the game with my duo-partner.  (Sure, I did random PUGs....and the background chatter and visuals of loads of heroes zipping about it fun to see...)

But a 'small server' for a 'handful of people' (5 was the optimal number for old rig so I never really liked teams bigger than that...) being feasible is music to my ears.  That's all I want.

I'd be quite happy with that right now.  I only want 'solo/local LAN/small server' p2p capacity.

I know it's not my IP, I don't want to rup NC's nose in it.

Quite happy to fly below the radar with inter-connected nodes of 'small' servers that can p2p.  I'd be quite happy running a small bijou server for me and my mate.  CoH small server clusters of people running 'Homer Simpson Home brew' (ie something I can run...myself...) really democratises the CoH experience for the community.  'Something' like Paragon Chat where you have 25-50 regulars would be fine by me.  Intimate. 

In fact, my gut instinct told me that was the next stage of Paragon Chat, a small server that was reverse engineered from the official live server.  Or using that live server code to give Paragon Chat that capability.  But the timeline hinted at being passed over to a new program that had combat 'speak' io.

The '3000' experimental 'test' server was great to taste.  But I always thought it was vulnerable to a take down from a C&D.  Sure, they'll be 'larger communities.'  And they'll probably take the lead in modding it and sheer force of numbers will get mod' tools out for 'us mortals' to play with.

The code is out there now.  But there's still the challenge of making it more efficient, to bundle it up and get a 'human' interface on it so mortals can run a 'home brew' specs.

We've now got 32 core pcs with 16 gig gpus and 32 gigs of ram etc.  SSD 1TB HDs.  Dream specs. 

With the full force of a coh coding community behind it...it's only a matter of time before it comes tumbling down.  I was quite happy with SCORE'S work on i25.  They've done a good job.  I got to play it.  (Or was I dreaming...?)

For 3 days, I felt 14 years younger...

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 23, 2019, 04:08:02 PM
I know one person was converting to SQL 2019 directly but figured that it would take 2 months.

Others were finding going to SQL 2010 was easier and they were working on that and then were going to try moving to 2019.

However it happens I expect to see a more streamlined version but as someone above stated the future of this game is in smaller servers where you pay much less but can only host for 100 - 200 people.

I am not sure the donations will cover a $5,000 a month setup. I know once I get one going I am going to pay for the initial setup myself and once I know what the monthly costs are I can then post it on the server website the exact breakdown.


I think that statement is spot on.

Whilst there will be 3000 strong communities (or larger) as this 'test' server proved.  I think the more logical route is 100-200 smaller server hosting.  I mean, just how many people do we have on our global friends list anyhow? :OOO

100-200 flying about Paragon City is enough to give the illusion of life on a server.  (The early Jack Kirby Universe only had a handful or so of heroes knocking about...certainly less than 20.)  So 100-200 is a CoH heroic universe and then some all by itself.  Enough to get a team going! :P

Between the hardware and tweaking code(?) it seemed the 'test server' was improving all the time and that was over a few days.

It augers well for the future.

Patience. Discipline.  Time.

Azrael.

PS.  $5000 is a lot of money to find every month.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 23, 2019, 04:41:52 PM
This is all much more encouraging than the raging turmoil going on in Reddit, and Discord. 

Thanks for that!

Well I just checked the discord, it appears to be relatively calmed down now. It seems now it is the waiting game...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: silurian on April 23, 2019, 05:13:05 PM
I know one person was converting to SQL 2019 directly but figured that it would take 2 months.

Others were finding going to SQL 2010 was easier and they were working on that and then were going to try moving to 2019.

I don't know how challenging it is, but down the road, wouldn't it be more beneficial to migrate to mySQL if at all possible to lessen the reliance on commercial license software, and further facilitate people being able to run their own home server instances?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Codewalker on April 23, 2019, 05:50:09 PM
PostgreSQL would be my pick if you want comparable stability and reliability to MSSQL. But I bet somebody will do a mysql port at some point because it's so popular for being fast even if it's not super well-designed.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 23, 2019, 05:54:58 PM
I don't know how challenging it is, but down the road, wouldn't it be more beneficial to migrate to mySQL if at all possible to lessen the reliance on commercial license software, and further facilitate people being able to run their own home server instances?

Having a 'home brew for dummies' CoH server that runs on 'my pc' surely has to be the Holy Grail.  Solo/Local LAN/modest server requirements would be the way to go.  We'll see how long that will take.  But for me?  Definitely the 'holy grail' inflection point where the 'gold ring' is scattered to the 'four corners' and the burden of 'the ring' is shared and the legacy fundamentally protected.

That way the game never goes away and the community can enjoy the game on their own terms.  Instead of a corporation or anyone else acting as gate keepers.

The more 'clever' people can create bigger servers with all the mods and trimmings.  And some people like being part of the larger community.  That I understand.

But I'd prefer my more modesty needs and discretion to play under the radar.  Give me the silky smoothness of Paragon Chat with a world/powers/mobs/combat server that can support 1-50 players and I'm happy.

I can't team with any more than 8 players at once anyhow?  I'm more than happy teaming with 'a mate' stress testing alts on a striga warehouse mission.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 23, 2019, 06:20:37 PM
Well I just checked the discord, it appears to be relatively calmed down now. It seems now it is the waiting game...

It's calm but nobody is happy.  Everyone's already given their opinion about the *new* discord server on reddit.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: ukaserex on April 23, 2019, 06:20:51 PM
I'll just add this thought or two.

Prior to the shutdown, honestly, I'd lost interest in the game. I really enjoyed the "marketing" via Wentworth's, as it seemed by selling various IO's or recipes for 1 inf, I could rake in millions and eventually billions. But even that got old. Then, the Incarnate content came out, and it was really something special. It made my level 50 characters really powerful - probably too much so - as I don't think a psi/fire blaster should be able to solo Dreck. But, it sure was fun!

That said, getting to play this weekend...it was all I could do to stop playing and perform various tasks that are now routine without a game to absorb every waking moment of free time. I wasn't really aware that it was just a test run. I think I read it, but it never occurred to me they'd take it down so quickly. I figured if there was a C&D, it would take at least a few weeks before that would occur.

It was super interesting to see names that I remembered from the game, people whom I wouldn't know if I saw them on the street, but for some reason, have a lot of respect for them - simply because they played the game - and most played it on what I would call a "high level". (that's not a 420 reference)

A number of others - what they may have lacked in high level play, they made up for high level character. By that, I mean, they were kind, generous with their time, always willing to help be that last person to join a task force, even if they had to log off. Those were the kinds of people that I encountered more often than not.

Occasionally, there'd be someone who's in game actions were counter-productive (like leaping ahead on Incarnate trials while we try to snipe bombs and fouling the effort because they chose not to read or lost control of their keyboard to a violent kitten or whatever), but those were so few and far between, I had to think really hard to remember a bad experience.

So - no idea who Yuvi is, had never heard of SCoRE, and all the other stuff that's been going on until I saw something on Massively and was able to get my preferred archetype & power-set to level 11 before they pulled the plug. (ice/ice blaster, naturally)

It was a delightful treat for the weekend. My boss doesn't know it, but he's probably grateful they pulled the plug, or I might have called in sick ...for a week.

Whatever happens, I'll remember the excellent sound effects and the resourcefulness it takes to use the enhancements that drop, and combine them and save every bit of inf you can, because you know SO's are darned pricey for a toon that's not subsidized by previous level 50's.

So, thanks to everyone who had a hand in making the weekend - even if you're someone who just played a bit and came up with a clever name and back story! (which I took time to read this time around)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 23, 2019, 06:38:20 PM
Personally, I'm enjoying this new game "City of Drama".
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Abraxus on April 23, 2019, 07:16:10 PM
I like to think that all this turmoil is an indicator of how passionate the community is about this game, and the prospects of playing it again.  However, as we have seen, passions can be misdirected when expectations are not met.  They turn to less constructive actions, like sniping, hurling accusations, doxxing, and blamestorming.  I understand it, but I also hope we can move towards having some trust that now that the genie is out of the bottle, things are moving at relative light-speed compared to where they were before all this started.  I think where that trust starts, is the emergence of a leadership team that takes control, says what they do/does what they say, and doesn't over or under communicate.  What is said has to be relevant, and factual.  Not speculation, not conjecture, and not knee-jerk in nature.  When all that starts happening, we will see the community come together.  But, that's just my .02 of a dollar's worth of prognostication.  :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 23, 2019, 07:45:10 PM
This is what I am considering for a home/small friend type server.

You need a minimum of 2 systems - one for the map server and one for the binaries but this is the cost for a 4 system clustered server.

$800 - $200 each Lenovo Thinkcentre M83 Desktop - Intel i5 3.2GHz (4570) Quad Core CPU - 8GB RAM -128GB SSD
$200 - $49 each HP 10GbE Mellanox ConnectX-2 PCIe 2.0 x8 Low Profile Network Interface Card
$100 - $25 each Mellanox Mellanox passive copper cable, ETH 10GbE, 10Gb/s, SFP+, 2.5m
$140 - Cisco Ws-C3560E-24Td-S Switch - 3560E

I am seriously considering try to set this up so I can play with administering the server and see how many players this could sustain. Believe it or not this is fairly powerful compared to what they were running in 2012 - I might add more ram.

If the code gets more optimized where I can run for under $200 a month renting a server - I won't bother most likely.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Odimodus on April 23, 2019, 07:59:25 PM
No clue about running a server but I'd seriously consider doing a personal setup for myself/family. I've no idea how/where I'd get the server files and whatnot though, I think they closed that link?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 23, 2019, 08:00:18 PM
No clue about running a server but I'd seriously consider doing a personal setup for myself/family. I've no idea how/where I'd get the server files and whatnot though, I think they closed that link?
I think a lot of people have the i24 source but I would wait a bit.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 23, 2019, 08:07:15 PM
What I would like to see:

NCSoft sell yearly server licenses for "Official" rated server for maybe $299 a year. The reason for this is to allow tested updates for stability. Have a Cabal of coders who - Approve - the version for the licensed servers.

This would allow for documentation for installs and ease of support because then the server and coder folks would know what you have if its the licensed version. Trying to mesh helping people with 10,000 different setups could be a nightmare.

 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Garble on April 23, 2019, 08:33:53 PM
Personally, I'm enjoying this new game "City of Drama".

Much like with past updates I feel like there's a lot I'm not understanding.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 23, 2019, 09:02:07 PM
I'll just add this thought or two.

Prior to the shutdown, honestly, I'd lost interest in the game. I really enjoyed the "marketing" via Wentworth's, as it seemed by selling various IO's or recipes for 1 inf, I could rake in millions and eventually billions. But even that got old. Then, the Incarnate content came out, and it was really something special. It made my level 50 characters really powerful - probably too much so - as I don't think a psi/fire blaster should be able to solo Dreck. But, it sure was fun!

That said, getting to play this weekend...it was all I could do to stop playing and perform various tasks that are now routine without a game to absorb every waking moment of free time. I wasn't really aware that it was just a test run. I think I read it, but it never occurred to me they'd take it down so quickly. I figured if there was a C&D, it would take at least a few weeks before that would occur.

It was super interesting to see names that I remembered from the game, people whom I wouldn't know if I saw them on the street, but for some reason, have a lot of respect for them - simply because they played the game - and most played it on what I would call a "high level". (that's not a 420 reference)

A number of others - what they may have lacked in high level play, they made up for high level character. By that, I mean, they were kind, generous with their time, always willing to help be that last person to join a task force, even if they had to log off. Those were the kinds of people that I encountered more often than not.

Occasionally, there'd be someone who's in game actions were counter-productive (like leaping ahead on Incarnate trials while we try to snipe bombs and fouling the effort because they chose not to read or lost control of their keyboard to a violent kitten or whatever), but those were so few and far between, I had to think really hard to remember a bad experience.

So - no idea who Yuvi is, had never heard of SCoRE, and all the other stuff that's been going on until I saw something on Massively and was able to get my preferred archetype & power-set to level 11 before they pulled the plug. (ice/ice blaster, naturally)

It was a delightful treat for the weekend. My boss doesn't know it, but he's probably grateful they pulled the plug, or I might have called in sick ...for a week.

Whatever happens, I'll remember the excellent sound effects and the resourcefulness it takes to use the enhancements that drop, and combine them and save every bit of inf you can, because you know SO's are darned pricey for a toon that's not subsidized by previous level 50's.

So, thanks to everyone who had a hand in making the weekend - even if you're someone who just played a bit and came up with a clever name and back story! (which I took time to read this time around)

City of heroes, once it is in your blood there is no cure.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Abraxus on April 23, 2019, 09:33:37 PM
And, for me at least, there is no substitute.  I haven't played too many games since CoH went offline, and the ones I did try, never generated the excitement I felt playing this game.  They were always poor substitutes for what felt to me, like the real thing.  Now that I have had a pointed reminder of what that felt like, I have completely lost interest in anything else.  That might be stubborn, or narrow minded of me, but that is what I feel, and there's no denying it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 23, 2019, 09:38:26 PM
And, for me at least, there is no substitute.  I haven't played too many games since CoH went offline, and the ones I did try, never generated the excitement I felt playing this game.  They were always poor substitutes for what felt to me, like the real thing.  Now that I have had a pointed reminder of what that felt like, I have completely lost interest in anything else.  That might be stubborn, or narrow minded of me, but that is what I feel, and there's no denying it.


Welcome to the club

Marvel, DC, champions are pale imitations of CoH

WoW that game is too far along I'd feel like I was always catching up on o other players, also I find wow boring

Star wars also boring

Will not play any mmo that is Ncsoft now
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 23, 2019, 09:52:51 PM
Even if the few hours are all we get at least it broke me out of daily agent network rotation on secret world legends. Now if only I could figure why i was doing it in the first place.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 23, 2019, 09:59:26 PM
Even if the few hours are all we get at least it broke me out of daily agent network rotation on secret world legends. Now if only I could figure why i was doing it in the first place.

I do mine for anima shards.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 23, 2019, 10:03:33 PM
Even if the few hours are all we get at least it broke me out of daily agent network rotation on secret world legends. Now if only I could figure why i was doing it in the first place.

Secret world.....knew I forgot one...but then for me that game was forgettable.

City of titans., Ship of heroes, valiance are the three best hopes I have seen for taking over for city of heroes.
But they can't replace CoH in my opinion.  Should CoH private servers finally become reality, I'll still try the successors but I think I know where my heart will be.

Shadowkiss is an in development vampire mmo, that one has my attention as well but we shall see.

Should I get my own server running I may not care about the other games. Especially if I can make new powers and archetypes
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 23, 2019, 10:11:02 PM
One thing about the recent test was the Pay to Win vendor....an ironic name, but one that could give rise to bad rumors about money being transacted

Perhaps calling it The VIP Vendor, or else program an option in to Ms Liberty that you can click on and reclaim the vet reward items like the axe, sands of mu, etc.

Or else set the game so that the vet reward powers are auto given to a new character that first logs in.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Myrmydon on April 23, 2019, 10:14:57 PM
I must say that if we are not getting a full restart of the game, then this definitely has my attention.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 23, 2019, 10:41:37 PM
Much like with past updates I feel like there's a lot I'm not understanding.

The patch notes are poorly written.   And why are they called updates if there is no new content?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 23, 2019, 10:42:44 PM
Secret world.....knew I forgot one...but then for me that game was forgettable.

The music is excellent.  The character animations, not so much.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 23, 2019, 10:43:01 PM
Better yet here is a question for those in the know as it were,

Since we have to kiss the old player database goodbye due to legalities (BOO),  has anyone been able to attempt a restore from sentinel backup and how did it go?  I remember codewalker once expressing concern that restoring some badges may not restore the power or costume piece it was tied to.

Just curious what the latest was about that. If sentinel files can restore archetypes, powers, selections, installed inventions, influence and crafted powers such as th incarnate powers, that should suffice.

Toss the restored alt a rename token a freespec, some tailor tokens and I suspect most players would smile.

If badges NOT linked to costumes and powers can be restored, even better.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 23, 2019, 10:44:28 PM

Perhaps calling it The VIP Vendor, or else program an option in to Ms Liberty that you can click on and reclaim the vet reward items like the axe, sands of mu, etc.


VIP Vendor is a much better name even if the function remains the same.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Shibboleth on April 23, 2019, 10:46:55 PM
Even if the few hours are all we get at least it broke me out of daily agent network rotation on secret world legends. Now if only I could figure why i was doing it in the first place.


I love Secret World but it does not scratch the itch that CoH does.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: VileTerror on April 23, 2019, 10:48:52 PM
I think that what has the biggest impact for me in terms of gameplay which City has done right, while so many others are awful at, is the strength of Controls and Debuffs.  A Controller, Defender, Corruptor, Dominator, and Mastermind feel meaningful and significant in combat because there is a definitely and tangible benefit to laying down status effects.  The only other game where I felt that status effects were even remotely impactful was League of Legends, but that game has a whole host of other problems with it (not least of which is that its devs only care about their precious e-sports nonsense).

Further, I think the reason I wasn't too thrilled with City of Heroes PvP was because all the Control and Debuffs were reduced in effectiveness during PvP.  At least while I was playing, back in the day.  Not sure if that ever changed.

Of course, that's not the only reason CoX was so great, but it's definitely one of the biggest elements as to never being able to find satisfaction in any other MMO for me.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 23, 2019, 10:53:40 PM
I think that what has the biggest impact for me in terms of gameplay which City has done right, while so many others are awful at, is the strength of Controls and Debuffs.  A Controller, Defender, Corruptor, Dominator, and Mastermind feel meaningful and significant in combat because there is a definitely and tangible benefit to laying down status effects.  The only other game where I felt that status effects were even remotely impactful was League of Legends, but that game has a whole host of other problems with it (not least of which is that its devs only care about their precious e-sports nonsense).

Further, I think the reason I wasn't too thrilled with City of Heroes PvP was because all the Control and Debuffs were reduced in effectiveness during PvP.  At least while I was playing, back in the day.  Not sure if that ever changed.

Of course, that's not the only reason CoX was so great, but it's definitely one of the biggest elements as to never being able to find satisfaction in any other MMO for me.

Well pvp was always a bit.....askew in CoH.  The diminishing returns of ish 13 horrified many die hard pvp players as I recall and I think there was a pvp Exodus of sorts. Then came the special pvp inventions which seemed to help.

I preferred Warburg for rep farming or else the arena but that's just me
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 23, 2019, 11:43:08 PM
I must say that if we are not getting a full restart of the game, then this definitely has my attention.

Hard to say what will happen.  Update no later today then 10 pm CST they said.

Personally, I would prefer a big server over lots of little servers.  I have 0 interest playing the game by myself with 5-6 people.   I've played good games that had small populations and it totally killed the experience for me.  Legends of Aria had potential but the fact it only had 60 people on it at a time took all the fun out of it.  As much I enjoy soloing, I don't want to be solo in the world.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 23, 2019, 11:55:14 PM
Hard to say what will happen.  Update no later today then 10 pm CST they said.

Yet another content free update.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 23, 2019, 11:58:30 PM
Hard to say what will happen.  Update no later today then 10 pm CST they said.

Personally, I would prefer a big server over lots of little servers.  I have 0 interest playing the game by myself with 5-6 people.   I've played good games that had small populations and it totally killed the experience for me.  Legends of Aria had potential but the fact it only had 60 people on it at a time took all the fun out of it.  As much I enjoy soloing, I don't want to be solo in the world.


Well big and little servers are relative. Would a server set for 300 players be enough?

Max team size was eight unless forming incarnate leagues or hami raids
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 24, 2019, 12:00:24 AM
Just curious what the latest was about that. If sentinel files can restore archetypes, powers, selections, installed inventions, influence and crafted powers such as th incarnate powers, that should suffice.

The new server would have to be coded in such a way to allow an update from Sentinel. That has not been done in the past and it would have to be specifically written to mesh with whatever version of CoH is running.

So... unlikely unless your private host is a very adept coder... and willing to accept those characters.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 24, 2019, 12:12:37 AM
My plan is to start smaller with 2 systems, then see how many that can host - you see the CoH code was made for lots of smaller servers sharing the load.

So the equipment I had earlier is the final phase where you could get 50+ playing - hence the 10gb network connections internally. I would have to pay a bunch to get 10gb where I live if its even possible.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 24, 2019, 12:14:10 AM

I love Secret World but it does not scratch the itch that CoH does.

The one thing Secret World had over City of was the story. (sorry, just my opinion.) When the story was good, it was good. And when the story was bad it showed. :) Yea, I agree none of the mmos I played ever got me to play as long and often as City of did. For example last Sunday, I played 8-9 hours. In all my other mmos, collectively they didnt even break 4 hours or so.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 24, 2019, 12:26:29 AM
Well pvp was always a bit.....askew in CoH.  The diminishing returns of ish 13 horrified many die hard pvp players as I recall and I think there was a pvp Exodus of sorts. Then came the special pvp inventions which seemed to help.

I preferred Warburg for rep farming or else the arena but that's just me

Hard to say, 300 doesn't sound too bad but you still may see a lot of empty areas.  Don't get me wrong I would take a server with 300 players over NO server.  But I'd prefer to have one like this weekend where no matter where you go you see people.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Shibboleth on April 24, 2019, 12:33:09 AM
The one thing Secret World had over City of was the story. (sorry, just my opinion.) When the story was good, it was good. And when the story was bad it showed. :) Yea, I agree none of the mmos I played ever got me to play as long and often as City of did. For example last Sunday, I played 8-9 hours. In all my other mmos, collectively they didnt even break 4 hours or so.

No disagreement here. Secret World's lore and story is mostly excellent. I just wish they could turn out content faster.

But nothing else remotely feels like CoH. Getting to play this past Sunday was like coming home.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 12:41:00 AM
Hard to say, 300 doesn't sound too bad but you still may see a lot of empty areas.  Don't get me wrong I would take a server with 300 players over NO server.  But I'd prefer to have one like this weekend where no matter where you go you see people.

Well going by the past weekend numbers may not be the most accurate as everyone was OMG COH LIVES
Excitement will drop a bit over time and some servers may be more popular then others. A lot of my pals played on guardian but most of the time for me that server had problems with lag and mapserver that I didn't get on the others.

I figure a server set for 100 to 300 should be more than enough
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 12:42:16 AM
The new server would have to be coded in such a way to allow an update from Sentinel. That has not been done in the past and it would have to be specifically written to mesh with whatever version of CoH is running.

So... unlikely unless your private host is a very adept coder... and willing to accept those characters.


Hm, then the alternative would be to take my sentinel files on by one and manually restore the alts one at a time.......that's fine
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 24, 2019, 12:56:10 AM
Hm well th y could set it where all veteren reward weapons and powers are given to you when your new alt logs in

But the point of the P2W Vendor is that it offers people a choice, and makes the choice as similar to what the game gave us as possible.

Better yet here is a question for those in the know as it were,

Since we have to kiss the old player database goodbye due to legalities (BOO),  has anyone been able to attempt a restore from sentinel backup and how did it go?  I remember codewalker once expressing concern that restoring some badges may not restore the power or costume piece it was tied to.

Just curious what the latest was about that. If sentinel files can restore archetypes, powers, selections, installed inventions, influence and crafted powers such as th incarnate powers, that should suffice.

Toss the restored alt a rename token a freespec, some tailor tokens and I suspect most players would smile.

If badges NOT linked to costumes and powers can be restored, even better.

As far as I know, the tool to import a Sentinel+ file was ignored after Leandro got the character database, since it didn't matter. He mentioned he'd have to find it, so it is promising. And they were obviously able to import characters from the raw database into their server, so some sort of character importing technology does work.

Also, the Senticon tool extracts costumes, so there's that, at least. https://cit.cohtitan.com/senticon/index.php (although an improved version is being worked on)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 24, 2019, 01:09:07 AM
Is this legit?

Quote
The Titan Network is in talks with NCSoft regarding a community-run City of Heroes server. Things are looking positive, so stay strong. We don't have a timeline right now, but we'll provide more updates as soon as we can. #SaveCoH

https://twitter.com/TonyV_CoH/status/1120855527175671808

Also re-tweeted by Leandro.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: DeProgrammer on April 24, 2019, 01:09:32 AM
That's the real TonyV. It's legit!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 24, 2019, 01:10:36 AM
That's the real TonyV. It's legit!

 :o
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 24, 2019, 01:16:32 AM
Just great! Now I'll have no one to hate!!!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Adam Infinity on April 24, 2019, 01:22:37 AM
Are we in a time loop? No timeline, no updates (NDAs forthcoming!) Good luck TonyV, but this seems just like 7 years ago. I love Titan Network, but no faith in NCSoft.

Ironwolf, please invite me when you get up and running
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 24, 2019, 01:23:52 AM
...Aaaaaaaaand the discord has officially imploded.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 01:28:14 AM
...Aaaaaaaaand the discord has officially imploded.

Well th discord is great if there is a server running, but a lot of the people on discord have not impressed me. Way too much emo on it
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 24, 2019, 01:28:38 AM
If we are getting community run servers - I will donate to those servers.

I will pledge $500 right now and happy to make a monthly sum if a patreon is setup.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: CG on April 24, 2019, 01:29:17 AM
Just got an email from the "wake me up thread".

Literally an email I never thought I would get.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Captain Electric on April 24, 2019, 01:30:07 AM
(https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img924/7903/atQSS1.gif)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 24, 2019, 01:32:51 AM
I don't have much faith since we've seen this before, but I'm not doing anything else so why not.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 24, 2019, 01:33:22 AM
https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/23/the-titan-network-is-negotiating-to-open-a-legal-community-run-city-of-heroes-server/
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 24, 2019, 01:33:26 AM
tools.

Need development tools.

If the iron curtain is finally coming down maybe we can get something to uncluster F   the code and actually develop things again?

Costumes? Powersets? Objects? Items?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 24, 2019, 01:34:31 AM
If we are getting community run servers - I will donate to those servers.

I will pledge $500 right now and happy to make a monthly sum if a patreon is setup.

I'll match you on that
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ultimate15 on April 24, 2019, 01:34:36 AM
Also, worth noting that the admin/dev team for the SCORE server has a separate announcement slotted to come in about a half an hour or so.

This is NOT the same announcement as that.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 24, 2019, 01:35:35 AM
Because this one had content?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: nicoliy on April 24, 2019, 01:46:47 AM
https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/23/the-titan-network-is-negotiating-to-open-a-legal-community-run-city-of-heroes-server/

That was not a great article. Did she say the shut down of the last server was due to this? Based on what presented facts?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 01:52:32 AM
Question for you all

The bug Hunter badge. I hated that it was awarded only at the whim of the devs.

That being said, should the badge auto award to any new character that logs into a private server?

Technically all players would be likely to report flaws and bugs thus they are all bug hunters by default......or perhaps setup a story arc where players stomp a bunch of rikti monkeys and get the badge at the end?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: c-0 on April 24, 2019, 01:56:51 AM
That was not a great article. Did she say the shut down of the last server was due to this? Based on what presented facts?

I don't think she said that. If you mean the bit about "made clear why," I think that refers to urging patience and not why it was shut down.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MegaWatt on April 24, 2019, 02:09:10 AM
tools.

Need development tools.

If the iron curtain is finally coming down maybe we can get something to uncluster F   the code and actually develop things again?

Costumes? Powersets? Objects? Items?

the SCORE Base editor with all of the freaking options and no presitege requirement if we promise not to open our base for PvP ? *grabby hands*
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Beltor on April 24, 2019, 02:13:04 AM
That was not a great article. Did she say the shut down of the last server was due to this? Based on what presented facts?
That was an unrelated issue as far as i know.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Kheprera on April 24, 2019, 02:23:19 AM
I'll match you on that

Ditto.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 24, 2019, 02:32:25 AM
The Titan Network crew is certainly a group I'd be willing to financially support.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Wyrm on April 24, 2019, 02:35:15 AM
I'll match you on that
"And my axe!"

...

Well, my money. I'd happily pay to help get things up and running, and to sustain.

Never did get around to leveling anything /axe...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: eabrace on April 24, 2019, 02:39:01 AM
*sigh*

I was just starting to catch up on sleep after this weekend...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: DeProgrammer on April 24, 2019, 02:44:44 AM
Never get into debt you don't know you can pay, Eabrace!  ;)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 24, 2019, 02:46:39 AM
*sigh*

I was just starting to catch up on sleep after this weekend...

Sorry no sleep.  I have crazy conspiracy theory posts to make!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nightraptor on April 24, 2019, 02:49:26 AM
Also, worth noting that the admin/dev team for the SCORE server has a separate announcement slotted to come in about a half an hour or so.

This is NOT the same announcement as that.

Was that for public consumption? And if so what was it (if indeed it has been announced)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 24, 2019, 02:53:10 AM
Was that for public consumption? And if so what was it (if indeed it has been announced)

Discord has teased that announcement for most of the day. 10 PM CST. (Even though we're in DST)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 24, 2019, 02:56:10 AM
Discord has teased that announcement for most of the day. 10 PM CST. (Even though we're in DST)

And the announcement is delayed for 30-45 minutes.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Irish Girl on April 24, 2019, 03:34:10 AM
Hey folks, Cailyn Alaynn here. Don't currently have access to my actual Titan account but wanted to poke in and throw my 2 cents in.

The folks involved in the various Hail Mary efforts, especially those of Revival, City of Titans, Ship of Heroes, etc have nothing to do with the secret server.
None of the money from, say, the CoT kickstarter ever went to a secret CoH server.

These last few days have been extremely exciting, extremely saddening, and everything in between. I'd ask, as a member of this community, that everyone remember to take deep breathes and try to stay patient.

I know everyone's excited, everyones impatient. I'm right there with you all.

I know it's been far too long since I was here, and commenting, and I'm sorry for that. As many of you might imagine...sometimes life gets in the way of passion.
And if the PMs I've been getting in the last few days are anything to go based off of... folks likely have questions for me as well.
As a note, I'm not directly connected to the private server team that was running the shard this weekend. I've gotten a few questions about that too.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Abraxus on April 24, 2019, 03:37:53 AM
When/if a private server comes up, I will be playing on it.  If/when a community server blessed by NCSoft comes up, I will be playing on that.  In any case, I will be playing CoH.  Recriminations for how we got here accomplish nothing.  In actuality, I'm not sure what could be done to satisfy the feeling of moral outrage that some feel about this.  That being the case, I'll be playing CoH...somewhere.  Of that, I feel fairly confident.  My only fear is that the folks carrying around these strong feelings might do things like send a fake C&D to the server owner of the last round.  That kind of thing is what will keep this community struggling.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: eabrace on April 24, 2019, 04:12:49 AM
<modhat>
I'm saying this once.  And this is a blanket warning for everyone.

There have been entirely unfounded rumors floating around for the last week that people were taking money under the guise of other efforts like the successor projects and funneling some of that money to the secret private server so they could play over there.

If you can't source irrefutable, first-hand evidence to back up your claim, then stuff it.

I won't be giving any further warnings on this subject.  And when I ban you for it, I'm not going to give you the courtesy of explaining it because you know better.

We're done with those rumors.
</modhat>
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 24, 2019, 04:17:59 AM
The COH Discord announcement came ...and went.  Nothing new for tonight it seems.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 24, 2019, 04:18:46 AM
From the Discord


Good afternoon, evening, or morning, everyone.

I'd first like to introduce myself - I'm going to be coming onboard as a community relations, in order to give an easier, more transparent communication line with you.

At this time, we have a third party in direct contact with NCsoft. These are real, actual conversations, with the goal of giving us an opportunity for a legal solution. We are working towards that now. We all want to see the future of City of Heroes as a bright one, so we are going to give this one last pass. It's an effort that might be futile, but it isn't one we take lightly.

But as the saying goes: Trust, but Verify - with this effort we are NOT stopping our efforts to provide a private server solution. We are making efforts right now and are getting closer to giving you a more specific timeframe for the release of a server. While negotiations are ongoing, we are absolutely committed to ensuring this game is brought to you in a clear, and open way. We are making efforts to ensure that, if the worst comes to pass, we will not lose our momentum. Please stay tuned for update announcements in regards to either the legal solution, or our open-sourcing.

The code will continue to be provided openly, and will be released via torrents and other solutions in order to ensure that this progress will never be brought back to square one again.

Thank you for your patience.

After this last Sunday, I am willing to give them all the time they need :) They earned that atleast from me :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 04:19:26 AM
After this last Sunday, I am willing to give them all the time they need :) They earned that atleast from me :)

Yeah. Time to just sit back and wait and hope....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 24, 2019, 04:20:18 AM
Yeah. Time to just sit back and wait and hope....

No.  It's time to begin thinking about the future.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 04:22:06 AM
If we are getting community run servers - I will donate to those servers.

I will pledge $500 right now and happy to make a monthly sum if a patreon is setup.

I'll donate to, but I want to see if the deal, if it happens, contains any fine print about NCSoft reserving the right to pull the rug out from under us again.

I just don't trust NCSoft,
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 04:22:59 AM
No.  It's time to begin thinking about the future.

Believe me, I am.  I have been thinking for days about if I can set up my own server, and how I would run it, etc.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 24, 2019, 04:25:47 AM
Tempest Flash is doing a Q&A on the discord channel and one of the code moderators chimed in and said the server is being worked on.  Nothing more than that regarding the server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on April 24, 2019, 04:58:08 AM
If we are getting community run servers - I will donate to those servers.

I will pledge $500 right now and happy to make a monthly sum if a patreon is setup.

I'll gladly pledge that amount too.

BUT, for people not to loose confidence in the latest news between Titan N and NCS things must happen fast because we have all played this wating game before.
This can not drag out especially now when people saw how quickly a working setup can be acheived in one weekend.
I fully support the cooperation with NCsoft and Titan N to have a legal solution to this.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Captain Electric on April 24, 2019, 05:00:44 AM
I support you, Titan Network. Keep doing what you're doing, I'll see you in Paragon City one day.

Until then, forum drama and popcorn.  \0/
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Surelle on April 24, 2019, 05:18:42 AM
Just got an email from the "wake me up thread".

Literally an email I never thought I would get.

Oh, what did it say? 

I just checked my account settings, and apparently I had "allow other members to  email me" NOT checked!  Ahhhh!

I can't even tell what email I registered under originally, and it was many years ago now.  Ugh.  I've been waiting 7 years for that email, and now this.   :P
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Triplash on April 24, 2019, 05:32:15 AM
.....Wow. Just, wow.  :o

I got kinda bummed for a while, and haven't checked in here for like a year or so; then today I decide to stop by and see what's new, and I find out that Stuff's Been Happening! I've been glued to this dang thread all evening! *blink, blink*
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nightraptor on April 24, 2019, 06:08:11 AM
As far as I am concerned, any alleged misconduct or mismanagement by the parties involved with getting CoX back, towards the community has been forgiven and forgotten. I simply do not care. Leave that sort of drama to the self important nobodies that love of that kind of controversy.
The ONLY thing that is important now is how close we are to getting back home.

Speaking of mismanagement though I  am hoping that the particular group of managers that forced the 2012 closure have moved on out of NCSOFT and their replacements are a little bit more flexible.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ironwolf on April 24, 2019, 11:36:06 AM
You know, I think this is my last post here.

We have now got people who have secretly had a server for 6 years keep control of said server and only share it with those they deem worthy.
The same people have lied and misdirected on Reddit and have overthrown the people at Discord. They brook no dissent and everything they do is to maintain power for themselves.

I hear "Community Run Server" bandied about - whose Community? SCoRE and their lackeys? I am happy if the game comes back but other than to donate to keep servers up I am not supporting the lies and cloak and dagger these people seem to revel in.

Please feel free to delete my account here - I am gone.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 12:07:23 PM
You know, I think this is my last post here.

We have now got people who have secretly had a server for 6 years keep control of said server and only share it with those they deem worthy.
The same people have lied and misdirected on Reddit and have overthrown the people at Discord. They brook no dissent and everything they do is to maintain power for themselves.

I hear "Community Run Server" bandied about - whose Community? SCoRE and their lackeys? I am happy if the game comes back but other than to donate to keep servers up I am not supporting the lies and cloak and dagger these people seem to revel in.

Please feel free to delete my account here - I am gone.

Please don't go Ironwolf
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 24, 2019, 12:09:59 PM
You know, I think this is my last post here.

We have now got people who have secretly had a server for 6 years keep control of said server and only share it with those they deem worthy.
The same people have lied and misdirected on Reddit and have overthrown the people at Discord. They brook no dissent and everything they do is to maintain power for themselves.

I hear "Community Run Server" bandied about - whose Community? SCoRE and their lackeys? I am happy if the game comes back but other than to donate to keep servers up I am not supporting the lies and cloak and dagger these people seem to revel in.

Please feel free to delete my account here - I am gone.

I wish you would reconsider your stance.

I don't speak for anyone but myself.

As far as that private server goes? I'll say this: I saw first hand what one troll managed to do to the public server.

One. Troll.

I don't blame them for their cloak and dagger. Not one bit.

Don't bother hating me for my opinion. It's always been unpopular.

Does being excluded like that hurt? Of course.

But look where we are now. Now is what matters.

How else could or would we have gotten to this point?

NcSoft has never listened before, but they are now?

Don't give in to that rift. Stick around.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nightmarer on April 24, 2019, 12:18:23 PM
As much as it pains me see Ironwolf getting so fed up he wants to leave and not to hear from anyone here, I understand him. What I don't understand is why some people still hold that tight to control (now that NCSoft know everything, it can't be that) and why would anyone be so low, despicable and imbecilic to send or hint or whatever that troll exactly did, a fake C&D.

Honestly, I read over and over that a few rotten apples should not tarnish the community and I agree, but we should also acknowledge that the rotten apples we have seem to be rotten to unimaginable levels and perhaps some sort of naming and shaming would not be the worst idea, or maybe it is, I don't know, I just hate havimng that kind of people shielded inside a great community and shattering it from the inside to amuse their own tardiness.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 24, 2019, 12:29:06 PM
Some people are so miserable they only exist to watch the world burn.

Either the world or something someone or a group of people worked hard for.

They are so miserable its the only thing they have going for them, to make others either as miserable or even worse than they are.

That old say, misery loves company.

Those trolls? KOS. 

That's the only way I know how to deal with them, to stop their destruction from spreading.

Kick them, ban them, have everyone on the same table, and as much as it has been used against us in the past, a unified front should be our response to trolls or the would-be destroyers of all the hard work. It's just a joke to them, and I am not laughing.

Make an example: Destruction is NOT wanted here.

We can't let that rift win. We've come too far.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: AmberOfDzu on April 24, 2019, 12:30:32 PM
I second the bunny.

If this had come into the open a few years ago, it might have met with immediate legal attack.

If I had been the one who had technically knowingly received millions' worth of stolen property, I would have been exceedingly careful with and quiet about what I did with it too, even if I believed I was on morally strong ground.

If I was using my personal business to host a private (illegal) server, I would be wary of legal threats too. Trolls can make up pretty convincing stuff. I can't say I wouldn't have panicked either.

If I had connections with the original owner, but wasn't personally involved with such an effort, I'd quietly contact them as well and see if there might be some accommodation possible.

Things change; over time, the IP value of the game has fallen. it's a year older every year, older code, older assets; eventually, the owners will abandon it. Maybe they already have, and will only give us a formal "don't use it" followed by no action at all. Even executive levels of corporations have personnel turn-over. Even if some of the names are the same, not all of them will be.

Maybe they're concerned about legal exposure from personal account information that might have been in the original data stolen. Maybe they would be willing to reach an accommodation just to get enthusiastic scrubbing/purging.

On the Discord team side, this is a crash effort run by the seat of the pants and working off passion, caffeine and volunteer effort; in large part by folks who've never had that much responsibility before in their lives. But they stepped up, like heroes. The may make mistakes, but I understand that.

There aren't any villains here; just good people, trying to do what they can, with what they have, in a trying situation with potential pitfalls the likes of which they've never had to deal with personally before.

Courage doesn't mean you're not afraid - it means you go on anyway.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: navyrayne on April 24, 2019, 12:36:06 PM
Third-ed.

Things are so very much different this time around. So much brighter. So many of our brothers and sisters were able to play again and I can tell you, that being in both discords and hearing the elation and sheer joy from those that got to play again really did a number on my emotions.

We're in a much different spot now than ever before and all these people posting rumors, lies, falsehoods, misstruths, what ever we want to call them are simply far to toxic for us to work with.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on April 24, 2019, 12:49:52 PM
I might not get another chance for this.

Ironwolf, Thank you.

Thank you for all you have done for this community.

Thank you for sticking around for as long as you have.

I wish we could talk. There is so much of my personal life I wish I could share with you.

Just to give you an inkling, that I know how frustrating it's been.

I can tell you are emotionally exhausted. I am too.

So yeah, take some time off.  Just don't leave.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Atlantea on April 24, 2019, 01:06:03 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 24, 2019, 01:09:42 PM
Oh, what did it say? 

I just checked my account settings, and apparently I had "allow other members to  email me" NOT checked!  Ahhhh!

I can't even tell what email I registered under originally, and it was many years ago now.  Ugh.  I've been waiting 7 years for that email, and now this.   :P

When you post in a thread, or click "notify" at the top of one, it should show up in your notifications list, which is accessed through your profile here (um on mobile or I'd give better instructions). So you don't need your email to see what it says.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: navyrayne on April 24, 2019, 01:11:19 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 24, 2019, 01:30:56 PM
Question for you all

The bug Hunter badge. I hated that it was awarded only at the whim of the devs.

That being said, should the badge auto award to any new character that logs into a private server?

Technically all players would be likely to report flaws and bugs thus they are all bug hunters by default......or perhaps setup a story arc where players stomp a bunch of rikti monkeys and get the badge at the end?

I agree that it could stand to be a little wider awarded, maybe to people who do test and find bugs... but I also think it's a bold assumption that "all players" would report bugs.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on April 24, 2019, 01:35:29 PM
You know, I think this is my last post here.

We have now got people who have secretly had a server for 6 years keep control of said server and only share it with those they deem worthy.
The same people have lied and misdirected on Reddit and have overthrown the people at Discord. They brook no dissent and everything they do is to maintain power for themselves.

I hear "Community Run Server" bandied about - whose Community? SCoRE and their lackeys? I am happy if the game comes back but other than to donate to keep servers up I am not supporting the lies and cloak and dagger these people seem to revel in.

Please feel free to delete my account here - I am gone.

Dont delve into the past too much IW. Dont let it press you down.
People have made mistakes in this issue, still make perhaps but we are people. Everyone is different.
Money is evil and can corrupt anyone.

I dont know much about the details in this drama, but I dont care so much personally. Dont let it get to me.

All that matters is that we get a stable future proof version of CoH running.
If we think too much about what is going on behind the curtains in our lives it wont be easy.

You can buy a car or some furniture and without knowing there could be illegal or inhuman stuff going on to provide them to customers.

Kratos says to his son in GoW,
Close your heart to it...

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Abraxus on April 24, 2019, 01:38:02 PM
The way I see it, then was not the time.  If it had become public knowledge back then, it would have been swatted down, and I don't believe we would be where we are today.  On the verge of getting our game back on many potential fronts.  The leverage is more on the side of the players now that the code has been released, and THAT is the main thing that could make the difference with NCSoft this time around.  That, and changes in leadership there over the years to folks who are even less invested in this IP than the original ones were. 

One way or another, we are getting our game back.  It is just a matter of whether it is a private server, or a sanctioned community server, or both.  I will be watching with great interest, but I am not interested in the least in recriminations, or exacting revenge on those who were on the original SCORE server all this time.  If anything, I envy them, but I don't begrudge them something that I myself would have likely done, if I had the chance.  I think most of us would have.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: navyrayne on April 24, 2019, 01:39:21 PM
No one overthrew anyone in discord Ironwolf,  kind of at a loss as to what you're talking about there.

What we need right now is understanding, and not rumor mill and hate. If they were doing everything just to "maintain power" then none of what has happened over the last week would have. Leo wouldn't have put out the code, and helped set up the server in the first place.

We can only hope this turns out good.
-LadyRayneCloud
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Captain Electric on April 24, 2019, 01:43:20 PM
The Discord wasn't overthrown, it self-imploded. Loath him or love him, it's been a total amateur hour over there except for Leandro, while the public server admins have been busy in-fighting, jockeying for power, mired in petty drama, bigotry, and finally went soft at the first sign of a C&D.

The most annoyed I've been this week about SCORE is when I heard Leandro got a few thousand people in before it all blew up. Wow, I would not have let that many people in, personally. NCSoft, y'all. fite me.

Forgive me for being out of the loop lately, and I like Ironwolf a lot, and I think he's leaving exactly when he's needed the most, but I don't care what people like the public server admins think about Leandro or the Titan Network or cloak and dagger or anything else for that matter, and if it can be passed into the Titan Network's capable and well-moderated hands going forward, okay, cool story bro, sounds legit, where's my game already, stop being dramatic, let's do this.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Korbian on April 24, 2019, 01:43:59 PM
That, and changes in leadership there over the years to folks who are even less invested in this IP than the original ones were.

Ooooooh.  I hadn't even thought of that.  If that actually is the case that could totally work in our favor.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RGladden on April 24, 2019, 01:45:29 PM
I might not get another chance for this.

Ironwolf, Thank you.

Thank you for all you have done for this community.

Thank you for sticking around for as long as you have.

I wish we could talk. There is so much of my personal life I wish I could share with you.

Just to give you an inkling, that I know how frustrating it's been.

I can tell you are emotionally exhausted. I am too.

So yeah, take some time off.  Just don't leave.

I second that motion.  Ironwolf, I appreciate everything that you have done for the CoH community.  Please do not leave.  Step back, catch your breath, and try not to let all of this crap get to you.  This is a great community, but like all great communities it isn't perfect.  No matter what you or any of us may do, that will never change.  So don't sweat that part of it.  Thumbs up!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 01:47:25 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 02:05:29 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 24, 2019, 02:06:17 PM
You know, I think this is my last post here.

We have now got people who have secretly had a server for 6 years keep control of said server and only share it with those they deem worthy.
The same people have lied and misdirected on Reddit and have overthrown the people at Discord. They brook no dissent and everything they do is to maintain power for themselves.

I hear "Community Run Server" bandied about - whose Community? SCoRE and their lackeys? I am happy if the game comes back but other than to donate to keep servers up I am not supporting the lies and cloak and dagger these people seem to revel in.

Please feel free to delete my account here - I am gone.

But why leave Titan? Titan Network kept itself entirely separate from SCoRE once the initial recruitment happened. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "overthrown the people at discord." The original discord server was not run by Leandro or SCoRE by any means, and still isn't. And the new reddit discord was made by the new, current reddit mods, who have absolutely nothing to do with SCoRE (otherwise people wouldn't trust them to mod the reddit). Their reasons for making a new server are laid out in their post, and clearly have nothing to do with SCoRE.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 02:07:20 PM
I second that motion.  Ironwolf, I appreciate everything that you have done for the CoH community.  Please do not leave.  Step back, catch your breath, and try not to let all of this crap get to you.  This is a great community, but like all great communities it isn't perfect.  No matter what you or any of us may do, that will never change.  So don't sweat that part of it.  Thumbs up!

Count to ten, Iron Wolf.

The community needs you, Leandro, SCORE, Discord CoH and Tony exploring all options.

It doesn't matter about 'who said what to who.'

What matters is the game is back.  (Thanks to Leandro and SCORE for safeguarding and progressing...)

But the time is now to race to get it into the hands of the many.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 02:08:52 PM
IF Score went public right after the shut down or during the first few years especially when sales talks seemed to be moving along, things would have imploded.

NCsoft very likely would have shut ScoRe down and ceased all talks and we'd be left in the cold.

That being said, it is a shame that they had to be private for so long and discourage rumors about their server, but as the Discord has shown, it only takes ONE TROLL to cause panic, and dare I say....discord.  That is what happened this past week and now they are picking up the pieces.

If NCSoft gets their head out of their corporate assets and sanctions a community with Titan overseeing it, that would be great. However if Score still sticks to their plan to create private server packages even if NCsoft sanctions a community then that is even better.

NCsoft could turn around and shut down a sanctioned community for all we know and we'd be all left in the cold again. 

Also private servers will exist even if a sanctioned community does happen.  I am quite confident that once a "private server for dummies" package is available to download I shall work to get my own server up and running, it may not be overnight, and I would still want to use the sanctioned community but I will still have a private server of my own.

NCSoft is losing this fight at long last and as some have mentioned it is possible that different people are running the show over there and we might get a more reasonable response.

As to the person that swiped the i24 code and player database so that Score could get running and now we all have a chance to return to our city.......

.......THANK YOU.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 02:08:59 PM
But why leave Titan? Titan Network kept itself entirely separate from SCoRE once the initial recruitment happened. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "overthrown the people at discord." The original discord server was not run by Leandro or SCoRE by any means, and still isn't. And the new reddit discord was made by the new, current reddit mods, who have absolutely nothing to do with SCoRE (otherwise people wouldn't trust them to mod the reddit). Their reasons for making a new server are laid out in their post, and clearly have nothing to do with SCoRE.

Aye.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 02:11:15 PM
IF Score went public right after the shut down or during the first few years especially when sales talks seemed to be moving along, things would have imploded.

NCsoft very likely would have shut ScoRe down and ceased all talks and we'd be left in the cold.

That being said, it is a shame that they had to be private for so long and discourage rumors about their server, but as the Discord has shown, it only takes ONE TROLL to cause panic, and dare I say....discord.  That is what happened this past week and now they are picking up the pieces.

If NCSoft gets their head out of their corporate assets and sanctions a community with Titan overseeing it, that would be great. However if Score still sticks to their plan to create private server packages even if NCsoft sanctions a community then that is even better.

NCsoft could turn around and shut down a sanctioned community for all we know and we'd be all left in the cold again. 

Also private servers will exist even if a sanctioned community does happen.

NCSoft is losing this fight at long last and as some have mentioned it is possible that different people are running the show over there and we might get a more reasonable response.

As to the person that swiped the i24 code and player database so that Score could get running and now we all have a chance to return to our city.......

.......THANK YOU.


Good post.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 02:12:22 PM
I might not get another chance for this.

Ironwolf, Thank you.

Thank you for all you have done for this community.

Thank you for sticking around for as long as you have.

I wish we could talk. There is so much of my personal life I wish I could share with you.

Just to give you an inkling, that I know how frustrating it's been.

I can tell you are emotionally exhausted. I am too.

So yeah, take some time off.  Just don't leave.

Yes.

Stick around, Ironwolf.  The community needs you more than ever.

All of us.

We need to stick together on this one.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 24, 2019, 02:15:43 PM
It is time to stop litigating the past.

Weve got enough new drama to fill our time.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 02:16:47 PM
I second the bunny.

If this had come into the open a few years ago, it might have met with immediate legal attack.

If I had been the one who had technically knowingly received millions' worth of stolen property, I would have been exceedingly careful with and quiet about what I did with it too, even if I believed I was on morally strong ground.

If I was using my personal business to host a private (illegal) server, I would be wary of legal threats too. Trolls can make up pretty convincing stuff. I can't say I wouldn't have panicked either.

If I had connections with the original owner, but wasn't personally involved with such an effort, I'd quietly contact them as well and see if there might be some accommodation possible.

Things change; over time, the IP value of the game has fallen. it's a year older every year, older code, older assets; eventually, the owners will abandon it. Maybe they already have, and will only give us a formal "don't use it" followed by no action at all. Even executive levels of corporations have personnel turn-over. Even if some of the names are the same, not all of them will be.

Maybe they're concerned about legal exposure from personal account information that might have been in the original data stolen. Maybe they would be willing to reach an accommodation just to get enthusiastic scrubbing/purging.

On the Discord team side, this is a crash effort run by the seat of the pants and working off passion, caffeine and volunteer effort; in large part by folks who've never had that much responsibility before in their lives. But they stepped up, like heroes. The may make mistakes, but I understand that.

There aren't any villains here; just good people, trying to do what they can, with what they have, in a trying situation with potential pitfalls the likes of which they've never had to deal with personally before.

Courage doesn't mean you're not afraid - it means you go on anyway.

You know what, folks?  Read this.

Amber, that is the must beautiful summing up of the situation.

Poetry.

It's a little bigger than a Haiku...

...but it has all of it's eloquence.

*approves.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: bugzee on April 24, 2019, 02:16:58 PM
Feeling good with all the progress I have seen  :) People are really working around the clock on this. Coming here to the forums for 7 years, and I finally see something happening. Its unreal... Here is hoping for a legalized public server /em Beer
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 02:24:54 PM
Feeling good with all the progress I have seen  :) People are really working around the clock on this. Coming here to the forums for 7 years, and I finally see something happening. Its unreal... Here is hoping for a legalized public server /em Beer

A CoH server is going to happen.

And lots of them.

As the saying goes, 'We can do this the easy way...or the hard way.'

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 24, 2019, 02:27:51 PM
And a new i25 server is up and running.

The problem with community led projects is that many (not all) of those most enthusiastic are also those who are absolutely the wrong people to be in the leadership positions that they put themselves in. No experience in organization, leadership, PR. And no common sense, or very little, which gets overrun by emotion. That's why I left one of the "spiritual successors." So dysfunctional.

That's why I have faith in TonyV and Titan Network. Proven leaderships and level headedness.

I will say this for the Discord group: their coders are amazing.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 24, 2019, 02:32:45 PM
And a new i25 server is up and running.

...

I will say this for the Discord group: their coders are amazing.

They really are.  I've been nothing but impressed with that part of the COH Discord.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 02:42:37 PM
They really are.  I've been nothing but impressed with that part of the COH Discord.

Yes.  Indeed.

'That part of Discord COH' has been most impressive.

Azrael.

PS.  They are getting absolutely hammered at the moment.  Can't register in the forums and therefore create a game account. :D
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 03:15:38 PM
And a new i25 server is up and running.

The problem with community led projects is that many (not all) of those most enthusiastic are also those who are absolutely the wrong people to be in the leadership positions that they put themselves in. No experience in organization, leadership, PR. And no common sense, or very little, which gets overrun by emotion. That's why I left one of the "spiritual successors." So dysfunctional.

That's why I have faith in TonyV and Titan Network. Proven leaderships and level headedness.

I will say this for the Discord group: their coders are amazing.

Their coders have been amazing.  Doing some great stuff patching i25 on the fly.  It was like the 'live' server before the 'take down.'

Tony V.  Aye.  Calm head.  Proven leadership.

And again, with i25 'temp' up again.  Thanks be to Leandro for coming through.  AGAIN!

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: RGladden on April 24, 2019, 03:32:06 PM

I will say this for the Discord group: their coders are amazing.

Yep.  Makes one wonder if they've done this sort of thing before... :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 03:37:49 PM
Yep.  Makes one wonder if they've done this sort of thing before... :)

*smiles.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 05:14:48 PM
may want to check discords latest updates
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: bugzee on April 24, 2019, 05:26:59 PM
Yep, apparently, full i25 binaries have been leaked "just made available for download".
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Codewalker on April 24, 2019, 05:51:48 PM
What do you mean "leaked", weren't they already out? Leandro wouldn't have dumped them on some discord rando's server if he didn't expect them to make copies.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: bugzee on April 24, 2019, 06:03:35 PM
What do you mean "leaked", weren't they already out? Leandro wouldn't have dumped them on some discord rando's server if he didn't expect them to make copies.

Yes sir, you are correct.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 24, 2019, 06:14:07 PM
What do you mean "leaked", weren't they already out? Leandro wouldn't have dumped them on some discord rando's server if he didn't expect them to make copies.

The situation prior to this was that we had the full I-24 source files and an assortment of data files of varying vintage. We also had ***** and an anonymous-but-clearly-knowledgable-person helping sort out some issues that occurred due to the code and the production client being out of sync vintage-wise.

"I-25" was not supposed to be disseminated to the general public. It was put into the hands of people who needed to have it in order to get working server online but otherwise it was (last we heard) intended to be limited in availability. And, truthfully, most everyone doing coding work doesn't want it anyway since they want to get the I-24 code working.

Judging by a note that was included in the leaked archive of "I-25" binaries, whoever leaked it felt he was being Mr. Destroyer Stroyer all over again and saving the world from the evil conspiracy between TonyV and NCSoft to control the server code.

I suppose the one good thing about it is that it's distracted all of the non-coders in the code discussion channel into going somewhere else to shoot the breeze and let the coding discussion be about, well, coding.

Moderator Note:  I don't know if that individual's involvement is widespread public knowledge, and that sort of thing can be looked upon quite unfavorably in the gaming industry, so I removed the name as a precaution for their protection.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 24, 2019, 06:14:32 PM
What do you mean "leaked", weren't they already out? Leandro wouldn't have dumped them on some discord rando's server if he didn't expect them to make copies.

I'm not sure his expectations matter at this point.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Codewalker on April 24, 2019, 06:19:16 PM
Just seems a little silly to me that this is after he gave them the I24 source they asked for, and gave them the I25 server setup they asked for, with the explicit purpose of somebody (anybody) running a server or two while the coders worked on the source. He was advertising on Twitter for somebody to run it, I don't think he was worried about it 'leaking'. And now they think they're sticking it to him by... doing what he wanted and firing up servers.

Eh, whatever. Reason seems to have gone out the window lately anyway so I'm not gonna worry about it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vella on April 24, 2019, 06:22:16 PM
Do I have to download the files again if I already have them from the first test server?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 24, 2019, 06:34:00 PM
Just seems a little silly to me that this is after he gave them the I24 source they asked for, and gave them the I25 server setup they asked for, with the explicit purpose of somebody (anybody) running a server or two while the coders worked on the source. He was advertising on Twitter for somebody to run it, I don't think he was worried about it 'leaking'. And now they think they're sticking it to him by... doing what he wanted and firing up servers.

Eh, whatever. Reason seems to have gone out the window lately anyway so I'm not gonna worry about it.

Let anyone believe whatever they want to as long as it drains the drama swamp.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 06:37:26 PM
Do I have to download the files again if I already have them from the first test server?

You may need to register your game account again at that site after that tequila should be ready and just revalidate the files
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Codewalker on April 24, 2019, 06:40:21 PM
Let anyone believe whatever they want to as long as it drains the drama swamp.

I'm all for that. If they're busy leveling alts maybe they'll chill out for a while lol.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 06:51:51 PM
I'm not sure his expectations matter at this point.

"There will soon be a restructure of administration and moderation to align with current interests - that being getting this code open sourced and out for production. Our goal is to eventually end up with a server-in-a-box solution for you all, and we are dedicated to that goal."

From Discord/CoH.

I agree with those sentiments.  Getting it open sourced and ending up with a 'server-in-a-box' solution for all allows us all to run it discreetly.

I'm pleased to hear they are dedicated to that goal.

If Tony V and NC come to an agreement that allows Titan Network to be the community home for CoH?  All well and good.

However, I'm more reassured by the Discord/CoH statement that work towards democratizing CoH continues regardless.

How long that takes is another thing.  But the 'truth' is now out there.

It's frustrating being a non-coder.  We can't do much more than play test or 'cheerlead' from the sidelines.

Personally, I just like to understand what is going on aside from my wishes for a 'home brew' distro that is Homer proof.

It's a good game.  I just want it's legacy preserved for the community who loved the game so much.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 06:54:03 PM
Just seems a little silly to me that this is after he gave them the I24 source they asked for, and gave them the I25 server setup they asked for, with the explicit purpose of somebody (anybody) running a server or two while the coders worked on the source. He was advertising on Twitter for somebody to run it, I don't think he was worried about it 'leaking'. And now they think they're sticking it to him by... doing what he wanted and firing up servers.

Eh, whatever. Reason seems to have gone out the window lately anyway so I'm not gonna worry about it.

Meh.  Human nature.  You can drive 10,000 miles to see a woman and she'll still walk out on you saying HER sanity was compromised...

(Azrael, what are you going on about...)

*Don't ask.

Azrael.

PS.  Back on topic?

1.  Dev' leaking CoH for perservation.  Hero status.
2.  SCORE guarding that legacy took guts, courage and hardwork.  Whilst presumbly holding down day jobs.
3.  Test server up and running, twice?  Well done to the CoH community for piling on and stepping up.

...and....

"There will soon be a restructure of administration and moderation to align with current interests - that being getting this code open sourced and out for production. Our goal is to eventually end up with a server-in-a-box solution for you all, and we are dedicated to that goal."

Break the ring and sent the shattered shards to the four corners so the CoH community can bear the burden.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Codewalker on April 24, 2019, 06:57:41 PM
If Tony V and NC come to an agreement that allows Titan Network to be the community home for CoH?  All well and good.

As I've seen memed a few times lately, "Why not both?"

The genie is out of the bottle as far as third party servers, and it's not going back. That was a given the second the source code was published -- only a matter of time.

If Tony can work out a deal to get an officially blessed community server, especially if it comes with a wink-and-a-nod agreement to leave third party servers alone and free from C&D threat, that's pretty much the ideal world right there.

If the deal doesn't work out, it's a bit of a loss for having a cohesive community, but the servers will still be out there.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 07:10:02 PM
As I've seen memed a few times lately, "Why not both?"

The genie is out of the bottle as far as third party servers, and it's not going back. That was a given the second the source code was published -- only a matter of time.

If Tony can work out a deal to get an officially blessed community server, especially if it comes with a wink-and-a-nod agreement to leave third party servers alone and free from C&D threat, that's pretty much the ideal world right there.

If the deal doesn't work out, it's a bit of a loss for having a cohesive community, but the servers will still be out there.

You know, Codewalker...when my Mum (god bless her...) offers me desert and offers me a choice?  My answer is...?

'Yes please."  :D

So yeah, why not both? :)

Totally.  Cake and eat it?  Nom, nom, nom.  *Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.  Say no more, squire! I'd be delighted if Tony can pull what you say off.  It's a win/win.  This is a chance for NC (and their new management?) to think about community relations and what they mean.  We can have an official and substantial community here at Titan and you'll have those 'unbroken' shards with 200 players clustered about here and there.

Regardless of if the talks work out or not.  The genie is out the bottle as you say.  Again, thanks to Leandro for putting the files out there for the test server and for the i24 to be worked on. 

I think you'll have clusters of communities.  It's already started.  SCORE presumably still have their own plans.  Tony is in talks to get us a home here.  And Discord/CoH are doing a fine job booting up not 1 but the 2nd 'test' server.  (Again, THANKS to Leandro's help.) 

Meanwhile, coders are racing against time to get i24 into something that we can 'all have' regardless of what NC decided to do.  The power is no longer in their hands.  They don't have the ring.  And to be honest with you?  I don't think that is such a bad thing.  Rather than 'just' one community that can be hit by a bus (see NC's shutdown of 80-100 thousand players...) we will have substantial servers and some less so.  The community can all, eventually, run servers and preserve the game against bus attacks.

Unbroken Shard i25 becomes the communities story.  They can tell it how they might.  There's the AE to create content.  Look at Matt Miller's final interview and piece together some Battallion content.  Create a zone with a Moonbase.  SCORE (I'm sure they hold their own counsel) could recruit Demonhunter to create new maps for i25 unbroken.  And use AE ot create missions for it.  Look at the Wharf that Leandro and others finished.  Beautiful...just needs a story and some mobs.

We're at the nexus.  I always believed in Tony here at Titan when there was no where else to go.  And I always believed, as night follows day, that SCORE would deliver.

We owe Tony, the dev' leak and SCORE a debt.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 24, 2019, 07:10:15 PM
Just seems a little silly to me that this is after he gave them the I24 source they asked for, and gave them the I25 server setup they asked for, with the explicit purpose of somebody (anybody) running a server or two while the coders worked on the source. He was advertising on Twitter for somebody to run it, I don't think he was worried about it 'leaking'. And now they think they're sticking it to him by... doing what he wanted and firing up servers.

Eh, whatever. Reason seems to have gone out the window lately anyway so I'm not gonna worry about it.


Out the window, all over the sidewalk and into the sewer system. The conduct of much of the community is disheartening and undeserved.   And people talk about how the community healed itself miraculously over the last few days,  but I just see savagery and unquenched entitlement with an irrational dose of trollish bloodlust for Leandro and SCoRE.

"We're all heroes."  I think the SCoRE server revealed something about the community. There's no caste system in game,  but there do exist more recognizable super groups, like the Freedom Phalanx.  No one could join Statesman on the Freedom Phalanx, but I think the players saw themselves an equal.   Likewise,  the SCoRE server managed to emerge due to recognition,  but many players couldn't join it, they were excluded.  And that shattered this illusion of community and enraged many,  which maybe isn't so surprising given the genre's foundation and appeal is primarily wish fulfillment. The venom as well as the entitlement may be unfounded and irrational,  but it is there. 

Some loudly raged,  many just watched and only few condemned.  "We're all heroes".  I don't think the community gets to say that any more. That's the genie that doesn't get to be put back into the bottle.  [size=78%][/size]Maybe (hopefully) Tony  is successful, but things will never be as good as they were.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 07:11:27 PM
Meh.  Human nature.  You can drive 10,000 miles to see a woman and she'll still walk out on you saying HER sanity was compromised...

(Azrael, what are you going on about...)

*Don't ask.

Azrael.

PS.  Back on topic?

1.  Dev' leaking CoH for perservation.  Hero status.
2.  SCORE guarding that legacy took guts, courage and hardwork.  Whilst presumbly holding down day jobs.
3.  Test server up and running, twice?  Well done to the CoH community for piling on and stepping up.

...and....

"There will soon be a restructure of administration and moderation to align with current interests - that being getting this code open sourced and out for production. Our goal is to eventually end up with a server-in-a-box solution for you all, and we are dedicated to that goal."

Break the ring and sent the shattered shards to the four corners so the CoH community can bear the burden.

How about a new badge: Anonymous Unsung Hero  badge text: Dedicated to the preserver of the Source

But as has been stated the ideal is Ncsoft to "bless us" with their consent for a community server, which they may give to save face in light of the fact that private servers shall be seeded across the internet ala sword art online
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 07:22:13 PM
How about a new badge: Anonymous Unsung Hero  badge text: Dedicated to the preserver of the Source

But as has been stated the ideal is Ncsoft to "bless us" with their consent for a community server, which they may give to save face in light of the fact that private servers shall be seeded across the internet ala sword art online


Amen to Two badges.  One for the Dev' leak.  One for Score.  Well said, Sin'.  And that's the thing.  Without both of those?  We have NOTHING.  Those raging they didn't get their entitlement can scream from the sidelines.  It's not easy to get on the cross.  As the truck driver (who did) but got spooked proved.  If I get badge creating tools in the home brew (hopefully....) then I'll create those two badges.

But the community is now with leverage.

Perhaps NC can do some face saving.  But, it's up to them.  We can do it the easy way...or the hard way.  Says the Genie.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: AmberOfDzu on April 24, 2019, 07:25:49 PM
Amen to Two badges.  One for the Dev' leak.  One for Score.  Well said, Sin'.  And that's the thing.  Without both of those?  We have NOTHING.  Those raging they didn't get their entitlement can scream from the sidelines.  It's not easy to get on the cross.  As the truck driver (who did) but got spooked proved.  If I get badge creating tools in the home brew (hopefully....) then I'll create those two badges.

But the community is now with leverage.

Perhaps NC can do some face saving.  But, it's up to them.  We can do it the easy way...or the hard way.  Says the Genie.

Azrael.

^ Agreed. We have some heroes. They may be imperfect in some ways, but are well worthy of our recognition and deserved of honors.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Surelle on April 24, 2019, 07:27:18 PM
As I've seen memed a few times lately, "Why not both?"

The genie is out of the bottle as far as third party servers, and it's not going back. That was a given the second the source code was published -- only a matter of time.

If Tony can work out a deal to get an officially blessed community server, especially if it comes with a wink-and-a-nod agreement to leave third party servers alone and free from C&D threat, that's pretty much the ideal world right there.

If the deal doesn't work out, it's a bit of a loss for having a cohesive community, but the servers will still be out there.

Agreed.

And if things fall through with NCsoft, then everybody else can feel a little less bad about running a private server or playing on one.  At that point:  Hey....we tried.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 07:27:49 PM

Out the window, all over the sidewalk and into the sewer system. The conduct of much of the community is disheartening and undeserved.   And people talk about how the community healed itself miraculously over the last few days,  but I just see savagery and unquenched entitlement with an irrational dose of trollish bloodlust for Leandro and SCoRE.

Er.  Well.  What can you say?  'Savagery and unquenched entitlement' indeed.  Not pretty.  Human nature at its most ugly.

They weren't taking the risks.  They didn't do the work to preserve it.

They're lucky.  We're all lucky.

We thought game dead.  It's a beautiful thing that it isn't...dead.  It's a-live.

Worth stepping back and thinking about that.

Again, CoH is in safe hands.  Even better?  It's now in more hands.

We get to be passionate about it.  We get to believe. 

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 07:32:04 PM
Amen to Two badges.  One for the Dev' leak.  One for Score.  Well said, Sin'.  And that's the thing.  Without both of those?  We have NOTHING.  Those raging they didn't get their entitlement can scream from the sidelines.  It's not easy to get on the cross.  As the truck driver (who did) but got spooked proved.  If I get badge creating tools in the home brew (hopefully....) then I'll create those two badges.

But the community is now with leverage.

Perhaps NC can do some face saving.  But, it's up to them.  We can do it the easy way...or the hard way.  Says the Genie.

Azrael.

To be honest wh n word of the super secret server was confirmed last week I was angry for about five minutes as I wanted to play for years.

Then rational thought returned and I was glad word leaked as it may lead to a more or less public return of our city.

So all the whiners on the internet really need to sit back and realize that if this leaked soon after shutdo n Ncsoft would have likely crushed it

Back then wasn't the time, now it is time
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 07:34:19 PM
Amen to Two badges.  One for the Dev' leak.  One for Score.  Well said, Sin'.  And that's the thing.  Without both of those?  We have NOTHING.  Those raging they didn't get their entitlement can scream from the sidelines.  It's not easy to get on the cross.  As the truck driver (who did) but got spooked proved.  If I get badge creating tools in the home brew (hopefully....) then I'll create those two badges.

But the community is now with leverage.

Perhaps NC can do some face saving.  But, it's up to them.  We can do it the easy way...or the hard way.  Says the Genie.

Azrael.

If the home brew doesn't have admin tools for those that want to tweak things and experiment, that would be disappointing. But then again if tools can be obtained later or from a polite request to leandro that is fine too
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 07:35:03 PM
^ Agreed. We have some heroes. They may be imperfect in some ways, but are well worthy of our recognition and deserved of honors.

I think so.  I know it to be true.  They're certainly my heroes.  I've been 'rooting' for them for the last 6 years.

Amber, it's hard for me, as a guy, to admit that I'm 'imperfect' (it's true folks...sorry to disappoint you all.)  All our heroes are flawed.  We have to take the 'tree' out of our own eyes.  Not issue death threats to the guy that gave us the code we never dared dream of.

That's what makes them interesting.  That makes this last week interesting.  This is the story of the CoH community.  Issue 25 will be ours to write.

But I wouldn't trade Tony, Leandro, Codewalker and SCORE for anything.  They did what they had to do, 'Is our action not just?'  You'd have to be hard faced to grudge dying people a chance to play on CoH...the testing and time it took to get things going again.

We got Icon, Paragon Chat and a safe guarded legacy (and who knows what else SCORE have planned...)

What more do we want?  (Well, apart from that 'homer home brew CoH solo/Lan/server....)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 07:42:44 PM
If the home brew doesn't have admin tools for those that want to tweak things and experiment, that would be disappointing. But then again if tools can be obtained later or from a polite request to leandro that is fine too

Yeah.  I think we'll get a stable i24 first.

Zone, map and mission creators beyond the bounds of AE?  Who knows.  Those will come in time.  We've already seen the excellent work of Leandro (and others) to finish the Wharf map.  Truly excellent.  And a Statesman statue no less.  The re-modelled Warzone?

Who knows what SCORE have planned.  And that's part of the fun.  Secrets can be fun.  They're called surprised.  But I'm not going to death threat Santa for keeping my presents secret...yeesh...

Demonhunter probably has loads of other maps on the go.  Any reason why SCORE can't issue an 'alt-world' issue 25 release?  I remember Leandro doing an excellent post on how he'd yank the incarnate stuff and raise the level cap and make the progression via Brickstown etc more in line with the original game.  Why not?  That's the thing.  i24 'stable' is just going to be a starting point.

When(?) the mod tools come for the zones, missions, maps, mobs etc...each community will compete to create their own issue 25.

As somebody once said, 'It's only code.'

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 07:58:11 PM
Yeah.  I think we'll get a stable i24 first.

Zone, map and mission creators beyond the bounds of AE?  Who knows.  Those will come in time.  We've already seen the excellent work of Leandro (and others) to finish the Wharf map.  Truly excellent.  And a Statesman statue no less.  The re-modelled Warzone?

Who knows what SCORE have planned.  And that's part of the fun.  Secrets can be fun.  They're called surprised.  But I'm not going to death threat Santa for keeping my presents secret...yeesh...

Demonhunter probably has loads of other maps on the go.  Any reason why SCORE can't issue an 'alt-world' issue 25 release?  I remember Leandro doing an excellent post on how he'd yank the incarnate stuff and raise the level cap and make the progression via Brickstown etc more in line with the original game.  Why not?  That's the thing.  i24 'stable' is just going to be a starting point.

When(?) the mod tools come for the zones, missions, maps, mobs etc...each community will compete to create their own issue 25.

As somebody once said, 'It's only code.'

Azrael.

Well for new content we have the AE for people to get creative with

Remove the incarnate powers? I kinda liked them but perhaps instead, at least on the server that i envision running, activate the 4 incarnate powers we didn't get. We have their names and while to my knowledge there is no lore data for them, there names are kind of easy to guess at what they could be.

After that...perhaps have the level cap move up and make stronger trials and missions?

The beautiful thing of multiple private servers could be the variety that springs up
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: battlebooze on April 24, 2019, 08:30:14 PM
It's been six years since I've posted.  :gonk: I can't believe the news that I  just read.  I don't even know what to say, I had given up totally, as I'm sure many had.

I still have episode 24 installed on my PC. I just didn't have the heart to remove it.

I'm just posting because I'm in shock.

Personally I'd be happy with a ep 24 re-release or a 25 upgrade, I don't really care either way. The idea of anything is a miracle in my eyes. I'm not even mad that a server has been up for so long in secret.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Seethe on April 24, 2019, 08:38:20 PM
As I've seen memed a few times lately, "Why not both?"


Exactly.

I'm rooting for both as options.  If Titan hosted a community server, that fits the need for all the folks who like doing content like Hamidon Raids, unscheduled TFs, or even just random PUGs.  I'm sure there's a bunch of folks who work odd hours or have small kids that planning a group to hop on and doing something scheduled at 8 PM sharp on a Friday just doesn't work.

On the other hand, I'm sure there are a number of groups of players that have 25-50 players that are excited taking on all the content together in a private environment as well.  Or even small groups of 5-8 players who just like to play every day together.

Oh, and hi Codewalker! 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MegaWatt on April 24, 2019, 08:45:32 PM
i desperately want to keepi25....the base editor is amazeing - i have CARS in a base garage and before i managed to break my base i was working on a hanger for aPraetorian fighter jet
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 09:01:50 PM
i desperately want to keepi25....the base editor is amazeing - i have CARS in a base garage and before i managed to break my base i was working on a hanger for aPraetorian fighter jet

I have yet to test that base editor but judging by your post, no prestige needed to build a base?

But you still need to unlock base badges?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: AlphaFerret on April 24, 2019, 09:20:32 PM
I was out of town over the weekend, so i was unable to participate in the test server mayhem.  This is the most exciting news in years.  Even better if NCsoft isn't lurking around every corner to shut down efforts.  It took a while, but it looks live Paragon lives!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 09:28:50 PM
I'm starting to see some character and SG names that appear to be for the purpose of.... colorfully expressing player feelings about Ncsoft.....

It may be wise to not poke that hornet's nest.   Just play the game everyone, that is the best way to thumb our noses at ncsoft


Note that to self for future private server...adjust name block list to include Ncsoft fo character and groups
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 24, 2019, 09:33:42 PM
Just to whet y'alls appetites - This screenie is from one of the coders who has been making the most progress, logged into her(?) own home server.

(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/568510088038449172/570710780081602570/unknown.png)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 09:41:16 PM
Delightful
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 24, 2019, 09:53:32 PM
i desperately want to keepi25....the base editor is amazeing - i have CARS in a base garage and before i managed to break my base i was working on a hanger for aPraetorian fighter jet

You had one day to play CoH, and you spent it base building?

I'm not being judgmental. I'm sure if it wasn't for the offline character builder, there would have been people spending all day making character costumes.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 10:22:46 PM
Just to whet y'alls appetites - This screenie is from one of the coders who has been making the most progress, logged into her(?) own home server.

(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/568510088038449172/570710780081602570/unknown.png)

Ty, Slickriptide!

WHOOO-HOOOOOOO!  Sound!

Here we go...?????  Home brew....?

Home server coming up.......????!?!??!

*slightly excited.  *Teased am I.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 10:27:55 PM
Exactly.

I'm rooting for both as options.  If Titan hosted a community server, that fits the need for all the folks who like doing content like Hamidon Raids, unscheduled TFs, or even just random PUGs.  I'm sure there's a bunch of folks who work odd hours or have small kids that planning a group to hop on and doing something scheduled at 8 PM sharp on a Friday just doesn't work.

On the other hand, I'm sure there are a number of groups of players that have 25-50 players that are excited taking on all the content together in a private environment as well.  Or even small groups of 5-8 players who just like to play every day together.

Oh, and hi Codewalker!

Aye.  We can have teh cake and eat it?  Small, medium and large slices of cake.

Alt-Worlds, alt-universes.  Shards.  Clusters.  Parallel CoH universes.

Teams of 8.  25-50 on a server.  3000+.

'Both.'

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 10:33:14 PM
Well for new content we have the AE for people to get creative with

Remove the incarnate powers? I kinda liked them but perhaps instead, at least on the server that i envision running, activate the 4 incarnate powers we didn't get. We have their names and while to my knowledge there is no lore data for them, there names are kind of easy to guess at what they could be.

After that...perhaps have the level cap move up and make stronger trials and missions?

The beautiful thing of multiple private servers could be the variety that springs up

Can the four inc' powers be activated.  Intriguing.

Level cap.  The reason I wanted to it to go to L60 (But no higher....) was that I felt we never had the chance to play our epics enough before bumping into L50.

If the Incarnate stuff came at L60 fair enough.  But I'd have still rather it have come using the standard interface.  Not so much that it's incarnate powers and all....but I just didn't get the 'grind interface' micro management windows.  They could have just had a standard interface with the powers having slots....

Ie.  Above Epics.  With the option of 6 slotting.  It was the interface more than anything else.  The concpet of being uber was fine.  And the content seemed good.

Yeah.  I guess my gripe was the interface.  I'd have just liked Incarnate to be like Super-Epic with a ten level cap raising of missions to take you to L60.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 10:40:08 PM
Can the four inc' powers be activated.  Intriguing.

Level cap.  The reason I wanted to it to go to L60 (But no higher....) was that I felt we never had the chance to play our epics enough before bumping into L50.

If the Incarnate stuff came at L60 fair enough.  But I'd have still rather it have come using the standard interface.  Not so much that it's incarnate powers and all....but I just didn't get the 'grind interface' micro management windows.  They could have just had a standard interface with the powers having slots....

Ie.  Above Epics.  With the option of 6 slotting.  It was the interface more than anything else.  The concpet of being uber was fine.  And the content seemed good.

Yeah.  I guess my gripe was the interface.  I'd have just liked Incarnate to be like Super-Epic with a ten level cap raising of missions to take you to L60.

Azrael.

Hmm activate the 4 lost incarnate powers, obtain them, slot all incarnate powers with tier 3 or 4.....eight level power shift.....hmmmmm
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 24, 2019, 10:46:31 PM
Hmm activate the 4 lost incarnate powers, obtain them, slot all incarnate powers with tier 3 or 4.....eight level power shift.....hmmmmm

Well, it's all up for grabs now.

It will be interesting to see how different parts of the CoH universe(S) develop the game.

Some may want vanilla.  Some might want an i25 written by the community elders according to cannon lore.  Some people will create their alt-world content.

The Holy Grail is the democratisation to have the tools to do so in all our hands. 

Some people might want to kick back and just enjoy a large community here at titan.  Some may want a more 'stealthy' under the radar approach with a few mates on 8 man teams on some private server.

I never really got into the AE.  It might be cool to create some content...  I only ever 'played' with it.  I never quite got the hand of it.

But it would be nice to have an AE+ that could put contacts, story and mission arcs into the the game itself.  One day...?

Zone creators, map creators....new archetypes, new power sets. 

I think when the community really gets ahold of this we'll see just how far this can go. 

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 10:58:08 PM
Agreed. Different server, different flavor.

I have many ideas in mind for tuning up some powers and archetypes and some ideas for new epics as well as the four lost incarnate powers
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 24, 2019, 11:00:59 PM

"We're all heroes".  I don't think the community gets to say that any more.


Time and loss allowed us to romanticize the community... but there were ALWAYS toxic entitled jerks in "the CoH Community" just like in every game "community".  The difference was the NUMBER of toxic entitled jerks compared to helpful considerate devoted players who wanted to help others.  The absolute number of toxic entitlement is always large, but ignoring them generally neuters them.  Embrace those who help and ignore those who wallow in butthurt and drama.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 24, 2019, 11:07:16 PM
I may be the only person who wants this - A progression server.

If I went to the trouble to host a server, I'd reset the story (not the game mechanics) back to Issue 1, complete with the Calvin Scott Task Force. Then I'd operate it similarly to the way that Everquest runs its progression servers, where there's some milestone content that triggers the next phase of the progression.

The problem is that the devs deliberately chose to avoid creating any more "milestone" content like Calvin Scott after that because it was too much work, so it might involve creating a bunch of custom milestones to fill in the gaps. I should think on that a bit (because, hey, that sounds EASY, right? Right? LOL).
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: P51mus on April 24, 2019, 11:19:48 PM
Time and loss allowed us to romanticize the community... but there were ALWAYS toxic entitled jerks in "the CoH Community" just like in every game "community".  The difference was the NUMBER of toxic entitled jerks compared to helpful considerate devoted players who wanted to help others.  The absolute number of toxic entitlement is always large, but ignoring them generally neuters them.  Embrace those who help and ignore those who wallow in butthurt and drama.

Yeah, and there were also toxic people unrelated to the CoH community joining in and stoking the fires.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 11:22:15 PM
I may be the only person who wants this - A progression server.

If I went to the trouble to host a server, I'd reset the story (not the game mechanics) back to Issue 1, complete with the Calvin Scott Task Force. Then I'd operate it similarly to the way that Everquest runs its progression servers, where there's some milestone content that triggers the next phase of the progression.

The problem is that the devs deliberately chose to avoid creating any more "milestone" content like Calvin Scott after that because it was too much work, so it might involve creating a bunch of custom milestones to fill in the gaps. I should think on that a bit (because, hey, that sounds EASY, right? Right? LOL).

The problem with rolling back that far is you risk the removal of enhancement diversification......though some may enjoy that....

Rolling pvp back to pre issue 13.....tempting.....but may just make sure the arena doesn't have the diminishing returns....

Convert bloody bay and siren to hazard zones and leave pvp fo Warburg, rv and arena?......hmmmm

The AE is the easy way to generate new content
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Captain Electric on April 24, 2019, 11:26:44 PM
He's not talking about rolling back the mechanics, just the story-related content. Wouldn't be my thing personally but progression servers are popular with other MMOs.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 11:27:38 PM
Yeah, and there were also toxic people unrelated to the CoH community joining in and stoking the fires.

Reminds me of what Kay said in Men in Black

A person is smart, people are dumb, panicky danderous animals and you know it. 1500 years ago everybody knew the earth was th center of the universe, 500years ago everybody knew the earth was flat, and 15 minutes ago you knew that humans were alone on this planet.

Well given how th CoH community reacted over the past week.....it is hard to argue against his opinion of people as large groups.

Ive lost track of all the movies, concerts or protests I have been too that started out well and one or two jerks screw it up for all
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 11:28:22 PM
He's not talking about rolling back the mechanics, just the story-related content. Wouldn't be my thing personally but progression servers are popular with other MMOs.

Ah, my error I misread
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 24, 2019, 11:37:55 PM
There's been rapid progress with i25 binaries - seems there's a server-in-a-box virtual machine out there now.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Captain Electric on April 24, 2019, 11:46:55 PM
Mechanics-wise, I can already tell you what the big deal is going to be once people get their fill of i24 and i25 servers and want something more exotic: a server setup balanced completely around PvP.

PvP never worked out for CoH and the reason was simple: the game was designed around overpowered, superhero wish fulfillment -- and that worked out just fine for PvE, because mobs don't complain on game forums about overpowered heroes and villains kicking their butts.

And PvErs didn't have much of a problem with some power sets being more powerful than others for the same reason that comic book readers don't write angry letters complaining that Superman is more powerful than Green Arrow. City of Heroes -- and comic book inspired games in general -- exist in a special niche that gets away with imbalance in a way that no other game could, because that type of comic book universe directly translates into imbalance.

PvPers can't thrive in any of that, to be realistic. The needs of PvE in a super hero game pretty much mean that you'd have to overlay a completely alternate set of mechanics onto the PvP zones and enhancements, and when resources get tight, all of that is gonna start to break. Hats off to them for trying, but that plan was doomed from the start.

A server that's balanced around PvP from the ground up neatly solves those problems, with the one expense being that it breaks the super hero theme (any world with superpowers will be a noticeably imbalanced world, thus you have your Supermen and your Green Arrows). Which is not an expense I'd expect those PvPers to mourn over very much.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 24, 2019, 11:56:39 PM
Mechanics-wise, I can already tell you what the big deal is going to be once people get their fill of i24 and i25 servers and want something more exotic: a server setup balanced completely around PvP.

PvP never worked out for CoH and the reason was simple: the game was designed around overpowered, superhero wish fulfillment -- and that worked out just fine for PvE, because mobs don't complain on game forums about overpowered heroes and villains kicking their butts.

And PvErs didn't have much of a problem with some power sets being more powerful than others for the same reason that comic book readers don't write angry letters complaining that Superman is more powerful than Green Arrow. City of Heroes -- and comic book inspired games in general -- exist in a special niche that gets away with imbalance in a way that no other game could, because that type of comic book universe directly translates into imbalance.

PvPers can't thrive in any of that, to be realistic. The needs of PvE in a super hero game pretty much mean that you'd have to overlay a completely alternate set of mechanics onto the PvP zones and enhancements, and when resources get tight, all of that is gonna start to break. Hats off to them for trying, but that plan was doomed from the start.

A server that's balanced around PvP from the ground up neatly solves those problems, with the one expense being that it breaks the super hero theme (any world with superpowers will be a noticeably imbalanced world, thus you have your Supermen and your Green Arrows). Which is not an expense I'd expect those PvPers to mourn over very much.

Hmm perhaps a redesigned arena system
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Alteran on April 25, 2019, 12:46:45 AM
I may be the only person who wants this - A progression server.

If I went to the trouble to host a server, I'd reset the story (not the game mechanics) back to Issue 1, complete with the Calvin Scott Task Force. Then I'd operate it similarly to the way that Everquest runs its progression servers, where there's some milestone content that triggers the next phase of the progression.

The problem is that the devs deliberately chose to avoid creating any more "milestone" content like Calvin Scott after that because it was too much work, so it might involve creating a bunch of custom milestones to fill in the gaps. I should think on that a bit (because, hey, that sounds EASY, right? Right? LOL).

I would absolutely love this. My wife was not into PC gaming while the game was live and my daughter was too young.  It would be amazing to go through the history with them the same way I did.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Surelle on April 25, 2019, 01:17:28 AM
Exactly.

I'm rooting for both as options.  If Titan hosted a community server, that fits the need for all the folks who like doing content like Hamidon Raids, unscheduled TFs, or even just random PUGs.  I'm sure there's a bunch of folks who work odd hours or have small kids that planning a group to hop on and doing something scheduled at 8 PM sharp on a Friday just doesn't work.

On the other hand, I'm sure there are a number of groups of players that have 25-50 players that are excited taking on all the content together in a private environment as well.  Or even small groups of 5-8 players who just like to play every day together.

Oh, and hi Codewalker!

I would trust the security of the server and website much more from CoH Titan (there wouldn't be malware and key loggers injected into the code, and there would be safe, secure payment methods for donations to keep the server running) than I would from outsiders.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Surelle on April 25, 2019, 01:28:25 AM
Just to whet y'alls appetites - This screenie is from one of the coders who has been making the most progress, logged into her(?) own home server.


I wonder if it's Arcana?    ;)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 25, 2019, 01:54:28 AM
I may be the only person who wants this - A progression server.

If I went to the trouble to host a server, I'd reset the story (not the game mechanics) back to Issue 1, complete with the Calvin Scott Task Force. Then I'd operate it similarly to the way that Everquest runs its progression servers, where there's some milestone content that triggers the next phase of the progression.

The problem is that the devs deliberately chose to avoid creating any more "milestone" content like Calvin Scott after that because it was too much work, so it might involve creating a bunch of custom milestones to fill in the gaps. I should think on that a bit (because, hey, that sounds EASY, right? Right? LOL).

These days the EQ TLP's just unlock content every 12 weeks.  I think they found it was a better way to go about it then milestone releases.  That way everyone kind of knows how long they can enjoy the current expansion.  I think the voting and milestone ones ended up being rushed through so fast the more casual players couldn't enjoy it.  So you could always go the same route with X amount of weeks.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 25, 2019, 01:58:06 AM
Can some please tell what happened today? Because I am at a compete loss. I read Iron Wolf is/did leave/ going to leave. Then I read something about drama. Like I have wrote I am at a complete loss. sorry all :(
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 25, 2019, 02:18:36 AM
Can some please tell what happened today? Because I am at a compete loss. I read Iron Wolf is/did leave/ going to leave. Then I read something about drama. Like I have wrote I am at a complete loss. sorry all :(

Oh, I am not sure about any of that.  I know there was a ton of Drama yesterday in the CoH Discord because people were upset they couldn't play and the day before that caused Reddit to split off and make their own discord.  But as for Iron Wolf leaving or such I am not sure about that, was that on this forum?

EDIT: Just read the post.  I am also sad to see Iron Wolf go - he did a lot for the community.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: wufenstein on April 25, 2019, 02:22:09 AM
We finally got the thing we've all been dreaming of for the last 6 years and it's tearing the community apart. :(
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Brigadine on April 25, 2019, 03:28:50 AM
Oh, I am not sure about any of that.  I know there was a ton of Drama yesterday in the CoH Discord because people were upset they couldn't play and the day before that caused Reddit to split off and make their own discord.  But as for Iron Wolf leaving or such I am not sure about that, was that on this forum?

EDIT: Just read the post.  I am also sad to see Iron Wolf go - he did a lot for the community.
What on earth happened? What post? Where?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Dev7on on April 25, 2019, 03:44:20 AM
It will boil down eventually. I'm not worrying about all of this either. When stuff like this happens we do get very emotional because we're still passionate to the game that we all love. Do you guys remember when NCsoft used the City of Heroes IP on Master X Master and how emotional we got? That's why I said all of this will eventually boil down some day. It will take some time. To be honest, for the people who were/are threatning Leandro. I would like for them to come out and have a sincere apology, taking responsibility, and own up to their actions. If they do that I'm willing to forgive them believe it or not because life is too short. Like Tony V said: "you just can't kill this community." If they continue to be jerks so be it! Move on! That's my 2 cents. Thank you. 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: bugzee on April 25, 2019, 04:15:15 AM
It sure is lonely all by myself... I'm rooting for a Titan Network server so that we can get lots of players. But still, I'm happy  ;D
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 25, 2019, 04:32:25 AM
What on earth happened? What post? Where?

He just left a post a few pages back saying he likely won't be returning here.  And aside from possibly donating to help a future legit server that he is more or less lost too much of his trust in the community.  He didn't elaborate beyond that.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: P51mus on April 25, 2019, 05:00:22 AM
It sounded to me like he was listening to too many conspiracy theories.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Auroxis on April 25, 2019, 05:36:03 AM
Can't blame Ironwolf for distrusting Leandro after the past few days. I too would prefer playing on a different server than Leandro's but time will tell if that's a viable option.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on April 25, 2019, 06:27:27 AM
How do progression servers work? It sounds to me like either way they're set up, people who come in late miss the start, is that right?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on April 25, 2019, 06:50:29 AM
Can't blame Ironwolf for distrusting Leandro after the past few days. I too would prefer playing on a different server than Leandro's but time will tell if that's a viable option.

I dont know the whole history, but Leandro must have been one of the people who got this ball rolling in the first place.
So whatever mistakes he has made or how genuine he has been to the public we should still be thankful because without him we would not have CoH as it stands today.
We all have a dog burried somwhere, no one is perfect :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Auroxis on April 25, 2019, 08:33:59 AM
I dont know the whole history, but Leandro must have been one of the people who got this ball rolling in the first place.
So whatever mistakes he has made or how genuine he has been to the public we should still be thankful because without him we would not have CoH as it stands today.
We all have a dog burried somwhere, no one is perfect :)

He is, he got the ball rolling 6 years ago. Problem is that he's been keeping tight control over it and has shown almost no willingness to back off and let other people take over (the first weekend he did let up a bit, we got a 2k people server). The main reason we'll have other servers in the near future is due to leaks getting out rather than just the work Leandro's done and released.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 25, 2019, 09:21:18 AM
He is, he got the ball rolling 6 years ago. Problem is that he's been keeping tight control over it and has shown almost no willingness to back off and let other people take over (the first weekend he did let up a bit, we got a 2k people server). The main reason we'll have other servers in the near future is due to leaks getting out rather than just the work Leandro's done and released.

The server is up right now.  I am pretty sure Leo helped get this one up and running as well.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Auroxis on April 25, 2019, 09:26:07 AM
The server is up right now.  I am pretty sure Leo helped get this one up and running as well.

His server, yes. Once he got demoted for boosting people to 50 he went his own way instead of giving all the tools to the original group.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 25, 2019, 09:38:32 AM
His server, yes. Once he got demoted for boosting people to 50 he went his own way instead of giving all the tools to the original group.

I am just happy to be playing with as many people as possible.  It doesn't really matter to me who runs the server.  I don't expect people to trust Leo, mostly because you shouldn't trust anyone you don't know.  I trust Leo exactly as much as I trusted the original group and the group to come.   Which is not at all, because I don't know any of them.  But the i25 codes are out there and according to the announcements in the Discord server, they will have their own server up soon.  On top of that, there is literally nothing else I can do to play the game.  I am not really in a position to ask anyone of anything when it comes to playing COH.

I don't expect Ironwolf or anyone here to trust Leo, and if you feel he has wronged you I don't expect anyone to forgive him.  All I know is I was able to play tonight and Leo helped make it happen.  None of the drama and the other stuff really matters to me.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 25, 2019, 10:28:40 AM
I may be the only person who wants this - A progression server.

If I went to the trouble to host a server, I'd reset the story (not the game mechanics) back to Issue 1, complete with the Calvin Scott Task Force. Then I'd operate it similarly to the way that Everquest runs its progression servers, where there's some milestone content that triggers the next phase of the progression.

The problem is that the devs deliberately chose to avoid creating any more "milestone" content like Calvin Scott after that because it was too much work, so it might involve creating a bunch of custom milestones to fill in the gaps. I should think on that a bit (because, hey, that sounds EASY, right? Right? LOL).


So, I proposed something akin to this in- game.... for your consideration: 


Timestreams.WHAT? 

Yes, timestreams. Every game eventually encounters a storyline evolution that affects the world (Matrix Online did it almost monthly, some games like Everquest released retro servers that started the world over) as did City of Heroes. 

Consider some major impacts to zones and storylines:
Timestream 1 - Launch day/Conclusion of First Rikti Invasion/Rebuilding (issue 0 - Issue 7)
Timestream 1.5 - Faultline Dam rupture (Faultline renovated) (Issue 8-9) [minor change, technically players below 14 couldn't get in]
Timestream 2 - Rikti Second Invasion (crashsite transformed into warzone) (Issue 10 - 17)
Timestream 3 - Praetorians fully introduced (players can start as praetorians with release of going rogue, praetorian players encounter primal npcs) (Issue 18 - Issue 20)
Timestream 4 - the coming storm (Galaxy city destroyed, can only visit as an Echo, major characters moved to other zones, e.g. BSB, knowledge of praetoria reflected in certain missions) (Issue 18-21.5)
Timestream 5 = The death of statesman (Statesman retconned out of most storylines, including his TF) (SSA #1.5 - SSA #2)
Timestream 5.5 - Dark Astoria revamp (Mot has been freed! Can visit an Echo of Dark Astoria) (Issue 22)

City of Heroes already incorporated time travel to visit different times (such as Cimerora) as well as Dimensional Travel to visit different places (such as the Shadow Shard), but if your character started after one of those really significant timestream events, then your character was never necessarily privy to those prior experiences.  With the implementation of phasing technologies in conjunction with the Ouroboros storyline, it would have been fantastic (imho) to be able to switch between major timestreams.

Implementation Concept Part 1:Consider this -- you roll a new toon and choose Hero, Villain or Praetorian, then a timestream.* You choose Praetorian and then have the option to begin in your earliest timestream (Timestream 3) or have the option to start in a later timestream (discretely covered with a spoiler warning or an ambiguous title so as not to possibly ruin the experience for a new player).* You choose Hero and have then have the option to start in any of the time streams.

Implementation Concept part 2:You officially transition through timestreams when you complete select mission storylines or reach certain levels.  E.g., you could enter old fautline up through level 14, but level 15 would trigger the transition to timestream 1.5.

Implementation Concept part 3:Just like with mission doors, party members synchronize to a timestream appropriate to the mission assigned by the team leader for the duration of the mission/involvement with team.  If a trigger mission occurs, player could be warned and prompted if they want to transition to new timestream.

Implementation Concept part 4:Although you could travel through time using the crystal of ice and flame, you could re-attune to an older timestream using it as well.


Edit to fix formatting
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 25, 2019, 10:55:13 AM
I may be the only person who wants this - A progression server.

If I went to the trouble to host a server, I'd reset the story (not the game mechanics) back to Issue 1, complete with the Calvin Scott Task Force. Then I'd operate it similarly to the way that Everquest runs its progression servers, where there's some milestone content that triggers the next phase of the progression.

The problem is that the devs deliberately chose to avoid creating any more "milestone" content like Calvin Scott after that because it was too much work, so it might involve creating a bunch of custom milestones to fill in the gaps. I should think on that a bit (because, hey, that sounds EASY, right? Right? LOL).

You're not the only one that wants that.  I noted that happened with Everquest.

A 'progression' server.  I'd like to play the game at launch.  Then go through all the issues. 

Slickriptide has volunteered to do the 'milestone' AE arcs between server progressions. :D  Put me down for your server, Slick.

It would be cool to go from pre-i4 mechanics to E' Diversification.  To see the introduction of zones, mechanics, the market.  24 issues of 'story' in terms of narrative, zones, powersets and mechanics added over time.

Be nice to have it set up so you can 'progress' through the progressive issues just as it originally happened.  Especially for those that never got the chance.

I wasn't quite there at launch but I think I came in before issue 3 and the Kheldians.  I'd like to experience Pre-issue 4 again and issues 0,1, 2 and 3...

Good idea.  Somebody might make it happen, right Slickriptide? :D

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 25, 2019, 10:59:18 AM

So, I proposed something akin to this in- game.... for your consideration: 



Edit to fix formatting

Hmmm.  You've put a bit of thought into that.  *Provokes ideas.  No reason that somebody won't be able to to that someday.

AE missions arcs based upon your timestream transitions?  A 'TF' to go from one phase of issues to the next?

I'd certainly like a progression server so I could enjoy the game as it was released each issue and patched with new features.  It's just another way of enjoying the original game again.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 25, 2019, 11:00:15 AM
The server is up right now.  I am pretty sure Leo helped get this one up and running as well.

Yes, he did.  :)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 25, 2019, 11:19:30 AM
therain's idea sounds great to me, highly preferable to all the talk of issue locked servers and progression servers. Only problem would be balancing rewards but I'm sure a reasonable solution could be found. Well only problem apart from someone having to code all that.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 25, 2019, 12:16:19 PM
How do progression servers work? It sounds to me like either way they're set up, people who come in late miss the start, is that right?

Yes, pretty much. If you were willing to turn your world into a whole lot of spaghetti-content you could theoretically use the phasing technology to give every individual charactet its own progression but that approach would work poorly in a lightly populated server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Abraxus on April 25, 2019, 01:34:26 PM
Preface: I know this does not describe the majority of our community, but there sure are some dissenting elements that are so much louder than most to whom it very definitely applies.

It is nothing short of amazing how quickly we have gone from "I am so happy to be playing again, it brought a tear to my eye", to "you know, this is fine, but I want my CoH THIS way, and it would be better". 

Between that, and the continued recriminations of the past, it's truly a wonder things are still moving forward at all.  I have to give credit to the majority of the community that is doing all of this for pure love of the game, because all of this work sure as hell isn't putting dinner on the table for their families/loved ones.  They have regular jobs during the days to contend with as well.  This is a totally volunteer effort. 

So before we begin pontificating about how things could be SO much better, how about we enjoy what we have for a bit, and let the organization solidify to the point where we can relax about the present, before we insist on knowing what comes next, and how soon it will be?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: bugzee on April 25, 2019, 01:48:59 PM
All I know is, I am happy that the game is back and I can't wait to play with you all again. Just excited to look ahead and not be sad about the lost time.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Brigadine on April 25, 2019, 01:56:49 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 25, 2019, 02:28:35 PM
I'm thrilled with what we have and will happily play i24 or 25 til the alts come home. But given that people seem to want all these options (I've marveled over the years at how many active people on these forums seem not to have played since ed), I'd rather them be centrally available rather than fragmenting what will likely be a small community too much.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: CG on April 25, 2019, 02:34:58 PM
Gonna be honest, there were times on the weekend I wasn't sure things weren't going to implode.

People seem to be settling in.  Coders are sharing what they have and what they know.  I25 binaries have been released.  Moderation seems to have improved.  Communication has definitely  improved.  The SCORE server is back up and running.

I hope Ironwolf has a couple of days to mull it over and comes back.  He's going to need something to do in his retirement and by the time August comes around, there should be an improved server for him to run!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: SilverAgeFan on April 25, 2019, 03:00:19 PM
Preface: I know this does not describe the majority of our community, but there sure are some dissenting elements that are so much louder than most to whom it very definitely applies.

It is nothing short of amazing how quickly we have gone from "I am so happy to be playing again, it brought a tear to my eye", to "you know, this is fine, but I want my CoH THIS way, and it would be better". 

Between that, and the continued recriminations of the past, it's truly a wonder things are still moving forward at all.  I have to give credit to the majority of the community that is doing all of this for pure love of the game, because all of this work sure as hell isn't putting dinner on the table for their families/loved ones.  They have regular jobs during the days to contend with as well.  This is a totally volunteer effort. 

So before we begin pontificating about how things could be SO much better, how about we enjoy what we have for a bit, and let the organization solidify to the point where we can relax about the present, before we insist on knowing what comes next, and how soon it will be?

I'm very happy to be playing again. I'm trying to keep reasonable with my expectations. Instead of insisting as to *exactly* what should be on my pizza, I'm being clear at least to myself, what my boundaries are.

I'll take i24, i25, progression, something with balanced post i25 development (I'd love to contribute model and animation content TBH--that's another conversation, though).

I'd LIKE to somehow have access to all the DLC powers and vet perks that I had, even if it means re-earning them via some mechanic similar to the P2W vendors.

I'd also like an environment that has more than enough players to run end game content, TFs, monster hunts, iTrials, etc. One that is supportive of casual to moderate RP. One where I can play with a few old friends hopefully and have the opportunity to meet more.

What I don't want though is a willy nilly server that throws balance and moderate paced play to the wind for insta-50 boosting, no agro cap, pre ED, or PvP prioritized balance. I don't begrudge anyone who wants that. I never quite fit in on Freedom. I understand that some of these things have significant appeal to portions of our community. They just don't appeal to me.

I also don't want a server that becomes a nonsensical playground, up to the dadaist whims of the administrators, where player models are swapped with GMs and cars and everything becomes a silly lulz-fest. It's just not what appeals to me. But again, to each their own.

I do want to give a moment to acknowledge the crazy, overwhelming enthusiasm we've seen with the test server. I have no idea how many people are trying to run or create multiple accounts. But anecdotally, in game, a large portion of the accounts logged in are one person to one account.

We had OVER 3100 people on last night at peak. SCORE logged over 10,000 accounts created in 2 hours when Torchbearer was announced. People want to play this game. Many of them will match with your play preferences. It's really cool that each of us have certainly never met a MAJORITY of the people logging in to play currently. Some are brand new to the game entirely.

So yeah, some people are being vocal about their specific desires and sounding a little bit exclusionary. And this can create an air of schism and exclusion. But the reality is there is a lot of excitement and participation happening right now within the game space of CoH. This is a good thing.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Surelle on April 25, 2019, 03:47:44 PM
Silver, I agree with you.

I'm most interested in just playing CoX the way it was at the shutdown.  The current i25 test content doesn't seem *that* deviated from the former live game we know and loved, so that's fine, too.

However, the reason I never played emus before (besides the malware, security risks, poor server performance, drama and sudden shutdowns) was because they're hacked to heck and back, full of dumb changes like what you described.

There are plenty of other games with TL servers for people who want that experience, or someone can feel free to download what CoX code there now is in the wild and make their own server if they want to hack the game apart or change it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 25, 2019, 04:25:19 PM
Silver, I agree with you.

I'm most interested in just playing CoX the way it was at the shutdown.  The current i25 test content doesn't seem *that* deviated from the former live game we know and loved, so that's fine, too.

However, the reason I never played emus before (besides the malware, security risks, poor server performance, drama and sudden shutdowns) was because they're hacked to heck and back, full of dumb changes like what you described.

There are plenty of other games with TL servers for people who want that experience, or someone can feel free to download what CoX code there now is in the wild and make their own server if they want to hack the game apart or change it.

The current i25 version doesn't bother me as it appears to have everything at shut down and then some.

getting an i24 only version is fine to.

As to progression and being able to play past issues/events......perhaps there is a way.... perhaps a special portal somewhere that will take you to a special ECHO zone that time warps you back to the past to partake of said events.....

Also a question for those in the know: Super Speed.  i have yet to try it on the server but I am presuming that it is not upgraded to allow running up walls, correct?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Auroxis on April 25, 2019, 04:36:52 PM
Apparently Leandro doesn't have an admin position in Torchbearer, he's there as a tech advisor.

This puts my mind at ease a bit.

Sources:

https://score.savecoh.com/index.php/topic,105.0.html (https://score.savecoh.com/index.php/topic,105.0.html)

(https://i.postimg.cc/gjX61Kkr/1556205651117.png)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 25, 2019, 04:44:46 PM
Superspeed is the same. But as/cj/occasional raptor pack hit is always effective.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 25, 2019, 06:06:27 PM
Apparently Leandro doesn't have an admin position in Torchbearer, he's there as a tech advisor.

This puts my mind at ease a bit.

Sources:

https://score.savecoh.com/index.php/topic,105.0.html (https://score.savecoh.com/index.php/topic,105.0.html)

(https://i.postimg.cc/gjX61Kkr/1556205651117.png)

Ultimately, this should give Leo more peace of mind.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 25, 2019, 07:36:31 PM
Superspeed is the same. But as/cj/occasional raptor pack hit is always effective.

Hmm I wonder, would it be the power or outdoor maps that would have to be updated to make super speed capable of running up walls like it should
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: SilverAgeFan on April 25, 2019, 08:01:28 PM
Hmm I wonder, would it be the power or outdoor maps that would have to be updated to make super speed capable of running up walls like it should

I recall significant discussions with BABs back on the original forums about the challenges of making this work for the game, including how view fields are rotated, etc. to make the power functional. IIRC, there was a round of internal experimentation by the original official dev team. (But I could be wrong)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 25, 2019, 08:30:17 PM
I recall significant discussions with BABs back on the original forums about the challenges of making this work for the game, including how view fields are rotated, etc. to make the power functional. IIRC, there was a round of internal experimentation by the original official dev team. (But I could be wrong)

Hm, okay.......an idea......perhaps while on outdoor maps with Super Speed turned on you can phase through walls, something that the Flash can do.  Indoor missions would not have this and neither would PVP
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Golden Aurora on April 25, 2019, 09:16:28 PM
Just realize if each person donated a dollar who played, it would be paid for like 3 times over. Lol
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Feign on April 25, 2019, 10:02:33 PM
As usual, it seems I'm late to find out, but thankfully it looks like the only thing I missed was confusion and anxiety.
I for one hyped about this.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 25, 2019, 11:24:37 PM
"We're all heroes".
As i have repeatedly tried to remind the community, even back when the game was running officially, some of us are villains.

Personally, I really hope TonyV wins the day, because this is a problem desperately in need of a monetary solution; anyone running a "public" server (farm) is going to need funds to support it. And I'd hope for a mutli-server solution, because I don't think Freedom, Pinnacle, Virtue, and all the other servers are going to play nicely together long-term.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 25, 2019, 11:34:19 PM
As i have repeatedly tried to remind the community, even back when the game was running officially, some of us are villains.

Personally, I really hope TonyV wins the day, because this is a problem desperately in need of a monetary solution; anyone running a "public" server (farm) is going to need funds to support it. And I'd hope for a mutli-server solution, because I don't think Freedom, Pinnacle, Virtue, and all the other servers are going to play nicely together long-term.

I want TonyV to win as well but multiple private servers is also good. Granted they will eventually differ from each other as admins alter things to their specifications and some may be liked more then others.

The main trick is the cost of money for hardware and bandwidth.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 25, 2019, 11:56:32 PM
As i have repeatedly tried to remind the community, even back when the game was running officially, some of us are villains.

Personally, I really hope TonyV wins the day, because this is a problem desperately in need of a monetary solution; anyone running a "public" server (farm) is going to need funds to support it. And I'd hope for a mutli-server solution, because I don't think Freedom, Pinnacle, Virtue, and all the other servers are going to play nicely together long-term.

I agree I would happily donate to help keep the servers up.  But until we get the okay I don't want to put the server in jeopardy.  But I don't think its remotely fair for the server host to have to pay all that upkeep themselves.  Let's hope the talks go well, I have faith that TonyV will do everything he can to make it a possibility.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Feign on April 26, 2019, 01:48:22 AM
As i have repeatedly tried to remind the community, even back when the game was running officially, some of us are villains.
Actually, watching the drama around SCoRE, it seems to have really shown what degree of lawfulness each of the users here have personally.
Some are mad at the group for possibly stealing code (even if it's from an organization that is arguably evil.)
Some are mad that the group kept the server from the greater community (and mostly from them personally.)
Some see progress for science, secrecy and laws be damned (they did what they had to do, after all.)
And some see another bell toll on the inevitable demise of NCS and are filled with a dark (but widely sympathized) glee.
I also find it interesting how these reactions don't necessarily line up with how we were in-game.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 26, 2019, 03:57:19 AM
Actually, watching the drama around SCoRE, it seems to have really shown what degree of lawfulness each of the users here have personally.
Some are mad at the group for possibly stealing code (even if it's from an organization that is arguably evil.)
Some are mad that the group kept the server from the greater community (and mostly from them personally.)
Some see progress for science, secrecy and laws be damned (they did what they had to do, after all.)
And some see another bell toll on the inevitable demise of NCS and are filled with a dark (but widely sympathized) glee.
I also find it interesting how these reactions don't necessarily line up with how we were in-game.
Astute and poetic-good observations.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 26, 2019, 06:25:24 AM
Imagine a server set up just for PvP and all the PvPers can find a home.

Far from us.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 26, 2019, 06:35:30 AM
Imagine a server set up just for PvP and all the PvPers can find a home.

Far from us.

Be nice.  PvPers are people too.  ;D

The stereotypical ones trash talk you after a defeat.  The good ones say, "wanna see my build"?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 26, 2019, 06:36:54 AM
As i have repeatedly tried to remind the community, even back when the game was running officially, some of us are villains.
Every villain is a hero of their own tale :p
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 26, 2019, 09:35:26 AM
I just finished reading the consolidated patch notes for "i25" and, I must say, if I had to chose, I'd rather play "i25" then a perfectly re-created "i24."

It just fixes so many things. And while I would't agree with all the ways they handled no longer having a real-money or auction-house economy... for the most part, it's perfectly fine.

And while I haven't tried it, people who've been using i25's revamped Base-Builder have only raved about it.

If any group wants to have an i24 server, they'd be better off with i25 and just reverting or removing a few things they'd do differently to make it more like i24 rather than take i24 and making all the fixes already done in i25. IMO.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 26, 2019, 10:02:19 AM
Actually, watching the drama around SCoRE, it seems to have really shown what degree of lawfulness each of the users here have personally.
Some are mad at the group for possibly stealing code (even if it's from an organization that is arguably evil.)
Some are mad that the group kept the server from the greater community (and mostly from them personally.)
Some see progress for science, secrecy and laws be damned (they did what they had to do, after all.)
And some see another bell toll on the inevitable demise of NCS and are filled with a dark (but widely sympathized) glee.
I also find it interesting how these reactions don't necessarily line up with how we were in-game.

People don't 'line' up.  Elementary.

...and you missed a few. ;)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Xringhitter on April 26, 2019, 10:07:02 AM
(sweeps cobwebs n dust away from costume closet).....2909 days since I updated badges....would be nice to hit em again
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 26, 2019, 10:10:47 AM
I just finished reading the consolidated patch notes for "i25" and, I must say, if I had to chose, I'd rather play "i25" then a perfectly re-created "i24."

It just fixes so many things. And while I would't agree with all the ways they handled no longer having a real-money or auction-house economy... for the most part, it's perfectly fine.

And while I haven't tried it, people who've been using i25's revamped Base-Builder have only raved about it.

If any group wants to have an i24 server, they'd be better off with i25 and just reverting or removing a few things they'd do differently to make it more like i24 rather than take i24 and making all the fixes already done in i25. IMO.

Well, now the 'cat is out the bag' if Leandro or SCORE want to run a server with issue 25 and it's continued development, I'd be happy with that.

I think SCORE have shown good judgement in the releases of ICON, Paragon Chat (the SG base is superb work and points to how they would reverse engineer the rest of the game.)

It was 'taking time' and they 'kept it a secret' both things I won't condemn them for.

The 'work' they've done so far shows good judgement and common sense.

That doesn't mean the community can't enjoy or have 'as per shutdown' i23.  (Sorry, i24 which wasn't officially released?  So it isn't 'official' either...mere beta...the wider community didn't have that either due to the hand of 'god' or NC Soft.)  i24 nearly made it...but thanks to the preservation work of SCORE we have it.  (And the original brave dev' who leaked the plans to the Death Star...)  I'd like to know more about i25 personally.  And maybe if Tony V can sort out a deal with NC, SCORE can use Titan as the home of that dev' distro/strain/version.

I hope (and I think they will...) SCORE continue along their development path with i25 'Unbroken Shard'.  I think the last 6 years 'is about right' in terms of getting something out there.  Regardless of how it happened.  Sometimes in life, it takes how long it takes.  'When it's ready or when it's done.'

And while I'm 'pontificating' (that's what forums are for, eh?) :P

So, SCORE took the 'market' out the game.  Easier.  Makes sense to me.  We didn't have it in the early game.  Big deal.  That's more in line with heroes, Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark asides...

As someone noted above, the 'grey morality' of the universe (you believe what your politicians and mainstream media tell you, right?  Or that WWF is well rehearsed real?  Or that WWF and Politics are not so strangely related...) of the community contrasted with heroes in the game?  Meh.  *shrugs.  Heroes pick pocketing the goons they beat up to go trade and play 'wall street' Michael Douglas on the stock exchange.

And that isn't a quandary?  Noooo.....god bless crony capitalism.  Even the 'heroes' are at it...  *Biff, wham, wallop, *pick pockets the 'villain' and sells his 'moral gains' by short selling on the 'stock' exchange.

Lies and truths.  Truth depends greatly upon our point of view.  Especially after the way NC Soft treated the devs', the community and their customers.  In that context, I'm happy that a dev' leaked the code and happy that SCORE preserved the legacy that we are playing now.

Sure that's against the law.  Ahhh, naughty.  But it's ok for corporations to lobby and 'buy' politicians and stack the 'law' in their favour with ransome ware licence ware that sucks the life out of its host until it's a hollowed husk remains and leave it lying on the floor when they've extracted all they can from it.  (We have an 'empty' box with a client with no 'pulse' because 'It's dead Jim.')  Call it 'subscription' call it rental call it 'you don't own it' call it you don't own anything call it the odds are stacked against you.  But hey, it's the 'law' so it must be 'right'.  As somebody put it on the Discord (you have to look carefully amongst the blood lust and fever pitch...), 'Corporations aren't human.'  Deal with them accordingly.

I'm happy that brave 'patriots' leak the fact that our governments spy on us.  Some may condemn as traitors.

'I don't trust the government.  I don't trust alternatives.  It's not that I'm paranoid.  That's just the way it is.'  Fish.

What of it?

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 26, 2019, 10:14:01 AM
Every villain is a hero of their own tale :p

But, of course. :P

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 26, 2019, 10:16:16 AM
Hmmm.  Where's Arcana?

Uncharacteristically quiet?

*teases.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: CG on April 26, 2019, 10:51:35 AM
I just finished reading the consolidated patch notes for "i25" and, I must say, if I had to chose, I'd rather play "i25" then a perfectly re-created "i24."

It just fixes so many things. And while I would't agree with all the ways they handled no longer having a real-money or auction-house economy... for the most part, it's perfectly fine.

And while I haven't tried it, people who've been using i25's revamped Base-Builder have only raved about it.

If any group wants to have an i24 server, they'd be better off with i25 and just reverting or removing a few things they'd do differently to make it more like i24 rather than take i24 and making all the fixes already done in i25. IMO.

The problem is that Leandro has not made the i25 source public, so most of the development effort is around the i24 source, which we do have. It is best to be self sufficient and be able to get a working game from the ground up for long term usability to handle OS changes or new hardware developments, etc.  We're in it for the long haul.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 26, 2019, 11:02:30 AM
The problem is that Leandro has not made the i25 source public, so most of the development effort is around the i24 source, which we do have. It is best to be self sufficient and be able to get a working game from the ground up for long term usability to handle OS changes or new hardware developments, etc.  We're in it for the long haul.

That's fair comment.

SCORE worked on i25.  It's 'their' version of the Dev's game.

Most of the dev' work being around i24 makes sense.  That's going to be the version 'most' people accept as legitimate (despite playing i25 on test thanks to Leandro's help...) as it was 'cruelly' snatched from a public release.  And it that's the 'only' copy they have it makes to base development around 'what we do have.'

In short, I agree, it is best to be 'self sufficient'...  And a promising development from the discord channels I spied...  A 'girl' coder has her own home brew server running on her set up?  Surely not.  A hoax?  An imaginary red kryptonite tale...

The sooner that 'i24' is democratised and in the hands of the coh community at large, then the game will never go away again.  A clean, stable, from the ground up copy that can use modern dev' tools to expand the game even further and adapt to OS/Hardware changes...

If we can get it into a 'smaller' hardware requiring package that will run on today's more powerful PCs?  Great.  With nice simple admin' tools.

I'm enjoying i25 by SCORE.  They did a good job.  Leandro (and the rest of SCORE) did a fine job on it.  But I'm also looking towards and voicing my support of all the initiatives.  i25 by SCORE.  The DISCORD CoH server variations (one working on i24 and one temp' Test server using Leandro/SCORE's i25...'for now.')

And yes.  I really hope Tony V (top bloke as we say here in the UK) gets a result from his 'talks' with the NC Soft corporation (good luck, he'll need it.)

There's going to be splintering.  It already has.  Alternative realities.  Good.  The more the merrier.

NC and Paragon Studios aren't going to write the next chapter.  The community is.  In all it's ice cream flavours.

Elec/Elec domis hit like a snow flake.  (But boy do I like them...)  Stone/WP tank?  Got to love that hammer.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 26, 2019, 11:36:52 AM


...but thanks to the preservation work of SCORE we have it.  (And the original brave dev' who leaked the plans to the Death Star...) 

I think it should be OK to give his name now. The leaker was the late Emmanuel "Manny" Bothans.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Atlantea on April 26, 2019, 12:33:54 PM
I think it should be OK to give his name now. The leaker was the late Emmanuel "Manny" Bothans.

Pffft... I see what you did there. :P
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Odimodus on April 26, 2019, 01:02:58 PM
The leaker was the late Emmanuel "Manny" Bothans.

Well played!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 26, 2019, 01:23:26 PM
That doesn't mean the community can't enjoy or have 'as per shutdown' i23.  (Sorry, i24 which wasn't officially released?  So it isn't 'official' either...mere beta...the wider community didn't have that either due to the hand of 'god' or NC Soft.)  i24 nearly made it...but thanks to the preservation work of SCORE we have it. 
In the months leading up to the shutdown all players were allowed onto the beta server, thus making i24 available to the wider community through there.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 26, 2019, 02:20:50 PM
I think it should be OK to give his name now. The leaker was the late Emmanuel "Manny" Bothans.

Nice ROTJ joke!

Seriously though I do not know what the statutes are for theft/cyber theft/data theft in Korea/USA, so even after all these years it may be best if the person remains unknown.

New badge for the game:  Protector of the Source       

or in Cybertronian terminology: Bearer of the Matrix
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: slickriptide on April 26, 2019, 03:11:19 PM
Hmmm... After some thought, I've removed this post on the chance that it violates forum posting policies. I'll double-check with the admins about it.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 26, 2019, 03:35:24 PM


New badge for the game:  Protector of the Source       



Amen.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on April 26, 2019, 10:35:40 PM
The problem is that Leandro has not made the i25 source public, so most of the development effort is around the i24 source, which we do have.

In the SEGS discord discussion that led to the current situation, Leandro was explaining that his source code had timestamps all through it that could compromise his source and that it would take him a long time to clean it. 

Then the PIVOTAL event was when ANOTHER person who had ANOTHER version of the source code joined and started working with Leandro.  The I24 source was released the next day. 

It seems reasonable to conclude that in some manner the second copy of I24 source either allowed the cleanup or it was actually the second person's I24 that was released.  But there would only be Leandro's source for the I25.

However the discord team working on getting the "tall not wide" server package going (one that can run on a single modern machine as opposed to multiple physical machines) has said they don't want the I25 source anyway because it isn't optimized to be easy to expand/update into further development directions.



Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 26, 2019, 11:23:15 PM
Well I like some of the i25 stuff lik rad melee and rad armor, but I can add them into my own private server, that's fine.


So... even though this is a test server that might get wiped and our character on it may possibly not be ported into other private servers......is anyone else having trouble restraining their urge to badge hunt?

Any badges I have gained have been either from th AE or hitting an explore badge as I travel around or from leveling or from obtaining ouroborus portal.  I am using a surprising amount of restraint,....anyone else having this problem?

Also I was poking around in pocket d last night, ski slope appears to be open.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 27, 2019, 02:13:42 AM
Well I like some of the i25 stuff lik rad melee and rad armor, but I can add them into my own private server, that's fine.


So... even though this is a test server that might get wiped and our character on it may possibly not be ported into other private servers......is anyone else having trouble restraining their urge to badge hunt?

Any badges I have gained have been either from th AE or hitting an explore badge as I travel around or from leveling or from obtaining ouroborus portal.  I am using a surprising amount of restraint,....anyone else having this problem?

Also I was poking around in pocket d last night, ski slope appears to be open.

I started making a Task Force in AE lol.  Even if it gets wiped I wanna try and get it finished for the double XP weekend.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 27, 2019, 02:54:33 AM
I kind of tuned out the discord today, they are having dxp this weekend?

Also dxp never applied to the AE as I recall
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 27, 2019, 02:56:23 AM
This Google Doc contains the consolidate patch notes for I25:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11cLJiSYlfueJheOumRywG8Evip2Mjmu_30Y6ePaetqY/edit?usp=sharing

How accurate are the contents?  No idea.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Surelle on April 27, 2019, 03:36:41 AM
I kind of tuned out the discord today, they are having dxp this weekend?

Also dxp never applied to the AE as I recall

Double Xp on Excelsior is already going Friday night on through Monday midnight.  Woot!  And we also have the 15th anniversary in Paragon Chat Sunday! Jeez, who would have thought all this amazing stuff would be happening back just a few weeks ago, huh?

Some fun stats:

Peak player count has increased to just over 3,500 (today)
Over 22,000 accounts have been created
Over 47,000 characters have been made
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 27, 2019, 03:45:10 AM
This Google Doc contains the consolidate patch notes for I25:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11cLJiSYlfueJheOumRywG8Evip2Mjmu_30Y6ePaetqY/edit?usp=sharing

How accurate are the contents?  No idea.

A labour of love.  Looks like they've been busy...

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 27, 2019, 03:49:09 AM
In the SEGS discord discussion that led to the current situation, Leandro was explaining that his source code had timestamps all through it that could compromise his source and that it would take him a long time to clean it. 

Then the PIVOTAL event was when ANOTHER person who had ANOTHER version of the source code joined and started working with Leandro.  The I24 source was released the next day. 

It seems reasonable to conclude that in some manner the second copy of I24 source either allowed the cleanup or it was actually the second person's I24 that was released.  But there would only be Leandro's source for the I25.

However the discord team working on getting the "tall not wide" server package going (one that can run on a single modern machine as opposed to multiple physical machines) has said they don't want the I25 source anyway because it isn't optimized to be easy to expand/update into further development directions.

Tall not wide.  =  Holy Grail.

Once i24 is optimised.  Stable.  Easy to deploy on a modern PC.  You have a real nexus point for development.

Presumably more modern dev' tools can be used and changes made faster.

I'm enjoying the i25 test server.  But being able to run my own server?  To help preserve the game for the future?  Can't wait.

And one day easy to use zone/map/mission creators will take the game forward.  An enhanced AE+.  Where we can all write an 'i25'.  Unbroken Shard.  A nexus point.

I still think this is all a surreal dream and I'm going to wake up.  It doesn't seem real.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 27, 2019, 03:52:51 AM
Double Xp on Excelsior is already going Friday night on through Monday midnight.  Woot!  And we also have the 15th anniversary in Paragon Chat Sunday! Jeez, who would have thought all this amazing stuff would be happening back just a few weeks ago, huh?

Some fun stats:

Peak player count has increased to just over 3,500 (today)
Over 22,000 accounts have been created
Over 47,000 characters have been made

I've never seen the tutorial zone so rammed with Heroes!  I can't even kill the outcasts because...people were jumping them.  Lol.

Just packed out...they never stood a chance... :P

Double xp early bird to get people on Excelsior...is gangbusters.  Going nuts for it.

22,000 a/cs made. :O

3500 peak player count.

No demand for CoH, eh?

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 27, 2019, 03:55:24 AM
I'm sure there is a demand for free CoX.   How much demand there would be for paid CoX is another question.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Surelle on April 27, 2019, 04:03:21 AM
I'm sure there is a demand for free CoX.   How much demand there would be for paid CoX is another question.

CoX had been F2P for several years before it got shut down, and it had actually seen an increase in revenue during that time.

Imagine all the thousands more people that are too nervous to play on a private server (or they'd rather avoid the lag, performance issues and drama there) that would jump at the chance to play again on an officially sanctioned server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 27, 2019, 04:07:57 AM
This Google Doc contains the consolidate patch notes for I25:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11cLJiSYlfueJheOumRywG8Evip2Mjmu_30Y6ePaetqY/edit?usp=sharing

How accurate are the contents?  No idea.

From what I have seen and done. It is very accurate :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 27, 2019, 04:44:09 AM
It certainly seems too complex to fake, given that no money is involved.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 27, 2019, 04:45:35 AM
CoX had been F2P for several years before it got shut down, and it had actually seen an increase in revenue during that time.

Imagine all the thousands more people that are too nervous to play on a private server (or they'd rather avoid the lag, performance issues and drama there) that would jump at the chance to play again on an officially sanctioned server.

Unfortunately, with everything unlocked, you're down to just the people who care enough to donate.  A population that I'm sure is smaller than the population of people that would buy a power set or costume parts.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 27, 2019, 05:03:10 AM
From what I have seen and done. It is very accurate :)

Yes indeed, almost makes me think we should skip i24 and have the i25 version instead.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: GamingGlen on April 27, 2019, 05:14:10 AM
I'm all for i25.  I like the finished Khalisti Wharf zone.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Brigadine on April 27, 2019, 05:56:53 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 27, 2019, 08:51:28 AM
Peak player count has increased to just over 3,500 (today)
It broke 4K now.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 27, 2019, 10:15:46 AM
I'm all for i25.  I like the finished Khalisti Wharf zone.

Leandro (and SCORE) did a terrific job on that.  Right down to the lady that did the Statesman statue.

All it needs are some mobs and a story for that zone.

Beautiful.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 27, 2019, 10:16:31 AM
Yes indeed, almost makes me think we should skip i24 and have the i25 version instead.

i25, clearly a 'love poem' and there's no reason the community can't have, as somebody once said...

'Both.'

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 27, 2019, 10:17:49 AM
It broke 4K now.

Aye.  The stats are phenomenal.

So, NC, no demand for the game, eh?

4k.  And that's 'just' the people that know about it.

Azrael.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 27, 2019, 10:22:10 AM
CoX had been F2P for several years before it got shut down, and it had actually seen an increase in revenue during that time.

Imagine all the thousands more people that are too nervous to play on a private server (or they'd rather avoid the lag, performance issues and drama there) that would jump at the chance to play again on an officially sanctioned server.

Well.  That could happen.  My duo-partner who teams with me on 'test' i25 says he'd like to pay a sub.

We'll see what happens with Tony's talks.  Servers don't pay for themselves and this is where the private servers have to very careful and discreet about money.

This is where a 'tall' i24 or i25 could help in terms of fiscal freedom from such costs to run on a home brew distro and 'reduced' costs in terms of running servers.  But yes, 4k plus players.  That isn't going to be cheap as things are currently?  I can see why the i24 programmers are in a race against time.

Azrael.

PS.  Happy 15th CoH anniversary!

One...and all.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 27, 2019, 12:33:55 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 27, 2019, 01:47:26 PM
So you'd rather grind prestige on a server that may be taken down at any time just to get a sense of accomplishment? You earned stuff before, if it bothers you that much put yourself on the honor system and only take/build what you had on live. Plenty of re-earning to be done just building characters back up for my taste.

There's enough 'earning penance' in the game.  SG 'grind prestige' was just the worst. 

Aye.  Just getting 'an' alt to L50 to fund the rest of my alts is going to be a 'earning my stripes' again thing.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ulysses Dare on April 27, 2019, 01:50:02 PM
So you'd rather grind prestige on a server that may be taken down at any time just to get a sense of accomplishment? You earned stuff before, if it bothers you that much put yourself on the honor system and only take/build what you had on live. Plenty of re-earning to be done just building characters back up for my taste.
That's what was bugging me about some of the people complaiing about how flight, etc. was now available at level 4. They argued that the fix was that the game should be reverted to it's pre-Freedom settings. Apparently "just don't buy flight until level 14" wasn't a viable option for them.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 27, 2019, 01:55:47 PM
That's what was bugging me about some of the people complaiing about how flight, etc. was now available at level 4. They argued that the fix was that the game should be reverted to it's pre-Freedom settings. Apparently "just don't buy flight until level 14" wasn't a viable option for them.

ER...

They don't have to take flight until L14 unless they want to?  (Plenty of temp powers for travel...from rad' missions.)

Most of the missions up to the early teens are relatively local with trains to get you about. 

Two slot swift is plenty fast to get about also.

I used to dream of having flight at L4.  Now I wait until even L20 whilst I balance primary and 2ndary on alts.

It's great to see the test servers alive and flooded with CoH players.  I'd never seen the tutorial zone rammed with heroes before.  The Outcasts never had such a beat down.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 27, 2019, 02:05:02 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Paragon Avenger on April 27, 2019, 02:05:10 PM
The SCORE peole and the THeM may or may not be one in the same.  I don't know.  I assume that they and THeM are different.  However, this does fit into the scheme of trying to get our home back.

The source code for City of Heroes has been released to the internet.  Is it theft?  That is unclear, after all, if you steal something out of your neighbor's trash nobody cares.  Not that City of Heroes is trash by any stretch of the imagination, except maybe in NCSoft's eyes.

With the game code out in the wild, several possibilities emerge. 
Like private servers popping up like danilions in the spring.
Malware servers could become a problem. 
Fake City of Heroes sites setup to steal credentials or infect your computer with malware.
Mostly, this changes the "THeM Talks".

Right now, all, (read 'both of'), the SCORE servers are down.
I believe that the crash was caused by too many players playing all at once. 
With so many avatars starting out, Atlas Park actually sank a couple inches, (ok, no it didn't).
It is possible, hopefully not likely, that rogue agents sabortaged the game.
Unfortunately, the servers will be stressed until most of the pent-up demand for the game is satisfied.

There is another possibility, shutting down the server in another feature of Marty.  When too many players are leveling too quickly, Marty steps in and shuts everything down.

Is there anyway to remove the Marty subsystem from the game?

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Brigadine on April 27, 2019, 02:24:21 PM
The P2W vendor is a nice way to slowly reclaim lost Vet Reward items and powers that you want rather then pay actual cash for them and risk server shut down by Ncsoft

As to the SG all being unlocked.....there will be many private servers after all is said and done. Hopefully also the TonyV community will be around.  Population on all servers will be......variable.

Some people don't want to be in a large SG, some want to have a base of their own.

Also some of the unlock requirements for SG badges/items seemed a bit steep.

Also if we don't have to pay base upkeep anymore that is fine with me.

I worry about things getting too fragmented. I just want a stable home with a healthy population enough to be able to find people to do most of the game any day.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 27, 2019, 02:26:40 PM
The P2W vendor is a nice way to slowly reclaim lost Vet Reward items and powers that you want rather then pay actual cash for them and risk server shut down by Ncsoft

As to the SG all being unlocked.....there will be many private servers after all is said and done. Hopefully also the TonyV community will be around.  Population on all servers will be......variable.

Some people don't want to be in a large SG, some want to have a base of their own.

Also some of the unlock requirements for SG badges/items seemed a bit steep.

Also if we don't have to pay base upkeep anymore that is fine with me.

It was a bit of a time sink and a money pit at launch.  They tweaked the costs a few times I think.

If you had a handful of people you could get the prestige to get a modest base going.

But yeah.  You'd have to arrest people for dropping litter just to keep up with prestige costs...

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 27, 2019, 02:35:46 PM
I worry about things getting too fragmented. I just want a stable home with a healthy population enough to be able to find people to do most of the game any day.

Don't worry about that, Brigadine.  I hear what you're saying.

But there isn't just one big studio doing 'one' strand of development any more.  (And there's no one that wanted to see i24 officially released than me...and the coming of the Batallion and the Moonbase as revealed by Matt Miller in his last interview re: CoH.)

There's 20 thousands registrations so far.  That's more than enough to support a handful of servers.

The 'home brew distros' (matter of time) will cover people like me who will fly below the radar. 

You'll have big communities and small communities.  But?  We're still the CoH Federation of 'Love our Game.'

It will just be like going shopping.  You'll have your favourite type of food, clothing, car etc.  Or 'ice cream.'

You'll be able to decide what flavour of CoH you like. 

Fragmentation.  It doesn't really mean anything other than?

Choice.  Something we have in most areas of our lives.

There just won't be one studio developing the story.  Not Paragon.  Nor NC.  Those 'official' days are gone.  We have to take responsibility for i25's story content upon ourselves.  Some that want to enjoy i24 as a frozen testament to what 'nearly' launched can do so.

But the sacrfices made by the dev' that leaked the code, the team at SCORE that preserved it and really brought some quality of life improvements and development fixes to i25....scream that we, as a community have to take responsibility where it goes next.

That means coders racing to get a i24 home brew distro that can be run more economically.  It means, eventually, the tools to create our own content.  (We can start with AE....maybe write our own Battalion arc...for The Wharf zone?) 

We shouldn't fear this.  It's the nexus inflection point.

Those seeking a more 'like live' home will be wishing and hoping that Tony's talks with NC go well.  My Duo-partner feels that way.  And maybe they'll have a license to take the game forward with some story content to go with i25 along with all the fixes and improvements they've made.

Me?  The privacy of my own distro run by me...where I know a legal nuke isn't going to take down the game or the server.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 27, 2019, 02:36:13 PM
I'm sure there is a demand for free CoX.   How much demand there would be for paid CoX is another question.
I would drop $15/month to play again, and I'm on a fixed budget.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 27, 2019, 02:38:04 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: hurple on April 27, 2019, 02:55:24 PM
Well, I've been trying to get on for about 4 days now and have yet to be able to actually do so.  I keep getting a server full message. 

Maybe we could institute a time-share program?  Bwah-ha-ha-ha!

 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 27, 2019, 03:54:54 PM
I saw a wild Paragon avenger in LFG last night. But as there's sadly still no chat indicator of pants I couldn't be sure.

Servers aren't down from overload now, they tried to patch something and broke all the things.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MWRuger on April 27, 2019, 04:06:52 PM
I would drop $15/month to play again, and I'm on a fixed budget.

So would I, happily.

Actually, I would pay for two accounts.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tubbius on April 27, 2019, 04:13:27 PM
CoX had been F2P for several years before it got shut down, and it had actually seen an increase in revenue during that time.

Imagine all the thousands more people that are too nervous to play on a private server (or they'd rather avoid the lag, performance issues and drama there) that would jump at the chance to play again on an officially sanctioned server.

Meeeeeeeeee
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 27, 2019, 04:20:37 PM
I worry about things getting too fragmented. I just want a stable home with a healthy population enough to be able to find people to do most of the game any day.

I have no doubt that for awhile after launch the server population will be fine.

The servers taht do experiments and add things like new powers may be the ones that keep the population...or not. Some may just want vanilla i24 and thats fine too
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Adam Infinity on April 27, 2019, 05:14:16 PM
From what I have seen and done. It is very accurate :)

If these notes are true for the endgame, then what's in it isn't enough for me to understand it. I.E., it doesn't explain how to get the badges you need to level past 50.                                                                                                                                                                                                     
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Brigadine on April 27, 2019, 06:44:31 PM
Don't worry about that, Brigadine.  I hear what you're saying.

But there isn't just one big studio doing 'one' strand of development any more.  (And there's no one that wanted to see i24 officially released than me...and the coming of the Batallion and the Moonbase as revealed by Matt Miller in his last interview re: CoH.)

There's 20 thousands registrations so far.  That's more than enough to support a handful of servers.

The 'home brew distros' (matter of time) will cover people like me who will fly below the radar. 

You'll have big communities and small communities.  But?  We're still the CoH Federation of 'Love our Game.'

It will just be like going shopping.  You'll have your favourite type of food, clothing, car etc.  Or 'ice cream.'

You'll be able to decide what flavour of CoH you like. 

Fragmentation.  It doesn't really mean anything other than?

Choice.  Something we have in most areas of our lives.

There just won't be one studio developing the story.  Not Paragon.  Nor NC.  Those 'official' days are gone.  We have to take responsibility for i25's story content upon ourselves.  Some that want to enjoy i24 as a frozen testament to what 'nearly' launched can do so.

But the sacrfices made by the dev' that leaked the code, the team at SCORE that preserved it and really brought some quality of life improvements and development fixes to i25....scream that we, as a community have to take responsibility where it goes next.

That means coders racing to get a i24 home brew distro that can be run more economically.  It means, eventually, the tools to create our own content.  (We can start with AE....maybe write our own Battalion arc...for The Wharf zone?) 

We shouldn't fear this.  It's the nexus inflection point.

Those seeking a more 'like live' home will be wishing and hoping that Tony's talks with NC go well.  My Duo-partner feels that way.  And maybe they'll have a license to take the game forward with some story content to go with i25 along with all the fixes and improvements they've made.

Me?  The privacy of my own distro run by me...where I know a legal nuke isn't going to take down the game or the server.

Azrael.

My hopes are definitely in TonyV atm. I would love something NC blessed or better yet an actual company being created to run the game. Dare I say Paragon reborn?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 27, 2019, 07:03:30 PM
I kind of tuned out the discord today, they are having dxp this weekend?

Also dxp never applied to the AE as I recall

Double XP this weekend won't apply to Architect awards but will apply to Standard Awards.  I think that the way people will be encouraged to AE missions that aren't farming related.  Although as far as I can see, its only farming missions so far on AE lol.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on April 27, 2019, 07:04:53 PM
Marty, being mainlined in the code, is indeed back.  We hope to appease Marty and his benevolent, if not wholly misguided, attempts at keeping the servers happy.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 27, 2019, 09:51:07 PM

They don't have to take flight until L14 unless they want to?  (Plenty of temp powers for travel...from rad' missions.)


I can't say it will be as late as level 14 but on the characters I'm leveling now, I'd rather take other powers first.  Sprint is plenty fast for the early maps.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 27, 2019, 09:54:20 PM
AE farming is a big part of what killed the game last time.

You'll never get caught up in a game if all you do is level up to 50 in three hours.

I remember the AE babies that couldn't play their characters.  Some of those people literally couldn't figure out how to get out of Atlas Park.

We are also not a good sample population for determining how many people would pay $15 to keep this game going.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 27, 2019, 10:04:44 PM
I can't say it will be as late as level 14 but on the characters I'm leveling now, I'd rather take other powers first.  Sprint is plenty fast for the early maps.

Aye.  Most of the missions are quite local and with sprint with swift inherent.  Plenty fast to get around.

I tend to like to get an attack chain going first and some defences.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 27, 2019, 10:09:42 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tivomaniac on April 27, 2019, 10:55:12 PM
Level to 50 in 3 hours big whoop then what?  No fun in that. For me anyway but if it works for you then have at it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 27, 2019, 11:41:48 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Dev7on on April 27, 2019, 11:45:46 PM
If you guys want to get distracted from all the drama this past week well go here ---> https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=13351.msg232754#new
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 28, 2019, 12:07:23 AM
Should probably put that is a link to an Avengers Endgame post that may contain spoilers.  It currently doesn't contain any, but you never know.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: GamingGlen on April 28, 2019, 12:33:56 AM
Aye.  Most of the missions are quite local and with sprint with swift inherent.  Plenty fast to get around.

I tend to like to get an attack chain going first and some defences.

Azrael.

Have you actually done the low level missions since your first couple characters, say before Inherent Fitness?  It sucks travelling across a zone dodging mobs.

Nearly all my heroes in the Champions TTRPG (except the guy who could change into a tiger), could fly from the start, and nearly all those I created in COX and CO should start with Fly as part of their concept.  I hated waiting to fly in COX.  Fly is a super power that I want to start with.
So those who like the old way of COX... piss off.   Let us play and make characters how we like to.  And capes SHOULD be available at level 1.  The devs did many gatekeeping things wrong, IMO.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Paragon Avenger on April 28, 2019, 12:38:06 AM
There are 3000 people in the queues right now waiting to play.  Why was this game shut down again?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Surelle on April 28, 2019, 12:39:18 AM
So, even with both Torchbearer and Excelsior, and over 4000 concurrent players being on (per server?), there's now a 2900+ person queue to get on as of 8:30pm tonight EST?  Wow!  I'm already on.  I had no idea.

I sure hope TonyV is able to get something official going with NCsoft soon, instead of it being "slow as molasses communication which turns into 'forever for nothing' " like usual.

I mean, the poor people donating all their time for free and paying thousands of dollars to run these rogue servers can't hold out forever!  They will need to set up donations soon. 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Victoria Victrix on April 28, 2019, 01:12:09 AM
Oh, gosh I remember how to get flight right out of the tutorial from live.  I could do it in my sleep.

Tram to Talos.  Jump in the water and swim to the ferry.

Ferry to PI.  Jump in the water and swim to just opposite Portal Corps.

Run up the bluffs, it's easy to avoid the couple of DE, down to the roof of Portal Corps, then to the building that has the Shadow Shard Portal in it.

Go to the Shadow Shard.  Find the jetpack vendor.  Pay 5000 inf.  You now have a 2 hour infinitely renewable flight power.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: GamingGlen on April 28, 2019, 01:31:03 AM
Oh, gosh I remember how to get flight right out of the tutorial from live.  I could do it in my sleep.

Tram to Talos.  Jump in the water and swim to the ferry.

Ferry to PI.  Jump in the water and swim to just opposite Portal Corps.

Run up the bluffs, it's easy to avoid the couple of DE, down to the roof of Portal Corps, then to the building that has the Shadow Shard Portal in it.

Go to the Shadow Shard.  Find the jetpack vendor.  Pay 5000 inf.  You now have a 2 hour infinitely renewable flight power.

I sure hope you're joking.   If you are not: Ignore character concept and go through a host of game machinations to get a temporary power I envision for my character from the beginning?   And which character has 5000 INF at the start?  Why not have some vendor selling such items in AP?   

For everyone: The P2W vendor has an unfortunate title so instead of whining about allowing newbs and oldies to buy what used to be veteran powers, there are no veterans with a new server, suggest some names for that vendor.  Some of those items cost a bit of influence, more than I'll earn any time soon.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: GamingGlen on April 28, 2019, 01:31:46 AM
Because 5000 people is really not a lot in the MMO world.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 28, 2019, 01:38:01 AM
It went Free-to-Play because it's been found that the people who will pay $1000/month more than make up for the people who only pay $0-$10/month.
Also,  worthwhile to have a bunch of free 2 players if it means the subbers and the 1000/ month players will stick around and continue paying (because they will have people to play with!)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: therain93 on April 28, 2019, 01:44:20 AM
I sure hope you're joking.   If you are not: Ignore character concept and go through a host of game machinations to get a temporary power I envision for my character from the beginning?   And which character has 5000 INF at the start?  Why not have some vendor selling such items in AP?   


After wentworths arrived, I hope anyone creating a new character (after their first) spent a bit of time buying cheap enhancements, recipes and temporary powers to sell to the vendors.  Make your first 100k in about an hour.....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 28, 2019, 03:27:57 AM
Anyone noticed if the raptor pack vendor is in the shard on the new servers? I started villain and the grandville one was missing. Didn't want to go through what VV described on my hero to find the blue one missing too so i just ninja ran til i could do the atlas bank.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Surelle on April 28, 2019, 03:36:49 AM
Because 5000 people is really not a lot in the MMO world.

It's 5,000 in queue (ballpark) while over 4000 on.  Plus, most people A.) Don't even know it's up after being dead for 7 years to 99% of past CoX players, and B.) even if they do know, won't play on a private server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Angel Phoenix77 on April 28, 2019, 03:56:29 AM
If these notes are true for the endgame, then what's in it isn't enough for me to understand it. I.E., it doesn't explain how to get the badges you need to level past 50.                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Like I wrote, from what I have done they are very accurate. I never made a l50 yet, sorry.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Adam Infinity on April 28, 2019, 05:09:47 AM
Any documentation helps, so thank you for posting it. I'm using Pines Hero Builder, even though I'm hearing the numbers are off. Very grateful, even if I don't always seem like it.

Does anybody have a macro guide for things like locating glowies or targeting bosses?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 28, 2019, 08:41:28 AM
CoX had been F2P for several years before it got shut down,
It only went F2P with Issue 21, which was one year and two months before the shutdown. :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 28, 2019, 01:59:53 PM
If these notes are true for the endgame, then what's in it isn't enough for me to understand it. I.E., it doesn't explain how to get the badges you need to level past 50.                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Someone was just saying in the discord once you hit 50, you keep leveling.  You just don't receive levels anymore.  So you will get rezzed from it like when you would level, as well as the Full Inspiration you get.  But you don't actually level past 50.  AFAIK no badge is needed - you just naturally do it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 28, 2019, 02:18:24 PM
Because 5000 people is really not a lot in the MMO world.

7000-8000 players (The amount trying to connect yesterday) is not a ton in the MMO world that is true.  But when you hear WoW has 10 million subs they are spread out across all their servers.  I assume WoW servers have more than 7000 players on the busy servers.  But most MMO's don't have 7000-8000 on a single server at a time (or in this case 2 servers).  The last MMO's I played were EQ TLP's.  Both Coirnav and Mangler had decent populations.  Maybe 3-4k at the peak?  I also just came from playing some Legends of Aria and that had maybe.... 100? 200?  So right now 7-8k feels like a TON haha.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 28, 2019, 04:51:29 PM
There are 3000 people in the queues right now waiting to play.  Why was this game shut down again?

'I don't know, T.C.'  Brains from Top Cast.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 28, 2019, 04:53:25 PM
Because 5000 people is really not a lot in the MMO world.

Those are the ones 'in the know.'

Wait until the mainstream CoH base twigs.

*Currently queuing.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 28, 2019, 04:54:26 PM
It's 5,000 in queue (ballpark) while over 4000 on.  Plus, most people A.) Don't even know it's up after being dead for 7 years to 99% of past CoX players, and B.) even if they do know, won't play on a private server.

Aye.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 28, 2019, 04:57:15 PM
7000-8000 players (The amount trying to connect yesterday) is not a ton in the MMO world that is true.  But when you hear WoW has 10 million subs they are spread out across all their servers.  I assume WoW servers have more than 7000 players on the busy servers.  But most MMO's don't have 7000-8000 on a single server at a time (or in this case 2 servers).  The last MMO's I played were EQ TLP's.  Both Coirnav and Mangler had decent populations.  Maybe 3-4k at the peak?  I also just came from playing some Legends of Aria and that had maybe.... 100? 200?  So right now 7-8k feels like a TON haha.

WoW has a lot lessing that 10 million now, I think.  There were few youtubes speculating they are down to 2-3.5 million after the last expansion.

7-8k on two servers sounds insane. 

The secret is getting out. 

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 28, 2019, 05:01:45 PM
Have you

I found doing CoH fun in the early days.  It's easier now of course.  I liked getting pre-stamina builds to work. 

It's not arduous doing missions on local maps.

Sprint was fast enough to get around?

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 28, 2019, 08:24:52 PM
So, even with both Torchbearer and Excelsior, and over 4000 concurrent players being on (per server?), there's now a 2900+ person queue to get on as of 8:30pm tonight EST?  Wow!  I'm already on.  I had no idea.

I sure hope TonyV is able to get something official going with NCsoft soon, instead of it being "slow as molasses communication which turns into 'forever for nothing' " like usual.

I mean, the poor people donating all their time for free and paying thousands of dollars to run these rogue servers can't hold out forever!  They will need to set up donations soon.

Which may be what Ncsoft is counting on so they can legally cry foul
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 28, 2019, 08:29:28 PM
Anyone noticed if the raptor pack vendor is in the shard on the new servers? I started villain and the grandville one was missing. Didn't want to go through what VV described on my hero to find the blue one missing too so i just ninja ran til i could do the atlas bank.

Haven't checked, been busy putting up with the server restarts trying to get to 50 so that I can safely explore the bulk of the zones again.

Level up six levels in AE, spin thu radios to get next safeguard mission queed fo later, AE six more levels repeat until 50... :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 28, 2019, 08:32:08 PM
They can legally cry foul whether money's taken or not. I'm choosing to take their not having cried foul yet as a sign they don't want to throw money at a whack-a-mole and are taking the smart route with TonyV.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Surelle on April 28, 2019, 08:57:10 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 28, 2019, 09:01:29 PM
Ya they must have just added those.  Login servers are down currently but that should help with the 2000+ Que we saw yesterday haha.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 28, 2019, 09:46:24 PM
They can legally cry foul whether money's taken or not. I'm choosing to take their not having cried foul yet as a sign they don't want to throw money at a whack-a-mole and are taking the smart route with TonyV.

You are correct, they can.  But the case becomes much stronger if they get wind  of money being transacted and the server admins haven't balanced the books properly to show that funds only go to the servers and not their pockets
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 28, 2019, 09:48:00 PM
Ya they must have just added those.  Login servers are down currently but that should help with the 2000+ Que we saw yesterday haha.

What's funny is that while playing I was leaving a radio Mish, instantly kicked to login screen, found myself in queue of over 1000,  and half seriously asked on discord....."so about those new shards....."
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 28, 2019, 09:49:52 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 28, 2019, 09:54:07 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 28, 2019, 09:54:35 PM
Which may be what Ncsoft is counting on so they can legally cry foul

Aye.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 28, 2019, 09:58:34 PM
Here is hoping dxp remains all week on them.

So....how is everyone's alt-itis doing?

I've got it under control...for now.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 28, 2019, 10:08:45 PM
I've got it under control...for now.

Azrael.

I may roll one or two on the new servers, but I am not ready to go berzerk with alt-itis. Also with what appears to be  1000 slots per server.... well there goes 100 for my lost legends.....no must fight the urge.....must....fight...it...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 28, 2019, 10:10:46 PM
I may roll one or two on the new servers, but I am not ready to go berzerk with alt-itis. Also with what appears to be  1000 slots per server.... well there goes 100 for my lost legends.....no must fight the urge.....must....fight...it...

You're not going for the 1000 alts, Sin'?

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Eiko-chan on April 28, 2019, 10:16:13 PM
So....how is everyone's alt-itis doing?
Eiko only just reached level 24 today, which is the level at which Masterminds actually become Masterminds. So my Alt-itis is well-controlled, only 4 low-level characters aside.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: bugzee on April 28, 2019, 10:24:06 PM
Someone was just saying in the discord once you hit 50, you keep leveling.  You just don't receive levels anymore.  So you will get rezzed from it like when you would level, as well as the Full Inspiration you get.  But you don't actually level past 50.  AFAIK no badge is needed - you just naturally do it.

Yes I noticed this on a test server. After level 50, the progress bar was still increasing. I was a bit puzzled about that. I don't remember the game being like that.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 28, 2019, 10:46:29 PM
I haven't played today -- those multi-hour queues are an arch-foe I can't defeat.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 28, 2019, 10:54:33 PM
Yes I noticed this on a test server. After level 50, the progress bar was still increasing. I was a bit puzzled about that. I don't remember the game being like that.

*intrigue.  Raising the level cap??? :P

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 28, 2019, 11:53:56 PM
Yes I noticed this on a test server. After level 50, the progress bar was still increasing. I was a bit puzzled about that. I don't remember the game being like that.

It wasn't. But it could be useful for accumulation and tracking payoff of character debt for the debt badges.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 29, 2019, 12:00:41 AM
You're not going for the 1000 alts, Sin'?

Azrael.


So want to, but will not yet do so.

Log in queues
Servers unstable
Serves could be wiped, not likely but possible.
Ncsoft finally drops the heavy end of the hammer on this whole thing

I am trying to wait until we hear f om TonyV about the community server project plus the "servers for everyone" code package.

My goals

1. A server of my own even if only I am the one to use it
2. Spend as many hours or days as needed on my personal server to restore my lost legends from backups.
3. Play on the community servers if TonyV succeeds
4. Hopefully on the community server to restore some or all my lost legends via sentinel

My ultimate goal: to give Ncsoft the giant middle finger they gave us when they killed CoH
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 29, 2019, 12:06:52 AM
*intrigue.  Raising the level cap??? :P

Azrael.

Raising the cap would have to be compensated by giving corresponding threats of similar power level..

If a character goes to level 55 and is level shifted from their incarnate powers they could move thru incarnate trials with minimum trouble
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Super Atom on April 29, 2019, 12:19:25 AM
The level cap should never be raised. That's so anti-city of heroes. Just go play WoW if you want to get stuck in an endless loop of power creep and dated content.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 29, 2019, 12:27:00 AM
The level cap should never be raised. That's so anti-city of heroes. Just go play WoW if you want to get stuck in an endless loop of power creep and dated content.

Yeah....unless the Battalion is added to the game I see no reason to raise the cap.

However, the 4 lost incarnate powers....yeah those I plan to activate on my own server. Though there is no official lore for them, their names seem self evident as to what they could be.

The Omega slot...for simplicity's sake that will be the bookend to alpha slot, and I would have it take the same powers as alpha slot, but you can't have the same one in each slot

Example: you cannot have two cardiac boosters, but if you want to have T4 cardiac core in one  & T4 damage core in the other that would be fine
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Leandro on April 29, 2019, 12:27:30 AM
*
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 29, 2019, 12:46:25 AM
No, that was just the solution I came up with for Veteran badges. Since subscription fees are not a thing, you can now continue earning XP after level 50, and those levels are called "Veteran Levels" in your personal info. Every 3 levels you get one of the Veteran badges. There are also some Incarnate rewards attached to them to ease off the grind, although they might be a bit too generous at this point.

Hmmm, now that is interesting and is a good way to keep the three month vet badges moving...

Also, hello Leandro! I don't think we've met yet.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 29, 2019, 01:15:59 AM
No, that was just the solution I came up with for Veteran badges. Since subscription fees are not a thing, you can now continue earning XP after level 50, and those levels are called "Veteran Levels" in your personal info. Every 3 levels you get one of the Veteran badges. There are also some Incarnate rewards attached to them to ease off the grind, although they might be a bit too generous at this point.

Really sweet idea, and any generosity to ease the incarnate grind for the altoholics like myself is welcome.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 29, 2019, 10:04:55 AM
No, that was just the solution I came up with for Veteran badges. Since subscription fees are not a thing, you can now continue earning XP after level 50, and those levels are called "Veteran Levels" in your personal info. Every 3 levels you get one of the Veteran badges. There are also some Incarnate rewards attached to them to ease off the grind, although they might be a bit too generous at this point.

Hello Leandro. :) 

Much pleasure it brings me to see you respond to my post.  I'm glad you're a vibrant part of the CoH community and ty for your leadership (and SCORE's) in bringing the game back to the community and preserving its legacy.  30,000 accounts now!  With 4 servers now creaking under the load.  Personally?  I am thanking you.

That's some rebirth.   8)  We're almost talking phoenix from the ashes territory, here...

(I was teasing...)  However...re: the level cap.  *probing for a response, perhaps.

I do recall one excellent post you did re: raising the level cap to 60 vs the whole Incarnate design and allocating the interface for the powers to a more standard CoH interface aka more like super epics....and re-doing the Brickstown zone (and possibly others...)  It was one of the more creative posts I ever read on these forums.  (I didn't have a problem with the Incarnate idea so much as its implementation in breaking with the standard CoH interface with its 'fussy and fiddly' annex design with nested interface elements...and 'shift' levels.  All of which could have been done in the standard interface.)  And in light of the work done 're-modelling' the Rikti Warzone and finishing the Wharf...(Statesman included...) along with ability to earn 'veteran' levels....  It teased my mind as to the possibilities.  *(I don't know if you remember that post you did.  But, who knows...alot of work...but one for the future?  Looking at Demonhunter's work on zone design...there's no reason SCORE couldn't add him to the team to create 'alt-realities' of all the standard zones.  But SCORE will probably have their own ideas where they want to take their development branch of CoH.)

Personally, I've read the feature list on i25 (along with all the bug fixes) and it is a 'love poem' to CoH. 

6 years of hard work.

Alot of care, attention and respect went into the i25 release (and as I'm musing above...) I hope SCORE continue work on their branch of the game.  I like Leandro and SCORE's ideas eg Veteran levels or the Archetype they introduced.  You look at, eg. Paragon Chat (Codewalker's ode to SG bases...in particular) and you see people that honour and respect the 'feel' of the original game. 

Yes.  I'm intrigued to see more of Leandro and SCORE's ideas.

Regards,

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 29, 2019, 10:20:39 AM
The level cap should never be raised. That's so anti-city of heroes. Just go play WoW if you want to get stuck in an endless loop of power creep and dated content.

Never say never. :P

We have 'veteran levels' now. :D

Play WoW?  Now CoH is around.  Are you crazy? :P  (Rasing the cap to 60 to include incarnate content is one thing...but 120?  I think Blizzard lost the plot there.  Played it.  Maybe they should have stopped at 60?  There is a danger in raising the cap endlessly.  The design can get 'leggy.')

Azrael.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 29, 2019, 10:25:15 AM

So want to, but will not yet do so.

Log in queues
Servers unstable
Serves could be wiped, not likely but possible.
Ncsoft finally drops the heavy end of the hammer on this whole thing

I am trying to wait until we hear f om TonyV about the community server project plus the "servers for everyone" code package.

My goals

1. A server of my own even if only I am the one to use it
2. Spend as many hours or days as needed on my personal server to restore my lost legends from backups.
3. Play on the community servers if TonyV succeeds
4. Hopefully on the community server to restore some or all my lost legends via sentinel

My ultimate goal: to give Ncsoft the giant middle finger they gave us when they killed CoH


Amen to 1-4.

I think that mirrors my own feelings.

The personal preservation of CoH and my alts is my goal.  And then, I have the option of playing COH with the 'broader' community via the current 'Test' servers...and Tony V's Titan community if he succeeds.

That's the thing.  There's going to be a community of communities.  There's already 3 different server projects ongoing.  One of which is i25 and ongoing.  And a potential 4th if Tony V succeeds.  (We've already had our 1st loss of a server when the 'panic' switch got hit.  However, another team stepped in.  And that augers well for the future.  Different teams can show leadership in running the game as is...modified see i25 or further creativity and modification in take the game in different directions.  What are the odds that some 'purists' try to implement a kind of Battallion and Moonbase content over issues 25/26/27?  Piecing together the snippets from what Matt Miller said in his farewell interview..?  There's the map creator (which is in a rough form usuable by people who are crazy enough to use it) and the AE.  So people can come up with their own content.  It's not unfeasible a Paragon Wiki committee create an offsute to muse future development once i24 is stable and in everybody's hands.)

I think that's the ultimate realisation of the COH community.  Running the CoH community is democratised.

...and the holy grail of your own private server to preserve its legacy in the case of any servers getting legal nuked, financially shutdown...or people get bored of the game.

It's uncertain.  Sure.  (I take your point about going 'all in' not knowing if a server is going to be NC Nuked...legally.  Or if it gets shutdown financially or any other reason.)  But that's exciting in a way.  The CoH community hasn't been this vibrant in a long time.  Things are happening fast.  MMOs all have that sword of damocles hanging over them.

All the more reason for that i24 'home brew CoH in a box' solution sooner.  I'll relax more when that comes.  I only want the ability to host a handful of players.  Well maybe a community of 25 for people who just like to 'hang.'  About what Paragon Chat handles on average (though it can do more than 25-50?)  In fact, a Paragon Chat style solution would suit me fine.  (On its timeline is feature talking of handing over to 'real-time' protocol to handle combat.)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nightmarer on April 29, 2019, 10:54:11 AM


Play WoW?  Now CoH is around.  Are you crazy? :P 

Heh, since servers were down, I decided to do something profitable so I uninstalled WoW... and every other game I had, heck I even uninstalled Steam lmao
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: privateer3 on April 29, 2019, 11:12:04 AM
Hopefully the problems created by the quickly growing population will be resolved. Login queues in excess of 1,000, frequent map server disconnections. Haven't been able to play for days.

It is wonderful that some talented programmers rebuilt the server code, but now they need to figure out how to get enough bandwidth and computing power to handle the load.

I started playing CoH on the day NCsoft turned the servers on. We had thousands of players every day. There were hundreds of Supergroups. I was there the day and moment NCsoft turned off the server, and watched the system chat countdown with my friends.

Sure hope I can actually play the game again!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 29, 2019, 11:29:47 AM
Heh, since servers were down, I decided to do something profitable so I uninstalled WoW... and every other game I had, heck I even uninstalled Steam lmao

Yes.  WoW.  Despite all it's billions and millions.  WoW still can't beat a 'dead' game.  (I'll give it props for the Death Knight AT.  Aside from that...oh yes.  The music is very well done.  Got to give them that...)

CoH.  Like the combat better.  The chat window.  The customisable interface.  The legendary costume creator.  The mobs.  Power sets.  Sidekicking.  CoH was so progressive in its design.  Still stands up today.

:D

Steam...yes.  Going to delete that myself...

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 29, 2019, 11:33:54 AM
Hopefully the problems created by the quickly growing population will be resolved. Login queues in excess of 1,000, frequent map server disconnections. Haven't been able to play for days.

It is wonderful that some talented programmers rebuilt the server code, but now they need to figure out how to get enough bandwidth and computing power to handle the load.

I started playing CoH on the day NCsoft turned the servers on. We had thousands of players every day. There were hundreds of Supergroups. I was there the day and moment NCsoft turned off the server, and watched the system chat countdown with my friends.

Sure hope I can actually play the game again!

Yeah.  NC turned the servers off. :/

Early days yet.

It will come.

Getting a version that is stable, 'efficient' and scaleable is probably a priority right now.  And that's the race that is going on in the background of the 'day to day' drama of the test servers.  Just teething problems.

Getting hit by 30000 accounts is no longer just 500-1000.  The populations has spiked rapidly.  And I'd argue more of the CoH casuals have no idea about it.  (I wouldn't bet against that 30,000 doubling.)

Word is getting out, though...

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on April 29, 2019, 01:11:43 PM
Someone was just saying in the discord once you hit 50, you keep leveling.  You just don't receive levels anymore.  So you will get rezzed from it like when you would level, as well as the Full Inspiration you get.  But you don't actually level past 50.  AFAIK no badge is needed - you just naturally do it.
Yes I noticed this on a test server. After level 50, the progress bar was still increasing. I was a bit puzzled about that. I don't remember the game being like that.
*intrigue.  Raising the level cap??? :P
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11cLJiSYlfueJheOumRywG8Evip2Mjmu_30Y6ePaetqY/edit
Quote
All the Veteran badges are back; they are now rewarded for earning experience after level 50, with each "Veteran Level" counting as one month in the original progression. Badges for levels 15, 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90 grant a Respec and a Costume Token.
Quote
Veteran Levels:
This is the new name for leveling up after 50. You can check your current Veteran Level in your info window (previously at any City Info Terminal kiosk, under "Character"). They grant the Veteran badges listed above, and also a second set of hidden badges with Empyrean rewards, front-loaded to allow characters to get all their T3s with 9 Veteran Levels (down from 12) and all their T4s with 48 Veteran Levels (down from 57). The Empyreans are tied to badges and no longer drop on every single level.
Badges 3 to 24: 20 Empyrean Merits
Badges 27 to 48: 15 Empyran Merits
Badges 51 to 69: 10 Empyrean Merits
Badges 72 to 99: 5 Empyrean Merits
You will also receive 120 threads for VL 1,2, 4,5, 7,8, and 10,11. (This is subject to change.)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 29, 2019, 03:29:44 PM
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11cLJiSYlfueJheOumRywG8Evip2Mjmu_30Y6ePaetqY/edit

Ty for the link, 5th Horseman.

Noted. 

I'll  also have to get teh hang of the multi-quote system here...

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on April 29, 2019, 06:44:38 PM
Got my private solo server running :) No more worries for disconnects, ques, lag etc.
Works like a Dream.
No-one can take away the game from me now...totally surreal
Off to solo positron task force...

quite a mysterious feeling standing at blue steel looking out in the city...being the only hero in the whole city...my city... ;)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 29, 2019, 06:58:31 PM
Got my private solo server running :) No more worries for disconnects, ques, lag etc.
Works like a Dream.
No-one can take away the game from me now...totally surreal
Off to solo positron task force...

quite a mysterious feeling standing at blue steel looking out in the city...being the only hero in the whole city...my city... ;)

Facetious much? :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 29, 2019, 07:54:24 PM

So want to, but will not yet do so.

Log in queues
Servers unstable
Serves could be wiped, not likely but possible.
Ncsoft finally drops the heavy end of the hammer on this whole thing

I am trying to wait until we hear f om TonyV about the community server project plus the "servers for everyone" code package.

My goals

1. A server of my own even if only I am the one to use it
2. Spend as many hours or days as needed on my personal server to restore my lost legends from backups.
3. Play on the community servers if TonyV succeeds
4. Hopefully on the community server to restore some or all my lost legends via sentinel

My ultimate goal: to give Ncsoft the giant middle finger they gave us when they killed CoH

I don't have Windows 10 so I can't run the SQL stuff but it sounds like you can set up a private server now on a single PC and host it on a VM if its just for one person.  Sounds like its not too hardware dependent if its just one person.

People have been discussing setting up on their offline servers on regular computers while being able to play on them the last couple days.  I think there is a link somewhere too?  I don't know if we are supposed to post it here so I can DM it to you if you want.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 29, 2019, 08:07:25 PM
Got my private solo server running :) No more worries for disconnects, ques, lag etc.
Works like a Dream.
No-one can take away the game from me now...totally surreal
Off to solo positron task force...

quite a mysterious feeling standing at blue steel looking out in the city...being the only hero in the whole city...my city... ;)

You got it working? 

:o

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on April 29, 2019, 08:08:05 PM
Facetious much? :)
Do you mean joking? No sir totally serious
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 29, 2019, 08:10:09 PM
Do you mean joking? No sir totally serious

In that case.

I'm impressed.  Well done.

Does it need technie knowledge?  Or did you follow a guide?

(What rig specs do you have etc?)

Not jealous.  But I am green with ENVIOUS.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on April 29, 2019, 08:13:58 PM
Well done!

Easy to do?  Or technie knowledge required?

Marvel or DC style.  You're the only hero in the city.  You're in your own universe.

I'm not jealous.  But I am ENVIOUS!

Azrael.

Hi. First time doing anything with sql and stuff like that. So total noob in that area.
Just follow the google document on the ourboro wiki site for coh.
Yes. Quite easy just a few steps that i had to resort to aid on discord and reddit. But now i know the pitfalls so i can aid others :) so happy to not be able to lose the game ever again. No dependencies on other people and servers.
Its all on mt pc. Windows 8.1.  I7 4930k. 4.5ghz. 16 gig ram. Ssd. 1080ti.
Awsome performance in game.
Tell me if you want help in seting it up.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on April 29, 2019, 08:39:26 PM
Hi. First time doing anything with sql and stuff like that. So total noob in that area.
Just follow the google document on the ourboro wiki site for coh.
Yes. Quite easy just a few steps that i had to resort to aid on discord and reddit. But now i know the pitfalls so i can aid others :) so happy to not be able to lose the game ever again. No dependencies on other people and servers.
Its all on mt pc. Windows 8.1.  I7 4930k. 4.5ghz. 16 gig ram. Ssd. 1080ti.
Awsome performance in game.
Tell me if you want help in seting it up.

As they say over here in England.  'Well done, my san.'   Really pleased for you.  One of the first to have true democracy in the COH community and to have the game preserved on his own terms.  Well.  Done.  Sir.

You've good sound specs there.  But achieveable ones.  i7.  16 gigs makes sense.  1080ti.  Nice gpu.!!!

And sound performance.  I bet!!!

Aye.  I may have a swing of the bat in having a go at this.  Mucho thanks for the offer of help.  Ty.  Much appreciated.  :)

I'm so glad our community are taking ownership.  I've been pontificating about Solo/LAN and smaller server play for a while now.  (Sorry everybody...)

Glad to see someone achieve it.

I'll check out the Ouro stuff.  *exciting stuff.

Regards,

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: eabrace on April 29, 2019, 11:34:23 PM
<modhat>
Quick reminder, everyone:

linking to Google doc of something like patch notes:  OK
directly linking to repositories with code of unknown origin that has not been vetted by TitanNO
linking to a Google doc with instructions on downloading code that has not been vetted by TitanNO
linking to Discord channels where you can find more information about downloading code that has not been vetted by Titan:  MAYBE but you should make it clear that no one here is taking responsibility for whatever you download based on their instructions

</modhat>
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: AjD on April 29, 2019, 11:43:16 PM
The virtual machine private server is very easy to setup because all of the work is done for you basically. It also seems to have very low hardware requirements. For reference my system is:

Windows 10
Pentium G4560 CPU (2 cores 4 threads)
16gb ram
Gtx 1050 ti

Now yes it is only me playing on the server, but still that was all I wanted out of a private server. If you want to host a lot of people then sure it'll be more demanding. I have built a few computers in my time but most of my knowledge is hardware based so if I found it easy I don't see why everyone else wouldn't.

If anyone is stuck then the best place is discord or reddit but honestly there are only like 4 steps :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on April 30, 2019, 12:10:27 AM
The virtual machine private server is very easy to setup because all of the work is done for you basically. It also seems to have very low hardware requirements. For reference my system is:

Windows 10
Pentium G4560 CPU (2 cores 4 threads)
16gb ram
Gtx 1050 ti

Now yes it is only me playing on the server, but still that was all I wanted out of a private server. If you want to host a lot of people then sure it'll be more demanding. I have built a few computers in my time but most of my knowledge is hardware based so if I found it easy I don't see why everyone else wouldn't.

If anyone is stuck then the best place is discord or reddit but honestly there are only like 4 steps :)

I got a cheap key for Windows 10 the other day that I plan on using to bring up my own server.  I looked over though and it seems like as long as you follow the instructions exactly it should only take 20-30 minutes to setup.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 30, 2019, 12:32:33 AM
Yes I've been skimming the steps here at work my win 7 box should do nicely. Both as server and client and my old xp box also was able to play the game back in the day so I can set it up to connect via lan for another to play
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on April 30, 2019, 04:34:57 AM
Sorry, it was I who linked the google doc totally unaware of the rules here :)

anyway, the nice thing of running solo server is that you are also the admin, GM and whatever and can set a lot of rules in the game.
Want to set solo requirements for task forces/strike forces no problem.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Auroxis on April 30, 2019, 07:32:20 AM
Really sweet idea, and any generosity to ease the incarnate grind for the altoholics like myself is welcome.

Sweet idea at a glance, but the end result is people grinding solo AE content instead of forming big groups to run the different incarnate trials. Incarnate trials the devs spent months working on which formed some of my most favorite memories of the game.

I understand why Leo did it on his 200 pop server. But it needs to be reverted(or at least toned down) in the current 3k pop servers for the endgame to truly return. If you wanna ease the grind, increase the rewards from trials. Don't give the rewards from grinding AE.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: candidate on April 30, 2019, 08:48:40 AM
Set up lan server runs very well and without a hicup

Anyone have any guide to how to change settings, like 2x XP, enable Halloween etc ?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on April 30, 2019, 09:06:17 AM
The Devs put a cap limit on AE rewards didn't they?

Still, the farming was too lucrative.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 30, 2019, 12:37:38 PM
I've not gotten high enough to see what the vet level rewards are but I can't imagine they'd make the trials completely unnecessary. And I'm pretty sure we paid off dev effort on the trials well before shutdown. I know I had more than a dozen maxed before they even added the da stuff. Nostalgia might make me run one baf but if there's a way to cut it from 100 I'm all for it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 30, 2019, 05:23:45 PM
The Devs put a cap limit on AE rewards didn't they?

Still, the farming was too lucrative.

AE should never, ever, have had XP rewards.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: AjD on April 30, 2019, 05:47:39 PM
Set up lan server runs very well and without a hicup

Anyone have any guide to how to change settings, like 2x XP, enable Halloween etc ?

You can find that stuff on the ourowiki that's been setup. Add XPScale 2.0 to servers.cfg for double xp and you can start halloween using /shardeventstart scriptdefs/Halloween_11_Event.scriptdef
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 30, 2019, 06:45:35 PM
You can find that stuff on the ourowiki that's been setup. Add XPScale 2.0 to servers.cfg for double xp and you can start halloween using /shardeventstart scriptdefs/Halloween_11_Event.scriptdef

As I recall multiple events can't be run at the same time, right?    Like dxp plus holiday or holiday plus rikti invasion?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on April 30, 2019, 07:16:52 PM
The private server thing sounds nice for preservation but I worry that if I can just push a button for my food pellets I'll quit running the maze and my stomach will explode.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 30, 2019, 07:57:04 PM
The private server thing sounds nice for preservation but I worry that if I can just push a button for my food pellets I'll quit running the maze and my stomach will explode.

Valid point however it looks like the public emulation servers are sticking around, so your personal server can be where you restore your lost alts, test new ones you didn't get to try, then jump into the more public servers with greater knowledge of how powers you never tried would work and a better plan on how to build up an io empower your alt.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: VileTerror on April 30, 2019, 09:25:28 PM
With a private server you can be the GM for a group of roleplayers.  Give some friends a custom-tailored gaming experience.  That's my plan, anyway.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 30, 2019, 09:41:46 PM
With a private server you can be the GM for a group of roleplayers.  Give some friends a custom-tailored gaming experience.  That's my plan, anyway.

Precisely what I've been thinking. My server once it is up will be Lan only for awhile.

After I get used to admin powers and fully research server costs and bandwidth costs and my budget allows for it I will boot up a more public server.....unless TonyV comes through with the win for community Ncsoft sanctioned servers


Main thing that will stop me from a more public server is money and I do not want to have to setup donations as that will be a slippery slope that could enable trouble with Ncsoft.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: AjD on April 30, 2019, 10:24:12 PM
As I recall multiple events can't be run at the same time, right?    Like dxp plus holiday or holiday plus rikti invasion?

I would've thought the XP multiplier would work regardless of what you are doing as you have to put it directly in the config file but I'm not sure. I rescued Baby New Year (again) yesterday but I was using a character that I boosted to lvl 50 so haven't checked.

The private server thing sounds nice for preservation but I worry that if I can just push a button for my food pellets I'll quit running the maze and my stomach will explode.

I think if you have a group of people and you rotate who the GM is then it should be fine because you'll have different ideas from each person. Playing solo though I can see it getting boring. I like both solo and team play but the idea of not being able to play with other people at all is why I would like a unified public server if possible. I like messing around on my own server (and will continue to) but it just isn't the same.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on April 30, 2019, 11:15:48 PM
One advantage the current servers have is that there are so few of them.  I'd say its almost impossible now not to find someone to play with.  That wasn't true on most of the NCSoft servers.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: eabrace on April 30, 2019, 11:23:51 PM
ourowiki
Side note:  I really wish they'd have picked a different name for that thing. (https://ouroportal.com/wiki/Main_Page)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on April 30, 2019, 11:30:43 PM
One advantage the current servers have is that there are so few of them.  I'd say its almost impossible now not to find someone to play with.  That wasn't true on most of the NCSoft servers.

Yeah I can think of three of the old servers that seemed to be dead zones in the last year before shutdown.
Infinity red side
Protector both sides
Pinnacle both sides

Though with the massive resurgence of players, my old estimate of how many servers may be required has been revised upwards. Discord I think has four now, things appear to be more stable but I suspect two more may be needed.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Victoria Victrix on May 01, 2019, 12:31:38 AM
Would it be inappropriate to post here about how much it's going to cost per month to run a single private server?  I'd like to see that, and I think that's information people should have before they jump into "gonna run a public server!" and the initial guesstimates that were posted here to do such a thing seem to have been wildly underestimated.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on May 01, 2019, 01:13:36 AM
Would it be inappropriate to post here about how much it's going to cost per month to run a single private server?  I'd like to see that, and I think that's information people should have before they jump into "gonna run a public server!" and the initial guesstimates that were posted here to do such a thing seem to have been wildly underestimated.

I think you'd need to set a maximum simultaneous user limit before you could get a good cost.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on May 01, 2019, 01:35:18 AM
I think it's safe to say it's very expensive to try and host any kind of public server.  The last estimate I saw was more than I made a month.

For a private server for you, and maybe 2 or 3 people.  Probably not much at all if anything besides some higher bandwidth usage.  Unless you want to leave it up all the time.  You will probably burn through your internet providers data pretty quickly if that were to happen.  But just hosting it a few hours a couple of times a week shouldn't be too bad.  The people who have been doing that on Reddit haven't mentioned how much it is, so I imagine its rather small.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 01, 2019, 01:43:59 AM
Different server hosts different fees.

Also....given that this is an emulation server of what could still be called pirated software....some server hosting services may have a thing about that.

Now if Ncsoft just says they consent to community servers.....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: P51mus on May 01, 2019, 07:31:09 AM
The current chatter I'm seeing seems to say the servers are light on bandwidth usage and cpu usage, but heavy on RAM.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on May 01, 2019, 09:03:37 AM
Would it be inappropriate to post here about how much it's going to cost per month to run a single private server?  I'd like to see that, and I think that's information people should have before they jump into "gonna run a public server!" and the initial guesstimates that were posted here to do such a thing seem to have been wildly underestimated.

Single private server for you and your familly? A good home pc will do. Mine does a fantastic job for the familly. Also running all the settings at ultra and 200% World detail. 60fps +
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Victoria Victrix on May 01, 2019, 10:11:25 AM
OK, what about a 30-300 person server?  I'm pretty sure that won't run on a PC.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: bugzee on May 01, 2019, 01:19:01 PM
OK, what about a 30-300 person server?  I'm pretty sure that won't run on a PC.

Its easy to load balance the servers too. The game has load balancing features built in so its actually pretty easy to dedicate a few machines to share the load. It actually runs really well, even on old hardware such as a core2 duo e8400. So get a few $100 used computers off of ebay and load them up (be sure to add a good amount of ram though). Its really not out of reach to put a few hundred players on home servers. If you have a good internet connection like FIOS, and you have a static IP, I would say you are good to go.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: bugzee on May 01, 2019, 02:46:31 PM
Had some thoughts on private servers:

If NCSoft were to not pursue any legal action against server owners, and we were free to make public servers, I would like to see the following things:

1. A server browser, so that we can see all the online servers and be able to choose which ones to play on.

2. In order to be listed on the server browser, the server owner will have to agree to a few things (make this info available via an api): # of online players, # of accts signed up, uptime statistics, max # of players allowed, server ping.

3. The server owners will agree to transfer characters to one another (Will need to make a character transfer tool). So if Joe Schmoe decides to shut his server down, characters can be transferred to a central character repository (perhaps operated by the server browser people) for further transfer to another server. Perhaps server owners will make available, a tool that the player can use at anytime to copy their character to the repository for safe storage as insurance against server shutdowns.

Just some ideas...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: JJSoulkatana on May 01, 2019, 02:57:20 PM
Big Thank you to all of you doing the work that you do.  While I am surprised that there was a private server running for years, I'm not mad at all.  I needed the break.  During that break I was able to get 4 college degrees finished and concentrate on real life.  It is so nice to be back on the streets kicking butt though and I look forward to doing it all again.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: CG on May 01, 2019, 03:05:52 PM
3. The server owners will agree to transfer characters to one another (Will need to make a character transfer tool). So if Joe Schmoe decides to shut his server down, characters can be transferred to a central character repository (perhaps operated by the server browser people) for further transfer to another server.
For character transfers, the server's take on the Inf economy will be relevant.  If your character is coming from a server where the Inf is free or massively inflated, moving to a server where the economy is more 'traditional', the transfer could wreck the economy.  The same with recipes, salvage, and other things that could be sold.

Possible other things that could be of concern are earning badges and whether the original server gives everyone all the badges and the new one requires that you earn them.  Did you earn your Enhancements or were you gifted them.  There's no objectively wrong answer, but there is a question of compatibility.

I don't think anyone cares about character level.

Fundamentally, it's an issue of trust and what the rules are on Server A vs the rules on Server B and whether those are compatible.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: bugzee on May 01, 2019, 03:08:00 PM
Hmm, good points CG...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 01, 2019, 03:22:49 PM
For character transfers, the server's take on the Inf economy will be relevant.  If your character is coming from a server where the Inf is free or massively inflated, moving to a server where the economy is more 'traditional', the transfer could wreck the economy.  The same with recipes, salvage, and other things that could be sold.

Possible other things that could be of concern are earning badges and whether the original server gives everyone all the badges and the new one requires that you earn them.  Did you earn your Enhancements or were you gifted them.  There's no objectively wrong answer, but there is a question of compatibility.

I don't think anyone cares about character level.

Fundamentally, it's an issue of trust and what the rules are on Server A vs the rules on Server B and whether those are compatible.

Well the game used to have character transfers, so seeing that return would be nice.

As to the character and what it is equipped with in terms of enhancers and badges and inf.....there is likely no way to prove if a character was "administratively boosted" vs. earning all the items through game progression.

There are also the haves and have nots, some players will look at any character and cry that said character has something they do not such as an anniversary badge or the notorious bug Hunter badge.

There will always be someone that thinks someone used an exploit or is an AE farm product or used a macro or a bot or something else to reach level 50, 2 billion influenc, have a maga supergroup base, etc, et , etc.

And with game back on emulation and the current i25build having basically everything unlocked for xcept bug Hunter badge which is fine, and an opportunity to purchase with merits the past years of anniversary badges, during anniversary time only, and even shortened the time to o get day job badges.....let's all just have fun and give that giant middle finger to Ncsoft that they so justly deserve.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Meridian on May 01, 2019, 06:45:28 PM
Facetious much? :)
I'm just so curious about this post. I think having a private server sounds awesome, why would anyone question whether someone happy with theirs was serious?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 01, 2019, 06:55:43 PM
I'm just so curious about this post. I think having a private server sounds awesome, why would anyone question whether someone happy with theirs was serious?

I thought they were kidding at the time. Relax I am quite glad they are up and running

Soon I shall be as well

The more of us that get servers running be they public or private is more giant middle fingers to ncsoft
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on May 01, 2019, 08:47:34 PM
Currently, the Homecoming team said Character transfers are very, very low on their list of things to add.  The current 4 servers up right now though have WW shared between them as well as all AE missions.  So aside from population, you have access to all the mission and items being sold.

OK, what about a 30-300 person server?  I'm pretty sure that won't run on a PC.

The current homecoming set up is for about 6,000 to 8,000 people and is (I believe) over $5000 a month.  The problem is people spreading out and doing their own thing.  If everyone stayed in the same area it wouldn't be a problem.  Also, 30 to 300 would have some rather different costs.  A 30 person server if you all stayed in the same area wouldn't be much at all I imagine.  300 People would be, even if they all stayed in the same place.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 01, 2019, 09:23:42 PM
Currently, the Homecoming team said Character transfers are very, very low on their list of things to add.  The current 4 servers up right now though have WW shared between them as well as all AE missions.  So aside from population, you have access to all the mission and items being sold.

The current homecoming set up is for about 6,000 to 8,000 people and is (I believe) over $5000 a month.  The problem is people spreading out and doing their own thing.  If everyone stayed in the same area it wouldn't be a problem.  Also, 30 to 300 would have some rather different costs.  A 30 person server if you all stayed in the same area wouldn't be much at all I imagine.  300 People would be, even if they all stayed in the same place.

Plus with all the servers that spring up, it will be harder fo Ncsoft to stop us. Eventually with all the servers that should appear, people will find one to call home and some servers may need to expand and some may not. A server for 100-300 players should be sufficient funds r me to provide a modest home for CoH players

Now if I should win the lottery....well....
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Surelle on May 01, 2019, 10:00:00 PM
NCsoft should somehow incorporate all current and future CoX private servers into a launcher list similar to what Conan: Exiles and other survival games do, and similar to what Bioware's old Neverwinter Night's multiplayer shows when you log in.  It would list all player-run servers grouped by category according to their customized rule sets, restrictions, populations, etc.

That would rock.  Then everybody would be under one banner.  If certain admins didn't abide by a code of conduct (and their financial restrictions), NCsoft could give them the boot.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 01, 2019, 10:11:24 PM
NCsoft should somehow incorporate all current and future CoX private servers into a launcher list similar to what Conan: Exiles and other survival games do, and similar to what Bioware's old Neverwinter Night's multiplayer shows when you log in.  It would list all player-run servers grouped by category according to their customized rule sets, restrictions, populations, etc.

That would rock.  Then everybody would be under one banner.  If certain admins didn't abide by a code of conduct (and their financial restrictions), NCsoft could give them the boot.

Having Ncsoft as an ally would be great....but that distrust will always be there.

Now as to code of conduct regarding player conduct, costuming and naming...yeah I think we need that ASAP.
The other day on one of the servers i saw a character that had a Germanic/warrior costume which is fine, but the name was Adolf Hitler and the bio entry was a bit...well you get the idea.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on May 01, 2019, 11:32:07 PM
Probably someone from 4Chan looking to shock someone.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on May 01, 2019, 11:55:25 PM
Probably someone from 4Chan looking to shock someone.

Ya most likely.  I saw some pictures from their private server that was basically just a really racist name, spamming really racist things.  Apparently, that is the whole appeal to that server judging by the pictures and things I read about it.

I think the Homecoming team will ban people for doing that kind of stuff.  They seem to be setting up a code of conduct for both the players and their GM's.

NCsoft should somehow incorporate all current and future CoX private servers into a launcher list similar to what Conan: Exiles and other survival games do, and similar to what Bioware's old Neverwinter Night's multiplayer shows when you log in.  It would list all player-run servers grouped by category according to their customized rule sets, restrictions, populations, etc.

That would rock.  Then everybody would be under one banner.  If certain admins didn't abide by a code of conduct (and their financial restrictions), NCsoft could give them the boot.

EQ does this with the private servers and I like it quite a bit.  Sometimes you need to download a different client or something, but it always shows the servers you can play on.  I think the goal (maybe?) is to make this possible with servers that share similar rulesets and ideals.  Currently, Tequila is needed to access any of server so I think in a sense it already is that way.  You just need to change something in the manifest to be able to see other servers.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 02, 2019, 12:05:05 AM
Ya most likely.  I saw some pictures from their private server that was basically just a really racist name, spamming really racist things.  Apparently, that is the whole appeal to that server judging by the pictures and things I read about it.

I think the Homecoming team will ban people for doing that kind of stuff.  They seem to be setting up a code of conduct for both the players and their GM's.

EQ does this with the private servers and I like it quite a bit.  Sometimes you need to download a different client or something, but it always shows the servers you can play on.  I think the goal (maybe?) is to make this possible with servers that share similar rulesets and ideals.  Currently, Tequila is needed to access any of server so I think in a sense it already is that way.  You just need to change something in the manifest to be able to see other servers.

Could work but as to other servers and their rules,. There probably won't be a huge deviation until admins start trying to adjust current powers and archetypes or make all new ones like how they currently have radiation melee and rad armor and the sentinel archetype.

Likely it will be where an i24 character can port over to any i24 server, and to i25, but an i25 cannot port over to i24.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on May 02, 2019, 01:23:58 AM
Likely it will be where an i24 character can port over to any i24 server, and to i25, but an i25 cannot port over to i24.

Sounds like in order to transfer characters between server it will involve having to create a dev tool to do it.  They said if a server has to shut down, they can try to copy the entire character database over to another(With no promise of success), but individual transfers without creating and thoroughly testing a Dev tool won't be doable.  It sounds like, for any server, character transfer is a long way down the road.

Once it exists, if multiple servers use it, then it might be possible.  For now, embrace the altitis.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on May 02, 2019, 10:46:37 AM
The other day on one of the servers i saw a character that had a Germanic/warrior costume which is fine, but the name was Adolf Hitler and the bio entry was a bit...well you get the idea.
Cheap shock value, ehhh.

But nobody expects... The Satanic Inquisition!  ;)
Spoiler for Hidden:
Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise....
Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency....
Our *three* weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to eeevil....
Our *four*...no...
*Amongst* our weapons....
Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise....
I'll come in again
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on May 02, 2019, 07:24:59 PM
NCsoft should somehow incorporate all current and future CoX private servers into a launcher list similar to what Conan: Exiles and other survival games do, and similar to what Bioware's old Neverwinter Night's multiplayer shows when you log in.  It would list all player-run servers grouped by category according to their customized rule sets, restrictions, populations, etc.

That would rock.  Then everybody would be under one banner.  If certain admins didn't abide by a code of conduct (and their financial restrictions), NCsoft could give them the boot.

Better to give NC Soft the boot.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 02, 2019, 08:02:13 PM
Better to give NC Soft the boot.

Azrael.

Yeah, I know I have made my feelings about NcSoft pretty clear  over the years and especially recently.

But all pretense and emotion aside, logic dictates to me that the further Ncsoft is from all this, the better.

In fact I'd like to see the login screen edited to have the NCsoft logo on it removed or else have the red circle with line through it.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on May 02, 2019, 11:47:36 PM
That was interesting.   I downloaded one of the I25 virtual machine solutions.  Easy enough to set up.   I'd have appreciated a "click to ignore errors" when starting the dbserver, but really, what else could you do?

I currently have the VM hosted on a magnetic RAID-5 array.   This makes zoning into new zones slow.  How slow?  Slow enough to make you wonder if the server has hung up.   Once a map has been loaded, zoning is tolerable.  I'm going to create a copy of the VM on an SSD later.  Performance should improve.

NCSoft is now powerless to stop me from playing solo.

I just need one thing to make this perfect - a way to import my Sentinel+ files back into an I25 database.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on May 03, 2019, 02:34:46 AM
That was interesting.   I downloaded one of the I25 virtual machine solutions.  Easy enough to set up.   I'd have appreciated a "click to ignore errors" when starting the dbserver, but really, what else could you do?

I currently have the VM hosted on a magnetic RAID-5 array.   This makes zoning into new zones slow.  How slow?  Slow enough to make you wonder if the server has hung up.   Once a map has been loaded, zoning is tolerable.  I'm going to create a copy of the VM on an SSD later.  Performance should improve.

NCSoft is now powerless to stop me from playing solo.

I just need one thing to make this perfect - a way to import my Sentinel+ files back into an I25 database.

So I was actually curious about that.  I know with the Admin powers you can set your self to 50 and Auto Enhance.  But are you able to actually manually create IO sets?  When I set mine up I wanted to recreate my main using the Admin Tools.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 03, 2019, 04:16:36 AM
That was interesting.   I downloaded one of the I25 virtual machine solutions.  Easy enough to set up.   I'd have appreciated a "click to ignore errors" when starting the dbserver, but really, what else could you do?

I currently have the VM hosted on a magnetic RAID-5 array.   This makes zoning into new zones slow.  How slow?  Slow enough to make you wonder if the server has hung up.   Once a map has been loaded, zoning is tolerable.  I'm going to create a copy of the VM on an SSD later.  Performance should improve.

NCSoft is now powerless to stop me from playing solo.

I just need one thing to make this perfect - a way to import my Sentinel+ files back into an I25 database.

Can you reroll the alt, bump it to 50, spawn the crafted incarnate powers, spawn crafted IO's to store in your base and then reslot the alt then restore the lost badges?

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on May 03, 2019, 01:30:12 PM
That was interesting.   I downloaded one of the I25 virtual machine solutions.  Easy enough to set up.   I'd have appreciated a "click to ignore errors" when starting the dbserver, but really, what else could you do?

I currently have the VM hosted on a magnetic RAID-5 array.   This makes zoning into new zones slow.  How slow?  Slow enough to make you wonder if the server has hung up.   Once a map has been loaded, zoning is tolerable.  I'm going to create a copy of the VM on an SSD later.  Performance should improve.

NCSoft is now powerless to stop me from playing solo.

I just need one thing to make this perfect - a way to import my Sentinel+ files back into an I25 database.

Congratulations.

"FREEEEEEEEEEEEDOM!"  Braveheart.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Codewalker on May 03, 2019, 02:52:49 PM
I just need one thing to make this perfect - a way to import my Sentinel+ files back into an I25 database.

I made a thing. (https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=13387.msg233093#msg233093)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Korbian on May 03, 2019, 03:40:47 PM
Now I have a GLADOS in my head...

"I wouldn't bother with that thing. My guess is that touching it will just make your life even worse somehow."
"Let's be honest: Neither one of us knows what that thing does. Just put it in the corner, and I'll deal with it later."


Really though.  Good Thing.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on May 03, 2019, 05:02:51 PM
That was interesting.   I downloaded one of the I25 virtual machine solutions.  Easy enough to set up.   I'd have appreciated a "click to ignore errors" when starting the dbserver, but really, what else could you do?

I currently have the VM hosted on a magnetic RAID-5 array.   This makes zoning into new zones slow.  How slow?  Slow enough to make you wonder if the server has hung up.   Once a map has been loaded, zoning is tolerable.  I'm going to create a copy of the VM on an SSD later.  Performance should improve.

NCSoft is now powerless to stop me from playing solo.

I just need one thing to make this perfect - a way to import my Sentinel+ files back into an I25 database.

I did not use the VM. Loading is just a few seconds between maps
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on May 03, 2019, 05:05:45 PM
Its quite funny the mmo that became a single player game.
How many folks did say it was impossible on a single machine to run coh :)
Only problemnis no auction house so you have to grind merits
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on May 03, 2019, 05:25:12 PM
If you're running your own game, I'm sure the coders will find a way to allow one to change a lot of the game parameters, such as multiplying all Merit Rewards by 10, 30, or 50. Or just making everything cost nothing.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: kiario on May 03, 2019, 06:39:51 PM
If you're running your own game, I'm sure the coders will find a way to allow one to change a lot of the game parameters, such as multiplying all Merit Rewards by 10, 30, or 50. Or just making everything cost nothing.
I25 has removed the min amount on taskforces. I did posi today solo :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: princezilla on May 03, 2019, 06:40:51 PM
Honestly, i25 is amazing and a near universal improvement over i24, I don't understand why some people want less options. :P
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on May 03, 2019, 07:16:31 PM
That was interesting.   I downloaded one of the I25 virtual machine solutions.  Easy enough to set up.   I'd have appreciated a "click to ignore errors" when starting the dbserver, but really, what else could you do?

I currently have the VM hosted on a magnetic RAID-5 array.   This makes zoning into new zones slow.  How slow?  Slow enough to make you wonder if the server has hung up.   Once a map has been loaded, zoning is tolerable.  I'm going to create a copy of the VM on an SSD later.  Performance should improve.

NCSoft is now powerless to stop me from playing solo.

I just need one thing to make this perfect - a way to import my Sentinel+ files back into an I25 database.

Did you use the Freedom VM?  If so, mind if I PM you some questions?  I am trying it and was able to get through the steps, but there were no instructions on how to handle errors.  The main issue  was running into was "Chatserver is not connceted"
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on May 03, 2019, 08:05:53 PM
Its quite funny the mmo that became a single player game.
How many folks did say it was impossible on a single machine to run coh :)
You're confusing what was actually said with how you understood it.
First, technically it's still a MMO, your personal server just has only one player.
Second, six years after the shutdown (and fifteen after the game launched!) the server's RAM demands are still somewhat obscene and thus prohibiting some players from running their personal servers on typical consumer grade hardware. When you asked that question five years ago, the number of machines that could handle both the client and the server on the same system would have been even smaller.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on May 05, 2019, 10:24:55 PM
I'm waiting for my isp to deliver my new router so i can go fibre.

So much for the 'smooth' transition. :p

No internet...

Then they txt me the date my bill is due.

Doooohhhhhh!  Robust phone call to them tomorrow... :p

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 05, 2019, 11:52:06 PM
I'm waiting for my isp to deliver my new router so i can go fibre.

So much for the 'smooth' transition. :p

No internet...

Then they txt me the date my bill is due.

Doooohhhhhh!  Robust phone call to them tomorrow... :

Azrael.

So close yet so far.....I feel your pain.

Overall the game is running well

AE exp was cut by half due to all the farming and crashes, not sure if they fixed it yet

Arena server is unavailable....thus blocking access to o a significant amount of badges

Ski lodge was open last I looked. But winter event is not on

It looks like you can queue up and run the summer blockbuster event but have not tried it. Yet.

The market....well some recipes are appearing and last I checked there is one of each of the pvp is that boosts defense by three for sale at each level....why? It doesn't take a lot of merits to get one from the vendor.  Overall there appears to be on be a lot of salvage selling and recipes are slowly loading up

Game is tricky when you are not at defense cap

Supergroup bases  you can register right away.
Prestige no longer needed
All base items unlocked
No restrictions on which items can go where,.

So for something quick, activate your base, get the biggest lot, and you entrance room can have a craft table fo invention, salvage and enhancement storage bins, put a small room next to o it with a teleporter with the pocket d beacon.

Now you can warp to pocket d, use their vault, merit vendor, tailor,  trainer, and type /auctionhouse to bring up the market, you cannot use that command in base or missions.

Stay in pocket for an hour to get fhe vip badge and pocket d teleport power.

Also only one hour in each pvp zone to get the badge for that zone.

Day job required time reduced.

Must be L14 to enter ouroborus portal, must be exposed to time travel to get the power.

Sister psyche taskforce in the ouroborus crystal menu

Statesman is dead.

Taskforces all appear to be running.

Visit nul the gull for quick alignment change
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: bugzee on May 06, 2019, 03:04:37 AM
I want to play on one of those servers, but dang, the fear of losing access to it again makes me stay away. I did run a private server, but way too boring by myself. Waiting to see what ncsoft does before I really get involved.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 06, 2019, 05:09:08 AM
I want to play on one of those servers, but dang, the fear of losing access to it again makes me stay away. I did run a private server, but way too boring by myself. Waiting to see what ncsoft does before I really get involved.

If nothing else, play on it to get familiarized with the game again.

If NCsoft does shut it down, you still have your own server.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on May 06, 2019, 02:42:36 PM
I want to play on one of those servers, but dang, the fear of losing access to it again makes me stay away. I did run a private server, but way too boring by myself. Waiting to see what ncsoft does before I really get involved.

On all three point...

Fear is the path of the dark side.

Private server?  Why not invite your mates to join..?

You'll be waiting a long time.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Shibboleth on May 06, 2019, 04:00:58 PM
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MWRuger on May 06, 2019, 06:12:14 PM
I made a thing. (https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=13387.msg233093#msg233093)

Thank you codewalker, much appreciated!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MWRuger on May 06, 2019, 06:20:09 PM
Well now, I  have often stated that I wanted to play City of Heroes again before I croaked and I have!

I created old toons and new ones!

Did 2 SG's.

Starting marketing.

Ran The Hollows

I teamed on Pugs.

I did an Oroburos mission.

I am content and happy.

So if you are waiting until you can have fun in the game, STOP WAITING. Waiting for the perfect moment to play may not come. Why deny yourself the fun you could be having now? See you on the streets! My global is mwruger
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Wyrm on May 06, 2019, 06:27:22 PM
I want to play on one of those servers, but dang, the fear of losing access to it again makes me stay away. I did run a private server, but way too boring by myself. Waiting to see what ncsoft does before I really get involved.
I'd rather play and lose it again than not play and just keep missing it. I'm kind of assuming that the characters I'm leveling right now won't be the final iterations and that I may end up on other servers entirely, but that won't stop me from having fun right now. :)

After all, the code's out there. Can't stop the signal.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 06, 2019, 07:13:11 PM
Well now, I  have often stated that I wanted to play City of Heroes again before I croaked and I have!

I created old toons and new ones!

Did 2 SG's.

Starting marketing.

Ran The Hollows

I teamed on Pugs.

I did an Oroburos mission.

I am content and happy.

So if you are waiting until you can have fun in the game, STOP WAITING. Waiting for the perfect moment to play may not come. Why deny yourself the fun you could be having now? See you on the streets! My global is mwruger

The thing about perfection is that it is unknowable but is around us all the time.

And that time is NOW.   Make your account number hich will let you have 1000 alts and start playing!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: bugzee on May 07, 2019, 01:25:23 AM
Bit the bullet and started playing on the homecoming servers. Ugh... Now the problem is, I can't find time to eat, work, sleep, etc.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 07, 2019, 04:07:45 AM
Bit the bullet and started playing on the homecoming servers. Ugh... Now the problem is, I can't find time to eat, work, sleep, etc.

Welcome home!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on May 07, 2019, 08:47:53 AM
Bit the bullet and started playing on the homecoming servers. Ugh... Now the problem is, I can't find time to eat, work, sleep, etc.

It is a rather easy bullet to bite :)  Welcome home.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on May 07, 2019, 06:29:43 PM
Bit the bullet and started playing on the homecoming servers. Ugh... Now the problem is, I can't find time to eat, work, sleep, etc.

That's the spirit.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: gypsyav on May 08, 2019, 05:01:39 AM
Bit the bullet and started playing on the homecoming servers. Ugh... Now the problem is, I can't find time to eat, work, sleep, etc.

I've been running into the same problem. I literally had tears in my eyes when I logged in for the first time a few days ago.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 08, 2019, 04:31:00 PM
I've been running into the same problem. I literally had tears in my eyes when I logged in for the first time a few days ago.

WE ARE COH of BORG
Permanent deactivation is impossible.
Escape is impossible
Escape is undesirable
You will be assimilated.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: EmeraldReaper411 on May 08, 2019, 07:39:54 PM
I played city of heros for a bit shortly before the big shut down when it was free to play and loved everything about it.  When it shut i tried to migrate to dc universe online and champions online but it wasent the same.  When I heard details of the homecomeing server i was so there it aint funny.  Now I got heroes on the brain trying to come up with new heros and villans and the plots behind them for RP
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Abraxus on May 08, 2019, 11:44:18 PM
Arenas are activated on all Homecoming shards now, so that has changed since a previous post stating that they weren't.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 09, 2019, 12:12:09 AM
Arenas are activated on all Homecoming shards now, so that has changed since a previous post stating that they weren't.

A badging we will go.....hi honey the merrio a badging we shall go.

Downside, server crashes from the heal farms
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on May 09, 2019, 10:04:33 PM
So close yet so far.....I feel your pain.

Overall the game is running well

AE exp was cut by half due to all the farming and crashes, not sure if they fixed it yet

Arena server is unavailable....thus blocking access to o a significant amount of badges

Ski lodge was open last I looked. But winter event is not on

It looks like you can queue up and run the summer blockbuster event but have not tried it. Yet.

The market....well some recipes are appearing and last I checked there is one of each of the pvp is that boosts defense by three for sale at each level....why? It doesn't take a lot of merits to get one from the vendor.  Overall there appears to be on be a lot of salvage selling and recipes are slowly loading up

Game is tricky when you are not at defense cap

Supergroup bases  you can register right away.
Prestige no longer needed
All base items unlocked
No restrictions on which items can go where,.

So for something quick, activate your base, get the biggest lot, and you entrance room can have a craft table fo invention, salvage and enhancement storage bins, put a small room next to o it with a teleporter with the pocket d beacon.

Now you can warp to pocket d, use their vault, merit vendor, tailor,  trainer, and type /auctionhouse to bring up the market, you cannot use that command in base or missions.

Stay in pocket for an hour to get fhe vip badge and pocket d teleport power.

Also only one hour in each pvp zone to get the badge for that zone.

Day job required time reduced.

Must be L14 to enter ouroborus portal, must be exposed to time travel to get the power.

Sister psyche taskforce in the ouroborus crystal menu

Statesman is dead.

Taskforces all appear to be running.

Visit nul the gull for quick alignment change

Noted for hints and tips.

Finally got the router.  The internet is much faster on fibre. ;)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Arcana on May 10, 2019, 03:09:41 AM
Is it ok to ask what happened to Arcana and Codewalker?

I went on vacation, and then I put myself into dark mode ahead of the release of Avengers Endgame since I was going to be travelling and unable to see it until last week, so I haven't been around for a while.

So, anything new happen while I was gone?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: eabrace on May 10, 2019, 03:41:27 AM
Nope.  No excitement around here at all.  :D
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Paragon Avenger on May 10, 2019, 04:39:39 AM
I went on vacation, and then I put myself into dark mode ahead of the release of Avengers Endgame since I was going to be travelling and unable to see it until last week, so I haven't been around for a while.

So, anything new happen while I was gone?

I posted another 2000 meaningless posts that someone will have to read and delete.  Other than that, nothing.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on May 10, 2019, 08:40:24 AM
I went on vacation, and then I put myself into dark mode ahead of the release of Avengers Endgame since I was going to be travelling and unable to see it until last week, so I haven't been around for a while.

So, anything new happen while I was gone?

Same ol, same ol. Waking up, going to work, talking on CoHTitan. 

Oh, and doing Task Forces to grind merits for my build.

Nothing out of the ordinary though
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on May 10, 2019, 09:15:19 AM
I went on vacation, and then I put myself into dark mode ahead of the release of Avengers Endgame since I was going to be travelling and unable to see it until last week, so I haven't been around for a while.

So, anything new happen while I was gone?

The plans for Death Star have been recovered by the rebel alliance...

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on May 10, 2019, 12:30:48 PM
I posted another 2000 meaningless posts that someone will have to read and delete.  Other than that, nothing.

I love that you think someone's reading them. And before you ask, no I didn't read this one, I just knew the content cuz reasons.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: duane on May 11, 2019, 01:26:25 PM
Nothing to see here.  Just continue as you were.

Go. Hunt.  Kill Skuls.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Korbian on May 11, 2019, 02:37:43 PM
I love that you think someone's reading them. And before you ask, no I didn't read this one, I just knew the content cuz reasons.

DAYUMM!  Somebody get Paragon Avenger some ice for that burn!   :P ;D

Y'all are so funny. <3

Edit:  I just noticed my forum rank is boss now.  I may have to end my posts with "like a boss" until I rank up again.
Like a boss.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: CAPTAINCAPSLOCK on May 11, 2019, 06:40:40 PM
My CDROMs are long since gone.  Is there a way to get ahold of new install media for the client?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on May 11, 2019, 08:02:05 PM
My CDROMs are long since gone.  Is there a way to get ahold of new install media for the client?

Yes, but it'll take patience. (https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=9531.0) 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Paragon Avenger on May 15, 2019, 05:08:31 AM
DAYUMM!  Somebody get Paragon Avenger some ice for that burn!   :P ;D
Like a boss.

Burned for no good reason.  I was even making fun of my many posts.

There for a while i would add a post to my fan fiction and there would be like q17 views.
I figured that it must be the forum moderators deciding if the post should be deleted.

Like an ELITE boss.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on May 15, 2019, 04:27:02 PM
We of the unread over-postings need no excuse to jibe at each other.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MWRuger on May 16, 2019, 08:12:23 PM
I have a question for the powers that be at Titan Network.

Are you going top be updating the changes made by Homecoming and issue 26?

There a ton of changes in the patch notes and somethings have morphed. For example, the jetpack vendor (now a PTW vendor) in Fort Zulu no longer sells at set 10000 INF jetpack. You buy it in 30 minute increments for 5000 inf each.

If you do, then what about the servers that are only running i24? Will you do disambiguation for these servers?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: PhiloticKnight on May 16, 2019, 08:26:02 PM
I have a question for the powers that be at Titan Network.

Are you going top be updating the changes made by Homecoming and issue 26?

There a ton of changes in the patch notes and somethings have morphed. For example, the jetpack vendor (now a PTW vendor) in Fort Zulu no longer sells at set 10000 INF jetpack. You buy it in 30 minute increments for 5000 inf each.

If you do, then what about the servers that are only running i24? Will you do disambiguation for these servers?

/JRanger (https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=13415)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on May 16, 2019, 08:58:44 PM
To be more verbose, as tracking all the changes most of the servers intend to carry out would make Paragon Wiki become too difficult to manage, instead we encourage servers to start their own wikis and either fork Paragon Wiki as a starting point, or use Inter-Wiki linking to point back to us.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on May 17, 2019, 03:15:25 AM
We of the unread over-postings need no excuse to jibe at each other.

Vee.  I have a question for you.  (Or anyone if they can answer...)

How many 'to hit' slots do you have to put in Tactics to have the Auto-Snipe 'circle' trigger for insta-snipe..?

Will 1 slot do it?

I notice when I hit build up or pop two acc inspires it will 'circle' auto-trigger.

I've just picked up Tactics.  Only one slotted for 'end red' at this moment in time.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on May 17, 2019, 04:08:12 AM
No idea. Only blasting toons i've made since the snipe change are water and sonic which don't have a snipe :D Someone's bound to know though.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on May 17, 2019, 09:47:20 AM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on May 17, 2019, 01:21:01 PM
Kismet should be easier to get as I think it's in the ae cheap rolls, or at least some from the set are. I've yet to buy anything of the market since converters are so cheap.

I'm loving my sonic/martial so far. Ki punch is my new favourite power. It's like a little Hong Kong film every two seconds.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on May 17, 2019, 03:36:44 PM
Kismet should be easier to get as I think it's in the ae cheap rolls, or at least some from the set are. I've yet to buy anything of the market since converters are so cheap.

I'm loving my sonic/martial so far. Ki punch is my new favourite power. It's like a little Hong Kong film every two seconds.

I have a convertor.  I haven't used that feature yet.  So, I can use a convertor to convert from IO recipe to another?  :o  So rather than buying IO Kismet Acc, I can just make it from another?

Sonic/Martial arts.  As a blaster/blapper?  Ki Punch.  That's a new punch, not heard of that one before.  Not in the MA scrapper set?  I do like different melee sets.  The more variety the better.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on May 17, 2019, 04:30:37 PM
Have to craft but yeah, converters work the same as the live version but are much easier to get. 1 to convert to same rarity, two to same type, three within set.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on May 17, 2019, 04:34:49 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: PhiloticKnight on May 17, 2019, 04:38:08 PM
I think that's the British pound.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on May 17, 2019, 04:44:29 PM
Potato potahto
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Tahquitz on May 17, 2019, 04:45:34 PM
INF, Quid... Close enough.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on May 17, 2019, 06:53:54 PM
So close yet so far.....I feel your pain.

Overall the game is running well

AE exp was cut by half due to all the farming and crashes, not sure if they fixed it yet

Arena server is unavailable....thus blocking access to o a significant amount of badges

Ski lodge was open last I looked. But winter event is not on

It looks like you can queue up and run the summer blockbuster event but have not tried it. Yet.

The market....well some recipes are appearing and last I checked there is one of each of the pvp is that boosts defense by three for sale at each level....why? It doesn't take a lot of merits to get one from the vendor.  Overall there appears to be on be a lot of salvage selling and recipes are slowly loading up

Game is tricky when you are not at defense cap

Supergroup bases  you can register right away.
Prestige no longer needed
All base items unlocked
No restrictions on which items can go where,.

So for something quick, activate your base, get the biggest lot, and you entrance room can have a craft table fo invention, salvage and enhancement storage bins, put a small room next to o it with a teleporter with the pocket d beacon.

Now you can warp to pocket d, use their vault, merit vendor, tailor,  trainer, and type /auctionhouse to bring up the market, you cannot use that command in base or missions.

Stay in pocket for an hour to get fhe vip badge and pocket d teleport power.

Also only one hour in each pvp zone to get the badge for that zone.

Day job required time reduced.

Must be L14 to enter ouroborus portal, must be exposed to time travel to get the power.

Sister psyche taskforce in the ouroborus crystal menu

Statesman is dead.

Taskforces all appear to be running.

Visit nul the gull for quick alignment change

I'm following some of this advice.  Set up a base with a big plot.  (A guy thing...)  Got enhancement table.  Salvage racks.  An inspire machine.  Not sure how that works but I put one in.

TP room next door...with Pocket D and the usual places like Atlas, Steel, Talos, Bricks etc...and the hard to get tos like P.Isle and Striga.

That's about it.

I'll start putting enhances etc. in storage for IO crafting later.

This is the first ever build where I have made Inventions L30s-35s.  Cost a few million.  But I don't have to upgrade them.

(I've had the more specialised IO sets in the past.  But never did the general 'training origin' style invention sets.  Slightly more than standard SOs...are the generic IOs.  Can't complain.  Don't have to think about them until L47-ish.)

Bought the recipes.  Made them.  Quite cheaply in the main.  Just the damage and end mods that cost a bit more.

Good stuff.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on May 17, 2019, 10:35:59 PM
I have a convertor.  I haven't used that feature yet.  So, I can use a convertor to convert from IO recipe to another?  :o  So rather than buying IO Kismet Acc, I can just make it from another?

Sonic/Martial arts.  As a blaster/blapper?  Ki Punch.  That's a new punch, not heard of that one before.  Not in the MA scrapper set?  I do like different melee sets.  The more variety the better.

Azrael.

If you haven't already figured it out.  In-set changes are 3 converters each.  For example, if you have a  Numina Heal/Recharge and you want Numina Regen/+Recovery you can spend 3 converters to re-roll in set for a chance at the Enchantment you want.  It's random, but so far I haven't had to spend more than 12 to get the exact piece I want.

You can also re-roll based on rarity.  For an Uncommon or Rare recipe, this would be difficult I imagine because of the sheer amount of recipes.  It is great for purple recipes, or AT IO' though.  My example was Hetacombs into Ragnorak.  It took about 8 rolls, of 1 Converter each, to get Ragnorak set.  It re-rolls randomly too.  So in my example, I had a Hetacomb: Damage/Accuracy, when it re-rolled to Ragnorak finally it was just Ragnorak: Damage.  It has a chance to re-roll for any IO Set of the same Rarity, except for the current one you are in.  Hetacomb would never re-roll as another Hetacomb.

The third option I am a little unclear still my self, but I believe you keep the Category regardless of rarity.  I think this means if you had a Smashing Haymaker IO set, you could re-roll at it a chance for a Kinetic Combat set.  This one costs 2 converters, and I currently haven't used it.  But it seems good if you have a bunch of an IO Set type (Melee, Healing, Defense) but not the not exact IO Set you actually need.

Also, don't forget the Reward Merit prices are way cheaper.  100 for Very Rare, 50 For Rare, 20 for uncommon.  For the market, you can generally underbid a decent amount on the market and still get what you need.  I was often bidding 400k on 5,000,000 recipes and getting them.  Generally, if something has over 20 copies for sale, I underbid by at least half of what the last successful bid was.  It doesn't always work, but it works more often than you would expect.  You may have to wait a few days though. 
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Captain Electric on May 19, 2019, 01:02:51 PM
Just wanna say, it's so good to see people here and elsewhere talking shop about the game.

Never say never.  :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Xev on May 19, 2019, 01:22:44 PM
I need to do some reading, it looks like.. I dunno anything about anything.

One question: Can I farm Architect on +4/x8 again, yet?  : D

OK two.. Can I do it with my old guys? Or do I have to reroll?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on May 19, 2019, 02:06:19 PM
I need to do some reading, it looks like.. I dunno anything about anything.

One question: Can I farm Architect on +4/x8 again, yet?  : D

OK two.. Can I do it with my old guys? Or do I have to reroll?

Two questions, one answer: yes, but only if you can handle +4/x8 with your level one.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Captain Electric on May 19, 2019, 03:04:22 PM
Reminds me of a true story, Blue Steel never even trained up past level one.

Because he didn't need to.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Xev on May 19, 2019, 05:09:01 PM
Two questions, one answer: yes, but only if you can handle +4/x8 with your level one.

Two reactions: 1) ohhhh a challenge (impossible, but still, those can be the most... luring). 2. I can only be level 1??? That's not a horrible thing, actually.. Even if it is possible, can we please not level our toons until, like, November...?

I still haven't taken the time to find out what's going on, yet.. I will. Feel free to fill me and other cluelessnesses in, in the meanwhile  : ) I promise to look it up for myself soon.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on May 19, 2019, 06:05:24 PM
New challenge - try to stay level one (and alive) as long as possible while fighting +4/8 without turning XP off. Probably means you can't finish off anything. Try to beat Xev's time.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: The Fifth Horseman on May 19, 2019, 09:43:56 PM
Reminds me of a true story, Blue Steel never even trained up past level one.

Because he didn't need to.
Come on, we all know Blue Steel is cheating the system by using an impossible powerset combination.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 19, 2019, 11:28:55 PM
Come on, we all know Blue Steel is cheating the system by using an impossible powerset combination.

Well I discovered last night that not only can any level seem able to start taskforces and trials but if an L50 starts something like the abandoned sewer trial or the Eden trial,the first missions of each will be a breeze as they are sweeps of the area and those targets do not change levels to match an L50

But the targets in the mission will have become 50s.  That being said though, while my teammates we're not incarnates, being an incarnate with the ion blast was fun to watch as devouring earth enemies would explode into rocks and crystals.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on May 20, 2019, 06:33:33 AM
Two reactions: 1) ohhhh a challenge (impossible, but still, those can be the most... luring). 2. I can only be level 1??? That's not a horrible thing, actually. Even if it is possible, can we please not level our toons until, like, November...?

I still haven't taken the time to find out what's going on, yet.. I will. Feel free to fill me and other cluelessnesses in, in the meanwhile  : ) I promise to look it up for myself soon.

You can be level 50, but you start at level 1 again.  It seems like we won't be getting our old characters back.  I think the decision was using the character database might make NCSoft more likely to do something.  Other than that there are a few different servers up.  The most popular is Homecoming I would say but there are other options, especially as of lately.  Although I have my roots dug in pretty deep on HC.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Xev on May 20, 2019, 01:47:43 PM
Liberty (LB...) server originally, here. (Ukase, your world is back!)

I was prepared to level again if the game ever came back. The topic came up even before the shutdown, I think. My attitude was: Did it once, can do it again. Luckily I think I still even have my pertinent Mids files and at least 1 screenie with one of my main's accolades and abilities and all that - so I should be able to carbon copy at least 1 of my mains. I remember what the other ones look like and can probably remember their builds eventually, too.

Well, hmmm. Wow. I've not got the gametime to find out how to get back on and to get back on and play, right now, but, umm. wow. Yeah. Will definitely be doing that asap.

Thanks for filling me in! Amazing news.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on May 20, 2019, 02:04:05 PM
Ummm about those mids files. You're probably going to want to trash those and start over. There are new sets that outperform a lot of the old standbys, and work at every level to boot. And everything's easier to get as well.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on May 20, 2019, 06:38:51 PM
Umm... new Enhancement Sets?

Everything I've seen shows the same ones that were Old Live.

Before the game went dark the original devs added a whole bunch of new Enhancements and Enhancement upgrades as part of Premium and Power Packs.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: PhiloticKnight on May 20, 2019, 07:13:54 PM
Umm... new Enhancement Sets?

Everything I've seen shows the same ones that were Old Live.

Before the game went dark the original devs added a whole bunch of new Enhancements and Enhancement upgrades as part of Premium and Power Packs.

Yes, there are new sets. See these patch notes for changes since I24. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/11cLJiSYlfueJheOumRywG8Evip2Mjmu_30Y6ePaetqY/edit)

I'm excited to try Sudden Acceleration!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on May 20, 2019, 08:25:58 PM
Preventive Medicine heal set and Unbreakable guard resist are particularly stellar. The former has a chance for absorb proc and the latter a +max hp proc and a 3% melee defense bonus when 4 slotted. Oh and the new defense set has a scaling resist IO that works like SR's resist up to 10% at super low hp. just so many new options that builds are even tighter than before if that's possible. oh and sudden acceleration that PhiloticKnight mentioned is a new knockback set that has a kb to kd which isn't unique and works in hurricane. Can't wait to roll up a stormy now.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: PhiloticKnight on May 20, 2019, 08:40:57 PM
Preventive Medicine heal set and Unbreakable guard resist are particularly stellar. The former has a chance for absorb proc and the latter a +max hp proc and a 3% melee defense bonus when 4 slotted. Oh and the new defense set has a scaling resist IO that works like SR's resist up to 10% at super low hp. just so many new options that builds are even tighter than before if that's possible. oh and sudden acceleration that PhiloticKnight mentioned is a new knockback set that has a kb to kd which isn't unique and works in hurricane. Can't wait to roll up a stormy now.

Those are actually NOT SCoRE/I25, those are I24 from Paragon Studios.

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Preventive_Medicine
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Unbreakable_Guard

In fact, it looks like Sudden Acceleration is the ONLY SCoRE/I25 Enhancement set, from what I can see...
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 20, 2019, 09:47:01 PM
Those are actually NOT SCoRE/I25, those are I24 from Paragon Studios.

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Preventive_Medicine
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Unbreakable_Guard

In fact, it looks like Sudden Acceleration is the ONLY SCoRE/I25 Enhancement set, from what I can see...


Hmm kb to kd and not unique....I sense many happy peacebringers
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on May 21, 2019, 05:11:08 AM

Hmm kb to kd and not unique....I sense many happy peacebringers

you mean happier teams with a peacebringer on them. i don't think there's such an animal as a happy peacebringer :D

btw soloed the freakspec tonight. just insanely fun, emphasis on the insane. and for my trouble it dropped an lotg 7.5 and a panacea proc, which would have given me seizures if it happened back in the day.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on May 21, 2019, 11:10:19 AM
Those are actually NOT SCoRE/I25, those are I24 from Paragon Studios.

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Preventive_Medicine
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Unbreakable_Guard

In fact, it looks like Sudden Acceleration is the ONLY SCoRE/I25 Enhancement set, from what I can see...

Right.

And looking at the patch notes there is really just one new set developed by the SCORE team.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nightmarer on May 21, 2019, 01:37:50 PM
you mean happier teams with a peacebringer on them.

Ah no, afraid not, people don't know or don't care about KB to KD enhancements despite going really cheap. Peacebringers or not and keep making melee chars (especially all tankers, all wp and all da characters) a living hell. I am now determined to roll a grav/storm troller, payback is coming mwahahahaha
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 21, 2019, 10:26:11 PM
you mean happier teams with a peacebringer on them. i don't think there's such an animal as a happy peacebringer :D

btw soloed the freakspec tonight. just insanely fun, emphasis on the insane. and for my trouble it dropped an lotg 7.5 and a panacea proc, which would have given me seizures if it happened back in the day.

No just happier peacebringers.  All my peacebringers back in the day we're easily played and knockback was no issue for me.  I even had a juggler build on one of them that I could switch into to show trolls on the team what kb could really be like :)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Xev on May 22, 2019, 01:56:19 PM
I know I had KB to KD on my Claws/Fire brute for Shockwave and(?) Focus, and, I'm thinking it was a relatively new addition.

On the first scan of my old Mids files... I accidentally wiped out and then overwrote some of the above build's power choices.. *rolls eyes* Saved the thing all this time and wiped it out in seconds. I've got a screenie with all his set bonuses still, at least. My other main main's Mids looks intact. I don't have a screenie for him.

Anyway, I was thinking non-unique KB to KD was around before the game poofed, and, relatively new. I know for sure I had it on Shockwave. I thought I had it on Focus, too, but I can't see what I used for mods. Maybe I'm wrong. I remember being real happy about my KB to KD on that toon..

If we're starting again at level one, and broke.. then it'll be awhile before I can afford the stuff that made up my builds, anyway.. It took a long time the first time, anyway. This's all academic, anyway. The game's back (sorta), that's the main thing. Gear is details. I think my mouse hand and keyboard fingers can remember how to get it when the time comes.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on May 23, 2019, 12:29:03 AM
I know I had KB to KD on my Claws/Fire brute for Shockwave and(?) Focus, and, I'm thinking it was a relatively new addition.

On the first scan of my old Mids files... I accidentally wiped out and then overwrote some of the above build's power choices.. *rolls eyes* Saved the thing all this time and wiped it out in seconds. I've got a screenie with all his set bonuses still, at least. My other main main's Mids looks intact. I don't have a screenie for him.

Anyway, I was thinking non-unique KB to KD was around before the game poofed, and, relatively new. I know for sure I had it on Shockwave. I thought I had it on Focus, too, but I can't see what I used for mods. Maybe I'm wrong. I remember being real happy about my KB to KD on that toon..

If we're starting again at level one, and broke.. then it'll be awhile before I can afford the stuff that made up my builds, anyway.. It took a long time the first time, anyway. This's all academic, anyway. The game's back (sorta), that's the main thing. Gear is details. I think my mouse hand and keyboard fingers can remember how to get it when the time comes.

My memory is a bit fuzzy on it all, but I believe there was Unique KB to KD that worked for all powers?  Maybe it was just a single power.

As for rebuilding toons.  It is actually much faster this time around.  Don't get me wrong it still requires some grinding.  But the reduced Reward Merit prices, and newer economy, really speeds things up.  All 5 HC shards have a shared Auction house (which helps a ton).  Reward merits are 100 for a Very Rare, 50 for Rare, and 20 For Uncommon.  As opposed to what I think was 500 for a Very rare on live?
I was able to get my first char officially finished last night.  Soft capped Defenses, Perma Hasten, "Perma" Soul-drain (It has like a 1.3s CD) and solo'd* my first AV.  It ended up costing I wanna say....between 500-600 merits and 80-90 million influence?  Maybe a bit more.   The veteran levels speed up the incarnate process (For better or worse) but luckily people still run Itrails and stuff.

* - Solo'd using Lore pets and about 25 Envenomed daggers.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Xev on May 23, 2019, 02:07:59 AM
My memory is a bit fuzzy on it all, but I believe there was Unique KB to KD that worked for all powers?  Maybe it was just a single power.

I really thought I had all my Claws KB powers on KD, and, that it was one of the last things I did, and, that it was really good/fun. That's about all I remember about it.

I'm knee deep in STO farming (it doesn't take long but it goes on...forever...) and have a lot of mandatory RL to do. But. Man. You're making me wish I was back in Atlas Park. Architect. Running Itrials. Incarnating.. Running the wall of Roman dudes - whatever that was.. CoH was the first game that I ever played a satisfying melee toon in. And then I couldn't stop making them.

Anyway. yeah. sounds fun  : )

How big is that download, anyway.........? Was it easy enough to get an account set up and online and playing? Is the client still 32-bit.....?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on May 23, 2019, 05:34:04 AM
Focus was always kd. Shockwave is the place for it in clawls. The overwhelming force was universal damage, so it could go in any power that did damage, but not in hurricane, eg. The new one is from a knockback set so it'll go in anything with KB.  It also isn't unique so if you wanted to stick it in every PB kd power you could.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on May 23, 2019, 11:50:26 AM
No just happier peacebringers.  All my peacebringers back in the day we're easily played and knockback was no issue for me.  I even had a juggler build on one of them that I could switch into to show trolls on the team what kb could really be like :)

KDown I never found as much fun.

On my En/En blaster and PB, loved knbk.  Kndown is good also.  I like the Solar Flare (Footstomp?) on the White Dwarf.  I used to stack that with the human version morphing between forms.

Fantastic stuff.  S-TISH.  Cr-ISSHH!  Normally Council mobs I liked doing that to most.

One of my 'irks' is the devs' took knbk out of Power Boost.  It's not as much fun now.

Sure, it was ridiculous knocking a grey mob a whole city block with it.  But that was part of the crazy 'hero' genre.  KnBK is now, ironically, the one thing my En/En blaster can't boost.

Another side issue.  Is it me, or did the devs' make room next to your enhancement slots...for what looks like...MORE enhancement slots?  Did they plan to give out more?

Some of the lesser used areas other than acc/dam and end....ie Range, Knbk and other aspects of the  power sets could be rounded out with more slots.  There is room there for something.  Range and Knbk are things that I'd like but can't afford to prioritise on a build so they go....wasted.  A shame.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Xev on May 24, 2019, 04:08:57 AM
Focus was always kd.

Wellllll my Mids disagrees.

I also remember having more than 1 KB power, and, I remember when I could convert both to KD, it made life way easier and more fun. None of my other powers are KD or KB in that build, soooo, it leads me to believe that Focus was KD before the shutdown.

I don't remember having to burn an enhancement slot in both powers to convert KB to KD.. I don't know how I did it.

*shrug*

I totally do remember more than 1 of my Claws powers going to KD, and, it being good. That's about it.

KDown I never found as much fun.

On my En/En blaster and PB, loved knbk. 

How can you not  : )

My Energy/Ice Blaster was named Energice.. Loved slamming things all over the screen with that guy. Ice offers pretty good defense, too. I wasn't very good at playing him team-friendly. I mean, I know you can hover and shoot straight down to kinda do KD instead of KB, but.. that kinda defeats the purpose of playing an Energy Blaster if you like using that power to pinball your mobs. I never played a Peacebringer (I may have fiddled..) but I sure loved my Energy guy and how he could keep mobs off their feet and send them flying. Very survivable and fun Blaster.

KB screwed up my Claws/Fire Brute, though. I wanted mobs staying close to me where I could light them on fire and drain their End while shredding them to...flaming shreds. Melee roundup/aoe is way easier when mobs stay nice and close. KD is great for a melee like KB can be great for an Energy Blaster. If they're off their feet, they aren't hitting you. But, yeah, you want them nice and close.

Man I was having the most fun ever, when they shut us down! The devs were on *fire*. You're making it all come back to me how fun it was to play  : )
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on May 24, 2019, 05:12:56 AM
If you look in the mids description of the power it says can possibly knock down your foes, whereas shockwave says possibly knock back. Power effects listings over where you mouse over to see set bonuses applied always say knockback. You can also tell from the base mag. My first ever toon was a claws, focus has been knockdown since at least issue 12. Also you'd have to be remembering from the secret server or the newer ones since overwhelming force's proc was unique.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 24, 2019, 09:34:44 PM
So...had anyone yet started to think at work "this blasted job is interfering with my CoH time"?

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Ohioknight on May 25, 2019, 03:21:20 AM
So...had anyone yet started to think at work "this blasted job is interfering with my CoH time"?

Retired a few months ago. 
Bought a new gaming capable rig figuring I'd learn to play Elite Dangerous until some spiritual successor came thru.
Then this happened
 ;D

so... HA HA!
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Xev on May 25, 2019, 06:04:34 AM
Well.. My first attempt to 'Add image to post' was a fail...

You'll have to settle for my crummy new links from Box, who, used to have really nice direct links until like 2 days ago..

https://app.box.com/s/jqwbejqo82z5r6ggx5l6f709da7hpzqm

https://app.box.com/s/72pexiq8btveo5mgpd9matzi6l0tsr08

Power effects listings over where you mouse over to see set bonuses applied always say knockback.

They don't on my TW/ELE build. I can make a screenie if you want...

Anyway. I'm willing to concede the point. Whatever it was. Maybe I remembered it all wrong. *shrug*. It wouldn't be a first. I thought the KB to KD thing rang a bell.

I'm pretty sure the part I remember about having a lot of fun and it was just getting better and better is right. I'm jealous of you guys playing again already! I'll be one of you soon enough, hopefully. It seems like a straightforward enough process. Go Go to all the people who are making it possible.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on May 26, 2019, 03:39:10 AM
Retired a few months ago. 
Bought a new gaming capable rig figuring I'd learn to play Elite Dangerous until some spiritual successor came thru.
Then this happened
 ;D

so... HA HA!

I daren't play Elite Dangerous.  I'll get sucked in and do nothing else.

It's bad enough that 'this happened.' :o

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on May 26, 2019, 03:47:38 AM
So...had anyone yet started to think at work "this blasted job is interfering with my CoH time"?

Uhuh...

:)

And isn't Sniping with new, improved En/En Insta-Sniping transformative.

Snipe.  Dead.  (I mean, arrested.)  Snipe.  Dead.  Snipe Nova.  Snipe Torrent.  Snipe Bone Smasher...  Nova...Snipe.Power Thrust Snipe.  So many new powers. :P

Rinse repeat Novas that don't blow end.  I can even fly with Power Regen on...discounts all end on all powers....don't need to slot for end... :OOO

And now flying combat (Don't even have hover...) is very fun.  Chris Reeve Superman style drifting along...BONE SMASHER....SNIPE!  POWER BLAST!  TORRENT!  EX-BLAST SNIPE!

En/En Blaster.  I knew one day you'd come...

First en/en blaster I've fitted Assault and Tactics on.  Transformative.

3 Slotted on the latter.  Think I need that kismet.  But with alting Aim/BU/Power Boost (WHY DID THE DEVS TAKE OUT KNOCKBACK?) I'm pretty much penultimate perma-insta snipe. 

It's very compelling...flying...sniping...melee....sniping...Freak Tanks.  remember me?  From all those years back when you (red con) knocked me clean down the street in Brickstown?  Yes.  Me.  *SNIPE...fly.  **SNIPE!  BONESMASHER.  SNIPE.  MORE SNIPE.  Reverses back over the Freak tank.  SNIPE.  MORE SNIPING.  ('I think he's 'dead/arrested', Jim...')

Cathartic.

And those Snipers in Founders that blew me out the sky 14 years ago.  They're next.  Boy....they're in for a helluva beating.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on May 28, 2019, 10:07:02 PM
Yes the upgrade to snipe is fantastic.

Still gathering some io for my blaster to permanent boost snipe
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on May 29, 2019, 09:00:25 AM
I agree it is an amazing change to the game.  To much delight, I discovered that targeting drone from devices will give insta snipe unslotted.

My new Energy/Devices blaster is running around at level 10 with insta-snipe.  It is so nice being able to just throw snipe into the attack rotation like a regular attack.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Nightmarer on May 29, 2019, 03:07:38 PM
Wellllll my Mids disagrees.

It was always KD, check the magnitude, KD is low magnitude KB and Focus was always 0.67 mag which effectively translated in KD. It is exactly what the enhancements are doing, lowering the KB mag to 0.67
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on May 31, 2019, 05:05:01 PM
Yes the upgrade to snipe is fantastic.

Still gathering some io for my blaster to permanent boost snipe

Let me know how you slot your Tactics power to do that.  (And the rest of your build.)

Perma-hasten and Insta-snipe with perma Energy discount are the long term IO aims.  Getting the build to play as fast as possible.

I'm using AIM/Build UP/Boost Power to tag team the 'auto trigger' on instal-snipe until I get Tactics slotted out with the unique IO I need.  Snipe's trigger seems to come up just when I need it (using Hasten.)  As long as I space the 3 'boosters' out I get snipe as I need it for each combat situation.  Ticks round just nicely with Hasten. 

It's now a fluid and essential part of the attack chain.  It can now be used in combination with other powers.  Fluid and combo-maker.  Two massive changes...never thought the day would come.

...along with the game chancing 'perms-energise' (I'm 6 seconds short of perms-energise.)  Great to play with the massive end discount. :)

There are sundry combat situations where I'd have been toggle debuffed, slapped, stunned...disoriented, on the ground getting a kicking, one-shotted or out mobbed.  Wolves, Vamps, Crey Tanks, Freak Tanks don't have it so easy now.  Can take on small mobs quite easily and there's the rinse repeat nova for greater ambition.

Meanwhile, In Founders Fall...

Snipe...*  Sniper sniped.  *remember me you sniped all those years ago?  Welllll....*snipe.  *Sniper bounces on the ground...  (It's a long wayyyyy down...)

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Zombie Man on May 31, 2019, 11:16:55 PM
Let me know how you slot your Tactics power to do that.  (And the rest of your build.)


Regularly slotted Tactics plus a Kismet: +6% Accuracy should do it.

Because it's misnamed, it's actually +6% ToHit.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on June 01, 2019, 02:30:33 PM
Insta snipe without to hit padding is on homecoming beta now ftw.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on June 02, 2019, 10:06:26 PM
Insta snipe without to hit padding is on homecoming beta now ftw.

I am not thrilled about that upcoming change.  I really don't know why they have to mess with a good thing.  If it was just giving everyone Insta snipe to be nice than I get that, but they are changing so much about the power.  Recharge time, a new IO set to pick snipes.  Instead of doing all that, just leave it the way it is, or lower the ToHit requirement to like a single small yellow.  This is a perfect example of "If it's not broke don't fix it"

It's a really, really bad change IMO.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on June 02, 2019, 11:01:38 PM
Idk i've yet to play a blaster with a snipe since the changes. And i hadn't taken a snipe since first ever blaster on live. Sounded pretty good to me from reading the initial post but peeps seem upset about it so who knows how it'll end up.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on June 03, 2019, 12:47:22 AM
I am not thrilled about that upcoming change.  I really don't know why they have to mess with a good thing.  If it was just giving everyone Insta snipe to be nice than I get that, but they are changing so much about the power.  Recharge time, a new IO set to pick snipes.  Instead of doing all that, just leave it the way it is, or lower the ToHit requirement to like a single small yellow.  This is a perfect example of "If it's not broke don't fix it"

It's a really, really bad change IMO.

Completely agree.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on June 04, 2019, 04:19:04 AM
Changes in general are out of control.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on June 04, 2019, 05:10:26 AM
Yet to be one I haven't liked. Jury's out on the snipe one but it's not like they could make snipes worse than they were on live.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on June 04, 2019, 05:20:16 PM
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on June 04, 2019, 05:22:42 PM
Regularly slotted Tactics plus a Kismet: +6% Accuracy should do it.

Because it's misnamed, it's actually +6% ToHit.

The Kismet wouldn't go in tactics?  It's part of a defense set?  So only in a defense power eg. Combat Jump?  Weave?

See my post above.  What DID I do wrong? :P

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on June 04, 2019, 06:06:00 PM
CJ, weave, maneuvers, stealth, hover, basically sounds like you'll need to take something just for the kismet. Cj would be most useful since if you were the hover type you'd have it already. Though I do hear the insta snipes with combat disabled by pff are op.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on June 04, 2019, 08:56:21 PM
CJ, weave, maneuvers, stealth, hover, basically sounds like you'll need to take something just for the kismet. Cj would be most useful since if you were the hover type you'd have it already. Though I do hear the insta snipes with combat disabled by pff are op.

I've played a Bubble/En Defender as a 'Hover Type.'  I quite enjoyed ping pong with deflection bolt (is it?) with it's 100% guaranteed (?) knock back.

Yes.  Of much of the advice saying you needed to just take the 'Kismet IO' - not one really talked about you needing Weave, CJ, Stealth.

So you can put the Kismet IO into Hover? 

If that is the case, thenperhaps I should respect from flight into hover. 

(I have all the en/en powers bar power push which, I feel is made almost redundant by the 'insta-snipe' and I don't have the stun power either.  Why stun when you can insta-snipe?)  I don't like the standard(?) practice of the fighting pool plus CJ to put together a defence or 'special' IO build.

Four powers that takes up.  And means I'd have to drop four powers.  What would I drop?  Power bolt?  Energy Punch, Bu-a-shakka Punch and..exploding blast?  At least two of those I like.  I don't use P Bolt all that often.  And the 'mega' punch (Total Focus) is slowest attack in the attack chain.  I tend to like taking 'almost' complete sets e.g. whether en/en or ice/ice or elec/elec.  I've never been that much into taking tertiary powers bar Hasten and a travel power.  I find most of them underwhelming.

vs

Just swapping flight for hover.

Thank you for the reply.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on June 04, 2019, 11:55:14 PM
Yet to be one I haven't liked. Jury's out on the snipe one but it's not like they could make snipes worse than they were on live.

But wouldn't you get more enjoyment out of them if the changes were spaced further apart?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on June 05, 2019, 12:10:45 AM
So i can do something the lame way before it gets improved? Pass.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on June 05, 2019, 05:52:06 AM
Yet to be one I haven't liked. Jury's out on the snipe one but it's not like they could make snipes worse than they were on live.

The snipe currently on HC isn't the snipe from live.  Its the changed snipe from I24, which in my opinion was in the best spot I have ever seen Snipe.  Instant snipe was already a thing if you had enough ToHit in i24.  This current change they are about to do messes with that and resulted in basically changing the power entirely.  It's about as powerful as T2 power on the Beta currently.  A lot of the changes they have done are good, but this particular one feels completely random and basically unnecessary.  I currently can't see any drawback to the way Snipe currently is, I haven't heard any players complain about it either.  Quite the contrary most people love the i24 changes to snipe.  The one on beta changes so much about the power for really no reason.  It changes the way builds will be done, it changes the way snipe will work and changes the Device set. Why rework something that works perfectly already.  If you want long snipe, don't use aim or build up, or just turn off tactics or targeting drone.  Want it to be instant?  Do any of those things or pop a medium yellow.

Nothing they are changing makes instant snipe any easier to obtain or makes it easier to choose which one you want.  It actually adds unnecessary steps to something that already exists but with fewer steps.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on June 05, 2019, 09:31:01 AM
The snipe currently on HC isn't the snipe from live.  Its the changed snipe from I24, which in my opinion was in the best spot I have ever seen Snipe.  Instant snipe was already a thing if you had enough ToHit in i24.  This current change they are about to do messes with that and resulted in basically changing the power entirely.  It's about as powerful as T2 power on the Beta currently.  A lot of the changes they have done are good, but this particular one feels completely random and basically unnecessary.  I currently can't see any drawback to the way Snipe currently is, I haven't heard any players complain about it either.  Quite the contrary most people love the i24 changes to snipe.  The one on beta changes so much about the power for really no reason.  It changes the way builds will be done, it changes the way snipe will work and changes the Device set. Why rework something that works perfectly already.  If you want long snipe, don't use aim or build up, or just turn off tactics or targeting drone.  Want it to be instant?  Do any of those things or pop a medium yellow.

Nothing they are changing makes instant snipe any easier to obtain or makes it easier to choose which one you want.  It actually adds unnecessary steps to something that already exists but with fewer steps.

The one on test still doesn't 'feel' as good as the i24 beta snipe.

It may say '1.33' cast time on the tin but in practice there seems to be slight delay.

The range nerf was a step back.  (That much seemed an obvious one without playing it.)  It felt like the 'old' Power Burst range which put you in melee range, which, as a blaster, you don't really want to be in unless you're a committed (as in insane?) blapper.  They put that back rather quickly.

The recharge nerf?  A truck driven right through the 'fun' aspect of a speeded up attack chain with a '3rd' heavy hitter single blast power from 'the hip.'  3 seconds longer?  It made the fun attack combos of live achingly long.  I've caught a Leandro message on Discord that says it's going back to 12 seconds.  (With x2 recharge SOs puts it at 7-ish secs.  With Hasten?  Just over 5 sec.  Which it currently is.)  A time nerf seems counter to the idea of having a 'fast' or 'insta-snipe'.  It executes quickly so you can wait longer for it?  uH?

Gamesmanship.  I LIKE the mangement aspect of hitting aim or build up or power boost to activate the instant snipe.  It's been fun.  Now those elements are no longer there (on test) it seems 'emptier' somehow.  I liked deciding when to use the auto.  Is it just semantics I can still 'choose' to use it when it comes up.  But I liked the process of activating it.

IO or not to IO.  That is the question. 

I'm not a fan of hacking out 4 powers out of my build to slot the Kismet, if I'm honest.  Just as I'm not a fan of the post i3 perma-hasten nerf.  And I didn't like the knbk taken out of Power Boost.

A far more elegant solution would be to have 3 to hit in AIM to create a perma-snipe.  (How many people slot aim with to hit anyhow?  Or 6 slot it?)  Or tactics with 3 to hit. 

That should be enough.  And far less fussy.  As is.  I've taken tactics.  4 slotted it.  Now I have to dismantle my build to get a 'defence' power when I'm supposed to be a 'snipe' specialist.

I'd argue that both of those could be addressed in snipe, aim or tactics.  Or to put it in slot language.  15 slots and I still haven't got perma-snipe. :P

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on June 05, 2019, 12:46:06 PM
Seems like they're just trying things at this point on test to find the sweet spot. The were plenty of folks I saw discussing snipe before they decided to work on it who were in the same spot as Azrael, having trouble working enough to hit into their build. From the beta discussion I've glanced at it seems like there's enough back and forth that there should be a good compromise before anything is pushed live. Tbh anything that makes me even consider putting a snipe in a build is already a huge improvement over live - I took it exactly once, on my first blaster, just useless.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Taceus Jiwede on June 05, 2019, 07:57:14 PM
The one on test still doesn't 'feel' as good as the i24 beta snipe.

It may say '1.33' cast time on the tin but in practice there seems to be slight delay.

The range nerf was a step back.  (That much seemed an obvious one without playing it.)  It felt like the 'old' Power Burst range which put you in melee range, which, as a blaster, you don't really want to be in unless you're a committed (as in insane?) blapper.  They put that back rather quickly.

The recharge nerf?  A truck driven right through the 'fun' aspect of a speeded up attack chain with a '3rd' heavy hitter single blast power from 'the hip.'  3 seconds longer?  It made the fun attack combos of live achingly long.  I've caught a Leandro message on Discord that says it's going back to 12 seconds.  (With x2 recharge SOs puts it at 7-ish secs.  With Hasten?  Just over 5 sec.  Which it currently is.)  A time nerf seems counter to the idea of having a 'fast' or 'insta-snipe'.  It executes quickly so you can wait longer for it?  uH?

Gamesmanship.  I LIKE the mangement aspect of hitting aim or build up or power boost to activate the instant snipe.  It's been fun.  Now those elements are no longer there (on test) it seems 'emptier' somehow.  I liked deciding when to use the auto.  Is it just semantics I can still 'choose' to use it when it comes up.  But I liked the process of activating it.

IO or not to IO.  That is the question. 

I'm not a fan of hacking out 4 powers out of my build to slot the Kismet, if I'm honest.  Just as I'm not a fan of the post i3 perma-hasten nerf.  And I didn't like the knbk taken out of Power Boost.

A far more elegant solution would be to have 3 to hit in AIM to create a perma-snipe.  (How many people slot aim with to hit anyhow?  Or 6 slot it?)  Or tactics with 3 to hit. 

That should be enough.  And far less fussy.  As is.  I've taken tactics.  4 slotted it.  Now I have to dismantle my build to get a 'defence' power when I'm supposed to be a 'snipe' specialist.

I'd argue that both of those could be addressed in snipe, aim or tactics.  Or to put it in slot language.  15 slots and I still haven't got perma-snipe. :P

Azrael.

I agree with all of this.  I am happy they backpedaled on the range and recharge about, those were my biggest gripes.

I agree the "feel" of it is just different.  Something about just doesn't feel entirely right  I also agree on the Gamership part.  Even on my Fire/Fire Blaster who didnt have Perma-Insta snipe I liked using Aim, Build Up, or Inspirations when necessary.  As for my /Devices blaster.  His whole existence was to have perma instant snipe as low as possible.  Which is 10 for an Energy/Device blaster.  Currently, the IO to pick is my biggest gripe.  It seems silly to make people change their builds to pick something they could already pick.

Seems like they're just trying things at this point on test to find the sweet spot. The were plenty of folks I saw discussing snipe before they decided to work on it who were in the same spot as Azrael, having trouble working enough to hit into their build. From the beta discussion I've glanced at it seems like there's enough back and forth that there should be a good compromise before anything is pushed live. Tbh anything that makes me even consider putting a snipe in a build is already a huge improvement over live - I took it exactly once, on my first blaster, just useless.

I will say its nice to see them responding the feedback.  People didn't like the initial Sniper changes and they listened and made some changes until it was ina place they felt was a good compromise between their goal and players wants.  I respect that at least, lots of MMO's with Publishers and full Dev teams blindly commit to changes all the time regardless of feedback.  So it is nice to see.  However, I still think they just call off this sniper change entirely.  To me, it doesn't feel like a player prompted the change.  It seems like something the SCoRE devs wanted to do when the server was private still, and now have the support to do it.  The only problem is the vast majority of us have only been playing for a month and a half tops, not 7 years.  Most of us barely even had time to enjoy the new snipe changes as they were.  I wouldn't say the newest snipe changes are a good thing if the last time you tried a Snipe power was on Live, at least until you try the current i24 changes - its that different feeling.  I agree snipe was less than useful on Live, but the i24 changes to Snipe have made it an entirely different power.

On Live I rarely took snipe besides my main blaster.  Now with i24 snipe changes, I always take snipe because its amazing.  After these newest changes, ill probably go back to never taking it.  Id say try the current snipe as it is, before deciding if these new changes are better or not.  They may be better than on i23 Live, but they certainly aren't better than the i24 Beta changes (IMO)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on June 05, 2019, 11:02:54 PM
So i can do something the lame way before it gets improved? Pass.

Each to his own, I say.   I enjoy the evolution of the game.  In the case of snipe attacks, I never thought they were broken.  I was a fan of what Paragon was going to do with I24.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Sinistar on June 06, 2019, 07:09:05 AM
My main on the homecoming servers is now slotted up and has about an 11 second recharge time on their snipe. 

With tactics six slotted with Gaussian which has the to hit buff running all the time and occasionally activating, I can keep my snipe almost always instant without the need for any special new IO sets.

However I do want to the game evolve.

I also want to play vanilla and that is what private servers are for.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Graydar on June 09, 2019, 06:24:39 PM
Been playing nonstop for the last 2 weeks. Was a Tanker on live but I'm a scrapper here atm. Still feels like I'm dreaming, lol
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on June 10, 2019, 10:09:36 PM
When you hit the groove, it's like the lost years never happened.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Abraxus on June 12, 2019, 02:42:36 PM
The timing of this rebirth was probably fortuitous too.  7 years later, things were such a state that NCSoft was bound to care less than they would have, if it happened much sooner after the initial shutdown.  So, in all likelihood, it happened when it could happen, and couldn't have happened any other way.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: saipaman on June 12, 2019, 05:56:45 PM
We'll never know about the road not taken.

Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: duane on June 15, 2019, 12:43:26 PM
We'll never know about the road not taken.

I will always wonder at 3 issues a year by 6 years what those 18 issues would have looked like.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Vee on June 15, 2019, 06:38:55 PM
I will always wonder at 3 issues a year by 6 years what those 18 issues would have looked like.

something like
(https://media.mnn.com/assets/images/2014/03/morningsunseastar.jpg)

 +

(https://media.mnn.com/assets/images/2014/03/nine-armed-sea-star.jpg)
perhaps? or something even more echinodramatic?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: MyriVerse on June 15, 2019, 10:21:54 PM
DC's lawyers then send a C&D for looking too much like Starro.

 ;D
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on June 17, 2019, 12:13:50 PM
The timing of this rebirth was probably fortuitous too.  7 years later, things were such a state that NCSoft was bound to care less than they would have, if it happened much sooner after the initial shutdown.  So, in all likelihood, it happened when it could happen, and couldn't have happened any other way.

Yep.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on June 17, 2019, 12:19:05 PM
I agree with all of this.  I am happy they backpedaled on the range and recharge about, those were my biggest gripes.

I agree the "feel" of it is just different.  Something about just doesn't feel entirely right  I also agree on the Gamership part.  Even on my Fire/Fire Blaster who didnt have Perma-Insta snipe I liked using Aim, Build Up, or Inspirations when necessary.  As for my /Devices blaster.  His whole existence was to have perma instant snipe as low as possible.  Which is 10 for an Energy/Device blaster.  Currently, the IO to pick is my biggest gripe.  It seems silly to make people change their builds to pick something they could already pick.

I will say its nice to see them responding the feedback.  People didn't like the initial Sniper changes and they listened and made some changes until it was ina place they felt was a good compromise between their goal and players wants.  I respect that at least, lots of MMO's with Publishers and full Dev teams blindly commit to changes all the time regardless of feedback.  So it is nice to see.  However, I still think they just call off this sniper change entirely.  To me, it doesn't feel like a player prompted the change.  It seems like something the SCoRE devs wanted to do when the server was private still, and now have the support to do it.  The only problem is the vast majority of us have only been playing for a month and a half tops, not 7 years.  Most of us barely even had time to enjoy the new snipe changes as they were.  I wouldn't say the newest snipe changes are a good thing if the last time you tried a Snipe power was on Live, at least until you try the current i24 changes - its that different feeling.  I agree snipe was less than useful on Live, but the i24 changes to Snipe have made it an entirely different power.

On Live I rarely took snipe besides my main blaster.  Now with i24 snipe changes, I always take snipe because its amazing.  After these newest changes, ill probably go back to never taking it.  Id say try the current snipe as it is, before deciding if these new changes are better or not.  They may be better than on i23 Live, but they certainly aren't better than the i24 Beta changes (IMO)

A GOOD read and a fair assessment.

If you haven't tried snipe before?  Try it now on 'i24' because it plays pitch perfect.  It feels THAT good.  (Whether it is technically what the devs intended in i24's unfinished state is one thing...)  But from a 'how it feels and plays' point?

Oh mamma.

They're going to use Tactics to get back the 'damage' the short snipe had on i24.  It's the whole longer short recharge vs more less damage equation their balancing.  Regardless, range and recharge nerfs were a bad(!) move they quickly changed due to feedback.  The auto feature works great.  But at least give us the option of using the short snipe animation from the powers customisation menu.


Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on June 17, 2019, 12:19:41 PM
Each to his own, I say.   I enjoy the evolution of the game.  In the case of snipe attacks, I never thought they were broken.  I was a fan of what Paragon was going to do with I24.

aye.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on June 17, 2019, 12:28:36 PM
My main on the homecoming servers is now slotted up and has about an 11 second recharge time on their snipe. 

With tactics six slotted with Gaussian which has the to hit buff running all the time and occasionally activating, I can keep my snipe almost always instant without the need for any special new IO sets.

However I do want to the game evolve.

I also want to play vanilla and that is what private servers are for.

They've put back the range and the recharge (thank goodness.)

The new '2 second' activation on the 'slow' snipe will come as relief to any who hated the long wait and the 'hey, he nudged me...' snipe.  The 'hit like a truck' damage is great.  And the 'SNIPE!' shows a nice dry sense of humour.  Bit of fun there.

The new 'auto-snipe orange ring in and out of combat' feature now works great.  Seamless.  And democratises gameplay for all instead of being behind a power and some slots and an IO pay wall.  Which , for me, is MORE in the spirit of the COH being 'pick up and play'.  (However, I will miss the game management of hit aim or BU or power boost to get the to hit.  Which those and tactics 'to hits' I had insta-snipe up and running 'most' of the time.)

Numbers?  Back to 12 second recharge.  With 2 recharge SO in snipe I've got about 7-ish seconds.  With Hasten?  Just over 5 sec!!!  (Ker-POW!)

One 'emotive' gripe from test.  They've changed the 'shoot from the hip' to the 'arm out wobble'.  I liked the 'cocked' arm fasted gun in the west animation.  So satisfying.  (There maybe be technical reasons why it was like this.  But the developers had a great 'short animation' for insta snipe and it differentiates both long and short form.  I hope they change the 'short animation' back.)

How it plays.  'Just about as good' as on 'live.'  (I think I got used to how it was.  I don't see how they couldn't have just made the requirement for insta snipe tactics and 'to hit.'  But it DOES democratise gameplay for all snipe.)

It's worth trying.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on June 17, 2019, 12:34:37 PM
something like
(https://media.mnn.com/assets/images/2014/03/morningsunseastar.jpg)

 +

(https://media.mnn.com/assets/images/2014/03/nine-armed-sea-star.jpg)
perhaps? or something even more echinodramatic?

Two 'regurgitative' monopolies.  One called Marvel and one called DC.

*just came to mind.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on June 17, 2019, 12:37:44 PM
I will always wonder at 3 issues a year by 6 years what those 18 issues would have looked like.

There is one 'farm' map that has the 'Earth' in the sky (much bigger than the Earth from NASA's 'film' release) and has what looks like a luna service.  I wonder...was this the beginning of the Moon base stuff?

What 'might have been.'  However, with the dev' tools most likely being in the hands of the community now...  Those 18 issues can be pondered and developed by the community. 

A fitting epitaph for a new dawn.

A multi-verse of visions as each dev' community will  have their own alt reality..?

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on June 17, 2019, 12:39:49 PM
My main on the homecoming servers is now slotted up and has about an 11 second recharge time on their snipe. 

With tactics six slotted with Gaussian which has the to hit buff running all the time and occasionally activating, I can keep my snipe almost always instant without the need for any special new IO sets.

However I do want to the game evolve.

I also want to play vanilla and that is what private servers are for.

I haven't fitted the Gaussians.  I'll have to do that before the new patch gets pushed.

That's the thing.  For those that want vanilla?  There will be those that believe CoH should be curated as it 'was'...

...and for Homecoming and others?  Perhaps evolution.

It will be interesting to watch.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on June 17, 2019, 12:40:28 PM
When you hit the groove, it's like the lost years never happened.

It feels just like live to me.  Testimony to the work done by the community.

Dream like.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Thunder Glove on June 17, 2019, 04:20:48 PM
There is one 'farm' map that has the 'Earth' in the sky (much bigger than the Earth from NASA's 'film' release) and has what looks like a luna service.  I wonder...was this the beginning of the Moon base stuff?

According to the 2012 Loregasm (https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA), the long-awaited moonbase was going to be added in Issue 28.  Positron says he approved the art assets in the last day before the studio was closed. :(

I will always wonder at 3 issues a year by 6 years what those 18 issues would have looked like.
Way too many Incarnate powers.  I don't know how they were going to keep up the pace.  (I mean, the six we have now make a dramatic difference; imagine having fourteen more of equal power and utility)
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Felderburg on June 17, 2019, 05:04:42 PM
There is one 'farm' map that has the 'Earth' in the sky (much bigger than the Earth from NASA's 'film' release) and has what looks like a luna service.  I wonder...was this the beginning of the Moon base stuff?

Isn't that the scene for the final "Who Will Die?" mission?
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: Azrael on June 18, 2019, 12:22:48 PM
According to the 2012 Loregasm (https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA), the long-awaited moonbase was going to be added in Issue 28.  Positron says he approved the art assets in the last day before the studio was closed. :(
Way too many Incarnate powers.  I don't know how they were going to keep up the pace.  (I mean, the six we have now make a dramatic difference; imagine having fourteen more of equal power and utility)

What a shame.  I wonder, is there anything in the code for the Moon Base or had they just started pre-visual?  I wonder if the 'art assets' are out there and can still be used?  Or lost in the 'hasty' closing down of the studios?

Incarnates.  Uber.  Nice idea.  Lousy 'nest ridden' interface.  I'd rather they'd have used the standard interface.  'Super Epics' or 'Incarnates'.  With standard slotting and power picking.

Azrael.
Title: Re: The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release
Post by: detour on September 08, 2019, 11:01:37 PM
SUDDENLY A WILD TRIPLASH APPEARS! 

I keep looking for you at the Auction House...